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Hastur had never been in the Reptile Rehabilitation Centre before. In fact, Hastur had never even considered entering the Reptile Rehabilitation Centre. Mostly he stayed either in his flat or in his office. Other places tended to have people, and Hastur didn’t like people.
This, however, was an emergency.
He didn’t particularly care that it was after hours and the Centre was technically closed. Nor did he care that he technically wasn’t supposed to use his University ID to gain admittance to buildings outside his department. Rules, in Hastur’s opinion, were for other people.
He pushed open the door and stormed inside, the box with his precious cargo clutched in his hands.
“Hello? Is anyone here? Hello?”
A handsome Black man walked into the lobby. He wore dark clothing and a fierce scowl. Hastur liked that. He didn’t trust cheerful people.
“What d’you want?” demanded the man, whose nametag proclaimed him to be “Ligur.” He had striking eyes that seemed to shift color with the light. He also had some sort of lizard perched on his head.
Hastur held out his box. “I have a frog.”
Again, technically, this wasn’t Hastur’s frog. It lived outside his building on the other side of campus, and he’d gotten rather accustomed to seeing the pudgy little bugger on his way in and out. Then, tonight, the frog had gotten into the building, and now it was hurt, and Hastur was not okay with that. This would have come as a great surprise to all of Hastur’s students and fellow faculty members, as he was well known to be the meanest, nastiest professor in the entire university.
“This is a Reptile Centre. Frogs are amphibians,” Ligur snapped.
“I-I knew that.” He hadn’t.
Ligur glared at him for several seconds, then chuckled at Hastur’s obvious unease. “’S okay. We don’t just rescue reptiles. C’mon.” He gestured for Hastur to follow him.
“Thank you, uh, Mr. Ligur.”
“Just Ligur.”
Ligur did, in fact, have a first name, but he didn’t use it. It was the same as his dad’s name and his dad’s dad’s name and his dad’s dad’s dad’s name, and Ligur figured if they were all going to have the same name anyway, it made more sense to use only the one and save time.
“And you are?” Ligur demanded. He enjoyed demanding. It made people nervous, and this pale, skinny frog guy seemed a particularly nervous type.
“Hastur. LaVista. I’m a professor of archaeology.”
“Sounds boring.”
“Oh, it is. I like to torture my students with endless lectures on the misery of their ancestors. The fourteenth century is especially wretched. It’s my favorite topic.”
Ligur laughed. “Now, that sounds fun.”
The two men smiled at one another. Hastur hadn’t smiled in several years, and this attempt might best be termed maniacal. Ligur, being Hastur’s sort of person, found it charming.
“In here.” Ligur pushed open a door and waved Hastur through.
The room, unsurprisingly, was full of reptiles. Cages and tanks of different shapes and sizes covered most of the walls. More enclosures sat on the floor. The only spaces not taken up by reptiles were a pair of floor-to-ceiling cabinets, and a large examination table in the very center of the room.
Ligur took the lizard off his head, deposited it in a cage, and closed it up, double-checking the latches.
“Do you always carry the lizard on your head?” Hastur asked, rudely.
“Chameleon. Gets outta the cage a lot. I’d rather carry ‘im up there than have ‘im go burrowing in my clothes.” Ligur gestured to the table. “Let’s see your frog.”
Hastur set the box on the table and lifted the lid. The frog croaked in annoyance. It was big, ugly, and mean, and had it recognized a kindred spirit in the pale, lanky human who dwelt nearby. Today, to its consternation, it had been startled by one of the young, noisy humans and accidentally hopped inside a human habitat. And then got stepped on. It had not been a good day.
Ligur picked up the frog, ignoring its cries of protests, and examined its injured leg.
“Eh, not too bad,” he said. “Think I can help ‘im out. We got a nice, clean tank he can rest in. Come back in a few days and we can release ‘im back into the wild.”
“Good. Good.”
Most people would have left at this point, but Hastur wasn’t most people. Hastur lurked. Lurking made people uncomfortable, which he enjoyed, so he’d become particularly adept at it over the years. Today, he told himself he was lurking because he didn’t trust Ligur. It wasn’t a very good lie, but Hastur’s imagination wasn’t strong, and he’d fooled himself with flimsier excuses in the past.
He lurked while Ligur tended to the frog’s wound. He lurked while Ligur prepared the tank with dirt and water and places for the frog to hide. He lurked while Ligur grumbled that some people didn’t know how to give a man space to do his damn job, thank you very much. By the time Ligur was washing his hands and putting tools away, Hastur had lurked so long he’d forgotten he had anyplace else to go.
“Welp, ’s done now. You can get outta here. Come back on Friday and we’ll take ‘im back to his home.”
Hastur blinked for possibly the first time in hours. “Right. Home.”
A heavy silence fell. Their eyes met. One corner of Ligur’s mouth curved up.
“Or… I got a couple animals to feed before I lock up. You could help.”
Hastur felt a funny sensation in his chest. It was called delight, and he was entirely unfamiliar with it. “O-okay.”
“But there’s lots of maggots,” Ligur warned. “You gotta like maggots, or you can’t help.”
Hastur scratched his head. “Who doesn’t like maggots?”
Ligur grinned, setting both their hearts fluttering. “Yeah, you’re alright. C’mon. I’ll show you the real gross stuff.”
Hastur followed along, a spring in his step. This “happiness” thing felt a little like being drunk. He was going to have to learn to confine it to time spent with Ligur. (Spoiler alert: there would be an awful lot of that in the future.) After all, he had a reputation to maintain and students to fail.