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Back in the early days after Kepler told him they had to keep it professional whilst on mission he thought about it a lot.
About laying on his back with Eiffel between his legs thrusting up into him whilst Kepler sat on the edge of the bed and leaned down to gently brush Jacobi’s sweaty hair off his forehead and tell him he was doing such a good job.
That he looked so pretty right now.
That Officer Eiffel was going to take good care of him whilst he was gone.
And then later, in his cell, Jacobi thought about getting down on his knees sucking Eiffel off wet and loud when he shuffled in to bring Jacobi his food rations. He thought about locking eyes with Kepler in the next cell as Eiffel came down his throat. Kepler would never have gone for it because he was a possessive asshole and Eiffel would never have gone for it because he thought, rightly, that Jacobi was a terrible person and besides, it wasn’t really about Eiffel anyway.
But this was a different Eiffel.
So when Jacobi watched Eiffel 2.0 shift on the couch and turn towards him, slowly but firmly pressing their mouths together, he was only really surprised that he wasn’t the one who made the first move.
He sucks Eiffel off on his knees in front of the shitty couch Lovelace got for their apartment and only feels a little bad when he comes in Eiffel’s hand and gets a few splashes on the cracked leather.
***
The sex is- well the sex is fine. It’s passable. Eiffel is sweet and gentle and really cares about making sure Jacobi comes. Jacobi kind of hates it.
He thinks about the kind of sex he was having a few years ago. Where every single time it felt like something was being torn from him. Where he spent half the day desperate and the other half high on the thrill of it. Clammy hand jobs on the floor of Minkowski’s guest bedroom don’t really compare.
But he keeps going back. Keeps getting drunk and telling Eiffel to come over and letting him suck the taste of liquor he can’t drink off his tongue. Eiffel is convenient and sort of attractive and most of all he wants Jacobi. It’s a nice thing. To be wanted.
***
Moving in with Lovelace might have been a mistake but when you decide to start blowing up the office buildings where they process your pay check, the nice apartment they gave you tends to go with it.
Lovelace is cold and ruthless and determined.
And she survived.
Out of the six people that went up to space in that tin can she’s the only one who made it back.
Sort of.
Either way that sort of thing changes you.
They have an understanding.
***
He’s on his back on his bed with his eyes screwed shut and Eiffel’s cock buried inside him.
Eiffel has a hand in his mouth and another carefully wrapping its way around Jacobi’s throat and squeezing and god, yes, finally he’s only been begging Eiffel to try this for weeks.
Jacobi laughs a little breathlessly and tries to say ‘Gee Eiffel I didn’t know you had it in you’ but it comes out muffled by the fingers in his mouth and the crushing grip Eiffel has on his windpipe.
His hands are bigger than Jacobi realised they were.
He’s pressing down harder now and Jacobi’s starting to get lightheaded, small fireworks exploding behind his eyes and Eiffel’s still fucking him and holding him down and putting his hands in his mouth and hair and throat that’s- and that’s-
That’s too many hands.
All of a sudden Jacobi’s eyes snap open and he whips his head sideways and sat next to Eiffel on the bed with his big hand on Jacobi’s throat he sees the bloated, burned face of Warren Kepler.
Kepler smiles for a second his frozen, blistered lips start to move and-
Jacobi wakes up with a strangled gasp, breathing as if he’s just been dragged up from the bottom of a lake, drenched in sweat and nauseous. And hard.
He smokes a cigarette, throws up, texts Eiffel a picture of his dick, jerks off, showers, brushes his teeth, smokes another cigarette, wonders if he should apologise for texting Eiffel a picture of his dick, doesn’t and showers again in that order. By that time it’s almost six am and he can hear Lovelace starting to stir in the other room.
She’s gonna be pissed he used all the hot water.
***
It’s the week before Christmas and Minkowski had cornered him in his room a week ago and told him that if he didn’t come to her stupid Happy Early Birthday Doug party she would personally cut off one of his fingers. In response Jacobi had pointedly asked her what she was doing at his and Lovelace’s apartment at eleven pm and she had gone very red and stormed out of the room.
But whatever it’s not like Jacobi has anyone else to spend the holidays with because everyone he knows is dead.
So he’s here.
It’s fucking awkward.
***
They stay for almost an hour before Minkowski excuses herself from the room to take a call from her husband and Jacobi feels Lovelace stiffen besides him.
He stands up quickly, looking around wildly, trying to find anything to change the subject but the first thing his eyes fall on is Eiffel chatting idly to where Hera has patched herself into Minkowski’s laptop for the afternoon. Jacobi really hopes that no one has told Hera about what’s been happening between him and Eiffel. He thinks she might try to electrocute him.
He suddenly realises he has been stood up silently in the middle of the room for about thirty seconds at this point and everyone has turned to look at him.
‘Uh… I’m going for a cigarette’ he mutters. Coward.
It’s not long before Lovelace joins him outside. She sits down on the concrete steps he has perched himself on and Jacobi wordlessly passes her the half smoked cigarette.
She takes it, inhales. Exhales.
***
Jacobi is in some nondescript motel in the middle of nowhere.
It must be the early hours of the morning and there’s frost on the windows but he’s sweating profusely and something has woken him.
A noise. A kind of muffled noise, unmistakably human. And unmistakably right next to him.
He reaches his hands silently to the gun he keeps under his pillow and starts to pull it out very slowly and then suddenly he hears it again.
A moan.
Jacobi opens his eyes and allows them to adjust to the darkness for a second before tilting his head in the direction of the noise.
He can make out a large shape in the bed next to him and now he’s more awake he realises he can feel the heat coming off the figure next to him in waves. He stares for a second as the figure moves strangely next to him. Jacobi can’t make it out properly. It seems to have too many limbs.
Suddenly the figure groans again and lifts its head Jacobi realises with a start that it’s Kepler.
He can’t quite make out his features but he knows the line of Kepler’s jaw like the back of his hand.
Then there is another, softer moan but Jacobi is sure Kepler’s mouth is closed and his faces twists and Jacobi realises he is smiling down at the bed.
At the second figure on the bed.
Kepler is here and naked and so, so warm and he’s fucking someone in bed whilst Jacobi sleeps next to them. He’s going to be sick.
Jacobi jumps out of bed, the gun clattering to the floor, and runs for the bathroom door slamming the light switch as he goes and for the briefest of moments he looks back at the room and that’s when he sees it.
The shaft of yellow light from the bathroom doorway is shining onto Kepler and the figure on the bed now and with a sickening jolt Jacobi realises he recognises them.
It’s him.
His eyes, his hair, every detail down to the scar just below his collarbone where he got stabbed on his first mission to Europe. His doppelgänger and Kepler are silent now, both staring coldly in Jacobi’s direction but he can still see the place where their bodies are connected. Where Kepler is still thrusting inside him, the rhythm steady and sure.
When Jacobi manages to tear his eyes away and back to their faces he realises why there are beads of sweat running down the line of his spine. Kepler and his doppelgänger are slowly but surely starting to melt, to burn and freeze and set alight, their faces crumbling and swelling with fluid and all the while as Jacobi stands frozen staring at the awful scene in front of them he can’t help but notice they’re still fucking.
He wakes up with a strangled yell. Eiffel stirs in the bed next to him with a muffled
‘Daniel?’ and Jacobi throws his feet out of bed onto the floor and presses his face into his palms.
‘What’s wrong?’ Eiffel says his voice soft and confused with sleep, his hands coming up and sliding from the back of Jacobi’s neck down to his collarbones.
‘You should go’ Jacobi says into his hands.
‘I- what? Daniel what hap-‘ Eiffel starts to pull his hands back and as he does so his fingers accidentally brush against Jacobi’s throat.
‘I said GO! GET OUT’ Jacobi stands up immediately and starts picking up items of clothing at random from the floor and throwing them at Eiffel, who grabs them on instinct as he scrambles backwards off of the bed his eyes wide and concerned.
‘GET THE FUCK OUT I’M SERIOUS!’
‘Daniel are you fucking-‘
‘GO AWAY!’
‘DANIEL-‘
‘HEY!’
Both men turn towards the doorway where Lovelace is standing, her voice grave and somewhere in the back of his mind, Jacobi thinks he’s never seen anyone look as beautiful wrapped in a fluffy pink bathrobe.
‘Jacobi’ she says. He doesn’t respond, just looks at her for a long moment chest heaving before she sighs and turns away from him.
‘Doug’ she says her voice softer, gentler, ‘it’s ok. Go take my room for the night.’
‘But-‘
‘It’s gonna be ok. Just take my room we’ll talk about it in the morning.’
Lovelace sounds weary, exhausted and as Jacobi watches Eiffel walk slowly out the room looking like a kicked puppy he feels a hot wave of shame.
Once Eiffel has left Lovelace shuts the door and walks slowly over to sit on the opposite side of the bed to where Jacobi’s standing trying desperately to get in control of his breathing.
‘You can’t keep doing this’ she says matter of factly looking him straight in the eye. ‘It’s not fair. To either of you.’
‘Oh that’s rich. Fuck any married women lately or?’ He spits, cruel and vicious and instantly full of regret.
Something in Lovelace’s face twitches and changes and she moves to leave before Jacobi darts forward grabbing her forearm.
‘Lovelace I-‘ Jacobi starts and then cuts himself off. He doesn’t know what to say.
‘You have to stop sleeping with him if you don’t know how to handle it.’
She keeps talking as if Jacobi never said anything, facing away from him towards the wall. ‘He’s not like us.’
‘I know.’ Jacobi sighs, his breathing feels more regular again now his hand is touching her warm, not hot, living flesh.
‘I’m sorry.’
She turns her face towards him and it’s composed and balanced as she moves to sit back down on the bed with him, both propped against the pillows, but her voice wobbles slightly as she breathes ‘It’s ok Jacobi, I know.’
She never calls him Daniel. He’s grateful to her for that.
***
Jacobi wonders sometimes if Eiffel might have a handful of memories, deep down.
That if he keeps poking and prodding at him he might be able to get Eiffel to remember how much he hated him once.
Maybe then at least the sex might be better.
For now Jacobi is on his back with Eiffel is thrusting inside him because Eiffel is a loser and really likes kissing him. Jacobi waits until he can feel Eiffel losing his rhythm, getting more erratic, starting to fall apart before he wraps his hands around Eiffel’s neck and pulls him down to whisper ‘hit me’ in his ear.
Eiffel doesn’t take it very well.
About twenty minutes and one cold shower later Jacobi is smoking a cigarette in bed whilst Eiffel gets dressed with his back to him. Jacobi can hear the way his breath is hitching as if he keeps trying to start talking but can’t quite get the words out. Finally he turns towards Jacobi his face stoney.
‘I’m not him’ Eiffel says gravely as if it’s some big revelation.
Jacobi laughs. ‘Yeah too right you’re not.’
Jesus Christ Eiffel never even met the guy. Not really.
Eiffel bristles. ‘So he would just hit you if you asked him to?’
Jacobi smiles coldly.
’I wouldn’t have had to ask.’
***
It was a simple mission.
In and out. Clean.
Get into the building. Take out the guards. Plant the bomb. Get out of the building. Blow up the bomb and around six billion dollars of Goddard tech with it. Easy.
Until they got made on the way out the door.
Running like hell away from the facility Jacobi laughs as Lovelace pulls ahead of him slightly, his fingers fumbling with the switch in his pocket waiting until they are far enough away that they can stand back and watch without worrying about flying shrapnel. He thinks they’re just about there when suddenly he sees a guard come out of nowhere flanking Lovelace about thirty paces ahead of him. He yells out to her and in an instant the guard turns towards him and Jacobi sees a flash like light glinting off metal and suddenly Jacobi stops running.
Jacobi can’t work out for a second exactly what has happened. Why did he stop?
Then he feels a cold creeping pain start up in his neck, getting hotter by the second. Jacobi reaches a shaky hand up to where he feels the burning, gnawing pain and feels the slippery, unmistakable warmth of blood and the cold handle of a small knife lodged in the side of his neck.
He barely registers the gunshots as he falls to his knees, Lovelace skids over to where he has fallen, the guard leaking brain matter onto the ground a few feet away.
‘Jacobi’ she says.
Her voice sounds panicked and too loud but her fingers don’t shake as she presses them firmly to the bloody gash in his neck.
Jacobi thinks about the last time someone wrapped their fingers around his throat. He snorts with laughter but it comes out a tortured, gargling sound as he slumps forward into her chest.
‘Jacobi. Hey, HEY stay with me. Don’t try to speak you’re gonna be fine ok?’
He’d explain the joke to her but doesn’t think she would find it very funny.
‘Ok you’re gonna be just fine alright? Just stay awake, stay with me.’
Jacobi can see two of her lovely, pinched face swimming in front of his eyes. He thinks, randomly, about the first Isabel Lovelace. How she burned to death in a star a million miles from everyone she loved. He is absurdly, selfishly grateful to her for that in this moment. Dying for something important with this Lovelace, his friend, holding him as the world fades into grey.
This, he thinks, might not be a bad way to go.
***
He wakes up in his own bed some time later. As it turns out being a legally dead fugitive makes it kind of difficult to just walk into a hospital.
***
He stops suggesting Eiffel comes over after this and Eiffel doesn’t ask. Jacobi considers it a favour to Lovelace and besides, the sex really was pretty mediocre anyhow.
***
As he slides the spare key Kepler gave him ‘in case of emergencies Mr Jacobi’ into the door he almost expects it not to work. But the lock turns smoothly and the door opens with a soft whoosh.
He thinks about the first time he came to Kepler’s apartment. He had to pick the lock because Kepler wasn’t answering his calls and back in those days he didn’t have a key.
When he finally got the door open he found himself with the cool barrel of a gun pressed to his forehead.
They had stared at each other for a long moment before Kepler had smirked and slowly began to trace the gun down the line of Jacobi’s temple and jaw until the edge of the barrel was resting against Jacobi’s lower lip.
Slowly, careful Jacobi had opened his mouth and let Kepler slide the bitter tasting metal between his lips.
Kepler fucked him so good and hard that night he’d passed out on the couch, his pants around his thighs.
When he awoke he was alone in Kepler’s bed. On the side table there were three items; a glass of water, a pistol and a note atop a cereal bar which read, in Kepler’s neat hand-writing:
‘Eat more.’
Now the apartment is quiet, untouched.
There are no forgotten glasses on the side, the fridge is empty, the shelves wiped clean and sparkling.
Other than a few expensive, dusty bottles of wine in the rack there’s no sign anyone was ever planning on coming back here at all.
Jacobi has no idea what he’s doing here.
He walks through the rooms silently, lingering often without touching anything, as if this is a particularly interesting museum exhibition.
In the kitchen Jacobi thinks of the fancy meals Kepler used to prepare in here. Jacobi, who knows nothing about fine dining, would watch from the countertop listing off all sorts of suggestions just so that Kepler would cradle his jaw in his large, strong hands as he held out a spoon of sauce for Jacobi to taste.
He walks to the bathroom and that’s when he sees the bottle of cologne Kepler used to wear sitting neatly next to the sink.
Jacobi crosses the bathroom in a few short steps. He stares at the cologne for a second and then very slowly, as if he is afraid the bottle will electrocute him, he reaches for it. The glass is cool under his fingers.
Strange. For some reason Jacobi expected it to be warm.
He picks the bottle up, holds it up to eye level to inspect it, does not smell it and places it carefully in the duffle bag he has slung over his shoulder.
The last room is the bedroom.
Jacobi gently slides open the doors that lead to the room and pauses at the threshold.
Just like the rest of the house there isn’t a thing out of place. The bed is neatly made. There’s nothing on the bedside table not even a book and for a moment Jacobi thinks about the apartment he shares with Lovelace.
They have only been there a few months but already there are plants winding their way across the windowsill, empty cans piled up by the door ready to be taken outside, books and dvds and a handful of photos tacked up on the walls.
That’s their home. They live there.
This doesn’t feel like a home.
Jacobi can’t bring himself to look at the bed too long so he walks over to the closet.
Opens the doors and runs his hand slowly along the smooth, expensive fabric of the suit jackets that line the wall until he feels something else. Cotton, soft and a little worn. Jacobi reached into the closet and pulls out the fabric and his heart skips a beat in his chest.
The t-shirt is almost threadbare in places, the logo of some stupid nineties punk band, something ‘membrane’, faded almost completely on the front and smelling faintly of dry cleaning chemicals.
It’s Jacobi’s shirt. He must have left it here.
Jacobi stares at the shirt until he feels his eyes start to sting upon which he screws it into a ball and shoves it way down the bottom of the duffle bag.
On his way out of the room he grabs the most expensive looking bottle from the small liquor cabinet by the door.
After that there isn’t much left to scavenge.
Warren Kepler this is your life!
A bottle of fancy cologne, a vintage single malt and a shirt that doesn’t belong to you.
Jacobi walks back through the apartment not looking around, carefully places the duffle bag by the door, walks directly to the kitchen, pulls out a bottle of wine and a corkscrew and drinks. A lot.
He stays there for three to four days give or take. His phone died on day two and he didn’t bring a charger. There’s no food in the house so he doesn’t eat. He just drinks.
Jacobi wakes up in the dark around 7pm on what he thinks is a Monday and decides today is the day.
He stumbles over and extracts the only other item from his duffle bag; a large bottle of kerosene. Not as dramatic as an explosion. Slower, more absolute. Complete and total consumption. That’s what Jacobi is going for.
He splashes the kerosene over every inch of the apartment until he’s out, sets up the small incendiary device he developed for this exact occasion and walks out of the apartment grabbing the handle of the duffle bag as he goes.
He pauses at the door for a second staring out onto the dark street. Feels a prickle on his neck like someone is watching him. Like maybe Kepler was sitting the whole time in some dark corner watching as Jacobi fell apart. It would be just like him.
Or maybe Jacobi’s instincts were right and this apartment isn’t a home. Maybe it’s a filmset. Maybe Kepler is just offscreen, waiting in the wings for Jacobi to figure out the right combination of lines to cut the cameras.
Or maybe his awful, bloated corpse is floating alone in the universe forever because Jacobi left him behind.
***
Jacobi waits until he’s about half a mile away to press the trigger. He doesn’t stick around to hear the fire trucks come.