Work Text:
Most people who met Hangman saw exactly what he wanted them to see. The cocky pilot who was so sure in his own words and actions that he never once stopped to second guess himself, a man not weighed down by the hardships life had dealt him, a man who is so dedicated to the skies that there isn’t a single other thing that could worry him. A man without strife or heartache or grief.
An unfortunate side effect of this persona that he’d spent years building up brick by brick in order to hide the boy who’d left home and had the shock of his life to learn that the scars he carried were of an unusual kind was that it made people think he didn’t care.
A lack of caring had never, not once, been Jake’s problem. In fact, more often than not, his problems were imbued by the fact that he cared too much. And that’s where most people who’d only ever met Hangman, who’d never gotten to see past the curtain at Jake, were tripped up.
Javy Machado, also known as Coyote, was the only person in living existence who saw the full extent of Jake’s being. Because he was there before the dawn of Hangman, before the walls were placed up. He was the one who slowly shattered Jake’s understanding of reality and then helped him piece it all back together. Javy broke the illusion that abuse was normal for Jake when he was eighteen and naive. He helped Jake come to terms with his bisexuality in spite of the struggle against all the shame that came right along with it when Jake was nineteen and growing more and more jaded by the day.
He was there for every broken step along the way, from Jake’s first breakup to the shitshow that was his situationship with one Bradley Bradshaw to losing his wingwoman and earning a kill on the same mission. So he knew the inner workings of Jake’s mind, intimately.
He was also the one who caught Hangman by his leash and reeled him back in when his posturing got out of hand. And Jake had been doing fine, right up until he shoved Bradley’s dead father and Maverick’s dead backseater right in both of their faces. That was when Javy finally told him he was crossing the line.
The difference between Javy and the rest of the class was that Javy understood why Jake had pushed so far. Javy was there for every tear that Jake ever cried for Kate “Blue” Jameson. Javy had nursed the worst hangovers of Jake’s life after nights spent slurring about how much of his heart belonged to Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw. He knew the reasons why Jake just couldn’t stop chipping and chipping away at Bradley’s carefully constructed armor with little regard to what wounds he scraped against when he did, not until he found a way through to his stubborn mind.
Jake’s problem for most of his life had revolved around being so unbelievably terrible with words that he, more often than not, ended up with his foot in his mouth. Because, as a child, he was never educated on proper or healthy communication. When he was small, his best course of action was often to keep his mouth shut and take whatever came his way, be it praise or punishment, reward or rebuke. So he never learned how to use his words, Javy had had to force him into finding his footing, and Jake still struggled with conveying the meaning behind everything he said when he said it. He was a complicated person like that and he knew it had to be exhausting to try and be friends with him. He’d apologized to both Javy and Kate more times than he could count over the years for having to put up with him.
And sure, if he was known as someone more laid back like Bob or trustworthy like Bradley, they might’ve all taken a moment to see his side. To actually digest his words and see the meaning, rather than the baseline implications. But Hangman’s veneer blinded them, discombobulating his point until he just came off like a dick who refused to let an old rivalry rest, who was antagonizing someone for the sake of gaining a reaction, who swung low and hit hard just to force Rooster to emote when his stoicism refused to be broken. Even his CO hadn’t looked at him quite the same after that, even if Jake felt more pity in Maverick’s gaze than he did of the blazing anger that came his way from everybody else.
What none of them knew was that Jake knew Bradley far too well not to see the fear in his eyes when Jake laid out the stakes in front of him to see. The reaction he’d been searching for hadn’t been anger, it had been some form of understanding. But Jake was clumsy and he took it too far, crossing a line he didn’t realize was there until he’d already blown past it.
Jake knew the story of Bradley’s father. Knew as much as his death hurt for Bradley, that wasn’t the ache he’d misstepped and dug into. No, the reason Bradley was pissed was because A—Jake was airing his dirty laundry in front of the whole class when Bradley had always been an extremely private person and B—he’d accidentally implicated Maverick in the accident. And Bradley wouldn’t stand for that, even if he couldn’t stand to look the man in the eye.
Jake wasn’t stupid and he’d heard the stories of the godfather who went behind his back enough times to connect the dots the day he saw the picture with Bradshaw Sr. standing to Maverick’s left in that picture in the ready room. He knew that had to be what Bradley was focusing all of the fierce anger dwelling within him on, that Maverick was the fabled godfather he’d heard so many stories, good and bad, about over the years.
He didn’t even realize until Javy pulled him aside later with a deep furrow in his brow, how his words must’ve sounded. He hadn’t meant to implicate Maverick as the one to blame in the accident. Bradley had told him the story once upon a time, that the accident his father died in was studied in the safety course they took in Whiting Field, that his death created a change in policy for ejection protocol. He knew it was an incident where no one was to blame but a mechanical malfunction and their training. But in hindsight…it had sounded like that was where he was going with it before Bradley leapt from his seat and grabbed him by the collar, his eyes ablaze with anger.
More than anything, Jake had been trying to tell Bradley to let it go and stop worrying about personal problems that he could end up never having to reckon with if he died on the mission. He just, as usual, missed the mark by a high margin thanks to his illustrious way with words.
Javy had always mocked him for having a strange way of showing he cared but this was an all-time low. Even Jake could admit that.
After that day, Jake felt less and less welcome amidst the group at The Hard Deck or going around in the ready room or chatting at the end of the day in the locker room. But he didn’t give a damn anymore about being friendly, hell, maybe he never had, because maybe, just maybe, if he pushed hard enough, somebody would see his point. Somebody would understand that when he said “you’re not flying fast enough,” what he really meant was “please stop being so afraid of yourself in the air because it will kill you.”
That “no time to be thinking about the past” meant “stop letting your anger get the better of you and fly like I know you can.”
That “they couldn’t keep up” meant “I might die in the crossfire but at least nobody else will.”
What terrified him to his very core was seeing Bradley so stuck on the playbook that he didn’t have it in him to play against his limits. He’d seen fear kill a pilot before, had watched as Kate’s fear of ejecting had murdered her in a ball of flames. He refused to witness somebody else he cared about die because they didn’t fight their fears in order to survive. He couldn’t take it, damn the fact that he and Bradley hadn’t been on speaking terms in a decade. He would not survive having to bury Bradley Bradshaw. That was what went unsaid in that classroom that day.
Jake had never been very good at communicating clearly. He’d never had an easy time saying what he meant and making any sense of it. Every time he opened his mouth, he spoke in knots that needed to be unwound in order to see past what it sounded like and understand what it meant. Javy had lamented the trouble Jake found himself in over it for years.
And sure, Jake knew he was an asshole. He knew he was a downright, grade-A prick for the way he acted ninety-nine percent of the time. He was self-aware enough to know why most people hated him. He also wasn’t very good at changing it.
But being an asshole did not mean he didn’t care. He cared, a lot. So deep in his bones that he ached with it. Sometimes he hated it, sometimes he loathed how deep in his chest he felt things, and he yearned to be the person that everyone assumed he was. The Hangman who was taken at face value. Some days, he really wished he was just some narcissistic dick who only cared about himself and his own personal gain because that would be such a simpler life to lead. But Jake’s heart was not so easily swayed.
From time to time, under the right lighting and in the right circumstance, Jake saw something of a kindred spirit in Maverick’s eyes. The pain of a loss that hurt more than most could ever fathom. The weight of taking a life, of blood on your hands that you can never wash away. The reputation of a reckless jerk that followed you despite your tendency to invest your whole being into somebody only to watch them walk away in the end. The willingness to be the one in the line of fire if it meant keeping someone else safe.
Jake didn’t know the man but his words and his eyes held more stories in them than any service record could ever begin to explain. So when Jake’s jade green eyes met Maverick’s emerald, he saw a twin flame. Someone just like him, the same paint in a different color. The same hurt with different bruising.
At the end of the day, Jake could only hope that someone might listen to his words and see the forest rather than the trees, but until that day, he would shoulder the reputation of the self-absorbed asshole and he would wait for the person who could see him for all he was.
Once upon a time, he’d thought that person was Bradley. But alas, he’d been wrong. So all he’s left with is hope.