Work Text:
It had been another long day at work. They were slowly, but surely, making progress on the engine, but there were still a multitude of side tasks that needed to be completed in order for their settlement to function more smoothly. It was either another project or modification or an entirely new invention for Xeno to work, but for once, he didn’t mind. Things were different this time around. He may have been restricted in what he was allowed to do, but Xeno was working in his field and having fun with science again.
Xeno's passion for science had been ever growing since the earliest days of his youth. Science had been wondrous and exciting. There was always something to learn, always something to experiment with and an endless amount of room for new ideas. The highlight of those early days being when Xeno would build weapons in his backyard and have Stanley test them out. Science was crazy and wild and everything Xeno wanted out of life. He wanted to know everything there was to know about everything and he had all the resources available to him to do just that.
Then he skipped a few grades and began university as a preteen and science became something new. Xeno went from learning anything he wanted all of the time to focusing on what he loved the most, aerospace engineering. Everyone thought he was crazy because how could someone who had the ability to go to space not want to go? And it was true that Xeno never had a passion to go to space himself. There was no reason for it. He cared more about what it took to get there. Xeno wanted to be in the control room, where the magic happened. School only made the flames of Xeno’s love for science burn brighter and he had never been more excited about his future until he was hired as a scientist at NASA shortly after graduation.
But it wasn’t what he dreamed it would be. Science was still elegant, but it was muddled by rules and red tape and deadlines and tedious work that he didn’t care about. Xeno would get up, go to work, and spend hours doing more paperwork than actual testing. Then he would go back home to his empty apartment, wait for a call from Stanley that may or may not have come, go to bed, and repeat the same thing the next day. He grew tired and exhausted of the bureaucratic nature of the space administration, but most of all, he was bitter. Xeno was no longer having fun. He was simply being used as a tool, an extra set of hands that could easily be replaced. Their work was not fun, challenging, nor profound. It was just that. Work.
Xeno lost the reason why he started down this path to begin with. He had started because he simply loved science. There was nothing more to it than that, but that burning passion he had for progress had grown sour. That bitterness carried on with him to the stone world. At the end of it all, he admitted that he was wrong because he knew deep down that he had lost himself somewhere along the way. The reason why he wanted to be in the control room rather than one of the astronauts going where only few humans can say they’ve gone was because he wanted to help humanity grow and prosper. He wanted to be a stepping stone for its future, to be known as one of the people that pushed humanity beyond its limits.
Xeno had forgotten all of that. He had forgotten that he was not just one man. He had forgotten that science was a means to help humanity move forward, not something to be hoarded.
But Xeno’s passion had reignited. He was helping humanity grow and creating new things every single day. And more than anything else, he was having fun again. Building the rocket engine and getting everything else ready for their mission was the most gratifying task Xeno had ever had the pleasure to be a part of. Of course, he had helped astronauts go to space before, but he was still blinded then. Xeno hadn’t realized at the time that that’s what he had been working so hard to accomplish. Now, he had the opportunity to do it all over again, and this time he would savor it. Xeno would succeed because he loved science.
So after an exhausting, yet invigorating and elegant day of work, Xeno headed to Tsukasa’s hut because, although he had changed, the general public did not trust him enough. They were right in their apprehensions. He wouldn't trust himself either.
He rapped three times on the door and moments later, it swung open, revealing the man himself dressed in his usual red tunic. “Dr. Xeno, is it that time already?” Tsukasa asked with a small smile on his face.
He and Xeno weren’t close by any means, but their friendship had grown some after spending a bit of time together since their establishment in Superalloy City. And it helped that they reminded each other of other people they were fond of.
“I believe it is,” Xeno replied, hiding the excitement he felt because in truth, he had been waiting for this moment all day.
“I’ll be out in a minute. Let me tell my sister I’m leaving,” he said before disappearing back into his hut. It wasn’t long before Tsukasa came back out and they began walking toward their destination.
At the beginning of their routine, Tsukasa had always brought his spear with him, but after the first two or three times, he stopped bringing it all together. Xeno wasn’t sure whether that was because Tsukasa had grown to trust him or that he was confident in his ability to detain Xeno without his spear. He decided it was both.
Tsukasa reminded him of Stanley in that regard. So very clever and confident in his skill that nothing scared him. There was no threat or challenge that Stanley had met that he didn’t believe he could overcome. Whenever Xeno had asked Stanley about whether or not he was capable of completing a task, Stanley would always say ‘I can.’ It got to the point where Xeno stopped asking because at the end of the day, if Stanley believed he could, then he could. And he would.
He had always been like that since the day they met, running into action with pure confidence despite his shortcomings at the time. In the present, Stanley was an extremely powerful and skillful man and it was hard to imagine that there had been a time when he wasn’t. But in their youth, Stanley had only been working off of sheer will and unfounded confidence when it came to challenges. When they had first met, Stanley was better than most at everything, but his size and age prevented him from being where he wanted to be. He failed many times, but he always got back up. Stanley always persevered until he had the power to back up his words. Maybe it was that willpower of his that made Xeno love him from the first.
As intelligent as Xeno was, without Stanley, it had been easy for him to forget to wear his watch or turn off the stove or put his TxTag on his windshield. Of course, in the stone world, Xeno had neither a watch to wear, a stove to turn off, or a car with a windshield to put his tag on, but it was the principle of the thing. The point was, Xeno needed Stanley more than anything. He had never been good with words. He could only describe how much he needed and missed Stanley by using terrible similes and metaphors. He couldn’t express how much he loved him without talking about unsafe kitchen practices and paying tolls on the highway.
All his life, Xeno had explained things with science, even his own feelings. Growing up, Xeno was one of those people that thought love was foolish and illogical because it was just a series of chemical reactions in your brain, but the explanation didn’t matter to him anymore once he had actually felt it. When it came to Stanley, nothing else seemed to matter.
But Xeno's original disregard for love was the reason why the first time Stanley confessed to him way back in high school went so horribly. The first time of many because Xeno was too much of an idiot to accept it. “Xeno. I think I love you, man,” Stanley had said one day as they were walking home from school. It was a ridiculous statement because what did he mean by ‘I think’ ? But Xeno understood him anyway.
Xeno wanted to pretend like he didn’t know what Stanley meant, to try to find a way to misinterpret it, but Xeno couldn't make himself out to be that oblivious. He knew what Stanley meant because he felt it, too. But he was too stubborn and wrapped up in his own teenage angst to say that. So instead he said, “Don’t let your brain turn you into a fool, Stan. It will pass.”
That was the first big argument they ever had which resulted in Stanley getting angry with Xeno and turning around and heading back to school to attend baseball practice. Stanley had originally planned to skip practice to hang out with Xeno instead and sneak his confession in, a decision that wound up blowing up in his face. They didn’t see each other or talk for about a week until Xeno reached out to Stanley first, under the guise of requiring Stanley’s help with a new project, which he agreed to immediately. Neither of them brought the confession or argument up and continued on like nothing happened.
Years later when Xeno finally got over himself and ended up with Stanley, Stanley explained to him why he was so hurt the first time. He told Xeno that it wasn’t the rejection that made him so angry. If he had simply said ‘I don’t feel the same,’ Stanley would’ve accepted that and moved on. It was the fact that Xeno not only rejected him, but invalidated him after working up the courage to tell him for months. That his own best friend who he trusted with his very life would be so quick to sweep his feelings under the rug.
Even after all the time that had passed since then, decades to them but centuries in the known universe, Xeno still regretted treating Stanley so unfairly. If he had gotten over himself back in high school, he and Stanley would've had more time together before Stanley shipped off to boot camp and his presence at home became more and more infrequent. Before the daily phone calls turned to weekly, then monthly, then once in a blue moon. Xeno was almost happy that the world ended, not only so that he could get away from his toxic relationship with work, but so that he and Stanley could make up for the all the time that they had lost. But again, due to Xeno's ego-fueled decisions, their time together had been robbed once more.
Xeno and Tsukasa talked about this and that, mostly about the progress they had been making and the goings on of Tsukasa’s little sister until they finally reached their destination. The cave. When they got there, Tsukasa had Xeno take off his coat so he could check his pockets. Then, he patted Xeno down, looking for a little vial of revival fluid that wasn’t there. He even had Xeno bend over and cough as if Xeno was that desperate to make himself an enemy. Xeno may have been a bit crazy, but he wasn’t stupid.
“Take your time,” Tsukasa said as a courtesy once the search was done. Xeno wouldn’t be longer than twenty minutes. It was all he could manage.
Some would say it was silly to visit a person’s statue as often as Xeno did, which was about every other day. To that, Xeno would say that it was just as silly as visiting a person's gravestone, except that he wouldn’t say that because it was a horrible comparison to make in Stanley’s case.
Stanley was far from dead. It was scientifically proven that he was still alive, but visiting him like this, in the state he was in, made it seem like he wasn't. Looking at Stanley in the stoney form he had been reduced to, Xeno's faith in science wavered. It was just so difficult being with someone like Stanley that was so… alive, to put it bluntly, and then having to believe that he really was still alive as a virtually lifeless stone statue.
He was supposed to be smoking a proper cigarette, making impossible bets with others against his skill, and teasing of Xeno for being cheesy dork. But he had to have faith, just as he had in science, that Stanley would come back to him someday. And he would come back as per his deal with Senku. Xeno helped build the rocket and send them to the moon and in return Senku would revive Stanley. Someday, just not now when Xeno needed him the most.
They say that after being with someone for a very long time, the constant repetitiveness of the relationship will lead to getting bored of your partner and them getting bored in turn. That the spark you felt when you first got together will eventually fade and when it does, you either split or chose to stay and find a new way to continue. But it was never like that for them. Every time their eyes met, it was like seeing each other for the first time. Every time one of them told a story that the other had heard before, they reacted as if it was all new to information. And when they touched hands, it was like a blanket of warmth and calming that Xeno had never come close to feeling with anyone or anything else.
Xeno touched Stanley’s cold, stone hand and felt the ghost of that warmth he had been missing. Stanley's mind was active, thinking about god knows what, but Xeno knew he was in there. Knowing wasn’t enough for him, but he made due.
Xeno wanted to tell him everything. Everything he had been thinking and all that he realized after his demise and resurrection. How he found himself again, found his love and passion again, and how sorry he was that he took them for granted, took Stanley for granted. But no matter how much he spoke, Stanley wouldn’t hear him. Xeno was stuck talking to a man frozen in time, unable to hear, listen or respond, so he would keep all the things he needed to say to himself for now. And he would instead talk about nothing, just like they had done a hundred times before.
Xeno took a deep breath and straightened his tie, an attempt at collecting himself. He reached out and touched Stanley's cheek, cold and grainy stone rough against his hand.
“Hello Stanley.”