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“No,” Dustin says.
Mike blinks. “No?” he repeats.
“Yeah, you heard me.”
“Why not?!” Mike sputters, and Dustin can feel the rest of them watching, too, and none of them get it.
“Because!” he says, and he can feel Steve watching most of all, because this is about him after all. “It’s not my thing! Why do I have to do it?”
Mike groans. “Because we don’t need any more mechanics! We’re choking on mechanics and fucking engineers. We need pilots.”
“And what,” Dustin says, “you think that’s me? A fucking pilot?”
“Sometimes I think you and Steve are pretty much already sharing one brain cell,” Mike says, ignoring Steve’s halfhearted Hey! as he adds, “So in other words, yes, I do.”
“I bet you’re drift compatible,” Max pipes up from the couch, and Dustin crosses his arms over his chest.
“I don’t want to,” he grits out, feeling a bit petulant.
“C’mon,” Lucas says. “You gotta give us a better reason than that.”
“I don’t want him in my head, okay?!”
It comes out wrong. Dustin knows it comes out wrong, because his eyes immediately go to Steve as soon as he’s said it, just in time to catch the look on Steve’s face, and it’s clear that Steve’s hurt even though he quickly schools his expression into something neutral and almost carefree, but Dustin saw enough to know.
“I’m sorry,” he tells Steve. “I just—”
But he can’t explain it without baring himself completely, so instead he turns and storms out of the room like a child in the middle of a tantrum, face burning in mortification and anger and maybe a bit of sadness too, and he’s not proud of it, but it is what it is.
//
The first monster claws its way out of the curse gate two days after the military swoops in to kill Vecna.
In hindsight, Dustin feels like they should have known that Vecna would have had something else up his sleeve, though the jury’s still out on whether the monsters are actually his creation or not. Some people theorize that he was actually what was holding them back, though even at his most generous Dustin very much doubts that.
Either way, Hawkins is gone. The monster levels downtown like it’s nothing and makes it halfway to Indianapolis before it’s struck down by enough military aircraft to block out the sky.
Dustin watches it all on live TV from an army base in Texas and knows without a doubt that the only reason any of the Party survived is that by now they know too much about the Upside Down for Owens to be able to afford to lose them; they and their families were whisked away before the monster even made it halfway out of the gate, the view from the choppers showing the truly massive scale of the thing – and of the curse gate, which seems to have grown at least twice as large in as many days.
The scientists later determine that it’s atomic in nature. Something to do with the Earth's tectonic plates and the energy they provide, and apparently Vecna has somehow been able to create his very own fault lines running straight through what used to be Hawkins. The curse gate seems to feed off them, and it spreads like a virus because soon more gates are opening – in California, up along Alaska, and down the coast of Mexico and Guatemala and the rest of South America, too. They’re spreading along the fault lines, following the Ring of Fire around the Pacific Ocean until, two weeks after the first monster arrived, something equally huge and horrendous claws its way out of the sea off the coast of Japan.
Kaiju is what they end up calling them, and it soon becomes clear to everyone that these are not random happenings or even isolated attacks but a full-on invasion – a fucking war.
Eleven months later San Fransisco, Sydney, and Tokyo are among the ruins, and the first Jaeger prototype stands completed.
//
Robin chases the rabbit every time.
She latches onto a memory and then she’s gone, trapped in the events of the past until the neural handshake is broken. It’s why she can never be a pilot, and why Steve’s stuck training new recruits because no one else so far has been drift compatible with him.
Dustin knows Steve would be a great pilot if he ever got the chance. He’s a great instructor too, but his frustration at not being able to find someone to pilot with is palpable to anyone who cares to look.
And no matter how much Dustin wants to help him, he can’t.
He trusts Steve with his life, and he knows that Steve feels the same way, but letting anyone – let alone Steve – into his head is opening a can of worms that is better off left alone.
Even if Dustin’s modesty reflex doesn’t kick in and abruptly sever the connection between them completely, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to live with himself afterward, knowing that Steve’s just been treated to a first-row showing of exactly how in love with him Dustin is and for how long he’s felt that way.
It might be selfish to not even try and in doing so deny Steve the opportunity he’s spent the past few years desperately looking for, but right now, it’s all Dustin can do to protect himself.
//
“That wasn’t very nice,” Robin says when she finds him.
He’s not technically hiding, but the hangar is huge and if one were to want to hide – like Dustin is not – then this place would be a good choice, with all its levels and corners and equipment piled high in stacks seemingly almost designed to shield from view.
“I know,” Dustin says, because he does.
He also knows that she knows, just like they all do, everyone except for Steve, who’s somehow oblivious to how Dustin always seem to hone in on him from across the room, watching his movements with an almost breathless air.
“He can’t read your mind just yet, y’know,” she says.
“And he’s never gonna,” Dustin mutters as he pulls one of the nearby toolbox drawers out and starts to fuss with the wrenches inside, placing them in their assigned positions.
“So what? You’re just gonna make him think you hate him?”
Dustin looks up at where she’s leaning against the spare Jaeger panel propped up against the wall.
“He doesn’t think I hate him,” Dustin says, because Steve knows him better than that, hopefully. “But if it would spare me the agony of being seen, maybe,” though that’s not true either.
Robin rolls her eyes. “Boys,” she says, shaking her head. “If he wants to know where to find you, I’ll tell him,” she threatens, and Dustin shrugs like he doesn’t care, even though in actuality it’s very much the opposite.
//
The process of drifting is essentially a mind meld. It allows two pilots to act as one consciousness as they control the Jaeger, but leave both of them wide open to each other’s memories and instincts and emotions, which is exactly what Dustin is trying to avoid.
He has no doubt that he and Steve are drift compatible – they’re already in sync, even without the neural connection – but Dustin is a very dominant person. It might be conceited of him, but he’s so in love that he’s afraid that he’ll somehow overtake Steve completely and make him love Dustin in the same way.
He doesn’t feel like it’s a completely unfounded fear; it’s been documented numerous times how pilots who drift with one another long enough soon begin to adopt certain character traits of their drift partners even outside the drift. Dustin doesn’t want whatever he’s feeling for Steve to influence Steve’s feelings to the point that they’re not his anymore.
In other circumstances, he thinks it might be a noble thing to avoid. As it is, it just makes Dustin feel like shit.
//
As expected, Robin tells Steve where to find him. Dustin doubts Steve even had to ask.
He’s still messing around with the tools, and Steve stops a few feet away and leans against the same panel in the same spot that Robin had, like some kind of silent reminder that Steve once had a co-pilot who couldn’t see it through to the end.
“You know it’s a two-way street, right?” Steve says, because apparently Robin’s told him that as well. “You’d be in my head too. Know all of my deepest, darkest secrets...”
“I already know about your hair care routine,” Dustin mutters, because he had to be the one to figure out the logistics of getting the hair spray onto base without raising too many questions.
“Robin told me, y’know,” Steve says. “The reason why you won’t do it.”
Dustin slants a look in his direction, taking in the way Steve looks as cool and collected as ever.
“No, she didn’t,” Dustin decides, because if she had, Steve probably wouldn’t even be here right now. He’d be with Robin, freaking out and second-guessing his friendship with Dustin.
“You know what?” Steve says. “For someone so smart, you really are an idiot.”
“Yeah?” Dustin says. “Well, you’re—” but he doesn’t get to finish, because Steve’s pushing himself away from the panel and crossing the room to cup Dustin’s face in his palms.
“Dustin,” he says patiently, like he’s speaking to a dim-witted child, “really?”
And then Steve dips down and kisses him, and it’s a good kiss because Steve’s a good kisser, just like Dustin knew he’d be.
It’s soft and slow and careful, like he’s trying to ease Dustin into it, and Dustin hadn’t figured he needed easing but judging by the surprised sound that escapes him as he reaches out to latch onto Steve’s jacket, Steve might just have the right idea.
Steve huffs a quiet laugh into Dustin’s mouth and pulls away, and Dustin desperately wants to chase him until he realizes that he can, so he does – yanks Steve back down and kisses him again, and Steve opens his mouth to let Dustin taste him, and Dustin groans and inches closer, until they’re chest to chest and Steve has to crane his neck down to not break the kiss because Dustin never got the growth spurt he spent his early teens so desperately wishing for.
He doesn’t feel so bad about it now though, because there’s something heady about the way Steve’s accommodating him; when Dustin dares to reach up and cup the back of Steve’s neck, holding him in place so that he doesn’t pull away, Steve simply sighs and relaxes into it, like he’s wholly content with letting Dustin take the reins, and Dustin’s the one that ends up having to break the kiss, if only to whisper a Holy fuck.
“This isn’t just some ploy to get me to be your co-pilot, is it?” he has to ask, just to make sure, and Steve grins and butts his forehead against Dustin’s and strokes his thumbs over Dustin’s cheeks.
“Drift with me,” Steve breathes, and Dustin’s powerless to resist.
//
—riding his bike to Tommy’s house and the wind in his hair as he scores the winning basket and Eddie pressing the broken bottle against his throat and Nancy smiling at him in the soft light of her bedroom and his father closing the office door in his face and the vine wrenching him below the surface of the lake and Billy splitting his knuckles open on his cheekbone and Robin looking at him from across the bathroom stall and Dustin laughing on the other side of the gate, Dustin ripping the roses from his hands, Dustin pressing closer in the tunnels, Dustin riding shotgun in his car, Dustin across the table at Sunday dinner, Dustin kissing him back, Dustin—
Dustin, Steve thinks, and Dustin closes his eyes and reaches inside and bares his mind and lets Steve see.