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This probably wouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but he and Seresin hadn’t exactly hit it off when they first met.
Seresin was one of those bastards who behaved like he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, wanting for absolutely nothing. He had no shortage of natural talent to ride on 'til the end of time and he paired it with a relentless drive to be the best at everything that actually paid off. On anyone else, it might’ve been impressive the way he didn’t rest on his laurels. On Seresin and his abject lack of humility, it grated the same way Maverick’s irrepressible cheek did.
Seresin was good and he knew it, the top of their flight school cohort from day one and flaunting it in everyone’s faces because the bastard just didn’t know when to shut up. He was the human embodiment of a cattle prod and Bradley spent most of the first two years of their acquaintance wanting to drop kick him directly into a smelter while the rest of their class stood guard at the door.
All that said, what did surprise people was that they did hit it off eventually, and they did it with a bang so resounding it probably should’ve devolved into a fist fight.
“Jesus, Seresin, do you talk to your mother with that mouth?” Bassett muttered directly into her oatmeal one morning in the mess. He was peacocking about how much faster he was than everyone else in the latest time trials—again—ostensibly in an attempt to motivate them to be better, regardless of whether or not anyone else saw it that way.
At that point, Bradley was still downing his first cup of coffee, bleary eyed and conscious only because he absolutely had to be, so he really wasn’t mentally prepared to control himself when Seresin replied with, “can’t say I’ve dusted off the ouija board lately, no.”
And that was all it took for Bradley to start laughing into his mug so hard that he almost drowned in it, doubling down when the rest of the table went the sort of quiet that could only mean they were lucky bastards whose mothers were still among the land of the living.
“Oh, think that’s funny, do you Bradshaw?” Seresin asked him, but he was smirking in a way that was a little less shark-sharp and a lot more amused than his usual fare, the sort of glint in his eye that said he took no small amount of pleasure in making people uncomfortable with inconveniently timed personal truths. And, look, it was probably terrible, but it was also the first genuinely human thing Seresin had ever said in his presence and Bradley, two decades deep in dead parent jokes and three cups of watered-down coffee away from awake, was utterly charmed by it.
“I’m thinking that I’m grateful you don’t hold regular seances to commune with souls in the pit, family or otherwise. We’ve got enough demons around here without you accidentally opening a gateway to hell.”
“Accidentally? Accidentally?” he sputtered, like that was the most offensive part of that statement and not what it implied about his dead mother. The rest of the table watched in muted horror, at least one of the guys missing his mouth entirely, runny eggs falling onto his shoulder with a wet plop. "No, that bitch can stay right down there where she belongs. I hope she and Jacob Senior are forced into the mutual torture of sharing each other’s wretched company on a spit roast until the end of time, the fucking bastards.”
“So you really do talk to your mother with that mouth,” Bradley mused, grinning at the devious tilt of Seresin’s mouth as his entire understanding of the man took a hard left turn.
“About at best. If it’s a choice between being forced to talk to her at all and certain death, I’ll take death thanks very much. We can’t all have patron saints for parents, Bradshaw,” he said, which was about the time everyone seated nearby started clearing out in anticipation of one of their infamous pissing contests suddenly made very personal. Only about half of them knew Bradley's parents were both dead, but all of them seemed to have a sixth sense for when he and Seresin were going to get into it.
Weak, the lot of them.
“Tell you what,” Bradley said, slow and teasing, because it was rare he got to indulge this particular brand of cathartic gallows humor and rarer still he could tell people he was an orphan without them giving him sad eyes. “Next time I break out the candles and salt circles, I’ll make sure my mom invites you around for a heavenly dinner and beers over the game with my dad. I hear the reception’s pretty good up there and it’s probably past time someone gave you a taste of decency for once in your miserable life anyway.”
“Well, that’s a mighty gracious offer,” he said, humming faux-considerately. “I accept.”
Most of their cohort had managed to excuse themselves from the mess by this point in their cursed conversation, beating a hasty retreat to literally anywhere else like the sane people they were, and that meant they were left, just the two of them and Machado—who was sighing into his breakfast like he was watching the opening scene of a particularly bad sitcom—to finally hit it off.
And so Seresin became Jake, Bradshaw became Bradley, and they both acquired the kind of friend you’d perjure yourself to cover up a murder for, almost late to their first hop as they bickered over the pros and cons of their own oddly specific abandonment issues.
–
They were attached at the hip within twenty-four hours, a fact which left everyone reeling except Javy, whose friendship turned out to be a package deal where adopting Jake was concerned and who’d gone through a similar warp-speed induction to Jake’s inner circle himself.
“Jealous, Machado?” Bradley had asked as he dropped his empty dinner tray off at the kitchen conveyor belt, their cohort’s confused whispers providing a none too subtle soundtrack in the background. Aviators really did love their gossip.
“Hell no. You think I want any part in whatever therapy-grade weirdness you two have going on?” he’d replied, then took a swipe at Jake in someone’s presence for the first time in Bradley’s memory by saying, “it’ll be good to share the burden of this monumental ego with someone else for once.”
“I can always send you back, Javy!” Jake ribbed, one arm slung around each of them and his signature shit-eating grin firmly in place as they headed out of the mess for the evening.
“You wouldn’t last a day without me, Seresin.”
–
By the end of the week, Bradley realized there was one small potential problem with the first close friendship he’d managed in years.
They were out on a run together, Jake shirtless and glistening, hair glinting blond in the sunlight as he bitched to him about magpies of all things, when they passed by a bar just opening up for the evening. The woman out front unlocking the door stared at Jake as they approached, absolutely shameless, and he watched the slow motion train wreck of Jake smiling back, all megawatt grin and bright green eyes as Bradley was hit with the sudden realization that he thought Jake was beautiful.
Well fuck.
By the time he'd gotten a handle on that fun new complication, Jake had flirted his way into offers of a free round, waving his goodbyes at the pretty little brunette bartender with promises that they’d be back within the hour. He slapped a hand on Bradley’s shoulder and led them off at a sedate jog for the last few blocks to the installation.
“You’re welcome for the free drinks, Bradshaw,” he said with a grin. “You can pay me back by showing off those dazzling piano skills you claim to have hidden somewhere.”
“Didn’t realize the place had one,” he muttered, and it was here he made a choice. “I’ll see if I can’t manage something that’ll end with you getting laid.”
Jake threw his head back and laughed, looking almost luminous with it, and Bradley forced himself to pack that thought away with every other inconvenient passing fancy he’d ever had. Beautiful or not, he had no intention of fucking up the easiest friendship he’d ever lucked into by giving his dick free reign, thanks very much. Decision made, he gave the matter no further thought. Bradley had always been good at compartmentalizing like that.
–
Jake was a helluva person once you got to know him, mostly because he didn’t do anything by halves and he genuinely didn’t care who he pissed off as a result. He was a man who played his cards so close to his chest that no one even knew he was in the game until he was laying down a royal flush—at least, that was Bradley’s opinion on the matter, not that most people believed him. Then again, he was one of the few people on earth who knew well enough to see the act for the circus and pony show it was and not the truth Jake made it out to be.
Jake was larger than life with the skill to back it up. He was relentlessly perfect, pushing himself past the edge of possible, all to remain unmatched, unparalleled, undefeated. He was exacting and selective, particular and uncompromising. If he saw something he wanted, he took it as his own and gave it everything he had. Everyone and everything else was irrelevant, beneath his notice and unworthy of his consideration. He treasured what was his and discarded the rest, a proud dragon protecting his meticulously chosen hoard of gold. Bradley considered himself fortunate to be part of it.
People hated him because when Jake didn’t care, he just didn’t care. It was grating to be looked at by someone so exceptional, so unbelievably good, and found wanting. It was easier to write him off entirely, just another asshole with a god complex and nothing redeemable to his name, than it was to accept that he didn’t think they were worth the effort of his attention in the first place. Men like that didn’t know how to care about anyone but themselves—that’s what people thought, because that’s what Jake wanted them to think, and they completely ignored the ones he guarded so fiercely.
It was the worst sort of con and Bradley knew that first hand, but he also understood it in the way only shared experiences could be. In another life, he would have turned out the exact same way, safe and untouchable, too afraid to give parts of himself away when the world had already proven itself undeserving of that caliber of love.
And Jake always said Bradley was the overly cautious one.
“Get out of your head, Bradshaw,” Jake said, tapping him on the chest as was his wont when he wanted attention. Bradley returned the gesture, tapping the space over his heart right back, and swiped the offered pool cue to line up his shot. He frowned when it went wide, just missing the pocket, and snorted when Jake leaned down to whisper obnoxiously in his ear. “You’d think after half a year with me, you’d have picked up on this by osmosis at least.”
“Fuck off, asshole.”
“You love me,” Jake countered, then draped himself over Bradley to line up his next shot with effortless precision. Bradley glared as it sank in the pocket without Jake even bothering to look at it. “That one’s free, darling.”
“Why do I keep you?”
“Stockholm Syndrome,” Javy said, back with their latest round of beers. “I’d tell you to get out while you still can, but it’s too late for either of us.”
“I’m telling your mother you said that. She likes me better anyway.”
“My momma does like a project,” Javy said, grinning into his beer as Jake sputtered. Bradley laughed and swung his arm around Jake’s shoulder, ruffling his hair to the sound of his indignant squawking.
“I hate you both,” Jake said into Bradley’s armpit, face squashed into it despite his best efforts to pull away. “So, so much.”
“You wouldn’t last a day without us, Seresin,” Bradley responded, and pulled him in tighter.
–
Lee and Lennox had stolen Bradley away not long after that, demanding he play them a song.
“Stop pouting, man,” Javy said, nudging him in the ribs with his pool cue. “It’s undignified.”
“I am not pouting,” Jake replied, wiping his face free of whatever expression Javy claimed was on it anyway. “I just don’t understand his continued association with subpar company. They wrecked a plane by forgetting the parking brake, Javy. Ivy league graduates who can’t operate a parking brake.”
“You’re so jealous it hurts to watch.” And maybe that was true, but Jake shrugged it off anyway. They weren’t competition in sealing the deal and never had been. Bradley was his and everyone knew it, even if Bradley was being slower than molasses about staking his claim. He was cautious, always had been, and Jake could respect that even if he was chomping at the bit to have him formally settled into the slot of lover where he damn well belonged. “You should really consider using words one of these days, brother.”
“It’s not like he doesn’t know, Javy.”
“I think you’re underestimating Bradshaw’s tendency towards obliviousness here, Jake.”
“Graduation,” he replied, racking the balls for another round as the opening notes of Bradley’s latest bar concert started. Jake grinned, recognizing Livin’ On A Prayer even on a shitty bar piano. “He has until graduation or I’ll cut to the chase myself.”
And maybe he laid it on a little thicker than usual when he made his way over to the piano bench after their game, hands dropping down onto Bradley’s shoulders and stepping in closer than was socially appropriate, but Javy’s comments had him just this side of uncertain, pressing to be sure there was no room for confusion here. Bradley dropped his head back against his stomach mid-song, grinning up at him and winking when Jake squeezed again, hamming it up to the backdrop of a cheering bar and not looking away from Jake once while he played.
This man was his, simple as that. Anyone who didn’t see that was an idiot.
–
They were all good and drunk by the time graduation rolled up a week later, the last of the after party making its way out of Bradley’s base housing in the wee hours of the morning. The sky was lightening into a pre-dawn promise of misery for anyone with an early transport time. Jake himself was going to have a hell of a flight to Lemoore ahead of him, but that wasn’t a concern to him at the moment, half-asleep and pressed up beside Bradley on the couch as he was.
“Why’re you the lucky bastard who gets to drive at a sane hour? And why aren’t we going to the same place? I mean, fucking Virginia for nine months? Why couldn’t they send you straight to Lemoore? Slot availability is stupid.”
“You’re like a whiny koala when you’re tipsy, Jake,” Bradley said, ignoring his grumblings like he wasn’t fully to blame for being a welcoming human furnace at half-past three in the morning.
“I’m your koala,” he muttered, preening when he felt Bradley’s hand brushing a stray lock of hair off his forehead, hand lingering just a bit too long on the side of his neck. “Love you.”
“Mm,” Bradley said. “Well, I am quite lovable.”
“Mean it,” he said, pawing at Bradley’s arm until he could pull it off his shoulders and down around his waist instead, fingers linked together, and he pressed his face into the curve of Bradley’s neck. “I’m in love with you.”
Bradley froze. Jake’s brain sobered up at that, the very first inkling that something was wrong. “Jake, you’re drunk.”
“Not really.”
“Then where the hell is this coming from?” And Bradley was pulling his arm away from him, moving to make space, like he was shocked, and—
“The fuck do you mean ‘where the hell is this coming from?’” he demanded, abruptly very awake, heart racing in the face of a sudden and unexpected disaster. “I don’t know why you’re acting so surprised I got tired of waiting on you to do something, Bradley.”
“Acting surprised? This isn’t an act. We’ve been friends for months—”
Jake ripped himself away from Bradley as though he’d been burned, stomach dropping, all certainty gone up in smoke. “You really didn’t know.”
“No shit.” Bradley looked back at him, absolutely poleaxed. “Jake, I didn’t realize you—”
“I’ll just see myself out.” He cut Bradley off, already on his way to the door.
“Jake!” He could see Javy waiting for a cab that was just pulling up to the curb. “Jesus christ, Jake! Come back here and—”
The door slammed shut, but he could still hear Bradley’s swear as he hustled to the car, mortified and humiliated beyond belief, resolute in his refusal to punch something until he felt better.
“Well that could’ve gone better,” he managed as they drove away.
Javy wrapped an arm around his shoulders in silent solidarity, kind enough to not rub it in Jake’s face just how right he’d been.
–
“—talk to me,” Bradley said to the door, the slam still echoing through the empty house. His brain finally came back online in time to open the front door, intent on following after until he saw the cab pulling back into the street. “Fuck.” And then for good measure: “Fuck!”
Scratch one off for Team Putting On Blinders, Bradshaw, and so much for not letting the whims of his dick fuck up a perfectly good friendship. Good intentions were apparently very committed to paving his path to hell.
He slumped back on the couch, trying and failing to parse out exactly what the hell he was supposed to do now. Jake was leaving for fleet replacement training in Lemoore in all of three hours, probably headed for the airport right now, and Bradley didn’t have the first fucking clue how to handle this mess when he was slated to leave for Oceana today himself.
Jesus, Jake had the worst timing on god’s green earth.
Call him an oblivious idiot, but he genuinely hadn’t known. Jake flirted with anything that moved, unabashedly tactile with anyone fortunate enough to be on his short list of approved human beings, and he didn’t believe in anything being off-limits to discuss once he’d taken a shine to someone. God knew half the cohort still firmly believed he was sleeping with Javy after one too many comments about Jake’s phone calls ‘home to Momma Machado.’ There was a reason he hadn’t allowed himself to consider pursuing Jake and it was entirely centered on the man’s complete disregard for nuance in his affections. How was he supposed to know he had a fucking shot?
“Fucking shit,” he muttered, hands dragging over his face and tugging at his hair until he saw spots. He probably looked as much of a mess as he felt. He desperately needed time to process and the slow break of dawn on the horizon promised that he absolutely wasn’t going to get it.
“Ok. Ok. Fucking fine.” He grabbed his keys and headed for the Bronco.
–
“Jake, listen—” he started, having finally managed to navigate through the airport and find Jake’s gate right as they started calling for passengers to board.
“Let’s just not do this,” Jake replied with a tight smile, bag slung over his shoulder as he made to get in line. Bradley grabbed onto Jake’s arm before he could leave, refusing to let go even when he leveled him with a glare that could melt glaciers. He spied Javy on the other end of the terminal, making his way back to the departures gate with a haste that said this conversation wouldn’t last long so he’d need to make it count.
“Look, I didn’t realize, alright?”
“You’ve mentioned, yeah. Now why don’t you let go and let me lick my wounds in peace?”
“Jesus christ, Jake. I didn’t even know it was an option.”
“Well, clueless is kinda your thing as it turns out.” Bradley suppressed a wince at the sheer amount of venom Jake managed to put into that sentence. This was going exactly as badly as he’d expected. “Now, this conversation has gotten redundant. Goodbye, Bradshaw.”
And that dismissive brush off pissed him right the hell off, teeth gritted together as he tried to get through to the thick-headed moron in front of him. “We’re friends, Jake. Give me the courtesy of getting my thoughts together, would you?”
“See, that’s the problem,” Jake said, his smile all teeth and no warmth. “You think we’re friends, but I’ve never wanted to be just your friend, Bradshaw, and I wasn’t fucking subtle about it. I wanted to be your forever. My mistake was thinking you might want the same. Now, I’m going to leave before my dignity ends up anymore tattered.”
“I actually might, you goddamned asshole, if you’d give me a fucking chance to think about it.”
“What do you imagine the last seven months has been, Bradley? Forgive me if I’m not in the mood to hang my hopes on a maybe when before now I wasn’t even a consideration,” Jake snarled, wrenching his hand away as he spun to leave. “Hope I don’t see you around, Bradshaw,” he called, sidestepping into a group of passengers before Bradley could get another word in edgewise, Javy settling in behind him with a warning look that guaranteed the conversation was over.
If the pang in his chest watching the plane take off was any indicator, and hindsight being 20/20, Bradley figured he probably should’ve opened with “I love you too, you bombshell dropping bastard.”
It was ‘well fuck’ all over again.
–
His expected transfer to a Lemoore squadron at the end of fleet replacement training came through, but neither Jake nor Javy displayed any interest in answering his calls during their nine months apart. When he finally saw them again, calling it a rough reunion was putting things mildly. He’d forgotten how ruthlessly exclusionary Jake was when he deemed someone beneath his notice and just how effectively Javy could run interference after a lifetime of having Jake's back. Time and hindsight were enough for him to acknowledge that he deserved some of that dismissive disdain, but he was also well passed goddamned done with Jake’s temper tantrum.
“Would you stop blocking me and just let me talk to him, Javy?” Bradley snapped, because it was hard enough to catch either of them on base when they were on separate squadrons with separate training and deployment schedules, let alone to catch Jake by himself, and this was the first time he’d gotten close since he’d arrived in California.
“So you can dredge it all up again?” Javy replied, still barring his path out of the locker room with a well placed arm. “Like hell.”
“I didn’t know, Javy. He didn’t give me time to think.”
“That’s a nice story you’re telling yourself there, Bradshaw, but here’s a third party opinion—you were right there with him the whole time, flirting right back, letting him get damned comfortable about a sure thing, and then you had the audacity to treat his feelings as a surprise after thought.”
Bradley damn near snapped at the accusation that he’d been intentionally callous. “He wasn’t an after thought, Javy. It’s not like I never thought about him like that.”
“Way to prove my point.”
“Neither of us have a lot of people. I wasn’t gonna risk someone important on a maybe, so I refused to think about it until—”
“—you’d let him waltz out on that ledge all by himself instead,” Javy said, flint-eyed and damning. “Yeah, we’ve already established that he deserved better than you and your bullshit excuses.”
“I’d have said yes if I’d gotten more than three fucking hours on transport day to consider it!”
“Shouldn’t have taken that long. Just admit that you’re a goddamned coward who missed his shot and move on.” With that, Javy body checked passed him, one last parting glower just in case Bradley didn’t grasp how serious he was.
And well—that was that, wasn’t it? Bradley figured he really had missed his shot.
When a transfer slot to lead a squadron back in Oceana opened up some months later, he took it.
–
Bradley Bradshaw was a man with the sort of easy confidence that made Jake hate him on first sight, then fall for him like a fool anyway.
He was free and easy and settled, so utterly unbothered that Jake had immediately wanted to pick at him until he cracked. People gravitated towards him, pulled into his orbit and staying there until they saw fit to leave. Bradley kept them gladly, never shoving them out and never begrudging them going. He wasn’t afraid to love people. He wasn’t afraid to lose them. He wasn’t afraid to see them, to take them exactly as they were. He wasn’t afraid of anything at all.
He was everything Jake wanted to be and wasn’t, but it didn’t truly chafe, not back then, not until after—not like it did now.
And the kicker was Jake had no one to blame but himself.
Once upon a time, he’d been everything Jake ever wanted, precisely the person he’d never dared to dream of, someone so comfortable with loving others that Jake would never need to fear being turned away. All he needed to do was offer and he’d have his forever.
That’s what he’d thought anyway, five years and a lifetime ago.
These days, that easy confidence just set his teeth on edge. These days, there was nothing he wanted to do more than knock Bradley right off his fucking unflappable perch.
(Once upon a time never quit. Jake just pretended like it did.)
–
“But that’s just you, ain’t it Rooster? You’re snug on that perch, waiting for just the right moment—that never comes.”
Standing in the Hard Deck facing Jake down after all these years, Bradley couldn’t help but think that wasn’t quite fair. Then again, Jake never had been.
Time and distance had a quelling effect, smoothing over the rough edges of this old hurt until Bradley finally saw it for what it was. He’d blamed himself for being oblivious for months, left in the burning aftermath of a friendship so dear to him that he’d once listed Jake as his emergency contact, but he’d eventually come around to the realization that it wasn’t his fault, at least not entirely. They’d been close as brothers, as good as family—he’d have gladly given Jake more than that if he’d known it was an option.
But Jake had never offered him an actual chance, not really.
That knowledge was all it took for the quiet devastation lodged in his chest to turn into something like cool indifference. Once, Bradley would’ve been surprised by how easy it was to let go of the maybes and the could-have-beens, but the reality was that it wasn’t even particularly difficult after a while. Bradley’d had plenty of practice letting go of people who didn’t give him a fair shake long before Jake showed up.
Because here, here was the truth of the matter: Jake Seresin was a man who played his cards so close to his chest that no one even knew he was in the game, to his benefit and to his detriment. Usually it served him well. Other times, it was just setting himself up to be disappointed. Rarely, and with immense destruction, it was both.
This—them—Jake’s refusal to clue him in on his interest—was certainly both.
But that was just Jake, wasn’t it? Too busy hurting his own feelings and calling it protection to give others the opportunity to do the same ever again. His circle was selective to the point of non-existence, probably extending no further than Javy these days. It’d included Bradley once upon a time, and it galled him endlessly that he still cared enough to be bothered more by the knowledge that Jake was a step away from total isolation than he was by his own brutal exclusion from Jake’s life.
Jake probably would lead anyone stupid enough to follow him to an early grave, if only for the way he made them worry about him—assuming, of course, that he could be bothered with the pesky nuisance of others and their inability to read his goddamned mind.
Watching Jake saunter away like he’d won the argument made that something buried behind Bradley’s ribs stutter, just once. Something like cool indifference, he called it, but something like wasn’t actually cool indifference at all.
Bradley refused to call it what it really was.
(In another life, Bradley would’ve given Jake everything he had. A shame it wasn’t this one.)
–
“You give ‘em hell” wasn’t for lovers, but Bradley figured daring last-second rescues just might be. Trust Jake to only speak in convoluted grand gestures and only at the last possible moment besides.
Heartbreak, Bradley thought as he shook Jake’s hand on the carrier deck. That’s what the feeling in his chest was. That’s what it always had been. He wondered what it would take to make that feeling go away.
Then Jake tapped his chest, right over his heart, just the way he used to, something altogether shy in his smile as he turned away to hug Natasha, and it really was that simple to make the years fall away.
When Jake opened his door that night, Bradley tapped him right over his heart and said, “we’d been friends for a week and I was already scared shitless of losing you by asking for more, so I treated it like it like a non-option so hard that I lost you anyway. How’s that for fucked up?”
“Pretty,” Jake said. “But then I'm the one who told you I was in love with you without preamble and ran for the hills when you dared to blink, so…” He gave a half-hearted shrug that was completely at odds with the hopeful look on his face.
“You never did do anything by halves, Seresin,” he said, tapping again, then let his hand flatten out over Jake’s heart. “Any chance that’s not past tense?”
“I spent five years avoiding you, then bent the frame of my plane to get to you in time,” he replied. “What do you think?”
“Cautiously optimistic,” he answered, dragging his hand to the back of Jake’s neck to pull him in closer. He rested his forehead against Jake’s and swallowed. “I’ve had some time to think about it and it turns out I’ve been in love with you since day one. Any interest in forever?”
“You have no idea how much,” Jake said, hands coming to rest on his hips as he stepped into the circle of his arms.
Bradley smiled into his hair. “Might have some idea.”
“Just some?”
“Well,” he replied, “probably wouldn’t hurt to schedule in regular briefings to make sure we’re on the same page from here on out.”
“Fucking sold.” And with that, Jake hauled him through the door, hands tearing at his shirt as he kissed him senseless.
Forever looked very, very good.