Chapter Text
It's past midnight, it's a Thursday night, and Caitlyn is decidedly far more drunk than she ought to be.
The bar is called The Bridge, which Caitlyn thinks is a stupid name for a bar but it has good whiskey and pool tables and it's close enough to Jayce's house that he can walk home if necessary. Caitlyn is sure he’s done that no less than five times already. It's dim inside and slightly sticky on the floor and the music is too loud for proper conversation unless you lean in, which the two have been doing all night, heads tilted toward each other across a table cluttered with empty glasses. The customers here are mostly young professionals in their late twenties and thirties, blowing off the stress of the work week a day early, all the laughter and chatter creating a wall of ambient noise that provides a strange kind of privacy. Nobody is listening to them.
Caitlyn is on her fourth whiskey neat. She never drinks whiskey. She's a wine person, a gin and tonic person on occasion, even sometimes getting down with softer drinks. But tonight she wanted something that burned going down, so she chose whiskey.
Caitlyn didn't even know what number beer Jayce was on now. He's bigger than her, broader, weighs more thus has a better alcohol tolerance than she does, but he’s not invincible. His words are getting looser, his gestures wider, his laugh louder.
The night started with Caitlyn texting him a few hours ago.
Caitlyn: Are you free tonight? I need to get out.
Jayce: Give me 30. I'll meet you at The Bridge.
He hadn't asked why. Caitlyn appreciated that.
Then at the bar, they started talking about work. The contract Jayce had with SpaceX moving forward rapidly and Jayce was cautiously optimistic but also anxious about a development. Caitlyn offered technical insights where she could, where her materials science knowledge was adjacent to his, overlapping in some regards, and Jayce gladly welcomed them. Then they talked about a documentary series they'd both been watching, something about deep ocean exploration.When asked the question if she’d rather explore space or the ocean, Caitlyn thought her answer was pretty self-evident.
"Okay," Jayce finally said, setting his beer down. "We've been here for three hours and you never drink whiskey and you asked me to come out on a weekday. So I think it's time you tell me why we're here."
Caitlyn looked down at her glass. "Vi and I broke up," she answered.
Whatever Jayce was expecting, or whatever response he was preparing, Caitlyn had definitely surprised him. His hand, which had been reaching for his beer again, stopped mid-motion and returned to the table.
"When?" he asked.
"Saturday night?"
"So five days ago?"
"Yeah."
"And you waited until now to tell me?"
"I needed to sit with it first." Caitlyn took another drink. The whiskey was beginning to taste less like fire, which meant she was reaching the point of no return. She should probably stop after this one. She probably wouldn't. "And… yeah. We're done."
"Tell me what happened," Jayce prompted. "As much as you want to share."
Caitlyn told him about the mandatory dinner and then getting fast food afterward and Vi's question. Jayce listened without interrupting, his beer untouched, his attention fixed on her face.
"How do you feel about it now?" Jayce asked.
"I feel like I did the right thing for the wrong reasons… or the wrong thing for the right reasons… I don’t know."
"What would make it the wrong thing?"
"If I threw away something good just because I’ve been so up in my head lately. Maybe a month from now I wake up and realize that what I had with Vi was the best version of love I'll ever find and I let it go, stupidly."
"And what would make it the right thing?"
"Vi deserves someone who's fully present and fully committed and if I truly haven't been either of those and staying would just… just…"
Jayce nodded slowly. He picked up his beer, took a long drink, then set it back down. "I think you already know which one it is. You said Vi asked if you just wanted to be friends and you said yes. Sounds like you were confident in knowing the right choice then."
"Knowing I made the right choice doesn't stop me from feeling terrible about it."
"Oh, those two things can totally coexist." Jayce turned his beer glass in a slow circle on the bar top, his fingers leaving prints in the condensation. "Do you think Vi’s okay?"
"She was... she was incredible about it. I don't think I could have been if the positions were reversed. Fuck." Caitlyn's voice caught slightly. "She told me we'd always be good and I believe her. But I also know that me hoping she's okay doesn't mean she actually is. Ever since I’ve known Vi, I’ve known she puts on a brave front for those she cares about."
"Have you talked since?"
"Yeah… a bit. We’ve texted briefly. She sent me a photo of a dog she saw and said it looked like me."
"Did it?"
"Jayce, I need to tell you a secret… that was the ugliest fucking dog I’ve ever seen in my life."
Jayce bellowed in laughter at that, and Caitlyn couldn’t stop herself from mimicking the same.
"You want to know what I think?" he said eventually.
"You're going to tell me regardless of whether I want to hear it."
"I think you've spent your whole life being strategic about your feelings, trying to control them. And I think you gotta learn how to just let it flow, Caitlyn, things come and go. We’re just people, you included, you know?"
"That's very insightful. How many beers have you had? Five?"
"Six, actually. I got another one while you were in the bathroom earlier." Jayce grinned briefly before his expression settled back into seriousness. "The point is, Caitlyn, uhh, what was the point? I’m sure you get it."
"You make it sound simple."
"Nothing's simple. I know there are things you haven't told me about and I'm not going to push you. But consider the possibility that these things, whatever they are, are probably passable. That the situation that seems impossible from where you're standing right now might look different in six months or a year."
"But in the meantime? In my life right now, Jayce?"
"In the meantime, let yourself grieve and keep going to therapy. You haven’t been single in a while, right?"
Caitlyn shook her head.
Jayce picked up his beer and raised it. "You can call me when you need to drink on weeknights whenever."
"God help me."
"That's the spirit." He clinked his beer against her empty glass. "Want one more drink? Or do you want to go hit balls with sticks?"
"I hate that those are my options."
"They're excellent options."
"Fuck you."
"I thought you didn’t like men?"
"I forgot you do."
Jayce chuckled. "Pool time?"
Caitlyn sighed. When not at work, Jayce was ridiculous but he showed up at bars on Thursday nights on a whim and he didn't make her feel pathetic for being heartbroken and confused.
"Pool," she agreed. "But I'm breaking."
"You always break!"
"Because I'm better at it."
"Psh. Blashphemy."
They migrated from their seats to the pool tables in the back corner of the establishment. The area was slightly quieter here, the lighting focused in a warm cone over the green felt. The table they claimed was well-maintained and Jayce racked the balls while Caitlyn selected a cue from the wall. She tested three before finding one with the right weight and straightness, rolling it on the table surface to check for warping. Old habits from the pool table in the Kiramman estate's game room, where she'd spent many evenings practicing alone while her parents entertained guests downstairs.
"Ready?" Jayce asked, stepping back from the completed rack, the fifteen balls arranged in their tight triangle at the foot of the table, the apex ball positioned on the foot spot.
Caitlyn chalked her cue tip. She bent into her stance, drew back, and struck.
The break was clean and sharp, the cue ball hitting with speed, the rack exploding outward with a satisfying crack! Three balls dropped, two solids and one stripe.
"Solids," Caitlyn declared then, circling the table to assess the new layout.
"You always pick solids." Jayce leaned against the wall beside the table, his posture settled into spectator mode because he knew Caitlyn's breaks usually meant she'd run several balls before his turn came around.
"I like consistency."
"What a surprise."
Caitlyn sank the 2-ball into the far corner pocket with a straight shot, then circled to find her angle on the 4-ball, which was sitting awkwardly near the center of the table and would require a shot off the rail, a mostly simple trick shot. She bent, calculated the angle, and struck. The 4-ball hit the rail, rebounded, and dropped into the side pocket.
"Show-off," Jayce commented.
"What can I say? It’s just geometry."
"I bet you'd describe orgasms as geometry."
"I am not discussing orgasms with you in a public establishment, Jayce."
"Just confirming the geometry thing."
Caitlyn lined up the 6-ball and sank it without response. She was enjoying this now.
"Jayce," she prompted, bending to line up the 1-ball.
"Yeah?"
"Do you believe in fate?"
The question surprised her almost as much as it seemed to surprise him. She hadn't planned to ask it.
Jayce shifted against the wall and took a drink of his beer. "That's a big question," he answered.
"Humor me."
"Okay." He pushed off the wall and began walking slowly around the table, not to play but to think. "I think I believe in something adjacent to fate. I don't think there's a predetermined script that the universe is following. Call me an indeterminist. But I do think there can be patterns and affinities and... tendencies? Like, certain configurations of people and circumstances tend toward certain outcomes because of how the elements interact."
"Mm, so chemistry?"
"It IS chemistry! At a fundamental level, everything that happens between people is chemistry. Neurochemistry, biochemistry, the chemical reactions happening in your brain when you interact with another human being. Some combinations of people produce reactions that are favorable and some don't. And the ones that are favorable that produce something greater than the sum of their parts, those tend to happen repeatedly because the universe tends toward energetically favorable states. Atoms form molecules because it's energetically favorable. Stars form solar systems because it's energetically favorable. People form connections because it's favorable."
"So love is thermodynamics now?"
"Love is ABSOLUTELY thermodynamics!" Jayce's eyes lit up. He was definitely drunk. "Think about it. Two people meeting is like two atoms approaching each other. There's an activation energy required, a barrier to overcome—for people, that’s that awkward phase of introductions and small talk—but if you overcome that, you can fall into a lower stable energy state together. You can form a bond. And some bonds are weak, they’re… they’re like Van der Waals forces—"
"I’m not following all your science bullshit."
"—temporary and easily broken. But then some bonds are strong covalent bonds, where you're actually sharing electrons, and those are much harder to break. Of course some bonds are ionic and one person gives and the other just takes."
"What?"
"I know what I’m saying."
"Alright then. What kind of bond did Vi and I have?"
Jayce paused in his walk around the table.
"I think you had a strong bond," he replied. "But maybe it was more of a metallic bond? The shared electrons are delocalized, flowing freely between a whole thing of interactions and commitments and shared history. Very stable under the right conditions. But if the conditions change, if the temperature increases or the pressure shifts, metallic bonds can reorganize. The atoms don't stop being atoms but they find new configurations that are more favorable under the new conditions."
"What do you think my new conditions are?"
"I mean, you grew. Therapy definitely helps. You became a slightly different element than the one that originally bonded with Vi. And the slightly different element might need a different configuration to be stable."
Caitlyn sank the 1-ball with a shot that was harder than it needed to be, the cue ball ricocheting with unnecessary force. "You make it sound like it was determinism."
"No, see, you always have a choice. That's the difference here between chemistry and fate. In chemistry, you can choose to stay in a less favorable configuration. You can choose to maintain a bond with external energy input even when the inner system is changed. People do it all the time. You could have done that with Vi forever, probably."
"But?"
"But it would have cost you. The energy required to maintain an unfavorable bond doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from you. Eventually the cost exceeds what the bond gives back and the system all fails anyway, just with more damage done now."
Caitlyn missed her next shot. The ball hit the pocket rim and bounced back, and she missed it. She straightened up and leaned on her cue and looked at Jayce.
"Your turn," She told him.
"I know." He moved to the table and sank a stripe into the corner pocket. Jayce was a decent pool player, not as technical as Caitlyn but more intuitive, more willing to take risky shots based on feel. "Can I extend the metaphor further or have you reached your limit?"
"How much further can it possibly go?"
"Oh just you wait. I have a whole thing about catalysts."
"Of course you do."
Jayce sank another stripe. "So in chemistry, some reactions that are thermodynamically favorable still don't happen because the activation energy required is too high. The system wants to reach a lower energy state but it can't get over the hill on its own. That's where catalysts come in. A catalyst lowers the activation energy and makes the reaction possible."
"And in your analogy, what's the catalyst here?"
"Could be anything. Could be a conversation. Could be a crisis. Could be proximity that forces two people past the activation barrier they've been behind." Jayce missed his shot and stepped back. "Could also just be time. Sometimes the catalyst is just enough time passing that the conditions shift naturally and what was previously impossible becomes possible."
"That's very convenient for someone who's been waiting years now and counting to ask someone out."
"Hey! We're not talking about me!"
"We're talking a little bit about you." Caitlyn moved to the table and sank two solids in quick succession. "You realize every single thing you've said tonight applies directly to your situation with Mel, right? The activation energy barrier you can't overcome is literally just you being too afraid to talk to her."
"My situation is different!"
"How is it different? You've identified a thermodynamically favorable configuration. You know the bond would be strong. You're just stuck behind the barrier because the risk of the transition state feels too high."
"If I ask and she says no, I lose her friendship! The current configuration, while not optimal, is at least stable and attempting the transition risks ending up in a higher energy state than where I started!"
"Or it risks ending up in a much lower one. Isn't that the whole point of what you're saying?"
They were both slightly out of breath from the rapid-fire exchange, standing on opposite sides of the pool table with their cue sticks in hand and their cheeks flushed from alcohol. Jayce looked at her and then laughed, a big genuine sound that came from his chest.
"Okay," he conceded. "Okay, fair. Then I'm a coward hiding behind activation barriers. Is that what you want me to say?"
"I just wanted you to acknowledge it."
"Acknowledged! Happy?"
"Mildly satisfied."
"Good." Jayce pointed at the table with his cue. "Now shoot because I need you to miss something so I feel better about myself."
Caitlyn obliged him by missing the next ball. Jayce took his turn and sank two more stripes.
They circled the table in comfortable silence for a few shots, just the sound of the game between them. The bar was thinning out around them, the crowd beginning to disperse. It was getting late.
"Hey," Jayce said, chalking his cue between shots. "Can I ask you something?"
Caitlyn's grip on her own cue tightened. "You can ask. I might not answer."
"Is the barrier you need to overcome for an outcome you could theoretically be with? Like, setting aside complications, is this a future that could become something if circumstances allowed?"
Caitlyn thought about this.
Jinx at a dinner table years ago, saying "Cool".
Jinx at a bar, arguing about her thesis.
Jinx at a conference, answering Caitlyn's purposefully hard questions.
Jinx drunk in a parking lot saying, "You and I don't have that relationship".
Jinx who hated her, who had never voluntarily extended warmth or friendship.
"I don't know," Caitlyn admitted.
"But you've had reasons to think otherwise?"
"I've had reasons to believe I feel otherwise, maybe. In a way."
Jayce sank his last stripe and moved to line up the 8-ball. "You know what I think you should do?"
"Besides not compare my life to science?"
"Besides that. I think you should give yourself permission to feel this without requiring yourself to act on it immediately. You just ended a relationship. You're in therapy. You're processing. You're in the middle of imperative personal growth. The last thing you need right now is to throw yourself into something else."
"I'm not planning to… to pursue anything."
"I know. But I also know you."
Jayce missed his next shot and stepped back from the table, waiting while Caitlyn moved to take her turn.
"Okay, completely unrelated tangent," Jayce started, "but I watched this documentary the other night about quantum consciousness."
"Quantum consciousness," Caitlyn repeated flatly.
"Don't say it like that. It's a legitimate field of theoretical physics. The idea is that consciousness might be a fundamental property of the universe. If that's true, then the information that makes up who you are might persist beyond a single lifetime or reality."
"Reincarnation?"
"Ehh… more like the conservation of consciousness in the same way we talk about the conservation of energy. Energy can't be created or destroyed, it just changes form. What if the same is true for whatever makes you, you?"
Caitlyn sank the 5-ball and straightened up. "I think you should’ve been a philosopher rather than a scientist in this life, then."
"Who says I can’t be both?"
"Point taken."
Jayce took a swig of his beer. "But seriously. Do you ever think about what you'd be in another life? If the same essential you existed under completely different circumstances?"
Caitlyn circled the table, assessing her options. The whiskey was making her contemplative and Jayce's drunk philosophy was easy to get pulled into.
"I think I'd still be in some kind of service," she answered. "Military, law enforcement, something with structure and duty. I don't think I'd function without a sense of mission."
"See, that's exactly what I mean! The essential you persists across hypothetical configurations! You'd always be someone who protects." Jayce pointed at her with his beer. "I bet you'd be some kind of sheriff or enforcer in another era."
"And you?"
"Oh, I'd be an inventor." Jayce responded with absolute certainty. "I'm the guy in the workshop building things that change everything. Probably with a partner, someone smarter than me who keeps me from going too far." He grinned. "Viktor, probably. He and I would find each other in any universe."
"Viktor as your eternal work partner across all realities?"
"Our professional bond transcends spacetime." Jayce sank a stripe and continued, "What about Vi? What do you think she'd be?"
Caitlyn didn't hesitate. "A fighter in any world. A protector of people who can't protect themselves. She'd be in the thick of it always, using her hands."
"And she'd be good at it."
"She'd be extraordinary at it. She has that quality where people just follow her."
Jayce nodded. "Ooh, what about your mom?"
"A politician," Caitlyn retorted immediately. "In any universe. She’s making decisions that affect thousands of people without thinking twice. Definitely shaping the world while the rest of us deal with the fallout."
"Cold."
"Accurate."
They both laughed. Jayce missed his shot and Caitlyn moved closer the table.
Her mind wandered as she leaned over to line up the next ball. Jayce's question had gotten into her head now, this idea of essential selves persisting across lives, across worlds.
What would Jinx be?
Her cue hit the ball a fraction off center. The shot still went in barely. She straightened slowly.
What would Jinx be in another life?
Dangerous. That was the first word that came. In any life, Jinx would be dangerous. The most dangerous person in whatever room she occupied and the most brilliant. She'd be someone who makes incredible, impossible things and also tears them apart. She'd be fire and invention and destruction together. People would either love her or fear her, maybe both.
She'd still have the blue, Caitlyn thought.
She'd still need someone patient enough to stay when she pushed them away. Someone who found her fascinating, maybe simultaneously frightening too.
"You alright?" Jayce asked. "You went quiet."
"Fine." Caitlyn shrugged. "Just thinking about alternate universes."
"See? It’s a compelling topic."
"It's interesting if I keep in mind none of it is real."
"Party pooper."
She missed her next ball and the game continued.
Jayce then took his 8-ball shot. It rolled across the felt, hit the far cushion, and dropped into the corner pocket. Game over. Jayce straightened up and pointed his cue at Caitlyn with triumph.
"I won," he announced.
"You won because I let you."
"I won because of thermodynamic inevitability."
"Oh my god, this again?"
"I'm the champion of this metaphorical and literal game and my philosophical arguments have been cosmically validated."
Caitlyn leaned her cue against the table and looked at her friend. He looked back with a flushed face, a ridiculous grin, an untucked shirt, and sincere, warm, slightly blurry eyes. She felt a wave of affection for him that was almost overwhelming. He'd come here at short notice on a work night. He'd listened without judgment. He'd made her laugh and think and feel less alone.
"Thank you," she smiled. "For all of this."
"You never have to thank me for this, Cait. This is what I'm here for."
"I'm thanking you anyway."
Jayce's expression softened from triumph. "Are you going to be okay?"
"Yes."
"Okay then for now, that's enough." Jayce set his cue in the wall rack and retrieved his jacket from nearby. "Another drink? Or are we calling it?"
Caitlyn checked the time on her phone.
"One more," she decided. "Then cars."
They returned to the bar and ordered and sat down.
"Jayce?" Caitlyn asked, after a while of quiet drinking and watching the bar's remaining patrons thin further.
"Mm?"
"Do you think people get second chances?"
"What do you mean?"
"If you meet someone and fuck up, if… I don't know, do you think it's possible to get another chance later?"
"Yeah," he answered eventually. "I think so. I think people find each other again all the time. Different contexts, different versions of themselves, different possibilities. The connection doesn't evaporate just because the first window closed."
"What if the second window hasn't opened yet?"
"Then you wait too and you do your work in the meantime. You become ready for when it does open." He took a drink. "And for the record, I don't think a window being closed is permanent. I think conditions change."
"You're very optimistic for a scientist."
"Science IS optimistic. The entire enterprise of science is predicated on the belief that the universe is comprehensible and that understanding leads to better outcomes. That's pure optimism."
"Mm."
They finished their drinks and then called their respective cars. They decided to wait outside, the streets quiet at this hour, the city reduced to a few distant traffic sounds.
"Hey," Jayce said, as headlights appeared around the corner, one of their rides approaching.
"When are you going to ask Mel out?" Caitlyn asked before he could say whatever he'd been building toward.
Jayce sputtered. "I was going to say something profound and sweet!"
"You've been profound enough tonight. Answer the question."
"I don't... it's not the right time."
"Really? You just spent a whole game telling me about favorable configurations and catalysts and thermodynamic inevitability and you're still claiming it's not the right time."
"My situation is complicated!"
"Jayce Talis. Activation energy barrier."
He stared at her. "Fine," he sighed. "Fine. I'll ask her soon."
Caitlyn laughed, the sound surprising her with its fullness after the serious talks of the latter half of the night. She looked at Jayce one more time, tall and rumpled and flustered under the streetlight, his hair a disaster and his shirt incredibly wrinkled and realized how lucky she was.