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redwineandroses-13 · 7 years ago

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If We Were Back on Earth

Fanfic written for @wolf359bigbang2017 Corresponding artwork Artist: @defenestratin Characters: Doug Eiffel/Isabel Lovelace/Renée Minkowski, Hera Rating: Mature Summary: In the crushing loneliness of space, this fragile thing that’s developed between the three of them has become a source of desperately-needed comfort—but also of anxiety, particularly for Doug. What happens to their loving little trio if they do make it back to Earth? When Doug stops being one of the only warm bodies available to these gorgeous, badass women he’s fallen more than a little in love with and all of a sudden they have options (and in one case, a husband) again? Lovelace and Minkowski, meanwhile, are more than a little afraid that they might not make it back to Earth at all. Hera hears their concerns, and she consoles them in the best way she knows how: by telling them a story.

The happy ending I like to imagine they’ll get. :)

It started with an innocuous comment— actually, a rather sexy comment. A comment Eiffel very much enjoyed hearing in the moment. Which makes the whole thing worse, really.

It happened during one of their talks, the ones they have so casually now, over mugs of nighttime tea or bowls of morning cereal. Conversations about this insanely glorious, mind-boggling, if-only-teenage-Doug-could-see-him-now kinky three-way relationship they’ve had going for a few months now, ever since Minkowski and Lovelace caught him jerking off at his station and punished him for it—only to find that they enjoyed punishing Eiffel just as much as he enjoyed being punished.

They’re talking through the logistics of a scene when it happens.

“Now, if we were back on Earth, Eiffel, I’d buy a nice dildo just for you and peg you with it,” Lovelace says, as cool and casual as anything, which is how she delivers a lot of her sexier propositions. It drives Eiffel crazy. “But I don’t know that there’s anything up here that would be good for that.”

“I don’t know,” Minkowski says. “There are some truly bizarre things on this ship.“

But Doug doesn’t hear much of the ensuing conversation (which centers mainly on whether or not anything onboard could be safely used for anal penetration) because he’s hung up on the one unsexy part of what Lovelace said.

“If we were back on Earth.”

That’s the phrase that gets stuck in Eiffel’s craw, that keeps coming back to him in quiet, vulnerable moments, like when he’s alone in the shower or halfway between sleep and consciousness. If we were back on Earth.

Because here’s the thing. No matter how Doug figures it—and he figures it a lot of ways, like solving a math problem by hand, in Excel, and on two different calculators, trying to get a different answer to a problem that only has one—this thing they’re doing? This threesome, triad, polyamorous arrangement, whatever they wanted to call it? It would never work back on Earth. Could never work back on Earth. He tries to imagine himself out on a date with Lovelace, her gorgeous and confident, him lanky and awkward and overcompensating with corny jokes. The stares they would get. The laughter, stifled under hands to be polite, but audible nevertheless. He doesn’t belong with her , these strangers would think. She can do so much better .

And Minkowski—Doug’s breath catches in his throat when he thinks about Minkowski and Earth. She has a husband. And while Doug doesn’t know much about their relationship—after Lovelace first defused the other woman’s protest that she was married with a sultry married ain’t dead, is it?, none of them had mentioned him again—there’s nothing to suggest that Minkowski wouldn’t go back to him when she returned to Earth. That she wouldn’t want to return to her healthy, monogamous marriage, leaving Lovelace and Eiffel—where?

Lovelace could find someone else, of course, easily. Someone as beautiful and badass as she was, her fitting counterpart, someone who in conjunction with her would evoke the phrase “power couple.”

And Doug would be all alone, with nothing but the memory of a few months on a spaceship when the two smartest, most fantastic women he’d ever met had been desperate and lonely enough to take him to bed. He could just picture himself, alone in a cramped and cluttered apartment somewhere, jerking off to the memories for the thousandth time. Miserable. Lonely. Untouched. And most of all, unloved.

It’s enough to make Eiffel collapse inside.

One night he’s in the middle of just such a collapse: he’s in the comms room, ostensibly on rotation, actually staring blankly at the controls, soul-crushing visions of if we were back on Earth dancing in his head like the world’s most vicious sugarplums and rocketing his mood into a downward spiral.

The thing about an all-seeing AI, though, is the all-seeing part.

“Officer Eiffel? Are you okay?”

Doug blinks a few times, rapidly, then rubs his eyes with the insides of his wrists.

“What? Yeah. I’m fine, Hera.”

“You don’t seem fine.”

“It’s nothing. Really.”

“Are you sure? Because you’ve seemed a little…off lately.”

Doug sits up, shakes the hair out of his eyes, and tries to feign alertness. “Off? I’m not off. I’m just as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as ever. Might as well call me Alvin or Rocky or something.”

“Eiffel.”

“Okay, okay, I will admit that I’ve been going through some stuff lately. Promise you’ll keep it a secret?”

“If I had hands, I’d pinky swear.”

“Okay, so…”

And he tells her the whole thing from start to finish. Lovelace’s offhand comment. How he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it. The ways it had manifested itself, over and over again, in the darkest parts of his imagination.

Hera’s an excellent listener, and by the time Doug’s finished, he’s on the edge of tears, the beginnings of a good old-fashioned cry forming at the corners of his eyes.

“Have you told Lovelace or Minkowski any of this?” Hera asks when he finishes.

Doug snorts. “Yeah, right. I’m just going to draw attention to the fact that I don’t deserve them and remind them exactly how out of my league they both are. That definitely won’t backfire or make them reconsider this entire situation or anything.”

“I don’t think it will,” Hera says. “Eiffel, I think��I think I have an idea. Something that might help. But it’ll be better if Lovelace and Minkowski are both here.”

“What kind of idea?”

“Just…trust me on this one, okay? I’ll ask them to come up here, and you can tell them how you’re feeling, and I’ll take it from there.”

Doug considers it. He’d rather swallow shards of glass than admit to either woman how insecure he’s feeling about their relationship. Just thinking about it feels like swallowing glass: a sharp pain stabs at the back of his throat, and the tears in the corners of his eyes threaten to spill over.

Still, he trusts Hera. Trusts her more than anyone besides maybe Lovelace and Minkowski. And this thing, this fear that’s built up inside him and keeps getting bigger, feels like it’s eating him alive.

“Okay,” he says finally, the word half-stuck in his throat. He swallows, breathes, and tries again.

“Okay.”

Minutes later, Lovelace and Minkowski enter the comms room, the former looking confused and the latter concerned. All Hera had told them was that it wasn’t an emergency, but that Eiffel needed them.

“Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” Lovelace says, and Eiffel breaks. The dam of stubbornness and willpower that’s been holding back his tears bursts and suddenly he’s sobbing into Lovelace’s arms, Minkowski’s hand running comfortingly up and down his back.

“Shhhhh,” he hears the commander say. “It’s all right, Doug. It’s all right.”

When he’s recovered well enough to speak—Minkowski insists on getting him tissues, and Lovelace ties his hair back for him so he doesn’t have to keep brushing it out of his face—he tries to explain as best he can.

“I’m sorry, I know you both have work to do—”

“Never mind about that,” Minkowski says. “We want to know what’s happening with you, Doug.”

“Well, um. Shit.” He looks down at his feet. “It’s hard to explain.”

“You and I were talking,” Hera says, prompting him.

“Right. We were talking, and I was telling her…that I’m afraid.”

“Afraid of what?” Minkowski asks.

“Afraid of an if ? Which is completely stupid, especially when I say it out loud, it’s just…” Doug takes a deep breath. “A couple weeks ago Lovelace said if we were back on Earth. ”

“Then I’d be fucking you senseless with a strap-on,” Lovelace says. “I remember.”

Doug can’t suppress the hint of a shiver that runs down his spine when she says this. “Right. But I just got to thinking…if we really were back on Earth…we wouldn’t have this at all.”

“What do you mean?” Minkowski says.

“It’s just…I mean, the two of you are only with me because you don’t have any other options. Besides each other, of course, and honestly sometimes I’m not sure why you don’t just stick with that and leave me out of it—but my point is, we’re only doing this…thing we’re doing because we’re trapped in space together. If we were back on Earth? Neither of you would choose me.” Doug breathes deeply, trying to keep tears from welling up again.

“Oh, Eiffel,” Minkowski says, and she wraps him in what might be the tightest hug he’s ever experienced. “That’s not true. Of course it isn’t.”

“I don’t know, Minkowski,” Lovelace says slowly, her expression uneasy. “I know I’d choose Eiffel on Earth in a heartbeat, but…you have a husband. The three of us would never have happened if he were in the equation.”

Minkowski tenses but doesn’t let go of Doug.

“I mean, that’s true, isn’t it?” Lovelace says. “You’ll go back to your husband. When we get back. If we get back.”

Minkowski shifts so that she’s still got her arms around Eiffel, but only loosely so. “I honestly don’t know,” she says. “I haven’t really thought about it. I’ve just been so worried that we’ll never get back at all…I’m not even sure he’d want me.” Her voice goes thin on the last sentence, threatening to crack. “He still thinks I’m dead. I don't…I don’t know what he’d do if I turned up suddenly.”

As far as Eiffel can tell, all this conversation has done is make everyone in the room feel worse. So he reaches for his lifeline.

“Hera? You said you had an idea to make this all better?”

“Yes,” Hera says, sounding less sure of herself now than she had in her initial conversation with Doug. “I thought I could…tell you a story. Of life back on Earth.”

“A story?” Doug says. That was her brilliant plan? Admittedly, Hera’s a hell of a storyteller when she wants to be—many nights spent masturbating to her cleverly improvised erotica could testify to that—but Doug isn’t sure a good wank is going alleviate any of the woe from the can of worms they’ve just opened.

“Yes, Officer Eiffel. A story. Everyone sit down, if you please.”

“What is this, kindergarten?” Lovelace grumbles, but she sits cross-legged on the floor nevertheless. Doug and Minkowski join her, and soon both women have Doug cuddled up between them, his head on Lovelace’s shoulder, her arm around his waist, one of Minkowski’s arms wrapped around his shoulders, and her other hand resting on his knee. He feels warm, and safe, and cared for, and the sharpness in the back of his throat begins to dull.

“If you were back on Earth,” Hera begins. “Lovelace would buy that dildo.”

“Hell yeah I would,” Lovelace says.

“Hey, no interrupting.”

“Sorry. Just excited.”

“Lovelace would buy that dildo,” Hera continues, “and she’d keep it in a locked chest in the back of her closet, along with all the rest of her toys. Vibrators, and handcuffs, and ropes and paddles and whips and chains. Costumes, too—a catsuit, a headmistress’ uniform, corsets and thigh-highs and heels. Everything Lovelace had in her dominatrix days, and everything she dreamed of having but couldn’t afford or didn’t have the space for. But now, now she’s working with three incomes plus the payout from a successful class-action lawsuit against Goddard Futuristics. She can afford a few indulgences.

"A lot of indulgences, actually. See, since Lovelace and her crewmates got back to Earth, they’d kept fighting, had organized Goddard employees past and present, gathered evidence, shared their testimony. And when it was all over, they had an eight-figure number to their name, but more importantly, they had the knowledge that the people who’d hurt them and their crewmates would never hurt anyone else ever again.”

Doug isn’t sure what he’d expected this story to be, but this is definitely not it. Still, he feels his muscles start to relax, his shoulders dropping down and the tension in his face, which he hadn’t even noticed until it was gone, releasing.

“And with that money, Lovelace decided to treat herself. Lord knows she deserved it after everything she’d gone through. But more importantly, she decided to treat her partners. Because after everything they’d been through, she couldn’t imagine a happy ending that didn’t involve the three of them together. And neither could they.”

Doug feels Lovelace sigh against him.

“And so they bought a house together in Southern California. A place where the weather was beautiful and they never had to worry about being cold. A place where they could make trips to the beach whenever they liked, but where they weren’t permanently tracking sand into the house, much to Minkowski’s relief. A place where they could hear the sound of traffic, never so loudly that it interrupted their sleep, but just enough to remind them that there were other people nearby, would always be other people nearby.

"And it’s a smart house, too, very environmentally friendly. But more importantly, equipped to accommodate a state-of-the-art AI program, originally designed for a deep-space mission, but more than up to the task of managing a single-family home.”

Doug smiles. “I think I know just the right girl for the job.”

“They fill the house with things they want but don’t need. Really nice china plates for Minkowski, which sit untouched in their custom-made cabinet, but which make her smile whenever she looks at them, and a vintage record player and stacks of Broadway soundtracks on vinyl. For Lovelace, a home gym full of shiny, fancy equipment, and a motorcycle, and of course, her trunk full of toys. And for Eiffel, a home theatre, with Blu-Rays of every movie he’s ever loved, and an arcade-style Pac-Man machine.”

“Awesome!” Doug interrupts, and Minkowski shushes him.

“They drink coffee together, real coffee from Colombia that Minkowski grinds herself every morning. Some nights they stay in, order pizza and catch up on all the Netflix they’ve missed, with queues carefully curated by Eiffel. Other nights they dress up, go out to dinner at fancy restaurants where Eiffel comically mispronounces the names of dishes to cover up the fact that he legitimately doesn’t know how to say them, and they order the most expensive items on the menu just because they can, and they play footsie under the table and don’t care who sees.

"One night they go dancing. There’s a swing dancing club nearby, and Minkowski insists on taking them, even though Lovelace has never done swing dancing in her life and Doug has and knows exactly how much of a disaster he’ll be on the dance floor. Minkowski doesn’t care, though, and the two of them want to make her happy, so they let her teach them each in turn, clumsy steps slowly turning into graceful ones, even for Eiffel, until they give up on partnering off and begin twirling and swaying in a messy, giggly threesome, making up the steps as they go along, stealing kisses until, by the time they make it back to the house, they’re ready for something much more satisfying than kissing.”

“Mm, can I get some more details on that?” Lovelace says.

“The bed in the house is massive, a California king that’s almost the size of the entire bedroom in Eiffel’s first apartment. It’s only because of how spacious the master is that the room isn’t swallowed by it. It’s a little extravagant, maybe, but it’s got enough room for three people to sleep comfortably—and have sex comfortably. A lot of times, for scenes, they’ll use other rooms of the house—the basement, over time, becomes more dungeon than anything else, and the kitchen surfaces have all seen their fair share of… unconventional use.

"But on nights like the night they go dancing, they take going to bed together literally and tumble onto the mattress, a sweaty mess of limbs and passion, mouths finding necks, hands dipping below waistbands. Yes, they have every sex toy any of them’s ever imagined having, but for all the hours of fun they have testing them out, nothing can turn them on like each other, like the feeling of skin on skin and the simple truth of the three of them together, present, safe, with all the time in the world to dedicate to drawing out moans and gasps and orgasms.

"There are no disasters to manage, now. No mind games to play, no ominous mysteries to uncover. There’s just a house, and three people, and one AI. So even when the nightmares come—and they come—and even when they must navigate difficult reunions with people on Earth—and they must—and even when it all seems like too much—and it does—there is always a safe haven to come back to, a place where there is love and support and understanding. Where there is always at least one someone to wipe away tears, to rub tired shoulders, to hold onto silently until the hurt goes away or to listen patiently until every frustrated word has been spoken.

"There is no such thing as a world without hurt. There is no such thing as paradise. But in a house by the beach, where they can always hear the sound of traffic, three imperfect people with imperfect pasts and imperfect futures do their best to build something like it. And at times, like when they sit out in the yard together, watching the sun set in brilliant pinks and purples over the horizon, each one holding the other two’s hands, they come so close to paradise that they may as well have reached it.”

Hera finishes her story, and there is silence for a long moment, the four of them letting the final words of her tale linger in the air for as long as they’ll last. Then, finally, Lovelace speaks.

“Hera, I think that’s the best story you’ve ever told me.”

“Me too,” Minkowski agrees.

“Me three,” says Doug.

“Thank you,” says Hera. “I do my best.”

“I don’t know about you guys, but…I’d like for that to happen. Just like Hera said,” says Minkowski. “The house, the dancing…all of it.”

“I make no promises about the dancing,” Doug says. “Hera wasn’t kidding, we did swing dancing in seventh grade and my partner and I both ended up on the floor. Twice. No joke. But the rest of it…yeah. That sounds pretty perfect.”

“What do you say we get a head start on that whole ‘lots of really excellent sex’ part?” Lovelace says, her mouth twisted into half a smirk.

“Aye, aye, sir,” Doug replies, and he scrambles to his feet to race eagerly toward their quarters. The pain in his throat has completely vanished.

#w359bb17 #w359 #wolf 359 #doug eiffel #hera

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sirijanu · 7 years ago

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Title: Context Cues Fandom: Wolf 359 Rating: T for language and implicit violence Characters: Warren Kepler, Daniel Jacobi, Alana Maxwell (mentioned), Cutter (mentioned) Relationships: Daniel Jacobi/Warren Kepler Summary: It really should’ve been obvious where this was going. What was really scary was that he was starting to like the terror. Notes: A background/backstory fic for my headcanons, Written for the @wolf359bigbang2017, [cross posted to AO3] [art link forthcoming]

Jacobi stared up at the ceiling, lying in his bunk on the Urania. He hadn't been in SI5 for long, and already he was enjoying himself more than he cared to admit. Cutter was terrifying, Kepler was terrifying, hell, the thin walls between him and space that could be compromised with just the tiniest bit of applied science was terrifying. What was really scary was that he was starting to like that terror. The uncertainty of their missions was something familiar, at least.

Quite the variety, too. Sometimes he was a little put out that he'd just been cast as Kepler's visible attack dog, there were two data retrievals that went off without a hitch before they had to blow the research plant. Just because he'd smiled a little too nicely to the receptionist while the Colonel was checking in, too. Quite the shame, the mousy intern behind the desk had been shaking barely a few words in. Poor kid, he probably thought he had a bright future in predictive climatology models. Shame he'd ended up in a lab that liked to steal corporate secrets. Jacobi felt for him, he really did. He'd thought his life was going in a different direction once, too.

Kepler had been no less terrifying than usual on that run, maintaining a stable level of shit-your-pants-off unnerving, and honing his already nearly perfected skill in interrogation. Jacobi had to repress the urge to grip a little tighter to the sheet, thinking about the man's calm and clear tone in asking someone on the opposite side of the room for the codes; and how Jacobi had, hopefully, imperceptibly stiffened and tensed his fingers around his liberated firearm. On the way back from that one, Kepler had just barely twitched an eyebrow when Jacobi brought up the questioning, which was enough to give him the resolve to never ask again. For any reason. Ever.

The soft hum of the starship's mechanisms reverberating through the bulkhead was a soothing element, at least. He couldn't go too far off the beaten path when locked inside a tin can--okay, various alloys; aluminum, titanium, transparent carbon, all fragile to the right combination of chemical reactions, and a state of the art, best of the best, over-engineered ship with technical capacities the missions so far hadn't called for, indicating a very sensible degree of miscellaneous dread but sure, just call it a tin can--hurtling along faster than Jacobi knew his human mind could soundly compute. Or relate to. Really, nothing too dangerous inside the vessel, not compared to the icy void with a power of death he was familiar with.

He chilled at the thought. Might have to retract that sentiment. Warren Kepler might be significantly more dangerous than the environmental hazards of the greatest outdoors, yet somehow more appealing to be trapped in an airlock with.

From a technical standpoint, the missions hadn't strictly needed him along, by and large. Kepler was a one-man army, and while demolitions work was certainly a boon, it didn't look like something he needed to complete most objectives. Jacobi had worked with other teams, being himself very good at his job, but for the most part he assisted on Kepler's missions.

It occurred to him, not for the first time, that his boss' personal details had managed to evade him to an impressive degree. For all the ease of his intake interview in that bar, there hadn't been any similar conversations; let alone digging into Kepler's history. Jacobi must be doing something right, though, if Cutter kept sending him back out with the guy. There's was probably something in the context there he was missing.

He just couldn't shake that feeling of redundancy. He was perfectly aware that he possessed a specific technical knowledge that Kepler couldn't match on his own, and not much else, but the application made him uneasy. He hadn't just been used as a bomb monkey, is the thing. So far, he'd been the bomb, car, plywood, minigun, salad spinner, and suit monkey. Sometimes twice. While the medical care Goddard provided was stellar, he couldn't help but question where it would cut out.

Even allowing for the cases where explosives defusal was required instead of civil-engineering diffusal, he still couldn't place what he kept being brought for. There's always the part where you don't know when the target has set up a secret web of explosives primed by local detonator, or the scientists have decided "oh, sure, why don't we just overload the reactor, that works exactly like in the movies", or... okay, so maybe there were a lot of sudden situations that escalate to the point of needing an demolitions expert, but that didn't change that sending him out with Kepler on every one of the guy's assignments seemed a little outside what he'd expected.

The Colonel himself didn't give Jacobi much indication that he even liked him professionally, let alone enough to request him that much. He would, he thought, normally be okay with not knowing where he stood with his superiors; he was a technician in a technical field. Just reading the context cues here, in a food chain shared by Cutter and Kepler both, that was a slightly less sound plan.

It's the little questions that keep a man up at night. In the middle of the eternal cosmic night.

Jacobi rolled over, pushing his back to the bulkhead, to watch the winking of the ambient system lights visible in the crew quarters. He snickered at that, every time he saw the sign on the door; on a ship with a commanding officer and--most of the time--just the one crewman, the idea of a general crew quarters seemed a little excessive. At most there was only ever one or two more people on an SI-5 mission, so a little illusion of privacy would've been nice and not that hard to make. Nothing was stopping him from putting up a sheet, but it was the principle of the thing. Something about the 'dangers inside' just being that much more real without a third line of defense.

Maybe his next assignment would make some goddamn sense.

It really should've been obvious where this was going.

That's what he told himself, dizzily looking at the corners where the walls met ceiling, once upon a time.

Getting sent on a mission that was hardly a solo op, at a significantly lower security level than he'd gone out on before, and no Kepler. Really fucking obvious. Not quite what he'd been asking for for the last six months.

It wasn't precisely clear where he was, but that would come back to him. Hopefully pretty soon. It would've been nice if the ringing in his ears followed the same pattern. When he tried to put weight on his arms to roll himself over, his left side buckled to the ground. That probably didn't bode well. Levering himself up with just his right arm, unsure he could even hold his other forearm steady enough to cradle it to his chest, Jacobi worked out what had happened. There was a decent clue in the distribution of building parts.

"Given my track record," he mumbled, trying to get to his feet. The facility was in pieces, sunlight streaming in from all angles, and the faint animal sounds were almost a cruel joke when he recognized the degree of person-shaped scorch marks in the remaining drywall and concrete. Taking stock of himself, he didn't feel particularly injured, which was nice. Internal bleeding was minimal, if any, and... whatever was wrong with his arm would work itself out. Probably. Hopefully, he told himself with a grimace. The generalized sense of dread and what was probably unspeakable pain if he allowed himself to think about it was purely circumstantial. To go with the circumstance.

A little wobbly, he managed to start picking his way away from the destruction. Heh. Away. There wasn't much away to get, he noted, nearly tripping over what was previously a desk; this mission hadn't exactly gone the best.

Eventually he navigated the wreckage and started plodding out to the assigned extraction point, though he wasn't hopeful anyone else was going to be there. From the state of the building, it was a quick trigger finger that had saved him from whatever had gone down before the building followed suit. He was still a little fuzzy on the details. And hard edges. Maybe the soft edges, too. Jacobi really needed to sit down again. The fancy tracking chip Goddard installed would help the extraction team, but it was always better to make things easier on your pilots.

Upon reaching the general area of the extraction coordinates, he let himself collapse against one of the trees. It hurt a little more than he had been expecting, implying slightly more damages than he'd previously accounted for. Something to think about later, as he closed his eyes.

Letting his head fall against the warped bark, he immediately jerking forward as it hurt way more than it should have. Tentatively he opened his eyes and took stock of himself in earnest. He could move his toes, that was good, and it didn't hurt any more than the usual exercise and post-adrenaline fatigue to activate any of the muscle groups in his legs. Massaging his abdomen with his good hand, nothing felt weird or hurt more than anticipated which was honestly much better than he could have expected, given the typical nature of blast injuries. Nothing felt burned, but he'd been knocked out by something...or maybe that was just the definite concussion talking. Angling his head as much as he could and ow, yes, context aside, that was definitely a concussion he'd been ignoring, his eyes slammed shut as he tried to take in his injured arm.

Breathing softly through gritted teeth, Jacobi looked again, and he should really have been less surprised. His hand looked fine, all fingers still attached, and he could even kind-of wiggle them a bit. If he ignored the definitely-not-a-good-color it took on from the elbow down, there was definitely nothing wrong. Even concussed, though, he probably couldn't successfully ignore the nauseating angle the limb had taken between shoulder and elbow. That probably explained the mysterious stabbing yet aching and throbbing pain he'd had to ignore walking out there.

Resting his head back against the tree, he closed his eyes again. This had gone considerably less well than it could have.

Rapidly blinking, Jacobi tried to keep his eyes open against the fluorescent lighting. Giving up, he squinted at the ceiling while smoothing out his breathing as though he were still asleep. Context cues indicated he'd not just died in the forest in the remains of a isolated cabin, and that he had in fact been obtained somehow and then treated in presumably a Goddard-owned medical center for his copious injuries and would bounce back to missions in no time with a disciplinary slap on the wrist. Context cues had lied to him before. Context cues had previously said "Oh, don't worry Daniel, you just need to get to extraction and then nothing will really matter anyway and you can have a nice long nap after answering the medics' questions, maybe buy yourself a beer or three to commemorate a terrible, terrible mission from which you escape unscathed". Context cues could eat shit.

In his periphery he could make out an IV set up with its tubes leading out of view but probably to his arm. On the other side...also an IV set up? If he angled his head just-so, though, he could definitely make out the Goddard logo, so there was one suspicion confirmed. With his eyes finally adjusted to the light, as much as they were going to anyway with his splitting headache, he craned his neck to look down his body. Off-white ugly patterned medical grade sheets. No secrets of the universe there. Releasing the arch of his neck he let his head sink back into the pillow again, he had to stop his data collection for a moment to rest. That had taken considerably more energy than it'd had the right to.

In that moment, though, he worked out what wasn't quite right about the sound profile of the room. There was the hum of the ominous machinery he expected in hospitals, the ventilation system hopefully doing a good job of whisking away any danger in the air and replacing it with nice, soothing, company-approved mysterious chemicals; there was even the faint jumble of conversation from outside the room. What didn't fit, though, was that to accompany his own breathing there was a second breath pattern. Fuck.

Jacobi felt around, and his hand landed on what felt like a notecard, and a small device with a button and a switch. Context cues had already failed him twice, so he figured why not go for a third try, and thumbed the switch. In a fit of unprecedented luck, the back of his hospital bed lifted up slightly, and he pressed it a couple more times so he was at least partially upright. Fuck subtlety, this was his hospital room.

Taking in the sight before him, though, indicated he'd thought too soon. In a chair that looked way too comfortable for any medical unit he'd been in before, sat Kepler. Fuck.

"Oh, good, you're awake," Kepler said with way too much cheer. "Are you lucid this time?"

Jacobi's lip twitched as he tried a couple comebacks, nothing quite coming to him in his present state. "You tell me," he croaked. That probably hurt more than it should, but well. Everything hurt more than it should. "That mean they cut me off on the heavy drugs?" Kepler didn't respond. Of course not. Fucking scary calculating bastard. Used to it, though, he took advantage of this better angle to solve the mystery of the two IVs. The one on his right wasn't particularly suspect, had all the standard features. A bag, a tube, a hook, the usual. That definitely didn't bode well for what was on his other side.

On his left, there was something not that. On his left there was a computer terminal, some ominous beeping, a bunch of wires, some connecting the machine to what he was really hoping was just the bed he was on and not somehow himself, and ominous flashing lights. Really way more ominous than was fucking necessary. He chuckled, though it came out more as a really, really soft whimpering noise. If it was that ominous it had to have something to do with Cutter. Kepler preferred you to know exactly why you should be scared, none of this vague bullshit. Jacobi appreciated that, probably a little too much.

"You should read the note." Think of the devil and he'll open his mouth. Jacobi did as he was bid, though, and grabbed at the paper by his hand. When it didn't work, he gingerly released the remote and tried again to better success. Looking down at it, there wasn't much information. Just the text, 'Don't try and move it yet'. Really. Ominous was starting to stop sounding like a word and he wasn't even saying out loud.

"Move what, sir?"

"First you're going to have to promise not to try and move it." Kepler's voice had a character of smoothness that was really helpful for direction mid-firefight but really disarming any other time. It was the same tone he used when still trying to convince a fanatic engineering crew to please step away from their idolized construction before it turned outwardly hostile, or strongly suggesting to some lackey that maybe they should scoot his meeting with Cutter up a bit in the queue. Jacobi was not becoming a fast fan of hearing it outside those contexts.

"I'll do my best," he offered. Better to undershoot his own capabilities and be wrong.

"Not good enough." The sing-song lilt Kepler took on did not suggest good outcomes for that plan. Overshooting and then making him perform anyway was Kepler's whole thing, of course that would come up. "Though I would like to note that although you not noticing it yet is an extremely good sign for the development team, it does not bode well for your health."

Giving in, he said, "I promise I won't intentionally move whatever it is. Sir." He still wasn't sure why he kept challenging Kepler on mission strategy, just because they weren't technically assigned to anything. To his knowledge. As he'd said it, Kepler stood up and crossed to his bedside.

"Good," he allowed, folding his arms where he stood. "Why don't you tell me what you remember?"

"Not much, really. From our last run off the Urania to now's all kinda...vague." Better not to provide incomplete situation reports. "I definitely have a head wound." He might have definitely still been on some of the fun pain medication because it looked like Kepler's eyes softened just a fraction. Blink and it was gone, of course. Probably wasn't even there.

"Then work backwards. From the context cues, if you will. If you can." If he could think a little more clearly Jacobi would probably have at least tried to be offended at the way Kepler tacked on the last clause.

Right. Context cues. How'd Kepler even... not important. Starting from their last mission, much more successful than this one. Terrible cosmic questions. Mission sent to hell. Injuries. Running away. Collapsing against a tree. Injuries. Context cues. Fuck.

Stepping through had revealed a jumbled mess between waiting for evacuation and the present moment. He'd gotten a glimpse of the inside of the chopper, and... he'd get to those.

“I’ve got a helicopter, and a lot of screaming. Or maybe they’re not screaming and it’s just audiosensitivity from the concussion.” Kepler nodded, as though encouraging a nervous preschooler. Pushing past that, Jacobi could kind-of make out faces and voices, but they kept changing. The structure of the vehicle did too, in complement Some of them...incongruously familiar. “Scratch that, different helicopters,” he amended. He could be wrong, but he thought maybe Kepler had shown up for most of that? It seemed weird for him to hover like that, especially before Jacobi’d made it back to a Goddard facility. That didn't follow the context cues at all, and it hurt too much to dig at the specifics.

“What happens next, specialist.”

“Getting to that, sir.”

After transport he could remember getting questioned by medical professionals. Hopefully professional, though they did have the Goddard logo. Hopefully medical. They hadn't seemed concerned all that much, all though.

“Medical, here.” Validated by Kepler’s nod, he continued. “Definitely some scary words like ‘internal bleeding’ and ‘completely crushed, like, woah’.”

“That’s not inaccurate.”

“Hah,” Jacobi said, relishing in catching Kepler out even a little. “So you were there for that part.”

“Rest assured, my hovering had little to do with you, personally. I did have to supervise, afterall.”

“Supervise?” Jacobi was not convinced. What he was being convinced of he could never tell, but it definitely wasn’t working this time. Unless that’s exactly what Kepler wanted him to think. Shit.

“What happens next, specialist.” Okay, repeating himself was definitely not helping with Jacobi’s mental state or recall abilities. Jacobi might have to amend his comfort with regards to the mystery, if Kepler was going to be this cryptic.

He faintly remembered waking up a few times in the middle there, Alana's voice mixing in with Kepler's and the occasional nurse.

“Maxwell was in here?”

“Mmhm.” He’d been pushed to humming. Either Jacobi was royally screwed and about to lose his job, or. Well. Other outcomes still needed to be observed. This still didn't help him with whatever it was he hadn't...felt yet?

"Alright, deep breath," he muttered. "Context cues." He'd lost consciousness twice, that was bad news but since he'd woke up and there wasn't a new breeze on his skull it hadn't been that bad, so he must have just faded in and out. Visits from Maxwell and Kepler both was weird. If it was just social then Kepler wouldn't have shown up at all, and Alana would've sounded a bit more distraught hopefully. He was one of her only friends. If it was business related, that explained even less. Kepler wasn't in the command chain this time, and no reason for Maxwell to show up at all. He opened his eyes and squinted at Kepler. Stoic as ever, so he'd definitely imagined an expression earlier. "I think I'm missing something."

Kepler blinked at him, jaw tensing slightly, before broadening into that fake grin only implemented in placation. It seemed somehow a little too organic to be just Kepler’s usual moveset. "In a few minutes you'll understand why that's funny." Asshole. Jacobi should really take that to HR some time. Uncomfortable and predatory work environment with unnecessary emotional distress. If Goddard's human resources department were anything but literal.

"What's funny about--"

"You'll get there."

Oh. Shit. He was definitely missing something, alright. Crush injuries. Maxwell had been in and out, almost as much as Kepler had been. Kepler was here. He was technically hired under Kepler, making anything to do with him his business. Maxwell did machines, and he was missing something.

"Fuck."

"That is about the size of it, specialist."

Jacobi felt himself pitch forward as the reflexive twitch of his left arm hurt beyond measure. That was new. Both that it happened, and how it felt so distant. It seemed so far off, but it couldn't be. The farthest a sensation in his body should be was a little less than his height away from where it was processed, and an arm is decidedly not that far away. "What," he grit out, teeth clenched as he slowly got over the feeling.

"You were told not to move it," Kepler said. Still nonchalant. Fuck.

"Look, respectfully sir, eat a plate of shit. On a nitramide platter."

"Objection noted, and ignored. Now why don't you tell me what you know." Kepler sounded gentle, or would have. If he were anyone else. No, that was bullshit, if he were anyone else that wouldn't even have read as emotional expression.

"It would be really cool if my concussion could lay off. I'm concussed," he rephrased at Kepler's expression. "I've been in and out for a few days, and I haven't worked out all of it but I think I'm up to six percent robot parts."

"Closer to five," Kepler corrected.

"Even accounting for the super secret corporate control and tracking chip?"

"Even accounting."

Jacobi's glibness started to wear thin. Carefully, he thought about where his shoulder met his neck. Both sides matched, and the soft and scratchy gown was as annoying as ever. Incrementing his attention down, it felt like his scapula was still intact, and most of his clavicle, and then the distant feeling started. He felt his stomach drop through the floor. He didn't try to move what he really, sincerely, hoped was just an advanced prosthetic arm. Someone might've decided to try bionic tentacles, or maybe a internally mounted gun. Or pack it with explosives in case he quit. Or got fired. Or maybe it was an explosive gun tentacle complete with standard nightmare technology.

"Please tell me it's just an arm."

"It's just an arm."

"No hidden compartments? It's not actually just a gun tentacle?"

"It's just an arm, Jacobi."

"That's good." His breathing evened out. Huh. Weird. He hadn't noticed his nerves ratcheting up that high. At least that was one more mystery solved. Suddenly the nerves were back and higher than ever. "What about, well. The mission."

"Well, despite obvious setbacks, it was more or less a success. A solid seven out of ten."

"I'm pretty sure I blew it, sir. Literally." He really wished he could move the robot arm already. Then he could wave it, make a point, give Kepler a taste of the fucking context cues. Kepler blinked at him, and leaned back against the wall.

"Not entirely," he said after a pause. "The goal of delivering an order to cease and desist was accomplished.” He checked it off on his fingers. "The goal of retrieving or destroying the secondary package was accomplished. The goal of not demolishing company property was accomplished, mostly. Your mission handler briefed me, and this does seem to be the best outcome given the circumstances. Unfortunate as it is," he tacked on. Right. The primary package. That he had been supposed to retrieve.

"What's coming down the pipe for me, then?" Jacobi grimaced at the thought.

"How do you mean." Kepler’s question, said like a statement, came with a bemused vibe. That wasn't quite the response he was expecting.

"I... failed to collect the primary package. Sir. Numero uno. The first one. That I was sent to retrieve as well as issue the C&D.” A beat. “The bold-and-underlined part of the memo it came on." Jacobi's explanation could have gone smoother, he hadn't anticipated being made to lay out his failure like this.

"Specialist, this was hardly an urgent assignment. And as I have already established, hardly a failure."

"Well, yeah, but people get fired for stealing paperclips," Jacobi persisted.

"Frankly, assets of your caliber can take as many paperclips as you'd like. Understandable tool of your trade." That level of patronization was frankly unnecessary. “Didn’t you provide a demonstration using condiments and a wire suspiciously close to paperclip gauge with the interns, high on energy drinks?”

Jacobi couldn’t argue that. Either charge, really, that he’d been on like six off-brand stimulants or that he’d constructed a demolition charge model with similarly loopy engineering students. The sedative seemed like it was almost entirely out of his system, though clearly not enough if Kepler’s disarming tactics were working this well. Heh. Disarmed.

“Respectfully…” he tried again. “That is, I still failed a mission parameter.”

“A regrettable but unavoidable outcome.” Kepler was nodding sagely along with his own advice. Jacobi really wanted to punch him. If he wasn’t going to be enraged, Jacobi would have settled for dissapointed. This was neither of those, and again, decidedly not helping his nerves.

"You're… not pissed I didn't go after the package?" Jacobi hoped asking outright would help. Instead, Kepler just furrowed his eyebrows and blinked at him.

"No. Why do you think I should be?"

"I just thought you'd be upset that I decided to ignore mission parameters and run to extraction." What Jacobi didn't say was that he'd been chewed out for less, even on missions Kepler hadn't been on. Really, it seemed like a rational response.

"I think it's fair to expect reasonable damage to assets, animate or otherwise, to suit mission vitality. This mission wasn't vital.” Kepler paused, waiting for acknowledgement. Jacobi gave it. “Therefore, any further damage to your vitals would be an unnecessary and unwarranted additional expenditure of resources."

"Well, yeah, but it's not like I would've died."

"Nonetheless, you had already sustained further damages than the mission called for. Sustaining any more would not have made it a further success."

“I’m hardly a necessary asset to the company, especially if I’m going to fail to do my literal job.” Jacobi’s convictions were waning just a little, as the futility of belaboring the point skipped over dawning on him and jumped straight to midday.

“Unnecessary hardly means readily expendable,” Kepler said. “Magboots, air conditioning, knives, and a fresh ration card also aren’t necessary. That doesn’t mean Goddard Futuristics--especially our work in SI5--will run as smoothly or efficiently without them.” Jacobi was unimpressed.

“Every single one of those are things that get replaced when they break.”

“Or,” Kepler paused. “They get taken out of rotation, repaired, and then used back in the field working better than ever before.” Jacobi was able to restrain himself from flinching when Kepler rapped on his new metal bicep to illustrate the point. Most of the brain-fogging medication must have finished wearing off. Using his newly accessible clarity, and not inching to the right side of the bed, Jacobi was able to identify a potential flaw in Kepler’s reasoning.

“Okay, yeah, sure. How does it go again, ‘but at the end of the day--’”

“That’s taken from a completely different context, specialist. As much as I do appreciate my scotch, it’s just an amenity. One that would impede rather than hasten any mission.” Kepler leaned back against the wall again, resting an arm on the robot parts upkeep machine. He made a show of drumming his fingers around some of the lights and switches, as well as some pointed eye contact. “Do you see the difference?” he asked.

"Aww, you sayin' you care about li'l ol' me?" If he could, Jacobi would probably have had to stop his hands from flying to his mouth. Now was definitely not the time. Or probably the place. Maybe the lab techs could get double the experience from augmenting him; both installing the freaky robot arm and getting to do an autopsy on the subject all in the same week!

Kepler didn't respond.

Jacobi didn't really have a response either. Especially since Kepler's voice had started to go a little funny. Carefully, he weighed his options. On the one--fleshy, he supposed--hand, the ice wasn't nearly as thin as he'd been assuming it was. On the robot hand, Kepler's tolerance for playful bickering was hardly consistent, especially when it came to emotions. Instead of trusting his recklessness to not dig him any deeper, Jacobi made busywork of counting the fruit bunches immortalized in the wallpaper across the room.

Kepler still didn’t say anything.

Jacobi started worrying the instruction note he’d been given. “Sir,” he started, but Kepler held up a hand to stop him. In response, he relaxed a little more. If they both knew precisely whose court held the ball in the moment, there wasn’t any point in further forcing the issue.

That didn’t mean Jacobi couldn’t get bored waiting. There were 136 fruits visible from his vantage point, and the slip in his hand could be folded over only three times easily with one hand, but he’d managed to get it to six with determination and effort. He’d repeated the periodic table with atomic weights to himself twice, and didn’t get caught up in rehashing the uses for the actinide series.

Just as he was preparing to discreetly thumb the remote buttons again just to see what the rest of them did, Kepler cleared his throat.

“It would be imprudent to dispose of you just yet, Mr. Jacobi.”

Well that was fucking terrifying. It’s not like he was expecting anything else, and Jacobi had to smile. It was comforting, too, and wasn’t that a sign. Context and all.

#w359bb17 #wolf 359 #kepcobi #slow burn #my writing #potential body horror idk #tried to queue this then tumblr decided to be a right prick

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