Tendo supposed he was lucky. Herc was Chuck's father, there would have always been things between them that Tendo wouldn't have been privy to. And there was no risk of Chuck breaking up with him for his drift partner.

What bugged him more was that there were things between him and Chuck that Herc wasn't supposed to know.

He tried to stay out of it, Tendo gave him that much. But then there were the stray comments whenever he and Chuck had had a fight or the barely concealed smile when Chuck had done his best to make up for the Kaiju attack on their anniversary.

It helped sometimes that Chuck and Herc barely talked to each other outside the Jaeger. But then it also meant that Chuck wasn't used to having to explain himself or his feelings to someone else. More often than not it was like prying a particularly stubborn clam open.

Herc knew though. Herc knew what Chuck couldn't tell Tendo, could barely show sometimes because he didn't know how to.

Herc knew how Chuck had bought flowers for their first date and had picked them out by their meaning in Japanese flower language which had taken Tendo weeks to figure out.

Herc knew what it meant when Chuck fleetingly touched the cross tattooed on Tendo's hand; the unspoken promise that he would try his best to come back.

Herc knew that Chuck left poems he liked for Tendo to find when he wanted to show how he felt because he couldn't express it in his own words.

These things were meant to be Tendo's only. The Drift meant that Herc knew everything about Chuck and everything Chuck knew about Tendo.

The ugly, irrational jealously Tendo felt was only made worse by the fact that he genuinely liked Herc. The man was easy to get along with, friendly and open. But Chuck was his and Tendo knew his possessiveness was mostly caused by the complete lack of privacy they had.