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Contrary to popular belief, Newt had never actually been opposed to the Jaeger Program. Sure, he thought the kaiju were way cool, because they were, but that didn’t mean he liked seeing the world slowly torn to bits by the things. He didn’t exactly like all the stuck up, ignorant pilots that eventually got involved with the Jaeger program either, but in the beginning, he thought it was a great idea!
Though, he was somewhat in the minority at the time.
He couldn’t remember where he’d first heard of it. He liked to imagine it was some tiny article in the newspaper for some reason, but he knew that was bullshit because who even read newspapers in 2013? It might have been on one of their sites, though. He had a feed set up to scour a bunch of places for any news relevant to kaiju--which was basically everything at a certain point--so it could have been from anywhere.
In any case, he found out about the Jaeger program when it was still in its infancy, and all but fell in love with the idea. Giant robots fighting giant monsters? Hell fucking yeah, why hadn’t anyone thought of that earlier? But, the article had jumped over the “introduction of the idea to the public” stage and went straight to ridiculing it, quoting a bunch of “scientists” who were undoubtedly hacks and had no idea what they were talking about (wait, wasn’t that one of Newt’s professors once upon a time? Eh.) saying how the Jaeger program was doomed to be a failure and would be a huge waste of money with how much it would cost, and how the technology wasn’t developed enough for it to be feasible, blah, blah, blah. You know what wasn’t “feasible?” Letting the kaiju take over the goddamn world.
Newt was determined to get in touch with one of these guys.
----
There were a couple people involved with the program that Newt could find the contact information for, so he went right at it.
Though, funnily enough, certain people don’t respond well to certain other people insistently attempting to contact them through every medium available, and through a huge mess of various correspondence, Newt had managed nothing except pissing off one of the guys involved--some “Gottlieb”--something unholy. It wasn’t Newt’s fault, though, the guy was just an asshole. Sure, the phrase “crotchety old man who obviously pays no attention to the current scientific community” may have snuck its way into one of the letters, but hey, that’s what you get for calling Up-And-Coming Scientific Rockstar Newton Geiszler “some kid.” Like, the guy had it coming. Really.
But fair or not, Newt had kind of completely blown his chances of ever talking to this guy. Well, no biggie, right? There had to be tons of other ways to learn about the Jaeger program. Newt had like...scientific channels and connections and stuff. He’d figure something out.
Okay, well, not really. For some reason none of his colleagues were willing to look into it for him, so he had to turn to the Internet and databases and scholarly articles and stuff, which...was really, really boring. The only thing that came up under his keyword searches was a bunch of unrelated studies and occasionally some German news article about a child prodigy which he ignored completely, because, like, who cares? Newt had talked to other “child prodigies” before and they were all pretty disappointing. Not, like, stupid or anything, just really boring.
Besides. Jaegers. That’s what he was after here.
But, after a few long nights of finding absolutely nothing relevant at all, he decided to just see what this article was about. Mostly to find out why it kept popping up under all his searches.
And that’s where he first learned the name “Hermann Gottlieb;” sitting in a dark apartment, squinting at a shoddily scanned picture of a kid in front of a chalkboard littered with equations that Newt couldn’t make sense of in the slightest.
He figured, hey, it was a lead.
---
Google was a wonderful and terrifying thing, and it wasn’t a week later that saw Newt grinning victorious over an address and procuring another envelope. He’d never written this many letters in his life, but hey, desperate times call for desperate measures.
It went something like this:
Heya Hermann
My name’s Newton Geiszler, Newt, and I’m totally interested in the Jaeger stuff your dad’s involved in but I tried to talk to him and I think he hates me now. So I was wondering if you know anything about it or could like do espionage or something cause I’m dying here trying to figure out what’s going on with that stuff. And also you seem like you might be cool so maybe we could be pals or something but I’m mostly interested in the Jaeger stuff.
Don’t send me a letter back I don’t have any stamps left just hit me up at [email protected] if you want to. And maybe if you don’t want to, like at least mail and call me an idiot or something so I know you got my letter.
Anyways good luck with your math stuff I guess.
-Newt
That was sure to get an answer, right?
---
Looking back on it, it was really something of a small miracle, but a little less than two weeks later, Newt awoke to an email from a certain Gottlieb in his inbox.
Subject, “Hello Geiszler,” body, “Are you the one that called my father a grumpy old man?”
Oh. Well, he’d come this far, no use in backing out now.
Re: Hello Geiszler
i mightve, yeah....
A while later came the reply;
Well, it seems we may get on after all. What is it you want to know?
Score.
---
Hermann did not need to do espionage. In fact, if his claims were true, Hermann actually knew more about the Jaeger program than Gottlieb Sr. did. There wasn’t a single question Newt asked that he didn’t have at least some answer to, and more often than not he’d go off on some rant about how his dad wasn’t doing things right and was thinking about problems the wrong way and wouldn’t listen to Hermann’s advice because he--despite being 23 at the time--was just a “kid,” after all, therefore couldn’t possibly know what he was talking about.
Newt was pleased to find that he had a fairly comfortable basis in the subject of Hermann’s rants. He wasn’t really a math guy, but he knew his way around programming alright.
And, of course, he was a fast learner.
The first few months of correspondence went something like that, slowly getting more technical and lengthy as time went by, to the point where Newt felt almost like he was taking some sort of high level course on robot tech, which was pretty awesome actually. Hermann wasn’t exactly a patient teacher when he got into things, but he tolerated Newt’s questions to a point. And, well, Newt could tell that it was more a way for Hermann to let off steam, really...or, it was at first. It’s usually hard to pinpoint the exact moment where conversations take a turn for the more personal, but Newt was pretty sure it was when he had ended an email, unprompted, with, “So, what’s it like being the smartest dude on that side of the Atlantic?”
Yeah, he was smooth, wasn’t he?
And, well, a little bit drunk at the time, but that probably had nothing to do with it.
Okay, maybe a lot drunk at the time, because he had completely forgotten he had asked that when he woke up the next afternoon, and was fairly surprised when under Hermann’s usual reply of coding and Jaeger talk was a small expression of actual human emotion. Something little and decently sarcastic about having no one to talk to, but Newt knew there was truth to it. He’d experienced that himself, after all.
So, he offered a little empathy, and asked something about Hermann’s school life. The next email, he got a little more of an answer. And so it went, until weeks later, the science-y talk became low priority under the paragraphs and paragraphs of personal story that Hermann was confiding in him, the years spent in relative seclusion (though Newt couldn’t, at the time, piece together exactly why) in “primary” school and how university was a nightmare for him the first few semesters. The bullying, the teasing, the worst of it all from his family. How he thought moving away would make it all stop but it never really did.
When questioned later, Newt would absolutely deny crying over any of this.
He offered his consolations, and a few stories of his own, occasionally, but he got the feeling this was the first time the guy had ever really gotten to let this all out to someone. So, Newt let him talk.
Believe it or not, he actually knew when to keep his mouth shut.
...occasionally.
Well, he must have done alright in any case, because it was actually Hermann who brought up the topic of instant messaging rather than emailing back and forth all the time. He didn’t suggest they actually do it, because of time zones and all, but Newt pointed out that they both had such irregular sleeping patterns that they might as well try it out.
So, they chatted.
After the first few times, Newt came up with a hypothesis: The more instantaneous their reactions were, the more likely it would be for them to get into an argument. There was the underlying feel of unrest in their emails a few times, but the delay in response usually assured that the feelings settled by the next message.
Not so with IMing, and definitely not so with Hermann. Like, Newt wasn’t a slow typer by any means, he’d had a computer since before he could look over the counter (and yes, that was quite a while ago, thanks), but when he got Hermann riled up the dude was like some sort of machine. Newt would be halfway through a sentence and Hermann would have already sent, like, two paragraphs of his argument and be working on more! Okay, maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration, but it certainly felt like that at times. Newt could just imagine the guy furiously hammering away at his keyboard...
Or, well, he would have be able to, if he had an idea of what the dude looked like other than a blurry photo of him in like, fourth grade.
Hm.
Well, it couldn’t hurt to ask.
do you video chat? Newt asked one day.
No, replied Hermann.
oh. okay.
Well...Newt would just have to wait until he met him, then.
...or, if he met him. He had to admit there was a pretty small chance that would ever happen, being so crazy far away and stuff.
Though he also had to admit that the thought of it kind of made him feel a little funny.
Oh.
...
Shit.
---
Being the brave and confident man Newt was, he obviously asked Hermann out soon after realizing he had feelings for him.
Okay, not really. Truer to fact, a month or so later, Newt slouched over his computer, face red as a beet, and pecked out with two fingers:
Do you have a girlfriend?
And, being the brave and confident man he was, actually managed to press “enter.”
No, was the reply. And, thank whatever deity, was soon followed by, Do you?
no, responded Newt, who quickly realized that that exchange alone was possibly the most ambiguous exchange known to humankind and really did not give him any of the information he wanted. But he was distracted from this train of thought by the message irregularly popping in and out of existence above the chat box: Hermann is typing...
It took about 15 agonizing seconds before the message appeared.
Do you have a boyfriend?
npo, is what Newt ended up typing in his rush to respond. no*, he corrected, and lest he be misinterpreted, added, but i wouldnt mind one, before he could argue himself out of it.
Yeah, responded Hermann, Me neither. Seconds after, Hermann went offline.
Newt felt a little bit like he’d been electrocuted, but in a pleasant sort of way.
---
Newt found it weird to say how long he’d known people. There were kids that somehow seemed to stick around in his life from when he was elementary school, but he knew hardly anything about them. Did they have siblings? What shows did they watch? How did they like school, anyways? Newt didn’t really care, to be honest. They were good, pointless company when he needed it. Then occasionally someone would come along and share their entire life story, and Newt could tell you everything from their SAT score to their shoe size, and no matter the time he'd known them it just felt too short, like the entirety of their existence in his life was too...big, to occupy such a small period of time.
You can guess which category Hermann fell into.
But no matter how weird it was to say, Newt did, of course, know. He remembered the date on the letter he wrote, he could check the first email Hermann sent him if he forgot. And, though heaven forbid anyone find out, Newt kind of kept a reminder on his calendar. Why? Well, no reason. It wasn’t important, really, it just...
No reason, okay? Jeez.
In any case, the days were slowly creeping towards the fourth year--four years, jesus christ, that’s how long it took Newt to knock out a few doctorates? He was getting lazy--when Newt told Hermann that he’d probably be offline for a few days.
i’m going to this rad science conference thing next weekend with a bunch of bigwig guys who probably actually know what they’re talking about so it’s gonna be cool but i don’t think they’d like it if i was just on my phone the whole time so i might not be able to talk for a while? idk if you care but yeah
The one in New York? Hermann asked.
yeah, you know it?
I’m going, too.
Newt wasn’t exactly proud of the noise that he made at that moment in time.
yeah??? you wanna hang out or something while we’re there? ?like it’s totally cool if you don’t but i kind of want to
I’d like that. Dinner, maybe?
hell yeah!!!
Newt was practically--well, no, Newt was literally bouncing in his chair. Screw all those nobel prize winners, he was going to meet Hermann Gottlieb in the flesh! And, like, yeah, he was friends with the guy and was at the point where he could admit he was crushing on him pretty bad, but he also kind of had a fanboyish fascination with him as well. Friends with Newt or not, Hermann was actually kind of a genius and the work he’d produced over the years (which Newt liked to think he had at least a little influence on) was completely mindblowing.
And he’d asked Newt out to dinner.
....shit, what was he going to wear?
---
Jeans and a button down. He wasn’t sure why he was agonizing over it, what other option was there? It was the only thing in his closet that was anywhere near formal. And, in tribute to how much this meant to him, he had actually brushed his hair.
It didn’t look like he had, but he totally did. It was the thought that counts, right? Yeah. Definitely.
Anyways.
It was around 6pm, the evening of the first day of the conference. Newt had sent Hermann a picture of himself the second he’d set foot in the city with an invitation to say hi if Hermann saw him around anywhere. But, no such occurrence happened over the next few hours. Newt was kind of afraid he’d chickened out, or was lying to him or something...
Until Hermann asked to meet him in the lobby.
So that’s where Newt was currently pacing around in circles, tugging at his sleeves and patting down his hair, feeling kind of like he was picking up a prom date. Or, at least, assumed that’s what it felt like, never really having had a prom date before. And it wasn’t like Hermann was really his date either, like they were going out to dinner but they weren’t going out to dinner, right? Or were they? What was even the proper way to clarify that, like--
His internal monologue was interrupted when he ran straight into someone.
“Shit, sorry,” he said, grabbing the guy out of impulse to make sure he didn’t fall over--shit, man, the dude had a cane, that would have been terrible--and glancing up at him. The guy looked like some kind of deer in headlights.
“Are you okay?” asked Newt.
“...Newton?” said the guy.
Newt blinked.
“Hermann?” he squeaked, immediately letting go and taking a step back. “Oh my god, dude, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, uhh...”
Newt stuck out his right hand, realized that Hermann’s right hand was occupied, and then stuck out his left hand, instead.
“Nice to meet you?” he said, attempting a smile--and then grinning when Hermann shook his hand and nodded curtly.
“You’re energetic,” said Hermann.
“You’re not,” said Newt. “You look like you just got run over by a bus or something. Long day?”
“Hasn’t it been?”
“Well, I mean, I didn’t fly across the ocean but it hasn’t been too bad, right? Everyone here’s really interesting! Well, except a few wackjobs but, you know.”
“Did you listen to that man talk about kaijus?”
“Yeah! Dude, wasn’t he--”
“Ridiculous,” said Hermann.
Newt stared at him.
“What,” he said, gaping. “He was awesome!”
“He obviously had no idea what he was talking about, his sample size was abysmal--”
“He had every idea what he was talking about! What do you want him to do, just go and find more kaiju to--”
“If he’s going to pretend to be an expert on them, then yes!”
“Oh my god,” shrieked Newt, earning a few looks from people in the vicinity. “Oh my god. Okay, okay, whatever. We are not talking about this. I’m starving. Where’re we eating?”
---
Newt couldn’t remember where it was that they ate. He remembered that they walked to a nearby chain restaurant, and remembered the look on Hermann’s face when he ordered macaroni and cheese. He doesn’t think they got kicked out, so they must not have made a scene, but he did remember Hermann grabbing his ear to get him to shut up at some point (“I didn’t even know people actually did that!”) so they weren’t exactly friendly, either. And once they were outside, all bets were off.
In short, Newt’s hypothesis was confirmed. The more instantaneous their reactions, the more likely it was they would get into an argument. Neither of them shut up about kaiju and kaiju stuff all the way back to the hotel. Newt didn’t even realize he’d followed Hermann to his room until, standing out in the hallway, Hermann abruptly ended the argument with;
“You’re wrong, but I am tired. Goodnight, Newton,” and disappeared into his hotel room.
Newt was probably in love.
---
Though the thing about arguing with someone for hours is that when you wake up the next day, it’s always kind of a toss up whether or not they actually hate you or not. Newt treated arguments kind of like a recreational sport, and it was easy to forget that not everyone felt that way and occasionally people get kind of mad when you insult a field of study they’ve been in for a decade or so. Who would have thought, right?
So, Newt was a little worried, and he remained fairly worried until, before the start of one of the speakers of the day, Hermann came and sat down next to him.
He timed it perfectly, too, because they hardly had time to exchange greetings before they had to shut up and listen to the person talk.
So, you know, probably a good thing.
---
Newt followed Hermann out afterwards.
“So Herms, what’re your plans for the day?”
“Don’t call me that,” said Hermann. Then, “I thought I’d get lunch, since my university is paying for all of my meals.”
“What?!” went Newt, “You gotta hook me up with that, man.”
“I’ll buy you lunch, if you’d like.”
“Really? Yeah, dude, if that’s cool with you,” said Newt. And,
“By the way, that speaker was full of shit.”
Second verse, same as first.
---
Though, maybe there was a little coda.
Okay...maybe there was a big one.
They ended up in front of Hermann’s room again, and Hermann whirled around to face him.
“You are irritating,” Hermann said.
“You’ve got a stick up your ass,” Newt responded.
“You’re disrespectful.”
“You’re the oldest 27-year-old I know.”
“And you are the youngest,” Hermann hissed, stepping closer, “You are the most immature, bratty, child of a man with absolutely no respect for the proprieties of scientific inquiry.”
He punctuated his last point with the handle of his cane on Newt’s chest, and Newt thought his heart stopped for a moment.
Hermann was kind of really close to him.
“...are you going to kiss me now,” said Newt. And, well, it was kind of meant to be a more gibe-y get-out-of-my-personal-space sort of remark, but it came out more like a I-really-want-you-to-kiss-me sort of thing. And after seeing the look on Hermann’s face, Newt decided to go with it.
“I really think you should kiss me,” he clarified, and Hermann did.
And, shit, this guy had no right to be that good of a kisser. Newt didn’t exactly go weak at the knees, but...well, okay, he kind of did, a little. To be fair, this whole thing was four years in the making, but, seriously, math nerds should not be that good at sucking face.
It was a formidable combination.
Newt told him so, and definitely not to cover up any whining noises he may or may not have made when Hermann broke away.
“You’re too good at that,” he insisted.
“Am I?” asked Hermann, seeming genuinely curious.
“Yes! You can’t be smart and handsome and a good kisser, jeez! How will the rest of us ever compare?!”
Hermann actually went slightly red at that, and Newt turned completely red.
“Oh, my god,” went Newt, looking anywhere but at Hermann, which was a little hard considering he was still standing right in front of him. “Okay, tell me to leave or invite me in or something I don’t want to stand in the hallway looking like a complete idiot.”
“If you insist,” Hermann mumbled, turning to open his door. “Come in.”
Newt stared as Hermann disappeared into his room, and then tentatively followed after, shutting the door behind him.
It didn’t look like Hermann had even been there the one night he had. Everything was in its place, and the freaking bed was even made. Who makes their bed when staying at a hotel?
“You are a neat freak,” he commented, sitting down on the foot of the bed.
Hermann frowned at him.
“I like things to be in their proper place,” he said, sitting caddy-corner to Newt and taking his shoes off.
“Oh, yeah?” said Newt, toeing his shoes off as well. “Where should I be, then?”
Hermann glanced at him.
“...scoot back,” he said.
Newt did.
“More.” Newt did, again. “A little bit more.” Newt sat in the middle of the bed and crossed his legs.
“Lay down,” Hermann finished, getting up to put his jacket away in the closet.
Newt did, and stared at the ceiling.
Then he laughed.
“My proper place is in your bed?” he asked, turning to look at Hermann. “Aren’t you going to ask me out first, at least?”
“Isn’t that what dinner was?”
“Oh,” said Newt, as Hermann came and laid down next to him. “That’s definitely what I wanted it to be, but I didn’t really know...”
“That was my intention.”
“Oh,” said Newt, again. “Cool.”
Hermann nodded.
“...I get the feeling you don’t want to sleep with me tonight,” he ventured.
“I’m cool with sleeping,” said Newt. “Just maybe not sex, this time?”
“Fair enough.”
“...can I still stay?”
“Of course,” said Hermann. Then, “Can I still kiss you?”
“Definitely.”
So Hermann did.
---
The thing about weekend conferences is that they only last a weekend, and the next day, Hermann was on a plane home. Newt decided to be a gentleman and see him off, and they actually managed to have a civil conversation while Hermann was waiting to board. It was like their own little miracle.
Newt hugged him goodbye, and he left.
It was okay at the time, but once Newt was back home, he couldn’t help but indulge himself.
He threw a complete fit.
Three days? Really? Just three days? Newt would have almost rather not met Hermann at all--maybe. Everyone always said that the joy of having something outweighed losing it, but at the current moment, Newt wasn’t really feeling that. God, all he wanted to do was argue with him and kiss his weird-lookin’ mouth and hold his bony hands and, wow. Newt was completely pathetic.
And, wow.
Hermann totally liked him back.
The world was under attack and god knows how long all of this would last, but at least for now, he was dating the smartest dude on that side of the Atlantic.
Newt wiped his face on his blanket and pulled out his phone.
We should do this again sometime, he sent.
He didn’t get a reply back in the next few hours, so he just went to sleep.
---
Unfortunately, travel across the Atlantic is kind of expensive, and scientific conferences were put on the backburner when all the greatest minds were occupied trying to figure out how to make sure humanity survived the next decade. So, arguably, that “sometime” never came.
Newt did get a job offer in Hong Kong, though.
His first day on the job involved a lot of...well, “catching up.”
And the rest became history.