”Whoa, you still speakin’ English?” Raleigh teases, but there’s no maliciousness embedded in his words or tone; he was trying to cheer Newt up the only way he knew how. Seriously, though, Raleigh could listen to what Newt was saying and hear him out, but that didn’t mean that he could understand it. His brain capacity wasn’t capable of withholding so much information — whether it be about Kaijus, ammonia, disgusting smoothies, or pancakes.
He had a craving for some pancakes, don’t judge.
”Yeah, I think you’re going’ta need some checkups,” Raleigh says, squinting at the clipboard above Newt’s bed that held some information; he couldn’t really read it, though — the handwriting was atrocious. After trying to evolve into a higher form of species trying to read what he couldn’t, Raleigh gives up and heads back to the chair his ass had been cozy friends with for hours.
And to think that this all came from a conversation about coffee. He was feeling a little guilty, now; although Newt had said that coffee wasn’t enough to take him down, the timing was pretty vague. Raleigh had no idea if his coffee made Newt’s condition even worse.
”Try’ta sleep, okay? I dunno about how medical works, but if they need you awake, they’ll get you awake. Take it from me: sleep is precious and definitely not for the weak,” he says, and gives a slight salute, a soft smile on his features, “—you did good. Let PPDC take care of you for a while.”
His eyebrow creased downward slightly, in silent rebuttal at the teasing statement. all the same, he’d think of some bad jokes to tell Raleigh in the future, when he wasn’t so brain dead or felt so shitty. He probably looked the part too. Newt hadn’t even shaved for days, maybe he should just grow a beard, it would certainly save time shaving after all.
He shut his eyes and nodded at Raleigh’s advice, mumbling an “okay” when needed. Smiling at the praise, he replied with a “You too.” That sounded like a great idea, getting taken care of, and sleeping. Yeah, sleep sounded great right about now.
Newt opened an eye, and looked at the Ranger. Was Raleigh still staying? He didn’t want to ask for fear of offending him, or giving Raleigh the impression that Newt didn’t want him here, because it was the exact opposite. That chair didn’t look that comfortable for sleeping in though… Maybe he could ask for a cot, or go back to his room, it was probably around night time anyway. Which was why the doctors didn’t hound him when he first woke, that or they thought he needed the rest more than they needed to do tests.
Newt closed eyes once more, letting his mind shutdown, clearing it off anything and everything — science could wait, his experiments could wait, and he deserved a break — before drifting off to sleep.
”Science isn’t a very good excuse, Newt,” he says, shaking his head. Seriously, this man — he was going to get hurt bad someday, and Raleigh could see it in the near future. But he understood; maybe cautiousness wasn’t one of his strongest suits.
Man, he was talking about the Kaiju smoothie again. Raleigh had no idea how he was so attached to his job; but then again, maybe he was the one with the wrong mentality going into his work. If Newt wanted to worry about his Kaiju cocktail missing its necessary dousing of ammonia, he’d let him. It wasn’t very healthy, though.
Raleigh just digs his knuckles into the hollows of his eyes, grateful that he’d been able to get some shut-eye before he’d been awoken. He didn’t mind all that much, though — too much sleep would probably net him a headache. “Don’t worry, I covered it with the, uh, lid,” he says, eyes narrowing as he tries to remember everything, “—and besides, you added the ammonia before your little tumble, didn’t you?”
To be honest, Raleigh’s first rush was to get Newt to medical; but before he’d done so, he’d actually shoved the damn smoothie into the freezer. He had no idea how that was supposed to work, but smoothies were supposed to be chilled and frozen, right? His thinking had saved the day. Right?
”Don’t worry about the smoothie, buddy; it’s chillin’ and rearing’ta go,” he says, and tucks the edges of the blanket under Newt so that he was cocooned like a larvae, “—and I know that people’s lives depend on you, Newt, but if you do somethin’ like this again and you don’t get to the medical in time, then we could lose you. Ammonia isn’t so good for the health, or so I hear.”
Raleigh licks his lips, wondering if there was an easier way to put it ( in layman’s terms ), “—if you take a nasty tumble and it takes weeks for you’ta get out’ta these doctors’ care, then I’m just sayin’ that it’s that long that you’re out for that PPDC doesn’t have you’ta keep things running in the lab. Understanding me?”
Science was a perfectly good excuse in his book, but he had Raleigh’s concern, so yeah, he ought to listen to Raleigh. Newt pulled his spectacles off his face and folded them before settling them on the table. He rubbed his eyes a few times, subconsciously following Raleigh’s actions. Psychology and all that: See someone yawn? You yawn too.
He breathed a sigh of relief, “Well, I did add some but not too much because it would change the chemical composition of the mixture. You’re supposed to chuck the whole bottle into a tank of ammonia, if that’s possible. I don’t usually need it to be preserved in this condition. But I think it’d do… Thanks again.” There was never a need to preserve it because he would have been there to finish what he was supposed to do. Dumping ammonia into it would cause scientific inaccuracies so the only solution was to dump it in ammonia instead. Neither sounded really proper, if he was honest with himself. Then again, half of the time he was making stuff up as he went along, Kaiju science being a new field, and Newt heading that field and all.
Newt nodded, feeling like a kid again. After all, the scientist certainly didn’t want that. Sure days away from Hermann would be a welcome change but then he’d have to settle for medical doctors and being confined to this bed. Yeah, the odds weren’t in his favour. We could lose you. Well if Raleigh put it like that, sure he didn’t want to die. Though he almost did when he drifting with that brain the first time. Maybe he needed to take the recklessness down a notch, or a couple, if his past actions and consequences were anything to go by.
“Are the doctors going to run those tests soon, or after I fall asleep? I’m pretty sure they would want to give me and MRI at least…” He yawned, breaking his sentence. Newt didn’t want to fall asleep again, but he knew he needed the rest and that the doctors had to scan his brain for any damages that he’d inadvertently inflicted onto it. He would probably fidget a lot if he was confined to machine for prolonged periods so time, so for him to be asleep for it would probably be best.
Raleigh’d just rushed into medical, surprising ( and amusing ) all the staff, before shoving Newt towards a doctor; he himself was being ushered to a chair not too long after, probably because he was continuously ranting about ‘passed out after talking about kaiju smoothies’. He was pretty thankful that they hadn’t assigned a psychiatrist to him, or something drastic like that.
If Raleigh was to be subjected to a psychologistical test, he probably couldn’t pass it; although he buried his ghosts and demons deep within himself, he wasn’t going to be able to watch them come up again. So it was a good thing, he decided, that he shut up and fell asleep after a panic-induced adrenaline rush.
A quiet noise alerts him; he’s not a very good friend with sleep, and he feels it running away from his grasp. He wants to hold onto it, however momentary, and is pleasantly surprised when he feels his body loosen into another bout of lethargy.
Sleep eludes him immediately and painfully when he hears something clatter to the floor and leak water across his feet. Raleigh’s eyes snap open, and for a moment, he needs to remind himself that he’s not on the shores of Anchorage, having solo-piloted a mangled Gipsy after losing his brother. The water was just from a cup, having spilled after someone tipped it over.
His gaze follows the trail of water to a hand, to a body, and then he remembers Newt. “The hell are you doing? You’re supposed’ta be staying in bed, buddy.” His eyebrows crease, and he stands up, shaking off sleep from his limbs as he pushes the other down with a gentle hand, before pulling over the soft comforters above Newt’s shoulders. “Doc’s orders.”
Newton’s body went willingly against the hand on his shoulder, head falling back onto the pillow, before he found himself getting wrapped up in the blanket. This was… actually quite nice. Right, Raleigh was talking to him, he was still dizzy from the — whatever the hell that was, not to mention the amount of work he had to do, and Raleigh’s admittedly really distracting hand on his person.
“Uh… but science.” Newt blinked, that wasn’t what he was supposed say. Man, how scatterbrained was he? “The blended Kaiju, it needs to be frozen in ammonia. It can’t stay out for long.” There, that was a coherent sentence. He hoped Raleigh managed to at least not leave it lying out there in the open. Firstly, it would probably start decomposing and then the whole lab would stink. Hermann would have a fit, (if he managed to survive the toxic air.)
He closed his eyes, not realising that he was that tired. Granted, he’d been working for 3 days straight so there was that, and probably only had a meal or two, Newt couldn’t for the life of him remember. The scientist did munched on some of those energy bars that he had stashed in his drawers so that was something. He mumbled out, “Lives are depending on me, ya’ know?” The thing was Raleigh did know, he’d been a Ranger, and lives — the whole world did depend on him. When he threw himself into the Breach and almost didn’t make it, or the countless other times he fought the Kaiju.
Newt opened his eyes suddenly, questioning, “You’ve been here the whole time?” Wow, that was… he didn’t think that anyone except his family that had done that for him before. “Thanks. For everything, I guess.” For carrying him up to medical and staying with him while he slept, not to mention even giving him the time of day in the first place.
Raleigh soon realizes that he couldn’t get through to Newt; and although worries pile themselves on the tip of his tongue, he decides to let the topic drop. Instead, he leans heavily against the cement wall, crossing his arms with ease. When Newt blends together the Kaiju pieces, he looks away — he really didn’t need any more nightmare pieces necessary in his head. He’d been blessed and cursed with creativity, it seemed.
”———that’s disgusting,” Raleigh comments, shaking his head; seriously, who thought that Kaiju pieces were a delicacy. Raleigh’d looked at people ( with sheer confusion ) who enjoyed snails as a delicacy, but Kaiju? That was a bit too much. He gives a slight shudder, glancing at the multicolored mixture with both revulsion and distaste. The cup — labeled ‘not for drinking’, — was a nice touch. Very fitting.
Newt starts to act a little weird; he gives a slight sway, and Raleigh’s inner alarm starts to reverberate inside of his head. “Hey, he starts, brows furrowed; he agrees to look at the slide with a nod of his head, but his focus is on something else entirely. When Newt drops, Raleigh’s at his side in a second, arms flexing to catch the dropping scientist with surprisingly quick reflexes.
”———sh—,” he can’t even finish his sentence; instead of wasting any more time, he just bends down to get a little bit of leverage, lifting him up and over his shoulder. Gritting his teeth, he shoulders his way through the door and half-runs, half-limps to the medical.
He came to, jolting awake in a white bed, eyes unfocused on white walls, illuminated by a dim light. Wha — What happened? Where was he? Right, white walls and bed. Probably medical. Somehow even in a base like this the medical department had to look like a hospital. Newt figured it probably had to do with giving patients a sense of recognition or something of the sort. He’d attended a course in Psychology during his years at MIT because he had some free time to kill and it’d been surprisingly useful.
Newt blinked, turning to find his spectacles, before his eyes landed on Raleigh. Raleigh who was asleep in the chair beside him. Frowning, he remembered the events that had occurred. He can’t believe he fainted in front of Raleigh. Had the Ranger carried him to medical? ”Jesus —" He exclaimed and flushed in embarrassment. He’d have to thank Raleigh for that though. Shit — Did he wake Raleigh up with that noise? Newt hoped not.
He turned to the bedside table, finding his glasses there. Putting them on the bridge of his nose, he’d moved to pull the blanket off himself. His experiments were still running! Newt had to stop them, or be there to track the results in person. In fact, if it had been whole hours the blended Kaiju wouldn’t be that well off. Sure he had added ammonia to increase the shelf life of it but he didn’t account for himself fainting.
Hauling his legs to the side of the bed that was not next to Raleigh, he attempted to pushing himself out of bed when he slipped, and knocked over the plastic cup of water that had been on the table. Crap. Newt hadn’t realised that he was that dizzy. Maybe Raleigh had been right. Speaking of — he was certain that if his first actions hadn’t woke Raleigh up then his latest stunt would.
”I wouldn’t be surprised if the coffee had something’ta do with it, actually. Are you sure you’re okay? I mean, Mako and I were checked over at medical, but were you?” He pauses, giving Newt a thorough look-over; he looked worse for wear, and he definitely had better days. Raleigh winced sympathetically; seriously, the guy had neverending nosebleeds and frequent passing-out spells. He needed some help.
”————hey, man, get yourself to med, alright? You were the idiot that drifted with a Kaiju brain, y’know? I mean, I know you did it for the science, but…”
Raleigh had no idea on what he’d do if Newt actually passed out on him, right then and there. He’d probably stare at the limp form for far too long, then probably try and force himself out of his stupid stupor so he could get both of their asses to medical. It’d be a mess, is what he was trying to tell himself.
At the show of the ‘Kaiju smoothie’, Raleigh couldn’t help but to show a deep grimace and a slight gag. Seriously, what the hell even was that? Who in their right mind would want to get themselves a nice, nutricious Kaiju smoothie? It was all so messed up. But Raleigh had time to kill, and he wasn’t going to get himself to sleep anytime soon, so he opens the blender lid and stares inside.
”————please tell me that this isn’t for consumption.”
“Never better. Well probably I did have better days but blah — I’m fine. It wasn’t just for science! I had to prove Hermann wrong! And save the world, obviously. If you’d went and deploy the bomb without my knowledge you would have died. And we would have been no closer to solving the Kaiju problem. So, I can’t make any promises though. Now that there’s no need for Kaiju dissecting, I’ve got to focus on some other things, I’ve got to do something.” Newt wasn’t one to sit around and do nothing, and the most effective way of doing nothing was going to medical and getting himself checked out. He’d be sitting there for hours and getting tests done. He had to feel needed, wanted, and to be wanted he had to be doing science for the PPDC.
“No no, of course not. That would just be crazy. Granted that’s a relative term and probably everyone thinks I’m crazy so…” Newt poured the blended alien bits into a cup labelled ‘Not for drinking!’ and refilled the blender with more parts before starting it again. “It’s for the Kaiju Blue experiment that I’m working on. Like you know, when scientists blend bugs to check their contents out? Yeah… though there are people who eat bugs so not a good example… Then again, there are people who consider Kaiju a delicacy.”
He smeared a bit of the Kaiju puree on a microscopic slide, and pressed another glass slide over it. Newt adjusted it properly before placing it under the microscope for viewing. “Hmmm… that’s weird. Everything’s blurry.” He adjusted the focus knobs on the side, trying to get the focal point right, but it only made things blurrier. “Hey, can you take a look at this?” The scientist turned to Raleigh for his opinion when he noticed that Raleigh was blurry too. That’s weird, Raleigh’s all blurry too. Funny. It probably wasn’t his glasses right? Right?! “Oh — ” Newt crumpled to the floor and lost consciousness.
”Bromantically, nice,” Raleigh says, lips twitching upwards in a smile. Seriously, where did this guy get half of his lingo? Shaking his head, Raleigh just looks around the lab, trying to wrap his mind around the sheer amount of information that flashes on the LED panels. Even after Operation Pitfall ( and its wins and losses ), the lab was still so busy.
He was, however, very glad to see that Newt enjoyed his cookie. He’d received it from one of the nicer cooks, who’d decided that a batch of cookies would be welcome to the remaining workers. They were, of course, correct. Raleigh’d barely had time to stick his head into the cafeteria before they were almost gone.
At his question, Raleigh pauses; in all honesty, he’d just been wandering. He’d been having trouble sleeping, again, and his insomnia just wasn’t letting up. And that wasn’t it, either — he’d been having some odd urges to take naps during the day; and when he did, he really couldn’t get his eyes to close at night.
”——just, uh, wandering around,” he says, in all honesty, curling a hand at the back fo his head and sifting through his hair. “And besides, I thought that this place was pretty cool. Still up and runnin’, even after we canceled the apocalypse, and all that.” And yet, he doesn’t feel all that victorious when he considers all that they’ve lost.
”Hey, you probably want’ta take it slow on the caffeine, there. Seriously. I don’t want you’ta pass out, or something.”
“Uh…yeah.” Newt nodded furiously. Moving along…
“Nah, I probably wouldn’t pass out, coffee’s meant to keep you awake. Not dead.” He said as he drank the coffee, trying to down it without burning his tongue. “And if I do pass out, it’s probably nothing to do with the coffee but rather the drifting with the Kaiju thing. Happened once or twice already I think, I don’t know, can’t remember.”
He was pretty sure he fainted in his food once. But like he said, more important matters than the after effects of drifting with a Kaiju. Like figuring out how to save people from Kaiju Blue… Newt bit on the cookie and sipped the coffee again, enjoying the texture of the cookie and hot liquid as they went down his throat. Placing the cookie on the rim of the cup he turned back to the pilot.
“Yeah, like I said, things to do and all that. Wandering around huh, I guess you don’t have much to do now right? Wanna help me with these?” He gestured to the pieces of dead Kaiju on the table and then to the blender. “Kaiju smoothie.” Newt explained, not that he was going to drink it, though people did drink it, those people who bought Kaiju parts from Hannibal. It was for purely scientific purposes. He probably should had not started with those two words, not really conducive for not scaring Raleigh off.
Huh. It seemed as if this guy had the world on his shoulders. Compared to Newt, Raleigh felt as if he did nothing. Going into a Jaeger took courage, sure. But when you were up against a mean, crude sort of monster that took more than just artillery to bring down, courage sure felt like stupidity.
But Raleigh’d never say that to anyone.
He’s a little worried about Newt’s frequent nosebleeds, though. The guy seemed to have it periodically. He sucks at the back of his teeth momentarily, before offering the cup of huge coffee towards Newt’s direction along with a cookie on the side.
”———nah, man, I’m offerin’ it’ta my Jaeger,” Raleigh says, shaking his head; but the smile is on his face, and it looks as if it’ll stay. “‘course it’s for you. You need it bad, don’t’cha? ‘sides, coffee and I don’t really mix, anyway.”
“Cookie. Thanks. I love you man.” He beamed at Raleigh and accepted the treats. He chomped on the cookie before correcting, “I mean bromantically, yes.” Shut up, Newt. Jesus, he could never shut up or say anything right in front of Raleigh. ‘Two thousand five hundred tons of awesome’ in front of the guy whose brother was killed by a Kaiju. Way to go, Newt.
The coffee probably wasn’t a good thing though, the scientist was already high on adrenaline from the lack of sleep. Which should be worrying but Newt was too busy for such trivial matters. Hey, he didn’t even get his brain checked out. Well, he’d been meaning to, but he’d been too busy.
“What brings you here anyway?” Newt made a face, adjusting his glasses. Raleigh probably had not much business here, or in the Shatterdome really, now that the world was saved. Not that Raleigh had anywhere to go, so he heard, last known residence was at the anti-Kaiju wall. At least he didn’t say all of that aloud. Newt was glad the Ranger stayed though.
[ he raises an eyebrow, staring at the rather eccentric scientist ( who was way too unhealthily obsessed with kaijus for his own good ) with a slight twitch of his lips. ]
”———yeah, man, coffee. I’m not going’ta drink it, so I guess you can have it. Looks like you need it. Bad.”
“Hey, even though the world’s not ending, well… not as soon as before, because nuclear fallout and Kaiju Blue is still pretty damaging to the world, not to mention world hunger and diseases, there’s still work to be done, Kaiju corpses to examine. So yes, I haven’t slept in days and of course I need coffee…”
Newt paused, and adjusted the tissue in his nostril. Yeah, he still had nosebleeds from time to time.
“Wait, you’re offering it to me?” He asked, shocked.
