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“...all likely a result of the Kaiju Blue entering our atmosphere, spurring on the ozone depletion started by carbon emissions…”
“...PPDC officials have assured the public that this is not cause for concern, however Horizon Brave and Tacit Ronin have been stationed in Sydney and Tokyo, respectively, to make up for Lucky and Tango, which are both stranded in Vladivostok…”
“...in what the UN is calling a Holiday Disaster…”
“...record winds from the North Pole, plus mountains of snow, making it unsafe for even the Jaegers to travel…”
“...reporting live from Vladivostok, where a winter blockade has been placed on the Shatterdome, where two Jaegers are stranded, until the weather breaks…”
“Turn the fucking thing off, yeah?” Herc grumbles from his bunk. “Unless you can find something else on.”
Scott turns the volume up in response. “You know the reception’s shit out here. Besides this, there’s that fucking game show, and Russian soaps.”
Herc turns over, mashing his pillow again, with little improvement. He sighs, looking at the grim, grey concrete wall, willing sleep to come. Scott has always been a dick, a nagging, aggravating younger brother, but since the news of getting snowed in came, he has done everything under the sun to get under Herc's skin, intentionally or not.
Besides the obsessive channel surfing, there are loud grunts and a rhythmic pounding against the wall, a sure sign someone is getting fucked, every slam of the metal bunk frame a reminder that it is not Herc.
“Fuck this,” he growls, throwing the covers off, and jumping down from the top bunk. He grabs his sheepskin jacket, his boots, and ID card—he’s still in all his many layers since the fucks up north don’t know how to properly heat a damn ‘dome—and slams the door on his way out.
He hasn’t done much exploring in this Shatterdome; the quick guided tour yesterday evening when news of the weather first came in had proved boring and barely helpful. The only thing Herc could find was mess hall, mostly from following the procession of gaunt and hungry J-techs when shifts changed. He walks for a bit, hopeful that moving around would keep him from freezing to death, until finally he ends up near the Jaeger bay.
He stands by Lucky, still a bit dinged up from the Cat-2’s claws, but still in good enough shape to make the trip back.
He hopes the weather reports are wrong. He hopes they’re getting out of this frozen hell hole and back to their posts, back home. He doesn’t want Charlie spending Christmas alone this year.
The steel panel stretching over the wiring Lucky’s foot is cold to touch, but Herc finds comfort in sharing a moment with her. It’s easy to get lost in the debriefs, the news reports, the screaming fans at talk shows. The important things get tossed aside; Herc likes the reminder every now and again.
Celebrity was just a byproduct of the job, one Herc wasn’t thinking about when he and Scott enlisted, and certainly one he isn’t keen on after a few years in the service. He finds himself looking over his shoulder for a paparazzi or a jaegerfly more often than not when he’s out of the Shatterdome; it’s pretty usual to sign autographs for K-sci or visiting politicians, too. Scott soaks it up and is always thirsty for more—praise, handshakes, gossip rag covers, blowjobs—it’s easy to get lost in a world where the answer is always “yes.” So when that hunger for validation seeps through the Drift, Herc has to put some distance between his brother and him. He can’t get caught in that, not with a kid to think about.
Seeing Lucky helps, but he’s still not ready to go back to the bunk.
As far as noise goes, Herc has heard machines whirring and metal grinding, the cries and moans of fucking and lovemaking, and a lot of Ukrainian hard house—not really that soothing at this hour of the night—but as he takes a different hallway than before, something much less abrasive is echoing in the hallway.
The door is cracked, and there’s a very distinctive smell coming from the room.
“Should’ve known you were up at this hour,” he laughs, the man’s back to him, but his distinctive build unmistakable.
Stacker turns around, cigarillo hanging between his lips. The hazy smoke from the blunt pours from his lips as he speaks.
“Not sure when we’re shoving off back home. Wanna make sure the place looks good before I go.”
Herc takes in the scene before him: at least two dozen plastic pine trees on several broken mess hall tables; boxes of tinsel, red and gold and silver bulbs, stars for the top, even a few ornaments that look a lot like Cherno Alpha’s emblem; weed smoke, just about everywhere in the all-purpose room; an old MP3 player connected to a dock, playing Stevie Wonder; Stacker, in a tight black shirt, with the hoodie he’d ripped the sleeves off of for the Kwoon, fixing the star on a finished tree, before moving back to the one in front of him; Stacker, nodding, swaying his hips a little to the music, even a little quiet falsetto singing with the chorus; Stacker, setting down the roach for a moment to replace the dressed tree with a naked one; Stacker, looking Herc over as the older pilot walks into the room, where it’s much warmer than in the hallway.
Herc remembers hearing Coyote’s crew going on about decorating for Christmas, wanting to make the dullest, coldest ‘dome in the Rim look a little friendlier.
“How’d you get stuck with the trees?”
Stacker shakes his head as he backs up to better take in the two-foot plastic tree, then fiddles with the tinsel a bit before looking back at Herc. “Nah man, this was my thing when I was a kid. Mum’d set me up with the bulbs and lights—bam! easily the best tree in the estate.”
The close bond between Herc and Stacker is fairly common knowledge, not just for the rumor mill or diplomacy propaganda, but camaraderie like theirs is a rare kind in the program, especially among rangers who don’t share a Jaeger, and certainly between Stacker and Herc’s co-pilots.
In the same city, in public, they’re more than friendly—Kwoon sessions, drinking games, and post-kill victory photos are commonplace. There are friendly handshakes and laughter, but occasionally, there’s a grab of a shoulder that lasts too long; their long absence from LOCCENT will be called into suspicion; Stacker will give Herc that hungry, patient smile he has now.
Herc is a private man. He has a dead wife, a son, and years of living anonymously, comfortably. He doesn’t need anyone, media or otherwise, with a working knowledge his life, how he lives it, and with whom.
Stacker has never really hid who he was or is. It’s less about pride, and more about audacity—“that’s what you get for sharing a brain with Tamsin Sevier,” he told Rolling Stone, “your balls get a whole lot bigger.”
They respect each other, their way of dealing, of coping with this life.
Sometimes when they’re alone and Herc is under Stacker, he’ll ask, breathless, if he’s sure the door’s been bolted.
Sometimes when they’re in public and Stacker smiles at him like that—like that—Herc blushes.
Right now, Herc is sure the door, still cracked, leads to a very empty hallway, and he doesn’t turn around to check before walking to Stacker, lightly touching his arm because he’s wearing short sleeves, because he can, because he wants to.
“Thought your co-pilot would help you,” Herc says, finding a new blunt from the empty ornament box, lighting it and taking a long drag.
Stacks nods at Herc’s hand. “Fucking lightweight, quit early when she saw one of Cherno’s main programmers go by.”
Herc laughs. “‘Help me find my bunk, I’m lost in a strange new Shatterdome’?”
“Added advantage of the cold, too.” He smacks Herc’s hand going towards the half-finished tree with an ornament. “No, get your own.”
Herc raises an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
Stacker snorts. “You’ll ruin the look I’ve got for my tree. Fuck your own one up.”
Herc goes to grab a tree, sets it next to Stacker, and gets to work on hanging the tinsel.
A few minutes later, he stops. “You saying I’ve got bad taste?”
“Hard to make a case for yourself in those boots,” Stacker says, making a face at Herc’s feet.
“These are cool boots, fuck you,” Herc defends, tilting his leg to show off the buckles that run up his calves. “I’ve got style.”
Stacker blows smoke in Herc’s face, frowning. “I must be wrecked, mate, because it sounded to me like you were serious just then.”
“This, coming from the man who puts pantyhose on his head at night?”
“That’s a bloody wave cap, and I told you how it keeps my hair nice.”
Herc reaches for Stacker’s hood. “‘S that why you’re hiding it all under here?”
Stacker’s batting his hands away again. “Oi, oi! You know better’n that. Don’t touch!”
But Herc thinks it’s entirely too funny to stop. “Will your pantyhose fix it if I do?” he leers, reaching out again.
Stacker is backing away, hands still out in defense. “Fuck off, dickhead.”
“Condomhead,” Herc shoots back, boxing Stacker back up against a wall. “You even wear it in the drive suit, don’t you?”
“Have you seen how you look, taking off that helmet after a drift?” Stacker asks, shocked he is even explaining this. “Fuck if I’ll be in OK! with my waves all fucked.”
Herc closes in, but instead wraps his arms around Stacker’s waist, and pulls until they’re flush against each other. The room is starting to feel a lot warmer.
“Okay, okay. I won’t touch you there,” he says lowly, but can’t suppress the catch in his throat when Stacker’s hands slide to cup his ass.
“You know,” he starts, massaging the globes in his hands, “if I were a real bastard, I’d make a comment about your cargo pants.”
“Stacks…”
Stacker crushes his mouth against Herc’s. “How these atrocities really do your arse some favors.”
Herc lets Stacker nuzzle him closer, feels the press of the other man’s erection on his thigh. “You’re still a bastard.”
“Yeah, but I’m the bastard who’s gonna let you fuck them silly into this wall, so close the door and get those horrible clothes off.”