#ashes ashes

…

“Look, it’s the handling, the engine and the exhaust — it’ll cost more to fix this pile of crap than it’s worth. Impound it and get yourself something worth running, sweetheart.”

That was the conversation that had kick-started Avery’s extended stay at Bradley Bradshaw’s house. 

Bradley had rolled his eyes, and stepped in, but he had walked away from the shop agreeing with the mechanic. It wasn’t about the money, or the condescending tone the mechanic had used; he just knew that the second these particular problems were fixed, another one would pop up.

“It’s not that big of a deal,” He had explained, nodding his head as he breezed along the coastal route. It’s like the 70s follow him where he goes, thrumming through the speakers and apparent in the grainy Polaroid tucked into his sun visor, observable also in his vintage Ray-Bans. “I’ll drive you around for a couple more days, and we’ll find you something to drive.” 

Her style isn’t so historic. Wind swept through her blow-dried hair, her lips glossed and her t-shirt bearing sight of a band older than herself. She picked at the soft, spring shade of varnish on her nails. Practically squirming in her seat as he laid out the plan, helpless to do anything but nod. 

Of course, she was grateful for the notion of this guy being so willing to put himself at an inconvenience just so that she would be able to get around. Taking a handout from a practical stranger just isn’t something that comes so easily.

She was really only expecting the car issue to take a few days. So, two and a half weeks later, she’s a little disgruntled to be still waking up in Bradley’s spare bedroom.

Formerly his home gym, there’s still a weight rack in the corner, a closet full of clutter, rubber flooring mats and a big workout bench that’s now squashed against the far wall — but there’s a futon in there too that makes a halfway decent bed.

It’s better than being at Maverick’s.

She has learned by now that he gets up early and works out in the backyard, sometimes going for a run down by the bay, makes himself — and often her — breakfast, and then claims the bathroom for an hour.

It’s his bathroom, so she can’t exactly complain, but she has started to wonder exactly what it is that he gets up to in there for so long.

Her routine looks a little different to his. Her shifts at the Hard Deck are tiring, and she often finishes late. For any finishes after 2am, Penny has been nice enough to send her home in a cab. Anything earlier than that, Bradley’s waiting in the parking lot or over by the pool table with his friends.

This particular morning, she wakes up later than usual, and the shower is already running. 

The distractions help. The late nights help. The person sleeping across the hall helps. But, Bradley can’t shake his bad dreams. The same sea-sick feeling that sweeps him every single morning, the suffocating feeling of waking up sticky with sweat and tangled between sheets. Avery hasn’t noticed yet that he has washed his sheets five times in two weeks, like that’ll help.

Cold numbs his toes and stings at his sore, tense shoulders. The pouring water spills over his skin, prickling like pins with each droplet. The bathroom light has been off the whole time; that helps with the headaches.

Sitting on the floor of his shower has become a tortuous part of his morning routine lately. Sitting until his fingertips wrinkle and his skin starts to lose its flush. Until the cold shocks his system into operating normally again, maybe.

He likes having her around. It makes it easier to pick himself up and get out of the shower, knowing that she’ll worry. He doesn’t doubt that she cares for him — she’s a sweet girl, and he knows that in other circumstances, they would have been great friends. He’d like to be friends now, but he understands her reservations.

The second that this is all over, she’ll run home and she’ll never want to think about Mav again.

Bradley isn’t so sure what’ll give him reason to get out of the shower once she’s gone.

He wishes that he knew what happened between them. He wishes Mav had talked about her more — though, Bradley had been thrown head first into his pre-teens back then, and probably wouldn’t have listened. He doesn’t know anything about why she calls her dad by his first name, or why he let her drive that piece of shit car, or why she stopped visiting all those years ago.

Thinking about Avery, and the things left to settle, is what drags him out of his morning fog. Keeping her going stops him from thinking of his memories of that day.

She has to be at work today at noon. She’s fitting in well over there, and the other staff are great with her. Bradley spends most of her shifts around the bar, either watching sports on the TV or talking to his friends. Occasionally, when it’s quiet, he’ll walk over to the bar and sit with her.

She talks the most then. Tells him about the elementary school she attended, and its big willow tree, and the neighbourhood pool where she broke her elbow, and the guitar lessons she took as a kid. He likes those chats.

Neither one of them talk about the fact that he still hasn’t been given the all clear to return to work himself. There’s a voicemail on his phone from two days ago that hasn’t been listened to yet, from a Commander that didn’t even jnow Bradley’s name one month ago, now saying that he cares and would like to discuss a referral to a service. A shrink.

Bradley has been before, after he first pushed a kid to the floor in the playground, a couple of weeks after his dad had passed. He remembers the drive to the office, and the worry on his mother’s placating smile. He remembers his legs dangling off of the worn-out, felted armchair. The lollipops and the pages of colouring. He figures the service he’d get now might look a little different.

This morning Avery lays in her bed; she watches raindrops spill along the window pane to her right. Pretty glum weather for California, but the West Coast has always looked pretty in shades of blue. Rain splatters the sidewalk at the front of the house, almost matching the steady pattering of the shower running on the other side of her wall.

When the shower cuts out, the noise stops on one side. 

She turns her head and looks to the closed bedroom door, wondering what time he had gotten up today. She had gone to bed at around two, and he had stayed up a little later. Last night they had watched Jaws together, and Bradley had revealed that he once hyperventilated in a swimming lesson as a kid because Mav had let him watch that movie way too young.

Mav didn’t ever let her watch scary movies. Well, he didn’t exactly have any rules at his place — but he heavily discouraged those kinds of movies. She can’t name a single thing she remembers watching with him.

She pushes back the sheets as the bathroom door clicks open, padding across the wooden floor to meet Bradley in the hallway. He has a fluffy gray towel secured around his waist and the meat of his palms are busy rubbing hard at his eyes.

He is very comfortable with his own body, and exceedingly comfortable with parading that body around his house. But, it’s his place, and she’s a guest and so forth — not that she finds much to complain about with the subject.

“Morning.” She sounds chirpy today, and he lifts one palm away to peek at her as he heads for his room. Leaning against the door frame with her knees together and hands crossed in front of her, offering him a small smile.

His voice is gruff and a little dry, tired sounding. “Morning. Didn’t wake you, did I?”

“Not at all.” It almost sounds like she’s about to follow him, just to keep the conversation going. He doesn’t hear her move though. “Have you been up long?”

And now that the conversation is still going, he can’t exactly slam the door in her face. He pushes it behind him, and leaves it open a crack as he replies. “Yeah. A couple of hours. There’s breakfast in the kitchen if you’re hungry.”

Today, Bradley sounds beat. Usually he is chirpy enough in the mornings, excited to see her because that means his brain might finally stop reeling. It just all feels too foggy to smile today.

“I was thinking,” Avery hums, thinking on the spot now, really — he does so much to keep her functioning, and what might make a man like him smile on a gray day? “Maybe we could go do something today. Like head out to the beach.”

“In the rain?” He doesn’t mean to sound as blunt as he does, but he just can’t pick up his tone. He pulls on clean socks and buttons his jeans, wondering if there’s a frown on her face out in that hallway.

Instead, her lips are pursed in consideration. The Washington state native in her almost laughs at the idea that a little shower makes the outdoors off limits.

If she knew him better, she’d make a witty comment about him being a chicken for being afraid of a little water — but, she doesn’t know him that well at all.

“Right,” She mumbles, looking towards the ceiling. She doesn’t know this city very well at all yet, either. “Well, what do you usually do when it rains around here?”

He makes a soft scoffing sound from inside the room. She listens to him shuffling around in there as he dresses himself for the day. 

Brown eyes flicker to the reflective surface hung above his dresser while his hands fasten at the button on his jeans. He rolls his shoulders almost instinctively, straightening out and eyeing his chest. 

He makes an effort to clear his throat as he opens the drawer with his t-shirts.

“Hole up in the Hard Deck ‘til it passes.”  

Her nose wrinkles at that. Now leaning her head back against the hallway wall, where a framed photo of Bradley and some friends from flight school sits just past her shoulder, she can’t think of much she has seen in San Diego beyond the dingy ocean bar.

“Lame.” The word passes her lips before she can really think about whether the joke will be well received, and the wince starts to creep across her features. She settles at the sound of him huffing out a sound of amusement from his bedroom.

And then, the door is tugged open and he appears. Leaning his forearm against the doorframe and raising his brows in something that isn’t either surprise or annoyance, something more pleased looking.

“Fine,” He gives a short nod, not giving much away. “Let’s do it — let’s head down to the beach. You got a coat?”

She wrinkles her nose like the idea is ridiculous. “I don’t need a coat, it’s just a little rain.”

And then, he’s standing there with his coat zipped all the way up, watching her watch the waves while wind whips at her hair and fat, heavy raindrops spill across the thin sweater she had chosen to wear. 

He presses his tongue to the inside of his cheek, because she has already declined to take his coat twice by now, but this just doesn’t feel right. 

His hands are pushed deep into his pockets, and the cap tucked under his hood keeps the rain off of his face. 

“I guess you’re used to this all, anyway,” He thinks out loud, lips pursed as he turns his head to look at the waves for himself. She turns her head to look at him, waiting for the second part of his thought. “All the, uh — grey skies and rain, huh?”

Avery thinks of Washington, and her lips twitch. It doesn’t look like any of it would come naturally to him at all, with a wardrobe made up of almost all shorts and short sleeves, curls that have been dyed by the sun and sunglasses on even now. 

No, he’s California through and through.

”Little rain never killed anybody.” She answers him, resuming their walk, trailing boot prints through the wet sand. It takes her a second to go on. “I was thinking of taking a trip back home this weekend. You think you could find me a ride before then?”

Bradley’s footprints come to a standstill, enervated waves lapping at his boots. He doesn’t think before he speaks. “Well, I could drive you.”

She smiles, halfway wondering where this guy’s nice gestures will stop and kind of wondering if he was just raised to be this polite. “I’m sure you have better things to do this weekend than make a sixteen hour drive up the coast.”

No, he doesn’t — and after a week of nothing but constant company, he likes the thought of being alone even less than the thought of a drive like that. But, he knows he can’t tell her that.

A month ago, he would have had plenty to do on a weekend. Friends, and sports, and live music and sunsets — he hasn’t felt much like leaving the house recently. A lot of his friends were developed through service, and all of them seem to know what happened, and none of them look at him quite the same.

That’s why he prefers to wait by his car when he picks Avery up.

“I could drive you to the airport.” He acts like he’s correcting her incorrect assumption, playing it cool by digging his hands deeper into his pockets and strolling forward until they’re side by side. 

“I don’t like to fly.” 

“You’re scared of flying?” He doesn’t mean it as a challenge, or to be condescending — but he finds a little humour in the idea. 

“I didn’t say I was scared — it’s just a lot of work,” She shrugs it off. “Buying a ticket, packing a bag, going through TSA, having an assigned seat, blah, blah, blah.”

“Did Mav ever take you up in the Mustang?”

“No,” Her answer carries less humour than his question had, and she turns to peer at him over her shoulder with that same look in her eyes. It’s a wounded kind of look, tainted with maybe something like jealousy. “Did he take you?”

“No,” Bradley’s lie comes as easily as it had when he had told it to his mother — who was worried sick about her baby boy, the day that he had made his mind up on how his life was going to go. “Nah, me either.”

Bradley’s first time flying was with Maverick, shotgun in that plane. It was the day he had decided to become a pilot for real, beyond the childhood wish to be just like his daddy — that was the day he had made up his mind.

He still remembered the look on Maverick’s face when he had uttered those words on the drive back home. It’s that same kind of wounded, air-out-of-your-lungs look.

Avery figures that Bradley is lying to her. She guesses that she appreciates what he is trying to do, and knows that he is doing it to spare her feelings rather than preserve some sort of image of her father. There’s no changing his absence, his disinterest. Not anymore, anyway.

“I’d come with you, though,” Bradley veers the conversation back in the direction it had come from. “This weekend. If you wanted the company.”

She stops walking as the tide creeps towards her soles. Watching him head up the surf, piecing him together like a puzzle, wondering what about Maverick makes him feel the need to be so kind to her. “Well, I’d just be catching up with my mom and… friends and stuff…”

“Right,” Bradley’s throat goes dry at the thought of his place being empty for an entire three days. He’ll have to find something to occupy himself. “By Friday. I’ll find you something.”

Work rolls around as quickly as that afternoon’s thunderstorm. 

They ate together, she got ready for work while he trawled through used car ads, and then they took the scenic route out to Coronado. It’s a short drive, but it’s easy to make longer when you have as many questions and as great of a knowledge of the city as Bradley does.

Avery’s still five minutes early, and there’s a big smile on her face as he pulls into the parking lot. 

Heavy, booming rumbles call across the sky. Thick, dense droplets of rain splatter the windshield almost faster than the wipers can work. Billy Joel plays softly through the speakers. 

Bradley’s almost wincing but there’s a hint of a smile on his lips as she swings the car door shut behind her, his coat finally accepted and hoisted over her head like a canopy as she makes the dash for the side door of The Hard Deck.

He hadn’t been joking earlier; folks here really do pile into that place on a dreary day like this one. It’s bustling, voices and music carrying across the parking lot when the door opens and closes behind her.

He sits back in his seat, one arm propped against the door of the car, tilting his head to catch a glimpse at the far right corner. As expected, he finds his friends there. Perched around the pool table, but not playing today. Out of uniform, but with regulated hair cuts and posture that gives them all away. 

They aren’t his closest friends, besides Natasha - but there’s a closeness that comes with the job. Camaraderie or something like that; they’re people that Bradley would say he trusts. People he enjoys hanging out with, for the most part. People that would be at his wedding one day, probably. 

And yet, he has been avoiding them every chance he has gotten for four weeks.

He knows that Natasha asks Avery about him when she can, and he knows that Natasha still respects him enough to not make it obvious that she’s scared for him. He’ll thank her for that at some point. 

The others, though, he isn’t sure. They might ask him how he’s doing, and he wouldn’t like to take the chance. They’re just more names to add to the growing lists of texts ignored. Tongue pressed to the inside of his cheek, he doesn’t give a second thought to leaving. 

Avery, in a similar way, likes to keep busy.

As much as she wishes Bradley would stop bending over backwards to make her life easier, she appreciates that it means she never has to do something alone. The Hard Deck is the kind of place where alone time does not, and will never exist. Even when it’s quiet there are regulars sitting on those worn leather stools with a story and a smile. 

“Newbie, I’ve got a burst keg, a line that looks like LA traffic and a bachelorette party asking for twenty Lemon Drops - pick one.” Jimmy doesn’t even have to look up to start huffing orders, handing change back to a customer and grabbing a glass to start a new order all at once.

His voice is almost lost over the Hall & Oats classic blaring from the Jukebox, but it still carries every bit of the begrudging tone that he means it to. 

He’s nice enough, and he seems to have been here for as long as the place has been open — longer than the time Penny has had it for, at least. Long enough, anyway, to have decided that he knows who’s name is worth learning and who’s is not. She hasn’t taken offence to it, figuring that she’ll be out of his wispy, gray hair before he knows it. 

“I’ve got the keg.” She decides, killing him with kindness and a sweet smile. He huffs in acknowledgement, or amusement, and resigns to the grinning bachelorette on the other side of the bar. 

It’s surprising really, how quickly a shift passes when there isn’t a moment to stop. 

In fact, she barely notices that she’s done, until Jake Seresin takes a break from bothering her while she polishes glasses. He jerks his head towards the parking lot.

“Your Uber’s outside, by the way.” Jake has made sure that Avery knows who he is already. She’s unsurprised to find him leaning over the bar with a look on his face like he’s just waiting for the penny to drop.

To aid the process, he looks over his shoulder and hikes a thumb in the same direction.

Sure enough, standing outside with his chin tipped towards the shore, leaning back against the hood of his car — there’s Bradley. Watching the night sky, totally in a world of his own. 

Jake gives her a minute to stare at him while he, in turn, stares back at her. He’s not exactly counting down the seconds, but he knows the look of a woman who is taking her sweet time eyeing someone up. Fingers drumming nimbly against the bar, a smile has already stretched across his lips by the time she remembers to look back to him.

There’s a suggestion in the way his brows raise. A look in the flash of his green eyes. An absolute smugness in the smile on his face. “So, big guy taking care of you alright?”

And, in a play that Jake himself couldn’t have even hoped for, she falls right for the bait. 

It’s just the cocky way his eyes glint and the subtle suggestiveness to his tone, the way his eyebrow quirks just the smallest degree.  

Flush crossing her cheeks and an immediate alarm flashing across her eyes, she straightens up and puts some space between them. “No, no - it’s not like that.”

Dimples press into the corners of his lips, a mischievous glint in his eyes as he cocks his head to a twenty degree angle. His voice is pure wouldn’t-know-better, country boy innocence as he quips, “Like what?”

Realisation hits with a beat. A grin crosses her face, her body slumping in relief as her eyes roll on instinct. He’s messing. 

“Ha. Ha.” She scoffs, leaning forward again to prop her hands against the bar. Just as quickly as that shock and embarrassment had crossed her face, it becomes  “Don’t you have anyone worrying about you? — This late on a Friday night and it’s just you and your best buddy.”

Jake huffs out a soft laugh, checking back over his other shoulder at Coyote, tossing a round of darts by himself in Jake’s absence. 

“Honey, I’m a free agent.” Jake smiles, and she gets it. She has heard the girls at the bar whispering about him every time he’s here, and she has always found him a little… underwhelming. But, the drawl in his voice when he calls her honey finally makes it click — she gets it, he’s hot.

But, it doesn’t quite work. 

Her eyes flicker downward, lingering on the glossed bar top. As her mouth stretches into a smile on her own, Jake follows her gaze downward until he finds what’s got her looking so smug. His phone resting there against the surface, released absentmindedly from his palm while he had been busy getting under her skin.

She looks between him, and the bell that hangs behind her.

Now, the rule’s pretty clear about what happens to those who dare to drop their phones on the bar.

She smiles, suddenly sweet as pie, and reaches under the bar to grab her little shoulder bag. Settling it against her body, she reaches across and pats him on the swell of his shoulder. 

“I’ll keep this one between us,” She hums, taking a quick glance outside at where Bradley is waiting for her, and then looking back to Jake with mischief in her eyes. “Honey.”

She leaves him with the taunt, grinning to herself about it, and just starting to think that maybe she might be able to like this place. 

Brisk air catches at her hair, nipping at the thin sleeves covering her arms. 

Bradley is perched against the hood of his car, his arms folded over his chest and his eyes on the ground. He hears her coming from the moment the door to the Hard Deck opens, but he doesn’t look up until she is just a couple of feet away.

He has been crying.

Instinctively, he lifts his palm and scrubs it across his face, like that will do anything to solve his red, blotchy cheeks, or still glossy eyes. He swallows thickly and clears his throat, his brows drawing together.

”Hey…” Avery slows to almost a stop, confusion settling across her face, hanging back like keeping her distance from him will protect her from what’s coming.

”Come on, we should go.” He says, his voice gruff. 

Now, she does stop moving, and shakes her head.

”Tell me what happened.” She’s still soft with him, which makes it worse. It sparks an anger in him that isn’t her fault, and wasn’t her father’s — the fault is his. It’s always been his. 

His breathing hitches and his fists ball at his sides. He hasn’t cried in front of anyone but Natasha in years, and now isn’t the time to start. With everything he has taken from you already, he won’t take the opportunity to grieve just because he can’t be strong.

”They left you a voicemail. You should listen to it.” His whisper is almost swept away by the coastal breeze, but she hears him just about.

Neither one of them says a word as they settle into the vehicle, seatbelts unbuckled and engine off. Avery rests her phone against her knee and lets the message play out loud, the voice of Admiral Simpson ringing out loud and clear.

As of eleven-fifty that evening, the search had been called off. The decision had been made, the paperwork was being drawn up. Maverick was gone, and there wasn’t a person in the world who could do anything about it.