Archive of Our Own

When I was a kid, whenever I'd feel small or lonely, I'd look up at the stars, wondered if there was life up there. Turns out I was looking at the wrong direction.

("Pacific Rim", dir. Guillermo Del Toro. 2013.)

The first time he sees Jeno Lee in action, Mark is sixteen and being shoved to the side by the vicious crowd of the Kwoon Combat Room, suffocated by the cheering and the heat and the buzzing energy coming from the other teenagers who, just like him, want to see the show.

If you ask him, no, Mark has never enjoyed violence, and that is exactly the reason why he let Yukhei drag him to the training room that evening. Because he’s sixteen and soon to graduate with honors from the Jaeger Academy, youngest Ranger to do so, but he’s also heard that the only cadet to ever stand on the same level as him is the one in the center of the room. So, no, Mark doesn’t care about the pushing or the screams or how unbearably hot it is inside the training room, he could never miss this. He’s sixteen and digging an elbow in Jaemin’s ribs, scoot over , and lets himself rest against a column on the right side of the room and enjoys the fight.

It’s not a surprise when Mark finds out Jeno Lee lives up to his fame – he’s heard about him before, sure, but only when that name meant nothing at the Academy, when Jeno was just one of the thousands of kids who lost their parents to a Kaiju attack, admitted to the Academy in hopes that they’ll be the ones to bring an end to this war –, but it’s still quite a sight to see. He trusted the other cadet’s and the Fightmaster’s opinions, but had to check for himself.

Jeno Lee, fifteen, fights like hell but you could easily mistake it for a dance. Mark doesn’t like violence, but he did enjoy dancing before the war began, and it’s in the way Jeno’s bare feet barely make a sound against the mat, how he’s faster and more gracious than his opponent could ever dream of being. He’s scrawny, maybe smaller than Mark himself, but building up – it doesn’t matter that his opponent is older, heavier, bigger, because they’ve been at it for fifteen minutes now and the guy is panting while Jeno remains untroubled, a little grin on the corner of his lips.

Mark knows that technique. He’s tiring the other guy out. His opponent's pace falters for a split second and it’s enough for Jeno to send him flying to the floor, and Mark wouldn’t ever believe that a kid like him is skyrocketing in the ranks, not when he has a kind smile on his face and hand stretched out for his fallen opponent.

No. Soft eyes like that aren’t made for this, and Mark pities him, for all the loss of innocence to come, but claps the loudest either way.

It’s not like he doesn’t like being at the Anchorage Shatterdome. Being inside a Jaeger has always been the thing Mark loved the most, – nothing would ever replace the thrill of feeling Limitless moving with him as if they were one –, but there’s only so much you can take of the cold and the even colder people on Alaska before it’s bound to break.

He isn’t the one to break, though. This is something Marshal Jung, from the Los Angeles Shatterdome, had said to him when she trusted her brother on his hands: you are unbreakable, Mark Lee. No Kaiju can take this from you. He basked in that, of course, all of that validation, how it massaged his sixteen-year-old ego to receive such high praise from a Marshal, but that’s something Mark regrets on his last day in the Shatterdome.

He sits at the side of Jaehyun’s bed in their empty dorm, hand ghosting over his pale skin tainted with blue, laughing at something stupid Jaehyun has said, probably about how he thought Kaiju blue looked beautiful until it covered him, until it burned like a bitch and hurt him too much. And then Mark cries, because he still was inside Jaehyun’s head when he realized they would never, ever fight together again, and even though he would still pull him from a thousand pools of Kaiju blue if it was necessary, he knows it wouldn’t be right to ask him to pilot again, not when the image and the feeling of Jaehyun covered in blue, beautiful but deadly, is still so fresh in his mind.

So, yeah, he isn’t the one to break, Jaehyun is, but Mark wishes it was him. He doesn’t know what kind of odd made the Kaiju rip out Jaehyun’s side of the Conn-pod, spit him out like a used toy when it could have been him as well. But no, Mark Lee is unbreakable and apparently damn lucky, and that’s why he sits around at the Anchorage Shatterdome for less than a month, and has his bag ready before they even say the word.

No need to stay here if his co-pilot was sent to Los Angeles to retire, safe under his sister’s protection. Therefore, Mark goes home.

If we’re talking numbers, it takes Mark four years, three months and twenty-seven days to hear about Jeno Lee again. It takes him less than a second, though, to discover he’s been beaten.

“What is this betrayal,” Mark comments, bag dropping at the foot of his new bed in his new dorm. He doesn’t remember how it is to walk barefoot on the floor without freezing his toes, but refuses to take the shoes off even when Ten suggests it. Old habits die hard. “I’m gone for three years and Kun finds another genius inside the program? Hard to believe, but I guess I trust you.”

Ten offers him a kind smile: “You saw it coming, Markles, we all did,” he pats the empty spot beside him on the bed. “I wouldn’t say he’s a genius, though, never aced shit like you did, but he’s pretty good. He’s so good that even the biggest scaredy cat would die to be in a Jaeger with him. To have a taste of it.”

Mark sits down and nods. “So Jeno Lee is a god, but you haven’t found a Drift partner for him yet,” he scoffs. “Holy, sure, but he’s going to rot inside this Shatterdome despite all that holiness.”

Fidgeting with the dog tag hanging from his necklace, Ten smiles with his lips pursed. Whoever sees him right now wouldn’t ever take him for their most skilled Fightmaster, but Mark has always known better. If he was the brightest cadet of the Jaeger Program, it was all due to Ten, youngest Fightmaster at the time, barely three years older. He received his title on the very same day Mark was admitted to the Academy, in 2014. They’ve been friends ever since, corresponding through letters over the years, meeting at conferences from time to time. Mark can’t say he doesn’t laugh at how he’s outgrown him, even if just a little.

“I haven’t someone for him, that’s true,” Ten replies, with a tilt of his head. “I’ll tell you, I’ve been holding him back, and they call me crazy, the other Fightmasters. Kun does, too. But, thing is, I was waiting for you.”

Mark fights back a laugh. “For me? And for what?”

Ten lets go of the dog tag and taps him twice on the underside of his chin. “To Drift with him, silly. Isn’t that obvious? Takes a god to understand another.”

“Nice to meet you, Mark,” says Jeno, with the kindest eyes ever know to humanity, over lunch. He stretches a hand out to Mark and it would be a crime, a heresy, not to take it, so that’s what he does. “I’ve only heard great things about you.”

Mark should reply that he could say the same, but he knows how cadets get when they’re fresh out of the Academy. Too eager to save the world, too eager to be praised by it. Taking a look at him, it’s obvious that there isn’t a drop of malice or vanity in Jeno Lee’s blood, but Mark shakes his hand and replies: “That seat’s not taken, if you want to eat here.”

Jeno shakes his head eagerly, smiling, and he’s off to get food before Mark can say anything else. A Ranger by the right end of the table whistles, and he stretches out a hand to Mark too:

“I’m Yuta Nakamoto,” he says. “What brings you to our Shatterdome, Mark Lee?”

“A jet plane,” Mark replies, and he didn’t expect it to be funny, but Yuta throws his head back in laughter. The other Rangers at the table, that he just knows by names, laugh as well. It’s all loud and all heat, all different from Alaska, so lets himself warm up too. “Who do you pilot?”

“My baby’s called Cherry Bomb, you must have seen her around,” Yuta replies, ripping off a tender piece of chicken in two with his fingers. He points with his chin to another table. “My two co-pilots, Johnny and Taeyong, are over there. They prefer bonding with the J-Tech team, or whatever. They’re big nerds, though Johnny looks more interested in one of the Fightmasters.”

(Another man, with hair cut short and cute ears, elbows him on the ribs, "You too, right, Yuta?", but he promptly ignores him and the man leaves. Later on, Mark discovers his name is Sicheng, and that he's been working with the Marshal for years.)

While Mark doesn’t recognize the pilots, he does recognize Yuta's Jaeger. It’s impossible not to know Cherry Bomb, a Mark-3 Jaeger who was nearly fully destroyed by a Category 3 Kaiju around the time Mark had completed seventeen years of age, only to be launched again with full power as a Mark-4 earlier this year. No nuclear reactor like Mark’s Limitless used to have, not even half as fun, but dangerously beautiful. He whistles, “Got your poster up my wall, to be honest. Quite a catch.”

Yuta smiles from ear to ear, “Thanks, man,” he says. Then, leans over the table a little and continues, on a quieter tone. “I’m sorry about your co-pilot and about your Jaeger. Will they rebuild it? We got some badass designers here, they could make it new again.”

Mark shakes his head, and that’s when Jeno sits on the empty seat in front of him. “There’s no need,” he replies. “I don’t intend to pilot again.”

While Yuta is probably more familiar with Ranger etiquette, as of never pushing it when someone talks about retiring and minding his own business, Jeno’s eyes grow the size of the moon in front of him, and Mark busies himself with his food before the other shoots the question: “You didn’t come here to be a Ranger? With all respect, sir, you’re too good to retire now.”

He swallows the pasta bolognese. “I’m only a year older than you, there’s no need to call me “sir”. And I’m not retiring.”

Mark tries to ignore how seeing the tips of Jeno’s ear turn bright red make his stomach feel funny. With all the cadets talking and with all that Ten has said about it, he didn’t take the prodigy for the type to blush that easily. Jeno purses his lips, and Mark continues: “On the other hand, I will assist Marshall Qian in the program and make sure that only cadets like you set foot on a Jaeger, Jeno Lee.”

Not expecting the compliment, Jeno swallows dry and shakes his head, playing with the fork on his hands. “Again, no offense, but would be a crime not to see you on a Jaeger. You’re the best of the best. Fightmaster Ten told me this himself, that you came back here because a talent like yours can’t be wasted like that.”

Of course, all of this has Ten’s finger on it. Mark offers him a smile so that Jeno won’t actually run from the table, which he certainly looks prone to, and because he doesn’t look like a god now.

While Ten has been feeding Mark with a myth, he did the same thing to Jeno. Even though the guy looks genuine, he’s sitting at this table because, all this time, he expected to find a Drift partner, but Mark is not going to give him that.

“Fightmaster Ten has a habit of dreaming big, Jeno,” he replies. “When you step on a Jaeger for the first time, you’re gonna see that there’s no such thing as a dream out there.”

He can sense the exact moment in which Yuta and the other Rangers at the table start pretending they have better things to do than to hear Mark crushing a kid’s expectations like that, because he was once fresh out of the Academy and full of illusions of grandeur about what it is like to be inside a Jaeger, but he can also pinpoint the moment in which Jeno throws his advice inside an imaginary dumpster. He puts down the fork and smiles at Mark, just as sweet as he remembers that smile to be.

“But there is hope, isn’t it?” Jeno replies. “Unless you don’t believe your own words anymore.”

Mark should’ve known better than not to expect this from someone who was raised to be just as good as the best, than not to expect this from someone whose file Ten had thrown on his lap and highlighted every line of it in which Mark would find the answer he did not want: that the boy in front of him, full of hope, could be his Drift partner if they both wanted it. And if Ten had an entire year to plant that idea on Jeno’s mind, there’s no way Mark can tear that down over lunch.

He nods, promising to himself that he ain’t giving out interviews to the media ever again if it means Jeno is going to use his speeches against him, and replies: “Touché. And what do you believe in?”

Jeno shrugs. “You.”

Mark, on the other hand, can’t believe himself, or the situation Ten got him into, but if we’re talking numbers, it takes Mark four years, three months and twenty-nine days to see Jeno Lee again. It takes him a ten-minute conversation, though, to realize Ten was right and wrong at the same time.

It does take one to understand another; to have Jeno Lee looking at him like that reminds Mark of a time in which he, too, was full of hope in the middle of a war that has no apparent end. That’s why he clicks his soda against Jeno’s, earning him a smile as bright as the Sun, and even though Mark ain’t ever stepping on a Conn-pod with him, –it’s a promise, one that he makes to himself –, he does see why anyone would die to do so.

It’s a pity, though, Mark thinks later at night, preparing to sleep. It’s a pity that if the simulations from the Jaeger Academy hadn’t been able to water down Jeno’s ambitions, a real Kaiju will have to do.

You know, he’s so pretty, with the jet black hair and kindest eyes. When Mark looks down at his own hands and takes off the bandages he still has to use, not fully recovered from when he pulled Jaehyun out of that infinity of Kaiju blue only to see the very same blue painting his skin, he thinks that it’s a pity, also, that a face like Jeno’s has ended up in this war.

“You have to stop being so mean to him,” Ten insists, shoving Mark to a wall when he sees him in the next morning, not bothered by the confused looks that a few cadets passing by send him. “Don’t you wanna get back on a Jaeger? Isn’t this what you were born for?”

“I’m perfectly fine with assisting Kun,” Mark replies, because he truly is. When the Marshal contacted him a month before, asking for his services, how he could he refuse? He didn’t even have a co-pilot anymore, couldn’t even imagine Drifting with someone who wasn’t Jaehyun, who was thankfully recovering well in Los Angeles – and sending Mark pictures of his dog every now and then, which was a cute way to say sorry for retiring.

Ten scoffs, and he presses his elbow tighter on Mark’s windpipe. Tiny but dangerous, that’s what everyone says when talking about him. “You were born to be in a Jaeger, Mark,” he insists. “And Jeno was born to be there with you. If you thought fighting with Jaehyun was good, fighting with him will be even better, and you know it. You’re not dumb, you’ve seen his files."

Mark pushes him off without much difficulty, or maybe Ten is just tired of his bullshit already. He leans back with arms crossed and waits, and Mark delivers:

“Not happening, Ten, sorry. You should go asking around, isn’t everybody dying to be his co-pilot?”

Ten scoffs, smiling in disbelief. “Alright,” he says, shaking his head. “I’ll pair him up with the first fool who asks, then, and when a Kaiju chews him up, it’s going to be on you.”

It doesn’t work, because both of them know that there’s no way Ten is going to send Jeno or anyone out there to die, so Mark pretends to take a look on a wrist clock that he does not have and says: “Oh! Would you look at the time, I have to go see the new Jaeger that Guanheng designed.”

Before Ten can break his windpipe for real, Mark starts walking. He should’ve known better because Ten speaks either way from the distance:

“I forgot to say that if you want to spare with someone at your level, Jeno said he’d be waiting. You still remember the way to the Kwoon Combat Room, don’t you, Markles?”

Even though Mark did promise to see Guanheng’s new Jaeger, he doesn’t go to the pavilion. No, it would be a crime, a heresy even, if he did not drop by the training room he remembers so well.

Sitting by the end of the mat, with a water bottle in his hand, Jeno stretches his long legs out and says: “Up so early, Drift partner?”

To which Mark replies “I’m not your Drift partner,” but still grabs two of the wooden sticks on the bucket, sending one his way. Jeno catches it in the air and gets up, and the way he bows to Mark has him laughing.

“I already told you I’m not that older, stop with that shit.”

Jeno cocks his head to the side, resting the stick on his shoulder. “Who says I respect you for your age and not for what you have done?”  

Mark moves his stick from one hand to the other, kicking his shoes off to the side and pacing around the mat a little. He missed this. “If you wanna fight me--”

“Beside you,” Jeno corrects, but he ignores him:

“-- you have to forget who I am outside this mat, otherwise I’m leaving. Deal?”

Jeno purses his lips, clearly not happy, but nods. He puts the stick down and taps the mat with it two times, and follows Mark’s pace. “And who are you in this mat?”

When Mark strikes, he’s waiting for it, and blocks his move without any problems. Except Mark doesn’t wait for him to get back on position, and the tip of his stick pokes at Jeno’s leg in a second. A point to him. “I’m Mark, I’ll be twenty-one in August, and I never learned how to swim. Your turn.”

He blocks Jeno’s moves twice before the latter notices his blind spot, hitting him on the ribs with a particularly harsh strike. Then again, Mark wouldn’t ever take his gracious dance for something so precise and strong, just like he remembers Jeno to be. He doesn't know if it's good or not that he hasn't changed.

“My name is Jeno, I'm nineteen and allergic to cats, but I used to have three back home.”

“Home?” Mark returns to his initial position, and Jeno does the same. They start again, but Jeno goes first this time, trying to knock Mark off his feet with a push to his chest. He dodges it, rolling to the floor and getting up in a heartbeat.

Jeno nods, pulling the stick to his chest in defense. “Incheon, South Korea. Where is your home?”

Mark doesn’t have a home, but he used to, somewhere in British Columbia. It’s been years, though, and he doesn’t even remember how things were before the Kaijus started hanging out on Earth. “Here. Watch your feet.”

He’s noticed Jeno’s weaker on his left side, probably hurt his leg on the Academy, and he gives him a chance to dodge. It makes Jeno furrows his brows, raising a hand to brush off the hair falling on his face. “Don’t take it easy on me,” he says.

Mark knocks him off his feet with a twist of his wrist, aiming straight for Jeno’s right ankle. He falls to the floor with a thud, and Mark stretches out a hand for him. “You were saying?”

Jeno doesn’t take it, though – there you go, hurt pride and all –, and instead rolls on his back, back on his feet in a second.

“What's your opinion on pineapple on pizza?”

Mark lets out a laugh, but Jeno doesn’t wait for his answer. He pretends to go for his head and when Mark raises the stick to block it, Jeno taps him lightly on the stomach. Two on two.

“I love it,” Mark says, when they’re back on the initial position. “Haven’t had a pizza in ages, though,”

“Let’s get pizza some other day, then,” Jeno replies, simply, as if they’re not standing in a gigantic building in the middle of the ocean, endlessly fighting. “I’ll even pay.”

Mark blocks a strike, “Tryna win me by the stomach?”

“Depends. Will it work?”

“Probably. I’d like some beer, too, they didn’t let me drink back at the States.”

Jeno laughs. “They probably won’t let you drink here, either, but I’ll see what I can do.”

Even though he tries to ignore it, Mark knows that every time they block each other’s strike perfectly, it’s not only Jeno that fights as if he were dancing. He’s only ever sparred with someone like this once, but he could never mistake the feeling for another. Unforgettable.

On Mark’s second week at the Hong Kong Shatterdome, he finds a familiar face.

Well, a familiar face finds him.

“Mark Lee,” says the boy, because he’s just so boyish, even more with the dyed pink hair. His grip on Mark’s shoulder is comforting, familiar even if the last time he felt it was such a long time ago. “Fancy seeing you here.”

He smiles. “Jaemin, where were you all this time?”

The younger hugs him tightly, laughter echoing in the empty corridor where he found Mark after dinner.

“Vladivostok, baby. You speak Russian? You better practice, 'cause they’re the future.”

Mark nods, thinking of all the high tech he’s seen on the Jaegers imported from Russia and the techniques their Rangers master, and lets Jaemin tell him all about it and some more. He’s arrived this morning with his co-pilot and Jaeger, a Mark-4 called Dream Danger, and when Mark swears he doesn't remember the co-pilot from Jaeger Academy, Jaemin sighs:

“Well, doesn’t matter because you’ll meet him and you’ll love him. Renjun has the meanest right hook on the galaxy. I know because I felt it. Once, I swear.”

Mark laughs, “Of course you did. Tell me, what about the other boys from the Academy? Hyuck, Jisung, Chenle, Yukhei?”

“You truly were living under an iceberg in Alaska, weren’t you?” Jaemin shakes his head. “Jisung is in his last year. Chenle gave up on being a Ranger, he's into J-Tech now. As for Donghyuckie and Xuxi, they’re serving in Tokyo. Ever heard of Double Sun?”

“They’re Drift partners?” Mark smiles. “That’s good to hear.”

Jaemin shrugs. “Eh, it’ll be a bummer if they ever break up, but whatever, live in the moment!”

That comment alone is capable of setting Mark off just like his worst memories from the Drift, and he pretends to be listening to the rest of the talk while they walk to the cafeteria. Break up . He can’t believe Donghyuck and Yukhei even dared to date despite all of this mess, can’t even picture what it must be like being out there with someone you like, fighting off monsters that could get both of you killed if one only makes a mistake.

But then again, Mark fails to think of a way to be as close to someone as you are on the Drift. He misses having Jaehyun inside his head, and even if the slight possibility of seeing him in a romantic way makes Mark want to throw up, he gets where they’re coming from.

Still, it terrifies him, the idea of letting yourself fall in love at the end of the world. He lets Jaemin buy him a coffee and they have somewhat of a toast, to the Jaeger Program who brought them together once again, and then Mark promptly makes himself forget about Donghyuck and Yukhei. It’s better that way.

The day Mark gets rid of his bandages is the day a Category 3 Kaiju launches himself against a city in Taiwan, and also the day he sits at the edge of the launching doc with Jeno on his side and a beer on his hand.

"Who did you bribe for this, huh?"

"No one," Jeno replies, wholeheartedly. He swings his legs in the direction of the ocean under them. They're not supposed to be sitting here, but everyone is just too busy thinking of the Kaiju that Yuta promised to blow up like a firecracker. "I'm friends with the people who work at the kitchen. They are really nice."

Mark watches with curiosity as he takes a sip of the beer and makes a face, "God, this is terrible. Do they all taste like this?"

He doesn't feel like saying that he's only ever drank beer twice in his life – the first when it was his birthday, back on the Academy, and Yukhei had sneaked it into their dorm; and the second on Jaehyun's last day at the Anchorage Shatterdome. Therefore, Mark doesn't know a lot about beer, just that he likes it a little, so he snatches the bottle from Jeno's hands without saying a word.

"I'm sorry for your hands," Jeno says, and Mark was waiting for it, honestly.

The blood of the Kaiju had melted through his gear and got to his skin irregularly, tainting Mark's hands with patches of blue as if he's been playing around with ink all day. He turns his palms up to see where the blue is stronger, the part that touched Jaehyun more, and it used to hurt like hell when he grabbed things. The doctors said he could wear gloves if he wanted to, if it made him feel better. It didn’t.

"It doesn't hurt anymore," he tells Jeno, even though he didn't ask. "Do you think the blue fits me?"

Jeno chuckles, looking away. “I don’t think anything.”

“Wordless for once? That’s new.”

Jeno doesn’t say anything else, just tries to drink the beer again for good measure. By the look on his face, it still tastes horribly.

Two hours later, the Kaiju is down and Cherry Bomb is back at the Shatterdome. The cafeteria is so loud that Mark can’t even hear his own thoughts, and when he asks Yuta about it, he talks about the fight with a gleam in his eyes that Mark has only seen in the mirror.

Despite the blue in his hands, despite the way Jeno talks about Drifting, he misses being in a Jaeger.

Mail from Jaehyun comes by the end of the first month at the Shatterdome, and it contains a long letter, a picture of his dog and a stash of his favorite childhood candy. Mark shares it with Jaemin, both for the old time’s sake and because he isn’t much of a sweet tooth, and reads the letter while sitting alone at the launching dock.

He doesn’t know what is worse, if it’s Jaehyun’s I’m not inside your head anymore but I can sense you sulking across the ocean , or the fact that the intel informing him of whatever’s happening at the Shatterdome is probably Ten, and Mark would kill him if it was possible, but he still goes through Jaehyun’s pep talk scribbled in very messy handwriting, – like it’s a children’s letter – at least three times before he can’t see a thing anymore.

His eyes burn, and he misses his co-pilot and his Jaeger, he even misses Alaska, and Mark doesn’t remember crying this hard ever since he was fourteen and afraid of what expected him outside the Jaeger Academy.

It’s good, though, refreshing even, that’s why he pins Jaehyun’s letter to the corkboard hanging on his wall right beside the photo they took with Limitless on the very first day, and lets himself cry a little more.

Even though Ten is an asshole, he’s still a legend, so that’s why Mark isn’t surprised as he goes through the files of the cadets arriving next week. He paces around Marshal Qian’s office incessantly, too engrossed in the pile of papers on his hands to notice that the tea Kun had made for him was left getting cold by the table.

“They’re brilliant,” Mark says, at some point, looking up. “Each one of them is better than the other. Do you even have that many Jaegers?”

Kun shakes his head slowly. He’s dyed his hair recently, ash blonde, and it makes him look older than the image Mark had of him in his head. “Only one of them is getting a Jaeger.”

Mark drops the pile on top of the table and takes a sip of his cold tea:

“What do you mean? You’re going to let them go to waste?”

“They’re matches,” Kun explains, hand coming up to give a little tap on the first file, the one containing info about a girl named Heejin. She’s brilliant, as far as Mark is concerned, for someone who entered the Academy with the poorest rank scores only to surprise everyone by the time she graduated. “These are all for Jeno Lee. Will you chose for him?”

Mark puts the teacup down, and he knows Kun is challenging him by the way he’s biting off a smirk. It suddenly hits him that Kun is just so young, so this must be why he’s doing this to him. He’s nothing like his father used to be, from what Mark remembers.

He wants to spit out: you’re just as bad as Ten , but instead, Mark replies: “Of course.”

Mark should’ve known better, should’ve known that they wouldn’t let a Ranger like Jeno rot in the Shatterdome when he could put his skills to use.

Still, it sets aflame something so strange at the pit of Mark’s stomach that he grows sick of looking at all of Jeno’s possible Drift partners, of going through their files knowing that they might be good but not as good as him , and that’s why he leaves his room after dinner to clear his mind with a walk.

“You know, I didn’t ask for company.”

A tall, broad guy smiles sweetly at him, and since he’s still wearing his personalized Ranger jacket in contrast to Mark’s sweatpants, he looks much older. Sweet, but older, kind of reminds Mark of the older cadets at the Academy. And he thinks that the design on his back, a bomb in the shape of a cherry, is neat as fuck, but he doesn’t say anything about it. “You look like you’re in need of company,” Johnny Seo tells him. “Or a friend, even.”

He’s not exactly wrong, but Mark’s been doing just fine for the past four years of his life with just his co-pilot to make him company. He guesses that everyone else thinks it’s a pity that he hasn’t set foot on a Jaeger in more than a month. But he doesn’t need pity right now, so he lets Johnny follow him around until he decides he does.

“I don’t want to be his Drift partner,” Mark says over the late night sandwich Johnny made for him, collecting the fallen lettuce on the plate. “I mean, I do, hell , I really do, but it just-- I don’t even know.”

Johnny nods at his words, and he spins in the high tools of the kitchen in a way that makes him look like a teenager. To be honest, Mark doesn’t know when he was born, but he figures he must be around Yuta’s age. “You’re scared,” he concludes. “But don't worry, we’ve all been there.”

“Don’t patronize me, please.”

Johnny stops spinning and takes a bite of his own sandwich. “I’m not. I’m sorry if everyone did this to you during your entire life, bet it isn’t easy being this famous at your age.”

Mark’s chin’s drop. He doesn’t exactly consider himself famous, but figures that it’s what graduating at age sixteen at the Jaeger Academy grants you. Maybe people think he's batshit crazy for launching himself to death like that, and it's hard forgetting prodigies like him, even if he's been hiding in Alaska for more than three years.

“It’s just that--” Johnny continues. “There’s nothing wrong with being scared of someone new entering your head. But, I'm telling you, you’re going to lose him if you keep holding yourself back.”

Mark doesn’t say anything, afraid of whatever might come out if he does, but nods anyway. It makes Johnny reach out with a hand, and Mark almost dodges his touch until he realizes the other had been motioning for his plate all along. When the mess is cleaned and they’re heading back to the dorms, Johnny does drape an arm around Mark’s shoulder, and it reminds him so much of Jaehyun that he lets him.

“You two can be brilliant together if you want,” Johnny says, quietly. “People will remember you for ages.”

Mark shakes his head. “I don’t wanna be remembered, I just want the war to end.”

This time, Johnny full-on laughs, and it makes a few other Rangers passing by look at him in curiosity. He taps Mark’s back when they reach his room and says: “Now I see why everyone talks about you so much. You’re one of a kind, Mark Lee, did you know that?”

Mark's finishing his daily drills and wondering what’s for lunch when he sees him. He chugs a whole bottle of water and gets up from the floor to inspect Choi Bomin closer from where he’s stretching at the side of a mat, and he’s so fresh out of the Academy that still bandages his hands the way they teach there.

Mark has forgotten how to do that knot long ago, if he's being honest. He lingers around pretending to watch other Rangers sparring, but follows Bomin’s movements with attention.

He’s been through his file a billion times, but didn’t expect Ten and Doyoung to choose him, as much as Doyoung wanted to. Mark thought he had the final word, had assigned Heejin as Jeno’s Drift partner in the end, but realizes that in no way his word would weight more than two Fightmasters's.

But it makes sense, after all. Bomin is perfect for Jeno, Mark knows this just by looking at him. So he slides into his boots again and leaves the training room in a quick pace, so quick that when Jaemin bumps into him in a corridor, he shouts “Where’s the fire, Mark?”, but he’s too distant to reply now.

Mark doesn’t know how he finds him, in a building this big, but Jeno’s taking a look at a new Jaeger being built when Mark grabs him by the shoulder. He doesn’t show any resistance, as if he had been expecting it, and has a grin on his face when Mark pushes him inside an empty corridor.

“What’s got you in a hurry?” he asks, crossing arms as he leans against a wall. Mark takes a deep sigh and says:

“Refuse.”

Jeno furrows his brows, arms falling to the sides of his body. He doesn’t look like a god now, with a warm hoodie that is way too big and big brown eyes watching him. He's just a boy right now – they both are, nevertheless –, so that’s why Mark repeats: “When they ask you, say “no”. Will you do that for me?”

Jeno licks his lips, almost hopeful. Mark hates that look on him because it makes everything more real, but when Jeno asks him “Is this a promise?”, he nods instantly.

“Deal,” Jeno smiles. “I ain’t Drifting with anyone that isn’t you. I never intended to.”

Mark doesn’t know what to do with this piece of information, so he taps Jeno on the shoulder and leaves. He doesn't fail to catch the way the other reaches out for him for a split second, only to let his arm fall by the side of his body again. Mark tries hard not to think about it the entire day.

(Hint: he fails.)

Needless to say Doyoung is mad at him, but Mark has always been one to be called insolent – because he's young and reckless but undeniably good, so people usually keep up with his antics instead of throwing him to the side with the promise that there are a billion other Rangers just as good as him. Because there aren't, and he only knows one Ranger that's on his level, so that's why he doesn't open the door to Doyoung when he comes to his room.

“You get out now , Lee,” he insists. “If you don’t want me to treat you like a child, don’t act like one.”

Mark has been planted on the other side of his door ever since the talk with Jeno. He’s sure he’s never felt a rush of adrenaline quite like this, not even when he fought, just by having a notorious Fightmaster like Doyoung going after him. When he tells Ten later, he’s going to be delighted, how Mark managed to step on Doyoung's toes so early in the year.

“You don’t have the final word here,” is what Doyoung’s voice announces, and Mark lets his forehead rest against the cold metal door with a grin on his face. “When I arrived last week and Jeno himself told me you were a hard shell to crack, I knew that you’d be trouble for him, but I didn’t know you could pull something like this.”

Mark presses closer to the door and asks, clear and loud, “Bet I surprised you, didn’t I, Do?”

He wishes he could see Doyoung’s face now, but it wouldn’t be the first time Doyoung hits him for his arrogance. He was Mark’s Fightmaster back in Alaska, has been with him since he was sixteen, and Mark doesn’t doubt his ability to knock someone down even for a second. He remembers it very well, sparring with Doyoung until he couldn't even get up from the floor. He's unforgiving.

“You have no right to hold him back like this, to ask him to refuse Drifting with Bomin,” Doyoung continues. This time, his voice is quieter, but still angry. “I care fuck all if you’re going to give up on this, you can retire for all I care because I know that none of this gets easier, trust me, but--”

Mark opens the door, and Doyoung almost jumps out of his skin. He recovers from the startle and crosses his arms, waiting.

“I’m not holding him back,” Mark says. “What kind of Drift partner would a be if I did that?”

Doyoung does punch him, hard, but he hugs Mark so tight after that he even forgets about it.

One day Guanheng Huang unrolls a paper in front of Mark and he feels like crying, but he’s not shedding tears in front of Jeno so early, so he blinks the tears away and fixes his gaze on the latter’s face as he leans over the table to take a better look at what is going to be their Jaeger.

To say Kun thinks they’re humanity’s lucky strike would be an understatement, because the way Jeno’s face lights up when Guanheng starts listing out whatever he’s cooking up is capable of having Mark knowing that they’re indeed going to be something to be remembered for ages. Takes a god to know another, and this Jaeger? It'll will be their sanctuary.

“What is her name?” he asks, at last, when he manages to stop staring at Jeno’s face. He takes a look at the design on the sheets and thinks that he’s so close to stepping on a Conn-pod again, he just can’t wait. “What did you think of?”

Guanheng spins in his chair, with a crazy smile on his face that he’s been wearing since the first time Mark saw him sketching out Jaegers back at the academy. “I don’t know,” he replies. “Was hoping that one of you would help me out with it.”

While Jeno smiles, Mark frowns. He’s never been good at naming anything.

“Why can’t you name it? No one has time for that.”

Guanheng stops spinning, leaning back on the chair. “Alright, I’ll think of something then.”

Sitting on his left, Jeno sighs loudly, crossing his arms. “You’re such a vibe killer,” he tells Mark, to which he replies “Takes one to know one,” with a scoff.

Before Jeno can defend himself, Guanheng takes out a marker from his pencil case and scribbles something down on the sheet.

“Don’t fret, boys, I got this,” he says, pushing the papers in Jeno’s direction. Mark leans into his space to see it, and fights back a laugh. Jeno, although, chuckles. “Drop by the Jaeger pavilion in a week to meet your new baby, alright? Just send me your suit sizes before you go, and leave the rest to me.”

A whole week is spent with them sparring at the Kwoon Combat Room, and every time Mark steps on that mat he feels as if more people come to see, to the point it feels claustrophobic to be here. He doesn’t blame them, though, because he wishes he could be an outsider like that, just to see Jeno and him sparring from a perspective that isn’t his own.

They stopped using sticks long ago, switching fight styles until they settle for something akin to Taekwondo. Mark used to take classes when he was a kid and it was Doyoung’s favorite style, therefore what he focused on during his training, but he was more used to fencing while training with Jaehyun. It takes him a few hits to get the ropes of it again because Jeno is just so good and fast as he's always been, and then they settle with a dance.

And it’s beautiful, even from Mark's point of view, the way their bodies move as if they were one, how it’s not him nor Jeno leading but something else entirely different, more powerful than both of them. It does not get tiring, does not get boring, he could fight with Jeno all day and only stop if the world was ending, or maybe through that as well.

Definitely through that as well . Mark knows they're Drift compatible just like he knows his own name, and that maybe there is a God, after all, not somewhere up the sky but standing in front of him right now.

It’s Jeno who vocalizes it, as if he could read already read Mark’s mind. “This feels so right,” he mutters, when they’re sitting at the empty combat room at night. The last person watching was Ten himself, and he left with a kiss to the top of Mark’s head just to be obnoxious, but undeniably proud.

“I know, I feel it too,” he replies, snatching the water bottle from Jeno’s hand. The latter rolls his eyes and reaches for another one from the cooler, and his hands are trembling when he tries to open the cap.

Mark puts his bottle down and takes Jeno's, uncapping it for him. The latter thanks him with a nod and Mark tries hard not to follow with his eyes the drops of water that run down his chin and neck, but he can blame it on his tiredness and the thrill of feeling it all again, how he wants to reach out and wipe it before it reaches the dip of his collarbone.

He doesn’t, of course, and the water pools there before disappearing inside Jeno’s tank top. For Mark, it’s like his air has been knocked out from his lungs with a mean kick, straight to the guts.

“My eyes are up here,” Jeno comments, putting his bottle down.  

Mark snorts, but he still doesn’t trust himself to say anything either.

When Mark sees Vibe Killer for the first time, the technicians and other people working on in a platform merely five meters away from the Jaeger aren't enough for him to force himself not to cry. In fact, he doesn't realize he's crying until one of Jeno's hand cups his cheek, and his thumb strokes Mark's cheekbones lightly and quick, as if he was brushing off a fallen eyelash.

Gone before anyone notices. It's enough for Mark to recompose himself, though, but he follows a technician's instructions to get inside his Drivesuit feeling like his skin is burning.

He doesn't care much about stripping in front of others because he did spend two years in the Academy, and then four letting himself be seen by technicians before each mission, so Mark does it without fussing about it. He thinks it's funny, though, how the tips of Jeno's ears are flaming red as he slides into the bodysuit.

And then it's not funny anymore because Mark finds himself staring at his shoulder muscles moving as if he has never seen another man in his life, and the technician helping him out snaps his fingers to get his attention back.

"Let me know if you can breathe well in this," the technician asks, and he snaps his fingers again.

This time it's not for Mark, though, and he watches as a boy his age enters the Drivesuit room to attach the last part of the polycarbonate shell on the front of Mark's suit. As he does, everything else constricts for a moment and Mark slowly breathes out, comfortable.

"It's good," he says, and then turns to the boy. "Thank you… ?"

The latter smiles sweetly. "I'm Dejun. Nice to meet you."

"Thank you, Dejun," Mark repeats. "It's nice to meet you, too."

The technician doesn't let them talk for too long, and he soon sends Mark and Jeno in the direction of the Conn-pod. If Mark missed this, he can't even imagine how it must be like for Jeno, practically buzzing with excitement by his side, a smile reaching his eyes. He fidgets with his helmet all the way to the Conn-pod and takes a deep breath before entering it, but the smile comes back to his lips right after.

A Jaeger seen from inside is nothing different from any simulation they put you through in the Academy, except for few modifications here and there because Guanheng likes to innovate, but still Mark runs his hand throw the cockpit and takes everything in. It's much, much better than Limitless, his old Mark-2 Jaeger. When Mark is connected to motion rig and Jungwoo's voice echoes inside the cabin, he can almost feel like he's sixteen again, doing this for the first time.

"Alright, boys," Jungwoo says, and Mark can see him through the display, waving. By his side are Ten, picking on his nails, and Marshal Qian himself. The sight of him makes Jeno fidget on his spot, and he puts his helmet quickly. Mark does the same. "We will start now, if you're ready."

Mark cranes his neck to the side, "You good?"

"Nervous," Jeno replies, and it's good that he's not lying. Trust is important in moments like this, trust makes the Drift easier.

While Mark has been at it a billion times, Jungwoo takes his time to explain the procedure to Jeno, emphasizing that as familiar as it feels to a simulation, he should not hide any discomfort during the Drift or else it'd just get both him and Mark hurt. He doesn't really see how any of this will help Jeno out, so when Jungwoo disconnects briefly to talk to his own technicians, Mark turns his head again and says: "Hey, I'm right here."

The tinted glass of the helmet makes Jeno's face look light blue, and he gives Mark a funny expression. "I know?"

"What I'm saying is, I'm with you. It's going to be fine, just don't think too much about it."

Jeno nods. "Not think too much, alright, got it. Any other advice?"

"Don't let yourself be trapped inside your own memories. Think of it as water flowing, and just let it flow," Mark doesn't know where that came from, but he's satisfied with the way Jeno smiles at him. "You're good, you're going to do just fine."

"Thank you, Mark. Let's do this."

Mark nods in agreement, turning to his initial position. "Jungwoo?"

If we’re talking numbers, it takes Mark four years, four months and thirteen days to step on a Jaeger with Jeno Lee by his side. It takes him less than a second, though, to realize that being here with him is what he was born to do.

" Neural Handshake beginning in five, four... "

Mark is standing in an empty street, so silent that it bothers him, and he only notices why when movement on the right catches his attention, but he wishes he'd stayed still instead of turning around.

See, he'd been in Jaehyun's mind for so long that the first weeks without him had been awkward, as if there was something missing, and even though Mark could say he missed sharing memories and feelings and fears and whatnot with someone, he feels like an intruder inside Jeno's memories like that. It startles him, at first, to see Jeno standing in the middle of debris without his suit on, and that's when Mark realizes that this isn't really Jeno, at least not the one who Drifted with him.

Jeno must have been thirteen by the time that Kaiju marched over Incheon like it was an insignificant scale model, and Mark can't believe he was so stupid – Jeno's home doesn't exist anymore, that's why he's a Ranger now and not a normal teenager trying to survive at the end of the world. It's no surprise that teenagers who have nothing left are sent to the Academy. And he remembers seeing it on the news, how Groundbreaker left a path of destruction from Incheon to Chuncheon before the Airforce stopped it, and he’s seeing it now too: the fallen buildings, the cars toppled over, the cracks on the pavement and all of that Kaiju blue. Rumor has it Groundbreaker was so big and so loud that the ground shook when he so as breathed, hence the name.

Mark is standing in front of a Jeno that looks so small and insignificant, a path of tears prominent in his dirty cheeks, and he wants to tell him: you won’t die today. You will live, and you will be so good at what you do that people would die to be you or be with you . But he can’t tell him that because that Jeno won’t hear him, and it’s not a good thing to he stuck inside a memory like that, so he needs to pull him back right now.

Mark reaches out to cup his helmet with a hand, and Jeno is suddenly nineteen again and equally terrified but still looks up at him.

“Just relax, Jeno, this is only a memory,” he tells him, but his lips are not moving. They're inside each other's mind now. “Let go of it. All you have to do is fall, and anyone can fall.”

He doesn’t know how Jeno hears him, but he taps Mark’s hand with his own and lets himself fall backward. The next time Mark sees him, they’re back at the Conn-pod.

When Mark walks Jeno back to the dorm, the younger’s hand lingers on the door handle and there’s this split second in which Mark thinks that if Jeno asks him to stay, he’s afraid he’ll say yes. And then he doesn’t even know what this feeling means, so he’s grateful when all Jeno says is: “Thank you. I thought I was going to be stuck there if it wasn’t for you.”

Mark offers him a smile. “You did well, Jeno. Good night.”

Mark knows that he has so many better things to do than fall in love, that being like this in the middle of a war that is so, so much bigger than him is the most stupid thing he could ever do in his life – still, he lays in bed and thinks that this is going to be a nightmare, to hide all of this from Jeno the next time they Drift.

But then again, judging by the way Jeno looks at him – and this is Mark hoping, wishing even, that he's not imagining things –, maybe it's a good thing that he doesn't need to confess. He can just let Jeno see, with his own eyes, the way Mark thinks of him.

"Mark?"

He looks down from the War Clock, how it's showing half an hour since the last Kaiju attack – a Kaiju that they had taken down, a small but nasty Category-2 that left Jeno throwing up as soon as they landed back on the Shatterdome –, and turns to his Drift partner. "Yeah?"

Jeno still looks pale, fresh out of a shower, but undeniably thrilled still. Mark remembers feeling like that too after his first mission, he couldn't stop trembling for a day.

"Do you think that God is real?" Jeno asks.

He didn't expect to have this kind of conversation in the middle of the mess that is the aftermath of a fight, with all those people running and cheering and working, but Jeno waits for his answer like he's waiting for a lot more, so Mark touches his face with a hand, pressing a stained palm to his cold cheek, and asks: "Do you?"

Jeno leans into the touch very slightly, and it makes funny things to Mark's heart. Maybe he's seen it, maybe he knows, maybe he feels the same .

"I think that if something up there lets us to deal with those things alone, there is no such thing as God," he replies, quietly.

To be honest, Mark stopped believing in God a long time ago and for the very same reason. So he taps Jeno's cheek lightly and retrieves the hand, "At the end of the day, though, we kill them. Does that makes us gods?"

Jeno reaches for his hand again, and this time he doesn't stop himself. "To me, you've always been."

(Mark might be a god, but he's fallen.)

It’s a sunny, Kaiju-free day when he talks his way out with the kitchen team and walks out of it with a bucket of fried chicken and beer, and then he meets Jeno in one of the empty levels in the Jaeger pavilion.

“Tryna win my by the stomach?” Jeno asks at some point, cleaning his greasy fingers on the jacket Mark’s thrown to the floor. It makes Mark jag an elbow on his side, but Jeno laughs out loud. It echoes and echoes in the Shatterdome, the prettiest song he's ever heard.

“Depends," Mark replies, finally, after a sip of his beer. "Is it working?”

Jeno doesn’t look any different now that he’s twenty, but he’s cut the hair recently and it fits his face just fine. Again, it’s a pity that a face like this has ended up in the war. At least that’s how Mark thinks.

“Probably,” is what Jeno replies, still giggling softly. He reaches out for another can of beer and Mark hands it to him, but Jeno takes a hold of his fingers instead.

The beer falls to the floor with a thud, rolling until it reaches the edge of the floor and falls, probably hitting someone’s head in the process. But Mark doesn’t know anything about it, his eyes are fixed in the way Jeno pulls his hand to his lap, playing with Mark’s stained fingers with his own.

“Despite all of it,” Jeno says, quietly. “I think the blue suits you.”

Mark turns his palm upwards, tentatively, and he's not breathing when Jeno presses his thumb to the stained patch of skin, rubbing slightly. He's not breathing, either, when Jeno's finger presses down on his pulse point and then down his forearm, and then up and up and up until it rests where Mark's shoulder meets his neck, thumb on his carotid.

If we’re talking numbers, it takes Mark four years, four months and twenty-three days to kiss Jeno Lee on the mouth. It takes him less than a heartbeat, though, to realize he should've done this sooner, and Jeno's fingers press on the back of his neck like he knows it.

"I heard it's your birthday," Mark mutters against his mouth, voice hoarse. "Happy birthday."

"Please, stop talking," Jeno says, and pulls Mark to his lap.

They shouldn't be kissing right here, where everyone could see, but still he licks into Jeno's mouth like it's just them, alone in the middle of the ocean. Mark doesn't know how long it lasts – five minutes, an hour, a year –, but it's more thrilling than fighting. And if Jeno fights like he dances, he surely kisses like his life is on the line.

Pretty , Mark thinks, pressing a thumb to his bottom lip at some point. He's so pretty it hurts , and when he vocalizes the feeling, Jeno digs his fingers on his waist and laughs.

The whole world shakes with his laughter. A god, indeed.

There isn't a rule saying that they shouldn't be doing this, and if there was, it would be just for show, because everyone would be willing to break it.

Mark knows for a fact that there is only so much loneliness people can take before they give in to a few smooches – or sex, even – behind closed doors, in between a Kaiju attack and another, because living in a floating building in the middle of the ocean surely gets lonely, even if it isn't the perfect scenario for romance.

The worst thing about it, perhaps, is that everybody knows when it happens – he knows, for example, that when Yuta talks about late night practice, his Drift partners don't accompany him to have practice with Doyoung after curfew. Or maybe they do, Mark wouldn't know about that, because he doesn't like prying, he just ran into his Fightmaster and Yuta once, and it earned him three painful running laps around the Shatterdome the very next morning for being so nosy. Doyoung is unforgiving.

So, no, there isn't a rule. Still, when he's pining Jeno to a wall in an empty training room and someone knocks on the door, Mark thinks his pressure dropped, and Jeno lips are still on his neck when he whispers: "Are we getting in trouble?"

"No," he replies, because the worst scenario would be them busy making out while the whole world was ending, but since the knock on the door didn't sound urgent, he figures it was nothing. Although, before they can go back to kissing, it happens again. "Shit, hang on, there."

Mark opens the door to find Ten with hands on his hips, in a typical patronizing pose but with a grin on his lips. "Is this where you were all evening?' he asks.

He doesn't even dare to reply. Ten continues:

"Anyway, in case y'all want to kick some sweet, sweet Kaiju ass instead of hiding here like horny teenagers, be in the launching pavilion in 10. Bye!"

Like that, he leaves. Mark leans against the doorstep and hears it when Jeno hits his head on the wall. "Why does he have to put it like that? It kills the vibe."

"Because he's Ten," Mark replies. "Let's go, we have a Kaiju to kill."

They make it to the launching pavilion in 12 minutes, and Mark hates himself when the same kid from the other day, Dejun, smiles at him and presses a thumb to the hickey on his neck and asks him what kind of fight style leaves marks like that. On the other side of the room, Jeno zips up his bodysuit with inhuman speed.

"You've done great today," Johnny Seo tells him, over their usual midnight snack. "But not as great as we did, though."

Mark scoffs, fighting back a smile. "Easy for you to say that. You guys have an extra pair of arms to fight."

He's kidding, of course. Fighting in three makes it even more difficult, if anything. Still, Johnny cackles, reaching to steal one of Mark's chips with a shit-eating grin.

This has become a tradition. When things are calm, Mark makes his way to the kitchen to meet Johnny and have a sandwich, sometimes dinner leftovers, and talk about everything, anything. He's found a friend in one of Cherry Bomb's pilot, and he's glad the feeling is mutual.

"So," Johnny says. "How's it going with your co-pilot?"

Mark tears the remainings of bread on his plate in tiny pieces, shaking his head:

"Am I an idiot for falling for someone who has full access to everything that happens inside my mind?"

Johnny furrows his brows for a second, then laughs. "Why, you wanna hide something for him?"

"No, that's the worst part," he sighs. "I don't mind sharing everything. I feel like we're Drifting even when we're not in the Jaeger, it's like he can read my mind anytime he wants to."

"Yeah, that's Ghost-Drifting, didn't you feel like that with Jaehyun?"

Mark shakes his head. "I don't know, it was different. He is, was , I don't know, my best friend. It just felt different."

He suddenly feels ashamed, for not feeling that with someone who Drifted with him for four years. Mark knows that the Drift feels different depending on the person, he's heard stories about people that had different co-pilots and had no problem with it. Still, it doesn't feel right. Or maybe it does, and Mark is just afraid. He's been afraid a lot lately.

Johnny reaches out with a hand and rubs his back, smiling softly. "The world isn't going to end because you're in love, Mark. In fact, if you can be in love in the middle of this, maybe there's hope for all of us, after all. Love can make us do crazy, crazy things, like enlisting in the Jaeger Academy, or saving the world."

Mark chuckles:

"You talking from experience, Seo?"

When Johnny's cheeks tint a little red, Mark grins, and then he raises his hands in defeat. "Maybe," Johnny replies. "And you have dishwashing duties because of that sneaky little comment."

Mark sighs. Maybe he should learn how to shut up.

At some point in the Jaeger Academy, one of the girls in Mark's dorm became obsessed with replying "Murphy's law!" every time something bad happened. He could never forget the sound of Mina's voice when a Kaiju trashed Mark's hometown, over the horrifying videos he found on the internet of what Karloff turned Vancouver into, or when that north-american pilot suffered a seizure trying to solo pilot a Jaeger for the first time.

Some people thought she was an asshole for it, and some people started saying the same thing over and over until it became some sort of illegal drinking game – take a shot every time Mina says "Murphy's law"! –, but Mark thinks that she was a genius for channeling the horrors of the war into such a simple phrase.

Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong . When you're dealing with extraterrestrial beings, bigger than anything you've ever seen, that emerge from a rupture between two tectonic plates in the middle of the Pacific ocean, you learn that it might be true.

So, no, Mark is not surprised when Jeno barges into his room, pale-faced. It worries him because it's Jeno, sure, but it's nothing Mark hasn't seen before. Still, he opens his arms and Jeno runs straight to them

"Something happened," he says, hands fisted on the back of Mark's shirt. "There were two, Mark, at the same time. I've never heard of a double attack before, but they got them."

He's been through this too many times, but the look on Jeno's face when he leans back unsettles him. "Who? Who was there?"

Jeno swallows dry, letting go of his embrace to sit in Mark's unmade bed. He holds up three fingers:

"Velvet Nightmare, Sand Glass, Dream Danger. The first two were completely chewed up, I swear, but it's Jaemin, Mark, you won't believe me--"

Mark feels his heart sink. "Jen, calm down, what's up with him?"

Jeno presses both hands to his face, groaning. Mark reaches out for him, but Jeno then grabs his hands instead, urgent: "You gotta see it for yourself, let's go."

Murphy's law, Murphy's law, Murphy's law. Mark clutches Jeno's hand tightly in his for a second before letting go, throwing the curtains to the side only to see Jaemin smiling brightly at him.

"Markie! Jeno!" he exclaims, raising both hands to greet them. "What's up, guys?"

"Jaemin, what the hell?"

The curtain opens again and Renjun makes his way in. He looks mad, and Mark even steps aside. "Yeah, that the hell?"

If Jaemin feels sorry, it doesn't show, because even though bloodshot, his eyes are the same as ever. Cheerful and unafraid.

The doctors don't let them stay for too long – in fact, they don't let them stay at all, but Mark has heard about Renjun's abilities to snap an arm in half, so maybe that's why they let him stay inside. As for himself, he lets Jeno drag him to the waiting room and forces Mark to sit in one of the chairs.

Solo piloting is complicated . At the very beginning of the Jaeger Program, scientists realized that the neural load and mental strength required to control a Jaeger was too much for a single person to handle alone. If Rangers don't die while solo piloting, they get severely damaged, and Mark's only ever heard of one man to ever do it successfully – Raleigh Becket, earlier that year back in Alaska, he retired after his brother died –, but he never thought Jaemin was stupid enough to do the same.

"When he heard the Jaegers were in trouble, he didn't even wait for Renjun," Jeno starts, incessant pacing around the room, and only comes to a stop when Mark grabs his hand and pulls. He looks down at him and sighs. "He just went. And I let him 'cause I was the only one there with him but they were-- they're severely hurt, Ong is still missing and now Jaemin is hurt too, this is all my fault."

"It's not your fault," Mark replies, motioning for the seat by his side. The other people at the medical wing pay no attention to him, so he reaches out to run a thumb on the skin under Jeno's eye, wiping out a tear that threatened to fall. "Even if you tried to stop him, you know Jaemin would find his way around it either way. And people get hurt, Jen. Horrible things happen around here, this is just how it is. Blaming yourself does you no good, trust me."

Jeno shakes his head, and he doesn't look like a god now. Just a boy. Mark cups his cheek and presses their foreheads together, and feels it when Jeno relaxes in his hold.

"Jaemin is stubborn as fuck," Mark tells him. "It's not easy stopping him, and less alone killing him."

Jeno chuckles. "Sounds like someone I know."

"Sounds like someone I know," he taps the back of Jeno's skull. "I'm in your head for a reason, Jeno Lee."

The other leans back just as Renjun storms out of the room with a doctor following short, face in the red and everything. When Mark leans a little to the side, he sees that Jaemin has fallen asleep, and then another doctor closes the curtains again. He turns back to Jeno, who's watching him with a funny expression.

"What?" Mark asks.

He shrugs. "I'm tired. Can we leave?"

Jeno only sleeps when he hears the Rangers are fine – including Ong, who's been missing –, and that Jaemin is going to be alright despite the consequences of solo piloting. When one of the other Rangers spreads the news through the dorm, it's visible, the way that weight is taken off his shoulders. He curls up in bed and dozes off in minutes.

Mark knows because this is his room, and the sleepshirt Jeno's wearing is his, and he has his chest pressed to the other's back like they've been doing this for years.

Maybe it's the Drift's fault, how it feels as if they've been like this for millennia. Or maybe Mark is in love. Whatever suits you best.

"You know," Mark says. "This is the place I saw you for the first time."

Jeno sits on the mat by the window, panting heavily after their practice, resting his back against the glass. Behind him, there's only blue. "Really?"

He nods, pointing at one of the columns on the right. "I was sitting there, and you were fighting with a guy that was two of you. And I couldn't stop thinking about the way you fought."

Jeno laughs out loud, patting the empty space beside him. When Mark sits down, he throws an arm around his shoulders. "I don't remember the first time I saw you, but you were everywhere. You were always everywhere. The kids back at the Academy called you a legend."

Mark sighs deeply, and it only makes him laugh harder. Jeno presses a kiss to his cheek, loud and obnoxious. "I still think you're a legend, but now I know you sing in the shower and that's just cute."

"Jeno, shut up, oh my God--"

With a hand on his chin, Jeno kisses him square on the mouth, pressing up to him until Mark doesn't even remember what they were bickering about. They shouldn't be kissing in the training room since Ten caught them twice – one on accident, the second on purpose because he enjoys pushing at Mark's buttons with every chance he gets –, but it's not like he's going to remind Jeno of that.

You're unbreakable, Mark Lee. He thinks of those words when Jeno presses a kiss to his jaw, and then does it again and again and again, biting down where his shoulder meets neck. Mark tugs on his hair and pulls Jeno's face close to his again, licks at the swell of his bottom lip and presses a kiss to his mouth, his chin, his cheek.

If we’re talking numbers, it takes Mark four years, five months and eight days to think that no Kaiju can break him, but perhaps a god can. It takes Jeno less than a second to show him that.