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They argue like they breathe—but that’s not all there is to it. Newt flirts, and it’s disgusting.
It’s not that Hermann minds workplace flirting. The Kaidonovskies have propositioned everyone in the PPDC, or so it seems, and Tendo has intimated more than once that he wouldn’t mind spending some time in the lab, “talking numbers.” The Shatterdome is a small place. One has to practice somewhere.
It’s just that Newt is so bad at it.
***
It starts innocently enough.
“Hermann, Hermann, Hermann, I know you’re allergic to humor, Hermann, but you’ve got to hear this joke—”
“I’m not allergic to humor. It’s just that most of the world stops thinking armpit farts are funny once they leave the second grade.”
Newt blew a raspberry at him.
“They also stop doing that after second grade.”
“But this is really great, I swear, and you’re the only other scientist here, so you’re, like, the only one who will get it, and it’s so great—”
Hermann lets out a slow, disgusted breath, looking at Newt from over the top of his glasses. “Will you promise to hush and let me work if I listen?”
Newt nods, bouncing from foot to foot.
Hermann rolls his eyes, but he makes a “go ahead” gesture.
“Are—” Here Newt pauses so he can giggle. Hermann turns his eyes to the ceiling, begging for patience, and Newt ignores him. “Are you copper and tellurium? Because you are Cu-Te!”
Hermann blinks. Then, slowly and deliberately, he brings his fingertips to his temple and begins to massage.
“Oh, come on! That was great! And adorable! Like me!”
“I listened. Now hush.”
Newt lets out the most dramatic, ridiculous sigh—and that’s saying something, because Newt is a fan of the dramatic, ridiculous sigh—but he draws an imaginary zipper over his lips and turns away.
Hermann wants to get back to work, and he tries, but his concentration is suddenly hard to gather. He frowns at his paper. Is he insulted? Newt was clearly mocking him, but that's nothing new.
No, Newt wasn’t serious. It’s not worth getting worked up over.
After all, fifteen minutes later, Newt slops kaiju excreta on Hermann’s side of the lab, and that is.
***
Hermann forgets. At least, until a week later.
Newt walks into the lab, leans over his desk, leers at Hermann. “I’ve got my ion you, baby!”
Hermann looks at him blankly.
“Dude! Ions! Like—charged particles! It’s a great pun!”
“Chemistry,” Hermann says, layering his voice with disgust the way a great painter applies watercolor washes.
Newt hmmphs and turns away.
***
Newt tries again the next day.
He sets down a piece of kaiju eye, pulls off his gloves and tosses them in the biohazard barrel, cocks one finger and points it at Hermann. “According to the second law of thermodynamics, you are supposed to share your hotness with me.”
Hermann glares at him from the top of the ladder. He’s tempted to throw his chalk, but then he would have to climb down to get another piece, and that is too much work for Newt’s sake. No matter how satisfying his yelp is when Hermann hits him on top of the head. “Where are you finding these? They’re abysmal.”
“Eventually, I will find one that gets you, and it will be completely worth it, and you will appreciate all the effort I’ve gone to, and that will be completely worth it, too.”
“Oh, I understand now.”
“Understand what?” Newt’s voice is quick and strangely nervous; Hermann looks down, checking for signs of kaiju viscera on his side, but Newt has moved far from the dividing line, over to his whiteboard.
Satisfied, Hermann returns to his chalkboard. “This is another of your fits.”
“Fits?” The disgusted tone of Newt’s voice is like a heating pack on Hermann’s bad leg when a storm moves in. Hermann basks in it.
“Fits.” Hermann begins writing again, though slowly because he’s still talking. “Like when you tried to get Tendo to tell you which instrument he plays, or when you decided to teach Max tricks. You obsess over something for a little while and let it go." He shakes his head. "Fine, Newton. Try all your terrible pick-up lines on me. I’ll let you know if you stumble along one that would actually work on another human being.”
“But—I mean—”
Hermann looks down at him, one eyebrow arched.
Newt sighs. “Yeah, okay, whatever.”
Hermann nods and goes back to work.
***
The next day, they work together on a holographic simulation of a new attack pattern for Jaegers.
“No, no, they’ve got to aim a little higher, most of the kaiju have this little gland, like, right here,” Newt touches the base of his chin, drawing attention to the top of Tantalus’s head, and Hermann realizes he is staring and drops his eyes, “and if they hit that, it’ll damage some deeper structures—at least, probably, if the pattern holds and the new kaiju have it, but it’s a good idea to try anyway, because in any case you’re still hitting them in the fucking throat, just higher than you usually would—”
Hermann decides it is safe to tune Newton out and waves the models away, bringing up the skeletons that determine how they move. He reaches into the projection and tweaks their position. “Like so?”
“Yeah, yeah, there we go, perfect.”
Hermann brings up the finished animation again and runs it.
“Yeah,” Newt says again, and he meets Hermann’s eyes. Hermann draws back; he is beginning to recognize this look. He scrambles for something to distract Newt, but it is too late. “You know, it’s not the size of the vector that matters. It’s the force with which it’s delivered.”
He holds Hermann’s eyes, and grins, and waits, and Hermann groans in disgust and lolls back in his chair.
Newt chuckles and reaches down into the projector for the storage chip.
***
It becomes almost comfortable. Hermann learns to expect them—not every day, but about once a week, with a frequency he feels he could plot like kaiju attacks if had had a little more data. And, of course, the inclination to devote that kind of time to Newt-related math.
***
“I wish I was DNA helicase so I could unzip your jeans.”
“I’m not wearing jeans, Newton, because, unlike you, I know what clothes are appropriate to wear in a professional setting.”
***
“I wish I was adenine so I could get paired with U.”
“What on earth do you have against the subjunctive tense?” The noise from Newt’s side of the lab stopped; Hermann lifted his head. “What? It’s ‘if I were.’”
“It’s just really weird to hear you talk about grammar.”
Hermann scoffs and returns to his work.
***
“I wish I was an ion so I could form an exothermic bond with you.”
“Did I not already tell you my feelings on the subject of chemistry?”
***
“Okay, this is legitimately great, prepare to be wowed—”
“You say this every time, Newton, and every time you are incorrect. Your margin of error is simply unacceptable.” But Hermann is nearly done for the day, and he is thinking of a hot bath and the heating pad in his mattress, so he looks at Newt with his chin on his hand and something that is not quite a smile. If it is a smile, it is only because his mind is halfway back to his room, curled beneath the covers.
Newt props his chin on both hands, grinning at Hermann from the piano bench. “I want to work on your leucine zipper with my zinc fingers.”
Hermann shakes his head. “You are so far from succeeding it is almost endearing. I do not care for chemistry. What on earth makes you think a biology line would succeed?”
“Hey, I legitimately like that one! It’s good science!”
“As much as any biology can be.”
Newt crosses his arms. He’s pouting, and Hermann finds it more amusing than irritating, which is the ultimate sign he really needs to stop working and get some sleep. He gathers his things. “Good night, Newton.”
Newt sighs, turning back to his piano. As Hermann starts down the hallway, Newt calls after him: “Hey, wanna put your alpha helix in my beta barrel?”
“Good night, Newton.”
***
Hermann keeps to himself, but one simply cannot ignore Tendo Choi when he comes shouting down the hallway that he’s got real beer, the kind made with hops, the kind that gets one drunk without leaving a feeling like one has been hit by a bus in the morning as the Kaidonovskies’ homebrewed vodka does.
So they’re all in the cafeteria, Hermann and Newt and several of the rangers and too many techs to count and Tendo Choi, who for a wonder has undone his bowtie and keeps trying to show everyone pictures of his infant son, never mind that they’re all over LOCCENT.
Newt is sitting beside Hermann on the bench; Hermann is aware of it the way he is aware of a light source, because that’s simply how Newt feels. He gives off energy. But they are not engaging each other. Hermann is instructing a J-Tech in the finer points of Brawler Yukon’s code, and Newt is babbling with Tendo about how great babies are or something.
Then someone crashes in the door and shouts, “Body shots!” The J-Tech bolts, and Tendo jumps to his feet. Tendo is a body shots legend. Hermann cannot remember when he learned this, but he also cannot keep his eyes off Tendo while Tendo unbuttons his shirt. That probably has something to do with it.
Before Hermann realizes, he and Newt are the only ones left at the table. “You’re not joining them?” Hermann asks, raising his eyebrows. “Or are you planning to wait and swoop in when they’re too inebriated to know better? Some of those lines might actually work once everyone’s drunk enough.”
Newt snorts. “Dude, I am already fucked up enough, I think. And those lines are fantastic and you know it.” There is a bit of a slur to his voice, but his eyes are bright and clear behind his glasses. He presses his face to Hermann’s shoulder.
“Stop that,” Hermann says, but he doesn’t push Newt away.
“But you’re so cool.” Newt grabs at his hand and pushes it against his forehead. “Like, dude, you are a goddamn ice cube, and I am all kinds of vasodilated.”
“I don’t think the word is meant to be used that way, Newton.” Hermann puts his hand back in his lap, flexing it to rid himself of the feel of Newt’s skin. He is flushed, and so warm, like metal left out in the sun. Hermann still does not push Newt’s forehead off of his shoulder. He is too drunk to come up with a reason why.
“Mmm.” Newt nudges his head up, so his eyes can meet Hermann’s. “We fit together,” and Hermann scowls, but of course it does nothing, “we fit together like the sticky ends of recombinant DNA.”
Hermann puts his hand against Newt’s forehead to shove him, possibly even off the bench.
But Newt lets out a sigh of complete ecstasy and grabs Hermann’s wrist to hold him there—and suddenly Hermann is staring at how pale his skin looks where the tattoos end. The touch sends a cascade of feeling down Hermann’s body like chemical igniting along the length of a filament.
Hermann pulls away, quickly, and tries to find his cane—he put it just so for safekeeping, but now he cannot seem to find it, and his brain is not working like it should.
The cane appears within his field of view: Hermann stares at it, at the tattooed hand holding it up. “Thank you,” he manages at last, and he takes it without touching Newt’s hand.
He gets up without making a fool of himself, at least, but as he starts to walk away, Newt grabs the hem of his sweater. Hermann reaches for nasty words, but Newt speaks first. “Dude, wait, look at Tendo, look at what he’s doing—”
Hermann does not. “I’ve seen how he bends, thank you, and once was enough,” which is only partly true. Tendo Choi can bend in ways that are simply inhuman, but pleasantly so.
Newt lets him go, and Hermann is glad of it.
When he returns to his room, he sits for a long time without undressing, one hand rubbing the other to erase the heat from his skin.
***
Hermann wakes with only a mild hangover, another benefit of drinking alcohol made by professionals. He showers and dresses quickly. If he falls into work immediately, he will have no time to think of last night, and that is—good.
When he arrives at the lab, Newt is already there, which is strange. Newt gets the worst hangovers, and, more importantly, even on a good day he never comes to the lab before eight in the morning.
“Are you—packing?” Hermann asks, before he can stop himself, before he can climb his ladder and lose himself in a fresh blank blackboard.
Newt lifts his head. His eyes are bleary, but the smile is irrepressible as always. Hermann does not look at it. “Yep. Got a call from Sydney—their labs are closing up, so guess who gets all their kaiju guts?”
Hermann winces. “Do not sound so enthused, Newton. For one thing, that’s disgusting, and for another—”
“Yeah, I’m not thrilled another ‘dome’s shutting down, either, but Striker’s headed here, so it all comes to the same thing anyway.” As he fits scalpels into his case, his tongue pokes out from between his teeth. Hermann does not stare at that, either.
“Good,” Hermann says, after a pause that feels too long. “Perhaps while you are gone I shall actually get some quiet.”
“Aw, you’ll miss me! That’s so sweet.”
Hermann does not dignify that with a response, focusing on his climb up the ladder.
“I’ll only be gone for a few days,” Newt adds.
Silence reigns in the lab for a few blessed minutes.
Then: “Do you have eleven protons? Because you’re sodium fine.”
This time Hermann does throw chalk at him. He does not regret it.
***
He wakes to the sound of the attack alarm—not the loud screaming klaxon that says Hong Kong is in danger, but the shrill beeping that says a different ‘dome is in danger. Which one? They’re all gone already.
Hermann gropes for his mobile and brings up the feed.
Australia.
Sydney.
He stares at the screen until news of Striker Eureka’s win finally appears. Then he sets it on his bedside table and tries to go back to sleep.
***
Sydney and Hong Kong are only three hours apart, so the text comes at a reasonable hour.
Guess who got pieces of Mutavooooooore
Hermann ignores it. Nevertheless, a few minutes later, his mobile goes again.
Can I be your enzyme? My active site is dying for a chemical reaction.
Hermann shuts off his phone.
***
It’s raining, and the wind keeps finding its way up Hermann’s sleeves, but he stays where he is. Hermann does not want to admit what he thought as Mutavore tore apart Sydney: thank God Striker was still there, or you might not be. But it won’t leave his head.
He closes his eyes as the helicopter lands because it sends the wind blowing in his face and the rain up under the hood of his parka. And because he does not want to look as Newt gets off, yelling at the aids to be careful with his brain—brain?
A hand clamps onto Hermann’s shoulder. Newt’s voice, breathless and exhilarated: “Hey, are you an alpha carbon? Because you look ready for a backside attack.”
Hermann opens his eyes. It is not relief he feels—or if it is, it is only the same relief he feels whe he wakes in the morning without the sound of an alarm. “Honestly, Newton, it hasn’t even been five minutes. Other people say hello or how are you.”
“Hey, hey, I’m trying to compliment you here—although I admit it’s kind of silly to talk about your ass because I can’t even see it under that parka, but that isn’t the point, dude, I was trying to pick you up—”
“For God’s sake, take a breath, Newton.” Hermann rubs his ears; they are hot with his blush.
Newton sticks out his tongue.
“If you’re going to insult me, do it better.” The words come out before he can regret them--but they need to be said.
“Hey, watch it, that’s irreplaceable—what?” Newt turns to him, his eyes wide behind his glasses. “What do you mean? I wasn't--" He’s almost serious, almost back here in this moment instead of caught up in his kaiju pieces and the leftover adrenaline from the helicopter ride and the insanity that looms over everyone living in the end times. He is surprised, and sincere, and confused.
And that—that is unacceptable. Hermann glares at him, maybe worse than he meant to and maybe not. “I mean it, Newton. Stop this. It is no longer amusing.”
“But—I mean—”
One of the aids nearly drops a jar, and Newt shrieks as though his grandmother has just fallen down the stairs. He shouts at the aid, and Hermann stumps toward the elevator, wondering why he even came out here to meet Newt in the first place.
***
When they catch the elevator, Newt meets his eyes as though he were going to say something serious, but then Pentecost is introducing them to Becket, and Newt trips all over himself like always.
Hermann is glad.
***
Hermann takes very little of Newt says seriously. It’s not because Hermann doesn’t respect him—Newt is an excellent scientist, never mind that his behavior is ridiculous. It’s just that very little of what Newt says is actually for other people to hear. He conducts experiments like other people throw darts at a newspaper to pick a want ad, trying everything to see what sticks.
And certainly no one—no one could honestly want to Drift with a kaiju. The sheer size of the brain compared to a human’s—even if it was only a fragment like Mutavore's--
Hermann had once attempted to calculate the amount of neuronal connections in a kaiju’s secondary brain, at Newt’s request. The number was simply unfathomable.
And Drifting does not simply add the power of two brains—it squares them, creating a number even more incomprehensible.
Newt knows that. He’s seen Hermann’s math.
Maybe—maybe Hermann doesn’t think about it as hard as he could have, because he is still upset from their earlier discussion, and maybe even from the night spent drinking, but he does a rough estimate, and he feels comfortable that Newt will just blast his music and sulk until he comes up with a different insane idea.
He never—he never imagines—
Then he doesn’t have to imagine, because Newt is shaking and bleeding and clinging to him, and Hermann is clutching him back as hard as he can because everything is suddenly more complex than he ever thought.
***
After Newt disappears into the depths of the Boneslums, Hermann calculates again. The neurons in a complete kaiju secondary brain—and the synaptic connections between them—and the further complication of the hivemind—
There’s nothing for it. Newt cannot do it alone, not a second time. The math says so. As he marches off to demand a ride to Hong Kong, he thinks only of that and not of the drops of Newt’s blood still staining the cuff of his sleeve.
***
The images from the Drift come at Hermann too quickly for proper processing—they are subliminal, felt rather than known.
Except for one.
It’s himself, looking down at Newt from the top of his ladder—and this feels queer, like waking in the middle of the night and trying to remember his own name—and Newt is staring back, giddy and terrified at the same time, his heart in his throat because this wasn’t actually supposed to work.
Then Hermann speaks, and Newt realizes it hasn’t worked, and his disappointment is a physical ache between them.
***
The hivemind crashes down upon them like a wave before Hermann can do more than draw breath.
***
In the helicopter, they grip each other like they have no seatbelts. Hermann has a million things he wants to say—because despite what pilots say about the Drift, some things do need to be said—but it’s the end of the world and he will fall apart if he speaks right now.
At least he knows Newt is the same way.
***
When it’s over, they walk away from LOCCENT, almost leisurely. Newt grips Hermann's hand with one of his own; the other wipes blood from his face.
Hermann’s quarters are the shortest distance. They stop there and turn to each other at the same moment. Newt opens his mouth and closes it again. Hermann nods.
He clears his throat and lifts their linked hands so he can press his lips to the back of Newt’s palms. “If I were a function,” he says, speaking more softly than he thought he could, “you would be my asymptote, because I always tend toward you.”
Newt blinks, and then he kisses Hermann so hard it’s like the hivemind slamming into them all over again. Hermann drops his cane and lets Newt take his weight. Newt slides his lips up to Hermann’s ear, speaking in a breathless whisper. “You know I was serious now, yeah?”
“I could hardly avoid it.” Hermann turns his head to find Newt’s lips again.
“Good, good, good,” and Newt giggles against his mouth.
“What?” Hermann demands, although he already sees the shape of it in the remnants of their connection.
“Let’s take each other to the limit and see if we converge.”
“I’ve done the math. We do.”