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Not every tattoo makes a scar.
People want to see them that way, those who balk and reject exactly what Newt's arms depict, those who even look close enough to notice. People want to think they are memorial, fucked up though that is, like Newt must have lost something to the kaiju that he needs to remember, something so lost that only their outlines can remind him.
But not every tattoo makes a scar—it takes a special kind of sadist, a really heavy-handed asshole of an artist to dig that deep. He's got a few like that, a few from before he found Lei, the Chinese woman who's now the only artist he'll go to. He's got a few like that, and he's not ashamed of any of his work, but he wishes he'd found her earlier. He wishes some of those early pieces hadn't hurt so much, been dug so deep into his skin.
The first few, they're the only ones you can feel. Raised lines on his upper arms—back when he thought this was something he could keep hidden—that swell and itch when the air gets humid. Raised lines that are always there, that Newt runs his hands over when he's lying in bed, trying to sleep through the racing thoughts and racing heart and shortened breath and everything. Runs his hands over them for the map they make, the outlines of giant beasts like bas-relief, like depictions and directions to whatever thing came alive in him—not when Trespasser attacked, not totally, but finally and firmly when Scissure stormed Sydney, when the world realized that this was it, this was really it.
Newt's never given a fuck about explaining what the tattoos mean, not really, but there have been girls and boys in bars and bedrooms—he'll brandish an arm and ask them to feel, point them straight to the map that points to something. Whatever this thing in him is. That move has been followed by fucking, more than once, but he hates to say it's gotten him laid. Hates it to seem like a tactic.
It's not a tactic.
It's not a tactic, it's a plea, and he puts it away when he meets Hermann. Puts away the t-shirts, the girls and boys in bars and bedrooms, puts away his desire. Tries to, at least. Puts away the idea, nagging at the back of his brain, that someone, someday, Hermann, maybe, or someone, will trace those tattoo scars all the way back to the moment he changed.
Not every tattoo makes a scar, not even most of his, and the few that do he hides away. For no one to touch, not anymore.