Disclaimer: I own nothing.
University AU: Hermann's 24 and Newt's 23. Kaiju attacks started when they were younger than they were in the canon.
M for smut that will be BDSM. Just a warning. If you don't like BDSM, this is not the story for you. At all. There will be a lot of it, if this goes the way I think it will. Also, TRIGGER WARNING for depictions of violence (the non-consensual kind).
Hermann never thought a single person could annoy him so thoroughly.
It's not like most people didn't annoy him anyway, because most certainly they did, but this… this was a new form of torture via human contact.
And it was only made worse by the fact that he could never get away from it.
It all started when he decided to go to Stanford for his first PhD. Why he decided to go to America, he actually wasn't sure. For something different? He'd been all sorts of places already. Born in Germany, lived there for a while, then in London a good portion of his life. He got his degree in theoretical mathematics in Sweden, then a Master's in Japan (he'd gotten lucky when the Kaiju Onibaba attacked Tokyo instead of the city his school was in), so he'd experienced those places. He'd visited most of Europe, some of Asia and South America, even Africa. Sometimes for fun, or with family, but mostly to gather research on the Kaiju, which he was more interested in than he sometimes cared to admit. The United States was one of the only places he hadn't yet experienced in any form—he hadn't even met an American tourist. And if he hated it, he'd only get one little PhD there and then he could go elsewhere. He planned to get more than one, after all.
So off to California he went. First, of course, he had to have a flat mate. He didn't have the money to get a flat on his own, but he also didn't want to live in a coven of college aged people either, as he didn't much like anyone, let alone people his own age who were far too prone to parties and/or copious alcohol consumption and not nearly prone enough to cleaning and/or thinking.
He obviously went to the internet to find said flat mate. One that would not grate on his every nerve at every moment was preferable.
So he found someone that seemed perfect.
He was a doctorate student as well, for Biology of some sort. Good, none of that Humanities rubbish. A scientist like himself. Even one interested in the Kaiju. There was another similarity already.
Better yet, he spoke fluent German, as he was born in Germany—though he'd lived in America since he was five, he'd still been in Berlin long enough to learn German and was smart enough to retain it even after two decades.
Hermann was actually rather delighted. He was quite certain he couldn't have gotten luckier.
Oh, if only he'd known the truth.
No, if only Newton Geiszler had possessed the decency to put up a photograph. Then Hermann would have at least guessed the truth.
Hermann moved in before Newton, so he was quite comfortable on the pristine leather couch he'd brought with him when there was a knock.
His flat mate? He was supposed to be coming today… Granted, he was supposed to be here several hours ago, so how much could his word be trusted? Hopefully being tardy was not a frequent habit of his…
Then he opened the door and saw that it obviously was not his new flat mate. This man… well, he was far from a scientist, that was for sure. He was a bit shorter than Hermann, but his hair was styled in a way that made him two inches taller, sticking up like maybe he woke up that way, or stood in the wind a while, but more likely he'd put some effort in. He was in tight dark jeans, black boots, a white button up shirt with a skinny black tie over it that was obviously tied incorrectly, causing it to lie at a strange angle. Likely this was also on purpose.
But what one noticed before all that, before the glasses and the green eyes and the several-days-unshaved stubble, were the tattoos. Both his forearms, which were left uncovered by his shirt because the sleeves were rolled up, were collages of colour. It took a moment, but Hermann realised with a rolling in his stomach what the tattoos depicted.
Kaiju.
This man had tattooed Kaiju on his arms like they were something other than murderous beasts. Tattooing yourself at all seemed a strange, unsanitary, gross habit, but with Kaiju?
He'd heard of people like this before, the ones who liked the Kaiju or something, but he never thought he'd meet one, and had certainly never wanted to.
"Yes? What do you want?" asked Hermann, quite eager to get the strange man off his doorstep. Especially before his flat mate arrived.
"Um… Dude, Herms, it's me, Newt."
Hermann said absolutely nothing because there were so many things wrong with this sentence. Horrid slang, worse nicknames, it was spoken too loud, the voice itself was grating...
"Your new roomie," he specified, seeming to think that Hermann's silence was caused by incomprehension as opposed to utter horror. "Just wanted to make sure I had the right apartment before I started hauling my shit up those stairs." He started to look unsure when Hermann still didn't speak. "Dude… uh, you are Hermann, right?"
Hermann nodded stiffly to the question, though he'd half wanted to say no just to make the man go away.
"Uh… cool then. I'll just… get my stuff… are you usually this quiet? I guess that's cool and all, I can talk through any silence, I don't really care…"
Hermann stopped listening there, because he didn't need to hear anymore to know that Newton Geiszler, as opposed to his original assumptions, was his worst nightmare.
Hermann set rules immediately. You will not try to speak to me when I am working. You will not make noise past ten o' clock. You will not, liebe Gott, you will NOT call me 'Herms' ever again. And above all else, you will never go into my bedroom. EVER.
Newton broke said rules just as instantly.
In fact, Hermann was unsure if Newton was unable to follow directions or if annoying Hermann entertained him. Either was plausible, he figured.
He blasted rock music any time that Hermann didn't have the energy to shut it off, he talked through his problems aloud whether Hermann wanted to hear it or not, he called him 'Herms' half the time.
But luckily, any time he wanted to get into Hermann's room, he knocked, so Hermann could open the door a crack and walk out of it, because he didn't want Newton stumbling upon… well, any of the things he had hidden in his room. They were the one thing that Newton would never find out about if Hermann had a thing to say about it. That would be utterly humiliating. "Oh, little Herms is actually human with human urges and everything!" he'd yell. The indignity of it would be unbearable.
He considered moving out. But he couldn't find another person to share with now.
Which Newton liked to remind him, actually.
"Dude, you on Craig's List again? Do I suck that bad? Sorry, man, but you're stuck with me. No way you'll find a roommate when the semester's started."
"There must be a flat share somewhere in this confounded city."
"Nobody says flat, dude. This is an apartment, and we're roommates. We're in America. Do as we do."
Hermann never understood calling someone your 'roommmate' who does not, in fact, share your room. It would make a little more sense to say apartment mate, but he supposed that was too much of a mouthful. If they'd just say flat instead, it'd be easier. But he said none of that. Instead, he said, "Thus far, I find Americans amazingly irritating."
"Hey, don't judge all Americans on just me," he said with a grin, as if the insult were funny to him. Maybe it was. "Aw, come on Herms, lighten up."
"Don't call me that," Hermann snapped.
"Oh, whatever."
It was like that.
Constantly.
But, as Newton so kindly pointed out, Hermann was stuck. Unless he wanted to transfer, but he didn't mind the city or the school really. It was something different, which he wanted. Close to the Pacific, which was also desirable, considering he planned to have at least part of his dissertation talk about Kaiju.
It was just his flat mate—roommate, either way—he couldn't stand.
But at the same time… he wasn't completely loathsome.
He was quite as smart as Hermann had assumed he would be when they met on the internet. Impressively so—and impressing Hermann was very hard to do. He picked up on anything you gave him with ease. Hermann was nearly jealous, because his intellect was not nearly so flexible. And if Hermann was in a very good mood and Newton in a very quiet mood—both of which were infrequent—then the two could have very constructive conversations about their fields of study, or perhaps other areas of science.
Newton was also a surprisingly gifted chef, and to his merit, he still cooked enough for two even when Hermann was being especially cruel.
But even with these things, it didn't help them get along.
And as time passed, things only got worse, because their living room became their mutual working space—they both seemed to have something against working in the place where they slept—and they obviously were incapable of dealing with each other while working.
It was bad enough when the both of them just worked on laptops, but then it get far worse when Hermann got the six foot by eight foot rolling chalkboard he'd been wanting and Newton somehow got ahold of various remains—Hermann never bothered to ask if said remains were animal or human. Hermann suspected it was a mix of the two.
It went like this:
"You just splattered some of your—your—your bodily juices on my chalkboard!"
"Yeah, well the grating sound of your chalk against your chalkboard made me cringe while I was working with this spleen!"
"Come clean this up this instant!"
"Come over here and mend my fucking eardrums then!"
"No, you can't sit on my couch after working with those unsanitary samples!"
"Then where am I supposed to sit, Hermann?"
"ON YOUR OWN COUCH."
"I DON'T OWN ONE!"
"THEN GET ONE, YOU UNCULTURED SWINE!"
"OR YOU CAN GROW UP YOU BABY IN A SWEATER VEST!"
It eventually came to the point where Hermann bought a roll of duct tape and separated the front room right down the middle. No crossing the line. Mostly it just made Newton angrier, but he did attempt not to cross it, which Hermann was grateful for. To show said gratitude, he even bought Newton a couch.
"Dude, this thing must have been my great grandma's or something. And grandma must have smoked a lot of weed."
"If you don't like it, take it back to the gentleman down the street with the gold tooth."
But Newton grinned. "Hell no man, I love it. It's got personality. Thanks Hermann."
Hermann blinked. "Erm… you're welcome, Newton."
"Hey, I called you Hermann, the least you can do is call me Newt."
"Not a chance."
"Hey, I thought I'd try. You hungry?"
"Famished."
So not every moment of the day was torture or anything.
But most moments were.
