Chapter Text
Jake Seresin has a lot of problems in his life, but the big one is that he sees dead people. Or it's that Hollywood has appropriated the words "I see dead people" for its shitty movies and now no one takes him seriously on those rare occasions he says those words out loud. Or it's that Fanboy keeps handing him tequila shots. Or that tequila doesn't mix well with dead people and Jake's ability to tell them apart from the living. Or it's that Rooster heard the words, "follow in your father's footsteps" at some point, somewhere, and decided to make it his whole personality. Or it's that Jake never learned to stop while he was ahead. Maybe it's all of the above.
Maybe it's that he sees Rooster standing quietly by himself in front of the jukebox and can't help himself even when a part of him tells him to leave Rooster alone. Stop goading the man. They've already gone a few rounds this evening and it's only their first night.
But, Jake's other big problem is: he has a weak spot for that little face Bradley Bradshaw makes whenever he gets riled up.
"What's the matter, Bradshaw?" he says, coming up next to the other man. "Your adoring public forget about you?"
The man turns around.
Jake freezes.
His blood runs cold and he feels a tremor in his hands. Because it's not Bradley who's gaping down at him. It's Nick Bradshaw.
"You—you can see me?"
Fuck.
The first time Jake ever saw a ghost, he was four and he’d run into his grandmother’s arms, screaming in terror.
The ghost — so new to the after-life that he was still screaming from phantom pain, the flames from the fatal car crash still licking at his body — had chased after Jake, desperate for the only person who had seemed to acknowledge him.
Jake had wet his pants and burrowed deep in his grandmother's arms. "Don't let him take me!"
The hours following that ill-fated meeting were a flurry of tears and confusion, but Jake's next clear memory is being tucked in his bed, exhausted from his tears, with his grandmother humming a sweet lullaby in his ear.
"Poor dear," his grandmother cooed. "You had a fright, didn't you?"
"Is he gone?" He asked, still sniffling.
"He's gone, he won't hurt you."
He clutched at her. "I was so scared."
"I know, I know. I'm so sorry, sweetheart. This isn’t fair to you at all.”
It’s not something Jake shares with anyone, but to this day, the ‘Man on Fire’ is his most recurring nightmare.
Eight years. Eight years Jake has been able to dutifully ignore Bradshaw Sr. hanging off his progeny without giving away his secret. Eight fucking years. And then, on the first night back at Top Gun, without any preamble, he just pisses it all away.
"Is this real?" Nick Bradshaw asks, waving a hand around. "Can you see me?"
Dread crawling up inside him, Jake slides his eyes impassively over the man as though looking through him. Sometimes, if he plays it right, he can convince them it was a fluke. He moves to stand in front of the jukebox, pretending to be looking through the song choices, and prays.
"Helloooooo?" Hands wave frantically in front of his face. "Can you see me?"
Jake swallows and presses buttons blindly, picking the next however many songs completely at random and hoping he comes off unbothered and nonchalant as he does so.
"NINETY-NINE BOTTLES OF BEER ON THE WALL, NINETY-NINE BOTTLES OF BEER!!!"
It's only years of experience that keeps Jake from flinching as Nick Bradshaw bellows in his ears.
"Take one down, pass it around, ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-eight bottles of beer—"
Jake grits his teeth, against the loudness, against the incorrect lyrics (it's 'if one of those bottles should happen to fall' for God's sake, everyone knows that) against it all, and turns away, forcing an easy grin on his face.
"Hey, Machado!"
Javy looks up from his conversation with Yale.
"Another game?" Jake asks, nodding towards the dartboard.
Javy rolls his eyes. "Man, how many times you gotta beat me tonight?" But, bless him, he gets up from his seat anyway and walks over to the dartboard. Jake follows behind him, infinitely grateful for his friend for providing him with the much-needed distraction.
("—ninety-six bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-six bottles of beer—")
"You gonna cheat again?" Jake asks and Javy squawks.
"I did not cheat!"
"You covered my eyes."
"That's not cheating. That's leveling up."
"Yeah, yeah, get me those darts, cheater."
("—pass it around, ninety-three bottles of beer on the wall. Ninety-three bottles of beer—")
Nick Bradshaw gets down to twenty-six bottles of beer as Jake and Javy play the first round. Then he gets bored and graduates to banging out air drums, which is about as pleasant as nails on chalkboard.
But Jake keeps his eyes on the dartboard and maintains a steady stream of conversation with Javy and whoever happens to hover around them.
Occasionally, he looks over at Rooster: no longer at the piano but still the life of the party, still basking in all the attention people are happy to lavish on him, and completely ignorant of the fact that not ten feet away from him, his dearly-departed father is making Jake want to set himself on fire.
"Hey, I see you ignoring me." Nick holds up a finger to Jake's arm, very close to 'touching' him but not quite there. "See I'm about to touch you. But I'm not. I'm nottouchingyouI'mnottouchingI'mnottouchingyou—"
Does Rooster know how fucking annoying his dad is? Was? Maybe he'd be less tragic about the whole dead-dad thing if he knew.
Jake walks around Nick to grab his drink. The other man follows after him.
"See? You walked aroouund me. If you couldn't see me, you'd have walked through me like everyone else."
Jake has never been able to walk through them. It's rude and he was raised with better manners. Plus, a ghost had once told him it was physically uncomfortable when people walked through them. So, as much as it would help sell his act, he can't make himself step through Nick.
His one blessing, he thinks as he listens to Nick attempt to beatbox, is that there are no other ghosts around at the Hard Deck this evening — an almost unprecedented feat. The last thing he needs is for Nick's antics drawing the attention of other ghosts and before Jake knows it he's surrounded by a hoard of them, bombarding him everywhere.
"Boom tss tsch-kah tss buh bing ba doom CHING baaaaaaam."
Jake squeezes his eyes shut. Maybe there will be two blessings and Bradshaw will wrap it up with that resounding beat-box conclusion.
"Hey! Bradshaw! You're here!"
It's Luke. A regular at the Hard Deck who likes to say, "I'm dying for a whiskey!" See, it's funny, because he's a ghost. Get it?
It's the kind of luck Jake has these days.
Time's up, it seems.
He sighs and stands, patting Javy on the shoulder. "Think I'm going to head out for the night."
Javy frowns. "It's early, isn't it?"
Jake shrugs. "Best get my beauty sleep."
There's always the chance that Bradshaw Sr. will abandon annoying Jake in favour of staying close to his son, but that hope dies a quick death when Nick just pauses long enough to call out "love you, son!" over his shoulder before he follows Jake out the door.
Despite Jake's reservations about walking through ghosts, he has no compunctions about letting the door slam shut behind him and into the astral shape of Nick Bradshaw.
"That was uncivilized!"
The drive back to base is, without doubt, one of the more trying times of Jake's life. Nick has quite a set of lungs on him, bolstered by the fact that he doesn't need to breathe, and he spends the whole ride belting out various 80s songs. Jake tries to drown him out by blasting his radio, but when Nick's rendition of Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go mixes with Moves Like Jagger he thinks he might just drive off a bridge. He shuts off the radio before the temptation gets too strong, mostly because he's not confident that he won't become a ghost stuck with Nick Bradshaw for the rest of eternity.
He rolls his shoulders and forces himself to just breathe. Do some of that mini-meditating shit his therapist harps on about ("Mini meditations, Jake, can be an extremely helpful tool when you need to quieten your mind. Even something as short as a minute can help stabilize feelings of anger or anxiety."). It doesn't relax him, as the advertisement had promised, but it does help him appear relaxed.
"WHERE HAVE ALL THE GOOD MEN GONE AND WHERE ARE ALL THE GODS WHERE IS THE STREETWISE HERCULES TO FIGHT THE RISING ODDS?"
His hands tighten around the wheel.
Don't. Jake tells himself. You can't punch him.
"THIS SONG WAS ALL THE RAGE WHEN I DIED." Nick says, still yelling at the top of his lungs. "YOU KNOW I'VE LISTENED TO ALL THE NEW STUFF AND I GOTTA TELL YA THEY JUST DON'T MAKE MUSIC HOW THEY USED TO."
They don't make ghosts how they used to, either. What happened to the good old ghosts who just killed you and got it over with.
"ALTHOUGH THAT RICK ASTLEY SONG AIN'T BAD. I'll DO THAT ONE NEXT."
Jake floors it.
He makes it to his base housing just in time to avoid getting Rickrolled, though the fact that Nick kept forgetting the lyrics to I Need a Hero and had to backtrack certainly helped.
It's all Jake can do to not throw himself out of the car and run up to his door, but he manages. He keeps his movements slow, and languid. No ghost-crisis to see here, no sir. Just a regular non-psychic man trying to get some shuteye. Comp-puh-letely normal. A-okay.
Nick relents a little in his screaming while Jake turns out the lights, and has the decency to stay on the other side of the wall when Jake is taking care of business in the bathroom, but when Jake slips into bed, the game is back on again.
"Alright, you want to play hardball?" Nick asks as he sits cross-legged on the bed, staring down at Jake. "We can play hardball."
Jake slides further down in bed and pulls the covers over his head.
On hour one, Nick Bradshaw recites to him, incorrectly, the names of all of the U.S. presidents. When he exhausts those, he turns to the full text of each of Goodbye Moon and The Hungry Caterpillar (Bradshaw Jr.'s top literary picks circa the time of Sr.'s death).
On hour two, he tells Jake all about the specs of every jet he's ever seen, both during his life-life and his after-life.
On hour three, he starts singing again.
"—AND IF IT'S QUITE ALRIGHT I NEED YOU BABY TRUST IN ME WHEN I SAAAAAAAAAAY. OH PRETTY BABY DON'T BRING DOWN, I PRAY OH PRETTY — oh what's the point."
Jake barely stops himself from lifting his head and checking to see what had made the other man stop so suddenly.
Nick sighs. "You really can't see me, can you?"
He sounds so defeated, it makes Jake bite his lip and screw his eyes shut. Don't fucking do it.
"Shit. This was dumb of me, huh?"
Don't, he tells himself. It's not your fucking problem, Seresin.
"No one's been able to see me in 30 years. Why should now be any different?"
You'll never have any peace and quiet.
"Just another old man in denial, I guess. Alright." A heaved breath. "I'll go. I'd wish you goodnight, Bagman, but you can't hear me."
Jake groans. He really fucking hates himself.
He sits up. “Wait.”
But in the room, there is only blackness.
Jake breathes. It's just as well. No good ever comes from ghosts finding out he can see them. No good at all.
But even though he finally has some peace and quiet, Jake finds himself unable to fall asleep. Eventually, getting tired of his own tossing and turning, he throws the covers off him and heads to the kitchen, hoping a glass of water could help.
It isn't his problem, Jake thinks as he takes down a glass, fills it and drinks it by the sink. It isn't. The man is dead and it's sad that he's dead, but nothing that Jake could do would reverse that. All that would come from admitting Jake could see Nick would be to bring trouble to himself and give false hope to Nick.
Yes. He takes a final sip and sighs, pressing the cool glass against his skin and feeling slightly revived. Yes, it's better this way.
He washes the glass and puts it on the drying rack then turns to head back to bed.
"BOO!"
And that's the story of how Jake "Hangman" Seresin dies.
Sort of.
"SWEET JESUS!"
"Aha!" Nick points a finger in his face. "I knew it!"
Jake clutches at his heart. "What the fuck!"
"I knew you could see me!"
"So you decided to kill me off too?!"
Nick throws his hands up. "Well, I wouldn't have had to if you hadn't pretended you couldn't see me!"
"Well excuse me if I wanted some peace and quiet!"
"How's that working out for you?!"
"Not so fucking great, thank you for asking!"
They stand there in silence, glaring at each other, the only sound between them the sound of Jake still trying to catch his breath.
They were at an impasse, and one of them was still in danger of going gray young.
Jake heaves a heavy sigh and eyes the other man warily. "Was there something I could help you with?"
Nick Bradshaw grins at him. "What could possibly make you think that?"
"No."
"Come on! You have to!"
"Nope."
"Come on, just think about it. Please?"
It's near three-thirty in the morning, and Jake has all but given up on any sleep. Instead, he's settled in his living room, with a mug of the strongest coffee that he could make, watching Nick Bradshaw pace back and forth in front of him.
"Let me get this straight," Jake says, sitting up on the couch, "you want me to, one, tell my co-worker who I don't have a great relationship with, that, a, I see dead people, b, that one of those dead people is his dearly-departed father who, c, has a message for him that he should talk to Mav, whoever that is, because, d, said dead father thinks this mission is going to be a doozy, and, then two, you want me to engineer the reconciliation between my rival-slash-co-worker and Mav, again, whoever that is, over a fight that's lasted over a decade. Does that about sum it up?"
"Yes."
Jake picks up his coffee, and takes a long sip, eyeing the man in front of him. Over the years, he's seen a great deal of Nick Bradshaw, but he's never allowed himself more than a passing glance. He knows the man's name from the many times he's heard the man scream it himself ("Nick Bradshaw is in the house everybody! No need to hold your applause!"). He knows that he has the same penchant for garish Hawaiin shirts as his son and frequently switches his outfits to match with Rooster's. He knows that he was in the Navy, and was most likely a pilot, but doesn't know his call sign or whether he was any good. And he looks — well, he's a dead ringer for Rooster, except that over time Rooster's face has aged in a way his father's never had the chance to. Rooster will age and gray one day, his face will wrinkle and his hair will thin. Nick Bradshaw will forever be 28.
"So?" Nick prompted. "Will you do it?"
"No."
Nick throws up his hands. "Why not?!"
"Why not? Oh, well, let's see." He puts the mug down and starts counting off on his fingers: "How about jeopardizing my reputation? My career? My ability to get into another plane for the rest of my life? How about, maybe, telling a guy who can't stand me that I can see his dead father, isn't going to be taken very well? What if he doesn't believe me and decides to get revenge for what he thinks is a shitty prank? What if he believes that I believe it, and reports me for being crazy? You think the Navy is going to let me in a plane if they think I think I see dead people? I'd be lucky if the least they do is throw me in the loony bin, nevermind getting into another plane for the rest of my career."
Nick huffs, walks through the sofa to stand in the middle of the coffee table — yes, in the middle. "Bradley wouldn't do that."
Ease for him to say. Only one of them has been on the other end of Bradley Bradshaw's temper.
"Yeah? You know that from your many years parenting him?"
Nick glares. "I know that from 30 years of following him around and from knowing the many, many years my sweet wife spent raising him. And Mav. Mav would never rat anyone out."
Which brings Jake to his other problem: "Who the fuck is Mav?"
"Maverick! Captain Pete Mitchell! How have you never heard of him?"
"Maybe he's not noteworthy."
"He's a legend!"
Jake shakes his head and stands. The conversation is going nowhere. "Okay. I have to be up in two hours for briefing so I'm heading to bed. Let me sleep in peace or I'll sneak into Rooster's room and draw dicks all over his face with a sharpie."
He turns and walks away. Gratifyingly, Nick stays in his place.
"You know," Nick calls out after him, "there's a reason no one likes you!"
"And I'm mighty crushed about that."
He shuts his bedroom door and collapses on his bed.