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Rusty really should have been happy to see his partner sleeping.
A month out from race season, and three months into internal construction, Hydra definitely needed the rest. For all that his darling fuel truck could talk the ears off a donkey and the paint off a wall, that bottomless-seeming energy had a limit, and one that the tanker wasn't often aware of.
They'd fallen into a rhythm, season on season on championship season, of piling everything into the final. Each year in competition meant a series of days building to weeks and then months of focused practice, pushing their machinery to its straining, screaming limit. They'd podiumed three years straight that way, skipping only a couple seasons. But it took a toll. The first few weeks after crossing the finish line felt like letting a field lie fallow-- quiet repairs to the inevitable injuries, solid meals as the focus shifted to recovering from racing shape rather than staying in it. Cool autumn nights and apple picking with the little ones, bundling up on the sofa instead of rushing out the training track as soon as everyone was fed.
Rusty had argued against continuing the season at all, after they'd found out. Technically, Pearl was ready to tag in as and when needed; she'd been loving the analysis she could get done from the standby paddock. But Hydra had just laughed the idea off, grinning as if they'd not added ten seconds to his solo times and joking about our little racer— and they'd toughed out the final few weeks.
It seemed that now that debt had come due. Not even half past seven and Hydra was sprawled out on their shared bed, skates still on, a magazine halfway open on their chest as he drooled into the pillows. The status lights beneath his jaw pulsed slowly, matching the sluggish circulation of air as they inhaled to feed their fuel cells.
That truck was out, likely for the rest of the night.
Rusty had to bite back a smile. Hydra was always pretty, every manic movement charming, but the peace of their sleep gave an engine more time to admire him. The futuristic design philosophy involved gave rise to smooth, solid lines, unbroken by the jut of the pipes and siderods steamers had. But it was the places where that broke down that made them even more appealing— the scuffed paintwork where he’d grazed the wall taking a corner too fast, the dark, tousled hair, verdant smudges everywhere from falling asleep in facepaint. The line at the collar of his half-unzipped under armour, where their synthetic skin matrix was untouched by the sun.
Rusty could have probably stayed there forever, relishing the rare moment of peace. But he had a job to do. Sighing, tearing himself away, he moved to take the magazine. Draped a blanket over Hydra instead, and gently kissed their forehead, not quite able to resist.
Dreadful timing, though. It was getting close to bedtime, and Rusty’d already been out of sight of any of the wee ones for too long. It wasn’t common that all of them were stabled there at once, so stars only knew what they’d got up to. As soon as Rusty'd got the bedroom door closed, he was chugging through the building apace, dreading what the relative quiet might have meant. Corrie at least he could trust with the silence; she'd probably be hunched over one of her doodles, but the others…
When he got back to the main living space, it became abundantly clear why.
Finch, a brush in her small hand, was confidentially smearing paint all over one of the Stadler twins, both of them splotched with red and white. In a chair behind them, the little Pesa shunter was…
“Petya, is that a knife?”
“No worries,” the eight-year-old said, calmly. “‘M cuttin’ away from me.”
“Have you had that this entire time?”
He’d been there the better part of a month already, for the championships. Rusty was confident that he had a good bit more sense than the rest of their lot, but not enough to be trusted with unsupervised access to sharps.
Petya nodded.
“Uncle Lumber showed me how to make a bird.”
He held it up, smiling slightly. It didn’t look much of anything like a bird, but the cuts were surprisingly steady.
“That’s great, Petya, but—”
“Ow!”
The twin at the low table, Geneva, had a hand suddenly over one eye. She was shoving Finch’s hands away, her face scrunching up. Rusty watched her uncovered eye dart around the room, and then finally, out of options, reach him.
“Ow,” she repeated, looking pleadingly up at him. “She poked me!”
“Did not!”
“Girls.” Rusty sighed. “It’s nearly time for bed, and I’m sure it was an accident—”
“Can we just finish her paint?” Finch blurted. “Please?”
“Finch-”
“Dad would let me finish her paint!”
“Dad is sleeping already, because dad knows that trains need rest.”
“I don’t wanna do more paint anyway,” Geneva announced, trying to wipe it off with her hands, and succeeding only in getting it ground into the joints of her fingers. There was going to be a trail of sticky reddish fingerprints through the shed soon, he knew. And she’d got some of it in her hair.
“You’re being boring,” Finch said, cheerfully. “I’ll just do mine, then.”
“Petya, put down the knife.” The boy in question was playing with the blade, prising it in and out of the company-branded handle. “Girls, do you want a bath together, or should I find Double, and Finch can wash down on her own?”
“Nah.” Finch leant over the scattered makeup, dabbing a smaller brush into glitter. He didn’t know where she’d got half of it— there were the play paints Hydra’d bought her, but the rest looked like the sort of thing grown trains used. Not appropriate for a nine-year-old who still routinely got sauce on her sleeves while eating. “Finch can do a ‘ponent liner look that slays.”
“Finch can do her “ponent liner look” tomorrow, okay?” Rusty stooped and began organizing makeup, tossing sticky paint pots and brushes back into the shiny silver case she used as a makeup bag. There were a few pencils in it, and what seemed to be an open bag of haribos.
“Nooo,” Finch whined, trying to grab them back. “No, you can’t take that off me, it’s from Auntie Joule and she says I can have it whenever I want, this isn’t fair!”
“I’ll wash down.” Petya rose from his chair, clearly as tired of the fuss as Rusty was.
“Remember grease after!” Rusty tried and failed to prise the angled brush out of Finch’s hand. “Geneva, sweetheart, do you want in the bath with your brother? Or with Finch?”
“I don’t wanna bath with a stinky boy,” Geneva protested, scrubbing at her face— that was definitely proper paint, thick and greasy and increasingly clumping into her golden curls — with the exposed underarmour on her wrists. “I wan’ this off.”
There was a bit of a whine creeping into her voice, the accent to her English getting harsher. She was tired. Summer days meant lots of running about outside; they’d only herded them all inside for tea, and at six the twins struggled a little bit in keeping up with the bigger ones. They’d both travelled, too, from opposite directions, and Rusty was pretty sure that the shift in routine was rough on them even now.
“We’ll get you cleaned up, promise,” he said, and changed tack. “Finch, do you want to help me with Geneva’s hair? Conditioner first, right?”
“No!” Finch nearly shouted it, her gloss-smudged lips curling into a sneer. Rusty wasn’t sure why she wanted to feel superior so badly, but it was the quickest way to get her moving. “Estúpido! You’ll ruin it!”
She dove for the makeup bag, and extracted— colourfully fingerprinted and very scratched, but still legible— a high-end bottle of cleaner, and one of conditioning oil. Both were silver, leaving exactly no questions on where she’d got them.
“Finch, calling people stupid isn’t nice.” Rusty took the bottles anyway, checking the backs to make sure they’d be safe for such a tiny trainlet. With his free hand he helped Geneva up, beginning to herd her to the wetroom. “Even if it’s in Spanish.”
“You don’t even KNOW Spanish!” Finch whined, folding her arms and thumping her soft indoor wheels on the floor in irritation.
“Geneva, how about Finch helps with your hair and we get Double dealt with later? Do you know where he is?”
“Dunno,” Geneva answered, laconically. Definitely starting to get stroppy. Rusty beckoned Finch to follow them, and she did. “Our room? He went to play blocks.”
He’d need finding, then. Double could halfway be trusted; he didn’t have the thirst for chaos that some of the kids did. But he’d got Hydra’s utter lack of impulse control. Usually that just meant ill-timed games of floor is lava or wrestling stuck objects out from under his plating, but he’d kicked off the summer by falling face-first down the ancient half-pipe in the yard, and ever since, Rusty had been a little bit terrified to let him out of his eyeline.
“Finch, do you think you could fetch him for me?”
“Ugh!”
“And no more shouting, please. Let your father rest.”
It was hard to stomp on wheels, but with a screech of brakes and a pout, Finch managed it.
Once they were in the washroom, Rusty turned the tap on to fill the tub, and set Finch’s fancy hair products on the rim of the sink so he could help Geneva out of her plating.
At this age, things were only hand-tightened on, but the series of screws and washers was a lot for her to handle with any efficiency. Geneva just perched on the low metal stool and offered feet and hands and shoulders without complaint, occasionally scratching at her cheeks where the paint was drying down. At least he only had one kid who’d properly need help— she could probably do everything but washing her hair.
Then the door swung open.
“Found him,” Finch chirped. “‘Neva’s right, he is stinky.”
“Am not!”
Rusty couldn’t take his eyes off his work on Geneva, but glances were enough. He took in filthy fingernails, matted, dirt-dark hair, flashes of blue through plating that was so dirty as to look black. A smudgy trail where Finch had clearly dragged him by the wrist through half the house.
“Double, what happened?”
“Went in the coal store.”
The tiny ZEMU was grinning, everything but his eyes dark with coal dust. He looked like Porter after a rough day at work. A very rough day. And the floor would definitely, definitely need mopped. Fantastic. Seeing his sister, the boy began to step forward, and—
“No wheels in the wetroom!” Rusty cautioned, trying to keep his voice low. They were closer to Hydra here, and he would not be calling in reinforcements. “Stay right there, you’re last in the queue.”
He turned his attention back to Geneva, scrubbing shampoo into her hair and trying to ignore the black tracks her twin’s wheels had left on the concrete. The greasy paint was breaking up a little, dripping down her cheeks in little rivulets of pink.
Behind them there was a sharp snap and a hiss of pain.
“I need new screws tomorrow,” Finch said. When Rusty glanced over his shoulder, she was holding up a piece of plating with a snapped-off screw still in it, where she’d not quite got it unscrewed before she’d started yanking.
“Oh dear, does it feel okay?”
“Yeah, it's fine." A hesitation, then— “Can I get silver glitter screwcaps? Lecca’s got silver glitter screwcaps and I aughta match.”
She needed a trip to repair tomorrow, but if he told her that now there’d be a tantrum. Even years out from his first championship win and subsequent rise to affording services, Rusty still preferred to go at such things with a bit of surgical spirit and a pair of pliers, but trying that on Finch would have got him shouted at by two of the biggest personalities in the yard. Three, if he counted Finch herself.
As he was rinsing Geneva’s hair, he was struck, not for the first time, by a realisation.
He liked this.
Liked the sound of Finch humming as she twirled her hair into finger-waves with conditioner. Liked that Geneva trusted him enough to lean in a little as he scrubbed paint from the nape of her neck. Liked the rainbow of child-safe cleaning products lined up on the shelves, the wobbly rack outside the wetroom door, overspilling with everyone’s indoor bogies. That their babies got to leave the house smelling of raspberry shampoo and strawberry-watermelon fleetclean, rather than cheap industrial degreaser, diluted too far so it'd stretch.
“Rusty?” A quiet voice came from the hallway. “Where’s dad?”
Corrie.
She’d been coping fairly well, recently. It was a shame to have to ruin that. She’d handled the addition of the various others fairly well, but they weren’t permanent. Weren’t newborns. By the will of the stars, it wouldn’t wound her too badly.
“Sleeping.” Rusty guided Geneva to tilt her head back, making sure the conditioning oil reached her hairline. “He’s… feeling tired today.”
“Oh…”
“Is dad sick?” Double was peering up at him with wide, brilliant green eyes, eerily identical to his father’s. Clearly bored, he’d been doodling on the wall with his coal-stained fingertips. “Is he gonna die?”
“No! Just been busy,” Rusty said. “Neva, do you want to wash your face then get in the tub? I’ll fetch you some pajamas.”
“‘Kay!”
“Can I come?” Double scooted forward a little, and Corrie stuck out a leg to stop him.
“You’re getting everything dirty!” she protested.
“So?”
“Stay there, I’ll just be two minutes,” Rusty promised, flicking suds off his hands. Double huffed, slumping onto the floor and then rolling over to kick his heels against the wall.
“This is boring!” he grouched. “I want to skate more.”
“Wheels off the wall, please.”
This was one of the times indoor wheels came in handy. Rusty could zip between rooms, frantically grabbing whatever would fit the relevant frames. The twins refused to share even their soft clothes, so he found trousers and shirts in their preferred colours— Double, blue, and Geneva, white and red. One last stop by Finch’s room and the airing cupboard— making a mental note to have more towels washed— and he was ready.
Thankfully, nobody had drowned by the time he got back, ready with nightclothes and towels. Finch needed to be shooed behind the shower curtain to actually rinse out her improvised hairstyle, but she was at least clean. All he had to do was braid Geneva’s hair while she soaked her dents out in the tub. She yawned as he did so.
“How come Neva got a bath before me?” Double asked, when he was beckoned in past his towel-wrapped sisters.
“Rusty,” Corrie mumbled. “Can, uhm. Could you help me—”
“Neva gets a bath first because she’s not gross.”
“Finch, don’t stick your tongue out, it’s rude.” Rusty suppressed a sigh. He felt like he’d had about three days worth of day in the past half-hour. “But that’s not entirely wrong. We’ll need to clean the whole room after you.”
“Could you…” Corrie was peering nervously around the doorframe, her eyes wide, face pale where coolant had sunk toward her core. “I think I’m getting low?”
“But she’s gonna go to bed before me!” Double said. “I don’t want her to go to bed before me.”
“Rusty, please—”
Corrie clamped a hand over her mouth as a slow, sonorous alarm started up. She couldn’t muffle it; the actual apparatus was somewhere behind her chestplate. Finch snorted back a laugh, as if such alerts weren’t common for all of them.
“Sorry, sorry!” Rusty said. Shit. There was no time to cross the shed to the cylinder stores, and Corrie ran horrendously on her last dregs of fuel; usually she’d get a top up to last through the evening, but the train that did that was currently three rooms away and probably snoring. “One second. I’m sorry.”
Rusty carried extra cylinders, now, rather than coal. He let go of Geneva’s hair and stretched to snatch one from his discarded backpack bunker, then held it out to Corrie. The teenager grabbed it with the desperation of a man in the desert sighting water, and curled around it protectively.
“My braids…” Geneva pouted, holding one up where it had begun to unravel.
“I’ll fix it in just a moment,” Rusty said. “Corrie, are you okay?”
She’d sunk to the floor where Double had been, her legs crossed and head bowed. Rusty’d got the same sort of fueling apparatus she did for her primary setup— she’d hooked the cylinder up to the port in her side, and gone limp. As fast as it had started, the alarm stopped.
“Mhm,” she answered, head nodding. Tired out, too, then.
“Did you wash down yet?”
She shook her head.
“Can I… in the morning?” She sounded exhausted. Rusty felt a stab of guilt for not chasing her down sooner; as the oldest, she tended to need the least help. “Or could you help me with tanks?”
“Oh, did you work on that in class today?” Rusty finished off Geneva’s braid, tying it off with a loop of smooth rubber tubing. He beckoned Double over from the sink, where the boy had been unsuccessfully trying to get some of the coal dust off his face. He’d even got it in his mouth, little black smudges on his tongue and teeth.
“Yeah,” Corrie groaned. “I think I might be sick.”
“Me too!” Double said, far too cheerily for it to be true. Rusty shoved the wastebin in front of Corrie just in case, and went at Double with the screwdriver, loosening the plating on the back of his tiny wrist.
“Finch, Geneva, I’ll come say goodnight when this one’s done, okay? Geneva, can you hop out?”
“Uh-huh.”
He greased her joints and bundled her up in one of the towels, the ends nearly reaching the floor. Sometimes he wondered how it was genuinely possible for a train to function while being so small. Even more so when she yawned again, showing a silvery gap where she was missing one of her front teeth.
“Get PJs on and go to your bedroom while I help your brother, please.”
“I don’t need help!” Double said, as Rusty helped. “I’m so, so good at trainwash. At school they taught me how to go through the machine for it!”
“That’s great, Double.” Rusty popped another piece of plating off, wincing at the outline it left. The kid was filthy. “Do you know how to do it without the machine?” Sunny as always, he answered wholeheartedly and honestly.
“Nope!”
“I’ll help you,” Rusty said. “Corrie, how are you holding up?”
A thumbs up. Probably the best he could hope for. Had Rusty not been, broadly, covered in soap, and paint, and coal dust, and stars knew what else, he’d have patted her on the head.
Rusty went to work with the full suite of their cleaning equipment. The stiff-bristled brushes cut through the grit, but apparently tickled— half of his task was telling Double to stay still when he started kicking and giggling. Once the water swirling down the in-floor drain was finally running clear— and heavens above did it take some doing— he got the same treatment as his twin. Heat molding, hair plaited into stubby braids, greased, wrapped up, pajamas. By the time that was all finished he was nearly nodding off, blinking drowsily as he waited for Rusty to dry his own hands.
On the way out, Rusty had to take a moment to check in on their eldest. Corrie seemed somewhat less wilted, at least; she was peering out from behind the straggly blue curtain of her hair, rather than just hunching over the bucket. He felt terribly guilty. The younger ones took their night fuel earlier; Corrie’s slightly larger tank capacity meant she could, and preferred to, hold out until just before bedtime. Hydra made a whole little routine of it, let her cuddle up close and ramble about her day. Rusty had missed out on that entirely.
Getting the twins down for bed tended to be difficult, but apparently the starlight showed small mercies. Geneva was already sleeping, curled up on her small steel bunk, a frog-shaped teddy crushed in her arms. She’d got her shirt on backwards.
“Ninight, Rusty.” Double rubbed his eyes, then crawled into his own bed. Sometimes, they’d squish in together, but it was apparently still too hot for that. “Tell dad I miss him.”
“Goodnight, Double.” Rusty tucked him in, quietly hoping that he’d forget to demand the usual bedtime story. “And I will. You’ll see them in the morning, okay?”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Once he’d got the littlest ones settled, he went right back to Corrie. Finch was almost certainly not in bed, not asleep, and causing havoc, but she’d remain in that state basically indefinitely. Corrie, he wasn’t so sure.
As he glided down the corridor, he could hear the washdown running. Petya, still, probably taking advantage of the chance for a bit of peace.
“You needed a hand with something?” he asked, when he was back at her spot on the floor.
Corrie nodded, the corners of her mouth creaking down into a little frown. She was probably upset that Hydra wasn’t there to do it— she didn’t half cling when she was feeling poorly. Which was a lot of the time.
“Water tanks,” she said. “Last time I spilled it. Bad for my electronics. Not certified.”
“I see.” That wasn’t true, really— she’d been signed off on most of her maintenance achingly early, but if she needed help, he wasn’t going to deny her that. “Skates off and come through here?”
Corrie complied, clacking through to the wetroom on bare bolsters. She didn’t have a modern water distribution system— something to do with the challenges of engineering her— so there were various water points dotted along her shoulders and sides. Even nearing working scale, she didn’t quite meet spec. A great many of her systems were non-standard, and that meant taking care.
“How has your day been?” he asked, reaching with the water nozzle to get the cap on the back of one sharp shoulder.
“Fine.”
They’d really got to get some proper weight on her. She’d hit a growth spurt in her time at troubadour, and the slowly-reappearing shapes of her structural skeleton reminded him horribly of when she’d first arrived.
“Was class good?”
“Informative,” Corrie answered.
“I’m glad.”
She didn’t want to talk, he figured. She was toying with her fingers in the nervous way that he knew meant she’d rather be anywhere but here. It was hard to really get a read on Corrie— it was impossible to tell how much of it was her just being thirteen, and how much meant that she genuinely disliked him. But when he’d finished, she smiled slightly as she thanked him.
Rusty left her to wash up properly and tried to tally up the rest of his tasks. He couldn’t hear the washdown anymore, so he could assume that Petya was out and had forgotten to grease anything. Finch would need actually putting to, possibly directly in bed, and the trail of coal dust needed cleaned up before someone tracked it across the entire place. Then Rusty needed to get clean, blow down his boiler, and put a note in his diary about that appointment for Finch.
“Petya?” He dragged himself across to the side of the building where the washdown was. It was a closet-sized alternative to the proper wetroom, just jets from the ceiling and a rotating brush that could be picked up and moved.
The boy in question was thankfully not still in it. He was sitting just outside, dripping morosely and clearly working on the little wooden bird again.
“Please don’t use knives without supervision,” Rusty said. “And especially not after your bedtime. Do you know why we don’t pull trains tired?”
Wispy blonde eyebrows furrowed.
“It impir— it impairs your judgement.”
“That’s right.” Rusty offered a hand, and hauled him up to his feet. “And that applies to other dangerous things, too. Like working with knives, or hazmat.”
“Right.” A solemn nod, which would have been much easier to take seriously if it didn’t come from a little boy wrapped in a fluffy yellow towel. “I’ll sleep.” “Good.” Rusty smiled. “Tomorrow, we’ll work some more on that bird.”
Petya used the room next to Finch’s, which was convenient. After he’d got Petya tucked in (which he “didn’t need”, but submitted to anyway) and pretended he didn’t see the foot of his teddy bear poking out from under the blankets, Rusty poked his head in to check.
“Finch,” he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Go to sleep.” The trainlet in question looked blankly back, as if she couldn’t understand why someone would ever suggest such a thing. She was lying on her front in her bunk, surrounded by a halo of carefully curated glitter gel pens and sticker sheets. Whatever she’d been drawing seemed to be coloured in almost entirely in metallic silver.
“I’m gonna finish my drawing first,” she said. “It's me and Lecca.”
He would have known that without being told. The big silver figure holding the hand of the smaller one was covered in spikes, outlined with blue highlighter pen.
“You can finish your drawing tomorrow,” Rusty argued. “But now you need to sleep.”
“How come?”
“It’s late, and if you don’t sleep you won’t grow properly.” The last thing Rusty wanted was a power struggle, but he tried to summon the energy for one regardless, just in case. “And all your hair will fall out.”
Finch gasped.
“Forreal?”
“For real. Happened to Greaseball— she wasn’t made with hair like that, it’s a wig. Now go to bed.”
Finch set her drawing aside and gathered up her pens in silence. Rusty watched as she wiggled under the covers, and flipped the light switch, leaving the room illuminated only by a star-shaped night light.
“Rusty?”
Finch spoke quietly, for possibly the first time in her life.
“Yeah?”
“Will… Will we see each other tomorrow?”
And he thought for a moment, about Electra.
About the drawing. About what Hydra had told him.
About how every. Single. Visit. The stories were Auntie Joule and me- and Uncle Killerwatt- and Me ‘n Volta-
“Of course,” he said, even with anger twisting hot and painful in his chest. “I’ll make you breakfast.”
“I want pancakes,” Finch said, through a yawn. She closed her eyes. “Goodnight.”
That was four out of five down, and Corrie reliably collapsed into bed of her own accord these days.
Just cleaning, then. He wanted everyone waking up to a clean house, Hydra especially.
Their discomfort was increasingly obvious. Little things becoming triggers, sounds and textures and smells. Double had handed Hydra a piece of “too soggy” toast that morning, and set off a round of dry-heaving that sounded genuinely painful. Hydra’d done all of this before, but Rusty… He had no idea. Back in steam days, it was uncouth to talk about it— Momma rarely had. He’d been walked through the mechanics, sure. But not how it would feel. To know that about someone before anyone else could even tell.
To consider what was coming. That there would be someone else in the world he’d adore that much.
There was no other word for it than awe.
He wanted nothing more than to lie down beside Hydra and bask in the feeling, but that awe was a motivating factor. The thing that had Rusty trying to stay quiet while picking up building blocks and toy tracks, even as exhaustion weighed him down. He had to get into the habit now, so they’d be well into them when the nebulous future-person arrived. Be able to look after everyone, when Hydra was busy with them. Be able to tough out being far, far more tired than this.
After all the cleaning, halfway through his own washdown— so exhausted he could barely keep his eyes open— he heard crying.
Rusty allowed himself a brief moment of anguish at not getting to sleep yet, and then followed the sound to the twins’ room. Neither of them were out of bed, no lights on, everything just dark velvety shapes and muffled sound.
“What’s wrong?”
“Dad?” And Double’s voice sounded so tiny and so broken. Rusty turned sharply to look at him, terrified. For a moment— one dreadful moment— he thought the dark stain down the front of Double’s shirt was circulatory oil. Then he flicked on the light and realised it was something else entirely.
“Oh, hon…” At seeing Rusty— or maybe at not seeing Hydra— Double just cried harder. “Do you think you can tell me what’s wrong?”
“I- I- I dunnooo.” He was kicking at the blankets inbetween sobs, tugging at the collar of his shirt. That couldn’t be comfortable, darkened steel slurry drying down into the fabric. “I don’t feel good…”
“I’ll bet you don’t, huh.” Rusty had put together exactly what happened. “Did you eat something from the coal store?”
There was a wept affirmative, sailboat-patterend sleeves wiping ineffectively at a mess of snot and vomit. As he got closer, Rusty realised that the sheets were wrecked, too— Double was not having a good day.
“Is he dying?” Geneva asked, quietly, prompting her brother to kick up into proper wailing.
“Ssh, shhh! You’re not dying!” Rusty patted his shoulder, trying to be comforting without getting entirely covered in sick. “We’ve just got to get you cleaned up a bit. And maybe no more eating coal? I don’t think it’s too good for hydrogen-powered tummies.”
“Uh-huh,” Double sobbed. He moved to get out of bed, but Rusty stopped him.
“Just stay put a moment, I can carry you.”
Mainly, that meant that he could scoop up Double and most of the bedding on one fell swoop. It would all need washed, anyway, and the twins were still so small— carrying him felt like nothing, even while he was wiggly and disgusting. In Rusty’s arms, though, he stilled a little, letting his head fall against the engine’s shoulder. Like he wanted to be close.
The baby would be smaller than this. Much, much smaller. Would they snuggle into him in the same way?
He couldn’t imagine it. And even if he could have, there was someone more immediately important.
“Do you feel any better?” In the wetroom, Rusty disentangled Double from the soiled blankets, setting him on the stool and turning the showerhead on. Warm water, not hot.
Double nodded morosely. The poor little thing looked wrecked, eyes red and puffy, his hair all mussed from where he must have been tossing and turning.
“That’s good. I think you just needed it out of you. Arms up?” When he complied, Rusty peeled him out of his shirt. “I am kinda wondering why you thought that was a good idea.”
“‘Cause you eat coal all the time! You’re a hydrogen train—” Double interrupted himself with an ominous hiccupy noise that suggested he wasn’t quite done purging his systems. “And, and you eat it.”
“But I’m a steam engine?” Rusty said, reflexively. When Double furrowed his barely-there eyebrows in confusion, he elaborated. “I work differently than you. I burn the hydrogen in my firebox, and you take the electrons off it in your fuel cells. I can still have coal because that burns, too.”
“Oh…” The boy contemplated that for a moment. “So could you burn anything? Anything ever?”
“Maybe not anything.” Rusty took the showerhead down from its bracket on the wall, set about cleaning the worst of it off. He should have realised when he’d seen the coal dust ground between the kid’s teeth. “Hmm… probably not soup. Too wet.”
That earned a sodden little giggle. Maybe he wasn’t terrible at this after all.
Momma had done this sort of thing, once.
Rusty had dim memories of feverish nights. Having his back rubbed, being slowly spoonfed water so he wouldn’t run dry. He couldn’t do the same for this child, didn’t need to, but he hoped that he could provide a fraction of that same comfort.
When he’d got Double back in bed— with clean sheets, re-brushed teeth and a wastebasket nearby, just in case— the clock was creeping into the wee hours. Rusty wanted to flop down beside his partner, his fuel truck, the source of the fire that brought him to life, and sleep.
But when he crept into the bedroom, there were two shapes in the bed. Hydra, where he’d left them. Then the light from the door grazing another form, something small bunched against his side. Corrie, curled close. Her head was pillowed on Hydra’s chest, her mouth slightly open. She was in just her short-sleeved pajamas.
Rusty stole a throw blanket from the closet. Tucked it around her, trying to make sure she was as completely covered as possible. She shifted a little in her sleep, sighing softly as she exhaled. It was a rare few, who got to see her in a state of complete comfort. He wished he could have taken a picture of the moment, a deep affection blooming behind his boilerplate.
How lucky he was, to have them both in his life. To have them all.
When he’d been younger, and people had asked— because back in the day, it was still the kind of question you might ask a steamer— if he wanted a family, he’d smile, and offer the most noncommittal and conventional ‘yes’ that he could.
As many as the starlight sees fit to bless me with.
Which could have meant none.
But now— as he eased himself into bed besides his love and the daughter they shared— he thanked the stars it hadn’t.