Work Text:
They’d been on the tour bus a couple days when Gorgug noticed it. He and Fig had picked up Adaine in Fallinel a couple weeks into the summer. She’d spent a couple days with the Elven government trying to fix some of the old Oracle laws, and caught a ride back to Solace with them on the Sig Figs bus on the summer tour. It was nice- Adaine brought a fresh energy to long days driving on the bus and he loved to see how excited she got, watching the shows from backstage. Fig had even mentioned maybe bringing her onstage as an impromptu backup soloist to Gorgug, but hadn’t gotten around to pitching the idea to Adaine yet.
Gorgug liked time on the road nonetheless. He’d never really gone on roadtrips with his parents when he was little, but despite this being the third Sig Fig’s tour and the big roadtrip the bad kids had done spring break of sophomore year, it still hadn’t lost its novelty. He liked the bus, with plenty of room for him and Fig to write and rehearse in the front, and space for them to sleep in the back. He liked seeing the rest of Solace from the road, popping into little local restaurants for dinner and breakfast en route. He liked the amount of time he and Fig could spend one on one, and how they would run into fans when they stopped in towns between shows- how excited people of all ages were to see the Fig and Gorgug from the Sig Figs.
It was doubly nice to have Adaine with them, though. It felt a little more like they were the bad kids (though it did make Gorgug miss the others and Zelda more, just from the reminder) and Adaine filled the bus with ther whip-smart comebacks. She and Fig would go back and forth for hours, debating and arguing and reminiscing, the topic changing from minute to minute; while Gorgug watched and listened quietly beside them.
They were riding through the middle of nowhere, a forest on the border between Fallinel and Solace, Gorgug thought, when he finally realized Adaine had been sitting silently for a couple hours. Adaine being quiet wasn’t all that unusual, honestly. A lot of times she’d perch in the corner of whatever room the bad kids had taken over and stick her nose in a book, Boggy on her shoulder. Or she would listen, eyes flicking between all her friends as they shouted amongst each other, a tiny smile on her face. But this was… Gorgug wasn’t always the best at reading people or situations, but this felt different. Wrong.
She was staring out of the window, eyes almost glassy-looking, as though she was looking past the scenery outside, instead of at it. For a second, Gorgug thought maybe she was thinking about something, Scrying or Messaging someone in Solace; but the blue of her eyes was her usual flat, mundane blue, with none of the shine they had when she was casting a spell. Her hands were still, that was the second concerning thing. Almost always, Adaine was doing something with her hands- petting Boggy, scribbling notes, flipping through her spell book, even fiddling with the friendship bracelet on her wrist- but Adaine’s hands were still and clenched in her lap.
Fig had been talking for a while- mostly to herself aloud, but that wasn’t unusual. Fig worked best around other people, it helped her think to talk through lyrics or melodies or even math homework out loud to someone else. Most of the time, Gorgug half-listened while scrolling through Fantasy Twitter on his Crystal, keeping an ear out in case Fig asked a non-rhetorical question or had a genuine problem. Adaine was used to it too; Gorgug knew they did homework together a lot in Mordred Manor. Fig liked having someone to bounce questions off of, and Adaine liked to not have to work in silence (anymore).
But Gorgug had been around Adaine long enough to know when she was listening- and she hadn’t even blinked at Fig’s last three big epiphanies. Gorgug wondered how long Adaine had been checked out before he noticed- if Fig had noticed yet, if she was getting as worried about Adaine as he was. Gorgug picked at the case on his Crystal, wishing Zelda was here. She was good at figuring out what to do when one of his friends was upset, good at helping him find the right thing to say.
He finally tore his eyes away from Adaine, looking up towards the front of the bus and tried to catch Fig’s eye. A minute later, she looked in his general direction, brow furrowed as she asked a question- more in his direction than actually to Gorgug, which was how he could tell she was thinking out loud. Halfway through she stopped, blinked, and frowned at Gorgug. He glanced pointedly towards Adaine, who’d shown no signs of noticing Fig’s abrupt stop to her lyric-writing tirade. Fig looked towards Adaine, her frown deepening.
“Is she okay?” She stage-whispered across the bus to Gorgug. He shrugged. “How long has she been like that? Is it me? Am I talking too much-” Fig’s voice rose in pitch and concern and Gorgug shook his head quickly. He wasn’t positive it wasn’t Fig, but it seemed really unlikely and out of character for Adaine to suddenly be offended or upset by Fig’s rambling after three years of best friendship. Besides, if it was that she would’ve spoken or moved once Fig started whispering- and she hadn’t. Adaine still had that glassy expression as she stared out the window, her spellbook abandoned on the seat next to her, and Boggy huddled against her leg. Either way, he knew how Fig worried that she was always accidentally annoying all her friends, that the bad kids all secretly hated her but never said anything. He knew how all her friends had abandoned her in middle school when her horns grew in, and how she worried it would happen again. Gorgug knew it never would- that the bad kids were going to be friends forever, he knew it bone-deep and certain, the way he knew Wilma and Digby were his real parents- but he didn’t want to give Fig’s insecurities any encouragement.
“I dunno, but I don’t think it’s you, Fig,” Gorgug whispered back. “Maybe give us some space and quiet for a minute? I’m gonna talk to her.” Fig nodded, worried, but grabbed her guitar and headed to the back of the bus. Gorgug caught her hand and squeezed it as she passed him. Fig shot him a brief, grateful smile, before ducking into the private quarters in the back of the bus and leaving Gorgug alone with a silent Adaine. He got up and carefully sat down near her, but not close enough to touch. Boggy looked up at him plaintively as Gorgug settled, hopping forward and leaning his face against Gorgug’s thigh.
“Adaine?” Gorgug asked, keeping his voice gentle and low. “You good?” He saw her blink, hard, and shake her head a little. She scanned the rest of the bus as she finally turned away from the window, her eyes jumping around the space before landing on Gorgug. Her hand reached out and landed on Boggy, and a flash of relief lit up in Gorgug’s chest. That, at least, was something.
“Huh?” Adaine said, her eyes still distant as she looked at Gorgug, as though half of her mind was still wherever it’d been when she’d been looking out the window. “Yeah, no, I’m fine.”
Gorgug pressed his lips together. “Are you… sure? You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but you’ve been zoned out for a while, and I was worried about you.”
“Oh.” Adaine blinked hard again, but when she opened her eyes they were a little more focused on Gorgug, instead of trying to stare through him. “Yeah. Sorry I’m just- tired.”
Gorgug raised an eyebrow. He’d seen Adaine sleep deprived and exhausted, and she usually erred more on the Riz side of manic and anxious instead of the Fabian side of sullen and quiet when she was tired, but he didn’t want to argue with her. “Oh, okay. I’m here if you want to talk, you know? Or if you don’t want to ride with us the rest of the way back to Solace I’m sure we can call Ayda and have her teleport you back to Mordred. I know it can be… a lot.”
“Oh,” Adaine repeated, softer this time. “I don’t want to go it’s just-”
“A lot,” Gorgug repeated.
Adaine nodded. “I’m not used to… the constant noise and strangers and I was okay and then suddenly it all caught up to me and my brain won’t let me do anything but just… sit here.”
Gorgug nodded. As with a lot of things, he didn’t really get it, but that was okay. He’d learned that being a good friend was less about understanding everything your friends were struggling with, and more about listening to them anyway. Being a shoulder for them to lean against. Gorgug was good at that- he had broad shoulders and really soft hoodies.
“Do you want to go back to the bunks where it’s quieter?”
Adaine nodded again, “I don’t want Fig to think-”
“I’ll tell her. I know it’s not her, it’s-”
“Too much, right now. I just don’t want her to think that I don’t like it when she talks or that it bothers me when she plays, normally it doesn’t. Just with everything else- last night overstimulated me, I think, and I’m still recovering, and a lot of things that don’t usually… it feels like sandpaper. On my brain, like a really rough grinding away sensation. And it doesn’t usually- but just, right now-”
“Okay.” Gorgug also knew that sometimes explaining was hard, and not the important thing- just like understanding. The important thing was, he was there, and Adaine was leaning on him. “I’ll make sure Fig knows you’re not mad at her. You can’t control your brain all the time, Adaine. You have a mental illness, and sometimes it does-” he made a weird gesture with his hands, and Adaine finally cracked a smile- “I dunno, weird stuff. And that’s okay too. Fig will understand.”
“Thank you, Gorgug.”
Gorgug nodded. “Do you want me to…?”
“Actually,” Adaine scooped Boggy up and huddled him to her chest. “Would you… I don’t want to. Talk, really. It’s hard to- find the good. The right words. And I feel like I’ll start rambling in circles and I don’t want to. Do that. But I don’t want to be alone?”
“I can sit with you? Or Fig?”
“You. Please.”
Gorgug smiled, pleased and warm. He loved it when he could really do things to help his friends, and he liked cuddling with Adaine, on the occasions she asked. She always huddled into his chest and tucked her hands into his hoodie pocket. “We could read something? Ayda gave me another book about Pirate Friendship Theory.”
“Oh, yes, that sounds perfect.” Adaine stood and squeezed past Gorgug, cradling Boggy against her chest as she went towards the bunks.
Gorgug got up slowly, and grabbed the book from where he’d left it in his bag, stopping to scoop up one of the blankets Fig had left abandoned in the front of the bus. He ducked his head into Fig’s bunk on his way down the narrow hall. She was sitting on her bed. pensively plucking chords out on her bass with her Crystal open to a chat with Ayda in front of her.
“She’s okay,” Gorgug said softly, smiling at Fig when she turned to him with wide, worried eyes. “Just overstimulated from everything, she thinks. We’re gonna cuddle and read in her bunk so you can keep working-” Fig relaxed a little at that, Gorgug knew she preferred writing in the front of the bus as opposed to being cooped up in her bunk- “but she says it’s not you and don’t worry. It’s just a lot.”
“I guess I get that.” Fig ducked her head to scribble something in the margins of her notebook- a lyric or a chord or a song title, Gorgug didn’t know. Fig was like that, taking inspiration from the weirdest things in the weirdest ways. She would see a field of flowers on the bus and fawn over them to Gorgug, and turn around and be inspired to write a verse about being king of hell. Her mind worked in ways Gorgug didn’t get, but she made really incredible songs and art, so who was he to question her methods? “Tell her I love her, okay?” Fig continued, after she’d finished writing down whatever idea she’d had. “And Ayda says she loves her too, and will come pick her up and bring her back to Solace early if she wants.”
Gorgug nodded, smiling a little at how Fig had come up with the same solution to help Adaine he had- even if she didn’t need it. “I will. Good luck writing,” he bent down and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Maybe next year he’d take a bard class and learn how to give Bardic Inspiration like Fig and Fabian. Maybe he could do it like that, kissing his friends on the tops of their heads and telling them he loved them. He’d talk it over with Zelda next week. “I can’t wait to see what you come up with- what you had earlier was really shaping up into something cool.”
Fig brightened. “Right? I think I’m going to call Fabian and run some of the chords by him- he’s been into music theory ever since he took that class last year-”
“Sounds good, Fig.”
Gorgug ducked back out of Fig’s bunk and headed towards Adaine’s. She was curled up in her bed, pressed against the far side of the little mattress, waiting for him. He silently held up the book Ayda had given him, and she smiled. He climbed into bed next to her, spreading the blanket he’d brought out over both their legs. Immediately, Adaine turned onto her side and curled onto his chest, tucking her face against his hoodie and putting the hand that wasn’t still holding Boggy into his hoodie jacket; just like he knew she would. His chest warmed at how safe and comfortable Adaine felt with him, and smiled down at her, even though she couldn’t see it.
“You want me to read it aloud?”
She nodded into his chest, murmuring, “Might fall asleep.”
“That’s okay,” he told her, and opened the book, propping it against his knees with one hand. He tucked the other arm around Adaine’s shoulders, pulling her close and combing his fingers through her hair like he knew she liked. Makes me feel grounded, she’d told him once, like I’m real and I have a connection to my physical body. It- helps. When I’m… when my brain gets bad. Gorgug felt her relax even more against his side. And then, he started to read.