Chapter Text
“...Bro!”
Hermann Gottlieb looked to the door to see Tendo Choi practically bounce into the K-Sci lab. The man’s perpetually calm, collected demeanor had been replaced with an uncharacteristic buzzing excitement as he stood in the middle of the room with one foot on either side of the yellow dividing line.
“Bro…?” Newton jumped up from his lab bench looking at his friend with a combination of curiosity and concern.
By now, Hermann knew the two of them well enough to read between the lines of their monosyllabic exchanges. Unless he was very much mistaken, the first ‘bro’ had been hey, got a second? and that last one had been, yeah, man, everything okay?
“Bro…” elaborated Tendo. I’ve got news.
“Bro…?!” Newt snapped off his latex gloves preemptively and his hands flew up in a gesture of inquiry. Don’t keep me in suspense!
When Tendo finally injected his speech with actual meaning-having words, his lips shot up into the widest smile Hermann had ever seen on the man as he announced, “Bro… she said yes!”
The delighted, ear-splitting squeal that followed caused Hermann to jump in surprise as Newt launched himself across the room to throw his arms around his friend with a giddy laugh. It took every bit of balance the LOCCENT officer had not to topple over from the sudden impact.
“Oh my god, BRO!!” Newt yelled.
“I know, bro!!!” Tendo exhaled contentedly in reply.
“I mean, holy shit, congratulations!!!” Newt said, overtly vibrating with emotion. “This is seriously the best thing to happen since we obliterated the Breach!”
“You’re telling me!” Tendo ruffled Newt’s hair affectionately. “Which means I’ve got another important question to pop…”
He disentangled himself from Newt’s vice-like embrace and got down on one knee to take his friend’s hand theatrically in his own. “Dr. Newton Geiszler— dude of my dreams, bro of my life… would you do me the honor of being my best man?”
The octave of Newt’s ecstatic yell reached never-before-heard heights. When his pitch finally normalized, he played along, giggling, “Oh, Tendo, my man, my bro, my dude, my bestie. Of course I will.”
At this point, Hermann considered it more or less safe to approach the pair. Tendo was just getting up again as Hermann moved into range to give his hand a firm shake. “Congratulations, Mr. Choi. I wish you and Alison the very best.”
“Who the hell is Mr. Choi?” Tendo snorted with an amused little head shake. “Brother, how many times do I have to tell you to call me Tendo? We’ve been friends for years. And on that note— I want both you two basement dwellers close by on the big day. Hermann, I’d be honored if you’d be my groomsman too.”
Hermann felt his heart swell at the question. He had very few friends in life and if he was being completely honest with himself, he’d felt a little twinge of envy when Newt had flown into Tendo’s arms… casual physicality had never come easily to him and witnessing it made him feel like he was on the outside looking in of normal, cordial interactions. His answer was a warm, “I’d be delighted."
“Sooooo, I’m guessing your better half asked Mako to be her maid of honor?” Newt asked. “I mean, they’ve been BFFs since Alison got assigned to the Lady Danger restoration squad.”
“Yup,” Tendo confirmed, “and Raleigh too. He and Alison were good buddies back before he left the PPDC and they’ve all become even better friends since the world didn’t end.”
“Funny how an almost-apocalypse tends to fast track basically everything,” Newt grinned.
“You’re telling me,” Tendo said. “Alison and I have only been together for half a year. But damn, brother, sometimes a near-ragnarok experience really puts things in perspective, you know?”
Hermann caught himself stealing a quick glance over at Newt. He knew all too well what Tendo meant.
He’d often heard Jaeger pilots say that when you drift with someone you feel as if you’ve nothing to say. That had not been the case for him. Not even remotely.
When he and Newt had drifted, it began the way he’d more or less envisioned. Memories had flooded in and he’d witnessed a crystal clear conception of the other man’s early life before feeling the echo of his own recollections reflected back at him through Newt's mind. But the moment he’d begun to see his labmate’s first perceptions of K-Day, the hive mind insinuated itself into their drift.
Admittedly, that had been the purpose of the whole operation. It was the best case scenario that the intel to end the war had engulfed their combined consciousness, overtaking everything else. Furthermore, it made sense, he reflected, that his and Newton’s first memories of the kaiju insurrection had been the hive mind’s logical cognitive point of entry.
But it meant that Newt’s life post-August 15th, 2013 had been obscured from him completely. Not a single reference to himself had he seen in the other man’s mind.
Had he wanted to see Newt’s memories of him? He didn’t even know anymore and he allowed himself a small, private sigh.
Perhaps part of him had hoped the drift could have been a moment of truth between them. A way to finally say without saying the way he felt about his lab partner and had felt for years— his scintillating, infuriating, fascinating contradiction of a lab partner. He wondered, as he often did, how things might be different now.
He watched Newt chatter on ebulliently to a grinning Tendo about all the “awesome stuff” he could help with for “the big day” and was unable to quell the familiar feeling of bittersweet affection.
***
The wedding date was set for the end of October and Hermann was unsurprised to see his colleague taking his role as best man very seriously.
The thing about Newton Geiszler was that he gave the impression to most as laissez-faire with his overly informal style and flippant, offhand way of speaking. But after over a decade working together, Hermann knew better. When Newt had a task before him, he threw himself into it with precision focus. He had, after all, not obtained six advanced degrees by ‘winging it.’
And the task now before him was, in his own words, being the “best best man ever.”
When the workday was done, Newt usually stayed on in the lab with his personal computer to do research. Seeing him put in long hours like this, Hermann felt a strange kind of nostalgia. It had only been half a relatively short time since the war clock had stopped forever but it felt like much longer. In some ways, that entire era felt like someone else’s life.
At any rate, Newton seemed content to have something to throw himself into over and above his xenobiological projects.
And it was a good thing that he was so enthusiastic; Tendo and Alison had delegated a fair amount to him. Newt was the point person for everything photo-related; from vetting photographers to figuring out shoot locations. He also assisted with whatever was needed on the overall look of the wedding; unsurprisingly, the couple had gone for a 1950’s rockabilly theme and Newt was happy to weigh in on minutiae such as napkins, cake flavors and music options.
It was a novel channel for the biologist's creative mind.
And of course there was the stag do… Newt and Mako joined forces in their respective roles to plan a joint party on request from the bride-and-groom-to-be who hadn’t seen the point in separate, arbitrarily gender-segregated nights on the town, especially given the relatively small size of the wedding.
They corresponded regularly about it and Hermann bore sporadic witness to streams of texts and voice chats punctuated by furtive whispers and loud laughter.
Newt refused to give any further details except to occasionally announce, “This is gonna be the most epic party of all time, dude. I hope you’re ready!”
Hermann felt entirely sure that he, more than likely, almost certainly, probably definitely was not ready.
But it wasn't until Newt and Mako announced the plan that he realized he was going to have to brace himself for what lay in store…