[ fic ] good run
B1A4 | cnu/jinyoung, ot5 friendship, (side) gongchan/sandeul | PG-13 | 3,000 w
there was life before kaiju and jaegers but sometimes it's hard to remember, and sometimes those memories seem more like dreams. pacific rim!au
written for b1a4ss 2013
“You skipped the post battle photographs and interviews, huh?”
There’s always a weird glow in the labs, Dongwoo isn’t sure if it’s the lighting or the Kaiju parts or both. He taps at the glass of a particularly large container with a chunk of Kaiju carcass floating in it. It’s bizarre to see them in neatly packed pieces like that when hours ago he’d been ripping one of these behemoths apart.
“I’m not really good at that part.”
It’s always quiet after the thing falls, so quiet. They always stand still for a moment, listening for nothing, still connected. It’s the only time Dongwoo feels at ease.
“You’re crazy, the other pilots love it. It was your third kill, you guys aren’t rookies anymore.”
Dongwoo sighs and swivels to face Sunwoo. “I don’t feel that great about smashing the university in the process.”
By the time Chansik and Dongwoo had arrived the Kaiju had already made it to the city, it’d been a fast one. They managed to lead it back out into the water but not without some damage to the city. It’s never without damage. They fight, fight for their lives; they grapple with nightmarish dinosaurs and take a chunk of the city with them. Their so called ‘win’ earns them a few weeks of peace before another monster shows up to tear apart another corner of their world.
“You’re thinking too much, I know you’re thinking too much, you’re making that face,” Sunwoo tells him, speaking quickly before Dongwoo can remove the look on his face. He plops a small cylinder with a Kaiju eye drifting in it in front of Dongwoo. “I know what you’re thinking. I bet we’d be Drift compatible.”
Dongwoo snorts. “Maybe, too bad you bruise like a peach and have no stamina.”
Sunwoo spins back to his work, waving Dongwoo away casually with one hand. “Too bad? Thank god, the last thing I want is to be stuck in a giant metal mammoth fighting alien dinosaurs. Now go, I have to get back to work, we’ll probably be getting new samples soon.”
He sighs and gets up to leave, squinting at Sunwoo one more time before hurrying out. The sight of Sunwoo elbow deep in luminescent monster guts should be unnerving or sickening , anything but normal - but that’s exactly what it is. This is their reality regardless of whatever they may have once dreamt of but Sunwoo looks so content with his work that Dongwoo has to wonder if maybe he is living his dream.
“Is Dongwoo here?” Jinyoung wanders into the labs half an hour after Dongwoo has drifted out. The milking machine is churning noisily. He hopes it’s just them clearing out backlog and not new material because Jinyoung does not want to be in the labs while their best and brightest scientists scramble around brains running way too fast for their bodies to follow.
Sunwoo scurries past him, cradling a glowing cylinder in his arms like a baby.
“Gone already, check his room.”
It’s how they are, never quite in sync, one of them trailing behind the other. But they always catch up to each other in the end; Jinyoung supposes that’s what matters out of all the tiny things that would matter if the world weren’t crazy and upside down.
Jinyoung pauses in his turn. “How is he?”
“Thinking too much. You know how he is, why bother asking?”
He does, but he likes to hear it from someone else sometimes. Their lives are far from what they used to be but he still knows Dongwoo. Jinyoung grins thinly at Sunwoo.
“All right, I’ll check his room. Try not to have too much fun with your new babies.”
“They’re not babies, they’re samples,” Sunwoo huffs, words completely at odds with how he absently strokes the thing he’s holding in his arms.
All the pilots are assigned identical rooms to begin with, all metal and plastic and glowing displays that never dim completely. Dongwoo and Chansik’s room is the same but unlike everyone else’s; as far as Jinyoung knows, Dongwoo is the only one that insists on growing plants in their room. He has three little potted plants sitting under plant lights in a corner of their small room. Jinyoung wonders how he and Chansik don’t knock them over when rushing out on assignment. One time Jinyoung knocked the one with the little yellow flowers over while rolling out of Dongwoo’s bunk. He hadn’t even been in a hurry.
“Hi,” Jinyoung chimes as he peers into Dongwoo and Chansik’s shared room. Dongwoo tends to leave his door unlocked when he comes back from assignment. Jinyoung wonders if he does it for him, if it’s an invitation. Sometimes he thinks about asking, coming in with a wider smile and teasingly asking, ‘did you miss me?’
Dongwoo looks up and smiles at him, as if he expected him. He’s crouching by the plants already, fingers dusted with soil, checking if they need water probably. Jinyoung smiles in return, crouching next to Dongwoo.
Jinyoung has already heard about the damage to the city. There’ve been no reports of fatalities or injuries, thanks to early evacuation, and they’d managed to turn the fight back to the water quickly. But they made a dent. Dongwoo will be thinking about it for weeks, until the next attack rolls along, and maybe longer.
He rests his head on Dongwoo’s shoulder as Dongwoo dusts his hands off. It’s uncomfortable, crouching and leaning, it leaves him balanced awkwardly on the balls of his feet but he has to touch Dongwoo because it’ll be a while before he’s ready to say much.
“Tired?” Jinyoung asks, and Dongwoo nods in response.
It’s doesn’t come naturally to Jinyoung at all. He has to try to follow Dongwoo’s pace while he’s used to it being the other way around. In school it had always been that way, Dongwoo a half step behind him with an easy smile on his face. Everything had been easy then. But they’re not in school anymore and it’s become a little easier to believe what’s happening every day; he blinks awake and he knows he’s far from home, he knows that monsters exist.
The alarm sounds at 4 AM and Jinyoung is up and alert in ten blinks. Fighting monsters has changed him in ways he’d never considered; or rather, none of them ever considered how fighting monsters could change them. He’d never been much of a morning person before.
“I’m up,” he tells Junghwan before he can ask, climbing out of his bunk smoothly and straightening his clothes.
“It looks like it’s headed for the Korean Peninsula,” Junghwan answers without being asked, voice thick with sleep but words clear.
There are eight Korean Rangers stationed at Nagasaki and there’s an unwritten agreement that they get to handle the Kaiju that head for Korea. The attacks aren’t common, Japan almost acts as a wall between the breach and Korea, but the only reason they’re stationed here is so that they can defend their home, even if it means being so far from it.
“Let’s get going then; it’s been a while since we’ve been back.” Their bodies move before they even have time to consciously think about what they should be doing. Jinyoung steps on Junghwan’s spare boots and kicks them aside without pausing or stumbling. It’s a far cry from the high schoolers they were once upon a time.
Dongwoo and Chansik meet them in the corridor when they step out, hair messy but eyes alert.
“Come back soon,” Chansik says with a curve at his lips, he looks at Jinyoung and then past him, holding Junghwan’s gaze. Jinyoung grins as he catches Dongwoo’s hand in his and gives him a firm squeeze.
“We’ll make it quick.”
Busan is about a half hour away by air, Seoul an hour. Usually the Kaiju doesn’t get anywhere close to land before they intercept, not anymore. They’ve learned; it’s hardly a comfort.
“Where are they going to drop?” Dongwoo asks, head resting on Chansik’s shoulder. Chansik is turning an empty glass cylinder his hand while Dongwoo taps a pen against the desk noisily.
“Why are you two here?” Sunwoo snaps before Chansik can reply. He’s always irritable when they’re like this, waiting; it leaves all of them a little off balance. Dongwoo straightens up and shrugs helplessly, there’s nothing they can do from here when only Jinyoung and Junghwan were launched.
“Because we’re not supposed to hover around the command center,” he answers dryly.
It’s strange to think that a Category II is nothing to be worried over, that there should be no cause for concern because they’ve seen bigger, more toxic, ones. It’s been over a year since the last time a Category II Kaiju attacked, they’ve become accustomed to Category III Kaiju while worrying about the appearance of the ever larger Category IV Kaiju. So now this ‘small’ monster should be a walk in the park.
But they’re all on edge.
“Don’t you think it’s strange?” Chansik asks, setting the cylinder down with a soft clack. Sunwoo snatches it the moment it touches the table.
“Sunwoo?” Dongwoo prompts, he starts twirling the pen in his hand restlessly.
“So you wanted my expert opinion,” Sunwoo says, mimicking the way he usually preens at the attention and falling a bit flat. It’s never quite quiet in the labs or anywhere in the Shatterdome, something’s always buzzing or cranking or clattering but the three of them are silent for a moment. Dongwoo drops the pen.
“Yeah,” Sunwoo says, swallowing around the word. “It’s kind of strange, but you know what? Stranger things have happened.” Like Kaiju and Jaegers and them piloting Jaegers to fight Kaiju, but all of that has long since become ordinary. This new ordinary is kind of awful and every reason to worry.
Chansik and Dongwoo get up at the same time, even pushing in their chairs at the same time.
“What are you going to do?”
“We’re going to present a logical argument and if that doesn’t work we’re going to beg.” Chansik grins, voice tight but even.
They’re twenty minutes behind but their Jaeger is lighter and it’s better to get there late than to risk regretting never going. It’s been a while since they’ve been home together.
Junghwan remembers the first time a Kaiju attacked Korea, he’s pretty sure they all do. It had hit Seoul, of course, and up until that point the whole bizarre Kaiju war had seemed worlds away, unreal.
Junghwan remembers the first time a Kaiju attacked Busan. He’d been at school when the alarm to evacuate had sounded. He’d been huddled together with his classmates, packed tighter than the subway during rush hour and it’d been unexpectedly quiet. By then the Nagasaki Shatterdome had been in service for almost a year and the Russian one for more than two, the Kaiju never made it to land.
So, it’d been quietly terrifying but they’d survived.
“I hope it’s a quiet day.”
He feels Jinyoung as much as he hears him. “We have some time until it gets here, it’ll be fine if we just wait.”
It turns out to be a quiet day thanks to Dongwoo and Chansik. It was far from an easy victory, but nobody died. They’re credited and praised for their foresight when the Kaiju shed its gooey second skin and revealed itself to be a very compact Category III. The four of them managed to take the monster down, the Kaiju never reached land.
“Yeah, we almost didn’t either,” Dongwoo says, talking over the news broadcast they’re listening to from the infirmary. It’s not funny at all but Chansik laughs, still giddy from the adrenaline. He’s stroking Junghwan’s bangs with a still shaking hand, Junghwan is asleep.
“It wasn’t that bad,” Sunwoo says. He’s waiting around for when they fish out the jelly Category II layer from the sea to get to work.
“Says the one that wasn’t there,” Chansik retorts with a sharp smile.
“You’re all so charming when you’re in pain.”
“I’m not in pain, I can’t feel anything.” Dongwoo sniffs unhappily and gingerly shifts to accommodate Jinyoung’s head on his shoulder.
Junghwan is knocked out, Jinyoung can’t move any of his fingers, Dongwoo fractured his collar bone and some other things, and they are all numb on pain killers. They’re in pieces and this is the worst they’ve ever taken since they became Rangers but it’s more surprising that it didn’t happen sooner. Sunwoo’s right, it wasn’t that bad. It’s more surprising that they all made it back. They’re in pieces but this fits in with the normal that has monsters that rise from the sea, it makes sense in a world where they’re piloting giant robots. Who would be surprised to die in a world like that?
They hear about Gypsy Danger’s half defeat, and it comes as a surprise. They’re surprised that it had taken down the Kaiju on its own even after losing one pilot, they’re surprised one of the pilots survived, and they’re a little surprised about the mangled victory all around. It’s not the first time a Kaiju has taken a Jaeger down with it, but they’ve been lulled to believe that they’re better now than years ago.
The whole world is shocked and scared for a few weeks before they forget.
And then the next Kaiju attack reminds them, the next attack takes down two Rangers and it doesn’t stop. They lose five Rangers in six months, they should be scared.
“They’re talking about building a wall,” Dongwoo murmurs from the top bunk.
Chansik snorts in response, mostly quiet in the bunk below him. They don’t talk much when they’re alone, there’s no real need to when they’ve been in and out of each other’s head so many times over the last few years.
It’s a stupid idea.
“If it works we could go home.”
They haven’t been home in so long, not really, except on assignment. Dongwoo thinks that he and Chansik probably feel the homesickness most acutely but he knows he’s biased because even right now it’s like he can feel Chansik’s feelings echoing inside him. With everyone else he can only guess at what they feel, but he knows Chansik feels the same ache because they share it.
So he knows Chansik knows that he doesn’t mean what he says.
Even if it were possible to build an unbreakable wall, where would it leave them? Building a wall to hide behind indefinitely is the stupidest, most pathetic idea he’s ever heard of, and yet he can see the appeal. That’s how far the world has fallen.
“We can dream,” is all that Chansik says in response and in ten minutes they do. Chansik falls asleep first and the sound of his deep, even breaths lulls Dongwoo to sleep moments later.
“Remember how we talked about moving to Seoul together?” Jinyoung runs his fingers through Dongwoo’s hair, it’s gotten longer and he talks about cutting it but Jinyoung likes it like this. He twists a strand around his finger and tugs lightly, making Dongwoo open his eyes to look up at him.
“Yeah.” It seems like forever ago that the two of them were in high school. They used to stay at school so late, because school was all there’d been to life. Jinyoung was in the student council and Dongwoo would wait for him after the meetings so that they could lock themselves up in the music room. And they dreamed there.
That was before any Kaiju attacked Korea, the closest attack had been Tokyo, so it still felt like there was more to life than Kaiju and Jaegers. It’s hard to believe that was almost five years ago.
“Do you still want to go?”
Dongwoo presses his cheek to the inside of Jinyoung’s thigh, his fingers curl around Jinyoung’s knee.
“Together?” Dongwoo asks, lips brushing against skin and Jinyoung has to press his lips tightly closed.
“Mmhm.”
“I’d like that.” His fingers are etching patterns up Jinyoung’s leg, touch so light it almost tickles. “Channie and Junghwan too. And Sunwoo. We could all go together.”
Jinyoung feels too old to go back to school and Dongwoo probably feels the same, but Chansik could. Junghwan wanted to be a singer, so Jinyoung imagines him singing in a small, dimly lit bar. He imagines Dongwoo playing the piano while he plays the guitar, even though his fingers can’t move the same way they used to anymore. Sunwoo would be there too, probably drinking to celebrate the fact that he’s actually old enough to, unlike when he first left Korea.
It’s a nice, quiet dream.
The feeling of Dongwoo’s tongue on him wakes him up but Jinyoung can’t complain. It’s just a dream, so Dongwoo - warm, solid, real Dongwoo - is much better than a paper thin dream.
“They’re talking about shutting this place down.”
Nagasaki was the last Shatterdome to be built and, it seems, will be the first one to be shut down.
Jinyoung glances over at Junghwan; he looks the way Jinyoung feels, blank.
“There’s still Russia, or Tokyo.” He feels brittle and tired suddenly, the combination makes him feel like he’s about to snap in half. Those are their options, the more ideal ones that keep them close enough to continue protecting their home.
There’s no moving anywhere to make dreams a reality because there’s no point, not when the world can still crumble around them and bury their dreams in the next week or the next heartbeat.
“Does that mean I have to learn to speak Russian?”
Jinyoung manages a tight smile. “We did okay here, I’m sure we’ll figure it out wherever we get stationed.”
He ruffles Junghwan’s hair and forces his smile wider. It’s not a genuine smile but it’s not empty, it’s a promise. “Wherever it is, we’ll go together.”
As long as they walk out of each fight alive, they’ll go together.
there was life before kaiju and jaegers but sometimes it's hard to remember, and sometimes those memories seem more like dreams. pacific rim!au
written for b1a4ss 2013
“You skipped the post battle photographs and interviews, huh?”
There’s always a weird glow in the labs, Dongwoo isn’t sure if it’s the lighting or the Kaiju parts or both. He taps at the glass of a particularly large container with a chunk of Kaiju carcass floating in it. It’s bizarre to see them in neatly packed pieces like that when hours ago he’d been ripping one of these behemoths apart.
“I’m not really good at that part.”
It’s always quiet after the thing falls, so quiet. They always stand still for a moment, listening for nothing, still connected. It’s the only time Dongwoo feels at ease.
“You’re crazy, the other pilots love it. It was your third kill, you guys aren’t rookies anymore.”
Dongwoo sighs and swivels to face Sunwoo. “I don’t feel that great about smashing the university in the process.”
By the time Chansik and Dongwoo had arrived the Kaiju had already made it to the city, it’d been a fast one. They managed to lead it back out into the water but not without some damage to the city. It’s never without damage. They fight, fight for their lives; they grapple with nightmarish dinosaurs and take a chunk of the city with them. Their so called ‘win’ earns them a few weeks of peace before another monster shows up to tear apart another corner of their world.
“You’re thinking too much, I know you’re thinking too much, you’re making that face,” Sunwoo tells him, speaking quickly before Dongwoo can remove the look on his face. He plops a small cylinder with a Kaiju eye drifting in it in front of Dongwoo. “I know what you’re thinking. I bet we’d be Drift compatible.”
Dongwoo snorts. “Maybe, too bad you bruise like a peach and have no stamina.”
Sunwoo spins back to his work, waving Dongwoo away casually with one hand. “Too bad? Thank god, the last thing I want is to be stuck in a giant metal mammoth fighting alien dinosaurs. Now go, I have to get back to work, we’ll probably be getting new samples soon.”
He sighs and gets up to leave, squinting at Sunwoo one more time before hurrying out. The sight of Sunwoo elbow deep in luminescent monster guts should be unnerving or sickening , anything but normal - but that’s exactly what it is. This is their reality regardless of whatever they may have once dreamt of but Sunwoo looks so content with his work that Dongwoo has to wonder if maybe he is living his dream.
“Is Dongwoo here?” Jinyoung wanders into the labs half an hour after Dongwoo has drifted out. The milking machine is churning noisily. He hopes it’s just them clearing out backlog and not new material because Jinyoung does not want to be in the labs while their best and brightest scientists scramble around brains running way too fast for their bodies to follow.
Sunwoo scurries past him, cradling a glowing cylinder in his arms like a baby.
“Gone already, check his room.”
It’s how they are, never quite in sync, one of them trailing behind the other. But they always catch up to each other in the end; Jinyoung supposes that’s what matters out of all the tiny things that would matter if the world weren’t crazy and upside down.
Jinyoung pauses in his turn. “How is he?”
“Thinking too much. You know how he is, why bother asking?”
He does, but he likes to hear it from someone else sometimes. Their lives are far from what they used to be but he still knows Dongwoo. Jinyoung grins thinly at Sunwoo.
“All right, I’ll check his room. Try not to have too much fun with your new babies.”
“They’re not babies, they’re samples,” Sunwoo huffs, words completely at odds with how he absently strokes the thing he’s holding in his arms.
All the pilots are assigned identical rooms to begin with, all metal and plastic and glowing displays that never dim completely. Dongwoo and Chansik’s room is the same but unlike everyone else’s; as far as Jinyoung knows, Dongwoo is the only one that insists on growing plants in their room. He has three little potted plants sitting under plant lights in a corner of their small room. Jinyoung wonders how he and Chansik don’t knock them over when rushing out on assignment. One time Jinyoung knocked the one with the little yellow flowers over while rolling out of Dongwoo’s bunk. He hadn’t even been in a hurry.
“Hi,” Jinyoung chimes as he peers into Dongwoo and Chansik’s shared room. Dongwoo tends to leave his door unlocked when he comes back from assignment. Jinyoung wonders if he does it for him, if it’s an invitation. Sometimes he thinks about asking, coming in with a wider smile and teasingly asking, ‘did you miss me?’
Dongwoo looks up and smiles at him, as if he expected him. He’s crouching by the plants already, fingers dusted with soil, checking if they need water probably. Jinyoung smiles in return, crouching next to Dongwoo.
Jinyoung has already heard about the damage to the city. There’ve been no reports of fatalities or injuries, thanks to early evacuation, and they’d managed to turn the fight back to the water quickly. But they made a dent. Dongwoo will be thinking about it for weeks, until the next attack rolls along, and maybe longer.
He rests his head on Dongwoo’s shoulder as Dongwoo dusts his hands off. It’s uncomfortable, crouching and leaning, it leaves him balanced awkwardly on the balls of his feet but he has to touch Dongwoo because it’ll be a while before he’s ready to say much.
“Tired?” Jinyoung asks, and Dongwoo nods in response.
It’s doesn’t come naturally to Jinyoung at all. He has to try to follow Dongwoo’s pace while he’s used to it being the other way around. In school it had always been that way, Dongwoo a half step behind him with an easy smile on his face. Everything had been easy then. But they’re not in school anymore and it’s become a little easier to believe what’s happening every day; he blinks awake and he knows he’s far from home, he knows that monsters exist.
The alarm sounds at 4 AM and Jinyoung is up and alert in ten blinks. Fighting monsters has changed him in ways he’d never considered; or rather, none of them ever considered how fighting monsters could change them. He’d never been much of a morning person before.
“I’m up,” he tells Junghwan before he can ask, climbing out of his bunk smoothly and straightening his clothes.
“It looks like it’s headed for the Korean Peninsula,” Junghwan answers without being asked, voice thick with sleep but words clear.
There are eight Korean Rangers stationed at Nagasaki and there’s an unwritten agreement that they get to handle the Kaiju that head for Korea. The attacks aren’t common, Japan almost acts as a wall between the breach and Korea, but the only reason they’re stationed here is so that they can defend their home, even if it means being so far from it.
“Let’s get going then; it’s been a while since we’ve been back.” Their bodies move before they even have time to consciously think about what they should be doing. Jinyoung steps on Junghwan’s spare boots and kicks them aside without pausing or stumbling. It’s a far cry from the high schoolers they were once upon a time.
Dongwoo and Chansik meet them in the corridor when they step out, hair messy but eyes alert.
“Come back soon,” Chansik says with a curve at his lips, he looks at Jinyoung and then past him, holding Junghwan’s gaze. Jinyoung grins as he catches Dongwoo’s hand in his and gives him a firm squeeze.
“We’ll make it quick.”
Busan is about a half hour away by air, Seoul an hour. Usually the Kaiju doesn’t get anywhere close to land before they intercept, not anymore. They’ve learned; it’s hardly a comfort.
“Where are they going to drop?” Dongwoo asks, head resting on Chansik’s shoulder. Chansik is turning an empty glass cylinder his hand while Dongwoo taps a pen against the desk noisily.
“Why are you two here?” Sunwoo snaps before Chansik can reply. He’s always irritable when they’re like this, waiting; it leaves all of them a little off balance. Dongwoo straightens up and shrugs helplessly, there’s nothing they can do from here when only Jinyoung and Junghwan were launched.
“Because we’re not supposed to hover around the command center,” he answers dryly.
It’s strange to think that a Category II is nothing to be worried over, that there should be no cause for concern because they’ve seen bigger, more toxic, ones. It’s been over a year since the last time a Category II Kaiju attacked, they’ve become accustomed to Category III Kaiju while worrying about the appearance of the ever larger Category IV Kaiju. So now this ‘small’ monster should be a walk in the park.
But they’re all on edge.
“Don’t you think it’s strange?” Chansik asks, setting the cylinder down with a soft clack. Sunwoo snatches it the moment it touches the table.
“Sunwoo?” Dongwoo prompts, he starts twirling the pen in his hand restlessly.
“So you wanted my expert opinion,” Sunwoo says, mimicking the way he usually preens at the attention and falling a bit flat. It’s never quite quiet in the labs or anywhere in the Shatterdome, something’s always buzzing or cranking or clattering but the three of them are silent for a moment. Dongwoo drops the pen.
“Yeah,” Sunwoo says, swallowing around the word. “It’s kind of strange, but you know what? Stranger things have happened.” Like Kaiju and Jaegers and them piloting Jaegers to fight Kaiju, but all of that has long since become ordinary. This new ordinary is kind of awful and every reason to worry.
Chansik and Dongwoo get up at the same time, even pushing in their chairs at the same time.
“What are you going to do?”
“We’re going to present a logical argument and if that doesn’t work we’re going to beg.” Chansik grins, voice tight but even.
They’re twenty minutes behind but their Jaeger is lighter and it’s better to get there late than to risk regretting never going. It’s been a while since they’ve been home together.
Junghwan remembers the first time a Kaiju attacked Korea, he’s pretty sure they all do. It had hit Seoul, of course, and up until that point the whole bizarre Kaiju war had seemed worlds away, unreal.
Junghwan remembers the first time a Kaiju attacked Busan. He’d been at school when the alarm to evacuate had sounded. He’d been huddled together with his classmates, packed tighter than the subway during rush hour and it’d been unexpectedly quiet. By then the Nagasaki Shatterdome had been in service for almost a year and the Russian one for more than two, the Kaiju never made it to land.
So, it’d been quietly terrifying but they’d survived.
“I hope it’s a quiet day.”
He feels Jinyoung as much as he hears him. “We have some time until it gets here, it’ll be fine if we just wait.”
It turns out to be a quiet day thanks to Dongwoo and Chansik. It was far from an easy victory, but nobody died. They’re credited and praised for their foresight when the Kaiju shed its gooey second skin and revealed itself to be a very compact Category III. The four of them managed to take the monster down, the Kaiju never reached land.
“Yeah, we almost didn’t either,” Dongwoo says, talking over the news broadcast they’re listening to from the infirmary. It’s not funny at all but Chansik laughs, still giddy from the adrenaline. He’s stroking Junghwan’s bangs with a still shaking hand, Junghwan is asleep.
“It wasn’t that bad,” Sunwoo says. He’s waiting around for when they fish out the jelly Category II layer from the sea to get to work.
“Says the one that wasn’t there,” Chansik retorts with a sharp smile.
“You’re all so charming when you’re in pain.”
“I’m not in pain, I can’t feel anything.” Dongwoo sniffs unhappily and gingerly shifts to accommodate Jinyoung’s head on his shoulder.
Junghwan is knocked out, Jinyoung can’t move any of his fingers, Dongwoo fractured his collar bone and some other things, and they are all numb on pain killers. They’re in pieces and this is the worst they’ve ever taken since they became Rangers but it’s more surprising that it didn’t happen sooner. Sunwoo’s right, it wasn’t that bad. It’s more surprising that they all made it back. They’re in pieces but this fits in with the normal that has monsters that rise from the sea, it makes sense in a world where they’re piloting giant robots. Who would be surprised to die in a world like that?
They hear about Gypsy Danger’s half defeat, and it comes as a surprise. They’re surprised that it had taken down the Kaiju on its own even after losing one pilot, they’re surprised one of the pilots survived, and they’re a little surprised about the mangled victory all around. It’s not the first time a Kaiju has taken a Jaeger down with it, but they’ve been lulled to believe that they’re better now than years ago.
The whole world is shocked and scared for a few weeks before they forget.
And then the next Kaiju attack reminds them, the next attack takes down two Rangers and it doesn’t stop. They lose five Rangers in six months, they should be scared.
“They’re talking about building a wall,” Dongwoo murmurs from the top bunk.
Chansik snorts in response, mostly quiet in the bunk below him. They don’t talk much when they’re alone, there’s no real need to when they’ve been in and out of each other’s head so many times over the last few years.
It’s a stupid idea.
“If it works we could go home.”
They haven’t been home in so long, not really, except on assignment. Dongwoo thinks that he and Chansik probably feel the homesickness most acutely but he knows he’s biased because even right now it’s like he can feel Chansik’s feelings echoing inside him. With everyone else he can only guess at what they feel, but he knows Chansik feels the same ache because they share it.
So he knows Chansik knows that he doesn’t mean what he says.
Even if it were possible to build an unbreakable wall, where would it leave them? Building a wall to hide behind indefinitely is the stupidest, most pathetic idea he’s ever heard of, and yet he can see the appeal. That’s how far the world has fallen.
“We can dream,” is all that Chansik says in response and in ten minutes they do. Chansik falls asleep first and the sound of his deep, even breaths lulls Dongwoo to sleep moments later.
“Remember how we talked about moving to Seoul together?” Jinyoung runs his fingers through Dongwoo’s hair, it’s gotten longer and he talks about cutting it but Jinyoung likes it like this. He twists a strand around his finger and tugs lightly, making Dongwoo open his eyes to look up at him.
“Yeah.” It seems like forever ago that the two of them were in high school. They used to stay at school so late, because school was all there’d been to life. Jinyoung was in the student council and Dongwoo would wait for him after the meetings so that they could lock themselves up in the music room. And they dreamed there.
That was before any Kaiju attacked Korea, the closest attack had been Tokyo, so it still felt like there was more to life than Kaiju and Jaegers. It’s hard to believe that was almost five years ago.
“Do you still want to go?”
Dongwoo presses his cheek to the inside of Jinyoung’s thigh, his fingers curl around Jinyoung’s knee.
“Together?” Dongwoo asks, lips brushing against skin and Jinyoung has to press his lips tightly closed.
“Mmhm.”
“I’d like that.” His fingers are etching patterns up Jinyoung’s leg, touch so light it almost tickles. “Channie and Junghwan too. And Sunwoo. We could all go together.”
Jinyoung feels too old to go back to school and Dongwoo probably feels the same, but Chansik could. Junghwan wanted to be a singer, so Jinyoung imagines him singing in a small, dimly lit bar. He imagines Dongwoo playing the piano while he plays the guitar, even though his fingers can’t move the same way they used to anymore. Sunwoo would be there too, probably drinking to celebrate the fact that he’s actually old enough to, unlike when he first left Korea.
It’s a nice, quiet dream.
The feeling of Dongwoo’s tongue on him wakes him up but Jinyoung can’t complain. It’s just a dream, so Dongwoo - warm, solid, real Dongwoo - is much better than a paper thin dream.
“They’re talking about shutting this place down.”
Nagasaki was the last Shatterdome to be built and, it seems, will be the first one to be shut down.
Jinyoung glances over at Junghwan; he looks the way Jinyoung feels, blank.
“There’s still Russia, or Tokyo.” He feels brittle and tired suddenly, the combination makes him feel like he’s about to snap in half. Those are their options, the more ideal ones that keep them close enough to continue protecting their home.
There’s no moving anywhere to make dreams a reality because there’s no point, not when the world can still crumble around them and bury their dreams in the next week or the next heartbeat.
“Does that mean I have to learn to speak Russian?”
Jinyoung manages a tight smile. “We did okay here, I’m sure we’ll figure it out wherever we get stationed.”
He ruffles Junghwan’s hair and forces his smile wider. It’s not a genuine smile but it’s not empty, it’s a promise. “Wherever it is, we’ll go together.”
As long as they walk out of each fight alive, they’ll go together.