Work Text:
***
With me it is quite stark: I miss you more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal.
(Vita Sackville-West in a letter to Virginia Woolf, dated January 1927)
***
Hermann blinks a few times, making sense of his surroundings.
He’s in a field. Large, expansive- some hills, visible way out to the east, and woods to the south-west. The wind whistles through tall grass that goes just above Hermann's knees, and the sun is high in the sky. Hermann hears birds, somewhere, and it’s all quite nice, but something is missing.
“Newton?” he calls.
“Hey, herms.”
Hermann turns around. Newton stands behind him, looking- well. Good. He looks good. He’s got a soft white collared shirt perplexingly both unbuttoned to his navel and tucked into the waist of a pair of loose slacks, patterned chest standing out against the pale fabric. His lapels and loose sleeves billow slightly in the breeze, along with his soft hair, which has grown out in the month-and-change he’s spent in the PPDC’s custody, not to be trusted with scissors anywhere near him. It usually adds to how dishevelled he looks during the day, but Hermann doesn’t mind it right now.
“This is nice,” he says, glancing down to himself appreciatively, and Hermann hums in agreement. He feels moderately underdressed in his blue bedclothes, but doesn’t mourn it too significantly. This world- whatever it is -never allows for a change in Hermann's appearance, just plopping him down in whatever he’s fallen asleep in, whereas Newton seems to come built into everything. He’s used to it by now.
“Should we go sit?” Newton asks, nodding toward a grandiose weeping willow a few paces away that Hermann’s somehow missed (that, or it didn’t appear until Newton needed it to). Hermann nods, and Newton proffers an arm for Hermann that he takes, perhaps leaning into Newton a touch more heavily than he needs to with his cane. Newton doesn’t seem to mind.
“How’s the research coming?” Newton asks, as they ease down to the ground, leaning against the wide base of the tree’s trunk.
“Newton,” Hermann warns, voice low. They’ve tested the limits of this world before- even thinking too intensely about the precursors brings everything to an end instantaneously, sometimes for days at a time.
“I know, I know. But you don’t have to talk about-” he gestures with his head to nothing “-you could just tell me what else is going on! There’s a whole world of science out there, man.”
“I’m afraid my studies are devoted entirely to one field for the moment,” Hermann tells him.
“Aw, Hermann. You sure know the way to a guy’s heart.”
Hermann rolls his eyes, but anxiety about the direction Newton is steering the conversation in thrums beneath his fingertips. “Please, could we talk about something else?”
“Yeah, yeah. Sorry. I’m just- I'm so bored , dude. There’s nothing for me to fucking do, and it’s not like I can just have a casual chat with-”
The dream slams to black. Hermann is left, for several seconds, in a vast expanse of darkness with a ringing in his ears, before he awakes with a start in his bed.
Bugger.
Hermann still can’t really explain the whole situation in a way that makes sense.
It went like this: a few short days after Newton’s capture (technically less Newton’s capture, and more capture of the precursors that Newton was accessory to, but the situation is complicated enough as is), Hermann started having highly lucid dreams where, in increasingly odd settings, Newton would insist to him that I swear, herms, it’s me, it’s actually me. I don’t know how to explain it and I don’t know how to prove it, but it’s me, just Newt, in your brain. And Hermann would ignore him and simply, achingly, indulge in the exceptionally convincing fantasies his subconscious was conjuring for him.
And then it all changed.
Hermann visits Newton every day. The precursors, mostly, but Newton’s in there some days- although less so now than he had been toward the start. Hermann keeps count, like the inverse of the old war clock, and it’s been nine days since Newton has been visible through the cold exterior. But this was weeks ago, when Newton would show his face almost every time Hermann came by, for minutes at a time (he usually hovered between five and ten, but seventeen was his record). He’d been looking at Hermann in that open, earnest way that the precursors can’t replicate, despite having the exact same muscles at their disposal.
“It’s me, Hermann.”
“I know it is, Newton,” he’d said, patiently. Newton is often confused and disoriented when they speak, but he shook his head furiously. His hands, restrained for when he was not himself, twitched, as though aching to run his hands over his face or through his hair, as he’d been one to do so many years back.
“No, not that. I mean- it is me, right now. But that’s not what I'm talking about,” he huffed, and Hermann was trying to maintain his patience, but he could tell by the uneven pace to the way he was speaking that Newton was starting to fade, and he wanted to know what was bothering him so intensely.
“What, then?”
“At night. It’s-it’s me. It’s been me. I wasn’t even sure if it was you, but I think- I think it is, and I’m-”
“It is me,” Hermann interrupted, his mouth picking up the slack for his overburdened brain on instinct. “Newton, it is me. I didn’t want to bring it up unless I was sure it was safe, but it’s me.”
Newton had smiled at him, the overwhelming fondness of his expression sustaining a flitter in Hermann's chest long after the precursors had taken the reins once more.
So he doesn’t know why it happens.
Some sort of abnormally delayed ghost drift had been the initial theory, but Hermann's done extensive research. He’s read every single book, paper, interview, and any other academic resource or firsthand account he could get his hands on. He’s also spoken to several pilots directly, both current and former, including a slightly amused yet sympathetic Mako Mori, over a call to her personal number on a particularly sleepless night.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Gottlieb,” she’d said, voice gentle, after he’d explained it all to her (somewhat reluctantly- he doesn’t know what could come of this information getting out, and he doesn’t want to think about it). “I’ve never experienced anything like that. I could- I could ask Raleigh, maybe? About him and Yancy? But I have to be honest, I think his answer will be the same.”
“That’s alright, Miss Mori,” he’d said, with a sigh “Thank you.”
“Of course,” a pause. “The circumstances of your drift, though- they’re highly unusual. When you consider both the sustained bridge that Dr. Geiszler was able to form with the precursors and the minuscule door you would have opened to both the precursors and Dr. Geiszler in Hong Kong, combined with the weakened, almost untethered state of Dr. Geiszler’s conscious right now… I wouldn’t say that there’s no precedent for it.”
“My working theory is along those lines, yes,” Hermann says. “I just wish there was a wider pool to study.”
“It only happens when you’re asleep, right?”
Hermann hums.
“Only one way to find out, then. Get some sleep, Hermann.”
He smiles, slightly, at the use of his first name. The distaste of formality had always been Newton’s game- insisting that a sixteen-year-old Mako call him by his nickname within moments of their first meeting, much to the chagrin of her father. But the familiar nature of the term is a comforting sound at this hour.
They say goodnight, and Hermann spares a glance toward his watch, finding it nearly two in the morning. He makes his way to bed, and he and Newton spend the night on a small sailboat over Kaiju-free waters.
So they begin to experiment.
The discovery of Newton’s inability to discuss the precursors comes by accident, actually, but it snowballs from there. Newton, curled up with Hermann on a lovely leather sofa in a grandiose library, attempts to communicate the knowledge that he’s gained, and Hermann is back in his bed. He dreams for three days of his father and Otachi’s baby and all manner of other things, but Newton is absent every time.
“You’re back,” is the first thing he hears, on the fourth night. They’re on the porch of a cabin located in a small forest clearing.
(It grew, after that night, to be a relatively common setting for them.)
( It’s in Germany , Newton told Hermann, when he brought up its significance. My uncle used to take me there when I was younger. We’ll go, one day. )
(Hermann had just nodded. It’s nice to think about him and Newton, somewhere other than a sterilized grey room in the Moyulan Shatterdome, with nobody in Newton's head but Newton. Even if he’s not sure that the day will ever come.)
“I am,” he says, unsure how else to respond, how to properly articulate how quickly he’s become attached to these visits, and how much it had hurt to lose them so suddenly. Newton smiles, though, so Hermann thinks he may understand.
So they figure out the rules, slowly. It seems to be that all of this is in Newton’s head, in some far back corner that the precursors can’t touch, that’s capable of taking the shape of both memories and products of his imagination, and Hermann is capable of visiting when his mind is not otherwise occupied. Newton can change the landscape, but not enough to be able to properly control it. The precursors have enough influence that Newton cannot divulge sensitive information, but not enough that they seem to be aware of what’s going on.
But that’s a small part, really. Hermann and Newton have been without each other for years, now, since Newton had first started to slip away in those months leading up to him taking the job at Shao industries, so there’s plenty else for them to talk about. Newton turns out to be most invested in pop culture- movies, television, music, celebrities, that sort of thing.
His only resource, unfortunately, is Hermann Gottlieb.
“They just kept me so busy,” Newton explains. “I was still aware of the general world, but they didn’t really give two shits about, like… what was on TV after work. And they hate music, too, so basically the only music I listened to for years was whatever they happened to play in the grocery store. Can you imagine, herms? Me?”
“Sounds peaceful,” Hermann tells him. They’re on a cliff, overlooking some unidentified body of water. Newton wears his old leather jacket to protect from the wind that’s left his hair tousled and cheeks pink, and the sight of him laughing at the jab makes Hermann fear for his sanity.
“Not for me it wasn’t, dick. Are you sure you can’t just tape an iPod to your chest or something?”
Hermann nods. He’s tried to surprise Newton with things stuffed into his pocket, clutched in his fist, even left in his mouth, once, all to no success.
“Damn.”
“I’m sorry I can’t be of more help. I don’t really have much time to watch television, though, with my research.”
“Dude, don’t apologize. If I could choose between a million, like, cultural masterminds- if I could choose between access to my collector’s edition x-files box set and all my records and every movie ever made, and you, I'd still choose you every time.”
There are words that they’ve both been too afraid to voice, given the tentative, fragile nature of the arrangement, but it’s as much of a confession as anything.
Also, the whole thing gives Hermann an idea.
Somewhere, in a box labelled only as NG , among dozens upon dozens of carefully preserved letters, a small handful of polaroids, and a few other miscellaneous items, there is a CD.
The only issue is finding the box.
Hermann has torn apart every inch of his quarters, phoned four different people that the box could have ended up with, and is approaching a point of entertaining the notion of breaking into the decommissioned Hong Kong Shatterdome to check every corner of his long-empty former quarters, when he spares a passing glance under his bed one last time.
There, of course, tucked neatly into the far corner, is a cardboard box with two letters scrawled across the side in Sharpie.
Hermann pulls it out hastily, and coughs at the almost comical cloud of dust that rises when he opens it. Everything seems to be intact, despite its age, but there’s only one thing he’s looking for as he disrupts the neatly sorted pages.
Lars Gottlieb's funeral mix, the plastic case reads, and the disc glints up at him behind its cover.
Hermann spares a glance to the letter it had been folded in, and smiles as his eyes fall on the bottom of the page.
You probably noticed I sent a CD. Which, like, boring, old-school, whatever, but you’re such a grandpa that I don't think you’ll care. It’s just that emailing you a playlist didn’t really fit the whole letter-writing schtick, so you can make do with that.
Hermann had only listened to it once before writing back that it wasn’t really to my personal tastes, if I'm quite honest, although I appreciate that you’ve shared it, but only now is he feeling the magnitude of that appreciation.
He acquires an old radio from a bemused Tendo Choi, and is only permitted to enter Newton’s cell (he hates to call it that, but there’s no other word for it) with it after getting written permission from Mako Mori herself in the name of research.
“Good afternoon,” he says, and not-Newton doesn’t look up. They usually don’t, and Hermann’s quite fine with it- prefers it, actually. The less he’s reminded of their presence, the easier it is to speak softly to Newton, wherever he is.
He catches their attention, though, when he sits down with the radio in his lap.
“Is that a radio?”
“It is.”
They sneer, and it’s so far removed from an expression Newton would ever pull that it doesn’t even feel like it’s his body that they’re inhabiting. Like a wax figure left under hot lights for too long; a recreation of Newton drawn from memory.
“What are you gonna do with that? Draw him out with the power of love? Oh, Newton- ” they adopt a mocking lilt, a high voice with a poor caricature of Hermann’s accent “ -listen to this lovely classical piece, hear the harps and think of me, my dearest. Oh, Newton, I love you. ”
Hermann ignores them, and fiddles with a few buttons. He turns it around, speakers facing where not-Newton sits in the chair across from him, and hits play.
They make a face, somewhere between confusion and irritation, as the opening bars play and a guitar riff Hermann vaguely recalls being tormented with in Hong Kong fills the room, but it fogs over with rage relatively quickly as they realize what’s going on.
“This isn’t going to work,” they say, voice low and dangerous, and Hermann just shrugs. They’re like a particularly bratty child, he’s learned- always looking to get a rise out of whoever they can. The best weapon is complete indifference.
“I’m sure it’s not,” he says, but their wrists are twitching, always the first sign that Newton isn’t too far off.
He’s fighting , a doctor had told Hermann on the first night Newton spent under their watch, as they observed his body thrashing around in the bolted-down chair through the mirrored glass on one wall.
Newton’s head lolls forward, face blank, and Hermann knows he’s got him. It takes a moment, usually, for Newton to come back into his body, and it’s been nearly two weeks since last time. He’s not sure how long it will take, but Newton’s head rises relatively quickly with a face-splitting grin.
“You goddamn genius,” he says, and Hermann finds his laugh to be a little watery.
“Yes, well...”
“No, I'm serious, you’re a genius. How did you even know this would work?”
“I didn’t, actually. I just thought I'd give it a shot.”
The song ends, and a new one starts. Newton looks at the radio, frowning momentarily, before he looks up at Hermann, eyes wide.
“This isn’t-?”
“It is, yes.”
“You kept it?”
“I kept everything, Newton,” he says, and Newton smiles. Hermann knows he’s losing him as soon as the expression breaks out and doesn’t have a sarcastic comment tacked onto the end of it, and It’s horribly painful to lose him so soon. But he reaches his hand out to Newton’s anyways, earful he’s going to get from the guards for touching him be damned. Newton smiles down at their joined hands and leans his head back, staring at Hermann through hooded eyes.
“Thank you,” he breathes, and Hermann nods. His eyelids flutter, and Hermann draws his hand back just as Newton’s goes limp in his grasp. The precursors are back faster than usual, and they roll their eyes.
“Turn that shit off, would you? He’s gone.”
Hermann leaves the radio on until he’s out of the room, the door falling shut behind him.
They’re at the cabin in Germany again, that night. Newton sits next to him on the porch swing, his head resting on Hermann’s shoulder as Hermann pushes the bench back and forth with his good leg.
“I still can’t believe you kept it,” Newton says, quietly.
“The CD?”
“Well, yeah. Everything, though.”
“I forgot I had it all, for a while, if I’m honest. But our conversation last night reminded me of you and your horrendous taste in music.”
Newton hums, sounding tired. As far as Hermann knows, neither of them can fall asleep, given that their bodies are already doing that, but Newton seems close. He’s had far less energy, these past few nights. Hermann doesn’t want to give too much thought to what it could mean.
Hermann moves the arm that’s been resting at Newton’s waist, curled in the soft fabric of his flannel shirt, up to his head to stroke his hair, and Newton hums again.
“I think ‘m gonna grow my hair long after this. Look like a real rockstar.”
“I look forward to it,” Hermann says, and he means it. They’re quiet for a little longer.
“Play it-” Newton yawns. “-play it again, tomorrow. The CD. they hated that shit.”
“And you liked it?”
Newton adjusts his head, burying his face in Hermann’s shoulder, and Hermann hears the smile in his voice just as much as he feels it. “I fucking loved it.”
There’s a knock on the open door to Hermann's lab the next morning, and Hermann knows something’s wrong the second he’s faced with Ranger Lambert, hands behind his back. Hermann has a feeling about what he’s going to say before he opens his mouth.
“It’s Newton, isn’t it?”
He nods, stone-faced.
Hermann’s only ever moved as fast as he does in the face of potential apocalyptic events, and even Ranger Lambert seems to struggle to keep up with him.
There’s a group of doctors and various other PPDC staff crowded around the window to Newton’s room, a stark contrast to the usually very small group of spectators present. They’re chattering amongst themselves, with several of them taking notes, but a hush falls over them as Hermann approaches. Dr. Nowak, who’s taken on most of Newton’s care from the medical end, steps forward.
“What’s going on?”
“He had a seizure,” she says. “We’re not completely sure, but we think the precursors may be rejecting his body. This wouldn’t have been a problem if it had happened years ago, or even two months ago, but because of the dependency on them that he’s developed from how much control they’ve taken, we’re not sure if he can survive without them.”
“What does that mean?” Hermann asks. He knows the answer.
“We don’t have exact numbers, but we’re putting it at a day or two before his body shuts down entirely,” the look on her face is almost overwhelmingly sympathetic. She reaches a hand out to his arm, and Hermann doesn’t shy away from the touch. “I’m sorry, Dr. Gottlieb.”
“Can I see him?”
“Yes, of course, but- there’s something else.”
Hermann’s heart pounds. What else could there be?
“It’s Dr. Geiszler, in there. It has been all morning.”
“It’s- sorry?”
“As far as we can tell, the precursors have not been present at the surface since the seizure.”
“How long is that?” Hermann asks, and Dr. Nowak looks back to one of the interns that Hermann recognizes, vaguely, from all the time the small group of them has spent hovering around this same observation area.
“About an hour and a half, doctor,” he says, checking down at the clipboard in his hands.
More than five times their record. Hermann would be ecstatic, under any other circumstance, but the pit in his stomach only grows.
“Again,” Dr. Nowak says, “we can’t be completely sure, as we don’t know Dr. Geiszler so well and would be easier to fool. But Ranger Mori spoke to him earlier, and seemed relatively confident that it was him. It also seems unlikely that they would imitate him for this long without attempting anything drastic.”
Hermann nods. “Thank you, doctor.”
They’ve rolled a bed in from the medical area- much higher and sturdier than the cot in the corner. Newton’s hooked up to an electrocardiogram, and propped up to be half seated against a stack of pillows. He looks like he’s about to fall asleep, but he perks up (if minimally) when Hermann enters.
“Hermann,” he says, sounding impossibly relieved.
“Newton.”
“I was starting to think you weren’t gonna come. And then that ranger- the blonde one, I can’t keep names straight anymore- was in here, and I was all hey, guy, where’s Hermann? And he asked the doctor for me, and she was like oh, shit, nobody told Gottlieb yet, did they? She didn’t actually say shit , though. So the ranger went to go get you, and I was just like, you guys seriously jumped through the hoops it must’ve taken to get Mako in here, but it didn’t occur to you to-” he stops, looking at Hermann, a little worried. “Are you okay?”
Hermann nods, hurriedly, wiping at his eyes when he finds them brimming slightly. He smiles. “I am. I just- I've missed you terribly.”
Newton returns the fond look Hermann gives him. “Well, come sit, then, Jesus. Stay awhile.”
He gestures to the chair haphazardly placed next to his bed, and Hermann does, pulling it as close as he can get before he sits down. He notes that Newton’s hands are free, as they have not been in weeks, and Newton catches the way Hermann’s eyes linger on his wrists.
“Sweet, right? I can finally gesture again. It’s great. I can do this, too.”
He reaches his hands toward Hermann’s throat in a choking gesture, entirely jokingly, but drops them quickly with a fearful glance to the mirror on the wall behind Hermann.
“It’s a joke!” he calls, hands held up in surrender. “Just a joke! All good!”
“Definitely an appropriate joke to make,” Hermann comments, unamused, and Newton rolls his eyes.
“Herms, if I got possessed by cosmic horrors and didn’t make jokes about it, who would I be?”
Hermann opens his mouth to retort, but Newton immediately leans forward with a cough, and continues to hack until Hermann hands him the glass of water on his bedside table that he gestures furiously for.
“Lie back, will you?” Hermann says, once he’s downed half of it. Hermann takes the glass from him and sets it aside, and places a hand gently on Newton’s shoulder to ease him back. “Incorrigible little man,” he mutters, more to himself, and Newton smiles.
Hermann moves the hand from his shoulder to Newton’s hair, stroking it in the same way he had been not too long ago, and Newton shuts his eyes as he leans his head up into the touch like some sort of absurd cat.
“What did they tell you?” he asks, after a moment, eyes still closed.
“About what?” Hermann asks, and Newton opens one eye to give him an annoyed sort of look.
“About me,” Newton says. “I know I had a seizure, but nobody will tell me anything. Did they say anything to you? About how I'm doing? ‘Cause I feel like shit, but I don’t know anything beyond that.”
“They didn’t tell me anything either,” Hermann says, without hesitating. “I don’t think they know.”
Newton closes his eye once more, and hums. “That feels nice.”
He leans back a bit more, and yawns.
“Get some rest, love,” Hermann says. The term slips out entirely by accident, but Newton only smiles sleepily in response.
He falls asleep shortly afterward, Hermann's hand still stroking through his hair. Hermann leaves, briefly, while he sleeps, too pent-up with nervous energy to keep sitting in the room with an unconscious Newton.
“We can notify you when Dr. Geiszler is awake, if you’d like to go get some work done,” Dr. Nowak tells him when he gets back, and he shakes his head.
“That’s kind. I’m staying, though, if that’s alright.”
She smiles. “Dr. Geiszler is lucky to have you.”
“Yes, well...” Hermann looks through the window to Newton's room. He’s laying in his back with his head angled toward the now-empty chair, hair still tousled from Hermann's ministrations. “We’re lucky to have each other.”
Newton wakes a few hours later. Hermann turns his head at the sound of movement, catching him mid-yawn, jaw unhinged like a python.
“Newton?”
He nods. “It’s me. What time is it?”
“Just gone five. Are you hungry?”
“Oh, so much, dude. Do you have something?”
Hermann produces the raspberry danish he’d gotten for Newton earlier after verifying with Dr. Nowak that he could eat it, and Newton’s entire face lights up.
“Gottlieb, you beautiful bastard. I could kiss you on your stupid frog mouth right now.”
Hermann ducks his head, hiding his blush in the half-finished crossword he’s working on. Newton munches happily for a moment, and Hermann erases a mistake he notices.
“Let me see that,” Newton says, through a mouthful of danish, and Hermann obliges. He shifts to lean his elbows on Newton’s bed, and Newton sends crumbs flying as he gestures with the pastry in his hand. They bicker about the puzzle for nearly a half-hour, and then Hermann turns the page and they bicker about the next one for twice that time.
The evening passes quietly after that. Newton eats his dinner with the tray resting in his lap, and Hermann rests his on a corner of Newton’s bed that he’s mindful not to kick.
“Do you remember,” Newton begins, tearing off a strip of bread and shoving it into his mouth, “That time I tried to cook us dinner with my hot plate in the lab”
“Oh, god,” Hermann groans. He’s tried plenty hard to forget. “And then you somehow dropped a used glove into the boiling pot instead of the biohazard bin.“
“They were right next to each other!” Newton says. He doesn’t have the energy to yell it, but Hermann can tell he desperately wants to. “The hot plate was on the edge of the counter, and the bin was on the floor against it.”
“I still don’t understand why you had the water so close to your dissection.”
“I needed to keep an eye on it! Plus, it’s not like it was all bad. That candle you bought afterwards was nice.”
It had been nice. Autumnal Breeze - Hermann’s not remotely sure what that’s meant to smell like, but he’d enjoyed it nonetheless.
“Yes, well, it’s too bad we could never properly smell it,” Hermann says. Melted latex and burnt Kaiju viscera had lingered for weeks, choking out the smell of the candle unless one stood directly next to it.
“Shut up,” Newton mumbles, through a laugh.
The first lapse in their easy comfort around each other comes a few hours later, when Newton yawns and closes his eyes while Hermann’s halfway through a sentence.
“I should let you sleep,” he says, and Newton opens his eyes again. He shoots a hand out to Hermann, hovering at his wrist.
“Don’t go,” he says, and Hermann shakes his head.
“I don’t plan to. I’ll be right here all night.”
Newton hesitates. “You’re just gonna sleep in that chair?”
Has Hermann overstepped? He’d assumed that don’t go was a pretty black-and-white request, but maybe not. “If that’s alright with you? I could return in the morning, if you’d-”
“No, no, I just meant- I mean, it can’t be comfortable.”
“Well, not particularly, no, but I can-”
“Dude,” Newton interrupts. “Stop being stupid. Get up here.”
He scoots to one side of the bed, and lifts the blankets next to him, patting the space. It’s not particularly large, but neither is Hermann, and if they get close enough to each other-
“Alright.”
Hermann pulls off his shoes, and sets his glasses gently down on Newton’s singular bedside table. Newton helps him up into the bed, and immediately pulls Hermann close to him once he’s situated. Newton adjusts the pillows so they can both lie back, and rests his head on Hermann’s chest, arms wrapped around his waist. Hermann holds Newton by his shoulders, and uses one hand to comb gently through Newton’s hair, as is becoming a habit of sorts.
Newton’s asleep in record time, and Hermann is left alone with the dim light and faint beeping of the machines monitoring Newton’s condition, as well as the softness of Newton’s hair beneath his fingertips, while he waits for darkness to swallow him too.
There’s always a brief moment of disorientation, in The World, where Hermann has to make sense of exactly where Newton’s brain has taken them. But tonight, the disorientation comes more from the striking familiarity of his surroundings.
“Pretty sweet, right?”
Hermann turns to his left, to see Newton, hands in his pockets and rocking on his heels.
“Did you do this?”
“Sort of,” Newton says. “I can’t really choose the environment, but I can hold things back, and I just stopped doing that. I wasn’t totally sure if it would work, but…”
Hermann looks around. It’s an exact recreation of their old lab- although his chalkboards are cleaner than they ever truly were. He's struck, suddenly, by the realization that he has never once felt properly at home since Hong Kong.
(Though that may be due, at least in part, to the newton-shaped hole in his surroundings)
“...seemed like the right time for it,” Newton continues, and Hermann, who had admittedly not been fully listening, snaps his head away from the floating Kaiju foot in a far tank to look at him.
“Why is this the right time ?”
“I’m not stupid, dude,” he says, tone sharp, and Hermann feels his pulse pick up minutely.
“What do you mean?”
Newton sighs. He worries his bottom lip between his teeth for a moment, before he reaches out a hand. Hermann takes it, and Newton pulls the two of them over to the worn lab couch. It’s the same level of slightly-too-soft as Hermann remembers it.
“I know I'm dying, Hermann. I knew it the night before the seizure. I could feel them pulling back, and I just knew. You forget that I'm literally the leading global kaiju expert by a mile. There’s no world where I can survive being disconnected from the hivemind.”
“Newton, I'm...”
“It’s fine, dude. I would’ve lied to me too.”
Hermann looks down at their still joined hands. He rubs his thumb over Newton’s, and swallows thickly.
“I admit, I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything,” Newton says. “But there’s- there’s one thing. I wanted to wait until I wasn’t, like, possessed, but I guess there’s not much chance of that…”
Hermann looks up. Newton brings his free hand to Hermann’s jaw, and leans in just as Hermann realizes what he’s about to do. Their lips meet, and it lasts just long enough for Hermann to lean into this kiss, pitching forward slightly when Newton pulls back.
“I’ve wanted to do that for like, years,” Newton says. “Do you remember when we first met, and you called me an insufferable prick within ten minutes?”
“Vaguely.”
“Since then. That’s how long I've wanted to do that.”
Hermann leans in again, and the second kiss is just as gentle and chaste as the first.
“It’s been... a long time for me as well.“
Newton smiles. The sight of him is strikingly comforting- granted, it always is, but now more so than ever. He’s dressed the same as he often was back in Hong Kong— thin tie, button-down, skinny jeans, the whole nine yards —and Hermann is still wearing the work clothes he was when he left the lab. It feels, almost, like this could be the romantic rendezvous that Hermann never had the courage to execute, way back when.
It feels, almost, like they haven’t wasted any time.
But they have, is the truth of it. Years before the breach was closed, and then several more after it. Even these past couple months in the privacy of Newton's mind, precious as they may have been, feel a little bit wasted, when faced with what they could’ve been doing instead.
So they waste no more time. The night is spent pressed against each other on the memory of the old lab couch, murmuring decades-overdue confessions into each other's skin.
I love you, Hermann says, and he’ll never again mean it with the severity he does then.
Morning comes with a start.
A series of loud beeping, for one. Newton, legs still tangled up in Hermann’s and gasping loudly, for another.
It passes in a blur. Hermann, fumbling for his cane and standing from the bed, just as Dr. Nowak bursts in, trailed by doctors and interns alike.
He hears something about transferring Newton to medical. Shouting about his heart, about his lungs. Nobody seems to be sure.
The singular moment of clarity, the eye of the storm, comes when Newton reaches past a frantic intern to grab Hermann’s hand in a death grip.
“They’re gone,” he says. “Hermann. I can’t hear them. It’s just me.”
Then he’s off, bed being pushed out the door and down the hall toward medical. The ghost of his hand over Hermann’s lingers, and his words seem to echo through the empty room.
They’re gone.
***
I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday.
(Lemony Snicket [Daniel Handler], The Beatrice Letters, September 2006)
***
The hinges on the screen door whine in protest as they’re flung open, and Hermann winces in anticipation of the loud clatter that follows, when the door slams back against its frame. A few loud clunking footsteps, heavy boots against unfinished wood floors, and Newton calls out.
“Hermann?”
“In here, love.”
Hermann turns to see Newton appear in the kitchen doorway, just as he reaches back to free his hair from the rubber band holding it back. He shakes his head, a bit like a dog trying to dry itself off, and it falls in thick curtains around his face. He comes closer to Hermann, who pushes it behind his ear on one side before leaning in to kiss him.
“Exactly how long are you planning on letting it get?”
“As long as it’ll go, baby. I told you- I’m a real rockstar now.”
Hermann hums, and kisses him again. It’s closer to some sort of caveman from a low-budget 80s film, but he bites his tongue.
“How long ‘till the tea’s ready?”
“Not long, I don’t think. What were you doing outside?”
Newton had disappeared a short while ago, without a word to Hermann. He goes for walks, occasionally, when he needs to clear his head, and Hermann usually leaves him be. But there had been a fair amount of noise coming from the side of the house, and Newton reeks of sweat far more than is customary for a stroll through the relatively even terrain of the woods.
“Oh, I was putting the firewood in the lean-to. Looks like it’s gonna rain tonight- I don't want a repeat of last time.”
“Last time” was a few weeks ago, when a thunderstorm soaked all of their firewood, and left the two of them shivering as the wind blew through the walls of their poorly insulated cabin. They got by relatively unscathed, but Hermann would still rather keep the firewood dry.
“Good thinking,” He says, and Newton hums.
The kettle starts to whistle, and Newton goes to fetch the milk from the fridge as Hermann pours water into the readied mugs on the counter. They take it out to the porch when it’s ready, and Newton waits patiently for Hermann to lean his cane against the side of the house, before making grabby hands so Hermann will come to sit with him, tea carefully set aside to cool.
“You’re like the world’s neediest barnacle,” Hermann says, as Newton immediately leans into his side, but he wraps an arm around his shoulders nonetheless.
“Whatever. You love it.”
Hermann says nothing. Newton shifts to get closer, and the porch swing creaks ominously under the movement- Newton’s memory, where they’d spent so many nights a year ago, had been remarkably accurate, except for the fact that it was nearly thirty years old. Newton’s uncle’s willingness to sell his property to them for almost nothing should have been the first warning sign of the condition it was in, but they had been so eager to get away from the PPDC that they hadn’t given it much thought.
(Hermann doesn’t imagine that they’ll stay away forever- you don’t devote that much of your life to something only to pull away completely just because of a few majorly traumatizing events. But they’ve both earned a break, and there’s time to recoup a bit before the whole “bring the fight to the precursors directly” plan gains traction.)
Hermann uses his good leg to push the swing a bit, and it gives another dangerous creak every time it gets to the back.
“I’m pretty sure this thing is just gonna snap, one of these days, and kill both of us.”
“Oh, well,” Hermann says, pressing his lips briefly to the top of Newton's head. “I think we’ve got time.”