Chapter Text
1.
He wasn’t sure when the dreams started, only when they started to get worse. They had a running theme. Darkness, coldness, pressure. Unbelievable pressure. He moved slowly through the crushing dark, blind and…not quite afraid. Wary, that was the feeling. Wariness of his surroundings as he wandered, lost and alone. And the silence, the maddening silence. He wanted to claw at his head and cry out when the silence pressed down on him, suffocating. He raised his head and stared up into the starless dark, opening his mouth and screaming-
“HFFGH!”
Newt rolled off his bed and onto the floor, clipping his head on the way down on the nightstand. He groaned miserably and curled up into a tight ball, pressing a hand to the throbbing lump he could almost feel rise under his palm. There was a sharp rapping on his door.
“S’open.”
Gottlieb poked his head into the room with his face fixed in a scowl. He always had a look of moderate bitter annoyance, but at two in the morning it had sharpened to murderous levels.
“I trust you’re aware of the time.”
“I’m fine, thank you for your concern,” Newt said, rolling onto his stomach and pushing himself up to kneel. “I’m touched, Hermann. Thank you.”
“Yes, yes,” Gottlieb said dismissively, limping into the room and hoisting Newt up by his arm, pushing him indelicately onto the bed. Newt fell back and lay staring up at the ceiling, crushing his hands against his eyes. Between the knock to the head and the lingering fragments of nightmare, he was exhausted to the core.
“I feel like shit.”
“Well, if you would stop imbibing those disgusting energy drinks of yours an hour before you go to bed, I’m fairly certain your repose wouldn’t be as disturbed.”
“Jesus, was that even a real sentence? Are you just stringing big words together because they sound nice?”
Newt sat up, pulling his blankets around him like a cloak. He grimaced as he felt how sweat-soaked they were and flung them off, and they slid off his bed in a tangle. He was aware of Gottlieb observing him and he glanced up in annoyance. He was surprised to see the man looking almost concerned.
“You do look a bit ill.”
“Bad dream, that’s all,” Newt said. “I’m fine. Why are you even still in here?”
Gottlieb’s concern fell away at once, and he turned clumsily on his heel.
“Well, forgive me for having some thought for a colleague’s welfare,” he snapped. “If you go into convulsions, do try to keep it down.”
“Good night, Hermann,” Newt called as the bedroom door slammed shut. He fell back onto the bed, staring at the featureless ceiling. He rubbed at his eyes until they started to ache too, adding to the pain until it felt like his head was going to burst.
Picking the blankets up off the floor, Newt wrapped himself up tightly and tried to go back to sleep.
“With the Breach sealed at last in a daring final act against the kaiju threat, many people are now wondering – where do we go from here? The global economy, in shambles from years of funding projects such as the Jaeger program, faces the daunting challenge of reaching stability in a post-war world-“
The television droned on and Newt barely paid it any attention, sipping at coffee so burnt and bitter it would have been more refreshing to chew on a charcoal briquette.
“You need to stop making breakfast,” he said to Gottlieb. The man gave him a disdainful look, pushing a plate of toast and eggs at him.
“If you’d take a turn cooking, you wouldn’t have to suffer through my attempts,” he said. “Eat your eggs, you look peaky.”
“Don’t mother me, Hermann,” Newt groaned, pressing the warm mug against his temple. The heat soothed his lingering headache. “I literally don’t have the strength to deal with you today.”
“So then the lab will be a place of peace and silence,” Gottlieb replied dryly. “I may even be able to work without interruption from you every five minutes.”
“Work,” Newt echoed sourly. “What work? The Throat’s collapsed, the kaiju are gone. They’ll be packing us up and off-base soon enough.”
Gottlieb eased himself into the chair opposite Newt, shoveling food into his mouth.
“Packing you up, perhaps,” he said around a mouthful of eggs. “Not much need for an expert whose subjects of study have been effectively burnt to dust by atomic fire.”
“Don’t be poetic. I will pay you ten bucks right now to stop being poetic.”
Gottlieb paused mid-bite, lowering his fork as he regarded Newt. His eyes narrowed and a shade of the concern he’d shown earlier flickered over his face again.
“Newton, you really do look ill. Is there…something wrong? You can tell me. I’ll barely ridicule you at all.”
Newt smiled unexpectedly, shifting the coffee mug against his temples. No matter how belligerent they behaved towards one another, that tenuous initial thread of respect had grown into something stronger after Drifting together. However brief and painful it had been, it had changed something between them.
“Do you…dream, about it? Everything that’s happened?”
Gottlieb toyed with his food absently.
“It is hard to live in the conditions we have and not carry some of the weight beyond waking hours,” he said eventually. “The death, destruction, the constant fear…one would have to be as a stone, not to be troubled by it. Stronger constitutions than mine have been broken by this war.”
“Yeah, but…” Newt sighed, setting his mug down. He watched a thin ribbon of steam curl into the air, and tried to ignore the subtle headache that had firmly settled itself behind his eyes. “I mean…the Drift. The memories we shared with each other. The…the kaiju’s.”
“I do,” Gottlieb admitted, sounding uncomfortable. “Though my dreams are of no great consequence. Fragments of memories, impressions. Yours, mainly.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Mostly how you attended protests during university to better ingratiate yourself with the fairer sex,” Gottlieb said dryly. “Though I don’t seem to recollect any such endeavors actually succeeding.”
Newt shrugged gamely, grinning.
“You can’t blame me for trying.”
“Insufferable. Absolutely insufferable.”
They finished breakfast in companionable silence, and Newt, without a single complaint, finished all his coffee.