After the Kaiju-intestine-slinging incident, things returned to normal, but Newton and Hermann had reached a plateau that was slightly less juvenile than their usual petty arguments. Whenever they talked about anything after that, all the contents of their letters seemed to spill out onto the floor between them like invisible sick. Their most recent insults had had such a ring of intimacy to them. They both knew they had gone too far. Consequently they were overly polite to one another for quite a few days after that. Once, Newt caught Hermann looking at him over his shoulder, chalk poised on the board, and when they accidently locked eyes for a nano-second, Hermann immediately started scrawling and Newton started to whistle in a very uncharacteristic fashion. "Shit, shit, shit," Newt chanted in his mind.
About a week later, during a crazy-long shift preceding a string of Kaiju attacks (at that point the worst on record), Newton slam-dunked his third energy drink of the last 24 hours into the large garbage bin across the room. Hermann stood at his desk and tisked.
"Those things will damage your heart," he said, keeping focussed on his composition notebook and selection of yellow #2 pencils.
"Didn't think you cared."
"I don't," Hermann said too fast to be true.
"And all your cups of tea are soooo good for your health, man," Newton said sarcastically.
"My tea only contains caffeine, not high levels of sugar or other stimulant drugs as those little cans from hell do."
"They're not that bad."
"I seem to remember you telling me your heart skipped a beat once."
"Ok, ok. It was just that one time."
"If my calculations are correct, there will be many other 'one times'."
"Yeah, yeah, I'm sure." Newton made his usual 'blah blah' motion with his gloved hands.
"And your heart hasn't given you any trouble since that incident I mentioned?"
"No, no." Newton was telling the truth, but only in the physical sense. His heart was bothering him. He just didn't admit in words. He didn't say inside his mind "I really love that jerk," not even in jest. It was just a little jolt in his heart when he saw Hermann in the morning, when the man said something to him that fell into the category of nice, and especially when they made eye contact for any reason whatsoever. But all this was buried under miles and miles of denial and Kaiju enthusiasm.
"Music?" Newton said hopefully. Hermann groaned.
"As long as it's not that heavy metal stuff you blare at me. It gives me a headache."
"Sure," Newt said, walking to the corner of the lab and powering up his high tech mp3. "Let's go with a classic." AC/DC's Back in Black exploded from the speakers. Newt started air guitar while still holding a scalpel.
"Oh God," Hermann said, making his lips as thin as a sun-dried rubber band and shutting his eyes. When the vocals really heated up he walked drearily over to his own music player and switched it on. Newton was hit with a wall of Dvořák's 9th Symphony. He over-reacted by shaking his head like he'd been hit by a cartoon mallet and looked over at Hermann who was glaring back. The twinge in his heart was totally absorbed by the deafening cocktail of Allegro Con Fuoco and Australian hard rock. The sound of the two pieces fighting one another at every quarter note made Hermann's stomach lurch and he tried to concentrate on the classical meter as hard as possible.
"Dude! DUDE!" Newton yelled. Hermann waved him off and cranked up the volume. "DUUUUDDDE! THIS WOULD MAKE AN AWESOME MASHUP!" Newt rolled his eyes. He flipped off his music just as the song was ending. Hermann looked up with a start and turned the volume down to a whisper. Newton walked over to the blackboards.
"I was screaming at you, man. I said AC/DC and Dvořák would make an epic mash-up."
"No thank you. My ears were on the verge of bleeding as it is."
"Dvořák, right?" Newt said. Hermann nodded. "Funny, I took you for a Wagner kinda guy."
"No, I prefer Bruckner...Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov..."
"The tempestuous ones, huh?" Neither of them fought a small smile.
"Surprised you know who they a – oh, your parents, yes." Hermann tried not to jam the whole of his proverbial foot in his mouth. There was another personal land mine they had to step over. Not that they hadn't discussed it in full detail in their letters but face to face the false anonymity dropped completely. Suddenly they couldn't discuss all the things they did before. They just knew. When things like this did come up they simply stopped in their tracks and nodded and changed the subject. Hermann leaned to the side and switched off the New World Symphony. They looked in eachother's eyes for a second and Newton went back to his work.
"Damn. I gotta cut down on those energy drinks."