mood indigo ; sable & indy

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I shake hands vigorously with Uriah, gripping at his forearm with a smile that was surely making my face crack funny at my cheeks. "Thank you, dude. Thank you so much for the opportunity." My forearm is still slick with sweat but he has a jolly laugh hidden behind his beard and pockmarked cheeks as he pulls me in by the back of the neck. "Keep pulling in crowds like that and I'll start letting you play every fucking night, man. Like, damn! What a sick set." Pride and adrenaline nearly stopped my heart.

And I genuinely think he means it, especially when he hands me a stack of money thicker than I was expecting. "Y'all earned that. Enjoy my party, alright?" I shove our pay into a clip and then into my back pocket, nodding my gratitude again with a something that surely seemed fake as hell plastered across my face. But it wasn't. "Thank you. Yes, yeah!"

If you think about it, it would be rude of me not to listen to him, right?

That's what I tell myself when I find Ives with a half spilt, corporate themed, plastic cup in my hand—"We got another one!"—that I offer her alongside the beaded necklaces of green, purple, and gold everyone had been throwing over my shoulders. They get all tangled in my silver chain, tangled in her hair. I- almost, very selfishly, for just a moment -hoped maybe she wouldn't go back to school.

"You fucking kicked ass tonight!" I don't wait for her to finish the drink I'd handed her before picking her up and swinging her around. I don't set her down until she's annoyed with me—"Fucking cheers, text me later if you need a ride. Need to tell everyone else. Have you seen Ruby?"—before I rush off to find Slate instead.

They're busy. Obviously. But they wave me over when they see me with a grin and a head jerk. "Oh! You're the- guitar player, right?" I look to Slate with a bit of a slack jaw and questioning look when the other woman on their arm hums disapprovingly as she looks me over. "Bass guitar, I suppose." I nervously chuckle, rub at the back of my neck—"That's me. Indigo Auclair. Glad you enjoyed the show, thank you for coming out."—and Slate smiles at me, tapping my shin with their toe, a gentle nudge to continue.

"We got another show set up. Apparently everyone enjoyed it, heh." I'm a bit nervous under the very calculated gaze of three different sets of intense eyes. Slate kicks up off the couch they'd been lounging in and kisses me on the cheek before pulling me in, forcing my forehead to their own. Slate is silent, but I can hear them laughing, so I laugh along, too, shaking them by the shoulders and getting excited all over again. "Okay, okay, alright, have fun. It was nice to meet you ladies!" I hear them giggling after me as I go and I try to force the heat away from my cheeks.

I find Ruby in a crowd too thick to fight, so I ride the wave, say hello to faces familiar, earn a few more necklaces—("Nice show, mister.") ("Oh yeah, you've earned more than one something thrown at you, for sure.") ("Quit teasing him.") ("Oh, please, he is flashing us. It's tradition.") ("Oh come on, everyone knows that's District folklore.") ("Then what is it for?")—and he disappears as my attention scatters between too many conversations at once.

"Well, shit." I curse, reaching for my phone only to get it shoved back into my pocket by a grip firmer than my own. "Hey! Thought I told you to enjoy yourself!" Uriah replaces my now empty hand with a drink—"Here, kid, damn!"—and a pretty exasperated scoff when he twirls a cigar in-between my rawest fingers. "Go on, then. Enjoy! Ain't ever met a rocker without a light, go on then," he says shoving me away with another boisterous laugh. And I feel as if I were parting seas, shifting the tides of bodies I could never understand, riding waves of some sort of ridiculous sin all the way to-

"Hey!" There is no point in shouting. He can hear me without the sound; I've been making sure of it for- wow, uh. For, for, for-

-ever, it felt like.

He's standing with his arms crossed—a sultry, straight-jacketed, silence in all caps that I know he doesn't mean—and I can't wait to watch him unfold as I tell him the good news. My cotton shirt is torn to shreds, turned to sweaty, ringed, curled, tentacle twirls that stick to my chest. And so when I finally make my way to him I try to memorize the way we fit together like a puzzle—all perfectly perforated painted pieces plastered together to make a pretty picture. I think. Selfishly, hope.

"We got it!" And I repeat because I'd been too close for him to see me speak. And because I'm happy. And maybe because the way the exit sign is shining all emergency red as his backlight makes him look like the most beautiful warning sign—"We fucking got it!"—and so how can I not shout it again?

"Plus a bonus! And-" I hold the cigar between us, grinning from ear to ear and pretending I have the same coordination as Ives, twirling it between my fingers. "I heard you have a light." And this time I'm hooking a finger in his belt loop and pulling him toward the door, bathing in the same sinful red glow he was and not for a single moment feeling the fear they'd driven into Sable's bones. "Let's celebrate, come on!"