Chapter Text
There is a tiny corner of Maxwell’s apartment that has been affectionately dubbed “the workshop.” The reason for this is unclear to Daniel, it’s little more than a soldering iron and the least flammable couch she owns, but somehow, through grace of God, the name stuck.
So here he is, in the workshop, his back aching as he hunches over a dinky little circuit board, iron in one hand, solder in the other.
He’s absolutely certain that Maxwell could do this busywork herself—she’s at least competent with mechanics and hardware and circuit boards are always tedious—but Maxwell asked him to, so he’s not complaining. Even if he could do this blindfolded and with an arm behind his back. Really, he cannot stress enough how dumb it is that he’s even here. What does he even care about battlebots anyways?
He is interrupted as a pillow squarely smacks the back of his head. Only then does he realise he’s been muttering aloud.
“Ow!” He glares at Maxwell, who has not glanced away from her laptop. “What the hell?”
“Stop complaining. Rule number eight!”
Daniel glares harder at her. He feels like an idiot glaring at someone who is very pointedly not looking, but he is too stubborn to stop.
“You know, I could be doing literally anything else right now.”
Maxwell finally turns to him, levelling a flat, heatless look in his direction. “I literally just told you to shut up.”
He throws his hands in the air in protest. “I’m bored!”
“Then don’t be!”
Daniel sighs and turns away from her, glaring petulantly around the apartment.
It is, to put it lightly, a mess. In all honesty, it looks like a hurricane blew through while he was soldering, books and mugs and disgustingly tacky furniture attuned to such a precise degree of chaos that it has to be intentional. The AC in the corner is blowing unbearably hot, a steady, eddying gust that picks at the dust and sends it on a swirling dance.
Daniel reshuffles his legs so that they’re no longer folded underneath him and runs a hand through his hair. He can usually estimate the time from the stiffness of his metal arm, the way it feels like the gears are grinding as he moves. It must be very, very late. He sighs.
“Stop complaining!”
Daniel rolls his eyes, leaning back to look at her upside down. “Maxwell, it’s hotter than the fifth circle of hell in here. Can you please change the thermostat?”
“Nope,” Maxwell chirps, popping the p happily.
Daniel stands, his back popping and protesting at the movement, and makes his way to the thermostat himself. He catches the time on Maxwell’s laptop. 00:59.
“Hey,” he says gently, patting her head as he walks past. “Unclench your jaw.”
“Oh, yeah. Thanks.”
“We’re going outside,” he announces, reaching over to close the laptop. Maxwell yelps, her fingers barely escaping in time.
“Do we have to?”
“Yeah, we do. It’s late and my back is killing me. Also, I think my arm needs readjusting.”
Maxwell sighs, her whole body slumping as she untenses. “It doesn’t, you’re just paranoid.”
“It does!”
“I designed it, I would know.” She stands, shaking out her long limbs. She moves a little like a giraffe sometimes, inelegant and gangly but strangely beautiful in her conviction. She moves with purpose, snatching one of the many blankets thrown over her sofa. “I’ll look at it in a minute.”
Maxwell starts towards the door. Daniel catches her wrist, cocking his head toward the windowsill. “Fire escape.”
Maxwell smiles. “You never did outgrow your teenage cliches, did you?”
Daniel grins wildly, pushing open the window. “That’s ironic, coming from Doctor Changes Her Hair Colour Every Month.”
Alana hits him in the chest as she climbs out the window. The metal of the fire escape clangs under her feet and Daniel follows after.
The night air is cold, biting where sweat has glued his singlet to the back of his neck. It’s a nice change from the stuffy heat of the apartment. As he exhales, his breath crystallises on the wind. He watches it float to the stars. It feels like his ribs are unravelling, sweet and aching.
It’s nice.
“Alright, let’s get climbing.”
The feeling of metal between his fingers is familiar, almost calming, though he’s not used to the level of rust that coats the rungs on the ladder. Even now, they move silently upwards together, careful not to make too much noise with their climbing. It’s ingrained into them after too many years of stealth missions and training.
They sit at the very edge of the building, legs dangling over the ledge. Daniel tips his head back, his eyes falling shut as he breathes a steady lungful of unapologetically cold Floridian air.
When he opens his eyes, Maxwell is watching him, he can see it out of the corner of his eyes. She’s taken her glasses off and placed them on the ground behind her, far away from the edge. It’s not often he gets to see her undone like this, her hair loose around her shoulders, falling gently into her eyes.
“What’s up?” he asks, jabbing an elbow into her ribs.
She cuffs the back of his head in retaliation. “Nothing. Just thinking. D’you know any constellations?”
Daniel refocuses on the stars, raking the heavens for something he recognises. “Nah, not really. I mean, there’s Orion.”
Maxwell shuffles closer to follow where his finger points. “Everyone knows Orion, Jacobi.”
He huffs a soft laugh. “Whatever. What brilliant constellations do you know, Doctor?”
Maxwell hits him again. “Don’t call me that, you sound like him!”
Daniel laughs, adopting a slow, almost-Southern drawl. “Well, Doctor, if you look here, you’ll see the Bees.”
Maxwell laughs into his shoulder. “The Bees?”
“Oh yeah,” Daniel grins, dropping the accent. “See those stars there?” He gestures broadly at the whole sky. “That’s the Bees.”
Maxwell smirks. “You're ridiculous.”
Daniel's grin widens to meet it. “Hey, my momma told me about the Bees, show some respect!”
“Oh yeah, ‘cause your mom was great to you.”
“Too soon, Maxwell.” He looks back to the stars.
She’s right, of course. Momma barely fulfilled her role as a parent, scraping by with falsified smiles and unceremoniously dropping nail polish and make up into his lap for his birthday. Until he left. A tiny part of him is still guilty for leaving her, a larger part of him is guiltier still for not crying when she died.
“Anyways, give me some blanket, it's freezing.”
“Just a sec.” Maxwell disappears down the fire escape, leaving Daniel in his thoughts.
No one taught him constellations when he was a kid, not even Girl Scouts. Brownies was worse, he suffered through enough of the summer camps to make it to Girl Scouthood before dropping out. He hated every second of those camps, stifled and crammed into a tent with three girls and forced into boring “wilderness survival” courses. Honestly, he learned much more about triage and tramping in his first week with Kepler than all those summers wasted in the wilderness of Wisconsin.
It wasn’t all bad. Daniel remembers the campfires, the smell of smoke under clear night skies. Their camp leader would always enforce a minute of somewhat reverent silence. Not once did anyone ever explain why they’d sit in absolute silence, watching the stars. Daniel was more inclined to watch the fire, leaping and licking between the ribs of the campfire. Even then, the stars never meant a damn thing to him. What’s the use of an explosion if you can’t feel it?
Maxwell returns with yet another goddamn mink blanket, one he’s never seen before.
“You’re kidding. How do you have more of them?”
Maxwell beams. “They’re soft, don’t bully me!”
It is soft, Daniel can feel the tension in his shoulders uncoil as Maxwell drapes it over him like a cape. “Thanks, Maxwell.”
Maxwell sits down next to him, settling into her blanket. Maxwell doesn’t need to be sitting so close, their shoulders rubbing. Daniel impulsively throws an arm around her shoulder, extending his cape to her. She rests her head on his shoulder. It feels like peace.
“Do you think there’s anything out there?” she says, her breath a murmuring whisper against his collarbones.
“What, like aliens?” Daniel huffs, blowing the hair out of his eyes and tilts his gaze to watch Maxwell’s face. “I dunno. Maybe?”
Maxwell looks at him, eyebrows upturned. “Really? I thought you were a skeptic.”
“I mean, yeah. Think of it this way, there might not be intelligent life out there, but that doesn’t mean it’s not life. The universe is too big for it to be empty.”\
“Sure, there’s bound to be microorganisms under Io’s ice, but like. What about something big? Don’t you think we would’ve found them by now?”
“Microorganisms are still big, Maxwell. Scientifically speaking.”
“Jesus Christ, you’ve been spending too much time with Faraday. She keeps trying to convince me to look at her Petri dishes.” Maxwell tucks a stray hair behind her ear. “She’s cute, but never in a million years am I gonna be sitting around watching bacteria grow.”
“Oh, she’s cute now, is she?”
Maxwell aims a sharp fist into his side, but Daniel deflects it, reaching up to ruffle Maxwell’s hair. She squirms out of the way. “That’s not what I meant! You’re such a dick, Jacobi!”
“Awww, has little ’Lana got a crush?”
“Oh my god, shut up! Shut your goddamn mouth!”
Daniel is too busy grinning to listen. His chest feels so light. “Aww, it’s okay, I won’t tell anyone.
Maxwell sighs, running a hand through her hair. “Seriously, you know it’s not like that.”
He doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the night that Maxwell called him. It had been one in the morning, he’d stayed the night at Klein’s, and his phone was ringing. He doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the panic in Alana’s voice when she asked if he’d ever been in love.
“What’s it like? Jacobi, I—Please. Tell me, I don’t think—I’m not sure I’ve ever—What’s it like?”
Daniel remembers laying it bare. How his chest hurt—still hurts, even now—to look at him, how it’s like being burned, it’s like immortality. He laid the depths of his chest into the phone line between them, sitting on Klein’s kitchen floor. It felt like perjury, sitting in that kitchen and talking about another man.
“Jacobi, I’ve never… I’ve never felt that. I want to, I want —” her voice cracked. “I don’t know if I can. Love. Daniel, am I broken?”
“No. God, Maxwell, of course not. There’s nothing wrong with you. I’m here for you.”
Maxwell choked on a sob on the other line. “Thank you.”
“I dunno if you wanna hear this right now, but… I love you, ’Lana.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Jacobi picked a shaking inhale from the static. “I love you too, Daniel.”
They hadn't said it before. It was always there, in every reassuring glance, in every time Daniel brought her lunch, in every iron knuckled grip on each other’s hands as they walked, together, through hell. But they hadn’t said it aloud before. It punched a hole right through Daniel’s chest. It still does.
Daniel blinks, brings himself back. The mink blanket, the cold biting at his nose. Maxwell, warm, solid. He places an arm around her again and pulls her into his chest. “Yeah,” he whispers, shaking her gently. “I know.”
Maxwell smiles. “Anyway, I like to think there’s something out there. Something as smart as us. How incredible would that be, finding a whole new world of people!”
Daniel hums. “I don’t think we’d know, even if we did find it. I mean, think about it. How do we know that all life is carbon-based? Would we even recognise life, if we found it?”
Maxwell settles back into her place against his chest. “You’re probably right. But it’s still out there, isn’t it?”
Daniel shrugs. “Yeah, maybe.”
“It’s just nice, you know? To think we aren’t alone.”
Daniel looks at her. The silver of the moon paints her skin an unearthly pale, softening the shadows under her eyes, the acne scars on her shoulders. He knows they both spent their childhood aching, it echoes something hollow in the bones. They fit together, they resonate in harmony.
“Yeah, I know. But like.” He nudges her shoulder. “You’ve got me."
Maxwell’s grin rings in his sternum. Jacobi’s lips twitch to echo.
"I know,” she laughs, nudging back. “I can’t get rid of you!”
Daniel is startled into laughter. “Oh, you wish.”
“I do!” Maxwell says between giggles. The laughter falls short, after a moment, but the happiness is still in her eyes. “I love you, Jacobi.”
“I love you too, ’Lana,” Daniel echoes gently, nudging her with his elbow.
Maxwell lets the silence sit before snickering. Daniel indulges her with a tired look that makes her laugh harder.
“Maxwell. I thought we were having a genuine moment here.”
“I’m sorry, this is just, like. The straightest thing we’ve ever done.”
Daniel gives a colossal eyeroll. “I’m bi, you moron.”
“Yeah, and? That’s pretty gay, even if you do like girls.
Daniel’s lip quirks involuntarily. “You’re ridiculous. Confessing your undying platonic love for me doesn’t make either of us straight. What happened to—” and here he makes bunny ears of his fingers— “you know it’s not like that?”
Maxwell pokes her tongue and him.
“Mature,” Daniel comments. “Hey, wanna go back inside and watch Star Trek and fall asleep on the couch?”
Maxwell grins. “The stars aren’t good enough for you?”
“Nope!” he says, popping the p joyously. “C’mon, I wanna sleep.”
Maxwell rolls her eyes, slipping out from the blankets and putting her glasses on for the climb down. “Alright. But I’m choosing the episode, we are not watching The Devil In the Dark for the fucking thousandth time.”
“But the meatball looking guy! He’s my favourite!”
Maxwell rolls her eyes and starts clambering down the ladder. Daniel sighs happily, watching the stars glint in the distance. They’re like a promise. He slings the mink blankets and climbs down the fire escape after Maxwell.
Life is good.