Chapter Text
They spend five days waiting for their submersible to grow.
Maxwell allows himself five days of as much selfishness as he can stomach. While everyone else enjoys the wonders of Oda, he spends his time with Torse, learning how to manipulate delicate clockwork machinery with hands that were never made to do delicate things. He knows how to touch Torse’s human body to make him moan; he wants to learn how to touch Torse’s automaton body to make him whir with pleasure.
Days are for them, for fun, and Maxwell might even be tempted to call their activities frivolous except for the way he feels like something inside him might snap apart if he goes too long without being able to hear the steady click-tick of Torse's escapement. Nights are for them, too – the only difference is that instead of touching each other desperately, they’ll do it gently. Torse will drape as much of his cast iron frame over Maxwell as he dares, and Maxwell will sleep better than he ever did back on Gath, the pressure making his whole body go pleasantly relaxed.
Unfortunately, that's not all they have to contend with over those few days. Monty and Marya are mostly entranced by the city, occupied by exploration and experimentation, but Monty hasn't forgotten about Torse's newly-acquired condition. He recruits Marya, ostensibly so they can "tackle the problem from both sides" – and to their credit, Maxwell supposes, when they want to steal Torse away for different tests and measurements, they make sure he knows he's doing them the favor. Satisfying their curiosity. They're looking for a fix, of course, but it's a complex process. They can't make any promises.
Torse still never tells them no. So Maxwell takes to accompanying him and sitting in the corner of the workshop, silently (brooding, Marya calls it), until he notices Torse's escapement ticking a little faster, or his hands curling into fists at his sides, or his eye-lights darkening from orange to red – then he steps in to be the one to say enough, when Torse is too desperate to come across as polite and amicable to say it himself.
The crew already thinks Maxwell has tone issues. Let them think this is a deficit of his as well.
He almost, almost asks Torse to stay back on the Zephyr while they take the submersible down to the temple. Days of having his hands all over Torse's more delicate clockwork has made him painfully aware of how breakable some of those systems are – and days of listening to Marya and Monty argue over hypotheses and data has left him feeling unsure of their ability to actually help, should anything go wrong.
But he never voices the concern. There's a part of him that knows that Torse would stay, if Maxwell asked, and that's why he can't ask.
By the time the fight is over, though, he wishes he had.
"Langostrum Gargantanex!" Monty calls over the radio, and Maxwell has to grit his teeth against yelling something truly ungentlemanly back. Because either Monty is digging into his memory to remember a name he heard while they were in Oda, or he's taking this time to invent a taxonomy, and neither of those things, in Maxwell's opinion, are a priority. They have more important things to worry about – like the giant fucking crab that’s trying to kill them.
Things don't get better after that.
Maxwell’s memory functions strangely when he’s digging deep, focused entirely on avoiding as much damage as he can. Sometimes things register out of order. Sometimes he can only focus on the unimportant details in his periphery, while the important details pass him by entirely.
He’s aware of very little except the crab before Olethra's mech disappears into a swirling cloud of grease, and then it’s like some sort of seal is broken. There are cultists fucking with the beacons, and he’s paralyzed, and then suddenly next to him, Torse goes unnaturally still as well, and the only reason Maxwell doesn’t descend into a true and complete panic is because he can still see the orange-red glow of Torse’s eye lights.
Still – the knowledge that whatever they’re up against can paralyze Torse is not a comforting one.
The first beacon goes out, and the seafloor becomes darker. At some point, Maxwell crashes the submersible – or maybe that was Monty? He’s not sure. He does know that Marya cries out over the radio as her goggles shatter, and Van curses loudly as she’s dragged closer to the portal that, maybe, they won’t have any other option but to go through.
Very clearly, he hears Marya and Van discussing the engine in the submersible, and Torse’s golden heart, and wants to weigh in, to tell them there’s nothing to even consider there – except then Daisuke is drowning and the panic is real again, clawing at Maxwell’s chest, and he feels like he doesn’t get a chance to breathe again until he’s clutching the ritual knife in one hand and Kensington is drifting to the seafloor, dead.
His first instinct is to look at Torse to share in the moment of victory, however brief, and he's just in time to see Torse pull the golden heart out of his chest and place it into the submersible's engine.
Torse disanimates, frozen on the seafloor, and it's different than seeing him paralyzed. This time, there's no comforting glow coming from his faceplate, assuring Maxwell that the lack of movement is temporary. He’s the same as he was at Ramansu – lifeless, utterly still – and something inside Maxwell’s chest tightens to the point of shattering.
He hears some kind of broken sound, and it takes him a moment to realize that it came from him. Grief is not an unfamiliar feeling, but he wasn’t expecting it here, not from two different fronts.
“Oh, shit!”
Olethra’s voice is sharp and high in his ear, jarring him out of the temporary haze that’s descended over him. He shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut as he forcibly turns his body away from Torse, from the submersible. They have other goals, other things they need to do, and he needs to focus on those.
“Maxwell!” Olethra’s voice comes over the radio again. “I’ve got Daisuke, go!”
Maxwell hesitates, confusion and exhaustion making everything so much harder. He doesn’t understand Olethra’s urgency, where she’s pointing him. But she’s looking at the submersible, so he turns back, and–
And he sees a human form clinging to the side of the submersible, twisting and kicking, completely unprotected in the crushing pressure.
Torse.
Maxwell is moving before he even makes the conscious decision to, straight for Torse. He’s painfully aware of the seconds passing, of the pressure of the water around them that he is unaffected by, but is slowly killing Daisuke and now Torse.
Torse is still flailing as Maxwell makes it to his side. He reaches, and a bare foot catches him on the wrist – not the wrist of the hand he has outstretched, intending to grab Torse and drag him into the submersible – but the other one, the one still holding the ritual knife. The blow drives the knife down, through the suit and through Maxwell’s thigh.
Water immediately pours into the suit as it begins to crumple around him, but Maxwell has a very clear goal, now. He releases the knife, now embedded in his thigh, and loops his arm around Torse’s waist, pulling his body close against his own.
By the time he makes it into the compartment at the back of the submersible, Torse is almost limp in his arms, and the water in his suit is up to his waist. But the leaves seal shut behind them and the water automatically drains, and both of them drop to the ground in a messy heap, Maxwell wincing as the knife is jostled.
It takes him two tries to pull off his helmet, and the water in his suit rushes up past his neck to pool on the floor beneath them.
Torse, he can see, is breathing, but his eyes are closed – and Maxwell only knows that the man half-draped over him is Torse at all because of the clockwork tattoo that covers one well-muscled arm. He looks almost nothing like he did the first time he transformed – the hair plastered to his head and face is dark, but there are no streaks of silver in it. There’s a faint dusting of hair on his upper lip, and he’s smaller, too, noticeably shorter than Maxwell, even lying down. His skin is a few shades darker than Maxwell’s own, and with the way his head is tipped back, there’s a mole right on the cut of his jaw that Maxwell can see clearly.
Maxwell clears his throat as the submersible lurches into motion. “Monty,” he calls, his voice weaker than he thought it would be. He glances down, surprised to see a fair amount of blood in the water pooling underneath them. Fuck. “Monty, I need–”
Monty appears in the archway that leads to the piloting room, and Maxwell slumps back to the floor, relieved.
A moment later, the world goes black.