Chapter Text
Pleck wasn't sure when he got such a prominent farmer's tan on his arms, probably sometime between summer and autumn when he’d helped his dad farm the fields for the year. Rangus Six had a tendency to hoard its heat all summer and blast it for a two week period, just in time for the glowbugs to come out of hiding and start their day-long mating rituals. He’d spent day after day on his knees tending to the grass, but he couldn't remember anything he thought about during it. The rest of the year was wet and dull and the grass maintained itself, Pleck thinks he'd like to curl up on the ground and be rained on for twelve months minus two weeks too, if it meant he didn't have to be reminded he's back on his parents farm.
He’s been back home for almost two years now, his dad had told him it would take a few months for him to get used to the humid air that accompanied the rain. In a way, he was glad that the weather rarely flip-flopped here, it gave him something to add to his routine. A constant that wouldn’t cheat him out on some random day and leave him over dressed and getting a stern talking to by his mom for the sweaty clothes. Karen, his mother, had always babied him, even before he left, constantly treating him like he was still fifteen and slingshotting pebbles near the garfons to make them scatter. Sometimes, while wheeling buckets full of mulch and leaves down the drive, he thinks that maybe he’s not any more mature now than he was when he left in the first place. His mom was glad to have him back, welcoming him with a bone crushing hug, his father had said “I told you so.”, and continued into the house.
“I bought the good kind, the one you like the smell of. Seasalt and coconut, I think. Make sure to use it darling.” His mom had told him in spring, showing him the white bottle of suncream, but he hadn't used it. Pleck doesn't like the smell of the ocean anymore, which is weird because in the last five years, he's only been to the ocean once. “Thanks, mom. I appreciate it.” He'd said to her, she’d smiled at him and patted his cheek, told him she was glad he was home. Though he could tell she was trying not to look at his eye.
“Ow.” Pleck presses his finger into the red skin on his shoulder, standing in the mirror of his bathroom. God, he'd lost weight since he got back. Sure, he put on more muscles working the field, but he also lost his appetite somewhere along the way. Now, he looks at the left over empty shoebox of a body reflecting back at him, his shoulders and neck burning something fierce. It isn't the worst he's ever burnt, glimpses of memories of fish flash behind his eyes but it's not that clear anymore. There's a pit in his stomach, the kind that makes you feel sort of sad or nostalgic. The kind that makes you want to go knock on your moms door and cry in her arms while she tells you it'll all be okay. He sighs making eye contact with himself, knowing he's only looking at half of himself and that somewhere out there the missing part of him exists, somewhere destroyed and not one piece anymore. Cells just floating. Something about The Space. Something about a part of himself missing.
Pleck runs his hands down his face, he'll be twenty eight soon, when he sleeps tonight he'll dream about going to Rangus Two. Or maybe he wont dream at all, it's hardly got any point anymore.
Pleck leaves the bathroom thirty minutes later, damp from his shower. Six months ago his mom had told him to cut his hair, that the back was getting too long, nearly reaching his waist. “The girls won't like that, sweetie.” Pleck walks down the stairs while towel drying his hair, the girls, he thinks, the girls that had curled, bleached hair and glittery eyeshadow and colorful earrings, the girls, he thinks, the girls that never spoke to him outside of class, or graduation, or on the street. It was almost laughable, how unlikely it was that those girls would even attempt to like anything about pleck.
He knew his mom had been waiting for the day he came home and explained that he'd met a girl from the Terrance family two miles down the road, Destine, her name, and that he liked her and her freckled cheeks and the long hair on her tail, that she wanted to take over her fathers stable when he retired. It broke his heart that he knew she knew it would never happen, she'd lost hope trying to figure out why, but Pleck was yet to tell her much about his work in space outside of just that, the work. She knew the names of his crew, what they did, where they went for the big jobs. She knew he'd been lost in another galaxy at one point, and she cried when he told her that. Pleck almost felt bad about it but he quickly lost that thought when he realized no, he actually didn't feel bad about it. He didn't feel bad because if he felt bad then he'd have to feel bad about all the other things she'd disapprove of, and he couldn't let himself carry that guilt. He's done enough of that for one person.
“Pleck, baby, call your father for dinner will you? And don't walk around with wet hair, you'll get sick.” Pleck nodded, roughing up his hair with the towel one last time before throwing it into the hamper behind the kitchen wall. His mother grumbles from his side and picks the towel back up to finish drying it for him, it feels like she's scrambling his brain. Pleck stands there, arms limp while he waits for her to declare it dry enough. He wonders if his parents know he hears them whispering about his personality change at the kitchen table before bed every night, about how quiet he's gotten, how complicit. Idly he realizes it’s shame making him assume they know, because really how could they when he never shuts his door completely before they go to bed so that he can open it without the handle creaking and lean over the staircase bannister above the kitchen door to listen.
His father is a kind man, but plenty judgemental about Pleck, almost never perfectly proud, always has some form of critique. That's not to say his father doesn't love him, he just doesn't show it as often as needed. Pleck finds him behind the house in the small garden sectioned off from the horses field, they used to have a swing set just by the left side of the garden, but not anymore. It rusted up one summer and his dad threw it out while he was at school. Pleck watches his father chopping the wood for the fire, he always feels like a kid again when he's alone with him. “Mom says dinners ready, told me to get you.” His dad grunts in response and waves him off.
Pleck lingers for a moment, then sniffs, “Do you want an orange beer with your dinner?”
His father sighs, looking forward at the house, “Yes, Pleckthaniel.”
“Okay.” Pleck sucks in a breath and turns around. There's a freezer in the barn where the family keeps the bulkier food and drink items, the box of beer, the steak and ribs they buy from the market every week, some of the horse medication is in there too. Pleck doesn't really know what it is. He used to hate going to the barn alone as a kid, his mom had told him that nothing was going to happen and there wasn’t anything to be scared of, and he knew that now, easily making the walk down the dirt path to the barn, flicking on the lights and rummaging through the freezer. As he got older he realized he was starting to like the smell of the barn, the stuffy scent becoming the only thing he liked about the farm. When he was a teenager he'd sneak to the barn at night and listen to old music on his fathers vintage CDs, he found the medium pretty useless in this day and age but the charm was there. He gravitated towards slow, melancholic music from his fathers collection, and he’d lay on the upper decking on some hay looking at the sky. At some point through the years, the barn had wilted and lost some roofing leaving a hole right at the back above the upper decking. Though they never fixed it, Pleck didn't tell anyone that overtime he'd pick away at the broken wood to make the hole bigger.
It's ironic now, that he'd spent so many nights as a teenager looking up at the sister planets of Rangus Six and fantasizing about going to them, or any other planet, just away. Pleck looks up at the decking, warm light streaming in through the hole. It would've been nice to share that view with someone. He grabs the beer for his dad and closes the freezer.
He eats in silence, staring off into space, while his parents share glances and talk about their day pretending everything is normal. Pretending the third person at the table isn't entirely wrong, and different from the person that left four years ago.
Pleck doesn't stay on his homeworld entirely anymore, his parents farm expanding in clients means more deliveries and he just so happens to have experience in both space travel and doing deliveries. Oftentimes the deliveries are to Rangus Seven and the neighboring planetary system. Although he hates the work he's sort of thankful for it too, he doesn't enjoy space travel anymore but he'd take anything to get off the farm for more than a day. He used to do some of the deliveries with next doors farmboy, Dennis, or Daniel or something. It didn't last long, the guy up and quit two months in. “This off planet chick, man, you should see her- I’m going with her when she leaves, I’m gonna follow her anywhere dude.” Pleck had told him “I’m happy for you, have fun.” Pleck had also chewed the inside of his cheek the whole trip back.
He wasn't entirely jealous, he had no immediate wishes to pack up and sail away with some no-name from here or there. He’s happy right now. Happy because at least he’s not endlessly sad, or out in the real sticks, or a dingy alley selling off-brand merchandise in Holowood. He doesn’t believe in much anymore, not finding a need or use for anything The Space dumped on him these days. He doesn’t spend much time fighting, or winning, or saving much anymore, either. Part of him thinks it would be nice to raid his moms bedside table in search of the small pocket book and make an appointment with the big man upstairs, fall back to his small town roots and believe with such a strong passion that it’ll mean something more. Sit in his room and not just say his name in vain but instead in pleas, or something, he thinks. He’s not sure of the intricacies of it all.
Now, he drowns in the silence of the ship, only the faint rattle of the console as he flies. He doesn't talk, or sing along to music, afraid that if he speaks out loud something will shatter inside him, that the lack of response from anyone will make him cry like a kid. Sometimes when he’s really worried he’s going to break into a hundred tiny pieces, he’ll turn on the galactic radio and flip channels until he finds something quiet, most of the time its guitar, and somber singing, he’ll turn it up loud and let the strumming echo around the control room of the ship. When he's on a long haul journey and can put the autopilot on he'll walk to the bridge of the ship and lay on the white metal plating ground, looking up to the stars through the middle window on the top of the ship, and zone out to the slow, loud music.
He finds he doesn't talk all that much anymore, saving his words for when needed, when talked to and expected an answer of. Pleck told his mom that no, he's not depressed, he's just burned out and tired. That years of constant travel and deliberating used up his voice for a while. He didn't tell her that he's afraid his voice won't sound like him anymore, that it'll be someone else.
An alarm goes off from the control room, signaling to Pleck he’s entering the delivery planet's atmosphere, he sighs and pushes himself from the floor and makes his way back to his seat. He never remembers anything from this part of the deliveries. Has a set script for his greeting, filling forms, unpacking, and leaving. He's delivered here enough that the recipients don't care much for small talk either. He helps them unload the boxes onto their dock, and promptly wipes the entire exchange from his memory, walking back to the hull of the ship. His music is still playing, overpowering the bird calls outside in the docking bay picking at the mud and insects from fallen boxes. Pleck holds back a shuddering breath and closes the hull door behind him, his eyelids feel heavy and his chin keeps quivering. He pretends they don’t, and it doesn’t.
The control room is loudest, the music still at full volume as he sits in his chair. He rests his head in his hand and just sits, sits with the music and the rattling and fists his hair and groans and- he sits up again, pulling the steering console toward him before pressing the buttons necessary to get back up in the air. His grip on the steering console stays tight the entire way up and out of the atmosphere, it loosens when he's out and he blocks in the coordinates home before turning on autopilot again. Running his hands through his hair, the song is quiet now, loud in volume, but quiet in meaning, and Pleck stands up to make his way to the kitchen, he doesn't really have an objective, he just needs to do something- now. He turns from the chair and takes less than a step before he's frozen. Frozen in place, in shock, in fear, in embarrassment. He looks down at his feet, hands gripping the ends of his shirt, he can feel his eyes are wide and his mouth is open but nothing comes out. Pleck looks back up, just enough to see the feet of the person standing at the end of the control room, probably only fifteen feet away. He swallows, opens his mouth again.
“Your hair is long.”
Pleck’s eyes feel dry and he laughs, he laughs because what a stupid thing to say, what a ridiculously stupid thing to say. He looks up at C-53, standing still, he's got a bandana around his neck and a new face plate, it looks like goggles- or maybe night vision add-ons. He looks older and Pleck smiles to himself and bites his tongue to trample that smile entirely. “I never cut it.” And his voice is too loud and solid, and he said he wouldn't talk out loud on the ship.
C-53 takes the- goggles, then, off his head, clipping them to his hip as he takes a few steps forward. Pleck blinks, this is too familiar, deja vu floods his body and he can feel himself panicking because this wasn't supposed to happen. This wasn’t- Pleck looks to his feet again, “Are you real?” He rushes, he hadn't really meant to say it but the music is loud and his voice is solid and he's going home and he doesn't know how to explain this.
C-53 is in front of him now, he can see his feet, they're muddy and scratched up, he kicks his toe plate to the ground to get some of the dried mud off, then switches legs. The bot hesitates before offering a vaguely untrustworthy “Yeah, Pleck. I'm real.” Pleck watches his feet disappear to the side of him as C-53 makes his way over to the co-pilot seat, Pleck stays where he is, he thinks maybe now he really is crazy after all this time. “It was Horsehat’s birthday last month, Nermut said the three of them went to some diner in Holowood that's still got Bargie’s theme up, the last one or something. Said they're a big fan of Bargie now that they're old enough to watch her holos.”
Pleck turns around and sees C-53 facing the window, his feet up on the console deck while he unties the bandana around his neck, he looks worn and solitary. He unglues his feet from the floor and feels himself float over to the pilot seat, sitting without looking at C-53 still. “Pfft, to think Dar was afraid they'd do a bad job raising Hoha, kid’s a saint.”
Pleck looks at him now, he could almost break down at the fact that C-53 is straight back into his Tellurian (but really just Pleck) colloquialisms and sounds without even thinking twice. He wonders if he's even made the sound ‘pfft’ in the last year and a half. Wonders if he's seen the ocean in the last year and a half. “Oh.” and he hears it himself, hears how pathetic of a response that is but really who could blame him, his heart is going a mile a minute and he's watching C-53 type in some command to turn hyperspeed on, changing his usual seven hour ride to not even ten minutes. Pleck’s breath hitches and he looks forward again. “Why- why are you here? Now?”
Out of the corner of his eye he can see C-53 look at him and shrug. “Honestly, I didn't even know this was your ship- or where it was going. I've been trying to get off that planet for weeks but, some people I cheated parts out of had other plans. Thought I'd hitch a ride. I guess it's fate.” and C-53 laughs. Pleck fakes a small laugh while his heart feels like it's being torn in two, because this was an accident. He wasn't planning on seeing Pleck again. “So where you headed next? I'll probably trade off somewhere.”
Pleck clenches his jaw, “Home- Rangus Six.” He glances at C-53, “My parents farm.” He feels like he's melting, like his skin and bones are going to fall straight to the floor and leave him a scrawny skeleton on the chair. C-53 straightens up, taking his feet off the console deck, like he was nervous- or more likely uncomfortable, regretting even boarding the ship. “Right.”
A pause.
It’s funny, that the tension swallowing the room feels exactly as it did the first day Pleck met C-53, he had accidentally offended him. C-53 had thought he was mocking his voice, or tone really, and Pleck had felt a metaphorical bucket of cold water splash over his head. Though the feeling only lasted a second, Pleck remembers the anxiety that had rushed through him. He only places both these moments on the same level because he hadn't known C-53 then, it was first meeting anxiety, and this was last meeting anxiety, or- he assumed it was. Point was, both were heavy and gave him stage fright, even with no one else in the room.
“Maybe don’t board random ships.” And Pleck can feel the snark swimming in his words, purposeful or not it was there. “Well, I didn't know it'd be you or that y'know, you had moved back home.” C-53 crosses his arms. Pleck furrows his brows, sighing, “Where else would I go.” He says quietly, it wasn’t really a question, he didn’t expect an answer, but it felt necessary to say. Realizing the music is awkwardly loud, he turns it off. Now it's just the rattling of the control console and the whirring of C-53. “Dar did say you could've stayed with them and Nermut, before Bargie got too busy.”
Pleck sighs and closes his eyes, “That was just out of courtesy, no new family wants a freeloader living with them.”
“Still you could’ve-”
“I could've done a thousand things. But I didn't. We're entering the atmosphere now.” And Pleck is upset, upset because he didn't prepare for this and he never expected to. He has to show up at home, with not just a random person, but one of his crew members, and there's too many things to explain to them. Too many things he'd have to admit. C-53 doesn't say anything else for the remainder of the flight, just sits quietly as the ship lands in the dock a few hundred meters from the farm.
Pleck grounds himself and takes a deep breath. Neither of them move, Pleck can’t seem to wrench his eyes away from the flight screen in front of him blinking in a solitary red rhythm. This, he thinks, is the worst he's ever felt in his life. He's not happy. He's not angry, but he doesn't know how else to word this. He doesn't know how to navigate this, no one taught him how. The last time he'd seen C-53 was when they all had orange beer on Bargie’s bridge, sitting on the remaining crates waiting to be carried through the hull and out into their respective xl speeders. Bargie had said she was happy to finally ‘drop those extra pounds’, Dar had laughed and called her beautiful regardless. C-53 had clinked his bottle, that he wasn't drinking (nor was it open), to Pleck’s and told him they'd done it. Pleck knew his chipped tooth was on bright display when he’d smiled, C-53 had smiled back- in a way that you really had to be looking to be able to see. Pleck can't remember how to see it anymore.
“Do you want me to leave?”
Pleck bit his cheek, something he'd picked up to help dampen his frown. “You don't have anywhere else to go.”
“Right.” C-53 rubbed where his mouth would be. “I can still leave, if you want me to.”
Pleck swallowed back a noise begging to escape his throat, “Just follow me.”
He stands from his chair without looking at C-53, silently grabbing the clipboard of paperwork from the shelf on the right side of the control room, he kept his eyes hard and focused as he made his way down the hall, C-53’s steps echo behind him- sometimes out of rhythm like he was stopping or slowing every time pleck himself slowed. It unnerves Pleck, it's so out of character for him to not be walking side by side.
It was darker out now, probably a few hours after dinner in the Decksetter home, Pleck usually gets back from this delivery at dawn, but C-53’s unprompted hyperspeed changed that routine. He'll have to fix his sleep schedule now. But at least it's pretty out, the sky is pink and orange, not lighting the ground but at least painting a pretty picture for anyone watching. The lights were off in the house, save for the front deck lamp swarming with flies. Pleck motioned for C-53 to follow him around the back of the house, he'd have to check his parents bedroom light on the top right. Just in case. Noting the coast was clear, he turned to C-53. “Go to the barn, down that road. Dad rarely ever goes down anymore. Hide in a stable, or the- I don’t know the upper decking,or some hay, I don’t care. Just go and don't leave until I come get you.” C-53 gives him an unreadable expression, nods, and turns around down the dirt path. Pleck watches him for a second before making his own way to the backdoor, he pauses for a second, turns back to C-53. “C!” He whisper shouts.
C-53 turns to face him again. “Don't touch the CDs!” Pleck really hopes his dad can’t hear him, considering he’s right under their window. C-53 nods again and is off.
Pleck does not sleep that night, not when he's too busy picking at the skin on his thumb, not when his stomach feels like it's full of warm water. His tail mindlessly swishing in the air beside him. He tried his best really, he furrowed his brows and bit his lip to stop his chin quivering. His eyelids were still heavy, but he wasn't tired. Sometimes Pleck felt like he was twelve again, and had a huge fight with a friend. Like he was alone in his room and no one was ever going to say the same jokes as that friend, know his nuances like that friend. His whole chest hurt in a way he was too familiar with, pain like seeing someone in a crowd and watching them turn away. Like he was sitting on his swingset alone because, really, Pleck couldn't even compare this feeling to anything because he'd never gotten the sickly daisy chain link of friendship with anyone as a kid. He couldn't even say this hurt like being twelve and having a huge fight with a friend, because he was twenty seven and this was the first time it'd ever happened, he was twenty seven and ten months and he hadn't even had a fight, not even a little, not at all, he'd gotten swept away on a current when he was twenty six and somewhere between the trickling off planet meet ups, he’d crossed a bridge over the frozen river running along the water tower a mile away beside the dairy farm and realized he couldn't remember the last time he spoke to any of them.
So no, Pleck does not sleep that night. And if he cries, which he didn't, it was because of the sunburn on his arms, and the lack of sea salt and coconut smell.