Chapter Text
In September Tendo walks into the lab and falls down onto the couch. It’s just gone eleven at night and Hermann is in the middle of something, so he doesn’t look up at the intrusion; it’s not uncommon for people to walk in to drop off some folders, but when the door doesn’t reopen to let the visitor out he goes to investigate.
“Alison’s pregnant,” says Tendo, voice muffled by the pillows.
“Congratulations,” Hermann replies.
“No!” says Tendo, rolling over and staring up at him. “No congratulations. This is the worst.”
“I presume you planned this,” Hermann says carefully.
“Duh. Couldn’t exactly,” he makes a vague gesture at himself. “Not the point. The point is, this is not me. I don’t do this. Married? A kid? I do dates with women and their boyfriends. Non-monogamy and lots of casual sex. I don’t do this,” he repeats, scrubbing his hands down his face. “What am I meant to do?”
Hermann is the least qualified person in the entire Shatterdome to talk about relationships. He hasn’t spoken to Newton in nearly a week, he realises with a slight pang of guilt. It’s not out of any malice, just, they’re both busy and conversation is difficult with all the distractions the world is throwing at them.
“Read baby books?” asks Hermann. This being the extent of his knowledge of human children he offers Tendo a cup of tea, which the man takes even though it’s not coffee.
“How are you and Newt coping?” asks Tendo, a while later.
“Managing,” says Hermann. He thinks Tendo means in relation to Tendo’s previous comments about how he does relationships, and Hermann searches for a comment to match. “It’s difficult, the balance between myself and him. He’s not the most… committed person.”
“You’ve got an open thing going on, while he’s down there?” asks Tendo, eyebrows up in surprise.
“No. Well,” he is uncomfortable discussing this. “I offered,” he admits.
“More committed than you thought,” suggests Tendo.
Hermann shrugs, certain that eventually it will change. They have eternity, and as much as he wants he cannot trust that Newton’s attention will remain on him for that long. He feels a pang in his chest at the thought of continuing with Newton with him.
He limps across the room and takes his cane from where it is hanging on the edge of the chalkboard. He looks up as his numbers, and glances back at Tendo.
“Come here,” he says. “I need you to check this for me.”
The Lima Shatterdome is decommissioned October 18, not even a week after Anchorage. Later that same month, Tokyo is sold to a private buyer.
There’s an influx of new workers, as many as Pentecost can afford. The sales don’t do much. They’re trying to rebuild Gipsy Danger and the metal costs so much. It’s cheaper and easier to melt it down into the Wall.
Hermann hasn’t spoken to his Father since that time he came to Hong Kong. During October he’s tempted to ring him up and yell at him, but that would achieve nothing.
The man continues to build his Wall.
Hermann has his numbers.
And, too far away, Newton’s worriedly watching the centrifuge, afraid that it will leap off the bench.
Newton is alone in the lab while the others have gone off to dinner. The music is loud but he can still hear everything: the filter in the aquarium meant to test Kaiju Blue in simulated aquatic environment but now a happy home to a collection of corral fish; the soft buzz of the autoclave; the whine of the printer; the soft schick of the door sliding open.
“Hey, man,” says Newton, loud above the music, “pass me that, would you?” He waves his hand indistinctly at the bench behind him, not lifting his head from the microscope. One visitor is giggling at something the other said, but eventually the little tool gets put into Newton’s outstretched hand.
“What’s up?” asks Olinda.
“IPod broke,” says Newton. “Fixing it.” He’s a little cold and a little hungry. Sydney it might be, but the lab is cold for samples and Newton’s gone all Hermann and he’s wearing an undershirt.
He reaches for his cup of coffee and finds it empty, and his hand is shaking a little. Whatever. Whatever, it’s Sydney, it’s 2024, his iPod is broken and the end of the world is nigh.
Well and truly fucking nigh.
He finishes with the delicate machinery inside the iPod and pulls it out from under the microscope to wrangle the cover back on. It doesn’t click quite shut, so he grabs some tape.
“There,” he grins. “Done!” He looks up at Olinda and her friend, and stops shorts.
“You!” he cries. He knows the woman but he doesn’t know her name. “Fuck.” He stands up and pulls her immediately into a hug.
“You know Marianne?” asks Olinda, watching Newton fold comfortably into her arms.
“Hell yeah. We go way back.” He pulls back a little, and says softly, “Did you hear about Mum?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry,” says Marianne. They both wince. Marianne is Newton’s Great Aunt, sort of. His Mother’s Mother’s Sister, but it’s all vampiric so the only blood they share has long since been digested. She’s a lot older than Newton. That’s the way of things, these days. Either they’re old and wise or young and idiotic.
Most humans who know Newton would be aghast to realise he’s part of the “old and wise”.
But he is. He’s a thousand years old.
“I didn’t know you were here,” says Marianne. “I’m not surprised.” Her accent is weird. She’s from Chile, or what is Chile, but she’s lived in so many places since and adopted so many personas that it’s difficult to distinguish what nationality she’s playing at now. Perhaps she’s just ambiguously foreign.
Newton will never be anything other than obnoxiously American with a heavy dose of German tossed in for good measure, same as Hermann is pretentiously English-German and nothing in between.
“Someone’s gotta save the world.”
“We’re just grabbing my coat,” Olinda interrupts. “Then we’re going out for drinks. You’re welcome to join,” she adds, though she doesn’t look at all certain that Newton is. She looks worried that Newton is going to steal Marianne from her.
“Yeah! If that’s cool,” he says, tossing the newly repaired iPod carelessly onto the bench and looking around for his jacket.
Olinda excuses herself to go get her jacket and Newton glances down at Marianne.
“You good for food?”
“If you’ve got something…”
He does, in a black-coloured bottle so no one can see in and they each take a couple mouthfuls before Olinda returns with a new coat of lipstick and her favourite coat. She looked a little put out at how close Marianne was standing to Newton, so Newton does his dance of digging into his pockets for his phone.
“What time is it in Hong Kong?” he asks, mostly to bring attention to what he is doing. “My boyfriend’s there,” he adds to Marianne, and makes a great show of texting Hermann to say he’ll be out tonight and thus not around if he wants to talk.
Not that he would, probably.
It’s been… tense.
Both of them feel it and both of them are trying, but there’s a lot going on. Newton understands. Well, he tries to understand. He tries to be pragmatic and logical, but really he’s half a heartbeat from giving up on the kaiju and flying home.
Home being where Hermann is.
Sometimes he dreams of nothing more than curling up in a bed where Hermann has been, sheets almost cold and smelling of chalk and blood.
He misses him with an ache that curdles the acid in his stomach and melts the tendons of his legs.
But there is a war, and he must fight.
The bar they go to is the bar they always go to, and there are already some of the Shatterdome team around a table. Newton finds himself squished between that Hansen kid and one of the new K-Scientists, one of the lucky few from Lima. (The unlucky don’t have jobs anymore.)
The beer is warm from sitting in a jug on the table and it’s too hot with Chuck’s thigh pressed against his, and everyone is too loud. He leans across the table to shout at Marianne, laughing and reminiscing, safe in the warmth and the noise. Marianne is one of the few nice vampires in the world. Even if she weren’t family Newton thinks he’d claim her. It’s rare that there’s an old one he actually likes. Most of them are like Lars, or worse.
Chuck is a grumpy shit ready to get mad at anyone and everyone, needing to prove himself worthy even to people who don’t give a fuck. He gets drunk and he gets into fights, that’s about the way of things. He gets into a fight at around eleven, which is earlier than usual and for some reason Newton is the one told to escort him back to base.
Marianne and Olinda follow, Olinda holding Marianne’s hand as though she’s about to escape and Marianne apparently waiting for a challenge from Newton. Newton doesn’t care, too busy keeping a firm grip on Chuck’s wrist.
“Look, big guy,” says Newton. “I know you wanna fight but let’s get real, I’m about as feisty as a guinea pig. It wouldn’t be any fun for you.”
Chuck’s arms are huge, even his forearms, and Newton’s having trouble holding on. Apparently there’s a couple engineers who need be introduced to his fists.
“You need a hand?” asks Marianne.
“Nah, I think I’ve got it. He’s like a bulldog. A drunk bulldog,” Newton corrects himself, pulling Chuck away from colliding with the wall.
“Kind of ruined your evening,” says Olinda.
“Nah. Better mine than yours. Where’s his room? Chuck, where’s your room?”
“Level three,” says Olinda.
“Three-four-?” says Chuck, who forgets what he is saying midword and steadies himself by putting a heavy hand on Newton’s shoulder.
“I’ll figure it out,” says Newton. “You young’uns hurry on off.”
Chuck bounces off the walls and Newton’s tired from the weight of him, but eventually they find Chuck’s room. Newton’s the one who’s left to dig through Chuck’s back pocket for his keycard.
“I’ll leave you to it,” says Newton. Chuck just sways in the doorway. Newton sighs. “Okay, come on then, big guy,” he says, putting Chuck’s arm over his shoulders again and leading him into his bedroom.
It’s far cleaner than Newton would have imagined. Not that he’s been imaging the Ranger’s bedroom, but if he’d been asked he would have presumed a mess of clothes and biscuit crumbs. Instead it’s nearly neat, lived in, but neat.
Chuck falls gratefully down onto the bed and tries to lift his legs to reach his shoes. Newton makes a disgusted noise.
“Thought I’d never do this for one of you again,” he mutters to himself.
“One of me?” asks Chuck. “One of me?” he repeats. “Let me tell you, mate,” he begins.
“Shut up,” says Newton. “Have a Tim Tam or something.”
“It’s bad enough,” says Chuck. “Seeing myself in dad’s memories.” He makes a face at Newton, but doesn’t seem to really be talking to him. Newton gets both his shoes off and lines them up by the desk. “It’s hard. I gotta be more. Than what I am.” He squints up at Newton.
“Dude, you gotta stop this,” sighs Newton.
“You sound like my dad.”
“Maybe you should listen to him,” says Newton, faintly appalled that he is giving fatherly advice.
“Dad nearly threw me out, you know,” says Chuck. “But gran got mad, so he had to keep me. How fucked up is that?”
Newton has no idea what he’s talking about. Chuck’s struggling out of his clothes, awkwardly tugging at his socks and fumbling with his belt. Newton helps him, mostly because he’s afraid that Chuck will try to stand up and then he’ll fall over, and Newton has no desire to drag the huge lump of a human back onto the bed.
“And somehow we’re drift compatible. It’s all about trust. I trust him?” He shakes his head and tries to lift off his shirt. It gets caught on his chin and it’s up to Newton to save him. It’s then, leaning over him, that he sees the same faint scars that he recalls on Tendo’s chest.
Oh.
That’s… far more complicated than Newton had thought it was.
“Your dad tries.”
“Not hard enough.”
Newton thinks it possibly goes the other way, too; Chuck’s a spoilt brat who clings to reasons to be messed up. He doesn’t want to get happier, he just wants to stay angry.
“But,” Chuck sighs, lying back. “There’s a war. Gotta keep…” He closes his eyes, and drifts off.
Gotta keep angry, Newton realises. Perhaps he’s afraid that if he’s happy he’ll stop fighting.
There are worse reasons.
The conversation is happening before Hermann walks into the mess hall, one hand on his cane and the other around his mug of half-finished tea. He feels tired and dazed and he cannot believe he just woke up. He sees Tendo already sitting and goes to join him. Tendo’s gotten in the habit of getting something hot for Hermann so he doesn’t have to wrangle with his cane and whatever else he’s carrying; usually a stack of folders but today it’s tea.
He sits, takes the plate and finds a steaming curry over rice. He knows for a fact that this sort of thing isn’t what they’re eating in other parts of the world, and he would feel a little guilty about taking food he doesn’t strictly need, but it smells good and burns his tongue.
“I’m just saying,” says Harry, “if kaiju are real what else is real?”
“I’ll put fifty on there being nothing like ET out there, at all, not even a little,” says Gillian.
“What about werewolves?” muses Pat. She tilts her head to the side. “Always thought my dog was a shapeshifter, at least.”
“Why?” asks Tendo.
“My books were always in different places.”
“Doesn’t count,” says Harry. “I know you. You lose your pen the moment you put it down.”
“Vampires could be real.”
“Scientifically impossible,” Gillian says, firmly.
“How do you figure that?” asks Hermann, softly.
“Everything needs sunlight.”
“I believe my colleague has an entire list of species that do not require sunlight.”
Gillian tries again. “Blood doesn’t have any nutritional value.”
Hermann looks down at his plate of curry. “I’ll give you that one,” he concedes. “I have always wondered if mermaids are real.”
“Probably not,” says Harry. “Or, probably not anymore.”
There’s a moment of silence at the table. The ecology of the ocean is shot to shit, most species dead or endangered and there’s only so much that conservation groups can do or want to do, what with kaiju popping out of the water every few months without warning.
“Dude!”
Hermann is used to this by now: answering the Skype call to a horrendous shriek from Newton, to be followed by a garbled mess of words that Hermann is expected to understand on the first go.
“Newton,” Hermann chides. “It is too early for such loud noises.
“Whatever, dude.” Newton is bouncing, actually bouncing. “Dude, dude. I gotta. Look.”
“Deep breaths,” says Hermann. His eyes are flicking away from the monitor and Newton taps his camera to get his attention back. “Spit it out, then, before you explode.”
“I’m coming home. I’m gonna be there for the New Year.”
The year ends in a week; Hermann opens up iCal just to be certain.
“Are you sure?” He doesn’t quite trust Newton to not have misread the orders.
“I’ll send you the bloody email,” says Newton. He’s picked up a slight Australian drawl, open-mouthed vowels and new swear words. Hermann, privately, finds it adorable.
Hermann’s email dings half a second later and he reads the email.
December 30, the date is.
Newton’s coming home.
The day that Raleigh arrives is not a good day. Newton’s been in Hong Kong just long enough to discover that the Sydney Shatterdome was half destroyed by Mutavore, and too many of the people he was with just a few days before are gone for good.
Hermann tries to understand. He heats up blood and lets him play his music, but this is no way to say hello: over memories of a species that Hermann doesn’t even care for.
They’ve had a fight, and that’s all they’ve done so far: Newton yelling at Hermann and Hermann riling him up in turn. They know each other so well that it only takes a few sentences to get the anger properly going.
Hermann’s the one who answers the phone so Hermann gets to shout that even if his bloody beloved humans died there’s more kaiju to dig through so shouldn’t Newton be happy?
Newton can’t stand the flippancy in Hermann’s voice, hates that he’s acting as though Newton doesn’t fucking care. He throws his glasses case at Hermann, hitting him on the shoulder, and nearly runs away. The helicopter takes far too fucking long, enough time that Hermann catches up to him on deck. Maybe he wants to apologise but Newton doesn’t want to hear it.
Hermann is unhappy to be out of his lab and unhappy about the low supply of blood in the fridge and unhappy with the mess in the lab and unhappy. Eternally unhappy.
They both are.
Absolutely nobody pays their loud argument any mind, though a few comment that at least with Newton back Hermann has someone to direct his moods towards. He hasn’t slept in more days than he can count and the only words he knows is the Breach, the Breach, how do we get rid of that goddamn rift in fucking time and fucking space and Jesus Gott-im-Himmel he needs some fucking blood. He can feel the need curling in his veins and through his teeth and he nearly drags one of the techs against the wall and takes her right there because he is so hungry he could die.
He hasn’t been this hungry since he turned.
That’s an exaggeration.
But it’s been a horridly long day, and Newton’s in a mood because his mortals had the audacity to be crushed by an alien monster, and Hermann wants him to shut up for just one second. Just one.
“Careful!” shrieks Newton, rushing up to one of the workers wheeling the giant cases. The kaiju moves within and the rain is starting again. Hermann pulls his hood up and glares at everyone.
“Look, dude,” Newton is saying – repeating. He’s been saying something to Hermann for the past half hour and he hasn’t come to the point yet. Hermann thinks he’s trying to say that it’s all just stress and if only they could just fuck it out, but he’s trying to say that without saying it.
Hermann could not feel less like having sex than he does in this moment.
“Hold the door!” Newton yells, racing after Pentecost and Mako, leaving Hermann behind. Herman winces, turning on his bad side and holding on to his cane. Today the pain is in his lower back and he’d lie down if he thought it would do any good. He eyes the tattoo over Newton’s neck and considers feeding.
Sometimes he dreams about it.
Blood hot from the vein.
“Come on, Hermann!” calls Newton, as though Hermann can move any faster than he is, but then Newton rushes back to him, perhaps in part to guide the last of the specimens indoors and perhaps to walk with Hermann.
Hermann hopes it’s the latter reason, but he doesn’t know.
Kaiju groupie, he thinks, more bitterly than usual. He pulls off the hood and shakes water off his sleeve, knowing that it will drip down onto his hand.
“Hermann,” says Newton sweetly, sarcastically. “These are human beings. Why don’t you say hello?”
“This is Doctor Geiszler –”
“Call me Newt, please. I mean, you can call me Doctor if you want, but I’ve got so many degrees that you’d have to call me Doctor Doctor Doctor Doctor Doctor –”
“Newton!” Hermann interrupts. “Try to act like a functioning member of society for once in your life.”
The new guy is looking between them uncertainly, from Hermann’s cane to Newton’s quick motions of rolling up his sleeves.
It’s Chuck, Hermann thinks, though he’s met the man only a few times before and this one has the wrong accent and neither he nor anyone else looks exceptionally unhappy. He blinks, shaking his head and feeling the hunger inside of him, the deeper, primal one. Newton’s had him on edge all day and he’s been dreaming only in red.
Mako is looking at the man with equal parts intrigue and irritation, and Hermann realises that it’s Raleigh a moment too late to stop Newton from showing off the ink tattooed down his arms.
Newton’s proud of his tattoos. Hermann gets it. He really does, for all that Newton thinks he doesn’t. It’s the end of the world and they never thought they were going to die. And tattoos are meant to be impossible on a vampire. They’ve stuck for seven years now.
Hermann grits his teeth and focuses very hard on not killing them all. He’s seen it before, a vampire ripping an entire group of humans to shreds. He wonders if he could, with his leg and his feebleness.
Of course, Newton would be mad at him.
It’s only Newton’s hands turning him away from the closing doors that make him realise whatever was going on is over.
“I need to get to work,” he says. He focuses on Hermann’s face, and all the arguments they’ve been having suddenly fade away. “You need something to eat.” Newton kisses his nose and Hermann growls low in his throat, but he allows Newton to put his hand on his elbow and guide him away.
Hermann grips the desk, hard, and glances at Newton. Newton is unconcerned, sprawled comfortably as though he didn’t have his head in a kaiju mere hours before. Hermann wants to get out of the way of the monitor. He wants to get out of the room. He eyes the hologramed screen with suspicion, as though Hannibal Chau can reach out of it and pull him in.
“Black market dealers, right?” Newton is saying. He’s sitting on one hand, to stop the nervous tapping that it has developed in the last hour or so.
Monitor-Hannibal grins a gold-toothed grin and Hermann feels his stomach twist. He wants to shout. He wants to shout no, and grab Newton and pull him in tight and not let him go.
Some people - most people, on discovering that vampires are real, stop going outside at night so much and never sleep quite so soundly as they did before. Then there are those who find themselves a silver-tipped stake and take to the streets to hunt.
And there are others. Those like Hannibal Chau.
Vampire blood cures illnesses. It makes you high. Newton’s speculated that it might cure cancer, or at least help get rid of it.
Vampire bones are stronger.
Vampire cells regenerate faster, heal quicker.
They remember everything.
You can cut a vampire up and sell all of them, from teeth to toenails.
Hermann’s been hunted before. He’d been younger and stupid and made himself an easy target, staying too long in one place, being careless with his meals. It had been stupidity. He’d rushed through his thralls and grabbed food where he could, and he’d been careless and nearly been caught.
He doesn’t know if Newton’s ever faced that sort of thing, but he has to have. America wasn’t safe. China wasn’t safe. Nowhere, really, is safe for long.
Pentecost meets Newton’s eyes, serious and fatherly. It’s been two years since his last encounter with them as vampires, and sometimes it’s almost as though he’s forgotten what they are. (He hasn’t, he’s just realised that even thousand year old creatures still play with dinosaurs and pettishly hide all the scalpel blades and play the same song over and over and over again until Hermann is forced out of the lab and into LOCCENT just to have some peace and quiet.)
“Newton,” says Pentecost. “Do not trust him.”
Newton takes half a moment to answer. “I won’t,” he grins, careless as always. Pentecost looks at Hermann, who is looking at Newton hopelessly. He is in love, and terrified that this is all they’ll ever have: a war putting them at odds and stupid, short interactions scattered over the centuries.
He wants to devour Newton, wants to take him and keep him and protect him and never let him go.
Hermann watches in a sick sort of silence as Newton grabs his jacket, discovering half a sandwich from probably three days ago still sitting on the side so he shoves that into his mouth and grins at Hermann.
“For god’s sake, drink something before you go,” says Hermann, in lieu of what he wants to say.
“There’s only a pint left,” says Newton. “You always get mad when I - where’s my glasses? Dude? Did you put my - they’re on my face,” he realises. There is blood dribbling from his nose again.
“Newton, please.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be back before you know it.”
Hermann gets up and goes over to him, taking his hanky from his pocket and dabbing at the blood on his upper lip.
They stand there, close together not quite meeting each other’s eyes.
“I have to,” says Newton, eventually. Hermann doesn’t reach for him, and Newton leaves without being touched in any kind of farewell.
The streets are loud. They’re so fucking loud. He’s not been around so many people in so long that it takes him several minutes to gasp through the pain of the noise and the lives being lived all around him before he remembers to flick on the light he has and look at the card in his hand. Right. Right. He can do this.
Hannibal Chau might be terrifying but he is only human.
Newton is so much more than merely that.
The bones of the dead kajiu formed into a place of worship taunt him, and he grits his teeth and wishes he’d taken Hermann up on that offer of blood. He doesn’t love the kaiju. He’s terrified, fascinated, intrigued. There’s life beyond this earth, intelligent life, life that wants to destroy, sure, but it’s out there.
He always wondered, and now he knows.
And yeah, he thinks. Yeah, he kind of loves them.
“I’m looking for Hannibal Chau,” he admits.
“Hannibal Chau, huh?” says the man, bookshelves sliding back and sweet Jesus Newton needs to get some of those. He has one of those bookshelf doors that reveals a sort-of secret room, but sliding shelves?
He wonders, briefly, momentarily, if Hermann would be okay with that sort of thing. In their house. That one day they’ll have together.
They will. A bed big enough for Hermann’s sprawling tendencies and Newton’s need for half a dozen pillows. Maybe they’ll have a cat. Hermann seems to be the cat sort of person.
He swallows the thought that maybe he’ll never find out.
On the other side there’s more than Newton could imagine. If this is where Pentecost has been getting his samples… Well.
“Oh my – this is,” he swallows, spins. “This is heaven.” He can’t believe it. This has been here, this whole time? He could have been here, instead of at the Shatterdome, here surrounded by everything he dreams of – a live parasite, still wriggling, the workers not in masks or even protective gear so either they have a high death rate or they know how to deal with Kaiju Blue.
He wants to grab it all and rush off with it, bury himself in it and – The brain. He needs a brain.
He hears the shoes before he sees the man, and he turns and he swallows.
“I’m looking for, uh,” he holds up the card, blank now without the light on it, “Hannibal Chau?”
“Who wants to know?”
Newton has his name on the tip of his tongue when he glances behind and sees one of the girls beyond open her mouth. Her teeth are sharp.
Implants are uncommon but not unheard of, not in particular communities. There are people who get their teeth filed to points and there are those who kill vampires and get them put in.
“I really can’t,” he glances again at the woman’s teeth. “Uh, I can’t say.”
There’s suddenly a knife in his nose and if he weren’t so torn apart from the kaiju in the corners of his mind and out of practice from defending himself he’d have his teeth around the man’s throat in his mouth.
“You’re a fuckin’ fanger,” he says.
“Uhh… Guilty?” says Newton. “I take it you’re Hannibal.”
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t add you to my collection. It’s been a while since I met one of you.”
“Look, I work for Stacker Pentecost. He sent me,” says Newton, fast and desperate with his eyes on the knife in Hannibal’s hand.
“You’re one of them scientists.”
“Guilty,” Newton says again.
Hannibal looks down at him. “You’re one of the things gonna save our lives?”
“If I can get a kaiju brain.”
“What the hell do you want that for?” exclaims Hannibal.
Newton tells him.
Hermann rushes for LOCCENT and interrupts Pentecost to talk to Tendo.
“Get a helicopter on the pad for me, immediately.”
Pentecost stares down at him. “Excuse me?”
“He is going to kill himself by drifting again. He needs someone to share the load and,” he leans in and hisses, “unless you think a human can take the weight of that brain you will let me go.”
Pentecost is taken aback by the blunt force of Hermann. Hermann stands his ground and stares back. He’s panicked and angry and a little afraid of what he can do.
He’s never personally been so out of control, but he’s seen other vampires in that state. Heard about them. He grips his cane.
“We require you here,” says Pentecost. Hermann is always in LOCCENT for any kaiju attack, to provide assistance to Tendo and advice to the other LOCCENT staff. “For the good of this city.”
Hermann wants to bite him, but Pentecost stands his ground. “So long there are kaiju on the ground there is no point you putting yourself in danger. We still need you here. Are we clear, Doctor Gottlieb?”
“Sir,” says Hermann. He grips the back of Tendo’s chair. He’s shaking.
He’s terrified.
It feels exactly like the end of the world, and all he can think is that Newton will die without him.
“Get your head into gear,” snaps Pentecost. That is his daughter out there, and his… Herc. Whatever Herc is to him. Hermann is not the only one with someone he cares about on the line. He must remember that.
(But these are humans, a small part of his mind hisses at him. Inconsequential, bleeding souls that will die as soon as he blinks. Yes. Yes they are. But they are going to save the world.)
.
The Drift is not an adventure into the unknown. The Drift is a series of memories that soothe them. The Drift is like remembering dreams you never knew you’d forgotten. The Drift is sinking into the ether, the Drift is paradise, it’s like drinking blood but better, it’s a warm body beside you on a cold night, an unexpected rainbow, it’s a hot coffee a warm bath, it’s heat seeping into them both in ways they never thought they’d feel again.
The kaiju tears them apart limb from limb and then collapses at the sheer weight of the centuries the two vampires are carrying.
Vampires dream in red. They dream in red and blood and they dream in viscera and they dream of the sun peaking through the leaves of trees, always always hidden, always out of reach.
Vampires do not dream very often.
When they do it is horrible.
The Drift.
It’s blue.
It’s blue like they remember the sky and it’s blue like a warm summer’s day and it’s blue like daytime and blue like the caress of a breeze over a sunny field. It’s blue.
And it is heavy, and it is shocking, and just the weight of each other is enough to make Newton stop breathing.
They’re both rushing, rushing through memories of JapananjapanKoreanorthsouthCHINA and Hermann is filled with Germany.
They don’t think they have secrets from each other - not proper secrets, just things they haven’t told each other because there’s been no time to regal the years in minute detail, but there’s Germany and books and cold big empty rooms, and Lars sends Hermann letters only occasionally and visits even less often, and Hermann teaches himself to enjoy being alone because he realises that there is no other option. He reads his books and he teaches himself to not look up at the sound of a door closing down the far end of a hallway, because his family - and Newton knew.
He knew that Hermann had been human, once, had been born into a family and had parents and probably brothers and sisters, but here in the Drift they are blue and they are loved.
Hermann did not leave his family because he did not love them, he left because he loved something more, and it’s with a pang of panic that Newton wonders when Hermann will leave him.
Everyone leaves.
Not in a morbid death kind of way, but everyone leaves because he’s short and annoying and never had a problem with cutting things open so long as they were dead first, and everyone leaves because he doesn’t like keeping thralls and he’s not very good at relationships and in any case, eventually they’ll notice that he’s getting no more grey hair and start to ask questions.
Everyone leaves.
Hermann’s in Germany with books and covered in so many fur coats that he’s a moving mound of dead animal, and he doesn’t eat.
Newton thought he had a problem with burying his teeth into warm necks, but he was never Hermann, and of course - of fucking course! Their minds get stuck on that for half a second that might as well be another decade as they argue the point, well obviously, it’s vile, Newton, honestly, how can you stomach it? And Newton saying, well, dude, you hypnotise them, and it’s not so bad, not really, it’s life, you gotta keep going - Hermann eats only when Lars reminds him to eat, until eventually Hermann resigns himself to this as eternity, and Lars won’t let him go to the Arabian countries unless he proves he can swallow a human whole.
It’s embarrassing now, of course, a child being bullied into eating his greens by a tired parent.
Worse because now he dreams of little else. Blood. Dripping, hot, wet. Life.
It’s a thousand years travelled in a few minutes and they get only pieces: Hermann’s first kiss, Newton’s hundred and fifty-fourth time having sex - Hermann recoils with a little wrinkle in his nose, and Newton laughs. For a moment it’s just them, together, no third party involved, and it’s Newton and he loves Hermann.
He loves Hermann so much he’s afraid that just allowing himself to feel even a portion of it properly and fully will overload the connection.
They remember France, the first time. The ship over to America. The plane over to America - planes! Newton hates them, hates trains and planes and busses and cars, and if he had his way he’d never travel anywhere at all, not until teleportation is invented.
The Bomb.
The Berlin Wall.
Dolly the sheep.
The kaiju.
Blueblueblue the whole world is blue and it is burning, not fire but acid and somehow
Som-
-ehow
That is far more -
Hermann grabs blindly for Newton and finds nothing, he is alone and he is alone and this is how he is going to die, drowned in acid from these horrid creatures from another planet, and no! No it’s not meant to be like this! He searches for Newton and - Newton is alone in blue. He is serene. He is looking down, and he is floating and watching his legs dissolve into acid.
- terrifying.
It’s blue.
It is dissolving.
They leave the Drift with enough force to give Newton whiplash and to send Hermann vomiting into the rubbish.
They do not save the world, but they tell the pilots how to do it. It’s nearly the same thing.
A moment later the camera moves from them and Hermann folds Newton into his arms, or Newton folds Hermann into his, and they bury their heads in each other’s shoulders and hold on.
Hermann’s mind is still reeling from the shock of unordered colour that is Newton’s mind, a psychedelic comic from the seventies mashed together with the colour schemes of the Rococo Era. It is like a flock of startled rosellas bursting from a wattle in bloom, and Hermann has a headache merely from the memory.
He dreads to think what Newton is feeling. He feels that his own mind is starkly grey and orderly, dressed like factory workers from the Nineteenth Century, disagreeably dull and repellently rigid.
But he holds on, because this is Newton, and even if they never drifted he could never let him go.
Newton holds on for much the same reason, but also he is tired and drifted twice, all his mind is stained in toxic blue and he is afraid that if he lets go of Hermann - now or ever, if he lets go he will fall and he will never find a way to claw out of the pit in the ocean that he has allowed himself to tumble into.
They hold onto each other until Herc slaps one of them on the shoulder - it doesn’t matter who, this close to the memory of the drift, they have not yet disentangled one from the other and they are the same person, still - and tells them that they’re bringing Raleigh and Mako home.
LOCCENT empties in a rush. There’s a general consensus to find alcohol, and to meet in the Jaeger Hanger to drink and to await the return of Mako and Raleigh.
Herc leaves first, sliding out of the way of consolatory shoulder-pats. Max is beside him, tongue lolling, unaware of anything that’s gone on.
They leave, together, Hermann and Newton walking in step with half a foot between them. They don’t talk until they get to the lab, and then they slump down on their respective sides.
The world is spinning faster than its usual 465.1 m/s, and Hermann badly needs an aspirin and a lie-down. Aspirin doesn’t do much for his kind but he feels like that’s what he should be doing. Curtains closed, and hush, now, child, mummy’s got a headache.
Newton looks far worse. Newton looks like he’s been put through a car crush, twice. He’s slumped in his chair in the middle of the room staring up at the ceiling. Hermann rather suspects he could ring his father and laugh at him down the line, but he doesn’t. Instead, he looks at Newton, who looks at the ceiling.
“We should go to Medical,” says Newton. Hermann wants to point out what a stupid idea that is, but he doesn’t have the energy. “Not that it’d do much good,” continues Newton, and Hermann marvels that even now the man is finding words to launch off his tongue. “You didn’t get an MRI so we have no idea what your brain normally looks like.” The usual bite is gone out of Newton’s voice. He sounds very much as if he is talking because he is uncertain of what else he should be doing.
Hermann considers telling him to shut up. Instead, he grips his cane in his hand, rises to his feet, puts some blood on the stove and goes to run a bath.
What else there is to do? He is cold and he wants to be clean, and it’s only as he reaches into the back of the fridge that he even realises that he can feel Newton.
Can feel him, now.
Post-drift.
He didn’t even notice. Scarcely notices now. He closes his eyes and can see only in blue. That startles a response, spilling blood from the place in the bag that he’s cut it and splattering it over the bench.
He leaves it. Doesn’t clean it. Doesn’t care.
Newton, he thinks, distantly.
It’s unimportant. He’s been affected this way before by drinking Newton’s blood, and Newton’s had the same problems, a suddenly rigid mathematical approach to theories that need to be far more flexible - and then the understanding that mathematics shifts and dances and moves, that maths is, as its basic core, a descriptor of the universe and it changes, wavers, alters.
Mathematics is the most flexible, most pure state of the universe and some days, sometimes, Newton understands that.
For now, the Newton part of Hermann simply doesn’t care that he’s made a mess.
He takes his blood and stretches out in the bath with the mug warm in his hands, and he leans back against the tiles and closes his eyes forgetting - Newton, or exhaustion, or both, but Hermann does not forget to remember such particular facts - forgetting that he will see blue.
It is as though his blood has turned that colour, he has become kaiju and the insides of his eyelids are this fluorescent brightness. His eyes fly open.
Scheiße.
He can cope with Newton.
He cannot cope with blue. He leaves his eyes open until they water and then he blinks only as quickly as he can, focusing instead on the smell of old soap in his small bathroom, the cold air billowing off the tiles, the music -
There’s music.
Newton’s music. He holds on to that and closes his eyes again - blue, still, but it’s not acid. It’s.
It is like what he thinks the sky would actually be like. He brings the mug to his lips and drinks, and strains his ears.
It’s The Hoosiers. Worried About Ray.
He knows that if it weren’t for the Drift he would not have known that. The song makes absolutely no sense in the circumstances. Like always. He sighs and drinks. He wonders, for a brief moment, about the future. There’s so much of it, all of a sudden. A whole world opening out. So many places to go, so much to see. So much research… He savours that though, lets it run over his tongue. He’s going to find himself a nice job at a decent university and bury himself for the next fifty years in every single journal in existence. He might not read a novel ever again.
There’s a knock on the door, and then the door is rudely opened and Newton comes bounding in. Hermann opens his eyes a crack and watches him critically through the half-open sliding door of the bathroom.
“There’s a party.”
“Then go,” says Hermann. He’s feeling as though Newton’s already here, already with him. He doesn’t need Newton physically. He’s in his mind, his head.
“Aren’t we gonna talk about this?” asks Newton, pushing the door open slightly so that he can lean against the frame, legs crossed at the ankle and arms folded over his chest. He hasn’t changed, the shirt still white-with-grey-smudges, the knot of his tie drawn too tight and his face a mess of blood and grease.
Hermann considers. “What’s there to say?”
“You drifted with me!” Newton shrieks. For months Hermann had been telling him his Pons idea wouldn’t work, drifting with a kaiju, far too dangerous, do you want to bloody well kill yourself you childish fool? The incoherent memory is cut off by a splash of water and Hermann sitting up.
“Your point?”
“I - “ Newton fumbles. He wants to talk about this, wants to talk about it with everyone. He wants to drag Hermann around the base and say look, look, this old crotchety vampire drifted with - with. He meets Hermann’s eyes. “You drifted with me!”
“And why would I not?” asks Hermann. He almost adds, the world was ending, but he cannot be so flippant. He considers, and holds out the mug. Automatically Newton takes it. Hermann waves a hand. “Yes, drink, please.” Newton needs it more than him. Probably Newton should have some of Hermann’s blood.
Newton takes a sip, scarcely wetting his lips. “What now, dude? What do we do?”
“What we have always done,” says Hermann. “We do science.” Newton is looking so horridly lost that Hermann takes pity on him, and perhaps he wanted more immediate advice. “Go and shower. Put on something sensible. I am not going anywhere with you looking like that.”
Newton nearly retorts that Hermann went across Hong Kong and into LOCCENT with him looking like this - hell, Hermann put his arm around Newton when he was looking like this - but that’s not the important part of now.
“You - the party? You want to go? Really?”
Newton could probably ask Hermann to climb an active volcano with him and Hermann would do it. Hermann’s been thinking - very idly, but he has been thinking about a future and a house and a bed big enough to fit both of them in it together. Now that the kaiju are gone that thought isn’t quite so distant.
He’s got Newton in his head, sure, but he wants Newton next to him, too.
Instead of admitting all that Hermann only nods his head.
“Now go wash up,” he adds in a frown. “You are a child, and I am going nowhere with you.”
Newton’s eye is bloodshot and his lips are too-red, face too white. He looks garish, a child’s painting of a nightmare. “I love you,” says Newton.
Hermann knows. Herman felt it and thought he was feeling his own thoughts, absolutely unsurprised at the magnitude of them. He’s still reeling a little from Newton’s emotion - breadth and height and length of it, an area too large to properly calculate and ever expanding like the universe itself.
He opens his mouth to return the sentiment, but Newton’s already gone.
It’s okay, though. They were together in the Drift.
Any secrets they have are an accident only, and this is no accident.
If you’ve ever asked the question, how often did Newton Geiszler dance to ‘Weapon of Choice’ and how often did Hermann Gottlieb yell that he is not and never will be anything like Christopher Walken, the answer is twice in 2020, three times in 2021, eighteen times in 2022, fifty-seven times in 2023, zero times in 2024 (Hermann deleted it from Newton’s ipod and modified the PPDC firewall so that the song could not, ever, be downloaded, and then Newton went to Sydney), and once during 2025 (Raleigh had the song on his ipod and lent it to Newton for while he packed up the lab).
That time in 2025 Hermann walked in, sighed, and realised that this was his soul mate and this is how is eternity would be spent.
And then he yelled at him, because some habits will never die.