sciencesaggressively | not cool, brain, not cool

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kate

not cool, brain, not cool

He'd drifted off easily enough, a smile on his face because his arm had been draped over Kate's waist, their fingers entwined and his forehead resting against her shoulder. He doesn't know how deep into sleep he is when it starts, the images tinted in blue--images and memories and emotions. He can see the Precursors, sees their wide eyes as Gipsy Danger destroys them all and closes the breach, a victory for the PPDC but nothing but pain and tragedy for the aliens; he can feel it when Striker Eureka kills Scunner; when Gipsy blasts Leatherback into oblivion. It's all pain, experience his mind believes he's connected to because of the drifts, and the part of his mind that is still just Newt is desperate to get the hell out of this, for an escape, for the pain to ease and--

He wakes up, chest heaving, and he paws at the nightstand beside him until he manages to find his glasses. He blinks a few times, trying to adjust back to reality, and realizes his hands are gripping the bedsheets so tightly that they're trembling. Or maybe it's his whole body that's trembling, that's quickly becoming a larger possibility. His one relief right now is that Kate only shifts a little in her sleep, and he holds his breath until she stops moving and her breathing steadies again; it's the last thing he wants to do, wake her up because of this shit, but then he feels something wet dripping down his nose and he curses to himself as he reaches up to wipe what he knows is blood away.

"Goddammit," he mutters to himself, trying his hardest to slide out of bed without disturbing her. He makes it to the bathroom quietly enough even without his cane to help and winces when he turns on the light, his eyes adjusting to the brightness. When he catches sight of his bloody mess of a face, he grimaces, shaking his head. He grabs at some toilet paper and perches on the edge of the bathtub, stuffing his nose with a distressed sigh. He has no clue what the hell had spurred the nightmare, he hasn't had one since the first time nearly a month ago. He'd honestly thought this wasn't going to be an issue but even if it is, he needs to be able to figure out if this is going to be a random occurrence or if he'll be able to map this out. Nobody needs to know about this, right? It's nothing.

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"I guess so, it's weird," he says, trying to work it out in his head. "Drifting is supposed to allow the pilots to control their jaegers, a right-brain, left-brain kind of deal. But I wasn't trying to control anything, I was just trying to, y'know, understand the kaiju better. Caused a neural overload, at least when I did it alone, and boom." He slaps a hand down on the porcelain of the tub and grips the edge until his knuckles go white. "Seizure. But I retained what I saw, remembered what they told me, for lack of a better term. But we blew them to pieces, there's no hive mind for me to be connected to anymore, just... just a bunch of stuff in my head that I didn't even realize I still had."

He wonders what would happen if he did it again, knows it's not even possible considering there's no such thing as the Drift or kaiju in Darrowb, but he wonders and not for the first time. "I don't regret it or anything, I totally found out how to save the world by doing that. I just don't want this to become like, a thing."

The sound of his palm slapping against the tub wakes her up a little more and she glances down when he says the word seizure. It makes her think back to the car accident, hearing him say that in the ambulance, wondering what the hell had happened, what would have caused the seizure and now she has her answer, though it doesn't really do much to ease any fears she had about it.

If anything, hearing him say it was caused by the thing that's now causing nightmares and nosebleeds makes her worry more. She definitely doesn't want it to become a thing either and she chews her lower lip, squeezing his leg again, probably harder than necessary, because she's suddenly a little more freaked out.

"How's your nose?" she asks instead of any of the other million questions that seem to be flying around inside her head. She can ask him later or maybe things will make more sense when she's awake in the morning.

"I-It's-" and he cuts off right there because it's the start of a stutter, and he only stutters like this when he's exceptionally nervous or afraid. It's not the way he wants to be speaking with Kate next to him, though he knows she won't spare a second of judgment for it. It's not so much that he's embarrassed about it, it's just that he's got no real reason to be afraid, not in Darrow. Not even if he'd been back in Hong Kong, with the Breach closed the kaiju gone. He tries again. "It's fine," he says, though the occasional drop of blood still falls from his nose. He grabs for more toilet paper from the roll and stuffs his nose again, offering a sheepish smile. "It could have been worse."

He's not sure if that's more or less of a comfort but it's what he keeps telling himself. He feels kind of like a train wreck and suspects that he looks like hell but it could have been worse. She looks like she wants to ask him something--probably quite a few somethings--but she holds back, and he feels kind of bad about it. It's too late, maybe even too early, for this shit, and while there's a major part him that just wants to go back to bed, he knows anxiety over this happening twice in one night will keep him awake.

"God, you've got blood everywhere," she says with a little laugh, though it's not all that funny, because she's hardly squeamish, but she doesn't love the sight of his blood. She's seen way too much of it lately, tonight on his face, that other night on the sidewalk. She's had his blood on her hands, and she has to push that aside as she gets up from the edge of the tub and begins to look for some kind of cloth she can run under the water for him.

"When they had you in the hospital, did they do a CT scan or an MRI or whatever the hell they do for head injuries?" she asks as she hunts, finally finding a small towel in a drawer. She goes to the sink and runs it under cool water for a moment before offering it to Newt as she waits for him to answer. Maybe that's something they do when a person has a concussion, maybe they've already looked at his brain, determined everything is fine and there's nothing to worry about, but if they didn't, she's going to ask him to go to a doctor. It's weird to have decided already, especially while still partly asleep, but she has. He can pick the doctor, she doesn't care, but she wants to be sure he's not just going to keep having seizures, she wants to know that he'll be okay.

"I'm a hot mess," he agrees, feeling guilty that she'd woken up to this. He'd been perfectly ready to handle this on his own but now that she's involved, he selfishly doesn't want her to leave him alone.

He nods asbsently, trying his best to must up a grateful smile as he takes the towel and holds it to his nose. "Yeah, they only did it because they knew about the seizure. But it just confirmed a concussion." He wishes he'd been able to see the scan himself, especially since Owen had been so vehemently pissy about the incompetency of the local doctors. "Even if they had found something, I'm not sure anyone would know what to do about it. Drifting's not exactly a common thing here."

That fact is a little worrisome, that if something really was wrong with him, a solution might be lost here. Not that he couldn't totally come up with something on his own, given the time and resources, but as far as things go right now, he's at the mercy of what's available to him. Still, he reaches out for her hand and squeezes reassuringly. "Don't worry, everything's fine. I can deal with a few nosebleeds." He's less confident that he'll be able to deal with getting hit with more memories, but he keeps that to himself.

"It's not the nosebleeds that freak me out," she says, leaning against the sink, watching him with the towel. "But at least they checked." The idea that they might miss something or might not be able to do anything even if they did find something makes her uncomfortable. It's not like she has a ton of faith in doctors to begin with, they've pretty much failed her family in a hundred different ways, but she wants to believe they can still help.

She lifts a hand, pulling her hair over her shoulder so she can untangle in with her fingers, looking down at the ends instead of at Newt for a second. She doesn't want him to see that she's worried and if he thinks he can deal with this, she doesn't want to spend all their time together freaked out that it might get worse or that he might have another nightmare. So she takes the moment, pushes the worries aside as best she can, then looks up again and smiles. "Alright, dude, no worrying," she says. It's a stupid thing to promise, she can't follow through on it, but she can do her best to make sure he doesn't notice.

"I know," he answers quietly, and he forces himself to look up at her because if she's come this far with him, all the way through the stupid car accident, then he figures she deserves to hear what he's really feeling, as much as he doesn't want to feel this way. "Maybe a little worrying. I mean, not a lot, just the least amount of worrying because what if next time this happens while I'm walking down the street or--or at whatever job I eventually get or whatever? What if next time it's a lot worse and it's just you and me, and you've gotta, y'know, deal with that, it's not okay. It's not okay." He's unloading on her, and he feels terrible about it because this isn't him; he's a rock star, he's a hero, he can handle a bad dream. But it's not just a dream, is it? No, it's memories buried deep in his mind, and he has no control over when they're going to surface.

His chest is starting to feel tight and wow, okay, that's a major wave of dizziness there. He tries to take deep breaths but it's turning out to be a lot more difficult than he's used to, and he feels like his body's going numb, and the lights seem way brighter than they were, and he just needs to get up, he needs to move. If he moves, he'll have something to do, so he pushes himself up off the tub and sure, he's a little wobbly and kind of regretting leaving the cane in the bedroom now but he can't be all too concerned about that right now.

He's freaking out, she can see it as soon as he starts to talk and Kate's never been great at dealing with her mom when she has panic attacks -- most of the time, she's come to realize, she was kind of the cause of them -- but she knows what she's supposed to do. And while she doesn't have a handful of anxiety medication she can give him, there are other things she can do, she knows that. As he talks, she has to admit, the things he's bringing up are actually kind of terrifying, but if there's one thing Kate is usually pretty good at in the face of her mother's panic, it's keeping her head. All this shit, she can worry about that later on her own time instead of worrying now and making things worse for Newt.

"Hey," she says, stepping up to him, her hands finding his. She's not sure where he wants to go, but it's probably better for him to sit back down until he's freaking out a little bit less. "Come on, come back to the bedroom." Her father used to try and distract her mom, get her talking about something else or pull her out into the back yard and make her run in circles. She's not about to do that with Newt, but she figures she can find something to distract him as long as she can get him to sit back down. "How's your leg feeling?" Maybe she can irritate him into panicking less.

He follows her, trying to focus on her hands in his and the sound of her voice until he's sinking back down on the bed. "I'm sorry," he says, and he makes a frustrated sound when his voice cracks a little. "I'm sorry, this is so stupid. It's just, it's a lot, y'know, to feel what they were feeling all at once, there were so many of them and none of it was good, there's just so much emotion there, they were emotional creatures, they felt. There was fear and rage and pain and not much in the way of anything happy, how could there be, right, not with a mission like they had."

He balls his hands into fists, trying to force himself to stop trembling, and grits his teeth. Enough, he keeps telling himself, she doesn't need this. And neither does he, for that matter, he hadn't let the first drift slow him down, he can't very well let a ghost-drift knock him on his ass. Maybe the thing that freaks him out the most is how there's just a little bit of empathy for them, for the kaiju he always so vehemently denied loving. He wouldn't have called it that, not like Hermann always did. He'd built a visual shrine on his body to the kaiju, had made them the highest priority in his life, they'd changed him, he'd seen them as amazing biological beings; but to understand them and then have that connection destroyed... It makes him feel a little like he's missing something now. The question about his leg comes at a good time because he'd much rather focus on the minor strain he's put on it tonight than the confusing string of thoughts running through his head. "My leg's fine. Everything's fine." He closes his eyes, repeating it like a mantra. "Everything's fine."

"Hey, seriously, don't apologize," she says, standing in front of him, her hands pushing through his hair again before they both slide down the back of his neck. "Trust me, when it comes to freaking out, this isn't even in the top ten I've seen." It's a shitty attempt at a joke, but it's true, too. Newt isn't turning into other people and the stuff he's got on his mind is pretty huge, they're all pretty valid reasons to panic. She presses a kiss to his hairline, then looks down at him, her arms around his shoulders. When he says it -- everything's fine -- she doesn't buy it, but only because she's sure he doesn't really feel it. But that doesn't need to matter. If he says it enough, it can be the truth, she's learned that from watching her mother, too.

"You wanna play a board game?" she asks, her mouth hitching into a faint smile as she drops her arms from around his shoulders and reaches down to take his hands instead. He has them balled up and she wants him to relax, so she threads her fingers through his, holding them loosely and wrapping both his arms around her waist. "Or maybe I Spy? Twenty Questions? Sexy Chicken? I hear you're good at that one." As far as she remembers they were both good at that one, but she just wants to distract him now, take his mind off the nightmare, off the bloody nose, off everything that's worrying him. She'll play I Spy all night if it helps.

He almost apologizes for apologizing but he hates it when people do that and suspects Kate probably feels the same way. He reminds himself of how good he's been having it here, in spite of a couple of these minor setbacks, reminds himself that this isn't a thing he needs to cry over--not that he's crying, there are no tears, just some dust in his eyes--or dwell on for too long because if he starts living every day in fear that this is going to happen under less than desirable circumstances, he can't be the same person he is--the person he likes being. He wishes he could explain to Kate how grateful he is that she's here, but the words he needs just aren't coming to him. How do you even begin to thank someone for doing what Kate's done for him?

He lets out a shaky laugh at the comment about games--she's good-- and takes comfort in having his arms around her, letting her anchor him. He rests his cheek against her shoulder and smiles. "Sexy Chicken sounds good," he says, though he shakes his head because one more round of that and he might actually go batshit insane. He lets out a few deep breath, relieved that the tightness in his chest is fading, and looks up at her sheepishly. "I spy with my little eye someone who makes my life a million times better."

Probably better for him to go with something other than Sexy Chicken, since she's pretty sure it's somehow both the best and the worst game ever. It might be distracting, which is what he needs, but she's certain if they do that again she's just going to lose it completely and then she'll definitely lose the game. Or win. She's not even sure how someone wins or loses at Sexy Chicken. Either way, it's not going to end the same way it has in the past.

She smiles, lips pursed as she pretends to give his clue some consideration, then tips her head to the side. "God, I hope the answer is me, because if there's someone else in this room I'm gonna be seriously fucking creeped out, dude," she tells him. "I mean, I was just sleeping not too long ago." He seems to be calming down, though, which is what she wanted and she shifts where she's standing slightly, squeezing his hands. "Can I ask for another clue? Is that allowed in I Spy? Remember when I said I didn't know how to play, I wasn't fucking around. I can't remember anything besides that first sentence."

He feels the slightest twinge of regret at passing up another round of Sexy Chicken because every time they play it, things have tended to escalate. Which is all that can be expected in such a game but still, he knows he must be feeling pretty lousy if he's playing I Spy instead. It's ultimately better, he decides, because they'd talked about wanting their first time together to be special and falling into bed after suffering a sort of mental trauma isn't exactly the romantic story either of them are looking for.

"You'll have to guess and see, you really are rusty at this game." He's feeling a lot calmer now, even though the fact that she's playing along is strictly for his benefit. He's not even sure what time it is, but he's certain she'd much rather be sleeping right now. He's exhausted from the nightmare, the consequences that had come with it, but he doesn't know if he'd be able to get back to sleep if he tried. So he's prepared to keep the game going for as long as she can stand it, until she falls back asleep and he can ensure that neither of them suffer anymore nightmare tonight. "I'll allow it. This person has one of those smiles that light up the room. A deep-rooted love for wontons. Oh, and impeccable sword skills."

"Sword skills give it away, it's totally me," she says and she gives his hands another squeeze before she moves back to sit down on the bed beside him. She's more awake now than she was in the bathroom, but as soon as she sits down, she can feel herself just wanting to curl up under the blankets again and go back to sleep. Even as tired as she is, though, she's smiling down at her knees, because he's just had a nightmare and a nosebleed and probably at least a little bit of a panic attack, but he still manages to say the sweetest things.

"A million times better, huh?" she asks, looking over at him. "That's a lot of times better given that I don't actually do a hell of a lot." She hangs around, pesters him into not doing anything too dangerous while she's there, but in truth, she's pretty sure she's getting the better end of the deal here.

The pillows look really inviting and she pushes back on the bed, holding out her hand toward him. "C'mon, lie down and I'll keep playing."

"And it only took you like, two questions. I think you hustled me, it's a good thing I didn't place bets." He lets out a little laugh that turns into a yawn and yeah, maybe he doesn't want to go back to sleep, but his body is being a dick and betraying him right now. He nods, rubbing at his face with both hands, trying to wipe the exhaustion away. "It is a lot, but you're so wrong on that not doing much part. This with the not karate chopping me in the throat for waking you up at the ass crack of dawn, that's worth like, half a million right there."

He takes her hand, following her direction gladly. "Think it's your turn to spy." Assuming she doesn't fall asleep first, which would be fair anyway.

"Dammit, I knew I was supposed to get you to do something before I hustled you," she says with a laugh, sliding back under the blankets. Curling up on her side, she props her head up with one hand, looking at Newt with a bit of a smile. At least he's calm now and he looks kind of tired, too, which gives her hope he might fall back asleep. "And what the hell, I don't care that you woke me up. Besides, I don't know any karate yet. Korra hasn't taught me."

Besides, she doesn't have anywhere to be in the morning, she can pretty much sleep as long as she wants, which she fully intends on doing, unless he plans on kicking her out, which she doubts.

"My turn," she says, pretending to look around the room. "I spy... someone who maybe woke me up stupidly early, but who didn't bail when I really needed him to stick around."

"Better luck next time," he says, shifting to get comfortable on his back with his head turned toward her. "You should have Korra teach me, then I could like, totally dropkick cars and dream kaiju. Seems legit, right?"

He squints, pretending to be at a loss, but he's admittedly a little puzzled because who the hell would bail on someone who'd gone through what she had? He thinks it would take a real asshole to do something like that, to abandon someone during a time like that. Maybe he gets nosebleeds during these nightmares, but that doesn't make hers any less traumatic. It's not fear of being devoured by a kaiju that has him waking up in the middle of the night, but Kate... To think that she might open her eyes and still think she's in danger of actually being in that casket, it causes his chest to ache. Still, he gives her a small smile, letting his head sink further into the pillow as he tries to stifle another yawn. "Hmm. I'm not as good at this as you are, I guess, I might need some assistance here."

Still leaning on her hand, she reaches over with the other, her palm against his chest. Rubbing back and forth slowly, almost absently, she hums softly, considering her next clue. "I thought you were supposed to guess first," she teases, relaxing against her pillow, her arm still draped over him. It's still kind of surprising to her sometimes, just how comfortable she is next to him, and she stretches in the bed, her knee brushing his leg, though she's careful not to nudge against him too hard.

"Okay, then I spy someone with some ridiculously hot tattoos and eyes that kind of make me want to agree to anything who willingly sat through the Darrow equivalent of meeting the parents even when said pseudo-parental figure was maybe a little off putting at first," she says, then laughs softly even as she tries to stifle a yawn of her own. "Jesus, that's one hell of a clue."

He lets his eyes drift shut as he sighs contentedly, a small smile on his lips. The feel of her hand on his chest is so pleasant, and he doesn't know how he's gone so long these past years without craving this, wanting a touch like this. A chuckle sounds deep in his throat and he puts his hand over hers, brushing his fingers against her skin. "Guess I'm worse at this than you pretended to be." He feels her knee come to a rest gently against him, and he's amused by how careful she still is around him in so many ways, even though she tries to hide it for his sake. He knows it's mostly because he'd probably make a fuss otherwise but the fact that she knows this and accepts it and does her best to respect it all while still finding ways to take care of him just reinforces that he's got the best girlfriend ever.

He blinks an eye open, his dimples deepening at her description of him. And at the part about Danny being off-putting, Newt still finds it kind of hard to believe that he gets to handle a gun on a regular basis. "Yeah, think this guy deserves a medal for that last part. Is a points chart still on the table?" He shifts until their cheeks are practically touching, as if the closer she is, the safer he'll be from Round 2 of ghost-drifting. "But whoever he is, I get the weirdest sense that he'd say it was worth it."

"No, I scrapped the points chart, you were so ridiculously ahead of everyone else that it was just getting kind of embarrassing. I ran out of paper, had to start drawing on the wall, it was this whole big thing. Carla Jean was super not impressed," she says, watching him with a faint smile. She's kind of hoping he'll fall asleep first, that maybe if she just keeps talking, eventually he just won't respond and she'll feel better about falling asleep herself.

"Hey, speaking of Carla Jean, I think she might cook for Thanksgiving," she tells him, the thought occurring to her right now, half-asleep, trying to get Newt fall asleep before her. Maybe talking about food isn't the best way to do it, but she's already said it and she's thinking about it. "You should come. And Chuck, invite Chuck. I like him." Given everything Newt's said about him, she's not actually all that surprised she likes him as much as she does, not when Newt clearly cares a lot about him. Plus, she had to appreciate his Halloween costume and she wonders just how many people dressed as dead things at that party had actually been dead. Or almost dead in her case.

"Wow, you're really inflating my ego right now and I like it." His tone doesn't do much in the way of expressing his amusement but apparently closing his eyes had been a terrible idea because he feels like he might fade away at any moment. Honestly, he hasn't gotten as much sleep as he has in Darrow ever, certainly not in the past ten years when he'd spent countless hours in the lab, poking at his kaiju parts and running tests and coming up with new hypotheses. Hermann had lectured him at least once every couple of weeks about how a lack of sleep would lead to a lack of accuracy, and Newt would just smile and wax poetic about how much Hermann did care. But here, it's just been so easy to let everything fall away, especially with Kate next to him, a source of comfort and warmth in what he's considering to be less and less of a foreign bed.

"I like Chuck, too," he mumbles, reaching his arms above him and letting one hand come to a light rest on her head so he can thread his fingers through her hair. "Besties for life. I can make pies, lots of pies." He smacks his lips because he may be sleepy but food is food, and he hasn't had a proper Thanksgiving dinner in a long while, not since his MIT years. "We call it Erntedankefest in Germany, basically means Harvest Festival of Thanks, but it's like, mostly a religious thing. American Thanksgiving is way better, way more food and celebration." He doesn't even really know what he's saying anymore, but he can't really be compelled to care at this point.

He's kind of rambling now, which he does a lot, so it might not be a sign that he's ready to fall back asleep, but she thinks it sounds pretty promising and the hand in her hair feels nice, so she closes her eyes as well. "She'd like it if you made pies," she tells him. "Did you know her husband was in his thirties when they got married?" It's completely out of the blue, but she's just thought of it now, how Carla Jean will be the last person in the world to comment in their age difference and she thinks maybe he needs something like that after Danny brought it up first thing.

"She was like, sixteen when they met," she continues. She knows that a lot of bad stuff has happened since then, but she knows Carla Jean was happy. That she was in love. She knows she gets it. Then, just because it sounds funny, she repeats what he's said. "Erntedankefest. German is such a weird language. Hey, can you speak German?" Just another thing to add to the list of weirdly hot things about him if he can.

"Are you sure she wouldn't just smash them in my face?" he teases, draping his other arm over his eyes. "She and Danny could team up, best Thanksgiving ever. Could probably even get Chuck on their side, but it's just because everyone loves me, right?" His raised eyebrows are the only visible indication of surprise on his face when Kate mentions Carla Jean's 30-something-year-old husband. "I didn't even know she had a husband. But that's cool, that she like, gets it." He lets his arm fall to the side and turns his head to look at her. "I really don't care if people think it's weird that I'm older than you. I mean, I'm not saying it's not maybe a little irritating..." He smiles. "But it's your opinion that matters when it comes to us, not anyone else's. Should I put that in the vows?" He gives a little laugh and nestles his head back in its previous position, closing his eyes again.

"I can speak German, yeah. Not often, haven't really had a reason to in a long time. But Hermann was from Germany, too, so when were like, super pissed at each other, we'd just scream at each other in the motherland tongue." Those were always times that would lead to full silent treatment for a couples days until one of them--usually Newt because silence has never been a friend to him--would break and their spats would start all over again. "Good times."

"He's not here. He died," she says, which is not how she expected this conversation to go and she frowns a little, shifting closer to Newt, tucking her head against his shoulder. It's been awhile, she knows, but she doesn't think a person ever really gets over something like that and she wonders how often Carla Jean thinks about her husband. She's about to say something about the other thing, because she's glad he doesn't care and she doesn't care, but she figures it can't be great to hear people commenting on it. But then he says something about vows and Kate doesn't tense up so much as she freezes, her eyes flying open again.

It's kind of like that conversation with Blaine all over again, but lucky for her, Newt's eyes are closed.

She should ask him about Germany again, she thinks, ask him to say something in German, but suddenly she's not very tired anymore. She still wants him to be able to sleep, but she's pretty sure she's going to be lying awake, staring at the ceiling and she knows he didn't mean anything by it, but the word vow still carries a pretty heavy implication.

"Oh." He doesn't know what else he can say to that. He hasn't had a lot of practice with the death of people close to him; in fact, Marshal Pentecost is probably the closest person to Newt who's died and though he'd always remained sure that Pentecost liked him more than he let on, they would never have called each other friends. He shifts, trying to make Kate more comfortable, and kisses her forehead and tries not to think about what it would be like if he lost her.

She's suddenly very quiet, and he wants to say something to fill the void, but then he thinks that maybe she's fallen asleep and it just wouldn't do for him to wake her twice in one night. So he keeps quiet, wrapping his arm around her because maybe if he keeps her as close as he can, he won't have to just pretend to sleep through the night.

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