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Hermann’s bathroom is fucking cold. Newt’s not wearing his shirt, he’s not in the mood to deal with getting hair all over his clothes, but even so, it’s gotta be one of the iciest places in the already chilly apartment. The light blue walls combined with the white garbage bags laid out on the floor make him feel like he’s trapped in a fucking ice cube. At least he had the sense to wear sweatpants over his boxers.
Behind him, Hermann’s hand comes to rest on Newt’s shoulder. He flinches – after ten years, getting used to touch is a process – but then Hermann squeezes, and Newt relaxes. He doesn’t turn around, though, just stares at the wall in front of him, awkwardly straddling the closed toilet.
“You’re sure you want to do this?” Hermann’s voice comes. It’s not judgey, or condescending, just checking in. He’s always so careful to check in.
Newt nods, runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah,” he says.
And he is – Newt is more sure about this than he’s been about just about anything since the Precursors were kicked to the curb. He’s sick of not recognizing himself in the mirror. Sick of seeing their face staring back at him.
It was their face. His body was their body. He was as nice a suit as the ones they made him wear, so nice they wore him to the prom for ten fucking years.
He’s made his body fit him once before, he can do it again.
***
“Good fucking morning!” Vanessa called to Newt where he sat in the kitchen when she opened the door to Hermann’s apartment. “You ready?”
Newt glanced at Hermann, washing up from the breakfast he’d made. First time leaving the house without Hermann, and the poor guy was just as nervous as Newt.
“Yeah, just let me –” Newt took a final bite of the eggs he’d been picking at, then brought his plate to the sink, his hand lingering where it brushed against Hermann’s soapy one. Vanessa, dressed to the nines as usual in a bright striped cropped sweater and her braids pulled into long pigtails under her ears, twirled the keys to her car in her hand as she waited.
“Hermann, say goodbye to your boyfriend.”
Hermann turned to Newt, meeting his eyes for just a moment before giving him a quick kiss. “You have your phone?” he asked, worry written clearly on his face.
Newt sighed dramatically, but the concern made his heart squeeze in his chest. “Yeah, babe, I’ve got it. I’ll call you if anything gets out of control, alright?”
“Alright,” Hermann answered, squeezing his hand before stepping away to greet his sister-in-law.
I’ve got this, Newt told himself. He’s got this.
***
Newt feels a hand run through his hair, and somehow, he doesn’t flinch. It’s nice, Hermann’s fingers in his hair. Those nights strapped to that goddamn chair sucked ass, but it was almost nice, having Hermann greet him with a kiss and a hand on the back of his head. And in the infirmary, after, with Hermann squeezed beside him in his tiny bed, a hand in his hair and his voice lulling him to sleep.
He’ll miss it.
But hair, after all, grows back. He starts to imagine what he’ll do after this: maybe grow it out, dye it, but then the clippers turn on and the light buzzing interrupts his thoughts.
“Ready?” comes Hermann’s voice behind him.
No turning back now. “Let’s do this.”
Then the clippers are running over his head, and Newt feels hair falling down his back and onto the floor. Hermann starts at the back of his head, and Newt almost makes some joke about having matching undercuts, but then the clippers carve a solid path down the middle of his head. So much for twinsies.
Hermann works in silence, aside from checking in once or twice. Newt just sits there, struck by how unbelievably lucky he is to have Hermann. When he first decided on a buzzcut, he quickly realized there was no way in hell he’d be doing it himself. He just doesn’t trust himself enough for that, no matter how safe clippers are. Hell, he can barely handle a butter knife these days without spiraling.
***
“So, what kind of clothes did you have in mind, exactly?” Vanessa asked.
Newt shrugged. “Anything other than those fucking suits they had me wear,” he said. “Other than that, anything’s fine by me.”
Vanessa made a contemplative noise. “I think I’ve got a place in mind,” she answered finally. “It’s pretty small, so you won’t have to worry about crowds, or anything like that.”
Newt relaxed at that.
“I know it’s gotta be a lot, relearning all this stuff. And they’ve got a good selection of styles, too; it’s actually one of the few stores that Karla and I can both shop at.”
Impressive, Newt thought. Hermann’s sister dresses like Indiana Jones stumbled his way through a lesbian bar, and Vanessa’s style is… Well, camp might be the easiest way to describe it, but she always looks amazing. He couldn’t have asked for a more qualified person to be in charge of his new wardrobe.
To help him pick it out, he corrected. He’s in charge of this.
Maybe with some new clothes, he’ll stop flinching every time he looks in the mirror.
***
It had been months since he’d moved in with Hermann, and still his body felt like a separate entity entirely from himself. It wasn’t literal – not anymore – but the dissociation had been taking a fucking toll. Newt was hardly the most mentally healthy person on his best days, but now? He desperately needs this change.
The last time he’d buzzed his hair was in grad school, freshly eighteen and having a dysphoria breakdown in his shitty apartment. He’d tried short hair, long hair, and everything in between, and one day he announced to his pet iguana (long live Godzilla, he is sorely missed) that enough was enough. The next day he bought the cheapest clippers in the nearby Wal-Mart and spent two fucking hours (he’d apparently sacrificed quality for cost) shearing it all off.
Once he’d gotten surgery and started T, dealing with his hair was easier. He’s still got pictures he’d sent Hermann in letters with his shitty little mullet.
“Darling, I can practically hear you thinking.”
Hermann’s voice pulls Newt out of his thoughts as the clippers run just behind his right ear, picking up any missed spots.
“Yeah, babe. That’s kind of how drifting works.”
Newt doesn’t think it’s the Drift that lets him know Hermann is rolling his eyes, but it might be. Who’s to say?
“What I mean is,” Hermann says, any annoyance in his voice drowned out entirely by the practically tangible affection, “care to clue me in?”
“Just… reminiscing. Remember my hair before the PPDC?”
He feels the clippers run from his hairline down to the nape of his neck, then pull away. “You mean that ridiculous mullet?”
“Fuck you, that mullet was badass!” he laughs.
“Of course, dear, whatever you say.” Hermann’s voice is positively dripping in sarcasm as he starts on cleaning up the back of Newt’s neck, running the clippers down to where Newt’s tattoos begin and making him shiver.
“Don’t tempt me, Hermann, or I’ll grow it out after this.”
“Is that all you were thinking about? Because really, Newton, that’s hardly a threat.”
The clippers turn off, and a hair dryer turns on. The warm air is welcome after sitting half-naked in this ice box for the past twenty minutes, setting up the garbage bags over the floor to catch the hair and getting all the materials needed together. Hermann gets all the misplaced hair from Newt’s neck and back, then switches off the dryer.
“Besides,” Hermann continues, “You know I’ll hardly object to having more of your hair to play with.”
“Yeah, you love me, I know,” Newt answers. “Done?”
“Done.”
***
Fuck, this was a mistake.
He was standing in a cramped dressing room, piles of shirts and pants and sweaters and even a few skirts he’d hesitantly accepted from Vanessa, half-dressed in a shirt that is the exact wrong shade of maroon. He’d made the mistake of glancing at the mirror, caught a glimpse of the body he’s in, and the panic slammed into him.
Christ, how could he have expected this to work? He’s not himself, he’s stuck again, he’s never going to get over this, he can’t even recognize himself in the mirror. He really, really, shouldn’t have left without Hermann. Even with him, Newt’s an anxious mess in public, how could he have expected this to go any better?
Fuck it, he thought, and sat himself down on the – probably disgusting, but he’s survived worse – floor. Tried to catch his breath. What is it that Hermann tells him when he has a panic attack? Breathe. Focus on your surroundings. Five things you can see.
He saw his legs under him, striped socks he stole from Hermann pulled up his calves.
He saw a pretty dress Vanessa had suggested he try on. It’s nice, and it looks soft.
He saw his phone poking out of his discarded jeans. He could call Hermann.
He saw a sticker on the wall promoting the store’s social media.
He saw the corner of the mirror, and he did not look at it any closer than that.
“Newt?” came Vanessa’s voice, just outside the dressing room. He could see her bright pink shoes under the door. “Everything okay in there?”
He could lie. “Not exactly,” he said instead, hating how pitiful he sounded. His head was pounding, now. Faintly, he wished he could cry.
“Can you let me in?” Vanessa asked, her voice gentle. “I can call Hermann, if you want.”
Newt could talk to Hermann later. He could deal with this. And he had Vanessa. It was okay. He was okay.
Not even bothering to stand, he reached up and unlocked the door. “You can come in.”
As soon as she saw him on the floor, she crouched down to his level.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was glad for how small this store was. He could only imagine the tabloid headlines: “WAR CRIMINAL NEWT GEISZLER SPOTTED HAVING A BREAKDOWN IN A PUBLIC SHOP, SOURCES SAY HE WAS CRYING LIKE A BABY.” Which wouldn’t be true, on a few counts. Not technically a war criminal, and he was cleared on his mass murder charges. And he can’t cry, so. Not true.
“Hey, what can I do?” Vanessa asked him, pulling him out of that train of thought.
Newt swallowed, took a deep breath. “Just, um. Stay here, please?” he managed.
“Of course.” She settled on the floor beside him, close enough to touch but giving him as much space as the tiny room would allow. “You wanna talk about it, or…?”
He shrugged. “Just, uh. Don’t really… recognize myself, I guess,” he muttered. He could feel Vanessa’s eyes on him, but he just looked straight at the intersection of the floor and wall in front of him. “They… wore my face. It was their face. Their body. They’re gone, now, but…”
“But it still doesn’t feel like you,” Vanessa finished.
Newt nodded.
They sat there in silence for a while. Newt managed to calm his breathing with her there, with another presence to ground him. She’d asked what she could do, and he didn’t really know. Not being alone was enough.
“I have an idea,” she announced after a few minutes.
Newt looked at her. “I’m listening.”
She turned to him, her eyes meeting his. “You don’t feel like your body is yours? Then make it yours.”
“What do you mean?”
She shifted her body to face him completely. “Well, I would suggest like, getting a tattoo or something, but–” She gestured at his torso, where she knew he was covered completely in Kaiju designs. “But what about your hair?”
Newt didn’t follow. “My hair?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Like, dye it some ridiculous color, or grow it out, or shave it off, or something. Easy, non-permanent, and painless, but something you can do for yourself. For your body.”
He considered that. She had a point. Besides, he’d had the same haircut since joining the PPDC, he was well-past due for a change.
“Yeah, I think I like that.”
***
Newt spins around, meeting Hermann’s eyes as he runs a hand over his head. It feels weird. And satisfying, almost like having a stim toy on his head. It’s nice.
“How do I look?”
Hermann doesn’t answer, but he’s got that same look he gets when Newt finishes a meal or communicates his needs; his eyes are all soft under his glasses, that adorable lopsided grin of his plastered on his face.
“Why don’t you see for yourself?” he asks.
Shit, the moment of truth. Newt’s developed a habit, doesn’t even think before he avoids looking in mirrors or struggles to acknowledge the face that stares back at him as his. But now he’s got no choice, does he?
Well, he does have a choice. He always does with Hermann.
Newt swallows down the panic rising in his throat, the dread in his stomach, the pounding in his chest, and stands.
He walks to the sink.
He raises his eyes to the mirror.
And finally, he meets the gaze of the man staring back at him.
The first thing that hits him is confusion. Shock. The cognitive dissonance is old hat by this point, the constant reminders to himself that Yes, that’s him, that’s his face, his body. It’s not theirs. And it’s not him, not the Newt that he sees in his mind’s eye when he thinks of himself, before. It didn’t magically transport him to his eighteen-year-old self (thank fuck for that), but it’s something.
He feels it with his hand again, watching this time. That’s my hand, he reminds himself, and it doesn’t stick. Not surprising, it never does.
But still, the man has the same bright tattoos as him. The same extra weight around his middle, thanks to Hermann’s cooking and gentle care. The same scars under his pecs.
It’s not the face of the Precursors staring back at him.
“Well?” Hermann asks, standing behind the man in the mirror.
Despite himself, Newt smiles.
“It’s not me,” he says, and Hermann’s face falls before he adds, “but it could be. I think it will be. One day.”
“So it’s not…”
“It’s not them, either.”
Hermann smiles, too, then, and Newt tears his eyes from the mirror to kiss him. It’s slow, careful, hopeful.
One day it’ll be him staring back. But until then, he’s got Hermann to help him make his body his.