![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
queenslayerbeeTitle: some drown, some swim against the tide, and some others surf.
Fandom: The 100 (TV show).
Character/Pairing: Emori/John Murphy.
Rating/Warnings: M. Pacific Rim AU.
Summary: Emori and John, facing just another type of Apocalypse.
Word count: 1.1k.
read more
-
They met because they tried to scavenge parts from the same kaiju.
After his mother died, desperation had taken John further and further down not-so-legal paths. It turned out he was an awful pickpocket, among other things. And like almost everyone else that went down that road before him, he ended up wanting in on the black market.
He heard the horror stories about people who got too close to one of those sea monsters, not realizing until too late that it wasn’t as dead as they'd previously thought. He was ready to disregard them, since kaiju parts were where the big bucks awaited.
His plan was simple: to scavenge the scavengers, to attack the solitary ones by surprise and take their goods. It just turned out he wasn’t the only one with that plan.
And that’s how he helped a couple of siblings to steal kaiju entrails. Then got a knife in his throat and a mysterious address whispered in his ear, for his troubles. All within ten minutes.
Enough time to fall in love, if you ask him.
People would say they had seen their first kiss coming from a mile away— if they had actually known each other long enough to walk a mile. Instead, Emori kissed him within two days of knowing each other. When the apocalypse is night, there's no time to wait.
Otan hadn’t made it in time to the shelter, and she was hysterical. Or as hysterical as someone like Emori could ever be. John didn’t have a single clue of how to comfort anyone, let alone a girl whose presence on his mind seemed disproportionate with the time they’d known each other, with whom every stare and every touch was overloaded with electricity.
He tried his best, embracing her in his arms, swallowing the meaningless “everything will be fine” that everyone else had once said to him.
She stared at him with determination and raised her hands to his face, caressing it. The left one, covered, felt pleasantly rough to the touch. She pulled him down for a firm, steamy kiss, that he returned without thinking it twice.
And that was their first kiss: in an overcrowded Anti-Kaiju shelter full of strangers practically sticking them with their elbows.
Later that night, he had to hold her as she dissolved in angered cries and screams for her brother.
Their first time was, of fucking course, interrupted by a kaiju attack.
Having that godawful alarm blaring at full volume as an amazing girl was about to go down on him was suddenly at the top of the pile of reasons why he hated those assholes.
They had to rush into their clothes, practically tripped over them on their way out. The two of them barely made it to the closest shelter, and John ended up pressing Emori against the exit, pushed by hundreds of bodies behind them.
The close proximity might’ve been an issue, if it wasn’t because the context they found themselves in killed any possible trace of eroticism.
And when they got out, they needed to go and search for kaiju’s corpses if they wanted to make a living.
Survival came first, after all. Sex, sadly, would have to wait. But not too long.
Even he had to admit that the hangar of the unofficially named Apocalypse Prevention Center was impressive. The Jaegers loomed over everyone, like mythical figures of the past. They looked deceptively alive, and John resented a little how it was near impossible to not feel safer around those metal cans.
Who would have told them kaiju’s brains, of all things, would be what brought them there. In any case, the fewer questions they asked, the sooner they’d be allowed to leave the place. John didn’t feel comfortable surrounded by the righteous pilots, as mythical as their rides.
Not that long ago, he might’ve been more excited about it. Surrounded by the Jaha team; Indra and Gaia; Bellamy Blake and Raven Reyes, the only two people to ever ride a Jaeger on their own, both with stories equally tragic. The stuff of legends.
No one except Green bothered pretending they didn’t look down on them for their business, despite how much they apparently needed them, so they were dead set on leaving the place.
But for some inscrutable reason, they were invited to stay for a meal. Last supper before the end of times. Or something.
The experience was plain awkward, but Emori and John were good in the ancient art of fake-it-till-you-make-it. As the conversation moved stiffly around them, she looked around with seemingly innocent wonder, asking intuitive questions to Reyes and to Green.
And under it, John could hear what she really meant to say: this is a good refuge.
He pondered it, because even if he didn’t like the place, she was one hundred percent right. Few places in the entire city were as safe as this one, and the ones that were, likely belonged to a higher class than they could aspire to the moment.
So they’d have to figure out how to convince them to let them stay.
John, once he finished the steak, raised his plate to give the carrots to Emori, who moved hers to accept them without even looking.
“You know,” Blake said, “you two would probably make good pilots. I think you’re two of the most drift compatible people I’ve met.”
Something in his eyes, in his falsely warm voice, in the way he’d been watching them closely since they arrived, told John that he wasn’t saying that just because of the carrots.
“We’ve just known each other for a long time,” she lied with a straight face, “but I don’t think it’d be a good idea to put two newbies into one of those giants just because you’re short of personnel.”
More like short of cannon fodder. Hell no, he would rather try their luck searching for a semi-decent refuge on the streets than get in one of those.
The laughs Emori’s comeback caused, though, gave him enough confidence that they wouldn’t just throw them at one of those robots to see if it stuck.
In the end, no cunning schemes were needed. The kaiju attack arrived soon, and nobody would’ve dared to say they should be thrown out in those conditions.
The Jaegers soared to the surface, but headquarters hadn’t managed to contact any of the pilots yet.
So the apocalypse came, and it went, and it passed through Emori and John without giving them so much as a scratch.
They sneaked out, hugging and kissing each other, euphoric, and lost themselves amidst the multitude of people that had left their shelters to gather in a sea of celebration.
