The lab was quiet. 

You had the entirety of the firehouse to yourself. Janine was out for the night with Louis, Dana was at a late-night rehearsal, and the boys were out on a call. The entity was abnormally hostile, so it was decided that it would be best for all four boys to go. You sat at Egon’s desk, full permissions given to you by the doctor himself, an exclusive privilege you often flaunted in front of the other boys whenever Egon’s back was turned. 

Egon trusted you to be alone in the eclectic mess that was his lab, and only you. Peter was too handsy and rough with delicate items. Ray could never resist trying to ‘gather up’ the lab, ultimately ruining whatever method of insanity Egon organized it by. Winston wasn't outright banned since he never cared to be in the lab unless he had business to conduct, but he kept a respectful distance, not wanting to risk ruffling any feathers.

Egon’s copy of Tobin’s Spiritual Guide lay open in front of you as you jotted down notes in one of his notebooks, taking down numerous points about creatures that may fit the description of the Dover Demon, of which there was a sudden spike in local sightings after years of dormancy. Scattered around the book were several photographs supposedly taken of the creature submitted by concerned locals. You easily debunked most of them in the last few hours, dismissed them as either animal sightings or poor development. But some seemed legit, and these were set aside for the boys to get closer looks at.

Above you, the garage door scraped open, sending a small rumble through the lab, making the lights flicker for just a split second. The boys were back. A small smile crossed your face and you trotted up the stairs, photos in-hand, excited to greet them. Peter was the first to exit the Ecto-1 and the first to catch your attention. “Peter! You guys aren’t gonna believe what I found!” 

Peter snatched the photos from your hand and let out a shrill gasp as he flipped through them. “How did you get these photos?! These are private! They’re only supposed to be between me and Dana!”

Winston looked over Peter’s shoulder and chuckled. “Peter, bud, these pictures are unbecoming of you…”

“Okay, but you have to admit.” He held up the photo of a little humanoid poking its head out from behind a tree. “I look pretty damn cute in this one.” 

Egon stumbled out of the Ecto-1, clamping a bloody rag to his nose. Ray held onto his upper arm to help him keep his balance. 

You immediately ran up to him. “Oh, no! Oh, Egon, what happened?” You instinctively reached up towards him, but then caught yourself and pulled your hand back. 

He peered down at you behind cracked glasses. The skin under his left eye was swollen, already darkening into a bruise. “Class V non-human corporeal poltergeist.” His deep voice was muffled beneath the rag. “Struck me in the face with one of its tails.”

“Is it bad?”

“He’s dying…” Peter said solemnly. “He asked us to bring him here so he could see you one last time and tell you that he lo—ow!” He yelped when Winston smacked him with a clipboard.

“How about you scuttle down and pull out the first-aid kit,” Winston said to you, “and we’ll follow you down?”

You scoffed, feigning offense. “I don’t scuttle, Winston. I am not a person who scuttles.”   

You scuttled down into the lab and pulled out the enormous first aid kit from beneath a bookcase. Unable to lift it, you struggled to drag it until Winston picked the case up with a hefty ‘oomph’ and slammed it onto the table. “Damn,” he huffed. “He must have a whole ambulance in here.” He cleared his throat. “Want us to leave so you can have some alone time with the handsome mad scientist?” he muttered, inaudible to the others as they eased Egon into a chair. 

“Don’t you dare,” you hissed. 

Winston sauntered over to Peter, an impish gleam in his eye. “I think YN can take it from here, right boys? We should go clean up.” He nudged Peter with his elbow, who immediately got the hint.

“I agree. Come on, Ray. Let’s go up.”

“Oh, you guys can go. I want to stay and make sure Egon’s okay.” 

Winston patted Ray’s shoulder. “YN’s got it, buddy. Believe me. Let’s go.”

“I’m sure she does, but I just think another pair of eyes would be m—”

“Ray,” Peter and Winston said in unison. Peter seized Ray’s arm and started hauling him up the stairs.

“Hey! Why don’t you guys think I should be down there too? It’s like you want it to be the two of them to be alo—” He gasped. “Ohhh.” The lightbulb went off in Ray’s mind. “Oh, okay! I get it! But I still want t—”

“Ray, my soft-skulled friend,” Peter said in a venomously sweet voice, tightening his grip on Ray’s arm. “Move it!”

“Okay! I’m going! I’m leaving them alone now!” 

The look on Egon’s face as they departed gave you the impression that he wanted to slip into his coat and disappear. Redness blotched his face. How much of it was due to injury and how much of it was due to embarrassment was hard to decipher, but, luckily for him, most of it was obscured by the bloody rag on his face. 

A stifling, heavy silence settled between the two of you as you rifled through the medical kit, pulling out various items and setting them on the table. An almost undetectable shiver went down your spine—the feeling of being watched. You glanced up and your eyes briefly met his before you both immediately looked away. Your face burned hot as you finished setting out supplies and turned to face Egon. “Can I see?” you asked, breaking the painful silence smothering the lab.

He pulled the rag away from his face, wincing a bit. Blood was coagulated under his nose and on his mouth where his lower lip had split, smeared on his cheeks and jawline, mingled with ash and soot. A few small burns and cuts were scattered across his face, but what caught your attention the most was the gash that tore across the bridge of his nose and circled around the bruise under his left eye, still bleeding. Seeing the full extent of his injuries sent an unpleasant chill up the back of your neck.  

“Ohhh, okay,” you said quietly, trying to force down your anxiousness, “It’s nothing bad at all. Let’s get you patched up.” You slowly brought your hands up on the sides of his face. He tensed when he felt your fingers on the temples of his glasses. For a split moment you feared he was going to recoil from your touch, but he relaxed as you gingerly lifted his glasses off and away from his face, never once breaking eye contact with you. Your hand hovered over the gash. “I think this should be irrigated.”

He made a face. “I’ll opt to skip the waterboarding.”

“Hmm. I hear an infection joyfully cackling in the distance.”

“I think the risk is relatively low. Besides, ectoplasm has antiseptic properties and I’d like to document the healing process, so a superficial cleansing should suffice.”  

You set his glasses aside. With a knot of nervousness in your throat, you cracked open the bottle of saline and prepped the first of many gauze pads. You started cleaning his face with tentative, almost fearful movements, taking special caution to be delicate when dabbing the cuts on his face, especially the large gash, which had begun scabbing over. He held completely still, peering at you with a wide, tired gaze, but his eyes would squeeze shut when you went over certain spots with the saline. 

While gently wiping away the grime from his face, your other hand unconsciously found the side of his jaw to keep him steady, slightly moving his head this way and that without any thought, his sight completely fixated on you. You tilted his head up and he locked eyes with you. A split moment of panic tightened around your throat when you realized how handsy you were being with him. You were focused entirely on being careful, being gentle, completely unaware that you were absentmindedly stroking his cheek with your thumb, that your fingers were splayed down the side of his neck. You jerked your hand back, making him jump a bit. 

He cocked his head. “Something the matter?”

“No, sorry.” Your heart pounded in your chest, threatening to leap into your throat. “I, um, thought I did something wrong."

He shrugged. “I find nothing objectionable.”

“Right, sorry.” You grabbed a fresh pad of gauze. 

“Don’t be.”

“Don’t be what?” 

“Sorry.”

“I forgive you, Egon.”

He cracked a small smile, the half-smirk that was so delightfully Egon, breaking through some of the tension as you started dabbing saline on his nose. “Think it might be broken?” His breath was warm on your hand as he spoke.

"No," you muttered. "No, not at all. It’s just bruised up. I wouldn’t be able to even touch you if it was broken. We should still put some ice on it soon, though.”

“I believe the marginal benefit of an ice pack for ecchymosis isn’t worth the discomfort at the moment.”

Your brow furrowed a bit, but you weren’t going to pursue an argument. 

“What are your thoughts on the laceration?” 

Your finger hovered over the wound, tracing above it. “I’d honestly prefer getting you to urgent care if it wasn’t so late, but then I’d have to drag you there by your ear.” 

“I believe a skin adhesive should suffice.” 

You rummaged through the first-aid kit and pulled out a small ampule labeled ‘2-octyl cyanoacrylate’. “Are you sure you trust this stuff?” you asked dubiously, skimming over the instructions. “I thought it was illegal in the States.”

“You are correct.” 

“Egon!”

He shrugged. “I trust you.”

You sighed and snapped the ampule open. “This might sting a bit.”

He flinched with the sting of the adhesive, despite his best efforts to remain still. 

“Ooh, ooh, careful,” you cooed. You put your hand on his jaw to steady him, stroked his cheek with your thumb—on purpose, this time. “You’re okay.” 

He relaxed a bit, leaning ever so slightly into your touch. You felt his jaw tighten as he sucked in air between clenched teeth, but he remained still until you finished applying the adhesive. 

“You’re all done.” You let your hand linger on his jaw for just a moment longer before pulling back.  

“Do you know where I keep my spares?” 

“Yes.” You reached into one of his desk drawers—an immediate death sentence for anyone but you—and handed Egon his spare glasses.

“Thank you.” He slipped his glasses on and blinked a few times to help his gaze readjust, then peered up at you with a wide-eyed stare of fatigue, his soft dark eyes dull from pain and tiredness. His eyebrows drooped ever so slightly, almost giving him a look of sadness, of vulnerability with the wound tearing across nearly half of his face. The urge to hold him was overwhelming, almost painfully so. You wanted nothing more than to pull him into your arms, hold him against your chest, ease his stress and show him how much you cared for him, but Egon was not one for physical affection, even avoiding handshakes when he could. But, he didn’t seem unreceptive to your touch for the past quarter hour, your face less than a foot away from his. But, that couldn’t really be considered any form of intimacy. Basic first-aid was just a matter of business. 

“You look distressed.” His voice yanked you from your thoughts. “Are you feeling distressed?”

“That’s not really the right word for it. I don’t know if I can properly explain it. Consternated, maybe? In a swivet? Conflicted.” 

He shrugged. “Playwright Mark Swan popularized the phrase ‘show, don’t tell’ when he found that the expression of emotion often presented itself best through action.” 

You searched his face, but his mood was inscrutable. Whether he was annoyed, tired, amused, curious, or some mixture, you had no way of telling. 

Screw it.

 Swallowing your fear, you slowly wrapped your arms around him and pulled him against yourself. He stiffened, but gave no resistance as you held him against your chest. He smelled of soot and ozone, the way the boys always did after an intense bust, residual fallout from proton gun fire.

 He kept still, feeling your warmth radiate against his cheek, slowly letting the knot in his stomach unwind. It felt good to be held.

“I, um, I really care about you, Egon. I don’t like seeing you hurting, and when I do I want to do everything I can to fix it.”

He remained silent. You closed your eyes and breathed a small sigh. 

Then, with the lightest of touches, you felt his hand tentatively brush up your back and settle between your shoulder blades. Hesitantly, he leaned against you, resting his chin on your shoulder. He swallowed, searching carefully for his next words. “I…feel the same.” His hand found the back of your head and he buried his fingers in your hair, holding you just a bit tighter against himself, reciprocating the embrace. He opened his mouth, about to say something else, but lost his nerve and kept quiet. He took a breath and sighed deeply, fully relaxing against you as fatigue started to weigh heavily on him. He could very easily fall asleep if he was held like this for long enough. 

“Egon! Egoooon! Is YN down there with you?” The two of you pulled apart as Louis Tully clumsily barreled partway down the stairs. It was barely there, almost inaudible, but you could’ve sworn that you heard a grumble of disappointment from the back of Egon’s throat.

“No! I’m not here!” you called out. 

“What is it, Tully?” Egon asked with a slight edge of irritation. 

Louis drew in a comically large breath and you braced yourself. “Peter wanted to come down and ask you guys to hurry up because he’s hungry and wants to go eat already but he didn’t want to do it himself because he thought he would interrupt something and you would get mad at him so I said I could come get you and only go a little down the stairs so you wouldn’t be able to see me while I talked—” 

Egon leaned toward you and muttered, “This man is a human run-on sentence.”

You snickered. “Don’t be so mean, Egon. You know he has a medical condition that prevents him from using any punctuation.”

Egon snorted.

“—Janine said that I should just let you guys come up on your own but Peter said he was hungry and I’m feeling hungry too and I think they want to go to Bubby’s but Winston also mentioned another restaurant so I really don’t know where—” 

You whispered to Egon, “Has he come up for air yet?”

“No.”

The two of you sniggered.

“—and Ray says he doesn’t care where we eat and I still don’t know where we’re going to eat and Dana said I should leave you alone because you’d come up on your own and anyways that’s the short version of it.”

“Egon,” you muttered, “I didn’t catch anything he said.” 

Egon cleared his throat, trying to conceal a burst of laughter. “The others are hungry and want to get going.”

“Ah, yes. Rushing medical care has never had any downsides.”

“Hi, Winston!”

Winston was idly standing near the staircase to the basement, sipping a can of club soda and reading a fashion magazine borrowed from Janine’s desk. He lifted his head and flashed you a warm smile. “Hey, girlie. How was the call?”

You trotted up to him, freshly showered after a particularly nasty call with Ray, who was still scrubbing himself of ectoplasm. “Ray got slimed.”

“Hey, that’s great!”

Peter stomped up the basement stairs in a huff, scowling. “He kicked me out!” he exclaimed.

Winston nodded his head in sympathy and shut the magazine. “Ouch. Did you try to swipe his last Twinkie?”

“No. I wouldn’t be speaking to you if that happened. I’d be a red stain on the wall. My entrails would be hanging out of his mouth. You know that. No, he’s just really into his research at the moment and wants to be alone. Doesn’t want anyone to go see him.”

“Bummer, Venkman.” You patted his shoulder. “I’m gonna go see him.”

“YN, honey,” Winston said gently, “last time someone interrupted Egon’s research, he bit their spleen out. It was a huge mess. Took us three days to clean it up. You should come with us to go grab something to eat instead and leave him be.”

You scoffed. “Well, boys, with this newfound knowledge of Egon’s cannibalistic tendencies when he gets really into his research, I’m still going to see him.”

“If you survive, would you like us to bring you back something to eat?” Winston asked. “The usual?”

“Yeah, that’d be nice. Thanks.”

“You’re gonna die,” Peter said solemnly as you approached the staircase leading to the lab. “We’ll leave the food at the coroner’s office for you.”

You shot a devilish smile at Peter before descending the staircase. Egon came into view, seated at his desk with his back turned to you. “Hello!” you called out.

“Hi, sweetheart,” Egon said pleasantly, not budging from his microscope as you drew closer. “Need something?”

“Winston says you ripped someone’s spleen out with your teeth.”

He shrugged. “It’s a nonessential organ.”

You took the seat next to him. “I like you.”

“I like you, too. Is this your way of communicating that you want some attention?”

“Yeah.”

“This documentation is time-sensitive. I'm going to be here for a few more hours.” He must have sensed your disappointment, because he quickly added, “I exiled Peter for the evening but you’re welcome company.”

Peter poked his head into the lab, having been listening in to see if Egon would let you stay. “Hey!” he whined. “How come YN gets to stay and I d—?”

“Out,” Egon said sharply, his eyes still glued to his microscope. You stuck your tongue out at Peter, who huffed and stormed back up the stairs, but you knew it was theatrics more than actual feelings. “Xiaolongbao and a side of ginger sauce, Pete!” he called out. “Thank you!”

“Bite me, Spengler!”

You scooted your chair closer to Egon. If he noticed, he didn’t show it, remaining completely preoccupied with whatever fungus he was currently studying.

He scribbled some notes on the notepad beside him, still looking intently at the fungal spores, and set the pencil down on top of it. Egon being able to write without looking was nothing new. He had his routine down pat: adjust the microscope, write notes, adjust, write, adjust, write, repeat, never once needing to look away from his spores. He put down the pencil again and pulled his hand away to switch the slide out.

You silently moved the pencil away and laid your hand over the paper, palm up, trap set. You only had to wait a moment for him to reach for his pencil and inadvertently grab your hand.

He jumped a bit with the unexpected contact and finally looked up from his microscope, directly at you, stony-faced, but you easily saw through his façade. He gave no resistance as your fingers intertwined with his. You smirked wickedly and winked at him, causing his cheeks to flush scarlet. He forced his gaze back to his microscope. He was completely flustered, but did his best to regain his composure. There was no effort nor desire to pull away from you—quite the contrary.

You pressed the back of his hand to your cheek, relishing his touch.

“Could you write down ‘cordyceps militaris, control two, seventeen microns, seventy-six hours after harvest’ for me?” he asked, slightly adjusting the focus with his free hand to get a better look at his spores.

“Of course,” you said brightly, quickly jotting down the notes.

“Average growth rate within one point three standard deviations of the mean, p-level of less than zero point zero three.”

“Got it down.”

He pulled his hand from yours to switch to another slide. The disappointment on your face melted away when he finished changing slides and offered you his hand directly this time, his eyes still entirely on his microscope. He wiggled his fingers and cleared his throat, almost impatient for you to resume contact. Your fingers once again intertwined with his. “Cordyceps militaris, experimental three, thirty-six microns, seventy-six hours after harvest and seventy-five hours after exposure.” He absentmindedly rubbed small circles on your hand with the pad of his thumb as he talked. “Average growth rate more than six point four standard deviations above the mean, p-level of less than zero point zero three. Abnormal fluorescent green coloration.”

“Got it down.”

He once again released your hand to switch out another slide.

“I’m, um, I’m not bothering you, am I?”

“No.”

"Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“You aren't just humoring me? Because Winston and Peter were saying tha—"

To your surprise, he turned away from the microscope entirely and pulled you into a tight hug, cradling your head gently against his chest. “I love you,” he muttered, his powerful voice resounding deep in your chest. “Please don’t ever think your presence is less than wanted here.” He planted a kiss on your forehead and withdrew, once again returning his attention to the microscope without missing a beat, leaving you reeling from his sudden burst of affection.

He cleared his throat, snapping you from your stupor. His hand was up, fingers wiggling as he glanced expectantly at you from his microscope. You slipped your hand into his and he turned back to his fungus. A contented hum rumbled in the back of his throat. “Cordyceps militaris, control three, sixteen point eight microns, seventy-six hours after harvest.”