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Caspar had always fallen asleep easily in cars.
Anything that was moving, really. When he was a baby, his moms would take him on drives to try and get him down for bed. Something about the subtle drone of the world moving on outside the windows, the vague feeling of motion that made his body calm (He’d tried driving David around, when he was colicky. But that had never worked for him like it had for Caspar. He’d been soothed by noise. Constant talking or singing. Miserable prison songs and anything else Caspar had on his mind any given night). He wasn’t sure what it was, gravity or inertia— or maybe they were the same thing? Either way, being in motion had always felt like being… swaddled. Wrapped up in a weighted blanket or his moms’ arms.
The diner was the same. Even at the beginning, when everything was unsure and he was constantly on edge. When he’d thought Effie and Zebulon were symptoms of his broken sanity. Even in the days when he couldn’t bring himself to open the doors to whatever worlds awaited after a jump. The motion of the diner between worlds had soothed him to sleep like car rides always used to. There was a steady hum that permeated the floor he slept on and lights passing by outside the windows that streaked across the walls and ceiling while he waited to fall asleep. And even though it wasn’t technically motion—at least, according to Ava—Caspar swore he could feel that familiar pressure all over his body. Could feel his breathing slow and his blood pumping against the confines of his skin. He missed that now.
Without the singing solar winds and dancing lights, the diner was just… a diner. It was just dark. It wasn’t quiet. There were still the sounds of Pasadena beyond the walls of the building: cars and birds and coyotes, occasionally. Occasionally a car would pass by, and for a moment the headlights would track across the ceiling the way the starlight used to, but otherwise it was… still. And uncomfortable.
All of this to say, Caspar couldn’t sleep.
The floor was hard, even with the padded sleeping bag he’d gotten accustomed to over the years. It was somewhere between too chilly and too warm, which meant Caspar was constantly pulling his blanket off, then back on. Then sticking one leg out, then the other. Then just his upper body, then tucking himself up to his chin. The sound of rustling fabric bombarded his ears incessantly, and he found himself biting the inside of his cheek as he once again tossed the blanket away from his sweltering body.
He groaned and sat up, giving up on sleep (which had become a more and more common occurrence since they’d been stranded here). He ran a hand through his hair and rolled his neck, grimacing at the soreness. 173 years of not aging in the diner unfortunately hadn't reversed the ache of age in his spine. He let his hand fall back to his lap with a sigh.
A memory surfaced, then. One of those memories that’s a million things except for what really happened. The smell of vinyl. Legs tangled up in his, the soreness in his knees from the awkward position. A feeling in his chest that felt like home. The sound of deep breathing in front of him. But no idea what it had actually been. What it meant. Why it had happened.
Why it hadn’t happened since.
Carefully, like a soldier poking his head out from a trench, fearful of enemy fire, Caspar peeked over the top of the counter and into the rest of the diner. Gloria and Leif were peacefully asleep in the office and on the roof, respectively, leaving all booths but one unoccupied.
Ava slept peacefully in her booth, her head thrown back against the seat and her mouth hanging open, slightly. Caspar was sure that if he looked closer, there’d be a faint line of drool down her chin. Ava wasn’t loud, but her breathing was slightly nasal, just on the verge of snoring. She had a blanket wrapped loosely around her and one leg tucked between her and the table. It didn’t look very comfortable, but Ava seemingly had a talent for falling asleep anywhere without much issue.
Seeing that she was asleep, Caspar pulled himself to standing, flinching when his knees cracked. But Ava didn’t stir. So, Caspar crossed his arms in front of him, leaning over the laminate countertop, letting his hips slide into a contrapposto that would definitely leave him sore if he stayed there too long.
He remembered the dizzy feeling of being roused from a deep sleep. A sharp pain through the back of his neck and into his brain, puncturing his skin like a sewing needle and pulling a string of numbers through his mind. He remembered waking the sleeping woman across from him— trying to, anyway— and the confusion that he trusted her to chase away. The panic that swelled in him when she couldn’t. A hand on his wrist and a promise in the dark. A tiny point of intimacy amid a universe of other happenings, dense enough to pull everything else toward it.
That had been after the Pyrophyte. After Clementine. After Caspar had compared Ava to the Foolish Guillemot, and after she had asked him not to go.
Caspar remembered what falling in love felt like. Or, at least, he thought he did. When he’d fallen for Philomena, he remembered feeling light and full of air, like he might lift off the ground. Untethered and ready to float into the stars. So he must not be falling in love with Ava, he reasoned. Because when Ava asked him to stay, it felt like gravity had gotten stronger. Like, even if he was able to leave her, some invisible force would pull him back. The same force that had dragged him across three galaxies after he’d been kidnapped by the Teds. The same force that had him watching her, here, now, when he couldn’t sleep. The same force that had led him to her booth all those months ago, falling asleep across the table.
The same force that was pulling him back there now.
As he crossed the black and white tile of the diner floor, Caspar realized that there was no catalyst spurring this forward. No close call, no moment of confession, no triumph or grief for them to share. They didn’t just do this kind of thing unprompted. That wasn’t how they worked. They worked like Orpheus and Eurydice. Caspar led the way into new territory and hoped Ava was following. And she always was, just so long as he didn’t turn around to face her. Just so long as he was something for her to hide behind.
Before he could talk himself out of it, he was standing beside her booth. He’d been right; if he squinted, he could see the faint glimmer of saliva trailing from the corner of her mouth. He used to have to wipe dribble from David’s chin after his afternoon naps, usually with his bib. There was no bib here. And also, Ava would probably kill him.
Still, his fingers twitched at his sides, itching to… something. Get closer, somehow. Brush the stray hair out of her face, readjust her blanket on her shoulders, maybe. He settled for squeezing her shoulder, gently. He could feel her collarbone jutting out beneath his thumb, even under the layers of fabric.
“Ava,” he whispered. Nothing. Caspar sighed. He could back out now. Go back to his bedroll behind the counter and pretend this had never happened. “Ava, wake up,” he said instead, shaking her this time. Her head rolled, slightly, and she smacked her lips. She was awake now, Caspar knew. Awake and ignoring him. Casper shook her again. “Ava. Ava.” Ava inhaled deeply, letting out a loud yawn on the exhale. She didn’t open her eyes.
“Caspar,” she rasped, her voice crackly with sleep. “If you’re waking me up in the middle of the night right now, for any other reason than new numbers, I will throw you off the parking lot. Are you hearing numbers?”
“I— no.”
“Parking lot.”
“It’s just Pasadena out there.”
“Sounds like a suitable punishment to me. Out you get. Let me sleep.”
“What happened to throwing me out?”
“You do it.”
“You know how I bring you things?” Ava cracked an eye open at that, giving Caspar the same quizzical look she gave everything. Like she was trying to figure out what he was going to say before he had the opportunity to say it. Well, good luck to her, because Caspar didn’t even know what he was going to say.
“You mean how you leave your little gifts at my feet like an eager puppy and I let you? Yes, Caspar, I’m aware.”
“Well…” Caspar took a deep breath and shoved his hands into the pockets of his PJ pants, trying to quell the desire to reach out. He’d always run his fingers through David and Philomena’s hair when they were tired, like an apology for disturbing them. Somehow, he didn’t think Ava would appreciate it the same way. “Well, now I’m asking you for something.”
“Oh?” That’s not how this works.
“Yeah.” I know. They both stood there for a moment, waiting for Caspar to speak. Both equally unsure of what the next words out of his mouth were going to be. He couldn’t help but feel like he was doing something he shouldn’t. When Orpheus had turned to see Eurydice, did he have a feeling, somewhere in the pit of his stomach, that he was making a mistake? Some dread beneath the desire to see his lover? Something screaming at him to stop, don’t turn around, don’t face her yet?
“... Well?” Ava sat up, letting her raised leg fall beneath the table and squinting up at Caspar with both eyes. In the light of day they were a hazel-y green color. Like the color the sky would turn before the tornado sirens went off back home. In the dark, they looked gray. And when she looked at him like that, with a combination squint of annoyance and not having her glasses on, they felt hard. It was intimidating, so instead he focused on the crease that she always got between her brows when she was looking at him that way.
“Can I sleep here?”
Ava’s eyes relaxed, and her mouth dropped open slightly. But only for a second. She snapped it shut so quickly her teeth made a clacking sound, and she winced. She didn’t say anything.
“I can’t sleep,” Caspar said. “I haven’t really been sleeping well since we landed here. I’ve always slept better when things are… moving, I guess. And it is the first time in about a hundred and seventy-three years that I’ve slept in the diner while it was stationary, so. I guess I’m just not used to solid ground anymore.”
“Okay,” Ava said. Already a better reaction than Caspar had been expecting. She was quiet for a second, like she was waiting for him to speak. When he didn’t, she ran a hand through her hair and flipped it over her shoulder. It wasted no time in falling right back into her face. “Why… would sleeping in my booth solve that problem?”
I don’t know, Caspar thought. Because being near you feels like being pulled somewhere. Because I feel in motion around you. Because I’ve never felt more still than when I’m sitting next to you. Because something about your presence makes me feel at ease. Because you can fall asleep anywhere and maybe it’s contagious.
“We’ve done it before,” was what he landed on. Ava stared at him. “Everything was sort of… stagnant? After the Pyrophyte? Everything had been so hectic for so long and then it just… wasn’t. I didn’t think I’d be able to get much sleep, but I did. And I slept here.”
“You don’t need a blanket or anything?” Ava asked gently. Not a concerned question. She wasn’t asking if he’d be cold. He wasn’t sure what she was asking. He was never sure of anything when it came to her.
“I was gonna ask you first. It’d be a bit presumptuous if I just showed up with my blanket and pillow.”
“Okay.” Pregnant pauses were common between them. Especially in the past year or so. It seemed they were never really sure what to say when they weren’t trading barbs or making fun of each other. But this. This was heavy. Caspar wasn’t sure if it was comforting or oppressive.
“So…?”
Ava stayed silent. She looked down at the table and her hair fell into her face even more, obscuring it. She hated having her hair in her face. It was so straight and fine that a severe bun was the only way she managed to keep it out of her eyes. The only time she let down like this was at night.
“You know how you bring me things?” She asked, echoing Caspar’s earlier shot in the dark. Her voice was quiet, quieter than Caspar had probably ever heard it. Not shy or tentative, just quiet. “And I let you?” He nodded.
“Yeah, Ava.”
“If you bring your blanket over here,” she said. “I’ll let you.”
Casper inhaled deeply, and let his response of “okay” come on the exhale. He turned and took his hands out of his pockets and rubbed them on his pants to try and dry some of the dampness that had accumulated there. Ava’s eyes were on him the entire trip back behind the counter. He grabbed his blanket off the bedroll and considered grabbing his pillow, but decided against it. It’d just be a hassle to figure out how to use it sitting up, and he didn’t want to fumble with a worn-down pillow in front of Ava for ten minutes. And he definitely didn’t want to sleep with his head resting on the table. His back would be stuck in a C-curve in the morning. No, he’d just sleep like Ava had been. Like he had last time. Last time, sleeping with Ava. Sat up straight in the booth, or… maybe leaning against the wall? Maybe he should grab his pillow, then. He didn’t want to have his neck at an awkward angle all night—
“You fall asleep back there, Schmoopie?” came Ava’s voice from over the counter. Caspar rolled his eyes and grabbed the pillow, pushing off his knees to get back to his feet with a groan and making his way back to the booth. “Or did your old-man knees just make it hard to get up again?”
“I’m not even middle-aged.”
“You’re one hundred and seventy-three years old—,”
“Yes, but my body isn’t.”
“How old is your body?”
“Isn’t that rude?”
“Not when it’s for science.”
“Is it?”
“Of course not.”
Caspar didn’t answer. He chuckled as he took the seat across from her, propping his pillow up against the back of the seat, flattening his blanket over his legs and avoiding Ava’s gaze all the while. Part of him was afraid that if he looked now, he’d discover she’d never actually been there at all.
His leg brushed Ava’s. Or her leg brushed his. He couldn’t make out much about her from the limited contact, but he could feel the shape of her calf. It was surprisingly toned, considering he could feel it through her pants and his own. Then again, maybe she was just thin.
For the nth time that night, Caspar found himself flung eight months into the past, the night before everything went to shit. When Ava had held his hand and told him he was doing great. She had held his hand, gripped it like a vice, pressing her thumb into his palm and then dragging it over his knuckles absently while her mind whirred. Back in the present, she crossed her other leg over her knee, and Caspar could feel her socked foot against his thigh.
Had there been anyone awake to notice, the contact between them would have been labeled unintentional. And they would have been right, in a sense. Two people sharing space are bound to make contact, accidentally forced into proximity. But there was always the choice that followed, the choice to end the contact when the moment arose. To pull back. Neither of them had made that choice, and that was as intentional as anything ever was when it came to them.
“Thirty-nine.”
“What?”
“I was thirty-nine, I think, when I got here. So, it stands to reason that my body is thirty-nine years old.”
“Ah. So, it was old-man-knees.”
Caspar sighed. “Yeah.” Ava hummed. “What about you?”
“Caspar!” Ava gasped in mock offense, putting the palm of her hand over her heart like a scandalized countess or something. “Never ask a lady her age, don’t you know anything?”
“It’s not rude if it’s for science.”
Ava laughed, the sound rumbling in her chest. Caspar really liked that laugh. It was somehow teasing and entirely genuine in that specific, Ava way that only Ava could be. Deep and subtle and not at all concerned with communicating her amusement to others. Just an expression, a completely natural reaction.
“I was maybe thirty-six? Thirty-seven? I only ever remembered my age on my birthday.”
“Right, sorry. I forgot I was talking to a mad scientist who doesn’t concern herself with things like her own age.”
“Exactly, Caspar.” It was quiet again, for a moment. Not the quiet of whizzing through time, space, and reality. The quiet of Pasadena. The quiet of a world that wasn’t theirs and they couldn’t leave. The quiet of the diner.
“You know, when my kid… when David was little,” Caspar began. Ava sighed and picked up her glasses from where they’d been resting on the napkin holder, unfolding them and placing them on her nose. Her brow eased immediately, now that she could see him. “And I mean really little. He must have been four or five when I stopped doing this. But I used to sing to him, to get him to sleep. Or talk to him. He’d get fussy if I stopped for even a minute, kid’s always been a good listener, I guess.”
“Yes, and you’ve always been an incessant talker.”
“Shut up. I think, after doing that for him for so long, it started to be for me a little bit too. Talking to him at night, or singing, or whatever it was, it started to help me. I slept better.”
“... Okay,” Ava said.
“When he let me do that for him, it helped me. It made my life better.”
“Okay.”
“Christ, Ava. I’m trying to say thank you.”
“Oh, were you? I honestly couldn’t tell.”
“Thank you,” Caspar said. “For letting me… bring my blanket over here. You’re helping me, when you do things like that.”
“I know,” Ava said, with that quality in her voice that was a little cocky, a lot amused, definitely real. He could really feel it then: the effect of being so close to Ava Maddox. He was being drawn in, closer and closer to her center of gravity. Being whipped around that tiny point of intimacy so fast that he barely felt as though he was moving at all. A pull so strong he felt like he was trudging through molasses. The soothing embrace of g-forces. He brought the back of his hand up to his mouth to hide a yawn and let his head fall back against the vinyl booth. He knocked his knee against hers gently.
“Are we going to sleep now?” Ava asked. “Are we done waking me up at ungodly hours to talk about random shit?” Caspar exhaled curtly through his nose in something between a chuckle and an annoyed huff.
“Oh, regret. So much regret.”
“What were you expecting? Honestly, Caspar.”
“God forbid anyone tries to ask you for anything, ever.”
“God forbid.”
Caspar’s eyes had slipped closed at some point, listening to the familiar teasing lilt in Ava’s voice. He heard her glasses clacking as she set them down again. He heard the vinyl creaking as she readjusted herself. He could feel her legs rearranging themselves under the table. She lifted both of her feet off the floor, seemingly hesitating for a moment. Her breathing seemed to slow, too, and Caspar tried not to furrow his brow. It was even more of a challenge to school his expression when, eventually, she laid both her legs across his lap, crossed at the ankles. Despite himself, Caspar smiled.
“G’night, Ava,” he mumbled.
“Good night, Caspar,” she replied. And with his heart pounding in his chest, spinning out of control around Ava’s center. With the weight of her feet in his lap and the nasally drone of her breathing in the air. With Ava, Caspar fell asleep easier than he had in eight months.