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workofthediesel · 1 year

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Making a Start

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Summary: Rusty wants his best friend and his boyfriend to get along, and if he has to force them to hang out one-on-one in order to accomplish that, then so be it.

Word Count: 3845

Pearl wasn’t entirely sure why she was doing this.

It was for Rusty, of course, but she didn’t know what he—and by extension, what she—was hoping to accomplish.

It seemed to her like a bad idea. A lost cause. Perhaps a recipe for disaster. But Rusty had been so adamant and, even worse, earnest that she’d had no choice but to go along with it.

And so now here she was: sat in a quiet cafe with CB of all people, trying not to wince as she watched him pour the entire shakerful of sugar into his extra-large cup of coffee. She took a sip of her own much more reasonable latte and reassured herself that at least she’d be returning CB to Rusty once all of this was done, so she wouldn’t have to deal with whatever particular brand of crazy an over-caffeinated sugar rush brought out of him.

She felt a little bad about dumping that mess on Rusty, but she supposed he’d signed up for it when he and CB had gotten together.

She still couldn’t quite believe that that had happened. Rusty had a good heart, yes, but he also had a good head on his shoulders. It made sense that he’d be willing to forgive CB for all he’d put him through, but he should have had enough sense to realize that CB was not the type of person he should be getting himself mixed up with.

And she wasn’t the only one who thought so. The freight, who had slowly but surely been working towards a tentative forgiveness ever since the championship, seemed to be excited about their relationship, but Pearl had never had much faith in their judgment. The other coaches, who were always much more sensible about these sorts of things, agreed that it seemed like the sort of thing that would go south very quickly. Their support meant a lot to her, even if Ashley’s stance that Rusty was “a big boy” who could make his own decisions and didn’t need them to interfere on his behalf didn’t quite sit right.

Dinah, of course, was a different story. She’d been friends with CB for years before he and Rusty had gotten together. She was too far gone to accept the kind of person CB revealed himself to be in the championship.

“He’s not so bad, really,” she had said when Pearl went to her to gripe about Rusty’s taste in men. “You’d like him if you got to know him.”

Pearl had scoffed. “I’m sure,” she said, sarcasm dripping from her voice.

“He’s pretty sweet in his own way,” had been Dinah’s response.

“Oh? So him breaking into Rusty’s house was ‘sweet’? Him taking Rusty to break into a museum was ‘sweet’? Him nearly starting a forest fire less than a mile from the yard was ‘sweet’?!”

Dinah shrugged a little helplessly. “He just doesn’t have a good idea of what people normally consider okay,” she’d said. “He’ll back off if you let him know what your boundaries are.”

As if Pearl was going to do that. As if she was going to tell him anything, least of all something that he could use against her. If she told him something made her uncomfortable, he’d be bringing that up at every possible opportunity, and she refused to give him the power or the satisfaction.

CB, for his part, seemed to be refusing to give her the common courtesy of polite conversation.

They’d been sitting in strained silence ever since they’d placed their orders. Pearl had been privately counting the minutes since they’d gotten there, wondering how long she’d have to tough it out before she could leave. Rusty probably wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than an hour, which meant that she would still be stuck there for another forty minutes.

She had the thought that she could lie about it. She could leave whenever and simply tell Rusty after that she and CB had had a fine time out. He would have no way of proving her wrong; the only other person to ask would be CB, and she was sure that he would go along with it. He was probably as desperate to get out of this as she was.

She took another sip of her latte, her mind made up; once she finished her drink, she would leave. That would still mean having to put up with CB’s presence for another ten to twenty minutes, but it seemed a waste to leave any sooner and have to leave her coffee behind unfinished.

It would be over soon enough, Pearl told herself. She could handle another dozen minutes here.

The whole experience was only made bearable by the fact that at least she and CB seemed to be on the same page here. She didn’t think she could take it if CB actually tried to talk to her, if she actually had to suffer her way through awkward small talk with him. This thick silence that laid between them was its own kind of awkward, but it was the lesser of two evils.

No sooner had that thought crossed her mind than CB started slurping loudly on his coffee. Pearl had to roll her eyes. Of course CB would manage to find a way to make even the simplest act of drinking something impossibly irritating.

They continued on like that for a few minutes, Pearl’s grip on her cup getting tighter and tighter as her annoyance mounted, before CB stopped abruptly. Pearl looked up at him, surprised and confused at his sudden silence.

CB had a tight look on his face. He had one hand raised to his ear in a gesture that Pearl recognized to mean that he was listening to a radio call.

There was a moment of peace while CB listened to whoever was on the other end of the call, then he flipped down the microphone attached to his headset, turning away from Pearl to respond. “Fine. Why?”

He paused for a second as the other person talked, then said, “Yeah, everything’s going great over here.”

Another pause, during which CB’s eyes flicked nervously to the side. “Oh, you know,” he said airily, “stuff.” Even without knowing what that was supposed to be in response to, Pearl could say it was one of the most unconvincing lies she’d heard in her life.

A pout worked its way onto CB’s face. His pause this time lasted longer than the others, and after a few extra moments of silence, his pout grew. “It isn’t just me, you know,” he grumbled.

After another second of quiet, CB sighed. He listened for a moment more before saying, “Fine, fine. Yes, I will. Yes, I promise. Okay? Yeah, okay. See you soon. Bye.”

CB flipped his microphone back up, turning back to face Pearl with that pout still on his face. He rested his chin on his hand, drumming his fingers against the tabletop with his other hand. He kept the pose up for a minute before he dropped it with a sigh. “Rusty says we need to talk to each other.”

Pearl watched him skeptically, trying to figure out what he was playing at. “Okay.”

CB watched her back. He seemed to be waiting for something, but when nothing more came, he prompted, “So…?”

Pearl raised a brow. “So what?”

“So… I don’t know. Do you have anything to talk about?”

“No.”

CB looked a little frustrated at how quickly and definitively Pearl had shut him down, which she silently patted herself on the back for. She didn’t know what he wanted to get out of her, but she wouldn’t give it to him.

A tense silence settled over them once more. CB went back to slurping at his coffee, but he seemed antsy this time, bouncing his leg at a rapid speed under the table. He kept switching back and forth between looking up at her and looking anywhere else. It gave Pearl a sense of self-satisfaction that she was keeping her composure while he was showing all the signs of discomfort. At the same time, she couldn’t deny that it was setting her on edge the slightest bit. It was like being in a cage with a hyperactive hyena; she had no idea what CB might do next, but it certainly wouldn’t be anything good.

The relative peace lasted only another minute before CB broke it. “Dinah said Ashley’s thinking about getting converted. Did you hear? She thinks smoking cars are going out of fashion. She wants to keep ahead of it.”

“Yes. She told me.”

“Oh.” CB dropped his gaze staring into his coffee. He pursed his lips, swirling the drink for a moment before taking another sip. “Do you, uh, think it’s a good idea?”

Pearl didn’t answer, occupying herself instead with her drink.

The silence that followed was, if anything, even more tense than the one that had preceded it. CB drummed his fingers on the table, his brows pinched like he was deep in thought.

After another few moments, he spoke again. “There’s a circus troupe coming to the area pretty soon. I think Joule used to travel with them before she joined up with Electra.”

“Okay,” Pearl said, her voice flat and disinterested.

“She used to be an animal truck. Did you know that? I think she used to transport tigers or something.”

“Okay.”

With that, it seemed that CB got the picture that his words were getting him nowhere. He went quiet again, and Pearl hoped that would be the end of it.

Of course, it wasn’t, and after another minute, CB said, “Rusty’s thinking about signing up for an exhibition race. Did he tell you?”

“Okay. And?”

CB groaned, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes for a moment before dragging them down his face. “What are you into?” he whined, frustration coloring every syllable.

Pearl huffed. “Nothing that’s any of your business,” she said stiffly.

“Look, I’m trying here, okay?”

“What?”

“I’m trying,” he said again. “I don’t know what you like, so can you either tell me or just humor me for five minutes?”

“Trying to do what?” Pearl snapped. “You’re just sitting there.”

“Trying to talk to you!”

“Well, stop,” Pearl told him, folding her arms. “I’m not interested.”

“Obviously,” CB ground out, “but can you at least pretend? I shouldn’t be the only one doing the work here.”

“What work?”

“This!” CB gestured between them. “Talking! Connecting! Making friends!”

“I don’t want to be your friend!”

“Great! Fantastic! Good for you. Now, can you get over it for, like, two seconds and lie like a normal person?”

“Why?” Pearl narrowed her eyes, scrutinizing him like she could pick up a tell that would give his whole game away. “What are you trying to gain from this?”

“Nothing! Starlight, I’m just trying to make conversation!”

“Why?” Pearl asked again. After all, there was no chance that CB was actually interested in talking to her. He had to be after something.

“Ugh, I already told you! Rusty wants us to talk.”

“I know that.” Rusty was the only one who wanted anything to do with what was happening here. If it had been up to her, she wouldn’t have spent even a second in CB’s presence.

CB’s eyes narrowed into a steely glare. “So you’re just… not going to, then?”

“No,” Pearl said coldly. After all, why should she? There was no chance of the two of them getting along even if they were genuinely interested in it. She knew exactly how the rest of this venture would go: they would finish their drinks in silence and leave, and when Rusty asked them individually how the outing went, they would lie and tell him that they had a nice time, and whenever the three of them ended up in the same place at the same time after this, she and CB would smile politely for Rusty’s sake before going back to ignoring each other’s general existence whenever he wasn’t around.

There was no point in wasting her energy on awkward smalltalk when their trajectory from here was so clear.

“Wonderful,” CB grumbled. “Thanks so much for contributing here. You’re really doing your part.”

“There’s no need to be sarcastic,” Pearl told him. “I don’t have to talk to you if I don’t want to.”

“Okay, sure,” CB said, “except that that’s the whole point of us being here today. But by all means! Be the reason Rusty’s disappointed after all of this! It’s not like I agreed to come today because us getting along is important to him! Whatever, am I right?”

CB’s voice was rising, getting higher and louder as if he was getting genuinely upset, and that made Pearl pause. “Making Rusty happy is that important to you?”

“So what if it is?” CB said with a huff, slouching back in his seat and crossing his arms defensively.

For a few seconds, Pearl didn’t know how to answer. She was somewhat stunned; CB actually cared.

She hadn’t been expecting that. She hadn’t thought CB was using Rusty, per se, but she had been certain that he wasn’t serious about the relationship. Nothing about him seemed the type. That was a large part of what she had been worried about, that Rusty would be jumping into it whole-heartedly while for CB it was nothing more than a bit of fun, and she would be left to help Rusty sweep up the pieces of his broken heart once CB got bored.

But… CB was here at Rusty’s behest, just like she was. Even though he probably had no more interest in making friends than she did—and was, historically, far more stubborn and less willing to compromise—he still came. Just because Rusty asked him to.

Not only that, but he’d been right before when he said that he was trying. Even though Pearl was deliberately shutting him down at every turn, he kept on with it, trying again and again to connect with her, pushing himself while getting nothing in return, because that’s what Rusty wanted.

He was making an actual effort to make Rusty happy.

Pearl looked down at the table, suddenly unable to meet CB’s eyes. She’d thought she was doing the right thing by refusing to engage with him, so certain that he was up to no good—so certain that he was capable of no good. She’d thought CB wasn’t able to feel deeply about anyone, so that it was a guarantee that he would hurt Rusty sooner or later. It was unfair of her. She’d been punishing CB for something he hadn’t done, simply based on her own negative assumptions of him. CB didn’t deserve that.

Those words surprised her even as she thought them, but it was true. It had been so easy to think of CB as nothing more than a sneaky, selfish, heartless bastard and use that as an excuse to justify her own nasty behavior. But CB cared. He made Rusty happy, and Rusty made him happy.

It didn’t fully make sense to Pearl, but she supposed it didn’t have to. As long as they were happy, she should support them.

A pinch of guilt twinged in Pearl’s chest as she realized she hadn’t been doing that. It was important to Rusty that she and CB get along, and she’d been actively trying to prevent that. If she wanted to be a good friend, the least she could do was make an attempt at conversation, just like CB had been doing.

Pearl cleared her throat. “Yeah, um. Well, Rusty actually did tell me. About the race.”

“Yeah?”

Pearl nodded. “A yard out east wants to organize a steamer showcase.”

CB hummed. “That sounds pretty cool, I guess.”

“Yeah.” Pearl bit her lip, debating on whether or not she should say what she was thinking. After a second, she decided to risk it. “He asked me if I would race with him.”

Pearl had been somewhat anticipating a negative reaction, but all CB did was nod. “Makes sense. He likes racing with you. Besides, he doesn’t really want me near any racetracks.”

“Because of…” She bit her tongue to stop herself from finishing that sentence.

Despite her effort, CB knew what she was going to say anyway. Thankfully, he didn’t seem bothered by it. “Yeah, yeah, because of the cheating.”

“Were you planning on cheating if he brought you?”

CB was suspiciously silent.

Pearl couldn’t say she was exactly surprised by that. After all, he’d cheated his way through the whole championship, where the stakes were much higher and the potential consequences much worse. There were no stakes in an exhibition, and perhaps because of that, she had to ask, “You’d really cheat in an exhibition race?”

CB shrugged. “It’s not like it matters who wins. What’s the harm?”

“That’s just it, isn’t it? If it doesn’t matter who wins, why break the rules to fix it?”

CB went quiet for a moment before answering. “It would make Rusty happy, wouldn’t it? To win?”

It was at that moment that Pearl finally understood what Dinah had been saying, that she started to get what Rusty saw in CB. If she was ever involved in a competition, she would want to win based on her own merit, and she knew Rusty felt the same. But the idea that someone might want her to win so badly—and not for any sort of gain on their part, just for the sake of her winning—that they would put themselves at risk of getting in trouble to ensure that she had that pride… it was a little sweet. In theory, at least. If she found out that someone actually had been doing that for her, she would be fuming, but she supposed that tied into what Dinah had said about CB not understanding what people considered okay.

It was also a demonstration of the other thing Dinah had said. Pearl had scoffed at the idea that CB would respect people’s boundaries, but here he was, doing just that. It didn’t seem like he agreed with Rusty’s decision to not allow him to cheat in the race, but he wasn’t trying to fight it. Even though he didn’t quite understand Rusty’s feelings on the matter, he wasn’t trying to change them or go behind Rusty’s back to cheat anyway.

That, of course, raised a whole slew of questions about why, if he cared so much about Rusty, he cheated against him in the championship, but there was a time and a place for discussions like that, and Pearl knew that this was neither of them.

Pearl said nothing of these revelations out loud; they were just for her to muse upon later. What she said instead was, “He’d be happy to win because he earned it. If he won because you cheated, it wouldn’t count.”

“You two are exactly the same,” CB said, rolling his eyes. “Why does it matter how you win? If you win, you win, and that’s the end of it.”

“It’s about feeling proud of yourself,” she told him. “If you work hard to be the best you can be and then you come out on top, you can feel good about yourself and your skills. If you only win because something bad happened to someone else, then it’s not the same. You can’t feel good about something that isn’t fair.”

CB didn’t look like he really agreed. “I guess,” he said doubtfully.

It didn’t seem like the sort of subject he and Pearl would ever see eye-to-eye on, so she decided to let it go. At least he was agreeing with her for now, even if he was only just saying it. That would have to be good enough.

Pearl went to take another sip of her latte and was somewhat disappointed to find that it was already empty. This was the time that she had told herself she was going to leave, but things were just starting to go okay between her and CB. Obviously they were far from perfect, but they had made the first step.

With that in mind, she made the call that it wouldn’t be a good idea to push it too far just yet. She wasn’t having a bad time anymore, but she wasn’t sure she would exactly call it a good time, either, and she suspected CB might be feeling the same way. She didn’t want things to take a turn for the worse and ruin the progress that they’d just made.

There would be other times for them to work on building a friendship. They lived and worked in the same yard—they saw each other practically every day. And once Rusty learned that they could be in each other’s presence without going at each other’s throats or doing nothing but trading passive-aggressive remarks, he was sure he’d be arranging things for them to do as a group. Surprisingly, she was almost looking forward to it.

Placing her cup back down on the table, Pearl said, “Anyway, I’ve gotta run. I promised Buffy I would help her look into appliance upgrades this afternoon. She’s been wanting to re-do her kitchen, you know?”

CB nodded, glancing up at the clock on the wall. “Yeah, Control’s probably wanting me back in the radio control room right about now.” He slammed back the rest of his coffee, which still had to be at least half full. The sight was somewhat perturbing, but it was almost certainly not worth commenting on.

Before Pearl could move from her seat, CB was already up and pushing away from the table. “Say hi to Buffy for me,” he said, and then he was gone, disappearing out the door and presumably heading back to the yard.

Pearl stayed where she was for a minute, CB’s abrupt exit throwing her off. It didn’t take her long to come back to her senses and shake herself out of it. Considering it was CB, she probably should have expected his departure to go something like that.

Finally standing up from the table, she gathered up her and CB’s cups and brought them over to a bin for dirty dishes before heading for the door. She hadn’t been expecting to leave without having experienced at least a minor catastrophe, and it felt a little weird. Not bad—not in the slightest—but she didn’t know what to do with the extra energy she’d been saving to deal with damage control. Hopefully Buffy could use it as they hunted for a new microwave.

The sun was shining brightly as Pearl stepped out of the cafe, and it was warm on her face. She took a breath of the fresh air, just starting to turn sweet with the onset of spring. She couldn’t stop the small smile that was tugging at the corners of her lips, nor did she want to.

Things were looking good.

#starlight express #stex #stex fanfic #pearl the observation car #cb the red caboose #bg rusted brakes #this was only supposed to be a one or two page warmup to get me back into writing but uhhhhhhhhh whoops?

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