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"Hermann?” Newt called out by way of greeting as he kicked the door shut behind him. “We got another box."
"Which box is that?" Hermann asked, not looking up from his notebook. As usual, he’d brought work the scant three floors home with him.
"Uh, the one that was next to the door?” he replied. Newt had gotten used to finding random stacks of boxes in the hallway next to their shared quarters, sometimes littered with dents where unsuspecting neighbors had tripped over them. Occasionally it was misdirected equipment or online orders. More often lately, it was stuff from Hermann’s storage unit at the Shatterdome that he had ordered returned shortly after Newt was cleared to move in.
The first eight boxes had arrived in the first week he made the transition from the medbay -- each with a list of the contents carefully written in familiar red ink on the side (clothing, books, data disks, dissection tools…) There was just the one this time: no shipping label, no hastily replaced packaging tape. The shape of the box said ‘storage.’ The musty smell betraying the age and deterioration of the cardboard and adhesive said ‘storage.’ But Hermann’s usual meticulous inventory was missing.
“I think it’s one of the ones from the old lab -- but it lacks your usual touch. Do you know what’s in it?”
"Newton, there were at least a dozen of those boxes. I’m afraid you’re going to have to be more specific."
"You packed them, dude."
"And that was ten years ago — my immediate recall is slightly delayed,” he said, clearing his throat. “Please describe it."
“Right,” he sighed, examining the load in his arms. “Small. Box-shaped. ‘HKGD-9’ written on the side in black sharpie, all caps. Not your handwriting. Unless the ‘GD’ stands for Götterdämmerung.”
Hermann paused thoughtfully. “Götterdämmerungen."
“Nice.”
“Thank you. That doesn’t sound like my packing protocol.”
“‘Told you.”
“It may be things that were in your desk -- I believe I asked some of the LOCCENT crew to empty the drawers and store the non-essential contents that didn’t merit inclusion in the archives."
“Oh, good! I hope my fidget pens are in here,” Newt nodded, slipping open the first two overlapping flaps.
“You just bought a new box of those!”
“Yeah, but I had pre-K Day ones in that desk! The ones they made before metal rationing shifted the whole design. Do you know how much I’ve missed spinners that actually spin ?”
“Oh yes, the ones that made it sound like there was a constant gas leak in in the lab,” Hermann replied, dryly. “I remember those. I can’t say I missed them.”
“Too bad, man,” Newt grinned, dramatically flipping the two remaining flaps open. “Get ready for the infinitely amusing power of brass and steel ball bearings!”
“I’ll wait with bated breath.”
The pens were indeed there — on top of the pile, stuffed inside an empty Pocky box.
Newt smiled at it for a long moment before moving on to the rest of the contents, all of which were similarly sorted in a haphazard form of hurried organization that betrayed his and Hermann’s combined psyches: notes on paper scraps and napkins carefully filed in manila folders, sheet music and technical manuals stuffed in colored portfolios, paper straws, knitting needles one of their lab assistants had left behind, a manga line-art postcard of Cherno Alpha vs. Raythe (Sasha had scribbled a naughty message on the back that both he and Hermann had refused to translate for Mako… who then got Sasha to translate it herself).
He lined up each item on the drafting table he had commandeered upon his arrival, humming idly as he mapped out where each newly revealed treasure would go.
They had managed to keep the transition from being completely clinical -- Newt was not infirm and Hermann was not his handler. But pretty much everyone had agreed that living alone was out of the question and having a familiar face nearby, sharing the same space, was preferable to anything else that might be recommended. So, roomies. It nearly mirrored their previous reluctant co-habitation in the same lab and Newt was almost grateful when Hermann picked small fights about posters and mess in their new shared space (though his Geiszlerian drift bleed was all over the current K-science lab). Just familiar enough, and certainly better than what they had before.
Close to the bottom of the box, his fingers stumbled upon something small and square, lacking the familiar nostalgia of the rest of the contents. He took in the size and shape of it, popped the lid off… felt gravity reverse itself as a dull roar filled his ears...
“Did you find your ridiculous pens?”
Newt coughed to cover his gasp as he bolted away from the table, shoving his hands and the offending item into his pockets. “Yeah...yeah. Listen. Uh, I’m going to take a walk.”
“What, now?”
“Yeah. Right now," he blurted, feigned nonchalance just out of reach as his breathing grew shallow.
“Newton,” Hermann stared after him, face etched with concern. “Is something wrong?”
“It’s nothing… just, uh. Remembered something,” he said, grabbing a coat from the rack by the door without looking. “I’ll be back a bit later. Don’t wait up.”
He was out the door and down the hall before he felt his hammering pulse begin to slow.
--
Hermann was still awake when he returned hours later, shoes off, seated on the chair that faced the door, making Newt feel like more of a disaster than usual.
“You didn’t have to wait up for me,” he said, closing the door carefully behind him.
“You took my coat,” Hermann said, telegraphing his concern, making Newt finger the zipper pull, still fastened nearly up to his chin. The old N-3B parka had become something like a security blanket in the last few months. Newt had continued to wear it for days after his medical release, long after new clothes that actually fit him had arrived.
The coat itself -- recognizable to just about everyone in the Shatterdome -- had actually managed to bring him more attention than he wanted during his walk. First, he was forced to break his quiet, half-panicked reflection to converse with one of the med-tech staff, who had questions about growing certain hothouse plants in the arboretum. After Rahul, there had been Ilya, one of the younger rangers. He had recently spoken with Jinhai and Namani about participating in Dr. Lightcap’s survey on the neurological effects of the more recent drift model and wanted Newt’s opinion. Finally, Caitlin herself just “happened” to turn up near the end of his journey up on the observation deck (though given the way her fingers shook as she produced her pack of cigarettes, it might have been her first chance to get away all day).
“It’s chilly.” Hermann shifted on the cushion, gripping his cane as if to stand. Newt quickly motioned him to stop before perching on the arm of the chair, still wrapped in the coat. “Did you know that Caitlin smoked?”
“I knew she did years ago. Given the intensity of her recent work load it wouldn’t surprise me if she started up again,” he replied.
“Yeah,” Newt nodded slowly, thinking of Cait’s long hours in neurology, pouring over his scans, asking questions about his drift bleed symptoms -- both recently and in the years bridging Pitfall and Sydney. “That makes sense.”
“You went as far as the observation deck, then. Alone. Why?”
Newt hedged, thinking of those long minutes up on the deck, facing the the horizon instead of Caitlin while she finished her cigarette and he analyzed the pang in his chest as he tried to make out the stars through a pollution-obscured sky. How much was him, how much was the teenage boy who had stargazed from his second-floor bedroom in Bavaria and the roof of the science building in Berlin; how much was the stars and how much was everything else.
“I don’t miss windows,” he said, after a long moment. “Is that weird? I sat in the window of that stupid high rise in Shanghai every night. Sometimes I didn’t even sleep -- I just sat there, waiting for the glass to give out and for the problem to solve itself.”
“Newton...” Hermann‘s hand gripped his elbow loosely, voice a gentle whisper.
“Yeah, morbid, I know. I’m sorry. But, it’s weird. Because now, I’m here and we’re pretty fortified in this place, which I think I kind of hated years ago… but I don’t now? There’s no windows in here or Cait’s office or the medbay but I don’t miss looking outside at all and, before tonight, I barely noticed for more than eight weeks.”
“Is there something outside that you miss? Or thought you might miss?”
“I don’t know,” Newt shook his head, rubbed his eyes. “Mostly I'm just scared of what I don’t know and still can’t remember... Some of this is just me spiraling.”
“You can keep going if you like. I’m listening.”
“I know,” he said, leaning into his partner’s hand. Hermann had been very good at listening since Newt’s rescue, even beyond the anticipation the ghost drift had brought to most of their actions. His friend lingered, always within reach.
“What’s brought this on?”
“You definitely don’t remember packing that box?”
“That’s what this is about?” Hermann looked up at him, aghast.
“You don’t have to sound so offended. This isn’t like the time I hid your chalk.”
“No it isn’t -- I at least understood that.”
“You said you would listen.”
“I did. I am.”
“And?”
“Newton, we have talked about this. Even without the precursors‘ intervention, some memories are just lost with time and age! I don’t remember what clothes I packed when I transferred to Hong Kong either!”
“Uh, I do. You packed two different tweed blazers and six identical sweater vests.” Newt had found it charming at the time, against his better judgement; wounded pride telling him to look away and just ignore whatever was happening on the other side of his unfortunately combined lab space. To not notice when his dear friend and correspondent, now lab partner wore the same dress shirt three days in a row, swapping out different vests and cardigans. (Unless, one or both of them started to smell, then a comment was completely warranted).
Hermann’s eyes widened.
“How--?”
“I remember most things about you, Hermann. It’s a habit. A very persistent one.”
"Well, good then. Regardless. Why do you keep asking me?"
"... amusement?"
“So amused you had to go off on your own for five hours?”
“I wasn’t on my own for the full five hours -- between Rahul’s herb garden, Ilya’s brain and Cait’s cigarettes, I barely had five minutes on my own. It was the worst relay race of small talk I’ve ever been in in my life. Remember the convention in Stockholm? After you yelled at me? Picture that but worse ---”
"Newton.”
“Fine. Fine! Just…” he sighed, defeated.
He bit back the various default replies: ‘don’t be mad.’ ‘I don’t remember.’ ‘I wasn’t there -- it was the collective of alien bio-engineer assholes that hijacked my body.’ Any one of them would have fit here and yet didn’t quite convey the appropriate solemnity. Instead, he reached into his pocket.
The (much smaller) box was black recycled cardboard with a lid, rather than the velvet, hinged boxes their parents might have preferred. He held it out towards Hermann, who eyed it cautiously before reaching to take it, swallowing thickly as he removed the lid.
The Möbius ring had a wide band. The glossy luster of the white gold reminded Newt of mercury glass, the ancient thermometer he’d broken in his mother’s bathroom in Paris (he had a stomach bug, Monica had the role of Leonora in Il Trovatore and no time to hire even a temporary au pair); an echo of the first time Hermann watched as lead-free silver turned to water with the touch of the soldering tip.
Newt’s chest tightened as he pondered the memory it didn’t bring to mind.
“Newton?” Hermann asked, voice ragged.
“I don’t remember buying it,” he said, feeling his throat try to close around the words. “Which, probably gives us a good idea of when I bought it. I don’t know where I got it or how I would have gotten around the metals rationing -- unless I hit up the black market. And, yeah, it would have been wildly presumptuous of me to do something like that before I told you anything of what was in my head... But it was with my things. And there’s really no one else this could be for.”
The will to cleave himself to Hermann had been strong from the start -- though he could write a six-volume treatise on the increasingly large barriers he’d thrown into his own path rather than tell him so. To bond their atoms and meld their brain waves; to never be apart from this man, even when there were just words on a page or scathing glances across the room.
Arguably, that impulse had been what actually rescued him, directing him to find his partner’s signal in the shifting labyrinth his mind had built to shelter his consciousness from invading forces. It had survived -- and so had he. He had survived and woken up to a world with fewer windows and a lot more Hermann and he had barely been awake for two minutes when he reached for him, crying with relief when Hermann reached back.
And, even then, the words had remained out of reach. Eight weeks and nine boxes later.
“My feelings haven’t changed. I’m sorry that I don’t remember. And I’m sorry that I never told you.” His throat hurt now and he could feel the hot sting of tears built up over a period of hours prick his eyes. “Hermann, I don’t want this to be another part of our history that sucks! And I don’t want you to feel obligated—“
“I bought it.”
“...excuse me?”
Hermann’s gaze wavered, posture slipping reflexively. He straightened up, cleared his throat.
“Your memory isn’t failing you here. I bought it.” He leaned on his cane as he shifted on the chair, moving closer to his partner. “I’m the one who was presumptuous. It was after they stopped the clock, when the crew was doing the clean-up. There was, there seemed to be so much ... possibility at that time."
Newt remembered the weeks after the breach collapsed, after the parties and the inquiries and mourning their dead. The colorful bursts of joy set against the backdrop of mundane paperwork and a creeping sense of dread he couldn't shake and couldn't vocalize to anyone else. The lost actions he could have taken -- alerting Hermann or just handcuffing himself to one of the many exposed pipes in the lab -- equally vivid as the ones that he did take.
"There was a gap in the rationing. I exploited it. The material cost was negligible -- gold scrap from recovered jaeger panels and machinery. Finding someone who knew how to make it to the specifications. That was... a bit more difficult," Hermann looked down at his hands as he continued. "I had it in my pocket for a week but lost my nerve. I finally thought about just leaving it for you to find, but I had waited too long and you had already gone and I was--”
Heartbroken. The word didn’t need to be spoken aloud -- it had tinged their shared nightmares for nearly a decade: a shining cornerstone of lost promise that lingered in their repeated drifts. Even after Newt had returned, it was still there on the periphery, still shining in the corner of his eye, but just as impenetrable as when he’d been lost.
“Hermann,” he slid down from the arm to sit on the chair, reaching for his partner’s arm as gravity shifted yet again, pressing them closer.
“You hadn’t seen it. So, there was no need for me to mention it.”
Or think about it. Newt blinked at the words spoken and unspoken. It had taken multiple drifts before Hermann and the others had been able to break the hive mind's connection, and his partner had buried the memory so deep, Newt had never seen more than reflection.
“I’ve seen it now.”
“Newton—”
“Hermann, did I just propose to you with the ring you bought?” his voice pitched upward as the hysteria surged in his chest. “For me? ”
That, of all things, seemed to give Hermann pause as he looked up to meet Newt's stare. “Did you?”
“How the hell did we manage to get this sideways?!”
“I don’t know, Newton! It seems to be a talent of ours!”
The laugh that tore free from his throat was rough and incredulous and long. By the time it tapered off, he realized Hermann’s hands were on his face, thumbing at the tears that had begun to drip from his chin.
Mako had laughed with him in the medbay about how the arc of their relationship resembled a helix... and Newt, out of nowhere, had compared it instead, to a möbius strip ... He had torn his mind apart for an entire evening, trying to find even a hint of a connected memory, a flicker of intent in that statement, when there had been nothing more than reflection.
“God, we are both idiots,” he said, when he got his breath back.
“I’m forced to agree,” he said, without laughing. A beat. “My feelings haven’t changed either.”
“Okay," Newt nodded, swiping his eyes under his glasses one more time before holding his hand out. “Put it on me.”
Hermann’s eyes widened. “Newton--”
“The answer is yes. When the person you’re proposing to says yes, you put the ring on their finger. Come on. Unless you don’t want--”
“Yes.”
“--yes what?”
“Yes, I accept your proposal," he replied, his own eyes shining. "And, yes, I’m proposing to you.”
“You’d better put it on me then, dude! Because I’ve had a very long evening kicking myself for not remembering something I was never supposed to remember in the first place and I’m seriously about to lose it!”
“Well,” Hermann smiled, visibly relieved and amused. “We can’t have that, can we?”
The gold was cool and Hermann’s fingers were shaking as he slipped it on. Newt suppressed an answering shiver as he grabbed his partner's hand, interlacing their fingers.
“Will you kiss me?”
“You have to ask?”
“Apparently I do,” he laughed. “We may be more committed to propriety than either one of us thought--”
“I love you.”
“--definitely propriety. Please kiss me. ”
He did.