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"Where did you say Hydra was again?"
They're about halfway down the tracks towards the quarry, on what should be a pretty simple hauling run. Now that the excitement of the races have calmed down, life had to return to normal eventually, and although Rusty is still getting used to the chill of hydrogen in his systems, someone around here has to do the freight hauling. Even if that engine just so happens to be the resident champion.
A decidedly easy job, today required him to lug Porter and Slick out to a quarry about an hour and a half north from the Troubadour, Porter to collect a few carts full of of limestone to ferry down later to a refinery in East London, and Slick to go and refuel their machinery. Porter's never quite as chatty as he is when Lumber is around, but is still happy enough to natter pretty much the entire way there about the mildly inane things that him and Lumber have been getting up to. Every now and then Slick chimes in with some sarcastic comment or incriminating piece of gossip about whoever Porter is talking about, but the slightly mean-spirited chat is enough to pass the time.
It's slightly weird though, having a half crew. In the cliques formed from the races, he's used to all four freight trucks coming as a group, or at least Lumber, Porter, and Slick if Hydra had been getting on their nerves too much. Lumber, since his style of hauling wasn't going to be much help at a quarry he understands, was dismissed to allow Porter to carry extra hoppers, but Hydra? He's not sure about.
For as long as they've been at the yard, Hydra has never turned down an opportunity for a trip, even if it was for the most trivial of reasons; they did explain it one evening whilst stretched out on Rusty's hammock, that apparently he didn't get many opportunities at the last test bed, and loved the freedom of going at decent speed. Since the race, he's had even more of an excuse, quickly declaring himself Rusty's aide pretty much everywhere they went whilst Rusty was still getting used to being an intermodal, and to memory, this is the first trip they haven't shown up for since.
As loathe as he is to admit it, since he knows Hydra is more than capable of taking care of himself, Rusty is worried. Last night was the first night in a while that Hydra hadn't stayed with him to rest, despite how tired they looked - they had kissed him goodnight but had left for the freight shed for reasons he couldn't even begin to understand. It wouldn't surprise him at all if they had just been burning the candle at both ends for a bit, but it had meant he slept like shit last night.
It's not a huge problem Hydra not showing, just a concern. He has enough fuel in his onboard tanks to last three hours, just enough time to make it there and back as long as they don't too many delays, and although it would have been nice to have Hydra with him, he's more worried about what else could be so important.
"Dunno'," Slick scoffs, unhelpfully, "he wasn't here when I woke up, so I thought you two were shaggin' like normal."
Over his shoulder, he hears a surprised grunt from Porter. "Nah, I heard him leavin' at shit o'clock this morning," he counters, "he was proper groanin', surprised he didn't wake Lumber up, but then again he-"
"Sleeps like a log." Slick finishes the sentence for him with an annoyed groan. "We get it."
"Heard that one before, have ye'?" Porter asks, and Rusty cannot tell for the life of him whether or not he's being sarcastic as Slick groans in mock pain.
"You say it like every day, it's not funny," she snaps, much to Porter's amusement, "Rusty, how far away are we? I need to know how much longer I have to endure this shit."
Rusty grimaces; she's not going to like this. "An hour or so, I think - and before you ask, I can't go any faster."
He can feel her gaze on the back of his neck like a laser. "Why not?"
"Because I don't want to risk catching up to a passenger train and having to wait at a signal," he explains tiredly, "I use more fuel stopping and starting than I do just going consistently slower."
"You've literally never cared about that before," she counters sarcastically, "is someone missing his boyfriend?"
Her teasing is saccharine and sarcastic, and Rusty has to remind himself to let it go before his boiler kicks up a notch from annoyance. As much as he desperately wants to be home to check on Hydra, the last thing he wants to do is run out of fuel and get stuck, and Slick, as he reminds himself, very likely knows this and is winding him up anyway.
"Just thought I'd enjoy the countryside," he argues, flat as he rolls his eyes, "try not to kill Porter in the meantime."
The rest of the journey back is quieter, apart from Porter's occasional observations and Slick telling him swiftly to shut up, but it simultaneously feels like hours and minutes before they're pulling back into the Troubadour. Within seconds, workers are on hand to help Porter unload the limestone hoppers whilst him and Slick are disconnected. Unsurprisingly, she's off like a flash; she never seems to hang around after jobs, and although Rusty can think of one or two reasons why, it's always a bit of a shame.
The yard is quiet, weirdly so. He remembers Greaseball and the coaches were on passenger runs today, which explains the lack of shouting and laughing from the coaches, but it doesn't explain why he just can't see anyone. It also doesn't help his mounting concern about where Hydra is; even if they're not able to come on jobs, they're usually hanging around waiting for either Rusty or the other trucks to get back.
He checks his shed first, since the engine sheds are closer to the storage warehouses, and as expected, it's empty. It's not unheard of for Hydra to hang out in his shed, but usually only for early morning jobs when it was hard to get him out of rest in time to say goodbye, and seeing as it's mid-afternoon, it was unlikely to begin with.
So he hunts.
The maintenance shed is empty apart from one of the diesels having her wheels replaced, and the various sand yards are pretty much the same save for a few engines going about their day; he passes Porter and Lumber on their way to the mess shed, but apart from them, he doesn't run into anyone recognises. Annoyingly, the freight shed is miles away, so inevitably it's the last place he looks.
With a heave, he wrenches the shutters back - why these doors never seem to get oiled is beyond him - and takes a second to adjust to the darkness of the building. The freight shed is usually a little bit rougher round the edges than the other holding bays, but he doesn't ever think he's seen the strip light hanging on the ceiling actually turned on, so there's a distinct possibility that it might just not work. Instead he's used to each bay glowing with its own colour and character, which doesn't greet him this time. Instead, darkness, and dust that swirls along the floor as a gust of wind enters along with him.
He rolls in for a meter or so, hesitant. "Hydra?"
Although not too loud, he waits for a second, waiting for the slight echo to clear. If he's not here, then Starlight alone knows where he's gotten to.
Then, as if on cue, there's a groan from one of the back bays, and Rusty doesn't think he's ever moved so fast in his life.
“There you are-“
Stretched out on the bunk is a familiar sight, that in any other situation would have his pistons racing; Hydra, stretched out on his back with his frame on the floor next to them, undershirt open and exposing smooth artificial skin and wiring ports. However, he looks awful, pallid and gaunt in the poor lighting, edges of his face looking greener than usual.
As Rusty approaches, Hydra cracks an eye open, red and watery as if he'd been crying, and one hand fights against their fatigue to shoot Rusty a peace sign.
"Hey gorgeous," they slur, exhausted and delirious, "didn't realise the scrappers were as handsome as you, here to make me away yet or nah?"
Rusty flounders for a second, mouth opening and closing as panic runs through him like ice. Something is wrong, something is very wrong, and has been wrong for a while. His hands fly in front of him, assessing the situation and trying to avoid the urge to just pull Hydra into a hug, so instead he settles for squatting next to the bay to be at eye level, and rests one hand a few millimetres above Hydra's forehead, like Momma used to do with him.
Thanks to being cryogenic, Hydra is never warm, let alone even mildly room temperature, and it's taken Rusty a while to used to cold skin against his. It's strange then, to not be suddenly assaulted with sub-zero temperatures. For a second it's nice, before the realisation of that definitely not being right settles in.
"I'll make this easier for ya'," Hydra grunts, lifting their left arm over their chest to reveal the gauges embedded in their side, "what's the diagnosis, doc?"
In the darkness it's hard to tell; Rusty is working from the light of his own firebox since the gloomy sunlight from the shutters doesn't seem to reach the back corner bay the other freight put him in. He's not entirely sure what the numbers mean, but he recognises the fuel level to be distinctly zero, pressure to be low, and that the internal tank thermometer is blinking 'ERR4' instead of any actual numbers.
He knows this is bad. Really bad. Bad where he really needs to ask Momma where she keeps Hydra's incident book. Bad where he's surprised Hydra's still lucid, most engines and trucks pass out if they ever hit zero. Panicked, he glances up at Hydra's torso again as they heave another ragged breath; both safety valves have blown, including the hand cranked one on his stomach, and he's pretty confident that if he managed to roll Hydra over and could peer under the external tank, the pressure disks running parallel down their chassis would be blown as well.
"Well, you're out of fuel," Rusty repeats back, trying not to let his worry bleed into his tone, "pressure's pretty much gone, and I can't get a temperature but you have an error code- Hydra, what happened?"
Before him, Hydra sighs expectantly, and shifts one hand up to wipe at his eyes; every movement looks heavy, looks painful, and Rusty reaches to help him return his arm to his side before they hiss in pain at the contact.
"Sorry, sorry, just a bit overly sensitive right now," Hydra apologises tiredly, "I, uh, I think I had a leak? I tripped yesterday and felt something go, so I was keeping my distance and then-"
As if on cue, he coughs, a wisp of hydrogen and water vapour curling out of his mouth like a tendril.
"There's not much left now, thankfully."
"You should have said something," Rusty breathes quietly, and rests one hand feather-light on top of Hydra's, who grimaces but doesn't pull back this time, "you should have got me, or Momma, we could have helped."
"I've been trained for this," Hydra tries to reassure, still smiling faintly despite the pain, "step one, identify the problem, step two - and this one is important - get the fuck away from anything flammable, and last time I checked, you run pretty hot."
He winks, but Rusty doesn't find it funny. Instead, there's this horrible sinking feeling in his pipes at the slightly consideration that he could have made it worse.
"Am I safe to be here now?" Rusty asks nervously, and immediately relaxes when he sees Hydra nod.
"Yeah, otherwise I wouldn't be back inside," they explain with a smile, and grunts as they begin heaving themselves upright, "I spent most of the night out in one of the sheep fields - you know, through the hole in the fence out by the coach shed - engineers told me to try and get three hundred meters on anyone else just in case, but I didn't manage to get that far."
Pained, Hydra coughs again, retching slightly as he spits out a few jagged looking balls of ice. "You don't have to be here," he mutters, shutting his eyes again and leaning his head against the wall of the bay, "I'm waiting for some engineers to arrive since your maintenance crew have no idea what to do with me, so Starlight alone knows how long they'll be - don't you have like, an actual job to be doing?"
"Only this morning, that's why I've only just found you." He can't ignore the guilt that settles in - he should have looked for Hydra first, he knew something wasn't right the moment they didn't show up for muster. "Sorry, I should have come sooner, I didn't think-"
The sound of Rusty's fires kicking up overwhelms his hearing for a second - there's this anger he didn't realise he was wrestling with until now, latent and roiling underneath the panic that has ebbed away. The fact that whoever designed them expected Hydra to just deal with all this on their own makes him seethe, the fact that his instructions call for self-sacrifice, denying assistance so that in the event of an explosion he's his only casualty, has him beginning to tunnel-vision, and the sound of steam and water beginning to pump around his systems thrums like a heartbeat in his ears. Hopefully those engineers will be here soon, and then maybe he can actually ask them what the hell-
"I can hear you stressing from here, shhh," he suddenly hears Hydra whisper, and lax, shaking fingers attempt to card through his hair. They struggle with the resistance offered by his ringlets, but the thought is nice, and Rusty looks over to see Hydra's bright emerald eyes on him, loving despite the pain he's clearly in. "It's all gonna' be fine, I've done this before."
"In test conditions, you mean," Rusty argues weakly, "not in an actual working yard."
"They dropped me in a field once, told me I had a leak, and then to see how far I could get with various wheels removed," Hydra recounts, as if he was telling some kind of epic story rather than a mildly horrifying aspect of prototype testing, "I did alright until I had to start army crawling, so as long as we don't end up in a crash where I can't roll, everything's tight."
"And the pain? The fact it sounds like you had to vent your tank-?"
"It wasn't all painful." Hydra rolls their eyes, or at least attempts to before another cough ricochets through their body. "The first two safety valves were fine, it was only when my disks went that the whole thing started to suck."
Rusty sighs, taking Hydra's hand out of his hair to lace their fingers together. "Sure - were you prepared for that?"
For a second, Hydra has to stop and think, and the silence is telling.
"They warned me it could happen," he admits, quieter than before, "like, I was told what might happen in the event of a tank breach, but they mostly just said standard procedures apply - get away, get clear, all of that, y'know? If you want the nitty-gritty, they gave Momma a book with all my safety routines in, should have the specifics in there."
Has he seen that book before? He thinks so, glancingly - when Momma agreed to race with Hydra in the second heat, he remembers her flipping through a large ring-binder, muttering under her breath about temperature parameters and crash routines, but he didn't get chance to read it before the final race.
"I'll ask next time I see her," Rusty assures him, "Are you sure there's nothing I can do?"
"If you really want to, you could go and check whether the engineers are here yet," Hydra finally offers, "I alerted them about five this morning, they said there would be a bit of a delay since the overnight crew wasn't equipped for hydrail, but I would have thought they would be here by now."
Struggling to his wheels, Rusty nods, determined; there's this strange voice in the back of his mind that doesn't want to let go of Hydra's hand, but it slips away weakly as he shifts, so instead he leans over to kiss Hydra's forehead. They're still cold to the touch, and he can see where the water from the air is beginning to condense against his skin like sweat. "Stay here, I'll be right back."
"No rush, love," Hydra says, slurred, eyes shutting again as Rusty moves, "not like I'm going anywhere."
Rusty only has to wait at the maintenance shed another twenty minutes before the emergency crew show up from JCB, mostly ignoring him once he's pointed them in the right direction of the freight shed. Ten minutes after that, he watches in mild horror as Hydra is wheeled across the yard in a flatbed, which garners a bit of attention from the various locomotives now back from work; they look dead as they're wheeled across in the stretcher like contraption, unmoving and pale, and as much as Rusty tries to follow, the shutters to the maintenance shed are shut behind them before he can enter.
The rest of the day is painful, and the night too. When the sun begins to set, Pearl comes and checks in on him moping around his shed, sitting with him for a while before his moroseness becomes unbearable, and Momma comes in a few hours later to deliver him Hydra's incident book and safety manual.
"Probably better you keep these safe," She explains, as Rusty begins to thumb through the smaller manual. It's labelled for a DOT-113A60W tanker, whatever that means, but once he gets his head around the science-speak and learns what parts of them are actually called, he thinks he should be able to understand most of this. It shocks him sometimes just how much work went into Hydra; he's used to the other freight, most of whom are run of the mill iterations of familiar tankers, not one-of-a-kind trucks with designations, error codes, and a book of paperwork that needs to be filled out if they so much as sneeze.
"I should have asked sooner," Rusty grumbles, leaving the manual open on a page about super-cooled gas behaviour as he looks up at Momma, who's currently sporting her familiar, knowing smile, "I just didn't think about it 'till now."
"I know, son," she reassures, handing him a pen and then picking up the incident book to flick through to the logging paperwork, "now do me a favour and fill this out for me? You got the description about what happened from him."
It takes most of the evening, but he eventually gets it done, once he's navigated what half of the terms mean and whether or not the numbers he remembers seeing were good or bad. At the very least, it distracts him from worrying too much, and gives him something to do when he knows he's not going to be able to rest.
After doing two different sweeps of the shed to clear up anything spiky or out of place, and half an hour spent rearranging his hammock in a few different ways whilst overthinking each one, there's a gentle rap on his shutter doors, and Rusty doesn't think he's scrambled to move so quickly in his life.
As he heaves the doors open, it's Hydra. Looking very much worse for wear, exhausted and still distinctly pale in the searing spotlights of the yard, but Hydra.
"Hey," they open with a tired grin, leaning on the shutter with one hand, "come here often?"
"Why are you asking me that, this is my shed," Rusty utters with a shake of his head, before stepping out of the doorway, "come in, I wasn't expecting to see you for another day or so."
Taking one of Hydra's hands, he leads him into the shed, into the warmth compared to the chill of the September night outside; Hydra's hands are cold, colder than usual, which suggests whatever coolant is usually running through his systems is working overtime, and Rusty has to fight against a shiver. He remembers Momma warning him once about Hydra's dangerously low internal temperatures, following the championship finals and their hasty coupling beforehand, and thinks maybe he needs to begin heeding them.
"Apparently, I was a quick fix, and my engineers think your engineers are cowards," Hydra recounts with an eye roll, sitting heavily on one of the chairs that Rusty pulls out for them, "they found where the puncture was, so that got patched-" he points to a new piece of panelling on his back that stands a lightly shinier lime than the rest of the tank, "and then I spent the last four hours being pressurised. Pretty boring really."
"You still look like shit, if you don't mind me saying," Rusty states as he heads to the small kitchenette, setting the kettle onto boil for the fourth time this evening, "how are you feeling?"
There's a grumble from Hydra behind him, unsure. "All the better for seeing you?" They eventually answer, and Rusty doesn't have to turn to see the cocky grin that's plastered on their face.
"Genuinely, Hydra-"
"Fine, fine." There's a crack in their voice that sounds like some kind of bravado faltering. "The nausea's a bitch, but I'm used to it, I'm just tired."
Nausea? He can help with that, as he reaches into a top cupboard for the small box of camomile he keeps on hand in case Belle is ever over, and drops one of the small teabags into Hydra's mug-
"Sorry love," Hydra interrupts, and Rusty is aware of a cold hand on his shoulder that pulls him into a side hug, "chief said no foreign bodies or liquids for forty-eight hours, but I appreciate the thought."
On his right, Hydra takes a shuddering breath, as if he stood up too quickly, squeezing Rusty loosely again as Rusty puts the teabag back in the box and Hydra's mug back on the hook nailed into the wall. From here, though, Rusty has a clear view of the tanker's gauges, and can't help but double check - the thermometer is displaying actual numbers now, deep into the negatives, and the pressure gauge is sitting neatly in the green. He's still running on empty, though, needle just hovering above zero.
"You didn't refuel," Rusty notes, looping his free arm around Hydra's middle as they shake their head.
"I'm waiting for the pressure to settle," Hydra explains simply, "give it a few hours, I'll have a go in the morning."
With that, he leans his head against Rusty's with a grunt; in this light, it's hard to ignore the uncharacteristic dark circles under his eyes and the uneven breaths against his skin. If he had to guess, he would say that Hydra is likely in more pain than he's letting on, but that's not a wall he's going to even attempt to break through today.
Once his tea is made, he leads Hydra over to the hammock, who is more than happy to follow. He sits down on the edge, manoeuvring Hydra in between his legs to begin helping undo buckles and poppers; the muscle memory in him wants to be hasty, used to this being desperate and hungry, but he forces himself to take it slowly as every shift Hydra makes results in an uncomfortable grunt of pain.
"You don't have to do this," Hydra grumbles, clumsy fingers struggling with his external tank clips, but Rusty shakes his head slowly.
"I want to," he counters simply, holding the external tank in place as Hydra slips it off, and Hydra doesn't seem to have an argument for that.
("I might be a lot of work," Hydra mutters, barely audible from where they’re beneath Rusty on the bed. Neither of them are sleeping, too full of adrenaline and pumping fuel from the race to even consider rest despite the absolute exhaustion they are both experiencing but too tired to take the make out session any further, so instead have just settled for holding each other close, trying to force as much contact as possible.
Rusty doesn't know what to make of it. He knows Hydra isn't a standard tanker, but then again, he's not a standard steam engine. Not anymore. Even if he hadn't converted to hydrogen, something else had changed following his meeting with the Starlight, something deep in his core that he cannot name or even begin to comprehend.
"I might be too," Rusty responds in a whisper, and watches Hydra's lips curl in a conspiratorial, excited smile, "guess we'll both find out along the way, hey?"
Hydra kisses his lips gently, still smiling as they do so; despite the cold, the kiss is tender and warm, and as he pulls away Rusty wants to surge up to meet them again, and again. "No one I'd rather find out with.")
Eventually, they wiggle off Hydra's undershirt, and Hydra spins on the spot to begin wrestling with his belt buckle whilst Rusty begins work on the straps holding their knee pads in place; from here, he can see those angry, raised welts surrounding each of the eight pressure disks, telling of a forceful depressurisation, and he reaches up to run a finger along one just above Hydra's warning stencil. In response, he hears them hiss in pain, and retracts his hand again quickly. He'll have to find some ice for them, or see if he can borrow some of Tassita's various creams and lotions in the morning.
Once the knee pads are off and Hydra can crawl into bed next to him without any bulky gear getting in the way, Rusty makes quick work of his own external boiler so that no time is wasted before he's nose to nose with the tanker. Unsurprisingly, their eyes are already shut, deep but jarred breaths visible on his chest as Rusty shuffles in, laying a gentle arm around their waist and a small kiss to their cheek.
"Do you wanna' just sleep?" He asks quietly, and Hydra nods, wiggling in to bury his head in the dip where Rusty's collar meets his neck. Usually it's Hydra holding him, not the other way around, just on account of them being slightly bigger, but the protective anger in Rusty is quelled momentarily by the solid weight in his arms.
He knows him and Hydra need to have a proper talk, as Momma calls them, about actually talking to each other in crisis situations, but he doesn't really want to think about that right now. Instead, he focuses on Hydra's slowing breaths, each one becoming less and less shuddering, and tries to match his own to the rhythm.
Tomorrow, they'll refuel, they'll talk, and he'll fix this. He'll read the safety manual and ask about the subroutines and commit as much of it to memory as he can.
Tonight, though. Tonight, they'll rest.