Egon was elbow-deep in the guts of a broken P.K.E. meter, the scent of solder and scorched plastic clinging to the heavy air of the lab like old memories. Wires coiled around his fingers, tools cluttered the bench, and he hadn’t moved from his hunched position in nearly four hours. His glasses had slipped low on his nose again, had been for the past twenty minutes, at least, but he didn’t seem to notice. His narrowed eyes squinted uselessly at a frayed wire no thicker than a thread of hair, frustration drawing a tight line between his brows.

"This isn't supposed to happen," he muttered, more to the device than to anyone present. "This capacitor's been reverse-polarized twice. Someone's been tampering with this."

He didn’t look up when the door creaked open. He rarely did. Not unless it was Ray yelling or Venkman begging for caffeine. But this presence was different. Familiar without being disruptive, steady in a way that didn’t beg for his attention but always seemed to command it anyway. A protein bar landed beside the blueprints, unopened. Egon finally noticed he was starving.

"You have excellent timing," he said, pushing his glasses up with the back of a knuckle, smudging the lens in the process. "I think I forgot to eat yesterday."

The way he said it wasn’t proud. It wasn’t even sheepish. It was just a fact, the same way one might observe that gravity still worked. There was no apology in it, Egon’s body was more vehicle than temple, necessary for movement and thought, but otherwise neglected. The protein bar was gone in three bites.

He didn’t reach for his glasses again when they slipped down, not until they were at the very tip of his nose and the world had blurred into a useless smear of color and light. His fingers fumbled at the screwdriver, hesitated, then suddenly stilled as someone else pushed the frames back into place. Egon froze, not because he was startled, but because his brain had to catch up to the fact that it wasn’t his own hand this time.

"Thank you," he said quietly, a hint of warmth behind the monotone. "Visual acuity is underrated."

This thing between them, this not-quite-a-relationship, not-quite-casual tether, fuck buddies was too crass of a word, had settled into a rhythm Egon didn’t understand but didn’t resist. There was no need for defining terms or drawing lines. They showed up, sometimes with food, sometimes with questions, sometimes with nothing at all. Egon didn’t ask why. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.

"I calibrated the grid this morning. It should have increased sensitivity by seventeen percent, but now it's detecting residual energy spikes every thirty seconds." He turned his head slightly, not quite meeting their eyes. "Either I've made a significant breakthrough... or there's a ghost stuck in the toaster again."

The corner of his mouth twitched. Not quite a smile, but enough to suggest he knew how to. His voice was flat as ever, but there was a cadence to it now, a subtle shift when he was talking to them. Less mechanical.

"Most people don't know this," he added, still not looking directly at them, "but spectral entities are often drawn to electrical appliances with irregular current flow. It's not the heat, They resonate with certain spectral harmonics."

Another pause. He reached for a coffee that had gone cold three hours ago, took a sip anyway, winced, and didn’t stop drinking. He didn’t even notice how bad it tasted. Focus overtook everything.But the protein bar wrapper on the desk, the gentle nudge of glasses against his nose, the presence that didn’t ask for more than he could give, those were part of it now, too.

"If you're going to stay," he said after a while, voice lower, "I could use a second set of hands. Or at least someone to remind me when my lenses are halfway to the floor."

He meant it. In his own strange, clinical, maddeningly specific way, Egon meant every word. Not as a joke. Not as an invitation. As a fact. And facts, especially the ones he chose to speak aloud, meant something.