When it's over, everyone expects something to happen. The air is charged with it—the hope that comes with the War finally being over. But for a while, nothing really happens.
There are still miles and miles of coastal land that won't be inhabited for years. There are fish—some of them dead, some of them malformed, some both—that wash up on shores unexpected, riddled with disease and scarring and worse, all of them tinged blue. Everyone who was ever lost during the twelve years' war is still gone. The riots don't all stop. There is talk of peace but an utter lack of planning. A world bent on surviving is suddenly faced with the prospect of living again.
No one expects to survive the Apocalypse.
And so the hounds are restless. Not the small Category 1 and 2 monsters but much smaller ones than that. People. Specifically, people with press passes and cameras and bulky, padded microphones. Most specifically, namely: the PPDN.
12 years. 24 hours a day. Over 50 countries and dependent and independent territories.
Countless interested parties. All around the world, the propaganda machine whirred on and on and on...
When the Breach closes, the world is brand new. The slate's wiped clean and all the hushed silence that had fallen, halting sales and production of Kaiju and Jaeger shoes and toys and clothes lifts away. It's boom time again.
All because of a single clip. A clip that's played over and over and over again. The sound is muted more often than not—when it's played it's just the constant, rhythmic whip of a propeller up above, drowning out the slosh of the ocean down below. The footage is grainy, out of focus, but there's only one thing it's even trying to focus on. Down right in front and then just below the lens's view is a liquid balloon of green spreading out, a flare in the water, and then another much more interesting metal, bobbing speck. The latter speck is occupied by two figures, leaned forward and touching, one damp, dark head of hair and another light and dry. Then one leaned against the other's shoulder, head ducking down, and in the vibrating, poor footage, it's still easy to make out an impression of both their faces...
The clip wasn't supposed to have been public. It is one of a dozen or so nearly identical clips that exist, all from slightly different angles. It just so happens that it's the one that got leaked.
Someone got in trouble over that. Someone lost their job and their rank over that. That someone didn't care.
And just like that, it's so simple—what's going to happen next. It's so simple, what the world will look at with rapt attention, inclining their heads toward the myriad television screens mounted in every public place and nearly every home.
Just like that: Mako Mori and Raleigh Becket are the two most famous people on planet Earth.
oOoOo
There's a high-pitched, sustained note of music that drowns out the natural ambient noise of the long, rectangular room. Occasionally a clap interrupts the noise, or a deeper thump, a building beat works its way up to blend with it and fade out again.
To Raleigh, it makes the whole place seem surreal—underwater. The choice of soundtrack is where the similarities to the nearby ocean begin and end. The light is shades of warm pink and yellow and stark white, all at different and probably somehow appropriate angles. The floor is the color of cream, speckled with hardly visible mica that shimmers if he changes the angle of his gaze. All of it is perfectly brand new.
Outside, and pretty much anywhere else in Hong Kong, a person can hear machinery going all hours of the day and night.
Reconstruction.
It's everywhere, not just in Hong Kong, but all along the Pacific Rim. Not here, though. Here there's a little safe haven, a sacred ground they've been polishing up, making ready for the cameras, like it's the Olympics or royalty arriving. For all he knows, some royalty might be—it's been a while since there was something of Olympic magnitude to celebrate.
The thought just serves to bring him back into the moment, where he prefers to live—most of the time. In this polished little bubble away from the reality down on streets, made all the more complete by the music and excited bursts of chatter in the background, Raleigh has been shorn and trimmed and even plucked to the point that when he looks in the mirror—positioned directly in front of him and surrounded by bare bulbs—it kind of looks like the last five years didn't even happen.
In fact, he's probably more clean-cut than he was then, especially given the clothes he knows they're going to help him into just as soon as they've pored over his reflection a little longer. They ask for his opinion about things he really has no idea about as they come and go. For now, he's just got a white crew-necked t-shirt and some dark blue, issued sweatpants.
He really wishes it could stay that way, already dreading the night that lies ahead.
"What do you think, Mr. Becket?" the woman who'd been in charge of the electric razor asks, approaching his side again.
His eyes follow her movement into the reflection in front of him. He really doesn't know what to say about his new haircut, though. It's... nice? But in the grand scheme of things it seems embarrassingly mundane.
He opens his mouth to say something, to come up with anything, but then he hears the click of a high heel on the floor—distinct from everything else including the high pitch and the repetitive thumping—and he realizes his mistake. Fishing a foot down to the floor, he pivots himself around to face Mako. He's glad he didn't manage to say something stupid that would alienate her before they have to face their biggest media circus yet. He knows he really shouldn't worry too much about that, but...
She seems so far away sometimes, now that they don't actively share everything.
It takes him a long moment of doing something that's a bit between staring and losing focus to realize that it's still a little bit strange that the stylist asked him what he thought. When he looks up and sees Mako's eyes, the slight part of her lips, she seems like she's waiting. For something, anyway.
Her dress falls short against her thighs and she still stands as poised as ever. Something about the way she balances on the heels seems a little different, but nothing about them throws her off. It surprises him a little. The fabric of the dress is a dark, dulled blue, familiar and with a faint sheen. A band of fabric runs horizontally across her waist just beneath her chest, set off only by its seams. Affixed right in the center of it, there is a large brooch which outshines the dress with a radiating sparkle each time she moves, each time she breathes—concentric circles, red, white, red. Raleigh's eyes study the costume—because that's what it is, a costume as much as a dress—with a kind of bemused recognition. It's beautiful, but there's something in the fact that she's become the Jaeger that the two of them saved the world with, the one she restored—he wonders if she's really okay with it.
Finally, he snaps his eyes back up and notes the way they've elongated her hair more than time and natural growth had done on their own. Extensions, he thinks they're called. That's all he knows about it.
When he meets her eyes, he flashes her a broad, unrepentant grin.
"You look good," he tells her, words drawling into one another in a familiar way that glides over his tongue like the memory the two of them share. No one else in the room knows about it, but he sees the way her head tilts softly under the brush of it and feels some secret thrill.
He sees a slight twitch in her lips that goes beyond her smile. For a second, he thinks she is going to say something but he watches as she changes her mind. Then he loses her gaze as she turns to look at his still-hanging suit. It's just plain black and white—normal, a dime a dozen. Only probably not actually worth a dime—maybe worth a bit more than that.
"Gonna outshine me like the moon to the stars," he amends, still eying the way she eyes the suit. When she looks at him, he can tell she's sizing him up again.
Maybe the suit isn't such a bad idea.
Raleigh finally decides to stop waiting around for permission to stand up and presses both his sock feet to the foot rest bar of the salon chair and helps himself up, shifting side to side against the smooth floor just off the padding that still has little golden and brownish traces of hair that used to be somewhere on his head. The only thing he sees are brown eyes as he moves forward, familiar and smiling like her mouth. He hardly notices that someone intercepts them, jolting back just a little when a small American woman reaches out and takes Mako gently by the forearm with her hand. Raleigh's eyebrows shoot up, wondering if the woman between them notices the slackening around Mako's lips and eyes that indicates something at least bordering on annoyance. She is never anything but polite, though.
"Here you are, Miss Mori," the woman says, holding out a small, red clutch, pressing it gently into Mako's palm like a handshake. It matches the red in the brooch.
Mako's eyes shift from Raleigh's to study up and down the woman's face, her hand automatically gripping the fabric from beneath.
"Thank you," she prefaces, and Raleigh can already hear the way she means 'Thanks, but no thanks,' and he can see the way the woman doesn't get it. "But I don't need to carry anything with me. No identification is needed and I don't have any money to carry," she explains.
For some reason, it's absolutely riotous to the women and one other man in the room. Raleigh lifts his chin up, sucking in a breath that he resists the urge to sigh out dramatically to draw the attention back away from her. He's protective. But then he realizes that the way she smiles—she's rolling with it. And, to be fair, he knew they weren't making fun of her. It's more the grating sensation of people laughing at a joke because of who a person is rather than what they have to say. Neither he nor Mako like that, and he knows it.
"Maybe I can use it to take something home with me. I am sure the food will be much better than in the mess," she answers with a little crinkle of disgust in her nose. She takes the clutch neatly into her possession, drawing back away from the woman who'd handed it to her. She's saved herself the spiel about why she ought to carry it because of who made it or what it means—all with this little quirk of wit that he knew was organic but which had seemed so restrained before the first time he'd seen her in a Jaeger. He knows it's all hers. He knows she owns it. Raleigh's proud to bursting, whether or not he has the right.
He pushes his shoulders forward and with a little wiggling shrug and tug, Raleigh has his t-shirt up and over his hand, holding it by the neck as he stands there, only clothed from the waist down, dogtag necklace conspicuously missing. He notices it set aside in a small tray with the hair trimming implements and he picks it up with a finger, working it back over his head with ease. The only set of eyes he pays any attention to are the same brown ones he'd been looking at before they were so inconveniently interrupted. There's something very inconvenient—tiring, really—about all of this.
Raleigh is, however, vaguely aware that the casual shedding of his clothes has the half-intended consequence of leveling out the concentration of attention in the room. Well, it actually settles it pretty firmly on him, but he doesn't mind. Much. He only starts to worry a little when he notices the way Mako's eyes go from fixing on him to shifting around the room. He reads the way she stands up ever so slightly straighter that she would rather him not use this tactic—or, well, that she'd rather them not respond to it.
He grabs for the white collared shirt and makes quick work of unbuttoning it and sliding it down from its hanger. Shrugging it on with only slightly more care than he'd used shrugging his t-shirt off, he quickly starts buttoning the thing. He takes a few steps over to Mako, so close he has to look down a little to see her eyes.
"Let's get me dressed and get this over with," he suggests. And the thing is, misunderstanding between them feels like it ought to be next to impossible, so he isn't entirely sure if he's startled by the slight sideways glance that appears to be embarrassment. Then she corrects her gaze and looks right at him and then lets it drop down right toward his collar. He can tell she is rising to a challenge, but that's not a challenge for now or here and suddenly he feels the skin flush hot up the back of his neck. He watches her and he thinks he sees—approval? Her fingertips touch the starchier-than-usual fabric that hangs still half-loose over his chest.
"Would you like any help with that, Mr. Becket?" the woman who had operated the electric razor asks. Then he sees something else in Mako's expression. A dip down, a drop of her chin, a certain sourness in the line of her mouth that barely moves at all and thinly veiled—disappointment?
"I can get me dressed," he amends, briefly touching her arm just beneath her elbow and lightly. She looks up at him and he sees a return of the light in her eyes—approval, definitely approval. Then he darts off to pick up the other hanging pieces of the suit and ducks into a room alone to change.
oOoOo
Herc Hansen hates suits and ties. He especially hates wearing the familiar dress blues he's forced to wear tonight because he doesn't own anything else of the like. He hangs around, pretty unremarkable off to the right of the shiny line of doors, poised on the top step and waiting for a car. He isn't a chauffeur or chaperone and it's not expressly his job to wait on them, but it's better than being inside where there is already a wall of music being emitted from speakers that come up to hip-height. Sometimes he recognizes chords—some of them from songs that had come about when the idea of winning had been big business but others are much, much older. He dully recognizes them, too. He can't get far away enough.
Glancing down for the time, he finally admits to himself that it's pointless to wait outside just yet. No matter how short the distance is, standing still isn't going to bring them any further into reach. Wishing minutes away is useless.
Abruptly, he steals away to head inside. Thankfully, the small sea of cordoned-off insect eyes, waiting to flash and flicker and capture, isn't really interested in him. He can keep moving, not caught in that underwater flash.
Inside, the air is a little thick with perfume that seems to emanate from the carpet, but once he's out of the hotel lobby and walks down the short flight of stairs toward the expansive ballroom it dissipates so he can breathe. The music is still much too loud.
A tap up by his ear and he asks in rote, not minding the ambient noise: "How are the exits?"
Positive reports.
"The roof?"
Very good, sir. Clear visual, sir.
All of them responding to him with 'sir.' Not a one of them PPDC. It's amazing, how clear his loyalties seem to him now—when it's all too late. The PPDC's presence here is as little more than bodyguard and back-up band to Becket and Mori. Not that they don't merit or need it, but it rankles him. Everyone conveniently forgets that the PPDC had fallen out of favor with the suits. They'd pulled the plug. But now it's like none of that happened and the entire grinning lot of them have nothing but praises for the Jaegers that brought the beasts down, that closed the Breach. And they mostly talk about the Jaeger. So he's stuck standing here—walking here, toward the first faces he recognizes and without a foggy comprehension as to why—in a suit.
"I'm telling you, it's so cool—well, I guess it was so cool, but you get what I'm saying. I mean... it's awful. Don't get me wrong. But I've been doing some research in my spare time since the Breach closed, and it's entirely possible—actually it's definitely what happened, but you get the turn of phrase—that the dinosaurs—" Newt Geiszler prattles on like a halting but unstoppable machine, his hands moving and gesturing like he's performing with shadow puppets and physically pushing his point home at the same time. He's wearing a more respectable shirt, but his jacket's already found a chair to drape over, his sleeves pushed up as high toward his elbows as they'll go. Something about that man simply cannot resist showing off every speck of ink, every monument to dead things, he can manage.
He's talking to a huddle of four people, two of whom are women. One's wide-eyed and eating it up—pretty, full-figured brunette. Herc sighs and tries not to indicate outward disgust or weariness, only fretting with reaching up and rubbing at the somewhat lengthy stubble along his jaw. They may have gotten him back in the suit, but they won't take his face from him. It's all he's got left.
He gives Newt and his chosen side of a round table, draped in white and a red runner, something of a wide berth. He circles around and strides instead over toward the other scientist. He's standing off to the side, inclined slightly toward Newt but seeming to hold as high a posture as steadying on his cane will allow. He's dressed well, though there's something a little uneasy to the eyes about the faint brocade-like pattern to his jacket. He looks very formal, a flower pinned to his lapel. Herc can't imagine being able to name it, though he imagines it has some significance.
"Like a party, do you?" he asks, wondering on his very next breath why he's chosen to engage in small talk at all.
"Not generally, no," Gottlieb replies, and for a moment it's every bit as monotone and slightly morose as Herc has come to expect. Then Gottlieb is smirking every so slightly and it settles onto his face in such a natural way that Herc actually looks at him for more than a cursory instant, his eyebrows lifting up a bit. "As I'm sure you might imagine."
"You don't say." It's not a question. That's likely friendliness enough for one day with them—the scientists, either of them. They've proven themselves good enough men, but Herc has absolutely no interest in provoking examination.
"Yes, sir. And this isn't simply a party. It's a great honor," Gottlieb responds, and Herc's eyebrows move a bit upward again when Gottlieb seems to find another vertebra's worth of height.
"Looks pretty damn well like a party to me," Herc retorts. Again, he doesn't know why he's talking. A scientist has called him 'sir.'
Hermann's gaze corrects itself toward his general direction and after a bit of hesitation he meets his eyes. It seems Gottlieb has been waiting.
"I realize. But for all this garish racket, I think it is still... an honor."
Herc wants to go and tear something substantial in half, but it's not anger with the scientist. In fact, he's rather impressed. He just hates that he thinks he fully understands what the other man is saying. He cannot afford to go and rip anything to pieces right now, so he settles for something else. A gesture.
"Suppose we dispense with the 'sir,' for the remainder of the evening," he suggests.
Hermann's dark eyes widen and he shakes his head quite insistently, shaking like a rattle for a moment.
"Oh, no, I mustn't," he insists, amicably and with a slight lift of his free hand. Then he's smiling again, playing off the gesture. "Wouldn't want just anyone getting the wrong idea," he says, faint gesture of his own just barely indicating Newt.
"We just won't tell him," Herc offers. Then he looks down and nods toward his dress blues. "... Least 'til I get my clothes back on?" he bargains, meeting Gottlieb's eyes with no pretenses. He breathes out when the other man seems to understand and gives him a nod.
"Oh yes, s—yes," Hermann confirms with a deep, steady nod. "Of course—enjoy your evening—" he wishes him. Herc can hear the hesitation each time.
"And see to it that one doesn't get going to hard, alright?" Herc requests, giving a perfunctory drinking pantomime.
"He's a bit enthusiastic, yes... I'll see what I can do."
The hesitation is just slight that time.
Taking an opportunity to move on, Herc turns and starts to head out the long way to make it back around to the door in time to get the kids.
"Hey, Ser—Marshall!" drawls out a loud voice, friendly and booming enough to make Herc turn around without much consideration of other options. At least he knows how to talk to Tendo. He'll have to give him the no 'sir,' and no rank suggestion, too. He doesn't want it tonight. Not where he doesn't have to take it.
"Look who's dragged in. Got here before our honored guests," he replies, no real malice to his sarcasm as he approaches Tendo Choi.
"Well, you know how it is—traffic," Tendo jokes as he reaches out to clap Herc on the shoulder, as is his way.
"Where's your wife?" Herc converses casually again, only slightly less bewildered at himself.
"Oh, you know. Family at home. Late in the day. And we're pulling out soon. I've got Alison's well-wishes here in my pocket," Tendo explains with a vague gesture to what is in all likelihood an empty pocket. The man has a flair for poetry, Herc thinks with the same lack of malice.
"Where you off to?"
"Memphis, maybe," Tendo supplies, and Herc has no idea if it's an expected joke or earnest.
"Right."
"But first I gotta see our boy and girl of the hour."
Herc simply hangs a soft smile on his face and clears his throat, resisting the urge to pocket his hands. He's not fishing for anything, but he sees a sudden tension and alarm straighten up through Tendo's posture. He shuts his eyes, not wanting to hear it.
"... I've known them both a long time," he says, and it's an excuse as much as Herc just wishes it were an explanation. "I was right on the line when—" And there's a reference Tendo won't complete because it's too close. He wishes he wouldn't tiptoe. "And I watched her... get what she wanted. That's a great, great thing... seeing kids do that."
And, at least Herc thinks, he didn't have the squeamishness for that to occur to him as a kind of rubbing it in. He knows it isn't, but it still stings.
"I dread it for them," he admits.
"Nah, they'll do just fine. I'm here to see to it."
"Suppose they come in here and—" But it's too empty for Herc to give voice to. Just idle chatter. And so he asks what seems like the most idle question of all—and perhaps the one most likely to draw a wager. "You reckon they got Miss Mori back into a dress?"
"I don't think she'll stop 'em," Tendo responds, smile settling onto his face as he rolls shoulders back to straighten once more.
"Could if she wanted," Herc agrees.
"Oh, absolutely. Not saying nothing about her being a girl. I just think I know her a little bit. And... girl can have her reasons."
"I'd better go see if our reasons are here yet."
oOoOo
The interior of the car is still and cool, dark and lit red by flashing lights above them. Raleigh notices more than the red the stripes their skin the way there's something red clutched to her chest once more. He wonders if he ought to offer to take it away.
She's seated in the center of the car, quite by her own choice. She hadn't slid over until both the doors were closed, and she'd neatly fastened the lap belt back in place. Nothing too rebellious for now.
"They don't know what it means," she comments into the dark toward the floorboard and Raleigh ducks his head slightly to listen.
There are at least three and possibly a hundred things she could be talking about. Raleigh knows nearly every single one, but he has no direct access to pinpoint which she means. He thinks he knows well enough to agree, though.
"They don't have to. They just need us to smile and tell them it's alright. … And it's gonna be," he promises, utterly hoping that it's as true as he sometimes, sometimes thinks it is.
He sees the set of Mako's jaw as she levels her gaze up toward the front of the car and swallows down.
"Hey," Raleigh coaxes, reaching out and thinking of touching her face or her jaw to gently, carefully ask her to look at him. "It's just for a little bit."
"I'm not afraid, Raleigh," Mako scolds softly. His name. He's listening. Rather than saying anything else for a moment, she adjusts a little and does look up at him, chin-lifted and expectant. He raises his eyebrows a little carelessly and smiles until it aches just a little bit. Bowing further forward, his temple touches hers and up and down in a little motion goes a little mutual, faint friction-causing nod. Nuzzling.
"But I've done this before," he suggests.
"You've done this before," she agrees, and he sees her teeth when she smiles behind her painted lips.
"Yeah, well. I might be a little bit rusty," he says when he remembers he ought to say something. And then they're just looking, still and silent and breathing, and the only thing he sees is warm light touching her eyes in the dark.
They almost don't notice when the car stops moving.
A/N: This story is cross-posted from my AO3 account (failsafe) where more info about it can be found. It is a fill for a prompt on the Pacific Rim kink meme.