#and yes i wish the curtains could be an inch longer but I'd have to order custom and I'll get on that at some point

[expatesque]

Have I spent hours getting my apartment completely perfect to impress the hot Italian guy (and, unfortunately, his girlfriend) who will be coming to stay tomorrow? Perhaps.

[hermannsthumb]

hello, I'd love to see newmann with 27 and 45 from the prompt fill you've been doing :)

27. sick/injured fic + 45. chocolate of romance

from fanfiction trope mashup here

another old fill…….

—————–

“You what?” Hermann says.

Newt sighs and wedges his cell phone between his ear and shoulder. Technically, the Shatterdome has very strict rules about cell phones in the med wing–the rules being definitely not allowed, because they interfere with the high-tech equipment they need to observe rangers’ brain scans or something like that–but Newt’s nurse is MIA and the other beds are empty, so he just snuck it out of his discarded jacket and crossed his fingers. It’s not his fault the only person who would visit him is busy half a world away. “I have appendicitis. Or, like–I did, I guess. Can’t really have appendicitis without an appendix. Ha!”

Hermann is quiet on the other end. Then: “Oh, Newton, you didn’t take it out yourself?”

“Oh, fuck no,” Newt says, though he can’t deny the thought crossed his mind as he rolled in agony on the lab floor, his scalpel just inches away. “No, I promise. I managed to get myself to medical in time.” He adjusts his phone again. “I can’t believe it’s just gone. A whole fucking organ. I kinda want to keep it in a jar or something on my desk. Like I’m Dr. Frankenstein.” That would be a hell of a conversation starter.

“Absolutely not,” Hermann says.

“Yeah, that’d be creepy.”

(It would be cool, actually.)

More silence from Hermann. He clears his throat. “Appendicitis. That’s…not too serious, is it?”

“Beats me,” Newt says. “It hurt like a bitch. I’m gonna have a pretty cool scar, though.” He lifts his bedsheet and hospital gown in one swoop to take a peep at his stitches: the scar won’t be quite as cool as the vaguely star-shaped one on his knee he got in college, but it’ll still look impressive.

“And you’re…” Hermann coughs this time, and when he speaks, it sounds like it’s being wrenched painfully out of him. Newt can’t help but smile. Trust Hermann to be allergic to even the smallest sign of emotion–even the smallest sign that he doesn’t, like, hate Newt’s guts. “…Alright? It all went well?”

“I’m fine,” Newt says. “They’re holding me hostage for a few days to make sure I don’t screw up my stitches. Anyway, I just wanted to say that if you get a call from medical later, don’t be worried. It’s just me!” He listed Hermann as his emergency contact years ago, mostly as a joke, but never really got around to changing it.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Hermann says, though he doesn’t really sound that glad. 

“And, you know,” Newt says, “it’s kind of boring just sitting here. All alone.”

“Mm,” Hermann says. “I imagine.”

“No visitors,” Newt says.

Hermann sighs. “Newton, I can’t up and get on an airplane just because you want someone to coddle you. Perhaps you would have some visitors if you weren’t an utter, horrendous nightmare to every single one of our colleagues.”

“Right, right,” Newt says, grinning. That’s what he misses the most about Hermann, if he’s being honest: his bitchiness. No one ever insults him the way Hermann does.

“Hm,” Hermann says. “Well. Goodnight, Newton.”

Newt decides not to remind him that–here in Hong Kong–it’s solidly morning, and instead says, cheerfully (because Hermann’s put him in a spectacular mood), “Night, dude!”

It’s been…weird, here without Hermann. Newt knows it’s their job to do whatever’s asked of them to further the advancement of k-science–to go wherever they’re told to go, calculate whatever they’re told to calculate–but. It’s just that things had been going really good with Hermann, and Newt was starting to think they were reaching territory that might even be considered amicable, and then the night before Hermann had to pack up and leave for three whole months they drank a little too-much and got a little too-close on the lab couch–well, it’s just a bad time for Hermann to be away from him, is all. If Newt had his way, Hermann would be here, and maybe even closer than he’d been on the lab couch. 

(“Three whole months,” Hermann said solemnly.

“Three boring months,” Newt said.

“Peaceful months,” Hermann said. “No one to make my life a living bloody nightmare–and a lab to myself–oh, I almost wish it was longer. I ought–” He spilled his drink onto his sweater. “–I ought to speak to the Marshal right now and ask him to make it permanent.”

Newt knew he was lying, just as well as he knew that there was no way Pentecost would ever let a mathematician as good as Hermann–high-maintenance and fussy as he was–out of his Shatterdome for good, but he did Hermann the favor of not pointing either of these things out. Instead, he ducked his head. “I’ll miss you,” he confessed.

“Oh, Newton,” Hermann sighed. “Yes, well. I’m sure I’ll miss you too.”

They looked at each other. Newt touched Hermann’s hand. “Goodbye present,” he said, and he leaned in, and Hermann leaned in, and…)

“Dr. Geiszler!” Newt’s nurse snaps, rearing his head back around Newt’s curtain, and Newt drops his phone with a clatter and a yelp.

“Sorry!” he says. “Sorry, I swear it was important!”

On the third day of his (visitor-less) hospital stay, Newt wakes to a bouquet of roses and a small pink box nestled alongside unappealing toast on his food tray. The roses are squished and wilted, and look like they’ve seen much better days; the box is shaped like a heart. Newton, a tag on each says. “What are these?” Newt says groggily.

“They were dropped off for you this morning,” Newt’s nurse says.

Newt waits until he’s gone to take off the lid of the box. It’s full of chocolate, it turns out, from the last candy shop still open in the city. A sheet inside advertises they contain two dozen different fillings, from caramel to strawberry to matcha. Under the sheet he finds a small, typed notecard:

I thought these might cheer you up.Dr. Hermann Gottlieb

“You sent me chocolate,” Newt says into the phone half an hour later, through a mouthful of about three of them. They’re fucking good. To be honest, though, wartime rationing means it’s been so long since Newt’s had chocolate that he might have just forgotten what it’s supposed to taste like. Hermann must’ve shelled out a fortune for it regardless. “That’s so corny.”

“And flowers,” Hermann says. He sounds grumpy. Right–time difference. He  was probably just getting ready for bed when Newt called. “Or did they not turn up? It was a rather last-minute decision, and I had to place the order before midnight, so I had…limited options.”

That would explain the wilting. It’s the thought that counts, though. “They got here,” Newt says. “I can’t believe you did all this for me!”

“Yes, well,” Hermann says. “We are…”

He trails off. Newt smiles, even though he know Hermann can’t actually see it. (He hoped the event on the lab couch wouldn’t be a one-time thing.) “We are,” he agrees.

Hermann sniffs, and mumbles something that might be I miss you, if Newt thought Hermann was capable of being sentimental. “I will see you in another two weeks,” he says, somehow managing to sound flustered and gruff at the same time. He hangs up.

Later that week, Newt tucks the card into the corner of his bulletin board, next to a photo of Hermann looking particularly grumpy at the last Shatterdome New Year’s Eve party. He does still kind of wish he could keep the appendix.