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It was the perfect plan.
That's what Herbert kept telling himself. In reality, and just over his delusional ideas of love, Herbert might be able to see how it’s psychotic—but, really, what had Dan expected?
A relationship, that’s what they called it, something a step further than friendship, roommates, scientific partners; something Herbert was completely unfamiliar with.
It seemed like an illogical step, a ‘relationship’. And maybe Herbert had just said yes to subdue Dan, keep him in Herbert’s grasp, so testing could go as usual; maybe he truly did like Dan in that confusing, stupid way that humans often find themselves feeling. Though sometimes he questioned whether he was even human. Wasn’t affection supposed to come naturally to them?
All things unfamiliar came with such an added thrill, the unknown, the pursuit of knowledge. He might be able to understand it if he put it that way. If he viewed this as just another science experiment: how humans act while in love.
And when Dan tried to push things past that blurry line between platonic and romance, and Herbert hadn’t quite reciprocated, that’s when the idea sparked.
There was one thing Herbert could truly love in a way that made sense to him: a good experiment. Something scientific, the effects of the reagent—all that medical stuff included. And that’s something he and Dan could share, even if Dan would prefer to share warmth and contact between two naked bodies, skin on skin. Herbert could give him warmth; he could give him skin on skin, he could give Dan everything and more if it was on his own terms.
So the knife clutched in his hand didn’t seem out of line; it felt perfectly poetic, romantic even. The way Dan’s demise could happen at the hands of Herbert if he so pleased (not that Herbert was stupid enough to lose such a vital asset like Dan), wasn’t that what romance was all about? Giving up all your trust to your one and only, leaving your back unguarded even as they approached behind, not so sweet thoughts hosted in their minds.
“Shit!” Dan’s shout stopped Herbert in his tracks, inches behind him.
“Dan?” Herbert tried his best to peek over Dan’s shoulder to assess what’d happened, barely catching more than the bloodied cutting board before he had to back up.
Dan turned around in a swift motion, holding his hand out in front of Herbert with a frown. They’d been cooking dinner—or rather, Dan had. Herbert had been stroking his finger along the blade of the knife, teasing the idea of slicing into the tender flesh. Awaiting the metal's cold, uncaring sharpness. And it seemed Dan had the same thoughts, whether subconsciously or not, his hand was bleeding.
“I cut my finger,” Dan sighed, eyes soft and tired, exhausted from a long day of surgery and dragging bodies for Herbert. Though Herbert caught the way Dan tensed slightly at the sight of the large knife in his hands, as if he couldn’t be trusted to do what’s best for Dan, as if Herbert wasn’t as deserving of that soft look if it were his show of affection rather than Dan’s more conventional acts.
The blood now making its way off of Dan’s finger and onto the floor caught Herbert’s attention, like he was a vampire in a hungry daze. Dan, despite being a surgeon, didn’t do anything to stop the bleeding, instead seeking out Herbert’s comfort, Herbert’s cure. They truly did love each other, didn’t they?
“Dan, Daniel.” His full name sounded more thought-out, as Herbert found when he corrected himself. It tasted right on his tongue. “I know how much you care for me–you do, don’t you?” He had to confirm, because a good scientist tests more than once.
“Of course,” Dan inhaled, eyebrows lowering at the question, confused as to why his cut finger would prompt it. He’d know soon enough.
“Of course, such a simple answer, Danny—But so effective. I don’t think I can ever be as simple as you, so thought out in such few words.” With every word, and every small shuffle forward, the knife slowly tilting towards Dan’s gut, Dan looked more and more pitifully concerned. “I’ve been thinking lately, though. I can reciprocate for you.”
Dan quirked a half smile, out of place compared to the sweat pricking on his brow. “Herbert, you don’t have to-”
“I want to. A relationship, as you’d define it, cannot be one-sided. I heard you and Megan—I heard way too much-” An uncomfortable sound squeaked its way from Dan’s throat at the mention of Megan. “-But it was never just you giving her love, she returned it. Don’t you want me to return it, Dan?”
Dan’s eyes flicked down to the knife before reconvening at Herbert’s. “Have you slept lately? You’ve been working on so much, and I don’t think I’ve seen you come to bed—I–Fuck!”
Love, pure, unbridled, uncensored in the way modern society makes it, all slid into Dan’s abdomen at once. Low and off to the side, because Herbert knew better than to hit a major artery or organ. There were limits to what a man could do at home.
“I love you.” If he was remembering correctly, this was the first time he had said those words. Not to a science experiment, a test gone right that he adored, but a real, living human. The achievement went unnoticed, though, the room instead filling with Dan’s little gasps of air.
“You—ah-stabbed me!” Dan managed to get out between the panicked gasps and pained whimpers. He didn’t look loved; he looked scared. There wasn’t a single ounce of love held in those usually soft brown eyes.
“Oops,” Herbert stated, and he didn’t know why. It wasn’t an accident; he and Dan could see that clear as day. “Danny, it’s going to be okay. This is an experiment, not a murder plan. I’d never kill you—on purpose.”
Dan seemed unconvinced, tears beginning to prick in his eyes. And when Herbert reached up to touch his face, he flinched—why didn’t he get it? Why wasn’t he smart enough to understand love in a way that wasn’t sexual affection? Why didn’t Herbert just simply go along with the small normal things?
There was no use in mulling it over, not when Dan’s once white shirt was quickly turning hues of red and pink, painting it in the most beautiful display of love Herbert could ever conceptualize. “No—No–no, Herb, no—Don’t pull it out,” Dan cried when Herbert began reeling the knife back, shaky hands grabbing at the handle of the knife to try and hold it in place.
They’d held hands before, sure, but this was the first time Herbert felt a little jolt straight to his chest from the contact of Dan’s calloused fingertips rubbing against him. It was working—he shouldn’t have doubted it even for a moment. Herbert knew he was always right.
“Shh, it’s okay. I’m going to make you feel so good, Danny.” Herbert would repeat his name like a prayer if it meant Dan would calm down, the blasphemous, whiny, sexual connotation of his name. This was sex to Herbert; Dan never looked more physically attractive than melting under Herbert’s touch.
Dan’s skin grew pale, and with each shade lighter, his eyes began to dull the shock and hatred. “Okay,” He muttered, voice weak and defeated.
And finally, Dan’s fingers slipped off of Herbert’s, allowing him to pull the blade from the wound. Little spurts of blood sprayed out, not to the pulse of Dan’s heartbeat, which was a good sign, showing that Herbert had avoided arteries as he anticipated.
But veins and arterioles packed such a punch, it was fascinating to watch the way Dan’s shirt went from slightly pink to unrecognizable in moments. If prompted with a photo of the lower half of Dan’s shirt, Herbert would have guessed it started as maroon rather than white.
It was working. The crushing weight of six feet of muscle hadn’t registered until he was hoisting Dan up. There it was again, that feeling that Herbert desired; Dan sought him out for help instead of using any sort of surgical skill. Herbert had conquered him, and the promise of love should shake Dan to the core.
“Come on, work with me here. I know you’re stronger than this. Don’t go limp on me,” Herbert chastised as he attempted to drag Dan towards the couch.
Maybe Herbert had nicked something important after all, because despite the lack of visual signs, Dan was getting woozy rather fast. He’d always been the shellshocked type, though, so it could be just the sight of a knife sticking out of his own stomach that had him whimpering in Herbert’s ear.
“Just a few more steps.” Herbert tried his best to take on a comforting tone, stolen and repurposed from what Herbert had observed Dan doing to patients. It sounded as fake as it did when Herbert tried it on the bodies in the morgue, giving sweet little affirmations as he hoisted their corpses into the oven.
Maybe Herbert should take Dan up on his offer of going to the gym together; he’d never seen the point in it when he had Dan to do the heavy lifting, but if there was ever a scenario of Dan being majorly injured by hands other than Herbert’s, it’d be a good advantage.
By the time they made it to the couch, Herbert’s shirt was just as bloody as Dan’s, the stickiness of slick iron coating his hands. At this point, they might be the sole contributors to keeping hydrogen peroxide brands in business. The shirt practically peeled off Dan’s midriff, slapping down on his chest when Herbert let go of the soaked fabric.
“Herb—” Dan began, whincing as Herbert laid him down on the couch. “We could have–ah-don’t poke it like that!” At Dan’s desperate shouts of protest, Herbert retracted the finger he’d begun pressing against the wound, testing the boundaries of just how intimate they could get tonight.
“We could have?” Herbert repeated.
“Done anything but stab me!” Dan suddenly shouted, life shooting back into his voice as the frustration built up.
“You’re not getting it.” Herbert’s brows furrowed. “We’re going to do a little experiment, okay?”
“Why can’t you be normal?” Dan muttered in response, fear striking his features again when Herbert began peeling his shirt off the wound.
“You’re the best test subject I’ll ever have, so virile, nothing like those stupid bodies in the morgue. Dan, you’re special.” As he spoke, he pushed that boundary again. He was getting a taste for Dan’s little whines, and in a way, he could understand the thirst for sex most people had if it involved sounds like that.
The tip of his finger danced over the wound, and how more intimate could skin-on-skin contact get than the acknowledgement that he could breach the barrier between separate and together in one small push? One slightly harder dip of his finger, spreading the already coagulating blood of the wound apart, opening it back up, had Dan nearly screaming, hands scrambling to stop Herbert's.
For a moment, there was nothing but heavy breathing and eye contact, Dan’s features as flushed as they could be with the blood loss. Herbert hoped that some tiny part of Dan, no matter how deep and locked away this was, was enjoying it as much as he was.
“I’m losing too much-”
“Shh,” Herbert shushed Dan’s protests as soon as they started. They’d both gone to med school, they both knew that the sheer amount of blood coating Dan was way too much.
This was a premeditated attempt at love, planned out like a date; it was the most romantic reanimation Herbert would try.
Well, the most romantic use of the reagent. There wasn’t a single part of Herbert’s plan that involved Dan actually dying tonight. As Herbert climbed onto the couch, positioning himself across Dan’s lap to get the best angle, he pulled the little box he’d left on the floor before Dan had his insides impaled.
“The reagent works for bringing damaged specimens back to life; however, I’ve never tested how it’d affect damaged living tissue.” Herbert began as he pulled the glowing syringe from the box. “Be a good subject, and stay still, okay, Dan?”
Dan’s eyes flicked over the reagent, that same concern he’d held for the knife. “I’ve seen how that shit makes you act, I don’t–” Dan’s sentence quickly trailed off into a whine when the needle prodded the already painful wound, redirecting any thoughts in his poor mind straight to the gash.
The wound pulsed as the reagent began flooding into the surrounding muscle, and it almost looked vulgar. An obscene sexual throbbing—Herbert didn’t understand why Dan would ever see it necessary for real sex organs to be used for sex. This equivalent was infinitely more enticing. And if to add onto the little sexual display Dan was accidentally giving, a little splurt came out of the wound, blood mixed with the glowing hue of the reagent, warm liquid splattering Herbert like a climax—it was premature, and if Dan wasn’t actively bleeding, he’d see the humor if Herbert chose to make a joke about it.
Herbert leaned back from his position on his haunches, ass fully pressing against Dan’s crotch, and he was enjoying this to some degree. It was glaringly obvious, and semi-hard against Herbert’s ass. “Save your blood for the wound, Danny.”
Dan seemed less than impressed, eyes fighting past their semi-glazed over state to glare at Herbert.
“Are you feeling anything? Perhaps decreased pain in your wound?” As Herbert asked the analytical questions, he refilled the syringe. Injecting with the same needle raised so many risks, but if Herbert was going to be “intimate” with Dan, he’d assume the risk of infection. It felt only right that there was a certain air of danger to Herbert as well.
The effects always hit Herbert in a few minutes, taking a bit to spread across his system through the vein in his arm, but Dan had gotten it directly into a wound. With Dan struggling over his words, his brain clearly getting worked up over the sudden stimulation from the more drug–like caffeinated effects of the reagent, Herbert decided to make it all the worse.
There were two things he could do, one he didn’t understand for them—stimulation of Dan’s sexual organs. In a homosexual relationship, Herbert didn’t see a clear goal there, but nevertheless, he shifted his hips experimentally as he leaned forward, getting back to the goal of testing.
Eyeing the wound wasn’t enough; he needed a better look at the effects hidden by the caking of blood. “I—It–yeah, it hurts less.” Dan finally managed to get out.
“I suppose it makes sense, with the reanimated subjects seeming oblivious to the injuries affecting them. Maybe there are some pain-numbing effects—I’ll have to test more on that.” He slowly rubbed away the blood, spitting a little to thin the thickened parts enough to get rid of it. And sure enough, Dan’s wound looked reduced in size by the slightest amount.
“Fascinating,” Herbert muttered. He was really getting the hang of this whole affection thing; it was so easy to understand this way. That thrill of rubbing his finger over the wound again, seeing how Dan twitched and groaned, he wondered if this was how a patient would react if not under anesthesia.
“Herbert–” Dan whined.
“We could get small animals, or maybe even a brain-dead patient.” Just the thought of furthering the reagents' effects, seeing how he could get it to improve wound healing more, possibly aiding in the mental preservation of subjects—he could say it was getting him “hot and bothered”.
When Herbert’s finger finally made the contact he’d been teasing, fully penetrating the slit, Dan didn’t just twitch—no, he convulsed. “Herbert!” This time, it wasn’t a whine; it was a full-on scream of his name.
“Hm,” Herbert hummed as he pulled his finger from the wound, watching the way blood quickly began flooding the now slightly more gaping thing. “It doesn’t numb pain completely, it seems.”
“For Christ's sake! Obviously!” Dan shouted. He looked like a mess—face flushed and sweaty, a little bit of drool leaking from his mouth. Honestly, if not for the conscious conversation and erection against Herbert’s ass, he’d assume Dan was just another mentally stunted experiment gone wrong.
Though Herbert had never actually checked to see if the reanimated could get erect, so it might not be the best indicator. “No need to get snappy, Daniel.”
“I’m bleeding out, and you’re fingering the damn wound!” Dan snapped back at him, justifying his weak yelling—Herbert could hear the effort in his tone, like he was using all his might to get those shouts out.
“Right… We’ll have to end this soon, won’t we?” Herbert began, reaching back into the box to pull the needles and thread he’d stolen from the hospital. “Oh, I almost forgot. You're going to love this.”
Herbert could have sworn he heard Dan sigh when he stood up, but maybe it was wishful thinking. There were layers to the premeditation; Herbert knew that testing the reagent, experimenting on the wound, finding out just what could be interpreted as sexual in science, wouldn’t get Dan going as much as it would him. There had to be romance; he had to swoon Dan right off his feet.
So he’d made a trip to a record store. Music was never something Herbert wasted his time on; he’d listen to the radio on the off chance he wanted background music during slow, monotonous dismemberments and the like, but that was about it. He was sure Dan would be into music with his sweet personality and all, probably owned a guitar before he was swept up in Herbert’s experiments all the time. Herbert could see Dan serenading a girl with some cheesy song he wrote just for them.
“I thought I’d try to set the mood,” Hebert commented as he lowered the needle onto the record—thank god for Dan, because Herbert didn’t own a player himself. Hell, most everything in the house belonged to Dan; Herbert might be described as a minimalist.
This, though, he’d maximize until Dan couldn’t shake the sheer levels of infatuation Herbert held for him that stayed trapped behind the confusing inner workings of his mind.
It was something from before both their times, but that didn't stop Herbert from deeming it right. Russ Morgan and his orchestra—old, but good, and surely Dan could appreciate the thought put into this, even if he would have preferred Herbert's flavor of love to stay encased in the prison of his mind.
The music began ringing out, grainy and crackling like older records tended to do. The album contained a few love songs, and they were just understimulating enough not to distract either of them from the sensations.
When Herbert finally let his eyes meet Dan again, he was struck by such an intense feeling. Crimson lay across his stomach, shirt hiked up to expose his now ruined abs, the way his mouth was opened with a steady, desperate pant. This was love in its purest form, and Herbert could feel it throb in his chest, and tingle down to the tips of his fingers—Dan was so helpless, so weak, such a perfect, obedient experiment gone so damn right. Who needed a climax when you had the steady leak of life’s essence right in front of you? Dan could give Herbert a million different results with this test, and Herbert would find himself satisfied with the answer to any of them simply because it was him.
Dan might be the only person Herbert could say he’s “loved”.
“You’re quite…Attractive, Daniel.” Herbert had never been good with compliments. But still, past the fear in his eyes as Herbert began reloading the syringe, a small smile cracked on Dan’s face. Hopefully, he appreciated the effort.
“Thank you,” Dan whispered, giving barely more than a twitch when the needle slid back into his wound. Herbert wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad sign; either he was going numb from the supposed effects of the reagent, or he was going numb from the looming figure of death.
“If you stay conscious, tell me how you’re feeling, alright?” Herbert instructed as he emptied out the syringe into Dan, leaving the wound practically glowing green with how much had been pumped into the surrounding skin and fat.
It just added to how attractive Daniel was like this. Skin slick and glossy like a fever, wound tainted by Herbert's effect; he was healing him, fixing him in a way that never worked on the other reanimated.
At the thought, Herbert's hand twitched, squirting out the final droplets of reagent across Dan's lap—and with it positioned at his crotch, it almost felt like a vague climax. Hopefully, Dan could understand that Herbert loved him enough to consider the possibility of that.
“I feel like I’ve somehow consumed an upper and a downer at the same time,” Dan replied with a breathy voice, all fight whisked away from his tone now. It was nice, Dan subdued, voice soft and submissive, all with the gentle music lining it in the back.
“Interesting.” Herbert should have brought a notepad. Though it was hard to distinguish the effects of the reagent from the effects of blood loss. Right now, Herbert was feeling buzzed, caffeinated almost—that "downer" effect was surely from the lack of blood flow properly across his body.
“This is going to hurt.” He added the warning as he got back onto Dan's lap.
“What is?” Dan questioned, eyes focusing on Herbert’s own rather than his hands lining up the pre-threaded needle with the wound. Really, as a surgeon, Dan should be more aware, but Herbert would give him the excuse of being high on unknown dosages of an experimental drug and loopy on blood loss. Herbert had way more experience abusing the reagent than he did.
But to answer Dan’s question more simply, Herbert would let the pain itself do the talking. That first press of the needle seemed worse than the pokes of the syringe had been—maybe it had something to do with the tugging, the sliding of thread through the wound, irritating it more than the sharp needle alone.
“How does it feel?”
“Bad!” Dan shouted in return, as if the answer was obvious. It probably would be in any other scenario, but Herbert was a man of science, and this had that added layer of unknown to it.
“Just try not to focus on it.” Herbert paused; wasn’t the whole point of this to try and make some sort of reciprocation between them? It might defeat the point for Dan to be completely zoned out through the process.
“Or—” Dan’s quickly wetting eyes distracted Herbert from completing his sentence. He was pathetic, truly. What kind of man can’t handle being cut open and sewn back together?
“Here, calm down.” Herbert swallowed the disgust tinging in the back as he leaned forward. Kissing: Dan had tried it before, oh god, had he, but he’d never succeeded with Herbert constantly ducking out of the way.
Maybe Herbert should have been more open to trying it, seeing as he was completely inexperienced in such a common thing. But here was no point to it, not usually at least, and this time around should be no different. A kiss couldn’t make science more romantic to the usual man; the only way Dan could learn the vaguely erotic nature of being a test subject was if he had the same brain as Herbert. One with that fucked up lust for knowledge, something that Dan, along with the average human, couldn’t begin to understand.
Normal people don’t dig up the dead, normal people don’t desecrate corpses or stab their partners; they do things like this, stupid, sappy, worthless things like smashing their lips together. But Dan had given up his body to be Herbert’s slightly unwilling test subject; no matter how much of it was Herbert trying to express affection, it was still a sacrifice. Herbert wasn’t stupid; he could acknowledge how much of this was Dan simply sacrificing himself over and over for Herbert’s pleasure, as he did so many times.
So Herbert could give up his mouth as well, feel the way the nerve endings were stimulated by those of another, uselessly, with little to no benefit to society—Herbert may never understand traditional sex. And Dan’s body probably couldn’t withstand another round of Herbert's so-called love—they were doomed, and Herbert knew this, but he’d let Dan live in a comfortable lie to keep him there.
Herbert can love untraditionally in some way; he could find more vague things to test, he could test the way his body reacted to Dan’s touch if it meant Dan would be happy as well. It was beneficial to both of them after all—Dan was happy, Herbert got bodies moved for him, and was more aware of such an integral part of most people's lives.
Maybe it’d unknowingly affect the reanimation. If he twisted the simple human act of lovemaking into something static and sanitized, try and see how he can pick apart a test subject's brain and use this as a way to bring them back to somewhat of a “normal human”, then he could put up with it.
Just when Herbert was really starting to feel the desperation build up in Dan’s shaky reciprocation, he pulled back. As much as he was getting into the idea of using sex for science (as opposed to science for sex, as he was currently doing), Dan was supposed to stay alive, and humans don’t tend to do that when bleeding out.
He got right back to it, poking into the edges of the wound again and again, drawing out more of those whimpers from Dan. Only this time around, they weren’t as charming, masked by the hiccupping sobs of a man clearly not viewing this in the same light as Herbert. “Dan, stop crying. This is romantic.”
“Fuck—I–I know you’re trying, Herb, it just–” Dan inhaled heavily as the edges of the wound began tugging together. “-It really hurts.”
Dan, ever sympathetic, trying to explain himself to Herbert as if he wasn’t the wounded victim in this. “I liked the uh—” He was beginning to stumble over his words. “The kissing, though.”
“Of course you did,” Herbert sighed, poking another hole, drawing another whine, repeating the action like music to his ears in a way neither of them could properly understand.
“You really don’t feel any pain reduction from the reagent?” Herbert still needed something to keep him going if he was going to reduce himself to Dan’s “whore”-or, Dan’s normal lover.
He felt like a whore, though, even just simply reciprocating in that normal way.
“Maybe? I’ve never been stabbed before,” Dan reminded. That was a dangerous wording, which led Herbert to all sorts of ideas for further tests; how would Dan feel if he hadn’t had any reagent? How would he feel on a higher dosage?
The continued crying from Dan reminded Herbert that he wasn’t the usual unfeeling corpse of a test subject; Dan was real and living, and Herbert’s love was a little too much for him. “How opposed would you be to us getting a living body to experiment on? I need someone other than you.”
Dan gulped. “Like—Kidnapping?”
“Abduction,” Herbert corrected. “We’d test it on adults; the public outcry to child experimentation would be too much.”
The final stitch tied off beautifully, leaving Dan with a mostly intact stomach—he’d be fine in a few weeks, if Herbert stole antibiotics from the hospital. Though the hospital might question why their star surgeon was out of work for weeks with a stab wound.
“I draw the line at torturing living people,” Dan exhaled, eyes trailing down from Herbert’s face to his own stomach, taking in the wound. “Though, you’ve already crossed that line, haven’t you?”
“This isn’t torture, Dan. It’s love.” Was it truly if he had to convince the other of it? He could fix this; he could convince Dan that this was love.
With the wound sealed, the reagent spread throughout both their bodies; there wasn’t much of an experiment left—there was one thing, though. That physical touch that Dan enjoyed so much. So Herbert sucked it up and leaned down, letting Dan take the lead with the kiss as he kept a hand on Dan’s waist, gently rubbing his thumb across the stitches.
Now that he could really focus on it, forcing himself to see past the logic of “this is meaningless.”, there was a vague sense of pleasure. In the way that he could feel his body reacting to the touch, disconnecting from the way his mind processed it, instinctual.
Maybe Dan felt more than the carnal reaction, and that was the difference between them. One was out of instinct, one was out of want and desire. And Dan managed to confirm that theory without words or the knowledge of it in the first place. Another advance Herbert wouldn’t have thought ever necessary, a tongue pushing past Herbert’s lips, breaching his mouth. They both had their vices. At the intrusion, Herbert’s fingers fumbled over the wound, looking for purchase in the grip.
When Dan’s whimper vibrated against Herbert’s mouth, it made Herbert realize how he’d been completely silent, almost statically still, leaving Dan to practically kiss a statue. He needed a moment to process, for this to sink in and click—pulling back didn’t take away the feeling, though. Logically, it should; he couldn’t feel it anymore, but he could still taste Dan lingering in his mouth, and more touches of Dan contaminated him. Against his ass, encrusted underneath his finger nails, digging into his thighs with desperation.
“Was this good?” Herbert questioned, bringing back the need to end this sort of experiment before the flavor of Dan’s earlier glass of wine was permanently staining Herbert’s tongue.
Dan paused, face shifting through emotions Herbert couldn’t begin to read; something he’d never been good at. “Herb, I don’t know how to feel. You stabbed me, drugged me, then sort of made out with me–”
“You’re putting it in a way that sours it. I felt you intimately inside, got covered in your fluids, kissed you and took care of you, all while trying to up the romance.” Herbert tried his best to rationalize it, and every word spiked that curious look on Dan’s face.
“Are you…are you trying to compare this to sex?”
He let out a sigh as he rubbed gentle circles into the wound, and Dan didn’t even try to resist anymore. “What do you think I meant by reciprocating? I know how you feel, Daniel. This isn’t going to work unless I do something.”
“Herb-”
“This is the closest to sex I’m going to enjoy. I’ve never felt more gratified than right now, doing this, testing on you.” That sentence was followed by a drawn-out groan from Dan as Herbert’s thumb pressed against the wound harder than a gentle stroke, causing the skin to buckle and tug at the stitches.
“Herbert,” Dan repeated, trying to capture his attention. Even with that pained, sweaty, puffy-from-tears face, Dan gave him that pretty, soft smile. “I knew what I was getting into. I’m fine with you not wanting to have sex—as long as it doesn’t mean stabbing me instead.”
During that stupid little spiel, Dan’s hand made its way off of Herbert’s thigh and to his face, cupping his cheek in a way that was much too soft for this scenario. Herbert wasn’t going for soft—this was rough, sensual, sexy-love in a way Dan deserved.
“Don’t be sappy,” Herbert let out a dry chuckle as he leaned into the touch, more emotion in his voice than he knew he could muster.
“I mean it.” His attempt at leaning up was halted by his wound, sending him leaning back into the couch with a groan. “If you stab me again, though, I’m moving out.”
“Evidence doesn’t lie, I can still feel your erect phallus.” Herbert reminded him as he leaned down, getting just close enough to give Dan a ghost of hope at kissing again.
“Don’t call it that,” Dan groaned.
“Some part of you liked this. If you let me, we can experiment a little and figure out just which part it was.” Herbert wouldn’t admit—past this whisper—that he enjoyed this to a degree that definitely wasn’t normal to him. There was something there, and Dan wasn’t the only one who needed to be experimented on.
Dan tilted his head, trying to chase Herbert back into a kiss. “Maybe if you go shallower with the knife—Dermis at the most.” This time, Herbert wouldn’t run from the affection.
“Dermis,” He repeated in a purr of acknowledgement before turning his head just enough for their lips to rub against each other. “I’m precise enough for that.” Herbert would study the way he smiled into the kiss some other time; right now, he’d allow himself to do the meaningless instinctual waste of time.
As he always was—Herbert was right. This was the perfect plan, a successful experiment in a sea of false reanimations. Dan would always be his favorite subject.