the vile rot loves you

Rehearsal's dragging into its third hour and Rain's guitar strap keeps slipping, which means Rain keeps hiking it back up one-handed, which means the pick's got nowhere to live except his mouth. He barely notices he's doing it anymore. Balaclava pulled snug, pick held right through the fabric against his lips, humming the bridge to himself while Copia argues with a lighting cue.

Dew notices. He would be incapable of not noticing this.

"Gimme," he says, sidling over between takes, already reaching — two fingers, quick, aimed right at the corner of Rain's mouth.

Rain turns his head half an inch. Just enough. Dew's fingers close on nothing but air and a very smug silence.

"Rude," Dew says, and goes again, and Rain dodges again, easy as breathing, eyes crinkling behind the mask like he could do this all night. Third try, Dew fakes left and Rain, predictably, drifts right into it — except Dew was never actually going for the pick with his hand at all.

He goes for it with his mouth instead. Covered-mouth to covered-mouth, teeth first like it's still the bit, like it's still funny — and Rain huffs a laugh through his nose because of course, of course this is happening, of course it's happening in full costume in front of the entire crew—

The pick clatters to the stage.

Neither of them notices, mostly because neither of them put their instruments down first. Dew's guitar thunks flat against Rain's bass with an ugly, ringing clunk of wood on wood, both of them too committed to care, and half a second later their helmets meet with a clack of horn on goggle that should absolutely have been a warning shot and does absolutely nothing to slow either of them down.

What's left after that is slower — the fabric gone damp where their mouths meet, dark little press of it clinging, sticking, the two layers of black doing nothing at all to keep this from being exactly what it looks like. Dew licks once, deliberate, and feels Rain go still under it before he licks back, sloppy and unhurried, spit soaking straight through both balaclavas until there's no pretending this is still about a guitar pick.

Rain's hand finds the front of Dew's jacket like he needs something to hold onto. Dew makes a small pleased sound against his mouth that will be brought up later, right around the time somebody points out the new scratch in his guitar.

A whistle cuts through the room — sharp, rising, gusting hard enough to flutter every loose scrap of fabric onstage, Cirrus clearly not content with a normal wolf whistle when she can weaponize the air itself. Somewhere behind them, a pedal squeals feedback into the silence, because apparently everyone else stopped playing to watch this happen too.

Copia doesn't even look up from his clipboard.