Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Herbert’s come to realize that living with Dan means accepting a particular kind of pattern, one that repeats with absurd consistency. A new woman every few weeks. Sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. Sometimes they’d leave on their own. Sometimes Dan would end things. Occasionally, Herbert would walk into the kitchen to find an unfamiliar half-dressed girl perched on the counter, offering him a tight smile before going back to fiddling with Dan’s sleeves like she had a right to them.

They blurred together into one increasingly predictable silhouette.

“Daniel,” Herbert said one evening without looking up from his notes, the faint scratch of pen on paper continuing even as his tone sharpened. “I do not understand why you would willingly keep such company. These women you spend your efforts on are not even remotely significant enough to be worth fussing over.” 

The last one, Sarah—or was it Sandra?—had cried in the kitchen when Dan forgot her birthday. The one before that had attempted to make them all dinner and nearly burned the house down. Different names. Same useless fragility.

Dan, halfway through sorting reagents into labeled trays, sighed through his nose. “Herbert…”

“I’m well aware,” Herbert cut in, setting the pen down with a little more force than necessary, “That it is simply part of your wiring. Though I must say, it does become rather obnoxious how often you feel the need to seek pleasure through the unimportant and incompetent.”

Dan blinked, rubbing his hand into his forehead. “Jesus.”

Herbert pushed his chair back, standing now, arms folded tightly across his chest. “I am merely making an observation. One might think after the sixth or seventh iteration of the same disappointing liaison, you’d begin to notice the redundancy.”

Dan didn’t respond immediately, which irritated Herbert more than he cared to admit. The silence dragged, like he couldn’t even be bothered to defend himself anymore. Typical.

“They’re not all the same,” Dan muttered eventually, though even he didn’t sound convinced.

Herbert raised a brow. “Aren’t they?”

Dan didn’t answer. He never did when the truth got too close.

Herbert exhaled quietly through his nose, jaw clenched. It wasn’t just the repetition. It was the carelessness. The fact that Dan brought these women around like it meant nothing. Like Herbert meant nothing.

Then Herbert turned back toward his workspace, voice cool again, measured and sterile. “At the very least, I’d suggest locking your door if you intend to keep parading them through the house. I would hate for one of your girlfriends to see something they shouldn’t.”

—-

It happens fast—faster than Herbert expects, though he supposes he should’ve seen it coming. Dan meets someone.

“Her name’s Rachel,” he says one evening, beaming as he sets groceries on the counter. “I met her at the hospital. She’s an RN. ”

Herbert doesn’t respond right away. He finishes labeling a sketch in his notes, then clicks the pen shut and drops it back onto the counter a bit too harsh.

“Charming,” he mutters. So that’s the voice he’s been hearing through the walls lately. “At least this one has some practical application.”

Dan rolls his eyes. “Don’t start.” 

Herbert doesn’t. But he also doesn’t ask any more questions. He just watches as Dan starts unloading the rest of the groceries, humming under his breath like nothing in the world could possibly be off-balance. He pulls out a bag of pasta, setting it on the counter. A can of soup, next. An apple rolls out, and Dan catches it midair, casting him a boyish grin.

Herbert watches, still as ever, arms crossed and leaning against the counter.

He tells himself it doesn’t matter. Rachel, her name, the glow in Dan’s voice when he says it. The way Dan didn’t even seem to notice the flatness in Herbert’s reply. But it festers somewhere behind his ribs, warm and unpleasant, and he can’t quite swallow it down.

She works at the hospital. She's an RN. She probably laughs at Dan’s jokes. Probably knows how to say all the right, soft things.

The thought sticks.

He takes another sip of coffee, lets it scald his tongue, and doesn’t move when Dan bumps the cabinet shut with his hip and reaches for a paper towel.

A new toothbrush had appeared in the bathroom this morning. He’d noticed it immediately. Pale blue. Delicate. The kind you buy in a two-pack.

He hadn’t asked. He’d shut it out and gone to work.

—-

The first time Herbert meets her, he had barely put the coffee to brew when the soft shuffle of footsteps makes him stiffen. He glances over his shoulder. She appears from the hallway, wearing Dan’s old college sweatshirt—the same one Herbert often borrowed when he got cold working late. The fabric was thin in the elbows from years of wear. It smelled like detergent and the faint citrus of Dan’s cologne. Herbert had worn it through countless experiments, sleeves pushed to his forearms, comforted by its softness in ways he’d never admit. His jaw clenched.

“Morning!” she chirped, eyes still hazy with sleep but lips curled in a bright smile. She clearly didn’t expect to find anyone else awake. Herbert didn’t respond. He turned back to the coffee pot, watching the dark liquid drip like it might give him the patience to withstand this encounter.

Rachel stepped into the kitchen fully, arms wrapping around herself as if she knew she was intruding, but figured charm might earn her some grace. “You must be Herbert, right?”

Herbert gave a single blink, silently willing the coffee pot to go faster. “Unfortunately.”

There was a beat of silence. Rachel let out a soft laugh, as if unsure if it was a joke or not. “Dan’s told me about you. He said you were his old roommate from med school.”

“We still share a residence,” Herbert said flatly. “Though I don’t make a habit of broadcasting my personal affiliations like he does, it seems.”

Herbert looked at her, really looked, and found everything he disliked: hair too polished, eyes too wide, that cloying perfume that filled the entire room like a synthetic cloud. She moved with the self-assurance of someone who believed everyone liked her. It irritated him instantly. It didn’t help that she was, by all conventional measures, a rather beautiful woman.  

Finally, the sputtering of coffee filling the pot slows to a stop. Inwardly, he sighs with relief, grabbing his mug and pouring himself a cup. There was a silence once again. Not awkward—not for him—but she seemed to feel it, because she filled it the way people like her always did.

“Well, I think it’s sweet you two stayed close. You know, Dan says you can be a little grumpy, but he means well.” She gasps softly, most likely recalling a memory, “He actually told me how smart you are, called you a genius and talked about how hard working you are when you’re passionate about something.” Rachel leaned against the counter, too at ease for his taste.

Herbert’s fingers tightened slightly around the handle of his mug. Her incessant rambling was getting on his nerves, though…

“He said that?” he asked, tone neutral but clipped. It surprised him, but he wouldn’t let it show.

“Yeah.” Rachel gave a small shrug. “Said you were sharp. A little… intense, but, y'know, genius usually is.”

Herbert turned fully toward her then, expression unreadable. He just wanted her to be gone already.

“How insightful,” he said, voice dry. “And what was it you said you did again?”

Rachel blinked. “Oh. I’m a nurse,” She smiles, pearly white teeth flashing. “I actually recently finished my ASN.”

“Ah,” Herbert said, like he’d just confirmed a suspicion. ASN. Ha. Entry level nursing. How predictable, he should’ve known. “So he’s branching out.”

The silence that followed was tight and awkward, and Rachel’s easy smile faltered just slightly at the edges. Herbert offered a thin smile in return, sharp and insincere. “Apologies, I didn’t mean to interrupt your… exit.”

Then, before she could respond, Herbert brushed past her, not bothering to excuse himself, not sparing her another glance. As he turned the corner, he saw Dan finally emerging from his bedroom, hair a mess, and pajamas wrinkled. Herbert stared at Dan as he passed, as if the entire situation—the woman, the scent, the invasion—demanded an explanation. 

“Your girlfriend was lovely.” Herbert mutters bitterly, tone oozing with sarcasm as he stops in front of him.

Dan’s expression flickered. Just a second. “Oh. You two met, huh?”

Herbert barely gives a small hum in reply as he continues down the hall. Surely, it’ll be over before he knows it. 

—-

Later, in the evening, after Rachel had left, Herbert spotted the sweatshirt draped over the chair in the living room. He snatched it up without hesitation, the faint scent of her cloying perfume making him wrinkle his nose.

“Definitely needs a thorough disinfecting,” he muttered, folding it carefully. He took it to his bedroom, making sure it stayed well out of reach of those entitled hands.

—-

Rachel starts showing up more and more. A laugh that carries through walls. Shoes left by the door. That same cloying scent of her perfume seeping into the couch cushions. She hovers in the kitchen, commandeering it for herself. Giggles when Dan wraps his arms around her waist and kisses her neck like they’re in a goddamn romance film . She even calls Dan “Danny,” as though she has the right.

Herbert times it; she stays an average of 3.6 nights a week. She eats his eggs, uses his bathroom mirror, and knocks his items out of alignment while trying to “clean up.”

She wears Dan’s shirts in the morning.

That, Herbert cannot abide.

It isn’t hatred, not quite. Hatred would imply he thought about her that much. It’s more like a low, relentless hum at the base of his skull every time she puts her hand on Dan’s chest. Every time Dan kisses her temple, touches her wrist, tells her she’s funny.

She’s not.

Herbert keeps telling himself it will pass. That this woman, like all the others, will eventually bore Dan, or cling too tightly, or ask too many questions. That he’ll send her packing like the rest. But weeks pass. Then a month. Then two. Dan seems different this time. Softer. More affectionate. He doesn’t even snap when Herbert makes snide comments anymore. He just smiles in that stupid, contented way. Because of her.

“I think she might be the one,” Dan says one night, unprompted.

Herbert had paused. He had been adjusting the burner under a flask, but his hands stilled. He hadn’t responded. He couldn’t. There had been a strange, sudden tightness in his throat, like something had attempted to claw its way up. 

The one, he repeats in his head, later that night. As if the title meant something. As if it changed anything.

Rachel’s staying over again. Herbert listens to them laugh through the wall. He listens to the bed creak. He listens until he can’t take it anymore and heads to the basement. 

He doesn’t sleep that night. 

He paces instead—slow, precise circuits of the lab floor, lit only by the cool blue glow of his desk lamp and the sterile flicker of a power strip. The night hums around him. Upstairs, the world is warm and occupied. Down here, it’s cold steel and fluorescence. The contrast is fitting.

He had tried, for weeks now, to ignore the gnawing thing in his chest. Had told himself that this, too, would pass. That Rachel, like all the others, would fade into obscurity, that Dan’s infatuation would expire like milk left too long in the sun. But tonight, Dan had used that word. The one.

And Herbert can’t ignore that.

The idea takes root in his mind like mold, unwelcome, but persistent. It begins as a whisper. Then a shape. Then something sharper.

Because he’s tired of this. Tired of the way she leaves her things around the house like she owns it. Tired of the way Dan laughs around her. Tired of how domestic it’s all become, like Herbert’s been demoted to a guest in his own home.

He’s done being polite. He’d tolerated her for longer than he’d tolerated most. Bit his tongue when she rearranged the dish rack, said nothing when she left the lights on. He’d held back. Let it unfold naturally. But nature was chaos, and Herbert West preferred systems.

He’s going to dismantle this. Quietly. Precisely. Like a surgeon working a scalpel between ribs.

Rachel is cleverer than most of Dan’s previous flings— marginally. But clever enough to get comfortable. She thinks she’s welcome here. That’s her mistake.

Because she won’t see it coming.

He doesn’t need to raise his voice. Doesn’t need to be cruel. No. He’s done more with less. Subtlety is his sharpest tool. All he needs is a little pressure. A few nudges. A touch of friction. Dan’s never handled emotional turbulence well, especially when it starts to affect his routine. If Herbert introduces just the right amount of strain at just the right moments, the foundation will crack on its own.

And when it does, Dan will turn to him. He always does.

It isn’t about jealousy, Herbert tells himself, watching the blue flame of the Bunsen burner flicker. It’s about balance. Stability. Sanity. Dan’s priorities have drifted, and Herbert is simply… correcting course.

His eyes flick to the vial beside the burner. Then to his notes, his files, the labeled storage drawers.

There are so many ways to make a person uncomfortable. So many gentle tugs that can unravel an entire situation without leaving a single mark.

He allows himself a small smile. The first in hours.

Soon enough, Rachel will be out of the picture. And things will be just as they were.

Better, even. 

Chapter Text

Herbert decided that jumping straight into seduction was a no-go, not because it wouldn’t work. It would. He did not doubt that, in the right moment, Dan would confusedly reciprocate. Enjoy it, even. But nothing was interesting about that. No challenge. No precision. No fun, ultimately.

The point wasn’t to provoke some clumsy, heat-of-the-moment response. The result he was after—Dan realizing his true feelings—would be meaningless unless it happened under the proper conditions. Naturally, or at least close enough. No panic, no alcohol, no plausible deniability. Just Dan, choosing him, without excuses. 

He needed to start slow. Imperceptibly slow. The shift had to feel natural, like Dan had arrived at it on his own. So Herbert would bide his time. He’d plant subtle suggestions, let them settle in unnoticed, and take root. A comment here. A glance there. Nothing overt, nothing that would ever force Dan to name it outright. But enough to keep him turning it over later in his mind, wondering why it stuck with him at all. Seduction, after all, wasn’t about seduction. Not really.  

He looked up from his notes, the pen in his hand tapping an idle rhythm against the page. A few minutes left before Dan would return. Always punctual. Predictable. It gave Herbert time to reset, just enough to put the next phase into motion.

Dan returned to their shared space that afternoon like normal, though the smile tugging at his mouth lingered a bit too long for someone just off a hospital shift. Dan shrugged into his lab coat without comment, sleeves still slightly rumpled from the walk over. 

Herbert eyed him, not bothering to ask. Dan looked like he was about to get into it anyway.

“She brought me lunch today,” he said, voice casual as he trudged over. “She remembered my order from the Mexican place we go to.”

Like that was such a feat. He would groan if it didn’t mean alerting Dan of his disinclination towards Rachel. Dan’s favorite order—chicken burrito, no cheese, extra onion, and salsa on the side. Not very hard to remember at all. How Dan’s impressed by such a thing is bewildering. 

He lets the silence sit for a beat longer. Just enough to make Dan start questioning whether it was worth bringing up.

Herbert didn’t look up from his notes. “Thoughtful,” he murmured, finally. “She must be keeping track.”

Dan gave a soft laugh, already moving to prep the cell tissue samples they’d collected earlier. Herbert watched his hands—steady, capable, always careful. He handled specimens like he handled people: delicately, like they might fall apart if he applied too much pressure.

Herbert tapped the end of his pen against the clipboard once, twice.

“You used to bring me lunch. Back when you still noticed such things.” He said mildly, rising from his chair and taking a step towards Dan.

Dan glanced at him, surprised, though not defensive. “You never finish it,” he said, his shoulders shrugging. “You forget it’s there until it’s cold, and then you leave it there until I see it and end up eating it for you.” 

Herbert hums. Well, that is true, he supposes.

“Still,” Dan added, softly chuckling. “You always made this face, like it was the first real food you’d had in days.”

Herbert didn’t answer. His eyes lingered on Dan’s hands again as he opened the lab fridge and pulled out a test tube tray. He worked so absentmindedly, completely unaware of how telling he was. He bit the inside of his cheek when he was concentrating. He whistled tunelessly when he was tired. And just now, he was humming some saccharine pop melody Rachel had clearly infected him with.

Herbert didn’t recognize the song. He didn’t care to. But it clung to Dan like glitter. And it needed to come off. As if there really was glitter, Herbert reaches out to brush Dan’s shoulder. His hand lingers, lightly gripping the material of the coat.

“It doesn’t mean the gesture went unappreciated,” Herbert said, eyes meeting Dan’s in the small space between them. He purses his lips. The look on Dan’s face is truly humorous; eyebrows raised, mouth parted in surprise, and his eyes darting all around Herbert’s face. 

He gives a small hum as he turns to his seat, his lips curling into a small smirk where Dan can’t see. “Or unnoticed.”

There was a brief silence between them, filled only by the low whir of machines and the faint trickle of water through lab pipes. Dan didn’t answer. Though the sound of movement behind him started again as Dan went back to gathering the supplies. 

Dan resumed humming under his breath, that same stupid tune, like he hadn’t even registered the shift in tone. That was the trouble with Dan. He floated through things too easily. He didn’t see what Herbert was trying to do. Not yet.

Still, this wasn’t about Rachel. Not really.

It was about Dan. Dan, who was easily distracted. Dan, who craved affection like a plant craves sunlight. Dan, who could be gently led, not forced, not manipulated, just… redirected. It would take time. But Herbert was good at waiting.

And very good at making himself hard to ignore.

—- 

Herbert could tell the plan required fine-tuning.

Dan had not reacted as hoped. No subtle change in behavior. No excess concern, no gentle probing question over their unusually close proximity the other night. Just a lazy smile at the now-frequent casual brushing of arms. Friendly. Unchanged. Maddening.

But no matter. Herbert had anticipated the possibility that Dan’s psyche might require further agitation to push past its state of denial.

This meant controlling the external variables.

He sat hunched at the lab bench, second floor of the hospital in pathology, reorganizing a tray of fresh slides, most of which he didn’t need right now, but it kept his hands moving. Kept the twitch of irritation from settling in his fingers too long. The fluorescent lights overhead hummed a bit louder than usual. Or maybe his nerves were just heightened.

He glanced around the room, his eyes lingering on the blood cultures set at the incubation station. He would need to look those over soon. He sighs. He adjusted a petri dish that didn’t need adjusting and reached for his notes, then paused when he heard her voice.

Rachel.

Chattering two halls down with another nurse in that saccharine, lilting way that grated against his spine. She laughed, and the sound echoed off the linoleum like an unwanted footstep in an otherwise secure room.

It was the lilt of it that first struck him. Overly rehearsed, with that performative softness women like her were taught to weaponize. It set his molars grinding. How quickly she’d made herself part of Dan’s routine, how easily Dan had let her.

She made things loud . Emotional, cloying. Full of unnecessary gestures. And Dan—poor, affection-starved Dan—didn’t seem to notice that it was noise . That it was cheap and shallow and temporary.

His eyes narrowed, setting the tray down a little too hard.

Herbert rose, straightened his coat, and moved into the hallway with calm, purposeful steps. He spotted her immediately; her blonde ponytail bouncing as she turned slightly toward the other woman, discussing something inane, gesturing animatedly with her fingers as she recounted some story that wasn't half as funny as she thought it was. She wore lip gloss. He scoffed. They worked in a hospital.  

He adjusted the papers in his hand and kept his pace even as he drew closer, ignoring the spike of distaste that curled in his gut.

Rachel finally noticed him when he was just a few steps away. Her smile twitched, a surprised yet pleasant expression. “Doctor West,” she greeted, like they were familiar, like she wasn’t just another distraction with teeth.

He didn’t break stride as he passed them, but he slowed just enough to let his words drift clearly. "Don’t overextend yourself, Ms. Hutton. I’m sure your stamina’s already been tested enough this week."

The other nurse blinked, confused. Rachel turned toward him, startled, but he was already walking away, coat swinging behind him as he continued down the hallway without sparing a glance. He could feel the silence ripple in his wake, the way the conversation behind him stuttered to an awkward halt.

He allowed himself a small, satisfied breath when he turned the corner. Herbert caught a glimpse of Rachel in his peripheral vision. She stood still, brow furrowed, lips parted like she might speak. But she didn’t. Of course, she didn’t.

He turned his gaze forward.

Let her stew. Let her squirm. Let her think whatever she wants. He hadn’t said anything truly inappropriate. Just enough to lodge somewhere beneath the skin.

That was the point.

The trick was never to draw blood. Just to make them wonder if they’d been cut.

If Dan wasn’t going to acknowledge what was between them on his own, then Herbert would clear the path.

One variable at a time. 

That was the art of it, after all. 

—-

Dan strolled into the house late that evening, still shaking rain from his sleeves. His scrubs were damp at the collar, his hair a mess. “Hey, Herbert. I picked up some food on the way home.” 

Herbert glanced up from where he’d been lying on the couch, his notes and documents scattered around him, his legs curled under him, and a pen still loosely balanced between his fingers. He didn’t move, only squinted at the clock.  

He blinked once, then slowly sat up straighter. “You’re late.”

Dan rolled his eyes. “So’s the weather.” He took his shoes off by the door and held up a bag. “I brought you something too. Figured you wouldn’t eat unless someone handed it to you.”

That earned him a soft, skeptical snort. Herbert set a clipboard aside with more care than he’d shown his own vertebrae. “I eat.”

“Yeah? When?” Dan pulled out two paper bags and set them on the coffee table, pushing aside a tangle of notes covered in Herbert’s spidery handwriting. “You live off coffee and contempt.” 

Herbert didn’t respond right away. The two bags on the table were not from the same place, and if memory served him correctly–it did–the two restaurants were on almost opposite ends of town. He gestures to the bags with a raised brow.  

“Oh! I was gonna try that new burger place,” Dan said, pulling out what must be a burger from the bag, and waving it in demonstration. “But then I remembered you don’t like burgers. Something about grease and ‘mystery meat’, right? So I got you that weird salad you like instead. The one with the sauce you won’t let me taste.”

Herbert sat up slowly, a small smile forming. He hadn’t expected Dan to think of him. Not like that—not in the small, specific way that meant remembering his distaste for things slathered in oil and wrapped in paper. And certainly not in the even more specific way of tracking down the salad. The exact salad. Tahini and parsley, and lemon, chopped fine the way he liked it. He’d never asked Dan to remember. Though perhaps their conversation from the other day had its intended effects.

“It’s not ‘weird.’ It’s Mediterranean.” He replied.

“Yeah, yeah,” Dan said, grinning as he peeled off his damp jacket. “I still don’t know what’s in that dressing.”

“And you never will,” Herbert replied jokingly, already sorting through the bag, “You wouldn’t appreciate the flavor profile.”

Dan chuckled and nudged Herbert with his elbow as he passed. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

Herbert didn’t look up; he was already about to dig into his meal. “Yes. Thank you for not poisoning me with ground chuck and condiments.”

Dan flopped onto the other end of the couch with a tired grunt. Their knees barely avoided brushing. In the corner of his eye, he sees Dan take in the mess of notes and books. “Rough day?”

“Unproductive,” Herbert muttered, spearing a piece of cucumber with surgical precision. “The moronic janitor spilled some sort of chemical, and it seeped under the storage shelf before anyone noticed. I lost two vials of the neural-reactive serum I was rebalancing.”

Dan gave a tired smile, one corner of his mouth pulling higher than the other. “Jesus. That's the same one that made the rat twitch like it was doing jazz hands?”

Herbert gave a small, derisive exhale, somewhere between a snort and a laugh. “Spasms. Neuromuscular misfiring from incomplete conductivity. Jazz hands is your term.”

Still, it pleased him how Dan remembered the experiments, even the small ones. He could pretend it didn’t matter, but it did. Dan paid attention. He always had. Though not enough lately.

Dan tilted his head back against the couch, eyes fluttering shut. “Sorry, man. That sucks. Are you going to have to restart the whole batch?”

“Not necessarily.” Herbert studied him for a beat too long, his fork now idle in the container. “I kept the samples from the earlier trials. If they hold up through secondary sequencing, I can reintroduce the reagent without loss.”

Dan nodded, eyes still closed. “Glad you’ve got a backup plan.”

Herbert hummed faintly in reply but said nothing else. He was watching Dan again: the faint dark under his eyes, the way his scrubs clung damply to his chest. Always coming home late. Always collapsing into this space like he belonged here, next to him.

Rachel wouldn’t like that. She’d want Dan to come home to her.

Dan unwrapped the burger and took a big bite, sinking into the cushions with a sigh. A smear of sauce touched the corner of his mouth, and he didn’t bother to wipe it right away, just chewed, eyes half-lidded like the day had wrung him out.

The smell of grease and grilled beef filled the room. Herbert’s nose wrinkled faintly.

“You’re missing out,” Dan mumbled between bites. “It’s actually really good.”

“Doubtful.” He replied, mind already going elsewhere. He popped another cucumber into his mouth and chewed slowly, gaze flicking back to his notes. No, he couldn’t afford to lose progress. Not with the serum—and not with Dan.

—

“Rachel said something weird today,” Dan muttered later, as he dropped the trash into the garbage can in the kitchen. Well, Herbert thinks, Rachel does seem prone to saying strange things. Really, it could be anything.

Dan returned and sank back onto the couch with a sigh. “She asked if you… Didn’t like her.”

Herbert didn’t look up from his notebook. “Did she.” He said, tone dismissive.

Dan adjusted the pillow behind his back, eyes flicking toward the coffee table before he picked up his drink again.

He paused.

“Yeah. She was saying that you, I’m not sure, said something to her? She made it seem like you were judging her.”

Oh. So that’s what this was about. He’d nearly forgotten the encounter at the hospital—Rachel, laughing loudly. Wearing lip gloss. Of course, he’d said something. Or could this be about a different time? They truly all blended together; it’d be hard to tell.

“I was judging her,” Herbert said flatly, flipping a page in his notes, still unsure of what time Dan was referring to. “But that’s hardly unusual. I judge most people. Efficient use of time.”

Dan let out a short laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. “That’s what I told her. Well, not exactly. I said you’re just like that with everyone.”

“That’s generous,” Herbert murmured. “I’m worse with most.”

He didn’t need to say why he was harsher with Rachel. Dan could fill in the blanks on his own. A seed didn’t need to be hammered into soil; it just had to be placed carefully and left to root.

He made a note in the margin of his page, then added, voice mild: “She seemed quite put together for someone so sensitive. I’d assumed she had thicker skin.” 

Dan shot him a look, but he was still grinning. “You really don’t filter a damn thing, do you?”

Herbert finally glanced up. “If she’s unnerved by the absence of small talk and flattery, that’s not my responsibility to correct. Some people mistake politeness for warmth. I’m not polite.”

“No kidding,” Dan said. “You once told that new trainee that his ‘exorbitant use of hair gel’ was a fire hazard.”

“It had a flash point of 23 degrees Celsius. I saved lives.” He smiled, looking at Dan from over the frame of his glasses.

Dan broke into laughter then, a deep, genuine sound, shaking his head as he wiped his hands on a napkin. “God, you’re impossible.”

“I’m consistent,” Herbert corrected, returning to his notes.

He could feel Dan watching him, head tilted slightly in that curious, open way of his. “She does overthink,” Dan admitted after a moment. “Gets in her own head sometimes. But… she seemed kinda thrown.”

Good. That meant she felt unsettled. Off-balance. It would make her insecure, and lead to doubt. Eventually, Dan would get tired of having to reassure her.

Herbert hummed, noncommittal, like the matter wasn’t particularly important. “Then she’s likely misreading me. Silence and scrutiny aren’t the same thing.”

But in her case, they very much were. 

And Herbert knew exactly what he was doing. A little discomfort, a quiet glance held too long, a pointed observation disguised as idle conversation—these were tools, nothing more. Not overt hostility. Just enough to wear down her confidence in the space she thought she held in Dan’s life.

She could sense it, even if she couldn’t name it: that she was temporary. That something here didn’t want her.

And Herbert? Herbert didn’t need to lift a finger. He just had to wait.

Chapter Text

It started with the collar.

At first, he thought little of it: a minor irritation, a shift of fabric against skin. But the feeling worsened. The stiff button-ups he always wore, pressed and pristine, began to feel suffocating. The collar itched. It clung too tightly to his throat, as though conspiring to choke him when he wasn’t paying attention. He found himself tugging at it absentmindedly, fingers curling just beneath the seam in a vain attempt to create space.

His slacks, once favored for their precise fit, now felt restrictive too, hemming in his movement whenever he crouched or reached. They seemed to press against him like armor he hadn’t agreed to wear. Everything was too tight and too rigid.

He tried to ignore it. Of course he did. But discomfort, like emotion, had a way of sneaking in where logic refused to look. By the third night of kicking off his shoes at the door and unbuttoning his shirt halfway down the hallway, even Herbert had to admit something was off.

So, begrudgingly, Herbert bought new clothes.

He loathed the experience. Retail employees were always too eager to help and impossible to ignore. He’d chosen a weekday morning, assuming the stores would be quiet. They weren’t. He left with a bag full of soft cotton shirts. Muted, plain things in charcoal and slate. The fabric draped differently. No starch. No collar. He’d paired them with drawstring pants, nothing flashy, just something that didn’t make him feel like his skin was being tailored along with the seams.

He was in the basement now, frustrated and itchy. 

The drawer was stuck again. Herbert yanked at it once, twice—on the third try, it finally gave, jerking outward with enough force to upset the contents inside. A glass vial rolled out, hit the edge of the counter, and shattered on the floor. "Damnit." 

The sharp curse echoed too loudly in the concrete room. Herbert stared at the shards for a second, jaw clenched, pulse spiking somewhere in his throat.

He bent down stiffly, grabbing a cloth from the lower shelf. His sleeves tugged again, too tight at the elbows. The collar itched. The back of his neck felt flushed.

The clothes he’d bought the morning prior were still in the bag, hung neatly in his closet upstairs. He’d thought about changing before settling in to work, but hadn’t wanted to make a whole thing of it. He’d thrown on his usual shirt instead, telling himself he’d switch later. He huffed.

"That didn't sound good." Dan’s voice came from the stairwell, tentative.

Herbert didn’t turn, still picking up the glass. "One of the vials rolled off."

He heard Dan step closer, his boots damp against the concrete. It must still be raining. The faint hiss of water in the gutters outside underscored the silence that stretched between them.

“Are you alright?” Dan asked gently.

"I'm fine."

“You don’t look fine.”

Herbert didn’t answer right away. He kept his back turned, fingers tightening around the edges of the towel. The broken vial still rested inside it—shards of glass pressing faintly through the fabric. He straightened with stiff precision, jaw tight. “It’s nothing.”

And yet the sound of the glass as he dropped it into the trash came too loud.

Dan didn’t flinch, but he didn’t move either. 

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Dan said, posture shifting slightly.

Herbert inhaled through his nose, slow and controlled. “You didn’t.”

But he could feel Dan’s eyes on him. Not pitying, not apologetic; just watching, concerned in that infuriating way of his. Dan hovered by the table, “You look like you’re about to rip that shirt in half.”

Herbert looked down. The fabric bunched awkwardly across his chest, tight where it shouldn’t have been. The sleeves had pulled up again.

“It doesn’t fit right,” he muttered. “I’ll change later.”

Dan didn’t respond right away. He stepped forward, slow and careful, and leaned one hand on the back of the chair.

“You know,” Dan said quietly, “you’ve been… off.”

Herbert didn’t respond. His hands stilled on the counter, knuckles pale.

“Not sleeping, hardly talking to me...” He trailed off.

“I’m fine,” Herbert repeated, sharper this time. “I’ve simply been working.”

Dan looked at him for a long moment. Not judging. Just watching. His voice, when he spoke again, was softer. “You don’t have to act like nothing’s wrong all the time.”

Herbert gave a short, humorless sound—neither quite a laugh nor a scoff. “What would you prefer? That I start sobbing into a beaker?”

Dan looked down. “That’s not what I meant.”

Herbert turned away, reaching for his notes, jaw still tight, fingers twitching. “Don’t psychoanalyze me, Daniel. It doesn’t suit you.”

“I’m just... checking in,” Dan said. “That’s all.”

The silence stretched.

Then Dan straightened and sighed. “I’ll be upstairs. Let me know if you need help cleaning the rest.”

He left with less noise than he came in.

Herbert stayed frozen in place for a few seconds. Then, slowly, he sat back down. He tugged once at his sleeves, then rolled them back to his elbows with quiet precision. The collar still itched.

He should change. He’d do it soon.

He told himself it was practical. Logical. That the need for a change of wardrobe was just a temporary solution to the heat, or the hours, or the strain of long nights in the lab. But deep down, buried beneath all the reasons he rehearsed, was the truth: he was stressed.

Not by work. Not entirely.

It was Rachel.

It was Dan.

It was the looming possibility, however irrational he told himself it was, that things might not tip in his favor. That Rachel might not unravel fast enough. That Dan might choose comfort, predictability, and someone normal. That Herbert, left alone again, would have to watch it happen.

And his body, traitorous thing that it was, had started sounding the alarm long before he could find the words for any of it.

The irony, of course, was that Dan noticed.

By the time Herbert wandered into the kitchen, the late afternoon sun had softened into amber. He wore one of the new shirts—loose, soft, slightly rumpled. The kind of fabric that didn't cling or choke or remind him of every other day he'd felt trapped in his own clothes.

Dan looked up from his coffee. He blinked once. Then again, slower.

“You, uh… trying something new?” he asked. Not quite casual. Not quite anything.

“No,” Herbert replied, reaching past him for a glass. “I simply grew tired of sweating through my dress shirts.”

He didn’t glance back, but he felt the hesitation. The way Dan’s gaze lingered, hanging in the space between them just a moment too long.

That evening, while drifting past the living room in a pair of low-slung cotton pants, book in hand, Herbert caught it again. Dan's eyes followed briefly. A flicker at the corner of his mouth—something unreadable, something not quite a frown, not quite a smile—before he looked away.

It was probably nothing. Surprise, perhaps. Simple adjustment. Still, something traitorous stirred beneath Herbert’s ribs. 

He refused to name it.

It hadn’t initially been a part of his plan, just comfort, nothing more. But now that he’d seen the effects… well. He’d use it to his advantage.

So he tested it.

Again. And again.

Once, while pretending to search for a document he already knew was in the third drawer, he stretched. Not dramatically, just enough to loosen his spine, an arm rising above his head, cotton lifting slightly at the hem, the air kissing bare skin.

He didn't look right away.

He let the silence settle. Then, casually, he turned his head.

Dan's gaze was fixed just at the base of his spine, at the sliver of pale skin exposed between his shirt and waistband. It vanished the second their eyes met. But it had been there.

Herbert had seen it.

Another time, he sat beside Dan on the couch—seemingly to skim through old surgical journals, but really because he knew Dan would be flipping through channels, bored and half-distracted.

He let one leg fold beneath him and smoothed a hand absently over his chest, the fabric of his shirt shifting just enough to reveal the delicate line of his collarbone, the gentle dip of his throat. He adjusted the neckline with a deliberate tug, feigning discomfort. Not too much. Just enough.

Dan didn’t say anything, but the pause in his channel-surfing was palpable. His gaze flicked sideways. Herbert caught it in the reflection of the blackened TV screen. Then it was gone.

He turned a page without looking up.

The next moment was small—Herbert leaned forward slightly to retrieve a pen he didn’t need, the motion causing the soft cotton of his shirt to tighten just faintly across his back and shoulders. No bare skin. No theatrics. Just his form, lightly outlined.

He didn’t check to see if Dan was watching.

He didn’t have to.

— 

Herbert lingered just out of sight in the dim hallway, watching Rachel and Dan through the cracked-open doorway. Dan’s easy smile was genuine—the kind that softened the edges of his face and made his eyes crinkle with warmth. Rachel returned the smile, but Herbert’s gaze didn’t miss the subtle tension beneath it.

Her hands twisted a loose thread on the hem of her blouse, fingers flicking nervously despite her composed expression. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, tapping a bare ankle against the carpet in a restless rhythm. The laugh she offered was light but forced, failing to reach her eyes, which darted away more than they met Dan’s.

Herbert cataloged each small detail with precision: the shallow breaths, the tight grip on the book she held like a shield, the way her shoulders hunched just a fraction as if bracing against an invisible weight. All very rehearsed. All very wrong.

Dan’s voice was warm and even, his posture relaxed and unaware. He leaned in, offering comfort with his eyes, with the gentle lilt in his tone. And she tried. She nodded at the right times. She smiled like she meant it. But something in the air between them never quite settled. The rhythm was off. The current didn’t run clean: a subtle unraveling that Herbert alone seemed to notice.

As he stood still in the shadows, Herbert felt a faint, cold satisfaction prick at his awareness. The tension was there, quietly fraying at the edges of her carefully maintained facade. 

Herbert could see it as clearly as a dissection table.

They didn’t fit.

Rachel’s presence hung awkwardly at Dan’s side, like a coat thrown over the wrong set of shoulders. It didn't cling. It didn't settle. It just sagged there, mismatched and ill-fitting.

She didn’t speak Dan’s language. Not really. She couldn’t read the subtle inflections in his mood. She didn’t know the shape of his silences. When Dan grew quiet, she asked if something was wrong. When he drifted, she tried to pull him back. She mistook introspection for distance.

She didn’t understand him. Not like Herbert did.

And perhaps that was the most infuriating part of all; she tried so hard, but still, it was hollow. A mimicry of closeness. A pantomime of intimacy. Her performance would’ve fooled most, but not him.

Dan deserved someone who didn’t flinch at stillness. Who didn’t fumble with quiet. Who could match his rhythm without stumbling to keep up. And Rachel—she wasn’t that. She was charming and skittish and misplaced.

A misplaced variable in a delicate experiment.

And Dan, blind as ever, didn’t notice the miscalculation. He just smiled; smiled at someone who didn’t even see him properly.

Herbert’s fingers curled lightly around the edge of the doorframe. His expression remained unreadable, but his jaw tightened ever so slightly. There was no real malice in his gaze—only calculation. Cold and controlled, yet possibly hinting at irritation.

She was slipping. Not loudly, not all at once. But the thread was loose.

And he, of course, had noticed first.

—  

There were two things Herbert loathed more than incompetence: clutter and emotional displays. And yet, here he was, both elbow-deep in a chaotic desk drawer and narrating the entire thing to himself in a dry whisper.

“This is precisely why categorization exists,” he muttered, flipping through a warped stack of old lab reports, some of which had absorbed the humidity like sponge paper. “You’d think a man aiming for a medical license would understand the concept of a filing system.”

He plucked a dog-eared folder labeled “SPLEEN” between his thumb and forefinger like it was contagious, then paused.

No, not “SPLEEN.” Dan’s handwriting, hurried and crooked, read “SPLEENED,” an accidental tense.

He rolled his eyes. “Brilliant.”

The folder didn’t go in the trash. He smoothed the edges and tucked it gently on top of a clean stack.

Herbert continued working thoroughly: reorganizing microscope slides, rewinding labeled VHS tapes, even dusting off beakers with the corner of his sleeve. It wasn’t necessary, but it felt necessary. The lab had become too lived-in lately. Too… shared.

At some point, he retrieved Dan’s stethoscope from under a stool. It was tangled with a forgotten hair tie—Rachel’s. Her strands of honey-blonde hair still clung to it, glinting faintly under the fluorescents.

He stared.

Then dropped the tie into the biohazard bin without a word.

The stethoscope, though, he cleaned. Meticulously. He even wound the tubing the way Dan always did, looping it once, then again, with the chest piece tucked neatly in the middle. He placed it on the counter. Then adjusted it. Then adjusted it again.

His gloves smelled faintly like bleach. He peeled them off and tossed them. For a moment, he stood in the middle of the room, unmoving, as if he’d forgotten why he’d come in here in the first place. His eyes drifted to the newly cleaned workspace. Right, he had work to do.

Herbert exhaled, not a sigh, but close.

“Ridiculous,” he said aloud. Then sat down.

—

The centrifuge hummed in the corner, its vibrations almost rhythmic as Herbert adjusted the flame beneath the Bunsen burner. He tapped the side of a conical flask, watching the liquid swirl, too murky to be viable. Again.

He moved stiffly, half-aware. The compounds hadn’t separated correctly, and the sample—supposed to stabilize under precise heat—kept frothing at the edges. He narrowed his eyes, flicked the burner down a few degrees, and turned away before the result could frustrate him further.

On the opposite bench, he began preparing a slide. He measured the reagent from memory, but it clung stubbornly to the tip of the pipette. His fingers twitched; he smacked the pipette once against the lip of the vial and reached for a coverslip, knocking the container of ethanol as he did. It rattled but didn’t tip.

This work should have absorbed him. It always had. He’d lost countless hours to calibration, to sequence, to repetition. But lately, even in the sanctity of the lab, his mind had a way of... drifting.

Dan had left not long ago, mentioning something about needing eggs or coffee, or maybe just air. Herbert hadn’t listened closely. It didn’t matter. 

It was working, after all. Of course it was.

He didn’t mean to think it. The thought simply rose, uninvited and smug.

Rachel had started fraying at the seams, subtle things, the kind that most wouldn’t notice. Herbert, naturally, cataloged them with clinical precision. She spoke less. Laughed less. Her posture had changed; she no longer sat draped against Dan like some triumphant feline, but perched cautiously beside him, always slightly turned. 

Herbert shifted on his stool. The pipette clicked faintly against the glass slide.

She didn’t linger as long anymore. Sometimes she didn’t come at all. And when she did show up, she kept checking her watch, like she was counting down the minutes.

He flicked a glance at the readout on the centrifuge, but the numbers blurred. His hand paused mid-motion.

Still...There was something off about it now. 

He returned to the bench and found the reagent already beginning to separate unevenly. He sighed sharply through his nose and swirled the flask again, irritated at the inconsistency. There was a rhythm to this—there had always been a rhythm—but today, his hands lagged a beat behind his head.

The faint hiss of the burner filled the silence, underscored by the occasional tick of cooling glass and the low drone of the centrifuge. He poured the immiscible liquid too quickly, letting a few droplets trail down the side of the beaker, then wiped it with the back of his glove. Sloppy.

He glanced at the burner, then the bench, then the sample again, each in rapid succession, his thoughts running ahead of his actions, fractured and irritable. It was unlike him. He was usually precise. Efficient. Today, everything required more effort than it should.

He hadn’t slept, but that wasn’t new. What was new was the... haze. The strange, persistent tension that settled behind his eyes and pulsed just beneath his skin.

Rachel again. The thought returned without consent, flicking the inside of his skull like a rubber band.

It was her fault, in a way. She had shifted something—some dynamic that had once functioned, however awkwardly. Her presence always irritated him, but lately it had taken on a sharper edge. She no longer felt like a temporary disruption but like a variable contaminating the whole process. An unstable element.

And yet—Herbert exhaled through clenched teeth—there was something almost gratifying about it. Watching her fray. Watching the strain work its way into her bones. She was unraveling in Dan’s orbit, and Dan, as always, seemed too sweet, too soft to notice.

The house was supposed to be a refuge. But now, even here, she was present. Not physically, but in residue. In the noise she left behind in Dan’s voice. In the echo of her perfume clinging to the sleeves of his lab coat. In the microscopic way the atmosphere of the house had changed.

Herbert moved to the microscope, bent low, and adjusted the focus knob with unnecessary force. The slide swam into view, the cells warping slightly in the light, their borders just starting to degrade.

“Contaminated,” he muttered.

But he didn’t replace it. Just sat there, blinking down into the viewfinder, jaw locked, the glass smudging faintly where his glove touched the base.

Something had to give. And it wouldn’t be him.

—

It was another late night. Rain hit the windows in soft percussive bursts, the scent of petrichor seeping in from the open kitchen window. Herbert sat at the kitchen table, flipping through notes. His feet were bare this time. Hair slightly mussed. The cotton-knit sweater he wore was a shade of dark blue, hanging just loose enough to soften the usual lines of his posture. He hadn’t even meant to pick this particular outfit; he had thrown it on out of habit now. Strange, how quickly new patterns took hold when they offered reward.

It was Dan’s sweater, the one he’d quietly pocketed weeks ago, back when things between them were more uncertain. At the time, it had been an impulsive, petty claim. Now, it simply felt familiar.

The front door opened with the usual sticky creak of old wood. Herbert didn’t look up. He heard two sets of footsteps this time—Rachel’s heels striking lightly beside Dan’s heavier gait.

Dan entered first, rubbing the back of his neck, visibly worn from his shift. Rachel followed a few steps behind, unwrapping a scarf from her throat and shaking rain from her sleeves. Her eyes flicked toward the kitchen, to Herbert, and stopped.

He could feel her staring. Noticing. Her gaze snagged on the sweater with pin-drop precision. A beat too long. Herbert didn’t look up, but he counted the seconds. It hadn’t initially been part of his plan, though now that he’d seen the effects, he would use it to his advantage.

“Long night?” Herbert asked, not looking up.

Dan sighed. “God, yeah.” He leaned on the table beside Herbert, one hand gripping the edge. The space between them was small. The heat from his body was closer than it needed to be. “You look... relaxed.”

“I am,” Herbert said, still reading, or at least pretending to. He could feel Rachel’s stare lingering behind Dan, heavy and narrowing. Dan was still watching him, too, his eyes sweeping over him. “Dan, you’re dripping.”

Dan chuckled breathily, shaking rain from his hair like a dog. “Sorry, sorry, just trying to thaw.” 

And then he reached out—a hand brushing Herbert’s upper arm, thumb dragging lightly over the soft fabric of the sweater. Too casually.

“So this is where it went,” Dan said, voice lower. “You don’t usually go for cozy. You’re starting to look less like a funeral director.” 

From the hallway, Rachel made a small sound—a scoff. Not loud, not confrontational, but more like disbelief, she didn’t bother hiding.  

Herbert turned the page deliberately. “You sound as though you disapprove.”

“I don’t,” Dan said quickly. “I mean—no, it’s fine. It caught me off guard. You’re usually so buttoned up.”

“I still am, in professional settings. I fail to see why a change in domestic attire warrants scrutiny.”

“It doesn’t,” Dan said. “I was just curious. That’s all.”

Rachel stepped back into view briefly, arms crossed. “I’ll be in your room,” she said to Dan, quiet but clipped. Her eyes didn’t meet Herbert’s.

He watched her go. She wasn’t subtle, not tonight. That tone—that was distance, withdrawal. In her place, he might have masked it better. But she had always been transparent. Dan didn’t say much: he’d given just a low, distracted grunt, his eyes following her only for a second before settling back on him, soft and unreadable.

Herbert didn’t look up right away, but he felt the heat of that gaze like a brand.

“Well,” Herbert said calmly, despite his erratic pulse, “I find this particular one suits me.”

Dan didn’t respond at first. His hand had dropped back to his side, but he was still standing too close, still watching. After a moment, Dan huffed a laugh, low. “Yeah. That’s the weird part.”

Herbert looked up then, just briefly, just enough to catch the flicker of something unreadable in Dan’s face before he turned away, muttering something about needing to shower. He left a faint trail of water behind him, footprints and all. Herbert watched them disappear into the tile. He hadn’t even realized he was holding his breath.

He tapped his pen against the page, pulse ticking steadily in his throat.

Interesting.

Very interesting.

He stayed at the table after they both left, unmoving. The warmth from Dan’s fingers still lingered on his arm, ghostlike. He rubbed at it once, as if the touch were a smudge to be wiped away, but then stopped. Dan had touched him, not Rachel. And Herbert hadn’t recoiled.

He leaned back in the chair. The overhead light buzzed faintly. Somewhere deep in the walls, the old pipes groaned from the shower.

Rachel had looked at him like she knew. Not everything, but enough.

She always watched too closely. Not intelligently, but emotionally. The worst kind of observer. The kind that smelled out tension rather than analyzing it.

Herbert stared at his notes without reading them. He had no interest in finishing tonight’s work. The ache behind his eyes was returning, dull and sour. He’d been doing too much—thinking too hard, not hard enough. Everything lately felt blurred around the edges.

Dan wasn’t helping.

A soft thump echoed from down the hall. The bedroom door. Herbert’s head tilted slightly. Not in curiosity, but in anticipation.

Then—

A voice. Muffled. Low. Rachel.

He couldn’t make out the words. Just the tone. Tight. Sharpened. 

Herbert tilted his head, just slightly, as if tuning to a radio frequency.

Another voice followed—Dan’s this time. Lower. Defensive.

He was familiar with that tone. Had heard it countless times in arguments with nurses, with hospital staff, even with Herbert himself when his patience thinned.

Rachel again. Louder this time. Herbert caught the edge of a phrase. Something like, “—acting like nothing's changed—”

The response was too soft to parse. But the cadence —God, it was obvious. That was the sound of a man backpedaling. Trying to explain something he didn’t fully believe.

Then: “You don’t even notice it, do you?”

Rachel’s voice was clearer now. She wasn’t shouting. Not yet. But she was climbing toward it.

“I see the way he looks at you, Dan.”

Herbert froze.

A flush crawled up the back of his neck, sudden and hot. Something icy twisted in his stomach. He didn’t blink. Didn’t move.

The bedroom door thudded again—open, now. Footsteps, quick and clipped. A rush of motion.

Rachel stormed down the hall, her face flushed and trembling. Herbert barely had time to straighten before she passed him in a blur of heat and perfume. She didn’t look at him.

The front door wrenched open.

“Rachel—wait—” came Dan’s voice, rough and too close behind.

She was already outside. The door slammed.

Dan’s footsteps followed fast—shoes half-tied, keys grabbed in a scramble.

Herbert’s breath caught as Dan passed the kitchen entrance. He didn’t look at him. Just bolted out after her. The door slammed again. The house fell still.

Herbert stared at the empty threshold, heart pounding; though from what, he couldn’t say. For a flicker of a moment, he’d felt… what? Hope? Vindication?

But Dan had followed her.

The rain ticked against the windows, faint and rhythmic.

The kitchen light buzzed above.

He hadn’t even realized he’d stood until he moved to sit back down.

The silence this time felt like punishment.

Chapter Text

Maybe Herbert had miscalculated. That was irritating in itself. He didn’t do miscalculations—not with compounds, not with temperature thresholds, not with people. But this… this had been imprecise.

Dan was supposed to have started getting annoyed. He was supposed to grow tired of Rachel’s constant need for reassurance, her tiresome tendency to talk in circles, to ask loaded questions, to hover at the edges of his attention span. It should’ve worn him down. Frayed his nerves. Caused tension.

Instead—Dan had simply gone along with it. 

Herbert hadn’t expected that. Not really. Not the way Dan had ran out after her that night when Rachel had stormed out, her voice rising with frustration. Herbert had felt something twist behind his ribs once Dan followed her right out the door.

And since then, they’d both been spending less time at their home.

Herbert didn’t mind the loss of Rachel’s presence. In fact, he’d celebrated it internally—with a small, silent burst of satisfaction that had come and gone like a flicked switch. Her perfume no longer clung to the living room cushions, and her high-pitched laugh no longer echoed off the walls like a splinter in his skull.

But Dan—Dan being gone was a problem.

Dan spending less time at their shared residence was a step backward in what had, up until then, been a meticulous progression. He was supposed to grow disillusioned. He was supposed to drift away from Rachel and anchor himself back where he belonged—here, in the home he and Herbert shared. Not just physically, but fully and attentively. 

Instead, Herbert was alone more often than not. The lights stayed off in Dan’s room. His toothbrush sat dry. The laundry basket stayed half-empty.

And Herbert didn’t care. Not in any emotional sense. That would be absurd.

It simply complicated things.

It disrupted his routines. Introduced irregular variables.

It was infuriating.

It wasn’t that Herbert missed him. Of course not. That would be ludicrous. The shift in routine was simply... inconvenient.

It was just strange how easy it had been to grow used to Dan’s presence in the background. The soft noise of his existence. The way his voice would hum through the house while he talked to someone on the phone. The shape of him moving past the living room on his way to the kitchen. The questions he would ask about Herbert’s work, even if he never understood the answers.

Now there was silence.

And Herbert—well. He’d adjusted. As he always did. With grace. With logic. With control.

On the nights that Dan did finally come home—never announced, never predictable—Herbert would hear the soft shuffle of shoes being kicked off by the door. A faucet running. Normal things. Expected things. And yet his muscles would tighten with an anticipation that felt neither logical nor welcome.

Dan never said where he’d been. Herbert never asked. He already knew. 

Something between them had shifted. Subtle. Barely there. A faint static humming between exchanges.

Dan would act a little different now. Not cold, exactly. But... searching. Like he was waiting to see how Herbert would react to something unsaid. He’d make small talk—pointless commentary about the hospital or a new brand of cereal—and Herbert would respond with his usual clipped precision. But then Dan would glance at him sideways. Fidget. As if measuring his reactions.

Herbert didn’t like it. He didn’t like being watched, weighed, or considered.

He didn’t like wondering if it had anything to do with the last words Rachel had spat before storming out. And maybe she meant it cruelly. Maybe it was the kind of accusation that came from insecurity and suspicion—the typical type of thought that ran through the minds of women like Rachel.

He shouldn’t have remembered the words. But they’d lodged in his mind with the tenacity of a splinter. He'd picked at them for days. 

I see the way he looks at you.

Dan had never brought it up. But every now and then, when they passed in the kitchen or brushed shoulders on the stairs, Dan’s eyes would flick to him with something unreadable. As if wondering the same thing.

And Herbert hated that he noticed. Hated that something in him reacted.

Then, there were the other nights, when the house was too quiet without Dan, and the tea had gone cold on the burner, he’d find himself drifting to the places Dan normally inhabited.

The couch where Dan would fall asleep with a book half-open on his chest.

The kitchen, where his coffee mug always left a ring on the tile.

The coat rack, where his blue scrubs used to hang in a wrinkle-prone bundle. 

He would stand there for a moment too long. Let his fingers brush the edge of the sofa cushion, or smooth the fabric of Dan’s old jacket still tucked behind the door. He would tell himself it meant nothing. These were habits. Physical loops. Simple animal instinct and spatial memory. That was all.

And then he’d return to the lab, to his work, to the comfort of structure. Alone. As he preferred it.

Obviously.

— 

Herbert had always told himself he wasn’t the kind of man to loiter. But lately, he’d developed a habit of hovering around corners, in empty stairwells, behind half-closed blinds. It was a quiet compulsion, one he rationalized with half-truths: he was simply checking supplies, walking the rounds, making sure the residents hadn’t gotten into the morphine cabinet again.

But somehow, his path always curved toward the hospital’s east wing. Toward Dan.

He found himself watching him in moments stolen from a respectable distance—behind the glass panel of the observation room, half-concealed by a filing cabinet, or pausing a beat too long in the hallway with a clipboard he didn’t need. Dan always looked the same when he worked: sleeves rolled up to his elbows, brow creased in patient focus, that soft, boyish earnestness painted across his features as he adjusted a patient’s IV or scribbled a note into a chart.

It should have been a comfort. It wasn’t.

Because Dan was different at work, too. He didn’t flinch or bristle at Herbert’s presence. No, it was subtler than that. He simply… kept his distance. A careful arm’s length. When their eyes met across the nurse’s station, Dan would offer a nod or a polite half-smile, but he didn’t hold Herbert’s gaze the way he used to. And when Herbert approached, Dan would casually shift, just enough to lean toward someone else, or turn his shoulders slightly away.

It was nothing exceptional. Dan wasn’t cruel. If anything, he was frustratingly normal.

And that was what scraped Herbert’s nerves raw.

Because he didn’t want normal. He wanted the way things used to be. Before Rachel. Before all the layers of discomfort and second-guessing. Before Dan began pulling away like Herbert had become some kind of contamination.

Herbert’s fingers curled tightly around the edge of a supply cart. He’d told himself—repeatedly—that Rachel’s words didn’t matter. That her presence hadn’t meant anything. That it didn’t mean anything the way he looked at Dan. Not to him, at least. And certainly not to Dan.

Herbert straightened, forcing his shoulders back as Dan passed by the corridor, eyes skimming right past him with a casual nod and smile. Their sleeves brushed, barely, and Dan kept walking.

It was nothing. Nothing at all.

Still, Herbert remained in the hallway long after he was gone, fingers twitching at his sides, jaw tight with something that felt a little like shame. Or longing. Or both. 

—

He returned to the lab more frequently now. He told himself it was for efficiency, to make use of the quiet, but the silence stretched unnaturally without Dan’s interruptions. No questions, no murmured complaints, no arguments about “practical ethics” or the “state of the fridge.” No coat draped over the stair rail. No jacket left carelessly in the hallway. The whole house had fallen into a kind of sterile equilibrium.

He sat in his lab chair and found himself staring at the second stool across the table. The one Dan would drag over without asking.

The yearning struck then—and Herbert did what he always did when something threatened to rise up from beneath the surface: he suppressed it. Like an immune response. Like an unwelcome infection.

Dan would come back. Of course he would. This was his home. This was their routine. Whatever nonsense Rachel had spun, it wouldn’t last.

It couldn’t.

Herbert let out a frustrated breath and turned back to his notes.

He had only reviewed the first few lines when a knock from upstairs broke the quiet.

Herbert stilled. 

The knocking came again—dull and distant, filtered through the basement ceiling. But in a house so quiet, even small sounds carried. 

He glanced up at the ceiling, as if he had the ability to see who on earth could be disturbing him.

Another knock. He didn’t need to guess.

His shoulders sagged with preemptive disgust. He didn’t need to open it. But ignoring it would only delay the inevitable. So he rose from the stool, peeled off his gloves, and strode up the stairs, already regretting the intrusion.

When he opens the door, he’s not surprised to see Rachel standing there. She stood in a denim jacket and that same expectant expression she always wore, as if the house itself owed her something.

“Dan’s not here,” he said flatly.

“That’s fine.” Her shoes clicked softly against the wood as she moved past him, her arms crossed. No greeting. No hesitation. 

He didn’t bother stopping her. If he was going to waste time arguing over threshold etiquette, he’d do it with someone who mattered. 

She sat on the edge of the couch cushion, arms folded. Her gaze trailed the walls like she was scanning for flaws.

He turned to leave, already halfway back down the hallway.

“Wait,” she called, clearing her throat. “I wanted to talk to you.”

He froze mid-step. A flicker of dread passed through him, not because he feared her. No.

Herbert West was afraid of no one.

Least of all self-satisfied, simpering blondes with more perfume than sense.

Rachel was… irritating, certainly. Tiresome, even. But frightening? Please. She was a predictable composite of textbook vanity and pedestrian attachment. She was transparent, obvious, and simple. He had stared down professors who’d tried to dismantle his life’s work, faced derision from entire faculties, and navigated the brutal gauntlet of peer review. Rachel Hutton—with her shallow, clipped questions and clumsy little attempts at insight—was laughably beneath his concern.

So, no, it wasnt that. He simply loathed emotionally charged conversations. Especially ones he hadn’t initiated. 

Herbert turned, slow and pointed. “How thrilling.”

Rachel didn’t flinch. “Why are you like this with me?”

He blinked at her. Then blinked again, slower. “Like what?”

She stepped closer. “You glare at me the second I walk in and think that I don’t notice. You act like I’m not even human.”

“I act the same with everyone.” He dismissed.

She smiled tightly. “You don’t act like that with Dan.”

Herbert gave her a look. What was she attempting to accomplish? “Dan and I have an understanding.”

“You mean obsession.” She scoffs, crossing her arms. “I used to think it was just insecurity—your little superiority complex. But it’s more than that. You hate that he gives me attention.”

His eyes flickered, once.

“You trail after him like a ghost with a clipboard,” she said. “You interrupt us, you hover, you sulk every time we’re alone together. You might as well drape a banner from the ceiling that says I’m in love with him and be done with it.”  

She stood now, hands on her hips.

He felt his jaw tense. Ridiculous. She was grasping. She wanted him to flinch.

“You’re transparent, West,” she continued, voice rising. “Maybe Dan’s too focused on me to notice, but I’m not blind. You think you’re subtle, but you’re not. You glare when I touch him. You make these comments. You try to turn him against me—but it’s never your fault, is it?” 

What on earth was she blabbering about? This was plain nonsense. He wanted to laugh, but it caught in his throat.

She took another step forward, bolder now. “You know what’s sad? I think he feels bad for you. I think that’s the only reason he puts up with all your... whatever this is.”

Herbert could’ve said something vicious. Cruel. He had the words. He always had them. But they tasted strange, suddenly. Heavy. Like swallowing stones.

She leaned forward, eyes narrow. “You think I’m the problem. That if you can just drive me away, he’ll finally turn around and see you the way you want him to. But the truth is, you’re the reason he’s been acting so... off. You wear him down with your constant need to be involved in everything.”

That struck deeper than he wanted to admit.

He shifted his stance. “If he’s so exhausted by me, why does he keep choosing to stay? Because, to me, it seems more like he’s growing exhausted by you.”

Rachel’s smile faltered for half a second, before curling back. “Really? Because to me it seems he’s been spending less time here, right?”

Herbert stared. He could feel the blood rising in his face—not from embarrassment, but from that familiar, grinding heat that always surfaced when someone hit a nerve.

It took him a second to respond.

When he finally did, his voice was low and brittle. “If you think your fragile rapport with him can survive an honest conversation, then by all means—tell him everything. But don’t mistake your presence here for permanence. He’s kind to you, yes. He probably even believes he cares. But you don’t belong in his life any more than a petulant weed belongs in a surgical tray.”

Rachel opened her mouth, eyes mean—whether to respond or lash out, he wasn’t sure. 

“Now. I have things to do.” He says, cutting her off. He straightens, pushing his glasses back up his nose. 

“Right. Important things. Like staring at petri dishes and pretending I don’t exist.” Rachel stood then, waving her hands around in emphasis.

Herbert gave a clipped smile. “If only it were pretending.”

She scoffed—sharp and breathless. “Jesus. You know what, this was a waste of time. You’re horrible. I can’t believe Dan puts up with you.” 

Suddenly, the sound of footsteps came from the foyer.

Rachel noticed first, her expression freezing mid-glare before softening into something guilty, defensive. Herbert didn’t move; he couldn’t.

Dan appeared in the doorway, eyebrows furrowed, gaze flicking between them. “I forgot my files...What’s going on?”

Neither answered.

Rachel grabbed her bag from the couch, brushing past him with a clipped, “Nothing. I was just leaving.”

Herbert still didn’t look at him. He stood there like a statue, back rigid, lips curled, before finally turning on his heel and heading for his room without a word. He could feel Dan’s eyes on him before he disappeared with the sound of the lock clicking into place.

He leaned against the door for a moment, hands braced against the wood, listening to the muted shuffle of Dan’s footsteps somewhere in the living room. He forced a breath through his nose, sharp and deliberate, like he could steady himself by will alone.

Ridiculous. The entire thing was ridiculous. Rachel’s petty little performance, her dramatics, her endless projection—all of it laughable. Transparent. 

“Absurd,” he muttered, tearing at his collar. The top button refused him for a moment—slippery against his damp fingers—before it finally gave way. He yanked the shirt off as though it had been strangling him all along and flung it onto the chair.

His jaw tightened.

Nonsense. That was—nonsense. She was grasping at patterns that weren’t there, inventing intentions, pretending she understood him when she couldn’t even begin to.

You might as well drape a banner from the ceiling…

Rachel’s words needled through his skull, persistent as a migraine. He sneered at the empty room. As if he—preposterous, asinine. The image forced itself on him nonetheless: a gaudy strip of fabric draped across the lab, proclaiming his humiliation in bold block letters.

With a snap, he pulled his notes across the desk and uncapped his pen. Ink bled onto the page before he had even settled on what to write. Lines of equations appeared in quick succession, scrawled and jagged, the script of a man trying to outpace his own thoughts. He wrote until his hand cramped, until a blot of ink spread like a bruise across the paper, but the calculations added to nothing. Half-finished sentences trailed off into scratches. He pushed the notebook away, then dragged it back as though he might be accused of abandoning it. 

Again. Rachel’s voice. Louder now. In love with him.

He exhaled hard through his teeth and dragged a hand down his face, fingers pressing into his eyes until sparks bloomed behind them. No. Absolutely not. He wasn’t—he couldn’t.

And yet…

Herbert’s gaze drifted toward the narrow window, its glass dark with nightfall. 

—

The clock had started to mock him.

Every tick felt louder in the stillness of the house, each second dragging out just long enough to remind him that Dan was not here. Again.

He told himself he didn’t care where Dan was spending his time these days, but the thought sat in his chest like acid. The hospital, probably. Or worse—Rachel’s. He imagined her voice, soft and saccharine, drawing Dan into some false sense of ease, and the thought made his teeth ache.

He remembered what it was like before Dan—before anyone had even tolerated him. The quiet nights in Europe, sterile flats where no one knew his name and no one wanted to. Colleagues who left him out of dinners and conferences, who called him obsessive in hushed tones like he couldn’t hear them. He’d walked home alone more nights than he could count, lights from pubs spilling laughter onto wet cobblestones while he passed, uninvited and unwanted.

They’d called him unhinged behind his back, a “cold little American with a god complex.” He’d worked in silent labs with men who spoke to him only when they had to, their contempt obvious in the spaces between words.

No one had ever waited for him. No one had ever chosen him.

Dan had changed that. Dan had been the anomaly. The one person who didn’t seem repelled by his sharpness, his arrogance, his… everything. Dan, who laughed with him, who found him funny. Dan, who tolerated his temper, his cutting remarks, his impossible standards. Dan, who came home at the end of the day and filled the silence without even trying. For the first time in years, Herbert had something more than the work to anchor him.

He glanced to the empty seat beside him.

Perhaps Rachel was right. Perhaps pity was all that tethered Daniel Cain to him—a kind of misplaced charity toward the strange, maladjusted man rattling around in his basement laboratory. A lunatic in a lab coat, tolerated out of compassion the way one humors a half-mad relative. What else could anyone see in him? Certainly not charm, nor warmth, nor any quality that made him fit for human company. No—just his endless experiments, his grotesque obsessions. A freak, the sort that people whisper about behind their hands. And Daniel, ever softhearted, ever eager to rescue, had simply… decided not to leave him to the margins where he belonged.

The lock clicked in the door.

Herbert’s head snapped up.

Dan stepped inside, hair mussed, jacket half-zipped, carrying the kind of exhaustion Herbert was starting to resent. He looked surprised to see Herbert curled there on the couch, as though Herbert didn’t always notice when he came home late.

“Hey,” Dan said, shrugging off his coat. “Didn’t think you’d still be up.”

Herbert stared at him.

Didn’t think he’d still be up.

The words landed heavier than they had any right to. What exactly was Dan implying—that Herbert ought to have gone to bed and stayed there, like some obedient housepet waiting for his owner to come home? That Dan assumed he had nothing better to do but exist in this house, quiet and inert, while he was off… wherever he was?

And worse—it dredged up everything Herbert had just been thinking before the door opened. The nights in Europe and the relentless awareness that he was alone because no one wanted him otherwise. That he was designed to be alone.

Herbert’s jaw tightened. He forced his expression into something unreadable, cold, clinical—the kind of mask he’d perfected years ago, when being overlooked hurt less if he pretended not to notice.

“Long night,” Dan said finally, voice low like he was testing the waters.

Herbert simply shifted his posture straighter. “I wouldn’t know,” he said without looking at him. “You’re rarely here these days.”

Dan hesitated, leaning against the doorframe. “I’ve been busy.” 

“Yes,” Herbert murmured, tapping his finger agaisnt his arm where they were crossed, like he was considering something profound. “Busy. I assume tending to matters that are… infinitely more engaging than being here.”

Dan’s shoulders sagged, the last bit of tension draining out of him. He looked like he might argue, but the fight slipped from his face before it reached his mouth. Whatever he’d been holding onto, he let it go with a breath.

Dan closed the small distance to the couch and sat down with a long, drawn-out sigh. The silence settled between them, soft and lingering, giving the moment room to breathe. Herbert didn’t look at him.

“Herbert, about earlier…”

Herbert tilted his head.

“I—” Dan shifted awkwardly, scratching the back of his neck. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. But when I came in this afternoon, I heard the end of it. Rachel. She said—” He faltered, as though repeating it might be a cruelty. “She said she couldn’t believe I put up with you.”

Ah, so he had heard. That final dagger, twisting on its way out. Herbert’s pulse ticked in his throat, traitorous, but he schooled his face into neutrality. Let Dan think him unbothered—better that than risk him catching even a glimmer of how precisely the words had landed.

“People say all sorts of things when they’re angry. I hardly think her opinion warrants repeating.”

Dan watched him carefully. Herbert didn’t look back—didn’t dare, not when his chest was still taut with the memory of Rachel’s voice. The silence stretched, thick and almost suffocating, broken only by the faint sounds of their breathing. Herbert could feel Dan’s gaze like a heat on the back of his neck, patient, insistent, and impossibly gentle at the same time.

Eventually, Dan spoke again, voice softer, careful not to break the fragile quiet.

“Herbert, I don’t think you’re horrible.”

That surprised him. He looked up, and for the first time in hours—or maybe days—his eyes met Dan’s directly. There was no accusation in them, no condescension, only something steady and quiet that made Herbert’s chest tighten unexpectedly. His throat tickled as if he might respond, though his mind scrambled for a suitable shield.

Dan offered him a small smile, his words nothing but genuine.

Herbert’s fingers absently picked at a loose thread on his pajama pants, tugging it between nail and thumb with a nervous precision that belied his composure. He shifted slightly, unable to hold his gaze as he glanced to the wall. 

Dan leaned just enough to gently nudge Herbert’s thigh with the side of his hand. “You should get some rest,” he said softly, voice low and steady.

Herbert flinched almost imperceptibly, a tiny shiver running through him, though he didn’t look at Dan. He didn’t need rest. He didn’t need anyone, he told himself; the familiar barricade of words rising automatically. Yet the warmth of the contact lingered longer than he wanted, and a part of him—the small, most reluctant part—couldn’t ignore it.

He swallowed, jaw tightening, fighting the urge to speak, to push the moment away. Instead, he let his fingers linger on the loose thread a fraction longer, a quiet concession to the stillness that had settled between them. 

For a heartbeat, Herbert stayed still, fingers tugging at the loose thread of his pajama pants, aware of Dan beside him. Rachel’s words still lingered somewhere in the back of his mind, sharp and accusing, but now they felt smaller, dulled by the steady warmth of Dan’s presence. He didn’t look at him, didn’t speak, but for the first time that evening, Herbert allowed himself to simply notice that maybe he really wasn’t alone.

And, maybe, things are going in his favor after all.