more thicker than forget

love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail

It's her voice that first catches his attention, the moment the cool, crisp tones give way to sudden warmth – sudden tenderness.

"Better than new. She has a double-core nuclear reactor. She's one of a kind now."

The clutch in his belly as he looks a the pure, pale profile is unexpected, a warm, slippery curl of sensation he hasn't felt in a while.

Tendo's arrival distracts him, but on the walk to his quarters, Raleigh finds himself watching and wondering about Miss Mori.

If Pentecost moved through the Shatterdome like a force of nature, Mako Mori picks her way through the crowds with a fastidiousness that's almost feline. Oh, it's an easy stride, comfortable and brisk, but also very controlled and very self-possessed. She doesn't waste time or energy – there's somewhere to go, she's getting there.

Briefly, Raleigh wonders how much of that self-possession she loses when making love, when she's open, unguarded, ecstatic.

He won't have the chance to find out, of course, but he finds himself imagining it all the same.

"Three, two," she tells him, as though he can't count, as though he needs the reminder.

She retreats across the mat, hanbõ at the ready as she moves away. And Raleigh watches her with a sense of wonder and a new-found respect.

This is what he's been looking for for the last half-hour. This is the connection he wanted and which he couldn't find with any of the other candidates.

Mako Mori, one of the PPDC's brightest, Jaeger redesigner, and tactical critic, is Drift-compatible with Raleigh Becket. Only it's not just mental or physical compatibility, the way it was with Yancy. The hum in his blood as he climbs to his feet is something else entirely.

She strikes like a snake, her hair lashing out like a whip. He blocks her moves, she blocks his. They dance like demons, like long-time lovers, like co-pilots.

He tosses her, trusting she can take it. And she can – physically. But battle gleams in her eyes as she fights back. They're matched in points, even, square, and the next point will decide—

It's a dialogue, he tells himself, not a fight.

They're in each others' space now, using all their range, all their reach. Her face is flushed, her lips parted, her hair askew as she twists and dodges. Raleigh's blood is up, his breath comes short and fast, and his whole body hums...

When she loops her hanbõ through his leg and pulls, making his hips thrust up to relieve the pressure on his leg, he knows he's lost – and won.

And he knows what he wants.

There's not much space in the decompression chamber, but there's enough for them to sit, hunched against the curved side of the chamber, shoulder to shoulder, their oxygen masks over their faces.

Raleigh feels exhausted, kind of numb, and yet also exhilarated on the post-mission high. He didn't have time to celebrate it last time – God, less than a day ago, when they fought both Leatherback and Otachii.

And now? Now they have all the time in the world.

Beside him, Mako makes a choked noise in her mask, and he lifts an arm and fits it over her shoulders, encouraging her to lean against him. She comes without protest, and sort of curls into him, hip to hip, thigh by thigh, her shoulder and upper arm tucked between their bodies. It feels like she's taking shelter against him.

It feels good to know Mako trusts him out of the Drift and not only in it.

Even if her tears sting his own eyes when she presses against his shoulder, her cheek wet against his skin. Inside her mask, she sobs, her breath catching unevenly through the grief that chokes her. The emotion echoes in Raleigh through the Drift, but it's only a faint resonance now that they're not in the neural handshake.

Still, it's enough to tighten his throat, to convulse his lungs with the sobs that struggle to be let out.

Raleigh helps get her mask off, then takes off his own so he can hold her properly, his lips against the side of her head, her body up against his as Mako weeps for the people she's lost as she curls against him and he holds her tight.

She takes a while to wake up in the mornings, and Raleigh lies in the darkness with his knuckles just touching her arm, listening to her breathe.

Mako came with him to his room the first night after Pitfall, once the docs let them out, once they shook hands with everyone in the Shatterdome and hugged more people than he can remember. They slept curled in each others arms, tangled up in body and mind and spirit, and woke twelve hours later, relaxed. They've shared a bed every night since.

Night by night, though, she's moving away. Easing herself out of his arms, sleeping turned away from him. Drawing back.

It aches a little, sometimes, to have his arms around her, or her body curled up against him, to feel like a shelter – but only temporary, only until she finds her balance again. But Raleigh doesn't know how to stop it, how to ask her for what he wants. He's afraid that if he reveals how much he needs her, she'll pull away completely. So he stays silent in the mornings and invites her in every night, and she sleeps unthinking in his arms, and lets him dream a little.

Mako grunts and rolls over now, pressing herself all along him with a slight shiver. "Warm," she murmurs into Raleigh's collarbone before drowsing off again, leaving Raleigh to brush the hair off her cheekbone and watch her sleep.

Later, when she's gone back to her own room and he's showering, Raleigh echoes that shiver with the memory of how she felt lying against him as he strokes himself out beneath the wet spray.

The shoot director doesn't need him for a few minutes, but Raleigh isn't going to go out the back and wait – he wants to stay with Mako. So he takes the seat offered by one of the make-up artists, and watches as they take photograph after photograph, as they consult the angles and bring in lighting and makeup and accessories.

Mako needs none of it to be beautiful, but there's something about watching the camera discover her, smile by smile.

"Are you together?"

The question is quiet, but it raises Raleigh's hackles more surely than all the media's avid interest. Particularly because the man asking isn't one of the brainless pretty boys who strutted around Mako like she might fall at their feet, but the guy who chatted with Mako in fluent Japanese for over an hour while Raleigh's shoot was going. All the more because he can't say Yes.

"What do you want?"

"What every man in this room wants." The guy has courage, at least; he's not intimidated by Raleigh's growl as he adds, "The chance to make her smile just for me. Is she seeing someone else?"

No. But he can't say that. He can't stand in her way.

Raleigh looks the other man dead in the eye. "If she says no to anything at all, you respect that."

The guy grins and turns to look back at Mako. "Of course."

Raleigh's hand clenches into a fist before he lets it go.

Mako's twenty years old. She's an international hero, with the world at her feet. Her skills are in demand by a thousand companies across the world.

She doesn't need Raleigh – and she doesn't seem to want him either.

It hurts, but that's not her fault.

Mako asks for a separate room, and Raleigh makes sure his expression doesn't betray him.

Still, he's not entirely surprised when Herc appears at his door at five. "Come out for a drink. The guys know a bar off the beaten track."

There's a plan. It's essentially to get Raleigh stinking drunk, so he doesn't think about Mako and Paolo together. Doesn't wonder why she wants someone new and different, someone who hasn't been in her head, seen her vulnerable – someone whose trauma she doesn't have to remember.

Someone else.

There's a strip bar – he doesn't know whose idea it was, but it's a bad one. He stands outside the club shaking with anger, with despair, with grief. It's nearly a minute before Herc and Tendo come out.

"She's not—" He stops and tried again. "They don't know anything about her."

"Human nature, son," Herc says. "They don't want to know anything about her."

Tendo takes his arm. "We covered you so they won't expect us back. Let's find somewhere to sit - I'm getting too old for this."

Herc's response is a snort. "You mean Alison will have your balls if she finds out you were at a strip joint."

"Nothing wrong with wanting to keep my balls," Tendo says loftily. "And my lovely wife would be furious that I went to a strip joint and didn't invite her along, too."

Raleigh hears their chatter, but doesn't listen. He needs to breathe and he can't do that here. "I'm walking back," he tells them, and lets them try to argue him into a taxi, lets them walk with him the first hundred yards.

It's Herc who lets him go in the end. "You call in when you get back to the hotel, okay?"

Raleigh agrees. At that moment, he'd agree to anything if only to be left alone.

Her light is on.

Raleigh shouldn't be able to see, but the little circle of the peephole betrays a golden light inside. He can hear her speaking to someone, the soft, familiar cadences of it rising and falling in easy, comfortable conversation.

He can't get into his suite fast enough. Can't bring himself to sit in the bedroom and think that, across the hall, Mako is—

Knifehead ripped Yancy out of him, leaving him empty. But Mako's not gone – she's still there, just...untouchable. His co-pilot, yes, but other pilots had years to learn each other, to draw together, to become familiar and fond and loved. Raleigh had three days and three Drifts and it was enough for him, but not enough for her.

But she's said no, and he'll respect that.

The knock startles him. When he gets up to peer through the peephole, he finds Mako standing on the other side.

"May I come in?"

He stands back, and the last remnants of her perfume curl around him as she walks past. When he closes the door, Mako is standing in the middle of the room, still all dressed up from her date – something pretty and dark-blue that seems slippery over her skin.

"Are you okay?" Raleigh watches her pace. He forces the next question past his lips. "How was the date?"

"It was...nice." But her expression's distracted, she won't meet his eyes. She's turning her room card over and over in her hands, like a nervous tic.

Raleigh steps in and puts his hands over hers. "What's wrong, Mako?"

She looks up at him. "I know there were pilots who were together for many years and we have known each other for only a little while, without the Drift. And I am not...not your usual type." Her cheeks go hot and her eyes slide away. "There are things we do not need to say in the Drift, but there are things, I think, that we must say out of it."

Shock has Raleigh's tongue in a grip of steel, even as hope hammers hard against his breastbone.

"We are friends I think—I would like us to be more—But I understand—"

Raleigh takes a risk. He has to. She's taken one by coming here to him. And he's somehow managed to make her believe he doesn't desire her. Which is so wrong, there aren't words to describe it.

He tips her chin up and kisses her. He's gentle, so she can move away if he's gotten everything wrong. He's careful, because he wants her like a burning fire in his belly and he doesn't want to scare her away. He's tender, because she's Mako and she's a part of him, as neecessary to him as air and sunlight and freedom.

When she draws back, he lets her go, and watches as her lashes flutter up, and her gaze lifts to his. "You never said."

"I never thought it needed saying. I'm yours, Mako. Even if you don't want me." He drops his gaze back to her mouth, to the smudged edges of her lipstick. "You do want me, don't you?"

"Yes," she says and draws him down again. "I—Yes."

Raleigh does get to find out how much self-possession Mako loses during lovemaking.

The answer? All of it.

"Your phone," she mumbles the third time it starts ringing. "You won't answer it?"

"I'd have to move." Raleigh kisses her shoulder, both of them warm and naked and very satisfied. "And I'm comfy."

Herc will understand, he thinks.

Herc understands. It doesn't stop him from giving Raleigh a slap on the back of the head for making him worry.

it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky