Chapter Text
Hermann does not know who, precisely, suggested they play Spin the Bottle, but if he had to guess, he would say it was Tendo. It was definitely Tendo, it was absolutely Tendo, Hermann would be shocked to find out it wasn’t Tendo, and now Tendo is smirking at Alison and Hermann hates Tendo, honestly, he does.
He doesn’t want to be here, in Tendo’s basement, sitting on the floor in a circle of about fifteen kids, all of whom are giggling and blushing happily at the idea of Spin the Bottle as if it weren’t a perfectly ridiculous, outdated game. He didn’t even want to come to this party, he only came because it is Tendo’s birthday, and Tendo knew for a fact that Hermann did not have anything to do on this particular Friday, and he threatened to tell Karla where her last pack of cigarettes went if Hermann didn’t come. Which isn’t even fair, it was Tendo’s fault in the first place that Hermann stole those, and it isn’t as if he smoked them; he and Tendo lit up one each, and they were dreadful, so they just threw the rest away.
He doesn’t really understand why Tendo wanted him to come. Tendo has lots of “cool” friends. Like Alison, who runs with the cool, artsy, hipster kids, the ones that dye their hair peculiar colors and smoke out behind the school. Or Yancy Becket, who is on the school hockey team and one of the best players, even though he’s only a freshman. Or that weird Newton kid, who Hermann has never met before, but he’s only sixteen and apparently he’s already in university, and his left ear is pierced. Tendo has an easy ability to make friends with anyone he likes, and Hermann feels horribly out of place here, in his shabby jeans that are a little too short because he’s going through a growth spurt and hasn’t wanted to ask his father for money to buy new clothes, in his t-shirt with an obscure Star Trek quote, with his hair that is cut badly and never lies flat in the back, with how skinny he is and how weird looking, and how he never says the right thing and most of the time doesn’t say anything at all, and how he glares at people even when he doesn’t mean to, and how everyone else has been sneaking drinks of the punch that Tendo laced with tequila, but Hermann hasn’t because his dad would probably find out, and also he doesn’t like how it tastes and is a little afraid of getting drunk. Tendo’s friends are cool and good looking and Hermann is. None of those things. Tendo is probably only friends with him because they hung out in middle school when Tendo had acne and liked computer games and hadn’t figured out how to talk to people yet. Soon enough he’s going to realize that Hermann is still as much of a nerd as Tendo was then, and then he’ll stop being friends with Hermann.
He normally quietly dreads the thought - he won’t have any friends at all once Tendo outgrows him, Alison is only friends with Hermann through Tendo - but right now he wishes Tendo would hurry up and realize that he doesn’t have any good reason to hang out with Hermann anymore, so that Hermann could go home and not play this awful game. Kissing a stranger. Why on Earth would anyone want to do that? Well. Tendo wants to, of course, because he has a crush on Alison. It’s all right for him. But why would anyone else want to? And why on earth is that strange Newton boy staring at Hermann?
Since it is Tendo’s birthday party, and he’s the one with the bottle - a water bottle, not the tequila bottle like Yancy laughingly suggested - he spins first, although not without first looking around the circle with an appraising eye that makes most of the other, slightly drunk, teenagers laugh, loud enough to be heard over the beat of some awful dubstep song that Tendo likes. He spins the bottle with a dramatic flourish. It revolves rapidly several times on the hardwood floor, then begins to slow near Hermann’s side of the circle, and dread clutches his stomach. But it goes past him, skittering to a stop on Sasha Kaidanovsky, the beautiful and terrifying Russian exchange student that Tendo somehow made friends with. There are rumors that she already has a husband back home, and that he is in the Russian mob, and that she is also in the Russian mob; but she condescends, with a sharp smile, to kiss Tendo on the lips and pat him on the cheek.
She spins and lands on Yancy, who is too drunk to look frightened as Hermann thinks is the proper response. He surges across the circle and kisses her sloppily with a closed mouth, and Sasha laughs, all white teeth and knowing eyes. Yancy spins and lands on a pretty girl from school named Cara that once called Hermann a freak. She and Yancy kiss deep enough that everyone cheers.
Hermann wants to go home. Every time the mouth of the bottle spins past him, he feels slightly sick with nerves. And everything is too loud, the music and the laughing and shouting teens, and the circle seems to be contracting so that the people on both sides of him are touching him, and the boy on his left smells like sweat and it makes Hermann want to take a shower. Not to mention that sitting like this hurts his bad leg, and that Newton boy keeps glancing thoughtfully at Hermann, and his eyes are the same green as his t-shirt, and Hermann doesn’t know why he’s looking at him, and it makes Hermann feel nervous and self-conscious, and when Cara spins the bottle, she says, “I just hope it doesn’t land on anyone gross,” and looks right at Hermann.
It doesn’t land on him. It lands on Newton. He laughs and says, “Oh no, I’m definitely gross!” in his strange shrill voice. Everyone else laughs too, including Cara, but there is something tight and fake in her smile, and Hermann is vengefully satisfied that she is disappointed. Newton and Cara press their lips together dryly for a second and pull apart, and for some reason Newton glances over at Hermann again. Hermann still doesn’t know why. He stares back blankly, and then remembers staring is rude and looks at the bottle instead. Newton is on the shorter side and his hands look tiny on the bottle, and there are little chips on color on his nails that Hermann thinks might be nail polish.
He spins. The bottle goes around and around and then slows, slows, slows, stops. Pointing. At Hermann.
Hermann’s mouth falls open in surprise. He looks at Newton instinctively. He’s- He’s smiling, a pleased little smirk.
Someone starts to say, “Oh, it’s a boy, you can-” but Newton is moving, surprisingly fast, flinging himself across the circle on hands and knees, and then he’s right in front of Hermann, and Hermann says, “Oh-” and Newton. Kisses. Him.
His lips are soft and warm. It doesn’t feel like anything else ever has. Hermann’s eyes are wide open, so he can see Newt’s face centimeters from his, golden freckles spattered across his skin like stars on a clear night sky in the countryside, his glasses skewed, his green eyes shut. He smells like shampoo. It goes on for centuries. Only his lips, he doesn’t try to put his tongue in Hermann’s mouth, he just presses his lips to Hermann’s lips for hundreds of years, and Hermann doesn’t move.
And then Newt flicks his eyes open and backs up and the person who was speaking before finishes, “-spin again- Oh.”
Lots of things happen after that, but Hermann is not properly aware of them. People say things. Cara says something, but Hermann isn’t listening. Alison says something back loudly. Hermann spins the bottle numbly, and it lands on someone, and they pityingly peck his cheek. The game goes on. At some point Tendo and Alison get to kiss. The game breaks up. The party breaks up. Hermann follows everyone upstairs - including Newton - and can’t remember how he’s supposed to get home until he sees that Dietrich’s car is parked outside. Right. Dietrich is home from school this weekend.
“Hermann. Hermann. Hermann!”
He starts and looks around, saying, “What?” in a stupid way that doesn’t sound like his own voice. He’d moved out into the front porch to go to Dietrich’s car, and Tendo followed him, apparently.
“Are you okay?” Tendo says, frowning at him.
“What?” Hermann says again. “Yes. Of course. Why wouldn’t I be.”
“You look kinda- Uh- I mean- You seem kinda freaked- You know, since Newt ki-”
“I’m fine!” Hermann says loudly.
“Okay,” Tendo says dubiously. “Listen, okay, just, about what Cara said, don’t even listen to her, okay, she’s- don’t worry about it.”
Hermann hasn’t the least idea what Cara said.
“Of course,” he agrees vaguely, and then, “Bye,” and then he walks off the porch to Dietrich’s car and he doesn’t. He doesn’t look at Newton walking a little way in front of him. He stares at the ground.
“Did you have fun?” Dietrich asks in that grave way of his when Hermann gets in the car.
“What- Yes.”
When they get home, Dietrich parks and, instead of opening the door, looks at him. “Are you okay?” he says slowly.
Hermann, who was staring out at the window and feeling this sort of whirling, hot chaos start up in his chest instead of thinking, starts and says, “Wh- Yes, I’m fine.”
“You look sort of weird,” Dietrich says.
“I- I’m just- Feeling a little, um, unwell.” Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s why he feels sort of hot all over, maybe he has a fever.
Dietrich purses his lips ever so slightly. “Herms-”
“Don’t call me that.”
“I know you’re a teenager and it’s, um, that age, but, ah, are you...intoxicated? I don’t care, but Dad-”
“I am not drunk!” Hermann snaps, and he unlocks the door manually even though that irritates his brother and opens the door harder than necessary and stomps up to the front door. As well as the hot feeling and the spinning chaos, he is starting to feel this tight, prickly feeling in his chest, as if he’s angry. It’s in his eyes too. Maybe he is angry.
Bastien is in the living room and says, “Hey, how’d the party go-” but Hermann ignores him and nearly runs to his room as the heat and chaos and tightness spreads and spreads, overwhelming the shocked numbness that had before overtaken him.
When he is alone in his room, flopping down onto his bed, he can think about why he feels like that. It’s because- It’s ever since- that boy- Newton- He-
He kissed Hermann.
He kissed him. He kissed him. That boy kissed him. On the lips. With his lips. He can remember it still, so vivid, the soft warmth pressed up against his face, all of his constellations of freckles, so close, and just remembering it makes him get hotter and hotter, his face burning with, with, with something, he doesn’t even know what he’s feeling, other than confusion, Newton didn’t need to do that, there was no call, he would have been allowed to spin again, or he could have kissed Hermann’s cheek or something, he didn’t need to kiss his mouth, he had no right, why did he do that, and so casually, like it was nothing, just, just kissing him, and that was Hermann’s first kiss.
His first kiss was like that.
The heat and prickling spreads and rises up his chest and throat and into his cheeks and eyes and spills over wetly, running out his eyes and down his hot cheeks, and he’s so furious because now he’s crying and he doesn’t know why and he hasn’t cried in months.
It was just too much of a surprise. The way that he looked at Hermann beforehand, with that little smirk. Did he just want to humiliate Hermann? But there was something else about the way he looked at him. And afterward he kept staring at Hermann, even through the shock that shut down his whole brain he’d noticed Newt staring at him. And he doesn’t know why. And it was his first kiss. With a boy.
Boys kiss boys, he knows that, but it’s, it’s weird, and yes, of course he knows that homosexuality is a natural thing and some people are that and that it’s fine, look at Tendo and Alison, but he’s not- and he’s heard the things other boys at school say, and that his father’s parents say, and, god, what if Dad finds out, what would he say, he’d be so- He’d probably be so disappointed, because, because it’s weird, but it felt-
When he tries to describe how it felt, and thinks about what his father would say, and what the kids at his school would say, and, and he thinks about his dreams, the ones he doesn’t want to think about, and how he’s already a freak, he already doesn’t fit in and everyone already thinks he’s weird, and it’s one thing if you are Tendo and Alison and already cool but Hermann isn’t, but it felt- When he tries to understand all that, it’s even more confusing and painful, like he’s both too full and hollow all at once, and he knows he's overreacting but he can’t quite seem to stop quietly crying until at last he falls asleep, fully dressed, tears drying on his cheeks.