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Playing in front of a cheering crowd wasn’t unusual for Kurt or Jimi, but it was unusual for them to be doing it as ghosts while plugged into two living people via aux cord. Nonetheless, the rush of playing and sharing their music with others was the same as it always had been.
For a star, the cheers of others are like lifeblood. It’s what inspires them to keep going beyond just the love of music. Knowing that others love their music too, that’s what tells them it’s worth making.
Kurt grinned at Jimi as explosive guitar music floated around them.
“Some crowd, huh?”
Jimi shrugged, “We’ve both had better.”
”Not since dying, though.”
“Fair point.” Jimi may normally be critical and nonchalant as fuck, but when he had a guitar in his hands (in a way) he couldn’t stop himself from emoting. His words and tone were stoic, but he had a manic grin on his face and the way he was enthusiastically shredding the guitar belied his true feelings.
He was happy to be back on stage, too.
—
“One more song! One more song! One more song!”
“How would you feel about an encore, Jimi?” Kurt asked.
“Fucking fantastic.”
There was an increase in the explosive cheers when the two came back on stage, or rather Honda and Ford did, and they came behind them, the true source of the music.
Kurt added his cheers to theirs, riding on the dopamine of the people’s reactions.
—
After the concert, the two ghosts leave Shiori and Mustang backstage, and go outside together for a smoke break.
Cheeks still flushed from the performance, Kurt lights up, passing a cigarette to Jimi, who leans in to light off of Kurt’s lit cigarette in his mouth.
Suddenly glad for the excuse for his face being hot and his breath short, Kurt looks up at Jimi, who grins down at him. Distracted, Kurt breaths too deeply through the cigarette and coughs out a cloud of smoke. Smooth.
”Helluva show, huh?”
”We’ve both had better,” Kurt parrots Jimi’s words from earlier back.
”You take what you can get when you’re dead.”
Kurt hummed in affirmative, and the pair settled into a comfortable silence. They both smoked a fair number of ghostly cigs, and would have stunk up the whole neighborhood if the smoke could be perceived by living people.
After a while, Kurt broke the silence. “Hey Jimi?”
”Yeah?”
”I’m glad it’s you, outta all the dead musicians, who I met after death. You’re a pretty swag dude.”
”You too Kurt,” Jimi said, slightly leaning into Kurt’s side. Kurt leaned back with a hum and a smile.