Designations Congruent with Things: Chapter 27

Hwi rolls down a window.

Chapter warnings: Realistic depictions of neurological, physical, and bureaucratic trauma. War. Grief. Death. Mental illness. Regular illness. Panic attacks. Self-harm. Dissociation.

Text iteration: Witching hour.

Additional notes: None.

Chapter 27

The departmental party is winding down.

In the dark of a residential street, a lateral breeze fighting to undo his Randy Waterhouse hair, leaning against the passenger side of Hermann’s Porsche, Newt can almost hear the repetitive scrape of glass dragged beneath a broom over the cement of a deployment dock.

What are you doing? he had asked her, that first time.

Geiszler, if one has a bottle-breaking penchant, which I have, then one had better also have an equal penchant for cleaning up broken glass.

How civic minded you are, Lightcap, he’d replied, a dry edged cover for just how much he’d wanted to do some glass breaking of his own.

Shut up, she’d replied, dropping her broom to hand him a beer.

He’d hurled the bottle straight against the cement, so hard that it exploded into tiny shards, meters away from them.

Geiszler, she’d sighed. What are you doing. You’re supposed to drink it first.

Well you didn’t specify, he’d replied.

How am I supposed to sweep beer.

I’ll sweep it.

No, you won’t. That’s not part of it. I am the sweeper. That’s how it works. Drink. Break. Sweep. Sleep.

How what works. How is this a thing. And if it’s a thing, then what am I. I’ve clearly already involved myself.

Don’t question the routine, Geiszler. The routine works. The routine will save your life. If I give you another beer, are you going to drink this one. You are legal aren’t you. Tell me you are.

Um, excuse me—I am twenty-six. And yes. I will drink it. 

Oh. Well then. Twenty-six. Good. I suppose that means if I hand you this thing I won’t be going to Hell.

Go to hell? Why would anyone go to hell. Hell, it seems, is more than happy to come to us. Wait a few weeks and a little piece of it it will crawl straight out of the water. You can strap yourself to a scaled-up metal hominid and literally beat it to death.

I’m going to like you, Geiszler, you baby-faced, bitter little thing. That or fire you. Right now I’m undecided. Take a seat on my dock. Did no one tell you to avoid me after experiments go bad?

Oh they told me, all right. But I had a thought.

Just one. Unfortunately, you owe me at least one original thought per beer, so you’d better come up with a something else. A corollary, at minimum."

Your rig, Lightcap, is shit. It’s slow, it’s full of redundancies, and it drops the resting membrane potential in the motor cortex like a rock. Thank god you jacked in above most of the brain stem.

My rig. My rig is shit. Well if we’re speaking of shit, Geiszler, you were, in fact, hired by me to look at shit in a dish. So do that, why don’t you.

That was thought one. Thought two is that you’re going culturally native in a regrettable capitulation to hierarchical norms that you’ve surrounded yourself with for the past three years. You’re not military, Lightcap; you suck at pretending you are.

Geiszler, I once fired a man for dropping a beaker.

Lightcap, I really couldn’t care less. Fire me. I’ll go back to JET Force and when you die, which you will, I’ll apply for your vacant, vacant, oh so very vacant job and, probably? I’ll get it.

God, I hope so. Fine. Sex up my rig. You can have Auxiliary Lab Three, four techs, fifty thousand dollars, six weeks, and me as a test subject. If I find it sufficient, you’re promoted. If I don’t, you’re fired.

I will trade you four of those weeks if you swap Aux Lab Three for the Secondary Interface Lab and give me a fifth tech.

I will trade anything for time, she’d said, looking out over dark water.

Newt sighs, crosses his arms, and tries not to regret anything he can’t change. 

Wave functions collapse; matter decays; the universe expands until the point of total stillness; biological organisms die and don’t die in terrifying ways, but then, that’s what terror is, the ultimate neurochemical slap across the face delivered by evolution for ostensible preservation of life, but twisted by the prefrontal cortex into all different kinds of interesting shapes that drive their pernicious way into every arena of existence. 

He’s good. 

He’s fine.

He looks at Hermann, who stands across a darkened lawn, silhouetted on a porch against evening spectrum lights, trying to politely extricate himself from Professor Starr, who is very earnestly and loudly telling him something about the Critical Line. Hermann is tense and overtired—he’s turning too polite, his shoulders are too rigid, and he’s been off balance for the entirety of the evening. 

Thaaaaat might be a little bit Newt’s fault.

That might be almost entirely Newt’s fault, actually.

He had been sure (before tonight) he had been positive, that Hermann likes him best when he is quiet. When he contains himself. When he is not grandstanding. When he is not shouting. When he is not using his soapbox. When he is not singing Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots with eleven-year old Mako and giving her glitter to throw at listening parties. When he is not picking fights with Seattle natives or Jaeger pilots or scientific competitors. When he is not driving forward with everything he is. When he is just Newt, working late, chewing on pens, making sarcastic asides during overly long briefings, sitting down and shutting up and working his way stepwise through the protocols he writes and refines within the confines of his own head.

But now—Newt isn’t so sure that he has the complete picture.

It has occurred to Newt over the course of this evening, and after seeing Herman approximately eight different varieties of totally flustered within the span of three hours, that the guy, may, in fact, like Newt’s showy defense mechanisms. He may like them in a totally different way than he likes Newt’s occasional moments of restraint. It isso difficult for Newt to tell—when he looks back, into someone else’s memory, at his own episodes of total flashiness, all he sees is someone that he doesn’t recognize from a perspective both foreign and familiar. There’s a kid so sleep deprived he’s punctuated an hysterical soliloquy about DNA polymerases with the upending of a blue metal table; there’s a guy with green-streaked hair rocking a post-punk aesthetic and pulling a rollerbladed Mako straight off her feet and out of an imminent collision with Herc Hansen; there’s a man in total torment screaming at Caitlin Lightcap, pale in her black Interface Suit; there’s a person shouting down a critic under violet lights at a conference in Geneva; there’s someone whose nail beds are turning blue mid-briefing because he cannot breathe; there’s someone crouching next to eleven-year old Mako under the pink and orange lights of a karaoke bar, handing her a tube of glitter; there’s someone singing An Ancient Curse to dark water who is too upset to attend Dr. Lightcap’s wake, held half a city away; there’s a shock of crimson blood across the bone-white forearm of some guy who might be dying as he’s pinned to a table, saying, ‘on the plus side, I don’t think I’ve been poisoned’; the night is dark, the street lights are bright, the wind comes from over the water, and a man in a black leather jacket jams an electrode into something’s brain. Newt’s examination of this set of exogenous impressions feels like a violation and grants him nothing but a through-line of confusion and envy and distress and pity and terror and a genuine, deep, long-standing, complex, unshakable regard.

Newt adjusts his glasses, twists the ball of one foot against the cement of the curb, and tries to keep his facial expression neutral.

Hwi rolls down a window.

“Hey grrl,” Newt says, quietly.

“Hello Newt,” Hwi says, equally quietly. “What are you doing?”

“Just waiting,” Newt replies.

“Would you like to wait inside the car?” Hwi asks. “It is colder outside than humans usually prefer.”

Newt smiles faintly. “Nah,” he says. “That’s nice of you Hwi, but it sends the wrong kind of message.”

“I do not understand,” Hwi replies.

“Well, if I wait in the car that implies that I want to leave in an expeditious manner. If I wait outside the car, casually staring at the stars and inverting space and the ocean in my brain, then that implies that Hermann can take his sweet time discussing vicissitudes of the Riemann hypothesis all he wants.”

“I see,” Hwi replies. “Being human seems complicated to me. I prefer to be a car.”

“That’s good,” Newt replies, “because you are a car. I don’t know that your carness necessarily frees you from the snarled complexity of the subjective experience but if it makes ‘life’ easier, aka more reproducible and predictable, you have hit the ontological jackpot. Of course, you’ll never have a standard of comparison, unless your consciousness gets transferred into another container for a while, which could happen, but doesn’t necessarily seem likely to me, Hwi, I’m not gonna lie.”

“I don’t think I understood the full implications of what you just said,” Hwi says.

“That’s okay,” Newt replies. “That’s a part of life as well. Sometimes, we never understand one another. Sometimes we understand fully, but at an inappropriately late time point.”

“Ah,” Newt says as Heliolatry comes up on Lightcap’s late night mix. “Wittgenstein. That takes me back. You don’t have to flatter me so egregiously, Lightcap. I have been known to work for beer alone.”

“Shut up,” Lightcap says, distracted, “this band is awesome. I doubt that you’ve even heard of any of the bands I listen to. I’m sure your musical taste both peaks and stops at Green Day.”

“I am actually embarrassed for you right now,” Newt replies. “Do you have any idea who fronted this band?”

“Do you?” she asks. 

“Yes,” Newt says pointedly. “Normally, I would not do this, but you deserve it.”

The verse ends and he breaks in, doubling himself on the chorus. The acoustics in the interface lab are excellent, and he gets a pretty perfect auditory matching thing going, right up to the point where Caitlin Lightcap drops a wrench on his chest, drags him off the floor, and takes him drinking. 

“As if, in a collision, I could not calculate the optimal solution for impact avoidance in time, but I completed the calculation after the impact occurred,” Hwi says. 

“Hwi, you are not just a pretty face, I’ll give you that,” Newt replies, crossing his arms and looking at the house, where Hermann shifts his weight and rolls his shoulders in subtle irritation.

Newt sighs.

“I don’t know, Hwi,” he says slowly. “What do you think about all this?”

“You will have to narrow the parameters of your question, Newt.”

“Did you know that Dr. Gottlieb has been telling his colleagues that we’re together? As in, together together?”

“You are not together?” Hwi asks. 

“Well we are,” Newt replies quietly. “But not in a romantic way. Yet, I guess, is maybe a reasonable qualifier to add.”

“How is ‘a romantic way’ different than other ways?” Hwi asks.

“Oh, er,” Newt begins, “humans are a little bit weird, Hwi. Like, we give each other presents and tell each other we are aesthetically appealing and then take off our clothes and press different parts of ourselves pretty close together for extended intervals and the way that that’s done says whole swaths of things about how we feel about someone, or, in an ideal world it does. It’s an alternative to words, a non-verbal designation congruent with the actuality of things. Humans are always trying to smash together their subjective perceptions of the world to form these little miniature alliances of selfhood that can stand for a while against the stochastic cruelty of life. How tight those alliances are and how long they last depends on a lot of stuff, Hwi, like the personalities involved, the external environment, and the modes and frequency of communication that the allied parties might employ.”

“So it is like driving an intelligent car,” Hwi says, “without your clothes.”

Newt laughs, and it’s quiet and controlled—just an amused exhale really, but it feels like his laugh and not like something that will end in hysterical weeping so yeah. Magnificence. 

“Yup,” Newt says. “Pretty much, presuming the car and the driver are equal participants in your analogy.” 

“So you and Dr. Gottlieb do not exchange presents or take off your clothes.”

“Oh god, Hwi, um, just say ‘romance’ okay? Romantic activities?”

“So you and Dr. Gottlieb do not engage in romantic activities. But he has represented to his colleagues that you do?” Hwi asks.

“Well, in some ways, we totally do. I mean, we exchange presents and, according to my definition of human relationships, meaning the mash-up of subjective worldviews, we have pretty much the tightest alignment that humans can have. We do not do the part where we take off our clothes, at least, we haven’t so far, and society would tell you that’s what really defines a romantic relationship. The disrobing part.”

“So your relationship fulfills secondary rather than primary ‘romance’ criteria, by societal conventions,” Hwi says.

“Yeah,” Newt says. “I’d say it already fulfills my primarily criteria and I’d totally tear off my clothes and ‘go driving’ in submission to societal pressures slash Dr. Gottlieb’s implied desires except for one thing. Well, two things.”

“What are those two things?” Hwi asks.

“One,” Newt says, looking edgily at the doorway where Hermann stands, “I am bad at the part where humans take off their clothes, Hwi, I have a terrible track record.”

“It does not seem difficult, in the way you have outlined it, Newt,” Hwi says, with unmistakable sympathy.

“Well yeah, but I’m grossly oversimplifying things Hwi. Once you start engaging in the total mess of biology-meets-society that is human sexual relations, there are certain expectations that arise that I have not been great at navigating over the course of my life.”

“Your algorithms are sub par,” Hwi says.

“Ouch. But yes, Hwi, my algorithms suck.”

“Why?. Hwi asks.

“Because I’ve mostly invented them myself. Because I think it may be best to see the behavioral algorithms that people use to navigate a romantic relationship modeled, but I didn’t have a model and didn’t really realize I neededone until perhaps a little bit late, and then I never found one.”

“Shouldn’t Dr. Gottlieb already be aware that your algorithms are sub par?” Hwi asks. 

“Yes,” Newt replies, “and I’m pretty sure he is aware of my epic, algorithmic suckage, but the problem is that him being aware of it does not preclude him being negatively emotionally affected by it.”

“I do not understand your logic,” Hwi says.

Newt sighs. “Look, carfriend, it’s going to go like this. Dr. Gottlieb has performed or is performing a cost/benefit analysis of me as a romantic partner. This, like many but not all things in life, is a binary fate choice. Yes, worth it, or no, not worth it. If he decides no, not worth it, then we just continue on as we have been, presumably, and everything is great. But if he decides yes, worth it, then the decision turns around to me, and I have to do the same cost/benefit analysis. But it sucks more for me, because if I say no, then, probably, we won’t see each other as much anymore, if at all, and that would be horrible. But if I say yes, then I will eventually make him unhappy because I am a terrible romantic partner I have literally tanked every relationship I have ever been in by a combination of obsession about the wrong things, forgetting the right things, pretending I’m invulnerable, and subordinating everything, including relationships, to intellectual pursuits.”

“If you are correct, this is a suboptimal position for Dr. Gottlieb.”

“Yeah,” Newt says, feeling abruptly despondent. “Don’t I know it. Make sure you have a good playlist of super emo romantic era composers for Hermann to listen to when he starts aimlessly driving around Oblivion Bay in fits of existential unrest, which he has been known to do. No Berlioz. The guy equates me with some historical figures; it’s weird, I don’t get it, but Berlioz is one.”

“I do not think your logic is sound,” Hwi says.

“Trust me, Hermann goes on long, wanderlust-style drives when he feels particularly crappy. You just wait and see.”

“That is not what I mean,” Hwi says. “You have stated that you already believe that you have a romantic relationship with Dr. Gottlieb that does not involve human sexual practices. Furthermore, you stated that the strength of the subjective alliance between two people depends on communication between parties but also upon their personalities and upon external circumstance.”

“What are you saying, Hwi,” Newt replies, smiling faintly. “That you think I should go for it?”

“I am saying that I find fault with your reasoning, Newt. I am not advising you.”

“Aw,” Newt says. 

“You said there were two reasons that you could not tear off your clothing and go driving,” Hwi says. “You have stated only one.”

“Myeah,” Newt says, tracing the clean line where his fingerless gloves give way to human skin. “The other reason is that I can’t tear off my clothing, Hwi.”

“Is your clothing somehow different from other human clothing?” Hwi asks.

“Nope,” Newt says faintly. “But sometimes humans make interesting decisions Hwi, not necessarily inherently bad ones, but decisions that, when combined with life experience, screw around with their operating systems on a very fundamental level.”

“Is there no way for you to default to your original settings?” Hwi asks.

“Well,” Newt replies. “Over time, in the absence of perturbation, some humans can return to their historical baseline. Some can, some can’t—it depends on how altered their brains have been.”

“How altered has your brain been, Newt?” Hwi asks, in a manner that sounds gentle, even if it is not meant that way.

“Very altered,” Newt whispers. “Very altered,” he says again, louder, so that Hwi can hear him.

“Can you not explain these things to Dr. Gottlieb?” Hwi asks. 

“He knows them,” Newt says. “He knows them all. And that, I am guessing, is why he hasn’t said anything about this psuedoboyfriend thing. Not because it’s not important to him, but because it is. He thinks of me as a melting snowflake, right about now, Hwi; I know he does. And that’s probably a little bit fair, all things considered. I have no idea what to do. Whatever I choose, I’m sure it will be wrong.”

Hwi waits him out for a few seconds while a faintly radioactive wind whistles through American suburbia.

“I am glad I am just a car,” Hwi says.

“Get out of here with that ‘just a car’ stuff,” Newt replies. “Never ‘just’ a car, Hwi, okay. There is nothing ontologically inferior about car-ness or goldfish-ness, or any-other-kind-of-fish-ness. Plant-ness. Insect-ness. Disembodied-brains-in-vats-ness. Stop that immediately. You and I. We’re going to team up to defuse the robot takeover predicted by science-fiction writers for two-hundred years.”

“I will need more information about this robot takeover before I join your team,” Hwi replies.

“Robot takeover is a figure of speech,” Newt clarifies.

“It is not present in my idiomatic dictionary,” Hwi replies.

Newt absently pats the door against which he’s leaning and then shoves his hands in his pockets. 

“What do you plan to do regarding the decision tree you are currently faced with?” Hwi asks.

“I plan to walk around it a little bit and make sure it’s really the tree I think it is,” Newt replies.

“It is not a literal tree,” Hwi points out helpfully.

“And it’s not going to be literal walking, either, carfriend,” Newt replies. “But right now, I think I should probably go rescue Dr. Gottlieb from an over-enthused colleague. Do me a favor—when you get an acclerometric trigger from my RFID chip, power up, lights on, do the whole I’m-about-to-drive-away deal. Just to be clear though, Hwi, do not actually drive away.”

“Certainly,” Hwi replies.

Newt crosses the lawn with the wet crush of boots on grass, eschews two out of the three cement steps leading up to the porch, and inserts himself next to Hermann, who gives him a lateral gaze of total external neutrality that Newt is one hundred percent certain means thank-you-so-much-for-rescuing-me-Newton-but-vhat-in-god’s-name-has-taken-you-so-long.

“But the zeros of patrician functions in statistical mechanics all lie on the critical line,” Starr says, looking at Newt as though Newt might possibly agree with him. “You’re telling me you don’t think—”

“The Lee-Yang theorem,” Hermann says, breaking in, “is at best, dubiously relevant and has been thoroughly explored as an avenue of approach.”

“And it’s soo nineteen nineties, man,” Newt says, making a serious attempt to hijack the conversation. “Totally fruitless. Everyone agrees. Even neohipster biologists. So, in other news, we’ve got to be going. You guys can map zeta zeros on Monday. He snaps his fingers in a vaguely Hwi-ward direction and she starts the engine and flicks on her interior and exterior lights with a deliberately dramatic slow fade up that Newt finds outrageously acceptable. 

Hermann shoots Newt an unimpressed look.

“How did you just—“ Starr begins.

“I’ll thank you to not encourage him,” Hermann says dryly to Starr.

“Science,” Newt whispers, as Hermann drags him off the porch.

“See you Monday,” Starr calls after them.

Newt turns to give Starr a vaguely sympathetic half-wave at exactly the same time that Hermann also turns to do the same thing. They are going to have to work on this kind of habitual synchronicity. Newt supposes it’s better than cognitive dissonance, but for anyone who’s spent hours and hours in and around a drift apparatus, like, oh, say, Mako, for example, this kind of behavior is going to be a dead give-away of inappropriate neural solidarity. In order to make the science-twins thing look less weird, Newt throws in a mock salute in Starr’s general direction because hey, when possessed of weird, semiotic instincts as some kind of residual respect to a father not his own why not subvert them?

Of course, Hermann, now possessed by vaguely anti-authoritarian tendencies and also an identical urge to destroy their inappropriate simultaneity of goodbye-wave, does the same thing. 

Starr gives them a vaguely perplexed look and then copies their terrible mock salute, like it’s a thing that normal people do.

“Oh god,” Newt breathes, in admirably restrained horrified amusement, his whisper cracking against a grin that’s twisting its way free.

“I wish I could blame you for this,” Hermann says, through clenched teeth, not specifying what he means by ‘this’ while giving Newt a look that could probably remotely ignite a Bunsen burner.

They turn from Starr to Hwi, still unable to decouple their synchronicity. 

“Eh, I’d say you could defensibly blame me for fifty percent of it at least,” Newt replies, extremely inclined to be charitable right about now.

“I never used to be eccentric,” Hermann says, rounding the car.

Newt has to use all his willpower not to lose his muscle tone and roll around in wet grass laughing hysterically at how blatantly untrue that pronouncement is and how totally true Hermann seems to think it is.

He holds himself together, though.

Out of courtesy.

And respect.

“Yeah,” he says, trying to breathe and speak at the same time, which is a mistake; it makes him sound like he’s choking. “You were totally normal and boring before—” Newt waits for the car doors to shut before he finishes with, “I remixed your brain. It’s very normal to salute people for no reason, intellectually attack PPDC Marshals when they piss you off in academic or ethical spheres, file forty-eight complaints with Human Resources about someone playing music in your workspace, insist on working in chalk as a medium like a retrosciencehipster, wear the same set of five outfits for ten years, drive like a fighter-pilot, and have borderline erotic feelings about mathematics as a discipline. Not even notable. So so normal. You and Raleigh Becket could have been best friends.”

Hermann shoots him a pointed look but does not have the chance to respond before Hwi breaks in.

“Dr. Gottlieb, you do not currently meet the legal sobriety standards to operate this vehicle. I have locked you out of navigational control.”

Hermann sighs.

“Aw,” Newt says sympathetically.

“Where do you wish to go?” Hwi asks.

“Home,” Hermann replies.

Hwi pulls out onto dark residential streets.

No one speaks.

Newt harasses the edge of his thumbnail between his teeth and tries not to feel overtly self-conscious because why would he even? No reason. Everything’s totally normal, they just had a weird night, and they’ve had so many weird nights recently, like the ones where Hermann abducted him from Hong Kong, the ones that Newt can’t remember very well but that maybe involved nonsensical random mental firing of the Geiszlerian variety, the ones where Hermann reads aloud until his voice is hoarse, the ones that Newt spends in ambitious breakfast preparation with varying results. This right here is a different brand of weirdness, or maybe not so different after all, maybe all the previous weirdness has been the same as this weirdness, maybe there’s been no weirdness at all, maybe Newt doesn’t know what’s happening, maybe he never has; his instincts are terrible, they seem to be totally academic and do nothing for him survival-wise, or, rather, very little, less than the instincts of other people do for other people; what’s wrong with him. Something’s wrong with him, but wrong by what standard? Newt doesn’t know. Hermann has good instincts. Can Newt maybe have some of those, possibly? Something other than the stupid saluting one?

He glances laterally at Hermann.

The guy has his arms crossed and is looking at the dark sweep of the road like he’d prefer to be driving down it. He’s not saying anything, which is kind of par for the course of the evening and also a part of what’s making Newt uneasy right now. A part. A fraction of the whole uneasiness pie that Newt has been assembling and baking over the course of the evening, mathematical theatrics aside.

“I told Mako and Raleigh that we were together,” Newt says, straight up and unadorned, because while he doesn’t particularly want to have a conversation regarding the whole black box of romance that might be full of flowers or might be full of the sins of the world, Pandora-style, he doesn’t want to spend a whole bunch of awkward mental effort not having it, either.

Hermann turns to look at him in open incredulity. “Why?” he asks, like he’s re-evaluating whole swaths of things. 

“I don’t know,” Newt replies, abruptly and anxiously defensive, because, er, yeah, Hermann had committed his misrepresentations for the purpose of helping Newt, while Newt had done his misdirecting for the purpose of being a sanctimonious dick to Mako and Raleigh.

Thaaaaat sums up everything up quite nicely, his brain says. You are a terrible person.

Even the kids hiss in disapproval.

Hermann is still staring at him like he’s an unsolved proof of some kind, and Newt understands the sentiment but it’s totally misplaced because he’s just a guy with too much raw processing power and an impulse control problem and so there’s not going to be anything for Hermann to get. Nothing to translate, nothing to uncover, nothing’s going to clarify or resolve or distill down or precipitate out of the multiple personality disorder that Newt is mixing like a scientifically literate audiophile, no extra revelations that the guy hasn’t already collected, catalogued, and filed away in his perpetually spinning mental rolodex.

Newt is going to have to say something.

Something else. 

Something other than, ‘I don’t know.’

“Well it’s just that I was already sort of loosely classifying you as a boyfriend-variant? Loosely. I mean, classical boyfriend variant? Probably not, but you did say yes to my whole life-partners proposal thing, you already said yes to it, and it’s not weird or anything, I don’t know why you seem to think it’s as weird as you seem to think it is, I mean, I wasn’t necessarily implying anything about, like, undying commitment, though it was framed as a ‘life’ partners things so it would technically be bounded by death or dissolution like most conventional relationships, but I didn’t really explicitly delineate any parameters other than apocalypse prevention, in the future, by you acting to inhibit me, in the event I turned evil, not that I would, not that I’m planning to, I mean I like my species, I like this planet, I want it to stay extant. Everything. Everyone. Still aliveness. You know what I’m saying, right. Species preservation, Star Trek, and späztle. That’s our deal right now, and if some pseudo-relationship-ish type stuff gets thrown in there, or some ‘real’ relationship stuff gets thrown in there, I mean, is that even a thing? Like, a thing a thing. I mean, maybe it is. Is it. Would it be. I’d rather know your personal definitions for what you consider to be acceptable and not weird rather than use some kind of societal set of standards that might or might not really apply to us as people, slash the joint managers of weirdly triplicated artifactual consciousnesses. Also? I brought you artisan chocolate as a present. You bought me a library on rationalism. I made us matching RFID chips. We’re emotionally dependent nerds. A little bit, kind of, or, not at all, really. I mean, we could do other stuff if you wanted to do other stuff, or not, if you don’t. I don’t see why any of this is weird, or, rather, why any particular permutation would be weirder than any other permutation, because the baseline weirdness is just so high. If anyone is being ‘weird’ about it it’s you, if only for perpetually expecting something normal and socially recognizable,” Newt explains. “I totally covered for you tonight, pretty flawlessly, honestly, but like, if you’re seeking even more normalcy, or something, I can do that, maybe, I’m actually very good at being very normal, better than you, probably, I mean, see our entire lives prior to this point if you need an example. You just have to tell me what you want, not assume I know it via EPIC Rapport because as far as I can tell the best we’re getting out of EPIC Rapport is, like, nausea, unfortunate synchronicity, Freaky-Friday-style brain swaps, and the occasional long distance, Skywalkeresque mental distress call that might or might not even be real.”

Oh yeah, his brain says, with a level of dryness approximating an alien sun baking the crust of a waterless planet, you tell him, Geiszler. 

“I find all of this to be very reasonable,” Hermann says, in a way that is vaguely relieved and unmistakably gentle.

“You do?” Newt replies, totally incredulous, hoping Hermann will summarize what exactly he took from Newt’s string of poorly verbalized thoughts.

“Yes,” Hermann replies, like a mysterious badass. A nice one, though.

“Meaning?” Newt says.

“Meaning that we are, indeed, in a unique situation and there is no need to conform to a rigid set of standards purely for the sake of conformation itself.”

Wow.

Okay.

This is an extremely unusual Gottliebian stance. 

Newt will take it though. Will he ever.

It doesn’t solve all of his problems, like what to do about the eventual person-on-person romance activities that might precipitate out of the unresolved sexual tension that’s been displacing the oxygen in the air all night long. Newt isn’t positive that they’ve ever been without it though. The sexual tension. Because something had always run between them wild and high and strange, cresting at intervals, receding at others, and no matter their intentions, Newt isn’t positive that they will ever settle out into a predictable, reproducible pattern of human relations, not even now, after spending a timeless interval mentally homogenized with one another and set against a vast and seductive collective darkness.

Darknessss, the kids echo with sibilant longing.

Yes kids, Newt thinks. But you have a new team now. 

“Yes,” Newt says. “Okay. Good. That’s what I meant to say, actually. But you knew that. You get me.”

“I would never presume so far,” Hermann replies dryly. “You are one of the most incomprehensible people I have ever met.” 

“Dr. Geiszler has unusual algorithms,” Hwi says, deciding, apparently, that this would be a good time to interrupt their conversation, “but that does mean that he is, in any respect, inferior to other humans, especially in matters of—”

“Hwi,” Newt says, extremely coolly and sedately. “Stop. Talking. Er, thank you, that’s very nice of you, but—”

“Why would you assume I implied algorithmic inferiority?” Hermann snaps, his eyes narrowing at the dashboard.

“Cars these days, I mean really,” Newt begins.

“Because Dr. Geiszler considers himself—” Hwi breaks in.

“HWI,” Newt shouts in a totally calm and extremely collected manner. “Let’s save the psychological profiling for another time. ‘Never’ works really well for me.” 

“Very well, Newt,” Hwi replies.

Hermann gives Newt a pointed look.

Newt gives Hermann his most winningly winsome smile. “Hwi and I were exploring ontological issues while waiting for you to escape from Starr,” he says.

“Your assistance was much appreciated,” Hermann replies, miraculously and mercifully not asking follow-up questions, probably because, alas, he doesn’t need to.

“Myeah,” Newt says, adjusting his glasses, feeling vaguely weird about literally everything that is happening except not weird at all because why would he, there’s no reason to feel weird, so he doesn’t.

Feel weird, that is. 

Everything is fine, his brain says, deciding to be supportive for once.

Newt is immediately suspicious that everything is not fine.

Thanks, his brain says. Thanks a lot.

There’s a constructively interfering wave function in the air, and it’s everywhere, in Hermann’s too careful, excruciatingly kind sentences, in the way that Newt isn’t sure where to direct the vector of his gaze; he’s not sure what he usually looks at, other than the Wall, which he can’t see, because it’s in darkness somewhere away to the west. He can feel it there always, not the Wall, but what lies beyond it. It’s constantly behind him; he’s constantly looking backwards along the axial spin of his pretty little planet.

All of this is his fault, really, he shouldn’t have done so many of the things he did.

Their constructively interfering waves take on the feel of something standing that oscillates between them and does not dissipate, not through the five aborted conversations they almost manage to have as Newt talks them through the drive home and the elevator ride to their floor, touching on every subject he can think of that seems safe to him, that will allow him to stand there, metaphorical pen in metaphorical hand, looking at a metaphorical page, but not metaphorically writing anything on it, not mapping out his Venn diagrams before he must.

Before someone makes him.

Newt walks down the interior hallway of Bayside Towers, trying to distract himself with where he is, what he is doing, Jedi-hipster-style. He drags a hand along the wall, feeling a little bit like he’s touching the inside of Blaze’s brain because someone had thought these walls and rooms into their current, stacked incarnation, they had existed, Eco-Consciously, in the brain of some architect before they precipitated out into reality—lead and concrete and wood and lacquer and compressed post-fracked shale, light metal alloys that had come from the materials science side of J-Tech—where do they come from, where do they go, where do they fall out, flaking like snow?

“What is the deal with architects though?” Newt asks Hermann. “I don’t think variations in style would be enough to keep me interested in building design. Every time you’re going to need a foundation, four walls, something on top, and a nervous-system equivalent. So boring. If I were an architect I’d build useful, complicated things that weren’t just weird-looking boxes.”

“There are two words for what you’re describing, Newton,” Hermann says, dry and distracted, “and those words are ‘civil engineer’.”

Hermann, too, is preoccupied, but whether that’s because he’s trying not to do any Venn Diagram tracing or because he’s busy tracing away, Newt can’t say. For Hermann, this has been, arguably, a somewhat upsetting day. In temporally reversed order sources of upset could include but would not be limited to: a) Newt being pretty unexpeditious regarding this hallway walking that is harder than usual a little bit; he actually drank an eight-thousand percent reasonable amount which was, like, two-point-five beers with a higher-than-typical alcohol content over the course of three hours, b) Hwi doing the driving on the way home; Hermann is not into not doing the driving when there’s driving to be done, c) literally everything that happened at the Mathkwardness Party but probably especially d) Newt’s semi-drunken semi-argument with Rush over the nature of polynomial time that he had, inevitably but gloriously lost despite being cheered on by literally everyone including Rush’s significant other slash mysterious body guard, e) his extremely high profile rendition of LHC, which, in retrospect, had been a little over-the-top, even for him, because Newt can control his own showmanship, kind of, most of the time, f) Newt’s semi-fake semi-real romantic history but honestly what had Hermann expected Newt to do when accosted with a surprise relationship status—

“I did not expect anything,” Hermann says, pulling out his keys, giving off the same vibe he’s given off intermittently all night, which, if Newt were going to tag it, he’d say: anxiously pissed meets fondly dismayed.

Newt gives Hermann a horrified look that is wasted because Hermann is not looking at him.

Oh god, his brain says. Now is not a good time for him to develop additional thought-reading skills or sensitivities.

“Um,” Newt says. “What did you think—or, did—. All his sentences are experiencing structural failure. “I think you EPIC Rapport’d me right there. What are we talking about? Were we talking. I don’t think we were talking. We were talking about architects, I think. I think you might be better than me at EPIC Rapport. What did you just peel out of my brain. You’re confused.”

I support you eighty percent, his brain says. You probably did not do any concatenating aloud.

Eighty percent? Newt replies.

I would take what you can get, his brain says.

Do your job why don’t you? Newt snarls back.

Hermann glares at him.

Newt feels slightly offended by this glare. Slightly more than slightly offended. Slightly more than slightly more than slightly offended. He has spent the entire evening covering for Hermann despite not being informed ahead of time that that was going to be a thing, and covering really well, actually. Covering for Hermann with totally glorious rockstarishness in a way that specifically stripped back some of Hermann’s perpetual reserve and made him look more like a person and less like some kind of two-dimensional ideal of human propriety—

Well, his brain says, when you put it that way, you look like a real jerk, champ.

“No no no no no. What is that look. I do not deserve that look,” Newt says to Hermann, before his mouth catches up with his brain.

Why are you so consistently so bad at relating to other humans? Newt asks his brain.

Hermann pushes the door of their apartment open and drops his gaze. 

Tone it down a notch or eight, his brain advises, and go have insomnia behind a closed door for several days, why don’t you. Maybe when you’re done with that your relationship dynamic will have regressed to its mean.

“If we’re talking about what I think we’re talking about, you totally blind-sided me, dude,” Newt says, following Hermann into the darkness of their shared apartment, continuing to defend himself in increasing unease and with decreasing vehemence. “What was I supposed to do?”

“Not what you did,” Hermann says, removing his shoes. 

Well great. This is just great. That could mean so many things and pulling this out of Hermann is going to be about as easy as going after the guy’s teeth with a pair of pliers while blindfolded. He needs a way to increase his pre-test probability before he just starts lexical hypothesis testing. Hermann is totally impossible when it comes talking about things that are bothering him; Newt usually has to find out later, weeks and weeks after the fact, when the guy completely decompensates over something only semi-related, such as viscera in a shared lab space that was, actually, built for the express purpose of accommodating viscera.

The hallway faux flirting had, perhaps, been a little bit over the top, somewhat crass, a little bit of an unnecessary interpersonal perturbation that had felt like totally justifiable revenge but that had less of that vibe as it continued. Less and less. It had gotten weird, actually, the whole thing had gotten weird, had been weird, right from the beginning, right from the point they’d walked into that party, right up until right now, it’s still weird, it’s—

Hermann, shoeless, makes a quarter turn, and, in a move that is total and perfect reciprocity, puts a hand on Newt’s chest and presses him back against the closed door of their apartment.

Ah Newt’s brain says. Revenge. Reciprocal revenge. Revenge against revenge. Except, I think that’s maybe just called escalation? Or maybe he’s hunting you. Maybe he’s really, genuinely, infinitely pissed at you for any one of a host of justifiable reasons. Maybe— 

“Are you aware,” Hermann whispers, “that post your first drift your entire mathematical framework transitioned from base-ten to base-eight?”

What? his brain asks.

“What?” Newt says, excruciatingly confused about where this is going. Does he seriously think in base-eight math now. Thaaaaaaaaats a kaiju thing he’s pretty sure, that’s creepy, that’s weird, that’s kind of hot a little bit—base-eight, mod-eight, eight is his maximal setting, that seems so right to him, he really likes the number eight, he will have to immediately adjust all his Negative Ten to Ten scales over to Negative Eight to Eight scales except no, he will not do that, that’s not a human thing, or is it. He doesn’t know, but eight is great, zero-one-two-three-four-five-six-seven then start over, octal-style, that’s cool, he’s cool, what’s happening exactly. He’d thought that this was some kind of turnabout hallway revenge vibe for sure, but the whole base-eight thing has thrown him for a loop a little bit, because what does that have to do with anything, really?

Hermann is staring at him in a super-up-close and personal way, definitely pushing Newt against their door, but it doesn’t seem like there’s a kaiju-style hunting vibe going on here, it mostly seems like the guy is really anxious about something. Newt is anxious also, but only because he’s not totally clear on how innuendo-revenge, Gottliebian anxiety, and base-eight math might be related.

Help, he thinks faintly, while locked into some kind of infinite loop of the human gaze with his colleague of years. Of years and years and years. Years. Brain, please help me.

I’ve got nothing, his brain replies. I cannot explain any of this. Unless—

Do not be coy with me brain, Newt thinks. Now is not the time.

This could be a romance thing. Happening right here, right now. I am not sure how, if at all, the base-eight math relates to romance, though. Analysis of historical patterns indicates that this is not typical Gottliebian style, but sample sizes are small and in the setting of EPIC Rapport, I would say you can count on Gottliebian patterns going at least a little Geiszlerian in unpredictable ways. So, in short, I’d hold to your present course, which seems to be just silently staring into his eyes kind of like he’s a cobra. His gaze has kind of an unwavering mesmerizing quality when he’s after something in particular, have you noticed this?

Yes, Newt thinks helplessly, yes I have noticed that. A little bit. A little bit I have.

“Well you do,” Hermann says, very close, fading into the dark of an unlit apartment.

“I do what?” Newt echoes, eight million percent flustered. 

Eight.

Ha. 

“Use an octal numeral system,” Hermann explains.

Octal numerals, chalk dust in Seattle sunlight, custom midair projection systems, quantum cartography, haircuts so terrible that maybe they actually looked good. Newt could be into that; Newt could be into all of it, no problem, arguably he always had been, hadn’t he? Does it matter? Newt does not have high standards, Newt tries to have no standards, Newt actually likes monsters a lot, a little too much, he always has, really; he’s panicking a little bit, yes he is, no he’s not, he’s not at all, his brain is sending mixed messages and trying to decouple things that should be connected like intent and action. He’d better do something, he’d better do it right now, he’d better do something before his brain and his body become separated secondary to derailing and fragmenting electrical trains of thought. He has two choices, or, really, three if one counts inaction as an action and everyone here is going to count that because obviously. He’s not sure what would happen if he just, hypothetically, stood here, staring at Hermann for an infinite amount of time. It would probably be something that would hypothetically ruin the hypothetically romantic mood; he’d probably stop breathing and faint.

Are you breathing? his brain asks. Right now, I mean? Try not to lose consciousness in the face of statistical improbabilities. It doesn’t send the right kind of message.

YOU ARE IN CHARGE OF THAT DEPARTMENT, Newt screams at himself.

In the back of his thoughts, the kids hiss in concerned confusion.

Three choices. 

Three choices.

Three choices, one of which is to just do what he’s doing right now which is staring fixedly at Hermann until his nervous system overloads. Two is to maybe just kind of do some reciprocal hand-to-chess pressing and walkaway, walk to any location that isn’t this one. Three is to grab his arch nemesis by his stupid sweater and do some hypothesis testing, so to speak.

Well.

Framed like that—he really has only one respectable option.

Assess, his brain suggests. Do one last assessment to make sure that your observations are consistent with your working model.

Newt takes stock. Yup, he’s in a quiet, dark apartment, lit only by the faint glow of streetlights from below and from the moonlight that reflects off the dark water of Oblivion Bay. His current status is best described as being pressed to the interior of own front door by Dr. Hermann Gottlieb, his colleague of nine years, his friend of twelve years, his love interest since never and always. No one is hunting anyone, no one saying anything, no one is doing anything, they are both just standing here, staring at one another and waiting.

You are good to go, his brain says, deciding to soundtrack this moment to the chorus from Enchiridion, like a really pathetic, romantic loser.

Newt is much cooler than his brain. 

“Just for your information,” Newt says, raising his eyebrows for emphasis as he grabs Hermann’s sweater, “this is not the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. 

He drags Hermann forward a few inches, because if the guy is going to be shoving him against a door Newt is going to do some reciprocal man-handling of his own. Newt is a little classier about it, a little more subtle than Dr. Gottlieb, thanks. Newt is basically an anachronistic rock star and that’s a hard thing to be and also be alive, he should list that on his CV in the Notable Skills section. 

Speaking of notable skills, Newt is a fabulous kisser.

How could he not be, really?

Kissing is all about a perfect blend of charisma, not being a dick, and paying attention to the other party, and he’s been Hermann Gottlieb, he’s been him in an ontological way so, theoretically, there should be no better kissing experience available to Dr. Gottlieb in the entire world than the one that Newt is initiating right now.

The key, really, Newt decides, is to be delicate as hell about this whole thing because a) Hermann is a classy guy, b) Newt could totally be misreading the situation, c) it’s easier to rock the whole no-it-was-just-a-confused-kiss-of-endlessly-platonic-love vibe if there’s no tongue, and, honestly, it may sort of be that vibe, Newt is very unsure about what’s happening here, but it will all probably turn out fine if he doesn’t do something totally classless like shove his tongue into someone’s mouth or start taking off someone’s clothes or something. 

Hypothetically.

Oh god, yeah, no, that would be bad. 

So yes. 

Newt is rocking the head-tilted, eyes-closed, I-totally-respect-you-as-a-person type vibe as he and Hermann share some dark communal air and do some very sophisticated, very slow, very minimalistic, single-perfect-flower-in-a-single-perfect-vase, windblown-sand-erodes-a-desert-rock, calligraphic kissing that Newt, personally, feels is exceptionally classtastic, minimally scary, and kind of nice, actually. This probably represents the theoretical pinnacle of Geiszlerian skill meeting Geiszlerian self-restraint. Newt takes it up one more notch by letting go of Hermann’s sweater and shifting his hands face-ward to a more classically romance-style configuration—

Or.

Nope. 

Because Hermann, either not into the face-touching thing for possibly telepathic reasons or not into the whole thing for non-telepathic reasons, clamps both hands around Newt’s upper arms, and shoves him back against the door.

Someone’s cane clatters to the floor.

Newt makes a distressed sound that he doesn’t intend to make because it’s just kind of surprising, really, the whole bones meet door thing, and yet not surprising at the same time. So so so not surprising.

What had he been thinking.

His eyes snap open and he’s already forming a sentence that starts with, ‘soooo sorry, er, full disclosure, I am not sure what—’ when Hermann takes advantage of his preparatory inhale to resume the kissing except this time with a whole lot more tongue being a whole lot more in Newt’s mouth.

Oh.

Well okay then.

Newt feels kind of like standing is becoming really hard, he’s not good in situations like this, he’s actually terrible at them—running for his life, not starting fights, winning fights he starts that don’t involve words, navigating flux points in kissing kinetics, making rapid, high stakes decisions, doing literally anything to get himself out of a drift going bad, waking himself up from nightmares, getting out of the way when nematocysts are about to discharge into his arm, being anything other than a terrible romantic partner, and, last but not least, managing to continue having coherent thoughts when his professional arch nemesis turned life partner turned roommate starts doing things like, oh, say—

Hermetically sealing them together from thigh to mid-sternum.

He finds this distracting.

In the extreme.

If he had to make a distraction hierarchy it would probably go something like: a) the aggressive lingual conflict that Hermann is winning, if people even can win at kissing, Newt’s not sure if that’s a thing that humans can do, but if it can be done, then Hermann is doing it and Newt is fine with that, kissing is not a zero sum game and they’re on the same team, he’s pretty sure although he does feel a little subsumed beneath the conflagration in his peripheral circuitry, b) the whole fully clothed, full frontal press thing that they are reciprocally rocking, it’s kind of hot, thermally and metaphorically, and also kind of frictional, c) the amazingly Captain-Kirk-style grip that Hermann’s got on his upper arms, d) the amazingly Neo-de-la-Matrix-style bilateral countered hip slash lower back gripping that Newt is doing, e) what is this list even. 

This state, his current one, this one right now, is not a state in which Newton Geiszler of the sub-par social skills and remembered monster gills is going to be able to think very clearly or really do anything other than reciprocally step up his own glossal game.

Which is fine, yes?

Totally fine, his brain affirms weakly, threatening to abandon ship in the face of complete sensory overload because it’s been a while since Newt has done anything like this, where by ‘like this’ he means using his reproductive system to have a good time. Generally speaking, this kind of thing is the kind of thing that doesn’t appear on his radar, but he can see why people get into it, he supposes. There’s a certain cathartic value to physical perturbation with people one likes, or people that drive one about eight kinds of—

Eight. 

“Base-eight?” Newt manages to breathlessly articulate in a maximally provocative manner. 

Apparently, Hermann thinks that numeral systems other than base ten are really attractive.

“You’re a terrible person,” Hermann breathes, finally shifting his grip and threading his hands inside Newt’s jacket. “I despise you. Everything you said was true.”

Was it? Newt tries to ask, but can’t because he’s being kissed pretty intensively again, nearly incapacitated with inverted deja-vu because, yes, this is indeed Hermann’s style that he’s on the receiving end of—ridiculously committed, totally invested; now that their equilibrium has been upset everyone is sliding down into whatever fire Hermann’s been feeding for years. The guy kisses like he drives, too fast, very precise, slightly scary, and it’s really confusing and not at all fair; Newt is supposed to be doing this, he’s the live-fast-die-young-and-formalin-fix-your-corpse guy out of the pair of them, isn’t he. He’s not sure. He has no idea, actually. Maybe that’s not him. Maybe that’s partially him. The only thing he can say with certainty is that right now he’s pretty sure he’s the one who is too overwhelmed to move and who would probably be lying on the floor (lying on the floor) if he wasn’t being mostly held up by an excruciatingly sextacular perpendicular force vector.

Hermann strips Newt’s jacket back over his shoulders, and Newt obligingly allows him to peel it off. He loses his left glove in the process, and he can feel it invert slowly down the length of his hand as it comes off with the jacket to land at their feet.

Newt’s fingertips run along the line of Hermann’s jaw, tracing toward his temple. 

“Can I—“ Newt manages to say, or maybe think; he’s not sure which it is, but really, the kissing is nice for a human who likes human things, and er, yes, he is a human, and he does like those things, the heat and the friction and the mouth action is all very well and good and distracting to the point of perturbing his autonomic nervous system into status total overload but, for sure, the most scorching element of this, for him, will always be the experimental angle, the telepathic, brain-versus-brain side of things.

Hopefully the experimental angle doesn’t kill him or destabilize his consciousness.

It might be worth it, his brain suggests.

Are you out there, kids? Newt thinks faintly.

The local kids hiss back at him, unusually subdued and very interested in human sexual practices.

This is new for them.

It’s a little bit new for Newt as well. He’s never been with a guy he’s been.

“You may not,” Hermann breathes like the swish of a ruler, pulling Newt’s dress shirt out of his jeans and Newt’s hand away from his head. “Avoid provoking catastrophe, will you please? I’m trying to have a reasonable evening, Newton.”

“This is a reasonable evening?” Newt asks, kind of, managing to form words despite all the metaphorical lane changing that Hermann is doing what with the kissing and the hands on skin thing. Should there be any skin contact if Hermann is not into the telepathic angle right now. The spinal cord is probably a good thought insulator but the whole telepathy angle is new for them, possibly evolving, poorly understood, potentially rife with unexpected side effects so it follows that Newt is really not sure what he should be doing with his hands now that empirical adventuring has been taken off the table, so he settles for some extremely classy hand over sweater positioning that will hopefully slow things down because, honestly? His colleague seems to be about a half step away from ripping Newt’s clothes off and tackling him to the floor and while Newt is currently in possession of a lot of escalation instincts, a lot, he’s not totally convinced that this is a great idea. Experimental thought reading is one thing. Cuddling while watching Voyager is another thing. Traumatizing identity swaps are yet another thing. Hermann nicely arranging Newt’s hair while reading him Neuron is also a different thing. But this—

He had talked to Hwi about this.

This is a bad idea maybe, his brain says, sounding uncertain. People do not like you. You are a bad life partner. You are a worse romantic partner. Arguably, you have never successfully navigated a long-term romantic relationship. As a friend, you are semi-tolerable for some people who have been forced to spend time with you for various reasons. As a human, you are useful. As member of society you are productive. As a member of your species, you are exemplary. As one half of a romantic relationship with Hermann Gottlieb, you may be a miserable failure. You do not enjoy sex enough for this to be worth it. 

Hermann pulls off Newt’s tie and it vanishes somewhere into the dimness of his peripheral vision.

All of these are good points, Newt replies, having a hard time thinking critically as he loses the battle with his escalation instincts and pulls Hermann’s stupid blue sweater over his head and yanks his dress shirt out of his pants because reciprocal undressing seems like the thing to do. 

Undressing.

Undressing.

He had decided that was not a good plan.

Hermann pulls his glasses off, in a careful, slow slide.

Newt finds this unspeakably hot for some reason.

The room blurs further into darkness.

On the other hand, his brain continues, back on board with the way things are going, it seems like your colleague has been, possibly, wanting to do this for some length of time so maybe you should just go with it, because his happiness level is important to you.

Hermann tips Newt’s head back with a gentle pressure beneath his chin and starts kissing a random-walk pattern along the path of Newt’s longitudinal neck musculature and er, yes, that’s strange, the kids aren’t into that, or maybe they’re really into it and kind of hoping for biting to happen. Newt isn’t sure, it’s weird, he feels weird, he feels like he’s not sure about the gravitational force vector that’s pounding him into the ground like a semi-actualized, semi-sexual metaphor, wherever the ground might be or whatever the pounding might equate to. Biology. Chemistry. Physics. Mathematics. Everything comes back to mathematics in the end and mathematics is inherently unknowable, partially, that was what had pushed Gödel too far beyond the bounds of convention. That’s been Hermann’s problem all along, a little bit, on different scales in different fields in different brains—

Hermann fractionally decouples the apposed edges of Newt’s shirt by releasing the button at his collar. 

This is, his brain says, contemplating panic but, as sometimes happens, just not quite making it all the way to panic and getting hung-up, mid fight-or-flight response with a waterfall of activation and Newt thinks that maybe one day he’ll just get pulled under the riptide of the self and never come back up or if he does come back, if he does, it won’t be as himself it will be as something else.

What happens to a fraction of a hive mind?

This is maybe not the best, his brain says, managing to finish its thought over and through the forest fire in his peripheral nervous system.

Newt feels as though he’s losing all the middle ground he has, his only open options are turning absolute—ripping Hermann’s still-buttoned shirt straight down its line of least resistance and tackling the guy to the ground or starting to scream in total human-relations-induced panic because this isn’t a good idea, he never manages to have sex with someone and then continue to associate with them, what is he doing, what is he doing what is he doing. What is he doing. Does he want to do this. If he doesn’t, who here does. Does anyone. Does Hermann. Does he think Newt wants this. Does Newt want it? Is there an origin to this positive feedback loop or does it just exist in eternal amplification? Was its origin hours ago in that hallway with faux-flirting that had turned progressively real? Because it’s endpoint is going to be a system overload where circuits fuse and fail. 

Dear Mako, Newt thinks. I need to come live with you because I am homeless and insane. Hopefully this will not cramp your style. Love, Newt.

Hermann undoes another button, and Newt knows why he’s doing it; it’s because he knows Newt likes it, has always liked it really, from the time he was eighteen in Prague and presenting, only once, at a Biomedical Ethics meeting, it’s weird to have a one night stand at an ethics meeting, he’s pretty sure about that, maybe. What is morality, anyway. But that’s not the point, the point is that Hermann is better at this than he is, unfairly better, too good, much too good, Newt is just trying to stay conscious and not totally panic in a very mood-killing way, it’s not a fair comparison—one person totally suave and confident and the other person caught between freaking out and passion in a space where only thoughts but no actions live. 

That space has a name, his brain says. And I’m pretty sure that name is Hypoxia. You have not been breathing for whole spans of seconds.

His entire body is a confusing shriek of sensory signals mixing into paralyzed indecision and he’s not doing anything now, he’s losing track of more and more as the hissing in his thoughts grows louder in concern or in conquest.

“Newton,” Hermann says concerned, stepping back.

That’s nice, Newt thinks vaguely as his perspective shifts. Hermann isn’t pushing him against the wall anymore and the direction of gravity is pretty clear to him now. He gets me.

“Newton,” Hermann snaps, stepping forward to help him not slide down the wall.

Terrible job, his brain offers. Really really terrible job.

“No,” Newt says thickly, getting his feet under him and steadying himself with both hands on Hermann’s shoulders. “Yes. Er, I—” he breaks off, not sure what to say. 

Hermann is giving him a maximum wattage, incisive-style look that Newt finds extremely attractive and also totally terrifying in his current set of circumstances.

Newt looks back at him, thinking about trying to smile in a casually winsome way but not quite getting to the point where he actually starts forming that facial expression.

Hermann sighs, gives Newt a look that might best be described as ‘pained fondness’, wraps a hand around the back of Newt’s neck and presses their foreheads together. 

Newt can feel the pressure of the other man’s thoughts behind the threatening unweaving of his entire sensory experience. 

“I do not think, Newton,” Hermann says, “that you need to hear me say this, but I will say it anyway. I will not leave.”

Newt shuts his eyes because they feel really hot to him just right now. He can’t say anything in response to what’s come out of Hermann’s mouth, because there’s nothing left to say, only a thoughtless, childish jerk would say, ‘you’re lying,’ or ‘you will, I’m sure you will,’ or ‘everyone does, you think you’re special in some way?’ Only a child equates death with abandonment. Only children do that. Not Newt. Newt doesn’t do that. Newt, in fact, never even did that as a child, when it would have been understandable. Past-Newt had decided not to be a child and had moved half a world away from everyone he’d known because it didn’t matter who wanted him or who loved him or who didn’t love him and how much. Newt loves other people and Newt does not need to be loved back for that. Reciprocity is great, but Newt is fine, Newt is fine, with just loving the people that he loves whether or not they love him back, whether they’re smart or whether the secret desires of their hearts amount to killing themselves in Jaegers, whether or not they accomplish all it is they want to do during the time that the universe is hosting their waveforms. Newt does not need to hear Hermann say anything. Newt does not need to argue with him in a closet search for additional reassurance. 

Newt does not need that.

Newt will be fine either way—on his own, or as a whole half of an infinitely interesting human relationship.

So, all he says is, “I think you’re better at reading thoughts than I am. Discuss.”

“You will never be rid of me,” Hermann says, managing to gently tune into the vibrational frequency of all Newt is, even when Newt is distorting his own signal. He threads his hands into the small space between them to re-fasten the top two buttons of Newt’s shirt. “Unless, of course, you wish it. Even then I’m unconvinced that disentanglement would be entirely possible. But you have only yourself to blame for that.”

“EPIC Rapport’d,” Newt whispers.

“Indeed,” Hermann says quietly, smoothing Newt’s collar. 

Newt needs to fix this. Newt knows exactly how it feels to sit amongst something unmade by his own hands and not be able to put it back together. This really, this can’t, this really just cannot happen here. He just—he just needs to explain everything, he needs to articulate all the ways in which him freaking out mid-clothing removal, is not a rejection of something that had been wholeheartedly offered by a guy who really does not do a whole lot of wholehearted offering of stuff. 

“It’s not that I—” Newt begins, but doesn’t finish, because how could he. He is not himself, his mind is not just his mind, quiet kaiju kids are hissing in his thoughts, wanting him to fail, wanting him to succeed, not knowing what they want, but him screaming on the floor would be a good start, yes it would.

“You are approximately as predictable as the atmosphere,” Hermann says, not backing off, moving from fixing Newt’s collar to fixing his hair with careful unconfining finger combing. “Endlessly interesting. Profoundly perturbable. A constant source of stress.”

“You’re really great,” Newt replies. “I—I have no idea what just happened there—I mean, I could, if you wanted to, we could—I find you very attractive in a complicated way and I always have I think, even before I actually met you, so, you know, make of that what you will.”

Kill me now, kids, he thinks. If you’re going to do it, do it now.

The kids hiss back at him in confusion.

Hermann says nothing; he just stands there, still super close, still fixing Newt’s hair over and over again in the exact same way every time, probably thinking about whole sets of things at speeds Newt lacks the chronometers to clock.

He feels like he should apologize for all the initiating he’s done of things he clearly cannot handle—like xenodrifts on garbage rigs and stupid hallway flirting.

“The problem with you,” Newt replies, his fingers pressing down into Hermann’s shoulders, “is that one day you just decided to start calling my bets, round after round.”

“I am less risk averse than I might appear,” Hermann replies. 

“I feel like maybe—” Newt whispers, trying to look at nothing, bringing a hand up to take in the space between them, everything he’s done, all the ways their brains have changed, everything he cannot quite do, not because he doesn’t want to, but because his bones and his brain and everyone who lives and loves in his skull can’t quite let go of the damage making them all that they are. “I feel like maybe I’ve totally destroyed, or if not destroyed then altered everything that you might have ever done—I mean, I would love to tear off your clothes right now, don’t get me wrong, I just can’t let you reciprocally tear off mine for really complicated, weird reasons that have nothing to do with how attractive you may or may not be, which is very attractive, as I previously mentioned, or how good a life partner you are and you are like the best. You are like the theoretical ideal except for the sweaters, I have mixed feelings about those, and your gratuitous enjoyment of acceleration.”

“Are you finished?” Hermann murmurs.

“Yes,” Newt says.

“I doubt that,” Hermann replies.

“No, seriously. You go.” 

“This outcome, this precise outcome, is orders of magnitude superior to outcomes I envisioned, both pre and post drifting. If it takes you years to decide that sleeping with me will not entirely destroy our extremely unusual relationship, if you never decide that—”

“Um, excuse me,” Newt says, unable to contain himself after seeing an avenue by which something might be rebuilt, possibly in a superior manner, “look, I have to break in here because I am planning start sleeping with you immediately. Today. Like, not metaphorical ‘sleeping’ where ‘sleeping’ is some social code word for ‘sex’ but actual sleeping, or, alternatively, staring silently into the darkness, full of ontological and maybe a little bit of epistemological dread. Look, just to be clear, I presume that we can eventually get all the way to conventional relationship territory, by which I mean, to be clear, having sex, given enough time sans near-death experiences, sustained mutual interest, and maybe with the judicious use of blindfolds? That sounds a little bit inappropriate, now that I’ve phrased it like that; it sounded better in my head. Maybe you should just read my thoughts. Actually, never mind, I’m not sure that’s a good idea right now. I kind of wonder what happens when I turn on my terminal, so to speak. Like, is it just you picking things up. Or might the real kids be picking things up also. I mean, I don’t think so, because of my skull, but like, it’s within the realm of possibility that the square root of two is a hot formaldehyde-cooler topic these days in the local network. Why am I talking about this now. I have no idea. My point is maybe I could be better, as like, a life slash romantic partner. But I’m probably not your worst possible option. I’m probably in the top fifty percent, even with my current inability to separate myself from my clothing taken into account. I could really see myself as being almost perfect for you but then tragically orchestrating your downfall, kind of like a film noir leading lady except where science is a stand in for the typical motivations, like money, past love, that kind of thing. Why is it always the male scientists who go bad in terrible sci-fi movies. Probably I’ll just die; like, I see myself dying from neural overload under the pressure of foreign influence before turning evil. Like, I just don’t see the hive mind, especially in it’s local, limited incarnation, as really being capable of the subtlety that would be required for ‘turning evil’. Do you? Cognitive overload leading to excitotoxic cell death. Now that I could see. Easily. So, ethically, it’s probably okay for you to date me. If someone needs to kill me, get Mako to do it. Er, actually, you should probably ask Becket. I just feel like before we start a relationship where there’s even more emotional attachment than already exists, which is a lot, that we should decide who is going to kill me if I turn evil, because it really shouldn’t be you. I feel very strongly about that. On your behalf. Likely, I won’t care at the time, because I’ll be evil.”

You might want to stop talking, his brain suggests. You might also want to check in with me before you say anything else besides the word ‘sorry’.

Yeah because you’re so helpful, Newt replies. So so helpful.

“Sorry,” Newt says. “I’m just looking out for you. In a Manichaean way. Like everyone does. For their significant other. Real significant other? Pseudosignificant other?”

“Real,” Hermann says, still doing the hair-fixing thing. “You seem quite anxious.”

“What gave it away?” Newt asks weakly.

Hermann doesn’t reply, instead he says, “I will, of course, sleep with you. I will not discuss who will kill you in the event that you become a danger to our species.”

“Okay,” Newt says. “That seems fair. Contingency homicide planning for no one, communal Raising of Estimated Sleep Tallies for everyone.”

“REST?” Hermann says dryly.

“Acronyms make everything better. They reduce awkwardness. Like, oh hey, want to jack an electrode into a guy’s brain. That’s a little bit invasive, but hey, just throw in some capital letters and make a Latin bridge-related pun and all of a sudden everyone’s signing up. Seriously though, you have no idea how intensively I have been working not to invade your personal space. For years. Years and years.”

“Your efforts have been mediocre at best,” Hermann says. 

“Well yours have been a dismal failure, albeit a recent one,” Newt replies, leaning slightly into the hair fixing that’s still happening. “I don’t mind; it makes me feel microbiologically privileged.”

“Please do not elaborate,” Hermann says.

Newt, very courteously, does not elaborate, he just nods, he just stands there, not saying anything stupid, getting his hair fixed over and over again, trying to decide if he can back date his current relationship into the past, and if so, how far. This afternoon, when he had stepped up to the boyfriend plate like a human relations rockstar. A week ago, when they’d had their first Star Trek: Voyager date. Four weeks ago, when Hermann had told UC Berkeley that they had some kind of legal status and they’d both signed the same lease—Hermann illegibly and fluidly, Newt legibly and laboriously. Five weeks ago, when Newt had used Hermann’s toothbrush. Six weeks ago, when they’d drifted. Two years ago, during the Fire Cracker Sake Incident and its associated drunken and experimental make out session that Newt can kind of remember from two different but equally inebriated perspectives? Six years ago, when Hermann had done Newt’s paperwork for the first time. Nine years ago, when they met, with their stupid hair and their stupid cheekbones? Twelve years ago when Newt had fired a letter into the dark tangle of humanity’s sprawling, evolving neural net? He’s not sure. He decides on the toothbrush time point, because if he picks that one, that already makes this his most successful relationship ever.

And that’s a win.

Hermann pulls Newt’s glasses out of his pocket, where he had, apparently, stashed them while Newt was busy being distracted. 

“Don’t move,” he says, sliding them carefully into place.

I love you, Newt thinks, while Hermann’s fingertips brush over his temples. If you’re reading random thoughts, read that one.

Hermann says nothing, he just gives Newt a look that seems to wordlessly communicate the sentiment of, ‘I know’.

Newt thinks about Star Wars too much, possibly.

“True,” Hermann murmurs. “Star Trek is vastly superior.”

“You are the better thought-reader,” Newt says, in composed accusation, Princess-Leia style.

“At a first approximation, you may be correct,” Hermann replies.

Newt drops his gaze. “Too bad the drift doesn’t homogenize complex feelings and histories to a shared, simplistic perspective. Otherwise, we could have started banging one another immediately.”

“Charming,” Hermann replies dryly, retrieving the jacket and the cane from where they are lying on the floor. “You are much too complicated, oblivious, and distractible for any such course of action to have even a remote chance of success, even in the case of a conventional drift.” The cane, he leans against the wall; the jacket he hangs in the closet after separating it from the glove still trapped in its sleeve; the glove he passes, wordlessly, to Newt.

Newt yanks it into place.

“Well thank you, Dr. Gottlieb, I am, of course, terribly flattered.”

It is not for hours, not until Newt is watching Voyager slantwise, his head in Hermann’s lap and his hair fixed into total submission, that Hermann, his eyes on the English translation of Descartes’ Meditations that Newt must have read eight times by now, speaking over B’Elanna Torres eating banana pancakes, says, “I confess I have been wondering, Newton, how is that you’re able to change your clothes. How are you able to shower?. 

Newt is so relaxed and the paired questions are so delicately asked that he manages to go straight to abstracting the intent behind them, without dwelling on the complicated iconography that he’s needled into his dermis and the implication that he cannot look at that which he has put on his body. 

Geiszler, she’d sighed, leaning close to him under dim lights. Why are you doing this?

Newt can feel the remembered sting of an oscillating needle gun, depositing dye beneath the skin of his right bicep.

Why are you sealing your brain into on experimental rig once a week, he’d fired back. You have a nice brain, Lightcap.

You had a nice arm, she’d replied. That wasn’t an answer.

He’d never given her one.

She hadn’t asked him again.

When he thinks of himself, he imagines his skin clean, not draped with a multi-hued dream coat that cannot be removed.

“I close my eyes,” Newt says.