Chapter Text
Newt woke suddenly from dreams tinted blue, wading through emotions that didn't belong to him, but felt like his. This phenomenon was not new; it had been like this for weeks. Each new morning he would wake in a bed that didn't fit the consuming nostalgia and grief he felt which are not his own and yet fill him, dragging him into unwanted wakefulness, and he would know a little too much about Physics or Math or English boarding school.
Rubbing his eyes, he rolled over on the stiff cot bed, and yeah, he should probably find a better mattress now that the world isn't actively ending if he wants any relief from his damn aching leg. But that pain didn't belong to him did it? It felt familiar and constant, but the sharpness of the pain is softened by the blue edge of that place in his thoughts at the back of his mind; the part belonging to Hermann.
The thought of his grouchy partner filled him with a new wave of sadness as opened his eyes to the decidedly not blue room he occupied. His walls memorialized his life through rows of movie posters from his twenties, and his dresser held his only lasting relic from his years at MIT; his Godzilla alarm clock which he was given when he started at 14 years old. It had followed him through every move, from apartment to apartment to residency to each proceeding Shatterdome as the world threatened to end. Now it sat atop his PPDC issued dresser and taunted him cruelly by displaying the entirely unhelpful god-awful morning time with far too much cheerfulness. 3 AM. God…
Hermann still slept, Newt knew. The itch at the back of his mind that had lived there since the Drift was quiet, but still achingly blue, and full of… Music?
The dream came back to him in a shaky series of images and impressions, like someone tried to make a video out of an extremely outdated film camera, and were running the film rapidly in front of his eyes. And yup, definitely weird that he could tell at any given moment where Hermann was or if he was actively conscious or not. Newt sighed. Oh well, it didn't change the damn music stuck in his head that he didn't even like before the drift.
He knew Hermann liked piano but he didn't know he could like play Beethoven with relative ease, and God, having the piano under those boxes in the lab was such a waste!
Standing, he pulled on an old, not too kaiju stained t-shirt and a pair of grey, Government Issue PJ pants. He cracked his neck to each side and found himself creeping out of the bedroom door and straight into the dimly lit, and currently silent shared lab.
Newt had a hypothesis he needed to test now because yeah, he can play four instruments proficiently and had been in a Band for crying out loud, but he never felt so desperate to play the piano as he did right in that moment, especially Beethoven, like what was with Hermann and Beethoven man?
Anyways he was pretty sure that the weird Drift-dreaming he had just been doing may have taught him how to play classical music on the piano, like, sure it helped that he had a photographic memory, and had just seen himself playing Moonlight Sonata with no mistakes through Hermann’s eyes, and yeah, apparently Drifting makes you into a pretty intense creeper, what’s with that?
But dammit, he has to play… for science.
And maybe also a little bit for the ache of nostalgia and grief filling his thoracic cavity and the blue edge of his consciousness, where Hermann was sleeping.
So he bee-lined it straight to the pile of boxes he knows is hiding his third most prized possession in the corner of the lab, behind Hermann’s chalkboards.
We wasted no time in clearing the boxes away and pulling the (thankfully wheeled) piano away from where it was pressed against the wall, before sitting on its bench and gently resting his fingers on the ivory. He let out a breath.
Closing his eyes he could see the keys being struck by fingers longer, thinner and younger than his own, and let his own follow their lead, replicating their easy movement over the ivory. The slow tune filled the lab and Newt opened his eyes to the keys. The song was familiar to his hands, but he was sure he never played it before. He is a rock star after all, not some lame ass classical buff. And yet it was comfortable, it felt so natural to follow the progression of keys he had memorized by watching Hermann’s young hands in his dream. Jesus he had barely been 9 years old and could play so well, but Newt knew also the drive to be something his parents could be proud of, and he knew how hard Hermann pushed himself to get to this point. He knew the desperate sadness Hermann had felt when he realized that nothing he did would be enough. His eyes flickered shut again and he once more let the liquid blue feelings fill his chest. It was almost too much. A rush of fondness not his own flooded him. He sighed and played more deliberately. A familiar and yet strange memory of a notebook filled with piano music filled his vision.
Beethoven’s moonlight sonata 1st movement
Newt chuckled to himself; eyes still fixed shut so as to watch the dream-like movement of fingers gently caressing the worn pages, flipping through them quietly. The memory faded as an empty page was reached, and a black pen, held in not-his-hand touched down softly to draw a new bar.
The warmth and comfort following that thought made Newt want to cry. But crying is definitely not what he was doing. Nope. Never. He’s a rockstar; rockstars don’t cry. He bit his lip and gave up trying to sort through the rush of emotions. Shoving those emotions back into the corner of his mind labeled “Hermann,” he let his fingers still, leaving the movement unfinished.
The heavy click of a door shutting snapped him out of his reverie, and he jumped away from the piano, looking around frantically, seeing nothing but an empty lab, his open door, and Hermann’s closed one beside it.
There was a feeling like oil on water for a moment, where Newt could feel his own heartbeat overlaying that of a certain German scientist who was definitely not in the room, and whose heart was definitely beating too fast.
The feeling was gone a second later, but Newt was left with the strange sense of needing to catch his breath.