Aftermath: 8 - A Borrower of the Night (2020)

He’s learned his duty. He’s learned nothing but.

Chapter warnings: Realistic depictions of neurological, physical, and bureaucratic trauma. War. Grief. Death. Mental illness. Regular illness.

Text iteration: Witching hour.

Additional notes: None.

2020 (Eight – A Borrower of the Night)

Three doors down the hall, Newton coughs. It sounds wretched. Utterly wretched, as though something is tearing free deep in his chest that should stay exactly where it is. It sounds like the wracking, exhausting, specter of death it had been in the centuries before antibiotics. The kind of thing inspiring so much fear that Puccini and Verdi had each needed an opera to work through their terror. Thomas Mann and Victor Hugo an epic novel apiece.

Hermann is overreacting. Probably. Probably he is.

Newton has been incredibly difficult since Lightcap’s death. Testy. Morose. Argumentative. Aggressive. Grief-stricken. Clinically depressed. Tipped right out of the mental equilibrium he’s maintained for years. Hermann has never seen him struggle quite so overtly. He knows the struggle, knows it from Newton’s letters, from epistolary confessions the man no doubt regrets now, the way Hermann regrets so much of what he himself divulged.

Hermann passes Newton’s lab, ostensibly on his way to get coffee, in actuality to look in on the man. Newton stands at a bench, loading an agarose gel, his hands as steady as ever, his expression fiercely intent. He doesn’t notice Hermann.

Perhaps he’s fine.

Perhaps he’ll make it through the next ten days. He has a grant due in something like a week. If he doesn’t get it out and get it, half his proposed experiments will go unfunded. They have a Budgetary Allocations meeting next week, and, due to what happened at the last meeting, Marshal Pentecost and Herc Hansen have requested a “preparatory session” today, the purpose of which is, likely, to defuse Dr. Geiszler’s unrealistic expectations.

If they—he and Newton—can simply make it to the grant deadline on January fifteenth, everything will be all right. Hermann presses his fingertips against the ridge of his brow. If Athens shall appear great to you, he thinks, so he will not think of something else, consider then that her glories were purchased by valiant men. And by men who learned their duty. Duty. He’s learned his duty. He’s learned nothing but.

Hermann continues to watch the other man from his vantage in the open doorframe. He looks like he’s finishing his benchwork, fitting the lid over the gel, adjusting the voltage on the chamber.

Newton, he wants to snap, have you finished your talk? Newton, have you finished your proposal? Newton, have you finished going through Dr. Lightcap’s files on Rig X? Newton, do you even have a psychiatrist anymore? Newton, have you considered the possibility you might need a chest x-ray? Newton, did you eat lunch? Newton, do you have a fever? Newton, have you emotionally prepared yourself for the possibility our funding may be cut again?

He says none of these things. His own talk is finished. He turns before Newton sees him, and, without a word, goes to retrieve coffee from the mess. When he returns, his colleague is seated at his desk, assembling his presentation at the last possible moment. Hermann places the coffee next to Newton’s laptop without a word.

“Thanks,” Newton rasps, twirling a pen through his fingers, his attention absorbed by whatever is on his screen. His hair is a mess, his tie is loose, his eyes are red-rimmed, his collar is unbuttoned, and Hermann feels a clenching in his chest; it’s become a semi-regular occurrence. There are times he finds the other man overwhelmingly appealing, and this is one of them.

His dexterity, his powers of concentration, his strength of hand and mind—Newton is not wise, but he has subsets of wisdom. He can open his arms to a child who doesn’t speak his language and win her confidence. He brings music and vivacity to the lives of others. His knowledge base is broad. His intuition is scorching. He’s incandescently arrogant, heartbreakingly sincere, and could not hold a grudge if his life depended on it. His mental endurance is boundless but his physical endurance cannot keep pace. Hermann very much wants to tell him these things, to go home with him at night, to wake up with him in the morning, to save him from himself and the ending of the world. 

“You are quite welcome,” Hermann replies. “I am not finished with my talk; I plan to ask the Marshal to reschedule this meeting.”

Newton looks up, sharp and amused. His green eyes are especially bright, likely with fever. He smiles, skeptically. Warmly. 

Hermann is quite sure that no one in the history of their little beleaguered planet, has loved anyone more than he loves this man in this precise moment. The sensation is physically painful.

“You finished your talk days ago,” Newton says. “You’re incredibly transparent. Don’t you dare. I want to get this crap done. So I can spend the rest of this week. On the grant,” he stops speaking. 

He stops speaking because he runs out of air.

Hermann must actually look away in order to compose himself.