Disclaimer: All characters borrowed from Stuart Gordon, Brian Yuzna, and the works of H P Lovecraft.
The first time that Herbert's woken by Dan trying to give him CPR, he comes up hissing like an angry cat, pushing Dan away and pulling himself away, flinching away from the hands that Dan's still trying to position and making his fingers scud, uncoordinated, across Herbert's chest. "Dan!" he snaps, "What do you think you're doing?" and they stare at each other, Dan's mouth hanging partway open, his breathing audible and a little rapid.
"I thought you were dead," Dan says. "You looked dead. There was something about not being able to get my scrubs clean, and looking for you in the morgue, and -" He sits back on his knees, and runs a hand through his hair. "God, was I dreaming? I was dreaming about Meg. But then it wasn't Meg any more, it was you, and you were dead."
"Well, I'm not," Herbert says. He can feel the same confusion inside his own chest, understands, without being told, the jittery thumping of Dan's heart.
"Maybe you are. I don't know. I mean, I'm not sure about you shooting up. Maybe you died after all. Maybe you've been dead all this time."
"Don't be ridiculous. You saw them check me out of the hospital."
Dan's fingers wander the bedclothes like they're searching for something; the memory of Meg, perhaps, her hair and her skin and the slippery eagerness of her sex. Herbert watches them, aware of Dan watching in turn as Herbert gathers the sheet and wraps it around himself, like gauze around the raw flesh that Dan's touch has left.
Wound-shock, he thinks. The irreparable puncturing of his self-integrity. He has the conviction that if he pulled up his shirt, he might see his skin bubbling and blistering.
"Go back to bed," he says. "I'm still here. I'm not dead."
Dan surprises him; he doesn't give up as easily as Herbert had hoped he might. His hands travel across the sheet, scurrying like spiders. "Why did you always have a problem understanding that I care?"
"I do understand. You care about our work, just as much as I do."
He catches the look in Dan's eye. A kind of anger, and, beneath it, a pain that suddenly makes Herbert wonder if either his charred flesh or the screams of the cadavers can even be called pain at all.
"Don't you see?" Dan says. "You have to let me care for you because you're all I've got left. And if you won't let me - if you won't let me do what I have to do, if you won't give me that - then I can't. I can't. Not any more."
Herbert stares at his hands, knowing that he's going to have to touch them. Dan's hands are strong and healthy, no mottled and pooling blood, no reek of putrefaction. But it's going to be far too intimate, here, like this, more intimate than an arm around the shoulders when it's required. Severed limbs and dangling ropes of flesh are Herbert's intimacy; they are how he connects with Dan, in the merging of their intellects, the passion of their creativity and the hungry drive of their ideals.
Herbert praises Dan, for his medical skills and his open mind, and still, for Dan, it's not enough and will never be enough, as re-agent is no substitute for blood, blood no substitute for semen, sutures and thread no substitute for the tender skin of a woman's thighs. Herbert is no woman, and yet he's uncomfortably aware of the ache in Dan that corresponds to a different but equally powerful need in him. The fear that Dan might leave is paralyzing, and still Herbert's unable to speak the words to stop it happening.
"You died, didn't you?" Dan says. "And you didn't even tell me. You wanted me to go on thinking you were alive when you were really just like those parts in the basement. When you were just like Meg."
Herbert clears his throat. "Dan!" he says, sharply. "Stop it. Snap out of it. I'm not like Meg."
Dan seems to consider this. "No," he says, at length, "you're nothing like Meg. Meg gave me everything. All her heart." And then he laughs a little at that. Actually laughs. "I guess you did try to give me that. In the only way you know how."
"I'm not dead," Herbert says, again. He's aware that, at some point, there's been a change. It's moved from being something to say to placate Dan to being something he's desperate to impress into him; something vital.
Dan shakes his head. "Prove it."
Herbert hesitates. Cautiously, as if there might be some loud and sudden scream, he reaches for Dan's hand. Dan's fingers are very warm, and Herbert's feel stiff and cold in comparison. He places the hand over his breastbone, where Dan can feel the quick, rabbity contractions of muscle beneath the surface, the rhythmic gush of blood.
For a long moment, Dan doesn't say anything. Then, slowly, he lowers his head and rests it against that fluttering place in Herbert's chest. His arms go around Herbert in some kind of desperate embrace, like he's so hungry for it he can't stop himself any longer. One of them is shaking, and Herbert's suddenly unsure which it is. When his icy fingers reach up of their own accord and clutch Dan's shoulder, the rush of feeling that comes back into them is so painful that he could have wept.
"If I let you," he says, "will you stay?"
"Do you need me to?"
The words slip out before Herbert can stop to think about them. "Yes. I need you to."
"I'll stay, then," Dan says. "I'll stay, tonight."