Archive of Our Own ^beta

Above Bradley, the ceiling fan turns lazily. He’s been staring at it for what feels like hours, but it’s tough to say; in the oppressive, sable heat of the night, the minutes seem to stretch out too long, woozy and concussed. 

Whoomf. Whoomf. Whoomf. The sound of the blades cutting through the thick and oppressive warmth is barely-there, more something that he feels than he hears. The cicadas and the katydids murmur a faraway chorus. Bradley wonders if he can really hear the high whine of electricity running through the walls, or if he’s just finally losing it.

People keep enquiring—with varying levels of tact—about his dreams, like they’re the thing to be worried about. They never say the word nightmares, not out loud, because this is the Navy and there’s too much machismo saturating the air for people to admit to shit like that beyond the confines of mandated counselling. It’s what they mean, though, when they fix him with a significant look and ask how are you sleeping? Holding up through the night, champ? You tired?

As assumptions go, it’s not a bold one. Between the vulnerable spot of his well-worn second-generation trauma and the sharp edges of his most recent mission, everybody knows he’s carrying more wounds than the healing scrapes and bruises littering his skin, the two fractured ribs that hadn’t made themselves known until his adrenaline had drained away.

But the thing is, nightmares aren’t the problem. Oh, they happen: the smell of burning jet fuel, the sudden, sickening tug of the chute harness, hard enough to tingle his fingers half into numbness, the full-body smack of the wind knocking even the all-consuming concern about Maverick out of him. But so what? He wakes, he stares at the darkness and waits for his heart to settle, and that’s that. 

No, it’s being awake that’s the problem.

The moment they’d bundled him into the medical bay and the heady cocktail of elation and relief and pride had quieted its song in his bloodstream, a strange sense of detachment had descended on him. Two weeks later, it still hasn’t lifted. Bradley feels like he’s been watching the world from behind a thick pane of frosted glass—everything muffled and faraway and just beyond his reach. 

If anything, the nightmares are a relief, because at least they feel real.

Maybe it’s his mind trying to protect itself from the trauma. Maybe the bailout rattled his brain harder than anyone realised. Maybe, he thinks, letting his head fall to one side to catch a glimpse of the unfamiliar landscape peeking through the gap in the curtains, it’s just the surreality of everything that’s come after. Like ending up here.

The spare room of Jake Seresin’s childhood home clearly isn’t kept specifically for guests. The bed is comfortable, but it’s crowded in by cardboard boxes with their clear and careful labels a mixture of nostalgia and practicality: ‘hurricane prep’ balancing haphazardly on top of ‘baby clothes’, a more battered box declaring itself to be ‘christmas decorations’ wedged tightly to one side. There’s shelves along one wall littered with all sorts of clutter, the collected detritus of a family’s life lived in one place. Photos and books and piles of paperwork, old plant-pots clearly hand-painted, dusty scale models of cars but, he notices, no planes. There’s an electric keyboard wedged beneath the window.

“Don’t even think about it, Bradshaw,” Jake had said when he’d first shoved him into the room, as though he suspected Bradley might start hammering out tunes at two in the morning, just to piss him off.

If it had just been Jake, Bradley might have considered it. But Jake’s mother had welcomed him into the house with kind eyes and an honest-to-god hug, and one of Jake’s younger sisters had fixed his plate without asking, and the other had gently steered the conversation away when he froze up momentarily at the mention of his own family. Bradley doesn’t intend to repay those quiet kindnesses with an unwanted midnight serenade.

Nor, if he’s being grudgingly honest with himself, the more aggressive kindness of Jake Seresin turning up at his door and telling him to pack a damn bag, because they’re the last two to take off and he’s sure as hell not leaving Bradley to mope around base on his own for the next six weeks of mandatory leave. From behind his strange and settled numbness, it hadn’t really occurred to Bradley that he could have said no until they were already on their way, and by then it had felt far too late.

So here he is. It’s unbearably nice—chokingly strange—and it’s fucking with his head. It’s so far from anywhere he ever imagined he’d end up. The thought won’t let go: that this has been the dream all along, and reality is the nightmare. That maybe he’s still lying in the snow, somewhere in the wreckage of his jet, his brain misfiring in its last moments, feeding him warmth and light and the soft, treacherous hope of something better than dying alone.

Whoomf. Whoomf. Whoomf. The ceiling fan spins on, impassive, and Bradley half-heartedly tries to convince himself that his dying brain would offer him something more pleasant than the unyielding heat of a Texas summer.

Eventually, he gives up on the whole sleeping thing. He guides himself through the dark house by touch, fingers skimming the wall and the kitchen counter, and wrestling clumsily with the unfamiliar lock of the back door. The air cradles him in its unwelcome embrace, sweat prickling against his skin almost instantly, but that feels far away too. He breathes. His ribs twinge. He presses his fingers against them, just enough to feel the sharp, chasing pain that punches air out of his lungs.

He’s here, and this is real, and he’s alive.

Bradley sinks down into one of the sun-bleached wooden chairs, and stares off at the low and looming silhouette of the rolling hills clinging to the starry horizon until the grainy, pre-dawn light begins to paint the sky. 

When he hears the door open and footsteps on the deck, he knows exactly who to expect.

“Shouldn’t you be crowin’ right about now?” Jake asks, sinking easily into the chair next to Bradley’s.

“Cock-a-doodle-fuck you,” Bradley retorts, the exchange all-too familiar. Jake laughs, low and roughshod, still gravelly with sleep. He’s wearing a faded t-shirt whose logo became a mystery long ago, only a few white lines, cracked and crumbling, still clinging to the fabric. His hair isn’t exactly a mess, but it’s a far cry from its usual perfection. He looks soft around the edges in a way that Bradley has never seen.

Bradley knows how the rest of this conversation goes. He’s suffered through it with enough people lately. 

Can’t sleep?

Something like that.

And then they lapse into silence, and he pretends to ignore the concerned look that gets thrown his way until he’s left in peace. Which is why he’s so thrown when Jake lets his head tip towards Bradley and says: “You think your old man would be proud of you, Bradshaw?”

It’s not the cruel and mocking tone that Jake had used last time he’d mentioned Bradley’s dad, but it’s not the soft and pitying tone he hears most often, either. It’s genuine curiosity, with just a little bit of that classic Hangman push. For a while, Bradley says nothing. Jake, in an uncharacteristic display of patience, just waits.

“I don’t know,” Bradley admits, eventually. “Mav seems to think so.”

“But you don’t?”

“Truth is, I never really knew him,” Bradley says. The faintest breeze does its level best to unsettle the still summer air, but doesn’t make it far. Once the sun comes up, the heat will feel insufferable. For now, it’s bearable. “Hardly remember him at all. I’ve seen photos, I’ve heard a hundred stories. Sometimes I think I’ve got a few memories of my own knocking around, but…”

He trails off, and they both sit in companionable silence for a couple of moments while Bradley considers those few well-worn recollections that might be his or might be the product of dozens of fond retellings.

“What about your mom?” Jake asks. Still pushing. Bradley finds, oddly, that he doesn’t mind so much. Not now. Not after everything.

“Maybe,” Bradley hazards.

“Only maybe?” 

“I don’t think she ever really wanted me to fly. Not after dad. She was always proud of me, you know, but… it’s complicated.” 

“Always is,” Jake murmurs. Bradley doesn’t know what to say to that. Instead, he stretches his arms out above his head and makes a strangled noise when his stiff muscles twinge in protest, his elbows flinching back down towards his sides. 

“What’s with the third degree, anyway?” he asks, before Jake can say something stupid like you okay, man? Jake tosses him one of those smiles—a little calculated, a lot self-assured.

“You look like shit, Bradshaw,” Jake says cheerfully, and pushes himself back up to his feet. “Go back to bed.”

Back in the little bathroom just off the guest bedroom, Bradley braces his hands on either side of the sink and studies himself in the mirror. He could kid himself that the unflattering light buzzing softly overhead is why he looks so sallow, but there’s no explaining away the dark circles under his eyes, or the sickly green-yellow bruise blooming at the edge of his t-shirt. He splashes water over his face, drags a wet hand across the back of his neck to wipe away the sweat gathered there, then retreats back to the rumpled guest bed. If he sleeps, it’s only in snatches, drifting between the fuzzy memory of sitting atop a piano and the unnerving clarity of Jake’s steady eyes on him.

“Gooood morning passengers, welcome aboard, I’ll be serving you your in-flight meal today—”

Jake slides a plate in front of his mother first—Bradley can’t deal with the familiarity of calling her Imogene, no matter how many times she asks—and then each of his sisters: Annie first, then Eleanor. Bradley stays where he’s leaning in the doorway, and watches them talk over each other, squabble good-naturedly over the syrup, and snatch mugs of coffee up just before disaster strikes. It seems like a well-practiced routine. He lets it wash over him.

“Mama, tell him to sit down—Jake, sit down for goodness’ sake—”

“I gave up telling him what to do a long time ago—”

“Is there sugar in this? This isn’t mine, here, swap with me—”

Jake glances up and catches sight of Bradley lurking at the edges of the domestic scene. Bradley tenses for a moment, feeling somehow guilty for being caught watching, but Jake just shoots him a wink and lets him be.

Jake has always been about winning. A month ago, Bradley would have said it was the beginning and end of him. Watching him dish up home-made pancakes to his family, barefoot and grinning, Bradley wonders how he ever believed it. It had been far too easy to accept the arrogant front Jake wears with pride than to bother looking past it.

After a few minutes, when all arguments about coffee and syrup are settled, Jake plucks a mug from the countertop and lifts it slightly towards Bradley in obvious invitation. Nobody else has caught sight of him yet, and Jake does him the mercy of waiting until he shakes off his moment of indecision and steps forward to accept the coffee before he calls attention to him.

“And for our VIP passengers,” he says, in the same smooth tone of a commercial flight announcement that Bradley’s all too familiar with. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, this is your savior speaking. Jake’s lips quirk into a smile, one brow raised as Bradley slides his fingers onto the mug. He doesn’t let go right away, not until he’s sure that Bradley’s grip is firm. Their fingers brush when Jake finally lets go.

Bradley jumps when Jake’s mom addresses him. He’s not sure why.

“Bradley, dear—come on, sit down.” She pats the empty chair next to her, and Bradley’s powerless to do anything but obey. “Jake’ll get you some pancakes.”

“He doesn’t want any, ma,” Jake says, with authority. He slides into a chair at the head of the table, also sans pancakes, hands wrapped around his own cup of coffee. 

“Bradley?” she says, not convinced.

“Coffee’s good, ma’am,” Bradley assures her, gaze fixed on Jake who—so far as Bradley can remember—has never been there to see him pass up breakfast in favour of coffee. He doesn't often eat until after his caffeine fix. Jake sits back, looking smug, but it’s hard to tell whether it’s because he thinks he’s won something, or whether that’s just his face.

“You boys,” Imogene sighs. “Doesn’t the Navy teach you that breakfast is the most important meal of the day?"

Bradley wakes to the sound of the screen door creaking open.

For a moment, he doesn’t know where he is. He only knows that he’s warm, and comfortable, with something soft tucked beneath his head. His body feels heavy and loose, boneless in the way that only an unexpected afternoon nap can really bring. 

Memory snaps into place, elbowing its way between the drifting, syrup-slow thoughts still shaking off sleep.

The Seresin living room. The old, comfortable couch. A folded throw that smells like lavender laundry detergent and sun. The low murmur of the radio from somewhere down the hall. He sits up too fast, heart lurching like he’s been caught doing something wrong.

Jake stands just inside the door, keys in hand, smirking down at him.

“Damn, Rooster,” he drawls. “You dead, or just hibernating?”

Bradley scrubs a hand over his face, suddenly acutely aware of the way his spine had curved into the couch, the way his legs had been stretched out without permission. Taking up space like he belongs here.

“Wasn’t sleeping,” he says automatically, too used to playing the contrarian where Jake is concerned.

Jake snorts. “Buddy, you were out.”

Bradley opens his mouth to argue, and then closes it again. He’s spent a lot of the last couple of weeks sleeping, finally making good on the checks his body wrote on the mission. 

He remembers, out of nowhere, holding his mom’s hand—her grip weak and cold and clammy—as she apologised for sleeping through his whole visit the day before. Sleep is the best medicine, she’d told him, from behind a weary smile.

Even then, with her body wrecked and ruined and the stringent hospital scent embedded in her pallid skin, she’d been apologetic about it. Like she’d somehow let him down.  

Bradley’s throat feels thick, like he’s swallowed something he shouldn’t have. He’s been thinking about his mom a lot, these past few days. Hard not to. They’re well-worn memories, polished smooth with years of handling, but it turns out that there’s still a few edges sharp enough to cut if he’s not careful.

Jake doesn’t push, just bends down and unlaces his shoes before placing them neatly in the little row by the door. Bradley can see his own sneakers, laces still tied because he couldn’t be bothered to bend down, angled haphazardly. A little spot of chaos in the row of orderly conduct.

“Didn’t mean to wake you,” Jake says. “Mom sent me out to post some packages.”

It’s one of a half-dozen little errands that Imogene has asked of Jake since they got here, part of the easy rhythm of the household that Jake has slipped back into with barely a hint of his Hangman attitude. 

Bradley just nods, because nodding is easier than figuring out what to say when Jake’s being this casual about Bradley existing in his space. Jake straightens, and sweeps a hand through his hair. On the way past, he tugs the throw rug back up over Bradley where his sudden shift upright had disturbed it, quick and thoughtless.

“Try not to drool on the furniture,” he adds, already turning away towards the back of the house where someone’s singing along softly with the radio. The door swings shut behind him, and Bradley is left alone.

His body still wants, achingly, to lie back down. To let his eyes close again. To sink into the quiet, into the sense of being held in place by something solid and unquestioning and smelling like lavender. But there’s an unease creeping up beneath his skin now, a skulking wrongness that settles on him like a pall. 

He swings his legs off the couch and stands. His ribs protest faintly. He welcomes it: the pain, at least, makes sense. 

Pacing the length of the living room, he shakes his hands out like he might be able to flick away the strange and restless energy prickling in his joints. He feels all of a sudden like a guest who’s overstayed their welcome, or a stray that’s been fed one too many times and is suddenly staring down a life of grudging domesticity.

He glances back at the couch, the throw still rumpled in the shape of his body, and something tightens in his chest. This isn’t right. 

Bradley folds it neatly. Replaces the pillow back where it belongs. Clenches his hand into a fist hard enough to feel the crescent-moon bite of his own nails against his palm and focuses on the sensation, searching desperately for a way through the fuzzy, dream-soft edges of his world to something clear and bright and real.

Jake finds Bradley first thing next morning in the garage, perched on an upturned milk crate with a wrench in his hands and no real plan for it. He’s got the garage door open in the hopes of catching an early morning breeze, and dust motes hang lazily in the golden light.

“You know that thing’s not broken,” Jake says, nodding at the mower Bradley’s been poking at.

Bradley blinks, like he’d forgotten the mower even exists.

“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”

There’s a gap where the rest of his answer should be. What do you know, you’ve probably never fixed anything in your life, or you mean you didn’t want me to overclock your mower?, but Bradley’s too slow to reach for it.

“...Right,” Jake says slowly. He steps in, leans a hip against the workbench. “Just makin’ sure you weren’t trying to single-handedly revive the suburban dream or somethin’.”

Bradley huffs out a breath that could, with generosity, be interpreted as a laugh, then goes quiet again. He fixes his eyes back on the wrench, turning it in his hands, over and over. He wishes he did have something to fix, or at least to mess with, if only to keep his hands busy: in a mood like this at home, he’d have the Bronco’s hood up for sure.

Jake narrows his eyes.

“You break something?” he asks.

“No.”

“Then why does it look like you’re about to apologise?” Jake’s voice is all warm with laughter, and it scrapes down Bradley’s spine like nails down a chalkboard.

He knows he’s missing all his cues, falling short on their usual back-and-forth, even if it’s been softer since they’d shaken hands on the deck of the carrier, less barbed.

“Can you not?” he says, a little too flat, tired.

Jake straightens, surprise flashing across his face before he schools it away.

“Not… what?”

Bradley shrugs, but it’s jerky, defensive.

“I don’t know. Everything.”

Jake studies him. There’s an itch between Bradley’s shoulders now, the kind he gets when his thumb is hovering over the weapons release button, just waiting for an order.

“Okay,” Jake says lightly. “My bad. Didn’t mean to breathe too loud in your general vicinity.”

Bradley’s jaw tightens.

“I didn’t say that.”

“No,” Jake agrees. “You’re not saying much of anything, Rooster.”

Bradley drops the wrench onto the concrete with a sharp clatter that echoes too loud in the space. He immediately winces, rubbing absently at his ribs like the noise itself might have hurt him.

Jake’s mouth twists.

“You good?” he asks, automatic.

“I’m fine,” Bradley snaps, then exhales hard. “Jesus. Sorry. I just—”

He trails off, frowning at the floor like the answer might be written there. But there’s no help to be had. Bradley doesn’t finish the thought.

Jake clears his throat.

“So,” he says, deliberately casual, “you wanna come with us all into town later? Admittedly there’s not much to do out there, but if you’re well-behaved I’ll let you buy me a milkshake.”

Bradley looks up, startled.

“Oh. Uh.” He hesitates, unmoored. If the little bubble of the Seresin household feels divorced from reality, the world beyond it seems unimaginable. “I don’t want to be in the way.”

Jake blinks.

“In the way of what?”

“I don’t know,” Bradley says, frustration creeping in. “Of… this. Your life.”

Jake laughs, short and surprised.

“Bradshaw,” he says, “you’re haunting my garage trying to fix a lawn mower that works just fine and worrying my mom. You kind of are my life right now, like it or not.”

Bradley’s mouth twitches, but the smile doesn’t quite make it all the way through.

“Right,” he says, bluntly.

Jake’s smile fades altogether.

“Nobody’s forcing you to come,” he adds, slower now. “Stay if you want.”

“Yeah,” Bradley says, bending down to scoop up the wrench and set it to one side before he pushes himself to his feet. “I probably will. Have fun.”

Bradley sits on a paint-stained stool and lets his fingers climb the keys of the electric keyboard. It’s old, and the tone is hollow, the keys a little stiff, like it never really got used all that much. The Seresins must all be in town by now. Bradley regretted his decision not to join them just as soon as he was left alone in this house that sits on him like clothes a size too big, with nothing at all to anchor him. 

This is real, he reminds himself, and picks through a dusty stack of sheet music, examining each piece carefully. He’s heard you can’t read in dreams. The notes are neat and clear and make perfect sense. This is real. He chooses one at random, props it a little too far away against the window, and idly drags his fingers through the opening bars, not really caring if he hits all the right notes. It's a jazzy little thing, meant for kids, but it keeps his hands busy. His fingers slip almost of their own accord, nudging the tune into a minor key that better suits the indifferent melancholy of his distant mood.

“Alright, Bradshaw. Let’s get this over with.”

Bradley’s fingers pause, but he doesn’t turn around, not even when he feels the warmth of Jake standing close behind him. He coaxes a few more lethargic bars from the keyboard before glancing up when Jake steps to his side, leaning his hip against the wall, arms folded.

“Get what over with?” Bradley asks, like he doesn’t know where this is going. Then, feeling petty and selfishly cruel and terribly desperate, he sharpens his tone. “Hangman.”

“Yeah,” Jake says, entirely unfazed. “That. Where’s your head at, Rooster?”

Bradley scowls, and jams his fingers down onto the keys, setting off a discordant jangle of tinny, artificial noise. He wishes it was a real piano beneath his hands; the soft snick-thump of the plastic keys undercuts the drama, makes it sound childish.

Which, he supposes, it is.

“Why'd you bring me here?” he demands, finally tearing his gaze away from his own hands and fixing it instead on the infuriatingly calm shape of Jake in front of him. Jake raises one perfect eyebrow.

“What, you got somewhere better to be?” he asks, easy levity in his voice.

“Maybe,” Bradley says, mutinously, but they both know it's a lie. When Jake knocked on his door, Bradley had been transparently preparing to spend at least the next week on his couch, cycling through shitty daytime shows and washing painkillers down with takeout and beer. 

“Will you just relax?” Jake demands. He doesn’t roll his eyes, but Bradley’s known him long enough to know that he wants to. The restraint grates. “It's a vacation, Bradshaw. I know you've heard of 'em, cause you're always dressed like you're on one.”

Bradley slaps away the hand that reaches out to tug on the collar of his wrinkled shirt, vibrant green palm leaves against a pale background. 

“It's not—”

—real, he's about to say. He manages to cage the word behind his teeth before it escapes, snapping his mouth shut so hard that his jaw aches with it. Jakes seems to hear it anyway. 

“Where's your head at?” Jake repeats, quieter now. “Tell me what you need, Bradshaw”. 

Bradley scrubs his hands down his face, and turns back to the piano. The chords beneath his fingers pick out a dirge. He plays for a while, just letting the music wander. 

Jake waits him out.

Bradley wishes he wouldn't. Wishes he'd push—needle him for getting back up on that perch of his. Give him just a little bit of normal. 

“Just do me a favour, Hangman,” he says. “Go back to hating me, will you? “

Jake looks at him for a long moment, mouth a thin, tight line. And then he pushes himself up from the wall and walks out, not bothering to close the door behind him. 

Bradley's eyes fall closed, his fingers still resting on the keys, and he wonders why the victory feels so hollow. 

Bradley manages to keep to himself for the rest of the morning. Jake doesn’t bother him, and he slips out of the spare room he’s holed up in only long enough to hit the head and stand in front of the fridge, wrestling with the sense that he’s being rude for taking the sandwiches that Jake’s mom said she’d made up for him specifically.

Later, though, the Seresin women return to the fold, chattering and laughing, laden down with grocery bags and gift bags alike, and they’re harder to avoid.

It's Eleanor who knocks on his door, barely waiting for him to answer before flinging it open. She finds Bradley stretched out on the bed, reading a battered spy thriller he’d unearthed from the shelf.

“I need your help,” she says, determined, and grabs at his arm to haul him upright. Bradley draws a sharp breath through his teeth as his ribs protest. Eleanor jerks her hands back as though burned.

“Oh, shoot. I’m so sorry Bradley, I forgot you were hurtin’—”

“It’s fine,” Bradley assures her with a smile that’s rueful but genuine. He swings his legs off the bed under his own steam, which is a good deal less jarring. “I forget too. If you hear wheezing in the middle of the night, it’s just me rolling onto the wrong side. What d’you need?”

She leads him through to the back of the house. Through an open door, Bradley sees the green splash of a ping pong table, and pulls up short when he hears Jake already inside, arguing good-naturedly with Annie. Eleanor beckons him in, and he pushes a steady breath out before he slips through the door.

“He’s insufferable when he wins,” Eleanor explains with a smile that’s all Seresin, eerily reminiscent of Jake’s own, right down to the competitive edge. “And he always wins. Bet you can help us take him down a peg or two, right?”

Before Bradley can come up with an excuse to duck out, Jake narrows his eyes and fixes him with a look that Bradley hasn’t seen since he walked into The Hard Deck and found him holding court at the pool table.

“Who, Bradshaw?” Jake drawls. “Not a chance. He’ll waste every point just waiting for the perfect shot.”

“Jake,” Annie says. She sounds genuinely appalled. The words, Bradley thinks, she could have let pass: it's nothing she hasn't already heard them throwing back and forth at each other. But the tone. It's cold and it's aloof and there's not a shred of humour to it. 

Her hand closes around Bradley’s forearm for a brief moment, offering one single, gentle squeeze of comfort. Bradley feels suddenly wretched for getting exactly what he’d asked for. Jake’s little sisters are staring at their brother like he’s grown a second head. Like for all the arrogance and teasing they’ve seen from him over the years, they’ve never seen him mean.

No matter how much Bradley had wanted this, he didn’t want it at the cost of Jake’s family. 

“Shut up,” he rasps. It comes out pleading.

“What?” Jake asks, circling the table and stepping deliberately into Bradley’s space. His hands stay buried in his pockets, his posture loose: the very picture of contempt. “Rooster can’t handle it when it gets real? Tale as old time.”

“Jake,” Annie says again, warning sharpening her tone. “What is your problem?”

“Just drop it, will you, Seresin?” Bradley says, hoping that Jake will get the message—hoping that he’ll back his stubborn ass down for his own good. Abort, abort, he wants to yell. There was never supposed to be collateral. 

“Well I always knew you were indecisive, Bradshaw,” Jake says, blowing past the point of no return with his afterburners on. “Still can’t make a call unless someone else pushes you—”

The world sharpens. Bradley’s hands hit Jake’s chest first, but Jake hits back harder.

Bradley stumbles half a step, ribs screaming, the fury ripping through him raw and red hot. He’s incandescent with the knowledge that Jake is shoving aside his own family just to give Bradley everything he asked for and nothing he wanted. They collide, momentum carrying them into each other.

This time, there’s no room full of friends to pull them apart, just Jake’s two little sisters. They don’t hesitate, grabbing at sleeves and shoulders, shouting and shrieking—but they’re too small to make much of a difference. 

“That’s enough!”

The Seresin matriarch has as much steel in her voice as any CO. All four of them freeze. The Seresin kids must know just how bad things have to be for their mom to snap like that, and Bradley’s just hardwired to obey a voice laced with that much authority. He and Jake stand inches apart, flushed and breathing hard. Jake’s face is a storm cloud.

“Annie, Eleanor, Jake, get your asses back in the house,” Imogene says sternly. “I won’t have y’all fightin’ under my roof.” 

Annie and Eleanor cast uncertain glances between Jake and Bradley, but slip past their mom with murmured apologies. Jake doesn’t shift. Bradley feels ashamed, almost nauseous with it.

“I’ll deal with this, ma,” Jake says. “You can—”

“In the house, Jake.”

Jake’s chin tips up. Then he takes a deliberate step back, shrugs his shoulder to straighten the skew of his t-shirt where Bradley had grabbed it, and goes. Bradley doesn’t watch to see if he looks back.

He fights the urge to stand to attention, like he’s had to do for pretty much every other dressing-down he’s had since he was a teenager. Imogene moves fully into the room, and comes to a stop in front of him.

He’s not sure what he’s expecting, but it isn’t this.

Imogene reaches up and lays a hand gently against his cheek. She isn’t all that short—around the same height his own mom had been—but with the soft, sad look she’s wearing, she feels terribly small in front of him. Nobody’s touched him like this in so long that he almost flinches. Bradley realises he’s trembling beneath her hand.

“Oh, honey,” she sighs, and pulls him into a hug. 

Bradley doesn’t know what to do. He stands stiffly, hands fisted at his sides, spine taut as an arresting wire waiting for an incoming jet. Then he lifts his hands, careful, and hugs her back.

Everything comes unravelled at once.

She holds him until his breathing evens out, then eases him back and keeps her hands warm and steady on his arms.

“Lord knows you and Jake have been through more than I can ever understand, Bradley Bradshaw,” she says gently. “Sometimes that kind of hurt makes you swing first. I get that.”

She hesitates, just a beat.

“After I lost my husband—well. I learned somethin’ the hard way.” Her mouth presses into a thin line, and then softens. “You can throw your punches at the world all you want, sweetheart. It won’t hit back the way you need it to. And it won’t change what’s already happened.”

That’s not it, Bradley wants to say, but it’d be a lie.

Jake’s sharp words had cracked through the thick pane of frosted glass that had settled between him and the world, cutting him where he was tender. Like the twinge in his fractured ribs under the pressure of his own fingers, the result is the same: this is real.

Bradley suddenly misses his own mom, fiercely. God knows she wouldn’t have been this gentle with him, but she would have said the same, more or less. The fact that Imogene Seresin took the time to do it on her behalf, for someone who was more or less a stranger in her home, only deepens his shame.

“Thank you,” he murmurs.

“You’re a nice young man, Bradley,” Imogene says. “I hope you get that head of yours sorted out.” 

Bradley manages a shaky smile, just in time for Imogen’s gaze to harden.

“But you lay your hands on one of my children ever again,” she says evenly, “and I will toss you out in the dirt. You hear?” 

Bradley swallows.

“Yes ma’am,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

He should give Jake more time to cool off. He should give himself even more. But he can feel the cracks in the glass smoothing back over, the edges of reality dulling again. Part of him worries it will only get harder to break back through.

He finds Jake standing on a low rise, throwing rocks into a broad expanse of dusty summer scrub. His body is all coiled tension. The stones leave his hand with a sharp, snapping motion; only a faint puff of pale dust marks where they fall.

“Hangman.”

Jake’s arm snaps forward. A puff of dirt.

“Seresin.”

Another snap. Another puff.

“Jake.”

Jake hefts the last stone in his hand but doesn’t throw it. He turns his head, just barely—an acknowledgment Bradley might have missed if he wasn’t looking so hard for it. From the narrow sliver of Jake’s face that he can see, the expression is unreadable, so Bradley doesn’t try.

“I just wanted things to feel… normal,” Bradley says, and it feels like flying straight into a dogfight with no wingman. Like leaving himself exposed to whatever hits he’s about to take. 

“And normal is me being an asshole, right?” Jake says, tightly. 

“You have to admit, you've got form,” Bradley says, and then winces. 

It must sound more like friendly teasing than outright accusation, because the iron line of Jake’s shoulders softens ever so slightly.

“I plead the fifth.” There’s something like a smile tugging at the corner of Jake’s mouth before it sours into a scowl and he turns away. He tosses the stone from hand to hand, like he’s testing its weight and balance. Bradley hopes it’s not going to get launched in his direction.

“Ask me again,” Bradley says.

“What?”

“Ask me where my head is at.”

Jake turns fully towards him. His expression is unimpressed, almost disbelieving. In the early afternoon sun, his gold hair is almost radiant, the low line of his brow throwing his green eyes into shadow.

“Really?” Jake demands. “You're gonna make me do the work for this, Bradshaw?”

Bradley fixes him with a desperate look. He must look just about as panicked and pathetic as he feels, struggling to even admit that he’s struggling, because Jake relents. He lets the stone drop at his feet, and takes a step closer. With Jake slightly upslope, they’re exactly the same height, eye-to-eye.

“Where’s your head at, Bradley?” Jake asks softly.

Bradley doesn’t hesitate. The words tumble out of him, rushed and clumsy, before he loses his courage altogether and make things even worse.

“Your dreams ever feel more real than anything else?”

Dreams, Bradley says, not nightmares. Jake understands anyway. Of course he does.

“Sure,” Jake says. “That what’s been messing with you?”

Bradley sighs. This is where it knots up, where it’s hardest to explain. The Texas sun beats down on him like a warning: say it now, or it’ll all just burn away.

“Honestly, I look forward to ‘em,” Bradley admits. Jake’s eyebrows shoot up. “They feel… I mean, ever since that F-14 hit the deck, nothing else has really felt—”

“—real,” Jake guesses, softly. Direct hit. 

Relief punches the air out of Bradley’s chest like someone just pulled the ejection handle. Someone knows, now. He didn’t even have to say it out loud. Shame follows close behind, and suddenly meeting Jake’s eyes is too much. Bradley looks away, up at the hazy sky. Something’s circling up there, far too slow to be a plane, but Bradley wishes he were up there too anyway. Forty thousand feet. Everything small and neat and clear beneath him, like the lines of a map.

“Everything’s upside down,” Bradley says hotly. “I’m grounded, and Mav’s back in my life, and I’m on the Seresin Ranch with your mom making me mac and cheese. None of it makes sense. I just—I needed something to prove that this wasn’t all—”

He gestures helplessly. It isn’t much of an explanation, but it’s the best he’s got. Jake sets his hands on his hips and stares down at the ground between them for a good, long moment.

“Well,” he sighs. “If my mama’s mac and cheese didn’t cut it, you might be a lost cause altogether, Bradshaw.”

When Jake glances up at Bradley again, there’s a familiar glint of amusement in his eyes.

“Also, this isn't a ranch. You know that right? Not every property in Texas—”

“Shut up, Seresin,” Bradley groans.

“Just makin’ sure, city boy. Rooster, you and Mav made it back just fine. This?” Jake twirls a finger in the air. “This is all real. For better or worse you're here. And you got a telling off from my mom.” 

“Actually, she, uh—she gave me a hug,” Bradley says. Even to his own ears, he sounds mildly embarrassed of the fact. 

Jake fixes him with a strange look, then sighs. “Yeah. The moment you walked through the door she did say you looked like you needed one. I thought—”

He cuts himself off with a shake of his head. 

“I can be a dick to you if you want, Bradshaw,” he continues. Bradley wonders where his first name went. Kind of misses it in Jake's mouth. “But I don't think it's gonna help you all that much. Anyway, I don't got the heart to mean it.”

Guilt dips low in Bradley’s stomach. For all his continued snark and teasing, Jake has been kind to him. Kinder than he needed to be. And Bradley had thrown it back in his face.

“It was a stupid thing to ask,” Bradley says. “I'm sorry.” 

“Yeah, well.” Jake says. “It work?”

“A little,” Bradley admits.

“Not enough though, huh?” 

Bradley shrugs. Saying it out loud sounds like giving something up that he’s not ready to let go of, yet.

“Well,” Jake says. “We could always try the alternative.” 

Bradley stares blankly at him, at a loss to figure that one out. Jake rolls his eyes. 

“God, you're an idiot,” he mutters and pulls Bradley in for a hug. Bradley's readier for this one than for Imogene's, but only just. Jake's hand curls at the back of his neck, fingers slipping into his hair. The other spreads warm and solid between his shoulder blades.

“I got faith you'll figure it out, Bradshaw.” Jake's words are hot against his ear. “You always get there in the end.”

He squeezes once, and the world sharpens, just a little. Brighter. Closer. 

“C'mon,” Jake says when he pulls back, flicking a finger at Bradley’s nose. “Before your mustache burns off. Believe it or not, I think I'd miss that thing.”

Annie and Eleanor glance between them both warily at dinner, and Bradley feels another wash of shame. He offers them an embarrassed little smile, and sinks down in the chair that Jake kicks out for him, right next to his. Everyone seems to settle, content that—for now, at least—there’s peace. 

The food is good, made with love. Conversation flows easily, and Bradley's chest aches a little, again. He makes the effort, even though he's not at his best. 

“Heard that old keyboard earlier,” Annie says. “You play?” 

“Oh, he plays,” Jake says, brandishing his fork for emphasis. “The trick is gettin’ him to stop for five minutes together.”

“Maybe if you picked some halfway decent tunes, I wouldn't have to,” Bradley fires back.

There’s no heat to their words, for all they’re biting back and forth about their turbulent reunion. Jake quirks a brow, fixes Bradley with a knowing little smile, and winks. Mouths something that looks, distressingly, like attaboy!

“My dad played,” he tells Annie, turning away from Jake with a roll of his eyes. The mood softens, just a touch. Bradley knows the change intimately. Everyone at the table already knows his dad is gone. He isn’t sure how he feels about that, about Jake having told them all ahead of time. How’d that conversation go, anyway? Hey guys, I’m bringing home a friend, and by the way his parents are dead, go easy on him?

“He teach you?” Annie asks, gentle and curious. 

Bradley shakes his head. “I was only four when he died.” Three and a half. He likes to round up. “But I remember him playing for us. It used to make my mom so happy. I wanted to make her that happy, too.” 

“Oh, I bet she loved it,” Imogene says warmly.

“First time I hammered out Twinkle Twinkle Little Star like I was Elton John, she just about cried her heart out,” Bradley says, the smile playing at his lips unselfconscious. “But she was laughing, too.” 

It's not a story he's told often, but it sits close to his heart. He remembers, suddenly, how she'd made him play it again so she could film it on the chunky camcorder she barely knew how to use. So I can show your Uncle Maverick. He wonders if Mav ever got to see it, and then feels sharp guilt at the realisation he still hasn’t spoken to Mav since they were ushered off the deck of the carrier for observation and debrief. 

Bradley jumps when a hand lands on his knee. Jake's fingers squeeze once, brief and steady, before pulling away. Bradley stares at him, perplexed. Jake's smile hitches at the corner, crooked and soft and nothing like the smirk he so often wears. 

“I always wanted to play the trumpet,” Eleanor says. “Dad wouldn't let me.”

“And I thank god for him every day,” Imogene says, mildly. “Nobody wants to hear a seven year old practicing the trumpet.” 

Laughter rolls in. Bradley lets it wash over him. 

Maverick answers halfway through the second ring, breathless like he'd sprinted for it.

“Bradley. How are you?”

Standing barefoot on the back porch, watching the sun sink grudgingly below the horizon, Bradley turns the question over a few times before deciding that Maverick deserves honesty, if not explanation.

“I'm gonna need notice of that question, Mav,” he says.

Maverick laughs, a rush of static through the phone. 

“I feel you, kid. It'll settle. You let me know if I can help.” 

“Yeah.” Bradley trails off, because he doesn’t have a plan for this. Don't think. Just do. 

“You on base?” Mav asks, filling the silence. They're out of practice with each other. Sure, something shifted after the mission, but there’s no magic switch to take them back to how things used to be. Not without work.

“Nah. I'm—staying with a friend.” 

He doesn’t say with Hangman. He does not want to navigate that conversation right now. 

“That's good. Come to the hangar when you can. I could use a hand.”

The invitation is casual, but Bradley hears the hesitation beneath it. The cautious, uncertain wanting. Some old habit twinges in him—the desire to say no, just to make it hurt. He pushes it down.

“Sure,” he says instead. “Sounds good. Not sure when I'll be back.”

“Whenever you like,” Mav says, relief plain. “Not like I’ve got anywhere else to be.”

“You're really retiring?” Bradley asks. Ice gone. Bridges burned. Even victories have casualties, but it seems impossible that Maverick’s career is one of them. He can’t imagine Pete Mitchell doing anything but flying.

There’s a long pause.

“It's time to let go,” Mav says at last.

It sounds like it’s more for himself than for Bradley, so he lets it lie. Instead, he asks the question that’s been nagging at the corners of his mind since dinner.

“Hey, Mav. My mom ever show you any home video?” 

“You kidding?” Maverick asks, and the smile in his voice is audible. “She filmed everything. I'd come back from deployment and have a dozen tapes waiting. I've got boxes of the stuff.” 

Bradley’s breath catches. “You still have it all?” 

“Never figured out how to get it off betamax.” A beat. Silence. That, at least, they have good practice in. “You want it?” 

“Yeah,” Bradley says, careful to keep his voice steady. “That'd be cool.” 

“I'll dig it out. You’re on your own figuring out how to watch it, though.” 

“Thanks, Mav.” Bradley glances at the screen of his phone. One minute, seventeen seconds. The longest personal conversation they’ve had in years. He feels wrung out, like he’s working out muscles left too long unused. “Listen, I've gotta go.” 

It’s a cowardly move, but Mav doesn’t sound disappointed.

“You take care of yourself, baby Goose.” 

The nickname is like a kick to the kidneys. Bradley's not sure Maverick has earned that back, not yet, but he doesn't want to end on a sour note. 

“You too,” he says.

He hangs up the phone, leaning down onto the porch railing and running a hand over his mouth as he pockets it. 

Jake materialises minutes later, a bottle of beer in each hand. Bradley takes one gratefully, the condensation gathering slick beneath his fingers, spilling down the side of the glass in eager rivulets. 

“Maverick?” Jake asks. 

Bradley feels a flicker of irritation at being watched so closely, but it's chased up by a pathetic surge of gratitude. He swallows a mouthful of beer like he’s chasing tequila, hoping to wash away the taste of it.

“Yeah.”

Jake leans against the railing beside him, their shoulders just shy of touching.

“He say hi to his favourite pilot?” 

Bradley coughs, and Jake turns, face a mask of exaggerated devastation, and points at him with the hand still hooked around the neck of his beer bottle.

“You didn't tell him you were here,” he says, accusatory.

“What?” Bradley says, defensive. “It seemed complicated to explain!” 

“What's complicated about it, Bradshaw?” Jake shakes his head, half-laughing, and tips the beer bottle up to his lips. “Damn. You're acting like we aren’t even friends.” 

“In my defense”, Bradley says, “I'm not sure he'd believe it.”

It's less embarrassing than saying are we? Jake grumbles, but doesn’t argue. And then, wordlessly, he holds out his beer. Bradley taps his own bottle against it, and they stand in comfortable silence in the fading light. Friends, apparently.

Four days later, Bradley's starting to think he understood what Jake meant. The alternative. 

Maybe Jake hadn’t meant all of this, exactly. He probably hadn’t pictured Bradley holding up a photo frame high on the wall while Annie called instructions about which side was crooked, until he told her, laughing, that her left was the same thing as his left. He probably hadn’t meant Bradley asking, a little hesitant, if he could page through Imogene’s recipe book, fascinated by generations’ worth of notes and additions. There’s no way he foresaw Bradley giving in to Eleanor’s not-so-subtle hints to play something for them, her eyes bright as she laughed through his over-enthusiastic performance: Eleanor, gee, I think you’re swell…

(“Quit flirting with my sister,” Jake had grumbled, and Eleanor had only laughed harder when Bradley had butchered the meter to replace her name with Jake's callsign instead.)

All Jake meant, probably, was that Bradley was better off reaching out than pulling away.

And—terrible news for the state of Jake's already inflated ego—Bradley is beginning to think he was right. Getting out of bed feels a little easier. Imogene's lemonade tastes a little sweeter. When Bradley laughs, it comes without effort, surprising him every time.

Everything has a price, though.

When Bradley wakes from a nightmare—Dagger One is hit! Dagger One is hit!—vicious terror squeezes his racing heart so hard it hurts. His breath slams out from his chest and his hands scrabble at the sheets as he fights against the imagined drag of a tangled chute. 

Once he's upright and the line between sleep and waking feels solid enough to hold, he drops his head into his hands, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes until a kaleidoscope of fractured lights blooms behind them. 

Part of him misses the strange, melancholic numbness he used to wake with. The other part—the soft, vulnerable part that’s been scratching to get out—knows that the sting of nightmares is a small price to pay for all the rest. 

It’s not even five. Bradley knows he's not getting back to sleep any time soon.

He changes his shirt—he’s sweated right through the one he wore to bed—and shuffles blindly towards the kitchen. An increasingly familiar nightly pilgrimage that gets easier to navigate each time. The plan is simple: cold water, straight from the fridge to soothe his raw throat, maybe slip out the back door and stand under the purpling dawn until the walls of the house feel a little less like a coffin.

Instead, he finds Jake.

“Cock-a-doodle-fuck you,” Bradley whispers, before Jake can make the same tired joke. He asks the question he doesn’t want to answer, hoping that if he’s quicker off the draw, he’ll escape the inevitable. “Can’t sleep?”

“Just heading out on a run,” Jake murmurs, gesturing towards the door where his sneakers are waiting, neat and military and expectant.

“You got up at oh-four-thirty,” Bradley says, incredulous, “on purpose?”

Jake fixes him with a look that screams gotcha. Bradley realises he’s all but admitted that awake he may be, but on purpose it was not. He stiffens, bracing for the incoming question that he’s been sidestepping, jaw tightening and hackles up.

“You coming or what?” Jake asks instead. “You got five minutes.”

Which is how Bradley finds himself matching Jake’s easy pace through the flowering dawn.

He’d been given strict orders to wait three to six weeks before easing back into exercise, and technically, he’s obeyed—even if he’s still on the fresh end of it. Every so often a step jostles something into brief discomfort. Not quite pain. Close enough to fine.

Jake’s calculating gaze flicks his way now and then, assessing, until he seems satisfied Bradley isn’t about to keel over.

“It’s not a long loop,” Jake assures him. “Three miles or so.” 

Bradley suspects it would have been longer, if he hadn’t showed up; there's no good reason to wake up this early for three miles. It’s his first real exercise since his injuries, and he’s not itching to push it, so he doesn’t say shit. Still, if he lets Imogene keep serving him seconds, he’s going to need to work back up to proper workouts sooner rather than later, or he's not going to be able to zip up his flight suit.

Jake slows to a stop after fifteen minutes or so, momentum arrested by the view that emerges, perfectly framed, from between two low clusters of trees. Bradley slows too, coming to rest beside him, and lets his eyes drag over the landscape. Out here, it’s almost possible to believe they’re the only people in the world, not a hint of civilisation in sight. 

His breath comes quick, but remarkably easy. Smooth.

“Figured it out yet, Rooster?” Jake asks.

Bradley tips his head back and looks at the sky, too, the last few faint stars struggling to shine on through the pinks and oranges of sunrise.

“Yeah,” he says, warmth slipping into his voice. “I think so.”

He yelps when Jake grabs his chin and pulls his face down, forcing Bradley to meet his narrowed gaze. Jake turns Bradley’s face first one way and then the other, studying him like he’s livestock for sale.

Bradley, who has no idea what the hell is happening and is suddenly concerned he’s going to end up in a shallow grave out the back of the Seresin property, slaps Jake’s hand away.

Whatever Jake was looking for, whatever he found, it just makes him laugh.

“Guess not,” he says. “You really are an idiot.”

“The hell, Seresin?” Bradley demands, fingers lifting to his chin to rest just where Jake’s had been. His skin is dusted with a light sheen of sweat, cool beneath his touch. When he pulls his fingers away, he looks down at them with a frown, like they might offer an explanation. Or, at the very least, a clue. They don’t.

“Don’t know why I’m surprised,” Jake says, already backing away, breaking into a light backward jog before turning and tossing the rest of the words over his shoulder. “Being an idiot seems to have worked out just fine for you so far!”

Bradley watches him for a beat before taking off after him. There’s an ache blooming in his ribs, or maybe just behind them, steady and insistent, and he can’t quite catch up.

Jake stonewalls his demand for answers, and Bradley’s eventually forced to let it go when he disappears off into town in his truck to pick up a forgotten ingredient for Imogene. Bradley might have joined him, intent on continuing his campaign of harassment, if Imogene hadn’t caught him with his hand braced over his aching ribs after his shower and fussed him onto the couch.

So there Bradley remains, with strict orders to stay off his feet. There’s an ice pack steadily melting a wet patch through his shirt. Sprawled back against the cushions and a frown fixed on his face, he turns Jake’s words over and over in his mind.

“Need a fresh one?” Annie asks, breaking him from his reverie. Bradley blinks up at her, shifting in place and shivering as he feels a trickle of cold water spill down his side as he moves, soaking into the waistband of his sweatpants. He pulls the ice pack—mostly melted—away, and inspects the sodden mess of his t-shirt.

“I’m good, actually,” he says.

She takes the dripping ice pack from him before he can protest and disappears into the kitchen. When she comes back, she hands him a bottle of cold water that he’s immensely grateful for.

“Thank you,” he says, cracking the lid and draining half of it in one go. It’s icy enough to leave a faint ache blooming in his forehead, and he scrunches his nose and squeezes one eye shut while he waits it out. She settles on the couch next to him. “I’m not an invalid, though. I’m just—”

She waits him out.

“—scared of your mom,” he admits.

She laughs. “As you should be. You sure you’re okay?”

“Just bruised and a little out of shape,” Bradley says ruefully. “I’ll be right as rain in no time.”

He catches the hungry look in her eye, and recognises it all too well. She wants to know, and knows she can’t. Jake must have already told her all that he can, which amounts to nothing at all. It must be hard, he thinks, loving someone with a job like theirs. He shakes his head in gentle reproof.

Annie flushes, embarrassment pinkening her cheeks.

“I know,” she sighs. “I just worry about him.”

“Don’t,” Bradley says sardonically. “His ribs are just fine.”

She hums, tucking her legs up beneath her on the couch. They lapse into an easy quiet. Bradley’s thoughts drift, heavy and slow, and he only realises he was seconds away from nodding off when Annie’s voice startles him back to alertness.

“We’re not homophobic just because we’re from Texas, you know.”

She’s got the same iron determination lining her brow that Bradley’s seen on Jake when he’s got the promise of a competition between his teeth. Bradley stares at her. Blinks. Open his mouth. Closes it.

“I didn’t… think you were?” he hazards, wondering what he could possibly have done to give off this impression.

“Okay, good,” she says, some of the tension leaving her shoulders. “I was worried that might be the thing getting in the way, that’s all.”

“In the way of what?” Bradley asks, wondering if he’s sidestepped into some alternate dimension, six inches to the left of normal, where the entire Seresin family has been cursed to speak only in riddles. Annie laughs like he’s said something funny. Then she spots the look on his face, and seems to realise he’s not in on the joke.

“Oh,” she says softly. “Shoot, I’m sorry. I’ve gone and put my foot in my mouth.”

Bradley leans forward from the couch cushions, and just about manages not to wheeze when something in his side briefly seizes up.

“Then pull it back out,” Bradley suggests. “So I can hear you properly when you explain what the hell we’re talking about.”

Annie winces, stands. Smooths her dress. Twists her fingers together and utterly fails to look Bradley in the eye.

“Ignore me,” she pleads. “I’m always getting up in people’s business where I don’t belong.”

“Seems genetic,” Bradley assures her. “Throw me a bone, Annie.”

She hesitates, then:

“I just really thought you and—” 

The screen door bangs open.

“—Jake!” Annie squeaks.

“That continues to be my name,” Jake agrees, sage and cheerful, wrestling with a loaded grocery bag. He brandishes a small tube. “This stuff’s for arthritis, but the lady at CVS said it’d probably do the trick for your ribs too, old man. Don't try lying to me. I know they're bothering you.”

Bradley stares at Jake. Annie stares at Bradley. Jake finally clocks the weird mood, and stares between them with a single eyebrow raised.

He’s backlit by the afternoon sun, all soft edges. His hair is fluffy and a little dishevelled from where he’d washed it and hadn’t bothered styling it. His t-shirt is worn thin, clinging in places it has no business clinging. He holds the tube towards Bradley like it means nothing at all.

We could always try the alternative.

Figured it out yet, Rooster?

I was just worried that might be the thing getting in the way.

Whatever’s left of that thick, frosted pane Bradley’s been living behind shatters all at once, which is all well and good except that it leaves him with two fistfuls of glass and the desire to squeeze. Someone says his name—maybe Annie, maybe Jake.

Bradley, tasting his own heartbeat on his tongue, flees.

Bradley would love nothing more than to call somebody right now, but he’s pretty short on options. His squadmates are a no-go. No family to speak of, except for Maverick.

He wonders if Mav would get a kick out of that phone call, at least. Pick me up, Mav, I’m scared. There’s feelings at this party. 

It’s not like he’s got anywhere to run to, even if he weren’t aching too much to manage more than a brisk walk. And since he can’t run, he’s settled for hiding. 

He’s holed up in the spare room, sitting on the floor in the corner, half concealed by the jumble of miscellaneous cardboard boxes. Back against the wall. Knees drawn up. Head tipped back. 

Of course, it takes Jake all of three minutes to find him.

He pokes his head into the room, then pushes the door open the rest of the way when he catches sight of a half-concealed limb. He pads on over to Bradley without a word, and lowers himself to the floor beside him, mirroring his posture like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“Guess you finally figured it out,” he observes.

Bradley keeps his eyes on the opposite wall. “Guess I did.”

A moment of silence pools between them, deep and dark and a little dangerous. Jake wades into it anyway.

“So,” he says, challenge laced tight in the single syllable. “Gonna do anything about it?”

Bradley tips his head to the side. They’re too close for his eyes to focus properly, but he looks at Jake anyway, a frown carved deep into his face. Jake looks calmer than he does, but that’s probably a given. Always three steps ahead. Always waiting on Bradley to catch up.

“I don’t get it,” Bradley says eventually.

“Well,” Jake says lightly, “you see, Bradshaw, I’m handsome and charming and talented. The whole package, really.” He bumps his shoulder against Bradley’s. “And you want me. Carnally.”

Bradley snorts despite himself. “Can’t imagine why.”

“But you do,” Jake says, unbothered. He’s never quit on anything in his life, and Bradley knows for a fact he’s not about to start now.

“I do,” he agrees. Helpless and hopeless.

Jake hums, satisfied. “So what’s not to get?”

“We’ve always hated each other,” Bradley observes. There’s a lot of feelings knotted up in his chest, sharp and in-focus, savage in their clarity. They’re too tangled for Bradley to grab hold of just one.

“Have we?” Jake asks. 

He’s not being facetious. There’s genuine curiosity in his voice.  He shrugs, his arm brushing up against Bradley’s. “See, I thought so too. But looking back?” A pause. “I’m not so sure.”

“Hm,” Bradley says, because he doesn’t have anything better.

They have acted like they hated each other long enough. Vicious competition. Razor-edged sarcasm. A mutual dedication to getting under each other’s skin. If it looks like hatred and sounds like hatred, sometimes it turns out to be something else entirely.

“How long have you known?” Bradley asks softly.

“Known?” Jake repeats, amused—but Bradley’s sure he can hear something a little weary beneath it, too. “That’s a pretty strong word, Bradshaw. Ask me about hope instead.”

That’s what does it.

The idea of Jake, of all people, looking at Bradley and hoping. Cradling something fragile and bird-boned in the cage of his ribs, waiting for Bradley to notice it too.

Bradley’s breath leaves him all at once, like a rush of static over radio.

He shifts his knee, presses it gently against Jake’s. It’s warm under him, solid and unmoving. Patient in a way that Bradley probably hasn’t earned.

Some nervous part of Bradley wonders if things are supposed to change, now. Are they supposed to be nice to each other? Are they supposed to hold hands and stare into each other's eyes? Is he supposed to call Jake by his name—the first one, no less? He’s losing himself in the spiral of these thoughts when Jake says “Get those tail feathers moving, Rooster, or we’ll be late for dinner,” and that seems to answer that.

He lets himself get pulled up and follows Jake into the kitchen where Imogene is futzing around in a relaxed sort of way: washing salad and chopping greens with the radio drifting bland nostalgia-pop. 

He sits in the chair next to Jake, as usual, who teases jokes at his expense, as usual, calling him Bradshaw when it suits him and Rooster when he thinks it’s funny, as usual. Jake throws a dinner roll at Eleanor when she starts in on an embarrassing story about him, and threatens to pull out stories from Bradley’s own checkered past when he gallantly catches it before it can hit her. They get into an argument about commercial airlines, bickering over which is worse: Frontier or Spirit. It gets heated enough that Jakes shoves him with his shoulder. Bradley braces for his aching ribs to jolt, but finds that Jake’s hand is already looped around his other shoulder to keep him in place. After they’re done eating, Jake leans back in his chair, stretching out and satisfied, and the arm draped over the back of Bradley’s chair doesn’t brush against his shoulder at all.

Which is to say, absolutely nothing has changed, except the shape of Bradley’s own thoughts.

The normality of it all smoothes the edges of his sharp and awkward uncertainty, and Bradley relaxes by degrees. He feels loose and easy and oddly at home, a feeling that’s never that common when your life is moving from base housing to base housing, the same apathetic spaces that all run together.

And yet—the longer he sits with it all, the more complicated it feels. Normal is a relief. Normal is a balm. All the same, normal doesn’t feel like quite enough. 

Jake’s gaze returns to him again and again, and Bradley feels it every time. Jake's not touching him, but Bradley can feel the heat of him all the same, the warm and solid weight of him. There’s a faint, restless ache threaded through the comfort now, and Bradley’s pretty sure it’s nothing to do with his ribs. He’s standing on the edge of something, and he doesn’t know whether he’s supposed to step forward or wait for an outstretched hand. 

By the time the meal is over, he’s wound himself all the way up again. He pushes himself up out of his chair when Imogene starts clearing dishes, only to be scolded right back down into it.

“Milk it while you can,” Jake says, scooping up Bradley’s plate. The whole family moves around him, clearing the table with a sort of concerted chaos. “Slacker.”

“I need you to tell your mom that I am still capable of simple household tasks,” Bradley grumbles as Imogene disappears into the kitchen.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Jake says, and casts a sidelong glance at Bradley that makes it abundantly clear that Jake can tell Bradley's still holding himself a little stiffly, one arm tucked a little too close and comfortable against his rib cage. 

“You're an asshole, Hangman,” Bradley says flatly, falling back on the classics to cover his confusion. He pushes himself up from the table and heads to the kitchen anyway. Imogene's gaze is steely enough that he just thanks her for dinner and keeps moving, straight through to the spare bedroom at the back of the house that's more or less been his home for the past week. 

He’s got painkillers—the good kind—stashed somewhere in his bag. He usually avoids them when he can, not a fan of the heavy, drowsy edge they bring with them, but he’s tired and he’s hurting and maybe knocking himself out for a solid twelve hours will do him some good. Body and soul.

Maybe by the time he wakes up, he’ll have figured out what the hell he’s supposed to be doing about Jake Seresin.

He never gets the chance to dig around in his bag for the little blister pack of tablets, because Jake follows him right into the bedroom without hesitation and says, wicked little smile pressing dimples neatly into his cheeks: “Strip, sailor.”

Wild panic sets in somewhere near Bradley’s back teeth.

The bedroom door is still wide open. He can hear Imogene and Annie and Eleanor in the kitchen. Jake is right in front of him, eyes sparkling and close enough to touch. Something hot crawls up Bradley’s throat and he’s worried it might be something quiet and sincere that he won’t ever be able to take back once it’s escaped the cage of his teeth. Something dangerous. 

He’s not ready for that.

Then he notices the little tube of ointment curled loosely in Jake’s fingers. Comprehension hits first, relief following  hard on its heels. It must show on his face, because Jake laughs—head tipped back, low and loud and unselfconscious.

“Relax, would you, Bradshaw?” Jake says, waggling the tube. “I’m not gonna jump you the second you get shirtless. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

Bradley feels heat creep up his neck, ears burning. He mutters a half-hearted fuck you and grips the hem of his shirt. Then, he hesitates.

His gaze flicks to the open door, and back to Jake. The line between the ache of fractured bone and the ache of his wanting heart feels thinner by the second.

“What if I want you to?” he asks, curious despite himself.

Jake’s eyes darken. Just a shade. Bradley doesn’t miss the way a muscle in his jaw jumps.

“Then I move to strike my statement from the record, your honor,” Jake says. It’s stupid and it’s classic Seresin. Bradley laughs, fingers still worrying the edge of his shirt, suspended on the brink of something.

“Why haven’t you?” he asks, then adds, quickly, “Kissed me, I mean.”

“Why haven’t I stuck my tongue in the mouth of a man in the middle of an existential crisis?” Jake asks dryly. “Gee, Bradshaw, I just don’t know. Real mystery.”

“It’s not a crisis,” Bradley protests, skipping right over the image of Jake’s tongue in his mouth.

“Alright, alright,” Jake agrees easily, and Bradley doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to that: Jake Seresin, passing up the opportunity for an easy argument spurred on by Bradley’s defensiveness. “Not a crisis.”

Bradley relaxes, starts gathering fabric again, trying to figure out how to get his shirt over his head without having to lift his arms too high.

“I’d call it DEFCON 3,” Jake says, thoughtful and mocking all at once. 

Bradley lets the shirt fall, hands lifting in a silent what the hell, man. Jake laughs, raising his own hands in surrender. Bradley’s lips twitch upwards at the corner, just a fraction, even as he fixes a scowl on them. For the look of the thing.

Jake reaches out and hooks a finger in the belt loop of Bradley’s jeans. He tugs, gentle enough that it’s nothing more than an invitation. The choice to stay put or to move closer is still Bradley’s.

He lets himself be reeled in.

“Because patience is a virtue,” Jake says, his hand settling at Bradley’s hip.

“Now I know you’re full of shit,” Bradley says. His voice is steady and unimpressed; his insides feel like he’s pulling at least six Gs. Jake’s hand is warm even through the denim. Sure, too. Certain. 

“‘Patience is a virtue’? Who the hell are you, and what have you done with Hangman?”

Jake chuckles, and Bradley watches the long line of his throat move. His fingers twitch with the urge to touch, but something still holds him back. 

“Fine. You got me. Patience is your thing.” Jake shrugs, easy and unguarded. “I just like you, Bradshaw. That's all I got.”

I just like you. It’s soft and it’s honest and it’s all that Bradley needs.

He tugs his shirt off with a faint grunt of discomfort. Jake doesn’t retreat—stays right up in Bradley’s space and deftly avoids getting punched in the face as the fabric is pulled free. Adrenaline and anticipation spike through Bradley’s blood. He’s not sure whether it’s the prospect of Jake touching him, or the thrill of letting himself be seen like this. Vulnerable.

“Well, shit,” Jake says flatly, looking down at Bradley's bare torso—and it’s definitely well, shit, you look like you fell out of a plane a few weeks ago and not well, shit, I want to eat you up.

“It looks worse than it is,” Bradley says, not bothering to follow Jake’s gaze.

The bruises are fading now, mottled greens and yellows bleeding into the edges, only a few dark and purple spots left. Jake’s expression makes Bradley quietly grateful that he hadn’t seen them at their worst, when his whole side had looked like roadkill. 

“Why'd you let me drag you out this morning?” Jake asks plaintively, hand reaching up but stopping just shy of actually touching.

“You'll figure it out,” Bradley deadpans, over the stutter-stumble of his heart. “I have faith.” 

Jake rolls his eyes and coaxes Bradley's arm up and out of the way, uncapping the lid of the ointment with the sterile little click of a breaking seal. He squeezes some onto his fingers, and then mutters a preemptive apology before sweeping them across Bradley’s side.

The touch is so careful, so reverent, that a shiver skates straight down Bradley’s spine. Maybe there's a twinge of pain or discomfort, but frankly someone could throw a brick at his head right now and he'd be hard pressed to notice. 

Jake pours his whole attention into it, laser-focused as he spreads the cream in long, gentle passes. Bradley watches his face, and with every touch something draws tighter and tighter in his chest.

Eventually, Jake caps the tube and sets it haphazardly on a nearby shelf. Bradley realises his arm is still raised and lets it fall, a soft exhale leaving him as it does.

Jake pauses for a moment, watching Bradley watch him. Then nods once to himself and takes half a step back. 

Still waiting on him, Bradley realises. Which is sweet, but kind of a bitch, because that means he's got to pull himself together before Jake walks out of the room. Despite his less-than-courageous showing up until now, Bradley’s no coward—but the thought of having to slink across the house in search of Jake, right past Imogene and Annie and Eleanor’s no-doubt knowing looks, is downright humiliating.

He gathers together the ache in his chest, and tries his best to shape into something he can say.

“If you’ve taught me anything—”

“I’ve taught you plenty, Bradshaw,” Jake cuts in, because even now—especially now—he just can’t resist trying to get under Bradley’s skin. 

“Name one thing,” Bradley fires back, instantly derailed, because Jake has always been impossible to ignore. He recovers just as fast, slapping a hand over Jake’s mouth before he can launch into an obnoxious and almost certainly fabricated list.

Jake’s hand comes up to Bradley’s wrist, fingers closing firm around it, but he doesn’t pull it away. He just holds it. Bradley can feel the thrum of his own pulse beneath the soft pressure of Jake’s fingers, loud as a confession.

“Actually,” Bradley says, leaning in, voice low and intent, “just shut up and listen for once in your life."

Jake’s eyes narrow above Bradley’s palm. Amused. Curious. Bradley leaves his hand right where it is, just in case.

“If you’ve taught me anything,” Bradley repeats carefully. “It’s that patience can be more of a vice, sometimes.”

The words hang between them, charged. And the move would be to kiss Jake, then, but Bradley’s hand is still pressed over his mouth.

He feels it anyway: the sharp intake of Jake’s breath against his palm, the way Jake’s fingers tighten at his wrist, not pulling away. Not pushing. Waiting. Hoping.

Bradley lets his hand fall from Jake’s mouth, but finds it impossible to abandon entirely. He drags it down, slow, like he’s giving Jake time to stop him. Jake doesn’t. Bradley’s thumb lingers at Jake’s lower lip, just enough pressure to feel the heat there, to feel Jake’s mouth part a fraction. His breath ghosts warm over Bradley’s skin, unsteady.

Bradley’s never seen him like this. No smirk. No armour. Just bare and open want sketched raw and honest across every plane of his face.

Jake swallows. Bradley watches his throat move and thinks, distantly, we could have ruined each other in so many ways.

“Then get the fuck on with it, will you?” Jake says, and he’s aiming for cocky but there’s rough impatience threaded tightly between his words and Bradley can practically taste it.

“God,” Bradley says, something sharp and fond and furious twisting in his chest. “Do you ever pass up an opportunity to ruin the moment?”

He slides his hand up to Jake’s jaw, steadying him or maybe—for all he wouldn’t admit it under pain of court-martial—himself. 

Jake’s borrowed patience snaps the second that Bradley’s lips press against his and it turns out that ruining each other is maybe still on the cards.

It’s not careful. It’s not tentative. It’s the sharp edges of broken restraint, catching Bradley’s breath in his throat as Jake’s mouth moves beneath his. Jake makes a sound, low and rough and pleased, and his hand slides from Bradley’s wrist to his side, anchoring him there like he’s afraid Bradley might still bolt.

Bradley feels it everywhere: the drag of Jake’s tongue against his lip, the jostle as Jake tucks their bodies close together, the way his own chest loosens around the ache it’s been guarding. It’s dizzying, like the moment after pulling out of a steep dive: disorienting and terrifyingly euphoric. 

The kiss only lasts a few moments, or perhaps a lifetime. Time’s all wrong again, stretched out and torn up and meaning nothing at all.

When they part, Bradley presses his forehead against Jake’s and stays there, breathless, eyes still closed. Jake presses another kiss at the corner of his mouth, murmuring words that drag against his mustache.

“I’m gonna shave this thing off while you sleep.”

“Seriously?” Bradley rasps, opening his eyes to meet Jake’s. They’re half-lidded, amusement crinkling their edges, his pupils wide and dark. “The moment-ruining thing? It’s pathological.”

“An incurable condition, so they tell me,” Jake sighs, draping one arm over Bradley’s shoulder. “Tragic.”

Bradley’s thumb has found its way beneath Jake’s shirt without conscious thought; he drags a clumsy circle against the smooth, hot skin of his side.

“Well now you’re just playing it up to get a pity-fuck,” he says, tipping his head and mouthing lazily at Jake’s jaw. He doesn’t miss the flexing of Jake’s fingers at his side as the hair on his upper lip scrapes across Jake’s clean-shaven cheek, nor the little shudder that runs through him. Bradley smiles against Jake’s skin. So much for shaving the mustache off while he sleeps, huh?

“Not in my mama’s spare room, I’m not,” Jake mutters.

Bradley’s gaze slams back to the bedroom door. Still wide open. He’d totally forgotten. Jake has always commanded his full attention, and Bradley has a sinking feeling that now it’s only going to get worse.

“Fuck,” Bradley laughs, and presses one more kiss to Jake’s jaw before he pulls back. Jake lets him go, but reluctantly. Bradley’s heart, still rioting in his chest, calms a fraction at the distance. He’s disappointed to put more than an inch of space between them, but at the same time, some part of him is glad.

The future is an awful, yawning chasm of uncertainty. Branching paths he can’t possibly fathom. Conversations not yet had. But at least for now there’s a signpost further up the road waiting for him. One that reads pity-fuck, comma, anywhere but Jake’s mom’s spare room. 

Something to aim for.

“Should my ribs be tingling, by the way?” he asks.

Jake frowns, gaze darting over to the abandoned tube of ointment before he splays a careful hand against Bradley’s rib cage, searching for some answer beneath his palm.

“Where?” he asks, ducking his head to inspect the fading bruises.

“Little further over,” Bradley directs him. “Higher up. Nope, still higher. Mm, yeah—about there.”

Jake’s hand is nowhere near the bruising now, his palm pressed flat against Bradley’s pectoral, right over his heart. Bradley grins. 

Jake clocks it immediately. His concern shutters away in an instant, replaced by exasperation that doesn’t quite manage to hide its fondness.

“You’re a sap, Bradshaw.”

Bradley settles his own hand over Jake’s.

“Just tell me, doc,” he says lightly. “Am I gonna live?”

“Not if I have anything to do with it.”

Bradley lets out a soft oof, brows pinching together, breath hissing through his teeth like the blow actually hurt. 

“First you threaten my mustache, now me?” his fingers tap idly against the back of Jake’s hand, playful. “I’m not sure this thing's got legs, Seresin.” 

Jake kisses him again, and his hand stays right where it is.

Bradley's heart should be racing. Instead, it’s singing, settling into the steadiest rhythm it’s ever drummed out. The same syllable, over and over. Jake. Jake. Jake. 

Whoomf. Whoomf. Whoomf. 

Bradley stares up at the ceiling. Usually his eyes track the lazy spin of the fan, the faint gleam along the blades the only movement in the velvet dark. He finds it soothing as he struggles to sleep. Tonight, he stares past the blades, past the room entirely, into something uncertain and unlit.

The cicadas have quieted with the sun. What’s left is only a thin, lethargic hum in the distance, easy to ignore if he could just get out of his own head. He can’t. His breathing is too loud in his ears, shallow and uneven, hitching when he inhales too deep and his ribs bite back in protest.

He feels kind of wrecked. Feverish. Like he’s coming down with something ugly and full-body, the worst kind of flu: every muscle is sore and tight. It’s embarrassing, really. One easy three-mile run shouldn’t do this, even with the excuse of bruises that still ache if he puts a foot wrong. But it’s not just that. It’s the hours of tension wound tight beneath his skin, the sense that his body has been braced for something all evening, and never got the memo that it was time to stand down.

Blaming Jake is easy and familiar, comfortable like an old habit. So Bradley does that.

Which turns out to be a mistake, because once his thoughts land on Jake, they refuse to move past him. 

Jake’s mouth, warm and insistent. Jake’s hands, splayed sure and grounding against his chest. Jake’s laughter, caught between them like a whispered secret. He’s seen Jake laugh a hundred times before, but not like that. Not the way he laughs here, with just Bradley, unguarded and free, head tipped back and all his sharp edges set aside. The sound had settled low in Bradley’s chest and it’s still there, warm and almost precious.

He squeezes his eyes shut, like that might help, but it only makes it worse. The images sharpen, fill in the gaps his memory had been polite enough to leave blurred.

With a frustrated huff, he rolls onto his side, and immediately regrets it. Pain lances bright and sudden through him, knocking a breathless wheeze from him, so intense that for a moment he thinks he’s bitten through his tongue. He freezes, hand clutching uselessly at his ribs as his muscles seize up around the ache.

“Fuck,” he mutters, thin and tight.

He lies there, teeth gritted, trying to ride it out and remember how to breathe. In and out. Slow. Steady. C’mon Rooster, you should have that part down, at least. The pain eventually fades from blinding to manageable, leaving behind a dull throb that feels personal, almost offended.

That’s his breaking point.

“Fuck it,” he grunts, levering himself carefully upright. He swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands, one hand pressed to his ribs like it might keep all the rest of him from splintering apart.

He doesn’t think about it too hard. Thinking is how he got stuck here in the first place.

The house is dark and quiet, but he knows the way now, even without light to guide him. Mostly. He pads down the hall by memory, past the places that have already started to feel dangerous in their familiarity. It’s only beyond the kitchen that he hesitates, pausing in the dark as it occurs to him he should have brought his phone to illuminate the way.

Too late now.

He edges forward anyway, hand skimming the wall, moving slow and careful. When his shin clips the corner of a chair, pain flares and he sucks in a sharp breath, going statue-still as he waits to see if the sound wakes anyone. After a long few moments, he doesn’t hear anybody stirring, and he releases his pent-up breath, shaky but determined. 

Because whatever this is—this restlessness, this ache that won’t settle—it’s not going to let him sleep. Pretending nothing has changed stopped working the moment that Jake kissed him.

Even if he doesn’t know what he wants to say, even if he doesn’t say anything at all. It just seems like it’ll all seem a little easier with Jake close by.

Jake wakes when Bradley eases his door open, the way that only someone in the military can: fully alert and ready to go before his brain catches up and realises there’s no threat, no call to duty. He squints, bleary and bemused, at the shape of Bradley looming in the doorway, then exhales and lets himself sink back against his pillows.

“You realise,” he murmurs, voice rough with sleep, “that when I said not in my mama’s spare room, the issue wasn’t the spare room part, right?”

“Shut up,” Bradley mutters, reflexive and embarrassed.

He slips around to the side of the bed and eases himself under the covers, careful not to jostle his ribs. He settles on his back, leaving just enough space between them to pretend he’s not doing exactly what he came here to do. His fingers betray him anyway, drifting until they find solid warmth—Jake’s arm, maybe—resting there on top of the covers like a question he’s not ready to ask out loud.

“What’s going on, Bradshaw?” Jake asks, amusement curling warm through his words, soft and lethargic. “You just come here to cuddle?”

“Maybe I did,” Bradley says, defensive on instinct. He turns his head toward Jake. In the dark, he can only make out the very edges of his features, silvered faintly by moonlight through the window. Jake doesn’t press, but then again he doesn’t need to. Bradley answers the unspoken question. 

“Well, Seresin,” he says, nudging his knee until it bumps against Jake’s. “You see, you’re handsome, and funny, and charming. The whole package, really.”

His eyes have adjusted enough to the dark to catch Jake’s smile, the way a dimple cuts into one cheek.

“And you want me,” Jake says. A statement, not a question. “Carnally.”

“Later,” Bradley says. “There’s other ways I want you first.”

Jake’s breath stills.

In the dark, his eyes are just a faint gleam in the shadows, the barest points of reflected light, unreadable. When he speaks, his voice is quieter. 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah,” Bradley says. “Like quiet for more than two minutes together.”

“Well,” Jake replies dryly, rolling onto his side, “now who’s ruining the moment?”

He moves closer, careful, fitting himself along Bradley’s side without pressing into his ribs. His hand settles at Bradley’s hip, warm and possessive. Bradley hadn’t come here to kiss him. Not specifically. But resisting Jake feels impossible.

Jake kisses him soft and unhurried, like it’s the only thing in the world. He sighs against Bradley’s mouth when Bradley parts his lips, traces his tongue gently like he’s memorising the shape of it.

“Guess it’s contagious,” Bradley murmurs when they break apart, cheeks warm and breathing uneven.

It’s still not the conversation they need to have. Bradley knows that. But he’s always had trouble keeping his focus where Jake is concerned, even if not quite like this. For now, this is enough. Being here and close. Letting the quiet settle between them without trying to outrun it.

Bradley wakes when Jake reaches for his phone on the side table. It's a delicate balance of skills, sleeping light enough to surface at the slightest noise or shift, but easy enough to sink straight back under if it's nothing. Bradley’s had plenty of practice. Jake's just checking the time, he thinks blearily as the room floods briefly with light, and waits for renewed darkness to ease him back into unconsciousness. 

But then Jake shifts more fully, settling back against the pillow, one hand tucked under his head and the other cradling the phone. 

Bradley reaches out, half-blind, and smacks it down, sending it skidding against Jake’s chest. Jake curses, fumbling for it. Bradley only makes a satisfied noise and leaves his hand right where it landed, sprawled across Jake’s torso.

“Asshole,” Jake mutters.

"Whatever, It’s—”

Bradley snags the phone before Jake can reclaim it, turns it toward himself, and squints against the brightness of the screen. He drops his head back to the pillow with a small groan, and wriggles, trying to reclaim the exact, perfect position he’d been comfortable in before being disturbed.

“—five forty-five,” he finishes. “Go back to sleep.”

Jake just laughs. He leans over and presses a kiss to the corner of Bradley’s jaw, quick and warm and familiar like it’s an everyday routine, and then slips out of bed altogether, disappearing out of the door with barely a sound.

Bradley lies half-buried in the nest of warm blankets, the air stirred by Jake’s exit pleasantly cool. He tells himself very firmly that cataloguing the memory of Jake’s lips against his skin is probably too much. 

Jake returns a few minutes later, but not to bed. Bradley prizes one eye open at the rustle of fabric and doesn’t bother pretending he isn’t watching Jake pull his sleep shirt over his head and replace it with a clean one.

“Jake,” he says, and doesn’t love how petulant it comes out.

“Quit your bitching,” Jake says, grinning. “I’m going for a run. You’re forbidden from joinin’ me. You did enough damage yesterday.”

“Joke’s on you,” Bradley grumbles. “Didn’t want to come anyway.”

Jake doesn’t kiss him again before he leaves. He does, however, flip Bradley off from the doorway. It feels enough like affection that Bradley just huffs out a quiet laugh and lets himself drift back into the arms of sleep.

By the time he’s properly awake another forty minutes later, the scent of coffee has worked its way through the house, saturating the early morning air. Jake’s not the only early riser in the family. The smell alone is enough to coax Bradley up and out of bed.

He spends a few minutes poking around because he’s not a saint, and the opportunity to uncover embarrassing childhood photos of Jake Seresin is too good to pass up. If this used to be Jake’s room, though, the childhood has been carefully stripped from it at some point. It’s a neat little guest room now, warm and welcoming, but faintly impersonal. A handful of family photos sit in tidy wooden frames. Jake looks younger in some of them, sure, but he’s fully grown in all of them. No bad haircuts. No braces. No proud Little League mementos.

Bradley slips out of the room before he really has time to think what it might look like to anybody else. He regrets that immediately, when Eleanor clocks him from the far end of the corridor.

She lifts her eyebrows. Bradley freezes, like maybe if he doesn’t move, she won’t be able to see him at all. She smirks—an expression so perfectly Jake that it’s almost unfair—and then turns on the spot, carrying on with her morning without saying a word.

By the time Jake gets back, a dark vee of sweat soaking into the front of his shirt, Bradley has settled awkwardly at the kitchen counter with his coffee. He’s sweating bullets under Eleanor’s intermittent, sweet smiles, each one paired with her refusal to comment on anything at all.

“Sleep well?” she asks Jake innocently as he moves towards the fridge. 

Bradley buries his face in his coffee cup in a poor attempt to hide his expression.

“Like a dream,” Jake says easily, pulling a bottle of water from the fridge and sending Bradley an unsubtle wink before he uncaps it.

Bradley can feel the telltale heat blooming high on his cheeks—the blotchy redness that betrays him every time he’s embarrassed or pissed off or both. When Eleanor squeals and launches herself at her big brother, Bradley makes a half-hearted attempt at escape.

She catches him anyway, abandoning Jake in favour of him. Her arms loop around his middle, her face pressed warmly against her back.

“I knew the moment you walked through the door,” she says brightly, “we were keeping you one way or another, Bradley.”

His escape takes him only as far as the front room. 

Bradley abandons his half-drunk coffee on the low table by the couch, and settles himself against the cushions, heart still hammering in chest. There’s something high and tight lodged behind his sternum, a pressure he knows all too well: the sudden, uninvited knot of grief that creeps in when he brushes too close to what’s been taken from him.

Like family.

It’s an old reflex—this flinch, this instinct to pull the ejection handle the second something starts to feel warm and real. He sits with it anyway, lets the feeling wash through him and tries to withstand it. The house hums softly around him. His coffee grows cooler in front of him, untouched.

He’s been stewing in that strange, heady mix of grief and elation for ten minutes or so when Jake interrupts it.

“Sorry,” Jake says from somewhere behind him, and doesn’t sound even remotely apologetic.

“No you’re not,” Bradley says without looking. He’s not mad about it. Jake is… Jake.

“No, I’m not,” Jake agrees easily. He circles around into Bradley’s line of sight, freshly showered, hair still a little damp, loose t-shirt hanging off his shoulders like it’s never known tension. His gaze flicks over Bradley, assessing. “Unless you’re actually freaking out. In which case, I could maybe be persuaded that I am.”

Bradley has just enough time to think that Jake might sit beside him—might give him space, ease into whatever conversation this is—before Jake plants one knee on the couch, then the other, bracketing Bradley’s thighs. 

The world tilts.

Jake doesn’t quite settle his weight down, hovering instead, close enough that Bradley can feel the warmth of him, the press of proximity. Bradley’s brain stalls out entirely; his body doesn’t. His hands come up automatically, fingers curling at Jake’s hips and tugging him down before he can stop himself, before he can remember that this might be a conversation better had standing six feet apart, and maybe with his eyes closed for good measure.

Jake laughs, low and delighted, and his hands come up to cradle the back of Bradley’s neck, thumbs brushing the line of his jaw. The contact leaves Bradley a little stunned, pleasantly unmoored.

And maybe Jake knows him well enough to figure that if Bradley’s dazed and a little distracted, he’s less likely to overthink himself into a defensive crouch. It’s a dirty trick.

“This okay?” Jake asks.

“With me? Yeah,” Bradley says, a little breathless. “With your mom? Hard to say. She threatened to put me out on my ass if I ever laid hands on one of her kids again.” 

“That’s not what she meant,” Jake says without hesitation, and Bradley has the sudden and swooping fear that Jake talked to his mom about all this before he talked to Bradley. And then Jake adds, pointedly, “Not what I meant, either.”

Bradley huffs a quiet laugh, equal parts fond and exasperated. “Then say what you mean. Jesus. I feel like I need an interpreter for you people sometimes.”

Jake laughs and drops one hand to the collar of Bradley’s shirt, worrying at the fabric until his fingers find the chain of Bradley’s dog tags. He traces the outline of the metal through the cotton, almost absent-minded.

“You in this, Bradshaw?” he asks quietly. “For real?”

Bradley recognises the question for what it is.

He looks up at Jake: the sharp line of his jaw, the dimples bracketing a smile that’s just a little unsure, the bright blue-green eyes watching him like the answer actually matters. His own smile feels crooked when it comes, imperfect and utterly unguarded.

“Feels real to me,” Bradley says. It’s the simplest answer he has. It’s also true. 

Something in Jake’s shoulders eases, just a fraction. Seems like it’s a satisfactory answer, at least for now. 

“So. You gonna tell Maverick where you are, now?”

“You want me to?” Bradley asks, genuinely curious.

Jake shrugs, but the set of his mouth gives him away. “I’m not shy,” he says. “You can crow about me, Rooster.”

Bradley snorts softly. Jake says ‘you can’ but Bradley hears the ‘I want you to’, tucked into the bravado, plain as day. Jake’s never wanted anything quietly that he could want loudly.

“Alright,” he says. “But don’t blame me when he gets all weird about it.”

Jake cocks an eyebrow. “What do you mean, weird?”

“Halfway through my first ever date,” Bradley says dryly, “he showed up to ‘check how I was doing’.”

Jake throws his head back and laughs, loud and unrestrained. Bradley’s chest tightens again, but it’s not grief this time—it’s something warmer. His fingers dig a little tighter into the firm muscle of Jake’s thighs, and watches him wantonly, a little awestruck.

He tells himself, futilely, that he’ll remember how to breathe again any second now.

Bradley successfully flusters Imogene by asking—and then insisting—that he can make breakfast for everyone. Yes, even with his ribs. Yes, he’s fine. Yes, he’d really, really like to. It’s the least he can do to thank them for their ongoing hospitality, and he means it.

He fiddles with the radio until he finds a station that satisfies him—bringing you the anthems of the 80s, 90s and 00s, all day!— and sings along while he pulls eggs and cheese and vegetables from the fridge. The normality of it all settles over him like a warm blanket: the clatter of pans, the hum of the fridge, the radio filling in all the empty spaces. It’s domestic in a way his life rarely is, and for once, it doesn’t make him itch.

Annie appears by his side to request no bell peppers in her omelette. He pretends for a moment that he won’t oblige her, then spins her suddenly to the music, laughing at her shriek of surprise.

“No bell peppers,” he promises.

He can’t dance along to the upbeat music the way he wants to—his body still protesting the hubris of ignoring medical advice—but he shuffles rhythmically back towards the stovetop in his socked feet, and the fact that she laughs at him instead of worrying feels like a small mercy.

They sit at the table to eat. The omelettes are good and everyone’s very polite about saying so. The small talk stays exceedingly small, circling satirically safe topics: the weather, the food, the house down the road going up for sale. Bradley feels something unspoken swelling beneath it all. He’s steadier than he felt yesterday, but the anticipation needles anyway.

This house is like its own little world, he thinks. A place where there are no demands on him. He can sit at a table, eat breakfast, and let something true without having to decide what to do about it.

Eventually, the waiting becomes unbearable. 

Bradley sets down his cutlery, and casts a sidelong glance at Jake. Jake’s watching him already, because of course he is. 

“Alright,” Bradley sighs. “Can we just get this over with?”

Annie says I knew it, I told you so. Eleanor says you weren’t exactly subtle. Imogene says let the poor boys alone, and then immediately ruins it by adding I’m very happy for you both, and then ruins it even further by saying no funny business under my roof, now, please.

Bradley feels the last of his tension ease loose, like the last frayed edges of a knot finally coming undone. There it is. Acknowledged, out in the open. No catastrophe. No collapse.

Jake reaches for Bradley’s hand. Bradley snatches his away, prim and proper, and fixes him with a look.

“Your mother said no funny business, Jake,” he says, solemnly.

Jake wrinkles his nose in the face of his family’s laughter, then leans over to steal a pepper from Bradley’s plate and hooks his ankle behind Bradley’s beneath the table.

The contact is easy. Unremarkable. Steady. There’s nothing sexy about ankle-to-ankle contact, or so Bradley has always believed right up until this very moment.

He lets himself bask in it—this version of things—knowing it’s not the whole story, knowing that the real world is waiting just outside the door. Breakfast, though, is just breakfast, and that he can handle. 

Javy calls Jake while they’re lounging on the back porch that afternoon with Annie and Eleanor, making the most of a soft breeze that’s picked up. Jake’s got one leg thrown across Bradley’s lap, Bradley’s hand hooked at his ankle to keep Jake steady as he leans back, chair balanced on its two back legs. Jake’s got a toothpick between his teeth that he shifts occasionally from one side to the other, and Bradley can’t stop looking. 

Jake answers and immediately hits speakerphone.

“Bored yet?” He asks, like he and Javy are already in the middle of a conversation that none of the rest of them are privy to.

“We should have gone on that road trip,” Javy sighs. “I thought it would be nice to have some peace and quiet. I’m losing my mind, man.”

“Sorry, buddy,” Jake says easily, without guilt. “I had other plans.” 

“Yeah, and you still won’t tell me what they are,” Javy says, accusatory. 

“I’m at home,” Jake says. 

“Well I don’t see what that had to be some big secret. Say hi to everyone for me.”

Jake lifts the phone, and his sisters chorus hi Javy, clearly familiar and delighted. Bradley’s smile is slower to come. He finds himself wondering if Coyote has ever stayed here: slept in the bed that Bradley’s been sleeping in, occupied the chair that he sits in at mealtimes, hung out on the porch with Jake’s family just like this. 

Jake raises an eyebrow and thrusts the phone towards him.

“What’s up, Coyote,” Bradley says, grudgingly.

“Is that Rooster?” Javy asks, tone somewhere between baffled and scandalised.

“Sure is.” Jake says. “He fits right in. I’m thinking about finding him some boots and a hat.”

Bradley rolls his eyes, but his grip tightens just a fraction around Jake’s ankle. It’s one thing to be here. It’s another thing to be flaunted.

“Well, I’m glad you guys figured your shit out,” Javy says. “World’s gonna be a lot more peaceful now that you’re friends.”

“Friends? Nah.” Jake says, dismissively. “The whole friends thing didn't work out for us.”

Bradley’s eyebrows shoot up. Not because he disagrees, obviously, but because Jake says it so easily. No hedging. No qualifiers. Like it's already settled, like it’s obvious. Bradley assented to that, he knows. He just didn’t figure he’d have to actually face it so soon.

For a brief, dizzying moment, Bradley feels his stomach swoop.

“What’d he do now?” Javy asks, weary groan crackling over the speaker, and who can blame him for the misunderstanding?

Jake sends Bradley a sunny, unapologetic smile. Bradley can’t even summon real irritation; god knows he’s had the same conversations about Jake with Phoenix more than once. Still, there’s a pulse of something tight and electric behind his sternum as Jake keeps talking.

“Nothing yet,” Jake says wickedly. He flips the toothpick between his teeth, and heat prickles through Bradley’s blood along with the fraying tangle of the rest of his emotions. “But just wait until I get him out of my mom’s house and into my bedroom.”

Bradley snorts a laugh reflexively, heat flaring high on his cheeks, but beneath it something stumbles on the thought of one of their squadmates knowing what’s going on before they’ve finished figuring it out themselves.

Javy chokes. Annie and Eleanor make similar noises of horrified delight, heavy on the horror. Bradley shoves Jake’s leg hard enough that it slides from his lap, and Jake’s chair slams forward, Jake catching himself just in time with a startled laugh.

“Jesus Christ,” Bradley mutters.

Jake takes the call off speaker, still laughing, and leans down to press a kiss to Bradley’s cheek before wandering off the porch steps, phone tucked up between ear and shoulder. Bradley stares after him, heart still ticking erratically. 

“Is it too late to change my mind?” he asks faintly, entirely unable to look either woman in the eye.

“Unfortunately for you,” Annie says. “Look at you, you’re in way too deep.”

Bradley doesn’t look away from Jake’s retreating figure. He’s got one hand in his pocket, grin easy, completely unbothered by the weight of what he might just have set in motion.

“Yeah,” Bradley says softly, more to himself than anyone else. “You’re probably right.”

For two days, Bradley ignores everything except the way Jake’s fingers trail over him every time they’re close enough to touch. Every time a nagging little voice begins to grate at the edges of his thoughts—the one that asks things like what the hell are we doing, here, and what does this look like out there, in the real world—he goes to find Jake.

Sometimes it’s to sidle up behind him, fitting his front to Jake’s back like they were made that way, hand splayed wide and wanting across his stomach, nose tucked against the warm juncture of his shoulder and throat. Sometimes it’s to needle him into a playful argument, all bite and banter and none of the malice they used to wield like knives. Either way, it works. The buzz quiets. The world narrows. Their private little idyll wraps around them tight enough that Bradley can almost believe they can stay in it forever.

Almost.

Eleanor corners him one evening while Jake is setting up the grill. Bradley clocks it immediately: the set of her shoulders, the way that her spine is held stiff and straight. His stomach sinks at the certainty of where it’s headed.

“My dad would’ve been the one to do this,” she says, standing a good six inches shorter than him, hands planted firmly on her hips. “But now it’s down to me, I guess.”

“Want me to have him home by ten o’clock sharp?” Bradley offers automatically, the joke sliding out on instinct. He lets the smile fall away, contrite, when she scowls at him.

“This isn’t a joke, Bradley,” she says. “He’s my big brother.”

“I know,” Bradley says, and means all of it, everything. “I’m sorry.”

“I like you. We all do.” She hesitates, just a beat, and then: “Don’t mess this up, please.”

It’s the please that gets him. Not a threat, not a warning. A request. The least dad-like way she could have landed it, and it hits like a sudden increase in Gs, crushing his lungs, pinning his thoughts flat and breathless.

“I don’t intend to,” he says, because he knows better than to promise more than that.

For a dizzy moment, he’s sure there’s someone standing right behind him. When he glances back, there’s only the yard, the grill, Jake laughing at something Annie’s said, but the feeling lingers all the same. Him and Eleanor standing face to face, and all their ghosts gathered behind them, watching him try to hold onto something precious with hands that don’t quite trust their strength. He can’t bear the idea of disappointing them all.

“I’m gonna try my best,” he adds, softer.

“Your best better be good,” Eleanor says.

Bradley knows exactly how Jake would answer that. I am good. I’m very good. He’s never been built that way, because good was never good enough in the face of the legacy he carries around like a penitence. The words stick in his throat, so he just shrugs, helpless and honest.

“I sure hope so.”

She hugs him then, quick and fierce, and Bradley hugs her back. His mom was a hugger, too. He hadn’t realised—hadn’t let himself realise—just how much he’d missed it.

“Man, he must have been so proud of you,” Bradley says before he can think better of it. Eleanor laughs, just a little watery. Bradley remembers Jake asking him the same thing: you think your old man would be proud of you, Bradshaw? He hopes, with a fervour he hasn’t felt in a good long time, that he would.

“He always said so,” she says, pulling back from the embrace.

“Good,” Bradley says. “Let’s go make sure Jake doesn’t burn the place down."

Bradley and Jake leave right on schedule two days later, slinging two identical duffels into the trunk of the rental Jake had picked up at the airport. The symmetry of it isn’t lost on Bradley: same bags, same destination, same temporary illusion that they’re moving in perfect step.

He hangs back by the passenger door while the family fusses, hugging Jake in turn then all hugging each other, looping back around like no one’s quite ready to let him go again. Bradley knows Jake doesn’t get home often—none of them do—and he doesn’t begrudge the lingering goodbyes. 

“I know you’re not leaving without giving me a proper goodbye, Bradley Bradshaw,” Imogene says after she’s held Jake’s face and made him promise, again, to try for Christmas leave this year.

“No ma’am,” Bradley agrees, pushing himself away from the car and bending down obediently so she can kiss him on the cheek.

“Didn’t I tell you to call me Imogene?” she scolds.

“Yes, ma’am,” Bradley agrees pleasantly, because some habits are worth holding onto.

Annie and Eleanor get him at the same time, knocking the air from his lungs as he staggers back a step under the double hit, grateful that his ribs have had a few days to recover.

“You keep him outta trouble,” Annie says.

“What gave you the impression I could ever manage that?” Bradley laughs, and Jake’s grin flashes sharp and knowing, challenge held between his teeth.

They wave from the porch until the long driveaway curves away and the house finally disappears from view. Bradley keeps looking out of the window anyway, watching the landscape unwind, familiar shapes blurring and thinning as they pull farther away.

“They want you back for Christmas,” Jake says eventually, eyes fixed on the road and hands easy on the wheel.

“They can fight Mav for me,” Bradley replies. “We’re overdue a few.”

There’s a pause, brief and deliberate, like Jake’s weighing whether to touch that. In the end, he doesn’t. Bradley’s grateful. The words had slipped out before he’d thought them through, and like so many other things lately, he and Maverick still haven’t actually talked about it.

The radio burbles out bland pop that Bradley doesn’t recognize, broken up by raucous ad jingles and the hosts’ cheerful nothing-talk. The silence between them isn’t uncomfortable, not exactly—but it’s taut, stretched thin, like it’s anchored back at Jake’s childhood home and pulled tighter with every mile.

They make it about fifteen miles before it finally snaps. 

Jake pulls over onto the dusty shoulder, tires coughing up pale clouds, and slams the car into park. Bradley doesn’t bother playing dumb. He’s already unclipping his seatbelt, already leaning in, reaching for Jake just as soon as Jake is reaching for him. 

They’ve kissed plenty over the past few days, but not like this. Jake bites down urgently on Bradley’s lip, tongue swiping over the sting he leaves behind. Bradley sucks Jake’s tongue into his mouth, his hands roaming desperately over Jake like he can’t decide where to hold him, like he needs to touch all of him at once. Jake’s hands, though, are single-minded, sliding insistently until his fingers brush the waistband of Bradley’s jeans and dip just below it.

They’re breathing the same hot air, foreheads pressed together, mouths never quite separating, and Bradley makes a thin, needy sound that he’ll deny to the grave when Jake tugs hard as his waistband.

“What do you want from me here, Seresin,” Bradley murmurs against Jake’s mouth. “Neither of us is small enough to fuck in the front seat.”

Or young enough, he wants to add. The ache in his ribs has continued to fade, but damn if he doesn’t still feel every one of his thirty-seven years and more.

Jake laughs, breathless, and relents just enough to slide a hand under Bradley’s shirt instead. His fingers skim up Bradley’s torso, drag over muscle and bone, blunt nails catching just enough to pull a helpless little sigh from Bradley’s throat.

“Plus,” Jake adds, “it’s a rental. Feels rude.”

They spend ten minutes like that, making out like teenagers who don’t know any better, until Jake finally breaks away and drags a hand down his flushed face.

“Don’t wanna miss our flight.”

Bradley leans in to steal one more kiss, and gets Jake’s entire hand to his face instead.

“I don’t care,” he says, muffled by Jake’s palm. “We can get another one.”

“Or,” Jake counters, shoving him back and adjusting himself unsubtly in his jeans—a move that makes Bradley’s mouth water despite himself. “The sooner we get home, the sooner I get you in my bed.”

Bradley grabs his seatbelt and fastens it with fumbling fingers.

The flight passes the way that commercial flights always do—slowly, in a kind of unsatisfied discontentment. Bradley’s up where he belongs, where he usually feels the most alive, but the steady and unvarying drone of a passenger plane leaves something hollowed out. There’s no bite to it. No edge. Just hours to fill.

He dozes, on and off, passing the time about as comfortably as anybody over six foot can when they’re flying cattle class. At some point, he drifts back to consciousness to find Jake tracing the lines of his palm, slow and absent-minded, like he’s mapping something out. Like he’s looking for a pattern.

Or looking for the answers to the same questions Bradley’s been so studiously avoiding, maybe.

“You want my star chart, too?” Bradley murmurs, eyes still closed.

“Yes honey,” Jake says dryly. “The real reason I want to fuck you is because you’re a Leo ascendant with a Jupiter conjunction.”

Bradley cracks one eye open. “What the hell is a Jupiter conjunction?”

Jake huffs a laugh. “I think you’re missing the important point here.”

“You’re right,” Bradley says solemnly. He slides his hand onto Jake’s thigh, fingers curling deliberately against the warm, solid muscle there, and leans in until Jake’s attention snaps fully to him. Jake’s eyes—green and bright and entirely too perceptive—meet his, already amused. Looking for the reaction he’d been trying for.

Bradley holds the eye contact just long enough to make it uncomfortable. When he speaks, his voice is pitched low and smooth and just a little dirty.

“I can’t believe you’re into astrology.”

Jake blinks. 

“It was a joke, Bradshaw.”

“Uh-huh.” Bradley leans back with a smug little smirk and closes his eyes again. Even without looking, he can feel Jake’s narrowed stare on him, the weight of it like a prodding fingertip. “I believe you, Seresin. Thousands wouldn’t.”

He leaves his hand right where it is until he catches a woman across the aisle fixing them with a hard-lipped stare. Bradley withdraws, slow and deliberate, folding his hands back onto his lap. He doesn’t care about her, not really—but the sight is jarring, sharp and unwelcome.

He’s not in Texas anymore. This isn’t a borrowed house or a porch or a kitchen full of noise and warmth and people who already decided to like him. This is his life, the real one, the one that keeps going whether he’s ready for it or not.

Jake glances at him, curiosity flickering across his face. Bradley shakes his head once—don’t, not now—and turns his face toward the window, closing his eyes again. He settles back into a doze that never quite deepens, the low hum of the engines threading through his bones.

The first jolt that nudges him out of his half-sleep barely registers as turbulence—just the faintest, unsettling change in the air. The engines keep their steady hum. Someone murmurs discomfort. Bradley blinks once or twice, cataloguing the feeling and dismissing it just as quickly.

The seatbelt sign chimes on a minute later, the captain’s voice smooth and unbothered as he mentions “a little rough air up ahead”. Around them, there’s a low ripple of reactions from the other passengers: the soft clack of buckles and the shared, unconscious bracing of people who don’t quite trust what they can’t see.

Bradley exhales through his nose in irritation. 

He’s not a superstitious guy. He doesn’t believe in omens. Still, the symbolism of the plane trying to shake itself apart while he’s busy trying to ignore the faint but persistent fear that his life might do the same once he has to set foot back in it is kind of a kick in the teeth.

The next bump hits harder. Enough to jostle his shoulders, enough to draw a few nervous laughs and one sharp gasp behind them. Bradley’s fingers flex against the armrest as irritation curdles into something bitter.

“You okay?”

Bradley nods, fast and reflexive. “Yeah. Just annoying.”

It’s true, as far as it goes. Bradley knows plenty of pilots that can’t stand flying as passengers, too anxious about the complete lack of control. It doesn’t bother him so much as it bores him; he trusts the plane and he trusts its pilot.

What he doesn’t trust, right now, is his own head.

Another drop. Brief, weightless. His stomach lurches, even though he’s been anticipating it. His pulse kicks, a traitor rhythm climbing his throat. Not because he thinks he’s in danger, but because it’s not the first time he’s felt his insides knot up just like this. He’s worried that if he looks at Jake right now, he’ll see something in his eyes he’s not ready for—or worse, that he won’t see it at all. 

He’s trapped again in that place between what he’s got and what he wants and what he’ll end up with, pinned down by the knowledge that he could sort it all out if he could just find the right words, the right questions to ask—only to find himself choking on them every time. Smoothing over the shame of his fear with kisses like that’s enough.

Jake’s knee presses against his, solid and familiar. Jake’s fingers find his hand, thumb brushing over his knuckles.

“You don’t like turbulence?” Jake asks, teasing but soft.

Bradley almost laughs. Almost says it doesn’t bother me, but knows he’ll have to face the follow up question: then what is bothering you?

“Not my favourite,” he says, instead.

Jake squeezes his hand, clearly satisfied with the answer. He shifts closer, like he’s offering protection Bradley doesn’t need, and Bradley lets him. He knows that Jake will give him shit for this, later. But it’s still easier than admitting that the air isn’t the problem—that what’s tying his gut in knots is the certainty that eventually, inevitably, they’re going to land.

He's not uncharitable enough to think that Jake might simply change his mind, back on base. It's not the fear that this Jake—the one whose biting remarks are warm at the edges, the one whose smiles aren't only sharp, dangerous things, the one who welcomes every gentle touch—will disappear entirely, melting away to reveal only the Hangman of old. 

It's the fear that despite all of that, it'll go away anyway. That the weight of the real world will be too much for this new and fragile, bird-boned thing to withstand. 

The turbulence stretches on, uneven and persistent. It’s not bad, as turbulence goes, and it’s not before long the air smooths, the tension in the cabin loosening with it. Conversation trickles back in, cautious at first, then louder.

Jake’s hand disappears around the same time that the captain announces their descent. Bradley keeps staring out of the window, pulse still a little too fast, thinking about runways and arrivals and the moment when there’s nothing left to hide behind.

Maybe Bradley shouldn't have worried. They seem to have this whole not-talking-about-it thing down to a fine art. Jake drives them back to his place without ever asking if that's where Bradley wants to go. There’s no polite back-and-forth—you want to come in? Can I drive you home?—just the sudden silence when Jake kills the engine, and then both of them opening their doors in perfect synchronicity.

Bradley follows Jake up to his door, crowds him in a little while he fumbles his keys out of his pocket.

“Can I help you?” Jake asks, amused, when Bradley’s bulk presses itself up along the line of his spine.

“Yeah,” Bradley says. “You can hurry it up.”

Jake has the gall to pause with the key half-turned, like he’s going to make him wait for it, and Bradley is absolutely not in the mood for that. He curls a hand at Jake’s hip and leans in, teeth dragging, unrepentant, across Jake’s earlobe. 

Jake inhales sharply. The door opens. They stumble through it together.

“You hungry?” Jake asks, already turning in Bradley’s arms to get his hands up under his shirt, palms warm against bare skin. 

“No,” Bradley lies. He hasn’t eaten since breakfast—too caught up in the wallowing, acid-sharp spiral of his own thoughts to manage anything in the airport or on the plane. 

“That's the spirit,” Jake says, and pushes Bradley’s shirt upward.

Bradley starts to lift his arms, and Jake’s hand comes down on his left one without thinking, steady and firm, keeping it in place over his bruised ribs. He works the fabric free from Bradley’s other arm first, careful even in his haste, then pulls it over his head and eases it down the left side last.

It’s a stupidly soft little gesture. Bradley swallows hard, breath burning hot in the back of his throat, and catches Jake’s face in both of his hands. Jake’s mouth opens up to him like a favourite book falling open at a well-read page: familiar and easy and somehow nostalgic, despite the novelty. 

Jake’s all push—teeth and tongue, pressing up against Bradley and working a hand between them, but Bradley does what he’s always done in the face of Jake’s precocious rush. He stays solid and steady, until Jake is forced to slow to his pace for once. 

At least, that’s the theory. It works for one, syrup-sweet moment before Jake flicks the button on Bradley’s jeans and sticks a hand inside them.

“Holy shit,” Bradley gasps out in surprise, and Jake laughs delightedly against his mouth, already chasing the gap between them.

“What, you think I’m full of empty promises, Bradshaw?” Jake asks. “I told you all bets were off once I got you in my bedroom.”

“This isn’t your bedroom,” Bradley points out, voice breathy and a little strained. He shifts his arm, and his elbow knocks against the front door behind him. “It’s barely even your apartment.”

“Astute observation,” Jake says, and then Bradley’s stumbling after Jake, their fingers locked together and his brain still struggling to catch up. 

He’s back with the program by the time they make it to the bedroom, tugging at Jake’s shirt impatiently until he shrugs it over his head. Bradley backs him up against the bed, manhandles him down onto it until Jake is sprawled across the covers, ruining the perfect, military lines of the tightly tucked sheets. There’s a flush high on his cheeks and his hair is a little ruffled, and his pupils are wide and dark and beautiful. Bradley just stands above him for a moment, drinking in the sight.

“Would you get down here?” Jake demands, hands reaching up for him.

“Pushy,” Bradley comments, but he's already going. 

The long line of Jake beneath him is intoxicating, every point of contact white hot. Jake's legs shift to make room for Bradley, and he settles between them like he's coming home. 

“Do you know,” Jake asks, his mouth roaming the line of Bradley's jaw, “how hard it's been—?” 

Bradley shifts his hips, and Jake's breath catches in his throat, the rest of his words along with it. Bradley laughs, low and a little strained, amused by his own joke. Jake's retaliation is a little less sexy; the sharp pinch of his fingers at Bradley's side has him yelping. 

“How difficult it's been,” Jake continues, gravel in his tone as the hot breath of his words washes right against Bradley's ear, “having you right there, and not being allowed to do this?”

Bradley captures Jake's mouth, licking in behind his teeth, captivated by the way that Jake responds so sweetly: fingers flexing instinctively against Bradley's bare skin, whole body pressing itself closer, melting into Bradley's touch. 

“You could say that,” Bradley murmurs breathlessly when they part again. For a moment, looking down at Jake is all vertigo, like he's standing on a precipice. Point of no return. 

Jake's eyes are on his, half-lidded as he tips his chin in challenge. Bradley steps off the edge, and the fall is beautiful. 

Both of them are suddenly urgent. Tongue and teeth and the sting of Jake's blunt nails against his shoulder blades: Bradley grunts and pushes Jake down into the mattress. When he hooks a big hand around the muscle of Jake's thigh and hitches it up against his waist, he earns a low whine for his trouble. 

Bradley's mind is a haze of heat and Jake, not a single coherent thought. Jake laughs when he scrabbles helplessly between them in an attempt to divest Jake of his pants. 

“Easier if you're not on top of me, big guy,” Jake advises, but it's clear from the tight edges of his words that he's just as desperate as Bradley. Bradley pushes his face in against Jake's neck while he catches his breath, like he's having to psych himself up to pull away from Jake for even a few seconds. 

Which he is. 

When he does push himself up, it's with a single-minded efficiency: button, zip, fingers under the waistband of Jake's pants and briefs. He practically lifts Jake's lower half off the bed in his hurry. Jake lets out a bitten-off moan that some part of Bradley's brain files away to examine later. 

For all his hurry, there's a moment right after he's finally got Jake gloriously naked and all laid out where he can do nothing but stare. Jake preens under the attention, letting one knee fall to the side and reaching down lazily to take himself in hand. 

Bradley slaps his hand away before he manages. 

“Just,” he says, nonsensically. “For a second.”

Jake quirks an amused brow and folds his arms under his head, instead, watching Bradley watch him. 

Jake's skin is bronzed by the sun, pink where he's flushed. Pale lines low on his hips mark the end of his tan, but even there his skin seems to glow golden. The muscles in his arms are bunched artfully, his pectorals pulled into smooth definition. The mountain-rise and valley-fall of ribs and abdominals stretch out, and his dick sits full and flushed against him. 

Bradley, dry-mouthed and awe-struck, stares until Jake's impatience has him squirming. 

“Bradshaw,” he says, like a warning. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Bradley says, shaking himself into action and hooking his thumbs into his own waistband. 

Jake's watching him hungrily, too, but Bradley's nothing if not a hypocrite and doesn't give him the chance to take his time with it. Their punched out breaths chase each other when Bradley fits himself back against Jake, burning skin against burning skin. 

Jake's hand slides, warm and gentle, against the mottled map of bruising sprawling over Bradley's ribs. 

“You good?” he murmurs. 

“Never better,” Bradley assures him, and it's embarrassing how sincere he sounds. He covers it up by chasing Jake's mouth, stealing the inevitable sarcasm right from the source.

When he ducks his head to kiss Jake's throat instead, Jake curses, vowels all Texas, and bucks his hips when Bradley's teeth scrape across his Adam's apple. Bradley can feel his moan vibrating in his throat. He drags kisses down further, into the hollow between his collar bones, down over the rise of pectoral. 

Jake's fingers slip into his hair. When they tug, lightly, Bradley freezes in place, shiver sliding right down his spine and Jake's name hissing from his lips.

“Oh there's your off switch,” Jake croons wickedly. Bradley bites him, but judging by the choked sound he gets in return, it's not all that much of a punishment. 

“Behave,” Bradley says. 

“Or what?” Jake asks, tone all sultry, and Bradley doesn't have to look at him to know exactly which smile he's wearing: the cocky smirk, sharp with defiance. 

“Oh no,” Bradley says blandly, turning his head to rest a cheek on Jake's chest. “My ribs. That's right, medical said no strenuous activity—”

Jake hikes a leg over Bradley's back, heel digging in hard right at the base of his spine. Making sure he can't escape. 

“Nice try, Bradley,” he says, dismissing the empty threat for what it is. Bradley's thrown for a moment by his name in Jake's mouth, heart slowing to a stutter-stop before it riots. 

“Fuck off,” he says, to cover his confusion. 

“Fuck me,” Jake retorts, easily. 

Bradley ducks his head again, resumes the meandering path of his mouth across Jake's skin. 

“Next time,” he mumbles into the dip between Jake's abs, tongue tracing the long valley down towards his navel.

This is as far as his signposts go. Pity-fuck, comma, anywhere but Jake’s mom’s spare room. Pathetic as it feels, planting another one down the road settles him. A simple promise they can both work toward, even if everything else gets complicated. 

If Jake has complaints, he doesn't voice them. He runs his fingers through Bradley's hair and curses gently under his breath, and begins to shift his hips impatiently the further south Bradley goes. When Bradley pins him in place with a heavy forearm across his lower abdomen, Jake lets out an honest-to-god whine. 

“Bradshaw,” he says, and his tone is breathless, but he's still too proud to beg. Bradley laughs, hot breath against the crease where Jake's thigh meets his torso and Jake plays dirty by tugging at his hair. 

“Fuck, okay,” Bradley mutters, fond and amused and barely clinging to his own self-control, and takes Jake in his hand. Jake keens, the hand not anchored in Bradley's hair scrabbling blindly against the sheets. 

Bradley drags his fingers up the length of him, cataloguing each little noise Jake makes like he's committing them to memory. Jake looks down at him, hair a mess and cheeks pink, and Bradley's stomach starts up the aerobatics.

He wants to say something dangerous. When his mouth opens, I want you to look at me like that forever is clawing its way up his throat, but it feels too raw and too real. Instead, hoarsely, he tells Jake “you're beautiful,” and means it. 

“If you don't get your mouth on me right now, Bradshaw, I'm gonna—” 

Jake's hot and heavy on his tongue, tastes warm and human. Jake's strangled sigh sounds like pure relief, like he's been waiting for this his whole life. Bradley had expected him to twist under the weight of the arm pinning him down, to run his mouth, to push for more. Instead, his whole body goes boneless, aside from the fingers carding gently through Bradley's hair, uncoordinated and tender. 

“Shit,” Jake mumbles, and Bradley takes just as much of him into his mouth as he can before he pulls back again, tongue tracing the underside of Jake's length.

That seems to do it. Jake's cursing turns urgent, the fingers in Bradley's hair tightening in a way that has him humming around Jake. He sets about his task in earnest. 

Bradley's not inexperienced, but he's never been great at one-night stands or casual dating—too much of a romantic, at heart—and it's been a while since he did this. He'd almost forgotten just how much he loves it, especially the first time with a new partner. 

It's a game of experimentation, of interpretation. Of reading each noise, each shift, each touch. Maybe it's because he knows Jake, really knows him in a way he hasn't known previous partners, or maybe it's just because they're more alike than either of them want to admit, but Jake is like a second language Bradley has started to dream in. Each sigh is a full sentence, each twitch of his muscles an instruction. Bradley takes him apart until Jake can barely string together the syllables of his name. 

Still, he tries his best when he's close, his muscles taut and his breath hitching, a garbled sound that could almost be ‘Bradley’. Bradley ignores what was possibly intended as a warning and doubles down, and when Jake comes, hot and salty on his tongue, he's delighted. 

Bradley trails idle, open-mouthed kisses up the sharp cut of Jake's abdomen, entranced by the way his muscles flex as he breathes heavily. When he glances up through his lashes, Jake's got an arm thrown over his face, only his red-bitten lips visible. 

“So there's your off button,” Bradley muses, voice a little hoarse and a lot amused. Jake smacks him blindly around the head and Bradley snorts a laugh, pushing his hand away and hauling himself back up Jake's body. Jake reaches for him, revealing his flushed face. 

“Feel free to press my buttons any time, Bradshaw,” Jake says shakily, and when Bradley grins above him but doesn't lean in, Jake tugs him down and kisses him, not shy about pressing his tongue into Bradley's mouth to taste himself there. 

Bradley's mostly content with this: Jake pliant and pretty beneath him, wrung out and serene, their kisses not chaste but hardly the messy, urgent things of earlier. 

Unfortunately, his dick didn't quite get the memo, and he can't help the way his hips stutter forward with want, dragging his hard length up along the defined vee of muscle that's still a little damp from his tongue. 

“Let me take care of you,” Jake murmurs against his mouth, and the words march right down the length of Bradley's spine for more than one reason. 

He lets Jake push him over, settling his back against the mattress, but catches his chin when Jake moves to take the same route Bradley did. 

“No,” he murmurs. “Stay up here.”

He kisses Jake again, because he just can't get enough of it. “Please.”

“Well, since you asked so nicely,” Jake says, and there's teasing in his voice but it's tender, too. Bradley doesn't want to hear it—you're a sap, Bradshaw—not right now. He draws Jake in with a hand at his neck, and Jake comes all too willingly. 

Jake might have lost his ability to string a sentence together while Bradley had his mouth on him, but he's sure as hell found his voice again now. When he takes Bradley in hand, thumb dragging through the mess of his pre-come, he starts talking and he doesn't stop.

“C'mon, Bradshaw,” he murmurs against Bradley's mouth when his head tips back, breath pulling sharply through his teeth. And: “I got you, darlin’,” when Bradley's fingers flex against his side. And: “Jesus, look at you, you're unbelievable,” when Bradley digs his heels in and pushes up into Jake's fist. 

Jake pulls his hand away just for a moment, lifting it toward his mouth, but Bradley grabs his wrist to intercept it and does the honours for him—licks a broad stripe over his palm, sucks three of his fingers into his mouth at once for good measure, moaning a little when Jake presses his fingers down against Bradley's tongue, his eyes dark and intense. 

“You're killing me, here,” Jake mutters, when he pulls his fingers away and returns his spit-slick hand to Bradley's dick. Bradley's laugh cuts off to something high and breathy. 

“But what a way to go,” he says, dragging his mouth against Jake's jaw again, nosing at the spot behind his ear. 

“No way,” Jake says. “I'm not gonna embarrass the good Seresin name with that obituary.”

Bradley laughs again, and thinks distantly that he's never really done that before—laughed during sex, at least not in a way that wasn't a little awkward or self-conscious. It's nice, it's good, but it's not enough, and he doesn't hesitate to say so. 

“If you keep going this slow, you're going to embarrass the Bradshaw name with mine,” he says, hands wandering across Jake's bare chest, his back, fingers pressing hard against Jake's warm skin. 

“But Rooster,” Jake grins, wide and sleazy. “I thought you liked a slow ride.”

Bradley's hand closes over Jake's, coaxes him into a faster pace that leaves Bradley panting into Jake's mouth. Jake doesn't laugh, despite the glint in his eye. He just presses his forehead against Bradley's and proves that he can read Bradley just as well as Bradley can read him. 

“That's it,” he says, and his voice is soft when he repeats himself. “Let me take care of you.”

Bradley comes like a revelation, the surprise of it catching him between breaths and choking an inelegant noise from his throat. Jake murmurs him through it, soft praise that Bradley can't parse while his brain is busy making fireworks. 

“Holy shit,” he says, when he remembers how. 

“Couldn't have put it better myself,” Jake agrees, and then flops back onto the mattress, cushioning his head on Bradley's chest. Bradley's hand finds his, locking their fingers together defiantly, like he's daring Jake to say something about it. 

He doesn't. 

They lie there for a while in comfortable, lethargic silence while their breathing settles. This would be the time, Bradley knows, to talk about it. 

His stomach beats him to it, growling out its protest at the meal he'd missed. Jake laughs. 

“Liar,” he says, fondly. 

“I know my priorities,” Bradley says. He shifts and then grimaces; he's a tacky mess, sweat and come, and it's kind of gross now that the moment has passed. “Right now it's a shower, and food.”

“Clean towels on the top shelf,” Jake says, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the bathroom. “Fridge is empty, though.”

Ordering onto base is a bitch, and they both know it. Bradley extricates himself from under Jake, who does precisely nothing to make it easier. 

“Guess we're going out, then,” Bradley says, and slopes off to the bathroom all-too-aware of the way that Jake watches him go. 

Bradley figures they'll hit up a diner, but they end up at the store instead. Jake seems to have a grocery list ready to go, lodged in his head somewhere, and Bradley trails up and down the aisles after him, hunger gnawing at his stomach. 

“Grab some eggs, will you?” Jake asks, and Bradley obliges, sliding them into the basket hooked into Jake's arm. 

“What else?” he asks, and just like that it becomes a two-man job, Jake listing items and Bradley fetching them, holding up options when he's not sure what Jake wants and letting him choose. It all feels terribly domestic, enough to make him ache with it. 

He sneaks in the cheese he likes when Jake's busy reading the back of a packet, because it looks like there's some kind of pasta dish in the future and he's never met one that wasn't improved by additional cheese. It's a little presumptuous, maybe—but also, he had Jake's dick in his mouth less than half an hour ago, so he figures he might be allowed to stick around for dinner. 

He also sneaks in some peanut M&Ms, because he knows for a fact Jake loves them. 

As they carry the grocery bags back to Jake's car, something hits Bradley in the face. 

“What the fuck—?” 

He picks up the offending missile, which had bounced off his cheek and landed in the grocery bag in his arm. It's a Slim Jim.

“Figured it'd keep that stomach of yours quiet until we get back,” Jake says, hoisting his bag into the trunk and plucking Bradley's from his unresisting arm. 

“You say the sweetest things, Seresin.”

Bradley hasn't eaten a Slim Jim in years, but he's almost pathetically grateful for it now; the packaging is open and the processed meat between his teeth even before he's in the passenger seat. 

“Never say I do nothing for you,” Jake says as he starts the engine. 

“You do plenty for me,” Bradley says, around his mouthful, waggling his eyebrows. 

Jake fixes him with a look, one brow raised, and Bradley's expecting a whip-smart comeback but instead Jake just nods once, decisively. 

“Damn straight,” he says, and pulls out of the parking lot.

They throw together sandwiches, nothing fancy, and eat with their feet tangled together under the same standard-issue table that occupies Bradley's apartment, just this side of too-small. Jake, who hadn't shared Bradley's anxious inability to eat all day, eats half of his and then pushes his plate towards Bradley. 

“Between you and your mom, my girlish figure is doomed,” Bradley sighs dramatically, even as he's reaching for the plate. 

Jake snorts a laugh. 

“I've seen the way you usually eat, Bradshaw,” he says, leaning back in his chair, jostling their ankles together. “Don't you go pinning that on me.”

Ordinarily, they're neither of them very good at doing nothing. Maybe it's because they got in good practice in Texas, or maybe it's the stubborn streak that runs deep through them both, but today they manage it. 

They drape themselves across the couch, and ignore reruns of NCIS in favour of bickering back and forth. They argue over old action movies and their merits: Speed (Jake) versus Point Break (Bradley). Bradley lets Jake pin him to the cushions to distract him when he's winning, and feels like he's winning anyway when Jake kisses the smirk from his face. 

Later, Jake cooks them dinner. Bradley leans against the kitchen counter, long legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles, and watches. 

“You look good like this,” he says as Jake reaches up to a cupboard to retrieve salt and pepper, flashing a smooth stripe of muscle from under his shirt. “Have you considered being my kept man?” 

“We both know your salary, Bradshaw,” Jake says dryly, turning a wooden spoon on him accusingly. “And it's nowhere near enough to make up for sitting around all day waiting on you.”

Bradley's mouth goes a little dry. 

“I don't know,” he says, softly. “You've proven yourself pretty good at doing that for free.”

It's half gratitude, half apology. It's an invitation. It's the beginning of a conversation they're still dancing around, and Bradley can taste his heartbeat. Jake looks at him, eyes flicking over Bradley's face thoughtfully. 

The hiss of the water boiling over the edge of the pan and hitting the hot stove makes them both flinch, and Jake curses as he spins around to scoop the pan off the heat. The moment evaporates into steam along with the spilled water, leaving the air hazy. 

“I am good, Bradshaw,” Jake says, the words rote and well-worn. 

“But not at cooking,” Bradley says, amused, and makes no effort to claw back what they both let slip away so easily. 

“You watch your mouth,” Jake says. “Or I'll eat all this myself, and to hell with both our girlish figures.”

Dagger One is hit! Dagger One is hit! 

Bradley surfaces like a man drowning, snatching air with wild desperation, scrabbling away the bedsheets. When Jake's arms wrap around him, he fights against those, too, until he figures out where he is, and then he buries himself against Jake's neck and clings to him. He gulps down air, pushes his face into Jake so that every breath is the smell of him—citrusy cologne, worn thin, and deodorant, and the warm and human smell of him beneath it all.

Jake's murmuring to him, nothing in particular, words that Bradley doesn't bother trying to put shapes to. He stays there, heart thundering and terror clinging in his veins, trying to soothe the empty ache of loss that he knows isn't real. 

Bradley's heart settles, eventually, but a different anxiety keeps it idling. He hasn't spoken to anyone about the details of his nightmares. He's saving that for his mandated psych sessions, and even then, they'll get just enough of the details to satisfy them. The SAMs, the bloom of yellow fire behind him, the urgency in Phoenix's voice, Dagger One is hit! 

Jake's going to ask, and Bradley's going to tell him, because he's powerless not to. None of the details matter. The nightmare isn't the mission, not really. It's losing what he didn't have. It's the bottom dropping out of the life he'd already walked away from. 

The real nightmare is the prospect of all the time he wasted on anger ending up with a hollow sort of mourning for a man he'd chosen not to know, of having to live with yet another ghost made up of other people's stories. 

Jake's going to ask,and then he's going to know, and Bradley can't bear the idea of it hanging between them. Of being treated like the pitiful pile of regrets he is. 

Jake coaxes him back down into bed, slings an arm across his torso, solid and reassuring, and kisses Bradley's neck where his pulse still jumps. 

“See I was dreaming I was in a sawmill,” he says. “Anyone ever tell you that you snore somethin’ awful, Bradshaw?”

Bradley can't find it in him to laugh, but he slips his fingers into Jake's on his stomach, and Jake doesn't ask him a damn thing. 

“I should head back to my place and do some laundry,” Bradley's forced to admit as he rifles through his duffle in the futile hope that clean clothes will appear out of nowhere. 

He doesn't like the idea. 

Despite any and all evidence to the contrary, some part of him believes that this will all break down the moment he steps out of Jake's front door without him. Shatter while he's not looking. His fingers flex against the bundle of crumpled shirts in his bag. 

“Here,” Jake says, and Bradley almost tips off balance as a t-shirt hits the back of his head. He stands to pull it on and looks down to see it's an old TOPGUN shirt, the kind that everyone gets for going through the program but nobody wears because it makes you look like a dick. 

“Gee, thanks,” he says. Jake's smile says he knows exactly what he's doing. 

“Humility doesn't suit you,” Jake shrugs, like he's got any room to talk. “Come on. We can pick up breakfast on the way.”

Bradley blinks after Jake as he saunters off towards the door, casual as anything. Like he hasn't just swept in through the wreckage of another impending disaster, and saved Bradley's ass from the flames. 

He follows Jake. He always does. 

Jake walks into Bradley's place like he owns it. And yeah, it's essentially the same magnolia-toned apartment as his own, a bland footprint built to be left as much to be lived in, but Jake pushes the bounds of familiarity by striding straight into the kitchen and opening up cupboards without asking. He finds two mismatched mugs and starts a pot of coffee like he’s done it here a dozen times. 

It’s a sight Bradley could get used to. The coffee, less so. He’s got no creamer and the cheap drip stuff tastes like regret, but he keeps stalling on buying something better, like one of the shiny Keurigs that Jake’s got. It’s hard to justify when everything he owns has to be packed up and hauled somewhere new every few years.

“You know,” Jake says, spooning grounds into the filter basket, “at some point we’re gonna have to talk about this without sarcasm as a safety blanket.”

Cold lances through Bradley's stomach, but it's followed up by wild amusement. He shoots Jake a disbelieving look.

“Is that aimed at me, or you?” 

“Yes,” Jake says immediately.

Bradley presses the heel of his palm against his eye, wearily. “Jesus.”

“I'm serious, Rooster.” Jake leans back against the counter, arms folded, watching Bradley in that too-sharp way that means he is, in fact, dead serious. “Can’t keep ignoring it forever. Before you know it, we’ll have orders and suddenly, we’re outta chances to talk. Better decide what this is before that happens.”

He sounds casual. He isn’t. Jake Seresin has never been casual about anything in his life—he just knows how to make it look convincing.

It should be easy. I want you. I want this. I’m not—ha, ha—chickening out.

Bradley’s gone his whole life keeping things like that locked down until they crack him open from the inside. Maverick’s voice drifts up, uninvited and irritatingly clear. Don’t think. Just do.

Bradley wishes he’d shut up. Even if it is good fucking advice.

Talking about it feels like stepping off a ledge he can’t see the bottom of. Doing something feels safer. Familiar. Harder to fuck up.

“Let’s go for a drive,” Bradley says.

“But Bradshaw, I just started the coffee,” Jake says, in the tone of a man who would do anything in the world to avoid drinking the shitty cup he knows it’s going to spit out. He’s already plucking Bradley’s car keys from the hook on the wall, and tossing them his way. Bradley catches them against his chest.

“I know where we can get the good stuff,” he says.

Bradley kills the engine outside the hangar. The doors are cracked open, letting the afternoon sun spill in across the concrete. He still doesn’t know how Maverick ended up in this old building, the navy lettering faded but stubbornly visible, when the navy always complains about needing more space. Seems like nobody’s seen fit to kick him out just yet, anyway.

Jake doesn’t question why they’re here, his curiosity restrained as Bradley slips through the hangar doors into the cool and shadowed interior.

Jake sucks in a breath at the first glimpse of the P-51 standing proudly in the dim space. Bradley grins as he approaches it like it's a high-strung horse, one palm outstretched but not quite touching. It's a beautiful plane. Exquisite. There's not an aviator alive who wouldn't go weak at the knees for that thing.

“What the hell,” Jake murmurs softly.

“Keep your sticky little hands to yourself,” Bradley calls after Jake as he disappears behind the bulk of the aircraft, huffing a laugh when Jake doesn’t even bother responding.

“Bradley?”

Maverick’s voice echoes through the space, and Bradley turns to see him standing a few steps away, eyes wide, like he’s not quite sure if what he’s seeing is real. Bradley tucks a smile on his face, a little awkward, a little nervous, but honest.

“Hey, Mav.” 

“You came.” Maverick’s words stumble out, disbelief lacing the syllables. Bradley shrugs, sliding his sunglasses from his face and hooking them in the neck of his shirt. 

“Sorry I didn't call. It was sorta spur of the moment.” 

“No, no,” Maverick says, almost too quickly. Like Bradley might change his mind and turn tail. “You're fine—it’s fine.”

A pause stretches between them, neither of them quite sure where to go from here.

“It's good to see you,” Bradley says finally.

“It's good to see you too.”

Their smiles come a little easier, both of them remembering the last time they shared this exact exchange—feet planted in the cold snow of enemy territory, both wonderfully alive and not entirely sure how they were going to stay that way. 

“Does this thing fly?” Jake’s voice punches through the softness of the moment.

Maverick's brows crease in confusion, eyes seeking the source of the disembodied voice, and Bradley jerks a thumb over his shoulder. 

“I brought Hangman.”

Maverick’s eyebrows lift, just slightly. 

“It flies,” he confirms, keeping his gaze on Bradley as Jake ducks around the front of the plane, appreciation in every careful movement. 

“Get used to it,” Bradley advises, and—God, he's never put so much effort into seeming blasé in his life—slides his hands into his pockets as he turns to watch Jake. 

“He's sticking around, huh?” Mav asks, and he sounds fond and a little wistful. 

Bradley’s thoughts flicker to Ice, a twinge of guilt twisting low in his belly. Ice had sent him a Christmas card, every year. Even after Bradley had walked out of Maverick’s life without a backward glance. He never got the chance to catch up with him again, not before he passed.

It’s obvious just how much Maverick misses his wingman, and Bradley can’t blame him. Can’t blame him for drawing the parallel, either: Bradley’s heard plenty of stories about their rivalry-turned friendship.

“Sure hope so,” Bradley says, then takes the plunge. “Otherwise, he's not much of a boyfriend.”

The word feels childish. Bradley thinks shit, maybe I should have gone with ‘partner’. But Jake’s gaze snaps to his, magnetic, and the grin spreading across his face is like sunshine. Bradley can’t help the way his own lips curve up in response. He tips his chin at Jake once, a confirmation.

Mav squeezes Bradley’s shoulder once, grounding him back in the present.

“That's gonna get complicated, kid,” he says. 

Out of habit, a little flare of anger burns bright in Bradley’s chest, defiance in the face of Maverick’s opinion regardless of its veracity. It’s easy enough, though, to smother the flame. He’s wasted enough time on anger. 

“Yep,” Bradley says, slow and deliberate.

“Good for you,” Maverick adds.

“Yep.”

And that just about seems to cover it. 

“So, someone taking me up in this thing or what?” Jake asks, finally abandoning the plane and slinging an arm around Bradley’s shoulders, bouncing on his heels. Maverick looks at Bradley, who laughs, and tips his head.

“You go ahead,” he says. “I'm sure you've got plenty to talk about.”

“What, like you?” Jake asks, and reaches up to ruffle Bradley’s hair. “You raving egomaniac.”

Bradley ducks away, shoving Jake in the direction of Maverick, hoping to make them each other’s problem. Jake lets himself be redirected.

“So which came first, Maverick? You or the plane?” Jake asks, cocky grin fixed between the parentheses of his dimples. Maverick tips his head, one brow quirked in an unimpressed expression.

“You really want to be taking that tone with me right now, Hangman?” 

“Ease off the shotgun routine, old man,” Jake says, slinging an arm around Maverick’s shoulder to propel them both in the direction of the P-51. “You'd lose all respect for me if I started kissing ass now.” 

Maverick shoots Bradley a look that says can you believe this guy? Bradley shrugs, his smile fond and his chest hot. He doesn’t hear what Maverick says as he turns back to Jake, but it makes Jake laugh.

Bradley helps slide back the towering hangar doors so that they can taxi the plane out onto the runway, and then leans up against the hangar wall to watch as the propeller stutters into life.

He's still not entirely sure how this is all going to fit together just yet. It’s complicated enough between him and Maverick, even before Jake is added into the equation. But, just possibly, he could stand to think about this shit a little less.

Sweat prickles on the back of his neck. It smells like dust and fuel and hot metal.

He’s got both feet firmly on the ground. From the pilot’s seat, Maverick sends him a salute, just the way he used to when he was leaving on his bike, Bradley watching him go from the front porch with his mom standing behind him. From the rear seat, Jake sends him a wink and blows a kiss. It’s all still a little off-kilter. Strange and new.

But for the first time in a long while, nothing feels abstract, nothing feels borrowed. Nothing feels like it might crumble to dust at any moment. It’s all right here, and it’s bright, and it’s hot, and it’s real.