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The main upstairs hallway in Otowakan is strangely quiet, and while that fact would usually be cause for celebration for one Franz Peter Schubert, this afternoon something feels too still. Oh, the birds still chirp, the wind still rustles in the trees, and he can still hear a faint cacophony off in the distance (which suggests Mozart is continuing to make a public nuisance of himself); rather, it’s the lack of one person in particular putting Franz on edge. He hesitates outside the room, Beethoven’s room, leaning awkwardly against the striped candy green of the wallpaper for a few moments before abruptly righting himself and brushing imaginary specks of dirt off his frock coat.
Schubert taps gently at the door with white-gloved knuckles, the noise almost too quiet to be perceived. There is no response, so he taps again, harder this time, although he winces at the idea of breaking his dear senpai’s concentration. Once more Franz is rewarded by nothing but silence.
Shifting his weight from foot to foot, he contemplates his options, squinting at the door as if the wooden grain has wronged him on a deeply personal level. It’s been perhaps two days since he last saw Beethoven, and while most of the house seems perfectly content with the assumption that the rather eccentric composer is “meditating” again, Schubert quickly notices that no “KEEP OUT!!” sign adorns the door.
After a last fruitless knock that reverberates in silence, he places a palm on the note stem that is the doorknob, hesitating for only a heartbeat more before pushing down and poking his head around the door with a tentative “Senpai?” - poised to dodge at the potential for flying guitars. For a moment, he wonders if he walked into Chopin’s room by mistake - but no, he's walked this path ten times if he's walked it once, and it's certainly Beethoven-senpai’s room. The shades are drawn down over the windows, though; a crack of sunshine persists around the edges, but his eyes still take a moment to adjust to the near-blackness of the room. Darkened outlines begin to come into view - broken guitar bases, dirty plates, Ludwig’s trusty flamethrower - all in a mess and none in anything resembling order.
This level of disarray is not abnormal, Schubert has to admit, but what is distinctly unusual is the seeming lack of Beethoven in, well, Beethoven’s room. He takes a handful of tentative steps inside, fully intending to open the windows at least a little bit, and nearly trips over a blanket-swaddled figure curled up on the futon on the floor. It lets out a weak groan and pulls the fabric up over its head of distinctly white, disheveled hair.
Wide red-violet eyes take in the minefield of discarded tissues littering the floorboards, as well as the sticky red remnants of a bag of cough drops; Franz gasps sharply, falling to his knees beside Ludwig’s sickbed. “Senpai!”
Ignoring the hazy, dull look in the teal eyes that crack open to meet his gaze, he places a palm flat against the other man’s forehead. The scalding heat he finds there makes his own eyes water with tears of concern, and he jumps to his feet, thoughts churning with every factoid he’s ever learned on how to care for a sick person.
“S-Stay here, Senpai, I’m sure we have a can of soup around here somewhere… a thermometer… more blankets…” Heedless to the futility of his ‘stay here’ comment, Schubert rushes out of the room and closes the door with perhaps more force than intended, leaving Beethoven to groan and rub his throbbing temples through the warmth of the blanket.
♪♪♪
Beethoven is dying.
At first, his symptoms - raspy cough and a steadily climbing fever - had seemed to point to a particularly pernicious case of the flu, although over time they have morphed into something more hauntingly familiar. He’s felt this before, if he thinks back through the tar-like blackness blotting much of his memory, and he knows it ultimately led to his death.
Lying flat on his back on the mat, Ludwig wonders what his funeral was like, so many years ago almost to the day. Surely, many people had attended; even at the time of his death he remembers enjoying popularity in Vienna, and surely everyone would have wanted a glimpse of their fallen hero, he thinks with a huff of scorn that is perhaps two hundred years misplaced.
He wonders if Karl went. Somehow, Ludwig doubts it, and in a way he can’t find it in himself to blame the boy. His nephew must have gotten exactly what he wished, Beethoven thinks with only a hint of bitterness; no more arguments, no more unwanted music lessons, and certainly no more controlling uncle. The thought of Karl is acid on his tongue, and he rolls to the left, as if turning his back on the rest of the room will create a tangible, physical barrier between himself and the painful memories.
He wonders if ClassicaLoids can die like normal humans, and wouldn't it be ironic if this body were to expire on the 26th of March, just like the last? It seems a little too timely to be chalked up simply to coincidence. Surely, it must be fate.
Maybe he really is dying. It would make sense, wouldn’t it - his chest rattles ominously with every intake of breath, a bloom of pain pressed against his ribs; he wouldn’t be surprised if his fingertips came away tipped with red after one pleuritic cough too many.
Beethoven scrubs at his eyes with the palms of his hands, but it does nothing to remove the history that plagues him. Vague images of women flit through his jumble of memories, faces burry and outlines indistinct. He recognizes them, cares for each of them still, in his own way - but the past is the past, and he had been turned down so many times as a young man (and older) that it was as if his foolish heart had finally stopped beating for love. Ludwig expects little more in this renewed life; his personality has not changed, and although he now has features he can gaze upon with something resembling pride, the description “ugly and half mad” never truly left him, not even across the centuries, transcending time and death alike.
It seems to be a day for reminiscing on the past, Ludwig analyzes as he grits his teeth at a fresh upwelling of painful memories to go along with his physical misery. Luckily, they do not linger long in his brain, at least for now.
It hurts to breathe.
His side throbs with a familiar, intense pain that his mind can remember acutely, even if this new body does not. With teeth firmly gritted he rolls onto the opposite side, feeling a trickle of sweat slide down his lower back. The line between 1827 and the present day is blurring more and more in his febrile mind, his eyes screwed shut and fingers trembling, pressed as they are against the epicenter of the recurrent waves of pain that make his gut coil in sickening knots. A flare of nausea spikes and for a moment he considers the very real possibility of either having to bolt his aching body to the bathroom or lying motionless in place to choke in his own vomit, but thankfully the feeling subsides.
Ludwig finally slits open an eye, after some moments of utter exhaustion spent limp and sweaty upon the mat; momentarily, he is struck by a bolt of confusion. It manifests in a surge of panic that makes him sit up in a single swift movement that leaves him reeling, blood rushing through his ears and head throbbing like he’s just awoken from an overindulgent night at the bar. He inhales sharply in his surprise, and promptly winces when his entire chest catches and burns with abrupt pain as a result. One hand cradles his head, the other tightly clamped over some indistinct area of his right side, his breath escaping him in pained shudders as he dissolves into a flurry of coughs. Each one sends tiny sparks of pain up his spine. Slowly Beethoven’s senses flood back to him, leaving him to flop back down bonelessly, equal parts confused over what just happened and wondering what is taking Schubert so long; for once, not wanting to be alone.
He falls asleep without really intending to, and spends much of his few unconscious moments tossing and turning uncomfortably, twisting the sweat-soaked blankets in his grasp so tightly that it is really a surprise that they fail to tear.
When he awakens, he knows Franz has been in the room, not because he can still smell a hint of his housemate’s favored blend of cinnamon tea lingering in the air - and he pushes the idea from his aching brain without further acknowledgement - but simply because of the tall glass of water that sits within arm’s reach of his sickbed, its surface rippling from some indistinct vibration of the floor below. Beethoven rolls onto his left side, propping himself up on his elbow and reaching for the glass, which he curses Schubert for not putting closer; although he realizes, quite logically, that he does tend to thrash about in his sleep, and he doubts it would help his condition much if he were to wake up wet through. When he finally scrabbles the cup into his hand he drinks in quick and loud gulps, draining it within seconds.
Ludwig puts the empty cup down while breathing a mild sigh of relief - at least, until he realizes that the sound of glass meeting wood doesn’t make quite as much noise as he thinks it should. The rushing noise inside his ears, which he hadn’t hitherto paid much notice to, begins a slow crescendo as he stares blankly at the glass in his hand. Beethoven gulps, acutely feeling a rivulet of sweat creep down his temple. His gaze fixates intensely on a dark whorl in the brown wood as if intending to scorch a hole through the floorboards; a wave of vertigo smacks him even as he purposefully drops the cup.
It bounces off the boards and rolls, but the sound only registers as a faint thud.
It feels like a bucket of ice water dumped over Beethoven’s head: muscles momentarily paralyzed by a brand of fear; icicles running through his veins; vertigo making his vision tunnel into faint pricks of brightness within a field of black.
Not again, anything but this slow torment of feeling his most vital sense of all slipping from his grasp without the power to halt it! Ludwig knots his fingers deep into tufts of snowy white, yanks until his scalp protests with a flare of pain, but it does nothing to relieve the buzzing that only soars louder and louder in his ears like the roar of the ocean.
He wants to scream; yet, he knows that if he does, he will never hear it, only feel the ragged tearing of his vocal cords.
Beethoven can feel his heart rate accelerate to a fever pitch in sheer panic; he begins to hyperventilate, sucking down air with a strangled cry that he can feel tight in his throat, even if no sound reaches his ears. It feels like the frigid fingers of fate, a noose around his windpipe. A hand clamps itself over his mouth almost of its own accord, fingers splayed and skin salty against his wet lips.
The heady whooshing of his blood against the thin membrane of his eardrums threatens to send him spiraling into madness. Ludwig tucks up his knees to his chest, closing his eyes tightly like a five year old trying to convince himself that the monster inside his closet isn’t real after all. But he opens his eyes again, and his ears are still unplugged from his brain, very much like the child realizing that the monster is actually his own drunken father. What use is this new life if he is eternally damned to be tortured by the loss of his ears?
The nausea makes a fierce reappearance in a surge that sends him lurching to his feet, head spinning both from the sudden change in position and from the fever raging through his body.
This time he does throw up, perhaps from drinking too quickly, from panic or from the illness itself; he is forced to lean against the doorframe for support when he returns on shaky legs, wiping the corner of his mouth with the back of a hand and looking every one of the fifty-six years he’d seen as the Beethoven.
It seems as though the floor futon gets more and more uncomfortable each and every time he sags his weight back down onto it, but to Beethoven’s credit he only lets out a sigh and leans forward, face cradled in his hands.
Tears pricking at his eyes, his vision grows hazy and silhouettes seem to sway with the growing film of wetness. Ludwig kicks at the blankets viciously in his torment, curling into a lanky ball of limbs brightened by a splotch of brilliantly white hair; he lets himself fall to the side, clamping a palm over each ear, although there is no escape from the maddening rushes inside his own head. Trembling, he at last screws his eyelids shut and stares into the inky abyss, failing to ignore the swirling black tempest raging behind.
Shockingly he is eventually able to fall into another disjointed form of sleep, losing himself inside his own head as his fever-addled brain conjures back the women from his centuries-old memories. This time, though, the only one that draws his eye is, well, her - his Immortal Beloved.
“An-” She quiets him with a nebulous finger against his lips, seeming to smile at the way he watches her with green eyes wide. He steps forward, reaches for the mere memory of her, but she fades to wisps before he can touch her, and slides through his fingers like mist.
And then there’s Schubert, all of a sudden, and the other man’s unforeseen presence in his romantic nightmare floors him so much - smile soft and eyes softer - that the dream fractures and splinters, dumping Ludwig back into the harsh coldness of reality.
♪♪♪
The next time Schubert sees him, Ludwig isn't Ludwig anymore - or at least, he isn't the man Franz has become accustomed to after all these months in the mansion; rather, he's something else entirely, someone far more raw yet simultaneously guarded.
Carrying a hot tray of soup in his hands, Schubert edges the door shut with a hip, frowning down at Beethoven’s supine form - flat on his back like a dead man, legs together and hands fidgeting at his chest as if he is wounded.
“Karl,” he rasps, clutching a hand to his side with fingers splayed. His breathing is heavy and labored, almost as though his lungs are failing him, and his face twists in a grimace of pain. “Es tut mir Leid. Es tut mir Leid. Ich wollte dir nicht weh tun. Wirst du mir vergeben?”
Schubert doesn't know who Karl is, but he nearly drops the tray of soup anyway.
“Senpai?”
If he hears him, Beethoven doesn't respond, and remains lying there on the mat staring unblinkingly at the ceiling, eyes hooded and skin clammy. Breath escaping him in raspy puffs, his chest rises and falls so sharply that Schubert can see the sharp edges of his ribs, jutting against the skin.
“Ich wollte immer nur ein Vater für dich sein.” He turns his head to the side and stares at Franz with a beseeching gaze; juggling the platter, Schubert points a finger at his chest as if to say me?, his eyes wide with confusion. He sets the soup down beside Beethoven’s sickbed, kneeling next to the other man and, with worry casting a shadow over his features, attempts to slide the metal tip of a thermometer between Ludwig’s lips. The endeavor fails when the ailing man, paying little mind to his bedside companion, swats the thermometer away almost on reflex, and continues to speak more to the empty room at large than to anyone in particular.
“Ich hätte nicht so hart sein sollen. Vielleicht hättest du mich dann so geliebt, wie ich dich liebte.”
Schubert folds his legs beneath him and frowns. Whoever this ‘Karl’ is, he evidently means something important to Beethoven - but why is Ludwig bringing this up now, and with so little cognizance of his housemate’s presence? Does he think I’m this Karl?
“Es tut mir Leid.” This particular phrase is softly spoken, but what shocks Franz more than anything else is how Beethoven rolls his head to the side to notice him as if for the first time, his eyes cloudy and misted with raw emotion that threatens to manifest itself in the form of tears. Schubert is no stranger to crying, but this is one emotion he can’t seem to associate with his venerable senpai.
Shaking off the uncanny feeling, the younger composer contemplates the thought of having to feed Ludwig, but upon second inspection - during which he spots the empty water glass lying on its side on the floor - he decides that Beethoven should at least be given the chance to feed himself, saving the both of them some discomfiture.
He leans over him to right the cup onto its bottom. With more strength than can reasonably be expected of a fevered and delirious man, Ludwig seizes Schubert’s retracting arm with both hands as he half-turns onto his stomach; electric green eyes blaze with a desperate, intense fire that takes Franz by surprise.
“Where is Karl? Take me to him! Please!”
Despite the strength of his grip on the younger man’s arm, he’s trembling, and Franz blinks numbly at him with lips slightly parted, taken aback by both the movement and the sudden break from German (which Schubert doesn’t stop to wonder why they both still remember).
“Sen...pai?”
He cups fingers to Beethoven’s sweaty cheek, peering down at him with brow deeply furrowed in concern. The hand moves to press flat against the older composer’s forehead, but withdraws in surprise at the warmth there.
“Senpai! Your fever is worsening - I’ll fetch a cold cloth - “
“No,” Ludwig moans over him, countenance changing completely as he seems to forget about Karl, and instead curls inward on himself, arms still coddling his right side and legs drawing upwards. Schubert freezes in his movements, swiveling midway through the motion of standing, to stare blankly at the hand that has just wrapped itself around his wrist.
“Lass mich hier nicht allein.” The fire fades from Beethoven’s eyes, and his gaze is left dim and hazy, the clear green muddled by illness.
“O-Of course.” Schubert slumps to his knees on the floorboards again, gloved fingers absentmindedly carding their way through damp and lank (yet somehow still entirely unruly) white hair as he hums under his breath. He wonders if perhaps, even through his delirium, Ludwig recognizes the first movement of his Spring Sonata, for the crease between his eyebrows lessens somewhat, and his head nuzzles closer to Franz’s comforting fingers. A soft smile lingers on the redhead’s lips as he pushes his spectacles further up his nose with his free hand.
Of course, his heart swells with pride at being needed by his senpai, and a rush of affection for the man he secretly wishes would press him to the wallpaper and kiss him soundly; still, his momentary sense of satisfaction is overshadowed by concern for Beethoven’s illness, and melancholy at knowing the affection isn’t truly for him, but likely for some unseen (and feminine) figment of Ludwig’s fevered imagination.
His train of thought is derailed by the sound of a loud fit of coughs; Beethoven’s hand comes away tinged with pink, green eyes staring at the hint of blood in his palm as if it is completely foreign to him. Schubert’s concern reaches a new high.
“Doctor Wawruch will be here soon - it’s best if you leave before then.”
Although he still doesn’t know what the older man is talking about, in a way perhaps his delirious senpai is right - Schubert can’t help thinking, with a stab of panic, that he himself is hardly a suitable substitute for a doctor (and, of course, the corresponding medical credentials). From what he can tell of this day and age, medicine has improved substantially; he’s just about to shout for help in getting Ludwig to the hospital when he remembers the obvious.
ClassicaLoids are - well, they’re not exactly the same as the everyday man on the street. Schubert realizes that he can’t know what to expect of a hospital, not really; a feeling of horror dawns upon him as he envisages the very real possibility of curious doctors discovering Beethoven’s musik abilities and whisking him away for “tests.”
Fleeting images flicker through his brain, each of worsening scenarios; scenes of the doctors hooking Beethoven up to machines, holding him prisoner, running all kinds of experiments on him like some curiosity, a freak of nature. He shudders at the mere thought. Schubert wouldn’t wish that on anyone, not even Mozart. Well, perhaps he’ll have to think a little more about that statement, but - that isn’t the point, is it?
The lab where they’d all been reborn - if that is even the right word to describe it - had been bad enough, he thinks, and Beethoven might also attract unwanted attention in the hospital by claiming to be a man who, insofar as the entire classically-educated world knows, has been dead since 1827.
So the hospital is, quite clearly, not a feasible option.
He himself must then undertake responsibility for his senpai’s care; he feels a swell of self-importance at the thought, but quickly brushes it away in favor of getting to his feet - noticing Ludwig’s eyes are momentarily closed - and retrieving a cloth soaked in ice water as quickly as is humanly possible.
When Franz gently places the cloth over Beethoven’s forehead, the older man jerks slightly and opens his eyes, squinching them up at Schubert with a complete lack of recognition.
“W-Who are you?” Ludwig makes a feeble attempt to bat off the cold fabric, but is too weak to succeed.
Franz’s only response is a simple, incredulous “Schubert.”
“Schubert, eh?” Beethoven repeats, chuckling in a low and rusty rasp that is echoed by a faint cough, but Franz can only shift onto his rear and frown with bewilderment as he nods. Ludwig brushes a strand of lank white hair back from where it has fallen over his sweaty forehead.
“I enjoyed the music of yours that was brought to me. You’ve given a dying man some light amongst all this darkness.”
“You aren’t dying, Senpai.” Scurrying onto his knees, Schubert feels splinters of wood pierce his palms where they lie flat against the floorboards, but doesn’t care. “Do you hear me?!”
Ludwig does not, nor does he seem to notice the way mulberry eyes fill with unshed tears that come dangerously close to spilling; he’s too busy humming out the mangled fragments of a tune which Franz can only faintly determine to be one of his own lieder. He would never admit it, but singing is not - and he has a feeling it never has been - one of his beloved senpai’s strongest points.
When he finishes, though, Beethoven turns his head to the side and - for the very first time, at least in this lifetime, and Franz remembers precious little of the last - gives a genuine, albeit weary, smile.
Schubert numbly feels the glimmering film of tears slide down his cheeks and plop, wetly, onto his hands and the floorboards both.
Struggling through his veil of emotions to return the smile, he latches onto Beethoven’s hand, holding it tightly between both of his own and scooching forward on his knees until they are almost touching the older composer’s side. The moment skin touches skin, though, Franz is hit by a veritable flood of memories. He remembers everything, memories thought lost to the empty blackness of death flying back to him in a confusing blip that overwhelms him completely. He remembers being completely in awe of the great Maestro himself, and nervously glancing around Beethoven’s living quarters as he walked towards the sickroom. He remembers pulling up a rickety old chair to his hero’s deathbed. The way Ludwig had looked at him weakly, with hardly the strength to keep his eyelids a crack apart. More than anything else, he remembers how the dying man was so gaunt, exhausted; had seemed so resigned to his fate, amidst piles and piles of never-to-be-completed composition scraps.
Franz grips the hand tighter, just like he’d done some two-hundred-odd years before - except, this time, Beethoven isn’t dying, not in this life, he can’t -
“I’m here, Senpai. I won’t leave you alone this time.” His words fall on deaf ears; Beethoven is already asleep, face remarkably peaceful despite its pallor and the frighteningly heavy bags sunken beneath closed teal-green eyes. Schubert’s hand flies to gauge the state of Ludwig’s fever, later spending a moment carding fingers through the ill man’s damp threads of white as Franz sags back against one of the guitar amps lining the wall behind him.
Beethoven’s sleep is for hours this time, rather than mere fitful stolen moments.
♪♪♪
It’s some time later that Ludwig stirs, roused from his fevered delerium at last. His head is cushioned by something more comfortable than his expected futon pillow, and he rolls his stiff body to the side (placing his hand on something surprisingly soft beside his head) in an attempt to see what he’s recuperating on top of.
Schubert has slumped backwards in impromptu sleep against one of Beethoven’s electric guitar amps and wears an expression of sheer exhaustion, a slight sheen of sweat shining on freckled cheeks and sleepy purple bags beginning to form, deepening beneath his eyes. Ludwig realizes his head is pillowed on top of the younger composer’s remarkably cushiony thighs, his hand resting on Schubert’s knee.
He heaves himself up to rest on his elbows, pausing there for a moment before sitting fully upright. His lanky body is spread out between the futon and Franz’s lap, Beethoven realizes, and his back aches at the contact with the hard wood of the floor. The movement from prone to perpendicular leaves him slightly dizzy, but it’s nothing compared to the disorienting whirling sensation he experienced earlier. He turns his head to look at his improvised pillow, who now shifts in his light rest, looking rather uncomfortable with the corner of a guitar amp jabbed into his left kidney. A smile passes sincerely over Ludwig’s lips; he’s not used to being cared for, despite Schubert’s undying loyalty to him - which, if Beethoven is being honest, is a little unnerving. The warm, effervescent feeling that spreads through his chest is utterly foreign, and should alarm him, yet it makes him inexplicably content.
As if awoken by Ludwig’s gaze, Schubert stirs to attention, looking utterly exhausted as he blearily looks around the room. He blinks rapidly in flashes of iridescent red-violet, squinting at Beethoven until his eyes adjust to the little bit of dimming light that seeps in around the window covers. Rather awkwardly, he gathers his legs beneath him and sways to sit on them formally.
“A-Are you, um… feeling any better, Senpai?” He pushes his askew glasses neatly up the bridge of his nose, looking somewhat sheepish. Ludwig swallows and nods.
“Yes, thank you… Franz.” It feels a little strange to be so familiar with someone other than Wolf, but the way Schubert’s face lights up at that has Beethoven’s stomach tying itself in nervous little knots, and he finds a weak smile tugging at his lips. Franz nods, trying to hide his own smile as he glances down at his gloved hands clasped in his lap; Ludwig resists the urge to tuck a wayward curl of auburn hair back behind Schubert’s ear.
“I’m glad.”
Then he looks up, tilting his head strangely at Beethoven for a moment, regarding him with cautious eyes and lip clasped uncertainly between his teeth - then it happens, almost in the blink of an eye. Franz’s dry and slightly chapped lips are warm, a welcome balm against the clammy pallidness of Ludwig’s cheek. And then it’s as if his fever rushes back in a bloom of pink to his face, his cheeks tingling with a fresh blush that this time has nothing to do with the flu.