This is the product of finals where the only way I've found effective to combat the stress is by writing threesomes that can only end terrible. (There may or may not be a Herc/Raleigh/Mako sequel to this, and really, it isn't so much that Herc gets around the 'dome, but it's more so that everyone just wants to give Herc some love.) I just really, really like Herc if that wasn't obvious enough.
Also, it's been a while since my last past tense fic.
XXX
Armageddon
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"This is God's war, Hercules."
Stacker used to tell him, when it was just the two of them.
It was a different world back then, where they still had the UN's full support. It was when there was still funding being poured into the program and Jaeger were barely christened against those monsters from down under.
And the glory days were just that, days.
"Never believed in that stuff, Stacks." Herc shook his head, this was still a world where there were months between each attack, months to catch a breath before sinking under one more time. "Ain't gonna start now."
Stacker smiled at him, and what a rare thing that was.
"Me neither."
Herc downed the rest of his bottle and motioned to stand up. "Figures."
Stacker followed at a pace.
.
The fact was this: They felt like the only adults in the room.
So they did the only irresponsible thing they could come up with. They fucked.
And that was the thing, when you fucked around with someone who wasn't your co-pilot (not that Scott and him hadn't went a few rounds in the sheets or that Stacker and Tamsin hadn't done the same), people assumed you were making love. That meant something in a war and a world just starting to learn what true devastation was.
It meant something Stacker Pentecost and Hercules Hansen never meant for it to become.
So when Herc started piloting with Chuck, they both knew how this would end. (How it should, at the very least.) They have both had co-pilots before. They have both taken each other off the edge before and knew that nothing dulled the feeling of exiting a drift quite like fucking your co-pilot into the mattress.
In any other circumstances, where it wouldn't work, here, the drift made it work.
.
"Sit your kid down and talk to him."
Stacker told him once. It still made Herc sit up in bed some nights, expecting the other man to be right there, lying on his side next to him, like he was a comfort instead of a reminder of all those years of fighting the good fight and losing all those good women and men to the sea.
That night though, Herc made to get up.
"Leaving already?"
"Romance is dead, Stacks. Gotta do this before I chicken out." He gave him a pat on his knee before he stood up to pull on the pair of sweatpants he liked to wear to the Kwoon, what detours he took to get to Stacker's room was nobody else's business. It wasn't like he wasn't getting the exercise at the end of the night. "I can bring you flowers next time."
"Not that kind of bloke, Herc." In here, Stacker wasn't just the Marshal, he was also that Mark I pilot that fought alongside Herc and drank himself into a stupor when it'd still been him and Scott and him and Tamsin and things were good.
In here, Stacker propped himself up on an elbow and called out after him. "I'd rather you bring me funding instead."
Herc's low chuckle was the last thing he could hear, and the shake of his head was the last thing he could see before he disappeared out the door.
.
The fact was this: Chuck had always been smarter than his old man.
What the program didn't warn him about, he learned on his own. It wasn't like they could have plastered this on the recruitment posters when all they needed were warm bodies to throw at the monsters coming for their homes. It wasn't liked it mattered in the grand scheme of things.
Jaeger pilots have a short shelve life. And Chuck was fine with that.
He didn't need to matter. He just needed to do his part in this war.
So when orders came down that Uncle Scott had done something redacted in black and not even dad could go another spin in the drift with the man, Chuck fathomed it was about time.
(He never asked and he never found out in the drift what exactly Uncle Scott did because he didn't ever want to know.)
.
"You and the Marshal, you two are together, we can't just."
Chuck bit his tongue, cutting himself off as he gestured to the space between them, gestured at this thing that was due to grow between them. Their third kill made things clear, not that they weren't before. But Charles Hansen was powered by hatred and anger, there were plenty of lines he would cross, and plenty that he wouldn't.
He wasn't sure which this was.
The drift was just that, waves upon waves crashing over rocks and sand.
There wasn't a need to explain that every Jaeger pilot needed their co-pilot to take the edge off, work the blunt blade of that knife until it glided smooth.
"I love him," Herc stood his ground, stilling Chuck with a hand across the back of the kid's neck, fingertips just grazing across the skin where the collar of his shirt ended. "But I love you too."
And in the end, I am not in love with either of you was what Herc told himself in the dark when there was no one else in his head but himself. That was reserved for a woman that had been gone for years.
Chuck never knew the right thing to say, so he turned into his father's hand instead.
.
The fact was this: The world was ending.
And that was a fact no one was going to dispute. What they did with their last days was never going to go down in history books the way they remembered it. Chuck didn't mind, Herc hadn't cared for a long time now, and Stacker. Well, it wasn't the Marshal that came to the Sydney Shatterdome to break the news to the Hansens, it was a man named Stacker Pentecost.
Hong Kong was wet and cold when they arrived.
Operation Pitfall was a go.
.
"I would think being the Marshal had better perks than this."
Chuck said when he stepped inside the room. Herc reached over and smacked the back of his head in slight annoyance, not that he expected any less really. "Still bigger than our bunks, kid."
"If we still shared a room like we did in Sydney, this is about the same size as if you just pushed our beds together."
Chuck raised a brow like he was daring him to say anything on the contrary.
Stacker walked in, suit pristine and looking every bit like the Marshal the world could see. But the man was also extending a wrist to his father and it didn't take words, never really did when it came to the two of them, when dad started to undo the cufflinks.
"Strip already, or get out of my room, Ranger."
Chuck didn't run his mouth off, just gave the two old men a smirk before he was pulling his shirt over his head.
.
The fact was this: They, the three of them, had their own moments too.
Chuck would kiss Stacker over the curve of Herc's shoulder, kissed each other and then the freckles scattered over where his neck stretched out into his shoulder. And there wouldn't be anything like taking turns when Stacker brushed his hand over the arch of Herc's spine and Chuck would run a hand down his daddy's stomach until his knuckles were grazing just over where the ginger hair started up.
Herc was kneeling on the mattress, between the two of them, letting them manhandle him this way and that, bring his mouth here then there, tilting his hips, fingers grasping over old bones so they could kiss him pliant and stretch him open with tongue and lips and spit slicked fingers dripping the bed sheets wet with lube.
They would have him gasping out their names in alternates, saying Chuck when that was Stacker's head between his legs. Then a stuttering of Stacks when that was Chuck reaching around to pinch a nipple while the other hand was still scissoring him wide open for when the two of them would push into him at the same time.
Herc's hand tightened over the back of Stacker's neck, let him swallow thickly around that cock in his mouth, let Stacker choke, just a little before he was sinking down further with a slow ache in his jaw.
It was still a war whether or not he was kissing the taste of his own come off of Stacker's tongue. And it was still a war even when he was leaning back to sit himself on Chuck's cock, biting off the soft keen that wanted to claw itself out of his chest when Stacker slowly pressed in too.
There was a kiss at his temple and then another one at the nape of his neck.
It was still a war but it didn't feel like one when the dizzying heat was spreading through them all.
.
"This isn't our fight, Herc."
Stacker wasn't so far gone that he would drop the bottle in his hand but the wide arc it made as he gestured at the dimly lit room around them had Herc cutting him off for the night.
"…So what are we doing, Stacks?"
Stacker turned his head to look at him, and the smile he gave him was still a damn rare thing.
"Beats me."
.
The fact was this: Hercules Hansen was just one man.
This wasn't his war, this wasn't his fight. But these were his losses. These are still his losses when he is standing on two feet with that ache in his broken collarbone. War clock at zero, and stopped for good.
This wasn't his war, and this wasn't his fight. Not that it mattered now that Striker's last pilots were gone, now that they were just dust (and not even bones) on the ocean floor.
XXX Kuro