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Bradley is waiting for him when he gets to the locker rooms, eyes dark and mouth a soft serious line under his mustache.
“Bradshaw," Jake crows. His heart kicks up into his throat, a manic choking thrum. " As I live and breathe.”
One side of Bradley's mouth crooks up, bitter like Jake's morning cup of coffee. “Something like that," he agrees quietly.
Jake waits a beat, but Bradley doesn't move, the loose slouch of his body against the lockers belied by the rigid set of his shoulders, so Jake ambles over to his own locker, pulls out his khakis with steady hands, and strips out of his flight suit.
The slow drag of Bradley's gaze over his skin is familiar, a relief; Jake watches his soft pink tongue dart out to wet his lips. He makes himself raise his eyebrows, lets his head tip sideways and his vowels unspool.
“Enjoying the show?" The words are sour in his mouth, but better out than in.
Bradley's lips press into a line. He doesn't answer. Jake turns back to his locker to retrieve his uniform shirt and doesn't turn around again until he’s squared up and buttoned away.
Bradley falls into step beside him as he leaves the locker room. The echo of their footsteps follows them, rattling and out of sync, down overbright empty hallway and past the doors into the parking lot.
It's just after sunset, scuddy clouds like deep purple bruises chasing the last streaks of daylight in the wide-open sky. Jake lets himself feel the familiar sweet yearning and then lets it crumble to dust in his hands.
“Night," he says to Bradley, when Bradley doesn't immediately veer right towards the blue-black loom of his ancient Bronco. Bradley just looks at him, the base lights glinting in his eyes, and then shakes his head.
“You're coming home with us," he tells Jake. The obstinate jut of his chin suggests he has a whole argument ready.
Because Jake lives to frustrate him, he just gives Bradley his best smile and says, “Sure," through clenched teeth. Bradley squints suspiciously at him but there's really no need. Let Bradley take what he wants from him. That's all there is left of Jake to be had tonight anyway.
The shape in the passenger side window of the Bronco sharpens as it gets closer until Jake can make out Natasha's straight-nosed silhouette. Her neat head lifts as their footsteps clap closer and closer on the asphalt and then her sharp eyes are spearing Jake through the glass. He widens his smile till it starts to splinter at the edges and lets his hips roll for her as he walks. There's no answering smile. Jake swallows down the sting and slides into the back seat behind Bradley.
An unstrategic move as it turns out, since it lets Natasha watch him for the entire drive. Jake lets her gaze scald him till he can no longer bear it and then turns away to the window to watch his breath mist the glass. There and gone, there and gone, smeared flashes of lights veiled and revealed over and over as Bradley carefully drives the speed limit back to his place.
Once they're inside, Bradley peels away into the kitchen. Over his shoulder he says, “He hasn’t showered." It's the first words he and Natasha have spoken to each other since they got into the Bronco.
Jake already has his mouth open to protest being talked over when Natasha hooks a hand in his elbow and drags him to Bradley's outdated but decadently large bathroom. Jake watches her fingers, swift and skillful on the buttons of his uniform shirt. He should remind her, he thinks, to wash her hands after.
The silence she wraps around him is charged, expectant. His skin shrinks from it, thin and overstretched. He moves slowly where he's directed and watches without helping as she strips efficiently out of her uniform. Her bra is bright red today. The straps slash like fresh gashes over her shoulders and Jake tries to remember if he touched her.
Her hand is warm on his wrist when she pulls him into the shower. Warmer than the tepid pinpricks of water that land like darts on his skin. Warmer than the vicious sting of her eyes.
“You're scaring him," she says, blunt and accusatory. Jake raises his eyebrows at her, meeting the bright edge of her gaze with his own, but she doesn't look away, and shame drops his eyes in the end.
Her sigh gusts wetly over his face. “I’ll wash your hair."
She uses her own shampoo. Apple and citrus smells waft over their heads as she lathers it between her small, exquisite hands, eyes intent on Jake's face. He watches her back and tries to hold his breath.
She lifts her hands to his face and cocks an unimpressed eyebrow. “Lean down."
Jake loops his arms around her waist, leans down to run his nose along the sweet slope of skin where her shoulder arches delicately into her throat. Natasha hums, amusement perhaps or encouragement, and lets her fingers run bright and sharp up the nape of his neck before she pushes her fingers up into his hair and starts working up a lather, sending effervescent, soapy rivulets down his neck and chest.
Jake curls himself over her and presses his forehead to the steady beat of her pulse.
It's almost like being held.
Bradley's sitting on the bed with his elbows on his knees when they get out if the shower, clean clothes waiting for them in untidy piles. Natasha knocks Jake's hand away when he reaches for his tee and pulls it over her own head. The stretched-out collar slides past her collarbones and catches on the ball of her shoulder.
Jake has to look away from her, standing staring at him him with her arms crossed under the gentle slope of her breasts, bare feet curling on the carpet. But the only other thing to look at is Bradley, watching him from the bed and holding out Bradley's faded, familiar Ramones tee and a pair of plaid boxers. Cornered, Jake thinks, bitter as his morning cup of coffee.
He takes Bradley's t-shirt.
He takes the soup they feed him and the crusty bread retrieved, and almost dropped, from Bradley's oven. He takes the thick silence where the jokes about Natasha's clumsiness should have been.
He takes everything he’s given until Bradley bundles him into bed on his side and curls around his back, toothpaste-cool mouth moving slowly over the skin of his neck. He's not sure if it's that or the arm Bradley curls over his waist, hand snaking warm under his borrowed t-shirt, that forces the noise of protest past his throat.
“Hush," Natasha tells him, and he feels the bed shift as she uncurls from where she’d been reading tucked in on Bradley’s other side.
Jake hears himself make another noise, softer and wetter. Bradley whines in the back of his throat and tucks Jake tighter into the curl of his body.
Another noise, thick and wet and unmistakable. Jake turns to press his face into Bradley's pillow, gasping in lungfuls of fabric softener and Natasha's shampoo.
A soft tsking and the bed is shifting again, Natasha's warmth puddling into his other side. Bradley’s hand has curled under his t-shirt again, a flat broad heat spread out on Jake's stomach and smoothing up to press into his heaving chest.
“Come here," Natasha says. Her hands curl in his hair, tugging him insisently down, and the first wail breaks past Jake's cracked lips. And then another. And another.
He curls around Natasha, presses his hot wet face into her throat. Behind him, Bradley soothes kisses over his skin, breaths stirring the soft hairs at the nape of Jake's neck.
“It’s all right, baby," he murmurs. “We’ve got you."
Jake lets go. Loses himself to shame, to grief. They've got him.
In the morning, Bradley makes him his coffee, black and bitter, with two spoons of sugar stirred in.