sciencesaggressively | 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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His body shakes with laughter as he rubs at his eyes because Christ, he's fucking tired and he knows she's got to be exhausted, too, but this--staying up until the ass crack of dawn just talking, which he's most certainly many times but not in bed with anyone who'd really acted like they cared about what he had to say--feels so nice and whether she realizes it or not, he thinks it's a true testament to how much he feels safe putting his trust in her. He's always quick to assume nothing can touch him, it's why he'd been so eager to jump into the den of a goddamn crime lord, not to mention the brain of two kaijus, but he doesn't mind being vulnerable with her and that's a pretty big deal for him.

He hates giving anyone a reason to think he's weak, had been so angry at himself after that first drift for letting the Marshal and even Hermann see him shaking and crying and a wreck. Not that he's exactly super willing to cry in front of her all the time, absolutely not, that's not really a thing he does; but he wants to let her in, make sure he doesn't push her away even if there's a part him that tells him maybe he should. "I don't come with a warranty," he warns, trailing his fingers over her back. "No returns or exchanges, either. Not even for store credit."

"That's okay, you're definitely the only one I want," she murmurs, a shiver following his fingers up the length of her back. "Except I'm starting to think I should see if I can maybe purchase an extended warranty or something, especially since you don't even come with one to begin with. Seems like a serious oversight." Sometimes it's the only way she can talk about the more serious things, making a joke out of it, but she's entirely sincere in her way. She wants him here and she wants him here for a long time, not just for a few weeks or months, not just until something else comes along, because she can't imagine anything else being like this.

"Besides, what would I even exchange you for? Some way less adorable and brilliant dude? Boring. I'm totally satisfied with the current model," she teases. "Like, scale of one to ten, I'd probably give you a twelve. That's valid, right?"

"It does, right? I'm already damaged," he says, gesturing to his cast, and he has a smile on his face but it doesn't reach his eyes. It's not the leg he's sparing worry about, he knows it'll heal, it's not as big of a deal to him as he might have made it if not for his new friend, the nightmares. He wonders if Owen would do him a solid and check him out more thoroughly, maybe even do a full scan, just in case. Newt's never really cowered from the possibility of anything but the thought that what's in his head could do real damage--which he knows it can, he's seen it happen, he's read the research files--freaks him out more than he cares to admit.

But even if he's freaked out, that doesn't mean Kate has to be, too. So he widens his smile and offers another laugh. "A twelve is like, bare minimum, I'm at least a fourteen. Good to know you're satisfied, though, I'd hate to think I wasn't living up to my full potential."

"Fourteen?" she asks, laughing against his shoulder. If she never had to move from this place, she thinks she might be perfectly okay with that. Her eyelids feel heavy, but she's not at that point where she's exhausted and grumpy and just wants to sleep, she's just comfortable and relaxed and really content. "Really, that's what we're going for? I mean, just jumping straight off the scale to fourteen?" She pauses, pretending she's considering it for a moment, then sighs heavily, a rush of air against his skin.

"Yeah, okay, fourteen is probably pretty close to what I'd land on." She laughs again, her eyes closed, resting against him. "Y'know, this is as bad as the points chart. We're apparently just shit at actually staying on any sort of scale or chart, even the ones we've completely made up on our own."

He's about ready to come back with an argument with supportive evidence as to why, exactly, he's totally a fourteen minimum, but then she's conceding and he nods, satisfied. "Fourteen," he repeats, and he sounds smug but there's a hint of playfulness in his tone. "I'm glad we can come to an agreement on that. I don't know what you're talking about, though, our charts and scales are flawless. We just happen to be exponentially superior in our charting and scaling methods."

He glances down at her, smiling when he sees her eyes closed and stroking at her hair. He's reminded then of something his mother used to tell him when he was young, a lullaby of sorts though she'd never really put a tune to it. He surprises himself when the words come spilling out of him, in German no less, like it's only been twenty-five minutes rather than twenty-fives years since he's last heard it.

"Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf. Am Himmel ziehn die Schaf. Die Sternlein sind die Lämmerlein, Der Mond, der ist das Schäferlein. Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf." He kisses the top of her head, then her temple, and repeats it softly in English. "Sleep, baby, sleep. Your father tends the sheep. Your mother shakes the branches small, lovely dreams in showers fall. Sleep, baby, sleep."

"My father would totally tend sheep," she mumbles, only half paying attention to the words, because it's more just the sound of Newt's voice that she's listening to, the way the inflection changes when he's speaking German, and she knows they've both just been talking about how angry German sounds, but she doesn't think that anymore. It sounds sort of nice now, she thinks, and she realizes she's drifting off to sleep, that she'd wanted to stay awake until he fell asleep first, but she can't seem to stop herself.

It's his fault. For making her feel so comfortable, for the fingers she can feel in her hair and his lips against her temple. "This is all your fault," she manages to say, but she's smiling when she speaks. "You're supposed to fall asleep first."

This is the moment Blaine was talking about. The moment she knows. She doesn't have to wonder about it anymore.

not cool, brain, not cool

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