driftsintobuffetline

Entry tags:

ic contact

Hey! You've reached the inbox of Newt Geiszler! Leave a message and call-back number after the beep!

Text

Audio

Video

[Burning embarrassment is his first reaction, and honestly doesn't leave him throughout the return letter. It even spikes somewhere around where Newton compares him to the night sky like something out of Shakespeare. God he can't handle this.]

Newton,

I suppose the red marker struck through it doesn't diminish your need to frame it. It was very clumsily written, honestly. I had hoped to write you something more deserving of the word poetry, despite having little talent for it but as usual, you've jumped ahead of my plans.

And your outpouring of emotions is, as always, daunting and something I may never measure up to. I'm never certain how to respond, but I hope that occasionally I can manage to impress just how much of an impact they really have. As you know, I spent most of my life isolating myself from others, whereas you've thrown yourself at them. Perhaps that's one of the only ways anyone was ever going to become as close to me as you are. I'm incredibly fortunate in that respect.

And yes, I do tend to trail in your disastrous wake in a continuous organizational effort. I may never reach consistent prevention, but I do enjoy that I'm able to look after you to an extent. Physical strength is foreign to me, but I always feel my strongest in every sense around you. But then we've always been intellectual whetting stones for one another so perhaps that's nothing new.

I do hope that whatever you've seen in me remains that way. I often think you may tire of me long before I ever tire of you and it's rather a discouraging thought. But then I recall we've spent eight or nine years circling one another and it doesn't seem likely on either end. I'm not sure I possess as much depth as you profess to see, but it remains reassuring.

I am not a patient man, though certainly critical. I've slowly learned to become less so, and though I know our working relationship has ever been based on thinly veiled insults, rarely do I mean to greatly offend. I can't make any promises to always be sensitive, but I trust you'll call me on it if there's a need.

I confess I honestly cannot see myself with anyone else now or in any future. No matter what happens in our world, you'll always remain one of my most important relationships, like a link has been added to the Gottlieb family that I wasn't truly aware of until the Drift.

It'll be interesting to see how they react when you meet them. I anticipate a fair bit of family drama over the matter, but nothing terrible should happen. And here I am with plans for you to meet my family already. Honestly, I probably should have seen at least some of this coming. But it was impossible to anticipate the drift, and we were all a bit too focused on the end of the world, I suppose, that's it's a wonder anyone did.

That being said, I will gladly accept all of your 'garbage love letters' for the foreseeable and unforeseeable future.

-Hermann

Hermann,

Are you kidding? Red has always been the color of love: red-penned reports of mine (markup courtesy of a Dr. H. Gottlieb), complaints filed with a red URGENT stamp, the color of your face when I do something irrational and irresponsible and incontestably cool... Red just means you love me, Hermann. I know how this works. You make all your love-notes in red. Red pen doesn't deter me in the slightest. (Speaking of red, I dug this letterhead out just for you)

Sorry about your plans, though.

Well, almost sorry.

Glad I saved that letter from the garbage.

Let me keep my outpouring of emotion to something of a less daunting or overwhelming level, then, but thank you for letting me throw myself at you continually until we made a connection. You're wrong if you think my throwing myself at people has made me any less isolated; it's different, but it's still an isolation. You're by far the Best Friend I have ever had, Hermann. I love you well beyond the romantic parameters of 'boyfriend'--don't forget it. We are, first and foremost, FRIENDS. Don't think that this is entirely new or that it's a whim. These are feelings I've had (albeit dormant sometimes) for a very long time. They will not be disappearing and I will not be growing bored so easily.

Hermann, you can insult me and critique me whenever you'd like. Remember that I gave as good as I got, too, and am no more patient than you. I haven't walked away yet--not SINCE that first time, and I assure you it won't happen again. I was serious about the counseling and working it out. Stop counting on us having a termination date: NO ONE IS GETTING BORED OF ANYONE (even if you make it sound like you're planning to tire of me at some point). There's no one else I want to spend my life with, so even if I am demoted back to lab-partner, you're stuck with me.

It's been a while since I was looked after--or that was what I was going to say, but you've been doing it for so long that I don't know what it's like to NOT have someone have my back--and I'm grateful. And I want you to know that I want to look after you, too, even if I'm a disaster. When you'll let me, I want to look after you. You are stronger and more supportive than you will ever know. I only hope I can return the support in-kind.

You're already lining us up for a date with your family, huh? Taking me home to meet the folks? You want me to rent a hot car or a motorcycle-with-sidecar, show up in true rock-star fashion with my best ripped jeans and leather jacket--REALLY give them an impression? Their Genius tours the world and comes back with a scoundrel on his arm. A rogue with a bundle of degrees. What ever will the neighbors think? Scandal.

If it helps, Hermann, I sort of wanted you to meet dad and Ilia even before we were--well, we were always A Thing, but you know what I mean.

I don't anticipate a fairy tale Happily Ever After for us, but we've made it work this long before romantic love or a Drift or sex, we can definitely make this work now that we have those things as well. We both know I'm not one for making plans and I know our lives here or at home may never be ideal, but sharing a life with you has been the best, and I hope to do so many more years to come: you with your sports car, me with my dragon, us with a little house outside one of the imPort cities, Liebling, maybe another cat or two. You've ruined a perfectly good rock-star scientist; you domesticated him, you bastard, and he loves you for it.

Enjoy the garbage love letters, then. Remember, you've now brought it upon yourself.

For the foreseeable and unforeseeable forevermore,

- Newton

Newton,

I have no intention of tiring of you. I've been in love with the stars nearly my entire life, and considering it's been twelve years now since we first started talking with no plans to stop, I'm rather certain of my attention span. Where I may have had a hand in domesticating you. you've successfully ingratiated yourself into my life to the point where I can't envision a scenario without you somewhere in it.

Chattering obnoxiously, of course.

I'm sure my family will be entirely bewildered upon your meeting, and I'm actually interested in hearing your first conversation with my father. I hope to find that more entertaining than stressful, but we'll see eventually, I suppose. The rest should accept you without too much trouble- although my siblings of course, do love to tease. You likely won't remember this advice in that scenario, but please don't take any of them seriously.

I hope your father and uncle are a bit less overbearing. You've never given the sense that they are, but then I don't know how they generally react to your partners- or if they've ever met any of them. I don't know if the fact that I will likely still plan to make an honest man of you will improve or worsen that meeting.

A nebulous future to be more concerned with after a proper celebratory date. Assuming you don't wind up terribly drunk beforehand.

- Hermann

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

ic contact

written on normal paper like a normal person the next day

because he thinks he's cute: written on a notepad stolen in Aug from a certain hotel in De Chima

no subject