Straight, No Chaser

Raleigh Becket woke up as the last light from the setting sun was shining through his window, moving just enough to test the soreness in his muscles without waking the woman who currently had one of her arms draped possessively across his scarred chest.

Not that he blamed Mako for her subconscious fear; Raleigh understood it completely. It just made waking up first a bit tricky.

As he successfully extricated himself and moved to the edge of the bed, the former pilot smiled as he remembered just how nice it was to not be sleeping on a cot anymore. He'd miss the comfortable familiarity of the Shatterdome, but the apartment he and Mako had bought with some of their severance pay from the Jaeger program felt a lot more like home.

Rising to his feet and getting dressed, Raleigh scribbled a note in Japanese and left it on the bedside table, apologizing in advance at the end for any wince-inducing errors in his kana. His speech was fine, but Mako seemed to enjoy pointing out that he wrote like a twenty-six year old fourth grader.

Grabbing his jacket from its place over a nearby chair, Raleigh headed out the door, down the stairs and out into the bustling streets of Hong Kong at night. The city was putting itself back together piece by piece, and Raleigh smiled as he returned a greeting from one of the friends he'd made working, once again, in construction.

It was only a short walk from his apartment to the nearest bar, and Raleigh found himself bombarded by an enthusiastic embrace from the bar's owner seconds after walking in.

"Welcome back!" he said happily in Chinese. "How are you, Mister Becket?"

"Very well, Mister Yuan," Raleigh replied, and the owner laughed.

"Your tone is better," Yuan complimented in English. "It no longer makes my ears bleed!"

"Thanks," Raleigh replied, chuckling. "Slow learner."

Yuan shrugged, taking Raleigh by the shoulder and walking with him over to the bar.

"At least you're trying," he said. "That's what counts. Hey, doesn't this guy work with you?"

Raleigh looked over and saw a very familiar tattooed arm resting against the bar, its hand holding an empty pint glass with an equally empty shot glass sitting at the bottom.

"Fancy seeing you here, Doctor," he said as he took the seat next to Newt, who looked like he was well on his way to being completely hammered. "What's the occasion?"

Newt didn't even look up from gazing at his empty glass when he answered, his hand idly moving the glass around and shifting the shot glass from side to side.

"I spent six years getting my PhD, dude," he said. "Six years. And don't think that was easy, 'cause it sure as hell wasn't. Kaiju biology is like human biology on sixteen tons of steroids, plus a few more."

"And?"

"And now it's totally worthless," Newt finished, "because there aren't any more Kaiju. Putting 'Kaiju Science Expert' on my resume now is like saying I'm real good at building rotary telephones. Who cares?"

Raleigh offered his friend a pat on the shoulder as he accepted a shot glass of his own filled with whiskey.

"Hey, think about it this way," he said. "I'm pretty sure reference letters from three different heads of state will get you any job you want. But if you don't want any of those, word is Hannibal Chau's a few people short of a full deck."

Newt paused, his foggy eyes squinted in thought as he weighed the chance to keep studying Kaiju against working with someone who had almost gotten him killed on more than one occasion.

"Yeah," he said at last, "that might work." Newt accepted another boilermaker from the bartender with a nod, taking the shot glass and dropping it into the beer. "Who knows," he continued, "maybe Kaiju livers have the cure for the common cold hidden somewhere in 'em."

"That's the spirit," Raleigh said with a chuckle as he watched his friend courageously gulp his way through another drink on his continuing journey to drunkenness. "Start clearing off shelf space for that Nobel Prize, Doc."

"Hell yeah," Newt agreed enthusiastically, putting his empty glass down on the bar. "I'll drink to that!"

Newt's plan for another drink were brought to an abrupt halt, however, by the arrival of a very flustered Hermann Gottlieb.

"Newton, for heaven's sake," he grumbled as he made his way over to the bar, "this isn't the end of the world. We already prevented that, remember?"

Newt said something unintelligible, and Hermann shook his head.

"He'll be fine," Raleigh assured the other scientist, as Hermann and a bystander carefully removed Newt from his barstool and began to guide him over towards a couch. "Don't worry about him."

"With all due respect, Mister Becket," Hermann replied with a weak smile, "someone has to. Might as well be me."

Raleigh smiled in kind, reaching for his shot of whiskey to toast the sentiment. But just before he grabbed it, the glass was taken by another hand and pulled away.

"Wha—?" he began to ask as he looked over, before a splash of blue color on black hair killed the question. "I didn't know you drank."

"Of course," Mako answered as she sat down next to Raleigh, sliding his empty shot glass back to him. "Just can't pilot a Jaeger drunk, is all."

"Fair enough," Raleigh yielded, ordering another shot.

Then he got an idea, and a sly smile slowly appeared on his face.

"How much you wanna bet I can drink you under the table?"

Mako laughed as she accepted another glass of her own.

"I won't," she said. "Winning easy money is no fun."

Raleigh did a double-take at the response, before accepting that there was now no turning back. Mako had officially crossed the line. He smiled, drinking his shot and signaling for another.

"That sounds like a challenge," he said in Japanese. "Last chance to back off, Mako."

Her smile was pure mischief.

"You should know by now, Raleigh," she said, "I don't lose."

They clinked their shot glasses together and drank in unison, and Raleigh did not at all like how calm his partner's face looked. Mako saw the look in his eyes and flashed a grin that meant only one thing:

You are so very, very screwed.

Two shots later, Raleigh was beginning to feel his body warming up and Mako looked like she'd just been drinking water.

"Want to just give up now?"

Raleigh replied by downing another shot, glaring petulantly at Mako.

Mako answered the unspoken challenge without missing a beat, and Yuan stopped by their seats just long enough to rub it in.

"Looks like you're done for," he laughed. "Still, no shame in losing to someone like her."

"I haven't lost," Raleigh replied, in Chinese so good it made Yuan's eyes widen in surprise. "And I won't."

It was the last thing Raleigh could remember saying that night as he woke up the next morning in his bed wearing his pajamas, with a raging hangover and a miserable headache to match.

"Wait," he said slowly as he watched Mako drink some tea, clearly fighting not to laugh. "You carried me back here after I passed out?"

"Yes," she assured him. "Thank you for not throwing up on me. How do you feel?"

"Absolutely awful," Raleigh groaned, before he saw the teasingly expectant look on Mako's face and gave a weak laugh. "And yes," he continued, "you won. Congratulations."

She laughed, leaning forward and kissing Raleigh on the forehead.

"I always do," Mako said. "Try to remember that next time."

Raleigh nodded as he fell back to sleep. When he woke up a few hours later, he felt a familiar warmth across his chest.

This time, he stayed right where he was, sinking back to sleep with a contented sigh.

…

…

A/N: Holy crap, it wasn't depressing! Good times. I felt like these guys deserved some laughs after all they've been through, so here you go. Hope you enjoyed it, and thanks for reading!

And for those in the audience wondering: yes, drinking does make your foreign language skills better, up to a point. And then you can't speak in any language, period.

Also, this story is named after a song by the musician Thelonious Monk, which is an amazing piece of improvised jazz music. Go listen to it!