"What are you doing here?" he asked icily, glaring up at her from his rather pitiful position on the ratty old couch.
Cassie tossed her bag onto the floor and plopped down in the seemingly ancient armchair as Dan quietly went into the kitchen. "Well," she said, placing her arms behind her head. "When I read about a local Arkham doctor surviving an entire crypt collapsing in on him and that it happened practically in his own backyard with his roommate as a witness…ideas run wild."
He didn't answer her. He'd stopped having things to say to her long before the incident in the Boston storeroom closet, and he sure as hell wasn't about to explain himself to her. She had no right to be sanctioning him and she had never had such a right - someone whose underwear was visible to him as she sat there with her legs crossed in a masculine fashion and her arms behind her head was far better suited to getting intimately acquainted with a stripper pole.
"…I guess you were right, Herbert West," she continued. "You're really difficult to kill."
"Yes, well, sorry to disappoint you," he replied venomously.
Cassie snorted, leaning forward onto her knees to bring herself closer to him. "You think I wanted you dead?" she asked.
"Isn't that why you keep coming back here even though there's no conceivable reason for you to?" said Herbert.
She laughed ruefully. "No," she said, shaking her head. "I told you – I keep coming back to check up on you. I keep telling you to be good, but you don't seem to wanna listen. That and the fact that I kinda like you, although I don't know why."
She smiled self-consciously and looked down at the floor, deciding she didn't want to know why there were dried bloodstains in the ancient carpet. "You know, this would be so much easier if you weren't acting like such a dick," she said.
He didn't like it when Cassie decided to look vulnerable. When people looked vulnerable, it usually meant that they were trying to say something that they were too afraid to spit out. "…I still think most women are a waste of time," he said finally.
Cassie snorted again – this time almost literally. "Oh" she said, laughing nervously. "Thanks a lot!"
"…But you'd be halfway respectable if I couldn't see up your skirt at the moment," he added.
Cassie looked up at him and realized that he was completely serious, and it only made her laugh harder. It even made him smile a little, and he was glad for once that he and Dan hadn't spoken much since the Gloria incident. If the whole thing hadn't happened, he'd be explaining himself to the other doctor who was probably listening in on the conversation anyway.
"Well," she said, closing her legs. "At least you looked! It boosts your heterosexuality, anyway."
She pushed her hair away from her face. "So how many bones did you break?" she asked.
Herbert shot her an "are you kidding me" look and she realized why – his arm and leg were visibly in casts and he was covered in cuts and bruises. "Oh," she said. "Sorry. S-So…is there anything I can do for you? Since you can't…"
"I'm not an invalid," he pointed out coldly.
"No, but you are a prick," she replied.
"So you seem to tell me every time I see you," said Herbert. "So where's your friend?"
"O-Oh, Vlad?" she asked, fidgeting a little. "He's up in Concord, taking care of a mission. I told him to go on ahead without me."
"And why's that?" Herbert asked, somewhat nervously.
"I'm staying here for a couple days," Cassie said brightly, standing up and stretching. "I'm sick of sleeping in the back of a van and Danny-boy sounds like he could use the extra help around here with you being out of commission and bitchier than usual. Actually, I'm kinda surprised he hasn't killed you yet."
"You're staying?" Herbert asked, looking angry. "Here?"
"Yeah, why?" she asked. "Is that a problem?"
"Yes, if you must know, I'm not comfortable with the idea of having strange people in my house," said Herbert.
"Well, lucky for you I'm not a strange person!" she said, coming around to stand next to the couch. "Well…I guess…not in this house, anyway."
She took advantage of his limited mobility and gently ruffled his hair – something that she could see didn't please him, but he could do nothing about since she would be able to pin him on his back even if he wasn't in dull, yet excruciating pain. "You know, I kind of like you with this no-moving thing," she said, leaning down. "Makes it easier to do this."
When she leaned down placed a kiss on his forehead, Herbert's first inclination was to shove her away, but unfortunately for him, she was standing in front of the useless arm. "It's actually pretty cool that you're hard to kill," she said, pulling away and flipping her hair out of her face. "Otherwise, I wouldn't have a convenient place to crash anymore."
With a quick turn and an unfortunate flipping up of her skirt, exposing her undergarments to him once again, she half-skipped away from him and barreled towards the kitchen in her less-than graceful Cassie Hack manner, shouting "Hey, Dan! Guess what?"
He wondered if she knew that his professional relationship with Dan was all but terminated. On the bright side, perhaps she wouldn't want to be in the middle of their differences. Herbert could only hope.