Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They pause at an intersection for a car to pass by, and Bradley’s glad for the brief break to stop and suck in air. He has years of proof, but he’ll never understand just how Nat is so much faster than him even though his legs are way longer.

She takes off again the second the road is clear, and Bradley shakes his head as he trots after her, lengthening his stride to keep up. This was supposed to be an easy jog.

“You can keep going,” Nat says, not out of breath in the least, once he’s at her shoulder again.

He frowns. “Keep going with what?”

“Complaining about Jake.”

That’s not—he wasn’t doing that. Bradley rolls his eyes.

“Very funny, I don’t do that.”

“Then what would you call the past five minutes? And I wasn’t kidding, keep going. You get all worked up, it’s great for your cardio.”

Bradley makes a face at her and stays silent, to make a point, for several minutes. But he just ends up replaying in his head his interaction with Jake the other day in the gym. “Did I tell you about the thing with the weights?”

“You told me you saw him at the gym. Why were you even working out there, anyway?”

“Reuben asked me, I didn’t want to say no,” Bradley says. He’d like to make friends with these people if he can, it seems like a tight-knit group. Being on a new team, in a new series, living on a whole other continent…it’s been a lot of change. He feels like the new kid at school who doesn’t know what lunch table to sit at.

“And Jake was there?”

Bradley grits his teeth at the memory. “There’s only one squat rack. We were sharing it, and he was such a dick about me lifting less than he was. I mean, I could lift that much weight if I wanted to.”

“Totally,” Nat says, but she’s trying too hard to keep her voice steady, and when Bradley glares over at her, she’s grinning.

“Hey, fuck you. You’re my trainer, this is your fault.”

“I’ll call him up and tell him. Let you off the hook.”

“You do that,” Bradley mutters. “Why does he need to lift that much weight anyway?”

“It’s like a team joke,” Nat says, then elaborates when Bradley lifts his eyebrows at her in question. “That he works out like a mechanic instead of an engineer.”

Bradley’s not thinking about that, so he changes the topic. “And the nicknames.”

They’re dumb as hell, even though Bradley desperately wants one. He’s reminded of it every time he sees Coyote scrawled somewhere, scratched out and replaced with Bradshaw.

“Hangman,” Nat says with a little laugh. “The opposite of a wingman, I’ve heard.”

“What?” Bradley’s gaze snaps over to her. “What have you heard?”

“Just that he’s, you know.” Nat shrugs. “Charming.”

“Charming,” Bradley repeats. He certainly hasn’t seen it. “Not the word I would choose.”

Annoying as shit, maybe.

“Didn’t Ricky vouch for him?”

“Not that directly. He knows someone who knows him.”

After trying for years and finally figuring out what his holdup was in F1—fucking Mav, Bradley hopes he never sees his goddamn face ever again—last year his agent was finally able to get two offers. The choice between them wasn’t difficult: Porsche is the better team and offered more money. Bradley knew going in he’d have to work closely with Jake, but he never had a chance to meet him. Which he thought didn’t matter, since he trusts Ricky and Ricky apparently trusts someone who likes Jake, but maybe that was a mistake.

Bradley’s heard the rumors, that Jake and Javy were close and that Jake was upset when Javy left for Jaguar. And Jake certainly hasn’t bothered trying to hide his distaste of Bradley. He’s not sure how they’re supposed to make this work.

Nat sighs. “If you’re that unhappy about it, tell Simpson you want someone else.”

Bradley’s mouth twists. That option isn’t appealing, either, and not only because it’d be sort of a dick move to skewer Jake’s career like that. “I don’t want everyone to hate me.”

“Then you’ll just have to deal with it.”

Nat’s as pragmatic as always even when, like now, it makes Bradley grit his teeth. Even though—especially because—he knows she’s right.

“He’s just…so fucking annoying. Drives me insane.”

Always showing off in meetings, always irritatingly competent, always acting like he knows more than Bradley. Always convinced that he’s right, and only even more irritating because he usually is. For all Bradley knows, Jake’s secretly rooting for him to fail.

Jake wouldn’t know it, but it cuts right down to the core of him: that Bradley’s not ready, that he shouldn’t have come to F1, that he won’t be able to do this and should’ve just stayed in Indy instead. The thoughts that pace around his head late at night when he can’t sleep. Does a guy in his 30s who’s spent his entire career in Indy have any hope of being competitive against these 20-something kids who have come up through F3 and F2? The voice sounds a lot like Jake.

Nat finally cruises to a stop and has the decency to look a bit winded. She hooks her hands behind her head and takes a deep breath. “You know, you can just admit that you think he’s hot, it’s fine.”

She’s not wrong about that, either.

Bradley can’t lie, the thought has crossed his mind. Fucking Jake just to shut him up, finding out what other noises he can make, seeing how long he’d keep up that smug little smirk if he was on his knees.

But he shouldn’t go there, not even in his own head. Not like it matters, anyway, he has way bigger problems than thinking his engineer is as hot as he is infuriating.

He tries to play it off. “Why, you think he’s attractive?”

“I mean, I have eyes.”

“Don’t go there,” Bradley warns. “Not with someone on the team, that sounds messy.”

Nat laughs, louder than Bradley thinks his comment really warrants. “I’ll try to resist.”

It’s shocking to finally catch a glimpse of the famous Jake charm at a bar in Barcelona. What’s even more shocking is the tall, handsome man to whom it’s directed.

Bradley is so caught off-guard by the blatant flirting taking place two feet in front of him that it takes a moment for it to register that Jake isn’t even speaking English but rather fluent-sounding Spanish. Bradley can’t understand a word they’re saying, but the other guy is clearly charmed, laughing at Jake’s words and his easy grins.

Either Jake is extraordinarily good at faking interest—and really cares about getting this pool table—or it’s real. Bradley’s betting on the latter, based on the lazy sprawl of his body and the way his eyes keep flicking down to the guy’s broad shoulders with a genuine spark of attraction.

Huh.

That’s—that’s new information. Because Jake has certainly never looked at him like that, with such heavy intent in his eye, nor shot him such a shameless smile. Not that…well, why would he? Bradley’s come around to Jake a little, the raw edge of his abrasiveness has smoothed with the time they’ve spent together and is now more amusing to Bradley than anything, but that doesn’t appear to be mutual. Jake is clearly still just tolerating him.

It isn’t a long conversation; soon enough one of the guys actually playing loses, and the third one, the one Jake was talking to, leaves with a friendly nod. Jake doesn’t seem too cut up about it, and his attention snaps easily to Bradley when he gets up in his space to take a pool cue off the wall.

The four of them take the table, and eventually, Bradley can’t resist. With Nat and Bob otherwise occupied, he looks over at Jake. “So where’d the Spanish come from? You fluent?”

Jake doesn’t answer right away and just squints at him while he takes a drink. “Lots of questions about me tonight.”

“Is that a crime? Still deciding whether I’m going to keep you around, might as well get to know you.”

Bradley softens the words with a smile, intending it to be a joke, but Jake just rolls his eyes. He catches the gaze of someone over Bradley’s shoulder, and the smile he gives them is familiar now—definitely not a look intended for Bradley. He twists and spots the target, a pretty dark-haired woman glancing right back at Jake.

Jake downs the rest of his beer in two long swallows and presses his pool cue into Bradley’s chest.

“Gotta go. Good luck with those two.”

Bradley laughs. Hangman, indeed.

“The nickname fits! You’re leaving me hanging.”

Jake claps him on the shoulder, his eyes twinkling. It’s perhaps the fondest look he’s ever sent Bradley’s direction. “Sorry.”

Bradley can’t help but watch him go. The woman spins on her bar stool as Jake approaches, and there’s an easy familiarity between them—this must be the woman he mentioned earlier, from the bar. Jake laughs at something she says, his arm dropping to fit around her waist, and Bradley looks away.

Nat and Bob have reached a conclusion about whoever’s shot they were arguing about—Bradley wasn’t paying attention in the least—and when Bradley approaches the table, Bob frowns.

“Where’s Jake?”

Bradley glances over to where the woman was, but there’s no sign of either of them.

“He left. Not alone.”

Bob looks around, his eyes wide behind his glasses. “With that guy? He moves fast, damn.”

He sounds impressed but not surprised. So he knows, and presumably the rest of them do, too. Interesting. For the time being, Bradley ignores Nat’s stare boring holes into the side of his head. “No. A woman.”

When Bradley bends over for his shot, there are eyes on his back—eyes that don’t belong to Nat or Bob. The ball skirts the pocket, barely, and he curses under his breath as he straightens and reaches for his beer. He takes a sip and lets his gaze wander until he finds the culprit: it’s the guy from before, the one who was talking to Jake. He keeps looking over at Bradley, and he’s not being all that subtle about it.

Not that Bradley minds, he’s pretty good-looking. Tall, broad enough to nicely fill out his plain t-shirt, with dark hair that swoops cutely over his forehead. Not quite in Jake’s league, but—who is? Is this guy Jake’s type? He’s a little generic, Bradley isn’t sure if there’s anything he can glean from it.

Bradley doesn’t look back or otherwise engage him but appreciates the attention anyway, his presence lingering in his periphery as he finishes the game. Bob wins, mostly because Bradley is too distracted to be of much help to Nat. Should he try to flirt with this guy? But his thoughts keep getting crowded out by the memory of Jake flirting with him, and he dwells on that instead.

As punishment, Nat orders him to the bar to buy a round. It’s more crowded than it was earlier, and Bradley has to squeeze in and wait a couple minutes for the bartender’s attention. After he orders someone shoulders up next to him, close enough that their upper arms press together, and Bradley doesn’t need to look over to know who it is. Dark-haired guy.

“Hello.”

His accent is pleasant, and Bradley spares him a brief glance. Still handsome up close; maybe he should actually give this a shot. “Hey. You a big fan of pool, I take it?”

He laughs, seemingly unfazed at being caught out staring. “What can I say, I can appreciate talent.”

Yeah, right, Bradley is not that good at pool. He smiles anyway, he can play the game. “Did you not catch that I lost?”

He pairs a shrug with a broad grin. “You’re Bradley Bradshaw, right?”

Oh.

Fuck. That’s why he was looking.

Bradley pastes on a much faker smile and flips to the I-thought-you-were-checking-me-out-but-you-just-know-who-I-am page of his playbook. He has a feeling it will become a well-worn page. “Guilty.”

The guy turns to face Bradley more fully, propping one elbow up on the bar. His fingers are about half an inch from the bare skin of Bradley’s forearm.

“Could I buy you a drink?”

So he is interested. Ballsy. Bradley admires the initiative, even as he drops his gaze and closes off his posture. He’s a pro at shutting things down with an air of obliviousness, without being an ass about it. Because there’s no way in hell he’s taking this risk.

The bartender slides three beers across the bar top—perfect timing. Bradley nods at him in thanks and shoots the guy a tight smile.

“Thanks, but I should get these back to my friends. Have a good night.”

Bradley doesn’t look back as he heads for their group in the corner. He hands one bottle to Bob and one to Nat, who leans in and lowers her voice. “Don’t think I didn’t see that over at the bar. That dude was hot and definitely into you. Why didn’t you talk to him?”

“Knows who I am.”

She makes a face, and Bradley clinks the neck of his bottle against hers with a rueful smile. For all that he’s thrilled to finally be in F1, that’s the one downside. God, he’s probably never getting laid ever again.

Nat takes a sip. “So are we gonna talk about Jake?”

“Oh, absolutely not,” Bradley says, already trying to shove it out of his brain, and she laughs.

“Wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

A pair of team-issued sneakers steps into his field of view, and Bradley looks up at Jake standing in front of him, just a scant couple inches from his knees. Backpack slung over one shoulder, a paper coffee cup in one hand, looking as chill as ever.

Bradley shrugs. “Where else would I be?”

Jake gestures around them at the boarding area. It’s packed—hence Bradley’s spot on the floor—and he’s sure everyone on this flight is affiliated with F1 in some way.

“I don’t know, on your own plane? Not slumming it with us regular people.”

Bradley snorts. “I’m sure as hell not chartering a flight from Japan to Miami.”

That’s excessive. Long-haul first class is fine.

Jake points at the small space between Bradley and the wall, his intent obvious, so Bradley scoots over the little that he can. Jake sits, close enough that their shoulders touch, and stretches his legs out with a quiet sigh. He’s wearing joggers, clearly dressed for comfort for the long flight, and Bradley stares at the tan expanse of his bare ankles like some sort of overcome Victorian maiden. Finding out that Jake is (almost certainly) into men has not dampened Bradley’s occasional, purely aesthetic interest. He’s not bad to look at.

“Nico’s not here,” Jake points out, and Bradley blinks, reorienting himself to their topic of conversation.

“I think his family has their own plane.”

“And you didn’t get invited? No cute teammate carpool?”

Bradley can’t help the laugh that escapes. “Would you be eager to spend so many hours with him in such a small space?”

Jake’s mouth twists. “Fair point.”

“Not like he offered, anyway,” Bradley admits. They’ve only known each other for a handful of weeks, but there’s already no love lost between him and Nico.

“Not besties yet?”

Ha. Jake was right, when Bradley asked him back in Australia—Nico’s a fucking asshole, without even the decency of some talent to back it up. Bradley’s a stronger driver, he’s sure of it. And despite Nico lucking out into a decent finish yesterday, Bradley thinks Nico knows it, too. He’s itching for a fight, and Bradley’s glad to give him one. This team will be his.

“Don’t think that’s in the cards.”

“Looks like we’re in for a long year, then,” Jake says, but he’s biting back a smile and doesn’t look too cut up about it. For some reason, Bradley being open about his dislike of Nico seems to have gained him some respect in Jake’s eyes.

In for a long year might be true in more ways than one, though. Getting yelled at by Simpson sucked, finishing out of the points sucked more.

“Yeah. Yesterday was pretty shit.”

Jake just hums, but Bradley can spot the tightness in his jaw. “Maybe if you’d fucking listen to me.”

The familiar irritation stirs in Bradley’s blood. It’s not like these two races have been easy for him, either. He’s trying to get used to an entirely different car, a car that he does not like, by the way. He’s not sure why, or even how to go about figuring out what it is, exactly, that he doesn’t like, and he knows he’s doing a shit job but this is all new to him. He’s fucking trying.

He’s not sure he can say the same for Jake, who digs his heels in even more whenever he presses Bradley for information and doesn’t get the desired responses. Bradley doesn’t know what he’s looking for, but he’s clearly not providing it. Which is how they get to the point of their boss yelling at them for sniping at each other on the radio.

But he doesn’t really want to get into an argument about it right now, not when they’re surrounded by Bentley mechanics, by the looks of it, and staring down a long-ass flight.

“Can you just—save it til we’re off the continent, at least.”

For once, Jake listens to him and doesn’t press.

He rummages in the front pocket of his backpack, and Bradley cranes his neck to see what he pulls out. It’s a piece of candy or something, the packaging looks vaguely familiar. “What’s that?”

“Green tea flavored KitKat.” Jake rips it open and cracks the candy neatly in half. “You want a piece?”

Bradley exhales. “Sure.”

Bradley stares at his reflection in the mirror, his hands braced on the sink, and tries not to feel ridiculous about giving himself a pep talk in a bathroom. This weekend will suck, he knows that. He’s been preparing for it, it’s been circled on his mental calendar in bright red pen ever since he knew there was a more-than-decent chance that he’d be in F1 this year. Sure, it’s only Thursday and the press conference was bad enough and it’s bound to just get worse from here, but—

The door opens, and Bradley jerks back.

Javy stills in the doorway, his eyes wide in surprise, and thumbs over his shoulder. “Sorry, man. I can…”

Bradley hides a wince. This is a little embarrassing. “No, it’s fine.”

He eyes the door. He could skedaddle right out of here, it’d be the safe choice. But he hasn’t done a great job so far getting to know the other guys on the grid, and at the very least he needs friendly faces, especially since god knows Nico won’t be one of them. Javy’s been affable and easygoing the few times they’ve talked, plus of course there’s the Porsche connection.

So Bradley clears his throat and forces a smile. “Planning to spend a lot of time hiding in bathrooms this weekend, figured I should get a head start.”

Javy shakes his head and steps fully inside, letting the door fall shut behind him with a thud. “I’m sorry, dude, that was brutal. Vultures, all of them.”

“Yeah.” Javy was in his press conference group and did an admirable job trying to deflect the attention away from Bradley, even at one point making a joke about why he even bothered to show up if no one was asking him any questions. “Thanks for trying, though.”

“Sorry they wouldn’t take the bait. You good?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” Bradley leans his hip against the sink and resists the urge to fold his arms over his chest. “How’s, uh, how’s Jaguar? Big change, I’m guessing.”

A slow smile spreads across Javy’s face. “It’s good. I’m happy, it was the right time to move on. But it’s different, you know? Different vibe. Porsche is such a family.”

Yeah, Bradley knows. He’s hoping they’ll let him in a little bit, he’s been trying. No nickname yet, though.

“How’s Jake?” Javy asks, grinning. They were close, Bradley knows, but he’s not sure if they still are. “Still being a dick?”

Bradley laughs. “No, he’s—we’re good.”

It’s not even a lie. Something changed with Jake between Japan and Miami. Bradley isn’t sure what, doesn’t know if it was anything in particular that he did, but Jake started making a bit more of an effort to meet him halfway, and Bradley’s glad for it. Because while he’ll never admit it out loud, Jake was right. A lot of this is new to him, and he needs Jake’s technical help. Even Jake tricking him into spending time in the sim didn’t piss him off like it would have not that long ago. Doing laps with Jake in the sim was the most fun he’d had in months.

Just trust me. Normally, words like that make Bradley want to run—lone wolf, he can hear Nat say, with a roll of her eyes—but he’s learning that he can maybe trust Jake on the track. He’s remarkably competent, which Bradley knew in theory but can finally see in practice now that they’re finally figuring out how to communicate. They still have progress to be made on working together, but Bradley can at least envision it now. He thinks it could be good.

Bradley has even, maybe, moved away from dislike and tipped a little too far in the other direction. Whoops. His easy, straightforward aesthetic appreciation of Jake is threatening to spawn into something more troublesome, and his attempts to course-correct have only been marginally successful. Probably some kind of jet lag-induced delusion—he needs to just get over it.

“Good,” Javy says, nodding.

There’s a look in his eye—wistful, almost, that gives Bradley a weird twinge of guilt, like he stole Javy’s team. But maybe he’s just imagining it; in reality, he only has the opportunity to be here in the first place because Javy decided to leave.

“Just sic Jake on everyone this weekend,” Javy continues. “Make him keep everyone away. He loves telling people what to do, a little bit of power goes straight to his head.”

Bradley laughs. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Did you ever hear about his whole Twitter saga?”

Bradley shakes his head and straightens, trying not to look too eager at the prospect of a story about Jake. He’s wildly curious to scrounge up every fact he can, which is definitely not a good sign for this aforementioned delusion, but he has so far resisted the urge to google him or even look back at his old Instagram posts. And Jake’s not that forthcoming about anything not related to work, so he’s a bit of a mystery.

“I haven’t, what happened?”

“A couple years ago, my grandmother got really sick. I went back home, to say goodbye and go to the funeral, and I ended up missing a race. Some reporter wrote an article about it, right, that it was unprofessional to skip a race.”

Bradley rolls his eyes. “Of course.”

“Jake totally went off on the guy on Twitter. And it wasn’t just, like, fuck you, man or whatever, it was eloquent. Multiple posts worth.”

“No,” Bradley says, laughing. He can totally imagine it.

Javy grins. “He got in so much trouble with the team. It’s all deleted, obviously, but I’m sure there are screenshots floating around somewhere.”

Bradley might have to do some selective googling, then.

“Sounds about right. I’m sure you heard about the team orders thing, back in Monza?”

Javy nods. “Bullshit,” he says, succinct, which Bradley appreciates.

“They kind of sprung it on us, and Jake totally laid into Simpson afterward.”

Javy laughs, shaking his head. “God, what an idiot,” he says, his voice infused with enough fondness that Bradley realizes he and Jake must still be close after all. “See, I like Pierre and all, but he’s certainly not yelling at his boss for me.”

Yeah, that one was an eye-opener.

Bradley tries not to dwell on it, how it felt standing in that hallway, listening to Jake stick his neck out and defend him so vigorously to Simpson. He kind of thought…he doesn’t know what he thought, actually. That he was special? But he’s been telling himself that it wasn’t a big deal, and it clearly wasn’t, especially given Javy’s story. It must be just how Jake is, loyal to a fault to his drivers. Not a bad quality, so what’s up with the weird twinge in Bradley’s chest?

He heads for the door, and Javy claps him on the shoulder. “Hey, good luck this weekend.”

He clearly doesn’t only mean the race, and Bradley nods. “Thanks.”

Maybe Javy’s right, maybe he should go find Jake.

Jake pulls some strings, or convinces someone else to pull some strings, and Bradley’s schedule gets conveniently rearranged, and they find themselves with a completely empty circuit, no fans or other team staff in sight, for a track walk in the early evening. It’s a beautiful setting, the fading, dappled light shining over the trees that surround the track, and Bradley kind of hates it.

He pauses at the second turn, looking straight ahead although the circuit now hangs a sharp right. It’s eerie being here, like the hairs at the back of his neck are standing on end.

“The track layout was so different back then,” he says.

When his dad was racing, he means. Jake must get it, he nods and gestures off in the distance. “Yeah. They had those long straights in the forest with the chicanes.”

Bradley stares off into the trees. “I guess I thought the old track would still be here, just for history’s sake. I didn’t know it wasn’t.”

“They tore it up and now it’s just trees.”

Bradley looks over at him. It’s stopped raining, but Jake’s still wearing his light windbreaker, the Porsche-branded one that Bradley used as a pillow earlier in the day when Jake let him hide out in his office. In the lead-up to this race he hasn’t made one reference to Bradley’s dad, which he greatly appreciates. He has to handle enough of that from everyone else this weekend.

“You think we can scale that fence?” Bradley asks with a jerk of his chin. It’s tall but not extraordinarily so, and there’s nothing sharp at the top.

“I think we can manage.”

The barrier at the edge of the track turns out to be a harder obstacle, low but broad and awkward to get over, but they manage to scale it and then the fence. And there, at the edge of the forest, is the memorial.

Bradley blows out a breath and steps closer. It’s bigger than he thought—a statue, flanked by two stone posts with plaques on top, and even a little bench. It’s nice.

“I’ve never seen this. Besides, like, pictures.”

“Really?” Jake asks from behind him.

Bradley shakes his head. “Never set foot in Germany until yesterday. I wasn’t here when it happened. They invited us back when they did all this, but I told Mom I didn’t want to go and she didn’t make me.” He steps up to one of the plaques, is momentarily confused, then lets out a little laugh. “Not sure why I’m surprised it’s in German.”

Jake stands at the other one. “This one’s in English.”

Bradley joins him, shoulder-to-shoulder, and lets his eyes skim over it—survived by wife Carole and son Bradley—but doesn’t really take in the words.

“The renaturalization of the old track has ecologically enhanced the forest,” Jake reads.

“Good for the forest,” Bradley mutters. Probably better that he can’t get to the exact spot, anyway. He looks up at the statue. “Doesn’t look much like him, does it?”

He glances at Jake, whose face twists a little. “It’s, uh…you know, statues are tough.” Bradley bites back a smile. It’s funny to see Jake, of all people, trying to be nice. “I mean, you can tell it is him. They got the mustache.”

Bradley hums. The base of the statue is covered with flowers and signs, clearly left by fans earlier in the day. “I didn’t bring anything, I feel bad.”

It just slips out, he doesn’t really mean to say it, but Jake shakes his head. “This is for everyone else.”

He’s right. This isn’t for him.

“They asked me to do, like, a photo opp thing here.”

Jake frowns. “Fuck them, of course they did. Did you say no?” he asks, and the lines of his face smooth out when Bradley nods. “Good.”

For the last 10 minutes or so of the post-race debrief, Bradley stops paying attention to what’s being discussed and starts looking at his watch instead. It’s rude, maybe, but this is running over and he has things he needs to do.

He jumps to his feet the second Simpson dismisses them, and as everyone files out, he grabs Jake. “You gotta help me.”

Jake stops in his tracks, his eyes immediately narrowing as they flick down to where Bradley’s grabbed him by the elbow. Bradley lets go and flexes his fingers. “With what?” Jake asks.

“The Indy 500 starts in six minutes, and I don’t have a place to watch it.”

Jake just looks at him for a second, long enough that Bradley figures he’ll probably shake him off with a smirk and tell him he’s on his own. But then he nods. “All right, let me grab my stuff. Two seconds, don’t move.”

He’s as quick as promised and comes back with his backpack slung over one shoulder and Duke the giant stuffed rooster tucked under his other arm. Bradley lifts an eyebrow, and Jake shakes his head. “Lost a bet, do not ask.”

Bradley grins. “Hope you’re checking your suitcase because that definitely counts as your second carry-on.”

“You want my help or not?” Jake says with an eye roll, but he’s already striding off so Bradley figures that’s more of a rhetorical question.

The Monaco paddock area is a maze due to the lack of space, and it’s even worse post-race with everything getting packed up. But Jake winds through the mess and finds them a little alcove that’s mostly hidden, with enough space to sit side-by-side. They’re still in the restricted area so they should be safe from fans and anyone else who might bother Bradley, especially when Jake pulls a baseball cap out of his bag, just a plain faded blue one, and tugs it over Bradley’s head. “We should be able to pick up one of the teams’ WiFi, if it stops we can use my hotspot.”

Bradley pulls up the stream on his iPad and balances the tablet on top of Duke, which Jake has helpfully settled across their thighs. Just in time for the green flag, perfect. Bradley exhales. “Thanks.”

“So who’s going to win?” Jake asks.

Bradley hums. He hasn’t been paying as much attention to the season as he figured that he would, so he’s not really sure. “Linden has a good shot. I mean, anything can happen, but he qualified second.”

“That’s your old teammate, right?”

“Yeah, him and Dwyer. There were three of us.”

“You guys close?”

Eh. Bradley shrugs. “I don’t know if close is the right word.” It’s not like they talk regularly or anything, now that he’s gone. “But we were friendly, they’re good guys.”

“Is the teammate thing as tricky as it is here?”

“Not really. There’s no equivalent of the constructors, so you don’t have that to deal with. It’s more of an every-man-for-himself kind of thing, makes it easier.”

Jake nods. They watch in silence for a while, but it’s comfortable. Bradley had worried, briefly, after he had come out to Jake in Germany—even though he didn’t do it in so many words, he knew Jake got it—whether things between them would change. He never thought it would be a problem, per se, but you never know. He’s not sure why he even entertained the thought, however briefly, that things might change in a positive direction. But what was he expecting? Jake’s never brought it up again, and why would he?

Jake shifts against him. The space they’re crowded into is small enough that their shoulders touch. It’s been a long day, warm even with the cool breeze coming off the water, and despite his post-race shower Bradley’s lower back is beaded with sweat. Somehow Jake still smells fresh, even though Bradley knows he definitely doesn’t get a shower.

“Like, I get this is the most famous race in the world or whatever. But—an oval, really? This is barely above NASCAR.”

Bradley sucks in a breath through his teeth. “You take that back.”

Jake unsuccessfully bites back a grin and gestures at the screen. “Driving in circles? C’mon. This is what everyone hates about motorsports.”

“Okay, first of all,” Bradley starts, holding up a finger, “ovals are only maybe a third of the races. Qualifying is faster than I ever go in the PR-22, and as for the race, you’re going like, 190. The entire time, there are no breaks. One wrong move and you’re fucked. And there’s no power steering! That’s a fucking workout, mentally and physically.”

“You aren’t as bulked up as you were in Indy.”

Bradley’s brain stutters, and his other protests fall away as he glances over at Jake, whose eyes still are on the race. It’s true, he slimmed down by five or seven pounds or so—though he’s still one of the bigger drivers on the grid, if not the biggest—but how would Jake even know that? Or notice that?

“Uh.” Bradley clears his throat. “Yeah, well. Mostly the power steering thing. The Indy cars are heavier.”

“It’s not easy, I’ll give you that,” Jake allows. “Unconvinced about it not being boring, though.”

“Bold of you to call this boring after we just raced Monaco,” he says, and Jake laughs.

“At least there are real corners.”

“Slow ones,” he shoots back.

Jake doesn’t have an immediate rebuttal to that and changes the subject. “Do you really have to drink the milk at the end when you win?”

“Yeah, it’s a whole thing. And after all the exertion and the adrenaline and everything…” Bradley shakes his head. “My first time, it did not stay down.”

Jake makes a face. “Gross.”

“You ever been to an Indy race?” Bradley asks.

“No. Do you miss it?”

No one’s asked him that before. The line of questioning is always about moving to F1, how different it is, how grateful he must feel to be here, as if he just spent a decade twiddling his thumbs in Indy instead of racing and winning in a series that he genuinely enjoyed. He blows out a breath.

“I miss the familiarity. I miss feeling like I know what I’m doing.”

A mere few weeks ago, he never would have made such an admission to Jake. That it’s been six races, and he’s only just starting to get a handle on things. Some of the progress he has made has been because of Jake, not that he’s ready or willing to admit it.

“But I left for a reason,” he continues. “I was getting bored, ready for a new challenge.”

“Oh, I see,” Jake says with a smirk, though he looks almost impressed. “Too good, huh.”

Bradley just shrugs. Yeah, basically. He won the championship three times, won the Indy 500 twice. He won everything there was to win.

“We’ll find you an oval somewhere.” Jake twirls his finger. “Let you do your circles like a little hamster.”

“Oh, I don’t miss the ovals.”

Jake makes an annoyed noise. “What? But you just—”

“You can’t talk shit about ovals. I can. They are kinda boring, give me a car that can take a real corner.”

“I did,” Jake says, all pissy, and Bradley laughs.

For a long time—minutes, hours, Bradley has no fucking clue—it’s just a blur. He can’t figure out how to get himself out of the car, despite his frantic efforts, and he’s disoriented enough that it takes a while for him to realize it’s because he’s upside down like a goddamn flipped turtle and he can’t get out. What the hell happened? Jake’s voice is there—or is he imagining it?—Bradley? What happened? Bradley? Fucking answer me, Bradshaw. You okay? Bradley?, and it hits him, a sudden pang of lucidity, that Jake doesn’t know. He thinks he says something back, tries to tell him that he is not okay, actually, not in the least, but he’s not sure he actually gets his shit together to say anything and even if he does, there are like a thousand buttons on that steering wheel and he’s trying but there’s no way in hell he’s managing to accurately press the radio button, even if it is still functioning amidst the wreckage.

The abrupt, discordant hiss of several fire extinguishers is perhaps the most reassuring sound he’s heard in his entire life, and his world tilts nauseatingly as the car flips back over with a jarring thud. The world keeps spinning, even after he’s pretty sure it shouldn’t be, and there are so many faces leaning down into the car that he has no idea whether it’s quadruple vision or just that many people. Someone asks if he can wiggle his toes, which he can—not paralyzed, probably? hooray?—even though it hurts, like fucking everything else.

Hands reach in and pull him out—fucking excruciating, every inch, though he’s never been more glad to get out of a car in his entire life, not even that one time as a kid in the backseat of a sedan in San Francisco when he almost puked from carsickness—and he tries to shake off the grip and walk away by himself because he is fine but it turns out nothing in his body works, like at all, and it feels like every single bone in there is broken even though that can’t possibly be true? He’s unceremoniously plucked off the ground and placed on a stretcher that’s neither soft nor padded, and Bradley wonders whether he’s going to get any kind of comment card survey about this experience. Kudos for the general lifesaving, demerits for the comfort level.

Everyone is talking, some in Spanish and some in English, but no one’s talking to him, just around him, about him, above him, every single other preposition. Should he tell someone that he can’t breathe? Like, really, he can’t at all, can barely suck in a single breath without excruciating pain unfurling through his torso, but conveying that sounds like effort and hey, if it’s important, they’ll probably figure it out.

He closes his eyes for a while.

The ambulance goes somewhere, then somewhere else, then his world is tilting again with a very loud thump-thump-thump-thump and he must be in the helicopter. Probably not a great sign? Some of the pain eases, blurs at the edges a bit, so either he’s recovering already or they gave him something. There’s a woman sitting next to him, keeping a hand on his knee while she looks at a monitor, and her hair’s darker than his mom’s was, but there’s something about her, maybe in the eyes? His dad died in a car accident, do they know that? Is there some kind of genetic component to this, like a family history he needs to explain? His maternal grandfather died of heart failure, his mother of cancer, his father in an F1 car. Put it on the form.

The woman pats his thigh. “Lucky for you, you’re not dying.”

She appears to be some sort of medical professional, so Bradley finds her words mostly reassuring. The hospital brings more questions, endless questions, more x-rays and scans and who the fuck knows what else. But the bed is comfier than the stretcher, and at least there is that.

And then a guy walks in with an FIA patch on his shirt who looks vaguely familiar but reassuringly in-charge, and he tells Bradley that there are two people out there waiting for him, he didn’t catch their names, actually, but they’re from his team and called themselves family and would he like to see them? And for the first time in god knows how long, he exhales and it doesn’t hurt.

Yes. Yes, he would, actually.

Jake doesn’t budge from that chair for a while, which relaxes Bradley as much as the pain meds do. When he eventually does—he flies out of there so fast there are practically skid marks on the linoleum, hopefully everything’s fine and he just needs to use the bathroom—Bradley looks over at Nat.

She seems outwardly fine, but she’s pale and her eyes are still a little wild as they flick over him, from his head to his feet and back again. “I’m sorry,” he says, catching her gaze when it passes over his face, and her jaw clenches. Her eyes fall shut, and she leans out of her chair to hug him carefully.

“God, Bradley,” she whispers into his shoulder, her mouth pressed to his hospital gown. “Never do that again.”

He squeezes her arm with his good hand and kisses the side of her head. “I’ll try really hard not to.”

She wipes her arm over her eyes as she sits back. “Fuck. Can I offer you a piece of advice?”

“Try not to crash the car next time?”

“No, not that.” Nat smiles, steadier than before. “If you don’t want Jake to know what’s up, you need to fix your face. I mean, I know he’s a little dense, but—”

“Hey,” Bradley complains. He’d probably be offended, and maybe a little embarrassed, if he didn’t feel so floaty and nice. “He is not. And my face is fine.”

“You better hope he’s dense because I was not lying about the heart-eyes.”

“I—” Bradley groans as it dawns on him. “Man, I told him about Mav. Like, the whole story,” he realizes, a little dumbfounded, and Nat laughs. “Fuck. I’m not taking any more of that shit.”

“You definitely should if you need to.”

Not worth the risk, Bradley can handle some rib pain if it means he has a better chance of keeping his thoughts inside his head where they belong.

“Do you think he’s seeing Paige?”

Shit, his filter is gone.

Nat laughs. “Paige? Are you serious? They…”

Her voice trails off as she tilts her head, clearly thinking about it.

“See!” Bradley lifts an arm and immediately regrets it as a stab of pain finds its way through the haze. “It’s not crazy.”

“It’s a little crazy. I’m sure they’re just friends. Isn’t she like, 25? And why don’t you just ask him, if you’re so curious?”

The thought of trying to find a way to bring it up in casual conversation is repulsive. He wrinkles his nose. “That’s weird.”

“Why? You’re friends, it’s a completely normal thing to ask a friend.”

“It’s not…we don’t normally talk about stuff like that.”

Nat lifts an eyebrow in a rather knowing way, which Bradley ignores. “Want me to find out?” she asks.

“Definitely not. Please forget I mentioned it.”

Bradley will certainly try to forget this entire conversation, actually.

Nat sighs. “What’d I tell you that time you let a naked man in my bathroom without warning me?”

God, she’s never letting him live that one down. He wasn’t even naked, which Bradley declines to point out for the tenth time.

“That I better not invite him back to the house unless he’s naked in my bathroom, not yours?”

She smirks, a little meaner than strictly necessary, in Bradley’s opinion. He’s still in a hospital bed, after all. “After that.”

“That I need to get off my ass and do something about it,” he repeats dutifully.

“Right, right. And how’s that going?”

Poorly, as Nat well knows. What is he supposed to do anyway? Starting up some kind of casual relationship, even if Jake would be interested—and that’s a big if—seems like a disastrous idea, given how closely they have to work together, and it’s not like Bradley knows how to do anything other than that.

“Have your excuses improved any, at least?” she continues, once she gets the message that he won’t be answering her.

“Yes,” Bradley says weakly. He’s full of excuses, that’s for sure. “I’m still not sure what the—what the vibe is.”

“Are you dense? That man would do anything for you.”

“No, he’s actually quite hard to read.”

Nat rolls her eyes so hard it looks like it physically pains her. “Jesus Christ.”

“And doing things for me is, you know, his job.”

She snaps her fingers. “Oh, you’re so right, I forgot. Driving you around everywhere, personal nighttime strategy sessions in your hotel room, dinners every Saturday—all part of the job description!”

“It is, he’s very dedicated!”

Her subsequent look is so pitying that he would honestly prefer the eye rolls.

“How long have you had a crush on him, anyway?” she asks, and Bradley winces at her choice of words. Crush makes it sound like he’s in high school. “I’m hoping you’ll tell me now that your inhibitions are lowered.”

“I didn’t tell you cause it’s not important.”

He didn’t tell her because he doesn’t know. It snuck up on him a little bit, and now it’s just there, all the time, wherever he looks. It started with just thinking Jake’s hot, something he has in common with a good portion of people on the planet, probably, but Jake’s wickedly funny and secretly thoughtful and consumed with his job to such a degree that would likely concern a normal person but Bradley just finds insanely attractive, even setting aside the point that it directly benefits his career. He’s never been so engrossed by anyone before, which is fully terrifying in its own right. They spend a lot of time together, but no matter what they do—whether they’re on a boat in Monaco or driving back roads in Bradley’s car or just watching a movie in a hotel room—it doesn’t satisfy Bradley’s thirst for more.

Nat shakes her head and pulls out her phone.

“What are you doing?”

“Buying Jake a flight for tomorrow, he’s about to miss the team one.”

“Oh.” Bradley clears his throat. “I’m sure he doesn’t want to, like…stay. The night. He doesn’t have to do that.”

Nat laughs. “Are we talking about the same person? You tell him that, then, I don’t want to get my head bitten off.”

“Maybe I will,” he says, to be contrary, but Nat just rolls her eyes again.

Bradley walks into the kitchen and is more surprised than he should be to see Mav. Not as surprised as he was a couple days ago, when the car that brought him and Nat home from the airport pulled in to his driveway and nearly hit Mav’s motorcycle, but—still surprised.

At that time Bradley was in no mood to speak to anyone, let alone his estranged godfather waiting on the porch, and very nearly sent him right back to wherever he came from. But near-death experiences have a tendency of shifting your perspective, he’s learned, and instead of uttering the first colorful phrases that came to mind, he told Mav that if he made himself extremely scarce for as long as Bradley wanted, he could stay.

And he’s obeyed—Bradley hasn’t laid eyes on him once in the past two days. But here he is, sitting at Bradley’s kitchen island like he owns the place.

“Good morning,” Bradley says, and Mav brightens. Bradley holds the power here, he could still send Mav packing or just retreat back to his bedroom without another word. But he’s a little curious as to whatever it is that he wants to say.

“How are you feeling?” Mav asks, as his gaze flicks down to Bradley’s cast.

“Okay. Better than before.”

He settles himself carefully against the counter and waits him out. It doesn’t take long, patience has never been Mav’s strong suit.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what, exactly?” Bradley asks, dry, and Mav’s mouth twists.

“That’s fair.” He ducks his head, an uncharacteristic display of humility. From what Bradley remembers, at least, it’s not like they’ve had a lot of contact over the past decade or so. Maybe he’s changed. “It’s a long list. But I meant for Silverstone, showing up like I did.”

Bradley nods. He’s still embarrassed, at how much that affected him. He deserved every moment of Jake’s lecture. “Apology noted. Some advance warning would’ve been nice.”

“I tried,” he says, his voice tight, which probably isn’t a lie. Bradley’s ignored a lot of voicemails over the past few months.

“And maybe my lack of a response could’ve been a clue,” he shoots back, but Mav just shakes his head.

“No, we need to talk. And I just—I had to see you. I’m so proud of you, that you made it.”

Despite the genuine sincerity in Mav’s voice Bradley can’t help but scoff. Yeah, he did make it, despite Mav’s best efforts and despite his doubts.

Things between them had been strained long before he found out that Mav was secretly poking holes in his F1 plans. As a kid, when Bradley was karting and told anyone who would listen that he would grow up to be an F1 driver like his dad, Mav was supportive. But he grew more wary of it, more distant as Bradley grew up, especially after his mother died and Bradley made it very clear that racing really was his future—the only career he was willing to pursue. He’d tried to talk Bradley out of it so many times, always with a doubtful air about it like, do you really think you can do this?

In Bradley’s mind back then, if Mav didn’t think he could do it, then he was more than welcome to get the fuck out of the way. He didn’t want help, anyway, he wanted to make it solely on his own merits, without Mav’s name or his dad’s memory easing the path. He even considered racing under a different name, to completely distance himself from the Bradshaw legacy, but he couldn’t go through with it. The thought of not honoring his dad in some way was unfathomable.

Contact between him and Mav became more and more sporadic until it was just texts on birthdays and holidays and then, eventually, nothing at all.

“I did make it, no thanks to you,” Bradley says, and Mav nods, his lips pressed tightly together.

“I always knew you would.”

God, what an asshole. Bradley reaches for an apple in the bowl on the counter just to give himself something to do with his hands. “No need to lie, man, c’mon. You never thought I’d be here.”

“I’m not lying. Bradley, it’s the biggest regret of my life, not being there for you. I just didn’t…” He trails off and shakes his head. “I didn’t handle my grief very well, I was selfish. You drive just like your dad. And I had so much guilt about—about not supporting you the way I should have. You can ask whatever you want, and I promise I’ll tell you the truth.”

“Then why now? Why’d you show up at Silverstone?”

“Like I said earlier, we need to talk. There are things I need to tell you, things I need to explain. I’d really like to be part of each other’s lives again.” Mav sighs. “And it wasn’t just Silverstone, I was at Hockenheim, too.”

Well, shit.

Bradley didn’t know that. He takes another bite of his apple to buy himself a few precious seconds. “You were?”

“I figured you wouldn’t want to see me,” Mav says, and he’s sure as fuck right. If he’d seen Mav that weekend, Bradley can’t even imagine how he would have handled it. Poorly, surely. “But even if we didn’t—I was there, I had to be there. I didn’t want you to go through that by yourself.”

Bradley hates that he’s touched by the gesture, that Mav showed up for silent support even though he knew Bradley wouldn’t want any contact. He can’t imagine it’s easy for him to go back to Hockenheim, either. He knows their grief is different. Bradley was young—he has memories of his dad, sure, but for him he mostly had to mourn the thought of the rest of his life without him. That has to be part of it for Mav, too, but the two of them practically grew up together, raced together, made it to F1 together. They’d been best friends for over 20 years, more brothers than anything.

Bradley clears his throat. “I saw the memorial. For the first time. It’s nice.”

“It is nice,” Mav agrees. “You drove beautifully that weekend, congratulations.”

“Thank you,” he says stiffly. “Why are you here now?”

“We really need to talk,” he says again, “and after Barcelona…something like that speeds up the timeline. I’m sorry you had to go through that alone.”

“I wasn’t alone,” Bradley says through gritted teeth. “I had Nat, and Jake.”

Mav nods. “Right. I remember him from Silverstone. Hard to forget getting frog-marched out of the garage.”

There’s a faint smirk on his face, and Bradley rolls his eyes. “I don’t think that’s exactly how it went down.”

“He seems like a good guy. You two buddies?”

Bradley bites off the last section of his apple and thinks while he chews. Buddies, sure.

“I have a huge crush on him, actually, it’s making my life hell.” He’s coming around to the word crush, the adolescent connotation matches the sheer absurdity of his feelings. He tosses the apple core into the garbage can under the sink, and when he turns back, Mav’s look of complete shock is quite gratifying. “I’m gay, did I ever tell you that?”

They’re both well-aware that the answer is no.

“Wow,” he manages. His face is going on quite the journey. “That’s—that’s cool.”

Bradley laughs. “That’s cool?”

Mav drops his face into his hands. “I wasn’t expecting you to say that,” he says, muffled. “I don’t have anything prepared to say.”

“Wow, so you actually planned the rest of it?”

He lifts his head. “No need to be a jerk about it,” he snaps, and Bradley grins. “Thanks for telling me.”

Bradley just shrugs. Maybe he can make a little bit of an effort, near-death experience and all.

“Why is it making your life hell?” Mav asks. “Does he not feel the same way or something? Hard to believe.”

Bradley snorts. “What, the closeted guy with no relationship history, not to mention the abandonment issues and a serious trust problem? Yeah, I’m a real prize.” Mav’s eyes go wide at that, with surprise and something that looks like guilt, and Bradley offers a little gesture. “We can just—scoot past all that.”

“Okay,” Mav says, looking relieved. Bradley sure as hell doesn’t want to talk about it, either. “Well I think you’re a catch.”

It’s almost painfully earnest, and Bradley skirts by that one, too. “Whatever, I’ll figure it out.”

“Summer break’s coming up, right? I’ll get out of your hair in a couple days, invite him here.”

“I think he has plans. I’m not sure what they are, but I overheard him talking to someone about going somewhere.”

Mav shrugs. “Pretend you don’t know, and ask him to come here instead. See what he says.”

Bradley will never tell him, but it’s not the worst idea in the world.

Injury recovery sucks. He’s certainly improving—by six days out Bradley can move around more easily and even work out a bit, although his ribs are still tender. He’s just antsy, knowing that his team is off racing without him at Spa.

And bored. So bored. Bored enough to even scroll through Instagram, which he rarely does. He stops on a post from Reuben, with pictures of the crew running the track. The countryside surrounding the track is beautiful, sure, but that’s not the scenery Bradley’s focused on. He swipes through the photos and lingers on the ones with Jake because no one’s around to judge him for it. Fuck, he looks good. A little douchey, maybe, with his shirt tucked into the waistband of his shorts and his baseball cap turned backward, but Bradley doesn’t hate it.

He comments on the post with a sad face emoji, then taps his thumb on the side of his phone as he thinks about what else to say. The rest of you need to take workout tips from Jake, he types. A little risky, maybe, to do it from his public account and not his private one, but whatever. He won’t be racing for at least a month, he needs a thrill somehow.

Around midday he works out with Nat, as much as he’s able to. He’d rather do more, but it at least feels good to get his heart pumping.

He checks his phone afterward and almost drops it in surprise when he sees a missed FaceTime call from Jake. He hasn’t actually talked to Jake since they dropped him off at the airport in Barcelona. He half-expected at least a text, to see how he was settling in or just to check in, but it’s been radio silence and Bradley hasn’t been brave enough to reach out, now that it’s been several days. Even Nat mentioned him the other day, they’ve clearly been texting, which Bradley feels totally normal about and not at all jealous of.

He does the time difference math in his head—it’s late in Belgium but not that late—and calls him back. When the call connects after just a couple rings, Bradley blinks. Jake’s in bed, and the lighting is dim but not dim enough to disguise the fact that he doesn’t have a fucking shirt on.

He clears his throat. “Hey. Did I wake you?”

“No, you’re good.” Jake’s eyes flick over him, which— “You look better.” Which is clearly for injury assessment purposes. Of course. “What’re you up to?”

“PT. My trainer sucks,” he says loudly. Nat’s still finishing her own workout, and she rolls her eyes at him from across the room.

“Tell loverboy I say hello,” she says, not loudly, but Bradley turns to glare at her anyway. He stands and heads for his bedroom.

“Good for her,” Jake says. His hair is soft-looking and unstyled, like maybe he just got out of the shower. “Heard you watched qualifying today.”

How’d he know that? Because he’s been talking to Nat? Why doesn’t he just text Bradley? The distance is clearly making him insane, as are the shadows that shift across Jake’s chest every time he moves his arm holding the phone.

He gives Jake some shit about Felix—he “loves him,” yeah fucking right—and decides on impulse to take Mav’s advice and invite him to San Diego for the break. Even if he has plans, Bradley can at least make his intentions known.

But then Jake yawns, and Bradley swallows down the words. “It’s late there, go to bed,” he says instead.

“Enjoy your PT. Tell Nat I say hi.”

Bradley resists the urge to make a snarky comment about how they’re clearly in touch.

“I will. Good luck tomorrow.”

“Thanks. You getting up early to watch?”

Bradley nods and decides that he doesn’t care about looking a little clingy. “Call me after, let me know when you’re back.”

Jake smiles, and Bradley decides he really doesn’t care about looking clingy, not if it gets him an expression like that. “Okay. We’re heading back to Slough right after, so it’ll be a little later.”

Bradley lifts his hand in a dorky wave, and then Jake’s gone.

Bradley tosses his phone aside with a groan and scrubs a hand down his face. Jesus Christ. He’s still gross from his workout, so he drags himself to the bathroom and strips down for a shower.

He can’t believe that Jake called him from bed. Without a fucking shirt on. Was he just tired enough that he didn’t think about it? He either thinks of Bradley in such purely platonic fashion that it’s no big deal to take a FaceTime call shirtless in bed, or—or it’s something different. God, Bradley hopes it’s something different.

Sometimes he thinks maybe, like when Jake kneeled at his feet to carefully clean his tiny cut and even more carefully helped him take a shower. But then Jake didn’t text him for six days then FaceTimed him in bed without a shirt on. What is Bradley supposed to do with that?

Jerk off about it, apparently. He’s fully hard just at the thought, clearly on a bit of a hair trigger since he hasn’t actually gotten off since before the accident. He feels a little bit guilty, thinking about Jake this way, but not enough to stop doing it.

He drops a hand to his cock with a harsh exhale and flips idly through his well-worn collection of thoughts—they’re not well-thought-out enough to be true fantasies, he has to draw the line somewhere. Just flashes, musings. Whether Jake would take control of a kiss, big hand on his jaw to dictate the pace and the angle, or if he’d draw back and wait for Bradley to chase him. How Jake would move in bed, how he’d look in Bradley’s sheets with his hair mussed and his face red. If Jake would let Bradley fuck him. He thinks he probably would, so it’s really much safer to not think about that at all.

It doesn’t take long, considering that it’s been a while, and everything twinges when he comes, little tendrils of pain curling through his ribs, but it’s not so bad. He gasps for breath, the shower spray misting in his face, and waits for the tender sparks to fade back to the usual dull ache. Worth it.

Every single nightmare is the same. It’s not every night—maybe every third night or so since the crash—but the sequence is the same. He’s in the car, in a race, but it’s not like the crash itself. There’s no fire, he’s not upside down. He’s stopped in the middle of the track at the end of a long straight, facing the wrong way, with the rest of the race barreling down on him. There’s some kind of malfunction with his seat or his seatbelt, because he can’t fucking get out, and the other 19 cars are at full speed, coming closer and closer, and—

And then he’s awake. He sucks in a breath, letting the edges of the dream blur out and fade into wisps. He does his little breathing exercises for a few minutes, like he does whenever he gets into the car and needs to relax, but he can already tell it’s not going to be one of those nights where he easily drifts off again. He is alert and awake. Fuck.

He stares up at the ceiling with a sigh and, after a moment, registers that the light in the room is a bit off. The curtains are open slightly, and sometimes he sees a bit of reflection from lights on the water in the pool, but this looks different. Something flickering, maybe?

He swings out of bed and heads for the window to look out. He can’t see fully into the outdoor living area at this angle, but there’s a light on and maybe the TV? Nat’s still in LA with her friends, so it has to be Jake. But why is he awake in the middle of the night?

Bradley doesn’t think twice before he shrugs a hoodie on, zips it up over his bare chest, and heads downstairs. Jake’s on the couch outside—of course not wearing a fucking shirt, though at least he has a throw blanket pulled over his shoulders—and his mouth slides into a wince as Bradley steps through the door.

“Shit, did I wake you? I was trying to be quiet, that’s why I came out here.”

Bradley shakes his head and joins him on the couch. “Nope, just happened to wake up and I saw the light. Why’re you up?”

“My sleep schedule’s still fucked.”

“Well maybe if you stopped napping all the damn time.”

Jake makes a face. “I’m on vacation, give me a break.”

He is on vacation, here in San Diego just because Bradley asked, and he feels smug as hell about it, actually. He has no idea what Jake’s original plans were, or what options he was deciding between, but all Bradley had to do was float the idea, dangle the prospect of an IndyCar race, and here he is. At least he’s not in fucking Greece with Paige.

Bradley kicks his feet up onto the coffee table and for a minute they watch SportsCenter in silence.

“Are you super into these highlights of, uh, Marlins-Brewers?”

Jake shakes his head, so Bradley reaches for the remote. He flips around for a few minutes and lands on Jaws—perfect. It’s even near the beginning.

After a couple minutes, Jake looks over at him. “What movie is this?”

“What the fuck, it’s Jaws!” he says, laughing. “How do you not know what this is?”

He shrugs. “I’ve just never seen it.”

“But how is that possible? It’s a classic.”

Jake squints at him and sighs. “I maybe have a little bit of a shark thing.”

Bradley grins. “Oh, I get it, you’re scared of sharks.”

“I didn’t say that,” he snaps. “I just don’t…I don’t like them. Who likes sharks?”

He shrugs again, and Bradley is hopelessly endeared. “We don’t have to watch it.”

“It’s fine,” Jake says, settling further into the couch, so Bradley forces himself to look back at the screen.

He lasts until they get to the part where they find the wreckage of the fisherman’s boat, and he glances over at Jake again. His gaze is firmly fixed at the ceiling, not on the TV, and Bradley laughs. “You’re not even watching!”

Jake reaches out with a groan and pushes at his face to turn him back toward the TV. “Why are you paying attention to what I’m doing, just watch the fucking movie.”

“I’ve seen it. It’s more fun to watch you watch the movie.”

Jake shakes his head, but his eyes are on the screen now. His cheeks are pink.

“We can watch something else,” Bradley offers. It’s a little bit funny, but he doesn’t want Jake to actually be uncomfortable. It would definitely be a Jake thing to do to have some kind of debilitating shark phobia and just not mention it while they watch Jaws.

“No, it’s fine.” Jake shifts. “As long as you don’t expect me to get in the ocean anytime soon.”

“This is the Pacific, that’s the Atlantic.”

Jake laughs. “That’s how you try to reassure me? Not that like, this is an unrealistic movie.”

“There are no sharks in San Diego,” Bradley says, lying through his teeth.

“That feels untrue.”

“Well I’ve never seen one.” That’s the truth, at least. Jake pulls out his phone and types something, making Bradley grin. “Are you fact checking me?”

Jake reads from his phone. “First search result: thousands of leopard sharks come to the clear, shallow waters of La Jolla Shores between June and October, but the best months to see them are July and August.”

“There’s no way that something called a leopard shark is dangerous.” Bradley reaches over and snatches Jake’s phone, since he didn’t grab his when he left his room, and does a search of his own. “The leopard shark is known as the friendliest shark in the sea. Ha.”

Jake takes his phone back and rolls his eyes. “You feel free to go make friends with the sharks, I’ll stick to the beach.”

Makes him think of last Sunday. It was a good day—a race, a little road trip, dinner on the beach. Pretty nice date, in Bradley’s opinion. “You survived the beach the other day. We were pretty close to the water and everything.”

“I’m not scared of the ocean,” Jake scoffs, like the mere idea is offensive. “And hey, you don’t like heights, you don’t get to give me shit about this.”

Fair. That takes him back to the day he told Jake that, when they were on the boat in Monaco. He’d debated it for a while, whether he should organize something like that and if people would want to come, but he’s glad he did.

“You never call me Rooster.”

Jake looks over at him with as little effort as possible, his head rolling against the back of the couch. His brow is furrowed, clearly confused given that he’s not in Bradley’s brain following his train of thought. Thank god for that.

“You came up with it,” Bradley elaborates. “The nickname. But you never call me Rooster. Everyone else does.”

Jake’s eyes are heavy, like he’s a few minutes from falling asleep. “You want me to?”

“No.”

Bradley says it without thinking, probably too fast, but it’s the truth. He’s thrilled that he got a nickname, he knows it’s a big deal within the team, but he likes that Jake doesn’t use it.

“All right, then.” Jake sinks down further into the couch and stretches out with a yawn, his knee just brushing Bradley’s thigh. “Wake me up before the big shark blows up.”

“You said you’d never seen this!”

Jake’s eyes are closed, but he’s smiling. “I still know how it ends, dumbass.”