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“Is it just me, or is Hansen bitchier than usual?” Raleigh growls, slamming his lunch tray down next to Mako’s plates. “I tried being nice to the kid, really fucking did, like you asked me to.”
Mako frowns. “I have noticed. But there is something else stranger. He jumps whenever I come up behind him to talk. It is like he is always scared. He was never like so before. And he is ‘bitchier than usual’, as you say.” She looks worried. “Raleigh, Chuck is a good person. You should give him a chance.”
Raleigh rolls his eyes. “I’d give him a chance,” he grouses, “if he let me.”
--
Weirder things happen. “I can’t Drift,” Chuck says, his voice flat.
Pentecost stares. “What?”
“I can’t.” Chuck repeats, his voice emotionless. He’s staring at the ground, his fists clenched. “Let dad go with someone else. I can’t do it.”
Herc looks pissed and he opens his lips to say something, but Pentecost has taken three steps to be in Chuck’s space, glaring down fiercely at him. “Listen, Ranger-“ Pentecost starts, but pauses.
Chuck looks terrified, and the look sends a jolt of shock down Raleigh’s spine. Next to him, Mako flinches. It’s not a look like he’s scared of being scolded, but he looks terrified, almost petrified with fear. Pentecost takes a smooth step backward, and Chuck stumbles, trembling enough that it’s visible.
He snaps out of his fear with a start, glares fiercely at everyone in the room, and bolts out. Pentecost doesn’t follow him. Instead, he and Herc exchange glances. “Mori, Becket, you’re dismissed.” Pentecost says, and before Raleigh leaves, he catches Herc and Pentecost starting to talk in low voices.
--
Pentecost doesn’t ask Chuck to Drift again. Mako does some digging, asks around to try to figure out what’s wrong. Raleigh doesn’t see much of Chuck for the next few days, and when he does, Chuck’s all thorns and pissed. Herc looks like he’s about to be driven to insanity. “I can’t tell what the fuck’s wrong with him.” Herc rubs his forehead. “As far as I can tell, he’s not eating. He’s barely coming out of his room. He won’t let even Max in.” Herc jerks his head toward the bulldog’s direction. “Max’s miserable.”
Max looks like the epitome of misery, flat against the floor, its face drooping. When Herc calls him over, he moves sluggishly and plops down by Herc’s feet. “Looks dead,” Jin says, adjusting his sunglasses on top of his head. “What’s wrong with the kid, anyway?” The other two triplets nod, eyes curious.
Herc lets out a sigh. “Won’t say.”
--
It’s two days of Chuck-hiding-in-his-room when they’re all assigned to one-day training in Shanghai. “Shanghai?” Raleigh repeats. “Why so far?”
“It is only two hours, and the Marshal has found us a trainer who refuses to come here.” Mako shrugs. “Dr. Gottlieb predicts an attack more than a week away, and he hasn’t been wrong yet. But that’s why you’re staying here. With Chuck. In case something happens.”
Herc adjusts the comm on his head. He’s flying the helicopter. “Take care of Chuck, kid.” He turns around, snaps to the Wei triplets in Chinese that means something along the lines of shut up or I’ll tape your mouths shut. They toss a basketball toward him in reply, and it’s neatly intercepted and tossed out toward Raleigh by Aleksis. “We’ll be back before you’re up tomorrow morning.”
--
Raleigh just ignores Chuck because he can’t really do anything. When he tries, he’s met with Chuck spewing curses and venom at him, glaring. He sees Chuck sometimes, in the Kwoon, wiping the floor with some poor rookie recruit, and then going through the rest of the dozen who are stupid enough to think they can beat him. Chuck is nothing about grace and everything about brute strength, although Raleigh sees shadows of his father’s unbeatable technique running in currents under lean muscles. Raleigh watches to make sure he doesn’t permanently injure any of them.
It’s obvious there’s something wrong with Chuck. The tension in his shoulders don’t go away, and sometimes Raleigh catches Chuck glancing around, like he’s expecting something to come at him.
He’s watching Chuck throw his fifth rookie challenger down onto the mat, flipping the poor kid over his shoulder when the kaiju alarm goes off.
--
Chuck’s old khaki drivesuit looks less beaten than Chuck does. He’s silently tight-lipped. Chuck and Raleigh don’t even know if they’re Drift compatible. They just don’t have a choice. Raleigh drowns out Dr. Gottlieb’s chant of it’s not possible the numbers don’t work out and lets his mind relax when Tendo announces, “Initiating neural handshake.”
The Drift is silence, he’s always been told. Chuck has Drifted for longer than he has, is a master at it, and the handshake looks like it’s going to be strong, the Drift going to work out when Tendo suddenly cries out, “Raleigh, Chuck’s chasing the R.A.B.I.T!”
Raleigh’s eyes snap open and he jerks his head to the side. Chuck’s whimpering, his legs staggering where he’s standing. “What the fuck?” He demands. “Hansen, snap out of it!”
But Chuck doesn’t, and Raleigh’s pulled in along for the ride, under a tidal wave of memories.
--
He’s in the communal shower. Raleigh growls in frustration because they don’t have time for this, but at the same time he’s slightly worried. Chuck’s a master at the Drift. He’s seen the reports, heard the stories. The absolute best in his class, a perfect score in every single exam, every single test drive. Chuck Hansen doesn’t do mistakes.
Raleigh’s drivesuit makes clacking noises on the tiles of the shower. Chuck’s in it by himself, his hands braced on the wall. He looks relaxed, smiling as the warm water steams up the communal showers’ walls. Raleigh frowns, wondering why this is the R.A.B.I.T Chuck’s chasing, and then there’s a gush of cool air. Chuck’s smile drops into a scowl, but he ignores the four men that walk into the shower, loud and guffawing.
Raleigh studies them – they’re big, muscular men, some of the Rangers in training. One’s almost as big as Aleksis (although no one’s quite as big as Alexsis), and Raleigh notices they’re staring at Chuck like he’s a bug on their windshield. “You enjoy that beating you got by Becket, then?” One of them shoots in Chuck’s direction.
Chuck smoothly ignores them, but one of them tosses their soap in his direction. It hits Chuck on the back of his neck, slides down his toned back, and Chuck consequently steps onto the soap, gracefully crushing it into a flat piece. “You know, Hansen, you gotta respect your elders. Can’t get cocky just cause you’re a pilot.”
Chuck sneers, “Sorry, didn’t hear you.”
They fall back into their muttered conversation, snickers from time to time. Chuck’s back is tense, and Raleigh can tell that the bullying isn’t just a one-time thing, that it’s happened before. It’s Chuck’s memory, so he doesn’t get to hear the actual conversation even if he steps close to the men. But one sentence is said loudly, meant for Chuck to hear. “I’d tap that fine piece of ass.”
Chuck’s face twists in a sneer. Apparently he’s had enough, because he swerves on his heel. “Sorry,” he hisses. “I don’t do ugly and untalented.”
It’s in a flash of seconds when Chuck’s tackled to the ground, sliding him enough to crash his head into the tiled walls. The memory goes blurry for a second as Chuck growls, fighting against the men that press him down, and even if Chuck’s good, he can’t take on four muscular men.
Especially when they’re fighting dirty. It takes time, but Chuck’s hands are bound behind him, his legs pinned under knees and a shower towel-turned-gag shoved into his mouth. Chuck tries to yell around it, but it sends him coughing instead. “Fuck, I dreamed about this.” One of them says, grinning down at Chuck. Chuck’s chest is heaving, his struggles futile under the grip of four bigger men.
Raleigh’s stomach sinks when he realizes why Chuck suddenly turned even more antisocial. He was raped. Gangbanged.
There’s no lubrication or preparation as the first man slams inside Chuck, tearing a scream from his throat. Chuck struggles, hard, but the other three hit him again and again until he falls limp, chest shaking from soundless tears. “Fuck, he’s tight.”
“You think he’s a virgin?”
“He’s sure gripping like one. You a virgin, kiddo?”
Chuck doesn’t respond, but starts struggling again. The biggest man catches him under the sternum, making him gasp for breath and stop struggling for a moment as the thrusts get rough enough for Chuck’s back to start sliding against the tiles. “If you squeeze his jaws, he won’t be able to bite down.”
They snicker and sneer as they grip Chuck’s jaws at pressure points, keeping his mouth hanging open as another man takes the gag out and shoves his cock in instead. Chuck’s body’s limp under them, his face hidden under the others, but Raleigh hears the sobs that can’t be muffled anymore. It’s muted under the obscene noise of flesh slapping flesh, of the cock in his mouth slurping onto his tongue, but Raleigh hears it.
He feels sick as they take turns, fucking Chuck’s mouth and his ass, sending rivulets of red and white streaming down Chuck’s thighs, but apparently they aren’t done. “You think he can take two?”
“Fuck, you’re sick.”
“You’d be the first in line.” There’s a finger shoved carelessly into Chuck’s torn ass, stretching it beyond its limits. “I think he can do it. Born to be a little slut, aren’t you?”
It’s not long until they start fucking him two at a time, grunting in arousal. Chuck’s lips are bruised from the constant abuse, his nipples dark and blue from their twisted attention. They take turns, over and over, laughing and sneering at Chuck, gripping his short hair to get better access to his mouth, fingering bruises onto his hips.
Raleigh feels sick, and as Chuck’s memory starts to get fuzzy around the corners, he burns the faces into his head.
--
“Becket! Hansen!”
Raleigh comes to with a lurch and realizes they’re no longer in Striker, but back in the drivesuit room. As the mounts come undone, Chuck staggers, rips his helmet off and vomits onto the floor. Raleigh tries to touch him, but Chuck snarls away. “Don’t fucking touch me.” He hisses, throwing Raleigh’s arm off. “Don’t – fuck.” He turns, and as soon as the technicians help him out of the suit, he’s gone.
“What happened?” Raleigh demands to the technicians. “Kaiju?”
“It was a false alarm.” Hermann says, face etched with a triumphant look of I-told-you-so. “Apparently there was bizarre activity near the breach, though, one that does need looking into.” He starts mumbling about the numbers and the data again, and Raleigh shrugs off the drivesuit. “The Marshal wanted to see you.”
Right. Of course.
--
“Did you keep us in there purposely so I could see what it was that made Chuck the way he is right now?” Raleigh snaps at Pentecost, who glares harshly at him as he nods. “Well, sir, you ever think that Chuck might not want to relieve the memory at all?”
He’s beyond angry. He’s at the point where he doesn’t know how to deal with this, and Pentecost tells him, “Hercules Hansen and the others’ ETA is 15 minutes.”
When he arrives, Herc is furious. He correctly guesses that there was no suspicious activity, and that the entire thing was the Marshal’s plan to figure out what the hell was going on in Chuck’s head. “I needed my best pilot back in the jaegar,” Pentecost hisses at Herc. “We’re putting the entire Operation Pitfall in danger when he’s like this.”
Raleigh has always heard, Herc Hansen was always a soldier first and a father second, but it finds that hard to believe when Herc hisses back, “Was it really worth losing my trust and respect for you? You manipulated my son.”
Chuck is sitting at one end of the office, his gaze fixated on the floor. “Fuck.” He says, standing up abruptly enough to send the chair clattering floor. “I got gangbanged. That good enough? I got fucked by four different guy who jumped me in the shower. Now that that’s all straightened up, and I’ve got nothing to hide from my old man, we can go back to the fucking Operation Pitfall.”
He slams the door on the way out, kicking the chair in the way over. There’s silence in the room, and Herc looks thunderstruck. “He’s not serious.” Herc tries, gaping like a fish out of water.
“He’s serious.” Raleigh says, quietly, and Herc storms out the door after his son.
--
Pentecost demands a description of the men Raleigh saw, and Raleigh explains every single man. They’re caught within the hour, and Raleigh sits in front of Chuck’s door. Max is at the door, whining lowly, and he rubs Max’s head. He can hear muffled yelling behind the thick steel doors, and he sighs.
He waits until the yelling stops and the door slams open, an impressive feat considering its weight. Herc stamps out, spots Raleigh, and holds the door open. He jerks his head, and Raleigh goes in, Max at his heels.
The door pushes shut, and Chuck doesn’t look at them, even when Max whines and tries to nudge his head under his hands. “You shouldn’t be involved in this mess,” Chuck growls, sounding defeated. He finally gives into Max’s constant whimpering, stroking his head lightly. Max falls contently by the bed. “Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you fucking pity me.” Chuck snaps. “We weren’t friends. We hated each other, and we were never going to be friends. I don’t need you to look at me like I’m some charity case. What happened fucking happened. It doesn’t matter.”
“You hid it from your father. Obviously it mattered.”
Chuck raises his head to glare at Raleigh. “We’re not friends, Becket. Don’t pretend to care. I’m not a fucking charity case.”
--
The Ghost Drift remains between them. He doesn’t know why it’s so intense between him and Chuck. He’d only gotten the tug between him and Yancy after multiple times Drifting, but he feels Chuck’s emotions across the bridge.
There’s a lot frustration and anger, but there’s no doubt there’s also pain under there, a feeling of being lost, and sometimes fear. “Get out of my head,” Chuck snarls at him one day.
Raleigh can’t help but point out, “You’re in mine, too.”
“There’s a difference. I don’t go poking around in yours. Stop trying to read into every single emotion I’m feeling. Tune it out.”
Raleigh can’t tune it out. Or maybe it’s that he won’t. He doesn’t quite know. But one day, he ends up staring at the ceiling, breathing hard, terrified. He doesn’t remember his nightmare.
It takes him a few moments to realize it’s not his fear. And the moment that he does realize, he jumps out of bed. He’s running, only in socks, and before he realizes it he’s at Chuck’s door. He doesn’t know how he knows the code – but of course, the Drift – and he bursts into the room. Chuck is whimpering in his sleep, his hands clenched into the sheets.
He touches Chuck’s hand. “Hansen.” He says. When there’s no response, he grips his shoulders, and Chuck comes out of his nightmare gasping, hands flying up to clutch at Raleigh. He doesn’t say anything, and neither does Raleigh. Chuck just clutches at Raleigh’s shirt, and Raleigh carefully lays them down onto the bed, his arms wrapped around Chuck, Chuck’s face buried in his shoulder, and they fall asleep.
To be honest, Raleigh’s not even aware that they fall asleep until he wakes up, his arm tingling from lack of blood circulation. Chuck is sound asleep against him, so he turns carefully to get a look at the clock nearby.
He comes face-to-face with Herc, who’s glaring daggers at him. “Uh.” He articulates so cleverly. “Good morning, sir.”
“Oh, it’s morning, all right. The other part we’ll decide soon.” Herc answers, narrowing his eyes at Raleigh. “What are you doing here?”
“Chuck had a nightmare last night. I felt it through the Ghost Drift and… I acted without thinking, but it got him asleep again.”
Herc looks a little surprised. “Ghost Drift. You two Drifted once, and you already can feel it?” Raleigh nods, and Herc looks a little unsettled. “I didn’t feel his nightmare.” He’s frowning a little to himself, and he stands. For one moment, Raleigh thinks Herc might punch him, but Herc just reaches over, rubs his fingers tenderly on his son’s jawline. He tells Raleigh, “I don’t care if your arm’s asleep. You started it, be a man and finish it.”
Raleigh doesn’t mention that’s what he was going to do anyway, before he thought Herc was going to kill him, because he’s pretty sure that’s definitely going to earn him a punch to the face.
--
When Chuck wakes up, they don’t talk about “It”. It’s exactly what Chuck says. “We’re not going to talk about it.” Right before he tosses Raleigh out of the room.
Raleigh tries to not let it offend him. He can feel Chuck’s emotions pulsing through the Drift, most of which is annoyance and embarrassment, but he feels the underlying gratitude. He wakes up more nights than not, yelling from someone else’s nightmare, and he always finds himself at Chuck’s door.
Their relationship gets better through the Ghost Drift, but Raleigh’s still not expecting Chuck to show up at his door one day. He doesn’t look angry, or even hurt. He’s blushing to the root of his ginger hair, Max wagging his tail enthusiastically at his feet. “Thought I’d save you the trouble of traveling at night.”
Raleigh can’t help but grin as he steps aside to let Chuck in. Max follows, sniffing enthusiastically around Raleigh’s room until he finds a corner he likes and settles down. Chuck stands awkwardly in the middle, rubbing his arms. “Make yourself comfortable.”
“And you’re gonna…”
“Relax. I’ll get into bed after you fall asleep. I’m reading, anyway.” Raleigh holds up the book he’d actually been reading when Chuck knocked on the door. Chuck shrugs and jumps into bed, drawing Raleigh’s covers over his head. Raleigh settles back into his chair, shutting off all the lights except the one by his desk. It’s not long until Max comes out of his corner and settles by Raleigh’s feet instead, snoring a little, and it’s not much longer than that until Raleigh decides he should get in bed.
Chuck’s sleeping pretty soundly, the lines of anger and frustration smoothed out as he sleeps. Raleigh raises a hand to gently brush his knuckles on Chuck’s jaw, an echo of Herc’s own tender gesture from this morning, and wonders not for the first time how that father-son dynamic works. When he gets in under the covers, Chuck shifts automatically to make room for him, mumbling unintelligible gratitude.
Raleigh slides his arm under Chuck’s head, and Chuck lifts it in his sleep. An eye opens, gazes sleepily at Raleigh, but slides shut as Chuck mumbles, “You’re not so bad, Becket.”
--
Then Leatherback and Otachi hit, and Raleigh feels a pain tearing at his chest that’s not his own. He weaves his way along the mourning crowd. He finds Chuck curled up in front of his room. “Aleksis used to look out for me a lot.” Chuck says into his knees. “They were so strong.”
Raleigh realizes with a painful lurch that it’s Chuck’s first time seeing Jaegar pilots fall. They always went into battle thinking they were invincible behind the steel. Raleigh had learned that the hard way with Yancy, and now Chuck was learning it through this. Raleigh opens Chuck’s door and Chuck stumbles toward the bed, falling on it. Chuck starts the kiss, angry and needy and explosive, but it’s Raleigh who presses him against the bed, sliding his hands under Chuck’s shirt. Chuck’s hands are on him, shoving his sweater up, and Raleigh yanks his jacket off, careful of his bruises. They’re back on the bed, shirts rumpled and panting, clawing at each other more with anger and despair than anything else.
Raleigh’s nudging Chuck’s legs open when a wave of sheer terror almost suffocates him. It takes him a moment to get his bearings, and to realize that he’s pressing hard on Chuck’s legs. He draws his hands away like they’re burned, and he’s about to apologize when the door slams open.
Herc Hansen walks in, takes a look at what’s happening, and punches Raleigh in the face.
--
Raleigh grits his teeth. “Sir, I swear to you it’s not what it looked like.”
“You think you’re the only one with the Ghost Drift?” Herc snaps at him. Chuck’s in the bathroom, meaning Raleigh doesn’t even have anyone to back him up. “I felt it.”
“It was one mistake, but I swear I wasn’t trying to-“
“Fuck off, old man.” Chuck snaps, kicking the bathroom door open. “You think I can’t take care of myself?” Herc’s answer is obviously yes, but he doesn’t say it. Instead, he narrows his eyes at Chuck, who just looks tired. “We were having mutually consensual sex. Or about to, before I fucking panicked. I’m not made of glass.” He looks angry, and he kicks at the bed. Neither Herc nor Raleigh say anything as he stalks out.
After a long silence, Herc grunts, “How’s your eye?”, which Raleigh guesses is the closest thing to an apology he’s going to get.
So he answers, “It’s all right, sir. I would’ve done the same thing if I were you.” He rubs the eye gingerly – it’s definitely going to bruise, but he’s being honest when he says he would’ve done the same. Herc doesn’t say anything as Raleigh shuffles past him to chase after Chuck. He knows where Chuck is mostly because there’s nowhere else for Chuck to go, and that’s his own room. He punches the code to his room and finds Chuck lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling. “Hey.”
“I’m not a fucking porcelain doll.” Chuck says.
“I know.”
“I’m serious.”
“I am, too. But you gotta understand that I feel you, and so does Herc, and we feel the panic under there. Yes, mostly you’re unaffected by what happened, sometimes you’re angry, but you have to admit – sometimes you’re hurt, sometimes you’re scared because of it. Like your nightmares. It doesn’t make you less of a person, Chuck.”
Chuck turns, and buries his face in Raleigh’s pillow. “We’re not friends.”
Raleigh grins. “No, we aren’t.”
--
There’s nothing coming over the Ghost Drift. He sits on his heels, staring out into the ocean, trying to feel across the broken bridge. He knows back at the Shatterdome, Herc is trying to do the same, attempting to reach someone that’s gone, trying to cross a burned bridge.
Mako’s all smiles when they get back, but Raleigh automatically scans for Herc. The new Marshal of the PPDC kneels in the back with Max, shoulders slumped, eyes unreadable. He makes his way over to Herc and sits. They sit in silence, Max whimpering between them, and everything feels so empty and quiet even though the Shatterdome is filled with celebration all around them.
--
Two days later, they get a call from Los Angeles. [We have your pilot.]
“You have our what?” Herc says, his entire body shaking.
[Chuck Hansen washed up on our shores. He wasn’t too badly hurt, just light burns and cuts in-]
There’s some kind of scuffle on the other side, and Herc stares at the screen. Tendo stares. Raleigh stares. Mako stares. [Come pick me up, old man,] a familiar voice growls across the line, and Max start barking and running around in circles of happiness.
Raleigh kind of wishes he was a dog so he could do the same.
--
They don’t know how it happened. “I was trying to tell you I was okay through the Ghost Drift,” Chuck says, looking sullen. Past a few shallow burns and cuts, Chuck is only as bruised up as Mako and Raleigh are. “They wouldn’t let me out of the hospital bed until they were sure I didn’t have any radiation poisoning, so I tried, but you fuckers both closed off the Drift to me.”
Chuck is leaning into Raleigh, his body language betraying his big talk. Raleigh had come with Herc on their jet to Los Angeles, because Herc had let it ‘slip’ that Chuck doesn’t like being on planes by himself, and he likes being in a foreign country by himself even less. “How was LA?” He says, instead of responding to Chuck’s idle complaining.
“I’d tell you,” Chuck says, seriously, “except they pretty much had me on lockdown the entire time.” He twists in his seat so he can lean most heavily on Raleigh. Across from them, Herc gives Raleigh a look.
Raleigh religiously keeps his hands away from anywhere on Chuck that makes the look even more intense.
--
The first thing Raleigh and Chuck do when they get back is Drift. There’s no Jaegar to get into, but they still have the technology. “Hands?” Raleigh says, holding his eyes.
Chuck narrows his eyes at Raleigh. “Don’t get cheesy.” But right before they go under the Drift, Chuck’s calloused hands slide into his own.
There’s no screaming emotion between either of them. He feels Chuck cautiously tap into his pain of losing his mother, of their father’s desertion, of losing Yancy, and he opens up, just as he slides into Chuck’s own memories of losing his own mother, his rape, and then the final moments where he honestly thought he was going to die.
Raleigh doesn’t bother prying, but the current takes him to a memory.
“Ah, this is embarrassing.” Chuck grumbles next to him, his face flushed red.
“Wait, this is my memory.” Raleigh realizes. “This is Anchorage.” Chuck’s face turns even a brighter shade of red. “…Is this a shared memory?”
Chuck shrugs and turns away, but his ears are a dark red. “Well. This is a good memory of mine, but I dunno if you’d remember it.”
Before Raleigh can ask, he spots a small boy at Gipsy’s foot, sitting on its toes, drawing his finger on the ground. Raleigh remembers this memory. He looks up to see his younger self walking up to the boy. It’d been a bad night, he remembers, and he couldn’t sleep, so he’d come to find Gipsy to find a little boy. “…Is that you?”
Chuck’s ears flame a new shade of bright red, and Raleigh knows the answer is yes. Raleigh walks closer to the pair, Chuck shuffling along beside him. Memory-Raleigh sit down next to the child.
[Hey. Are you lost?]
[..No. My old man’s visiting, so I’m here with him.]
[How come you aren’t asleep?]
[How come you aren’t?]
“You were a pretty cheeky kid back then, too,” Raleigh chuckles, and Chuck snorts in response.
[She’s a beaut, ain’t she?]
Memory-Chuck looks up at Gipsy. Raleigh can see the awe in the kid’s eyes, and Memory-Chuck smiles. [Yeah. You’re a good pilot. I wanna be one, too, when I grow up, but everyone else at the Academy says I’m too small.]
Memory-Raleigh raises an eyebrow. [You in the Academy, already? How old are you?]
[I’m 12! And I’m best in the class at the Sydney Academy.] Memory-Chuck sticks his tongue out. [I’m better than all the bullies, too, you just see. I’m going to be a pilot like you.]
Memory-Raleigh grins. [So you know who I am?]
Memory-Chuck grins back. [Gipsy’s my favorite. I got a poster of her, back in my room in Sydney. My old man says I should like Lucky Seven, since she’s Sydney’s Jaegar, but Gipsy’s so much cooler. Plus, Luck’s only a Mark II. Gipsy’s Mark III! That’s awesome. I’m gonna pilot something like her one day.]
[You know what, kid? I think you just might. And you can tell all your bullies back home that Raleigh Becket’s your friend. I bet that’ll get them to stop being so mean.]
The memory fades, and Raleigh stares. “That’s why you kept saying we weren’t friends.”
Chuck jams his hands into his pockets. “Shut up.”
--
They Drift often. It becomes a source of healing for both of them, and in a way that Raleigh doesn’t have to be overbearing. They heal each other’s pain, and soothing out painful nightmares with good memories.
They’re in each other’s head enough that Raleigh doesn’t even think it’s surprising that they fall into bed together again. “Is this okay?”
“I’m not-“
“Made of porcelain. Glass. Whatever it is. I know. I still want to know if it’s okay.” Chuck glares at him. Instead of an answer, Raleigh gets an ankle hooked behind his knees, and Chuck’s flipped them around in the next second. Chuck snickers down at him, his fingers pushing Raleigh’s sweater up.
Chuck snorts as he tugs at the fraying sleeves. “Get rid of this god-awful sweater, mate, would you?”
“Says the kid who wears his daddy’s closet.” Raleigh grins, flipping them back over easily. “You don’t mind if I take the lead, do you?”
“Like I’d let you, old-timer.”
The wrestle around for a while, seeing who can undress more, seeing who can touch more, kiss more, that it’s more fighting than actual foreplay. When Raleigh pins Chuck down, a flash of fear shoots between them, but Chuck pushes it down and he grins up at Raleigh. “You good?”
“I’m fine.” Raleigh pushes his knees in between Chuck’s legs. “What makes you think you’re gonna be pitching?”
Raleigh smiles and bends down to press his lips to Chuck’s lips. “I’ll make it good.” There’s no hurry anymore, with Chuck pliant under his fingertips, so he takes his time rubbing lube onto his fingers, kissing Chuck lazily as he slides a finger inside. Chuck doesn’t tense, and there’s no fear between them, so Raleigh continues along slowly, almost lazily. Chuck doesn’t rush them along either, his fingers dancing along Raleigh’s sides. He doesn’t seem bothered when Raleigh slides another finger along except that his breathing gets slightly labored. Raleigh crooks his fingers, rubs his fingers along the spot that drags a groan from Chuck’s throat.
Raleigh grins down at Chuck, and Chuck narrows his eyes. “I don’t know if I like that look.”
“I’m gonna make you come from this.” Chuck doesn’t seem against the idea – just wriggles his hips down to meet Raleigh’s fingers. Raleigh squeezes lube onto his fingers again and pushes a third digit in. Chuck doesn’t seem uncomfortable, so Raleigh starts his merciless attack.
He’s never seen something so breathtaking as Chuck Hansen, covered in a sheen of sweat and writhing in pleasure under him. It’s not long before beads of precum drips down Chuck’s impressive erection, and Raleigh resists the urge to take the head into his lips and continued his assault until Chuck throws his head back and lets out a feral growl, coating his stomach and chest with spurts.
Chuck looks deliciously satisfied and relaxed, so Raleigh quickly slathers lube onto himself and presses his forehead to Chuck’s. “Ready?”
“If you don’t hurry, I may flip us over and do it myself.”
Raleigh laughs. “You’re such a little shit, kid.” He finds anchor in the dip of Chuck’s hips and sinks in in one smooth stroke. There’s another flash of panic that Raleigh smothers quickly with a mindnumbing kiss, and Chuck groans appreciatively, panic fading. “This is amazing.” Raleigh breathes.
Chuck’s breathless when he tries to drawl, “My ass?” It doesn’t come out as sarcastic as he probably wants it to be, and Raleigh can’t help but laugh again.
“Yeah, you.” Raleigh licks into Chuck’s mouth and starts to thrust, making shallow thrusts because he doesn’t know if he can handle much more. “Just. I can feel you everywhere.” They’re both breathless, and he doesn’t have to explain, because he knows Chuck feels the same. He doesn’t even need the Ghost Drift to tell him that – he can just tell when Chuck draws him closer.
Their sex is slow, unhurried, not at all desperate, the complete opposite of how they used to fight with each other. Raleigh takes Chuck’s cock in his hands to stroke him to completion, and he remembers to pull out before he finishes, coating Chuck with his own release. “Gross.” Chuck tries to make a face, but he looks to content to pull it off too well.
“Mm.” Raleigh rubs Chuck down with the sheets and pushes it off the bed, spoons him from the back. He pressed his nose to Chuck’s neck. “That’s too clean for my liking.”
“Wha…?” Chuck’s sleepy, and he doesn’t bother to even turn. Raleigh bites down, maybe a little too hard judging by Chuck’s cursing, but he only squirms, doesn’t try to get away when Raleigh sucks a mark into his neck.
“We aren’t friends, Chuck.”
“No,” Chuck agrees, turning to bite his nose. They grin at each other when Raleigh tangles their ankles together. “We aren’t.”