Chapter Text
“Can I get the snare one more time?” the audio tech in the back of the room requested over the PA.
Twenty minutes to showtime and they’d almost finished sound check. All was right. Tomori had gone first while the others tuned and assembled, so now she stood where the audience would and listened.
Taki gave a cautious little tap-tap-raptaptap on the top of her drum. It had the same quality as someone testing a pan on the stove to see if it had cooled enough to be handled. Her face was clenched in that pressed lip grimace of concentration she kept on standby to quell the pre-show jitters. She would have to find a way to comfort her when she got off stage.
“Great, guitar next?” the tech asked. Raana’s fingers played a quick chord, then skipped their way up a scale.
She didn’t usually get this perspective on her bandmates. Sometimes she sang to them on stage. And they played back to her, instruments expressing emotions no language could. But that was different from being in the audience. On stage, they were partners. Equal members of the home they’d made for themselves. Here, she saw her life partners as an audience member looking up in reverence.
“Again please, Kaname-san.” Raana sauntered up onto show-off-block (Anon’s term, she just didn’t have a better name for it) and stared down at her.
Raana strummed, and her notes flitted through the live house like sparrows, adjusting course as the tech honed in on her ideal mixing. They scattered into non-existence, and she strummed again to revive them.
Heat. Light. The stage was powered off, just house lights, and yet she felt phantom spotlights beating down on her. Raana couldn’t possibly be sweating or crying so early. She felt the cascade of sparkling liquid emotion bathe her anyways.
The audio tech doffed her headphones and leaned back into her mic. “We’re good. Thanks all!”
Raana took her pick between her teeth and squatted down on the block. She was still a good head above Tomori. Ah, the MyGO tradition of tossing picks into the crowd after a live-
An impish smirk communicated Raana’s challenge. You want a pick? Take it.
Taki would’ve been scandalized, but Taki was behind the drum kit and Raana’s musician’s pocky game was obscured by the back of her head and that mane of silky soft hair that was so soothing on her fingertips.
Words never came easily to Tomori, and sometimes actions failed her too, but not in this moment. She stretched up on her tiptoes and leaned in without taking her eyes off Raana’s, moving closer and closer until she filled her whole field of view and she could smell the earthy traces of matcha on her breath.
Tomori took the pick between her teeth so it bridged the space between them, their lips a petal’s breadth apart. A wordless scream from her heart: I’ll fight for you.