Chapter Text
Later that night, Julien’s nervous. Some of it feels like excitement, but it’s hard to disentangle show nerves, good and bad, from this new kind of nerves she unlocked by baring herself in a way she hadn’t done yet, good and bad.
Some of it, the more she chews on the events of the early afternoon, is quickly turning into the kind of heavy, buzzy worrying she reserves for the times where she fucks up: it’s delicate in her mind, between Lucy and her, it has been since their initial, mutual crush had turned into a significant part of the foundation of their musical endeavor, molten down and dispersed into a new alloy when Phoebe came into the picture too, and she’s afraid she might have made a dent in the unspoken balance they had managed to build up until now.
The easy way Lucy talks to her through the day and the normalcy she feels between the three of them manage to dissipate her bursts of anguish, but the bastards keep regenerating threefold when she’s not looking, like heads to a hydra.
Their show flies past her and she throws herself into their songs like she’s made of them, because when they play she doesn’t have to exist past the words she's written and the music she makes with her whole body, and what happens outside of it can only come into it as fuel. Besides, Lucy twinkles at the edge of her vision like a fixed star, and when Julien looks at her she sees no hesitation, only the rhythmic pulsing of her blue light.
It’s while they’re sitting close together on the edge of the stage for Ketchum ID, no guitar shield in her lap, warmth pouring from Lucy’s thigh into hers, that she realizes what the small pinch gnawing at her haunches is: they’re gonna launch into salt in the wound soon, and she’s gonna have to make a decision.
As soon as the thought sprouts up from the mulch of her brain, Julien knows that it wasn’t born out of any pressure she might have felt coming from her bandmate or what she had said to her earlier that day, because there hadn’t been any; no, this is all her, and it is made so clear by the wave of giddy pressure she feels cresting over her head when Lucy looks at her with a smile Julien must have seen thousands of times by now, and there’s nothing different in the way she reciprocates it, and that is exactly what is making her burst at the seams with joy.
Still, her solo does feel a bit charged while it’s spilling out of her fingers and onto the crowd, the band, and two of the most important people in her life, but Julien figures no one can actually tell but her. Lucy and Phoebe run circles around the shriek of her guitar like nymphs to a tree, and Julien pictures the disembodied turmoil of her thoughts solidifying into bark, the grooves and cracks of it smoothing out under the touch of her bandmates' bright hands. And then suddenly she is the tree, and Phoebe is gracelessly felling her so they can go back to the earth together, and Lucy’s lap is the soil that breaks her fall.
Lucy’s smiling face settles itself between Julien and the messy cacophony of allegories rattling inside her skull, like the moon during a solar eclipse, and Julien’s eyes immediately focus on the faint glow of her friend's red lips, their two faces excised from the rest of reality by the curtain of Lucy’s dark hair.
“Can I?”
Julien reads the question in the movement of Lucy’s mouth, so familiar with the shapes of her words she doesn’t even have to take any brain power away from her fingers, and her reply comes in the form of movement as well, her neck a spring uncoiling upwards. Lucy meets her halfway down and their barely contained smiles mash together like flint stones, warm hands on either side of Julien’s ears catching the sparks, and Julien thinks, wants her tongue to become the flame they summoned together but she hesitates a beat too long, and Lucy’s pulling away and she’s opening her eyes at the loss of contact and Lucy’s smiling face is still there and Julien wants to pull her back down but her hands are not done playing and the stage lights flood her vision like the Red Sea closing back behind Moses as Lucy slumps down to join her and Phoebe on the sticky stage floor and Julien’s veins are coursing nothing but the acceleration of a possibility lost as soon as it had been realized.
She wanted to.
-
Excitement is still high while they all run backstage, drenched in sweat and gratitude, their ears ringing with it.
Julien's face feels like it's gonna split in two from all the grinning, and she sees it mirrored in Phoebe's before she falls into her open arms. They squeeze each other wordlessly, their combined weights swinging like a pendulum from one foot to the other, a well oiled ritual the two of them have down to the millimeter by now.
When Julien emerges from the pounding of Phoebe's chest, her bandmate turns around to plant both of her hands firmly on Lucy's shoulders and Julien watches her silver head float up as she stands on the tip of her toes to stomp a kiss right in the middle of both of the tallest cheeks amongst the three of them.
Lucy giggles, her eyes closing with fondness and Julien can't make herself look away; when Phoebe lets her go, Lucy's eyes open slowly and they're still glowing with it all when she meets Julien's. Lucy manages to take a couple of steps forward before they fall into a hug that starts normal, but soon morphs into the shape of a confessional: Julien's head reaches just high enough that all Lucy has to do to whisper directly into her right ear is tilt her head down and push her nose in the mess of Julien's hair, where her words will be just for the two of them.
"i was a little afraid you'd be to embarrassed to kiss me at all"
Julien feels each syllable tumble down her back in a ripple of goosebumps, tries not to roll her spine under it.
She pulls back just enough so she can give Lucy the most patronizing little smirk she can muster.
"i would never be so cruel honey"
Lucy rolls her eyes at her and shoves lightly at her shoulders, both of their laughs filling the small green room.
Ten minutes later, while they're all unwinding and getting ready to get back on their bus, Julien ties her shoes slowly through the thick fog enveloping her brain and arms while she allows herself to watch Lucy float from Phoebe to some of their crew members, talking to them, listening, laughing at something or other.
She doesn't have the stamina or the presence of mind to deal with whatever she felt earlier during the show, but she clearly feels the imprint of it now, like the invisible dullness of a bruise that's still waiting to get its colors.
Lucy turns around to toss a dopey smile at her, and Julien worries for a second that she might have felt her thoughts; knowing Lucy, it wouldn't actually surprise her that much.
Wiggling her eyebrows back at her, Julien tentatively acknowledges that she couldn't do it tonight, but also that
there would be other nights.
And she wants to.