Chapter Text
Forgive me
We both know I'm the one to blame
'Cause when I saw my demons
I knew them well and welcomed them
Have mercy
I know that I have gone astray
'Cause when I saw my reflection
It was a stranger beneath my face
But I'll come around
Someday
-The Oh Hellos, The Lament of Eustace Scrubb
It’s strange, the thing that finally breaks him.
It’s a fucking email.
Back when they were saving the goddamn world, IT couldn’t be depended on to make sure that emails got through on time, and yet now, at the end of it all, after what happened in the past year, with Alice-
Newt’s emails are still arriving, with their classified symbol.
Today’s is about a smaller kaiju body that was found preserved in the Siberian arctic, one of the earliest corpses ever left by the invaders. This one actually managed to die by a fucking lightning strike and then was buried by a blizzard, which is a fascinating piece of information that Newt could make an entire paper out of, the properties of decomposition, the weaknesses of early Category Twos, if they had designed a jaeger that had electrical prods as part of its weaponry, how would that have affected the kaiju they fought-
But the question interrupts his ping-ponging thoughts: why the hell has he been sent the information?
Newt has been waiting for his ID to stop working. For him to stop receiving communications, and offers of supplies, and everything else that was associated with his old position.
And sue Newt, okay? He’s always been a little bit dramatic.
So he pushes his glasses up his nose and prints off the email and storms into the cafeteria, where he finds Tendo, Mako, Herc, and Raleigh all sitting and eating and talking.
And Newt, of course, waves around the piece of paper and demands: “Can one of you tell me why the hell I’m still getting classified information sent to me about kaiju specimens?”
They’re all looking at him like he’s grown a second head, and he doesn’t know why.
“Because you’re still one of the only two K-scientists in the building?” Tendo offers up, “The world’s leading xenobiologist? You’re supposed to be getting reports about any kaiju biological matter that has been discovered.”
“But not classified information,” Newt points out, because it’s rather fucking obvious what’s wrong, isn’t it?
The investigation has had two months to be finish its findings. His name shouldn’t be on those emails. His ID should have been deactivated a long time ago.
So why?
If they’re not shocked, if they don’t understand his question, there’s only one reason why he would still be getting classified information, after a report on his behavior: the same reason why PPDC personnel never swarmed this place for an investigation.
“Wait a minute. Holy shit. Did-” Newt swallows. “Did none of you report what I did?”
“Nothing to report,” Herc says, “It was taken care of.”
The words spill forth before he can contain them, because what the actual fuck, all of you?
“I was a clear and present safety threat to the entire fucking human race and none of you wrote a report about it?”
“We checked everything,” Herc says, “No codes were stolen, no drones were activated, there aren’t any jaegers left to sabotage or steal. This place has been basically in a state of decommission since the end of the war. It’s an outpost, a basic research facility, a clean-up post, nothing more. You would have had to get off of the Shatterdome to do some damage. And even if something had been stolen- we would have told them what was compromised, but we wouldn’t have told them that it was you.”
“But I could have done so much damage. I could have hurt-”
Newt can’t breathe. Can’t even think to breathe.
Because it was never Alice. It was never a girlfriend.
Almost eleven months ago, Newt drifted again.
He doesn’t remember entirely why, anymore. He doesn’t remember if it was his own curiosity or the lingering drag of the kaiju brain in his own, pulling him forward and to his own destruction.
(Everyone in this room knows that Newt doesn’t need help in self-destruction.)
All he knows is that night, he’d come back from the night out in Hong Kong with Raleigh and Mako, because there was beer buzzing in his veins and he could have gone anywhere, could have met anyone, but all he wanted was to go home to Hermann. All he wanted was to curl up in Hermann’s arms, and pull him down close, and press their mouths into each other until they melded into one again, anastomosis-style, two veins feeding into each other and becoming one.
So Newt had come back to the lab, and he and Hermann had stayed up late in the lab together, and they’d been talking, and there was a moment- just one moment, impossibly bright, impossibly close- where they’d been next to each other, and they’d been leaning in close, and their mouths had been so close together that Newt had thought, well-
They’d nearly kissed, that night, because Hermann’s mouth was sharp and bright and his smile was intoxicating and Newt had spent ten years dreaming about making it his-
But Hermann’s phone had rung, and Newt recognized that ringtone as specifically Hermann’s father, who never, ever called save when he needed something.
Hermann had swallowed, and Newt had thought oh, come on, we’re about to kiss, tell me that’s gotta be more important than your fucking dickhead of a father.
But Hermann hadn’t rejected the phone call. Instead, Hermann had apologized and offered to walk Newt back to his room.
But something in Newt had been frustrated by the fact that Hermann had ditched him for Lars fucking Gottlieb. By the fact that he’d wanted this for so long, and so did Hermann, and the ghost drift was itching beneath his skin, begging to be answered, begging to be connected, and Newt didn’t understand why Hermann couldn’t just ditch his father when this could finally become a thing between them-
Hermann had left, and Newt had been lonely and yearning as he headed back to his own room alone.
And he’d reached for a pons unit, and had gone to the tank that preserved Otachi’s brain, and-
And the Drift had taken him under and stolen him away from himself, and there was no one to catch him when he fell.
Newt remembers screaming for Hermann. Screaming his apologies, screaming for help, screaming that he loved him, that Alice was wrong, that everything she said was a fucking lie-
But there was nothing that he could do to open his own mouth, because it wasn’t his anymore. Nothing was.
And yet despite the kaiju-sized hole in his brain, all of them- pilot, Marshal, J-Tech Chief LOCCENT Officer- had not said a word about it, despite the fact that Alice- that the precursors- sat hooked in Newt's mind for nine months, waiting to hatch into a second apocalypse, undoing everything that Stacker Pentecost and Chuck Hansen and Yancy Beckett and so many other jaeger pilots sacrificed themselves for.
Mako’s father. Herc’s son. Raleigh’s brother. Tendo’s grandfather. All dead, due to the kaiju, due to the apocalypse.
The second end of the world was at Newt’s fingers, and if he’d made it to Shanghai, if he’d made it away from them, he would have brought it all down. He would have welcomed the precursors in and the kaiju back, and no one would have even batted an eye at the man with the kaiju inked across so many large swathes of his skin, a calling card from the fucking kaiju groupie-
Newt is no war hero. He is no savior.
He isn’t even a fucking rock star.
He is a man who let in the end of the world, because he was too curious for his own good, because he couldn’t resist the call of the drift and if he couldn’t have it with Hermann again he would take it from anywhere, and he was weak enough to not be able to fight back against the kaijus once they made it into his own brain.
If it hadn’t been for these four and Hermann-
“What the fuck is wrong with all of you?” Newt asks, and he thinks that he might be begging. “Why the fuck didn’t you lock me up? Why did you let me go free?"
Newt’s hands are trembling in front of his stomach. They need to clench down, need to grasp for something, for a scalpel, for a sandwich, for a bat to smash through a kaiju tank-
But Alice is gone. The precursors are gone.
There is nothing to fight save himself, and the role that he played in everything that went wrong.
Mako is getting up, heading to his side, just as he thinks she did that final day, at the end of the world, at the end of everything, but she's not going to get there soon enough.
“Because we trust you,” Tendo says, and it’s a kick in the fucking stomach, after everything that he did, every lie that he told, every ache that he dealt upon the rest of them.
Because why?
Why would they ever trust him? Why would they not take the knives away? Why would they invite him to concerts? Why would they let him into rage rooms? Why would they fall asleep with him?
The questions have been banging around his head, itching under his skin, for so long, begging to be answered.
“Why? Why should you trust me? Why the hell am I even out here? I nearly fucking destroyed everything, my hands were this close to getting to a switch, if I’d made it to Shanghai, I would have built in that back code, I would have destroyed everything, I would have reopened the fucking Breach.”
“But you didn’t make it to Shanghai,” Raleigh says, all fact-of-the-matter abrasive to Newt’s ears.
Mako nods, and her voice is kinder. “You didn’t hurt anyone, Newt-”
But she’s wrong. They’re all wrong.
“But I did hurt someone,” he says, and he can’t hold it together anymore.
His legs give out. He crumbles like a marionette with its strings cut, because his strings were cut ages ago, when Alice's tendrils made their way into his head and severed the one relationship he ever held his faith in.
Because it’s true. Because it’s never been anything but true.
Because it’s not a could hurt, it’s a did hurt, because Newt can still feel Hermann’s neck beneath his fingers, because before they stopped him, the person that he hurt the most, that he has always hurt the most, was the person he loved the most.
The paper is on the ground in front of him, but he can barely make out anything more than a blurred square of bright white through the tears covering his eyes.
A couple of months ago, they were tackling him to the ground in this room, forcing him to his back so that he didn’t try to kill-
So that he didn’t-
“I nearly killed him,” Newt says, except he doesn’t so much say it as choke it out, the words strangling themselves in his throat just as his fingers once choked Hermann, hitching on a sob. “And it was- god, it was the worst thing that I’ve ever done. That I ever could do."
Newt is on his knees, surrendering, and that is where he should be, because how could he ever keep standing if he'd lost Hermann Gottlieb at his own hands?
“You didn’t kill him,” Tendo says, “And Alice didn’t either, because we stopped it from happening
“Yeah, because I was a- I still am a- a fucking monster, Tendo-”
But Tendo’s voice is steady, as it should be, as the chief LOCCENT officer, even after everything has finished, even after his mission is over.
“You stopped, because you had us. Because we care about you, Newt. Because if you didn’t have a fucking parasite in your head, you never would have done all of that. Just because the world stopped ending doesn’t mean we stopped being a team.”
But Newt can’t hear it, because all he has had holding himself up for so long has been the thought that he might one day get punished for what he did, for hurting Hermann. “You all lost something to the kaiju. How can you know that I’m safe, when I hurt the person I love more than anything else? When Alice made me- when I made myself- when I-”
Newt wants to bite down. He wants to tear something. A vein, an artery, his entire fucking heart right open. Anything that would make it so that his first thought of blood isn’t the bruising on Hermann’s throat when Newt’s eyes opened to the feeling of Hermann’s neck beneath his fingers and Hermann gone.
Hermann and Mako got back to the cafeteria rather quickly, of course. They were breathing hard, but they were alive.
But for a moment, as Alice was wrenched out of his life, as she screamed, as they all screamed, every precursor, every kaiju, as they were torn from his head, and Newt opened his eyes to Hermann being gone-
It was the worst moment of Newt’s life. Worse than drifting with a half-dead kaiju brain alone. Worse than surviving Otachi. Worse than the pit of starvation carving away at his stomach. Worse than every bullying incident and nightmare and the nine months of holding onto some small sliver of himself through the onslaught of thousands of millions of kaiju and precursor minds against his own.
Because for a moment, Newt couldn’t see Hermann, and for a moment, he thought that Hermann was gone.
If Newt had returned from what had happened with Alice and Hermann had been gone, if he had been dead, with Newt having no chance to apologize, no chance to confess, no chance to tell Hermann the truth of what he felt, and all of that was at Newt’s hands-
Newt never would have been able to forgive himself. Hell, he thinks that pitching himself over the edge of the Shatterdome along with the jaeger parts and the sunglasses and the shards of tank and the paper cranes and the letters would have been easier than having to live with that.
“I’m not a hero. I’m just a scared guy who is too reckless for his own good or anyone else’s. And I’m- I’m sorry. God, I’m so, so sorry, I fucked everything up, all because I was too curious for my own good, because I couldn’t stop making mistakes, and I’m so fucking sorry-”
Out of the corner of his eyes, he can see them exchanging glances in front of him, above him, because Newt is alone, because he is on the ground, because he has surrendered to the fact that this is all that he deserves.
And maybe they’re all finally fucking realizing that-
But Mako sinks down to his level, squatting in front of him, and she says, “It must have been terrifying, to be in that drift.” Well, no shit, of course it was, but that doesn’t matter- “To have your will overridden. To not have him there.”
The breath catches in Newt’s lungs, because the fact of the matter is that yes, the scariest part of the drift was not the kaiju itself, because he’d drifted before with Hermann and he’d come out of it exhausted but victorious, but rather the fact that he was in that drift without Hermann.
The second drift, the one with Hermann there, there had been an equal amount of kaiju blue and gold, the light of Hermann’s brilliant mind, every equation and pattern and measurement, keeping him anchored.
But the third time, there was just a fucking tsunami of kaiju blue. Of Alice, flooding through every sense, every cell in his body, cramming down every part of himself to the tiniest corner of every cell, because Alice was thousands of minds, thousands of masters, and Newt was alone, so alone, because Hermann wasn’t there to steady him, to anchor him, because Newt was frustrated and reckless enough to do something so fucking stupid-
“They hated him, y’know,” Newt croaks out, staring at the ground, and he doesn’t know how he’s managing to get the words out. “They hated him, because they saw him as a threat. The kaiju, the precursors- they’re annoyed by the jaegers. They were pissed off at the nuclear blast that sealed the breach. But all of that just felt like roadblocks to them. The only things that they ever felt truly threatened by was science. By the people who could replicate that ending. They took me out of the equation, because I was the weaker one, the easier target, and that should have broken the magnetic pull, the drift. They wanted us to become incompatible in the drift. For the fact that I loved him to become a one-way thing. For him to hate me. But I-”
A sob hitches in Newt’s throat, but there is a hand against his back.
Newt looks up, breath looping itself into a noose around his neck, tears burning in his eyes like a nuclear blast lighting up the sea, nearly killing the two pilots brave enough to save the world, to find Tendo squatting down in front of him, Mako's hand on his back, even Herc and Raleigh on their knees on the ground as well, squatting there by his side. Each of them is here for a different reason, a different ache, but they are here, and Newt's breath catches in his chest.
“We couldn't watch you waste away, kid,” Herc says, even though he's only a decade older than Newt, because this is a man with a dead son who has forgiven Newt for everything that he's said to him. “We need you to understand that it wasn’t your fault. That Alice- that the precursors- punished you far more than you ever deserved.”
To hear them say the words aloud. To hear precursors instead of Alice, but also to hear them both, to hear his monster named-
“You don’t have to listen to us when it comes to you being a hero," Mako says, "You don’t have to listen to us when it comes to the end of the war. But I need you to know- it doesn’t matter if Alice was an abusive girlfriend or an alien hivemind. You are a victim. A survivor.”
Tendo's voice is gentle as he delivers the blow that nearly knocks Newt onto his back: "And Hermann thinks the same."
"I'm- I'm sorry?"
Tendo nods. "He's the one who brought us all together in the cafeteria, for that sort of...intervention that got you out of the precusors' grip. He was the one that identified that you were stuck in an abusive relationship. And he wasn't that wrong, in the end."
Newt’s breath catches in his chest.
After everything that happened. After everything that Alice- that the precursors- that he said to Hermann.
Hermann has been taking the effort to help him out. To help him recover.
But...he has also been avoiding Newt.
“But why?" Newt has to ask. "I know that he hates me, for leaving him for Alice, for saying all of that shit about him-"
Raleigh’s expression flickers when Newt says the word Alice, but that doesn't stop him from saying: “Y’know that he doesn’t blame you for what happened. He blames himself, instead-”
Newt’s jaw drops. How? Why? It was Newt’s bad decision making and near suicidal curiosity that nearly doomed them all. “Why the fuck does he think that? He did nothing wrong, it was all my fault-”
Newt's words stutter to a halt as Raleigh reaches forward and takes Newt by the shoulders.
Newt can’t believe the fact that he doesn’t flinch at being grabbed, but at some point in the last year, he and Raleigh Beckett, the big alpha jaeger pilot, all rugged and rough at the edges, became friends.
Even when he had Alice winding her way through his mind, even when he was in the depths of hell, there was still some part of him that learned to accept Raleigh as strongly as it did Tendo and Mako and Herc.
And so instead of feeling like some bully grabbing him in order to string him up from the flagpole as a “hazing” ritual which proved to Newt that MIT was never going to be safer from bullying than high school would have been, Raleigh’s grasp on Newt’s shoulders is steadying.
“It was not your fault, you listen to me."
“I was the one that started this whole mess-” Newt begins, “I was the one that drifted with her in the first place-”
“To save the fucking world, Geiszler,” Raleigh says.
“And besides,” Tendo says, “If you really think that he hates, you would he would have been the one to organize the food schedule for you, while you've been recovering?"
Newt thinks about food and getting his own clothes back and the stitch on a leather jacket and wishes tossed over the edge of the Shatterdome to be swallowed by a Pacific Ocean slowly, slowly being cleansed of kaiju blue.
Newt has wanted that for so long. To be depolluted. To flush the ammonia and kaiju blue from his veins.
It seemed so impossible for so long, but slowly, over the past few months, with the help over everyone in front of him, but especially Hermann, despite their distance-
Newt swallows, but he can’t dislodge the knot in his throat. “He can’t bear to look at me, after everything that happened-”
“That man is able to shoulder as much guilt as you do,” Raleigh says, “It’s like the fucking Himalayas with you two. No wonder you two can drift.”
Tendo snorts. “Never seen a more matched set in my life.” He shrugs at the three actual jaeger pilots in front of him. “No offense to you three, or whatever, but it’s true.” He flashes Newt a smile. “There’s been a bet going here in the dome on when you’d get together for about six years running.”
Newt Geiszler is a grown ass man, but he nearly squeaks: “I’ve only been assigned here for six years!”
“Exactly,” Tendo says with a fond, long-suffering sigh. “The betting pool started after your first blow-out argument, when Haruhi from Engineering thought you two had fucked afterward.”
God, I fucking wish.
God, the idea of having been able to be with Hermann, to answer Hermann's love with his own before everything went to shit, before everything blew up in his face.
Newt swallows. "I think- I think Hermann and I might need to talk."
"Fucking finally," Herc says with a sigh, and the others laugh as Mako reaches out a hand to help Newt up off the ground- an offer he finally takes.
Newt never used to be this insecure. This full of fucking doubt, like a saint. He used to be sure of everything, knowing that if he was ever wrong, Hermann would point it out, and Newt would have to find stronger evidence and come back even more sure of himself.
It would be so easy not to believe them.
But there is something that he might call hope building in his chest. An impossible thing, it kind of feels like the warmth of a hearth burning through the cold.
For so long, Newt has felt like the kaiju corpse buried beneath the snow. Like someone frozen in time, being buried by the blizzard coming in, the snowdrift settling over his lifeless body and preventing him from drawing air.
But in this moment- maybe there is a warm front blowing in. Maybe there is a chance that the groundhog won’t see its shadow and spring can arrive early- that is, it will arrive at all.
---
Newt doesn’t have any alcohol in his hand when he finally strides up to Hermann’s room and raps on the door-
But Hermann isn’t in there.
Newt isn't going to let that stop him, though, because he knows Hermann, and so he knows that means that there’s only one other place that he could be.
So Newt goes straight for the lab that was their home for so long.
And of course he finds Hermann Gottlieb standing there, staring at the chalkboard in front of him, shadows digging trenches under his eyes, because he never would have ended up anywhere else, would he?
There isn’t a breach to predict anymore, but that doesn’t mean that every answer of the universe has been acquired.
It just means that the thing that they dedicated their lives to for the past decade is gone, and they have to find something to replace it.
Newt gets it, though. He has spent months feeling unmoored. He has wanted nothing more than to get back to work, to feel fucking normal again.
Maybe the kaiju specimens, when they arrive, will be enough to make this lab feel normal. For both of them to get back to normal, bickering and prodding and poking at each other’s methodologies and tightening up each other's papers, because they've always been at their best when they're pushing each other.
But when Hermann hears the door open, Newt can see the way that his shoulders tense up and his jaw clenches- though, keyly, he doesn't stop working.
A few days ago, Newt would have assumed that that meant that Hermann wanted nothing to do with him, but there is something in Newt now that is pretty sure he knows the real truth.
Newt is tired of letting Alice control him and who he sees and who he loves. He is tired of letting the precursors be Alice.
So Newt charges forward, as heedless and reckless and restless as he used to be, before his head was scooped open and used like a puppet by the precursors. “I need you to know, Hermann, that I am sorry for what I said. You know that what I said about you, when Alice was in my head- none of that was true, right? You have always been the brightest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Hermann’s fingers freeze at the chalkboard, the chalk pressed in the middle of a number.
He doesn’t turn around. He doesn’t look at Newt.
For a moment, all breath in the room seems paused, frozen.
Newt knows that there is every possibility that his apology won’t be accepted, but he has to try. He has to at least know that he has told Hermann the truth: that he is not a robot, that he is not a weakling, that he is not lesser than, because he has always been more than anyone else could ever dream of being.
When Hermann speaks, his voice is low. Sharp. “Her words were indelicate, yes,” Hermann says, but Newt’s not sure if he even believes what he’s saying. “But not untrue."
"Fucking bullshit, man. There's not a single lick of evidence for the shit that she spewed, and you know it. I love you, Hermann, and I know that you love me, too. That you have been doing fucking everything to help me recover, and yet you refuse to come fucking talk to me, and we both deserve better than that-”
Hermann’s head finally, finally snaps in his direction, something haunted in his gaze. “I absolutely failed you, Newton,” Hermann snarls, “You deserve far better than me and my utter lack of ability to notice that you were drowning and I barely was able to find a lifeboat in time, and even then only because all of the others were able to take care of the hard things-”
And oh.
It was never about Newt hurting Hermannn; it was impossibly, incredibly, about some inane idea that Hermann has gotten himself sucked into that he hurt Newt.
Holy fucking shit.
Newt’s gaze sweeps over Hermann, his cane, the stains there that Newt could notice from a mile away. “Then explain the cane. I don’t- I don’t remember a lot, about what I physically did when Alice was around, but I remember the tank. The-” Newt’s voice cracks around the word, around the memories of what happened the one and only time he drifted with someone to carry the neural load, because that person was Hermann, and it was the only time in his life that he truly knew that he had an anchor if he lost himself. “Drifting. I know how I preserved that piece of brain, because I’ve done it a million times before, and the fact that you were missing when I woke up, the glass in my room, the ammonia stains on your cane- and don’t lie to me, I know when I’m right, I’m a fucking genius- you were the one that destroyed Alice.”
“That is debatable,” Hermann sniffs, but there is no sincerity to his voice, because they both know that Newt is right. That Newt is a genius and always has been, because that’s the whole reason that their relationship even began in the first place, because Newt had things to say and Hermann read them and sent him a letter questioning a lot of what he said, of course- they’ve been poking and prodding at each other from the first- but still did praise Newt’s points, calling them interesting, calling them fascinating.
And even if they fought when they met.
Even if they’ve fought every single day since-
That’s what brought Newt home, in the end. The fact that Hermann recognized that something was wrong and questioned him about it. Prodded him about it. And didn’t let up until Alice was gone.
“It was Mako, really, that destroyed Alice," Hermann says, "I was there to assist in the effort, and truly, anyone could have broken into that tank.”
Hermann broke Alice's tank with his cane?
God, Newt didn't think that he could find the man in front of him any hotter, that he couldn't love him any more than he already does, and yet before he can say that's fucking hot, dude, Hermann plows forward: "Everyone else deserves far more credit than I did."
Hermann's expression twists. “And besides, it does not matter who broke the tank in the end, because that night that you went on your first “date” with Alice, I could have stayed. I shouldn’t have picked up that phone call from my father. I should have kissed you. I have regretted that for eleven months, and I shall regret that forever, and I must apologize-"
“You all got me out of there,” Newt says, “And they said that you were the one to figure out the truth. The one who put the pieces together. But you specifically- you’ve done so much for me, since. You put together the plan for me to eat when I didn’t have the brain space to think about it. You left me the ginger ale and the anti-nausea meds the night I vomited.” Newt’s hand goes to the stitching on his jacket. “And you sewed my jacket, didn’t you? Don’t say you don’t know how to sew, don’t even pretend, I’ve seen inside of your head, remember, I know.”
Newt knows that Hermann learned how to sew before his mother died, and he hated the way that the needles pricked his fingers, but that after his leg started hurting because of an out-of-balance pelvic bone situation that only got worse as he got older, the needle pricks almost felt like a way to distract from the pain. That most of Hermann’s clothes are carefully stitched and patched together, because in the depths of the apocalypse, the only way to convince himself to leave the lab and actually try to sleep was to give himself something to stitch.
Every stitch was a pattern. Something small that could be calculated, over and over and over again, in a way that could focus the mind away from the existential dread that came along with having to make predictions about when the world would end permanently.
(Newt wants to think that if Hermann had just said something, if he’d just asked, Newt would have dragged him to the cafeteria for some stolen hot chocolate late at night. Hell, he might have even taken Hermann to the same rage-room type situation that he took Herc to, because clearly that works as a pretty great source of distraction.)
Newt steps forward, and Hermann doesn't move as Newt reaches up to cup Hermann's face, to cradle his cheek, to tuck his fingers into the edge of Hermann's hair. If anything, Hermann leans into the touch, as if he's craving it, as if he needs it, and god, Newt is going to spend as much time as possible over the next decade (and the decade after that, and the decade after that, and the decade after that, on into infinity, he doesn't care if it's impossible, Hermann, he's gonna make it possible, if it means more time with you) filling that craving, making up for the fact that they both wasted the last decade. "You took care of me. You saved my goddamn life. And I get it, if you don’t want me now, but if it’s some sort of misplaced sense of guilt, then fuck that. What happened, happened, and it sucked, and I know I’m going to be figuring out how to process it for the rest of my life, but why not spend that time annoying each other?”
Hermann pulls away from Newt’s touch, rolling his eyes, his mouth twisting downward. “Can you take something seriously for once in your life, Newton?”
“I’m being serious, dude,” Newt says, "I have enough guilt for both of us. I love you, and I'm sorry that I spent nine months convincing you that I didn't, but it's true."
“You are not the one that needs to apologize," Hermann says, “I should have known that you couldn't be cruel like that. You loved fucking kaiju, gave them the sort of consideration that no one else would. Treated those monsters like they were creatures that needed to be understood as much as a fucking bunny rabbit. How could I ever have believed that you were capable of such cruelty as you exhibited?" Hermann swallows, this dry, harsh thing. "Please, accept my apology. I could not- I cannot forgive myself, for not seeing things, but maybe if you could forgive me, I could begin to accept it."
“Okay, then,” Newt says, huffing a laugh. “Apologies all around. Both of us accepting each other. Just- take me as I am, and all that jazz,” Newt says, and it is so close to sounding like a wedding vow, but he and Hermann are so far past the “through sickness and health, til’ death do us part” bit of the situation that the analogy almost feels like it would be less permanent than the last eleven years. “Will you let me love you, Hermann Gottlieb?”
The question is quiet. Plaintive. The sort of request that would be so easy to turn away, because it isn't made dramatically, it isn't made with some grand romantic gesture.
And yet, that might just be the reason why Hermann allows it.
After all, they don’t really ask each other a lot of quiet questions. It’s more questioning than questions. More retorts than requests.
There is something wet in Hermann's eyes. Something sweet in Hermann's smile as he says, “That’s Dr. Hermann Gottlieb to you,” and it could ruin the moment, it could send them swinging back into pushing and shoving like kids on a playground instead of the world-respected scientists that they are.
But Newt has had enough of relationships where there isn’t a bit of parrying. Where he is pushed down and expected not to swing back.
No, what Newt has always wanted is a relationship between two equals, two sometimes-rivals, where the other person wants him to question, to annoy, to challenge right back.
So Newt grins. “Call me Newt, then, and you have a deal.”
Hermann rolls his eyes. “It is Newton, and I shall cede no further-”
The thing about Newt Geiszler is that he has always been the very definition of impulsive. Prone to making bad decisions because he doesn’t know how what makes the difference between good and quick and smart and reckless.
It’s what led him to drift with a kaiju in the first place.
It’s what led him to drift with Hermann in the first place, because the end of the world was at stake, and there was no one that he trusted more than Hermann at the end of all things.
It’s what led him to drift with Alice, and he’s paid the fucking price for that one.
But this decision-
Well, he’s run the calculations, Hermann Gottlieb-style, and it’s hard for Newt to find a downside, when he’s looking at the possibility of Hermann fucking Gottlieb on the other end of things.
They’ve already wasted eleven years, and every day wasted after this feels like a price that Newt, quite frankly, doesn’t feel like paying.
Fortune favors the brave, Newt said once, and it has fucked him over so many times before, but it also saved the goddamn world.
And in this moment, Newt’s entire world is one Hermann Gottlieb. Is the tips of his fingers, dried out by chalk dust. Is the beautiful brown of his eyes, the way that they have always seen right through Newt. Is the laughter lines around his eyes, because so many people might think that they are solely crow’s feet, but Newt knows for a fact that they are more than that. That the man that Newt fell in love with over letters all those years ago is the same man that he bickered with for half a decade is the same man he drifted with is the same man who has taken care of him for the past couple of months.
And Newt, quite frankly, is done giving up his world to punish himself for nearly dooming everyone else’s.
So Newt does what he does best: he follows his impulses. He leans forward, and grabs Hermann by the lapel of his blazer, and he pulls him in.
Hermann’s mouth tastes like stir-fry and a bit of chalk, and Newt’s not quite sure how that second bit is possible, and yet, here they are, with Hermann’s chapped lips on his, and there is no romantic music playing in the background. No grand swell of a drift.
And yet, in this moment, when Hermann’s hands fumble to Newt’s hips, Newt adjusting on instinct to alleviate the pressure on Hermann’s bad leg, neither of them breaking the kiss the entire time, the swell of a supernova between their mouths, Newt knows that he is able to read Hermann just as well as he always has- if not more.
Sure, it doesn't solve everything. Not even close. There is still much to be figured out, so much to be dealt with, so much life to be unentangled-
Newt has never wanted to get his fingers on someone else more than he does right now as they stumble and fall back onto the sofa behind them, but as Newt kisses his way down Hermann’s mouth, his cheek, his neck, to-
Newt pauses. He doesn't want to push too far. He doesn't want to make Hermann uncomfortable. He wants to kiss Hermann until the cows come home, wants to devour as much of him as he can, wants to make his home inside of Hermann's ribs, but he doesn't want to take anything more than Hermann wants to give.
So he pulls away, just slightly, to say, "I don't want to, like, push any more than you want to give, man-"
There's a moment where Hermann looks at him, and the look in his eyes is so soft, so tender, almost tender like a bruise that Newt doesn't want to step on. "God," Hermann breathes, "I don't know how I ever thought that that was you."
Newt knows that he could allow Hermann to wallow, for both of them to dwell in the past, but instead, he grins and says, "Why? Because I'm so awesome?"
Hermann rolls his eyes. "You are certainly something, Newton Geiszler."
"Hell yeah," Newt says, "See, I speak Hermann-ese and I know what sort of compliment that is. You ain't getting away with being an emotionally constipated oyster around me, dude."
Hermann's lips press together for just a moment, as if he's about to roll his eyes again, as if he's about to make some sort of smart comment- and bring it, Hermann, Newt can parry you right back, just watch- but then his expression softens into something firm but full of faith. "I trust you not to push too far. And you can trust me to tell you."
Newt grins. "If there's one thing I'm sure of when it comes to Dr. Hermann Gottlieb, it's that he has no problem telling me exactly what he thinks of the way I'm performing."
This finally gets Hermann to roll his eyes again- fucking score- but then it's Hermann pulling Newt in again, pressing their lips back together, and god.
Hermann feels like the warmth of spring finally coming through the middle of winter. Like the clouds finally breaking during a winter snow.
The frost melts beneath Newt’s fingers and away from his mind as he finally gets to acquaint himself with the spring.
---
Eventually, they'll make their way to the bed, Newt knows.
But for now, it only feels right that they are curled up on the sofa, Hermann with his leg elevated- Newt isn't going to have let him get hurt just for the sake of cuddling, fuck that shit.
Newt is playing with Hermann’s fingers, because he can, because he’s finally in a relationship where the other person isn’t going to punish him for fidgeting, for playing around, for being himself.
Sure, he might annoy Hermann, but there are no precursors in his head to cut off his words before they reach the end of his tongue. There is just the two of them, and-
“The others are gonna be thrilled,” Newt says, “I think they have a bet going on our relationship, y’know.”
There is a glint in Hermann’s eyes that newt loves the look of, because how could he not enjoy Hermann when he’s getting clever and devious, the sort of thing that other people might not believe him capable of, but that Newt, who has spent a decade fighting and bickering and trying to one-up the man, definitely knows he is down for. Hermann might seem to most like a stick in the mud, but that stubbornness, that self-assuredness, is something that Newt has always loved about him. Something that Newt has always wanted to hold onto.
Something that he is not going to take for granted for the rest of his life.
If he gets to wake up to this, if he gets to fall asleep to this-
How could Newt ever trade that for anything else?
“I do believe that we might be able to have a little bit of fun with their pool," Hermann says, and it's one of the best things that Newt has ever heard, because any worry that they are no long drift compatible has long flown out the door, when he can read Hermann like this.
“Dude, if we could close the fucking breach while we were actively chomping at each other’s throats, then we’re gonna be fucking unstoppable now,” Newt says.
“Do you really think that we’re going to stop our…spirited debates now that we are together?” Hermann points out, “Or that we won’t find nice things to do with our mouths and each other’s throats?”
Newt grins. God, they really are drift compatible. “Study them, I'm assuming?"
Hermann's smile sharpens in response. "I would be quite alright with the research plan of memorizing you."
"Talk dirty to me, man.”
It's not always going to be easy. Not when there are so many moments where it's too easy to be reminded of the past, such as the moment where Newt is kissing Hermann's neck and he remembers what happened the last time he was this close to Hermann's throat and nearly freezes up, bile in his throat.
But they're going to be there for each other, to nudge each other away from guilt, to remind each other of the promise made to forgive each other and forgive themselves.
---
It takes some time, to find a rhythm again.
When they come into lunch the next day, holding hands, Newt grinning from ear to ear, the proudest man in the world- and though Hermann’s smile is far more tucked away than Newt’s is, a smaller thing, he is clearly no less pleased- there are whoops and hollers as if some sort of sportsball game has been won.
(Listen, Newt is a genius and an expert in many different fields. Biology, physics, music, Hermann Gottlieb, you name it. But fuck him with a ten-foot-pole if you think he’s gonna touch sports with said pole.)
Tendo sighs and passes Raleigh some cash, though Tendo doesn't seem that actually put out by the money, as he's beaming from ear to ear looking at them.
"Fucking took you long enough," Herc says with an arch of the eyebrow, but Tendo elbows him.
“So,” Mako says, “Do you have some news to tell us?”
“Hermann and I are breaking up," Newt jokes, just to see the look on their faces- iconic, he's going to have so much fun messing with them now that Alice isn't a thing, especially since it leads to rolling his eyes.
"Dr. Geiszler and I are finally together, yes," Hermann says, "And I do believe that we are owed a percentage of whatever bets you all are making." He offers up his hand, palm up, to Raleigh. "Consider it damages for how long it took to make the event occur. We do need to go on a date, after all."
---
The next month unfurls in front of them.
They do go on the date, of course, and plenty more after that, but not before Newt ends up going to that concert with Mako.
"Sorry, babe," Newt says to Hermann, "But I promised a lovely lady a date. Last one, I promise."
Hermann just smiles. "Miss Mori is the one lady I would not care if you ever went on a date with."
"C'mon, Herm, you know you're the only one for me," Newt says, "No ladies for me, ever."
Hermann rolls his eyes. They end up making out on the lab sofa, Hermann sliding his hand up Newt's stomach, feeling the pudge that is growing there, slowly but surely, a sign of health finally restoring itself.
---
Eventually, they’re able to drift, just to check, just to chase out the last parts of Alice that might linger even after she’s been destroyed.
It's a bit of a nerve-wracking moment, after all of the damage that the pons units have done to Newt over the past year, but if there's one person that he trusts, it's Hermann Gottlieb.
So they drift, and Hermann hears the song inside of Newt’s mind, the punk rock, the clash of the Mountain Goats and the Sex Pistols, and it's better than any symphony, because it's him.
It's Newt, in all of his disastrous glory, and that's all Hermann has ever wanted to hear.
---
The kaiju specimens arrive, and after a year, Newt is able to dig his fingers into the inside of a kaiju specimen.
The ammonia will never not remind him of Alice. Of not having control of his own brain. Of being forced to sit in that chair and hook himself up to the brain of a hivemind that actively wanted to drown him out of his own mind and crush him down into nothingness.
But he has to do this. He is going to do this.
Because Newt refuses to let them win. He refuses to let them take this away from him.
Newt Geiszler is the man that stained his skin with the ink of monsters, and he hasn’t once thought about getting any of them removed.
They are testaments to what he survived. What he is fascinated by studying, regardless of how much fear they inspire- even in himself.
But that doesn’t mean that after he’s done, as he’s peeling his gloves off for the evening, he doesn’t need to stop for a minute and take a breath at the sink.
Recovery is not an easy process. It consists of fifty million (yes, Hermann, Newt knows that you told him a gajillion times never to exaggerate, to be mathematically precise in all things, but these are his thoughts, all his, no one else influencing them, so he’s gonna thinks what he likes and to hell with anyone else’s guidelines) small steps that have to be approached one at a time. It’s so easy to slip up at any one of them.
But in the meantime, he is able to hold onto the things that he can focus on. His eating is pretty much back to normal, save the vitamins and the tums he carries everywhere. His clothing is all his, thanks to a small thrift-store-spree that Tendo and Raleigh of all people took him on a couple of weeks back. He talks to his father and his uncle at least once every couple of weeks, sometimes every week, and the last week he got to introduce him to his boyfriend, because-
An arm wraps around Newt’s middle, where the pudge that he once wore with pride is finally making its way back to him.
With anyone else, he'd jump, but thanks to the drift, Hermann is the one person that doesn’t make Newt flinch as his fingers settle across Newt’s stomach, beautiful as always.
Hermann can rest his head on Newt’s shoulder, can kiss the back of his neck, and it’s fine. Hell, it's more than fine- it's beautiful. The best miracle that Newt ever could have asked for.
But that doesn't stop Newt from joking: “You know that your joints are way too sharp, dude,” Newt says, “They dig into my stomach."
He can hear the roll of Hermann’s eyes as he says, “Is this you saying that you no longer wish to rest your head on my shoulder during movie nights?”
“The fuck are you on, dude, that’s my pillow, thank you very much.”
“How many times do I need to tell you that it’s Dr. Gottlieb,” Hermann says, and Newt can’t help but smile, because this is his normal, now. This is what the end of the world brought him: Hermann Gottlieb and his smart mouth, beautiful as can be.
---
A real double date does eventually happen, with Hermann and Newt going out to the bar with Mako and Raleigh, and it's a fun time had for all, absolutely demolishing the other groups and then going head to head against each other in pub trivia (Hermann and Newt do win, to no one's surprise, but Mako and Raleigh do put up a valiant fight, especially in the history and pop culture categories, the second of which Hermann, for all his strengths, knows fuck all about).
But the true highlight is when they have an impromptu "dance" night in the cafeteria, and it's informal, sure, but Newt still buys Hermann flowers for the first dance that they have ever attended, and gets to see the way that Hermann smiles at the gesture.
Newt dances with everyone- but so does Hermann, as others pull him up to dance with them, everyone careful of his cane, and he's a bit stiff, he's a bit awkward, but he smiles as he dances with Newt, and he laughs as he watches Newt and Tendo spin each other around the floor, both of them willing to make utter fools of themselves.
Newt ends the night swaying with Hermann, Newt bracing Hermann’s arm, and they're a perfect match, because at the end of the day, no matter what has happened between them, they are still drift compatible. They are still each other’s other half, each other’s perfect complement.
And at the end of the day, sparring is the same as dancing. The push and the pull, the anticipation of your partner’s actions, the two bodies complementing each other.
There will always be ghosts. You will always be haunted. That’s how humanity has worked since the dawn of fucking time.
The end of the world isn’t much different, in that respect.
But what you have to remember is that you can let the music play. You can birth a world anew, nebula from supernova, instead of supernova to black hole.
You sing to the spring.
The scene ends badly as you might imagine
In a cavalcade of anger and fear
There will be feasting and dancing in Jerusalem next year
I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me
-The Mountain Goats, This Year