Chapter Text
To Thomas’ surprise, Ethan is actually a really cool guy. You know, once they got past his obsession with aliens. He’s always calm, which can’t be said for the other two members of the group, so he appreciated Ethan adding some balance to their chaotic energy.
Sure sometimes he’d dump a good half hour’s worth of facts about NASA onto him as he’d try to eat his lunch. And then other times he can be a bit too honest with his feedback on certain people’s, cough Damiano cough, cooking. But he never means anything in a malicious sense and he always makes up for it whether it’s through an apology or with his kickass drumming.
The first time Thomas sees Ethan looking nervous is before their first performance. He looks as if someone filled him with mentos and coke and his body might just explode from all the nerves he’s poorly hiding. Ethan has his head tucked into his chest as his thumb taps on his shoulders and he seems to be humming something, though he can’t understand what.
“What’s up with you?” The shock falls out of Thomas’ mouth before he can think of a way that doesn’t sound as mean. The damage is done and Thomas can sense the tears clogging up Ethan’s throat. “Hey, relax. Everyone gets nervous.” Thomas tries to comfort Ethan but can’t help the knots tying themselves in his own stomach out of concern for the drummer. Sure he had stage fright every now and then, and he’d witnessed a small handful of panic attacks with his other bandmates, but this felt different and he couldn’t understand why.
“S-sorry” Ethan stutters and his face somehow manages to flush an even more vibrant shade of embarrassed red. Thomas just reassures him with a slight laughter lacing his tone.
“Oh no, no stress Etan. You know what you gotta do?” Ethan shakes his head and Thomas smiles as he stands back up in front of the timid boy. “You just shake it out bro.” Thomas lets his body do a small shake, a trick his mum had taught him as a young boy. Ethan scrunches his face in confusion and Thomas tries to encourage him to try it out. “You know!” Thomas demonstrates by letting his entire body flop around and letting out an indistinguishable noise in the process. But it makes Ethan smile and Thomas watches as he anxiously moves his head side to side before freezing up again, still tapping on his hip.
“No, come on. You gotta go all or nothing, like this.” He blows out a raspberry noise as he flops up and down, making as much of a fool of himself as he can and helping Ethan take his mind out of its panic mode. Eventually Ethan begins to jump up and down and flap his hands side to side as he makes a clicking noise like a dolphin. Whatever does the trick I guess. Thomas notes to himself as he can see the bottled up emotions ooze out of him softly until he has a calm smile across his face. “There you go!” Thomas joins in and is impressed by the peculiar feeling of satisfaction the movements give him.
“Hey this is nice.” He comments and Thomas doesn’t miss the momentary blush of pride but keeps the laughter to himself. He leans against a railing and sighs in success. “Ok, you feel better?” Ethan nods as he still softly shifts his weight from one foot onto the other and Thomas nods.He looks around and realizes the other two are nowhere to be found, which is concerning seeing as Thomas is usually always the last one to arrive anywhere. “Perfetto, now where are the other two?”
As soon as he finishes his sentence, Victoria surprises him from behind and Thomas almost topples into some storage boxes, making the bassist and singer behind her laugh. “Okay everyone is feeling good?” They all murmur, cheer and nod in agreement and Thomas cheers back.
“Okay then, let’s rock and roll.”