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His son is in love with Raleigh Becket.
Raleigh Becket is in love with his son.
The thought is a quick one-two punch that buries itself in his gut one day, ten feet from the physical therapy studio. The door is cracked open due to the ac being busted. And its through that faint crack that Herc sees Raleigh’s numb fingers open reflexively. He hears the sound of the weight dropping a moment before the pilot does. Well, ex-pilot, Herc corrects.
Raleigh left the Shatterdome without therapy of any kind. But Herc knows that a part of him thinks of the injury as penance. If he had been stronger they would have had that arm and Herc knows that he thinks he could have hurt Knife head or caught Yancy or something insane like that. He carries the injury as a reminder, the ache and limitations a reminder of Yancy, the same way Gipsy’s burned in to his skin.
At the time he wasn’t sure why Raleigh had begun physical therapy or why it was slow going when he started.
He sees the weight drop and he sees Raleigh’s legs buckle and then he sees Chuck. He sees him because Chuck drops and essentially catches Raleigh’s other shoulder. In actuality he gets his arm underneath him, placing it exactly where it won’t hurt him. And yeah, Chuck looks frustrated and angry, but that isn’t directed at Raleigh. There’s concern there, he’s concerned and even though the look is more or less gone when Raleigh lifts his head, the other pilot gives Chuck a look of as much affection as he thinks Chuck will accept. His son still rolls his eyes but there’s a mirror of affection in his eyes.
Herc leaves feeling like a perv for spying on his son and then feels like he’s been punched because he realizes his son is in love.
Chuck’s never been in love.
Herc knows that for sure. Sex for his son just to take care of a need, like eating and sleeping and going to the bathroom, only one of which Herc thinks his son enjoys. It isn’t a crush either, though Herc is sure it started out as one, something that came to Herc’s attention when Chuck started acting like a child because Raleigh was being particularly nice to a young woman. That alone was enough to keep him up at night.
It isn’t that Chuck likes guys, well, it isn’t that exactly.
Herc wasn’t raised in a household he would throw his worst enemy in. He knows he’s hard on his boy and he comes up with some pretty weak excuses when he needs them. But he’s never poured two bottles of whiskey down his throat and beat Chuck bloody with his belt. Even the thought makes him sick for reasons that have nothing to do with the off chance that Angela’s watching down on them. He knows what it’s like to hate yourself because of someone else, he’d rather Chuck hated him instead.
So his son is in love and the person he loves loves him back.
Those are all good things, incredible and wonderful things. And in a perfect world his son and the pilot he loves would get their happily ever after. In the world they actually live in, Herc knows things are not that simple. And Chuck’s life has not been the kind where things like dating are high priority, or real a part of it at all. Or they weren’t in his previous lives.
Herc thinks of Chuck as having lived three distinct lives. The first began in the back of a taxi in a hospital parking lot in Sydney and ended in a helicopter above a naval carrier. The second began on the carrier and ended at the claws of a Cat 5. The third began sixty feet below the ocean in the wreckage of a pod. Chuck carries things through his lives, but they have a painful death and a more painful rebirth and when he comes out the other side he’s different.
Herc thinks Raleigh’s the only one who might understand.
The other pilot knows what it’s like to go to the other side and to come back with bits of yourself missing and others in different places. Both go quiet occasionally or use their keycards to get in to the gym at ungoldy hours. But they never go quiet at the same time and Herc has definitely taken note of the fact that they wind up in the gym together more nights than they don’t.
It’s been a painfully long time since Herc was in love, since sex wasn’t done on a clock and with the exchange of bills and the longing look of a red head walking away.
Really that’s his only excuse for putting them on the same work in the file room. And when they last two hours before he’s brought down, he doesn’t understand. They love each other. This should be easy. Of course it isn’t and he doesn’t see them together for a week and a half until he goes to the garage to find Raleigh climbing in to the back of a car, one of Chuck’s boots locked around the small of his back. He hears a peel of laughter before Raleigh turns up the radio and Herc makes himself scarce.
He has another quick one two realization when he gets that Chuck and Raleigh may love each other, but Chuck doesn’t really know what being in love is. He does like machines though. And Raleigh Becket loves his son in that way that Angela loved him, the way where they don’t care how emotionally stunted expressions of love may be, they understand what they are.
So he sends them to work in the garage.
That’s also a mistake. They still get a shocking amount of work done but no-one wants to sit in the back seat of the cars and there’s an unfortunate wrench incident that means whenever he goes down there someone’s actually knocking on the door like they need permission to access one of the fifty or so cars they have down there. It’s a problem so Herc just has Chuck down there and he literally fixes twenty cars in one day and refuses to talk to Herc.
Herc is at his wit’s end with the dance they’re doing so he does the last and worst thing and calls them both in to his office. Raleigh sits and pretends to be calm, Chuck crosses his arms over his chest and glares at Herc like this is somehow his fault. Herc starts with Raleigh.
"What are your intentions with my son?" He demands and it comes out a bit harsher than he intended.
"I love him," Raleigh answers like its the most obvious thing in the world.
Chuck sputters and Herc wonders if this is the first time he’s heard those words from Raleigh.
"That doesn’t answer my question," he snaps.
"My intentions are to keep loving him," Raleigh says and his voice takes on an edge of it’s own, "not to hurt him and to be with him for as long as he’ll have me."
Herc clears his throat and looks at Chuck.
"And you?" He questions.
"fuck off old man, I don’t have to answer to you," Chuck spits.
"Try again," Herc growls.
"I said I don’t have to answer to you!" Chuck shoots back.
"Ranger you are in a relationship with my another of my Rangers. It has compromised your work, for the last time what is your intention?" Herc demands.
He can actually see the struggle between Chuck his son who wants to leap across the desk and murder him and Chuck his ranger who has taken oaths to obey him. Raleigh looks torn between wanting to sink in to the floor and wanting to fight him as well. He settles for pushing himself half up out of his chair before Chuck speaks and its like he’s doing his best to stab Herc with his voice alone. which is hard to do with the two words Chuck gets out through gritted teeth.
"We’re together," he says and it’s not really what Herc wanted but he sees Raleigh drop in to the chair and his head flies towards Chuck and Herc decides it will do.
"Sit," he orders Chuck who drops in to the chair and tries to kill him with his eyes again.
"You have fourteen days of leave," he says, "I don’t care where you go but you are not allowed to work on cars. The Standard downtown is expecting you. Start there."
Chuck opens his mouth to protest because of course he would think of this as a punishment so Herc reminds him what that would actually look like.
"Don’t make me suspend you," he says to them both.
"Yes sir," Raleigh says. Chuck gets the words out too. They salute him and they’re out the door to go pack.
Herc looks down at Max who drops down on to his feet and pants up at him. He definitely doesn’t want to do this. If it was up to him Chuck would never leave his sight and definitely not to be underneath Raleigh Becker. He runs his hand over his wedding ring and reminds himself that all parents feel the same way. Even ones as shitty as him. And Raleigh may be a good man and he may love his son but the PPDC needs them to make out somewhere else. Like in a broom closet or in a bed. Times like these he really hopes Angela’s looking out for them.
Two weeks later when the boys stumble back in tanned and wearing different clothes with the only injury from Raleigh falling off a surf board he thinks she is.
She’s probably laughing too.