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Jake isn’t sure what he’s doing anymore. Can’t stop thinking about that night, and the nights afterwards. The nights like this one. Since he managed to save him and fall in his bed oh so soon after.
It had been so easy, to give in to the temptations he’d felt when Bradley walked into his room. To fall back into his arms. Like they say, old habits die hard.
Now here he is curled in Bradley’s arms, wide awake at 2am as he tries to figure out what good could come from doing this again. They never seem to have enough time. Never seem to know the right thing to say. Never know how to be open about how they feel. Never, never, never .
He thinks of Bradley, good, kind, perfect Bradley. Then he thinks of all the feelings he’s tried to keep trapped about Bradley. The messy and all consuming feelings.
No matter what he wanted to tell himself, he’d never love anyone the way he loves Bradley. Fell in love and never fell out, not when he was walking out, not when he was fighting him for that spot as Mav’s wingman. Because it didn’t matter, not when he’d realized that Bradley being picked wasn’t the end of his world. The end of his world was hearing Bradley go down and thinking he was too much of a coward to tell him.
Then he’d disobeyed orders, threw caution to the wind once again in order to get to him. ( Faster, he has to go faster- )
It was too complicated, too much. The exact reason he had left the first time. Why he had broken both their hearts before he’d ultimately lose him some other way.
Now, it didn’t matter. Now that he’s let himself fall back into Bradley, there was nothing else for him. Yet, what a way to go.
He’s accepted that if he’s going to ruin all the walls he’d put in place over these past couple of years, he’d want it to be for Bradley.
There’s a kiss being placed on his neck, and he sighs when he realizes it was right on one of the multiple marks Bradley had littered him with that evening. “Should I leave?” he asks, while tightening his arms around his waist.
( ‘Should I leave?’ he asks. Like Jake would ever make him leave. No, that’s Jake’s job. )
He doesn’t say that, instead answering: “Ask again in five.” Because he’s weak, and he’s always got to have an escape route planned, a way out of the hole he’s dug for himself once again.
“Jake,” he sighs. “Talk to me.”
That’s all he ever asked of him, like it was simple. Just wanting to talk, put it out there. But how can he know what to say when his brain is playing tricks on him, trying to convince him that he could have this (could be happy ).
“We should go on a trip.”
He’s not sure where that came from, and from the way Bradley pauses from where he was tracing shapes on his chest, he’s just as confused.
Nonetheless, he takes it in stride. “Where would we go?” He continues his tracing, sinking seemingly even further into Jake’s chest. “Drunk in Malibu? I’ve never been to Nashville.”
“Austin,” he breathes. “I’d bring you with me to Austin. I think you’d like the ranch. I know you’d love my mom.”
Bradley sucks in a breath, obviously waiting for some kind of punch line. When it never comes he smiles into Jake’s neck. “I’d like that,” he replies.
“I think…” he starts. Trying so hard to be real, to finally give Bradley something that’s real that isn’t just late nights and broken feelings. “I think we could be good.”
He doesn’t dare elaborate, waiting for Bradley to stiffen and tell him it’s just sex. That Jake lost any claim to him in that way two years ago. Instead, he flips Jake over so he’s looking at him.
His eyes are soft and he’s still smiling in that disarming way of his. He continues to trace, now on his back. It’s as Jake starts to figure out what the pattern is that gives him the confidence to keep going.
“I almost lost you.”
Bradley opens his mouth to rebuttal, to tell him once again that he’s here because Jake saved him. And he knows that, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that he did lose him for those painful moments after he went down and there were no signs of life.
“No, I did. And I know I brought you back, but it doesn’t erase those moments where I was sitting there thinking you were dead and I hadn’t even told you how I felt. How I'll always feel.”
Bradley only nods, obviously knowing if Jake doesn’t get this out now there’s a good chance it’s never going to happen.
“I’m a mess, and I’m hard work, and I know that. And sure you’re not perfect, but you’re as good as it’s going to get for me. That’s just the way you make me feel.” He takes a deep breath to calm down a little bit, trying to reign in the tears he can feel bubbling up. “I’m in love with you, have been since we first fell into bed together. I think if I had flown out there just for you to not have survived, I would have rather fallen 30,000 feet than lose you.”
Bradley only looks at him, and when Jake nods to signal he’s done, swoops in to kiss him. It’s not demanding and possessive like everything had been since they got back on solid ground. Wasn’t them trying to prove to each other that they were alive, instead was them proving to each other that they were all in.
Jake immediately melts into it, gripping Bradley’s shoulders for some support. When he finally pulls back, he doesn’t dare leave Bradley’s orbit. Instead just resting his forehead on the other.
“That’s a bit melodramatic.” He states, smirking at the other, then: “I love you,” he promises as his smirk melts into a smile. “I’m in love with you.”
He can’t help it, he cracks. The sobs he’s been holding in for weeks are released at that moment. He tucks his head into the crook of Bradley’s neck, only sobbing harder when the other holds him tighter. “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s okay.”
Jake shakes his head. “I walked away from us, that was my fault. You can’t just say that.”
“I can,” he insists. “Because I love you, and you love me. We’re going to be okay.”
Jake feels the hope flutter in his chest and prays (for the first time in years) that he’s correct, because he can’t lose him again.
So, with more hope than he’s ever allowed himself previously to dare, he falls asleep to Bradley tracing ‘I love you’ over and over into his back.