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Jake has an expression on his face that Javy really doesn’t like. The same one he’d had when they found the picture of Captain Mitchell’s Topgun class; him and Rooster’s dad, and the COMPACFLT staring granily back at them from 1986.
“Did you notice something strange about Rooster today, Javy?”
A deep sigh emerges from what feels like the very depths of his soul, he pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Please, Jake. Stop. Don’t you think you’ve antagonised him enough for one day?” The grin is still there. “He’s already come at you for bringing up his dead dad once, please don’t do it again.”
“Ah!” the light in Jake’s eyes is bordering on manic, “but didn’t you notice, Coyote? He only tried to hit me after I said Maverick was driving.” Honestly, Hangman is a dog with a bone when it comes to Rooster. Coyote doesn’t know why he tries. “The plot has thickened, my friend!”
He had noticed. And Javy doesn’t want to admit it, but he is curious too. Bradshaw hadn’t even looked particularly bothered until Maverick came up, and he hadn’t snapped until Hangman insinuated the obvious conclusion.
“I thought he just had beef with the old man, but that was… protective.” Coyote wouldn’t call it that. From where he’s sitting it just looks like all that pigtail pulling finally struck the right nerve to blow the fuse on Rooster’s incredibly hot temper. But what does he know, He’s not the one with a degree in Rooster-ology, even with the front row seats he has to Jake’s obsession.
Hangman isn’t often surprised by their fellow aviators, he’s generally got an excellent read on people, it’s how he always knows exactly how to get under someone’s skin. But this, this has thrown him.
Bradshaw is an all or nothing kinda guy, he’s got about three modes for interacting with people. And they don’t overlap. To Bradley Bradshaw, you are either on his side, and he would lay himself over the wires for you (there are precious few people in this category; mainly Natasha, but he must be at least a little fond of Payback and Fanboy too, if that first hop is anything to go by) or you’re not. If you’re not in Bradshaw’s good books, then you’d better hope he ignores you. This is not the first time Hangman has been on the receiving end of Rooster’s temper, and it won’t be the last. The breakup hadn’t been nearly dramatic enough to warrant all the vitriol that’s been spilled between them in the past few years. But Jake will be damned if he lets himself be ignored by Bradley Fucking Bradshaw. He doesn’t think he could stand it. He’d engineered an almost seamless transition from being with Bradley, to being against him. And he’s gone to a lot of trouble to keep it that way. To keep that attention on him. Because if there is one thing that Jake Seresin cannot let himself be, it's ignorable. What can he say, he’s an egotistical bastard. Javy’s side-eye anytime a song about heartbreak comes over the radio is irrelevant.
That being said, nothing about Bradshaw’s response today has made sense in that ironclad framework. Bradshaw does not extend his protective instincts to people he hates (That time he pulled the handsy lumberjack off Jake in a dingy bathroom doesn’t count, he’d have done that for anyone. It was the right thing to do, and Bradshaw liked nothing more than being right. Besides, he’d been way too drunk to even properly realize what was happening before Bradley had swooped in red-faced and furious), and he hates their instructor. Palpably. So what is it about the Captain that has Rooster all screwed up? Angry and spitting all the way through training – dancing right on top pf the line of insubordination – but still jumping violently, instinctively, to the old man’s defence. Because that’s what it had been, and Javy corroborated it. Bradley hadn’t gotten mad, hadn’t worked up that infamous Rooster Temper when he’d called him conservative, slow, stuck in the past, unfit; all reliable mainstays that have lit that fuse in the past. Bradley’s never swung at him like that either. In all of their traded barbs over pool tables and dart boards, no matter how much it escalated verbally, Jake has never truly been afraid of Bradley. The image of Bradley, of Rooster, flying out of his seat, his fist aiming for Hangman’s face, will stick in his mind for a long time. Along with his red-faced scream “you son of a bitch!” drowning out Jake’s smug assertion “everyone knows Maverick was flying when his old man died!”
Instincts are a hard thing to kill. Rooster knows that better than anyone. In the shocked silence after they’ve all been dismissed, he can admit to himself that that’s what it had been. Instinct. It is instinct to protect Mav, he’s been doing it all his life. There are precious few people left who will, and fuck knows he won’t do it himself.
And Jake’s been sticking his fingers in Bradley’s scabs from the moment of their breakup, but nothing has ever crossed that line, a line he hadn’t even known he still had. Hangman has never made him so angry he forgot who Jake is. He’s never come so close laying his hands on someone he cares about. That red-haze moment will scare him, deeply, after the shock has worn off and everything that is now numb has faded into the cold chill of his own irreparable actions. But this is an old wound. The oldest. Ripping that particular scab away had hurt. Hangman probably hadn’t even meant to do it, hadn’t even realised.
“I don’t blame you for it.” Mav is still standing by the podium. He’s suddenly a lot smaller than Bradley remembers. “It was an accident, there’s nothing you could have done.” Mav’s eyes have gone glassy. “It wasn’t your fault, I’ve never blamed you for that.” He leaves before Mav can respond. He leaves because there are plenty of things he does blame Maverick for. Goose’s death just isn’t one of them. And he does not want to get in another fight with his dad, not when he’s still reeling from a handful of recklessly thrown words from the man he’s still in love with.