Mad Dogs and Englishmen

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“I am surprised you are not sleeping off last night.” Hermann demurs, smiling. “You were rather, enthusiastic.”

“Well yeah,” Newt shrugs. “Halloween, dude! You made a great xenomorph.”

“I am a xenomorph.” Hermann huffs. 

Newt leans in and kisses him. “A really sweet, adorable xenomorph.”

Hermann kisses back happily. “You made a lovely Ripley. Did Hermine mind being your prop?”

“She loved it.” Newt puts his arm around Hermann. “I kept sneaking her sardines. Now, we’re going to be late.”

Hermann looks up, the massive, gaping fissure leading into Boneyard. “In here?”

“Yep.” Newt strokes his arm, “It’s cool dude, you’ll love it. It’s Tendo’s idea.”

Hermann shivers as they pass out of the gold Anteverse sunlight, and into the cold cold cold of the Boneyard, the pits. The great walls rear up around them, damp and still as they round the corners, burrowing in and deeper into the old Master complex.

Tendo is waiting for them a turning away from the Kaiju graveyard, he smiles. “Hey Hermann! My man!”

He steps in, and throws something around Hermann’s shoulders. Hermann reaches up and his fingers find warm, rough wool, it’s a sort of poncho and Hermann buries himself in it, glad for the relief.

“Here,” Tendo leads him around the bend, and out into the sprawling, hollow darkness of the Kaiju boneyard.

It’s so huge here that it takes Hermann a few moment to notice the candles. There’s a cluster of them, just off the path, into the maze of bones. Hermann frowns, and steps off the path. He has to get on all sixes to climb over the skeletons and his heart tightens in his chest, a silent apology to the dead.

The candles mark out a little circle, and there are blankets here, two baskets. He looks back at Newt, frowning, and Chris and Alison are here too, and Diane. They climb over carefully and join him, sit down on the blankets and opens the hampers.

One is full of sandwiches, rice, last night’s cake. The other holds the remains of a skinmite and some local fish.

Hermann looks between them, then back into the expectant faces of his friends and oh, oh.

“Dia de los Muertos.” He murmurs.

“De los Difunos,” Tendo corrects him gently. “Yeah. We thought we might spend some times with your dead, today.”

Hermann looks around. The searchlights are dim, out here, the candles glint in empty eye sockets, broken teeth, shattered bones. Hermann rests a hand on the smooth curve of a fingerbone, then settles down beside Newt on the blankets. “Thank you.”

“No problem.” Newt smiles, “Never a bad excuse for a party.”

It’s a huge chamber, a Jaeger could get lost here. Their little firelight is a tiny pinprick in the miserable darkness, the heavy, oppressive sense of loss and pain that still weighs on this place.

But it is a pinprick, a tiny hole. And maybe in time, little by little, that might spread, grow and warm until the Boneyard will be- yes, a graveyard. A place to ponder and remember the dead and celebrate them, unnamed as they are.

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Luckily, humans have odd ideas about what to do with their free time. Newt had walked past this shop several times and had gone in before, marveling at what humans- so far removed from pain and fear-  enjoy doing.

The cuffs are very solid, Newt went with thick bands of stitched leather, with padding on the inside. Newt is careful as he tightens them around Hermann’s ankles, the strap between them passed through the basement railings.

Hermann sits up on his elbows, looks up at him. Newt crouches down beside him, close, but just out of reach. “Ready?”

“Never.” Hermann sighs, and closes his eyes.

When he opens them again, there’s someone else behind them.

Newt goes cold all over. Panic claws at his stomach and he wants to run, every instinct screaming to get away before those claws flash, those jaws sink into his throat-

He forces himself still, breathless and lifeless as those sharp eyes cast over him.

He’s looking for a threat. He can read that much. Newt hunkers down, trying not to look dangerous. It’s a waste of time, he can’t hide anything from those cutting, killing eyes.

But whatever they saw seems to have been enough, because the Victor’s taut muscles relax. He rises on all six legs, turns his back on Newt and oh Newt can breathe again, because the Victor would never, never turn his back on anything he wanted to kill.

The Victor takes a step, the leather ties snap tight and it stops, back legs nearly torn out from under him. He turns his head, eyes wide.

A tremor begins in his hindquarters, rising up the length of that long, lean body. The Victor moans, shuddering, it pulls at the restrains, but not with the terrible strength Newt has seen before. But a helpless, limp, trembling motions, barely rattling the D rings.

Newt suddenly wonders if Hermann had ever been tied up before, and knows, sharp as a tooth, who had done it.

What had done it.

Newt is down by his feet in moments, he ignores the huge talons, the lashing tails, and unbuckles the straps. Hermann hurls himself free in less than a heartbeat, clawing away and backing up against the wall.

Newt hesitates for a moment, then follows him. He crouches in front of him, looks into those dark, wild eyes. The Victor blinks at him, fearful and lost.

“Hey,” Newt whispers, “You’re okay.”

The Victor stares at him, he doesn’t understand. Newt tries to send warmth and comfort through the Hive, it seems to work, the huge claws slowly creep back into their sheathes, then long legs are drawn up to the ridged chest,

Newt sits beside him, he reaches up and gently nudges his hand closer and closer. The Victor’s eyes follow his hand, close when he rests it on his shoulder, rubs gentle circles on the junction of shoulder and neck.

There’s a heartbeat between them, his arm a bridge between them. Then suddenly, the Victor moves.

Newt doesn’t have time to run, when suddenly he’s on him, the lean weight of him, the claws pressed tight against his chest, the teeth pressed tight against his throat. Newt closes his eyes- hopes it will be fast-

But the claws don’t dig into his tender belly, the teeth don’t bite. Instead, the Victor curls into a tight little ball against him, trembling, a low moan breaking through his throat.

He’s crying.

“Hey, hey.” Newt’s hands tremble, but he puts them around the Victor anyway, pulling him close. “It’s okay. They aren’t here, just us. It’s okay, it’s okay.”

And maybe some of that made it through the Hive, because the Victor’s eyes close, and he goes lax against Newt, the trembling slowly fades.

Newt holds him tight, whispers nonsense into Hermann’s shoulder until, pressed tight as they can together, no breath between them, they sleep.

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Newt must have fallen asleep after all. He wakes up stiff and shivering, still under the table. He bites of a groan as he props himself up on stiff legs, blinks a few times to clear the sleep from his eyes.

Hermann isn’t there.

The destroyed tupperware boxes are still there, torn apart and starting to stink as the cloned remains rot. His bag trails away in a blur of blue and claw marks.

Newt’s eyes follow it, the track of blue stains to their battered sofa. There’s a new tear down one of the seat cushions, the stuffing puffing out, tipped with more blue.

Newt pulls himself carefully out from under the table. “Hermann?”

There’s a scratching sound from behind the sofa, a faint creak. Newt takes a breath. It’s not the Victor. The Victor wouldn’t be hiding.

Even so, he doesn’t walk around the sofa. He squats down on the seat cushions and carefully pokes his head above the back, haunches clenched to leap away if- if-

He can’t even think it. It’s beyond thought, an instinctive tremble in every nerve. The tension that had kept him alive, for so long.

It fades quickly though, when he sees Hermann.

He’s huddled up against the back of the sofa, spines poking little holes in the hessian sacking, the weight of him pressing a hollow between the wooden stats. His legs are pulled up to his chest, four arms crossed into a wall and head tucked down. He trembles again, squeezes his arms, his legs tighter, coiling up to make a tiny ball even tinier.

“Hermann.” Newt hesitates, doesn’t know what to say. He lopes down, falls heavily on all fours beside Hermann and slides his legs out to sit beside him. The tendrils on his back flare and instinctively reach for Hermann, but his flinches away, and Newt forces them flat.

“I’m sorry.” He tries. It seems a good bet.

“What in the world for?” Hermann’s voice is low, grinding and wretched.

“I should have told you.” Newt drops on his belly, puts his head on his forepaws. The heavy tendrils of his tail twine and flick. “If you knew, you wouldn’t have- freaked out.” It’s the best way he can put it.

“Freaked out.” Hermann repeats. His arms drop away and he looks up, his face is slack, jaws open in small, helpless pants. He’s so miserable and he’s the most beautiful thing Newt has seen and wow he feels bad about that but oh fuck it’s him it’s Hermann.

Hermann must have seen the relief on his face, he twists away. His hands come up, trembling in shame.

Newt slides closer, gently bats his hands away. “Hey, hey.”

“Don’t-” Hermann’s voice is frail.

“It’s okay-”

“I could have-” he chokes.

“You didn’t.” Newt takes a breath because it’s true. The Victor could have killed him. He would have been as easy a target as the cloned meat- and probably tastier. But it hadn’t. “Not a scratch, look-” He spins around on his rump.

Hermann looks at him, takes a deep breath, and lets it out with a heavy shudder. He rubs his face, his arms, the back of his neck. The spines stand up, Hermann wraps his arms around himself and this time his breath comes out raw, ragged- a cry.

“Hey- hey-” Newt forgets the Victor, the trembling terror-instinct of the last night, and pulls Hermann in. He feels frail in his arms, the terrible strength of his other self melted away and gone. Thin bone and spun muscle and Newt wonders how he could have even been scared of him, even for a moment.

Hermann doesn’t move for long moments, his sobs breaking great and fearful as though each one was rent from his body, his hands keep moving, mapping out around his body, reassuring himself that he is his, he belongs to himself and there is no one else in there.

“Shh.” Newt rocks him. He thinks, for a moment, of the great bodies of their larger cousins, how Newt could huddle against them and let the horrors of the Anteverse whirl around them like a storm against great rocks. He tries to be that, in the Hive if not in body, great and solid and unbeakable and warm and holding life and comfort in every crevice of his body.

Hermann must have felt it, and lets out a weak chuckle. He looks up, and this time, the worst of the pain has passed. “If it counts for anything, I don’t think I- it- would have hurt you. The hunger- nothing else mattered, but I- it was still there, under my skin, I wouldn’t have-” he touches Newt’s shoulder, very lightly. The tips of his claws- those deep blue, razor sharp claws- whisper so softly against his skin.

Newt looks into his eyes, and- he knows. he can feel him, Hermann and, deeper still, the Victor. There, in the Hive, curled up alone and afraid and- in it’s own way- ashamed.

“I know,” he says softly. “It’s okay.”

“I’m sorry,” Hermann whispers. “I ruined this. You worked on this for months and- and we should be so happy and- I ruined it.”

Newt shrugs, and hugs him again. “I’ll make more. We’re fine, Hermann.”

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Thousands have changed, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. Kaiju Blue poisoning was eventually lethal, but the infection was their way out.

They hasn’t really been such a sense of urgency. The quarantines were holding, and were mostly being broken deliberately, and anyone who changed was at least stable-

And maybe Newt wanted to maintain an excuse, for as long as possible.

“I’m not going back,” He announces, slumping back on the bed.

“Where were you thinking of going?” Hermann rolls over, resting two right hands on his side.

“Well, back to human.” Newt cranes his head back, “It’s an option now.”

Hermann’s spines fall flat. “Oh,” he’s trying for pleasure, but it’s dull, hopeless.

Newt rolls over. “I’m not changing.” He says firmly. “I like being like this- and you can say you do too.”

Hermann’s spines perk up a little, he tucks his head into Newt’s shoulder.

“You’re beautiful.” Newt says softly. “Anyway, didn’t you pretend to have MS? That’s a pretty good excuse for not going back.”

Hermann nods, Newt strokes his beautiful, glossy back.

“And we won’t be the only ones,” Newt continues, “S’not just those with Kaiju Blue poisoning, it’s a way out for a lot of people with terminal things.”

And maybe, in time, however many years, there might be a community. Other people like them.