Newt Geiszler walked into the lab he shared with Hermann Gottlieb and immediately knew that there was about to be trouble. He knew this because Hermann was currently lying in a puddle of ammonia and glass on the lab floor, looking as mad as Newt had ever seen him.
"I'm going to kill you," the mathematician seethed as Newt hauled him to his feet. "What idiot would leave a kaiju liver-"
"That's a spleen," Newt corrected, helping him into a chair.
"Kaiju parts in the walkway!" Hermann shouted. "Any parts! All parts! I could have died!"
"You broke my specimen." Newt frowned at the mess on the floor and vaguely wondered where the spleen had actually gotten off to. He turned back to his colleague and frowned even harder. "Aw, dude, you're bleeding."
Hermann looked down at his pant leg. The slacks had been punctured by a shard of glass sticking out of his calf. "Bloody perfect," he muttered. "This is all your fault, you imbecile."
"I said I was sorry!"
"You said nothing of the kind."
"I'm sorry. There." Newt rustled around in his desk until he came up with his first aid kit. The old kit was never far from reach, what with Newt's propensity for cutting open his fingers with scalpels. "Let me see."
Newt knelt to examine his leg, but Hermann pushed him away. "I can take care of myself," Gottlieb sniffed proudly, "tis but a scratch."
"Yeah," Newt admitted, "but a scratch from a kaiju specimen jar. There's no telling what kind of creepy crawlies are in there." He knew perfectly well that the specimens were harmless, but the white lie was worth it to see Hermann squirm.
"Fine." The good doctor sighed in resignation as Newt carefully extracted the glass and rolled up his pants to get a better look at the wound.
"What do you know, it is a scratch," Newt muttered, plastering a band-aid on the relatively shallow cut. "There we go, all- Hello, what have we here?" The biologist pushed Hermann's sock down further, trying to get a better look at a dark mark on his partner's ankle.
"That's none of your business, Newton," the older man exclaimed and swatted him on the head. "Thank you very much for nothing, now clean up this atrocity before the Marshall comes in and hangs you out for the kaiju!" He stomped off, muttering in German.
Newt rubbed his head where Hermann had thwacked him and stuck out his tongue at the doctor's back. He knew what he'd seen and no amount of Hermann's blustering was going to change it.
Newt waited until the next night, when both doctors were working quietly on their respective specialties, to drop the bombshell. "Sooo," he said nonchalantly. "Dr. 'Tattoos Are Childish' Gottlieb has ink."
There was a slight pause, then a soft click as Hermann laid down his chalk. "So you saw it."
"Yeah, but I don't get it. Why get Fermat's Last Theorem tattooed on your ankle? I mean, I know you like math, but there are sexier equations. I mean Euler's Formula, don't get me started!"
"It's a long and personal story," Gottlieb said stiffly, picking up his chalk again.
"We got time."
"We have precisely one day until the next kaiju surfaces, we most certainly do not 'got time'."
Geiszler subsided and waited. And waited. He knew Hermann would tell him, Hermann always ended up telling him. It just took a long time for the other man to work up to it. Alcohol and the lateness of the hour also seemed to help, so as clock ticked later Newt opened up some specimen jars to 'let them breathe'.
That wasn't the night he found out, however.
The answer came floating to the surface of his mind in a dream several nights later. His dreams had been plagued by Hermann's memories, a residual effect of the drift. It would have been really annoying if it weren't for the fact that Hermann was having the same problem with Newt's memories. That was just hilarious.
In the dream, Newt watched Hermann meet his future wife, Vanessa, while they were both in school. The younger version of Gottlieb was even less sociable than he was now and he had very few friends. Newt could feel the war of caring and not caring in the young man's heart and he felt that heart leap at the sight of Vanessa.
The girl was young, but sharp with a head for mathematics and a sassy wit. Young Hermann fell head over heels for her, but hesitated to approach. Vanessa's friends made fun of him, called him names and mocked his reclusive nature. But she was different. Vanessa approached him and determined that they should be friends.
And friends they were. Newt watched them grow from friends to best friends to dating. Hermann remained awkward and irascible but Vanessa knew just how to reach him. They understood one another. She said that he was like Fermat's Last Theorem, so brilliant he was nonsense to everyone but the people who mattered.
Newt could feel that Vanessa mattered a lot. So much that Gottlieb had gotten the equation tattooed on his ankle to remind himself of his beloved even when they were apart. She said it was sweet. He thought it was embarrassing, but had never taken the trouble to have it removed.
When Newt awoke from the dream memory, he lay staring at the ceiling for a long time. Eventually he made up his mind not to say anything to Hermann about it. It was deeply personal and he wouldn't feel right intruding. The biologist sighed and curled up on his side. He'd have to find other ways to torment his friend.