linndechir

Title: Pretty good team
Fandom: Pacific Rim
Characters: Herc Hansen & Chuck Hansen
Rating: G
Words: 1591
Warnings: none
Summary: The story of how Chuck started marking their kills on their fighting suits.
A/N: Written for another

pacificrimkink prompt. Not actually kinky. Just bb!Chuck being an adorable little shit and Herc being a surprisingly good father.

Chuck had disappeared after their debriefing and after basking in the applause of the crew and the admiring questions of journalists for a while, and Herc only had the time to look for him again several hours later. He had no idea what he was going to say to him, but even so he felt that it would be irresponsible not to check in on the boy. The first fight against a kaiju was tough for anyone, especially for a fifteen-year-old kid.

He found the boy in one of the equipment storage rooms – not such an unlikely place to be for him; Chuck had already been obsessive about their equipment being in order before the mission, so it stood to reason that he was the same afterwards. He was sitting at a large workbench, both their armours laid out in front of him next to a few cans of paint, and he was scribbling on a piece of paper.

“What are you doing?” Herc asked, almost flinching at the sound of his own voice. It had come across more like a reproach than a neutral question, and Herc wondered if he'd ever manage to find the right tone with his son. But for once Chuck was in too good a mood to mind much, he had been glowing with pride since they had taken down the kaiju earlier today. Chuck's first kaiju.

With a big grin on his face Chuck held up the piece of paper he had been writing, no, drawing on. Herc stepped closer to examine it, frowned a little. Chuck had never had much of an artistic talent.

“What do you think? I like this one best.” Chuck pointed at one of the scribbles. Herc squinted. It reminded him vaguely of the Starfleet insignia, but to his knowledge Chuck hadn't cared much for TV or movies since he had been a little boy.

“What's it supposed to be?” He thought back of the crude drawings Chuck had made as a little kid, and at fifteen Chuck gave him the same look he had given his father at five, as if he thought Herc had to be a complete idiot not to get it.

“It's a kaiju head.” He paused, waiting for Herc to catch on. When Herc just kept looking at him, Chuck sighed and explained, “To mark our kills. We should paint them on the armour.”

Chuck's face fell a little when Herc's reaction wasn't as enthusiastic as he seemed to have hoped – his reaction was actually non-existent, because Herc was simply dumbfounded. Chuck had been incredibly professional since they had started working together, far too tense and mature for a boy his age, obsessed with being taken seriously by his father and his superiors and the whole crew, and this almost child-like enthusiasm had taken Herc by surprise.

“It's an old military tradition, right?” Chuck's voice sounded a bit more hesitant now. He put the piece of paper back onto the workbench, smoothed it out carefully. “You told me about it when I was a kid. How warriors used to get tattoos or carve notches into their weapons, one for every enemy they killed. And you said some figher pilots marked on the hull how many enemy planes they had shot down.”

You don't remember, do you?

The disappointment in Chuck's eyes hit Herc like a punch in the face. He did remember that tradition of course, but he couldn't remember ever telling Chuck about it, and he certainly had no idea that it had impressed his son that much. To be frank, he had always thought it was rather immature and old-fashioned, to show off with something that was simply an unfortunate necessity.

But for once he had the good sense not to say the first thing that came to his mind. Maybe, after years of always saying the wrong thing to his son, he was finally learning. He sat down next to Chuck, closer to him than he would have just a few weeks ago.

“We've only killed one kaiju so far, you and me.”

That brought a tentative smile back onto Chuck's face, his eyes gleaming with pride. He looked so young in that moment, younger even than fifteen. If everything was still right in the world, Chuck would be proud of winning a rugby match with his high school team right now, not of killing a gigantic monster that would have destroyed millions of lives otherwise. Herc knew it was his fault that Chuck was in this situation, that Chuck was even here even though he was far, far too young for any of this. But his son was also the most promising young pilot the Jaeger Academy had ever produced, and the world couldn't afford not to use him just because his father would have liked to protect him. And if drawing little kaiju heads on his armour made the boy feel better about this crazy life he was living – crazy and probably so very short, because Herc Hansen knew better than anyone that even the best Jaeger pilots didn't live very long – the least Herc could do was to let him have that small pleasure.

“The first of many, right?” Chuck looked hopeful, then glanced down at their matching suits on the workbench. There was a sudden note of fear in his voice, fear of rejection, fear of having to be alone again, and Herc realised only then that his son sounded like that far too often. “I mean, we beat the shit out of that kaiju. The bastard didn't even get anywhere near the coast.”

He's afraid I won't want to co-pilot with him again, even though he did better than most pilots in their first fight.

“Yeah, we made a pretty good team out there,” he said, and what he meant was that Chuck had done well, that Herc was proud of him, but the boy was already convinced that he was the saviour of the universe and the greatest Jaeger pilot the world would ever see without Herc stroking his ego. And what he had said was enough, wasn't it? Because Chuck was smiling again, smiling like a little kid on his birthday, except that he hadn't looked like that on his birthday for years, and the last time Herc had tried to give him a birthday gift Chuck had told him that one shitty present a year didn't make up for never being there the rest of the time.

Chuck shifted a little on the bench, fidgetting with the piece of paper.

“If you don't like this one, we can use a different design,” he said, and Herc smiled because coming from Chuck that was the biggest peace offering he had ever heard.

“Nah, I like it. Reminds me of the Starfleet symbol,” he replied, laughed when Chuck rolled his eyes in that particularly annoyed way of teenagers who were embarrassed by their parents.

“Star Trek hasn't been cool since before I was born, old man,” but for all the adolescent brattiness in his voice he was still smiling, and leaning a little towards Herc. For the first time in what felt like years Herc considered hugging his son, or just slinging an arm around his shoulders, but it had been too long for that to feel natural, and he doubted any attempt at touching Chuck would even be welcome. Instead he tapped on the little drawing of a kaiju head.

“Go with the one you like best. On both our armours, all right?” Herc got up, relieved that Chuck seemed to be dealing well with his first real battle, and in desperate need of some sleep. He felt bone-tired, exhausted from the fight and the added stress of drifting with his son, of trying to play down just how worried he was about him because Chuck would have assumed that his father wasn't taking him seriously, not that he wanted to protect him.

“All right. Thanks, dad.”

Herc froze, and so did Chuck, his smile lingering on his face for a second as if he had forgotten to stop smiling before he swallowed hard, and for a moment they just stared at each other in disbelief. Because Chuck didn't call Herc 'dad', hadn't called him that since Herc had told him about his mother's death. Neither of them said anything to fill the silence that ensued, and Herc decided the only thing worse than ignoring what his son had just said would be to acknowledge it. He cleared his throat and scratched the back of his neck.

“Er, don't go to bed too late,” he said and quickly retreated towards the door.

“I killed a kaiju today, I'm not a child anymore!” Chuck called after him, and Herc had a feeling he was going to hear that particular sentence awfully often from now on. But he decided to let it go for tonight, even grinned back at Chuck over his shoulder before he left the room. If he allowed his son to put that sort of burden on his young shoulders, he had to let him deal with it his own way. And no matter what he thought about showing off their kill count on their armours as if they were some sort of viking warriors, he was too grateful to have even such a little thing to connect him with his son, something that belonged only to them, something that brought them closer even outside the drift. Herc wasn't going to waste that chance.

Title: Sucks to be right
Fandom: Pacific Rim
Characters: Stacker Pentecost, Herc Hansen/Chuck Hansen
Rating: PG-13
Words: 1071
Warnings: consensual father-son incest
Summary: A common side effect of the drift is that the co-pilots start sleeping with each other, so Stacker wonders if co-piloting with his son is really the brightest idea Herc ever had.
A/N: Written for another

pacificrimkink prompt. Not really a serious fic or anything, just something I had to write down quickly to get the idea out of my head. I need to stop obsessing over these two. ;)

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Stacker's tone made it clear that he was very sure that it wasn't.

Herc let out a resigned sigh. He'd been waiting for that question since the first trials, since he had started looking for a new co-pilot and realised very quickly that the best option, in every regard, seemed to be his son. His son who excelled in every single class, who knew more about Jaegers than most technicians and had simulator stats that made candidates who were years older than him look like incompetent idiots, his son who was more driven and ambitious than anyone else Herc had ever met. And at least according to preliminary scans and tests they seemed to have an exceptionally high drift-compatibility.

“He's the best candidate by far. He's young and inexperienced, of course, but we both know that often works better than when you throw two veterans together who already have too many old habits and memories from previous co-pilots.”

“That's not what I mean.” The way Stacker was looking at him would have intimidated most people, but Herc had known him for years, and hierarchy or not, they were friends more than anything else. Still, he sighed and sat down on one of the chairs in Stacker's office.

“You mean that Chuck and I barely talk, that he spent the last three years telling anyone who asked that he isn't related to me, and that he's made it very clear he will never forgive me for what happened to his mother?” It was more than he had wanted to say, but maybe he had kept all his worries about his son bottled up for far too long, and in a way it felt good to put them into words. He shook his head. “If anything can bring us closer again, it's the drift. And if things don't work out, then there are still other candidates.”

Stacker raised both eyebrows, in an expression that clearly said that he wasn't buying any of this, the look he usually gave Herc when Herc insisted he was perfectly fine, or when he pretended that the only reason he wanted Chuck by his side was because his son was technically the best choice, not because he didn't really trust anyone else to keep the boy safe.

“That is not what I mean.”

Herc frowned, confused by the pointedly meaningful look on Stacker's face, then jumped up when he finally realised what his friend might mean.

“Oh please, tell me you aren't serious! He's my son!”

Stacker raised his hands in a gesture of pacification, but he didn't back off.

“And I'm not saying you want to do anything you shouldn't. But I'm sure neither did the Becket brothers or any other sibling team before they started drifting. It is a very common side effect. The shared memories, the mind-meld, it is almost impossible to keep any sexual thoughts out of that bond. Even when the co-pilots are not in love with each other, such a high level of intimacy –”

“Don't lecture me,” Herc snapped, too angry to feel sorry for taking that tone with his oldest friend. If anyone else had suggested this to him, he would have punched them without batting an eyelash. “I know all about the psychological side effects, but I'm sure if there had been any other parent-child-teams before, this particular side effect would not have occurred with them.”

Stacker didn't say anything, but he didn't look convinced. Herc kept glaring at him; the very thought sickened him to the core, no matter how much he knew that some sort of sexual tension seemed to exist between most co-pilots. He himself hadn't actually slept with most of the people he had worked with, but there had always been dreams, fantasies, awkward moments when something almost happened, and he knew that most pilots – knowing that there was a good chance they wouldn't survive the next fight, and that it was almost impossible to have any serious relationship as long as you were still drifting with someone else – didn't bother to refrain from acting on those desires. But this was different.

“Chuck and I aren't siblings, nor are we hormonal 20-year-olds,” he went on. “He's fifteen years old, for God's sake.”

“All I'm saying is that those kinds of thoughts or dreams would only make things worse between you two, Herc. There would be no turning back from that.” Stacker's voice was gentle enough, but it did little to calm Herc down.

“It won't be an issue,” he said sharply, and Stacker never mentioned it again.

~ ~ ~

Three years passed and neither the drift nor their stellar battle record changed anything about how distant Herc and Chuck were with each other. Where most co-pilots seemed to grow closer with every passing day, the Hansens never seemed to touch each other, they barely even talked about anything other than Jaegers and battle tactics, and most of the time the only thing that seemed to bring them together outside of work was their dog. Eventually Stacker wondered how he could have seriously considered the idea that these two would ever be attracted to each other, no matter how often they drifted together.

Until he almost ran into them in a dark corridor by the gym, so early in the morning that he hadn't expected anyone else to be awake – and neither had they, it seemed –, saw them standing there in sweat-soaked gym clothes, Chuck crowding his father against the wall, for once without even an ounce of hostility in his demeanour, with Herc's hands at the back of Chuck's neck to keep him close, their foreheads leaning against each other in something that would have looked like an uncharacteristic display of parental tenderness, if not for Chuck's hand on Herc's hip, slipping under his shirt as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

“We've still got over an hour until there's any breakfast at the mess hall,” Chuck said so softly Stacker barely heard him even in the quiet of the empty corridor. “Your room?”

Stacker saw Herc nod, and he turned around to leave as quickly as he could without making any noise – before he ended up seeing anything else he didn't want to see. For once he couldn't even take any pleasure in knowing that he had been right to worry all those years ago.