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.

Grayson just looked at him. As he’d been completely willing to point out, who else was there in the world who might Drift with Liam? No one would even Drift with him, not after they knew he was compatible with a murderer. They both had blood on them now. In one moment, they had become monsters – never mind that Grayson had nothing to do with the murder at all – and Haiming a martyr. For the most part, he was safe from being recognized on the street, but his name was known enough that he’d become careful giving it out. The fame of Jaeger pilots went both ways. Even though he and Liam had never sought either the fame or infamy that came to them, their names had been common knowledge as much as Haiming’s had. Possibly even more so, though he whored himself out for the camera like that, and not fighting Kaiju, was his job. By contrast, Grayson found the lights and interviews pointless and unpleasant, the obsessive part of the fan base disturbing, and the commercialism and merchandise positively inane. Fighting Kaiju wasn’t a game, and Kaiju themselves weren’t toys.

The fact that replicas of Famine Elysium, along with the other Jaegers, were on the market and could be collected in addition to miniature Kaiju, paired with the Jaegers by who had taken them down, turned his stomach. Of course, the commercialization of Jaegers and their pilots hadn’t been a personal problem for him in five years. When the news about Liam, and by extension, Grayson, broke, models of Famine Elysium had been pulled off the market en masse. Even some of the Kaiju they’d taken down were removed by certain stores, attempting to expunge records of the killer pilot from their shrines to marketing and capitalism. Thinking about them in terms of their kills became suddenly blasphemous. The only thing that mattered was what Liam had done – the human he had killed. They were a sudden and complete matter of spectacle, to be acknowledged only from a safe mental and physical distance.

Speculation about the nature of their relationship, which had always been a public game, turned nasty. Those in the Shatterdome could have easily cleared it up for them, considering that there was close and then there was spending most nights together, but Grayson suspected the public enjoyed guessing or wanted to hear it from them. He’d primarily denied it, sarcastically confirming often enough to stave off accusations of hiding something. Grayson hadn’t been ashamed of his relationship with Liam, as their entire tech team knew only too well, but he found all the publicity unpleasant and figured that each part of his private life that became public knowledge would have to be hard won.  Of course, once Liam became enemy number one and he a target of great suspicion, people had been all too willing to come forward and attest that they were fucking, as though sharing a bed with a murderer was somehow worse than sharing a mind with one. A reporter even had the gall to ask Grayson who fucked whom, as if that was a matter of any importance at all. Grayson had replied that Elysium fucked the Kaiju and was done with it. As long as he tried to be in the Jaeger program, he would have Liam’s shadow hanging over him, Liam’s hands burned into him like a scarlet letter. Someone else would have to save the world. Grayson couldn’t do it anymore.

He’d never imagined ending up back here. Drifting was out, as no one wanted to link up with Liam Grant’s partner, and he had no interest in mechanics or lab tech. Grayson liked the natural world, true, but in the first place Kaiju were distinctly unnatural. Secondly, whenever he tried to stick a gloved hand up to the elbow in Kaiju entrails, he thought of Liam. He thought of Liam enough as it was. No one needed to remind him. Of course, it made a perfect kind of twisted sense that the thing which had driven him away from the program, his own copilot, was the only thing that could bring them back. The Marshall needed more pilots, trained ones. He said the situation was dire, but bringing Liam out of imprisonment? Grayson believed him. No part of the public bore any love for either of them (save the inevitable murder fangirls, some of whom loathed Grayson for getting in the way of their notions about being Liam’s true love) and the program would receive only negative publicity, once it was discovered they were allowing Liam Grant back in a Jaeger. That screamed necessity. As did the way the Marshall spoke to him, almost desperately. There were other options, he’d said, but who? Trainees too eager to get in a Jaeger to think about who they might be drifting with, no doubt. If he hadn’t needed Grayson, he didn’t think he’d have pushed it. The man was tough and war-hardened, but not without compassion. He was the only person who’d been there when Grayson told on Liam. He’d seen the wild-eyed confusion and bone-deep hurt that even now Grayson couldn’t forget despite his desperate wish to. Whether or not he judged Grayson for having slept with Liam, and Grayson rather suspected he did, he still treated him well.

Because of that, though, it was hard for him to resist making a small noise of disdain as the Marshall told Liam not many people were willing to test compatibility against him. As if it was a choice. If they could still pilot together, they would. If not… Liam might go back to prison. Grayson would probably have to Drift with someone who had no many ideas and not enough knowledge about who he was. Maybe they’d be able to find Liam another copilot. Likely not. Not because no one else would be able to Drift with him, because anyone with any sense wouldn’t want to, and anyone without it wouldn’t be able to handle it. On that scale, Grayson had to place himself in the senseless category. He should have turned his back on this whole idea, said that he was sorry. Said he couldn’t let Liam in his head again, not after he’d made a mess of it the first time. Instead he was here, across the mat from him, about to get back into a test. Which was definitely a bad decision.

He couldn’t even be certain how he felt about Liam.  There was the same simmering anger that had lived under his skin for years, prodding at him and reminding him of everything he had lost, not just his life but his copilot, because Liam couldn’t fucking not snap someone’s neck. Then of course there had to be an irrational irritation at the way he peeled off his jacket and shirt, because frankly it was obnoxious. It pissed Grayson off that Liam was still hot, that he couldn’t just look at him with distance but instead the weight of everything he remembered and on top of that the sheer pull of finding him attractive. Liam had fucked up everything by being a killer, and yet Grayson kept asking himself if he should have seen it coming. If he should have looked at arrogant, clever, talented Liam and seen that lurking beneath his skin. He knew Liam could be volatile and he knew he talked about things like putting Kaiju blue in people’s food, but at the time it had just seemed funny. Perhaps it was unorthodox to talk about murdering the obnoxious, but Grayson hadn’t really cared. They were just playing around. Until they weren’t. Until there was Haiming with his head twisted at the wrong angle, collapsing in Liam’s memories. Until Grayson had been thrown out of the handshake, almost killing them both. Until he’d sent Liam to prison.

And now they were back again, and despite Liam’s physical beauty, despite the five years that had gone by, despite his anger, despite everything, Grayson wasn’t afraid of him. They wanted to know if Liam would try to hurt him. That much had been made clear. How stupid did they think Liam was? Impulsive, yes, but not stupid. He was as driven to live as Grayson was, and if he wanted to kill him, cover his mouth with his hand and twist his neck around the way he had Haiming’s, he would do it in private. Not that Grayson would let him. He wasn’t stupid either, certainly not as stupid as the pilot Liam had killed, gauche as it was to speak ill of the dead. Try or not, Liam wouldn’t kill him. If Grayson thought he might die, he wouldn’t have come at all. He honestly wanted to know if Liam could still be his partner, though perhaps that was as much a question about himself as it was about Liam. What could he be, people had demanded, if he could drift with a murderer? Grayson had no answer for them save that he had never killed anything but a Kaiju. Even his and Liam’s body count had been low, their fights constrained to the sea wherever possible. Could they even still move together like that? Did he want to? That part didn’t matter. If Grayson could fight, he would, for all that his copilot would be Liam. He’d missed the Jaegers, missed Famine Elysium especially – the only woman he loved aside from Fiona, he’d once joked. Those days were long gone. Here, he just had to fight.

Grayson waited for Liam’s move before he hit back. The rod felt clumsy and wrong in his hands, his movements just a second too slow. He raised for a hit that never came, staff driving for his hip instead. It was just a graze, Liam’s clacking off his but still making contact. Grayson set his jaw, refusing to acknowledge Liam’s taunt. “One – zero.” When the small girl beside the Marshall opened her mouth as if to speak, even though he already saw words weren’t going to come out, he flicked his gaze over his shoulder for just a second, fixing her with the briefest of stares. “One zero.”This mattered. No matter what anyone else thought, it mattered to him. He wouldn’t keep his eyes off Liam long though. They were still in the fight, and five years ago, Grayson hadn’t been above taking advantage of anyone’s distraction, no matter how justified. He’d expect no less from Liam.

He had done this before. Picked up a rod of bamboo and danced with Grayson, watched his movements and timed his own. He’d been young then, though, barely twenty-four and just figuring out the entire reality of his situation. Being in the Academy had been completely different from being picked as a potential pilot. Liam hadn’t been top of his class, but he’d done well for himself, and the fact that the Marshall was always watching meant something to him. His father, Rene, was a retired Marine and had known the Marshall in his youth. Liam had always wondered if his father had requested that he Marshall find Liam and convince him to join the Jaeger program; he had never got a straight answer out of either of them, and Liam suspected that his father had done just that. The fact that two of his older brothers, Nathan and Lucas, worked as engineers on the Jaeger program didn’t escape his notice. Even his youngest siblings, the twins Emily and Ryan, had been headed into the Academy the last time he had checked in with his mother. That had been four years ago, the last time his mother had physically visited. Liam hadn’t even bothered to look at the letters she meticulously wrote weekly; they meant nothing to him anymore.

But he had been here before, stripped to the waist and looking at someone that he hadn’t really known but was being tested against anyways. He’d barely paid attention to the other students in the school. Liam had been one of the older students, that was for sure, and he’d been all-too aware how annoying their talk could be. Most of the students were eighteen-years-old and brimming with knowledge from high school; Liam had been twenty-two and trying to figure out how the hell he had managed to pass algebra in his junior year. But somehow he’d been picked to take up a stick and whack some stranger with it, and then the Jaeger test had occurred, the first moment of linking up with Grayson and getting stuck inside his mind. No simulation could prepare a human for the intensiveness invasion of their mind. Liam had so thoroughly rejected it at first that he had thrown himself completely out of alignment.

Something so completely foreign in his mind had been more than Liam could take, but he’d forced himself to calm down. To close his eyes, breathe, latch onto reality and not the memories skidding to a halt in front of him. Latching onto one of those would probably have brought on something worse than him being struck out of alignment by latching onto something that wasn’t even physically there. From what Liam understood, it had been his utter rejection of the melding of their minds, to being in each others’ heads, that had tossed him out of alignment, that it had all been in his head – literally. Not a physical-in-a-sense rabbit chase, but Liam just rejecting. And, Christ, it had burned. He’d wanted to scrape the taste of a heaviness in his head that wasn’t his own from his tongue, but Liam had forced himself to steady and calm down. It wasn’t that Liam had become used to the neural handshake after that – it was that it was a part of him as much as his tongue and hands. He could even admit to craving it at times, having complete access to someone else’s head and memories.

He shook off the thoughts, turning over the baton in his hands, feeling the weight of it. Liam had done this before and he could do it again. So what if he had just spent the better part of five years in isolation and hadn’t actually fought anyone in years? He could do this. Because this wasn’t just fighting. And maybe he could rein in the urge to whack Grayson over the head and break his teeth on the concrete just a few meters away.

There was a bubbling rage in the pit of his stomach, an anger that had been laying there for fucking years on end. There was only time to think in the cell that he had been glanced in, and Liam had had thoughts that would have made the pope himself keel over. He had killed Grayson in every way imaginable. He had replaced Haiming’s face with his, torn strips of skin off of him, poured acid on his hands and cut his tongue out. Doing everything to him that he wanted to, while that rage just brewed in the pit of his gut, rippling out to his ribcage and consuming every inch of his body. He had flayed him alive, branded his name into every inch of his skin and snapped his ribs, one by one, with his own hands. Holding him down and leaving marks on his skin, keeping him chained up in the dark and violating his body in every way imaginable. It had been one of the only things that had kept Liam sane through the years of smooth concrete and fucking memories.

The memories were the worst part, Liam thought as he looked over Grayson. He was the same, or at least he looked the same to Liam. Then again, everything that he had believed had been pulled inside out and flipped upside down where Grayson was concerned. He had twisted Liam up into so many knots that he had been blinded to the damn obvious truth in front of him: he was different and therefore unacceptable. If he had been as smart as he knew he was, Liam would have kept himself knitted into all the different knots that he had created for himself that Grayson had unravelled; he would have kept himself together and remembered the fact that the world was so hung up on who lived and died. Liam had used to wonder what it was about him that made him so different. He wasn’t a fool. He knew what he was by the standards of most of society. Tapping into the animal in every human that they had given away in exchange for written laws and social niceties, Liam had never known any way other than to exist as he had. Deluding himself into thinking that Grayson could even begin to understand him had been his pessimal mistake. Remembering everything in between the moment he had first looked into Grayson’s eyes and when he had turned away from him came into a close second.

Betrayal was seeping into his fingertips as he battered away the urge to toss away the baton and use his hands. He had never been one for weapons, although he had a certain affinity for a knife, but this was just ridiculous. A bamboo rod wasn’t something he had ever really trained with before, and it certainly wasn’t his style. He had always been a dirty fighter, pulling out all the tricks that everyone shied away from for fear of being called a coward for using them. This – this stupid wooden stick – meant nothing to him and he felt the same unpleasant tingle along the back of his neck as he had had years ago. This wouldn’t show the Marshall and the little brunette anything. Only that Liam still could stop someone from smacking him in the face with a stick.

Or not. His arm jerked up on reflex to stop Grayson’s rod from smacking him in the temple, but he caught himself before he could break the rules, forcing himself to stop and getting tapped with it. His body jerked, fluid as he glided backwards, the edge of the stick sliding across his temple as his fingertips twitched around the wood. He was rusty, sure, but the damn stick was just getting in the way of what he could do. What he could do with his hands. He wouldn’t be able to keep his eyes on the movements of Grayson’s body, the way his hips pivoted or where he was moving if he was too focused on keeping the stupid baton in his hand and not beating the hell out of Grayson until his skull cracked open. There were guards still in the room to stop that from happened, but Liam still entertained the notion.

The women beside the Marshall said something that he didn’t take in. In one ear and out the other, and something that Liam was pretty sure he didn’t give a fuck about.

It was a dance. Liam just had to remember that part of the situation. Grinding down the urge he had to snap at Grayson, to do all the things he had been thinking about doing since the moment the Marshall had entered his cell and uttered those stupid, Goddamn words to him if he got the chance to, Liam sucked in a shallow breath, holding it for the length of a heart beat before exhaling. A dance. He could do this. Follow and track Grayson’s movements, squash down any urges that reared up to snap at him and just do this. He could figure out where to go from this once he was done. Maybe he could get the fuck out of the Shatterdome and head off to some remote village in the mountains if the Marshall gave any leeway and didn’t have guards on his twenty-four hours of the day. Liam somehow doubted that he would bend for him anymore, no matter who his father was.

Raising the baton, he slid his thumb down the smoothed side of the shaft, taking a step forward and focusing on this. If he could just get his thoughts gathered into one place, he could get through this and not end up snapping someone’s neck or gouging out Grayson’s eyes and ending up with a few bullets in his head as the result of that.

Very few people had the power to render Grayson speechless. The difference between “no interest in talking to you” and “can’t formulate words” was not one easily observed from the outside, especially not in Grayson. He kept his temporary dumbness quiet and contained. In general, he didn’t like to show people his hand. That level of vulnerability was best left only to a select few, often overlapping with those who could leave him mute with only a look. Once upon a time, Liam had been foremost among these. He couldn’t help being so, not with the access he had to Grayson’s head. If words wouldn’t come, they usually could get by without them. That was what it meant to be Drift Compatible. Something within them clicked. A part of him was the same as a part of someone who could kill without meaning or hesitation. It was an unsettling thought. Even more unnerving was the realization that looking at Liam could still make him quiet, even five years later. Some things didn’t change.

Most things did. He still looked like Liam, dark hair soaked by rain and that careless arrogance in his eyes and the way he held himself. He was still gorgeous and he still knew it. He was still better that most everyone else in the room. That might not be his own assessment, but it was Grayson’s. If he forget he was a murderer, very few people measured up to Liam. But he was one, and that meant the only things truly the same were Grayson’s memories and Liam’s appearance. Beyond that, he didn’t even know the man. How could he? Sharing minds five years ago hadn’t been enough to tell Grayson that his copilot was a murderer. With half a decade of separation, both mental and physical, between them, there was no way he could still know Liam, if he’d ever known him at all. Whatever went on in Liam’s head was a mystery to Grayson now, and he needed to get used to that. The man he’d… loved, or something like it (could a bond forged in intimacy beyond regular understanding really be called love?) and the man he’d reported for murder overlapped in front of him. For his own sanity, Grayson needed to see only one. He’d known Liam once, but not anymore. From here, he was just a stranger whose mind fit eerily comfortably beside Grayson’s.

At the very least, it seemed that Liam was no more eager to work with Grayson than he was with Liam. Grayson couldn’t have said why that reassured him, when it ought to be evidence that they were no longer able to work together. They’d been something great, once, but could people fall out of Drift Compatibility? He’d never heard of such a thing, but that in no way made it impossible. And if anyone would be unable to hold a neural handshake, it would be people who didn’t want to. Yet if Liam had looked at Grayson and still wanted to be his partner, Grayson might have announced that it wasn’t going to work right then and there. He didn’t trust Liam. How the hell could he, after what had happened between them? A Liam who wanted to get back in his head, though, would be a clear risk, and not one he wanted to take. At least if they agreed the time stretched between them in an impossible gulf, there might be something of their partnership that could be salvaged. They could still fight.

Without waiting for the Marshall to speak, Grayson took a step closer to Liam, face still carefully neutral. "You didn’t think they could find someone else Drift Compatible with you?" Though he tried, he couldn’t quite keep the sharp edge out of his voice. Who else would be fool enough to go into the Drift with Liam, when Grayson hadn’t even committed a crime and no one else would touch him? It hadn’t been entirely his decision to retire after Liam’s arrest. He might have made a go of it after a bit, if they’d found someone compatible. No one would try. Even trainees, eager as they were to see combat, avoided Grayson. Partnering one of the most notorious killers of the decade came with a certain stigma, one he’d been feeling since Liam’s arrest. If they were going to pilot with anyone, it would be each other. "I’m here for the same reason you are. To see if we can still Drift."

He held his body still, hands folded on top of each other, resting on the end of his baton, as someone handed Liam a weapon of his own. They might only have wooden sticks to beat each other with, but as long as the guards were there, the spectators seemed largely unconcerned with the possibility of Liam attempting murder. Grayson wouldn’t let him, of course. He had no desire to die today, or any time in the next fifty years. But it still struck him as odd that someone they didn’t trust to walk anywhere without supervision would still be considered safe enough to whale on him with a stick. Bureaucratic logic had never made much sense to Grayson. This wasn’t about the people lining the edge of the room, though. For the first time in five years, it was just about him and Liam. It might turn out that they could no longer work together. Something could be broken in them, so much so that the judicious application of ignoring it and barely speaking wouldn’t even solve the problem. If that was the case, Grayson would accept it. He’d said no in the first place, and still wasn’t entirely sure how he’d been talked around to a yes. Either way, they’d fight and know, one way or another.

No, he thought, that wasn’t entirely true. The man standing in front of him, five years older and no longer looking at him like he might tear his clothes off his body, was the reason Liam had been charged with murder. Public enemy number one. The household Boogeyman. Liam had lost everything in the middle of a Drift because he’d forgotten himself. Let himself get tangled up, twisted into knots by someone else, and someone who didn’t understand him – or even give him a moment to explain himself.

He could remember the day it had happened. A Kaiju had attacked and Famine Elysium had been called into action at daybreak, snapping Liam awake with alarms and calls for him and Grayson to head to the docking bay at once. Running on an empty stomach, sleep still clinging to his eyelashes and his mind muddled, he could remember rolling over in bed, pressing his mouth against Grayson’s for a moment before clambering from the warm sheets and heading to get dressed. Everything had just gone downhill from there. If had known that shit would hit the fan and everything would fall apart underneath him, he would have swallowed an entire bottom of ipecac and claimed to be violently ill, allow another set of Jaeger pilots to take this one. After all, according to everyone he’d ever come into contact since that day, he was, and always had been, violently ill.

He’d lost himself. Forgot that there were things that he needed to hide. Haiming’s blood was still clinging to the front of his mind, the weight of his smothered scream echoing in his ears. They’d gotten into an argument in one of the hallways the week before, Haiming tossing out condescending remarks about the last Kaiju, Spiketail, and the performance of his Jaeger and his co-pilot. Liam had been tired, only half-dressed and searching out for food when he’d stumbled into him, and in no mood of listen to him havering away about his “lack of abilities” within the Jaeger cockpit. He’d been annoying, in short, and Liam hadn’t been in the mood to listen to his babble on about how Liam and Grayson could take a pointer or two from him, how they could do better if they would actually apply themselves. A media-whore was what Haiming was, and he as annoying as fuck in Liam’s book. He’d only been piloting a Jaeger for a little over a year and a half, and yet he acted like the world owed him a favour for destroying Kaiju, despite the fact that there were older, more skilled and overall better pilots who could have done the job with less of a mess. From the tally, he and his co-pilot, an unassuming woman whom Liam could never remember the name of, had a death toll of humans well over a few thousand.

Liam had lost his temper. It was as simple as that. He’d tried to step around the man, but he’d tracked his movements and sidestepped in front of him, carrying on about what Liam could do to improve his performance. He hadn’t give the slightest fuck. Grayson was back in his room, naked under warm sheets, and he had been pretty fucking sure that Fiona or Cedar would have taken his place by now. With a little noise of frustration, Liam had reached out with quick hands, the heel of his palm pressed to Haiming’s mouth and snapped his neck. It had been over before it had started, and when his body had crumpled to the floor, Liam knew he’d fucked up. Hiding away his body in the trunk of a random car and paying someone to crash it into the water a hundred miles away had been the easiest way to clean up his mess; he hadn’t counted on Grayson probing into that dark place in his head that he kept sealed, chained and fenced.

“Liam,” the Marshall said, a hint of warning lacing into his tone. Liam turned his attention to the man in a uniform. The little brunette was standing beside him, clipboard in hand, a pen pressed to the page. He was pretty sure that she was recording everything that happened. “Play nice. Very few pilots are willing to even test themselves against you. You are not here to pick and choose who you want to Drift with anymore. Grayson and you will test your compatibility.” He nodded towards Grayson. Liam pointedly ignored the man and squelched the urge to shove his bamboo rod into the Marshall’s eye. “And don’t try anything,” he added. Liam made a face, mouth turning down into a frown at that.

With a grunt, he stripped off his jacket, letting it fall to the floor in a heap. The short trip through the rain had soaked him down to his T-shirt, the fabric plastered to his body like a second skin. Plucking at the hem, it pulled away from his body with protest. He didn’t particularly feel like taking up and do this dance with Grayson, but he could play nice. He had no doubt that Cormac and the other guard had guns on them, and that they were allowed to fire at will if he stepped out of line. Being shot wasn’t in his plans for the day. Peeling off his soaked shirt, he dropped it onto his jacket, nudging off his boots and shedding his socks. Liam wasn’t sure whose clothing he was wearing, but they definitely weren’t his. At least the pants fit properly, even without a belt. He’d been getting tired of the same, dull, washed-out prison uniform, day in and day out. Clothes and food had been nice, but the guards who looked as if they were going to jerk out and aim a gun at his head at the slightest provocation were a bit of an overkill.

He didn’t say anything to Grayson. He was pretty sure that he’d end up responding by wrapping his fingers around his throat and squeezing the life from him. Liam had had years to dwell on everything, to let the gaping wounds of betrayal fester in a dimly lit cell. It had clawed its way from his skin, left him with weeping cuts that no one else could see, swelling with blood and never clotting fast enough. Maybe he’d been the one to pick at the healing scabs and make them bleed all over again, but Grayson had been the one to turn his back on him and make him bleed in the first place. As if he’d meant nothing. As if he’d beennothing to him, nothing that couldn’t be replaced by someone else. Someone who didn’t have blood on his hands. Someone more human.

His mouth curled up as he plucked the rod from the man’s hands, turning it over in his palms and testing the weight of it. He could remember this part of the deal, the fighting that happened and the way they moved. He could remember pinning Grayson to the floor. He could remember Grayson pinning him to the floor. But that had been more than five years ago now, and this was an entirely different game they got to play. This wasn’t testing their abilities anymore, and Liam wasn’t fooled into thinking that was what the Marshall wanted. He wanted to know if Liam would drop the fucking baton and wrap his hands around Grayson’s neck. He had no doubt he’d be shot before he could do any damage, but the Marshall wanted to know. He knew him well enough; he’d been the one to recruit Liam when he’d been twenty and uncaring.

The scars lining his neck, uneven and jagged, white and stark against his tanned skin, burned as he took a step onto the mat and watched Grayson. Pressing the butt of the bamboo rod into the mat, he glanced at Grayson, taking him in. He packed the same unassuming punch as he did five years ago, when Liam had been acquainted with his head and knew what went on in there. Things might have changed. Liam doubted it. People never really changed. He sure as fuck hadn’t.

Here were the things Grayson had once been really good at: piloting a Jaeger.

When the first Kaiju landed, he was young, not yet a teenager and too focused on the geography of his own small world to directly get news of the larger one. Grayson remembered it in the way everyone remembers their childhood national tragedy, latching on to the clips and commentary on the news, the pictures plastered all over the internet, and the worried looks on his parents’ faces. It hadn’t really meant anything to him at the time. Back then, planes and tanks were their only options for fighting against the Kaiju. The Jaeger program had not even been conceived of. Grayson’s ideas about his future still included days of arboreal silence and the immature faith that if it wasn’t okay, it wasn’t the end. There was a certain way the world worked that even children knew, and that order did not include the possibility of monsters crawling out of the ocean. The incident would not repeat itself, most people assured themselves. And then the second Kaiju made land.

By the time he joined the Jaeger Academy, just bordering on too young to be allowed, Grayson had been certain for several years that he wanted to be a pilot. As far as ambitions among people his age went, it was so common a desire as to be all but universal. Pilots were the living embodiment of a wish fulfillment fantasy, both heroes and celebrities at once. Grayson wanted to be neither of those things. The idea of being trotted across a stage for people to gawk at and meaninglessly adore never really appealed to him, but Grayson maintained no delusions about the state of the world. If they didn’t fight, the Kaiju would take over. About five minutes after the rise of their new overlords, humanity would be decimated. Grayson estimated that at most, it would take twenty four hours for a major influx of Kaiju to wipe out all humans. Personally, he wasn’t yet ready to be exterminated. Piloting a Jaeger mattered to him because the fate of the world matted to him.

In the end, that was probably a better reason than hunger for fame. Not that some of those who had joined the program looking for glory hadn’t found a true aptitude. But at the same time, Grayson had seen pilots more naturally talented than he drop out because they couldn’t work hard enough. Not that he wasn’t good, but there were those who seemed Drift compatible with nearly anyone but couldn’t or wouldn’t put the other necessary work in. Grayson wanted to pilot a Jaeger. That was what he worked towards. And with Liam, that’s what he’d been good at. 

Liam. He’d well and truly shaped the last seven years of Grayson’s life, five of which he hadn’t even seen the man for. From the moment they were labelled as Drift compatible, neither of them equipped with a sibling or a parent or someone else close enough to be an obvious choice, Liam had completely changed the structure of Grayson’s world. In the end, it turned out it wasn’t fame Grayson had to fear after all. It was notoriety. 

Once, Liam had been completely inside Grayson’s head. They shared memories without latching on to any, rarely, if ever, needing words to communicate. That was what made them good. Liam should have known from that. He should have known he couldn’t keep who he was - what he’d done - hidden from Grayson forever. How could he have imagined that in the process of sharing each other’s minds, Grayson wouldn’t come across those particular memories, wouldn’t find out? He’d wasted very little time ever wondering how it was that Liam could have killed another Jaeger pilot in the first place. Grayson already knew the answer to that question. He was Liam. He just could.

Maybe it was that Grayson had refused to give interviews on the subject after he turned Liam in. Maybe it was the refusal to emotionally renounce Liam, to vilify him and everything he was just to look good for a camera. Grayson suspected he would have been tarred with that brush anyway. He was Liam’s co-pilot. They Drifted together, fought together. They were great together, but that was not what anyone remembered, when the price of Liam’s greatness was the murder of another pilot. Haiming, with his sculpted jaw and his thoughtless arrogance, had been a darling of the media circuit. No one ever remembered that Grayson had turned Liam in. Or if they did, they called it an act of remorse. It didn’t matter what Grayson did or didn’t do. In the public opinion, he was branded a murderer’s partner. As long as he and Liam were a Jaeger team, they were considered a unit, sharing not just a kill count but virtues and sins. Even the most desperate trainee refused to try Drifting with him. Grayson was good at being a Jaeger pilot. But when Liam went away for murder, he took all of Grayson’s credibility with him. Grayson quit the Jaeger program. It still mattered that the world not be destroyed. But with a damaged Jaeger, a jailed copilot, and no one willing to even test for Drift compatibility, Grayson knew his run was over. He left the PPCD Jaeger Program without any intention of ever returning.

When they approached him about piloting again, with Liam nonetheless, Grayson didn’t even have to ask if the situation was really that bad. He already knew the answer. Regardless of what else he and Liam were, or had been, in public opinion, they were the murderer and his co-pilot. Sometimes his accomplice, his bitch, and even in extreme cases, his whore. Over the past five years, Grayson had found out first hand just how furious people could be over the death of their heroes. His association with Liam had completely changed his relationship with the world once. And yet here he was again. Bamboo pole in hand, slung over the back of his shoulders like he wasn’t bothered at all, watching the door.

Having another person inside his head meant everything.

The beefy guard with a lisp – Cormac – grasped Liam by the shoulder, haul him from the helicopter and onto the wet pavement. His boots hit the ground with a slap as he stumbled forward, tossing a look at Cormac from underneath his lashes. The guy had been giving him dirty looks since he’d been picked up at the airport, even with his wrists shackled behind his back and three guns pointed at his head. They weren’t taking any chances with him, apparently, and they’d even sedated him on the first plane ride from the Wall. The fact that he was inspiring so much fear did nothing but amuse him, made him toss his head back and laugh. What Liam had done had put him as enemy one for the public, and something of a legend that child were told by fretful mothers when they didn’t come home before dusk or refused to eat their vegetables. Liam Grant was a household name, and the way that people walked around as if he were a glorified Boogeyman who would kill anyone who stepped in his way.

“Careful, precious,” Liam said, tossing a cocky grin over his shoulder at Cormac, solidifying it with a wink,“you just might turn me on.” The guard simply snarled at him, opening his mouth to shoot something equally as thrilling at him. A hand dropped onto Cormac’s shoulder; the other guard, equally as tall, but more bulky and with scarlet tattoos licking up the front of his throat from beneath his standard issue uniform, tugged Cormac back, giving him a careful look. Liam didn’t know the other guard’s name, and only knew Cormac’s due to the fact that the bulky guard had snarled it a time or two when Cormac had gotten mouthy, trying to egg a reaction out of Liam.

Turning his head to the look forward, Liam squinted through the downpour of rain. His hair was slicked down his nape, the rain sliding down the gap in his shirt, soaking through his clothing. The guards on either side of him, hovering closely and invading his personal space in case he decided to bolt. He wasn’t entire sure where they thought he was going to go, or even what he was going to do if he managed to get away for longer than five minutes. Kill everyone in the general vicinity? The entire situation with Haiming and Liam had been completely blown out of proportion in his opinion; the reaction by the media and the people it influenced had a lot to do with it, he knew. Haiming had been the media star, lapping up the attention like a faithful servant to the people. He’d thrived on the attention and although some had claimed that Liam had simply been jealous of the media’s attentions on him, Liam had scoffed at the notion. Haiming’s death had everything to do with the fact that he’d been a shitty Jaeger pilot and had a cocky attitude with nothing to back it up. Looking back on it now, he probably shouldn’t have mentioned to Haiming’s mother that her son had cried like a small child in his final moments and died like a dog, but he’d been pissed off at that point, fresh out of rehabilitation and still in pain.

Squelching the urge to each up and brush his fingertips against the thick scars around his neck, Liam moved onward through the doors, where he was greeted with varying looks of disdain. He hadn’t needed to think twice about whether or not he would get inside a Jaeger again; it was never an option for him to do anything else. Despite his provocative nature and the way he liked everything to be a melodramatic display, being a Jaeger pilot had been the one thing that Liam had taken seriously in his entire life. From the moment he’d entered the academy to the day he was found to be Drift compatible with Grayson Pierce, he had taken it seriously. The idea of being anywhere but prison – the place where he’d spent the majority of the last five years in isolation – was one that he couldn’t pass up. Who they could persuade to be his Drift partner Liam didn’t know; he was still hated for a little snuffing as far as he was aware. He wouldn’t put it passed the Marshall to force himself to Drift with him if it came down to it.

A little brunette in a lab coat moved towards them, eyeing Liam nervously and conversing quietly with the bulky guard while Cormac listened in. He didn’t bother paying attention, because in truth, he didn’t give a fuck. Breathing fresh air that wasn’t guarded by stone walls was something he was too busy relishing to care which direction the guards hauled him off to. It had been so long since he’d seen the outside world made of something other than stone that Liam didn’t realize they’d even come to a stop until he head the familiar voice ringing in his ears.