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They need to get going.
Someone’s going to knock on the door soon — a roadie, or another ghoul, or if they’re really unlucky, maybe even Papa, because not even the glitzy view from the top can stop him from micromanaging the tour schedule down to the minute. Some things never change.
Sort of like this.
“ƃuᴉzɐɯɐ sɐʍ ʇɐɥʇ 'ʞɔnℲ" Dewdrop had sighed, tugging off his helmet after a half-second struggle. He was flushed pinkish with his hair tangled to shit, just a big white tumbleweed spilling over his shoulders. He never seemed to brush it — he just freewheeled through life with the expectation that it would figure itself out along the way.
Aether had nudged the dressing room door shut with the toe of his boot. He watched Dewdrop roll his neck, palms flat behind him on the counter, sweat shining all down his throat. His feet were bare on the grubby carpet, because he’d wrestled his boots off the second they were offstage and out of view, bitching about blisters. It was always something.
The helmet rocked next to him on its rounded edge. “Fuck these masks. Are your horns killing you too?”
And that had seemed like as good an opening as any for Aether to come closer and get all up in his space, cupping his sharp little jaw in one hand, tipping it upwards.
“You asking for something?”
Dewdrop’s tongue poked between his teeth when he smiled. He looked tired—you couldn’t not be tired after a show, especially the first one after two years of idle Abbey puttering-about—but his eyes were bright.
“Why?” he asks. “You offering?”
Of course Aether was offering. He always was, one way or another.
*
Aether had just meant to rub his horns a little — maybe get a kiss for his troubles. He’d like the record to show that.
He’d sunk two hands into the snarled disaster of his hair, still damp-hot from the helmet, and laced them together, cupping him around the back of his skull. He felt so fragile back there, behind the fire and the venom and the rest of his armor.
“Careful,” Dewdrop had said, warningly. “It’s tangled.”
Aether rolled his eyes and tried to focus. “It’s always tangled.”
You were really supposed to ease into this sort of thing, not go from zero to sixty with no warm-up. You could knock someone out, maybe burst a blood vessel in your eye. Like burning rubber on a tire, or brain freeze. If you give a body too much, sometimes it just shuts down.
But other times, it’s like the first drink of water after a long, hot day: even sweeter for how sudden it is.
He’d let the magic bleed out of him like paint in water, full-steam ahead, until Dewdrop had tensed, then groaned in open-mouthed relief, and he knew he made the right choice.
“Ahhh,” he’d panted, hands clutching at the front of Aether’s jacket, fingers curling around the clasps. His eyes were shut, and Aether couldn’t explain why he felt a sudden tenderness seeing the indentations on his cheeks from the seams of the mask. “God. You could bottle that and sell it.”
“Sell it?” Aether said into his hair, inhaling smoke and sweat, feeling fierce, protective desire flutter to life in his belly. “I give it to you for free.”
*
They needed to hurry.
They needed to change, pack the bus, and maybe see if Papa’s door was open, like it sometimes was when he was really jazzed up after a good show — but then the meaty part of Aether’s thigh had drifted in between Dewdrop’s legs, and he’d made an aborted groan high up in his throat, and the plot was very quickly lost.
“They fucking loved you up there. Did you hear them?” Aether’s saying into his neck now, all loopy with the Quintessence comedown. He’s letting the metal edge of the mask and his mouth take turns fucking Dewdrop up, alternating sharp and sweet along his throat. He smells exerted, burnt down, like a fire ashed to the embers. “I know you did. I know you get off on it.”
“I’ll— I’ll bite you,” Dewdrop gasps in pointless warning, but Aether’s the one doing the biting, even with the mask in the way: sucking his neck and pinching the skin between his teeth. Rolling it, bruising it, leaving welts in his wake. “Hurts,” Dewdrop whines. But he’s squirming into it, tilting his head back for more.
Aether peels the jacket off him with the cape still attached. Then the leather belt and gaudy clasp, letting it hit the stained carpet with a thud. He slips a hand up Dewdrop’s belly, untucking the shirt and groping him in one solid go. He’s a hundred pounds of spite, his stomach drum-taut and blistering. And of course he’s wriggling underneath him the whole time, tail thumping, making everything twice as hard.
He starts on his pants with clumsy hands, tugging with too much force, and then—
A seam pops somewhere. Quiet, but unmistakable.
They both freeze. Somewhere in his gilded dressing room, Papa must feel a disturbance in the very expensive force.
“What was that? What broke?” Aether says, breathing hard. He’s got one hand flat against Dewdrop’s flank, like the structural integrity of a uniform is something you can spook if you move too quickly.
“Rain can slip-stitch,” Dewdrop says in a hurry, and Aether’s about to ask how he even knows what that is, but he’s already kicking his pants off the rest of the way. And then—because why not throw the baby out with the bathwater—he takes a claw and slices it through the laces at the front of Aether’s pants.
“I could’ve untied that,” Aether says stupidly, watching his cock tumble out among the ruined fabric. He means to tease—to tell him he’s a brat who doesn’t know how to take care of nice things, but trails off when he watches Dewdrop sink to the floor.
Then Dewdrop opens his mouth expectantly—politely, even—and Aether had figured there’d be more preamble than this, but there are some things you just don’t ask too many questions about.
“Yeah?” He nudges his cock against his mouth. He’s so keyed up, it’s already pearling at the tip. It slides against his bottom lip, slippery-wet, and then Dewdrop licks him all the way inside.
It all happens pretty fast after that.
There’s something about seeing him so bare when Aether’s got enough fucking clothes on for two people that makes the pulse in his throat pick up tempo. It’s like the difference between the pit and the stage—the push and pull of power, the audience and the performer. His belly goes hot just thinking about it.
“You have to— stop making noise,” Aether pants, fisting a hand in his hair, but Dewdrop doesn’t seem inclined to listen. He never was good at taking direction.
Dewdrop’s got his hands around his ass, two huge fucking handfuls of Aether, as much as he can grab. He’s pressed close enough against him to pull back and move his head, but only barely. Aether smells spilled beer, leather that hasn’t been broken in yet, and the stark, coppery smell of sex in progress. He feels winded from the show, like all the tension is here between his legs, like the rest of him is vestigial and perfunctory.
And Dewdrop just keeps on swallowing and swallowing, pulling off to press the point of his tongue into the tender slit, until the pleasure’s overlapping and sweet, right on the point of being too much—and then Aether’s thighs suddenly go tight and his tail curls in on itself and he hears himself saying from a distance: Open your mouth.
And Dewdrop does. He pulls off and closes his eyes, sweet as anything, mouth open with his tongue out and the tiny little points of his fangs just barely peeping past his lips, and—god. Aether exhales hard through his nose when he comes in one long, strained groan. He catches him across his lips and cheeks first in big, glistening streaks, then manages to drip the rest into his mouth.
“Sorry,” he blurts out, too late, steadying himself on the arm of the couch. His pulse is pounding in his temples. His jacket, his shirt—everything feels too tight, too much, maxed out on the sensory input scale.
Dewdrop swallows, looking serene. He’s still sitting on his heels with his lips pinked up and his face all wet. Anointed, Aether thinks, with fresh heat curling inside him. It’s enough to make his dick twitch weakly in his hand.
The image lasts for exactly one beat before Dewdrop reaches out blindly for something, eyes still closed, and rubs his face into his own jacket.
“Oh, come on,” Aether protests. “Are you serious?”
“‘S your fault,” Dewdrop says, dropping the ruined fabric, pressing his finger to the corner of his eye and blinking.
“That was brand new,” Aether pinches the cloth between his fingers. “Papa’s gonna hit the ceiling if you go onstage covered in jizz.”
“Like he’s not balls-deep in someone else right now,” Dewdrop says, shaking out his hair, which looks even worse now than before. “You saw him and Swiss. And you know how the girls get after a show. Whole band’s gonna be up there in sweats and T-shirts tomorrow.”
“You’re gross,” Aether laughs, then, eyeing between his legs: “C’mere.”
They collectively fumble onto the couch, which Aether distantly registers is unpleasantly sticky and probably well-acquainted with this particular type of curtain call. He hauls Dewdrop into his lap, licks his palm, and gets his hands on him for about two seconds before there’s a knock at the door.
“Hey! Bus is packing up!” someone says. It must be Sunshine, because that's the brisk, do-gooder tone of someone hasn’t had their sense of timing or privacy totally fucked by years on tour. “Everyone in there okay? Papa says we need to hit the road.”
Dewdrop swears against Aether’s chest, shoulders sagging in defeat.
“Um, sorry, what was that?” Sunshine asks, after a beat. Aether can hear the strained cheer of someone quickly losing patience, but trying to be nice about it.
“Be right out,” Aether calls, then slumps against the vinyl cushions. “Later,” he promises, apologetically.
Dewdrop sighs, shrugs and hops off his lap with more dignity than Aether could personally manage with no pants on. “I know where your bunk is,” he says, rummaging around for his clothes.
Aether fights a smile. “You are not quiet enough for that.”
Dewdrop looks at him over his shoulder, shimmying back into his slacks. His neck’s starting to go purple where Aether did the worst of it: big, incriminating splotches, all the way from just under his ear to his shoulder. “I don’t know. Let’s find out.”
Maybe they will, Aether thinks, helping him lace up the pants, then the shirt, then hunting around for the forgotten boots. But even if they don’t — there’s a whole big, dazzling tour ahead of them, and another after that, and the limitless possibility of louder, better, more. More spotlights, more shows, more moments in front of a screaming, exhilarated crowd — or maybe behind the curtain. They have time.
There’s always the aftershow.