sciencesaggressively | 6/29 open to all!

6/29 open to all!

It’s been a good morning.

As much as Newt prefers to have his wife around, he also can’t deny that every once in a while, having a day off when Kate is scheduled to work can be kinda nice—even when it means Jeff tries to cuddle up next to him when he’s trying to lounge naked on the couch. What makes that worse is the way goddamn Cat stares at him like he’s trying to peer real deep into Newt’s soul.

Otherwise, it’s perfectly relaxing, and he knows Kate would say the same of when he’s out long enough for her to have the condo to herself for the day. Of course, being that the place is so big, there’s only so much tinkering and TV watching and baiting the dog with the cat that he can take before he needs to be out and about. That wouldn’t have been a problem at the ‘Dome, he’d been totally content to be alone in a dark lab for hours on end, not even bothering to take a break to eat unless Hermann would sigh at him from across their diving line before going to grab him a tray from the mess hall. Nowadays, though, he’s about to be around people. It gets too boring without having some to talk at, and the pets don’t count.

Once it hits noon, Newt decides that he’s craving something he doesn’t have to go the trouble of making himself for lunch. Indian, maybe, or Thai. Or pizza. Chinese? A burger. No, probably Thai. Definitely Thai, and he can grab something to go before he leaves the restaurant to drop off for Kate at The Dressing Room to earn himself some extra Super Awesome Husband points. Yes, good, a plan.

Before he leaves, he makes sure the dog has done her thing and the pet bowls are stocked up with food and then he’s out the door, nodding at Jack the Door Guy as he passes through the lobby doors. The Thai place is only a couple blocks away, his mouth is already watering at the thought of shoveling some pad thai in his mouth, but he has to take a moment to pay attention to his surroundings because it’s such a nice day out. The sun is shining, the sky is clear, and all Newt can think is that he’d better not get a burn because he’s so not prepared to deal with a peely nose. Granted, he probably should have remembered to slap on some sunscreen before he’d left but the thing is, he hadn’t so really, it’s up to Mother Nature now to do him a solid.

Squinting up at the offending sun, he adjusts his glasses, losing track of where he’s stepping because of the distraction. Before he can process what’s even happening, Newt crashes into another body, nearly landing his ass on the ground.

“Dude!” he exclaims as he steadies himself, arms held out to maintain his balance. “That was totally my bad, sorry. You good?”

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"Hey, thanks. One of those things I never thought would happen but hell, this place tends to turn your world upside down. Lot of things have happened to me here that probably wouldn't have if I'd stayed back in Hong Kong."

Newt doesn't know for sure what he'd be doing right now if he were still in his own world, whether he'd still be tucked away in a lab with Hermann, working on something new, or actually living out the rock star life he'd always wanted. It's hard to say where the road might take someone who's played a part in saving the world, but it's moot now. He's not interested in going back, not if it means leaving what he's got here behind.

"And dude, Kate would not even be surprised, seriously. That was a mild reaction, at best, she's seen way worse. 'Sides, you give this food a shot, and you'll be singing its praises real quick."

"I don't know, I'm pretty in love with bourbon these days," Coop said, deciding to play along because why the hell not. This guy might be able to fix his phone without Coop smashing it to pieces before saying a car ran over it and hoping that would be enough to get him a new one without him having to shell out too much money.

"Thai food's never been there for me in the worst of times," he remarked with a snicker. "Only the sweet, sweet burn of alcohol and the horrible mistress it leaves behind: a hangover."

Coop frowned. "Of course, bourbon's the reason I'm in this mess with my phone in the first place so maybe she's not a great wife. Or husband. I don't know if alcohol has a gender."

The more Coop talks, the more Newt starts to suspect his friend is a borderline alcoholic. Or maybe he's even crossed the border, there's not even hard evidence yet. Newt likes to drink, the condo's always pretty fully stocked in case they have company over, but for the most part, it's just a beer or two most nights.

"As far as drinks go, coffee's more a mistress for me," he says. "Wouldn't be able to get through the day without it. Allison, she's a friend, works over at the lab, she tried real hard to hold an intervention for me. Thought I was drinking way too much caffeine. She wasn't successful, it's too formidable a bond."

Even Kate hadn't bothered to jump on that train. Besides, drinking assloads of coffee had been exactly what he'd needed to stay up for days on end in his effort to save the goddamn world. If anything, coffee is totally his co-hero and without it, he might not have been sleep-deprived enough to think drifting with a kaiju would be a good idea. In summation: coffee, yay.

"Anyway, what're you havin'? Because I might just buy out the whole place, I'm so damn hungry."

"I'm going to make a confession," Coop said, staring up at the menu with the look of a man who did not order Thai food often. He squinted, tilted his head in a futile attempt to make the words up make sense.

He almost asked if they had any pictures that he could look at so he wouldn't accidentally order a meat that came from an animal that he really did not to eat. But, he figured that would be offensive for the owners and embarrassing for Newt so he refrained.

"I haven't really had Thai food in...ever," he admitted with a wince. "So, I don't know what's good and what's not. Recommendations?"

"Everything," Newt instantly replies, which he realizes isn't actually helpful at all, but he can't help that it's the truth.

With a mild grimace, he peers at the menu over Coop's shoulder, pointing at the Entree options. "Okay, so the lemongrass chicken here is super delish. Obviously, you can't go wrong with the pad Thai, that's like, what Thai restaurants are known for and shit. Shrimp, beef, chicken, veggie, doesn't matter, it's all good. It's made with these rice noodles, there's bean sprouts and peanuts and scallions and what not in it. Dude, so good, I'd probably go with that to start. Oh, the curry's bomb, too, though."

There are so many goddamn choices, and Newt doesn't want to have to pick.

"Okay, okay, how about this: we order all of that, and you can give 'em all a shot. See which one you like best. It's win-win because I want everything anyway."

"You wanna order everything?" Coop asked, raising an eyebrow at Newt's very ambitious dinner plans. He doesn't mind though and his stomach grumbled a little at just the thought of mood.

"Okay, I think that's a yes," he said with a laugh. "I don't know how much of that I'll eat but you can keep all the leftovers and eat off that for a week."

Well, maybe not a week with how much Newt seemed to love Thai food. "Okay, if not a week, a few days, at least. You and your wife can have a date where you eat Thai food and don't leave the house."

"We'll see."

He's being sarcastic, of course, kind of. There's no way they're going to be able to eat all the food Newt's just personally signed off on, but Coop's right. Kate will appreciate leftovers, and Newt gets brownie points in the process for being a thoughtful enough husband for bringing food home for her, which he'd planned to do anyway. Everything's lookin' up, not that anything had brought him down.

"Okay, let's get this shit ordered so we can get out of here and eat it. And try to fix your phone, I guess. Sorry, pal, I've got unchangeable priorities."

"It's all right, really," Coop said, waving off any apologies or platitudes. The fact that Newt was even going to try and fix his fuck up was enough. If he could get away with breaking into his phone and not having to get a new one, he'd be grateful. Plus, he got to eat a bunch of food and sit around with a guy who was funny so Coop saw no down side.

"I honestly have nothing but time on my hands lately," he said, chuckling. "It's been kind of...well, boring sometimes but freeing too. It's been awhile since I've had time to myself. Just to do nothing but navel gaze, if I want."

"You gotta find a hobby that's not purely getting shitfaced, my friend," Newt tells him, flashing a grin before holding up a finger to excuse himself so he can order.

The cashier doesn't even blink when he lists out the copious amounts of food he wants, just flatly delivers the cost and how long it'll be before the food's ready, which works just fine for Newt. Coop's way better at conversations, anyway.

"She said like, ten to fifteen minutes," Newt tells him, gesturing at a small table nearby. "I ordered us a couple sodas out of the fridge, too, if you wanna grab yours while we wait. But dude, okay, hobbies. I've been telling my BFF Chuck--don't tell him I called him that--we should be doing the same damn thing, but he keeps rejecting all of my ideas! What the hell is wrong with taking up like, baking? Right? Or knitting? We could save so much money on Christmas gifts if we just learned how to make a sweater. I'd make the ugliest ones, too, because it's not like they can be returned. The real gift would be for me because I'm the one they'd have it wear it for at least once."

"Hey, it's not the only thing I do," Coop protested though it was weak. He knew he did that a lot and he knew it was maybe getting to be a slight problem but he also thought he deserved to sow his wild oats after all the shit his life had thrown him.

"I helped out a friend with his dog and his robot the other day," Coop shared even though he knew that wasn't really a hobby. "And I'm thinking about getting a cat. I don't know if that's going to make me some crazy cat man but if it does, you should knit me a shawl so I can really get the persona going. I like to go all out when I do something."

All the talk about hobbies made Coop realize that he didn't really have a lot of them back home. Between prison and all the shit with the box, he hadn't much time to do anything but get kidnapped and steal things that he didn't want to steal. "I don't know if I'd be a great knitter."

"A dog and a robot," Newt repeats, arching a brow. "Okay, was the dog also a robot? Because a robot on its own, that's pretty freakin' awesome but just consider a dogbot. Is that not even cooler? Anyway, if you've never owned a cat before, don't do it, you don't even know what you're getting yourself into. They're demonic, dude, for real. My wife's friend disappeared from Darrow awhile back and for some goddamn reason, we inherited the guy's cat. His name is Cat."

Most days, Newt makes a habit of taunting Jeff with the cat, which is a hell of a lot more fun than being stared the hell down by some little shit he hadn't asked for in the first place.

"I could be a master knitter if I wanted to be," he says, narrowing his eyes in thought. "Yeah, I totally could. Little bit of effort, I could knit you your shawl plus little sweaters for what I'm hoping will be tons of dogs, not cats. It's okay if you have a lot of dogs, y'know? Having tons of cats makes you crazy but make 'em dogs, and you've turned yourself into a stud."

"The dog was not a robot, sadly," Coop told him with a shake of his head. Poe's dog had been pretty damn cute but he'd been flesh and blood, completely devoid of any circuits or wires or whatever else made Poe's robot work. "I bet Poe could probably get a robot dog if he wanted to but this one was named K-9 and he was pretty damn cute."

Coop found himself momentarily wondering how Poe's dog and robot were getting along after the initial friction. He made a mental note to himself to check in on that a little later.

"I almost want to dare you to knit me a shawl right now," Coop said though he didn't outright issue the dare. Newt sounded pretty confident about his knitting abilities and Coop was never one to turn down someone trying something they didn't know how to do just because they thought they could. "Winter's probably not long off and I could use a shawl, you know. It'd give you plenty of time to knit my shawl and sweaters for all the dogs that I could have by then."

"Well, fine," Newt answers defiantly, sitting up a little straighter in his chair. "I will knit you a shawl, a damn good one, too."

Whether or not that last part is going to be true could possibly be up for debate, but Newt will figure it out. Besides, this will totally give him the chance to like, expand his horizons or whatever. Bonus, if another kaiju louse ever drops out of the sky again, he'll be able to knit it a sweater of its own.

"If you ever meet Chuck," he adds, "don't tell him about this. Don't want him getting all jealous that I'm knitting another man a shawl."

Coop held up his hand and then crossed his heart over his shirt with one finger. "I promise that I will never mention this to anyone named Chuck. So far, you're lucky in that I haven't met anyone with that name so this'll remain a secret between the two of us."

Coop thought he might want to offer Newt something since Newt was going to help him with his phone and possibly knit him a cool shawl that he could wear during the winter (whether he was here or back home, he'd still wear it).

"My favorite color's are green and red," he teased, snickering. "Can I buy the food since you're gonna help me with my technology problems and create me something that I will wear until I die?"

"Already paid for," Newt says, waving off the offer. Not only is it true, but he'd literally just dared himself to knit this shawl, based on a dare Coop had only suggested. So really it's his own fault he's gotten himself into this mess, and he'd be more annoyed by it if he didn't think it'd be kind of fun.

Sure, Kate's going to walk into the condo one evening to find him swimming in yarn or wool or whatever the hell shawls are made out of and think he's been possessed by some kind of knitting demon--which probably exists somewhere in Darrow, now that he thinks about it--but in spite of all that, if the end result is an epic Christmas-colored shawl, he'll be satisfied with his work.

"But consider the colors noted, just be sure to remember you're promising to wear it forever. I mean, I won't let you forget but still. I should make you sign something in blood."

Their number gets called then, and Newt gets up to grab the several bags the cashier gives in before giving Coop a nod toward the door.

"Home's this way, and we're in a hurry. Mostly because I might just eat my way through these paper bags if we take our time."

Coop didn't say anything about how he'd broken contracts before, about how he'd signed things and slickly gotten out of agreements just by saying a few words or lifting a few important pieces of the contract and disposing of them in private. If Newt wanted him to sign something in blood, he'd do it but, if the contract got to be too much, he'd probably work himself out of it.

It was what he knew how to do. Steal things, lie, and get out of doing things he did not want to do. Everyone had to have a talent.

"You'll have to give me a break on days when it's like one hundred degrees or when I need to wash it," he joked. "No matter how nice this shawl is, no one's going to want me to wear it if it smells like sweat and feet."

He followed Newt out, falling into step with him and making sure not to dawdle. He didn't want to see Newt just sit down on the sidewalk and start eating if he could help it. A nice, air conditioned apartment would be more comfortable all around.

That's a fair point, and Newt's willing to concede to it so he nods as they head out the restaurant and back toward the condo.

"Okay, I'll accept those terms," he says, "but only because I don't want to have to knit you back-up shawls to make up for it. I don't have all the time in the world to be knitting you shit, y'know, I have a life. I have a wife. Things to do, places to go. Okay, scratch that last one because we like, literally cannot go to any other places but whatever. You get the point."

There's almost a skip in his step as they get ever closer to home, and Newt realizes it's kind of weird that he's bringing a rando to the condo but at the same time, he and Kate have always embraced the random. The epitome of this entire damn city is all about that and hell, it's not like Coop seems like much of a potential ax murderer. Granted, that's probably what all ax murderers' victims says; but he'll take his chances on this one.

"Okay, so word of warning, our dog Jeff likes to jump on anything that moves. Which is why Cat hates her so much. Cat is the devil, by the way, he's got a stare that I think would literally kill, given enough time. Just beware. On the plus side, I've got ice cold beer so I think that'll even things out."

"Not being able to leave is going to make wanting to take a vacation frigging hard," Coop said idly. He still didn't like to think too much about not being able to leave because it reminded him too much of Surf City, of walls that tried to look inviting but were suffocating and impenetrable. You could try and escape but you never ever succeeded. If you tried in Surf City, you were either tossed in solitary or beaten up. If you tried here, you just ended up looking stupid.

"Duly noted," Coop said, nodding once Newt had explained the chaos that he was about to meet. "A dog jumping on me's not going to be the worst thing to ever happen. I've had a lot worse things try and jump at me. Mostly they just ruin my shirt or get disappointed when I don't live up to their standards. I'll do my best to avoid a staring contest with Cat too. Wouldn't want to turn into stone. It'd really ruin my social life."

"Hey, there's always Kagura," Newt tells him. "Sure, it's only open like, half the year, and you never know if you're going to get snowed in... but it's the cloest thing to taking a vacation we can get in Darrow so I guess there's really no choice but to embrace it."

It doesn't take much longer to get to the condo, and Newt tugs his keys from the back pocket of his jeans. He pauses in front of the door, taking a deep breath because he knows what's coming. The fact that he's carrying a bag of food isn't going to help, not when he can already hear the scratching of paws against the door. "Here goes," he mutters under his breath and sure enough, the second he unlocks the door and nudges it open with his foot, Jeff springs at him with reckless abandon, rearing up on her hind legs and pawing at him, eager to know what's in the bag.

The only reason she gives up, he suspects, is because there's a new stranger to whine at, and he's admittedly grateful when Jeff seems to forget the smell of food in favor of investigating Coop instead.

"Don't let her stop you," Newt says, "come on in. And shut the door on the way, will ya?"

"It actually snows here?" There was absolutely no snow happening in Surf City or Los Angeles. Coop didn't know if it was just too hot, too close to the equator or if it was just sitting on the mouth of Hell but the closest they got was some very light frost maybe one a year. Other than that, they were lucky if the temperature dipped down below fifty degrees.

"Man, I haven't bought a winter jacket in decades," he remarked idly. Consumed with thoughts of snow, Coop fell quiet and followed Newt back to his house. Once they got there and were inside, Coop couldn't stop himself from crouching down and letting Jeff sniff him and paw at him.

"Hey man, you're a big guy," he cooed, giving Jeff's head a rub with one hand while he shut the door with the other. "I come in peace, I promise."

"Girl," Newt corrects, "and she doesn't come in peace, watch the slobber. Do you know how much time I've spent cleaning up dog slobber the last couple years? Too much, the answer is too much time."

He carries the bags into the living room, dropping them down on the coffee table and gets halfway through unpacking the food before getting distracted by the reminder that he's supposed to be fixing Coop's phone.

"Oh, dude, while you're dreaming about snow and anoraks, take the rest of this out, will ya? I'll grab a couple things for your phone, couple of beers, maybe Space Hospital will be on. We are in for an exciting afternoon."

"Don't worry, I once knew a guy who smelled like a literal swamp," Coop said, giving Jeff's head a few more strokes before straightening up and heading over to the coffee table. "You might think that that's not so bad, that getting a whiff of freshness all the time would be nice but it's not. Swamps are fucking terrible. Absolutely gross and it never went away. I could have sprayed him down with Febreeze for an hour and the smell wouldn't lessen."

Coop did not miss Rodney, not one bit. He hoped his cell mate was alive and doing well but Coop did not miss living with him twenty four hour a day seven days a week.

"Space Hospital, huh?" Coop said, taking the food carefully out of the bags and settling it neatly on the table. "Can't say I've watched too much television since I got here. Not unless you count late night infomercials."

"You haven't lived until you've seen Space Hospital," Newt calls from the hall as he rifles through what the hell ever they've been stacking up in the closet. He and Kate aren't lavish spenders, he doesn't know how half the shit they have even ended up in their apartment, but eventually, he finds what he's looking for.

"I wasn't big on soaps back in my world, even before the kaijus came along," he continues, heading back into the living room and plopping down on the couch with his adapter in hand. "But dude, this one is insane. It's like, mind-numbingly awful-slash-outrageously-good at the same time, I don't even know how to describe it. Total shitshow."

A total shitshow he will watch until the day he dies, though, if he's being real. Grabbing the switch, he turns the TV on, and it turns out to not be Space Hospital but that's probably for the best if he wants to actually focus on fixing the phone. He already has to balance that with eating, he'd be done for if the show came on; but there's still time. He'll find a way to introduce Coop to the beauty of space soaps eventually.

Coop took a seat next to Newt, kind of caught up with watching him eat and attempt to fix Coop's phone without missing a beat. Coop could multitask pretty damn well but this was a whole other level and Coop couldn't help but stare.

Realizing that staring was probably creepy when he'd just met Newt and Newt had invited him so kindly into his home, he shook his head and said, "Tell me honestly, Doc, is my phone gonna make it or am I going to have to subject myself to a trip to the mall wherein I stare at a wall of phones and let myself get talked into something expensive and flashy by a pretty salesperson?"

He gets unintentionally lost in his own world for a little bit, fiddling with the phone and adapter between quick bites of Thai, and he nearly startles at the sound of Coop's voice. If he's honest, Newt had kind of forgotten he had company for a second there.

"Well, that depends," Newt says, eyes flickering between Coop and the phone. "I'm about three seconds away from fixing it but if you want to go talk to someone pretty, I can just crush it with my foot right now." He pauses then, arching a brow in consideration. "Or I could fix it, and we could find you someone pretty to talk to anyway. That seems like the better plan."

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