“I hope what I've said hasn't hurt you too much,” The man in front of him, with his deep eye-bags and looking like the wind could blow him over, crossed his spindly arms. “But sadly, it is the truth, and you need to stop living in your delusions, Doctor.”

Doctor Jason Marcus stayed silent at the mockery, hands placed neatly on his desk and back straight. His brown eyes glaring steadily at a shade darker than his own.

Doctor Klein Bauer, on the other hand, got more nervous with each passing second as he waited for Doctor Marcus' reaction.

It wasn't everyday that he would mess up on a research paper, no matter how mild it was. He was usually very thorough in his research, gathering multiple sources for his analysis and replicating those theories to reach his own conclusions.

The problem was, a major theory that was unanimously accepted within their community was recently disproved, making a good half of the project he was working on obsolete almost immediately.

It was a lot better than some others who had written whole books and papers with said theory as a core concept, but it still hurt his pride.

And Doctor Bauer, his academic rival, knew this intimately. He had taken his lunch break to come over to his office and gloated about the fact that his research was going smoothly and that he had never trusted that quack theory and, “Oh, I'm so sorry, I forgot you believed it.”

Bauer was now nervously tapping his finger on his arm. Most people would just assume that this was his impatience, but he knew that he was scaring the other with his silence.

Good. Let him be scared.

Klein awkwardly cleared his throat to chase away the prickle of his skin from Jason's stare, but he still didn't give in.

Jason narrowed his eyes.

Klein pretended he wasn't scared.

“Doctor Bauer,” He began, voice low. “I assume that you've already finished your paper?”

“What?” Bauer was a tad flabbergasted. It had barely been a month, after all.

“Well, you just seemed quite free, considering you're still here even though your break was over half an hour ago.”

“What!?”

Bauer snapped his head back towards the clock so fast Marcus began to get a tad concerned.

This concern vanished when the other let out a squawk and scrambled to get back to his lab before he got caught and reprimanded by their site Director.

Marcus watched this entire show with clear mirth, before deciding that, yes, he can be pettier.

“Oh, and Klein?”

Klein looked back in mild horror, almost expecting what he would hear next.

Jason spoke gleefully, clearly enunciating each word to make sure the other heard it in full, “You're sleeping on the couch tonight.”

The look of utter despair on his husband's face was something he would fondly look back on even years afterwards. The very notion of it soothed his injured heart, and he had the most wonderful sleep that night, regardless of the wraith that sulked outside the door.

If, the next morning, he prepared a full breakfast-in-couch pack with extra-kisses for said wraith in order to make it up to him, no he did not. That is slander.

The cover image was created in Canva!