Archive of Our Own

CB was unconcerned. Just yesterday he had checked his braking shoes, and they had never betrayed him before, anyway, so he wouldn’t know why they would do so now.

With a paper bag dangling merrily from his gloved fingers and soft crackling sounding from his built-in radio whenever he passed an inhabited shed, he rolled down the track, stopping here and there to gather and blow on dandelions that grew on the wayside.

It was still early enough that barely anyone was up, only Dustin, who sat on the front steps of his shed, waved to him as he passed by. CB saluted and waved back, making a careful bow around Poppa’s shed and accelerated when he heard Dinah starting to rummage around in her kitchen.

Normally he would pop in for a cup of coffee and a chat before Greaseball managed to make his way from the bed to the floor and from there to the kitchen, but right now he was on a mission.

Opening and closing a metal door noiselessly was even harder than it sounded, but he managed to produce only the softest clang when he pulled it shut behind him. Then he brushed off his wheels and waited.

Ten seconds, forty seconds. All quiet. Schweet.

On to the kitchen.

With a malicious grin, he opened the bag, took a sharp knife, and-

halved the two breadrolls and English muffins that he had bought from the bakery, buttering the muffins, getting marmalade, honey, Lotus Biscoff spread and Nutella from the kitchen cabinet and loading the coffee machine with the finest coffee grounds that he had stolen from Rusty’s stash.

For a moment he debated stacking it all onto a tray and having breakfast in bed, but the coffee stains from last time still hadn’t washed out of his favourite comforter, so he set the table instead and flicked on the microphone of his radio.

“10-8. Electra, do you copy?”

The receiver crackled, almost sounding disgruntled. CB suppressed a grin, remembered that he was the only one in the room, and grinned so widely that his moustache tickled the bottom of his nose.

“10-2,” the voice on the other side murmured. “What you got for me, Red Caboose?”

“Still in bed greasy side up?” CB teased. “I only got a limited amount of breakfast food, you know…”

“Nrglgh.”

“Copy that. See ya in a minute.” He shut off the microphone.

True to his word, Electra appeared in the door not much later, in all his bed-headed, sleepy-eyed glory.

“Good morning. How do I deserve this treatment?” he greeted CB, looking not very grateful at all.

“Morn’. What, me making breakfast for you?”

Electra rolled closer and leaned down to kiss him. He tasted more like toothpaste than like morning breath, thankfully.

“No, being woken like that. Just, the cold, loveless bedroom around me and the cold, loveless sound of a radio receiver booting up without my permission.”

CB grimaced. Oops. “Sorry, I keep forgetting about that.”

Electra grumbled, but the fact that he didn’t seem to want to stop kissing him showed that CB was already forgiven.

“Got some hundred mile coffee here to wake you up properly. How about that?”

Electra, who had just sat down at the table with CB, looked up with surprise. “You drove hundred miles to get this coffee?”

“Erm…” CB imagined the steam coming out of Rusty’s ears at the other end of the yard when he’d find his empty stash sometime around noon today. “Sure. I’d go the extra mile for you, you know that.”

Electra’s lips curled into a sweet smile, and CB quickly looked down at his muffin and pretended that he wasn’t blushing.

A loud crunch made him look up again.

Electra had slathered an impressive amount of his Lotus Biscoff spread onto his bread roll and was now chewing with vigour, eyes still half-closed and crumbs sticking to his chin, almost unnoticeable on his dark skin.
It was an endearing sight.

“I can’t understand how you can eat that disgusting stuff,” CB said correspondingly, to express his love.

“Hm?”

“Speculoos spread. It’s so sweet, my entire mouth contracts when I even think about it.”

“It’s better than that toffee of yours.”

CB lifted an eyebrow and playfully tugged on one of Electra’s braids. “Don’t you dare call salmiakki toffee. You’re gonna hurt my feelings.”

“Noted,” Electra said drily, opting to hold CB’s hand to stop him from pulling his hair. Volta had just rebraided it yesterday.
It also made that adorable blush on CB’s cheekbones reappear.

He finished his roll and reached for his coffee cup, the aromatic, bitter smell clearing his sinuses and waking up his foggy brain.

“What did you do yesterday night that you’re so bleary?” CB asked, trying and failing to spread marmalade on his muffin with his left hand. He didn’t let go of Electra’s, though.

“I couldn’t find my silk bonnet,” Electra replied, unhappily carding his fingers through the frizzy mess of his hair. “That’s what I get for making Purse dust the shelves. He probably stole it for himself.”

“Possibly.” CB gave up and unceremoniously dipped his muffin into the marmalade like a tortilla chip. “Didn’t you think of Wrench’s silk scarves in the chest in the living room?”

Electra halted in motion with his coffee cup half-tilted to drink, frowning. “No.” He pursed his lips, burning them on the coffee in the process. “Agh!”

CB shoved the rest of his muffin into his mouth, let go of Electra’s hand and hopped off his chair, opening the fridge to pour two glasses of orange juice.

“You coulda asked me,” he said as he sat down again, handing one of the glasses to Electra so he could cool his burned lips, “I’m always up late, and I still got some heirlooms from my grandma. There oughta be a bonnet or two among them. You like frilly stuff, don’t you?”

“Silentium,” Electra grumbled, pressing the cold glass to his mouth.

CB cackled and turned his focus to his bread roll.

Comfortable silence fell over them, only interrupted by Electra slathering honey and Biscoff spread onto his muffin, making CB grimace in pity for his taste buds.

“Are you still going over to Dinah later?” Electra asked after a while, carefully blowing on his coffee.

“Yes way,” CB nodded, brushing crumbs from his moustache. “Was planning to go to the radio tower later on. Maybe we can meet in the middle?” he added when seeing Electra’s downcast expression.

“And what’s so important at the radio tower that you can’t just stay here, lover?” he said, reaching out with a long arm and snatching CB’s hat from his head.

CB huffed and threw a quick look into the mirror on the kitchen counter that someone had forgotten there and sorted his mousey brown hair.
“Oh, just reading the mail. Besides, I might get mad if I stay inside for too long, Rakastettu. You wouldn’t like that.”

Electra’s hair seemed to bristle at the pet name. By now CB knew enough about electric trains that he was aware that it did bristle, all the flustered excess static energy having nowhere else to go. (Since Electra didn’t blush as easily as CB himself, this was far more of a tell that he was flattered.)

“By now I’ve seen you in every state of mind. Haven’t found one that I dislike. Yet.”

CB beamed. “You do love me.”

The hair did it again. Electra’s eyebrows wandered into the direction of his hairline. “…I just called you lover. I thought that was a given?”

This resulted only in a cackle and the building worry that he had misunderstood something again.

Because oh, how he did love this smart-aleck of a caboose, from the antenna on his hat that had almost poked Electra’s eye out while trying to kiss many a times and the single gray hair on the back of his head that CB always complained about down to the silly little moustache comb in the back pocket of CB’s trousers and the left shoe tie that was chronically too loose.

“You’re sweet,” CB said eventually, stealing his hat back from where it dangled limply from Electra’s long fingers. “I was just making sure, you know? No, I’m lying. I was teasing you.”

Electra breathed a soft sigh of relief. “Oh.” Then, carefully: “I’d whistle at you. If I could, I mean.”

The blush was back full force, but this time CB didn’t care. “Oh, you dip,” he said affectionately. “Whistling at folks isn’t half as important as Dinah made it seem. Greaseball can’t whistle at her, either, after all. He’d just honk her off her wheels.”

“I don’t want to think about that wannabe right now,” Electra grumbled and reached for CB again, this time grabbing his hand while tangling their legs under the table. “But I am glad to hear that. Seems that I am perfect after all.”

“Perfect? Hm.” CB tugged at a braid again and whistled at full volume.

The sharp fweeeet made Electra flinch and the windows rattle. One of the wine glasses in the kitchen cabinet burst and they could hear the Components loudly complaining from where they had been rudely awakened in their bedrooms.

“We complete each other,” CB said cheerfully, letting go of Electra’s braid and stooping down to retie his left shoelace. Then he stood up and rolled to the hallway to get a dustpan for the unfortunate wine glass while Electra recalibrated his eardrums.

Once the shards were swept away and Electra had cleared the table for the five bleary trucks that shuffled into the kitchen, CB stood on his stops for a kiss that was eagerly reciprocated.

“I’ll see you at the radio tower. Keep it between the ditches, neighbour. 10-7!”
With that, he was out the door.

Electra looked after him, accepting his missing bonnet from Purse absentmindedly. A gentle smile adorned his crumb-blotted face.
“I’ll see you there.”