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No penetration. No swirling. No kissing. She varied the strength with which her fist was pulling on the hairs, and she moved the pad of her finger up and down. No more than half an inch. It was almost counter-intuitive to watch Delia, because the closer she came to finishing the more her brow furrowed, and the more she groaned. It looked painful, and Vivian had tapped out on more than a few occasions early on worrying that she was making things worse. She wasn't. It took knowing more about the end of the journey to trust that it was helping.

By this point, Vivian was experienced enough with Delia's body, and familiar enough with all of her most intimate tells, that she could navigate them both blind. Precision strokes. A delicate touch. Delia didn't say anything; she often couldn't, which made Vivian's explorations all the more treacherous, but she was unafraid. All she wanted was to help, and she knew that she could.

The closer she got to the moment, the more Delia's hips would retreat, lower back arching and knees coming further up. The squeezing became more intense, and rhythmic. Muscles from her thighs to her abs contracting in waves. She reached down to grab Vivian's wrist in a meaningless gesture, as if Vivian would turn back then, and pulled. Pushed. Squeezed.

When it came, it came with a whimper. A single, soft, "nngh," followed by a long exhale. Her lips formed a perfect 'o', there in the dark, and she panted for nearly a minute straight. Eyes pinched tight. Vivian came to a complete stop, giving Delia the room to catch her breath, and listened.

Each little vocalization. Each aa, oo, and ohh meant something. A vocabulary all its own.

"Aaa. Aaa. Aaa."

Vivian didn't need to hear Delia say, out loud, that she wanted her to continue, to go again, but she waited for it anyway so as not to start too soon. Sometimes, one was enough. Usually, one was enough. It was a sign of how much pain Delia had been enduring throughout the day if she needed more than one.

"More," Delia whispered.

Vivian gave her more. Two more, slowly, over the course of the next hour, with only a slight pause after the second one so Vivian could stretch her fingers. The second one took the longest, though Vivian could not see the clock and never timed them. Her internal clock was good enough that she could gauge the time in hindsight.

With each orgasm, Delia became a little more animated, until she was moaning in the aftermath of the third. She rolled onto her back, panting hard. Chest rising and falling. She blinked, eyes unfocused in the low light, and Vivian moved in closer so she could watch. She could get as close as she wanted now that the worst of it had passed.

There would be no smiles. No gushing exaltations of Vivian's skill. No torrent of I love you. That would come later, in the morning. Delia would drift, and move closer to her, and that's how they would fall asleep...

...except that Delia rolled onto her side. Away from her. At first, Vivian didn't know what to make of this change in the routine, so she moved closer. To be the big spoon. Delia flinched when her knee brushed the back of Delia's thigh, but then she scooted back into her and settled. Vivian put an arm around her girlfriend, and got a soft mmm in response.

A good sign.

Vivian brushed her nose through the short hairs at the back of Delia's neck, and kissed along her shoulder. "Better?"

"Mmm."

"Good," Vivian said, careful to keep her voice down to a whisper. "That must've been a bad one if it took three."

"Mmhm."

"I hate seeing you in pain."

Another small sound, less distinct. Delia shifted in her arms, and Vivian tried as hard as she could to interpret the movements on their own without asking more. Delia needed to sleep.

"Do you want me to tell you a story?"

"No," Delia murmured. Then, after a beat in which Vivian's heart went into panic mode, Delia added, "Thank you, though."

"I'm sorry your day was so hard, baby."

"It's just been a bad week," Delia said, voice coming out as thin and colorless as Vivian had ever heard.

"It's only Monday," Vivian said, slowly. When Delia didn't respond, verbally or physically, Vivian felt a stab. It had been three days since the gig with Graviton. Had Delia been quieter over the weekend? Had Vivian missed something important? "Is this about the show?"

Delia made a groaning sound, and said, "Can we talk about this in the morning?"

"Sure," Vivian said, softly.

In her arms, Delia felt stiff.

***

They didn't talk about it in the morning.

***

"Yeah!" Vivian said, into the microphone, as the sweat dripped off her brow. "Oh yeah! Yeah, how'd that sound?"

The crowded auditorium erupted in approval, and across the stage Lucia played a few E5 chords for punctuation. Heavy on the distortion. Heavy on the overdrive. Crashing over the crowd like a wave.

Vivian raised the corner of her mouth in a painted smile, something she knew she needed to do. "Yeah, I think so too."

"It's great to be back, Olympia!" On the other end of the stage, Lucia whipped her head back, throwing her black hair back out of her face, and smiled like a thousand watt bulb. "It's been a hot minute, right? At least a couple years since the last time we were all able to come together like this."

"It's been a tough couple of years for live shows," Vivian added.

Lucia pointed at her, beaming, and said, "It's been a lot longer than two since the last time me and this lady right here shared this stage."

Vivian nodded slowly, taking a half step back from the mic, as the response was loud.

"Yeah," she said, turning more toward the crowd. "Big hand for my girl Vivian, stepping in for us so we could be here tonight." Once the hooting and hollering died down, she said, "Our bassist, Taylor Vinson, she's back home in Portland with her feet up. She really wanted to be here tonight. The Octopus Lounge is one of her favorite venues."

Vivian drifted into the middle of the stage, and made eye contact with the drummer. Beanie gave her a flat stare, and the clenching in her chest got a little worse. Gene was over in the corner of the stage, by the amp stack, pretending to be adjusting a knob while actually giving himself a moment. He always seemed to step away whenever Taylor not being present was mentioned or, worse, if Lucia was trying to give her credit again; that usually got her a look just short of hostility.

"This is gonna be our last show for a few weeks. Taylor should be giving birth next week, and proud papa Gene is gonna be spending some quality time doing all the work for a change. Whaddya say, Beanie, should we do some duo shows while everyone else is sleeping it off?"

Beanie gave her a perfectly timed rimshot, and Lucia feigned insult.

"Come on! We could do a killer White Stripes show. Some Black Keyes? I know you wanna play Little Black Submarines."

Beanie, ever a man of few words, leaned over to his mic and said, "No."

Lucia went on for a bit more, and while she did Vivian stayed off to the side, just out of the lights. Lucia had matured into the role of interacting with the crowd, riling them up and keeping the energy high. For her part, Vivian just wanted to get on with the next song, and rip through two hours non-stop, but that wasn't their way. She didn't have the showmanship. Never had, and she knew she was no replacement for Taylor in this respect. She'd seen enough Graviton shows to know Taylor and Lucia put on a regular comedy routine with their banter, but Vivian didn't have it in her to do that.

She could sing though. Her voice was rougher, but they'd been cherry picking songs that benefitted from that. She was pretty sure Beanie had sped everything by about ten beats per minute too. Compared to the demos she'd been given, it sounded ragged. In her head, Vivian put a positive spin on this by arguing that the raggedness had its own kind of live awesomeness, but it lurked in the back of her mind that they were, consciously or unconsciously, rejecting her presence.

It didn't matter. Songs were exploding out of her, which sounded amazing, even if she didn't have the same chemistry with Gene and Beanie that she did with Lucia. She was glad they were keeping up, though they were gradually more vocal about not being okay with the changes that came with having her on board. They wanted to play songs she didn't know, and it felt like it was because they knew she didn't know them.

Back in the moment, she could feel Lucia building to a point, and recognized that the story she was telling was going to end with an anecdote about Insanity Hall. There were only a couple IH songs that Graviton played, and all of them were from Methbender. At an appropriate moment, Vivian hit a G5 chord in triplet. Lucia laughed, and the crowd started roaring in recognition.

That energy, that feedback from the sea of people out there in the dark behind the lights, hit her chest like a live wire, and she came surging out of the shadows on cue. She and Lucia came together in the center of the stage, guitars only a few inches apart, and they tore through the intro to Barely Lucid in perfect unison.

***

Later that evening, with everyone else out except the band and some of the local staff, Vivian sat on the bar and sipped at her third beer. She was always the first one done when it came to packing and stowing, because she didn't fuck around. Normally, she didn't mind the waiting part afterwards, but that wasn't why she was drinking.

Lucia hopped up on a stool next to her, so that her shoulders were right next to Vivian's knees, and spun around to face the empty room with her. "Good show, tonight."

"Yeah," Vivian said, in between sips.

"No," Lucia said, half turning back. "Like, really damn good. You sounded great."

That old, familiar tug. Vivian looked down and took another sip of her beer. Somehow, she had finished another bottle in four sips, which probably meant she wasn't sipping at all. When she turned around, one of the staff grabbed her another with a nod and a wink.

Did it feel good because it was a compliment, or because it was a compliment from her? Was it even a genuine compliment, or just a cover.

"I heard you guys talking," Vivian said, softly, testing the waters.

Lucia winced. "How much did you hear?"

Bad answer. She couldn't contain the sigh.

"It's just because they don't know you," Lucia said, seemingly answering the sigh. "They're not used to how... intense you can be. The vibe's different with Taylor around."

"Great," Vivian said, head hanging down.

"Don't listen to them. They don't know shit. They're fucking kids."

"No," Vivian said, feeling a whole whirl of emotions kick up. "No. That's... they're your band. Don't go... you don't have to stick up for me. You probably shouldn't, really. That'll just lead to tension later for you, and you don't need that. It's okay if they just don't like me. I just... I wanted..." It was hard to put a name on what she wanted.

"If you wanna cancel the other shows," Lucia said, "just say the word. We can pull—"

"No," Vivian said, surprising even herself with how fast she cut in. Then, in an attempt to play it much cooler, she said, "It's fine. I can ride it out."

"Well, maybe this will help," Lucia said, seemingly unaware of the turmoil under Vivian's surface. "So, like, a couple months ago, I played that, uh... what's the one that sounds like 8-bit industrial? Chiptunes Fear Factory, but happy?"

This did not immediately register for Vivian, either because she was slightly drunk or because she was not accustomed to figuring out which of her own songs people were referring to by imperfect descriptions. "Sunny D, Original Flavor?" Chiptunes Fear Factory was kind of accurate, though, once she thought about it.

"Yeah-yeah" Lucia said, slapping Vivian's knee. "We were working out a 4 piece instrumentation for that because we thought it might sound good, you know, our way."

Vivian squinted and cracked open the fourth bottle. "I can hear that." In the back of her head, it was impossible to not hear our way as distinctly differentiated from her way. It was her song, after all.

"Yeah, right?"

"That could sound good." She nodded slowly, and took a longer sip.

"It's definitely the one we could do the most with. You know, with two guitars."

Vivian gave her a sideways glance. "That's your favorite? I figured you'd go for one of the heavier songs like... I dunno, anything off of Bison."

Lucia turned, opened her mouth, and then stopped. The pause stretched out for a solid, full second, and then she held up her finger. Vivian expressed her confusion through blinks, and watched as her old friend moved around behind the bar, and gave a triumphant A-ha! at finding a green pack of Marlboro Menthols and a box of matches. It only took another few seconds for Lucia to light up and come back around, but it seemed to take forever. At the same time, though, it felt like they'd traveled backwards. The two of them, drunk and smoking after a show, arguing about complete bullshit.

Some of the best times of her life.

"No," Lucia said eventually, after letting out an obnoxiously large puff of smoke. "No, that's not my favorite of yours."

Vivian gave her a raised eyebrow. She knew how Lucia liked to have favorites of things, but asking felt... gauche. Fortunately, it didn't seem like Lucia had seen her eyebrow, and she tried to school her features to expressionlessness.

Lucia said, after another long drag on her stolen cigarette, "It's Hero of the Hour."

If Vivian hadn't been holding her beer against her thigh, she would have dropped it, and she had to fumble to keep it from falling even then. Lucia chuckled, bleakly, and shook her head.

"That... you... but..." Her brain refused to stay on one thought long enough to form a coherent sentence. "That's..."

"I know, I know," the little Latina said. She turned, very slightly, to look at Vivian's legs. No higher. "What can I say? I mean, I've always liked your songwriting. You know that. That one, though, is... inspired."

All Vivian could manage was, "Why?"

Lucia inhaled so hard that Vivian could see the ash line creeping closer and closer to the filter. "I mean, it fucking rocks. Just straight up." She swallowed, and then swallowed again more forcefully. "What I really like, though, is that you... you know, you wrote your break up song, but nobody knows. Like, if you weren't there the night that stack of Orange amps caught fire in Boise, and-and-and the road trip back from South By Southwest, you'd think it was saying something nice ab... about me. Or, you know, whoever it's about. It's not, but... it's clever about it, and it's all true. That's a hell of a needle to thread."

At a loss for any more insightful response, Vivian managed to croak out, "I tell everyone it's called Hoth."

Lucia just smiled. "I know. I was there, though. I remember." She put out the cigarette and lit up another one, and when she started talking again she had a lot more of her usual energetic cadence. "Sorry. I made it weird. I didn't bring that up to make you feel bad or anything. I don't even know why I told you."

"I haven't listened to that one in a while," Vivian said.

"I have."

"You shouldn't, though," she said, finally finding some steam of her own. "It's... angry. I was so angry."

At this, finally, Lucia turned to her. "Then that song did what you needed it to do... and now you don't need it anymore. I'll get there someday, but for now, I, uh... I need to keep the edge sharp."

In the back of her mind, a thought began to form, but Vivian wasn't ready to look at it.

***

On the ride back, Lucia slept. Or, pretended to sleep, maybe. Gene, who was anxious to get home, took the wheel, and Vivian sat up front with him. It was a very quiet, uncomfortable ride.

***

"It's so good to hear from you, dear!"

Vivian sighed, smiling sadly as she held her phone up to her ear. "How are you, Gladys?"

"Good, but it's Tuesday! Is everything okay? Are we still on for Friday?"

"Yeah yeah," she said. "I'm just... I needed someone to talk to."

"Of course! Of course! You know I'm always here for you!"

Vivian nodded, even though she sort of knew that the nodding wouldn't translate through the phone.

"What's going on?"

"I don't know where to start."

Gladys was silent on the other end, for a beat. "What made you call right now, hon?"

"I just got off the phone," she said, as she stepped off the bus, "with Lucia's partner. Helen? Do you remember her?"

"She makes an impression," the older woman said, with the sound of a smile on her lips.

"A couple nights ago, I was talking to Lucia after a show—"

"Oh that's right! You're touring! Wonderful! Glad to hear you're getting out there again."

Vivian rolled her eyes, but avoided responding to that directly by saying, "Lucia told me that her favorite song of mine is one that's about her, and it's not a very nice one either."

"You wrote a mean song about her?"

"A couple," Vivian admitted, sadly. "Anyway, in the middle of us talking about her liking this song, she goes and grabs a cigarette from behind the bar. Now, today, I've got Helen yelling at me because Lucia broke her sobriety."

"What... her sobriety? What am I missing?"

"The cigarette! She said she needed to lean on a substance to get through something hard, and that counts!"

"Well that's not your fault, hon."

"Helen thinks it is, so I got an earful about it. Plus I don't..."

"...You don't what?"

Vivian moved to lean against the corner of a 7-11, slowing her walk home by however much longer she could. "Helen says I shouldn't be playing with Graviton. That it's just gonna cause trouble. Delia thinks I shouldn't be playing with Graviton either."

"Did she say that?"

"Yeah." Then, after blinking a few times in the thoughtful pause Gladys gave her, she said, "No. Not directly, anyway, but she isn't happy about it."

"And what do you want?"

"I don't know."

"What does Lucia want?"

"I don't know."

Gladys chortled on the other end of the line, and Vivian rolled her eyes again.

"I don't know why she asked me. I'm not right for them. I don't really fit in with them. They don't really seem to want me there, but I..."

"How many shows have you played with them?"

Vivian took a long breath. "Maybe five? Five."

"Then why do you keep going back?"

"I miss it," she said, immediately, and it wasn't until after she said it that she realized how much she'd missed it. "Playing in a band. Even when it isn't great, it's... I don't know. I've been doing the solo thing for a while, but... Plus, I might not fit in with the rest of them, but playing with Lucia again is... incredible. Being up on stage with a whole band... I missed it more than I realized."

"You missed her too, huh?"

'Missing her' didn't feel like the right way to put it, but Vivian didn't know a better way to phrase it. Her brain spun its wheels in the mud while she tried to come up with something better, but she didn't get there before Gladys added,

"It's complicated. I know."

"Yeah." It came out like a whisper. She hadn't meant it to, but it did. She cleared her throat, holding the phone out at arms length, to try and get rid of the tightness she felt, but it didn't help. "Regardless—" This time her voice sounded like complete shit, so she turned into her elbow and coughed forcibly. "Regardless of why, though, I've got a few weeks before they start back up again."