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i.
Hermann Gottlieb is 36 years old and certain of two things. First, that numbers, when manipulated correctly and very carefully, can stand up in absolute defense better than any coastal wall. And second, that despite his title, his doctorates, and his age, Newton Geiszler simply Cannot Help It. What, exactly, he cannot help is, Hermann feels, of little importance. It changes, is the thing, at any given moment. He cannot help the way his voice grates when he walks cheerfully into the lab at 7:30 in the morning, nor can he help the way it gentles at 11 o’clock at night when he ushers Hermann away from his too-bright computer screens and out of the lab. He can’t help that the number of people willing to try to understand the reasons for the swirls of ink on his arms amount to a rather pitiful percentage, any more than he can apparently help rolling up his sleeves in mixed company and bracing himself, gleefully, for a fight. He cannot help that most days his mind seems to race faster than his attention span will allow, that he can count the people who have ever been able to keep up with him on one hand, and he certainly cannot help prodding and provoking Hermann at every turn.
He knows other things to be true, of course, but these are the two most important. It’s the last days of war, and certainty, Hermann thinks, is invaluable.
He pushes his glasses up on his head, rubbing at his eyes as Newton chatters on inanely next to him. Hermann is sitting at his computer, putting the finishing touches on the bridge holo for their debriefing with Pentecost. Newton had skipped over a few minutes ago, apparently overcome with an enthusiasm that Hermann felt frankly undue, warranted as it was by the arrival of several hundred pounds of rotting alien flesh.
It’s useless, Hermann knows, to hope that if he just ignores him Newton will tire out and putter to a stop on his own. He’d tried it once, during their second year in Hong Kong. Newton had talked for 40 minutes uninterrupted until Hermann finally let out a strangled yell, pointed a shaking finger in Newton’s direction, found himself unable recollect any words appropriate for his frustration, and stormed out of the lab, one hand clenched at his side while the other clutched tightly at his cane, knuckles white. Newt, for his part, hadn’t seemed to realize how long it had been since Hermann had ceased responding to him. He blinked wide-eyed at Hermann’s retreating figure, shrugged, and returned to his dissection. He’d scream too, he reasoned, if he had to stare at numbers all day.
Hermann has since decided that Newton must only ever manage to stop talking through sheer force of will.
He groans and pushes away from his desktop, muttering as he looks up at the man in question, who is currently sitting on the edge of Hermann’s desk, attempting to twirl his cane like a baton.
“I still don’t understand why I’ve got to be there to sign for the bloody things.”
He grabs his cane from where it’s clattered to the floor and stands. Newton jumps from the desk, toothy grin in place as he shoves Hermann’s parka at him and ushers him to the door.
“You’re more than welcome to step down, Hermann. K-Sci doesn’t really need co-heads, though I’ve heard the scientists can get a little unruly.” Newton speaks out of the side of his mouth conspiratorially, “it’s an HR nightmare.”
“Heaven forbid,” Hermann answers wryly, glancing sidelong at his partner.
“Someone should really file a complaint,” Newton says lightly, grabbing an umbrella from beside the door.
“I do, and often.”
They make their way down the long corridors toward the freight elevator, Newton keeping pace with Hermann’s limping gait, resuming his twirling with the umbrella. He’s developed a habit of circling Hermann when they walk together, like a piece of debris trapped in his orbit. It makes Hermann dizzy. Newton drops the umbrella twice more before Hermann whacks at his shins with his cane, imploring him to keep moving.
“Ow, fuck, Hermann! You know there’s a rule against violence, right?” Newton whines, punching the button to call the lift.
“That’s for the rangers.”
“That’s for everyone, you ass. Really typical, coming from someone with a history of violence- You know, I bet you tripped that J-Tech in the mess last week on purpose, they should take that thing away from you,” Newton looks at Hermann from over the top of his glasses, pointing an accusing finger as he walks through the open doors of the lift.
“Entirely accidental,” Hermann sniffs, following after him. The tech had actually been doing a rather unflattering impersonation of a certain biologist’s propensity for screeching rants at the time, though Hermann felt that this was not something Newton really needed to know.
The lift ascends upward towards the ground level, doors opening onto the wet tarmac. Newton opens the umbrella and rests it poised on one shoulder, watching Hermann again as he walks backward out of the lift.
“You gotta watch that callous heart, you know. We wouldn’t want it to shrivel up from disuse.”
More’s the pity, Hermann thinks disparagingly, watching Newton turn and bound off toward the nearest glowing tank. He pulls his hood up and over his eyes and follows Newton out into the rain.
ii.
“What a jerk that guy was…”
Newton’s arms fall to his sides as he turns back to the closing doors of the lift, muttering angrily all the while. Hermann walks away to the large tanks, shaking himself of the casual touches Newton gives all too easily.
“God, how blind do you have to be not to realize that we’re not winning this fight right now,” Newton continues, rounding back around on Hermann. “They’re barely holding the kaiju back is it is, and the breach is never gonna break under brute force. That war clock’s just gonna keep on fucking ticking. What do they think we’re doing here?”
Newton looks up at him appealingly. Hermann is, for once, at a loss. Newton does this sometimes, catches him off-guard with instances of desperate sincerity. It’s moments like these that make it impossible for Hermann to reconcile the boy he’d exchanged letters with from the man standing in front of him today. He wonders if he’ll ever be able to stop resenting Newton for it. It’s unfair, he knows, but he’d left their first meeting all those years ago bitterly disappointed and a little bit in love, and he’s never really been able to forgive either of them for it.
When it becomes clear that Hermann won’t respond, Newton seems to deflate, shoulders falling slightly. He runs his hands through his hair, letting out a deep breath before peering sidelong at Hermann.
“You know, they recovered a piece of Mutavore’s brain-”
Any sentimental feeling Hermann had been harboring drops at once like a cold weight in his chest.
“Newton!” Hermann hisses through clenched teeth, eyes darting to the PPDC officers still stood in the lift with them. Newton blessedly manages to stay quiet, and they make it back to the lab without incident. Hermann spares the officers a grim smile as they wheel the tanks in behind them, thanking them when they leave. When he rounds on Newton, he finds him standing in front of one of the tanks, silhouetted against the sickly yellow glow, arms crossed and braced for a fight.
“You cannot,” Hermann begins, trying his best to temper his frustration. “Seriously be considering bringing this ludicrous theory,” he says the word sneering like it pains him to do so, “to Pentecost. It is borne from some crazed, misplaced fanaticism-”
“Oh God, give it a rest, Hermann.”
“-that will yield nothing more than you getting yourself killed! It is reckless, unfounded, and insane, Geiszler, even for you.”
Newton reels back, only for an instant, expression flashing some emotion Hermann can’t name. “Unfounded, what, you mean like the latest in your brilliant parade of ideas that don’t work.”
Hermann’s jaw clenches, his next words carefully cold. “Do not think me naïve, Newton, I am aware what’s at stake each time my counsel fails.”
He’s always found it terribly shortsighted, the way the rangers parade around with tallies painted on their backs. He doesn’t begrudge them their celebration, of course not, their self-congratulatory customs mean nothing to him. It’s just that while they’re counting drops and kills like it’s something to be proud of, Hermann counts years. Because every monster that emerges from the depths of the ocean is another moment that Hermann wasn’t quick enough, wasn’t smart enough. Some people celebrate the new year like a victory, slopping drinks held aloft in toasts to the resiliency of the human race. To Hermann, though, each year feels like more pronounced failure.
“‘Ten years decorated experience,’ Hermann. Ten years, and we are both grasping at straws.” He’s right, is the thing, of course he is. Hermann has been dealing with margins of error far too large, margins that any self-respecting mathematician would balk at. But the world is ending, and Hermann is fairly sure his dignity left around the same time he first started working with Newton anyway. The world is ending, and he knows they have no hope of seeing the other side of it if Newton kills himself in a last, desperate fit of hubristic pique. “At least my theory has some hope of getting us somewhere.”
“Yes,” Hermann hisses. “You. Six feet under.”
“Since when have you been so macabre?” Newton says derisively.
Hermann feels very tired, all of a sudden.
“There are cleaner ways to kill yourself, Newton. You cannot drift with a kaiju brain.”
Newton smiles coldly, teeth bared in the ugly twist of his lips.
“You only say that because no one’s done it yet.”
Hermann turns to his chalkboards.
iii.
“Or I’ll be a rock star!”
Hermann wonders if anyone’s ever told him that it’s the brightest stars that snuff out the fastest. Fortune does not favor anyone.
iv.
“Newton- Newton, what have you done?”
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Of course Newton would have ignored professional orders, pained pleading, and all semblance of common sense in favor of piecing together a Frankensteinian neural bridge and spitting in the face of self-preservation. Half a decade working side-by-side in cramped quarters and Hermann knows that Newton’s predilection for stubborn defiance is rivaled only by his own. He should have known.
Stupid.
Newton’s seizing body gentles and stills in his arms as he rips the stolen Pons from his head, and Hermann’s fear in that moment seems to choke all the breath from his chest.
“Newt.”
Newton’s eyes flutter open and meet Hermann’s own with unfocused, bleary recognition, and relief pours over Hermann in one rolling wave.
He is filled, unbidden, with the sudden desire to slap Newton hard across the face.
He dismisses this. Only just.
All too soon Newton is clutching at Hermann’s arm like it’s the only thing keeping him grounded, hands shaking where they grip tightly at Hermann’s jacket. He looks up at Hermann with wide, panicked eyes, looking like he’s desperate to speak but can’t form the words. Hermann’s attempts to calm him go ignored, Newton’s hands only clenching tighter around his arm. Finally he stutters out one frantic, broken word, “P-P-Pent-Pentecost.”
Hermann stares down at him disbelievingly, “Newton, you need to see medical im-”
Newton is all but choking now, trying desperately to speak, “Ah- Hermann.”
Hermann meets his wide, pleading gaze and realizes all at once that Newton is terrified, terrified and begging Hermann to help him, and Hermann cannot say no to him.
“Alright, okay,” he whispers, if only to placate him for the moment, still not breaking eye contact. “I’ll get the Marshal.”
Newton sighs, full body, and slumps further down to the floor, curling in on his own shaking form. Hermann gently retrieves Newton’s glasses where they’ve fallen into his lap and looks wildly around the room, eyes settling on Newton’s chair a few feet away. He stands, leaning heavy on his cane and ignoring the pain in his leg, and rolls the chair next to where Newton lies prone on the floor.
“Newton, we need to get you up-”
“Pentecost needs-”
“Yes, yes, I will get him,” Hermann tells him, relieved to hear the word coming easier to him now. “Just as soon as we get you off the bloody floor.”
Newton groans, but manages to push himself upright into a seated position, gazing warily at the chair. Hermann crouches beside him, bad leg stretched out as much as it can, and moves one of Newton’s arms around his shoulders. “C’mon,” with a grunt, one arm putting as much weight as he can on his cane, they stagger up to their feet. Hermann grits his teeth against the blaring white pain that screams angrily through his leg and deposits Newton rather bodily into the chair. Newton lets out a quiet whimper but otherwise stays quiet, hands still shaking uncontrollably in his lap.
Hermann watches him for a moment despairingly before looking down to where Newton’s glasses are still clutched tightly in his own hand. More in an effort to keep from breaking them than anything else, he folds them carefully into Newton’s shirt-front pocket.
He takes a cup from Newton’s desk, hoping that he hadn’t been using it for anything kaiju-related, and fills it with water at the tap. He takes in one long, shaking breath as the water fills the cup. When he returns to Newton, the man is staring unseeingly across the room, muttering incoherently under his breath. He blinks slowly to attention when Hermann ducks into his eye-line, looking up at him helplessly. Hermann takes his hands, calloused from guitar strings and dry from washing after countless dissections, and wraps them gently around the cup.
Newton won’t stop looking at him.
“Do not,” Hermann says softly, barely a foot a space between them, “go anywhere.”
“Dude,” Newt manages a weak smile. “Where am I gonna go?”
v.
“Show them that card, look for that symbol. And a word to the wise, do not trust him.”
The Marshal’s last warning echoes deafening through Hermann’s mind long after the man leaves to hurry back to LOCCENT. He remains seated at the holoprojector even as Newton stumbles around the lab preparing to leave. His hands have not yet lost their tremor. The clatter of Newton’s UV light hitting the floor as he fails to stow it in his pocket finally forces Hermann to his feet. Newton straightens, turning to him as he approaches.
“Hermann, have you seen my recorder?”
Hermann picks it up from where it sits in plain view at the corner of his desk and holds it aloft. Newton murmurs his thanks, not looking Hermann in the eye as he takes it carefully from his grip.
“Dr. Geiszler,” Hermann begins as Newton turns back to rifle at his desk, “please do not do this.”
Newton groans, sparing Hermann no mind as he focuses his attention to the items on his desk. As far as Hermann can tell, he succeeds in nothing more than picking things up and moving them a couple inches to one side. Newton’s mumbled words seem more an afterthought than anything, “God, Hermann, enough with the ‘Dr.’ bullshit.”
“I am trying to be serious,” Hermann’s voice raises in spite of himself, settling into the familiar routine of a well-worn argument.
“And I appreciate the mothering, I really, really do-”
“I am begging that for once in your life you listen to sense-”
“Enough, Hermann!” Newton wheels around to face him, throwing his arms out beside him, “Look around you! This is it. You have spent half of your life on the predictive model, you wrote the fucking timeline. The end is spelled out in chalk across your blackboards.”
Hermann stands his ground, jaw clenching as Newton takes a step toward him.
“It worked, Hermann. It works,” he says it likes it’s something to be proud of, breathless and half-grinning around the words. Hermann cannot bear it. “I have to do this.”
The words wrestle their way from his mouth like he’s unwilling to let them go, quiet and stiff, “I found you seizing on the floor.”
Newton’s shoulders fall, expression bemused as he looks back at Hermann. “I got up.”
“I dragged you from the ground,” Hermann bites out through gritted teeth, fist tightening around the handle of his cane.
Newton winces, “Sorry.”
Hermann wants to hit him, “I don’t want your apology.”
Newton only shakes his head. Groaning, he pushes his glasses up into his hair to rub tiredly at his eyes. Hermann takes two steps forward until they are face to face. He pulls his own glasses from his eyes, letting them fall dangling on the chain around his neck. Hand still raised, he pauses for only a moment before reaching forward and cupping Newton’s cheek. Newton stills, staring back at Hermann with wide eyes.
Any number of different scenarios, Hermann can see them all rushing through Newton’s mind, fast as lightening as the man’s breath stutters from his chest. Maybe if their roles were reversed, he thinks. Maybe if Newton was standing where Hermann is, frustration and fear and something he’s not let himself put a name to yet coursing through him, screaming at him to do something. Maybe if it were Newt, Newt who is impulsive and heedless and never, ever thinks first, always moves, moves, moves. But Hermann is none of those things. So he holds a hand to Newton’s face and, after a moment, a thumb under his eye and pulls down to gently examine the red that’s flooded there.
Newton’s breath shudders out of him softly, all at once, “You called me Newt.”
Hermann peers back at him, brows knitted together, confused.
“When you found me,” the man clarifies. “When I was… you called me Newt.”
Hermann clears his throat and takes a step backward, hand dropping back to his side. “Did I? You’ll have to forgive the informality.”
Newton just looks at him, Hermann trying his best not to squirm under his gaze. Newton finally turns away, shaking his head as he picks up his jacket and pulls it over his shoulders. “Shut up, Hermann.”
All of a sudden, Hermann feels much like he did when he and the Marshal returned to find Newton still shaking in his chair. Had it really only been minutes ago? He thinks it must have been hours.
As Newton turns away from his desk, finally ready to leave, he finds Hermann standing with his hand thrust out at him, offering a white handkerchief. Newton raises an eyebrow at it, “Is this your weird way of calling truce?”
“Your nose,” Hermann answers impatiently, waving it at him.
Newton takes the handkerchief, uses the corner to wipe at the smudge of blood drying just above his lip.
“Thanks, dude,” he says, stuffing it into his back pocket, “I’ll, uh, wash it, or whatever.”
Hermann turns, back to his chalkboard, back to his numbers, away from Newt.
“Keep it.”
vi.
“Go to Dr. Geiszler, now!”
Hermann has never been happier to follow an order. This feeling lessens somewhat as the helicopter begins its descent onto a reeking alleyway in the heart of the bone slums. He can just make out Newton running excitedly around an underdeveloped corpse, ever the little boy enraptured with a new toy. Just a ways off from the kaiju corpse standing innocently amongst the rubble is Newton’s derelict Pons, lights blinking menacingly (though Hermann may be projecting that last).
He disembarks carefully from the helicopter and onto the street, one last certainty screaming through his head; He’ll do it again. He’ll do it again without a second thought.
Newton stands waiting, arms outstretched and smile wide as though Hermann is somehow meant to be impressed with his swan song. He can’t help himself.
Hermann calls out to him, voice sharp, “Have you never heard the story of Icarus?”
Newton’s smile doesn’t waver.
“You hate analogy, Herms.”
Hermann scowls, “Don’t call me that.”
He turns away as the satellite phone crackles to life in his hand.
vii.
“It’s not going to work.”
Hermann is back in the helicopter, this time with the added company of a bleeding nose, a rather foul taste in his mouth, and, a little worse for wear but – unexpectedly, incredibly – altogether okay, Newt.
Newt’s fingers tap out an arrhythmic beat against his knee and Hermann reaches over to cover Newt’s hand with his own, whether to stop Newt’s fidgeting or to stave off the foreign impulse of his own, he is unsure. Newt startles, his thumb coming to rest slowly on Hermann’s fingers, and it’s the warm feeling that blossoms in Hermann’s chest, the calm that settles the discordant chorus of voices in his head, that has him retracting his hand a moment later. He grips tightly at his cane to keep his hands from fidgeting, and Newt doesn’t resume his own either.
Hermann feels his heart beating heavy in his chest and wonders if he can really hear the echo from Newt beside him or if that’s just his imagination.
The Shatterdome seems to appear all at once, the reality of this, their last stand, looming still closer. Newt huffs out a short, nervous breath of a laugh and, at Hermann’s pointed glare, pitches his voice deep and says, “Once more unto the-”
“Shut up.”
Newt, for his part, just grins, giving Hermann’s knee a short squeeze before lurching forward and calling to the pilot to open the door, “tout suite, thanks.”
Moments later, the ground fast approaching, Hermann stands next to Newt in the open doorway, stealing himself, as he has not had cause in many, many years, to run.
viii.
“Stop the clock!”
The relief that courses through Hermann’s body leaves him feeling dizzy and off-balance. He is grounded, as ever, by the firm grip on his cane and, new but familiar all the same, the warm pressure of Newt at his side.
--
Hours later, the party rages on. Alcohol is liberated from all manner of private stores, and drink and tears flow freely as the Shatterdome celebrates and mourns in equal measure. Hermann excuses himself from the fold, exchanging a tired smile with Tendo as the latter clasps his shoulder before moving away toward a crowd of J-Techs.
The air outside is crisp and cool. Hermann spares a thought for the vest and jacket he’d left… somewhere inside, before resolving to enjoy the uncommonly cool night. Grasping the wall behind him, Hermann lowers himself to the ground as carefully as he can, knowing he’ll regret it later. He can’t bring himself to care at the moment though, closing his eyes and breathing in the salty air. He checks his pockets and pulls out a crushed packet of cigarettes, the box worn from carrying it around daily. Hermann had long since given up the habit, but hadn’t been able to get used to the feel of his empty pocket. If there was ever a time for it though…
He looks up at the sky, looking for stars and finding none. Heavy clouds blanket the dark sky, hiding the few pinpricks of light he might have been able to pick out despite the glare of the city, ever bright below. All the better, in any case. He can’t remember the last time he’d seen the sky as it appeared from the roof of his childhood home. It feels like another lifetime, though he reassures himself that the memory is entirely his own.
Predictably, inevitably, Newt finds him later.
“I thought I’d lost you,” Hermann comments, not looking at him as Newt settles down next to him.
“Nah, dude, we’re connected now. I felt your absence.”
Hermann turns and levels a look at him, one of his favorites. Newt is grinning.
“Just kidding. I asked Tendo.”
“Traitor,” Hermann mutters, but he’s smiling so the effect leaves something to be desired.
Newt looks him up and down, gaze lingering on his bare arms where he’s rolled up his shirtsleeves for what may be the first time ever, and then again at the pack of cigarettes in his lap. “You out?” he asks, nodding his head at Hermann’s lap.
“Can you believe,” Hermann says, picking up the box and flipping it open to show the three cigarettes still intact inside. “I’ve carried this around for years now and never once considered carrying a lighter.”
Newt grins again, chuckling, and procures a lighter from his own pocket. Hermann has seen the thing a fair amount over the years, knows that there’s no real use. Newt likes the repetitive click on-and-off, on-and-off on days when his mind won’t quiet. Newt lights him up silently and watches while Hermann takes a long drag and breathes out, avoiding his gaze, opting to look out at the dark sea ahead of them instead.
His feelings for Newt are a muddled, messy thing, tangled up with something that resembles nostalgia and familiarity, and something else, too. They weren’t something he liked to examine regularly; like an old hurt, a thing he could live with if he didn’t think about it too much. He didn’t know if Newt would have parsed it out of the drift. He could have, though.
Hermann raises the cigarette to his lips, but Newt plucks it from his fingers, answering Hermann’s scowl with a smile, and takes a drag. He lasts all of two seconds before coughing into his elbow, smoke rising in plumes above them, offering the cigarette back to Hermann.
“That is rank, Hermann, and you quit, like three years ago.”
He’d picked it up in high school, would climb through his bedroom window onto the roof at the side of his house, lighting up and blowing smoke at the stars. A meaningless indulgence, it was his own private act of rebellion in his father’s oppressive house. It had been four years, actually, though Hermann doesn’t bother correcting him. You get to a point, he thought, when one’s life is so clouded by stress that you might as well just get on with it. And anyway, time was too precious to waste on fifteen minute smoke breaks. He kept a pack though, thought that whether the world crumbled or not, he’d want a smoke at the end of it. He wonders if it’s the drift that left Newt reaching for one, or something else entirely.
“It’s a special occasion.”
Hermann considers Newt quietly, mind feely foggy from the drink or the smoke or both. Newt eyes him warily, quips “I know I’m pretty, Herm, but it’s rude to stare.”
Hermann doesn’t take the bait, instead takes a breath and begins, fumbling a bit for his words, “it’s just that, after the events of today, now that so much feels apt to be left unsaid, I want to make a point to say it to you aloud-” Hermann shakes himself, squeezing his eyes shut once before looking up and directly into Newt’s eyes. “Though it has not always been a pleasure, it has been the privilege of my life to serve alongside you all these years.”
Newt stares, overcome, an echo of all those hours ago in a dirty alley. It’s a few moments before he composes himself, donning his usual well-worn confidence. Smirking slightly, he whispers, “We were good, weren’t we.”
“Rockstars,” Hermann says sardonically.
They sit in companionable silence, listening to the waves and shivering in the breeze rolling off the ocean. Newt begins humming along to a song they can still hear from the party inside.
“It’s not like you to miss out on the fun,” Hermann comments, nodding to the doorway spilling light a few metres away. Newt looks at him like he’s missed something.
“No one else I’d rather be with at the end of the world, man. Drift compatible! You’re my drift compatriot!”
“That’s not what that word means.”
“Shut up, Hermann, I’m still reveling.” Newt smiles, not quite looking Hermann in the eye. He’s got a faraway look on his face like he’s remembering something he’d long since forgotten.
“I kept your letters too, you know,” Newt says, eyes focusing back on Hermann.
Hermann’s heart twists in his chest. He looks warily at Newt, but feels calm like he hasn’t in a long time. A feeling like an inevitability come to fruition.
But then Newt’s face alights with a smirk that Hermann doesn’t like the look of at all.
“You thought my writing was charming,” Newt says like he’s prompting him.
Hermann sputters, indignant, “I had a crush.” Newt smiles widely, but Hermann ignores him. “My judgment was decidedly biased. I did not see it for what it was – unfocused-”
“I can’t help that I’ve got depths, man.”
“Overfamiliar-”
“Friendly!”
“And long-winded!”
“Hermann,” Newt says with far more fondness than he has ever directed at Hermann. “I’ve got letters from you that are twenty pages long, dude. Front and back.”
Hermann blows smoke at him.
“Oh- bah! You’re in a good mood,” Newt says accusingly, waving the smoke from his face.
“We helped save the world this morning, Newton, why shouldn’t I be?”
Hermann smiles to himself, tapping ash onto the ground beside him. When Newt stays quiet, he looks up at him, watches him take a breath as if to answer, then shut his mouth in a tight, watery smile.
“Newton, what-”
“Oh, God, don’t, Hermann. Don’t use your gentle voice now. Just let me have my meltdown in peace,” Newt answers, bringing his knees to his chest, head falling to rest on his arms.
“You followed me out here,” Hermann says, bewildered.
“I didn’t say I wanted to have my meltdown alone,” Newt says, rolling his head to look up at him. “And anyway, it’s not my fault your anti-social, anti-party, anti-anything-fun leeched off onto me post-drift.”
“That’s not how the drift works.”
“Oh, how would you know,” Newt grumbles petulantly. “It was your first one.”
Hermann rolls his eyes and lets his head fall back against the wall, still watching him. A few moments of quiet and Newt sighs, lifting his head.
Newt looks out into the ocean, and Hermann looks at Newt.
“What do you think it’ll feel like, waking up tomorrow?” Newt asks, still watching the horizon, fingers tapping out an erratic rhythm where they’re wrapped around his crossed arms.
“I rather think most of our peers will be waking up feeling hung over, from the sound of it.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I know.”
Newt opens his mouth, struggling with what he wants to say.
“I don’t know how to live in a world that isn’t ending.”
Hermann takes stock of the man beside him, and doesn’t understand how he can stand to live with his heart hanging so grotesquely from his sleeve. He is open and incautious with his feelings in a way that Hermann has never known how to be, and Hermann wants nothing more than to be able to calm him now. Because Hermann has been in love with him for half his life, but he has never, ever known what to do with that. They spent too long fighting each other for the sake of the world, and now that the world is Saved., full stop, they are finally free to point that focus singularly, piercingly on each other. He fears they will be crushed beneath the weight of it.
Hermann gathers his courage and says what he thinks he’s meant to all along, “You don’t have to face it alone, Newt.”
Newt stares at him, his face open as ever, searching Hermann’s eyes as if expecting to find he’d heard wrong. Hermann feels a rush of fondness, like before. When earlier Newt had made the mistaken distinction between “for me” and “with me,” as if it mattered, as if it wasn’t all Hermann wanted to do to shake his head and shout, “Yes! Always, always yes!”
Newt scrambles to his feet, hands Hermann’s cane to him and pulls him up too. He crowds Hermann back against the wall and leans close, stopping inches away from his mouth, hands fluttering around Hermann’s waist.
“Is this-” he breathes. Hermann feels it against his lips. “Is this okay?”
Hermann brings his hand up to Newt’s face in answer. He closes the gap between them, lips brushing before pressing together more insistently as Newt’s hands find their place wrapped around Hermann’s back. And if there’s not fireworks, Hermann’s heart at least feels like it’s exploding.
They break away, Hermann still holding Newt’s face, smiling as he strokes his thumb over his jaw.
“You,” Newt begins, whispering, blinking up slowly at him under heavy lidded eyes. “Taste gross.”
Hermann flicks ash at him from the still-burning cigarette, but drops it anyway, letting Newt stub it out under his boot. And in any case, Newt pulls him forward again all the same. Hermann’s hand slides back into his hair as Newt crowds him, one hand braced against the wall behind Hermann’s back, the other hooked into his belt loop, pulling him closer, closer.
Hermann pulls back, just shy of letting Newt capture his lips again. He smiles. It’s a brave new world, he thinks, and he is in no mind to continue denying himself those things he’s always wanted.
“Come to bed,” he tells him, asks him. Newt looks up at him, flushed prettily under his freckles.
“Yeah,” he whispers. “Yes, okay.”