Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/912464.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Pacific_Rim_(2013)
  Relationship:
      Newton_Geiszler/Hermann_Gottlieb
  Additional Tags:
      Child_Abuse, Childhood_Trauma, Relationship(s), The_Drift_(Pacific_Rim),
      Surviving_Child_Abuse, Dealing_With_Trauma, LGBTQ_Jewish_Character(s)
  Series:
      Part 1 of Imagine_Sisyphus_Happy
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-08-04 Chapters: 13/13 Words: 15664
****** All I Want ******
by Jenni_Snake
Summary
     In a world invaded by monsters, Newton has to deal with the monsters
     from his past.
     (The tags are meant as trigger warnings for dealing with difficult
     subjects. Please be aware.)
Notes
     This story contains GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS of child sexual abuse.
     PLEASE HEED THE WARNINGS.
     I have attempted to work in most of the canon timeline, though
     chapter ten was based on what might have been an error in my
     reference material: I have left it in because I liked the effect.
     Also, I have played fast and loose with the movie script, so please
     be aware that there will be inconsistencies.
     For translations of foreign words and phrases, you can either hover
     over_foreign_underlined_phrases or see the list in the Appendix
     (which is posted as a separate work). (*Please do not click on
     underlined translations, they are false links.) Thanks to one of my
     commenters for helping with fixes!
     *this story is complete, Chapter 14 does not exist, it was formerly
     the Appendix (TO ANYONE WHO LEFT ME A COMMENT PREVIOUSLY AT THE END
     OF THE STORY I AM SO SORRY! Those comments were deleted when I made
     that chapter a separate appendix! I loved them, and remember them in
     spirit, and thank you so much for them! AO3 admin regrets to inform
     me that they are gone forever, but they live on in my heart. <3)
***** Chapter 1 *****
Their arrival in Hong Kong on the last, wet day of December didn’t start off as
inconspicuously as Newton would have liked. Besides having been made to look
like a fool in front of an engineer, a former Jaeger pilot, and the ‘dome
Marshal himself, Hermann had just beat his idea into the ground in front of
him, all while treading into territory that they had already agreed was off
limits in their arguments. Without an ounce of regret, Newton lobbed a sticky
slice of intestine which stuck to the chalkboard right above where Hermann was
scribbling, and left the lab without even washing his hands.
Hours later, Newton slunk back, balancing a tray of food that he had scrounged
up from the long-closed mess on each hand. The smell of kaiju guts hit him
before he acclimatized again, and he wondered, just for a fraction of a second,
how on Earth he, let alone Hermann, put up with it.
Even in the other Shatterdomes, the research teams had usually avoided eating
in the mess hall. Now that their team was reduced to two, Newton didn’t see the
point of trekking all the way there to sit awkwardly with his shirt cuffs
rolled down and Hermann wordlessly calling him a kaiju groupie.
Hooking his foot around a chair, he plopped down, spun around, and pushed
himself to slide up in front of Hermann.
“Mayn_her,” he said deferentially, proffering a tray to him. Hermann opened his
mouth, then just smiled as he sat himself down with some difficulty, took his
fork, and started eating.
Picking up his chopsticks, Newton smirked, embarrassed, and started to shovel
food into his mouth. It seemed like a new record to have already had a fight.
But, just like Newton no longer called Hermann out on being hangry (“That’s not
even a word!” “You’re right - it’s two. In one. Ingenious, really, if you think
about the linguistics behind it...”), Hermann, in turn, no longer said anything
when Newt slipped into Yiddish.
They used to fight in German, partly so the rest of their team didn’t
understand them, and partly because it came naturally. Whenever he was losing
an argument, without realizing it, Newton would start to slip in more and more
Hebrew until Hermann could barely understand him, at which point he would yell:
“Warum_sprichst_du_kein_richtiges_Deutsch?!”
And Newton would stop immediately, and Hermann would win. It took a few
arguments for Hermann to realize he wasn’t actually winning. The very last time
they had argued in German, instead of finding Newton stewing and muttering
about how he was right after all, he found him standing over his specimens,
staring into nothing, drained. Newt had tried to hide a sniffle by wiping his
nose with the top of his sleeve and continuing to work, but Hermann had turned
away, abashed. Neither of them had talked about it, but Newton was grateful
that, ever since, they had argued English.
Exhausted from the trip and their altercations, they ate in silence, knees just
touching, neither of them noticing that it was already New Year’s Day.
 
***** Chapter 2 *****
In 1995, Silicon Valley was the place for tech-savvy musicians to be, or so his
uncle had kept telling his parents until they pulled up their roots in Berlin
and headed for California. Newton had been transfixed by the space, the houses
that were so far away from each other, how the hills were brown but the lawns
were bright green.
And the ocean. From the backyard of their Watsonville home, if he climbed up
the first rung on the fence, he could see the grey ocean stretch away to the
horizon. At night, the lights of the city ran down the hill and stopped
abruptly, swallowed up by the large, dark expanse.
The best part of moving had been getting to live so close to his uncle, whom he
had only ever known as a voice on the other end of the phone speaking to him in
a mixture of German and English, even if he didn’t understand. In California,
he was a tall man with soft, blond hair and squarish glasses who looked a
little bit like his father, but rounder. He was also the only person who spoke
to him in English at home. His uncle had always scoffed at his sister-in-law
for teaching Newton a useless language like Yiddish, claiming that she was
going to confuse the boy, who, aside from speaking German with his father,
should stick to learning English. His mother reminded him that if his half-
baked amateur linguistics were as good as he thought they were, then Altavista
would have poached him from EA instead, and that he could just farmach_dos_moyl
and enjoy programming hardware for his shpilele. Just because he had hated his
own father for ramming another language down his throat, it was no reason to
not give her son an advantage in life. Just to annoy her brother-in-law, his
mother always called him feter Günter, and he’d correct her to onk’l on
instinct, then catch himself and insist he was Onkel_Günter, and finally Uncle
Gunther. Newt just took to calling him Gunnar, like his father had since they
were kids, and no one seemed to mind.
***** Chapter 3 *****
It wasn’t until the completion of the Tokyo Shatterdome that the PPDC decided
to bring the various arms of its K-Science team together at one station, even
though the scientists themselves had been griping for months that it would only
make sense. The physicists were happy to have an uninterrupted flow of
information from the breach, due in part to the more advanced technology that
the Hong Kong ‘dome had lacked. The geologists were happy to have more complete
access to all records on the Challenger Deep, too. It was unspoken that no one
wanted to be that close to the breach, but, from a scientific standpoint, it
was only logical. None of the teams, however, appreciated the evolutionary
biologists who only half-jokingly said that it would be easiest for a kaiju to
make landfall in Tokyo.
Newton had never really been comfortable being his team’s lead, and it was even
worse now that he was the liaison with the other team leaders, making him
unpopular with them because they hated his ideas, and with his own colleagues,
because their voice never seemed to be heard at meetings. They did, grudgingly,
admit that it wasn’t so much Newton’s fault as it was the fault of the other
departments, and that no one wanted to deal with what everyone outside of the
biology department thought was the most ridiculously dangerous of the
investigative realms, and only the biologists thought was, therefore, the most
interesting.
Most other leads were happy when ‘Doctor Geiszler’ shut down and shut up, but
after their fourth or fifth meeting, he was approached by the hobbling Doctor
Gottlieb, who had introduced himself to the group at their first meeting as the
youngest and most sociable of his department. Newton’s eyes had gone wide, and
he blinked, swearing to himself never to wander into the physics lab for fear
of finding Tolkeinesque wraiths scrawling with bone-and-paper hands on ancient
chalkboards. He tried to play it cool, and forced his most jovial self at
Gottlieb, who switched hands to lean on his cane with his left, and stretched
out his right stiffly. Newton was surprised by the strength in his handshake.
“Gottlieb,” he introduced himself, “Hermann. Don’t call me that.”
During the next few meetings, he swore he caught Doctor Gottlieb smirking in
his direction at some comment or other that he had guessed, correctly, would be
amusing to the biology team, but looked away casually whenever Newton tried to
meet his gaze.
It wasn’t until the first meeting in March that Hermann had surprised him out
of doodling over Tresspasser’s tattooed teeth by asking him a question.
“What do you think, Doctor Geiszler?”
Newton’s mouth hung open for a moment, as he wished that no one had been paying
attention to what he had been doing, and slowly raised his pen to his mouth,
flipping his arm over. He hoped the look of consternation that had crept onto
his face somehow passed as pensive, since his heart was racing and he could
feel himself blushing.
“About the effect of salinated dihydrogen monoxide-diluted ammonia on kaiju
lung function?” Hermann prompted, throwing him a lifeline with a smirk.
And that was when their back-and-forth had devolved into their first argument.
In front of everyone. In German.
All in all, it went pretty well.
***** Chapter 4 *****
School started out fine for Newton, more than fine after he began to speak
about halfway through kindergarten, and his teachers removed his ESL coding by
the first grade. It was then that he really took off, and he had been skipped
ahead from third grade into fourth, even if fifth wouldn’t even have been a
challenge for him, but he was already the smallest student his own age, anyway.
If he really thought about it, and he never liked to think about it, it was
just about the same time he had won the San Jose Citywide Science Fair in his
age category (though he had overheard the judges joking that if the other kids
wouldn’t have beat him up, they would have given him the junior high prize
instead). His parents proudly bought him a lifetime subscription to Scientific
American, and he had got his photo in the paper. Being more of an engineer than
a biologist, his uncle had decided that, even though his project had been an
investigation on salamander limb regeneration, a tamagotchi would be an
appropriate gift.
He sat on the edge of Newton’s bed, his babysitter for the night while his
parents were out celebrating their anniversary (the only occasion he refused to
get them a card for), shrugging as Newton got the wrapping paper off and raised
his eyebrows at the toy.
“You can take it apart or take care of it, whatever you like,” his uncle told
him.
“Thank you, Gunnar,” Newton said, giving him a hug.
“Everyone needs to be cared for,” he cooed, stroking his hair and holding him
long enough that Newton became uncomfortable. “Jeder_sollte_jemanden_haben,_um
den_er_sich_kümmern_kann.” When his uncle's hand slid down his back and under
the waist of his pants, he closed his eyes.
It wasn’t much later that his uncle switched off the light and closed the door
with a Gute_Nacht, as if nothing had happened. Newton clenched his new toy in
his hand harder and harder until he heard the front door open and close and his
parents’ voices in the hallway, and the plastic screen cracked, cutting open a
long slice on his thumb that he sucked until he fell asleep.
*
It wasn't something he thought about often. It wasn't something he wanted to
think about, ever. It was just something that happened. Often, not often, he
didn't know, and he didn't want to find out. It was a secret he kept, not
knowing who he was protecting.
***** Chapter 5 *****
Nobody thought that being a PPDC biologist was a glamourous job. Except the
biologists. Particularly Newton. He would tell people, especially when he would
FaceTime with his mother, how cool it was to see the newest specimens (myan
doktorkl!), and the cities, or, well, what was left of them (zikhroyne-
livrokhe), but the food, he could go on and on about the food and she would in
turn tease him that he was eating too much, or not enough, or just eating too
many strange things with tentacles.
He wouldn’t tell people that moving from Shatterdome to Shatterdome and back
again, sometimes after six months, sometimes after a year, depending on where
the kaiju went, gave him the opportunity not to have to get to know people, to
not to have to settle in, not to acquire anything except more and more ink
(which he never, ever told his mother about, and made sure to roll down his
sleeves and do up his collar for every conversation, and sent up a small prayer
before they spoke that she wouldn't find out).
Still, even if he hadn’t been that close with his team, he missed the company
and started eating in the mess, and started to feel worse because he ate alone,
lost amongst the crowd, sleeves rolled down after he had gotten glares from the
Jaeger pilots and others who had probably lost friends and family in attacks,
too. He started to doubt the sanity of trying to eat among people, until the
day he arrived in the mess early for lunch, having forgotten to eat breakfast
that morning or dinner the night before. The empty table he had chosen quickly
started to fill up with Jaeger engineers who introduced themselves and let him
be part of their conversations, and were actually interested in the kaiju. They
had even smiled when they had recognized his name, noting that he was 'that
little doctor guy' whose reports they read every so often. They talked amongst
themselves, and with him, about their projects, and their days and about the
neuroscience of drifting and the engineering of a pons and the human biological
capacity to share a neural link. And sometimes at least one or two of them got
transferred by coincidence with him to the next ‘dome when the next attack was
predicted to hit, and at the very least he had people around him who he could
talk to, but never really had to get to know.
The only other people he got used to were the handful of Marshals and
commanders, and the various K-Sci department heads he ran into at their once
again respective ‘domes. The other scientists were polite enough in person, but
he was thankful that their bi-weekly meetups were done over e-mail now, since
he found it much easier to type his diatribes without interruption. It took him
a while to realize that the arguments usually devolved into him and Doctor
Gottleib sending messages back and forth to each other, one of them having
forgotten, after their heated typing, to hit the ‘Reply All’ button. Which was
fortunate for them, since their arguments usually devolved into how many German
insults Newton could deflect by calling his opponent Hermann until he cracked.
Newton smiled at the computer screen every time he won an argument.
In May 2020, it was back to Tokyo from Anchorage. Every time he flew into
another city, he’d imagine what it would look like with unintended paths carved
recklessly through it, like the difference between San Francisco when he had
left for his first year at MIT, and then when he had been among the first to
witness the kaiju-inflicted destruction from the air. He had tried not to
stare, and not to think, and not to giggle maniacally as incomprehensible
sensations washed over him, and had just turned his music up and closed his
eyes instead. He’d never seen Tokyo before Onibaba, but his eyes could trace
the scars that, four years on, were still being stitched back together.
He hadn’t expected a welcome beyond the ‘dome ops manager letting him know that
the samples from Ho Chi Minh wouldn’t start showing up until the next day
because they had been expecting him in Hong Kong, but escorted him to his room
and then to his lab, and he was happy not having to deal with either pomp or
circumstance. It gave him a chance to pour over old data on his holoscreen for
the rest of the evening, tapping his foot to the music that blared through his
earbuds and and occasionally choking on a mouthful of month-old matzo crackers
he’d found in a box in his bag, which tasted the same as the day he had opened
them.
So he nearly jumped out of his skin when Hermann materialized out of thin air
next to his chair.
“I knocked,” he stated, as Newton scrambled to turn off his music, everything
but the gleam in Hermann’s eye indicating that he was ignoring his surprise, “I
suppose you were too absorbed to hear.”
Newton rubbed his eyes under his glasses and tried to formulate an apology
through a yawn.
“I was wondering if you had anything useful from your time in Alaska,” Hermann
said, without apparently caring that Newton wasn’t a part of the conversation,
and interrupting him just as he opened his mouth.
“And I see you don’t disappoint. That,” he said, pointing at the parka slung
over the back of Newton’s chair with his cane. Newton passed it to him with a
mental shrug, wondering how on Earth anyone could be cold in Southeast Asia in
May.
“It’s a bit large, but it will do. Danke.”
And before Newton could add even the most polite of inanities or scathing of
remarks, Hermann cut him off again.
“You should clean those up,” he suggested, though it was phrased more like a
command, waving his cane at the box of crackers Newton had spilled in his
surprise, before pivoting and limping from the room.
“Thanks,” Newton yelled at his retreating figure. “Nice seeing you again, too!”
Starting the next day, kaiju specimens started trickling in to the lab. Newton
swore he would never tell anyone, but there was something sensual about digging
into the glop of animal remains. He tried to not even think it, just in case
anyone was around who could read his thoughts.
Also starting the next day, as if to try to save imaginary paper, or maybe cut
down on electricity, Hermann stopped sending Newton e-mails. Newton took it as
something of a blessing... until later that afternoon, when Hermann showed up
to share whatever was on his mind.
And it happened the next day. And the day after. And the day after that, until
it became so regular of an occurrence that Newton started taking his coffee
breaks around the same time each day, then started pouring a cup of coffee for
Hermann, too, and then started to really look forward to his visits. Through
their time spent together, Newton found that Hermann wasn’t just the
cantankerous bastard that stalked the hallways, but that he had a wry sense of
humour, and smiled more than most people thought, and was enthusiastic about
collecting ancient Roman coins and shy about liking spy novels, and had studied
in Berlin and lectured at Cambridge. And it took Newton quite a while to
readjust his perception when he found that they were contemporaries, but
Hermann had dismissed it with a wave of his hand and a dispassionate
explanation that he suffered from hip dysplasia, and the surgeries hadn’t quite
caught everything but ibuprofen made up for the rest, and he would still rather
be standing than sitting. Newton chose not to say anything about his fashion
sense. And Newton started to notice Hermann’s eyes and how the corners creased
just ever so slightly when he smiled, and how his skin was creamy, not pale,
and smooth, and Newton caught himself a few times staring, and as soon as he
did he plunged back into his coffee. Without even noticing, he’d shared all the
same information with Hermann - about MIT, and how many times he had gone to
see Trespasser’s skull when he was in Chicago, and showed him the tattoos he'd
had done on his inner wrists, his first set, the second one only three months
after the first because it really was addictive, and how he had started
learning Japanese to read articles at Berkeley, but ended up using it to read
manga instead. Or the time when he was ten and entered a kid’s hot dog eating
contest and came in second place and couldn’t get out of bed for the next three
days he was so sick, or how he used to try to pet stingrays when he was
swimming in the ocean, or how he had watched all twenty-two Godzilla movies at
least three times by the time he was seven and got in trouble with his mother
for walking around the house screeching and stomping on small buildings he’d
made out of popsicle sticks.
It was well into June by the time the kaiju remains had started to run out, and
Newton didn’t even have to scrub down before pouring his cup of coffee. He was
staring at the ceiling, trying to piece together two sets of data while resting
his eyes from the holoscreen. There was something in a DNA sample he had seen,
but couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was that was bothering him. Then,
unbidden, another thing that was bothering him popped into his mind: Hermann
was late. Newton blushed.
Not five minutes later, as Newton pretended to be staring at his data set, but
was really watching the door out of the corner of his eye, Hermann marched in,
having finally shed his parka in the muggy weather. According to the unwritten
rules of their breaks, it was Newton’s turn for a story or an interesting
thought, but, after handing Hermann a cup of coffee, opening his mouth was as
far as he got.
“Don’t even start!” Hermann warned, taking the cup and spilling half of it, and
then setting it down and mopping at the mess with a handkerchief all the while
ranting about the ‘dome Marshal, misuse of funds, resource allocation, losing
part of his department, dealing with bureaucracies and paperwork in general,
all punctuated with just about every curse word Hermann probably knew, and a
few that surprised even Newton.
When it seemed that Hermann had finished, Newton sheepishly offered up, well,
something, it had to have been, but thinking back on it he could never remember
exactly what it was he had said, shocked as he was by the reaction it produced.
It was then, for the first time since Newton had met him, that the tight line
of Hermann’s mouth slowly unfurled, and the sparkle in his eyes beat the sound
to his trembling lips. His laugh was as unexpected as it was infectious, and
Newton laughed, too, until he had to wipe tears from his eyes and catch his
breath to steady himself.
Once they both regained their composure, they stood and sat in a silence that
stretched into what Newton considered to be awkwardness. After a full minute,
Hermann, any trace that his lips ever held a smile gone, rolled his eyes and
let out a huff.
“Verdammt!” he muttered, grasping Newton by the knot of his tie and half-
pulling him out of his seat and into a kiss.
And by the time Newton came back to himself, his lab was empty, and it was
already past seven o'clock.
***** Chapter 6 *****
The day of his bar mitzvah, Newton wiped his mother’s lipstick off his cheek
with a grin. He had begged his parents to have his party at Chuck E. Cheese’s,
and they had acquiesced. It was only a handful of friends and some of their
parents who were there, with his own parents, his Aunt Sylvia who had come from
Philadelphia, and his uncle making up the family side.
It was cold and dark by the time everyone left, stuffed with soda and pizza,
but it wasn’t until they got home that his uncle gave him his gift. He tried
not to cringe at the hand he laid on his back, especially with his parents and
his aunt watching, and opened the envelope his uncle handed him. His eyes
widened at the crisp twenty dollar bills inside, eighteen of them, and he
looked at his uncle, then at his parents.
“Was_soll_man_sagen?” his father prompted him.
“Vielen_Dank,” he said, quietly, staring at the card.
“You can spend it, or invest it, or whatever you like,” his uncle told him.
“You’re old enough now - it’s your decision.”
And with a squeeze of his shoulder, and some pleasantries to his parents and
his other sister, his uncle bid them all goodnight, and left.
Newton sat on his bed until much later, having laid out the bills
alphanumerically by serial number in front of him, resisting the violent urge
he had to tear them to pieces. At midnight, he put them in the drawer in his
nightstand, switched off the light and pulled the covers over his head. He had
decided that he would put the money in a bank account, a separate one for only
that. And the next time his uncle... spoke German to him (as he’d started
calling it, at the same time chastising himself for something so stupid-
sounding), he would withdraw every penny in the same denomination and burn it.
And it wasn’t until his fourteenth birthday that he remembered the money and
the bank account again, and realised he hadn’t had to touch it. He laid in bed,
counting down the seconds until midnight, and, as the red numbers on the clock
flicked to twelve, he let out his breath, finally realising he was free, and
not caring why.
As he fell asleep, the thought drifted into his head that his bed felt empty,
and hated himself for it.
 
***** Chapter 7 *****
In the place and time and circumstances, it was what could pass for dating.
More than their daily chats (which only sometimes turned into arguments,
especially after the next kaiju landfall in November), they occasionally left
the ‘dome to wander the rain-and-neon soaked Tokyo streets, sometimes to eat in
tiny restaurants with too-white walls and too-loud pop music, sometimes to sit
at the back of near-empty movie theatres and whisper and hold hands or make out
like teenagers because they couldn’t understand what was going on on-screen.
And Newton caught himself grinning at the ceiling goofily in his cot at night
after they’d come back to the dim, empty hallways, stolen a last kiss and gone
to their separate rooms. And he’d fall asleep agitated over not having pressed
Hermann to bring him back to his room, but that would probably be out of the
question, or inviting him back to his own, but pulled the covers over his head
and forbade himself from ever letting anyone into his bed ever again.
During the day, their work went on. Occasionally their research would overlap,
and Hermann would roll the one chalkboard that his team begrudgingly let him
take into the biology lab and scribble notes on the weight and size ratio of
the kaiju, and they would discuss and debate the dimensions of the breach and
how to reconcile its indisputable gravitational pull with its unidirectional
passability, or its instability with its refusal to collapse. Whenever they got
close to what felt like a breakthrough, they joked about putting themselves out
of a job.
They grew into their silences, becoming comfortable around them instead of
panicking to fill them up. When they had something to say they would say it;
when they didn’t, they merely enjoyed one another’s presence.
Every so often, though, Newton would grow restless and want Hermann to tell him
how he got through the day, let alone got out of bed, with the prospect of
another twenty-four hours of struggle stretching painfully before him. Newton
stored up the question, knowing that, for some reason he tried to ignore, he
shouldn’t ask, but needing to hear an answer. When he finally asked, he made it
seem like the question had only just popped into his mind, casually, out of the
blue, imposing on their silence while he inputted data and Hermann scrawled in
chalk and tutted and sighed to himself
“Does it ever stop you from doing things?” Newton asked, not even taking his
eyes away from the screen. “I mean, your hip.”
Newton didn’t turn around, but he didn’t have to - Hermann had stopped
everything that he was doing, and stood stock-still. Newton, too, stopped
typing, sat frozen in his chair, trying not to breathe, kicking himself for
thinking he could even ask, wondering what had possessed him.
Without giving so much as a hint of recognition that Newton had even spoken,
Hermann started scratching on the board again, and even threw out a question to
Newton on retinal distortion under deep water pressure. Newton started
breathing again and answered him, glad that he was ignoring his intrusion
altogether. Hermann continued to elaborate on his own scientific question,
wrote something down on the board, and Newton hurried over when he was pressed
for verification. He peered at the numbers and letters, Hermann watching over
his shoulder, but was having trouble following the equation when, suddenly, he
was spun around and pressed hard up against the board in a forceful kiss.
Hermann softened it slowly, rubbing his palms up against Newton’s abdomen, and
Newton smiled.
“Does that answer your question?” Hermann asked slyly.
Pushing his glasses up on his nose, Newton nodded: “Yup.”
The colour had risen to Hermann’s cheeks and neck, and his eyes were
fluttering, half shut, as he pressed his thumbs deep just beside Newton’s hip
bones, licking one of his nipples through his shirt, making Newton stand up on
his toes. Newton started breathing deeper and faster, feeling his own heat
rise, and moaned.
“Door?” he asked, hoping it would pass for an entire question.
“Locked,” Hermann rasped, kissing and nipping at Newton’s neck.
Newton nearly lost control at Hermann’s seeming impulsiveness, and felt his
knees buckle beneath him. He switched their places, pushing Hermann onto the
formulae that had already been hopelessly smudged, and while Hermann clutched
at the underside of the board, Newton fumbled with his zipper, then, dragging
his hands along Hermann's sides, slowly slid down onto his knees in front of
him. He took the tip of Hermann’s hardening cock between the bottom of his
tongue and his lip, rubbing against his red, wet tip, then slipped his tongue
underneath as he took Hermann into his mouth. Hermann clutched the board,
arching his back, and Newton moved over his erection with his tongue, and and
kissed the end, and sucked hard at just the tip and made Hermann mewl and sigh
and whimper without restraint. The sounds Hermann made fed back into Newton’s
arousal, and he did all he could to keep Hermann on edge and draw him out and,
with a groan, help him reach climax. Trying not to make a mess, he held him in
his mouth after he came until Hermann pulled away, reluctantly tucking himself
back into his clothing, and Newton wiped his mouth on the roll of his sleeve.
When it came to relationships, Newton was feeling his way in the dark. Even
though he was friendly, even outgoing under the right circumstances, he had
never been forward and so watched his friends’ college romances from the
sidelines, giving excuses that he was too young, and then too busy, and, as
time went on and he still found himself alone, not giving excuses at all, just
avoiding the conversations altogether.
If Hermann had been in any previous relationships, he chose not to mention it,
and treated Newton as if he were, outside of his research, the centre of his
universe.
Late one night after, on the cab ride back to the ‘dome after dinner and a
movie, Newton had been looking out the window, running his hand up and down
Hermann’s leg. Hermann had flinched, and Newton yanked his hand away, glancing
at him.
“Sorry.”
“Es_macht_nichts,” Hermann replied casually.
Newton stared at Hermann’s thigh, and ventured to put his hand back, still
staring, and massage it lightly. Even though it was dark and Hermann was
looking away, Newton saw the corners of his mouth turn up in a smile, and
Hermann's whole body relaxed a little.
“Does it ever stop hurting?”
At the question, Hermann tensed, and Newton wondered why the hell he couldn’t
keep his own mouth shut. Hermann looked at him sharply and bopped him lightly
on the forehead with the head of his cane. Newton cried out and clasped his
head.
“Does that?”
Newton shut up and rubbed his head and tried to shake the pain away, and stared
back out the window. He felt Hermann take his hand and put it back on his
thigh, keeping it in place tenderly with his own. But something about Newt’s
own words hovered in the air around them. Newton swore he had heard the
question somewhere before, but couldn’t quite place it.
The one night he was invited back to Hermann’s quarters, he had to remind him
that he needed to be up at three in the morning and again at six to collect
data sets, but Hermann was undeterred.
To Newton’s eyes, Hermann’s room seemed stark: bookshelves organized neatly
(and upon closer inspection, alphabetically, with a small pile of Ian Fleming
crushed into a corner), with barely anything on the table surfaces. But he was
soon reminded that comparing Hermann’s living space with his similarly
immaculate workspace was not the reason he was there. Hermann pulled him onto
his lap and they lost themselves in a kiss that they didn’t need to worry about
anyone walking in on.
They took their time, fooled around, rubbed against each other through their
pants, not able to get much further with the narrowness of the cot and the
awkwardness of Hermann’s hip, but they found a way to lie together, simply
basking in each other’s warmth, and dozed off.
It wasn’t until he was pipetting in the lab at quarter after three, music
turned up too loud, that Newton realized Hermann had planned the invitation
that way. Newton put his head down on his desk and closed his eyes, and when he
opened them a moment later, it was already six.
They spent more and more time together, on and off the clock, until they became
a team within a team. When Hidoi struck Bangkok and Newton was called to the
Hong Kong ‘dome, Hermann somehow finagled the Tokyo Marshal into letting him
go, too.
***** Chapter 8 *****
When he graduated early, at the age of fifteen with, as his aunt joked, only
his glasses prescription outstripping his IQ, and scholarships and letters of
invitation came from institutions across the country, Newton jumped at MIT. Two
years later, for his Convocation, his parents came out to visit him, and even
his aunt flew up from Pennsylvania. When he found out they were the only ones
coming, he breathed a sigh of relief. When MIT offered him a scholarship for
his grad work, he took it without a second thought. When it came to his Ph.D.,
he hadn’t meant to start an academic bidding war over himself, but when
Berkeley had sent him the first letter, he tore it up having barely glanced at
it; he wouldn’t go home. Not discouraged by his refusal, and even his firm
acceptance of MIT’s continually higher counteroffers (he wasn't looking for it,
but it was nice to feel wanted) Berkeley continued to send him a new proposal
every semester. It got to the point where he would shred the envelopes without
even opening them, shaking as he did so. When he accepted a guest lecturer
position for the 2013 spring and summer semesters at the evolutionary biology
department in Chicago, news got back to him that Berkeley was fuming - but it
didn’t stop them from sending their students to work under him.
And it was that Saturday, pints in hand, sitting around the Pub’s thick wooden
tables in the basement of the Ida Noyes building with his students, some of
whom were even slightly older than he was, that the news came in. Somebody
joked at first, drunkenly trying to count on their fingers, that CNN was about
five months too late for April Fool’s day, and that it wasn’t even the first,
and it was way past noon, anyway (to which their more sober friend asked with a
chuckle if they were sure). A group of fine arts majors in the corner shouted
obscenities about the poor costuming job and the scale being way off; someone
shouted to call the national guard; another, in their best Orson Welles
impression, offered up: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the most terrifying
thing I have ever witnessed!” and everyone laughed. A cheer went up when the
unbelievable godzilla sliced through the Golden Gate Bridge, and someone even
yelled that they’d seen better. And then the tables started vibrating. Phone
after phone went off around the bar, and the mocking turned to confusion, and
then to ripples of panic. His own phone lit up in front of him, and he
deciphered the last message he would get for the next twenty-four hours as the
wireless carriers backed-up:
Dad (mobile)
Mom und me still ok told stay put into further notice alread messages you aunt
Gunnar missing love you vatti
And for the next several hours everyone watched in silence, in awe, in terror
and disbelief as the world changed in front of their eyes. Some people started
crying, and others comforted them wordlessly. Nobody said anything, or if they
did, it wasn’t the words that were important. At one point, he looked down and
saw that one of his students had been holding his hand. He didn’t know her very
well, and she didn’t look at him, couldn’t tear her eyes from the television
screen, but he didn’t let go. Students trickled in to the bar to watch until it
was standing room only. Advisories came for people to stay together if they
were able, but remain in their homes, to await further information; to be
prepared for evacuation if they could, but please not to be on the roads if at
all possible; to keep their televisions or radios on, and keep their phones on
but not to call or text anyone unless absolutely necessary. Twitter, facebook,
tumblr and just about every social media site went down as too many users
flooded them with information. At the two-hour mark, one of the reporters broke
down, and people started to go home. Tricia, the bartender, took charge like
she did on any crowded night and reiterated what the newscasters were saying as
people left - stay together, stay informed. She filled up empty jugs, bottles,
containers, whatever she could get her hands on, with water and passed it out
to the people leaving, just in case. People left with people they didn’t know
but would now never forget. Some people never left; Newton was one of them. He
tracked the monster’s progress in his mind’s eye, almost street by street, as
it laid waste to San Francisco, and mentally willed it to keep going north, not
to turn south, to stay the fuck away from his family. And he tried, tried his
best, to avoid all thoughts about his uncle in case in the silence someone
heard that most despicable of thoughts that slipped into his mind.
For the next six days he couldn’t remember eating or drinking or sleeping. No
one had to say that classes were cancelled, that the semester would end there,
with only three weeks to go. It almost seemed as if no one said anything at
all, ever.
And then, finally, it was over. And at the same time it carried on and people
helped each other and were called heroes and survivors and the nation and the
world were in shock and awe and grief and fear.
It was only then that the lists of the missing started coming in, and the lists
of the dead were confirmed. Time of death and location of the body placed
Gunnar on the Bridge at rush hour, heading home from a meeting across the Bay,
among the very first casualties. And his father couldn’t talk to anyone, and
his mother barely could, and Newton couldn’t say anything, either. How could he
tell them that, just like everyone else in the bar who was watching at that
moment, he had cheered?
He didn’t want to go home right away - he couldn’t, even if he had wanted to,
as the area was still closed off to all but essential air and ground services -
but Berkeley had called, and he had known they would almost the second before
his phone lit up, picking it up before it even had the chance to ring. It
wasn’t permanent or a commitment, they said to open, in case they scared him
off again, just a team they were putting together, exclusive access to tissue
and fluid samples and special clearance to start bringing people in
immediately, and they didn’t have to say it, that there was no one else in the
world they would even think of asking, just like any of the other elite few who
made up the rest of the team. And he didn’t even have to say yes, because there
was no one in their right mind who would have said no.
His mother both loved and hated having him home, because the feeling still
lingered that it might happen again, but once he was there her concern faded
into the background, and it was her grief he found uncomfortable. He wanted to
scold her for taking on what should have belonged to his father and his aunt,
should have been weighing them down and wanted to shout at her that they should
be feeling this bad, not her, but he said nothing. And every weekend he spent
at home she bothered him to go visit his uncle’s grave. And every time he said
no, but still drove her to Pajaro Valley, and waited in the car. She said
nothing, understanding in some small way that it was different for everyone,
but it still broke her heart. And he waited in the hot car, stewing, muttering
to himself that the only thing she never asked him was why, but that it didn’t
matter because he could never tell her, could never make her blame herself
because it wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t anybody’s fault but his own, that each
of the eighty-seven times it happened that he could have said no and he never
did. And he rubbed the headache that sprung up behind his left eye to try to
calm himself from the moment he saw the movement of her taking the brown scarf
off her head from just beyond the trees, to the moment she got in the
passenger’s seat and they drove the entire way home in silence, except for
whatever radio station she chose mumbling in the background.
And every Monday morning he got to forget all about it, and instead marvel in
something completely new, completely alien, and share it with people just like
himself, who, in polite company, said nothing about the kaiju, held their
tongues when people used words like ‘horror’ and ‘tragedy’ when they wanted to
scream things like ‘fantastic’ and ‘discovery’ and shake them because didn’t
they know how amazing this was?! And in their spare time, or when they couldn’t
sleep, they built different scale models of Trespasser, and littered them along
the windowsill, and others started bringing in their own toys, their Godzillas
and King Kongs and Optimus Primes and Borg ships and someone even found the
Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man - and one-by-one Trespasser crushed them all. The lab
was abuzz with nervous energy and caffeine and lack of sleep and conversations
about did you see this? and what about how that works? and who knew that would
do that? and I had no idea and isn’t this so fucking cool?!?
And every Saturday morning, his mood darkened with every one of the ninety-four
miles, ninety-three miles, ninety-two miles until he pulled into the driveway
of his parent’s house and resisted the urge to turn the car around and drive
straight back. But his mother always greeted her bubbala with a kiss and a hug
so hard that he smiled when he wheezed that she was going to break his ribs.
And she fed him, and he ate and mowed the lawn, and ate some more, and he tried
to push away the dread at the question his mother would always ask. Except that
time, she didn’t.
“You should go see Gunnar.”
Whether it was because his father hadn’t asked him in German, or really hadn’t
asked him at all, or because he used his uncle’s name and made him sound almost
like a completely different person, or because of the way he said it, his tone
relating the words his mouth couldn’t form - do it for your mother, not me -
whatever it was, Newton went. And they let him go alone.
It didn’t take him long to find the piece of flat, black polished marble with
the Star of David at the top and GEISZLER engraved in grey into its surface. He
didn’t know what to say, or what to feel, and was angry that he felt nothing,
and anger was the only thing that stuck but he couldn’t let it out, couldn’t
yell, there were other people there, but without a word and with hardly a sound
he kicked the slab, hard, in a rage, and kept kicking and kicking until his
foot was sore, and then he dropped to his knees and pounded the flat,
unforgiving surface with his fists, and yanked the yarmulke out of his hair and
tossed it at the stone and vowed he’d never be buried anywhere near here and
kept hitting and hitting until he ran out of energy and sat, panting, under the
hot sun chilled by the cool breezes, until his ears rang and his eyes started
to dot with black, and he forced himself back to the car.
He leaned over the steering wheel staring out at the trees, not wanting to go
home, but not knowing where to go. His eyes glanced over to the mini Trespasser
model that he had stolen from the lab to keep on the dash for the drives home,
and hid under the junk in the glove compartment whenever either of his parents
got in the car. And he thought back to the windowsill in the lab with all the
toys his colleagues had brought in, and realised he had none of his own. His
parents had always bought him books and comics and lab kits and Meccano sets
because that was all he ever asked them for. It was his uncle who bought him
toys, and he always said he could do what he wanted with them, and he usually
took apart anything with gears or electronics, and anything else, whether it
was a stuffed animal or plastic figurine, and whether he liked it or he hated
it, he had always burned or melted it and then hid it at the bottom of the
garbage bin. Nothing was permanent.
And it was at that moment that he dropped the plastic kaiju he had been holding
so tightly in his grip that it was leaving marks on his palm, and swiped at his
phone to check the savings account that now had nearly $450 with over a decade
of accumulated interest, and that, thanks to the real-life kaiju, he would
never have to think about checking again.
His first stop before home was a bank. His second stop was a tattoo parlor.
***** Chapter 9 *****
“Doctors Gottlieb, Geiszler,” the ‘dome ops manager nodded to each of them,
“let me show you to your room - you can drop off your things, and I’ll give you
a tour of the lab later this evening.”
“Thank you, sir,” Hermann said courteously ignoring Newton’s knotted eyebrows.
“Room?” he whispered furtively as they walked quickly down the hallway, Hermann
trying to keep pace with the administrator. “Did she say ‘room’, as in
singular?”
Hermann cast him a withering look.
She told them that the mess was in the same place as all the other ‘domes,
dinner started at 1900 hours as usual, and they could find her there to show
them the lab after they had a chance to rest and unpack.
Newton looked around the room with his hands on his hips, nodding at the empty
bookshelf and then sitting down on the large bed.
“How?” was all he could ask with a goofy grin.
“For goodness sake, Newton,” Hermann lectured, a smile twitching at the corner
of his mouth, “all you have to do is fill out application 619-stroke-G, Request
for Family Housing.”
Newton’s eyebrows seemed to raise themselves.
“Application request?” he said out loud, while all he could think was that
Hermann had called him family.
“Seriously,” he scoffed, “it’s as if you’d never filled out a grant application
in all your - my God, you never have filled out a grant application in all your
life, have you?”
Newton shrugged.
“Isn’t that what undergrads and grad students are for?”
Hermann rolled his eyes, then allowed himself a moment of worry.
“You do like it?” he asked meekly.
“I do, I do!” Newton affirmed. “It was just a bit of a surprise.”
“I knew it,” Hermann chided himself, “I’m sorry, I was too forward, I should
have asked first. I can request a change if you’d like your own room, this was
stupid of me..”
To stop his agitation, Newton took Hermann by the hand and drew him close.
“It’s a good surprise,” he clarified, rubbing the back of Hermann’s hand with
his thumb, staring at it. “It’s nice. Really nice. Well, I mean, for a
‘dome...”
There was something liberating about no longer worrying whether it was his bed
or Hermann’s bed because it was theirs. There was a certain sort of peace in
not having to worry about unexpected visitors to the lab or whether they should
be doing the things they did on a dissection table, or getting shore leave for
a weekend and wondering if trying to get a hotel room together would be an
issue in whatever city they were in. They had a space to share that was truly
their own, together.
They discovered more things about each other - that Hermann strongly preferred
having laundry in a basket instead of on the most convenient surface - and came
to agreements - that Newton’s nightstand was his own and he could keep it as
messy as he liked - and made compromises, and formed routines.
Hermann got used to tracing the outlines of Newton's tattoos when he walked
around shirtless, and he got used to Hermann lying on his back on the floor in
his striped pyjama bottoms and blue t-shirt with his legs up the wall and his
forearm over his eyes. Some nights he would tease him, and some nights he would
give him a kiss upside down, and some nights he would just lay down beside him
until he got into bed.
Every Sunday morning he would wake up alone when Hermann went to the pool, and
would let himself fall asleep again until he was poked awake. Newton would
remind him that they had nowhere to be, and would pull him back down into bed
to lounge between sleeping and waking.
“You should come to the pool with me,” Hermann suggested.
“Too cold.”
“Or go to the gym while I swim.”
Newton writhed and whined and pulled his pillow over his head.
“I’m just saying it would be good for you,” Hermann continued. “You should
elevate your heart rate, increase your metabolism.”
“I thought elevating my heart rate was your job?” he needled him. “Besides,
what’s the point when my mother stuffs me with knishes and blintzes whenever I
go home?"
"Well, be careful, or SF-19 -"
"Clawhook," Newton corrected him, naming the kaiju that adorned his chest and
stomach.
" - will start to sag and look sad."
He squeezed Newton's stomach, and Newton pushed his hand away with force.
"Fuck off," he pouted.
"I’m sorry," Hermann apologized, cradling him again, "I was just teasing. I
like the, wie_sagt_man? softness."
They wouldn’t always make it to bed at the same time, if there were experiments
to babysit, or ideas that struck in the middle of the night, but even that
became a routine. Newton would sometimes crawl into bed at four in the morning
exhausted but overstimulated, his brain unable to process why the pH balance of
a slice of cornea dissolving in ammonia was going down while in pyridine it was
going up, having already accounted for the self-ionization of the water at the
low concentrations, but unable to shut off his brain to stop thinking about it.
Instead of waking Hermann, he draped his arm over himself, and Hermann half
awoke, settling around him, and Newton could finally sleep, their feet and legs
just touching.
Their space also gave them the luxury to discover all of each other without
hurry, and their intimacy, also, became comfortable. Although Newton was happy
with their routine, Hermann often wanted more.
“Why not?” he asked, trailing a finger down Newton’s chest.
“No,” Newton said, shaking his head, but biting his lip as he rubbed up against
him.
Hermann squirmed and whined.
“Please?”
“Why is no not enough for you?” he slurred, half in a daze already, enjoying
their closeness.
“Because,” Hermann said as if truly pained, “I’m dying to be inside you, I
can't help myself.”
Disarmed by how Hermann’s words turned him on in a way he never thought he
could be, he tried it, slowly pressing himself down, as much as he could, bit
by bit, fully in control, wincing and stopping, but then moving again, sighing
as he came undone by the sensation that sent rushes of heat and ecstasy through
him. Hermann moaned and jerked up beneath him, triggering a rush of memories
and emotions, and he gasped as suddenly his body wasn’t there anymore, it was
somewhere else, at a different point in time all together and he pulled away
and off him and Hermann was apologising and he was trying to tell him no, no,
it wasn’t his fault, but Newton refused to try again, blaming it on pain, and
trying to get a handle on his own panic.
He took up a more familiar position, between Hermann’s legs, cleaning him off
with a quick dab of the covers before devouring him, back in control, one hand
wandering over Hermann's thigh front and back, then over his own cock and tried
to make it so that Hermann forgot everything that had just happened, along with
everything he had ever known.
He dwelled on what had happened in the lab the next day, and ended up asking
Hermann another thoughtless question.
"Newton!" he yelled at him, "I am disabled, I am not broken! Things happen to
people just like that, and all the mathematics in the world can’t tell you the
reason why. You learn to live with it and you move on!"
Newton sat alone after Hermann's outburst, staring into space. In the silence
of his own floating memories, two words jumped up at him suck and fuck, words
he hadn’t heard his mind say for a long time. He hated them from the day he had
heard them and put together what they meant, drawing the line back to his
uncle, but the words assaulted his brain over and over until he wanted to
scream. He tried to rub the thoughts away unaware that he had been rubbing
Trespasser’s frill on his wrist until he felt the burn on his skin and this
time it hadn’t helped because as he stopped the thoughts continued - he was
turned gently onto his stomach and his back was being rubbed, lower and lower,
then his buttocks.
“Das_tut_gut,_nicht_wahr?” his uncle asked, treating him like a living doll.
“Sex_ist_gesund...”
...and should feel good and shouldn’t be painful, he said, but it was - it was
both - and he forced his mind to be anywhere else and pressed his face into the
pillow clenching it so tightly from underneath that when he finally let go his
hands were stiff, and when he finally moved off the bed, after he was alone in
his room, he found a wet spot that he had left on the sheets, and he got mad at
himself for crying as he tried to sop it up with tissues, and laid a face cloth
on it, and then another, and grabbed the ridiculous mechanical stuffed hamster
that his uncle had placed on the nightstand as a gift, and when he couldn’t
crush it in his grip took to undoing the velcro at the back, skinning it, and
proceeded to rip each gear and each wire out of its socket.
There were good nights with Hermann, Newton had to keep reminding himself, but
it was the conflicts that assailed his memories. Straddling Hermann, kissing
him as he dragged his cock up his inner thigh, Hermann trickling his fingertips
up and down his back as he moaned.
“Please,” he begged in a whisper, “please let me do it.”
“Do what?” Newton asked, only half aware of anything.
“I just - oh God,” he moaned, “you make me say these things, stoop to such
indignity - I just want to suck it, you look so tasty.”
And Newton knew that it had taken nearly every ounce of himself for Hermann to
get those words out and they sent a flush of heat from his shoulders to his
groin and he bit and tugged at Hermann’s lip before kissing him again and
pressing his tongue into his mouth without a second thought.
“I swear I’ll be good - I’ll be nice,” Herman begged.
“No,” was all Newton said.
“You’re so mean to me,” Hermann pleaded with him, arching up with his good hip,
eyes half closed and rolling back into his head. “Please...”
“I can’t,” Newton said more firmly.
A lustful grin spread across Hermann’s face to match the darkness of his eyes.
“You’ve not tried...” he purred, and grabbed Newton firmly and playfully by the
back of the thighs and tried to pull him up to where he wanted him to be.
In a panic, Newton pinned Hermann’s arms to the bed, sitting up and pulling
back and barked at him:
“I said NO! What part of that don’t you understand?!”
And Hermann said nothing and that wasn’t good enough for Newton so he yelled at
him some more, whether he made sense or not, he just had to say words.
“Just fuck off! You can stay there cockblocked all night for all I care!”
And he stomped into the bathroom and banged the door shut behind him and leaned
over the sink. For a moment he stared at himself in the mirror before shutting
his eyes against the body he had been covering up, trying to erase for the last
so many years. He splashed some water over his face, and when it wasn’t enough,
he stepped into the shower and let the water run over him.
If they had had a couch, he would have taken his towel as a blanket and slept
on it, but instead he dragged himself back to bed, staying as close to his edge
as was physically possible. He kept his eyes opened because he couldn’t fool
himself into sleep with them closed, and listened to Hermann’s steady
breathing.
Quietly, still sullen, and not expecting an answer so he could continue to be
mad he asked:
“Are you asleep?”
There was a pause, then Hermann answered, “No,” paused again, and added, “I’m
sorry.”
The covers rustled as Herman arranged himself, moving close behind him for an
embrace.
“It’s fine,” Newton said quietly, wishing he hadn’t fallen apart so
dramatically.
Hermann pressed his forehead to his back.
“I just wish you’d let me in.”
“Not funny,” Newton sniggered in spite of himself.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Hermann replied.
“I just - I’m,” Newton faltered, his mind supplying a vicious onslaught of
adjectives - embarrassed - humiliated - ashamed, “I don’t want to talk about
it.”
“We can work on it,” Hermann promised him sleepily.
“Okay,” Newton said out loud, instead of what he was thinking: No, we can’t.



***** Chapter 10 *****
For a whole year, the world held its breath. New Year’s Day 2023 came and went,
and the entire planet braced for the next projected onslaught. As usual,
bookmakers gave odds for the exact date, time and place. And, as usual, people
decried the practice as being in poor taste, while others placed their bets.
Then March came, and the world tensed collectively. March went, then April, and
May, and hysteria erupted from the tension. Rioting broke out and, with no
experts to turn to, all the political leaders could do was appeal for calm.
There was no hope that this could be the end, despite the musings that
headlined around the globe, because there was no reason for the break in the
pattern. The trepidation subsided somewhat when it was given an unlikely
direction through the tabloids, that shouted loudly about conspiracies and
cover ups and moon landings and sound stages. Irrationality was something
governments could deal with, or at the very least comfortably ignore.
Inside the PPDC, the situation was reversed. Starting the year out with peace
gave everyone a respite from a battle they still counted as not over, and a
chance to regroup. Sorely needed maintenance went into everything from worn-
down Jaegers to overused coffee machines, and the ‘domes buzzed with
productivity throughout the summer. Things changed with the seasons, and by
September rumours of cutbacks started to circulate and everyone got defensive
and suspicious of the other departments' budgets and expenditures.
With a diminishing supply of kaiju tissue, Newton had taken to dissecting and
dissolving smaller and smaller and older and older samples just for fun in the
hopes that something new might slap him in the face. Hermann grew more and more
agitated as his numbers became less and less clear, and data from the breach
all but ceased, and he would smear his hand across filled chalkboards and shout
that it didn’t make any sense. Newton would yell at him that the kaiju were
people not particles and Hermann would jump down his throat because they were
monsters, and one of them would inevitably storm off and not come back for
hours and sometimes not come home that night only to be found asleep on a desk
in the lab the next morning. Tensions built through the day, and dissipated
when they laid down next to each other at night, only to start fresh again in
the morning.
When the next New Year’s celebrations counted down around the world and still
nothing happened, the headlines dared to proclaim the Start of a New Era,
finished with questioning, ready to make declarations. People took to the
streets, and allowed the edge of uneasiness they had lived with for the last
year to melt away, to be replaced by a sense of security, no matter how
undeserved it felt.
As if to intentionally pour salt into an open wound, as if they were reading a
calendar and planning the best day to continue to terrorize humanity, the kaiju
struck Shanghai on the second day of the new year. And the year of respite
evaporated as if it had only ever been a childish daydream.
The PPDC was reinvigorated as everyone found their footing again, but quickly
started to lose resolve when it seemed that 2024 was going to more than make up
for the year that had just passed. Newton was required to travel more
frequently, and, as understanding as the commanders had been of letting Hermann
accompany him, they both realised the benefits if he stayed in one place. They
said goodbye in April, with Hermann heading back to Tokyo, sending Newton off
to Vladivostok with his parka, making him promise that he would bring it back
as soon as humanly possible.
Newton’s visits to Los Angeles allowed him the chance to reconnect with his
parents, who had come to understand the work he was doing even if he saw how
the stress of the attacks coming so close and him constantly chasing monsters
was taking its toll on them physically. He tried to joke that, luckily, he was
the last one on the scene and probably in the least danger, but even he didn’t
think it was funny. When, sheepishly, he told them about Hermann, they shrugged
and smiled and said they knew there had been something, and that they were
happy for him, and hoped that one day they might meet him. His last visit
consisted of a week of helping them pack their things, leaving the furniture
for whoever would be willing to rent a house so close to the ocean, and sending
them off on an early retirement they couldn’t entirely afford, even living with
his aunt in Pennsylvania. None of them said goodbye to the house.
It was nearly the end of November before Newton and Hermann saw each other
again, in Tokyo. They had stayed in contact daily at the start, then once a
week by the summer as they were both overwhelmed with work, and then once every
two weeks. Newton draped the parka around Hermann when he met him on the
helipad, trying to keep off the sharp winds, burying his face against his neck.
They held each other for a long time, silently, oblivious to everything around
them.
Over dinner, Newton shared his stories of increasingly empty labs, and they
both boggled at the stupidity of diverting funds to a Wall that no one wanted
to openly say would probably not even be finished before it was destroyed. Two
days later, they were officially notified over e-mail that they were the new
heads and composite staff of the K-Sci division. They went to lunch shoreside
for a mock celebration.
Not even two weeks after their reunion, circumstances conspired to keep them on
edge. Hermann blew up when he couldn’t find a stack of papers that he needed
because Newton had forgotten a clipboard on top of them, and complained that he
had the organizational and emotional capacity of a twelve-year-old. Blinded by
rage, Newton hurled back the most demeaning insults that came to mind, dredged
up old arguments, yelled until he was hoarse and tried not to smash things. He
would have sacrificed an entire week’s worth of work just to be able to
overturn a table full of beakers, but he caught himself short.
Another argument over nothing, and Newton would yell that he wanted a divorce
only to be reminded cooly by Hermann that they weren’t married, to which he
replied that it would be a lot easier, then.
They weren’t getting much sleep at night, and when word came that the ‘dome was
being decommissioned and everything was being relocated to Hong Kong within the
week, they spent nearly every minute in the lab packing.
The day before shut-down, Hermann was in a foul mood. When he found a set of
Newton’s scalpels in his box of equipment, he tossed across the table, noting
nastily that having to live together was enough of a chore, but that having to
work together was perdition. Without thinking, Newton grabbed Hermann’s cane
that leaned against the table, not knowing what he was going to do with it,
just seething. But Hermann glared and chided him casually for verging on being
abusive, and shot at him that it was obvious that, despite his questions about
his condition, he would never truly understand what it was like living with
something that held you back.
Those were the last words that Newton heard before his world went fuzzy and
soundless, and he swung the cane over his head and smashed it against the edge
of the metal table with a roar that must have issued from his own throat, and
it splintered in the middle with a crack. Panting he tossed it at Herman's
feet, scowling at the immense shock on his face, and stormed out to pace the
hallways until the tingling in his hands stopped.
If he could have chosen, it wouldn’t have been how he would have left Tokyo.
 
***** Chapter 11 *****
Stress was running high in the Hong Kong ‘dome just days after it had become
the last PPDC outpost, and it seemed that at any moment half of the crew was
going to snap. Newton was buzzed off the energy, but even more by his own idea
that was nearing its real-life genesis. He had become so enthralled by it that
he had shared it with Hermann, who had received it with rather less enthusiasm.
“This is the stupidest idea you’ve ever had!” Hermann was yelling, pacing about
the lab, kicking whatever was in his way to the other side of the room.
Newton held up the pieces of his homemade gadget, talking more to it than to
Hermann.
“No, see, that’s where you’re wrong,” he chattered, demonstrating, “it’s
actually quite brilliant: these semiconductive diodes acts as a pons, and then
to calibrate for the increased frequency in the megahertz range of the kaiju
brainwaves, the dampeners offset the - “
“That’s not what I meant!” Hermann interrupted with a thump of his cane. “It is
your worst idea to date - and may very well be your last.”
It unnerved Newton that Hermann was expressing what he himself had already
thought, and he didn’t want to admit to his nervousness. It also pained him to
hear the concern and helplessness in Hermann's voice, when he had a job to do.
He stumbled, pointing an accusing finger at him.
“You’re just arguing so you can be right about everything!”
“I’m arguing because I love you!”
“Don’t even try it!” Newton screeched at him, pressing his eyes shut for a
moment, trying to pretend he didn’t hear Hermann’s words. “Science hasn’t got
anything to do with love!”
Hermann stopped. Newton had never seen him purse his lips so tightly or heard
him speak so softly.
“Fine. Do what you like,” he said, and turned on his heel and left.
Newton waited until the door shut before shouting at the silence it left
behind:
“Fine, I will!”
Just over an hour later, recorder in his pocket, Newton began detailing his
experiment. He left snide comments about being right to Hermann, bragging that
he trusted his equipment explicitly and knew it would work, but omitting that
he didn’t entirely trust himself to be able to cope with it. He batted away the
thought that was trying to form in his head that he might not have cared if he
wasn’t.
He swallowed, trying to get rid of the dryness that crept up his throat as he
stared at the spongy, yellowish piece of brain floating in its massive glass
tank, and pressed down on the red button much harder than he needed to.
It was as if someone had punched him and he fell over and then, without having
to get up, found himself standing in a dream. No, sitting. In the seat of a
plane, a small child with dark hair next to him, face pressed up against the
window - no, him - without moving, himself, sitting with his face pressed up
against the window watching Berlin disappear beneath the clouds.
A blink, but he didn’t close his eyes, and now a concert hall, sitting in the
dark, hard to see over the heads of the adults in front of him, but still
mesmerized by the glow around the pianist on stage as the first chords of Grieg
shudder through him, he closes his eyes, there is nothing quite like this.
Blink - opens his eyes, another concert, louder, hazy, still hard to see over
the mass of people in front of him, an acrid, intoxicating smell, the music
pounding through him. Absolutely nothing like this...
Blink - Nothing like this - shaking, in bed, the door closes, surely his
parents know, so why do they leave him alone with his uncle to watch over him,
this is the twenty-first time, what’s wrong with me - why am I keeping count?
Blink - Keeping count, thirty-four kaiju, be out of a job if they don’t keep
coming but how long can this go on, can’t admit it to anyone but it feels like
we’re not going to win.
Something new: a mental jerk - no, physical, like he was yanked back by the
collar, and something is different, there’s a connection, someone else is
here...
A Jaeger has never seemed so small or battered, it’s missing its damned arm why
is it not giving up, another blow, another, it’s still standing, arming itself,
mission nowhere complete, but we’re not going to win.
Half a blink, now, just narrowing his eyes, and it almost doesn’t seem like his
own memory, it’s shaded in blue, but he remembers it, it’s Berkeley and his
colleagues lean over the tablet he’s holding with rows and rows of numbers and
he’s hoping they’re all bright enough to see it because he’d hate to have to
explain that it just doesn’t get any better than this, of course they see it,
that’s why they’re here, all of them, the data is just perfect...
And a bit of a mental sway, like he’s pulled to the side and loses his footing
slightly, then steadies himself... the data is perfect - the room is glowing
blue, it’s not ever been like that, anywhere - we should be pleased with this
data, administration should understand, we understand - and the lighting is
dimmer than he’s used to but it still gives you a headache after a full day’s
work - and the scribbles and dashes on the tablet, moving, look like nothing,
mean nothing - no, not nothing, everything: CHz-Cheyta-3 (of 9/8) Incursion
(Mark II post-Mesozoic) atmospheric SO2/CO2/NOx ppm mixture just slightly below
ideal on average, ideal-to-tolerable where the infestation is highly
concentrated - the planet is nearly perfect for colonization. Unfortunately,
the clone variant Gamma was unsuccessful with its mission, biomedical
engineering needs to produce another Zeta clone, cost be damned, and quickly.
He is surprised by all of this and he knows all of it now, or - no, he always
has, we all have, it’s what we’ve been doing for millennia, we’ve just not
encountered such difficulties in Phase I since - the symbols on the tablet
change; she’s flipped back a page - Glieseyta-5, but we know they can’t all be
easy, if only administration wasn’t tiring of that excuse.
And he feels, is convinced, determined that it’s time to stop fooling around,
we’ve spent far too much time on this outpost, it should be moving along more
quickly, the portal needs to be strengthened to support more and larger forces:
we need the extinction phase complete.
Shit.
Another shock shaking his whole body, like just before drifting off into sleep,
but this jerk brought him back to the lab, and it was no longer a memory even
though the room wouldn’t stop lilting the opposite way from however he tried to
move, even with whoever it was trying to keep him from falling, but he could
still see the infopad glowing its weird characters across his eyelids whenever
he blinked.
It was Hermann holding him up, and Newton clutched at him, trying not to fall
over. He felt his nose dripping and was embarrassed, but he was excited. No,
disappointed. Or determined? It was difficult to wade through the residual
emotions, so he just let them assail him in waves, coming and going.
“It worked!” he croaked, throat hoarse.
“You need some water,” Hermann said, with so much raw concern in his voice that
Newton forced himself to turn his head.
“You look so p-p-pale,” he slurred and stuttered, trying to lift a hand to
touch Hermann’s face, but finding it heavy as lead.
“I could say the same about you.”
Hermann dragged him to a chair and pressed a glass into his hand and told him
to stay and Newton giggled, noticing a piercing pain behind his left eye as he
looked down at his white shirt, stained with a mysterious bright drop of red
blood, and asked Hermann how he thought he was going to get anywhere, and
giggled again when he noticed Hermann wasn’t there, where had he gone? His head
was pounding now, not just spinning, his legs tingled so he started to jiggle
them and felt better, where had Hermann gone? Why did he leave him there,
alone? Was he that angry? Newton gripped the arm of the chair tightly and he
swore he was sitting still, but the room kept spinning.
There was a glass in his hand that he didn’t remember getting there, and he
stared at it like it wasn’t his hand, it wouldn’t stay still, but he somehow
brought the water to his lips and it traced a cool line down his throat and
into his stomach. Then suddenly the Marshal was near him, and he wished Hermann
would come closer not just stand officiously in the background but, right, this
was the ‘dome Marshal, in all his towering, determined calm, so this was
probably, like, an official meeting or something.
“I told you it would work,” Newton opened, too excited to think.
Maybe the Marshal wouldn’t notice his flippancy. He rambled off everything he
had seen, had learned, about the kaiju, that they weren’t unthinking beasts
like they had supposed all along, that these were planned attacks, the portal
was controlled, not random, that their task was extermination. The Marshal was
the picture of quiet authority, and commanded not people but their respect, so
when he asked Newton to drift again and to get him what he needed to do so,
Newton was in awe. As soon as the Marshal left, Hermann rushed to his side.
“Didn’t adjust the incoming frequency for the hive mind,” Newton heard himself
babbling, “I was off by ten... ten. Ten to the neg-negative three.”
“That’s a thousand time’s magnitude,” Hermann whispered, voice trembling,
running a shaky hand over Newton’s damp hair. “You could have killed yourself.”
“I think I wanted to,” Newton mumbled, confused, and was shaken by Hermann.
“Don’t talk nonsense!”
Newton didn’t really know what he had thought and what he had said, he had
spent every last bit of energy he had talking to the Marshal and he just needed
to rest...
But there were things to do.
***** Chapter 12 *****
Most of the evening had seemed like a dream to Newton, and, for all his lack of
sleep, and having been hunted down for some inexplicable reason by the sort of
monster he had pretended to be when he was a kid, he thought he was doing a
remarkable job of keeping himself together. And awake.
He was nervously figuring out how to check for a pulse on what he hoped was now
the corpse of a newborn kaiju, still sad that it had to go that way despite, or
perhaps because of it having swallowed one of the more revolting people he had
ever met right in front of his eyes. In the back of his mind he was also
mulling over why they would have sent a pregnant kaiju into battle.
There wasn’t much time to think as Hermann arrived with the equipment. It
didn’t seem right to plunge a diode into the brain of something that hadn’t
been alive for more than a minute, but Newton thought back to having nearly
been eaten not minutes before, and plunged the point through the beast’s skull.
If Newton had had more sleep he might have gotten angry or upset that Hermann
had volunteered to drift with him, to share the mental burden, as he put it,
even though Newton had assured him that the notes he had left about
recalibration would take care of the overload. He might have also worried about
sharing his thoughts, if he had been more lucid, but all he could do to prevent
himself from crying was to kiss Hermann fervently for offering.
And with a shared sense of apprehension they delved into the muted otherworld
of thought together.
Now that he was more familiar with the drift, the fall didn’t come as of much
of a surprise as it first had, but the sensation lasted longer. He also felt
both Hermann’s presence and the kaiju’s, like people in the same room who
hadn’t yet seen each other. Memories spun around him - as a child at the
Siegessäule looking up at the gold angel haloed by the sun, alighting on the
obelisk and asking how high it was and did it ever come down to Earth? -
licking sour cream off his fingers on a dark night in early December as his
father tries to pass him the candle to light the menorah - finally catching a
miniature crab from the grey sand, letting it trot over his fingers as he
switches it from hand to hand - staying in at recess because he and his best
friend had started punching each other over something one of them had said, and
his teacher marking and fuming silently at them from behind her desk...
It seems like forever and he is still falling and it gives him a moment to
panic that he hasn’t factored in a newborn alien trying to wrap it's head
around its own brief existence trapping him unwittingly into delving into his
own childhood against his conscious judgement. He remembers the waves, like
standing on a beach, knows that he needs to go with them instead of holding his
ground or he’s likely to get sucked under, knows that he needs to experience
the feeling to be able to pass through it, to treat each image or taste or
smell without curiosity, forget Alice and the White Rabbit, let him run off to
wherever he needs to be. And each memory flutters up like cupping a cocoon in
your hands and feeling it unfurl into a butterfly, trying not to grab it and
crush it and end the link, but opening your palms and watching it test its
wings as long as it wants to, until it flies away on its own.
And he lands with a lurch - standing at the back of his classroom, then sitting
at one of the desks in the rows - rows? and where are the SMART Boards, even
just the whiteboards? - his teachers never had chalk marks around their pants
pockets - no, of course they did, Herr Krüger in particular, who is engrossed
in conversation with him, leaning back on his desk at the front of the room,
Bitte,_Ruhe! to the other students, if they would only pay attention, he
thinks, maybe they’d catch on instead of sniggering at him, kicking the
crutches that lean on the back of his chair to the ground, Raus!_Jetzt! at
least his teacher is on his side, stupid crutches, if he didn’t have them they
wouldn’t make fun of him and force him to hide in the nook near the gymnasium
over recess because he doesn’t want to get tripped anymore on the playing
field, and this loneliness doesn’t matter because who needs imbeciles as
friends?
Blinks - even surrounded by people, the loneliness of those first years in
college, Cambridge: Massachusetts, cold; England, lush and green - a first kiss
(this isn’t his) and thereafter knowing who to smile at, and how, and being as
forward with his lovers as he is with his ideas, just a pity that nearly
everyone surrounding him still feels like an imbecile.
Wincing as he blinks - jealousy (this is his) and loneliness and complete
silence, except the light blaring noiselessly from the lamp, interrupted only
by the sound of a zipper and clothes rustling andhe doesn’t want to be here at
all.
Groggy, now, blinking, he suddenly sees the scene through Hermann's eyes, his
own white, naked body, uninked, pristine, disappearing into the bedsheets, his
uncle between his legs, and on instinct turns away in horror, shock, disgust,
physical revulsion, wishing he’d never seen it, muttering a prayer he didn’t
know und_mich_diese_Nacht_auch_gnädiglich_behüten. He is overwhelmed by the
anger and pity, disgust, sorrow - feels it all directed towards him - and still
hears his own small whimpering, and, mortified, cowers.
And the yank - this time it feels like a shove - and it’s terrifying but he’s
grateful, then suddenly not - mortified to be cowering before the
administrator, yelling to pull yourself together, stabilize the portal - they
don’t care that it’s already secured to accept only the clones’ DNA patterns so
we’re safe on our side, the plan won’t work, can’t work - don’t give us your
theories, your shoddy work, your damned excuses, just stabilize the portal! We
send the first platoon as soon as we have confirmation from the fireteam that
their weapons are neutralized, and we wipe the bastards out!
The plan won’t work.
The shock, and they fall back to Earth simultaneously. Newton somehow got to
his feet, accustomed at least to the spinning, pressing his thumb to his eye,
wincing at the headache. It had been too much for Hermann, and he was
physically ill, so Newton offered him the handkerchief and sniffed, wiping his
bloody nose on his jacket. There wasn’t time, they had to get back, and wove
their way through the mess in the street to the chopper where they sat in noise
and darkness and silence, letting the images crash over them, helpless to make
them stop, their distress tempered only by the resolute panic that their plan
wouldn’t work, but it would have to work, and they could help make it work.
It had worked.
The collective tension in the command centre evaporated, replaced by the noise
of a frenetic shared energy that this was over, they were all out of jobs,
thank God, this was decisive, not a victory, something more, an end to the
struggle, a release. And the jubilation that their soldiers were coming back,
already heros, even if no one else in the world knew it yet, was balanced
precariously with the sorrow that two of their finest were lost in noble
sacrifice.
And in his joy, Hermann held him tightly as Newton picked up on a reverberation
between them, something different from their usual closeness, he could feel
Hermann’s energy, that he wanted to cry for happiness but wouldn’t let himself
in front of all these people. Then the remorse, then anguish over all he had
witnessed, diffusing into pity, and Newton knew it was directed at him and was
struck by it as if by a blow and thrust Hermann away and fled the room.
There was chaos in the hallways as word spread and whoops went up around
corners, and hurrahs, and someone passed him and hugged him, lifting him off
the ground, oblivious to his slovenliness, then let him go and assaulted the
next person with his elation. Newton couldn’t stand, could barely see, leaned
on the wall for support. It had seemed he’d only been there for a moment, but
it could have been longer, he might even have fallen asleep and no one noticed,
and then Hermann was there, holding him up by the arm, searching his eyes.
“I know you don’t want to talk about it,” he said, so low that no one else
heard, and the pity in his voice rattled him.
“Then let’s not,” Newton seethed. “See, that was easy!”
Newton faltered down the hallway, caught up in his dread at having let Hermann
see and remember the only thing he wanted to just forget, and he moved down an
empty corridor and Hermann had to catch him to steady him again, but he pushed
him away, still feeling the remnants of his thoughts and wanting to be as far
away from him as possible. Hermann would not be deterred, so Newton pushed him
again, harder, with all the strength he had left, fully aware that he was
unsteady on his legs but beyond caring, and Hermann stumbled against the wall
and called after him as he ran down the hall and slammed the door to their room
and sat, head in his hands, hyperventilating on the edge of the bed, alone for
how long he didn’t know, blackness swirling just on the edge of his vision, but
then he wasn’t alone and, sitting beside him now, Hermann put a gentle hand on
his back, but couldn’t stop himself from trembling.
“What I saw,” Hermann began, even his voice unsteady.
The jolt of Hermann’s horror struck Newton again, and he tensed, feeling like
his limbs were going to snap in on themselves, and Hermann drew his hand away.
“You didn’t see anything,” Newton declared, grabbing fistfuls of his own hair,
remembering that what Hermann had seen had made him physically sick.
“It’s not your fault,” he said.
“How the hell do you know what is my fault?!” Newton demanded, tearing his hair
out, wishing it would make Hermann leave.
“It’s not your fault,” he repeated simply, and Newton heard tears in his voice
and wanted to ask him what right he had.
“It’s not your problem! It doesn’t matter!” he shouted, sitting up, clenching
his fists in the air in front of him and willing Hermann to get the hell away
from him.
“It matters,” Hermann insisted quietly.
“No!” Newton yelled, shoving a threatening finger in his face, spitting the
words back at him, “it’s just the same kind of stupid thing that everyone has
gone through and you get over it! Only I’m too broken to be able to do that.”
“It's not the same,” Hermann rasped.
“It is the same,” Newton kept yelling, unable to stop, “you said so yourself -
there's no reason - you just deal with it and you move on!”
“It's - it’s not the same,” Hermann said again.
And Newton didn’t know why Hermann kept saying all these stupid things but
didn’t want to touch him, even though he knew he couldn't be touched now -
dirty, soiled, stained - and wondered how he had ever been touched, and Hermann
was right.
“I’m repulsive,” he hissed acidly.
“Newton,” Hermann tried to reassure him, smoothing his hair gently, and now he
didn’t want to be touched because he could feel through Hermann, somehow, his
sadness and his helplessness and the feeling that he wanted to offer all the
solace in the world if he could, and that it still wouldn’t be enough.
“Don’t,” Newton warned.
“Spätzchen...” Hermann cooed.
“Kein_Deutsch!!!” Newton shrieked, clenching his eyes and fists shut, and that
was the breaking point. He doubled over on the edge of the bed, still
shrieking, and as it mixed with his tears and got into his chest, it turned
into a scream and he didn’t care who heard, tears burning through his eyelids,
and he sobbed and then screamed again when he’d got his breath back, and again,
wishing Hermann would hate him and tell him that this was too much and to stop
it already and leave him, and he sobbed when Hermann stayed, and more because
this felt like it should be the end but he knew it was just the beginning, and
he screamed for the twenty-seven years of sound that he had never made, and
sobbed for all those same years he’d never let anyone know, and when he
couldn’t scream anymore, and Hermann still held him tightly, he sobbed until he
had nothing left, and then he whimpered and coughed because his throat was sore
and salty.
And when breathing without gasping or shuddering or sound or tears finally
seemed normal again, he laid his head in Hermann’s lap and felt him stroke his
hair with a tired hand, but still manage somehow to position what must have
been all of Newton’s dead weight into bed, gently pulling off his glasses and
his pants and covering him with the blankets, and then with himself.
And Newton was finally grateful that the world hadn’t ended, and slept.
***** Epilogue *****
There was no need to stand on the fence to see the ocean anymore, but Newton
did it anyway. The sunlight sparkled in the far-off waves, and the shades of
blue changed, light to dark and back again, before drawing a bright line at the
horizon. His parents let them live in the bungalow rent-free, but Hermann
insisted that his salary easily covered both their needs, even with Newton on
sabbatical, and they sent his parents just what they would take to supplement
their own savings, and help them come back to visit on holidays.
It had seemed like a step backwards to return to his old house, but his
therapist had pointed out that it was, in a way, a good place to restart. They
had done up his old room as a study, and it became just another place in the
house instead of a threat looming in the back of his mind.
After a few weeks of sleeping late and puttering around the empty house and
napping, he forced himself, on both Hermann’s and his therapist’s advice, to
develop a routine. He perfected making breakfast, and, after dropping Hermann
off at work, headed out for errands, his session, then back home. He allowed
himself free time, too, but focused mainly on the upkeep of a small vegetable
garden in the backyard.
With Hermann’s steadying influence and continual support, he learned to cope
with his past. They forged new memories to write over the old ones, like
covering up a fading scar that would always be there, but became less
noticeable. Soon, the pain started to dull, becoming a sound being made in
another room. It would all, he slowly realized, take time.
Thankfully he, and the whole world, now had nothing but time.
 
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ing the further away they
got. Peter was unsteady on his feet, Stiles could see that much, a good portion
of his fur was coated in tacky red blood and it splashed down onto the snowy
forested floor as they moved. Eventually, judging they were far enough away,
and with the top of the cabin just barely in sight, Stiles slowed down.
“Peter,” he gasped, “Peter, you need to stop.” The werewolf growled at him, but
did as he bid, circling around the boy and watching the forest. Still
defending. Still protecting. Stiles lurched forward, feeling unsteady on his
feet as he reached out for the wolf. “Peter,” his voice was choked, “come on,
we– we need to get that arrow out of you and you need to change back. I– I need
to see the damage, okay?” Peter rumbled at him, his head shaking. He jerked his
head towards the cabin and Stiles nodded slowly. “Alright... at –at the cabin,
okay? Back in our room? You'll be safe there, right?” Peter's eyes sharpened
and he snarled, though he didn't seem the be angry at Stiles. Swallowing with a
dry click, Stiles nodded. “Where we'll be safe, right? I –I can protect myself
inside the room, right? So I can help you.” Peter watched him for a long moment
before nodding, his head butting into the centre of Stiles' back to propel him
forward. Moving with the momentum easily, Stiles continued on, one shaking hand
on Peter's neck the entire way there.
 
Inside the cabin, Stiles dully noted the sound of blood tapping onto the floor
as they traversed the halls into their room. Once there, Peter sat on the floor
and waited with keen eyes that were slowly glazing from pain as Stiles locked
the door. He didn't move until Stiles also barricaded it with some furniture
from inside the room as well.
“Lie on the bed, alright?” Stiles said, looking him in the eye. “You'll need
it. And if you can shift back, okay? I'll look after you. I promise.” Peter
nodded slowly before hopping onto the teen's bed. Stiles couldn't bring himself
to care as he hurried into the bathroom, shedding his layers as he went.
Searching the cabinets, he came up with the first aid kit and quickly wet a
cloth before he scrambled back to the werewolf's side; pausing just long enough
to grab his own werewolf-upgraded kit from his bags (never hurt to be prepared
after all). When he re-entered the room, Stiles suddenly felt the wind blown
out of his lungs. Peter had obliged his request and was now laying stomach-down
on his bed. Completely naked. Shifting uncomfortably, and his face now a dark
burgundy red, Stiles unsteadily made his way over to Peter's side. Hazy cobalt
blue eyes peered up at him.
“Stiles...” Peter's voice was slightly slurred from pain. Looking at his back,
Stiles felt a pained noise push it's way out of his throat.
“Fuck, Peter...” he whispered, dropping to his knees next to the bed and
running his hand up Peter's forearm.
“Jesus, dude, you look like you went to war with Freddy and lost.” Peter
laughed hoarsely.
“I'm still alive, and as he kills everyone, I think it's safe to say I won.”
Stiles grinned shakily, his thumb stroking the man's arm lightly.
“Fuck...”
“Keep using that word and I might,” Peter mumbled into his arm, his eyes still
focused on Stiles even as the boy's roamed his damaged form.
“How is it you've gotten the shit kicked out of you and you're still such a
fucking creep?” Stiles snorted, bending down to grab the cloth he had soaked in
water.
“It's a skill,” the werewolf replied as Stiles gently began to wipe away the
blood, moving closer and closer to his open wounds with each pass.
“Is there wolfsbane in these?” Stiles asked.
“Trace amounts,” Peter answered quietly. “Enough to make healing difficult. For
which I should be thankful.”
“Thankful?” Stiles asked, his voice strangled and indignant even as his hands
remained steady and gentle. “Why?”
“Because otherwise you'd have to cut me open to dig the shrapnel out,” Peter
replied. “As it is, if you don't hurry you're going to have to anyways.”
“I won't be able to see beyond the blood, asshole,” Stiles snapped, eyes
flashing. “I'm trying to help you.” The two fell silent as the cloth in Stiles'
hand slowly grew from a soft grey to a pink to a stained red. Stiles swallowed
thickly and left quietly to ring the blood out and try to clean the cloth as
best he could before returning to swipe away the rest of the blood. Once done,
Stiles dropped the cloth to the floor and leant up onto the bed, eyeing the
arrow shaft mistrustfully. “I'm going to have to pull this out, aren't I?” He
asked, his voice defeated.
“Yes.” Stiles made a pained noise in the back of his throat and sat on the bed,
one hand placed gently in the centre of Peter's back as the other hesitantly
gripped the arrow shaft. Peter stilled unnaturally under his palm, as he waited
in tense silence. Stiles inhaled deeply and pulled out with a sharp exhale.
Peter snarled, his claws ripping into the blankets beneath his body. Throwing
the arrow to the side, Stiles' hand stroked against Peter's spine lightly. “I'm
sorry,” he was murmuring under his breath, “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'd take the
pain if I could,” he was saying almost on repeat. Peter reached back and
gripped his wrist, tugging Stiles' hand forward to press a kiss to the boy's
palm before threading their fingers together.
“It's alright,” he murmured drowsily. “Though I would appreciate it if you
could get the shrapnel out of my back now.”
“I'll get to that,” Stiles told him before reaching over to his bag and pulling
out a pair of sweatpants. “Here, put these on.” Peter let go of his hand almost
(dare Stiles say?) unwillingly as he pushed himself up, hissing as his back
muscles contracted around the pieces of metal in his skin. Grabbing the grey
sweats, Peter halfheartedly shimmied them over his hips before dropping back
down onto the bed, his face half on a pillow. Stiles hesitated for a moment as
he tugged out a scalpel.
“Fuck,” he muttered, “please don't gut me for this.” Before Peter could ask,
the boy clambered onto his lower back, straddling him lightly. Stiles couldn't
help but beg to whatever divines above that he didn't suddenly get hard, before
he placed his hand on Peter's back again. “Where are the pieces?” Stiles asked,
his voice barely above a whisper.
“Mostly in the middle of my right shoulder,” Peter muttered in reply. “You'll
be able to feel them through the skin.” Stiles swallowed nervously, but gently
skirt his fingers across the man's shoulder. The firm, warm muscle yielded
under Stiles' touch as he felt the unnatural bumps under the skin. As steadily
as he could, Stiles pressed the scalpel into the skin, listening as Peter
hissed quietly into the bed. Grabbing the tweezers, Stiles began to pluck the
shrapnel out, his hands fast becoming slick with blood. Besides the initial
noise, however, Peter remained silent underneath him.
“Thank you, by the way,” Stiles muttered, “for protecting me.” For a moment, he
didn't think Peter heard him. But then, a long breath gusted out of Peter,
moving his chest enough that Stiles had to brace himself in order not to fall
forwards.
“How did you know where to find me?” He asked. “The others were far behind you,
you couldn't have been following them.”
“I, uh,” Stiles swallowed uncomfortably, fighting the urge to shift on top of
Peter. “I don't know, I kinda just... knew. Like I knew you were hurt or
something. I just...” he coloured, “I knew I needed to find you. So I found
you.”
“Just like that,” Peter murmured.
“Yeah. Why?” Stiles asked suddenly, digging the last of the shrapnel out. “Is
it... is it not normally like that? I just thought... I mean, you talk to me
most out of everyone else, so I thought it was just, like, a pack thing. It is,
isn't it?”
“It's certainly a thing,” Peter replied, cracking one eye open to watch as
Stiles slid off his back. “The shrapnel's gone,” the wolf said, changing the
subject.
“That was kind of the idea of me sitting on you –on your back,” Stiles hastened
to correct himself, his face reddening.
“Indeed.”
Stiles shifted the man so he could lean on his shoulder, trying to get him off
of the blood covered bed and to the man's own bed. He was not being helpful at
all. But they got there in the end, after much slipping on the wood flooring.
Stiles lay next to the man for a moment , too tired to move after the emotional
rollercoaster.
“Huh? I didn’t faint at the sight of blood , so that's a score for me.” Stiles
chuckled as he unconsciously cuddled up next to Peter on his bed. Peter seemed
to be curling up around him like the wolf that he was, his head stuffed between
Stiles' neck and shoulder and he meshed his and Stiles body together,snuggling
on the bed. “Thank god you are okay.” Stile mumbled to himself , it barely a
whisper of breath. “Please don’t wander off next time.” Stiles begged into the
man's hair.
“I'm a grown man Stiles I can 'wander' if I want to.” Peter grumbled stubbornly
into the boy's neck.
“Sure you can , cause your a big bad wolf.” Stiles giggled before he fell
asleep to the ambience of Peter's breathing.
***** Finally *****
Chapter Summary
     Stiles' jaw dropped, his heart pounding double-time in his chest. He
     had asked for the truth, but he never really expected Peter to
     actually give him that.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Being awoke to what caused you to feel like you were having a heart attack is
not the best thing to happen after an emotional rollercoaster that Stiles had
just had. The banging was the thing that worrying Stiles the most, if the
banging wasn’t there it would be the fact that he was curled up in a bed with
Peter Hale who was commando and also had his hand resting on Stiles' butt.
Peter moved swiftly covering the boy's body with his own as he crouched over
him ready to pounce snarling at the door, where the noise was coming from.
“It's just us, guys.” Scott called from the other side of the barricaded door.
Peter still didn’t stop crouching over the boy.
“Peter it's fine, come on lets see if everything is okay” Stiles said as he
caressed his hand over Peter's cheek. The older man leant into his hand before
he climbed off of the boy and off the bed, shoving the barricade out of the way
with no struggle at all.
Derek was on the opposite side of the door arms crossed over his chest ,a
worried look written on his face. As soon as he noticed Peter was fine, he
exhaled and his shoulders dropped.
“Are you both okay?” Derek asked as his eyes darted to the blood covered bed.
“Peachy.” Peter yawned , leaning against Stiles who nodded in agreement.
“The hunters have been dealt with so there is no need to worry. Isaac needs
some medical attention but I should be able to sort that out.” Derek explained
before he turned to walk away. “Thank you, Stiles...for looking after Peter.
When Stiles looked up to meet Peter's face he noticed the man looked pained and
shocked.
“I forgot to thank you, so, thank you.”
“Why did you protect me?”
“Cause the rest of the pack would skin me otherwise, Lydia is waiting for the
right moment to wear my pelt as a beautiful coat.”
“Seriously? That’s it? That’s what you are giving me?”
“What do you want to hear Stiles?”
“Really, you are going to be a dick now after I saved your furry ass, oh my god
you are insufferable. The truth is all I ever want!”
“I didn’t want you to get hurt, I didn’t care about anything as long as you
didn’t get hurt.”
Stiles' jaw dropped, his heart pounding double-time in his chest. He had asked
for the truth, but he never really expected Peter to actually give him that.
Peter's look hardened dangerously, his mouth thinning to a firm line. The man
stiffened, his chest muscles rippling as he brought himself up to full height.
“Are you quite finished staring?” He asked, his voice positively frigid. “I do
have others things to do–“
Stiles didn't let him finish, he merely lunged forward, his arms flying around
Peter's neck as he tugged the werewolf into a desperate kiss. The werewolf let
him do as he pleased, one arm sliding around Stiles' lower back as he tilted
his head to deepen the kiss.
The teen groaned, and let Peter lick his way into his mouth. This was the kiss
Stiles had hoped his first had been, not the awkward peck he had gotten when he
was nine, nor the frantic and unpractised one he had gotten from Heather. Peter
kissed with finesse, twirling his tongue just so to make Stiles' knees feel
weak.
It was then that Stiles felt Peter's other hand join in, skimming up to curve
over his hip and push his t-shirt out of the way lightly. Standing in the tan
cargoes and black t-shirt he wore yesterday, Stiles shivered at the contrast of
his cool skin to Peter's heated palm. Stiles groaned again and nipped at
Peter's bottom lip playfully, pushing his body further into that hand. A
rumbling growl forced it's way out of Peter's chest and Stiles had the
delicious sensation of feeling the vibrations against his body.
Peter yanked his head back, his eyes flashing from ice-blue back to cobalt as
he stared down at the teen plastered to his front. “Stiles,” his voice was low,
a warning, “if you keep at this I'm not sure I'm going to be able to pull
back.”
“Who said I wanted you to pull back?” Stiles murmured, pressing on the nape of
his neck to try and get Peter to kiss him. The werewolf didn't budge. “Come on,
Creeper,” Stiles couldn't quite keep the whine out of his voice, “don't stop
now.”
The teen felt a sudden prickle along his side, and he knew that Peter's claws
had decided to make an appearance. Still, Peter didn't move, though Stiles
could feel exactly how unaffected he was judging on the hard length pressing
against Stiles' abdomen.
“Stiles...” Peter rumbled again, his eyes steadily sinking into the wolf's. “If
we do this, it won't be a simple getting-it-out-of-our-systems fuck,” –Stiles
tried to pretend that his heart didn't jump at hearing Peter curse– “this will
be permanent.” Peter's eyes glowed iridescently. “You will be mine for as long
as you exist. And I do not share.”
Stiles' breath hitched, the tantalizing suggestion of something more hooking
him and drawing him in. Tilting his head, Stiles gently eased his mouth over
Peter's, slowing their kiss from something hard and fast to gentle and achingly
sweet. Pulling away after a long moment, Stiles pressed his forehead to
Peter's.
“You piss me off,” he started, meeting the wolf's eyes determinedly. “You're
sassy and rude and infuriating. You always argue with me, and tend to treat me
with kid gloves just to piss me off. I hate it when you snipe about my friends
in front of me, and I hate it when you get creepy just to freak me out.”
Peter opened his mouth to retort and Stiles tugged on his hair warningly.
Narrowing his eyes, Peter glared down at Stiles but obligingly kept quiet.
“If you thought,” the boy continued, “that that little speech was going to do
anything more then turn me on,” Stiles punctuated his comment with a roll of
his hips, letting Peter feel exactly what he was doing to him, “then you've no
idea who you're talking to,” he panted, tingles of electricity spiking up and
down his spine.
Peter ducked his head to press his face against the junction of Stiles' throat
and shoulder. Stiles could feel him press his fangs –still closed– against his
skin; the effort going into restraining himself being kind of endearing.
“Because despite how much you piss me off,” Stiles' back arched as he rolled
his hips against Peter again, listening as Peter hissed in pleasure, “I love
how protective you are. I love how you look out for me. I love how you can
challenge me, I love how you can see me,” Stiles swallowed hard at the
admission but barrelled on, “I love how you know I'm more than just the token
human, the side-kick. I love how you understand when I need to do something for
me. I love your eyes. And I love your wolf's colours. Hell, I even love it when
you start snarking with me,” Stiles laughed breathlessly as Peter flicked his
hips in such away that made his laugh choke off into a moan. “I'm loyal to a
fault, Peter, and I don't do casual fucks. You'll be mine after this and I,” he
whined as the friction made his hips flick forward mindlessly, making Peter
growl. “I'll be yours.”
With that, Peter snapped, his trigger having been hit. The werewolf slid his
hands down to the back of Stiles' thighs and gripped one, making the boy sling
his leg over his hip. With a little encouragement, Stiles leapt up lightly, his
other leg slinging around Peter and clenching tight. The werewolf didn't even
falter, only sliding one arm underneath Stiles' upper thighs in order to keep
him up as the other gripped at Stiles' neck and pulled him into a kiss, his
tongue fucking into the teens mouth in such a way that Stiles keened.
The teen squirmed, his cock an iron bar pressing against the fly of his
cargoes. Peter growled low, his forearm tensing underneath Stiles as he quickly
pushed him back, the door rattling in protest when Stiles' back collided with
it. The boy groaned at that before tugging Peter back into a kiss, sucking on
his tongue suggestively.
“Damn it Stiles,” Peter snarled when he pulled back, his eyes glowing.
“What?” Stiles grinned at him, running his hands over strong shoulders and down
a firm chest. “I'm not doing anything.”
“Liar,” Peter looked amused, though there was a lingering heat still in his
eyes.
Peter's hand skimmed up, his body a solid weight keeping Stiles pressed against
the door. Gripping the hem of his shirt, Peter pulled it up and off, Stiles
lifting his arms to let the fabric be shucked. Pressing forward, Peter ducked
his head and nipped at Stiles' collarbone, leaving an impressive set of marks
dotting along the ridge of bone. Stiles moaned, his head falling back with a
solid thud as he bared his throat to the wolf.
Peter growled, pleased, at the submission as he went about sucking dark marks
into the boy's pale skin. After a particularly sharp bite, Stiles keened and
bucked up, once before pushing himself off the door. Peter took a step
backwards to regain his balance before he twisted sharply and took the next few
steps to the bed. He dropped Stiles and the boy bounced once, a small gasp
escaping him as he fell. Before he had a moment to recover, Peter was there,
insinuating himself between the boy's lewdly spread legs and pressing them
groin to groin.
“Fuck!” Stiles hissed, throwing his head back at the hot friction burning
between them.
“We'll get to that,” Peter rumbled in a chuckle, nipping at his skin before
soothing it with kittenish licks.
“Promise?” Stiles gasped, trying to be cheeky but falling short and sounding
more needy.
Peter smirked up at him, his eyes dark with lust and his hair a mess. Ducking
his head, his tongue trailed down from Stiles' neck to his pectorals, stopping
for a moment to flick over his nipples. Stiles' breath hitched as his back
arched, pressing himself firmly against Peter. His hand flew up and he bit down
on his knuckle hard, trying to stop the noises from falling. A hand suddenly
pressed down firmly on the bulge in his pants and Stiles choked, attempting to
buck up to get more deliciously painful friction.
“Spit it out,” Peter's voice was throaty and deep. “I want to hear you.”
“N-normally people want me to –nnnnh!– shut up,” Stiles panted, arching hard as
Peter began to rub against his erection.
Peter chuckled darkly, his breath hitting Stiles' navel wetly. “Do I seem to be
like most normal people?” He asked as he began to undo the front of Stiles'
pants.
“I-is that a t-trick ques--” Stiles cut himself off with a sharp cry as Peter's
hand enfolded his length tightly. “Oh, god!”
“I don't think he's currently in the room,” Peter mused lightly, as he began to
stroke Stiles infuriatingly slow. “I could always leave to go check--”
Stiles drew him up for a harsh kiss, his hips bucking as liquid fire traced
it's way through his body. “I hate you--” he broke off into a whine as Peter's
thumb swiped over the head.
“Now Stiles,” Peter murmured into his skin, “what have I told you about lying?”
If he could currently pull the brain cells to do so, Stiles would toss back a
sarcastic remark. As it was, however, all he could was squirm underneath the
werewolf's grip, cursing and crying out in turns. Peter's hand tightened over
his length and Stiles choked, slamming his head back against the bed, the
tendons in his neck straining.
“Fuck, Peter, come on–!”
Peter smirked. “As you wish, little one.”
Ducking down, the werewolf swallowed him down and Stiles just barely managed to
choke back on a scream. The wet suction felt fucking divine and Stiles felt
like his brain was currently being sucked out of his dick, barely even noticing
as his remaining clothes were pulled down and off. Looking down, Stiles met
neon blue eyes and his hips jerked wildly. Peter smirked around his length and
twisted his tongue just so, leaving Stiles a trembling mess.
Reaching down, Stiles carded his hand through Peter's hair, as the werewolf
pressed Stiles' hips back against the bed, giving him absolutely no leverage to
buck up. This, it turned out, was more for Peter then Stiles, as the teen then
felt a set of suspiciously wet fingers trail down, passed his balls and
perineum to his pucker. The barest touch had Stiles lurching as though he was
touched with a live wire.
“Fuckfuckfuckfuck!” The boy thrashed as best he could under the wolf's grip.
Peter pulled off of him and Stiles barely resisted sobbing from the sudden lack
of tighthotwet. “Tell me Stiles,” Peter's voice was rough and it sent a zing of
electricity down Stiles' spine to pool in his groin, “how often do you use that
little toy of yours on yourself? The one you told me you only needed twenty
minutes and double a's for?”
Stiles could barely scrape enough braincells together to reply. “Often enough,”
he panted, gasping sharply as one clever digit pushing into him.
“Oh?” Peter hummed, pressing a nipping kiss to his thigh. “Do you like it,
then? The feeling of being full?” Another finger joined the first, pressing in
hard and firm, right up to the knuckle. Stiles arched, trying to get enough
leverage to squirm back on Peter's hand. “Come on, Stiles,” Peter clucked,
smirking like the asshole he was. “Don't leave us in suspense.”
Stiles glared at him, feeling deliciously frazzled at the feel of two fingers
working him open. “Y-yeah, I liked it,” he grit out. “I'm just wondering
whether or not you'll be able to match up.”
Peter's eyes darkened impossibly at the challenge, his pupils totally blown.
“Oh?” He rasped.
Stiles, despite the fact that he was gasping every time Peter pressed up into
him, still managed to smirk. Twisting his leg easily, he pressed his foot
against the tent in Peter's pants. The werewolf snarled, a hint of fang as he
pressed his mouth against his hip. Stiles smirked, though it quickly
disappeared when a third finger wormed it's way up inside of him. Determined
not to be outmatched, Stiles continued rubbing against the hard member, liking
the way Peter twitched erratically every time he managed to pass over the head.
Suddenly, Peter hit something inside him that had him crying out, his abs
bunching up as his mouth dropped in a silent scream. His hearing buzzed out for
a second as his brain fizzled out into nothing.
“Oh, fuck, fuck!” Stiles sobbed out. “Fuck, Peter, please!”
Peter was panting hotly against Stiles' skin. “Not yet,” he was saying, his
voice breathless, “not yet.”
Stiles keened high in his throat, thrashing hard as Peter began to angle his
fingers and hit his prostate on every pass. There was a coil in his abdomen,
tightening to the point of pleasure-pain. Stiles was panting, little gasps and
breathless pleas falling from his mouth unchecked. Peter hunched forward,
bending his neck to swirl his tongue around the crown of Stiles' cock and suck
harshly.
Stiles' mouth opened in a wordless cry as his back arched hard, cumming hard
into Peter's mouth. The werewolf rumbled, his eyes flashing his pleasure as he
sucked Stiles dry, cleaning the remaining cum away with kitten licks.
“Why'd– why'd you–“ Stiles' chest was heaving as he watched the man rise over
him, until he was at eye-level.
“You'll be a lot more comfortable this way,” Peter told him, his voice a deep
rasp that had Stiles shivering appreciatively.
Before he could reply, Peter slid an arm under Stiles and rolled them smoothly.
Leaving Stiles to push against a firm chest to sit up, straddling the werewolf
comfortably. As he sat up, however, the swell of his ass brushed against
Peter's member, making the werewolf hiss in surprise, his cock twitching in his
sweatpants. Stiles hummed, a devilish grin spreading across his face. Peter's
eyes narrowed and he grit his teeth (that were quickly becoming fangs) harshly
as the boy rocked back on his erection.
Stiles leant back, curling his fingers into Peter's sweats and pushing them
back, his cock bobbing hot and heavy as Peter kicked his pants the rest of the
way off. Rising forward, Stiles braced one hand on Peter's firm abdomen and the
other gripped at the werewolf's cock. Peter hissed underneath him, his fingers
digging bruises into Stiles' hips but otherwise letting the boy do as he
wanted.
Lining him up, Stiles bit his lower lip before easing himself down onto Peter.
The stretch was different, because despite Stiles' prior jab, the werewolf was
easily bigger then his toy. It burnt and Stiles couldn't help the high moan
that left his throat as he slid down inch by agonizing inch. Peter's eyes were
vibrant, and his fangs were bared though he made no noise. His claws were
slowly growing, and it seemed like the wolf was holding onto a tenuous control.
The thought made Stiles feel powerful, despite the fact that he felt Peter
pierce so deep into him he felt like he couldn't breathe right. He had reduced
Peter Hale, a wolf whom prided himself on his control, to barely holding onto
it with the tips of his fingers. The thought made blood pound through Stiles'
veins, his cock beginning to stiffen once again.
Shifting (and gasping at the feel), Stiles slowly lifted himself up before
dropping down hard. Stiles keened but Peter growled, tossing his head back and
baring his throat. The teen couldn't rightfully help himself, sliding his hands
up Peter's abs (delighting in the way they twitched under his touch), he ducked
forward, his tongue running up to swirl a nipple and nip playfully before
continuing on it's trek to latch onto Peter's throat. The werewolf growled and
his hips bucked at the sensation, almost displacing the boy on top of him.
Stiles braced himself, pressing his palms into the bedspread on either side of
Peter's head, before ducking back in to bite at the werewolf's neck. His marks
faded fast, but every time he slipped a tooth in deep Peter's hips would buck
harshly again, displacing their rhythm. Getting brave, Stiles swirled his hips
as he came up.
“Stiles,” his name sounded guttural, pulled from Peter almost unwillingly.
“Yes, Creeper?” Stiles panted, sitting up with a lewd smirk as he swirled
again, Peter's cock hitting his prostate just enough to make him groan aloud.
Peter's eyes glinted, as they always did when Stiles challenged him. He grinned
at the teen astride him, baring his teeth before moving in a sharp twist that
knocked the air out of Stiles. There was a brief moment where Peter pulled out,
making Stiles keen desperately, before he slammed back in again, turning the
keen into a choked-off whine.
“P –Peter!” Stiles cried out as the werewolf began to thrust hard, and deep,
and fast. Pounding into his prostate with every thrust, impossibly deep inside
of him. “P –Peter, please!”
“Stiles...” the werewolf responded, his voice sounding wrecked. “Fuck, Stiles!”
If Stiles could, he'd reply with a snarky 'well yes, that is what you're
doing'. But as it was, all he could do was pant wetly into the bedspread and
cry out every time the werewolf hit that perfect spot inside of him. The coil
was tightening again, his stomach clenching and his cock throbbing painfully.
Sliding his hand down, Stiles went to grab at his cock, only to have Peter
smack his hand out of the way and grip it himself.
A direct hit to his prostate and a tight grip over his cock later, Stiles was
screaming into the bed as his vision, hand-to-god, blacked out. He would have
fell forward, if not for a muscled arm suddenly wrapping around his hips.
“P'ter... c'mon...” Stiles slurred, “wan' it, wan' you. So fucking much...
C'mon, cum in me...”
Peter howled at that, hunching over Stiles' back and latching onto the nape of
his neck in a bruising bite as his hips snapped forward once more before
spilling into the boy unbidden. Stiles groaned at the feeling, shifting just
barely underneath the man. Blunt teeth tightened and Stiles stilled, even when
he felt the skin break he did not move.
“P'ter...?” He cleared his throat thickly. “Peter, what...?”
A sharp thrust of his hips had Stiles' question stilling in his throat. Unlike
what he thought, the werewolf was softening or pulling out, if anything he was
getting bigger and harder. Stiles choked, at the thought that he was being
knotted. He didn't know that even existed outside of the animal kingdom,
dubious porn and fanfiction. Peter unlocked his jaw, pressing his forehead to
Stiles' shoulder.
“It's okay,” his voice was tight and rough, like the wolf had him by the
throat. “Just breathe, baby, relax, I've got you.”
Stiles sobbed as the knot grew, his ass burning fiercely and making his entire
body tremble. He tried to do as Peter says and breathe through the stretch, but
his orgasms had made him dizzy and the pleasure still lingering in his body was
making everything fuzzy. His lungs were all out of whack from the abuse his
body was taking.
He focused on Peter, feeling how his warm, calloused palms skim up his sides
soothingly and the werewolf pressed kisses to his shoulders. He paid special
attention to the sluggishly bleeding bite on the back of his neck, licking at
it gently and making it tingle pleasantly. His limbs trembled and when the knot
finally popped past the rim, Stiles was certain that the only thing holding him
up was Peter's arm curled over his middle.
Gently, the werewolf pulled Stiles down, rearranging them both on their sides
so the teen didn't have to support his weight on trembling limbs anymore. The
knot tied them together deliciously and, despite having just cummed his fucking
brains out, Stiles' cock gave an interested twitch.
“Fuuuuuuuck...” the boy groaned as Peter's hips rolled deep and languid, the
knot catching on his rim and bumping against his prostate. His cock filled with
blood, making him feel punch-drunk.
Peter huffed out a breathless laugh and did it again, and again. “Everyone's
going to know now,” Peter was panting into his skin, “if they didn't hear us
before, they'll certainly know now.”
Stiles was sobbing, sparks of pleasure dancing along his spine like a concert
pianist's fingers. Peter was running a hand down Stiles' front, barely dancing
across Stiles' cock.
“They'll be able to smell me on your skin,” Peter said, rolling his hips in
tight circles, “see it in my marks.” The bite on his neck throbbed. “But most
of all, you'll be able to feel me,” a sharp thrust, “every time you move, every
time you sit, every time you mouth off,” twist, buck, “you'll feel me, inside
of you. Like a brand. My Stiles. My human. My mate. Mine.”
For the third time that night, Stiles tumbled over into the abyss, ropes of cum
spewing into the bedspread. He tightened around Peter involuntarily, and the
werewolf groaned, his hips twitching as he pumped his seed into Stiles. Peter
finally stilled, locked tight and deep into Stiles' body.
“Mine.” Peter murmured, sounding as drowsy as Stiles felt.
“Yours,” Stiles responded, blissfully slipping into unawareness.
Chapter End Notes
     LastTactician here, hope everyone enjoyed this chapter!
     Laughatthegirlwholovedtooeasily: This is all on Hayley, she was the
     mastermind behind this beautiful chapter. x
Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed
their work!