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“Doctor Geiszler, please tell me that you have a very realistic doll in that carrier, and are not in fact entering my laboratory accompanied by an actual baby.”
Hermann stood rigid on the top rung of his ladder, his gaze fixated on Newton’s chest for all of the wrong reasons.
(Technically, insofar as workplace harassment guidelines were concerned, there would be no right reason for him to be staring at his chest, but that was by the by.)
Newt seemed to pay him no mind, breezing past his desk and across the line that divided their lab. As if that will save him, Hermann thought ominously in the back of his head as he stepped down onto the grated metal floor and approached Newton’s half of the room.
“Newton,” he pressed, rapping his cane against the floor in impatience, and Newt finally dropped his backpack to the ground and turned around to face him.
The baby attached to his front gurgled. Hermann was already convinced that it was mocking him.
“Sure dude,” Newt said cheerfully, not meeting his eye, “If you can explain how it would be less weird for a grown man to be carrying around a toy baby than a real one?”
“Dear lord,” Hermann exhaled, clapping a hand against his cheek and wishing, just wishing, that he had put in that request to transfer to the Sydney Shatterdome.
The universe did not like him. That much was plain.
The baby – he could not gauge precisely how old it was, only that it had a tiny tuft of dark hair and was currently drooling all over Newton’s shirt – clapped its hand together, little droplets of spit flying everywhere, and Newt chuckled and leaned down conspiratorially.
“You see that man over there,” he whispered, loud enough for Hermann to hear, “That’s Doctor Gottlieb. Or as we like to call him, Doctor Grumpy. He likes maths and people being quiet.”
“And yet you have elected to bring a child into our workspace,” Hermann said loudly, vaguely affronted by the notion that Newton felt fit to describe him as grumpy, “I can only assume this is your… offspring?”
He gestured towards the child, who blew a spit bubble that then collapsed onto its cheek. He couldn’t deny that it was… well, adorable, but Hermann prided himself on being above cute.
In theory anyway.
Newt scoffed as he sat down, adjusting his chair’s distance from his desk to make room for the new arrival. “Hermann I was gone for three days, do you really need someone to explain the birds and the bees and the nine-month marathon to you?”
Hermann rolled his eyes. “Obviously not-”
“Because I know you’ve got that whole stick-up-your-ass-don’t-touch-me vibe going on, but I refuse to accept that you haven’t done the dirty at least once,” Newt insisted, and Hermann could feel a blush rising in his cheeks. Newt looked at him for a second longer than he was comfortable with, and the blush transformed into a deep purple flush.
“’Done the dirty’…” he echoed in exasperation, lost for words.
Newt shot him a lascivious grin. “You know… knocked boots, checked the oil, Netflix and chilled, oscillated the unmentionables-”
Hermann had no doubt the man could carry on all day.
“Newton Geiszler if you don’t hush this instant, I will oscillate your unmentionables and I promise that you will not enjoy it. And whatever the point that you’re meandering towards is, please could you endeavour to get there faster,” he snapped, stepping over the dividing line and walking towards his desk, which currently resembled a toxic landfill.
“Oh Herm, you really know how to make a guy swoon,” Newt snarked, though his attention was wholly directed at the child, who had captured his forefinger in its tiny fist. Hermann tsked at the sound of the nickname, but it was more for effect than an expression of genuine irritation; if Newt was still able to get under his skin like he had when they first met, he would never get any work done.
And anyway, he was becoming similarly distracted.
Hermann had never seen Newton interact with a child before, nor had he ever really thought to imagine such a scenario. Even so, he doesn’t think he would’ve been able to predict the glorious shimmer in his eyes, nor the hopelessly enchanted smile on his face.
Hermann isn’t jealous of the baby. Nope.
“No, she’s not mine,” Newt finally answered, a silly grin plastered across his mouth, and the tension in Hermann's gut disappeared, his relief palpable. The idea of Newton having… created this child with somebody else was distasteful to him, to say the least.
Newt's face then scrunched up into an amused confusion, “What kind of life do you thinking I’m living outside of this lab? Jetting around the world knocking people up around the pacific rim?”
“Is it such a far-fetched conclusion?” Hermann asked pointedly, though perhaps now he was being unfair.
Newt raised his eyebrows in disbelief and returned the serve. “Considering I generally swing the other way, and that we’re in the middle of a war, then yeah. Duh dude.”
Generally swing the other way, Hermann echoed, before he stabbed himself in the foot with his cane and reprimanded himself with a sharp, Stop that this instant.
“Then where on earth did you source the… child?” he asked, thoroughly perplexed. He had been anticipating Newton’s return today, but he had assumed that it would be with some Kaiju organs in tow – not a mass of human ones.
“Lima. Man, it’s really bad down there,” Newt replied quietly, “The entire coastline is just… gone. They didn’t have enough time to evacuate most of the city. They found this one-” he paused to make cooing noises at the baby, who was staring up at him with wide gleaming eyes, “-in the rubble. Parents are probably dead, or she might have come from one of the orphanages that used to be there. Either way.”
No matter how colourful his limbs became as a result, Hermann knew Newt was beginning to tire of the endless, repetitive destruction. He was too.
“And you have… adopted this child?” Hermann pried.
“No, don’t worry, I’m not turning your side of the lab into a nursery,” Newt said, but the joke didn’t quite reach his eyes, “I spoke to the Marshal and he’s going to find someone to look after her here. The Nilssons in J-Tech really want kids so I think she might go to them. I mean... I only brought her back because there was just nothing left dude. There was no one to look after her at all. I couldn’t just leave her.”
He looked at Hermann with sad, beseeching eyes, and Hermann felt every iota of opposition melt away in a New York minute.
“She’s gonna be with us a week tops,” Newt assured him in a more upbeat voice, driving through the sombre mood like a forklift through a rainforest, “Do you think you can cope with that Herm?”
Hermann rankled at the condescension and brought himself up to his full height.
“Well it’s certainly not convenient,” he said, clearing his throat before he spoke, “But if it’s only for a week, then I suppose it is tolerable. So long as it does not make too much noise.”
“Dude it’s a baby, it’s going to cry,” Newt argued back, and Hermann considered it for a moment.
“Well,” he settled on, “I doubt even a chorus of wailing children could be any worse than your hideous music choices.”
“Hey! Iggy Pop was a rock icon!” was Newton’s instant reply, but Hermann had already turned back to his chalkboards.
He hid his smile well. He had become really rather good at it over the years.
*
To Newton’s credit – or rather, Hermann supposed, the baby’s – the rest of the day passed without incident. Hermann retrieved their lunch from the cafeteria instead of Newton – who had been engaged in what had looked like a faecal re-enactment of the Battle of the Bulge at the time – and the normally deafening post-punk soundtrack was swapped out for Kate Bush, but aside from that, it was a normal day; Hermann scratched away at his equations, and Newt filled in all of his import forms for the Kaiju parts he had brought back from Peru. He did so with much complaint and just enough whinging that Hermann climbed down from his ladder and filled in the last five pages for him, but he did them all the same.
It seemed that even Newton, for all of his chaotic, manic working ways, was aware that trying to dissect a toxic alien liver with a baby strapped to his chest was not the wisest course of action. Hermann found himself staggered at the implication that Newton was actively putting off his experiments because of the child; he hadn’t thought anything could ever get between that man, his scalpel, and his Kaiju organs.
Scratch the description of the day as normal, Hermann thought to himself as the clock hit 8PM, these have been the most utterly bizarre hours of my life.
Newt was yawning at his desk, the baby snoozing, open mouthed, against his shirt; he had taken her out of the carrier in the afternoon – “Hey Herm, how long can you leave them in these things?” “Why you think I would know is beyond me.” “Better let her stretch her legs, I guess?” – and had been holding her in his arms ever since.
As much as Hermann had convinced himself that he wasn’t interested in cute, he could not help but stare, goggle-eyed and utterly transfixed, at the scene. Good lord, his palms were sweating.
“What’s her name?” Hermann asked, putting on a casual air, as he closed down his computer.
“Huh?” Newt replied sleepily, spinning in his chair to face him, “Oh, I don’t know actually.”
“We can’t very well go on calling it ‘the child’ can we?” Hermann retorted testily, hoping that it disguised the affection that seemed to have rooted itself inside of his chest.
“I know, I know,” Newt said through another yawn, now walking across the lab to join Hermann, “I was just… trying to not get attached.”
For a brief moment, Hermann panicked that he was in the initial stages of heart failure. Then he realised that what he was actually feeling was a dreadful, heavy feeling of pity.
“That’s very… responsible of you Newton,” he said, and it might just be the kindest thing he had ever said to the man, “But consider that young children need attachment.”
Regardless of how much it’s going to hurt.
“Well whoever ends up taking her in will probably want to name her properly,” Newt mused aloud as they traipsed through various winding corridors, “So I suppose we could give her a little nickname just for the rest of the week?”
They joined the night shift engineers in the lift – just now on their way to LOCCENT to actualise the modifications to Romeo Blue and Cherno Alpha that Hermann had suggested in one of his latest reports – and every single one of them gawped at Hermann, Newt, and their temporary lab-mate.
The few children in the Shatterdome hadn’t been born there; it had been years since many of them had seen a baby in the flesh.
“Yeah, she’s real, no, you can’t eat her,” Newt warned as he and Hermann headed out, and the engineers took it in good humour and laughed as the doors shut behind them.
It was just possible though, Hermann thought, that they were laughing at the extremely odd tableau they had just been witness to. Whilst the three of them had been in the lab, it was easy to see the child as belonging to Newt and Newt alone; he supposed that whilst they were out in the rest of the Shatterdome, she was theirs.
And there was that heart attack sensation all over again.
“What about Yamari?” Newt suggested out of the blue, breaking Hermann out of his trance, “That’s pretty.”
Hermann nodded, now keenly aware of the stares being directed at the three of them by every single passer-by (and god did he hate being the subject of Shatterdome drama), and he didn’t manage to find his voice before Newt proffered up another idea.
“What about Raija? I think it’s Finnish or something.”
As they reached their corridor, Hermann finally snapped to, and let out an audible noise of contempt.
“Newton, if you were half as subtle as you thought you were, you’d be invisible,” Hermann sniped, rolling his vowels like a line of poetry, “We are not naming her after one of your pet Kaijus, that is beyond reproach.”
“First, it’s Kaiju, it’s singular, and you know that,” Newt replied, and Hermann knows he would’ve pointed an accusing finger if he had had a spare hand, “And second, fine. What are your suggestions Doctor Demiurgic? Hang on, before you answer that, can you hold her a sec?”
“What? No- I mean, why must I hold her?” Hermann spluttered, unconsciously taking a step backward.
Newt gave him a look that said dude, seriously?
“I need to get my keys out of my pocket. For my room,” he tipped his head towards the door they had paused at. “Unless you want to fish them out for me,” he added with a wink, swaying his left hip toward him, and Hermann reacted so loudly that the baby stirred in her sleep.
Newt’s entire demeanour shifted instantly. “Ssssh man, don’t wake her up, you’re not the one who’s gonna be feeding her through the night, at least give me a chance to get some sleep,” he hissed, and Hermann felt chagrined enough that he reluctantly accepted the request.
Hermann had never held a baby before. She was heavier than he had expected, a definite, assured weight in his arms: a real breathing human being. He found himself verging on astonishment. As he held her against his chest, he could see all of her tiny ashen eyelashes, the miniscule quivers of her nostrils as she breathed in and out, the fluttering of her eyelids as she dreamt.
Did babies dream? Another thing that had never occurred to him.
He had never given much thought to children – the War had begun to rage many years before he would’ve been ready to have a family, and even then, the bitterness of his childhood had made him reluctant to force another through it. And yet, in mere seconds, he was already spellbound – so much so that he didn’t hear Newton asking for her back.
“C’mon in then if you don’t want to let go of her yet,” Newt said with a small, teasing smile on his face as Hermann followed him in. He settled onto the edge of Newt’s bed, and the baby wriggled for a few seconds in his arms.
Alarm was clearly broadcast across his face because Newt laughed quietly and said, “Don’t worry man, she’s not going anywhere.”
“How do you know what you’re doing?” Hermann asked, not even bothering to try and layer his tone with disinterest because he knew that his face had already let him down in that department.
Anyway, this was Newton. Things were different here. He didn’t have to pretend. Well, not so much.
“Lots of cousins,” Newt said, tracing his hand lightly through the baby’s hair, “Lots and lots of cousins. So many bat mitzvahs, you would’ve done your nut in.”
They fell into a comfortable silence and Newt excused himself to brush his teeth and put the finishing touches to the makeshift crib put together in engineering at short notice this afternoon.
“So, Herm, name: what are we thinking?” Newt asked through a mouthful of toothpaste, and Hermann was strangely flattered that his opinion mattered here (even if he did grimace at Newt's hygiene practices).
“Perhaps we could name her after a woman of science,” he suggested, “Rosalind, Ava, Lise, Marie-”
He was interrupted by the sound of Newt spitting into the sink. How hideously domestic this was becoming, Hermann thought, although that didn't stop the fizzing sensation in his stomach.
“That’s a shout, what about María?” Newt said as he emerged from the bathroom, toothpaste still smeared on his chin, “In homage to our lady of radiography, and to honour her heritage too? María, Spanish version of Marie? Excellent song too.”
Hermann smiled, and it used muscles he thought had atrophied long ago.
“María. That must just be the one.”
*
The next couple of days were nothing short of chaotic, but between them they just about managed it. They were scientists after all – experiments were part of the job description.
Newt looked after her in the mornings, and Hermann took her in the afternoons (though he refused to wear that ridiculous carrier garment) so that Newt could finally get to his Kaiju organs before they started to expire. Whilst he sliced and diced and adhered to safety regulations for the first time in the six years that they had been working together, Hermann sat behind his desk and fiddled with his holographic programme, looking for any remaining flaws in the Mark-2 jaeger design.
María was entranced by the holographic, the vivid turquoise glow and bright orange flashes the perfect source of entertainment. She babbled in delight at the moving pictures, constantly reaching out her tiny hands out to try and grab at the images – which turned out to be a blessing when she grabbed at the hologram of the neural panelling and drew Hermann’s attention to an issue with the transistors.
“We’ll make a mathematician out of you yet,” he whispered, and she let out a happy squeal, just as Newt shouted across the room, “Uh-uh, I was the one who rescued her, so she’s going to be a biologist!”
“Really Newton, how can you claim to care for her whilst also planning to make her the mockery of the scientific community?” Hermann bit back and Newt pointed a viscera-covered middle finger at him.
“And that is why you’re going to stick with maths,” Hermann assured her, nodding his head slowly up and down, and something in his chest burst like someone stepping on a blueberry when she nodded along too, “You’re far too polite, aren’t you?”
María giggled again.
Come 9PM, there was a knock on the lab door just as Newt was leaving the decontamination shower (which he was supposed to use every day, as Hermann had tired of telling him, but better late than never). Water droplets were still falling from the ends of his hair onto his collar bone, and Hermann had to drag his eyes away to attend to their visitor.
Visitors.
The veritable hoard.
“So, erm, we heard you guys had a baby,” Tendo said brightly, clearly having been pushed to the front of the group.
Hermann raised his eyebrows, scanning through the crowd to see not just Tendo and Allison, but also the Kaidonovskys, Herc and Chuck Hansen (thankfully minus Max), and the Wei Tang triplets, one of whom was carrying Mako on his shoulders. All of them were more Newton’s friends than his, and Hermann wasn’t really sure what to do.
“We thought you two were taking it slowly,” Allison teased from over Tendo’s shoulder and Hermann flushed to his roots whilst Newt tossed back a quip that he didn’t hear over the sound of the blood rushing through his ears.
“You guys can only come in if you brought food, neither of us have eaten all day,” Newt ordered, and Hermann settled back down into his chair, content that he was no longer in charge.
Luckily for the queue of people waiting at the door, they had brought pizza in abundance (pay day, the greatest day of the month!) and the group quickly settled down inside.
If this had been a few years ago, Hermann knew he would be seething about how this laboratory is not a den, you should not be eating in here, this is totally against regulation (and in the interests of transparency, he was making a conscious effort to repress those very thoughts right now), but when he looked upon the scene he found that it was with affection, not irritation.
“May I hold the little chudesnaya malyutka?” Sasha asked, bending down so she was face to face with María, who was instantly fascinated by her bleach-white hair. Sasha brushed a finger against her cheek and spoke a few words of Russian that Hermann was too rusty to understand, and with a bit of an ache in his stomach, he nodded his head and handed María over.
Sasha Kaidonovsky could pilot one of his jaegers, Hermann reassured himself: she was perfectly capable of holding an infant.
Newt seemed to sense his hesitation and he hastened to Hermann’s side and perched on the edge of his desk, parallel to him. They watched – amused and anxious in equal measure – as Sasha introduced the baby to Aleksis and Allison (who was giving Tendo an awful lot of side-eye at the same time); Mako, who hadn’t seen a baby since Pentecost had pulled her out of Tokyo, was staring, bug-eyed, like María was fine china that she was forbidden to touch.
María was clearly enjoying the attention, happy in the company of all of these wonderful new people that she hadn’t ever met before, and Hermann finally allowed himself to relax when he heard her happily cooing away.
“We have gotten so old and so territorial,” Newt joked, handing him one of the bottles of beer that Herc had brought, "It’s nice though, isn’t it? I haven’t seen any of this lot this happy for months."
“Maybe the Marshal should introduce a mating programme, it might do wonders for morale,” Hermann suggested with only a hint of sarcasm, and Newt spit out a mouthful of beer and let out a raspy laugh.
“I take back everything I ever said about you, you're a wonderful, handsome genius; orgasms, babies, what’s not to like?” Newt said, eyeing Hermann up and down with that old salacious stare and Hermann could only shake his head in response and take another swig of his drink.
Handsome. Hmm.
“’If we had but world enough and time’,” Hermann recited off of the top of his head, the rest of the poem lost to the ravages of time and adolescence.
“I’m surprised you know that one Herm, the rest of it is filthy,” Newt quipped, “Isn’t the whole poem about the guy wanting to shag his fair maiden before marriage?” He clapped his hand against his chest in faux outrage and proclaimed, “An absolute scandal, would you not agree Doctor Gottlieb?"
Bemused, Hermann wondered if Newt was truly that much of a lightweight, but before he could come to a decision, Hu Tang switched off the lights in the lab, and Hermann made a disgruntled noise before the reason why became clear.
He didn’t know who had brought the starlight projector with them, but as the room began to glow with the artificial light of a thousand constellations, he sent thanks to them all the same.
Aleksis – the tallest of the lot – stood up, held María in the crook of his elbow, and pointed at the image closest to him.
“You see dorogoya, that is the Phoenix constellation,” he said tenderly, and María looked at him and then at the flecks of light on the wall where he was pointing, and then back at him again, her mouth open and her eyes sparkling, the stars reflecting back upon her.
“This one is Orion,” said Jin Tang, gesturing towards another cluster, and Aleksis pivoted on the spot to let María explore it for herself.
“And Hercules over there,” Herc chimed in to a groan from the rest of the group, “What? Of course I know what the constellation I was named after looks like.”
They took it in turns after that, naming all of the stars in the cosmos in between bites of pizza and gulps of beer, and Hermann found himself so lost in enjoyment that he startled when Newt pressed his hand against his.
“So…” Newt said in a hushed voice, “Maybe she becomes an astrophysicist instead?”
Even though the starlight wasn't real, beneath it he looked more beautiful than anything Hermann had ever seen in his life. If this was another time, another place, without half the Shatterdome pissing about a few metres away, and if he was braver, more certain of himself, if he knew exactly what he wanted, and if the whole damn world wasn’t falling apart around them, he would have kissed him right there.
Instead Hermann finished his beer, and muttered, “Astrophysics…” He weighed the idea, considered it, and then gave a wry smile, “Well, it’s a step up from biology at any rate.”
The light punch Newton landed on his arm felt like he would’ve kissed him back.
*
“Newton, for God’s sake, will you stop pacing, you’re making me nauseous,” Hermann hissed through gritted teeth, and Newt stopped dead in his tracks on the other side of the hallway.
“Sorry man, just trying to burn off some excess energy, don’t want to scare the investors,” he said, before jumping up and down on the spot as if to drive his point home.
“I wouldn’t be too concerned,” Hermann said blithely, “I’m the one who’s about to ask them for several billion pounds. If they’re in fear of anyone, it’s going to be me.”
“How many jaegers are we hoping to put into construction?” Newt asked, and Hermann adjusted the straps of the baby carrier attached to his chest.
Yes, he had resigned himself to wearing it. Yes, he was about to give a presentation to an ex-oil cartel with the frankly delusional aim of convincing them to hand over nearly 90% of their assets to the PPDC, with a baby in tow.
No, if you had asked him this time last week how he envisioned such an important meeting going, he would not have answered with this.
Oh well. These were unprecedented times after all. Why the hell not.
“Dependent on the amount, we should be able to build five Mark-1s, or we can start construction on the Mark-2s. Personally I think the money would be better spent on the Mark-2s but the Marshal believes there is strength in numbers,” Hermann said, unable to keep the disapproval from his tone. María blew a raspberry, and Hermann counted that as a motion of support.
Suddenly, Newt jerked his head to the space over Hermann’s shoulder – incoming.
“If I’m in the midst of a firefight, I prefer to have more men than less.”
Hermann did not believe in God, but if he did, he was sure that He and Pentecost would get along like a house on fire. The man led not through preaching his authority, nor through terrorising his subjects, but through the decency and humanity that he radiated. He was the leader that the times demanded, and whilst Hermann might disagree with him on this, it in no way changed the profound respect he held for him. He and Newt might aide him, but ultimately everyone at the PPDC knew that Stacker Pentecost would win the War.
“Good afternoon Marshal,” Hermann greeted, bowing his head slightly. Newt took the opposite approach, and stuck his hand up as if to go in for a high five – Christ alive Newton don’t you dare. “Morning! You ready to rock, Sir?”
Pentecost ignored the question, well accustomed to Newt’s predilection for informality (Hermann preferred to describe it as unprofessionalism, but that was just him) and then turned to look down at María, who was currently trying to cram her entire right hand inside of her mouth.
He opened his mouth as if to speak, and then promptly closed it.
Mako, Hermann thought to himself, it seemed he was not the only one with a soft spot.
The Marshal smiled so briefly Hermann thought he might have imagined it, and then stepped into the conference room; Hermann and Newt were left to scuttle on in behind him.
If the investors waiting inside looked surprised to see the world’s leading Breach mathematician carrying a baby, they did not show it. But there were a few bumped shoulders, a few muffled whispers whilst Newt and Hermann set up their various screens and projectors, and one of them coughed loudly when María let out a squeal when Hermann crouched down to plug in his holographic UI.
“Remember to use your pleases and thank yous,” Newt muttered under his breath as he pinned Hermann’s microphone to his shirt collar, “And if they annoy you, remember: deep breath in, and count to three.”
He gave him a wicked grin whilst he fiddled with his own mic, and Hermann barely managed to resist the temptation to swat him around the head.
The Marshal introduced the pair of them, his voice reverberating around the conference hall, and Hermann felt slightly nervous about following him. Charisma had never been his strong suit – let alone trying to be gracious in the pursuit of science. If this endeavour was left to him, it would not be a case of niceties – it would be a case of rattling these stupid men in their stupid suits until the money fell out of their pockets.
They were trying to save the world – why did he have to stand here and beg?
Nonetheless, he knew he had to play the monkey and dance for his jaegers, and so he did. He gave them every statistic, every reading; he broke down the exact cost of every key part of the Mark-1 jaeger and tried to gauge the value of future prototypes; he told them how many lives a jaeger could save. He put an exact price on every human head.
“I have calculated that the deployment of Tacit Ronan in the 2016 Tokyo attack saved approximately 34 million lives. Taking into account the building and maintenance costs of the jaeger, that means investors paid a mere fifty-eight pounds per person. I think we can all agree that human life is worth far more than such a paltry sum, though it appears to have been adequate in that particular scenario,” Hermann reeled off, trying to keep the disdain from his voice (though judging by the way the Marshal had one hand clapped to the side of his face, he clearly hadn’t managed it), “Investing in the jaeger programme means many more lives could be saved. There’s no point fighting a War if there is nobody left at the end of it.”
The investors were all dutifully taking notes, though none looked up when the Marshal announced, “Thank you Doctor Gottlieb. Doctor Geiszler, if you could elaborate on your investigations into the Kaiju.”
Newt stepped up to the projector, but before he could open his mouth to start, María decided that it was high time someone paid attention to her.
Hermann had seen footage from every Kaiju attack around the globe, and he would swear on Albert Einstein that even the strange monsters from the deep were quieter than this baby when she cried. He rocked her up and down, but she still wailed and wept with a fury that, if weaponised, would end the War tomorrow.
“Take her outside Herm,” Newt said under his breath before the Marshal could intervene, “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.”
He looked over at Pentecost, retrospectively asking permission, and Pentecost gave him a quick nod.
“Gentlemen,” Hermann said as he departed, inclining his head in the general direction of the mass of suits, before slipping out into the corridor; he didn’t want to go too far in case he needed to head back into the meeting for any residual questions, for more dancing.
“Come on then,” he said to María, threading a fingertip through her wispy hair, “What’s got you all upset, hm?”
She gave no indication of what was bothering her, only continuing to let out high-pitched screams, and Hermann could feel a headache blooming in the base of his skull; he exhaled in defeat and decided to make a deal.
“Bowie then?” he asked, looking her in the eyes, “I cannot believe Newton has already passed on his horrific taste in music to you, you poor child.”
This baby was destroying his reputation, Hermann thought to himself, as he cleared his throat and braced himself for the next few minutes.
He liked that people thought him unapproachable; he liked that they oft considered him ill-tempered and cantankerous. It meant that they didn’t dare bother him, and that he could get on with his work in peace. And now here he was, resigned to singing to a five-month old in a corridor and hoping to God that nobody saw him do it.
Fortunately, nobody did see him.
Unfortunately, in his haste to remove María from the conference room, Hermann had failed to remove his mic, and so Newt’s presentation was once again interrupted, only this time by the dulcet sounds of his lab partner singing Kooks in his ridiculously modish Queen’s English (although, to his credit, it was only slightly out of tune).
Of what to say to people when they pick on you, because if you stay with us, you’re going to be pretty kooky too-
Inside the meeting room, Newt was bravely trying to persevere – “And as you can see, experiments into the hydrogenic composition of Kaiju tissue show that…” – but it quickly became clear that his audience’s attention was elsewhere.
Don’t start a fight with the bullies or the cads, because I’m not much cop at punching other people’s dads-
As Hermann passed the two-minute mark, Newt couldn’t contain himself any longer, letting out a snort of laughter that quickly devolved into a fit.
“I’m so sorry guys, but if you knew him, you’d be laughing too,” he managed to get out, the suits looking less than impressed, and the Marshal cleared his throat loudly.
“Doctor Geiszler, if we could get back to the matter at hand,” he said soberly, and after a few seconds, Newt managed to come back to himself just enough to carry on.
“Sorry everyone, sorry. Right, where was I? Oh yeah, so, as I was saying, the toxicity of the saliva…”
In the corridor outside, Hermann wrapped up the tune, María having mercifully quietened down, and he rocked her steadily from side to side whilst she grabbed at the open air, both of them totally unaware that Newton Geiszler’s long-standing crush had just turned into love.
*
Hermann couldn’t remember the last time he had slept the whole night through. Sleep tended to come in dribs and drabs, bits and pieces, hour blocks broken up by shooting pains in his leg, or by ghastly premonitions of a nuclear sky over a ravaged continent that startled him from his sleep.
Sometimes he couldn’t sleep because when he closed his eyes all he could see were the equations he was struggling to solve and the bodies that were piling up as a result.
And sometimes, just sometimes, he couldn’t sleep because he dreamt of Newton Geiszler and his acid green tattoos and the precise weight of his hand on Hermann’s hip as he scooted him out of the way in the line at the canteen.
Those dreams were so vivid that it normally took Hermann a few seconds to adjust when he awoke. And so when the banging came at 3AM, and Hermann stumbled to his pod door to unveil Newt standing shirtless on the step, screaming baby in tow, it took him a moment to realise what was going on.
Newton looked terrible. Hermann had seen him work for three days straight, kept up only by energy drinks and the sheer power of his peculiar brain, but even then he hadn’t come close to looking this exhausted. He was swaying María from side to side in his arms, but the poor thing was red in the face from crying and didn’t look set to stop any time soon.
“Herm, can you please help me, she won’t go to sleep and I am beyond tired and I don’t know what to do, I’ve fed her, changed her, I’ve done everything, you’re the freaking baby whisperer, please help,” Newt rambled incoherently, and Hermann let him in without even thinking about it.
“Stop hovering in the corridor Newton, we don’t want to wake up the entire Shatterdome,” Hermann hissed, and Newt collapsed backwards onto his bed, immediately sinking his face into his sheets.
The sight of him, bare-chested and wrapped up in his quilt, was almost too much to take.
“Sorry man, my brain is just gone,” he whined, holding the baby up for Hermann to hold.
Hermann nestled into the bed beside him, not wishing to try and balance María whilst his leg was still locked-up from sleep; the heat he was radiating warmed him immediately.
“Was it ever there?” Hermann muttered under his breath, and Newt pouted.
“No fair dude, I am not in the right head space to fight right now,” he complained, and as if to back him up, the baby let out a piercing shriek that made Hermann’s ears ring.
“Then consider yourself defeated Doctor Geiszler, witticisms wait for nobody,” he hit back, but it was gentle and without malice and he saw Newt smile into the pillow.
His pillow.
María cried for a few minutes more until Hermann finally conceded and gave her a surprisingly harmonic rendition of Changes, at which point the tears subsided and by the end of the hushed tune, she was beaming up at him, sunshine personified.
Hermann hummed in relief at the newfound quiet, though it didn't last long. He assumed Newton had fallen asleep, until he felt the man shift in his bed next to him.
“How do parents do this?” he asked quietly as María patted her chubby hands against Hermann’s face, squeezing the end of his nose, her curiosity piqued. Hermann let her continue without interruption – exploration was her right, as the (temporary) child of two scientists.
“Well I imagine the majority are not also fighting a war at the same time,” Hermann replied, and his next words were as true as they were necessary, “You’ve done a good job with her Newton. She’s lucky.”
Newt shifted once again, twisting onto his back, and he smiled up at Hermann and María – who was currently digging her stubby fingertips into the mathematician's cheek – like there was nothing wrong in the world at all.
“You're good at this whole dad thing too,” he said, the words broken up by a yawn, “I know she’s not going to remember us, but I just… I want her to be happy. All the time. Even just for this week. Poor kid’s had enough go wrong in her life and she’s only a few months old.”
He reached up a hand and stroked her hair, and then brushed his thumb over her still-wet cheeks and wiped the teary remnants away.
Hermann exhaled softly.
“I sometimes forget,” he said slowly, as if he were laying in a confessional instead of his own bed, “That this is the very real aftermath of the phenomenon that we study. The human cost is… unbearable.”
Hermann felt a light touch against his side and was almost surprised to see Newton resting his head there, curling up beside him.
Hermann didn’t understand Newton, not really. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what he felt, how he felt, why he did the things that he did, what he wanted, the state that his psyche was in. Newton was as much an enigma to him as the Breach had proved to be, and no matter how often he looked at him and felt the deep bloom of something he could only identify as love, Hermann only had the time to investigate one.
They were at war. Everything else – no matter how much it ate up his insides, no matter how much it made his hands tremble with want, no matter how much it made him long for a future of soft touches and late-night caresses, and no matter how right it felt – just had to wait.
“We better keep working then, hey?” Newton said, forcing Hermann back to the present, “And one day soon, we’ll be able to end it.” His words trembled with a conviction that Hermann wished he could replicate.
“The amount of faith you have is-”
“Ridiculous?”
“Magnificent,” Hermann countered, and Newt gave him a questioning look.
“I’m not sure that it is faith anymore,” he admitted, “It’s more just… desperation. We have to do this. We have to win this.”
María was falling asleep in Hermann’s arms now, lulled into a dream by his gentle motions, and Hermann understood precisely what he meant. Their victory had never had a human face before; it had always just been for the greater good and, really, for the sake of scientific progress. But now, things were different. Even though she had only been with them for a few days, she had intrinsically changed them; all of it was for her.
“I think,” Hermann said, pausing, “of all the people on the planet, that the two of us probably stand the best chance of doing so.”
“That’s almost sweet of you Hermann,” Newt replied, his eyes closing against Hermann’s hip, “You better be careful, I’m beginning to think that you like me.”
“Of course I like you Newton,” he said lightly, because if you couldn’t say it at 3AM when could you, “I might even dare to say that I’m fond of you.”
“Woah, slow down man, you haven't even asked me on a date yet,” Newt said, though he was too tired for it to come across as a real flirtation, and Hermann was struck by the temptation to stroke his hair. Instead, he got up from the bed and placed María down on the mattress next to him.
“Herm, don’t leave,” Newt whispered, and those words ate through his heart like Kaiju Blue through concrete.
“I’m not, I’m just going to fetch María’s cot,” Hermann murmured back, before darting (well, as fast as one does with a cane) across the hallway to Newt’s room. The timber frame was mercifully very light, and though he would definitely question it in the morning, Hermann didn’t stop once to think about why he hadn’t just sent Newton back to his pod when the baby had stopped crying.
Hermann scooped María up off the bed and placed her in the cot, dawdling for a few seconds to watch her sleep under the yellow glow of his nightlight. Then he turned around to his bed and pondered what his best course of action was.
In the end, his clock decided it for him. 3:27AM, he groaned internally, I’d get into bed with a Kaiju at this stage. He limped over to the bed, poked Newton in the sternum to get him to move over and make room, and then swung his legs over the side of the mattress and climbed under the quilt.
“Hermann?” Newton asked a little later, so quietly that Hermann barely heard it.
“Yes?” he said back, closing his eyes as the automatic lights snapped off overhead.
He felt Newt rustling under the covers next to him, tried not to picture his pale torso against the deep blue sheets, and waited for the man to speak.
“I’m fond of you too,” he murmured, half-asleep, and Hermann smiled into his pillow, safe in the knowledge that Newton couldn’t see it.
The K-Science department was just the two of them now and they didn’t have strict working hours, so Hermann wasn’t too concerned if they slept in just this once. And when he did eventually wake several hours later, it was only because of the novel sensation of what felt like Newton pressing his lips against the nape of his neck (maybe he was still dreaming), before the man climbed out of his bed and quelled their baby’s morning whimpers.
*
Ana and Jorine-Freja Nilsson loved the name María, and Hermann was grateful for that at least.
The morning after their (no, he had to correct himself, the, she was never theirs to start with) baby went to her new family was one of the toughest he had had in his career at the PPDC. The silence in the K-Lab pushed straight past “distracting” and into the realm of painful, and Hermann wished for once that Newt would start blasting his awful music just so her absence wasn’t so noticeable.
Newton was stewing on his side of the lab. Normally, he vocalised everything, shouting about every notable discovery as he sifted through layers of skin and chipped through bones the size of tree trunks. Today, he hadn’t said a word at all. Not even a good morning.
Well, it wasn’t a good morning, was it?
Hermann was having difficulty concentrating himself, idling behind his computer and making glacial progress through the modification reports; his shoulders started to ache at around 11AM, and it took him a few moments to realise that it was because his posture had subconsciously readjusted itself to account for the lost weight of María’s carrier.
Around lunchtime, he clicked out of modification files in frustration and turned to his chalkboards. Maths. Maths would help. Surely he could lose himself here.
Behind him, Newt carried on tinkering with his Kaiju lung, maintaining his disconcerting quiet.
The Marshal arrived not long after.
“Doctor Gottlieb, I’m missing your sign-off on the Romeo Blue/Cherno Alpha alterations,” he announced, and Hermann swung around on his ladder to face him.
Odd. I wouldn’t have thought the Marshal would come all the way down here just for that.
“And Doctor Geiszler, by my estimations you’re four days behind schedule on your assessment of the Kaiju that attacked the Lima Shatterdome, and I have some very impatient Peruvians waiting for that information,” Pentecost continued, striding into the centre of the lab so he could focus on the two of them at once. He relaxed his stance just a little when Newt chucked his scalpel down, and unless he was mistaken, Hermann thought he looked borderline-sympathetic.
It was a strange expression to be witness to, and Hermann wasn’t sure whether he liked it or not.
“Doctors,” Pentecost said lowly, “I know this has been a strange week for you, for all of us. But we simply do not have the time for you two to be distracted any more than you have been already. I’m sorry, I truly am, but we are at war – as I am sure neither of you have forgotten.”
Hermann saw Newt nodding in acquiescence out of the corner of his eye, and figured that if he was emotionally mature enough to herald Pentecost’s warning for what it was, he ought to as well.
“You have our apologies, Marshal,” Hermann said, “We’ll have everything to you by the end of the day.” He turned back to his chalkboards, embarrassed at having been brought up by Pentecost of all people on his current emotional impairment, and he gripped his chalk to stop his hands from shaking. He heard Pentecost’s quiet hum of acceptance behind his back, and then his footsteps as he exited the lab.
“You two do good work here. I am grateful for all of your efforts,” the Marshal added, stalling in the door, “But I need you to fix your hearts, and quickly. The alternative puts all of us at risk.”
He closed the lab door behind him with a definitive clang, and Hermann dropped his chalk.
“Did he just quote Twin Peaks at us? Did that just happen?” Newt asked in incredulity, his voice raspy from disuse, as Hermann clambered down his ladder to retrieve his utensil.
“I believe so,” Hermann mused, a little bewildered by the exchange. A few seconds passed, and then Newt said, “He’s right though, isn’t he, really,” and then dropped into his chair, his head in his hands.
Hermann was stunned by that.
“What do you mean?” he asked, and Newt rapped his knuckles against his desk before he answered.
“The Marshal. He’s right. We’re both distracted. I’ve only gotten through two epidermal layers over here, and you haven’t said ‘huzzah!’ once today, so I know you’re not getting any work done either.”
“I do not say ‘huzzah!’,” Hermann retorted, and Newt gave him the ghost of a smile.
“Well whatever anglicism you use to celebrate, I haven’t heard it this morning,” Newt said, “And you know… she’s safe. She’s healthy. She’s got two mums who are going to love the shit out of her. And it’s not like she’s a million miles away and we’ll never see her again.” The rapping continued, and Hermann could see Newt’s left leg shaking under his desk too – another of the hundreds of signals that his body emitted when he was distressed.
Hermann could alphabetise them at this point, he knew them so well.
“And it’s stupid,” Newt said through a hollow laugh, “We knew it was only for a few days. Stupid to get so upset about it. Like any of us have got time for… I don’t know, frivolities.”
Oh Gott, he was breaking Hermann’s heart. He had never seen Newton like this before; he had seen him angry, frustrated, hyperactive, manic, had seen him when his journal articles were rejected and when the investors belittled him, and even when his mother had died, but never like this. Never dejected. Never hopeless. Not once, in the twelve years they had known each other, had Hermann ever known him give in to somebody’s else reason.
And he wasn’t about to start letting it happen now.
“Love isn’t frivolous Newton,” Hermann said firmly, and it felt like it was somehow the most important thing he had ever said, “We… we may not have time for it, but that doesn’t make it stupid or unimportant. Love is never wasted.”
He walked over the tape that divided the lab and stopped just short of Newt’s desk. He could feel a latent awkwardness starting to rise through his body from the tips of his toes, so he got the question out as quickly as he was able.
“Do you require… do you want- Can I offer you a hug?”
A beat passed and then-
“Oh my god,” Newt said breathlessly, like he was holding back a laugh, and Hermann’s defensive instinct immediately kicked in.
“What?” he snapped.
Newt leaned over his desk and said, “I spent so long thinking you were the most miserable old man I’ve ever met, but you’re not are you? You’re a giant softie.”
“Newton,” Hermann warned through gritted teeth, but Newt carried on regardless, clearly now on a roll.
“You’re not this stone-cold rational I-wank-over-statistics guy are you? You’re actually a great big teddy bear. A tough cookie with a soft filling. A rough exterior hiding an absolute heart of gold.”
“I am going to batter-”
“Don’t worry Herm,” Newt whispered before Hermann could finish threatening him, “Our little secret.” He winked and Hermann narrowed his eyes.
“If wit were wealth, you could build the jaegers yourself,” he rattled back as snidely as he was able before he stomped back to his desk.
“You’re adorable,” Newt trilled gleefully, and Hermann resisted the urge to launch the chalk he was still clutching at his head.
Another day, he promised himself, one where he’s not expecting it.
Despite that, the atmosphere noticeably relaxed as the two of them returned to work. Half an hour or so later, Newt turned on his ancient speakers and put Physical Graffiti on at his normal almost-intolerable volume, and by the time Hermann had filled an entire chalkboard with new equations using the data extracted from Lima last week, the heaviness in his chest had alleviated almost entirely. Indeed, when he looked over at Newt, elbow deep in Kaiju lung, flecks of alien guts spattered across his face (and had he gotten Kaiju Blue in his hair again? That patch definitely wasn’t there this morning), he felt a pleasant contentedness settle in his insides.
He submitted his mods report just shy of 7PM, and after an intense squabble that nearly ended in Hermann throwing Newt’s CD player in the toxic waste tank, Newt sent his off too.
“Happy?” Newt yelled across the lab as he slammed his finger on the enter button to fire off the email, and Hermann gave him a smug look from the top rung of his ladder and replied, “Eminently so.”
He was very nearly on the verge of a breakthrough, so he quickly turned around and reimmersed himself in his numbers. If I carry the polynomial value here, and substitute Gδ for the elliptical variant…
“You ready to head out Hermann? Tendo promised us drinks at his and Ally’s tonight if you fancy it,” Newt called, and Hermann hesitated, chalk hovering over the board but not making contact.
“I’m… I think I need to stay for a while longer,” he replied, trying to avoid Newt’s eye, “I’m very close to making this work.”
“Do you want a hand?” Newt asked, meandering over to his side of the lab, and Hermann was about to fire off a witty retort before he looked down and saw Newt smiling up at him, his hands raised in surrender.
“I’ve got six PhDs Herm, what harm do you really think I’m going to do?” he asked through a short laugh, “You are impossible to impress.”
“I wasn’t under the impression that you were trying to,” Hermann snarked, and Newt carried on chuckling, leaning back on Hermann’s chalkboard with enough force that some of his numbers began to smudge.
“Newton Geiszler, if your hideous posture leads to the disappearance of a single integer from this board, the result will be your rapid and very messy demise,” he said severely, and Newt leapt back like his shirt was on fire.
“Oh, you old sweet talker you,” he teased once he was out of the danger zone, and Hermann exhaled in defeat and began descending the ladder. Once Newton was on at him like this, there was absolutely zero chance of getting any work done.
Although he found that he really didn’t mind so much tonight.
“That is the second time you have called me old today. Might I remind you that I was born a mere seven months before you-”
“Well if you will act like an old man-”
“And if you will act like a child-”
“And yet you still won’t sing for me,” Newt whispered conspiratorially, and Hermann wished his desk was closer so that he could bang his head against it.
He was never going to live that down, was he?
“You are aware that if anyone else finds out about that, I’ll know that it was you who told them,” Hermann said lowly, challenging Newt with a glare as he shrugged on his blazer.
“And what would you do if I did?” Newt pinged back, rising to the bait. Never one to back down.
Hermann had archives worth of blackmail material on the man (when your lab mate was as reckless as Newt was, it was easy to collate evidence over the years), but he didn’t feel like taunting him right now. The daring expression on Newt’s face, his half-moon smile… no, he didn’t want to taunt him. He wanted something else entirely.
“You are impossible,” Hermann huffed instead. He switched off his computer and began walking towards the lab door.
A sudden shift in the conversation stopped him just before he could cross the threshold.
“Do you think we’ll ever get to have a normal life?" Newt asked quietly, stopped in his tracks by the sight of the starlight projector, left behind in the lab by its owner and tucked away on Hermann's bookshelf for safe-keeping, "It’s just… I always kinda liked the idea of being a dad. What if that was my only chance and it's already over?"
Hermann caught his gaze when it eventually moved away from the light, and there was a profound longing there, one that shouted that it wasn’t going to go away anytime soon. Hermann limped across the room and before he could stop himself, he reached out a hand and interlaced his fingers within Newt’s.
Words failed him for a second, but then he felt the pressure of Newt squeezing his hand, and they came right back.
“Anything is possible Newton. I would’ve thought at least one of your PhDs would have covered that,” he said, trying to imbue his words the kind of compassion that he knew Newt needed, even if he wasn't totally sure of how to provide it.
“It just seems so far away now, so unlikely,” Newt said, hanging his head, “By the time this war is over, if it ever ends... There's just not enough time.”
“Newton-”
“And I mean, you know first-hand how... much I am, I'm not exactly a hit. Who's gonna want to have a family with me?” Newt laughed, but Hermann refused to laugh along with him, “I just… I wish some things were different. Y’know.”
Hermann nodded, and unconsciously stroked the back of Newt's palm with his thumb.
“You shouldn’t…” he began, and he wasn’t sure if he was ready to say the next few words but they tumbled out all the same, “You shouldn’t think so poorly of yourself Newton. You are an exceedingly good person, and you are cared for by many people.”
“Yeah?”
The doubt in his voice made Hermann's heart hurt.
“Yes, you are. The Chois adore you, and Mako – for some bizarre reason – finds you very amusing. You are highly respected by the pilots, by the Marshal, and you are far more personable than myself, so most of the PPDC can at least tolerate you,” Hermann said, bordering on indignant, genuinely irritated by how readily Newt insulted himself, furious with the people who had allowed him to do it in the first place, “My father... was a cold and difficult man, and a poor father. I could not be more certain that you would be the opposite. Any child... would feel blessed to have you. And any person would feel blessed to have you as a partner. Now, let's go to Tendo's. I could use a drink.”
Hermann dropped Newton’s hand, with a certain amount of reluctance, and turned away from his desk. He started walking to the door again, and was nearly in the corridor, before he realised that Newt was still rooted to the spot.
“Do you mean that?” he asked shakily, and Hermann gave a decisive nod.
His next question was quiet and gentle but there was a defiance there too that let Hermann know he wasn’t getting away without answering it: “Would you?”
"Would I what?"
Newt tapped his fingers against his thigh.
"Would you feel blessed? If you had me?"
“Newton- I… Pfft,” Hermann stuttered, and his hand started to tremor as Newton approached him, the green of his irises glinting under the harsh fluorescent lights above them. Newt reached out for him, tugged at the sleeve of his jacket, and held the fabric tight in his grasp so he couldn’t wriggle free even if he tried.
Now or never.
“Do you really need me to say it?" Hermann asked with a fragile smile, "Is it not obvious, beyond words, at this point?”
“Hermann,” Newt exhaled, his hand trailing up and across Hermann’s knitted jersey, dancing across the fabric, every touch a sensation, until he reached the pinnacle of his journey, where he brushed a thumb against his shaking jaw.
“Newton, what are you doing?” Hermann asked, his heart thrumming in his chest, tickling his ribcage, and Newt smiled at him in a way that he never had in all of their years together, before he leaned in and whispered, “Fixing my heart.”
Newt kissed him gently, the pressure of his mouth so light that he could have missed it, and yet when he drew away, Hermann felt as if all of the air had been sucked out of the room.
“Is this okay?” Newt asked, tiny brushes of moisture making his mouth glisten, and Hermann was transfixed.
“Yes,” he breathed, “Yes. More than okay. Wonderful, in fact.”
Newt grinned and kissed him again, moving less tentatively this time; the taste of him lingered in Hermann’s mouth, and Hermann pulled him in closely, felt the heat of him, felt the starchy texture of his shirt under his fingertips, and then laid his palm over the space where Newt’s heart lay beneath, and knew that it was his.
As they left the lab, Newt knocked his forehead against Hermann’s shoulder and said, “Maybe we should get a dog.”
Hermann halted, and he wound his hand down and curled it up inside Newt’s. Mein Gott, I love you, he wanted to say, but he found that there was no rush, no need to race through the beautiful parts and across the finish line. He could live in these minutes for the rest of his life.
“Don’t push your luck,” he settled on, and he pressed his lips to Newt’s temple like he had all the time in the world.