Work Text:
Maxwell grimaces as another wave of pain ripples through her abdomen, leaving her feeling as though she’s been shot. In reality, she sits still as ever in front of her desk, computer screen emitting its migraine-inducing rays and minuscule but incessantly present static buzzing. She curls up in her chair, like some sort of ancient fossilized tetrapod shielding itself against the weight of billions of years of existence, just trying to find a comfortable place for her aching joints to shift into. Gravity has never been kind to Maxwell. Her own body has never been kind to her, always opposing her every whim and need. She doesn’t have the time or liberty to try to make amends now, though, so she grits her teeth and checks the clock to see how much longer until she can down another handful of paracetamol.
Over everything swirling in her brain and setting off all sorts of pain responses in her body, she barely notices Jacobi coming into her office, and barely has the time to react when her swivel chair is suddenly being—who would’ve thought—swiveled around to face him.
“Hey!” Maxwell’s indignant shout is more than counterproductive to the pressure building behind her skull.
“Sorry, dude, Colonel’s orders. Said it’s time for you to quit working for the night. We don’t need you wearing yourself out, especially now.” Jacobi hooks his foot around the base of the chair, pulling Maxwell away from her desk and into the center of the office space.
Maxwell crosses her arms, and using the center of Jacobi’s thigh to kick off, propels the chair back against the desk.
“Okay, the disrespect. Ow,” Jacobi says, rubbing his thigh. Maxwell doesn’t pity him; he has no idea the type of pain she’s in right now.
“You can’t tell me when I can and can’t work,” she says, voice low and gravelly. “You of all people should know that I am doing very important things!”
Maxwell huffs, breaking eye contact with Jacobi. The throbbing steadily increases behind her eyes, and while she wants nothing more than to abandon her work in favor of her bed, the next best option for her is to be left alone. She can deal with it just fine when she’s alone.
“You know what else is an important thing?” Jacobi grabs at the back of the office chair, laying off when he’s met with a ruthless slap on the wrist. “Sleeping. Resting. Recovering.”
“That’s three things.”
Jacobi rolls his eyes, stepping forward to lean on the arm of the office chair while he watches Maxwell work. Granted, the silence is uncomfortable, but Maxwell supposes it’s only right that she can’t have nice things. She’s just glad that, for the time being, Jacobi isn’t making her life actively worse.
“Do you have an autosave on this thing?”
Maxwell scoffs. So much for her previous statements. “Of course I have an autosave, are you—”
The whirring computer terminals and bright, cathode screens all come to a grinding halt, ensconcing the room in darkness and silence the moment Jacobi hits a button.
“What the hell , Jacobi? You could have compromised mission data! Are you insane?” For a few seconds, small specks appear in Maxwell’s vision; they’re quickly blinked away as her face heats up, a mix of anger and exhaustion threatening to boil over.
“Yeah, a little bit,” he smirks, yanking the chair away from the desk again.
This time, Maxwell firmly stands up, her fists clenched at her sides, wobbling on her feet. For one brilliant moment, Jacobi’s adrenal response kicks in, almost anticipating a real, genuine fight. He doesn’t actually want to fight Maxwell, but it seems that’s the only way to get her to obey Kepler’s orders at this point. Plus, he hasn’t been on a real, gory mission in over six months, so he’s well overdue for some good old-fashioned violence, as gentle and fake as it always ends up being with Maxwell. It’s just play-fighting, like a couple of wild dogs. Jacobi assumes a stance, as performative as ever, in the hopes that Maxwell will drop her scowl and laugh.
Instead, Maxwell crumples to the ground, and Jacobi hears a couple very disconcerting sounds on her way down.
“Christ, Alana! Are you okay? Do you need me to go get Kepler? Or… or a medic?” All former pretense of hostility is dropped within a millisecond and Jacobi’s sole focus shifts to making sure Maxwell isn’t hurt.
Despite the tears pricking at her eyes and her face turning a garish, blotchy bright red, Maxwell insists, “I’m fine.”
Jacobi shakes his head, trying to find the source of whatever made that horrendous noise when Maxwell fell. It sounded something like a crunch, a crack, and a pop all mixed together, and when Jacobi thinks about the mechanics of it for too long, he feels on the verge of collapse himself.
“Can you… go away, please? Get me some water, or something,” Maxwell says, staring at the wall past Jacobi’s shoulder.
Jacobi does as he’s told, mostly out of mild terror, which leaves Maxwell alone in the dark room with her own thoughts and her own thankless, uncooperative joints. Her hip feels odd. Not bad, per se, but not good either. Just simply odd, simply wrong .
This isn’t the first time this has happened—not by a long shot—which luckily means that Maxwell is somewhat of a seasoned professional at popping joints back into place. She should’ve known this would happen sooner or later on a job like this: stress does tend to lead to muscle laxity issues, which in turn leads to increase of joint dislocations and other associated symptoms.
These are all things that Maxwell’s doctors have never told her. When she first was assessed at MIT, they recorded her symptoms as mere benign hypermobility. Clearly, it has since become less benign. In the time elapsed from then and now, however, the one thing that has improved is Maxwell’s own knowledge of her body and her condition.
Nobody else had ever been there for her, so she had to learn how to advocate for herself and understand how to fix her body as best she could. So… no big deal if things like this happen occasionally, as long as she knows how to cope with it.
AI is so much easier to work with in terms of things like this, she laments, a new soreness radiating from her back as a result of being on the floor.
Slowly, she manages to bring the weight into her hands, feeling the strange numbness in her leg and the acute, fiery pain in her hip socket. On the count of three, like ripping off a bandage, she puts all the weight into her leg, sighing as another popping noise occurs and the joint goes back in. Feeling nearly boneless now, she lays on her back against the cool linoleum tile of her office, and has scarcely caught her breath before Jacobi returns with a bottle of water.
“What was that noise that I heard when you… you know, collapsed?”
Maxwell takes a sip of water. “Oh, that was just my hip.”
“What?” Jacobi’s horrified look seems strangely unprecedented, judging by how casually Maxwell acts about the situation.
“I’d been sitting weird, so when I stood up, it slipped out of place. Don’t worry, it’s back in the socket now.”
Jacobi’s face goes pale and Maxwell wonders why he isn’t like this on scary, bloody missions. Apparently her lack of connective tissue is the dealbreaker for his squeamishness.
“I’ve had this forever, you know. I will have it forever. I can deal with it.”
Even so, while technically the truth, Maxwell’s been having a particularly nasty flare-up. She doesn’t need to tell that to Jacobi, though. Not right now, at the very least.
“Yeah, but maybe you should be doing something more than just… dealing with it. I think you need some help.”
Maxwell lays back down, refusing to look at Jacobi. “I’m fine .”
She’s not particularly fond of Jacobi’s suggestion. She’s heard it far too many times before—she’s tried it far too many times—to trust anyone’s advice anymore.
“Sure,” he says, “But I don’t think Kepler is going to be too pleased to hear about what happened.”
“You better not,” Maxwell threatens, shooting back up only to regret it seconds later. Jacobi’s face twists in genuine pity as she melts back down, groaning and gnashing her teeth.
“Oh, sorry, but I am obligated to relay all incident reports to him.”
“Well, there simply wasn’t an incident, then. Since I’m fine. Problem solved.”
“Yeah, you seem great.” Jacobi raises an eyebrow, regardless of whether or not Maxwell can see it. “I promise not to tell him if you promise to start taking care of yourself. Deal?” He even extends a pinky.
Maxwell rolls her eyes, grumbling to herself. She doesn’t sit up, but she does stick her arm out, extending one of her own pinkies. It comes out at an odd angle and Jacobi wonders if he’ll ever look at Maxwell the same again after this.
He needs to try, for her sake.
He intertwines his finger with hers. “Deal.”