Archive of Our Own

When Blade got the call from the emergency roadside assistance company on a random Tuesday afternoon, he thought they got the wrong number at first.

“Am I speaking with Mr. Blade—”

“Yes,” Blade said, not feeling too bad about cutting off the customer service representative in the middle of their sentence. It was a bit rude, sure, but the sooner they could get the pleasantries over with, the better — the customer service representative probably wanted to be talking to him even less than he wanted to be talking to them, and Blade had midterms he needed to be studying for.

Normally, Blade wouldn’t have picked up the call, but he was feeling a bit extra self-destructive after his breakup three weeks ago, so picking up potential solicitation calls was not the worst thing he could be doing.

“Perfect,” the customer service representative on the other side of the call said, his chipper voice not faltering in the least. “I just wanted to let you know that a tow truck will be on its way within the next thirty minutes, so please make sure to stay by your vehicle in the meantime.”

What.

“If you would like, our tow truck can drop you off at a stop along the way to our holding lot, so if you want to visit urgent care or go home we can certainly offer that service to you,” the customer service representative continued, oblivious to the swirl of confused thoughts overtaking Blade’s brain. “However, if you would prefer to arrange your own transportation, you may do so. Please just remember to stay by your vehicle until our tow truck can retrieve it.”

Blade blinked. Blinked again. Stood up from where he was sitting at his desk and ran out the door of his apartment.

“Sir? Sir, can you hear me?”

Living on the eighth floor of his building had always been a huge perk: there were no upstairs neighbors to complain about, something that Blade loved because he tended to be a light sleeper, and Dan Heng used to value on those weekends Dan Heng slept over — fuck, Blade wasn’t supposed to be thinking of Dan Heng anymore! — but now, it was just a huge annoyance in waiting for the elevator to finish its trek all the way up. Today, it felt as if it were even slower than ever.

“Sir, are you still there?”

“I’ll call you back,” Blade said, hanging up on the poor customer service representative before they could get another word in and wrenching open the door to the stairs so he could bolt down toward the parking garage.

Surely, the customer service representative had gotten the wrong number. There were probably so many other customers named Blade out there… Or, there was probably some poor customer named Blaine, or Blake, or even Blaire who had put in a request for their car to be towed, and the rep messed up by calling Blade instead.

Surely, Blade would feel stupid as soon as he entered the parking garage and curse the customer service representative in his head for making him panic.

Surely, Blade’s car was still where he left it.

Eight flights of stairs were no joke, but Blade didn’t even break a sweat until he stumbled to a stop in front of his assigned parking spot.

His empty assigned parking spot.

Bzzt! Bzzt! Bzzt!

“So…” Silver Wolf’s voice rang clearly through his phone, a rare note of sheepishness coloring her words. “I swear, I was going to tell you…”

“Your car is really nice,” Dan Heng said as he settled himself inside the passenger seat. “Do you fix it up yourself?”

Blade closed the door to the passenger side and hurried back to sit in the driver’s seat before he responded. “Thanks. I do.”

Once they were both buckled up, Blade started driving, trying to ignore the stilted air that had settled between the two of them. It was a first date, after all, and if the dramas Kafka liked to watch were any indication, then first dates were supposed to be awkward.

Just the fact that Blade and Dan Heng were on a first date, though, was monumental. Before meeting Dan Heng, Blade had never really had any interest in dating. He had friends, of course, like Kafka (a psychology major who also shared an apartment with him, since he hadn’t indicated a preference for same-gender dorm or apartment unit assignments), but a romantic relationship felt like a new level of vulnerability that he wasn’t sure he was cut out for.

For Dan Heng, though, Blade was willing to give it a chance.

On the first day of Blade’s “English 1A: Literature through the 1500s” class — a first-year English Literature weeder course that Blade had to take because his enrollment period had been too late, and the easier classes to take to satisfy the Reading & Writing general education requirement were all filled up — Dan Heng had sat next to him and introduced himself.

That day, Blade had learned less about Old English literature and more about his seat neighbor: Dan Heng was an introvert who had challenged himself to talk to at least one person that day; Dan Heng was originally from up north, in another huge diaspora community, and had actually enjoyed his Saturday Chinese school classes; and Dan Heng had beautiful eyes and a dry wit that made Blade want to spend time with him even outside of class and listen to his mother when she told him, as part of the letter that she left for him after she passed away, to live his life and take risks.

And that’s exactly what Blade was doing by inviting Dan Heng out on a date. After exchanging numbers (to keep sharing class notes, naturally) that first day, they texted almost daily, even if neither of them were really chatty types, and eventually, Blade mustered up the courage to send off that, “Do you want to hang out on Saturday?” text.

And that brought them to where they were now: both sitting in Blade’s car, not saying a single word to one another. The engine of the car sputtered here and there — Blade really wanted to fix it, but he also didn’t want to waste money on new parts when he already had other plans for the car, so he let it be — but otherwise, there was nothing between the two of them but silence.

Fingers flexing over the steering wheel and eyes watching the trees pass by along the sidewalk as they drove past, Blade finally had enough.

“What music do you want to—”

“Where are we going—”

Blade stopped what he was saying at the same time Dan Heng did, shooting Dan Heng a bemused look before focusing his eyes back on the road. “You agreed to come on this date without knowing where we were going?”

From his peripheral vision, Blade saw a light blush creep up on Dan Heng’s cheeks. “You didn’t tell me where we were going.”

“You didn’t ask.” Blade turned right at the intersection, noting that his car was struggling more than usual to decelerate to make the turn smoothly. “So, you just got into a car with some guy you met two weeks ago?”

“You’re my classmate,” Dan Heng replied. “I trust that you’re not here to murder me. I also told my friends who I was going out with today, so it’d be very easily traced back to you.”

“But if I were a murderer who didn’t care about getting caught? Then, you would have just gotten into a car with one.” Blade came to a stop at the red light and finally turned to Dan Heng with a teasing smirk on his face. “You’d have nowhere to run.”

Dan Heng met Blade’s eyes with a deadpan stare. “If you threaten to murder everyone you take out on a date, then I can see why you’re still single.”

“You’re the first person I’ve invited out,” Blade said. “So, my jokes about death and murder aren’t appealing?”

“I don’t have anyone to compare you with,” Dan Heng said, the implication that this date might be an exclusive thing making Blade’s traitorous heart skip a beat, “but, no, not particularly.”

“Hm. Bummer. I can unlock the doors now, if you’d like to escape.”

“I’ll pass,” Dan Heng said, his lips quirking up into a small smile. “I need to stick around to protect anyone else from getting murdered.”

Blade chuckled, his heart feeling lighter now that the awkward air had dissipated around them. “Oh? You’re going to keep an eye on me?”

Dan Heng leaned in closer. “Someone has to.”

Blade raised an eyebrow and tilted his head. “No longer scared of me?”

“I can take you.”

HOOOOOOONK!

With the wheels of their tires squealing, the car that had been stopped behind Blade’s car swerved out of the lane and into the next, the driver flipping them off as he sped past.

Forcing his eyes away from Dan Heng’s, Blade noted that the light was green, and, given the reaction of the other driver, had likely been green for quite some time. Blade normally hated it when people didn’t pay attention on the road, but talking to Dan Heng was a distraction he didn’t want to get rid of.

It was exhilarating.

“We’re heading to the old bookshop across town,” Blade said, taking his foot off the brakes and easing his car back slowly into drive.

Although Blade couldn’t see what face Dan Heng was making, he could hear the slight warmth in his tone. “The one that’s connected to a cat cafe?”

“That very one.”

“I’ve been wanting to pay it a visit,” Dan Heng said, his tone deceptively light as if he were trying to hide just how excited he felt. “Have you been stalking me, too? Should I be worried that I really will be on the news by tonight?”

“You mentioned that you like books, and you said that you thought your friend’s cat was cute.” Blade pressed his foot on the gas pedal, accelerating the car as fast as he could so he could merge safely onto the freeway. The car sputtered a bit, but did what it was forced to; Blade hoped that it would, hopefully, last them through the entire date.

And thankfully, the car did its job. They managed to fight their way through the weekend traffic without too much hassle, and the universe smiled down upon them, as they found parking right in front of the bookstore right as they arrived there.

As advertised, the bookshop was connected to a cat café, and two adorable, fluffy dark gray cats wound themselves around both Blade’s and Dan Heng’s legs as soon as they stepped inside.

“Aw, I’ve never seen Sesame warm up to people that fast,” the cashier sitting behind the checkout desk of the bookstore said. “He’s up for adoption, if you two were looking.”

“Which one is Sesame?” Dan Heng asked, crouching down to scratch behind the bigger one’s ears.

“The one you’re petting right now,” the cashier replied. “He used to be a feral cat that wasn’t acclimating to people well, so the local shelter almost had to put him down… but when Mochi — the other one right next to him — came to the shelter, he thankfully started being more receptive to people.”

With a smile, Dan Heng scooped Sesame up in his arms. “You’re just one big fat softie.”

Sesame purred and settled himself further into Dan Heng’s hold.

Blade felt an intense amount of cuteness aggression surge through his veins, forcing him to clench his fists to prevent him from doing something stupid like reach out and pet Dan Heng’s head.

The cat that at his feet — Mochi — looked up at Blade with what could only be an unimpressed stare and meowed. Not wanting to be judged by a cat of all animals, Blade sighed and picked Mochi up, too.

The cashier smiled at the two of them and patted a stack of papers on top of the desk. “I have some adoption application papers with me right now, if you two wanted to start the process. Mochi isn’t Sesame’s brother, but they’re a bonded pair, so they’re the perfect cats for a couple like you two.”

Blade and Dan Heng exchanged a look. This was only their first date, and they hadn’t discussed exactly what they were to each other, but…

“We’re both in college with no steady income,” Dan Heng said, giving Sesame one more scritch under his chin before setting him down. Sesame yowled, struggling a bit in Dan Heng’s arms before finally agreeing to go back onto the ground. “I don’t think we’d be able to give both of them the care they need right now.”

Dan Heng wasn’t denying that they were together. Blade mentally clapped himself on the back as he too placed Mochi back on the floor. Mochi swatted his paw on Sesame’s face, and Sesame stopped meowing sadly.

The cashier sighed. “Ah, that’s too bad. Maybe you two can keep visiting them, and if they don’t get adopted before then, you can adopt them together once you’ve got jobs.”

Maybe if Blade and Dan Heng really did start dating, in a year, Dan Heng would agree to move in with Blade, and they could come back to adopt the cats. It was a little too soon to be planning their future out like this, but Blade couldn’t help it — he was an engineer, after all, and he liked to plan ahead.

Blade and Dan Heng thanked the cashier, said one last goodbye to the cats, and walked further into the bookstore.

Hours passed by like seconds as the two of them got engrossed in perusing the shelves. The two of them spent the majority of their time in the nonfiction section: Dan Heng looked through the books detailing the customs of ancient Chinese dynasties, while Blade flipped through robotics magazines. They didn’t speak much, both of them totally absorbed in their readings, but they made little quips and shared interesting tidbits of information between one another.

Before they were even aware of it, the bookstore was set to close for the day; the cashier from before had to come and fetch them so they could quickly make their purchases. Blade paid for both his and Dan Heng’s books, his fast reflexes allowing him to tap his credit card on the machine faster than Dan Heng could, and he held the door open for Dan Heng as they exited the store.

They had left for their date in the early afternoon, while the sun was still high in the sky. Now, the sun was starting to dip lower, painting the sky in warm hues of pink, orange, and purple. Dan Heng looked ethereal under the light, and Blade was tempted to say so, but instead he just got into the driver’s seat and drove to their dinner spot once Dan Heng was fully buckled in.

Dinner was a simple affair, but it was comfortable. At the end of it all, once they got back into Blade’s car and started the route back to the dorms so Blade could drop Dan Heng off, Blade was pretty confident that Dan Heng would agree to go out with him again. Blade had even managed to get Dan Heng to admit that he tended to listen to instrumental tracks, so they were both enjoying the songs being played by a classical channel on the radio.

The drive back home was even going perfectly; there was practically nothing that could happen that could ruin the mood now.

…Which was exactly why Blade’s car decided to prove him wrong and putter to a stop, just one street away from their destination.

Blade should have known better than to think that something was going well; the universe really did have a twisted and cruel sense of humor.

With a sigh, Blade mentally counted to ten in his head before turning to look at Dan Heng, who looked a bit like a deer caught in headlights as the car came to a stop. Thankfully, there were no other cars around them, and Blade had been able to direct the vehicle to the rightmost lane and turn on his hazard lights before it completely stopped moving.

“You know how to drive, right?” Blade asked.

Dan Heng’s eyes flitted to the side. “I don’t have my license.”

“But you know what to do?”

“For the most part, yes.”

“Okay.” Blade unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the driver’s side door to step out. “You’re going to have to steer the car and keep it going straight on the road while I push it the rest of the way.”

To Dan Heng’s credit, he didn’t even bat an eye. He just slid out of the passenger’s seat, hopped into the driver’s side, and listened to Blade’s instructions before placing both of his hands firmly on the wheel.

Thankfully, Blade had plenty of practice before pushing cars from all the times he had helped his uncle at the autoshop. He focused on maintaining a proper form as he pushed, doing his best to push his spiraling thoughts of how Dan Heng surely wouldn’t want to see him ever again after this out of his mind.

Soon enough, the dormitory buildings came into view, and Blade and Dan Heng were able to guide the car into a spot in the parking lot.

Blade wiped the sweat off his brow quickly before hurrying over and pulling the driver’s side door open, offering a hand out to help Dan Heng to step out more easily. It was not necessary, considering Blade’s car wasn’t even high off the ground, but Blade felt like being a gentleman was the least he could do.

Dan Heng looked down at his hand for a brief moment before taking it and getting out of the car.

“So…” Blade summoned all the bravado he could muster as he locked the car door and leaned against the side of it, admiring the way Dan Heng’s skin shone under the moonlight. “What did you think of today?”

“It was interesting, definitely,” Dan Heng replied, crossing his arms. “Was the car breaking down part of your nefarious plan to murder me?”

A shocked laugh punched its way out of Blade’s mouth. “Well, you’re still standing here, alive and in one piece, so I’d say my plan failed.”

“You make a good point.” Dan Heng’s lips lifted into a tiny, tiny smile, but it was a smile nonetheless. “Did you need another opportunity to try again?”

“If you’re free next weekend,” Blade said, “we can lock in another date so I don’t have to chase you down.”

“So, you’re not the type of murderer who likes the chase?” Dan Heng swiped open his phone and nodded as he looked down at the screen. “I’m free both days next weekend. Just text me which date you prefer.”

Spending both days with you would work for me, Blade thought.

As soon as the two of them settled on a date for their date — Sunday, so they could both spend Saturday studying and catching up on assignments — Dan Heng stepped up on his tiptoes and pressed a short peck on Blade’s cheek.

“Thanks for today,” Dan Heng said, his own face flaming, before turning around and walking quickly to the front doors of his dorm building.

With the memory of Dan Heng’s lips on his cheek and his own heart beating a mile a minute, Blade watched Dan Heng walk back into his dorm building, making sure to not take his eyes off of him until he disappeared completely from sight.

Dan Heng’s backside was such a distracting sight that Blade had almost completely forgotten about his automotive struggles until he stuck the keys into the ignition and the car refused to start.

Blade sighed, patting the dashboard of his car as he thought about how much it would cost him to call his uncle and get his car towed to the autoshop for repairs. Still, that was a small mercy in and of itself: the car was in one piece, and it could still be fixed.

“At least you’re not totaled,” Blade said to himself. A text from Dan Heng popped up on the screen of his phone, asking Blade to let him know when he was home safe. “And at least I’ve got a second date.”

“Totaled,” Blade said, staring down at the report that the tow truck driver had dropped off with him at the same time he dropped off Silver Wolf. The man had given him a sympathetic smile, probably noting the purpling eyebags and disheveled hair Blade was sporting from too many sleepless nights, before driving away.

Without Blade’s car. Which meant that the tow truck driver had already dropped off Blade’s car at the autobody shop.

Which meant that it really was totaled.

“That’s just their preliminary assessment,” Silver Wolf said, fiddling with the strap of her messenger bag as they stood in the lobby.

Memories of the pictures the tow truck driver had taken of his car flashed through Blade’s mind: a crumpled hood, shattered windows, a deployed airbag. He had seen cars in Uncle Huaiyan’s autoshop that had been declared a total loss for less. “It’s totaled.”

Silver Wolf shifted back and forth on her feet, refusing to meet Blade’s eyes. “...Yeah.”

Blade’s car, though it was almost six years old, was his pride and joy; it had been the car his uncle had gotten him when he was first learning to drive, and he had painstakingly converted it by hand from a gas-powered car to an electric-powered car after his first year of university, using the knowledge he had gained from helping out at Uncle Huaiyan’s shop and the mechanical and electrical engineering courses he had taken. That had been his first big automobile project, a point of pride that Blade still thought about today and talked about in his interviews for potential jobs following his graduation in a month. It had seen him through thick and thin, from midnight drives in high school where he cursed the universe and cancer for taking both his parents away from him, to day-long road trips during summer breaks with his uncle and his baby cousin. It had been the car that he had driven, clammy hands and all, to pick up Dan Heng for their first date; even though it had decided to give up before Blade could drop Dan Heng off at his dorm, it had at least gotten them most of the way there. After Blade had fixed it up and converted it in his autoshop class, it had also become the site of more than one desperate make-out session on those rare occasions Dan Heng didn’t want to wait to get back to Blade’s apartment and Dan Heng’s own dorm room was occupied.

All in all, Blade’s car had been one of the few material items he could confidently say he truly and deeply gave a shit about.

“I’m sorry.”

Silver Wolf’s voice was so small, so ashamed, that Blade almost didn’t hear it. He blinked out of his reverie and focused on her, noting how she was holding her arm and looking down at the ground.

“I know how much that car meant to you,” Silver Wolf said, her shoulders shaking. “I wanted to go to the one-day pop-up shop for Fluffy Across the Blue, but it was going to be a three-hour bus ride to get there and the rideshare was over a hundred bucks, so I decided to borrow your car since I knew you were too busy with studying to go… But then the stupid ass pickup truck came barreling through the red light out of nowhere, and…”

Even though Silver Wolf was only one year younger than him, she looked so small, then, standing there with her head bowed. A million questions raced through Blade’s mind, like, how did she steal his car keys without him noticing? How did she even get into the parking garage of his apartment without him noticing? But he waited for her to continue talking.

Taking a deep breath, Silver Wolf finally looked right up into Blade’s eyes as she said, conviction in her voice, “I’m sorry.”

Blade wasn’t going to lie and say it was okay, because it wasn’t, but ultimately he was glad that despite the wrecked state of the car and just how bad the accident was — Blade had skimmed the incident report and was shocked to see just how destroyed the other cars had been — Silver Wolf had managed to walk away from the accident with barely more than a few bruises and scratches.

If there was anything Blade truly believed in, it was that material things could be replaced, but people could never be. He would gladly have this car and his next ten cars be destroyed if it meant he lost nobody else.

…Though, that didn’t mean that he wanted his next ten cars to be destroyed. He hoped the universe wouldn’t start getting funny ideas.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Blade said, and he meant it.

Silver Wolf’s eyes shined with tears, though she gritted her teeth and clenched her fists, apparently determined to not let them fall. Which Blade appreciated, because he didn’t really know how to react when people got too emotional.

“I swear, Blade. I owe you, big time.”

That she did. Blade didn’t bother agreeing out loud, because she knew she did.

“And that’s why…” Silver Wolf typed furiously in her phone, fingers flying rapidly across the screen, before looking up with a huge grin on her face. Talk about emotional whiplash. “I’m getting you a replacement car.”

Blade blinked down at her.

“By the time you wake up tomorrow,” Silver Wolf said, punching her fist into her palm, “there’ll be a brand new one waiting for you in your parking spot!”

The… thing waiting for Blade in his parking spot at 8:00 am the next day was certainly not new, but it was, at least, a car.

Whether it was functioning or not was a completely different story.

“My totaled car looked better than this,” Blade said, deadpan.

“Hey!” the owner of said car jumped out of the driver’s side, hands on his hips and a frown on his face. “I’m the one doing you a favor!”

And therein lay another problem: the apparent replacement car that Silver Wolf got for Blade already had an owner.

“You said you were going to bring over a new car,” Silver Wolf hissed, gesturing at the gray sedan that looked as if it wanted to pass onto the afterlife. “What the hell is this?!”

As Blade looked at the car for longer, he came to the terrifying realization that the car actually wasn’t gray at all. It likely, at some point in time, had actually been a gold color, reminiscent of the same color cars that Uncle Huaiyan and every single old man liked to drive once they reached retirement age.

It was just the copious amounts of silvery duct tape and peeling paint from scratches and dents that made the car look gray.

“It’s not like I could get a new car overnight! Himeko wouldn’t let me borrow her car, and Stelle told me to get lost,” Caelus replied, crossing his arms. “You’re lucky that Welt was willing to let me carpool with him, or else I wouldn’t dream of letting you borrow the Garbage Mobile!”

Ah. So, the car had a name.

“Garbage Mobile” was, quite honestly, not too far off from what Blade had started calling it in his head.

“As long as it runs fine.” Blade crossed his arms and did his best to ignore all the glaring issues that were just begging for him to fix. Were both the side mirrors stuck onto the car by duct tape? Was the bumper of the car just entirely made out of duct tape? Even if the car could even start up, it was so incredibly illegal to drive in that Blade would rather not have to worry about seeing flashing blue and red lights in his rearview mirror. Did the car even have a functioning rearview mirror? The windows to the car were so tinted that it was hard to tell. Blade hadn’t taken a look at the interior of the thing, and he was not too eager to have to find out.

“It works perfectly!” Caelus beamed, raising both of his hands to flash Blade two thumbs up. “But before I agree to let you drive it, I just have a teensy, weensy, tiny, winy favor to ask you.”

What could Caelus possibly need from Blade? Did he want Blade to drive his car to the junk yard for him? Blade would gladly do so.

Silver Wolf stomped her feet as she drew closer and slapped Caelus upside the back of his head. “I was the one calling in a favor from you. And now you’re trying to get a favor from Blade?!”

“It’s a teensy weensy tiny winy one, I swear!”

“What is it,” Blade said through gritted teeth.

“Okay, so…” Caelus scratched the back of his head sheepishly. “I know you two aren’t on the best of terms right now…”

Blade did not like where this was going.

“…but since I’m carpooling with Welt and Welt has some schedule conflicts, I can’t do it anymore, but I’d feel so bad leaving him to take the bus by himself…”

Blade really did not like where this was going.

“…sooooo I know you might not like it, but could you be the one to pick up Hengheng today?”

There were so many things wrong with what Caelus was asking him that Blade had to take a moment to simply process everything.

First of all, Hengheng? Dan Heng had never let Blade call him any sort of pet names while they were dating, and here Caelus was, casually calling Dan Heng something that would have gotten Blade a scolding (with a blush coloring Dan Heng’s cheeks, too, but a scolding nonetheless).

Hah. It figured.

Blade had never gotten on Dan Heng’s case for his close friendships, especially since doing so would have made him a hypocrite, but he had always had a strange feeling about Dan Heng’s friendship with Caelus. Sure, Blade spent lots of time with Kafka, Silver Wolf, and Firefly, but none of them jokingly flirted with him. All of them were raging lesbians, anyway, so even if they did flirt with him, it would have clearly been a complete joke.

Caelus, however, was an incorrigible flirt who felt attraction to people of all genders. Even if he always said he was only jokingly flirting with Dan Heng, it still made Blade uncomfortable, doubly so because Caelus wasn’t seeing anyone.

Or he hadn’t been seeing anyone. Now, Blade wasn’t so sure.

Dan Heng’s friendship with Caelus had been one of the few reasons that Blade and Dan Heng had broken up — and in those three weeks without Blade attached to his side, it seemed that Dan Heng had only been getting closer to the guy he told Blade not to worry about.

(Okay, Blade had never explicitly or specifically confronted Dan Heng about Caelus, preferring to keep his thoughts and feelings and jealousies to himself, so in return Dan Heng had never told him to not worry about Caelus, but. Well.)

And now, since Blade was still too young to rent a car without having to pay exorbitant extra fees (and it was no guarantee they would even let him, considering the totaled car now on his insurance record), he had to debase himself to borrowing said guy’s car.

“I’ll pay for all your rideshares so you don’t need to get into this piece of shit,” Silver Wolf said, turning to Blade and ignoring Caelu’s offended cry. “I’m so, so sorry again, Blade. I’ll figure something out until we can get your car replaced—”

“It’s fine,” Blade said, waving her off. “I’ve dealt with worse.” To Caelus, Blade said, any hint of emotion carefully scrubbed from his voice, “I’ll pick up Dan Heng from his internship today.”

Caelus looked up at Blade with glittering eyes, looking not unlike a raccoon that liked to dig for scraps at the trash chute outside Blade’s apartment building at midnight. “…and the rest of this week while you’re borrowing my car?”

Some teensy weensy tiny winy favor this was. “And the rest of this week.”

“Yippee!” Caelus pumped his fist in the air and patted the hood of his car. The side mirror on the driver’s side drooped and suspended itself in the air for one single breath-holding moment, the layers of duct tape clinging onto it for dear life, before finally careening to the ground with a crash.

“Whoopsies.” Caelus bent over to pick up the mirror and dropped it immediately when the glass shards that had broken off cut into his hands. “Ouch! Okay, uh, well…”

At Blade’s unimpressed look, Caelus chuckled and clapped his hands together. “At least it’s on the driver’s side, so you can just look out the window?”

If this really was Dan Heng’s new boyfriend, the guy he essentially left Blade for…

Well.

Dan Heng had still dated Blade for three years even after he had been forced to help Blade push his malfunctioning car to the parking lot of the dorms, so perhaps Dan Heng just had a thing for guys with shitty cars.

“If anything else breaks on this thing while I’m driving it,” Blade said, plucking the car keys quickly from where they were hanging off the lanyard around Caelus’ neck, “I’m not paying for the repairs.”

Parking in front of the publishing house Dan Heng was completing his internship at was incredibly familiar.

After all, it hadn’t even been a full month since Blade had been the one to drop off and pick up Dan Heng for his shifts. Though, of course, a month ago Blade had been driving his own car, which had a functioning cooling system, rather than the Garbage Mobile that was quite honestly a violation of at least ten automotive laws to have on the road, and Blade and Dan Heng had been dating at that point in time, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Following their breakup, Blade had almost driven himself to Dan Heng’s dorm building to take him to the publishing house out of habit, but he had stopped himself before he could back out of the parking garage. He had given it some thought, then, wondering how Dan Heng was getting to and from his workplace, but he had forced himself to stop thinking about it too much lest he make himself angry enough to punch a hole in his wall. (He was glad he had managed to keep his temper in check; he really needed his security deposit back, especially now that he would need to use most of his savings to replace his car.)

(Silver Wolf had sent him a few memes about needing a “post-breakup glow-up.” All Blade really wanted was his boyfriend and his car back, but the universe really had a twisted sense of humor.)

Blade almost didn’t notice the passenger side door opening, but the voice that came floating through was one that Blade would never forget.

“I told you that you didn’t need to pick me up, Caelus,” Dan Heng sighed, his eyes trained downward on his phone as he settled himself into the passenger seat. “I know how to use the bus routes.”

Dan Heng was so quick to get into Caelus’ car without a thought, without any glance up. The clear trust in his body language made something incredibly ugly furl in Blade’s chest.

“It’s a good thing I’m not Caelus, then.”

Dan Heng’s shoulders raised up to his neck as he swiveled his head around to glare at Blade. “What happened to Caelus?”

And so quick to ask about Caelus, too.

If Blade and Dan Heng had still been dating, Blade would have made a snarky joke, some sort of comment about Blade coming by in a different car to keep Dan Heng on his toes and make sure Dan Heng still loved him even when he didn’t have a fancy ride to pick him up in.

But the two of them weren’t dating, not anymore, so no joke was made. 

“Nothing happened to your precious… friend,” Blade said, his voice dripping with acidity. “As a favor for letting me borrow his car, I have been asked to pick you up at the end of your shifts for the rest of this week. If you have a problem with that, I suggest you talk to your friend about it.”

Dan Heng blinked, looked outside toward the street as if he were contemplating getting out of the car, looked down at his phone as if he were contemplating calling the authorities, before closing the passenger side door and buckling himself in.

He did not ask Blade why he was borrowing Caelus’ car. Blade did not offer him an explanation.

Would Dan Heng even care to hear one?

Blade was a man of few words, but even he couldn’t stand the tense silence that had settled inside the car. But he also was not going to be the one to break it himself.

Without saying anything, Blade simply turned on the radio — which only worked if you kept it to one of two specific stations, and thankfully, one of the radio stations was a classical music station, so Blade hadn’t needed to grit his teeth through whatever insane soundwaves Caelus liked to listen to, though he had been forced to contend with the jealousy of knowing that Caelus had been able to cater to Dan Heng’s musical tastes every day he drove him — started up the car, and drove the two of them out of the parking lot in front of the publishing house.

Blade didn’t need to ask for an address, and Dan Heng did not tell him that he needed to go anywhere different as Blade drove through a route he had long ago memorized.

Pulling into the parking lot in front of Dan Heng’s dorm building was easy, familiar. Dan Heng’s silence, the tension in the air… that, too, had become familiar since the day of their breakup, though Blade wished it wasn’t.

Dan Heng opened the passenger side door. With his back turned to Blade, Dan Heng said, “I won’t be seeing you tomorrow.”

Carefully, Dan Heng slammed the door shut — with enough force to make a point, yet not strong enough to break anything of the car — and walked toward the entrance of the building.

The one remaining side mirror wobbled, but the duct tape keeping it in place stayed strong. Blade watched Dan Heng’s retreating back just long enough for him to reach the front doors of the building before peeling out of the parking lot. 

Despite Dan Heng’s acerbic words, Blade drove into the parking lot of the publishing house again the next day, where Dan Heng was already waiting for him. Beside Blade’s bitten out, “Nice to see you today,” the two of them still sat in silence the entire car ride home that day, too, but at least Dan Heng hadn’t said anything rude to him once he reached his dorm.

The rest of the week continued like that, with Blade begrudgingly driving the Garbage Mobile from his apartment to class, then driving from class to the publishing house to pick up Dan Heng. He would then drive the Garbage Mobile back to his apartment, where he spent the rest of his time studying for his midterms and valiantly not thinking about how cute Dan Heng looked every day.

As much as it sucked to drive his ex-boyfriend around in his ex-boyfriend’s probably-new-boyfriend’s shitty car, Blade was, ultimately, a rather weak man. He liked spending time with Dan Heng, even if the circumstances were less than ideal, and with each day that passed, Dan Heng seemed to relax, if only minutely.

Any other person who hadn’t spent extensive time with Dan Heng likely would not have noticed, but Blade, who fancied himself as having both a keen eye and perhaps an unhealthy obsession with Dan Heng, did.

It was all in the way Dan Heng’s shoulders were no longer tense. When he sat down in the passenger seat, he was not poised as if he were ready to unlock the car in the middle of the road and roll out into traffic. Instead, he actually reclined a bit into the seat, still not completely at ease as he once was driving in a car with Blade but much better than he had been just two days before.

And on the fourth day of Blade driving Dan Heng home from his internship, Dan Heng actually made eye contact with him before buckling his seatbelt. And said eye contact hadn’t been hostile at all, just purely neutral.

The eye contact was enough to give Blade the courage to open his mouth and speak.

“How was your shift today?” Blade asked, pulling out of the parking lot. The car already did not drive very well, but today it felt extra bad in his hands as he drove.

“Taoran was annoying, as usual,” Dan Heng sighed, looking as if he wanted to say more before his shoulders tensed. “It was fine.”

Blade knew who Taoran was; he was another intern at the publishing house who had a raging superiority complex that did not match his own incompetence. In the early days of Dan Heng’s internship, he had spent many days complaining to Blade about Taoran’s actions. But now, it seemed that such stories were now locked behind the “not my ex-boyfriend” paywall.

Still, Dan Heng had talked to him. Blade had to celebrate the small wins. Progress was progress.

Now, Blade wasn’t a homewrecker. (Or, he didn’t think he wanted to be.) But if he managed to spend enough time together with Dan Heng so that Dan Heng realized that he did want to get back together with Blade…

Well. Blade wasn’t going to stop Dan Heng from breaking up with Caelus and getting back together with him. If that happened, Blade would even offer to reattach Caelus’ side mirrors for him, free of charge, as an apology for stealing his boyfriend.

As if sensing Blade’s devious thoughts against its owner, the car made several loud, rattling noises of protest.

Oh, what the hell. What was up with Blade’s luck with cars?

Kachunk. Kachunk. Kachunk.

“Ah.” Dan Heng blinked, looking first out onto the road before turning to Blade as he forced the car over to the side of the road, just barely managing to pull over as it sputtered to a stop.  

With his mind buzzing and blood rushing thunderously in his ears, Blade turned off the car and got out of the Garbage Mobile on autopilot. Reflexively, he reached over and undid Dan Heng’s seatbelt, too, and the message was clear: get out of the car, now.

The sounds that the car was making had already tipped Blade off as to what the issue might be, but even standing outside of it, he hardly needed to do anything to see what was wrong with the car: there was smoke pouring out from under the hood. Clearly, the thing had engine problems, insanely bad engine problems that could get dangerous fast, and if Blade were forced into making a bet, he would put all of his life savings on Caelus having tried to fix the issue with duct tape rather than taking his car to an actual mechanic.

Without thinking, Blade grabbed Dan Heng’s wrist and yanked him several feet away from the car. He hadn’t seen any flashes or fire, and the smoke itself was dark but not too heavy, so the likelihood of the engine exploding was still moderately low, but it was better safe than sorry.

Good thing Blade had already said that he wouldn’t be paying for any repairs on the Garbage Mobile while he was driving it, because if he had, he might have had to pay more to get the sorry excuse for a car working again than for his own new car.

“I knew that car was going to fail one day,” Dan Heng said, staring incredulously at where the Garbage Mobile was still smoking. “I’ll text to see if someone can come pick us up.”

“I’ll call the towing company.” Blade dropped Dan Heng’s wrist from his grasp — he missed it already — and dialed the number for the company that had just called him a week before. It seemed that, no matter how much Blade loved cars, he had pissed off some automotive deity that was out to get him.

Once Blade was done explaining the situation to the poor, minimum-wage towing company worker, Dan Heng was looking up at him with a grim look on his face.

“Himeko, March, and Stelle are all taking their midterms right now,” Dan Heng said. “Caelus is with Welt and Sunday across town, so they can pick us up, but it’ll be another hour or so before they can turn back around…”

And Caelus was the one on the insurance records for the car, and Blade didn’t think it’d be very safe to go into the car and search for the registration papers (if Caelus even kept them in the car), so he probably had to be the one to talk to the towing company. Blade hoped that this car’s breakdown wouldn’t go on his own insurance record; he was a broke college student, for fuck’s sake, and he couldn’t afford how high his insurance premiums were sure to get if he had two automotive incidents reported within a week of each other.

And without a car to drive, and his own midterms to worry about…

Blade wasn’t usually an overly emotional person.

Sure, his temper flared quickly, but he did his best to not let most of that slip through the cracks. He did sometimes joke about beating someone up and perhaps had gotten into a few altercations with others back in high school, but he had never, ever laid a hand on anyone he cared about. And though Blade and Dan Heng used to argue a lot during their relationship, Blade always tried his best to keep his voice level.

But Blade was still human.

“Tell your boyfriend that his fuckass car broke down, so it’s his responsibility to pick you up now,” Blade snapped.

Dan Heng blinked, then blinked again, before his eyes narrowed and his eyebrows took a sharp dive downward. “My what?”

“Caelus,” Blade hissed, gesturing to the still-smoking piece of shit car pulled over at the side of the road. "Tell him that he needs to come pick you up."

“That’s not what you said.”

“Being pedantic, now?”

“I’m not being pedantic if what you said is simply wrong.” Dan Heng’s glare was more frightening than the possibility that the Garbage Mobile could explode. “Because, contrary to your misguided beliefs, Caelus is not my boyfriend.”

…Perhaps Blade had jumped to conclusions a little too easily, but could anyone blame him?

Before Blade could say anything to defend himself, Dan Heng added, “What made you think he was?”

“You’re not dating Caelus,” Blade said, for lack of anything else to say, because he wanted to make sure he wasn’t hearing things. It had been known to happen on occasion, especially on the days he got little sleep.

If looks could kill, Blade would have been dead ten times over. “Did you really think I would be the type of person to date someone so quickly after we broke up?”

Technically, no. For all the bitterness Blade had held in his heart, he hadn’t thought that Dan Heng would be the type to move on so quickly. Which was exactly why, when Caelus had called Dan Heng by a pet name, it had hurt Blade’s ego and perception of Dan Heng.

“And why did you think I would date Caelus, of all people?”

Ouch. Even Blade could admit that was a bit harsh. Weren't the two of them friends?

“Caelus called you Hengheng,” Blade replied in one final, last-ditch effort to defend his intellect.

Dan Heng clutched his head in his hands. “He has never called me that to my face ever.” Dan Heng’s hands slid into his hair, his fingers curling into fists, before unclenching and sliding back down over his eyes. “I think he did that on purpose.”

The “to mess with you” went unsaid, but Blade heard it loud and clear.

Honestly, Blade should have suspected as much; even if Caelus was Silver Wolf’s gaming buddy, he was Dan Heng’s friend first and foremost, and Blade was Dan Heng’s ex-boyfriend. It was likely written in the friendship rules of conduct that friends had to mess with any and all ex-partners at least once following the end of the relationship.

Suddenly, the previous anger and hurt that had been taking over Blade’s brain drained away. In the end, once all that was gone, Blade just felt tired. So incredibly tired.

But also so incredibly hopeful.

“I thought you just happened to like guys who drove cars on the verge of a breakdown,” Blade tried for a joking tone to lighten the mood.

Thankfully, Dan Heng snorted, his shoulders shaking slightly. “Well, in the case, you’re the only guy whose car I’ve been in that’s broken down. Twice, now.”

“It’s not even my car,” Blade said.

“But you’re the common denominator,” pointed out Dan Heng.

And that was true.

Blade liked cars. Cars, evidently, did not always like him.

But that was okay, because Blade liked Dan Heng the most.

“Since it’ll be another hour until we can get picked up, and we need to stay near the car while we wait for the tow truck…” Blade gestured farther down along the street, where a small café sat. It was the one that they would sometimes grab coffee at before Dan Heng’s internship shifts started, on those occasional days where traffic hadn’t been bad and they had a few minutes to spare. “Let’s grab coffee.”

Dan Heng’s eyes flitted over to the Garbage Mobile. “And leave the car alone?”

“What else can we do? We don’t want to be near it, in case it blows, and I’ve already told the towing company the situation.” Blade took out his wallet and nodded in the direction of the café. “So, are you coming with me?”

Dan Heng looked at Blade, looked over at the Garbage Mobile which was still smoking away, and back at Blade.

“Let’s go, then,” Dan Heng said, walking toward the café.

Blade coughed out a startled chuckle and followed right behind him. With all the bravado he had, and a heaping helping of sleep deprivation, Blade asked, “It’s a date?”

A smirk spread across Blade’s face at the sight of Dan Heng’s ears turning pink.

“We broke up for a reason,” replied Dan Heng, looking down at the ground. He sounded more like he was trying to remind himself of the fact, though, than countering Blade’s offer of a date. “You never wanted to open up to me. Talking to you sometimes was like pulling teeth.”

Blade’s heart clenched at the memory of their last argument, the scathing words that had ended in Dan Heng storming out of Blade’s apartment.

“And you prioritized all your friends over me,” Blade said quietly. “But I’m opening up to you right now, and we can work through some of our issues over some coffee, wouldn’t you say?”

Dan Heng stopped walking and stayed silent for several moments that felt more like years. Blade stood there, stock still, waiting for the final verdict from Dan Heng. They were just a few steps away from the café, so even if Dan Heng didn’t want to make it a date, Blade still wanted his dose of caffeine to make it through what would no doubt be an excruciating next few hours should he be rejected.

“If it’s a date, then you’re paying,” Dan Heng said, sparing a quick glance backward at Blade before walking the last few feet to the doors of the café and going inside. His face had been carefully neutral, but the tips of his ears had, indeed, stayed bright red.

Blade sighed, the weight that had been drooping his shoulders for weeks melting away, and followed right behind him.

“Hey, Bladie! Hengheng!”

“Don’t call me that.”

“I’ll kill you.”

Caelus wasn’t particularly scared of either Blade or Dan Heng, so he ignored both of their glares and skipped over to the true love of his life.

There, in the middle of the dormitory building parking lot, was the Garbage Mobile. It looked just as beautiful as the day Caelus had lost (loaned) it.

“Thanks for getting my car fixed, guys,” Caelus said, stroking the exterior of the Garbage Mobile lovingly. “And you kept all of its charm intact, too!”

When Dan Heng told Caelus that the Garbage Mobile’s engine was smoking and that Blade was calling a tow truck to take it to his uncle’s automotive shop, Caelus had been filled with immense fear for his precious treasure. What would the scary car guys do to his Garbage Mobile? The last time Caelus had taken the Garbage Mobile to get checked out, the car guys had tried to convince him to do a number of horrific things, like get the wheels rotated (wheels were round, so they rotated by themselves — what a scam), have the paint retouched (you weren’t supposed to touch paint, especially when it was drying), and something about having guys “serve-ice” to the engine (even Caelus knew that engines were supposed to be hot). But, Dan Heng had been very persuasive, saying things like, “Blade’s uncle knows what he’s doing; we’ll tell him to keep it looking the same,” and, “Your car almost blew up with two people inside of it, Caelus.”

Though Caelus hadn’t wanted to get his Garbage Mobile changed whatsoever, he had to admit that it was looking much nicer now. The duct tape on the car was freshly washed and buffed, the wheels looked like they had air in them, and the even golden hue of the original paint job for the Garbage Mobile looked especially radiant from underneath the layers of silver.

“Sorry for making you guys wait a few hours.” Caelus said, turning away from the resplendence of the Garbage Mobile toward Blade and Dan Heng. “You guys weren’t too bored without me, right?”

“We were fine,” Dan Heng said with a deadpan expression.

Blade snorted. “We found other ways to occupy ourselves.”

In the few weeks since the Garbage Mobile nearly went up in flames, it seemed that their own romance had sparked back up: their hands were now firmly clasped in one another’s, and their shoulders were pressed together.

Caelus’ devious plans had worked! Caelus wanted to jump up and down in pure joy at seeing his wonderful friend Dan Heng back in a happy relationship, all thanks to his own meddling, but he stopped himself — not because he cared about looking weird, but because he didn’t want either of them to realize that he had been meddling in the first place.

“Cool, cool,” Caelus said, taking the keys from Blade’s outstretched hand. “Well, I don’t want to keep either of you from whatever plans you’ve got now.” With joy in his steps, Caelus swung open the driver’s side door — wow, Caelus had forgotten how smoothly the door was supposed to open — and settled himself inside. “I’ll see you guys around?”

Blade and Dan Heng, in almost perfect synch with one another, nodded. How creepy. They had always been creepy, but it seemed that them getting back together just made them both creepier.

Oh well. At least Dan Heng was happy.

The key turned without any resistance. Caelus let out a little whoop and holler as the Garbage Mobile’s engine purred to life.

It was a miracle just how quiet the car was, now that there weren’t any loud rattles or thunks coming from any part of it. The best part of all was that the car actually stayed in park when it was in the correct gear, and Caelus did not need to keep his foot on the brake at all times to prevent it from rolling around.

As Caelus slid his foot around the floor, a slight crinkling came from underneath his shoe.

Ah, man. Had Blade and Dan Heng been eating snacks in the Garbage Mobile? They were allowed to eat in there, of course, but even Caelus had standards of picking up after himself.

When Caelus looked down, the plastic peeking out from under his foot was much smaller than he had expected. Curious as to what kind of snack could possibly fit in such a tiny wrapper, Caelus bent down to pick it up.

Durex? What kind of snack was that—