Work Text:
I. APOCALYPSE, INTERRUPTED
12.01.25 | 9:45 AM
A string of subtle, more personal kind of misfortune begins unravelling there and then in the LOCCENT, mere minutes after the initial outburst of unconstrained relief. In the general commotion, Hermann finds himself inching awkwardly—but persistently—towards Newton, pitifully desperate to retrieve their close proximity. The shriek of sound and colour surrounding him feels disorienting, more so given the sudden intrusion of unfamiliar Geiszler-ish hyper-perceptiveness to stimuli which stings at the peripheries of Hermann’s consciousness, numbing it even more. Stunned, he’s drawn to the source like a lifeline: a single steady point among the blur, vivid and sharp.
To call their drift anything other than traumatic would be a definite stretch, Hermann is well aware, and yet—and yet.
And yet, well, there’s the undeniable pull urging him to rekindle at least a spark of that rash and stunning cerebral connection. There must have been an enticing aspect to the violent blue horror after all, some sneaky warm presence of something unmistakably Newton in all aspects—noisy, wrapped in a flurry of colour and sensation, weaving through Hermann’s stymied and controlled mind like a blare of loud music in a dusty house whose windows have been shut for years.
He almost feels guilty at the speed with which he adapts to it: virtually unable to fend off a smile at Newton’s lopsided one-armed hug—at the slight sizzle of blue this sparse touch revives from his recent memory. Such a short and fear-infused moment, that drift, and yet Hermann can’t remember feeling so far removed from alone for years on end. He almost feels guilty, yes, and soon enough the almost will die away, because in spite of everything, he still knows it.
Whatever it is that Hermann is yielding to with such vehement wonder, it does not belong to him.
He half-expects Newton to grow loud and fluttery and drunk on epinephrine, shout his voice into shrill hoarseness as the celebrations kick off with the startling noise of Tendo’s long-kept champagne. The following fanfare of voices and music is overwhelming, and Hermann notes vaguely that soon enough it will become unbearable. Hazily, he predicts the remaining time interval to spend sharing those accidental live-wire collisions with Newton before they’re dragged apart. Then all order will return, and Hermann will stumble away and sink into sleep, his stolen splinter of technicolor life will fading into perpetual grey.
But Newton doesn’t say a word. He keeps smiling, yes, but it’s an odd thing, wide-eyed and unusually timid—and allows them, still linked arm-to-arm, to be swept away from the centre of the stage. Then, in a movement that seems improbably straightforward, he tucks his head into Hermann’s collarbone and sags against him with a weary sigh, little shivers running up and down his entire body.
‘Jesus fuck,’ Newton says, voice vibrating against Hermann, ‘Hermann.’
Dazed enough to neither understand nor question, Hermann braces himself against the control panel behind and holds on.
12.01.25 | 10:51 AM
In the end, it is Hermann who drags Newton—by then wholly sleepy and pliant, and muttering an incessant string of incoherencies—to the showers. There, they strip and nearly melt into the water, sane enough to avoid not only touch and eye-contact, but perhaps also thinking altogether. From then, finding the way to Newton’s quarters is both easy and daunting—and Hermann finds himself futilely trying to justify his own dawdling.
Coming to his senses somewhat, he pushes Newton—still damp-haired, and wrapped haphazardly in an oversized, badly buttoned PPDC-issued emergency care uniform (a hint of colours showing on his chest and arms, and Hermann can’t help a hazy daring thought of how expansive the inking must be, stretching all the way down Newton’s shower-flushed skin)—towards his unmade bunk, then aims blindly for the door handle, trying in vain to remember the way to his own quarters.
He doesn’t get very far.
‘No, you,’ Newton says abruptly, swivelling waveringly and pointing a—visibly shaking—finger at Hermann. His voice is hoarse but steady for the first time and he steps forward to yank at Hermann’s equally ill-fitting uniform; pull him all-too-easily back towards himself, ‘you stay.’
‘Newton,’ Hermann manages in half-assed weary reproach—and doesn’t elaborate, suddenly finding no words.
It’s not that he doesn’t see reasons to object, the reasons are varied and numerous; it’s more that suddenly, each and every thing dims into the overwhelming inertia of physical exhaustion, the voice of reason making no exception. Head cottony, eyelids heavy, limbs numb, and—well.
And there’s the matter of Newton’s eyes, wide and still inherently scared, a sight both rare and frightening, in any shape or form, but especially, especially now. No guarantee against nightmares today, Hermann thinks, and swallows.
‘You’re stayin,’ Newton repeats, hands fisting weakly in the uniform’s starchy pale-green fabric, eyes half-lidded now as he stares desperately at the neatly done-up buttons of Hermann’s collar. ‘You’re staying here.’
And he tugs them backwards, the motion simple enough to warrant Hermann falling along with him, only half-surprised with his body’s persevering allegiance to Newton’s touch. They tumble onto the mattress, half-trying to realign and fit together: Newton’s arms, familiarly restless, move as though blindly, running up and down Hermann’s sides and spine, to finally find purchase at a blanket and tug it up so it tangles around them.
It’s all a mystifying process which Hermann can neither comprehend nor do anything but yield to: blinking rapidly, he finds himself encased in the cottony tired hush of the blue—returned with full force along with the physical contact—and entangled in both Newt’s limbs and his blankets. His overstrained aching leg is secured atop Newton’s, his warmth-flushed cheek pressed against Newton’s scratched-up forehead, his thoughts rendered incongruous with increasing blue.
‘Night,’ Newton says, damply, somewhere into Hermann’s neck. He seems calmer, the earlier flash of worry squashed in tiredness. It’s all alarming, or should be, as Hermann is dimly aware, just as potentially disastrous as it is unprecedented. Soon enough Newton’s fast asleep, warm and breathing evenly, and at any other time, Hermann would absolutely disbelieving, absolutely appalled—
—at how easy, how traitorously easy, his own body finds it to surrender completely and drift off as well, further into the inviting blur of blue-tinted drift bleed-out, tiredness and touch.
12.01.25 | 12:49 AM
He wakes in a distracting haze of unknowing regarding the time and his whereabouts—the locked-in tiny quarters allow no natural light to enter, and the juxtaposition of adrenaline and sleep have disrupted Hermann’s usually sound sense of chronology. For a confusing moment, he hasn’t the slightest idea where he is: the air seems stuffy, light only half-penetrable, and there’s a warm unfamiliar weight half-slung across his body, moving in time with—Newton’s, yes, that’s Newton—deep-sleep breaths. His right hand rests flung across Hermann’s chest, fingers curling vaguely in the fabric of his uniform. Hermann can feel the scratch of Newton’s stubble on his own neck, damp warm breath on his skin and something—something like a tangy scent of stale blood still perceivable in the air.
Spurred on by the disturbing thought—if not quite awake yet—Hermann moves, writhing away far enough from Newton to blearily examine his face.
A wan streak of dark-red blood has trickled from one of his nostrils, staining the pillow and both their uniforms. Before any reason not to do so chooses to manifest itself, Hermann reaches out to wipe it with his thumb. Unperturbed, fast asleep, Newton burrows his head back closer with a snuffle, nosing into Hermann’s collarbone and sending a shock of branching shivers down his chest. The frizz of blue sparks up for a startling moment, and drags Hermann upwards from his drowsy haze, clearing his thoughts. As though in compliance, Newton gasps—but then exhales, tension relenting.
Mind clearer but still uncannily blank, Hermann cards his fingers through Newton’s—soft, unexpectedly, like so ridiculously much about the man—hair, contemplating. There’s hardly a tested pattern he could follow here; to wait seems somehow indulgent, and to rise might mean to wake Newton, by far more exhausted and overstrained of the two of them. Even if forcing the reckless fool to pay a long overdue visit to the Medical does seem pressing enough to pursue, Hermann hesitates.
To stay at all would mean to eventually face Newton, and that would mean snap out—from a different trance altogether.
His fingers skim lightly down Newton’s right temple, then his cheek: rough, gristly in touch. He is ridiculously warm, Hermann thinks with fond exasperation: if he were to have such a furnace in his bed more frequently, he’d perhaps forget how to be cold.
Shame comes in a rolling wave, tepid, sickly and well-known, constricting Hermann’s throat and jerking his hand away. He may be foolish enough to linger and project, but he’s not—he cannot be—stupid enough to do anything more.
Hermann knows better to anticipate anything else than to be left behind.
After a beat, he disentangles himself from the burning up bundle of Newton as carefully as he can, eliciting from him a hazy grunted noise of protest. Seized by the sudden stinging cold—which truly should have no place in the tiny half-lit room, blast the goddamned fund cuts—Hermann braces himself against Newton’s desk and gropes for a pen in his half-open cluttered drawer. Having scribbled a couple of explanatory lines which wouldn’t read needlessly nurturing, he then allows himself one last glance.
To catalogue, if nothing else: a bundle of rumpled blankets. Dim light. Newton’s sleep-smoothed roughed-up (darling) face. Silence.
He leaves Newton’s room witnessed by no one, hand braced on the comforting stability of his cane, and heads for his own quarters. Then, properly dressed (armoured) and properly desensitised (liar, oh, liar) he ascends in the murky elevator and out into the deserted roof.
It almost feels comforting.
It’s midday by now: a vague grey day of dim light and constant drizzle, shimmering and uninviting. Hermann fishes for a cigarette in the pockets of his destroyed parka, with cold fingers, trying to trade disintegrated for intimidating when it comes to similes.
12.01.25 | 1:32 PM
It’s scarcely half hour. An hour since he’s left at most.
‘Okay, so one? You left before I woke up and I’m your drift partner. Rude.’
‘We are not drift partners, Newton,’ Hermann says, almost on auto-pilot, feeling too numb to be properly startled.
There’s a scoff. ‘We’ve drifted together, Hermann, that’s literally all there is to it. That’s what it says on the tin. Drift. Partners. People who drift together. And wasn’t done, so shut up. One, drifting. Two? Stop smoking, you moron, I’ve told you what’ll be left of your lungs if you keep it up. I’ve shown you pictures. And I’m a doctor.’
Hermann inhales, trying not to let his breath hitch and the warmth reign too expansively in his cheeks at the startling, embarrassing reaction Newton’s voice invokes in him. Physical, this has gotten so much more terribly physical all of the sudden—which means Hermann has been right to avoid touch at all costs throughout all the years, only to have the effort come to dust now. So it goes.
‘Forgive me, Newton, but for all the high esteem in which I hold your medical advice,’ he says, voice dry and listless, ‘given the context, I neither feel particularly inclined to follow it nor do I really care.’
There’s footsteps, jittery and easily-recognised, and then Newton’s next to him, in flesh: smiling, awake but barely so—and, what startles Hermann, still wearing the emergency uniform under his ripped leather jacket. His boots are unlaced, hair in a very telling disarray. He’s holding two bland paper cups in his hands. They both smell of over-burnt cheap coffee.
‘Three,’ Newton says, a smile in his voice, ‘I’ve brought you breakfast, asshole.’
Hermann blinks. The half-hour was enough to shuffle some things into perspective. See himself copied and pasted into the vague probability of near future, living day by day shielded and busied by numbers, tracing abstracts and—possibly—poring over scraps of information sought out from the author of most incoherent and intelligible e-mails in the world.
It isn’t the kindest vision but it’s hardly despicable. Hermann would know not to be picky, just as he knows not to be delusional.
The drift, as shockingly titillating as it’s been in and of itself was still hardly hope-inspiring, given the sheer force and detail in which he must have been delivered to Newton, outlined by the looming glare of the Anteverse. Hermann’s prediction of what must follow is clear: a sudden insight into all the wrong that’s made him what he is, would naturally cause well-due repulsion and withdrawal.
Or—it should.
‘Earth to Hermann,’ Newton says, raising his eyebrows at Hermann’s slow mute blinking. It’s entirely distracting—and crushing, really—to take notice of his red-rimmed injured eye, framed by scratches marking his cheek and forehead. He’s paler than usually, eyes shadowed and shoulders slumping. He’s wearing his old glasses. ‘You good?’
‘Yes,’ Hermann says tersely, too seized by some irrational emotion to let himself grow excessively verbose. Instead, he sounds almost accusing, ‘I—you were asleep.’
Newton smiles sheepishly, tapping his left temple.
‘Yeah—you, uh, you woke me up. In here. As in, I kinda felt you? Being awake. Up on the roof. You got a bit … cold just there.’
Again the sheepish smile. Against all will, Hermann finds himself mirroring it, just so, before he purses his lips again and looks down. ‘Yes, I—the drift bleed-out, I suppose. Not unheard of. I’m … ah, sorry.’
He trails off, uncertain. He feels like he is hovering at the verge of something.
All exception from stagnancy in Hermann’s life stems from either his work—here, in particular, from the stimulating thought of being needed, of his work being needed in the world—or from Newton Geiszler. That constant simmer of heat, rekindled day by day through nerves and adrenaline, through the ongoing, life-saving sparring with his lab partner, which Hermann has grown to perceive as a necessity.
Letting go of both at the same time requires strength Hermann is not wise enough to have gathered yet. Growing somewhat desperate, he finds himself clinging foolishly to whatever it is that Newton seems to be offering now.
‘Four,’ Newton now says, passing him one of the cups in a way shaky enough to warrant his—warm, clumsy—fingers bumping into Hermann’s blue-from-cold ones. He instantly flinches. ‘Aw, shit, man, you’re freezing. That’s not what I wanted to say. But Jeez. I was right. Or ... or the blue was.’
Gingerly, he hijacks Hermann’s free hand from where it rests on his knee, laces their fingers together in a deft efficient movement and sticks both in the pocket of Hermann’s parka.
Hermann clenches his jaw at the ripple of blue that inevitably surfaces. Newton’s being tactile, surprisingly so—because he tends to be abundantly tactile, yes, only he does so with everyone but Hermann, respecting all the imaginary boundaries Hermann has so staunchly projected (devoutly so, ever since the Stockholm fiasco). And in the general scheme, it’s made it easier, but it’s made it worse as well—because Hermann has deduced, inexorably, how beyond repair their early bond was, if Newton shied away from something he tended to give so freely.
Now—now is confusing. But there’s the bleed-out, lurking everywhere, clouding judgement, and perhaps all could be blamed on it, if need be.
‘Four,’ Newton picks up stubbornly, taking a sip of his coffee and wincing. The spasm of his features is fleeting but brings out—just for a moment—all the misgivings of exhaustion. ‘Ugh, this is disgusting. Don’t drink it.’
Hermann sniffs, straightening. ‘Believe it or not, Newton, but I wasn’t intending to. I don’t yet have a death wish.’
Newton drags the tip of his filthy boot across the floor contemplatively, ‘Well, four, we kind of, uh, have to report in Medical, like, an hour ago? According to Human Resource Management Squad in the impressive person of Tendo Choi, that is. Also, I think Hansen’s gonna kill me—and so, like, you too by default cause you know he can’t tell us apart—cause I don’t know if you remember but I might have called him a fascist?’
Hermann sighs. ‘Newton, for god’s sake.’
II. STAR TREATMENT
12.01.25 | 7:14 PM
Less than six hours later, and he’s back the roof, huddled in the tinny shelter shielding the elevator shaft, in his filthy parka, drinking some vaguely suspicious alcohol out of an inscription-lacking bottle which Tendo has retrieved from the Kaidanovskys’ quarters—and god, no, not that line of thought—and trying to breathe in as much of the damp foggy air as possible. To feel like he can breathe again at all.
What he feels instead is, if possible, even more tired than before.
Hansen’s primary solution to the chaos that reigns inside and outside of the Shatterdome—magnified by the onslaught of news-hungry media at the base’s proverbial doors—has been to declare a hasty lockdown and order everyone to ‘sort themselves out.’
Curiously enough, it seems that Hermann is not the only one violently relieved they are not being dispatched just yet. Still in the LOCCENT, he briefly catches Mako’s eyes, tired and gleaming with something that mingles grief with relief in a manner which shouldn’t be quite this seamless. No, Hermann thinks, sobering, leaving immediately would feel too much like facing up to the loss.
But between Tendo’s idiotic protocol-fuelled insistence on filling out stashes of dreary reports and signing up for a variety of dreadful psychological check-ups, Mako and Raleigh’s barely comprehensible recounts of their drift and Marshall Hansen’s attempts at controlling the half-dazed and—in a large portion—already drunk populace of the Dome, Hermann has hardly had the time to either see Newton again or resolve the case of a pulsating migraine lurking at the back of his head, which he suspects they might be sharing.
They seem to be sharing a lot of such things: minor and major aches, tensions and fleeting worries. Drift bleed-out, indeed—with the odd warmth gone, the name feels more apt than anything.
Mechanically, Hermann takes another swig and winces, shuddering.
‘Lungs done, now we’re killing the liver? Hermann, I’m honestly humbled by your determination. Keep it up and we’ll reach brain death in no time.’
Newton, inevitably, startles him—emerging out of the shadowed staircase, quiet and warmly intrusive like a stray cat.
He has been cooped up in Medical for most of the day, which Hermann perceived through various stabs of pain through his own ribs and arms and an annoyingly unrelenting urge to dump everything and come keep him company.
‘Glad to have your approval, Newton,’ he presently says, surprised at how hoarse he sounds, ‘seeing as I’ve so very ardently looked for it. I’ll be sure to name-check your unavoidably correct prediction in my will, should the brain death occur anytime soon.’
‘Look at him, trying to be funny,’ Newton quips, perching himself down next to Hermann and coaxing the bottle out of his grasp. ‘Have you eaten anything today, Doctor Zhivago?’
‘No. Have you?’ Hermann retorts with a half-glare, to which Newton responds with a sleazy rueful smile before raising the bottle to his lips.
Hermann watches his throat work through narrowed eyes. Newton’s scratches have been cleaned up a little, but something like a patch of expansive bruising begins to poke out from his scruff now, framing the still-bloodshot eye. Having changed out from the uniform somewhere along the way, Newton still looks smaller, somehow. Strikingly more subdued.
‘Looks like we’ll be stuck here for a while,’ he mutters vaguely, taking another swig from the bottle, and never specifying whether he means the Shatterdome, the roof or perhaps something else entirely. ‘What a day, huh? And I mean earlier. I refuse to call this—’ he gestures vaguely with the bottle, ‘a day at all. Feels like a bloody fever dream.’
‘This feels like a fever dream?’ Hermann repeats incredulously, raising his eyebrows at the muddy grey evening gathering around the damp roof. ‘Newton, I dread to think what you consider the events preceding it, then.’
‘Oh, only the best day of my goddamn life,’ Newton says with a faint forced laugh.
Almost instantly, a shadow crosses his face. He tenses, traces of mirth evaporating. Then he says, in a changed, startlingly sober voice, ‘Day I met you was honest to god the worst one.’
A stab of well-know frustration, now entirely devoid of anger but instead twined snugly with rapidly returned nausea. Hermann swallows, drawing his shoulders, just slightly, inwards—not quite enough for Newton to pick up, but perhaps enough to feel marginally more shielded. He lets his eyes fall shut.
‘Newton, really,’ he says, disturbed at how old and tattered his voice comes out. ‘Must we—must we really do this now?’
‘No, I—shut up. This is important.’
Surprised, Hermann opens his eyes.
There’s an odd, uncharacteristic edge to Newton’s voice, a rare thing to pick up from him in any context but strictly professional, strictly contained in his manic nook of scientific expertise. Hermann can’t but perceive it as ill-fitting to the usual air of Newton’s jibes: as he levels him with a wary half-lidded look, he finds Newton’s expression drawn, his eyes fixed stubbornly ahead.
He’s still clutching at the bottle. The scratched-up knuckles of his hands have gone white.
‘I didn’t mean it like—’ he says, and then cuts himself off, visibly frustrated. Jerkily, he sets the bottle down between them and then rubs his hands against one another—a soft familiar movement Hermann has learned to catalogue as a signal of Newton’s growing discomfort.
He picks up, voice somewhat uneven, hitching at the higher vowels, ‘I didn’t mean it like because of you. I know you think that. But’s not that, it’s … I just, I count that day as one of my biggest fuck-ups and … and, shit, it’s only fair that you kne—’
‘Newton,’ Hermann hears his own voice, only just short of erratic. He’s caught between contrasting feelings of growing trepidation as he recognises the raw edge Newton is plucking at, and something choking and unfamiliar that feels more dangerous by half.
‘The past is in the past,’ he says eventually, voice more neutral now. ‘There’s hardly any need to resurrect it.’
‘Yeah, except there is,’ Newton whispers, eyes still fixed in front of him, utterly without movement. His hands still as well, splayed evenly on each knee—Hermann notices that the dirty fabric of his trousers has ripped, letting the skin to poke through. There’s a momentary silence, heavy and oddly congested, somehow.
Then Newton speaks out, ‘The thing is … the thing is, it was that kind of day, like … that wrong kind of day when I just—I can’t stop myself, Hermann, I just do things, just to push at the boundaries, like I want to ruin everything, only I never really do, and it’s never, ever good afterwards. That kind of day. But then I … I remember thinking, hey, I’m gonna meet Hermann. And that seemed like such a … such a good thing that I thought it wouldn’t matter what my fucked up head decided to do. And … and it was the good thing, and I should’ve seen it coming that I’d ruin it, I should’ve … I don’t know. None of what I’ve done made sense. It didn’t make sense. We were—I don’t know, we weren’t supposed to be like that. I didn’t mean for us to end up like that. So I guess what I mean is, I’m sorry. For being such an ass back then. And … and later.’
Trying to find words sparse and pointed enough not to betray the raw and fragile thing that’s opened up in Hermann at the words—fighting to obliterate his usual composure to an end—he forcibly tears his eyes away from Newton’s now-twitching hands and stares at his own knees, blinking.
He wants to touch him, for once prove a man bold enough to reach out and take those shaking mobile hands in his own, try to steady them as best he can.
‘Then I suppose I can only say I am sorry, too,’ he says instead, with pressure, willing his quiet voice to remain even. ‘And for the same thing, no less. Perhaps with even less excuse.’
Newton’s movement is sharp and surprising and Hermann’s head snaps up instinctively to meet his eyes—or perhaps it’s not instinct, perhaps it’s something else, the waning and growing connection between them, still at force. Newton’s face is still unreadable but seems suddenly livelier, half-quizzical, round odd-coloured eyes in perpetual tiny movements.
‘You mean it,’ he half-asks, voice tense—it strikes Hermann as an odd distorted echo of their last minutes prior to the drift. ‘You … you think we’ve both fucked up.’
Blinking, Hermann allows himself a caustic little smile before he nods sharply, looking down. He muses, ‘Misery loves company.’
There’s a moment’s quiet, pierced only with the wind’s low whine, coiling low in the leaky drainage system encasing their point shelter. Hermann stares ahead, hollow-chested, trying to decide whether the painful tightness in his ribs is a by-product of his own trouble or merely a physical bleed-out from Newton’s violent encounter with a car that he’d glimpsed in the drift. He cannot decide be sure which option strikes him as worse.
‘Come to—uh, sleep,’ Newton says at once, impulsively, an odd ring to the phrase—as though he’s meant to say come to bed but caught himself. He rises to his feet, turns on his heel, extending a hand to Hermann. From such angle, he looks uncharacteristically tall, ‘We both need it. Like really, we do. And I bet you’re in rigor mortis now, the body temperature you tend to cultivate.’
For a moment, Hermann doesn’t tear his eyes away from the flock of gaunt grey-feathered birds that have risen along with Newton, circling them like some sort of a disturbed-still point. He has an odd, piercing idea that they must be the same birds they’ve seen in each city, following them like a visible manifestation of things corroding with time.
He blinks. Oh, what nonsense.
He says, ‘Yes, I suppose that’s fair.’
12.01.25 | 7:43 PM
The general consensus about Newton Geiszler’s looks, as established a number of years prior by the terrifying collective of Tendo, Mako Mori and the Kaidanovsky siblings—may they rest in peace—over the otherwise entertainment-lacking lunch table—seemed to be that he was adorable. It was also consequently overheard by none other than Hermann himself, who tried valiantly to compress himself somehow and hide behind either his tablet or the black coffee he choked on, or possibly melt into the wall.
An appalling assessment. Startlingly inaccurate, Hermann presently concedes, thoughts swimming in a swaying haze.
Newton is … life, in shapes and movements, in violent colour, sloppily aligned into a person, a being of such absolute wonder at everything he comes in touch with that the world seems to come alive before him. That’s not adorable. That’s—
Alcohol clouding judgement? Hermann thinks hazily. Yes, quite so.
Half-asleep, through his lashes, Hermann watches Newton as he lies on his bed, having invited himself there without either question or hassle. He’s lingered at the door, the same inscrutable expression on his tired face—never before has Hermann seen Newton let the misgivings of his inner state of trouble show so carelessly. But physical exhaustion does that to you, Hermann knows well, shatters the inhibitions of pretence. From such close distance, Newton’s skin seems paper thin, face slack and young.
Hermann watches Newton, and Newton watches the bunk’s low ceiling, clear and devoid of the scribbles that scatter the walls of his quarters. He’s uncannily still, lost in thought, dulled eyes fixed upwards.
Hermann recognises that he’s verging on the very brink of yielding to the residual exhaustion—incoherent enough to entertain a vague morose thought that he likely won’t get a repeat from the previous day’s strange touch-fest, weary enough to let the thought slide unpunished.
Newton startles him when he speaks out, voice thready, ‘There’s a reason I’ve brought up Stockholm, y’know.’
‘Hm?’ Hermann says, still hardly clear-headed enough to maintain any air of professionalism about the potential conversation.
Newton licks his lips, still gazing upwards. ‘I’ve had … some really weird dreams last night.’
‘The hivemind,’ Hermann mutters sullenly, heaving a sigh into his pillow and trying to blink himself back to consciousness. ‘Yes. I—Those creatures do make for considerable nightmare fuel, I admit, though of all people I’d expect you to build up a sort of immunity—
‘I’m not talking about the Kaiju, dipshit,’ Newton says warmly, and turns gingerly on the bed. He’s facing Hermann now, mattress dipping under his weight, face half-tucked into the pillow just as him. His eyes, however, are large and excited, not remotely as bleary as they’d seemed to Hermann, ‘I’m talking about you.’
It’s a little too much to process, in Hermann’s state of newly restored exhaustion and—reluctantly acknowledged—increasingly tangible inebriation. He should have watched himself. Tendo’s good intentions be damned, the Kaidanovskys handled their liquor better than most, and certainly better than him.
‘I’m … one of your nightmares?’ he says, voice more childishly lilting and begrudging than he’d like to. He quickly schools it into sarcasm, ‘Oh, charming, Newton.’
‘In a manner of speaking, yes, you are. Half the deal, at least,’ Newt replies smoothly, somehow gathering himself up to scoot even closer, so that there’s barely any distance between them. In a blink, Hermann can feel the faint wave of blue-spiked warmth radiated from Newton’s body.
He seems tipsy enough to match Hermann, despite having drunk considerably less, which shouldn’t exactly be surprising. Hermann can recall various instances of half-official celebrations post-attacks which allowed Newton to display just how much of a careless drunk he can be: growing louder than usual, giggly and tactile, trying to dance with anyone with legs and paying sloppy—if curiously nonsexual—compliments to his animate surroundings.
(‘Ex-cellent hyoid bone, my dude,’ he would say, voice slurred and teary, yanking the equally-sloshed Tendo forward by his bowtie, ‘you rock that thyroid.’
‘Geiszler, you. You beautiful bastard,’ Tendo would reply, shaking Newton gravely by one arm and then staggering blindly off, usually towards the hunted-looking Alison that he’s managed to smuggle into the dome.)
‘The nightmare was Stockholm,’ Newton then says, voice innocuously neutral, and it’s sobering enough.
Eyes wide open now, jaw tightening involuntarily, Hermann levels Newton with a tense, wary look. He really is very close, he now realises, too close—leisurely half-crossing all of the boundaries that they should be wary of crossing lest they want to come out of this unscathed.
Admittedly, sleeping in one bed twice in a day for no apparent reason seems to chuck all care about coming out unscathed out of the window, Hermann acknowledges sourly.
Before he brings himself to muster up an answer more eloquent than a brusque I see, Newton tugs his hand free of the scratchy PPDC-issued blanket and runs his index finger along Hermann’s wrist, flicking the button of his cuff undone and tugging up the sleeve, methodically, so that skin only meets skin.
He speaks out, ‘I’ve dreamt about it before, you know, so it’s not all the drift. As I’ve said, bit of a disaster on all fronts and I do tend do kind of … torture myself with such things. But, uh. This was different? I don’t know, I’ve been … thinking about it all day. Had a lot of time, you know, when they poked me about in Medical. Couldn’t for my life put a finger on what was different, though. But then it hit me. It all gets so confusing in the … the blue. All blended together. But I figured it out: it was inverted. You know? Not all of it. But parts.’
He’s annoyingly distracted by the upwards tug of Newton’s fingers, which have managed to hike up the sleeve enough to expose Hermann’s elbow. Newton resumes the movement downwards from then, stroking along the bony arm’s pale curve. Up and down, while Hermann tries to understand his words. Up and down. And again. And again. He doesn’t meet Hermann’s eyes.
‘Inverted?’ Hermann asks at length, voice stymied, frowning. ‘How do you mean, inverted?’
‘I mean, parts of it were from you,’ Newton says, voice oddly blunt, as though he’s picked up just enough courage to blurt it. ‘From your perspective. You said it yourself, drift bleed-out. Bit of … uh, pain from both sides. Which, I mean. Changes things? It’s been a nightmare for me but—but I didn’t—’
He trails off, visibly troubled. Bites at his lower lip.
‘Yes,’ Hermann cuts in, realisation hitting him hard, a dark incriminating flush rising in his cheeks that he hopes Newton doesn’t see. All of the sudden, he feels panicked, intent on interrupting before Newton gets tangled in words and too embarrassed to communicate with, ‘you realised that—yes. What I mean is, for me, too. A … a nightmare. Obviously.’
‘Is it?’ Still not meeting his eyes, Newton continues worrying his lip. He adds, cryptically, ‘Huh. So maybe I’d … gotten things bit wrong after all.’
No, it would not have been obvious. Hermann knows it, not with the care he’s put into concealing the weight that fateful—rash, shouty, immature, completely ruinous—fall-out has set in his chest. Years of hopeful—overly, for any standards and not only his—pining, of devouring his letters to the point of learning them by heart, brought down in one day. He has Newton’s sloppy, disarmingly childish can’t wait to meet you burned permanently into his brain.
Just as permanently as the voiced, ringing, well, fuck YOU too, Hermann. And for the record—
Newton’s hand stills on Hermann’s wrist before he has a chance to finish the thought.
‘Is there more of that?’ he says, voice barely containing the urgency to get his answer, and Hermann thinks please, no, ‘That we could’ve gotten … I think there must be. I think, Hermann—I think—’
A pause. Then a dizzying change of pitch and venue, ‘D’you get anything from me?’
Trying to will himself to breathe evenly with Newton’s hand now firmly wrapped around his wrist, Hermann manages, ‘I have tried not to … not to think about it at all.’
‘Mm,’ Newton murmurs. ‘Okay. Makes sense. You and your … propriety. Okay. What if I said go off and have a stroll?’
Hermann inhales through his nose, feeling strained and uncomfortable. ‘Excuse me?’
‘What if I wanted you to get nosy for once? And … and call me out on my bullshit. Or not. Or just tell me what’s your trouble.’
‘My trouble—my … ’ Hermann stumbles over his own words, gripped by dread, eyes fixed unseeingly ahead. His hand has gone stiff in Newton’s loose grip and he hates, he hates himself for body’s inability to keep itself in check and feign indifference, perhaps sparing them both, ‘my—it shouldn’t … factor in this.’
‘No?’ Newton says, voice raspy as thought he’s finally succumbing to sleep as well, so dreadfully close now that they are almost touching. Hermann chances a sideways glance and finds Newton staring, muddy greenish eyes half-lidded, pupils widened—for all intents and purposes, he looks drugged, and Hermann shivers, breath hitching on its own accord.
‘What should, then?’
‘Not—I don’t—Newton.’
‘Newton should factor in this?’ Newton repeats, vaguely, and he’s definitely fading now, because his voice grows warmer and more slurred, like the previous day. He chuckles. ‘I mean, he kinda does. But so does Hermann. Even more, from a certain angle. Or … or at least the same amount.’
This is all—it’s all slipping out of control, again, all of the world escaping Hermann’s precarious focus, and again he’s more powerless than he’s ever been, and Newton is too close (and should he be closer) and Hermann knows he can’t (they can’t) and that this is not what it seems, and quite too much, and—
‘You’re drunk,’ Hermann tries, voice almost level, already losing the fight with Newton’s proximity but valiant enough not to show. ‘And I’m not—’
Not what? comes from Newton, curious, warmly insistent, only it’s not even said, it’s thought, and Hermann can’t fight it (how can you fight someone who thinks himself into your head, for god’s sake?) Inertia is seeping from Newt—Newton—tide by tide, in mild blue waves, stealing away Hermann’s protests.
He thinks, Not enough.
‘Yes, you are, you idiot,’ Newton mutters, curling in closer. ‘Go to sleep. And we’re so not finished.’
You’re everything, is swirling in the blue, so odd and foreign that Hermann cannot breathe. You’re all there’s ever been. The only thing.
Which doesn’t make any sense at all, not in any reality—or not until Hermann dares look, still without breath, and finds Newton sleeping.
So maybe he’s sleeping as well.
13.01.25 | 1:25 AM
Later, a vague and mystifying time later, he seems to wake from a vivid, screeching nightmare of being swallowed by the luminous, ubiquitous Otachi—a shriek of sound, a whip of rain and fear, fear so paralysing—to welcome a bundle of old blanket and limbs wrapped around him like one of the cephalopods he’s always loved so dearly. He? He has? Once again, he hasn’t the notion of time or location. Everything is swimming, disjointed, Hermann’s heart hammering in his heart, his forehead clammy with sweat. A sharp spike of anxiety pierces through the dull haze of his mind, only amplified by drowsiness it can’t chase away. No—no, it wasn’t real, it wasn’t even his—
As though physically jolted, Newton is roused from sleep with an audible hitch of breath. Bleary, he sits up, groping in the dark for Hermann.
‘There you—ah,’ he croaks, semi-coherent. ‘Was it you? I think so—s’okay, by the way. I don’t mind. You borrowed my nightmare. C’mere.’
Too disoriented to effectively resist, Hermann lets himself be gathered up into Newton’s clumsy arms once again.
‘M’not sure if you worked it out yet nor not,’ Newton is muttering, yawning into Hermann’s shoulder and hooking an ankle across his calf, ‘but like, I love you a whole damn lot. Like more than science.’
Hermann’s chest is so tight and cold that he has trouble breathing. Everything seems too bright, too tinged with the radiant blue, and everything seems like nothing but a vivid projection—a dream, perhaps, the twisted coercive kind, one that sneers with almost-reality.
Hermann has to wake up. He desperately wants not to.
‘You love me more than science,’ he repeats, voice wan. Even his own voice feels eerie and vaguely absurd. He must be dreaming.
‘Yeah, don’t be a bitch about it,’ Newton mutters, nudging him in the thigh. ‘Is your leg okay?’
Herman exhales, heart stuttering in his chest, out of tune, ‘Yes.’
‘Good.’
III. DAYLIGHT
13.01.25 | 8:15 AM
His third post-Apocalyptic awakening is the first one to resemble normalcy in Hermann’s internal lexicon. He’s alone in his bed, pointlessly tangled in a solitary blanket, his position alleviating little discomfort from his leg. Cold air must have found a way to sneak into the quarters; or perhaps it’s just his quarters that are normally cold sans-Newton.
Newton. Hermann feels a rush of tense, almost nauseating, anxiety at his very name. God, what has he landed himself in. Newton.
No—no.
He forces himself to sit up, scanning the room in search of his cane. He finds it laid across the night-table, the handle pressing down upon a small scrap of paper. He recognises the knobbly writing.
couldn’t sleep. come up to the roof, we need to talk.
- newt.
13.01.25 | 8:34 AM
He’s so preoccupied by the crafting of a foolproof professional detachment that would serve as a way of saving his face and surviving the inevitable rejection in the sober light of day more or less intact that upon stepping out of the elevator, Hermann is nearly blinded by the sharp morning light.
It must be later than he’s assumed.
Newton is leaning against the thin wall of the shelter, hands tucked deep into the pockets of his grubby jacket, one of his legs twitching up and down. He startles at the sound of Hermann’s cane, then turns. Smiles
‘Hi,’ he says, ‘slept well?’
‘I—’ starts Hermann and cuts himself off. I’ve crawled through your nightmares all night long, and either you know it and know what you’ve said to get me through it, or you don’t and I couldn’t bear letting you know what I conjured you to do. ‘Decently, yes.’
Newton fixes him with a nondescript look. After a beat, he muses, ‘Me, not so much.’
Hermann braces himself, straightening and schooling his voice into dreary reluctance. ‘Newton, what is it that you wanted to talk about? Your message wasn’t terribly informative.’
Newton is not looking at him now, instead studying the back of his own hand with odd intensity. Finally he declares, in a muffled voice, ‘Yeah, that. I’ve, uh … done something, Hermann, and depending on your reaction, well … the whole world might shift yet.’
‘You’ve done … what, exactly?’ Hermann asks, eyes narrowing. Newton smiles, still studying the bracelets on his right wrist. The morning light reflects off his face in an odd way, lighting up the eyes—progressively less blood-shot—and making him look oddly like the Cheshire cat, as he finally looks at Hermann.
Newton bites at his lower lip.
‘You know how I said I don’t really want to leave Hong Kong? I mean—what with us being dispatched and all. I just don’t really want to let go quite yet.’
‘Did you?’ Hermann says carefully, hand tightening on his cane.
‘Or maybe I just thought I said it. Gets—confusing sometimes, nevermind. But anyway—I know you’ve got … like literally nowhere to stay here. And … and if you were to stay, you’d probably try to rent out something in, like, the shadiest of dead ends in Hong Kong and inevitably die beat-up in stinky ditch, which, uh—not good? But I—see, I’ve got a place.’
There’s a beat.
‘That’s—wonderful, Newton, congratulations,’ Hermann says wryly, jaw clenching, feeling an unreasonable sting of disillusionment, ‘a truly mature reason to gloat.’
‘Shut up, Hermann, this is not—I’m not—’ Newton exhales, closes his eyes. ‘Jesus. I’m saying come stay with me.’
All of Hermann’s mental processes screech to a halt. He blinks. ‘What?’
Newton squirms, one hand rubbing at the other. He musters up a nervous smile, one corner of his mouth tugging uncertainly upwards. ‘I’ve got, like, a … shitton of space. It’s pretty sweet, you’ll … see, maybe? And before you go all … hedgehog on me and proudly decline, I’ve … I’ve already listed it as your accommodation at Tendo’s yesterday so just maybe … behave like a human being for once, and accept it?’
‘I—’ This isn’t wise. Not in the slightest. This is the single stupidest, most self-destructive thing he could do. He desperately, mind-numbingly wants to throw caution in the wind and do it. ‘Newton, for god’s sake. How do you—this is—preposterous. Just how do you think this would—work? You and me in your—your place, and w-what would we even—’
He trails off. Suddenly, with startling, ice-cold clarity, Hermann sees the deliberate and thought-through corner he’s just walked himself into.
Newton’s eyes, staring right at him and right through him and—and no, there’s no mistaking it.
‘Well, that … that is the question, isn’t it?’ Newton says, voice strained, falsely casual with something unbearably hopeful underneath. ‘Something for us to … work out, perhaps? Or just—fix.’
There’s a pause. Hermann swallows, trying to compose himself. Everything seems to be falling apart, and he can’t stop looking at Newton.
‘There … there are things in this world, Newton,’ he says finally, quietly, with improbable difficulty, ‘that are beyond fixing.’
‘Hermann,’ Newton says, and it’s almost flippant, and Hermann almost manages to hate him for it. ‘Hermann, come on, it’s not a sport, you don’t have to shoot me down every time just for the kick of—’
‘Don’t you mock me,’ Hermann interjects, voice choked with something that toes the line between utter despair and cold, cold fury, and looks up.
There must be something dreadful in his eyes because Newton’s lower lip trembles and all trace of levity drains from his face in an instant.
‘I’m not,’ he says abruptly. His hands chase Hermann’s wrists, trapping them between them. ‘I’m not, Hermann, I just don’t get it. Ever since that goddamned drift, I’ve been trying to work it out, I’ve been … god, it’s not like—it’s not like we have to keep pretending that either of us doesn’t give a damn anymore.’
Jaw clenched, Hermann doesn’t answer, eyes set somewhere to their left. They sting, and he hates himself for it, for this … weakness, pervading him from every point. He’s growing cold and colder still, distant, folding back into his usual self. By now, Newton seems light years away—and it should be good, it should feel right, because if there’s one person in the world that Hermann doesn’t want to hurt with his inadequacy, it’s Newton.
‘I do,’ Newton says, as though in direct defiance, his grip on Hermann’s pale wrists tightening. ‘I do give a damn, okay? I care about you, so much it’s been driving me fucking insane because I thought nothing would come of this. And—and correct me if I’m wrong but—but fuck, I don’t think I am, you care too, you’re just … I don’t know, you’re shutting me off for some reason, and I don’t understand it, Hermann.’
‘What’s not to understand?’ Hermann counters weakly—chest tight, blurred eyes shifting pathetically away—adamant not to break down, not just yet. ‘I’m not—I’m not—Newton, for god’s sake.’
He inhales sharply. ‘Just look at me.’
He’s always preferred clear solutions. To add striking force to his point, he forces his eyes to meet Newton’s; a dead stare that, once again, must make him appear like something that belongs to the perpetual night; belongs with what’s theoretical and stale.
Here he is, on display: morbid and unshapely, having crawled out of what made the darkest corners of their drift, strung together by something harder and colder than a human being should endure, and barely even human in result. Hermann knows it, and Newton must know it, too. A broken thing, from so many angles.
‘Look at me,’ he repeats, very quietly, and looks down.
Newton’s hands twitch on his wrists. He draws a sharp breath.
And then, suddenly, he’s drawing even further into Hermann’s personal space: closer, against all odds, with all his softened edges and incessant small movements, hand letting go of Hermann’s wrist and finding his neck instead, pulling him down.
And Newton kisses him: it’s somewhat inelegant, what with his nose and glasses colliding with Hermann’s, rather chaste. Untrained. And in spite of himself (or perhaps, not, not at all) Hermann lets himself fold forward and reciprocate, desperate and almost instinctive, swept suddenly back into the warmth.
‘I’m lookin,’ Newton says, withdrawing rapidly, inviting a cold slither of dizzying air between them and leaving Hermann breathless and blinking. Newton’s voice is tense and urgent, eyes bright with conviction. ‘I am. Haven’t once looked away in twelve years.’
He laughs, a wonderful anxious sound before his hand drops from Hermann’s neck and settles lightly on his elbow. ‘Do you hear me, Hermann? Just once in your life, you shut up and listen to me. Come live with me. It’s going to work. It is.’
Hermann waits for it all to disintegrate, for the warmth to fade but it doesn’t—instead, steady and quite stunning, it remains settled somewhere inside Hermann’s ribcage. And yes, maybe it doesn’t belong there, but maybe it can begin. Maybe he can borrow some from Newton, and maybe he even can give something else in return.
And it doesn’t make much sense, does it, to suddenly have this rash foolish feeling after years of disproving its worth and against all logic—but Newton has brought his forehead to rest against his, and there Hermann is, clinging back, and saying, quite nonsensically, ‘Well, I suppose. I … we might give it a try.’
Newton laughs, then, louder and hoarser this time, familiar and good. ‘You’re such an asshole,’ he mutters, grinning. Then he leans away, tugging Hermann back towards the elevator. ‘Okay. Okay, let’s go back to bed, even I’m freezing.’
The wind has picked up and morning light cuts through the fog, falling slanted and restless upon them, shocking after months on end of artificial half-shadows. Newton’s face, alive and contagiously hopeful, is lit up, turned towards Hermann, hair scattered in the wind as well, eyes bright despite their injury.
‘I’ve told you, Hermann,’ Newton says, grinning, ‘fortune favours the brave.’
For once, Hermann doesn’t fight. He smiles back.