Chapter Text
The car door slammed shut, cracking up the morning silence. The sun was just starting to creep up over the horizon, brilliant summer yellow. It was a sight almost pretty enough for Jake to not mind being dragged out of their shared bed to start the trek to the airport to begin the journey. Bradley, ever the caretaker even if he would deny it to his grave, had loaded up the car when he wasn't looking and had already gone through and made sure that the house would still be standing even when they got back. The domestic life suited him far more than he’d ever admit, Jake thought, it being another sparkling facet of the frustratingly handsome man currently sliding into the driver's seat of his beach town Jeep. Someday he’d figure out everything that made up the two next to him, unravel them down to the threads that had tied them so deeply to each other, but that was a long way off. The idea that they had forever to get to know each other like that was a summer-sweet one, lit up from the inside.
It wasn't like there was an off season for Fightertown per say, but there were points in the year where a stillness settled over the base, less and less planes taking off as the new classes rotated in, stuck in the pen and paper section of their studies still. The roads were empty this side of base, people having already left for work, leaving the drive to the local airport a smooth one. The beach lined the highway further inland, seeming to follow them as they moved through the late morning traffic without any real trouble. The morning sun glinting off the waves, throwing a thousand golden rays across the world, giving everything the feeling of a half-remembered dream still.
A comfortable silence settled over the car, Bob having already given them the briefing on his family in the days before, he was close with his sister growing up and was excited to go back for the wedding before his sister was sent off on a year long deployment with her soon to be wife as flight line mechanics together overseas. Other than that it was supposed to be a small family event, just his moms, a few family friends, and a few guests of the happy couple. A special note had been hand-written on the bottom of the invitation sent their way saying Bob was more than welcome to have two plus ones if he wanted, his sister finished the note with a heart. She had heard his ramblings about the other two over the years, and had tried her best to help set Bob up with them on the few occasions she’d worked with in passing over the years.
That had ended after he’d sent her a picture of the TOP GUN lineup, with him sandwiched between the two, and she called him, laughing her way through the sentence, to tell him that she had a very brief but “passionate” fling with the Phoenix herself years before. His sister had told him to give Phoenix her best and wish her well after she had stopped laughing, he hadn't even known how to begin that conversation and had chosen to try and make himself forget that he had even found that out, vowing to never tell Nat himself.
The overnight parking for the airport was as empty as it got over the never-ending shuffle of people in and out of the base. They pulled up and parked, preparing themselves for the first leg of their journey, there being a one hour car ride from the airport to the Floyd residence waiting for them on the other side of the flight. Bradley came around the car to find that Jake had already put down the money for the three days overnight parking, never missing a chance to beat them to the punch no matter how small, and Bob had already started grabbing the bags out of the trunk. There was something nice about being cared for like that, the little things he didn't even think of as conscious actions until somebody did them for him.
They made their way up to the terminal, Bradley leading the charge with all the seriousness normally saved for mission assignments. Even through his distaste for airports and their rituals, Bob has to admit it's an easy process this time, the airport basically empty as they process through security and checked luggage in record time. Their gate sits empty, Bradley having shuttled them up with a little over an hour to spare before the time for boarding comes up. They stake out the back corner, flight desk and point of entry both in view, and settled in for the wait. The screen with the incoming and outgoing flights ticking in the background, making Bob feel strangely small, the amount of people in motion around him hard to imagine. Where were they all going? And why?
He had been the little kid who had run around asking why things were the way that they were, questioning the first thing out of his mouth more often than not. It lent itself well to back-seating, the constant search for details and single-minded focus built up over a lifetime of trying to understand the world around him. It was part of the reason he and Nat got along so well, she never stopped to question, always moving forward without a second thought. She got him moving and he slowed her down, got her back on the ground, literally and figuratively. He stopped to send her a message that the three of them had managed to make it to the airport in one piece and she sent back a text wishing him luck and demanding pictures of the whole Floyd clan, having been almost adopted after spending Christmas with them one year when she couldn't get back to her family. His mom still asked about her every time he called, always slipping some of the peach jam Nat loved so much in the care packages she sent Bob’s way with strict instructions for it to be hand-delivered to Nat as soon as possible.
Jake wandered off at some point in that quiet way of his when he was planning something and came back with the airport version of a breakfast, sandwiches this side of greasy wrapped up in newspaper and coffee doing its best jet fuel impression. Jake takes about one sip and slides it over in Bradley’s direction when he's not looking. The terminal fills up to about halfway, the three people watching from their almost hidden corner. As they finished eating, the first boarding call rang out. The three shuffle over, falling into their usual pattern, Bradley leading and Jake bringing up the rear. The half empty terminal only ended up filling the plane up well before last call, empty seats sticking out like punched out teeth. It gave them the feeling of privacy, like they were in their own little bubble back there, separate from the world.
Their row ended up being closer to the back of the plane, Bradley’s need to have his back to a wall coming out while booking the tickets. He stepped off to the side so the other two can file into their seats as Bob pushes Jake towards the window seat lightly. He was the only one who still wanted to watch takeoff and landing, it brought a little smile to his face every time that was quickly helping temper the hatred of commercial flying Bob had harbored for years. Bob slid in next, taking his usual place between the two, feeling far more settled now that they were in this together. As the doors shut and the in-flight safety message starts, the age old “what if the whole plane just goes down” rises up in Bob’s head. On all rational levels, he knows it's irrational, he back-seats in a fighter jet for a living and had just been involved in a real crash, planes just don't crash out of nowhere and besides if something really does happen, there's really nothing he can do anyway.
Bradley, half compacted into his seat and slowly creeping over into Bob’s seat space, was clearly on his way to back asleep now that he was situated on the plane reached out, raised the seat rest between them, and picked up Bob’s hand from where it was drumming against the seat. He gave the joined hands his three little taps before racking out for the rest of the flight. It was a comforting weight, it gave Bob something to focus on, the plane having finally taken off, starting their journey back. The exhaustion from the late night and the early morning started to creep back in as the stress had faded off, and Jake, never one to miss a chance for physical contact, slid the other armrest up and pulled Bob under his arm.
The three sat slumped into each other, Bradley drifting over towards their warmth even when he was asleep and ending up laying over Bob’s lap. It was quickly becoming harder for Bob to remember why exactly he had hated flying so much now that he sat so completely sandwiched between his two pilots, half asleep and some giddy kind of happiness bubbling up inside. The plane was only half full and still it felt like it was just the three of them back there, alone in their own little world. The physical contact a pleasant weight spread over him, warm and heavy-solid in a way he had found himself missing more and more when they were apart.
It had been so easy to just fall into them, he was expecting old bitterness and the ever so close edging to meanness the other two had during training. He knew they had been something to each other before and it hasn't ended well in the slightest. That was about the only reason he could figure out how they acted when the Dagger unit had descended upon the Hard Deck for the first time, the tension spreading over the bar like a storm cloud and everybody who knew them both taking sides like it was some aviation-themed take on West Side Story. Bob wasn't going to push he decided pretty early on, he was a private person by nature and if it came up, it came up. They were as settled into each other as they had ever been, no good reason to go kicking ant hills just to see what comes out like his mom always said.
The thought of seeing his mom again in person after so long was another reason he had decided to bite the bullet and fly back. Between him and his sister, they had finally gotten her to Facetime them when she could remember to plug her phone in but she still wanted to write them letters and send care packages which were hit or miss depending on where they both were deployed. Bob thought that she was just happy they had both finally settled down, or close enough to the idea. She had been after them both for years in that loving way she had, talking about watching the grandkids and helping raise them up on the farm the same way she had brought up her own two. It was a sweet idea, but neither Bob or Erin had the heart to tell her it was going to be a bit, if ever, for them to really truly settle down and even think about kids.
Erin was one of the most sought after aircraft mechanics in the Navy right now, that’s how she had met her future wife. They had been slapped with a half rusted out helicopter without its parts as punishment for bickering over the hanger for months and somehow in the process managed to not only get the thing flying better than it ever had, but had realized they fought like an old married couple for a reason. After that they had been joined at the hip, somehow swinging matching sets of orders wherever they went, perks of being the best.
His sister had grown up and taken the rough edges off Bob that he’d carried when they were kids. They were twins but had ended up looking more different than the same over the years. Erin was two minutes older, which she loved to hold over his head by the way, but Bob had always been the one to put himself in front of her and hold off whatever the world was throwing at her. She’d dragged him to a self defense class a few months into their freshman year of high school after they both had come to the conclusion that the institution was kicking their collective asses. The rest was history after that, they both ended up racking up a few medals in that along with their 4H club, ending up briefly co-heading the school’s chemistry club until they had both been let out with a warning for making fireworks in the lab after hours, and then she had dragged him into the band thing. He maintains it was all her idea, like most things that he ended up doing while they still lived together, she had taught herself guitar and he’d ended up really liking sitting in the back playing his heart out, the progression to back seating seemed far more natural after than, and the rest was history.
Somebody had thought it was a great idea to station them together right after Bob finished flight school and that poor base commander became very familiar with the most common pastime of good old southern kids living in the middle of nowhere with nothing else to do, improvised pyrotechnics. All of a sudden the fire extinguishers were all replaced and the sprinkler system was properly maintained for the first time in years so all in all net positive for everybody in their opinion. They’d been split up for a while after that, having given out their fair share of heart attacks and minor fire damage. They had a common enough last name and really the resemblance was striking if you knew both of them or had them up next to each other but most people just didn't put it together. Every now and then they managed to swing orders together on brief assignments or layovers here and there, much to their delight.
Even Phoenix, who had flown with Bob for ages and had some kind of nebulously defined relationship with his sister at some point hadn't really put it together so there were times they ended up posted together. Those were Bob’s favorite assignments, it felt like back when they were growing up, just the two of them against the world, finding their own little pockets of trouble. He was a little jealous, not that he would admit it to her, that she was getting an overseas billet again, he’d only had brief ones here and there, more layovers than real postings and this was her third in the past five years. A part of it killed him a little to be so far away from his not so little sister but the space they had both gotten over the years had given them room to fill themselves out,, to find who they were, what they wanted, and find who they wanted. She was still the first person Bob called when anything happened, time zones be damned.
“I can hear you thinking over there darlin.” Jake said quietly, his free hand moving through Bradley’s hair, it having curled up just past regulation length in the weeks off they had together. The act was so tender it made Bob’s heart hurt a little, the affection so plain in the simple act of just touching the other man. He hummed before saying, “It’s nothing really. It’s just been a bit since I went home.” He shrugged, not really knowing where the rest of the sentence was going, an old sense of homesickness washing over him. The feeling crept up on him sometimes, he’d hear a song that his sister used to play loud enough to shake the house and the urge to reach out like she was still right there with him would crash down almost overwhelming. He still found himself drumming out the teenage angry songs she wrote for them so long ago on any available surface, a smile spreading over his face when he realized.
Jake hummed in agreement, letting the quiet stretch out for a moment as the clouds passed by the window. “Bet your sister is dying for you to get back.” Bob nodded, thinking of the extended conversations they'd been having as the big day got closer, how she seemed lit up from the inside. He wondered if she saw the same thing looking at him, if she could hear how happy he was the same way he could when she talked about her fiance. He’d never thought that she’d settle down before him, she had always teased him for being a romantic growing up. He used to drag her out to see every romance movie that came out growing up, the stories of love at first sight and sweeping romances drawing him in like nothing else. She repaid him by insisting on seeing just as many horror movies, the more blood and guts the better. Some days even Bob couldn't believe they were twins.
The idea of Erin finally offically meeting the men draped over him brought a smile to Bob’s face, they were going to get along so well, all trouble wrapped up under faces you couldn't stay mad at for long. “She’s going to love y'all. She might get after Bradley here for his flying but she’s still after me for the bird strike.” As soon as he had been sent to medical after his ejection, she had come screaming up the coast like a bat out of hell, stopping short of kicking the door down to make sure he was alright. Once she was confident he wasn't about to keel over right there, she gave him a lecture about flight safety that lasted the better part of an hour before dropping off some food her fiance had sent up with her and going back to the hanger and seeing what could be scrapped.
“She's been after me about getting you to come back for a couple weeks now darlin.” Jake was quietly pleased with how proud Bob sounded, like he was going to show them off as soon as they touched down. Bradley shifted from where he was still asleep, up into Jakes hands, like an oversized cat almost, somehow managing to sleep anywhere he could and sleep well.
“What do you mean?” Bob asked, already knowing that his sister had somehow managed to do something devious. He had a sixth sense for when she was out doing something that would find it’s way back to him one way or another.
“Nat gave her my number after the mission, what's the story there?” He had started getting texts from an unsaved number as soon as the carrier had docked, the messages telling him to treat her brother well and put a shirt on in at least some of his Instagram posts. Natasha had explained who was sending the messages the next time they saw each other after the texts had come rolling in, laughing about it the whole time. She had leaned in real close after than and told him the story of how she had met Erin way back on their first assignments and how she had been after Nat since Bob had been called up for TOPGUN to get her in touch with the other two pilots so she could give them the shovel talk herself.
“There's no story.” Bob's outright refusal to elaborate, doing more to fill in the blanks than anything he could have said. The flat tone shook a quiet laugh out of Jake, rumbling against Bob where he sat pressed as close as he could in the airplane seats. Nat had let some details slip one night at the Hard Deck, had said she didn't know they were siblings until she had seen them both side by side and thought she was seeing double. It had made Bradley curious, having grown up an only child, the idea of someone as this built in support almost alien to him.
The plane touched down easily on the runway after that, the landing finally waking Bradley up and putting him right back into mission leader mode. Texts from Erin scrolled over Bob’s screen as he turned his phone back on, pictures of her driving up from the farm into the city to come grab them accompanying the frequent updates. He sent off a quick message to her saying they landed and were on the way as the plane started uploading its passengers into the sweet-hot Georgia heat. The way the air clung to them as they made the short walk across the tarmac feeling like a little homecoming of all its own.