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“Hey Mav?”
“Mmh?”
They are sitting on the beach outside their house, feet buried in warm sand as they are watching the sun set. Bradley is leaning on his godfather’s shoulder, trying to imagine what it would be like to see something else than all the – admittedly lovely – shades of grey that make up his world.
“When do you think I’ll get my colours?”
Mav looks down at him, and not for the first time, Bradley wonders what ‘green’ looks like, since his mum told him that’s what his eyes are supposed to be. “Why are you asking me?”
Bradley shrugs. “It’s just… You and Mom, you’ve got them, and I…don’t.”
“You will,” Mav answers with a small smile, wrapping an arm around his shoulders affectionately. “I only got mine when I was twenty-three, you know. You’ve got time, you’re only fourteen, kiddo…”
The brown-haired teenager at his side shrugs again.
He doesn’t want to admit that he’s anxious to know what it feels like.
To get one’s colours.
To find one’s soulmate.
Everyone’s reaction to suddenly seeing in colours is different, from Bradley’s experience.
Some are overwhelmed by it, passing out or losing their minds when their vision suddenly clear up. Others feel it like a growing thing, starting from the centre of their vision and spreading like the warmth of the sun. Others still just blink, and there they are.
For years, he wonders what he’ll feel like, if he’s lucky enough to one day find himself in the presence of his soulmate.
He knows his parents were it for each other. That Nick – Goose, as both Carole and Mav keep calling him even years after his passing – got his while sitting at a piano in some college bar where Carole had just walked in with some friends. That her first taste of colours was the awful Hawaiian shirt he’d been wearing.
He knows Mav got his while he was at Top Gun. He doesn’t talk about it much, but Bradley thinks it was Uncle Tom’s doing. They are acting so weirdly around each other whenever they gather for a barbecue or something other… He doesn’t understand why they’re not together, but he gathers he’ll understand when he’s older.
At eighteen, some of his high school friends already have their colours. They’re not necessarily trying to track down their soulmate, but at least they know they are somewhere in the vicinity.
When he finally manages to get into the Navy – no thanks to Mav, and he’s not sure he can ever forgive him for that – Bradley hopes he’ll get his colours. If only because being a colour-blind pilot isn’t practical or safe. Thankfully, he’s far from being the only one in his promotion to see in black and white when they start up.
Their simulators and training planes are generally geared with some code supposed to represent the colours for those who can’t see them. Those who can usually take it as a viable reason to bully the others, but it’s generally done in good fun.
He’s graduated and got into Top Gun, the experience already surreal enough when he sees his fathers’ faces everywhere his eyes can see; but it takes a turn for the worst on his very first day.
He and a group of other newbies are making their way inside the training room where a dozen others are already seated, and suddenly, he sees.
It’s like a veil lifting from his eyes. As if he’s been wearing his sunglasses inside for eons, and has finally remembered to take them off.
He stands awkwardly next to the door as the others pass him, not paying him any mind, and he takes it in, quietly, heart beating faster.
He doesn’t know what is blue, what is green or red; but he sees.
And it’s beautiful.
Even more beautiful are all the colours that make up a person. Some have darker shining skin; others have shining hair. He can’t wait to find out what all those shades are called.
But now’s not the time.
He takes a seat at the back of the class, and tries to figure out which of the pilots present there today is his soulmate.
But no one seems to have gotten their own colours; or if they did, then they’re hiding it.
He’s torn between excitement and dread.
And what if he got his colours, but his soulmate hasn’t?
What then?
Unbeknownst to Bradley Bradshaw, someone did get their colours the moment he stepped inside the room.
Jake Seresin, who had been sitting with his friend Javy when he blinked and BAM – there they were.
He’d expected better. Perhaps a drumroll or at least a warning.
As it is, he tries to play it cool.
He isn’t interested in soulmates. He only wants to be the best, right now. To excel. To show his old man that he can be better than anyone else.
A soulmate would only slow him down.
He doesn’t tell Javy about getting his colours until two weeks later, and then again, it’s only by accident.
Javy is much more excited than he is.
Bless the lad.
In-between lessons and training, Bradley tries to figure out who’s his intended among the group of pilots he is going to live alongside to for the foreseeable future.
At first, he thinks it must be Natasha Trace, who’s as beautiful as she’s fierce. They immediately get along, and it immediately seems to mean that she’s Bradley’s soulmate.
But after a few beers and friendly dates, she tells him that she hasn’t got her colours yet.
She quickly becomes his best friend at Top Gun.
They team up to try and identify the person he’s fated to love forever, but it’s a minefield.
There are a few – like Jack or Ace – who already have their colours and are living happily ever after with their soulmates. Some others are not interested in trying to find Bradley’s own; and others are just not on the list of possibilities.
Which makes Natasha wonder if it couldn’t be one of them instead.
“Why not Madison?” she asks one evening while they’re sipping on a beer at The Hard Deck and Bradley is watching said female pilot destroy two of their classmates in darts. She’s very attractive, if not a bit too arrogant to his taste and, most importantly, she’s-
“What about her being a lesbian don’t you think is an issue here, Tasha?”
She snorts. “Javy, then.”
Bradley turns his head to look at the man in question, who’s playing pool with a wide grin on his lips. “Doesn’t have his colours. Already asked him.”
“Shame.”
“Yeah,” he huffs.
“I’m sorry, pal; but that only leaves-“
“Don’t even dare mention that name, Natasha Gloria Trace,” he hisses. “He’s not it. Can’t be. I can’t be fated to such an asshole. It’s not possible.”
She sighs, not for the first time. “Then I can’t help you.”
“It’s fine,” he sighs, defeated. “I guess I was simply a bug in the Matrix, as they say. I mustn’t be my soulmate’s soulmate. It’s fine. It happens.” And it does. It’s never not sad, from what he’s seen when he’s researched the issue; but he’ll live.
A loveless and unfulfilled life, but live he will nonetheless.
“What about-?”
“If you mention another stupid name, Javy Machado, I swear to everything I hold dear that I’m going to punch you in the face.”
Jake and Javy are in their shared room, each on their own bunk bed, and while the blonde – because now he knows what it means, that colour, and he’s quite fond and proud of how he looks – is reading yet another manual about the Super Hornet, his best friend is currently doodling about on a notepad, trying to find out who Seresin’s fated to be with.
As he’s been trying to do for the past thirteen months by then.
Javy sighs. “Excuse me for wanting to see you happy, mate.”
“I am happy,” Jake counters as he usually does.
“Not you’re not, but I’ll drop it for now. Why don’t you want to know who it is?”
“Because knowing will only distract me,” Jake says, turning a page and already cursing the fact that this conversation was indeed distracting him from his self-imposed homework. “I don’t need a soulmate. I need to graduate. To make it to the top.”
Javy sighs again. “Yeah, I know.” Because he does. He knows the pressure Jake’s on whenever he calls home or whenever he dares mention his father. He has to succeed. To be the best of the best. Second best can’t cut it.
Unfortunately, one stupid brown-haired pilot is trying very hard to drop him from his pedestal.
Fucking Bradshaw and his fucking excellent grades.
They’re in the common room one evening, sitting next to each other and texting aimlessly as they tend to do in such gatherings.
The others are dancing, drinking, singing or all three at once; but Javy and Jake are content enough to just sit and sip on their beers leisurely.
At first, Machado sends his friend memes and funny videos about people falling on their faces or stuff like that. After the tense atmosphere brought on by their exams that ended just that morning, it’s a welcome reprieve.
Until Javy texts him “What if it’s him?”
Jake glares at his friend before texting back. “Don’t be stupid, Javy.”
“It would make sense, though. He’s the only one you’ve never wanted to consider an option.”
“If you mention the pornstache granpa once more, Machado, I’m rescinding your best friend privileges and changing the Netflix password.”
Javy sends him a gif of a cartoon character falling to his death – the very same he’d get his callsign from not a week later –, and texts back “You wouldn’t.”
Jake smirks and sends him the devil emoji. “Try me.”
Natasha, who’s relatively tipsy, comes over to retrieve her discarded jacket from the back of Javy’s chair when she narrows her eyes at them. “Are you texting? You’re sitting next to each other!!!”
Jake smirks at her. He’s always appreciated the fact that she never stopped giving him shit not matter how hard he tried to get into her pants. He can respect a woman who resists him. “What if we don’t want anyone else to hear what we have to say?”
She snorts, cocking her hip like an annoyed mother. “It’s called ‘going elsewhere’, moron.”
He chuckles. “But we’re having too much fun watching y’all embarrass yourselves!”
Once again, her dark eyes narrow. Jake briefly wonders if she knows just how dark her irises are, but he doesn’t want to know if she got her colours. Those things are too distracting. “You’re an ass, Seresin. I’ll be happy to see the back of you.”
He makes a kissy face at her, and watches her retreat back towards her usual clique.
When Bradshaw unplugs the stereo to plug in his fucking synthesizer instead, he texts Javy that he’s calling it a night.
He ignores the way his skin buzzes the closer he gets to the wannabe pianist; and the way it numbs when he gets further away again.
He’s just drunk too much.
Rooster – because now he’s Rooster, and not only Bradley – stops thinking about soulmates and colours for a long time after that.
He’s too busy trying to stay alive and making sure the missions he’s sent on actually work out.
He works alongside Natasha – Phoenix now – a few times more, and even she seems to have let the matter drop. He’s glad, because he’s desperate to just live a normal life.
When he thinks back on when he was a kid and impatient to see everything in colours; compared to the misery he’s now in, heart hollow but eyes taking it all in; it makes him want to punch himself in the face.
When he’s called back to Top Gun by Uncle Tom, he’s tempted to decline. But Tasha calls him saying that she’s going too, and he can never leave his best woman hanging.
He basks in the Miramar sunset, bitterly remembering a time when he shared those black and white moments with the man he had looked up to all his life; and who is no longer in the picture.
God knows Maverick could help him with this whole ‘soulmate’ thing. But he is still angry, even fifteen years later; and Rooster is nothing if not stubborn. Got it from his godfather, apparently.
When he steps inside The Hard Deck, his skin starts pleasantly buzzing. He hasn’t felt this for years, and now knows to associate it with the proximity of his soulmate. When one gets closer to their intended, it’s like a magnet polarizing. Apparently, when touch is involved, it’s even stronger.
So. His soulmate’s here.
Which means that some of his old classmates are here, and he could probably narrow it down properly.
He’s not sure he wants to, though, especially when he sees what choices he has.
Natasha is here, of course, and she’s got a grin brighter than the sun when she sees him. Javy – Coyote now – is here too; as well as Harvard and Fritz – but both had been colour-blind when they’d all graduated; and…fucking Hangman.
He’s always refused to consider Jake Seresin an option, and he’s not about to change his mind, especially when they greet each other in this ‘I’m still better than you’ way that he hasn’t missed one bit.
His skin is buzzing as he stands close to all these pilots, one of which is the person he should be fated to; and he chooses to back off. Namely, to tickle the keys a bit.
After he belts out ‘Great Balls of Fire’ in homage to the man who once sat on this very same piano stool and placed him on top of the very same piano, Natasha pulls him aside, eyes wide and excited.
“Bradley,” she whispers, “I got them!”
He furrows his brow. “What?”
“I got them! My colours!”
He huffs a laugh, hugs her tight. “That’s amazing Tasha! Who is it, d’you know?”
She nods enthusiastically, then grimaces a bit. “Now I can see properly, your shirt is much uglier than I remember.”
He hugs her again for that quip. “Come on, tell me, Phoenix.”
She grins again, and juts her chin towards the group of pilots who have resumed their game of pool. “Bob.”
“Bob?” he asks, looking towards the bespectacled WSO. He seems nice enough from what he gathered in a furtive glance. He has to be, to deserve Natasha Trace.
“Yeah, Bob.” She huffs. “Figures I’d be fated to a nerd.”
“A cute nerd,” he adds.
“Yeah, a cute nerd.” She grins again, and he’s happy for her. She’s visibly giddy with getting her colours and knowing who her soulmate is in the same evening.
He’s envious, but not enough not to buy her a beer.
Maverick’s their new instructor, and Rooster wants nothing more than to tell him everything; but he can’t forgive, and he snaps at him instead. He hates how much time has passed since they last saw each other; hates the wrinkles that have appeared at the corner of his godfather’s eyes.
He hates that he still doesn’t know who his soulmate is.
And he hates Jake Seresin even more.
Especially when the asshole manages to bring up his dad’s death in training.
His skin has never been buzzing stronger than when he’s about to punch the blonde bastard; but he’s too riled up to notice and to understand what it means.
He gets it much later.
This time, he decides to bask in the sunset no matter what memories doing so brings forth.
He’s got tears in his eyes, because he misses his dads, misses his mum, misses the blessed time when he could only see in shades of grey.
Hangman finds him like that.
He hates it.
“Hey,” the asshole greets, making him wipe his tears away and stand up as if poised to run. Or to fight. Either way.
In the setting light, his skin is warm. He could call it buzzing, but there’s no one around apart from Jake Fucking Seresin.
“What the Hell do you want, Hangman?” he spits.
The other man locks their gazes – and Rooster has never paid attention to the shade of his eyes, but goddamn, they’re the greenest he’s ever seen – and seems apologetic, for once. “I’m sorry for earlier.”
He’s over it. He says so. “Yeah, that was a proper dick move. But I’ve got other things on my plate than whatever shit Jake Almighty Seresin decides to tell to my face to care.”
Hangman huffs, looks annoyed too now. “Yeah, like the fact that you’re going to get us all killed if you keep up flying like a man on Valium.”
Rooster lunges. He doesn’t know why; perhaps because his skin feels itchy.
He tackles Seresin to the ground, and they land on the sand.
Bradley’s hand is touching Hangman’s shoulders through his t-shirt, but his pointer finger comes in contact with a sliver of bare skin at his collarbone.
It feels like fireworks have set off in his chest.
The colours he’s gotten used to seem brighter; everything is sharper, as if he’s on acid, looking through a kaleidoscope at the man similarly frozen under him.
They are both breathing hard when Seresin pushes him off of him.
“It’s…you,” he breathes, shocked, hand going to where they’d been unwittingly touching. Their sights go back to normal, but their hearts don’t slow down. “It’s you!” he repeats, and he’s never looked angrier about anything.
Bradley is overwhelmed, and it’s only when Hangman has turned away and left that he realises what this means.
He falls back onto the warm sand and fresh tears spring to his eyes.
His soulmate.
It was Hangman all along…
Jake goes back to his room, breath short and heart beating so fast he fears he’s gonna go into cardiac arrest.
Bradley Bradshaw. Rooster. His soulmate.
What kind of fucked up world was he born into?
As he usually does when pondering about the person who gave him his colours, he tries to direct his thoughts back to what matters: being the best; becoming team leader; saving the world. Perhaps then his father would finally say he’s proud of him.
He doesn’t need a soulmate.
Doesn’t need to feel like he’s flying under Bradshaw’s touch.
Doesn’t need to feel like he’d rather crawl inside the other man and never let go until they have consumed each other.
Doesn’t need to imagine what it would feel like if more of their skins touched.
If they kissed.
He doesn’t need any of that.
But he doesn’t sleep anyway.
They avoid each other as best they can after that.
They’re no longer overtly antagonistic towards each other, but it’s obvious that something pulls them together anyway. They touched only once, but it seems enough to create an addiction.
When they play dogfight football on the beach, Bradley’s skin never stops buzzing. He gets a ball to the face when he finds himself daydreaming about what Seresin would feel like if they fell to the sand right now, bare chested.
It’s rendered far worse by the fact that Natasha and Bob have now gone on a date, and have shared their first kiss.
When she told him about it, he couldn’t help but picture it between him and Seresin.
Even though he obviously hates the man.
And yet…
He seeks Coyote out. The other man isn’t surprised to hear that he’s ‘Jake’s’ soulmate, and agrees to unveil a bit of the Hangman’s mystery, so long as they don’t verge into dangerous country. Rooster agrees, and also agrees to share some bits and pieces about him, in case Seresin gets the same weird urge to get to know his soulmate via Machado-post.
The more he learns, the less he hates Hangman.
The more he learns, the more he pines.
And unfortunately, things don’t get better…
When Uncle Tom dies, Rooster feels like it’s a turning point.
Because Mav has just lost his soulmate.
And the sight is heartbreaking.
He knows the man enough still to be aware that he could tear his own heart out of his chest if he could. If he didn’t have a mission to accomplish; kids to teach and to bring back home.
Bradley would give everything he has to make sure his godfather didn’t have to go through this.
Maverick becomes team leader, and Rooster becomes his wingman.
Jake feels like a knife has been twisted in his gut.
At first, he needs out if only because he feels like his father is lurking in the shadows, about to point at him and call him a disappointment as he always does when Jake isn’t first. He feels like the earth – or ocean – is going to swallow him whole, even though he knows William Seresin isn’t there to bury him six feet under for his failure.
Then, when he’s looking at the waters of the Pacific Ocean, he understands that he could lose Bradley forever very soon. In fact, he could lose him before they even had a chance to properly be soulmates.
It eats at him, and he lets it distract him.
He lets it distract him when he hears over the comms the next day that Dagger Two has gone down. He lets his heart constrict and tears pool in his eyes because suddenly, he could lose what he hasn’t got, and it’s killing him.
He gets into the air without a care in the world about Cyclone’s order to stay put.
If Bradley doesn’t come back, he’s ready to go find him. He’s ready to crawl into sand, snow, dirt, mud to find Bradley Bradshaw.
Thankfully, it doesn’t go that far.
He takes the shot, and saves what’s become more precious to him than anything else. More precious than being the best.
Rooster finds him in the crowd, following the buzz under his skin that goes stronger the closer he gets to Jake Seresin and his green green eyes.
He’s got his Mav back, and now, he’s ready to get his soulmate.
Phoenix and Bob are already snogging in the background; and it spurs him onward.
Jake catches him when he stumbles forward, losing balance because of exhaustion or simply because of the other man’s proximity.
They stare at each other, and then, Jake lifts a hand slowly, so slowly, until it cups Bradley’s cheek. The fireworks are instantaneous, addictive, and overwhelming.
They both gasp.
“It’s you,” Bradley says, mirroring what Jake had told him on the beach that fateful night.
Jake smiles. “Yeah. Apparently, it’s me.”
They stare some more, wait, perhaps, for the fireworks to dim, but they never do.
Once they lean in to kiss each other, it’s even worse.
The fireworks morph into a blaze, turning each of their cells to molten lava.
Jake whimpers and falls into Bradley who narrowly catches him and catches the noise with his lips.
It’s better than any acid trip. Better than watching his first coloured sunset.
It’s better than anything else in the world.
It’s a branding of the soul.
They belong to each other now.
There’s no way they’re letting the other go.
Even when they have to get back to reality and to the officers surrounding them, they keep holding hands. The kaleidoscope makes their faces brighter and shiny with happiness.
Bradley smiles.
No more black and white.