Ship/Member: Mingyu/Minghao, one-sided Minghao/Soonyoung Major Tags: N/A Additional Tags: Pacific Rim AU, drift compatibility, internalized homophobia, constructing intricate rituals etc. Permission to remix: Yes
it’s been a minute since i watched this movie, so some of the lore might be a bit off… and the busan shatterdome and academy are my own additions.
***
Soonyoung caught him in the mess hall, passing off his empty tray onto the pile. “Cadet Xu,” he said with a grin that scrunched up his cheeks, like his name and rank were an inside joke. They probably were; Soonyoung seemed to take the formalities of rank and title as suggestions rather than rules. “I’m headed to the Kwoon Room. Want to come with?”
He said it so easily that Minghao felt even stupider for the way his heart hammered and fipped at just the thought. Biting down the Yes, yes, of course, he replaced it with what he hoped was a perfectly neutral, “Why?” It must have come out on the wrong side of rude, from the way Soonyoung half-winced. “I just mean, Cadet Lee—”
There were maybe two dozen Cadet Lees at the Busan academy, but Soonyoung would know who he meant. Anyone would; at least since the entrance of Minghao’s class, no one’s seen Soonyoung train with anyone but Lee Jihoon. They had the highest sync rate at the base. If something happened to one of the active Rangers, they could be in a Jaeger the next day.
Soonyoung’s mouth did something complicated and a crease appeared between his sharp eyes. “You didn’t hear?” he asked, forced-casual. “J-Tech got him.” He started walking away, but Minghao got the feeling he wasn’t being left behind on purpose; he half-jogged to catch up. The path was obvious: they were, as he said, headed to the Kwoon Room. “He’s pulling out of Ranger training?”
“Ah, well,” Soonyoung shrugged. The lightness was returning to his voice with more ease. Minghao wondered how many times he’d explained it already—it felt like only a day or two he had last seen them flying through their katas on the mat together, moving like two shadows cast by one body. “It wasn’t really his choice.”
“That’s not fair,” Minghao blurted, and was immediately embarrassed by the childishness of the thought.
Soonyoung didn’t scoff at him, give him the Life isn’t fair, kid, that he probably deserved. “The techs want him in their program, and to be honest, he’s wasted here,” he said simply. “I don’t know if you know, but he’s really got a good mind for that kind of thing. He just understands it like this,” he snapped his fingers. “You’d think he’d pass some of it over to me, but...” He chuckled, a little bashful.
Some of the cadets in Minghao’s year insisted Soonyoung was too scary to talk to, but he’d never seen it. It felt like Soonyoung was always bending over backwards to make himself available to the newer recruits, always willing to make himself the butt of a joke if it meant that his juniors would be less afraid to ask him for help.
“Well, it sucks,” Minghao said, hoping Soonyoung would understand what he meant to encompass in the useless words. He’d never drifted himself, at least not all the way. He was good, even excellent, in the Kwoon Room, able to match his movements with anyone who put in the same effort he did. He’d made it as far as the sims with Jeon Jungkook, Hirai Momo, Ha Sooyoung, even the untouchable Lee Ten. Every time, he’d floundered less than halfway to completing the handshake, backing away like a frightened animal. The trainers were probably starting to think he wasn’t worth the cost of feeding and housing him.
If he managed to find someone he was compatible with the way Soonyoung was with Jihoon, he didn’t know if he could stand to give it up.
Why me why me, he wanted to ask, the question matching his pulse in his ears. Of course Soonyoung wanted to get back on his feet as soon as possible, but anyone who wasn’t such a coward they avoided him on principle would jump at the chance to spar with him. He couldn’t judge whether he should be excited by the fact that Soonyoung sought him out specifically, but he couldn’t stop himself.
Kim Mingyu and Lee Seokmin were on the mats when they entered the room; both instinctively dropped their staves to rest position when they saw Soonyoung. Two girls in their class were waiting off to the side, one half-asleep on the other’s shoulder, and both stiffened to attention. If Soonyoung noticed any of it, he didn’t show it. “Hyelim-noona, can we have the floor for a minute?”
Fightmaster Yoon, who Minghao would never dream of addressing on any other terms, spread her hands wide. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s stopping you.”
Mingyu flashed Minghao one of his blinding smiles as he gave up his space on the mat. Minghao couldn’t think of a response and just blinked at him like an idiot until Fightmaster Yoon threw him a staff and he was back on solid ground.
It wasn’t perfect. Soonyoung clearly wasn’t used to sparring with someone taller than him, and Minghao was nervy in a way he’d never been before in the combat room, every clash of their staves sending shockwave pulses down his spine. It sped up his movements by half a beat, rushed and uncertain—Fightmaster Yoon clearly saw it, barking corrections, but he couldn’t parse it, his already shaky Korean turning to a wasps’ nest of buzzing white noise. But they caught up to each other at a startling speed, Soonyoung giving ground to accommodate for his wider range, Minghao slowing to follow through each move the way he’d trained on his own. They shared a preference for flashier moves, a palm spin meeting a downward flower—and then Minghao was disarmed and on his knees, breathless, electrified.
“Noona—Fightmaster—What do you think?” They both knew before she answered. Sure, they could have done better, but no one could keep Kwon Soonyoung out of a cockpit.
**
“Keep your breathing steady,” Soonyoung said. “And, you know, don’t chase the rabbit.”
From anyone else, Minghao would have taken it as condescension. It wasn’t his first or second or third time in the sims. But Soonyoung didn’t condescend, so Minghao didn’t bite back. He nodded, and let himself drift—
Soonyoung at maybe nine or ten, scattering feed to chickens. At twelve or thirteen, running to the bakery on his mother’s request and staying to watch the baker toss the dough, pull it easily from the sizzling pan. Then in high school, called home with a sharpness that felt unjust until he saw the footage on the news, an impossible monster breaking from the sea, breaking through everything he’d known as his reality. Staying home day after day, glued to the television, face bathed watery blue: The first victory of Korea’s first Jaeger, Blazing Muse, and the first interview with her pilots. Ranger Choi Minho beaming and Ranger Kim Kibum laughing wryly at his side.
I get it, I see you, Minghao tried to say. He’d watched the interview too, subtitled.
Then a familiar surge of cold panic as it was Soonyoung’s turn to walk around inside his mind. Wushu practice after school. The same news of the same first impact. His mother taking the job at the Shanghai Shatterdome, her biology degree finally finding a use. Enrollment at the academy—Jungkook pinning him to the mat, grinning wildly, sweat dripping onto Minghao’s face—the night Mingyu dragged him out with a handful of their cohort to go club-hopping in Seomyeon, stumbling together into a grimy bathroom stall—Soonyoung seeing himself through Minghao’s eyes, a hand ghosting over his spine to correct his form—
Neural handshake 62% completed.
“What happened here?” Officer Kye asked. He had a good way of speaking to the cadets, never too harsh but never coddling. Soonyoung’s mouth parted, uncertain, and Minghao forced himself to find his words.
“Modesty reflex,” he said, patient as the staff unplugged the headsets, powered down the simulator. “Nothing serious.”
Officer Kye’s mouth was a hard line. “Cadet Xu—” You’re wasting Cadet Kwon’s time, Minghao filled in when he cut himself off. Soonyoung still hadn’t spoken, and Minghao could feel without looking at him, in the dizzy after-effects of the simulation, that his eyes were on the ground. His hair was plastered to his forehead in sweaty clumps, and Minghao couldn’t help wanting to brush it out.
“I’m sorry, Officer.”
Last time, Officer Kye suggested meditation, that maybe he needed to learn to sit inside his own head before he could let anyone else in. And Minghao had tried, really made the effort, and this was all he had to show for it.
“I don’t need an apology,” he said. “Get back to your training and come back when you’re ready to drift for real.”
In the corridor, under faltering fluorescents, Soonyoung repeated it back to him: “I’m sorry.” He moved as if to throw an arm over his shoulder, maybe, then seemed to think better of it. “That wasn’t that bad. I mean, we made it more than halfway. And I’ve seen way worse in Jihoonie’s head.” He shuddered theatrically, and Minghao felt the sting: he was playing the appeasing senior again, comforting a dongsaeng whose pride had been wounded. The same way he’d made Seokmin laugh, weeks ago, after Minghao laid him out on the mat in two strikes. The camaraderie, the chance at a relationship of equals, all up in smoke because he didn’t know how to separate matter from mind.
“That’s the highest sync rate I’ve ever gotten,” he ground out, because if he’d sacrificed the rest of his pride already, he may as well throw the last of it away. Beg a bit, implicitly.
Soonyoung gave him a sympathetic, courteous little smile. “I’m sure you’ll find someone...”
And that was that.
**
“I thought you and Soonyoung-hyung might have been it,” Mingyu said, and Minghao did his best not to snap at him. He only meant well, in the same blunt-edged way he always did.
And of course he knew. Even if Minghao was still a rookie, everyone knew Soonyoung, and word of potential matches spread fast. Minghao twirled his bo staff, trying to ground himself out of the embarrassment with the repetitive motion. “I didn’t,” he said. It wasn’t quite true. Before Mingyu could blunder into a well-intentioned question about what went wrong, Minghao asked, “You’re here to train?”
It was the middle of the night. Only insomniacs and people with too much to prove came to the Kwoon Room at this hour. Minghao was both. Mingyu, as far as he knew, was not.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Mingyu pouted. The kicked-puppy look stirred a familiar, unwelcome slurry of feelings. “I’ve been working harder.” Minghao let the staff fall still, put on what he hoped was a conciliatory smile. “I know. I can tell.”
That was true. The first time he saw Mingyu on the mats, he got the measure of him at a glance. He was a head taller and maybe ten kilos heavier than the cadet he’d been paired up against, but held himself with uncertain, flat-footed awkwardness. His eyes were flickering up and down, left and right, missing every obvious cue. He’d never thrown a punch. Maybe he’d raised a fist to scare someone away from a sister or a girlfriend, but anything more than that? When he was downed before he could get in a single strike, Minghao coolly filed him away under cut before the end of the month and wondered why he couldn’t forget the match the way he’d discarded so many other non-starters.
But Mingyu hadn’t been cut. He hadn’t even dropped out of his own volition, while plenty more talented than him had. And day by day, he found his footing, started learning to use his natural advantages.
Minghao’s scant praise was enough to light him up at—what was it now, three in the morning? He puffed up, beaming with all his perfect teeth, and Minghao’s eyes dropped to the floor. Something had long been growing in his chest like kudzu and every now and then it tightened around his heart and lungs.
In another life, he and Mingyu might have been best friends. He was bright and affable, so quick to draw people in. He had an old film camera—Minghao had no idea where he went to get it developed—and went around taking pictures of everything and everyone. Every time Minghao caught him kneeling or contorted to capture something in that flash, he wanted to ask what it was he still found beautiful in this bullpen of exposed wiring and freezer-burned food while the world ended around them. He wished he could see it too. The only beauty he could see anymore was in people, and even that made him sick with guilt and fear half of the time.
In another life, they could have been best friends. Instead, Minghao watched others get drawn into his orbit in his place. (Soonyoung, even, head always turned up to grin and giggle at Mingyu, while Minghao seethed with a jealousy that couldn’t find a place to roost.) They remained cautious allies from a safe distance. And they forgot about the night that didn’t matter because it didn’t, not when they were drunk and pent up and losing their minds from the news of the Category Four ravaging Australia’s west coast and two Jaegers going down and the countdown to the end times winding on fast-forward. They didn’t talk about it. Minghao was scared of what he might say if they did.
“So if I’m doing so much better—”
“Don’t put words in my mouth,” Minghao said, but he was smiling; he knew a set-up when he saw one, and Mingyu shared Soonyoung’s gift for putting people at ease by giving them the upper hand.
“—If I’m doing so much better, should we go a round?”
Minghao felt his mouth fall open: body, as always, a step ahead of his mind, but caught himself. “I’m the only one here, aren’t I? I’d be insulted if you came here to train and wouldn’t spar with me.”
For a moment Mingyu’s warm eyes sharpened to a kind of scrutiny Minghao wasn’t sure he’d seen in him before. “It’s not about me,” he said, less playful than usual.
You’re right. I don’t want you in my head. But there he was already, reaching in with his clumsy hands. For whatever reason, he’d been the one to see more of Minghao than nearly anyone else, and there was no taking that back.
“Let’s try,” Minghao said, feeling his heart speed up, blood pulsing where his skin met the staff. Maybe he wanted Mingyu to touch him again, even if it was like this.
At the end of the world, there wasn't much left to risk.
[FILL] in new shapes
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Pacific Rim AU, drift compatibility, internalized homophobia, constructing intricate rituals etc.
Permission to remix: Yes
it’s been a minute since i watched this movie, so some of the lore might be a bit off… and the busan shatterdome and academy are my own additions.
***
Soonyoung caught him in the mess hall, passing off his empty tray onto the pile. “Cadet Xu,” he said with a grin that scrunched up his cheeks, like his name and rank were an inside joke. They probably were; Soonyoung seemed to take the formalities of rank and title as suggestions rather than rules. “I’m headed to the Kwoon Room. Want to come with?”
He said it so easily that Minghao felt even stupider for the way his heart hammered and fipped at just the thought. Biting down the Yes, yes, of course, he replaced it with what he hoped was a perfectly neutral, “Why?” It must have come out on the wrong side of rude, from the way Soonyoung half-winced. “I just mean, Cadet Lee—”
There were maybe two dozen Cadet Lees at the Busan academy, but Soonyoung would know who he meant. Anyone would; at least since the entrance of Minghao’s class, no one’s seen Soonyoung train with anyone but Lee Jihoon. They had the highest sync rate at the base. If something happened to one of the active Rangers, they could be in a Jaeger the next day.
Soonyoung’s mouth did something complicated and a crease appeared between his sharp eyes. “You didn’t hear?” he asked, forced-casual. “J-Tech got him.”
He started walking away, but Minghao got the feeling he wasn’t being left behind on purpose; he half-jogged to catch up. The path was obvious: they were, as he said, headed to the Kwoon Room. “He’s pulling out of Ranger training?”
“Ah, well,” Soonyoung shrugged. The lightness was returning to his voice with more ease. Minghao wondered how many times he’d explained it already—it felt like only a day or two he had last seen them flying through their katas on the mat together, moving like two shadows cast by one body. “It wasn’t really his choice.”
“That’s not fair,” Minghao blurted, and was immediately embarrassed by the childishness of the thought.
Soonyoung didn’t scoff at him, give him the Life isn’t fair, kid, that he probably deserved. “The techs want him in their program, and to be honest, he’s wasted here,” he said simply. “I don’t know if you know, but he’s really got a good mind for that kind of thing. He just understands it like this,” he snapped his fingers. “You’d think he’d pass some of it over to me, but...” He chuckled, a little bashful.
Some of the cadets in Minghao’s year insisted Soonyoung was too scary to talk to, but he’d never seen it. It felt like Soonyoung was always bending over backwards to make himself available to the newer recruits, always willing to make himself the butt of a joke if it meant that his juniors would be less afraid to ask him for help.
“Well, it sucks,” Minghao said, hoping Soonyoung would understand what he meant to encompass in the useless words. He’d never drifted himself, at least not all the way. He was good, even excellent, in the Kwoon Room, able to match his movements with anyone who put in the same effort he did. He’d made it as far as the sims with Jeon Jungkook, Hirai Momo, Ha Sooyoung, even the untouchable Lee Ten. Every time, he’d floundered less than halfway to completing the handshake, backing away like a frightened animal. The trainers were probably starting to think he wasn’t worth the cost of feeding and housing him.
If he managed to find someone he was compatible with the way Soonyoung was with Jihoon, he didn’t know if he could stand to give it up.
Why me why me, he wanted to ask, the question matching his pulse in his ears. Of course Soonyoung wanted to get back on his feet as soon as possible, but anyone who wasn’t such a coward they avoided him on principle would jump at the chance to spar with him. He couldn’t judge whether he should be excited by the fact that Soonyoung sought him out specifically, but he couldn’t stop himself.
Kim Mingyu and Lee Seokmin were on the mats when they entered the room; both instinctively dropped their staves to rest position when they saw Soonyoung. Two girls in their class were waiting off to the side, one half-asleep on the other’s shoulder, and both stiffened to attention. If Soonyoung noticed any of it, he didn’t show it. “Hyelim-noona, can we have the floor for a minute?”
Fightmaster Yoon, who Minghao would never dream of addressing on any other terms, spread her hands wide. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s stopping you.”
Mingyu flashed Minghao one of his blinding smiles as he gave up his space on the mat. Minghao couldn’t think of a response and just blinked at him like an idiot until Fightmaster Yoon threw him a staff and he was back on solid ground.
It wasn’t perfect. Soonyoung clearly wasn’t used to sparring with someone taller than him, and Minghao was nervy in a way he’d never been before in the combat room, every clash of their staves sending shockwave pulses down his spine. It sped up his movements by half a beat, rushed and uncertain—Fightmaster Yoon clearly saw it, barking corrections, but he couldn’t parse it, his already shaky Korean turning to a wasps’ nest of buzzing white noise. But they caught up to each other at a startling speed, Soonyoung giving ground to accommodate for his wider range, Minghao slowing to follow through each move the way he’d trained on his own. They shared a preference for flashier moves, a palm spin meeting a downward flower—and then Minghao was disarmed and on his knees, breathless, electrified.
“Noona—Fightmaster—What do you think?”
They both knew before she answered. Sure, they could have done better, but no one could keep Kwon Soonyoung out of a cockpit.
**
“Keep your breathing steady,” Soonyoung said. “And, you know, don’t chase the rabbit.”
From anyone else, Minghao would have taken it as condescension. It wasn’t his first or second or third time in the sims. But Soonyoung didn’t condescend, so Minghao didn’t bite back. He nodded, and let himself drift—
Soonyoung at maybe nine or ten, scattering feed to chickens. At twelve or thirteen, running to the bakery on his mother’s request and staying to watch the baker toss the dough, pull it easily from the sizzling pan. Then in high school, called home with a sharpness that felt unjust until he saw the footage on the news, an impossible monster breaking from the sea, breaking through everything he’d known as his reality. Staying home day after day, glued to the television, face bathed watery blue: The first victory of Korea’s first Jaeger, Blazing Muse, and the first interview with her pilots. Ranger Choi Minho beaming and Ranger Kim Kibum laughing wryly at his side.
I get it, I see you, Minghao tried to say. He’d watched the interview too, subtitled.
Then a familiar surge of cold panic as it was Soonyoung’s turn to walk around inside his mind. Wushu practice after school. The same news of the same first impact. His mother taking the job at the Shanghai Shatterdome, her biology degree finally finding a use. Enrollment at the academy—Jungkook pinning him to the mat, grinning wildly, sweat dripping onto Minghao’s face—the night Mingyu dragged him out with a handful of their cohort to go club-hopping in Seomyeon, stumbling together into a grimy bathroom stall—Soonyoung seeing himself through Minghao’s eyes, a hand ghosting over his spine to correct his form—
Neural handshake 62% completed.
“What happened here?” Officer Kye asked. He had a good way of speaking to the cadets, never too harsh but never coddling. Soonyoung’s mouth parted, uncertain, and Minghao forced himself to find his words.
“Modesty reflex,” he said, patient as the staff unplugged the headsets, powered down the simulator. “Nothing serious.”
Officer Kye’s mouth was a hard line. “Cadet Xu—” You’re wasting Cadet Kwon’s time, Minghao filled in when he cut himself off. Soonyoung still hadn’t spoken, and Minghao could feel without looking at him, in the dizzy after-effects of the simulation, that his eyes were on the ground. His hair was plastered to his forehead in sweaty clumps, and Minghao couldn’t help wanting to brush it out.
“I’m sorry, Officer.”
Last time, Officer Kye suggested meditation, that maybe he needed to learn to sit inside his own head before he could let anyone else in. And Minghao had tried, really made the effort, and this was all he had to show for it.
“I don’t need an apology,” he said. “Get back to your training and come back when you’re ready to drift for real.”
In the corridor, under faltering fluorescents, Soonyoung repeated it back to him: “I’m sorry.” He moved as if to throw an arm over his shoulder, maybe, then seemed to think better of it. “That wasn’t that bad. I mean, we made it more than halfway. And I’ve seen way worse in Jihoonie’s head.” He shuddered theatrically, and Minghao felt the sting: he was playing the appeasing senior again, comforting a dongsaeng whose pride had been wounded. The same way he’d made Seokmin laugh, weeks ago, after Minghao laid him out on the mat in two strikes. The camaraderie, the chance at a relationship of equals, all up in smoke because he didn’t know how to separate matter from mind.
“That’s the highest sync rate I’ve ever gotten,” he ground out, because if he’d sacrificed the rest of his pride already, he may as well throw the last of it away. Beg a bit, implicitly.
Soonyoung gave him a sympathetic, courteous little smile. “I’m sure you’ll find someone...”
And that was that.
**
“I thought you and Soonyoung-hyung might have been it,” Mingyu said, and Minghao did his best not to snap at him. He only meant well, in the same blunt-edged way he always did.
And of course he knew. Even if Minghao was still a rookie, everyone knew Soonyoung, and word of potential matches spread fast. Minghao twirled his bo staff, trying to ground himself out of the embarrassment with the repetitive motion. “I didn’t,” he said. It wasn’t quite true. Before Mingyu could blunder into a well-intentioned question about what went wrong, Minghao asked, “You’re here to train?”
It was the middle of the night. Only insomniacs and people with too much to prove came to the Kwoon Room at this hour. Minghao was both. Mingyu, as far as he knew, was not.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Mingyu pouted. The kicked-puppy look stirred a familiar, unwelcome slurry of feelings. “I’ve been working harder.”
Minghao let the staff fall still, put on what he hoped was a conciliatory smile. “I know. I can tell.”
That was true. The first time he saw Mingyu on the mats, he got the measure of him at a glance. He was a head taller and maybe ten kilos heavier than the cadet he’d been paired up against, but held himself with uncertain, flat-footed awkwardness. His eyes were flickering up and down, left and right, missing every obvious cue. He’d never thrown a punch. Maybe he’d raised a fist to scare someone away from a sister or a girlfriend, but anything more than that? When he was downed before he could get in a single strike, Minghao coolly filed him away under cut before the end of the month and wondered why he couldn’t forget the match the way he’d discarded so many other non-starters.
But Mingyu hadn’t been cut. He hadn’t even dropped out of his own volition, while plenty more talented than him had. And day by day, he found his footing, started learning to use his natural advantages.
Minghao’s scant praise was enough to light him up at—what was it now, three in the morning? He puffed up, beaming with all his perfect teeth, and Minghao’s eyes dropped to the floor. Something had long been growing in his chest like kudzu and every now and then it tightened around his heart and lungs.
In another life, he and Mingyu might have been best friends. He was bright and affable, so quick to draw people in. He had an old film camera—Minghao had no idea where he went to get it developed—and went around taking pictures of everything and everyone. Every time Minghao caught him kneeling or contorted to capture something in that flash, he wanted to ask what it was he still found beautiful in this bullpen of exposed wiring and freezer-burned food while the world ended around them. He wished he could see it too. The only beauty he could see anymore was in people, and even that made him sick with guilt and fear half of the time.
In another life, they could have been best friends. Instead, Minghao watched others get drawn into his orbit in his place. (Soonyoung, even, head always turned up to grin and giggle at Mingyu, while Minghao seethed with a jealousy that couldn’t find a place to roost.) They remained cautious allies from a safe distance. And they forgot about the night that didn’t matter because it didn’t, not when they were drunk and pent up and losing their minds from the news of the Category Four ravaging Australia’s west coast and two Jaegers going down and the countdown to the end times winding on fast-forward. They didn’t talk about it. Minghao was scared of what he might say if they did.
“So if I’m doing so much better—”
“Don’t put words in my mouth,” Minghao said, but he was smiling; he knew a set-up when he saw one, and Mingyu shared Soonyoung’s gift for putting people at ease by giving them the upper hand.
“—If I’m doing so much better, should we go a round?”
Minghao felt his mouth fall open: body, as always, a step ahead of his mind, but caught himself. “I’m the only one here, aren’t I? I’d be insulted if you came here to train and wouldn’t spar with me.”
For a moment Mingyu’s warm eyes sharpened to a kind of scrutiny Minghao wasn’t sure he’d seen in him before. “It’s not about me,” he said, less playful than usual.
You’re right. I don’t want you in my head. But there he was already, reaching in with his clumsy hands. For whatever reason, he’d been the one to see more of Minghao than nearly anyone else, and there was no taking that back.
“Let’s try,” Minghao said, feeling his heart speed up, blood pulsing where his skin met the staff. Maybe he wanted Mingyu to touch him again, even if it was like this.
At the end of the world, there wasn't much left to risk.