Aftermath: 9 - Untangle This (2030)

He doesn’t understand what he doesn’t understand.

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

Text iteration: Witching hour.

Additional notes: None.

2030 (Nine – Untangle This)

Myeah, so Newt gives up on the day after the car ride home, when Hermann decides to unburden himself re: whatever. Newt can’t even say and doesn’t really want to think about it that much, because, if he does, he’ll probably figure out how Hermann has pulled some kind of massive culpability reversal. There’s a better than ninety percent chance that whatever Hermann thinks he’s done wrong is, in actuality, something Newt has done wrong. He does a lot of things wrong, it’s kind of his deal and always has been. 

Giving up on things is not something that was in the Geiszlerian Catalogue pre-2025. Resolving? Yes. Putting on hold? Sure. Giving up? No. Not historically. Now? He reserves it for special occasions that don’t involve science. Like days he cries on the car ride home, as a hypothetical example. He hasn’t had one of those in a while. He’s breaking a streak. He’s wet. He’s cold. He’s going into power save mode. 

He overdoes it on the power saving little bit. It’s way too hard to get himself to move, unbuckle that seatbelt, get out of the car. He does it, but it’s slow, it soaks up everything he has. Hermann isn’t talking to him, which is fine, which is preferred, actually. 

When they get inside their apartment, door shut, everything smelling like rain, Hermann takes Newt by the shoulders, looks right at him, and says, “I did not mean to upset you so much, Newton.” He looks like he’s about to cry, which isn’t fair, because that makes Newt actually cry. Usually the sympathy crying is just him getting a little teary, but he doesn’t like to be told he’s confused. He doesn’t like it at all, actually, which Hermann should know. He tries to say something dismissive, flippant, but his face won’t go with that, he’s sad, Jake is graduating in two months, everything is very stressful, Hermann is upset— 

And then, Dr. Geiszler of the stoicism jealousy and scientific zealotry is straight up sobbing. Zero thoughts. Pure misery. 

Hermann pulls him in, holds him tightly, says stuff that Newt doesn’t process. Newt tries to rally, but he can’t. He’s not sure why he can’t, he just can’t. It happens sometimes.

I knew you’d be confused for years, Hermann had said. Years? Normally his brain would be helping him out with counter-examples and alternate interpretations and retrospective analyses about how he’s so so right and Hermann’s so so wrong. But his brain, much like Newt himself, has given up on the day.

Years, though? Years? Really? That sounds problematic, potentially deeply. He doesn’t understand what he doesn’t understand, and that, right there, is what’s triggering the crying, keeping it on repeat, because it plays into so much of what Newt struggles with, at times. 

The crying goes on for way too long. Way. Hermann stops talking eventually, and just lets Newt stand there and sob inconsolably into his shoulder. Like the world will end, after all. 

God. What is WRONG with him? 

You constantly fear that if you do something wrong, I will leave you, Hermann had said. Why is he bringing that up? Newt knows it’s stupid; they’ve had whole conversations about why it’s stupid. They’ve been together for five years. And, before that, five thousand more. Why does there have to be some kind of revelation right now? Revelations are destabilizing. He doesn’t want any revelations. He just wants things to be like they’re supposed to be, he doesn’t want Jake to go, he doesn’t like thinking about the past, why would he? It was miserable, except for the people whom he loved, and a bunch of them are dead.

So, yeah, Newt cries until the point of total exhaustion, standing right inside the door, soaking wet, churning out cortisol like nobody’s business, behaving as if he has a single cognitive circuit that controls weeping and it’s fused to ON right about now. 

Finally, finally, finally, his amperage bottoms out. 

“I’m sorry.” Hermann ramps up the amplitude of the half-hour hug he’s been giving Newt. “I’m sorry, I knew you were not having a good day, I shouldn’t have surprised you with this, I know it makes you anxious. I will explain it differently. Better. Later.”

Newt nods. Hermann lets him go, turns on the lights, then hands Newt a handkerchief, which Newt uses to clean up his face. Hermann’s coat will need to be dry-cleaned, because Newt has cried himself into a nosebleed. Great. 

Hermann kisses him on the forehead and takes his coat. “Boots off,” he tells Newt, maybe just to have something to say. Newt drops unsteadily into a crouch and does his unlacing with cold fingers, which takes about eight times as long as it should. Newt is working the first knot free when Hermann crouches next to him, bad leg extended forward. He’s down to his dress shirt, collar unbuttoned, sleeves unbuttoned.

Hermann helps Newt loosen the laces on both boots, then leaves again. The shower goes on. Newt gets his boots off, then addresses his socks, which express a wordless desire to remain joined with his feet for the foreseeable future. The sweater is next. He pulls it off and hangs it in the guest bathroom to drip itself dry. 

Newt lets Hermann peel off his wet clothes, put him in the shower, and then basically re-dress him. Why? Because Hermann wants to, that’s why. On a related note, Newt isn’t all that interested in participating in the rest of this day. 

“Sit.” Hermann indicates the counter in their bathroom.

The air is warm and humidified, condensation over every reflective surface. Newt boosts himself onto the tile counter, next to the sink. Hermann finds a clean hand towel and gently dries Newt’s hair.

Newt, possessed of different ideas, decides to rest his head on Hermann’s shoulder. It’s more a drape than a hug, really, but Hermann goes with it, stepping in, pulling Newt’s hips closer to the counter’s edge. He goes back to drying Newt’s hair, this time with one hand. 

“Are you all right?” Hermann asks.

Newt nods, figures he probably needs to start saying words. “Myeah. I overreacted a little bit.” Sorry, he doesn’t say.

“Oh hush,” Hermann says, essentially giving Newt a scalp massage with a towel in the sauna their bathroom has become. “If you overreacted, it was only in response to an overreaction on my part.”

Oh. Right. The rain.

“Y’know,” Newt says, eyes closed, “getting wet is—it’s just water. Precipitation does not cause illness. I’m a biologist. This is my whole deal. You should trust me on this.”

“Mmm hmm,” Hermann says, humoring him. “This sounds very much like theory, Newton, and last I checked, you placed more stock in empirical data.”

“Myeah, well,” Newt replies eloquently.

“I can tell you with certainty that, whether or not it was the rain, you are well on your way to a viral illness.”

“Nah,” Newt says, 

“Ja,” Hermann says, halfway between German and American sounds. “You have a very particular prodrome that is unmistakable.” 

“I don’t even,” Newt says, whining a little bit. 

Hermann sighs, puts the towel down, and wraps his arms around Newt, kissing his temple. “I can tell. I have always been able to tell. Even before drifting, I could tell.”

He might be right. Newt doesn’t want Hermann to be right; being right about this seems like a little too much for Hermann to take for whatever reason.

“I’ll be good,” Newt says, miserably.

“You’ll be good?” Hermann arranges Newt’s damp hair with his fingers. “I wonder what you envision that entails.”

“Tylenol,” Newt says. “Sleep hygiene. Fluids. Hypothetical Rain’s new shtick about that dissolvable stuff she wants me to put under my tongue if I get a fever, which I will not like, Hermann, because it’ll make me useless for days on end.” 

“You don’t know that,” Hermann says unmistakably hopeful.

That clinches it. The goodness to which Newt has committed, should he get sick in the relative near term.

No,” Newt agrees, listless and virtuous, virtuous and listless. “I don’t.”