Holy hell, this turned out a whole lot longer than I ever expected this to be. Team daddy issues and DILF is my personal favorite, with everyone else coming in as a close second! I took some liberties with the timeline in terms of events that are never specifically stated in both the movie and the official Man, Machines, & Monsters book (which I spurge bought because holy shit, worth every single penny!)
XXX
all the best ones are troubled
XXX
Sometimes he will wish that he could be Drift compatible with anyone else.
Maybe then he will know something outside of the bond he has forged with his dad. But in all the attempts the PDCC has tried to put him through, there has never been one candidate that is half as good with him than he is when he's with his father.
As for the rest of the time, Chuck knows he wants no one else.
.
Chuck is five years old, eyes red and cheeks still wet with tears, when his dad presses his lips to his forehead for a kiss to make up for the nasty scrape on his knee. He hiccups and his dad gives him a half smile, one that communicates all the things Herc Hansen has never been good with saying. The bandage he puts over his son's knee is a bright, bright blue.
.
His mother and his father aren't close.
They are still in love, and that is something Chuck has never once doubted. He's seen his father touching his wedding band, turning it around his finger, every time he is about to enter the Conn-Pod to forget that. And they are married in the same traditional sense. But his father is a soldier with ranks over his shoulders and his mother is the same blonde hair, blue eyed beauty that once imagines Hercules Hansen to be the kind of men that could forget the world for her. But he isn't. And neither is their son.
So Chuck gets pass between the two of them until he convinces his dad that he wants this bad enough.
.
Chuck is eleven years old when his mom dies in the first Kaiju attack on Sydney. It is the weekends, he stays with his dad at the Shatterdome on the weekends. And while his dad is in the field, Chuck watches as his home turns a Kaiju blue. He resents himself for a long time after, for the helplessness that freezes him in place, but for the most part, he comes to resent his father for not loving his mother enough to keep her safe (too).
.
Chuck has an ego.
But he knows a beautiful thing when he sees it.
And that recognition has happened exactly three times in his entire life.
.
Chuck is fifteen years old when he officially joins the Jaeger Program. The same day, his father gives him a bulldog on a leash, one that can't seem to stop slobbering over their shoes with a scrunched up face. He doesn't say thank you, he doesn't know how. And it will be another week before the two of them agree on a name because arguing is the only way they know how, and this too is something they are no good at.
.
The first time happens when he sees Striker Eureka in its final stages of production.
Chuck has never played with plastic figurines as a child. Instead, he plays sports and anything else that makes sure his presence is enough to distract his mother from the absence of his father. It works better on days when the other side of the world is under another Kaiju attack. Because then she remembers that someone else needs her husband more than her.
"They're calling her Striker Eureka."
It is the first and only Mark-5 Jaeger, it is also the most beautiful thing Chuck imagines he will ever see. He startles out of his daze to find his father standing next to him, Max already settling himself at Chuck's feet, a familiar, heavy weight for the two of them.
"…That's a good name for her."
"That's what I told the Engineers too."
Chuck catches the sight of Herc's thin, barely there, smile when he hands over Max's leash. But he won't understand a fraction of the meaning behind it until a good three years later. Chuck only watches as his father turns to leave for a meeting with a man named Stacker Pentecost, the Marshal who has personally come to Sydney to see the launch of Striker Eureka.
Chuck also meets Mako Mori for the first time that day.
.
Chuck is embarrassingly green at eighteen. And even though he has been at the Sydney Shatterdome for so long, he has never once wondered who his co-pilot will be. He doesn't think that there will be a doubt when he finds them, but in the mean time, training is the most important thing. He doesn't know anything outside of this war.
.
The room is empty, and the mat is worn. While he's been in here a thousand times, it is different when his father is standing at the other end in another dark green shirt he seems to have a million of, and his feet bare.
"Are you serious?"
"You aren't?"
His dad raises an eyebrow as Max barks in the corner and Chuck almost cringes in the way they avoid each other with questions instead of answers. So he pulls his shirt over his head, leaving himself in his dark tank before stepping on to the mat, where his hands grip at air before they form fists.
This isn't a fight (because if it is, it won't be a very fair one, they know each other's weaknesses too well to make it one).
No, this is a spar where they are standing too close, and Chuck has no idea what he is about to do when he is faced with something like this.
"Come on, don't tell me you never wanted to punch your old man in the face."
The small dry laugh Herc Hansen bites out makes Chuck steady his stance. And then he is throwing out his first punch. There is no grace in the line of his arm when he swings, just brutal strength. And instead of dodging, his father catches his fist in his opened palm, halting the attack in its track. The contact is brief but it is enough for Herc to take his own swing, his fist stopping only millimetres in front of Chuck's face.
"1-0." His father's voice is deliberately calm.
Shrugging it off with a bitten back huff, Chuck takes his initial stance, centring his entire body once again. He only narrows his eyes when his father takes a single step forward.
It's not about winning or losing in the same way that there are no weapons, just bare-knuckled palms curling into fists. It's not quite wrestling, there are too many wild punches thrown for that, but it does resemble a kind of dirty boxing that is all rough around the edges.
It isn't how either of them fights.
And for a second, Chuck is caught off guard. But in quick succession, he has his father halting in his stance with his fists poised precariously over the openings in his defence. He is hovering right over the skin, never enough to touch. And when he glances up, his grin is feral, ridiculous for such a small win.
"1-1."
This is how they continue, with their breathing coming in deep heavy drags and the fluorescent light in their eyes. They are fighting in tandem in a style that is distinctly theirs, the last of the Hansens. A perfect mix of what they are good at. Chuck fights like a wild child trapped, all emotions lighting up in a blaze while Hercules fights with ruthless efficiency, like a man that's been disciplined for lifetimes too long.
Chuck is lying on his back, the sweat making his skin gleam.
He has always known his father is strong but having the man throw him over his shoulder and into the mat, his breath knocked right out of his chest in one fluid manoeuvre, is a whole other thing all together. His hand is resting just over his throat, strain in the lines of their bodies as he pins him to the mat with a knee between his legs and an arm stretched taut, just enough to keep Chuck still.
Chuck doesn't know what he'll rather have.
Instead, he takes a deep breath that leaves him weak at the knees if he isn't already on the ground, the realization that they fit in all the right places and grates painfully in all the wrong ones. They work, and that is an irrevocable fact.
Max is licking at his fingertips as his father pulls back. Chuck doesn't move.
"You're sure about this, Chuck?"
"…You aren't?"
Chuck scoffs softly before dropping his head back on the mat. He doesn't watch his father when he leaves the room, but Chuck feels as though he can see that smile from three years ago again, that half smile over his dad's thin lips that tells a million things they will never acknowledge in words.
And in the empty training room, the second time is when Chuck finally admits.
"I don't think I've ever wanted anything else."
He covers his face with his hands, hears his dog whine at the loss, before the room is filled with Chuck Hansen's deep chuckling laughs.
Because of course, he would only be Drift compatible with his father of all people.
.
Chuck doesn't feel young but he is the youngest Jaeger pilot the PDCC has had. And that is both a fact that feeds his ego just right and makes him sick to his stomach with the realization that he has become a soldier before his time (that there may be more, the war has barely even started). But before that, he experiences his first Drift.
.
The first time they synchronize their minds to one another, the Drift is overwhelming.
He doesn't chase the rabbit, like he's been taught a million times. He only lets the sight and sound and feel of his mother in her favourite summer dress twirling further and further away from him before letting the rest of his father's memories wash him by. It is like a tidal wave, or a tight embrace he never received as a child.
He can't quite tell.
And when the Drift is terminated, he falls to his knees, gasping for breaths.
His hands still twitching to move in tandem with his father, like a phantom pain that has finally surfaced.
It takes another week of endless persuasion before his father agrees for them to try again.
"You're compatible with everyone."
They are sitting at the cafeteria, Chuck feeding bits and pieces of his dinner to Max as he speaks, memories of his father entering the Conn-Pods of every generation of Jaeger at least once.
"But you're not."
Chuck glances up, lips twisting into the start of frown, mouth opening to start another argument. Herc has always known Chuck wants to surpass him, but he has never known why. It is only through the neural bridge that he has worked through a better part of Chuck's memories barely a week ago. Because then, maybe the young child will have a chance to fight the doom that killed his mother, maybe then, he can protect the one thing his father couldn't.
"I want to be there if anything were to happen to you."
But because Herc can't stop Chuck from becoming one of the best Jaeger pilot of his time, he will be there all along the way. And if he dies, Herc will be right there next to him until the very end.
But these are the things they don't (know how to) say. And that has always been a given.
"Now stop feeding Max that already."
Herc snaps but there has never been any real heat in that.
.
Chuck doesn't stop, he doesn't know how to even when his first Drift nearly knocks him out cold, leaving him with an empty feeling like something has been taken out of him. But the second, third, and fourth time gets better, and then the invasive disappears altogether. Drifting becomes a little bit addictive. And he won't admit this either, but this is also the only way he knows how to get close to his father.
.
Some describes the Drifting process as something even more intimate than sex.
Chuck doesn't know.
He is too young when the war has just started. And by the time he understands a fraction of the things that are happening all over the world, thousands have died from every damaged coastal city all along the Pacific rim.
Chuck doesn't know a lot of things, he only knows how to fight.
He knows how to sync his mind to someone else and make Kaijus bleed blue. He doesn't know how to kiss a girl with a hand resting on the back of her neck. He knows how to wield weapons in hands almost fifty times the size of his entire body. He doesn't know how to hold a separate person like he understands love and sex when he has felt intimacy like being in someone else's head for so many times.
Chuck doesn't know how to compare sex to mind melds.
He only knows the Drift is not something he can put into words.
.
Chuck is twenty-two years old when he dies. He is a hero, but he isn't the kind that lives. Chuck Hansen is the sacrifice. And this is one he will gladly make. Because he is his father's son, he doesn't know how to show affection either. Instead of wrapping his arms around his dad, he bends down and kisses Max on his frowning, wrinkly forehead. Just the way he remembers his father has done for him when he was only a child.
.
The night he comes back from the dead though, his father doesn't leave his side.
He doesn't let go either, his fingers gripping painfully tight into the hand that Chuck can still feel. Like any looser and he'll lose him for good. (And maybe in that moment, it really does feel like that.)
That is the third time.
.
Chuck knows everything about his dad. And that is not an understatement. Sometimes, he will wish it could be. But then he remembers the way his mind fits into his dad's and everything else sort of becomes negligible.
.
It is an inevitable thing when it happens.
They both know it and they both come to it in the way they have always managed the things that goes on between them (ignoring it until it is far too late). Chuck wants to laugh, but it comes out sounding like a wet gasp that makes his entire body shake in pain. Herc just shakes his head, his lips twisting into the same half smile that means a million other things Chuck can only begin to guess at. But that is okay too when his father drags a hand over the back of his neck and pulls him close.
Their foreheads touch, something too damn soft for two grown men that have always been a little rough around the edges. His fingers are resting heavily at the base of his neck, holding him close as something slowly comes undone.
And for the moment, even without the Drift between their minds, Chuck understands that he is his father's most important person in the world, and his father is his.
Everything else comes in second place.
And that has always been more than enough.
XXX Kuro
I nearly broke my moral compass because of these two, just sayin'.