Grayson knew Liam had his breaking points. He’d known for years, even before he chased the rabbit and got caught in Liam’s memory of killing Haiming on impulse, just because he was fuckingirritated. He’d felt the tension rolling off him when he’d stood beside him and set a hand between his shoulder blades, not to calm him down or remind him that there were people around – Grayson didn’t consider himself Liam’s owner and never had – but because he wanted to feel the tightening of his muscles and the coiling in his body, because there were better things to do with their time than sit through a talk with the Marshall about responsibility. Grayson had failed to see what Liam getting irritated with the other pilots had to do with responsibility. It wasn’t as though they trashed Famine Elysium or any of the other Jaegers. They didn’t even work with any of the other pilots, taking down Kaiju in Elysium alone. Even category threes, which had been much harder to deal with, they’d done okay at. So who cared if they didn’t have great public relations? Grayson, at least, was never going to relate to the public well, and Liam could put on a show well enough for the both of them when it was necessary. The important part – taking down Kaiju – they did flawlessly.

Even when Grayson had lost the handshake, almost gotten them both killed against their last category three as every bit of the life he had built for himself shattered around the sudden, inescapable knowledge that Liam was a murderer without even a reason, they hadn’t died. Other pilots might have. Lesser pilots, like Haiming and his partner, would have been ripped to shreds by a disconnect like that. Which was all sorts of sacrilege to even think, because Haiming was dead by Grayson’s own co-pilot’s hand which meant de facto that he was a hero when in fact he was mediocre among the best. It didn’t mean any of it was less true. Grayson and Liam had both survived that experience, even Elysium hadn’t been damaged beyond reasonable repair, but their partnership had shattered. Maybe that had been for the best. Reviving them would only lead to chaos, would lead to every little flaw that had pushed them apart in the first place. But Grayson and Liam were good. They had a functioning Jaeger and no new pilots were coming in. The fact that it was Grayson and Liam was little more than incidental to the Marshall, just another hazard. Only to Grayson was it more than that.

He’d told himself he wouldn’t get back into it. That he’d had enough of people being in his head, had enough of fighting when there were other pilots, other people to take that place. That it made sense that no one would want him anyway. But now there were no other pilots and there was still no one who wanted him but there was someone who could drift with him. Grayson knew that, because he knew Liam. And he knew, when Liam’s hand hooked around the back of his leg, that whatever anyone might think, whatever Liam might think, he hadn’t changed.

Grayson dropped his baton, let the bamboo rod fall harmlessly off to Liam’s side, shoving it away as his hands opened and moved back behind him to catch his fall. Liam had already let go of him, his hand gone from the back of Grayson’s knee where the feel of it had burned right into Grayson’s skin. Even when he heard the click of a gun cocking he didn’t cease his own motion, landing on his hands and using his airborn body to throw himself back to standing, shoving onto his feet and tensing his stomach, pushing himself up with a combination of velocity and strength. When he was younger, when he trained more often, he could have done it more gracefully, but he still got back into a fighting stance, unarmed and alert.

Liam hadn’t moved, standing from his crouch much more slowly, not touching his baton either. By all rights, they were done. They’d both dropped their weapons, Liam had broken the rules of engagement, this combat situation was over. Grayson could push Liam away, could point out that he was a hazard to his health and safety and never have to deal with this again. He could still drift with him. He knew that the way he hadn’t had to think when he dropped his weapon, the way he let the rules shift around him and changed with them, the way Liam hadn’t tried to kill him. That wasn’t saying he might not in the future. Only that now, with a gun aimed at his head, Liam hadn’t tried to commit murder and they were still drift compatible. Fine. That was enough.

“Sir.” Technically, yes Grayson was pretty sure he’d interrupted the Marshall. Also technically he didn’t give a fuck. He was the one to break eye contact, to let his eyes move away from Liam’s hard gaze and meet the man at the end of the room. He was the one to take that step away, towards the Marshall, and it had an odd kind of symmetry to it, because Grayson was the one who’d moved towards the Marshall when everything ended too. “I’ll Drift with him.”

The man’s attention snapped to Grayson, one eyebrow raising in an expression that could have been skepticism or irritation, because this wasn’t Grayson’s call. “Pierce?” He’d only called him Grayson once that Grayson could remember, when he wanted to convince him to come back to active duty. Grayson had known what he was doing and he hadn’t cared, because he didn’t want it either way and had been pushed into it regardless. “I don’t think-“

For the second time, Grayson cut him off, which was far from the right way to go about getting what he wanted from the man who ruled the Jaeger program in a benevolent dictatorship. “He won’t kill me.” He didn’t even look at Liam, made no acknowledgement that he was there. “He doesn’t want to die. We’re still compatible. I’ll Drift with him.”

The man’s expression didn’t change, every part of his face seemingly unimpressed with Grayson’s argument, though his eyes too, never once drifted over to Liam. It was a matter of focus and control. Liam was contained by the gun pointed towards him, so at the moment, Grayson was talking to the Marshall alone. “He’s a hazard, Pierce. Not just to you, but maybe to the entire program. We can’t take on the liability if he can’t control himself.”

He had known his body, had touched him in every way he could think of, with his hands and mouth, his tongue and cock. Liam had learned every part of Grayson’s body, had dragged his lips down his spine and bruised his hips, shoved him into the bed, the floor, up against the wall. He had torn him apart and built him up, had ripped him apart and exposed him, but he had never really known him. Liam had never known Grayson, even though he’d been inside his head and skin, touched him in every way he could think of. He had thought that – maybe, just maybe – Grayson had cared enough about him, loved him enough to not tattle on him for what he did, but he had. And Liam had thought that maybe with enough time and patience, Grayson would have been able to accept that part of Liam that he hid.

He hadn’t. Grayson had told and Liam had wound up imprisoned and almost murdered because of it.

The idea that he was better than Grayson and could overlook their issues in favour of being let out of his cell and breathing air that wasn’t filtered through a system so he wouldn’t suffocate on his own carbon dioxide. He wasn’t. He really fucking wasn’t. He was a mix-up of emotions, a hurricane of anger and violence mingling in with sadness and a desperate need to tear Grayson apart. Love had never come easy to him, and neither had trust, but he had been sure that what Grayson and Liam had had, and it had been blown out of the water. Liam wanted to both strangle Grayson with his bare hands and shove him down and fuck him, taste the back of his neck and bite down on his skin, leaving violent marks on his skin.

Slowly, he turned his head to the side, glancing at Cormac and flashing him a cocky grin, tongue flicking against the fronts of his teeth. A muscle in Cormac’s jaw twitched and Liam could swear his finger twitched on the trigger. That would be funny, in a way, because although the Marshall didn’t trust Liam for shit, he probably wasn’t the type to turn a blind eye to him being killed by a trigger-happy lisping asshole who couldn’t keep his nerves in check. Sure, Liam didn’t want to die, but he would be laughing all the way to Hell while Cormac got his ass handed to him.

Upper lip peeling back from his teeth in a scowl, Liam crossed his arms over his chest, looking between Grayson and the Marshall. “He’s right here,” he said rather petulantly, unhappy with being talked aboutinstead of being talked to. He had never liked it when people spoke about him as if he wasn’t in the room, starting from when he was a child. Not much had changed since then, except for the amount of blood on his hands. “And does anyone give a shit about what I want? Maybe I don’t wanna Drift with a fucking traitor.”

Liam knew he was going to be chewed out for that comment. Or, at least, he was going to be snarked and told he didn’t have an opinion on that matter, because he’d killed someone and apparently that mean all his opinions and thoughts were null and void. Which was completely bullshit in his head, but the Marshall was king of the fucking domain, and his word was law. It had always been that way, and when Liam had been clear of murder he hadn’t cared that much. He could listen to the Marshall blather on about laws and rules, about how what he said went, and he could do what he wanted – usually fucking Grayson in a utility closet when he got the urge – without worrying about getting a bullet in the skull or cuffs on his hands. He couldn’t do that now. Because of Grayson. Because Grayson hadn’t even fucking heard him out and stopped looking at him like he’d just opened the gates of Hell long enough to listen to Liam. He acted like he knew it all, that because Haiming had died at the hands of Liam that Liam was a monster.

Tucking his palms against the sides of his ribs, he lifted an eyebrow and gave a look to the Marshall, ignoring Grayson. He didn’t want to look at him anymore. It hurt to look at him. It hurt to remember all the things he’d done with him, all the Kaiju they had taken down together, and then remember that he had been tried and judged, charged and almost executed, just because Grayson was a little bitch who couldn’t handle the truth. Liam should have known better than to trust anyone, but he’d trusted Grayson and been intimate him in every way that he could think of, and Grayson had tossed that trust to the ground and curb stomped it. Fucking obliterated it into the metal of their Jaeger. Looking at him again would just make him want to attack, to launch himself at Grayson and tear into his skin, rip him apart in ways that had nothing to do with how deep he could press his cock into him and everything to do with prying open his rib cage and setting his heart on fire – literally.

 The scars around Liam’s neck were the eeriest part. He’d changed, of course he’d changed, but that wasn’t expected. Grayson had known he’d be older. Liam always had about four years on him, give or take. Grayson had never thought to calculate, but that was about it. He’d been older than most of their class when Grayson first met him, older than the other people Grayson had been matched up with to test for Drift compatibility. That hadn’t mattered then. It didn’t matter now. What mattered wasn’t even the way Liam’s body was no longer lean the way it had been. They were like greyhounds, once, much as he hated that comparison for the simple fact that his name invited it. Fiercely strong but with a lean, stringiness of muscle. Now Grayson wasn’t as strong as he had been. He knew it. Though he climbed trees regularly and never quite let his exercises go, he didn’t exercise daily the way he’d used to. There were very few times before that he hadn’t been doing something. It was no easy feat to pilot a Jaeger, and he’d taken on a number of physical pursuits during that time of his life, most of them solitary.

The notable exceptions were sparring and fucking. Grayson hadn’t cared at the time what people thought of it. They were far from the first Jaeger pilots to share a bed. Those who weren’t related often ended up that way, wrapped around each other, getting inside each other’s skin the way they climbed into their minds. If Liam wanted to touch him with people around, if someone came looking for him and found both him and Cedar missing from his quarters, the air thick with sex when the door to Liam’s room was pulled open after they knocked, well. That was their business, and Grayson saw no reason to hide it. Fucking Liam was an experience and a half, the kind of thing that ripped him open and left him unable to keep up the masks of detachment and disdain that he wore so well in his daily life, but that would also leave him unable to do anything but sleep. These days Grayson didn’t get near that kind of regular exertion. From the looks of it, Liam worked out now, lifting weights the way he never had before. He had a power to him that Grayson would have to work hard to match. Though he hadn’t passed thirty and Liam had, that was a meaningless distinction, really. At this point, Liam was stronger than he was, and Grayson was going to have to work to catch up. He was a good fighter and he knew how Liam’s body worked, but that wasn’t going to matter if Liam got him into a situation where strength was the only way out.

Even so, he’d expected something like that, had been pushing his body ever since he found out that he would be seeing Liam again, working with him. Fighting alongside him, which could all too easily turn into fighting against him. Grayson didn’t think Liam would fuck up a mission. He didn’t like Grayson chasing the rabbit that one time, when everything had crashed down around them, and Grayson had no more reason to think he would be accepting of ruined missions now. That was all normal, or as normal as this could possibly be. But Liam was fucking scarred, like someone had wrapped barbed wire around his neck and tried to strangle him with it. It disturbed Grayson more than he wanted to let on. He had no emotional stake in Liam anymore. They weren’t one, and there was nothing for him in the press of their minds or the arch where their bodies met. Liam wasn’t his… whatever they’d been. Liam wasn’t anything. Nothing except his copilot, which was, in a word, everything. Grayson told himself he’d ask about it later. Not Liam, more like Liam’s records. He was sure they’d have something on the incident in there, no matter how illegal it was to access. For the moment, he needed to focus.

A kind of relief ran through Grayson as his pole smacked against Liam’s, the blow cleanly blocked. This he remembered. He knew how to do this, when it wasn’t score against score, the kind of competition that ended too quickly. Liam no more fought like a normal person than he did. He was usually the one to toss aside his baton first when they’d sparred privately, Grayson ditching the rules of engagement smoothly after. But that led back to the way he’d wrapped his legs around Liam’s waist, the times people had come in while they fucked in less than private places and been unable to do anything about it, because he and Liam were Jaeger pilots, and what was the Marshall going to do? Put them on time out from killing Kaiju because they’d been having sex? They were needed, and besides, that would just give them more time for sex. It was difficult to tell two grown men who all but lived together that they weren’t allowed to see each other because they’d scarred the trainees. Grayson made a frustrated sound in his throat. He felt like all roads led back to that, that instead of Rome every mental pathway went back to that place where he’d been with Liam, because he’d spent years of his life so connected to him that Liam had shared his very mind. With him right there, in front of him, it was impossible to forget, as much as Grayson wanted to. That was one thing he’d loved about being in the forests. Aside from his own preference for nature, the lack of talking people, there was nothing Liam about it. Liam was flashy and addictive. Trees were patient. When Grayson lost himself in the woods, he didn’t have to think about Liam. God knew, he couldn’t even get away from him at home, given that Fiona showed up along with Cedar to wind around his ankles and demand attention like the princess she was.

It hadn’t mattered that he hadn’t meant to kill Haiming. Liam had killed people before on purpose, had planned their deaths down to the second while sitting across from them in a bar, while shoving them up against the back of a grungy bathroom door, fucked into them right up to orgasm and then took them back to his place. He had plotted and planned, spent months convincing people that their wives were cheating on them and taking immense satisfaction when he saw the headlines of a father of three going off the rails and killing his best friend and wife. It was all a game to him. Life was a game board to Liam, and although he probably should have reeled in his arrogance, he had felt untouchable. Nothing bad had ever happened to him when he had been free and clear, when no one had known that he was a secret bogeyman. He was the monster in the dark, the thing that went bump in the night, but he was the monster that everyone trusted. He was the monster who got away, and he had been arrogant enough to think that would continue on.

When he had first joined the Jaeger Academy, he had been nonplussed by the way the others in the twenty-four-week program had broke under the pressure and the weight of the intense training. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Liam had never been all that normal, but he had managed through the program with minimal stress. His mind hadn’t shattered under the pressure and the weight of little sleep, although his temper had been edging towards explosive by the end of training. His body had taken a toll. He completed the physical fitness tests well enough, and he had always considered himself to be in shape, but he had never had to go through such intense, violent physical training before. Suddenly running and swimming, minimal weight lifting at the gym, seemed to not cut it. Although the physical demands had done a number on his body, they hadn’t done much to his mind. He was still cocky and overly arrogant, mouth curved up into a smug grin when he had graduated the program. Exhausted as he was, he had made it to the final round and come out a winner. That was all that had mattered to him.

It was all that had mattered to him until he had been brought into the Kwoon Combat Room to test him against other would-be pilots, see who he was compatible with and who would be his co-pilot – if he were selected at all. The cost and time it took to build a Jaeger was astronomical, and although he had long forgotten the actual number, he knew it was expensive as hell and there weren’t enough to go around for everybody. The competition was fierce, and Liam suspected that it had stayed that way until the Academy had closed down on Kodiak Island. Those who made it through the training process wouldn’t play fair or nice, wouldn’t accept failure after all they had been put through. The constant testing and knowledge consumption had been enough for Liam to refuse to accept failure; having been shoved to the breaking point physically had just hardened his resolve.

Being paired with Grayson had been something he hadn’t expected. Liam hadn’t really paid attention to the other Ranger candidates, hadn’t cared all that much if he made friends with any of the other hopefuls or not. Of course he had been aware that everything was riding on his Drift compatibility with another pilot, but he hadn’t thought that it meant anything if he didn’t seek out interaction with anyone. After all, in the Academy, they were all fighting just to keep their heads afloat, not make friends with anyone in sight. The sleep deprivation had taken its toll on everyone. By the time graduation rolled around, most of the graduates were just getting to known one another, and although Liam hadn’t actively participated or sought out anything other than a fuck in the bathroom before roll call, he had seen it happen around him.

Grayson had changed everything. Everything about Liam and who he was and what he was had been changed by Grayson fucking Pierce, and he had been his downfall in the long run. He was the reason that he was scarred. He was the reason everything had gone to complete shit in the first place.

Jerking his head up, Liam saw the baton swing towards him, the stumped end aiming towards his throat and he lost it. Dropping the bamboo rod from his hand, he lashed out with his other, curling his hand around the back of Grayson’s knee and yanking forward, trying to throw him off his balance. The rod hit the padded mat with a muted noise and Liam snarled, lips peeling back from his teeth as his hand yanked from Grayson’s body as if he’d been burned. He hadn’t mean to, but it had happened that way, his loss of control overriding him and completely encompassing his entire mind for one fatal second. One fatal second was all it took for him to lose control in front of Grayson. He was completely disgusted with himself.

The cocking of a gun drew his attention away from Grayson, made him jerk his head to the side and search out for the person who had pulled their shiny, polished gun out. Cormac was smirking at him from the entrance of the room. He and the other hulking guard had taken bets on what would happen, but Liam had zoned them out, uncaring for what they were saying because he would have rather taken a nap than listen to Cormas lisping on about whatever he thought was important but really wasn’t. Apparently, it was Cormac would had won the bet. Turning his head, Liam glanced at Grayson, hand poised over the rod that lay on the floor.

He could pick it up. He knew that if he picked it up, it would be admitting that he had lost control, that it had been an accident. But it hadn’t been. It had been all the pent-up rage and anger and betrayal that Liam had been letting fester for the past five years. One movement had been all he could do, simply because he was the prisoner and Grayson had been the one to put the ball and chain around his wrists, leaving him free. Swallowing around his dry tongue, he stood slowly, eyes on Grayson with each pull and strain of his muscles.

Grayson hated having Liam look at him. There was something in his gaze, his stupid fucking gaze, that laid him out flat. That pinned him, and god he didn’t need to go down that particular mental route. Because he could all too easily imagine Liam’s hand around his throat and his entire weight over Grayson and he wasn’t sure which thought made him tense more, that he was being seen right through his clothes or that Liam could with a look flay off his very skin. Grayson couldn’t deal with that. That had been once, when he let himself go completely. When the distant set of his jaw relaxed into something pliant and open. There had been days when they weren’t called, when Grayson barely felt the need to leave Liam’s room, at least one of the cats usually tucked against his body, that he just hadn’t bothered. Hadn’t bothered covering up, because Liam had literally seen everything. He’d been through the inside of Grayson’s mind and over the expanse of his body and so Grayson had seen no point in blocking off everything that flitted through his mind, letting it play across his face as though it was the easiest thing in the world to just sink into everything between them. There was nothing, nothing at all safe or fair about the idea that even when he gave Liam nothing, watched him like there wasn’t a part of it that hurt, Grayson could still feel a bit raw. They should have given that disclaimer. Warning: don’t Drift when you’re eighteen years old and have no idea what you’re doing, because there will always be a part of your Drift partner stuck in you, and brainwashing itself will not get it out.

When his pole actually made contact with Liam’s temple, albeit a very momentary contact, Grayson almost recoiled in surprise. That, of all things, he hadn’t expected. To slide past Liam’s guard and strike an official hit, the kind that didn’t even necessarily require contact, as they weren’t here to beat on each other, yes. Not for his arm to fly up without the bamboo rod in it before lowering, aware as Grayson was that this wasn’t about combat skill but about moving together. If this was to be a fight, Grayson would have tossed away his pole immediately. He hadn’t worked with one in years, longer, even, than Liam had been incarcerated. It didn’t seem necessary to piloting a Jaeger, when he could just train hand-to-hand with Liam if he needed to improve his ability to fight, seeking out another member of a team occasionally to switch things up. One to one, this would be a very different kind of fight. One to one, Liam just might try to kill him.

That, Grayson couldn’t forget, both in the sense that he needed to remind himself and that he wished he could scrub it from his brain. His memories of their partnership were entirely too vivid to be fair or safe. He’d locked them away in his mind, taking them out only when he was absolutely certain it was okay, but even then he’d questioned it. Questioned what had even gone on between them, how any of this could be real if he had spent years inside Liam’s head without once knowing he could be capable of murdering someone. Grayson wasn’t given to poetry, but there was a certain irony in that the French referred to orgasms as little deaths. Liam had killed him again and again before Grayson had ever turned him in.

“One-one.” It was for Liam, pitched just loud enough that he would be able to hear it across the space between them and no more. If someone else caught it, Grayson didn’t mind. There was nothing private about the comment, he just didn’t care if anyone else took note. Undoubtedly the Marshall’s assistant would be doing so, but Grayson didn’t care about her. They were here to make sure they were still Drift compatible, yes, though that might just be a cover for the test that Liam wouldn’t try to murder Grayson, or perhaps everyone in the room. Grayson had no idea if people could even fall out of Drift compatibility, but there was one thing he was absolutely certain of, and it was that Liam Grant was not insane. Disturbed, maybe. Had a few things very wrong with him, no question. But he wasn’t going to kill everyone in the room just because they were here – or try, at least, Grayson had no doubts that he’d be shot the moment he made a single aggressive move. The only one he had a reason to take action against was Grayson himself. Possibly the guards, depending how they’d treated him. And yet even that wasn’t why Grayson had come. It would be a lie to say he didn’t care if Liam killed him, but he was trained too. He knew how Liam fought, and he had the benefit of sparring with a few partners in the past five years. Only two, but that was still more than zero. Grayson had resigned himself to the possibility that Liam might try to kill him the moment he’d agreed to come. But not here. Whatever else was true about Liam, he did not want to die. That was part of the reason they’d both become pilots in the first place. If he’d throw his life away just to spend a second with his hands around Grayson’s neck, it was time for Grayson to concede that he didn’t really know Liam at all, and probably that he never had.

He just wanted to see if he could still do this. If there was something left in him that could fall into step with Liam, that could anticipate him so well neither of them could land a hit on each other, or at least that would vibrate on the same chord. There was no degree to which he wanted to let Liam back into his mind, yet if that was inevitable, Grayson figured he had to at least be able to dance with him. He would have accepted any form of combat, really, with bamboo poles or hand to hand or even with knives. The sharp sting of blood prompting him not to miss a block, reminding him what he was dealing with here, might not have been so bad. But then, of course, if Liam got to his throat it would all be over. Compatibility testing was what they had available to them, though, so that was what Grayson would take. He could accept this form of reunion, because their only purpose here was to fight. Against each other, maybe they were immovable object and unstoppable force. Turn that on someone else, though, and they were good. Grayson knew they were good. Or at least they had been five years ago. He still wondered if they could be good without being good for each other. Liam had probably never been good for him. He’d let himself get used to it. Being near him. There was nothing at all good about that.

Over the past five years, Grayson had gotten very good at not feeling things. It was an inborn talent of his, but one he’d honed carefully, and had to practice almost incessantly since the moment he’d chased that stupid fucking rabbit, thrown them out of alignment, almost gotten them both killed, and ended up reporting Liam for murder. With Liam here, in front of him, it was harder. Harder not to remember, when his mind didn’t have to conjure any of the details of him. He needed the extra moments to gather himself again, to shut everything down. The turn of Liam’s hips was only a giveaway, as were the flex of the muscles in his arms. What five years had taken off his practice, he’d tacked onto his ability to observe. So when Liam struck, with speed and force but not art, Grayson already knew where to block it.

Everything had changed in those five years between them. Liam’s physical appearance had changed. Grayson didn’t look much different to him. Older, yes, but still the same man that Liam had kissed and taken to bed on a nightly basis, the same man he’s sunk into and marked, the same man who Liam had tattooed onto his own hip. He looked the same to Liam, and he wasn’t sure if that made it all that much harder to look at him or not. If he had changed, he wasn’t sure what he would do. The idea had plagued him as he’d been in the helicopter, eyes downcast and making sexual comments towards Cormac just for kicks and something to do to pass the time. What if Grayson were married now? What if he had kids and a wife or husband, a family outside of the world that Liam and him had created? It had taken all of five seconds to shove the sickly jealousy trickling into his veins away. He didn’t need to think about it, because all he wanted to do when he did was wring Grayson neck.

Liam needed to throw his concrete, steel-enforced walls up against the image of Grayson fucking Pierce in front of him. This was the man who had betrayed him, he reminded himself, fingers tightening on the bamboo rod in his hands, eyes narrowing in and waiting for Grayson to make a strike. This was the man who had sent him to his almost-death, the man who had been the reason for the thick web of scarring around his throat and the five years of isolation he had just recently been let out of. This wasn’t the man who had been his Jaeger co-pilot and boyfriend or whatever the fuck they had been – he was the enemy, the reason for the downfall of Liam Grant, and he needed to remember that and remember it well. The tearing feeling deep inside his gut wouldn’t leave him alone until he had patched things up in a way that could suit him or Grayson was dead in the ocean. The only way he was going to survive this, convince the Marshall that he was still a suitable candidate for drift compatibility, was to play along is best he could and keep Grayson’s toxicity out of his mind.

Liam wasn’t stupid. He knew that there was no way that he was going to see the light of day if he wasn’t playing dutiful Jaeger pilot. Maybe five years ago he would have scoffed at that, told the Marshall to go fuck himself and to fuck Grayson while he was at it, but the years of isolation had grown a cancer inside of him. It was black and sticky, tar-like and growing with each passing day he spent cooped up inside three walls of concrete and bulletproof glass. It had nearly driven him insane, the lack of stimuli that he could get his hands on in confined places. Liam was always moving and always in constant action, never a moment of quiet or stillness lest he become bored. He couldn’t go back there. Not after breathing the crisp air of the outside world. Not after feeling the heat of another human close to him. Not after being free again.

Slamming up that mental wall, Liam jerked his arm, dipping the baton to block to blow against his side. A loud clack rang out, vibrating along his palms and the wood, grounding him to the moment he was stuck in. This was a dance, a fluid movement between the two of them, but Liam doubted that he would be able to let Grayson in enough to let them dance. It would be a clumsy moment of anger, something violent and bitter and swelling in his chest. He didn’t need that right now. If he carried nothing but silence and blackness into the Drift, there wouldn’t be an issue. Liam could reign himself in enough to get through this test. If he could do that, he could hold himself back in a Jaeger and he could be free from the torment of concrete and glass. It was all he had thought about in his first waking moments – the aching need for clean, clear air and something different than the stale, recycled air from the vent above his dingy bed.

The woman and the Marshall had disappeared from his mind. It was just him and Grayson in that room that they had been in before, just him and Grayson sharing the same space. If Liam dug back deep enough he could grasp a hold of the first time they had sparred together, the first time Liam had licked across his lips and sized up the man who he was supposed to attempt to be compatible with. If he could draw from that moment, maybe he could ignore the tumultuous feelings kicking and screaming in his gut and get this over with. If his only way to the real world again was through Grayson, Liam was willing to fake it until the Marshall was satisfied. He didn’t have to play along as the happy camper, but he figured if the Marshall was desperate enough to call on him, that meant that as long as he didn’t strangle Grayson or otherwise maim him, he would be accepted into the arms of the Shatterdome again. Maybe not with happy smiles and open arms, but with begrudging need. Liam had no idea what the fuck had been going on with the Breach, but he knew that the number of kaiju crawling from wherever the fuck they came from had been increasing when he had been charged with second degree murder. After that, he’d stopped caring. It didn’t matter because he was the Boogeyman and stuck in a Hell of a cell.