Chapter Text
The tour starts without a hitch. In the late spring, when the wet weather fades and the temperature rises, Dew joins the other ghouls in his debut as the new lead guitarist.
He’s still taking the same medication, the third one. It doesn’t make him restless like the second, or tired during the day like the first, but he does sleep like a rock at night. Once he rolled fully out of his bunk and into the aisle of the bus without waking up. When Aether found him there he simply rolled him right back in.
The plan is for Dew to start tapering off of it after the end of the tour, slowly, over the course of months. If all goes well, he can be done with it forever.
And if it doesn’t go well, Rain isn’t sure what will happen. Dew will just start taking it again, he supposes. Maybe he could try to taper again after the next tour. Or maybe not.
Touring, Rain has learned, mostly involves waiting around in different places. They wait in the bus, first for it to leave, and then for it to reach its destination. They wait at the venue, backstage, for showtime. When they have a day off, Rain tries to think of it as a break, a vacation, and not as waiting a whole day in some unfamiliar city for the tour to continue.
Today is one such day. As scheduled, they’ve arrived at one of their stops a day before the show, and have a chance to relax. They have the luxury of hotel rooms to replace the cramped living space of the bus.
When the two of them enter their room, Dew immediately flops backwards onto one of the beds. Rain busies himself unpacking just enough so he can take a shower.
“Hey,” Dew calls out to him, “before I forget, can you pass me the other, the other, fuck. You know.”
“The room key?” Rain has the little paper envelope in his pocket. He took one of the cards out to get them into the room, and Dew is supposed to have the other one.
“That.” Dew massages his forehead with a fist.
“Are you feeling okay?”
“Yeah, I’m just tired.”
Dew lifts his head to look up and across the room at him. Rain knows he must be making big, worried puppy-dog eyes at him, but he can’t help it.
“Rain.” Dew stands, walks over, and takes both of his hands, a gesture that has come to mean something specific in his somewhat austere catalog of communication. He only ever does it when they’re alone. It means he’s going to be honest about something.
Rain fights the urge to shrink away. He trusts Dew won’t say anything hurtful, but the anticipation makes him nervous.
“I appreciate it, always, but I really just want to be treated like everyone else.”
Rain can understand that. It makes him think of being one of the newly summoned ghouls at practice, or even now, on tour. The guidance he receives is helpful, but he can’t get past the desire to shake the “new guy” label.
The thing is, without that label, and without the help he’s been given because of it, the show would probably be a disaster. Dew in particular has saved him several times, starting with the day, months ago now, when he helped him through that one line he couldn’t nail.
“Promise you’ll ask if you need something?” Rain nudges.
Dew frowns slightly, his eyes downcast.
“Please?”
“I never really know what I need, though. You always know what to do.”
Rain can feel gears turning inside his head. He would have said the complete opposite — he never knows the right thing to do. He always feels lost.
“But, yeah, I will,” Dew assures, when Rain doesn’t respond.
“Okay.” Rain is still trying to fit the idea of himself as someone who has answers into his mind.
Dew releases one of his hands so he can slide it into Rain’s back pocket. “Right now I need the room key, though.”