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Dan thought he would’ve gotten used to the smell of corpses by now.
The stench was miasmic, lingering in the crevices of the basement amidst the cobwebs and poorly plastered on wallpaper. Dan hauled the man onto the table. He wrinkled his nose almost instinctively.
“Something wrong?” West had always been annoyingly perceptive. His voice carried a teasing sort of lilt however, not the stuck-up nasally tone Dan was so used to hearing.
“Nothing at all,” said Dan, stepping back. “I’m having a frightfully splendid time.”
“You make it awfully obvious, you know.” He pinched the top of the syringe. “Hold this for me, Dan.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but anatomising cadavers has never been my ideal Friday evening,” Dan bit back, but took the scalpel.
At that, West made a noise that rivaled an affronted gopher.
“We are not anatomising cadavers,” he snapped. He looked like one, too, cheeks puffed up and front teeth peeking out between his lips. “We are challenging science.”
And Dan was inclined to believe him after Rufus nearly mauled West’s ugly face off. But, then again, so would Dan if given the chance.
“But if you’d rather spend it with Halsey’s daughter,” West’s eyes narrowed from behind his rectangular glasses. He purposefully drew out the name, enunciating every syllable.
“Have you forgotten that Meg’s my girlfriend,” Dan began, waving the scalpel around in his general direction, “who I spend time with, because I love her?”
“Yes, yes,” said West. “You hardly ever do shut up about her.”
Dan looked at him. “Alright then,” he said, pushing past the table and West’s gossamer-thin bravado.
“But.” And suddenly, Herbert West looked very, very small. “What about the—”
“Frankly, I don’t care,” called Dan, and he made sure to bang the basement door shut on his way out.
“Say.” Meg shifted on the bed, the mattress dipping underneath her weight. “When’s that baleful roommate of yours going to move out? He’s already been expelled and you know how fretful he makes me.”
“I’ve been helping him pack up.” Lying came as easy as breathing, it seemed. He tilted his head, drawing his lips to her temple. “He’ll get out of your hair in no time.”
“Not now, Dan,” said Meg. He couldn’t shake the feeling that the rate of their sexual encounters had gone down significantly after West had moved in.
Dan tried not to let the frustration show on his face. He watched her features for a few seconds, eyes mapping out the bridge of her nose and curve of her lips, before he rolled onto his back. “He’s really quite harmless.”
“Hiding Rufus in the fridge is not harmless,” she said. “Experimenting on your cat in the basement is not harmless.” She gave him a conspiratorial glance. “I still think he killed him.”
Dan omitted mentioning that he was the one that slung the feral creature into a wall so hard that it snapped its spine in half, as West sank to the floor, blood-stained and wide-eyed. He was laughing.
Alright, well, maybe West was more threatening than he gave him credit for.
“He’s just a little cracked,” Dan sighed. He wondered whether he had managed to resuscitate that guy on his own, judging by the long periods spent holed up in the basement. “That West is something else.”
If he managed to bring Rufus back in the matter of seconds, then surely West must’ve figured out how to move onto humans. Albeit an unknown dosage, with a little trial and error…
Meg muttered something under her breath, but Dan was not listening to her anymore.
Dan only heard the soft drone of the table lamp when he creaked the basement door open.
He didn’t know what compelled him, but after a few missed dinners and awkward shuffles in the bathroom hallway, he decided that enough was enough.
Peering in, he spotted West’s hunched figure. He possessed a certain stillness only seen in the exhausted. Or the dead. The second option might’ve been more auspicious.
When asleep, West’s features seemed lighter. His brows weren’t drawn together in a perpetual state of annoyance, nor was his mouth pulled into a surly frown. He looked younger, boyish almost.
“West,” said Dan, hand gently rousing him from his sleep. When he only stirred, Dan’s grip tightened. “West, come on. Wake up.”
West made an unintelligible noise. “‘M not sleeping,” he groused, pushing up his glasses, “just resting my eyes.”
Amidst his annoyance and exasperation, Dan realised that it was fondness tugging on his chest at the sight. “Okay,” he said, “but you can do that in your bed.”
“So shrewd you are,” West quipped, swatting away his hand. A cavil died down in his throat when his eyes met Dan’s, pressing his lips into a thin line. “Why are you here?”
“To check that my roommate is, in fact, still alive. Now come on, up you go.” His eyes swept the two bottles of reagent and severed limb on the table. “What’s with the arm?”
Much to Dan’s surprise, he let himself be tugged upwards. “He got a little…” Something flashed across West’s face. “Handsy.”
“You’re ridiculous,” said Dan. “How you haven’t gotten dismembered yet is beyond me.”
“That’s where you came in,” sniffed West, “fending off the creatures with your brutish nature, naturally.”
“Naturally,” repeated Dan, incredulous, but he couldn’t stop a smile from tugging on his lips.