And they don't know what to do with Themselves- Pacific Rim Fic
Fluffy black hair and leather and muscles and Sasha's just 'I can drift with that yeah, sure why the hell not. But I should probably teach him manners first."
Hell, ONE of them was a prison guard before. Never says Which.
Or, the story of how two pilots can be so in sync and also want to strangle each other to death on a near-daily basis. How they met, and the grudges it left unsettled, and really, they don't like each other in the beginning, which makes things much more difficult than they have to be.
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The first time they meet she kicks his goddamn ass because he's a stupid teenage punk and ow now he is on the ground when the FUCK did that happen, oh god he is never living this down.
And then he recruits, and walks into the Shatterdome in Vladivostok (possibly just to prove a point, you see) and there she is. He has the WORST luck.
Stupid fucking teenagers always ending up on her shift, fuckers.
There is no reason why Aleksis would actually fuck with her on duty, but he might, out of bad luck, catch her after-shift when a woman only wants to get a drink and be left in peace from brick-headed morons like those ridiculous teenage wannabes in black...it's trite and she has NO patience for that shit.
NO patience.Stupid teenage fuck messing with her, what, is it because she doesn't have bits that dangle and she's daring to guard a prison? She'll teach this little bastard how to respect his betters.
And she does.
Thoroughly.
And with much gusto.
Aleksis spent a lot of energy just avoiding the fuck out of Sasha for weeks. Because she is terrifying. And he remembers her, and he's not sure she quite recognizes him, he hopes she doesn't, at least not until they have the most unfortunate luck of continuously getting paired for tests together, and he has to admit, they DO fight well together, when he's not trying to hit on her, and she's not trying to introduce his face to a beer can (he still has a scar from that, dammit) but god is he terrified, because she smirks at him and he knows she absolutely remembers him.
Bitch. Stupid blonde kicking-his-ass bitch. She infuriates him so goddamn much.
Aleksis has no idea what to do with her. Or himself. Because as much as he tries, and tries, and he does a great job in training, no one can argue that he's one of the strongest candidates they have, physically (And hell, the murmur, with the size of him who can be surprise?).
But she damn well smirks at him every time she does better. A challenge if there ever was one, the quirk of painted lips that has him seeing red the same shade as her smile.
Because oh, of COURSE she remembers him. (The most ludicrous, barely-veiled pick-up line. His smile, like he expected anything out of him. Sure, thinking back, she had been a little on edge. Tense, and dealing with more than enough crap from her supervisors. Idiots, all of them. So maybe she shouldn't have reacted immediately by throwing him on the bar. But damn, okay, she'd just wanted a goddamn drink in peace. His friends had found it hilarious and she'd left before she even got her damn beer. She still resented him for that a little.)
Funnily enough, her frustration with her supervisors and the fucking hierarchy at the prison had been what drove her into the military. An anger-fueled decision, admittedly, but she didn't back down, and she could hardly go back to the prison after the sort of exit she'd made... It was, at least, probably going to be easier for her than the guard job had been. Paid a little better too, if she passed.
She entered with the same confidence as she ever walked into the Prison with. Shoulders thrust back, a snarl on her face just under the 'better than you' smirk. A bunch of teenage boys, damn idiots. She could count on one hand the few candidates she didn't think would fuck it up in the first week.
The scruffy idiot with the black hair and the broad shoulders was not on that list. Bar asshole, here, seriously? She supposed it figured, with her luck. Prick probably thought he'd go proving something to his dumbass friends. She ignored him completely, at the first. Of course, that got a little more difficult when he exceeded her very low expectations of him and managed to make it through the first round of cuts. By the second she was taking it personally. Jackass like him hardly deserved the recognition from the proctors, was it really so fucking hard to fight when you were a yeti to begin with?
Of course as they dropped the ones who couldn't cut it, the number of un-paired recruits dwindled too. And the endless matchup tests were a pain, and almost no one liked them- the tests, that is. Aleksis took to just growling at the constant questions by the Neuro teams, (which was hilarious, actually, because he had no idea, but that blonde bitch did almost the same thing, and Neuroscience and the Jaegertech proctors were actually getting fed up with the both of them. Their big sell had been in being able to match teams on compatibility of person, without needing or boasting blood ties of a sort.)
There were only a few Jaegers in the first wave. Cherno was the biggest and, they were confident, the best. ('They' being pretty much everyone in Vladivostok who'd been waiting with baited breath for completion of their Jaeger... now it was just the matter of finding the Pilots.
Cherno needed a team. Nearly completed, and the Shatterdome was feeling the pressure of her weight as time wore on.
And as time ground down against them, nerves grated against each other.
Aleksis was proud to be at the top of the cuts. He knew this was one place he might actually excel. It took a lot to be a pilot, the strain was incredible, and here, at least, he knew he'd be strong enough to bear it. Here his strength was, well, a strength. Unfortunately, every clenched-jaw sneer that blonde bitch gave him made him more and more certain she was bound to see him fail. In fact, he was pretty sure she was taking things out personally on him.
She actually was, but she'd never tell. She took out everyone as brutally as she had the chance to, hen they tried to trip her up in training, when they tried to wear her down. Maybe she took it too personally, she was told. She didn't see right away that they did it to everyone. The Kaiju were huge and long-tempered, and it was still hard to take them out even in a Jaeger. It was exhausting, and constant, and there was never a break. But Sasha took it to heart. She was used to always being on guard, always watching her back. You think the Prison gave her any leeway? She'd never let herself falter long enough to find out. She had a chip on her shoulder, sure. So what? Someone needed to. She wondered sometimes if these others didn't treat this whole thing far too loosely, Like it were some sort of game to them.
So she took her anger out where she could. And if it was especially satisfying to catch a giant black-haired fucking dog of a man and put him on the mat like she'd put him on the bar, well, so be it. She likes the spark of hatred in his eyes. She likes the way she knows she infuriates him. Now maybe he knows how she feels, hmm? And she smirks at him every time and waltzes away.
And Aleksis hates her. He hates the look in her eyes every time she hits him. He hates the was she snarls instead of smiling at people. He hates the haughty clip to her voice like she's in charge of something. So he takes to purposefully ignoring her, and wishing he had done that in the bar. Stupid, stupid mistake. Talking to her then, and trying to now. Bitch won't even give him the time of day if he asks. He growls a reply to his friends (brothers, idiots, but close, and they're doing well in the tests.) when they ask what his plans are. You know, they say, Cherno's core got installed today, they're not far from the final cuts. What's big Aleksis gonna do? "Beat you." He replies offhand, like he's not worried about it.
But like everyone, he is worried. And it gets to him. It gets to him and she gets to him and training gets to him. And yes, he has a temper. Yes, he's being noted down on all their stupid little psych charts and he knows that much. And that does nothing to stop him from nearly breaking his hand in training after one of the pilot-pair matches they had picked for him makes exactly the wrong comment, He can hear them talking behind his back. And worst of all he can hear her laughter too.
She's amused by his failure. Just like every other time, she's happy to see that big bear of a man go down like the awkward puppy he is. She'd been surprised he was so young when she actually learned his age. But it fit, really. That scruffy idiot, must have been the way he never shaved that made her think he was a little older. Such dark hair too, he really does look like a bear. And it just makes her happy to watch him get his ass handed to him by the real contenders, the ones she keeps HER eyes on. The real wolves of the program and not the lucky overlarge puppy. She'd be drifting with one of them, she could feel it. But that stupid boy kept getting in her way.
She needed to teach him a lesson in fucking with his betters.
Aleksis isn't in the mood for shit when he finds out they've pitted her against him. The blonde bitch. Prison's Ice Queen. All the names he'd thought up for her in his head and never dared to voice because there is still a scar on his temple that reminds him of the one time he got royally fucked over in his dealings with a woman- the one time he'd ever even tried. His friends are hounding him more than ever, trying to get him to drop out. There's competition now, for the spot. Cutthroat. Bets are taken, and no one ever considered how hard they'd fight for Russia's first Jaeger. Cherno still doesn't have pilots.
And he's got to put up with another fucking test round with the bitch woman.
It goes pretty much as normal. She comes at him like a fucking panther, some wild animal. He hates it, hates her. She kicks him in the leg, gets him down on one knee, and there it is. That fucking smirk. Like she's had over him every time he's seen her. Like she's going to enjoy this. And before he knows it, before he even realizes it, he surges up and at her, just blind and completely off balance, it's crazy, and stupid, and completely against any sensible move in a fight, but he gets her around the middle and throws her to the mat, and when she stand, he takes her again. A knee to her middle, throws her almost halfway across the room with a roar. She staggers back to her feet, those bright blue eyes huge (when did he notice what color they were? Cold and blue like ice.) And she stares. And wipes blood off her lip, the same color as her lipstick, and it smears along her teeth when she hisses at him.
Did that fucking bastard just do what she thought she had? But here she was on her side on the mat with blood in her mouth and that scruffy punk grinning at her and she just fucking loses it. He is NOT supposed to win. Her vision blanks, and she swears she only remembers screaming when she takes him on.
An hour later they hurt like hell and Aleksis is sporting a twisted arm and a mottling of bruises along his side, and the whole side of Sasha's face is swelling and her ears are ringing and she's limping as she walks, and they won't look at each other. But the Pscyh eval team is laughing and grinning and the proctors of the training program are looking far, far too pleased.
Pleased is not the word anyone would use for /them/ when they're slotted together for training after that.
Maybe 'Furious'.
Maybe 'Enraged'.
Maybe 'Considering manslaughter just for the satisfaction'.
But not pleased.
Because Sasha still can't stand the sight of his face, and now she can't help but see it. Everywhere. She mostly just tells him to get a haircut. Shave, maybe. He usually answers by slamming a door in her face, but she can see the tension in his jaw. Yeah. She's not going to have to deal with him for much longer.
Aleksis mostly just hates her because he's never had anyone keep up with him that long. Or to make him hurt as much as she did. As she had. As she does. He thinks he might rather die in a fight with a Kaiju barehanded than keep up with her. But there is NO way he is going to fail. Bleach-blonde bitch and her stupid face.
Sasha's bar asshole, she never even calls him by name. She knows it. Aleksandr, same as hers, Aleksandra. But Bar asshole is more satisfying. More satisfying even when he manages to get her face down on the floor with his knee in her back snarling curses at him. He makes her crazy and she can't fight like that.
When they suggest the two of them go through with the neural bridge test, they laugh. "No." Sasha says flatly. "He is an idiot. Young, stupid, crass."
"And she's a bitch." Aleksis snaps back. "A bitch who holds a grudge. And an ice queen." He adds, just for emphasis. And because it's true. He'll pay for that later when the 'Ice Queen' is doing her damnedest to break his teeth with her fist, but it's worth it.
But things get a little worse. Cherno's still not got her pilots. And they're dumping people left and right who can't get through the training. And both of them are way too stubborn to just quit. No one else matches up right, they'd wreck whoever they tried to drift with out of those left. But they hate each other.
They hate losing more.
It might be the only thing they ever agree on.
So they do it. A last ditch effort before they're out on their asses like everyone else. It won't work. Of course not. But they have the chance, they'll take it. Sasha does it with a snarl and elbows him out of the way, He growls after her and won;t look at her as they're hooked up to the test machines. Weird shit, the helmets and the wires. Aleksis feels like he's being trapped more than anything, but Sasha just smirks at him and he bites back the irritation. He didn't like the confined spaces but he wasn't about to let her see.
The techs are terrified. They're convinced they're about to kill these two. They have no compatibility, they protest. But the Psych team laughs, tells them to continue. They've got everything in common. They just hate each other, they say. The tech team isn't so sure about that. They can see the readings, the tensions high and tight in blue and green bars laid out across their screens. But the commander gives an order, insists they'll be fine.
The countdown snaps out, mechanical and sharp. Three, Two, one-
It's a lot more than either of them expected. They drift tech had been explained, as best as anyone could. The Neural bridge between human minds and a machine body. But there was never a way to explain the drift itself short of experiencing it.
It's flashes, mostly. A spiral of stream of consciousness images and feelings and a scraping feeling as a soul is laid bare against it's will. They resist, of course, everyone does, even with familiar pairs there's a fear of revealing that much of yourself to any other person, and that's what will throw them out of it if they fuck up.
But even before that they have to endure it and not wreck each other's minds first.
Aleksis was an easy puzzle Sasha had figured out from day one, she thought. Angry, huge, full of himself. But in the eternities between microseconds she /feels/ him too. He's exactly what she thought- huge and hard in the cracks of her mind. Imposing and a lot more like that dog than anything. The overeager puppy with a body too big for him, awkward and floundering. But also a mastiff, huge and unyielding who bites down and won't let go. He's stubborn and mulish and he's got the temper of a bull. He's also terrified of being trapped in caves and his favorite food is orange marmalade. He keeps his hair long because his mother said he looked just like his father when he did. She sees flashes of things, a kitten with orange fur, his first kiss, a tattoo on his back.
Aleksis can see her too. Her thoughts about him, her disgust in nearly everyone around her. She's angry at the world, and he can;t blame her. She takes everything as a challenge. She's apt to lash out before anyone can get to her, and she's not afraid of people hating her. She's not afraid of anything. She's called cold and that stabs at her so she fights right back and makes sure that anyone who'd have something to say is also going to have a broken jaw after saying it. She remembers her father taking her to a ballet, a horse at a circus, and a broken rib, a flash of pride as she walks into the prison. She adores hard, heavy music, and hates high heels, because she's already taller than most men around her.
The sensors waver wildly and shake, the alignments shooting all over the place, the handshake shifting every which way out of alignment-
Aleksis is fury and strength. Sasha is equal parts challenge and dominance and power, and they should be fighting each other, and they do. They fight and pick and circle each other like wolves but there's something there. The admittance of two equally-matched wild animals meeting and acknowledging they'd both be better off without a fight. The challenge is brief and spikes like a lava plume-
And then the handshake settles down and in. Holding steady. Weak, but solid. Sahsa and Aleksis jerk back into themselves. Alone again, but in the back of their heads, like a shadow in their peripheral vision the other. They raise their right hands and clench a fist, and face each other. It's not friendship. They hate each other. They have to. But they're angry. They're stubborn. They're not going to lose to each other. So they raise a fist and fight, because it's easier than failure. Because they would rather hate each other and take out their rage the way they both best know how- with a fist to flesh, with physical force. They can take it on, fueling each other. Every time Aleksis falters, Sasha's sneer picks him back up; when he gets so mad, so damn furious he starts to lose sight of anything but that anger, Sasha's laugh at his puppydog temper slams him back into himself like a fist and a cold bar top sharp in both their memories. Every time Sasha's tensions rise Aleksis' roar brings her back down. She gets too temperamental, she starts to freeze up in fury, and Aleksis drags her back by the scruff of her neck, and they fight.
And then it's official. They hate each other.
And Cherno Alpha has her pilots.