the vile rot loves you

Rain drops a plastic shopping bag on the dressing room table, between Dewdrop and the expansive vanity mirror in front of him. A frame of frosted light bulbs illuminates it from every direction.

They charge money for these bags, not very much but enough that he considered — briefly — carrying his purchases out of the store in his hands. He decided the bag felt integral to the experience. Now it feels a little silly. There’s not much inside, and the wispy gray handles rise above its contents like smoke.

Dew raises one eyebrow. “What? You bought weird snacks again?” He leans forward in his chair, reaches toward the bag—

Rain stops him with a hand on his shoulder. The reconfiguration of inertia causes the entire chair to tip back, gently giving way via some fancy internal mechanism fit for fancy furniture in a fancy arena dressing room.

Dew’s incredulous glare in response to what by all means was a minor slight isn’t a surprise. He’s been irritable lately, the past two weeks, reactive — understandably so. Healing is taking a lot out of him, and any energy he has left is immediately spent, overspent, on performing a concert every day or two.

He seems to have turned a corner, at least physically. He’s up and about more, walking to catering, things like that. Marginally less pain, and the swelling is starting — just barely — to go down. Rain has done his reading, though. Broken bones take weeks to fully repair, for temporary cartilage cells to ossify; it takes months for things to get back to normal. A relative lack of inflammation is not the green light Dew wants it to be.

Rain removes his hand. The chair bounces back upright, hitting its maximal angle with a clunk.

“Not snacks, I guess,” Dew grouses.

Rain did indeed buy snacks, normal ones, but he has other plans first.

“In order to heal you need to rest,” he says.

“How have I not been resting? All I do is sit around.” Dew makes a vague gesture at their surroundings, a space in which he’s more or less confined for the next several hours.

Rain rolls images of him sulking and fidgeting around in his mind. “Well, yes, I mean—” He thinks of him leaning off a couch to reach a bottle of water, which falls to the floor. “You’ve been sitting but you haven’t been resting.”

“What do you want me to do?”

Rain reaches into the bag and pulls out a flat, heat-sealed foil rectangle. “We’re doing this.”

Dew narrows his eyes at the item presented to him. “What is it.”

“Face mask.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not going to help.”

“It feels nice. It’s hydrating.”

“I’m not a water ghoul anymore,” Dew bites.

Rain looks up from the foil packet, now haphazardly torn at a diagonal that starts at the perforated open-here notch and wanders down toward the belly of the packet where the mask lies. His fingers are damp with serum — hyaluronic acid, glycerin, slippery things. He rubs them together. “I don’t think it’s the time or place for fire right now.”

Dew huffs. A muscle in his jaw flexes. “Fine.”

Rain pulls the mask out of the packet. Dew glares daggers into him as he struggles to pick apart the seams of what, under the weight of his scrutiny, feels like a densely folded wet napkin. What he finally unfurls is a white circle, spanned by perpendicular creases from its time entombed, with neat, machine-cut openings to accommodate two eyes, a nose, and a mouth.

As he brings it to Dew’s face, Dew shrinks back, just a little.

“Hold still.” If he had a free hand, Rain would hold him still himself. The best he can requisition are a few free fingers, the ones not holding the mask, ring and pinky on each side, lightly pressed to his temples as he drapes bottom of the mask on his chin, then aligns the eye holes over his eyes.

“Eugh,” Dew complains. “It’s cold.”

“It’s soothing.”

To his credit, Dew does hold still while Rain carefully tugs at the edges of the annoyingly self-adhesive sheet that, in reality, is not the shape of a face. Something flat never had a chance to fit a nose, cheekbones, a jaw, despite the carefully engineered notches and cutouts — a known limitation of the form. Still, he pokes at it with gentle fingers until it’s as centered and optimal as it can be.

“Okay, done.” He stands up from a leaned-over position that had become, in the midst of his focus, intimately close, zoomed in.

Dew turns and looks in the mirror, stiff in the way one might be when they have something balanced on their head. He gives himself a restricted, blank-faced scowl.

“This is stupid. I feel stupid.”

“No, here, look, I have one too.” Rain quickly grabs the other packet and tears it open, even more obliquely than the first.

The mask slides wetly into his hand. He shakes it out with much less care than was afforded to the previous one and places it haphazardly over his own face. Then he sits in his own chair.

“Okay,” he says. “Now we’re not going to do anything for thirty minutes.”

Dew doesn’t even protest at this point. He sighs and closes his eyes.

Rain pulls his phone from his pocket and lifts it up to eye level so that he can type “relaxation music” into the search bar without looking down and disturbing the fragile surface tension adhering the mask to his face. He considers, then scrolls past, a guided mediation — too much — and taps a two hour long track with an album cover featuring river-worn rocks and deep green foliage.

Dew opens one eye halfway as the tranquil soundscape of low-pitched bells and flowing water fills the room.

“Relax,” Rain instructs, firm, at odds with his choice of musical accompaniment.

Dew closes his eyes.

Rain doesn’t. He keeps watching Dew to make sure he’s cooperating.

He does look peaceful, hands folded in his lap, big boot elevated on a small ottoman scrounged from another room backstage. Maybe it’s working.

Only a fraction of the way into their thirty minutes, a knock sounds on the door, three energetic taps.

Dew’s eyes snap open.

Almost immediately, the door swings ajar and Aurora spills into the room. “Hey, do you guys have—”

Dew, without delay, sits up in his chair and turns it around until his back is to the door. Unfortunately for him, every mirror in the room reflects his image right back to the beaming smile spreading across Aurora’s face, to her eyes radiant with the serendipity of witnessing something very unusual and very secret.

“Oh! Wait, this is so cute!” She looks from Dew to Rain and back again. “Can I paint your nails? I have black, and a glitter top coat— Or white, to match your guitar! Hold on—”

Then she’s gone as quickly as she came.

Dew starts trying to stand up, both hands on the arm rests of the chair, injured leg kicked out in front of him so as not to put weight on it, then seems to think better of it.

“Quick, lock the door,” he hisses in an urgent, shouting kind of whisper, like if Aurora hears him she’ll come running back.