Archive of Our Own

 Jacobi looked up, made a face, sighed, and put his chicken nuggets back in the freezer.

 It was 11pm on a Tuesday. Most people, needless to say, were not at Kroger, except the attendant, who was sure to give Jacobi a Look on his way out the automatic doors.

 There was a shiny black Cadillac waiting at the curb. Jacobi stomped up to it, making sure to get as much rainwater and dirt stuck to his sneakers as possible before he yanked the door open and slouched into the passenger seat.

 "Did you have to do that," he deadpanned as he buckled his seatbelt, without even looking at the driver.

 He heard Kepler lower a pair of stupid expensive sunglasses. Of course Kepler wore sunglasses at night.

 "Good to see you, too, Mr. Jacobi," he said, which meant, No, of course I didn't.

"You embarrassed me in front of my friends," Jacobi whined.

 Out of his peripherals, he saw Kepler's hand pause on the gear shift, saw his head turn minutely. "Friends?" he pronounced, at once incredulous and disturbed.

 Jacobi hid his grin by pretending to mope out the window. "Yeah, the chicken nuggets I was gonna buy."

 A short, sharp sigh, a brief eye rub, a stern, "Jacobi."

 "Hm?" Jacobi finally looked up, innocent eyes belied by a wide, sharp grin, one which instantly fell when he saw Kepler straight on. "Jeez, what the hell happened to you?"

 "Careful," said Kepler in that low growl that meant Jacobi needed to back off on the buttons to his remote. He looked awful. A purple bruise painted his cheek and a butterfly strip held a gash on his forehead shut. Something about his eyes was darker than usual, too. Deadlier. His hands, on the wheel as he pulled out of the parking lot, had raw, busted knuckles.

 Somehow, he still managed to be ridiculously hot, which instantly put Jacobi in a shitty mood. Shittier, even, than getting a call from his boss at the grocery store in the middle of the night. The thrill of being able to antagonize Kepler after nearly two weeks of radio silence had worn off almost as quickly as his heart was pounding. Which was to say, quickly.

 Stupid Goddard. Stupid Kepler. Couldn't a man just buy crappy frozen food in peace without someone with bloody knuckles showing up in an unmarked car?

 "Where are we going?"

 A tense smile stretched the little scar on the corner of Kepler's mouth, one that Jacobi had heard the story of about a hundred times. There was a matching one across his eyebrow with an equally torturous saga.

 "Defer no time," Kepler recited. "Delays have dangerous ends. Enter, and cry 'the Dauphin!' presently, then do execution on the watch." Oh, god. He was quoting Shakespeare. That in itself was almost as frightening as the way Kepler pronounced execution, with hard consonants and five syllables instead of four. "Do you know what that means, Jacobi?"

 "Uh. No," said Jacobi, picking at a loose thread in his jeans.

 "It means," said Kepler at just below a roar. "We are on a limited schedule, so quit joking around, quit asking pointless questions, and above all quit wasting our Time and just do as you are told."

 A little trickle of blood ran down from the gash on Kepler's forehead. Jacobi decided not to mention it, but he did stare.

 "I can only assume your silence means you don't understand," Kepler snapped, making an unnecessarily sharp turn. "Would you like me to repeat myself, Mr. Jacobi?"

 "No, sir," said Jacobi, quickly.

 "Good boy," said Kepler, the words clinking on his teeth and tongue like ice in a glass. "Now if you don't mind, I would appreciate you checking our guns."

 There was a small backpack on the floor between Jacobi's feet. This, then, was easy. Routine. Something Jacobi could do by rote, and just enjoy having something to do with his hands.

 (Kepler's hands, each time Jacobi snuck glances at him out of the corner of his eye, were clenched around the steering wheel like a throat, and remained that way for the duration of the trip.)

Jacobi could think about how the job went. He could think about the office building that Kepler had kicked the door in on, or the quick, simple shots that had taken out the brute squad in the lobby, or the ride up in the elevator listening to—unfathomably—George Michael's "Faith," again. Or the second floor, the third floor, the fourth, each with a new set of enemies, a new set of obstacles, like something out of a video game, though it was clear the whole time that Kepler wasn't in it for points. He would let the elevator open, scan the floor, scowl, and shoot until the elevator closed and started rattling up again. None of his usual showmanship. No dallying. Kepler was holding out for the final boss.

 That battle (on the eleventh and final floor, naturally) was anticlimactic at best and boring at worst. Jacobi easily killed off the two goons waiting in front of the elevator with well-placed headshots before they could so much as grimace at Kepler, who strode over their bodies even as they were hitting the ground, eyes locked on an old man in a crumpled suit with wild, horror-struck eyes.

 Kepler broke his neck with one fluid, brutal snap. He prodded the man's body with the toe of his boot, and a cruel, satisfied smile appeared on his face, instantly replaced with detached unenthusiasm.

 "Well, Jacobi?" he said with a glance over his shoulder. "What are you waiting for? Light this place up."

 Jacobi could be thinking about all of that.

 He could be wondering what had driven Kepler to be so vicious in tonight's operation—particularly so. More even than usual. He could also be wondering who the hell had given Major Warren Kepler the bruises on his face and knuckles.

 Instead, he was waiting in the passenger's seat for Kepler to order their McDonald's, arms crossed and quietly muttering the chorus to George Michael's "Faith" to himself.

 It was a testament to the horrors fast food customer service personnel must face that when Kepler—still bruised and only "clean" of blood due to the aid of the Clorox wipes he kept in the console—pulled up to the window at fuck o'clock in the morning with that damned smile of his, the woman accepted the stack of bills in his hand without batting a tired eye.

 "Thank you kindly, miss," he said when she gave him their food. He even winked. Jacobi rolled his eyes and settled deeper into the upholstery as Kepler pulled into the vacant 3am McDonald's parking lot.

 He presented Jacobi with a smiling red box.

 "There's your chicken nuggets, Mr. Jacobi," he said, practically twinkling with joy.

 Jacobi stared at the happy meal. He slowly turned to Kepler, who was smiling like a kid.

 "You're joking."

 "What? You mean you aren't happy to get your meal?"

 "You're joking." Despite his tone, Jacobi's smile went ear to ear as he opened his box and started shoving fries into his mouth.

 "Don't you want the toy?" asked Kepler.

 "Eat your food, Major," said Jacobi, and turned on the radio so Kepler couldn't try to make any more clever jokes. There were only so many one could take in a day before they started to affect one's constitution.

 The radio was a mistake. After exactly two minutes of enduring Jacobi's chosen station and eating his big mac in peace, Kepler took command of the station.

 Despite all of Jacobi's experience in luck (good or bad), particularly where the man next to him and his own personal life and death were concern, he'd never much believed in the stuff. Good, bad, whatever the universe threw at him, he had learned to accept it with a shaker of salt. No luck necessary or provided.

 All that said, Jacobi had the worst luck.

 The first station Kepler found that wasn't advertising an auto shop or restaurant was playing George Michael's "Faith."

 Jacobi groaned and put his head in his hands. "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

 Kepler laughed and turned up the station. "Now, what are the odds of that?" he asked. "You know, this reminds me of the time—"

 The combination of Kepler's voice as he told Jacobi about the time he did blah blah blah and George Michael's Grammy-awarded number one pop hit were almost enough to make Jacobi open the car door and walk out into the darkness. Instead, he opened his happy meal toy. It was a bobble head of some cartoon character; a purple monster with wide, happy eyes and teeth. He flicked the head. It nodded along to the story and song.

 It wasn't until the song was long over and the story was just wrapping up that Jacobi realized he had no idea where they were, and the sun was just poking over the horizon.

 "Long story short?" said Kepler, pulling off the winding, tree-enclosed road onto a dirt easement that shook the car with its bumps. Around them, abandoned farmland stretched about an acre in each direction then melted into the line of trees. "Forming a band with two drifters and a professional bongo player is not a lucrative career move, but it does make for some damned catchy songs."

 "Uh, that's. Great, sir," said Jacobi, distracted by the—well, the nothing around them. "Quick, um. Quick question? Where the hell are we?"

 "Nowhere, Mr. Jacobi," said Kepler, jovially, unbuckling his seatbelt and stepping out of the car. "Get the shovel out of the backseat."

 He shut his door and strode around to the back of the Cadillac. This was it, thought Jacobi. His worst nightmare. Kepler was going to kill him and bury his body out here so no one could ever find him, and he was going to make Jacobi dig his own grave, just like in the movies.

 Jacobi heard the trunk open, and an impatient rap on the back window.

 He tucked the happy meal toy into the pocket of his jeans and got out of the car, opened the backseat. Sure enough, there were two shiny new shovels. Jacobi sighed, grabbed them, walked around to the back.

 Kepler leaned with one hand on the open trunk, looking nonchalantly at the contents.

 "Jesus Christ," said Jacobi. Said contents was the body of a man with a face so busted it was nearly unrecognizable as a face. He was huge, too—two or three hundred pounds of muscle and at least 6'2. Kepler had had to stuff him in; his arms and legs were shoved at awkward angles.

 Jacobi had seen a lot of bad things. This almost made him throw up. He had to look away, close to hyperventilating.

 "What—what—has he—have you—was he there the whole—Jesus Christ."

 "What?" said Kepler, unaffected. He unbuttoned his pinstriped dress shirt and folded it carefully, then set it on top of the car. He was wearing a Queen t-shirt beneath it. Jacobi did not have time to appreciate the way it clung to his muscles, because, you know, hyperventilating.

 "What do you mean what, that's a—"

 "You shot five men in the head just today," Kepler seemed to think Jacobi's green expression was hilarious. "You blew up a whole building. Just today. You're upset about this?"

 "It just caught me off guard, okay? Jeez." Jacobi wiped a hand over his face, balancing himself on the handles of the shovels. "Okay," he said. "Okay. So, what. Start digging?"

 Kepler took one of the shovels. "Start digging, Mr. Jacobi."

 They found a good spot a few yards from the car and, for a while, neither of them said anything, they just dug, and watched the world get progressively brighter as the sun finally rose. At one point, Kepler started humming a distressingly familiar upbeat song, and Jacobi "accidentally" tossed a shovelful of dirt at him. He got a heated lecture about chain of command and insubordination for his trouble, but Kepler didn't hum again, so Jacobi counted it as a win.

 It took a long time. By the end, they were both covered with dirt, anyway, as well as a thin layer of sweat. Jacobi had been awake for longer than he cared to think about, at this point, and he was. Exhausted. His bones felt like granite, his eyelids like sandpaper. When Kepler finally leaned back on his shovel and said, "That ought to do it," Jacobi wiped the sweat off his forehead with a grimy hand and immediately plopped himself down on the ground.

 Kepler tilted his head at him and something Jacobi would've called affection on any other face crossed his expression, but Jacobi didn't have time to really look at it before Kepler was busying himself with the body in the trunk.

 It wasn't fair, thought Jacobi, watching Kepler drag the dead man to the hole, that Kepler always looked so good. Beads of sweat clung to the back of his neck and dripped down his arms, and he was covered in dirt, but the way the muscles in his back and arms moved while he dragged the body was something out of one of Jacobi's wet dreams. Literally, sometimes. He scowled. Stupid Kepler, with his legs and his voice and his arms and—

 "Jacobi?"

 Jacobi jumped. Kepler was looking at him. The body was in the hole.

 "Mmhhnh?"

 "You gonna help me fill this in?"

 "Uh..." Through his tired brain, Jacobi tried to work out how to get out of this. He wasn't sure he could stand, let alone pick up a shovel—

 "You don't have to," said Kepler.

 "I. Don't?"

 "You look like you just ran twenty miles."

 "Yeah, well, you don't look so great yourself," said Jacobi, gesturing at Kepler's bruised, sweaty state, though the words sounded feeble even to himself.

 Kepler gave a short laugh, picked up the shovel, and started filling in the hole. "That's no way to talk to your superior officer, Mr. Jacobi. You ought to have complete and utter faith in me, regardless of looks. Besides—"

 "Let me guess, sir," said Jacobi. "I should see the other guy."

 A pause, while Kepler's smile turned just this side of evil, and he gestured into the hole with his shovel.

 Jacobi's expression went slack, and he leaned over from where he sat to watch dirt slowly cover the man.

 "Fuck," he murmured. He quickly looked back at Kepler, because it was a lot more fun to watch him do manual labor (for more reasons than one) than to stare at a dead guy.

 The hole was soon filled. Kepler kicked the dirt off the shovels and put them in the trunk. Before they got back in the Cadillac, Jacobi propped the happy meal toy in the soft, broken dirt on top of the hole. Its head bobbled, ominously.

 They used the last of Kepler's clorox wipes to clean off the worst of the grime, then. Sat there.

 Jacobi gave Kepler a minute or two of silence and nothing. Then, just as he was about to say something, Kepler said, staring right ahead out the windshield,

 "Sorry about the body."

 "Uh. It's fine, sir."

 "I didn't know you'd be so upset about it."

 "Not upset. Just surprised."

 Kepler hummed. "Okay."

 More silence.

 "Hey, uh. Sir?"

 Kepler hummed again.

 "Why did you—how come... what happened to—"

 "Do you remember those men who died in your explosion, Jacobi?"

 "You're gonna have to be more—"

 "You know the one."

 Jacobi did. His heart and fists clenched. "Sir, I would appreciate it if we could talk about literally anything else—"

 "That," Kepler continued, like Jacobi was nothing but a song on the radio to talk over, gesturing vaguely outside the car. "Was Campbell's brother. You remember Campbell."

 Of course Jacobi did.

 "Well," said Kepler. His voice had lost its usual pompous charm. It was now flat, pragmatic. "His brother was looking for you. Unfortunately, he found me."

 Jacobi started at his knees, grinding his teeth. His fingers were claws in the leather seats.

 Most people learned one new thing every day. Jacobi had just learned three.

 "...Jacobi?" prompted Kepler, at length. "Are you..."

 "Shut up," said Jacobi, "Just shut up for a minute. What the—what the fuck is wrong with you?"

 "Excuse me?" warned Kepler.

 "I said," roared Jacobi, whirling on him. "Shut up, sir."

 "Don't ever talk to me like that again," Kepler snarled, and Jacobi backed down, because of course he backed down, but his heart still beat against his ribs like a jail cell.

 "I did," said Kepler, short and clipped. "What was necessary. So did you."

 "So did—"

 "Yes," said Kepler. "At the office. You provided the necessary backup to eliminate any further threat to your safety, ergo the safety of an SI-5 agent."

 "What the hell does all that mean?"

 "It means you won't be hearing from the Campbells again, Mr. Jacobi."

 In a quiet, small voice, Jacobi asked, "Who was the guy at the office?"

 "Someone who won't be trying to avenge both his sons anytime soon."

 "You—I—you—why would you do that?"

 Kepler raised a dangerous eyebrow, and Jacobi amended himself.

 "Why would you do that, sir?"

 "It's hard to come across good SI-5 candidates. I was protecting Goddard Futuristics' investment," he stated, and no, no, that was wrong, that wasn't it, that was just a blanket statement, that was just a cue card in Kepler's head.

 "Is that what Cutter told you to say?"

 Kepler's eye twitched. He said, in a low, calm voice, "Mr. Cutter has yet to know about this particular mission."

 What?

 "So it was just your idea, then, to—"

 "To stop them before they got to you."

 The way he said "you," it was like there was no one else in the world.

 Jacobi stopped breathing.

 Then, before he could kill himself thinking about it, he turned it all into a joke, because if he didn't, if he allowed this to be real, he'd never make it out alive. "Aw, Major, you do have a heart."

 Something fought a war in Kepler's eyes, and for a second—just a second—he looked so fucked up that Jacobi almost took it back.

 Instead, he reached out and touched Kepler's hand, which instantly balled into a fist.

 "Don't," he rasped.

 "Kepler—"

 "I said don't."

 Jacobi's mouth snapped shut, but his hand stayed warm on Kepler's.

 "Just leave it, Daniel," Kepler whispered. "I can't do this, you can't do this. So shut up, leave it where it is, and we're never going to talk about this again. Is that clear?"

 "You saved my life on purpose," said Jacobi, almost to himself.

 "I said is that clear?"

 Jacobi leaned over the console and kissed Kepler, whose whole body went rigid and whose mouth opened under his on a sharp breath. He tasted like dirt, and two hours of driving, and no sleep for God knew how long and a little like McDonald's, but that was okay. It was him, and he didn't push Jacobi away, even though Jacobi expected it.

 Not wanting to press his luck, Jacobi pulled back before Kepler had the chance to rethink the whole not-pushing-him-away thing.

 "Yeah, Major," he said, leaning back in his seat. "Shut up, leave it where it is, never talk about it again. All clear."

 Instead of answering, Kepler started the car, and they drove back to civilization without talking about any of it ever again. But they knew. And, in some ways, that was enough.