Chapter Text
Jake loved traveling, the first time he left the state was to go to basic and he never looked back. Name a country and he’d been or was just waiting for a chance. He could hold a half decent conversation in a half dozen languages at this point and could puzzle along in a half dozen more. There was something about the rush of seeing just how big the world was, just how many people fit on this giant spinning rock that made him spend what little time on the ground he had trying to see just as much of it as he could. He’d started bringing home little things from his time deployed all around home to his boys. A brightly patterned shirt from a stint on a carrier docked over in Japan for Bradley, a book of postcards of European landmarks from the very short layover in Germany for Bob, it was his way of sharing the world with them, bringing them into his adventures, both in and out of uniform.
Rooster, on the other hand, couldn’t give a shit about traveling. He grew up in the military, his first move when he was a baby, flying cross country in the infant carrier with the little plane mobile spinning lazily and hadn’t stopped since. He’d gotten a reputation in flight school for being able to sleep in every type of aircraft, situation, or time. Somewhere out there, there was a picture of him racked out in the cockpit of his plane during refueling, it had made its way into Jake’s hands at some point in not so recent history and had taken up residence in his wallet. It was a fact of his life, he was always going to be in motion somehow and more often than not, flying in planes flown by people other than himself was the quickest way to get there. Sure it's not like he was exactly a great size for commercial planes but he ended up sleeping through most of the flights anyway, used to making himself fit where he needed too.
Bob, rounding out the three, maintained there was a difference between flying and flying. He loved flying, fell head over heels the second he stepped out into an air strip for the first time, feeling like he’d stepped into a whole other world. The way the sky spread out all around the jet like a raft in the ocean, the way the clouds rolled so easily in the sky. It was his own kind of private magic. He could have stayed up there all day, surrounded by the clear blue, everything was so simple up there. Go here, do that, come back, repeat. It was easy, not the endless little choices and movement down on the ground that always seemed to send him wishing to go back up again.
Then about as far on the other end of that lightning in a bottle feeling was flying. Stuck in a freezing metal tube with who knows how many strangers, no space to breathe, just trapped as you were shuttling across the sky in a rattling death trap. it was like going from a fresh off the line race car to a falling apart city bus, he thought privately, keeping this rare moment of being unsettled to himself. The other two men would never let him live his rare moment of easygoing, go-along-to-get-along attitude slipping. Something about the idea of TSA brought out that rare little spark of something ugly in him. He’d spent years going out of his way to avoid flying, choosing to road trip himself to his new assignments when he had the chance, putting hundreds of miles on his quickly approaching retirement age car over the years. He liked to think about it as well loved, they’d stopped at all the various roadside attractions over the years, criss crossing the entire country over time. The tiny recreation of the world's biggest rubber band ball somehow always manages to find its way to the newest duty station with him, part nostalgia, part some vague idea of practicality keeping it around, even though he couldn't actually remember the last time he had needed a rubber band.
Sometimes even he couldn't put off the trial of flying though, his older sister was getting married and had asked him to come back home for it. It’d been a long long time since he’d been back, calling when he could here and there. Not as often as everybody back home wanted but that's how it goes. He’d barely been able to open the cream-colored invitation before both other men sitting half on top of him at the time, boxing him in like he was the real flight risk out of the three of them had started dropping the least subtle hints of all time about how much leave time they had saved up from their extended stay at Fightertown, picking up one off missions here and there, and how they had actually never been to Georgia, which was patently false.
Bob knew for a fact that Jake had a very brief assignment right up near Marietta because his menace of a twin sister had been working at the hanger on the base and seen all 6’2 of Norman Rockwell painting made flesh Jake “Hangman” Seresin walking around on the base like he owned it and tried her measure best to slip Bob’s number to him almost five years before TOP GUN had even happened. He still hasn't exactly told her that this was the same Jake Seresin, naval pilot extraordinaire, she had tried so hard to set up with all those years ago but she was absolutely going to hold that over his head until the end of time.
“Why’d it have to be a morning flight?” Bob grumbled looking down at the tickets he’d been handed for safe keeping by Bradley with a kiss pressed to his temple in the middle of his off-duty version of pre-flight checks, looking more like a children's book depiction of the word “grumpy” than any sort of real anger. The house had been filled with a quiet undercurrent of excitement from the taller two of the three men, it wasn't often they got to choose where they went and when and this was the first real “meet the family '' milestone they’d come up against so far. Meeting Maverick didn't count, they decided after a fairly lengthy back and forth, having technically met him before falling into step with each other. Besides picking him up and throwing him out of their bar wasn't the most favorable first impression but it’d made for a very good story and any hard feelings had been replaced with a healthy mutual admiration on both sides.
Especially now after the months they’d spent as settled in their issued housing as they’d ever been, Bob had shyly offered up a beachside home right off base after the first weeks of this, he’d picked it up from a long lost aunt or something like that and had planned on settling down there once he was finally grounded for real. Jake had staunchly ignored the feelings that the idea of moving into a “forever” home with the two men dredged up in his chest. It was a fallback plan, if they decided to stay around here and pick up teaching jobs of their own one day. There wasn't any real rush, but it was a plan for the future beyond “Dont die.”
That was grounding in its own way, a better expression of attempting at real permanence being found in and with each other than anything Jake could come up with himself. It made the idea of having to impress the people that had put Bob on this crash course to end up here, posted up near the front door frowning around a yawn, having been dragged out to the Hard Deck again last night to celebrate something or other, more real for Bradley at least. Jake had nothing to worry about, recruiting and making flesh, in another time the perfect picture to see war bonds to middle America, and a good old boy scout to boot. Being charming came easy to him, maybe too easy if the ever growing list of trouble he’d talked them both into and somehow out of, was anything to go by.
“We would have had to leave two days ago for the afternoon flight darlin.” The response came with a set of arms slipped around Bob’s waist as Jake dropped off his bag by the small pile at the door, having been packed days in advance so he could sleep in just a little longer. “More importantly, now we're all sitting together. I’ll even let you have the window seat if you want.” Jake finished, resting his head on Bob’s slumped shoulder with a “you’ve dragged me out of bed at the ungodly hour of 9am on a Sunday” yawn that was still somehow attractive, much more like an oversized cat behind closed doors than anybody would ever believe looking at him.
“You’ll let me? My prince charming.” Bob replied back, too tired for it to come out with that teasing lilt to it, ending up landing far closer to sincere than anything else. “Anything for you princess.” Jake said, pressing his face up the side of Bob's neck with a sleepy grin, causing the other man to let out a pleased shiver at the closeness. The solid weight of the man pressed up against him, all warm and still smelling like their shared bed drew an answering yawn out of Bob. The longer they stood there, the more he wanted to call the whole thing off, push the flights until the night, just stay here wrapped up in each other as long as possible. If his sister saw what he was up against, she’d forgive him. If he was keeping score she had technically had the idea for him to shack up with Jake years before it’d happened.
“Sleeping beauty over there barely got up for this one.” Bradley said, watching the soft little moment from across the room, finally deciding to join in, having finished his double checks of the house and what little luggage they were bringing with them. The military had drilled them to pack as light as humanly possible and they were really only going to be gone for a couple days. The three matching moss green seabags sat at attention by the door, set apart only by the names blazed upon them, ready to be thrown in the back of his Jeep he had so generously offered to shuttle the half-asleep men currently holding up the wall of the entryway to the house. Something getting closer to fondness every day bloomed in his chest, putting down roots, as he watched Jake sway slightly, pulling Bob around with him in sleepy little circles and starting to hum some half remembered love song that's played at the bar every night this week, wrapped around Bob like an oversized jacket, hands coming to rest just under the untucked shirt that Bradley was almost convinced was one of his, long sleeves falling down just over Bob’s hands, swiped from the complete jumble of the pre-traveling mess of the shared closet. They looked just about ready to start dancing for real, like something out of one of Bob's guilty pleasure rom-coms he’d started making the other two watch with him.
It had been an adjustment at first for Bob at least, to go from a passing slap on the back or handshake here and there to all of a sudden having not one but the two men he’d privately admit he had a more than a little bit of a hero worship crush on before actually meeting them just there to touch whenever he wanted. They had both existed on the periphery of his life before their shared mission, it was a small Navy and an even smaller pool of pilots to pull from. They’d spent years just missing each other here and there, taking over old postings, an endless revolving door they could just catch a glimpse of each other through until now. Stories of batshit crazy maneuvers, pissed off CO’s, magnetic presences posted up at the staple base dive bar, and those hellraiser grins had chased the other two men out the door at every base Bob had ended up stationed at just after them.
It helped foster a little bit of that hero worship thing, it was hard not to just hearing half of the stories over the years. Then going and seeing them, somehow twice as talented and infuriatingly pretty in real life as they all competed for a spot on Mav’s team, had absolutely kicked that feeling into high gear. The team bonding on the beach had absolutely not helped matters at all, if he was going to be honest. It had gone from a small crush to a full blown case of infatuation rather quickly after that, sue him watching both astoundingly talented pilots somehow fly like that, looking like magazine models on a day off, and still come out the other side was charming as hell.
Affection came easiest to Jake out of the three of them, like most everything else he grew up with a surplus of it and never had to learn how it felt to be half starved of it. He never knew the way it felt to almost crawl out of his skin without being touched in a way that mattered for endless stretches of time, that need for contact of any kind, good, bad, god, just something. Bradley had watched the way Bob had let himself fade into the background when the unit was all together, seeming to startle when somebody turned to him, like he forgot that he was even in the room with them sometimes and the way his eyes seemed to linger just half a second too long on the passing contact between the people around them. It was a lot easier to just watch the other man those few short months ago than to sit and think about how he had gone out and spent a life picking fights just to feel that razor-slice moment just before his hands made contact with somebody else. There was something similar in how they both made it seem like a choice, like that way it didn't have to hurt, because they wanted it that way, something separating them from the world in their own ways.
He could see the way Bob sometimes still hesitated for just a split second, hand suspended in midair, before reaching out for them both almost timidly, like it was something that could be taken away from him, the look in his eyes something years old and veering too close to sad for Jake’s comfort. He wasn't going to pry, hardly one to talk about things long since buried that seemed to rear up at bad times with worse results, but had quietly resolved to stay close, to make it easy for the other man to want, to tuck him under his arm like he was made to fill that space he hadn’t even known was empty until they’d met, fit together like long separated puzzle pieces.
Bob had mentioned once in passing after the six month anniversary of them all surviving their mission, the last one they had all been assigned to together for obvious reasons, that sometimes in the middle of the night he would sit straight up in their bed and listen for their heartbeats when the other two were asleep, finding the pulse points on their wrists and holding them for what felt like hours, counting the steady beats to ward off the what ifs and the close calls their lives seemed to be filled with. From then on they had taken every chance to pull him close, letting him just listen to the steady thump-thump of the living, beating thing in their chests. Most importantly to impress upon him that he could take just as much as he gave. That he didn't have to earn his place between them, the fact he was there, solid and warm was enough. That they weren't going anywhere, not if they had any choice in the matter.
Bradley himself was never the best with words or touch, obviously, somehow always saying just the thing to take things from bad to worse, whatever he said like a lightning strike chased by the thunder clap of whatever hell was about to break loose around him. He cared for the other two, so deeply it felt like a tectonic shift in his chest sometimes, like it knocked something loose, making it just a fraction easier to exhale around them. Suddenly the well traveled closets of three men found their way into one and Bradley was the first to wrap his well loved jackets around the other two, the sleeves just a little bit too long on them, the sight just about driving him crazy, run aground in himself watching the easy way they lived around each other. He always took the aisle seat, the edge of the bed closest to the door, whatever he could to put himself between them and whatever could come crashing through. Something shiny and possessive woke up at the sight of them wrapped up in his clothes in their house, made him feel protective, which was pointless, they were both adults and clearly could take care of themselves considering how far they had made it on their own. That didn't stop Bradley from doing his best to try and displace that summer heat feeling in his chest that seemed to rise up around the other two without any real effort on their parts.
So he tried to take care of them in his own little ways, driving out to the very much overpriced Whole Foods 45 minutes from their new home base to get the extra special coffee Jake swore “just tasted better than whatever instant shit you drink, Roo.”, slipping new crossword books into Bob’s bag before whatever brief deployment separated them for a time here and there, sneaking the car keys for the other two’s cars out once a week to make sure they were filled up and clean for the coming week, always being the one to check the locks on the doors and windows every night, trying to make their lives just a little bit easier for having him around. Sure he just about hated washing the dishes more than anything else in the world after Bob’s latest attempt into the field of culinary arts, but the look on his face as he woke up to a spotless kitchen and a fully packed fridge made all the scrubbing and wet food worth it to Bradley. The man was unfailingly good at everything except muffins they had found over months of trial and delicious error, something about how there was always food in the house was all Bob’s doing, freshly made and just there for anybody to take, like the act of providing for anybody who found themselves in the house was innate in him.
On the rare occasions Bob beat Bradley out of bed, he found the other man in the kitchen, wreathed in golden sunlight, radio playing quietly as he was in his own little world, making something new for them to try, Bradley had never really understood the courting aspect of cooking for somebody, food was food in his opinion, military upbringing leaking through around his edges. It’d been years since he had had anything resembling a home cooked meal, he’d been on his own since he enlisted, particularly before if he really thought about it. Then the night after they’d all been discharged from medical, waiting out the adrenaline crash of the day, and had ambled back to the house, fully expecting to pass out where they managed to sit and worry about food in the morning, Bob had beelined right for the kitchen, still in his flight suit, glasses cocked up to the right just a little bit, ash smudge on his face from where he’d pushed his helmet off earlier that day, and made them a real honest to god human meal, pulling it out of god knows where, grocery runs having not been any kind of priority. He had shoved the plates at them and didn’t start his own until they had both started digging in, watching them from the corner of his eyes like he needed to see them to believe that they were there with him.
Ever since then, Bradley had found himself looking around the corner from the living room into the kitchen to see Bob sat at the kitchen counter more and more, trying his level best to turn their tiny base kitchen into a gathering place for their little mismatched family spread to the four corners of the world. The rest of the unit had started dropping in and out when they heard how much he was cooking, enough to feed an army they joked before he took that upon himself literally, passing out full tupperwares of home cooked dinner to those of them not lucky enough to rate a kitchen in their assigned rooms on base, with a promise to fill them back up if they were returned clean. Over time some of them had acquired name tapes on the containers, decorated with callsigns and the half remembered jokes passed around worn with age.
They had started coming over to the house for fresh dinners and not just the food exchange program that had been set up almost haphazardly out of curiosity at first and now came for their own version of family dinners once a week, shyly making requests or dropping off old half-remembered family recipes. The full unit was almost never there anymore, being deployed all over the world, but over the course of the months since the tradition had been established Fanboy had come up with a phone chain so they could at least facetime most everybody in for a few stolen moments here and there. Bradley would watch as Jake would tug the ever so slightly smaller man’s chair just that much closer to his, wrapping his leg around the chair effectively boxing him in with them, wherever they ate at the table in the base issued house surrounded by the friends they had picked up along the way. The table having picked up a slight tilt to it over the years passed from hand to hand and a tapestry of scrapes and dings, a couple lifetimes of military families having passed it by over the years, all the while adding their own history to it in time. It was nice, really nice Jake thought. He didn't know when he had started getting soft but he wasn't as opposed to the thought as he used to be.
That's what they were, a family pulled into each other by a lifetime of uniform and service. It was an odd thought, without each independently coming to the choice of enlisting, spending a life working to be the best of the best, and the millions of tiny little choices in between all those years ago, they wouldn't have ended up anywhere close here. All dozen of them would have ended up scattered all over the country, completely different people in radically different places, likely never even crossing paths in passing. It was too ugly and frankly too sad a thought for the early morning, especially with the sight in front of him, Jake ended that particular train of thought on, choosing to end it on the idea that they were a family of their own. It was a really nice idea to him, family being something you could and should choose and he had chosen these two, chosen them over and over again. And in return, they had chosen him, stuck by him and waited for him to come around, all patient and easy smiles.
Other times when Bradley woke up earlier than the both of them, far enough out of basic for them to forget the alarm bells and ice water wake up calls. Something in him was hard wired to wake up just before the sun started the slow crawl across the sky, not that he was complaining anymore, it gave him time to steal a few of the quiet moments alone with the other two men, curled up around each other, pressed up skin to skin, soaking up as much of the contact as he could like he was preparing for a long winter somewhere cold. Arms thrown around each other, legs tangled under the blankets that never seemed to stay on the bed under the California heat, the sounds of soft breathing the only thing ringing out in the shared bedroom.
Jake on the other hand, never one to back down from any sort of a challenge, real or imagined, and far too observant for his own good, no matter how much his behavior would lead anybody to think otherwise, had started doing much the same in his own way to show just how much he cared for the other two. The teasing little jabs he’d been infamous for on every base he had graced with his presence, lost their venom and had been further tempered by his newfound very free usage of terms of endearment. The first time he called Bob sweetheart in that half-asleep, boy you’d just love to bring home to your mom tone he got behind closed doors with the both of over the still warm plate of eggs Bob had made with just the right amount of milk to make them taste like home handed over after he finally crawled out of bed, Bradley swore he had just about killed the poor man right there in the kitchen, flushed as pink as the sunrise in the open window behind him. Coffee pot drip-drip-dripping in the background, Bob having learned how to make it the only way Jake would drink it seemingly overnight with that homegrown devotion of his.
After that, he’d made it his very own personal mission to get that sweet little flush to creep its way to rest just under the silver glint of the navy issue glasses Bob wore, same pair he’d been issued the first day of basic, having lovingly been tweaked and fixed up over the years. Jake had found that the quickest way to get that warmth to rise up and linger on Bob’s face was to just hang off him sweet as can be, like he was the last fixed point in the world, like he’d fall off the side as the world spun if he didn’t have at least a hand on the other man. It was grounding, it kept Bob there on the ground and out wherever he went inside his head if left alone for too long and it stated something that needed constant contact in Jake, a real win-win for everybody.
He’d drape himself over Bob like a portable space heater, whenever he sat curled up on the shared couch tearing his way through whatever books Bradley had grabbed from the base library on his way back from work, his arm like a heated band around Bob’s waist, searching for the little sliver of exposed waist like a moth to a flame. Jake always did run hot compared to the other two much to Bob’s quiet delight, he had always run cold and could see the way Bradley always grabbed at warmth when he could, a lifetime of flying not lending itself to poor circulation, especially in his hands. Bradley really didn't mind the sight of them curled around each other much either, anchoring himself around them in time, somehow making the couch that barely fit one of them on a good day squeeze all three of them in on nights they don't end up making it to the bedroom, too wrapped up in each other to get up and move just down the hall to the bedroom they had all slowly claimed as their own.
“Alright lovebirds time to go.” Bradley began the slow process of herding the other two out the door to the car. Jake let out an almost childish grumble before straightening himself up and out as much as he could still wrapped around Bob. “You heard the man, your carriage awaits princess.” He teases, gesturing to the door Bradley had just opened, letting the morning off the water breeze into the house. He got a fond eyeroll in response as they all finally started climbing into the Jeep, sliding in one after the other. They ended up in the same seats as usual, Jake sprawled out over the window seat, Bob sat between them in the middle bench seat, and Bradley sat behind the steering wheel like he was placed there by something divine. Once again, not exactly a space designed with the idea of three fully grown men pressed up against each other to occupy it, but they made it work, the haze of early morning making them all seem just a little more pliable, more willing to bend around each other.