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1.
Tendo has known Hermann since his days coding the Mark 1s, and he's gotten to know Newt-- he hasn't always been stationed with the two, but they've all run into each other and exchanged tech-and-science information often enough that he has no qualms about calling them friends.
And one thing he knows for sure is that those two guys are to-ge-THER. And not just together, but TOGETHER, in some kind of weird, impenetrable way that he has a hard time wrapping his head around.
He and Alison share an affinity for open, healthy polyamory, to the point where he sometimes forgets that other couples don't-- She's teased him before, in fact, about his overtures to the happily coupled, because his first thought is never 'two people who are together might not be interested in sleeping with me and/or us', ever.
Well, with Newt and Hermann she has plenty to tease him about. He'd approached Hermann first, back during the Mark 1 days, and gotten a very nervous version of the 'flattered but I really can't' speech. And they'd hung out anyway, because Tendo never took being turned down hard, and Hermann learned not to take his flirting too seriously-- and Hermann really needed somebody to bounce ideas off of. And then the Mark 1 coding was finished, and they'd gotten drunk, and he'd walked Hermann home and seen the file box in the back of the guy's closet labeled 'N. Geiszler- Email printouts- 3', because Hermann's closet had been very well-organized until he let Tendo hang up his coat for him while totally blitzed...
Tendo didn't think much about it, until he met Newt. He remembers Newt kissing him after a victory bash, and then pulling back horrified and apologizing, saying he couldn't, he was so sorry. He remembers talking about the Mark 1 Jaegers, and mentioning Hermann, and the way something sublime lit Newt's face for a moment before he shut it down and pretended not to be familiar.
He remembers the first time he was stationed at a Shatterdome with the both of them and they argued like they hated each other, sure, but the way they moved around each other was something else. Not quite like the way the pilots did, more like a married couple who'd shared the same tiny kitchen for a number of years-- hyper aware of each other, and easily able to adjust, whether it be Newt matching Hermann's pace as they argued down a hallway, or Hermann leaning this way and that to evade Newt's messy work as they argued in the lab.
So when he apologizes to Hermann, because he knows, he knows without an iota of doubt that the two of them are deeply in love in a way that's alien to his own jealousy-free spread-it-around brand of it, he's really, really surprised when Hermann just stares at him.
Not like it's none of his business or supposed to be a secret, but like he doesn't even know what Tendo is talking about.
And then he snaps that they're fighting a war, and he hasn't exactly had time to date, nor been fighting off any suitors, and Tendo has to sit and reevaluate a lot of things.
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2.
Mako is familiar with Dr.s Geiszler and Gottlieb. She's grown up moving from Shatterdome to Shatterdome, after all, and she's met them both, though she knows them more by reputation than anything until she starts working on the Jaegers herself.
She considers it an enormous opportunity to be stationed at the base with Dr. Gottlieb, the man who coded the Mark 1 Jaegers, now that she is working on restoring the Mark 3s.
He is arguing with Dr. Geiszler in the lab when she ducks in to ask after a moment of his time-- as she'd been warned would be the case, everyone knew about the arguments.
They hadn't told her that the two men would be sitting across from each other at a small desk sharing a tray from the mess, however, and that while one made his case, the other would take a few bites from a communal plate, only to switch seamlessly to countering once he'd swallowed, giving his colleague the chance to eat. Nor that by the time they finished this hastily-stolen lunchbreak and its attendant fight, they would both be rushing back to their work reinvigorated.
It beat the hell out of talking to a rubber duck, as her fellow J-Techs would probably say.
It feels wrong to interrupt what is clearly a moment of inspiration, and so she ducks back out of the lab and returns to talk over the current crop of issues with Mr. Choi instead, but privately, she thinks that the two doctors are a cute couple, in their own strange way. Maybe they would exasperate anyone else, but they are so clearly well-suited to each other...
And if it is their secret, then it is safe with her.
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3.
Herc remembers Sydney when he sees the two of them.
Or, he remembers Dickie, who worked in the Sydney Shatterdome keeping the rangers up on their training, and the way he fought with the brass.
Well, not the brass in general. Just one bloke, who did one of those dull as hell pencil-pushing jobs under the Marshall there, but always wound up watching training exercises.
Herc figured they hated each other for years, until Dickie'd snapped and hollered 'how about you get into the ring, smart-arse?', and this skinny pencil-pusher-- guy wasn't even Australian, wasn't even anything Herc could ever put his finger on, honestly-- he steps in, and they fight.
And it was something to watch. Not because the guy won-- and Dickie could take Herc in a fair fight, if it was a bad day-- but because it took so bloody long that it was obvious to anyone who had a drift partner that the two were compatible.
And it was obvious they weren't related, and Dickie never got put in a Jaeger on account of his incompatibility with anyone, so maybe Herc Hansen was no genius, but it didn't take a genius to figure out they were a thing, when he ruled out everything else.
Geiszler and Gottlieb are like that. At least, they strike him as being like that, very much. He doesn't know who wins in their fights, and he thinks you might have to be a genius to know that, but he knows those fights go on long enough and happen often enough that they're on the same level. And for all the fighting they do, when they have the option of being in the same room or not, they wind up together when they don't need to a lot of the time.
Besides, he's sneaked peeks at some of the complaints Gottlieb files, when the budget's slashed to the point where the two are sharing a lab, and it sounds a lot like a bloke complaining about his other half to him. Geiszler uses up all the hot water and forgets to put on a fresh pot of coffee when he drinks the last cup, apparently, and that's the most domestic official complaint he's ever caught sight of.
He's just glad his job's not responding to those reports, because Gottlieb probably doesn't want actual marriage advice from him. Even if he thinks the stubborn ass could use it. Could just shower together and save a load of heartbreak, that would've been Ange's suggestion.
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4.
Karla has mixed feelings when Geiszler's name starts popping up again in her brother's emails.
She remembers the honeymoon phase, and how red in the face Hermann would go if she teased him about his little crush. And she was a good sister about it, she didn't go outing him to their family or anyone, but really, it was obvious. And the long-distance love affair was good for him, she'd never seen him look as well as he did when every other word out of his mouth was about this mysterious Dr. Geiszler.
Then he'd stopped mentioning the other man at all, somewhere around coming out of the Jaeger Academy. While he was still there? The details are fuzzy, she just remembers it was as if Newton Geiszler dropped off the face of the earth, and there was no digging the story out of her brother.
Now he mentions the man again, though he can't give any details about their work, and while he always sounds deprecating-- hurt, still?-- he certainly devotes a lot of his writing to Geiszler.
She just hopes he'll get to be happy.
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5.
Jacob Geiszler kind of always knew, and Newt never formally came out as being... bisexual, he thinks, or something along those lines. He's seen all of Newt's early crushes, and the only thing that they all had in common was brains. Boys, girls, long-dead scientists, cartoon characters with thick glasses... Newt just wanted someone to understand him, he thinks, and it's not a bad thing to want.
He reads up on who Dr. Gottlieb is, after about the twentieth time Newt mentions him-- Dr. Gottlieb the younger, apparently, a boy not much older than Newt.
He approves. If this wunderkind can keep up with his wunderkind, he approves.
Newt's call home about heading to the Jaeger Academy was nothing compared to his call home about meeting up with Hermann Gottlieb in person.
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1.
Raleigh is in medical, getting checked over, while the party rages on. He's not worried-- it's going to last more than long enough for him and Mako to get a taste of the celebration.
He hears more of the story behind what the scientists managed to do while he's there, stuff he hadn't really been able to fully take in, back when he was on the job and shutting the breach down, and hears that they'd been released from their own check into medical a while ago-- a nurse says she thought they'd headed for the lab.
He'd kind of gotten off on the wrong foot with Geiszler-- which he wasn't going to take responsibility for, but that didn't mean he couldn't start kind of new. At least he could shake the guys' hands, thank them for their part in it. He'd have been one of the first on the line to be Kaiju chow if they'd failed.
He splits off from Mako-- no words really necessary, there's a tug in the back of his head that lets him know he'll find her as soon as he's done, and lets him know she'll be okay having a couple of minutes' quiet-- and heads for the lab, where he's surprised to hear a breathless, raised voice through the door, words he can't make out that sound kind of angry.
That feels wrong. Not even those two could drift together and be fighting this soon, could they?
He pushes the door open and realizes 'angry' wasn't it at all, and he couldn't make the words out because they're in German, and they sound so breathless because of whatever Dr. Geiszler's hand is doing, or maybe what his mouth is doing.
It's a little hard to tell. Gottlieb has his back pressed to one of his chalkboards, and his shirt is actually unbuttoned-- at least, Raleigh thinks it has to be, for Geiszler's mouth to be doing any good at the side of his neck.
Geiszler's shirt is untucked, and rucked up so high that Raleigh can see some of the tattoos on his back-- plus a space he has to work another in-- and he's got one hand wrapped around one of Gottlieb's wrists, the other moving between them in a pretty suggestive manner now, while Gottlieb's head tips back, and neither of them have noticed him, they don't even notice when Geiszler lifts his head.
"Why haven't we been doing this for ten years?" He asks, doing something with that hand that pulls a really filthy sounding moan out of his...
Colleague is maybe not the most appropriate word, under the circumstances. Raleigh isn't sure what is.
Gottlieb's answer is in German, and Geiszler laughs before kissing him deeply, and they don't seem to notice Raleigh leaving, either.
He really wishes they'd been doing that for ten years-- maybe if they had, Mako would have warned him to knock first.