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[statementfuckingends]

You've reached Timothy Stoker, leave a message at the tone and I'll get back to you.

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[statementfuckingends]

Bertha still looks a bit prim for a second, but after she takes the cracker she uses it to nudge a nice berry back towards Marie.

"Fair enough." Tim takes a cracker too, and some cheese. "So anyway, what do you need to make fireworks? I know it's different metal salts for the different colours."

[mrballisticsdummy]

"Potassium nitrate, aluminum powder, potassium perchlorate, magnalium, charcoal and sulfur," he comments lightly, reciting them off. "And the ones to make the colors. Strontium carbonate, calcium carbonate, barium carbonate - " He picks up a cracker. "That sort of thing. Or you could just ask the Admiral for all the things to make fireworks and see what bullshit he gives you," he laughs.

"You'll end up with those things you throw at the ground that make a loud noise," Marie predicts.

[statementfuckingends]

Tim's got a good head for lists, but he still pulls out his comms so he can take notes. He might need to double check some spellings.

"Last time I tried that I got cash, so I'm gonna try for specifics this time."

Bertha's feathers ruffle a little as she shakes her beak. "Does he really need more noisemakers when he has a perfectly functioning mouth?"

[mrballisticsdummy]

"Hey! It's not like that," he insists. "I'm not setting off the fireworks, just making them. Warren's got a whole shitload of them somewhere around here, I'm sure, if I just wanted to set off fireworks," he says softly. "Anniversary's in April. His birthday is in May. Fireworks aren't just noisemakers. They're - "

He waves a hand. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. This is just a favor for a friend."

Marie chews loudly on a cracker.

[statementfuckingends]

Bertha starts grooming one wing, which is a fantastic way to avoid eye contact. Tim can't resist sending a bit of a grin Jacobi's way.

"It's a way of showing you care, or whatever, right?" It's teasing, but he's not being mean about it. "The whole 'putting effort into something 'cos it makes the person getting it happy' bit. They get to enjoy it, you get to watch them enjoying it, sort of thing."

He didn't miss how intently you were watching his reaction for that scarf, Jacobi.

[mrballisticsdummy]

"Kind of," he says softly. "That's what getting people shit is for. But - " He clears his throat and sits forward. "Okay, so a year after Kepler recruited me, we were on a stakeout. Hours of sitting in a car in the rain. Hours of 'quiet, Mr. Jacobi,' and 'don't read the paper, Mr. Jacobi,' and 'we have to pay attention, Mr. Jacobi.' But I was pissed off at him because he hadn't said anything, all day, about how that day was - important. Really important. To me. Just the damn car. And after a year of us going through so much, I thought that it would mean something, you know? So - anyway, turns out he had been pranking me all day. He knew the whole time. Had remembered the whole time. And in the backseat of the car was fifty pounds of fireworks."

He shrugs. "So that's why I don't set off fireworks with anyone else."

Marie picks up a bit of cheese and inspects it. "And it's why he'll be expecting something special on the anniversary of your pairing," she tells Tim. "Or he'll get passive aggressive at you, too."

Jacobi shrugs.

"Yeah, probably."

[statementfuckingends]

That's actually kind of cute, in their weird Jacobi-Kepler way. Fully sincere and utterly, intensely unhinged.

Marie's comment helps, funnily, and he cracks a smile as he takes another piece of cheese. "I'll make a point of finding something for us to celebrate it with, then," he replies lazily. "I've got another..." He bites his lip thoughtfully, glancing at Bertha.

The toucan tilts her beak, clacking it softly. "Eight months, to think of something you'll enjoy half as much as a personal fireworks show with your man." A bird shouldn't be able to give lewd looks, but Bertha certainly has a cheeky glean in her eyes when she tilts her head towards Jacobi.

[mrballisticsdummy]

Jacobi laughs at that. "Jesus Christ, has it really only been four months?" he wonders, looking a bit bewildered by it. The way that the Barge works is similar to the world Jacobi worked in. Where trauma and activity means that everything feels a hundred times longer.

He gives Bertha a very loving eye roll and Marie giggles.

"I have faith that you won't fuck it up," Marie says.

[statementfuckingends]

"Might even just be three, 's'not like we got paired day zero," Tim points out.

"Doesn't help we keep getting alternate-universe floods," Bertha points out dryly. "Hard to keep time straight when you don't technically exist inside of the standard flow thereof."

Tim automatically reaches a hand over to stroke her neck idly, soothing rankling feathers back into place.

[mrballisticsdummy]

Tim can't give Bertha attention and not Marie. The raccoon waits an appropriate amount of time before ducking underneath Tim's arm, demanding some pets of her own. Jacobi laughs softly to himself.

Strange to see his habits laid out in front of him. Then he realizes what she's said and looks between them.

Oh this is gonna be bad when this is over.

"Yeah," Jacobi says softly, looking between them. "I mean, the last one wasn't too bad for me."

"Because you weren't just 'one of them?'" Marie shoots back deliberately and Jacobi gives her a glare.

"That's not fair." He knows that she's prone to saying the quiet parts out loud, but he'd rather those parts stay quiet. So he can continue to be closed off about some things, dammit.

[statementfuckingends]

Even with her attitude, Bertha still gets both hands cupped around her head so Tim can massage her ears around the top of her head, fingers lightly creasing her fur.

"What, didn't enjoy being so close to being an actual Avatar?" Bertha pipes up; mostly she's bitter at Marie stealing her pats, though, and glares one narrowed eye at her.

[mrballisticsdummy]

"No," Jacobi says quietly. "It's not like that." He was happy enough to not say it, but Marie had already brought it up. Still, Jacobi can deflect.

Marie gives Bertha a chattering laugh out from under Tim's attentions.

"Anyway, time is weird here and hopefully it won't take a whole year to fix me and make me a real boy."

[statementfuckingends]

"If it does I'm formally retracting my celebratory declaration," Tim says dryly, removing a hand from Marie so he can steal some fruit, before he offers a piece to Bertha as a peace offering. "We'll just make it the anniversary we met instead."

No comment on any kind of doubt there: they'll get him to graduate somehow. Judging by the success rate, apparently it was inevitable. And he doesn't want to deprive Jacobi of a fun day of stupid bullshit.

[mrballisticsdummy]

"If only it was as simple as socializing me like some of these other assholes around here. Imagine if all I needed to do was get along with people. It would be so fucking easy."

He sighs dramatically. "I don't want to make friends, but I'm not here because I'm incapable of doing it."

"Oh yeah. You definitely have great boundaries and healthy issues around friendships," Marie says and Jacobi takes up petting her.

"Says the raccoon who is a part of me?"

[statementfuckingends]

"Whoever said a daemon's an effective way of pulling your head out of your arse clearly never met Jon," Tim comments, sitting back in his chair again.

"But sometimes it helps," Bertha shoots back easily, "To have someone you can't play denial to. Since we know how you're feeling."

[mrballisticsdummy]

There are very few people that Jacobi will tolerate jabs at Jon from. Tim is definitely one of those people, and he can't help but laugh about it. "Feeling, thinking, all of it."

"Why don't you tell him about 'one of them?' Since you're in a sharing mood?" Marie says, poking Jacobi in the chest with a little paw before curling up in his lap.

"Why don't you go finish your nest?" he mutters, putting her on the floor and tossing the berries she chose for Rune into her bundle in the corner. "I wonder what it means that my daemon thinks that I can warden myself by just talking things out."

Like he needs to get it out of his head.

[statementfuckingends]

Of all people, Tim's earned the right for a few well-placed jabs against his last boss, and he'll fight anyone who tries anything else.

"Probably that you know there's something you need to talk about," Tim says, with a slight cant of his head, "that you don't particularly want to but need to get off your chest."

Bertha picks up another cracker and flaps away from Tim to join Marie on the floor, waddling over to hand over the cracker.

[mrballisticsdummy]

Marie happily takes that cracker and adds it to her pile. She gives Bertha a grateful pat with her paw.

"Eh," Jacobi says, waving a hand. "Not everything is a wardening moment, Warden," he says affectionately.

"Says the guy who wants to be wardened so he can graduate," Marie pipes up.

"Yeah, I know. It's stupid."

[statementfuckingends]

"Maybe it's a friending moment, mate," Bertha retorts from under the table, pecking Jacobi's ankle.

Tim just tries not to smirk. "Look, if you don't want to, just say so. Don't dance around it like a prat."

[mrballisticsdummy]

Jacobi swears, pulling his feet up. "Why is it always the ankle?" he cries out. "You and Marie both."

He sighs. "Look, I just meant - okay, do you know why shit started to fall apart with us after Maxwell? And not just...because of the obvious. It's because of the need to know. Because it was always us vs them. Me and Kepler against the Hephaestus crew. And then he started treating me like one of them. Keeping me out of the loop. I don't like...not knowing things. Being kept out."

And not in a normal way. Normally, people don't plan entire mutinies because they feel like their partner is keeping them out.

[statementfuckingends]

"We're coming for your Achilles, Homer!" she snickers gleefully at the retreat.

Tim smirks a little, but he does listen properly to Jacobi as he explains. Tries to turn his cringe into a more sympathetic expression.

"Same, actually." He folds his arms over his chest, tight like its a defence against the ache in it. "Jon did the same thing, after everything with Prentiss, and finding Gertrude's corpse and he just... locked us out. Didn't tell us anything, didn't let us help properly. We only started finding out how deep off the rocker he'd gone after we caught him stalking my house."

[mrballisticsdummy]

"Yeah, I know," he tells him. He's heard those stories. And he knows how Jon has tried now not to do that any longer. But how he still shuts people how. How it hurts the people around him. Jacobi might not know the extent of it, but he can see it.

He takes a breath.

"But uh - that's what I meant. About that flood. And the Hunt and everything. And it was hell on you and Jon but - at least I got to be a part of it, you know? I gave Jon a statement the other day. About being trapped in the hallways. And all of that really, really fucking sucks, but I'd rather it be that way than to feel like 'them.' I'd rather be miserable and 'us.' I think that's why - I went into Elias so hard, too. You know?"

[statementfuckingends]

Well, it's certainly a bit tangled, but he's definitely understanding it. He's pretty sure.

"Right, yeah. You, me, Jon and Martin, we're all an 'us' - an in-group. And yours, you're always ride and-or die for. So Elias being on the outs with the three of us, meant that he got... rather aggressively slotted into your out-group, just from the bloody Venn diagrams lining up." He purses his lips for a moment and glances away. "Massively stupid move on our parts getting so worked up at him, really, knowing you'd end up latching onto that outrage like a limpet."

[mrballisticsdummy]

"Mmhm," he says. "Not the stupid move part. You're allowed to do what you want and feel what you want and all that psychology 101 shit. But I know me. I know that I was going to get worked up about it. Especially since I had just been a part of your world harder than Little Mermaid only a few weeks before."

[statementfuckingends]

"Yeah, but if you hadn't been, Elias wouldn't be on your shitlist. Not in the same way."

He gives Jacobi a long look, enough that Bertha actually looks up at Jacobi as well, her beady eyes thoughtful. "You're actually shockingly empathetic, when you let yourself be. You ever notice that?"