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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"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.

"Say something in German," she murmurs after a moment, because he has his arm around her and it's just a word, anyway. She's tired, they both are, she's making way too big a deal over a single word and what's worse is that she's making a big deal of it internally. He doesn't even know, doesn't need to know, and it's not like he even has any way of knowing about the conversation she had with Blaine anyway.

She shifts against him, thinking she should just let him go to sleep, that was her intention all along, and she will. She just doesn't want him to fall asleep thinking there's anything wrong, because there isn't. It's just her own mind working against her.

"Anything," she adds, smiling a little. "I don't care what. Unless you're calling me something awful, don't swear at me in German."

"Anything, huh?" He pauses, considering what to say because really, sky's the limit here. It hits him then, a truth that he doesn't think he can express in English quite yet because he doesn't want to seem like he's jumping any guns, not when it's still so early on in their relationship... but he thinks maybe it would be okay to say in another language. He hesitates just the slightest bit before softly telling her, "Ich bin verliebt."

It still feels good to say, and he smiles to himself, suddenly feeling awake again though that's no fault of hers--it's mostly from the elation of being able to say it in his own private way. "That was like, such a mean thing to say, by the way. You should be so offended."

"I am, I'm super offended," she answers, smiling, her eyes still closed. She has no idea what he's said and she thinks she could ask him or look it up tomorrow, but she won't. Whatever he's said, it's not insulting and she has no idea how she knows that, because she doesn't speak a word of German, but she knows all the same. And she could look it up, but she sort of doesn't want to, not because she doesn't actually want to know, but because not knowing seems weirdly romantic.

"What if I was secretly fluent?" she asks, rubbing her cheek against his shoulder. She opens her eyes briefly to look at him, then closes them again. She's warm and comfortable and he's calm and maybe he isn't tired, but at least he's not freaking out or pacing or having a panic attack. She pretty much considers that to be a victory.

"What if my mom was German? Or my dad? I guess Gregson's not a very German name, is it?"

"Well, then, I guess you'd probably be dumping my ass right about now," he replies, keeping up the charade because he's not about to tell her that he's foreignly admitted he loves her at whatever the hell o'clock it is right now. He's maybe not thinking the most clearly right now, but he's definitely aware enough that this isn't the right time for that. Maybe tomorrow. "Yeah, Gregson isn't all that German, it's very English. If you were Kate Geiszler, I might have been more careful with the Deutsch talk."

He rests his head against hers, and he sighs softly, taking this moment to appreciate the fact that he has someone in his life he can do this with--be next to in bed, talking about anything, just being content with each other's company. And yeah, he's pretty sure he might sleep in embarrassingly late tomorrow between the nightmare and the love confessions but at least this night will have ended on what he's considering a high note. "Du bist schön," he says, and it surprises him a little because he hadn't even really meant for it to come out in German. "Look what you've started."

"I would say I'm sorry, but I'm totally not," she mumbles, smoothing her hand over his chest again before she stretches, arching her back for a moment. Then she relaxes against him again, still smiling faintly, running the words over in her mind. It's no different than being spoken to in English, or it shouldn't be anyway, but they're just for her somehow. In the dark, in the stupidly early hours of the morning, in his bed, they're just for her. She doesn't need to know what he's said to feel that way.

"It's weirdly kinda hot," she admits, but then it's like everything he does is weirdly -- or not so weirdly -- kind of hot, so it doesn't surprise her much. Even now, half asleep, it makes her heart beat a little faster just to be lying next to him. She's pretty sure that's not even just the fact that she's totally into him taking over, she can't imagine ever getting over it and she's completely content with that. Everything he does is something she's into except, maybe, for climbing on chairs with a broken leg, but she can forgive that.

"Really? Maybe 'cause I'm choosing my words wisely. German is like, the angriest sounding language ever," he laughs. "Give it some time, you'll demand that I stop altogether." It gives him a little thrill, though, to hear her say that. He's not sure why, but a memory sparks in him of being in the LOCCENT command center, holding his breath and praying to anything that what he and Hermann had learned from the second drift was true, that they'd found the only way to close the Breach. He remembers Pentecost--and Chuck, god, it's crazy how much more it hurts now to think that Chuck had ever been gone--and Mako, exchanging their last words, what she'd said to him in Japanese that Hermann had later explained meant I love you, teacher.

He thinks of this, he realizes, because in these moments in the dark of the night, where it's completely private, he can feel comfortable with feeling vulnerable. He can tell her he loves her--maybe not in words she understands just yet--and he can talk to her about the nightmares, the memories that plague him, and he can fully trust that she won't run. "Maybe I'll learn like, French. Game over."

"I know some French, too, so you wouldn't be able to use it to say things to me that I can't understand," she says, although it's not like she knows a lot of French. Just things she's picked up here and there, mostly expressions from movies Marshall had made her watch during his French New Wave phase. She knows more Japanese than she does French and she sure as hell doesn't know much Japanese, but that's it, those are the only two languages she has under her belt besides English and it's a pretty pathetic showing from both of them.

"But whatever language you're speaking, I'll like it. Even German. Even if it's angry sounding," she tells him. "But what you said, that sounded nice... nice-ish, anyway. Ich bin verliebt, right?" She truly has no idea what she's repeating, but she knows whatever he's said, whatever he tells her about dumping his ass if she understood, it has to be something nice.

"Plus, I totally have access to the internet, dude." It's mostly an afterthought, she'll probably forget to look anything up in the morning. "Whatever the Darrow version of google translate is, I can type shit in there and know everything."

His eyes snap open when she says the words and for a second, it's like he forgets where he is, almost like he's having an out-of-body experience or something because Christ, hearing her say that--even though he knows she has no idea what she's really saying--kind of blows him away. He tries to speak but his words catch until he clears his throat and even then, his reply is near a whisper. "Yeah. That's right. How dare you." He presses a soft kiss to her forehead, letting it linger.

"You could," he agrees, though he's fairly certain that it won't happen, "but where's the fun in that? We should randomly bust out the French and German to each other when we're out, confuse the hell out of people." The thought makes him laugh, the two languages being bounced off each other, because yeah, they don't mesh very well together; but then again, he's always found that an unlikely pair always seems to be the one that works out best.

"How dare I," she agrees, stifling a yawn. She's warm and comfortable and it's easy to forget why she'd woken up in the first place when she has her arm slung across his chest and he's pressing kisses to her forehead. It's kind of ridiculous, how goddamn normal it is given their extremely not normal lives, but maybe that's why it's so nice, maybe that's the kind of thing she's been looking for without even realizing it.

"Shit, dude, I already confuse people," she says. "I don't need French for that, but I like the idea of you breaking out some foreign languages whenever you feel the urge." He already knows one and she thinks it'll be easier for him to learn more than it will be for her, since he has the big genius brain to begin with. "Except my French knowledge comes from French movies, so the stuff I could blurt out is probably super strange. My brother went through a New Wave period. He went through a German Expressionism period, too, so I guess I should probably also know some German, but mostly they just sounded so angry that I left that shit to him."

"See, I told you it's an angry language. Lots of ichs and eins and unds. But okay, we can confine the weird, random French things you know to just you and me, I'm good with that. Mein Französisch liebling." He knows he should let her sleep, there's a voice in the back of his mind that's telling him he's being selfish keeping her up like this. He sees her attempt at holding back the yawn, should just stop talking altogether or pretend he's asleep so she can drift off on her own, but it's hard to give this up. She anchors him, calms his nerves even when she's causing his heart to beat a little faster, is there for him in ways she probably doesn't even realize.

"You should go back to sleep," he finally tells her, lightly running his hand up and down her arm. "See if you dream in German, maybe you'll wake up just knowing what the things I've said mean."

"I am going back to sleep," she answers, because she is. She really is, she's just waiting for him to go back to sleep first, which probably isn't going to happen if she keeps talking to him. Tilting her head up without opening her eyes, she brushes a kiss against his jaw, pressing her nose against his cheek, smiling faintly. He's become so familiar to her in such a short period of time and she thinks a year ago that might have scared the shit out of her, might've caused her to back off and get awkward, but something's changed. She doesn't know if it's her or if it's him or maybe it's a combination of both, but whatever it is, she's good here. Nothing about this makes her want to run and that in itself is pretty terrifying. Or it would be if she wasn't comfortable and warm and mostly asleep.

"I never remember my dreams, so even if I dream in German and figure it all out, I won't remember in the morning," she promises. "So your German secrets are safe until I figure out how to spell them and remember to look it up."

"So do it," he teases, unable to hold back a smile she can't see. It's a smile that lingers as he blinks up at the ceiling, reveling in a simple kiss, feeling her own smile forming against him. He's starting to think this is turning into a game of Sleepy Chicken, each of them waiting for the other to fall asleep, and it's so ridiculous but it's so them, this is just what they do. And it actually feels so good because what it means to him is that they're there for each other, even in ways that might come off as silly to anyone else. So yeah, the fact that they keep talking doesn't help at all with the getting her to sleep thing but he takes comfort in knowing that the only reason she's still forcing herself to stay awake is because she cares about him, wants to make sure he'll be okay for the rest of the night. He doesn't know if he will be, doesn't know whether the nightmares will happen again tonight, but at least he knows that she'll be next to him.

"Nah, I'll just tell you you're crazy, I don't speak a word of German, it was all a dream." He thinks he might get a smack out of it if he really did do that so it's a good think he's certain she'll never remember to look it up at all.

"I would, but this is nice," she tells him. "I mean... not the nightmare and the bleeding nose, but this part. This is nice. Not like I have to get up early anyway, I could just stay here all morning and stay awake the whole time and it'd be nice." Her eyes open again slowly and she can't really see him from where she's lying, pressed so close, so she tips her head back on the pillow, just enough that she can see his profile.

She's told exactly one guy that he was nice in the past and he hadn't loved that description, so she hadn't said it again. For Kate, it's kind of one of the best things she can say, because there are plenty of dudes out there who are attractive and there are plenty who are smart and she's pretty sure there are even plenty who are funny. But most of them are dicks. Most of them wouldn't be lying awake with her, murmuring things in German, telling her to go back to sleep.

When she looks back, this might be it, she thinks. That moment Blaine was talking about when she just figures it out, when she realizes just how big her feelings are and it's not as scary as she thought it might be.

Edited 2013-11-25 12:56 (UTC)

He nods lazily, glancing down at her when he feels her move her head and rubbing his nose against hers. "Yeah, not really a fan of the nightmares thing." And that's to say the least, it's only because of her that he can say that like it hadn't meant anything, like it's not going to fuck with his head tomorrow or the next day or next month. He already knows he'll spend a lot of time wondering how long the nightmares will go on, how long before they cause more than a nose bleed, how much damage it's really doing to him. He knows the thoughts will linger before he closes his eyes at night, maybe not every night but often enough for it to feel like a disease. But those thoughts can wait until later; and if he's lucky, maybe later will actually be a long time from now.

"Nice is good. I like nice with you. It's-- Dare I say it? Nice." He's losing it and it's probably from the beginnings of sleep deprivation but he also means it, no matter how ridiculous he might sound. She's given him so many firsts, whether she's aware of it or not, this here being one of them. She's the first person he's felt like he can entirely let his guard down with, no pretenses and no bravado. It's so different, and he's never really been adverse to change, but he hadn't known he was so on board with it, either.

"Y'know, it's weird, I--" She pauses to stifle a yawn, though she can't quite control her grin, because she thinks she's being pretty hilarious right now before she's even finished her sentence. It's probably that she's tired and would really like to be asleep again, but maybe she's also really funny. "I always thought geniuses had way bigger vocabularies than that."

The laugh that escapes her is dangerously close to a giggle and she muffles it against the side of Newt's neck and this is totally, one hundred percent her sleep deprivation, but everything just seems really funny all of the sudden. Not the nightmares, not the nosebleed, none of that is funny, but everything else. The memory of catching him climbing on the chair, the dinner with Danny, breaking into the security office, Halloween. She's not sure why she's remembering all these things now, but they're all really amusing at the moment and she laughs again, still with her face pressed to his neck. "Stop it." Like he's somehow responsible for her sudden urge to laugh at everything.

"You ever thought about stand-up?" he asks with a snort and there's another almost yawn from her again, he almost thinks that maybe he should go out into the living room to watch some TV or something but then he remembers that would mean being away from the warmth of her body next to him and that simply won't do. In this bed, he can forget. In this bed, there's just the two of them, hive mind be damned. "'Sides, like 80% of my doctorates are in biology. I'll leave the intricacies of the English language to the blogger."

He raises an eyebrow when she practically smothers herself against him and lifts his head to raise an eyebrow at her. "You're losing it, Gregson," he teases. He turns over onto his side, careful of his bad leg, and rests a hand on her hip, watching in amusement as she continues to laugh. "I refuse to take responsibility for this."

"But it's your fault," she insists, trying to bite back another bout of laughter, but it's really no use. She's always gotten like this when she's tired and she remembers lying with Marshall in her bed, the two of them exhausted and scared and laughing hysterically because it had been easier than dealing with whatever had been going on at the time. She misses her brother so fiercely it aches in that moment, because she thinks he'd like Newt, she thinks he'd approve, and she wants him here so badly, but even that doesn't stop her laughter.

"I just keep picturing you on that chair when I caught you," she explains, trying to catch her breath. "With the light bulb and the look on your face and I was so mad at you." But now it's really funny. Now she can picture his expression at being caught and it's kind of priceless. "And you and Danny at dinner, Jesus Christ, I'm sorry, it's not even that funny." Except it is.

"I take offense to that," he says in his most indignant tone, which isn't all that indignant at all really because she's so goddamn cute right now, trying and failing at keeping her laughter in her punchdrunk state. He loves the sound of her laugh, it's musical to him, the pitches perfect and sounding at just the right intervals. Her laugh and her voice and basically anything Kate, he suspects, are nothing short of flawless, no matter how much she might disagree.

He heaves a dramatic sigh at her short list of his apparently hilarious actions, even though he does have to admit that it had all been pretty damn funny in retrospect. There had been a brief moment when he'd been on the chair and Kate had opened the door to his apartment that he thought she might actually charge him and send him back to the hospital. Dinner with Danny had been a different kind of scary but he thinks it had turned out okay in the end, even though common ground between still feels a little shaky. At least he's pretty sure that Danny maybe kind of likes him. He pats a still laughing Kate lightly on the back. "I'm glad you think I'm so funny, had I known how little it takes to get you rolling, I'd have done it all a lot sooner."

"Yeah, wake me up at some stupid hour and then don't let me go back to sleep. The sleep deprivation will get to my brain before long and I'll just get kinda giggly," she says, still laughing, though she's calming down a bit. "When things got really bad at home, Marshall would come sleep in my room, except we'd never be able to fall asleep. We'd lie there and just laugh about every stupid thing that was going on, because what the hell else were we gonna do? Sometimes shit gets so bad you just have to laugh before you stab someone in the face."

It's not as serious as she's making it sound. The memories of lying in the dark with her brother, laughing up at the ceiling while Tara and Max fought in the other room, those are mostly good memories. It's the nights lying alone in the dark, knowing the silence that stretched through the house wasn't because everyone was sleeping but because there was nothing left for her parents to say that get to her. Those are the bad memories.

"I like being awake in the middle of the night when everyone else is asleep," she says, a smile still curving her lips. "It's a different world."

"Well, as long as I'm out of danger of being stabbed in the face." He doesn't think things have ever been so bad for him. Yeah, he'd been living in a world in danger of being taken over by aliens using huge monsters as bioweapons but other than that, he's spent most of his life feeling generally optimistic. He'd never doubted they'd--rather, he'd--find a way to close the Breach; never doubted that his research on the kaiju would lead to something incredible; and, as usual, he'd been right. The nights he couldn't sleep had more to do with the fact that he was so jazzed about being on the verge of some discovery or other. There'd been occasions that he couldn't sleep because he'd had a particularly nasty fight with Hermann or had received an overly harsh lecture from the Marshal, but those had been few and far between--the times he couldn't sleep, not the fights or shakedowns, those had happened fairly consistently.

Still, he likes the idea of bed being a safe haven, a place where they can laugh until they cry with nobody around to ask them what the hell is so funny. "It is," he agrees, very clearly remembering what it had been like to wander around the 'Dome at four in the morning when he'd needed just a second to stretch his legs. There'd still be a fair amount of activity but it had been so much quieter than usual without the buzz of all the workers running around. "'Cept now I might like being awake in the middle of the night with you just a little better."

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