Work Text:
There's really no such thing as night aboard the Astral Express. The onboard computer tracks days in 24-hour cycles, but "night" for the Trailblazers is decided by an unspoken consensus. The cabin lights go down gradually as the passengers grow quiet, and when they shut off entirely, and only stars light the parlor, the Nameless trickle out into their rooms or teleport down to their home worlds or space stations. Sometimes when you make it home late, Himeko or Mr. Welt are sitting up working by lamplight, but neither of them are here to greet you. The cabin is quiet. When you left this morning, you teleported directly into the General's office from the dining car after a hearty breakfast. You spent all day in the Seat of Divine Foresight, since you couldn't show your face—Dan Feng's face—elsewhere on the Luofu. The Diviners are dour, polite but efficient, somehow even more so than you remember them being before. They have a very important job to do, cleaning up a mess you helped make, so you let them work their whirlwind around you and try to stay out of their way. you've been counting the hours until this moment, when you board the express and the hushed warmth of your home washes over you. You hesitate to even drop your bag on the floor, lest you disturb the silence and break its simple spell.
You're up on the mezzanine, leaning against the railing. You usually like to have your feet firmly on the ground, so to speak, but lately you've come to appreciate the view from higher up. From here, you can see the whole parlor car spread out in tableaux. Lamps cast long shadows of the pens and papers left in their light, and the stars shine bright in windows set in dark frames. He's here too, as quiet and watchful as any inanimate object. Caelus is standing at the window nearest the phonograph, so he can listen to music without waking anyone, but nothing is playing. The phonograph's lights are off. You're not sure if he knows the music's stopped.
You do wonder sometimes what he thinks about in quiet moments like these, though you know it's fruitless to do so. Nobody can get him to open up, not even you. People say the same things about you that you think about him. They say you're too solemn, too calculated, that you keep to yourself too much. That's not a judgment many people make about Caelus. On the surface, he's everything you're not. Bold, loud, carefree, eats trash out of dumpsters. He thinks you're stuffy. He doesn't see it either, and it's not your place to point it out to him. It would be disrespectful to the effort he puts into keeping his feelings hidden. He's better at it than you. So much better he hardly knows he's doing it any more. He spends his days befriending everyone he meets and pestering food from everyone else. And then he comes back here. To you. And that's when you see him for who he really is. That's when he stands up against the window, and his knuckles tangle red and white in the straps on his jacket.
You know he likes it well enough on the Express. he has your group chat saved on his phone as "family." He promises Clara and March and Sampo that they'll be friends forever. He tell you something similar, something a little truer but which makes your ears turn red when he says it to you. But the Express isn't his home. The few months he's been here, he's acted like a guest. He's always ready to leave, always ready to shuffle off on whatever errand he's given. He wipes his feet off when he teleports in and sleeps with his shoes on and tries to earn his keep and never believes that he belongs. He doesn't even have his own cabin on the Express, though Pom-Pom said he could have one. He sleeps on floors and couches—yours, mostly, since he likes the whir of the machines in the records room. You lie and listen to the hum of the fans together, your eyes squeezed shut against the ceiling light like two snakes basking in the sun. When he's not with you during rest periods, he's in Herta's office with his feet up on one of her impractically fancy chairs while she shoots him dirty looks, or he's in Belobog sleeping in one of the dumpsters that Hook checks last during hide-and-seek (so he can win without trying, and get a much-needed nap and a snack out of it.) Or he's here, in the parlor car. Staring. Nominally out the window, but he seems just as focused on the Xianzhou Luofu in the distance as he is on the traces of dust that freckle the window pane.
He probably isn't thinking about you. There's a lot to think about, especially about everything on the Luofu. The abominations of Mara, the wrath of Phantilliya, the way Miss Tingyun's neck snapped. March shudders every time she tells that story, and she's told it a few times now. She adds a few details each time, and watches closely to see what your reaction will be. So...Caelus probably isn't thinking about you. He's seen worse. You saw how he smiled at March's joke about using your horns to store their stuff. It would work, you think, maybe. You haven't thought about it before. You try not to think about your horns. You've been trying not to think about any of this. You've pressed it down into the furthest corners of your mind, and now you feel it flooding out of you, like a dam burst by your own carelessness.
By how much you cared. By the fact that you cared so much about him that you were willing to face him.
He hears your footsteps on the parlor carpet as you head for your room. You hate how stiff the carpet is, how unpredictably it crunches under your feet. You weren't trying to hide your footsteps. That would be ridiculous. You're not ridiculous.
He looks over his shoulder and smiles. "Hey, buddy."
He calls you buddy. You've fucked. You're fucked. You probably shouldn't be using that kind of language.
"Hey."
"You good?"
You nod.
"I didn't think you could get any more quiet," he tells you as he turns around. He punches your shoulder playfully. It's the bare shoulder, and his knuckles are still bloody from his latest Calyx run. He leaves a smudge on your skin. You suddenly feel both under- and over-dressed. "Something up?"
You shake your head. "I'm tired."
"Heading to bed?"
You shrug. "Are you?"
He leans back against the window and drums his fingers on the sill. "Depends," he says mischievously. "Can I hang out in your room?"
"Yes," you say, because the answer is obvious. "The archives are free for anyone to use."
He yelps in pain and sticks his finger in his mouth. It seems he's pricked himself with the loose screw that rolls out of the windowsill and across the floor. You track it down and pick it off the linoleum where the artificial gravity pulls it around in circles. You present it to Caelus, who pushes it over in your palm with a gloved knuckle. "Clara's?" you ask.
He nods, running his injured finger over his lips to stem the bleeding. "Yeah. I don't think Pom-Pom is tall enough to see inside the windows."
"You should be more careful," you chide.
He frowns as he pockets the screw. "I'm plenty careful," he complains. "I've only almost died like, four times"
"Four—?" You stick your hands in your pockets. "Forget it. I'm sorry."
"Something's up," he decides. "You know, I'm here if you ever want to talk about it."
"I don't," you say. "I mean, there's nothing to talk about, so..."
"Dan Heng."
He's the first person who hasn't stumbled over your name today, and the way he says it makes your stomach turn somersaults just as it did when you first met.
"Are you okay," he demands. He grips you by one shoulder and one sleeve, and fixes you with sharp yellow eyes. You don't meet his gaze. His shoes are untied. They're usually untied, but he usually keeps the laces tucked in. The laces are covered in dirty boot prints, and one aglet is smashed. You don't think he's realized.
"No," you answer. You're not okay.
Caelus shakes you a little bit, holding your clothes more gently this time. "Okay," he says firmly. "You want help to make it better?"
"No."
He lets you go. He fumbles with his gloves; he doesn't seem to know what to do with his hands when they're not on you. "Okay," he says again. "Do you wanna be alone, then? Just chill and recharge by yourself?"
No. "Yes. If you don't need me, I should be getting some rest."
He nods, and puts his hands in his pockets. And now you're both standing there awkwardly with your hands in your pockets, and neither of you knows what to say.
"Well," Caelus says, since it's his turn to speak. "Good night."
"Goodnight, Caelus."
"Talk later?"
"Sure."
That's probably the longest conversation you've had since reuniting on the Luofu. It's no one's fault. Neither of you have had anything to say. There's nothing to say. Nothing about you has changed. Nothing has changed aboard the Express, nothing has changed aboard the Luofu, and the only thing that has changed about him is that he knows.
The way he talks to you hasn't changed. He calls you buddy; he asks if you're okay. At first, he hesitated to look at you, and still he hesitates to speak. He's not afraid of you—he's not afraid of anything. Why should he be. He has nothing to lose. You're sure he had his suspicions about where you came from. He'd never voiced them, but he'd never needed to. He shouldn't have needed to.
You shouldn't have gone to the Luofu. You could have hidden forever, if only you had a little more patience, a little more sense, if you had trusted Caelus the way a buddy should. You return to the records room and slump down into your bed. Your knees hit the floor through the thin mattress. The climate control has been on the same setting since you've started living here, but now it feels close to freezing. You decide you're too tired to change it. You wrap yourself up in blankets, paying special attention to your tail, and slump up against the cabinet behind you. The knobs dig into your back. You're a coward. You have nothing to hide anymore, but you still hide in your nothingness.
Is this how Caelus feels? Unwilling to commit to any simulacrum of permanence, always running from something. You've both found a family in the Astral Express Crew. Neither of you wants to disappoint them. Yet you know what when the Stellaron Hunters return, neither of you will have a choice.
You take out your phone. No new texts. Obviously. You checked fifteen minutes ago. You just needed something to do.
You should have taken him up on his offer.
You hear a knock on the door to the records room. You missed the footsteps. You're distracted. "Who's there?" you call out, but you get no response. You open the door. No one's there.
Someone's left a mug of tea on the floor, along with a slip of paper. It looks like it's been torn off a wanted poster. You bend down and pick it up, looking for whom the beverage might belong to. There's a note scrawled on the paper in Caelus' handwriting. It reads: "for Dan Heng" with little hearts on either side of the words. In smaller letters, he's written: "Don't you dare snipe this March 7."
You laugh. The tea is just the kind you like, real Xianzhou oolong with seaweed and more sugar than you'll ever admit to taking. He knows you as well as you know yourself. Maybe better. You take the tea back to your bed and take a sip, and you didn't realize how much you needed something warm to drink. You cradle it in your hands. It's sweet and bitter...bittersweet. You turn the note over in your fingers to see whose wanted poster it is. Caelus has a collection. You discover the paper has been torn very carefully to avoid the printing and provide a blank surface to write on. Space here is limited, but Caelus has crammed in a short note: "Just so you know," in black ink, and then a continuation in red after some inkless scribbles from a dry pen, "I know you need your alone time, but if you ever get bored of being by yourself, you know where to find me."
He pings your phone a moment later. You have his text tone set as a recording of the little whoosh of fire that accompanies the drawing of his lance. It's the only thing on your phone you have personalized, and as much as March teases you for it, it makes you smile. The message reads: "Did you get the tea?" with four excited Pom-Pom emojis.
Yes, I got the tea. Thank you very much.
Is it good? March said not to put so much sugar
Yes, the sugar is perfect.
I mean, it’s probably not very healthy but it tastes good.
Health schmealth. Sometimes you gotta eat what makes you feel good
And by sometimes I mean always
Life’s too short. Even if you’re immortal
You're very wise.
I’ve picked up a few things
On the Xianzhou?
Nah, I don’t read the collectibles. Seriously, you good?
Better now.
Good, I'm glad
Calyx tomorrow?
Yeah, keys for the general. He said his back was doin a little better and he wants a chance to go out and fight with you sometime
You guys make a good team
Not as good as you and me tho
Wanna come with?
If Yukong is busy, sure.
Oh, we don’t need an imaginary unit. Just thought it might be fun
Oh.
You in?
Wouldn't miss it.
Text me is you need anything, okay? Anything at all
*if
Okay.
Love you.
...
Caelus is typing...
Love you too