#riaraww

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Jake remembers when he and his sister had fallen off Jake’s bike. They’d been coming home from the farmers market, vegetables hanging in a bag off his handlebars, his sister standing on the poles off his back tires, when Jake had hit one of the potholes in the road.

He remembers them skidding down the into the dirt and rocks, skin scraping, vegetables flying off into the grass beside the road.

They’d been only a second from the house, in view of his mom sitting on the porch waiting for them to return.

He remembers watching his mom run to them, scooping up his sister and scurrying off.

She’d called for Jake to dust himself off and collect the food and hurry inside to get cleaned up too.

He remembers wondering why his mom made a big fuss of his sister when Jake had significantly worse scrapes and cuts on him.

He’d remembered it being the first time his parents weren’t there to help him up. He was only 7 at the time.

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Jake’s first ‘boyfriend’ was a secret.

They were only 14, didn’t really understand the big deal about dating, but knew enough from their church that they’d be harassed if people knew.

He’d kept all their hand holding to when they were alone, and nobody could’ve possibly caught them. They’d kept their pecking kisses to behind locked doors. They’d never told anyone about anything they did, or anything they felt.

He remembered when his boyfriend told them they should stop. He’d told Jake that a girl from their class told him she had a crush on him.

He’d remembered them walking around holding hands the next day, and how everyone was oohing and aahing at them like they were the next big thing.

Jake remembered the feeling of his hands, and how he never wanted to be with someone who was ashamed again.

-

Jake remembered when his parents used to promise him things, and then turn around and give them to his sisters.

He been told he could take the car? Suddenly his sister needed it for something stupid. He’d wanted a new suit for prom? He’d been given a hand-me-down from one of his Ma’s old friends, but his sisters all got expensive new dresses for their proms.

Jake never complained. Never fought back. He was raised to take what his parents said, and know that was the final say.

It’d always bothered him though, knowing his own parents seemed to put him in last place when ranking importance.

-

Bradley was supposed to be different. Jake felt like he was finally understood, he knew the story of Maverick pulling his papers, he knew the feeling of betrayal Bradley had been holding onto for all these years.

Jake doesn’t know why he’s so surprised when Bradley admits he has feelings for Jake.

But, things go good with them.

Jake feels like he’s finally found a place to just exist. He feels like he’s being put first for once in his life.

Javy, his bestfriend since childhood, reminds Jake to not get too comfortable. They all know how the military is, how sudden things can fall apart in their personal lives.

Jake doesn’t take his advice. He falls headfirst into the new relationship, opens up to Bradley about his family, and embarrassing stories of him and Javy as kids, and about his awkward frat stage that he deeply regrets.

Jake tells Bradley anything he’d ever want to know about him, except for his insecurities and fears of being abandoned.

Bradley closes himself off.

Bradley tells Jake he’s not looking for some lifelong commitment or anything.

Bradley tells Jake he ‘thought they were just letting off some steam together’. Jake knows Bradley is lying, that Bradley liked Jake just as much and Jake liked him. Knows there’s something else going on with him.

But Jake doesn’t push. He doesn’t chase. He’s not fighting for someone who’s already decided he’s lost.

Jake lets Bradley leave, doesn’t make a whole big scene when Bradley tells him he’s being shipped off to the other side of the country.

Jake doesn’t keep tabs, Jake doesn’t try and win him back, Jake doesn’t even try and contact Bradley after it all. The only indication Bradley ever gets of Jake even being alive still is when Nat texts him saying hangman is drunk, and rattling off about some ex of his being an ‘asshole’ and a ‘sheltered bitch’.

Bradley knows he’s talking about him, Natasha doesn’t. Nobody else does.

-

Bradley regrets his words every second since saying them.

He doesn’t see hangman for almost a year and a half after he’s ended things.

Jake doesn’t look at him, doesn’t engage in any casual conversation with him, keeps any teasing or hurtful comments to an all time low.

It’s the first time Jake brings up Bradley living on a perch. Bradley feels a pit in his gut open up, a pit he dug himself after he left Jake.

-

Bradley was an only child, an only grandchild, and he had one aunt and one uncle on seperate sides of his family. He was really the only thought on people’s minds at his dad’s funeral, when he was 4.

And then again at his mom’s when he was 11.

And then again when his grandparents and Mav were trying to come to a custody agreement.

Mav and Ice took Bradley when either of them were home from deployment, and he stayed with his grandparents the rest of the time.

They had the money to do whatever he’d wanted, the space to have anyone over at any time, the caregivers to always have someone to go to.

Bradley had never fully been a second thought to anyone in his life.

Sure, he felt suffocated at times, but it was also the most reassuring feeling in the world to someone who’d been orphaned before he was even a teenager.

-

When Jake and Bradley had been called back to top gun, on some unspecified special mission, it’d been almost 5 years since they’d last felt each others touch.

It’d been 5 years since Jake had any emotional connection with anyone he’d been sleeping with, and it’d been 5 years since Bradley had let his insecurities and self sabotaging misplaced anger get the better of what was a good thing for him.

During top gun Jake pushed Bradley to work harder and be better, knew he’d never make the mission alive if he didn’t. Bradley let him.

He’d missed Jake’s soft words, but his rough ones would have to suffice. Even in the rough words Bradley could tell it was coming from a place of worry for him.

Jake knew Bradley was going to fly this mission, knew from the second he saw the tension between him and Maverick on the first day of maneuvers.

Jake pulled out every stop in the book to ensure Bradley was going to be on his a-game for the mission. Brought up the family he’d lost, brought up the public fighting with Maverick, had even flirted with him here and there to make sure he’d been staying on his toes.

Or maybe that was for a little pleasure of his own. It was his business.

-

Jake heard Mav fall, then Bradley, then silence. Sat on the tarmac for hours wondering if they’d died.

Heard Bradley had gone supersonic in a plane only Mav could’ve been flying, he knew they were okay.

Jake heard they’d been engaged in dogfighting by superior enemy aircraft’s and he immediately took off.

Heard Mav shoot down two other planes, thinking they’d been in the clear, before a third one appeared out of nowhere.

When the radio got turned back on he’d heard their pleas for Goose to forgive them.

He’d come up behind them and shot the last plane down before it had the opportunity to steal the chance for Jake to forgive Bradley.

They’d got back to base, celebrated and gone their separate ways on the carrier.

Jake went to have a panic attack while hiding behind cargo crates on the other side of the deck, while Bradley was ushered inside to medical bay to be checked over and observed.

Bradley’s eyes searched for Jake as he was being pushed out of the crowd.

-

Bradley found Jake two days later, hiding in his bunk.

Jake had gone to mission debriefs, along with all the other daggers, and Bradley hadn’t been cleared to leave his lovely little cot in the infirmary back on base until now. Nat had visited him just the once, saying that the sooner he got out the better, because, as she put it, “Hangman looks like shit right now and we all think it’s cause he hasn’t had his rooster shots in almost 40 hours”

Bradley chose to forget that comment as he entered Jake’s bunk.

“Jake?”

Jake shot up from his bed, eyes snapping to the door as his brain seemed to being playing catch up to where he was. Bradley seemed to have woken him from a nightmare.

“Hey- uh. Hi. Rooster.” Jake had caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror on the wall and was desperately trying to smooth his hair down.

“Glad to see your doing better now.”

“Yeah” Bradley huffed out a breath, the energy between them was weird now. “Thanks, by the way, for saving my life. I would’ve said it sooner but I feel like you’ve been avoiding me or something…”

“Avoiding? Oh.” Bradley had never seen Jake have any nervous tics until now, as he’d picked the skin around his cuticles.

“So you have been?”

Jake sat down on his bed again, trying to will himself to relax. “It just felt like it wasn’t real every time I caught a glimpse of you.”

Bradley was confused “how do you mean that?”

“Every time I see you I see that plane, and that missile. Rooster, every time I close my eyes I just imagine you getting shot down again, but permanently this time. And it being my fault for flying too damn slow.”

“Bradley.”

“What?”

“If we’re gonna start talking again, you’re going to call me Bradley again, Jake.”

“Sure- whatever.”

Jake clearly had no faith Bradley actually wanted back into his life.

Maybe a quick night together here and there for the rest of their deployment in fightertown, but nothing serious. Just like Bradley had mentioned almost 5 years ago.

“I’m serious. I was so stupid for leaving Jake. I never want to make you feel like some second choice.”

“Guessing Nat told you about all that huh? Her and Javy love to talk when they’re drunk, guessing Javy slipped up and told her about all my shitty insecurities.”

“Yeah…”

Jake hadn’t fully met Bradley’s eyes since he’d sat down.

Bradley made the move to kneel on the ground between Jake’s legs to meet his eyes as they burned into the floor.

“Jake, baby?”

Jake could feel his throat clench almost instantly at the pet name. How he’d went almost 5 years without it was baffling to him now. He wanted Bradley to say it again in that liquidity soft soothing tone again. Wanted to get this feeling injected directly into his brain and remember it forever.

“Yeah, B.”

“I’ve missed you so much, baby.”

“I never went anywhere, sweetheart.”

Bradley moved his hand from where they rested on Jake’s thighs to cup at his jaw now.

“I know, baby, and I feel so guilty. I never should’ve left, shouldn’t have closed myself off from you. I should’ve admitted I was in too deep with you from the second your hand grazed my shoulder in flight school.” Bradley had run one hand to the back of jakes neck, the one still on his face rubbing soothing circles as he spoke.

Jake’s hands had been clenched on his lap, knuckles going white from how hard he was pressing them together. Jake knew if he opened them his fingernails would have made an arched print from where they’d been pressing into his palm.

“Baby?”

Jake lunged forward, gripping Bradley’s tshirt to pull him in at the same time. He smashed their lips together before he could have another chance to run away.

“Missed you so much sweetheart,” Jake panted out between kisses “saw you in everything.”

Bradley now moved up to crowd into Jake’s space in the bed, letting Jake crawl onto his lap and snake his arms around his neck, let him pull Bradley as close as humanly possible.

“You ever leave me again, sweetheart, and I swear to god I’ll crash both our planes.”

“Square deal. I accept.”

Bradley held his arms around Jake’s waist, staring up into his eyes.

“Don’t know how my stupid brain ever let me leave the first time. You’re so beautiful Jake, so perfect for me.” Bradley sucked a few nice purple marks on Jake’s neck before he let them lay down on Jake’s bed, which was definitely not built to be holding two grown muscular people on it.

They made it work.

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