Work Text:
Touring hurts. There's a low-grade ache all throughout Fig's body. She doesn't sleep enough, they're on a grueling schedule of rehearse-show-drive to the next venue-repeat. Her fingers burn most of all, as the calluses from playing the Infaethable Bass develop and shift with every show. She puts what she can on them, but you can't play with bandaged hands, and the balms Sandra Lynn produces from the woods for her only do so much. They're just tender and sore and a healing word can't help with things that aren't really injuries to begin with.
It reminds her of her horns coming in, skin tight and nubbly as it evolved and calcified into external bone. She pushes those memories down. Fig has the Bad Kids and Ayda now, and they'll stick with her through her new metamorphoses.
"Got you these," Gorgug says, dropping them on the small table in their tour bus. He squeezes his bulk into the other side of the bench.
Fig takes her tired hands out of the ice bath. The water's lukewarm now anyways from her sheer body heat, and the remaining droplets steam away off her skin. The gloves are beautiful, butter soft black leather, and they fit, well, like a glove.
"Fuck yeah, these are dope," she says, wiggling the other one on. They're very biker-chic.
"They're artificed," he says, sounding sheepish. Hellfire it kills Fig how little his confidence has come along even as they tour the world with sold out shows. "Try your crystal."
She obediently pulls it from her pocket and swipes it open.
Wait.
She locks it and reopens it, her fingerprint reading right through the gloves. Even more impressively, there's no pressure on her hand. It's like she's not even touching anything. Fig blinks a few times in surprise and then opens her messages to tap out a response to Fabian's last text. He'd sent it yesterday, but her hands had been too tired to try and struggle through a response and Fig finds voice-to-text to be a repugnant feature. If she wanted to use good grammar and punctuation and capitalization she wouldn't be a fucking rockstar.
It doesn't feel like anything while she types. She can definitely feel herself making contact with the screen, but there's no pressure on her sore fingerpads.
"Holy shit," she says, looking back up from her phone at Gorgug in shock. He's smiling a little bit now. "Gorgug, holy shit . You're incredible. Thank you, thank you ." She worms her way around the narrow table to get him into a hug.
"You shouldn't have to be in any pain," he says, muffled against her shoulder. "Adaine helped me get the pocket dimension just right. You can play bass with them on."
"They're incredible," Fig gushes, already moving out of the bus kitchen back to her bunk. The Infaethable Bass's strap slings in its familiar way around her shoulder and she gently thrums a few notes to test it. Not a whisper of a feeling on her hands, just easy silky playing. Her eyes well up, but she brushes any tears that don't evaporate away quickly. "Gorgug. Thank you ."