#i wrote out a whole combat-by-words between tony and ivanov but it's Not Working so

[moosemonstrous]

yep I misspelled Guero in the last one my bad anyway! this has to get posted or I'll never move on

Ghost Rider Pacific Rim AU - calm waters

“What’s with the tracker?”

Robbie belatedly realises this isn’t the first time Guero asked him this question. It’s hard to hear anything with the number of people all eating, talking and moving around in the mess hall. Third shift is always the busiest for food, all three kitchen bays turning out enough trays to tile the base. Over the last week it became rather obvious that Robbie can indeed fit in twice the rations after a six hours training session, but that means he needs to make sure he doesn’t inhale it all before Gabe has finished eating. It’s your damn food. Just tell him to stop fucking around with that tablet and hurry up. It’s assigned reading. He’s been doing tons of his own reading now, that’s good, it’s good that he doesn’t need Robbie to read for him— “Sorry, what?”

Guero points his chin at the black band around Robbie’s left bicep. It’s just him joining in for dinner today, the rest of the guys unwilling to wait until he was finished with the school handover. Robbie’s pretty sure he’s trying to hit on the TA. She doesn’t seem terribly interested, but it’s not his place to point it out.

“It’s for blood pressure,” he shrugs. He’s almost forgot about it, the steady squeeze and release around his arm just part of the general static his head fills with after running suicides. He hates running. His opinion doesn’t count for much in the gym. “I’m—”

“She jumped off!” Gabe interrupts him, finger pressed hard into the tablet screen to highlight a passage. “Robbie, she jumped off the roof! I don’t want her to get hurt!”

Robbie draws a blank. Normally, he’d keep ahead of whatever Gabe is reading so he can reassure him everything will be okay down the line. This whole week, though, he’s been going out like a light the second his head hit the pillow, and he’s not even entirely sure which story this is— “Hey, buddy, it’s alright,” he reaches out to grasp Gabe’s hands as they begin to clench and unclench in distress. “You have to keep reading, yeah? I’m sure she’ll be alright; you just need to keep on reading to find out.”

Gabe squeezes his fingers until his knuckles turn white and does the three-fours breathing a few times. It seems to work, because rather than starting to fidget in his chair he reaches back for the tablet. He nods to himself, steady, before clicking the device back on.

“Don’t forget your food,” Robbie pushes the fork back into his hand. He can feel Guero’s gaze on the side of his face. “What?”

“Kid’s got a lot of feelings, huh.”

“He’s right here,” he mutters. Gabe doesn’t seem to be paying attention to anything other than his book, but it doesn’t mean he can’t hear this kind of crap. “It’s okay to get upset about a story.”

Guero frowns for a moment before he figures out the last comment wasn’t really meant for him, but Robbie’s glare definitely is. “Are you—” he glances significantly between Gabe and Robbie’s blood pressure meter.

What a dickhead. Like they’d let you into the academy if you were—“It’s just for monitoring.”

“Monitoring what?”

Aw, he’s worried you’ll weigh him down. Fucking upstart. “I don’t know, it’s not like they’re telling me anything. It’s just a lot of brain scans.”

Gabe had a turn in the magnetic scanner a couple of days ago. It was hard for him to keep still for long enough, but for all that Robbie agonised he’d unwittingly set his brother up to be a test subject right alongside him, Dr Montesi never asked him back. Cho said they were just being thorough – that Gabe’s brain was fine, considering. Robbie is still considering if it’s really worth learning all of those martial arts if he can’t use them on annoying pricks in lab coats.

Meanwhile, Guero’s face goes on a bit of a journey. “Damn. They’re really pushing you forward.”

He sounds like he’s trying to hide he’s angry about it. Robbie puts his fork down just in case. “What are you on about?”

“Is it because of your dad? They’ll really let you pilot Hell Charger?”

“What?” Last Robbie heard about it, it was Cho arguing with Stark about extracting The Charger’s Conn-Pod for further testing. Apparently a no-go. “No, it’s decommissioned. It doesn't even have a reactor.”

Guero crosses his arms over his chest. “I’ve heard the techs talk. It’s getting a refurb. You can just tell me, you know.”

“I’m not going near that thing.” Liar. He hasn’t told anyone what landed him in R&D’s clutches in the first place. Nobody said he couldn’t, not even the Colonel, but it feels like the kind of thing he should be keeping to himself. It’s bad enough that the word spread his dad was a ranger. People look at him and Gabe funny whenever their last name comes up. “Besides, they’re getting a new jaeger any day now, right?”

“Well, I don’t know. You’re the one cosying up to the strike team.”

“I’m not—”

“Forget it,” Guero waves him off. He’s so fucking jealous. Watch it, guys like that will stab you in the kidneys to get ahead. “And if you really don’t know what the tests are for, fucking ask, are you insane? There are like, reps.”

“Yǔyán,” an older woman chides them from across the table. Guero bristles.

“Mind your business,” he barks. Stops swearing, though. It’s one of those weird unspoken rules in the Shatterdome – you’re supposed to keep it civil in the support areas. This is why soldiers tend to stick to their own barracks. It’s kind of embarrassing to be told off by a cleaning technician and impossible to assert dominance with hundreds upon hundreds of other civilians surrounding her, watching.

Cho mentioned they’ve got two sociologists on staff, studying cultural development in the semi-enclosed environment of a Shatterdome. Apparently Hong Kong is particularly interesting to researchers, what with a major city only a short ferry ride away. Sometimes, Robbie wonders if the L.A. base was at all similar. It didn’t really use civilian contractors. He rarely gets to ask follow-up questions when Cho goes on a tangent, and he doubts Guero would know, or care.

“Anyway,” Guero says, still giving the woman a stink eye. “Reps. Get one.”

Yeah, sure. See how long they keep you if you start complaining. And it’s mostly just training now, anyway. There are no new tests, just repeats of the same ones. Dr Montesi wants Robbie to have another full psych eval, but with the intake of new recruits for the academy there’s a bit of a waiting list. Is it weird that he’s relieved, that he has to wait for his turn? Yep. But it’s not like a psych eval will show anything, anyway. Cho seems to be doing everything at such a breakneck pace, it’s nice to know Robbie has a schedule to follow for at least the next couple of weeks.

Funny. That’s how long until the next demon is due.

#ghost rider pacific rim au #robbie reyes #gabe reyes #guero valdez #another one where Not Much Is Happening but uh time is passing we're getting there #i wrote out a whole combat-by-words between tony and ivanov but it's Not Working so #seriously tho if something isn't working do tell me 😂 #i have enough self-esteem to go around