★彡[ɴᴇᴘᴛᴜɴᴇ'ꜱ ᴛʀɪᴅᴇɴᴛ ᴛᴡᴏ]彡★

☾☉☉☉☽

Waiting for Sao and Cupid, Caju’s only company is his thoughts: the worst company of all. They brew like a storm, and no matter how hard he tries to block them out, they’re more deafening than thunder. He squeezes his eyes tighter and pulls his hair harder.

It’s annoying. It was a play fight, it was fun, so why does he feel so miserable?

Shut up, he urges his brain. Shut up, shut up, shut up.

Something about telling another person flipped a switch in him. It’s embarrassing now that it’s not a secret between him and Saturn. It’s embarrassing that he’s the one crawling back to Cupid with a broken ship while Saturn is still out there with a ship (mostly) unscathed. It’s embarrassing that Caju was fine with Saturn winning but now it feels like the worst loss of his life. It’s embarrassing, that sudden and stupid feeling of weakness.

Caju ducks and punches him in the stomach with as much force as he can muster. The kid crumples over in pain—Caju doesn’t remember who this kid is, nor does he remember the kid he beat before. Who cares who they are? Look at me! I’m strong, too!

His mother looks at him with widened eyes, her hands over her mouth, mortified. It’s an expression he’s seen before—one he saw earlier that day. “Why are you acting like this? Girls—"

—don’t fight. Girls are too weak to fight. Boys are the strong ones.

Caju stares at his mom. If that’s the way things are, if that’s what it takes to be seen, he’ll be the strongest boy of them all. If he can’t do that at least, then what kind of boy was he? What worth did he have?

None.

He had no worth. Because he lost.

I let him win, shut up, Caju urges his brain once more.

“Are you alright?” Sao asks. Somewhere, stories above them, Cupid inspects the Ursa Major with great diligence. Cupid had gotten to work right away while Caju and Sao kept busy swimming through inner turmoil.

“Probably. Are you?”

“Probably.”

And they leave it at that.

Sao doesn’t like to talk about anything that matters. Caju, in comparison, is far more open… but he has things he’s hiding, too! If he shares a secret, he’ll shed a tear, and he can’t do that. He’d never.

✦✧✩✧✦

It hurts more than anything he’s felt before. The world spins. The cracking noise had made his stomach lurch, and the immediate pain that followed made his nausea increase tenfold. Every nerve in his leg is screaming so loud, it can’t be ignored. There was nothing more he wanted to do than to die—or scream or sob. But he wouldn’t.

“Fuck,” Caju says. “Let me go, will you? I can walk.”

Sao slows down for a split second like he wants to obey… before resuming as if Caju never said anything. “No. You can’t. Have you looked? It’s swollen—it looks so bad. How are you not crying?”

“It’s not that bad,” Caju insists. He hasn’t looked, and he doesn’t want to. “You should see the other guy. He’s far worse off than I am.”

Caju’s not wrong. Somehow.

His possibly-broken-ankle wasn’t as unpleasant as the bruises and absolutely-broken-nose the other guy is sporting. The possibly-broken-ankle wasn’t even from the fight! Well, not really. He was jostled, and he fell, and he landed wrong. The push was on purpose, but the fracture was an accident, a more painful result than what either of them were expecting.

Caju squirms in Sao’s arms. Being carried around sucks incredibly. “I can walk,” he repeats.

“Why are you like this?” Sao says. “You don’t have to do things like that. I know you’re strong.”

“I know you know— I’m glad you do, but that’s not enough for me.” Caju is more ambitious than that. “No one else knows. And I need to prove it to them.”

✦✧✩✧✦

Caju leans his head on Sao’s shoulder, something he’s done so many times, he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. He reaches for Sao’s hand.

“Sao… If you could live anywhere, where would it be?”

Life as they know it will be taken away, but they still have each other. Just like it’s always been. Just like it will always be. And maybe, once this is all over and they leave space forever, they’d move. Somewhere nice. Somewhere far away from Pandora and Titan and everyone else that they can’t stand.

But Sao answers, “Venus.” Because who would want to live on Earth?

And Caju scrunches his nose, frustrated. Because that isn’t an option.

“Excuse me.” Cupid taps Sao on his shoulder politely. Sao flinches away—from Cupid and from Caju, like he was caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to. He wonders if Cupid had been waiting to say something, if Cupid had been listening the entire time.

Caju watches Sao with a frown. Who cares if Cupid saw? What’s Cupid going to do? Who’s he going to tell? What does it matter?

“Can you do me a favor?” Cupid asks, oozing sweetness that makes Sao want to disappear. Why would you trust me with anything? What did I do to deserve this? “Can you go to Mars real quick and fetch something for me? The Ursa Major has a few tiny missing pieces, and while I do have replacement parts, it’s better to put back together the original components. These ships are sensitive, you know?”

Ships are like people—Well, they’re not, but they sort of are? They’re not conscious, living beings, but they have their own personalities. Some are more… particular than others.

“Sure,” Sao says without hesitation. He worms his way out of their sights, eager to escape everything he can. A slippery fish that won’t stay in your grasp no matter how hard you try to keep it there, flopping further up land instead of back into the waters.

“Why’d you get rid of him?”

“I didn’t. I really do want those missing pieces.”

“Bullshit.”

“Caju, will you play a game with me? We’ll take turns asking each other questions that we have to answer.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be a genius?” Caju huffs. “That’s so stupid. That’s so childish. You’re the smart, mature one? No, you’re not. Cosmos Administration was doomed to fail as soon as you joined.”

“But you’ll play with me, won’t you?”

“…Only if I go first.”

Cupid wins. “Go ahead.” He smiles, and if you study him close enough, only if you really know him, you’ll see how fucking smug he is. Caju wants to force that smugness off him. You’re not better than me, so don’t look at me like that.

People don’t like Cupid for existing near them, but Caju doesn’t like Cupid for being an asshole!

“You don’t actually need those pieces, do you?” Caju demands.

“I want them, but I don’t need them, yes.”

“So why—"

“You already asked your question, silly! It’s my turn now.” Cupid figures Neptune’s Trident, the lab no one wants, can be used as a place to fix more than just mecha-ships. He hopes Caju can be more honest. “You love Sao, don’t you?”

Caju stiffens. Oh. That’s why. “I thought I told you that’s none of your fucking business.”

“That’s not an answer.” Cupid shakes his head. “Caju, you’re bad at this game. Horribly, embarrassingly, hopelessly bad.”

“What about you? You love Saturn, don’t you?” Caju mocks. Maybe he’s lashing out in fear and hurt, or maybe he’s being mean simply because boys will be boys.

“That’s still not an answer,” Cupid complains. “You’re the absolute worst. You tell me Saturn isn’t worth it, but you ask me something like that, and you want my answer to be yes.”

“Me, the absolute worst? You are! Stop meddling with things you have no right to be meddling with, you idiot!” Caju shoves Cupid back, and Cupid takes it like he’s been shoved many times before. “You know what your problem is? You’re smart, but you play dumb all the time. You know meddling is wrong, but you do it anyways. You know Earth won’t accept you, but you want to go back. You know Saturn likes you, but you want to act like its your one-sided crush. People insist you have a gifted brain, so fucking act like it! Use it, Cupid!”

Cupid blinks. “Saturn doesn’t like me.” I don’t love you either, he’d said. “He told me so.”

“That’s exactly what I mean! You know better!”

“I think,” Cupid says, “you know better, too.”

Cupid is easy to underestimate. Who knew he could be so obnoxious? So daring? So dangerous? Caju’s temper dips up and down. His fingers twitch. He’s never fought Cupid before. Maybe today that’ll change.

“You like Sao, and Sao likes you. It’s obvious to everyone. You’re almost always together, clinging to the other one so desperately, even the people who want to say ‘they’re just best friends, they’re just close’ can’t pretend not to notice. People say you’ve been dating for years. You guys are the only ones feigning ignorance. It’s sad. I want you both to be happy. Why won’t you give yourselves that?”

“You’re sooooo insufferable, I hate you,” Caju spits. “I want to be happy, too. I’m working on it.”

“You know Sao isn’t going to do anything. Why haven’t you—”

“I HAVE! I have tried!” Caju snaps, and then he’s word-vomiting so fast he can’t catch his breath in between the words, in between the syllables. “He runs away every time I bring us up, like he doesn’t want to talk about it, and it makes me feel like shit, like he doesn’t want me, like he’s only tolerating me. Sometimes I can touch him, and other times I can’t. I’m sick of those mixed, twisted, fucked up signals. If he can’t want me, and he won’t let me want him, the least he can do is curse me and cut me off and never see me again. He…” Caju spins around sharply, raising a hand to his face. “God. Don’t look at me. I feel like a girl when I cry. It’s gross.”

“You’re allowed to cry, Caju. Boys cry too.”

Caju cannot remember the last time he cried. It’d been years. And now that he’s started, he can’t stop, every emotion he didn’t let himself feel pouring out of the dam. It feels wrong—he put so much effort into not crying, ever—but it feels nice, too.

Cupid stifles a laugh sometime after. “Why do so many boys cry when I’m around? I’m starting to feel like I’m the problem.”

Caju sniffles. “You are, dumbass.”

“Sorry!” Cupid means it, but meaning an apology is not the same as acting on it. “You have good reason to be frustrated. There’s a simple solution though: if you can’t talk because he keeps running away, you just need to make it so he can’t run.”

“…I guess so.”

The Ursa Major is not yet fixed. Caju is not fixed either—it’d never be that simple. But a small part of him feels the slightest bit better. And that’s okay.

It’s progress. Cupid can appreciate that.