Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

     It is common fair that our mundane suffering, our everyday violences, are what inspire the greatest of ingenuities within us. Rather, perhaps not ‘mundane’ or ‘everyday,’ but the happenings that grow to be part of the populace. These things we embrace as part of progress, but that have truly haunted or accompanied us for a very long time. They are to be the seeds of inspiration. The tender bruise from which we draw our dearly beloved. The foundations that we build, and build upon. 
     
     What questions should we ask of it other than ‘what great deeds will these great and terrible feats inspire,’ or ‘whose mind shall be awakened at this time’? I find that these terrors are only clouds that have been painted a shade too light for the darkness they host. They are not inspiring. They are not awe-inducing. They are just events, carried out by scared men following orders.  
     
     I feel it on the horizon: this great change. It is coming soon now. Sooner. Sooner. 

—from the journals of officer Hermann Gottlieb, 1870

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26 | May, 1882

     The devil rides him. Seated on his chest, its scabbed lips pulled back from bleeding gums and sharp incisors, it leans down into his face, breathing and keeping the man in place. He finds it hard to breathe, harder still to move. The moonlight lights him up in luminescence, his white nightshift riding up on his pale thighs as his legs tremble, strung tight as if tied to the furthest corners of the bed.

     Outside, the sea tosses like a colicky child, and inside the man grimaces in fitful sleep. He is the spray upon the rocks, and the clap of the thundering sky lancing its rays to the oily ocean surface. The night howls, windowpane rattle and whip-sharp gust of cold water-wind shake the brick foundations. The man dreams that the devil sits on his chest, that the devil gazes into his eyes, that the devil’s face becomes the face of a man, that the rocking boat he is in is a cot, that the thunder filtering into his dream is a gun going off. The devil, or the man, smiles down at him. Sharp teeth, flashing white, backset in the dirt-smudged face. He tells Hermann to breathe. He tells Hermann he’ll be right back. Hermann may be dreaming, but he knows that the man will not come back.

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When he wakes, Hermann still feels the mud shifting beneath his hands, filling his boots, mouth open to call out to someone. Who it was has disappeared with his waking. It is all he can do to stumble across the wooden floors to the privy before he heaves into the toilet. His hands shake around the bowl as he presses his sweaty, heated forehead to the cold porcelain. His breath shudders from his chest and his wild eyes struggle to focus on the linoleum tiles. He counts them, eyes snagging on the grout until his mind quiets and he can let his eyes fall shut again. Until he can hear the silence outside.

When he is ready, he stands on shaky legs. He flushes, washes his hands, and goes back out to his room, peering out the window. He braces his hands against the rounded windowsill. There is fog stretched out along the horizon, where the sea has darkened to a grey blue from the shadow of overhanging clouds and curtains of rain, but for now, closer to shore, skies are the dusky purpling of dawn and the water is clear. He allows himself a small smile as he watches a brood of seagulls squawk at one another on the grassy crag below. There is nothing more tempting than staying in his bed, but the duties after a storm are many, and perhaps it will shake the devil from his bones at least a bit.

He changes into his uniform, scratchy with starched trousers and ironed creases. For a moment he mourns being unable to wear what he pleases. He’d much rather fit himself into something layered and undeniably warm. Instead, his fingers push hangers aside to grab the uniform coat. He pulls a cap down tight on his head and hesitates just briefly, before the mirror, assessing himself. If his mother or sister saw him they would say he looks gaunt, almost jaundiced, but he has not seen himself otherwise for so long that he believes it might just be a permanent fixture: his mouth ever-stuck just slightly downturned and his eyes unable to meet even his own gaze. He brushes his fringe from his face, and straightens his vest before he slips away from his accusing reflection.

He pads bare feet across the wood paneling of the sitting room. The only sound, other than that perpetual backdrop of tide billowing in and out, is the dull thump of his cane against the floor as he skirts around rough patches and onto the rugs that lead to the rickety, rusted spiral staircase.  It creaks under his weight, and his hip aches with every step. It is not the most ideal arrangement, but he goes up it slow and patient until the lamp room comes into view. 

There is little space that is not occupied by the fresnel lens. First order, it overwhelms the room in its size. Hermann can stand inside it, and has sometimes spent entire afternoons sitting up in the lighthouse tower, watching and waiting as the sun fuses with the horizon and floods the skies in pinks and reds. As it is, the lamp has been running for little under six hours. Where the rest of the house has been left cold from the storm, this room is muggy with heat. Hermann can feel himself start to sweat immediately as he pulls the five-gallon container of reserve oil from the furthest corner of the room and begins to refill the lamp. Though the day seems clear, further out it is dark and they’re on storm watch so he judges it would be best to keep the lamp lit.

He cranks the lever on the clock to reset the rotations before he slips from the room and onto the balcony. It is a narrow strip that wraps around the tower, metal railing salt-bitten and in need of replacement often. Much of the building needs constant maintenance because of the weather, age of the building, and coastal position. Hermann is thankful that he is not out here alone. Though he is the lighthouse keeper, he knows he could not keep things in working order without his housekeeper, Jillian, and her boy, Caleb. They are an odd pair, like him. They don’t mind the solitude or isolation and, while friendly, also desire their space at times. With how unsettled the night has left him—most nights tend to, but this one was worse—he can’t deny that their presence will be incredibly welcome.

He shivers, wrapping his arms around himself and drawing the coat closer to himself. The wind is still strong. Pungently brine-y, it’s like the storm pulled even the most stagnant waters out into circulation from the trenches. It smells promising. While the wind is still cold and cutting at the cheeks is the best time to walk the strand. Not for duty, though he has channel soundings and weather readings to do, but because he’s admittedly amassed quite a collection of things he’s found along the shore. Call it the fault of his lingering, nagging, artistic mind.

He peers over the railings and sure enough, it looks far more busy on the shore than usual. The gulls are squalling, circling up in the air and picking their way across the sand and rock. Eager not to be the last one out, he returns inside, closing the door firmly behind him and once more checking on the lenses, scrubbing at them where grease has smudged the glass, and making sure that the oil is not leaking.

Hermann picks up the now empty oil container and makes his slow journey down the stairs. Down is easier than up, for the mere fact that lowering himself gently is not nearly as difficult as pulling himself up, bracing himself against the walls of the tower.  He stops on the second landing, where his room is, only to slip into a pair of broken-down shoes, and then continues to the first landing.

Already he can smell breakfast and see the dim light glow from the doorway to the kitchenette, but he turns the other way instead, past Caleb and Jillian’s rooms and out the back door. Again, he has to tuck his coat closer to himself. Though it is May, it is far too cold in the after-storm. The ground is wet, too, dampening the bottommost hems of his trousers as he parts grass and heads to the oil and boathouse. Normally he asks Caleb to do it, but he feels like doing the task himself this morning. Now that he’s out of his room, woken by sea-breath, he wants to keep his mind busy, distracted from the lingering yoke of his nightmare.

He rubs at his throat, ignoring the persistent tremor in his hands. The tremor doctors tell him he should not have, because the bullet would not have affected that. He drops his hand again, pushes open the door to the boathouse, and sets down the container heavily. He breathes, bent overtop it, surveying the boathouse perfunctorily to make sure the building’s suffered no damage. Satisfied, he snatches a pail on his way out.

The walk from the lighthouse to the shore is not long, especially since the tide is risen. The pail bumping against his calf can only get heavier from here on out, he muses. He’s been having luck much more frequently now that the stormy season is upon them. Or perhaps he is becoming a hoarder, which, would not surprise anyone, really. He has come to think of himself as fragmented in a way he has a difficultly and reluctance voicing. However, he is very aware of it. He can’t help but be when it haunts him so persistently. At times he wonders what would have been of him if he’d objected, if he hadn’t been sent to another country as a boy to finally play at war in the way he actually never did in the comfort of his home. How he could have finished at the academy, shunned by society but content in his artistry—these insidious tendrils repeatedly make incursions in his thoughts. He shuts down the ‘what ifs’ because they are of no use to him, but, as with the fragmentation, he can’t help but wonder. The tremor in his hands is always at its worst when he has fingers around a pencil or brush. He can’t help but wonder.

He makes himself stop wondering as he bends to flip over shells, running his fingers over their corrugated surfaces. Large fans, ripped and shredded, make the sands an obstacle course. Crabs scuttle to-and-fro, picking the meat off the carcasses in their tiny claws and peering up at Hermann with their beady eyes. Pinned between arm and chest, he’s gathered large conches, strange bones, fossilized remains, and plant life—the likes of which he’s rarely seen before. And along with these, battered things on the very verge of death—hyperventilating through gills with blank eyes unseeing.

He didn’t expect there to be so much wash-up this time. In hindsight, he should have. It’s still a bit too stormy for comfort, thunder and the sky pregnant with barely-contained rainfall, but it’s the largest respite the area’s had in a while. It’s dark out there: all the way from horizon to shore the sea’s been desaturated into a paint water pool of deceiving undertow and seaweeds torn at the root, kelp swirling in the water like death-trap nooses. What poor creatures got tangled in those, Hermann can do little for. Hermann doesn’t trust even the shallows—it is not infrequent for these storm seas to steal people. He does his best to avoid the water.

He’s bending down, trailing fingers over one of those unfamiliar stones, when he hears it—a wheezing, trilling sound. Like a breath squeezed out of laboring lungs with painstaking care. Then, he sees it: a head of human hair, followed by a body. For a moment he stands, breath speeding up as his hands clench around the handle of the bucket. He swallows around the itch in his throat and closes his eyes shakily when his leg spasms. For a moment he allows himself this: to be swept up by the fear, the dread, the momentary all-powerful inhibition, the feeling that he does not know what to do. Has not been instructed. Cannot manage the situation.

Then, he sets his jaw and his mind quiets. It is duty and care that guide him this time. It is not the first time someone’s washed up, and he has been instructed. He knows what to do, what vitals to check, where to place his hands, how to do what needs to be done. Time is of the essence, so he puts the bucket down and approaches the man, wondering how long he’s been lying there in the cold. Hermann crouches carefully, the only sign of his hesitation in the way his hands hover. When Hermann touches him, his skin is clammy, and he does not react. Hermann fears him dead, until he sees how his chest rises and falls. It is uneven, straining, but there all the same.

"Hello?" Hermann says, shaking the man. The man doesn’t stir at first. When Hermann gets more forceful he makes a pained sound and immediately begins to cough. Hermann hastily turns him over on his side as he begins to retch, curling in on himself and bringing up water against the sand.

"That's it, get it out," he says, rubbing his hand against the man’s back as violent shudders wrack his frame. Absently, Hermann notes that he is not a slight man. A good, strong back. Strong arms too. Stalwart. It is probably this that helped him survive at all. He is only in breeches, so his upper body is entirely exposed, which inevitably grants Hermann a view of the extensive ink work he’s had done. Hermann is not entirely unworldly. He lived in the town after all, has seen tattooed men before, but never like this. Never so exposed. Never so all-encompassing. It disappears even under his breeches, and reappears at the backs of the man’s so very pale thighs.

Hermann’s gaze doesn’t linger. He feels his face heat up as he quickly pulls his hands from the man’s body and takes off his own coat instead. Already silently mourning the fact that it’ll get wet, he drapes it over the man’s shoulders.

"Can you walk?" he asks, already thinking he could call Caleb to help. The man pushes his hair from his face, and turns to look at Hermann. He looks unwell, about to be ill again, but he shifts so that he is fully facing Hermann.

"I think…so?” he says, voice rough and much higher than Hermann expected.

"Good man. Let’s get you up, eh?" Hermann says, rising to his feet and switching the hand on his cane so that he can offer one to the stranger. The man takes it, pushing up unsteadily and leaning against Hermann heavily. Unexpectedly.

"What is your name?" Hermann asks as he waits for the man to get his legs under him.

“Newton. Newt, rather," the man says, glancing up at Hermann.

Newton’s damp fingers press spots into the side of Hermann's shirt and he stammers. "I worried you were-ah. Well. No matter. Just Newton?”

Newton eyes him, and Hermann feels him shift his weight when he sees the cane. Still, Hermann feels like he is the one who’s lost his balance. Though not triggered by Newton specifically, Hermann is reminded of how difficult it is to do these things. To talk. To look, and be looked at. He doesn’t get much company from strangers. This is foreign, and in company it is so easy to be reminded of the things that make him different.

“Geiszler. Newt Geiszler," Newton says, correcting himself. Hermann keeps his hand on Newton’s upper arm as he begins to take uncertain steps. The name—Hermann assesses him sidelong—it sounds as close as his own. Again, he can’t help but wonder. Wonders if Newton also wore a uniform, and on what side he was on.

“What about you?” Newton asks. “Who is my savior?”

Hermann ducks his head, looking down and away. “Apologies, Mr. Geiszler. Hermann Gottlieb. I'm the resident lighthouse keeper."

Newton laughs weakly at that, but still sounds amused. “No need for the honorifics. Seriously, just call me Newt.” 

He has no intention of calling Newton ‘Newt’, but because Hermann suspects that it’s not ideal to be speaking in Newton's present condition, he nods and allows them to lapse into silence as they make their way across the shore.

It feels like it takes them ages before they push through the front door of the house. Upon hearing the door, Jillian comes out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on the front of her apron and already speaking.

“Ah, Mr. Gottlieb, I’ve put a kettle on and the break-oh!” Jillian pauses, eyes going round, but her surprise is much more short-lived than Hermann’s had been. Jillian, after all, has been here longer than even Hermann himself. She’d been with the previous keeper, who, apparently, had a whole brood of children and a wife determined to keep to her books. Jillian had been a logical solution. When the keeper retired, Jillian remained, tidying up the houses and welcoming Hermann as he settled in during his first week of service. They took to each other well, and at the end of the week Hermann offered her a position, if she so desired it. She had stayed, along with her son, and she’d been more valuable than Hermann could possibly express.   

Jillian takes a step forward, and then back, and then opens the hall closet and pulls down some blankets before going around to Newton’s other side and helping guide him to the kitchen. They lower him into one of the rickety wooden chairs, next to the oven. Hermann takes his coat from Newton’s shoulders and helps Jillian pile him with towels. Newton is heavy-lidded, and staring off into the distance, just vaguely nodding his head in thanks and clutching the soft material of the towels in his hands.

Hermann taps the table in front of Newton to draw his attention. “I know you must be tired, and disoriented, but let’s get you fed and I’ll draw up a bedroom for you so that you can rest, yes?”

Newton nods, and turns to look out the window over the sink. The curtains are pulled back, and the sun has risen at this point. It is a hazy blue outside, just a scumbling of cloud cover.

“Water?” he croaks, gaze snapping to Hermann and then Jillian.

Jillian takes down a glass from the cupboards and fills it before passing it to Newton. Newton drinks slowly, grimacing all the while as if in pain. He sets the glass down heavily and leans forward, shivering.

“Clothes, as well,” Hermann adds. “We’ll need to get you clothes.”

Jillian sets a plate tall with food in front of Newton. “No worries, lad. We’ll have you right as rain before long. I know you’ll not be wanting to eat, but be best you do. You’ll see I cook a mean meal.”

Newton laughs, and it is more a noisy puff of air than anything else. “After what I’ve had to put up with, I dare say it’ll be the most delicious thing I’ve eaten in years.”

“Ah,” Jillian says with a delighted laugh. “Mr. Gottlieb, you failed to say you’d brought a flatterer.” She takes the kettle off when it starts to scream, and fixes up a mug of tea for Newton.

Hermann excuses himself from the room before he can hear Newton’s answer, and goes down the hall. He knocks twice upon Caleb’s door and waits, listening for any movement inside. Caleb opens the door, face still sleep-rumpled and red hair askew. He sniffles and wrinkles his nose, squinting at Hermann.

“Mornin’," he says. His voice is in that awkward growing stage where it cracks and jolts in the most unfortunate of ways. He rubs at his neck and peers around Hermann, probably smelling his mother’s cooking. “What’cha need, Mr. Gottlieb.”

“Good morning, Caleb. I’m sorry to wake you, before you’ve woken on your own.”

“'S fine. I know we’re on storm watch. The oil?”

“Yes, precisely. I’ve left the container in the boat house.” When Caleb makes to squeeze past Hermann, Hermann stops him with a hand on the elbow. “We have a guest, as well. Washed up sometime last night or this morning as I was walking the strand. I’ve left my bucket on the shore, if you could-?”

Caleb’s eyebrows rise for a moment before he nods. “Yeah, no problem! I’ll get it.”

He smiles at Hermann and Hermann smiles back. It’s then that Hermann lets him go and watches as he leaves through the back door to the boat house. Usually there would be more reserve oil in the service room, but every five hours the lantern needs to be refilled with oil, and they’ve weathered a long storm this time around.

As all the rooms on the first landing are occupied, what with Jillian and Caleb in need of their own living space in addition to their bedrooms, Hermann makes his way up the stairs. At the top he pauses, gripping the handle of his cane, and sighs. He hasn't opened the guest room since the last wash up they had. He’s grown used to the solitude, and is a bit loathe to give it up. The thoughts are pushed aside, reprimanded for their callousness.

He pushes the door open and finds the room in no disarray. It’s last tenant had been quiet enough, but Hermann would chalk it up to how shaken up he’d been. If he’s any luck, this one will also be quiet, though he bears him no ill will and has no particular desire to see him further shaken. As of now. he just seems disoriented. Perhaps exhausted.

Hermann struggles with the latch on the window for a few seconds before the window snaps open under the force of Hermann’s full weight. Brisk breeze whooshes in, taking the stale air from room. Though it is cold, he leaves the window open as he works, untucking the fitted sheet and shaking it free of any chance of dust, and quickly passing a rag over most of the surfaces. He goes out of the room to retrieve a broom from the maintenance closet and perfunctorily sweeps the room. From the top ledge of the closet, he pulls down a pillow and two blankets, and sets them on the bed. Newton will have to make his bed as he pleases.

Hermann has brought only a few casual clothes with him, but they will have to do in the meantime. The next time they get relief supplies, if Newton cannot go with them, he’ll ask for clothes. He reminds himself to make note of it in his journal.

He’s just looking through his drawers for trousers when he hears movement coming up the stairs. Newton appears in the doorway shortly after. He has his back to Hermann, and has changed into a long-sleeved shirt, a pair of loosely fitted denim work pants, and socks and shoes. He’s tied his hair back, as well, and Hermann can see the edge of a tattoo peeking from the collar of his shirt. He then turns and catches sight of Hermann and hesitates a moment before coming forward, hovering between hall and Hermann’s room.

“Clothes,” Hermann says, holding up the ones in his hands as explanation, and then he sees the bundle in Newton’s hands. “Though it seems you may not need them.”

“Jillian thought Caleb’s clothes might be a better fit,” Newt says sheepishly. His gaze is on Hermann for just a moment, and he keeps shifting his weight. Hermann is reminded again that he must be practically collapsing on his feet.

“She is right about a great many things. I’ve no doubt this is also one of them. Come, I can see you swaying.” Hermann sets the clothes he extracted on the armoire top for the time being and leads Newton to his room. Newton puts his clothes on the small table in the corner and barely looks out the window before he sits on the bed. He slips out of his shoes and begins unrolling his socks, unacknowledging and uncaring of Hermann’s presence.

“Right. I’ll, ah, leave you to it, then,” Hermann says, tapping his cane against the floor once in a nervous gesture. Newt looks at the foot of the cane for a silent moment, and Hermann flushes, embarrassed. “I’m just across the hall, should you need me.”

He hastily leaves the room, shuts the door behind him, and then pinches the bridge of his nose, away from view. Newton is quiet, but his gaze is—unsettling. The vagary of it makes it hard to read him, and the sudden intensity makes it hard to return it. He’s only just washed up. Hermann must remember not to make any preemptive assumptions.

Chapter Text

The next time Hermann sees Newton, Hermann is at his desk, picking shells from his bucket and examining them with his glasses on. He’s changed out of his uniform, stripped down to a simple tunic and a pair of cossacks for the night. With just the light of the lamp to guide him, he lifts a shell into the light, turns it this way and that, and catalogues it precisely in his sketchbook. He has to pause between each one to let the ink dry, but he’s already painted a spread of them across the two open pages of the sketchbook. It is dark out, and the lamp draws soft light onto Hermann's face. He doesn’t hear how Newton approaches, or how he leans in to squint at the notebook, until he is quite at Hermann’s shoulder.

Hermann startles, which startles Newton in turn. The both begin to stammer out apologies at the same time and then quiet. Newton laughs and rakes fingers through his hair. He is no longer in the denim Jillian lent him. He’s changed into a soft cotton nightshirt and his legs and feet are bare upon the wood. He still has an air of sea-tossedness, but he looks far more rested.

“I trust your sleep was beneficial,” Hermann says, setting the shell aside in an already substantial pile, and turning in his seat.

“I’m still sore in some places. Got torn up pretty bad all over my chest and Jillian bandaged me up,” Newton says, hands pressing over his diaphragm and Hermann can see the bandages crease the fabric of Newton’s nightshirt.

“Yes. I saw you bleeding. I thought you might be dead.”

“No such luck, I’m afraid. May I?” Newton asks, gesturing towards the bed. There is no other chair, and Hermann does not see the harm in it, so he nods.

“My legs are still not at their best,” Newton says by way of explanation. He immediately glances at Hermann's cane and gets a rueful expression on his face.

Hermann waves his hand, not offended. “I should imagine not, after what you’ve been through.”

Newton nods, looking around the room, glancing from the shelves with framed photographs on them, to the desktop covered with jars of water and palettes, ink bottles, quills, brushes, and Hermann’s sketchbook set up as if on a podium.

“They’re very good,” Newt says.

“Excuse me?” Hermann asks, confused at the conversation shift.

“The-the, uh, paintings. The shells.” Newt gestures at the notebook. “Is that, I mean, is there more?”

Hermann is momentarily stunned. Truthfully, it’s been so long since he’s shown anyone his work. Not even Jillian or Caleb have seen his work. Not even his bigger pieces stored out in the boathouse and covered in butcher paper. For a long time he had not been drawing or painting at all, and before that the last time must have been… during the war, perhaps.

Hermann swallows and looks down at his hands. He shrugs. “They're nothing. Not that impressive. I catalogue the shells I find at times—when I am without much else to do.”

“It is far better than what I could do, and better than much that I’ve seen. I would like to see more, if you’re amenable. If not, that is fine. I promise not to pry.” Hermann glances up and Newton is smiling, leaning back on his hands and the collar of his shirt has slipped down slightly, showing off a decorated collarbone. He winks and Hermann frowns, his hands fidgeting in his lap.

The thought of sharing his work makes him anxious, but there is a part of him that desires that recognition, and to hear it after so long is more welcome than he could have anticipated.

“Very well,” Hermann says. He presses the pads of his fingers to the pages he has open, testing them. When the ink does not smear, he picks up the sketchbook and passes it to Newton.

It is hard, initially, to watch as Newton flips through the pages. Hermann’s hands shake and he clasps them together, in hopes that it wont be noticed. As it turns out, he has no reason to fear that, because Newton does not lift his eyes from the pages even once as he goes through the sketchbook. There are pages and pages of shells, but there are also sketches and quick renders of the shore, of the vista from the top of the lighthouse, of the lens itself, of the gulls, of the dawn, of Jillian and Caleb. Newton does not look unimpressed, or unmoved by them. Hermann had thought, perhaps—well, he doesn’t know what he’d thought. He’s never received negative feedback on his art but it has been a long time. And he is much different now. Aged. Sleepless.

Newton looks at the drawing in delight, and awe, a soft smile on his face. He passes the sketchbook back open on the pages Hermann was last working on. “Thank you,” he says. “I don’t have an artistic bone in my body, but I love to look at art. Those are really impressive.”

“I doubt the veracity of your statement,” Hermann says and slips the sketchbook back on his table. At Newton’s questioning look, Hermann gestures to his torso. “Your tattoos. They are extensive.”

Hermann wishes he could take back the words the minute they come out of his mouth, and he can feel his face heating up. Newton laughs and Hermann goes rigid, thinking himself laughed at.

“Oh, yeah. Those. But I didn’t design them. I have ideas and no way to carry them out.” Newt rubs at a wrist over the cuff of his nightshirt.

“Well, I am a firm believer that we all have creativity somewhere. Perhaps yours manifests itself differently.” Hermann pauses. “Is there someone we should contact? Let them know you are safe?”

“Ah, yes. Probably so. My mind has been so”—Newt waves vaguely for a moment, lips pursed as he searches for the right word—“scattered.”

“We can wait, if you’d like more time to yourself. There is, of course, no hurry for anything. All the same, we have to wait until the supply delivery comes in to send anything out. You may go with them as well, if it is more convenient.” The nearest town is far, and small though the market is plentiful.

“Let us wait, then. I’m likely to be more coherent after more sleep and in a far better state to make relevant decisions.”

“Very well.” Hermann nods. “Are you hungry at all?”

“I could eat. Jillian did not lie when she said she could cook a mean meal, but I’ve been out at sea for so long that I fear anything would taste excellent.” Newton laughs as he comes to a stand and waits for Hermann to join him.

Hermann shakes his head with a rueful smile, unhooks his cane from one of the arms of his seat, and takes the lamp in hand before he follows. “You may have to test that statement. She sometimes leaves me meals, as I am usually up through the night with the lamp, but if she has not we may have to make the best of things.”

Newton glances back at Hermann over his shoulder and raises an eyebrow, smiling. “Come now, out here on your own and unable to fix yourself a good meal? For shame!”

“Quite,” Hermann replies sharply. He blushes, feeling his pride rear its head, and presses his lips together. “Take this, will you?”

He passes him the lamp without waiting for a reply and glances away from the divot between Newton’s brows as advances down the stairs. He hears Newton follow shortly but at a distance, and he is quiet.

Jillian has already retired for the night, but Hermann can see light filtering through from beneath Caleb’s door. He turns to the kitchenette and waits for Newton to join him with the lamp. Once he does, Hermann goes to light the other lamps in the room.

The icebox in the corner of the room is squat, of a tawny wood, and mounted upon six wheels. Hermann unlatches the door and peers inside. From the icebox he pulls out a soup now cold, and a few sandwiches.

He holds out half of the sandwiches to Newton, and then turns to the stove. While he reaches in the cupboard for a pot, Newton takes a seat at the table. Hermann pours the soup into the pot and sets it to heat before setting the kettle as well and joining Newton at the table.

“It seems we are in luck,” Newton says with a grin, holding up his sandwiches.

“Yes, well. It is a rare occasion when Jillian does not leave me anything. Especially considering all of this.” Hermann unwraps one of his sandwiches and takes a generous bite.

“All of what?” Newton asks as he unwraps his sandwich.

“Storm watch. Don’t get much sleep during storm watch. The whole month is a bit of a storm watch, though.”

“Right. It’s stormy season. I don't get much sleep during stormy season either,” Newt admits with a frown, peeking between the slices of bread to see what is in the sandwich.

“How so?” Hermann asks.

“‘M a sailor. Work on the merchant schooner The Otachi. Wouldn’t do to steer us straight into a storm.” Seemingly satisfied with his inspection, he, too, takes a bite of his sandwich.

“Were your crew caught in a storm?” Hermann asks, straightening in his seat and already beginning to write the telegraph out in his head.

“Well, yes, but as far as I know they had no troubles. There was a rather sudden gust of wind and I was up on the rigging. The storm came upon us all of a sudden.” Newton has the sandwich halfway up to his mouth, both hands clenching it with force as he recalls the memory. His fingers tear into the bread, and Newton blinks down at them and then smiles at Hermann apologetically. The tide crashes against rock face outside, and the kettle begins to whistle.

Hermann gets up, careful of his step in the flickering lamplight, and pours them both mugs. He unhooks a wooden spoon from the wall and stirs the soup slowly. It is not nearly warm enough, he judges, when he tastes a bit in the spoon. He turns the heat up just slightly and takes the mugs back to the table.

“By all rights it should have been a straightforward run. We’ve done it dozens of times. But, well, the skies and seas were not so forthcoming this time. I was supposed to be on the lookout, and I wonder if I missed something.” Newton rubs his fingers against the sides of the mug, staring off beyond Hermann. Through Hermann. Hermann bobs his teabag in the water and mulls over the words.

“Life on the sea is unpredictable. The best you can do is wait for word on your vessel. I will be going up to refill the oil in the lamp. If you wish, I will send word to the ports so they can transmit any information to me.” Hermann, though he lives at the sea’s mercy often, can’t imagine being in the eye of the maelstrom. What things Newton has seen, he’s only read of in novels and travel journals.

Newton smiles at him politely, and Hermann’s last words seem foolish. Or, perhaps, insensitive.

“Yes,” Newton says with a nod. Despite the smile, he doesn’t look as casual as he probably means to. “Yes, I should sit back and wait. Nothing else for it.”

He sniffs and ducks his head, stray strands of curly hair hanging down in his face. Hermann’s not the best at reading people, but he feels he should be comforting Newton in some way. Offering him some consoling words. Hermann has seen no ship on the horizon all day, so Newton is very far from the familiar. He must be worried.

“I will try my best to get any information I can, and then we will see how to get you back to your crew,” Hermann says finally, following it with a sip from his mug. It is far too soon and the tea burns his tongue, scalds all the way down his throat.

“Thank you,” Newton says, looking up at Hermann through his lashes and drumming his fingers on the tabletop. He sips from the mug and hums. His eyes close and his shoulders drop, heavy under an invisible weight.

He stands, one hand on the tabletop to brace his weight and the mug and sandwiches in his other hand. “Well, I’ll be off, I suppose.”

“Won’t you stay for soup?” Hermann asks, scrambling to a stand as well. Newton gives him a strange look. The scrutiny makes Hermann stammer, makes him realize he’s stood for no reason.

“No,” Newton says slowly. “No, I am fine. Thank you. This is enough.” He raises the sandwiches and nods. “Good night. Full sails.”

“A lantern. Take a Lantern,” Hermann says, swiping one from the counter and offering it to Newton. “And, your ship—The Otachi—an unusual name."

Newton takes the lantern from his hands. Their fingers brush and Hermann jolts. Lit from below, Newton’s eyes gleam as he regards Hermann again and wipes at his mouth with the side of his hand. “Named after a beast. Out at sea there are many. Better to take its name as our own.”

Hermann watches him leave, ghostly with the wan light making his shift translucent. He shivers and rubs at his biceps through his shirt, sitting back down and dropping a hand to massage at his knee. In the silence following Newton’s departure, Hermann finds himself unsettled. When the soup is sufficiently warm, he transfers it to a bowl and decides to take it with him up to the tower.

All the way up the tower, the staircase is transgressed with shafts of moonlight. White beams wavering only slightly over metal with each crash and pull of the surf. Hermann can feel it reverberate from the foundations up. That Newton was not entirely crushed to a pulp is a miracle in an of itself.

On the second landing, Hermann spies the warm light under Newton’s closed door, and continues on upward until he reaches the control room. He sets the bowl and his mug down, sets his cane aside, and takes a seat at the desk situated right under one of the long lattice windows. He drags the telegraph closer to the edge of the table and swings the circuit closer to the ‘on' position. His fingers stroke over the knob for a few idle moments before he begins tapping out the message.

—

EAST ISLD 5 PPDC LIGHTH              27 | 05 | 1882

RESCUED MAN WASHED ASHORE BY NAME NEWTON GEISZLER. BELONGS TO CREW DETAIL OF SHIP THE OTACHI. REQUEST INFORMATION ON SHIP STATUS & BEARING.

LH KEEPER H. GOTTLIEB

—

He sits back, waiting for an answer for some seconds. As he waits he finishes up his soup and nurses his tepid tea. It’s not likely he’ll get an answer, and after a few minutes he decides he’ll try again in the morning.

Hermann unhooks his cane from the desk and checks on the systems. He steps out into the frigid night air on the observation deck, and lifts a pair of spyglass to his eye. Out in the dark of night, there are only the vague glimmers of the moonlight on the sea, and, further out, the lights of fishermen’s small boats. The sky growls just a bit, and Hermann feels, without having to look, that there will be more rains to come. Perhaps not as eventful as the ones the storm brought, but they will come.

He retreats back into the building, regretting he has not thought to bring a coat with him. Again, he goes up, through the service room, and up to the lamp room. The heat in the lamp room is invariably smothering when it has already been running through the night. More so when it has been running day and night. If he is lucky, Hermann will not have to leave the lamp on tomorrow as well.

Today has been rough on his leg, and he feels it already. It is a lingering ache from heel to hip, bone deep and riding eddies. If he puts weight on his leg, the pain is sharp for a blinding moment, and then it seems to spread out from the site as if it were an inkblot. Storm days have him climbing the tower every five hours or so to refill the lamp. He would ask Caleb to do it, but it is Hermann’s duty, and he fears Caleb burning himself far too much to dole out the responsibility. Hermann himself has several burns, small and large, on the inside of his forearms from where the oil has splashed during refill. Oil burns are like no other. They keep you awake through the night with numb skin. Pins and needles, but exacerbated, multiplied.

He is careful as he refills the lamp with oil. There are smears on all of the lenses from its heavy use during the day. Hermann makes note to clean them tomorrow, when the lamp has been off enough time to cool down. He takes off his worksman gloves and sets them on their hook. Short of breath—the air is so oppressive, so humid on the lungs—he drags the empty reserve oil container down to the service room with the others. He checks over them again, counting. Caleb had refilled them during the day at Hermann’s behest, but he’s used quite a couple of them already. Still, he has enough to last him at least three more nights before he has to ask Caleb to refill them again.

For a moment he considers taking a reserve container up the stairs for when he needs it tomorrow night, but his hip protests. It can wait.

Back down in his bedroom, Hermann glances at Newton’s closed door and is surprised to see light still shining from beneath it. Well, it’s no business of his how his guest decides to spend his time, or what hours he keeps. Far be it Hermann’s right to pass judgement. His hours are kept by necessity, but still. He closes his door behind him quietly.

“Ah damn,” Hermann mutters, clenching his hand around his cane as he remembers the mug he forgot in the service room. That, too, will have to wait until tomorrow. He leans back against the door, struck with a spell of dizziness and he reaches one trembling hand up to slip the glasses from his nose, to leave them dangling from his neck from a gold chain.

Beyond tired, he slips off his shoes on the mat next to the door, and strips out of his layers. He rummages for a nightshift in the drawers, pushing aside socks and jabots until the soft cotton is in his hands. The exhaustion is such that he can’t even finish tying it at the collar, and collapses into his bed. As he extinguishes his lamp, he wonders if Newton has been able to sleep at all, and hopes that he hasn’t left the lamp on by accident.

Chapter Text

In the morning, Hermann wakes to music. Singing, more precisely. It is loud, and after a few seconds of listening, Hermann determines, red-faced, that it is also bawdy. He lies face up, staring at the ceiling of his room, as he mentally prepares himself for the day, for his duties, for the guest. Free from post-storm cloud cover, this morning feels less like night. It is still on the heels of dawn, sky reddish at the edges, but it feels brighter. His leg, on the other hand, seems to want no part in the jolly atmosphere of the day. He is always surprised by the sheer amount of pain he is in the day after a storm watch. After so many of them, one would think he was used to it, but pain is variable and memory oft forgets.

He eases himself up into a sitting position and winces as his hip complains. His fingers massage the area and he closes his eyes, breathing heavily. At least he will have to make that climb much fewer times this morning. Perhaps he could even have Caleb make the morning survey, and then handle the midday and suppertime ones.

A hot shower and a change of clothes cannot solve everything, but he finds it eases the pain in his joints just a bit, and manages to wash away the grit and grease on his face left over from the previous night. He switches out his cane for another, as the handle of the one he’d used just the day before has pressed a bruise into the palm of his hand. There is little to remedy it, as any handle will irritate the area, but the curve on this one is more forgiving.

Unfortunately, no handle will give him back more fluid ease on the staircase. At times he questions why he ever took his post. Arriving at a kitchenette where Newton is at the sink washing dishes and still singing out perverse verses is one of those times.

“Will you cease your horrid squalling?” Hermann snaps, lowering himself into one of the chairs. They used to use the sitting room for meals more often, but the chairs were hard on Hermann, and it felt too proper for the amount of people in the house. Now that all four seats are filled, Hermann starts to reconsider.

Newton turns to look at him, and Hermann’s eyes go as wide as saucers when he notices that the man has Jillian’s apron on. He cocks one hip against the sink cupboards and raises his eyebrow with a grin.

“Someone woke up in a strop,” he says.

“Well,” Hermann sniffs. “Some of us have long work hours so that less careless sailors end up banked on a reef.” The image of Newton’s worried face the night before comes unbidden to Hermann’s mind and he fears that he’s gone too far, perhaps. Newton, however, is in untarnishable good spirits and just laughs.

“Fair enough. Whatever would I do without my heroic Keeper?” Newton drapes a wrist over his forehead dramatically. He’s holding a sponge in that hand and just so happens to squeeze on it and dribble water on himself. He yelps and turns back to the sink.

Well-rested, he is incredibly energetic. The whole time he washes the dishes, he rocks on his feet or bobs his head as he hums out a tune. His hair is tied back with a ribbon and it bobs this way and that with each movement of his head. His arms are also in constant motion. Today he is wearing a tunic and has the sleeves rolled up far past his elbows. It affords Hermann the sight of toned muscle, and bronzed skin peeking from between the ink. There are moles, and freckles here and there all the way down Newton’s forearms. Hermann imagines that he is used to much more liberating clothes. Perhaps shirts without sleeves at all, so that they may not get caught in the rigging.

With his shirt pulled up, and without the hurry of concern for Newton’s wellbeing, Hermann can also more clearly see some of the man’s tattoos. There are waves, arched and angry, etched into Newton’s skin. Creatures, too. Big and small, they crawl their way up Newton’s arm and disappear into the folds.

“Where has Jillian gone off to?” Hermann asks, looking around the room. Both Jillian and Caleb’s doors had been open when he came down, so he knows they are not asleep.

“Caleb said something about going to market, and Jillian went out back. There is, uh-“ Newton leans to look into the pot burbling on the stove. “There’s porridge. And tea.”

“And, pray tell, why are you wearing Jillian’s apron? Were you also concussed?” Hermann asks, raising his brows and crossing his arms as he sits back in his chair. Newton turns to face him again, hands on his hips and getting water every which way. He rolls his eyes and points at the dishes.

“What else should you wear when doing dishes?” Newton asks as if it is the most obvious of conclusions. Hermann has no idea how it works on schooners. Perhaps it is.

“Well, clothes, for starters,” Hermann mutters, stubbornly wanting the last word.

“Not necessarily,” Newton sing-songs and Hermann is left so flustered he can’t even form words, sputtering unintelligibly. He feels the back of his neck heat as he clenches his hands in his lap in indignation. 

“You are clearly in need of medical attention, Mr. Geiszler,” Hermann begins mildly. "We can only hope that a doctor can do something for you, and it is not a preexisting condition!”

“No need to be shy, Mr. Gottlieb. It may be foreign to some of us, certainly not to this god-given individual, but such things are quite natural,” Newton says with a hand upon his heart and a solemn expression.

“God-given? Hardly!” Hermann exclaims, the heat moving to his face and half out of his seat.

Jillian, fortunately, enters the kitchen again. She has a grass-woven basket full of oranges from the trees out back and she greets them both with a spirited ‘Mornin’.’ Hermann glares at Newton and lowers himself back in his seat slowly with a terse nod and thanks in her direction for the fruit she tosses his way.

“No scurvy for you lads,” she announces with a hearty chuckle. Turning to Newton, she places his orange in his hand and waggles her eyebrows. "Bet you don’t get many of these out there on your fancy schooner.”

“It’s not very fancy, but you’re right: we don’t.” Newton grins at Hermann and then unpeels the fruit eagerly. He pops a wedge into his mouth, shortly followed by a moan. “Oh, they are divine!”

It cannot be said that Jillian does anything but outright giggle when Newton swoops down and plants a wet kiss on her cheek. “Well, I did not make them!”

“Can’t a lad give a handsome lady a kiss?” Newt teases with a smile that dissolves into a laugh when she smacks his forearm and shoos him away from the sink. She mutters something about ‘men and their weird antics,’ and serves out the bowls of porridge for the three of them.

“Mr. Gottlieb, my boy’s gone into market to stock us up better until t’next delivery. Didn’t rightly know what you might need, but I gave him a list. Forgot to ask you last night.” She sits at the table and immediately spoons the porridge into her mouth. By her thinking, porridge should be eaten at its freshest, even if it is scalding.

“It's quite alright, Jillian. I will not need him as much today. Perhaps, if he would like to help me in the garden in the afternoon, I would appreciate it.” Under the table, he rubs at his hip. He could wait until Caleb is back to have him do the survey, but trips into town take a while, especially since the boy goes by bicycle. He lets out a small sigh under his breath.

Apparently, he is not subtle enough to escape Newton’s notice. The glance he gets, jumping from face, down the length of his arm, and then his hand at his hip, reminds Hermann sharply of the intensity of Newton’s gaze the night before. This morning Newton’s proven to be playful, irritating, inappropriate, and hardly concerned with what might be thought of him in many regards. However, there is something behind these sporadic gazes that hint at a quick mind. Hermann is not sure whether to find it unnerving, or welcoming.

Newton unties the apron and slips it over its wall hook. He turns his chair backwards and straddles it, crossing his arms overtop the back of it and resting his chin upon them as he waits for his porridge to cool and peels another orange. The rind stains his fingernails, and bits of it get stuck there.

“I could work in the garden,” he says, gaze on his hands as they roll the fruit from its fibrous skin. His fingers pick at the threads at the outside of it, stringing them off. “If that’s alright.”

Hermann’s not expected the offer, and he’s doubly reluctant to accept it when Newton’s gaze slides from the fruit to the hip Hermann’s still got his fingers wrapped around. “It won’t be necessary.”

“But I want to,” Newton says, gaze flickering up finally to meet Hermann’s own. Hermann pauses and thins his lips. He nods and drops Newton’s gaze, lifting a spoon of porridge to his mouth.

Once done with his breakfast, he excuses himself and hears Newton crossing over to the living room with Jillian in tow as she tells him about their library. Hermann pauses on one of the steps, overhears Newton exclaim about a bestiary or some such, and continues upward.

By the time he reaches the watch room, he is so winded and in such aching pain that he has to sit for at least a half-hour before he looks over any of the systems. While he waits, he tries to send the telegraph again. This time, the reply comes quickly.  

—

 

EAST ISLD MNLD VEYST 23             27 | 05 | 1882

 

RECEIVED.  THE OTACHI SPOTTED AT 0600. IN NEED OF HEAVY REPAIRS. ALL CREW ACCOUNTED FOR WITH EXCEPTIONS FOR NEWTON GEISZLER. EST. TWO MONTHS IN DRY DOCK.

 

T. CHOI

—

That, at least, may put some of Newton’s concerns to rest. Hermann spends the remaining duration of his rest transcribing the message from morse into english. He tucks the piece of paper in the front pocket of his coat, and heaves himself to a stand.

He takes his journal out with him on the balcony as he casts his gaze over all he can see, spyglass up to his eye. There is a strong breeze coming in from the East, and the tide has abated some. Cloud cover is minimal with thready cirrus formations. He spots The Leighton, The Cassiopeia, and a small fisherman’s boat. A bit late for a fisherman’s cuddy, but they don’t seem to be in distress, so he closes his journal and lets his glass hang from his neck. He slips the journal in one of the large inner pockets of his coat and braces himself on the railing. This is not like the widows walk surrounding the lantern pane. It does not go the entire way round the building, and his position means that the sun is upon his skin. He welcomes it. The days leading up to the storm were bereft of it, fraught with dreadfully cold weather. Today is not bad. Fresh. Brisk, but not terribly cutting.

Remembering the grease stains on the lenses the night before, he makes his steady way up to the lamp room. Again, he must pause to recuperate, and grits his teeth as he feels his leg tremor. His hands, as well.

The lenses of the lamp spread out from the rounded focal point in concentric rings. Each ring is superimposed on the other, like the plating on the hide of an animal, and juts out slightly. The rays of sunlight that reach it through the lantern pane throw prismic rainbows over the wooden floors and up the walls. The sight, paired with the powder blue of the sky beyond the lantern pane, never fails to make Hermann gaze upon it with wonder.

The room is still humid, but it is cool as it has not been for hours. The lamp has stopped rotating, and burning. He opens the doors to the widow's walk, letting out the stagnant air, and sets his coat and cap aside on the back of the single wooden chair in the room. He unbuttons the sleeve cuffs of his shirt to roll them back up his arms, and sheds his vest as well, as an afterthought. The spray nozzle and cleaning rags are on the wall shelf above the desk, next to a framed picture of the lighthouse’s first tenant and an oil lamp. The first rag he grabs is unraveling at the edges and Hermann slips it into his back pocket before he reaches for another.

With the unhindered glare of the sun on them, Hermann can truly see how filthy the panes of the lenses have become. He hefts his ladder under his arm and rounds the outside of the lenses, dragging his fingers over the smooth surface and is satisfied that at least he will only have to clean the interior.

Hermann edges his way inside the connective gap between the lenses, and pulls his ladder through. He props it against one of the inner walls of the lenses, and set the nozzle and rag on the extendable tool table of the ladder. Unlike the outside, the inside of the lenses is smooth, and the view from inside to the outside is of a colorful landscape, the lines blurred and distorted as if being projected from a carnival mirror.

The lamp itself stands in the middle, housed by the large lens, and is elevated on a turning pedestal on a column. The chimney of it is smudged as well, and the wick has been run down. Hermann unscrews the chimney from the fuel container and takes out the wick. He drops it on the tool table and hooks his cane over one of the steps of the ladder. Before resting his weight on it, Hermann checks to see that the ladder is solid on the ground.

The grease is stubborn and Hermann has to scrub at the glass chimney for long minutes before he can replace it. The fuel container must also be scrubbed clean, to scoop out any oil residue that might compromise the effectiveness of the duration of the lamp.

He spends the rest of the morning similarly, working his way across the inside of the lens and scrubbing where needed. The lamp was the simplest, and easiest part. It is small, compact, not much larger than a regular oil lamp. The lenses, however, are expansive. Three men could fit in it side-by-side if they wished. At times, Hermann knows there’ve been three men working as the Keepers. Often, he must spray water over the stains with the nozzle and is bent at uncomfortable angles the higher up he goes, and the more the cupola of the meeting lenses narrows. Not for the first time, Hermann sees the wisdom in maintaining more than one Keeper.

—

“Hello?” A voice calls out around midday, ringing in the hollow space. Hermann fumbles with his cloth and only just catches himself from an unfortunate fall. He tries his best to clean the grease from his hands, but there is little for it. Besides, it is a job like any other, and it will hardly be the first time Newton’s seen someone unkempt.

“What in the blazes was that woman even thinking?” Hermann mutters under his breath. She knows, even better than he, the rules about allowing civilians up. Beyond that, there is also that Hermann does not appreciate being intruded upon—has come to regard the job as somewhat of a private affair. An idea encouraged, no doubt, by the relative solitude of it. And Newton is different, with his loud mouth, loud gestures as he speaks, singing, and his jokes. His willingness to be at the crux of a joke, to make a joke of himself, even. His apparent little care for being a joke, and his insistence on keeping that unshakable facade of the everyman no matter what.

More than anything, it is Hermann himself that concerns Hermann. He is so often lost in his thoughts, in his past that insists on lingering like a ball-and-chain manacled to his pained leg. He would rather the rag on the lens for hours on end, than conversational pleasantries shared for the sake of it.

He tosses the rag on the tool table and pokes his head out from the connective gap, frowning at the man. Newton hasn’t spotted him yet, turning in place with his gaze up on the ceiling. His mouth is open in wonder, and he stops when the lantern pane is in his line of sight. He steps forward to it, setting the tray in his hands aside onto the desk. He pauses in front of one of the open doors to the widow’s walk, and stands in the frame, gazing out at the sea. The light throws him in silhouette, and Hermann watches him for a few silent seconds after retrieving his cane and fully stepping out from inside the lenses. He briefly considered staying hidden until Newton left, but there is something in his expression that makes Hermann soften just the tiniest bit. The amazement, perhaps. Regardless, it makes Hermann straighten, pull his coat over his dirtied shirt, and clear his throat.

“You’re not supposed to be up here,” Hermann says. Newton turns around, his eyebrows raised and a half-smile on his face. He raises his hands and shrugs his shoulders. His hair is down again, Hermann realizes belatedly. He must have washed it at some point, as it now bears a healthy gleam and well-defined curls. It blows back from Newton’s shoulders as if a billowing curtain confronted with an open window.

“Jillian told me you’d be wanting for lunch, and Caleb’s not returned.” He looks back out to the view beyond the widow’s walk. The wind is picking up speed, and it throws Newton’s hair in further disarray. 

“I've never been so far up,” he murmurs.

Hermann makes an aborted gesture and then tentatively moves forward. Newton looks back at him, and smiles as Hermann ushers him onto the walk.

“I imagine Jillian gave you the whole spiel,” Hermann says, searching for the cigarettes he’d slipped into the breast pocket of his coat that morning. He slips one between his lips and searches his other pockets for his matchbox before he lights it.

Newton leans against the railing, propping his chin up in his hands, and watches as Hermann takes a drag. Hermann blows it out slowly, tilting his head back and slightly away from Newton.

“…Yes. She did,” he says, finally, and purses his lips.

“You need only say if you mind the smoke.” Hermann supposes it’s polite to ask before lighting it up. Though he tries, he’s certain he has not known what constitutes proper decorum for a long time now. He taps the ash against the side of the railing and turns to face Newton, a metal crossbar hard against his hip, through his coat.

“I don’t mind it,” Newton hastens to clarify. “I've smoked, myself.”

“Would you like one, then?” Hermann reaches up to his pocket, and hums when his fingers graze the transcribed telegraph. “Ah! Right.”

He takes it out of his pocket and holds it out to Newton, along with a cigarette. Newton frowns down at the paper in confusion, reads over it, tightly clutching at it with both hands—whether against the wind’s thieving hands, or in emotion, Hermann cannot guess. He reads over it a second time, as Hermann smokes at his side and watches him discreetly. Newton tucks the paper into the pocket of his denims when he’s finished. He swallows, raking fingers through his hair, his gaze out somewhere on the horizon.

“I see,” he says and slots the cigarette between his lips with a trembling hand. His hands cup around Hermann's when he lights a match and holds it to Newton’s cigarette, but he doesn’t glance in Hermann’s direction.The shore holds his attention, lids shifting with his eyes and casting the shadow of his lashes over the apples of his cheeks. He blows out smoke from the corner of his mouth, and leans back, tapping on the railing pensively.

“Transportation can be arranged for you to reconvene with your crew,” Hermann ventures after an appropriate amount of time has passed. Though all members are accounted for, there’s no telling the extent of the damage done to the ship. With that long a repair time, it almost sounds as if they broke a mast, or ran aground a reef.

“I'll think on it,” Newton says, watching Hermann from the corner of his eye for a suspended moment before he turns his back to the view and leans back on the railing, his arms hitched high to prop his elbow on one of the metal runners. “No way we’re going anywhere soon with those kinds of repairs. Might stick around for a while, if it’s alright by you.”

“It's not protocol,” Hermann says, doubtful and shifting in discomfort. “Depends.”

“I reckon I’ve got a week to rest up before I convince you,” Newton says, low and leaning forward conspirationally, gaze on Hermann for only a second before it flickers away, focused on something behind and beyond Hermann. Hermann stiffens, stares at Newton down the length of his nose and his fingers curl around the handle of his cane tightly.

“You, frankly, can do as you well please,” Hermann says, dropping the cigarette and stubbing it out. "It is all the same to me, and I cannot throw you out.”

He pulls his coat tighter to himself and retreats back inside. Newton, however, does not take the comment as the dismissal it is meant to be, and follows him inside. He sits up on the table with one leg folded under him as Hermann sits in the chair. Hermann glares at Newton’s shoes with distaste, and pulls the tray closer to himself.

“Have you not”—Hermann waves over the tray vaguely, with no little amount of annoyance—“done what you've come to?”

“Well, technically,” Newton says. “I did not think you would be averse to company. Jillian tells me you’re up here sometimes until nightfall, and then back up soon after to light the lamp.”

“It’s a demanding job,” Hermann says, feeling irrationally defensive, as if he has to explain his self-imposed isolation to some stranger. Though Newton’s said nothing in that vein, it feels like Hermann is being silently judged.

“It's many hours alone,” Newton says, but he sounds thoughtful rather than opinionated.  "Personally, I can’t imagine it.”

Newton slouches back against the wall, and lifts the leg that had been dangling over the side of the desk. He notches the heel of his boots against the grain of the table, and regards the lamp, over Hermann’s shoulder. 

“You serve on a ship,” Hermann says and lifts the metal cloche from the plate. "Sailors are always in each other’s pockets, or so I’ve heard.”

“Yes,” Newton laughs, looking over at Hermann with surprise and then dropping his gaze to his lap as the laugh tempers out into a pleased smile. Hermann can tell he’s not really looking at his lap—his gaze is far off.

Hermann means to give Newton little more than a look, but it draws itself out and becomes a stare. It roves over Newton’s exposed forearms again, only now the other one is available to his sight as well. Curious creatures, no doubt ones from imaginations as well as ones Newton’s encountered, crawl their way up that arm too. The tide does not abate, crashing into them perpetually from the inner side of Newton’s arms.

Hermann glances up at Newton when he shifts, and Newton is already looking at him.

“You want to ask,” Newton says.

Hermann frowns, hands clenching around his utensils and ducks his head. He focuses on his food even as Newton rolls his shirtsleeves up further. Hermann half expects him to tell Hermann about his tattoos anyway, but Newton just leaves his sleeves rolled up high on his shoulder, and slouches back again. Hermann can’t tell if it’s an invitation to stare more, if Newton is being coy, or if it's a smug display.

  “What’ve you been doing all morning that required your immediate attention?” Newton asks after they’ve lapsed into silence. Hermann rolls his eyes upward to the heavens and takes a few steadying breaths. He turns in his seat to face Newton fully, and the hand clasping a fork between its fingers sets back down on the tabletop.

“Are you bored?” He asks bluntly. There’s no other reason he can think of for Newton’s persistence. Hermann’s not been the most engaging conversational partner, and he’s not really in the mood to be one, either.

“Yes!” Newton exhales, throwing up his hands. “Terribly so.” He hops down from the table and puts his hands in his pockets, spinning on his heel and walking toward the lenses.

“Don’t touch!” Hermann snaps as Newton runs a finger over the edge of one of the outer ridges. He’d done the same thing just a few hours before, but it was permissible for him to do it. ”You should be resting, not-not pestering me.”

“I'll be fine,” Newton says. He waves Hermann off. “But, I think I will leave you to your own devices for a bit.” 

“Praised be. There are small miracles,” Hermann mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Newton narrows his eyes at him but his lips curl in amusement. “Don't you care to know why?”

“Not particularly, no,” Hermann deadpans, slipping off his coat and folding it over the back of his chair again as he gets ready to go back to work.

“How rude!” Newton exclaims with a laugh as he crosses the room. “Fine then, you recluse.” 

Hermann shakes his head. Newton’s heavy steps reverberate through the metal of the stairs. Hermann slips himself between the lenses to see how much work he has left before he can attend to other duties.

“Say-“

Hermann closes his eyes and holds in a sigh, his shoulders slumping.

“What?” he asks. He looks out from the lenses gap and sees Newton halfway disappeared down the stairwell.

“The garden-you’ll still come down to work on it?” With his hands perched on the landing, cheeks still ruddy from the wind outside and his hair disheveled, he looks—young. Despite the shadow of facial hair. He’s got that expression on his face again—the one he’d worn when he’d first stepped into the lamp room—and it is not exactly eager, but a bit wondrous, a bit enchanted and intrigued.

Despite himself, Hermann nods.

“Of course,” he says. "I’ll be down in an hour or so. If I’m not, call up the stairwell. No need to climb up the whole way. The noise carries.”  

Newton sends a small smile his way at that.

“Thank you, I-.” Whatever end the sentence was meant to have, Hermann does not get to hear it. Newton closes his mouth and nods again. “See you then, Mr. Gottlieb.”

 —

It turns out that Newton does not need to call Hermann down two hours later. Hermann is exhausted and vaguely achey, but the lenses are clean and most likely will only need minimal maintenance in the foreseeable future, forbidding there is no other long storm. Hermann doesn’t often have to spend such rigor on the lenses otherwise: minimal scrubbing and dusting from time to time. On a particularly humid night, he might have to wipe down the windows and wipe them down again during the day to vanish the smears.

Just as Hermann is making his steady way down the stairs, Newton peers up from the first landing and starts calling out before he spots Hermann and grins.

“I’ll be down just briefly. I’m going to freshen up,” Hermann says. Newton nods and disappears again.

Hermann quickly changes into a pair of denims similar to the ones Jillian lent Newton. He leaves his coat folded over his desk chair, and tucks his smudged shirt into the high waist of his pants. He stops in the bathroom to splash his face with water, and finger comb through his unruly hair. It’s getting long. He’ll have to ask Jillian for a trim soon, he imagines.

Newton is seated on the couch facing the fireplace in the living room, and he has an elbow propped up on the arm. His thumb runs over his lower lip, eyes quickly reading over the pages of the book spread in his lap. His other hand holds the edge of the page lazily, prepared to turn it over once he is done. He never turns it over, though, just flattens the edge of the page all the way down with his thumb and looks at Hermann over the thin metal rims of a pair of glasses. Hermann found no pair on his person.

“You're wearing glasses,” he points out dumbly, eyes darting down to see what Newton’s reading. He’d overheard Newton mention the bestiary to Jillian this morning, and there it is in his lap. Hermann himself had sat down with it when he first arrived at the lighthouse, privately amused at the wildly inaccurate drawings of exotic animals the artists had never gotten the opportunity to see.

“Caleb lent me a pair of his. They’re not quite strong enough, but they’ll do.” Newton closes the book and sets it aside on the couch. “Ready?”

“Yes. Could you see anything at all earlier?” Hermann asks, stopping in the hall closet to pull out two utility aprons. He tosses one to Newton and slips his own over his head. He wedges his cane under his arm and his fingers brace themselves on one shelf as he stretches up for the toolbox.

“Well, I see colors,” Newton says. "And vague shapes and the like. It’s all blurry, though.”

Hermann had wondered why he’d been curiously silent on the view. He’d mentioned the height, but not the view, and by far the latter was the most impressive. Hermann had a hard time believing Newton had said it out of some sense of vertigo. The man’s constitution was doubtlessly fortified by his time on the high seas, unlike Hermann who’d been entirely unprepared for facing the sheer cliff face on one side of the lighthouse, dropping straight into sea and spray.

“I can hardly imagine how you keep track of glasses on a ship,” Hermann muses, staggering slightly under the weight of the toolbox in both of his hands. He braces himself with a hand on the wall as he extracts his cane. Newton’s laughter follows him outside where he sets the toolbox down on the grass at the edge of the garden.

“With much difficulty,” Newton says with a chagrined smile. “And pairs to spare.”

The garden is tucked up next to the rounded corner of the building, where the tower’s foundation meets ground. It is not a project Hermann started, or even knew how to tend to when he first arrived, but between Jillian, he, and some outdated books, they’ve managed to keep the garden thriving. To either side are the more decorative filler plants: some rosemary, lavender, and cilantro. Further in, there’s a line of cucumbers, then peppers and radishes, cabbages near the front, basil at the very edge.

Newton crouches down, lifting the stems of the basil plant and checking the undersides of the leaves before Hermann’s scarcely said anything. He meticulously looks over the other plants as well, checking the vines for small white mealybugs, or invasive growths. Meanwhile, Hermann reaches in the open kitchen window and grabs hold of the planter they’ve kept on the counter for the past weeks. It’s time the peas got transplanted.

“You’re familiar with the work,” Hermann observes as he uses the handheld spade to ease the dirt from the planter.

“I used to work on my father’s farm before I went off. It was either this, the sea, or me off to Paris with the rest of the Bohémiens.” Newton’s bent over, head lowered as he inspects the cucumbers, so Hermann can't see his face. Can’t tell what sort of response the information should garner, if any.

“I take it you are not,” Newton says, and at that he turns, one hand on his knee, and looks at Hermann. “Familiar with the work, I mean.”

Hermann shakes his head.

“I’ve been posted already a few years here, but before now I had not the faintest idea.” Hermann lowers himself carefully next to Newton. “Sort of touch-and-go, isn’t it?”

One corner of Newton’s lips lifts. “Yes, a bit. For this kind of success, you must be lucky. A natural green thumb.” 

Hermann has nothing to say to that, because he has never considered himself lucky, or particularly fortunate. It is not the first time he’s heard the word used in reference to himself. He is lucky in many ways apparent only to others, it seems. Lucky that he has a gift, though he cannot bear to use it very often, or with any ease. Lucky that he was able to return home, when many of his compatriots did not. Lucky to have survived a bullet. Lucky to be able to count the years of his age in the crowsfeet cornering his eyes.

His hand shakes around the handle of the spade, and he presses it to his thigh to abate the tremors, working his jaw.

“Yes,” he grits out. “I suppose I am, at that.”

Newton frowns over at him, green eyes roving his face, trying to decipher what Hermann keeps carefully blank. Controlled. Purely internal and self-reflexive. Hermann cannot tell if Newton sees through it, or if he discards the effort, but he looks back down at the plants, picking his way through them, and they fall into an unsteady silence.

Instead, Hermann pushes the intrusive vines from the free patch of space he’s been eyeing for the peas. The dire status of his hair length gets re-emphasized when he leans down to turn over the earth. He keeps it cropped short at back, and the longer part up top used to lie flat to his head. It hasn’t been flat in years now, though. The salt and the humidity seaside keep it constantly toeing the line of curly. It is getting long, too. Already it passes just inches below the shell of his ear. It has the annoying habit and consequence of tickling his inner ear and tumbling into his eyes when his head is downturned. As it is now. He’d left his cap in his bedroom, so he is at the mercy of the wind.

He reaches up and brushes the hair from his face, doing his best to tuck it behind an ear. It’s not quite long enough, and it just tumbles back into his eyes. Newton turns toward him at his huff of frustration.

“You’ve got a-“ Newton gestures to Hermann’s face. Hermann frowns, confused, and reaches up to touch his face. Newton nods and Hermann scrubs at it with the heel of his palm. When he pulls it away, he sees grease and dirt.

“It's not quite-“ Newton leans forward over the toolbox and holds Hermann’s head steady with a grip on his chin with one hand. He uses the thumb of his other hand to swipe across the line of Hermann’s jaw. His face is pinched in concentration, lips pouting just the slightest bit as he wrinkles his nose.

“There!” He says, startling Hermann. Hermann flinches back and stares at Newton’s bewildered expression for a paralyzed beat.

“Are you alright?” Newton asks, concern creasing his brow. “You look pale. Been looking pale for a while.”

“I am fine. That is—thank you.” Hermann despises how strangled he sounds. He turns from Newton, unable to bear the mortification that courses through him, mocking him at the back of his mind.

“No… problem.” Newton sounds nearly as confused as Hermann feels. Nearly as disoriented.

Hermann discards his work gloves and sifts the sunwarm soil with his fingers. In a way, it is grounding to focus on the sensation, on the task at hand rather than at the dark, muddled turn his thoughts have taken. He crushes the clumps in his fists until the superficial dirt is soft, and then he uses the handheld spade to dig down. Once he’s made a hole big enough, he transfers the peas over and smooths over the mound, filling in the gaps.

When Hermann dares glance at him, Newton’s slipped into some workgloves and stretches his arms forward, grabs purchase, and tugs. The muscles of his back and arms strain under the folds of his shirt, shifting in exertion as he seeks out weeds and extracts them.

They work like this, side by side, pruning leaves, cutting back growth from the juniper, cypress, and hedge holly shrubs lining the outer wall of the house and tower. Jillian brings them peach tea, but they only stop working when Caleb returns, pedaling his bicycle up the winding road to the berm. He brings his basket laden with paper bags of fruit, meats, cheeses, and fresh breads.

Newton is already on his feet and dusting the legs of his denims as Hermann eases himself up and grimaces. He stands in place for a few beats, waiting for the dizziness to abate, and rubs at his hip.

“Welcome back, Caleb,” he says with a smile. Caleb grins at him brightly and walks over with one of the paper bags.

“They had your favorites,” he says, pushing the bag into Hermann’s hands. Hermann feels warmth bloom in his chest, as it often does when Caleb and Jillian show care for him. The intensity will never abate, he thinks as he reaches out and playfully taps the bill of Caleb’s hat.

“Thank you,” he says, looking down into the bag. Five perfectly almond-shaped madeleines sit at the bottom, golden and crisp at the edges. When he looks back up at Caleb and smiles again, he notices Newton paused in the doorway with a strange expression on his face, looking at Hermann. He quickly looks away, however, when he notices Hermann’s seen him, and picks up another bag in his arms.

“With these I’ll truly be able to fix something good,” Jillian says, setting the things in the bag out on the counter.

There are a few bottles of milk previously unnoticed, and Hermann spies muskmelon, strawberries, tomatoes, and eggplants as he passes by the kitchenette. Most of the bags have already been brought in, so Hermann only feels mildly guilty about lifting his cup from its saucer and withdrawing to the living room. He sits down on the chaise lounge under the window along the wall. The diffused afternoon light shines into the room. It alights the dust motes in its path, dancing above Hermann’s head.

Shoulders sagging tiredly, Hermann closes his eyes. He lifts the cup to his lips, inhales deeply, feeling the warmth seep into his fingers. Finally, he sips cautiously from the cup.The tea’s cooled down from the time it spent on the windowsill as Newton and he worked in the garden, so Hermann takes a more confident drink and sets the cup aside on the halfmoon table beside the chaise.

He tucks his hand under his leg and lifts them both onto the long end of the chaise before he lies back with a small sigh. When he closes his eyes, he hears the sound of clattering dishes, cupboards opening and closing, containers being rattled in the spice rack, Newton singing again and Caleb laughing at the offensive lyrics. Always, a permanent cadence in the background, the sea ebbing in and out. 

Hermann drags a hand down his face, shaking his head slightly, and his hand travels further downward to massage at his hip.

For the most part, Hermann is left alone for a while, and at some point he hears Newton excuse himself to go to his room. Jillian appears shortly after with a cup of water and he opens his eyes with a grateful smile.

“Thank you, Jillian,” he says as he takes the cool glass from her hands.

“Think nothing of it. You’ve been pushing yourself these days.” She sits across from him on the couch and rubs her hands over her thighs. Hermann thinks they make quite the pair: her with her age pains, and he with his own set of maladies. His “spleen,” were he to utilize the language of the Bohémiens Newton wanted to join in his youth. He gazes at her gnarled hands and sits up to drink from the glass.

“Yes, well,” Hermann says simply with a shrug. She gives him a hard look and shakes her head.

“You spend so much time in that mind of yours that you forget that you are also”—she turns one arm out and slaps it three times over the inner elbow with the other—“flesh and blood.”

“I never forget,” Hermann murmurs quietly, hands between his legs, clasping his glass and leaning his head back against the window frame. He follows it with a belated mirthless laugh.

Jillian’s does not bother to hide the way she looks at his hip. “No surprise it’s bothering you with the way you’ve been climbing everywhere as if you were a youth.”

From anyone else, Hermann would take offense. That he does not, does not mean that the comment has no sting. He bends at the waist, over his legs, and rests the glass against his forehead. “I am getting on, aren’t I?”

“You’re a proper bachelor now—like in those romance novels, eh?” she says with a small laugh.

“I wouldn’t know anything about that, Jillian,” Hermann protests mildly, lifting his head to look at her. His smile is a small quirk of the lips.

“Oh, wouldn’t you? Tall, dark, brooding.” She teases, batting her lashes. Hermann feels his face heat and he hides his mouth behind his hand because it seems the smile will not stop spreading. 

“I am not brooding!” he insists. Jillian simply raises an eyebrow, cackles and gets up with a grunt. Before she leaves the room, she rests a hand on his shoulder.

“I’ll heat up some wet towels for you, yes?” Her voice is pitched low, quiet for the benefit of the both of them.

Hermann covers her hand with his own. “I—Yes, I would like that.”

For the rest of the afternoon, Hermann lounges below the orange and pink bougainvillea hung in the window until the sun disappears past that watery border on the horizon. Hermann replaces the wick, refuels and resets the lamp, closes the door to the widow’s walk, makes his last observations of the day, and retires to his room. Newton is absent in all of this, and the house falls quiet, falls prey to the sound of the tide.

Chapter Text

For the first few days, Hermann assumes that the strange hours Newton keeps are due to the rest he needs to catch up on. Newton denies it each time anyone makes comment on it, but Hermann can see the lines of exhaustion etched below his eyes. It turns out that either Newton is one of those unfortunate afflicted with a perpetual and ineffable weariness, or his circadian rhythm is simply the consequence of his bodily chemistry. If it is the former, Hermann understands far more than he cares to. His own is a self-imposed and maintained state of fatigue, but Hermann suspects that Newton cannot exactly control or help it most of the time. The mind that Hermann gets glances of is, in turns: expansive, overreaching, ever-connecting the semiotics and intricate, secret relations between the things that surround it. So wound up and always in the middle of multiple self-incursions of thought, it is a mind that could keep one up for hours on end at night.

Perhaps afraid that Newton will assess him, see the things that Hermann has not seen of himself, expose them on the butcher board for all to know, Hermann starts trying to deduce the patterns that make up Newton. Tries to anticipate and read into the unvoiced. This, however, is an explanation that Hermann comes to much later, when he lies up at night on his bed and tries to justify his unshakeable new behavior.

Hermann grows curious, a bit. After all, Newton is at times loud, and at times very quiet, pensive. Where Hermann feels himself a fixed point, so long nailed down to a particular mould, on an unwavering grid, Newton is mutable, ever changing and mercurial. So many lines bisected and transgressing one another, Newton is a vanishing point. He is inscrutable and uniquely understandable only through tracing back the marks left on the pentimento back to their origin.

If Hermann could see him in action on his ship, Newton likely would not look out of place. He would fit. His erratic energy would be a cog slotted in its proper place, with all the others working in alignment beside him. In the lighthouse, he is a stranger in an unwelcoming environment. It is not that he flops on land, as if he were a fish displaced and gasping on the deck, but his eyes look out to the water often. He will smile, and laugh with his lips spread, but his gaze will always find its way back to the sea. Indeed, Hermann cannot tell if Newton is simply coltish on land by nature, or if he cannot settle without some sort of rhythm to rock the soles of his feet. His weight shifts, his hands brace. He is looking for the rigging, for the metal footposts on the masts, for the weary linen of the sails.

He is the outlier, the now spiritually dispossessed flâneur, but Hermann is the one who feels himself so strange. So alien. Newton brings his odd habits, his half-mad idiosyncrasies that so boldly distinguish him as other. Yet, Hermann feels himself on the other end of a poorly-told joke. He has been uninformed of what to do; how to behave.

How does he behave when Newton takes the old, discarded clothes from previous tenants of the lighthouse and cuts them so that they bear his flamboyant arms and his bronzed legs freely? There is no cravat to tie, and no vest to button. Newton is a parody of himself—a parody of a sailor. A sailor, playing the role of a sailor.

And what of that, when he wakes up early and Hermann can hear him sing through the woodwork? Or when he kisses Jillian on the cheek, and bites into the fresh cuts of fruit she sets out on the counter? Under what index of recognition do his bouts of restlessness, vacillating between maudlin and manic fit?

Newton’s words of convincing Hermann he should be allowed to stay longer, murmured days ago, almost lost to the salt-tang of the biting wind, become less offensive as time goes on. Less like they are a dare, or an impertinent challenge. Hermann does not become convinced, exactly, but he is quietly intrigued.

Truly, at first it hadn’t been on purpose—watching Newton. Hermann does not seek to watch people on purpose, ever, but its a bit of a left over habit. One from his youth at the academy when he walked along promenades with a sketchbook open in one hand and a pencil in the other.

It starts innocently enough, and through no fault of his own. Newton has no concept of the volume of his own voice or how it carries. It is inevitable, embarrassingly irresistible. So much so that Hermann grips the railing of the spiral staircase, and pauses, tilting his head so he can listen with more clarity and not give himself away. Newton is regaling Jillian and Caleb with a story—a story of one of the many places Newton has been during his travels.

Hermann is not well-travelled. He does not know what lies past great stretches of water. His vision is corralled within a visor whose parameters are set, and limited. It is ironic, considering the nature of his employment before he was a lighthouse keeper, but map making was little more than knowing how to work off of measurements and descriptions. Hermann has always been quite precise with numbers, less so with people. He can render the border of an unknown country, or the mountain range, or the vein-like rivers that insinuate themselves in the land. He knows the land—visually, schematically. He does not know it tangibly, and there is a part of him that harkens back to his days as a knee-scraped boy reading books about adventure and discovery. 

When he judges he’s heard enough and feels foolish for hiding on his own property, he continues on down the staircase. The grin Newton gives him, as his eyes pointedly glance at Hermann’s cane, lets Hermann know he’s been found out. It’s difficult not to make noise on the metal steps. Hermann’s cane is no help at all in that regard. The pause in his journey must’ve been noticeable and yet, Newton had had no hitch in his story. No moment where he ceased and invited Hermann in. It still feels like a private affair, and Hermann will not join unless invited.

After that, there is a distinct shift. Newton is irritating, and knowledgable. His lackadaisical attitude rivals that of an idle gilded youth. It makes Hermann feel his age in sharp contrast. But there is a more subdued part of him that wants to listen. Would like to fill in the blank ‘what-ifs’ of his lifestory.

Though Newton had allowed Hermann his privacy that one time on the staircase, thereafter he insinuates himself into Hermann’s life more insistently. During the afternoons he’ll come up to the lamp room and bring Hermann his lunch. If Hermann still hasn’t come down by dinner, Newton will bring him that too, or call him down. He’ll stay for longer spreads of time up in the tower with Hermann. At times, he won’t even announce himself. He’ll leave the tray of food on the desk, and go out to the widow’s walk now that he has glasses and can see. Hermann will only know he’s been there either because of the tray, or because he pauses during his maintenance and happens to catch Newton, leaning against the balustrade. His hair is usually loose, blown back from his face, and there is that wistful look that he carries upon him always. Body half on land, half at sea. Afterwards, he’ll come back inside, and sometimes he’ll poke his head between the lenses, cheeks ruddy and eyes teary from the wind, and he’ll grin, and he’ll say “Hello, Mr. Gottlieb.”

They might talk for minutes, or they might talk for hours, and Hermann becomes familiar with the weight of Newton’s gaze on him. He imagines Newton gets familiar with his own in return. And the curiosity increases, but Hermann still cannot decipher Newton. He wonders if he will ever be able to—if the man will, in the time they have together, ever become anything short of an enigma.

He cannot understand him through the plentiful petty discussions that turn into raised voices, into pointing fingers and loud huffs. Into storming off, into impassioned speeches, into snarled ugly words. Hermann’s had an upbringing. There are a lot of things that make up Newton, and some of them make him disapprove. Hermann sneers and prods, and provokes when he is in a bad mood. And still, each time, Newton is something so entirely new that Hermann feels the loser in each round.

Hermann has always had one way of understanding things.

—

It is inevitable that the connection makes Hermann’s hands itch to be around a pencil again. Itch to draw Newton’s figure as they sit in the living room, Newton splayed out on the couch as Hermann reads, or pretends to read, or his eyes rove, and rove, and rove over the same set of words.

At some point it becomes habit. For Newton to come and sit restlessly. At times in silence, at times in motion and abrasive noise. Becomes habit for Hermann to watch. Suspended in that metaphorical poise of the brush. Two warring impulses: 1) the fear in his limbs, in the spasm of his fingers; 2) a continuous study that calls upon the palette, the graphite, the fibrous surface of the canvas. If he could anatomize these, diagnose the problem areas himself, it would come to him easier. There is a precedent, instead, that precludes Newton’s arrival to the lighthouse. Hermann has allowed himself the paintings of shells in his sketchbook, but little else. One thing hinders him from acting upon his impulses before Newton’s arrival, and one thing further, after.

Before, and lingering, it is that, alone on the berm at the base of the lighthouse, away from the faces of his peers, of his family, of the fellow veterans that walk head-down searching for shadows in the grooves between cobblestones, Hermann is still looking for commands. He is waiting for a general, or a sergeant to tell him exactly how and with what precision he should press a mark into the canvas.

For years after the war, Karla had found him sitting in a quickly darkening room, brush held slack between his fingers as he sat on a stool in front of a blank canvas reclined on an easel. Hours—Hermann would spend hours looking at the dried gesso on canvas, or, rather, past it with his vagarious gaze as the day wasted.

“Oh, Hermann,” she’d say, standing in the doorway of Hermann’s makeshift studio, and Hermann would turn, and have nothing to say. Nothing to show but the unlidded turpentine, its scent sour and heady and nauseating.

He’d look down at his trembling hands, reach with his trembling hands for his trembling lips, for his trembling knees. She’d sit at his feet, pull his hands into her own and stroke over them. Hermann could not look at her. Could not face her teary lashes as she kissed his hands.

“I've lost it,” he’d said one day. “I've lost it,” he’d repeated. And he continued repeating it for so long that soon enough he believes it.

Since his arrival at the lighthouse, he’s worked on some uninspired pieces but quickly discarded them. He stashed them, wrapped in butcher’s paper, at the furthest corner of the boathouse to be forgotten. Secretly, he’d hoped that perhaps some day he would return to them. He never did.

He would say his hesitation then, and now, stems from his return to rock bottom. He has simply been getting reacquainted with the medium. But this is not the truth. This hesitation is new. The large expanse of white, with nothing, to plain eye, worth hiding scares him. Where would enemies prowl? Between the fibers?

His first attempts at the lighthouse, before Newton, were of the landscape around him. Nature is there, and largely unchanging. Patient. Waiting for him to put the brush to use. It does not encroach upon him as if in judgement. There is no expectation for Hermann to be better or faster or less-less injured.

After, when Newton comes, with his inked skin, the mole at the bottommost curve of his left elbow, his flat ears, Hermann cannot paint for an entirely different reason. He is, against his will, distracted. It is not only that the man talks to himself—for hours, gesticulating and changing volume, because at times Hermann fancies he can just hear him over the whipping wind—Newton has a presence. And a look, as well.

Even alone, Newton is far more expressive than many Hermann knows, including himself. They come together like wave to rockface, and retreat from one another with the same lingering, sluggish pace of the backflow.

Before Newton, Hermann carried around his sketchbook and a pencil in his breast pocket—for comfort and familiarity. Every day now his hand will rest over his pocket, running over the protruding ridge that his pencil marks in his pocket.

He’ll observe Newton, from the watch tower, or even from the widow’s walk with his binoculars. He’ll watch him as they talk; watch him as he talks to others, or moves through the house, or lounges about, or leaves the relative safety of the house and stands at the very edge of the small fishermen’s dock as if about to leap from it.

Newton will pace along the shore, talking. It’s very strange—very full of short stops and sudden spills—but Hermann can’t say it’s any stranger than what he himself is doing. He watches a man talk to himself for hours on end.

It feels strange—opportunistic—for Hermann to watch Newton take to the shore, or the garden, or the stairs two-by-two with such youthful abandon. There is no little measure of envy, of desire, of paused consideration, that Hermann derives from it.

Hermann has, for so long, been a voyeur. He has spent most of his life watching, content to allow things to transpire around him as he captures them in quick scratches on old and fraying paper. Even eleven years after the war, everything revolves around it. The Hermann that was drafted is not the same Hermann that came out the other side. There is a stark fissure between these two modalities and Hermann sometimes, often, does not know how to reconcile them. The voyeur he is now is nothing like the one he was as a child. Now, pure nature will not suffice. Things as they appear will not suffice. There must be some hidden reason, intent, behind everything. It took eleven years for his nightmares to resurface in paralyzing clarity. A long time. Years of him using the ruler to try to find himself within some coordinate. Now that he is rediscovering this, this urge, he wishes there were some formula to invoking the precise contours of something. He wishes that he weren’t so focused in finding meaning in the peach haze of scumbling, or blade of grass. He wishes he could look at a man, and see a man. Not wonder about his humanity, or what afflictions tug at him inside his breast. Not provoking with dismissive words because if Newton is screaming himself hoarse, perhaps he is not watching back. Perhaps he is not listening.

At the end of a week, Hermann begins to pay him less mind, finally forcing himself to paint.

'This is new', he thinks, as he drags his thumb over the stretched and prepared canvas. He’d spent a day making the frame from wood brought up from the boathouse. It was more physical work than he was used to—than he’d put himself through in the eleven years since the war. The stretching alone made his arms strain until the canvas was drawn tight. And this said nothing of the cutting, glueing, nailing of the frame. Then, it was easier. The gessoing was not hard. It never is. Clean brush marks from prow to stern and then twice over. It dried overnight and is now a solid and stiff layer on the cloth. 

He’s lost his touch, he thinks, his fingers running over the rough surfaces where too much gesso has dried. He’s gotten old, stiff like the gesso. And, his hands, they shake so dreadfully around the brush. Hermann closes his eyes, imagines he is sitting on the berm: his easel digs feet into the earth, and further on, the tree-line encroaches  with gnarled, tangled brambles. To the right, at the bottom of the slope, a cobble beach curls into a bay. The shore is littered with scraggly rocks and pebbles. It is not the sort of strand to have sand greet the waters. There is only stone, stacks, and raised platforms of sediment that have piled on the layers year after year. When the tide recedes, there are pools in the rock flats. The coastal breeze tears at his clothes, brings acrid brine to make his eyes water.

The last, at least, is not a fiction.

Look ahead, look a stern. Look the weather in the lee. Blow high! Blow low! And so sailed we.

The bristles on stretched cloth; the turpentine spiritous.

Chapter Text

Hermann goes largely uninterrupted when he paints. It is no different than his usual fare—large swathes of time up in the tower or on the grounds taking stock of what must be maintained, what supplies they should ask delivered. The difference now from when he attempted this once before is that Newton seems unable to keep himself from knocking on Hermann’s door every two minutes. When Hermann answers it, blocking the way, Newton unabashedly attempts to peer over his shoulder. It creates the strange sensation that Hermann is not really being spoken to, but at. Unlike Jillian and Caleb, Hermann still does not take to intrusions in his life kindly, and this kind of disregard for Hermann’s privacy makes him more waspish than he might have been otherwise.

Nevertheless, Newton leaves without sating his curiosity, and Hermann’s pride remains quite intact. He is not, fortunately, painting Newton, but he is embarrassed all the same. He’s lost it, as he told Karla that handful of years ago. This time, however, what he’s lost is that dauntless eagerness to share what he’s done, to timidly present it to someone else’s assessing eyes. It is a fear of what the other person will see as much as it is a fear of the canvas itself.

There are no rules there, and yet he is scared to break some. He is afraid that the landscape he blocks in may be transformed. That the rock-face will be muddied, ground turned to slippery trap, and the water into fire cover. He would not dare expose someone else to something so voracious.

When the canvas seems too vast, too full of possibility and open field, Hermann pulls out his sketch pad and thinks back on Newton, who surely, as he thinks himself unwatched, does not think of war in moments like these. That surely only has eyes for the precious things he grasps in his hands and lifts into the light, to hold there on a pedestal. The infinite joy he has for unspoiled milk, for a fresh loaf of bread—it is unparalleled. If Hermann could grasp it, just a bit, perhaps some of the mystery would be unspooled. If there was, in Hermann’s sketches, but a gleam of the secret fulfillment Newton derives from working dawn-to-dusk until his shirt clings transparent to his form, Hermann would know, then. He would be able to dip his hands in this fountain that has somehow eluded his knowledge. Just out of reach, it is on the periphery. Is it clairvoyance that Newton carries on his broad shoulders—sun-beaten and salt-stung? What is it about him that makes it so that even in the darkest nook he is a penetrating beacon, rotating on its axis and blinding with its focus?

Memory is not—could never compare to—study, and there is an uncanniness to the Newton on the paper that is in turns unsettling and intriguing. Not so much unlike the man himself. The charcoal smears against Hermann’s skin, a part of him as much as he is a part of it with each smudged shadow on a jaw or inner-ear.

A canvas—a canvas is easy to hide. It is large, expansive, and it’s easier to conceptualize the effort to keep them from sight. The sketchpad is so much more intimate and feels, for it, all the more illicit that Hermann should keep it close to his person at all times. By dint of slow and studious attention, he is mapping Newton. He may have to rend parts of his geography from his memory, tame his shaking hands into performing the gestures necessary, but there is a recognizable figure coalescing from the seafoam and the gloom.

In little time, his pad is filled with studies of the man. Some done in the privacy of his room, once the day has wound down and it is he and the sea, the only reckoning Hermann must do. Some are done quickly, clandestine in their expeditiousness and little more than a silhouette. Newton, sitting on a flat, jutting rock over the water, wet from his swim and hair curling forward onto his forehead and down his back. Newton, hair pulled back in one ribbon, and looking down at some unperceived thing with his hands on his hips. Newton and the splash of color down his very bare back, and his very bare arms. It seems that where his head ends, and entirely new body begins—some sort of reverse theriocephaly where Newton’s head is the only recognizably human part of him.

This is, after all, the part that Hermann knows best. The rest is hidden under few layers, enough that Hermann could speculate. He does not—cannot. Not even when he spies Newton bathing in the shallows on occasion. He'll submerge himself and shamelessly come out of the water, white drawers sticking to him like a second skin, and Hermann’ll be forced to look away with heated cheeks. Surely, surely, he must think himself unwatched.

Hermann, cheeks blazing, fidgets with the charcoal in his hands, knocking the black onto his lap, and he’ll glance back out the window just briefly. Just a second. Just to see.

Chapter Text

Hermann’s surprised it came so late, when it finally comes.

“What's this?” Newton asks, mouth full of honeydew.

Hermann’s seated on the chaise, under the window, which puts him at a disadvantage where height is concerned. It is one of the few situations in which Newton actually surpasses him.

“Hm?” he asks, slipping his reading glasses off and setting down his journal. The tide is oddly lower today—he will have to send off a missive to the mainland warning any trade ships that should pass through the bay. The last thing they need is a ship run aground.

“This,” Newton repeats and lifts one of the framed photos on the mantle. “I imagine you have no identical brother.”

When Hermann sees which photo it is, the grainy quality of it and the fraying edge, he stiffens and his fingers curl around the edges of his book. He slides his gaze down and away, and nods.

“No. That is me,” Hermann agrees.

“Not surprised you were a uniform,” Newton muses. “But you look awfully young here. Hardly a shade on the jaw.”

Hermann swallows, methodically folds the page he is on, and sets the journal aside. “It was at my father’s behest. That is, I joined the forces at his prompting.” Hermann keeps his gaze on his hands in his lap, where they tremble palm up. “I felt a duty to my country, as one does, but my father felt that if I were decorated, I might more easily make my way.”

Newton makes a noise at that, but Hermann does not lift his gaze.

“An artist,” Hermann continues with a chagrined smile, “is an unstable Bohémien, after all.”

“Jesus, Hermann,” Newton exclaims, the words seemingly expelled from his body. “How old were you at the time? Sixteen?”

“Seventeen,” Hermann corrects, and he despises the way his voice goes frail. Despises the way his breathing hitches, and he is not quite seeing. The hands in his lap do no appear so.

“That's awful,” Newton says, but it is muffled. Hermann is not there. He is not on the chaise, under the scant sunlight. He is miles away, with the other men.

—

For years it had been enough to be skilled with numbers; talented at translating them into visual proportions. Numbers enough to drown out the sound of artillery fire and the taste of dirt in his mouth, the phantom mud on his hands and stiffening his uniform, the haze of gunpowder, the rats in the trenches, the poor food, the illness and the bile and the doctors with too many wounded and the bullet that dug itself into one hip and didn’t come out the other side, keeping his shattered bone in an unstable equilibrium until the field doctors had to go in because if they didn’t he would lose his leg, and he might lose his leg all the same. He didn’t lose his leg, unlike many. He had a father of name, even though that often meant nothing on the field where every soldier was another head with a doffed cap. Straight back, single file, turn about, aim precise.

Hermann knows numbers. Hermann knows angles. Hermann’s long, tapered fingers—fingers more used to the crook of the charcoal holder than that of the trigger—firing, and firing, and firing. He doesn’t know if he hit any young man like him, covered head to toe in grime and crying because he cannot see, and the fight is not his, and he is so very far from home. He never saw if some other man got his hip shattered, or lost a leg, or, perhaps, bled out into the canals and was listed as unidentified.

And at night, when all is quiet and very very still, he sees it all come back to him. Not in flashes. Not in fragments. He remembers it all. Clutching Tanner’s body to his breast, crouching from gun fire, telling him to breathe, that it’ll be alright, that it’ll soon die down and he’ll go get help. And Tanner looking up at him, clutching at his shirt and shaking his head. Please don’t go. The words unsaid, but there. Not wanting to be alone, unnamed in the confusion. Wanting the clasp of hands, and the murmur that all is well and Tanner’s gaze looking further and further away. That all is well. That all is well.

That all—

is well.

—

Hermann comes back when Newton’s hand squeezes his shoulder. It is a touch lingering, and Newton’s eyes full of concern as he says Hermann’s name in that strange lilt of his—of too many languages jammed in his mouth fighting for a way out all at once.

“Are you alright?” Newton asks, pulling in and bent over close.

“Yes, I-“ Hermann stammers. He fiddles with his cufflinks for a silent beat, and straightens his back before smiling at Newton politely. “I am quite alright. I take it you did not enlist, then?”

Newton’s brow is still creased for a moment, and then he pulls back and the warm grip on Hermann’s shoulder goes with him. Hermann’s hands in his lap are trembling again, and Hermann can feel the ghost of the touch root itself deep, and he knows, as he knows many things, that this too will haunt him.

“I didn’t,” Newton says, shaking his head. “At fifteen I was already cabin boy on my uncle’s schooner. I’ve been on a couple of ships on and off since then, but the Otachi stuck.”

“Tell me”—Hermann clears his throat—“Tell me about her. Why?”

“Well-” Newton laughs and sets the picture back on the mantle before he sits down on the couch across from Hermann. “Firstly, she cuts through water like nothing else. Have you ever been on a boat?”

Hermann levels a flat look at Newton and then turns slowly in his seat to look out the window pointedly. “I should hope so, seeing as I hardly swam all the way out here."

Newton barks out a laugh and shakes his head. “That was not what I meant. I don’t mean one of those small ferries.”

Hermann hesitates and then shakes his head.  “No, I can’t say that I have.”

“More's the pity,” Newton says. "There-There’s nothing quite like. Like rigging burn on your hands, what feels like the whole weight of the ship against you as you tie down the sails, the wind biting at your cheek, and at night the sound of the waves lapping against the side of the ship. Even the taxing things, like storm navigation, or waxing the deck, or draining the water, or eating the bad rations. There is little else like being at nature’s mercy like that.”

“Isn’t it terribly frightening?” Hermann asks, leaning forward in spite of himself.

“Yes—all the time,” Newton says. "I am terrified most of the time I am on the sea. The whole of the time I am continuously exposed unto the treacheries, and beauties of the world.”

“Are you very sure you have not ended up a Bohémien after all?” Hermann asks lightly, smiling. Newton’s eyes light up and his grin grows wider.

“Oh, perhaps just a little,” Newton admits. "After all, there is also that—that out there, there is no master. When you are on land, you always belong to something, someone, somewhere. Out there? There is nothing but blue from bow to stern.”

“It sounds exhausting,” Hermann says, wrinkling his nose but feeling his pulse speed. There is something exciting about the thought of it all. Knowing things others could not. Being in your own little world with its own codified language that no outsider could possibly hope to understand. Hermann lives in a lighthouse, on an island. He should understand. He does not. They are two worlds apart. He, a beacon, a guiding light should they need it; they, the explorers, out on whims and docking or taking guidance only when they please.

Newton hums and tilts his head slightly, scratching at the hair at his nape. “No more so than running a lighthouse, I would imagine.”

Hermann scoffs. “Don't jest. You’ve been here long enough to see that my work is nothing in comparison.”

“They are taxing for different reasons,” Newton insists. "You are here alone, and entirely self reliant. Though, it doesn’t really surprise me much.” 

“What do you mean by that?” Hermann asks, narrowing his eyes.

“Well, it’s just-“ Newton pauses, sucking his bottom lip into his mouth and worrying at it, gaze wavering. “You're the quiet sort, aren’t you, Mr. Gottlieb?”

“I like my privacy, if that is what you mean,” Hermann says. "And, after the war, it is a welcome solitude, you understand.”

“Yes, of course,” Newton says, but his expression—there is something not entirely forthright about it, his mouth twisted as if he is savoring something sour. He is uncharacteristically quiet, subdued as if approaching prey backed into a corner. 

“But, well,” Newton continues. “You are, as well, of a countenance.”

The words, so calmly spoken, with Newton’s eyes upon him, make Hermann still. The fear, uncertainty, flares up inside Hermann, but he lets a carefully perfected veil of cultivated frigid indifference settle down over his features.

“I can’t imagine what it is you mean, Mr. Geiszler,” Hermann says lowly. “However, were I in your position, I would choose my words with more care.”

Newton gives him a long look, and the air between them is fraught with an unnamable tension. His gaze drops down to Hermann’s lap and Hermann uncurls his fingers from the wrinkles they’re no doubt scrimping in his trouser legs.

“I meant nothing by it,” Newton says finally, dropping his gaze away, head bent and hair obscuring his expression from Hermann’s view. “I see you, is all.”

Again, they lapse into an uncomfortable, unresolved silence. Hermann maintains the silence, afraid that he has, indeed, been seen. That his gaze has not been so subtle as he’s thought, and his polite distance not so well-kept. He doubts Newton’s words—how could he not when there are so very few that have actually seen him?—but there is possibility in them. And that is enough to wind him tight with apprehension, excitement, courage and cowardice in turn. He would like, just once, to reveal himself, he thinks. 

Newton speaks again. “Don’t you ever feel alone?” he asks.

“Not particularly,” Hermann answers. “Not often.”

Chapter Text

Newton has somehow managed to steal Hermann away from his work. It is an incredible breach in order, in protocol, but as of late there have been many of these. Newton is not supposed to ever see the inside of the lens, and yet just the day before they had spent an entire afternoon inside it. Hermann had made adjustments to the lamp and cleaned around the rotating mechanism since it had been juddering unsteadily the night before. Newton had snuck Hermann’s food inside the lens, and laid back on the floor, his arms under his head as he looked at the landscape distorted by the glass.

Nowadays Newton spends less and less time confined to the ground level, and more time shamelessly snooping through the places that should be restricted access. Hermann cannot find it in himself to enforce the rules.

This time, however, Hermann can’t even pretend he’s at least doing some work, but Newton had been compelling, to say the least. Hermann's is a job with no vacations. An hour or two of absence from it would “do him good.”  It’s fairly unlikely, with the weather forecast, that anything will go awry in the bay, either. All the same, before they’d left the lighthouse, Hermann had told Caleb to run up each half an hour, just in case.

At the moment, Hermann is not even in uniform. Stripped down to trousers rolled up at the bottom hem and a loose shirt, collar undone, he walks with Newton down the berm to the side that becomes sandy beach rather than sheetrock. When he’d first appeared from his bedroom after Newton made his argument, Newton had given him a long, indecipherable look. He’d said nothing, where Newton usually says everything and more, and that nothing discomforts Hermann. 

He tugs at the sleeves of his shirt, thinking that he may have misunderstood. Maybe Newton did not mean something prolonged. Maybe Hermann is underdressed, and the excursion was merely meant to humor Newtons whimsies, and for Hermann to catch a momentary second wind.

Newton, utterly unaware of Hermann’s doubts, walks beside him with his hands lackadaisically in his pockets. His hair is loose again, dishevelled in the breeze, and he looks out with eager eyes to the sea. Can one even be sure he is looking at anything? His eyes go so far and bring nothing back with them. When he notices Hermann looking at him, he grins at him and bumps their shoulders together jovially.

Hermann reconsiders. It is not nothing that Newton brings back with him, rather everything, and Hermann can’t quite map it all. It is so much.

“Isn't this better?” Newton asks, pulling his hands from his pockets and spreading his arms to encompass all that is around them.

“Yes, though it is hardly as if I’ve never seen it before.” Hermann hasn’t been entirely cooped up, either, as Newton well knows. The grounds must be tended to quite often. Not all of his hours are spent in the tower. 

Newton rolls his eyes. “Next time I will simply leave without you, then.”

“No-I,” Hermann blurts out and then feels his cheeks color. “I would like it if you asked me out another time.”

Newton hums noncommittally, a smile lingering on his lips as he dips his head down in an understated nod. When they pass from grass to sand, Newton kicks off his shoes and waits for Hermann to take off his own before he sprints off into the foam, kicking it up and turning at the waist when the waves reach his calves. He looks over his shoulder at Hermann, watching him as he approaches and hesitates a moment before letting the cool water brush his feet. The salt water won’t be good for his cane, but he has spares and it is hardly the first time he’s stood barefoot in the water. He doesn’t go as deep as Newton does, and soon Newton comes over to join him.

“You don’t have to stay with me. I am quite capable,” Hermann points out.

“Oh, I know, but I wanted to,” Newton says.

There is a charming hesitancy to Newton as they walk along the strand side-by side, feet entirely submerged in the water. He leads Hermann to a place where sand becomes flat rock. Newton walks out onto it, and clutches Hermann’s upper arm in a strong supporting grip. The platform is slightly elevated from the sandy bank and there are dry spots. It is in one of these dry spots that Hermann lowers himself carefully, Newton hovering all the while. 

Hermann settled, feet dangling into the water where it is deeper and his pants rolled to his knees, Newton finally leaves him be. He begins to strip his clothes before Hermann can ask him what he’s doing, and then Hermann is ducking his head and clearing his throat. It is only once Newton’s dived into the sea, a flash of color through the air, that Hermann looks back up.

For long moments, he does not rise. There is only the swell of the ocean, the water all the same combinations of blue and no movement beyond. Just as Hermann begins to worry, Newton’s head pops above water and his hands latch onto the edge of the sheetrock, next to Hermann’s knee. He blinks the water from his eyes, lashes glued together, and kicks back, on his back and looking up into the sky.

Newton habitually wanders around the property shirtless when it gets too hot, or he is working with Caleb on the grounds, but since that first day Hermann found him, Hermann has not seen Newton’s tattoos up close as such. He’s only seen images like those printed on Newton’s skin in museums, on scrolls from countries Hermann’s never visited. There are recognizable things, though. Giant serpents that curl out from the sea, whiskers angry and sharp across the chest.

In all of Hermann’s studies of Newton, he has been unable to capture these quite so well and in such detail.

After a bit, Newton swims back over and hoists himself up with a strained noise. He reaches for the towel he’d brought and dries himself perfunctorily. When he sits next to Hermann, so close they are nearly thigh to thigh, and still bare, the pale of upper leg peeking from the hem of his drawers, Hermann imagines he can feel the heat coming off of him. Newton drapes the towel over his shoulders and sighs pleasantly. He is still dripping. Rivulets cross the colorful territory of Newton’s arms and back.

Hermann shifts. He pulls back a little, and Newton fixes his eyes on him with raised eyebrows. Hermann coughs, eyes darting down to Newton’s chest, to the blue-green of the smirking serpent there.

“I've never, ah-“ Hermann says, gesturing at Newton’s chest.

“Seen a bare chest?” Newton asks with a teasing grin.

Hermann glares at him as he feels his cheeks heat. “No, Mr. Geiszler. Never in my thirty years of living have I seen a bare chest. It’s simply scandalous.”

Newton, tickled, doubles over with laughter. “I-I bet,” he says between breathless hiccups.

“I meant your tattoos, you foul little man.” Hermann pokes Newton’s arm with a sneer he can’t really maintain when seeing the crows feet at the corners of Newton’s eyes, and the one dimple that pocks his cheek when he smiles so ridiculously wide.

“What about them?” Newton asks, straightening back up and expression settling down into pleasant.

“Their design—I’ve never seen anyone with ink so,” Hermann says, eyes lingering on the swirl of faded yellow on Newton’s shoulder, sloping down into white stripes across his shoulder. It diffuses into a navy blue swell of waves with red undershadows.

“I didn’t get it here. My ship does many runs across to Japan, and some of the sailors I’ve met there had ink like this.” He pauses, running his tongue over his teeth and then, slowly, peering up at Hermann. He pitches his voice lower, leaning in closer to point at a spot on his right arm where a beast’s tail curls out from between blocky waves. “There are many monsters out on the seas, some friendly and others not so much. We’re, all of us sailors, a bit frightened and in awe of them. Surely you’ve heard of them?”

Hermann’s pulse is loud in his ears, Newton close and briny, and he can see where small shells have gotten tangled in Newton’s hair.

“Yes, I’ve heard,” Hermann says. "When I was a boy there were many stories. I’m no longer a boy to be frightened, Mr. Geiszler.” Hermann frowns down at Newton. In the slant-light, his eyes flash, shifting between amber to green as Newton tilts his head and smiles enigmatically.

“I know you’re no boy,” Newton says. "Neither am I. You’ve never seen, in the mist, anything out in the distance that you could not name?”

“I've not,” Hermann says.

“Well, perhaps you are too landlocked.” Newton’s gaze drops from Hermann’s and descends, lingering around Hermann’s jaw. “What I mean is that I’ve seen them.”

“Monsters?” Hermann asks skeptically.

“Yes.” Newton nods, heavy brows coming together and mouth turning down. “In the light of the moon, their terrible teeth, and their moaning sounds. I’ve seen them and I was struck. I thought, in that moment, ‘If I have them on my skin, fear will not overtake me.’ They ride with me, rather than against me.”

“I should think it would be bad luck to have a sailor on board with such perverse modification,” Hermann says, but it is not critical. He is still skeptical, but who truly knows what lays stretched across a dark and boundless sea. There may be some truth to Newton’s words.

Newton shrugs. “Bad luck or no, we’ve had all sorts of trouble and I’d like to think that I am good enough a sailor that the payoff is worth it.”

Hermann hesitates and then touches Newton’s inner wrist, turning it skywards and splaying his hand across the skin, following the upwards curve of the flower stem inked on Newton’s forearm. Newton’s skin is burning, but so are Hermann’s hands.

“And this?” he asks. “This is hardly a monster.”

This is the one tattoo that is incongruent with the rest. It is in color, as the rest of Newton’s tattoos are, but it is a plant in bloom. Its oblong shape extends just shy of Newton’s elbow and all the way to his wrist, its purple flowers turned this way and that. The petals curl at the edges, green stems peeking through the blank spaces.

Newton’s brows jump on his face, and he stills. He looks down at his own arm, quiet for a moment before he looks up at Hermann. He licks his lips, hesitating, and then he smiles. “You know it? The flower?”

“Can’t say that I do,” Hermann says. He knows many flowers, but this one is entirely foreign to him.

“It’s a Hyacinth,” Newton murmurs, stretching out his arm for Hermann to see, his knuckles brushing against the inseam of Hermann’s knee.

“Oh. Well, it is very nice, all the same. Does it mean something?” Hermann has to assume it does. Newton's others are more decorative than meaningful, but this one is different. It doesn’t fit the theme, or the style, so Hermann has no doubt there is some deeper significance.

“Do you know the story of Hyacinth, Mr. Gottlieb?” Newt asks, shifting back, crossing a leg over his knee, and looking out across the water. His brow is just slightly creased as he rests his chin on his hand, and the sunlight draws his face into sharp relief.

“I’m afraid I don’t,” Hermann says. 

“Its a Greek story. You know how they were.” Newt waves his hand about vaguely. “Before he was a flower, Hyacinth was a man. He was a very beautiful man—admired by many of the gods.”

“Oh,” Hermann says, repeating himself and swallowing, looking away when Newton looks at him. “And, this story, it ends well?” His hands curl against the knees of his pants.

“No, not really,” Newton says slowly, mincing words.

"But his lover, Apollo“—Newton pauses here, waiting, though for what Hermann cannot tell. A reaction, maybe. Hermann will give him no such luxury—“mourns him so gravely that he turns him into a flower to honor him.”

Hermann tilts his head against a particularly rough gust of wind and narrows his head. His lips thin and he is quiet as he pushes himself to a stand. The shore wind tears at his clothes, and he wonders how Newton is not cold.

"I see. I see,” Hermann stammers. The tremor in his hands, the thickness in his throat. "The Greeks were—strange.” His grip around the handle of his cane is white, and the waves are so loud, their sound encroaching upon him and overshadowing the other senses.

Choked up and, horrifyingly, feeling himself hot behind the eyes, as if ill, as if fevered, he turns away from the sea. He tilts his head back, looking at the lighthouse—his beacon, his beacon in the fog, his guiding focal point.This is distinctly dangerous territory. Of the kind Hermann is unwilling—unprepared to explore. He is glad of his cane for purchase. Glad that he has not been utterly swept off of his feet, robbed of his senses.

He doesn’t turn as he hears movement behind him; simply begins to walk forward, making his way from porous rock to sand without the help that had been volunteered on the way there. The surf rushing in, slapping against the outcrops of stone and foaming up into the pink sky, is the bone-rattling backdrop to their walk back.

Newton does not walk beside him, or slightly in front of him, backwards so that he can keep looking at Hermann as they move. He hangs behind Hermann, keeping his distance, and at times Hermann will stop hearing him entirely only for a set of steps to come trotting up. Catching up.

“Have I said something to upset you, Hermann?” Newton pipes up, as they are half way to the property. It is as level and controlled as Hermann’s ever heard him. Quiet and nearly lost to the wind entirely. And Hermann’s name, he resents the way it curls, so listless, finally among them.

"I am always upset at you,” Hermann says.

This, apparently, is not good enough an answer for Newton. He speeds up to bypass Hermann until he is in front of him, in his way, and grabs him by the arms to still him. Hermann comes to a stand still, barely catching himself in time before he stumbles into him.

Newton looks at him and Hermann sees his cheeks quivering. He sees Newton's eyes, and his slightly parted lips as his gaze roves over Hermann’s face. His hair is knocked wild, and he is cast against a background of light. The scene is them on a sand ridge, just below the steep berm, an expanse of water all the way to the horizon, orange scales on each wave from the diffused light, and Newton’s hands wrapped so firm and warm around Hermann’s trembling arms.

There is something—something that falls into place at that moment. Something clicks with such starling clarity about Newton, that Hermann staggers back from Newton’s hands, one arm raised in front of him as if to ward the man off. It is a mirror reflection, Newton’s eyes on him, body strung tight, lips drawn back to form words but there are no words forthcoming.

Newton is not looking at him smugly, or with disdain, or disgust. Hermann is not the one that has been caught out. It is Newton that is, in this moment, infused with fear. More than Hermann has ever seen him bear. The melancholy edge to him has always been there, but this fear? It is new, and it is startling, and it is a familiar panic that Hermann has not seen or felt in many, many years.

Newts face is ashen white as he looks at Hermann, alarmed. Waiting. Hermann means to ask him why he looks at Hermann so, to tell him that it’s alright. But, instead—“Get a hold of yourself.”

Newton retreats, hands hanging in the air between them for unsure seconds, and then dropping limply to his sides. He laughs, a terrible, drawn out noise that rings hollow. He shrugs his shoulders, spreads his arms with hands open, and smiles bitterly.

“I’m-" he begins. "I’m quite serious, Hermann. Are you upset?”

Even though they are facing each other, across from one another, Hermann cannot bear to meet Newton’s gaze any longer. Their feet press into the sand, the dirt, weight against one another as time crawls from one bitter minute to the next, willing itself to stop.

“I-“ Hermann’s shoulders sag. “It is a story. Why would I get upset by a story? You’ve said nothing out of place, have you?”

“…I see.” Newton bites his lower lip and makes an aborted movement.. “No, I-Well, that is-That is good.”

The conversation should resolve the tension, but it doesn’t. The uneasiness rests on them, lingers. The ocean stills, even, as they regard each other without actually looking at each other. Looking at the negative space around each other with darting eyes. There is, in Hermann, the impulse to do as Newton had done: grab him by the arms, anchor him, ask for clarity. Do his words—what they mean—is this not another misunderstanding? Yet another dispute, except they are hoarse by volition? He cannot, though. It is difficult, was difficult even to brush his fingers over Newton’s ink, skin warm underneath. Skin scalding.

Of a countenance, Newton had said.

“Come,” Hermann says, jerking his head towards the berm. "It’s getting late. The tide will be rising and, even for sailors, it is best we’re nowhere near.”

Newton is not lingering behind Hermann as they walk the rest of the way back to the houses, but he is apart. He is opaque, an affliction even his ink cannot fix, as if to not disturb the air around him.

—

They are at an impasse, an unsteady truce maintained on circumspect glances at each other as they brush past one another in the hallway, or see each other through windowpane. At times, Hermann will bring down dishes from the watch and control room, and wash them at the sink quietly as Newton and Caleb tend to the grounds. Newton roughhouses with the youth, jokes, and throws his head back in raucous laughter. Breathless and flushed, he’ll open his eyes slowly, lazy smile still stretching his lips, and meet Hermann’s eyes for the briefest of seconds.

For many days this is the extent of their interactions. Newton still comes all the way up the tower, but he is not unlike some of the mice that have plagued the woodwork for years. He’ll not make a sound, and then scurry past on his way out. Hermann should address it—should tell Newton that he is not a vermin. That he is not unwelcome.

And, then, there’s Newton sitting at the kitchen table days later, alone in the early morning and hunched over. What does he see? Hermann wonders. His hands are in his lap as he stares off at nothing. Alluring, endearingly sleep-rumpled—terrifying that Hermann now sees him so—the man has not bothered to change out of his nightclothes, or tame his hair in any way.

  It is the first of many omens for the day.

Hermann eyes him as he fills a glass with water and drinks deeply from it, turning to lean against the counter with a hip.

"Have you slept at all?” Hermann asks, and it’s the only noise in the room other than the precise tick of the grandfather clock in the living room.

Newton lifts his head slowly, vacantly. His acute gaze pinning Hermann in place. His eyes are red rimmed and his mouth contorted in a miserable press.

“I can’t,” he says. His voice is gravel, thick and rough.  “I keep thinking of how my ankles-they got tangled in the rigging. I’ve not-I’m not-I’ve never slipped on the crossbeams, but I did that then. I hung upside down, the blood rushing to my head, thinking I would fall on the deck and then. That would be it. But the wind was so hard that it blew me clear of the ship, and it was too dark.”

Hermann closes his eyes with a grimace. It comes less as a revelation and more of a recognition: the tedium of being confronted again and again with the image of himself. In Newton’s eyes, time and time again. Now, as Newton holds his own face in his hands and trembles against the table.

Hermann sets the glass against the counter and jumps at how loud it sounds. He glances down, surprised to see how tightly his fingers are gripping it. Surprised to see that the force has shaved off one of the bottommost corners of the glass. Chipped it quite by accident.

His fingers ache when he lets go of the glass, and the onerous task of approaching begins. He drags his chair with him and sits, so close they are nearly sharing the same breath, and their knees knock together. Hermann pulls Newton’s hands from his face with infinite patience, holds his wrists together with both hands. Newton’s breath comes in quick, juddering, and his jaw wobbles. His eyes are on the verge of tears, though none spill over.

Hermann hasn’t had to do this in a while, since Caleb was younger and more knobby-kneed. Caleb suffered of hauntings like Hermann. At night, at the foot of his bed, apparitions would come. At times they were silly, but all the same Caleb would wake paralyzed and could not call out. Hermann had taken to sitting at his bedside, pressing Caleb's small body to his side, and brushing across Caleb's brow as Hermann's mother and sister had done for him.

But Caleb was a child. Hermann does not dare do more than stroke his thumb over Newton’s wrists again and again until his breathing slows. Until he looks less like a jigsaw puzzle, shattered at the seams.

"You survived, Newton,” Hermann says. "You are alright.”

Newton looks up at him through dewy lashes. His smile is not confident. "Thanks, Hermann, but my brain won’t get that message.”

Hermann knows all too well what that is like. He nods—feels more solid than he has in so long: his hands on Newton’s wrists, Newton’s wrists in Hermann’s hands.  Newton is looking at him, seeing him, not through him or past him. Newton is not at sea, not with the bucking ship and the crewmates that talk of Apollo. He is here.

“You may think, for whatever reason or assumption you’ve made, that I don’t understand,” Hermann says. “I assure you, I do.” 

Newton seems about to protest, as his gaze transits from Hermanns face, down his torso, and lingers on his leg before he looks back up. Understanding dawns on his face, and Hermann wonders how it is possible to be so transparent and still, somehow, have withheld depths.

He wonders, as well, about the warmth under his fingers. What is alive, or living, and what isn’t? How to deduce backwards from this moment of two men in the silence of the kitchen to the pull of wind, the vertiginous sway of a landscape overturned? They’re both different, the two men: loud in silence or noise. Yet, they are here left mute by that which they cannot voice.

Hermann had not seen any signs of it in the previous weeks. This is the first indication Newton’s even given of thinking back on the night of the storm.

“It's sink or swim—is that not what the sailors say?” Hermann bumps Newton’s knee with his own and smiles.

Newton laughs wetly, but genuinely. “Sink or swim. Indeed, Hermann."

They’ve been stripped from their family names. There is no history that can fit alongside them in the room. They are Newton and Hermann; Hermann and Newton.

The unspoken camaraderie they’ve developed, in light of their conversation, lingers throughout the day. Later on, Newton comes to join Hermann in the lamp room and he does not pretend that he is there alone, leaving a tray for a ghost that lives between panes of glass.

—

Hermann has many theories about the nature of things. Though, just that morning, he’d had words for Newton, he often does not have words for himself. He is not a friend to himself, and cannot console himself with a kiss to the forehead. He does not truthfully know if he will ever be able to finally dispel the images and noises that prowl his mindscape. Secretly, he does think himself a ghost a lot of the time. One that, perhaps, escaped the battlefield when he was not meant to.

He knows that he wakes, already shouting out into the night, his body in a fetal curl. It is hot, sweat pearling his skin, and Hermann cannot breathe. The shout was the last of it—the last of hearty airfulls, and his ears are full of gunfire, of the morse of his heartbeat.

Hermann sits up, scoots back to press his back to the cool wall, grips his thighs with his trembling fingers. Always trembling, shaking, titivating. Always as in motion as the rest of his body is not. 'If I am not loud, if I am not much, perhaps I won’t be discovered,’ he thinks.

His already threadbare nerves fray even more when his door slams open and Newton rushes in, panic on his face. He hurries over to Hermann on the bed.

“What is it? Are you hurt? Do you need help?” The questions rush out of Newton as he surveys Hermann, hands hovering.

Hermann shakes his head. “I am fine. I merely had… a small mishap.”

His words slow and dwindle in volume as he raises his hand to his nose. It’s wet, and when he pulls his hand away, there is blood on his fingers. Newton is there, then, pulling a handkerchief from his trousers and holding it up to Hermann’s nose. His face is tight with concern. Hermann lets him for a few silent moments.

“You’ve freckles,” Hermann observes dumbly, fiddling his soiled hands in his lap. The words have a bit to a lisp to them, and are muffled through the cloth.

“Excuse me?” Newton asks, frown deepening as he temporarily removes the cloth to let Hermann speak.

“Freckles,” Hermann repeats. Newton flushes at that and freezes in place with wide eyes. He hesitates for a little too long and Herman feels more heavy wet tickling the fine hair over his upper lip. He smears it away with the back of his hand with a grimace, and it jolts Newton into motion again.

He dabs at Hermann’s upper lip carefully, biting the inside of his cheek. His eyes are on how Hermann’s hands are trembling more violently than they usually do, and with his other hand he replicates what Hermann had done for him earlier. He takes one of Hermann’s hands by the wrist, fingers so warm—always so warm.

“What kind of small mishap is this?” Newton murmurs. “I thought you’d been shot.”

“Sorry. Must’ve yelled,” Hermann mutters, clearing his throat and gaze sheepishly dropping to Newton’s shoulder. “Was a dream, is all.”

“You get dreams like these often?” Newton asks.

Hermann takes the handkerchief from him in lieu of answering. Newton climbs on the bed and sits down next to Hermann. Hermann is disarmed, still sleep-heavy and his head hurts and Newton is so close that Hermann can smell him: cloves, salt, soap.

“I do,” Hermann admits. “All the time. Nearly every night.”

“First time I’ve heard you yell like that. Must’ve been a bad one.” Newton’s hand is on Hermann’s elbow, and he’s pressed against him solidly. Rather, Hermann is a mast listing into Newton’s side and Newton is a firm pillar holding him up. The immensity of the emotion that swells up within Hermann is not—there is no possible space for it. His hand, the one that rests on the bed in the small space between Hermann and Newton, is so close to Newton’s thigh. He grazes it with his small finger, closes his eyes, and tilts his head back.

“No worse than anyone else’s memories from the war, I suppose,” Hermann says, and his voice is reedy. If he were a metalsmith, he would want to beat it into form. As he is not, just a man, he wishes he hadn’t spoken at all.

“It is alright to be upset,” Newton says, paused and awkward as if it pains him to take his time with the words. “You’re not in uniform now, Hermann. I’m not your sergeant.”

“No, you are not,” Hermann agrees shortly. Eyes closed, he can’t see what expression Newton’s made, but he does hear his intake of breath.

“Earlier you said you understood me. Won’t you trust me when I say that I understand you? Won’t you let me?” Newton asks, and the proximity of his voice makes Hermann open his eyes. He is met with Newton’s soft and subdued expression, and he jerks.

Stubbornly, he shakes his head. His fingers curl in the sheets and he feels Newton’s hand slip down his arm, over his tense hand, and pry the fingers loose.

“Hermann,” Newton says. “I’m here as your friend, or at least I’m trying to be.”

“We're friends, then?” Hermann asks, feeling childish, feeling small and slow.

“I've thought so for a while. I would like us to be.” Newton smiles at him tentatively, and it brightens when Hermann nods.

“I guess we are friends, aren’t we?” Hermann says and then yawns.

Newton laughs and shakes his head. A beat. “Do you want me to stay for a while longer?”

“Yes,” Hermann says, head already beginning to nod off once again. “I’d like that… very much.”

In the morning, Hermann finds himself tucked under his quilts, and Newton at the foot of the bed, still sat upon it with his back against the wall. His head has fallen to his chest and he snores, chest a comforting rise-and-fall.

Chapter Text

“Hermann?” Newton calls down from the second landing.

“Yes?” Hermann asks absently, trimming the small buds in the window’s hanging planters. Shortly after, he hears Newton’s heavy boots clank down the stairs in a now-familiar two step cadence.

“What are these?” Newton asks. His voice is closer now.

Hermann turns around and very nearly drops the clippers. He manages to toss them onto the chaise before he lunges toward Newton. Newton, though shorter, escapes Hermann’s grasp. In his hands are several loose papers—papers Hermann left scattered all over his bedroom floor the night before and did not have the foresight to put away this morning. 

From the expression on Newton’s face, it is already too late. He’s seen. Hermann stands his ground and clenches his jaw. He holds out his hand, leaning heavily on his cane even as he feels his face aflame.

“Hand them to me!” he says.

Newton purses his lips and looks down at the pages. He begins to leaf through them slowly, body in relaxed contrapposto. He is utterly devoid of the statuesque rigidity in Hermann’s body at the moment. Hermann feels dread well up as a hard knot in his throat. He does not want to watch Newton as he sees what Hermann’s been doing. It was well and good when Hermann was a student at the Academy. Now, here on this remote island, it reads very differently. He doesn’t want to see Newton’s reaction, but a perverse curiosity keeps his gaze rooted to the small twitches of Newton’s face.

When he is finished, he turns towards Hermann and his face is carefully blank. He regards Hermann for a moment in silence, and then he smiles. It is late, the understanding of the expression on Newton’s face. It hadn’t been blank: it had been speechless. His expression is one of awe, of wonderment and he looks back down at the pages and holds a hand over them gently, reverently, lips parted slightly.

“Hermann,” he says, hardly above a whisper. “These are wonderful. I saw, you know, the first night, and I knew you studied, but I had no idea.”

Hermann flushes for an entirely different reason, the fingers of his outstretched hand twitching briefly before he lets the arm drop entirely. His jaw, however, remains clenched and his brow furrowed.

“You had no business being in my room and-and snooping!” he grits out, gaze darting to the sheets. The damage is done and yet his heart is still anxiety ridden—he is still drawn so tense. “That is my personal proper-“

“Jillian told me to retrieve the tray since you never brought it down after your shift last night,” Newton says. He no longer holds the sheets away from Hermann’s grasp, but brings them directly in front of him and holds them with both hands. “But, nevermind that. I never noticed you drawing me before… Is this all memory?”

Hermann is still, gathering his words and deciding how much to reveal. He takes a deep breath and pinches the bridge of his nose as he sits down on the chaise. He leans forward, elbows on knees, and his hand drifts down until he covers his mouth.

“Yes. From memory—all of them,” Hermann admits. Newton’s face softens for reasons Hermann cannot fathom. His head is tilted, a smile on his face and sad eyes looking down at Hermann. Even now, when Hermann should be more preoccupied with being angry at him, he can’t help but want to draw him like this too.

Newton sits himself down next to Hermann heavily and he holds the pages out to him. Hermann takes them carefully, slowly as if afraid that Newton will change his mind and keep the evidence of his shame. They sit with silence tended between them, Newton’s head tilted down as he looks at the pages now between Hermann’s fingers. Hermann is also looking down at them, though he watches Newton from the corner of his eye.

“You know,” Newton says, tone thoughtful. “I’d let you draw me. You don’t need to hide from me, Hermann.” He tilts his head up at an angle, looking at Hermann. Hermann can feel Newton’s gaze hot on the side of his face, as if he were touching him.

Hermann keeps his gaze on the pages as his fingers toy with the ragged, uneven edges of the weighted paper.

“Don’t I?” he asks. He jumps, freezes, when Newton puts his hand on Hermann’s knee, lingers and then pats it twice as if the gestures are an afterthought.

“Of course not. I can’t see why anyone would be unflattered by this kind of attention.” Newton grins at him, one cheek dimpled and boyish. Hermann swallows, nods, aligns the pages so carefully, so precisely.

“I shall keep it in mind, then,” Hermann allows, looking at Newton with a small smile. Newton pats his knee again, and smiles at him. He looks as if he wants to say more, but he simply shakes his head and stands up once more. He stretches his back, joints cracking and back muscles shifting notably under his shirt.

“I’m putting a kettle on. Should I fill it enough for the both of us?” Newton's head turns, hands on his hips. Hermann takes a second to answer, still confused, just a bit, and then he nods.

“I could carry those up for you, too,” Newton says. Hermann’s about to turn him down, but Newton has already seen, and likely he’d seen his fill before coming down the stairs. He hands the pages back to Newton and watches as he leaves through the doorway. The Newton in his mind’s eye goes down the hall, around the armoire, up the stairs of the building to the small room with the sticky window, his drawings and paintings, all of his things. On the floor; on display.

Hermann’s hands unclench. He breathes. He shivers. He picks up the clippers and he turns to the light of the day. He prunes the flowers, and the bougainvillea flutters in the wind.

—

Newton arrives, a stumbling blurry figure through sheets of rain. His clothes are glued to him and he leaves long puddles behind him all the way inside the house. In his hands, tugging him downwards, he has one of the white buckets they keep in the boat house. He hefts it to the kitchen, bypassing Hermann’s stunned form in the hallway, and sets it down on the tiles in front of the sink.

Hermann had not been aware of where Newton was or what he was up to when the downpour started, but his worry does not last very long since Newton seems in fine shape. All the same, he lights the fireplace before he joins Newton in the kitchen.

Newton slicks his hair from his face.

“It's stormin’ out there,” he says, and his breath is coming in short as he pushes his sleeves up his arms and wrinkles his nose when they won’t stay.

Hermann, curious, peeks into the bucket and immediately stumbles back against the table. “What in the blazes-?”

Newton grins, droplets sliding down his face, dripping from the tip of his nose and his chin.

“Went crab fishin’,” he says and bends down, reaching a hand into the bucket. He pulls up one of the crabs by a leg and holds it up, outstretched to Hermann. “Bet you’ve never seen such beauties.”

Hermann pulls back further and scowls at Newton. “Get those infernal creatures away from me this instant.”

Newton does not take the words as the threat they are, and simply laughs at him before putting the crab inside the sink. He turns away from Hermann and dumps the whole bucket in the sink, to Hermann’s horror.

“No can do, Hermann,” Newton says over the clatter of the crabs trying to climb out of the sink. Newton tuts at the crabs that manage to lever themselves over the edge, and swiftly deposits them back in the basin.

“How come?” Hermann asks through gritted teeth, bumping the empty bucket away from him with his cane.

“Gotta get the best for my best fella, ain’t I?” Newton asks, turning to look over his shoulder with eyebrows raised and a smile on his face. Hermann’s mouth opens and closes, stammering and his grip on the table behind him tightening . 

He makes a small strangled noise and ducks his head.

“You'll catch your death in those wet clothes,” he murmurs, passing Newton and beyond to the hall closet. He is not Newton’s fella at all. Newton doesn’t know what it is he says half of the time, Hermann thinks as he pulls down towels and returns to the kitchen, holding one out to Newton.

Newton takes it and immediately scrubs at his hair until it is left damp and tousled. He peels out of his wet shirt, frustrated with how it clings to him and Hermann grimaces when he hears the wet slap of it hitting the countertop. His trousers follow shortly after. He sits down at the table, leaning back and his legs falling open lackadaisically. He lets his head hang, expelling a loud breath, and then he lifts it and looks at Hermann.

“You've no allergy, have you?” he asks, rubbing his hands back and forth over his thighs. It is distracting, the tan of his often-exposed hands against the pale of his thighs.

Hermann shakes his head, throat thick. He’s standing, looking down at the ink embedded in Newton’s skin. There are errant drops here and there that have escaped Newton’s rudimentary pass with the towel. He is soft and toned in measure. His arms capable, and his midsection spilling over the ties of his breeches. 

“I’ve never had crab while here,” Hermann admits, hot around the ears. He’s never had the time or the interest to go crab fishing—fishing in general. It is too unclean for him, he can hardly stomach the idea of the crab being cooked as is. He suspects, rather, that it is something else that has him unsettled, antsy. What Newton can’t possibly mean, ever.

Newton hums. “I'm a good cook, and I’m sure Jillian can fill me in where I am lacking.”

“Eh? Lacking?” Jillian calls from her room and Hermann jumps, startled. “You two are making so much noise. You wake me from my midday nap!”

Newton and Hermann smile at each other and Hermann stifles a laugh when Newton rolls his eyes. Jillian comes in the kitchen soon, wrinkles pressed into her face where she was napping on her bed. Hermann bends down to kiss her cheek and she tuts.

She does a double take when she spots the sink and then she turns very slowly, very terrifyingly calmly, towards them. Hermann raises his hands, blameless in the whole affair, and Newton grins at her.

“Look at you—shameless!” Jillian chastises, swatting at Newton. "You make a mess of my house and walk around like, like that!”

Neither of them dare correct her about it not being her house, and Hermann clears his throat.

“Yes, it is quite improper,” Hermann adds, glancing down at Newton’s bare chest. The look he gives Newton, however, is not nearly as infused with disapproval as it should be. Hermann clears his throat again and looks away when Newton shoots him a betrayed look.

Outside the window, fog is rolling in fast. Hermann’ll have to go turn on the lamp early. He excuses himself, crossing the room while staying as far away from the sink as he can, and begins the climb. It is plenty enough to distract him: counting each step up the tower, concentrating only on the rise and fall of his own chest, on the balance he must maintain so that the climb is not too tedious, and that he must never, ever fall.

—

The thing is that—well—Hermann has not been drawing Newton as he had before. Where before there was a private embarrassment of the whole thing, in a generalized sense, it is starting to feel more specific. More personalized. Hermann had been watching Newton, but he hadn’t been understanding. Things that had once been so innocuous start to take on a nuance that Hermann cannot bring himself to dismiss. Before, he’d seen. Now, he is starting to understand. He is beginning to comprehend: the hyacinth, the pansies Newton’s taken to tucking in his lapels or shirt button-holes. He is noticing things—the way Newton will tuck curls behind his ear, or fiddle with his small golden hoop earrings when he’s thinking. His gaze is lingering, catching on the dips and swells of all that makes up Newton.

Hermann’s beginning to think—has always thought—that Newton is, as well, of a countenance. He will not voice it, and these separate observations that he makes rarely converge on themselves. He does not give them the time or focus to do so.

Instead, whenever he is looking too long, he pulls his sketchbook from his coat pocket and begins to draw. He’s caught Newton failing not to smile when he does so, just a very slight tick up at the corner of his mouth. Newton is not good at staying still, either, so it is a constant exercise in speed or improvisation. No little amount of memory is still called upon.

On his end, Newton delights in allowing Hermann to do as he pleases without comment, but will often come around at some point, place his hand on Hermann’s shoulder and lean over it to look at what he’s done in his sketchbook. At times, it is the small of Hermann’s back instead: Newton’s hand warm through Hermann’s shirt, and the smell of his aftershave so close. Hermann does not move, does not dare. It feels so terribly important to keep Newton where he is when he does these things. It feels as if the moment is likely to vanish if Hermann makes any sudden moves, and the flightiness of Newton’s disposition might manifest physically.

He is still, and is rewarded in the form of Newton’s smiles when he sees Hermann’s painted studies and sketches, or when Newton’s gone out to market with Caleb and they both return windswept, laughing. They’ll doff their caps and prop their bicycles against the side of the house, complain about the resistance of the wheels and put their feet up on the table as they massage their tired calves.

“It’s the salt,” Hermann says, awkward and bumbling and trying to be involved in the conversation. “It eats at everything out here.”

“Oh!” Newton says, and grins at Hermann before letting his feet fall loudly from the table. “Speaking of eat…”

He drums his fingers against the tabletop giddily, and seems to hover half-in and half-out of his chair for a moment before he’s gone entirely. He brings in armfuls of paper bags from their purchases and begins to set things out on the counter.

Hermann watches with mild interest, just long enough to make sure everything he needs is there. Then, he ducks his head back down into his sketchbook. The liberty—Newton knowing that he draws, that he can draw—has proven to be far more fruitful than Hermann himself could have expected. There is no obligation to keep this to himself, and if he wants to draw the people around him, he has the permission to do so. It is just that the acknowledgement has meant that Hermann feels enabled to draw or paint other things as well. There are gardens at the corners of his pages; there’s the light filtering in through the kitchen window, curtains billowed away from the frame; there is Caleb, crouching down low to the garden as he steals a green cucumber and bites into it.

He’s working on a drawing of Caleb, tilting on the back legs of his chair and his arms crossed over his chest as he chews on a mint leaf. He’s worse than the bugs about that—eating up his garden. Caleb doesn’t really look at Hermann at all as he draws. He’s used to it. Hermann has, however, on more than one occasion let Caleb flip through his sketchbooks. The young man acts like he doesn’t care that Hermann’s drawn him, but it’s all poppycock because he always tries to sweeten the offer with tea and madeleines.

Today, Caleb is not the one that slides a plate of madeleines across the table: it is Newton that does so. There are clementines as well, half—peeled from their skins, and fresh strawberries on the plate. Hermann stops, pencil stilled and leaving a line unfinished. He stares at the plate, and then at Newton who is already at the counter once more and pouring out water from the kettle into Hermann’s favorite mug.

Shortly after, this too is placed in front of Hermann. Newton’s put on Jillian’s apron again, Hermann notices when Newton wipes his hands on it. He’s got a strange smile on his face as he gestures between Hermann and the plate.

“You look peaky—Are you alright?” Hermann asks, squinting and adjusting his glasses so he can see Newton better.

“Yes!” Newton squeaks. “Yes, never better.”

He turns quickly, away from Hermann’s concerned frown, and Hermann must direct that frown down at the offering instead. He sets down his pencil and picks up one of the clementines.

—

After that day, Newton takes to carrying a paper bag full of a few madeleines wherever he goes. Hermann’s never seen him eat one, though he’s claimed to like them. The only contexts in which they seem to get any use is when Newton turns to Hermann suddenly and offers him one, apropos of nothing.

There are also the incidents where Newton is gone for hours and returns with scratches on his arms and legs, but beaming. He’ll proudly present a drooping handful of flowers to Hermann, and Hermann will dutifully get them some kind of vase. Unfortunately, Hermann’s green thumb only extends so far and all of his attempts to perk the flowers up again fail. Caleb has much more luck, and he does not share what it is that he puts in the water.

—

Moreover, there’s the day Hermann’s in his room, hunched over his canvas stand. It’s a small surface that he’s been painting, and the subject matter goes no further than the view he can see right outside his window. The last few minutes have been spent in idle suspension as he fills in some of the details in his journal. It is not enjoyable to pause his activities to fill out his journal, but he is working—always working—and this is something he must never forget.

It is hard to be mindful of his duties. Especially when Newton knocks upon the open door, and Hermann glances up at him with a small smile to wave him in. Newton stands just next to Hermann’s shoulder and whistles when he sees Hermann’s painting. Newton and he may discuss many things, but Newton’s been embarrassingly firm about his delight in Hermann’s talent.

Hermann notices the hint of brown butcher’s paper peeking from behind the line of Newton’s back, where his hands are hidden. He is making a poor attempt at angling himself away. Hermann sets the pen between the pages and narrows his eyes at Newton expectantly.

“What is it then?” he asks.

Newton pulls a glass jar from behind his back. The lid has been covered with butcher’s paper, tied at the neck with a ribbon. Inside the jar it is golden, rich and thick with comb inside: honey. Newton holds it out to Hermann and Hermann’s eyebrows jump.

“For me?” he asks, incredulous. He sets the journal down in his lap and takes the jar from Newton. “Where did you get this?”

Newton nods several times, jerky sort of motions, and he rubs at his arm in a self-conscious gesture. He scuffs his boot against the floorboards.

“Market.”

Hermann flounders, speechless. “Thank you, Newton.”

He sets the jar on his desk, amongst paint water and dishtowels so dirty from paint smears that they no longer hold any trace of white at all.

“Will you, uh, be up? In the tower—later on?” Newton asks, reaching out to fiddle with one of the loose fibers of the canvas. Hermann looks at his hand and Newton stops.

“Yes, of course.” Hermann frowns. “As I always am.”

“Yes, of course,” Newton echoes. His gaze goes far for a moment, not in the present, and then he smiles at Hermann and nods again, stiffly. He hesitates, lingering in the room for no discernible reason, and then he seems to wake from whatever daydream his thoughts have taken him on.

“I’ll see you, then.” Newton rapps on the door twice before he leaves, and Hermann stares at the jar, reaches out, undoes the ribbon and unscrews the top. He dips a finger in it, brings it to his mouth, closes his eyes and savors. Dark and rich and sweet, it lingers on his tongue as he works, blocks in the shore, and hesitates when he sees Newton out on the dock. He stands against the wind, hand raised to his brow as he looks out.

“What is it that you see?” Hermann mumbles, as he has done so very many times before, tracing his lower lip with his fingers. He worries at his lip with his teeth, sucks it into his mouth until it is sore and tender.

—

Newton’s never tiptoed, never tried to compress himself or make himself invisible—other than the one time on the strand. In this they are different. Hermann is constantly aware that he occupies so much space. That he pulls himself in to create more negative space. To draw the eye away from himself. He sees himself often within the multitude—perhaps because he still cannot shake the sensation that he belongs to a regiment, and that it would be most proper to see himself as a collective. Newton is part of a crew, and yet there is something distinctly individual about him. He is not the type to follow orders without somehow circumventing procedure.

The new behavior, it is strange. Or, perhaps, it is not strange, and it is just that Hermann is unused to companionship of this sort. He’s not quite sure how to tell Newton that, though he likes madeleines a lot, he does not need to have them every day. He’s not quite sure what to do with the honey, either. He’s spread it on his toast in the mornings and noticed Newton sit in his chair with a quietly pleased expression on his face. But, Hermann had never indicated that he liked honey. Now, he finds it odd if there is not the smallest hint of it at the back of his throat.

This may just be part of what it means to welcome someone else into one’s household, however temporary it may be.

But then, Hermann does not know how to explain this either… This that he sees when he flips through his sketchbook. There are, as there have always been, errant sketches here and there of Jillian and Caleb, of Hermann’s own body when he is feeling brave, of miscellany. Those, however, are not what dominate the pages.

Hermann’s heard that the theme of an artist’s work is deciphered through the codification of their obsessions. Surely, it must be obvious. Surely, Newton must know. He’s seen enough of the drawings. He must know that this—Hermann swallows, dragging his thumb along the edge of a page—this is not, not usual. And, yet, he has not said anything. Has not mentioned.

Hermann is no fool. He knows that, should his art get recognized long after he himself is no longer living, someone, somewhere, will read between the lines. They will recognize the pattern of a stubbled cheek examined from so many angles. They will understand, without him needing to speak even a word, the obsession he harbors.

He trembles as he looks around the floorspace of his room and sees sheets and sheets of replicated faces, doublings of one solitary body, of one solitary man. The man bent over with the colors winding down his sides, and back, and arms, and the tender backs of his thighs.

He is not entirely cognizant when he takes the papers in his arms, crinkling and crumpling and he so overwhelmed as he begins to push them out the window. The wind fights him, blowing some of the pages back inside, sticking against him like a second skin. Even now, even in this state where he is here confronting himself, he cannot escape but for a few measly pages before, overcome, he folds to the floor.

Hermann curls in on himself, on his knees and grimacing at his hip and grimacing at himself and trembling all over. He holds his head in his hands, and he stays that way, breathing into them, shuddering and letting out quiet dry sobs. For how long, he does not know, but eventually there is Newton, as there is always Newton these days.

He appears at last in the glare of the light, in the doorframe lit from without and within. Hermann is not looking at him, but knows it is him as he cannot help but know. Cannot help but recognize the specific pattern of the click of his heels against the wood floors. Hermann closes his eyes, pained, lifts a tremulous hand to cover them.

Newton stands too close to focus on, vague and smeary like the charcoal that dirties Hermann’s hands, and remains tucked in his nailbeds. Newton kneels next to Hermann, feet tucked up under him, and eases Hermann back, off his knees, with the quietest of touches.

Hermann’s gasp is wet and embarrassingly loud between them. Louder than the ocean swell that is always there—always the background cadence: in, out. Like an intake of breath, and a weary exhalation. Hermann wavers—wants. He wants to fall toward Newton fully. With his entire body and weight.

He is suddenly so very tired and he deflates against the side of his bed. Newton remains there, watching Hermann in silence with his green eyes lanced with yellow. The hand that had pushed him back slips from his shoulder to his bicep, squeezes, and Newton’s other hand is just on the swell of Hermann’s knee.

Hermann raises his arms, holds his hands up to ward Newton away.

“Don’t,” he murmurs, small and wobbly and frail between them. Newton pulls his hands away and his face creases in concern.

  “Is there anything I can-?”

“No.” Hermann wipes at his eyes, sniffles, wipes at his nose with his face turned away from Newton. “No. You can leave.”

“Alright.” Newton stands and Hermann presses his hands to his eyes harder, so that he does not reach out again for his heat, for his presence. He hears the rustling of pages and feels bitterness swell again.

“I brought,” Newt says. “I saw the pages on the hillside. If you don’t want them, I’ll take them. I would hate to see them go to waste.”

Hermann shrugs. “It’s all the same to me.”

Hermann hears more rustling, and then the door closes. He lifts his head and sees that Newton’s left the pages on the bed. It’s the studies where there is a figure just beginning to take shape in the landscape. Three rock outcrops, uneven surface and rough in contrast with the soft strokes of the man with his back to the viewer, at an angle and bent down to see something hidden in the water. The water green, and blue, and red, and yellow, and hazing into the horizon with feather-patient strokes.

He pushes himself to his feet unsteadily and reaches out for his cane immediately as his legs complain from being in the same position too long. He doesn’t throw the studies, or the rest of the drawings, out the window again, but he does push them to the floor before he crawls into his bed, still clothed, and lies fitfully until he falls asleep, his body heavy like a stone drowning.

Chapter Text

Hermann avoids Newton as best as he can for a few days, and the whole time the fear of something else, some relentless thing, tails him. There is nowhere he can hide from Newton, so he concludes that Newton is avoiding him as well. That he’s finally pushed Newton away. However, Newton comes skulking up the stairs one day and stands at Hermann’s elbow as he sits at the desk in the control room. Newton hesitates and then places something on the desk and smooths it out with his hands.

Hermann looks over and pauses in his writing. He sits back, looks at Newton, and then down at what he’s placed on the table.

“You made this, didn't you?” Newton asks, pointing at the bottommost corner where Hermann’s signature is visible.

“Yes.” Hermann is still—so very still—ink dripping from his pen and ruining the day’s notations in his journal.

“It's amazing. I had no idea.” Newton leans down, squinting at the parchment and Hermann notices that he’s not wearing his glasses. “So detailed and precise. It must’ve taken you months.”

Hermann eyes Newton for a moment. He’s not acting any different at all. Well, that is not quite true, Hermann revises upon seeing the subtle way Newton’s hands are shaking.

“It did.”

“Do you have more?” Newton asks, dragging fingers over the sea monster Hermann had drawn surging from the waves, face angry and eyes looking at the viewer.

Hermann pulls out the bottommost drawer of the desk, and pulls out several tied rolls. He sets them on the desktop and watches as Newton undoes the ribbon and pushes it flat as he’d done with the first.

Newton is quiet for a while, eyes scanning the page and fingers following where he feels at some texture hidden to Hermann.

“What is it that is so special about maps?” he asks, finally. Hermann pauses, sets down his pen, and pushes his journal away from him as he leans forward on his elbows, gaze resolutely on the map stretched between them.

“I’ve never tried to explain it,” he says. “I might not get it right.”

“I like hearing you talk,” Newton says. He pushes some things aside and sits himself on the far corner of the tabletop. “It doesn’t matter if I don’t understand.”

Hermann does not know what it is about the words, or about Newton, looking at him still and still wanting to be around him, that makes him want to try. To trace a path across the treacherous topography between them.

“Well, alright,” he begins. “I was in the war, as you know. Lots of ground to cover—lots of information passed from soldier to soldier. We were told where we were going, of course, but out there none of us knew what it meant. Not really. We were more concerned with our depleting food rations, and the changing of the season. Winter was always the worst.”

Hermann finds himself telling Newton of how nothing was the straight and narrow, and how that impression seems even further true when Hermann sees things through the filter of memory. Events get jumbled up. Names mixed and matched. Every boy’s face just another. Newton listens, eyes glancing down at Hermann’s trembling hands or jittering knee but never saying anything. His eyes are riveted to Hermann, despite his sailor’s worldliness. None of Hermann’s words make Newton’s eyes droop or flicker in boredom. As good as his word, Newton wants to listen.

“I suppose the lines, and the numbers... they do not get mixed, or confused,” Hermann says. “They are fixed points in a space. After the war I could not imagine going back to art as I had been. Everything was too full of emotion. One needed the passion in their art to get any sort of recognition.”

“I do not depend on recognition, but I found myself,” Hermann pauses, gazing up, out the window with a frown, “unable to comprehend, or represent that level of emotion. Lines were like following orders. And I hoped that, perhaps, I would find myself in them.”

“And did you?” Newton asks softly.

“No.” Hermann shakes his head with a chagrined smile. “I only got more confused. They were too unforgiving.”

Newton reaches out and places a hand on Hermann’s shoulder, squeezing it gently and smiling. “And now? Have you found what you were looking for?”

Hermann’s breath stutters. Newton’s face so open and drawn in—not pity, never pity—curiosity, sympathy, patient understanding? His hand so warm on Hermann’s shoulder, and Newton’s thumb rubbing circles over his collarbone.

“I don’t know. I think I am relearning,” Hermann confesses finally, looking down and away when he sees how Newton’s expression becomes considering. Newton pats Hermann’s bicep before removing his hand.

“That is good. That is something.”

—

Hermann worked on his maps. An isolated job, easy, precise. Helped him reconcile lost territory. Unknown territory that he did not recognize by name, but by rugged terrain and how many uniforms in front or in back, or to left and to right. He worked through the sleepless nights, charting a geography of nightmares and jitterbug memories that seem half-dream, half-beast, half-man, somewhere in there. Straight lines are the fastest path, but they didn’t lead him anywhere. They constricted, tightened, choked him like a well-placed tourniquet.

It was finally when Karla arrived at his townhouse, the hem of her skirts heavy from the rains, that they brought another doctor. Hermann would be embarrassed to admit that he was like a child crying in Karla’s arms. Telling her he did not want, or need a doctor. Telling her all he wanted was some sleep, some rest, some peace, some quiet that is not too loud. She rocked him back and forth, softly humming the same Hebrew songs their mother would sing to them as she smoothed the hair from their foreheads and put them to bed. And Hermann let himself be swayed against her, clutching at her blouse. Please don’t go.

Shortly after, Karla had found him the posting at the lighthouse and suggested it. And now, years, months later, Hermann is at the lighthouse. Hermann is at the lighthouse with Newton.

They’re lying on the floor of the control room, side by side, on a clear night. The sky is full of smokey clusters of stars and planets. Hermann has pointed out, named and drawn the constellations for Newton. At times, Newton’s breath is hot on Hermann’s neck when he turns to listen to him. They are so close their shoulders touch as Hermann lifts his arm to point out, to the universe, at Saturn, and Neptune, and Cassiopeia.

Newton himself points out a couple that he knows from his sailing days and huffs a laugh against Hermann, shaking his head, teasing Hermann for his surprised expression. Hermann dissolves into laughter himself. It does seem a terribly obvious oversight.

Newton’s arm is still outstretched, but he is not pointing at anything. His hand is open, palm outward as if to cup the whole of the universe between his fingers. Hermann lifts his arm alongside Newton and bumps Newton’s hand until Hermann’s palm grazes his. Newton’s smile fades and he turns his head to look at Hermann. 

Hermann swallows, hesitates, feels Newton against him and there is something—that something, relentless thing—thrumming between them. It occurs to him, insidious and persistent at the back of his mind, that he may be projecting. That he is alone in this. Sailors are storytellers, and what better vessel for Hermann to place all of his machinations upon?

He looks away from Newton, at their hands against one another. Newton’s: stocky, scarred, callused and rope-burnt. Hermann’s: elongated, blunt fingers, callused only where he’s needed to grip an implement, oil-burnt, large enough to hold Newton’s in his with ample space.

He does not hold Newton’s hand, just leaves his pressed against Newton’s.

“I’d like to paint them, if you don’t mind,” he says. Newton gives him a peculiar look and laughs.

“You always ask me if you can paint me!” Newton exclaims. “When have I ever said no?”

Hermann is glad for the dark and how it hides the heat in his cheeks. Newton’s laughter dies down, and he pulls his hand away, resting it above his own stomach as he looks up. Hermann mirrors him and frowns. Newton has that expression on his face—the one when he is thinking and he is unsatisfied.

Silence floods them and it can only do what silence is wont to do and drown them, if only until Newton breaks against the tide again.

“You never quite look at me, Hermann,” Newton says, and his voice sounds so unbearably tired as he wipes a hand across his brow. “I would like it if you looked at me.”

Hermann frowns.

“But, I do look at you,” Hermann says slowly. “I look at you a lot. You’ve failed to notice it, perhaps.”

A pause. A lull.

“Perhaps you are not looking at me as I look at you, and that is what I mean.” Newton turns on his side, facing Hermann, looking down at Hermann and resting his head on one hand. 

“What do you mean?”

“That is what I mean. This-You don’t look at me, Hermann. You do these things, these questions. What do you mean by them? What do you truly, honestly, mean?” Newton’s hand tentatively reaches over, tracing his fingertips lightly over the back of Hermann’s hand—so lightly Hermann might not know they were there if it weren’t Newton, and if it weren’t here under the silent eyes of the cosmos.

Hermann looks at Newton. Newton’s hair has tumbled free from its tie, a bit tousled from being against wood-grain, and face is bathed in a diffused warm light from the oil lamp they’ve left on inside.

“I am-“ Newton begins again. “What I mean is, Hermann. I am transfixed. Do you understand?”

Hermann swallows quickly, feels the tremors in his face. He slips a hand out from under the other, and reaches out—reaches out until his clumsy, slow, shaking, unsteady, torpid fingers bump into Newton’s. Newton’s mouth parts, soft and languid, and Hermann thinks, even under the sight above them, he’s never seen something as wondrous, as precious, as the expression that overtakes, subsumes, Newton’s face.

Hermann’s fingers trail up Newton’s hand, past joints and rough skin, past his inner wrist, until he caresses across the flower blooming on Newton’s skin in ink.

“Is this-?” Hermann asks, barely over a whisper. Newton nods, smile a wobble. Hermann inhales sharply, wraps his fingers around Newton’s forearm more firmly.

“I, also. Transfixed.”

Newton’s smile unfurls. The dimple, the light glinting off of Newton’s glasses, Newton so warm, so close. Hermann begins to laugh. It is more a hiccough at first, startled, delirious, and then he hides his face in his hands and shakes with the laughter. Newton laughs alongside him, pressing his forehead to Hermann’s shoulder and Hermann can feel his smile against his skin. Newton breathes his joy against Hermann, and Hermann can do little more than hold it together.

—

Though they’ve spoken, they’ve revealed themselves, they are still all tentative touch and embarrassed smiles in the days following. Newton will tuck a strand of Hermann’s too-long hair—he’s let it grow out—behind his ear, and slip extra fruit on his plate. Hermann will adjust the strap of Newton’s garden apron, will take Newton's hands in his and meticulously wash the dirt from them.

But Hermann is nervous, and he suspects Newton is as well. Hermann doesn’t quite know what it means for them. What could it possibly mean? Newton still stands on the dock, looking out past the horizon. Newton, Hermann knows, longs for places Hermann cannot see himself following.

And it is not long before Hermann receives the message: The Otachi has been repaired, and her crew are ready to get underway.

Hermann stares down at the telegraph blankly, writing out the words in his too-proper script, but he is not feeling. Or, he is feeling too much, an ugly wrenching in his chest.

He hands the paper to Newton solemnly and says nothing. Newton’s face twitches. His grip tightens on the telegram and the muscle in his jaw tenses as he looks out the window, blinking rapidly.

“How much time-?” Newton asks hoarsely.

“Tomorrow morning, early,” Hermann replies.

Newton lets out a low moan and tilts. Hermann catches him with a grunt just as he collapses and tucks his face against the crook of Hermann’s neck. His hands curl into the bottom hem of Hermann’s shirt, pushing under his coat and breathing unsteadily.

Hermann pushes his nose against the top of Newton’s head, inhaling deeply and closing his eyes as he wraps his arms around him. He rubs circles into Newton’s back until Newton calms and pulls back, eyes red-rimmed. Hermann cups his neck and rubs at the small patch of skin behind Newton’s ear, smiling minutely when his finger bumps against Newton’s earring.

It is easy to desire this. Easy to desire Newton, Hermann thinks.

“I think we are like colors—the balance of our tones: warm and cold,” Hermann muses, a strange calm washing over him. “Our contrasts… We’re not defined absolutely… We exist, maybe, in relation to one another.”

“Hermann, we are not colors!” Newton exclaims, upset and with a hurt expression on his face. “We are people. People that feel, and emote.”

“No-I. I know that,” Hermann hastens to correct. “What I mean. What I am trying to say is that… I would like it. If we were like that. In relation to one another.”

Newton pauses, expression no longer hurt but still frowning, biting his bottom lip. He ducks his head, fiddles with one of the buttons on Hermann’s coat.

“Even now?” Newton asks.

“Even now,” Hermann agrees. “Always.”

Chapter Text

The night before Newton’s supposed to leave, they do not sleep. They greet the dawn sleepy and soft, and tangled in one another. They move slowly to pack all of Newton’s few things, but they must leave the lighthouse quietly eventually. Newton had made his goodbyes to Jillian and Caleb the night before, and it is far before their waking time. It is still dark out.

Hermann and Newton walk across the berm, to the cliffside and stand there as they wait for the boat. From there they can see that it has not yet even left the far port yet.

Newton squeezes Hermann’s hand, presses up against his side and leans his head against Hermann’s shoulder. After a bit, even this is not enough, and he guides Hermann until he is tucked up against Hermann’s chest, under Hermann’s coat and breathing him in.

He drags a hand up the planes of Hermann’s stomach, over his chest, up the side of his neck until he cups his jaw. Newton holds his gaze for a steady moment, and then he’s pulling Hermann down to him in a flurry of motion. He presses close, hand on the back of Hermann’s head and their lips coming together. Newton is trembling against Hermann, making small sounds, cupping Hermann’s face with such care as he continues to kiss Hermann until they are dizzy and can do little more than breathe—if not to avoid giving in to reality. In this moment, almost nothing is lacking. Yet, that ‘almost nothing’ means almost everything. Almost everything Hermann will not, cannot bear to voice.

Hermann waits until the last moment to pull away, overwhelmed. He presses his forehead against Newton to breathe, to stabilize himself.

“The-the boat. It’ll be here soon,” Hermann murmurs. Newton’s lips thin and he nods. He closes his eyes and exhales shakily before he pulls away completely and they walk to the dock. Hermann stops while still on the berm, and gives Newton a smile before Newton must run down to the dinghy that will ferry him across.

“I’ll see you soon, Hermann,” Newton calls out, cupping his hands around his mouth and waving. Hermann smiles and waves back at him. Really, it is only a few months—a few more rotations of the lamp. Hermann will be there to guide him safely to port.

Hermann fancies that Newton is looking back the whole time he gets further and further away. Hermann does not look away even once, a hand lifted to his trembling lips as he runs his fingers over them. He still feels Newton’s lips against his, wishes there’d been more than once that they braved that.

When Newton disappears entirely, he squeezes his eyes shut and it is not a prayer, exactly, that he sends out, but he hopes it reaches Newton all the same.

Chapter Text

12 September, 1882

 

Dear Newton,

 

You walk through my dreams, Newton, and I see the future. I see, rather, a future: where you have returned, and we are still by the shore. When I cannot climb the stairs to the lighthouse any longer, we take the ferry to the fishing village across the bay, and there is a cabin there where two bachelors may take their rest. May seek comfort in the quiet. Would you like that? Your spirit is so free—so untethered. I wonder if these are not foolish things to dream of. I am asleep, so perhaps you can forgive my fanciful mind. In my dream, it’s always you: the man standing on the dock, against the wind, color moving across his skin.

I have also been unable to rid my mind of that last embrace we shared, your lips upon mine. I dare say I would like to repeat this, when you smell of rain and dirt. You so often smelled of damp soil, and peach tea. I cannot smell one or the other without thinking of you.

Make haste back to me, my love.

I know you catch your breath on the water.  I dare not take you away from her before the proper time, but, Newton, I weaken in your absence. It is so long and you so far away.

I keep seeing specters of you—you at my elbow as I work at the easel; you, face sleep-rumpled in the morning; you, out back, picking oranges with a basket on your hip. Am I mad for it? Am I mad, as well, for feeling as if these are more than ghosts?

 

Yours,

Hermann

—

22 October, 1882

My Hermann,

 

I would like that very much, I should think. The sea is not what it used to be, or perhaps you pampered me too much. You were always so busy, all the time concerned with that damn lamp! I envied it for the attention it wrought, I admit, but you must remember that I had a relaxed life during my stay. I did what I pleased to do—things I would be most pleased to do wherever, were I with you.

My uncle and his crew are as excitable, incredible as ever, but the procedures we must endure to merely sail past a port are becoming more and more tedious. I do not mean this in the physical sense, though I am getting on in age. There is far more paperwork to do than I would have ever imagined. My uncle has me bent over a ledger most days, at this point. It is work you would like, and be very good at.

At least, on those long days, I too find solace in remembering our last embrace. I wished, so fervently, in those quickest of minutes to keep your essence with me. My hands wished to grip you until I knew you so intimately it would be intrinsic. We would be, as you said, colors. Impossible to be absolute. I feel I may have succeeded, at least a little. I yearn for my return, where I may put my hands upon your brow, upon the curve of your handsome face, and know it as well as my own. I see it when I close my eyes, weary at day’s end. You visit me in my bunker and I am not even yet asleep.

You are on the mind, always.

 

Lovingly,

Newton

—

27 November, 1882

Dear Newton,

 

No wonder you spent so much time attempting to distract me from it. I thought you simply a nuisance. Perhaps you may illuminate me further upon your return. I am counting down the days joyously, and trust that the sea will treat you well during what remains of your trip.

I should like to meet your uncle, I think. Perhaps I can be of some use to him next time you dock. I only know what type of man he is by your reference, and he is far from many I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. Would we get along, do you think?

I am sorry to hear that they have you pushing so many papers. I know what you like best is being on deck. It would not be the same, but in this dream I’ve had, you have a small boat of your own. I would go out in this boat, if it were with you. I trust you explicitly. Your dream-self told me that you’ve never been afraid of anything, not truly.

Your words have moved me—are we not in the sea of love now? Or am I hasty? It seems silly to doubt myself even now, after your detailed, lovely, letter. I feel you across the water. Still, I’ve done you a disservice in wondering if you were merely infatuated. I no longer think so—I only just turn the lamp and let my mind wander to the heat of your body against mine. In the dreams, I stop you on the stairway, push you flush against the brick wall, and allow myself to take you in my arms as we laugh and tremble in each other’s languages.

 

Yours,

Hermann

Chapter Text

1883

It's on one of those middling days in January, where the breeze is still teasing with cold but the warmth is what people will remember, that the boat docks at the fishing village across the way, and throws down a dinghy that rows over to the far island with the lonely lighthouse keeper. Everything seems to be taking a second cautious breath.

She's an impressive ship, the Otachi. Steam and billowing sails, painted blue and black, she cuts through the waves smoothly and settles into the dock with a comfort and ease that ships have a hard time imitating. Her crew are but a handful of men, despite the size of her. Though the town is no stranger to sailors, it's still a delight whenever sailors came from foreign. They bring spices, and silks, and delicacies that are rare, and they often come inked in wild patterns and colors, and speak in lively voices of things that children can only dream of.

They bring, also, the man rowing the boat across the bay.

Hermann stands on the dock, leaning on his cane and watching the whole time Newton becomes more than a vague smear of color. He would throw himself from the dock, clothes and all, just to converge with Newton sooner, but he doesn’t. He contents himself, rather, with taking in the image of Newton in his uniform. It’s the first time he’s seen it.

Newton makes quick work of looping the ropes to the dock, knotting them firmly before he looks up at Hermann from the rocking belly of the boat.

“I’d no idea I would have such a handsome party to receive me, or I would have tidied myself up a little bit,” Newton says and grins. Hermann does not know how he will ever stop smiling. His cheeks ache, and his heart seems fit to burst. It’s been so long—Newton’s scratchy voice opens the floodgates to so much.

Newton climbs out of the boat and immediately sweeps Hermann into his arms.

“Newton!” Hermann shouts, dissolving into laughter and pressing his hands against Newton’s firm chest. “Jillian and Caleb are right there.”

“Don't care,” Newton says breathlessly, his hair windswept. “How'm I supposed to act when the man I love is right here?”

His face is so soft as he gazes at Hermann and Hermann wants nothing more than to kiss him, if only to wipe the expression from his face—it's too open and Hermann feels it rock him down to his core.

Newt must see some of what Hermann’s thinking because he murmurs, “I'm here now, my Hermann.”

Hermann trembles as he nods and squeezes Newton’s arm.

“Welcome back,” he says, voice raspy with barely contained emotion.

Newton looks past Hermann’s shoulder and his grin widens. He lets go of Hermann with a look and then trots over to Jillian and Caleb, crushing them both in a hug. Hermann overhears Jillian tell Newton he gets more and more handsome. Newton laughs, head thrown back, as Jillian shakes her head. She pats her shoulder and mother and son excuse themselves to continue on to the market.

Hermann catches up to Newton and stands beside him, regarding his uniform. They are in a comfortable silence as Newton looks around, re-familiarizing himself with the view, and then he turns his gaze on Hermann. He reaches out, entwines their fingers together, and they begin to walk back to the lighthouse.

Over the threshold, Newton leads Hermann into a turn, and then dips him with a mischievous look. He gives Hermann only a fraction of a second before they are kissing again, brief, sweet, warm. Hermann shivers, squawks in flustered embarrassment as he flails a bit.

“Are you mad?” he hisses, righting himself and peeking over Newton’s shoulder. “Anyone could see us!”

Newton laughs, bright and crystalline, so happy, so soft. Hermann’s words die on his lips as his fingers clench in the fabric of Newton’s blue flap collar. Newton’s tanned—far more freckly.

“Who's going to see us? We’re miles away from anyone. We’re in a world alone.” Newton cups Hermann’s face in his hands and rubs his thumbs against Hermann’s jaw. Hermann drags his hands up until his fingers card through the hair at Newton’s nape. He’s trimmed it close and Hermann misses the curls, but this is also nice. Also good. Excellent, where Newton is concerned.

He slips his hands down Newton’s arms and holds both of Newton’s hands in his.

"How many nights I-“ He makes a choked-off noise. “I imagined—recreated these hands in my mind's eye and tried to put them to paper. Your hands, brown dirt on them, and I watching as you scrubbed them in the basin before we went inside.”

His hands travel up further, grazing over Newton's wrist, tracing over his tattoos, that he’s missed so terribly. Dipping in the tender juncture of Newton's inner elbow.

“And the colors. I suddenly found myself unable to picture your strange creatures. I’d forgotten how colorful, loud, vulgar these are. They’re all wrong in my—in my attempts.”

He skims his fingers over Newton's bicep and under the rolled-up cuff of his shirt. He crawls his fingers over the cloth, up to Newton's collar and his neck. Traces a finger over the shell of his ear.

“Even these small, round things with their hoops and such, none of it was right,” Hermann murmurs.

Newton turns his head before Hermann’s finished speaking, and Hermann’s fingers drag across his cheek.

“Do you mean to say it is better that I stay?” Newton asks with infinite patience and Hermann looks down at Newton's hands still between them.

“I would not ask you to,” he demurs.

“Would you like me to, then?” Newton asks, and Hermann’s fingers twitch against his cheek. He says nothing and Newton tilts Hermann’s chin up with a hand. Repeats the question. Hermann melts into the touch, falls into Newton as he wished to so many months ago.

“Must I say it?” Hermann asks. “Surely you know by now what it is i wish.”

“Of you I know many things, and still it is not enough.” Newton leans forward slightly, gaze flickering down to Hermann’s lips.

“What do you want, Newton?” Hermann whispers, thin and reedy. Newton leans in closer, nose grazing alongside Hermann and a smile curling his lips.

“Must I say it?” Newton echoes. Hermann nods minutely.

“Kiss me,” Newton says, hushed.

Hermann quivers in place, fears he may very well tear the flap collar, leans in against Newton until their lips slide against each other, catch each other, and they are simply not close enough. He moans into his mouth, a yearning sound that has been waiting a long time to be released. Newton’s hands are warm on his stomach, through his shirt as he presses forward eagerly.

Hermann gasps wetly when they part, keeping his eyes closed for a moment before he looks at Newton again. Newton smiles at him, undone, and leans in again to kiss Hermann’s cheek.

“Come,” Newton says. “Before you collapse.”

—   

Later, after morning has turned to afternoon and the shore exposes its tender belly to the rays of the sun, Hermann lies on his back, staring up at the beams crossing his ceiling. Newton is next to him, on his stomach, sheets pooled around his waist as he looks down at Hermann. They’ve just stubbed out their cigarette, and in the dim and smoky light it’s hardly discernible whose hands are whose.

Hair disheveled, Newton is the hazy, artless object of Hermann’s every desire—his every affection. Hermann reaches out, caresses Newton’s arm and looks at him through his lashes. Newton’s cheeks pinken as he continues looking at Herman.

“What's on your mind? I can hear you thinking,” Newton says, teasing.

“You want to love the whole world,” Hermann muses, tilting his head. Newton’s smile flags as he frowns.

“No, Hermann,” Newton says, a strange smile on his face. “I just want you—just all narrowed down to you.”

Hermann swallows, blinks and turns his head into the bedding as a hallucinatory rawness clutches at him. Newton’s hand is upon his shoulder, sliding down the bare plane of his back. He leans forward, presses kiss after kiss against Hermann’s shoulder and then leans his forehead against it. His breath is hot, humid against Hermann’s skin. Hermann closes his eyes, caught in the bounding deep seaswell that is Newton. That sublime undercurrent.

"I feel as if we should have a chaperone,” Hermann mutters. Newton laughs against him, pushing himself up to look at Hermann.

“On whose part do you fear untoward behavior?” he asks, raising his brows.

Hermann flushes. “Yours of course. I can’t imagine you being proper even one moment.”

Newton sighs with mock-resignation. “I suppose we’ll just have to hire Jillian to keep us in check.”

Hermann laughs, surprised, and pulls Newton down to the bed again.

An artist's life’s work surrounds a theme. A theme that is a home. They are not a home yet, but they are so close. It is coming soon now. Sooner. Sooner.

Chapter Text

There is a berm on the most Eastern coast of the fishing village, and on this berm there sits a man upon a stool, at an easel. He is wearing a loose, heavy coat, and a straw boater hat low on his brow despite the shade he is already under from the large white umbrella he’s tended over his workstation.  Between two lax fingers, a poised brush that has not yet set mark upon the canvas as if it were a cigarette, waiting to be lit. The turpentine is unlidded, its scent sour and heady on the wind. To his right, his toolbox overflows with oil paints and a palette sits slanted above it all. Further on, the tree-line encroaches with gnarled, tangled brambles. To the left, at the bottom of the slope, a cobble beach curls into a bay. The shore is littered with scraggly rocks and pebbles. It is not the sort of strand to have sand greet the waters. There is only stone, stacks, and raised platforms of sediment that have piled on the layers year after year. When the tide recedes, there are pools in the rock flats.

The man on the berm watches, now, another man on the flats at low tide. The man often crouches, looking down into the tide-pools and plucking things out. He’ll raise them up into the light, turn them this way and that with a smile on his face, and return them. He rarely takes things with him.

Later, the man on the flats will climb up to the man on the berm. He will lean down, and pull the brim of the hat to cover them. Perhaps he is telling the man on the berm a secret.

But that is later.

FIN