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ghoulodont · 10 months

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Held at a Knife's Point

Dewdrop invites Rain on an unconventional date.

Relationship: Raindrop / Characters: Dewdrop, Rain Tags: Ear Piercing, Ghoul Lore (just a little), sweet & supportive Dew Words: 3511

Read below or on AO3

Dewdrop asks him as they’re cleaning up after a practice session that day, just the two of them in the instrument storage room.

“By the way, I’m going into the city tomorrow, want to come with me?”

The abbey’s locale meets most of their day-to-day retail needs, but for some things, more specialized purchases, they tend to go to the nearest major city. There’s a big record store they all like to browse, and a music store that stocks all sorts of gear that’s better tried in person.

“Sure,” Rain says. “Guitar pedals?”

“Getting my ear pierced.”

“Oh. Cool.”

“You could get one too, if you want.”

Rain reaches up and touches his own ear without any conscious intention. “I’ve never thought about it.”

“No pressure, you could come with me either way.”

“No, I mean, I’m just not sure what kind I would get.” Dew has a few piercings already, in a scattering of different places across his ears — a body part which is quite intricate, actually. It seems there might be dozens of possibilities. Rain runs his fingers over the loops and curves of his own, as of yet unaltered.

“I think you should get one here.” Dew reaches up and places his fingertip on a spot just inside the round inner hollow of Rain’s ear. If that hollow were a globe, a planet rotating on the long axis of his ear, Dew’s finger could be on its equator.

Rain puts his own finger there, nestled against Dew’s for a moment.

Dew pulls his hand away, then leans back a bit and watches Rain as if he’s visualizing, considering how it would look on him.

“Won’t it get in the way of the in-ear monitor?” Rain asks.

Dew hums thoughtfully. “I don’t think it will. You could always change the jewelry if it did, though. To something flat.”

Rain pinches his ear between his fingernails. It stings. He imagines what it would feel like if they went all the way through.

“You can get whatever you like, though.” Dew puts his hands in his pockets and rocks back on his heels. “You don’t have to get anything at all. It’s up to you.”

“What are you getting?”

“One that goes across, like this.” He pulls one hand back out of his pocket and drags his finger horizontally across the flat plane of Rain’s upper ear. Rain places his own fingers on that blank canvas of a space. His and Dew’s hands bump together. “Through..?”

“Here,” Dew gently pinches the rim of Rain’s ear between his fingertip and the pad of his thumb, above where it attaches to his head in the front, then a similar place on the opposite edge. “And here. The jewelry goes across.” He drags his finger horizontally again, connecting the two points.

“Oh.” Rain rolls the rim of his ear between his fingers. It’s fleshier, the cartilage thinner.

“You can think about it, yeah? No pressure or anything.”

He’ll think about it, sure, but he’s already made up his mind.

—

Around noon the next day, the two of them board a train into the city. As it pulls out of the station, the trees and houses next to the tracks start to creep by, then accelerate faster and faster until Rain can’t focus his eyes on any single feature anymore. Once the train makes it far enough from the residential area, the trees fall away to reveal the slow-moving landscape beyond.

“Have you decided?” In the next seat over, Dew is watching out the window too.

“Yeah. I’m going to get what you suggested.”

“Nice.”

“By the way, are they going to notice...” Rain taps the pointed tip of his ear.

“Nah, just don’t mention it and she won’t say anything.”

“Really?”

Dew hums in assent. “It’s like the horns.”

“Even up close?”

“Yep. The power of confirmation bias or something.”

Despite whatever power that allows them to function in human society, be it mystical or psychological, Rain still feels skeptical. For a human to look directly at his ear, touch it, even alter it, seems riskier than going to the grocery store, or any other day-to-day activity he’s used to. But Dew has done this before, so it must be okay.

Their destination is a fifteen minute walk from the train station. Dew knows the way without any maps or directions. They pass restaurants and cafes, department stores, shops selling clothes and furniture. Eventually they arrive at an unassuming storefront — a door listing operating hours next to a single display window, set into brown stone. Dew pushes open the door and holds it for Rain to follow behind.

Inside, a woman behind a display case greets them. Rain finds himself distracted by his surroundings while Dew talks to her. The store is bright, artificial light compensating for the cloudy weather and shadows of buildings through the window. It’s neat, too, orderly and immaculately clean, every surface polished and free of dust. The ambiance is something between high end retail and a dentist’s office.

“Do you have time for a walk-in?” Dew places his hand on Rain’s upper arm. Rain smiles politely as he’s being displayed.

“Of course.”

Dew seems to have some sort of ability to get things he wants. He doesn’t beg or argue, at least not in this context — he might pout lightheartedly in private, with Rain, with the other ghouls, but that’s the extent of it. When he isn’t pulling his punches, he just asks for things directly with a high rate of success.

The woman turns to Rain. “What are you thinking of getting?”

“Oh, um—” He points to the spot on his ear that Dew pressed his finger against yesterday. If he really focuses on it, he can still feel the heat there. “Just here.”

“Great. For your jewelry, you can pick from any of these,” she says, tapping a fingernail on one of the glass cases between them. “Or any of the ones over there, if you’re looking for something fancier.”

Of course, standing in the middle of what he now understands to be a very specialized jewelry store, he should have anticipated this would be part of the process, but it still catches him off guard. All of Dew’s jewelry is plain silver, little round beads and hoops. It would seem he always skips this step.

Rain peers into the case in front of him. Within it are rows and rows of gems and charms, arranged in orderly grids on stark display stands. There are faceted jewels in a rainbow of colors, all kinds of decorative metal shapes, intricate designs, gold and silver, large and small and every size in between. His head spins.

A cloudy gray-green stone, smooth and round and flecked with black, catches his eye where it’s lined up amid other natural-looking options. It gleams, almost iridescent, blue and bronze, when he moves his head.

He points with one finger against the glass. “The gray one.”

She reaches in through the back of the case and pulls out the display stand. She points at the stone. “This one?”

Rain nods.

She plucks it from its slot on the stand. It glints again under the LED ceiling fixtures, reflecting light from within, like an animal’s eye, a deer in the headlights.

Before she disappears into the back of the shop to prepare things, she hands them each a form on a clipboard. The two of them sit next to each other on a leather couch and fill out their names and demographic details, and confirm their willingness to participate by signing at the bottom of the page. It barely takes a fraction of the time that she’s gone, leaving them waiting and unoccupied. Rain taps his feet nervously. Dew bumps their shoulders together.

When the piercer returns, she leads them into a smaller room with a counter along one side and a black padded table in the center. It’s windowless, but just as bright as the front, and just as clean.

“Whoever is going first, you can have a seat up here.” She gestures to the table.

Rain glances over at Dew, who is already looking at him, watching his face.

“Want me to..?” Dew speaks softly.

Rain nods. This will be a first for him either way.

Dew hops up onto the table. He folds his hands loosely in his lap. His boots dangle above the tile floor.

At the counter, the piercer peels open blue and white sterile envelopes with gloved hands and lets their contents fall onto a paper-lined tray table next to her. She picks supplies from drawers and sundry jars — gauze, alcohol wipes, a marker, a small cork like the kind used as a stopper for a bottle. She wheels the tray over to where Dew is sitting.

She scrubs his ear with alcohol, then marks two spots on it with a purple pen — the same two spots he showed Rain yesterday. She offers Dew a hand mirror. He examines his ear, holding the mirror off to the side, and then nods.

From her prepared supplies she picks up a needle, unadorned steel and intimidatingly thick, the broad teardrop shape of its beveled end clearly visible from a distance. With her other hand she picks up a cork. She lines them both up against Dew’s ear, the needle on one side and the cork on the other, framing one purple mark.

“Breathe in,” she tells Dew.

He complies, his chest rising slightly.

“Breathe out.”

He does, his chest sinking back down.

As soon as he begins to exhale, she presses the needle through his ear and into the cork on the other side. Dew doesn’t even blink. She slides a metal bar into the newly created hole in his ear, using it to push the end of the needle all the way through.

She repositions the cork and the needle on either side of the second purple mark and repeats the same process — inhale, exhale, needle, jewelry. She screws a metal ball on each end of the bar, which is now threaded through both sides of his upper ear.

“All set.” She peels off her gloves.

Dew hops down from the table and checks out his ear in a large mirror hanging on the wall. The bar is longer than the width of flesh that it spans, sticking out a bit on either side. The entire top half of his ear is pink. It clearly looks new, fresh, but conceptually it fits in well with the other metal there. In time, once those indications of newness dissipate, it will look like it’s always been there, just like the rest.

Dew returns to where Rain is standing, off to the side of the table, out of the way.

“Ready?” The piercer is putting on a new pair of gloves.

Rain is the one who is supposed to be ready. He doesn’t feel ready, but time is moving forward on its own. He sits on the padded table, now in Dew’s place, with Dew where Rain was before, their positions swapped.

When the piercer brings over the tray, it has the same things as it did for Dew’s piercing — gauze, alcohol, a marker, a cork, a needle. She tips Rain’s head slightly with her gloved hands and draws a dot on his ear with the marker.

She passes him the hand mirror. “Let me know if this looks good.”

He tries to imagine the purple dot replaced by a piece of metal and stone. He can’t really close the conceptual gap — it’s just a dot. Regardless, he nods.

“Great.” She picks up the needle and the cork.

Rain’s breath catches in his throat. The needle is so much bigger up close. He glances up at Dew and imagines standing where he is again. The distance isn’t far, but somehow it made a huge difference.

Dew steps forward and closes that distance without saying anything. He eases the mirror from Rain’s tight grip and places it on the table. Then he offers his own hand, palm up and welcoming, in its stead.

Even just the invitation is a relief, a logical and straightforward improvement to the situation that Rain wouldn’t have thought of by himself in this state. He takes Dew’s hand in a firm grip. It’s warm, and the pressure is grounding.

The piercer brings her hands to the side of his face. She’s working so close to his head he can’t see anything, only the blur of her glove in his peripheral vision and her expression of concentration off to his side.

“Breathe in,” she instructs.

Rain can feel the sharp tip of the needle where she places it against his skin, just resting there lightly, painlessly. He knows what’s going to happen. He breathes in.

“Breathe out.”

He breathes out.

More than pain, there’s pressure. And more than pressure, there’s sound — a loud pop, almost a crunch, of the needle penetrating his cartilage.

She takes something from the table nearby and performs what he assumes must be the same dance between needle and jewelry as she did for Dew. He still can’t see what’s happening, only hear the rustle of nitrile as her fingers move.

Dew gives his hand one tight squeeze and then releases it.

“Feeling okay?”

“Yeah.” Actually, he feels giddy. It’s unclear if it’s just from the sudden relief after a very long day of anticipating an impending unknown, or if it’s a rush of endorphins precipitated by the needle itself.

“Want to take a look?” She takes a step back and nods at the mirror on the wall. Her gloves snap as she peels them off.

Rain slides off the table and walks the two steps to the mirror. He leans in and tilts the side of his head toward it, holding his hair back with one hand. There, in the inner shell of his ear, right where he pointed to, and exactly where the purple mark was, is the gray-green stone from earlier. It shines when he tips his head just a few degrees.

He leans back, standing up normally. He realizes that his face, outside of his control, has composed itself into an expression of pleasant surprise, with his jaw dropped just slightly and his eyes bright. At this distance, the jewelry is subtle — not too flashy or too colorful or too large. He lets his hair fall the way it normally does, tucked partially behind his ear, and it’s barely noticeable until it glints with his motion.

Behind him, Dew is watching the mirror too.

The piercer leads them to the cash register at the front of the shop. Cool midday sun is shining through the window now, brightening the space even more. Rain pulls his wallet out of his pocket but Dew waves it away and taps his card on the reader before Rain has a chance to protest, or to see what the total is.

The piercer sees them off with a paper copy of the aftercare instructions for their piercings. Dew folds it neatly in thirds and slides it into an interior pocket of his jacket, and then the two of them set out for the train station.

They stop for ice cream on their way. It’s too early in the year for it, really; the sun warms the ground but there’s a petulant breeze in the cool air. Packed-down piles of plowed snow remain unmelted on street corners, tucked into alleys, at the end of the occasional parking lot, all dripping sluggishly onto damp asphalt. Sidewalks are littered with a crusty patchwork of the same.

Nevertheless, Rain’s eyes linger on the shop window as they walk by. The freezer case with its cheery selection of flavors, assorted colors in big tubs marked by little handwritten labels, is visible within. When he turns his head back towards the direction they’re walking, Dew’s eye contact tugs on him with an unspoken question. Both of their steps falter, and then they’re turning around.

A bell hanging from the door greets them with a hearty jingle as they step inside. The interior of the store is warm, almost stiflingly so, and empty of other customers. The syrupy smell of waffle cones is so dense it might as well be visible in the air, condensing near the ceiling in cotton candy clouds. Sweat forms on the back of Rain’s neck like liquid caramel beading on the surface of a torched crème brûlée. His limbs sag like pulled taffy.

After they make their selections and after Dew pays — for both of them, again, as if they’re on their first date instead of their hundredth, as if they’re counting, as if an ordinal number could represent an infinitesimal sum of continuous time — they file past bistro tables and metal chairs tucked along one wall and head back out the door, which bids them farewell with the same jingle.

The early springtime air is a refreshing contrast, freezing the sugary haze on their jackets and in their hair. They trade spoonfuls of ice cream while waiting at the crosswalk. Rain ducks his head down just slightly to reach Dew’s raised spoon. The traffic signal changes.

Rain’s ear is starting to ache now, pulsing out a nagging heat in time with his heartbeat. Without much forethought he places the cold ice cream cup, held in fingers that are rapidly becoming numb, against his ear. Immediately, he jerks it away with a sharp, involuntary inhale.

Dew chuckles. His eyes are warm, glimmering with a knowing spark.

“Ow,” is all Rain can think to say.

“Yeah,” Dew laughs. When he speaks again, he’s suddenly much more serious. “Not that bad though, right?”

Rain glances over and Dew is looking at him with his brow furrowed, and with the big, sad eyes that he can never quite replicate when he tries to as a joke. Rain considers how best to downplay his reaction. “It’s...” he starts, and finally settles on, “distracting.”

Dew nods once. He doesn’t say anything, nor does he provide any other indication of what he thinks about that.

A couple blocks later, he makes a sudden turn into a pharmacy.

“Wait, where—” Rain stutters as he follows his lead. Dew never mentioned making another stop.

“Just want to grab something.”

The two of them weave through a maze of aisles stocked with neat rows of medicines and first aid supplies and vitamins. Dew leads them to the selection of over-the-counter pain relievers. The thing Dew wanted to grab, apparently, is a package of ibuprofen, which he bends down to select from a lower shelf.

They return to the front of the store to check out. On the way, Dew grabs a bottle of water from behind the glass door of a refrigerator case. It swings closed with a snap.

Back outside, Dew pauses mere steps from the door. He slides open the flimsy cardboard flap of the ibuprofen box and pulls the blister pack of pills from within. He holds the plastic and foil sheet out towards Rain.

The chain of cause and effect snaps into a straight line, orderly like the rows of pills in the package. Rain thought that he succeeded in alleviating this particular concern. “Wait, it’s not that bad.”

“It’s not a big deal, and it’s good for the swelling anyway.” Dew presses the sheet closer.

Resigned, Rain holds out his hand to take it.

Instead of handing over the entire sheet, Dew holds it over Rain’s outstretched palm and presses one dose out of the individual cells with his thumb, breaking through the foil backing. Then he twists off the top of the water bottle and hands it to him as well.

Rain swallows the ibuprofen with a sip of water. He sighs quietly. He feels sort of like a party foul, the one who needs their hair held back in the bathroom at a bar, maybe. The one who couldn’t handle what they signed up for.

Next to him, Dew pops another dose of ibuprofen out into his own palm, then drops it into his mouth. He reaches out for the water bottle. It takes Rain a second to catch up with what’s happening and hand it back. Dew drinks from the bottle and then screws the cap back on. He stuffs the remaining ibuprofen into his jacket pocket.

When Dew looks back up, Rain is still staring, gears in his head turning. His eyebrows are probably raised just a little, he realizes.

Dew shrugs at him, nonchalant.

When they start walking again, Rain reaches out and bumps the back of his hand against Dew’s. Rain doesn’t need to say anything; Dew clasps their hands together without hesitation.

He pulls his and Rain’s hands into his pocket. It’s a comfortable fit with the two of them, not too tight — Dew’s jacket is oversized in every aspect, including, or maybe especially, the pockets. There’s nothing else inside this one, just them. It’s warm from Dew’s body heat.

Rain squeezes their hands closer together.

#ghost band fanfic #fic i wrote #raindrop ghost #how do i tag them #raindrop

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