Chapter Text
Hermann Gottlieb pressed enter on his keyboard and sighed with the weary weight under his breath, inputting one's A levels is not necessarily a difficult or particularly straining task but something about the importance commonly put upon the action that hit Hermann in much the same way a lead-lined pillow would. Hard. He was 16 years of age, rapidly approaching 17 with long angular features that still somehow gave him the general air of a frog. His eyebrows felt most at home in a neat scowl and arched smoothly over his doe brown eyes laced with a dark lash line that many a mascara company have yet to replicate. He ran his long finger through the excuse for a haircut, brushing the fuzz of his undercut nervously. In only a few months the next big step of a teenager's life would begin. God now even he was being too dramatic it's only some A-levels.
When Hermann was 8 years old, he remembers his mother beginning to cry as a woman in a white coat holding a clipboard said “I'm sorry Mrs Gottlieb, he will never regain full mobility again. “Since then, it had gone from wheelchair to physical therapy, back and forth till that’s all his early memories consisted of. Hermann remembered feeling bad that he didn’t cry at the news he would need a mobility aid, he didn’t know why.
As he grew up, he had found that the only way he would survive school did not feel, which wasn’t that difficult seeing as he had already been doing that for what years he could remember. Bullying meant little, the things kids said were not to be thought of as overthinking would do no good. So, he became cold and reserved even compared to how he was before, leaving him the solitary of his school.
When Hermann went to secondary school, he had the foolish thought that it would change things, his frightening intelligence had landed him an academic scholarship to a pretty prestigious secondary school and college (going from year 7 right through 6th form). He found the oversized blacker and slacks comforting as they hung on his body the morning before his first day, it made him feel safe like no matter what happened he would be ok, protected by a cotton and wool shield. It had gone painfully. The kids, although intelligent, were little compared to Hermann as he breezed past intro lessons it felt dull and dreary. He was about to call the day a failure when something happened. He made a friend. Two friends in fact.
A boy of the same age as him approached, followed by a younger-looking girl. The boy had overly gelled hair and a little bagel icon on a pin badge lopsided on the lapels of his blazer, the girl was smaller and had a sharp black bob that was longer at the front and a slight blue shine to her bangs suggesting they had been box dyed over sill letting a little of the earlier colour been through. Hermann stiffened in his desk chair as they sat to the right of him as others milled into the form room. He sat straight as he realized in fear that the boy was going to speak to him.
“Hi, I like your badges where are they from?” the boy asked flashing his open pal up like a half-assed version of the combination of a wave and a salute.
“It's,” Hermann began swallowing the spit he had been forgetting to swallow, “The hitchhiker's guide if you know it...” he said trailing off, realizing it wasn’t necessarily the most common interest. The pin in question was of a whale that arched around the circular badge to frame a bowl of petunias.
“I thought so!” said the girl, her eyes lighting up as he mentioned the sci-fi book.
That was how Hermann met Tendo Choi and Mako Mori (whose father was the head of the school). And most likely how he survived years 7 to 11 with the addition of an American lad that reminded Hermann of a golden lab or retriever of some sort by the name of Raleigh Becket. The four were an odd combination of “nerds and then Becket” as tendon would often point out, but to be fair Raleigh was a massive Star Wars nerd even before he joined the others in about year 9.
Hermann was happy enough, but by anyone else's standers, it would be considered barely getting by. Despite having friends, he often felt intellectually un-fulfilled, throwing himself into his studies and already taking his German GCSE in full in year 8 and further maths in year 9. Even still it wasn't enough, the studies did provide him with some rest bite from having to be in the presence of his father and siblings as he would hide in his room and plot stars or build raspberry pies for fun. Once even (unknown to others) he took part in a worldwide physics contest at which he won and got to send a section of code that would eventually display a small animation of the formula for chaos theory on a LED panel on a satellite. The idea that a small line of code was floating up there comforted him as he would often imagen the stars, going so far as to save up his oven money to buy a telescope and arrange glow-in-the-dark stars in the correct positions on the ceiling. Sadly, his father had scolded him for sticking the “tacky” things to his ceiling and was made to take them down.
But the fact was no matter how much extra thing he did it never felt like enough, he felt like something was missing, like a large chunk of him had never been put in. When at age 14 he was diagnosed with autism some of it made a little sense, but it didn’t do much to improve his mind. A get-out-of-lesson free pass was not something that helped Hermann. But it did explain his hatred of most touch and obsessive fascination with space.
Hermann loved space so much that at the behest of mako, he watches the TOS of star trek, he was baffled no dought, but it was certainly good background noise when he was writing essays or code. He enjoyed it so much in fact that he began deconstruction of the futuristic gadgets with real science and ended up making a bit of a splash in both the trekies spaced on the web as well as some actual scientific blog posters. One such blog was simply called: Fl0w3rz_Fr_G3zli3r
Newton Geizler was born in Germany but moved to the states when he was 6, he was short, loud and often irritating. He had light brown hair and green eyes that had just the hint of brown flecks, a myriad of freckles painted constellations on his arms and face, and he had a browed smile the link that made most people want to throw a fist at him. His father had called him a grasshopper due to his bouncy nature as he would jump from rocks to trees taking in all the nature around him. And it was fascinating, some of his earliest memories being of pushing up his thick-rimmed glasses and squatting by a creek jotting down all the bugs and critters he could see.
In school, he was badly behaved, but teachers could do little about it as he was merely acting out of boredom each task provided for him being either so dull it could be considered an insult or something so easy, he could complete them 10 times over in the same span it would take a normal kid to do half. After he became too difficult to put up with at school, his father (Jacob Geiszler) sent him to a more prestigious privet school for gifted kids. And newt hated it, everyone was so pretentious the kids were bad, but it was the other parents that really got to him. Jacob would say the newt was “too self-aware for his age” and worried how it would affect his son.
When he was 11 years old, he was diagnosed with ADHD and then in the later few years at 15, he was diagnosed with BPD. Between different medications and going through puberty newt had a pretty miserable time, having only a few friends but only truly finding comfort in his music or taking adventurous walks into the creek near the back of the road he lived on. He did find that music helped him, he played both guitar and keys teaching himself how to play both instruments with a wide range of skill. The pads of his fingers were rough yet, he was still surprisingly agile, having a steady hand despite his hyper mentality.
When he was 15 nearing 16, he formed a band with the few friends he had made and managed to keep, they played a few covers and even a couple of original songs, but it never felt like enough for newton. He always had a feeling deep inside that he was meant for more, he was destined for greatness. And that was when he started referring to himself as a rockstar which obviously got on the nerves of almost everyone he met.
At 16 he began a blog, and that was a main source of entertainment and serotonin for newt as he connected to lots of people who held his passion for many of his fixations. From the many subcategories of biology to engineering, from music to realistic analysis of the things seen on star trek.
The star trek thing had all started when he found a theory that the transporter was killing people and he got obsessed. And when he began, he could not stop, talking about the anatomy of many a species to data’s moral programming. He loved it, and he ended up becoming quite a name on the trek side of the internet. He made a few friends through this too, but one stuck out to him, an account titled: QuadraticCaCO3.
Newt knew that the CaCO3 part referred to chalk and he also remembered seeing the usernames on a coding competition he came second in (and was frankly very bitter about not winning). They had begun talking (arguing) in the comment section of one of newtons posts on the ideas of terraforming planets when it got to the post that newt asked
Fl0w3rz_Fr_G3zli3r
hey do you want to continue on dms
QuadraticCaCO3
That would be amicable.
And since that day they had talked almost every day, at length one might add, newton typing out paragraph after paragraph stumbling over his words adding random letters here an accidental number there, whilst his correspondent, whose name he had learnt was Hermann, never made a single error. They quickly moved away from nerd talks to passionate and fascinating discussions on not just other sci-fi media but real-life science. Between the academic discussions, Newt learns more about the man behind the screen, becoming infatuated with every little detail he learnt. The first of which was that he had a favourite mathematician witch upon reading had sent newton into a fit of laughter at how nerdy it was.
(for your information it was Allen Turing obviously)
On the day newton played his first gig he live-blogged the whole thing and felt all warm inside knowing Hermann was following along with it despite the man never mentioning an interest in music. The gig was wild and the crowd loved them whooping and hooting at every dramatic movement he made on stage. At the after-party he even live-blogged his drummer giving him a stick and poke tattoo on the back of his calf ( it was meant to be a newt but ended up looking more like a gecko, the drummer had said “wait aren't they the same thing” to which Newt babbled for an hour about reptiles and such). The moment the blotchy black outline was posted on his blog Hermann had messaged him in great shock, Newt couldn’t quite tell if he was pissed confused or in awe: he went with the latter.
After talking with Hermann for a year, making Newton 16, he told Hermann that he was moving to England, a decision his father made upon receiving a very good position at a music school that needed a talented piano tuner and music tech teacher.
To Newt it seemed a little bit overkill and would have much rather stayed in the states, it affected him much more than he let on crying to his bandmates at their last practice, promising to still make songs online with them all. It was very alien when he got there only 4 months till he started at the college he gained a scholarship too. When he told Hermann all this over a phone call Hermann had wondered if he would want to meet up, it was tentative and careful as if the words would leave his lips only to bash his teeth in. Newt, of course, said yes.
And so they met up.
And it was awful.
It was in a neat little coffee shop the kinda that would happily let you pay for your drink in old LPs, it had vintage records lining the walls and a warm 70s orange-brown and yellow colour pallet.
Newt had been so nervous that he re-packed his satchel 2 times and changes his outfit at least a solid 13. When he finally arrived he was in a shockingly fashionable pair of black skinny jeans and a neat green and black stud belt, a multitude of bands adorned his wrists. This was all topped off with a ratty dark grey hoodie that hid a clandestine industries tee underneath. He looked around doggedly scanning the people in the café chewing the inside of his mouth, biting off little sections of his cheek as the long seconds dragged by. And then he saw him.
And it just had to be Hermann.
Not just by the sleek cane that rested beside the chair ( for newt had chatted with Hermann while he ordered the darned thing) but it was also by the out-of-place aura he carried. He could tell Hermann was nervous too as he ran his hands over each other like a familiar stim.
Newton wanted to make a good impression so desperately that his brain was speeding faster than he could keep up with, his thought hurdling over each others ranging from polite to obscene. And as the nerves built up and he felt himself slightly walking towards the other boy he was shocked to find himself beginning to speak to the formally dressed teen.
“Ohh my god herms you dress like your 80!” Newt said a bit too loudly making Hermann jump just the slightest bit.
The older boy looked stunned for a moment his brown eyes staring intensely boring into newtons skull and then into the rest of him as Hermann scanned him over a disgusted look rolling over his face in much the same way a steamroller does over hot concrete.
“ I can't say you look much better, you look like a hot topic was raided and then set fire to.” the brit responded his accent clipping over the syllables, grating into the black bored of newtons mind.
They both just stared at each other for a moment before Newt sat down heavily in the seat opposite his friend, “Well at least I made an effort, I'm sorry dude but none of that stuff even looks like it fits you!” he replied speaking too fast and to breathy as they end sort of spilled out of his mouth into a short bitter laugh. Hermann glared at him disdainfully.
“ I could say much the same about you,” Hermann restored “ Now will you quit making a scene and act like a normal person.”
Newt laughed and even snorted a little as he felt the air in his lungs solidify as he watched Hermann's face just look at him. Oh god what had he done. “ normal person! Normal person, I'm sorry herms you are dressed like a grandpa, the whole vintage store could not hold your stuffiness!” newt gestured wildly.
“Don't call me that.”
“What, herms?” newt said tauntingly his brain practically begging his mouse to shut the fuck up and be nice to his friend, hed been nice before what the hell was he doing. No matter how much he pleaded, he continued.
“Oh come on dude what do you have again a nickname it's not hurting you heeerrrmmss” he accentuated the name which produced an impressive scowl from the other boy.
“If I had known you would be so childish I would have left you to feel lonely, I should have known better than to befriend someone so reckless as to get a stick and poke!” Hermann said his nose twitching as he continues to scowl and newt.
“Childish! Herms, we met due to star trek you have no right to talk! I expected another nerd but not your kind of nerd!” it shouldn’t have but it did hurt for both parties to hear the words thrown around. As patrons of the shop began to look at them the insults grew and grew like one of those snake fireworks all black and charred creating an ugly smog that seemed to be drowning all rational thoughts between the boys.
“Urg your so pretentuions ,fuckin math nerd ha!”
“ At least I, not as revolting as the work I partake in, I would rather be covered in chalk and cables than dead frogs and rats!”
“Oh my god, why did I ever think you were cool!”
“Why did I ever call you a friend!”
Hermann had gotten up at this point cleanly swooping his coat on and briskly striding towards the exit followed by newt as he exclaimed,
“At least I have friends!”
“ Not here you don’t"
And with that Hermann was gone. Newt stood stunned for a moment before saying softly,
“fuck.”
And that summed it up quite neatly.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hermann told no one who he met up with, he just said he had been out. Even when his sister asked him what was wrong, he said nothing, retreating to his room. He told himself in later remembering of that day that he did not cry yet his handkerchief would beg to differ. He felt foolish, the worst of all emotions, he felt embarrassed not even of Newt but himself. Surely he wasn't that bad. The more he replayed the moments, no more than 30 minutes in the presents of Newton Geizler, it became worse and worse the words burned into his brain providing many a breakdown's self-hatred fuel.
“I thought he was my friend,” he said to the stars on his bed set, “ I thought you were my friend,” he said to the air. The air did not reply.
In the morning he checked his phone 10 times in 15 minutes and yet nothing from newton. He tried telling himself that he didn’t want the American to respond to him, but he knew that was a lie, a big fat stupid lie that only lead him into a deeper rabbit hole of self-hate.
He rubbed his eyes feeling the disgusting gunk that had formed from the tears he had definitely not cried deep into the night, then looked dejectedly at his phone again tempted to block newton in his contacts and throughout social media platforms, but alas he didn’t have the strength and left it at that, at least it was left open. Perhaps it was a bad idea to leave the continuation of communication with newton but even Hermann didn’t have the heart to fully accept losing him. Did he lose him? Did he lose a friend?
Hermann left it alone in the part of his mind labelled “not to think about”. A rule he would find himself breaking very soon in the coming days.