Title: Grace of Hand and Thigh
Pairings/Characters: Mako Mori/Raleigh Becket
Rating: K. The innuendo is really vague.
Notes: Written for the Pacific Rim kink meme on lj. I like it too much to let it remain unclaimed forever.
They both know how it is. Mako can tell from the glint in his eye and the tilt of his grin. They circle each other on the mat, feet sliding soundlessly, watching, waiting. The tension in the air is electric.
After all this time, it ought not to be. The spectators have wandered out hours ago, and it's been hours still since. They move in this dance, lunge and recoil, meet and disengagement. A smooth thrust there, a bold spin and rejoinder here. They don't need words. They haven't for a long time now.
She knows now, without words and without needing them, that his right shoulder pains him still, but that he won't favor it—only compensate for it. She's been in his mind and brought some of him back with her. Her left knee aches with his phantom pain. Her knuckles on her right hand throb in time to...something. His heartbeat?
No matter. She slips past his staff, flipping under him and around. He's fast, but she's faster. He's sneaky, but she's been taught by Marshall Stacker Pentecost himself. His every move she can predict—the tensing of his muscles, the subtle shifts in his stance—they are helpful, but not needed. Of course he would strike here. She knows, just like he knows that her own staff would meet his.
His eyes are very blue. They sear her as she darts past him. Would they scar her with their passing, they way he is scarred? Her fingers tighten on her staff, unruly with the desire to touch them, to trace the indelible history this war has etched into his skin. He carries that battle around him like a mantle. She is glad to see him cast it aside when he spars with her.
Hit and recoil. Strike and retreat, then strike again. Her muscles burn, but it is the good kind. A drop of sweat slides down her cheek. She finds herself smiling. He smiles back, wide and challenging. How appropriate: his smile has a swagger. He might have learned humility in his years away from PPDC, away from the daily grind and sweat of war, but something wild churns in him still, a dangerous edge to his moves, a wildness that has found an equal and willing match in her. She will meet him, thrust for thrust.
They talk through this battle. Sensei had told her years ago, hadn't he? The bond will pull at her mind. It will clamor for nearness. She knows now that she will spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder for him, searching rooms for him, feeling the imprint of his thoughts: that he likes Glenlivet but hasn't had any in years, that his favorite hour of the day is the deepest of the night, that he still thinks of Yancy and wonders at the futility of heroism. She knows what that smile means, wide and generous as the sun, but dangerous as a knife's blade. She knows he's read her face, and that he likes the curve of her cheek and that he thinks the way she sauntered onto the mat is the sexiest thing he'd ever seen.
He is very golden in this light, and smells of machine grease and sweat. She reads his moves—a feint to the left, and a stab to the right—but she's forgotten that he can read her just as well. He counters her. Enough. She charges, pushes in on his injured side. It's something her more loose-lipped contemporaries would have called a "dick move", but it's not, really—it's merely pragmatic. She slams him to the mat. His breath leaves him in a satisfying rush. She crouches over him, triumphant.
"That," he pants, "was a dick move."
"Maybe," she says, smug. "I still win."
Their breathing is harsh in the silence. She doesn't often think of his size, but he really is huge, broad-chested and hulking. Ordinarily, such a build would have struck her as distasteful. It makes a difference, she supposes, if he hulks for her or against her. She likes it—all that power, all that sweat and muscle, coiled beneath her. She feels the tension build in him. He's going to flip them over in a second.
She leans down to kiss him first.
It flies through her like a winter gale. That rush, that power, that force, only of the kind she'd once felt at the helm of a Jaegar, barrels through her. His hand threads through her hair, another on her back. Good. That's good. Their mouths meld in wild mating. A slow growl builds in his chest. Yes. This is how it ought to be. He ought to always growl and shudder and swell. She knows, after all, that he holds her precious, that they are perfect inversions of each other, but in this, they match. It has been building—with every blow and parry, every glance and smile—this tension, this current. It seizes her now by the throat.
He really does flip them over then. She shivers as slabs and ropes of muscle tense, caging her in. It's funny how she doesn't feel the least bit imprisoned, but feels only a mad exhilaration, as though she is anchored to earth only by his mouth and his teeth and his tongue.
He pulls away, panting. Presses their foreheads together. "Easy. Easy."
"Why did you stop?" Is it because she has so little experience? He should have known that. Singular purpose of mind and action did not accord with youthful, amorous shenanigans. And besides, what man would dare cast lures towards Stacker Pentecost's daughter?
But he only says, "You're too much."
"Too much of what?"
He looks down at her. His eyes are hungry, electric. He eats her with his eyes. "You're so bright. It almost hurts to touch you." His hand curls in her hair, tightening. "I'm not—"
"Good enough for me? Too old for me? Too battered?" She snakes one leg over his, pins him to the floor again. "You are being an idiot. There is no point to your protests."
"Oh, yeah?"
She presses her nose to his. Breathes in his scent. "None. I have been in your brain. I have no objections."
"Aw, hell," he groans, and pulls her down to him.