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There’s a faded Danger Mouse sticker stuck to the bottom of the vanity in Maverick’s bathroom. Bradley knows this for two reasons: he stuck it there when he was kid and he’s currently curled up on the bathroom floor staring at it thirty years later. The scrawny white rat with an eyepatch is grinning at him from underneath a maroon nose faded brown and holding up his human shaped hand with an index finger poking out as if mocking him that the last time he reaches for the toilet to throw up will be his last.
His stomach feels like the taffy at the candy store that gets stretched out over the arms of the machine in the front window, but whatever else is left in there needs far less torque to get moving. With a groan muffled by the back of his hand, Bradley raises himself out of Danger Mouse’s optimistic view and bends back over the open lid of the toilet with a couple of weak dry heaves in quick succession. The echo of it in the bowl rivals the sound of an F-18 engine due to the headache currently trying to squeeze his brain to mush and he thinks maybe it’s starting to ooze out of his ears when Maverick barrels through the door with an armload of supplies.
“Still at it, then,” his uncle notes with a grimace that Bradley can see just over the horizon of the porcelain rim.
He spits in the toilet and shudders at the noise. “Yeah, Danger Mouse is a liar.”
There’s a clatter of items being haphazardly discarded on the counter, something bulky bouncing around the curves of the sink. “Jesus, kid. How high is your fever? We checked it about a half hour ago.”
There’s a comforting pressure despite all odds on the crown of his head and he thinks maybe if Uncle Pete just keeps tousling his hair with the back and forth motion of his fingers his brain just might stay solid. “ ’s the sticker,” he mumbles, hoping the acoustics of the toilet will carry the sound of it to an audible level. “It’s mockin’ me after all this time.”
Mav gives his hair a gentle swoop from front to back with his hand and scratches at the fine hairs at his neck. “Ah, that Danger Mouse. I was thinking you meant you saw him in here with us and I was going to have to leave you to it.”
“How very parental of you,” Bradley jokes and maybe it would’ve stung back before the mission that brought them together again, but a month out from heavy apologies and a tearful late night conversation that surpassed a sunrise, Maverick smirks at him when he chances a squinted eye outside of the perimeter of the toilet.
“I don’t do rats, kid. You know that.”
“Yeah,” Bradley nods, attempting to abandon his puking post under the comfort of their quiet banter. The world tilts sideways, but the taffy machine in his stomach stays still so he counts it as a win even though his head ends up pillowed by Maverick’s jean clad thigh. “That’s why Ice had to be the one to take me to Chuck E. Cheese.”
His uncle settles underneath him for the long haul, the way Bradley remembers from the few bouts of flu he had as a kid and when he had to have his appendix taken out in the ninth grade. Despite the cold floor digging into his hip bone and the heat burning just below the surface of his skin, Bradley feels the persuasion of sleep dragging him down with each pass of Mav’s fingers though his hair.
“You need to try and keep some fluids down, kiddo,” he encourages on a stretch to reach whatever had tumbled around in the sink earlier. He feels woozy with the movement, but the older man’s hand against his back keeps him out of Danger Mouse’s sight again. “And you and I both know Ice would’ve been there either way. He loved taking you there.”
“Yeah, he did,” Bradley agrees, smile dragging against the denim under his cheek as fond memories gnaw at the edges of the sickness clinging to him until the faint thought of greasy pizza taunts his stomach. “But maybe we wait to reminisce about it until I don’t feel three seconds away from throwing up.”
“Good idea,” Mav agrees while making sure Bradley is as comfortable as possible and twisting the plastic cap off a blue Gatorade bottle. “Try a few small sips for now, okay?”
“Ugh.”
“You and me both kid, but it’s either this or our next family trip is gonna be to the ER.”
“A step up from bombing a uranium plant, don’t you think?”
“Let’s at least aim for Disneyland,” Mav says as he helps Bradley sit up enough to test out a few sips of sugary electrolytes and waits in the aftermath of whatever may come. For now, he feels okay despite the way he thinks he can feel the trickle of juice through his chest as he lays back down, pillowing his head on his uncle’s thigh again.
The air conditioning kicks on, pushing a chill into the room with a whir that feels like angry crows flapping their wings incessantly against his eardrums. He wishes they would fly away, leave him alone. He turns into Maverick’s stomach, nose squished against a collection of wrinkles in the man’s t-shirt that smells like the laundry detergent he used back in the 90’s and whines at the birds in his head that seem to want to stick around just as long. He reaches up to bat them away but Mav catches his wrist before he gets in the second swat.
“Hey, hey, hey. Easy, bud,” Uncle Pete murmurs, pulling him in tight so the words are pressed into the sweaty curls on the side of Bradley’s head. “What’s wrong? What are you trying to do?”
For one delirious minute, Bradley doesn’t know. Forgets anything past the wave of fever pebbling his skin in gooseflesh until something cold and damp is pressed across his forehead, chasing everything away except the crows beating their wings to a painful cadence in his ears. He remembers then, what he was trying to do, but doesn’t think he can do a damn thing about it if Maverick can’t. Maybe if they knew there’s a mouse under the vanity they would leave him alone, but he feels the way Uncle Pete hugs him tight, hand mapping out circles against the sweat soaked shirt at Bradley’s back like it doesn’t bother him at all to be wrapped around sickness in human form, and wonders why the mouse is still there at all.
“Why’d you keep the sticker there if you knew about it?”
The question steals Maverick’s comforting gestures, each one coming to an abrupt stop but somehow Bradley feels just the same in the stillness of his uncle’s embrace. A thumb kickstarts the soothing motions again, brushing once across an eyebrow and then bobbing back and forth around his temple. The washcloth gets folded over for a fresh wave of relief and then Mav ducks his head to rest against Bradley’s when he answers, “I found it when you were in high school and by then it seemed silly to worry about it. It was on there pretty good, faded and whatnot. After that…I guess I just tried to keep as much of you at home as I could.”
The admission scoops him out raw like a carved out pumpkin two weeks after Halloween sitting rotten on the front stoop for all to see. He tries to hide himself in his uncle’s arms like he did so many times before as a child, sheltered from everything outside and in and only uncovered when he found the courage to reveal himself. Mav takes him in as seamlessly as he does everything else, holding onto him like he never let go at all. Bradley feels himself start to cry at the thought, to know that the man he remembers most as a father has never let go in almost fifteen years filled with ample reasons to do so.
Mav takes his tears, too. Stretching out his shirt to wipe away a sadness Bradley can’t seem to shake no matter how hard he tries, humming the one song he doesn’t feel embarrassed about knowing because it was the only one that calmed Bradley down after his mother passed away.
“You’re okay,” Mav promises, kissing it into the crown of his head as if the belief will stick and Bradley loves him enough to trust it, to never doubt him again. “It’s alright, kiddo. I’m right here with you.”