Chapter Text
If it weren’t for the fact that Alana’s back is entirely frozen solid against the frost jewelled grass, she’d be surprised that Kepler interrupts the silent air of their mark’s Swiss cabin (“He won’t be needing it anymore,” Kepler had reasoned, grinning wide) to check on her.
“You’ll catch your death out here, Doctor,” Kepler says, his knee cracking as he sits next to her, cross-legged in the grass.
Alana hums an agreement. “Probably.”
“Do you know what time it is?”
Alana reaches for her phone before remembering where it lies on the granite kitchen top inside the wood cabin. “I don’t know, sir.” She looks at the moon above them. “Twenty-one hundred hours, maybe?”
Kepler chuckles, his laugh taking on the unpleasant quality of being an inside joke she is not in on. “Try oh-two hundred.”
“Oh.” Alana looks at him. “Why aren’t you inside, sir?”
“For much the same reason you are, I imagine, Maxwell. Couldn’t sleep.”
Alana has a tendency to forget that Kepler is, in fact, human. And honestly, it’s not like Kepler makes it difficult for her, with his cold calculations and his blank eyes. Alana has worked with AI a damn sight more human than Kepler is.
Maybe that’s why his insomnia is such a hard concept for her to grasp.
She finally looks up at him, with the intent of asking some trivial question out of formality, when she stops dead.
“Sir, is that… Is that Jacobi’s hoodie?”
He glances down at the MIT logo emblazoned on his chest, blinking in surprise, like he hadn’t even noticed it wasn’t his. “Yeah.”
Alana smiles wryly. “He deserves better than you.”
He chuckles, rolling his shoulders. “You say that as if I’ve laid claim to him.”
“Haven’t you?”
"You’ve been spending far too much time with Miss Young,” he sighs, settling into the grass next to her. “He’s my subordinate, not my dog. I don’t own him.”
“And he’s my coworker. He’s also my best friend; it’s possible to be two things at once.”
Kepler hums again, the kind of polite acknowledging hum that shows his dismissal all too well. “And that’s all he is?”
“You’re going to have to be more clear than that, sir.”
“You love him.”
A statement, sharp, pointing, unequivocal. It prickles at her skin, the tone so clinical for such a personal question.
“I do.” Her tone is equally as measured, cold, precise.
He pauses like that is some sort of revelation, smiling politely like she’s just proved his point.
“Is there something I’m missing, sir? You’re acting like that’s not a statement I could apply to you. He’s not a difficult man to love.”
Her words seem to move through Kepler’s whole body, the clenching of his jaw and the tightening of his shoulders a whole, carelessly unconcealed story, but all of that pales in comparison to the look in his eyes.
When Alana was young, she used to love sharks. She couldn’t honestly say what it was; they weren’t especially bright, they certainly weren’t pretty, but Alana still adored them. Maybe because they were so powerful, and Alana hungered for even a shred of that strength.
For the entirety of Alana’s employment, Kepler has styled himself a shark, from the slick of his obviously expensive suits to his too sharp smile. But it’s his eyes, dark and cut from stone or the star-strewn cloth of the heavens, that have always been so impassive and predatory, as if he wasn’t even trying to hide his sky-black soul.
But his eyes, now, seem a war. There is no black glass indifference to hide behind, just the starlight dripping silver-spun secrets into the frostbit night air. Never in her life did she think she’d see a shark afraid.
Alana watches her breaths float, clouded and uncertain, to Orion.
“No,” Kepler says eventually, “I suppose he isn’t.”
Alana smiles to herself. “You know me better than to consider me a threat to you and him, Major.”
He opens his mouth to protest, but something untenses in him. He shakes his head, quickly suppressing the quirk of his lips. “Don’t like the men folk, Doctor?”
Alana would laugh if it didn’t cut so neatly to the quick. “That’s one hell of a conclusion to leap to, sir.”
“Am I wrong?”
“No.” She has half a mind to ask him the same question, but she’s not entirely sure she wants to know his predilections. “No, I don’t like … anyone, really. I’m, uh…” Take a deep breath. Finish the thought. “I’m asexual.”
Kepler’s eyebrows knit together. “You’re what, sorry?”
That’s the first time she’s ever heard him say the s-word. It warms her chest a little. “Ace. Uh, it’s like… Well, some people like men, some like women, or both, and some just… don’t. Like sex, that is. And that’s me.”
“Huh.” Kepler looks at the stars for a long time. “Thank you for telling me, Alana,” he says, eventually. “That was very brave of you.”
Alana laughs. “Thank you, sir. Most people will tell me that asexuality isn’t a real thing, so I appreciate you taking this so well.”
Kepler smiles. “What kind of leader would I be if I encouraged any kind of prejudice? I’m a terrible person, but I’m not a bigot.”
Alana laughs, because. somewhere along the line, she traded her humanity too. “Good to know.”
Kepler huffs a satisfied laugh and lies down next to her, rolling his shoulders as he extends his legs. There’s a long beat of silence as Kepler shuffles himself into a position of mild comfort against the cold, hard ground.
“I didn’t know there was a word for it,” he breathes eventually, his gaze still fixed on the stars.
Alana watches him out of the corner of her eye. “What do you mean?”
“I just… understand what you mean. About…” He seems to realise that he’s not only having this conversation with his subordinate, but with a subordinate half his age, and changes tact. “I don’t hate it, but I’ve never enjoyed it, really. Never been really interested. It just is, you know?” He laughs at himself as if he can’t believe this conversation is happening. Neither can Alana.
Alana smiles. “I do. I’ve never met another ace person in real life.”
He echoes her smile. It’s far softer than any expression she’s ever seen on his face, almost hesitant as if Kepler is something other than a well-oiled machine. “Neither have I. I always thought…”
There is a decidedly haunted look in his eyes, and Alana remembers the things she put herself through, the disgust like bile burning the back of her throat, before she accepted who she was.
“I know. I thought so too.”
They return to staring up at the stars, Alana tracking the steady movement and far of rumble of an aeroplane and trying not to think about the frost collecting at her fingertips. Kepler seems content to stay silent, but Alana can’t stand lying there like Kepler’s presence is entirely normal. She shuffles closer.
“I bet you never thought you’d be having a heart to heart with your most favourite member of the SI-5 in the Swiss Alps of all places.”
He doesn’t seem upset by her interruption, so Alana stops wishing herself to be swallowed by the earth. “It’s not the Swiss Alps, unfortunately.”
That’s the only part of that statement he’s disagreeing with?
“Yeah, if it were the Alps, you’d be taking us all skiing.”
Kepler huffs an unattractive laugh. “Can you imagine Jacobi on skis? It would be chaos.”
Alana chuckles. “I dunno, he might be alright…”
“Maxwell,” Kepler says, his voice tight with a restrained laugh.
“Yeah?”
“ Maxwell . We both know he’d be terrible. ”
Unwittingly, her face splits into a grin to match the one in Kepler’s voice. “I dunno, they have mountains in Wisconsin, don’t they?”
“Yes, Maxwell, they have mountains.” He sounds simultaneously deeply amused and deeply tired. “That doesn’t mean that Jacobi—what?—absorbed skiing by proximity alone? Maxwell, c’mon. It’s Jacobi .”
“Hey, maybe if he had a good teacher?” Alana sing-songs, elbowing him and wiggling her eyebrows.
Alana can practically feel his eye roll. “Jacobi has not worn a single rain jacket in the entire time I’ve known him, you really think he would enjoy skiing? Absolutely not.”
“For someone who complains about the cold so much, you’d think he’d dress warmly. But at least I can drag you off-piste with me, right?”
Kepler huffs a barking laugh. “Sure, I’ll keep that in mind next time we’re all in the Alps.”
Alana laughs, knocking her shoulder against his. “You better!”
There is a moment, the laugh still warm in her chest, that Alana realises that she’s near flush against his side, her head barely millimetres from his shoulder. She has to shift when Kepler raises his arms to tuck them behind his head, and almost in spite of herself, she finds herself inching closer to him, tucking her head against his lats.
There is a long moment, where Alana listens to him breathe and keeps half an eye on the brilliant stars ahead.
“Sir?” she whispers, eventually, gently head butting him to get his attention.
All she gets is a mildly disgruntled hum in response.
“All due respect, sir, but are you and Daniel…?”
She doesn’t fill in the blanks because she’s honestly not sure what she’s asking, or really why she’s asking at all, considering that she really doesn’t care.
Except, of course, that she does.
“No.” There’s a whole world of hurt and regret packed into a single syllable, but his face remains stoic, set into a grim mask of nonchalance. “No, we aren’t.”
Alana considers this. “He deserves a damn sight better than you.”
Kepler grimaces. “I know.”
“But.” She gathers her strength. “He would love you.”
Like a rapture, he would. Because, as much as Alana loves Jacobi, and as much as she disapproves of his terrible taste in men, he would, because that’s who Jacobi is. He is loyalty incarnate and he has never half-assed anything in his life, and he would live and die for Kepler. He already does, for the both of them.
“I know.”
Alana spares him a glance, studying his profile with pitying eyes. She shouldn’t, by all rights, feel sorry for him. He’s horrible and Kepler would only hurt Jacobi in the long run, but…
“I know you don’t like how he looks at me.” Kepler’s gaze flicks to her for a brief moment, her frown confirming her disapproval.
“He can look however he sees fit, he doesn’t need my blessing.”
“I know.” There’s a long pause. “Have you considered that I don’t like it either?”
Alana digests this for a long moment. “I thought you wanted—”
“It doesn’t matter what I want, Maxwell. He wants from me what I can’t give him.”
The words should sound so angry, but they come out bleeding with such bitter resignation that the sting of being interrupted is drowned in Alana’s chest by something like pity.
“I think you think too little of him, then,” Alana whispers, pursing her lips, “if you think he’d be selfish and conceited enough to force you to do anything you didn’t want.”
She can feel Kepler’s breathing falter from its casual rhythm into something strictly maintained, regimented four-seven-eight.
“Sir. You have to trust him to do what’s right.”
Kepler laughs at that, barely making it out of his lungs. She can feel it rolling inside his ribcage. She smiles in spite of herself; since when did any of them do what was right?
Kepler shifts suddenly, the warmth of his chest leaving as he sits up. “It’s late, Doctor,” he says, and oh, it’s back to Doctor now, is it? The title sends her chest roiling and she almost, almost hates him for it. He doesn’t move, though, from his place next to her.
Alana pushes herself up, fingers and palms screaming with the cold. She takes Kepler’s extended hand and lets him haul her to her feet. She drops it quickly, too quickly, but Kepler doesn’t seem to mind.
The walk back inside is an awkward one, shoulder to shoulder in silence, but Alana doesn’t mind the quiet. Kepler makes a beeline for the kitchen, grabbing himself peppermint tea, as Alana slips past to grab her phone; it’s flat but the weight of it is a comfort in her hands.
“Do you want some?” Kepler whispers, cocking his head to indicate the (ridiculously well-stocked) tea rack Kepler always brings on missions.
“No thanks, sir,” she whispers back, suddenly remembering Jacobi, asleep in the other room.
“Suit yourself. Sleep well, Maxwell.”
Alana nods, sidestepping around him to head to her room. “You too, sir.”
She stumbles into her room, not bothering to turn on the lights and collapses into bed. Stopping only briefly to kick off her boots, she crawls under the covers to find the electric blanket already warm and waiting for her. She hides her smile in her pillow, and sleep comes easy.