Chapter Text
The first time Johnny meets Doyoung, he doesn’t exactly meet him.
Instead, he meets Kim Dongyoung at the third round of recruitment for the Jaeger Pilot Programme. A tall, lanky boy with quiet alert eyes who is a direct contrast to his companion who is loud and jovial and uniquely Lee Taeyong. He’s with Ten himself — a childhood friend that he was half in love with — a talented sharp boy who had blazed through life with all the force of a burning star with a smirk that was just as dangerous as it was charming.
Johnny had long believed that he could never streak across the universe with Ten, despite their shared childhood in one of the many suburban neighbourhoods in Texas. Their families were well off, their fathers were business partners while their mothers shared muffin recipes and gardening tips, and Johnny and Ten played basketball together with the hoop set up on the front of Ten’s garage while talking about auditioning to be K-pop idol trainees.
Then the Kaiju came.
Johnny’s father, founder of Seo Industries, a small but growing enterprise specialising in robotic and machinery research, gets roped into the defensive industry. A few years later, the Jaegers are introduced, alongside an elite squad of soldiers that pilot the gigantic robots and go toe-to-toe with the grotesque monsters that have emerged out of the depths of the sea and easily tower over the tallest skyscrapers while humans scatter like ants beneath their vicious claws and teeth. Seo Industries is one of the many names credited, but close enough at the top that Johnny’s family is able to move out of their decent-sized home into a sprawling estate in South Dakota, miles from the coastline of danger with an idyllic lush countryside providing the illusion of a safe haven.
However, like his father, Johnny didn’t care for any of that. He packed up his bags when he was fifteen, gave his mum a hug goodbye, and moved into a much smaller bedroom in California. The apartment was paid for by the government, and as the son of one of the pioneering scientists that had developed the Drift system used in Jaegers, Dr. Seo only needed a few words to bump his son’s name up the list of eager recruits that vied for the chance to be one of the international heroes that fought the monsters one-on-one.
Johnny had tried to get his father to bump Ten’s name up too, but his father had merely smiled at him, clapped him on the back and told him to try his best. His scores were good, on the better and promising side even, but General Kwon had glanced down her clipboard before smiling gently at him, an apology crinkled into the worn lines of her young face.
Next round, John. We don’t want to send you out too young.
General Kwon’s orders are absolute, and no one could question her — a prodigal candidate that had bravely stepped forward to be one of the first Jaeger pilots at a mere fourteen years old. After she had gotten her title and rank, her first decree was to set a minimum age for Jaeger pilots to one, get accepted into the training programme, and two, for them to debut on the battlefield to fight the real monsters rather than the virtual ones generated by the training AI that contained the data from all existing battles.
So Johnny held his tongue, nodded and smiled when the other soldiers assured him that he would be automatically accepted into next year’s recruitment roster. He had gone home after that, called Ten on his cellphone, and sniffled into his pillow as Ten chattered on and on about some cats that he had encountered near the convenience store that day.
“Anyways,” Ten’s voice is tinny through the line, and Johnny hears some vague shuffling around on the other side, “It just means we might be in the same batch then.”
Johnny sits up immediately, all lingering negative emotions from the rejection suddenly gone as the weight of his best friend’s words settle into him.
“Wait, are you-”
Ten laughs, and fireworks go off in Johnny’s chest. “Yeah, I’m going to try. Mom gave her blessing and all. Might as well, there’s nothing to lose.”
“Oh my god,” Johnny breathes, his mind immediately spinning at the possibilities, at seeing Ten again. “I’ll tell Dad that you’ll stay with us. I need to bring you around to this nice cafe with the best beans and crepes just down from the Training Centre. You’ll love it-”
“Whoa, slow down there, tiger,” Ten giggles, and Johnny can see him tucking his hair behind an ear, curls settling around his chin and wrapping around the slender column of his neck. They haven’t seen each other for about three years now, ever since the Seos had moved away while Lees had continued to live in the same house with their perfectly manicured backyard draped in marigolds and daisies that framed Ten in the most idyllic sight with the soft glow of the sunset.
He wonders if Ten still thinks about him like he does. He misses the boy that he had fallen in love with since he was ten. The one that had streaked his way in Johnny’s heart and left him gasping in the wake of the crater created by the surge of emotions that he felt for his best friend. The surge had crested, and then stayed, even after Johnny bid him farewell with a tight throat and watched wordlessly as the house that he had known for the first decade of his life disappeared from his view, together with the first love of his life.
“I’m not even sure I’ll make it past the regional try-outs yet,” Ten mutters, as a muffled thump sounds from his end, meaning that he had just thrown himself on his bed. “They do have a very secretive testing process. Any tips you can give me?”
Of course Johnny knows the process — he had just gone through it after all. So he knows Ten will pass without issue, and he also knows that Ten will do more than pass. He will impress the testers, the older soldiers who are a bit bitter that they didn’t make it to the end. The ones that have ridden in a real Jaeger and tasted the barest tinge of battlefield together with their partner in the Drift. However, not every capable soldier makes it to the end with a customised Jaeger built for their compatibility and chemistry with their partner.
So they end up at this stage, recruiting hopefuls who had dreamed the same dream as them, only to watch as the crowd thins out the batch bit by bit, taking those that had just missed the final goal by the tips of their fingers under their wing. The cycle repeats, the new batch takes over, soldiers get promoted and more soldiers get recruited for a chance at living the dream of being a Jaeger pilot.
Full circle. One circle is a year. Necessary, given the recent progression and evolution of the Kaijuu appearing on the many coastlines around the world. It doesn’t matter how many pilots die at the hands of the Kaijuu each year — it never stops the horde of sign-ups.
And Johnny knows that if there is anyone that has a real chance of making it to the end, it would be Ten. He tells his best friend such, and his heart stutters again at the laughter that trickles from the phone speaker down and warms the veins in his chest. Ten says thank you and goodbye, and Johnny tells him see you soon before they hang up.
Johnny goes to bed with a full heart and dreams of his best friend naked and gasping in his bed. He wakes up, and makes a promise to himself that he writes in the margins of his own journal before he dresses for school.
I’ll confess to Ten if we are Drift-Compatible.
There’s a silly, romantic part of Johnny that loves the idea of soulmates and fated ones. He’s seen it before, having grown up close to the many iconic Jaeger pilot duos. Some are siblings, others are best friends, and some others are more than that. He has witnessed Baekyun and Chanyeol struggle to get their helmets off haphazardly before kissing each other ferociously in the middle of the Shatterdome, teeth and tongues and all, high off the victory of slaying the first Category Three Kaijuu that had wrecked havoc on over more than five hundred miles on the coastline. Two months later, they had gotten married with matching medals on their chest, smiles wide and eyes wet despite the fact that Chanyeol’s left arm had been replaced by a stump wrapped in bandages.
If he’s Drift-Compatible with Ten, he has a chance at that too.
But then, Ten’s a blazing star. Johnny thinks of himself as an ordinary meteorite, not even a moon that reflects light off its surface in the presence of one. He would not have survived the full brunt of Ten’s fire and passion, he knows that. He would have been consumed wholly, reduced to nothing but brittle and ashes, maybe even less, and Ten would then move on because other ordinary meteorites are always drawn into the orbits of beautiful shining stars without knowing their destructive, consuming heat.
“I’m Ten,” his best friend introduces himself, eyes gleaming as he smiles at the slim, pretty boy standing before them. They are all dressed in plain dark blue jumpsuits, the insignia of the Jaeger pilot programme splashed across the right breast in neon green, the colour of their recruitment batch. There is another boy standing beside the pretty one, dark eyes hidden underneath a messy fringe, cheeks hollowed out and lankier, taller, but Ten completely ignores him in favour of his smaller companion.
The pretty boy grins back, bleached hair almost translucent under the harsh bright lights of the training dojo. He leans in, deliberately drags his eyes up and down Ten’s entire body before smiling even wider to match the greeting.
“I’m Taeyong.”
Even before the loud clash of their staffs ring through the dojo twenty minutes later, Johnny understands that the promise scribbled hastily in the creased pages of his journal will never be fulfilled. It’s something that he will be able to cross out, no matter what he does.
The star of his life has met another star — equally brilliant, magnetic, extraordinary.
Drift-Compatible.
“I’m Dongyoung.”
The lanky boy with hollowed cheeks offers, doesn’t bother to put out his hand. Johnny stuffs his hands in the pockets of his jumpsuits, pretends not to see how Ten is absolutely itching to volunteer to be the first on the mats, how Taeyong is matching the rhythm he is tapping on his staff even without looking, how they have no eyes for anyone else in the dojo.
“I’m Johnny.”