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When discussing his therapy contract, the boundaries of the setting and all that, Herm initially suggested bringing a kiddie pool along.
"You know, c-cause it's gonna- I'm- wet."
He remembers Regina patiently listening through his itemized list of moisture-related concerns, then probing to see what was the worst that could happen if he were to get "wet".
"Oh- oh, water damage c-complaints, and I, uhm, that's not- my budget is, well..."
"My office is on the first floor," she smiled, "And it's tiled."
They settled on a plastic chair and an emotional support bucket.
After all this time, he never got to calling her Gina and still ma'amed her. It felt weird otherwise.
"How so?" Regina asked once.
Herm drummed his fingers on the plastic rim of the bucket he was clutching.
"Well, I'm twi- no, I don't know, but you're old-er, older. Than me. Quite?"
She nodded, calm and without a trace of a smile. "Is that an upbringing thing or a something else thing?"
He just pointed expressively during the last half of the sentence, spraying some water droplets around. Not using words was amazing, sometimes. Grand privilege. They once had a session where he sat wordless for almost the entirety of it. Bad, bad day, but to be unburdened from his painstakingly awkward speech apparatus even for a while was oh so nice.
"Okay. Would you care to share?"
"Respect!"
It was always like this, he either stuttered till kingdom come or blurted out whatever he was saying, oftentimes with a mouthful of water.
"Thank you. I respect you, too. And yet you insisted on calling yourself Herm."
"Call me Robert," says Robert. This first time it's casual, friendly, uplifting even. In the janitor's closet, they are sitting either in or on a bucket, Herm's hands full of melon and Beef. Robert doesn't know anything about speech impediments; that much is obvious. If it only went away, were Herm to stop caring what people thought of him. Not that he tried that. Well, not that he succeeded in trying that. But he recalls dad saying to mom that he's stammering "like your fucking mom", who he never met (Oma is dad's mom), so that must've run in the family. Anxiety made it worse.
He wants to tell Robert. Not to devalue the advice, just, he wishes he knew. He would understand. And he listens so patiently, too. Rare occurrence when you can't get through a sentence for the life of you; the number of times he tried to make an order at Starbucks just for the barista to try and guess it over and over, until he would give up and would pretend like they guessed right and drank up whatever he was served.
Robert doesn't play the guessing game. As Herm struggles through a sentence, he says with a small smile, one that's certainly tired, but not of him, "It's okay. Take your time, man". Words that were colliding in Herm's throat now get stuck there like a ginormous piece of gum. What comes out is a gurgling laugh. Robert doesn't get what's funny, but he smiles again, and Herm's so thankful it's dark enough in here, and that he's usually flushed half the time anyway, so no one really knows when there's a good reason behind it.
It makes Herm nauseous, and tasteless, clear bile is rising in his throat, and it reminds him of that one time he slipped a soaking wet note under his camp counselor's door the evening before the summer shift ended. It was innocent, really. Mostly. He allowed himself this one thing because he was leaving, and Mr Bell (Jackson, actually; didn't call him that, not even once) was so very nice, and that's what the note said, a barrage of thank you’s and sincere wishes to come again next summer, and he was content knowing he dripped so much water when writing that silly note that Mr Bell would never be able to discern a word, and he was leaving tomorrow. He didn't account for the breakfast before the long bus trip back home. When taking a few more jam packets than appropriate at the cafeteria line, he saw the familiar red jacket and wished for a sudden tornado to come over their little campsite and take him far, far away. His dream, like usual, did not come true. Instead, Mr Bell spotted him, the telephone pole that he already was at 14, and came over. He said that he read the note. That it was sweet. Called him "champ". Happy to see him next summer. Herm then proceeded to projectile vomit his full body weight in water to the point that he couldn't leave with the morning bus, dehydrated as he was, and some other counselor actually ended up giving him a ride all the way home later.
Then Robert asks one more time, befuzzled, "Just, call me Robert."
The Z-Team doesn't let that slide, and the channel is full of overtly enthusiastic and mockingly eager "Yes, sir"s and "On my way, sir"s and "Oh would you kindly fuck me in the ass, sir"s. Herm wishes to unhear that, alongside some 10 seconds of Flambae moaning on the line luxuriously until Robert threatens to cut off his comms. He later apologizes, to Herm's great surprise.
"Listen, I shouldn't have put you on the spot. I know how shitty they can get, should've asked you in private." His brow is pinched.
Some small part of Herm agrees, but the rest of him is overwhelmingly positive that the others would catch on to him anyways; it was only a matter of time, and it wasn't about what Herm called Robert.
"Th-thanks, it's cool- io. Don't worry!" he gives Robert a moist and squeaky double thumbs up. They're alone in the office, lights are half out, and Herm was waiting for a good moment to sneak into the break room for his third coffee machine watered-down hot chocolate (not like he needed to sneak, not like there was a limit on hot beverages) when Robert called him over.
"I really don't think that was all that coolio of me. I was serious though, I'm not much older than you." He then looks back at Herm, who has a comically unsure expression on his face, and deadpans, "I'm 33."
So, almost 10 years his senior. Yuppers, that checks out. Herm sighs, quietly tapping his foot on the surface of the small puddle that formed underneath him.
“Can we- how about we settle on, uh, 'boss'?” he says halfheartedly, but Robert finds it genuinely funny; he spins in his chair, running a hand across his smiling face.
“I propose 'excuse me', that's foolproof: polite, to the point, and I'll never know if you actually forget my name.”
Herm won't.
“Hey, you leaving?”
“Ah- a-actually, yes, just wanted to go- grab some…” He points to the break room. “Do you want coffee?”
He does. It's a double espresso. Herm shuffles there and back, two tiny cups in one hand and a pack of twinkies in another. They split it. There’s no easy way out this time, no bus to haul him home, no tornado to carry him away.
"You said your team would catch on to you. What is it about you, then?"
"Y-you know."
"I really don't."
He really hates the endless questions. Regina's patient with them, but boy, is she relentless. Nowhere to hide.
He breathes and smiles somewhat blankly and wishes he'd tell her to zip it, then feels bad about it, all the while Regina is just waiting. Supposedly. He rarely looks her in the eye.
“Uh- I sa- I misspoke. Sorry. They did. Already ca-catch on to me. They're already bul- well. It happens a-all the time, it's just. Me. I-” he pauses to throw up a bit, rub at his eyes, wince at the fairly disgusting feeling of rubber on sclera. “I’m unlikable. And I'm ashamed,” he adds, upset, knowing that he'd better say how he feels himself, or Regina will ask.
She looks to the side, the way she always does when she's choosing the right words.
“So, I wonder, what's underneath the shame?”
Very inappropriately, Herm bursts into a tiny laugh and splutters a bit, before saying, “U-ultra shame?” Regina snickers, and he knows he's winning therapy today. He's scoring across the board. He adds, “Shame 2: Return of The Shame?”
She composes herself to say, “That would be Shame 3. You're good at identifying it because you feel it often, and you've been feeling it for a while, so I'm sorry you've developed such a keen taste for it. I'm curious if there maybe was someone who planted it there.”
It's quiet in the office, apart from the steady drip-drip-drip somewhere down the rose-tiled floor. Herm puts some earnest and diligent thought into the question because he really doesn’t want to say he doesn’t know, since that usually means he doesn’t want to know, or something of the sort, and they’d be stuck here spinning this single “dunno” until he floods the office. So he says, “I al- Like I said. It’s just me."
He stares at the pic, dumbfounded, as Prism nudges him. Not unfriendly.
“Oh, you fine fine, that’s some American Vogue type shit. How do I tag you?”
She has her thumb hovering over the white “post story” arrow and looks up at him through the visor. Herm’s account is private, and he’d like to keep it that way, at least, until the SDN PR representatives approach him, if they ever do, cause they haven’t yet, and, well, unsurprising, but also thank God. He just gives a shy wave, Prism shrugs, and there goes the story to her 700k-something follower account. Which isn’t that big a deal—there’s like five other pics in this article she shared, three featuring her, and she's gorgeous in all of them.
He takes a closer look at them in the locker room as he fumbles with his phone. Apart from the radiant Prism-centric pics, there's this one other photo that's just a top-down shot of the water filmed by a drone, the dark waves and even darker oil spill spreading wide, creating a pattern not unlike marble. And then there are the yellow hazmat suits scurrying along the shore, and there he is. He wiggles out of the wetsuit halfway to slump on the bench and take a closer look. First mental note is to, apparently, never notice any reporters ever and stop trying to pose, because all his other field photos to date where he's wincing at the flashlights and smiling at lenses awkwardly remind him of his middle grade photoshoots. This is different. He likes how his suit matches the hazmats around, contrasting sharply against the blackness of the ocean. He’s half-kneeling, holding one of those human hair-woven mats that looks like a crazy pool noodle, and the scene is as odd as it is unnerving. The hair clinging to his face isn’t weird but dramatic, the eyes, unobscured by the goggles—he took them off to wipe the oil away. He doesn't recognize the expression on his own face. It’s pinched, and weary, and—
“You look so grown!” Grandma’s voice crackles through the static. Herm sent her the picture thoughtlessly, didn’t even pair it with a caption, and now a realization comes that this photo looks out of place amongst one-sided messages of “they ran out of sour cream, is it ok if I get greek uoghurt??” and “Misty found your pill box today. again. thankfully she couldn't open it and just played with it until I took it away. could you please lock it away? at least put it in the cupboard? please” and “will be super late today please go to sleep i love you”. Grandma never answers because typing is a hassle, so she calls.
“Very, very unusual!” she continues.
“I guess, Oma,” he nods, picking at his nails as he holds the phone between his ear and naked bony shoulder.
“You’re so very handsome, Herm, you did wonderful, I’ve seen it on TBC, though they sure didn’t show you off enough!”
“Aw,” says Herm, and almost smiles.
“Mom would love to see,” she says. “I’ll show her on Sunday, she will love this, she sure will.”
He can feel himself heat up to the point the moisture on his face is sure enough to turn into vapor as he finally smiles, “No- she’s. If mom wants to- She’ll see me, Oma. She can watch the news.”
“I just said they don’t show you, Hermie, nearly not enough.”
“Yeah. I know,” he breathes.
“Oh, but you should know, she miss-” he catches Robert’s eyes from where he stands by the opposite locker. If he was there a second ago, he could honestly not say. There's this overwhelming, sticky feeling that none of them wanted to witness another right now. It’s a split of a second. Robert turns so quickly it feels like a trick, and then he’s gone off to the shower stalls.
Herm watches his back as he says, not lowering his voice, “We talked ab- I gotta go, Oma. I lo- I gotta go.”
They shower in silence. Well, Herm kind of stands there letting surprisingly strong water pressure power-wash him into nothingness to later ideally flush him down the drain. And Robert is there. There are no stall separators, so. There they are. Which is very normal. Herm thinks it's sort of degrading that in men's spaces, privacy is considered something fully optional and complimentary, like a mini-fridge with soft drinks at a cheap motel. He thinks, on the other hand, that this particular shower is comfortable because at home he always keeps bumping into the shower head.
“Terrific job today,” comes Robert's voice. Out of the corner of his eye, Herm can see him lather up shampoo and put it in his hair in motions so rigorous the hair might or might not fall off. It's how one would wash a dog. It's adorable.
“I'm- Th-thanks,” Herm says and is again grateful for the impeccable timing because the water is scalding, and he's red all over, not just his face. There's also a lot of steam. It's curling in thin wisps, rising to the ceiling, and obscuring Herm's vision. He is warm all over. He lets himself slip away from his own grasp, like a piece of soap, as he asks, “I d-did?”
Robert snorts and then regrets it instantly, coughing and spitting water, then laughs for real, wiping at his face to look back at Herm, but constantly getting shampoo in the way and cursing softly. Now they're both laughing.
“Yeah, absolutely. I never doubt you.”
Now Herm snorts, suppressing a cackle, and he's no stranger to getting water in his airways, so he holds it in like a man.
“Oh, now you're being pissy about it? Good sign, bud, love to see it.” Robert's now putting actual corporate public bathroom bar soap on his face. It's horrific. This, somehow, does it. Herm shifts, mortified, to turn his hips away and considers turning the water cold, but just cannot make himself do it. It's not that bad. He's just kind of pent-up; it'll go away in a moment if he relaxes.
“Seriously, though, that was impressive. You were super composed,” Robert continues, and meditative as his tone is, it's doing little to help. Herm sighs, his shoulders sloping. “Oil doesn't really stick to you, does it?”
“I'm hee-hydrogenic. So. It's like uh- water off the duck's back,” he should really get out. He can't. Herm leans against a wall, pressing his whole cheek. It's warm, too. The cheek. And the wall.
“Hey, you don't talk to your mom?”
And now it's cold. Herm glances back over his shoulder and can't really make Robert's expression out through the water. He barely moves his tongue to blurt out, “Both. Uh- no, it's, I only have one. One mom. Dad t-too.”
“Right. Sounds tough.”
Herm just keeps silent. He's never sure what's tougher: talking to them or not talking to them. He learned he'll never be sure, so he just went ahead and picked his struggle. His stomach’s still churning, though.
“Whatever they thought of you before, I bet they're sorry now.”
Herm looks down at himself, watches himself go fully soft while all the rest of him is rigid as hardwood, and no hot shower can fix it. The steam is creeping into his lungs, wet and suffocating.
“What are you doing?”
He turns. He stands there—wet, naked, overcome with whatever this is. Stupid. But Robert looks just as stupid. He barely manages a “huh?”
Herm doesn't repeat himself. He doesn't think he can. In a few moments, it will be over, it will go out, and a comfortable guilt will settle in alongside a familiar shame, and they will eat him alive like ringworms, so he doesn't want to spend precious little time he has fumbling over a five-syllable phrase. Robert, in the meantime, collects himself as he raises both hands like he's held at gunpoint.
“A pep talk, I suppose,” and before he can finish saying “It clearly didn't work,” Herm interjects.
“For whom?” he asks, curt and snappy, because anything longer will send him blubbering. Robert shivers. Herm cannot hear the water over the blood thumping behind his eardrums. He shivers, too.
“So, what is it that you’re looking for that you feel like friends can't give you?” is what he gets after he's done with a 15-minute monologue on how he can't be friends with Robert. He sits there and gapes. An answer comes to mind, perfectly formed as a well-rehearsed graduation speech or a baby about to be born. If he were to say it, he’d self-combust on the spot, but that isn't his area of expertise; that would be something more akin to what happens when a lump of cotton candy is thrown into a tub. He instead asks if there was ever a reason behind the kiddie pool ban all those years ago.
"N-no different," he nods to the bucket.
Regina indulges him. She points to a box of Kleenex she has on the tea table beside them, “That’s not unlike the tissues. It's accommodation. On the contrary, courteous as your offer was, I recall imagining you in that rubber pool and suddenly feeling so small. Like in a container." Regina demonstrates, shrinking in on herself and shutting her eyes tight. Herm giggles faintly. He likes physical comedy, though he suspects this was meant to ease the tension, because Regina's eyes are already open and on him. "Do you recall how you felt?"
He skips a bit, licking a droplet falling from the tip of his nose. He doesn’t remember. He felt fine? If he were to make a mess, at least that would've been for him to clean up. No trouble. It was the right thing to offer. He was being a polite young man. He doesn’t feel the tears so much as hears them as they begin to pitter-patter on the plastic bottom of the bucket, then break into a steady stream. It was fine. He felt fine.
"F... F-f... F-f-fuck!” There goes the Kleenex box, flying through the air and hitting the opposite wall with a weak, muffled thud.
“Mad,” he says.
Regina smiles at him.
Robert asks him out for drinks. He says, “I’m planning on grabbing a beer at that new place, heard they got some crafty stuff. Wanna join?”
They bump shoulders at the elevator doors and get inside. It chimes softly. They're going down.
They both look totally unflattering under the LED lights: Robert's eye bags are corpse gray, and the yellow of Herm's suit now appears to have a certain sick barfy hue to it.
“That- sounds fun.” It does. “Who’s, uh, anybody else c-coming?”
“Nope,” is all Robert says, and he pops the “p” as he does, then looks up. One would usually describe a moment like this as awfully, torturously long, but when you have anxiety, time finds new ways to pass. It flies past Herm like a high-speed train, and the strong gust of air knocks him down. He barely registers a thing. What he can make out is that Robert is looking at him kindly. He would expect “apologetic” or “well-meaning”. But it's a kind and open look. He says, “Well?”, and Herm smiles and ignores the tingly pulsing in his pores.
“I love- I'd love that. I would love that.” He would. He swallows a mouthful of lukewarm water, pushing something else down along with it, and lets it disintegrate like a flushable toilet paper roll. He's still smiling as he says, “But, not r- uh, now. Now's not…”
He exhales. “Thank you, really. But. Yeah. Maybe, sometime later, Robert.”
Those paper rolls are actually incredibly harmful to sewage systems and are sure to cause a blockage at some point. But he's equipped to deal with those now.
The elevator chimes again and rocks them both ever so slightly. As the doors open with a whirr, Robert's still looking up at him intently, but if there are any cogs turning inside, the machinery is too complex to understand by an untrained eye. Then it's gone. He nods and claps his hand on Herm's shoulder, slightly squeezing.
“Sure,” he says, nods again, and steps out without even wiping the moisture from his hand.
Herm lingers for a moment. He lets it pass. And then he steps out too.