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It's been a few days since he's last spoken to Dan Heng, or rather, since Dan Heng had last spoken to Caelus. Caelus, honestly, really isn't sure how he feels about that.
It's been just slightly longer than that since they'd come back from Scalegorge Waterscape, from fighting Phantylia, from the reveal of Dan Heng's secret past as the High Elder of the Xianzhou Luofu. In that window of time, in the small gap between seeing Dan Heng's other form for the first time and the last time Caelus had heard his voice, Caelus had most likely entirely stuck his foot in his mouth, and now he's pretty sure Dan Heng hates him.
Dan Heng had sounded so sad back in Scalegorge Waterscape when Caelus hadn't answered him, but what was he supposed to say? Who are you wouldn't be taken well. Neither would You're beautiful, so that ruled out both of his first thoughts. At the end of the day, his best choice was to stay silent, and so silent he was.
Except, now, Dan Heng won't even speak to him, might actually hate him, and Caelus's only shot at fixing this is to talk to him.
He knocks on the door to the Archives, more as a warning than as a question because he knows for sure he isn't getting an answer, before sliding it open to reveal Dan Heng at his desk like usual. He's back to his plain nothing-more-than-human look, short haired and innocent, looking like nothing at all had happened.
Dan Heng doesn't even look up as Caelus steps inside.
"Hey. Can we talk?" says Caelus, no preamble for once, because if he didnt just get into it he'd probably never say it at all.
"You already are," replies Dan Heng, eyes not leaving his screen. Rude.
(It feels almost like the dismissive way he'd acted when they'd first met. Dan Heng asking if He's that important? still echoed through his brain sometimes. It's been a few months since then, and Caelus had been uneasy all the way through Belobog because of it.)
"Back at Scalegorge Waterscape," he starts, "when I didn't answer you, I— look, I'm sorry, okay? I really don't want you to hate me, I miss when you'd talk to me, I—"
"And you thought it would be a good idea to break in here while I was working to say this?"
Oh. Okay. "You never leave your room."
"I'll be out of your way soon enough." That's enough to get Dan Heng to make eye contact with Caelus, and enough to make Caelus's heart sink.
"You're leaving." Not a question, just a statement. Dan Heng looks away again. "Were you even going to tell any of us?"
"It's for the best. A renowned traitor aboard the Astral Express doesn't exactly do wonders for its reputation."
"And where would you even go?"
Dan Heng turns the screen he was using off. "I'd find somewhere."
"Not back to the Luofu, right? Because you missed your chance on that one, we left like three days ago." And it's like a dam breaks somewhere inside his heart. "Dan Heng, please don't leave, we want you to stay, we'll miss you so bad if you leave, just—"
"You weren't supposed to miss me," says Dan Heng quietly, and Caelus shuts his mouth. "If I acted like this, you were supposed to move on. You were supposed to accept that I just didn't want to talk to you anymore, and when I left, you were supposed to be happy."
"I don't think I could ever be happy if you left." It's dramatic, but it's the truth. "You and March are like my best friends. It'll be too quiet around here without you, it won't feel right. And I just… I want you to stay, okay?"
Dan Heng's shoulders slump. "You are…. something else."
"In a good way, right?"
"In a good way," he confirms. "I think if I left, I'd miss you more than you'd hate me."
"So just to be sure, then" says Caelus. "You don't hate me."
Dan Heng finally looks at him again. "No," he says, "I don't."
"Great. Good. Awesome, actually." He's got a lot more adjectives he could list, but he's going to cut that off there. "So you're staying, then."
"I doubt any of you are going to take over the Data Bank in my absence."
Caelus tries to imagine spending his days hunched over the keyboard, reading and rereading and re-rereading books and articles and everything else imaginable and trying to compress it into something legible. "Mr. Yang might. Definitely not me though, nope. That means we need you."
If Caelus looks closely, really closely, he might be able to see the tiniest corner of a smile tugging at Dan Heng's lips. "Then I'll stay."