Work Text:
The pain, bright and searing, had now been steadily spreading from Jake's right jaw, pouring in deadly waves toward his ear, his head, his neck and his shoulder for days.
A stupid toothache seemed like a minor trifle compared to his threshold for pain and managing the stress he was subjected to on a daily basis – for God's sake, he was a fighter pilot in the United States Navy, first in the naval academy and its flight course, only pilot of his generation currently in active duty to have two confirmed kills, stable member of the Daggers Squad used in covert special operations, and current flight instructor permanently at TOPGUN.
It was unlikely that there was anything that could bend Jake Seresin to his knees in his thirty-one years of life, yet the suffering that his traitorous body was inflicting on him every second of every hour of every damn day was such that it brought tears to his eyes like a child.
So Jake took a half day off for health reasons, went to a dentist affiliated with his base in San Diego - God bless the health insurance valid for active military personnel - and quickly did all the necessary tests, and he had the sad confirmation of his suspicions: at his venerable age, one of his wisdom teeth had decided to emerge horizontally, causing those pangs of suffering that made him fervently hope to tear that little bastard off with his bare hands.
It was not uncommon, he was told – wisdom teeth could grow even after the age of 25; fortunately, their extraction was nothing particularly dangerous to his health. A nice anaesthesia, a precise series of cuts to extract the little son of a bitch, stitches in his mouth that would absorb themselves, and within a few days after the operation he would be as good as new.
Jake, despite this, was afraid of this situation for multiple reasons.
First of all, the fact that he deeply hated not being in control of something as important as his body – the damn thing had betrayed him after doing so well for years, and it was absolutely unacceptable to him.
Then the fact that he didn't like at all having someone's hands in his mouth intent on cutting him up and sewing him up when he was fully conscious - it's not that he was afraid of dentists (because Jake Seresin wasn't afraid of anything or anyone, thank you very much), but he certainly would much rather fly 30,000 feet above land and do very complicated maneuvers in the air than voluntarily subject himself to such a thing.
And finally, the real fact that he was so fucking afraid of the hours immediately following the general anesthesia he had chosen – he had seen too many videos on TikTok of people recovering from the after-effects of the operation, and he knew that the brain-mouth filter was being destroyed completely and the minimum level of human intelligence was reduced to a flicker in that specific situation.
And since Jake had some private things he absolutely didn't want to get out of the sacred confines of his mind regarding a certain TOPGUN fellow teacher colleague whose life he had saved no less than eight months earlier... well, no thanks, but he had no intention of revealing his darkest secrets to anyone other than Javy.
So, once he left the dentist, he called his best friend – and emergency contact in similar situations – on the way to his car.
“Hey, bitch,” Javy's bright and cheerful voice welcomed him.
They were complete opposites in every way: Jake was calm, detached, and cold, while Javy warm, good, and friendly, but he represented the only fixed point in a career that had taken him around the world and his only constant need was fly beyond the limits, above everything and everyone, and be the best.
“Hey, jerk,” Jake responded reflexively. They always greeted each other like this, like the brothers from Supernatural – a memento for the hours spent watching that TV series together at the naval academy.
“How did it go at the dentist? Tell me everything,” his best friend asked with his usual warmth and interest.
The most beautiful thing about Javy was that he gave you all of his affection freely, and for Jake it was something incredible – for him, letting people into his world represented an immense effort. Javy had been the only exception for many years, until Jake realized that, between one argument and another, Bradley too had carved out a space of his own inside his heart, which had become bigger and bigger until that damned mission hadn't ruthlessly confronted him with the reality of things.
A heavy sigh left Jake's mouth, and one front tooth dug into the soft skin of his lower lip before he began to speak.
“My wisdom tooth is horizontal, as shown in the x-ray I took this morning. So they have to take it off in two days, the pain is truly unbearable and I can't fill myself with medicine when I need to be clear-headed for the TOPGUN course and the flights we take. I'll be filled with anesthesia until I explode, so I'll sleep all the time and not realize anything that's happening to me... you know I hate feeling at the mercy of others,” he said in one breath, as if he were immersed under water.
Christ, Jake hated exposing himself in these silly little things, even to his own best friend.
“I therefore strongly ask you to come and pick me up after the operation, because I will literally be high on I don't even know how many drugs and I need you to take me home safe and sound,” he concluded.
No prayers, no begging. Jake Seresin was a grown, independent man who didn't need anyone.
“Got it. Any particular requests that I need to fulfill?” Javy's warm voice boomed in Jake's ear, above the chaos of San Diego's infernal traffic.
“Look, I'll give you a list of food to buy, because I can only eat cold and liquid things for the next three days after. As for the rest, I'll make it on my own,” he stated with his usual self-assurance. His independence was his strong point and, at the same time, also his weak point.
And when he thought of his other weak point, Jake couldn't help but think of a pair of chocolate brown eyes and a sweet smile topped by a mustache that he loved to insult good-naturedly.
Javy made a noise of agreement. “That's it, buddy?”
“Yes, you have to promise me something on your life, Javy,” and the use of his best friend's first name signaled how delicate and serious the matter he was about to expose would be. “Never, ever let Bradshaw see me immediately after my surgery. I wouldn't be lucid, and I want to avoid embarrassing situations with negative repercussions on my professional and private life. Did I make myself clear?"
Jake had recently realized that Mav's Don't think, just do mantra wasn't as easy to apply as it was in the air flying multimillion-dollar planes when it concerned human relationships with certain people who triggered in him a kaleidoscope of emotions that were difficult to control and where one wrong move would have led to total catastrophe.
If he had been pining for years - unfortunately he had realized this splendidly and tragically when he had spent an entire hour of his life believing Bradley was dead and then had flown as he had never done up to that moment to rush to save him and Maverick - for a man who wore hideous Hawaiian shirts straight out of the 1980s and with whom he had finally miraculously managed to forge a delicate friendship that he still felt might be teetering on the edge of a tense and false rivalry that he would no longer be able to manage, it was just Jake’s business and no one else.
“Awww, are you afraid to declare your undying love to him if you saw him? That's so cute, Jacob, I didn't know you had a real heart beating in your chest,” Javy teased, laughing loudly.
“Fuck you asshole, don't come anymore, I'll manage on my own as always,” he replied more out of reflex than true intention. And he knew that his best friend understood him like no one else in the world.
“Don't worry, you have me. You're not alone,” Javy whispered in a serious tone.
And Jake believed him. Because it was true.
Puta de madre, he's in a worse shape than I expected, Javy thought through uncontrollable laughter that was almost making him have convulsions while driving.
He knew perfectly well that that day he would finally see Jake drugged as he had never seen him in his life before, an unrepeatable opportunity to make fun of him a little for all the bullshit that would surely come out of his lips.
Even though Jake had his mouth half closed, gauze stuck over the place where his wisdom tooth had been extracted, and his words came out in a slurred but still understandable tone, his desperate plea was still extremely clear.
“I want Roo here! Why isn't he here with me? He still hates me, doesn't he? But I don't want him to keep hating me, I lo-... I want him here, bring him to me now!” Jake exclaimed, tears threatening to fall from his eyes and the most devastated expression Javy had ever seen on his face in twelve years of friendship.
Well, of all the things Javy thought Jake would talk too much in those conditions, Bradley Bradshaw was not the one he hoped to hear.
He was expecting a monologue about the Texas Longhorns, or his beloved four sisters, or his white mare named Mary Jo, in all sincerity.
Of course, Javy Machado was not a blind man and he knew that there had always been something strange between those two, too intense to be a simple rivalry between pilots, but everything was all so damn funny that Javy didn't know whether to stop the car and take out his phone to record Jake's post-anesthesia madness - so as to have material to blackmail him forever and have guaranteed favors and free drinks for the next thirty years -, or continue driving and laughing like a madman for the last ten kilometers that separated him from Jake's house to take him there to safety, witnessing in the front row the spectacle of a highly decorated pilot whimpering desperately the name of his crush.
Because, really, Jake hadn't been at all unclear in his intentions by pulling Bradshaw's proverbial pigtails every time they crossed paths throughout their careers, not to mention the unbelievable way in which they greeted each other, or rather flirted, every day since he had saved his ass by going against higher orders. Everything had always been very blatant to Javy since the very beginning.
“Why isn't he here with me? Call him, I want him home! I want him to give me ice cream and cuddle me and make me feel better... I want him!” Jake kept saying, his proverbial cold ability to use rationality completely destroyed by a simple shot of anesthesia and a tiny tooth, now gone, in his mouth.
For Javy this was one of the best days of his entire fucking life.
“Dude, just two days ago you made me swear on my life that I should never let you near Rooster, not even dead, with you like this, and now you're begging me to bring him to you at any cost? Jesus Christ, you're in worse shape than I thought,” Javy stated, his voice shaking with laughter that he could barely keep in his throat. God, he wished he had some popcorn to enjoy this magnificent show with.
Jake's dull, unclear gaze turned on him, with such sadness that Javy's heart almost broke in his chest.
“I take it all back, call him! I like him a lot, and he doesn't like me at all! I just wish-” Jake started to say, then froze and banged his head against the window. It was like dealing with a drunk whose mood swings were so sudden it gave him whiplash. “Call him and tell him to come to my house! Do it now, Javy, or I'll never speak to you again!”
Jake's constant yelling and complaining (God, he looked like a petulant child wanting his favorite stuffed animal) reached such a level of unmanageability in the final moments of the trip – he kept blabbering over and over and over that he wanted Bradshaw at all costs into his house - that Javy found himself forced, against his will, to take out his phone and call Rooster to tell him to go to the small apartment that Jake had rented a few months earlier, a few kilometers from the base, because there had been a sudden emergency after wisdom tooth extraction surgery and he really needed some help with Jake.
He didn't put him on speaker because he was afraid that, if Jake heard the other man's voice, it would trigger an unmanageable emotional or physical reaction and he couldn't afford that in the slightest at that moment. Good Lord, he just had to get to Jake's house, drop off a six-foot-tall man full of anesthesia and with his mouth torn open, recalcitrant and waiting for his Romeo - because if Jake pulled Rooster's pigtails, neither Bradshaw backed away, and Javy had seen too many glances between them inside the Hard Deck that were far beyond camaraderie between two pilots or a simple manly friendship born of rivalry – in his bed, and then running off to the grocery store, since Jake had carefully written down all the foods he could eat after the operation; strawberry ice cream was sure would be first place and written in block letters.
Maybe this stupid wisdom tooth would finally bring something good into his best friend's life.
Bradley fished his phone out of the back pocket of his dark jeans and quickly typed a message to Javy.
I am here.
The response was lightning fast. The door is open.
Bradley pushed his hand towards the ajar door of Jake's house, a heavy gray block of plain-looking metal, and stepped inside. He had been to Jake's house a few times - maybe two or three since they had become real friends, or at least managed to have a civil relationship that didn't involve wanting to strangle each other every second of every day -, and every time he had been invited there, his heart had sank in his chest, as if he were a kid with his first crush.
It was nothing short of absurd the way Jake made him feel, Bradley was fully aware of it. The range of emotions that that man was able to unleash in him had always gone from one extreme to the other, from the first moment they met: he went from frustration to admiration in less than a clear second, but, after The Mission, something else had also begun to mix inside his heart.
Gratitude, tenderness, deep respect, attraction.
Bradley was gifted with a pair of functioning eyes like the rest of the human population, so he was well aware of how much Jake Seresin, also known as Hangman (and he had given him that name, back in their naval academy days, when they shared a room and a bunk bed every night and their relationship had unfortunately already become an intense and brilliant tangle of thorns to stay far away from), was handsome and charming.
That man couldn't be defined in any other way; the color of his eyes, the blonde of his hair, the pearly smile of him when he wasn't arrogant but sweet, left you breathless.
But the real problems arose eight months later, when Jake saved his life and his voice, as he announced his presence in the skies after blowing up the enemy plane just before it could hit him and Mav, became Bradley's favorite sound ever.
Then they shook hands on the tarmac after landing – and no, Bradley had absolutely not memorized the softness of Jake's fingertips against his or the way their gazes seemed to have been born to intertwine –, the Navy big bosses had decided after a month's leave to make the Daggers Squad a permanent team and gave him and Jake the chance to co-teach a flying course at TOPGUN, and their relationship completely lost the sharp, jagged edges that had made them bleed each other up until that moment.
Jake was beautiful in a way that went beyond the outer shell he possessed: he was loyal, passionate, sincere. A huge, stubborn pain in the ass, of course, but he was capable of a generosity and honesty that were truly rare to find around.
Having him around, next to him reassured Bradley to his very bones, in a way so profound that he hadn't felt within himself since his mother's death. He had memorized all of Jake's flaws over time, but he was genuinely surprised by his hidden strengths more and more every day.
Being still alive, having been given a second chance in the face of certain death, had changed Bradley deeply. Of course, he still remained in some respects a perfectionist who was always waiting for the right moment to come down from his perch, a moment that would never come (and this was evident in his silent pining for a man he had always been physically attracted to, in spite of everything, and which he had now grown to really know and love), but Bradley liked to think that he had become capable of taking more risks and letting go of the heavy baggage of his past.
He did it with Mav, he had also done it with Jake, and he was really proud of it.
Eight months earlier, he would never have rushed to the other man's house to help him and monitor him for a few hours after a dental operation - he would have laughed in the face of anyone who dared to present him with a similar situation, so absurd as to be unthinkable. And now, instead, Bradley was right there, doing what he never thought he would do in his life.
He walked down the short corridor of Jake's house - white walls dotted here and there with photos of his mother, his sisters, Texas landscapes riding Mary Jo, him with Javy and with the Daggers, including Bradley - and went in the kitchen when there was Javy, leaning against the counter as he double-checked a handwritten list.
With all the paperwork they'd signed over the last few months, Bradley might have recognized Jake's handwriting even in the dark.
In the background, a constant string of complaints came from Jake's bedroom, its door open, allowing Bradley's ears to pick up words like "he," "ice cream," and "pain," as well as soft whimpers.
Oh shit, the situation was even worse than he could have imagined.
Funny how anesthesia had managed to bring a big man like Jake to his knees, he wasn't virtually afraid of anything or anyone.
“Hi, Javy,” Bradley said, walking over to him. Javy's brown gaze lifted from the paper in his hands and he chuckled.
“Are you listening to him? Please, go to Jake over there and calm him down, he's been pissing me off for almost an hour wanting you close. He didn't stop talking about you for a single moment since we left the dentist, can you believe it?” Javy stated, as if he had said very normal things and hadn't just shocked Bradley's world.
“Huh?” it was his very intelligent reply to him. Bradley just couldn't understand what he was doing here, or why Jake was so adamant in these conditions on wanting him with him. He was sure that vulnerability was the last thing Jake could tolerate in their friendship or in human relationships in general... and, besides, Javy was his best friend.
Not him.
Javy looked up at the ceiling and muttered something in Spanish that Bradley didn't have the courage to understand, in all honesty.
“Look, I have to go now and buy him everything he needs to eat for the next few days. He doesn't have to open his mouth completely, he absolutely doesn't have to remove the gauze because he can do it in a couple of hours or so, and he can't do anything but drink cold water, but without a straw. Straight from the glass, I recommend. Got it, Rooster?”
Bradley's curly head gave a simple nod – the orders given were definitely doable.
“Try to get him to rest, anesthesia has made him very agitated and I think he needs to get it out of his system as soon as possible,” Javy concluded, before grabbing his car keys and phone from the counter, clutching the list between his fingers and leave an affectionate pat on Bradley's shoulder. “Go to that asshole over there, please... if I hear him complaining again that you're not there, I swear I'll strangle him with my own hands.”
Even more confusion showed on Bradley's face, but he followed Javy's advice and headed towards Jake's bedroom, a few meters from the kitchen. It was a small room, painted in a delicate light blue, with a beautiful white bed placed against the left wall and a large window overlooking the street. The curtains were drawn, leaving everything in the dim light of the early Californian afternoon.
“Hey, Hangman... You don't look so good,” Bradley began, approaching the flailing mass that appeared to be Jake. He was wrapped in a soft blanket, his head resting on the headboard and his back nestled between various pillows – he was simply the cutest thing he had ever seen in his life. A fierce rush of protectiveness crept into Bradley's breathing as he sat next to him on the mattress.
“Roo,” was the only word Jake could say, his jade green eyes lighting up like the Christmas tree lights Bradley remembered his mother putting up every year. Even though he wasn't in the best of shape, Jake was clearly as happy to see him as ever, and Bradley's stupid heart skipped a beat at the thought.
“You're finally here,” Jake continued to say, his jaw slightly locked from anesthesia and surgery, but able to make himself understood by Bradley's ears. “Why weren't you outside the dentist with Javy? You left me alone and it hurts,” he whimpered, a crumpled expression spreading across his devastatingly handsome features.
Bradley grabbed his hand – it was cold, despite the blanket on him – and began to calm him, touching his knuckles delicately.
“The most important thing is that I'm here now, right? How do you feel? Do you want to drink some water?” he asked, his voice as sweet as honey.
Jake shook his blonde head. “I just want you to stay here with me and cuddle me,” he freely confessed, as if it were absolutely and completely normal for Jake Seresin to ask Bradley Bradshaw to be wrapped in his arms.
Bradley's expression must have been one of complete surprise – it wasn't easy to come to terms with the fact that a drugged Jake was asking him for everything he had ever wanted, and he probably shouldn't have given in because of that. Once Jake returned to his full state of mind, he would feel humiliated by all this and couldn't risk their friendship for anything in the world – because Jake started moaning again, his eyes full of tears like a child who had denied a birthday present.
“You- you don't want to cuddle me? Do you hate me so much that you don't even want to hug me?” he asked in such a broken voice that, in turn, Bradley felt his heart shatter into a thousand pieces.
So he moved closer to Jake and tried to relax him. “No, I don't hate you, you know it's not like that... it's never been like that between the two of us. But I don't want us to do things that you might regret once the anesthesia wears off. I don't even think you can feel your face right now,” Bradley chuckled, trying to keep the atmosphere between them light.
He now understood why Javy had called him so urgently.
“Why should I regret it? Fuck, you're all I think about when I listen to Taylor Swift,” Jake confessed, his gaze strangely clear and present for a second before closing his eyes and taking a deep, pained breath. “But you're right, I can't feel my face and I don't even know how to stop the words from coming out of my mouth... I just know that I want you here with me.”
“And I'm here with you, don't worry about it,” Bradley whispered sheepishly, his face red as a tomato – he could clearly feel the blush spreading down his cheeks and pricking all the way to his neck.
But what the fuck had they put in Jake's veins to reduce him like this? To bring out Taylor Swift, who Jake secretly listened to religiously (and he knew it very well, he had heard him humming Midnight Rain, Cardigan, or Cruel Summer absentmindedly at the gym or while they were playing pool on the Hard Deck more times than he cared to admit)... wow, the situation was really serious.
Then a calm silence spread between him and Jake, who finally seemed to have calmed down, hold Bradley's hand as if it were his personal lifeline.
“When will you give me ice cream?” he then asked suddenly, breaking the immobility into which they had both fallen. Bradley chuckled and a part of him thought for a moment of taking his phone and filming Jake in those conditions, to secure this absurd situation forever on video, but he desisted because he knew that Jake, even reduced to that, would break his wrists if he had tried.
“When Javy comes back. He went to buy you everything you wrote to him. I bet you asked him to get you a huge tub of strawberry ice cream, didn't you?” Bradley teased, tugging on his hand. To him, strawberry ice cream, or any fruit-based flavor, was an absolute abomination (chocolate for life, baby!), while Jake had always defended the sanctity of strawberry as his all-time favorite flavor.
“Yes, asshole, you got it right. Strawberry is the best thing that ever happened to humanity after you,” he sighed, continuing to close and open his eyes like a sleepy sloth.
Bradley's heart was now under siege with all these mini declarations of love that Jake was making to him and he felt a bud of hope born inside him – perhaps anesthesia was like alcohol, revealing a person's true feelings, and he could had a good margin of safety now that his love for Jake was no longer as unrequited and hopeless as he had thought just fifteen minutes ago -, but he made it a point to desperately stifle it until the adorable blond in front of him had regained his lucidity.
Only then would he come down from the perch on which Jake had accused him of hiding until recently and they would have a heart-to-heart talk. But only then.
“Maybe it's time for you to rest, don't you think?” Bradley ask him softly, their hands still linked together as if there were two magnets that attracted them and prevented them from loosening their grip.
Jake looked at him again, the beautiful green of his eyes clouding with tiredness.
“Okay, Roo, but I'm only doing it because you're asking me to... you are the bane of my existence and the object of all my desires... you and that damn mustache you have,” he drawled, chuckling, then touched his own right cheek and finally closed his eyelids.
Bradley's look became shocked. “Wait, did you just quote Bridgerton to me?”
But his question received no answer. Jake's breathing became very deep within a few minutes and he finally fell asleep, with his fingers intertwined and a peaceful expression on his face.
Bradley stared at him with his heart pounding like a mad herd of horses, as if Jake’s face was the point where his entire universe had concentrated.
When Jake opened his eyes again, his bedroom was completely shrouded in darkness.
The sun had now set on San Diego and he checked the time on the clock placed on the bedside table to his right: it was 06:21 in the afternoon.
His jaw ached, and he avoided running his tongue over the stitches the dentist had sewn in his mouth – they had strongly recommended to not do so. The sensitivity to his face had almost completely recovered, Jake noticed by very calmly moving some muscles at the corners of his mouth.
Then, like a train hitting his face, he remembered with extreme clarity everything that had happened and what he had said to Bradley a few hours earlier.
Fuck, I want to die. What have I done? What have I done?! he thought with terror. God, what he had hoped wouldn't happen had actually happened. Bradley had seen him in those conditions and he had practically revealed everything he felt for him, freely and authentically.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. By now Jake's vocabulary had been reduced to this single word that continued to swirl in his mind like a crazy pinwheel.
He had made a huge mess, from which he could never emerge intact. It was worse than having brought up the story of his dead father in front of everyone to provoke him to fly better and try to return home, it was worse than having disobeyed a direct order from an admiral to save Bradley from death... it was worse than anything he had ever done in his life. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Jake got out of bed, freeing himself from the blanket he'd wrapped himself in, and stumbled into the bathroom to check himself – but his knees were still steady, thank goodness. He carefully avoided looking at himself in the mirror - he could feel how swollen his cheek was, he probably looked like a squirrel -, and he washed his hands carefully before putting them in his mouth and taking off that damned cotton bandage.
Then he threw it in the garbage bin there and Jake filled his lungs with as much oxygen as possible.
The noises he heard outside his bedroom implied the presence of another person in the house and fuck, if Javy had been there in the kitchen he would have killed him with his bare hands for giving in to his pressure (he remembered that he had actually been pushy and temperamental, so in the end he knew he couldn't really blame him for everything, but still what the fuck, man) and still calling Bradley in those pitiful conditions.
If Bradley had been there instead... no, no, no, no, he couldn't even think about it. Jake preferred to focus on the fact that he had to drink ice water and that he deserved a nice bowl of strawberry ice cream to put into his stomach as a personal reward.
He went towards his kitchen and saw Bradley's broad shoulders, wrapped in one of those damned Hawaiian shirts that by now appeared to him even in dreams, while he was near the sink. From the sound of the tap, he was filling a glass of water for him to drink.
Jake softened for a moment, then decided to put on Hangman's mask and try to limit the damage he had foolishly done under the effect of anesthesia.
“Don't be scared, it's me and I'm completely awake,” he said in a full, ironic voice. Without the gauze and drugs it was easier to speak and be able to express his thoughts with ease... Jake would never underestimate the great gift of verbal communication again in his entire life.
Bradley's warm gaze, two black wells that seemed to attract Jake with their gravity every time they looked at him, rested on him, and a sincere smile was painted on his sweet features.
“I was just about to come and wake you up, but as usual you did it all on your own,” he chuckled as if he had delivered the comic joke of the century. “Here, drink. It should be quite cold.”
Bradley's fingers handed him a glass tumbler full of water, which Jake eagerly drank to the last drop calmly. God, his throat was as dry as if he were in the desert of Afghanistan again.
Then an uneasy silence spread through the air, and the weight of this tension settled on Jake's back, almost crushing his vertebrae.
Well, better get it over with. It was nice while it lasted between us, he thought, aware that he was meeting the end of his friendship with Bradley with far less dignity than he would have hoped to have at the time.
"I-"
“Look, I wanted to-”
His voice and Bradley's started speaking at the same time, and Jake decided to keep quiet. He gestured for Bradley to go ahead – perhaps it was best for him to organize the biggest rejection of the century and put Jake's feelings to rest forever.
“I wanted to ask you how do you feel and if you remember what you told me earlier,” was all Bradley said before running a hand through his wavy hair and looking straight into his eyes, with an intensity that sent shivers down Jake's spine.
Well, it was all in his hands.
Bradley, like the good co-leader that he was, was offering him the possibility of an escape route on a silver platter. He was protecting him as he always had, both in the air and on the ground.
And Jake could choose whether to leave him hanging, like a true Hangman, or take a leap of faith.
If there was one thing Bradley had taught him over the last few months together it was that he didn't leave anyone behind. That courage wasn't just the absence of fear, but the ability to close your eyes and trust someone more than you can trust yourself.
And if there was anyone Jake Seresin trusted more than himself, it was Bradley Bradshaw.
“Yes, I'm feeling better, thanks for asking, Roo. And yes, I remember everything I told you on my bed,” he said, his hands shaking slightly and his heart beating directly in his ears.
Bradley's smile, from tense, became relaxed, showing a tenderness that Jake had never seen truly directed towards him until that moment. It was like seeing the sun for the first time flying up above, like having just the endless blue sky in front of you and no obstacles that could stop you from feeling free.
It was as if he had just given him the fastest wings in the entire universe and made him fly up into the atmosphere by simply standing in his rented apartment in San Diego.
Jake walked over to him, and took his large, warm hands again, releasing a deep breath he'd been holding between his ribs. He didn't say anything else, there was no need between the two of them at that point.
Bradley's expression was probably the same, completely incredulous and stunned by the feelings they had for each other and that finally, finally, were able to exist outside of their hearts and become something concrete, tangible.
“You know,” Bradley began, his lips so close to Jake's that they seemed the only source of any language his brain could understand, “I also made you a bowl of that horrible strawberry ice cream you like.”
And he moved behind him to take with one hand a full breakfast cup full of pink ice cream, complete with a spoon already inserted. Jake laughed at him as he looked at him and, with his free hand, immediately tasted some of the ice cream, letting it melt on his tongue and allowing the sweet taste of it to envelop his palate like velvet.
“You know me, for me strawberry ice cream is an incredible disgrace and I still can't believe it's your favorite flavor,” Bradley whispered amusedly before his eyes became hungry and Jake's back was covered in shivers because of it. “But I am strangely convinced that if I tasted it from your lips, it would instantly become my favorite taste in the entire universe.”
“Well, it's really great that I have completely worn off anesthesia and that I can feel my face again. If someone kissed me now, I would be able to f-"
Jake wasn't able to finish that sentence.
A pair of chapped, full lips rested on his, delicate as a feather, as his heart took flight again upwards, higher and higher, faster and faster and then dived again, again, again, endlessly.
It was like dying and being reborn, but on the mouth of the only man he had ever truly loved in his entire life.
“As I thought, strawberry has become my new favorite flavor, baby,” Bradley stated, laughing and gently holding him in his arms, happy as ever.
And Jake understood in that moment that his new favorite flavor was the joy that Bradley just gave him.