extremely funny that aether is a ghoul who perpetually wants uppies. no one has a choice in the matter. aether has selected you. he will go Up. swiss began lifting him up as an anticipatory measure
At the end of the day, my thoughts on job hunting are that it's incredibly stupid how every fiber of our current socioeconomic structure is screaming that you MUST have a job and nothing else matters because you MUST be working and that's the only thing of true importance so never forget that you MUST have a job, and I'm like damn okay so I'd like a job, can I have one? And the answer is No
Warnings: rain and Dew talk. and touch. just once. Tension and yearning. General phantom shenanigans. Rain being unbearably hot in an Outfit. Non-explicit fwb smut at the end
Song: Private by The Neighbourhood
a/n: before you ask what's wrong with me, consider that I also have no idea
· · · — 𖥸 · 𓃹 · 𖥸 — · · ·
Dew is not trying.
He's established this clearly. To himself, in the mirror, when his day started at seven forty-five. AM.
He's going to be casual and that means…
No tie — that's the whole point, the tie is the thing. The tie says trying and he is not trying.
He is simply a business owner visiting his business on a Friday.
His.
Almost officially.
The paperwork's not signed yet, but…
Details.
The collar pins, however, are non-negotiable.
He'd grabbed them without thinking — one gold star, one white enamel tuberose, linked by a fine custom chain. They're asymmetric.
And that means casual.
The folio is practical. He's the owner.
Prospective owner, rather.
He needs... documents. A place to take notes.
Beside him, Bell looks like he's about to present quarterly earnings to a stadium. Charcoal suit, crisp pocket square, shoes catching the violet bleed of Tempt's sign off the wet pavement as they approach.
The neon stains everything purple. The street smells like last night's rain and cigarettes and something sweet underneath — sugar and dry ice bleeding through the club's vents even now, even hours before opening, like the place can't help itself.
Dew does not have a reaction to this.
The chain catches the neon as they approach, a brief gold glint against black fabric.
Bell looks at the pins, just once.
"Tuberose," he observes.
"It's part of the shirt."
He looks at Dew.
"Mhm."
· · · — 𖥸 · 𓃹 · 𖥸 — · · ·
The club at five o'clock on a Friday evening hums like something coiling.
Not loud yet. Not the full-body bass thrum of a packed house, not the laser-bright chaos of peak hours. Just — alive. The low warm glow of prep lighting catching brass rails and velvet booths. Someone running a sound check in short bursts, bass notes dropping like stones into still water. The smell of the fog machine warming up underneath the sweetness of whatever Phantom's eating.
Which is, Dew clocks immediately, Chinese takeout.
At the bar.
His bar.
Rain and Phantom are installed right in the middle like they've been there for hours, possibly days, possibly since the dawn of time. Little white boxes open between them, chopsticks, a constellation of sauce packets neither of them has touched. Phantom's laughing at something on Rain's phone, one hand pressed to their chest like it's the funniest thing they've ever seen.
Rain is smiling.
Not the smirk from the alley or the hallway or the stage. Something quieter. More real. The kind of smile that happens when nobody's performing.
Dew stops walking without meaning to.
Bell doesn't. He just steps neatly around him and continues toward the bar like a ghoul that remembers he has a job to do.
Rain's gaze lifts and finds Dew across the room.
Holds there for exactly one beat — unhurried, assessing, that ocean-eyed catalogue that means Rain is paying attention even when he looks like he isn't.
Then he looks back down at his takeout box.
"Mystery man is back," he says with a low hum.
Phantom looks up and grins wide enough to be dangerous.
"I bet you he bought it," they say, vibrating with energy.
Rain picks up a dumpling with his chopsticks. Unbothered. Domestic. Like Dew standing in the middle of a club holding a leather folio at five on a Friday is the most ordinary thing in the world.
"Mm," Rain says.
He takes a bite.
Aether materializes from the back hallway with the timing of someone who's been watching from a distance and decided now is the moment.
"Gentlemen."
Aether’s voice is warm, bracelets chiming as he crosses the floor. He claps Dew once on the shoulder and turns toward the bar. "Come on — I want you to meet Cumulus. You'll want to know her."
He leads them down the length of the bar, which means they pass right by Rain and Phantom.
Dew keeps his eyes forward, measured and professional.
He almost makes it.
Rain's phone is face-up on the bar between the takeout boxes, screen bright. Phantom's leaning over it, chopsticks abandoned, one finger scrolling. The listing loads in full just as Dew draws level—
Oxblood leather. Brass hardware. A chest harness, waist belt, thigh straps, studded collar. The custom kind of thing that costs more than most people's rent and looks like it was designed specifically to—
Dew looks at it for a second before he looks away. Keeps walking.
Behind him, Phantom finally looks up from Rain's phone and finds Bell.
Bell, who is already looking at them with those perfectly calm grey eyes, tablet under one arm, expression revealing precisely nothing. All six feet four inches of charcoal suiting and mild attention.
Phantom, for perhaps the first time in their life, goes very still. Their grin spreads slow and certain, like sunrise.
'Oh,' they think. 'Oh that's a problem.'
Dew doesn't see any of this.
He's already at the end of the bar where Cumulus is prepping for the night — big blonde curls piled high, moving through her setup with the quiet authority of someone who has done this a thousand times and could do it a thousand more, likely with her eyes closed.
She runs the bar, the music, the announcements, the atmosphere — basically everything that isn't the stage itself.
That belongs to her wife.
The whole room runs through her even now, even empty, like she's already tuning it.
"Hi," she says, and even that single syllable fills the space around it.
Dew blinks.
"Hi," he says.
Aether is already smiling.
Cumulus waves a hand like pleasantries are beside the point and slides a drink across the bar — something dark. "I have opinions. Several of them. About the supplier contracts, the music rotation, the bar stock and the vermouth situation specifically. Want them?"
"All of them," Dew says.
She nods once, satisfied, like he's passed some sort of test.
She pulls out a tablet, hers sleeker than Bell's, with a custom case that has a little gold star and a heart that says C&C on it — and turns it toward him. "Music rotation first. Aether let me build the full system two years ago. Curated by performer, by night, by crowd energy. It's not broken so I'd prefer we don't fix it."
"I wasn't planning to."
"Good." She flips to the next screen. "Vermouth. We're using the wrong one. I've been saying this for eight months."
"Change it."
Something in her expression shifts toward warmth, a smile growing across her cheeks.
"You'll do," she says, mostly to herself.
Dew opens his folio.
This, at least, he can handle.
His brain, however, is still three feet back.
Oxblood leather.
Brass hardware.
Rain wearing that while he—
Focus.
He's three questions deep into the vermouth situation — Cumulus not kidding about having opinions, and all correct, of course — when movement down the bar catches his eye.
He doesn't look.
The stock list, the page right in front of him, is very interesting.
Rain sets his chopsticks down, tips his head toward the back hallway, and Phantom reads it instantly — that wordless shorthand of two people who've spent enough time together to stop needing sentences.
He stretches as he stands.
Both arms overhead, spine arching long, the hem of his hoodie riding up to flash a strip of grey-blue skin, the little dip of his waist catching the prep lighting. His neck rolls to one side, then the other. Slow. Easy. The movement of someone completely at home in themself.
They start gathering takeout boxes, Phantom stacking the containers one too high before Rain rescues them with a fond eyeroll.
Dew looks back at the stock list.
The stock list is… very interesting.
"—which is why I think we should reconsider the well options entirely," Cumulus is saying.
"Agreed," Dew says, with great conviction. About the stock list.
Rain and Phantom drift past the bar toward the back hallway, takeout boxes balanced, Phantom's voice carrying just enough to catch.
"So what's tonight's fit—"
"Still deciding."
"Ooh, let me do your liner."
"You always make it too sharp."
"Because soft liner is a crime and you know it—"
Their voices blur into the hallway noise, the door swinging shut behind them with a soft thud.
Dew stares at his folio.
'Supplier contracts,' he thinks firmly.
Vermouth.
Work.
· · · — 𖥸 · 𓃹 · 𖥸 — · · ·
The dressing room smells like hairspray and warm skin and the faint sweetness of setting spray — a specific smell, Dew is learning, that means performers getting ready. The lighting's warm and close, vanity mirrors ringed with bulbs casting everything in amber. Costume rails packed tight along one wall. A half-open door showing the steam-tiled edge of the showers beyond.
It's warm in a way his apartment isn't.
Lived-in. Claimed. Every surface belonging to someone specific — a locker left half open, a costume rail organized by color, the little photo tucked into the corner of someone's mirror. The kind of space that holds people.
Dew stands in the doorway and doesn't examine the feeling that gives him.
Rain's vanity is immediately identifiable — the neatest one, which somehow makes it the most devastating.
Stage makeup arranged with quiet precision. A small jade roller. Two different setting sprays. A lineup of lip products that might as well be a foreign language.
Phantom perched on the edge of it.
Obviously.
Like they belong there.
Liner pencil in hand, head tilted, in the middle of angling toward Rain's face with intensely focused energy. Rain has his chin tipped up with the resigned patience of someone who has been through this before and knows resistance is functionally useless.
Aether clears his throat.
"Everyone, a moment—"
The room shifts. Aurora looks up from her lashes. Cirrus pauses mid-adjustment on the costume rail. Swiss materializes from somewhere near the back wall, arms folded, sleeves rolled.
Phantom glances toward the door.
Up.
And up.
And up.
Their gaze lands, with great specificity, on Bell's pocket square.
Three perfect points. Geometric. Deliberate. Folded to within a millimeter of its life.
Rain glances sideways at them and reads the situation in approximately half a second.
Not like this.
He reaches up and puts his headphones on, volume maxed.
Phantom, betrayed, turns to him.
Rain's eyes stay forward.
Phantom grabs his wrist. Squeezes — once, twice, the urgent morse code of are you fucking seeing this.
Rain pats their hand once.
He does not remove his headphones.
Aether, unbothered, raises his voice slightly.
"—pleased to introduce the incoming owner of Tempt. He'll be shadowing operations while the paperwork finalizes—"
Phantom is not listening to Aether.
Phantom is watching Bell with an intensity that has nothing to do with professionalism and everything to do with that pocket square.
Bell, for his part, is doing a quiet, methodical inventory of the room with those calm grey eyes and has not looked at Phantom once.
This is, somehow, worse.
Phantom leans toward Rain's ear, headphones and all.
Rain reaches up without looking and pushes their face gently away.
Phantom allows it and grabs his wrist again anyway.
"—so please make them feel welcome," Aether finishes.
Dew, standing in the doorway of his almost-club watching his almost-employees, catches the tail end of Cirrus's knowing smile. Aurora's wide eyes. Swiss's single acknowledging nod.
Rain has heard precisely nothing.
Which is, Dew suspects, entirely on purpose.
Aether's already steering Dew back toward the door.
"Let's get back to the floor, Cumulus should have the rotation pulled up—"
Dew follows, folio tucked under his arm.
Very professional.
· · · — 𖥸 · 𓃹 · 𖥸 — · · ·
Rain pulls the headphones down around his neck when the door swings shut.
The silence lasts approximately half a second before Phantom launches.
"Okay—"
"Finish my liner first."
"Rain—"
"Liner. Then talking."
Phantom makes a noise of profound suffering but picks up the pencil anyway, tilting Rain's chin up with two fingers, already talking at full speed.
"Did you see him—"
"Saw him."
"He's so tall—"
"Phantom."
"Like unreasonably, aggressively, personally offensively tall—" Phantom's hand doesn't even waver, the liner staying perfect despite the monologue, "—and that suit, Rain, that suit, who wears a suit like that—"
"Someone who gets paid to wear suits."
"I want to ruin it."
"Obviously."
"I want to find out what's underneath the pocket square."
"More suit, probably."
"Rain." Phantom pulls back, pencil hovering, expression deadly serious. "I want to climb that ghoul like a very expensive, very well-dressed tree."
Rain considers his reflection.
"Done," he says, about the liner.
"Did you hear what I said—"
"I heard you." Rain reaches for his setting spray. "Go check Aurora's makeup. It's her premiere night."
Phantom looks at Rain. At his setting spray. At the very deliberate way he's not quite meeting their eyes in the mirror.
Their expression shifts — the manic Bell-induced energy settling into something quieter. Sharper. The look of someone who has known a person long enough to read the spaces between what they say.
"I know what you are," Phantom says.
It's not unkind, or even teasing.
Just. True.
"Aurora," Rain says again. "Go."
Phantom slides off the vanity and smooths their outfit.
"She's going to be so good tonight," they say about Aurora, watching Cirrus adjust her costume across the way.
"I know," Rain says.
They go with a knowing little smirk — floating across the dressing room toward Aurora's vanity, already switching gears, already warm and focused and present in the way Phantom is when something actually matters to them.
Rain watches them in the mirror for a moment before he opens the small drawer at the base of his vanity.
Collars. A neat row of them — different widths, different materials, different energies. He thumbs through slowly. The black velvet ribbon, the red satin, the delicate gold chain, the thin leather with the silver clasp—
His fingers pause.
There.
Black. Simple. The individual letters slid along the band, each one a small square of dark enamel, set with tiny rhinestones that catch even the warm vanity lighting.
B. A. B. Y.
He picks it up and turns it once in his hand. Sets it on the vanity in front of him.
He looks at his reflection for a long moment — liner perfect, curls loose, body shimmer catching the light. His expression does something small and private that he doesn't bother to name.
He reaches for the setting spray.
He'll need an extra spritz or two.
Good night to bring out that old wooden chair.
· · · — 𖥸 · 𓃹 · 𖥸 — · · ·
By six-fifteen, Dew has filled two pages of notes.
Real notes. Good notes. The kind that justify the collar pins and the showing up to a club on a Friday with a leather portfolio.
Bar stock — well managed. Cumulus runs tight inventory.
Security rotation — Mountain on door, Swiss floor coverage. Efficient.
Sound system — upgraded recently. Good bass distribution.
Lighting rig — ask about maintenance schedule.
Staff morale — high. Retention makes sense.
He clicks his pen and then clicks it again. Writes:
Fog machine — check filter schedule.
Bell, beside him, is already three emails deep into supplier contract comparisons. He hasn't said anything in forty minutes.
This, Dew has decided, is the ideal working environment.
𖥸
The floor fills slowly. Bar staff arriving, taking their positions. Mist moving through the space with quiet authority, checking sightlines, adjusting a spotlight with the focus of someone who has opinions about angles.
Aurora is doing something with her hair in the mirror behind the bar and catching Dew's eye every thirty seconds like she's waiting for him to announce something.
He doesn't.
She goes back to her hair.
It's fine. Everything's fine. He's good at this — the operational side, the systems, the numbers. This is his language. The club in prep hour speaks it fluently and he's finding the rhythm of it, the logic underneath the glitter and velvet.
He can do this.
He is doing this.
Phantom materializes at his elbow.
"You know," they say, conversationally, "Aether would send song suggestions."
Dew looks at them. "Pardon?"
"For the dancers." Phantom leans against the bar, arms folded, the picture of casual. "Every few weeks he'd send something through. Just a track or two, no explanation. Always fun to see what he picked." A pause. "Gave the sets a different energy, you know? Like a little window into what the owner was thinking."
Dew looks at them for a long moment.
Phantom looks back, innocent as anything.
"I'll think about it," Dew says.
"Sure," Phantom says. "No rush."
They push off the bar and drift away, all loose limbs and easy grace.
Dew looks down at his folio.
He's not going to overthink this.
It's a professional courtesy. A continuation of established precedent. Aether did it, it worked, it's simply good ownership practice to be aware of the energy you're curating—
He goes to tear a page from the back of his folio and thinks better of it, reaches for a bar napkin instead.
Writes three songs down in his usual handwriting — precise, small, slightly too neat for someone who claims to not be thinking about it.
He taps his pen and starts to add a fourth song before crossing it out, deciding that hearing it here may lead to a fire code issue and moves on like a normal, well-adjusted ghoul.
When Phantom drifts past again he holds it out without looking up from his notes.
"The song thing," he says. "For consideration."
Phantom takes it.
Dew is already writing something else down, no longer paying them any mind.
Phantom unfolds the napkin and reads it once. Reads it again. Their expression does absolutely nothing.
"Great," they say. "Thanks."
They fold it back along the original crease and tuck it into their waistband, drifting away to finish the last of their prep.
They get exactly twelve feet into the room before the smile becomes a problem.
They fix it before anyone sees.
Mostly.
· · · — 𖥸 · 𓃹 · 𖥸 — · · ·
The doors open promptly at seven and Tempt exhales.
That's the only way to describe it — like the building has been holding its breath all day and finally, finally lets go. The fog machines sigh to life, dry ice curling low across the floor. The lighting rig shifts from prep warmth to something deeper, more deliberate — pink and violet bleeding into each other along the walls. The sound system stops testing and starts meaning it, bass settling into the floor like a second heartbeat.
People filter in. Then more people. Then enough people that the bar has a three-deep queue and Swiss has relocated to the stage rail without anyone asking him to.
Dew watches all of this from his position near the east wall and feels, cautiously, like he might be fine.
Aurora takes the stage first.
She's good. Nerves translating into something electric — a little raw, a little eager, but the crowd responds, leans into it. She works the pole with careful precision, having clearly drilled it a thousand times in an empty room and is now discovering what it feels like to run a routine with an audience breathing beneath her. There's something real in it. Something that doesn't need polish yet because the honesty is doing the work.
Dew watches her land a transition cleanly and feels something that might be professionally adjacent to proud.
He makes a note.
Aurora — strong debut energy. Crowd engagement high. Watch for confidence development over next quarter.
He pauses and adds: Congratulate her on a strong open.
A real note. A good note. The kind of note a business owner makes.
He makes several more.
East rail at capacity by 7:40 — consider expanded seating configuration.
Bar queue peaks at 7:45, clears by 8:05 — Cumulus runs efficient turnaround.
Mountain ID checks averaging under ninety seconds — no bottleneck.
Bell appears at his shoulder with a water. Dew accepts it without comment. Bell always knows, and Dew stopped questioning that a long time ago.
"Thoughts?" Bell asks.
"It's a well-run operation," Dew says.
"Mm." Bell looks out at the floor. "Aether built something good."
"He did."
A pause.
"You're going to make it better," Bell says simply. Like a fact.
Dew doesn't answer.
But he clicks his pen and keeps writing.
Staff communication — seamless. No visible gaps in coverage.
Crowd demographics — diverse, high spend, strong return rate evident from staff recognition of regulars.
Atmosphere—
He pauses on that one.
Writes: effective.
Underlines it.
He looks out at the floor — the fog curling at ankle height, the lights doing something warm and deliberately sinful to every surface, the bass in his chest like a second pulse — and thinks that effective is perhaps the most catastrophic understatement he's ever committed to paper.
But it'll do.
He's fine.
Everything's fine.
He's been fine for hours.
Days.
Everything is absolutely fine.
𖥸
By eight-thirty they've migrated to the bar — Bell's suggestion, practical as always, better sightlines to the floor. Dew doesn't even register the move consciously, mid-note about crowd flow in the northeast corner.
Phantom materializes at Bell's elbow the way they materialize everywhere — suddenly, completely, like they were always there and the rest of the world simply failed to notice.
They set two shot glasses down on the bar.
Something amber and top shelf, catching the flashing lights.
"You've been working this whole time," Phantom observes.
Bell doesn't look up from his tablet. "I have."
"That's a tragedy." They nudge one glass toward him. "Drink with me."
"I'm on the clock."
Phantom considers this briefly.
"Mmn."
They pick up both shots and knock the first back neat, setting the glass down with a delicate click. They hold the second up between two fingers like a question.
Bell looks at them with a raised eyebrow and makes no move to take their little offering.
Phantom shrugs and knocks that one back, too.
They turn to go, pausing to look over their shoulder, eyes catching the light.
"Let me know if you want a taste."
They disappear back into the crowd.
Bell looks at the empty shot glasses.
He is a professional. He is on the clock. He is here in a strictly professional capacity and Phantom is—
Five foot five and made entirely of chaos and very precise eyeliner.
He returns to his tablet.
His ears, if anyone were looking closely enough, have gone slightly copper.
Dew is writing something about seating at the center rail and has noticed nothing.
This is, Bell decides, fine.
· · · — 𖥸 · 𓃹 · 𖥸 — · · ·
Dew is mid-note about the back bar lighting when Cumulus steps up to the mic.
He doesn't notice her step away from the bar until the air changes. A shift — literal, physical, the atmosphere in the room changing pressure like a storm gathering. Her air magic moves through the club in a warm current, lifting the fog just slightly.
The crowd feels it, her voice dropping into the silence like something inevitable.
"My beautiful disasters—"
Just that. Just those three words, and the whole room leans forward.
Dew's pen stills on the page.
"The headliner for the evening."
The lighting shifts — everything else dimming, a single spot blooming at center stage where a chair sits alone. Simple. Wooden. Angled just slightly toward the audience.
Dew looks at the chair and then back to his notes.
Back bar lighting —
"Please welcome to the stage—"
The bass drops to almost nothing. Just pulse. Just the suggestion of a beat, lazy and low.
"—our Rainy baby."
The curtain moves and Dew's pen stops working entirely.
Rain comes out slow.
Like he has nowhere to be and all night to get there.
Different tonight — black, thigh high seamed stockings, held up by the black straps of a garter belt visible below the hem of the tiny pleated skirt sitting low on his hips. A white button down on top, oversized, collar open, two buttons already undone like he started getting dressed and simply lost interest.
The BABY collar sits at his throat, rhinestones catching the single spotlight. Just below it, where the collar ends and skin begins, the faint lines of his neck gills sit smooth and closed.
Dew clocks the garter straps immediately. He does not process them.
His brain files it somewhere under later and moves on because processing that fully right now would mean game over and he is a professional and this is a business observation and—
He looks back at the BABY collar, sparkling under the lights.
'Oh no,' Dew thinks.
Rain reaches the chair but doesn't sit in it yet.
He puts one lazy hand on the back of it and lets the opening notes of something slow and deliberate curl through the speakers—
You radiate in shades of grey—
Dew's notepad hits the bar.
He doesn't notice.
Rain turns the chair backwards and straddles it — thighs spreading wide on either side, the skirt riding up with the movement, garter straps pulling taut against his thighs, stockings flexing where they sit. He settles his forearms on the back of the chair, casual and comfortable, like he's getting ready to have a conversation.
His eyes find Dew immediately.
Like he already knew exactly where to look.
Dew picks his folio back up.
Bar renovation — back lighting, under-shelf fixtures currently—
Rain rolls his hips once against the back of the chair, slow and deliberate. His thighs flex with it, the inner flesh shifting just above where the stocking band sits, the elastic pressing into that devastating place where Rain is soft — spilling just slightly over the top and Dew is going to—
His pen stops moving. He doesn't need to write that down.
Not gonna change your mind when it's made—
Bent out of shape, hey—
Shh.
Rain lifts one finger to his lips. The shush gesture small, precise, aimed like a dart straight at Dew's chest. His head tilts with it, the collar rhinestones catching the light, and just beneath — the neck gills, still closed, still smooth, still secret.
Dew stares at his notepad.
Bar service, he writes. Cumulus — efficient. Turnaround time—
Rain stands. Steps around the chair. One hand trails the back of it as he moves, and with the other — unhurried, eyes tracking back to Dew's without quite landing there — he undoes the third and fourth buttons.
The shirt swings open another inch. A sliver of grey-blue sternum. The first glint of shimmer sitting just below his collarbones — and below that, where the shirt falls open further, the suggestion of ribs. Of the gill lines there, smooth and closed, catching the light just enough to be visible.
Rain turns and gives the audience his back, the skirt doing something criminal when he walks.
You've got a way, contagious in a room—
He drops to a crouch.
Both hands to the floor. Head bowing forward, curls falling loose. And then his spine curves up, hips lifting, the whole long line of him arching — the skirt riding higher, garter straps pulling taut, the shirt falling open as gravity gets involved.
He holds the arch.
His breathing deepens with the effort, chest expanding — and at his ribs, just visible through the open shirt, the gill lines flutter.
Once. Twice.
Opening just slightly, pulling in air, the delicate movement of something that doesn't perform. Something that just. happens.
Dew sees it.
Dew sees it and his brain goes completely, catastrophically offline.
He is going to ruin his briefs. He is already ruining his briefs. He is a business owner and a professional and he is absolutely, completely, irreversibly ruining his briefs over a water ghoul's rib gills catching the spotlight in a chair routine and there is nothing he can do about it—
Bell doesn't look up from his tablet.
Rain rises. Rolls his neck — the gills there fluttering briefly with the deep breath he takes, just once, just enough — before they close again. He reaches up with both hands and undoes a fifth button. A sixth. The shirt falling fully open now, the belly ring finally visible, a tiny glinting centerpiece, and on either side of his ribs the gill lines close again, quiet as an exhale.
He doesn't take the shirt off, instead lets it hang open.
Hallucinate when I'm dancin' for you—
Rain turns back to the chair.
Sits forward-facing — one leg hooked over the arm, the skirt riding up completely on that side, the full length of garter strap visible from hip to stocking. Elbow propped on his knee, chin in his hand, like he's thinking about something mildly interesting.
His eyes find Dew again, pinning him in his gaze.
You want this, his expression says. Don't you.
Then he lifts that finger.
Shh.
Dew writes something.
He will not be able to read it later.
Rain's — and then something that might be stage presence except it looks more like the way that elastic band is pressing into the give of his thigh right where the garter strap connects—
Dew's pen is getting warm.
He switches his grip and keeps writing.
All that it takes is a taste—
Rain stands from the chair in one fluid motion and steps back. One hand finds the zipper at his hip.
Draws it down.
The skirt drops.
Hits the floor. Done.
The black garter belt sits low on his hips, straps running down to the stockings, framing everything they were only suggesting before.
The crowd makes a sound like a single organism forgetting how to breathe.
Dew has forgotten considerably more than that.
And we'll know what we should do—
Rain moves back to the chair. Doesn't sit. Both hands on the back of it, shirt sliding off one shoulder with the motion, and he drops his head forward — letting the curls fall, letting the spotlight find the back of his neck.
He looks back over his shoulder.
Right at Dew.
Too soon to say, better behave—
Shh—
He rolls his hips.
Slow. Devastating. Building into something relentless.
His thighs flex with it — the skin above the bands shifting, pressing against the elastic, the garter straps pulling taut and releasing, taut and releasing — and then deliberately, specifically, with the particular cruelty of someone who knows exactly what they're doing—
He lets his thighs jiggle.
Just above the band.
Right where the elastic sits.
The flesh there moves with a gravity that has nothing to do with performance and everything to do with Rain being entirely fucking devastating—
The pen melts.
The barrel softens in Dew's grip, ink going warm, the thing losing structural integrity one slow degree at a time until Dew is holding something that used to be a pen and is now just evidence.
He sets it down on the bar with great care.
Bell produces a replacement from his breast pocket without looking up.
Dew takes it without a word.
Rain does it again.
Keeping it private—
His breathing has deepened now, the work of it showing — chest rising and falling, with every breath. At his ribs, the gill lines flutter open again. Pulling in air. Working. The delicate movement of something involuntary and private and utterly, completely annihilating to witness from three feet away at a bar where Dew is supposed to be taking professional notes—
The neck gills flutter too. Just once.
Dew swallows a sound that will follow him to his grave.
Bell, to his infernal credit, does not react. Not even slightly.
Why does it feel like we're hiding—
Rain lets the shirt fall away.
It's just him now. Just the garter belt and the stockings and the collar and the belly ring and the gills and everything else Dew is going to be thinking about for the rest of his natural life.
The curse of immortality.
Rain tips his weight back and drops into a backbend.
Full and controlled. Spine curving in a long impossible arc, thigh highs planted, arms extending overhead until his fingertips brush the stage. The belly ring catches light. The gill lines at his ribs flutter open with the effort, working hard now, visible with every heave of his chest — open, flutter, open —
The first bills hit the stage.
Rain doesn't acknowledge them. Just holds the arch, chest heaving, gills working, the spotlight catching every point of sweat on his body.
Dew is gripping the bar like he'll do something stupid if he doesn't tether himself.
The second pen is somewhere on the floor, probably.
Rain comes back up slow. Vertebra by vertebra. Head last, curls falling back from his face.
He looks directly at Dew like he timed it.
One corner of his mouth curves.
He lifts his finger one last time.
Shh.
More bills. The stage is starting to mean it.
He turns back to the chair for the final sequence — steps around it once, hand trailing the back, hips finding the beat again. Every step deliberate. Every movement building. He rolls his body forward into the chair back, slow and deep, thighs flexing, the garter straps pulling —
Bills slide across the rail.
Rain rolls again. Deeper. Elastic bands pressing in, the skin above shifting, and he looks out across the crowd with the expression of someone who has never once been surprised by their own power—
His eyes find Dew at the bar.
Gripping it with both hands. Knuckles gone pale. The expression of a ghoul who has made a structural commitment to this piece of furniture and cannot be moved.
Rain drops to his knees in front of the chair. The descent sends his thighs settling back against his heels, the stockings pressing in, the soft jiggle with the movement—
He looks up through his lashes.
At the crowd.
At Dew.
And they bow down, and they bow down—
The bills come in earnest now. A wave of them. Sliding across the rail, catching the last of the spotlight, landing soft across the stage around him like something inevitable.
Rain doesn't look away from Dew.
Not once.
Not even when he reaches out and gathers a few bills with two fingers like he has all the time in the world to be paid.
He holds it for exactly one breath.
Then the lights cut to black.
The room explodes.
Dew stands very still in the noise and the dark and the aftermath and becomes aware of several things simultaneously:
One. The folio is still on the bar, which is the only thing that he could control tonight.
Two. He has no idea where the pen went.
Three. His briefs are a lost cause and have been for some time and he is not examining when exactly that happened.
Four. The harness listing is still sitting in his brain, patient as anything, and it has been sitting there this entire time.
Bell sets the replacement pen back on the bar next to him without looking up.
Dew picks it up and writes. Measured. Thoughtful.
Not a single tremor of his hand.
Rain — strong performer. High crowd engagement.
He takes a steadying breath and adds a line.
Asset to the club.
He nods and scribbles a tiny little note in the corner, just to himself.
Send Bell that link tonight.
Bell, reading over his shoulder, produces the melted pen from his breast pocket and sets it on the bar, too.
"Understandable reaction," he says. He looks up and sighs, tucking the melted pen back into his pocket. "Phantom's heading this way."
Dew looks up.
Phantom is weaving through the crowd toward them, grinning like they've won something, eyes bright with delight.
"So," they say, arriving in front of Dew with a gleeful lack of boundaries. "New boss."
Dew straightens.
"Rain wants to meet you."
· · · — 𖥸 · 𓃹 · 𖥸 — · · ·
The dressing room is even warmer than the floor.
Closer. The vanity lights doing something too-intimate to the air, the steam bleeding through the shut bathroom door making everything feel slightly more alive than it should.
Rain is seated at his vanity.
Of course he is.
He's redressed, applying more glitter along his collarbone, looking at Dew's reflection in the doorway like it's a mildly interesting development and not the direct result of a targeted campaign.
He doesn't turn around. Just meets Dew's eyes in the mirror.
"New boss," he says.
"Rain," Dew says.
Rain sets his makeup brush down, reaches for his water bottle and takes a nice long sip, throat bobbing with every pull.
"So," he says, still to the mirror. "What did it for you this time."
The room is very quiet.
"I'm here in a professional capacity," Dew says.
Rain turns on his stool.
Slow. All the way around, one knee pulled up, elbow resting on it. Completely at ease in his own space, in his own skin. The skirt shifts with the movement, fabric settling soft against his thighs.
Dew does not look at his thighs.
"That's not an answer," Rain says pleasantly.
"It's the only one you're getting."
Rain considers him. Does the catalogue thing — noticing that Dew is holding his folio in front of himself with both hands at exactly the kind of height to not be coincidental.
"Backbend," he decides. "You stopped blinking."
Dew's jaw tightens. "I was taking notes."
"Was it just your pen that melted?"
"The—"
"Climate control in this building is excellent," Rain says simply.
Dew stares at him.
Rain stares back, perfectly pleasant, like he hasn't just surgically removed Dew's last defense.
"Was there a reason you wanted to meet me," Dew says, "or did you just want to watch me stand here."
Something flickers across Rain's face. Not the smirk — something more genuine, quickly contained.
"Can't it be both?"
"I have a full house to observe."
"You were observing pretty hard from the bar." Rain tilts his head. "Thought we should make it official."
Dew looks at him for a long moment and shifts his weight.
"Five years," he says, moving into the room properly, letting the door fall mostly shut behind him. "Aether says you built half the regular clientele yourself."
Rain's expression shifts fractionally.
"He talks too much," he says.
"He respects you."
Rain looks down at his water bottle. Turns it once in his hands.
The silence that follows is different from the ones before it. Less charged. More careful.
"This place matters," Rain says quietly. Saying it the way you say things that are true and slightly inconvenient to admit. "What happens to it matters. To all of us."
He says it to the water bottle, mostly.
"I know," Dew says. Quiet enough to match. "That's why I'm here."
Rain looks up.
Really looks at him, like he's trying to read something written very small.
The moment stretches.
Dew swallows like he's about to say something more when Rain glances back to the mirror.
He tilts his head.
The Y is crooked.
He looks at it for a moment. Then his eyes slide, slow and deliberate, from his own reflection to Dew's.
"Mind straightening that for me?" he says. "New boss."
'This is a trap,' Dew thinks, despite already moving.
He crosses to Rain in three steps, sets the folio on the bench without looking at it, and reaches for the collar with fingers that are definitely steady.
Mostly, nearly, definitely — steady.
Rain's eyes drop.
Just for a second. Just long enough to see the angle of suit fabric that hasn't had time to be properly rearranged.
Back up before Dew's fingers reach the collar.
The Y is warm from Rain's skin. The little rhinestones catch the light up close, each letter precise and deliberate and sitting right there at the hollow of Rain's throat where his pulse is visible if Dew looks, which he is not doing, he is looking at the letter, just the letter, just the—
His thumb grazes Rain's throat in the process.
One brief, electric second of contact.
Neither of them moves.
Rain is watching him the entire time — cataloguing every micro-expression, every slight unsteadiness, every place the composure is held together with collar pins and professional courtesy and not much else.
Dew steps back.
Clasps his hands in front of him so they have somewhere to be. No other reason.
Rain looks at his reflection.
The collar sits perfect. B. A. B. Y. Rhinestones catching the light in a neat, devastating line.
The corner of his mouth curves.
For more than one reason.
"Thanks," he says.
His eyes flick towards the clock on the wall. "Got a client."
He stands and moves toward the door — past Dew, close enough that Dew can't help but think of the alley, when he could've, should've—
Rain pauses with his hand on the frame; doesn't look back.
"New boss," he says quietly.
And then he's gone.
· · · — 𖥸 · 𓃹 · 𖥸 — · · ·
Dew walks back to the bar and finds Cowbell exactly where he left him — standing behind it, posture perfect, scrolling numbers and contracts and all the little things Dew insists he can handle himself, but Cowbell does anyway.
Phantom is leaning against it from the other side with their full attention trained on Bell, chin propped in their hand, doing something with their eyes that could only be described as a proposition.
They don't pause when Dew appears.
"—all I'm saying," they're telling Bell, "is that your tie has seen a lot tonight and deserves to be loosened—"
Bell looks up like he can sense Dew approaching.
"Mister Delmere," he says, sounding almost bored. "Productive meeting?"
"Mhm," Dew says, tight lipped.
Phantom looks between them and is about to open their mouth — likely to say something abjectly awful — when the universe decides to throw Dew a small helping of kindness.
Aether rounds the corner with his signature gold fanged smile, bumping Dew gently on the shoulder.
"Good timing," he says. "Come up to the office — I want to show you how we run the counts. Every performer gets their split precounted, house cut already off the top. It's a whole thing, you'll want to see it in person."
He's already moving toward the stairs.
Dew follows, Bell falling into step behind him with quiet efficiency, opening a new spreadsheet.
Phantom watches Bell go.
Their eye twitches.
They have deployed the shot maneuver. They have deployed the eyeliner. They have deployed the shoulder lean and the chin prop and the eyes and none of it — not a single piece of it — landed anywhere.
Bell barely even looked back.
Phantom turns back to the bar and finds Cumulus is already looking at them.
She's not even trying to hide it. Leaning against the back counter with her arms folded and a smile that's been growing for the last ten minutes.
"Don't," Phantom says.
"I didn't say anything," Cumulus shrugs.
"You're saying it with your face."
"My face," she says pleasantly, "is saying nothing."
Phantom sets down the glass they picked up for no reason.
"He's just," they start.
Cumulus waits.
"He's very—"
She waits.
Phantom's jaw tightens.
"That pocket square," they say finally, with great dignity, "was very nicely folded."
Cumulus laughs. It's not unkind, just full of love and knowing and that she absolutely cannot wait to see what they try next.
Phantom points at her.
"Not a word."
"Not a single one," she agrees, still smiling, turning back to her bar prep like she wasn't just witness to something historic.
Phantom goes back to work.
Their eye twitches again.
· · · — 𖥸 · 𓃹 · 𖥸 — · · ·
Aether's office is quieter than the floor but not silent.
The bass comes up through it — muffled, persistent, the suggestion of a beat rather than the thing itself. Like the club is breathing beneath them.
Dew is aware of it immediately.
He opens his folio anyway.
The counting system is clean. Elegant, even — a whole infrastructure built around making sure every performer knows exactly what they've earned before the night is out. Stage bills collected after each set, sorted, counted, house cut pulled cleanly off the top before the stack ever changes hands.
Dew looks at the process and immediately understands why retention is so high.
"You built trust into the system," he says.
Aether looks pleased. "Exactly."
Dew makes a note.
Bell, beside him, is already cross-referencing something on his tablet with the focused quiet of a ghoul in his natural habitat.
"We run the counts after every set," Aether continues, pulling up the night's figures. "Everything gets logged and given to Mist, who distributes at the end of the night. Rain's up again at eleven-thirty — his second set always pulls higher than the first. Crowd's warmed up by then."
Dew looks at the numbers from last Friday.
They're good. Better than good.
The bass shifts below them.
Something darker. Slower.
He looks back at the spreadsheet. He's not going to think about it.
"What's the variance between his first and second set?" he asks.
Aether tells him. Dew listens, asks the right questions, makes the right notes. The numbers make sense — more than sense, they tell a story about a performer who knows exactly how to pace a room, how to let the energy build, how to make the second set land harder than the first.
He writes: analyze set timing across all performers — optimize scheduling around peak crowd energy.
He underlines it.
The bass shifts again below them, deeper now, and Dew's pen slows without his permission.
He's not wondering about the client Rain is currently entertaining.
He keeps writing.
Aether says nothing.
He reaches for his glass, takes a slow sip, and watches the way Dew's jaw tightens every time the floor moves beneath them.
"Revenue's always up on nights Rain runs multiple sets," he offers, conversationally.
"It is," Dew says, scrolling the financial data like he hasn't already studied it.
"He's good for the place."
"The numbers suggest that, yes."
The bass drops to something low and patient below them. Dew writes something in the margin of his folio that he immediately crosses out.
Aether smiles at his glass.
They work for another hour.
The bass keeps going.
Dew keeps not mentioning it.
Aether keeps not mentioning that Dew keeps not mentioning it.
Bell optimizes something quietly in the corner.
It is, by every measurable standard, an extremely productive meeting.
· · · — 𖥸 · 𓃹 · 𖥸 — · · ·
By one-thirty, Tempt has exhaled again.
The crowd's thinned to the faithful — the ones who always stay too long, nursing last drinks, not ready to let the night close around them. The fog's settled low, barely moving now. The lighting's shifted warmer, more amber than violet, like the club itself is winding down.
Dew is at the bar, pen in hand, making his last call observations after having sent Bell home.
Bar service maintains efficiency at reduced volume.
Atmosphere shifts post-peak — more intimate. Warmer.
He taps his pen once.
Twice.
Writes: Revenue tail-off begins approx. 1AM. Consider late programming to extend—
"You're still here."
Dew turns his pen in his hand and closes his folio.
Rain slides onto the barstool beside him like he was always going to end up there. Less put together now, button-up over bare skin, hair slightly undone, a small run crawling up the back of his stocking. Closer to the version Dew caught glimpses of in the dressing room than anything he's seen on stage.
He smells like the end of a long night. Warm skin and the ghost of perfume and something underneath that's just Rain.
He flags Cumulus down without looking. "Two of whatever he's having."
"I'm not—" Dew starts.
"You are now," Rain says simply.
The drinks arrive. Rain wraps both hands around his glass and looks out at the thinning floor. Not performing. Just — there, taking up exactly the amount of space he actually occupies for once.
It's disorienting.
Dew looks at his folio. Doesn't open it.
They sit like that for a moment — the club winding down around them, the fog low, the lights warm, the bass finally quiet.
"You stayed later than I expected," Rain says eventually. Not quite a question.
"I had notes to finish," Dew says.
Rain hums. Takes a sip. His eyes stay on the floor.
"How'd we do?"
Dew looks at him. "Hm?"
Rain tilts his head slightly. "The club. How'd we do. You've been watching all night."
Rain looks at him then — that ocean-eyed catalogue, brief and assessing. Whatever he finds he keeps to himself.
He looks back at the floor.
"Good," he says simply.
And that's all.
They sip their drinks in something that isn't quite silence and isn't quite comfortable and is, Dew thinks, probably the most dangerous thing that's happened to him all night.
Which is saying something.
"Go home, businessman," Rain says eventually, setting his glass down. "You've done enough damage to your pen collection for one night."
And before Dew can do anything with the weight of that —
The door opens.
Ifrit, who had dinner reservations at seven, drinks with another client at nine, and has been planning to end the night here since approximately the moment Dew said 'it's just a business observation' this morning.
"Hope I'm not interrupting," he says, in the tone of someone who absolutely knows he's interrupting.
"You're not," Dew says flatly.
"Great." Ifrit slides onto the barstool on Dew's other side, clapping him once on the back. He looks past Dew at Rain. "Hey."
"Hi," Rain says easily. Sweetly.
Dew stands.
He does this with great dignity. With the energy of a ghoul who is leaving because he has somewhere to be and not because the two beings on either side of him are a little too comfortable with each other and he needs air.
"I'll—" he starts.
Rain looks up at him.
He puts on his coat instead.
Ifrit, who has been waiting all night to debrief, looks personally robbed.
"I'll walk you out," he offers.
"Stay," Dew says.
His eyes flick to Rain for just a fraction of a second when he says it.
Rain's expression can only be described as pleased.
"Night, new boss," he says softly.
Dew leaves.
The door swings shut behind him.
Ifrit picks up Dew's abandoned drink, takes a sip, and turns to Rain with a smile far too broad for the hour.
"You know," he says, "his name is—"
Rain lifts one finger.
Doesn't look at Ifrit.
Just. One finger.
Ifrit closes his mouth.
Silence.
Rain picks up his own drink and takes a sip. Looks out at the last of the crowd like nothing happened.
"Show me what you're working on," he says eventually. "Aether said you had something new."
Ifrit considers him for a moment — the deliberate stillness of him, the finger, the complete composure — and decides, wisely, to let it go.
He pulls out his phone and opens up the Helion project.
"Mural," he says. "Still early but—"
He turns the screen toward Rain.
It's not Ifrit's usual work — no bold abstraction, no riotous color. Something quieter.
A meadow rendered in careful detail, wildflowers and long grass, a small pond catching painted light. The kind of thing that takes patience. That takes looking at something softly for a long time before you put it down.
And there, tucked into the corner — a rabbit. Drawn with the same care as everything around it. Ears long, one paw lifted like it's about to bolt, caught mid-decision between staying and running.
Rain stares at it.
Something moves across his face, quick and unguarded. Gone before it fully forms — but it was there, the half-second where something got through before he could catch it.
He looks up.
"Calming, yeah?" Ifrit says innocently, looking at his own work with pride.
Rain looks back at the mural.
His jaw does something small and controlled.
"Yeah," he says.
He takes a sip of his drink.
"It is."
· · · — 𖥸 · 𓃹 · 𖥸 — · · ·
Rain's apartment is quiet.
Cool sheets. Low light. The city doing its ambient thing outside his window — distant sirens, the occasional bass thrum from some car a few blocks over.
He's showered. Changed. Cotton sleep pants and nothing else, curls damp against his neck, skin clean.
He is, by every measurable standard, done with the evening.
He's fine.
And then his phone buzzes.
👻:
okay so
I need to process something
✨️professionally✨️
--
Rain exhales through his nose. Picks up the phone.
it's three in the morning
go to sleep
--
👻:
Rain
that ghoul's palm is the size of my FACE
DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM
--
Rain sets his phone face down on his chest and lets it chime with every one of Phantom's rapid-fire thoughts.
He looks at the ceiling.
He is not thinking about black on black suits.
Or collar pins.
Or that little fire ghoul's face as he watched his pen melt in his hands.
Rain picks the phone back up.
👻: '
are you even reading this
--
unfortunately
--
👻:
so how big do we think his—
--
Rain closes the thread before he finishes reading. He does not want to think about that right now.
But he also doesn't want to think about the collar pins.
Or the way he had stood in the dressing room, folio clutched in front of his pants, and said I know quietly enough that it meant something. The way he'd absorbed every hit Rain gave him and stayed standing anyway.
That's why I'm here.
Rain exhales and rolls onto his side.
A distraction. That's all he needs.
He opens the thread back up.
--
come over
--
The reply is immediate.
--
👻:
on my way
do NOT start without me
--
Rain sets the phone down.
Closes his eyes and waits.
Phantom arrives in eleven minutes, which is frankly impressive given the distance, still in their club clothes with eyeliner slightly smudged and an expression that says they have a lot of feelings and have decided Rain is the appropriate venue for them.
They don't say anything.
Neither does Rain.
That's the thing about knowing someone this long — the words become optional. Phantom drops their jacket on the chair and kicks their boots off. Rain shifts to make room and that's the whole negotiation.
They've done this before.
They'll do it again.
It doesn't mean anything, except that it means everything in the small way that best friends who have known each other's bodies as long as they've known each other's minds can mean something without meaning that.
Phantom climbs in, cold from the outside air still clinging to their skin, and Rain makes a noise of protest when they press their feet against his calves.
"Your feet are freezing."
"Warm them up then," Phantom says, completely without shame.
"I hate you."
"You called me."
Rain pulls the sheet up over both of them.
They lie there for a moment in the dark, shoulders touching, looking at the ceiling the way they always do when the world is loud and this, this specific quiet, is the only thing that makes it manageable.
"His hands," Phantom says, to the ceiling.
"Mhm," Rain says.
"Rain. His hands."
"I know, Phantom."
A beat.
"The collar pins," Rain says, to the ceiling.
Phantom turns their head. Studies his profile in the low light.
"Yeah," they say softly. "I know, too."
Phantom shifts — rolls toward him, chin propped on Rain's shoulder, the way they always do that no longer needs any explanation.
"Hi," they say.
Rain looks at them.
"Hi," he says.
Phantom smiles. Small and real and nothing like their work smile.
Rain's hand comes up. Pushes a piece of eyeliner-smudged hair away from their face, gentle.
Phantom catches his wrist.
Holds it.
Just holds it, just for a second, like they're both acknowledging something without saying it.
The night.
The feelings with nowhere good to go.
The ache of wanting something you haven't figured out how to reach for yet.
Phantom tips their chin up.
Rain meets them halfway.
It starts soft.
Familiar as breathing — the press of it, the ease of it, the way they fit together like something that's been done enough times to find its own logic. Phantom makes a small sound against his mouth, almost a laugh, and Rain feels his own mouth curve in response because that's just how they are, that's just what this is, warm and a little silly and theirs.
Phantom pulls back just far enough to say, "You're thinking about him."
"And you're thinking about Bell."
"...Fair."
Rain pulls them back in.
Less soft this time.
Phantom goes easily — always does, always has — fingers curling into Rain's shoulder, and for a moment it's still warm, still familiar, still the comfortable architecture of something well-practiced—
Then Rain's fang catches Phantom's lower lip.
Not hard. Not breaking anything.
Just — catching. Dragging. A bright edge of sensation that tips the whole thing sideways.
Phantom makes a sound.
Something lower. Something that starts in their chest and comes out with an edge on it, a rough little exhale that's half-surprise and half — not surprise at all, actually, because they know each other, because Phantom knows exactly what Rain's fangs feel like and Rain knows exactly what that sound means.
The heat cranks. Immediately. All the way.
Phantom's hand fists in Rain's hair and Rain makes a sound of his own and suddenly the careful soft familiar thing has become something with real urgency to it, something that takes the want that's had nowhere to go all evening and gives it somewhere, finally, to land.
Even if neither of them is quite thinking about the other.
Even if that's always been okay.
𖥸
After, Phantom is asleep inside of ten minutes.
Curled toward Rain's side of the bed, one hand loose near their face, eyeliner finally, fully wrecked, looking peaceful in a way they never do anywhere else. Their breathing evens out slow and deep while Rain watches the ceiling and listens to the city and lets the quiet settle back around him.
He picks up his phone.
Opens the listing.
That oxblood leather. The matte brass hardware. The chest harness, the waist belt, the thigh straps, the studded collar.
Rain looks at it for a long time.
He wants it. Has wanted it for weeks — the weight of the leather, the cool press of brass, the way it would sit against his skin under stage lights. He can picture it exactly. Has been picturing it, if he's honest, since the moment he first saw it.
A few more good Fridays.
He'll get there.
He always gets what he wants, in the end.
He sets his phone on his nightstand and looks at his ceiling in the dark, with Phantom breathing soft beside him.
He lets his thoughts wander.
The dressing room. The heat of that thumb at his throat — right where his gills sit, fingers hot enough to burn just for one unsteady second before he stepped back.
Professional.
His chest does something he's not going to examine too closely as his hand drifts low.
He probably shouldn't be thinking about his new boss like this.
He closes his hand and lets his thumb drag a slow path.
Rain is new in town, he meets the barista from the coffee shop, things happen.
The alarm blasted in his ear. Rain woke up and paused it. Usually, Rain would have to fight himself to get up and ready for the day, but today was different.
During the past months he and Mountain had gotten a bit closer, and Rain had started to like the tall man. It had been obvious to Dew.
Rain tried to tame his curly hair, but then gave it a second thought and put them up in a bun, if he was working with food, that was the best option, and the one that both Dew and Mountain went with too.
Rain was excited, if he was lucky there wouldn't be many people in the café and he would chat with Mountain during the day.
He made the short walk to the café and found Mountain at the door. —Hi! — He greeted the taller man, being met with the same smile as the previous day's.
—You came. — Said Mountain, more as a question than a statement. Rain nodded, smiling back at him. —Why wouldn't I?
Mountain shrugged and opened the shop. He turned on the lights and Rain took a moment to actually look around and take in the place. It was actually very nicely decorated, the plants and fairy lights made it look very cosy.
—It's very pretty, I really liked what you did with it. — Rain told Mountain, who quietly thanked him as he opened the door to the back of the store.
Rain walked in behind him and, to his surprise, the back of the store was also full of plants and very cosy. Mountain apparently saw the surprise on him, —It's important to work comfortably, you know?
Rain nodded and followed Mountain to a small kitchen, it had just enough to bake the goods he sold, but it was well equipped for that.
Mountain grabbed a leather-bound book from a cupboard and placed it on the counter. —This is my recipe book, you can check it any time and bake something if you want to.
Rain nodded and listened as Mountain explained how all the machines in the room worked and gave him some tips.
They walked back to the front of the store and Mountain showed him how to use the coffee machine and the cash register.
He then put on the apron Mountain handed him and got ready to work.
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