loch | txt me maybe

[ Banging around inside. Clink clank clunk. ]

SENT: 03:19 AM
mako

SENT: 03:21 AM
makoooo

SENT: 03:25 AM
mako im coming in

[ She's changing out of her sleep clothes and into something a little less conspicious, which means Mako's head is stuck in her sleep shirt the moment Chuck Hansen opens the door. He is greeted, unsurprisingly, with an unceremonial squeak before she tries to hide behind the door of her locker. ]

—jerk!

[ he doesn't laugh (those are still precious currency, rare even in these early days) but the grin pulls at the corner of his mouth all the same. he won't risk hovering in the hall, and slips in a beat later despite her exclamation. (he'd been caught creeping in once- and given the last punishment- he's not keen to repeat it.) the door clicks closed, and his hands lift, palms pressed over his eyes. ]

I'm not looking!

You're so full of crap!

[ Mako disappears completely behind the door, her pale ankles visible in the sliver beneath the bottom of it and the floor. She's barefoot despite there being cement underfoot and so she does a little dance as she shimmies, hidden, out of the rest of her clothes, donning a recruit's standard drabs. Her elbow knocks against the locker occasionally, making a hollow metal noise.

So there's where that sound was coming from. ]

[ he dutifully keeps from peeking (chuck doesn't have many virtues, but he's always stuck to his word, regardless of how freely he gives it) but his mouth flickers. an unconscious clocking of the sounds, attempts to ascribe a cause to each one. his voice is a loud whisper, but a whisper all the same. ]

What's taking so long?

[ Mako mutters something under her breath in Japanese and sticks out her head (she's checking to see if he's full of shit) just long enough to retort: ] Some loser interrupted me. [ Before she's disappeared again.

Sure enough a few moments later she emerges, only to brush past Chuck in order to snag her boots by the door. As she leans down she braces one hand on his forearm, swinging her spare arm down to swipe both shoes by their tongues. ]

[ he isn't dressed for the night air, but he's going along anyway. she touches his forearm and chuck turns on his heels, moves after her into the hall. they're largely on tip toe all the same, and where she looks left he casts his gaze right. chuck's hand moves to her own, and wraps around her fingers. ]

[ It's difficult to look at Chuck Hansen and Mako Mori and understand how and why they could possibly ever think they'd be drift compatible. Their behavior's different by the light of day, when they're running drills or in the classroom or running laps around the shatterdome (Chuck chasing Mako, Mako chasing Chuck, Raleigh chasing both of them until he laps the lot). But at night, in moment's like these when they steal through the corridors for destinations undecided, there's something close to synchronicity.

Like spirits and like minds.

Mako's stomach does something weird whenever Chuck reaches for her hand. She tries not to think about it to hard, though her fingers find the spaces between his own. ]

[ they never go anywhere spectacular, for the handful of times chuck has come calling- tugged on her hand or tapped on her door. whispered for her to come away with him. chuck can see no other future for them except as co-pilots, because he has nothing and no one. because she knows his body and his heart and his moods like she's learned the blueprints of so many jaegers. it might not be trust, but it's something, because there is no one else he comes to. not like her.

when they slip back in again it's nearly sunrise, and the temptation to watch the day start from the very edge of the eastern platform is tempered only by the consequences they would face if caught. chuck follows her back into her quarters all the same, and they walk too close. bump and knock and press- two weeds growing into whatever they might become. ]

[ He doesn't come often but whenever he does, they leave together and they come back together, the very first light of morning chasing their heels. They don't go anywhere particular, nowhere special, but they're not special children with special needs. Chuck and Mako are used to receiving only the things that they've earned and never expecting anything more, and so this is enough, this strange, silent companionship. (Talking just means getting caught that much sooner, though there are the occasional conversations whispered back and forth. Nothing of consequence, however, they're not those sorts of friends. Anything you can do, I can do better mostly.

Loser.
Jerk.
Shut up.)

When they reach Mako's bunk Chuck follows her back inside and once the door shuts behind the both of them she crowds him against the inside of it a little, the cold metal of the handle digging into the dip of his spine, the warmth of her coveralls against this front. They don't usually talk during this part either.

Sometimes they skip it altogether.
Sometimes they don't. ]

[ they steal back in the same way they had going out. there are no official rules that bar them from spending time together, the only children of the shatterdome. they spar and train and read and sit and eat in each others presence like they're carved from the same tree. and maybe allowances are made because of their wide eyes and set jaws. because they're soldiers as much as they're children and they remind the men and women around them of families that have been left behind or the collateral damage to be faced when the next kaiju makes land.

but when chuck looks at her-
all he sees is mako.

climbing over her bunk is the harder part (he bangs his left knee and will have a bruise in the morning. not the first and not the last) because climbing over her, that's easy. mako's hands reach for him the moment they're close enough, and their noses bump, followed by foreheads, followed by chins. chuck's palms fit into the bedding and he leans between her thighs to get closer, until they're finally kissing again. and that part is easy too. ]

[ When Chuck looks at her, all he sees is Mako. Not the Japan's lost daughter or Tokyo's Dorothy or even Pentecost's new project. He sees a person, not a word or an idea; not a recruit or a soldier or a child. All of things are just facets, one part of a greater whole, but Chuck has known Mako long enough to collect all of them, hoarding ever sliver of her she's ever offered or he's whittled from her, gathering them to him and holding them so tightly to his chest that sometimes, when she thinks about it, it makes her breastbone ache — like the pressure of his own arms is holding her down.

During training they're taught that their copilot will be everything, that there will be no one else in the whole wide world that they will ever trust or understand more than them. And it's moments like these (and the rivalry and the fighting, all of it) with her knees pressing hard into Chuck's side and Chuck's mouth twisting into a shape that resembles a smile, that convince Mako that there is only him — eclipsing Raleigh and all of his large-eyed pining, all of his boyish sighs and adolescent shoving and those late night texts that cry Mako Mako.

In the morning she'll feel bad about it; not unlike the bruise that'll color Chuck's knee come breakfast time, it'll be sore. Mako will sit across the both of them in the mess hall and feel something burble in their stomach that is equal parts happiness and dissatisfaction, but for now there's only the warm press of Chuck's tongue into her mouth and the puff of air he lets loose against her lips as one of her hands curls up into his hair, making him not-quite laugh. ]

Edited 2013-10-30 08:28 (UTC)

txt me maybe

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