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He'd expected it to backfire the moment he had the idea. He knew it was only going to make things worse, maybe even unfixable. He wasn't an idiot, he knew all this, and also what the smart move would be.
The smart move would be to let the day come and pass them by. If Jacobi wanted to say something, he definitely would.
Warren isn't sure why he decides to do it anyway. Maybe he's bored. Maybe he wants to create an explosion, wants to give Jacobi a reason to yell at him for a little. Maybe he just wants him to look at him for a second.
None of these very good reasons are the conclusion he comes to.
He decides that it simply doesn't feel right to let a day like this pass. Not with everything that happened.
He wonders what Kepler would have had to say to this before he died. Kepler hadn't been a sentimental man by far, and he never tolerated distractions.
But Kepler was dead, and honestly, there's nothing left to be distracted from. So Warren goes ahead.
Jacobi- or well, Daniel now, Warren supposes, since he's not a Colonel anymore and really, shouldn't roommates call each other by their first name?- comes home in the afternoon. He looks ready to disappear into his room and not come out until it's dark outside, like he usually does. The smell coming from the kitchen, however, stops him in his tracks.
'You're cooking.'
It's not a question, so Warren doesn't say anything when Daniel appears in the door. He looks tired, and empty. Like usually. He doesn't even look particularly haunted, even though it's the middle of April and last year around this time the two of them were-
Well. Were the three of them.
'This'll be done in about twenty minutes,' Warren says softly. Daniel just stares at him, at the knife in his hands and then at the stove.
'What do you think you're doing?', he asks. His voice is dangerously quiet. And Warren was expecting this, of course, but his shoulders still tense.
'It's just a-'
'No,' Daniel interrupts him. He doesn't come closer. He doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't even look at Warren. 'I can see what it is. Why?'
Warren takes a deep breath, and wonders if he should feign ignorance. Pretend he doesn't know what this means. He wonders if that would make Daniel angrier.
It probably would, so Warren simply tells the truth.
'It's the thirteenth,' he says.
His voice sounds so soft, so careful. Kepler had never sounded like that, not even when he was just about to get thrown out of the airlock.
The soft doesn't do anything, though, because Daniel recoils anyway. He shakes his head. 'Fuck you,' he says. He sounds like he's concentrating hard to keep his voice from wavering.
Warren frowns, without meaning to. 'Daniel,' he says, 'I-'
'No, don't,' Daniel snaps. 'Don't say anything. Just- just shut up.'
And with that, he turns around and walks out of the kitchen.
Warren flinches when he hears the door to Daniel's room slam. Kepler never flinched, not at explosions, not at Cutter, not at slamming doors. But Warren does, and he turns to his preparations of what was Alana Maxwell's favourite meal before she was shot in the head, and he isn't sure what to do next.
He counts to ten, a strategy he's learned from somewhere, some years ago, probably before he died. He doesn't remember, which is fine, because it doesn't work anyway.
Continuing the cooking doesn't work either. Setting the table for two people, and eating alone while Daniel doesn't leave his room doesn't work either.
Warren would like to draw a meaningful conclusion from this, about the man that was made by beings beyond anything a human can understand, who can make perfect replicas and still somehow managed to mess him up and bring him back all wrong, about the man that's currently locked himself in his room and can probably hear any noise he's making, about what it means when Warren's heart skips a beat in the rare moments he really manages to make Daniel smile, or when both of them are woken up by nightmares and find each other on the couch, wordlessly.
Or maybe just about Alana, about the woman that he knew, or maybe didn't know at all, and that he can't help but to miss very much.
'Happy Birthday, Doctor,' he mutters into the emptiness of the room, and it doesn't help at all.
When Daniel comes out of his room, Warren has already cleared the table and is now sitting on the couch, staring right ahead. Daniel doesn't join him. Instead, he disappears into the kitchen, where, Warren assumes, he eats, standing at the counter instead of sitting down, like he used to do after a mission, late at night.
It doesn't make Warren miss the days there were three of them, and they were a team, and they knew that they could accomplish anything together. It really doesn't, but it's close.
Eventually Daniel steps out of the kitchen. Warren expects him to walk straight past him back into his room, but he doesn't. He sits down on the couch, right next to him.
And Warren keeps his breathing perfectly under control, because that's something that he learned and did not forget, but that doesn't do anything about the fluttering in his stomach.
He should say something. He really should. He's sure that the silence is only going to stretch like taffy, and soon it will be a whole day without him hearing Daniel's voice, and then a week.
'I'm sorry,' is, unfortunately, the thing that he ends up blurting out.
Daniel sighs, and doesn't look at Warren.
'I know,' he says, his voice flat.
'You know I- I miss her, too,' he adds, still surprised by how much he means it.
'I know,' Daniel says again.
And then it's a few more seconds of silence during which Warren waits (hopes?) for Daniel to say something, anything. Even if it's I can never forgive you and all I see when I look at you is a reminder of the things I've been through.
Even if it's the aliens should have left well enough alone when you were thrown out of that airlock.
(Warren has dreams, sometimes, maybe nightmares, where Daniel tells him all these things, and more. It's those nights that Warren realises just how much he likes hearing Daniel speak, hearing his voice.)
(It's probably not normal, of course.)
Warren clears his throat. ‘She was- she was-’
He doesn’t know what to say. He knows how strange that must seem to Daniel, considering who he is (or maybe who he was, it’s not easy to tell here on Earth). He tries anyway, and when he speaks again it’s nothing calculated and confident, knowing exactly what it’s going to do to the person next to him.
‘She was-’
(She was young. She was radiant. She was brave. She was special. She was my friend. She was my friend. She was my friend. She was my-)
‘She was brilliant.’
Warren knows that it’s the wrong thing to say as soon as the words leave his mouth. Daniel’s shoulder sink. He doesn’t look at Warren, still staring straight ahead.
‘Yes, she was.’
And more silence.
Warren wants to say something more. He wants to say I don’t know how I’m ever going to make any of this up to you. He wants to say I don’t understand why you’re still here. He wants to say I miss you so much and you’re not even gone at all.
And just maybe, he wants to say, I love you.
But it doesn’t matter, because he doesn’t.
Instead he takes a deep breath, feels very heavy for a second, and says, ‘I wonder why they did it, sometimes.’
Next to him, Daniel pulls his feet up on the couch, hugging his knees. He looks so small. Warren shouldn’t-
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean-’ Warren sighs. ‘There was no reason for it. No use to it at all. I had done my job, I was- I was-’
He swallows the end of that sentence. Daniel is holding his breath.
‘But her,’ he goes on, his voice turning soft enough to scare even him, ‘she was- she was so much more. I just- I wonder, if it was a mistake. A waste. So- sometimes.’
This time Daniel looks at him. Warren doesn’t look back at him, but he can feel it.
It’s a very familiar feeling, except that it didn’t use to make him feel so on edge.
Daniel sighs once, deeply, and then Warren finally looks at him. He watches him drag his hand down his face and run it through his hair.
‘God,’ he says, ‘you’re so fucking bad at this.’
‘Bad at what?’
‘At being a goddamn person.’
Warren frowns. ‘I don’t think I under-’
‘Look.’ Daniel turns to him, his brows furrowed. Warren thinks he’s going to touch him, but he doesn’t. ‘Every morning I wake up, and I miss her. With every single breath I take, I miss her. Everywhere I look, every time something hurts, every time something doesn’t hurt- I miss her, so much.’
His voice cracks on the last word, and his breathing is shallow and his eyes are misty and it puts Warren in such a state of fear-
‘Daniel, are you-’
‘I loved her,’ Daniel says. He looks like every single word is causing him pain. ‘More than anything. More than anything in the world. And she’s never coming back. But-’
He takes a shaky breath. He looks down at his hands, and when he looks back at Warren his eyes seem to look right inside him, where Kepler never let anyone look before he’d died, and-
‘It’s not a waste,’ Daniel says softly. His hand reaches for Warren’s, touches it for a split second, and then pulls back. ‘You being here, it’s not a waste. You making it- coming back, I mean. It can’t be a waste.’
He grins then, a shadow of the adrenaline-fueled smile Kepler used to know so well. It’s sad and tired and very beautiful.
Warren wonders if seeing Daniel smile had felt like this back when he was still Colonel Kepler.
‘Because if you being here is a waste… that means so am I.’
This is where Daniel’s voice breaks. He turns his head away.
And Warren isn’t human, not really. No matter how convincing he plays the role, he isn’t. But fuck, neither was Kepler, and neither of them really know how to handle this.
Warren has no idea what to do, so he just puts his arm around Daniel’s shoulder. Daniel lets out a sob. He presses a hand to his mouth and then his face is buried in Warren’s shoulder.
He's shaking. Warren pulls him closer, his hand drawing circles on his back. He rests his nose against Daniel’s hair.
Neither of them say anything. Eventually, Daniel’s breathing evens out.
It’s not right. It’s not enough. But maybe it could be, with a little bit of time.
‘This is just like her,’ Warren mutters after what might have been an hour. It’s long gotten dark outside. ‘Doing something like this. Even now.’
Warren thinks Daniel might not understand what he means, but he lets out a weak laugh.
‘Yeah,’ he mutters against Warren’s shoulder. ‘God she would have made fun of us for this, wouldn’t she?’
‘Mercilessly,’ Warren agrees and Daniel laughs again.
'Fuck,’ he says. ‘I miss her so much.’
‘Me too,’ Warren says. And he means it.
He thinks Kepler would have, as well.
They spend the night right here, because Daniel eventually falls asleep and Warren doesn’t want to move. For once, he spends no time wondering why he doesn’t. He just holds Daniel and eventually falls asleep next to him.
He doesn’t dream. He wakes up with an aching neck. Jacobi is already up in the kitchen, making breakfast. He's probably not going to mention any of the things that happened yesterday, and neither is Warren.
And it’s not quite right. It’s not enough. Warren knows this.
But maybe, it could be. With a little bit of time.
The one thing that they do have, these days, is time.