Work Text:
It happens when Newt breaks the coffee maker.
Out of all the ways he would've bet on that happening, Hermann didn't see it coming. There were no toxins or acids involved, no experiments or organs, only melted plastic and a little bit of smoke and fire. Or a lot of fire, it was hard to say, with all the smoke.
Newt doesn't notice at first, of course, too busy singing along to Alanis Morissette (on headphones, at Hermann's insistence, although it did little to lower the overall volume). He dances past the tray of... Rib bones? Or some Kaiju equivalent? Regardless, he winds his way through carts and chairs stacked high with wayward piles of paper and containers that may have held either food or acidic remains at one point, making his way back to his desk.
The coffee maker is on top of the filing cabinet behind the desk for some reason, the cord stretched to the nearest outlet, the sturdy glass pot waiting half full, and a thin PVC pipe superglued to the hole neatly cut into the bottom of the pot. There was some complicated Rube Goldberg-esque mechanism surrounding the desk and cabinet that, when properly set off, resulted in coffee gently flowing down the pipe and directly into the mug waiting in the spot outlined by painter's tape on the desk.
Newt had jury-rigged it one night (or was it morning?) waiting for an early shipment of debris from Sydney. Fueled by espresso fumes and a need to do something , he had dug out scraps from some other failed invention, and by the time Hermann had come in at a slightly more reasonable time, he was covered in twine, glue, and coffee stains.
Eventually the system became useful, to the point where Hermann didn't even have to be convinced to use it. He would be on Newt's side of the room to argue about something or another, run out of steam and concentration upon seeing something he could correct, and end up sitting at Newt's desk and organizing papers as Newt continued dissecting this or dissolving that. When the tangle of twine hanging all over the room became unwieldy, Hermann was the one who suggested moving it against the wall, and when Newt suggested a redesign, Hermann not-so-unhelpfully pointed out any flaws in his makeshift blueprints.
Newt considered the whole thing worth it every time he caught Hermann smiling at the marble winding down the corkscrew or the sand slowly filling up the tiny paper cup on the end of the little seesaw. The silly over-engineered invention he thought up in a haze of caffeine and sleep-deprivation was actually a great idea.
Except now it's on fire. Newt waits for the coffee to trickle down and, when nothing happens, he looks up to see the pot off-center on the burner, which had sliced through part of the pipe like, well, a hot coil through plastic. There was coffee all along the top of the file cabinet and also it was smoking and gently on fire.
Quickly glancing over, Newt sees that Hermann hadn't noticed the growing catastrophe yet. He really hopes it stays that way as he dashes across the room to the fire extinguisher in the opposite corner as quietly as possible. If Hermann finds out what's happening Newt would literally never hear the end of it, and he really wants to stay on his good side as long as possible. It had been positively pleasant, not feeling the need to shout each other down every second of every day, and it made the actual arguing a lot more enjoyable and productive. Also Newt had really grown to like the dude, as stupid as his vests are, and he had just started to think maybe Hermann liked him too, and maybe they both liked each other a little more than—
But now is not the time to think about that, Newt decides as he fumbles with the pin of the fire extinguisher. The pot is mostly empty and the stronger-than-usual smell of coffee is quickly evaporating, leaving behind only the acrid burning plastic and related smoke. His plastic gloves are slippery with something he can't spare the brainpower to name right now and it takes him a second or two to realize he's making it impossible to open by holding the whole thing up by the handle and okay, yeah, that's on him, and then the extinguisher is being pulled out of his hands and hey, Hermann's there!
Hermann, apparently having already unplugging the coffee maker, proceeds to then smother the entire set up in the fire extinguisher's CO2 foam. It reminds Newt of elementary school when they would cover their desks in shaving cream on the last day of school and get to draw on them until the bell rang. He is in the middle of realizing that it was all just a ploy to get them to clean when Hermann waves his hand close enough to Newt's face that he can feel the displacement of air.
Hermann gestures to his own ears and Newt pulls out the earbuds he had forgotten were still playing. The second he thinks Newt can hear him, Hermann says, "You could have burned down the entire lab, what were you thinking?"
He isn't quite yelling and Newt is thrown by that simple fact. He had been expecting an outburst that would register on the Richter scale, not the intense but perfectly moderate tone of voice he was hearing now. It was kind of scary.
"Yet another one of your idiotic contraptions threatening our life's work," Hermann continued, "all because you were too lazy to get your damn coffee."
"Hey!" Newt jumps in, finally finding his footing. "Don't call my invention stupid! You were all for it this morning when you didn't have to walk all the way down to the caf to get your stupid cup of coffee."
Hermann raises an eyebrow at his hypocritical adjective of choice but says nothing as he turns to get the broom propped up by the sink.
Newt runs ahead of him and grabs it, holding it close to him like Hermann is going to try to steal it away, and continues, "Don't think I didn't see how excited you were rebuilding the crane last week, you totally loved my 'idiotic contraption'."
"Yes, until it was on fire ."
Secretly agreeing but unwilling to concede, Newt starts pushing the foam to the drain in the floor. Hermann goes back to the remnants of the machine and starts to pry off the melted plastic, looking very thoughtful.
"The base is ruined," Hermann says eventually. "There's too much plastic fused to the inside of the coil to salvage it, but the rest seems okay."
When he turns around, Newt recognizes the faux casual look on his face and smiles. "I think I can get a replacement. One of the techs owes me a favor."
Hermann nods, humming. "We could probably re-case the entire thing, make it harder for anything flammable to get close." He glares a little at Newt as he says it, but Newt only smiles wider.
"I was thinking about moving it over by the sink, I found some plastic tubing the other day we could hang from the ceiling, it shouldn't be that hard to..."
The floor still covered in foam and the scraps of their over-complicated apparatus, Newt starts sketching on the back of a long-forgotten report and Hermann smiles.