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Hangman’s a big guy.
Bradley doesn’t mean that as an insult—he’s big in all the right ways—or as an innuendo, although he’s heard that one, too, whispered in the barracks, that the missing vowels on Hangman’s helmet aren’t both letter As.
He has a big personality, is all.
He’s fucking obnoxious, is what Phoenix would say, and has said, several times and very loudly, within Hangman’s earshot. Maybe it’s a side effect of growing up in close proximity to Maverick’s bullshit, but if he’s being honest, Bradley’s always kind of admired Hangman’s swagger.
Not his methods when it comes to his wingmen; never those. Not since Mav pulled his papers and Bradley started orienting his career goals in opposition rather than in adulation. But the way Hangman can draw people’s eyes and enjoy having them on him whether it’s in appreciation or censure, as if both are equal. The way he lets every goddamn insult slide off his back like he’s made of smooth, sculpted marble—Bradley could do with some of that.
He’s always burned too hot, is the thing. You don’t make it past thirty in a high-stress environment like every single Top Gun pilot thrives in without being very aware of your faults, the pressure fractures that shatter open when the going gets tough. He burns hot and bright with anger and resentment and everyone can read it in his every expression. He’s too honest and he’s too careful, keeping all his rage bottled bright in his ribcage, on display for the whole world and going fucking nowhere.
Maybe Hangman’s got it all figured out, because as far as Bradley can tell, he never gets mad, he only gets more and more smug.
Well, as far as Bradley could tell.
The tense is operative.
Because one week ago, Hangman saved his life, all quips and showboating, and Bradley had been so relieved he could have cried, both over the rescue and the return to normalcy. Except somewhere between being dragged to medical and being held captive there for twenty-four hours while his two cracked ribs were X-rayed from every possible angle, Bradley seems to have lost his familiar rival.
He’s had not a single quip from Hangman since they got back to Miramar despite hours of debriefs spent sitting in board rooms and rehashing every moment of the operation. Bradley’s spend more time talking about it than he did flying it by now. He’s facing some mandatory leave, both for the cracked rib and as a slap on the wrist for the order he disobeyed, and today, Hangman was given the same punishment.
Maybe it’s that, the knowledge that Hangman broke rank to save his ass, but for the first time, Hangman looks small to Bradley.
Maybe it’s his posture, sitting on the sand next the Hard Deck and staring out into the water as the sunset draws golden highlights across his face and hair (and would it kill the guy to look less like a model while Bradley is trying to process adult emotions?). Maybe it’s that he’s out there and everyone else is in here on their third consecutive night of celebrating their continued existence.
Maybe it’s that Bradley’s been looking at him for about a decade and stubbornly only seeing what Hangman wants to show him.
He’s not sure he’s going to do it until he’s opening the door and letting himself fall into the sand next to Hangman, passing over a beer.
“Thanks,” Hangman says with a half smile in Bradley’s direction.
Bradley’s trying—really, he is—to not obsess about this, but it isn’t even how he usually smiles, with those deep grooves around his mouth and those movie-star-perfect teeth.
For longer than Bradley honestly thought Hangman was capable of, they sit there in silence, staring out at the water, sipping their beers.
Eventually, Bradley starts. “I never said thank—”
“Don’t.”
“Excuse me?”
Hangman shrugs, grins, and there it is, dialed up all the way to eleven, smarmy and insincere. “Skip it. The bit where you swallow your pride and tell me how grateful you are I saved your ass. Don’t need it.”
Irritation nearly has Bradley on his feet and back in the bar before he can think twice. He looks over at Hangman, about to snap something sharp and cutting, but the last rays of sunshine catch on the slight, barely noticeable slump of his shoulders, the way he’s folding in on himself. Making himself small.
Instead, Bradley forces himself to breathe in and out twice and let his own shoulders drop from his ears. “Maybe I do,” he says.
Hangman snorts.
“What can I say,” Bradley tacks on, laying on the schoolboy charm thick as he does every time Penny gets on his case for pulling the plug on her jukebox. “Guess I need to get it off my chest. All those feelings, y’know, maybe we should hold hands—”
Hangman shoves him in the shoulder.
Laughing, Bradley catches himself on his right hand, taking another long pull from the beer with his left. “Look, man,” he says. “You put your life and your career on the line to save us, and I appreciate it.”
“Calculated risk,” Hangman says, smarmy grin firmly in place again. “Looks like it’ll get me whatever posting I want.”
He’s not wrong, but he’s also lying.
Bradley lets him and bumps their shoulders together as they stare out towards the setting sun.
Class reunions aren’t exactly feasible in the navy, and ultra-elite squadrons that flew one fucked-up and extremely classified mission together reunions are definitely off the table.
Still, every time they happen to end up in the same place, the dagger crew, as Fanboy dubbed their group chat, gravitates to one another. Bradley has dinner and drinks with Halo and Fritz on a layover in Germany; he plays MarioKart with Payback, Fanboy and Coyote in Oceana. He facetimes Phoenix twice as often as he used to, before.
And when he gets the call that he’s stationed at Lemoore for the foreseeable future while Phoenix and Bob are out on deployment, Hangman picks him up from the airport in Fresno.
He’s leaning against a pick-up, which is a mindfuck, because when Bradley pictured him with a car, it was always something sleeker and more douchey. He’s got one of his endless supply of toothpicks between his teeth and when he catches sight of Bradley, he peers down over the top of his sunglasses and says, “Rooster. You look good.”
Bradley throws his duffel bag in the bed of the truck. “You stole my line.”
Hangman shrugs. “If the shoe fits.”
Bradley rolls his eyes as he climbs into the passenger seat. “Anyone ever fall for that hokey farmboy schtick?”
With a grin so sharp it could be lethal, Hangman slams the door on the driver’s side shut. “You tell me. When are you due on base?”
“Nine hundred hours, tomorrow morning.” It's early evening now, dusk settling across sky in pink streaks.
Hangman takes the scenic route. Not that there’s a lot of scenery in this part of the country, as far as Bradley’s concerned. It’s all dead trees and desert and the very real possibility it might go up in flames while he’s living here.
Still, the view’s not half bad when Hangman parks in the middle of nowhere near a reserve of some sort. There’s some water in the distance, and the trees are actually green.
Bradley’s about to say as much when Hangman sets his sunglasses on the dash, unbuckles his seatbelt, leans over the distance between them, cups Bradley’s face in his big, rough hands and kisses him.
It’s not a surprise.
Well, it is surprising, but more in that Bradley has thought about it often enough that it takes him a moment to be sure it’s not just his imagination. As good as he is at picturing impossible scenarios, just like every orphan, he couldn’t have pictured the way Hangman smells, like the last dregs of whatever cologne he used hours ago and sun-tan lotion layering over sweat. He couldn’t have imagined the prickle of Hangman’s barely-there stubble because he’s never actually done this.
He’s thought about it plenty, he’s not that blind to his own desires, but it was always easier to just…ignore that side of himself. So much of his life has felt like an uphill battle anyway, and kids who spend their whole lives dreaming of a military career learn pretty fast that they’ll be putting rocks in their own paths if they look at other boys too long.
Bradley’s not stupid; he always knew why he and Hangman teased and taunted each other, at least from his end. He thinks of Hangman, sitting in the fading light on the beach, trying to wave away Bradley’s thanks.
He thinks that maybe he’s done ignoring the things that are hard to think about.
Hangman’s breathing hard when they pull apart, his chest rising and falling unevenly in his uniform shirt.
“You’ve been wanting to do that a while,” Bradley observes.
Hangman doesn’t say anything, but the look he throws Bradley is wretched.
Bradley swallows. He reaches out, traces the line of Hangman’s jaw with his thumb. “We don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want,” he says.
They don’t.
Fanboy gets married some eighteen months after the mission. He’s from Albuquerque and the flights work out so that Bradley can make it without using up all his personal leave for the year.
Not everyone does; there’s no hard feelings, Fanboy assures everyone in the group chat. They all know what it’s like.
Everyone who actually flew the mission is there, though.
Phoenix, Bob and Bradley fly in together, bitching about commercial airlines under their breaths and making a game of tossing each other the complimentary snacks and catching them with their mouths.
The flight attendants hate them.
Bradley loves it.
Hangman and Coyote fly in straight from deployment and come to the bachelor party in uniform. Bradley’s already a little buzzed—self-defense, he loves Fanboy but he is eternally grateful it was Payback’s job to plan this event; even the drinks are comic book themed—when they walk in. It’s not his fault he greets them both with a hug, this is just what two Spiderman’s Web Slingers do to him, apparently. He’s pretty sure there should be a law against mixing whiskey with milk.
“Christ, Rooster, what’s gotten into you?” Coyote laughs even as he returns the hug, slapping Bradley on the back.
“The spirit of love,” Bradley says, complete with jazz hands on the last word, as he goes in for his hug with Hangman.
“Definitely spirits,” Hangman mutters in his ear.
If his mouth so close to Bradley’s skin makes Bradley shiver, well, he’s kind of drunk.
They bunk together that night. Phoenix and Bob booked separate single rooms and Coyote, who was supposed to share a room with Hangman, hit it off with one of Fanboy’s cousins at the hotel bar when they were having one last drink to top off the bachelor party.
Bradley wakes up the morning of the wedding on crisp white sheets with his nose tucked into the back of Hangman’s neck and thinks he could get used to it.
He’s not dumb enough to say so, not when Hangman wakes up slowly, in increments, his hair soft and messy, and turns in Bradley arms to look at him. He knows what this is.
Fanboy’s a mess all day and it takes all of them to keep him on schedule and not panicking. It’s not till he sees his girl walking down the aisle that his back straightens and worry lines on his forehead smooth out. There are no hitches, no disasters, just two people who love each other and all their friends and family around them.
It’s not a fancy reception, just a rented hall in a community center with the stale smell of buffet dishes over burners keeping the food warm. The flowers are pretty and the music is fun, a lot of nerd shit. Bradley’s recognized at least three songs from video games so far. Somewhere to the left, Phoenix and Bob are waltzing like there are regulations about it, six inches distance between every part of their bodies but their hands, identical uniforms a mirror of each other.
It’s a pang to see everyone in their whites. The last time they wore them all together was before the mission, when they thought they were shipping out to die. Maverick especially; Bradley watches him slow-dance with Penny, staring into her eyes like they both thought they’d never get the chance, and it hits him that they did think that.
He chances a look over at Hangman. “You wanna get out there?” he asks.
Hangman snorts. “Please,” he says. “That seems like your area of expertise, piano man.”
Bradley shakes his head. “I make the music, I don’t need to dance to it.”
“Having seen your dance moves, I’ll have to agree.”
At four in the morning, Bradley wakes up because Hangman has kicked the blankets down. He’s thrashing in place, tossing back and forth with his teeth gritted together, not making a sound.
“Hangman,” he says, voice rough with sleep and two days of drinking more than he usually does.
No response.
“Hangman,” he tries again. He rests a hand on Hangman’s shoulder.
Hangman’s body stills, but he’s shaking all over, trembling in Bradley’s grip.
“Jake,” Bradley tries.
Jake’s eyes blink open, hazy and terrified.
“I,” he starts.
“I got you,” Bradley says. “You’re safe.”
Jake doesn’t say what he was dreaming about. That’s fine; it’s none of Bradley’s business anyway. He curls into Bradley, though, face pushed into Bradley’s chest and knees drawn up tight. Bradley strokes his hair and wonders how he can feel so protective of a man who is quite literally lethal.
Phoenix tells him he should try dating again on the two year anniversary of the mission.
Bradley reacts so badly he should get an award.
“You’re just saying that because you’re about to make an honest woman of your WSO,” he says.
For a moment, Phoenix’s eyes go wide and hurt, and then she shutters.
“I’m just trying to watch out for you, Bradshaw,” she says, and leaves.
Bradley stays where he was, at a bar just outside Lemoore, wincing at himself and regretting his life choices, until Bob shows up at his elbow and orders a Sprite.
“How much trouble am I in?” he asks.
“None, with Natasha,” Bob says evenly.
Bradley doesn’t answer, bracing for impact.
“See, she’s used to colleagues saying sexist things about her,” he continues. “She gets it all the time, either she’s too much of a girl to be as good as she is, or she’s so good she’s not a girl at all anymore.”
“I—” Bradley starts.
“She’s just sad that she thought better of you,” Bob says, and then stops talking entirely.
With a sigh, Bradley finishes his drink and pays both his tab and Bob’s. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s go.”
It only takes twenty minutes of groveling for Phoenix to come out of her room in the barracks and call him a dumbass.
“I don’t want to date anyone, Natasha,” he tells her when she’s said her piece and, allegedly, forgiven him.
She levels him with a long, even look.
Realistically, what is he supposed to say?
He could talk about fucking in the bed of Jake’s pick-up truck, jerking each other off like teenagers, stealthy and quiet like they were scared of getting caught even in the middle of nowhere with no one around for miles on either side.
He could talk about the week they had just after he got to Lemoore, before Jake left on deployment, sneaking into each others’ rooms after dark to trade kisses and blowjobs and leaving before dawn every time.
He could talk about the morning before Fanboy’s wedding, slow and easy like it had never been between them, rutting up against each other in the cool sheets, the utter indulgence of full-body contact in a bed the right size.
He definitely can’t talk about the morning after Fanboy’s wedding, how they’d lain there and just kissed until Bradley’s lips were sore and puffy and Jake couldn’t wait a second longer or he’d miss his flight.
In the end, he doesn’t say anything else.
After, he keeps an eye out for it. The perfect corridor of negative space between Phoenix and Bob at all times; the way he lets the dumb barbs sent in her direction glance off his back and the way she captures the attention he doesn’t want.
“They could let their guards down when it’s just me,” he tells Jake on facetime, just a little petulant, not even saying who he’s talking about in case someone is listening.
Jake huffs out a laugh. It sounds like static through their phones. “And they could never fly together again,” he says.
It hits a chord somewhere in Bradley’s stomach. He hasn’t flown with any of them since the mission, an endless rotation of other teams and other missions has followed in their place. He misses trusting blindly that his wingmen would keep up. He wonders if that’s how Jake has felt all along.
About a year later, Phoenix fucks up her left knee badly in a rough ejection during a mission Bradley isn’t allowed to know about.
She takes the honorable discharge (and a sweet fucking medal) with her chin held high.
Bradley’s been stationed overseas again, but he manages to stay for the ceremony and helps Jake and Bob pack up her room while she directs on crutches.
She’s got a job lined up with some friend of Mav’s, consultancy work building planes that go higher, further, faster, baby. She’ll be fine. She keeps telling them all so, with a smile that won’t meet her eyes.
Halfway through packing up, Bob apologizes. “I should have been the one,” he says. His voice is shaky and mechanic, stuttering like Bradley hasn’t heard when it’s just the dagger crew in years.
“Baby,” Phoenix says, one of her crutches clattering to the floor so she can grab Bob by the shoulder. “No.”
It’s the first confirmation Bradley’s ever gotten of what they all know about Bob and Phoenix, what none of them ever say where anyone else could hear. Sure, Coyote wiggled his eyebrows when Bob went to get Phoenix a new drink at the bar last time he was visiting. Sure, Payback elbowed Fanboy a little too hard at the Fourth of July cookout at Mav’s hangar some of them miraculously made it to when he wouldn’t stop laughing about the couple on his squadron who got in trouble and then split up for fraternization. But no one’s ever said it out loud in so many words.
Jake invents a problem with the straps holding down Phoenix’s shit in the back of the moving van that keeps them occupied for half an hour.
“I can’t even imagine,” he says, fiddling with the perfectly functional strap.
“I can,” Bradley says. “Knee ligaments, man. Most common injury for pilots.”
Neither of them say that Phoenix got fucking lucky it was her knee and not her spine that got busted; that they’re all one bad op away from death or permanent disability.
Judging by the way Mav groans when he gets up out of a chair these days, even in a best case scenario, they aren’t leaving this job unscathed.
“I mean,” Jake says slowly. “For Bob.”
Bradley swallows heavily.
“You know,” he says. “I did a lot of things trying to be like my dad.”
“Listen, if it weren’t a homage or whatever, I’d have made you shave that thing off your face years ago.”
Jake’s lying, he loves the ‘stache, but Bradley lets it slide.
Bradley sits down on the edge of the trunk, legs sprawled out in front of him. His joints pop as he does it; flying really is rough on the knees, and he’s tall enough that he’s already feeling it. “I always thought I’d do one thing differently,” he says.
The van dips alarmingly as Jake sits down beside him. “Oh yeah?”
“I always thought, if I ever had someone to come home to, I’d get out,” Bradley admits. “Didn’t want to do to someone else what he did to me.”
“How’s that working out for you?” Jake’s shoulders are relaxed, his expression so neutral it’s almost vacant.
Bradley shrugs. “You tell me.”
He wonders if the negative space between their hands, side by side on the floor of the van, is as easy for others to see as it is for him.
Six months later, quietly and to all appearances as if it was his plan all along, Bob doesn’t reenlist.
Payback’s funeral is a shitshow.
Fanboy and Coyote are drunk enough to be belligerent, spilling secrets and accusations about the mission that killed him. It takes the cane Phoenix has started using pointed directly at their balls to get them to shut up for long enough that Jake, Bradley and Bob can get them off the premises.
Halo, Fritz and the Ivies stick around with Mav to make nice with the admiral Fanboy and Coyote were this close to pissing off, which leaves Jake and Bradley on drunk duty.
Bradley barely remembers the last time he got that wasted.
He meets Jake’s gaze over Coyote’s back as he vomits in a motel bathroom and sees fine lines around the corners of his eyes.
They both have nightmares that night.
Jake’s prickly the next morning, all closed-off smugness, a persona Bradley thought he wouldn’t have to confront again. He knows why, of course he knows why, but it doesn’t stop him snapping, “Jake, will you cut it the fuck out?” over breakfast when Jake boasts about the new line of fighter jets he’s been testing.
To his credit, Jake cuts it the fuck out.
“Jake, now, is he?” Coyote asks. He’s nursing a hangover the size of Nebraska, but it doesn’t make the question less intrusive.
Jake shrugs. “I think it’s been about two years since anyone called me Hangman,” he says, idly, like he’s just stating facts.
“If the shoe doesn’t fit,” Bradley says.
He catches a flash of Jake’s smile and knows he’s forgiven.
“Thought I’d take a page out of Bob’s book,” Jake says, slapping Bob on the back. He winces; he looks rough. He and Phoenix were up all night with Fanboy, who is nowhere to be seen this morning. “Just be myself all the damn time.”
Bob looks almost proud at that.
Coyote takes them to the airport when he’s sober enough. Phoenix and Bob depart for the Southwest, and Jake and Bradley sit in the departure lounge, waiting on flights towards deployment in opposite directions.
In the anonymity of a transient space, their shoulders brush up against each other.
“Cyclone offered me a teaching job in Miramar,” Bradley says.
“You’ll be good at that.”
“You think?”
“Yeah,” Jake says roughly. “You’ll be closer to Mav. He’s getting old, were those gray hairs I saw yesterday?”
“Closer to Phoenix and Bob, too,” Bradley points out.
“Sounds nice,” Jake says.
He’s drawing inwards again, making himself smaller in his seat.
“Jake,” Bradley says.
“Bradley,” Jake answers.
Bradley doesn’t ask, because he doesn’t have the right.
Jake presses a hand to his chest when he leaves, just like he did the day he saved Bradley’s life.
He told Bradley once that it was the only way he could be sure Bradley’s heart was still beating.
Moving to Miramar feels inevitable. Permanent. Bradley gets off-base housing, a two-bedroom with a little garden he has no idea how to take care of. He visits Phoenix and Bob on Wednesday nights, helps them plan the wedding—it’s a low-key thing, it’s in his wheelhouse, no one’s asking him to think about napkin colors or themed cocktails—and Mav and Penny on Saturdays.
He teaches snot-nosed kids to do stupidly death-defying tricks in government property five days a week and he feels, suddenly and abruptly, like he can breathe.
His dad never got this. Never got to the point in his career where he wasn’t in danger or on the move all the time, never got to put down some roots. Never got to learn that he’s fucking dogshit at keeping plants alive.
Jake calls him two months after he moves.
It’s not exactly unprecedented. They talk on the phone pretty often. Have to, there’s no other way to talk most of the time.
It’s just, as soon as Bradley picks up this time, he says, “You know I got family out in Texas?”
“Yeah,” Bradley says slowly. “I know. Mom and two sisters, right?”
“Right,” Jake says. “You know they keep waiting on me to come home?”
“You were there for Christmas just three months ago,” Bradley points out.
“That’s not what I mean,” Jake says impatiently. “I’m supposed to come home and marry one of my sisters’ friends and get a job in politics or consultancy or something. If something happens to me, that’s where they think I’ll go and what I’ll do.”
Bradley blinks. From everything Jake’s said about his family, that tracks; conservative, family values, proud of him but laboring under some pretty major misapprehensions about what Jake’s ideal family life would end up looking like. “Okay,” he says slowly. “And?”
“And,” Jake says, “tell me why I’m in fucking Miramar instead.”
Bradley opens the door.
Jake’s sitting on his doorstep, phone pressed to his ear. He’s chewing on a toothpick. His left arm is in a cast, as is his left foot.
“Jake,” Bradley says, horror creeping into his tone.
Jake looks up at him and smiles. “No lasting damage,” he says. “I’m a lucky son of a bitch. Your garden is a tragedy, Bradshaw.”
“You’re,” Bradley starts. “You.”
“Me,” Jake agrees. “I am, in fact, myself. Always have been. Always will be. You gonna let me in?”
They sleep on the pull-out couch in the living room while Jake’s foot heals up. Jake redecorates the entire living room in increments while Bradley’s at work. Once he can manage the stairs, he finds a whole host of things on the second floor to criticize.
The next time Phoenix and Bob stop by, the whole house is different.
Phoenix surveys the garden (at least somewhat alive), the bigger TV, the electric kettle Jake insisted on and never uses.
“You two good, then?” she asks.
Bradley lets his knee knock against Jake’s. Jake still hasn’t decided whether he’s reenlisting when his medical leave is up, or if he’s trying to get a teaching gig at Top Gun, or if he’s quitting for good. He hasn't really talked about it, either because he can't or because he doesn't want to, but it's clear it was a close call.
“What do you think?” Bradley asks. “We good?”
Jake slings his arm over the back of the couch, around Bradley’s shoulders, letting himself sprawl, letting himself be big. “We’re good.”