#brianmayplease

“Hiya, honey,” Newton says, dropping down from Hermann’s windowsill with a smile. Hermann looks up from the textbook he’s poring over--his Calculus final is in a few days, and then he’ll, blessedly, be finished with university for the summer--and smiles back, unfazed by his boyfriend’s sudden appearance. He’s grown used to Newton dropping in whenever he pleases these days. (The first time it happened, late one evening while Hermann’s vision was half-blurred with exhaustion, Hermann threw a shoe and nearly shrieked before the blurry dark shape started swearing violently and shouting about Hermann cracking his glasses. Newton made sure to be less suspicious after that.) 

“Hello,” Hermann says, setting down his pen and inching his chair away from his desk so Newton can straddle his lap and kiss him hello. His chair creaks slightly, but holds their weight, and Newton reaches down and rubs at Hermann’s long, soft pink skirt, the kind that’s all the rage these days. Hermann doesn’t usually bother with the modern fashions--he’s perfectly fine with his elder brother’s hand-me-downs and whatever dresses and skirts his sister tires of--but he’s been saving up money from his campus job at the library and thought he’d buy himself something nice. Something nice, and something that he knew Newton would be sweet for.

(He won’t tell Newton this, but he wore it today with the express hope that he’d see Newton and be able to show it off.)

“This is real cute on you,” Newton says. “New?”

“Mmhmm,” Hermann says, running his fingers through the greased-down hair at the back of Newton’s head. “I bought it last week.” 

“I love it,” Newton says, slipping his hand down further to rub at one of Hermann’s exposed calves. “I’m gonna buy you fifty more.”

Hermann means to make a remark about how that really isn’t necessary, but Newton’s shifted his attention back into kissing Hermann and it doesn’t seem all too-crucial. Newton smells like motor oil, which means he’s been working in the garage all afternoon, and Hermann suddenly, belatedly, worries that Newton is dirtying up his clothing. (Not only is the skirt new, he’s just washed this button-up.) Thankfully, Newton slips back to the floor before Hermann has to say anything. “Can you still go out dancing Saturday?” he says, adjusting his leather jacket and then pushing his hair back into place. He lets one strand curl down on his forehead. “I just fixed up the back wheel on my bike so I can pick you up on it, really piss off your old man.”

“I’d love to,” Hermann sighs, because it’s what they do every Saturday: Newton makes some grand scene in Hermann’s front yard with his bike and his jacket and his loud mouth, and Hermann’s father will storm outside and shout at him until Newton peals away with Hermann wrapped round his back, both of them giggling like mad, “but--”

“And you can wear that pretty skirt,” Newton says, eyes flicking low to the bottom hem.

“I can’t go,” Hermann says. 

Newton’s eyes snap up. He frowns. “What? Why?”

“Mother’s having a garden party,” Hermann says. “She and father want me there.”

Newton’s frown deepens to a pout. “Aw, man.”

The Gottliebs rarely have garden parties, and even more rarely require Hermann to be there during them, but Father’s dead-set on impressing some new business partners and even more dead-set on finding Hermann a proper, wealthy, and upstanding new suitor from their pool of proper, wealthy, and upstanding sons. That is to say: a suitor who is not Newton. “I’m sorry,” Hermann says. “You know how much I loathe going to these.”

“Yeah,” Newton says, glumly. Then he brightens up. “Hey, what if I crash it?”

“Well,” Hermann says. “I suppose you could--”

“I’ll dress nice,” Newton says. “I promise. I’ll borrow my dad’s suit or something!”

“Er,” Hermann says. He’d love to have Newton there--he’d love it more than anything--but he knows he’d be getting himself in trouble, he knows he’d be getting Newton in trouble, he knows he’ll be distracted in moments flat when Newton lures him away to neck in the hydrangea bushes like he did when he came for dinner last spring and he’ll really get an earful later, but... “Fine,” he finally says, “but you really must be on your best behavior, Newton.”

“Sure,” Newton says. “Of course.”

“I mean it,” Hermann says. “And you really must dress nicely.” He’s seen Newton in exactly two things that aren’t his usual scruffy-dirty-ripped jeans and leather jacket--a scandalously short green dress that Newton sometimes wears dancing and the aforementioned borrowed suit--so he doesn’t have much confidence in the latter. Perhaps Newton will wear the green dress. It’ll get him less looks than his jacket.

Newton smiles beatifically. 

Hermann holds out a full thirty minutes before disappearing into the hydrangea bushes with Newton this time. He’s frankly impressed with himself he lasted this long. Newton did not dress up nicely, whatsoever, even if his selected jeans are moderately less torn than usual, but his plain white shirt stretches so tight across his chest that Hermann was dry-mouthed even before Newton started playing footsie with him under the patio table (much to the confusion of the flirtatious proper, wealthy, and upstanding young gentleman sitting at Hermann’s elbow, who couldn’t understand why his flattery and praise of Hermann’s work in astronomy was getting him absolutely nowhere). “You’re a scoundrel,” he sighs in Newton’s ear, and Newton laughs against his neck.

“I can’t help it,” he says. “You look so cute, Hermann. Yellow looks nice on you.”

Hermann’s borrowed a dress from his sister again, a yellow flowered sundress with a skirt that swishes and flairs out and a small white collar, and Newton’s managed to stain it with his grease-dark fingertips already. (He loathes having to face her wrath tomorrow, as it’s one of the things she hasn’t tired of yet, but Hermann expects he’ll be able to talk his way out of it somehow.) “Don’t you ever wash your hands?” Hermann scolds, swatting Newton’s hand away as it starts to creep up his thigh. When Newton’s not covered in car grease and oil, he’s covered in strange chemicals from his garage laboratory or the remnants of whatever his last meal was. Today it seems to be a mixture of all three, most noticeably the horrendous green gelatin concoction a neighbor brought that only Newton had been brave enough to try.

Newton pulls his hand away and blinks at it. “Whoops,” he says. “Sorry.” He wipes it off on his jeans, then dives right back in to sucking on Hermann’s neck.

“Below the collar,” Hermann wheezes, gripping at Newton’s back with his free hand. “Below--” Newton undoes his top few buttons--shaped like small daisies--and yanks the fabric aside to nip at his collarbone instead. He’ll die of embarrassment if his parents see him with lovebites from Newton, even if the thought of parading them about thrills him endlessly.

“Oh!” Newton suddenly says, snapping up, and Hermann swallows down a disappointed groan. “I got you these.” He pulls a handful of wilted, slightly squished-looking daisies from his right pocket and presents them with a flourish. “Snagged ‘em from someone’s garden on the way here. They match you!”