Summary: Newt is horny, and Hermann is just trying to read.
Just as Newt gets up to go jerk off in the bathroom, Hermann clears his throat loudly. He shifts down in bed and opens his legs, making eye contact with Newt over the top of his book.
Me and my pal Kiku just finished putting together a real fun collaborative comic that hearkens back to the origin of our friendship – talkin’ bout Pacific Rim. You can find physical copies of DRIFT / APART at my table at Flamecon, August 18 – 19!
Two dweeby scientists in love, two parallel dimensions, two back-to-back covers, two stories that meet in the middle…
Yeah yeah!!! This was so fun/heartbreaking to work on, check it out if you’re going to Flamecon!! Two stories about two lonely nerds during the loneliest years of their lives – Blue wrote Newt’s half and I wrote Hermann’s. Collabor18!!
I read a lot of fics where these two have serious trouble finding new jobs, and that’s fine. But while I don’t know exactly how academia functions, I think they’d be in very high demand as guest lecturers at every single major university on the planet. They’re both at the cutting edge of fascinating new fields and they both made amazing new discoveries.
These lectures would extremely informative and extremely entertaining/disastrous. No matter how much they like each other, they’re still them.
Aki, care to weigh in?
OK, as someone in academia, they would have absolutely no problem finding academic jobs. It’s a rough market out there for people without celebrity and without status/cred (i.e., young academics) but academia was specifically built to accommodate people like them, the famous people who did something real-world significant and now need to lecture for a while. If post-post-apocalyptic academia works anything like it, they’ll have cushy tenured jobs before you can say bob’s your uncle.
THAT BEING SAID.
Usually it’s a rather big deal to get a joint hire–two tenure track jobs at one go–and it’s always for married academics. BUT I WOULD BET SERIOUS MONEY THAT THESE TWO JUST BULLIED THEIR WAY THROUGH. Like, probably a Dean was like, “–so we can talk funding packages in th–” and Newt (because I’m imagining NYU at the mo’, this process would work differently if Hermann was bullying them into an Oxbridge position) would interrupt and be like, “Yeaaaaaah, I’m gonna need two packages.”
And the Dean would be like, slow blink, “I didn’t realize you had a spouse.”
And Newt would shout something like, “YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH,” and then there would be a lot of shouting and door-slamming and Hermann would call later and be like, “yes, let’s talk about the funding package in the spring. Also, we’re definitely not married.” And then he’d cough politely. “But we will only need one office.” Another polite cough. “And we’ll be co-teaching all of our courses.”
@avelera and I serving the hottest take of Hermann. PR:U was a badly written shallow mockery of the first movie but at least it showed us a glimpse Hermann The Obsessive as applied to relationships
For those wondering: Newt is a Disaster Pansexual and fully owns and, arguably, flaunts it
Of all the universes they could have had, this was theirs: A Newton Geiszler shaped thing trussed up in a cell, and Hermann Gottlieb desperate and unable to give up hope. . To save Newton’s life, Hermann is driven to tinker with the very handwriting of god.
god this is my hc for how the separation went too pretty much? i think hermann kept emailing even when newt stopped replying regularly and i think maybe the precursors let newt make the most basic replies every now and then (ie avoiding discussing work/only making boring small talk) just enough that it doesn’t arouse too much suspicion like newt cutting out hermann entirely would (and newt’s replies got shorter and less and less frequent each time before they stop altogether)
hermann just. continuing to send him stuff anyway after newt seemingly stops caring is so SAD. but at the same time i feel like newt (once he’s freed from precursor control w the power of love thanks) would really, really appreciate it, because he’s already been forcefully separated from the man he loves for ten years but at least he wasn’t cut off from him entirely? he still sort of has an idea of what the decade’s been like for hermann even if he couldn’t reply, current hermann’s not a complete stranger to him