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I'm forever a child looking out my window at
the night sky
Thinking one day I'll touch the world with bare hands
Even if it burns.
-Tracy K. Smith, "Don't You Wonder, Sometimes?" from Life on Mars
There was a point, before the hunching, before his leg decided to mutiny against his very existence, where Hermann Gottlieb was actually one of the taller kids in his class.
Hermann Gottlieb was an early bloomer, when it came to height. He shot up a year before the other boys in his grade did—hell, he shot up so fast that he ended up with stretch marks carving their way across his thighs.
He was self-conscious about it. He’d never had the muscles to fill out his body and it wasn’t as if suddenly being so physically set apart from the other kids was helping the fact that he was already intellectually and socially set apart from them.
But he only had a year to be self-conscious and awkward in his own body—not because of the heigh difference disappearing, but rather the everything else that came with turning eleven-years-old and having his entire world ripped out from beneath of him.
The next year, when Hermann got his injury, when he fell off of the edge of the mountain on that fucking school hike that ruined everything—that he hadn’t even wanted to go on the first place, preferring to stay home, but his father refused to let him do anything that wasn’t the Proper German Way, even if it killed him—where Hermann had to bite down on his own lip and crawl his way up the mountain side to the trail where someone could call the emergency services, a few stretch marks didn’t matter anymore.
How could they, when he ended up with several scars that crossed the side of his thigh, a web of scarring, nasty and gnarled, that made the inside of a strangler fig look healthy? When every step—hard fought for, hard-won, desperately clawed for—was accompanied by the distracting clunk of the cane that he ended up needing, far more distracting than any lack of hikes that Hermann participated in, much to his father’s chagrin?
Hermann never wore shorts after that again, no matter how hot it got in Bavarian summers, much less in the sticky, clinging Hong Kong humidity.
---
The first time Hermann ends up in the decontamination shower in the Shatterdome lab, having to peel off his slacks and get down to his pants because Newton Geiszler got kaiju entrails and kaiju blue all over everything—and Hermann is going to implement a line in the sand in the middle of the lab for both of them, so that he doesn’t have to suffer the consequences of Newt’s careless lack of lab safety again—he catches Newt staring.
For a moment, Hermann thinks that Newt is staring at the scar. It is a ropey, jagged thing, the sort of thing that splits the skin in half, each section of his thigh stitched back together into the sort of patched mess that would make Mary Shelley proud, new life from old skin, on a mountain in the middle of a summer that never came, because Hermann spent April through September in the hospital, in and out, surgeries placing themselves down, skin grafts and splints and casts and braces and the knowledge that he would never, ever get to even have the choice of going hiking again.
(Not that Hermann had ever liked hiking. Not that he had ever wanted to hike. He preferred his classroom time flipping through books and marking up equations, watching the way that numbers synthesized together, far more than any sort of torturous physical exertion that his teachers could dream up.
But the appeal of getting to tell his father that he didn’t have the option to send Hermann on a hike quickly wore off the moment that the physical therapist at the hospital told Hermann that if he did regain the ability to walk properly, he likely wouldn’t be able to even walk up the five front steps to his father’s house without pain ever again.
Hermann proved the expectations wrong on being able to walk again—he’s always been too stubborn, too intent on proving everyone wrong—but no amount of willpower can overcome crushed nerve endings and torn muscles and ripped tissues and every other buried down pain point. The pain lances itself through the boil one way or another, and the brain learns to live with a constant point of agony seeking to leech away at one’s ability to think properly.)
And Hermann is ready to snap at Newt to look away. To point out that this is not his to stare at it. That just because they share a lab, are the last ones left, doesn’t mean that gives Newt any sort of ownership of gaze over Hermann’s worst moments. That doesn’t mean that Newt gets to witness the sort of things that Hermann has kept away for so long because no one else can ever understand.
But when he looks closer at Newt’s expression, it’s to see that he’s grinning. “Mean Lichtenberg figures, dude,” Newt says, voice half-awed, “Those are like. Mad cool.”
And in an instant, Hermann realizes that Newt is looking not at the scars, but at the stretch marks.
It’s an awkward thought. Hermann had been so prepared to see Newt looking at the scars in disgust, in pity, and yet—he didn’t.
Rather than staring at the scars, he’s looking at both scar and stretch mark together, the web of them feathering together, the old evidence of awkward life gained pressed beneath the wreckage of a life nearly ended, sewn back into acceptable shape, the years in between toughening and softening in equal measure until everything together weaves itself into the sort of web that can be mistaken for—
Lightning.
Hermann is no meteorologist, nor would he ever want to be, but he knows what a Lichtenberg figure is. He knows that they are the scars that lightning carves into the skin, the feathered fractals of pink-red skin raised in the pattern of electricity tracing its way across flesh, staining in the same way that a drop of blood follows the course of the water through a creek, down into the ocean.
Hermann never would have thought about the evidence of his own grief, his own ache, his own brutal, bloodied survival in such a way. There is nothing about his fight to get back onto his feet, to spend the rest of his life gritting his teeth against the war within his nerves, each clamped-tight nerve ending responding to the crush of tissue around it to this day, that in any way resembles the almighty crash of electrons up in heavens above—
Hermann’s lips twist. “You sound like a teenager that never got over the ‘90s.”
Newt rolls his eyes. “First off, dude: I am way cooler than you’ll ever be. A fucking rockstar.” Hermann opens his mouth, ready to fight, ready to argue that a washed-up musician with a penchant for skinny ties and combat boots, both of which are nearly as out of style as Hermann’s own wardrobe, and at least Hermann isn’t trying to posit a sense of style beyond practicality, is not exactly “cool,” but Newt adds on: “And second off: you have literal lightning on your skin, man. You’re way more awesome in the like, biblical sense than anyone who could ever tell you otherwise. You’re cosmic.”
And Hermann’s breath catches inside of his throat.
He’s Jewish, not Christian, so biblical does not exactly have much of an impact on him beyond a general understanding of the cultural weight that the word holds, but the second…
Cosmic?
Hermann Gottlieb, made of the cosmos? Comparable to the stars?
It’s incredible to picture, carrying lightning beneath his skin, his scars more comparable to plasma, to supernovas, than to damage, and yet—
Newt grabs Hermann's cane and returns it to him as they step out from under the decontamination shower before scurrying off to get towels and a chance of clothes (because Hermann is well-prepared for this instance, for the inevitability of Newt's experiments getting all over the place, just as much as he wasn't prepared for Newt to knock Hermann off of his feet with such an impossible comparison, an incredible metaphor, the crackle of lightning beneath his skin) and Hermann has to stare after him, somewhat dumbstruck, by the idea that Newt could look at him and see a force of nature within his broken flesh.
---
Hermann has never forgotten what it felt like, to bite down on his own lip, to taste the iron and the steel on his tongue.
He remembers how it felt to have his leg be nothing more than a bloodbag beneath him, the way that it had felt to have a storm wrecking its way through his body, the way that it had felt like to have to crawl his way up the side of the mountain.
For so long after the fact, Hermann had been determined never to taste the iron in his mouth again.
He was determined to become galvanized steel. To be coated in zinc to avoid corrosion. To avoid weathering any further.
He would not rust. He would not stain the world rusted red.
He would not burn.
---
Hermann gets dressed and things go back to normal and he tries to forget this conversation ever happened.
But it’s hard not to linger in that moment. In Newt's comparison between Hermann’s ache, his growth, his awkwardness, the fact that he’s never felt at home in his own skin—
And fucking lightning.
For the first time in Hermann’s life, his scars don’t just carry the memory of blood and pain, but also of the bright white that danced behind his eyelids, fractal promises of the fact that the scars that he carries aren't just the wretched reminders of agony; they are something cosmic.
---
The Drift sinks into his brain, dark blue shot through with golden fractals, lightning-bright.
And Hermann thinks lightning fractals—
And Newt thinks Lichtenberg figures—
And the memories are flicking by too fast for Hermann to catch all of them, all the sinew connecting memories of scalpels and lab time and the lightning-fast pace of doctorate after doctorate after doctorate, all of them sewn together by an unceasing need to know everything about everything, to learn as much as he could as fast as he could, because he didn’t know who he was when he wasn’t folding as much information as possible into the folds of his brain, all of that gray matter destined to hold as much knowledge as possible, if he can only contain the storm to the clouds within his skull—
Only one of Newt’s sticks with him: a little boy, no more than seven-years-old, leaning over the side of a simple metal fishing boat, his uncle trying to teach him how to to thread the worm onto the hook, but the boy more eager to do PH testing and to see the fish in their natural habitat than to fish that he keeps sticking his fingers into the water.
The way that when it started to rain, the storm clouds pouring into the valley from the distance, the boy didn’t want to go inside; rather, he ran out into the rain, because it was better to run towards the lightning if it meant getting to see it then to stay inside if it meant missing out on getting to see a scientific marvel.
He’d brought puddles back into his Uncle’s tiny cabin at the edge of the lake, a small hut that didn’t even have electricity beyond the battery-powered lantern because a gas-powered camp stove did well enough, but he’d been grinning from ear to ear and he hadn’t stopped even after he’d been made to dry off, because he’d seen the lightning over the lake, watched it arc through the clouds, and that had been the most spectacular natural phenomenon that he’d ever seen until he met Dr. Hermann Gottlieb in person and he’d been struck by the cosmic edge of Hermann’s passion, his equations, the only person who had ever been fast enough to keep up with Newt—
The drift splits itself through with golden fractals of lightning, of the cosmic power of two minds striking through the kaiju blue ocean with their own connection able to part the sea, and Hermann loses himself in the chase to find the information that they need to close the Breach, but that’s what he remembers clearest: the lightning above the lake.
---
When they emerge from the drift, Newt’s skin is electric-bright, burning like a match flung against an oil spill, like a lightning bolt striking a tree and lighting it up brighter than the burning bush, so charged up with static electricity that Hermann thinks—
Hermann thinks that if he just turns his head toward Newt, if he just presses his mouth to the corner of Newt’s lips, he might just find out what nuclear fission tastes like.
---
But then, after the drift, after the Breach is closed, Newt peels away from him to speak to Tendo, and when Hermann turns to look at Newt, brow furrowed, a question raised in the arch of an eyebrow, because he can feel the thump-thump-thump of Newt's rabbit heart beneath his own, he doesn't get the chance to open his mouth.
Hermann doesn't get the chance to open his mouth, because Tendo passes out, from stress, from relief, from victory, Hermann doesn’t know, all he knows is that last he saw was Newt’s fingers tapping Tendo’s shoulder, and then the world fell apart.
Everyone scrambles to grab Tendo, to grab Tendo's mic, to direct the choppers to bring Mako and Raleigh back into the Shatterdome.
Tendo quickly wakes up, saying that it was nothing, just what felt like a quick skipping of a heartbeat, that somewhere in the midst of the end of the war, someone must have not quite connected a cord to an outlet because he thinks he electrocuted himself (and scans will later show that to be true).
But by the time Hermann looks up from all of the mess, Newt is gone.
---
And Newt stays gone.
It’s been three days, and no sign of him—in the cafeteria, in the lab, anywhere. Newt is a ghost in the wind, nowhere to be found.
Hermann has gotten so used to a tornado ripping through his life, tossing it up into the sky, that he has no idea what to do with a life where Newt is nowhere to be found.
Hermann never thought that he’d end up here, standing at the eye of the hurricane and thinking where the fuck is the goddamn lightning, and yet, here he is.
And he refuses to stay here.
---
Maybe Hermann Gottlieb should give Newt time to himself. Maybe Hermann should give Newt a chance to gather his own thoughts, to calm down from whatever's spooked him, to let him have a chance to collect himself. The end of the end of the world must be doing a lot of damage to people's brains, really fucking with their sense of normalcy. Ten years of the apocalypse, gone in an instant—that sort of change in air pressure, high to low clashing, would cause hurricanes or tornadoes in most people's minds.
But when it comes to one Newton Geiszler, Hermann has never known how to place a limit. He has never known how to tell himself to stay away.
Hermann is drawn to the buzz-zap of the moth zapper that is Newt’s heart, as reckless as that might be.
He needs to make sure that Newt is okay. He knows a thing or two, himself, about what it's like to bury yourself under the ground so that you can avoid the storm.
And if Newt is avoiding Hermann because of what he saw in Hermann’s head, if he’s avoiding Hermann because what he saw disgusted him, because he saw the blood and the bone and the truth of the flesh behind his Lichtenberg figures and decided that he wanted nothing to do with that—
Well, Hermann deserves to know that, doesn't he? He deserves for Newt to tell him to his face that whatever Newt saw in his head, the flint-strike of Hermann's shrapnel aches against the side of Newt's thoughts, was too blinding to deal with.
And so when the sun begins to set on the third day, Hermann stops giving Newt space.
He goes searching, because he refuses to let Newt lose himself just so that he can avoid Hermann.
---
Their quarters are right off of the lab. Hermann has always been rather good at not stepping into Newt’s space, not wanting to step in on whatever kaiju-related mess might be within the walls, but today is a different story. Of course it is. Of course Hermann can't stay away.
But when Hermann enters Newt's side of the quarters—finding the door unlocked, though the doorknob does jolt him just slightly, a tiny static shock—he finds Newt sitting in the dark, knees pressed up to his chest.
Newt's hand is standing on end, making him look like a modern-day Einstein, except Einstein was never curled up in a wrinkled shirt and skinny tie and thick, coke-bottle glasses, and Einstein certainly never had his hand is cupped in front of him, lightning dancing across it, a small ball of blue plasma crackling through the air above his fingertips.
The sinews in his hand and arm, the red rim around his eyes from tears, are thrown into great relief by each blue flicker. He lights up the fucking world.
And it is a breathtaking sight. The sort of thing that breaks the laws of physics, except for the fact that Hermann has spent the last ten years watching monsters push every boundary of physical laws, and if anyone can come up with the impossible, it was always going to be Newt Geiszler. How could it not be? Newt is determined to do five impossible things before he's even eaten breakfast. No one else ever would have thought of drifting with a kaiju, much less have actually done it.
But Newt did. Newt did, because he is determined to steal Hermann's breath away, because he is the impossible taken flesh, determined to constantly be proving the established rules wrong—even if said rules are the laws of physics, Hermann's beloved field, and perhaps because they are Hermann's numbers, that just makes Newt more stubbornly determined to rebel against them.
And yet somehow, as much as the laws of physics are being violated in front of him, Hermann’s entire understanding about how human flesh might interact with plasma, with a literal ball of lightning being held against naked flesh, being thrown up in the air, this is still somehow preferable to the alternative.
Because clearly this is why Newt has been avoiding everyone. (Not just Hermann, he now sees, but everyone.) Not because of what he saw in Hermann’s brain, but his own fears and dreams made manifest within his own flesh.
"You are determined to be impossible, aren't you, Dr. Geiszler?" Hermann asks, despite the fact that Newt hasn't been Dr. Geiszler in a long time, much less since he saw within Newt's brain to the shining center of his core.
“I don’t know what it did to my brain, those two drifts smashed right up next to each other, but as far as I can guess—" Newt swallows. “The first one, the seizure—it should have been too much for my brain to handle. And I guess it was, touching my brain to another dimension without something to ground it the first time. Maybe something inside of me was always destined to vibrate too quickly.” Newt shrugs. “Never been one to believe in fate, but—" Some sad laugh echoes from between his teeth, the lightning dancing between his fingertips. “Well, point is. I vibrate the atoms too quickly. I sear everything I touch. You can see it, in front of you. I haven’t been able to hold any electronics in days, I shorted out the lights in my own room the moment I touched the switch, I knocked out Tendo when I touched him after the Breach closed—"
“A King Midas for the post-modern age,” Hermann says, voice dry.
Newt’s mouth twists. “It’s not funny."
“I was not intending for it to be,” Hermann says, though he does have to admit that of all of the possible consequences that could have come out of melding a mind with a kaiju, this certainly has to be the better of them. Imagine if the result had been something like the precursors or the kaiju getting through into Newt's brain instead of it playing around with his interactions with the electrons in the air around him.
Newt swallows, hard, and the light against his face flickers. It would be so easy to be afraid, to worry, and yet, Hermann can't, not about anything other than Newt's reaction. "I'd be the first person freaking out in a good way if it had limits, but it doesn't. I can't control it. I can't get it to stop." Newt snaps his fingers, and the lightning flickers as it dances across his fingers, follows his touch, but it does not fade away. It does not dissolve. "I can't interact with computers or electronics save possibly the pons unit, but even then, the glow on the outside only really started after the second drift, so I can't be sure what triggered it. I can't touch anyone, not after what happened with Tendo, I'm a fucking hazard—"
But that's not entirely true, is it?
There is one person that Newt touched without incident after those drifts. One person who didn't even flinch, because he wasn't affected.
Hermann isn’t afraid of Newt, no matter how fucking cosmic this tiny little fraction of the Shatterdome has suddenly become.
One Breach in reality has closed and another opened, and yet, this one is cradled between the curious fingers of one Newt Geiszler, and that is the most trustworthy place in the world for it to settle.
Sure, anyone else would be terrified of the fact that Newt Geiszler of all people has been the one that has ended up with this very specific and impossible power, but Hermann knows Newt. Knows him inside and out. Has seen every inch of his brain, every memory, every fractal of fractured past echoing through his brain.
And he knows that while Newt is someone that cannot be relied upon to remember to make his bed or sometimes to feed himself, Newt was willing to burn up his own brain at the altar of the world’s survival in order to make sure that everyone else survived, not just once, but twice.
Maybe there was a little bit of ego involved in the decision to do such a thing, a need to prove that he was right, but Hermann knows that it wasn’t just a matter of needing to show that he was right, but also about being desperate to save anyone and everyone from the kaiju and the end of the fucking world.
Hermann isn’t afraid of him. Isn’t afraid of this new, tiny wound in the universe, of Newt Geiszler’s ability to harness the very building blocks of the universe, to excite the electrons enough to cause them to vibrate and move around.
How could he be afraid of this wound when Newt was the first person to look at Hermann’s scars and say that Hermann has lightning in his skin, not in terror, not in disgust, but in awe?
And so Hermann steps forward—
But Newt scrambles back, fear washing over Hermann, this sticky, nasty feeling that feels completely antithetical to Newton Geiszler’s state of existence, but it’s clearly not his own emotions, so he knows that it can only come from one place and one place alone.
And something in Hermann aches for Newt, aches for the little boy who stared over the edge of the boat at the fish, who was more fascinated by what was at the bottom of the lake, the bottom of the ocean, than what could get caught near the top, who now would likely be able to fry the entire lake with a touch of his fingers but would never wish to.
So Hermann sits down next to Newt on the bed, carefully setting his cane to the side—while Hermann is pretty sure that he himself might be safe from being electrocuted, he doesn't exactly what to test what adding a metal cane to the mix might do—even as Newt shakes his head, eyes wide with fear, protesting: "Get away from me, Hermann, dude, I’m gonna hurt you, just like I did Tendo, and I'd never forgive myself—"
“You’ve already touched me after the Drift,” Hermann points out, matter-of-fact, because he's a scientist, too, he knows a thing about evidence, and Newt might have panic overwhelming rationality, but Hermann knows what is true.
Newt’s wet eyes go wide. "We-" He swallows. "We did—" and there is a breathless sort of hope breaking through his voice.
Hermann nods. “We drifted together, and maybe that means your body recognizes us as compatible, or, well—" Hermann cannot help a small smile.
A closed system, he thinks, transfer of energy without transfer of matter, old classes about thermodynamics bubbling up to the surface of his mind.
The first law of thermodynamics: conservation of energy within a closed system. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Perpetual motion cannot be sustained, because energy must be consumed.
For awhile, Newt’s very existence made Hermann question such a rule of physics—if anything in the world embodied the possibility of perpetual motion, it was Newt Geiszler—but now, it’s hard not to believe it, that two bodies within one problem can only exchange energy with each other and not anything outside of it.
“Someone once told me that lichtenberg figures were “mad cool,” Hermann says, and he thinks about a storm over a German lake, but also about the ache within his chest the one and only time Newt went to the opera and wanted to be anywhere but there, away from the spotlight on a woman who had never wanted him, who only invited him so that she could brag about him at a banquet after the night’s performance. It is alright in the end, though; Newt has always burned brighter than Monica Schwartz could ever dream of. “That they were cosmic. I had never been described as such before that moment, but it spoke to me. It was the first moment I began to think of lightning not just as something up in the clouds, but something that could be harnessed within the flesh."
“And I must admit,” Hermann finishes, “There is something rather beautiful, in all of that lightning blooming within flesh.”
Newt’s cheeks burst bright red, crimson blooming bold, and it is no wonder as to why.
In the drift, Hermann had seen how Newt saw him: the fractals of lightning, the burst of light, the way that an argument with Hermann felt like a tornado bursting through the room, kicking up everything and spinning it into something new. The way that sometimes, when Hermann looked at him, it was a lightning strike down the spine, down to Newt’s very bones.
And Hermann wants to see if Newt’s dreams have a truth to them. If the way that Newt sees him—bright, brilliant, beautiful—is true in real life.
He wants to know if this feeling is more than just a flash in the pan. If it is something that might take the breath away as much as Hermann has imagined it.
If maybe, when they kiss, Newt can find a place to ground himself.
And if he grounds himself within Hermann’s flesh, well—Newt was the one who pointed out the fact that Hermann’s flesh already knows a thing or two about currents. That he is already lined with the stains of a life lived too close to plasma.
Newt might be the reckless one with a penchant for ignoring an instinct towards self-preservation, but it’s not as if Hermann Gottlieb is not familiar with danger. With what it takes to control the lightning strike.
So Hermann leans forward and presses his mouth to Newt’s, connecting the circuit, allowing the switch to flip and the current to sing through both of their bodies.
And yes, Hermann does feel a small shock, but it is nothing more than static electricity and fireworks and the lightning strike of a decade of pining finally getting to sink itself into Newt’s mouth, especially when Newt kisses back.
Ready, set, ignition, some reckless thing in Hermann’s chest that feels a little too Geiszler says, and it’s true. God, nothing could be truer as his hand slips beneath the hem of Newt’s shirt, fingers pressing into the soft, welcoming abdomen that Hermann has dreamed of for so long, electricity might be thrumming beneath Newt’s skin, his heart thundering in his chest, able to be felt through the remnants of the ghost drift humming between their skin.
What Herman told Newt is true; he is already made of lightning. He is already marked by his own Lichtenberg figures, twice over, by stretch marks, by scars, by the facts of life feathering themselves out on his skin, staining his flesh, until he can never forget them.
When they kiss, it is with electricity buzzing beneath their skin, the sort of hum that Hermann has ached for his entire life but had been so sure that he would never get.
Newt melts with relief at the touch, at the affection, as his hands slip upward to cup Hermann’s cheeks, for his fingertips to splay across Hermann’s jaw and cheeks, to cradle the sharp cheekbones that kids at school once made fun of him for as much as they did the awkward height before they were handed a far more solid reason to mock him (Hermann never saw any sort of grace or beauty within his limp until the day that Newt Geiszler’s brain revealed that lichtenberg figures was another word for Newt seeing nothing but the fascination of light within him).
Hermann’s eyelids fall shut, as they so often do when you kiss someone, as Newt’s body unfolds, his thighs levering downwards to open his body to Hermann's, their bodies cleaving close together, this tender thing between his ribs expanding so large that it could only be compared to a red giant—
But speaking of stars—there is something glowing beyond his eyelids, something dancing across his skin, not itching, per se, but unable to be ignored, like a need to scratch one's skin.
And Hermann opens his eyes to find blue sparks right in front of his eyes, skipping across Newt's skin, up from his hands, and his eyes, and the warm hum of his mouth.
For a moment, Hermann almost expects to taste ash in the air. You would expect the electricity to be caustic, the plasma to burn the skin, but the electricity almost seems to be playful—sure, just as restless as Newt, but still, wanting to play, to dance.
There is nothing searing his flesh as electricity dances against Hermann’s skin, playful, skittering, warm, a tendril here, a fractal there. Most dissipate away, and the few that do sink into his skin sink in harmlessly, like a bit of static electricity. The electricity almost seems to wish to caress Hermann, to meld itself into him, to embrace him as surely as their minds embraced each other in the drift.
It’s endearing, truly, the beauty of Newt's impossibility.
But Newt seems to feel Hermann's awe, his wide eyes, the way that his jaw would have dropped if his mouth was not against Newt's, because his eyes fly open.
Hermann can feel the flash of anxiety rattling through the ghost drift, the breath catching in Newt’s throat, as he goes to pull away.
But Hermann shakes his head as he leans forward to rest his forehead against Newt's. “It’s beautiful,” he says, and he means it, every syllable sincere, and Newt can clearly tell that he means it, can clearly hear the genuine nature to his voice, the way that when Hermann looks at Newt, he sees the very same Lichtenberg figures that Newt sees when he looks at Hermann, the flesh-and-blood stain of the beauty of electricity.
Newt grins, corners of his eyes crinkling. “Guess I’m gonna be the most academically interesting one in this relationship."
“You are determined to make sure to turn yourself into quite the biological specimen,” Hermann says dryly.
Newt smirks. “You wouldn’t have me any other way. Be honest—you're excited to study me."
And by HaShem, Hermann wishes that he could argue to the contrary, that he could tell Newt that he's wrong, but the truth of the matter is that Newt knows better than anyone in the world how much Hermann loves debate. How much he loves learning new things, loves watching Newt's experimentation, loves watching them both getting to burn bright.
“I’m ready to spend the rest of my lifetime studying you,” Hermann says, and it’s the sort of promise that feels like a vow, but he can't help himself as he watches the dancing sparks of blue electricity light up Newt’s hazel eyes and his tattoos and every other beautiful line of his features.
It's not just Newt, either—they’re both bathed in the flickers of Newt’s brain made manifest in the literal vibrations of atoms around them, and there is some part of Hermann Gottlieb, so unloved for so long, the vessel of so much mockery, that thinks, this half-delirious thought: it’s not just Newt that loves me, it’s the very electricity inside of him that does.
It’s a foolish, non-scientific thought, but there is something about attraction and the pull between forces that cannot be denied, especially when the strongest force in the world is not nuclear force at all, but rather the way that Hermann's heart responds when Newt finally laughs, this wet, beautiful sound, because he is finally listening to Hermann.
---
When they drifted, when he looked into Hermann’s mind, Newton Geiszler didn’t see the side of a mountain. Didn’t see the way that a child had had to pull himself up because the teachers didn’t see the kid who tripped him because he was at the back of the group. Didn’t see the blood on the rock. Didn’t see wreckage of ruined flesh, the grafts, the stitches, the scar that refused to smooth away after all the time, the tissue sometimes pulling tight within the skin itself to this day.
No, what Newton Geiszler saw was the day that Hermann walked for the first time in the hospital without the help of his physical therapist. Each labored step made under gritted teeth, iron hot against his tongue, the edge of his teeth pressing into his gums because Hermann Gottlieb was not going to die on the side of this mountain. He was not going to bleed out.
Numbers are the closest that we can get to the handwriting of god, and Hermann Gottlieb might have passed out when he made it to the trail where the next group could find him, but he made it there because numbers might be immovable, but flesh is not, and Hermann was not going to let the laws of the flesh stop him from finding his way out of this fucking canyon.
Newt felt the way that muscle burned after the threat of atrophy. The way that Hermann Gottlieb refused to let the fire burn out.
When they kissed, when Hermann rested his forehead against Newt's, Hermann didn’t taste of iron; he tasted of ozone, of the atmosphere, of the way that certain sparks can never be put out, no matter how much fuel you steal away.
If Newton Geiszler is the hurricane, is the storm, then Hermann Gottlieb is the place where the lightning strikes and grounds itself out.