Newt was dozing lightly when he half heard Hermann walk into the bedroom. The bed shifted slightly where Hermann sat and turned down the sheet covering Newt's head. Newt cracked an eye open and peered sleepily up at the other man.

"Are you ill?" Hermann asked. His tone was casual but Newt could feel the concern in the back of his mind.

"No, not really." Newt answered. "It was just…not a good day brain-wise." He stretched beneath the covers, turning onto his back and opening both eyes so he could see Hermann. The mathematician's eyes flickered over to the small bottle of pills on Newt's night stand before fixing Newt with a hard stare. "No, I took those. Totally medicated for the things that need medicating. I meant the synesthesia. I, uh, might've overloaded earlier."

Hermann's gaze softened and he reached forward to run his fingers through Newt's hair. "I'm terribly sorry. What happened? I thought you weren't going to be doing anything today?"

"Yeah, well, I decided I'd try to do a little grocery shopping since we were running low on a few things. And there was this family there, really big family, lots of kids, and the kids were yelling and running all over the place and generally just being really loud and kind of obnoxious. But those colors I could ignore well enough, but then, I don't even know what happened, a fuck up of some kind, the store's alarm system went off and it was this really, really, really bright yellow-orange flash over and over again. The alarm got the kids going even more so there was the various colors of their screaming on top of this bright as fuck alarm color and I…I just couldn't. I had to get out of there. Brain almost totally shut down I'm surprised I didn't have an accident driving back." He rubbed his hands over his face, exhausted just remembering what had happened. "Then I get home with every intention of curling up somewhere dark and quiet forever and your pillow had to go and start making snide remarks."

"I did wonder why it was out in the living room." Hermann said quietly. "Are you doing better now? I'm not making anything worse am I?" He sat back suddenly, cautious and prepared to leave if Newt said.

Newt rolled back onto his side and threw his arms around Hermann's waist, pulling him closer. "You're fine. I've had enough time to calm down." He said, nuzzling against Hermann's hip. "Your colors never set me off anyways."

"Really? I do recall quite a few times where you told me I 'clash'. Apparently the color of my voice and the color of the smell of chalk don't mesh well together."

Newt waved a hand dismissively. "I only said that to piss you off. Green and that weird pink-blue aren't that bad together, I promise." He snuggled closer as Hermann resumed carding through his hair. "Speaking of, you should tell me about your day so I can see that green some more."

"It's not going to irritate you? I refuse to be responsible for another overload."

"Nope, cross my heart and hope to die. And I'm so used to the mix of the phoneme's colors and the overall voice's color that I swear even that won't bother me. C'moooon…your voice is, like, my favorite shade of green ever. It's very you. Hermann-green. Besides, you should indulge me since I had a hard day."

Hermann smiled at that. "Very well. Since you've made such a convincing argument, I suppose I can humor you."

Newt closed his eyes as Hermann talked, letting the colors float behind his eyelids and enjoying the sensation of his hair being played with. He started to drift off to sleep again after a few minutes, lulled by the simple colors and Hermann's presence. Instead of trying to stay awake, he let himself slip into sleep. It had been a long day, after all.

AN: a) come talk to me about synesthesia it's super awesome and I have a few synnie!Newt headcanons, b) sensory overloads freaking suck so bad but I won't lie mine have never personally been as bad as Newt's but I've heard other synesthetes talk about really bad ones