Chapter Text
“i spy,” jacobi starts obediently, his gaze flickering dully around the room, “with my little eye,” and the gaze locks on the view through the window, “something… beginning with… s.”
kepler sighs. jacobi can hear the disappointment in the exhale. “star.”
“okay.” he shifts, wrists flexing experimentally where they’re cuffed behind his back. he’d asked minkowski to lock them in front of him, so the strain was easier on his shoulders, but she ignored him – apparently, he could escape. “i spy, with my little eye, something beginning with w.”
there is another sigh from kepler. “wolf 359?” he suggests, somehow conveying the question in his tone despite the monotonous nature of his normally-animated voice. it betrays just how long they’ve been playing this game.
jacobi’s hand twitches with the intent of raising it to give kepler a nicely sarcastic thumbs-up, before he is reminded of the handcuffs keeping the hand in place behind his back. “congratulations,” he replies drily instead.
“can’t you try something a little more… exciting?” kepler asks.
“fine,” jacobi replies, biting back on the desire to point out you want something exciting, you don’t play this game. “i spy, with my little eye, something beginning with…” he hesitates. then, confidently, he continues: “b.”
silence hangs over the room for a brief moment. then, in possibly the most resigned voice jacobi’s ever heard kepler use, his former commander replies, “blue dwarf star.”
jacobi snorts. “i was just thinking blue star, but, yeah, you get it.”
kepler groans. “mr jacobi,” he says slowly, “these games are meant to make time go faster. i know our alien neighbours have talents in manipulating the passage of time, but i don’t think any of them have your unique skill of slowing it down quite so tediously. where’s your sense of fun?”
“hey,” jacobi bites back. “the stupid game was your idea. don’t like, don’t play.”
there’s a brief chuckle from the overhead speakers, and both kepler and jacobi appear to cringe minutely at the reminder that hera’s been watching this entire interaction. “wee—ee—eell,” she starts, the comms crackling as she glitches over her irritatingly smug tone, “if you want someone with a sense of fun, colonel, i can join in.”
somehow, jacobi’s pushed kepler so close to the edge that he seems relieved by the interruption. “hera,” he greets warmly, though jacobi knows he doesn’t think of her even remotely fondly. “go ahead. try not to make it anything to do with wolf 359.”
“let’s see,” hera continues, voice annoyingly peppy in a way that tells jacobi she already made up her mind on what she’d choose before she even interrupted them. “i spy, with my very large motion sensors, something… that beg—begins with… d.”
kepler blinks. “now, that is a challenge,” he croons. “unless – dwarf star.”
“nope.”
“deep space?”
“nooo. wrong again. how many chances are—are you supposed to get to answer this before i win?”
kepler’s eyebrows raise fragmentally. “well,” he starts, “that hasn’t come up in mine and jacobi’s game, since everything he seems to choose is guessed within the first or second try.”
“doug eiffel,” jacobi interjects. before kepler can point out doug eiffel isn’t here, he continues, “just because we can’t see it, doesn’t mean she can’t. with her very large motion sensors.”
kepler’s eyes flicker up to the ceiling, wondering if the challenge hera set for him is truly that challenging. “no,” she replies, “it’s definitely in the same room as you. very close to you.”
jacobi’s eyes dart around the area. out of the corner of his eye, he sees kepler look around, too. “demolitions expert?” kepler asks. jacobi wrinkles his nose.
hera rejects this, too, but tells them, “you’re getting warmer—mer.”
“disastrously incompetent commanding officer?” jacobi asks, and ignores the slightly amused edge to kepler’s glance. “oh, no, wait – disastrously incompetent former commanding officer.”
“veee—eery warm,” hera replies. she sounds like she has all the time in the world.
lips curling into a slight smirk that only spells out revenge in jacobi’s experience, kepler says almost immediately after, “doctor maxwell’s friends,” and revels in the way jacobi flinches from the words.
“dick,” jacobi mutters.
there’s a pause.
“correct, mr jacobi!” hera crows, and kepler sighs. “though i was looking for it in the plural. now, i’m going to say that since neither of you got this in, hmm—mm, three guesses, i’m still in charge. i’ll make this one easier. i spy, with my little motion sensors, some—something beginning with a!”
there’s another moment of silence, as kepler sulks over his game being hijacked by someone who actually knows how to make it fun.
“if it helps,” hera adds, “the word ends in holes. unauthorised vocabulary is provided courtesy of officer eiffel.”