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It’s supposed to be nothing. It really, honest to God is, and Newt Geiszler has never believed in ‘nothing’ but this time, he has to. He has to because a blur on his MRI means nothing because the MRI machine is no better than the Pons machine he assembled from garbage. Outdated and outperformed by other tech but it’s all the ‘Dome could afford so that’s all there was to it. The fault of a machine was all the blur was, all the blur could be, because he was fine. Damaged eye and eyewear aside, he was okay. Decidedly okay. Determinedly okay because if he wasn’t, the last of the samples would go to rot and that’s all they had left of the beasts that tried to ravage the earth. The towering, glorious beasts that, on two occasions, he got special insight into.
If he doesn’t think enough, he’ll hear the faint buzz, damaged but undestroyed, in the back of his mind. If he doesn’t keep his eyes open, he’ll see blue behind the lids, an unnatural, stabbing blue that makes him cringe.
He still doesn’t hate the Kaiju. But there’s a shudder that runs down his spine whenever he gets in the shower, runs soap over ink. He tells himself it’s reverence and moves on.
He’s dissecting a sample now. And it’s important, it’s damn important because it’s one of the last he has, and he’s gotta get it stored away properly before it rots. But his vision is blurry and he tries to put that down to not enough sleep (if he sleeps he will dream and when he dreams he is part of the hivemind again and he will wake with red welps on his arms and blood trickling from his nose).He tells himself if he gets this last section done, he can break for mess hall, grab a cup of coffee or three. So he shakes his head, pops his neck, and tries to focus. Slice, shift, slice, shift, lift, turn, repeat. It’s going well. He’s managing.
And then a drop of red meets blue, and a god-awful hissing sound fills his ears as the blood bubbles from the acid his gloves are protecting him from.
"God motherfucking damn it shit,” he curses because he can. He rushes to try to cut away what’s contaminated, keep it from spreading but there are more drops and the more frantic he gets, the higher his voice gets as he spews profanity, the more he loses until he throws his scalpel somewhere behind him, throws his fist against the metal slab, curses some more.
”Newton, for heaven’s sake, will you stop your tantrum!”
Hermann, of course it has to be fucking Hermann, berating but with a furrow of concern on his brow and Newt doesn’t need concern because he is fucking fine, but he’s not because he can taste blood and that’s jarring enough to make him still. He almost reaches up with his gloved hand to touch, but he remembers the blue staining the material and quickly peels them off, dumps them in the biohazard bin. By the time he looks back up, refocuses on his surroundings, there’s a stark white handkerchief dangling in front of his face. An offering.
He almost feels bad when he snatches it, jams it against his nose and tips his head back. Seconds later, there is a hand on the back of his skull, gentle but firm as it tils his head down.
"You’ll choke on your own blood if you tilt your head back," Hermann informs him, removing his touch after a minute. A beat of silence, then, "I thought you said you were ‘checked out’ by Medical."
"I was," Newt tells him, looking up only to be huffed at.
"Keep your head down until it stops. If you were ‘checked out’, why are you currently staining my handkerchief?”
Because you offered it? Newt wants to snap, but it’s not Hermann’s fault. It’s not. It’s nobody’s fault because nothing is wrong. Nothing. Is. Wrong.
His silence is met with a sigh and a stony look. “I’m taking you back to Medical. Clearly, something is wrong.”
"No!" The loud cry is out before he can stop it , and his lab partner (Driftpartner) is taken aback.
"Newton, you need to go back. This—” Another sigh, long fingers through short hair. “This is not okay.”
"I’m fucking fine!" He takes Hermann’s handkerchief away from his face, tosses it to the ground, shoves away from Hermann and tries to control the shaking in his hands. He cannot come apart now.
But he is.
He’s coming apart, shaking and chest heaving. Nothing can be wrong because he just saved the world, he was a hero, a goddamn rockstar and he cannot die, he cannot be sick, not after that. He saw what happened to Pentecost, the nosebleeds, the pills. He knew the story, the exposure, what would’ve happened to him if he’d made it out of Striker Eureka. He knew and he was fucking terrified because he was only thirty-five, he was too goddamn young to die (hadn’t they all been?). He had work left to do, research left to complete, papers and grants and fame and he was going to lose it all.
But he wasn’t, because he was fine. Even if he had been screaming without realising. By the time he does, turns around, looks at Hermann, he realises a lot of things. The nosebleed had stopped but there was wetness on his cheeks now, and a hysterical laugh on his lips because he was losing his mind - losing his life - and he didn’t know how to stop it.
There’s something painfully akin to pity in Hermann’s eyes when he looks there, so he looks away quickly. That doesn’t stop the man from stepping closer, though, from resting a hand on his shoulder and whispering, “Newton. Newton, look at me.” Newt doesn’t want to look. He doesn’t want to see.
He looks. He looks and is met with brown eyes, one ringed with red. He is met with understanding and something that looks too much like love. It makes his heart break in his chest, shatter and fall to pieces and get sucked away into some void that he thought he’d lost a long time ago.
He’s pulled against a scrawny body, arms and a cane resting against his back. Thin lips meet the crown of his head and a low, accented voice murmurs, “Everything is going to be fine.”
He pulls back just enough to look up, meet those eyes again. The word “Promise?” is too high and too quiet and too scratchy but that’s okay, because he was soon met with an answering, “I promise.”
Hermann had always made promises he wasn’t able to keep. Newt didn’t care. It was something to believe and in some cases, a lie is better than nothing. He’d rather go out thinking it was gonna be okay than go out knowing what was waiting. So he leans up, closes the gap, and press, es his lips to Hermann’s. Because he can. Because maybe he won’t get another chance. Because ten years means something, and the Drift meant something, and by God, he needed it.
The kiss tastes like blood and tea and desperation, and it doesn’t even matter if teeth catch on lips or if glasses clack or noses bump. It doesn’t matter because they’re together, at the end of the end of the world. They made it. However briefly, they made it.
They make it back to Hermann’s quarters, barely. They’re both stumbling, Newt because he’s dizzy and Hermann because of his hip and back, but they make it. They make it to the bed, their clothes make it to the floor, and they are together. It’s fumbling and new but they learn each others bodies, ink and planes and gaps between and they are gasping, sweating, satiated and alive. Newt smiles. Hermann laughs. They’re both breathless, tangled in each other, giddy in having this, having each other. Giddy and exhausted, and soon they’re dozing off in each other’s arms. At peace.
Newt Geiszler has never been at peace for long.
Orgasmic haze cracks, shatters, Blue shining through. He wants to scream, wants to beg and plead with forces he can’t hope to understand, not even with his six degrees. He doubts pleading would help, though, even if he could when his lungs felt crushed, his vocal cords felt frayed. He is dragged down, down down down and through and he is gasping for air underwater, dying to scream as mental claws dig in, grasping and picking and ripping, trying to fathom out his secrets, whatisthiscreaturesmallstrangekilldestroydestroy and he is devoured.
He wakes screaming, shaking, can feel something in him snapping. His eye feels weird and he can’t think, can’t breathe, chest heaving and rattling and he cannot stop, he can’t stop, it’s out of his control and he can’t even claw at his arms, as if destroying the monsters inked there could destroy the ones that destroyed him. He can only twitch and jerk and choke.
He is breaking. He is coming apart and there is something wet on his upper lip, copper on his tongue, a spreading warmth between his legs and he is shaking out of his body, thrashing wildly and it is wrongwrongwrong and his head is going to explode and Hermann is there, “Newton, Liebling, it’ll be alright, everything is going to be fine, Newton, Newt, Newt please, can you hear me? Newt-” And there is fear in his voice, fear so visceral it’s nearly tangible, hanging in the air with the smell of blood and piss and he is quaking and he is—
g
o
n
e.
He doesn’t hear it because his chest has stilled and his brain is officially offline for good, but in the metal walls of what could have been their room, there is a quiet, strangled sound. There is something that could be a sob. There are tears and blood and sweat and piss and inked skin that, within hours, will be ice cold. And there is a man with striped pyjamas and a shitty past who has tears on his cheek and a name on his lips.
Days later, there is a large gravestone in a quiet cemetery. Months later, another name is added, because the quiet is not quite so bad with two.