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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"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."

"No one here is getting stabbed," she promises and she's feeling a little more calm now, a lot more exhausted, the laughing having worn her out even more. "I would never really stab anyone. Way too creepy and personal." She's been stabbed, she knows what it's like to be on the pointy end of that knife and she's really not interested in being on the other end either.

"Yeah, I like it, too," she says, rubbing her foot against his good leg. "When I first got here I used to go for walks sometimes super late, but then I got mugged, so I kind of stopped that. I'd go with you, though. Probably less likely to get mugged when there's two of us, huh?" Or maybe more likely, because it means more money. She's still annoyed about that guy making off with pretty much everything she'd had to her name at the time.

"Now that you haven't totally jinxed it," he teases, giving her a little nudge. No, but seriously, thinking about her scar and hearing her talk about being mugged, it makes him tense a bit. He acts maybe a little reckless when it comes to himself, though he's only ever had a knife shoved up his nose--but he thinks he might lose his mind if anyone tried to hurt her in any way, shape, or form.

He holds her closer to him, like she might slip away if he doesn't. "I don't know what the odds of that would be here. I think I'm actually pretty lucky that I wasn't dismembered and sold for parts the last time I was in the Bone Slums, but I did get carsmashed once I got here so maybe my luck is running out."

"No," she says, because that's all there is to it. She's not having his luck run out, no matter what this place thinks it has in store. She knows there's nothing she can do to prevent this city from throwing shit at him and, apparently, nothing she can do about assholes who drive through crosswalks, but she's letting it be known that she's not happy about it. She's had some terrible shit dumped on her and given that his world had giant monsters destroying everything, she's convinced they've both totally earned a reprieve from things going wrong.

"That's it, just no. Just for the record. I'm throwing it out there, I'm not allowing this place to do anything else to you or it'll have to deal with me and I'm not fun when I'm mad." She pauses, grinning a little. "You kinda know that." Now that she's looking back on it, it wasn't even a real fight, not to the levels she's sure the two of them can get to when they're both really going, but she's still pretty sure she was at least a bit of an asshole to him that day.

"I'm not sure that's how it works but I appreciate the sentiment," he tells her, and he truly does, it's kind of ridiculously sweet that she would just outright reject the idea of him getting hurt again altogether. It's not as though he plans on going out and getting his ass handed to him, and he's not going to go through the rest of his time here being paranoid that something terrible is going to happen. He might extend a little more effort in making sure there aren't any cars speeding through any crosswalks he's in, but he doesn't plan on cowering in the face of much else. But the thought of her acting as his own personal bodyguard makes him laugh because honestly, she'd probably do a bang-up job.

"So you protect me, I'll protect you, we protect each other from all the nasty things this big, bad world has to offer. Sounds about right." He traces a finger up her jawline, brushes her loose hair behind her ear, brings his hand back down to tip her chin up for a soft kiss. "Not super fun, no, but you do that cute furrowy thing with your eyebrows and then it turns into a rousing game of Sexy Chicken so maybe you should get mad at me more often."

A soft hum escapes her when he kisses her and then she frowns, wrinkling her nose and she has no idea if that's the face he's talking about -- she has little attention for anything except her anger when she's mad and she can't really remember - but either way, it's probably the worst time in the world for that. She's kind of too tired of protest much, though, and if he wants to lie here and kiss her, she sure as hell isn't going to complain. "Like this?" she asks. "Except we can totally fool around without either of us having to get pissed off first."

Her forehead smooths out and she smiles again, bringing up one hand to rest against the side of his neck, her fingers toying with the ends of his hair. "We could test all sorts of emotional states and see which one is the best, which one makes everything else the most fun." She has a feeling it might be anger, but there's also the whole desperately afraid area that's probably pretty hot, too.

Edited 2013-11-27 13:15 (UTC)

He leans his head back to examine her expression and bursts out laughing. "That's the one," he says, mirroring her nose wrinkle and goddamn it, she really is just the cutest when she's mad. At all times, rather, and he doesn't know how he's ever supposed to take her seriously if she's yelling at him with an expression like that. Then he remembers how she'd caught him up on the chair and the look on her face then had nearly given him a heart attack so yeah, he thinks it's probably best just to stay on her good side as often as he can.

"I like the sound of that," he tells her, his eyes falling shut again at the feel of her fingers in his hair. "It can be one of our experiments. We'll make charts and logs and recordings. We can write a book, guaranteed bestseller."

"You're the only person I've ever known who can make charts and logs sound kinda hot," she murmurs, still playing with his hair, her fingers moving absently against the back of his neck. "That sounds good to me, but if we're being totally honest, I'd probably do just about anything with you. Experiments, recordings, books, whatever."

As long as she's getting to spend time with him, she figures she'll be content with whatever they choose to do. Even if it's nothing at all, like right now, just lying here with him, talking about the things they're going to do. She likes this just as much as everything else. "Don't use that against me one day," she adds with a soft laugh. "Ask me to do something terrible and then remind me I told you I'd do just about anything."

"Mm, wait 'til you hear me go way in depth on the subject of kaiju parts," he says, and he never wants her to stop doing that thing with her fingers in his hair and on his neck because it feels so nice, it's something only she's allowed to do to him, and he like the idea of that. "Just about anything, huh?" And he wouldn't use that against her, he wouldn't ask her to like, listen to country or anything like that, it's just that doing just about anything can mean a hell of a lot to someone whose curiosity is so easily piqued at all times.

"I would never dream of taking advantage of your saying something like that," he says, though he's very clearly being facetious and he suspects she's probably used to that by now. Another thing he loves about her, that she's not smacking him every five seconds for saying something he wouldn't even realize is irritating. "I'll make sure it's something easy enough. Sponge bath or something."

Her thumb sweeps over the skin behind his ear as she grins a little, closing her eyes. His skin is warm and soft under her fingers and she thinks she could just do this forever. The fact that he hasn't already had her sit down for a serious lecture on kaiju parts is actually kind of surprising to her and she figures it's maybe due to the broken leg and to the almost but never quite all the way game they keep playing and once that's all dealt with, it's bound to happen. She makes jokes about the guts and bits of monster being gross, but the truth is, she'd probably find it all pretty interesting and if it came down to it, she'd rather listen to him talk about monster parts than like, marketing or stocks or whatever.

"Sponge bath?" she repeats with a laugh, one eye opening again so she can look at him. "Sounds kinda sexy nurse-like, do you think that's such a good idea while you've still got the cast on? We both know how well stuff like that has been going." Which is really, really well, she thinks, except fooling around going really well always means they have to stop themselves and that's the part that's been getting more and more difficult every single time. That's the part that she knows has left them both more than a little frustrated.

"I'm willing to wait," he replies, nodding sagely. "The cast comes off and you can give me a thorough cleansing. I mean, you've already been my sexiest nurse, but y'know, sponge bath is a standard task." And shit, he has to distract himself real quick before the image of himself and Kate naked in the shower together starts to take over because Sexy Chicken is all fun and games until his junk actually aches from lack of follow through.

He's pretty proud of himself, in fact, in his restraint right now because he really wants to be tugging her clothes off and touching her and kissing her but no, bad. Well, okay, very good but bad for their current predicament with the whole being half immoble and shit. He closes his eyes, tries to go zen. "Category III. 2,500 tons. October 17, 2007. Los Angeles. Gipsy Danger, Becket brothers." He lets out a breath, settling into a smile and before Kate can ask, he explains, "Yamarashi, the little guy I've got inked over here." He lifts his arms up and points at his tattoo, eyes still closed. "This is what you've driven me to, reciting kaiju facts."

"Not sorry," she answers, propping herself up on her hand again, because she's tired, sure, but she's also fascinated by the tattoos and the stories behind them. He has his eyes closed, but he still points out the tattoo and she can see it pretty well in the half light of the bedroom, her eyes adjusted to the dark again. Besides, she's seen it before, it's the first one she looked at that day in the train station, the first one of his tattoos she put her hands on -- without asking, which is pretty much normal for her -- and she knows it pretty well by now.

"What about this one?" she asks, pointing to the tattoo further up his arm. She likes hearing the stories, partly because she knows she'll never have to deal with anything quite so terrifying and partly because she just likes tattoo stories. The one on her arm doesn't have much of one, but there's the one on her hip -- the one he hasn't seen yet -- that has a story to go along with it. And even so, she's pretty sure her story doesn't compare to any of his, given that she only got the tattoo because her mother turned into a teenaged girl and almost got the word slut tattooed on her body in huge letters. The tattoo on her hip is the compromise. A pay off for her silence about the whole incident.

"Eh, I'd rather you not be." He feels her moving next to him and feels kind of bad that he's inadvertently baited her into stay awake even longer but oh well, at least the topic has shifted from Kate being a sexy nurse to his tattoos, he could talk all day about his tattoos and it wouldn't be a problem; what's awesome is that he's pretty sure she wouldn't mind all too much. He smiles when she asks him about Onibaba--he doesn't have to peek to know which one she's pointing at.

"Category II, 57.3 meters tall, 2040 tons," he recites, no hesitation. "Breached May 16, 2016, three years after I got recruited to the PPDC." He opens his eyes again, his smile a little sadder now. "Cleared out most of Tokyo but it was... fascinating. Not the destruction, just the way it went about it, like he didn't want to fight. He'd actively try to avoid combat and even when it did attack, it was like, pretty much all defense. Almost like it didn't even want to be there." He chews on his lip as it all comes flooding back to him, as he gets a flash of Marshal Pentecost--or Coyote Tango, rather--taking Onibabo down and his body jolts. He tries to cover it, hopes Kate thinks it was just some involuntary reaction caused by his leg--though he knows she knows better--and just keeps talking. "I know it sounds like I have sympathy for them. Maybe it's true, to an extent, they're creatures that were engineered for one purpose, they were all just following orders. But if you think about what that means, how that was accomplished... It's pretty remarkable."

She notices the twitch and wonders what he's thinking, if he's remembering something else from the one he's talking about, and she rests her head on his chest for a moment. If she's quiet, she can hear his heart beating and it's that steady sound that calms her enough to not ask about it, because if it's something he wants to tell her, he will, and she doesn't need to know every single thought that goes through his mind.

Especially if they're not all his. That can't be a great feeling, she doesn't want to make it worse.

"What's remarkable?" she asks without moving her head. "I mean... I don't know anything about them, right? How was it accomplished?" She's glad she doesn't come from his world, because while it doesn't sound like Kansas ever ended up in the line of fire, she's pretty sure she would've ended up getting squashed anyway, because that's just her luck. But maybe because she's never had to deal with it, she finds it all kind of fascinating.

"That's the thing," he answers and now that they're into it, he pushes himself up so that he's sitting up a little, he needs room for potential hand gesturing. "The technology being used to create them is beyond what we have here, what we even had in 2025. The Precursors--the guys who made the kaiju, basically aliens--have been around... Christ, forever. Since before the dinosaurs. They tried the whole world takeover thing then, too, by the way. But they were able to take the same strand of DNA and clone these things over and over but evolve them, make them stronger and better and--" He cuts himself off with a sigh, bringing his hand to his face to rub over his stubble. "If we could do that here, it would change the world, y'know?"

He needs to get in a lab. It's starting to feel like an addiction flare-up, there's a craving in him to get his hands dirty. He's been fairly complacent since getting here, struggling to accept the fact that the past ten years of his life are basically moot because of the world he's in now, but the idea of getting back in the saddle and doing research that matters... it lights a spark in him.

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