Chapter Text
Morning arrived in Amphoreus with the stench of static and a migraine.
Anaxagoras stood in the crumbling research outpost just outside Okhema, surrounded by broken screens, a stack of unstable documents, and a kettle that had just exploded—scalding water dripping from the ceiling in mocking intervals. His pristine coat was stained with a splash of instant tea and something… suspiciously green.
He rubbed at the spreading blotch with a cloth. It only got worse.
“Of course,” he muttered bitterly, flinging the cloth across the room.
As he turned back to his desk, the monitor sparked again—then died.
Anaxagoras’ eye twitched.
That was the third time this week. The only working console in this rusted, collapsing archive lab, and now it was as dead as the stars above the Eternal Land.
With barely-restrained fury, he flicked his hand toward a drawer—only for the knob to break off in his fingers.
There was a moment of stillness. Of silence. Of utter disbelief.
And then:
"Unbelievable."
Not even elegantly said. Just flat. Bitter. The voice of a man who had accepted, reluctantly, that reality had decided to personally spite him today.
When the drawer finally opened (after a dignified struggle and minor injury), he reached for his pen and datapad—only to discover the stylus was cracked, the pad screen frozen mid-scroll on an error message about corrupted files.
He stared at it.
This time, he said nothing.
Instead, Anaxagoras rose slowly—regally, if a regally-drenched researcher with tea-stains and ink-smeared gloves could rise—and marched outside without so much as a sigh.
Only to step directly into a puddle of still-simmering kettle water. With his socked foot.
“...I hate this planet.”
---
He didn’t know where he was walking, only that he needed to leave before he snapped and committed some irreparable academic crime—like tearing up a priceless Stellaron chart out of sheer rage.
He passed silent relics, cracked titan statues, the wind carrying the hollow moans of distant beasts. Amphoreus was eternal, they said. So why did everything feel so temporarily cursed?
Of course, that’s when the drizzle started.
Of course.
---
“You look like you lost a fight with a tea set,” came a voice from the ledge above.
Anaxagoras froze. Then glared upward.
Caelus was lounging lazily on a broken slab of ancient stone, his usual faint smirk on his lips and that glowing lance balanced across his shoulder like a glorified staff. His silver hair gleamed in the rain, and—of course—he wasn’t soaked. The bastard had a weather shield toggled on.
“Don’t you have something better to do?” Anaxagoras snapped, pulling his damp coat tighter.
“I did,” Caelus said, hopping down with infuriating ease. “But then I noticed someone storming out of a lab like a thundercloud with legs.”
“I wasn’t storming. I was… relocating.”
“Sure. That’s why you’re dripping tea and limping like a scorned scholar.”
Anaxagoras opened his mouth to retort—then realized he had nothing. Because Caelus was right. And worse—he wasn’t even mocking him.
He was just... smiling. Lightly. Like it was okay.
That made it worse.
“Everything I touch today breaks. Machines, pens, my glasses—”
“Wait. Your glasses?”
Anaxagoras gave him a flat look. “I stepped on them. It was dark.”
Caelus chuckled, not unkindly. “And yet you still showed up to work.”
“I have obligations.”
“You have ink on your face.”
That stopped him. He rubbed furiously at his jaw with his sleeve. Caelus gently batted his hand away and used the corner of his scarf instead.
The silence after was brief. Tentative.
“I know days like this,” Caelus said, quietly now. “When the whole world seems rigged against you. When it feels like... everything you do just proves you shouldn’t have gotten out of bed.”
Anaxagoras’ shoulders stiffened.
Then he exhaled, slowly. “Yes,” he murmured. “Exactly.”
“You don’t have to fix everything alone.”
Anaxagoras blinked. That... hit too close.
He didn’t answer. But Caelus didn’t press. He just started walking, glancing back with that same exasperating, magnetic warmth.
“Come on. You owe me tea that didn’t explode.”
---
They sat under the remains of an archway later, sipping bitter tea that Anaxagoras had grudgingly admitted Caelus brewed better than him. The rain had stopped, and the stars—distant, broken things in this realm—flickered weakly above.
Anaxagoras stared into his cup. His gloves were clean now. His coat dry. But it wasn’t those details that grounded him.
It was the presence beside him. The quiet companionship. The simple, maddeningly gentle fact that Caelus hadn’t left.
“You make this place feel less... unbearable,” Anaxagoras admitted, his voice soft.
Caelus turned slightly. “Yeah?”
Anaxagoras met his gaze.
“I think I love you.”
There it was. Unadorned. Almost inconvenient in its honesty.
Caelus blinked, then grinned—not in mockery, but like the sun rising after a hundred storms.
“Good,” he said. “Because I’ve been hoping you’d say that.”