Chapter Text
Bradshaw's ridiculous rendition of Great Balls of Fire was still ringing in Jake's ears as he gritted his teeth and stepped out onto the back porch of the Hard Deck. He couldn’t stand the way Bradshaw made him feel—it made it hard to parse out the different parts of himself that he usually prided on keeping separate. He’d started out his career with next-level compartmentalization: he could be competitive and cutthroat as Hangman in the skies and classroom, while still being regular old sweet and sassing Texas momma’s boy Jake Seresin the moment the dagger-laced helmet came off. He could perform the womanizing-Navy-boy act every day from the moment he stepped out of bed until he got back in it at the end of the day, but still lay awake staring at the ceiling at night and think about what his life could be like someday, once he was far enough along in his career to find someone to live alongside him without fearing the consequences.
Then there was Bradley Bradshaw. Stupidest fucking name Jake had ever heard, worse even than Will Williamson that he’d gone to middle school with, or the unfortunate twins Monica and Veronica who did not enjoy any jokes about rhyming. Bradley Bradshaw. Years behind the rest of them and yet in no apparent goddamn hurry to catch up. Content to be one of the best, and never fully rising to the jabs Jake threw his way to dare him to try to compete for the absolute best. Bradshaw played by old-school rules: that nobody was supposed to try to be the best, they were supposed to try to do their job and come home. Jake disagreed—the only way for everyone to come home was for him to be perfect, and perfect happened to make him the best. And prodding others into competing against him gave him something to fight for and made him even better. It—god, it frustrated him, and he found himself keeping that competitive dagger-sharp edge with him even when they were all at a bar or a party. Just trying to dare Bradshaw to go toe-to-toe with him.
So Hangman started bleeding into Jake, and it got harder and harder to shake off that personality the longer he was around Bradshaw.
Then there was the other thing.
Bradley Bradshaw was every barracks bunny’s wet dream walking, from the pornstache to the cocky strut and most of all the way he’d take a new one of those girls home every time they went to a bar. They’d all be enjoying themselves, playing pool or shooting the shit, and one of those girls would drift away from her friends, set a hand on Bradshaw’s shoulder, and only have to wait a split second before Bradshaw turned in his seat, twisting his whole body around to make sure she knew she had his attention with a slow smile.
That is to say, Jake knew beyond a reasonable doubt that Bradley Bradshaw was straight as they come. The blank, steady stare Jake would always receive if he leaned too close on a barb was confirmation. Jake didn’t have as big of an ego when it came to sex as most people assumed—his only encounters consisted of a furtive roll or two through a backseat of a pickup truck when he was fresh out of high school and suddenly staring down years ahead of needing to be as closeted as they come. But he knew he was handsome, and he knew that men who were open about liking other men sure were open about liking him, even if he wouldn’t accept their advances. So when he got close enough to count the hairs in Bradshaw’s stupid mustache and got no reaction but a dead stare and an eye roll, he had confirmation of what he’d known all along. Bradley Bradshaw was straight.
So that was the thing: Bradshaw broke open the careful box in Jake’s mind where he kept his Hangman self, and one slow grin at a time he all-out shattered the other, steel-trap box where Jake kept his sexuality. And hell if that wasn’t the biggest pain in Jake’s neck he’d ever endured.
It felt like his own fault, was the thing—he’d grown up knowing that sexuality was a choice, and he’d somehow made the wrong one, stepped through that door and thrown away the key. And he had felt himself slipping when it came to Bradshaw—lingering eyes, that drop in his stomach when Bradshaw happened to direct a smile his way—and had done nothing to stop the fall but lean back and close his eyes so he wouldn’t have to watch. He felt like he could’ve stopped it before it got too bad, but he hadn’t. He’d always liked the feeling of weightlessness, of that sensation of falling out of the sky, and Bradley Bradshaw made him content to nose-dive.
Thanks to Bradshaw, there were no longer pieces to Jake—Hangman, regular Jake, ‘straight’ Jake and queer Jake—there was just Jake “Hangman” Seresin, that pilot asshole who people joked liked to flirt with Bradshaw. (He just couldn’t help himself, but it’d been a few years and so far nobody had made the leap from ‘Jake’s an ass who tries to rile up the unruffle-able Rooster by pretending to flirt’ to ‘oh, shit, maybe Jake actually has a massive hardon for Bradshaw.’)
Jake would’ve liked it if he could step outside and walk up to Rooster as Regular Straight Navy Boy Jake or as snarking-sweet Texas Jake, but he hadn’t been able to wrangle those personalities pure and solo in years. Instead, he had to take all the jagged pieces with him, and he wasn’t quite sure which one would be taking the lead until it stumbled right out of his mouth. Especially with Bradshaw, and especially seeing him again like this, out of the blue, after nearly two years. Two years since the Navy had foolishly tried to assign them as wingmen, and now here they were, assigned on the same mysterious mission, and they were already back to their same old shit. Taunting each other across a pool table like the time apart hadn't helped them forgive each other at all.
Bradshaw was lighting up a cigarette, which Jake consistently chided himself for finding hot as shit, and he barely looked up as the door swung shut behind Jake.
“That stuff’ll kill you,” Jake said, and Bradshaw scoffed, proffering out the cigarette. Jake laughed. “I’d rather save my nine lives for the sky, Bradshaw.”
“Suit yourself,” Bradshaw said, and sucked a first breath of nicotine that he sighed out in one long stream of smoke. Jake’s stomach twisted, and he imagined for a moment stepping into Bradshaw’s space and getting his mouth close enough that he could breathe the smoke in straight off his lips. “I figure if I’m going to burn in one day, I’d rather have tried everything first.”
“Everything?” Jake said, and—goddammit—reached out with his toe and kicked the side of Bradshaw’s shoe.
Bradshaw just gave him that blank stare and lifted the cigarette back to his mouth.
Jake leaned against one of the support columns on the porch and watched the ember of the cigarette glow and fade.
“So,” Bradshaw said, smoke curling between them. “Been a while.”
“You could say that,” Jake replied, and alright, maybe there was more antagonism in his tone than he ought to let through.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bradshaw said, scowling, and Jake glared out at the ocean for a moment. He’d spent a long time thinking about what it might’ve been like if they’d stayed partners down in Texas and learned how to fly alongside each other. He’d even thought about what it would be like if they had managed to shake hands and say ‘well, we’re not made to be wingmen, let’s go our separate ways’ and parted on better terms. He imagined long text conversations with inane memes about planes and comments on recent episodes of Top Gear, which was one of the few things they’d managed to find in common during their brief stint as partners. Jake imagined scenarios where he could send Bradshaw a casual miss ya text when they were on deployments and get a FaceTime call in return.
Jake sighed.
“You could’ve told me where you were going,” he said. “Or warned me you were going radio silent.”
“Oh, yeah, because we left on such good terms,” Bradshaw said. “You could’ve, I don’t know, not been a colossal a-hole and then maybe we could’ve been penpals while I was in Japan, or we could’ve actually stuck it out in Corpus Christi.”
“Right. It’s my fault you fucked off to Ayase.” That stupid penpals comment rang in Jake’s ears, a little too close to what he’d hoped for once it became clear they weren’t going to hack it as wingmen. What he thought they could’ve managed to have if Bradshaw had bowed out with a touch less antipathy rather than picking a fight and then vanishing without so much as a text.
“Well, we were supposed to be partners,” Bradshaw said sourly, and Jake tensed. They were upset about different things still. Bradshaw was still mad that Jake hadn’t changed his entire flight style to suit Bradshaw’s—that Jake had refused to accept slow and steady wins the race as a mantra suitable for a Naval aviator. That Jake had left him in the dust again and again and again.
“You weren’t ready,” Jake said, and he leaned closer slowly. Bradshaw’s shoulders jumped up around his ears and he leaned further away. “And you still aren’t.”
“Grow up, Hangman,” Bradshaw said, his lip curled.
“Grow a pair, Rooster.”
Bradshaw threw his cigarette butt towards the sand and stomped towards the door and into the bar. Jake let out a heavy breath, his lungs burning like he was back in water-escape training. His legs felt heavy, and he let himself sink down to sit at the top of the steps to the beach, pressing his face into his hands. He just needed—a minute.
Once his heart was beating slower, he stood up and walked inside. He let Javy know he was headed out and made a beeline for the door, glad that he’d only had a beer and a half and could leave right now. He didn’t know for certain which part of him was in control, but it definitely wasn’t regular, fun-guy straight Jake. He wanted to slam Bradshaw against a bar and either kill him or kiss him, and that wasn’t a version of himself he trusted enough to keep hanging around the Hard Deck. Especially not when Bradshaw was staring at him like that, what the fuck was that about? He didn’t glance over as he walked by, but felt the heat of the glare until he was outside.
When he reached his car, the guy he’d thrown overboard from the Hard Deck was parked a spot over, straddling a motorcycle and texting, a deep frown lit up in phone-screen blue.
“Nice ride, old man,” Jake said, unlocking his truck. He stepped one foot up into it and smirked. “Bite-size just like you.”
He heard a disbelieving laugh just as he pulled his door shut behind him. He turned on the truck and cranked his music louder before pulling out of the space and heading for home—or what counted as it for the next few weeks.
Halfway there, he shook his head and pressed a few buttons on his car’s dash until the sound of a phone ringing replaced the CCR song on the radio. The phone clicked over and he hit his blinker, pulling over.
“Jake?”
“Hey, mama,” he said, shifting into park and rolling down his windows.
“Everything okay, hon?”
“Oh, everything’s fine,” he said, his voice strained as he loosened the collar of his uniform. “Just wanted to hear your voice.”