Chapter Text
“Hermann! We got it, we’re in!” Newt exclaimed, busting through the lab doors like the freaking Kool Aid man. He flew over to where his befuddled lab partner was wiping clean some doofy looking kaiju doodles Newt had left on his towering chalkboards earlier that day.
“In? In what?” Hermann asked skeptically, putting down the chalk covered rag he was using, and clapping the dust off his hands.
“Dude. We’ve got two passes to the very exclusive, one-and-only, brand-spankin’ new BEKS Symposium!” Newt beamed at Hermann. “And not only that, wait for it- they want us to be the keynote speakers. Can! You! Be! Lieve!”
Hermann returned an incredulous look, a smile starting to spread across his face. “You mean we- ”
“Yes.”
“-are going to Paris?”
“Yes!”
“And we can present our research?”
“Dude, YES! And you know what that means?”
The two of them looked eye to eye, an intensity sparking between them as they spoke the next part in unison, clearly of the same mind.
“More funding!”
It was nearing the end of 2023, and support for the K-Science division had dwindled significantly over the recent years. At this point it was just the two of them working fervently in Hong Kong, trying to scrape by however they could. They had already tapped every resource they knew for additional funds, and all avenues were exhausted. Each day more money was diverted away from the Jaeger program and put towards the Anti-Kaiju Wall. Some called it the “Wall of Life”, but Newt called it the “Wall of Lies”. Hermann called it “a fast way to disown a father”.
Regardless, neither Newt nor Hermann were pleased with the situation they found themselves in because of it. But with the opportunity to speak at the inaugural Breakthroughs in Engineering & Kaiju Science Symposium, their research was bound to turn some heads, and open some pocket books. Put on by a series of enormously wealthy benefactors, the conference was to convene in Paris in mid January, with the express purpose of inspiring the world’s greatest minds to solve the kaiju problem that was knocking down humanity’s door. And of course, that meant providing the funding to go with it.
The last two PPDC K-Science officers set to work to prepare.
---
The week of the event, record snows fell in France, a region more used to a light dusting. Flights were cancelled due to poor visibility, and many Parisian businesses shut down. The city was just not equipped to handle the sudden inclimate weather. Hermann checked the international news for any sign that the snowfall would let up in the coming days, while Newt checked the conference’s website for announcements.
“Sounds like they’ve made the decision to postpone by a month,” Newt called over to Hermann.
“Well that’s not so bad. I’d quite like to formalize the latest data gathered from the Breach anyway. At least this will give me time,” Hermann said, picking up a stack of printouts from his desk. “What is the new date? We’ll have to adjust our accommodations.”
“Uh…” Newt trailed off. “Well…”
Hermann looked over impatiently. “Well, what? Out with it.”
“Well, it’s moved to the 14th.”
Hermann began rifling through his papers. “Very good. That will be plenty of time to reschedule our flights, and-” Hermann paused flipping through the printouts and looked up. “Wait. The 14th you said?”
“Yyyyyup,” Newt replied sarcastically, letting his lips pop on the P to make a pronounced puh sound. “February 14th.”
Hermann dropped the stack of papers back down onto his desk, gave Newt an awkward glance and worked his jaw. “Bugger.”
---
It would be fine. It’s not like Valentine’s Day really meant anything to either of them. They were both unattached and had been for some time. And they certainly both had higher priorities than worrying over some greeting card industry cash grab. Or at least, that’s what Newt told himself as they boarded the plane.
“It doesn’t have to be weird,” Newt had reasoned to Hermann earlier that day.
“I know it doesn’t,” Hermann had snapped defensively. “This is a professional endeavor, Newton. Nothing more.”
“Right… right.”
Newt rubbed his face in his hands. Professional. Sure, uh huh. He could do professional. He’s the top of his field, afterall.
He threw his duffle bag into an overhead compartment and helped Hermann with his own as they took their seats.
It’s not like the goings on at the conference would be any different regardless of what day it was held. And besides, if the effects of climate change hadn’t run rampant back in January, the two of them would’ve been in the lab working away together on Valentine’s as they had in past years with no incident. So yeah. What’s the big deal? So what if Newt is spending the weekend away with the man he’s secretly harboured a small (read: raging) crush on for an embarrassing number of years? And so what if that weekend happened to be on Valentine’s Day? And so what if they were going to what is perhaps the most cliché romantic city in the world?
Newt sank into his seat and tried to will himself asleep despite the nerves churning in his stomach and his heart jumping every time Hermann’s elbow bumped his on the arm rest.
Oh god.
A loud ding rang out, and a voice came over the PA system, waking Newt from his nap and rousing Hermann from his completely predictable Alan Turing biography.
“Good evening folks. This is your captain speaking. We’ll be starting our descent to Charles de Gaulle momentarily, so we ask that you remain seated with your safety belt secured for the remainder of the flight. As our flight crew makes their final rounds, we would like to leave you with a token of our appreciation and thank you for choosing Air France for your journey to the City of Light this Valentine’s weekend.”
Newt stretched and looked around. There weren’t many people on the plane. Between increasingly sporadic weather patterns and the occasional Pacific coastline kaiju attacks, international travel as a whole had taken a nose dive in popularity. But of those who did decide to check out La Ville-Lumière that weekend, they looked to all be couples.
A flight attendant approached Hermann and Newt’s row, and handed a small red box to Hermann. “Make sure you share,” he said with a wink, then moved on to the next row. Hermann spluttered some malformed sentence about the two of them being colleagues, and decidedly not romantically involved, but the flight attendant was already long gone by the time he got the words out.
Newt leaned over to get a look at what had been given to them. It was a mini box of chocolates in the shape of a heart that said Paris Is For Lovers in curly white letters across the front. Newt groaned and slumped back into his chair. The notion that the box of chocolates was a bad omen, a symbol, a metaphor for how their weekend was about to go flashed across his mind. At least he’d get some chocolate out of it though.
Almost on cue, Hermann deftly smuggled the candies away into his carry-on bag like he was a teen trying to hide a porno mag from his parents.
“Hey that’s for both of us!” Newt protested.
Hermann blushed almost imperceptibly, gave an awkward cough and shot Newt a side-eyed look. “I don’t see how they could be since it clearly states ‘for lovers’ on it.”
For lovers, huh? Newt rolled his eyes and turned away to look out the window, trying his best to seem apathetic and unaffected. He desperately hoped Hermann hadn’t noticed the blush creeping across his cheeks just from hearing Hermann say the word “lovers” in the remote vicinity of applying the term to them as a pair. Newt bounced his leg with nervous agitation and tried to put the thought out of his mind.
Yep. A bad omen indeed.