#imm try to sleep now and hope i feel better when i wake up

[sad-leon]

Forgor to clock out but already took melatonin so even if I wanted to make that 30-45 minute round trip, I couldnt ;-;

I know its not a big deal, but the anxiety doesnt know that

This why I liked swiping my badge, much harder to forget to clock out (though also much easier to forget to clock in)

[niccage]

bc things look best when asked from an ask ILL PROMPT MYSELF!! "i’m sick on halloween but told you to go have fun at the party anyway but instead you surprised me with a blanket fort, tons of candy and all my favourite scary movies" newt/geiszler GO

what a solid request thank you @newtgeiszlur 

— 

To Hermann Gottlieb, falling ill on Halloween morning was hardly a “worst case scenario,” nor would it usually have been of particular concern to him at all in years prior. In times of both earthly isolationist peace and great extraterrestrial war, Halloween had never been of much interest to him, and you would never catch him donning a silly costume at a work party while sipping plastic cups of a spiked beverage whose flavor could only be described as bottom shelf vodka and Red 40 while 50 other full grown adults did the Thriller dance on a cafeteria floor. No, missing such an opportunity would normally not be a loss for Hermann Gottlieb. 

To Newt Geiszler, however, the only thing worse than himself falling ill on Halloween morning was his quasi-secret sometimes-boyfriend slash lab partner slash couples costume co-conspirator getting caught up with a nasty case of the flu in the early hours of October 31st, and yes, these were both worst case scenarios, and the latter was currently underway as they spoke, as he had been notified by a message on his laptop from a concerned Mako Mori that had stopped by his counterpart’s room in the preceding morning hours. 

Newt had just walked in the door to Hermann’s Shatterdome apartment to see his partner in bed, swallowed by a massive white comforter and surrounded by menthol lozenge wrappers and real, bonafide handkerchiefs (because of course he would be too prim for Kleenex, Newt briefly considered) that had certainly seen better days. What appeared to be vintage Barabara Walters clips played at full blast on the small, crooked television screen that hung from his wall, though Hermann didn’t seem to pay it much mind, although he wasn’t looking at Newt, either, for that matter. His locked gaze seemed to only concentrate on the grey ceiling above him.

“I don’t even think I realized you had a TV in here,” Newt said, looking for the remote to turn down the volume. Not that the noise bothered him, but he knew that if healthy Hermann didn’t like any loud or obnoxious noises save Wagner’s symphonies, then sick Hermann probably wasn’t enjoying this, either.

“Neither did I,” grumbled Hermann as he slowly shifted his head to look at Newt. “Mako turned it on this morning when she stopped by to drop off the briefings from the pilot meetings last evening. I believe she thought it would help, but it seems as though the programming gets louder the closer we find ourselves to the noon hour and I haven’t been able to place the remote.”

Newt wasn’t having much luck placing it either, so he resorted to shutting the screen off manually before he turned his attention solely to Hermann. Though Hermann had perhaps never been the vision of youth, his face looked grayer than Newt had ever seen it with the exception of his nose, which held all of Hermann’s vibrance and redness within itself. He had clearly not had the energy to shower that morning and his hair still showed all his sleep in the way each strand went this way and that. Bedhead was a rare sight on Hermann, as Newt always slept later than him, so he tried to take as much of it in as he could while still maintaining the plot, which was that Hermann was sick and it was, very importantly, Halloween morning.

“How are you feeling?” asked Newt uncomfortably, knowing the answer already but not wanting to face the reality.

Hermann stared blankly at him while he removed a white handkerchief with blue trim from his bedside table and brought it daintily to his nose. “Wonderful,” he said dryly.

“So, should I assume you’ll be out of the lab all day, then?” Newt continued, awkwardly scratching at his pant leg while looking across the overall barren room at Hermann in his down feather cocoon. 

“I would imagine that would be a yes, Newton,” Hermann sighed, clearly failing to understand the point of this conversation. “And all other activities that would have fallen within the jurisdiction of today.” 

That was all Newt needed to hear for his face to fall, unwillingly and unintentionally, and he knew Hermann could see it, as his own expression untightened and turned to one of almost guilt. “I’m sorry,” Hermann continued. “I know you were looking forward to this evening,” referring to the Halloween party that Tendo had been planning since early July that featured a confirmed guest list of nearly every employee at the Shatterdome and was considered to be the biggest and booziest event of the year, save they unexpectedly close the breach or something similar before January. Not only had Newt been talking about it during their lab hours nonstop since who knows when, but he had even convinced Hermann to enter the costume contest with him as an obviously platonic Mulder and Scully. Newt had had his ginger wig sitting on his bedroom sink for months and had probably treated it more carefully and lovingly than he did his own (fucking awesome, if he did say so himself) hair. 

Newt couldn’t bother trying to hide his disappointment on his face once it had already come out, so he just shrugged and gave a hint of a forced smile. “It’s okay, I promise. I can find something else to go as that doesn’t require a second person,” said Newt, and he really was trying to not sound as dramatic as possible but fuck, he really had been excited about this. He’d known that with the track he’d put together for the DJ to play when it was their turn to be up on stage paired with the sheer screen accuracy of the costumes that he had put together for him and Hermann, they really could have won that shit tonight, and now he was going to have to put together something last minute that just won’t be as good. Without Hermann. 

Hermann weakly beckoned for Newt to sit beside him on his twin-sized mattress, to which Newt obliged. The closer Newt was, the sicker he could see that Hermann really was (not that he’d ever doubted him, but a scientist can hope, right?) and brought the back of his hand to his forehead. “Do I feel very hot to you?” said Hermann, mustering a smile with eyes that clearly showed how guilty he felt for ruining Newt’s evening. 

“You know you’re always hot to me, babe,” said Newt, who was never one to resist an opportunity. Hermann began to chuckle but instead began hacking on something lodged in his throat. “Do I need to get you down to medical, though?” he continued, “Or like, get you a doctor up here or something?” 

Hermann quickly shook his head to this while his coughing receded. “No, no, no,” he said, “I know I may not look very good but I do know this is no more than simply the flu, which I have dealt with many times in the course of my life and do not need to bother a medic about. Nor,” he continued between soft coughs, “need you concern yourself with me. I know you still have work to do in the lab today and that you’re going to skip all of it to focus on making a new costume for yourself tonight so that you can win that thing you’re so concerned about.” 

Newt’s heart warmed at the way that Hermann pretended to not know exactly it was that he had entered them into this evening and he brought his hand gently to Hermann’s warm cheek as his fellow scientist shivered and curled more into his comforter. “Okay, okay,” he said, before he leaned down to kiss Hermann’s forehead as delicately as he could muster and got up to leave the room and let Hermann rest. “I’ll stop by later, yeah? Before I go tonight?”

Hermann nodded, pulling the blanket up tighter to his neck. “Please do, my darling. I’d like to see what awful thing you muster up for this evening.” 

This got Newt to grin as he went to step out the door back into the apartment hallway. “Oh, you know it, babe.”

—

Hermann spent the following hours in and out of deep sleep, with his moments of reality largely consisting of blowing his nose, guzzling down the hot green tea that continually and magically appeared by his bedside every time he woke up (Newt was certainly one to hold onto, moments like this reminded him,) and staring at the grey ceiling of his apartment while fighting back feelings of both terrible congestion and infinite guilt for ruining Newt’s evening. Never would he have thought in his life that he would resent having a genuine medical excuse for not attending a Halloween celebration with his work colleagues, but Newt seemed to bring this side out of him more than he liked to admit. Hermann spent many of his waking moments over the course of the day considering how he could make it up to him, though he continued to draw blanks on how. This evening had really been something that Newt had clearly been looking forward to for weeks, and Hermann had just gone and blown it for him with no chances of rectifying it for him. He generally tried not to focus on his own instances of being a shit boyfriend, though he knew they were plentiful, but as he laid there between illness-induced naps, it sure was hard to not feel like the biggest asshole in their two-person K-Science division. 

Even as much as he had somewhat been dreading having to parade onstage amongst other costumed eccentrics like Newt, the fact that he was doing it with his partner had made him resent missing this all the more. For the first time in his life, Hermann had looked forward to bobbing for apples and eating repulsive candy corns and listening to the “Monster Mash” play no less than seven times on the loudspeaker in an overcrowded Shatterdome cafeteria, all because he knew that the man he, for some unforeseen reason, loved with all his heart, would be beside him, and even if they hadn’t decided to reveal it yet to the rest of their coworkers, just Newt’s sheer presence made everything not only manageable, but something that Hermann looked forward to immensely and intimately.

The fact that Newt was now going to the event alone caused a slight tear to form in Hermann’s heart, as he imagined the handsome scientist in a dazzling costume that won the entire evening, surrounded by suitors of all and any genders that were as amazed and impressed by the mere existence of Newton as he was, and while he trusted Newt enough to know that nothing would ever happen between any of these admirers and him, it didn’t mean that his petty and insecure sides were very comforted by the thought. 

Somewhere in the beginning of the evening, Hermann had begun finding it easier to delve back into consciousness as well as feeling more like an actual human being than a mere receptacle for influenza, though his ability to stand or breathe comfortably for more than a few seconds at a time continued to be limited. By 1900 hours, he heard a knock on the door, though didn’t bother asking who it was or telling it that it was free to enter, as he knew that if it was the only person he wanted to see that it would freely walk in regardless of any response he gave.

He was correct, and in walked Newt, not dressed in his typical lab clothes nor any clearly identifiable Halloween costume, but instead wearing simply an old Godzilla World Tour cotton t-shirt and a pair of green plaid pajama pants, which struck Hermann as odd. 

“Does your party not start soon?” Hermann asked, unable to stand the obnoxious nasal quality to his own voice. 

“Hello to you too, dear,” said Newt in a rapid voice, grinning from ear to ear as he stood in Hermann’s doorway, “and why yes, yes it does. Which is why I’m here, talking to you!” 

Hermann raised an eyebrow as far as he could muster. “Then, if I may ask, why are you not in any sort of costume?” 

Newt rolled his eyes as if it were obvious, “Again, that’s why I’m here! Duh! It’s in my room and you’re just going to have to come see it.” He began heading over to Hermann’s bed, clearly with the intention of helping him out of it and dragging him out of his room. 

“What?” Hermann exclaimed, not following but at the same time entirely unsure of what he was missing. “In case you haven’t noticed, Newton, I’m not exactly feeling my best and would rather stay where I am. And if you cannot remove it from your room, how, pray tell, do you intend to showcase it at the party?”

Newt seemed entirely nonplussed by either of Hermann’s objections and continued helping him rise from the bed. “When I show you, it’ll all make sense. Can’t you ever just like, chill and let me handle things?” 

Hermann, already exhausted after a day of battling various symptoms, caved easier than he likely would have in other instances and allowed his boyfriend to help him to the door. Fortunately, Newt’s room was just to the left of his own so they needn’t walk far to get to their desired destination. Hermann blew his nose into the lavender handkerchief that he had brought with him as Newt fiddled with the door until it swung open and he guided Hermann in without turning on the overhead light, and closed the front door behind them.

“You know, you may have consumed enough kaiju particles in your day to garner the ability to see in the dark but not all of us share the same genetic mutations,” Hermann griped as he stood in complete darkness while Newt scurried off to do God knows what. 

Newt laughed while he fiddled with something near his bed, a good ten steps from the front door. “Come on, we both know that’s a myth and that kaiju can orient themselves so well in the deep oceans because they have fucking awesome hearing and anyways just give me a second, okay?” 

Hermann, again too tired to argue, relented for the moment while he let Newt complete whatever it was that he was doing, until suddenly Newt seemed to find the outlet for which he must have apparently been looking, and the room lit up with small white fairy lights which cast a soft glow on a canopy of various blankets and quilts that had been hung from the back of table chairs over what Hermann presumed was still Newton’s twin-sized bed. 

Unable to think of anything to say, Hermann stood open-mouthed and looked at Newt, whose glasses reflected the tiny bulbs that had been strung across the ceiling of the tiny apartment and whose smile showed how excited he was to merely be in this moment with Hermann. 

“I couldn’t think of any costume nearly as good as the one we’d planned for tonight,” said Newt, who began to circle back around the room once more to get behind Hermann with the intention of wrapping his arms around his middle and pulling him close. “And honestly,” he continued, voice muffled as he leaned his head into Hermann’s back, “it really didn’t seem like it would be any fun without you there. So I figured we could have a night in and I could finally make the pillow fort that I’ve been dying to put up for you.”

Hermann began turning around in Newt’s arms and wrapped his own arms around the shorter man. “Newton, I’m not really sure what to say-” 

“I’m not done yet!” Newt went on, abruptly ending their embrace and instead pulling Hermann over to the small bed that they had long figured out how to most effectively share that was now enhanced by a covering of various prints and fabrics. Newt guided Hermann into the soft cave, and once they comfortably settled in, Hermann realized that Newt had created a perfect hole in the fort to see the television screen as well as stocked the bedside table with all of the Halloween treats that Hermann had recognized seeing in the Shatterdome convenience shop. Newt quickly reached over to grab a box of allegedly “spooky” Mike and Ike’s as well as the remote. “I already went and predownloaded ‘The Fly’ (1986) partially because I know you get hard from not only ridiculous pseudobiology and because, like, fucking Halloween and all, but also because I know how bad you want to get in early Jeff Goldblum’s pants and I thought it might ease your way into recovery.” 

Hermann scoffed but did not deny, and leaned further into Newt’s shoulder and tugged him tight. “I love you,” he sighed into Newton’s chest while his lover peppered his scalp with gentle kisses and pressed play on the remote. “Thank you, for all of this.”

Hermann could feel Newt’s lips pull into a smile by the way they moved across the top of his head. “I love you too, babe. And thank you, for being my-” 

He tried to stop him, he really did. “Newton, please.”

“Boo.”