Chapter Text
“You’ll get cold sitting out here on your own,” Dan Heng says softly, bending down to drape Caelus’ newly synthesized coat over his shoulders from behind. It’s an exact replica from the Omni-synthesizer of the one he’d adorned when he boarded the Express, along with the rest of his ensemble.
Caelus tilts his head back with an expression of surprise as he does, absentmindedly grabbing at his coat’s lapels to keep the jacket secured, before he grins. “Thanks.”
Dan Heng nods, before straightening up to survey the area. They’re currently docked in Herta Space Stations’ loading bay, parked in the rail usually reserved for the Express. Caelus had been missing for the past few hours, causing a mild panic, so Dan Heng had spent the last hour anxiously scouring for him. Only to find him sitting atop one of the Express’ cars, the ones near the tail end, bringing him further away from the main area of the docking bay.
“The new clothes fit you?” Dan Heng asks, seating himself beside Caelus. Caelus nods as he mirrors Caelus’ position, dangling his legs over the edge and leaning forward with his elbows on his thighs. “I’m surprised you had blueprints for them.”
Caelus snorts. “It’s all I got, of course I would.”
“Right,” Dan Heng nods. “What did Mr. Yang talk to you about earlier, by the way? You two were conversing for quite a while in the medical wing.”
The Astral Express had jumped straight to the HSS as soon as Caelus had woken up, simply because they were the closest stop and had more suitable medical supplies to better sustain Caelus post…operation. In truth, Dan Heng still doesn’t know what Kafka had done to Caelus, and the scans from both the Express and the HSS revealed nothing in particular.
Caelus was just heavily fatigued it seemed, and he would need all the replenishment he could get.
No wounds, no scars, only sleepless nights where he would toss and turn himself to sleep, before waking up in cold sweat and tears, gasping for breath until he realizes he still has the voice to scream. It’s been two nights since Caelus has awoken. He hasn’t slept alone for either of them.
Dan Heng’s heart aches for him, because he knows what it feels like to suffer from that same ailment. But he can’t assuage them, can only hold Caelus throughout the rest of night as Caelus shivers in his arms, sniffling with the quiet hums that March sings into his ear, with the soft reassurances Welt places upon him, with the stories Himeko regales him with.
“Just about what happened when I was gone,” Caelus says. He sighs, pulling at his bangs in frustration. “I heard I attacked you guys when I was out of it. I don’t know why it—“
“Don’t worry about it,” Dan Heng interrupts. He remembers, and he has his suspicions, but that’s not something they have to dissect right now. Caelus doesn’t have the energy, and Dan Heng doesn’t have the urgency. “I don’t suspect that will happen often. Or ever again, for that matter.”
“But what if—“
“It won’t,” Dan Heng insists. “You know Kafka was there. The fact that she showed up must have signified that this event was consequential enough that it deviated from whatever script she was following. Treating you took time. I doubt she would want this to happen again.”
Caelus pinches his eyebrows together, clicking his tongue as he glares at the floor in discontent. “I know. I know that but still.” He sighs, dropping his hand back to his lap. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize,” Dan Heng reassures. “You’ve suffered enough, and you had to act against your own will without your knowledge. I can’t imagine that’s something anyone can easily recover from.”
Caelus snorts, smiling wryly. “I guess. Yeah. Thanks. I’m sorry you guys have to sleep with me at night too.”
“That is something you need to apologize even less for.” Dan Heng interlaces his fingers together between his knees, twiddling his thumbs over one another. “Though I might suggest that we all move to the parlor car. Your room, for all intents and purposes, is not exactly an ideal place to sleep.”
“Are you talking about my trash?”
“I would not say all that you possess is trash. You are merely just,” Dan Heng purses his lips, “a kleptomaniac. Even the Archives has more open space than you.”
Caelus laughs. “But that’s because you keep nothing in there.”
“I keep my essentials.” Dan Heng’s thumbs stall. “Which includes all your gifts, and your bed.”
It’s been two days, and they had not gotten a single moment alone together until now. But it’s not something to dwell on when Caelus is clearly still traumatized from the whole ordeal, even if he claims that his memory is hazy and his demeanor is as standard during the day time. His nightmares don’t lie, and neither do the lag in his movements, exhausted due to the deficit of rest he can’t obtain by normal means.
“Oh,” Caelus responds after a long pause. “Did you uh, by any chance, uh, receive a voicemail from anyone, during that time, I went missing?”
Dan Heng presses his lips together, before he lowers his eyes and reaches for his pocket. “I did.”
“Oh. So you,” Caelus falters, before finishing lamely, “know.”
“I know.”
“So is this where we—“
“I also know,” Dan Heng says, holding out the flower Kafka had left behind in his palm. It’s still in pristine condition, kept in a little water cup in the Archives. Dan Heng had been dutifully attending to it, whenever he had the time. It would never leave his sight whenever he was in the room. “About this.”
“Ah.” Caelus worries at his lower lip as he takes the flower from Dan Heng’s hand. He twirls the stem between his fingers, and Dan Heng watches as he does, tracing the way Caelus’ eyelashes fan out across his cheek when he lowers his eyelids. “I never knew it could stay so intact like this.”
Dan Heng clenches his hands atop his thighs. Betrayal, might’ve been the first reaction he would default to, back then. Before the Express, before Caelus. Now, now it’s only sorrow, an underlying hurt that afflicts him from within. His heart that beats too prominently these days, when he’d buried it deep within himself, sealed just as he was. “Were you ever going to tell me?”
Caelus sighs, looking away. “Probably not.”
Dan Heng cuts his nails into his palm. “I see.”
He doesn’t ask why, because he can somewhat understand Caelus’ thought process. He’d said so, within that voicemail, using terminology such as ‘burden’ and ‘fullest’ and ‘inhibitions’. Dan Heng has read more literary works than most others, so he’s familiar with the way authors wield diction to their advantage. In this instance, Dan Heng is lucky that Caelus hasn’t learned the art of deflection yet, unless it’s in its most crude form.
His words hold no other connotations than their denotations.
“Have I,” Dan Heng hesitates, “made you doubt me?”
He’d tried to do as much research as he could, and there was more than he’d expected documented for such a rare disease, but it still wasn’t enough. He’d only understood it as a disease born from unrequited love, but the validity of each one fluctuates, information clashing about a phenomenon that can’t be understood.
There were cases of definite unrequited love, but there were also cases of the love having been requited all along, just never expressed, and yet the victim had still passed. Perhaps the disease was self-inflicted, Dan Heng had surmised, contracted only because the victim believed that their feelings were unrequited. It wouldn’t make sense otherwise.
“You know how Hanahaki works, right?” Caelus asks.
“I have my hypotheses,” Dan Heng responds. “But you sound as if you have a more concrete idea.”
“We gave up,” Caelus says simply, lowering his voice until it grows hoarse, “on each other.”
Dan Heng frowns. “But I—“
“You can like me, you can like me and tell me and I would believe you.” Caelus shakes his head, refusing to meet Dan Heng’s gaze as he keeps his eyes pinned to the side. “But liking me, and wanting to like me are different things.”
Dan Heng’s throat dries. “Oh.”
Caelus laughs, once, self-deprecatingly. “You didn’t want to. I never would’ve gotten it, if you didn’t, even when I had my doubts.”
“But I—,” Dan Heng falters, because if he were to continue with his statement, it would be a false one. Caelus is right, Dan Heng didn’t want to like him. “I, didn’t.”
Caelus hums. “That’s all. I didn’t think you would, and you didn’t think you could.” Caelus turns to smile sadly at him, and Dan Heng’s heart breaks at the sight. “So I got sick.”
“And are you still…?”
From the research he had done, if the afflicted person were to get their flowers surgically removed, all their unrequited love would cease to exist, removing the root of their problem at its source. It would cease, never to be developed again.
If Caelus had removed the flowers, he would not only no longer hold any affection for Dan Heng, but he would also never be able to develop any feelings for Dan Heng thereafter. He doesn’t know if it’s only in the romantic sense, or in the platonic sense too. But given that Caelus is speaking to and treating him like he usually does, he doesn’t see Dan Heng as a stranger.
“I’m not,” Caelus answers.
“You’re lying.”
Caelus grits his teeth. “I won’t be.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Isn’t that what you want?” Caelus asks incredulously. “You said that you didn’t want to.”
“I don’t,” Dan Heng confirms. “But you misunderstand. I don’t want to not for the sake of not wanting to. It’s that I don’t have,” Dan Heng swallows, finally tearing his gaze away, “the confidence.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I can’t cherish you the way you deserve to be, as I am now. So I thought, it would be better if it wasn’t me, in the first place.” Dan Heng shakes his head, clasping his hands tighter together. “It’s not that I no longer liked you, that I didn’t want to. It’s that I liked you, more than I thought I ever could, that I no longer believed I should.”
“What, is that supposed to mean?” Caelus repeats. Enunciates slowly, belying his apprehension, and his confusion.
“Caelus, you are,” Dan Heng recounts all that he had revealed to March, and realizes that he’s never said a single one of those remarks to said man himself.
Loving someone is easy when it’s internalized, but it gets significantly harder when there’s a bridge to gap in order to make that love known, one that has to be built by his own hands.
“My partner, in more ways than one,” Dan Heng continues. “You take me as I am, and who I want to be. You don’t hesitate with your decisions, always steadfast with your actions. If you hadn’t woken up with your memory wiped, you probably would’ve made a better guard than I. You’re perceptive, you’re patient, you’re altruistic. You are a blaze of flame, that is hard to extinguish.” Dan Heng smiles sheepishly at Caelus, the curve of his lips diffident as he takes in Caelus' befuddled expression. “The light of my life.”
Caelus blinks owlishly at him, but there’s a flush high on Caelus’ cheeks, steadily growing in opacity the more Dan Heng spews emotions and introspections that he keeps under tight lock and key.
“I like you,” Dan Heng says quietly, his throat constricting enough that he chokes on the words. “I like you so much. But I’m scared, I’m scared that once I find the person I want to become, the person I can be comfortable being, that you no longer will.”
Dan Heng’s eyes water, but there are no tears to expel, not yet, not enough, but so, so dangerously close. Caelus doesn’t comment, just lets him speak, which makes it easier for Dan Heng to ramble. This is the most he’s ever spoken about his feelings, lowering his defenses until he feels stretched thin.
“You told me, that you would get to know me again, and you would decide. I was, I was relieved. But the more time I spent with you, the more my affections grew, that relief slowly waned. There are very few things I want to keep in my life, very few things that I realistically will need enough to want to keep a tight grasp on.” Dan Heng can’t help the way his voice cracks when he meets Caelus’ eyes. “You are at the very top of that list.”
Caelus blinks rapidly, before shaking his head. “People change, Dan Heng. People are constantly changing. Humans, humans don’t have forever. They have to.”
“I have longer than most.”
“But you’re human,” Caelus argues. “You have a sense of urgency, sympathy, empathy. You want to find yourself, you’re still evolving, you’re human. Did you think I liked you because you were this cool emo alpha male who stood mysteriously off to the side?”
“What.”
“I liked you because you were caring,” Caelus says, ignoring him. Dan Heng tries not to let his mood sour. “You were sensible, and strong, and cool, and had the sickest dragon transformation I’ve ever seen. Not even my gacha men can do better than that. You know how impressive that is?”
“Caelus—“
“Because you were a trailblazer, who wanted to walk on nobody’s path but your own.” Caelus smiles crookedly at him, and Dan Heng’s eyes widen with every statement that Caelus concludes with, hanging onto every word like a lifeline. “Because you were Dan Heng, and you wanted to be no one else but that.”
Dan Heng grits his teeth. “But you’re wrong, I’m—faltering. I don’t know who—“
“Is this because of the visit with your old friends? The one you told me about?”
Dan Heng thins his lips, his silence as good a confirmation as any. He’d been ruminating over the implications since then, unable to escape. He still hasn’t reached a satisfactory conclusion. He doesn’t know if he can, any time soon.
“What, are you suddenly just going to regress back to being Dan Feng just because you fight like him now, or carry his memories?”
“I…”
“You’re going to forget your experiences as Dan Heng so soon? Me and March and Himeko and Pom-Pom and Mr. Yang?”
Dan Heng flinches. “It’s not that I would—“
“Then why?” Caelus asks, his eyes blazing. “You can find yourself. You can take all the time you need. You can be tired, you can change. But in the same way everyone keeps telling you that you can’t lose Dan Feng, the shadow of your past, you can’t lose Dan Heng either, the one that trailblazes in the present. We won’t let you.”
Dan Heng closes his eyes, hanging his head between his shoulders as he grits his teeth. This, is how Caelus always is. Even without anyone instilling confidence in him, he can find it on his own, and stand with his own two legs.
“You can blaze,” Caelus says softly, and when Dan Heng looks up at him again, devastated by the way his heart tears itself to shreds. “Just like you taught me. And when you find it, come meet us again.”
…no. There’s always been confidence instilled into Caelus. A majority of it may have come from within, but he’s only able to nurture it, fan the flames even higher, because the rest of them refuse to let his embers die. And in return, Caelus does the same for them, a never-ending cycle.
March has someone to joke around with, to partake in her hobbies, keep her company. Welt has someone to take care of, to be pestered by, adventure with. Himeko has someone to share her expertise with, to both entertain and educate, witness her great undertaking. Pom-Pom has another passenger, another protector, another friend.
Dan Heng…has Caelus, in all his glory, in all his eccentricities and abnormalities, in all his beauty. He can lose him, he can lose at any moment in time at any corner of the universe, and even then, even still, he will promise, to find him again. And then, he will introduce himself again.
“In the near future,” Dan Heng falters, the words dying nervously on his tongue as he picks at his fingers. His stomach twists itself into knots as he deliberates.
But he thinks as he waits—as Caelus waits, as patiently as he always has been—and decides. Decides that perhaps, he’s waited long enough, offering himself only through concessions, when Caelus is someone he’d decided long ago, unconsciously, that he’d want to walk alongside, to stay beside. For better, for worse, for every heartbreak and contented bliss in between.
“Soon,” Dan Heng continues.
He clears his throat, turning away, bouncing a single knee as he tries to calm his fraying nerves. He can see Caelus blinking curiously at him from his periphery, and he takes the gentle light of Caelus’ gaze, and turns it over in the steadying breaths he takes.
“If you would want me to beg even as my chest caves in, if you would want me to crawl back to you even if I’ve become paralyzed, please.” Dan Heng’s voice wavers, but he’s confident, in the words he says. He’s certain, this time, in the future he wants, so long as Caelus is willing to give it to him. “If you would allow me, please give me the chance to love you again. Properly, even if those feelings are never reciprocated. You just—you, Caelus.”
‘You were a life-changing experience, if that’s what they’re called.’
“You are everything.” Dan Heng feels it, when that first droplet of water rolls down the swell of his cheek, searing his skin. It’s odd, and it’s the only one that falls, but he still reaches a thumb up to wipe at the track it leaves behind, choking on his words. “To me.”
Caelus is quiet beside him.
Dan Heng won’t pressure him for a response, so he only inhales sharply and lifts his gaze to admire the scenery. Upwards, to the stars, a beautiful backdrop that many take for granted now, now that space-travel has become commonplace for many civilizations. But Dan Heng finds that it will be a scenery he will never bore of. It’s the only constant he’s kept in his life when he had been trying to establish a new name for himself, bidding him safe travels, company, and good nights.
“Love me, again?” Caelus asks meekly.
Ah. “Is that,” Dan Heng hesitates, “a problem?”
“It’s—.” Caelus huffs, before he laughs. It draws Dan Heng’s bewildered gaze to him, a helpless moth to a flame. There’s a flush high on Caelus’ cheeks, and his exuberance is infectious, even if it’s at Dan Heng’s expense. Caelus is laughing, and it’s not derogatory. Is it so wrong, if Dan Heng hopes? “Are you a masochist? Why are you choosing to set your difficulty at max?”
Difficulty…at max? What does Caelus mean—wait. Dan Heng narrows his eyes. Masochist? “Who taught you that?”
“Do you actually want to?” Caelus asks instead, dutifully ignoring him. He smiles at Dan Heng, but there’s a hint of insecurity in the curl of lips, when it unmistakably quivers. “Do you want to love me?”
“I do.”
“Then love me.” Caelus’ voice shakes, and his eyes water, but he still grabs at Dan Heng’s sleeve. His face scrunches up, and he quickly swipes his palm across his eyes. Dan Heng’s heart aches. “Love me now, and I’ll love you back. We can tackle the future together, later. For now, just let me love you. Dan Heng, I love you. I—“
Dan Heng doesn’t wait for him to finish, tilting his head and surging forward so he can seal the rest of Caelus’ words with his mouth. A soft peck of lips, one that Caelus reciprocates with his wet lashes fanning across their cheeks, before Dan Heng reaches out to pull the other closer, encircling one arm around Caelus’ waist while grabbing at the hand Caelus had curled into his sleeve by the wrist.
Closer.
Caelus wraps his free arm around Dan Heng’s neck, letting Dan Heng lean further forward to connect their chests by arching his back.
Closer.
Until they fall, with their lips still connected, with Caelus on his back, and Dan Heng sprawled atop of him.
They don’t pull apart until they have to gasp for air, and even then, Dan Heng doesn’t let them part far, panting against each other’s lips.
Caelus intertwines their fingers together, smiling softly up at him. “I love you,” he murmurs.
Only love, Dan Heng thinks, can hurt him as much as this. “I love you, too.” It’s warm, when Dan Heng smiles tenderly back, dropping his head until their foreheads are connected, their noses brushing as their eyes flutter close. “Let me tell you, about when I first joined the Express.”
When Dan Heng, for the very first time in his life, truly began living, rather than just surviving. When sunrises were no longer just a perpetual alarm for him to get up and keep moving, and sunsets were no longer the beginning of a shroud that would keep him hidden as he fled and wandered.
“Will you listen to my story?”
Caelus laughs under his breath. “You know that I will.”
Dating, or “to be involved with another in an intimate relationship”.
It’s relatively easy to define with words, and if you were to ask Dan Heng, he would repeat that definition back word for word. He would leave it at that too, staring impassively at you with his arms crossed. And then he would ask, raising a single hand, “Is that all?”
Of course not. The next logical question would be: “Are you dating anyone?”
And Dan Heng will answer with a simple: “I am.”
This time, it’s less surprising. Dan Heng is someone who’s sensible, who’s rational and calm and collected. Who other people come to and rely on for support. “Who?” You might ask, already having several guesses on who he could be dating. He’s a handsome young man, he could have anyone he wanted, really.
But Dan Heng would also defy your expectations, because who in their right mind would guess, after interacting with the both of them, that he would say: “My partner is Caelus, though if that terminology isn’t specific enough, you could say he’s my significant other, or more commonly, my boyfriend.”
Wow! Who would’ve thought? Certainly not you, who has not witnessed their journey across the stars together. You are but a passing civilian, too curious for your own good, and he is, after all, from the Astral Express.
So you are the common fool who underestimated him. Hahahahaha! How does it feel? Perhaps you’ll be lucky enough to witness one of those many journeys of the Astral Express in the future. Oh but, perhaps another time.
This one, for now, has concluded. A round of applause, if you will!