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Hermann has been in medical for 12 hours, and asleep for 8 of them.
Waking feels a bit like dragging himself up from the bottom of a pool. His first thought is anxiety: How long has he slept? What work has gone undone? How much closer to the apocalypse has the world slipped in his absence?
Followed closely by realization: It was over. They had done it. They had won.
He lets an echo of last night’s victorious smile stretch his face, feeling warm and anchored in the memory like an arm around his shoulders.
He is comfortable, and for the first time in ten very long years, he has nowhere to be. He could rest in the dim quiet of the infirmary for as long as he wants. But he is awake now, fully, and bubbling up through the cracks in his calm is the insistent feeling that he needed … something.
Perhaps a shower, or perhaps food, though these needs feel as distant as the remaining aches in his body. All he knows is that he needs to do something, be somewhere, and the more he thinks of it, the more he needs it now.
Hermann is sitting up and adjusting the loose, starchy infirmary gown that hangs from his sallow frame like a curtain when a nurse bustles in to discharge him. She’s frazzled, but jubilant as she hands him a cane — his backup, and he spares a thought for his nicely broken-in cane likely on its way to the incinerator with his kaiju-contaminated clothes — and a set of PPDC sweats and tells him to take it easy. Hermann barely speaks to her, too distracted by the important, undefined errand tugging at his chest.
His walk through the halls is surreal, more a dream than the blue-soaked flashes still echoing through him. Since the budget cuts, Hermann has only ever seen the halls this crowded during a kaiju attack. Groups large and small streams past on their way from one impromptu celebration to another, laughing and tipsy and larger than life. They stumble giddily around clumps of mourners: Some crying, some holding hands, all solemn-faced reminders of what they’ve lost.
He even passes a couple tucked into a shadowy corner engaging in some questionable amorous activity. Wildly inappropriate, true, but Hermann finds he could not begrudge them their affection.
For some reason, it’s this that finally turns his mind to Newton, to the blue-washed flashes of memory they’d shared, to that last giddy grin he’d glimpsed as they were pulled away to separate parts of the infirmary.
That smile is still fixed in his mind when he looks up and realizes he has walked to Newt’s quarters. The sense of urgency in his gut carries him up to Newt’s door, and he has knocked, twice, sharp and echoing against the metal door before he realizes what, exactly, he is doing.
He is standing outside Newton Geiszler’s private quarters, bony ankles poking out from under too-short standard-issue sweatpants, his hair a wreck and his red-ringed eye still sore, with a lifetime of stolen memories in his head. What if Newt isn’t there? What if he’s sleeping? Or, worse, what if he is waiting on the other side of the door with his own stolen memories fresh on his mind?
Above all he remembers, sudden and frighteningly clear: This is not what they do.
Hermann has just enough time to straighten his spine, shift his hand on the unfamiliar cane, and tug fitfully at the navy blue sleeve of his borrowed sweatshirt before the door rolls open with a clang and a muffled curse.
And there’s Newt, clean and sleep-rumpled, in a worn-soft black henley with a hole in the collar and his sleeves tucked down over his fingers, hair flat from sleep. His jaw is dark with stubble and bruises, and his eyes are puffy and tense, ready to yell at whoever dared bother him today of all days, but he relaxes into a sleepy smile when he catches sight of Hermann.
“Hey Herms,” he mumbles, rubbing at his red-ringed eye, and Hermann barely resists the urge to touch his own.
“Newton,” Hermann says, voice still hoarse from shouting and sleep and narrowly avoiding the end of the world.
And that’s it. He is out of words. He has no real reason to be here, and that driving sense of urgency isn’t helping him come up with an explanation for what he’s doing here, on Newt’s doorstep for the first time without a report to drop off or a complaint to launch.
Newt doesn’t seem to mind. He just shuffles back and ushers Hermann inside with a muted wave. His room is dim, as messy as every other time Hermann had seen it, but softened somehow by the warm glow of his desk lamp — the only light source other than the glowing blue eyes of one of the kaiju figurines scattered around the room.
Hermann hovers awkwardly as Newt closes the door and then pads past him back toward his rumpled bed. Hermann can’t tear his eyes away from Newt’s bare feet, struck dumb by the vulnerability and intimacy of being here and seeing him like this less than a day after sharing a Drift.
Newt settles cross-legged on the bed and picks at his Godzilla-patterned pajama pants, as Hermann stands there and stares and still has nothing to say. Then Newt looks up at him, brow furrowed, and Hermann feels exposed, all boney angles and awkward limbs without his tightly buttoned armor to hide behind. He scratches at the knob of one skinny ankle with the bottom of his cane.
“You doin’ alright, Herms?”
“All things considered. How are you?”
Newt laughs, a little scattered. “Considering we just shared brains with an alien monster, after I almost died like six times? Fantastic.”
Hermann’s tired smile makes Newt snort again. “Well, victory certainly feels thrilling.”
“It sure as hell does,” Newt agrees, grinning wide despite the dark bruising on his jaw. “Total rockstars.”
It’s Hermann’s turn to snort. “Indeed.”
They grin stupidly at each other for a long moment before Newt glances away and speaks again.
“Did you need something, dude?”
Did he? He had needed something, had needed to be here with Newt, watching him smile and soaking in the feedback from their Drift. As clear as it seems to him, Hermann doesn’t relish the thought of saying something so irrational out loud.
“Just thought I’d check in and make sure you hadn’t found yet another way to traumatize your brain today.”
“Ha ha. Let me remind you that my mad science just saved the world. And you volunteered to join me in that last one. But no, no energy left for awesome science. I went to sleep as soon as I got out of medical. I don’t think I’ve slept so long uninterrupted since before college.”
“I’m sorry if I woke you.”
“No, I’ve been up for a few minutes. Actually, I think I woke up when you did.” Newt trails off as his eyes go distant, and Hermann feels him poking at the edges of their connection — the loud, bright, Newt-shaped spot that’s been in his mind since their Drift.
“Ah,” Hermann answers lamely. The ghost drift. He and Newt knew more about it than nearly anyone else on earth, but nothing had prepared them for actually experiencing it.
“So … I guess we’re going to be sharing head space for a while.”
“It would seem so. Though, given that no one else has ever drifted with a kaiju, I suppose we don’t know exactly what will happen.”
“Cool.”
They lapse into silence again, long enough that Newt starts fidgeting in place, playing with a fold in his sheets. Hermann stands straighter and steels himself to say what he knows he should say.
“Well, I suppose I’d better-”
“Would you like to stay?” Newt interrupts, all in a rush, staring up at him with big blue eyes, one ringed in violent red.
“Yes,” he answers, just as fast, sighing out a breath of relief.
Hermann moves a stack of papers from Newt’s desk chair and drops into it, leaning his cane against the desk with another sigh. Despite the ludicrous amount of sleep, his body is still exhausted to the bone, and now that he’s allowed to stay where he for some reason needed to be, he wants nothing more than to relax and not ask any difficult questions.
If only someone had told Newt that.
Hermann has barely settled in before he feels Newt prodding at their mental connection again, a burst of experimental curiosity tickling the back of his mind.
“Newton,” Hermann says slowly, caught between a question and a protest.
Newt doesn’t even have the grace to look apologetic. “It’s just so fascinating. Like, the Drift itself was so intense and confusing — just you, me and the hivemind, you know? — and I didn’t really have time to process anything but the kill-all-humans plan. But now I have access to all these memories, but not all at once like a movie, just there if I go looking for them, like my own memories.”
Newt’s manic rant peters out as he seems to remember Hermann is there right in front of him.
“Should we, um, make some kind of agreement? You know, like a ‘try not to rifle through my memories’ kinda thing? What’s the protocol here?”
“You’d have to ask a jaeger pilot about protocol. But that seems … impractical to me.”
“I know, man, but you said it yourself: You didn’t really have a choice in this. I’d understand if you didn’t want me rooting around in your head.”
“Newton, despite the circumstances, I did choose to Drift with you, and I don’t regret it. It was surely worth it to avoid the end of the world. And, err, more than worth it to save your life as well.”
Hermann feels the flush on his cheeks and tries to shake it off, concerned about the strange look on Newt’s face. It isn’t until he sees him swallow thickly and start blinking rapidly that Hermann understands what is happening.
Good lord, Newton is about to cry.
Luckily for both of them, he manages to hold it back, but Newt’s voice is still a little wet when he says, “Uh, thanks.”
The sound of unshed tears in Newt’s voice snags on something in Hermann’s memory, and it’s effortless to follow the thread down, to hear that tone again from Newt’s own perspective as he mumbles into the phone that he was fine, that he would be flying back to Boston soon, that meeting his long-distance friend just hadn’t been what he thought it would be—
“Wanna hear something crazy?” Newt interrupts, sudden and too bright. “I thought you hated me.”
“What? Newton, I never hated you.”
“I know that now,” he drawls, with a self-deprecating smile. “But you have to admit, we’ve never really gotten along.”
Another rush of memory. A curl of excitement from seeing his name on an envelope, the ringing in his ears after a shouting match, a warm mug appearing by his elbow without a word, a pang of regret as the lab doors close behind him—
Newt coughs, staring at him with wide eyes. Hermann shifts in his seat, mumbling vaguely in his direction.
“I have often found you intolerable, but we have done good work together. Challenged each other. Supported each other, in our own ways. After all, you’ve been the only constant relationship in my life for the better part of a decade.”
Hermann glances down at his fingers where they drum a rhythm against his thigh, clearing his throat. “And we did help save the world.”
Another flash of memory, a technicolor collage of the moment when they looked at each other and knew that they had won, Newt and Hermann’s perspectives superimposed over each other so that there was no distinguishing them.
Newt is still staring at him, stock still and some kind of gobsmacked. He speaks slowly. “So, I guess staying out of each other’s heads isn’t going to be an option …”
“If you’re uncomfortable …” Hermann offers, an out, entirely ready to retreat to his own room and possibly never discuss emotions again.
“No, no, I just-” Newton breaks off with a frustration noise, tugging at his already messy hair. “I don’t know man, yesterday I didn’t even know if we were friends, and then I almost died, and then we saved the world, and now it’s like you’re right here and I have all these pieces of you in my head.”
Newt’s laugh is only slightly manic. “And you have all these pieces of me in yours, and it’s … It can’t be a fun place to be right now.”
Perhaps not. Hermann’s mind is likely no calmer. It’s a lot — too much to process now, or maybe ever. And who knew how much of the swirling fractals and disjointed angles were the remnants of the impossibly alien mind they had touched?
But Hermann does know two things: First, they are both exactly where they need to be. And second, he is not done sleeping.
“Alright,” he announces, leveraging himself to his feet decisively. “Move over.”
“What?” Newt’s scratchy voice leaps up an octave as he stares up at Hermann standing insistently at the side of his bed.
“I’m still exhausted, and I’m willing to bet you are as well,” Hermann explains impatiently. “And by my calculations the PPDC owes us nearly a decade of proper sleep. So I suggest we take a nap before attempting to deal with anything else.”
He stares calmly at Newt for a moment, surprised at his own confidence in basically inviting himself into the other man’s bed, but he’s sure he already knows the answer even as he asks, “If that’s alright?”
Newt nods, scrambling back to the other side of the bed to make room. “Yeah, yes, just … uh, make yourself at home.”
Newt’s bed is no more comfortable than any in the base, and his children’s sheets don’t do it any favors, but Hermann’s battered body relaxes easily as he settles in. Newt lays suspiciously still beside him, and he can feel the warmth curling off of him even with the inches between them.
It’s awkward, of course it is, and Hermann has never been more aware of how long it’s been since he’s shared a bed with anyone. But the warmth and comfort and safety (finally, finally safety) stretch between them as surely as the tendrils of blue, and Hermann finds it surprisingly easy to turn on his side to face Newt.
He is staring back, wide-eyed, and Hermann can practically taste all the questions building behind his lips. “Hermann …” he starts, voice cracking, but nothing else follows.
Hermann takes a deep breath, slides his hand across the sheets between them and lays his hand carefully against Newt’s. “Rest, Newt. I’ll be here.”
Newt seems to dissolve all at once, relaxing back into sleep like he’d never left it. As his eyes slip shut, he grins and slurs, “You called me Newt.”
Hermann smiles back, and as he follows Newt off into more much-needed sleep, he slides into dreams of soaring sky blue, a mind as familiar as his own, and a strong hand that never let go.