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Sallowed hands shook in frustration over Herbert West’s desk. This was perhaps the most off-colour mistake he’d ever caught himself making. He was in a rush last night - distracted by the pigeon’s corpse stowed in the freezer which he had forgotten about after returning from a night of deliberation over bourbon.
He’d been investigating the effectivity of decayed isotopes in his reagent. He had kept a sample of an amended recipe in a small, nondescript glass vial. The contents of which were absent of the element which gave it its lurid green glow, leaving it clear, and vaguely yellowed.
Of course, as he suspected, the altered formula was hardly adequate, causing only a single spasm in the wing. He had shrugged it off, noted it down, left the vial and the cadaver on his desk, and slunk up the stairs to fall onto bed.
Now, however, he was awake, and suffering from the consequences of his liquor-dipped carelessness. Herbert, as he realised in sodium rage, also managed to leave the bottle of testosterone cypionate he was due to take today on his desk.
The label was soaked off (out of fear Daniel would question it), the two vials were maddeningly similar in size, and without the distinctive verdancy of the prime formula, the pair were indistinguishable.
He cursed himself twice over - once for his idiocy, and another for the unavoidability of his overreaction, the growing sense of disquiet surrounding the break in his perfect injection schedule. It couldn’t be that serious. But damn it, it felt like it.
He slammed two fists down on the desk, and sank into his chair, which emitted a sympathetic creak.
He inhaled.
In, out. It wasn’t that serious. He could get more. The panic was asinine. He needed to shut up and put the bottles down.
“Herbert? Are you okay?”
The sound of Daniel’s voice made Herbert turn to the stairs so fast that he could hear his neck crick. There he was in his tank and boxers, glowing against the warm light, casting a shadow into the basement.
Dan peered down at his roommate from the top of the stairs. Herbert was clearly stressed. His eyes were a little sunken, and the veins in his hands stuck stark against his skin.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, descending in sleepy, heavy footsteps. “Another demon cat?”
Herbert’s eyes darted madly around the room. Dan thought, through bleary eyes, that he could see sweat beading on his brow.
“Nothing at all. Frustrated at myself for letting this specimen lose its freshness overnight,” Herbert said, adjusting his rumpled tie.
Dan approached, glancing at the dead bird. “You’re a bit past the testing-on-animals stage, aren’t you?” He looked back at Herbert, who was avoiding eye contact by burying himself in some papers. “Besides. If you want another, we can find one, easy,” he went on.
Herbert nodded with a dismissive yes, yes, and did his best to turn away inconspicuously. Unfortunately for him, Dan had grown to recognise a lot of his mannerisms very well in the time they’d been living together. In fairness, however, Herbert wasn’t a great liar in general.
“Herbert,” he tried, rubbing the back of his neck. “Herb. Do you really want another pigeon?”
Herbert spun back to face Dan, a strand of dark, slept-in hair falling in his eyes. “No. I want you to lose the patronizing tone.”
Dan rubbed his furrowed, sleepy brow. “I’m just tired. Sorry,” he said, leaning against the desk. “A little frustrated though. You can talk to me, you know.”
“We’re talking,” Herbert responded bluntly.
Dan sighed. “No, as friends. Look at it objectively, West. We live in the same house. It’s easier to uh, let things air out. We keep bodies in the closet, not skeletons,” he said, before cringing at his own joke.
Herbert gritted his teeth. He paused before speaking. “I’m sorry for being callous. I’m a little stressed.”
Dan swept some scientific flotsam to the side, heaving himself up to sit on the clear space on the desk. “Why?”
Herbert grabbed two bottles, neither taller than an inch. “One of these,” he began, tone steadied, “is a slightly shifted sample of the reanimating agent. The other is…” Herbert’s gaze glanced between the pair of vials. “…medication that I need to take.”
Dan raised his eyebrow, slipping straight into his medical-student mindset. “Huh? What is it? Insulin? I’ve never seen you inject anything…” Well. Not into himself, at least. “Or do you have something autoimmune?” His eyes darkened, piecing together the elements of secrecy. “No. Herbert, are you doing drugs?” He tentatively placed a hand on Herbert’s shoulder. The act felt silly, though he concealed his embarrassment.
“No, no… It’s hard to explain,” Herbert said, glancing at Dan’s hand.
Dan looked at Herbert, worry lining his brow. “Try me.”
Herbert felt his innards drop from his hands. He did not like it. He had specifically chosen to do his injections early enough that it would still be dark, so that Daniel would be asleep. Funny how this wasn’t even the weirdest thing he did in the graveyard hours.
Yet, here he was, heavy warmth from Daniel’s hand spreading over his shoulder and into the vein.
Moments like this had become less common as he had grown older, when passing had turned from luck to normalcy. He thought he’d forgotten how it felt. But the feeling that came with these conversations was familiar and claggy in his throat. He felt the smallness of his hands, the ridges of his chest scars building friction with the starch of his shirt, the emptiness of his suit pants.
He felt weak. Vulnerable. He hated that feeling. It was not him. He had forged an image for himself, and he felt it melting away, sutures opening and oozing. He might as well have been the corpse on the table.
But he looked at Daniel and saw a softness in his eyes. Softness that might have been weakness. Stupid big brown eyes. Baby cow eyes. Eyes that made you feel sick to look at them, they were so stupid.
He stopped looking at them.
“Look, by telling you this, I’m endangering myself considerably. Whilst I do trust you, as is required of me in… this business,” Herbert said, gesturing to the makeshift laboratory of the basement, “this is a deeply personal matter that I don’t expect you to understand.”
Dan stayed silent, watching a quiver in Herbert’s smile lines, a feather in a nervous jaw.
Herbert placed the vials back on the desk, and stared black daggers into Dan. “One of these vials would be injectable testosterone.”
“You’re testosterone deficient?”
“No. I’m a transsexual.”
There was quiet for a moment. Dan’s mind was loud.
Firstly, there was confusion. Dan barely knew what the term meant, at least beyond the gloss of tabloid pages. A friend of his from highschool had transitioned to female. She had been killed in a vicious hate crime. You can’t save them all. He had read a few medical journals on it, heard before of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft. He’d overheard some senior doctors talking about a man who had come into the hospital pregnant. He’d pictured images that really did not match up with Herbert. And surely Dan would have realised if Herbert was female, somewhere along the way?
Somewhere beneath the clamour of cognitive dissonance were thoughts that Dan did not want to unpack. Something about explanations for why Dan felt so drawn to Herbert, why he felt ill to look at him, why his palms got a little sweaty at the thought of him sometimes. And then there was something else, a little darker, sicker, warmer, though he shook the thought off before he could worry about those implications.
Herbert had become something of a deific figure to Dan. He had an astounding mind, for sure, but it was more than that - he sparked something twisted and devout within Dan. That way he had cast the blanket over him, enveloped him in warmth after they’d been attacked by a reanimation. Shock, Herbert had whispered in his ear, holding his quivering body.
And now, Herbert was here, drenched in sweat, looking up at Dan with a vulnerability he had never seen before.
He glanced back at Herbert. “Right,” he started. “Thank you for telling me.”
Herbert swallowed. “Regardless of your new perception of me, I have always been, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally, male. And I’m sure that was your opinion prior to this reveal. This is not something I share lightly, and I’m sure you can agree that I do not look, sound, or act like a woman, though you may think of me as one-”
“I don’t,” Dan said. “I couldn’t really picture you as anything other than a man. I’m just surprised.”
He watched Herbert’s jaw relax, and he felt something within him rise to the surface. He pushed it back down.
“Your vials. You’ve been injecting them routinely?” he asked, holding one up to the desk lamp.
Herbert nodded, a smile creeping at the corners of his mouth, so small you couldn’t see it unless you were looking, as Dan was. “Of course that’s your first thought. Yes, though. For several years now. Almost a decade. I’ve never missed one, either. The disruption has me a little muddled, to tell you the truth,” he said, pushing glasses back up the bridge of his nose.
“Is it safe to, uh, smell the reagent?” Dan asked.
“I haven’t tried. I lost my sense of smell in a seventh-grade chemistry lab,” Herbert said. “I would have done that to distinguish between the two. I believe the alcohol and preservatives in the testosterone would make it easier.”
Dan chuckled. Very in-character, he thought. “Learning a lot about you today, then. I guess it makes sense that you’re unfazed by rotting corpses.”
Herbert pursed his lips. Dan caught his gaze lingering on them for a fraction of a second, and silently chided himself.
He gently unscrewed the lid of one of them. Vaguely floral, potently alcoholic. Matched Herbert’s hungover breath.
The other, he opted to hold at a smarter distance. It was acrid, acerbic.
“I sure hope the reagent isn’t the one that smells like vodka,” Dan said softly. It was mostly to himself, and certainly not funny enough to warrant a reaction, but Herbert smirked nonetheless.
“Can you show me where you’d usually inject it?” Dan asked. “To add to my medical vocabulary.”
Herbert gave a nod. He rose and rifled around in drawers to grab some other materials. Dan’s breath caught again as Herbert unbuttoned the bottom of his shirt, now creased, and pulled it up to reveal his stomach. “Subcutaneous,” Herbert explained, immediately receiving a nod of understanding from Dan. “I sanitise the area first,” he continued, reaching for a found cotton ball.
“Let me. Your hands are shaky,” Dan said. Herbert paused, before handing the ball to Dan, who doused it in alcohol. Dan drew the clump over Herbert’s skin, who quivered slightly at the cold touch. He’d administered drugs like this a thousand times before. And yet, seeing Herbert like this, it felt… Different. Visceral.
He steadied his hands.
He reached for a clean syringe, drawing the oil of the chosen vial into the barrel.
“Oily?” Herbert asked. “That would be a good indicator of which one's which.”
Dan nodded. “Sure is.” He tapped away a bubble in the needle. He looked at Herbert.
“The texture is likely enough. I could have figured it out on my own. You happened to walk in on an overreaction of mine," Herbert muttered, as Dan inspected the syringe again. Herbert watched him turn it in the light, watching the fluid slip around the shaft, glinting in the dimness.
“Better safe than sorry,” Dan replied, silently noting Herbert's attempts to cover his tracks. “Ready?”
At Herbert’s nod, Dan carefully plunged the needle into the cleansed area. He gently pushed the fluid into Herbert’s abdomen. He took it away, and wiped the area clean once again, thumbing the skin around the area to soothe it.
The pair paused for a moment.
“I think you got the right one,” Herbert said. “I’ve injected myself with minor doses of the reagent and it usually hurts a lot more.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry about it.” Herbert tugged his shirttail down, not bothering to rebutton it. He ran a hand through his greased hair, before bringing it to palm his face, leaning on the table.
Dan put the instruments aside, the feeling of Herbert’s stomach somehow still on his fingers. “Thanks, for uh, trusting me enough,” he said. “I never would have guessed.”
“That’s oblique,” demurred Herbert. “It’s just a fact about me. I’m still the same person I was yesterday. It’s hardly a part of me, really. I have bigger things to fret about.”
“I know. Sorry,” Dan said. “Again, just not quite, uh, used to it.” He busied his hands with the syringe, twirling it around his fingers absentmindedly. Herbert’s gaze followed the metal of the needle.
Dan watched him closely. The crease in his cheek, the unknowable in his eyes, his uneven, bitten fingernails. That feeling rose in Dan’s stomach again, sick, beating, unsettlingly warm, up in his ribcage now. Something about the way Herbert’s hair fell in his face. Something about seeing him like this, and not his usual forthright, composed self, a little maniacal, about to stab a lurid needle deep into something’s brainstem.
“Has anyone found out?” Dan said. Conversation as water, choking back down the feeling like a tablet.
Herbert straightened himself up, and shook his head. “No. Nobody’s known for years. The last person who knew was a man in Zürich who…” He stopped, glancing at Dan. “No secrets, I suppose. He took an interest in me. I had no interest in him. I never really have, in anyone, honestly…” He looked away. Something told Dan he was lying. Yet, that seemed less important than the unpacking he needed to do once he realised his attention had been drawn immediately to the notion of Herbert having had any involvement with a man.
“He didn’t tell anyone, when he found out,” Herbert went on, “and since I’ve been back in America, I’ve been too busy to discuss anything like that with anyone else. Living, at least. Corpses, I find, don’t give the best advice.”
Dan stifled a laugh at Herbert’s deadpan. “Well. You can discuss it with me. Probably good to have in my, uh…”
“Medical vocabulary?”
“Yeah.” Dan concentrated on the barrel of the syringe.
There it was again. That frustrating twinkle in Daniel’s eyes. If ever there was a time for sincerity, however, this had to be it.
Herbert grabbed Daniel’s free hand, feeling the bones beneath a layer of warm skin. His own hands were much colder, and he clenched them with desperation. “Nobody else can find this out. Don’t tell anyone,” he murmured. “Please.”
Daniel nodded. “You know I wouldn’t.” He had a sincerity in his eyes that Herbert knew well, but wasn’t used to being the recipient of. Typically, Dan had looked at him with disapproval, some kind of fear, or at least, diluted respect. Well, that was what he assumed.
They paused like this for a moment, time growing sluggish and dreamlike, though it was only for a few seconds. Herbert felt Dan release his hand, and then the pressure of it moving up to his shoulder again, then slowly dragging up his neck to cup his face.
He felt his teeth clench at the touch, but he let himself the repose of relaxing into it. It seemed as though Dan’s hand had moved without his realisation.
The basement lighting framed Dan like a memory. Distant green light reflecting softly on the angle of his jaw, the dim lamp making his skin glow peach and gold, fuzzy at the edges. Warm. Like home.
Of course, Herbert had in fact taken an interest in someone. He had just been too preoccupied with beating death to do anything about it – ideally, that would be getting over it, but evidently that wasn’t about to happen.
Especially not now. They were closer now, and very quiet. Dan smelled like aftershave and decaying moral fortitude, and now he was leaning in. The air hung between them like a question.
Herbert closed his eyes and let Dan’s build fold over him. Dan’s lips were soft. Surprisingly soft. They pulled apart with a tiny pop of air.
All Herbert felt was hunger.
Dan felt shaking hands grasp the front of his tank and pull him back in. Herbert clung to the fistful of fabric, and Dan could feel the live blood return to rush through both of their veins. Herbert tasted like old alcohol, and his lips were chapped enough to taste metallic. And he kissed Dan like he was his only source of air, taking their shared breath, his hands gliding through Dan’s hair, frantically grabbing at him, exploring, giddy, clearly uncertain about how it was supposed to go.
Dan was, in that moment, a new source of investigation, a specimen to be explored, and he loved it. He had never felt more alive than he did at that moment.
The knot in his stomach unfurled, and he grabbed back. He pulled Herbert closer, curling his arm around his back, feeling the raised notches of Herbert’s spine through his shirt as he swept up and down him. He still had the syringe in one hand, though capped. He traced it gently, blindly, plastic building friction with the fabric as the pair kissed.
Herbert stopped for a moment, creating a brief gap of chill. “You’ve gone pink,” he remarked, softly.
Dan laughed. He could feel the blood rising in his cheeks. “You’re making me blush,” he replied, before leaning back in, grinning through the kiss.
After minutes that seemed too short, they had calmed down, Dan having clambered completely onto Herbert’s lap. They breathed together, slowly, Dan feeling the warmth of the typically cold scientist against his own chest, the rise and fall, the heartbeat that started to slow. Herbert radiated around him.
Shock blanket.
“Dan?” Herbert finally said.
Dan inched his weight a little closer, up Herbert’s thighs. “Yeah?” he answered, resting his head against Herbert’s chest.
“I’d like to do another pigeon trial, now that I think about it,” Herbert replied, wiping his glasses with the stripe of his tie.
Dan smiled. He took Herbert's glasses out of his hands and put them on the surface of the desk with the syringe. Herbert slid a hand beneath Dan's boxers. “I think the pigeon can wait,” Dan said, before bringing his face back down to his.