Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ron clocks the bag the minute it spits out onto the luggage carousel. Tom makes a noise. Ron pushes his way through the holiday crowd to snatch the thing before it completes an entire circuit. It's Goose's bag, all seabag khaki overrun with tacky tourist patches.

Carole had been the one to sew them on, Ron remembers. Goose would always leave with fistfuls of patches and return with them haphazardly attached to the fabric, their stitch work sporting whatever color Carole felt like playing around with. She had given the bag to Mav after everything - it hurts too much to look at, she had said, reminds me too much of Nicky - and Mav had locked it away until Bradley left with it.

Ron hasn't seen it in years.

Tom doesn't look at it when Ron returns. That's fair. Ron can hardly look at it, either. They watch the doors to the baggage claim instead.

Bradley's just as easy to clock.

Kid's tall, first off. Not as tall as Ron, but close. Certainly taller than Mav and, Ron glances over at Tom, almost right there with his front seater. Long legs, long arms. All Goose. The broadness is from Carole's side, Ron knows. He'd seen one of Bradley's uncles - one of his real uncles, Carole's brother, someone strange and foreign to the little military bubble they all made together - at Goose’s funeral. 

The kid comes closer.

He looks tired. Ron spots it. Tom makes another noise - and yeah, he spots it too. Bradley looks dead on his feet, bundled up in a USNA sweatshirt and jeans, and he scrubs at his face when he wanders over to the luggage carousel. He helps a family fish together all of their bags. He helps a single mom with her stroller. He neatly sidesteps screaming kids and frazzled parents, pulling bags clear of the carousel to reunite them with their owners as he waits. He waits and waits and waits until the board switches flight numbers. He blinks up at the sign, looks down, and seems to realize he’s the only one left waiting. His face doesn’t crumple. It only grows softer, sadder, more tired.

Christ, Ron thinks, he's so young.

"Bradley," Tom calls. The kid's head snaps up in their direction. Mav may have been Bradley's favorite, but he was the soft touch. Tom had always been the one with the low voice, steady hands, and Bradley Nicholas sit up straight and don’t lie to me.

Bradley stares at them. He doesn’t move.

“Bradley,” Tom repeats. Bradley twitches backward, looking all for the world like he’s considering running back onto whatever commercial flight he was just released from, and Ron half-heartedly lifts Goose’s bag. Bradley catches sight of it, frowns, and starts moving over to them - even sixteen years after his death, Nicholas Bradshaw’s allure is still greater than Mav and Tom and all of the ‘86 class put together. Sometimes Ron hates it. Other times - like now - he can’t help but think it’s Goose’s way of trying to keep them all together.

Tom and Ron edge further away from the next wave of flyers. Bradley follows, chasing after Goose’s bag.

Ron looks around, trying to see if the kid’s traveling with someone. He can’t find anyone. It makes his chest ache. It’s the same ache from when Tom had called him at piss o’clock in the morning to ask if he’d seen Bradley - he’s gone, Tom had said, he’s gone and we can’t find him. Have you seen him, Ron?

Ron hadn’t. None of the ‘86 crowd had. 

They all went looking anyway, peeling themselves out of their beds and into the musky grey morning to try and find something, anything to figure out where the hell Bradley went.

That had been nearly half a year ago.

Ron learns a few things in that span of broken time. The first is that Bradshaw men seem to have a talent for leaving so fast and suddenly that all someone can do is miss them. The second is that Tom loves Bradley, loves him like a real son and not just the tow-headed toddler Carole once unceremoniously dropped into his arms between rounds of coughing and chemo. Tom stayed grounded so that everyone else could fly - Carole to the hospital, Mav halfway across the world, the rest of the ‘86 crowd to their mandated stations - and the pain of giving up his wings so early had only been tempered by baseball games, late-night movie marathons, and everything else that came with raising Bradley. 

Bradley stops just short of them.

He looks between the two of them as if they're dangerous. Maybe they are. There’s still something furious and betrayed rustling around in Ron, a mixture of his own and all of Tom’s unspoken hurt, but it fades the longer he stares at Bradley. It fades until all that’s left is the ache because the gosling’s all alone. No wingman. No RIO. Nobody.

“Hey, kid,” Ron says after a beat of silence.

Bradley stares up at him with Goose’s eyes, big and brown.

“Hey,” he says, trailing off before he can hit Ron’s name.

“Want some coffee?”

Bradley’s eyebrows furrow together in a way that’s all Tom Kazansky.

“Huh?”

“Coffee,” Ron says, miming a drink. He feels stupid. He knows he is. Tom had called earlier that morning, asking if he wanted to go to wait at the airport on a hope and a whim, and Ron had agreed before he could really think about what the whole mission entailed. That’s not the sign of a sane man, he recognizes, but neither is standing around the baggage claim of an airport to catch someone who doesn’t want to be found. “You look exhausted.”

Bradley glances to the sides, right and left, and he looks down at his watch.

“I really…”

“Layover?”

Bradley shakes his head.

“You’ve got time,” Ron says, gently. “C’mon, Brad. Just a coffee.”

“Just a coffee,” Bradley repeats, and Ron isn’t sure who it’s meant to reassure. All of them, maybe, because Bradley steps forward, Tom relaxes, and Ron begins to wonder, for the first time in half a year, if this whole damn mess is fixable.

They go get coffee.

None of them speak while in line. Bradley gets through the fastest and wanders away to go find a table. Goose’s bag stays with Ron. It’s the only leverage they have, and Ron’s not letting it go. He makes sure that Bradley really does find a table - way back in the corner, pressing tight to a window that shows off the holiday-crammed runways - before turning his attention to Tom.

“He’s grown,” Tom says, and Ron hears he’s different.

“He’s in college now.”

“So?” Tom responds. It stumps Ron because Tom’s right. There’s pre-disappearance and post-disappearance Bradley, and they’re as distinctive as night and day. The change is more than freshman-year freedom, and it’s certainly not coming from a good, happy place. Ron looks back at Bradley. A year ago, it would’ve been hard to imagine the kid doing something other than smiling, but now Ron isn’t even sure what a smile on Bradley would look like. Ill-fitting, probably. Wrong.

“Something’s happened,” Ron says.

Tom shakes his head.

“Something happened before. And now it’s just…”

“Snowballed.”

“He left for a reason,” Tom says, and he means something made Bradley leave.

They grab their coffees. They go over to Bradley, sitting on the opposite side of the table, and Ron leans forward. His pilot needs information. Ron’ll play RIO a little longer in order to get it.

“How are you, kid?”

Bradley squints out at the planes.

“Fine,” he says. His coffee’s untouched. He’s so still it looks painful; no bouncing leg or mouth running a mile a minute. After a beat, he sucks in a breath and looks over at Ron. “How are you?”

“I’m doing just fine. Kids are planning to enter high school soon, the house is nearly paid off, and I’m still flying.”

“Who’s the new pilot?” Bradley asks, the question a familiar territory for all of them. Tom hasn’t touched a cockpit in little more than a decade, stranding himself in a Top Gun teaching slot to keep Bradley close after returning from the Gulf War, and Ron had been given an assortment of pilots to babysit in the meantime. When he was younger, Bradley would always ask about them, and Ron would always tell.

“Real asshole of a guy,” he says, his lips twitching. “Used to have frosted tips back in the ‘80s.”

Tom snorts. Bradley’s eyes shoot over to him and they look warmer all of a sudden. Warmer and younger and all who Bradley used to be.

“You’re flying again?” He asks. 

“I’ve been put back on active duty,” Tom answers.

“He’s missed me,” Ron says, hoping that the kid picks up on the fact that Tom’s missing a lot of things. By the way that Bradley drops his head to stare into his coffee, Ron thinks the message’s landed. Bradley. One of his feet scuffs against the ground, hooking around the leg of his seat. He flashes his eyes - Bradshaw eyes, full of Goose and Carole and the little boy Bradley might’ve been - at Tom.

“Do you enjoy it?”

“Flying?” Tom says. “‘Course I do.”

Bradley gives a slow nod. “People said you used to be the best.”

“Mav tell you that?”

Bradley’s face closes so quickly and tight it gives Ron whiplash. Tom catches it, too. The two of them withdraw a little, regrouping. Outside, a lumbering Boeing slips into the air.

“Mav didn’t talk about flying. Not - not with me.”

“I’m good,” Tom says. “It’s just been a while.”

“Eleven years,” Bradley murmurs. Carole had held on until they’d all flown back in from the Middle East. Ron still remembers the night they got the call, some bartender from the Miramar O Club shoving through the crowd to hand Mav the phone - yeah, this is Pete Mitchell. Carole? Carole Bradshaw? She’s…I’ll be right there - only for Mav to toss it right back and lunge towards the door. The ‘86 crowd had spent the rest of their leave juggling funeral arrangements, the familiar sting of death, and a little boy left all alone far too young.

Tom shrugs.

“I don’t regret it.”

Bradley opens his mouth. He closes it. The silence stretches on.

Ron points at the kid’s sweatshirt.

“That’s where you’re going now? Annapolis?”

Bradley nods.

“I thought you didn’t get in?” Ron says, trying to sound as casual and gentle as he can while knowing full well that Bradley hadn’t gotten into USNA. Ron had swung by Tom’s at just the right time to experience the aftermath of the school’s rejection letter. The sight of Bradley, curled in his bed and hardly moving, still burns in Ron’s mind.

“It’s complicated.”

“Yeah? Did they make a mistake or something? Address the letter to the wrong person?”

“I don’t really want to talk school,” Bradley says, his voice coming out small and strange. It sends alarm bells ringing in Ron’s head, and Tom goes stiff next to him. He leans forward into Bradley’s space, searching his face, and Bradley shies away.

“Are they not treating you well?”

“They are,” Bradley says. “It’s - the school’s fine. I’m doing fine. I just don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why?”

“Because I just don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Why are you asking?” Bradley suddenly snaps, his voice cracking. “You already know, okay? You know and I know and everybody knows that I’m the kid with the pulled papers and the dead dad, and I don’t - I can’t…”

“Hey,” Tom says. “Breathe, Brad.”

Bradley doesn’t breathe. Instead, he looks over at Ron with wild eyes - he’s gone, Tom’s voice plays over and over again, he’s gone and we don’t know where he is - and nearly pleads, “I want my bag back.”

Ron grips Goose’s bag so tight the weave digs into his hand.

“No,” he says.

Bradley deflates, slumping back into his chair and away from them like a puppet with cut strings, and he’s not crying, but he’s close. A tell-tale flush is creeping up his neck, his shoulders keep shaking, and Ron has the sudden realization that he and Tom are missing something, some puzzle piece that’ll make all of this make sense. He meets Tom’s eyes, and Tom meets his.

They turn back to Bradley.

“What do you mean I already know?” Tom asks. He reaches over and touches Bradley’s hand. “Brad, what do you mean?”

Bradley doesn’t answer. Ron tries.

“What do you mean you’re the kid with the pulled papers?”

Bradley flinches.

“Brad,” Tom says. “Gosling, talk to us. Please.”

“Mav,” the kid says, the name sounding punched out of him.

“Mav?”

“Mav pulled my papers,” Bradley chokes out, crying this time. “I called the school and they told me that someone pulled my papers so I asked Mav and he said he did it and I asked why and he told me - he said -”

“Brad,” Tom says, hushed and a little lost. “Bradley.”

“- he said that I couldn’t do it,” Bradley says, hiccupping and trembling and full of so much unhappiness that it hurts Ron to look at. He looks anyway because it’s Bradley - my baby goose, Goose had introduced him as, smiling so wide Ron could make out each tooth, kinda strange that I made something so wonderful, huh - and Bradley needs him, needs both him and Tom because he’s got no one else. “He said I couldn’t do it, Ice. Why would he tell me that? Why would he…?”

Tom rounds the table. 

Bradley folds into his arms as easily as he did when he was six and gap-toothed, all wide-eyed wonder and breathless hi Uncle Ice, hi Uncle Sli during family weekend - or maybe in the way he’d done when he was twelve, a mess of gangly limbs and fever flushed cheeks staring at Ron with disconcertingly glassy eyes before Tom swept him away to the hospital. Appendicitis, Ron remembers. Bradley had been so terrified and young that the medical team had let Tom go into the operating room with him. Hold my hand, Bradley had pleaded right before he’d been taken into surgery. Please hold my hand, Uncle Ice. I don’t wanna be alone.

Tom had held his hand.

Ron isn’t sure his pilot’s ever let go.

“You’re okay,” Tom says - in Russian, a language Bradley sure as hell doesn’t know but gets because Tom’s the one speaking it - as if he can force them all the way into Bradley’s head by sheer conviction and love. Maybe he can, Ron thinks. If anyone could do it, it would be Tom; ice-cold and calculated Kazansky, with more actions than words crammed into him and a heart that beat too hot for everyone he loved.

I’m going to look, he had said that morning. I’m going to go look because if he walks through that airport and I miss him -

“It’s okay, Brad. I’m here. Ron’s here.”

Tom swipes the chair next to Bradley with a clean, practiced extension of his foot. He tugs. The chair bumps into Bradley’s seat. Tom sits down in it, dragging Bradley with him. The kid continues to cry, rough and painful, and his arms snake around Tom’s shoulders. His fingers dig in. Tom holds on.

Ron watches the planes come and go. He drinks his coffee.

He’s not sure how long he - how long all of them - sit there. A long time, he thinks, noticing that the airport is beginning to slow down, but when he catches sight of Bradley, all he’s left with is the sudden urge to stretch the day as long as it’ll go.

Bradley scrubs his face. Coughs.

“Dad died on active duty,” he says, pressing his fingers into the table, “I didn’t - I didn’t talk about it the first time I applied, and Mav pulled my application before it could hit the review board. I called around. Pretended I hadn’t already applied. The nomination board liked me enough to give me an interview. Then they liked me enough to offer me a spot, the baseball coach really liked how I pitched, and I - I had to go and get there before Mav found out.”

He goes silent. He looks at Ron, brown eyes that are the best of Carole and Nick and Tom and the whole damn ‘86 class rolled up together. His voice wobbles.

“You didn’t know?”

Ron shakes his head. His hands are curled into tight fists, his nails biting into the meat of his palm. He forces them to relax.

“I would’ve killed him.”

Bradley turns.

“Uncle -?”

“No.”

“If he asked, would you’ve -?”

Tom answers without pausing to even breathe.

“No.”

Bradley covers his face with his hands.

“I’m an idiot,” he says, sounding like he believes it. “I was so panicked and I didn’t know who I could trust so I just left. And then I didn’t know who I could talk to - didn’t know if I could still talk to anyone.”

“Always,” Tom says. “You call and we’ll answer, Brad.”

“Even after what I did?”

Tom peels one of Bradley’s hands away. He makes the kid look at him.

“Always,” Tom repeats. It rings like a promise, clear and heady all around them. He tucks a loose curl behind Bradley’s ear and brushes his hand against the newly-shorn sides. He opens his mouth again, closes it. Struggles. It’s alright. Ron catches it.

“Brad,” he says, leaning across the table. “Brad, come home.”

“I can’t.”

“It’s Christmas. Please don’t spend it alone.”

“I can’t,” Bradley says, a little sadder and quieter. “Mav and I fought. Bad. Really bad. And I just don’t know how I could…he pulled my papers. He doesn’t want me flying. He doesn’t think I should be flying. He thinks -”

Bradley chokes. He looks down at his hands.

“I don’t know what he thinks.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Tom says. “You don’t have to say a word if you don’t want to. I’ll talk to him.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Bullshit I can’t.”

“I don’t want you to do that,” Bradley says, the truth this time. “I can’t ask you to do that. You’ve already done so much for me - everything, really. I took your wings.”

“Bradley -”

“You and Mav,” Bradley says, “you’re wingmen.”

Tom closes his eyes. Squeezes them.

“You’re Bradley,” he says, but the kid’s name comes out sounding more like son and too much like an ultimatum. Bradley hears it. Ron knows because Bradley smiles half-crooked and slow in a way that’s all Mav, all Pete Mitchell.

Bradley goes to speak, and Ron catches the I’m sorry before it hits the air.

“Stay with me.”

Tom’s eyes open. Bradley looks at him.

“Huh?”

“Stay with me,” Ron repeats. “I’ve got a guest room.”

Bradley’s forehead furrows again.

“But -”

“Leo and Rick have a couch if you don’t want kids around. Sam’s out, but he’ll tell you where the spare key is. Charlie’s been itching for someone to go camping with. Marcus will figure something out.”

Bradley’s staring at him. Tom isn’t, but Ron can feel his front seater’s gaze anyway. He’s not exactly surprised - Ron had done his fair share of watching Bradley during those long, awful years after Carole’s death, rocking the kid to sleep after nightmares and making god-awful Cheez Whiz sandwiches because it’s what Nick would do. When he had caught the stomach flu, Ron had been the one to play nurse, his wife (girlfriend back then) watching with soft eyes and gratuitous amounts of saltines and ginger ale. So no, Tom’s not exactly surprised, but he wasn’t expecting it, either.

“Sli,” Bradley says, and Ron holds up a hand to stop him. He holds open his arms instead.

“C’mere, kid.”

Bradley comes.

Ron hugs him - tight, tight, tight - and Bradley wraps his arms around his shoulders and lays his cheek against his hair. His skin is cold. He feels light in Ron’s arms, like he hasn’t eaten a good meal since he left, but there are rough edges that Ron doesn’t remember the kid having. Goose had been the same height, but Bradley was the one growing into his shoulders.

“You really want me to come with you?”

It’s a whisper just for Ron, for Uncle Sli. He remembers, all at once, back when Brad was so little he only came up to Ron’s thigh. It had been late, Ron had been babysitting, and Bradley had climbed into his bed, whispering Uncle Sli? Were you my Daddy’s wingman? Ron had pet the kid’s back, feeling every minuscule vertebra of his spine and the way his heart thumped rabbit-fast, and he told him no, I’m not anyone’s wingman. Your Daddy and I were just RIOs .

Ron moves a little, tucking Bradley into his side. He picks up Goose’s - Bradley’s - bag.

“I’m inviting the guys over on Christmas Eve.” He points a finger at Tom. “You can bring the beer.”

“But Mav -”

Ron squeezes Bradley.

“We’ll see him on Christmas.”

“He’ll be hurt you didn’t invite him.”

“We’ll keep it secret.”

“But -”

Ron looks at Tom. Tom’s staring at Bradley.

“You gonna tell?”

One of Tom’s eyebrows raises.

“Tell what?” He says. “What’s there to tell? I’m seeing you on Christmas Eve, and I’m bringing beer. If other people are there at the same time…”

“You’ll be pleasantly surprised?”

“I’ll be pleasantly surprised,” Tom says, giving a ghost of a smile that is all thank you, Sli.

Ron gives one sharp nod in acknowledgment, in agreement, in the same color of brotherhood he and Tom have had since Plebe summer when Ron had caught Tom under his arms and hefted him back up to his feet before their instructor could sink his teeth into him even more. Tom had smiled back then, too, sharp like a shark. Ron had trusted that smile, trusted it through hell and back, and when the day came for Tom’s first hop, he’d hardly let the instructor finish talking before giving a solid, steady Kerner, sir. I want Kerner as my RIO.

They walk out of the airport.

Tom gives Bradley another hug, sweeter and far less desperate, and then Bradley disappears into the cab of Ron’s truck. Tom and Ron hug. Then Tom goes into his car and Ron goes into his, putting the bag in the backseat. He starts driving. Bradley fiddles with his radio, settles the station on something that might be ABBA but is definitely from the seventies, and then proceeds to fall fast asleep against the window.

He had become an RIO for Tom, he muses, tapping his fingers against this steering wheel. He’d stayed an RIO for Tom, too - but Tom has a wingman. He’s got Mav.

Bradley has no one.

He’s flying blind, thrown into a tailspin before ever being handed the manual, and it hurts. Aches. Ron’s never been a fan of single-seater pilots. He sees the young kids Tom teaches load up into them, solitary under the canopy, and it feels wrong. Someone should have their back, he can’t help but think, someone to help bring out the best of them and help make their world underneath that canopy seem a little bigger.

Bradley’s a single-seater. Ron can tell. He can see it in the kid’s eyes, in the way he moves, in the way that despite everything the ‘86 class has poured into he still has wary eyes and a tendency to stay ten paces away underneath the smiles and wise-ass remarks.

He’s a single-seater. He doesn’t need an RIO, but he needs somebody. Tom has Mav, and Ron - Ron had been an RIO for Tom. 

It’s Bradley Bradshaw who makes him into a wingman.

Chapter Text

Ron takes Bradley home.

It’s not a very long drive, but Ron isn’t paying attention. He takes a right when he’s supposed to go left and winds up doing some sort of odd roundabout that lands them on the scenic route. He doesn’t mind the extra miles or extra minutes, but -

But they pass by the old baseball field.

Ron stares at it as he drives, his fingers clenching and unclenching on the steering wheel, and when it disappears from the rearview he breathes out slow and even. The In-N-Out is next, all red awnings and towering palm trees, but Ron can only see Bradley, fifteen-something years old, nicking one of those God-awful paper hats right off a nearby worker’s head and whirling around just to say may I take your order, sirs?

Tom had been horrified, Ron remembers, but Mav had snorted so hard that Pepsi came out of his nose. It had set off a chain reaction of cackling from the rest of the ‘86 crowd crammed into the booth with them, and the boys had all pitched in handfuls of fives and tens to dare Bradley to sneak into the kitchen and see if anyone noticed. Bradley did it, of course, because it was what Mav would’ve done - no, Ron amends, it’s what Nick would’ve done - and he had returned, unashamed and triumphant, with a red crayon, a set of job application forms, and the manager right on his heels.

You must be so proud, Mav, Rick had said, laughing, he’ll be buzzing towers in no time.

Mav had smiled back, leering forward to jab his bony fingers into Rick's side in retaliation, and Ron wracks his brain trying to remember if there was anything enigmatic about it, anything not quite right. He thinks and thinks and thinks, but all he can remember is Bradley beaming and the softness in Tom’s eyes. 

That’s his fault, he realizes. 

He’s got a good memory - a great one, actually - and a knack for spotting things that others don’t, but he’s got axis points. Every RIO does. Their pilots expect them to know who’s an ally and who’s a threat on-and-off ground, and so they all have little points of interest that ride herd on what they notice. Tom’s one. Bradley’s another. Mav had been one only in the beginning, right back in the humid summer of ‘86 when he got under Tom’s skin like no one else, but when he and Tom’s relationship shifted, Ron had stopped paying attention. There were threats and there were allies and - and Ron hadn’t noticed when Mav had shifted from one back to the other.

No one had, apparently.

Ron kills the ignition. He lingers in the truck, though, staring at his house. Bradley’s snoring up against the window, the Christmas lights are starting to come to life, and Ron wonders when you’re gonna fly like us someday, baby goose, I promise turned into pulled papers. After Nick’s death? After Carole’s? When Bradley began filling out his application to USNA? Ron can’t decide which is worse - Mav planning this for years while nurturing Bradley’s dreams, or him spontaneously crushing them - but doubts he’ll ever get answers. Mav could be tight-lipped when he wanted to be, and this whole mess strikes Ron as the kind someone would gladly take to their grave.

“Bradley,” he whispers, reaching out a hand to nudge the kid. He jerks it back when Bradley flinches awake at the touch, cramming all of his new-found bulk against the door. His eyes go wide and all over the place, bouncing around the truck and outside the window and onto Ron’s face with a speed that’s dizzying.

“Easy,” Ron says, holding up his hands. “Easy, Brad. It’s just me, kid.”

Something like recognition flickers once, twice, three times across Bradley’s face before clicking into place. He leans back into his seat carefully, the tension bleeding out of his shoulders. He flushes, too.

“Sorry,” Bradley says. “Sorry, I just -”

“You must’ve been really sleeping, huh?”

Bradley doesn’t look at him.

“Yeah,” he says. “Finals week was exhausting.”

“Exhausting.”

“I’m just tired.”

“Mm.”

“I am. I’m tired and you surprised me and that’s why I jumped,” Bradley says, his voice reminding Ron of the time he had to bail the kid out of school for fighting -  I didn’t start it, Sli, Bradley had said, staring up at him from outside the principal’s office with a bloody nose. Really, you gotta believe me. 

Ron opens his door.

“Come on,” he says, letting Bradley lie to him. “We’re here.”

Bradley’s hand hovers over his handle.

“Sli, you don’t have to -”

“I do,” Ron says. “I do. It’s what Uncles do, Brad.”

Bradley opens his mouth. He closes it. He gives an uneven, shaky nod and steps out of the truck. Ron follows, rounding the driver’s side to get Goose’s bag from the back before Bradley can, and Bradley’s lips twitch when Ron reappears.

“I’m not going to run.”

Ron doesn’t respond. He just wraps an arm around Bradley’s shoulder, guiding him up the front steps and into the house. It’s quiet - which means that the kids aren’t in - but someone’s moving around in the kitchen. His wife, Sarah, probably - the formerly Kazansky, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, Kerner, you remember my little sister, don’t you, Sarah - and Ron doesn’t miss the way Bradley shuffles around to hide as much as he can behind Ron.

The noises stop.

“Ron?” Definitely Sarah. “Is that you?”

“Yes,” he says, tugging Bradley into the house. Bradley doesn’t argue, but he presses so tight to Ron that he can feel the kid’s heartbeat against his own ribs; it’s loud and pounding and nauseatingly fast. “It’s me.”

“Where have you been all day? You didn’t leave a note or anything. The kids were looking for you. It’s the first day of winter break, you know. They wanted to spend it with you.”

“Didn’t Tom tell you?”

“Didn’t Tommy tell me what -?”

They round a corner. Sarah’s on the other side of it, kneading out a ball of dough with a level of ferocity that meant Christ, Ron, you scared me. She grunts, rises up onto her toes, and falls back down. She swipes at her face, leaving a smear of flour on her forehead. When she frowns, some of it drifts back down onto the island.

“No, Tommy didn’t tell me anything,” she says. “Was it a Christmas thing?”

“Sort of.”

“You’re being vague again, Ron.”

“Sarah,” he says in his serious voice - the one he uses on his pilots, on his kids, in the odd, late-night moments when they talk about life and the mortgage and each other - and she stills. “Sarah.”

She looks up.

Her eyes land on Ron first, slightly narrowed and wondering. Ron jerks his chin to the side. She looks, raises an eyebrow, and then turns back to him. Ron holds a hand - wait , it says - and jabs his other into Bradley’s side. The kid squawks and detaches. Sarah gasps.

The silence afterward is deafening.

“Bradley?” Sarah asks, her voice hitching.

Bradley just stares at her. He looks pale, Ron notices. Paler than he had at the airport, and the wild eyes are back. It’s the same look, no doubt, that the kid had during his fight with Mav. Ron doesn’t like it. He doesn’t trust it. It’s fight or flight personified, and Ron already knows which of those Bradley prefers.

“Brad?”

The kid’s throat bobs.

“Hi, Aunt Sarah.”

Sarah takes a step forward. She takes a step back. She searches Bradley’s face and must find the same thing Ron has because she sucks in a breath and says, “Oh, Brad. It’s just me. What’s so scary about me?”

“I don’t know,” Bradley says, his voice wobbling in a way that meant he was trying not to cry, “I dunno. Everything.”

Ron puts a hand on Bradley’s back. He isn’t surprised by how tense it feels under his hand, but the trembling has him concerned. It’s the kind someone can’t stop, the kind that sometimes sweeps Tom into the realm of I can’t breathe, Ron, I can’t breathe. Jesus Christ, I can’t -

Ron books it to the guest room with Bradley in tow.

The kid staggers into the room and crumples onto the bed, still shaking and shuddering. Ron stares at him for a small while. He can’t help it. Bradley had been lost at Nick’s funeral and devastated at Carole’s, but neither had left him looking quite as fragile as he is right now in Ron’s guest room. Ron crouches in front of him - taking the dull ache in his knees with as much dignity as he can - and puts a hand on Bradley’s knee.

“Brad?”

Bradley stares at him.

“Gosling?”

The kid wheezes.

“Breathe,” Ron reminds, gentle and low. He presses his fingers into the back of Bradley’s knee, not enough to hurt but enough to say I’m here. Uncle Sli’s here.

Bradley gives a little groan and curls inward, panting. The shivers get worse. Bradley’s knee begins to bounce against Ron’s hand - up and down and down and up - and sweat starts beading along his forehead. Ron wipes it away. He drapes his other hand on Bradley’s neck, tipping him into the recovery position.

“Breathe,” he repeats. “Just breathe, Brad. Slow and even. In and Out. In. Out.”

“I- I can’t -”

“Yes, you can. I know you can, kid.”

“Hurts.”

“What hurts? Your chest -?”

“Sli,” Bradley hiccups, “Sli.”

Ron hugs him.

It’s instinctual and a kneejerk reaction and maybe the wrong thing to do, but Ron does it anyway. He drops both of his hands to wrap around Bradley’s waist instead and pulls the kid against him, not minding the sweat or the tears or the way Bradley’s nails dig into his arms and shoulders so hard they sting. Ron doesn’t care - can’t care - because Bradley needs him. Bradley needs him, and that’s all that matters, all that’s ever mattered, really, because once upon a time there was a man named Nick Bradshaw - the there’s two o’s in Goose, boys, show me the way home, honey, let’s turn and burn Nick Bradshaw - and it’s Ron, not him, who has the luxury of growing old enough to have the beginnings of arthritis in his knees and grey in his hair. It’s Ron, not him, who got to watch a blond little boy grow up, who got to take him out for ice cream after every Little League game, who got to be the one to introduce him to chocolate chip pancakes on Sunday mornings while mindless cartoons played in the background.

It’s Ron’s name, not Nick’s, that Bradley cries out for and - and it’s all so damn unfair that it makes Ron want to scream.

He doesn’t.

He strangles down the urge and morphs it into something productive instead. He holds Bradley. He comforts him. He does all the things that Nick can’t do, that Nick never got to do, and it burns in a way that’s more bitter than sweet. He shudders to think of how Tom must feel sometimes. He can hardly begin to think about how Mav must feel - awful, probably - and then he wonders how it must’ve felt to pull Bradley’s papers. Relieving? Monstrous? Ron has to go with the latter; it’s difficult to feel sympathetic while Bradley crumbles apart in his arms.

Eventually - mercifully - the tremors cease.

Bradley’s breathing evens out, his body stills, and he becomes a warm, loose weight in Ron’s arms. Ron doesn’t let him go right away. Tom didn’t like to be touched during his attacks - they aren’t attacks, Ron, Tom had hissed at him once, flushing as they slid into their seats before one of Viper’s droning lectures. When Ron gave him a look, Tom didn’t meet his eyes. Nothing’s wrong with me, okay? I’m fine - but Ron had learned the hard way to not make any sudden moves when they ended. He lets Bradley come back to him at his own pace. It takes a while, enough to have Ron’s knees screaming at him, but Bradley shifts around on his own accord. Ron isn’t entirely surprised when it’s only to get closer to him. Bradley had always been more tactile than most; Nick had been, too.

“Hey, kid,” Ron whispers. He slowly, carefully begins to run his hand up and down Bradley’s back. “You back with me?”

“Think so.”

“That’s okay. Take all the time you need, Brad. I’m not going anywhere.”

Bradley tucks his head against Ron’s shoulder. Ron readjusts to let him. Back when Bradley was younger, small enough for even Mav to tote around, Ron had been the one he always ran to when he wanted to hide. You’re tall, Bradley had told him once. And when you hold me and I put my head right here, no one can see me. I’m hidden and - and you won’t let anyone find me, will you Uncle Sli?

“‘M sorry.”

“What’re you saying sorry for?”

Bradley huffs. He clings tighter.

“Bradley, it’s okay. This isn’t your fault,” Ron said, pausing. “And I’m not upset.”

“Really?”

“Really. I just want you to be okay.”

“Oh.”

Bradley withdraws a little. Tries to remember how to fit inside of his own skin, probably. Tom had always been as tight as a wire after his attacks - Not attacks Ron. They’re just…moments, okay? I just have moments - and sometimes he would have to beeline to the nearest bathroom to hunch over a toilet and dry heave.

Ron patted his pockets.

“Here,” he said, pulling a packet of gum from his back pocket and offering it to Bradley. The gum’s taste - peppermint, the kind that sears someone’s tastebuds away - and the constant motion of chewing had always helped Tom refocus and recalibrate. Ron can’t even begin to guess how many packets he’s run through over the years. Hundreds, maybe. Thousands.

Bradley stares at the package.

“Take one,” Ron says. “It’ll help.”

Bradley takes a stick. His movements are jerky in a newborn, coltish way, but he doesn’t freeze again, doesn’t tremble, doesn’t choke on every exhale. Ron takes it as a victory.

“Better?”

“‘M sorry.”

“You already said that, Gosling,” Ron reminds.

“I mean it.”

“I know, but you don’t have to. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“I have,” Bradley says, giving a particularly violent chew. “I have. I’m making trouble for everybody because I’m a dumbass and I overacted and - and I was childish. Mav was right. I’m not ready. I’m not good enough. I can’t -”

“Bradley.”

Bradley quiets. He won’t look Ron in the eye.

“Don’t talk about yourself like that, Brad. It’s not true.”

“It is. Mav knows. Mav sees it.”

“Mav’s wrong.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I’m an RIO. We always know more than pilots.” Ron touches Brad’s chin. He tilts his head up. “And you want to be a pilot, right?”

Bradley nods.

“Then trust me on this. I’ve got your wing, kid.”

“Thought you said you were an RIO?”

“Who says I can’t be both?”

“But -”

“Bradley.”

“It’s not normal,” Bradley says, his voice hitching and then spiraling down, down, down until it’s so quiet Ron hardly hears it. “I’m not normal.”

“Gosling -”

“You can’t say it’s normal, Sli. You can’t.”

“It happens to more people than you think.”

“But it didn’t use to happen to me,” Bradley says. “I used to be fine and normal and I don’t - I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Nothing,” Ron says. He squeezes Bradley’s chin for good measure. “Look at me, Bradley. Look at me. There is nothing - and I mean nothing - wrong with you. You aren’t broken. You aren’t disgusting or dumb or childish. You’re Bradley, and Bradley’s always been perfect the way he is. This doesn’t change that. Nothing changes that.

“But -”

“Nothing,” Ron says, enunciating each and every syllable. It’s important that he does because Bradley has to know this. He has to. “Tell me you understand that.”

Bradley’s eyes flicker down.

“Okay,” he says, and Ron hears whatever you say, Sli. It hurts more than he expected it to. He opens his mouth to push the issue, but Bradley curls away. The kid fidgets.

“Can I - can I go to sleep? I’m tired. I’m really tired.”

“Bradley -”

“I just want to sleep,” he says. “Please.”

It’s the please that does it. It drags up too many memories - Bradley offering up a mangled tie with a sheepish smile on his face, Bradley dropping a geometry textbook in front of him and pointing at a problem with the chewed end of his pencil, Bradley standing outside of the Bronco with the hazards on and smoke trailing out from under the hood. 

Can you help me, Sli? All those Bradleys ask. Can you help me? Please?

“Okay,” Ron says, folding like he’s always folded. “Do you…do you want to eat something first though? Maybe take a shower?”

Bradley shakes his head. He tucks his knees up, wrapping his arms around them.

“I’m tired.”

Ron stands up. Bradley’s brown eyes follow him up, follow him to the door. They watch as he hesitates in the doorway.

“Call me if you need anything,” Ron says. “I mean it. Anything.”

“I will.”

“Bradley?”

“Yeah, Uncle Sli?”

“I love you.”

Bradley stills.

“You know that, right?” Ron says, curling his hand around the doorframe and - and because Nick can’t say it, because Mav won’t say it, Ron repeats it. “I love you.”

“I know,” Bradley says, his voice watery.

Ron waits for a little bit longer and then, even though it kills him, he walks away. Sarah stands at the end of the hallway, still covered in flour. Still shell-shocked. She jolts a little when she sees Ron’s face. She jolts. Sarah Kerner jolts at the sight of Ron’s face and it’s that exact moment that Ron knows - knows in his soul - that not a single person in the ‘86 family - the family they’ve all pieced together with jet fuel and laughter and having each other's backs when no one else did - would be the same after this.

“Ron?” Sarah says.

“Hm?”

“You’re crying,” she says.

Ron takes one, two, three jilting steps towards her. She cups his face.

“You’re crying,” she whispers.

Ron pulls a Bradley. He dips his head, tucks it against Sarah’s slight shoulder, and lets her hold him in her arms. Ron pulls a Bradley - he hides.

They don’t see Bradley for the next three days.

There are signs of Bradley in the house - whispered conversations with the kids, a load of laundry in the washer, cleaned dishes in the sink, and the occasional rush of water from the guest bathroom’s shower. There are signs, but there’s no Bradley.

They let him hide. They give him time.

It might be the wrong thing to do, Ron thinks, but they’re in uncharted territory and flying blind. For all his years as a naval aviator and father, Ron doesn’t know how to fix this. He doesn’t even know if it is fixable. Ron lies awake at night, listening to any meager noise Bradley makes down the hall, and tries to make a plan of attack. Wracked with sleep deprivation and desperation, Ron manages to make one. It’s crude around the edges and he’s almost certain it won’t work.

He tries it anyway.

On the fourth day - right as the sun rises - Ron shakes Bradley awake. It gets another flinch, another wince, another set of wide, scared eyes, but Bradley eventually moves along with Ron’s incessant tugging. He drifts during the car ride, head lulling between the headrest and window, and it isn’t until Ron parks that Bradley struggles to wake up. It’s a real battle. Ron watches it while white-knuckling the steering wheel. The amount of sleeping Bradley’s been doing is concerning - no, Ron thinks, everything Bradley’s been doing is concerning; this whole situation is concerning - and Ron isn’t sure if it’s because Bradley’s going through an extraordinarily late growth spurt, or if it’s something else. Something deeper and darker and scarier than tone-lock.

Mav had gone through it after Nick’s death. 

Tom and Ron had only been shuffled off to Viper’s office after the hop, numb all over the place, and listened to Viper’s speech about loss and duty, accidents and misplaced guilt. Neither of them had hardly done as much as breathe. They were still stuck in the cockpit, watching their jetwash swipe Mav’s wings out from under him and send him tumbling, tumbling, tumbling into the ocean while Nick - this isn’t either of your boys’ fault, Viper said, staring at Tom for a long, long while before turning to Ron. I’ve already lost Nick. Don’t make me lose you, too.

“The old baseball field?”

Ron blinks.

“You said you were playing for USNA. Don’t you need to practice?”

“Well,” Bradley says, a little bewildered, “yeah, but -”

Ron jerks a thumb over his shoulder.

“Gloves and balls are in the back. C’mon. Sun won’t be so bad right now.”

“You’re serious?”

“It’s baseball, Brad,” Ron says, sliding out of his truck and slipping on his aviators. “I’m always serious about baseball.”

Bradley mumbles something under his breath - crazy, he’s gone crazy - but he gets out. He takes a glove, pauses, and flips it over in his hands. It’s his old one, the one that’s all soft brown leather and has a permanent residence in Ron’s garage. Ron watches Bradley slide it on. It could be a trick of the light, but Ron swears he can see the kid’s lips twitch upward.

They walk out to the field.

Despite popular belief, Mav didn’t introduce Bradley to baseball. Neither did Tom. Instead, Ron was the man responsible for creating the kid’s addiction to all things nine innings and boiled peanuts and satisfying bat cracks. Hell, baseball was how he got his callsign. Too many close calls by the umpire and stolen bases had everybody at USNA - his teammates, his coach, other students, and even the sportscasters - calling him Slider. Bradley had ended up as a pitcher, but the underlying sentiment was the same; he loved baseball, Ron loved baseball, and sometime during the years, it had become their thing.

Ron crouches. He flexes his glove.

“C’mon,” he calls out to Bradley, “give me a fast one.”

Bradley hesitates.

“You sure?”

“As good as you are, kid, you’re not going to rip my hand off.”

“That’s what you think.”

Ron raises his eyebrows. He shakes his glove. There’s still dew on the grass, the sun is just beginning to shine orange-gold in the sky, and it feels good to be outside. Seeing Bradley’s mouth curl into a smirk - one that’s stilted and uncomfortable and out of practice, sure, but still a smirk - feels even better.

He whistles.

“C’mon, Bradley. I ain’t getting any younger.”

“Okay,” Bradley says, digging his feet into the mound. He points at Ron with his glove, his eyes a little more alive, a little more there, and he grabs a baseball with his other hand. “Let the record show that you asked for this, Sli.”

“I’m shaking in my shoes, kid.”

Bradley rears up. He lets go. The ball flies through the air, a blur of white and red and red and white, and when Ron stumbles back at the impact - because Christ, Gosling can throw - Bradley laughs.

He laughs.

There’s light at the end of the tunnel, Ron realizes, shaking his hand out and soaking up the sight of Bradley - Baby Goose, Gosling, Brad, kid, nephew Bradley Bradshaw - laughing. There’s light at the end of the tunnel, and Ron’s going to chase after it.

And if he sometimes hears Nick in the laughter, hears a distant honking sound in the whistle of the wind and the racing baseball, catches sight of a man stolen away from his son too soon in the growing heat of the sun and the cleat-paved dirt diamond of the field -

Well, Nick had loved baseball, too.

Chapter Text

Ron isn’t much of a drinker. He had never been much of one, even during his final, feral months of high school, but Lord knows he could’ve been. His father had been a certifiable alcoholic and his graveyard of strewn, half-empty bottles could’ve easily become Ron’s. They didn’t. Ron picked them up only long enough to drain in the sink and dump, skirting around his father’s searching hands and increasingly loud Ronnie? Leave it ‘lone, Ronnie. Leave it. I said leave it, Ron. You’re gonna ignore me? I’ll teach you to ignore your father. Come here. Come here, you little -

Well, there was a reason why God made Ron so big, and it wasn’t just for sports.

His father had been tall, but Ron had ended up being taller, and when high school ended and college started, Ron used those long legs of his to book it up to Annapolis. Officially, the campus was dry. Unofficially, Ron saw more guys shipped out for tiny travel-sized bottles of booze by their roommates than actual school officials. USNA had been too competitive, too serious, and too tight-laced to risk a sudden affinity for drinking. Shipping out had been a similar story. There weren’t many places to grab a Coors or Heineken in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and getting caught with anything close to booze would’ve been an instant demerit or worse - the end of a naval career before it even began. In fact, when Ron thought about it, his life just didn’t have room for drinking.

Not to say that Ron never touched alcohol because he did. There were odd moments here and there - the Top Gun celebration, his wedding, Tom and Mav’s unofficial and slightly illegal one - where he would nurse a flute of champagne, a half-filled wine glass, or a bottle of beer for the night.

Like tonight, for example.

Ron’s the first one at the bar. It’s not an accident - after a handful of baseball sessions, it’s only become more clear that Bradley needs more help than Ron can give. For every smile or voluntary conversation Ron manages to drag out of the kid, something new and dangerous comes with it. The attacks are one. The flinching is another. Bradley’s eating habits - if Ron can even call them that - are the latest discovery. One day Bradley would be hunched over with nausea, unable to keep anything down but water, and by the next, he would be eating either above or beyond what someone his size and age should be. It’s concerning. Ron wants to blame it on the anxiety, but something lingers in a deeper and darker place. Goose had died at a premature twenty-four. Carole had left them right before her thirtieth. 

The Bradshaws have a legacy, Ron muses, and it isn’t a pretty one.

He spins his bottle around, collecting the condensation with his fingertips. He spots Leo and Rick when they enter - the last half of the ‘86 blond quartet - and tips the neck of his beer in greeting. Leo throws himself into the booth and reaches for the complementary peanuts without saying anything, but Ron can see his eyes searching, searching, searching in the way all RIOs’ do. Rick’s more direct. He drifts into the booth with that crooked, John Wanye, people call me Hollywood, guess I should’ve gone to the big screen smile pointing directly at Ron.

“Drinking?”

Leo snorts. He cracks a shell open. Rick’s smile wavers in response.

“Has it got anything to do with that cryptic text you sent this morning?”

“Wasn’t cryptic.”

“Course not,” Leo agrees, handing over the bare peanut to Rick, “but it was ominous.”

“Ominous? I just asked if everybody was coming tonight. Somehow we’ve all got leave and it’s the holidays. I just wanted -”

“Ron.”

Ron stops talking. Rick reaches over Leo for another peanut. Leo hardly glances at him. He’s focused on Ron instead and Ron, despite himself, tries not to squirm. For all of Leo’s wildness - they call me Wolfman, and it ain’t because of my name - he’s wily, too. If he had had a Kazansky instead of a Neven, or if he was just a little less loyal to his pilot, he would’ve given Ron a run for his money. But he hadn’t and didn’t and Ron, sometimes, forgot that wolves didn’t just track their prey. They hunted them.

“You’re nice, Ron,” Leo says. He pushes the bowl toward Rick indulgently while still looking at Ron. “But - and no offense - you ain’t friendly. What’s up?”

“I’ll tell you when everybody else gets here.”

“You need all of us?”

“Maybe. I certainly want all of you.”

Leo shifts. Rick glances up - in response, Ron thinks, because the look on his face is sharper, more aware. He nudges the peanuts aside. Leo throws an arm over his shoulder, skims Rick’s arm, and that’s a message, too. Ron doesn’t know what it means. It grates a little. Ron likes knowing things and likes understanding what’s going on around him, but Leo and Rick aren’t Tom and Mav. Their dynamic is softer, sweeter, more intertwined. It’s hard to know where one ends and the other begins.

Rick leans forward. His voice lowers. 

“Is it serious?”

“Of course it’s serious. I wouldn’t’ve said anything if it wasn’t.”

Leo and Rick glance at one another.

“How serious?”

“How -?”

“On a scale from Mav,” Leo says, lifting his eyebrows in just the right way for Ron to catch demotion in that one syllable, “to Carole.”

“Jesus,” Ron says. “No, no. It’s nothing like that.”

Leo points at his beer.

“But it’s rattled you,” he says, blunt but - but Ron catches something else in his voice. Curiosity? Concern? He can’t tell. When Ron doesn’t say respond, Leo prods. “Right? It’s eatin’ you up?”

“Yeah.”

Leo stills. So does Rick. Ron’s surprised them, he realizes, but he can’t enjoy it. He doesn’t know why he’s surprised him. Frustration starts to coil up in his stomach, the same kind that his dad always used to drag out of him - pick you up? You didn’t say anything about picking you up today, Ronnie. And don’t get smart with me - and the one Mav’s whole mess is slowly dredging back up again.

“And you think we can help you with it?”

“You and everybody else, yeah.” Ron looks at the two of them. “What’s so strange about that?”

Neither one answers.

Rick makes a half-motion to return to the peanuts. Ron, petty and frustrated and everything in between, doesn’t let him. He takes the bowl instead and holds it away from Rick’s searching fingers, penance for not answering his question. The pilot flashes a smile again, but it’s not as real, not as genuine. It’s nervous. Awkward. Rick folds his hands in front of him like he’s back at that all-boys Catholic school he used to go to - they used to come at me with rulers, Ron. Big, wooden ones. Scary ones. They’d slap my knuckles with it if I did something bad - and, well, maybe those sisters had the right idea, Ron thinks, because he certainly wouldn’t mind being able to hit Mav with a ruler. Tom would never do it, and he wouldn’t like Ron doing it, either, but - but Leo’s wrong. 

Ron isn’t friendly. He isn’t nice, either.

Ron takes care of the people he likes. He’s busted his knuckles open for Tom - what’d he say to you? Ron would ask, squinting at the guy Tom had just walked away from, what’d he call you? - more times than he’s hugged him. Ron doesn’t do comfort well. He tries, tries to piece back together too-fragile pieces with too-big hands, but at the end of the day, he’s hurt more people than he’s helped. 

Ron doesn’t do friendly or nice - he protects. He protects and shelters and he’s not sure how to do that anymore for the broken, brown-eye kid he catches at two in the morning crying in the bathroom.

I’m sorry, Bradley always says to him, his shoulders heaving and his fingers white-knuckling the toilet bowl. I’m sorry, Uncle Sli. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I just can’t - I can’t keep it down.

Whatever Bradley’s fighting, it’s larger than himself. It’s larger than Ron, too, and that burns. It stings. Ron isn’t strong enough, isn’t big enough, and he prays - prays to God and his angels and whoever else is listening - that whatever is unraveling Bradley right in front of him isn’t greater than the ‘86 class all put together.

The others arrive.

It’s good to see them again. Sam’s freshly arrived from his last deployment, somewhere in the Middle East maybe, and he’s sun-tanned except for a thin strip of milk-white skin on his wrists and ankles where his flight suit and boots don’t cover. Charlie releases a flurry of homemade Christmas cards on them, each of their names on the front in an unwieldy crayon sprawl that can only belong to Charlie’s twins. Marcus casually mentions that he’s going back to school for his doctorate - something about getting tenure when he’s done flying - and Sam almost chokes on his drink.

“You want to be a professor?”

“Sure,” Marcus says, shrugging. “Why not? I don’t have anything better to do after the Navy, and none of us are exactly getting younger. You know they’re working on a new jet, don’t you? That’s what all the scuttlebutt says. Either we stick around and learn a whole new manual soon, we climb the ranks, or we do something else.”

“Like becoming a professor?” Sam asks.

Marcus spreads his hands out.

“Time’s running out, boys. Kids Bradley’s age are going to be in the air sooner than we think, and I, for one, won’t take any old man jokes.”

Someone - Rick - whistles.

“Wow. What a way to damper the mood, Marc,” Charlie says, a little serious but mostly teasing. Ron glances over at them. No matter how many times Ron’s flown with them, or how capable he knew they were, he always thought they could’ve done better if they switched seats. Marcus might be better at math and quicker at calculating speed and distance, but he didn’t have the temperament of an RIO. Charlie might have a reputation for his clean take-offs and landings, but he didn’t have the attitude or drive of a pilot. Ron isn’t sure how either of them got away with staying in their seats for so long. It’s almost a tragedy.

“I don’t know, Charlie,” Leo says, straightening up in his seat, “I think Kazansky’s got Marcus beat.”

They all turn.

Tom’s furious - that’s the first thing Ron notices. He can’t help it. Tom wears anger like it’s some couture suit, all clenched-jaw and clean lines and purposeful, sweeping steps. He hardly slows down when he comes to their table, just paces around them all once before stealing Ron’s half-drunk beer. The beer’s warning number two. Ron might not drink because he doesn’t want or need to, but Tom doesn’t drink because he hates the way it makes him feel. I don’t feel like myself, he told Ron once. Hangovers are always shit, but when I’m actually drunk? I don’t like that Tom. That Tom doesn’t know what the hell’s going on. 

But sometimes, Ron know, sometimes Tom liked to feel that way. When things really hit the fan, Tom liked not being the one in control anymore.

The third thing - the death toll - is that Tom’s alone. Ron twists around to look at the doors again, but no one follows after Tom. Ron can’t decide how he feels about it. On one hand, having Tom without a Mav feels wrong. Sacrilegious, almost. On the other, Ron doesn’t trust himself to act pleasant if Mav did show up. He isn’t sure he could look at Mav and not see Bradley’s face, sallow and hurt, instead.

Tom drains Ron’s beer, places it back on the table, and assesses them all.

“Okay, Tom?” Charlie ventures, and it’s that level of bravery, Ron guesses, that’s kept him sitting front-seater for so long. Tom doesn’t answer. He just stares, low and level, and Ron’s hair stands on end. Charlie glances around. “Where’s Mav?”

“Home,” Tom says.

“He’s not coming?”

“No.”

Rick and Leo both look over at him, but Ron keeps staring at Tom. His pilot’s staring back at him and - and there’s something wild in Tom’s eyes.

“Is he…is he okay?” Sam asks. Ron feels a rush of sympathy for the guy. He and Bill had been great together, a dream team that had kept him and Tom on their toes, and while he and Mav made an equally good team, Sam didn’t choose Mav. That choice had been made for him and it - it must’ve hurt, Ron thinks, because RIOs chose their pilots. They chose and kept and hoarded. Sam and Bill had been like brothers, and Nick and Mav had been like that, too, but Sam and Mav were a strange combination of grief and loss and two halves of an ill-fitting whole. It had taken years for Sam to join the ‘86 reunions, and it had taken an even longer time for him to get comfortable nosing into Mav’s life.

“No,” Tom says, and then, after seeing how fast everyone paled, “I mean yes, he’s okay. Mav’s fine. He’s fine. He just -”

“Tom,” Ron says. “Sit down.”

“He pulled his papers.”

The table goes silent. The boys look around and around at each other.

“Okay,” Leo slowly says, “what’re we missing here, guys?”

Ron ignores him. His pilot’s stalling out, and Ron has to catch him before he hits the hard deck. There’s gum in his pocket - after Bradley’s first attack Ron had gone out and bought two whole new packets - and he slips a piece out. Tom’s face twists when Ron holds it out to him, but he takes it.

“We knew that, Tom,” Ron says. “Bradley told us, remember?”

Someone at the table chokes.

“No, no. This is different.” Tom places his hands on the table, stretching them out. “Mav admitted to it. I asked and he said that he did it. He didn’t even try to lie to me. Didn’t even hesitate. Mav pulled those papers, and he doesn’t even - he’s not guilty about it. How isn’t he guilty about it?”

Charlie tugs on Tom’s shirt. Tom gives a minute little flinch - don’t touch me, Ron. Don’t touch me. Please. It burns. It burns bad and I…just help me breathe, Ron. Just do that - and his nails dig into the table.

“Tom,” Charlie says. “Maybe you should sit down?”

Tom gives a particularly venomous snap of gum. 

“He’s not guilty,” Tom repeats, still staring at Ron. 

“I know.”

“You know?”

“If Mav was guilty, he would’ve reached out to Bradley.”

“But he hasn’t.”

“No. He hasn’t.”

“How,” Tom says, choking. He sounds quiet and disgusted and lost, so lost, when he speaks again. “How could he do that to him? How can he not feel guilty? If I -”

“You can’t do that, Tom. You can’t play that game.”

“Why not?”

“Because you aren’t Mav. You would’ve never done the things Mav did.”

Tom squeezes his eyes shut. Charlie tugs at him again, and Tom sinks into the booth. The others rearrange themselves, somehow get Tom against Ron’s side, and then they fold inward to cut off the rest of the world. Leo gestures at him.

“Is this the thing you needed our help with?”

Tom says nothing. Ron stares down the table. The table - six faces, all confused and concerned and a little scared because ice cold, no mistakes Kazansky is melting right in front of their eyes - stares back.

“Promise me none of you will tell Mav,” Ron says. “Tell me that you won’t go to him or give him hints or try to let him know. If you can’t do that, if you can’t stick to that, then get out.”

Sam pales. Charlie makes an odd noise, half snort and half nervous laughter. The others just keep looking.

“I mean it,” Ron says and something in how he looks or sounds must tell them that he isn’t joking. Not about this. “Either promise me or leave. There’s no middle ground here. Not anymore.”

Tom twitches. He doesn’t correct Ron.

“You’re scaring us here, Ron,” Marcus says.

“Tough. Promise me.”

“Alright,” Rick says. “We promise. No going to Mav, no snitching.” The others all murmur in agreement despite how uneasy they look, and Ron tips back in his seat. There’s a headache winding its way into his temples. It thumps and thumps and thumps and Ron wants to scream because - because what happened to them all? What did Mav put in motion?

“Bradley’s back,” he chokes, the secret burning its way out of him like poison. “Tom and I went to the airport a few days ago and found him. He’s been staying over at my house since then.”

“And him being back isn’t…good?” Charlie asks.

“He isn’t the same.”

“Isn’t the same how?” Rick says. “He did just leave us -”

Ron shakes his head.

“He’s broken,” he says, his voice catching. Tom lowers his hands, frowns, must see the fear crawling its way out of Ron because he sucks in a breath, lets it out, doing the counting exercises that Viper all but beat into both of their heads years ago - you’re wound-tight, Tom, and tension like that snaps if it isn’t loosened every once in a while, he had said, waving Tom’s gold pen around. Tom had been particularly jumpy that day and had sent the poor thing skittering halfway across the room when he had tried to flip it over his knuckles. Viper pointed at them with the end of it. You’re too good to snap. Too good of a pilot, too good of a kid.

Ron’s chest clenches.

It hurt, sometimes, to think of Viper. Ron and Tom hadn’t treated him nicely. He had been their commanding officer, their instructor, but when he reached out to them with kindness, Ron could only smell sickly-sweet booze and cigarette ash and Tom could only think of cold silences and constant, hateful eyes. It had taken a while - had taken Nick’s death, really - for both of them to let their guard down. Mike had swept right in, becoming something like a father to all the scared, bruised little boys the ‘86 flyboys seemed to have in abundance. He had passed when they had all been overseas, right before Carole. Ron wishes he had been able to go to the funeral. More than that, he wishes Mike had gotten the chance to meet Bradley.

He would’ve thought Bradley was a good kid, Ron thinks. Mike would’ve thought he was a good pilot, too; the kind that deserved to fly as fast and far as they could, the kind that got their wings right after USNA and never let them go, the ones like Mav and Tom and, once upon a time, like Mike himself.

Mike would’ve loved Bradley. Ron knows that as a fact - Mike would’ve loved Bradley and Bradley would’ve loved Mike and Ron isn’t sure why the universe is so dead-set on hurting a kid who’s only given back love.

“Ron?”

“He’s broken,” Ron repeats. “Mav pulled his papers so he couldn’t go to USNA. Said he wasn’t ready to fly or something. Said Bradley couldn’t do it -”

“Bullshit,” someone whispers. “Bullshit he couldn’t do it.”

“ - but Bradley found out. He reapplied. When he got in, he didn’t want to risk Mav finding out somehow, so he left. He thought we were all in on it, too. He thought we helped. He was scared of reaching out to us in case we did something. He was scared.” Ron pauses. He clears his throat. “He’s still scared.”

“Of us?” Leo asks.

“Of everything,” Ron says. “He has…attacks now.”

“Like, uh, Tom’s?”

Tom flushes. The secret had been leaked years ago - Ron? Is this Ron Kerner? Rick had asked once, calling Ron in the dead of night. Thank Christ. It’s Tom. He’s hyperventilating. We don’t know how to calm him down - but Tom hated that the others knew. Hell, Tom hated that Ron even knew.

“Kind of, but they’re worse. They catch him by surprise, and he doesn’t know how to deal with them. I think it’s got something to do with us, though, because the first one he had was when Sarah -”

“Sarah?” Marcus says. “What’d she do, yell at him?”

“She just looked at him,” Ron says. “I told you, he’s scared. He’s scared of us. The first time it was Sarah. The second time it was me - one of my kids was upstairs and I yelled for them to come down - and I guess the noise got to him. I guess me being the one to make the noise got to him. The third time was because Mav called and Bradley caught the caller ID before I did. The fourth time -”

“The fourth time?” Sam says. “That’s not just worse, Ron. That’s - shit- that’s concerning. He would be grounded if he was in service. Or worse, they’d send him in for a psych eval and never let him go. You said he got back into USNA, right? They don’t really mess around with that crap.”

“I know,” Ron says because he does. He’s spent the last few days researching Naval regulations and USNA service and physical evaluation criteria, and what he’s found has only made the pit in his stomach grow heavier and more uncomfortable. Even though Bradley got back into USNA, Mav might’ve accomplished his goal anyway. Bradley still had four years to go, sure, but when those four years were up? Sam was right. Neither USNA nor the Navy messed around when it came to the kind of problems Bradley was dealing with. “I know,” Ron repeats, “I’m hoping it’s only this bad because we’re around, you know? And maybe it’s better when he’s at school. When he’s not here.”

Marcus shifts.

“Should he not be here, then?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. If you guys saw him -”

Ron’s throat closes up. He stops, trying to get I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Uncle Sli and long nights spent on the bathroom floor, whispering soothing things into the darkness on the off-chance that Bradley can hear him over his own sobs, out of his mind. It’s nearly impossible. This isn’t a problem someone can push away easily, and Ron, if he’s being honest, doesn’t want to push it away. He doesn’t want to - can’t - avoid it because Bradley needs help, and Ron’ll get it for him. No ifs or buts or anything else. Ron’ll get Bradley the help he needs even if it burns down every bridge he’s ever built over the years with Mav. Mav isn’t Ron’s wingman. Mav isn’t Ron’s husband.

Mav is a problem, and Ron fixes those for the people he loves.

“Bradley doesn’t want to be alone. I asked him if he wanted me to book a hotel or something for him after the third attack. I thought it would’ve been better for him, less stressful, but he just stared at me and asked if I wanted him to leave. I didn’t, of course, and I told him that. I said I was worried about him, that was all, and I wanted him to be comfortable. He said that he didn’t want to be alone anymore. He said that having Sarah and I around helped even if it hurt sometimes.”

Ron puts his hands together.

“He wants to see you guys,” he says. “He wants to apologize.”

“He doesn’t have to apologize. I mean - Christ, I would’ve done what he did,” Rick says. He gestures at Tom. “And you said that Mav isn’t guilty about? Not even a little?”

“I’d rather have him hate me and be alive than adore me six feet under,” Tom says, languidly chewing his gum and staring at the ceiling. “That’s what Mav told me when I asked. I’d rather have him hate me…”

He drifts off, wiping at his eyes. He blinks.

“He didn’t sound like the Mav I know,” Tom says. “He didn’t sound like Mav at all.”

They all wince.

“You didn’t tell him Bradley was here, did you?” Ron asks.

“Of course not,” Tom says. “Mav thinks I figured out what happened to him and his application all by myself. Said he was surprised it had taken me this long. Said he was glad that it had taken this long because I could’ve overturned it. I could’ve overturned it.”

Marcus nudges Tom’s shoulder.

“You didn’t know,” he says. “None of us did. Who would’ve thought that Mav would be the one to try and keep Bradley from flying?”

Sam fidgets. “Could it be because of Nick, you think? Mav might’ve been fine with Bradley saying he wanted to fly when he was younger, but when the time finally came…Mav never really went to those grief counseling sessions he was supposed to.”

“I don’t know. You guys know how Mav gets - he wouldn’t say why he did it no matter how times I asked. But I don’t think it’s because of Nick. Mav would be scared and he would hate it, but he wouldn’t crush Bradley’s dreams because of that. He wouldn’t crush Bradley for that.” Tom pauses. He releases a pent-up little breath. “Would he?”

“And Bradley doesn’t know why Mav did it, either?” Marcus asks, looking at Ron.

“Besides thinking Mav doesn’t think he has what it takes? No, Bradley doesn’t have a clue why Mav did what he did. In fact, I think that’s why Bradley’s so shaken. He doesn’t trust anything or anyone anymore - how could he? Mav was his world.”

“So maybe not Nick,” Charlie says, “but what about Carole?”

Leo cocks his head. Rick frowns.

“Carole?”

“Didn’t she say she didn’t want Bradley flying?”

“Back when Bradley was six, sure,” Tom says. “But Bradley was a kid.”

“Her kid,” Charlie counters. “Her and Nick’s. And I don’t think that fear would’ve gone away when he grew up. I think it would’ve just gotten worse. She only told us she didn’t want him flying once, but how many times could she have told Bradley? Told Mav?”

“Carole’s dead,” Tom says, so soft and quiet that Ron can hardly hear the words.

“But is she dead to Mav?”

Tom can’t answer that one. No one can.

“I’ll find out,” Ron says.

Tom sighs.

“Ron -”

“I’ll find out. Mav can try to dodge you all he wants, but he’s not dodging me.” Ron leans forward. He wishes he had picked up another beer if only to have something to fidget with. He almost goes for a piece of gum but stops himself. Mav’s been cut out of the circle, Bradley’s barely keeping his head afloat, and Tom’s torn between two worlds. Somebody has to be strong. Somebody has to act tough and look big, and no one in their strange family looks tougher and bigger than Ron. “Besides, Bradley’s got more things going on with him than just the attacks. He’s not eating right, either. I can’t even begin to guess how he’s sleeping. He doesn’t like being touched. He hardly smiles anymore. He isn’t Bradley - worse, he thinks it’s his fault. He thinks everything that’s happening is his fault.”

“He’s not eating?” Tom asks, sounding horrified.

“He tries,” Ron says because that’s all he can say. “He tries really hard.”

The flyboys look at one another. A wave moves through them, starting with Marcus and going around the table until Leo crosses his arms and squares his shoulders. Sam pulls out his wallet and phone. His hands hover over both of them.

“Okay,” he says and there’s something like steel and jet fuel and Bill really liked you guys, you know. He didn’t trust just anybody on his wing, but he sure as hell trusted you and Tom. “Okay. How can we help?”

“Don’t let Mav know where he is,” Tom says. Ron glances over at his pilot. Tom’s face is perfectly smooth. Mask-like. Ron wonders what’s hurt him worse, the fact that Mav dragged them all to this place or the fact that Tom’s clawing his way back up without his wingman. “We’ve got to keep them separate.”

“Playing keep-away,” Marcus says. “Got it. What else?”

“Do you guys remember our medical officer?” Ron asks. Rick perks up.

“Savant?”

Ron snaps his fingers.

“He got a new number or something when he got relocated. I can’t find it. Do any of you have it?” He turns to Tom. “Do you have it?”

Tom wiggles his phone out of his pocket and clicks through the contacts. The others do the same. Ron waits impatiently, tapping his fingers on the table. With how tightly wired Bradley is and how panicked he got around hospitals and doctors, Ron didn’t want to risk bringing him somewhere for help just to make everything worse. Ron hasn’t seen Savant in months - medical officers were always strange; beloved and just a little insane but never belonging to just one class or company - but he always liked the guy. If Ron’s going to have to trust someone to give Bradley an actual medical evaluation, it would be someone like Savant.

“I’ve got it,” Sam says. He scribbles it down on a napkin and passes it over. “He should say yes to whatever you want him for, he’s working in Miramar now.”

Ron carefully folds the napkin up and puts it in his pocket.

“Thanks,” he says. “I don’t know what you guys could do past that, though.”

“Didn’t you say that Bradley wanted to see us?”

“He does. I’m just worried -”

“We’ll be gentle with him,” Leo says. “We’ll take care of him.”

“I know. But -”
“Ron.”

Ron stares at Leo. Leo stares back. Wolves, Ron remembers, are pack animals. They’re rough and loud as shit but loyal when it mattered. Loyal and protective and - and out of the two of them, Rick was the nice one. Rick was the friendly one. 

Leo wasn’t.

“We’ll take him,” Leo says and Ron hears we’ll protect him, we’ll help him, we’ll love him.

Rick blinks.

“We will?”

“You want to make Christmas cookies, and I’m not young enough to eat most of them by myself anymore. We’ll take Bradley for a day. A night, too, if he wants to stay later. Everyone can take a breather - you and Tom especially, Ron. Hell, you can even go beat up Mav if you want.”

“No one’s beating up Mav,” Tom says, but his heart isn’t in it. If Ron really did want to swing by his house and throw Mav around, Tom probably wouldn’t stop him.

Leo waves his hand.

“Sure, yeah, whatever.” He drags Rick against him, and this time the pilot seems to be on board. “Our offer still stands. Let us babysit. Bradley’s got to know that we’re in his corner, and he’s got to trust us again. If we all ambush him at once, he’s going to lose it. But if we do it slowly, just in pairs, it should be fine.”

“Besides,” Rick says, back to smiling his real smile again, “you don’t make cookies, Kerner. You buy them on discount like a heathen.”

Charlie snorts, tries to cover it with a cough, and then breaks out into his little boy giggles that make him sound decades younger. Marcus shoots his pilot a beaming smile, Sam’s shoulders shake, Leo rolls his eyes, and Tom - Tom gives a watery snort, his mask chipping away to show the exhaustion and relief and love in his eyes. Ron has to look away to save face because there’s gratitude and devotion, and then there’s whatever the ‘86 crew has.

It’s almost enough to make a grown man cry, and Ron hopes it’s enough to piece one back together.

“If you can get my kids to stand still long enough to help you make them,” Ron says, “be my guest. But since you, I, and God himself can’t, it’s those coma-inducing sugar cookies.”

“I can’t believe you still do Santa,” Charlie says.

“The kids like it,” Ron argues. “And Sarah thinks it’s cute.”

Tom gags.

“Please,” he says, “do not talk about what my sister finds cute about you.”

“Come on, Tom. Don’t you remember her waxing poetics about Sli during that volleyball game you guys played? You thought she was cheering for you, but she was really cheering for that pair of grey sweatpants,” Rick says.

“Oh, my God,” Tom says. “Oh, my God.”

His pilot looks horrified, and Ron can’t help himself. He laughs. He laughs loud and long and booming, the kind he hasn’t done since Tom had first called half a year ago telling him Bradley was gone. Ron laughs like he means it, and it’s that noise - that little victory - that makes Tom throw his head back and laugh, too.

The rest of the night melts away.

Ron’s still laughing when he leaves the bar, the aftershocks making him snort every so often, and he flicks a hand up to wave goodbye to Charlie and Marcus when they split ways in the parking lot. Tom’s busy talking to Sam, no doubt asking him about his last deployment, and Ron just watches his pilot for a short while. He doesn’t get that opportunity as much as he used to, so he savors it. Despite everything going on with Mav and Bradley, Tom looks good. He certainly looks healthier than he had back in ‘86. As much as Ron loved that time of his life and the people he met along the way, he hadn’t loved having to all but shove food into Tom or nurse his pilot back to health when a stress-induced fever reduced him to a miserable bundle of blankets and blond hair - you don’t have to take care of me, Ron. I’m not a kid, Tom had always said, all but biting Ron’s hand off when he nudged a bottle of water or a pudding cup or the thermometer at him. I’m not some damsel in distress. I’m fine. Fine.

You can fight me on this, Ron always responded, but you aren’t going to win.

Ron -

You’re stubborn, Tom, but you aren’t that stubborn.

Tom catches him looking. He flashes Ron a little hand sign - three fingers up, two pressing together into a circle - and goes back to his conversation. Ron’s chest loosens. He feels lighter.

“Ron?”

He turns. Leo and Rick are walking over to him.

“I wasn’t joking,” Leo says. “About Bradley coming to visit.”

“I know.”

Rick searches for their car in the dark. “We’re both free tomorrow. We know it’s kind of sudden, but -”

“I’ll ask him tonight.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Ron promises, and he feels like laughing again when Rick and Leo’s faces all but beam back at him. “But just prepare yourselves, okay? He’s not the Bradley you remember.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Leo says. “Bradley’s Bradley.”

“Yes, but -”

Rick clicks his tongue. “We’ll love him no matter what he acts or looks like. He’s Baby Goose. He’s our Baby Goose.”

Ron nods. He doesn’t trust himself to speak, not when his eyes are suddenly so misty and his chest is rising in little hiccups. The feeling only gets worse when Leo lunges forward a few steps to hug him.

“‘S okay, Sli,” he says, his voice muffled into Ron’s chest. “‘S okay. We’ve got him. You don’t have to hold on so tight anymore.”

Ron wraps his arms around the other RIO and buries his head into Leo’s hair. Rick pats his arm.

“You’ve had a good flight, Ron, and you’ve taken care of him, but it’s time to refuel, though, okay?”

“I’m okay,” Ron says.

“You aren’t a drinker,” Rick says. “And you aren’t a pilot. You hold on too tight.”

Leo squeezes him and looks up, looking up at Ron like he’s always looked up to Ron, like they really are back in ‘86 and the hyper brat with the cowboy hat has just appeared at his elbow, asking are you Ron Kerner? Slider? Hi, I’m Wolfman - uh, Leo. Leo Wolfe? You wouldn’t know me, but I’m an RIO like you. You once did a training simulation with my company. You taught us physics, and I just wanted to know if you were still, uh, open to tutoring?

“It’s okay, big guy. We’ll help fix this. We’ll help Bradley. We’ll help you.”

Ron opens his mouth to say that he doesn’t need help, that he’s very clearly not the problem here, but Leo and Rick are both still looking at him with soft eyes and strange twists to their mouths and Ron - Ron doesn’t ask for help much. In fact, Ron doesn’t like asking for help. Ron likes knowing things, he likes having answers, and when he doesn’t, it leaves him wrong-footed and strange. It turns him inside out. When he asks for help - and asks it so openly and desperately - it scares them, he realizes. It surprises them.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” he says.

“You’re Sli,” Rick says and Leo nods so enthusiastically that his pointy chin stabs Ron right in his sternum. Ron lets him. Rick searches around for something else, for something more to say, but he stops. 

“You’re Sli,” he repeats, more serious this time, and it sounds like hi, Kerner, how are you doing today from Sam, Marcus is teasing me about never seeing The Shining, but I hate horror movies - can you watch it with me, please from Charlie, I probably misheard him, Sli, the air boss wouldn’t call me that and, hey, where’re you going from Marcus, there he is, the man, the myth, the legend. Teach me that volleyball serve of yours again from Rick, thanks for doing this again, Sli, I know I’m not the easiest student. At least, that’s what my other teachers always said from Leo, and -

“Hey,” Tom says, suddenly at his side. “How’s my RIO doing?”

Ron holds Leo closer. He’s tired, he realizes, but he’s also happier. Weightless. Ron feels like he’s floating even though he only had half a beer, and the feeling sinks into his bones and fills him up.

“Talk to me, Kerner,” Tom says and it hits Ron all at once that in a few weeks, he’ll get Tom back. No more babysitting strange pilots, no more white-knuckled grips on the ejection handle, images of Nick flashing through his mind, no more having to guess and second-guess what his front-seater is thinking because Ron’s pilot is coming back.

His pilot’s coming back, the ‘86 crowd is reunited, and there might just be a way to help Bradley with whatever monster he’s fighting.

“I’m good,” Ron says.

He takes a breath. Let's it out.

“I’m good.”

Chapter Text

“In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him…”

“Ow,” Bradley mutters, peeling open one eye.

“You’re falling asleep,” Hannah says. Her face is all screwed up like Aunt Sarah’s, but the way she withdraws her sharp little fingers from Bradley’s side is all Ice, petty and pointed. She peers even further over the top of her book - which is actually his, Bradley wants the record to show. Hannah’s just commandeered it for this eternity and the next - and gives a sigh that is three times too weary for her age. “You’re both falling asleep.”

Bradley nudges his arm. On his other side, Grace grunts. 

“‘M awake,” she says, sounding pissy. “Totally awake.”

“Both of you are impossible.”

“Sorry,” Bradley says, closing his eye again.

“I’m not,” Grace says and God, it’s a miracle she and her sister have managed to survive together this long. Bradley used to babysit them when they were younger, and he’d slink home to Ice afterward, confused and exhausted and slightly horrified. They’re siblings . They’ll either learn to live with one another, or someone will die , Ice always used to say, and Mav would, from somewhere else in the house, always scream out, my money’s on Grace. She’s got way too much Ron in her .

Bradley hadn’t understood. He still doesn’t, if he’s being honest.

It seems like everyone he meets has a sibling, especially in USNA, and from their stories being an only child seems like a blessing - and Bradley doesn’t get that, either. Being an only child has always been some strange, mixed place caught between relief and disappointment because Bradley isn’t a normal only child. 

He’s only alone because his parents died.

Bradley likes to think that he would’ve had siblings, maybe, if Dad had lived longer and if Mom had been healthier. He knows that they were trying to give him one before Top Gun; going through his Mom’s stuff after she passed had him stumbling into a series of postcards and photographs and calendars with secret codes that weren’t so secret. It was a little disgusting. It was also a little depressing. Bradley spent a long time staring at all of those things, imagining a world where he had a sister or a brother or someone who he could share things with - not that Bradley’s bad at sharing. He can’t be, really. He’s spent his whole life growing up in snippets of other people’s households, sharing homes and beds and time and love that belonged to someone else. He just means that sometimes he wishes he had somebody who understood everything. Someone to share the grief and the ache and the missing with.

Mav had been that, once.

Mav never spoke about his parents, but they were missing, too. He and Bradley never talked about Bradley’s situation, either, but some connection was there, lingering between the two of them until -

In hindsight, Bradley might not be good at sharing. Maybe he’s just good at taking.

An old girlfriend of his used to call him needy . Bradley can still hear her say it, her condescending pout and needy, you’re needy, Bradley. God, can’t you just grow up? You’re the only guy I know who acts like this. Can’t you just deal with it? And Bradley had dealt with it. He dealt with it by leaving, telling her they were over before he kicked her out of the Bronco and drove away. Because Bradley might be needy , might want to be held and comforted, might want to have things he wasn’t given and do things other people told him he shouldn’t, might want to fly even if Mav was convinced that he couldn’t do it, might be chasing after the faded chorus of show me the way, honey , might sometimes wish that Hannah and Grace were really his sisters, might sometimes squint his eyes at Uncle Sli and trick himself that his hair was darker and he was thinner and that was okay because he was tall and an RIO and liked baseball and those were the only things Bradley still remembered about -

“Isn’t the whole point of this to make us fall asleep?” Grace asks, stretching out her legs. Bradley winces. She actually means to ask if the point of Hannah’s nightly recitations is to make Bradley fall asleep because the girls had found him passed out on the kitchen table one afternoon after a particularly bad night. They didn’t ask about it, and they still don’t really know about everything that’s going on, but Hannah had swept into his room that night with a selection of books and told Bradley to pick.

He picked, less because he wanted to and more because no one argued with Hannah.

“It’s meant to relax,” Hannah answers. “Not have you snoring.”

“Wasn’t snoring,” Bradley says, but it gets lost between the Grace and Hannah show suddenly airing on his bed - no, not his. It’s Uncle Sli’s guest bed and it’s Bradley being entitled again. He rubs his eyes. The girls argue above him. Maybe, he realizes, he’s picked up on some of those normal, only-child traits. He’s needy . He’s got issues. He might be selfish. Those are all only-child things, right? Or were they orphan things? Sometimes he thinks they’re both. Other times he thinks they’re just Bradley things, self-contained. Bradley’s needy . Bradley’s got issues. Bradley might be selfish.

“Isn’t it bedtime?”

The girls suddenly stop. Bradley lifts his head. Uncle Sli’s in the doorway, holding his shoes in one hand and looking soft. Softer. Uncle Sli is like Ice; everyone thinks they’re intimidating, but they aren’t. Not really. They’re complicated in the same way a painting is. They have layers and brushstrokes and a thick, glossy polish that hides away half of their details until someone stands very, very close.

“We’re teenagers, Dad. Bedtimes don’t exist anymore,” Grace says, but she starts getting up anyway. Hannah reaches all the way over Bradley to hold her sister down. She doesn’t even glance over at Sli when she speaks.

“I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them…I destroy them,” she says, closing the book immediately after. “There, all done.”

“Pure poetry,” Grace says. “Truly.”

Uncle Sli points down the hall.

“Out. Bed. C’mon, you both have a long road trip tomorrow with your Mom.”

The girls groan. Uncle Sli mimics them, still gesturing. They get up and head out the door. Bradley misses them almost immediately, misses the way they pressed into his sides to keep him from rolling, the feeling of Hannah’s fingers in his ribs, the way Grace always shoved her cold feet against his legs. He closes his eyes, counting their retreating steps.

“Why are we going with Mom?”

“Can’t we just stay here? It’s always so cold there.”

“And Uncle Ice isn’t even going to be there.”

“Girls.”

“We’re just saying, Dad. Why can’t we spend Christmas here?”

“Can’t we spend it with Bradley this year? Can’t we stay with him?”

They drift away.

Well, almost all of them. Bradley’s alone and then he opens his eyes again to find Uncle Sli back in the doorway, watching. Bradley tries not to squirm. He gets the feeling, sometimes, that Uncle Sli looks at him like this, so focused and serious, because he’s trying to find the broken thing inside of him. It makes him nervous. Bradley wonders when he’ll realize that Bradley’s the broken thing. He’s all missing pieces and haphazard tape jobs and the mess of too many people having to arrange him into their lives.

Uncle Sli’s face goes soft again. The feeling passes.

“Hey,” he says. It’s the same hey he’s used from the beginning, the same one that’s echoed in rooms that reeked of jet fuel and sweat and across the familiar crackle of long distance, landline static. It’s the kind of greeting that Bradley recognizes in his soul. It’s the kind he doesn’t know how not to respond to.

“Hi. Did you have a good time?”

“Did I - oh,” Sli says, his eyebrows raising. Bradley might not be all the way here, but he’s not so far gone that the concept of time is lost on him. It’s Friday night which has, historically, always belonged to the ‘86 crowd. Bradley had some great memories of being stolen away by one of the guys from his Mom - we’re just going to borrow him for a few hours , Hollywood always used to say, scooping Bradley up under his armpits and tucking him away like a sack of potatoes, don’t worry Carole, we’ll bring him back in one piece , and they would. Mostly. There were some times when Bradley was brought home with extra bruises or scrapes, trophies of late-night bike rides, or being used as an impromptu football in a wild game of keep away. He’d go hoarse from laughter be tacky with sweat and would eat way too much junk food, but Friday nights used to be one of the few times when Bradley didn’t notice the gaping hole in his family or the ominous big C his Mom kept whispering about.

Then the big C became cancer and then metastasized and stage four and Bradley, baby, I’m going to need you to be brave, alright? I need you to be brave for me and Bradley had. Bradley had followed his Mom into hospitals, into chemotherapy rooms, into the waiting room of so many doctor's offices and pharmacies and funeral homes that they all blurred together and Friday nights became white-knuckled phone calls into warzones at God-awful hours of the night, his saving graces being Sli’s hey s and Ice’s low chuckles and Mav’s talk to me, Brad-Brad s.

And then Bradley became an orphan.

He doesn’t remember much of the funeral. It’s a blessing, he thinks, because he does remember how pale everyone looked, how sick - so wan and wide-eyed it looked like they were all the ones who went several rounds with the big C and lost - but he does remember Sli taking him outside. It’s okay , Sli whispered to him, one big hand cradling Bradley’s back, it’s okay to cry, Brad. You don’t have to be tough anymore . Bradley hadn’t cried. Sli told him it was okay, and maybe it would’ve been, but Bradley’s mom asked him to be brave and Bradley would rather feel brave than hollowed out and miserable.

The funeral had been on a Friday and then -

And then it was the ‘86ers cutting their teeth on parenthood, Bradley shuffling around their homes each weekend until Ice just kept him one day, not saying anything more than his car waiting for Bradley after-school every day and the guest room being incrementally filled with Bradley’s things from home. Friday nights became whatever they all could cobble together as everyone grew older and wiser, shifting from flyboys to husbands and fathers and Bradley from a lost little boy to a man who’d cut his teeth on loss way too soon. Nowadays, Fridays were back to being whatever part of the ‘86 core could carve out an hour of their time to meet up. Bradley misses them sometimes. He misses the way they used to make him feel - loved and alive and so happy he was bursting with it.

“Yeah, I had some fun.”

Bradley blinks.

“Who was there?”

“Everybody.”

“Really? That must’ve been nice.”

Sli hums which, yeah, stupid statement, Bradley. If it hadn’t been nice, Sli wouldn’t’ve gone because he constantly skates the thin line between self-assured and assholish. Bradley respects that about him. Bradley respects a lot about Sli, actually. It’s why there’s a mug in one of his cabinets, lop-sided and unusable and stamped with Best Uncle in little Bradley’s chicken scratch. He remembers giving it to Sli, carefully taking it home from his elementary art class, and keeping it from everyone until his Mom took him to Family Day.

Hey, you have something for me, Brad? Whatcha got there - oh, Brad, Sli said propping his aviators up on his head and crouching all the way down to be on Bradley’s level. He’d gently taken the mug from Bradley’s little hands, turning it this way and that, and his thumb pressed into the letters. Oh, Brad. You sure this is for me? You don’t want to give it to - it’s mine? Yeah? It’s perfect, Bradley. Really. I love it, Gosling. All the guys are going to be jealous. But Sli didn’t show the others. Sli kept the mug close to him at all times like it was some long-lost and expensive Di Vinci piece, and he had hugged Bradley so tightly it nearly shoved every broken wedge of his eight-year-old body back into place.

“Mav wasn’t,” Sli says.

“Is he in town?” Bradley links his hands together on his stomach and looks up at the ceiling. His feelings around Mav were - they were complicated. Messy. Bradley understood why Mav did it, but he hated that Mav couldn’t understand why Bradley needed to do it. He’d spent most of his life searching for a way to get to know his Dad. Maybe it was pitiful that he’d jumped straight into aviator training to soothe that wanting, gnawing thing inside of him, but Mav had done it, too. Mav had done it when he was Bradley’s age and Bradley didn’t know if that made everything worse or better.

They were a lot alike, him and Mav. Not personality-wise, of course, but everywhere else? Yeah. They had a lingo between them, some telepathic trauma bond that even the mystical wingman or pilot-RIO union couldn’t touch. Bradley could catch Mav’s eyes on the beach and know it’s too cold and the waves are too loud and I’ve got to get out of here, Jesus get me out of here or Mav would find Bradley frozen right at the entrance of the stupid CVS pharmacy and gently pry the prescription information out of his hands. I’ll get it became I’ve got you and I’ve got you became - well, it became you aren’t ready and what the fuck, Mav and Bradley, Jesus, please just think about this for one damn minute more than you have.

Bradley’s thought. He’s thought damn hard and here’s what he comes up with: Mav gets to go up into his plane and whisper talk to me, Goose and listen to whatever line-thin, tin-can telephone spirals down from the horizon. Bradley has stayed on the ground, wilting and watching people go to places he can’t follow, and maybe if he gets to that gauzy, breathless place in the sky he can whisper talk to me, Dad and hear something other than static and jumbled piano keys.

Bradley wants that. Bradley wants that so badly that he’s done a lot of things he isn’t proud of but doesn’t regret. He ran from Mav, stomped all over his godfather’s wishes, and didn’t look back. He’s joining the navy. He’s majoring in aerospace engineering even though it sucks the soul right out of him. He’s answering emails and engaging in guest lectures and attending galas - God, Ice would be so proud and that’s the one thing Bradley’s ashamed of. Leaving Mav behind was a necessity. Leaving the rest of the ‘86 crew felt petty and childish and stupid, so damn stupid. They were adults. They could make their own choices. Bradley just - he was afraid. He was afraid that they would’ve all made their choice and it wouldn’t be him. He was a pity case. Mav was Mav. The two things weren’t equal, had never been equal, and while Bradley can swallow down Mav’s disappointment and you can’t do this, Bradley. You aren’t ready, the idea of swallowing Ice or Sli’s had been so brutal that Bradley, instinctively like some small, cowering dog, had tucked his tail and booked it to USNA.

“Does it bother you to know he is?”

“No,” Bradley says. It’s the truth. He’s upset with Mav, but he’s not angry. Bradley doesn’t really do angry. Bradley does sad and depressed and fucking heartbroken really well, but anger isn’t in his skill set. He’s frustrated. He’s hurt. He’s wondering what he’s done and what should he do better and what could he improve to make Mav change his mind. It isn’t healthy, he knows. Bradley’s always known. Bradley hasn’t been healthy since Mom picked him up from pre-school early, right before the day ended but not soon enough that Bradley didn’t spend every second of the day - Dads and Doughnuts day, give him a damn break Christ, please - wondering why Dad hadn’t walked through his classroom door even though he had promised to come after his flight, and sat him down with mascara smudges below her eyes, saying, Daddy had an accident, baby. Daddy…we’re going to go see Mav now, okay? We’re going to see where Daddy works. Isn’t that cool, baby?

It had been. It had been cool all the way up to when Bradley stepped even to a casket and his mind finally grasped onto the fact that it was Dad in that casket and he was never, ever getting out of it.

And here’s the thing - here’s the big secret - Bradley’s problems started there, actually. The shit he’s going through now is the same shit that had him hospitalized as a kid because Bradley’s fear of hospitals didn’t just start with Mom. It started with bedwetting and twitching, restless sleep that escalated into nausea so deep and powerful it twisted his stomach into kinks that couldn’t keep anything down because little boys shouldn’t see their dad’s in caskets or get bowed down with I’m sorry from people who knew too much and too little about him.

He got out of the hospital, eventually.

He got good at ignoring nausea, sleeping accidents, and the sickly-sweet taste of grief and anxiety in his body. He buried it. He rolled it all up in its own little casket, sent it six feet under, and by the age of four or five or maybe even six, it had sat in the dark dirt, just resting. Then there was Mom. Bradley managed with her. He managed. He needed to be and act and do too many things to get caught up with all of the stuff going on inside of him. When it was over, it was easier than not to pretend it just didn’t happen. The feelings didn’t exist. Bradley, sometimes, didn’t exist.

Then there was Mav.

Bradley wants the record to show that his problems aren’t because of Mav. His problems are because his trauma or whatever the fuck is so closely tied to naval aviating that he can’t start following one and not take along the other. The second time he applied, he used Dad’s name to get into the door. It felt cheap, but what had made him sick was finally looking at the death inquiry. Mom and the ‘86ers never told him what had happened, but Bradley had been eighteen and blood-kin. He got to look if he wanted to, and now he dreamed of cold waves and green dye and the weight of a parachute that never deployed amidst intensive physical and mental training and whatever lizard-brain instinct keeps going off like a nuclear bomb inside of his body each time he senses danger.

Which is a lot, by the way. Bradley’s body seems to find danger around every corner, and it’s exhausting. He’s exhausted. He’s pretty sure everyone who is stuck dealing with him is exhausted, too - and that’s another reason why didn’t contact the ‘86ers. He didn’t want them to see him like this. He didn’t want them to think that any of this is their fault because it isn’t. It isn’t. It’s Bradley’s fault, and he feels terrible for dragging them all into it.

He’s a big boy now. He should be able to get his shit together and clean up his own messes and yet - Bradley presses his hands against his stomach. He tries to focus on the pressure. It helps a little. Like one of those small dog jackets that keep them docile during thunderstorms.

He closes his eyes. God, he hates himself.

“Did it bother you that Mav wasn’t there?”

Sli’s silent for long enough that Bradley peels open an eye. He almost falls out of the bed when he realizes that Sli’s on the bed with him, slowly lowering himself down to lie next to Bradley. He lifts up an arm.

“Uh,” Bradley says. Sli isn’t - he’s not big on touch. Bradley thinks it has something to do with all the scars on his back, thick and gnarly, crawling white and silver and even pink along his spine and muscle, and the round, pock-mark stamps burned into the soft parts of his arms, but he’s never had the courage to ask Sli himself or Ice about them. It doesn’t seem like something someone could ask about. So Sli’s not big on touch. Bradley is because he’s needy, but even with all his neediness he won’t ask Sli for things he doesn’t want to give. He’s already asked him to be a parent. Bradley’s pretty sure that voids any and all of his other requests just for fairness’s sake.

“C’mere,” Sli says. When Bradley doesn’t, he reaches over and starts pulling, tugging on any part of Bradley he can reach. “I’m not going to bite you, kid.”

“Are you drunk?”

“No.” Sli arranges them. Bradley ends up half-splayed over his chest, so close he can feel Sli’s heartbeat against his cheek, and it’s good. It’s nice. Bradley turns his head and hides his face and settles. Sli’s got him.

Sli always has him.

They lay like that for minutes, maybe hours, maybe days, and right as Bradley tips into sleep - and God, please let it be dreamless. Please let him have one night when he doesn’t stumble, half-alive, to the bathroom as all the poisonous things inside of him try to pry themselves out of their caskets and into the world - Sli tilts his head.

“Brad?”

Bradley hums.

“Leo and Rick want to see you.”

“Yeah?”

“They want to come over tomorrow. Said something about making cookies.” Sli pauses. “Does that sound like something you want? They won’t be upset if you say no.”

“Yeah?”

Sli huffs a little. “Yeah,” he mimics, and Bradley knows he’s smiling by the way the word curves, half-teasing and fond. He considers it a miracle. He can’t really remember when the last time someone was fond of him was, and yet here’s Sli. Here’s Sli and Ice and Wolfman and Hollywood -

“Okay,” Bradley says.

Here’s another thing about Sli that Bradley loves, he knows. He knows so much, so many things about the world and math, and - he’s a genius, Bradley knows. Ron Kerner’s a certified genius even if he looks like the guy always cast in the movies to be the big, dumb jock, and Bradley knows that because of all the math classes he’s passed only with Sli’s help and the way Ice doesn’t say I’m good when he gets awards, but we’re great. Ron’s great. I’m lucky to share the plane with him. Sli’s a genius and he knows. He understands. When Bradley says okay, he doesn’t question it. He doesn’t need to.

“Brad?”

Bradley sighs as if he’s pained. “Sli, ‘m trying to sleep…”

“Shh. Bradley, do you remember someone named Savant?”

“No?”

“Mm. You were young, I guess,” Sli says. “He’s a friend of ours. Really good guy. Sweet. He’s a medical officer, too, stationed in Miramar. He could help.”

Bradley frowns.

“I don’t -”

“You wouldn’t go to a hospital or anything,” Sli says. “He’d come here or we’d meet him somewhere or, hell, it could just be a phone call. He won’t take blood or make you do any tests, but he could talk to you about…things. About whatever’s going wrong. And he might know more than we do. He might be able to figure out how to help you.”

“I don’t know,” Bradley says. He hates how it sounds a little like failure, but Sli takes it in stride. Sli seems to take everything in stride. Bradley isn’t sure how much of that is actually Sli, or how much of it is because of the things he’s seen. The closer Bradley works toward graduation, the more he understands what being a naval aviator means - the more he gets Mav’s paranoia, almost, and the stronger the nightmares become.

“Okay. Maybe later, then,” Sli says. “But maybe talk to Tom in the meantime?”

“Ice?”

“He’s got something similar.”

That throws Bradley for a loop. He wiggles. Sli lets him move only when he gets an elbow into his ribs.

“Ow,” he says, raising an eyebrow.

“Ice has something similar?” Bradley repeats. “Like, our Ice, right?”

Sli looks at him.

“Sometimes people are good at hiding things. Sometimes they even hide them from people who love them, or they hide them for a very long time, but the thing is, is that the things they’re hiding are still there, and they have to come out eventually,” he says, slow and careful. “It might be good. It might be scary - and sometimes it’s scary to know, right? Sometimes it catches you off guard and it hurts to know that someone’s been hiding something like that from you for a long time, but when it’s out in the open -”

Sli breathes one big, great breath and somehow it fills Bradley up, too.

“Tom has attacks, too. He’s wired pretty tight,” Sli finishes. Or maybe starts. Bradley feels like he’s caught somewhere between two conversations.

“I’ll talk to him,” Bradley says.

“Good. That’s good.”

“Uncle Sli?”

“Hm?”

“Is that what you said to Ice? The things about hiding and -?”

“No. I wish I did, though. Maybe he would’ve talked to you more if I had.”

“Well, what did you say?”

Sli puts his hand on Bradley’s back, and Bradley settles with the weight. It’s familiar. It feels like home - like early morning grocery shopping with Ice, all Bradley, if we’re going to get Pop-Tarts we’re going to get cherry or brown sugar, not wild berry you heathen, or late night motorcycle rides with Mav that always turned into here, Brad, sit like this. Straight up. Good, okay, now twist the grip towards you - slowly! A little goes a long way, Baby Goose, or, better yet, hey, kid, from Sli on Friday night, pulling Bradley aside from everyone else and wrapping an arm around his shoulders, you want to come over this weekend? Have a little sleepover?

Yeah, Bradley always answered, yeah I want to come over.

“It’s alright.”

“Huh?”

Sli cleared his throat. “I said ‘it’s alright’ to him. That’s it. Somehow it always used to work. I never understood why.”

Bradley knows. Bradley’s living proof of it. For all that Sli’s a genius and for everything he knows, his own magnetism or power or whatever the fuck it is that has bleeding hearts and broken souls and blond-haired catastrophes in human form reach out to him has always been a blind spot. Sli thinks his alright is the same as everyone else’s, but it isn’t. His alright is some strange combination of alright, what’s stopping you and alright, we’re going to get through this and alright, if anyone can do it, it’s you all rolled into one. It’s loyalty and love and the same rolled-up-sleeve attitude that every cheesy wartime poster has - except Sli makes it not cheesy. Sli makes it admirable. Sli makes it believable. If he says the sky isn’t falling down, it isn’t. If he says alright, it’s falling down but we’ll fix it, it’ll get fixed. It’s like some law of nature. It’s like Sli is some law of nature, as undeniable and inarguable as gravity.

So, Bradley knows. He knows why Sli’s alright worked on Ice, and he wants to tell him or try to tell him. He does. He just - he falls asleep before he can, there one minute and out the next, and he wakes up to Grace and Hannah whispering goodbye to him before they head out to New York for the great Kazansky holiday reunion.

He blinks. He blinks again.

He isn’t sure if it was because his luck is finally changing for the better or if it was because he’d fallen asleep with Sli’s it’s alright playing around in his head like a record, but he wakes up feeling like a person again, a real living, breathing one. His mouth doesn’t taste like bile. He doesn’t remember oceans or broken necks or funeral caskets. All he has is bedsheets and sunlight, and God, he’s missed them.

He’s smiling when Holly opens the door to his and Wolf’s apartment. It feels strange on his face, but most of his smiles do, even before the Big Bang of USNA. As a kid, he’d practiced them in a mirror for hours until they looked natural. He got good at them, so good he sometimes tricked himself into feeling happier because when Bradley smiled for the first time after Dad’s death, it made Mom cry and laugh and smile. She cupped his face and kissed his cheeks. There’s my Brad, she said, there’s that smile. His smiling made her happy. The no-brainer had been to keep smiling.

The no-brainer is still to keep smiling even if Bradley knows he doesn’t need to. The thing is, is that Bradley doesn’t know if he can stop. Smiles have been trained into him like never cross the street without looking, baby, or don’t ever leave the front door unlocked, okay? Matter of fact, don’t leave the back unlocked, either. The people who really need to get in already have keys. They don’t need us opening doors.

“There he is,” Holly says. He’s smiling too, and Bradley gets this swooping feeling in his stomach because once upon a time, staring at old photos of Dad smiling had been too hard, so he had turned to Hollywood instead. Bradley’s a knockoff. Holly’s pristine. He’s mint-conditioned, organic, they-don’t-make-them-like-they-used-to.

Bradley’s eyes flicker to Wolf. He wonders if the RIO notices - if he’s ever noticed - but Wolf’s smiling, too. His is smaller but sharper. It reminds Bradley of Mav.

Wolf drags him inside. Holly waves goodbye to Sli and shuts the door. 

“Baby Goose,” Wolf cackles, and God, Bradley’s kind of missed that sound. It’s some unholy creation of cocaine-fueled euphoria and a coyote’s bray, but it’s home in the same way Sli’s hand on his back or Ice fidgeting with his hair is. “Let me bring you into the kitchen. I wanna get a look at you.”

“Sure, Wolf.”

Wolf makes a pleased sound. Spending time with him and Hollywood felt different than spending time with anyone else in the ‘86 crowd. Everyone else felt a little like parents or uncles. Wolf and Holly felt more like brothers, sometimes older but mostly younger. They liked having fun, and they liked making fun, especially if it involved other people. Bradley’s best decisions had been made with them, and so had his worst.

Bradley gets pulled into the kitchen. Wolf lets go and regards him. Holly appears behind him and does the same.

“Well?” Bradley says, wiggling his hands and fingers and trying not to look as uncomfortable as he feels. He doesn’t really have to worry about Holly, but Wolf - it’s hard to figure out what Wolf knows. His RIO stare isn’t as intense as Sli’s, but it’s cunning. Crafty. Everyone likes to underestimate him because of how hyper he was, but Bradley’s seen him scent out a secret too many times not to feel wary. Besides that, if push came to shove, Wolf could be just as intimidating as Sli. Bradley still remembers the day some guy at a waterpark tried to take him. The man followed him to the bathroom and grabbed his wrist before Bradley could touch the door handle, dragging him towards the parking lot. Bradley only screamed once before the guy put a hand over his mouth, but once was enough.

That’s not your kid, Wolf said, appearing like some avenging angel even while soaking wet and his hair plastered to his head, so get your fucking hands off of him before I snap them off.

The guy let him go. Bradley cried afterward and his wrist bruised something terrible, but Wolf had hugged and shushed him. You’re okay, he said, you’re okay, Brad. I’ll never let anything bad happen to you, okay? I won’t let anyone hurt you. Nobody. But let’s get some ice for this wrist, huh? And maybe a sundae. You want a sundae?

So Wolf’s protective. Scratch that. He’s protective of Bradley in a way that makes him hope the nobody-hurting-you rule doesn’t apply to himself. He really hopes it doesn’t apply to himself.

“Not bad,” Holly says, which is - it’s vague for him and that’s troubling because Holly doesn’t really do vague. Wolf’s noncommittal hum is out of character for him, too. The two of them are bright, pushy, and loud.

Bradley drops his hands.

“You can be honest, you know,” he says. He immediately wants to dive out a window because Christ, Bradley, come on, but watching the two of them try to tiptoe around something only makes everything feel worse.

“Honest?” Wolf asks, checking.

“You’ve already talked to Sli, haven’t you? We might as well…what’s the point in pretending, you know? We might as well acknowledge it.”

They’re both quiet for a minute.

“That’s mature of you, Brad,” Holly says. “I mean it. Honest.”

Bradley nods because Holly’s always been as sincere as his smile. If he thinks Bradley’s acting mature about all of this, then Bradley isn’t going to burst his bubble. There’s confronting and then there’s whatever Bradley’s doing - no, not doing. Bradley’s not doing anything. He’s not going out of his way to have nightmares or to not keep anything down, he’s just existing and they’re appearing anyways. Bradley’s not confronting so much as he’s being confronted.

Somehow, he thinks, that’s worse.

Confronting means he can meet it on his own terms, on his time. Being confronted means this. It means standing in Holly and Wolf’s kitchen pounds lighter than he should be and probably as pale as a corpse, smiling some fake-ass smile he made to make his Mom and Mav and everyone think he was okay when really all he could keep seeing was that casket rising above his head, heavy with the weight of somebody who had his eyes and his nose and the unusual honk-hitch in his laugh and so many I’m so sorry for you loss that they took all the oxygen out of the room until Bradley ran, wailing, out the doors of the funeral home and into the street until Sli scooped him out of oncoming traffic and into his arms, murmuring it’s okay, it’s alright until it sunk halfway into Bradley’s bones -

“Bradley. Breathe.”

Bradley sucks in a breath.

“‘M okay,” he says. “‘M okay.”

Something shrieks in the kitchen. Bradley rocks away from the noise and throws his hip straight into a countertop. The pain makes everything focus. He has the sudden urge for a piece of gum and fumbles with his pockets, finding the stick Sli makes him keep on him at all times and putting it in his mouth.

“Is that gum?”

Bradley closes his eyes and feels sick. His chest hurts. He can’t breathe. He’s trying - of course he’s trying, who wouldn’t be trying - but everything comes in too fast and leaves too quickly. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale, exhale. Inhale exhale - Christ, Christ, Christ.

He has to breathe, he knows. He tries. He tries to breathe.

He can’t.

The cradle of his chest starts to hurt. Hurt bad. He presses one of his hands there, looking for a wound - maybe he was stabbed. Maybe he was shot. He can’t breathe and it hurts and those two things mean that something’s wrong. Something’s wrong with him.

He doesn’t find a wound, but maybe that’s because it’s the inside that’s broken, like a watch or something. Didn’t they need to be reset if they ran too long? Because Bradley’s been running, running, running for as long as he can remember and the reset is coming up too fast, too sudden, too big and immovable for him to grapple and shove back down to inexistence inside of himself and - 

He’s tired. He can’t breathe. His chest hurts.

He might be dying. He might be dying and that’s not fair. He doesn’t want to die. He wants to meet Dad and see Mom again, but not like this. Please, God, not like this.

“-ley? Bradley? Can you hear me?”

Bradley wheezes.

“I’m going to take that as a yes. Rick, can you -?”

Bradley’s neck goes cold all of a sudden. He shivers, gasps, gets some air into his lungs that burns so bad he chokes.

“Bradley, stick with me, okay?”

Bradley nods. He knows that voice. He knows it.

“Okay, that’s good. That’s really good, Brad. Can you open your eyes for me?”

Bradley, apparently, can do that. His vision is a little blurry, but it clears when he blinks. His face feels warm. Is he crying? He might be crying.

Wolf’s in front of him. Wolf’s crouching right in front of him because Bradley’s in a chair somehow - the shriek? Was the shriek the chair moving? - and Wolf’s right there with him.

“Hey, there’s our Gosling,” Wolf says. His voice sounds slurry. Or maybe Bradley’s hearing is just slurry. He’s not sure. The whole world feels tilted on its axis, and Bradley didn’t have enough time to hold on. “Can you tell me three things that you see, Brad? Just three, okay?”

Bradley squints.

“You,” he says, breathing through his teeth. The air still burns. “You and, uh, a counter? A fridge.”

“Perfect. That was good. So, so good. Now, how about two things you can touch? Can you feel anything?”

“‘S cold. On my neck.”

“And? One more thing, Brad. One more thing and you’ve got it.”

Bradley squirms. It seems to shift something back into place - maybe he’s finally resetting - because his chest starts loosening. He taps at it.

“Your chest?” Wolf asks.

Bradley expands his hand, spreading his fingers out, and then swallows some air. “Doesn’t feel so tight.”

Wolf nods as if he understands. Maybe he does. Maybe he’s understood Bradley from the moment he walked in. “One last thing, okay? I want you to really focus on this one if you can, alright? Tell me what you taste.”

Bradley focuses. Bradley focuses really, really hard.

“Peppermint,” he says. He wonders why he tastes peppermint and then - right. Right. The gum. The gum Sli gave him to calm down. The same gum that Ice always used to pop and snap and blow bubbles with, flashing his shark teeth at Bradley behind a spectrum of pink bubblegum or a white so frosty it almost matched his God-awful dye job. Bradley musters up as much Tom Kazansky, Iceman, ice-fucking-cold as he can and forces himself to blow a bubble until it pops.

It does. Bradley collects it back up and does it again.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Wolf raises his head up. Bradley’s vision is still blurry - he really is crying, then - and he stares into a face that probably knows him better than he knows himself.

“Stop,” he says, very quietly. “Don’t, Brad.”

“I’m -”

“Bradley.”

Bradley crumples forward. Wolf catches him.

“You’re okay,” he murmurs, and Bradley thinks of sunscreen and chlorine and a bruised wrist and way too much hot fudge on vanilla ice cream but mainly he thinks of Wolf. Mainly he thinks of Holly and Wolf, both always laughing and wild and dragging him into places and scenarios he’d never thought imaginable, and he - and he wonders, maybe, if he’s not so much of an only child after all.

“You’re okay,” Wolf repeats. “Nothing’s going to hurt you, Gosling.”

Bradley squeezes his eyes shut because apparently, Wolf’s rule did include himself. It isn’t the first time Bradley’s been called his own worst enemy, but it’s really the only time it’s mattered. It matters because Wolf’s fighting against it, anyway. Wolf is willing to go tooth and nail and pieced-together-grounding techniques to drag Bradley back where he belongs, back to who he belongs to. Wolf’s fighting for him, and Bradley - Bradley isn’t sure when he had given up.

None of them speak for a long, long time.

Bradley tries to pull away after a while because he’s needy, sure, but he isn’t childish, but Wolf holds him tight and doesn’t budge. Bradley relaxes back into him. He wraps his arms around Wolf’s neck. Behind him, Holly removes the ice wrapped in a towel from his neck and scratches at his back, long, steady strokes up and down.

“Do you remember my dad’s funeral?”

“Oh, Brad,” Holly whispers.

“I didn’t think I did,” Bradley says, his voice breaking, “but then -”

Wolf, mercifully, finishes for him.

“But then you started thinking about it?”

“I remember.”

“Does it scare you?”

“It scares me more that I forgot. Why did I forget it?”

“You were really young,” Wolf says. “You were just a little kid, Brad. You didn’t know what was going on. You couldn’t keep up with it all.”

Holly hums.

“It’s a coping mechanism. Repression or something like that. It’s when you unconsciously block something when it's unpleasant or, you know, hard to deal with.”

Bradley twists just far enough to stare at him. Holly gives a shy grin and flushes.

“‘S what Google said,” he says.

“What?”

“Google,” Holly repeats. “Ron told us about what was going on and we wanted to help you with it, but we didn’t know how, exactly, so…”

“Google?”

Holly makes a little space between his fingers, measuring. “And a little bit of Yahoo, but Google was better. Much better.”

Bradley snorts. He can’t help it because -

“You guys are ridiculous.”

“We love you,” Holly says, still so sincere that it makes Bradley want to start crying again. “Love makes everybody ridiculous.”

Bradley sniffles.

“I think,” he says, “I think I could do with some ridiculousness.”

Wolf squeezes him.

“Of the sugar cookie kind?”

Bradley smiles into Wolf’s shoulder and this one - this one feels different. It feels a little real, a little genuine. It’s one Bradley doesn’t have to pretend with, and he responds, “Is there any other kind?”

“There’s our Baby Goose,” Wolf says, and it sounds a lot like we’ve found you, we’ve found you Bradley, and Christ we’re going to do everything we can to keep you. It should be scary, maybe, to have someone be so dedicated to him, to have someone see his worse and still keep him around, to have someone so willing to fight for things you never guessed needed to be fought for, but there’s something freeing in it, too. Something effortless. Something weightless.

Bradley’s felt heavy for a while now. Since ‘86, really, and he wants to know what it feels like to float - to fly. Bradley wants to feel weightless and airborne, flying so close to the horizon that caskets and oceans stop seeming so big. He wants that. He’ll fight for that.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“He’s sleeping.”

In the dark, a motorcycle's engine cuts off. Something shifts outside of the porchlight’s glow. Ron barely spares it a glance. He knows who it’ll be and what he looks like. Mav doesn’t mature so much as he just gets older. Deep down inside himself, he’s still the same pilot who stood on his tiptoes to puff up in Ron’s face and glance over his shoulder at the same time to watch Ice walk away. Ron knows that Mav, and knowing him makes it easy to call bullshit on the one parked in his driveway.

“I didn’t want to see him.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I didn’t want to see him,” Mav repeats. Ron leans against the railing of his porch, unmoved and unamused.

“I heard you the first time, Mav,” he says.

“You’re a real ass, Kerner.”

“It takes one to know one.”

Mav stares at him through the dark. Ron can feel it.

“You hate me?”

“No,” Ron says, “but I don’t particularly like you right now.”

“Does he hate me?”

“No. He just doesn’t particularly like himself right now.”

“He needs -”

Mav makes a noise that’s more Pete Mitchell than Maverick. It’s one Ron can’t describe but understands way down deep in his soul. It sounds a little like help but more like therapy. Ron has to agree with both, so he does.

“I worry about him. I worry about him being…there.”

“In USNA or up in the air? Because he’s already at one and hellbent on the other.”

“He’s not ready for it.”

“And? None of us were ready for it, Mav, not even you or Tom. That’s what the school’s for. That’s what training is for. That’s what hops are for. He’ll make mistakes. He’ll learn. He’ll become ready for it - you know that.”

Mav sighs. “What do you want me to say, Ron?”

“He’s eighteen, Mav, he’s got to make his own choices.” Ron pauses. “You’ve got to make your own choices.”

“Ron.”

“Carole -”

“Don’t,” Mav says, hissing, and yeah, Ron expected that. Mav’s kneejerk response was always anger as if he was forever stuck in the dregs of the Navy, fighting off everybody who sneered at Mitchell and stung him in places that never healed right. “Don’t say her name.”

“Why’d you pull Bradley’s papers?”

“I love him.”

“Yeah, Mav, you love him - you love him too much to do something like this to him and pretend it wasn’t wrong of you to do it.”

“Maybe I don’t.”

“Don’t what? Don’t love him enough or know it was wrong? Both are pretty simple to figure out.” Ron crosses his arms. “Tom thinks you aren’t guilty.”

Mav wanders out of the dark, into the porchlight. Ron hadn’t heard him leave his bike, but Mav can be sneaky when he wants to be - flipped inversions, sudden silence, and pleading, sweet eyes of some mismanaged alleycat. Mav’s had a rough life. He and Ron are the same in that regard, except Ron grew up and got domesticated. Mav didn’t. Mav still skates the line of feral, caring too much and thinking too little with his claws half-out and waiting.

Mav appears. Ron doesn’t budge.

“You aren’t seeing him,” Ron says. Mav’s throat jumps.

“I know,” he says. He looks up at Ron. “What do you think? Think I’m guilty?”

“I think you’re here, in front of my house at - what? Two in the morning? - to try and see the kid you raised.”

“We. We raised him.”

“Nick and Carole would’ve been proud.”

Mav flinches as if Ron has said something mean. Maybe he did, or maybe anything about Nick and Carole always sounds mean to Mav because they raised him. Mav likes to pretend that they didn’t, and, sure, he was fully grown when he and Nick merged into Mav and Goose, but that didn’t mean much. They housed and fed and loved him, trying to smooth down some of his rough edges so he stopped catching himself up on them and bleeding, and that sounds too much like parenting to Ron.

“Of Bradley?”

“Yeah,” Ron says. Mav looks young in the dark. It might be a trick of the light - has to be because they’re all hurtling toward the bend where wings get dull and rusty, either on their chest or in a velvet box, and Tom and Marcus seem to be the only two who might avoid that kind of slow death - but Ron looks down at him and swears he sees twenty-four, sunbaked and smiling on Miramar’s volleyball court. “And us, too.”

Mav frowns.

“What’s there to be proud of?”

“I think more than you know.”

“I hate it when you do that - when you go all ancient Greek oracle on me,” Mav says, snorting. He turns his head to look out at the street. Ron wonders if Tom knows he’s missing because before they were wrangling Bradley, they were watching Mav. What do you think? Tom asked him once, the two of them staring at a half-drunk, sweating pile of limbs on their base housing couch that was supposed to be the Navy’s most promising pilot.

I think he’s a mess, Ron said and he wonders, sometimes, why he didn’t pull Tom aside and tell him and we don’t need to be cleaning up any of those, okay? We’ve got our own shit to deal with, Tom. Let him go. Maybe it’s because Ron knows Tom wouldn’t’ve listened to him. Maybe it’s because Ron already saw all the looks and the posturing and exchanged far too many commiserating looks with Nick to know that telling Tom to stay away was like telling Juliet to stay on her balcony and cover her ears whenever Romeo came calling.

Or maybe it’s because it had been his and Tom’s jetwash that had killed Nick. Maybe it’s because if Tom dipped down instead of pulling up - if Ron had told Tom to dip down to the hard deck instead of trying to bank back around Mav - Nick would still be around to raise both of his boys.

“Do you want to know what I think?”

Mav tilts his head.

“Yeah,” he says, “I think I do.”

“I think you’re guilty,” Ron says. “But not about Bradley so much as…”

He trails off, but it’s fine. Mav winces hard enough that Ron knows he understands what he meant.

“It’s fine, though.”

“What?”

“It’s fine to feel guilty about them. I do. I am,” Ron says. “So is Tom and Rick and Leo and everybody else and, yeah, it’s different for you. I’m sure it’s worse. I’m sure it eats you up inside in a way that we can’t really understand because you love a lot, Mav. Your problem here isn’t because you don’t love somebody enough.”

Mav stares at him. Something twitches in his jaw.

“Yeah?” He says, low and tense. Ron is tipping closer and closer to that puffed-up version of Mav, the one who always attacks because he never learned that criticism could be healing or didn’t have to come with a kick to his ribs. “And what’s my problem then, Ron?”

Ron doesn’t say anything at first. He just reaches out next to him and finds the paper towel bundle Bradley had given to him when he’d come back to Ron’s pink-faced and giggly, little boy serene. He offers it out to Mav. Mav takes it while giving him a look. He opens it up. Inside is a Christmas cookie, man-shaped, and it’s -

It’s Mav decorated, all smeared leather jacket frosting and a piped smirk.

“Bradley wanted me to give you that.”

Mav’s shoulders fall. He holds it like it’s precious.

“You can love somebody,” Ron says, watching Mav’s hands shake and his head dip down, down, down until his chin touches his chest, “and still disagree with them.”

Mav doesn’t look at him. That’s fine, Ron thinks. He hadn’t expected Mav to anyway.

“You can still love somebody and realize that they might be wrong. That’s kind of what love’s about, Mav.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I think you don’t think I understand.”

“You -”

“It’s late,” Ron says. “It’s late and I’m tired. You’re probably tired. But here’s the thing, Mav - when you think about Carole, do you think about Nick?”

Mav looks up from the cookie.

“What?”

“I don’t know what you two ever talked about or what she asked you - but I know that you did talk. I know that she asked you something at the very end because as scared and guilty as you are, Mav, you love Bradley too much to ever stand in his way like this unless someone asked you to.”

“Carole never -”

But Mav’s face is pale and shockingly open, and Ron might not be his RIO, but he’d known Mav’s. He’d known Nick. He knew Carole, too, in snatches and bursts, and as sweet as she was, she had been lost and scared and saw too much of Nick in a boy who hardly knew who Nick even was.

“She did. She asked you something and you loved her too much - you felt too guilty - to refuse her. That’s fine. This is what Carole wanted. This is her wish,” Ron says, “but did you ever consider what Nick might’ve wanted? What he would’ve done if Bradley wanted to fly?”

“Nick’s dead.”

“So’s Carole,” Ron says. It isn’t what Mav meant and maybe it’s a low blow, but it’s the truth. More than that, it might just be a truth that Mav needs to hear. “Carole’s dead. Nick’s dead. Bradley isn’t. He needs some help living, actually, and if we’re going to help him - if you’re going to help him, if you’re going to the Mav he wants and needs in his life - we’ve got to stop focusing on the dead. We’ve got to stop feeling guilty.”

Mav opens his mouth. He closes it. He looks back down at the cookie. Ron turns away and goes back inside. He leans against his front door and just breathes for a few seconds before he wanders down the hall to peer into Bradley’s room. The kid’s dead to the world. Ron makes a note to himself to thank Leo and Rick. Neither they nor Bradley told him what happened over at their apartment besides the obvious, but whatever it was had exhausted the kid enough to actually get him to sleep. Small mercies, Ron thinks, or signs of progress?

In the distance, a motorcycle comes to life. Ron closes his eyes, listening to its rumble, and he stays there, on the boundary of Bradley’s bedroom and in the gentle quiet of the night, until he can’t hear Mav anymore.

He opens his eyes. He heads to bed.

He decides, eventually, on progress, and he hopes he isn’t wrong.

Chapter Text

The phone rings.

Tom doesn’t pick it up. He’s got a migraine flaring up behind his eyes, whiskey-warm and malicious, so he’s content to let the landline go — besides, he knows who it’ll be. Mav left ages ago. For the first few hours, Tom listened to the purr of his motorcycle circling the culdesac like some trapped and fierce animal, and then it drifted away. It didn’t take a genius to know where he went or what happened. If he really wants to, Tom can picture it: Ron leaning against his front door with that calculating, heavy-eyed look of his and Mav dodging, diving, trying to escape it even as walks right up to it.

Tom snorts, pinching the bridge of his nose.

The two of them together are like an unstoppable force meeting an unmovable object. They’re both stubborn and too smart for their own good. They’re both survivors. Ron’s childhood is an enigma even among their tight-knit, fucked-up family, but it’s Mav’s beat in a different flavor. Abandonment, embarrassment, absentee mothers, etc., etc.

It’s almost funny how similar they are, really. Tom has surrounded himself with — well, he doesn’t know how to categorize Ron or Mav. They defy classification.

Regardless, they’re sometimes too alike for comfort. They know where and how and when to hit each other to garner the worst pain. They talk a language all their own, those two, and it often isn’t pretty. Sometimes Tom thinks that’s why they both tried so hard with Bradley. Neither of them wanted him to end up like them, but in the end, he’s become something worse. 

He’s ended up like Tom. 

His face is wet. Tom touches his eyes, searching. Migraines always make them water, but he would be lying if he blames it just on that. He does it anyway. Tonight feels like a night for dishonesty, and that means Tom will pretend to be fine even while nursing a bitch of a headache and the weight of ruining Bradley Bradshaw’s life.

The phone cuts off. The silence echoes, and he winces when it’s broken again by the shrill clatter of the landline. This time he answers it.

“Did you kill him?”

“I wouldn’t make you a widow, Tom,” Ron says, and Tom closes his eyes. He’s always liked listening to Ron talk. He’s been trained to like how Ron talks, really. There are only so many times a man can save your life before you owe it to him. Tom listens to Ron like one might God. “He’s coming home, I think.”

“Alright.”

There’s a pause on the other end of the phone.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Tom says. “Why?”

“You’re slurring.”

“I’m drunk.”

“Okay,” Ron says, and Tom hears how bad this time, what do you need, what can I do, Tom? Tom’s stomach twists. He rests the phone in the cradle of his shoulder and jaw, breathing. His head throbs.

“I just finished reading Alpha Zulu, Ron.”

I have the weather, Ron. I’m reading the forecast. I’m fit to fly and talk and walk and act like a person. I promise I’m okay. Come on, Ron. Believe me.

“Okay,” Ron repeats, softer.

“What about you?”

Ron laughs as if Tom’s asked a stupid question. Maybe it is. Tom isn’t sure he’s as good at reading people as he used to be. Mav is proof enough of that.

“I’m doing fine, Tom. The cargo, though —”

Tom snorts again.

“The cargo?”

“You don’t want to give Brad a codename?” Ron says, half-assing but honest. He’s the only man alive that Tom knows who can pull that off. It’s a talent he’s jealous of. “I thought Mav might be back already.”

“He’s getting drunk, too. Probably.”

“Jesus.”

Tom hums. He leans against the wall, half in and out of the kitchen. The lights are off. The only thing he can see is the nebulous glow of the living room Christmas tree. It’s bare beside the lights. Neither he nor Mav has had the time — or courage — to put all the tinsel and ornaments on. That had always been Bradley’s job. The star had been, too. When he was smaller, Tom used to sit him on his shoulders, so he could reach the top. Mav would always hover by his elbow, fidgeting, one hand just shy of touching Brad’s back. He’s not going to fall, Tom would say, I’m not going to drop him, and Mav would nod, saying I know, I know even though he still waited, ready, at Tom’s side.

It’s not that I don’t trust you, Tom, it’s just –

“Bullshit,” Tom murmurs.

“Hm? You say something?”

He shakes himself. Mav’s voice fades, but the ephemeral weight of Bradley stays, balancing on his shoulders and tugging at his hair.

You won’t drop me, Ice?

You’re good up there, kid, I promise. I’ve got you.

“Tom?”

“I’m here,” he says. “I’ve got you.”

“I told Bradley about you.”

Tom’s chest clenches.

“What?”

“I told him about you,” Ron says. “About the fits you have. I thought —”

It isn’t often Ron asks for his forgiveness. The last time Tom ever remembers it happening is when Ron came clean about him and Sarah — listen, Tom, that girl I’ve been seeing? Yeah, yeah, the one that makes me nice or whatever, well, she’s actually your sister. No, I’m not joking. I’m serious. It’s serious. She and I are serious. Or, I want to make it serious — and that happened over a decade ago. Ron Kerner apologies were few and far between and hardly sounded like admissions of guilt, but they were. They always were.

Tom tells himself to breathe. 

“Did it help him?”

“Think so,” Ron says. “But still, it wasn’t my secret to tell. ”

“How did he take it?”

Ron pauses. When he speaks again, it’s slow, recalculating.

“Fine. He likes the gum trick, I think. Likes your flavor and everything.”

Tom swallows. He thinks he might be sick. He braces against the wall, turning away from the tree, and tries not to remember some of the worst days of his life. He tastes peppermint. It makes him want to crawl out of his skin, out of the house, out of this world.

“Funny,” he says instead, fighting himself.

“He wants to see you.”

“Yeah?”

“I tried to see if he would talk to Savant, but Brad didn’t seem thrilled about it.”

“But he’s thrilled to talk to me?”

“‘Course he is,” Ron says.

Tom knocks his forehead against the wall. His mind whirls. That’s the problem with his migraines — they’re just enough to knock him out physically, to lay him out for days on end if he isn’t lucky, but they don’t stop him from thinking. His thoughts turn rapid and thin, slipping between his fingers every time he tries to catch them, but they still come. There’s no turning off Tom Kazansky’s brain. It is always on, on, on. It’s his second greatest weakness.

His first, of course, is Bradley.

“I’ll talk to him,” Tom says. He smells peppermint now, heady and sharp. He makes the mistake of glancing into the kitchen and sees Brad, so small he has to tiptoe to peer over the counter, and there comes the memory: do you have any mints, Uncle Ice? Mom always puts them in my hot chocolate. She says it makes it taste more like Christmas.

No, Tom always wanted to tell him. Carol put mints in her hot chocolate because that’s what Nick did. He put them in anything hot. Tea, coffee, anything. Every day had been Christmas to Nick, and now Tom couldn’t think of the holiday without also thinking that was some ice-cold maneuvering up there, Kazansky. Some really chilling stuff. Do you have ice in your veins or something? Wowza and a canopy that never cleared.

Don’t look, Tom, Ron told him. Don’t look, keep flying, that’s it, steady. Steady.

Tom kept steady. He hadn’t looked, hadn’t reacted, had stayed ice-fucking-cold, and maybe it saved him. Maybe it was a small mercy to be the only one out of the four of them to not know what Nick looked like floating in that big ocean. He thinks the not-knowing might have made it easier to raise Bradley, and then he sees the top of Bradley’s hair raising above the counter, staring, waiting, and there — that’s Tom’s ghost. That’s his Nick.

He covers his eyes.

“Tom?”

“I’m fine. I just — you remember that old Christmas story? The Dickens one?”

“Huh?”

“Nothing,” he says. “Never mind.”

“You want to see him tomorrow?”

It isn’t enough time. Tom knows it isn’t. He agrees anyway. He’ll have to wear shades and stay away from noise, but Bradley wants to talk, so Tom will. It’s the least he can do.

“It’s not your fault.”

“Ron.”

Ron stops. It’s a challenge, Tom knows. His RIO is a blunt one, calling things as he sees them. It’s one of his best attributes, and it’s the one Tom hates the most.

Ron tries again.

“Just because we were overseas and you were here —”

“Kerner.”

“I’m just saying, Tom.”

“I know,” Tom says. Another phantom appears at his hip, Bradley with sleep-mussed hair and one pajama leg hiked up too high, his small hands reaching for the phone’s cord, wrapping it around his slim fingers. ‘S that Sli, Ice? Uncle Sli? Can you hear me? Are you coming home soon? Can’t you come back soon? I miss you. Ice isn’t any fun.

Tom shoos him away. Bradley disappears.

“I’ll pick him up tomorrow, okay? We’ll go somewhere. We’ll talk. I’ll try to convince him to talk to Savant.”

Ron hums.

“He always did listen to you the most.”

“He’s used to it.”

“He trusts you,” Ron corrects, and Tom’s lips press together. He wonders how many people he’s damned by trust alone. Too many, maybe. Tom is a hard man from a long line of hard people, his body and heart remembering those hard days in the East even if those memories don’t belong to him, not really. They’re in his blood regardless, settling like damp silt in his veins. He’s a creature of survival. It’s a wonder anyone ever thinks he should be held responsible for someone else’s and yet — here he is, in a house one room too big with a Christmas tree that looks like it still belongs in the hard, wild place.

He hangs up the phone. On the other side of town, Ron and Brad both settle down for a long winter’s nap. Tom heads to his office.

He’s a workaholic by nature, but even he knows it’s a little fucked up to feel comforted by the sight of his desk and the heavy chair behind it, the stack of confidential manila folders in the uppermost drawer, the half-pack of gum slotted into the grooves of his pen holder. He sits down in his chair and pools there, glancing over at the half-closed blinds. The night’s dark. The only light is that of the neighbors’ Christmas decorations, and Tom’s head throbs in multi-colored glory.

He feels, blindly, for the drawer underneath the once already occupied by the military. That’s Kazansky’s drawer. The one that Tom slips migraine-thick fingers into is just his, just Tom’s. It’s filled with a tiny, colorful stack of comics. He takes only the uppermost one, the cover soft and faded in his hands. The drawer closes. Tom presses the pad of his thumb into the untidy scrawl along the bottom — for the real Iceman, Merry Christmas, Brad (and Carole) — and remembers the beginning of his end.

I’m Brad. Bradley. My Dad’s Nick.

Goose? Tom gave a half-curious look down at the little blond boy hanging down by his thigh. He snapped his gum. The kid squinted his eyes up, sort of wild about the noise and so Tom does it again. Nah, can’t be. Where are your feathers?

Dad’s not a goose! He’s a pilot.

No kidding.

Are you a pilot?

Yes. Tom tapped at his helmet, the damn, heavy thing still sweat-slick from his earlier hop and dangling from his half-curled fingers. Brad stopped right there in the hall to cradle it, turning Tom’s wrist around just to mouth out the letters on his paint.

Iceman? Brad’s nose crinkled. Like the X-Men?

The what-man?

The X-Men. Iceman. He’s a superhero in the comics. He has ice powers. Dad says that Cyclops is cooler because he’s the leader and can shoot stuff from his eyes, but Iceman’s the coolest. Get it?

No, Tom hadn’t gotten it. Bradley looked up at him as if he was a poor, pitiful thing instead of one of the Navy’s finest pilots.

He’s a good guy. A superhero.

I’m not a superhero.

But you’re Iceman.

Nick came around then, flustered. Tom saw his face go right from pasty white to red when he caught sight of the two of them, and Tom grabbed Brad’s tiny hand in his, marveling for a moment at how delicate it felt between his long fingers, before moving toward Bradshaw. Bradley remained entirely unaware of the danger he faced.

Look, Dad. I found Iceman!

You mean Iceman found you, Nick retorted. They hadn’t been friends back then, at least not nearly as close as they started to get during Top Gun, so Tom only bared his teeth when Nick scooped Bradley up and raised his eyebrows, mocking. Because he’s just such a sweetheart like that.

Wouldn’t have to be one if you actually watched your kid. This is an airbase, Bradshaw, not a daycare.

Tom breathes like he’s been taught — low and slow. It hurts to think about that part of his life, back when he was his hardest and meanest and nothing close to either a good guy or superhero, but family days kept being approved, and Bradley had been fascinated with the blue of Tom’s eyes and the pale, sharp blond of his hair and the very way he moved, steady and sure-footed, navigating the ground like he was still up in that cockpit, sweaty and cramped and with his heart hammering in the hollow of his throat.

The X-Men have a jet, too.

Yeah?

They call it the Blackbird. What do you call your plane?

The F-14 Tomcat.

That’s a dumb name. Who named it?
My bosses.

Your bosses sound dumb.

They were and they are, and Tom wonders if Bradley still thinks that way. It’s a question for tomorrow when Tom is headache-drunk and Bradley is stress-sober, and it isn’t so hard to think about that little boy’s first Christmas without peppermint in his hot chocolate or Nick’s off-tune carols in the air, a third-hand comic pressing into the slip of skin between his arm and side — This was Dad’s and then it was mine and now it’s yours, Ice, for the real Iceman. Merry Christmas from Brad (and Carole, God, don’t be a stranger, Tom. Please).

Tom covers his eyes with his hand, shuddering. His face is wet again; he thinks he’s melting.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tom meets Bradley at the beach. It’s hell on his eyes, but it’s his and Brad’s place. Ron has the baseball pitch, and Mav has the garage, but Tom has the ocean —  wild water, frothy waves, the subtle scent of its salt. He’d taught Bradley how to swim here. How to surf, too. He still remembers the gossamer weight of that blond boy rocking on the Pacific with him, their swim trunks damp and their fingers hanging over the edge of Tom’s board. 

Mav had given him hell for taking Bradley there — isn’t one Bradshaw in that water enough, Thomas? — but Bradley swam like a shark, craving it, and Tom thought his hard thoughts: if Brad can’t float in that ocean then we’ve already lost him.

Maybe he’s still thinking about it. Or maybe he just knows that the beach is the only place Mav won’t go, making it the only safe place Tom can give Brad.

It doesn’t take Brad long to find him. It’s a little too cold to actually swim, but the sand is gritty and San Deigo warm, perfect for whatever hatchet needs to be buried. Tom twists his head when his body becomes covered in shadow — Bradley sinks into the shore next to him, big and adult and still in a way that’s unfamiliar to Tom. He looks so much like Nick. He looks so much like Carole. He wonders if there’s any room leftover between the two, some microscopic cubby for Brad to cram all the rest of him in.

“You look terrible,” Bradley says, breaking the silence.

“Kettle,” Tom sighs, touching his chest. He points at Bradley. “Pot.”

It gets Bradley to smile — an odd twinge up of his lips — and Tom considers it some great victory. The silence descends again. For everything that Tom is — asshole genius extraordinaire, methodical pilot, textbook Boy Scout — an intelligent speaker he isn’t. He pleads for Bradley to forgive him and then barrels on.

“Ron says we need to talk.”

Bradley looks down at his hands.

“Yeah,” he says.

“Okay.” Tom tries to remember how to be gentle. He tries to remember how to be kind again, how it felt to let Bradley twist his wrist around and trail his small hands over his flight helmet. “What do you want to talk about?”

Brad glances over at him, shy and searching.

“Did you really not know?”

“I didn’t.”

“Do you hate me for doing it?”

“No,” Tom says, as simple and blunt as that. No, I don’t hate you. No, I never could. No, I won’t take your wings just to punish you for the crime of wanting them.

“Are you scared that I’m doing it?”

“I haven’t thought about it much. It would be strange if I didn’t, though, wouldn’t it? Nobody lets anybody join the military without thinking about all those what-ifs.”

Bradley takes some time to digest the idea. It’s easy to talk to him like this, Tom thinks, just the two of them with the sun on their backs and that alluring, coastal breezes on their faces. Tom focuses on his breathing. He’s grateful, all at once, that his sunglasses hide his eyes.

“Are you proud of me?”

Tom hums. “Now that would be really strange if I wasn’t, wouldn’t it?”

Another smile. Brad shifts around, leaning more into Tom’s space, and the kid smells like Ron. It reminds Tom of all the times he picked Bradley up from a sleepover — any sleepover; the gosling imprinting on everything and anything that showed him an ounce of kindness. Tom would go collect Bradley and get Rick’s smooth voice, Leon’s wild eyes, Marcus’s pessimism, Charlie’s softness instead.

“You didn’t do it for me, did you?” Tom asks, thinking of all the people Bradley has to have stuck inside of him, each one tangling itself up as it tries to come out.

“No.”

“And not for your dad?”

“No,” Bradley repeats. “I wanted to do it for me.”

“Alright.”

“Why did you do it?”

“Now that’s a question,” Tom says. He mulls it over. “I was poor. I was angry. I got sick of being both of those things, and the Navy was the first place to offer me a way out. It got me into college and out of poverty and out of the sense that I was the only thing standing still in the world, but it also — it made some parts of me worse. Iceman didn’t come from a nice place. It didn’t come from an awful place, either, but sometimes I hate the name and sometimes I love it, and you won’t get that until you’re so far up in that sky that you become something less than you are.”

“Oh,” Bradley says. He leans further into Tom, and Tom lets him, bearing that once easy weight of a lost kid in a foreign land of jet fuel and voracious, hard-churned men.

“It’s going to be hard,” Tom tells him, but Brad has dealt with hard things his whole life, already used to growing where he’s planted, used to the split-second flash of fear that is waking up in an unusual place with unusual people, used to the I’m dying press against his lungs that make better men’s heads spin; Tom could pull his nose up harder and higher and longer than anyone else should, can still hear Ron going Jesus, Jesus, you’re taking all the air up here, Tommy behind his shoulder, and wants to laugh all over again when someone asks him how — that’s not you, Kazansky, Mike told him, that shit, that’s not how you fly, and Tom wanted to tell him so badly that that’s how he lived that it ached to keep it behind the firm line of his teeth.

“Isn’t that the point?” Bradley says, and Tom knows exactly how Brad will fly: good and slick and with too little air in his lungs. It’s the worst thing Tom could’ve ever given him. It’s not, he muses, the kind of things heroes teach, but, then again, Tom’s not that Iceman. He’s never been.

“Yes,” he answers, thinking of the comics inside his desk.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. I just wanted to say it,” Bradley says, and Tom gets it in the way that they’re both carrying peppermint or spearmint or some painful, sharp things of gum in their pockets.

“I forgive you.”

Bradley blinks at him, blinks again. His eyes look like glass. Tom brings his hands up to wipe underneath them, skimming the soft, warm skin of Brad’s face. There aren’t any tears, and it’s okay. Bradley says sorry for all the ways that Tom never did, and that’s okay, too. Sometimes forgiveness is more powerful than love. Tom’s thoughts change to Mav, then.

“Sli says that you have —”

Brad gestures at his chest. Tom can feel the tension in his.

“Anxiety attacks? Yes.”

Bradley pales a little at the name — if Brad can’t float then — and Tom shrugs easy and loose-shouldered as if this isn’t killing him. He thinks Ron would be proud of him. 

“I do, too,” Brad admits.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

Bradley sounds mystified. Tom has never considered himself mysterious, but maybe —

“Ron snores,” he says.

“So?”

“So it made it a little hard to bunk with him. Leon used to smoke just enough to make him reek. We all hated it. Mav used to hook up with any girl that would cause him trouble.”

“Ew,” Bradley says, his face scrunching.

“Yeah, ew, but you know what? He was still Mav. Leon was still Leon. Ron is still Ron. I’m still me, and you’re still you, and sometimes people deserve to be a little hard.” And Tom’s eyes are still blue, but his hair has gone downy, butter-whip yellow, his body a little heavier, a little rounder, older but not really wiser, and — and Brad props himself up on his shoulder all the same, still fascinated, still believing in that little-boy trust that has Tom riding in a Blackbird instead of a Tomcat and the blow-snap of his gum the coming of some great blizzard because Tom isn’t a hero but he is, always, Bradley’s Iceman.

“Because we love them?”

“Because we can forgive them,” Tom corrects, “and one day you’ll wake up and realize that they’re softer now because Ron got some special nasal surgery and Leon realized he was being stupid and Mav got demoted one too many times.”

Bradley searches Tom’s face.

“Did you talk to anybody about the — the anxiety attacks?”

“Yes.”

“Did they get better?”

“Sometimes.” Tom raises his glasses, and Bradley sucks in a breath at the way Tom looks — really, truly looks; all puffy-pink skin and clumping lashes, and he does even though it’s difficult and shameful and Christ, his eyes burn because in every comic there’s a moment when the good guy stops being a guy and just becomes human. “But sometimes they just linger, and that’s okay, too.”

Bradley doesn’t respond. He’s busy growing up, and Tom lets him, closing his eyes against the sound of the ocean and seagulls — don’t look, Ron told him, keep flying, and Tom listens to him all over again.

“I’m scared,” Brad eventually says.

“Everyone is. But it doesn’t mean that you aren’t brave, too.”

“I’m not you.”

“No, thank God. You’re Brad.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s your name,” Tom — Thomas ice-cold Kazasky — says. “What do you want it to mean?”

Bradley looks out over the ocean like he’s searching for something. On anyone else, Tom might think they were looking for Nick, but Bradley already has him tucked away in the shape and color of his eyes, in the fierce, funny way he laughs, and he remembers — lean back, Brad, right on my arm. There you go, and the spindly shape of a Bradshaw ebbing along with the pulse of the water. Take a breath. Hold it. Keep still and straight. There. You’re floating.

“I want those wings,” Brad says, and Tom can hear it in his voice, the need and the taste and the passion for it. Mav said he couldn’t fly, but Tom would rather give up his own wings than miss the opportunity of seeing Bradley get his. “And I want —”

“Yeah?”

Bradley’s face grows hard then, serious.

“I want to forgive myself.”

“Oh, baby goose,” Tom says, “don’t we all.”

Bradley tucks into his side tight, and Tom holds him like he still can, as if Bradley isn’t taller than him and his hands aren’t longer than Tom’s own; they’re still delicate, is the thing. Still new-bird fragile against his, and it’s enough to pretend that Tom is strong enough to keep Brad’s head above water if he feels ready to wade into it.