I've been chipping away at TSDAFE again in my spare moments, have an itty bitty spoiler as a treat :)
Tendo and Hermann had been in each other’s orbit for, at this point, the better part of a decade. They’d both been in the Jaeger program from the jump, and whenever the digital realm crossed with the physical, they’d bump into each other. Hermann, to Tendo, always seemed more like a log of petrified wood than a person. Absolutely assured of his own correctness, unflinching in his expertise. Blunt. Talking to him left you feeling like you’d been kicking rocks. For a long time Tendo sort of figured that Hermann had hacked his brain and programmed all positive emotion to ‘no.’
Now, the extended stint in Hong Kong had reshaped his opinions a little (petrified wood might have been too strong a phrase). But the past few hours were getting hard to wrap his head around. He didn’t know Hermann was ever like this. He didn’t think Hermann could get like this. He was too… Hermann. Was this something Newt saw more of? For all the spitfire between them, they were joined at the hip.
“I am sorry, Mister Choi,” Hermann said. “Going forward, I can be better. I… I’m going to be better. I’m going to get things done.”
No, Tendo thought. Hermann was the kind of guy who’d die before allowing himself a single sober, vulnerable moment with another human being. “You don’t need to apologize to me, man. All you have to do is what you can. You know?”
Hermann made a sound deep in his throat that wasn’t quite disgust. “Right.”
They hesitated outside the doorway to the lab. “You good?” Tendo asked.
Hermann nodded.
Tendo eyed him. The words coming to him now weren’t wise, but he also had some serious booze under his belt, and he didn’t think too much before he said, “So. Newt’s, uh. Dashing and daring now, is he?”
Red crawled up Herman’s face in a furious flush. He regarded Tendo with a haughtiness cold enough to flash-freeze molten steel. “Yes,” he said. “Insomuch as dashing refers to moving at speed, and daring means doing something foolish and dangerous based on very little evidence. Goodnight, Mister Choi.” Without waiting for a reply, Hermann stalked into the lab, leaving Tendo alone in the hall.
“Goodnight to you too,” he murmured. He counted rosary beads against his palm.