And welcome back, folks! This is it. Well, except for epilogue-esque chapter.
Many thanks to my poor injured beta-chan paradorx, who sprained her ankle last week :( send her your love and affection.
The jolt of the gurney being raised brought Herc back to the waking world. Everything was dim and foggy, and he was unable to move from where they had strapped him down. He tasted a thick coating on his tongue that only could have been some kind of medication.
The medics took notice of his open eyes, looking up at the canopy of stars above him. They shone lights and talked over him to each other about injuries and suspected drunk driving. It was nothing that Herc wanted to hear.
"My son," he slurred, struggling to get control of his arms and legs, "where's my son?"
The medics' words were nothing but gibberish to him as he craned his neck up and looked around; it was a little past midnight, and the street was empty aside from the police and the ambulance.
There was another gurney, beside him, with a white sheet thrown over a long, lumpy shape. Herc's heart leapt and his eyes were burning. "Oh, God, please, not my son."
His hand was being held. He looked over to see who it was and his head dropped back down with a sharp exhalation.
"Jesus, old man," Chuck said, holding onto his hand and walking alongside the rolling gurney, "it was only a little fender-bender."
"You're alright," Herc muttered, and tried to squeeze his hand. He checked over his other side and saw a medic continue to stuff a sheet into a medical bag, propped on the top of the gurney so to better be reached. Herc looked back at his son, drinking in his very presence silently.
Chuck smiled, his face a bruised and scraped-up mess. "It's going to take more than a car crash to get rid of me. I'm fine."
"Actually, you have a severe concussion," one medic said bluntly, obviously having to repeat himself, "and you should be in the ambulance getting it checked out."
Chuck rolled his eyes.
"It's not the first time getting his head bashed in," Herc added fondly as they loaded him into the ambulance, Chuck climbing in alongside, "he'll make it."
Chuck's laughter—something he hadn't heard in a long, long time, lulled him back to sleep as the ambulance pulled away, sirens blaring.
When Raleigh got to work in the morning, his head was still trying to wrap itself around the fact that Herc and Chuck had been in a car accident the night before—and had come away unscathed, if a little pissed. Herc had a broken collarbone and kept saying to the police how he saw a dark shape from the school, which had Raleigh on edge. Mountain lions and the odd coyote were known to wander around, but not in this kind of weather.
"Psst."
Raleigh, at his inbox, paused and looked around the empty room in confusion. Then he shrugged and collated his papers together, humming a bit.
"Psst."
He jumped and looked around, again making sure that the room was empty. It was. Deciding that it was too early to deal with whatever the hell was going on, he shoved his papers in his bag and beat a hasty retreat for the exit.
"Psst Raleigh!"
Raleigh banged into the wall as he jumped away from the door of the supply closet, which was hissing his name. The supply closet was apparently very interested in getting his attention.
"Tendo?" Raleigh asked, squinting, having recognized the voice. "What are you…?"
"Get in the supply closet," Tendo hissed through the door.
"What? No." Raleigh was about to start walking away when the door opened and Tendo's hand closed around a fistful of knitted sweater.
"Get in the supply closet, Shinji!" Tendo punctuated his pulling and heaving, finally manhandling the larger man into the closet. He yanked a string below a light bulb to illuminate the small space, stale smelling and piled with reams of copy paper and ink cartridges. Raleigh's eyes adjusted to the sudden light and he groaned loudly.
"I think I hate you," he reflected, to both Tendo and Yancy, who was sitting on a low shelf at the back of the closet, face buried in his phone. He put away his phone and stood, assuming a soldier's posture.
"We need to talk," he said darkly.
"You need to be psychiatrically evaluated," Raleigh replied. "Why are you two hiding in the supply closet?"
"What are you wearing on your date tonight?" Tendo asked without preamble.
Raleigh shook his head and held up his hands. "Nope. I'm not doing this with you guys." He let himself out of the closet and Tendo and Yancy trailed after him.
"We're only thinking of helping you out," Yancy explained. "It has been a little while since your last successful date."
Raleigh silently rolled his eyes and blocked out their chattering. His date with Mako was scheduled for that night, and he frankly wasn't up for any romcom-situation shenanigans that his brother and Tendo would have stored up their sleeves.
"Bye, guys," he waved over his shoulder to them as he exited the faculty offices, leaving them standing at the door of their island of influence with steeled jaws and hunting looks. Raleigh hefted his bag farther up on his shoulder and swerved to avoid a group of girls sweeping through the hallway. He ended up slipping behind the math and sciences building. He had only just registered how he had gone from the frying pan into the fire when Sasha bore down on him in her lab coat.
She aimed a finger at his face and he suppressed a sigh.
"You will treat her like a lady," she instructed sternly. "Or I will ruin you."
"Yes, ma'am," Raleigh bowed out and actually did groan when confronted for the third and fourth times, respectfully. His classroom was so close he could almost taste it, but he was halted again by the doctors Geiszler and Gottlieb.
"Where are you two going for your date?" Newt demanded, Hermann glowering at Raleigh at his elbow.
"I am going to my classroom," Raleigh said, "and you are getting out of my way." He shouldered them aside.
"Pick someplace classy!" Newt called out, and Hermann called out as well something about ensuring maximum success by paying in full, and Newt told him off for sexism, and their momentary coalition broke down into their normal married-couple squabbling. Raleigh could feel his blood pressure rising.
Once in his class, he wasted no time.
"If anyone mentions me and Ms. Mori or a date then I will be sending you straight to Mr. Pentecost's office." A few kids paled, and one began to hyperventilate in the back. Raleigh wondered, not for the first time, how it was Stacker commanded so much fear, and how he could possibly cultivate some general fear of his own to make his life easier.
He spotted Mako in the doorway of her room. She waved shyly at him. He waved back, and then froze. He turned to his students. They were all looking at him.
"Well," he coughed, "Um. Grammar. Let's do some grammar."
Mako and Raleigh both agreed to stay at school to grade papers—they sat next to each other at the table in the teacher's lounge, occasionally bumping elbows in the cramped space, but neither one moved, or even dared to speak, too cautious of the newborn agreement between them, the understanding that there was something more there than friendship. Eventually Mako excused herself to go see Sasha about something, and Raleigh checked his watch and then his hair in the faculty bathroom, checking his breath as well. The restaurant he chose wasn't all too "classy" as Newt had recommended, but judging by the hours he spent online doing research it was a good first date place, with barely any students flocking to it. How embarrassing that would be.
He texted her, and headed out to stand by his car in the fading light and cold late autumn air, trying to whistle past the lump in his throat and the tight fist in his chest. He thought he spotted Yancy peering at him from his office window, but as he was looking closer a shade fell in place, hiding him. Raleigh rolled his eyes despite knowing no one would see it.
When Mako arrived at the gate, Raleigh nearly dropped his keys, and felt the air in his lungs solidify.
She wasn't wearing red, like she had been the day before at the dance, but a subdued navy that made her lips red and her eyes dark and shining—her blue hair streaks were like beacons. Over it she had put on a brown sweater with falling autumn leaves, and Raleigh was close to declaring her impossible, it was so wonderful.
She smiled gamely at his staring, and he thought he should say something. He kept ogling.
"Aren't you going to say anything?" she asked, playfully.
Raleigh finally found his voice. "You look good," he blurted out. She chuckled and circled around to the passenger door, which he unlocked for her, wincing at how he missed his chance to open the door for her. He could feel Yancy's judgmental eyes on him from the window.
He had a better chance of opening the door for her once they reached the restaurant, jumping out of the car before it had even fully stopped to get to her door in time. She looked at him in amusement and he felt his face getting hot as he led the way into to give his name for his reservation.
The waiter tried to pull Mako's seat out for her. Raleigh glared and basically shoved him aside to do it himself. They were seated and given menus. Silence stretched.
"So, do you—"
"I think—"
They laughed as their words crashed nervously together. Raleigh looked frankly at Mako. "I haven't done this in a while," he said. He didn't say how he had never been in love with someone like her, but she felt it, drifting across the table.
"Me either," she said, and her relief was palpable. The awkwardness melted away and they laughed again.
"What were you going to say?" Raleigh prompted her.
"I was going to ask why you chose English," she said, and took a sip of water. Raleigh was struck by the movement of her throat as she swallowed and then reassembled his thoughts.
"I hated English when I was younger," he admitted with a smile, "it made me so angry. I didn't understand why everything worked the way it did—but I wanted it to make sense. So I just dug and dug and dug and before I knew what was happening I had a teaching degree." She laughed at that. He wanted to make her laugh again.
"What about you?" he asked. He saw the furrow of her brow and he chuckled. "I don't mean Japanese. Because. Obviously. I was wondering why teaching, when you have an engineering degree? And why at the same school your father runs?"
She made an abashed face. "Stacker did not want me to be a teacher. He sent me to school, but once I got my degree, I just—it wasn't me. So I went back, put myself through my teaching degree, and, well. Here I am. He was against it at first, me working at Pacific Rim High, but eventually he came around, and invited me personally onto the staff."
Raleigh made a note to thank Stacker should he ever have a conversation one-on-one with him. Mako continued to relate her quest to hold herself up, and he could feel himself sinking deeper. She was a fire contained, just ready, waiting, to be set loose. It reminded him of running with her, of how she pulled ahead. He could follow her forever.
They gave their orders; he was going to get pasta and then thought about garlic breath, getting a steak instead. She got salmon and shrimp. They ate, still talking, about work, each other. This wasn't a game of Pictionary on a scrap of paper; it was just them, speaking and revealing, pushing and prodding, laughing and listening. Raleigh could listen to her forever. Shades he never saw came out, and he kept falling, over and over again, as the full three-dimensional Mako was revealed. Oh. Oh. Oh.
He could only hope she felt the same way. But, if he was perceiving it right—and he hadn't been wrong yet—she was looking at him in a way that made his mind soar.
Eventually, Mako excused herself to go to the bathroom. Raleigh wasted no time in getting out his phone.
"What's up, kid?"
"Yancy, I am freaking out."
"Breathe, baby brother," Yancy instructed. "How's the date going?"
"Good." Raleigh swallowed. "Really good."
"Well. Isn't that, I don't know, good? Mission accomplished. Mozel tov, high fives all around."
"I'm still freaking out." Everything was swimming together, blending and blurring. He was in love. Oh. She loved him back. It was too much and too little—he wanted to kiss her until he was senseless, wake up next to her on late Saturday mornings, cook her breakfast, walk hand in hand with her in the hallway. When he was with her, every sense he had was heightened, every breath he had was full of stars. It was new and utterly terrifying.
"What am I supposed to do, Yancy?" Raleigh asked. "This is just a date, but I want… I'm not sure… what if she… oh my God I don't think I can breathe."
"Raleigh," Yancy cut him off, voice kind, "you tell me right now what Mako means to you."
He didn't need to think. "Everything," he said. "She's everything to me."
"THEN WHAT ARE YOU DOING TALKING TO HIM FOR?!" Chuck's voice blasted through the phone. "JESUS CHRIST, RAY, STOP WASTING TIME."
"Yancy," Raleigh said calmly, after a moment's silence, "please tell me I'm not on speakerphone."
"You're not on speakerphone," Yancy dutifully replied. Tendo snickered in the background.
With that, Raleigh ended the call.
"Well," Yancy said in an upbeat voice, "that went well." Chuck muttered something into his bowl of chips, which was really meant to be a communal bowl, but had been claimed for himself barely into the first half hour of the party. He was still banged up from the crash but his concussion was fine, and Herc had been released and taken out by Stacker for a much-needed break. Chuck had ended up at Yancy's doorstep demanding food and entertainment. And thus the Date Seminar was born.
"How's Mako doing?" Yancy called out, standing from the couch. Sasha emerged from the kitchen, her husband following behind her with a hot tray of spinach puffs on a plate. She tapped something on her phone and summoned up her text conversation with Mako.
"She's in the bathroom having trouble breathing," she reported brusquely, "I told her to grow a pair."
Yancy nodded. "Well done."
Tendo's watch electronically beeped and he stood as well, clapping his hands for attention. "We have entered the second hour of Operation: Date Night," he announced to the room, raising his voice to be heard over the sound of Newt and Hermann bickering, "please update or support your current bets." He walked around with a collection bowl full of money and one rather vaguely valued watch and a grid sheet of paper, marking off what went where and the odds of what.
Chuck dumped in twenty more bucks on a kiss within the next hour, and Yancy deposited forty on one within half an hour. Sasha stuck with her bet of a kiss at the end of the date, and Aleksis dropped a suspiciously large roll of cash for a kiss in fifteen minutes. Tendo struggled to control his curious eyebrow raise and moved on.
Newt and Hermann had taken control of one corner of Yancy's living room, with large swatches of butcher paper liberated from the drama department taped over the walls so Hermann could scribble away algorithms that would take too long to enter into a calculator. He was scribbling with one hand while using the other to gesture at Newt while he spoke.
"I'm telling you, there are proven methods of socio-culture study that time and predict—"
"It's not mental or psychological, it's physical. Pheromones are—"
"For animals, Newton."
"Guys." Tendo shook his collection bowl. "Give it up."
They searched pockets and laid more money on their own individual theories, glaring at each other as Tendo tallied them down. Newt favored a more animalistic approach to his reasoning, also heavily swayed by his knowledge of romantic comedy movies. Hermann, however, had a time frame and equation he kept updating throughout the night.
Tendo rejoined Yancy at the middle of the room. Between the two of them, they fiddled with the television and finally got picture—a grainy feed from a web camera Tendo had pointed out of a window in the front offices. In the darkness, illuminated barely by street lamps, they could see Mako's parked car.
They watched, and waited.
Eventually dinner was over, with a shared dessert. Mako glared at him when he tried to take the whole bill and he laughed, letting her cover half.
The ride home was warm and easy. "She did not!" Raleigh laughed.
Mako was wheezing. "She walked right up to me and said," she put on a thick Russian accent, "'Mako, you should be standing next to him.'"
"Yancy told me the exact same thing." Raleigh couldn't believe it. Too soon they were back in the parking lot and Raleigh got out of the car, watching as Mako lined up by her car. The air was cold, but he was warm, and she looked at him in a way that made him want to stand like a statue, forever.
Raleigh said "I had a good time," and immediately regretted it. It was such a horrible way to describe one of the best nights of his life.
Mako gave him a look that showed how she knew how he was feeling. "I had a great time, too," she said. They stood some distance apart in the parking lot of the school, her car behind her, and him leaning against the driver's side door of his own in an attempt to look more casual than he felt.
"Yeah," he said. Then, he stood up, grabbing a hold of his courage. "Mako, I—" he stopped. The way she was looking at him. He let out his gathered breath slowly. "I never really thought about the future," he started, and then laughed, scuffing his feet on the asphalt. Something went unsaid that made color rise in Mako's face. "I never did have very good timing."
A small smile flickered on her lips. "I don't think so," she said, and everything about him was alive as she stepped up, covering the distance between them until they were nearly chest to chest, only a breath of air separating them, a small half-inch that sang with energy, with the reaction of them happening in midair. She tilted her face up and he looked down at her, so close. He leaned down.
Mako's breath was ghosting across his lips and he could feel her getting closer, and closer…
She paused, and backed up so fast that Raleigh's heart broke. "Did you hear that?" she asked, and he gave her a quizzical look in response, arms feeling empty and skin cold. Then, he heard it.
"What the…?" he turned around, looking at the lit up front offices. Drifting softly down from it was the sound that Tendo's soundboard tended to make when accidentally touched.
He looked at Mako, and she nodded her agreement. Together, they walked in the shadows towards a window. It was not unusual for security lights to be left on at the school to try and dissuade thieves, but never in the front offices. They got down low and looked up over the window ledge, leaning on each other for balance as they took in the scene.
Tendo's soundboard was in his bullpen, and someone—Raleigh didn't recognize them—in black clothing, was trying to shut it up, pounding at keys and buttons uselessly. He could hear him cursing under his breath. A second figure—a woman, who looked pregnant—appeared at the entrance to Stacker's office.
"It's not here—will you shut that thing up?"
The man gave up and addressed her. "Check the VP's office. We need those codes. Should be in a memo."
She went to Herc's office and let herself in, rummaging around. "Hey!" she called out, "come look at this. He's got handcuffs in his desk!"
"What?" he moved to go stand by her.
Mako and Raleigh turned to look at each other silently.
Everything fell into place between them. Chuck, screaming on the sidelines of the football game as they were beat time and time again—Chuck, with his playbook in an unlocked drawer. Tendo missing his keys and phone on the day of Yancy's accident—Tendo's universal key set. The missing tests, the losing sports team, the broken soundboard. The dark human-like shape that had nearly killed Herc and Chuck, running across the street from the school.
Without a sound, Mako and Raleigh moved in towards the offices. The back entrance had been opened and propped there with the lock-stopper engaged. The lock-stopper was a plastic wedge installed on all lockable doors that would block it from engaging with the jamb fully and locking. Raleigh's heart was in his throat and he looked at Mako, with her jaw set and fire in her eyes.
She pulled the door out and slipped inside, leaving him opened-mouthed and holding the door for her. She ducked down and crawled along the floor in Tendo's bullpen, her hand shooting up to grab at the wallet and keys the man in black had left next to the soundboard. She then kept her head low and reached the door. He was ready to close it after her, but she stopped, and took the careful time to find the right key and lock the office door.
His heart was beating out a tattoo on his ribs as she finished the job quickly, and joined him outside. He made sure to slide the lock-stopper so that the door clicked shut as he released it. The two intruders were now locked inside.
Mako seemed completely in control. "What do we do?" Raleigh asked, trailing after her, back towards their cars.
"Call the police," Mako ordered, and he immediately got his phone out, pulling up the necessary keypad, and spotted Mako doing the same.
"Who are you calling?" he asked.
She didn't look up. "Someone much worse than the police," she said cryptically, and he swallowed, turning to give her a bit of privacy as he pressed the numbers.
"Raleigh," she said. He turned around.
She put her hand on the back of his neck and brought him down to her level. Their mouths crashed together, lips and teeth and tongues, all the unspoken things, making Raleigh's heart stop and start up again. They parted, breathless, foreheads still touching. They didn't want to separate any farther, create any distance. They leaned together in the semi-darkness, phones still out and thieves locked away, breathing in and out. In and out, inhaling each other.
It was minutes before they could bear to move again.
Stacker's phone buzzed inside his suit pocket, and he retrieved it while Herc stared at his plate and wondered how he was expected to cut a steak with only one functional arm. As Stacker read the screen of his phone he gave a small smile.
"What's that, then?" Herc asked, choosing to eat his baked potato first.
"It seems that Mako and Mr. Becket's date went well," he replied.
"How'd you know that?"
Stacker held up his phone. "I follow Yancy on twitter."
Herc grinned and shook his head, ignoring his food in favor of seguing into how he would need to get himself a twitter account if he was ever to keep on top of what was going on. He was about to speak when Stacker's phone rang in tandem with his.
They answered at the same time with matched confused looks.
"Mako?" Stacker asked.
"What? A break-in?" Herc nearly dropped his phone.
Then, within a minute, they stood up and rushed out of the restaurant, leaving a wide bill and excuses behind them.
Ta-da! I, for once, and not totally evil.