Archive of Our Own

It was nearly twenty minutes behind schedule when Rusty came tearing into the freight yard, filling the air with the clatter of a steam engine at full speed. Hydra suppressed a laugh, knowing exactly what had happened.

Rusty was a late riser. Hydra had thought at first that it was just because he liked morning cuddles- many a morning after at this point had devolved into lazy affection that lasted close to noon, or at very least until the last second they could feasibly get up. But then he’d started paying closer attention to the way the steamer’s morning went. Rusty was never quite all the way awake without a fire in, and that took a little while to get going. Especially on days like this, when there was nobody else about to help him do it.

He was cute like that, all drowsy and half-warm, before he got to working pressure. But he was not productive.

“Afternoon,” Hydra called, with a cheeky little wave. Rusty flushed, going gold to the roots of his hair.

“Shush,” he huffed, but he leaned in for a quick kiss all the same. Hydra coupled up, still smirking a little, and connected their vapour line. There’d been some tweaks for the conversion, but nothing that meant Rusty couldn’t still burn solids-- he’d got over here on a cheery little wood fire, just enough to get up to pressure before Hydra could tag in.

“We’ll have to tweak our schedule a bit,” Rusty explained, clearly stressed. “No water stop at the plant, I think. The coaches need me back too soon.” 

“No water stop?”

Hydra wasn’t an expert in steam locomotives. He was trying to be, given that Rusty had to be an expert in his care and keeping just to be trusted to haul him-- the information was just much, much harder to come by. But he was pretty sure that the water was important, given that it was the only thing between Rusty’s crown sheet and catastrophe.

“I’ve only got a load half the way there, no backhaul today.” They were picking up speed, gliding toward the steel depot. “It doesn’t take me half a tank to get there, and I’ve done the run back light engine a thousand times. We’ll be fine.”

“If you’re sure.”

And for the first half of the journey, it was. They picked up the steel train, rowdy flatbeds loaded with coils, always making for fun conversation.

The manufacturing plant went smoothly, too-- Rusty’d radioed ahead, so they weren’t routed through the usual maze of clatter and machinery to reach the pipe that passed as a water tower, there. Hydra was glad of that; had never liked the place. Something about the buzz of manufacturing and the metal-on-metal stink in the air set him on edge.

When they were back out in the light, things seemed fine, too. It was a mild spring morning, the sky greyish-dim but not too foreboding of rain, a light breeze blowing. Birds twittering in the lineside bush, and a passenger special in the afternoon. They were stopped at a few signals, but that didn’t particularly matter-- they’d made the plant just shy of on time, and consequently had a little wiggle room.

The first bad sign was that Rusty got quiet. Very quiet.

There were always lulls, comfortable silences in their easy back-and-forth chat. But this felt different, wrong. Conversation became single sentences became words, falling eventually into sullen little answering hums. Hydra wondered if he’d put his feet wrong somewhere, prompted this-- but there’d been no one moment. Should he just be silent, too?

“Are we keeping good time?” he asked, instead. Wanting an in, like selling something, feeling suddenly shy all over again.

“Yeah.” 

Something was wrong. Very wrong.

Rusty’s voice was different. Thin, like an instrument played without enough breath behind it. The birds could have drowned him out.

Hydra remembered, abruptly, a habit of his. Once Rusty’s fire was out for the night, when he was running on residual pressure, just enough to get to bed-- he whispered. Soft and gentle every time he spoke them; goodnight, I love you, stay with me? Saving steam, he’d said, the one time Hydra had thought to ask about it.

That was what he was doing now.

Saving steam.

“Rusty,” and Hydra knew that it was probably rude to ask, but he wasn’t going to just… wait for something to go wrong. “Are you alright?”

“Yes.” And there was a little bit of stubborn grit to that answer that Hydra really didn’t like, because every bolt in his body was screaming that something was wrong. He could see it in the set of Rusty’s shoulders, the harsh huffing of his breath, so much more of a struggle than usual. Even the set of his wheels on the rails was different.

Rusty raised a shaking hand, the thumb tucked into his palm. Their non-verbal indication for cut back.

The controls for the vapour line were on Hydra’s side of the equation, his higher pressure most of the driving force of fuel transfer. He turned the wheel obligingly, easing the flow through the valve a little.

The hand stayed up. Hydra cut back more, a dense pit of worry coalescing in his stomach. Finally, Rusty lowered his hand, began to brake. They’d come to yet another red signal.

“Shit,” the steamer hissed, almost too quiet for Hydra to hear it.

Maybe they’d just… been a little less to-timetable than they’d thought. Maybe that was all. Maybe Hydra hadn’t near enough killed another steamer, miles from their home yard and on a fucking important section of track. He grit his teeth and clung to the couplers and willed what little fuel he was providing to work, a growing sense of dread falling over the moment.

It took more energy, stopping and starting, than coasting along. More pressure.

More steam.

More water.

“We could, ah, there’s sidings at—”

“No!” Rusty snapped, squaring his shoulders as the signal flicked back to green. “I can make it. I have to make it.”

The sidings were full, when they passed them.

He would just have to make it.

Hydra began to understand the strange set of wheels on rail; Rusty was running lighter than he’d ever been with him, struggling more than ever to shift Hydra’s weight. He’d dropped all pretence of ease, leaning into their direction of travel like an ox in a yoke, surging forward at speed despite the obvious pain of it. Hydra couldn’t see his face, but he could sense the determined expression that he knew was on it, brutally stubborn despite the consequences.

Hydra wanted to believe they’d make it. Despite the creak of metal straining, the off-beat pound of struggling cylinders. The thinning bursts of steam, less on every cycle. They were, what, ten minutes out from Troubadour?

They began to slow.

“No,” Rusty mumbled, “no, no no no no-”

Something popped. There was a hiss, hot water dripping to the ballast beneath them, and Hydra realised abruptly that Rusty wasn’t braking-- he was losing power.

“Shit,” Hydra cursed. “What do I do, tell me what to do, please--”

But it wasn’t going to work like that, was it? That wasn’t how steamers worked; he’d seen Rusty at low pressure before, after a washout, struggling to even string words together. All his perfectly-precise emergency protocols were pouring out between the bars of his fire-grate with the spray of steam and ash.

Rusty raised his hand again, one quick chopping motion that slowed at the end, faltered as he forgot his intent. Hydra cut the line completely, but there’d still be draft, the force of physics sucking more through until the pressures equalised, until his sluggishly-cycling pistons slowed to a complete stop.Hydra had brakes of his own, applied them hard, and then everything was screeching and sparks for a second-- how fast had they even been going?

“Rusty,” he begged, “Rusty, babe, can you brake for me?”

And then Rusty was glancing back over his shoulder like he’d forgot Hydra was even there, dark oily tears budding in his eyes already because it must hurt. Must have been hurting for a while already, because how many miles had it been since he’d said a full sentence?

But he put his brakes on, and there was the familiar sliding click of his regulator shutting.

“Brilliant.” Hydra let go of the couplers, and nearly scalded himself throwing his arms around Rusty. “You’re perfect, you know that? Perfect.”

Rusty didn’t answer, hissing an inhale through clenched teeth instead. He dropped slowly to sitting, nearly dragging Hydra to the ground with him. There was the clank of dampers shutting, but what help that would be at this point Hydra had absolutely no idea. He’d exhausted what little knowledge he had when he’d started praying that Rusty wouldn’t just outright explode.

This wasn’t safe. Shouldn’t have even still been in this section, blocking the line. Shouldn’t have put himself in range of something hot and burning and dangerous, and god the heat rolling off of him, fever-pitch and burning and even more intense than usual-- but that didn’t matter, couldn’t matter. He needed this to stop, needed Rusty to feel better.

Needed to make things safe.

“What happened?” The words came out in a panicked rush, and maybe this was somehow Hydra’s fault, a quirk of the convergence of their systems. “What do I do?” 

“Lead plug...”

Something shifted in his mind, the part of him that had been drilled through a thousand standard operating procedures snapping into action.

He reached over Rusty’s shoulder, finding the little lever on his side to rock the grate.

“We’ll drop your fire, can you kneel up for me, just a bit?”

In an awful heave of creaking metal, Rusty complied, rising to his knees. He wouldn’t hold like that, shaking from the effort-- Hydra pushed forwards, braced body to burning, shaking body, wrapped his free arm around Rusty’s chest and tried to ignore the searing sensation that resulted.

Sparks showered the sleepers, ash and embers blowing up in the draft and staining both their paintwork. And it wasn’t enough, probably, because steam boilers were insulated too; Hydra’d often joked that they had the same amount of jacketing, just for opposite reasons.

How long would that heat hold?

“There we are,” he soothed. Rusty was half-sensate, vacantly staring ahead and panting for ventilation like he couldn’t get enough air in. It feels like suffocating, he’d said, once, of an inadequate draft; was that what he was feeling now?

All at once, he collapsed against Hydra, seventy tons of scorching dead-weight with his head lolled against the tanker’s shoulder. Every instinct screamed at Hydra to fling himself away, alarms kicking up and adding to the cacophony as heated metal got far too close to his fuel lines. They needed help, and quickly, and stars above Hydra shouldn’t have been so fucking flippant about the change of plan.

“Rusty,” iron incandescent against him where their cheeks touched, the smell of scorching silicone. “Rusty, baby, if you can, I need you to whistle.”

Rusty shifted slightly, eyelids fluttering as he struggled to focus on anything. There was another, awful hissing burst of steam as another plug went.

“Please.” Hydra could hardly hear himself speak over the din; steam and sizzling and the shriek of discordantly digital alarms. “Whistle for me.”

Rusty jolted, the movement spasmodic. Guttural, like a dying man, he drew breath.

And whistled.

His whole body tensed, straining with the last of his steam to make the sound-- unmeasured and desperate, nothing like the cheerful tones that heralded his stop at a station. It had the tone of gears shrieking as they ground to breaking point, a hollow wail that mingled with his voice as he cried out in pain. The sheer force of the blast rattled through them both, rumbling against Hydra’s chassis as every millimetre of metal resonated with the sound.

Half of Hydra’s face was numb, sensors destroyed. A tinny ring started up in that ear.

“Knew you could…” He gave up on trying to spare himself, wrapped his arms around Rusty and sank back onto his heels with the steam engine limply sprawled against him, halfway in his lap. Kissed the red-hot iron of his neck, leaving a smudgy mark from the damage that happened on contact.

It wasn’t as though he didn’t deserve this; he’d not mastered the maths yet, but of course- cryogenics were heavy; he’d got them in this shit. Had it been Slick or Lumber, Rusty could likely have made the trip. The signal box ahead would have seen them pass by now, nearing the red but not so utterly in it. And someone might be coming from there now, if they were lucky--

Steam.

At the end of the grade approaching the yard, a strong, solid plume of it, the distant sound of an engine charging up the other line.

Then, like a miracle, an answering whistle.

With silicone streaked through his hair and his eyes glassy, Rusty smiled. His voice was almost absent when he spoke again, just a weak hiss.

“She’s coming.”

He tried to lift his head to look; failed.

“We’ll be okay.”