mun needs a goddamn leash where it concerns pacific rim

[appellative]

I really don't see what the problem is.

You're having fun and I wanted out. Everyone wins.

Comments

[alaskans]

[ There's a retort sitting on his tongue but he swallows it rather than says it. She's a kid and, well—

Raleigh crouches, hands braced on the tops of his thighs, and looks her eye-to-eye. ] Quite a name you got there.

[ Everything about it is heavy but he bears the weight happily. It's not like it's anyone's fault. ]

[appellative]

[ She blinks up at him and smiles. ]

It's awesome.My mom named me after a jaeger pilot.

[alaskans]

[ Awesome. No argument there, though Raleigh recognizes his own biases on the subject. When he and Yance were kids their names were the bane of their collective existence (—who names their kid Raleigh—) but they'd grown into them over time.

This little girl, who wears Yancy like it's her Sunday best, has got years on them in that respect. ] One of the best. [ Again, bias. ]

Your mom must know her stuff.

[appellative]

[ The boys at school all ask her why she's named Yancy because to them it's a boy's name, a hero's name. And when they tell her she can't play jaeger vs. kaiju in the playground during recess, she just shrugs and tells them it's okay, it's not my fault that y'all are just jealous. ]

She's a journalist. The best one there is. [ It's said with pride. ] She's super smart.

[alaskans]

So the best and the best, [ Raleigh says, feeling the corners of his mouth begin to pull upwards. There were people you met in life that were just like that, able to put smiles on faces just by walking into a room. But that's never been Raleigh; that was his brother, as far as he was concerned. He was just the dumb chucklefuck left doing all of the smiling, too damn enthusiastic to ever play it cool like Yancy. ]

Guess that makes you double best, huh? [ It probably sounds a lot like pandering but Raleigh doesn't mean it it be. He means it just like he means everything else that comes out of his mouth: as earnestly as possible. Like he's carved off a tiny morsel of himself just to offer up in conversation. ]

[appellative]

[ She doesn't think it's pandering at all, and for that, she's definitely grinning up at him. ]

So what's your name? [ She's curious. She knows she shouldn't talk to strangers but the lady who let her out of her headspace seems to think he's okay, so she's just going to run with that. ]

[alaskans]

[ He recognizes that smile, or at least thinks he does. (Memory worked that way sometimes, imperfect and incomplete, details smudged and rearranged over time — a look that lingers longer in the mind, words left unsaid that should have been shared between people.) The last time Raleigh had grinned like that it had been February 29, 2020 — one detail that doesn't smudge or rearrange or dissipate with time. (That one he carries and indefinitely. First a weight, then a scar, now a memorial.) ]

Yancy— [ It's a weird thing to say out loud again. He offers his hand, huge compared to hers, in the space between them. ] —I'm Raleigh.

[appellative]

[ She recognizes the name from the files her mom would sit down with, the television tuned into the news. There were pictures and notes and sets of typed up conversations that her mom called transcriptions and she'd sat down to thumb through one because she'd seen her namesake. ]

Are you named after a pilot too?

[exhort]

I don't really see a problem either, so maybe there isn't one.

[appellative]

She's just being silly. She thinks letting me out is a bit self-indulgent.

[exhort]

Even if it is, that's not a bad thing.

[appellative]

No, it's not. Especially since I get to hang around you, Uncle Raleigh.