For the Newmann Secret Santa. I have cane-sword over on Tumblr.
Newt was in the lab and he didn't remember how he got there. He didn't know how long he had been working before that occurred to him. He didn't know what that meant. Most likely that he had been in this room too long and needed to take a break. There was never time to take a break. Not a real one. Not one that would mean that there wasn't a persistent heaviness behind his eyes that almost felt like a part of him now or that his shoulders didn't ache or that his hands didn't start to shake when he went too long without some form of energy shot. Not enough that it meant that he could spend more than fifteen minutes at a time forgetting that every countdown might be ticking away their last breaths or that he didn't have to do some hard math about how sick he had to be before the negative effect working had on his health and productivity was greater than the negative effect of missing time.
It was never enough.
They were never enough even though there was no one in the whole damn world who was more. Ironic, really, he had always been the one who was too much until the time came when it really fucking mattered.
He was getting goddamn maudlin was what he was getting.
He needed a break.
But…Usually when he started feeling this way, usually when he didn't remember things like if he had eaten or when he had gotten there or things like that it was exhaustion so deep it threatened to send him face-first into the nearest kaiju organ.
Right now he felt surprisingly clear-headed.
Hermann was at the chalkboard writing out a long string of symbols that looked even less like they made any sort of sense than usual (all his degrees and if Newt didn't fully understand how Hermann could math his way into accurately predicting kaiju attacks then there was no one in the PPDC who could).
Newt didn't remember moving but there he was, comfortably on Hermann's side of the line. "Hermann."
Hermann stilled but did not turn around. "Newton."
Suddenly Newt's mind went blank. Why was he here? What was he going to say? Hermann was grumpy about interruptions at the best of times and now he was standing before him with not a single goddamn explanation.
His eyes absently flickered back to the chalkboard and he frowned. Now that he took a second look at, the symbols didn't just look like they didn't make sense. They were literal gibberish.
"What…are you writing?" Newt asked slowly.
"I-" Hermann broke off, sounding confused. "That's not right."
It took Newt a moment but he got it. "This is a dream."
Hermann turned slowly to face him. "I'm in a dream?"
Well. Hermann was the dream, to be more precise, but wasn't it ultimately the same? This Herman wasn't the real Hermann, he was a creation of Newt's subconscious mind. He was a part of a dream in a larger dream. Hermann was the more likely of the two of them to argue semantics anyway.
"I mean, unless you have a better explanation for that," Newt said, gesturing at the chalkboard. He tilted his head. "I mean, fuck, I've got a perfectly good alternative explanation. You're just writing squibbles like that to fuck with me."
"You mean scribbles?" Hermann asked archly.
"I mean what I mean," Newt said waving a hand at him. "And that does sound like you on a slow day."
Hermann turned around again and slowly, painstakingly, wrote out another unintelligible mess. "That was meant to be my name," he said after a moment, turning back around.
"I don't remember how I got here," Newt offered. "I don't remember what I was doing before this."
"And didn't we…" Hermann trailed off, an expression of intense concentration crossing his face. "The breach. We closed the breach. You drifted and I-I went with you."
The memories came back with such a force Newt gripped the table that hadn't been there a moment ago to steady himself. "Whoa. How did I forget we won?"
"Dream logic," Hermann said simply.
The two of them stared at each other for a moment.
"Now what?" Newt asked.
Hermann shrugged. "I suppose we could bicker over which of us is the one having the dream and which is the manifestation of the other one's subconscious but whichever one of us is real would know for certain that they are real and the manifestation would not, not actually existing, so there's little point in that. I imagine we both know, as far as a manifestation of the subconscious can know, which one of us is really here."
"Okay, I'm going to stop you right there, Hermann," Newt said. "You can't just stipulate that!"
Hermann frowned. "Newton, what are you even talking about? Are you suggesting one of us might be dream but be sentient enough that we believe we are a real person?"
"I hate to do this to you, buddy, I really do but I have to invoke Sophie's World here."
Hermann narrowed his eyes at him. "First of all I don't believe that you do regret it given that you bring that abomination up at least once a month and secondly you don't have to do anything."
"I do, though. It'll bother me all day if I don't," Newt said. Reconsidered. "All night? Honestly, with my sleep schedule, it could really be either."
"Are you trying to say you're the real one?"
Newt laughed. "As opposed to the fake one? Please, Hermann, no need to be melodramatic. And of course I am. From my perspective I am and even if I don't have a perspective because I'm fake and not that complicated of a construction of myself, what's to stop me from claiming that I am real? Wouldn't you expect that from me in a way?"
Hermann sighed. "Sadly, I would."
"Don't be like, you know I'm delightful," Newt said flippantly. "And don't think you can distract me from that book!"
"I wish I could but I know better," Hermann replied.
"These are fictional characters realizing they are fictional and clearly not being well-developed enough to have the appropriate existential crisis at learning that the very nature of their reality is false and some rather boring treatise on philosophy for some guy's daughter," Newt said. "Though I guess since it's all a pathetic attempt to make philosophy more palatable to the general populace the horror of their situation wasn't really the point. Even in-universe the guy's writing their book for his 15-year-old and he's trying to teach her, not instill her with a sense of existential dread and make her question her own reality a la Inception."
"I am not having another argument about Inception with you," Hermann said firmly. "Especially not since right now we both know we are in a dream."
"Ah, but technically we never had that argument before," Newt said, gesturing between the two of them. "One of us had it with the real version of the other of us."
Hermann didn't dignify that with a response.
"So the point is, the whole thing is on way more crack than Alice in Wonderland," Newt said. "Like the guy's writing the book and in the book he's writing his creations successfully plot to escape from the book and go into the real world and his kid's mad he's writing a book and like controlling the actions of the characters he is creating like they have any life outside of his words and then they're like invisible and intangible and go on a boat and the author goes mad with power and has all his characters just get super flat and not notice he's off grandstanding and it's super weird."
"I'm sorry, I could have sworn you said 'the point is' at some point," Hermann said.
Newt nodded. "Yeah, weren't you listening?"
"I'm afraid one of us rather lost the thread of this conversation and I'm pretty sure it was you so could you please just state it succinctly?" Hermann asked.
"You drive a hard bargain, Hermann. But sure. The point is that it's entirely possible that I – or you for that matter – may not be the real version of ourselves but be a sophisticated enough manifestation that we can believe ourselves to be real. I know this is the plot to like so many things. Well. Maybe not exactly this. But 'I thought I was real and I'm not' stuff cue angst. Although, really, what is 'real'? Certainly not anything that can think for itself and then we get back to Descartes. But that really only lets you know about yourself because how can you ever, dream or otherwise, really know that anyone else is actually a conscious being and it isn't all just a construct that perhaps you created and perhaps was created for you?" Newt asked. He took a – totally superfluous since it was a dream but still feeling rather necessary – breath to continue.
"Let me stop you right there," Hermann said flatly. "We are not getting into solipsism. I refuse. We will be here for hours. We will be here for days. We will not leave this lab for the rest of our lives."
Newt snorted, conceding the point. "I mean, at one point one of us will have to wake up."
"Newton."
Newt rolled his eyes but didn't continue. "But that still leaves us with the question of what to do until we wake up? I'm trying to, like, manifest an elephant in here because elephants are fucking awesome but I guess I don't really have this lucid dreaming thing down. Or I might not exist and not have any power to do so. Either or."
"I'm going to regret asking but you seem remarkably open to the possibility, given that if you are real you know you are real presumably, that you may not be real," Hermann said.
Newt shrugged. "You could just have a really great subconscious, Hermann, I believe in you."
"I don't have any ideas either," Hermann said. "I don't normally have to come up with an idea in dreams like these."
Newton leaned forward, suddenly very interested. "Dreams like what? Do you dream about me Hermann?"
Hermann's smile was tolerantly exasperated. "With alarming regularity."
"Are they sexy dreams?" Newt asked hopefully.
"I'm not going to dignify that with a response," Hermann said stiffly.
"That's totally a response, dude," Newt said, laughing. "And that's totally a yes, too!"
"Well I was hardly going to say 'I am not going to dignify that with a response beyond this response informing you of my intention to not further dignify this'," Hermann said. "It may be more accurate but it's losing the plot just a bit. And refusing to comment is not a yes. Nothing short of a yes – or, I suppose, saying it is not a no – is a yes."
"Well, maybe, like, legally," Newt conceded. "But this isn't a courtroom and it's not illegal to have sexy dreams about your completely adult lab partner. And I think it is a yes because otherwise why not say no? Mind you, this kind of biased thinking is the thing that makes people who invoke the fifth because they don't want to have to testify themselves look super guilty because it implies they did something bad they don't want to have to admit to or lie about. And that's not great but, again, this isn't a bunch of legal crap. This is just you and your nightly sex dreams about me."
"Please, Newton, do try to keep your ego in check," Hermann said, rolling his eyes. "No one said anything about nightly. And I reject your premise that-"
"You reject all my premises," Newt interrupted but he was smiling. "But just look at it this way. There's really no need to be embarrassed. I clearly really really want you to be having sexy dreams about me. Or I am your subconscious and you clearly want me to want you to be having sexy dreams about me. Either way, let a little sexy Newt into your life."
It took him a moment to realize that he was only wearing his boxers and that a moment before he had been wearing significantly more.
"Oh, hey, would you look at that? You do want it," Newt gloated.
"That or you do," Hermann countered.
"Are you now the one suggesting you might not be real and this might be my subconscious?" Newt asked. "Because I am open to the idea. I was going to say I think my subconscious Hermann would be a little bit less ready to fight me at every turn but, let's be real, he wouldn't. Sometimes I think the arguments are the best part. Without that you're just a very pretty face and a truly impressive brain you insist on wasting on boring math crap."
Hermann raised long-suffering eyes to the ceiling. "This is the man who regularly invades my dreams."
"Ha! I fucking knew it!" Newt exclaimed, pointing a finger enthusiastically at Hermann.
"Yes, well," Hermann said.
It took Newt a moment to process the fact that Hermann, too, had just been wearing significantly more clothing than he was now.
"What else do you know?"
Some time later, Newt's eyes flew open and he got out of bed so quickly he almost tripped. He barely paused to put his glasses on as he practically flew out the door and to Hermann's room.
Hermann's door was locked but if Newt was in the habit of letting little things like that stop him, he never would have gone anywhere in his life.
"Hermann!" he cried as he burst in.
Hermann was sitting up in his bed reading a book. He blinked peevishly at Newt. "Is there some reason you decided to break into my room before so much as knocking?"
Oh, right. He hadn't tried that. "I couldn't possibly wait around until you got up to answer the door! This is important!"
"I refuse to believe it would have taken longer for you to knock and me to answer then for you to break in here," Hermann said. "Particularly as I could hear you working and I may be slow in the mornings but I am not that slow."
Newt stared at him. "Then why did you not open the door at some point? That's what a reasonable person would do!"
"When there's a knock, certainly, or when you hear someone outside your door perhaps debating whether to knock or not," Hermann replied. "Not when you hear someone trying to break in – which is not the behavior of a reasonable person, just in case you were wondering."
"I was not but go on."
"In this case, you really shouldn't help them and enable this behavior," Hermann said. "In fact, I really ought to have called security and hidden or armed myself except I figured it would be you and it really wasn't worth the headache." He paused. "Do you see what you have done to me, Newton?"
"First of all, you're welcome," Newt said. "Second of all, what part of 'important' did you not get?"
"Maybe the part where your definition of important encapsulates not just things that are actually important but a lot of nonsense that I cannot honestly believe you actually think I would find important or interesting in any way," Hermann said. "Also the part where you haven't yet told me what it was."
Newt waved that off. "Oh, you know me. I'm easy to drag into an argument. But that doesn't make this any less important!"
Hermann shook his head fondly. "Newton, it is a wonder you saved the world."
"It's a wonder we did," Newt corrected. "And the rangers. They helped. A little. But the point is, I had the weirdest dream last night."
Hermann laughed lightly. "This is exactly what I mean. You cannot possibly think-"
"You were in it," Newt interrupted. "And I am here to tell you that I am officially not a manifestation of your subconscious! I was like, reasonably sure that I wasn't before but now you're reading and I saw the title of the book so I'm sure! Which…either you're going to know exactly what I mean and I don't even know why I thought you would, come to think of it, that's what happens when you don't stop and think these things through and so that's really how I choose to live my life or you're just going to stare at me and add it to your mental list of all the weird shit I do."
"I think you'll find that I keep a list of every time you don't do something odd," Hermann said faintly. "It's significantly shorter. I…Newton. Newton what are you saying?"
Newt shrugged. "I mean, I think I was pretty clear. You either know what I mean or you think I'm just randomly arguing with you about a dream I had. Or, trying to. You really need two people and you normally oblige me but if you truly don't know what I mean you might not. I don't know."
"Am I to take it that you had a dream last night where the two of us were in the lab but we knew we were dreaming because when I tried to write I could not write anything legible? Then we were distracted for some time debating which of us was having the dream and which did not exist and then we expressed certain…sentiments towards each other and acted on them?" Hermann looked uncharacteristically uncertain.
Newt couldn't help but laugh outright.
Hermann's eyes narrowed in offense. "Well excuse me if-"
"No, no," Newt interrupted. "I was just thinking that you could not have gotten any of that from what I said so in a way you answered my question. Or rather the question I didn't quite ask but was at least thinking about. We're dream buddies now, Hermann, and there are no take-backs here!"
"I didn't sign up for that."
"Neither did I but it's probably some drift thing," Newt said. "I don't know, people have probably studied it or will study it or who even knows. Maybe we could even study it. I could not care less about any of that right now."
Hermann seemed to suddenly realize that he was still lying in bed, holding his book in his hands and quickly scrambled to stand up.
Newt was not even surprised to see he was wearing thick, wooly socks, sweatpants, a sweater, and at least one shirt underneath that. He personally was wearing jellyfish pajamas and put slippers on bare feet because it was too cold to go running around barefoot and Newt honestly didn't see the point of sleepwear if it wasn't going to be amazing.
"Then what are you here for?" Hermann asked. His hands fidgeted with the top of his cane.
"I'm kind of peeved I didn't pick any of this up with the drift but I guess I kind of had other things to focus on," Newt said. "And this way makes it a choice, I guess, even with the dream. Hermann, I'm just going to come right out and say it." He took a deep breath. "I have all kinds of feels for you."
Hermann started at him.
Newt stared right on back. He had said his part and now it was on Hermann to react.
"Newton, you… 'Feels'? Are you serious?"
Newt shrugged. "I wouldn't have thought it would be that much of a surprise given what happened last night. This morning. Whenever. While we were sleeping. Or are you critiquing my way of expressing the sentiment?"
"I am absolutely critiquing how you said that."
Newt rolled his eyes. "Of course you are."
"You could say that you have feelings for me. Or even specify what those are because while that is usually a shorthand for romantic feelings you have always had feelings for me and at many points those were quite negative," Hermann said.
Newt crossed his arms. "Fine, next time you confess first. But if you could maybe get past the fact that you don't appreciate me and my wonderful verbiage, what do you think of the content of the message?"
"As I believe I indicated last night, I have romantic feelings for you as well," Hermann said simply.
Newt laughed. "You are just the king of anticlimax, aren't you?"
Hermann gave him a look. "In some areas, perhaps. But if you wanted fanfare you really shouldn't have come by so early in the morning."
"What I'm hearing you saying is that I should hang around until you're motivated and energized enough to be a little more passionate."
"Well," Hermann said, taking a step towards Newt. He took another and another until he was standing right in front of him. He placed his free hand on Newt's cheek and leaned in. "You're not not hearing that."