[ her hand comes down onto his arm, and it isn't anything like electricity. but it's the first time someone's touched him since he got here, since he suited up to head into the breach, and it does something to his nerve endings. chuck doesn't short circuit. but part of him sinks. comes out of the air and seeps back into his bones. returns him to his body.
his gaze drops on reflex, moves to the single point that defines the be-all-end-all of their connection, like he just needs to see it to be sure. like burning the image into his memory will mean something. here, or now. whatever those words were supposed to count for. when chuck finally looks back at her it's impossible to define the difference. there's no loss of tension, no absence of mangled identities and half-formed ideas about who and why and what they are. but chuck nods, and something- some small, translucent piece between them, slots into place. ]
[ He doesn't look any different and neither does she (he doesn't stand taller, his eyes aren't softer; their gaze they share is still lined with things left unsaid and swallowed) but there's a sense that something has come into realignment, like a part of themselves that had been thrown out of kilter the moment Chuck woke in this place to air in his lungs and blood pumping through his veins. Even without a word Mako knows it because she feels that same piece shift inside her as well. Like a lens racking forward only to finally find focus, indistinct lines sharpening again, gravity pulling once more on their feet. When they were children they used to speak this way for hours, but simply looking at one another and knowing without having to ask. (It's what had convinced them, once upon a time, that they would be copilots, that there wasn't anyone else in the whole wide world who could possibly understand themselves they way they understood one another.)
It's not exactly a comfortable sensation (they're different people now and had put that aside for a reason) but it's there and makes manifest in the moment that follows, in the way that Mako mouth forms a slightly bowed shape and she turns, stepping back to let Chuck in a little further into her room. ]
You're not in your suit, [ she observes. (The moment lingers but Mako refuses to talk about it. That wasn't her way and it wasn't theirs either.) ]
[ he's always been crap with small talk. it's the kind of thing he's heard comes to you with practice. with enough time and energy and rehearsal. chuck's always preferred to spend his time pushing himself into exhaustion and making something collapse under the weight of his (anger) fists.
but here they are, how many years later and how long after the fast- moving around each other and working through their paces. like this is the kwoon. something the could still learn. still master.
chuck follows her lead, steps inside, and while he isn't outright wary- there's certainly a caution of his movement. something about the way his weight moves that betrays his awareness to his surroundings, to her. ]
Even as children, they spent the majority of what time they had together knotted up in an intent and sometimes furious silence — two kids who had stopped being kids far too early and who had nothing but their training and one another to teach them what to become instead. Conversation, chit-chat, talk about the weather (—how's the family—), those were skills that normal people cultivated in the day-to-day. Things that, as adults, neither Mako or Chuck have much practice in or much use for.
Still, an attempt is made — albeit a stilted one. Mako comments on the state of Chuck's suit and his response doesn't have a clear line for her to follow from one thought to the next. Her brow puckers in obvious (still silent) confusion as she looks at him for a long moment.
Was he calling her a persistent girl for asking? Or had some young, tenacious female help him out of his drivesuit?
The pucker to Mako's brow furrows deeper at that second possibility. Then it shifts and changes shape to resemble something closer to: you didn't, did you. ]
[ mako is different now. different than the girl she was before and maybe it's age and yeah maybe part of it's experience- the difference between standing in the walls of the shatterdome and suiting up to become part of a jaeger. but if chuck is going to take it apart- if he's going to hold it up to the light and be sure, then he knows it isn't the jaeger and knows it wasn't stacker, knows it wasn't him.
mako's different because of becket.
once, he thought he could see the distance between them in feet and inches. now they stand opposite by miles. ]
[ For the longest time they stood opposite one another, comparable in the eyes of others in almost every way. A sliver of age separated Mako from Chuck, but they were both orphaned children with widowed fathers, kids who grew up in the military because that's what their dads knew and they were destined to be made in their fathers' images. As children they were peers, as cadets they were rivals, and for each step or leap or bound that Chuck took Mako pushed herself to keep the pace, to match his stride (and sometimes excel); to not fall behind.
That changed following graduation, when Chuck was assigned to copilot Striker with his father and Mako's drift stability fell into question again and again. After that, Mako found herself lagging behind while Chuck continued to leap ahead: into the conn-pod and onto the evening news. (—that's Striker Eureka's tenth kill to date—) Two paths that ran in tandem then diverged, one to the neural bridge and one to the engineering bay, but even then their past held them together, a tautly held thread constantly threatening to snap.
Now, however, Mako's not too sure. Becoming one of Gipsy's pilots had brought her and Chuck side by side again after a long absence, but something (maybe it's her, maybe it's Chuck, maybe it's death) seems to have thrown that into imbalance once more. (It's Raleigh, she'll realize the next time she looks at her copilot, her gaze tracing his brow to the slope of his nose and down to his mouth and away again.)
Mako doesn't roll her eyes (she hasn't since she was a child) but maybe the desire is there. ] I had help.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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his gaze drops on reflex, moves to the single point that defines the be-all-end-all of their connection, like he just needs to see it to be sure. like burning the image into his memory will mean something. here, or now. whatever those words were supposed to count for. when chuck finally looks back at her it's impossible to define the difference. there's no loss of tension, no absence of mangled identities and half-formed ideas about who and why and what they are. but chuck nods, and something- some small, translucent piece between them, slots into place. ]
no subject
It's not exactly a comfortable sensation (they're different people now and had put that aside for a reason) but it's there and makes manifest in the moment that follows, in the way that Mako mouth forms a slightly bowed shape and she turns, stepping back to let Chuck in a little further into her room. ]
You're not in your suit, [ she observes. (The moment lingers but Mako refuses to talk about it. That wasn't her way and it wasn't theirs either.) ]
no subject
but here they are, how many years later and how long after the fast- moving around each other and working through their paces. like this is the kwoon. something the could still learn. still master.
chuck follows her lead, steps inside, and while he isn't outright wary- there's certainly a caution of his movement. something about the way his weight moves that betrays his awareness to his surroundings, to her. ]
Persistent girl.
no subject
Even as children, they spent the majority of what time they had together knotted up in an intent and sometimes furious silence — two kids who had stopped being kids far too early and who had nothing but their training and one another to teach them what to become instead. Conversation, chit-chat, talk about the weather (—how's the family—), those were skills that normal people cultivated in the day-to-day. Things that, as adults, neither Mako or Chuck have much practice in or much use for.
Still, an attempt is made — albeit a stilted one. Mako comments on the state of Chuck's suit and his response doesn't have a clear line for her to follow from one thought to the next. Her brow puckers in obvious (still silent) confusion as she looks at him for a long moment.
Was he calling her a persistent girl for asking? Or had some young, tenacious female help him out of his drivesuit?
The pucker to Mako's brow furrows deeper at that second possibility. Then it shifts and changes shape to resemble something closer to: you didn't, did you. ]
no subject
mako's different because of becket.
once, he thought he could see the distance between them in feet and inches. now they stand opposite by miles. ]
Y'aren't wearing yours either.
no subject
That changed following graduation, when Chuck was assigned to copilot Striker with his father and Mako's drift stability fell into question again and again. After that, Mako found herself lagging behind while Chuck continued to leap ahead: into the conn-pod and onto the evening news. (—that's Striker Eureka's tenth kill to date—) Two paths that ran in tandem then diverged, one to the neural bridge and one to the engineering bay, but even then their past held them together, a tautly held thread constantly threatening to snap.
Now, however, Mako's not too sure. Becoming one of Gipsy's pilots had brought her and Chuck side by side again after a long absence, but something (maybe it's her, maybe it's Chuck, maybe it's death) seems to have thrown that into imbalance once more. (It's Raleigh, she'll realize the next time she looks at her copilot, her gaze tracing his brow to the slope of his nose and down to his mouth and away again.)
Mako doesn't roll her eyes (she hasn't since she was a child) but maybe the desire is there. ] I had help.
[ Who was yours? ]