Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Raleigh didn’t remember much - tearing the kaiju apart with the only arm he had left. Making it to the beach. All instinctual, because he felt like he was being drilled into, right to his very core. That he was missing something essential.

He was missing something essential.

He passed out on the beach.

“Yancy.” He felt someone wrap a blanket around him. He felt himself get lifted.

“What is he saying?”

“Yancy-”

“Hey, hey.” This voice was familiar, and it grew closer as straps were tied around him. “Raleigh - hey.”

“Tendo - Yancy-” he said, and fluttered his eyes open. Tendo wasn’t even in his outdoor gear, he’d just shucked a coat on. Had to be freezing in the hard snow. Raleigh tried to reach for him, but his arms were bound. Everything was wrong.

“We got him, Raleigh,” Tendo said, and Raleigh released a huge, embarrassing sob.

“He died.”

“Yeah, for a little bit,” Tendo said.

Raleigh passed out again.

They told him he was in a coma for three days. Raleigh believed them. He awoke to machines and antiseptic lighting and he screamed because his brother was dying, his brother was being ripped away from him and he was dying-

“Kid.” Raleigh turned, and opened his mouth. He couldn’t really make a sound. He thought he had dreamt Tendo - that it was some effort in self-preservation, that he would have died himself on that beach if he didn’t have something to hold onto. “Hey.”

“You died,” Raleigh said. Just to make sure.

“For three and a half minutes,” Yancy said. He quirked a grin at Raleigh. “Cold water. Fishing boat got me out.” Raleigh grinned slightly, at this. That was good symmetry - he hoped Stacker appreciated it.

Then his grin faded, because he was able to get a better look at Yancy in the wheelchair - tubes in and out of him. One arm was bound to his chest, the leg on the same side had rigid boards holding it straight out. He wasn’t the right color, either.

“Fuck.”

“Broken bones, lots of bruising. Some internal bleeding - hey. Coulda been a lot worse.”

“Yeah,” Raleigh managed.

“We’ll be back in that Conn Pod,” Yancy said.

“But Gipsy-”

“OK, a Conn Pod,” Yancy said. “But it will probably take just as long to get her back together as us.” He reached his good arm out and touched Raleigh’s upper arm, near where a line of stitches was. “You were amazing, Raleigh. You got him and then piloted her solo for fifteen minutes.”

“Probably why it feels like someone took a whisk to my brain.”

“Yeah,” Yancy said. “But we’ll be fine.”

---

“That’s it?” Raleigh asked, leaning against the desk, shoulder to shoulder with Yancy after the PPDC national advisors cancelled the program.

“Hardly,” said Pentecost. “We’re going to Hong Kong.” The way he said it indicated he had a plan, so Raleigh raised an eyebrow and Yancy nodded.

“I’ve never been,” Raleigh said, and grinned. Pentecost leveled his gaze at him, and Raleigh shrugged. Sorry I try and keep my own morale up, he thought, while I lose friends and fellow Rangers and Jaegers left and right. You want us to win this, we’ve got to want to win this.

“Let’s pack,” Yancy said.

---

Raleigh smiled when they entered the Hong Kong Shatterdome - it was good to see a few familiar faces. “Becket boys,” said Sasha, and she shook her head. “Good to have you.” Aleksis clapped him on the back, hard enough to make him stumble.

“Hey,” Yancy said, looking off into the distance. “Is that Nova Hyperion?”

“Yes,” said Aleksis. “Ms. Mori’s project.”

Raleigh and Yancy looked at each other - they’d met Mako several times over the years and had been impressed by her dedication, her scores, her engineering skills. She’d never had the opportunity to pilot, though, with Jaegers falling left and right.

“Who’s going to go in with her?” Yancy asked - Raleigh trusted he knew about all the potential other candidates, Yancy was the one who kept up on this shit. Raleigh couldn’t stomach it, not with one of their friends, their colleagues, dying each on what seemed to be a weekly basis.

“Pentecost is hunting,” Sasha said, and shook her head. “Must be someone.” A basketball barely missed her head, and she turned with a serious snarl on her face.

“Missed!” called a younger voice, and Raleigh turned and saw, for the first time in person, the Wei triplets. One was grinning, one was keeping a good stone face, and the third - the smart one - was looking for the nearest exit.

“You never miss,” Aleksis said, and crossed his arms.

Sasha rolled her eyes at Raleigh. “It has been us, and these-” she waved her hands, as the stone faced triplet ran after the errant basketball. “Good to have you.”

“Are they bringing in Striker?” Yancy asked, and Raleigh arched an eyebrow.

“Stupid question,” he said. “Haven’t you heard? Best fucking Jaeger, best fucking pilots in the world.” The two remaining Weis rolled their eyes at this - fair enough, Raleigh thought, because Crimson Typhoon was seriously badass. But he figured he and Yancy - hell, Sasha and Aleksis - deserved more credit. They were still here, despite their so-called outdated technology.

“Of course,” said Sasha. “They are the key.”

“Pentecost is going to have us make a run at the breach, isn’t he?” Yancy asked. Sasha arched an eyebrow.

“Fuck yeah,” Raleigh said. “About time.” Aleksis cocked his head at this, then grunted. Raleigh assumed it was his general sound of assent.

“Sorry to interrupt,” said a bridge tech, smiling nervously at them. “But I was told to take you to your room?”

“Great,” said Yancy. “I could use a nap - right, kid?”

Raleigh didn’t even bristle at it like he usually did - sure, kid. They could pretend it was before Knifehead, before Yancy got ripped out of his head and died. “Sure,” he said. He smiled at the Weis, the Kaidanovskies. “Good to see you guys - good to meet you.”

---

“Beckets,” said Jin Wei - or, at least, Raleigh was pretty sure it was Jin Wei. “Come. Kaiju in Sydney.”

Yancy raised an eyebrow at Raleigh - the alarm hadn’t sounded in the Shatterdome. They quickly walked behind Jin to the television screen in LOCCENT.

“Made it through the wall in an hour,” Pentecost said, and Tendo shook his head.

“Dumb fucks,” Tendo said.

“Lucky fucks,” Aleksis added, as Striker Eureka came into view.

“There they are,” Sasha said, crossing her arms over her chest.

Striker Eureka never failed to impress, no matter how many times Raleigh had watched it on the screen. This would be the tenth kaiju kill, tying the Hansens with Gipsy Danger - except they’d done it in less time.

“I would sell my brother to get a chance to run that thing,” Yancy said, as Striker moved in a fast, fluid burst towards the kaiju. Raleigh elbowed him in the chest.

“Don’t think he is worth that,” Sasha said.

“Hey!” Raleigh protested.

“We give them Hu,” said Cheung. The youngest triplet scowled. “Season the deal?”

“Gentlemen,” said Pentecost - again with the disapproving glare. Yes, sir, I promise to take everything more seriously, sir, Raleigh thought. Fuck. He’d had his brother die in his head. You’d think people would be commending him for not going bugfuck crazy on them.

“Just shoot the missiles,” Sasha said, and rolled her eyes. “That is what they are for.” Aleksis grunted again and looked down at Sasha’s chest. Raleigh had to grin - he was glad he wasn’t the only one who thought of Striker’s missile array as breast canons.

It was another ten minutes before Striker Eureka took Mutavore down, and twenty minutes after that for Chuck Hansen to give one of his typical responses to the press.

“Kid needs a good brain to mouth filter,” Yancy said, and crossed his arms. Sasha laughed at this, and glanced at Aleksis with a strange smile. Raleigh didn’t want to know what that was about. Well, he sort of knew what that was about.

Chuck Hansen had been a weird looking teenager, but he’d somehow settled into his features and now he was - not hard to look at, not at all. The opposite of that, actually. It had happened suddenly, too, one day he was this gawky ginger kid and the next day he was...well.

Raleigh had felt unsettled the first time he’d thought that, like some kind of pedo or pervert, but then he’d been relieved to find out Hansen had just turned eighteen. Less relieved because the article was about how Chuck was now legal and someone needed to deflower the programs youngest and best Jaeger pilot.

Yancy glanced over at Raleigh and shook his head. Whatever, Raleigh thought. Not like he’d ever act on it. He’d have to gag Chuck to make it work - which, actually... Yancy rolled his eyes.

“Dude, we’re gonna have to drift soon,” he said. Raleigh grinned, and Sasha laughed.

“Hansens will be here soon,” said Hu, as the press conference ended. Apparently what had just transpired had gone over their heads.

“I like the dog,” said Jin.

“Max is a good boy,” Aleksis said. “Surprise.”

“We have some vodka,” said Sasha. “We drink to celebrate, I suppose.”

“Of course they have vodka,” Tendo said, following Raleigh and Yancy over to Cherno Alpha’s Bay. “They really can get just about anything.” As if it were harder to get vodka than a nuclear missile. Who knew, maybe it was? Raleigh had never been the one trying to manage supplies.

---

“Look at him, thinks he owns the place,” Yancy said, and crossed his arms.

Chuck Hansen did have a swagger. Raleigh didn’t object - and, fuck yeah, Yancy, he was going to take in the eye candy if they were making a run for the breach. The dog waddled behind him, apparently with no idea he was supposed to look intimidating and dignified, and Herc Hansen followed behind him, looking worn. Raleigh didn’t blame him - he’d been piloting since the start, after all.

“Gentlemen,” said Pentecost. “Welcome to Hong Kong.”

“This is what you’ve got, running defense for our mission?” Chuck asked, arching an eyebrow at the four Jaegers in the bay. He didn’t seem to know that the Beckets were within earshot, because he waved his hand at Gipsy Danger and said, “How many times had that rust bucket been repurposed?”

“Twice,” Yancy said, removing himself from the wall he was leaning on. He squared his shoulders, but Chuck had a few inches and several pounds on him. Yancy was still slender, even though he was in peak condition. “Yancy Becket.”

“Yeah,” Chuck said. “Tied your kill count yesterday.”

“I can see that,” Yancy said, nodding at the crude kaiju heads stamped on Chuck’s jacket.

“It’s not a competition,” Herc said, with a sigh. “Good to see you boys.”

He nodded at Raleigh - so he supposed it was his cue to emerge, as well. He held a hand out to Herc and was pleased with the firm grasp. “Sir, it’s a real pleasure.”

“Haven’t seen you since - when did we last drop together? Manila?”

“That would be it,” Raleigh said. Right before Knifehead. Right before - he shook his head, and he felt Yancy draw a little closer to him. He also felt Chuck watch his brother’s movement. “Three Jaeger drop.” Yancy reached his hand out and shook Herc’s.

“Cute dog,” Raleigh said, because he could. Chuck glared at him. Raleigh grinned back.

“Let’s get you to your quarters, gentlemen, I imagine you may want to rest following that flight,” Pentecost said.

Raleigh resisted the urge to flip Chuck Hansen off as he turned and followed after the Marshall. “Do not,” Yancy said. “Do not go there.”

Raleigh shrugged. He had the sense one of them was going to wind up punching Chuck before they completed the mission.

---

“Dunno where he thinks he’s gonna find some pilot,” Chuck said at dinner. “We’re all right here. Now.” He emphasized the last bit with some disdain - on that, Raleigh didn’t blame him. Sydney would have been demolished and countless people would have died if Striker Eureka hadn’t been there to take the kaiju down.

“Not entirely true,” Herc said, and he looked up at the four of them and seemed surprised they were surprised. Then Raleigh realized he was pointedly looking at the two of them like they had suffered from brain damage.

Which they had. To be fair.

Oh, shit, Raleigh thought. Flashes came to him like he was in the drift - a short woman tossing curly hair over her head, her co-pilot picking her up during one of their victory celebrations, he and Yancy watching the news when Chrome Brutus was destroyed and they showed the two pilots being pulled out of the ruined Conn Pod.

“No one even knows if she’s-” Raleigh glanced over at Yancy, who swallowed hard. But she had to be - Pentecost wouldn’t have headed out so quickly if he didn’t have good information.

“Who?” Chuck asked.

“Daven Robinson,” Herc said. “Jockeyed Chrome Brutus until her partner died when they dropped at the Panama Canal with Solar Prophet. Kaiju went for the Conn Pod again. Copilot died from her injuries.”

Yancy’s head shook slightly, and Raleigh glanced over at him. He would have touched him, hugged him, if they weren’t in the middle of the commissary - he knew what Herc wanted to say, that the kaiju went for the Conn Pod again, just like Knifehead. Part of their evolution, their accumulation of knowledge.

Then Raleigh realized Chuck was grinning for some reason. “You know her, Becket 1?” he asked. “Know her well?”

“Shut your mouth,” Raleigh said. Herc sighed, the long suffering sigh of a father whose son had turned out to be a complete douchebag and who wasn’t entirely sure how much of it was his fault.

“I’m not judging, Raaaleigh...she was pretty good looking, back-”

“We were just friends,” Yancy said, and his jaw was tight. He was going to punch the kid. Raleigh couldn’t wait - it was just too bad two on one wouldn’t be fair. He didn’t really feel like punching Herc.

Raleigh knew what Yancy was thinking - they should have been better friends. But Daven’s accident happened when they were both still healing, when Yancy was still in a wheelchair and Raleigh’s brain was still the consistency of baby food. And then she’d disappeared. Not that Raleigh could blame her. If he had lost Yancy that night, he would have ran as well.

He watched Yancy and Chuck stare at each other - a little bit like watching a tennis match, since his eyes flicked back and forth between them to catalogue all of the little changes in their faces. “Enough,” Herc said, and that ended all the fun. “C’mon, Chuck. Max.” He paused, looked back over his shoulder at Yancy and Raleigh as he and Chuck rose. He nodded at them.

“Man, he’s a good guy,” Yancy said, “but he is a shit parent.”

“Maybe it couldn’t be helped,” Raleigh said.

“Like how you’re naturally adorable,” Yancy countered. Then he sighed.

“Pentecost is going to find her,” Raleigh said.

“I know,” Yancy replied, and sighed. “Guess I’ll have to apologize. Shit, Rals, I - I forgot about her.”

“It was five years ago,” Raleigh said. “Of course people are going to forget.” Yancy gave him a look, and Raleigh shrugged. He’d tried. So maybe it wasn’t complete sincere. After all, they’d spent three years with Daven and Helena - but then everyone started to die, and it was easier to just...to just move on.

---

Pentecost brought Daven through the bay with Mako. She was still acting as though she had only restored Nova Hyperion, not that she intended to be the Jaeger’s pilot. Mostly for her father, Raleigh figured. Pentecost was going to be a hard sell, even though he’d had almost a year to prepare.

“Gipsy Danger is over there,” Pentecost said. “I believe you-”

Daven hadn’t changed. Raleigh had thought five years of hiding in the jungle, or wherever she was rumored to have gone off to, after Panama, would have taken its toll - but she was still fierce and tiny, her deep brown eyes belying the fact that despite her size you really should think twice about fucking with her.

“Daven-” Yancy began, but she just smiled at him.

“Nope,” she said. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her oversized pants. “I was the one who made the runner.” She glanced up at Gipsy. “Your girl looks good.”

“Well,” Yancy said, and he rubbed the back of his neck. “She’s been put back together twice.”

“You two were never careful,” she said.

Raleigh narrowed his eyes - he knew the just friends line was bullshit, at least on Yancy’s end. Enough that it had bled over into Raleigh and left him questioning his sexuality. Thanks, older brother.

“Rals,” she said, and then hugged him as well. Her eyes were a little searching, and Raleigh resisted the urge to sigh.

“Herc,” Pentecost said, and the three of them turned their attention to the incoming Aussies. Raleigh rolled his eyes at Yancy - of course Chuck couldn’t stand that it wasn’t all about him for more than two minutes. “Hercules Hansen, this is Daven Robinson. Herc’s the best damn pilot the program’s ever had.” Oh, shit, Raleigh thought, and looked over at Yancy, who had arched his eyebrow - was Pentecost poking on purpose?

“It’s a pleasure, Ranger,” Herc said, and Raleigh saw Daven’s posture soften slightly - Herc respected anyone who had piloted, because he respected what it took to qualify, to succeed. That was the difference between him and his son. Chuck had seemed to have just assumed that he would make it... “Good of you to be here, after what happened.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Raleigh wanted to give Daven a little warning - he imagined they didn’t get too many updates on Jaeger pilots in the Amazon. “My son, Chuck Hansen.”

Chuck was still in his drive suit from the simulation they’d been running. He looked Daven up and down and then his lip curled in disdain. “Yeah,” Chuck said, and held his hand out. Daven’s eyes went to those stupid Kaiju heads Chuck had stamped on just about everything.

“Nice to meet you,” she replied. “That was a good run in Sydney.”

“Good?” Chuck asked.

Daven smiled, nodded.

“I will show you to your room, Lt. Robinson,” Mako said.

This left the Beckets with the Hansens. Herc was good, at least, at recognizing when Chuck needed to get put in the time out corner. “C’mon,” he said. “We’ve got work to do.”

Chapter Text

“Oh, shit,” Yancy said. “Here he comes.”

“You don’t think I can handle myself against a standard Aussie dick head?” Daven asked. Yancy shrugged his shoulders. Oh, Yance, Raleigh thought. Here we go again.

“Hansen,” she said, when Chuck sat down with Max, and gave him that big feral smile of hers. She had told their Ranger class she’d been raised by wolves - Yancy had laughed when he found out she meant two corporate lawyers in Toronto.

Raleigh had been impressed with Daven when they’d first met. She and Helena were a bit more typical potential pilots that the Beckets - both were athletes, both were excellent students - but they were one of the few pairs who hadn’t been related. They’d rowed together. Helena had been the stroke seat in the eight that Daven coxed, where she barked out orders and ensured that the boat ran like a machine. Helena had been the lead who executed everything, and they had spent a hell of a lot of time staring each other face-to-face.

Raleigh decided to befriend them when Daven accomplished the quickest Kwoon take-down anyone had seen, despite her opponents considerable size advantage. He’d made the mistake of telling her that just because she had gone around yelling for four years didn’t mean she qualified as an athlete, didn’t mean she had any right to think she was going to be a pilot.

“Dah-ven,” said Chuck, and he picked a roll in half and jammed it in his mouth. He even ate like an asshole. Christ, Raleigh thought.

“Lt. Robinson,” Yancy replied. Raleigh resisted the urge to roll his eyes at him - Yancy was making it way too easy for Chuck. “Means she outranks you.”

Chuck grabbed a piece of chicken from their table’s platter and fed it to Max.

“Did they restore that rank, though?” Chuck asked. “Besides, what’s dad always saying? We’re all Rangers.”

Yancy glanced over at Raleigh, his eyebrows arched subtly - like they could intercede. Raleigh shook his head. He could pretty much see where this was headed.

“When was the last time you jockeyed, Dah-ven?” Chuck asked. What was his thing with saying people’s names wrong, Raleigh wondered - did he want to get his ass kicked? He had clearly not been surrounded by enough people who were capable of actually kicking his ass - and that thought made sense, Raleigh realized, because Sydney had only housed Striker Eureka for a few years now. Raleigh kind of hoped he felt the urge to mispronounce one of the Russian’s names. Especially Sasha’s.

“Five years ago,” she said.

“And what did you do for those five years? Something pretty important, I reckon.”

Daven’s grin had long since settled into a hard, steely countenance. “Fishing, primarily,” she said. In the mother fucking Amazon, Raleigh thought.

“Well, that’s great,” Chuck said. “That ought to be real helpful, Dah-ven, if we ever-”

“Day-ven,” she said. “It’s Daven.”

“Whatever,” said Chuck. “You’re Pentecost’s grand idea - we’ll see where that goes. But trust me, you slow me down, I’m going to drop you like a sack of kaiju shit. C’mon, Max.”

“Well,” said Daven, when he left. “At least we know he’s as unpleasant to women as he is to men.”

---

“Well, of fucking course,” Chuck said - Raleigh wasn’t sure if he was speaking to anyone in particular, or just thought that his observations warranted vocalizing. “We go get some washed up old pilot and they’re not even drift compatible.”

Raleigh walked towards Mako - she looked more devastated than Daven did at their failed test run in the simulator. “Hey,” he said.

“It is my fault,” Mako replied. Raleigh knew from talking with her that she had studied all of Daven’s engagements, looked at her Drift records, and had thought that she would be a suitable match.

“It’s no one’s fault, we couldn’t even achieve the first level-” Daven began - they hadn’t even begun to share memories, hadn’t even delved into each other. Raleigh had seen it countless times in the academy, leading to dejected hopefuls being assigned to chopper crews or support staff.

“How are we going to run Pitfall, then?” Chuck asked. “You think it’s going to work with just four of us?”

“It seems it will have to,” Herc said. “We don’t have pilots for-”

“I could have done better,” Mako said, softly, and Raleigh was probably the only one who heard her.

“Hey,” he said, and leaned in while everyone continued to argue around them, “you’re the best goddamn trainee we’ve got, Mako, I looked at your scores-” He wanted to help her, because he knew how she felt.

“We do have pilots,” Yancy said, raising his voice. Raleigh turned and looked at him. Pentecost crossed his arms. “Uh, we might have pilots. Daven and I, we’re...pretty compatible.”

Raleigh widened his eyes - he’d forgotten that, too, along with a lot of other things. But they’d done compatibility tests with almost all of the other pilots stationed in the Americas, just in case. “Try Raleigh with Mako.”

Mako still looked a little shook up, but Raleigh ducked his head and gave her a soft, hopefully reassuring smile. He knew he had to talk before Pentecost was able to think too much about it. She wanted this, and she had earned it - she just needed the right partner. “What do you say, Mako? Get a cup of coffee, give it another go?”

Mako swallowed, then looked up at Pentecost. “All right.”

Raleigh nodded at her and kept his focus on her as they walked out of the room - though he could feel Chuck glaring at him, probably because he couldn’t figure out if he liked the idea or not. Or because he didn’t like the idea and now Raleigh was complacent with it.

The mess hall was fortunately empty, and Raleigh went back into the kitchen and poured them some instant coffee. He would kill for some of the real stuff, but it had become exceedingly scarce - actually, if he thought about it, he sort of was killing for the real stuff. “Here,” he said.

“I appreciate your...suggestion,” Mako said, as she poured some hot water from the kettle into the cup. “But we will not be drift compatible.”

“What makes you think that?” Raleigh asked.

“Your piloting is...”

“Go ahead,” Raleigh said as he leaned against the counter. “I can take it.”

“You are unpredictable,” Mako said. “It puts your crew at risk, you deviate from standard combat techniques and...you take risks.”

“Well,” Raleigh said. “That’s technique. Not whether we’re going to drift.” He paused, wanting to address the other comment. After all, he and Yancy had just barely made it back from Knifehead, and then there was Bonesquid - and why did they tend to get all of the kaiju with the dumb, descriptive names? Gipsy had been refitted and redone almost twice.

But Gipsy was still here. They were still here. “When you’re out there, when it’s real - it’s not a simulator, and you’re all that’s standing between millions of people...you’ve got to make decisions you can live with. And I guess I realized...” Mako nodded and smiled softly - he appreciated that she wasn’t going to make him vocalize all of that. “Well. I think we have some things in common.” He knew about Mako, of course, it was hard not to, even when neither she nor Stacker talked about it.

“Yes, perhaps,” Mako said.

“That’s where you start,” Raleigh said. “You need something immediate to latch onto.” Loss, trauma - probably wasn’t ideal, but he sensed there was plenty more beneath Mako’s surface that he would be compatible with, despite her rebuke.

“Why did you offer to do this for me?” she asked. “You and your brother-”

“It’s not about us,” Raleigh said. “It’s about the mission.” He needed to win her over, so he sighed, said what he’d never said out loud to anyone before. “When you said it was your fault - I really did understand, I...I was never the gifted pilot.” He shook his head as she opened her mouth to object, even after her evisceration of him. “We got in that Jaeger because of Yancy. I was just compatible with him - I’m good now, sure, but in the beginning...and I knew. Nobody needed to tell me. But you, you’re the opposite. You know your scores...but you still doubt yourself.”

Mako frowned. “Revenge is a poor motivator,” she said. “You will see.”

Raleigh nodded - they were going to be in each other’s heads in about ten minutes. “We need to get this done, end this,” he said. “If that’s not revenge...”

---

“Holy shit,” said Yancy, clapping him on the shoulder. “Mako and I both wanted to jump in there with you.”

“Yeah, well, Mako’s fucking grounded,” Raleigh said.

Yancy shook his head. “Rabbits happen for new-”

“Did you miss the part where we nearly took out the Shatterdome?” Raleigh asked. It was as much his fault as hers - without Yancy there, balancing him, his mind had gone right to Knifehead, right to that wrenching feeling of Yancy being pulled out of his head and into the night. He knew how it would resonate for Mako and he still failed to suppress it. He had barely managed to pull himself out of it to help her - it had been like it was happening again, like it was real.

“So, what, she and Daven are just going to sit this one out?” Yancy clenched his fist. “If Gottlieb is right...we’re going to need all the fire power down there that we’ve got.”

“I know,” Raleigh said, and he slumped against the wall. They were both silent for a moment.

“Did it feel good?”

“Did what feel good?”

“Handing that kid his ass?” Yancy asked.

“Yeah,” Raleigh said. “Yeah. I think I might of broke his nose.”

“Rearranged his face a little?” Yancy asked. “That’s too bad. Bet there are a lot of people that are going to be disappointed about that.”

“Some people like the rugged look,” Raleigh said, and he peeled himself from the wall and started to walk back to their bunk. He needed a shower and probably a nap.

“Yeah,” Yancy said. “Raleigh - you can look, but you are not touching-”

“Seriously?” Raleigh asked. After he’d just pummeled the kid?

“I know your type,” Yancy said. Raleigh nodded, remembering the one time they had drifted together for some practice maneuvers immediately after Raleigh had just slept with one of the Shatterdome’s doctors. Never again, Yancy had said, when we’ve got something scheduled we put at least two hours between it and sex. Raleigh had just pouted at him, and Yancy had punched him in the back of his shoulder.

They weren’t in their shared room for fifteen minutes when the alarm sounded. Raleigh glanced over at the screen. “Shit,” he said. “Two Cat IVs - what the fuck is-”

“Oh, yeah,” Yancy said. “Newt drifted with a kaiju.”

“What the fuck is wrong with that guy?” Raleigh asked, and he sighed. “Now we have to suit up because they’ve come to fucking eat him.”

---

“I’m sorry, did you just say that-” Yancy said, moving in close to Pentecost, like he was going to grab his arm. Definitely not, Raleigh thought. The third rule of fight club is that you do not touch Stacker Pentecost.

“Why?” Raleigh asked, interrupting Yancy.

“Your little stunt this morning, Becket. You’re grounded.” Raleigh had to look away as Chuck Hansen got a wide, satisfied smirk on his face. “Don’t look too pleased with yourself, Ranger. If I could put someone else in that Jaeger I would.” Chuck’s smirk minimized by one degree.

Raleigh felt his chest tighten - he had never not gone out without Yancy, there was only once when he had ever... “Hey,” Yancy said, turning to face him. “Hey, kid. I’ll be fine.”

Raleigh leaned in so no one else could hear him. “I was her biggest supporter, I still am...but I can’t, without you, you-”

“We just have to kick two kaiju’s asses,” Yancy said. “Then we come back.”

Raleigh threw up a little bit in his mouth, though, when he watched as the two Mark-IVs and the Mark-V got disabled by the EMP burst from Leatherback after Otachi managed to paralyze Cherno Alpha - fortunately, at least, Daven and Yancy had been able to distract the kaiju and give the rescue crew enough time to get the Kaidanovsky’s out of that stupid Conn-Pod of theirs.

“Two hours to get everyone back online,” Tendo said, frantically typing on his computer.

Raleigh fought back the sense of panic he was feeling, because that was his goddamn brother out there and he was going to get- “Not everyone,” Raleigh said, and he looked at Mako. “Gipsy’s analogue.”

---

“I have never in my life seen anything like that,” Pentecost said, and the crowd cheered again. Raleigh beamed at Mako - it had all been her, and he would tell anyone who wanted to know. She was brilliant. “But we’ve got four Jaegers to get back online, five to repair. Restart the clock.”

Hello, buzzkill, Raleigh thought, and when he glanced back to see Yancy he saw Chuck instead. Chuck met his eye and nodded at him - which, yeah, Raleigh sort of had coming, seeing as how they saved him and his father after that dumbass stunt with the flare gun.

He let Mako head towards Stacker and moved back in the crowd towards Chuck. “What were you thinking with that?” he asked. “Piss it off more?”

“Didn’t quite know you were coming, mate,” Chuck said. “Dad and I figured we might as well try something stupid.” He gave a smile - an actual smile, not that cocky bullshit smirk of his, and Raleigh was very suddenly aware of the deep dimples on either side of his face. They were not fair.

“If you have a shot,” Herc said, appearing beside Chuck. “You take it.”

Raleigh nodded, then felt Yancy wrap his arms around him from behind. “Aw, c’mon!” he said.

“I didn’t give you a noogie, did I? That was awesome, kid.” The Hansens looked at each other and then walked away, presumably towards medical to deal with Herc’s broken arm.

“Inspired,” said Daven, moving out from behind Yancy. Raleigh had worried about her, even with all of the successful tests she had run with his brother in Nova Hyperion. Now she seemed energized. She seemed ready. “Thanks, Raleigh.”

“I wasn’t about to-” he stopped, and met Yancy’s eyes. Yancy nodded, then leaned in. Their foreheads almost touched together.

Then Yancy pulled back and grinned at him. “You better not have just been eye fucking Hansen.”

“What?” Raleigh demanded, pulling back. “No!” Possibly, he meant, and Yancy glanced over Raleigh’s shoulder and narrowed his eyes at Chuck as he and Herc retreated. Not the first time Yancy had been a cockblock. It was kind of...cute, though? The whole protective older brother thing. Until he was actually a cockblock.

“You’re just as bad,” he said back, because Daven was now out of earshot with all the din around them. He leaned in. “What was it like?” Yancy shook his head, and Raleigh realized why - she knew how Yancy felt now, and he knew how she felt. Plus, while Yancy had certainly spent a lot of time in Raleigh’s head, post-Knifehead, finding a more acute form of that grief in someone else must have led to some reflection.

“Mako’s pretty awesome,” Raleigh said, hoping to salvage something as Yancy pulled away.

“Yeah,” Yancy said. “I could tell how you were following her around like a golden retriever.”

“Was not,” Raleigh said.

“Was so,” Yancy said, and then, to punctuate his point, he stuck his tongue out.

“So mature,” Raleigh replied.

“We’ve got work to do,” Yancy said.

“Hypocrite.”

---

Four Jaegers went into the breach - much to the disappointment of the Kaidanovsky’s. But neither they nor Cherno Alpha were in any position to attempt to do anything. “We will miss you,” Raleigh told Sasha before he kissed her cheek goodbye. He wanted to say, you were lucky to get out of that harbor, but that would probably lead to her cutting him. She still shook her head and scowled at him.

The Weis were the first taken out - Raiju, Scunner, it didn’t matter - but they made it to their escape pods in time and were found by the chopper pilots. Then Striker got torn to shreds and Nova was wrapped up in Slattern and Raleigh felt Mako’s heart sink and ache when Pentecost said his goodbye. “You know what to do,” he said, and Raleigh nodded at her.

“We’ve got to finish the mission,” he said. “We’ll use Gipsy to make a run for it, detonate her...”

“Raleigh, no-” it was Yancy, garbled but still there, struggling with Slattern.

“She’s nuclear, Yancy, it’s the only way.” He waited for further objection, but Yancy knew. This was what they had signed up for. “Yance - I love you.” He turned off their communication line and met Mako’s eyes again. “Let’s do this. Let’s end this. Together.”

---

“You stupid goddamn son-of-a-bitch,” Yancy said, basically tackling him from his own escape pod. He and Daven had started to paddle over as soon as Mako had surfaced. It was his voice that broke Raleigh from his embrace with Mako. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

“Following orders,” Raleigh said, and then grinned at his brother. Yancy shook his head and wrapped him up in a hug.

“Fucking hell,” Yancy said. “You thick-headed asshole, you-”

“Hey,” said Daven, “not to break up all the brotherly...feelings, but do you see that?” She put a hand out to shield her eyes and pointed into the distance. There was a slight glint on the ocean, metallic.

“How the hell did you see that?” Raleigh asked.

Daven shrugged. “I’m used to looking for stuff in water...”

“Tendo, do you have that on radar?” Yancy asked. Always the professional, Yancy Beckett, ladies and gentlemen, Raleigh thought.

“Confirmed,” Tendo said. “It appears to be one of the escape pods from Striker Eureka.”

Raleigh looked at Yancy, who suddenly looked tired and a little confused. Mako was smiling slightly - and Raleigh would have said it if she hadn’t. “He would have done it, if he could,” she said. “If you have a shot, you take it.”

Turned out Stacker had shoved Chuck Hansen into the escape pod and Chuck was a little worse for wear because of it. Barely making it out of a nuclear blast range in an escape pod didn’t help things, either, but Chuck was lucky to get out with mild radiation poisoning, pins and rods holding his wrist together, and a broken ankle that was immediately put in a soft walking splint.

Raleigh felt for him - mostly because he missed the party. Everyone in the Shatterdome, it seemed, had saved some sort of good stuff for if and when the actual apocalypse got cancelled. Or to consume when it became clear they were all going to be crushed, eaten, or dissolved in kaiju shit. “I can make that joke!” Raleigh protested, when Yancy elbowed him for it. “Because it is not going to happen!”

It started with the Russians, as all good celebrations must. Raleigh was amazed to see them at the front of the choppers welcoming committee. Aleksis was still huge in a wheelchair, likely only mobile because the of the literal shit ton of painkillers they’d given him after he’d broken his femur and cracked his hip, amongst other issues. Sasha leaned next to him on crutches, her one ankle shattered, several of her ribs broken and her face half covered in bruises.

“Sorry we miss out on all the fun,” Sasha said. She had put her lipstick on. Raleigh admired her - he sort of wanted to be her when he grew up.

“We get the party ready,” Aleksis said.

“Actually,” Tendo said, when he wrapped an arm around each of the Beckets, “I did, but I’m not going to make any claim to that...and we only decided to break out the booze Shatterdome wide when we knew Chuck was coming home.”

Raleigh glanced over at Herc, standing with the Aussie crew’s lead and Mako. “Give me a minute,” he said, and Yancy nodded.

Raleigh limped over - he’d fucked up his knee somehow, but that could wait for later. “Sir,” he said, carefully. “Marshall.”

“Ranger,” said Herc, and his eyes were still brimming slightly with tears. The bulldog was wagging its tail and almost grinning at Raleigh. He felt bad not petting him but he really didn’t feel like bending over was in his best interest just then. “Well done.”

“Thank you,” Raleigh said, and Mako knew - of course she knew - and drew the Aussie crew leader back away from them to give Raleigh and Herc space. “Sir, I...I’m really glad - I know how you must have...”

Herc nodded, but it looked like he’d been through hell. Then he got a really funny expression on his face, like something important had just occurred to him. “Appreciate that, Becket,” he said, and nodded his head at him. Raleigh nodded back, then returned to Yancy and Daven. They looked like they’d just fucked - hell, piloting a Jaeger was kind of like fucking, but Raleigh had not wanted to think about it that way when it was him and Yancy. That whole analogy had only come back to the forefront when he’d drifted with Mako, and that was kind of weird, in and of itself - yet more questioning his sexuality thanks to the drift.

“Here,” said Tendo, and he handed Raleigh a bottle of legitimate looking sparkling wine. “Oh, come on, you don’t...” Tendo shook his head. “Kids these days.” He put his fingers on either side of the cork and showed Raleigh how to pop it. Foam poured out, and Raleigh quickly took the bottle and drank it down. He’d never had it before, and he grinned at the fizzy, cold feeling in his mouth. Another one was immediately placed in his hand, even though he wasn’t done with the first.

Yancy had his own, and Raleigh grinned at him. They’d earned this - it reminded him of when he used to watch the Stanley Cup with their dad, back when there had been hockey teams and sports championships. For a moment, he let himself fall into the memory - dad, mom, both of them leaving in their own way. Just him and Yancy, really, him and Yancy always. Thank fuck, he thought. And also, at least, that it would have been different for Yancy, because they weren’t connected, and because he was able to prepare Yancy for it.

Raleigh slung his arm around Yancy, and Yancy slung his arm around Daven.

“Hey, where’s Mako?” Daven asked.

“She probably wants a few moments...” Raleigh said.

“Oh,” Daven said. “Sorry, I-”

“No, it’s fine,” Raleigh said. “You didn’t really know.”

“Beckets!” called the Weis - Raleigh had watched them in the distance, passing a bottle of hard liquor between them. Despite their prowess as Jaeger pilots, Raleigh suspected they weren’t the kind of guys who ever really drank and were, therefore, most likely to be found passed out in a corner with their shoes still on. “And Daven!”

“Well done, gentlemen,” Daven said, in a husky voice. Raleigh bet it really turned Yancy on, and he glanced over at him. Yancy scowled.

“First up,” said Cheung, shaking his head.

“Either sink or swim, brother,” Jin said, and Hu nodded, eyes wide. They toasted with their liquor bottle and then moved back towards the Chinese crew.

Things quieted then as Chuck was brought in. Raleigh and Yancy pushed their way to the forefront of the crowd. Chuck was covered with a thick blanket, strapped to a gurney and grinning like the crazy asshole he was - painkillers, Raleigh thought, he had the smile of someone properly doped up. With good reason.

Herc was immediately on the other side of him, and he leaned down and said something - Raleigh could only imagine what - and then pulled away and closed his eyes.

He probably should have thought through it some more, but Raleigh said, “Hey, Chuck. Welcome back.”

Chuck turned his eyes towards them and they were wide and starry, like he was looking at someone he had idolized as a kid. “You did it,” he said. His words were slurred. “Good one, Raleigh.” Raleigh expected it to be a mocking comment, but he appeared to be sincere. Then they resumed wheeling him off to medical, and Raleigh was left wondering what the hell had just happened there - he’d beat the snot out of him only half a day ago, or at least it felt like that.

“That is...” Sasha said, and then got that look on her face when she had to search for the English word. She said the Russian instead. “любознательнo (curious, inquiring). Interesting, but more.”

“What do you mean?” Raleigh asked.

“You got big hero play,” Aleksis said.

“Meant for Chuck,” Sasha added. She had her free hand on the back of her husband’s neck. “Maybe he will be mad later.”

“Maybe likes it,” Aleksis said, and arched an eyebrow at Sasha.

“Uh, hardly,” Raleigh said.

“We see,” Sasha replied.

“We’re all sort of suffering from delayed reactions,” Raleigh said. The Russians nodded in unison, and it made Raleigh think of all the rumors about them - ghost drifting, how they dreamed the same, how engineers had swore they saw Cherno Alpha moving when the pilots weren’t engaged. He smiled at them. “Thanks for the-”

“Not ours,” said Sasha. “But we said, pilots get the...шампанское.”

“Champagne,” Raleigh said.

“Yes,” said Sasha. “But maybe not - maybe not comes from the right place in France.” She shrugged again, then winced. Raleigh handed his bottle to her and she took a sip from it.

“You have your own?” Sasha nodded - they were stashed in a little bag that was attached to the side of Aleksis’ wheelchair. “Good,” Raleigh said. He had worried, for a moment, that they hadn’t thought they deserved it since they hadn’t made it for the final drop.

Raleigh took another long drink of the sparkling wine, or champagne, or whatever. He looked around at the celebration - people were chatting with each other, embracing, and all of them had this wide eyed look. No one had thought they would actually do it, he supposed, they’d lived with the breach and Kaiju for so long. “Hey,” he said, to no one in particular, because he was drunk on sparkling wine, “what are we going to do tomorrow?”

Chapter Text

Raleigh was drunk through most of the next day, and then slowly transitioned into a hangover like no hangover he had ever had before - a drift hangover, an alcohol hangover, a I just saved the world hangover. He curled into his bunk in the Shatterdome, put his ear buds in, and wanted everything to just stop.

“How you feeling, kid?” Yancy stepped out of the shower, towel around his waist. Raleigh groaned and pulled his head out of the pillow.

“How are you upright?”

Yancy shrugged. “Not for much longer,” he said. Raleigh put his face back into the pillow as Yancy pulled on a pair of boxer briefs and a PPDC t-shirt. Then he climbed into the bottom bunk. Next to Raleigh.

“Hey, what?” Raleigh said, and rolled over so they were facing each other.

“Hey,” Yancy said. Yancy was still drunk, Raleigh realized, he looked sweet and sloppy and, for the first time in a long time, like he wasn’t worried. “We did it.”

“Yeah,” said Raleigh. “But you’re in my bunk-”

“Don’t want to climb up,” Yancy said.

“This is just going to perpetuate the rumors-”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Yancy said, as if cuddling and sleeping with your brother when you were in your late twenties was perfectly natural. “Remember when we lived in that apartment in Palmer, we shared a bed.”

“I was five,” Raleigh replied. But there had been times since then when they had laid down like this to talk - hell, even in the Shatterdome. Raleigh was just being an ass because his head was throbbing right along with Yancy’s breathing.

“I’m trying to have a brotherly moment, here,” Yancy said. “This wouldn’t be weird if we were girls.”

Raleigh considered this. He didn’t know very much about what girls did at all - but he thought the whole climbing into bed together to chat about boys late into the night was sort of a stereotype. “Roll over so you’re not breathing vodka breath into my face.”

“No way,” said Yancy. “I’m not gonna be the little spoon.”

Raleigh sighed and rolled over, allowing Yancy to be the big spoon, or whatever the fuck he wanted. Yancy sighed, and then didn’t say anything for awhile. Then he said, “We made it, Rals.”

It took Raleigh a moment to get his hungover, post-drift brain to figure out what Yancy was saying. “Yeah,” he said, and he felt his throat constrict as he remembered Yancy getting pulled out of the cockpit, flailing, his almost last words telling Raleigh what to do- “Yeah, we did.”

They were silent for a long time - they were men, after all. Fucking manly men, actually, Jaeger pilots, Rangers, the Becket Brothers. “How’s Mako?”

Raleigh sighed. Before he’d retreated to his room he had found her, carefully seated at the edge of the party. She was uncharacteristically drinking straight from a wine bottle - and it was that sight that drew Raleigh over towards her when he had been stalking around, looking to see if someone was amenable to sex. “Hey,” he said, and sat down next to her.

She passed him the wine bottle. He drank from it. “This is-”

“Hermann made it,” she said.

“Hermann’s been making wine in the lab?” Raleigh asked.

Mako shrugged her shoulders. It sort of surprised Raleigh. Wine making was probably messy.

“You don’t have to say anything, you know, at least to me - I was...there,” Raleigh said. “But sometimes it helps to say things out loud.” His PPDC therapist had told him that following Knifehead. As much as Raleigh bitched about her, she had actually been helpful.

“Yes,” Mako said. “He was...he did not have much time left anyway. I knew this. Knew I would have to say goodbye.” Raleigh nodded and took another drink from the Hermann wine. He couldn’t criticize - it was probably difficult to get your hands on decent grapes, these days, and who knew when he’d made the wine? It very well might have come with him from Lima. “He was strong until the end, and I am...proud of him.”

Raleigh nodded, though he thought of his mother. She had smoked until the end - he didn’t know why it made him so angry. He understood now that her diagnosis had been a death sentence, but at the time he thought that it meant she didn’t want to live. Didn’t want him, or Yancy, or Jazmine - and fuck, that was a whole other mess. Now he guessed he was just angry because his last memories of her were all tinged with nicotine and smoke, all a dull brown.

“I am sorry,” Mako said, and she put a hand on his knee.

“No, it’s - it’s what it is,” Raleigh said. It was really good to have drifted with someone else - strange as it was to have another person in his head. Mako was...they were drift compatible, if what that meant was that they fit together despite the fact they’d come from completely different places. Now there was someone else out there who he had shared himself with entirely, who understood him.

“You are a good man, Raleigh,” she replied. “I feel...sad, but I am happy for him.” Mako pressed her lips together. “He died in a Jaeger. That is what he wanted most.”

Raleigh nodded - drive suits had to be made specifically for each person. The fact that Pentecost happened to have one in his closet said a lot.

“There will be many reporters tomorrow,” said Mako. “We will need to speak with them.”

“I fucking hate that stuff,” Raleigh said. Mako smiled - she already knew that.

“They will love you,” she said. “They have always loved you. Becket Brothers. Beckets.”

“It wasn’t the Becket Brothers, though,” Raleigh replied. He reached over and took her hand and squeezed it. “It was you and me.” He hadn’t said this to anyone else, phrased it like it had solely been them - and of course, he didn’t think that the victory was solely theirs. But they had finished things, and only Mako had been down there with him in the anteverse. Mako gave him a slight smile.

“Yes,” she said.

In his bunk, spooning his brother, Raleigh chewed a little bit at the inside of his cheek. “She’s alright,” he said. “It’s complicated, for her, I guess.”

“Yeah,” said Yancy. Then he stopped talking - thank God, thought Raleigh, and he closed his eyes and did his best to even out his breathing.

“Rals?” Yancy asked, just as Raleigh was about to fall asleep.

“Yes, Yancy?”

“What do I do about Daven?”

Raleigh squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. Christ. “You’re asking me for relationship advice?” Raleigh wasn’t even sure if he’d ever had a relationship - nothing had ever made it beyond a few months. People were always getting reassigned, getting nervous about Jaeger pilot mortality rates, getting twitchy about the whole apocalypse thing.

“When we drifted...” Oh, shit, Raleigh thought.

“Did she..?” Raleigh sighed. “Did she say anything?”

“I kinda...maybe avoided her, after a certain point?”

“Yancy Becket,” Raleigh said, in his best stern command voice - like anyone would ever put Raleigh in charge of anything, “you are a grown ass man. You saved the fucking world. Now you’re supposed to go and get the damn girl. That is how this shit works.” Raleigh saw, vividly, a possible future - Yancy and Daven, sort of ridiculous together because Yancy was a foot taller than her and she was just overall quite tiny, one of them with a baby slung over their hip like a football and another kid underneath them doing something adorable like chewing on his stuffed animal. He shook his head.

“Yeah,” Yancy said. Raleigh didn’t have to see him to know the smirk that was crawling up his face. “Then you need to go and get the damn guy.” We’ll fix all our problems! Raleigh thought.

“There isn’t a damn guy,” Raleigh replied. “I’m open to offers, though.”

Yancy sighed behind him. “This is where I’m supposed to give you brotherly advice, about settling down...or something.”

“Right,” Raleigh said. “When you come up with that, I’ll listen.” He paused. “Can I go to sleep now?”

“Yeah,” said Yancy. “Should be well rested for the barrage tomorrow.”

---

Raleigh did what he always did with the press which was sort of performance art. He was himself but he was also what everyone wanted Raleigh Becket to be - the eager younger brother, the kid, the one who had a quip or two but still took things seriously. He was the compliment to Yancy’s easy professionalism.

He answered most of the questions directed at he and Mako because he knew she wouldn’t want to say anything unless it was precise and perfect. She let him know when she wanted to speak, and he held her hand under the table when she spoke of Stacker.

Raleigh watched Chuck speak with interest - he had insisted on sitting in a chair rather than a wheelchair and looked sort of constipated because of it. Raleigh had learned, after Knifehead, that some stupid notion of dignity and bad-assery was not worth being uncomfortable. He was disappointing the reporters, as well, because he wasn’t giving them the Chuck Hansen soundbites they wanted. He didn’t make mention of his own prowess and superiority as a pilot and he was only a dick when someone talked about how the PPDC and Jaeger program had been defunded for the Wall of Life - and any one of them on the panel would have given a similar response.

“You piloted with Stacker Pentecost-” one reporter began.

“I did,” Chuck said, and leaned into the microphone before the question could be asked. “I’d always admired him. Didn’t know if we could drift, but we did. Without his sacrifice, without his work since the beginning of the program...we wouldn’t be here.”

“But you made the ultimate sacrifice move-” the reporter said.

“Well, that’s why I joined - why I’ve been a Ranger, why I wanted to be one since I was...” he shook his head and looked at Herc, who had to look away - and met Raleigh’s eyes. Raleigh gave him a soft smile.

Daven leaned over to Yancy, but Raleigh could hear her as well. “Did they say he had a concussion? Or is it radiation sickness?” Yancy shrugged, but glanced over at Chuck, who was staring straight ahead. It was like Yancy wanted to pierce right into the core of his soul. A little unnecessary, Raleigh figured, since he’d been willing to give his life for the rest of them.

After, Chuck was taken back to medical and the rest of them busted into one of the cases of beer that had been delivered by some country’s government as a thank you. “Fuck me,” said Herc, with a sigh, “I haven’t had a good, cold beer in a long while.”

---

“So,” Raleigh said in medical, the next day, because he felt like he should go and see how Chuck was doing, because it was - what, the nice thing to do? The right thing to do?

Chuck looked at him and pressed his lips together. Raleigh smiled. Chuck didn’t say anything.

“So,” Raleigh tried again, because three days ago - he thought it was three days, at least - he’d punched him and taken him down with a kick to the face, “we saved some champagne for when you get out.”

“Oh yeah?” Chuck asked. “Awful considerate.”

“Real stuff, apparently,” Raleigh said, ignoring him. “France sent it.”

“Love that,” Chuck said. “They were telling us to fuck off weeks ago. Dad said PPDC’s been wired millions. That there are retirement pensions for us.” He shook his head.

“Well,” Raleigh said. Some of the reasons they’d stopped funding the Jaeger program had made sense, if you looked at it from - how had Daven phrased it? A macro-economic standpoint. But it didn’t mean that the Wall of Life hadn’t been a really stupid idea.

“Well, what?” Chuck said. “Guess it doesn’t matter, right. We did it. You’re the big damn hero.” Raleigh tried to figure out what he was trying to get at - was Sasha right, was he mad he didn’t get to be the one to get the job done, like he had wanted to be since he stepped into a Jaeger? He was getting just as much press as Raleigh and Mako - the boy who lived! And maybe that would be a good peace offering. Raleigh doubted Chuck had taken the requisite time out of training to do something like read Harry Potter.

“We could never have done it without you.”

“Yeah,” Chuck said, and he shifted and winced, because his whole body was bruised and battered even if he’d only broken the ankle and wrist. “I suppose so.”

Raleigh wanted to ask why he was being such a grumpy bastard, but stopped before it came out of his mouth - after all, what had he expected?

“And you two are doing well with your new girlfriends, huh?” Chuck said, and he nodded over at the laptop that was open on his tray. He pushed it towards Raleigh. There was a picture of Yancy with Daven, pretty much beaming with a hand on her shoulder and then Mako and Raleigh alongside them, both grinning like idiots at each other.

“Not girlfriend,” Raleigh said, quickly. Mako was awesome - Mako was probably the most brilliant person he’d ever met. “I don’t-” he stopped, and looked at Chuck, whose brow had furrowed slightly. Shouldn’t he know this? It was in Raleigh’s file. “I don’t like women, really.”

“Oh,” Chuck said. He squared his jaw for a moment, then said, “Becket 1, though. He’s got it bad.”

Raleigh didn’t know if he should really talk to Chuck about this - but, hell, it was progress. It was also incredibly obvious. “Yeah,” he said. “For awhile now.”

Chuck looked up and raised his eyebrows, then, and Raleigh turned and saw Herc in the door with some food. “Marshal,” Raleigh said, and smiled at him.

“Ranger,” Herc replied, and there was a little bit of a growl in his voice - it sounded like he was trying to figure out how to replicate Pentecost’s tone.

“Look, I’ll see you later,” Raleigh said to Chuck, and Chuck nodded his head.

“Sure.”

---

Chuck was out the next day, which was good, because after saving the world there really wasn’t much for the pilots to do. Raleigh had offered to help in several different ways and had been politely refused each time. Not that he blamed them, he’d worked on Gipsy plenty of times, but there weren’t any more Jaegers. And other than that, he really didn’t have anything to offer. Before he’d been a Jaeger pilot, he and Yancy, they hadn’t been anything special, not until they drifted.

Chuck seemed surprised that all of the pilots, research team - well, Newt and Gottlieb - and Tendo had gathered in one of the conference rooms. “Come, drink,” Sasha said.

“He’s still on painkillers,” Herc said, standing behind Chuck. He was using a cane along with his soft cast, and he looked back and gave Herc one of the best petulant teenager but daaaaaaad style looks Raleigh had ever seen.

“Yes, I am too,” Sasha said. “All of us are, right?” Herc just shook his head - he was a tough old bastard, but Raleigh guessed he had availed himself of something in the aftermath of all of this.

“Just means we conserve booze supply,” Yancy said, and then he shrugged his shoulders at his own practicality.

“Here,” Aleksis said, and handed Chuck a red plastic cup filled with champagne.

“To Chuck,” said Sasha.

“To Marshall Pentecost,” Raleigh said, when he raised his own glass. Mako gave him a slight smile.

“To all of you fuckers,” Daven said - since she’d proven herself, she’d begun to speak more like she used to, which was largely strewn with swear words.

They clinked their cups with everyone who was around, and then Hu went over to the iPod dock and began to fiddle with the device. “Oh, no,” said Sasha. “You are not doing music.”

Oh, here we go, Raleigh thought - the battle between the Russians and the Chinese over the Shatterdome music had only stopped when he and Yancy arrived and rigged Gipsy’s bay, with Tendo’s help, to play Ultimate Kylie Minogue on loop. It took twenty-three hours for one of the Chinese techs to figure out how to get it to stop.

“Use mine,” Yancy said, and Raleigh nodded and handed it to Hu. Yancy had really good taste in music. In another life, he might have been a musician. “Just put it on shuffle.”

The first song was by some old rock band, and Herc seemed to recognize it, but it was good because it was unobjectionable. Raleigh smiled at Mako.

“I think about what you said,” she said to him, keeping her voice low, “about how you did not think about the future until now.” She glanced around the room and sipped some of her champagne. “There is much work to still do, you know. Here.”

“Are you asking me to stay?” Raleigh asked. She bowed her head down and nodded, almost embarassed. “Of course - I mean, I want to, and besides that, where else do I have to go?”

“Yes,” Mako said. “There is that. But - this is a party. I should not have brought it up.”

“No, it’s...” Raleigh understood - she wanted the confirmation so she didn’t have to worry. “It’s good. Look, you want to help me wingman my idiot brother?”

“Wingman?”

“Help him get the girl,” Raleigh said, and nodded at Yancy, talking to Aleksis but clearly peacocking a little bit for Daven, who was chatting to Newt right next to him.

“So silly,” she said. “He is always winning best looking polls.” She looked down, embarrassed again.

“Yeah, I know, thanks, Mako,” Raleigh said, feigning annoyance. “Hey, I wonder if that’s why Chuck doesn’t like us.” This had just occurred to him.

“I do not think Chuck even thinks about that,” Mako said, and shook her head. Raleigh understood what she was getting at. It was a real shame that someone as pretty as Chuck didn’t use his powers for good. Or evil.

---

“Look,” said Raleigh, and he wasn’t entirely sure how the conversation had even started - because Yancy had the smart idea that they needed to do vodka shots with Sasha and Aleksis, and Raleigh had sort of spaced out from there, “hockey is much harder than rugby.”

“You play, what, one minute, two minutes?” Chuck asked. “Ruggers are running back and forth for sixty minutes, no breaks.”

Raleigh narrowed his eyes and considered this. “Have you ever ice skated?”

“Mate, I am Australian,” Chuck said, drawing out the vowels in Australian like he said Raleigh’s name. “You think we got a surplus of ice ranks?”

Raleigh shrugged. “Trust me, it’s not like running.”

“You skated?”

Raleigh nodded, though it was a melancholy memory - back when they still had money because his dad was working on the oil rigs. “It’s like being in a Jaeger.”

“Fuck off,” said Chuck, and he slid a little lower in his seat. His eyes were a little glazed, and Raleigh wondered how often he had actually let himself drink and get drunk.

“Why are you so defensive, anyway, you play rugby?” Chuck stared at him. “No? What then, cricket?”

“Don’t you say anything about-”

“You played cricket.” Chuck nodded.“It’s not even a real sport!” Raleigh said. “It takes five days, including tea breaks-”

“There is a psychological battle, there, between the batsmen and the bowler-”

“There aren’t even rules! They make them up!”

He felt Yancy’s hand on his shoulder, then, and he got tugged backwards with his chair dragging along with him. “What the hell?” Yancy asked.

“Cricket,” Raleigh said, and furrowed his brow.

“You were about to punch each other again,” Yancy said. He glanced over at Daven for back-up, like they were the only two adults in the room - and, considering Tendo was drawing a dick on one of the passed out Wei Tang triplet’s faces, this was probably a correct assumption.

“Yes,” Daven said, and she grinned at Yancy. “That was exactly what was about to happen.”

At the same time, Herc was growling something at Chuck about behaving himself - like he ever did that.

“Boys will be boys,” Sasha said, and shared a strange sideways glance with Aleksis, who laughed.

---

“I’m sorry I insulted cricket,” Raleigh said as the evening wound down.

“It’s like insulting my...mother,” Chuck said.

“Not really?” Raleigh said.

“It’s like if I insulted something really American,” Chuck said. “Like football.”

“I don’t think that would bother me,” Raleigh said. “But I’ve never been that attached to that kind of thing.”

“No? Never felt particular A-mur-i-can?” Chuck asked.

“Never felt particularly anything,” Raleigh admitted - and what the fuck was he saying this to Chuck Hansen for? How had wound up on a couch next to Chuck Hansen while his brother spoke quietly - thank God - with Daven in a corner and Newt was babbling at Herc about kaiju, probably, while Gottlieb rolled his eyes? “Well, like a Jaeger pilot.”

“Yeah,” Chuck said, and he got a winsome smile. “Now what, though, huh?”

They both looked at each other, then, because things weren’t supposed to get that serious that quickly. Raleigh sort of wanted to stuff the words back into Chuck’s mouth.

“Shit,” Raleigh offered, finally.

Chuck picked up a beer can and hurled it in Yancy’s direction so that it hit just left of his head. “What is wrong with you?” Yancy asked.

“Just make out with her, you stupid donger,” Chuck said. “For all of our sake’s, yeah?”

Daven grinned at Chuck, though, and then she looked at Yancy and raised her eyes expectantly. “Yeah?” Yancy said.

“You are an idiot,” Daven affirmed, then leaned in and kissed him gently.

Chuck sighed. “Was getting awful tired of that soap opera bullshit,” he said. Raleigh nodded. “Someone’s got to get stuff taken care of,” he said, to Herc, who just issued a long suffering sigh. Raleigh felt for him, but when he met Herc’s eyes the other man quickly looked away.

“You know we kissed before you did that, right? Like fifteen minutes ago?” Yancy asked.

“He wasn’t paying attention,” Daven said. She grinned at Raleigh.

“I think we all need to go to bed,” Herc said, standing up.

Raleigh was surprised that Chuck didn’t protest this, just grabbed at his cane and pulled himself up.

“Go back to her room,” Raleigh said. Yancy did his best to look offended, and, because he was romancing someone, Raleigh didn’t bring up the multitude of times Yancy had brought someone back to their room despite having a lot of other opportunities to avail himself of. Raleigh suspected it was because the Gipsy Danger sign was painted on the door - as though anyone would forget he was Jaeger pilot.

He walked back with Chuck, and at one point he stumbled - his cane got caught in some uneven flooring, most likely. Raleigh reached and touched his shoulder to steady him. “Hey!” Chuck said, and smacked Raleigh’s wrist - hard. “I don’t need your help, OK?”

“OK,” Raleigh said, and held up both of his hands. “Fuck.”

Chuck curled his lip and let his jaw go firm. Raleigh let him walk ahead of him, then, and flinched when Chuck slammed the door to his room.

---

Raleigh woke with another hangover, though one admittedly less vicious than the one that had plagued him a day before. He stumbled out of bed and then slowly brought his head up to rest on Yancy’s mattress - then frowned when he saw that Yancy wasn’t there. It took him a moment to remember where he was, and he sighed. Not that he wasn’t happy for his brother. But, and this made him feel fairly conflicted about a lot of things, the times he’d eaten breakfast by himself while they were stationed in a Shatterdome were few and far between.

He decided to go and get Mako, but came to Chuck’s room first. Might as well, he thought, and he knocked. “Do you know what the fuck time it is?” Chuck shouted from inside, and Raleigh widened his eyes at the sound of something hitting the ground and then the cane against the floor.

Chuck threw his door open, and it was clear from the fact he was in his boxer briefs that he thought Herc had been knocking. “You always talk to your dad like that?” Raleigh asked, repeating over and over - do not look at his package, do not look at his package... Like that was possible. Chuck had a little morning...excitement going on, and it was damn impressive. Not that Raleigh was a size queen, or anything, but...

Chuck followed his gaze, then met Raleigh’s eyes. Raleigh decided the best course of action was to give him a winning grin. “You want breakfast? They’re still only going to serve the hot stuff until nine.” Chuck looked like he was contemplating a variety of ways to kill Raleigh. “Today it’s waffles.”

Chuck sighed. “I do like waffles,” he said. “Give me a minute.”

Raleigh didn’t say anything while they walked, except to stop and knock on Mako’s door. She wasn’t in - and of course she wasn’t. Mako probably had things going on. She had been training to be a pilot, certainly, but she’d been involved in the inner workings of the Shatterdome as well.

The commissary wasn’t as full as normal - despite the allure of waffles, apparently plenty of people were still sleeping in - so Chuck and Raleigh got a table largely to themselves. “Where’s Max?” Raleigh asked, suddenly sensing the dog’s absence since he wasn’t underfoot, looking for food.

“With the old man,” Chuck said. “Hard to manage him with the cane.”

“Right,” Raleigh said. “I’ll go get the food, OK?” Chuck shrugged his shoulders.

“You gonna stay around?” Chuck asked, when Raleigh returned.

“Yeah,” Raleigh said. “Mako said there’s still plenty to do, so...” He shrugged.

“You and your brother?” Chuck said, and there was something pissy in his tone, like Raleigh and Yancy hadn’t earned the right to.

“Where else, right?” Raleigh asked. He had suspected that last night wouldn’t be the last he heard of Chuck’s existential crisis, though why he had chosen Raleigh as the person to discuss it with he would never know.

“It’s good, right?” Chuck said. “No home except the fucking Shatterdome.”

“Bad rhyming, there,” Raleigh pointed out, and stabbed some waffle. “You could make a cross stitch.”

“Yeah,” Chuck said. “I guess I’ve got time for some fucking hobbies, now.” He shifted, and groaned. “But you’re just all sunshine and optimism about things, right? It will all turn out just great?” Raleigh shrugged.

“Look, don’t be a dick to me because-”

“Because what?” Chuck asked, when Raleigh stopped and swallowed.

“Look, I’ve asked myself the same thing, right? I’ve never been anything else. I got in a Jaeger when I was eighteen.”

“Yeah, I know,” Chuck said. “Youngest until me.” Then Chuck reddened, slightly, and looked down. Without that gesture, Raleigh would have assumed that Chuck knew that because he wanted to beat Raleigh’s record. But-

Chuck glanced up at him, still slightly red, eyes framed by incredibly long lashes - sort of pleading with Raleigh not to say it. But then again, this was Chuck, and Raleigh couldn’t resist poking at him. “Did you have a...crush on me?” he asked.

Chuck dropped his eyes. “Fuck you,” he said.

“Yeah?” Raleigh asked, and he leaned back and crossed his arms - and he didn’t even really think about it, what he was offering. But they’d been heading here, hadn’t they? Probably before Raleigh even punched him in the face. In his stupid pretty face. Chuck didn’t say anything, so Raleigh said, “I mean, are you offering?” Goddamnit, he thought.

“What?” Chuck said, and he finally looked up and met Raleigh’s eyes. Raleigh grinned at him.

“What?” Raleigh said. He held the moment, watching Chuck’s grow a little more unsteady - and he was adorable, without that thick layer of bravado. “Well? Are you?” He leaned in, getting a little bit of syrup on his shirt. “Or I can fuck you. I’m not fussed.”

Chuck was a brilliant shade of pink and was completely flustered, like Raleigh had already started sucking on his cock, pulling him undone. Raleigh held his gaze, did his best to let Chuck know he wasn’t joking. “OK,” Chuck said, voice soft. “Uh, now?”

“No, I’ll pencil you into my schedule,” Raleigh said. “Christ, Chuck.”

He brought him back to his own room, figuring Herc could just barge in if they were in Chuck’s and that Yancy was otherwise indisposed and not a factor.

He smiled at Chuck when he slid the door shut. Chuck still looked nervous, so Raleigh took a hand and put it to the side of his face. “Chuck,” he said.

“OK,” Chuck said. His voice was soft, though Raleigh didn’t expect that the spell would last. He leaned in and kissed him, pulled him tight against him by putting his other hand to his hip.

Chuck opened his mouth, eager, hard, and he kissed like he piloted a Jaeger - all aggressive movement, but still fluid. Raleigh moved away for a moment to breathe through his mouth, then returned his attention to Chuck, using his tongue. Chuck reached and grabbed at his ass and squeezed, then pivoted Raleigh towards the bunk beds.

“Aren’t these adorable?” he asked, and kissed down Raleigh’s neck. “Do you two have matching teddies and jammies, too?”

Raleigh grabbed the back of Chuck’s head and pulled him back up so he could kiss him - he could devour him. He planned on it. Chuck moaned into the kiss, shifted his leg so that Raleigh’s groin was pressed against his thigh. “Fuck,” Raleigh said.

“That was your idea, mate,” Chuck replied, and went back to kissing him.

Neither of them heard the door open. They just heard Yancy. “Kid, they’ve got waffles this morning so I - aw, fuck, c’mon! I knew it! You can’t resist the pretty ones-”

Chuck pulled back from Raleigh’s lips and furrowed his brow. “Pretty?”

Yancy looked legitimately appalled, and Raleigh just burst out laughing. Then Yancy slammed the door on them. Raleigh was certain he heard Daven laughing in the hall.

“Really? Pretty?” Chuck asked.

“Does that offend your masculinity?” Raleigh asked. He sucked Chuck’s ear lobe and grinned as he moaned. “I told you I’d let you fuck me.”

“Good,” Chuck said. “But I was already planning on it, Raaleigh.”

Chapter Text

“Let me get in the bed, yeah?” Chuck asked, a moment later, and he glanced down at his ankle and wrist. Raleigh nodded, and Chuck sat down on the bed and then scooted back. “Bit cramped in here.”

“Yeah, well, maybe now we saved the world they’ll give me my own room,” Raleigh replied, and he climbed into the bunk bed and on top of Chuck. He grabbed at Chuck’s hips to line them up better and ground into him as he kissed him.

Chuck grabbed at his t-shirt and wrapped his hand in it and Raleigh groaned. He ran his fingers through Chuck’s short, ginger-blonde hair and then tugged to get Chuck at a better angle to kiss. He sucked on his lower lip when he pulled away and then kissed at his neck. He scraped his teeth down and felt Chuck shiver and relax slightly.

He grabbed at the stupid grey t-shirt of Chuck’s - he didn’t have any others, Raleigh was convinced, and if he ever had the chance he as going to go through his things to prove it. Chuck lifted his arms up and Raleigh pulled it off.

Raleigh pulled his own shirt off and both of them got out of their pants. Chuck was hard in his underwear, and Raleigh was pleased to see that he had gauged its size correctly from his glimpse that morning. Raleigh got on his knees and leaned back on his heels so that he could better take in Chuck - the width of his shoulders and the muscles in his arms. “Yeah?” Chuck asked, and Raleigh was surprised there was a little self-consciousness there. Raleigh kissed him again.

He pulled off his boxer briefs off and smiled at Chuck - but instead of the response he expected, he got, “Uh.”

Raleigh furrowed his brow - he’d got that response before, to be sure, but this particular uh was tinged with legitimate confusion as well as trepidation, and not in the you better stretch me, you bastard kind of way but more in the you want me to put what where? kind of way.

“Chuck?” He met Chuck’s eyes and watched, fascinated, as Chuck’s asshole exterior melted away, as his whole face softened and he suddenly looked...cute, and a little frightened. Raleigh realized he hadn’t done this before - well, with a man, and he gave Chuck a reassuring smile.

“Hey,” Raleigh said, and cupped his jaw, bringing his head back up from the bashful way he had hung it - just like when Raleigh had caught on he had a crush. “No worries.” He gave Chuck a big, sincere smile and then kissed him, hard. Chuck’s eyes strayed back down to Raleigh’s dick. “Besides, aren’t you going to fuck me?”

“Ah,” Chuck said. “Yeah. That was the, uh, plan.” Raleigh grinned. Never, before, had his dick short circuited someone. He was also pretty sure he’d never slept with someone new to this before either - it was a great responsibility, but he took it seriously.

Raleigh pressed Chuck into a kiss, careful with his ankle as he spread himself over his body. Chuck still had his underwear on, and so Raleigh kissed down his abdomen until he was pressing his lips around the edges of his underwear. Then he put his lips over Chuck’s cock and mouthed it, carefully, and pulled back and then licked up his cock, still covered in fabric. “Christ,” Chuck said, and his eyes were wide again - it was like, so long as you were petting him the right way, he was domesticated. Raleigh grinned.

He reached back with a hand and cupped Chuck’s rounded, gorgeous ass while keeping his mouth on his cock. “I figured you’d be a cock tease,” Chuck said.

“Figured you’d be a whiny bastard,” Raleigh replied, then grabbed at Chuck’s underwear and tugged them down. He slid between him to get a better angle and licked a strip up his cock. Chuck grabbed at the edge of the bed with his good wrist. Raleigh grabbed Chuck’s dick and moved the foreskin back, then tongued at the sensitive parts of the head.

“Uh,” Chuck said. “Fuck, that’s good, but get on with it, I want-”

Raleigh slid his mouth over the head of Chuck’s cock and moved up and down it slowly. He kept his focus on the head, making Chuck squirm beneath him. He tongued around the edge, then slowly stretched his mouth and moved down Chuck’s length. He hummed, gently, and Chuck sighed.

Raleigh was meticulous, slow, and Chuck was clutching at the sheets with his good hand and moaning in both pleasure and frustration. “This is a much better use for your mouth,” he said, and when that didn’t work, he started to arch his hips slightly. “Raleigh, fuck, c’mon-”

Raleigh scraped his teeth up Chuck’s cock, and Chuck moaned. Then he worked his mouth in earnest, bobbing and increasing his pace slowly. He reached back and massaged behind Chuck’s balls. “Christ, fuck, oh, God!” Chuck said - and had someone neglected to tell Chuck about his prostate? That needed to be rectified. Raleigh grinned around Chuck’s cock at his own pun, then pressed hard against the soft skin that covered the gland. Chuck moaned, this time, and Raleigh could feel him begin to tense and throb.

“Raleigh!” Chuck said, and Raleigh slowed because he could. Chuck made this perfect little desperate noise. Fuck, Raleigh thought, the things he was going to do to him. Do with him. “Please?” Perfect, Raleigh thought, and he quickened his pace and tongued at Chuck’s head. “Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck...” Chuck said, and then came, and Raleigh took it easily. He kept his mouth on Chuck even as he grew softer and looked up at him. “Oh, God,” Chuck said.

He face was a little flushed and his hair was mussed and sweaty. His eyes were wide and framed with his long lashes and his mouth was open as he gathered himself. Raleigh slid up his body and ran his hand through the soft hair on Chuck’s chest, then thumbed gently at a nipple. Chuck turned towards him, this sweet smile climbing up his face, but there was a flash of something almost naughty in his eyes. Raleigh grinned and his cock literally twitched.

“Now what?” Chuck asked, and Raleigh took the lube and a condom from one of the drawers built into the bunk bed frame.

“Really, Rah-leigh?”

“Like you don’t,” Raleigh replied, and he kissed Chuck before he could respond. He took the lube and squirted it into Chuck’s good hand, then took his wrist and moved it behind him. He picked a leg up and bent it around Chuck’s hip to open himself to him. Then he arched into Chuck so that his cock was against Chuck’s cool, smooth skin.

Chuck trailed his hand down Raleigh’s crease, and there was this look of...not awe, but a little less than that, in his eyes as he put a finger at the tight opening. “That’s good, Chuck, slip it in,” Raleigh said into his neck, and Chuck complied like the good little soldier he was. Raleigh groaned as Chuck worked past his muscle and into him. Chuck groaned too. “Like you’re fucking me with it,” Raleigh said, and Chuck drew his finger back and forth. “Crook it, nice, a little more, right - right <i>there!</i>”

“You want this bad, don’t you?” Chuck asked. He slid another finger in without Raleigh saying anything and zeroed right in on his prostate.

“Fuck, yes, that’s - but you’re just going, you have to stretch it,” Raleigh managed, eyes clouding as pleasure coursed through most of his nerve endings. “There, yes, like that.” He talked Chuck through the third finger, and Chuck was a fast learner, soon drawing things out like Raleigh had.

Then he met Raleigh’s eyes as he thrust three fingers into him, hard. “I want to see you when I fuck you.”

“Yeah, excellent, that’s a great idea,” Raleigh said.

“Do you narrate everything you do? Or just Jaeger piloting and fucking?” Raleigh grinned at him, then rolled over onto his back.

“Get comfortable,” he said, and he grabbed at a pillow and tossed it back to Chuck. “For your ankle.” Chuck nodded and situated himself in front of Raleigh, and Raleigh leaned forward and put his hands on Chuck’s hips. He let his eyes linger over the muscles in Chuck’s arm, the definition to his chest - not that those stupid grey shirts had really not left anything to the imagination.

He slid the condom onto Chuck, then worked a large portion of lube over it - Chuck’s arrogance and attitude certainly weren’t an attempt to compensate for anything. “Nice and easy,” he said.

Chuck took his cock in his hand, and Raleigh wrapped his legs around Chuck and pulled him closer. Chuck sighed and put his cock in, slowly, and he wiggled a bit.

Raleigh gave Chuck a warm smile and inclined his hips further. “That’s it, that’s so good, fuck, you’re a lot to take, you-” Chuck blushed at this, as Raleigh continued. Then Chuck thrust, perhaps experimentally, but with enough force to push himself all the way deep into Raleigh.

Raleigh groaned at the sensation of being full, filled, not quite like he was being split open but close. He needed this. “Oh, God, Chuck-”

Chuck’s eyes were closed, then he opened them. “Did I hurt you?”

“No, it’s good, you’re just - move, OK? Yeah, like that, easy, slide...” When Chuck thrust back in it was better, and Raleigh adjusted his legs and pulled Chuck a little closer to get a better angle.

“You’re so fucking tight,” Chuck said, and he turned and kissed at Raleigh’s knee, a little wet and very eager. “I want to fuck you so bad-”

“You are fucking me, really, really well-”

“Do you shut up? Fuck!” Chuck said, as Raleigh clenched around him and then relaxed.

“Slow, Chuck, I want to feel you, want to feel it build...” Raleigh said, and Chuck met his eyes, curled his lip, and then nodded.

Chuck moved slowly, and Raleigh pulled him closer to him. “Yes, that’s...right there, right there,” he said. Chuck’s cock grazed his prostate for what felt like a very long time, pleasure spreading from it to Raleigh’s cock and then up his spine. His orgasm began to pool, and he took a hand to his own cock and began to pump in tandem with Chuck. “More, please, harder-”

“You’re being contrary,” Chuck said, and he dug his fingers in Raleigh’s hips. Raleigh groaned.

“That’s so good,” Raleigh said, and Chuck increased his pace. His cock slid against his prostate in a more direct way, the contact coming in a steady, maddening pace. “Fuck, yes, I need that, that’s-” he sort of descended into moans, at that point, everything widening and tightening at the same time as his orgasm built and then overcame him.

Chuck wasn’t far behind and he kept fucking into Raleigh through his orgasm and the after effects. Then Raleigh watched as he closed his eyes and flicked his hips on last time. “Raleigh,” he said. “Fuck, fuck.”

He stayed in Raleigh for a long time, looking down at him like he was trying to figure something out. Then he slid out and glanced down at the condom. Raleigh slid it off and tossed it on the floor.

“We can get it later,” Raleigh said. He reached his arms out and grinned at Chuck.

“Oi, we have to cuddle, then?” Chuck asked. Raleigh pouted slightly. Chuck rolled his eyes and then curled down and put his head on Raleigh’s chest.

“Was that so difficult?” Raleigh asked. He ran his fingers through Chuck’s hair, and Chuck sighed. Raleigh could feel Chuck’s body relax.

Raleigh had been compared to a puppy a lot, when he first started piloting, and he had bitched about it constantly. Now he saw why is was a desirable trait.

“Raleigh?”

“Mmm?”

“We’re gonna keep doing this?” There was something tentative in the way Chuck said it that made Raleigh develop a pit in his stomach. He could instantly see the people who had fucked Chuck - one of the many disadvantages to that particular nickname choice - and then carried like it was some casual thing, forgetting how young Chuck was, what kind of thing he did with his life.

“I’d like to,” Raleigh said, and he turned his head so he was looking at Chuck. He gave him a languid smile. “If-”

“Yeah,” Chuck said, and nodded his head. He bit at his lower lip for a moment. “Now what do we do?”

“Watch a movie?” Raleigh said.

“OK,” Chuck nodded, and he moved so Raleigh could get up and get his laptop going.

---

Yancy wasn’t able to corner him until lunch. He and Raleigh bumped into each other picking up platters of food for the table. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Trying to pick out one with good pieces of chicken,” Raleigh replied. He always seemed to get the gristly bits.

Yancy raised his eyebrow in a way that made Raleigh think of him as his mom, for some reason. Like he was asking if he’d brushed his teeth. Raleigh rolled his eyes. “With Chuck Hansen - did you fuck him?”

“No,” Raleigh replied, and grinned. Yancy groaned.

“Raleigh - we’re not going anywhere, we’re staying here, you know, and this...he...his father is the Marshall, and...”

“What is the problem?” Raleigh asked. He grabbed a platter of chicken and some mashed potatoes.

“He’s a complete douchebag,” Yancy finished. “You punched him in the face and shoulder slammed him to the ground a few days ago.”

“That might have been because of some unresolved sexual tension,” Raleigh said. Not really, but he liked riling Yancy up

“He’s not - I don’t like him,” Yancy replied.

“Yeah, well, you’re my big brother,” Raleigh replied. “You don’t have to like him.” He took a platter of green beans and balanced them on his arm and walked back to their table.

He grinned when he saw Daven had sat across from Chuck. He wasn’t sure why, but he suspected that she would be on his side. “So you just sat in the front and yelled, like, row, row, row your boat?” Chuck asked.

Raleigh set the platters down and began to put chicken on his plate. “Bit more complex than that, eh?” Daven replied, as Yancy sat down next to Raleigh. He was scowling. Brat, Raleigh thought. It was just like the fights they had as kids - you’re not mom and dad, you can’t tell me what to do! I’m going to play with Chuck if I want to! And you can’t come in my clubhouse!

Chuck arched an eyebrow at Daven’s claim. She continued, “you have to steer, first, either a straight course or navigate a canal. Run all the practice drills, call you rowers out on technique issues. And you’ve got to be able to motivate each of them, eight disparate personalities.” She looked somewhere in the distance, for a moment, and then sighed. “I would have rowed, honestly, but when I turned up for try-outs there was a never a question because of my size.”

Raleigh smiled at her - she and Helena had always looked so odd in the official pictures, Helena was maybe an inch or two shorter than Yancy, making her loom over Daven. They’d looked even funnier in Brutus after the Conn-Pod had been adjusted for their respective heights.

“Just seems like a lot of hassle,” Chuck said. He eyed Yancy and was having some kind of staring contest with him, except Chuck was smirking and his eyes were taunting Yancy - hey, I fucked your brother this morning. Raleigh resisted the urge to sigh. Actually, he kind of liked it. Which might mean that, instead of saving the world, he’d fallen into a bizarro world version of it. Which was fine. It was OK here.

“There’s something really soothing about coursing along in a boat like that, eight oars hitting the water at the same time...” Daven glanced between Chuck and Yancy, then shook her head. “Eat,” she said, and kicked Yancy in the shin, barely missing Raleigh. “You can have your dick measuring contest later.”

“Not like we’ve got anything else to do,” Raleigh said. It wasn’t like they were constantly in a Jaeger, during the war, but there had always been plenty to keep him occupied, even if it was just paperwork and forms for the brass.

“Mako’s got a project,” Daven said. “She was going to go see you about it, but I told her you were busy.” Daven gave him a broad grin.

He and Chuck approached Mako together after lunch. “They are studying how to use the drift, the Jaeger technology,” she said. “They are making models, now, like we used to have. One pons and one arm, remember?. No data was recorded in a usable way. It was too urgent to build.” Her lip curled at the last statement, and Raleigh nodded at her. “Would you like to assist?”

“Yes,” Chuck said. Raleigh nodded, but wasn’t exactly mollified - so they were just going to be perpetual test subjects. From Jaeger pilots to lab rats?

Mako read him like a book. “We need to refine designs, refine the system. Perhaps rebuild. Everything was made without...much thought. Adapted as we needed it. But there are better ways to do things.”

“Don’t really have experience-” Raleigh began.

“You piloted the damn thing,” Chuck said. “Got to have something in that thick head of yours to be able to do that.” Raleigh looked over at him, but Chuck was scowling.

“It is true,” Mako said. “You can also study. Learn.”

“I’ve got some textbooks,” Chuck said. Of course he did - consummate over achiever.

“Great,” Raleigh replied. “That stuff is right up my alley.”

---

Fuck, he thought, what was Yancy’s problem? Raleigh had been with some pretty dick-headed companions before and Yancy hadn’t said boo about it, had watched Raleigh pick up the worst possible guys in the bar and go home with him. And Chuck Hansen tipped him over the edge?

Besides, who was Yance to make value judgments? He’d wanted a girl - wanted Daven - for a long time and never did anything about it, just slept with techs and half of medical. People talked about The Becket Brothers for a reason.

And, OK, it wasn’t like Raleigh had ever expected he was going to kiss Chuck Hansen, let alone wind up in bed with him. It had just happened, and he’d gone with it, because it felt right. Chuck was a douchebag for a reason, Raleigh could sense it, like it was crackling right beneath his skin. He was also a kid - was a six year age difference creepy? Raleigh didn’t think so. And! As far as his douchebaggery went, Raleigh thought about how much he’d changed in the past five years. He’d changed even when he’d worried about dying every day.

“Thinking big thoughts?” Raleigh looked up and smiled at Mako. He pat the seat next to him in the largely empty staff lounge.

“Sure,” Raleigh replied. Mako made him feel so at ease. “Just...”

“Your brother is skulking around,” Mako said. Raleigh smiled - it was the perfect word.

“Yeah,” he said. “I sort of...well...” He wasn’t sure why he felt awkward verbalizing it to Mako, given what they’d seen of each other in the drift. “Was with Chuck this morning.”

Mako gave him a very slight smile, and it appeared like she was trying to control it. “I grew up with Chuck,” she said. “I was so jealous, when he was a pilot. He is arrogant and rude, but...” her smile broadened slightly. “He is all right.”

“Yeah,” Raleigh said. “He is.”

“You like him?” Mako asked. Before Raleigh could respond, she reached over and grabbed his upper arm and squeezed. Hard. “You had better like him.” Raleigh had to grin - of all the people he expected the shovel talk to come from, he hadn’t expected it from Mako, and it was nice.

“I do,” he said. “Unexpected, but I do.”

“Good,” Mako said. “Herc will harm you slowly. That is his boy.” Raleigh nodded again. “Your brother?”

“Thinks he’s my dad - and I get it,” Raleigh said, “he took care of me a lot when I was kid, looked out for me, and when my dad took off it was just me and him. But...I mean, I’m a pilot, a ranger...I did these things, and I don’t need him breathing down my neck.” Raleigh paused. “It was the worst after Knifehead, like...I felt him die, but he felt himself leaving me there, you know?”

Mako nodded her head. “You will have to show, and not tell him these things,” she said.

Raleigh thought about this for a moment - it was the best advice someone had given him in some time.

---

He prepared himself for the inevitable, but it didn’t happen at dinner. Chuck sat with his father and the Aussie crew and they ate and carried on like they had since the cancellation of the apocalypse. Raleigh took a seat next to Sasha and Aleksis, because Yancy was still skulking.

“So,” said Aleksis, when Raleigh took a piece of pork. “You finally fuck Little Hansen?”

“Uh,” Raleigh said, and sighed. There were no secrets in the Shatterdome. Sasha smiled at him.

“Do not be rude,” she said, and poked Aleksis with her fork. “Raleigh is gentlemen, yes?”

“Always,” Raleigh replied, and Sasha laughed. “I had a question for you.” Sasha arched an eyebrow. “They say the Russians can get anything?”

“You want kinky things?” Aleksis asked, and Sasha rolled her eyes.

“Nutella,” said Raleigh.

“You are going to woo him with Nutella?” Sasha asked, and she shook her head. “I thought you were better. More experience.”

“No, I mean-”

“Is very...thick,” Aleksis said, and shook his head.

“I want to eat it!” Raleigh said, loud enough that the Wei Tangs, over at the next table, turned to look at him. One of them still had a vague outline of the dick Tendo had drawn the night before on their face. That wasn’t going to end well.

“I will see what I can do,” Sasha said. She shook her head again. “Nutella.”

---

Herc got to him after dinner when Raleigh went to go and do his light weight training. He was doing jump squats when the door opened, and he groaned. He had thought he’d be fine because some of the head engineers had cornered Herc after dinner - looked like he had important Marshall things to do. Silly boy, Raleigh said to himself. Threatening you is a lot more important.

“I don’t like you being with Chuck,” Herc said. Raleigh set the hand held weight down. At least he was being direct. On the other hand - he was objectionable? Herc seemed to have a fairly realistic conception of what Chuck was.

Maybe that all changed, though, in different contexts.

“Everyone talks, kid,” Herc said, the last word definitely derisive. “You’ve got plenty of experience, but no relationships, yeah? Fuck ‘em and leave ‘em.” Raleigh opened his mouth, wanting to protest that he had been broken up with, or the other person had been the one who broke things off, plenty of times, but Herc just narrowed his eyes at him. “So I think I got a good idea, what you’re doing with my son.”

“Uh, no, I-”

“Pull him right from breakfast into your room?” Herc leaned against the wall near the door, and for some reason, this was a lot more menacing than if he had been in Raleigh’s face. “Night after he gets out of medical, gets drunk while on painkillers?”

He has had a crush on me since- Raleigh thought, but decided it would be best to just listen to the dressing down. “Sir, I-”

“Can’t tell either of you what to do, here, unfortunately,” Herc said. A grin spread across his face, wild and much bigger than any human should be allowed to grin. “But you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Raleigh replied, and Herc nodded and walked out of the gym.

---

“Such a tosser,” Chuck said. They passed a bottle of Hermann wine between them.

“He’s just looking out for you.” Raleigh wished that this could be like a real relationship, without interference from all ends - two people who meet cute, like in a bookshop, go on some dates, introduce each others friends and parents... but he hadn’t chosen that life, had he? “Thinks I’m a...I haven’t ever really had a relationship.” Raleigh put the empty wine bottle down on the ground.

Chuck turned his head sideways, as if this was news. He turned slightly red again and bit at his lower lip, which was incredibly sexy. “In the magazines,” he said, his voice a little strained, “always said you...”

“Yeah, PPDC publicity,” Raleigh said. “With a girl, too, even though people are...can’t have your big, tough kaiju punching warrior sucking cock.”

“That’s too bad,” Chuck said, and he was back to himself again - well, not entirely accurate, Raleigh thought, because the nervous, bashful Chuck was Chuck too. He was back to the Chuck that Raleigh had first met. Arrogant, brash. “You suck cock so well.”

Raleigh grinned and leaned over, meaning to smoosh his head into Chuck’s groin - not the most mature thing, but why not? Except Chuck took a hand and turned his head so Raleigh had it resting in Chuck’s lap, facing the small television Chuck had. “I wanted to, like...relax?” Chuck said. “I picked out a movie?”

“Yeah,” Raleigh said, and he spread himself out across Chuck’s bed and curled into him a bit more. “Sure. You know, you’re awfully comfortable.”

“I try,” Chuck said, and raised the remote.

---

Yancy didn’t go off until the next afternoon, which meant he really went off. Everyone was lucky it was just in a conference room. Mako and a German engineer were outlining the research protocol for the drift and Jaeger technology investigation.

Raleigh wasn’t sure what Chuck had said to him during their coffee break - and that was another lucky thing, since the Wei Tangs had left for the restroom along with Mako and the engineer. He could only imagine what had come out of Chuck’s mouth.

“Fuck off,” Yancy said, and he curled his lip.

Chuck cocked his head - did he like getting punched? Raleigh wouldn’t doubt it. “Aw, come on now, Yancy,” he said, his accent really hard on the “a” sound. Raleigh walked over towards them. Max looked up at Yancy, who was leaning close to Chuck, and began to bark. As if Chuck didn’t know and needed Max’s help - danger, danger, Ranger!

“You’re a self-absorbed dick !” Yancy said, “and-”

“Hey!” Raleigh shouted - I am making louder noises! he thought, but Max’s barking was probably the loudest. “He’s my self-absorbed dick.” Then he instantly felt himself redden, because fucking with someone once didn’t make them yours.

Chuck just glowered at both of them, arms crossed over that broad chest of his. Finally, he said, “I thought I was pretty, Yancy.”

Yancy considered this, and then Daven put her hand on his hip. “Behave,” she said. Raleigh appreciated it. Yancy never listened to him, in this respect, when he was like this - Raleigh might be the one most likely to mouth off or say something stupid, but Yancy had the temper.

Yancy narrowed his eyes at Chuck, which just made Chuck grin wider. Then Mako and the engineer stepped back in the room and appraised the scene. Mako sighed, a good, long-suffering sigh she had probably got from Pentecost.

---

“Why is Herc Hansen looking at you like he’s trying to castrate you?” Daven asked, leaning her head towards Yancy at dinner. Like she didn’t know.

“He doesn’t think that Raleigh is good enough for Chuck,” Yancy replied, and narrowed his eyes at Herc. “Can you believe that shit?”

“You two both need hobbies,” Raleigh said.

“Let’s go eat with Mako,” Daven added, and Raleigh nodded and picked up his tray. Mako was seated with the Russians and Tendo in another corner of the room. Raleigh cocked his head when they arrived - there was a large piece of paper on the table, and Newton was sitting with them. Aleksis had obscured him from view. Newt had several colored markers around him and was writing out math equations, though they looked like a foreign language to Raleigh for a moment.

As they sat down, Aleksis said, “He will take Becket in the hallway.”

“No, has already been done by different Becket and Hansen,” said Sasha. “Odds 20:1. I think Kwoon match more likely.”

“Sets Max on him for the kill,” Tendo replied. Newt furrowed his brow and began writing.

“Are you talking about me, or my brother?” Raleigh asked, and really?- they’d saved the world, and now they were trying to calculate the most likely way Herc and Yancy were going to maim and mutilate each other?

“Trip him in the mess hall?” Tendo suggested, and Newt started to write again.

“Probably 10:1,” said Newt, and he crossed out some numbers. “I mean, I’m not Hermann, but I did do a lot of statistical modeling...”

“Clearly there’s something going on between them,” Tendo said, and leaned back to watch the staring contest. “Heey, that would be awkward, right?”

“Yes,” said Daven. “But unlikely.”

“Why, it’s not like Yance is-”

Raleigh made a coughing sound, then inclined his thumb at Daven.

“When did that happen?”

“When you drew a cock on Cheung’s face,” Raleigh replied.

“That was you, Choi?” Sasha asked, and she smirked. “Wei Tangs out for revenge you know.”

Tendo made a huffing sound and sighed. “What do you want for your silence?” Sasha looked at Aleksis, who grinned, and for a moment Raleigh was certain they were going to suggest a threesome.

“Rumor is that you have some good coffee,” Sasha said.

“Weell...” said Tendo, and then he glanced over at the Wei Tangs. “Yeah. I do.”

“Will not send Max,” said Aleksis, pointing at the paper. “Is not fierce dog.”

“30:1,” said Sasha, and Tendo wrote it down on another sheet.

“Yancy is slippery,” Daven said. “Remember the ice cream incident?”

Raleigh grinned, and Tendo rolled his eyes. In an interview after their second kaiju kill a female reporter had asked Yancy how he wanted to celebrate, and he had looked right at the tits she was thrusting at him and said, <i>I could really go for a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.</i> Sixteen pints arrived two days later, freezer packed, addressed to Yancy Becket. Then someone started to eat out of them, so Yancy put his least favorite flavor in the freezer laced with laxatives. One of the chopper pilots had to be grounded the next day he was so violently ill.

Everyone laughed when Daven relayed the story, and Raleigh smiled himself. Yancy had been as protective over that ice cream as he was over Raleigh.

“Poison?” Tendo said. “Laxatives you’d have to get from medical, but you could cause some trouble with some of the common chemicals from around here.

“We going to have to go through each individually?” Newt asked. “Or just...mild poisoning?”

“This is ridiculous,” Raleigh said. Everyone was behaving like a child except for him and Chuck.

“Is just passing time,” Sasha said, but she looked over and nodded her head at Herc and Yancy, who appeared to still be staring each other down. “Though Kwoon fight is definitely most likely.”

“I don’t need him fighting for my honor,” Raleigh said to Daven. She shrugged her shoulders.

“Boys will be boys,” she said.

Chapter Text

“Did you get a talk from your dad?” Raleigh asked.

“Yeah, when I was thirteen. Mostly just shoved some condoms at me and-”

“No, I mean-” Raleigh said, and Chuck shrugged his shoulders at him. Ass.

Chuck cocked his head. “No,” he said, and he took his belt off and slowly removed his pants with a smirk. Raleigh’s eyes instantly went for his cock, and he smiled - Chuck was already mostly hard from the vigorous makeout session they had just had. Raleigh leaned forward, reaching, and Chuck slid out of his boxer briefs before Raleigh could grab his hip. Raleigh’s eyes widened. “You like what you see, Becket?”

“Don’t be such a bastard,” Raleigh replied.

“That’s a term of affection in Australia,” Chuck said, and he climbed onto his bed and on top of Raleigh.

“Whatever,” Raleigh said, as Chuck wiggled into lap and their cocks brushed against each other. Raleigh reached for them, but Chuck snapped his hand away.

“Maybe you need to learn to be patient,” he murmured, and he kissed Raleigh and then moved his lips down his jaw to his neck. Raleigh felt himself shiver.

“OK,” he said.

---

“So, I think I got this,” Chuck said, with no real preamble, in the middle of the movie. I would hope so, Raleigh thought, it was just the second Harry Potter film so it wasn’t like they were dealing with complicated stuff.

Raleigh turned his head towards him and smiled, though. “Yeah?”

“Yancy comes and calls me a dick wad, or whatever, tells you that he doesn’t like me,” Chuck said. Ah, Raleigh thought, and nodded. “Then Herc tells you he doesn’t approve cause you’re a slut.”

“I don’t think that was his exact point-”

“So now Yancy is mad at Herc for calling you a slut, and Herc is mad at Yancy for calling me a dick wad,” Chuck said, “So if last night’s staring contest is any indication - they’re just going to fuck around with each other, now.” He looked at Raleigh, who nodded. “And not fuck around with us.”

“The other pilots and Tendo and Newt were figuring out the odds for various things they might do to each other, like challenge each other to a Kwoon grudge match or use Max as an attack dog,” Raleigh added.

“Max is the worst attack dog ever,” Chuck replied. “Unless dad gets him to go and sit on Yancy’s face in the morning and smother him.”

“What?” Raleigh asked.

“He gets excited when he wakes up,” Chuck said. “So he smushes onto your face and sometimes he smothers you.” He looked at Raleigh like this was something he should have known, and said it in such an earnest way Raleigh had to kiss him. “What?” Chuck said.

Raleigh suspected Chuck wouldn’t respond well to Raleigh indicating he had found him adorable in that moment, so he just shrugged his shoulders.

Chuck rolled his eyes. “You ever work on Gipsy?”

“Yeah,” Raleigh said. “Mostly nuts and bolts repairs, though.”

“One of our techs who stayed on - Becks - Mako has her fiddling with the simulator structures, wants us to rebuild one of those arms they first used to a more basic prototype so we can see what else we can...are you paying attention?”

“Yeah,” Raleigh said.

“So I was going to help.” Chuck stared at him.

“OK,” Raleigh said. Chuck kept staring. “Uh, do you want my help?”

“Could use someone to hold my tools,” Chuck replied.

“Really?” Raleigh asked. “That is such an obvious set-up.” Chuck shook his head. “Have you never heard someone call it that, your tool? Your cock? You’re being a tool?”

“No,” Chuck said. He was giving Raleigh that look again, like Raleigh was being completely ridiculous.

“Well, anyway, I’m happy to hold your tool.” The moment had passed, though. Raleigh frowned at Chuck, a slight pout, hoping to gain some points for that.

“You are supposed to be the mature one, here, you know,” Chuck replied, then turned so he could get out of the bed and get dressed.

---

They collected Max from Herc, and Raleigh rolled his eyes - Chuck hadn’t really wanted his help, he just needed a literal extra hand with the dog. Max sniffed at Raleigh, then looked up at Chuck with a weird expression on his face. Raleigh couldn’t help feel like Max was judging him, like, really, dad? This guy?

Not you too, Raleigh thought. Chuck reached into his pocket and slipped Raleigh a small dog treat. Raleigh bent down and held it out for Max. He gobbled it up, leaving a little bit of drool on Raleigh’s hand. Raleigh wiped it on his pants and sighed.

He watched and asked questions while Chuck and Becks - Rebecca, she introduced herself as, and so Raleigh wasn’t sure what to call her - worked on rebuilding and reworking the model arm based off of the more sophisticated simulator apparatus.

Max had flopped down on the ground with a sigh when they started to get to work, and Raleigh absently pet his head while Chuck worked. At some point Max issued a deep sigh and rolled over, his stumpy legs high in the air.

“Wants his belly rubbed,” Chuck said.

“Ah,” Raleigh replied, and rubbed his belly. Max issued a low moan. It sounded suspiciously like a sound Chuck made, but Raleigh decided not to dwell on this.

“Means he likes you,” Rebecca said, glancing up and giving him a soft smile. There were no secrets in the Shatterdome, it seemed, and Raleigh shouldn’t have expected any. He just couldn’t help feel disappointed. He didn’t need every relationship he had to be in a fishbowl.

“That’s good,” said Raleigh. “Won’t do for him trying to smother me in my sleep.”

Raleigh knew he shouldn’t be surprised by how knowledgeable Chuck was. Graduating from the Jaeger Academy at fifteen took more than just physical prowess, and so did piloting a Jaeger. Still, it was a side of Chuck that he hadn’t revealed yet - and it was impressive, to watch him work and to discuss technical things adroitly with a woman who presumably had an engineering degree. Competency was definitely a turn on, Raleigh decided.

“Shit, Raleigh, get over here, I can’t quite-” Chuck said, and held up his broken wrist. Literal extra hand, Raleigh thought again, but this time he didn’t mind.

Raleigh moved in and followed Chuck’s directions, and Chuck also explained why they were doing what they were doing. Raleigh let it wash it over him, though he was certain he was going to find the relevant page of a textbook open on his bed at some point that day.

“Becket.”

Raleigh looked up, holding his wrench in place. Chuck sighed. The three Wei Tangs hovered over them.

“Hey,” he said.

“Need your help,” said Hu.

“I’m in strong demand today,” Raleigh replied.

“Choi drew dick on his face,” Lin said. “We need to get back.”

“You rig Gipsy Danger to play shit music-” Cheung began.

“Don’t you talk about Kylie like that,” Chuck said, furrowing his brow. Raleigh resisted the urge to laugh at him and just smiled. The Wei Tangs looked confused for a moment, then pressed on.

“So we want to do that in LOCCENT.”

“I didn’t, actually,” Raleigh replied. “That was all Yance.”

“Huh,” said Cheung.

“So maybe he is not the Boring Becket,” Lin said. Raleigh laughed at this - oh, Yancy, he thought.

“What did you have in mind, out of curiosity?”

“Long discussion over most annoying song possible,” Hu said. “We decide on Gangnam Style.”

“That should work,” Raleigh replied.

“Want to play at...” Cheung pressed his lips together.

“Random,” Hu filled in.

“So when he think is over - no, more,” said Lin.

“You guys need a project,” Chuck said. “Like Raleigh has - see him doing something?”

“Whatever,” said Hu. “Do you know where Boring Becket is?”

“Do you guys actually refer to him as Boring Becket? Because he might not like that,” Raleigh said. All three of them shrugged in unison.

“Probably off with Daven,” Chuck said. “I think they’re doing Drift sims.”

“Thanks,” said Hu, and the three of them turned and walked off.

“Remind me not to go anywhere near LOCCENT tomorrow,” Rebecca said. “Did Tendo really draw a dick on his face?”

“Yeah,” Raleigh said, and grinned. “Apparently you’re fair game, as a canvas, if you pass out with your shoes on.”

“Huh,” Rebecca said. “Good to know.”

---

"Hey, Daven,” Raleigh said, sliding in next to her as he and Mako waited to run their first simulation to get baseline information on their drift.

“Raleigh,” she said. She slid her iPad shut. “If you’re going to try and get me to...” she stopped and narrowed her eyes when she saw that Raleigh had a small bag with him. It was almost like she could smell it. “You’re going to bribe me.”

“No, it’s an apology,” Raleigh said. “I kind of wanted to ask you something.”

“OK,” Daven said.

“You like Yance - did you like him back then?” Raleigh asked - because it had occurred to him, while he lay stroking Chuck’s hair until he fell asleep, that Yancy and Daven were really dodging some scrutiny. Everyone thought it was so cute, together at last. Except she’d had years to make a move on his brother and had just played coy - of course, plenty of things could change in five years, especially with apocalypse looming.

“I did,” Daven said, and she got a sad, wistful smile. “Not immediately - I thought he was kind of...you know, just standard dude wannabe pilot, right?” Raleigh nodded. Yancy had been stiff initially, Yancy had thought that he needed to act like he was out of Top Gun for them to get picked. “But Helena, fuck, she fell for him the minute she saw him.”

“I know,” Raleigh said, and mock sighed. “I’ve accepted it, you know, he’s the hot one, I’m the cute one.” Daven grinned at him.

“And then it was clear, you know, he didn’t like her and...he grew on me, he really did, and it was like this stupid shitty romcom except Helena and I were drifting together - and you know what would have happened, how it would have affected our drift, if I..?” She shook her head.

“Thanks,” Raleigh said, after a moment. He picked the bag up.

“It’s nice, looking out for your brother,” Daven replied. She made grabby hands at the bag. Raleigh gave it to her, and she made an uncharacteristic squealing sound when she opened it and saw the three jars of Nutella - Raleigh had kept one of the four Sasha turned up with for himself.

“Oh my God, you can ask me all the personal questions you want if this is...” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. Then she pulled back. Daven smiled. “I used to check up on you, when I would go into Manaus every now and then, and each time, I hoped and...you were always still alive, though. But I would get this pit, like, what if, when I typed into the search engine...” she shrugged her shoulders.

“You really were fishing in the Amazon,” Raleigh said.

“Yeah,” Daven said. “I got a boat...I was mostly with this one, uh, tribe, did first aid, helped translate English and French when they needed it...”

“I thought that was just...huh,” Raleigh said.

“No kaiju in the rain forest,” Daven said. “No one really talked about kaiju when you were worried about if you were going to be able to eat for the day.”

---

“Look,” said Raleigh, when he found Yancy in the gym later that evening, “I know you...think you’re defending me, or whatever, and it’s funny, but...you don’t need to stare down Herc each time you see him.” Lunch had been another awkward affair - it definitely reminded Raleigh of the high school cafeteria, like one girl was staring at another for stealing her best friend’s boyfriend.

Yancy was suspending himself on a set of parallel bars. He pulled his legs closer to his body. His muscles were quaking from the exertion - something was bothering him. He normally didn’t push himself like this unless he had to. Raleigh sighed.

“Herc basically called you slutty.”

“To be fair, I was kind of slutty,” Raleigh said.

Yancy finally set his legs down and turned to look at Raleigh. “We all were,” he replied. “The world was fucking ending, no one wanted to-”

“Yeah, before that, though? Before I had an excuse?” Raleigh said. It had been so easy then - everywhere he went, people knew who he was. He and Yancy had graced magazine covers and been the subject of plenty of interviews - the PPDC loved sending the two of them out, probably because they projected this great sort of wholesome image, got people to support the Jaeger project when they thought nice American boys like the Beckets were its apple pie core.

“You were eighteen,” Yancy said. “It wasn’t any different from what most people say freshman year in college is like.” Raleigh shrugged. “Besides, even if he was right-”

“He’s just concerned for Chuck,” Raleigh said. “He almost - he actually did die, as far as Herc was concerned, and...” Raleigh felt a hard lump form in his throat and swallowed, but he wasn’t able to. His throat felt like it had sealed shut. It wasn’t until he felt the pain radiating from his chest into his right arm that he realized what was happening, and he squeezed his eyes shut. This one had been building for some time. It wasn’t a surprise. Raleigh had just thought that maybe, just maybe, Breach closed and everything, he’d get past them.

Come on, not now, not now, he thought. He’d been plagued by them since Knifehead.

He tried to concentrate on his breathing, to think of something peaceful, but instead he actually felt cold, hard rain and then snow pelting against his skin. Then there it was, the distinct sensation that half his body had been ripped right off of him and a very old, very bad ache in his left arm.

“Kid, Raleigh, hey,” Yancy said, and he was behind him with both his hands on his shoulders. Yancy didn’t have any of those memories, just knew of them from the drift. Yancy had been unconscious or actually dead for all of that part, had woke up and been more focused on the pain in his body than in his brain. “Inhale, OK? Exhale - you want to go to medical?”

Raleigh shook his head, but then nodded, because this was a big one and he was beginning to feel dizzy and nauseous. He had some Ativan back in his room, but he was going to need something stronger.

Yancy wrapped an arm around his shoulder and walked with him down the hall and towards the clinic.

“Oi! What’s wrong?”

Raleigh turned and grimaced - this was the exact opposite of what he wanted, both in terms of Chuck seeing this and Chuck and Yancy interacting.

“Panic attack,” Yancy said, and Raleigh knew the exact look that he was giving Chuck. Raleigh met Chuck’s eyes, he was concerned and confused - Rangers, apparently, didn’t get panic attacks. “You coming to medical with us?”

“Yeah,” Chuck said, and then followed behind them.

Raleigh was glad they didn’t have to do much explaining at medical. He had a nice, long sit down with Narita when he’d come in from Anchorage. Raleigh had slapped his massive chart down in front of him and smiled. He was relieved to see him this evening.

“Ranger, let’s sit down,” Dr. Narita said. Huh, Raleigh thought, so, we’re still Rangers. “I’m going to get blood pressure, heart rate, and then we’ll get you something, all right?”

“OK,” Raleigh said.

“You’ve had these before?” Chuck asked, cocking his head, as though the whole thing was fascinating.

“You never have?” Raleigh asked. Every Ranger he had known had a prescription for one kind of benzo or another.

“I...probably,” Chuck said. Figured he wouldn’t admit to it. Fucking Hansens.

Yancy glanced between them, then shook his head. They didn’t speak until Narita injected him with something.

“Might want to head to bed, somewhere comfortable,” Narita said, smiled at the three of them, and then walked back to his office.

Yancy looked at Chuck, and Chuck glowered back at him. Raleigh opened his mouth to say something, but Yancy nodded at Chuck. “You mind, Hansen?”

“If he’s too much for you, old man,” Chuck replied. Raleigh resisted the urge to roll his eyes and just gave both of them a long suffering smile and huff.

Chuck glanced over at Yancy once before he walked Raleigh out of the room and over to Chuck’s room. There was an interesting contrast between the two ways each of them touched him - Yancy’s concern, and Chuck’s concern.

“You want to talk about it?” Chuck asked, when he opened the door to his room.

“No,” Raleigh said. He sat down on Chuck’s bed and felt the beginnings of the benzo wash over him and the end of the tight, constricting feeling in his chest. “I just...recently, have been thinking about things that remind me of...”

“It’s not possible to be more vague, Raleigh,” Chuck said, and he shoved his hand in his pocket and then shrugged his shoulders. “About Knifehead?”

“Yeah, just...with things, the way they happened...” The proverbial lightbulb lit above Chuck’s head, and he sat down next to Raleigh and pressed his lips together.

“OK,” Chuck said. He leaned in and kissed Raleigh, very light against his lips, and then he kissed his cheek. Raleigh hadn’t thought Chuck was capable of something as tender as that, but then again, it seemed like Chuck was full of surprises.

---

When Raleigh went to get breakfast the next morning he heard Gangnam Style reverberating down from LOCCENT so he grabbed some fruit and a bagel, and turned right back for Chuck’s room. He forgot how wiped out you could feel the morning after getting an injection of benzoes. He would have been more than happy to just crawl back into bed with Chuck - except Chuck was missing from bed, since he had gone to go and work out that morning.

So Raleigh went back to his own room, where Yancy wasn’t - he wouldn’t be anywhere Tendo would think to find him, if he were smart, and sat in one of the rickety Shatterdome chairs and ate his bagel and his fruit. Just when he was about to crawl back into his bed there was a knock on the door.

“Enter,” he said. He cocked his head to the side when he saw Sasha standing there - mostly because she was wearing jeans, and he hadn’t seen her in anything other than that enormous jacket and military issue cargo pants or some kind of workout gear. “Nice boots,” he said, because they went up to her knees and had four inch heels. “You can come in.”

“You take this Nutella and you give to the pixie?” she said, and walked in and sat down on Yancy’s bed.

“Daven? I wouldn’t call her a pixie,” Raleigh said.

“Very small. What is she? Dwarf?”

“Probably worse,” Raleigh said. “I had to, uh, ask her some things and just wanted to give her something because I felt bad about it.”

“Aren’t you sweet,” Sasha said.

“Are you guys not sticking around?” Raleigh asked.

“You need more things, Baby Becket?”

“No, I-”

“Joke,” said Sasha. “We go back to Russia for two week victory tour. Will bring back plenty, don’t worry.” She curled her mouth into a smile that might have been maternal in some sort of scary universe. “You behave yourself.”

“Will do,” Raleigh said. “Thanks, Sasha.”

He didn’t notice, until she left, that there was a bag right next to his bed. He opened it up and he grinned at the contents - two very large bottles of high quality lubricant, condoms that looked a lot nicer than what medical handed out, and some erotic chocolate liquid that he was pretty sure was meant as a joke.

Not that he wasn’t going to put it under Chuck’s pillow.

---

He herded Chuck into his shower as soon as he got back from his workout. Chuck grinned at him, and Raleigh kissed along his neck and then grabbed a washcloth and started to work it all over Chuck. He had ideas. Very good ideas.

He worked some soap into a lather and then reached forward to wash Chuck’s cock, then he soaped his other hand and worked it through the crease of his ass. “Raleigh!” Chuck said, legitimately startled.

“Something wrong?” Raleigh asked, in his most innocent voice. He was only slightly taller than Chuck, so he had to get onto the balls of his feet to put his head on Chuck’s shoulder.

“Mmm,” Chuck murmured, and maybe it had been a bit much - he hadn’t really expressed any interest, and it wasn’t that Raleigh was particularly fussed, but it would be good for Chuck to at least give it a try, see if he liked it.

Raleigh stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel for Chuck and tossed it at him as Raleigh dried himself off. He grinned when he felt Chuck’s eyes linger over him as he dried off his ass and then as he stood, naked, and ran the towel through his hair. “Come here,” he said.

“Raleigh-”

“Yeah?” Raleigh asked, and he spread out over Chuck’s bed and grinned at him.

“I got to get my wrist out of this bag, hold your fucking horses,” he replied. He chucked the wrap into the garbage and then shook his head at Raleigh. “Can’t wait to get this fucking thing off.”

“I thought the reason they put pins in it so you didn’t have to wear a cast.”

“Two weeks,” Chuck said.

He crawled onto the bed, on top of Raleigh, and Raleigh ran his fingers through Chuck’s hair. Chuck responded by opening Raleigh’s mouth with his tongue and twining it in with Raleigh’s. Chuck pulled back and kissed Raleigh’s jaw and then down his neck. He nudged his face into the space there, almost shy. “Raleigh, I want...”

“Mmm?” Raleigh asked, after a moment of silence and just Chuck’s breathing in his ear.

“Can you...you know, uh, we could do something different-”

“You want me to fuck you?” Raleigh asked, and he kept his voice soft even though he felt a surge of warmth and arousal go straight to his cock. He had hoped for this.

Chuck nodded. Raleigh kissed him again, pressing his lips against Chuck’s eagerly, then he rocked his hips so Chuck could feel Raleigh’s cock against his thigh.

“Doesn’t take much, yeah?” Chuck asked, and that smarmy grin was back on his face and Raleigh felt the strong desire to fuck it right out of him. They turned, so Raleigh was laying straight down the bed. Chuck grabbed at Raleigh’s hip and then sucked on his neck. Raleigh moaned when Chuck’s teeth scraped against him and then bit him. “Gonna have to wear that scarf of yours, Raleigh.”

“Fuck,” Raleigh said. He shivered. “Yeah.”

“You like that?” Chuck asked. Raleigh rolled him over so they were on their sides and pulled back slightly so he could watch as Chuck’s cock bobbed against his stomach. Raleigh dragged his thumb up it and got Chuck to arch into the touch.

Chuck reached behind his pillow and furrowed his brow when he put his hand over an unfamiliar bottle. “Present from Sasha,” Raleigh said.

“Fuck,” Chuck said.

“Don’t disparage it...” Raleigh murmured. “Don’t look good lube in the mouth, or...something. Plus, I knew you had your own stashed all-”

“Put it there last evening, mate,” Chuck replied and he kissed Raleigh again. He sucked the same spot on his neck and it throbbed to Chuck’s touch this time. Raleigh could get used to that.

Raleigh debated the best way to go about things. “Can you get on your knees?” he asked, and shuffled some pillows near Chuck’s head. Chuck moved and nodded, then winced slightly as his wrist caught as he arranged himself. “Bend at your elbow, head on the pillow, is that comfortable?” Raleigh made an imprint of the image on his brain, Chuck’s ass high in the air, just laid right out for him. Sorry, Yance, he thought. He wasn’t sorry.

“Yeah, this is good,” Chuck murmured, but he seemed a bit put out. He was tense, too, Raleigh could see it in his broad shoulders and down his spine.

Raleigh draped himself over Chuck. He kissed at his neck. “Don’t worry,” he murmured. “Gonna take good care of you.”

“I don’t need you to take care of me,” Chuck said, and he squirmed a bit as Raleigh kissed down his spine. Raleigh didn’t argue, but he remembered how Chuck had first looked at his cock. How he couldn’t even vocalize his request a few minutes ago.

Raleigh kneeled and squeezed his round ass, worked his fingers into the muscle and then moved down and massaged his inner thighs. He grinned, then lightly kissed Chuck’s ass. “Raleigh-” He sucked, then bit, just as Chuck had, and Chuck moaned.

Then Raleigh placed his hands on either side of Chuck’s hips and spread him apart. “God, your ass,” he murmured, and Chuck made a sound that was immediately replaced by another as Raleigh licked down him.

“Raleigh - what?” Chuck managed, as Raleigh licked again, broadening his tongue and then circling at Chuck’s center.

“Told you,” Raleigh murmured, and he was able to admire the mark he’d put on Chuck, “told you I’d take care of you.” He licked once more, then pressed his tongue against the hole. Chuck squirmed, and Raleigh circled again, keeping it light.

“Fuck,” Chuck said. His voice was a little higher, and Raleigh grinned before he increased his pace. “Oh, God, Raleigh, oh - what the fuck?” Raleigh had pressed his tongue in slightly and then pulled out. Raleigh moved his hands up and trailed them down Chuck’s sides and pressed his tongue in and out, just that little bit. Chuck was incoherent, just groaning, and his hips bucked when Raleigh plunged deeper inside of him. “Raleigh, fuck, you bastard, Raleigh...”

Raleigh swirled and got his thumbs in a bit closer to the crease of Chuck’s ass to pull him open further, to get deeper inside of him. “You cunt, fuck, Raleigh!” He was so warm, so eager, Raleigh felt his own cock twitch. Chuck was babbling, and Raleigh reached forward and gently grasped his cock. He trailed his thumb over the tip and grinned at how it was leaking. He pulled in and out of Chuck, fucking him with his tongue - he circled and moved back and forth, slowly opening Chuck.

He continued tonguing Chuck as he lubed a finger, and then slid it in next to his tongue. “That’s so...oh, God, fuck, Raleigh, please, I...” Raleigh plunged his finger in further and withdrew his tongue. He flicked it at the pucker of muscle, and Chuck groaned.

“So gorgeous,” Raleigh murmured, and Chuck was suitably loose as he plunged his finger in and out of him. Chuck made this wanton, low noise and Raleigh slipped a second finger in before Chuck even noticed. “All right?”

“Feels...wierd, good,” Chuck managed, and Raleigh reached forward with his other hand and began to slowly work Chuck’s cock. He kissed right above his ass and crooked his fingers, then Chuck began to babble again, “Holy fuck. Oh, fuck, oh fuck...Raleigh, I’m going to, I’m going to...”

Raleigh pulled his fingers out and kissed Chuck on his ass, wanting to draw it out. “You dick, you bastard, Raleigh...” He peppered his kisses and then put his teeth back where he had made his mark. “Raleigh, Raleigh, come on!” Raleigh waited, kissed at Chuck’s ass and massaged it.

He slid three fingers in and spread, and Chuck’s body tightened. “You’re so good, Chuck, you feel so good,” Raleigh murmured.

“Just fuck me!” Raleigh plunged his fingers in once more, just to make sure that Chuck was suitably relaxed.

“Roll over,” Raleigh said, and Chuck sort of collapsed. Raleigh slid a pillow under him and then crawled up his body to kiss him on the lips. Chuck kissed him immediately, and Raleigh grinned, he hadn’t expected him to be so...open, given where Raleigh’s mouth had just been.

Raleigh quickly slipped a condom on. Chuck wrapped his legs around Raleigh’s waist - such a quick learner, Raleigh thought, and he lined up his cock and slowly made his way into Chuck.

Raleigh babbled encouraging nonsense. “There, that’s it, are you...fuck, you feel so, so, good Chuck, I-” Chuck was warm and tight and it was only compounded by how Chuck squeezed his legs around Raleigh each inch that he moved in. He was doing better than Raleigh expected and seemed to be accepting his cock without too much discomfort.

Raleigh watched Chuck to make sure he was all right. Chuck’s mouth fluttered, opening and closing, and he held Raleigh’s eye contact the whole way. When he was fully in, he said, “So gorgeous, Chuck, you’re perfect, you’re-”

“Raleigh, fucking hell,” Chuck said, and he pulled Raleigh closer with his legs and gave this aggrieved sigh. Raleigh grinned, slid in and out, rubbed Chuck’s legs and marveled at how good he felt, how tight he was, like he was meant to have Raleigh’s cock in him. Chuck had been paying attention, it seemed, when he was fucking Raleigh because he canted his hips in rhythm with Raleigh, just as Raleigh had, and-

“So gorgeous, Chuck, I can’t-” Raleigh quickened his pace and Chuck issued a loud, deep moan. His fingers clutched at the sheets and then he moved his hand up and tried to grab at Raleigh as he plunged in and out of him, losing himself in the motion and connection between them.

“Raleigh, fuck, fuck, fuck...oh, oh!” Chuck almost howled when he came, spurting over his stomach for what seemed like forever, and as soon as his muscles clenched down around Raleigh he came as well.

Chuck was completely fucked out, his eyes were wide, a little crossed and mouth open. Raleigh pulled out and collapsed alongside of him. He nuzzled into Chuck’s neck and kissed at it.

“Ungth,” said Chuck.

“Mmm? That’s good, let’s try words next,” Raleigh murmured.

“I hate you,” Chuck said. “God, I hate you. How..?”

“I told you-”

“Shut up,” Chuck said, and whacked him with a pillow.

“That was uncalled for.”

“No it wasn’t,” Chuck said, and he stuck his lower lip out. “It wasn’t at all.”

Chapter Text

“Oh, man,” Newt said, looking up from the soup he was eating at lunch. “The Russians are going to be upset they missed this.”

Raleigh turned his head towards where Newt was looking. Yancy and Herc were standing next to each other in line to get trays of food.

“Who put money on food fight?” Daven asked, glancing around. Chuck narrowed his eyes at her, an expression Raleigh had decided to term his stank face - though it was distinctly possible there were several variations and sub-divisions. This was definitely the generic foundation, though. He was going to have to think about this further. “What?”

“You think my dad is going to throw food at someone?” Chuck asked.

Daven shrugged. “Anyone think you two assholes were going to get together?” she asked. Raleigh grinned, and Chuck elbowed him in the side. Raleigh kept grinning. “Actually, Yancy did-”

“Really?” Raleigh asked, but no, Yancy would know, even if he wasn’t in his head. It was probably why he’d kept purposefully directing Raleigh away from Chuck that first night, proposing alternate options during their celebrations -Tendo knows a guy in LOCCENT Ops from Norway, Scandinavians are supposed to be really good at-

“Drift doesn’t lie,” Daven said. Chuck rolled his eyes and then turned in Yancy and Herc’s direction. They were both getting trays for lunch.

As far as he could tell, Herc and Yancy were having some kind of conversation through gritted jaws - trying to do their best Clint Eastwood, it seemed. A good old fashioned dick measuring contest, though, and really, it was kind of cute. Raleigh had always been fascinated in movies and TV shows when the family kid would bring a date home and the parents would react in a variety of ridiculous ways to the possibility of whoever it was dating their child. He had always thought it was all overly dramatic and fictionalized. He had always thought it would never happen to him.

They leaned in close to one another, and Herc had his eyes narrowed. Then Yancy took a little dessert cup and turned to head towards their table.

Then the almost unthinkable happened, as Herc turned as well and Yancy spilled his milk right on Herc’s pants. It honestly seemed like an accident, though arguments would abound across the Shatterdome for the next week - there was intense video analysis, arm-chair psychoanalysis, and eye-witness recollections. Hermann, despite caring for a newborn, got recruited into doing several calculations to determine whether the trajectory of the spill could reveal anything as to intent.

“Ooh,” Daven said, then, “Goddamnit.”

Chuck’s eyes widened slightly, and then he just shook his head and went back to his meal. Raleigh watched as Yancy reddened and wondered what Chuck knew that everyone else didn’t. Then Herc set his tray down, clapped Yancy on the back hard enough that Yancy winced, picked up his tray, and carried it over to the table where they were all seated.

“Not a bad spread today, yeah?” Herc asked. “Haven’t had broccoli in a long time.”

“Only you would get excited about that,” Chuck said.

“Some napkins, Marshal?” Daven asked, sliding the napkin holder over to him.

“Naw,” Herc said, and gave Yancy a broad grin. “Though it is very nice of you to offer, Ranger.” He picked up his fork and speared his piece of tofu curry.

Chuck raised his eyebrows from his food. “Little spill, eh, old man? Gotta watch those reflexes.” Raleigh gave him a slight side-eye while Newt carefully put his hands on his tray - obviously looking for an escape route.

Before Herc could say anything, though, the opening to Gangnam Style filled the mess hall, which was adjacent to LOCCENT - Raleigh had always understood it was so that the twenty-four hour crews would have quick access to food, coffee, and water.

Herc inhaled, then exhaled, and it became clear that he had no idea that Yancy was the one who had made this possible. Herc stood, glanced down at the stain on his trousers, and then walked over to the table that the triplets were rapidly vacating.

“You can’t try and influence events, you know,” Newt said, narrowing his eyes at Chuck. “There are terms and conditions where your win will be invalidated-”

“There are no fucking terms and conditions, mate,” Chuck said.

“You placed a bet?” Raleigh asked.

“Bet about what?” Yancy replied.

“How you and Herc will eventually confront one another,” Daven replied.

“I can’t believe you bet-” Raleigh said, “and shouldn’t he be ineligible, anyway?” No one paid attention to him.

“I’m not confronting him on anything,” Yancy said, and he glanced briefly at Chuck and then back over at Daven. “He’s the one that seems to think my slutty brother is going to ruin his son, or something.”

“He didn’t say slutty!” Raleigh said, perhaps a little too loud. At the same time, Chuck turned a really adorable flushed shade and quickly looked down at his tray of food.

“I am so, so glad I am not drifting with you any time soon,” Yancy said, and he widened his eyes at Raleigh and nodded his head.

“You notice I’m not harassing Daven like this?” Raleigh asked.

“Nothing to harass him about,” Daven replied. It took Yancy a moment to roll his eyes, and then he put an arm around her shoulder and whispered something in her ear. “Eh, not even that,” she said.

“You know, I’ve got some stuff you guys could work on,” Newt said, looking up. “What? Seems like you need something to do.”

---

Newt probably didn’t expect them to take him up on it. Raleigh really didn’t, either, but it spoke to all of their mutual boredom that they did.

“So, uh,” Newt said, as they stepped into the lab, “you’re lucky, because Hermann’s not in today-”

“Dr. Gottlieb!” Hermann called, and emerged from behind one of his signature black boards.

“Dude, baby?” Newt asked. Hermann narrowed his eyes at him.

“Congrats on that, Dr. Gottlieb,” Raleigh said, and walked towards him - there hadn’t been an opportunity to say it to his face. Hermann shook his hand and smiled.

“I have a picture, if you would like...” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and showed Raleigh a picture of a very wrinkly little red mole creature with a massive amount of dark hair.

“That’s a lot of hair,” Raleigh said.

“Sure is,” Chuck said, peering over his shoulder.

“She’s like a little raisin,” Daven added.

“Johanna is a lovely name,” Yancy said - of course, managing to come up with the safest and most appropriate comment of all. Raleigh thought, and had thought before, that if the PPDC kept around and kept its funding, Yancy was going to wind up Marshall some day.

“Thank you but, if you don’t mind, dare I ask, what you all are doing in the lab?”

“Need some help with some recent, uh, acquisitions,” Newt said. “Figured, you know, nothing better than three and one half burly Jaeger pilots, right?” Raleigh immediately regretted his decision to accept Newt’s offer, because he had a very distinct idea what he was about to get into.

“Half?” Daven asked.

“You are about half,” Yancy said, and it was clear from his expression he was doing the math in his head. “Maybe a bit more.”

“Acquisitions from where?” Chuck asked, and Newt grinned at them.

---

“I am never bitching about boring drift simulations and robot building projects ever, ever again,” Chuck said, emerging from a shower that Raleigh had decided would best be done individually so that it could really be taken seriously. “You hold me to that.”

“Absolutely,” said Raleigh, and then he paused - that was sort of a long-term responsibility, wasn’t it? There was an implication there, however casual the statement was. “Also...some mob boss is sending Newt kaiju parts? Should we be concerned about that - like, Breach is closed. Guys supply chain has sort of, uh...”

“Like there’s a huge market for kaiju intestines,” Chuck replied.

“Newt said he sells just about everything, even the skin louse,” Raleigh replied. “Lice? Louses?”

“Mate, I don’t want to sit and think about the relative value of kaiju intestine and what was the other thing-”

“Secondary liver, I think?” Raleigh shrugged. Biology had never been his strong suit.

“That was pretty fucking big to be a secondary liver,” Chuck said. Raleigh grinned as Chuck entered the room with just a towel wrapped low on his waist. Raleigh could see the beginnings of the soft ginger hair that surrounded his cock. He desperately wanted to run his fingers through that hair and twist it into little tufts. Chuck followed his gaze and grinned, really grinned, enough that those dimples of his were prominently displayed.

Raleigh had gone back to his own quarters to shower and had come back in a pair of sweats.
Yancy had come with him. He’d manage to get out of slopping around kaiju guts by basis of asking Hermann several actual questions about the models he was running - Hermann was attempting to determine how the Breach had opened so they could be aware of even the most minute development, if necessary. Raleigh sometimes forgot how good Yancy was with numbers and physics. Probably what had made him a better pilot.

“You seem good, yeah?” Yancy asked, grabbing a pair of his own sweats. Raleigh was confused for a moment until he remembered that he had a panic attack the night before. He nodded.

“I’m never going to get over it,” he said. He’d said this before. They’d discussed this in the drift, in real life, they’d been over and over it.

“Why should you? No one should expect you to,” Yancy said. “That was...he could of handled that a lot differently, I was...it was good.”

“Yeah,” Raleigh said, and tossed his underwear into the trash - Newt had put them in radioactive-style containment suits to deal with the kaiju guts, plus fresh standard PPDC tees and pants that were immediately thrown out and sent to hazardous waste when they were done. Raleigh couldn’t help but feel that the kaiju guts had permeated through all of that.

Now, Raleigh put his thumbs into the band of his sweatpants and arched his eyebrow at Chuck.

He had no idea why this made Chuck’s grin fade. It was supposed to have the alternate result, instead, Chuck pressed his lips together. He seemed to be deep in thought, suddenly, though it had probably been plaguing him all afternoon while they played with kaiju guts.

Oh, shit, Raleigh thought - they’d fucked, four, five times? Over three days? He realized, then, that if those were his first thoughts, Herc was maybe right about him, and it stung.

“Look,” Chuck said, and he tugged the towel up slightly while he looked at Raleigh. “I mean, it’s just...”

“Chuck.” It was reasonable for anyone to want to get a better sense of what they were doing. On top of that Chuck was a kid, and he’d never done this before, and he was as much under the microscope as Raleigh was.

“Chuck, if I...I wouldn’t have...”

“You did just kind of jump me at breakfast,” Chuck said. “And you sort beat the shit out of me three days before that.”

It felt like so long ago. It didn’t mean it wasn’t a valid point. “OK,” Raleigh said. “But it doesn’t mean that I don’t...like you. And, yeah, I did just...but I knew it couldn’t just be a, you know, casual thing, I did it because-” Each word came out slowly. Raleigh suddenly really understood the term emotionally constipated.

“That really hurt, didn’t it?” Chuck asked, cocking his head. “Talking about...feelings?”

Raleigh relaxed. “Well, I’m sure you know how to spot those traits.” Chuck shrugged, and his shoulder muscles moved ever so slightly.

“I just don’t know what I want anymore,” he said. “I don’t understand anything, and, yeah, fiddling around with engineering projects is fine and good, but-”

“Maybe we need a break from the Shatterdome,” Raleigh said. “I mean, have you ever been outside of one, not inside a Jaeger?”

“Haha,” Chuck said, but he sat down on his bed. “Like where?”

“Somewhere inland,” Raleigh said, and he sincerely meant it. “Europe. Ever been to Europe?”

“No,” Chuck said. “Never really been anywhere but...around here.”

“So we could travel, for a little bit. People used to do that all the time, it was a right of adolescent passage,” Raleigh said. Chuck Hansen would either be great to travel with, or Raleigh would be tempted to leave him somewhere in Eastern Europe with a woman with a head covering and a chicken in a cage. If that stereotype even existed. Raleigh really didn’t know shit. “Backpacking.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Chuck said. “Herc wouldn’t be up for it, though.” No elaboration needed - Herc wasn’t likely to let Chuck out of his geographic proximity for some time.

“We could start...closer. Weekend trip,” Raleigh said. “Plenty of places in China are supposed to be stunning. Hell, we could bring Herc.” Chuck looked appalled at this. “Get him his own room.”

“No Herc,” Chuck said. “But that could maybe work.” He looked up at Raleigh, expectant, eyes framed by his long lashes. Raleigh sat down next to him on the bed.

“I don’t know what I want, either,” Raleigh said.

“You musta thought of something you wanted to do, before K-Day.” Raleigh considered this - he’d had good enough grades in humanities and social studies, he’d always presumed he’d go to local community college and figure it out. He shook his head. “You were, what, sixteen?”

“Yeah,” Raleigh said. Chuck had been ten, and two years later, he would have formed a single-minded purpose for his entire life. “I mean, it wouldn’t matter now, anyway, say I wanted to be, like...a teacher, or something, I couldn’t now, because I’m always going to be Raleigh Becket.”

“I was trying to think of reasons why I really haven’t left here, before, and you just reminded me of one,” Chuck said.

“You do have a lot of fans,” Raleigh said, and this made Chuck turn redder than his hair - because he was Chuck, and because he had once been Raleigh’s fan. Raleigh leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “We could go out somewhere, get dinner, I bet.”

“OK,” Chuck said. It was a start.

---

It was strange being out in a city again, and Raleigh felt like the buildings were going to cave in on him and bury him. He inhaled and exhaled, reminded himself of how the city had looked when he was striding through it in Gipsy - that he had saved Hong Kong and that he belonged here, despite the looks he was getting from people.

Chuck kept close to him. Neither said anything - there was plenty to take in, especially the fact that people were still celebrating and signs of real life returning. The stores were actually stocked with some things, there were places where prices asked for currency instead of ration coupons, and people were outside and smiling at each other. “You like dim sum?” Chuck asked, nudging Raleigh once they got to one of the more upscale districts - well, as upscale as you could get in a port city. The real wealth, unless it was profiting from kaiju remains, had moved inland long ago.

“Never had it,” Raleigh replied. Chuck shook his head and opened the door to the place.

It wasn’t crowded. Raleigh glanced at the menu and flinched at the prices, even though he didn’t know what dim sum was. Didn’t matter. He and Chuck had flush accounts now, being big heroes, and Raleigh didn’t have a problem spending the money on a dinner out.

The maitre’d looked at them and cocked her head. She smiled broadly. “Yeah, you’re right,” Raleigh said. “Hello.” He held a hand out - there was no point denying it, and for a moment he was back in 2018, 2019, when he and Yancy had been pulled down to Vancouver to get tarted up in designer clothes for some magazine and had to answer questions for another about their exercise regime so that in a few months the headline could say Look Like a Jaeger Pilot! with them on the cover. Raleigh blushed, slightly, because Chuck had to have...he shook his head.

“Goodness, it is a great honor to have you,” the maitre’d said. “My mother, she will want a picture.”

“Sure,” Chuck said.

“Your meal will be-”

“No,” Raleigh said. “Sorry - but I have to insist we pay you.” She nodded, smiled slightly, and took them to a booth in the back.

A bottle of wine arrived without prompting, and then the entire staff of the restaurant came and gathered around them to get pictures. Raleigh smiled and wrapped an arm around Chuck’s shoulder, figuring it looked collegial, but he regretted it after - in another year someone would find it and publish it, early proof of Becket and Hansen’s love found in Dim Sum restaurant in Hong Kong!

Chuck poured himself a massive glass once they were left to themselves. “I thought you liked all that stuff,” Raleigh said.

“I liked killing kaiju. Being a pilot,” Chuck said. He frowned, probably realizing he had spoke in past tense. “I did not like the websites that counted down until I was legal.”

Raleigh grinned at this until he remembered that he had found out Chuck Hansen was legal by going to one of them. Well, clicking on the link in Google. Fuck. “Yeah,” Raleigh said. “The burden of being young and hot.”

Chuck blinked at him. Raleigh wondered if anyone had ever said something like that to his face before - probably not, for fear of getting their own face smashed in by Herc. “You are,” Raleigh added. “Uh, attractive. Hot is kind of a stupid word, like-”

“OK,” Chuck said. “Thanks.”

“There’s room for you to sit next to me,” Raleigh said, softly, somehow unsure of himself. Chuck nodded, got up, moved into the booth space next to Raleigh with a slight smile. “Hey.”

“You better be done with all of that wishy-washy shit,” Chuck said, and he reached across the table to grab his wine glass.

“Absolutely,” Raleigh said. “We can talk about man things now.” He wasn’t done with Chuck, though - he was surprised at how Chuck could be so confident about his ability as a pilot and yet not confident about his appearance, given that there were Internet websites dedicated to his ass. He leaned in and smirked at Chuck. “Like your shoulders, your biceps, the way your muscle moves when you stretch-”

“Fuck, Becket!” Chuck said, and he looked around the restaurant before starring at Raleigh with a mix of irritation and embarrassment.

“What?” Raleigh asked, and he moved in closer so he could nuzzle Chuck’s neck lightly. “I’ve already had my tongue in your ass, you know.”

Chuck’s eyes widened comically at that, and then he swallowed. Raleigh grinned at him, then pulled back when their waitress arrived.

“You want to order?” he asked. “I don’t know anything about dim sum.”

“Yeah,” Chuck said, and swallowed before he smiled. “Sure. Yeah.”

---

Raleigh was ambushed as he attempted to go from his solo drift session with one of the new jerry-rigged apparatuses to his room for a shower. Herc Hansen grinned at him as he turned a corner and approached. It was not a healthy grin, and Raleigh debated whether he’d be able to outrun him if he turned and sprinted.

Herc would have the advantage, he decided, he knew the Shatterdome better than Raleigh did even if Raleigh might objectively be faster. Raleigh just smiled back as Herc approached.

Herc clapped a hand on his shoulder and nodded. “Not too much to ask for, take the kid on a proper date, yeah?” he said. His grip was strong enough that Raleigh felt certain it would leave light bruises.

Raleigh hated these kinds of questions because he never knew whether to say yes or no, so instead he just smiled a little bit more. Herc narrowed his eyes, though he was still grinning that grin. “You do him right.”

Raleigh opened his mouth slightly and then nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said. Herc had phrased it that way on purpose because he was a bastard and he had a hot, shit-headed son that Raleigh had fallen for.

“Good,” said Herc, and he removed his hand. Raleigh exhaled, then went to go and find Yancy. He was relieved to find him in their room, sprawled out on the lower bunk with his lap top, poking around on the Internet.

“Looking for the site dedicated to your jaw line?”

“What?” Yancy asked.

Raleigh crawled half onto the bed and turned his head upside down so he could see what was on the screen - hotels, it seemed. “I was thinking about that too,” Raleigh said, and he sat down on the bed with Yancy.

Yancy closed the lid of the computer. “Some traveling,” he said. “Mom always said it was the best way to figure out if you were compatible with someone.” Raleigh laughed, thinking of the endless personality tests, intelligence tests, and various other psychological profiles before the PPDC had even let them drift together. They could have just given them a tent and sent them into the wilderness.

“Never thought I’d feel out of place here, you know,” Raleigh said. Their shoulders were touching. When they first saw their bunk beds in Anchorage, neither of them had been willing to yield the bottom bed and they had fallen asleep next to each other. Raleigh had relented the next night, but only because Yancy snored and insisted on wearing scratchy flannel pajama pants. “Does Daven let you wear those in bed?”

“Uh...” Yancy said. Raleigh grinned - he still knew exactly what Raleigh was thinking about. There had been a few times, he’d wondered, if Daven had replaced that space in his head. If Mako had replaced Yancy for him. “I’m usually not wearing...Christ, Raleigh, you know how that all works, don’t you?”

“No,” he said, and he laid down on the bed so he was sprawled over it. “Tell me all of your brotherly wisdom.”

Yancy had never had to do much to get a girl’s attention. Just smile pretty in their direction, turn his head ever so slightly to emphasize his eyes and that heroic jawline. “About relationships? You’re fucked if you’re asking me, kid.” Yancy laid down next to him. Raleigh actually appreciated it this time, unlike when Yancy had tried to chat with him through their mutual hangovers. He missed him.

“Being a Jaeger pilot does not lend itself to healthy relationships,” Raleigh replied.

“Fuck, world ending doesn’t lend itself to healthy relationships,” Yancy said. “And besides, you really gonna strive for that, dating Chuck Hansen?” Raleigh punched him in the arm.

“He’s not that bad,” Raleigh replied.

“Sure, you would think that,” Yancy said.

“Daven’s Canadian,” Raleigh replied.

“I’m not sure how that’s a negative trait,” Yancy said.

“Really? Come on,” Raleigh replied. Growing up in Alaska, they had heard plenty of stories about Canadians and their strange ways.

“She’s not really that Canadian, anyway,” Yancy said. “She’s not apologizing for things all of the time and she’s not that polite.”

“Dude, that is an understatement - remember when she threatened to cunt punt Tendo?”

Yancy grinned - it was probably one of the moments when he had decided he really liked Daven. “Yeah, what did he do-”

“Took her Tim Horton’s coffee, which is apparently a big thing,” Raleigh replied. “For Canadians.”

“Uh, am I interrupting something?” Both of them turned their heads to see Chuck leaning in the door, curious, in a childlike way. Probably because he was an only child, Raleigh realized.

“Uh...slumber party?” Raleigh said.

“But not a sexy one,” Yancy added, quickly.

“Uh-huh,” said Chuck.

Max waddled into the room, apparently unperturbed. He stood up, put his feet on the bed, and grinned at Raleigh. “Come on, buddy,” he said.

“That hurts, you wrinkly fucker,” Chuck replied, as Raleigh scooped Max into bed with him.

“Room for one more,” Raleigh said, and he and Yancy shifted so they were slumped and seated, backs against the wall. Raleigh pat the spot next to him as Max whined, presumably communicating the same thing.

Yancy gave Chuck a sort of smile, and Chuck made a huffing noise and climbed in next to Raleigh. “Now what?” he asked.

“We were talking about how weird Canadians are,” Yancy said. “Do you have any experience with Canadians?”

“Just your half sized one,” Chuck replied. “But I’ve heard she’s not typical.”

“Yeah,” Yancy said and this loopy smile crossed his face. Raleigh looked at Chuck, who raised his eyebrows. Max settled between them and spread himself out with a contented sound.

“Now you’re not going anywhere, even if you want to,” Raleigh said.

“You ever see Lord of the Rings?” Yancy asked, and he cocked his head at Chuck.

“No,” Chuck said.

“Excellent,” Yancy replied, and got out of bed to set up his laptop.

Daven poked her head in when they met Aragorn at the Prancing Pony. “Oh, good, it’s mostly just starting,” she said, after taking in the scene. She was small enough she mostly fit on Yancy’s lap but Raleigh moved over and curled into Chuck to make more room.

If I had gone to college, Raleigh thought, this is something I would have done. But with booze. Strangely, it was Daven who shared this thought with him. “I know you have that rum and coke, Yance,” she said, and poked him in the rib. Yancy also only had disposable plastic cups, so it really completed the collegial picture as they sat and watched.

Mako came when Frodo was stabbed on Weathertop. “I remember this movie,” she said. She made herself a drink but did not sit, instead picking up her phone. Hu Wei Tang arrived five minutes later, carrying two pillows and a blanket. Raleigh arched an eyebrow at her and she gave him a demure smile.

“Wasn’t aware you guys came individually,” Chuck said.

“We try to date same girl once,” Hu said. “Got weird real quick.” Mako smiled again at this. Raleigh elbowed Chuck before his next inevitable question, which was how Mako had picked amongst the three of them.

Yancy, also sensing the need to deflect, said, “You know, you’re about hobbit sized,” to Daven. She turned and shook her head.

“I would be a badass lady dwarf,” she replied.

“They have beards,” Yancy said.

“It’d be longer than your dwarf beard,” she said. Yancy made a huffing sound.

“Besides,” said Chuck, “aren’t you too pretty to be a dwarf? Have to be an elf, really.”

“I’m the one who gave you all the booze,” Yancy said.

“I brought vodka,” said Hu.

“Ah, that explains it,” Mako said, and reached back into the case of the pillow she was sitting on. Hu shrugged when she pulled a bottle of vodka out.

“Forgot which one,” he said.

“Besides, you’re the oldest,” Raleigh said. “So don’t go on whining about your mistreatment.”

“Daven’s older by two months and seven days,” Yancy replied. Raleigh instantly made a gagging sound, but he smiled. They were definitely going to have adorable little kids with curly hair and heroic jaws, and Raleigh actually felt a little choked up about that because they had all made that fucking possible by closing the Breach, closing the monster gateway. And, fuck, how was Yancy going to answer that question, when one of his kids asked if there was a monster under his bed?

“Shut up and watch movie,” Hu said. “Pay attention.”

“Maybe put the subtitles on?” Mako asked, cocking her head slightly. Raleigh looked down and saw the outline of her hand on Hu’s thigh under the blanket and smiled.

“Sure, fine, I’ll get up again,” Yancy said. As soon as he was standing Chuck grabbed Max under his armpits. Max accepted this and just dangled.

“Can you let him out, too?” Chuck asked. Yancy shot him a murderous look, and Chuck shook his head and put Max back in his lap.

Towards the beginning of the second movie, Raleigh was pretty sure that Herc walked by, but didn’t stop, a slight smile on his face.

---

“Got some news,” Herc said, standing at the front of their table at lunch - it was all the remaining Jaeger pilots, plus Newt and Hermann, who had begun debating the finer points of Lord of the Rings with Chuck. Apparently both of them were really into Tolkien. “UN, most countries, want to fund us even more. Not just research and monitoring. Figure we could use some new Jaegers to rebuild. Maybe not as big.”

Raleigh pressed his lips together and looked down, not wanting to interrupt anyone else’s thoughts. He’d figured he would never get in a Jaeger again.

Chuck burst into the thoughtful silence. “Dunno, dad. Any of you know anything about construction?”

“Cannot be that difficult,” said Jin.

“Easier than fighting kaiju,” said Hu.

“Like Legos,” said Cheung.

“Need to know if you want to,” Herc said, working his lip slightly and looking directly at Chuck. “We’ll still have some recruits to train...well, probably not you,” he said, when Chuck met his eyes. “Unless they’re real shits.” Chuck did not dispute this.

“Think about it,” Herc said.

“Sit down and eat,” Yancy replied. “We’ve got plenty.”

Herc looked at them all again, then nodded his head. He slid in next to Chuck and narrowed his eyes at Raleigh when he noticed Raleigh’s foot resting on Chuck’s ankle. Raleigh removed it and Chuck rolled his eyes.

“How much smaller you think?” Cheung asked. “Big Jaeger get big work done.”

“Also costs a metric shit ton of money,” Herc replied. “Though who knows. I’m not an accountant.” He shrugged his shoulders.

Raleigh knew what Mako would say, and he was surprised to find that he still wanted it to - and Chuck, well, that didn’t even warrant consideration, Chuck was in. Yancy and Daven, he decided, were the only ones who might not sign up. That was OK, though, Raleigh decided. They had babies to make, after all.