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The first time it happens he thinks nothing of it.
She’s come out of the shower wearing nothing but a towel. He goes red around the ears and focuses very hard on his paperwork because Mako’s a foot away pulling out a pair of panties. she slides them on underneath the towel and he focuses with everything on his paperwork. He only turns around when she ducks back in to the bathroom to hang up her towel and by then she’s clad in a pair of sweats and a hoodie. He brushes it off as a one time thing and fingers his dog tags.
the next time it happens he’s completely unprepared.
He opens the door to find her stretched out on the bed, a book in her lap and Max pressed to her thigh. One hand is drawing lazy circles on the dog’s belly but all Raleigh can see is the fact that the leg Max is cuddled against is bare. Very bare. Because Mako’s wearing a tank top and a pair of panties and literally nothing else.
"Sorry!" Raleigh gets out, "I can—"
"What?" Mako asks and the confusion on her face is plain and unmistakable.
"You’re—" he doesn’t know how to put it in to words. Mako looks down and then back at him, still uncomprehending.
"Reading?"
"No you’re—"
"With Max?"
"Pants!" He bursts out, "you’re not wearing any pants."
"why would I be?" She asks as if its the most simple question in the world.
He gulps because he can think of a thousand reasons why she should be wearing pants, and most of them involve the expanse of milky skin he can see. Mako spends most of her time indoors while he leaps at any chance to be outside. His fingers are calloused and burned, both from the sun and the wielding and now they itch with the desire to see how dark his skin is against hers, how rough it is against hers. How it would feel to curve around her thighs and guide them open and—
His throat works and he turns around, already aware of how red he is. He can follow her train of thought fairly easily, he essentially knows her body as well as she knows herself. Same with her and him. And that’s the problem because he knows it but that definitely doesn’t mean he doesn’t want explore it for himself. he wants to learn every scar she has with his fingertips and his mouth. he doesn’t just want to know what she looks like with her head thrown back and her orgasm running through her. He wants to do all of that for himself.
Her being two feet away wearing nothing but a tank top and panties as though its the most natural thing in the world isn’t helping.
Yancy always used to make fun of him for never having a shirt on. Raleigh’s always naturally run hot. Now though he always wears at least a tank. Its more habit than anything else, five years he spent not necessarily hiding who he was but hoping no-one would notice. His scars back then weren’t huge but they are a dead give away.
There’s another part of it that goes back to Mako. Raleigh’s never shared a room with a girl. Even if that girl has been in his head, there’s still a dress in the closet and a pink razor in the shower and a pair of small diamond earrings in a seashell on the dresser. He’s a guy and he doesn’t want to make Mako uncomfortable about sharing a room with him. It isn’t that he’s afraid she’ll leave, Mako has a stubborn streak a mile wide, especially where things that pilots do are concerned. It’s just that she’s—
She’s Mako.
There’s no other way to put it. She’s Mako. She’s everything to him, his other half. And on top of that he’s in love with her. Copilot are bonded together, but they don’t necessarily like each other without a Jaeger between them. Sometimes they’re too much alike, sometimes their secrets are too dark. It isn’t like that with Mako. Loving her is easy, even when she’s wearing almost nothing sitting on the bottom bunk.
"Does this make you uncomfortable?" She asks and her voice is a lot closer, "why?" She prods when he’s silent, "you’ve seen it before."
"As you," he says, "I’ve seen it as you," he fights not to turn around, "it’s different as me."
"Why?"
He chuckles because he feels like a total perv. There’s seven years between them but considering on an average day he feels like he’s about seventy that’s not saying much. Mako’s hand touch his shoulder and he knows he’s tense. But he has to tense so he doesn’t turn around. For some stupid reason he thinks this will be easier if he isn’t looking at her.
"You’re not attracted to yourself," he points out with a weak smile.
She tugs him and he wants to fight her but he turns anyway. Her hand slides up to the back of his neck, fingers toying with the hair at his nape. She guides his head to hers and presses their foreheads together, holding them there for a long moment. She doesn’t apologize and he feels the heat of her breath on his chin as the warmth on his face drains.
When he comes out of their bathroom and tosses his suit on the desk chair she’s wearing a pair of his cut off sweatpants that are way too big. He can’t help the laugh that escapes his lips as he leans his forearm against the rail of his bunk and looks down at her.
"Better?" she asks.
"Not really," he says.
She smiles, obviously pleased with herself. She shifts over on the bed and he lowers himself on to the bed, Max wheezes and rolls over. Raleigh leans forward and scratches his belly.
"Listen I didn’t—" he begins, "I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable about everything. It’s your room too. You should do what you want."
"It’s your room as well," she says.
"Yeah but this is in my head," he says, "not yours."
Mako shifts on the bed placing herself next to him. Their bodies are pressed together, her head a warm weight on his shoulder. In moments like this it’s easy to fall for the brave fronts, to pretend not to know the grief and anger that consumes her, the sorrow that consumes him. It’s easy to pretend that all is right in the world.
It’s very dangerous.
The urge to hurt—someone, anyone, anything is there. It pulses through them, threatens to consume them. And however much they ache for each other, the idea of doing something to hurt the other is not one they’ll allow. Not even the chance of it. Their sounds are too fresh, too deep, their broken edges are too sharp to fit together without hurting each other.
He kisses the crown of her head, letting his lips linger and tries to imagine what her lips will feel like against his. Her fingers trace the dots and lines that scar his knuckles. For all that her thighs must be smooth, her finger pads are as rough and calloused as his own.
They don’t move for a long time and fall asleep together, Max sandwiched between them.