Work Text:
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
"Herbert."
He pretends not to hear the voice, instead opting to continue to count his steps. Even numbers on right, odds on left; end in fives on the left and tens on the right.
"Herbert."
Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen.
"Herbert!"
He halts immediately, glaring at Dan with such ferocity that he notices him take a half step back. Good. “ What ?”
"Hey, take it easy. I just asked if there was anything specific you want when we get to the store."
Ah, that was definitely a valid reason for interrupting his counting. Bouncing on the balls of his feet, Herbert takes a few seconds to run over anything that immediately comes to mind. "Pencils. I need pencils."
"What? How? I just bought you some a week ago. A whole pack ."
"Well, that pack is gone. It no longer exists. Past tense verb usage only."
"Oh my god, okay, fine,” Dan mumbles as they begin to walk again.
Herbert can tell that Dan is becoming frustrated with him, but it's all according to his plan. Despite his initial agreement, he wants to be off 'relapse watch' as soon as possible. He can't get a moment's peace. Dan really has stuck to his word and Herbert has had enough, especially with the trips into public.
He has been on edge for the past few days, and of course the temptation is there, but the need to use the solution has been merely a flicker in his mind, which is occupied by important work. He's made too much progress in his experiments. The active state of the reagent has reached new limits, its effects lasting well over an hour before needing to be reapplied to the subjects; each application of luciferin to tagged cells confirms the fact, the bioluminescent glow a rewarding sight. One hour. More, more. Once the reagent is active, could embalming fluids be used to help preserve the new active state? No no, it would be backtracking. What if--
"Herbert."
He almost stumbles face first into Dan’s chest, now noticing that they have made it to the front of the convenience store. Well, that was fast. "Is this going to be a regular occurrence? Interrupting my thoughts?"
Dan actually groans in annoyance. "I'm asking you an important question here, Herb. We are right outside the fucking store."
"Then please, by all means, ask your question.”
"Do you need anything to help curb your tics while we’re in there?" Dan inquires, tone clipped as he enunciates each word.
Herbert, once again, takes a moment to mull over the question, his left hand slowly flapping in a sign of concentration. He chooses not to acknowledge the stares and glares already beginning to take place. He can't give less of a shit if he tried. A small, cheeky upturn of his mouth twitches before returning back to its normal thin line.
"A rubber ball, which I need to use immediately."
"Herbert," Dan sighs incredulously. "Are you going to bounce it all over the store again?"
"You know as well as I do that if I am still required to stay connected to your hip, especially going so far as to be thrust into public, I must have something to keep my hands occupied," Herbert utters harshly. "Would you rather my body slip up and make a show of myself and ruin your public image?"
“Aggressively bouncing a rubber ball up and down the aisles while simultaneously trying to aim for people's heads is considered making a show of yourself! Stop being a brat!” Dan throws his hands up in the air, but quickly puts them back down at his sides, eyes ping-ponging from face to face in the crowd. "Christ, you would think I still have a public image at this point; which I don't, thank you very much for reminding me."
“That’s hardly my fault, Daniel.”
Dan runs a hand over his exhausted, frustrated face. “Look, all I’m saying is the least you could do is make these trips seem less like prying rusty nails from a plank of wood and more like, oh, I don’t know, an appropriate experience.”
Herbert’s eyebrows raise inquisitively, his hand still flapping slowly. “An appropriate experience,” he parrots sarcastically. “Do you mean having to endure the sound of crying children, tall ceilings, bright lights, long lines, and overhead speakers without the aid of a stimulation activity? Because an ‘appropriate experience’ for me would consist of vibrating appendages and wanting to light myself on fire.”
He counts this instance as a victory when Dan does nothing but roll his eyes before quickly grabbing Herbert’s flapping hand with his own, holding it tightly against his hip.
“Let’s get in and out of here as soon as possible, without a rubber ball.”
“Dan, you just asked me if I needed--”
“As the man who needs to put up with you for this whole outing, I’m vetoing your request. Pick something else. Something less bouncy and less likely to attract the attention of children.”
Herbert releases an infuriated breath from his mouth, brows furrowing and lips pursing almost childishly. He can taste the unpleasant sensation of embarrassment in the back of his throat for what he is about to suggest.
“... Play Doh.”
Dan actually facepalms with the hand not holding Herbert’s. “Oh, for the love of god.”
“You said less bouncy. I cannot help the fact that it may attract the attention of children; or adults,” Herbert murmurs softly.
Herbert can practically see Dan's brain churning away inside his head. He considers it a phenomenon how Dan's head can be so pretty and intelligent yet so dumb and airheaded. Of course he is a valued partner in his research, but sometimes he wonders how Dan got through high school let alone the first few years of medical school.
“What if…” Dan’s cheeks seem to have gone rosy red. Herbert can’t help but stare in fascination. “What if I just hold your hand the whole time?”
Now that surprises him, his eyebrows shooting up and eyes flickering between Dan’s face and their discreetly linked hands.
“Daniel,” Herbert begins in a hushed tone. “Do you not think that would also attract unwanted attention? Not to mention possibly being seen with--"
"Herbert," Dan interrupts, squeezing Herbert's hand gently. "My life with you has been filled with many examples of 'unwanted attention'. If I cared like I used to, I wouldn't have asked. Is it a yes or a no?"
Dan makes things seem so simple. How can he do that? Everything in Herbert's life has been complicated; convoluted and interwoven with false pleasantries and seething smiles. How can this one beautiful man manage to temporarily erase all of that in his mind? Herbert knows he's staring slack-jawed, but words elude him. He's going mute again, so he simply squeezes Dan's hand so tight he almost wants to apologize, but the ecstatic smile Dan gives him hushes any type of apology.
―――――
He's going to explode, he just knows it.
Herbert has not let go of his hand since entering the store and Dan's body is torn between combustion and melting. Fucking smitten , he reminds himself. He has to push their cart with one hand and almost runs into several shelves at sharp turns, but he can't care less. Dan has Herbert against his side, holding his hand like his mental state depends on it, and he wonders if it actually does. Besides the occasional sound of clicking, Dan is thankful that Herbert's body - and, by extension, Herbert himself - has decided to behave. It's been an uneventful outing so far and he prays it stays that way.
Dan takes them to an out of the way aisle so he can stop and run over their list without clogging up the shopping traffic.
"Okay. Pencils, check. Play Doh for later, check. Toiletries and towels, check. We've stocked up on our food for the week and I can't believe you picked out cereal."
Herbert's eyes are darting around at an impressive speed; a signal, Dan has learned, that means his body is beginning to ramp up on the sensory intake. That and Herbert's hand is so tight around his own that Dan lost feeling in it about five minutes ago.
"I am not that much of a stickler, Dan. I occasionally enjoy unhealthy cuisine."
"Captain Crunch, Herbert. You picked out Captain Crunch."
"And what's wrong with that? Am I suddenly not allowed to consume it?"
Dan can't help but chuckle. "Okay okay, have it your way, Captain Crunch."
He sees Herbert take a second to pass a steely glare his way. "We are not going to start with the nicknames. We are adults and I am not 'Captain Crunch.'"
"Whatever you say, Captain," he whispers as he leans over to kiss Herbert's temple. He grins fondly when Herbert seems to calm down a little bit from the contact, so he does it again, three more times, before placing a kiss on the back or Herbert's hand.
"Faggots," a large, gruff voice comments from behind.
"For fuck's sake," Dan says in a hushed tone.
Six months ago, his first instinct would have been to pull his hand away like he'd been burned. That hurdle was a mighty one to leap. Dan’s first instinct in the present is to hold Herbert's hand tighter, intertwining their fingers to erase doubt from anyone’s mind about the state of their relationship.
He can see Herbert's other hand begin to move at his side and suddenly Dan wants nothing more than to punch someone. He swings around to take a look at the origin of the voice. Oh, perfect. Here we go. He observes two men, both possibly in their mid to upper thirties, eyeing Herbert and himself brutishly, as if they are a gruesome circus act. Of course they are both gargantuans of human beings, standing at least a head taller than Dan himself. One is, surprisingly, dressed impeccably well, while the other looks like he just got out of prison.
Oh, joy of joys.
"Can I help you gentlemen with something?" Dan asks with bravado, his smile mirthless and eyes frigid.
"As a matter of fact, you may." The man in the suit has a misleadingly smooth voice; business-like and laced with acidic velvet. All bark but no bite, Dan also figures. "We came to this store to shop in peace and would appreciate it if you both did not advertise such… unsavory behavior."
Dan notices the man's eyes have drifted to Herbert during the last part of the sentence. Out of his peripheral, he takes notice of his boyfriend's hand movements, which consist of cramping and twitching in a motion Dan's never seen before. He'll have to ask later. Right now, he's busy burning holes into both of the men's heads.
"I'm sorry, I'm confused," Dan spits. "What sort of 'unsavory' behavior? Many things can be considered unsavory. I swear I heard a screaming child a moment ago. Oh! There was also a customer mistreating a cashier! Fuck off and bother someone else."
The impeccably dressed man's smile is so unnerving that, for a split second, it reminds Dan of the way Dr. Hill used to grin at the other faculty; all teeth and void of warmth, not a genuine cell in his body.
"I believe I made myself very clear, young man. The foolish dalliances of your youth should have worn away. It's time to be normal now."
Dan wants to roll his eyes so hard they would surely fall out of his head. “Normal. Right. Because two people can’t show simple affection without getting their nuts sucked by passersby. Looking at you two, I say you’d both need a good nut sucking. Not from me, though. I’m allergic to raisins.”
"You listen to me, boy,” the rough looking man threatens. “You queers can walk right back out the front door. We don't need or wanna see that disgusting shit. If you wanna object… I ain’t got a problem with beating the shit out of a fag and his retard ."
Now that is a term that ignites a fire in Dan’s stomach. These assholes can poke fun at him all day without much consequence. That courtesy ends when something is said about Herbert, especially a word that is so ableist it makes him want to puke.
“What the fuck did you just call him?”
“You heard me, queer.”
“No no, go ahead. Say it the fuck again!” There are a few customers beginning to peek their heads down the nearly deserted aisle to see the cause of the commotion, but Dan doesn’t pay them any mind. If he wasn’t still holding Herbert’s hand, he knows he’d be right in this homophobic prick’s face. “I dare you, right here and right now. Use that word again if you want to get punched in your pruned nutsack.”
“You’re just askin’ for a beating, aren’t you?”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” the well-dressed man interrupts, “there is no need to make a scene. People are beginning to look. Now, young man, take your mentally challenged… partner… and please leave. It is obviously bothering everyone in this store.”
Dan is probably about to do something he regrets, he just knows it. “Bothering everyone? Are you kidding me? Jesus Christ, I know you both are fucking stupid but I didn’t think hallucinations worked their way into the mix.”
Inmate growls low. “You call me stupid again, bitch--”
"Gentlemen, I highly advise both of you to look in the mirror before you judge others based on traits with which they were born,” Herbert suddenly chimes in. “Your small, malnourished brains cannot handle the sight of what is different. You are both wastes of life and I , sirs, am offended by your mere existence. I'm surprised your mothers wanted you. It would have done the world a service if they had aborted. What a pity."
Dan blinks and releases eye contact with the men to focus on Herbert. His boyfriend’s hand is still cramping, but his eyes are hard and his head is held high in certainty. Dan may or may not be really fucking hot right now.
“You close your minds based on asinine rules made up by a deity that forsakes those he has created,” Herbert continues in a bored tone. “People become complacent under what they think is law; stagnant and useless. I have come to the conclusion that you both are the personification of those words. You project your naive, inane truths onto those you cannot and will not take the effort to understand. Wastes of space. I have no interest in becoming the personification of possible closeted feelings you both may have, which is often the case in these situations. Now, run along, children, the adults have more shopping to do.”
The man who looks like an inmate is currently fuming while the man in the suit simply wears an inquisitive expression.
Dan’s in the middle of having a mini heart attack when Herbert hurriedly drags him along out of the aisle and back into the flow of shopping traffic, where there would be too many witnesses to see any sort of violence acted upon them by the two bigoted men. Herbert directs Dan and the cart until they come to the front of the store, which is safe and far away from the two threats. They take up space at the end of a cashier line and wait for the flow to continue so they can finally leave.
“Herbert,” Dan rasps after a few moments, squeezing the smaller man’s hand tightly. “First of all, are you alright? Second of all, I am really attracted to you right now.”
“Don't be ridiculous, Dan, I'm alright," Herbert answers. His hand has ceased its cramping and is replaced with a slow, almost calm movement. "We may discuss your current attraction when we get home. Now is not the time."
"No shit." Dan brings Herbert's hand, which he is still holding after all this time, up to his lips. "I think we've had enough of the public for the day, yeah?"
Herbert scrunches his nose in agitation. "Yes, I believe we've had enough. I would like to get back to work." Dan wiggles his eyebrows at the word "work" and his boyfriend simply sighs in response. "I mean it."
"Okay okay. I know you need a break from human interaction for a while. As long as you come upstairs to eat dinner, I won't bother you until then. You can be off watch for a few hours."
There is a genuine grin that appears on Herbert's face and it’s the most adorable thing in the world. "Thank you, Danny."
Dan ever so softly presses an affectionate kiss to the top of Herbert's head.
―――――
He is painfully aware that Dan is trying his best not to laugh.
Dinner tonight happens to be a ‘grab whatever’ kind of deal. They are both sitting on the couch for an impromptu movie night and Herbert wants to drive Hill’s laser drill through Dan’s skull. So what if he wears sweatpants and a large graphic t-shirt in the evenings. So what if he actually sat down to watch a movie. So what if he is leaning up against Dan’s side as they’re curled under his weighted blanket. So what if he wants to eat a whole bowl of Captain Crunch. Herbert’s an adult and he can do what he pleases. They are half way through Night of the Living Dead, ironically enough, when Herbert can’t stay quiet any longer.
“Daniel Cain,” Herbert begins, uncurling from Dan’s side and sitting up properly. “If you can’t refrain yourself from cackling any longer, I suggest you quickly get it out of the way. I’m trying to consume food in peace.”
The snicker in response makes his nose scrunch in annoyance. “What… What kind of food are you eating there, Captain?”
“You are a filthy child.”
“Is it… is it crunchy?" Dan all but snorts.
"An absolutely immature neanderthal."
“Does it crunch your captain, Captain?”
“Yes, keep going, I implore you. Cuddling privileges may be revoked."
He feels Dan gently nuzzle his nose into the crook of his neck. "What about other privileges?" Dan asks.
Herbert rolls his eyes and sets his now empty bowl down on the table in front of them. "I've come to realize that your brain is where your dick is."
"You sure do know how to compliment a guy."
Dan's lips have moved to the shell of his ear and Herbert lets slip a soft noise. "Is this movie not entertaining enough for you? Must you be so insatiable?"
To his credit, Dan sits back to look at Herbert's face. "I've been holding myself back very well since we got home earlier today, thank you very much."
"Ah yes, this is your leftover attraction," Herbert mutters. "Formed a new kink, have we?"
"What was your hand doing?" Dan inquires, suddenly and unprompted. "I've never seen it move like that before."
It catches Herbert off guard and it takes him a moment to recall what Dan is talking about. "Oh, yes, you mean my flailing about." Dan nods so Herbert continues. "It is rare, but that occurs when I experience a state of agitation. Today was… A protective agitation."
Dan's eyebrows lift considerably. "Protective?"
"Yes, protective. Did you not just hear me say that?"
"Well of fucking course,” Dan responds, taking a moment to lean in closer to Herbert. “It just surprised me; I don't know why. Protective of what?"
Herbert's eyes shut in an action to hide a subtle form of embarrassment. "Of… of you, you absolutely stupid big oaf. I wasn’t sure how that encounter was going to resolve itself, so I interjected before it escalated. I couldn’t have you unable to hold yourself back from a physical altercation."
"So, you pretty much said 'fuck it' and decided to say something to protect me?"
"... Yes."
Dan is floored. Herbert can see it in the way his mouth slightly hangs open, slack-jawed and caught off guard.
There are a few moments of silence that seem to stretch into an eternal ringing in Herbert's ears. Just before he tries to make some sort of excuse to dismiss his earlier behavior, he’s quickly grabbed into a crushing kiss. Dan's lips are soft and full of an almost primal want, if the tongue trying to shove its way down his throat is anything to go by. The wetness of their kisses somehow drown out the sound of the suddenly forgotten movie. Dan breaks away from Herbert's lips to continue planting kisses down the side of his jaw, prompting another small moan from him.
"Dan," Herbert says between shaky breaths when lips reach his neck; then his clavicle, then his shoulder. It’s when Dan begins to slide a hand up his shirt that he panics. "Dan. Stop."
The kissing comes to a halt as requested, a confused look in Dan's eyes. "What's wrong? Am I going too fast? Did I push past a line?"
Herbert puts space between himself and Dan on the couch. "I require no coddling, I'm fine. I simply don’t want for this to get out of hand. I'm not… I can't do more. There are factors which I need to take into account and a plan to properly approach the situation and--"
"Hey, hey, Herbert," Dan calls softly, reaching up to cup Herbert's cheek. "It's okay. This isn't an equation. We don't have to do anything you don't want to."
Herbert's eyes fall down to Dan's crotch before he can stop them. "It seems that something disagrees with you."
"Oh, uh, yeah, don't worry about that! I can take care of it myself,” Dan chuckles lightheartedly.
"Daniel…" Herbert is at a complete loss for words for the second time today. That's unusual and unexpected. “The customary response would be for the partner to--”
Dan's other hand now takes Herbert's other cheek in his palm, now completely cupping Herbert's face. "I mean it. I may have an outstanding libido, but that doesn't mean I have to take action."
That gets Herbert's face to show a very slight yet still present grin, his own hands taking Dan's from his face to hold in his lap. "So. Do you always become intimate with partners during movies or is this a new occurrence?"
"Fuck yeah I do," Dan chuckles, wrapping Herbert's weighted blanket around both of their shoulders once more. "It's practically a relationship tradition! What, have you never done it?”
Herbert rolls his eyes yet finds himself nestling back into Dan’s side, the weight of the blanket and of Dan’s arm around his shoulders a welcome sensation. He doesn’t want to talk about his past right now; he simply wants to curl up next to his partner and try to piece together the rest of this terrible movie.