Archive of Our Own ^beta

The consequences of touching an alien world entirely unfathomable to humanity were widespread, seeping into all domains of life. The most obvious consequence, of course, is the giant, awesome (or horrifying, depending on your perspective) monsters rising from the sea in an attempt to destroy humanity and the subsequent technological and scientific leaps to prevent said destruction of humanity. That takes up most attention.

The sociological and political consequences are also widespread. Crises of all sorts tend to turn preexisting systemic cracks into deep holes, causing tensions to violently erupt. On the other hand, people are also kinder to each other; international cooperation is paradoxically at an all time low and an all time high. To be honest, the social stuff isn’t exactly Newt’s wheelhouse, so he can’t really explain how that’s possible and he hates thinking about it anyway, so he hasn’t paid that much attention.

But one particularly horrible consequence had snuck onto Earth almost completely unobserved until too late; viruses (or maybe bacteria or something) that landed on human shores and quietly developed into disease. When he first heard the mutterings of a new disease, of plants that grow inside humans, Newt had been running off fumes and juggling PhD projects with a ferocity that only comes with the constant low thrumming fear of the end of the world. He had, of course, wanted to examine it, but the cases were difficult to track down - likely highly classified if they existed at all  - and not really his expertise.

“It’s simply disgusting, the things people will do to earn money off the vulnerable,” Hermann had written to him at the time, skeptical of the very idea and angry at people who were already selling forms of “protection” via vitamin mixes. “There’s giant monsters rising from the sea,” Newt wrote back, “Anything is possible.” Truthfully, he too was a bit skeptical, but he enjoyed playing devil’s advocate to annoy Hermann. It wasn’t until years later, when Newt was working at the PPDC, that he finally got the opportunity to examine it himself. By the time he received an email from a microbiologist asking for his expertise, the mysterious disease had become much better known in academic circles, but still with much skepticism. He’d idly wondered what Hermann would think of this now (they had been in the mid-phase of their relationship: hating each other from a distance, not yet forced into each other’s presence) and concluded Hermann would likely still be extremely annoyed about it. Regardless, his curiosity was piqued so he immediately wrote back and agreed to help out. The next week Newt was unpacking the samples out of a cold box and into his storage fridge.

“I have to conclude that this is a real phenomenon. On every level, there is sufficient scientific evidence to suggest this is a real disease,” he had eventually written in his official report. His unofficial notes involved a lot more swearing and disbelief, but he’d learned the hard way that it was rarely appreciated officially (major revisions just to remove foul language, pssh). Oh well. He’d still got a kick out of writing a report to support the scientific existence of Hanahaki Disease. Okay, sure, he didn’t know that at the time — it was epidemiologists and public health experts who painstakingly traced and connected the root (ha!) cause to unrequited love. But still, his name is on the report and the academic article, and he specifically helped link it to the Kaiju and the Breach. So, he’s still very pleased that he got to be a part of the team that proved one of the most ridiculous scientific discoveries of recent times. It would be funny, if it weren’t tragic; they still understood almost nothing about it and it did have a habit of being fatal.

Later, when they were forced into each other’s company non-stop, Newt was delighted to discover that he’d been right about another thing - Hermann was still annoyed by it.

“How can a disease, or-or a body, know the meaning of flowers!” He’d exclaimed to Newt and Mako in the mess hall one lunchtime. Mako had taken it either upon herself or at the behest of Pentecost to sit with them when they all shared meal times, likely to help decrease the loud arguments he and Hermann had, and/or people’s complaints about said arguments. But Mako did seem to have some strange affection for Hermann - who was generally kinder to her than anyone else he interacted with - and seemed to politely tolerate Newt, which made it feel at least a little less like a pity or responsibility thing. Hermann had been agitated, gesturing and talking too loud as he continued to work himself up, to Newt’s pure joy. Mako, polite in all things, was simply listening attentively, but he could see the upward tilt of her mouth.

“Flower meanings are subjective and dependent on culture,” he’d continued as a sad piece of lettuce flopped from his sandwich onto his tray as he unconsciously waved the thing back and forwards, “And not real. It is absolutely absurd.” He bit down on his salad sandwich a little too aggressively.

“Perhaps it’s purely psychological,” Mako’d said thoughtfully and, after taking a moment to politely eat a bite of her boiled egg, turned to Newt to ask, “There’s no consistency as to what grows, is there?

“Nah,” Newt replied through a mouthful of chips, “The primary commonality is plant growth. What grew - or was produced and spat up via sputum - appeared to match to flower dictionary definitions when compared to the individual’s feelings, but not across cases.”

“Oh, don’t ask him,” Hermann muttered to Mako, “Who knows if he didn’t just cross-contaminate his samples.”

“Oh, my mistake! I forgot we were in the presence of Dr. Mr Man, the actual biological and epidemiological expert!” Newt had yelled back. He only brought out the literal translation of Hermann’s name when he really wanted to be petty or distract him, and it felt particularly justified because how dare Hermann, who is so incorrect on so many things, imply Newt can’t do the basics of his job!

“Dr Geiszler, you’re not an epidemiologist either!” Hermann had snapped back, face all pink, and he slammed his sandwich onto his tray.

“Pip pip Mako,” Newt continued, ignoring everything Hermann had said and cutting him off, “Time to make the world’s worst cup of tea and maths my way into an incorrect conclusion!!”

That conversation had quickly turned into a full argument, delightfully petty and unstoppable even by Mako’s intervention, ending only with their expulsion from the mess by some severely underpaid food service workers. They did not speak at all for three days until Newt had discovered a packet of coveted sour gummy worms near his newest sample cases, and Hermann had found linzer cookies on one of his many CRTs.

So, safe to say, Newt’s a bit of an acknowledged expert about Hanahaki.

Having said that, when Newt coughed up the first petal, he didn’t recognise it until much later, when he worked backwards. It makes sense: he had been in the lab doing a time sensitive test, and had coughed into a tissue. When he opened it up to look at it (which is a perfectly normal human impulse actually, Hermann) he’d assumed it had been a weird bit of mucus, and his timer was about to go off, so he didn’t think too hard about it.

It wasn’t until later that night in the communal showers, when the hot water he had previously been so grateful for had triggered a coughing fit, that he thought about it again. Standing under the water spray in his little shower booth, wearing his pink shower flip-flops, he coughed a white thing into his hand. It was clear then that it was not mucus, and he stared at it with confusion until he was snapped out of it by someone laughing outside. He laid it on his towel and continued with his shower. Did he inhale something weird?

He waited until he’d finished up and was back in his room to look closer. Yep, it was definitely a petal. He’d folded it into a tissue and tried to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach. Instead, he’d lay down on his bed, inattentively flicking through the internet on his phone, and convincing himself it was just a weird one-off. He’s not in love — he’s not, not with anyone — and even if he was, why now? Tomorrow, he tells himself, he’ll be back in fine form and fighting with Hermann, all this weirdness behind him. It’d be just like that week he’d twisted his ankle or something and it had hurt so bad but then he stood strangely one morning and it made a loud clicking noise and never hurt again. Sometimes human bodies are just weird. It’s fine.

It’s not fine. It keeps happening, one or two coughing fits every other day with a single petal coming up. He continues to save them in a tissue until he has too many and moves them into the lab.

It had been a particularly late night in a long series of late nights in the lab when he finally realised he couldn't avoid it anymore. Hermann had been jumping between working on perfecting an equation for timing Kaiju attacks and a coding project he’d agreed to help J-Science with, while Newt had been dissecting an old sample and running it through various tests hoping to confirm a suspicion he had about Kaiju soft tissue structures. It had been dark in the lab, and stuffy in a way that made him think that only the air circulation vents were active and not the air conditioning, as often happened during late nights. He had been particularly deep in thought as he stared at the sample he was holding when Hermann’s uncomfortable metal chair scraped across the floor and made him jump. And Hermann calls Newt noisy!

“Oh my, it’s 2am,” Hermann said, clear in the silence of the lab, “I think I will retire.”

“Where to, the Bahamas?” Newt said automatically, still looking at the sample, before taking in what he’d said and looking up at Hermann’s unimpressed face, “Ah, yeah, not my best. It's late, cut me some slack.”

Hermann rolled his eyes and began packing up his bits and bobs. As he did so, his glasses began to slip from his nose and rather than adjust them, he simply sighed and let them fall off. His old-man glasses chain caught them, of course, and they bounced comically against his chest while Hermann went about his business. Newt felt little pinpricks up his scalp and warmth in his stomach, but when he opened his mouth to let out a giggle, a rough cough instead ripped free.

Newt had immediately put his sample down and tried to take off his gloves, but it’d been the worst coughing fit he’d had until that point. He’d sucked in breath between coughs, pinpricks of light behind his eyes, and felt like maybe he’d pass out. God, he hoped not, not in front of Hermann, fuck. He’d all but given up on getting his gloves off when another set of hands took his and pulled them off, letting Newt properly cover his mouth. His back muscles hurt so bad, cramping under the strain of coughing, but Hermann began to rub and pat his back intermittently which felt so much better. After a few seconds, he managed to finally cough up what he knew was trying to come out - two petals that he immediately crushed in his fist so Hermann couldn’t see.

“Thanks,” Newt says as he reached for the water bottle that sits on his lab desk at all times, “Must have swallowed the wrong way.” Even if he didn’t have a handful of petals, he’s far too shaky to get it open so Hermann, to Newt’s disappointment, drops his hand from Newt’s back to open it for him. Newt takes three big gulps before putting it down.

“Go wash your hands,” Hermann said, nodding towards Newt’s closed fist. Newt tensed but Hermann continued, “It’s disgusting to cough into your hand like that, but of course you would. Use your elbow next time.” Newt relaxed, and ignoring this otherwise sound health advice, walked over to his decontamination basin, dropping the crushed petals into it and washing his hands.

“Would you prefer I coughed on you?” He’d replied, scrubbing his hands thoroughly under Hermann’s scrutiny.

Hermann sighed, clearly deciding to let it go and instead awkwardly cleared his throat. “Are you...alright? You’ve been coughing all week,” he asked, fiddling with the head of his cane before looking up and directly into Newt’s eyes with an annoyed face, “I swear, if you have a viral infection and have brought it in here every day with you-“

“Dude. It’s probably just allergies. I’m fine.”

Hermann fixes him with The Stare, a term Newt developed to describe a look Hermann only seems to use on Newt. It’s as if Hermann has sharpened all his senses and can see directly through every carefully constructed wall Newt has ever put up and summarily crushes them, just like the Kaiju will destroy the anti-Kaiju wall, and is disgusted by what he sees. It’s as unsettling and terrifying now as it was the first time Hermann used it on him all those years ago, when they’d first met.

“I’m in perfect health,” Newt lies, “But I’ll finish packing up and go straight to bed if it makes you feel better. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He turns back to his desk and begins packing up his samples.

After a moment, Hermann hesitantly says, “Alright. I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

“Sounds good. Night!” Newt yells over his shoulder as Hermann leaves. His footsteps stop at the door for a few seconds as if he’s looking back at Newt, but then the door closes and he clack-stomps away down the hallway. When the sounds have faded completely and Newt is sure he’s alone, he collects the newest petals and pulls out his older ones.

Newt never really studied botany, but he has six PhDs for a reason.

Well, more than one reason actually. The list includes ADHD hyperfixation, poor coping mechanisms, and a frankly terrifying knowledge of MIT policies and procedures that allowed him to find loopholes to argue he should be able to do multiple projects at once, and defend them across different degrees. Hey, Newt genuinely is a genius with an extraordinary memory and university had simply been another set of rules and patterns to conquer.

So he Googled everything he wanted to know and illegally downloaded botany textbooks for the things Google fails him on.

It’d been 4am by the time he finally figured it out. He’d drawn a shitty diagram of the petal’s features in an old half-full lab journal and extracted samples to run against prior Hanahaki ones, as well as a chemical composition breakdown. He’d been looking at image banks and comparing petals, and he was sure they’re the tepals of Narcissus poeticus or poet's daffodil.

It’s a beautiful flower, native to Central and Southern Europe and associated with the myth of Narcissus. It’s supposedly also quite toxic, which is a worry if they ever become full flowers. When he Googles the meanings, they supposedly mean unrequited love (well, duh, it’s Hanahaki) but also selfishness.

For fucks sake. Is this weird Kaiju disease fucking throwing shade? Because Newt thinks he’s a perfectly normal amount of narcissistic for who he is, thank you very much judge-y alien disease. When he finally cleaned everything up (aka hid all evidence of his disease) and collapsed into his bed, it was 5:30am and he was supposed to be back in the lab in three hours. Oh well, Newt thought, he’d just tell Hermann he has a big old nasty cold, just to fuck with him.

As he drifts off, he lets himself wonder: after all this time, why now?

He likes to think he accepts his Hanahaki self-diagnosis with a fair amount of grace. He doesn’t dwell on it too much — he’s in the middle of a war, after all, and the lives of all human beings is enough weight to carry already without being distracted by his own life. He has a doctorate in medical engineering and science, which in Newt’s humble opinion is close enough to being a medical doctor, so he self-treats. Admittedly, it’s mostly stuff his uncle always did to make him feel better when he was sick as a little boy: he takes hot showers when he can, eats a lot of soup, and uses VapoRub like it’s going out of style (which it is, he’s starting to smell like Hermann). So not particularly doctorly, but he does get an over-the-counter inhaler and cough syrup which do seem to help open his lungs enough to help pass the petals.

But his coughing fits continue to increase in both frequency and amount of petals. To be expected, unfortunately, and not likely to improve. He’s successfully managed to cover up what he’s coughing up for now, shout out to the human instinct of disgust for pulling most of the weight there. Hermann always politely turns his head whenever he starts, and if he’s around others he leaves the room until he’s done.

Speaking of Hermann, he’d successfully avoided the topic until a particularly nasty coughing fit lasts a bit too long for comfort, leaving him gasping on the lab couch while Hermann stands fretfully in front of him. After he’s done and about to force himself to bounce up off the couch to get back to work, Hermann puts a hand on Newt’s shoulder and opens his mouth to speak.

So, of course, Newt cuts him off.

“It’s just asthma, dude,’ he says, shaking his inhaler, “Now that the nights have been getting colder, it seems to be triggering it more.”

Hermann fixes him with The Stare. “You’ve never mentioned having asthma before.”

Well, that’s because Newt doesn’t have asthma, of course, but he can’t tell Hermann that.

“Yeah, medical said it can sometimes come on later in life. Sucks, but that’s life, I guess,” Newt shrugs, taking Hermann’s hand on a small up and down journey. Still, Hermann doesn’t let go, and instead begins to rub his thumb idly against Newt’s shoulder. He doesn’t seem aware he’s doing it. Newt feels his neck go hot, and the pin prick feeling in his scalp again. It’s just nice, okay, to have a bit of comfort when you’re ill! And if he notices that Hermann smells like chalk and cheap wool wash, that’s also just a comfort thing. To, you know, ground him in the present or whatever.

“I had asthma as a child. It was quite difficult, I felt as if I was always sick,” Hermann muses, The Stare shifting into a far-away look as he clearly wanders into a particular memory. Hermann rarely went into details about his childhood, but in one letter he admitted to spending a very lonely winter with a chronic bronchitis he didn’t seem to be able to fight off that had eventually become pneumonia. He’d admitted to Newt that, at the time, he had been convinced he was going to die, and had spent most of his time solving various complex mathematical problems that had helped cement his child genius status to distract him. When Newt had read that the first time, his heart tugged for poor lonely little Hermann and his sole mathematical comforts.

Then they had met and Newt had decided to halt all feelings towards this strange math robot who used his robot vision to dissect Newt, regardless of how sad his childhood was.

Thinking about it now makes Newt cough, which startles Hermann back to the present.

“I wonder if it’s your exposure to all the chemicals you use. You should be more careful with safety procedures, perhaps use a mask,” he says, inspecting Newt’s face.

Of course Hermann would turn this into a way to wheedle him about being too sloppy in the lab, but Newt was too worn out to fight about it. And really, he had been thinking similarly, though about his exposure to Kaiju rather than lab chemicals or whatever. Perhaps developing Hanahaki was also the consequence of prolonged exposure to whatever had piggybacked across on the Kaiju. Sure, that hadn’t been the case in any known infections but Newt has spent significantly more time with Kaiju parts than any other living human so who knew! Not science, that could barely do much but confirm it as a real thing. And really, Hermann’s right - an unrequited love disease is ridiculous. So instead of taking offense, Newt instead says, “Yes, I was wondering something similar,” causing Hermann to almost physically startle in surprise, before frowning.

“Newton...if,” he pauses, looking about as emotionally constipated as someone could look, “If there’s anything I can do, I’ll endeavor to do so.”

In this moment, it’s bizarre to think that a few hours ago Hermann had yelled at Newt so hard about a Kaiju sample Newt had forgotten and left on the kitchenette sink (which was neutralised, smaller than a fingernail and in a JAR) that Newt had been convinced he would pass out. Now, Hermann is rubbing his shoulder and looking at him with something that could almost pass as concern.

“Thanks,” Newt says quietly. He wants to reach up and touch Hermann’s hand, but he’s scared he’ll make Hermann conscious of his actions and let go. He wants this moment to go for as long as possible.

“I must admit that I was worried that it was...well, you know. That ridiculous disease.”

And that’s the end of that, because Newt needs to deflect right now.

“Nah, man, no worries about that,” Newt says, jumping up and knocking Hermann’s hand off his shoulder and forcing him to take a step back lest they be chest-to-chest. Newt throws his hands in the air and gleefully declares, “I am fundamentally unlovable!”

This, he realises as it's coming out of his mouth, is the wrong way to deflect because it’s a little too self-depreciating and doesn’t even make sense in context, fuck, why can’t he just think a little bit before he opens his mouth! Hermann begins to frown even more and turns The Stare on him again, and panicking, Newt defaults to his old fallback: light cruelty. As he begins to walk away, he blurts out, “Besides, I spend all my time here in this lab. Who would I fall in love with? You?” He laughs, long and hard.

Newt hates himself a lot, sometimes.

“Yes. What a nightmare that would be,” Hermann says, stiffly. “Perhaps it would be your love for Kaiju, then, that would be the cause. You are so overly invested in them, and your obsession with drifting with them would certainly be explained by romantic love.” He rolls his ‘r’ on ‘romantic’.

“At least I can actually love something,” Newt mutters without thinking as he pretends to investigate the settings on his autoclave. Another thing that doesn't make sense, but the room goes dead silent, and it feels like someone has set his fume extractor on high and sucked any playful energy left out of the room.

“What a pity you don’t have it then,” Hermann fires back after a moment of stunned silence, “To have everyone see you writhe around in pain over the unrequited love of a monster would be extremely satisfying! Perhaps they would finally see how ridiculous you truly are.”

“At least I’m not still touting terrible theories that will usher in the end of the world, you double agent!” Newt yells back, turning sharply to glare at Hermann, who is currently scurrying out the door. He turns back around, red-faced, and screeches, “I hope your beloved eats you whole!” before slamming the door.

It’s a completely undignified and ridiculous response, especially from Hermann, and it would make Newt laugh in any other circumstance except that it's evidence that he really got to him. That and how suspiciously wet Hermann’s eyes are. Hermann isn’t much of a crier, but he’s bad at handling the aftermath of conflict sometimes and he’ll cry after a particularly vicious blow up. Newt had learned this after witnessing a screaming match Hermann had had on a call with his father when they were both working late in the lab a few years ago, resulting in one of the few times they had ever hugged. Newt also knew Hermann found this uncontrollable physical reaction particularly humiliating, no matter how much Newt told him it was normal.

Fuck.

Instead of dealing with it, he throws himself back into his work - his analysis on the petals is done. It’s exactly what he expected, unfortunately: genetically and chemically normal to the point it could have come from a field and not Newt’s lungs. It doesn’t tell him all that much, as he also expected, so he puts it away and returns to his soft tissue research.

Later that night, a violent coughing fit reveals the flowers have changed - little yellow petals that fold back on themselves with a ruffle-y edge, that he poorly doodles into his notebook. It takes a bit of time to work out what they are: Ruta graveolens or common rue. He doesn’t think he’s seen it in person before, but its native to the Balkan Peninsula, is the national herb of Lithuania, and, as is implied in that, was used as herb but caused stomach upsets (due to its toxicity; is every plant toxic?). Another thing not to swallow. It, of course, means regret. Although, it is used in Lithuanian weddings by brides to symbolise purity, so perhaps it just means that Newt is still virginal.

But even if he put any stock in the idea of virginity, that ship had sailed a long time ago and he’s masturbated to too many bizarre things to be considered pure in any conception of that. No, even Newt, who admittedly isn’t the most emotionally intelligent, doesn’t need a literal interpretation to know what this feeling is. Oh, Newt is such an asshole. It’s only fun to argue with Hermann when there are no real stakes. Arguing about theories got vicious particularly because the fate of humanity rested on their shoulders which was at best a major stressor and at worst a crushing burden slowly destroying them inside out. But this, at least from Hermann's perspective, had no particular stakes at all so Newt can't really blame him for anything he said. For Newt, though, it had felt as high stakes as risking lives to destroy the breach. Well, not entirely, but still.

Hermann doesn’t return to the lab, and isn’t at dinner when Newt is there. He hangs around just in case, fiddling with his phone and chatting with Tendo and Mako who pop over to say hello, for some reason, as he eats his oddly sour stew. After an hour or two, he gives up and returns to the lab, just to double check. Still no Hermann.

Newt’s not going to ignore a sign he literally coughed up, so instead of going to his room to sulk he employs every ADHD strategy he knows into cleaning, which he spends the next four hours doing. It’s easier once he gets into the flow of the timing techniques and turns on some music, and before he knows it the lab is...well, not spotless, he’s no miracle worker, but cleaner than it's been in literal years. He’s scrubbed and reorganised their little kitchenette so it’ll be easier for Hermann to visualise and get to his 8000 varieties of tea, and he cleans the inside of the shared food-or-heat-pack-only microwave for the first time maybe ever, and sprays disinfectant in the air until it smells like lavender disinfectant and less like various forms of formaldehyde and Kaiju gore and chalk dust. When he gets back to his room, he strips off, sets his alarm for 6am and passes out.

And he’s determined to get up at 6am because Hermann is almost always in the lab at 7:30am on the dot to get organised to begin focusing at 8am, except for when he’s sick or his leg is causing him trouble, in which case Newt will text him and find out what he needs. Newt has known him to stumble back to his room at 5am and still be back in the lab at 7:30, though he did nap on their shared couch that day. It’s burned into Newt’s memory, because Hermann had looked so sweet with his mouth open, completely unconscious and snoring loudly. It’s also burned into his memory because it’s his lock screen photo, much to Hermann’s continued anger.

He snoozes his alarm only once, and forces himself up at 6:30 to rush to the mess hall. He takes whatever little pastries he can stuff in a paper bag (which they’re not supposed to do - it's against the rules to take more than two because they’re a treat, on top of not taking any food outside of the mess unless they put in a request) while Pentecost, who is directly ahead of him, pointedly ignores what Newt's doing. Tendo, who is clearly going for his second cup of coffee, sees Newt as he’s running out the door and yells after him, “Another long night, brother?” to which Newt nods aggressively and waves cheerily, ducking out of the way of a group of very impressively muscled Jaeger pilots. He runs to the lab with time to spare, and he puts his immorally acquired pastries on a plate and makes Hermann’s favourite morning tea selection - a typical English Breakfast tea with two sugars and milk (powdered, unfortunately, he forgot to grab milk) which Hermann has declared, as long as Newt’s known him, to be a better morning wake up than coffee, the sick freak. He ends up making it a little too early and has to guiltily tip it out and re-make it just before 7:30.

But 7:30 comes and goes with no Hermann. Shit. What if he’s unwell? Should he text him? But will he even want to hear from Newt? He debates it as it ticks closer to 8, when his worry finally wins. He is literally pulling his phone from his pocket when the lab door swings open to reveal Hermann, his parka zipped all the way up (can he even see?) with two brown and white takeaway cups in a cardboard tray in one hand, while his other is white-knuckled around his cane. He grunts, and Newt runs over and takes the tray from his hand, relieved to see him.

“I don’t understand how it can get so hot out there so quickly. It was positively freezing when I left,” Hermann bemoans as he desperately tugs his zipper down and open, revealing his brown oversized grandpa sweater and sweaty face. Newt is going to roast this fool for that completely stupid statement.

“Sexy,” blurts out instead, horrifyingly sincere, and Hermann’s face crinkles up like someone had waved a particularly strongly smelling Kaiju sample under his nose (which Newt didn't intimately know because he’s done it to Hermann before, definitely not).

“Don’t make fun of me,” Hermann mutters, all grumpy, mouth turned down, as he shrugs his parka off completely. Newt loves that face.

“I’m not! Nothing sexier than a man stripping after handing me coffee,” Newt says, gesturing to the coffee in question. Oh my God, why won’t he keep his stupid mouth shut?! The tips of Hermann’s ears go a deeper pink, and he says, “Yes, well. It is for you,” which does finally shut Newt’s overactive mouth up.

“Really?” He asks, surprised. Upon closer inspection, he realises that it’s from the tiny coffee van that drives out near to the ‘dome sometimes and is subsequently hugely popular among its residents. That also makes it almost impossible to get, because it's only there for so long, and the lines are long because the Jaeger pilots (who are almost always up too early for training) get there first, and it can be a bit expensive (real coffee, not the three-in-one powdered coffee-milk-and-sugar garbage that is the ‘dome staple, is more expensive than ever, much to the benefit of developing countries who export it and can kind of make up for the costs of breach damages and also colonisation and climate change. Newt can’t morally begrudge that, even though it sucks for his caffeine addiction). Hermann must have gotten up even earlier than Newt to get in line for this.

“Well, one is for me,” Hermann states, taking one cup out of the tray and taking a sip, sighing happily and moving to his desk. Newt takes his own, and takes a sip while flinging the tray into the recycle bin near the doors like a frisbee. It takes a moment for him to fully realise what it is.

“Dude, is this...is this a mocha?” Holy shit.

“Yes. I know you’re not the biggest fan, but I thought you’d appreciate it.”

Newt is surprised Hermann had remembered that: he hadn’t been the biggest fan of mochas prior to K-Day, once writing to Hermann his hottest take: that a mocha is simply a sad hot chocolate. But chocolate is also a hot commodity now, and the combination of two of his favourite substances is melting his mind. He feels light on his feet; he can’t remember the last time he had one. “This is amazing, thank you so much. This must have cost you, like twenty whole US dollars dude, that’s insane-“ but when he comes out of his sugar/caffeine trance, he realises Hermann is staring at the plate of little pastries on his desk.

“Oh, uh, that’s for you,” Newt says awkwardly, taking another sip to hide how he feels like he’s about to explode from anxiety. Hermann fixes him with The Stare. Jesus.

“Did you clean the lab?” He asks, and Newt just nods. They stare at each other for a good twenty seconds while Newt psyches himself up. Come on, he tells himself, it’s punk rock to talk about your feelings! Bad ass to admit your mistakes! Do it! DO IT!

“I’m sorry for yesterday,” he finally says, in a big rush. “It was uncalled for and I-I was a huge dick. I’m seriously sorry, man.”

Hermann, who had still been a little tense, almost completely softens. He looks again at the pastries before turning back to Newt. He looks at him exactly like he’s just seen something beautiful, which Newt also knows intimately because he saw it when they managed to catch an actually visible meteor shower one night, and Hermann had quietly told him all sorts of facts that Newt pretended not to know. To have it turned on him makes Newt want to run, or cough, but he just takes a sip from his coffee and looks at Hermann’s sweater.

After a moment, Hermann quietly says, “Would you mind awfully checking over an equation I wrote the other day? I want to be certain it’s all correct.”

It’s Hermann’s way of saying “I’m sorry too, and I forgive you.” Newt breaks into the biggest smile he’s had since the whole coughing-up-flowers thing began and he feels like he might just burn up and become a bright sun of happiness, existing just to give Hermann a stable gravity field. It’s a silly thought.

“Sure,” Newt says, and walks to sit next to Hermann and do math.

Miraculously, he doesn’t have a coughing fit all day.

Later, when he’s alone in his room, the leftover happy feeling he’d been enjoying seeps out of him in a sudden rush, replaced with a kind of horrid emptiness. Newt is good for a particular kind of enthusiasm and energy that, along with his intellect, makes him temporarily desirable to be around. He’s perfected a mask of confidence that makes people praise him for being so self confident in the face of adversity. He doesn’t know why; he’s no Hermann after all, who’d survived a childhood of touch starvation and only barely being enough, but at some point it’d become the only way for Newt to survive. He’s really gotta stop being so...much. Being fully himself is a dangerous endeavour. Hermann must have felt particularly sorry for him, especially to let him check his equation, as if he needed that help, though who knows why he pitied him especially when it was Newt who was the problem and really what even is the point anymore -

Another coughing fit overtakes him. It’s particularly painful, and he coughs up blood along with a whole flower - his first one. It’s changed again; now it's beautiful big petals that start light pink before becoming darker pink on their ends. He adds another illustration to his little journal. He’s getting faster at searching for them now, and lying on his belly, he finds them to be Lathyrus odoratus or the sweet pea. They were cross-bred and cultivated in Victorian times to be more sweet smelling, which just makes him think of Mendel and the pea plants, which is kind of funny considering, you know, his line of work. According to Wikipedia, they mean gratitude and tenderness. Newt strokes the petals, soft and wet and bloody, and thinks that makes sense, after today.

They also mean farewell, which Newt would rather not think about.

Newt hadn’t fully understood that Hanahaki would actually kill him until he woke up one night on his back in bed with his skinny jeans hanging off his left ankle and no recollection of passing out. When he looks in the mirror on the back of his door he looks grey and lifeless. It’s kind of shocking to see.

The thing is Newt has lived with the idea of death for a very long time. He wakes up most days after Trespasser smashed its way through the Golden Gate Bridge wondering if this would be the day the world ended. Before that, he’d been suicidal often enough that he’d spent a lot of time thinking about his own death. Seeing it before him like this is a different thing, though.

It’s still not quite enough to get him to go to medical. Instead, he pulls his jeans back on and goes to the lab. It’s quiet and eerie without Hermann to yell at him. He goes to the back of his side and slowly, with much effort, clears off his barely functional x-ray machine.

He’d inherited it from medical when they got a new one after years of begging, and he’d tinkered with it enough to keep it working. He uses it infrequently these days; when he’d first gotten it he’d x-rayed all the samples he could get his hands on until Hermann, who’d spent most of that time being ushered in and out of the lab, made him sign an agreement (an actual agreement on paper and signed in pen and everything like it was the Middle Ages!) that he would only use it when he absolutely needed to, which wasn’t that often, actually. He’d turned it into a spare storage bench instead.

It takes him a lot more time than it should because he’s not “trained”, but also because he has to work out the best way to get a chest x-ray because he doesn’t have a machine specifically for that, and to minimise his incidental exposure, and actually start up the machine while also being in it and staying still. And also, you know, stopping to gasp for breath. He does get it done, eventually.

Exhausted, he examines his own lungs. He puts on his scientist voice: posteroanterior chest x-ray of a 34 year-old male, lower left lobe showing diffuse shadowing. He already knows the cause, at least, but it does mean that it’s a significant blockage that’s decreasing his lung capacity. Why hadn’t he started tracking it this way sooner? He’d be able to compare, then.

But honestly, even if he had, it wouldn’t help. No one really understood the mechanisms by which it worked, or could counteract it. It was all useless; all he could do was watch it grow. In the war against the Kaiju, it was Hermann and bureaucracy that was stopping him from achieving success by listening to his perfectly correct theories. Here, it was science itself that was letting him down. And also, you know, whatever had come through from the Anteverse. But Newt had had success understanding the Kaiju, why not this?

If Newt was going to die, he had hoped it would be dramatically and heroically. In his fantasies, it's him singlehandedly saving the world after drifting with a Kaiju brain, while Hermann strokes his forehead and Pentecost declares to the world that Newt’s the biggest rock star of all time and also he’s won every Nobel prize, as Newt peacefully and painlessly fades out, and Hermann cries at his funeral and tells everyone that Newt was the greatest mind of any generation, greater even than Hermann's, and that Newt always beat him when they played chess and that he loved him more than words can ever say.

Look, it's Newt’s morbid death fantasy, it can be as ridiculous and false as he wants, okay?

More realistically, he hoped that he would go out doing some good, like protecting Hermann from something, or at least in a way that was maybe funny and would get him into the news, like accidentally drinking Kaiju blue instead of his coffee. He’d never considered it would be the stupid magic flower love disease.

Fuck Newt’s life.

And he is going to die from it, he realises quietly.

Hermann will never love him back (and yes, here at 3am, staring at a shitty self-taken x-ray of the physical manifestation of his love, completely exhausted and defeated, he can admit that it’s Hermann, of course its Hermann, it’s been him forever, maybe since the first letter, the stupid emotionless math robot of a man whom Newt has never stopped loving). Hermann has maybe learned to tolerate him and make peace, but since that first meeting when Hermann turned The Stare on Newt’s lovesick form and his horrible screechy speech and rude behaviour and found him completely wanting, Newt’s known it's not a possibility. And Newt is self-aware enough to know that’s not strange or unique to Hermann, so he can’t even be too mad about it.

And he won’t get the lobectomy, either. This he knows is also a part of Hanahaki, a complete refusal to do the literal only thing that could cure you, and when he’d read about it he’d laughed and told himself he’d never be so silly, but here he is! He’d rather die. So, whatever, he’d better accept his imminent death.

Newt cries in the lab until day breaks, when he crawls back to his room before Hermann can show up, leaving him a note that he’s got a cold and to leave him alone.

He starts coughing up little yellow flowers he discovers are yarrow (everlasting love) and beautiful bigger ones he already recognises as marigolds (sorrow, despair, pain).

He no longer has the energy to track their scientific details in his journal.

Dying is, unfortunately, very difficult to hide. After his crying jag and subsequent 5am bedtime, Newt wakes with some difficulty in the afternoon, and upon sitting up immediately vomits into the bin next to his bed (still yarrow and marigolds, but something he suspects are also red roses which, ugh, if he has to die does he have to go out a cliche?). He must be coughing them up and swallowing them in his sleep now. Not a great sign.

The mirror shows him paler and greyer than ever, even under the tattoos, with his hair slick from grease build up. His face has purple splotches from where he’s burst capillaries from coughing and his eyes are bloodshot, having suffered a similar fate. His lips are chapped and blue-ish.

He might die today.

He’s also unbelievably thirsty. He has no water in his room, and he really, really wants cold water anyway which means going to the mess hall. He checks his phone for the time and discovers two things. First, it’s 2pm which means it’s risky but no one will likely be in the mess. Second, Hermann has been blowing up his phone while he’s been asleep. Newt flicks back to read through them from the start:

HerMANn

Saw your note, I’m sorry to hear you’re still unwell. Please do message if you need anything.

Received 7:34

HerMANn

Unless you’re contagious. Then I will arrange something.

Received 7:38

HerMANn

Also I sincerely hope my name is no longer “Math Robot” in your phone, or some other pun on my name. And also that you’ve changed your background. It’s unprofessional.

Received 7:46

HerMANn

And don’t argue that it can’t be unprofessional if it’s not work related. You bring it into the lab with the ringer on full blast, making it a professional issue of your own making.

Received 7:49

HerMANn

Are you very unwell Newton?

Received 9:45

HerMANn

I was not serious when I said the thing about you being contagious. I will always to be in your service when you need it.

Received 10:34

HerMANn

And do not make fun of how I phrased that, I am trying to be sincere and kind which you often complain I am not. So it would be unkind to make fun of me, when I am trying to do what you want.

Received 10:36

HerMANn

I have gone to lunch, in case you come into the lab and can’t find me, or need me at all. I can bring you food, if you’d like.

Received 12:32

HerMANn

Mako is at lunch today, and sends her best wishes, and hopes that you are back soon so you can discuss some animé or something? I am unsure. I told her to text you.

Received 12:51

Mako Mori, Future Jaeger Pilot

Hello Newt, I hope you get well soon. I watched Your Name on your recommendation and I did enjoy it. I feel silly that I avoided it for so long, but we can perhaps talk about that soon and you can give me more recommendations. Take care!

Received 12:55

Tendo Choi, Cool Guy

Hey Newt heard you weren’t feeling well, j-science all hope you feel better soon!! But feel better soon also because you’re worrying Hermann and the man might explode if he’s under too much stress, but I’d have to check the stats ;) Gotta have a game night soon! Enjoy this pic of my boy crawling!!!

Received 13:02

HerMANn

Newton, I am very concerned. Please message me when you get this. You have often been unwell recently, I worry that medical was incorrect in assuming it was simply asthma. I will take you down again this afternoon.

Received 13:10

HerMANn

If this is about the other day, I hope you know I did not mean what I said. I was very angry and you also said hurtful things, but I regret it. I do not wish for you to die.

Recieved 13:26

HerMANn

Nor do I believe your obsession with Kaiju is romantic or sexual. Simply misguided.

Received 13:28

HerMANn

I found your journal and x-ray. I am coming to your quarters right now.

Received 14:02

Oh fuck. Newt quickly texts back:

sorry overslept, was looking @ old data, dw dw

Sent 14:04

And then, for good measure:

don’t come will cough or vom on u

Sent 14:04

But it’s too late. This has been a long time coming. He’s still in his clothes from yesterday, so he barrels out of his room and heads straight to the mess hall.

He doesn’t really remember it but he somehow makes it there successfully without being intercepted by any furious Hermanns. It’s empty, and the workers are out the back, he guesses. He opens a communal drink fridge where he picks up a glass jug of water and begins to down it. Logically, he knows it’s too much and he needs to stop or he’ll vomit, but also he can’t seem to stop. He’s nearly completely drained the bottle when he hears voices and turns and oh fuck, of course, its Mako and Hermann.

They don’t see him at first; they’re having a quiet conversation with worried frowns on their faces, but Newt starts coughing as soon as he sees Hermann and they both jump and stare at him. And he knows what he looks like, so he knows why they’re staring but really, can they not?

His insecurities don’t really get a chance to explore that thought further before his coughing becomes so strong and painful that he drops the jug, where it shatters on the floor, and he grabs a table for support. He’s so focused on not passing out into the glass that he doesn’t even realise that Hermann and Mako have rushed to his side and are patting his back and saying comforting things.

“Call the medics,” Hermann says desperately to Mako.

“No,” Newt spits out along with a number of yarrow flowers all over the steel of the table. All three of them stare at them. Hermann grips Newt’s arm tighter.

“Newt, do you have Hanahaki Disease?” Mako asks him directly, because she is Pentecost’s daughter and does not play around.

“Of course not,” Newt lies shakily, and then immediately vomits all that terrible, irresistible water and yarrow and roses and marigolds (how are they still in there?) all over Hermann’s legs and shoes.

“Warned you,” Newt says to the table.

Hermann, to Newt’s complete surprise, takes it in stride.

“Sit,” he tells Newt.

“No.”

“I will go fetch the medics,” Mako says and directs all that Jaeger training to sprint faster than Newt suspects he could comprehend even if he wasn’t probably dying.

“Let me go,” Newt says, trying to shake free of Hermann but instead nearly falling down, giving Hermann the opportunity to manhandle him onto the bench.

“I won’t,” Hermann says and he’s giving him The Stare, “I can’t, I—“

“Don’t look at me like that,” Newt gasps out, “I know it’s pathetic—“ he’s cut off by another round of nasty coughing.

“It’s not pathetic,” Hermann says shakily, and when Newt looks at him he realises Hermann is crying. Hermann sits down opposite Newt.

“Who?” Hermann whispers.

This is the Worst Case Scenario. Newt really, really doesn’t want to die anyway but being rejected and then dying? Yeesh.

“I wasn’t lying. I am fundamentally unlovable,” Newt cough-laughs.

Hermann grabs both of his shoulders. “Ridiculous!” He half-yells, and if he were a cartoon his tears would be steaming off his face from how angry and worked up he’s getting, “You are loveable. Everyone is fond of you, because you are so easy to love, even when you’re ridiculous.”

“That’s not how that works,” Newt gasps out tiredly, “I know what I am.” Newt gestures at himself. “Too much.”

Hermann groans frustratedly.

“Untrue, with no evidence. Even when you are excessive, you are never too much, and never in the way you think, apparently!”

“I have evidence,” Newt says tiredly, “Called Dr Mr Mann.”

Hermann looks perplexed for half a second before realising what exactly he means.

“Surely I am evidence to the contrary,” Hermann says, frowning, “Or else I would be much more upset about you ruining my shoes.”

Dear God, he’s trying to joke. Newt really is dying.

“You,” Newt takes a half-gasp, “Hated me on sight, and still—“ he’s cut off by his own horrible coughing. His vision whites out, and he coughs up a bloody marigold. His lungs feel scratchy, as if the growth within is rapidly growing and expanding. He can feel something sharp and pokey in his lung; how long now until they burst through the tissue and collapse it completely? Will they keep growing right out his chest, puncturing through muscle and bone, or erupt out of his esophagus up into the air and blossom freely, while Hermann is forced to watch as Newt’s creepy love for him manifests literally? Will they use his own flowers at his funeral?

“Just tell me who,” Hermann croaks desperately, “I will tell them, I will convince them. Or we’ll get the surgery,” Newt shakes his head frantically, “I know you don’t want it but it’d be for the best. Please trust me and tell me and I will fix it.” He says it with such conviction that Newt wants to laugh. It’s sweet. This is exactly why Newt loves him, his wonderful mathematical genius, who has never seen a problem he didn’t think he could solve. Newt wants to believe him.

Newt lifts a hand to Hermann’s cheek, cupping it gently and smiling meaningfully at him. Hermann looks so surprised that if it hadn’t already happened, it’d take Newt’s breath away.

Then Hermann completely destroys the moment by scoffing.

“Oh, it’s not me. Don’t lie and say it’s me. Who is it really? Is it Pentecost? Or...oh Lord, please tell me it’s not Mako.”

Newt has never frowned so hard in his life. What is this complete idiot on about? One of the most brilliant humans alive and he’s blathering about complete nonsense. He lifts his other hand, so he has Hermann’s face in both and brings it towards his own, bringing their mouths together. It’s an extremely chaste closed mouth kiss, extremely awkward, and Hermann makes a face as he pulls away, which is fair because Newt just vomited but also ouch.

“But it can’t be me,” Hermann says, dumbstruck, “Because I love you.”

It’s like something electric burns its way through Newt. He stares at Hermann.

“No you don’t,” Newt croaks. Hermann stares right back, the tips of his ears going red again.

“I know my own mind, thank you, Newton. Of course I love you, you fool! Sometimes you drive me beyond bonkers, and I feel as if I’m going out of my mind, but I’d rather that than anything else. I am better with you. I,” Hermann pauses and takes in Newt’s face, “I had hoped maybe my actions would tell you but that was...Oh and the things I’ve said recently...I do love you, Newton, very much.” He kisses Newt’s mouth again, and then his nose, and Newt is absolutely elated, at which point he loses complete control of his body and falls into darkness.

When Newt wakes up, he’s lying down with little plastic things in his nose and he’s all alone. It’s cold and unpleasant and makes his nose itch, so he pulls them out and tries to sit up, which is a mistake. His head hurts as if he’s been aggressively headbanging and his body feels a bit like a sponge someone has squeezed completely dry. On the other hand, he feels better than he has in a while, so he can’t complain too much. He’s in medical, of course, with a blanket up around his shoulders and way too much beeping for his head’s comfort. There’s a cannula in his arm that is connected to the fuzzy thing he assumes is his IV. He also doesn’t have his glasses on, obviously, though he wishes he did. He’s tired, but he doesn’t want to go to sleep. He can’t remember how he got here, but he remembers Hermann kissing him, and oh wow.

He wonders if he’s going to have to have surgery, or maybe he’s already had it. But Hermann had kissed him and said he loved Newt, so maybe…

Or maybe it was a lie. It seemed almost out of character for Hermann. Maybe it wasn’t real. A hallucination, perhaps. Or even—

The curtain that surrounds his bed makes the unpleasant skidding sound of plastic on metal as it’s pulled open and Newt hears the clack-stomp of Hermann’s gait just as he appears, staring at Newt. Or, Newt assumes anyway; he can’t actually see that far without glasses.

“I sit on these horrible chairs for hours waiting for you to wake up,” Hermann says in the tone he only brings out when he’s particularly sick of Newt’s shit, “And when I finally give in and go to use the bathroom, you wake up.”

“Sorry,” Newt croaks out as Hermann clack-stomps closer.

“Oh it’s fine, don’t apologise. I just hate that—did you pull your nasal prongs out? Put them back in!” But before Newt can do anything, Hermann hooks the tube back up over his ears and slides them into his nostrils.

“It makes my snot go all cold and dry,” Newt complains.

“Charming. But you let your illness go too long, and now you need oxygen, so you can’t complain. If you’d just seen medical in the first place…” Hermann trails off. Newt wishes he could see his face properly.

“Do I need surgery?”

“I hope not,” Hermann strokes his cheek, which is an exquisite feeling, “We’ll need to talk about all this, of course.“

Newt can’t help but cut Hermann off.

“I love you, Hermann. I’ve loved you since the first letters, probably, or maybe the first time we videocalled, or-or, maybe when you put down the tape in our lab or maybe—“

“Newton,” Hermann says quietly.

“Okay, sorry, but I love your face and your brain and the quiet moments when it’s just us in the lab and we look at each other and I know I’m going to love you forever. And I don’t understand why it’s happening now or what changed and I’m sorry, but I do love you even when you’re completely insufferable.”

Hermann scoffs, but it’s a gentle thing, and now he’s stroking Newt’s eyebrow with his thumb. He’s silent, and when he starts talking he’s quiet, and sounds so sad Newt wants to implode with guilt.

“When they brought you in here, your oxygen saturation was so low and I thought, oh. He’s going to die,” he stops for a moment to collect himself before continuing, “And I thought, he never knew. I’m going to outlive the man I love, because I’m just no good at...at anything.” He stops, defeated.

“No, Hermann, it’s not...this isn’t on you! It was me being ridiculous. It wouldn’t have been your fault.”

“I don’t know that I believe that,” Hermann whispers, “But I’ll try.” He kisses Newt’s forehead. “Try and sleep now, we’ll talk more later.”

“I’m not that tired,” Newt says, but his eyes have been closed for the last minute or so. Hermann hums, disbelieving.

“Good night, Newton. I love you.”

“Love you too.”

He gets what feels like a few minutes of sleep when the curtain is being ripped back again, but Hermann is sitting next to his bed doing something on his tablet, so it must have been longer.

“Dr Geiszler, how are you feeling?” Says a doctor he recognises from other trips down to medical but couldn’t remember the name of if his life depended on it, which it very may well do, along with a group of other doctors, he guesses.

"About as okay as I can be," Newt replies.

The main doc looks at Hermann, and asks, “Are you alright if Dr Gottleib stays?”

“I’d prefer it,” Newt says.

“Alright. I’m Dr Hui, I’ll be in charge of your care today.” And then before Newt can even feel bad about forgetting her name, the doctors begin doing a series of poking and prodding, and asking invasive questions. Then they disappear for a bit and Hermann holds his hand, which is very nice, and then they come back.

“Our concern is that you still have chest sounds consistent with obstruction,” Dr Hui explains, “So we’ve ordered another x-ray to double check what’s going on.”

“I did an x-ray you can use,” Newt says.

“Ah. Yes, thank you, we will use it as a comparison if we can,” she says bemused, which, rude! Newt did his best on his own while unwell, and he opens his mouth to tell her so. Hermann’s internal Newton-Causing-Trouble alarm seems to sound, so he cuts Newt off.

“Do you suspect it’s not gone, then?” Hermann asks.

“We don’t know yet,” Dr Hui says evenly, “It could be a secondary infection like pneumonia. Time and the x-ray will help us understand.”

He gets the x-ray. And then they wait, both for the images to process and to see if Newt coughs up anything else. Hermann gets shooed away, and Newt sleeps until he comes back, bringing Newt’s phone and laptop and various things he thought might cheer him up. They’re watching cat videos on Newt’s laptop when it finally happens.

It’s not the worst coughing fit he’s had, but it’s not great either. Eventually he coughs up a long dense group of tiny red flowers.

“Oh Newton,” Hermann says sadly.

“I’m sorry,” Newt says, “I don’t understand. I’m not, I’m not poly, I don’t…”

“You have nothing to apologise for,” Hermann kisses him, “We’ll figure it out.”

They spend the last of their visiting hours together looking up the flowers. Hermann adds an illustration of the newest one to Newt’s journal (he’d added the yarrow, marigolds and roses too, the softie). He, thankfully, is also no good at illustration.

Hermann shows him an app that uses photos to identify plants and if Newt had the energy he'd feel silly for not thinking of it earlier. It's Amaranthus caudatus or kiwicha or loves-lies-bleeding, a hardy, edible plant from India and South America, whose beautiful red colour comes from betacyanins. In the Victorian era, it meant hopeless love or hopelessness.

“I don’t know what to do with that information,” Newt confesses.

“Me either,” Hermann says and kisses his hand, “Well, I’ll keep telling you I love you now, if that helps.”

“It certainly doesn’t hurt,” Newt says.

When Hermann is finally kicked out for the night, Newt opens his phone and messages Mako:

Sorry u saw me vomit 2day hope ur ok

Sent 23:38

Then he changes Hermann’s name in his phone, tries watching some more cute cat videos, and then immediately gives up and messages Hermann:

2day sucked but in some ways im glad it happened

Sent 23:46

Who’s man? MY MAN

I am as well.

Received 23:46

Who’s man? MY MAN

As always, I refuse to believe it is faster for you to type like that. You have a spellchecker. Do you turn it off?

Received 23:47

haha u love me

Sent 23:47

Who’s man? MY MAN

Yes, I do.

Received 23:47

It’s surreal, but he can’t complain. He’s already sick of that name though, and he’s mid-changing it when he gets a reply from Mako.

Mako Mori, Future Jaeger Pilot

I am not distressed by vomit, but by you being so unwell. I hope you get better soon Newt. I mean it.

Received 23:51

It’s a nice message, but it twists something within him. He texts back:

Thx <3

Sent 23:52

And then, because he’s been brave once today, he messages Hermann:

Do u ever think everyone is lying about liking u?

Sent 23:55

Hermann <3

Honestly? Quite frequently. If you hadn’t been coughing up flowers, I’d worry it of you. I’m not lying about my affection for you though.

Received 23:56

This is a lot easier in text.

It’s not really that that I’m worried about, It’s more like, eventually everyone is going to see right through me and they’re just waiting until they can get all the use out of me. And maybe they’re right and i am actually useless in the end and the world is ending anyway and even u see through me so what’s the point amirite haha

Sent 00:03

He nearly jumps out of his skin when Hermann immediately calls him.

“Don’t try to put off serious things by adding 'haha',” Hermann says as soon as Newt picks up, “What do you mean I see through you?”

“This was a lot easier in text,” Newt mumbles, and then sighs, “Sometimes you look at me all intense and serious, and it’s like, I don’t know, like you see through me and you’re not happy about it.”

“I can’t even think...can you give me an example?”

“Uh…” Newt thinks until he remembers, “Oh, when you brought the coffees and you saw the breakfast and the lab. You looked at me, with The Stare like, ‘oh it’s still Newt, I hate that guy.’”

Hermann splutters for a moment and then says, “One, that is a poor imitation of my voice and either get better at it or abandon it entirely, and two, please do not attempt to read my mind as if we drift everyday. Three, I think that...I think that’s my…” and then he mumbles something inaudible.

“What?”

“I said, I think that’s what J-Science has taken to calling my ‘I love Newt’ look,” he forces out, loud enough that Newt pulls his phone away from his ear.

“No, it’s The Stare,” Newt argues, mostly because he’s surprised and also because he has no idea what to say about this revelation.

“Newton!! That’s just my face!” Hermann yells, and Newt bursts into laughter, “It isn’t funny!”

“I just love you so much dude,” Newt laughs, “Even your confusing face.”

“Excuse me,” says a nurse, peaking through the curtain, “As happy as we are for you, you need to quiet down,”

“Sorry,” Newt says sheepishly, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow Herms. Love you.”

“I-love you too—“ but Newt hangs up and settles down.

Hermann <3

Newton, I’m sorry I ever made you feel that I hated you. Lots of people like you, and even if some don’t, you are wonderful. I’m scared the world will end too, but I’m glad I’m with you. I do love you. Also, don’t ever call me "Herms".

Received 00:12

Newts tired, so he sends back:

luv u 2 dude <3 talk soon

Sent 00:13

He’s been convinced for so long that The Stare was a sign of hatred, and now, surprise! It’s actually a sign of love, apparently. Does that mean Hermann’s loved him from the beginning too? That’s as depressing as it is exciting.

It’s a strange revelation, one that feels like he’s waking from a fever. Not because Hermann’s love has cured him, because that’s a pipe dream and false anyway, if his flowers are anything to go by. No, it’s more like he’d had this fundamental way of looking at the world that he’d been sure was correct, but suddenly wasn’t.

Newt fiddled with the blue hospital blanket, rough but comforting somehow. He could see it clearly now, the path of going more and more into his own head, believing everything was a sign that not only was he broken, but that it was visible to everyone, who hated him for it. And it’s like he’s been going against his own values or ideology to get to that conclusion; he fundamentally believes that there is evidence of reality that is observable and collectable, even if it’s not always exact. He thinks about that with his samples, aware that while they're objective evidence, they’re flawed in ways he can never truly correct for, and maybe even in ways he doesn’t even know about or can control for. But in his mind, he’d become convinced he could intuit peoples thoughts over even trying to find something objective. Everyone does that, he knows, but he’d let it become the very foundation for the way he understood the world. His own perceptions had warped to the point he just accepted everything at face value, without ever being curious about whether it was the truth or not. All those years ago he'd thought Hermann had hated him, and he never bothered to see if the evidence had changed. Even when it was right in front of him.

Ugh, he hates reflexivity. It sucks when he realises he’s been a dummy.

He tries not to be too mad at himself; as much as he loves Kaiju, the whole destruction of humanity thing stresses him out a lot. That probably doesn’t give him a stable headspace to work from.

Look, maybe he is broken and weird and everyone knows. So is literally everyone else. And even if he is broken and has sharp edges, at least he’s trying, right? And he can’t always make things okay, but he can keep trying. People, somehow, like him anyway, and he has to try and trust that not everyone is lying all of the time.

Maybe that fear isn’t a helpful thing he needs to take with him right now. He’s gonna be a shitty person sometimes and be too much but he'll keep trying to make amends or whatever he has to do, and maybe that’ll be enough. And he's probably going to change his mind and convince himself everyone still hates him and he's better off alone, and maybe that's okay too. He'll just keep trying and eventually, maybe he can change it. Maybe even make something new.

And then there is a burning sensation through his chest and he thinks, oh never mind, guess I’m going to die instead! Then the coughing starts. This really is the worst fit he’s had, and he struggles to press the call button. He coughs and coughs and wants to scream, and someone is behind him patting his back and then there’s is an awful ripping feeling, and then a sense of heaviness in his chest and something gross and too big traveling up his throat and the force of his cough sends it across to the end of his bed.

It’s the biggest ball of phlegm he’s personally seen, with a little root system in it. What the hell.

“What sex is it?” He croaks out to the medical staff. Dr Hui just looks at him, unimpressed.

When he’s well enough to be released back to his own quarters, Tendo pushes his wheelchair while Hermann walks next to them. At the elevator, Mako meets them and hands him a ‘Get Well’ card: “From the Marshall and I,” she says, smiling kindly.

When Tendo drops them off, he happily tells Newt, “You better be better before game night! Only your support is keeping us from a full game of Risk, and I just don't know if I can do another 3 month game.”

“I’ll do my best,” Newt laughs and smiles back.

The world is still ending, but Hermann is giving him The I Love Newt Stare and Newt is okay with it, for now.

“You wanna have a nap?” he asks, lying on his bed in his hospital pyjamas. Hermann nods, and shucks off his jumper and, after hesitating for a moment, down to his boxers before lying next to Newt and pulling the covers up over them both. It’s not comfortable, per say, because its a smallish bed but Hermann weaves his fingers through Newt’s, and Newt thinks he will do anything in his power to keep the world, and Hermann, safe.

Still.

“I love you so much dude, but you still know your theory is wrong, right?”

“Newton, I swear!”