Pacific Rim Fic - Ante Up
Title: Ante Up
Beta: Kris
Rating: Gen
Summary: “So we’re still going?” Raleigh asks, just to clarify.
“Yes,” Mako says, simply.
“Okay, then,” Raleigh says, leaning back into his room to grab a sweater. “You any good at poker?”
“So, you are new one, yes?” the female Russian pilot - her name is Sasha, Raleigh remembers - says, sitting down across the table from where he’s eating lunch with Herc in the hour before his first test run.
“. . . I guess?” he says, looking over at Herc for support. Herc just looks amused and focuses on his own food, ignoring Raleigh. Sasha snorts at him.
“Either you are, or you are not,” she says. “Not new pilot, but new here. You play poker?”
Raleigh blinks at the apparent non-sequitor. “Yes?” he offers. Sasha nods, pleased.
“Good. Pilot game, 2100. You come. Tell co-pilot.” She gets up and nods at him sharply before going back over to sit with her massive husband. Raleigh turns to Herc, whose shoulders are shaking a little, and scowls.
“Can’t help it, Raleigh, you sounded so confused,” Herc says, not sounding sorry at all. “But she’s right, you should come to the pilot’s game.”
“I don’t have any money,” Raleigh says. Herc gives him a scornful look.
“Join the club, mate. We don’t play for money.” He leans back in his seat and smirks at Raleigh. “We play for whatever we have lying around. You probably don’t have anything worth much,” he says, shrugging his shoulders a little. Raleigh scowls harder. “Better hope your co-pilot does.”
“Wait, what,” Raleigh says, confused. Herc smiles at him, but the smile has way too many teeth in it for Raleigh to feel comfortable.
“Didn’t I mention? We play in teams. But you’re not allowed to communicate with your co-pilot aloud.” He taps the side of his head. “See how good your link really is.” He shoves back from the table and heads out of the mess hall, calling “See you later, Raleigh!” as he goes.
0o0o0o0o0
After their disastrous test run, Raleigh isn’t sure whether or not he and Mako are still invited to the pilot’s game. He’s still sitting in his room at 2045, debating whether or not to go, when he hears a knock on the door and knows that it’s her. He is completely unsurprised to open the door and find Mako waiting outside. He is surprised to see what she’s carrying.
“Are those apples?” Mako nods.
“For the game,” she explains. When Raleigh gives her a blank look she sighs and elaborates. “All teams must bring something. You have nothing they would want, so I got something.”
“Ahh,” Raleigh says, still feeling a little stunned. “So we’re still going?”
“Yes,” Mako says, simply.
“Okay, then,” Raleigh says, leaning back into his room to grab a sweater. “You any good at poker?”
0o0o0o0o0
“What’re they doing here?”
Raleigh feels Mako stiffen next to him at the sound of Chuck’s voice and turns to face the other man, sneer firmly in place. “We were invited,” he says, as calmly as he can.
Chuck throws up his arms in disgust. “They’re not real pilots,” he said, turning to appeal to the Kaidonovskys. “They shouldn’t have been invited.”
Aleksis growls something in Russian as Sasha raises an imperious eyebrow. “I am senior pilot,” she says, calmly. “I decide who is invited to pilot game. They are pilots, they are invited.”
Chuck scowls but turns away to play with Max. “Welcome to the pilot’s game, Mako,” Herc says, grinning at her. His greetings are echoed by Sasha and Aleksis and the Wei triplets. Raleigh doesn’t remember hearing Marshal Pentecost introduce them by name, but then a flash of Mako’s memories hits him and he can recognize Cheung, Jin and Hu easily. He smiles at all of them and greets them by name, earning him an impressed eyebrow raise from Cheung and easy smiles from Jin and Hu.
“What have you brought as stake?” Sasha asks, and Mako presents her with the apples. She gives them a nod of approval and sets them down on the table, next to a small pile of chocolate candies, a beautifully decorated set of throwing knives, and two bars of fresh white soap that almost certainly will not burn or chafe the way the harsh base issued soap does. Raleigh is impressed at the diversity of the stakes and almost misses it when Sasha hands Mako a stack of chips.
“You remember rules?” she asks, and Mako nods. “Good. Explain to him. We will begin as soon as Aleksis has found the cards.”
Raleigh looks over at Mako, who nods at him. “It is like standard five card draw,” she says, lowering her voice and smiling at him. “But instead of betting on your own hand, you bet on your co-pilot’s hand. You are also not allowed to speak to them in any way.”
“How does that work with them?” Raleigh asks, gesturing at the triplets, who are throwing a stress ball back and forth amongst themselves without looking at each other. Mako shrugs.
“Circulating bets, I think,” she says. Raleigh nods as Aleksis manages to locate the deck of cards and shouts triumphantly as he fishes them out of his pocket. Sasha clears her throat and all of the pilots converge on the table, jostling with each other as they try to figure out where to sit. Raleigh makes a face when he ends up next to Chuck, but Mako gives him a stern look and he subsides, turning to face Aleksis, who is shuffling the cards showily.
They draw cards to see who deals first, and Jin draws the highest card, so Aleksis passes the deck to him and he shuffles them again, much less showily than Aleksis, before offering them to Sasha to cut. She cuts the cards and hands them back to Jin, who deals amidst the bustle of sorting out whose chips go where. Raleigh takes a deep breath and grins quickly at Mako before picking up his cards.
0o0o0o0o0
After six rounds, Cheung has amassed the largest collection of chips, followed closely by Sasha. Raleigh looks helplessly at the tiny stack of chips sitting by Mako’s elbow in lieu of meeting her eyes - she’s been glaring him down since the second round, when it became obvious to everyone at the table that he has no poker face to speak of. Chuck and Herc ran out of chips in the fourth round, when Chuck tried to bluff his way out of Herc’s terrible hand by going all in only to be stopped by Hu’s straight flush. They decided to stick around, despite Chuck’s loud comments about all of the other, more interesting things he could be doing, in order to trash talk the remaining pilots.
Raleigh will cheerfully admit that the only reason they’ve managed to stay in the game this far is that they’ve taken to folding early on their bad hands. In the second round, Raleigh had been dealt a poor hand that Mako had tried to bluff her way through, not realizing that Raleigh’s inability to control his facial muscles would completely give them away. They’d lost most of their chips on that hand. Raleigh can feel Mako’s frustrated amusement at his haplessness clearly.
“I thought you said you’d played poker before, RA-leigh,” Chuck drawls from where he’s sprawled out in his chair, petting Max.
“I have played poker before,” he says, pushing two of his chips into the center of the table. “Call.”
Jin raises and says something in Chinese that Raleigh doesn’t quite catch but Mako does, and he feels her amusement. “He says that knowing the rules is not the same as playing the game.”
Raleigh elbows Jin in the side as Sasha calls. “I’ll have you know that I am a much better poker player than my brother was.”
Herc booms out a laugh. “He must have been downright dreadful, then, mate. Because you’re terrible. You can’t bluff your way out of a paper bag.”
Mako raises an eyebrow at him and folds, so Raleigh throws in his cards. Sasha looks over at her sympathetically. “I am sorry, Mako, that you have such terrible partner. Next time maybe we rotate.”
“Hey!” Raleigh says, stung. He is absolutely dragging Mako down - he’s pretty sure that she’d be cleaning up if they were playing for themselves or if she had a different partner - but their status as co-pilots is still new enough that he feels protective of it. He can tell that Mako feels the same way, but she’s better at hiding it. She smiles at Sasha instead.
“I will teach him,” she says. “No need to rotate.” Sasha dips her head in understanding and Hu calls.
“Teach him fast,” Aleksis advises, calling. “No more funding soon.”
Raleigh calls again and looks around the table. “Show me your cards, people.”
Jin groans as Mako reveals a royal flush before leaning across the table and laying into Hu in Chinese. Raleigh doesn’t understand what he’s saying, but he’s pretty sure it’s an uncomplimentary assessment of Hu’s shuffling. Hu is giving it right back to him and their voices are rising as though they’re about to start exchanging blows. Raleigh looks nervously around the table but everyone is acting blasé about the whole thing, so clearly this is a common occurrence. Cheung finally slaps the table as Hu leans forward and jolts both of them into silence.
“Shut up and play,” he says, reaching out and collecting the cards and passing them to Aleksis. Hu and Jin subside, muttering at each other, and Mako grins smugly around the table as her tiny pile of chips suddenly quadrupled in size.
0o0o0o0o0
They don’t win - Aleksis and Sasha get such good hands in the last two deals that Raleigh would have accused them of cheating if he hadn’t been the one dealing on the last hand- but they do manage to finish respectably. Sasha and Aleksis are gracious in victory and everyone takes turns mocking Chuck and Herc for managing to go out completely- “Even Raleigh and Mako managed to finish with chips,” Cheung says to Herc gleefully. Herc just shrugs philosophically but Chuck scowls, having taken every round Raleigh and Mako managed to stay in after he and his father went out as a personal affront.
“Cheung,” Mako says reproachfully, and he turns to her, saying something in rapid-fire Chinese that causes their bond to flush red-hot with her embarrassment. Raleigh looks up from where he’s assembling the deck to give her a quizzical look. She sends him a quelling look in reply, and he goes back to the cards and trying to convince Sasha to part with some of the chocolate. She laughs at him and pats him on the cheek.
“You are very cute, Raleigh, but not cute enough. No chocolate unless you win it,” she says. He pouts at her and tries to ignore the conversation Mako and Cheung are having across the table.
“But,” he says, and Sasha laughs at him.
“No buts. Let Mako teach you to bluff, maybe you win next game.”
“Like hell,” Chuck butts in. “No one’s that good a teacher.”
Raleigh’s on his feet in an instant, anger fizzing along his nerves at the insult to Mako, but Aleksis just claps him on the shoulder and roars with laughter. “Lost cause, this one. Still, Mako is good teacher. Maybe lose by less.” He drops his voice as Chuck turns away and leans down to speak in Raleigh’s ear. “She fights her own battles,” he says, sounding much more serious. Raleigh looks up at him, confused.
“I know that,” he says. Aleksis claps him on the shoulder again.
“Good you know that,” he says. “Good you stick up for her, too. But she will not appreciate if you keep trying to take her battles.” He moves away, leaning over to pick up one of the apples Mako had brought and taking a bite out of it with relish. “Good!” he says with clear approval, and Mako looks up from her heated discussion with Cheung to nod in acknowledgement.
“All right, you lot,” Herc says, clapping his hands together decisively. “It’s getting late and we need everyone rested. Off with you. Same time next week, barring any emergencies.”
The pilots boo Herc’s decree but head out anyway, calling out goodbyes as they do. Raleigh and Mako are two of the last to leave, and he looks over at her as they head back to their rooms. “What was that all about?”
“Hmm?”
“Don’t try that with me. What did Cheung have to say that got you all worked up?” Mako grimaces.
“He was commenting on the trial run earlier,” she admits, and Raleigh reaches out and grabs her shoulder.
“That wasn’t your fault,” he says as forcefully as he can. “I got caught up in a memory and you had to relive it with me. I went out of alignment first, it was my fault.” Mako starts to shake her head and Raleigh shakes her shoulder a little. “Mako. It was not your fault. You were not prepared for the consequences of Drifting with someone whose last Drift ended in extreme trauma. That was my fault, and I’m sorry. We’ll do better next time.”
“There may not be a next time,” she says softly. Raleigh tries to project confidence across their bond.
“There will be a next time,” he says. “There are only four jaegers left. The Marshal needs all of us. There will be a next time.”
Mako doesn’t say anything, but Raleigh feels her spirits lift across their bond. He smiles at her and they keep walking in silence back to their rooms, where they say “Good night” and separate, each with a lighter heart.
Beta: Kris
Rating: Gen
Summary: “So we’re still going?” Raleigh asks, just to clarify.
“Yes,” Mako says, simply.
“Okay, then,” Raleigh says, leaning back into his room to grab a sweater. “You any good at poker?”
“So, you are new one, yes?” the female Russian pilot - her name is Sasha, Raleigh remembers - says, sitting down across the table from where he’s eating lunch with Herc in the hour before his first test run.
“. . . I guess?” he says, looking over at Herc for support. Herc just looks amused and focuses on his own food, ignoring Raleigh. Sasha snorts at him.
“Either you are, or you are not,” she says. “Not new pilot, but new here. You play poker?”
Raleigh blinks at the apparent non-sequitor. “Yes?” he offers. Sasha nods, pleased.
“Good. Pilot game, 2100. You come. Tell co-pilot.” She gets up and nods at him sharply before going back over to sit with her massive husband. Raleigh turns to Herc, whose shoulders are shaking a little, and scowls.
“Can’t help it, Raleigh, you sounded so confused,” Herc says, not sounding sorry at all. “But she’s right, you should come to the pilot’s game.”
“I don’t have any money,” Raleigh says. Herc gives him a scornful look.
“Join the club, mate. We don’t play for money.” He leans back in his seat and smirks at Raleigh. “We play for whatever we have lying around. You probably don’t have anything worth much,” he says, shrugging his shoulders a little. Raleigh scowls harder. “Better hope your co-pilot does.”
“Wait, what,” Raleigh says, confused. Herc smiles at him, but the smile has way too many teeth in it for Raleigh to feel comfortable.
“Didn’t I mention? We play in teams. But you’re not allowed to communicate with your co-pilot aloud.” He taps the side of his head. “See how good your link really is.” He shoves back from the table and heads out of the mess hall, calling “See you later, Raleigh!” as he goes.
0o0o0o0o0
After their disastrous test run, Raleigh isn’t sure whether or not he and Mako are still invited to the pilot’s game. He’s still sitting in his room at 2045, debating whether or not to go, when he hears a knock on the door and knows that it’s her. He is completely unsurprised to open the door and find Mako waiting outside. He is surprised to see what she’s carrying.
“Are those apples?” Mako nods.
“For the game,” she explains. When Raleigh gives her a blank look she sighs and elaborates. “All teams must bring something. You have nothing they would want, so I got something.”
“Ahh,” Raleigh says, still feeling a little stunned. “So we’re still going?”
“Yes,” Mako says, simply.
“Okay, then,” Raleigh says, leaning back into his room to grab a sweater. “You any good at poker?”
0o0o0o0o0
“What’re they doing here?”
Raleigh feels Mako stiffen next to him at the sound of Chuck’s voice and turns to face the other man, sneer firmly in place. “We were invited,” he says, as calmly as he can.
Chuck throws up his arms in disgust. “They’re not real pilots,” he said, turning to appeal to the Kaidonovskys. “They shouldn’t have been invited.”
Aleksis growls something in Russian as Sasha raises an imperious eyebrow. “I am senior pilot,” she says, calmly. “I decide who is invited to pilot game. They are pilots, they are invited.”
Chuck scowls but turns away to play with Max. “Welcome to the pilot’s game, Mako,” Herc says, grinning at her. His greetings are echoed by Sasha and Aleksis and the Wei triplets. Raleigh doesn’t remember hearing Marshal Pentecost introduce them by name, but then a flash of Mako’s memories hits him and he can recognize Cheung, Jin and Hu easily. He smiles at all of them and greets them by name, earning him an impressed eyebrow raise from Cheung and easy smiles from Jin and Hu.
“What have you brought as stake?” Sasha asks, and Mako presents her with the apples. She gives them a nod of approval and sets them down on the table, next to a small pile of chocolate candies, a beautifully decorated set of throwing knives, and two bars of fresh white soap that almost certainly will not burn or chafe the way the harsh base issued soap does. Raleigh is impressed at the diversity of the stakes and almost misses it when Sasha hands Mako a stack of chips.
“You remember rules?” she asks, and Mako nods. “Good. Explain to him. We will begin as soon as Aleksis has found the cards.”
Raleigh looks over at Mako, who nods at him. “It is like standard five card draw,” she says, lowering her voice and smiling at him. “But instead of betting on your own hand, you bet on your co-pilot’s hand. You are also not allowed to speak to them in any way.”
“How does that work with them?” Raleigh asks, gesturing at the triplets, who are throwing a stress ball back and forth amongst themselves without looking at each other. Mako shrugs.
“Circulating bets, I think,” she says. Raleigh nods as Aleksis manages to locate the deck of cards and shouts triumphantly as he fishes them out of his pocket. Sasha clears her throat and all of the pilots converge on the table, jostling with each other as they try to figure out where to sit. Raleigh makes a face when he ends up next to Chuck, but Mako gives him a stern look and he subsides, turning to face Aleksis, who is shuffling the cards showily.
They draw cards to see who deals first, and Jin draws the highest card, so Aleksis passes the deck to him and he shuffles them again, much less showily than Aleksis, before offering them to Sasha to cut. She cuts the cards and hands them back to Jin, who deals amidst the bustle of sorting out whose chips go where. Raleigh takes a deep breath and grins quickly at Mako before picking up his cards.
0o0o0o0o0
After six rounds, Cheung has amassed the largest collection of chips, followed closely by Sasha. Raleigh looks helplessly at the tiny stack of chips sitting by Mako’s elbow in lieu of meeting her eyes - she’s been glaring him down since the second round, when it became obvious to everyone at the table that he has no poker face to speak of. Chuck and Herc ran out of chips in the fourth round, when Chuck tried to bluff his way out of Herc’s terrible hand by going all in only to be stopped by Hu’s straight flush. They decided to stick around, despite Chuck’s loud comments about all of the other, more interesting things he could be doing, in order to trash talk the remaining pilots.
Raleigh will cheerfully admit that the only reason they’ve managed to stay in the game this far is that they’ve taken to folding early on their bad hands. In the second round, Raleigh had been dealt a poor hand that Mako had tried to bluff her way through, not realizing that Raleigh’s inability to control his facial muscles would completely give them away. They’d lost most of their chips on that hand. Raleigh can feel Mako’s frustrated amusement at his haplessness clearly.
“I thought you said you’d played poker before, RA-leigh,” Chuck drawls from where he’s sprawled out in his chair, petting Max.
“I have played poker before,” he says, pushing two of his chips into the center of the table. “Call.”
Jin raises and says something in Chinese that Raleigh doesn’t quite catch but Mako does, and he feels her amusement. “He says that knowing the rules is not the same as playing the game.”
Raleigh elbows Jin in the side as Sasha calls. “I’ll have you know that I am a much better poker player than my brother was.”
Herc booms out a laugh. “He must have been downright dreadful, then, mate. Because you’re terrible. You can’t bluff your way out of a paper bag.”
Mako raises an eyebrow at him and folds, so Raleigh throws in his cards. Sasha looks over at her sympathetically. “I am sorry, Mako, that you have such terrible partner. Next time maybe we rotate.”
“Hey!” Raleigh says, stung. He is absolutely dragging Mako down - he’s pretty sure that she’d be cleaning up if they were playing for themselves or if she had a different partner - but their status as co-pilots is still new enough that he feels protective of it. He can tell that Mako feels the same way, but she’s better at hiding it. She smiles at Sasha instead.
“I will teach him,” she says. “No need to rotate.” Sasha dips her head in understanding and Hu calls.
“Teach him fast,” Aleksis advises, calling. “No more funding soon.”
Raleigh calls again and looks around the table. “Show me your cards, people.”
Jin groans as Mako reveals a royal flush before leaning across the table and laying into Hu in Chinese. Raleigh doesn’t understand what he’s saying, but he’s pretty sure it’s an uncomplimentary assessment of Hu’s shuffling. Hu is giving it right back to him and their voices are rising as though they’re about to start exchanging blows. Raleigh looks nervously around the table but everyone is acting blasé about the whole thing, so clearly this is a common occurrence. Cheung finally slaps the table as Hu leans forward and jolts both of them into silence.
“Shut up and play,” he says, reaching out and collecting the cards and passing them to Aleksis. Hu and Jin subside, muttering at each other, and Mako grins smugly around the table as her tiny pile of chips suddenly quadrupled in size.
0o0o0o0o0
They don’t win - Aleksis and Sasha get such good hands in the last two deals that Raleigh would have accused them of cheating if he hadn’t been the one dealing on the last hand- but they do manage to finish respectably. Sasha and Aleksis are gracious in victory and everyone takes turns mocking Chuck and Herc for managing to go out completely- “Even Raleigh and Mako managed to finish with chips,” Cheung says to Herc gleefully. Herc just shrugs philosophically but Chuck scowls, having taken every round Raleigh and Mako managed to stay in after he and his father went out as a personal affront.
“Cheung,” Mako says reproachfully, and he turns to her, saying something in rapid-fire Chinese that causes their bond to flush red-hot with her embarrassment. Raleigh looks up from where he’s assembling the deck to give her a quizzical look. She sends him a quelling look in reply, and he goes back to the cards and trying to convince Sasha to part with some of the chocolate. She laughs at him and pats him on the cheek.
“You are very cute, Raleigh, but not cute enough. No chocolate unless you win it,” she says. He pouts at her and tries to ignore the conversation Mako and Cheung are having across the table.
“But,” he says, and Sasha laughs at him.
“No buts. Let Mako teach you to bluff, maybe you win next game.”
“Like hell,” Chuck butts in. “No one’s that good a teacher.”
Raleigh’s on his feet in an instant, anger fizzing along his nerves at the insult to Mako, but Aleksis just claps him on the shoulder and roars with laughter. “Lost cause, this one. Still, Mako is good teacher. Maybe lose by less.” He drops his voice as Chuck turns away and leans down to speak in Raleigh’s ear. “She fights her own battles,” he says, sounding much more serious. Raleigh looks up at him, confused.
“I know that,” he says. Aleksis claps him on the shoulder again.
“Good you know that,” he says. “Good you stick up for her, too. But she will not appreciate if you keep trying to take her battles.” He moves away, leaning over to pick up one of the apples Mako had brought and taking a bite out of it with relish. “Good!” he says with clear approval, and Mako looks up from her heated discussion with Cheung to nod in acknowledgement.
“All right, you lot,” Herc says, clapping his hands together decisively. “It’s getting late and we need everyone rested. Off with you. Same time next week, barring any emergencies.”
The pilots boo Herc’s decree but head out anyway, calling out goodbyes as they do. Raleigh and Mako are two of the last to leave, and he looks over at her as they head back to their rooms. “What was that all about?”
“Hmm?”
“Don’t try that with me. What did Cheung have to say that got you all worked up?” Mako grimaces.
“He was commenting on the trial run earlier,” she admits, and Raleigh reaches out and grabs her shoulder.
“That wasn’t your fault,” he says as forcefully as he can. “I got caught up in a memory and you had to relive it with me. I went out of alignment first, it was my fault.” Mako starts to shake her head and Raleigh shakes her shoulder a little. “Mako. It was not your fault. You were not prepared for the consequences of Drifting with someone whose last Drift ended in extreme trauma. That was my fault, and I’m sorry. We’ll do better next time.”
“There may not be a next time,” she says softly. Raleigh tries to project confidence across their bond.
“There will be a next time,” he says. “There are only four jaegers left. The Marshal needs all of us. There will be a next time.”
Mako doesn’t say anything, but Raleigh feels her spirits lift across their bond. He smiles at her and they keep walking in silence back to their rooms, where they say “Good night” and separate, each with a lighter heart.