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Halfway up the winding, decomposing staircase, Herbert loses the battle he never wanted to win, and looks back. Just out of sight below, his creations howl or gasp with exertion, and he slows, compelled by the scientific urge to see how they are doing.
Dan reaches to pull him along, but not before Herbert glimpses the front runners rounding the spiral staircase below. The sight confirms his suspicions. Leaning on each other, the partial subjects traverse the narrow stairway almost as one being. Working together. Something he had only observed previously under Hill’s hypnosis. But there’s no outside influence this time, certainly, he wasn’t the one who told the larger specimen to help assist the legless up the stairs -
"Herbert! Come on!” Dan’s tug on his arm nearly topples him over.
Broken from his reverie, Herbert follows up the stairs, the final planks of wood cracking under their weight and sending dust and splinters tumbling to the floor far below. The moment they made the split-second decision to flee up, their sole escape route was chosen. Dan shoves the trapdoor above open, wood cracking, then his strong hands grab Herbert’s hips and propel him into the cold clean air.
Herbert scrambles onto the ledge above. The roof is unfamiliar to him, Dan walked the house when they first moved in, but Herbert stayed below, more interested in the facilities in the main house. He knows from Dan that, like the rest of the house, the roof needs extensive repairs. He stands, surrounded by grey skies, on a thin widow’s walk flanked by broken railings, at the apex of a sloping roof.
He reaches for Dan, whose momentum causes them to collapse back together onto the roof. As soon as Dan is up, they are working together as of one mind - Herbert grabbing a section of the fallen railings, Dan wrenching it out of his hands as they push it into place over the hole. Piling bricks over the top of the frame, half sitting on the edges themselves. The roaring and clawing from below doesn’t stop Dan industriously grabbing anything within reach to block the hole further, but does make Herbert pause, and stare in wonder.
Dan finally stops, collapsing to the ground, panting. Below them sounds reverberate behind the barrier, but Herbert's laugh is louder, a laugh of pure joy.
Dan stares at him, confusion lingering for a beat before turning to irritation.
"They're communicating, Dan!" Herbert tells him, cheeks burning from the smile bursting out. "No, not simply communicating - co-operating! This is beyond a simple reflection of their past lives, they‘re adapting, learning. Collaborating, Dan." Surely Dan must understand the importance of that? But Herbert doesn’t see the hoped for reaction. Well, Dan might need time to settle down from the rush of the chase, in situations like this he tends to become overly focused on fixing the immediate problem and loses sight of the bigger picture.
Dan stands, mumbles something about Déjà vu that Herbert doesn’t quite catch, and heads off towards the railing. Herbert watches him go, then, presuming he’s searching for an escape route, directs his attention back to the hole.
There’s muted shuffling below now, not the frenzied banging of before. Smart enough to have realised their previous tactics were ineffective, but not to have thought up an alternative. In life they may have been defeated by the petty demands of society and inevitable grind of time, in death, it’s a flight of stairs and pile of broken wood. Well, his reagent can't fix human nature. Yet. But as limited as this state of reanimation is, it's still progress. And once full reanimation is achieved, improvements can be made.
He can’t hear Dan, and looks up to see him standing by the cracked railing, facing away. Beyond him Herbert can just glimpse the fog-shrouded tips of fir trees separating the manor from the shore.
Dan seems to feel him watching. "There's no way down. Even the fire escape's rotted away."
Dan has a natural flair for the dramatic, and Herbert an appreciation for it. Dan’s image draws his attention away from even what's below - tousled hair, torn shirt revealing glimpses of bare skin, muscles tense underneath the meagre remaining fabric. He watches the slight rise and fall of Dan’s shoulders as if breathing isn’t a process he’s studied and observed over and over, but the most fascinating thing in the world. In this moment Herbert thinks he could exhibit Dan as evidence of his theories, not of the myth of the soul, but proof of the precision of the innate mechanical nature of life. An absurd thought, but Dan makes him think of absurd things. And it so often is at moments like this, these breakthroughs, when he looks at Dan and sees with brilliant clarity the distance and similarity between him and his subjects, an intricacy lesser minds can only ascribe to God.
"Fuck!" Dan pivots, raising his hands to his head. "How do I keep letting you get me into this?"
Once, those words might have worried Herbert. "You insisted on this coming here." A huge run-down New England country manor, deep in the countryside. "Somewhere isolated. Where no one else can get hurt.” He shrugs. “The mortuary had better escape routes." Not that Herbert is complaining, much. The isolation has been good for Dan. A post-graduation sabbatical in the country, caretaking for this rotting building the owners hope to someday fix up into a retreat. After the first week or two of wandering restlessness, Dan is still focused overly on the mundane - rest, food - but he's not constantly dwelling on ethics. Herbert has seen him enthused by the potential results of the experiments, even if his delicate stomach turns at the methods. Though at times Dan may still cling to the idea that he has been dragged into their experiments unwillingly, Herbert has no doubts of their future of a lifetime of research together. And of course, now Dan isn't out chasing female company anymore, that helps too.
"We’re trapped here until they leave, or until someone comes by and distracts them-" Dan cuts off with a noise of frustration.
The realisation hits Herbert like a bolt of lightning on a stormy night. Anyone could come by, and discover - "The recorder, it's still in the lab. We have to collect it, if it falls into the wrong hands-"
Dan pats his hip. "I have it."
Herbert gazes at him. "Oh, Dan."
Dan approaches, frowning. "This would never have happened if you took breaks like I told you too." But his eyes are soft. They had argued earlier, it had felt strange after several peaceful weeks. Dan feels guilty about so many things, this expression has become very familiar.
His fingers brush the bruise at Herbert’s temple, warm and light. If Dan hadn’t stayed close enough to hear, if he hadn’t come back – Would he have had the chance to wake, breathing anew to Dan's eyes - or would his own experiments have torn him apart? But Dan did come back.
He allows Dan to examine him, checking his wound, his pupils. "You may be right about the lack of sleep," Herbert admits. "Without the use of my reagent I’m no longer functioning at the level I'm used to." Dan wisely ignores that. But it's true, just as Dan had a point about the reagent, this situation probably wouldn’t have occurred if Herbert had listened to him about rest. Which is challenging to put into practice sometimes, when so much is on the line and the clock is ticking. But Dan's presence does make caution more bearable. "However, this is hardly the first scientific breakthrough to occur by accident, and that blunder doesn’t make the information gained any less valuable. The value of pure research is often overly questioned, and underestimated by the smallminded and afraid.”
The way Dan fusses over such a minor injury – if it were anyone else Herbert would have ducked away by now. But he finds a lot of things less irritating than usual when it’s Dan doing them. Dan's hands rest on his face after he's finished examining him, and Herbert finds he's gripping him back, hands on his wrists, holding on desperately, despite the lack of immediate danger. It takes him back to the first time Dan pulled him unexpectedly close, and all those times after, trying to get the same reaction from him. And the first time they kissed, hard and fast and Dan’s face wet with tears. Dan arriving unexpectedly to his bed, night after night. Two days ago, when Herbert realised for the first time that he could kiss Dan any time he liked, and did so.
Dan glances past him, at the makeshift barrier. "I don't hear anything."
When Herbert crouches down to listen to the silence, Dan joins him, putting out a hand to stop him as he leans in closer. "Careful. You’re right, they're more intelligent than we're used to. It could be a trap."
Herbert shrugs. “All we need to do is outwait them. One vial of reagent shared by so many can only last so long."
When Dan's eyes meet his it's like Herbert can read his mind - visions of their subjects heading back to the lab, seeking out the one bottle of reagent not locked away, the apocalypse kindling in Dan's eyes.
Herbert grins, and produces the bottle with a flourish. "You're not the only one who can think on his feet. These may be smarter than our previous experiments, but I doubt they're smart enough to make more."
Dan looks a little shocked, and Herbert wonders why. Did he think Herbert wouldn’t put the reagent before his safety? Or that maybe he'd leave it to the subjects, to see what they'd do? It’s an interesting idea, if not a risk he has immediate plans to take. Before Herbert can consider it too deeply Dan is kissing him, soft lips contrasting with the force he presses Herbert back with. Herbert meets him, kneeling and clinging together on the hard roof. Dan's body is warm, and close, and the knowledge and memory of him even warmer and closer is right here too, the physical connection he has forged with Dan is a constant feedback loop. The smell of Dan sets him off, deodorant and fresh sweat, turning into taste. And as always, a constant undertone of reagent, binding them together.