Work Text:
“Bradley, please stop tryin’ to swing from the ceiling light. You’re not an acrobat.”
Maverick looks up from the chessboard where Carole is absolutely destroying him. She’s got two queens on the board and most of her pieces, and he’s down to a rook, a king, and two measly pawns — one of which Carole’s certainly going to capture this turn. “You killing your son’s dreams over there?”
That remark earns him a swat on the back of the head with a folded newspaper. “I didn’t say he’ll never be an acrobat,” Goose admonishes. “Although I think he would prefer ‘Spiderman.’ I just don’t want him yanking that fixture slap out of the ceiling.” Despite the exasperation in his voice, his eyes host a twinkle. He smacks Maverick again for good measure.
“Be nice to Maverick,” says Carole.
“Bold words from someone who just put me in check.” Maverick mourns the loss of his rook, which sits pretty over by Carole’s side of the board. It’s in good company among its fallen comrades.
Goose squats down, surveys the board. Pretends like he knows jack shit about chess. “Go easy on Mav, honey,” he says at last, kissing his wife’s temple.
“Bold words from someone who just smacked me upside the head with a newspaper.” Maverick snatches the paper from Goose’s grip and sits on it. “I’m starting to get why your son is the way that he is.”
What Maverick doesn’t say is that he has been around for just as many of Bradley’s formative years as anyone else in this house, and that he is undoubtedly the worst influence of them all. Saying that would not only be admitting defeat, but something worse, too: the fact that he’s all but a resident of the Bradshaw house at this point.
Never mind the fact that he’s not blood related to them, and never mind the fact that he’s a grown man well past the prime age for sleepovers. Carole has quilted a little toiletry bag for him and embroidered his initials on the front. It’s stashed in their guest bathroom for access whenever he visits, which is often enough to warrant its existence.
From across the room, Bradley makes an impressive leap off the couch, misses the ceiling light by several feet, and faceplants into a pile of pillows on the floor.
Goose glances over his shoulder, then back at Maverick. “He’ll be fine.”
Maverick’s heart swells in his chest. It’s stupid, but the room feels so warm, and he can’t stop a smile from creeping onto his face.
“You’re in check,” Carole reminds him.
Well, that stops the smile. “You know, I think you cheat. Someone oughta check up your sleeves, see if you’ve got a computer hidden there.”
Carole throws her head back laughing. Maverick is a goner for that laugh. Against his will, the smile comes back, and under the table Carole’s foot bumps against his own.
“Oh, honey, we don’t lick the swingset. There’s germs there.”
Bradley glances over, tongue still planted squarely on the red metal pole.
“Bradley, listen to your mother!” warns Goose. He lifts his aviators and gives Bradley an I-mean-it glare. “Or I’ll come over and throw you off the top of the jungle gym.” As if to prove it wasn’t an empty threat, his hand flies to his cane, which leans on the bench beside him.
“No!” Bradley squeals in laughter — then takes off running near fast enough to leave a cloud of dust in his wake.
Mournfully, Goose sighs, putting his sunglasses back down and giving a shake of his head. “Kid’s gonna be the death of me,” he mutters.
Carole squirts some more sunscreen on her hands and gently taps the side of Maverick’s face. “Look at me, baby. I know it’s tempting to stare at such a beautiful man, but I don’t want you getting all burned again.”
Baby. A shiver runs up Maverick’s spine, and he leans embarrassingly into her touch. It’s a welcome distraction from the horrible sensation of the cold cream on his skin — and the accusation she had lobbied against him. Sure, her tone was more knowing than angry, but that almost makes it worse. Goose is beautiful. Maverick does get tempted to stare at him. That this is apparently obvious makes Maverick squirm.
He lets his eyelids drift closed and tilts his face to the sun as Carole applies the sunscreen to his cheeks, nose, forehead. She even gets some on her thumbs and carefully rubs it into the skin under his eyes.
“There,” she says at last, sugary sweet. “You are all good, Pete Mitchell.”
Maverick ducks his head to hide his blush. It’s a spectacular failure.
“Sunburn already?” teases Carole. Then she gets closer. Her voice is low in his ear as she leans forward and whispers, “Think I might need to put on another layer of sunblock?”
Grumbling, Maverick loops an arm around her neck and pulls her in to tousle her hair. She giggles madly.
“What do you think you’re doin’ to my wife?” Goose hollers from over in the shade. His sunglasses are up again. He can’t see shit with them on, and everyone knows it — his eyes don’t work anywhere close to the same after the beating his head took — but he says he likes looking cool. One of these days, he’d told Carole over breakfast last week, we’ve gotta get me some prescription aviators. They can sure afford it. Disability pension from the Navy doesn’t make them rich, but they’re fairly comfortable, especially in their little Appalachian farmhouse.
Maverick looks over, realizes he’s been cupping Carole’s head for far longer than can be played off as a friendly gesture. “Just spoiling her like she deserves,” he calls back, and comes close to masking the tremors of shame in his voice.
“Hm,” says Goose, settling down on his bench again. “Fair enough, carry on. So long as you come over here when you’re done and spoil me like that.”
Maverick would like nothing more, and the idea makes his stomach do a stupid flip, but he tosses out a sigh that he hopes sounds neutral. “If I have to.”
“‘Cause you know, I did survive a plane crash, and all.” Goose’s grin is ridiculous. He waggles his eyebrows.
“Oh, shut up,” says Maverick, giving Carole one last pat on the back and heading over to Goose’s bench. He’s not tall enough to cast an intimidating shadow, but he does manage to cast a significant portion of Goose’s torso into darkness. He places a hand over his heart like he’s offended. “For one thing, it wasn’t a crash.”
Goose grabs his cane and raps Maverick’s ankles with it. “I dunno. It sure crashed into the water.”
“Yeah, when we were already ejected.”
“And I sure crashed into its canopy.”
“Jesus Christ.” Maverick rolls his eyes, but he can’t be mad at Goose. He never is anymore. When you nearly kill someone, you’re under an obligation to do anything they want for the rest of time. Goose is in agreement with the second half of that claim even if he vehemently denies the first. (“You didn’t nearly kill me, Grumman did,” he takes every opportunity to remind Maverick.)
“Now, c’mere, Mav.” Goose winks. “Get on down and spoil me.”
“Technically, you can eat acorns, but that doesn’t mean you should. ‘Specially not dirty ones from the ground. You’ll get a disease and die.”
Goose’s long legs have brought him to the front of the pack on the hiking trails. Maverick brings up the rear, hands shoved in his pockets as he watches Bradley pause with a fistful of acorns halfway to his mouth. “Jesus,” Maverick says. “You got eyes in the back of your head or something, Mother Goose?”
In response, Goose throws up a middle finger and keeps walking on.
“Sweetheart, really, don’t eat those,” tuts Carole worriedly. Always prepared, she pulls a packet of trail mix from her fanny pack. Bradley’s face lights up at the sight and he lets the acorns scatter on the ground. Before he can grab the snack, Carole touches his nose. “You can’t only eat the M&Ms, okay? I don’t want you to get a bellyache. Eat some of the good stuff too.”
“In my book, M&Ms are the definition of good stuff.” Goose tosses a wry grin over his shoulder.
The air is blissfully cool today, a welcome break from the stifling weather that Tennessee has been having lately. Sometimes Maverick walks outside and can barely breathe, humidity choking him, but today there is none of that. Today he can taste the breeze.
“Slow down, Goose,” he calls. “You’re leaving us all in the dust here.”
Goose’s cane makes a fine hiking stick, something that neither Maverick or Carole thought to bring. Bradley found a branch on the ground and has been ambling along with it so he can be just like his daddy.
“Not my fault you’re fun-sized,” says Goose.
“Fun-sized!” Indignantly, Maverick darts forward. “You’re lucky I’m short, because I have half a mind to tackle you right now.”
That sets Goose off into a fit of his trademark honking laughter until he’s all but doubled over, gripping his cane and Maverick’s shoulder for stability.
“You think it’s funny? You think I’m joking? You’re so tall a gust of wind could knock you down, buddy!” says Maverick, but his cheeks ache with how hard he’s smiling, and he hardly notices the way Carole is smiling at him with her head all tilted.
“Jeez Louise, Mav,” Goose says. He straightens up at last. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“Do what?”
Goose loops an arm around Maverick’s waist and pulls him in close so they can sway together. “Make me laugh so damn hard.”
And Carole, oddly, is still looking at them like she knows something Maverick doesn’t. When she catches his eye, she winks.
“Get down from there this minute, you rascal! No more dancing! You might fall!”
Carole’s admonishment is lost in giggles as she watches her son do the hokey pokey on top of their table at Krystal’s. It reminds Maverick startlingly of God, doesn’t he ever embarrass you? That was said about Goose, but little Bradley acts more and more like his father every day.
“Watch this!” he says, and jumps, shaking the table when he lands. One of the crayons that came with his kid menu rolls onto the floor.
“C’mon, honey, it isn’t safe up there. Your mother’s right.” Goose easily plucks his son off the makeshift stage and sits him right down in the booth. Leaning over to whisper conspiratorially in his ear, Goose adds on, “Besides, I think your dancing was so good it was making every other schmuck in this place jealous.”
Bradley laughs as he begins the very important work of scribbling all over the maze on the back of his menu.
“He gets it from you,” Maverick says, poking Goose in the arm. “Don’t you remember the stunts you used to pull back in the day?”
“The stunts he still pulls.” Carole snatches Goose’s spoon before he can use it to catapult a sugar packet across the room.
“Hey,” says Goose, shrugging. “What did you expect when you married the class clown?”
Goose and Carole’s high school romance was nothing short of sickeningly sweet. They’d known each other since toddlerhood, at least six years before Maverick came into the mix, and when Goose proposed he’d asked Maverick to be hiding in the bushes with a Polaroid camera. Carole had indeed fallen in love with him because of his humor. And his sweetness, his charm, his off-key crowing — she had a long, long list, all of which she read during her vows, and Maverick would be lying if he said that it didn’t make him tear up.
Carole leans forward and brushes her nose against Goose’s, eyes fluttering closed. A smile plays on her lips. “I expected nothing short of this,” she murmurs, then kisses him right at the corner of his mouth.
Maverick doesn’t even pretend to look away.
“Why are you biting my sleeve? You don’t know where it’s been.”
There’s a significant wet spot on the cuff of Maverick’s leather jacket where Bradley has been gnawing on it, hands braced on Maverick’s chest.
“Bradley—”
“I’m not Bradley, I’m a dog!” Bradley exclaims around the sleeve. As if to punctuate his point, he gives another ferocious tug.
Maverick extricates his arm from the kid’s mouth and shakes off what slobber he can. “There’s germs on it, Brad-Brad,” he says, in as gentle of a tone as he can manage. “Germs can make you sick. Also, now my jacket’s all wet, and that’s gross.”
“I’m not Bradley!” Bradley jumps up and down like he’s on a pogo stick. Then he barks. “I’m Odie and you’re Jon, and you’re gonna send me to the dog pound! Woof!”
“Since when did we get a dog?” Goose calls from the living room doorway. Padding closer, he uses his cane to nudge Bradley away from Maverick.
In response, Bradley woofs again, and grabs the end of the cane.
“Okay, Odie, you wanna play tug-of-war? I’m warning you, I’m gonna win. I’ve got muscles. Whaddaya think all that PT was for?” Goose throws Maverick a wink.
Maverick sits back and watches them go back and forth. Bradley gives a valiant effort but is eventually defeated as Goose yanks the cane away. He barks angrily and scurries out of the room, leaving Goose and Maverick alone.
“How much of that did you hear?”
Goose lightly bonks Maverick on the top of the head with his cane. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
Christ. Maverick rolls his eyes and grabs the cane, pulling it — and in conjunction, Goose — closer. “I would like to know. That’s why I’m asking. I wanna know how embarrassed I should be.”
“Nothin’ embarrassing about being a good uncle,” says Goose. His breath is warm against Maverick’s face, because shit, he’s close enough for his breath to hit Maverick’s face. “He loves you, you know. Thinks you hung the stars.”
“He isn’t the only one. You see the way you look at me?” Maverick teases.
Instead of answering, Goose kisses him. It should come as a surprise, but it doesn’t. It feels like the kind of kiss you get when you wake up next to someone. It feels like instinct, like the sun hitting your face, and like Maverick has been expecting it for a long time.
Before he can say anything, Goose kisses him again.
“And that,” says Goose, “was from Carole.”
“Not so fast! I can kiss him myself, thank you very much.” Carole sidles over from wherever she was lurking.
“Jesus!” Maverick’s heart leaps into his throat, but it chokes him pleasantly. A fullness after a large meal. “Can’t anyone in this house enter a room normally?”
Carole doesn’t try to defend herself. She presses her lips to Maverick’s cheek. Her eyelashes tickle his skin.
“Jesus,” he says again, but this time it’s thin and cracked. He swallows hard and returns her kiss. She smells like everything beautiful in the world. Maverick’s sure he’s flushed to hell and back, so in a stupid attempt to hide it he lets his head fall against Goose’s shoulder. Arms wrap around his waist. “Hey, thought you guys wanted me to spoil you — not the other way around.”
“Well, we just love you so much, and we couldn’t stand it anymore. How’s that?” Carole’s whisper tickles the shell of his ear. Her voice is light, but Maverick feels the weight buried deep behind it.
What could be an earth-shattering moment of realization passes in a flurry of souls settled at last. Maverick gets the feeling that this is how it’s been for years — they just finally got around to cementing it.
“Next time,” he says, “don’t make me wait so long.”
A huff of laughter bubbles from Goose’s mouth. “Deal.”