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last01standingTitle: Love of the Fight
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Pacific Rim
Disclaimer: Not for profit
Summary: He doesn’t kiss her then either.
Author's note: Oh god I'm not even in this fandom. I actually think this fandom is mildly insane. Because while I thought this movie was good, I saw it once and didn't get to the freak out. But I know this fandom is all about representation and the glance at aO3 says its not yet supplied ace!Raleigh fic. Which is a failure. So I'm doing it.
Love of the Fight
Facing the end of the world, there’s crush of people who turn to life affirming sex. Yancey has whole books of pick-up lines, will drag Raleigh out to bars to play wingman, where he sidles up to the prettiest girl he finds, lowers his voice and says, “You know, if the last thing I ever saw was you, I think that I’d be happy.”
It works an appalling amount of the time but the failure rate is still astronomical.
And that’s why Raleigh’s always invited to these ventures when he’s honestly just as happy to play pick up basketball at the gym until his body aches. He loves himself a good fight, grew up fists bloodied, face battered. Give him a cause and he’s never going to turn one down. Yancey’s failures at pick-up lines aren’t a good reason, but gigantic monsters are stomping San Francisco and if that’s not a good reason to feel alive, Raleigh doesn’t know what is.
They’re recruited right out of a bar, Yancey chatting up the wrong girl. Her boyfriend’s military and there are six different people wiling to back up their fellow soldier. The brothers are brought to a military lock-up, stitched up by nearly identical nurses. The man who approaches them afterward is not there to press charges.
“You boys look like you’ve been fighting together for a long time,” he says.
“What have you heard about Jaegers?” he says.
*
There’s something impersonal about sex at the end of the world, about sex all together. Raleigh gets love. He’s been in love. The girl in high school, Savannah Knight, who’d patched him up after a fight. Who’d held his hand in the hall and passed scribbled notes during class. Who’d kissed him once and waited for him to get on with the rest of it. Who’d screamed, If you don’t want me, just nut up and fucking say so.
She’s dead now, causality of San Francisco and a kaiju. He wonders about her sometimes, if she would have stayed if he could have put words to it. Raleigh’s never been one to hide, has always known precisely what exists in his own head. It’s the other people who’ve never managed to look.
The drift makes it impossible not to see. His brother’s mind pressing against his own, two halves of the same whole. They’re overnight rock stars after the first fight, and while Raleigh’s blood is singing with adrenaline, tracing the phantom lines of blue kaiju blood against shared fists, Yancey’s smiling at the pretty support tech girl, a different kind of restless building in his veins.
They only talk about it once. Big brother’s arm over the younger’s shoulder. “It’s all right, kid. Just means there’s more for me.”
*
This is Raleigh’s biggest secret: Yancey being dead makes it simpler.
There’s still a gaping hole in him. He wakes up, barely able to use his right side. He has Yancey’s allergic reaction to a peanut butter sandwich. When he sleeps, the ghosts of a woman’s hand traces lines over his skin. He uses up all of his water rations to get the sensation to leave.
Now, when the girls ask, he can say, I lost my other half. I’m not looking to let anyone else in.
And he hates that it’s that easy.
*
He falls in love with Mako at first sight.
No, that’s wrong. He falls in love with Mako when he first sees her fight. The counters to his own moves pushing him farther, pushing him harder and the empty part in his brain that Yancey left starts to wake up. He feels drunk on it, that possibility. We’re drift compatible. Can you feel it? What we could do? How we can win?
He wonders if it feels the same for her, rush of the fight, of the possibilities, blood singing in tandem with another person for the first time in years.
*
Mako doesn’t fill the places Yancey left. Doesn’t even try and that’s why it works. Impossible to hid in a drift, but Raleigh’s never wanted to hide. The looks of longing in the hallway stop, and they fall into step instead. Two halves of the same brain
And it’s better and it’s worse and he doesn’t bother trying to sort it out while there are still kaiju to fight.
*
Their recovery is filmed. The two minute clip of the Raleigh holding Mako as the rescue squad makes their way to their escape pods. The news has a field day spinning tales of the epic romance. Intimacy enhanced by drifting. The love thick in their gazes. He gets letters by the dozen. They say thank you, good job, and why didn’t you kiss her?
Raleigh knows this: for all that they won that day, they lost, too.
Raleigh knows this: Mako will be his best friend until the day he dies.
*
On the anniversary, they go back to the same stretch of ocean where it ended and light a candle for Chuck Hansen, for Stacker Pentecost, for hundreds of thousands more who they never met. Mako leans a head onto his shoulder he slings his arm around her waist.
He doesn’t kiss her then either.
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Pacific Rim
Disclaimer: Not for profit
Summary: He doesn’t kiss her then either.
Author's note: Oh god I'm not even in this fandom. I actually think this fandom is mildly insane. Because while I thought this movie was good, I saw it once and didn't get to the freak out. But I know this fandom is all about representation and the glance at aO3 says its not yet supplied ace!Raleigh fic. Which is a failure. So I'm doing it.
Facing the end of the world, there’s crush of people who turn to life affirming sex. Yancey has whole books of pick-up lines, will drag Raleigh out to bars to play wingman, where he sidles up to the prettiest girl he finds, lowers his voice and says, “You know, if the last thing I ever saw was you, I think that I’d be happy.”
It works an appalling amount of the time but the failure rate is still astronomical.
And that’s why Raleigh’s always invited to these ventures when he’s honestly just as happy to play pick up basketball at the gym until his body aches. He loves himself a good fight, grew up fists bloodied, face battered. Give him a cause and he’s never going to turn one down. Yancey’s failures at pick-up lines aren’t a good reason, but gigantic monsters are stomping San Francisco and if that’s not a good reason to feel alive, Raleigh doesn’t know what is.
They’re recruited right out of a bar, Yancey chatting up the wrong girl. Her boyfriend’s military and there are six different people wiling to back up their fellow soldier. The brothers are brought to a military lock-up, stitched up by nearly identical nurses. The man who approaches them afterward is not there to press charges.
“You boys look like you’ve been fighting together for a long time,” he says.
“What have you heard about Jaegers?” he says.
*
There’s something impersonal about sex at the end of the world, about sex all together. Raleigh gets love. He’s been in love. The girl in high school, Savannah Knight, who’d patched him up after a fight. Who’d held his hand in the hall and passed scribbled notes during class. Who’d kissed him once and waited for him to get on with the rest of it. Who’d screamed, If you don’t want me, just nut up and fucking say so.
She’s dead now, causality of San Francisco and a kaiju. He wonders about her sometimes, if she would have stayed if he could have put words to it. Raleigh’s never been one to hide, has always known precisely what exists in his own head. It’s the other people who’ve never managed to look.
The drift makes it impossible not to see. His brother’s mind pressing against his own, two halves of the same whole. They’re overnight rock stars after the first fight, and while Raleigh’s blood is singing with adrenaline, tracing the phantom lines of blue kaiju blood against shared fists, Yancey’s smiling at the pretty support tech girl, a different kind of restless building in his veins.
They only talk about it once. Big brother’s arm over the younger’s shoulder. “It’s all right, kid. Just means there’s more for me.”
*
This is Raleigh’s biggest secret: Yancey being dead makes it simpler.
There’s still a gaping hole in him. He wakes up, barely able to use his right side. He has Yancey’s allergic reaction to a peanut butter sandwich. When he sleeps, the ghosts of a woman’s hand traces lines over his skin. He uses up all of his water rations to get the sensation to leave.
Now, when the girls ask, he can say, I lost my other half. I’m not looking to let anyone else in.
And he hates that it’s that easy.
*
He falls in love with Mako at first sight.
No, that’s wrong. He falls in love with Mako when he first sees her fight. The counters to his own moves pushing him farther, pushing him harder and the empty part in his brain that Yancey left starts to wake up. He feels drunk on it, that possibility. We’re drift compatible. Can you feel it? What we could do? How we can win?
He wonders if it feels the same for her, rush of the fight, of the possibilities, blood singing in tandem with another person for the first time in years.
*
Mako doesn’t fill the places Yancey left. Doesn’t even try and that’s why it works. Impossible to hid in a drift, but Raleigh’s never wanted to hide. The looks of longing in the hallway stop, and they fall into step instead. Two halves of the same brain
And it’s better and it’s worse and he doesn’t bother trying to sort it out while there are still kaiju to fight.
*
Their recovery is filmed. The two minute clip of the Raleigh holding Mako as the rescue squad makes their way to their escape pods. The news has a field day spinning tales of the epic romance. Intimacy enhanced by drifting. The love thick in their gazes. He gets letters by the dozen. They say thank you, good job, and why didn’t you kiss her?
Raleigh knows this: for all that they won that day, they lost, too.
Raleigh knows this: Mako will be his best friend until the day he dies.
*
On the anniversary, they go back to the same stretch of ocean where it ended and light a candle for Chuck Hansen, for Stacker Pentecost, for hundreds of thousands more who they never met. Mako leans a head onto his shoulder he slings his arm around her waist.
He doesn’t kiss her then either.
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(no subject)
6/10/13 07:13 (UTC)(no subject)
6/10/13 13:20 (UTC)But as for Mako and Raleigh. They were in literally in each other's heads for half the movie. Mako was all about the chest. If they were going to bone, they would have kissed at the end. But then they didn't and it was great.
Also the more I watch Sheppard, the more he's totally not a Manly Action Dude and more Gigantic Dork who Failed His Way to the Pegasus Galaxy. Which is one of the reasons I love him moooost.
(no subject)
6/10/13 19:24 (UTC)(I am going to write all the ace!Alex fic and it's gonna be ridiculous, mark my words. That fandom will be out of control.)
(no subject)
6/10/13 20:40 (UTC)(Is it kind of funny that literally the biggest reason Alex is ace is the fact that I wanted to foreshadow Elle so he wound up flinching every time she touched him? And then because I had no idea who Alex was when I started writing this it kind of got internalized to his character. God nano makes the strangest things happen to people.)
(no subject)
6/10/13 09:00 (UTC)(no subject)
6/10/13 13:24 (UTC)(no subject)
8/10/13 04:09 (UTC)(no subject)
9/10/13 03:23 (UTC)I'm really glad it worked for you.
(no subject)
8/10/13 18:45 (UTC)This is perfect and so, so, so well done.
(no subject)
9/10/13 03:25 (UTC)(Bit of a random question, but does the PR fandom play the drift for horror much? Because I feel like there's a huge potential for playing the drift for horror. Because having someone die when you're in their brain cannot be good for your mental health.)
(no subject)
9/10/13 03:31 (UTC)Uh, let's see. Oh, there's the issue of the Hansens - Before Herc piloted with his son Chuck, he piloted with his brother. Travis Beacham (the screenwriter) has told us that during a drop, Herc saw something REALLY terrible and awful in the drift with Scott (you can't hide anything in the drift...) and has alluded to it being REALLY awful. Herc then had his brother drummed out of the PPDC because of it.
So there's a potential for horror, but I think that most people tend to lean more on the sadness aspect? However, given the universe, I think there are some really interesting things to be done with a horror bent to things but I'm not sure how it would work.
And that is a REALLY long answer to your question, whoops. XD
(no subject)
9/10/13 11:41 (UTC)I'm actually really disappointed? Yeah. My glance through a03 showed a lot of really great representation, but more with happiness and domesticity or angst.
(no subject)
9/10/13 18:16 (UTC)Also, the thing about it is that Pacific Rim is a really, really new fandom. Like, yeah, as far as these characters go, we all sort of want to see happiness and domesticity, but there's also a fair amount of angst because of the events of the movie. So I wouldn't be to terribly disappointed JUST yet, because I think there's still a lot of people for whom the shiny and new feeling hasn't worn off yet. However, again, it should be noted that I don't tend to read horror in Pacific Rim because there's so many horrifying events. So I thought that maybe I'd offer up some recs?
As far as recs go: I recommend taking a poke around quigonejinn's stuff because they write some amazing things and while they're not necessarily horror, they are definitely not the typical fare from the fandom. (Quigonejinn's Pacific Rim fics) (http://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn/works?fandom_id=872785)
Before I burned myself out on Newt and Hermann, I did read a couple that were viscerally wrenching and very much in the level of, 'I need to step away for a moment', so here they are:
Needful Things by icarus_chained (http://archiveofourown.org/works/940441): Newt had thought that the Anteverse would be the most terrible thing he encountered in the Drift. He was wrong. Some horrors are ever so much closer to home. (A bit of a Lovecraftian mashup. As much as I have issues with Lovecraft, I thought this was lovely.)
Corpus Callosum by balphesian (http://archiveofourown.org/works/911244): This one has a pretty vague summary but it's a lot about the aftermath of the Drift with Hermann and Newt being exactly as they are but with the Kaiju still involved, in a way. It's less horror and more disturbing.
Geiszler's Kaiju by Lancinate (http://archiveofourown.org/works/900747): Drifting with a kaiju isn’t like drifting with a human. Or maybe it is. All Newt knows is that he’s changed. That he hasn’t just seen their memories, he’s felt them. And, well, it’s making him think things.
Soft by digitalis (http://archiveofourown.org/works/902916): Newton Geiszler saves the world. (This one is gorgeous and really plays to the fact that Newt's specialty was actually in tissue replication.)
And finally, the last two (I'm a little embarrassed that this is so long, I'M SORRY, I REALLY LIKE TO TALK.)
Lazarus Syndrome by Miss_Six (http://archiveofourown.org/works/912703): Raleigh’s never told anyone, but he’s pretty sure he died in his escape pod after nuking the Breach. (This one is less horror and more emotionally driven but it's possibly one of my absolute favorites.)
Bee Dance by butterflydreaming (http://archiveofourown.org/works/902725): The kaiju were not "great beasts" following a hunting-and-gathering instinct. They were an invading army following orders. Armies are made of soldiers.
Otachi was going in to battle, she had an unborn child growing inside her, and she still had a connection to a foreign mind somewhere in the new world. (This one, again, is less horror but there's still that element of dawning, "Oh dear god," because it gives this other perspective to Otachi and the Kaiju.)
WOW, THIS GOT SO LONG. I am so sorry, oh my god. If you want me to shut up, I totally will. I just. Really love this movie and this fandom and I will talk about it for days if you let me. *facepalm*
(no subject)
11/10/13 03:00 (UTC)[But I will get to these. Dammit. Because by all rights there should be horror in this fandom. There are so very many opportunities. ]
(no subject)
11/10/13 06:13 (UTC)I know pretty much all I need to know about SPN from Tumblr and I'm pretty okay with that. I've watched a handful of episodes, but other than that, I don't really get into that fandom.
(And ahahahaha, those are the ones I've enjoyed. Again, I couldn't tell you if there is horror but I can tell you that for a fandom that only got started in July, it's pretty impressive. At least, it is to me. The amount of fic - and varied fic with lovely representation - that's popped up is super impressive to me.)
(no subject)
7/1/14 05:14 (UTC)I'm really glad you wrote it, even though PR isn't really your kinda fandom! (imo, it was a fandom that needed your kinda fic.)
(no subject)
8/1/14 02:20 (UTC)