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In the Drift, Newt(on) Geiszler is both himself, and he is someone else. He sees and is seen. By the kaiju hivemind, by himself somehow, and by Hermann Gottlieb. Everything is doubled, refracted, thrown back against itself. A mirrorself and an Other and a regular self, all jumbled together into one headachenosebleedvertigo. They are in the Drift for maybe 10-20 seconds, and it feels like he's experienced whole other lives. Things slip by instantaneously and he can't see them consciously, but they enmesh themselves in his subconscious so completely that it's like they were always there, woven into the same neural fabric. It was both awesome and terrible, in the way that the things Dr. Geiszler had always been drawn to in his life seemed to be. Like biology: paradoxically beautiful and ugly at the same time.
The base has been sleeping off a two-day-long hangover. The Big Mission succeeded despite every reason not to, and every hip flask and keg and special-occasion-stockpile had surely run dry by now. All his nervous energy he usually can direct into work has nowhere to reroute; it had been a few days but the Drift was still there, a new pathway in his brain. The pilots hadn't told him that it sort of stayed around even when you were disconnected, like an open door waiting for something to walk through it again. The concert's over, yet the tinnitus remains. He wanders back to his bunk and leaves the literal door open, because even if he can't hear his cane hitting the floor yet, he instinctively knows that Dr. Gottlieb is heading this way.
Goddammit, Hermann. For all the adolescent bickering, the Drift had tessellated them into each other and shown him they had much more in common than he wanted to admit. Both of them isolated by their interests, even from their fellow scientists. His whole self-image had been built on having been rejected, laughed at, or downright distrusted. The kaiju tattoos were as much an expression of his passions as they were an extended middle finger to the polite society that had been nothing but cut funding, research proposal rejections, and a thousand dead-end job interviews. When the Corps had finally hired him he thought he'd broken through to legitimacy. That someone was listening to him. Mostly he'd just gotten more jock pilots being assholes and administrative officials ignoring him. Finally though, someone had trusted him. Someone had believed in him.
And he'd seen and felt the same fundamental isolation there in Hermann's memories, being a child prodigy and utterly alone. Gottlieb had taken a tremendous leap of faith with him; one that could've gotten him killed, even. Other people had done nothing but hurt both of them their whole lives and he'd chosen to put his faith and trust in someone again. He'd willingly held Newt's hand as he was about to jump off a cliff. If that wasn't heroism, he didn't know what the fuck it was.
And just like that, he's back there in the Drift with him.
A memory that he'd only glanced at before it suddenly catches him full in the face. It was recent, as fresh in his mind as it must be in Hermann's, and it burned like a fever in the dead of summer. They're in the lab, like usual. His sleeves are rolled up, and he can feel eyes on him. Newt had caught him staring at his tattoos before, and had written it off when Hermann had looked away and mumbled something condescending. But being both part of and the source of the memory, in place of what he'd assumed had been disdain, he felt desire. Felt it surface and felt it be suppressed, Hermann's knuckles turning white gripping the metal of his chair, his mouth going dry. Felt his thoughts try to turn away from tracing his arms with his thin, nervous fingers, to pulling his shirt tails up from his jeans to inspect him further. The realization of what he was seeing hits him, the simultaneous feeling of lust and of being lusted after intertwined curiously in the pit of his stomach.
He sees the end of their first week working together, getting their bunks on-site assigned. He remembers leaving the lab, seeing Hermann disappear into his room across the hall; now he remembers-by-proxy being Hermann, barely waiting for the door to close behind him before he's trying to get himself off as quickly and quietly as possible. Of course he would view this as just a problem to be solved, an inconvenient attraction that could be addressed and then re-suppressed. His thoughts are uncomfortably vivid in their newly shared headspace, so desperately felt initially that they echo and bounce and magnify in Newt's brain. Images of himself looking debauched, rolling around in bed with an ex-girlfriend, blowing a college roommate, being bent over a knee and spanked pink by Pentecost, holy shit. He physically reels at the dueling sensations of being fantasized about, and the authenticity of his/his own hand around his/his dick. The memory seizes in his brain as it ends, Gottlieb stuttering out a moan as he finishes himself off at the conjured thought of his coworker pinning him to his threadbare mattress and fucking all that royal pomposity right out of him.
"I did not intend for you to have to see that," Hermann huffed, red as a sunburn, closing the door behind him. Newt jolts back into reality with a million things to say at once. He tries the first few: "Why didn't you say anything? Why not tell me? Jesus, why didn't I notice?"
"Because it is mortifying! To be so susceptible to such base urges is unprofessional. Undignified."
For once, he can't think of anything else to say, so he stands on his tiptoes and grabs the back of the poor bastard's head and crushes his mouth down to his own. He catches the bottom of Hermann's lips between his, runs the wet of his tongue along it, asking for permission. Please, let me help you.
Hermann arches into it, shivering, like he's never been touched, and oh god it occurs to him that it's a distinct possibility, and he so does not need that kind of responsibility. He doesn't think he's ever been anyone's first. "Tell me what you want me to do," he hears himself say from far away, even though the pictures still raw in his head tell him everything he needs to know. He doesn't mean it to be cocky or domineering. The residual feelings of desperation and needwantplease are still snapping around in his synapses, and he's torn between swimming in them and wanting to fix them, to give Gottlieb something for the ache. Paradoxically being the problem and the solution.
"I-I don't know," he gets in response, which is honestly the first time he's ever heard the phrase from out of the other doctor's mouth, and Newt can't help but chuckle, and then feel terrible that he might have hurt Hermann's feelings. Which are as sensitive as anything else he's brushing up against. More so, even. To his surprise, Hermann's other hand tentatively palms him through his jeans, and Newt realizes he is embarrassingly hard. It's so difficult to separate where everything is coming from, where the other person's wants end and his start. His hips grind involuntarily against an open, sweaty palm. He can count each individual seam of his way-too-tight pants lathing against his dick and he's trying his damnedest to find the zipper because it's almost painful.
They end up on the floor, ungainly flailing around each other. Hermann's godawful stupid hair actually isn't too terrible looking when it's this mussed, and it's kind of cute how his undershirt is somehow pulled half off, his mouth open and panting. He's so dazed he lets his head loll back and stares at the ceiling, but when Newt finally gets what's left of their pants off and presses his groin against his, it's like the wind is knocked out of him, and he squeezes his eyes shut and groans, canting his hips up into it.
He angles them up against the bottom of the bedframe, and if Newt were in his right mind he'd be worried that one of the patrol is going to be kicking down the door to make sure someone's not dying, now that they're both making an indecent amount of noise. He braces himself with one elbow and gets his hand around the curve of his friend(?)'s ass for leverage, and shudders at the drag of skin on skin as the other man manages to take some surprising initiative and fists their cocks together. He can feel how wet they are all along his stomach and in fingerprints on the inside of his thighs where Hermann's other hand has wandered. So wet he can't tell the difference between this and his first time with his high school girlfriend in the backseat of her dad's car, her soaked panties pulled to the side in the mad rush to be inside her. Her moaning in his ear when he is. The memory is so bright and clear and terrible it's like a migraine, overlapping with another memory, on top of the ones that aren't his but that he can feel in his molars.
But he's here in this room where the ceiling is spinning, and he's coming so hard he's shaking. The mouth below him sputters and gasps, and then laughs, of all uncharacteristic things, and he's laughing too, and it's just the strangest thing, it's borderline hilarious. It's also the first time he's genuinely laughed in at least a week, and that in itself justifies the mess he's cleaning off his stomach with a shirtsleeve. He rolls over and flops onto his back, and God help them both, Hermann's hand is next to his and their fingers find each other. And he realizes neither of them are alone anymore, and that he can just lay on this floor for a little while longer.