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Top or bottom
“This is it, kid. We’re gonna be Rangers.”
Raleigh surveyed the bare, cramped quarters they’d been assigned, eyes bugging out in shock at what he saw. Yancy swung down his duffel bag and automatically started testing the switchboards, as if suspicious that there was a bum fuse lurking in the room somewhere. The empty walls begging to be plastered with photos and the double-bunk bed didn’t ping his consciousness. Raleigh, who couldn’t bear to shuffle through life as a zombie, bounded for the main attraction.
“Yancy,” he yelled, slamming his fist into the nearest door. “We got our own bathroom! Holy crap, we got ourselves a bathroom.”
This should have been in the brochures when they were enticing impressionable teenagers to enlist. Shatterdomes provide pilot quarters with en-suite lavatory facilities. Raleigh was glad he’d never gone to college: he’d have to share a bathroom with a floor full of smelly frat boys. It’d be like living with his brother all over again.
Yancy was testing the tensile strength of the bunk bed by prodding it with his toe. Correction, Raleigh thought, scrapping the frat boy analogy. My brother is a suspicious middle-aged woman.
They spent the next fifteen minutes settling in. Clothes went in the closet (the use of hangers were optional), photos were taped to the wall (Raleigh tried and failed to scrub the Sharpie devil horns and buck teeth off his photographed face), toothbrushes were strictly segregated (Yancy even wrote THIS ONE IS YOURS on the handle of Raleigh’s), and timetables and schedules were examined. Soon, there was literally nothing left to do except divvy up the bunks.
One on top, one on the bottom. And they had to choose.
Facing off from opposite sides of the room, they eyed the bed carefully. “Marquis of Queensbury rules?” offered Raleigh, because he was the charitable brother.
“That’s for boxing, dumbass.”
Raleigh could go Jim Jeffries on anyone’s dumb ass in a second. “Look,” he tried again, “I ought to get the top one.” He sucked in a deep breath, marshalling his thoughts into a succinct, decisive argument. He’d always had the top bunk when they were kids. Their family was too poor to get three separate beds (let alone individual bedrooms) and they’d all agreed that Jazmine would get the cot anyway. Yancy said he liked the bottom bunk because it was easier to sneak out of bed in the night, and Raleigh felt like a superhero in his Superman pyjamas sleeping on top of the world. They ought to have told a five-year-old that Superman needed at least a cape to be able to fly; just flannel pants and the top bunk didn’t cut it. If he’d known, he wouldn’t have attempted the Great Simulated Test Flight Incident that got Yancy the top bunk and Raleigh’s eternal resentment. Now, he wanted to look Yancy in the eye and said, “Bro, I’m old enough to know better. And I can fly.”
There was the old amused hit-me-with-your-wittiest-shot glint in Yancy’s eye. Raleigh knew what that looked like because he could read his brother like a comic book, complete with pictures and words. He just snorted and shoved his hands into his army-issue cargo pants, and said, “You’re so old you couldn’t climb up to the top without breaking a hip anyway.”
“Oh yeah?” said Yancy, and lunged for Raleigh, knocking them both to the ground.
Trying to wriggle out of a nasty headlock and an older bastard’s brother’s conviction that he wasn’t too old for noogies made him forget a whole lot else.
I’ve got your number
There were girls in the Anchorage Shatterdome, and this made Raleigh nervous. Palms slick with sweat that he had to keep wiping off levels of nervous. His brother and he were brand new faces, and people told them they looked so similar they could be interchangeable. He didn’t point out that this wasn’t a Sweet Valley High special; just that Yancy did a kind-of-side parting and his hair stuck up at the front. He tried not to talk to girls and stayed on friendly terms with every guy he met. (Depressingly, Tend Choi was the only who understood why.) He was still smarting from the Great Naomi Sokolov Boondoggle. He didn’t want to use up all his best moves trying to chat up a girl, and then go into the drift to find her straddling Yancy in their heads.
It would have been nice if Yancy felt remotely the same way. Raleigh appreciated not walking into the mess with a laden tray only to find that his brother had saved him a seat, like they were grade school sweethearts. The worst part was that Yancy had done it without thinking, on protective-big-brother-autopilot, while he focused his energies on flirting with the sweet-faced brunette next to him. The girl was way out of a newbie’s league, but she was giggling and flirting right back.
“Hey.” The older man sitting across the table nodded at Raleigh. His Australian accent was thick as fog. “Don’t touch the peas.”
The bright green peas swam in a sea of cream. Raleigh’s fork hovered uncertainly above his tray. “Why not?” He glanced up and down the table, startled to see that he was the only one who’d scooped up peas for dinner.
“Poison,” said the ranger matter-of-factly. “That’s why they’re that colour.”
“I thought they’re supposed to be— well, they are unnaturally green…” Raleigh trailed off when he noticed the grin on the ranger’s face. “Oh.” He snuck a peek at Yancy, who was thankfully too busy flirting to have noticed.
“Not having the peas is just a tradition around here. You’ll learn fast, new guy.”
Raleigh took another sideways look. No peas on Yancy’s plate either. He suspected the brunette had a role in that. He held out a hand to the ranger. “Raleigh Becket. I owe you.”
Bemused, the ranger reciprocated. “Herc Hansen. Don’t mind collecting the favours. And under the table is Max. He likes chewy bones.”
Please be referring to a dog. Raleigh bent down to see an adorable bulldog pup curled under Herc’s seat. Max was buried nose-deep in a plate of meat strips, and he shyly scooted backwards when a human hand reached out to scratch his ears. “Is he the Shatterdome’s mascot?” asked Raleigh, once he emerged topside again. “’Cause we—the Ranger programme—we—could use a mascot.”
Something indecipherable flitted across Herc’s face. “Nah. Max’s family.”
This made Yancy butt into the conversation with great interest. “Max? Is that your son’s name, sir? Bit light on the theme-naming there.”
Herc laughed. “Don’t lecture me on theme naming, Becket One.” He nodded meaningfully at Raleigh. “Unless girl-names count as a theme in your family.”
Raleigh felt like his tongue had suddenly turned into a particularly sour lemon. “Hey,” he protested, wondering where the joking, friendly Herc had gone. The Herc who had just been hundred percent on his side. “We’ve got great names. They’re good, solid, old English names—”
Yancy threw an arm around his brother and gave Herc his best bitchface. “Us. You. Throwdown. After dinner. No one gets away with an insult like that.” Then, with the smoothest hint of a pause: “Sir.”
“Sure.” Herc drawled the word in passable imitation of a John Wayne movie villain. “Brothers versus brothers. Just don’t come crying when we kick your arses to next Wednesday.” With that, he swung his legs free of his seat and snapped his fingers for Max to follow him out. “Be seeing you, Becket One and Becket Two.” His expression softened, slipping back into the Herc of a few minutes ago, as he regarded the brunette Yancy had been flirting with. “Evening, Vanessa.”
“What are you two even doing?” she groaned, once Herc was out of earshot.
Yancy just shot her a hooded-eyed look, smile curling around his lips. Raleigh sighed and tore off a piece of bread. He dunked it into the cream he was supposed to have with the forbidden peas, and translated aloud: “We’re beating the top dog to usurp his position.”
That sounded ten times more badass in his head.
Vanessa shook her head and chuckled. “Fucking hell, boys. Don’t go around begging to get your asses handed to you.”
Foul play
Raleigh was practically hopping on both feet as he followed Yancy into the Kwoon. ‘Followed’ wasn’t the right term; maybe ‘walked side-by-side’ was better. Less accurate, but better. The two of them had been taken on the same tour of the Shatterdome, and Yancy had been half-asleep through it. How was it then that he retained enough to know his way, while Raleigh trailed stupidly after him? Life wasn’t fair, and his brother liked playing with loaded dice.
“This is insane,” he muttered as they stepped into the presently empty training arena. “Herc Hansen’s—he’s practically the Deputy Marshal—Stacker Pentecost’s right hand.” His every nerve was thrumming in anticipation of a fight. It was what he needed to toss his insides clean and kill the unease simmering in the pit of his chest. If he could prove to himself just once that they belonged here. That this wasn’t a mistake. “We’re going to get chucked out faster than you can spell K-A-I-J-U.”
Yancy, who had already toed out of his shoes, winked at him. “Then, we’re going to be here for a long while, huh?”
Raleigh remembered the two of them at the enlistment orientation, with ID badges clipped to their jackets and uncertainty radiating out of their pores. Yancy had clapped him on the back, promised they’d fail to make the first cut, and laugh it off afterwards over a beer. Raleigh had grown up watching Jaegers on every screen there was. He remembered holding his big brother’s hand and swapping college out of their future in return for the Jaeger academy. He, too, had pretended it didn’t matter if they made the cut or not. As long as there was Budweiser afterwards.
And here they were, instead.
Two fingers flicked at his temple, making Raleigh wince. He smacked Yancy’s hand away. “Jesus, you even hit like a girl.”
“Big words from a little man.” Yancy sauntered over to a weapons rack against the wall, hefting a hanbō. He twirled it effortlessly in one hand, showing off like a prize-class dick who watched way too many Jet Li movies. His eyes gleamed. “Come at me.”
Okay. No resisting that challenge. He took off his dark blue pullover and boots. He grabbed a hanbō of his own and treaded the wide mat in the middle of the Kwoon. “Loser gets the bottom bunk,” he said, tightening his arms into his opening fighting stance. “Hope you have sweet dreams at ground level, brother.”
Yancy rolled his eyes. “Don’t get cocky, kid.” He rolled his shoulders, and in the same movement, stepped forward to angle the hanbō at Raleigh. It was desultory and lazy, just like Yancy, and it signalled the start of the fight. Like everything else in their lives, Raleigh was always coming second.
Although he barely had to tilt the far end of his hanbō to block, Raleigh put a little pressure into it, sending Yancy’s staff overhead. Still holding it like Harry Potter’s wand, he slammed the tip into Yancy’s ribs.
“Oh,” said his brother, soft and calculating. His gaze skimmed Raleigh’s face, picking the thoughts out of Raleigh’s head.
Fuck off, Raleigh telegraphed. I’m fine.
“That’s how it is, huh?” Yancy twirled his hanbō, casually switching grips, but the stick kept turning like a spoke in a wheel. Raleigh watched the end, bracing for the split second when the vortex would pause and the attack would come. Yancy moved so fast that Raleigh only registered how his brother’s left shoulder tensed even though the hanbō was in his right hand. Yancy reversed his grip again, and aimed his downward swing to sweep Raleigh’s feet out from under him.
Raleigh jumped back, the soles of his feet brushing wood. Too close. “Too bad, so slow.”
Yancy shrugged, body slouching again into his old nonchalance. Raleigh didn’t let that fool him; his own stance stayed compact and alert. He initiated this time with a sharp sideswing that Yancy had to physically twist away to avoid. The hanbō angled between Yancy’s knees, whacking hard to unbalance him. Yancy fell, but midway, his hanbō cracked into the crook of Raleigh’s shoulder.
Stacker Pentecost believed that fighting was the best way to determine drift compatibility. The idea was to find two people who understood each other so well that they read each other’s bodies and anticipated each other’s moves. Middle-grade students and athletes brothers Becket were in the Corps only because of the strength of their neural handshake. Raleigh prayed the Marshal wasn’t watching them now. The only kind of compatibility they now displayed was mutually assured destruction. They couldn’t anticipate for shit; all they were good at was exploiting the chinks in each other’s armour.
He held out a hand to his brother, who automatically grasped it to lurch himself to his feet.
“You done already?” asked Yancy, his gaze sweeping over Raleigh again in that mind-reading way.
“Whatever. We don’t want to burn out before Herc shows up.” He stepped off the mat and into his shoes, replacing the hanbō on the rack. He picked up his uniform pullover, fiddling with the sleeves to straighten them before he tried to put it back on. Shirts and Raleigh didn’t mix. Shirts usually tried to strangle Raleigh.
He felt a callused hand squeeze his shoulder. His muscles tensed, ready to shake off Yancy. He didn’t want pity or attempts to second-guess his feelings. Fuck off. I’m fine.
“You know what your deal is, weirdo?”
Don’t wanna know.
“How many times have we drifted? A lot, right.” As if they could forget. Raleigh wanted a confetti cannon primed to explode every time they broke an Academy record. The only pilots with better drift compatibility than them were some married couple in the Vladivostok Shatterdome, and Raleigh half-suspected their eighteen-hour neural handshake was an urban legend.
“Well, you’ve been in my head, and I’ve been in yours, and it’s turned us inside-out. I’m you, you’re me.”
You’re my brother. My big brother. I love you. This isn’t about you, about us, about Naomi. I’ll always love you, you’ll always be me, I’ll always be you. Raleigh shrugged off Yancy, turning around to face him with a sneer.
“This is not a chickification zone—” He gestured at himself, the white wifebeater barely able to conceal the mass of pure muscle and man that was Raleigh Becket. “We’re not doing the girly speeches, so fuck off.”
Most irritatingly, Yancy’s expression didn’t change. “You still fight like you. Aggressive, hard, fast. You talk like me, I like the same crap music you do, you look like me, I feel like you. We’ve got the drift hangover. But you still fight like you.”
“Good for me.” Raleigh jammed on the pullover to hide his face as he ducked past Yancy to leave the Kwoon. He ended up swallowing a mouthful of fabric and being rendered temporarily blind, so he tripped over something and forgot his shoes, but at least he’d made the dramatic exit.
For brother or for worse
Klaxons were echoing through the Shatterdome, the PA announcing a Jaeger’s deployment. The Kwoon wasn’t so far behind him that Raleigh couldn’t run back to fetch his brother, but he determinedly made for LOCCENT anyway. This must be why Herc had never showed; he had to go beat a hurricane.
Tendo Choi was in the command console, Marshal Pentecost looming over his shoulder. The clock was ticking as the Shatterdome watched the Jumphawks release Lucky Seven into the water. Feedback from the Conn-Pod streamed into LOCCENT: Herc’s steady vigilance and his brother, Scott’s million-words-a-minute commentary was as alien to Raleigh as the kaiju they were all waiting for. It was never silent in Gipsy Danger’s pod; they were both always talking even if no one said a word. They were vying back-and-forth for the coolest zingers and hah-I-saved-your-ass points. But it never felt like his brother was a thousand years older and as many light years away from him.
In a sense, it was a relief to see Meathead slinking out of the ocean. Water ran in rivulets down the wrinkled folds of his silicon-based Carnotaurus-like body, collecting in shallow basin-like joints that exposed pink flesh. He came at Lucky Seven with no finesse, full of confidence in his brute strength. Lucky Seven’s rescue horns boomed, a prelude to danger, as her fist crashed into Meathead’s midsection. The kaiju went sprawling and Lucky Seven advanced, parting the ocean with her feet.
Raleigh’s eyes were glued to the screens; it was the most uneven fight he’d ever witnessed. His heart sang for Lucky Seven, Gipsy Danger’s only fellow action girl in an all-boys fleet, and he loved watching families pilot Jaegers. He empathised completely, he understood their every motive, the strength of their ties. You didn’t let the closest person in your universe go do this alone. You didn’t let them face death in the line of duty alone. Where they went, you went. You fought together, thought together, blurred the lines between man and god together. You didn’t slide your hands under the shirt of the girl your other half was mad about, didn’t whisper filthy things into her ear just to make her smile and grind into your lap. You didn’t betray every shred of trust holding you to your soul mate. You had to know that there would be no secrets in the Drift, that I’d find out inevitably, but you didn’t fucking care.
You did it anyway.
Lucky Seven was unbalanced. The subservient left side was in full control, but something was off in the dominant right. Scott Hansen was cheering for their side as they beat punches into Meathead, but Herc had gone radio silent. The plasma screens tracking the neural handshake were ready to bleep out warnings. Not because the handshake was loosening, but because Herc was in too deep, half-chasing the RABIT as he struggled to aim Lucky Seven’s arm cannon into Meathead’s brain.
The blast was pure fluke. Herc wrenched himself back to reality. The strangled gasp of breath was the only sound he made, and then there was the whir of the cannon priming up. Meathead exploded into headless fragments, and LOCCENT erupted into cheers. Scott’s voice was one of them, but Herc wasn’t.
Raleigh sort of found out why, hours later, when he ran into Herc by nearly tripping over Max.
The bulldog yipped in glee to see Raleigh, but stayed glued to Herc’s side. Raleigh didn’t blame him: Herc looked wrecked and ten years older.
“What happened?” he asked at once, not bringing up the promised throwdown. He was a lot of things, but not stupidly suicidal.
However, the sight of Raleigh did the trick for Herc. An immediately apologetic look washed over his face. “Damn it, we were supposed to meet you and Becket One, weren’t we? Didn’t mean to hold you up. I just—” He glanced back over his shoulder but there was nothing there except the corridor to Pentecost’s office. “Well, you saw.”
Oh boy, did he ever. Raleigh kept his expression in ‘concerned’ territory, and strictly out of ‘nosy parker’. “We saw Lucky Seven take a hit. Is everything okay?”
Pilots treated Jaegers like their love-children, born out of the union of their minds. Raleigh knew that first-hand: he and Yancy treated Gipsy Danger with more care than they ever had Jazmine. It was probably because their baby sister had kicked them both in the shin when they ineptly tried to comfort her at their mother’s funeral. She’d screamed at them for being obsessed with billion-dollar robots, while Mom kept slipping one more last cigarette out of the carton. You’re going to leave like she left, and you can’t even admit it, get out get out get the hell out.
“Sure,” Herc lied. It was written on his face. “Everything’s fine.” He clapped Raleigh on the shoulder, his hand accidentally landing where Yancy’s had been, and he took off down the corridor. Max trotted at his heels.
For life
Their room was empty by the time Raleigh returned. The bathroom door wasn’t thick enough to conceal the sounds of a shower and blithe off-key humming. Raleigh was surprised it wasn’t some Jacques Brel number, a favourite that Yancy had shared with their mother. Instead, as he flopped down onto the bottom bunk, he recognised the strains of Take Me Out to the Blue. It was the latest hit song of Angels of the Ocean, a kaiju groupie band. For a second, Raleigh grinned to himself, thinking he’d hit jackpot. He’d found his brother’s guilty pleasure.
You talk like me, I like the same crap music you do.
Or not. With extreme overuse of force, Raleigh yanked off his boots, throwing them across the room. The left one bounced uselessly off the closet door. He didn’t want Yancy to be right. He didn’t want to be gone. He wanted his own identity to stay inside him, instead of being pulled apart like loose threads until they were indistinguishable from Yancy. He loved his brother until the two of them were twisted together in an unbreakable lifeline. Ever since they were kids and Yancy pretended not to enjoy what Raleigh enjoyed, so that there would be more left for Raleigh: the last two slices of pizza, extra hours on the computer, the TV remote, the bottom bunk, Margit who had promised to show Yancy Munich, but Raleigh had been the one kissing her.
Naomi Sokolov had been the only time Yancy had pretended he wasn’t interested, and gone back on his word instead.
Raleigh started tugging his clothes off piece-by-piece, his movements throttled by sudden exhaustion. Fresh laundry was heaped on a nearby chair, and he rooted through it for something wearable. The only wearable thing he found was a pair of trackpants. He crawled back into the bottom bunk, wanting to be lights-out in his head before his brother came out of the shower.
The bathroom door opened to release a cloud of steam. Yancy stepped out in the only towel in their room, tousling his hair dry with his fingers. He nodded at Raleigh, who didn’t even have the energy to mock him for the overwhelming scent of mint shampoo.
“Where are the clothes?” he demanded.
Raleigh shrugged, so Yancy heaved an exasperated, you’re-my-family-it-would-be-wrong-but-mostly-illegal-to-murder-you breath. Then, he poked through the new laundry until he discovered a shirt and pair of boxers that might have been his. Raleigh closed his eyes as Yancy’s towel dropped to the floor. He didn’t open them again, not even when he felt a nudge in his side.
“Get up,” rumbled Yancy’s voice. “Go sleep in your own bed.”
Raleigh didn’t move.
“I will sit on you, so help me god, and crush your diaphragm.”
Not even a snicker to acknowledge Raleigh had heard.
Finally, after spending an impressive ten seconds trying to change his brother’s mind, Yancy gave up and hauled himself up the stepladder to the top bunk. The routine never changed after that. The top bunk was Yancy Becket’s once again, until the day he died.