Work Text:
Three years.
That’s how long he’d been working at this job. Three years, two months, and nine days if you wanted to be exact.
But no one did.
The work was hard. The steel was heavy. The strong sun had been an unwanted constant since they had hit the arid lands of the American Southwest. The men around him constantly grumbled in various languages and dialects foreign to him, and there was only ever a one in ten chance he could understand a thing his fellow workers were saying to him.
But today was the day Hinata had been waiting for.
Three years.
That’s how long he had been apart from his only love. Three years, two months, and nine days if you wanted to be exact.
Hinata made sure to never miss a second.
At that time – three and something years ago, that is – Hinata had come to America with Kozume Kenma, a petite boy of nineteen who was one year his senior, seven centimeters his giant, and five years his one and only. They had been friends since their tween years of schooling, when Hinata’s ailing mother had sent him to Tokyo to live in with a couple and their son. They had been practically inseparable since. But, Kenma came from money, and the Kozumes had a status to protect. Kenma’s family had expectations, and a plan. Hinata wasn’t part of it.
The realization that they weren’t able to live without one another wasn’t a surprise to anyone. The move to America, on the other hand, was. Then Kozumes figured Kenma would lay down his arms and relent. The move to America would be dangerous. It was a blossoming nation, uncovered and uncultured. His parents begged him to stay. The prospect of money and the allure of adventure in the new nation was too strong to ignore. With Kenma’s parents steadfast, either of them had anything important in Japan. They hoped in the American frontier they could be themselves.
The world had a way of screwing them over.
Hinata remembered the boat ride over – a crowded wooden supply ship, packed full of men (and a few, straggling families) with faces that were either made up of hard lines and the weariness of struggle or smooth skin and eager, ichor pumped eyes.
Hinata remembered getting his working ticket, remembered trying to soothe Kenma’s nerves and allay his feeling that something wasn’t right.
Hinata remembered hearing some men saying they had sold their soul to the devil, and that they wouldn’t see the free side of life for years, until the labor was done and the railroad was built.
Because that’s what they were doing: constructing the first transcontinental railroad in the United States of America.
There were two railroads – the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific. There were two railroads, owned by different companies, building on different sides of the country, and in need of different crews. And there was only one employee pool.
Hinata remembers his last night with Kenma, remembers saying over and over again that they didn’t have to do this – that they could quit right now and go live on the frontier. Kenma, ever the voice of reason, reminded him that they couldn’t survive without money from this job, and that they were legally contracted to work to complete the railroad. Through slow tears and hiccupping sniffles, Kenma reminded him they had sold their souls to the devil.
So, in 1866 when America was stitching itself back together, and ex-slaves were testing the limits of their newly acquired freedom, Hinata, Kenma, and thousands of Chinese and Eastern-Asian immigrants began their trek to complete the first transcontinental railroad.
It wasn’t an easy job. The shifts were endless, the days were either brutally hot or freezing cold – depending on whether they were in the desert sun or the cold mountains. The track was heavy and the bolting process was long and laborious.
Kenma and Hinata wrote back and forth whenever they got the chance, but Hinata’s waking hours were spent in worry that something had happened to him.
Whenever he overheard about an incident he panicked: any crew that got caught in an avalanche, or trapped in a mine explosion, or fought with Native Americans was Kenma’s crew. Any unidentified, injured rail worker was Kenma. Any one of Hinata’s vivid nightmares could easily become reality.
The men on his own crew were nice.
Not all of them spoke Japanese, but Hinata had acquired a bit of Chinese back in Japan under the tutelage of a overpaid teacher employed by Tokyo’s high class residents, and quite a bit of English in an attempt to do his job to the best of his ability, so he was able to communicate with his crew in some way. Hinata wondered if Kenma, with his quiet nature and affinity for languages, was faring better than him.
In Hinata’s opinion, the women were the worst part.
The second favorite spot for the men on his crew to go was the local saloon. The first favorite was the local saloon woman.
Hinata, for evident reasons, wasn’t interested in the women. But, he was twenty one years old – young and fresh, lean and healthy. He wasn’t the youngest, and at times he was years older than the woman looking for a lay, but he was their favorite target.
He wasn’t necessarily bothered by their incessant attempts to get a night – or an hour they would offer if you’re in a rush – out of him. He understood they were only trying to make some money – make a living and a life in the unsettled west. Hell – wasn’t he trying to do the same?
Yeah, it wasn’t the women that bothered him. It was the feelings of jealousy and longing that pained him whenever they found a man and walked out, hand in hand with him, in a way Hinata and Kenma hadn’t been able to in an eternity.
Hinata had been chosen to work the Union Pacific. That is, his work would start on the eastern side of the nation and build west, while Kenma would have to stay in California and work east.
Hinata would do anything to see him.
It had been three years, three years and they were finally done.
On the morning of May 10, 1869 the air was warm. Not burning hot like it had been for the past few weeks, but on the warmer side of temperate, with a calming breeze coming, it seemed, from the Pacific ocean, hundreds of miles westward.
They were in Utah, about half a mile out from the town of Promontory. The two railroads were scheduled to come together at Promontory Summit at high noon. Kenma had written that he would be there. Kenma had written and Hinata had prayed everything would work out just fine.
Hinata could see the other crew. He recognized the tired, soot covered faces and worn overalls as reflections of himself and the men around him.
He scoured the crowd about thirty yards in front of him for that familiar face that he had been craving so much. He didn’t see it, he didn’t see Kenma, and he struggled to contain the suffocating panic he felt rising in his chest and throat.
Hinata heard his voice spoken, in a smooth southern accent by a white man in a crisp suit and a tall hat, and followed it to its source.
Five minutes later he was standing at the junction. There were reporters all around, and two men in suits – one of whom being his own manager, and the other being the owner of the Central Pacific company with whom Kenma was contracted. Hinata was to help place the final peace of track before it was symbolically hammered in by his manager’s daughter.
Hinata went through the motions, trying not to focus on his inner turmoil, trying not to focus on the tired faces of his crew, and Kenma’s crew, trying to focus in on the face of his only love.
The hammer swung down, the spike went in with a satisfying scraping hiss. The big band struck up, playing what he assumed was an anthem of sorts judging shallowly from the way the white men and women in pretty clothes that he could never afford even with the money earned from the hard and painful physical labor he had endured for three years began dancing in joyous, playful circles. Hinata figured he was on the verge of a mental breakdown, judging just as quickly from the fact that he kept hearing a bodiless voice call him name: over and over and over again.
“Shouyou! Hinata Shouyou! Hinata!” Hinata turned and the warm caramel eyes he saw in front of him made his knees go weak. Kenma didn’t even have a chance to catch him before he fell to his knees, crouching on the ground, thick wet tears dropping unapologetically from his tired eyes.
“Kenma. Thank God. Kenma. Kenma I missed you so much. I missed you.” In the middle of the crowd, Kenma bent down, getting down to Hinata’s level. His eyes were bleary, his nose was red from sniffling. His hands grabbed at Hinata’s face, pausing momentarily when he seemed to realize they were in public, but deeming the celebration a suitable ruckus to detract prying eyes.
Kenma’s hands were warm, not suffocatingly so, like how the sun in the arid desert sky had been for the past few weeks, but warm like the feeling of home and love and everything that Hinata had come to associate Kenma with – all the things that he had been lacking for the past three years and a handful of months and weeks and days and hours and things that didn’t matter now. Didn’t matter now because Kenma was here, right in front of him, with a warm welcoming smile and eyes filled with love – love that was only for Hinata.
Kenma rested his forehead against Hinata’s, closing his eyes and gently carting his hands through Hinata’s soiled hair, thankful to have been returned to his best friend, the love of his life, the only person he was willing to live and die for.
Later on, they would rent a cheap room above a saloon and have a reunion filled with deep kisses and hungry touches and words of love. Later on, one of the saloon women – this one with long brown hair, glazy tired eyes and a wrinkled twenty in the pocket of her frock – would realize why Hinata had always turned her down. She would realize, and let out a wistful smile. She knew what it was like to have to make sacrifices to survive in this world. She knew what it was like to have to hide your love from the world.
Months later they would build their house, close to Promontory but far enough away from the prying eyes of the booming western town.
In the coming days, and weeks, and months, and years, and decades – however long it didn’t even matter as long as Kenma and Hinata had each other, the two of them would build their life together, and their love would serve as their fingerprint - left on the booming American west, the disappearing frontier where Kenma and Hinata would live out their days, happily together, until the years, months, weeks, days, and hours ran out and the train to paradise stopped running.