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He’s never really had the chance to learn the ways of music, the signs and black curls on white paper, the theories; he lacks basic grammar for a language he’s only ever heard the way people breathe in secondhand smoke.
His mother, she used to be the real thing back when the whole of their lives didn’t revolve around fearing kaiju and fighting kaiju and dying at the hands of kaiju.
She’s taught Inigo how to dance in between battles and practice, smiled quietly to herself when he was handed a wooden stick for the first time and his steps followed a rhythm that had nothing to do with sparring.
“You’ve got a weird style going on,” Owain tells him after the fifth time Inigo has sent him landing with his back on the floor. They’re 5-7 with this and those are the first intelligible words Inigo’s heard him say since they’ve started. “I like it.”
What he says next is the actual deal though, the moment Inigo’s mother would make the melody do her bidding and the ground shake below her feet. The moment she would strike the kaiju right through the skull.
“Drift with me.”
Inigo falls flat for the eighth time.
.
His mother’s told him of the way orchestras sound when they’re getting ready for something, of how harmony is hardly as simple of a concept as people make it to be but rather something like a clash, like the mess hall when breakfast comes after a night with no drills.
The first drift with Owain feels exactly like that, the jaeger they’ve been assigned whirring and beeping around them, and Inigo’s breath catches for a split second as someone else’s life washes over him, his own washing over Owain.
Lissa’s eyes shine bright green in front of him, then the jaeger moves.
.
“You’re way easier to understand in the drift,” he whines as Owain goes on about heroes and destiny and other words Inigo’s not sure he’s ever heard before. Maybe they don’t even exist.
“Excuse you,” Owain retorts, eyes far too quick to find his, like he knew exactly where would they be (and maybe he does, maybe that’s the aftermath of giving yourself away like goodbye kisses). “It is clear that the issue lies within you, my friend, for my speech slashes through the ears of my comrades like a polished blade.”
“Oh my god.”
“And besides.” Now Owain’s putting on his best outraged expression, the words you fiend written all over his face. “You’re impossible in the drift.”
Coming from the guy who says his speech is like a polished blade (you’ve got the simile all wrong! he can hear Owain say inside his head, probably not a good sign) Inigo should probably take it as an insult, coming from his co-pilot he decides to listen.
“Really?” he asks, just a hue too self-conscious. He grits his teeth.
In the glow of the neon lights Owain softens as much as it takes for Inigo’s jaw to slack and his stomach to sink.
“There’s music everywhere,” he says. Inigo’s stomach sinks deeper.
Owain’s forehead is pressed against his own now, hands curled around his sides as Inigo leans back.
“I’ve been taught to be quiet when music speaks.”
.
Every inch of his body hurts, every inch of Owain’s too, the drift exploding in blotches of crude light in front of his eyes, their eyes; below them the kaiju howls its last breath at the night sky towering above.
Inigo thinks of nocturnes, of overseas melodies and his father’s fingers tapping on the table in front of him. A military base is no place to keep a piano after all.
“Chopin,” Owain says, and the next moment his end of the drift turns into a blur.
Inigo follows right after.
.
His dancing is imperfect, sometimes raw, fighting and instincts taking priority, taking over. Inigo takes note of every mistake he makes, knows the faltering and stammering of his legs, the flailing of his arms.
When he sees himself inside of Owain’s mind he can’t find any of that.
.
It’s a strange thing, knowing that Owain loves him and that he knows Inigo loves him back but never doing anything about it.
Because they’re at war, because kaiju keep slowly eating their world away and do not seem to stop, at all, because there’s no room for anything but blue blood raining down on them.
Because they’re both geniuses in the art of bullshit, though that’s just what Severa says.
(It’s not like she’s wrong, but the truth weighs less when it’s on someone else’s tongue.)
“You should start working on a routine for two.” Owain’s voice sounds unusually quiet, almost distant, like he’s trying to take a step back from his own words as soon as they leave his mouth. “So you can teach it to me the day this all ends.”
There’s no wondering if the day it all ends will really come, doubt squeezed out of their horizon for the time being, possibly till the next alarm goes off.
“You better not step on my feet,” Inigo says, and when Owain laughs it’s rock solid.