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It's all-personnel-day in the Shatterdome because all PPDC-funding to the jaeger programme is finally being cut, and Pentecost has called an all day meeting for everyone on base in order to explain the situation for everyone and strengthen the team-spirit in the remaining personnel.
Everyone has been herded into the mess-hall and been fed a mediocre breakfast with mediocre coffee and now they’re all sitting on mediocre benches listening to people talk.
Pentecost himself has given a speech—which at least was not mediocre, because that man is just the definition of charisma—telling people they're free to go, but begging and encouraging those who are willing to to stay. Nobody left.
Later, there will be a team-building workshop.
To Newt, who’s sitting beside Hermann at the end of a table pushed far back to make room for extra chairs, this sounds like the worst thing that could ever happen to a human being.
We are the resistance, Pentecost has said more than once, and Newt has tried in vain to amuse himself by imagining the Marshal with a Princess Leia hair-do, and to take any kind of joy in being part of an actual anti-authoritarian movement. Ish.
No luck, though. It’s still the military.
On any other day, Newt might have been able to brush off sitting on a metal bench in a metal box as if it was nothing, but, as of now, he has not slept for 32 hours and counting, and so far no amount of food, coffee, or changed positions have brought him anything other than agony.
He wishes he was hungover. Wishes he was drunk. Wishes he was anywhere but here. Back in the lab, or, dare he even think it, safe in bed. Drunk and in bed, preferably.
Jesus Christ, he’s so tired. He leans forward, removes his glasses and buries his face in his hands.
Now ranger Hansen is talking about jaegers. Upgrades on jaegers. Technical fucking upgrades on jaegers.
Newt groans and rubs at his eyes.
He’s spent half the night applying for additional funding for K-sci, the other half furiously doing nitrogen isotope analysis on his latest kaiju blue samples, and the third half trying to piece together something positive to say when he’s inevitably going to get called upon, because the order to attend the Event today didn’t reach him before six pm, and there ought not be room for that many halves in one night, but Newt managed it, yeah he did, and now he can kind of hear colours, and it's not. fun.
He realises too late that he is not going to be able to open his eyes again. When he tries, his eyeballs strain, but his eyelids don’t even flutter, and his elbows glide, slowly, forward across the table.
Next to him, Hermann moves, and hisses something that sounds like ‘Newton!’ but Newt does not care about what Hermann thinks, not right now.
He bites down hard on his lower lip and tries to will himself upright. Tries not to as much as fantasise about giving in to oblivion, tries not to slip. If only Hansen would stop talking then he might—might not—m ig h t n o t f a l l
Newt jolts awake when a strong grip yanks him backwards by his collar, vertigo overwhelming him, he’s being strangled and—and—
Wait.
It's only Hermann.
Okay, okay, alright. It’s alright.
Hermann, looking, uh. Suspicious? Concerned? Hard to tell, without glasses. Hansen is still talking. Which means that Newt’s been out for a time interval ranging somewhere between one minute and four hours. Hermann lets go of Newt’s collar.
“If you were going to kill me, Hermann, couldn't you have done it before that totalitarian superman tried to bore me to death?” Newt slurs and fumbles his glasses back on his face, slumping against the table. “When are we up? I think maybe you should talk. I can taste sound. Hermann. Hermann. I’m… not feeling it at all. Can we please go? Back to the lab? Please? They don't care about the weather in the Anteverse, Hermann, nobody cares about the weather in the Anteverse, I don't care, and at this point it's all I’ve got, so please, can we—”
Newt registers that he is pleading at the same time he registers that his hands are fisted in Hermann's sweater, shaking slightly.
“Keep your voice down,” Hermann hisses and looks frantically around, apparently still concerned about appearances, of all fucking things he’s concerned about appearances, here at the end of the world. Newt strangles a scream.
“Pull yourself together,” Hermann whispers, and when he’s satisfied that no one is paying them any attention (of course no one's paying attention to them, Hermann should know better than to doubt the laws of nature), he gently unclenches Newt’s grip on his sweater and rubs his thumbs over Newt’s palms. An uncharacteristically affectionate gesture, sure, but Newt’s ready to roll with it.
“We’re making a short presentation in about an hour's time, and you are going to live. Newton, are you listening to me?”
“Mh-hmmm,” Newt says absently, licking his lips, straining to keep his eyes open. Hermann lets go of his left hand and pushes a half-drunk cup of coffee into it.
“You’re not listening. Terrific. Drink this, you lunatic. I promise we’ll leave after our talk.”
“ ‘s not a talk, ‘s a display of lousy inconclusive data that even the world's brightest minds have trouble interpreting, and also, nobody gives a fuck, all they want are fucking nuclear warheads and jaegers with giant guns, not an angry mathematician and a fainting biologist telling them about the chemical composition of the goddamn atmosphere on the kaiju planet, and so it's nothing but a waste of time, a waste of your time, of my time, of everyone’s time!”
Newt is aware that his voice is rising towards what some people might define as a screech, but at least he’s gaining momentum with the last spike of angry adrenaline shooting through his nervous system, and he’s focused again, hell to the yes, he’s—
“Care to share with the class, Dr. Geiszler?” a voice comes drawling through the hall, and Newt flinches at the same time as Hermann does. Hermann abruptly lets go of Newt’s hand and sits up straight, cold and rigid once again.
Well, fuck ‘im.
“Actually, yes, Herc, I do,” Newt says and knocks back the lukewarm coffee Hermann has given him, then slams the mug down on the table in front of him. “I’m sure all of you are having a blast at this—” he makes a vague, sweeping gesture with his right arm, “—this thing, but while we’re sitting here discussing how many extra arms we can haul out of the junkyard and weld onto some poor sucker’s neural pathways—my apologies, Sir—right now the kaiju are adapting, getting bigger, more toxic, and more efficient, and if the best idea we’ve got is to nuke the bastards, then we’re back at square one!”
Newt doesn’t know when he rose to his feet, or when he started yelling, for that matter. All he knows is that he’s angry, and that everyone is looking at him.
“Then what do you propose we do, Dr. Geiszler?” Pentecost’s voice booms at him, and Newt flinches again and looks at him, instead. “You are just as free to leave as everyone else.”
Someone yells fuck off, Geiszler! which is exactly what Newt intends to do.
“What I propose we do? I, for one, will be in my goddamn lab getting some actual work done, and then I’ll be sure to let all of you know when we have something substantial to tell you,” he says and stomps towards the nearest door. Before exiting the hall, he turns to see Hermann shaking his head with that sour, disapproving frown, and Newt rolls his eyes and slams the door behind him.
Furious energy fuels his trip back down to the lab, but as soon as the doors slide closed behind him it evaporates and fatigue hits him once more like a ton of bricks.
The lab is in a state, papers and samples and test tubes and data sheets and additional chalkboards (where does Hermann find them?) are cluttering the space entirely, and Newt has to relocate a 17 volume Treatise on Astronomy to the floor from where it was spread out on the couch before he can fall face first onto it (the couch, that is). One hour, that’s all he needs, just one hour’s recharge, and he’ll be back at work.
“Maybe not your sexiest moment, Dr. Geiszler,” he tells himself, wiping drool on the worn pillow and adjusting the position of his face, so his glasses are in less of a risk of breaking.
“What are they gonna do? Fire me? I doubt it,” he answers himself, split-seconds before all consciousness disappears.
He wakes with a full body jerk from a dream of thumbs caressing his palms, warm, disoriented, and literally in the dark. His first instinct is panic, and his second is flight, and it is not before he’s rolled over the edge of the couch and landed up on 17 volumes of Astronomy that he realises the cause of the darkness is nothing more than the fur-lined hood of some large green jacket smelling faintly of tobacco and sexual frustration having been draped over him.
“Fuck,” Newt says for the 800th time (probably) in a span of 48 hours.
“Shall I arrange a visit to the infirmary?” Hermann is, of course, right at hand to provide a sarcastic commentary on Newt’s wake up routine. Probably doing space-physics. Bastard.
“Fuck you,” Newt says, and wrestles the jacket off of himself. The ceiling looks blurry this morning. Or whatever time it is. “Am I fired?”
Hermann's face comes into view, upside down, and still frowning. “Don't be ridiculous,” he sneers.
“So I'm not fired? Is that why you look like someone nicked your entire stamp collection?”
Hermann scoffs and rolls his eyes. “I do not collect—was that supposed to be an insult? Please get a grip, Newton. I need you a little more up to snuff than that.”
Newt shrugs, and drags himself into a sitting position. Then he slumps against the couch.
“Coffee,” he says, and bores his face down into the fabric. He can usually deal with Hermann's resentment, but right now it makes him nauseous. Almost like he’s being stabbed. Emotionally, or whatever.
“The funding was approved,” Hermann says.
“Not funny, Hee-mann,” Newt says. “Can't you just leave a guy to orient himself in Astronomy for five fucking seconds?”
“Newton, you idiot, if you stopped whining, and for once in your life listened to anything other than your own voice, then perhaps you would not—”
“Shut up, you’re serious?” Newt snaps up to look Hermann in the face, and is presented with what actually looks like a smile. That can't be right. Maybe Newt is still dreaming. “They approved it? Already? Are you shitting me, dude? How long have I been out?”
“The email came twenty minutes ago. I took the liberty of responding, since you were… Inconvenienced,” Hermann says with a disgusted side-glance to the drool-mark Newt has left on the couch.
“Whatever,” Newt says. He’s still feeling nauseous, on top of being weary in his bones, but there are only so many hours in a day, and quite possibly, his days are numbered. “Back to work, then?”
Hermann rolls his eyes. “You should sleep, and perhaps shower, before you as much as look at a sample.”
“Meh, whatever,” Newt says again and stands up. Then he sways, but catches himself before he crashes face first into Hermann. “I’ll be fine. I’ll just order some standards with this sweet, sweet project-dough. I’m all out of two-oh-five lead, did you know?”
Hermann grunts and continues to glare daggers at him, but when Newt inevitably dozes off at his desk, Hermann walks by and pats him on the shoulder, mumbling ‘lunatic’ with a soothing edge to it.
So maybe it’s fine, after all.