Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I’ve loved you almost as long as I’ve known you, and it has been hell every fucking step of the way.”

It seemed like Bradley had finally grown some balls and followed through on telling Jake how he felt.

Good for him.

Jason wasn’t yet convinced of this new reality he had toppled into where the two of them were involved in some tortured, star-crossed love story that they were only just now starting to resolve, even though they had been a part of each other’s lives for well over a decade. It wasn’t like they had stopped to poll for opinions before merrily announcing that they were in a relationship though, so this was something that Jason would have to figure out in his own time.

He frowned, hard, over the unprecedented softness of the scene playing out in front of him, struggling to reconcile what he was hearing with what he thought he knew of the world.

Being confronted with the gritty reality of their true relationship wasn’t something that Jason expected to be dealing with outside of Sarah Kazansky’s upstairs bathroom in the middle of the night, and yet there he was, dealing with it anyway.

“Don’t tell me this isn’t real, baby,” Bradley continued after kissing Jake softly. “I couldn’t bear it.”

Who was this man, and what had he done with the real Bradley Bradshaw, that was what Jason wanted to know.

Jason found out about their relationship in one of the worst possible ways, that wasn’t up for debate. They should have told him, years ago, not left it to chance and then dragged out the disclosure. It was supposed to be the three of them against the world. They were supposed to always have each other’s backs, to never fail one another. There were unspoken rules to all of this, regardless of how much the ongoing feud (lovers quarrel?) between Bradley and Jake had sometimes complicated matters. Only, it didn’t feel like that was the case anymore. Jason was stuck outside looking in at the happy couple.

Literally.

Creeping on his family’s private conversations wasn’t something that he did on purpose. He was startled awake some minutes ago by the muffled sounds of his brother shouting out in terror. Though, logically, Jason knew that Bradley was there, that he was more than capable of calming Jake down and tucking him back into bed, instinct took over. Jason had been handholding Jake through his nightmares since the kid was in diapers. Some habits you simply never broke. Even when your baby brother was on the verge of thirty, tough as nails, and the type to make your life a living hell if he ever found out that he was still largely considered a kid in the back of your mind...

Jason was struggling to free his legs from where they were tangled in sheets before he even knew what woke him up.

He needed a minute to piece the puzzle together, and another few to navigate his way through the labyrinth that was the Kazansky homestead in the dark. It wasn’t until he reached the top of the stairs and noticed a light on in the main bathroom, therefore, that he realised exactly how superfluous he was to the situation. Bradley had it handled, and then some. Jake was talking post-nightmare. He was forming words and sentences in a coherent enough manner that Bradley could have a conversation with him. It was unprecedented enough that Jason couldn’t even register, at first, what he was eavesdropping on.

“I’ve been dreaming about this moment since forever,” Jake replied, his lowered voice only just about audible from Jason’s position outside the bathroom. He sounded tired, which Jason blamed on the vicious combination of his injuries and nightmare-fuelled adrenaline, but happy as well. Content. Pleased to be there with Bradley, Jason assumed. “I don’t know that you’re proving your case…”

Jason contemplated knocking on the door and announcing himself, if only so that he could look his brother in the eye and know for absolute certain that he would be alright come morning. Then he heard Bradley snort out a laugh, and braced for impact. He had never seen Bradley and Jake talk their way around an obstacle, they were both too bull-headed to think big picture where the other was concerned. There tended to be a lot of posturing and snide comments; sarcasm; underhanded remarks; raised voices; and even, in some cases, physical contact to express their frustrations; but never genuine attempts at communication. There was every chance that Bradley’s amusement now would ruin everything.

“This moment exactly?” Bradley asked. “Because I have some questions if we were ever three feet from a toilet in my aunt’s house in any of those dreams…”

When Jake laughed too, Jason considered the possibility that Bradley might just have a better read on Jake’s current mood than him. Maybe he knew how to approach this all in the right way? Maybe a little light teasing was, in fact, the safest tactic given everything else Jake had been through today? Maybe, just maybe, the middle of the night wasn’t the most appropriate time for them to start digging down into the root cause of every problem they ever had with one another? That didn’t mean Jason had to like it.

He never had really learned how to be objective where his brother was concerned.

“Don’t make me laugh,” Jake griped, one hand pressed against his side like he was in pain.

“Can’t help it, I’m hilarious.”

Jason would have known Bradley was smirking even without catching sight of his reflection through the crack in the doorway. He took that as his cue to quit whilst he was ahead, more than familiar with what might come next. Much as he wished he didn’t sometimes, Jason had intimate knowledge of just how alluring the people who were attracted to Bradley found his particular brand of self-assurance. Since Jake didn’t have a subtle bone in his body, Jason had harboured suspicions about him being a secret member of that club long before discovering the truth of the matter, he just never stopped to consider the full extent of those feelings, let alone wonder if they might be reciprocated. Now that he knew his brother was, without a doubt, head over heels, full-on loopy for the guy, he felt no need to stick around and watch Bradley reap the benefits.

“Yeah, keep telling yourself that…”

Jake’s voice trailed away as Jason jogged downstairs again, on inordinately light feet for his build. He avoided the squeaky floorboard on the second to last step out of habit just as easily as he had on his ascent, and took his time in navigating his way back to Ice’s office.

Jason had always been a little unnerved by Bradley’s uncles, despite how well he got along with most of them. Much as Bradley sometimes liked to pretend otherwise, he had a veritable army propping him up from behind the scenes. He was fortunate not to share any of their surnames, otherwise he never would have been able to wash off the stink of nepotism, Jason knew that much from personal experience. The problem was that Jason had never really figured out how to get past the notoriety of Bradley’s adoptive family within the Navy, even though they operated in entirely different branches. Their reputations preceded them in an awful lot of ways, and that was the case even before Bradley started telling stories about his childhood.

Iceman was most enigmatic of the lot of them.

A decade spent observing him from the sidelines as Bradley’s friend and Jason still couldn’t be sure that he understood what made the head of the Bradshaw Support Club tick. Everyone that Bradley had ever introduced Jason to from this side of his life, to a man, looked at Ice with the kind of respect that was earned from a lifetime of hard work and getting his hands dirty. Jason didn’t have to understand a thing to recognise when the status quo existed for a reason. That didn’t mean that they were anything more than distant acquaintances. And it sure as hell made sleeping in his office after his death one weird and uncomfortable experience. But, whatever. It was far easier powering through this kind of hang-up than it was bearing witness to whatever the hell was going on between Jake and Bradley.

Jason breathed out a slow sigh as he eased the office door shut behind himself.

He was a little too wired still from worrying over his brother to head straight back to sleep. Besides, the pullout that Sarah had splurged on outfitting this office with lay in this strange sweet spot between being too hard and too soft for his back to appreciate. There was only so long Jason could spend camped out on it without feeling like a beefed-up version of Goldilocks. The only bed that he considered ‘just right’ was the one in his room on his mother’s ranch, and that had more to do with the familiar setting of home than it did the actual mattress.

Once Jason stepped forwards to flick a lamp on, squinting his way through adjusting to the brightness, he eyed the chair positioned behind Ice’s desk with passing hesitation. If sleeping in his office was weird and uncomfortable, sitting in his chair had to be downright blasphemous. Not that that stopped Jason. It gave him that same rush he used to get as a kid misbehaving, getting away with something he shouldn’t be doing. He relaxed into the plush leather with a low, appreciative groan, marvelling over the expensive tastes of his elder. This was the kind of office he imagined Jake to one day be destined for: stately, lived-in, a touch too large to be practical for day-to-day working.

Jake’s dreams and ambitions befit this kind of ostentation, where Jason’s never had. He couldn’t fathom chasing after promotions so far up the command structure as Ice, but that was what his brother lived for. Jason was a good soldier, someday he would lead his own team, but there was little desire in him for power or influence. Besides, assuming that their careers continued to progress at the exact same rate on the exact same path as they always had, then being in charge would mean moving away from working alongside Bradley. Maybe that was less of a guarantee now than Jason had once imagined? If the last month had taught him anything, it was that, even after a decade of friendship, Bradley was still capable of surprising him.

Anything could happen.

Bradley starting up something serious with Jake complicated things as much as it simplified them.

Jason drummed his fingers against the arm rests contemplatively as he forced his mind away from those darker trains of thought, reluctant to entertain them. He eyed the desk again, with speculation this time. Ice was a man with good taste. Logic dictated that his vices would be as nice as the décor if he had anything stashed around here… Jason eased closer to the drawers on his right, and smiled to himself when he found the bottom one was locked, taking that as a sign that there was something good hidden inside.

Picking the lock took little effort for a seasoned SEAL like him, even after a cursory glance around the rest of the desk confirmed that the keys weren’t readily available.

The drawer eased open with a quiet hush to reveal assorted contents. There were a few large leather-covered jewellery boxes stacked atop a decently sized personal lockbox. The first that Jason picked up to open revealed a purple heart medal, the sight of which made him snap the lid shut before he could investigate any further, curiosity curbed in place of respect. Whether it was Ice’s outright or one he had inherited wasn’t for Jason to know when it hadn’t been put out on display. Beside the stack of boxes stood a bottle of liquor, just like he had been hoping for, with a handful of envelopes leaning up against it.

When he picked up the bottle, the envelopes fell sideways with a soft thwap, which prompted him to gather them up into a pile out of a strange sense of guilt that he had disturbed their resting place. He set them aside at first, more interested in the alcohol. It was some kind of scotch, he could tell that much, but he didn’t recognise the brand, and he was wary of looking it up online when that would attach a price tag. Jason made a point of seeking out a crystalline rocks glass from the decanter set that decorated the wall length cabinet positioned behind where he was sat, and smiled appreciatively over the smooth pour of amber liquid. A more refined version of him eased back into his appropriated chair a moment later, emulating Ice to the best of his abilities. As he swirled liquor around the glass, close to wishing that there had been more substance to the mystery of the locked drawer with how short-lived this distraction ended up being, his attention drifted back towards the envelopes.

It was well beyond the realms of appropriate snooping, but Jason needed something unrelated to what was going on upstairs to focus on for a while, if only to protect his own sanity.

He couldn’t have said what he was expecting from this, but when he saw that the scrawl of writing on the top envelope addressed it to Maverick, he was somewhat taken aback. Sentimental was far from the first word that Jason would have used to describe Ice before now, and yet it seemed baked into every facet of this gesture. After Mav’s came envelopes addressed to a series of other names and callsigns, most of which Jason didn’t recognise. He began to doubt his need for distraction in the face of all those strangers, confidence on the precipice of wavering before he turned over Bradley’s name. There was a second where he had been struggling to justify his own nosiness to himself, but now he could say that there was a stroke of altruism in it. Who knows how long it would have taken Bradley to come across this gift in his own time as it was being stationed on the other side of the country, let alone with Jake here as a distraction? Jason’s belated self-rationalisation of his own actions, his private assurance that he was doing something helpful on his friend’s behalf and not wildly overstepping, was cut short when he set Bradley’s envelope aside to give to him later and saw his own name written on the last one.

It was an uncanny thing, being caught out like this by someone Jason hadn’t really known.

He rarely felt undeserving in his life, but he wasn’t convinced that he had earned this consideration.

Absentmindedly, Jason turned the envelope over in his hands a few times, before steeling his nerves with another sip of scotch and opening it. Though the names were scrawled onto the envelopes in neat and uniform handwriting, the actual letter inside had been typed.

Jason,

I hope you can indulge an old man his presumption in writing to you this way, but with my time running out, I find myself becoming increasingly aware of how much I regret not getting to know you better.

When he left home at eighteen, I made my peace with his never wanting to see us again, so it was a surprise beyond measure to have my nephew rock up on our doorstep so many years later to make amends with his new brother in tow. From what I understand, it is your influence which eventually brought him back around, and since there are no real words to express the depth of my gratitude, all I can say is that we should all be so lucky to have a friend as loyal as you.

I have found it difficult not to reflect on my past mistakes as I near the end here. Of all the things that I would change if I could do things over again, I don’t think that pulling his papers would be one of them. For all its faults, I stand by that decision when that is the very thing which led to him meeting you and the rest of your family. I’m sure you must know already that Carole never wanted him in the air. It is ironic that her desire to keep him safe sent him down an equally dangerous path, but I believe even she would have to admit that you are both exactly where you’re supposed to be. It has been my honour to watch the two of you grow together. I hope that you are as proud of your accomplishments as I have always been.

If I might take the liberty of offering you some advice before I close this out: be careful not to let your loyalties to others get the best of you. It is admirable how much you live for your family, but there is no crime in being selfish every once in a while. Take time for yourself. Savour the little things in life. Find yourself a Sarah one of these days, and don’t talk yourself out of deserving her. I’ve lost count of the number of times I have said this very thing to my nephew, but you will find life becomes a lot easier if you just get out of your own way when it comes to love. It isn’t supposed to be complicated. Your other half will know exactly what she’s signing up for when she falls for you, please don’t do her the disservice of thinking you know better.

I wish you all the best for the future.

Take care.

Tom.

There were more words in that one letter than Ice had ever said to Jason in person, and not just because of his degenerating ability to speak in the later stages of his life. More layers to what he had written than Jason could make sense of on the first couple of read-throughs. Layers, and implications, and direct acknowledgements, which that first glass of smoky, subtly-spiced scotch did nothing to make the taste of go down smoother.

The faint creak of floorboards overhead startled him out of his introspection, and whilst he had no way of knowing how much time he had lost, that was a passing concern in the wake of realising that Jake and Bradley were headed back to bed.

Jason tossed the letter on Ice’s desk and poured himself a second drink.

He had no intention of finishing the bottle, but he wasn’t quite done yet.

It was the mortifying ordeal of being known and managed by someone whom he had thought never even noticed him that he didn’t know how to stomach. Ice having regrets about the past was hardly news, but everything else that he had written and revealed paled in comparison to the possibility of him having been aware of Bradley’s relationship with Jake. It wasn’t spelled out in that many words, but there was something in the way that he regurgitated dating advice that felt more pointed than strictly necessary. Maybe Jason was just projecting though, since their relationship was still on his mind? The rest he would process, take to heart, mourn over, later. He could only spiral over one life-changing prospect at a time.

Love really wasn’t supposed to be complicated, and yet that was Bradley and Jake’s whole deal by definition. Who was to say that they would work out in the long run? What would be left to salvage when things inevitably imploded between them? Could Bradley be trusted with Jake’s heart? How about Jake with Bradley’s? And did something as simple as love really earn them a free pass on all of the lies they had spent the last decade telling when this was the position that Jason was left in, doubting the people he trusted most in the world?

Jason blew out a slow sigh as he took another sip of scotch, eyeing his comfortably uncomfortable bed from across the room with a weary sense of resignation. It was less of a dawning realisation than the acceptance a truth that he already knew. He wasn’t going to be getting much sleep tonight if he wanted to figure out the answer to those questions.

Chapter Text

When Bradley laughed, really laughed, it was a full body thing which consumed him. His head knocked back and his chest heaved. He even staggered a little when it caught him by surprise, and in this particular case, had to brace against the wall that he was stood beside to help steady his balance with the force of it.

There were very few people in the world who could bring that out in him, and Jason was still a little bitter over missing the fact that his baby brother was one of them before those retrospectively-obvious feelings of theirs were quite literally spelled out for him to see.

He had spent the last week alternately feeling pleased that Jake was so content in his new relationship and infuriated by it.

Jake could be a needy patient on the best of days, behaviour that Bradley had been more than eager to indulge whilst they had the downtime. Jason liked to think that he would have let that slide without issue if not for the fact that it was still happening now that they were back at work, on the literal opposite side of the country. Jake had had a pretty rough ejection, they knew that much. If not for Bradley being in his way, Jason might even have spent as much time doting on his brother. He wanted to give Bradley the benefit of the doubt. It was understandable that he would want to indulge his protective instincts after so spending so long suppressing the true depth of his feelings for Jake. But the reality was that Jason was becoming increasingly pissed off the more that this whole thing developed.

“Never thought I’d see the day,” Alvez said, jolting Jason out of his thoughts as he slumped down onto the concrete step next to him and handed over a water bottle for him to refresh with. “Bradshaw’s been domesticated.”

He sat in the spot Bradley had vacated when his phone rang earlier with a picture of Jake’s face flashing up on his screen, an unexpected heart eyes emoji included on the contact’s name now.

The team was loosely assembled around one of the hangars that they ran practice drills out of, taking the opportunity to catch their breaths whilst their last successful run was being analysed and picked to death elsewhere by their commanders. Alvez had been confident before Jason and Bradley ran off to California that they were on the verge of deploying again, but bad calls and mistakes that had been made well above their paygrade meant that they were still stuck on the bench, proving themselves over and over. If today went well, then perhaps things would start looking up, but well was a qualitative thing when they were succeeding their training objectives without the usual flare of perfection that they were used to performing with.

Jason could’ve used the distraction of being cleared hot and spinning up on a mission to save himself from thinking about everything else that was going on at the moment, but something was holding the team back, and he hated it.

He scoffed over Alvez’s comment, at the leading way that it had been said, and attempted to school his expression into something indifferent and unbothered without success. Jason wasn’t a huge fan of the entire team knowing the ins and outs of his personal business, so them having actual insight into how he felt about Bradley dating his brother was a nightmare of his own making. He couldn’t blame Alvez for taking advantage of the opening that came from Bradley being otherwise occupied, even if he didn’t trust the way that he smiled sympathetically before concentrating on making himself comfortable on the concrete.

Jason didn’t hate it, no matter what people thought.

Two of the people he cared for most in the world finally getting exactly what they had always wanted from the other, to the point that all they could be considered now was disgustingly in love? It was the stuff of fairy tales and happily ever afters. Jason would have to be far more spiteful than he was by nature to even come close to hating it. He was the one who had been front row to every car crash of a relationship Bradley had been in since they were baby-faced twenty-somethings. And he had been a sounding board for more than his fair share of Jake’s struggles throughout his entire life to figure out that he had been self-sabotaging all this time for good reason, even if the reason itself had always escaped definition. He wanted things to work out. Of course, he did. This, them being together, it was fine, it was just… weird.

Jake’s contact had been saved under the name Hangman on Bradley’s phone as recently as last week, and so far as Jason knew, Jake never used to go out of his way to call him.

The hardest part, Jason found, was reconciling what he had been told before with what he was being told now, especially when he was faced with the inconceivable notion of an in-love and happily settled down Bradley Bradshaw.

Jake had been holding out hope that Mr Right would one day find him since he first learned about love. It wasn’t that surprising that he would jump into all of this head first without once stopping to consider the consequences. For Bradley, however, long-term commitment was the one thing he had never before been so impulsive about in the entire time that Jason had known him. Domesticated was both not enough and too much of a descriptor for how he was acting. Dating Jake hadn’t changed Bradley in the slightest. He was still the same egotistical, self-assured, too-smart-and-talented-for-his-own-good asshole as always. Jake hadn’t done a single thing to temper his attitude or lessen the gigantic chip he carried around on his shoulder, and yet Bradley had somehow managed to become a softer version of himself in the blink of an eye. He had smiled more in the last few days alone than the entire rest of his life.

Jason sighed, shaking himself out of his thoughts again in time with when Bradley gave himself over to yet another full-bodied kind of laugh. Ice was right, he had come to accept. Getting out of his own way had done Bradley an awful lot of good. But for some reason, that terrified Jason.

“He’s something alright,” he replied for Alvez’s benefit after what he knew was too long of a pause. Though he couldn’t quite tell what the Master Chief was after, he was confident that he wouldn’t be left alone until he had gotten it. Alvez hummed leadingly, triggering Jason’s self-consciousness. He hunched further down into himself, dragging his gaze away from Bradley to focus on cracking open the water bottle in his hands instead. “I’m happy for them.” Alvez snorted like he didn’t believe him. “I am.”

“If I didn’t know better, I might start getting ideas about some green-eyed monster living inside you…” Jason choked on the sip of water that he had been in the middle of swallowing. “Yeah,” Alvez laughed whilst Jason spluttered his way through catching his breath and wiped his chin. “Quit moping.”

It was far from the first time in the course of their friendship that such an insinuation had been made – Jason wasn’t sure that you could truly consider someone your best friend if there weren’t rumours slung around about you secretly dating at some point or other – but Jason was as secure in his sexuality as Bradley had always been. Normally, it was something that he found easy to laugh off. Here and now though, he had the sudden and horrifying urge to defend himself.

“You know it ain’t like that.”

“Obviously,” Alvez insisted with the exaggerated roll of his eyes. “You might live in each other’s pockets enough to drive me up the goddamn wall, but let’s be real, you’d make a terrible couple.”

“So, what-”

“You two are supposed to be my glue keeping the team steady, but instead you’re here making your precious feelings everyone else’s problem. We get it. Shit sucks, it’s messed up, he handled it badly. But we have enough else going on without you unsticking our whole deal just to get your point across. Either get over yourself, or bring this to a head and fight him for your brother’s honour already.”

Jason gaped after Alvez as he stood and left him alone again, wishing that such blunt delivery hadn’t helped him in the slightest. That Alvez was wrong. And that he didn’t know in an instant how he would need to handle this to set the matter to rest for everyone…

It took another ten minutes of Bradley laughing his ass off like he was the happiest man in the world for his call to end. He wandered back across the hangar with a stupid, dopey, little grin playing across his face, right up until the point that he settled next to Jason again and made a gallant attempt at tempering his good mood.

“Uh,” Bradley cleared his throat to break the awkward silence surrounding them. The rest of the team weren’t even pretending to hide that they were watching them interact. Haskell was throwing a ball for the detection dog that they were working with today, Carlisle was halfway through eating an apple, and Bishop was texting, but Jason had no doubt that they were still listening closely. It was something that Bradley had to be picking up on at some level, even if he wasn’t consciously aware of it. “So, Jake said-”

“Stand up.”

“Hm?”

“On your feet,” Jason said, rising himself as he gestured for Bradley to follow suit.

“Why?”

“Jesus, just stand up, Bradshaw. Ain’t telling you again.”

With obvious reluctance, Bradley squared off against Jason, a wary look in his eyes which said that he had his suspicions about what might be coming next. At the same time, Jason looked at his best friend, his brother, and sighed. There was only one way to clear the air. It was stupid, and played into every single stereotype about the toxicity of their masculinity as SEALs. Neither of them would like it. And yet…

“Hit me.”

Bradley snorted out an ugly, disbelieving laugh, sounding convinced that he had misheard him. “Come again?”

“Hit me.”

“No?”

“Jesus Christ, Bradshaw,” Jason said with a pointed glare. “Fucking hit me. Get it over with.”

“Jace, I have no reason to hit you,” Bradley replied, his tone even and confident, and yet somehow also incredulous and a little bit disturbed.

“I’ve been an asshole since I found out about you and Jake and-”

“You’re the only one who thinks that.”

“-I wanna get over it and be happy for you, so hit me.”

“You’re fucking insane, you know that, right?”

“Yeah, and you’re in love with my brother,” Jason said with a large measure of acceptance. The truth washed over him instead of sticking in his throat, and all of a sudden became a hell of a lot easier to stomach as an irrevocable fact of the universe. “What does that make you?”

Bradley gaped at Jason for a long moment like he wanted to argue the point but couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say before eventually reiterating, “I’m not hitting you.”

“Fucking do it, Bradshaw,” Haskell cut in, leading a chorus of agreements from the rest of the team. “He’s been a bitch for days. We’re sick of the fighting.”

“We haven’t been fighting?” Bradley said, looking genuinely perplexed for a moment before Jason snorted, their eyes met, and he visibly wilted as he conceded the point. “Not out loud, anyway…”

“It’s like when toddlers fall out,” Carlisle muttered as he fed the core of his apple to the dog, whilst Jason squared off against Bradley and gestured at himself encouragingly. Bradley rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest in silent protest of what he was being asked to do. “It’s just sad.”

“Bradshaw,” Jason said, imploring him to do as he was told. “Make it good.”

“Goddammit, Jace,” Bradley muttered, shaking his head to himself with obvious frustration even as he shifted his weight to a better stance.

Because he was expecting it, Jason supposed when he was taking stock afterwards, it wasn’t half so bad as it could have been. Bradley was a scrapper through and through. He knew how to use his body as a weapon, had grown up with goddamn Maverick teaching him how to fight long before any of their hand-to-hand combat training started at work, and generally had few reservations about playing dirty. Even so, he held himself back from laying Jason out entirely by nut tapping him instead.

Jason crumped into himself with a low, pained groan, before almost immediately retaliating with far more force than Bradley.

It wasn’t satisfying enough to help him magically get over it, but it had to be enough. The instant that Bradley staggered backwards into a defensive crouch with a stifled groan, Jason accepted that. It was the whole point of this exercise, after all. Bradley would understand and respect that as much as Jason did, even though he clearly wasn’t happy that it had been necessary in the first place. Jason shook himself out whilst Bradley was bracing his weight with one hand against the tarmac. He stared his friend down, thought about all of the threats that he could have made on his brother’s behalf, how unnecessary getting overprotective actually was, and began to move past the grudge he had been holding onto for real.

“We good?” he checked as he reached out to help Bradley stand.

“Jesus,” Bradley scoffed as he accepted Jason’s offer and rose to his feet. “You really need to ask?”

Jason didn’t get the chance to respond. Their commanders swept into the hangar and ordered for the drill to be run again right there and then. It said a lot, probably more than it should, that Jason felt more settled now than he had on all of their previous runs combined as he fell into line behind Bradley in preparation for their entrance. Everything was sharper in an instant, more in focus. He was thinking straight for the first time in weeks, thinking only of the task at hand and his brothers around him. Somewhere nearby a watch was keeping score, but so far as Jason was concerned, time stopped for the next few minutes.

“So, what did Jake say?” he asked later once the team broke out from their fastest mission success all day.

“Huh?” Bradley frowned for a split second before a smile cleared his expression. “Oh, right.” He snorted his way through falling into step with Jason as they headed back to the starting line to reset for their next run through of the drill. “Mav tried breaking curfew again last night, so Jake got a front row seat to Sare dressing him down. He said he underestimated how scary she can get when she’s angry…”

Chapter Text

“In my defence, you tell each other everything. How am I in the wrong for not guessing this was an exception to the rules?”

Jason rolled his eyes over the patronising lilt to his mother’s tone, glancing up to glare at her onscreen for good measure when he felt like that wasn’t enough on its own to convey his displeasure. His phone was propped against a can of chopped tomatoes inside one of the kitchen cabinets at eye level whilst they talked, a position it regularly frequented.

“Don’t pout.”

“I think I get to pout, mom,” Jason snarked as he returned his attention to the chopping board in front of him.

A relationship announcement had been dropped into the Seresins’ extended-family group chat earlier that afternoon, courtesy of Jake’s clean bill of health, back in the cockpit, oh and by the way you’ve all already met my new boyfriend life update. Based on the look on Bradley’s face when he first saw it, he hadn’t known that that was going to be sent out at all, let alone today, but he seemed the opposite of bothered. After posting a selfie taken of the two of them together from when they were at Sarah’s as confirmation for the rest of the family that Jake wasn’t punking them, he disappeared into his room to call him, and wiled away the next few hours arguing the point about Jake’s unilateral decision making. In Jake’s view, it had apparently been about just ripping off the Band-Aid to circumvent any potential awkwardness, but Jason had to agree with Bradley that a heads-up beforehand would have been considerate.

Bradley only resurfaced after Jason rapped on his door to ask if he wanted to eat dinner together tonight, and even then, he stayed on the phone with Jake as he headed out on a beer run. Once the door slammed behind him, Jason began taking his frustration over the general lack of reaction from their wider family out on the stir-fry he was making, but he had mere minutes to stew in his own thoughts before his mother called to debrief. The distraction of cooking wasn’t necessarily making him feel better, but at least his hands were kept busy. Close as the store was to their apartment, Jason hoped Bradley wouldn’t get back too soon. He needed this opportunity to vent more than he thought when he first answered the phone.

“First, there’s them keeping secrets,” Jason said, his knife waving in his hand to accentuate his point. “Then, there’s the fact that it took forever for them to give up any details. Add that to me playing third-wheel to their goddamn honeymoon period. And, now it turns out, I’m the last to fucking know?”

“I’m so pleased to hear you’re not making this all about yourself…”

“Mom, it’s Jake and Bradley. I have the right to be pissed about this.”

“I’m not saying you don’t, hon,” Valerie promised with a chuckle. “But, be honest, Jason, are you really surprised? I always thought it made perfect sense.”

“It’s…” Jason sighed. “Yeah, I guess,” he conceded reluctantly, annoyed that he had to admit as much in the first place.

“You certainly won’t be the last to know in any world,” Valerie assured him, before laughing to herself. “If nothing else, I’m sure your dear old dad will have something to say when it finally gets back to him…”

A chill rushed through Jason as that prospect occurred to him for the first time.

It was inevitable, and therefore, terrifying.

“You leave that for them to handle in their own time, Jason.” He stared at his phone, wondering not for the first time whether his mother could read his mind. “It’s their cross to bear.”

“He’ll be pissed.”

“Well, that’s his problem. It has nothing to do with him.”

Jason scoffed, thinking of all the times that kind of technicality had meant anything. His father was a complicated man, his relationship with Jake even more so. Jason didn’t like to dwell on it when he didn’t absolutely have to.

“I know he makes it hard to believe otherwise, hon, but the world doesn’t actually revolve around him.”

Jason was his father’s son, through and through, a decorated SEAL, too married to the job to commit himself to a family. The difference between them was that Anthony Seresin had tried and failed to do it all, where Jason knew better. He had learned from his father’s mistakes. It was easier to avoid commitment, to avoid falling in love, because that way he didn’t have to put any potential woman he might one day fall in love with, any potential children that might be born out of that love, through the misery of playing second fiddle to his true calling.

And he was his father’s son, because of clear and unadulterated favouritism. Without question, Jason was the golden child in Anthony’s eyes, which Jason might have seen fit to consider a fair arrangement in any other circumstance when Jake was their mother’s favourite. In reality, however, it made him feel doubly guilty whenever he received undue attention from Anthony for things he couldn’t change: his sexuality, his career path, everything else which marked him as different from Jake…

Jason’s perception of who his father was had been damaged beyond repair a long time ago, when Anthony declared that he only had one son in response to Jake coming out. But even before then, Jake had always been treated like something of a burden. His achievements were lesser than Jason’s, his problems more of a hassle. There was a reason why Jason was so protective of his baby brother, and it had everything to do with their father. That kind of instinct was difficult to suppress, even when Jake was on thin ice with Jason because of Bradley at the moment.

“How did you find out anyway?” Jason asked, needing to shift the subject back to safer topics before the temper his father brought out in him could spill over and sour the rest of his evening. “They didn’t just tell you outright, did they?”

“No, I walked in on them in bed together years ago.”

“Jesus, really?”

“Asleep, Jason,” Valerie clarified with the kind of teasing tone that said she had phrased it that way on purpose. “Not that I think they’ve really been trying that hard to cover their tracks all this time…”

“Mom.”

“Lord knows I love them both, but neither of them have really mastered the art of subtlety, have they?”

“Mom,” Jason groaned, hating to see quite so much glee in her expression when he glared at his phone screen again.

“Anyway,” she relented. “They were all cosied up together on Bradley’s bed, ain’t like they were trying to hide anything. I just assumed they were still figuring themselves out, so I didn’t want to push before they were ready to talk about it.”

Valerie shrugged her way into stirring something, cooking on her end of the call, too. This was the kind of established routine from years gone by that used to have Jason fending off Mama’s Boy accusations. They spoke daily when Jason was available for it, because weeks could pass, sometimes months, where he wasn’t able to check in at home.

“And then,” she sighed contemplatively, “well, you boys all went back to work, and next thing I know, Jakey’s bringing home that Adam character to meet the family with no mention of him and Bradley having been anything in between.” She shrugged, pursed her lips for a long moment whilst she thought things over, and eventually added, “I suppose I was right, in a way, they just took about six years longer than I thought they would to sort everything out.”

Jason hummed contemplatively, parsing his way through the details and setting aside most of it to circle back to later when he had the chance to think about how his mother’s insight on Jake and Bradley made him feel in his own time. None of it sounded too surprising or scandalous, outside of it being luck which had put her in such a privileged position.

“But even without that,” Valerie continued, “your aunt Heather spotted them getting all heavy handed out behind the barn one time. Took me a moment to get her on board with keeping her mouth shut, but really, she didn’t seem to think much of it either, once she got past the novelty.”

“Serio- aunt Heather knew before me, and she actually managed to keep it a secret?”

“Okay, I get to speak about her that way because she’s my sister, you show some respect, please.”

Jason scoffed. “You know what I mean.”

Valerie hummed disapprovingly, but with a smile that Jason shared. She allowed the matter to drop without pushing any further, leaving them to doctor their respective dishes in companionable silence for a few minutes. Jason taste tested and adjusted his seasoning, checking the time as he tried to gauge how much longer Bradley might be, nodding along whilst Valerie began to gossip about the wider family’s reactions to the news.

When Bradley burst through the door soon afterwards, dropping his purchases on the counter adjacent to where Jason was stood in a whirlwind of activity, Jason finally added his last few ingredients, flash frying them before he prepared to serve up their meal. Bradley was still on the phone to Jake himself, his tone heated. They were bickering, but not with the same degree of ferocity that there used to be when they were talking one-on-one. In comparison to the past, it didn’t really even constitute an argument. Bradley waved in the background of Jason’s call to Valerie, before disappearing out of the kitchen again to finish his conversation. Despite Bradley’s insistence that he wanted to join him, Jason resigned himself to the fact that he might end up eating alone again tonight, and tried his absolute best not to indulge any resentfulness he was tempted to direct Jake’s way.

In the weeks since they had left him behind in California, Jake had disrupted just about every single aspect of Jason’s relationship with Bradley. They were best friends, colleagues, roommates. An argument could have been made for them spending every waking moment together before now. And yet Jason felt like he hadn’t even so much as spoken to Bradley in passing without Jake worming his way into things in all that time. He loved his brother, he would always be his greatest protector, but he was getting a little tired of how invasive his existence was on a routine that was more than a decade in the making. Bradley was his friend long before he became Jake’s boyfriend. It stung more than Jason wanted to admit how quickly he had been shuffled out of favour.

“I see being official has done wonders for making them get along,” Valerie remarked once Bradley was out of earshot, unaware of Jason’s inner turmoil.

Jason smiled wanly at his mother, making a concerted effort to get himself past this sticking point for the good of them all. “Welcome to my world,” he joked, realising as he plated up that there was nothing stopping him from just eating in Bradley’s room whilst he and Jake continued their debate.

Chapter Text

Jason taped the final box of kitchen utensils shut with a sigh of relief, long past regretting that he hadn’t made more substantial plans for this weekend. He loved his brother – really, he did – but being enlisted into helping someone move was enough to test even the tightest of relationships.

Jake was officially transferring to North Island.

The decision hadn’t been made lightly, Jason knew that, but it also wasn’t one that Jake needed to agonise over for long. It was the best place for him to be in for the ongoing upwards mobility of his career, and the Daggers were the squad that he most wanted to be working with. In those respects there were no downsides. He would be so far from home though, and even further from Bradley and Jason. As the three of them dedicated the morning to packing up the last of the house that Jake had been living in whilst stationed in Norfolk before his medical leave ended, Jason could see some doubts starting to set in. Like it was only just occurring to Jake now what he was giving up to have this, and he couldn’t be sure that was worth it. Jake wasn’t obvious in his ruminations, but the fact that he had barely spoken all weekend, where usually it was a fight to shut him up, was a surefire indicator that something was wrong. Jason knew better than to second guess his brother’s decisions though, and he supposed it was a bittersweet situation, willingly signing up for an even longer distance relationship than you had already been expecting to be in for the sake of your own personal development.

They all sacrificed a lot for their careers, this was just the icing on the cake where both Jake and Bradley were concerned.

Bradley had taken the news with a kind of stoic pragmatism that said he planned on never complaining because he knew this was what Jake wanted. It was a disconcerting level of acceptance, of acquiescence, which made Jason wonder how much he was bending over backwards on the inside not to rock the boat while their relationship was still so shiny and new.

He hefted the box that he had just closed into his arms to carry out to the rental van Jake had hired, shaking those thoughts off with the pointed reminder for himself that it wasn’t his problem to figure out how they were going to navigate these hurdles. Walking through to the front of the house provided myriad evidence of where the place had been stripped of the personality that made it home for Jake. It had come as a furnished property, and so the base level furniture would be staying here, but that only made it that much more obvious how temporary Jake’s tenure in Norfolk was always supposed to have been.

“Yo,” Jason called to catch Bradley’s attention as he neared the van, “last of the kitchen stuff. Are we almost done?”

Bradley laughed without looking around, busy himself with organising how everything was stored inside and securing down the few pieces of furniture that Jake was taking with him to keep them safe for driving across country. “Yeah, he doesn’t have that much stuff, dude. Quit whining.”

“I gave up a perfectly good weekend for this shit.”

“Saturday,” Bradley corrected, because technically Jake had already done most of the packing himself in the last few days before they reported for duty. Bradley made the trip out last night once their workday ended, to log as much quality time as he could get, whilst Jason showed up with breakfast for them all first thing that morning. “And the only thing you had on before he asked for help was detailing your truck, Jace, you can still do that tomorrow.”

“I’m also meeting Farrah for drinks later tonight,” Jason said just to be contrary, placing the box he was holding onto the floor of the van for Bradley to take when he was ready for it.

“Since when?”

“Yesterday.”

“So, you made those plans after you already knew we’d be coming here?” Bradley clarified amusedly, finally turning to offer Jason a disparaging look before carrying on with what he was doing before. “How’s that Jake’s fault?”

“You know, I liked you better when you just agreed with me on everything to piss him off.”

“Heard that,” Jake called from behind Jason.

“Good.”

“Here, babe,” Jake said as he passed his own box straight to Bradley, who had turned as soon as he heard Jake’s voice to be ready to take it from him. Jake glanced to Jason once his hands were free, a patiently exasperated smile crossing his expression. “You can go, if you want to, we’re basically done.”

“No, I’m here now,” Jason conceded begrudgingly. “Might as well see it through.”

Jake huffed out a laugh. “Really, Jace, that’s pretty much the last of it. There’s just the shit we’ll need for tonight and the stuff I’m donating left.”

“We can put that stuff in my truck, if you want to keep it separate,” Bradley offered. “Drop it off later this afternoon?”

“Yeah, good idea,” Jake agreed, smiling wider despite the lack of enthusiasm in his tone.

Jason snuck a glance at his brother in the moment he took to steal a hug from his boyfriend, trying to gauge where his head was at.

This place had only been home for Jake for a couple of years, but he adapted to it with the same practicality that most people in the military could. Everywhere was home, until it wasn’t. Duty stations came and went. His focus was the future, and all the good things that would come with it.

Equally so, Jason imagined that it was tough not to linger on the past at this particular juncture.

When Jake transferred to Norfolk, Luke, his boyfriend at the time, had relocated to be with him. This was the house that they shared. And Luke may have left it all behind when they broke up, but there were still memories baked into every room of the life that Jake had lived with him. His and Bradley’s relationship was at its very worst through those years, Jason had come to learn, and that more or less made this house representative of everything that might have been if things hadn’t ended up working out for them.

It had to be making ending this chapter and putting it behind him even more poignant for Jake, in a way that Jason struggled to relate to.

He had no idea what his brother was thinking as he stood there with his arms wrapped around Bradley’s waist, the height difference that Bradley gained from standing on the bed of the van making it easy for Jake to bury his head in his abdomen. Bradley carded his fingers through the hair at the back of Jake’s neck absentmindedly whilst he stared at the house with his own guarded expression. And Jason was left to wonder if this moment right here was worth everything that they had paid to get it.

He still had an incomplete picture, was still building his own timeline in his head of what he had missed in the last decade, but he trusted it wasn’t regret that was souring the mood.

“In that case,” Jason said after only a few seconds contemplation, “ain’t it about time you paid your workers?” Jake twisted his head sideways and opened one eye to squint at Jason without otherwise pulling away from Bradley. “I’m starving, and you’re the lucky man who gets to buy me and Bradshaw lunch.”

Bradley laughed. “I knew there was a reason we were doing this.”

It was nice, Jason found, the three of them being together without the strange unspoken tension that there used to be between Jake and Bradley. Sure, the near constant physical contact when they were in each other’s orbits was new, but Jason had started acclimatising to it. Besides, it was hard to get precious about how handsy they were both acting when Jason knew that they were soaking up every little moment they could get before their time ran out. Jason’s sympathies were in the right place, even if this was still a little weird for him.

Later, once they had finished lunch and were back at Jake’s freshly cleaned house with only the most menial of tasks left to complete once he was ready to leave in the morning, Jason found himself on the verge of seeking out even more jobs he didn’t really have to do just to stretch time out before he had to say goodbye to his brother.

“Call me when you get home,” he ordered Jake after making sure that he knew the best route to get to Texas, the out-of-the-way pitstop he was doing before carrying on to California. Jake rolled his eyes and grumbled through being told what to do like he thought he was being lectured, but Jason didn’t think it was unreasonable to double check when Jake usually flew that route rather than driving it.

“What, so you can brag about how much better time you’d have made than me?”

“Obviously,” Jason agreed, even though this had far more to do with the peace of mind of knowing he had arrived safely than it did one-upping him. “We both know I’m a better driver than you.”

Jake scoffed. “Sure, you are.”

It was Jason’s turn to roll his eyes, though he did so whilst he was fighting back a smile over Jake being so quintessentially Jake. “Just take it steady, okay?” he said as he tugged his brother in for a quick embrace, slapping his back a couple times. “And give mom a hug from me?”

Jake nodded as he stepped back and away, before offering the hollow promise that they would see each other soon as his final farewell.

All too soon, Jason was outside, climbing into his truck to drive home whilst Jake waved him off from the doorway. There was something inherently domestic about the way that Bradley joined him in the seconds before they faded out of sight in the rearview mirror, about the way they closed the front door together to go about finishing off their final evening alone for who knew how long. Practiced, easy, and comfortable, even though they had barely even been dating a full month yet, let alone reached a milestone as significant as living together.

They made each other happy, Jason thought with a smile as he kept driving away, and despite all of the complications they kept encountering, they seemed dead set on keeping this.

Chapter Text

“Because I don’t get why it even matters!” Bradley was shouting as Jason opened the front door to their apartment. “It’s not like we’re legally related.”

Jason made the immediate assumption that Bradley was talking to Maverick.

There weren’t many people he took that kind of tone with, fewer still since he and Jake had started dating.

Jason allowed the door to slam shut behind himself, purposefully making more noise than he would naturally to give Bradley the heads-up that he was home as he juggled their groceries down the hallway. That way, if he wanted to, he could use Jason’s arrival as a convenient excuse to cut his conversation short. Something he had done unscrupulously in the past whenever his uncle became too much for him to handle.

Mav was a strange, little man, a mystery unto himself who played by a completely different set of rules to every other person in existence. Jason was much closer with him than any of Bradley’s other uncles, but despite that, they rarely spent any time together outside of the neutral ground that somewhere like a bar or restaurant represented. Bradley generally struggled to talk to Mav without something else around to keep the majority of his attention occupied, and even then, that wasn’t always enough to keep him sane and amicable where his uncle was concerned.

Theirs was a relationship Jason would likely never understand.

An incredible amount of love was lost between them, and yet they had never once failed to show as much to one another.

The whole Mav pulling Bradley’s academy papers debacle was utter bullshit, so far as Jason was concerned. Because it was easy to figure out why he had done that, provided you had the necessary context of how Goose died and Carole coped in the aftermath. Which Jason had the first time that he heard Bradley’s precious little rant about how ‘Mav tried to ruin his life’. It had been nice to learn that he wasn’t the only person in the world with a vested interest in saving Bradley from himself.

Whenever Jason talked to Mav one-on-one, he left the encounter feeling a strange mixture of amused, confused, and intimidated. Mav had never once acted in the way that Jason expected him to, and he had yet to figure out whether that was on purpose. He thought they got along pretty well , all things considered, but that didn’t mean he enjoyed how frazzled Mav could render Bradley without conscious effort. It reminded Jason of the relationship that he had with his own father, which was a complex association to make when the wider context of who Mav and Bradley really were to one another was taken into account.

“But what if it does?” Bradley demanded, seemingly unaware of Jason’s presence despite his best efforts. “You seriously want to risk fucking with his career when you don’t have to because of this?” He paused to listen as Jason reached the kitchen, before shouting, “you’re the senior fucking officer! Of course he’d be the one getting fucked over if they decide to take issue with it.”

Jason wondered, during the next stretch of silence, whether Jake was even aware that this conversation (which was so obviously about him) was taking place. He also wondered whether this was the kind of thing he still had any right to ask his brother about, whether Bradley would loop him in on the finer details unprompted, whether he was supposed to be fighting his curiosity, whether he needed to be worried…

“No. You want the truth? I’d have him back at Norfolk. Hell, fuck it, I’d have him transferred to Vah Beach if I had any say in the matter, that way I’d maybe have a chance of seeing him more than once a fucking year. But it’s not up to me. This is his career we’re talking about. It’s what he’s been working his whole life towards. He wants to stay at North Island, he wants to lead the Daggers, so no one gets to take that from him. That’s why I don’t want you doing this. Not when it’s not fucking necessary.”

Jason was as surprised as he wasn’t to hear the crux of that outburst.

He had known all this time that the long-distance aspect of their relationship would either make or break Jake and Bradley, and that them being stationed on opposite sides of the country was only going to complicate things in the long run, but he hadn’t really stopped to consider the reality of it before now.

It was impossible on a multitude of different levels.

Jake was busy with his job, sure, but even that paled in comparison to how often Jason and Bradley were on duty. Ten out of twelve months a year they were operating on some level. They would maybe get a weekend here or there where Bradley could pop off to California for a visit, Jake could use up most of his leave fitting in around things, they could reunite on the ranch in Texas as often as they always had, but even then, they would never be seeing one another on anything even remotely close to a regular basis.

“Right, well,” Bradley laughed defeatedly, “why ask if you’re just going to do what you want anyway?” He paused for a moment before adding in a scathing tone, “yeah, what else is new? Thanks for fucking nothing.”

Jason hurried to start putting groceries away when he heard the tread of footsteps across the apartment, not wanting it to be too obvious that he had been eavesdropping. Bradley, of course, saw straight through him when he walked into the kitchen himself. Jason had never been that great of an actor though, so that wasn’t all too surprising.

“Dude, unclench,” Bradley said without looking at him, gaze fixed on his phone. “I know how much you heard.”

“Problems in paradise?”

“Mav’s on a tear about him and Jake working together long-term.”

“Why?”

“Fuck if I know,” Bradley scoffed. “He said something about not wanting to put either of them in another difficult position, and then point blank refused to actually explain what that means.”

“That ain’t at all suspicious…” Jason snarked before sighing to himself, considering everything that he already knew of Mav, including how single-minded he could get when he was trying to protect the people he cared about. “You think it’s about their ejects a while back?”

“You mean, the first job they ever worked together? No, I think it’s a massive fucking coincidence.”

Jason snorted. “Jake never dropped any details on what happened there, then?”

“Nope. He pulled the ‘it’s classified’ card. Looked real pleased with himself when he did that, too, which is bullshit.”

“Why?”

“Because it makes him a fucking hypocrite,” Bradley said, like that explained anything. He scoffed and shook his head to himself as he muttered, “nothing new there though.”

“Wow,” Jason chuckled, “almost sounds like old times.” Bradley hummed his agreement without otherwise acknowledging how his snide comments were starting to make it seem like he was regressing to his former self. “You know, his heart’s probably in the right place? Mav, I mean.”

Jason frowned to himself when he didn’t receive an immediate response, and looked around from the fridge to find Bradley had his phone pressed to his ear. Bradley met his gaze with a weary smile as he settled in one of the chairs at their kitchen table and waited for his call to connect.

“I know,” he promised, “just hang on. I need to loop Jake in before we get into this, maybe he can talk some sense into him…”

Chapter Text

Jason glanced across the gym again and squinted at where he could see Bradley adding another couple of plates to the bench press. Bishop and Carlisle were with him, seeming more invested in what he was doing than their own workouts. Jason was supposed to be concentrating on himself – and on his current workout partner, Farrah, too – but there was something about the way that the three of them were huddled together, deep in discussion whilst Bradley eyed the bar he was about to lift and looked to be contemplating adding even more weight to it, that kept pulling his attention.

Farrah muscled in in front of Jason and laid a hand on his bicep, squeezing overfamiliarly as she blinked up at him with wide eyes and a pretty smile. “Will you show me that pullup trick of yours again, Jace?”

Jason cursed everything that was Bradley Bradshaw as he accepted that he would have to satisfy his curiosity on this whole deal before he would have any chance of giving Farrah his full and undivided attention.

“Hold that thought?” he said.

“Uh,” Farrah cocked her head at him confusedly and stepped back a fraction, “sure?”

Jason stalked all the way across the gym in the time it took Bradley to lie back and churn out a few reps, struggling more than he did when he benched his usual weight. Bishop was stood by his head in position to spot him whilst Carlisle scrutinised his form like there was a problem to solve. Their debate picked up again as soon as Bradley sat up.

“-lifting that’s the problem, it’s holding it up,” Bishop was saying as Jason came within earshot. “That’s what I think you need to work on, and that’s just basic strength training.”

“Yeah,” Carlisle agreed. “How are you on the shoulder press?”

“About the same,” Bradley shrugged.

“So, couple months, you should be golden. Perfect timing.”

“For what?” Jason asked, forcing his way into the conversation as he made a show of adding up the plates in front of the others. He met Bradley’s guilty expression with a calculated stare. “More than your usual?”

“Yeah, I…” Bradley chuckled awkwardly, scratching at the back of his neck like he was feeling uncomfortable about something as he rose to his feet. “No harm in building strength, right?”

“That what this is?”

“Sure, let’s go with that,” Bradley agreed too quickly. Bishop snorted and muttered something under his breath to Bradley, which made Bradley shove him in reprimand. “Dude,” he hissed as Bishop rolled with the movement, looking to be enjoying himself far too much for Jason’s liking. “Shut up.”

“You want to try that one again, Bradshaw?” Jason said.

“Take my word for it, man,” Bradley insisted, unable to meet his eye. He went so far as to look away from Jason, which was his biggest mistake. “Less you know the better.”

“Seriously?”

“Let’s just say it’s a relationship investment,” Carlisle chimed in with a strangely affectionate smile.

“Not helpfu-”

Bradley never had chance to finish his complaint, Jason’s headlock cut him off.

They had spent their entire professional lives wrestling one another. It was safe to say that they were a close match. Even so, Jason had deep-seeded resentment over his growing awareness of the uncomfortably healthy, borderline obsessive sex life Bradley shared with Jake, which gave him an added edge this morning. They didn’t even live on the same coastline, let alone the same state, or time zone, but did they let that stop them? No, absolutely not. And who’s problem was that? Jason’s. Because they weren’t subtle, at all. Their honeymoon period had been enough of a nightmare to live through, even with Jake recovering from his ejection injuries, but it turned out that was the quiet before the storm. Jason had overheard too much in the last couple of months, seen too much, and learned more than he thought he would ever need to know about his baby brother.

Bradley was a scrapper, through and through.

But so was Jason.

It took longer than it usually would have for Bradley to remember that he was part eel, a point in Jason’s favour. Once he did though, he shifted his weight and hooked his ankle around Jason’s calf, using the momentum he created to trip them both. The shock factor of falling loosened Jason’s hold for the split-second Bradley needed to take advantage, and then they were grappling. One or the other of them got a lock on an arm, or a shoulder, or a wrist even, because they weren’t above fighting dirty. Holds which they managed to get were always quickly broken, because they both knew the other’s tricks too intimately to ever make this fair. There was probably a point or two where they came close to actual injury with the narrowness of the aisle they were doing this in and the heavy workout equipment all around, not that either of them paid that much mind when beating the other was their priority.

Jason wasn’t sure who started laughing first, but all of a sudden, he was struggling for breath alongside Bradley, and it became twice as hard for either of them to make their pins last past a few seconds at a time.

“Jace?”

Farrah’s voice snapped Jason out of the moment, thwarting his attempt to wrangle Bradley’s arm into lock behind his head. Bradley elbowed him in the temple on accident as the resistance he had been fighting against suddenly gave out, and he cursed out an apology, before they looked up in unison. Farrah was stood there frowning at them disapprovingly with her arms crossed. She looked seconds away from tapping her foot with impatience. Bishop and Carlisle were either side of her, matching grins on both of their faces, the former with his phone out where he had presumably been recording the action.

“I guess we’re done working out, then?” she said, sounding annoyed and expectant.

“Right,” Jason said, releasing Bradley and roughly shoving him away as he moved to stand. “Yeah, I’m coming.” He looked down at Bradley once he was on his feet, resenting the arrogant smile on his face as he shifted to lounge back on his hands, legs now stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles. “This ain’t over.”

“Yeah,” Bradley agreed easily enough to trigger Jason’s suspicion. He waited until Farrah’s hand had cinched around Jason’s wrist to counter, “you know, it’s not really fair to hold your brother’s kinks against me?”

Jason threw as much venom into his glare as he could muster. “You’re a dead man.”

Bradley, Bishop, and Carlisle all burst into the kind of laughter which said that that threat hadn’t been taken seriously.

A member of staff, who had no doubt been on their way over to reprimand them for the scene they were causing in the middle of the weights area, made their approach whilst Farrah was dragging Jason towards the exit. That, more than anything, mollified his wounded pride for a while. Let Bradley take the blame, he deserved that and more as punishment.

Without Jason needing to ask outright, Bradley began to make an effort at toning things down, or at the very least became more considerate with his timing, finally catching on to the fact that he needed to treat his relationship with Jake differently to the ones he had been in before.

This was the painful reality of them having lived together for their entire adult lives. Jason and Bradley were firmly situated inside each other’s pockets. Though neither of them had ever gone out of their way to walk in on the other, to overhear certain sounds or conversations, to catch sight of the exact wrong thing at the exact wrong time, that was just how things went on occasion. Their apartment was no mansion; there were only so many places to hide. And that was to say nothing for the various bases, and carriers, ships, and myriad safehouses they had been assigned for temporary housing over the years that they worked alongside one another. This pragmatic lack of privacy wasn’t even limited to just the two of them, it was the entire team, too. Their squadron. The vast majority of people that they had served with throughout their careers. It had simply been an awful lot easier for Jason to play deaf, dumb, and blind when he didn’t know that it was his baby brother on the other end of Bradley’s phone calls, or sending him flirty little texts and photos, and doing whatever the hell it was that made him groan so loud when he was alone in his bedroom.

“Bradshaw!” Haskell hollered from where they were congregated around Alvez’s dining room table a few nights later. “Your phone is blowing up. Fucking hop to it, would you?”

They were between poker hands in the game that they had had going on all afternoon to celebrate the Chief’s birthday, and Bradley was the poor soul who had been suckered into replenishing their snack bowl this time around, leaving his phone face down on the table in front of his seat whilst he did so. He had been texting on and off all day, but no one from the team really even acknowledged as much before now.

“Jesus, fuck,” Haskell muttered to himself when Bradley’s phone buzzed again, on the other side of the empty seat to Jason and closest by far to the noise that it was making. “Since when was your brother this needy, Seresin?”

Jason snorted to himself, keeping quiet that he had already had the exact same thought. “How do you know it’s him?”

“Who the fuck else is it gonna be? Bradshaw’s hardly stepping out on him with someone else, is he?” The amusement which rang around the rest of the team over that prospect was soon drowned out by three more buzzes sounding out in quick succession. Haskell grabbed it to throw at Jason as he demanded, “fucking make it stop.”

Distracted as he was by the team’s comments on how whipped Bradley had become, Jason didn’t think to look at any of the dozens of messages that Jake had sent when he unlocked the phone. He simply hit the call button next to Jake’s name at the top of the screen, and laughed along with the jokes as he listened to the line ring.

Jake answered in a far breathier tone of voice than Jason had been expecting. He sounded smug and taunting as he drawled, “I thought you were playing poker, baby?”

“If you want him to live through the rest of the night, you have got to stop texting him,” Jason replied, trying not to think too hard over what he had interrupted.

Jake audibly flinched when Jason started speaking, a surprised sounding yelp catching in the back of his throat. He sounded no less breathless than before, even if it was for different reasons, when he snapped, “the fuck are you doing, calling me on Bradley’s phone?”

“You’re blowing it up, dickhead, it’s annoying as hell,” Jason replied, rolling his eyes for the team’s benefit. Bradley walked back into the room, oblivious to the jokes being made at his expense. “Don’t worry, he still like-likes you, even when it takes him longer than two seconds to text back.”

Bradley snorted as he slumped into his chair with an undue measure of pride. “Guessing that’s Jake?” he asked no one in particular.

“You, uh, didn’t read any of those texts, right, Jace?” Jake said at the same time, something altogether too nervous in his tone, which gave away far more about the content of them than Jason needed.

Jason shuddered to himself, summoning all the disdain he possibly could to reply, “I’m doing us all a favour and pretending I don’t know why you just asked me that.” He ended the call before Jake could respond and tossed the phone in Bradley’s direction, gleaning a sick sense of satisfaction from seeing him fumble the catch, which did nothing to make up for his newfound insight. Bradley ducked his head as he focused on the screen in front of him, the blush crawling up his neck deepening with every passing second. To distract both himself and the rest of the team, Jason asked loudly and a little desperately, “we playing poker, or what?”

Carlisle started dealing their next hand whilst Bradley was still otherwise distracted, and the bet worked its way around the table until it stalled on his turn. As a unit they stared him down, waiting for him to return to the present whilst he blithely scrolled through Jake’s messages with a slowly widening grin turning up the corners of his mouth.

“Bradshaw,” Alvez prompted in a bored tone once it became obvious that he had no real interest in paying attention to his surroundings.

“Hm?” Bradley glanced up and around himself sightlessly, not even taking in where his cards were still lying on the table waiting to be checked. “Oh, I fold,” he said, rising from his seat.

“Seriously?” Jason scoffed. “Where the fuck are you going?”

“Anywhere but here.” There was a round of protests from the entire team which Bradley disregarded entirely, phone already pressed to his ear as he shoved one foot into a sneaker. He grabbed the other to hop into on his way towards the front door. “Hey, baby,” he said once Jake answered. “Yeah, no, it’s actually me this time…”

Jason sighed his way through playing his hand, braced for the teasing he got when he complained, “guess I’m Ubering home.”

“Just crash here, Jace,” Alvez said above the noise, raising the bet and sending it around the table a second time. “We can ride in together tomorrow.”

“Tash won’t mind?”

Alvez wrinkled his nose with displeasure as he shook his head. “Called it quits the other week, she’s moved out.”

A moment of weighted silence passed as the rest of them took a beat to mourn the end of another team member’s relationship. Bishop ended up being the first to recover, cracking a joke about how if beds were being offered up then he was taking one. He popped open one beer can after another, sliding the first towards Alvez and then taking a long draw from the second. No one was really surprised over the breakup, or asked much about it. Not because they didn’t care, or weren’t nosy enough to be curious, but because this was far from the first time that things had gone awry for Alvez. His on-again-off-again relationship with his wife was more notorious than Bradley and Jake’s simply because they had never really bothered with hiding their dysfunction.

Maybe that shared kinship was why Alvez was one of the only members of the team who never gave Bradley any grief over his and Jake’s history?

Jason made eye contact with Alvez from across the table, cocking his head slightly to ask how he was without asking. He received a subtle shrug and the echo of a smile in response, which was enough to satisfy him. When the others had passed out from too much alcohol, and no doubt stolen the bed that Jason alone had been offered, then he might get the chance to pry further. For now, though, he shook off his concern, and purposefully stopped himself from wondering whether Alvez’s current situation was a snapshot of the future in store for Jake and Bradley.

Chapter Text

Jake’s laughter rang out through the speakers of Bradley’s laptop, brightening the team’s quarters without much effort. Jason found he was smiling in spite of himself. He had wanted to punish Bradley, and get even for his now inescapable awareness of the intricacies of their sex life, but his plan of sending all the worst photos he had of him to Jake seemed to be backfiring, based on Jake’s reaction.

“I can’t believe I forgot how cute you used to be,” he cooed. “What happened?”

“About a decade of operating.”

Jake laughed again, “guess that explains this one then, huh?”

“Jesus Christ, Jace,” Bradley griped, looking up from the screen exasperatedly to ask, “how many did you send him?”

“I honestly don’t remember; we were pretty pissed when we put it all together.”

“Awesome,” Bradley scoffed, “thanks so much.”

Jason grimaced, starting to feel a little guilty as another sadistically gleeful cackle burst out of Bradley’s speakers. “I thought you deserved it at the time.”

Haskell was passed out in the hammock he had strung up in his possession’s cage over on the other side of the room, but the rest of the guys headed out in search of food as soon as Jake’s call came through. Jason hadn’t known what exactly tempted him to stay before, but he just now figured it out.

Seeing this side of Bradley with this side of Jake, it was oddly heartening.

“And… another Hawaiian shirt,” Jake continued, “that makes, what, four now?”

“Five,” Bradley corrected with an embarrassed chuckle.

“I swear I’m burning your wardrobe next time I come over. How do you have so many of them?”

“You don’t think I look good?”

“No,” Jake cackled out a laugh. “Your face is as red as the shirt!”

Jason tossed the second-hand paperback that he had been pretending to read on top of his kit bag without bothering to mark the page, and wandered from his own cage to Bradley’s without overthinking the move too hard. Bradley lifted his laptop with one hand and shuffled sideways on the storage box that he was using as a seat to give Jason the space he needed to join him without hesitation. They were pressed right up against one another, the box barely long enough to fit either one of them comfortably as it was. Bradley dropped the laptop down between them, setting it half on each of their thighs. Jason kicked out his other leg, using his foot to help keep his balance as he squinted at the screen to catch up on where Jake was at in the Bradley’s Most Embarrassing Moments highlights reel.

“Okay, I knew you kind of had this whole ‘I can sleep anywhere’ schtick going on,” Jake said, flashing them a look at the picture on his phone screen. It showed a particularly dirty, still-geared-up Bradley curled up, impressively small for how long-limbed he was, under an operations table alongside the equally-exhausted detection dog that they had been working with at the time. “But that’s just nasty, baby. Her tail is like in your mouth.”

“In my defence, I was fucking tired. We ran like a dozen raids that night.”

“That whole deployment was pretty rough,” Jason agreed.

Jake hummed, not unsympathetically, as he scrolled to the next photo. Jason couldn’t remember what order they were all in himself. A few weeks had passed since he and Alvez had decided this was a good idea as the Chief’s birthday celebration was winding down for the night. Bradley spent most of that time playing voicemail tag with Jake whilst they figured out how this whole consistent communication thing was supposed to work when one of them deployed and their schedules were the opposite of compatible. Jake sticking with his new squad in North Island long-term was amazing development for his career when he was now officially second-in-command for such an elite unit of pilots, but less than ideal for him being able to see or speak to his boyfriend on a regular basis, let alone the rest of his family.

Jake had been uncharacteristically patient, waiting to go through the photos until after he had Bradley as captive audience on a video call. As if it mattered more to him hearing the stories behind them all from Bradley’s mouth than it did just flicking through the album for the sake of seeing them.

With the way that he froze on screen all of a sudden, Jason was struck by a wish that he had saved himself the trouble. He watched his brother’s expression cycle through a strange series of emotions too fast for him to catalogue them, the pseudo joke that sending these photos was supposed to be very quickly loosing its lustre.

“Um,” Jake scoffed after a long, weighted pause, before finally revealing what he was looking at. “What’s going on here, babe?”

A shocked breath punched out of Jason, somewhere between a laugh and a groan.

The photo was one of those never see the light of day types. Bradley, under neon lights, covered in glitter, mid lap dance at a strip club that they had been dragged to for a former teammate’s bachelor party. Jason didn’t know much about serious relationships, but he far from of the belief that seeing one’s partner in that kind of context was a good thing. Even if it was from long before they started dating officially. And especially when said partner had been blackout drunk at the time, and was visibly enjoying himself…

“What the fuck, Jace,” Bradley hissed, elbowing him in the side fiercely enough to hurt. “Why would you send him that?”

“My bad,” Jason muttered through a guilty chuckle as he rubbed at his ribs with the opposite hand, figuring he could apologise properly later.

“Oh, did you not want me to know this happened?” Jake challenged at the same time, something teasing in his tone.

“Not like-” Bradley groaned lowly in the back of his throat and grabbed the laptop as he rose to his feet, pacing away from Jason without leaving the cage, because he had a tendency to think clearer when he was moving. “Not like that.” He chuckled humourlessly, sucking in a sharp breath through his teeth as if to temper his patience. “Jake, I love you. And because I love you, I’m asking you, please, just delete that and pretend like you never saw it. I’m really not proud of who I was that night, and I don’t remember a lot of it, so it’s really just a whole thing I’d rather you not think about.”

“What’s the big deal? It looks like you’re having fun to me…?”

“I promise you that’s all the alcohol.”

“When was this?”

Bradley had his back to Jason as he slowed to a stop, and yet Jason could tell just from the set of his shoulders that he was considering lying, or perhaps even just hanging up before he was forced to answer. Jake seemed able to sense as much from whatever he could see from his end of the call.

“Bradley,” he slowly prompted. “When was this?”

Bradley balanced the laptop on one arm as he scraped a hand through his hair, inexplicably frustrated. Even so, Jason was glad not to hear a lie when he finally spoke again.

“Like, four years ago? I don’t remember exactly.”

“So… not long after I started dating Luke?” Bradley nodded. “Any correlation?” When Bradley breathed out a heavy sigh, moving the few steps he had to reach the open doorway of his cage so that he could slump into a one-shouldered lean against it, Jake simply hummed in understanding, as if that reaction told him everything he needed to know. “I will delete it, if we can talk about this properly when we have some privacy?”

“Yeah.”

“I love you.” Bradley smiled crookedly in reciprocation of that sentiment. “Hey, and, uh, I’m all for pretending this never happened, if that’s what you want, but there’s… some parts we should maybe consider coming back to sometime?”

“Shared space,” Jason called out before Bradley could answer that, disliking how far upwards the corner of his mouth ticked. He waved his hands around himself to encompass the entire room when Bradley glanced over at him and huffed out a quiet laugh when Bradley swapped the laptop to his other hand so that he could flash him his middle finger.

“Put a pin in that for now?” Bradley murmured softly.

Jake breathed out a quiet chuckle, and the two of them shared a short pause where they just watched one another, before he murmured, “want me to keep going, or should I save the rest of these ‘til we can go through ‘em together?”

“Maybe save them, if that’s okay?”

“Sure,” Jake agreed, far more agreeable than Jason had ever heard him be before. “But don’t hold it against me if I start begging Mav for baby photos.” The relief in Bradley’s laugh told Jason that Jake had said exactly what he needed to hear. “I should probably go, anyway. I’ll be late to meet Nat if I ain’t careful. Mav put us in charge of running drills tomorrow, so we’ve got to make a plan.”

“I love you,” Bradley murmured, turning away from Jason fractionally as he cradled the laptop in both arms. “Give ‘em hell, baby.”

“Right back atcha. Later, Jace!”

Bradley sighed as he eased the laptop shut, and he rolled backwards to lean against the cage’s doorjamb more solidly in order to fix a reproachful stare in Jason’s direction.

“Should go without saying that I know I fucked up,” Jason said straight away. “But it ain’t like that went to Jake on purpose, and I don’t think that any of this should be held against me.”

“I told you to delete that photo the day after it was taken.”

“So, I fucked up twice, I’m willing to admit that,” Jason conceded. Bradley scoffed, shaking his head defeatedly as he shouldered off of the cage and moved to dump the laptop on the table across from Jason. “Dude, not to be a dick, but is the reason you got so fucked up at Gunner’s bachelor party seriously just because you found out about Luke?”

Bradley’s jaw clenched enough to prove that that question had struck a nerve. Jason could see the tension in his every muscle as he grinded his teeth, even when looking at the back of him. He stayed unnaturally still for a long moment, staring down at the laptop rather than meeting Jason’s eye. A pink tint darkened the back of his neck, which showed off just how sensitive a topic this really was for him.

“Just delete the fucking photo, Jace,” he said eventually, spinning on his heel to perch against the table with his arms crossed. He moved forwards again almost before he settled, however, his hand outstretched expectantly. “Better yet, hand over your phone now, I’ll do it for you.”

Chapter Text

“Can I ask you something about Bradley?” Jake asked Jason at the tail end of their call. “C’mon, please?” he added when Jason groaned rather than answering that question.

“I don’t want to get dragged in the middle of y’all’s shit anymore.”

“Please?”

“Can’t you just ask him?”

“Please?”

Jason groaned again before relenting with a heavy sigh. “What?”

“Do I need to worry about Catelyn?” The question was so out of left field for Jason that he couldn’t help laughing at it. “Jace, c’mon, I’m being serious.”

“Why, on God’s green earth, would you have any reason to worry about Catelyn?”

Jake scoffed, his irritation evident through the phone. After a long pause where it felt like he was debating how much he actually wanted to have this conversation, he muttered, “we finally had that long overdue talk about, you know, The Past and Luke, and all the other shit we’ve ain’t really talked about before…”

Jason frowned. “What took you so long?”

“We-” Jake sighed his way into a groan. “I don’t know, we kept putting it off, I guess.”

“Okay… so?”

When Jake didn’t immediately answer, Jason rolled his eyes to himself. It was shortsighted of them both not to have buried their history already, and yet also predictable as hell. Jason wasn’t surprised to learn that they had simply avoided talking about it, but he found he was a little disappointed in them. How were they supposed to last if they never learned from their mistakes? He wished that he didn’t have to be a part of this, that he could just hand off the phone to Bradley to handle Jake’s neurosis, but Bradley had gone to help Bishop with collecting the team’s food order for the evening, leaving Jason with what he previously thought was the perfect opportunity to talk to Jake in private. Now, he was regretting having been so diligent in keeping in touch with his brother.

“You know the only reason he ever even thought about dating her was because he was trying to get over you?”

That was a fact Jason only learned in retrospect, but he figured it was safe to assume that it was common knowledge between Jake and Bradley.

“Yeah, no, I-” Jake sighed regretfully. “He’s been pretty upfront about that, but he won’t say shit else about her. I mean, it’s fine, right? He never really loved her, I know that. And it ain’t like I’m in denial about the fact that he’s dated other people, or anything, I just- I can’t shake this feeling there’s something he ain’t telling me?”

Jason sighed, his loyalties to both Bradley and Jake in conflict in the worst kind of way.

He should have known, he supposed, that this might come up one day. That Jake would no longer let sleeping dogs lie where Bradley was concerned. But that didn’t mean he had to be happy about it when he knew that Bradley had put this relationship behind him and not looked back for a reason.

“She’s…” Jason chose his words carefully so as not to betray Bradley’s confidence whilst also being honest with his brother. “Look, she made the same mistake most people do. She built up this idea in her head of who he is, and made it his problem when he couldn’t live up to her expectations.”

“Why’d he stay with her for so long?”

“Why do you think?” Jason said instead of spelling out the obvious.

All the controlling behaviour, the insecurity and possessiveness, the manipulative tactics to get him acting exactly how she wanted, Bradley used to think that he deserved it. Though Catelyn had loved having the big, bad Navy man as her arm candy, she actively resented the realities of being a military girlfriend. She made Bradley act smaller than he was, made him someone that Jason almost didn’t recognise, and Bradley just allowed it to happen. Jason suspected that in some sick, twisted way, Bradley had enjoyed punishing himself by her hand. He spent those years lost in a haze of self-flagellation. That much had been obvious, even without the context of Jake as his main motivation.

Jason waited for Jake to say something else, and was strangely unnerved when he didn’t.

“Jake?”

“Yeah?”

“You ain’t got nothing to worry about.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“Jesus,” Jason muttered under his breath, making a small effort to hide the exasperation in his tone. “You have got to stop making things more complicated than they are with him, man. Break the habit of a lifetime and just take what he says at face value.”

“You realise you’re, like, the last person in the world I should be coming to for relationship advice?”

“Why ask me then?” Jason said with a snort, before more or less answering himself when he added, “what did Javy say?” Jake mumbled something under his breath, clearly unhappy that he had even thought to ask that question. “He said the same thing, didn’t he?”

“More or less…”

“Cool. So, you’re gonna be petty, and ignore the both of us, and turn this into a thing just for the hell of it then?”

“No,” Jake said, likely just to be contrary. He sighed afterwards though, weary with regret. “I just think- shit, if I’d just had one conversation with him when it mattered, he never even would’ve met her.”

“Yeah,” Jason agreed with an unsympathetic scoff, “one conversation would’ve made all the difference.”

“Wouldn’t’ve hurt, would it?”

Jason hummed, conceding that point. “You know, while we’re on this, actually,” he added after a second’s thought, as the opportunity that had fallen into his lap occurred to him. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you.”

“What?”

“You mind explaining why you almost married another fucking guy just to fuck with Bradshaw’s head?”

“He told you that?”

“He didn’t need to, jackass. Funnily enough, it ain’t hard to put together when I lived through it and I have all the facts laid out.” Jake scoffed, which only confirmed Jason’s suspicions for him. “Why would you do that?”

“Because he broke my fucking heart.” Jason took a breath, but before he could cut in and demand a less cryptic answer, Jake added, “it’s not- look, I- I don’t want to get into this with you, but I thought I was doing the right thing at the time. For the both of us.”

“You rubbing your relationship in his face, and putting him in a place where he went and sought out the exact woman you’re now asking me if you should be worried about, is the right thing? Give me a break, man, that’s fucking bullshit.”

“What do you want me to say, Jace? I don’t know. We’ve settled this already, I don’t need you stirring shit up just for the hell of it.”

“Ain’t just for the hell of it,” Jason insisted. “You think you get a free pass on putting him through hell just because we’re related? Fuck that.”

“Jace-”

“No. He’s my goddamn brother, and you treated him like dirt, for years. You don’t get to shut me down now just because you don’t want to hear this.”

“Hear what?”

“You’re not special, Jake. You think you’re the first person to make out you love him with one hand and stab him in the back with the other? No. That’s every other goddamn person he meets.” An indignant noise clawed out from the other end of the phone, but Jason ignored it. Jake only ever really responded to tough love. Rough handling was often the only way to get through that thick skull of his. “Won’t pretend I know all the details, or that he’s some saint who ain’t never made a mistake in this either, but there’s no way you can tell me he actually deserved half the shit you put him through.”

Jake scoffed again, softer this time. “You think I don’t know that?”

Jason sighed, his anger dissipating into guilt as soon as Jake stopped arguing back. “Look, I ain’t trying to be a dick here, kicking all this off again when y’all are past this. But I ain’t had the chance to say it yet, so for the record, it’s gonna take something pretty fucked for me not to be in his corner.”

Jake audibly swallowed and sighed his way through another groan, and yet, when he finally responded, he simply said, “I know.”

“Alright then.” Jason nodded to himself, glad to have gotten that off of his chest. Already he was wondering if perhaps he could have chosen his words better, or held on to his righteous indignance on Bradley’s behalf until they could do this in person, but it was the protector in him that would never not see Jake as his baby brother driving those feelings, and sometimes they needed ignoring. “Look, I…” he began to say again, subconsciously backtracking before he caught himself and changed tacks, “call mom, would you? You don’t talk to her enough, it makes her worry.”

“I talk to her plenty.”

“Every other week ain’t plenty, Jake. Call her. Today.” Jason pulled the phone away from his ear, planning on hanging up right there and then, before that guilt reared its head again, and he relented enough to add, “I’ll catch you later, okay?”

Jake huffed out a short laugh like he wasn’t amused, but there was the sound of a smile in his voice when he replied, “yeah, speak soon. Jackass.”

Chapter Text

“Penny for your thoughts, Bradshaw?” Carlisle said, voice low out of consideration for their sleeping team members.

They were situated in a dugout on the ridge of a grassy hill overlooking the compound that they were monitoring as part of their current operation, a lastminute mission which had them scrambling to deploy after all of those months of being benched with training. Originally, it had been their intention to infiltrate the place for an extraction under the cover of darkness, however, their target hadn’t bothered arriving on time. Plan A had quickly gone out of the window in favour of them monitoring the location with the hopes that their updated intelligence was accurate. If the target didn’t show up later today as promised, they might end up having to exfiltrate the location without having achieved anything at all on the ground, which was a more common outcome than Jason liked to acknowledge.

Dawn was just starting to break on the horizon.

The three of them had maybe another hour or so before they could switch off on keeping watch.

Jason was the one monitoring the compound’s entrance through their long-scope rifle, so it was only when he looked up and around at that question that he found Bradley had been staring off into the distance towards where the sun was rising.

“It’s Jake’s birthday today,” Bradley murmured, suppressing a sigh as he shook his head and came back to himself. “Just wondering what he’s up to.”

“Sleeping’s probably a safe bet,” Jason said. “It’s still yesterday back home.”

Bradley snorted. “Not the point, Jace.”

“You do anything for it ahead of time?” Carlisle said, boredom and genuine curiosity likely equal factors in his asking. “Or, are you just planning on making up for missing it when we get back?”

“He’s never really been a birthday person, to be honest.”

Jason nodded in agreement for Carlisle’s benefit when he glanced his way for confirmation, taking the opportunity to roll out the kink in his neck from where he had been holding the same position for too long, before he returned the majority of his focus back through his scope.

“He likes eating out, though. The couple times we’ve celebrated together before it was all about finding somewhere fancy to check out.”

“When have y’all ever actually celebrated his birthday together?” Jason asked.

“We went to this surf and turf place for his twenty-first,” Bradley murmured, the sound of a smile in his tone. “He wanted to try lobster, fucking hated it.”

“I heard about that,” Jason replied, frowning to himself as a couple of kids ran into view in the midst of a game of tag. “It was one of those joints where you pick out your food for them to cook?” Bradley hummed affirmatively. “Since when was it you that took him there?”

“I mean, always.” Bradley snorted again, his tone suitably chagrined when he added, “fuck knows what we told you as a cover story.” He paused for a moment, considering, before he started sounding wistful about his reminiscing. “We got all dressed to the nines, he loved that. And he had his first legal drink. Said it being legal took all the fun out of it.”

“That sounds like him,” Carlisle agreed. “You know, I keep forgetting how long you two have actually known each other. It’s kind of weird to think you’ve only been dating a few months when you have all that history.”

“Yeah,” Bradley agreed, “tell me about it.”

“So, fancy dinner? That’s seriously all you’ll owe him?”

“I don’t know that owe is the right word, but yeah, we’ll do something at some point.”

Carlisle cursed under his breath and chuckled to himself like he couldn’t quite believe that. “My girl’s one of those birthday month types,” he elaborated, eliciting identically sympathetic hums from both Bradley and Jason. “It’s like a whole production, all the shit she likes to do, and fuck me do I get in trouble when we’re spun up around it.”

“Dude, are you pissed Jake doesn’t care about his birthday?” Bradley asked with a suppressed laugh.

“No…”

“You are!” Bradley laughed again. “That’s priceless, man. What month’s your girl’s birthday in? I hope it’s one of the longer ones for that.”

“It’s January first, actually.” Carlisle snorted fondly. “Shanuary, she calls it. Because, you know, Shannon. She says, since everyone’s usually too dead from New Years Eve to do anything on the day, she deserves the rest of the month to make up for it.”

“Damn straight she does.”

Down in the compound, Jason could see activity picking up, people moving around with more intent and purpose than before. It raised his suspicions enough that he signalled non-verbally for Bradley to take a look and offer a second opinion, which cut into his conversation with Carlisle before they could take it any further. Bradley moved to lie alongside him without question, positioning his own rifle parallel to Jason’s and fixing his eye to the scope. Despite their earlier distraction, and how long they had been sat on standby waiting for anything to happen, all three of them were capable of switching on in an instant.

“Yo, go wake Alvez,” Bradley ordered Carlisle after a few seconds’ observation, “looks like this might not be a wasted trip after all.”

In hindsight, it was as if that declaration jinxed them.

There was all sorts of activity for them to monitor, too much. But not the right sort in the end. They reported everything that they saw back up to command, and yet they weren’t authorised to act on any of it, because they had been sent there for one specific target, and one specific target only. That was the problem, more often than not. People weren’t even half so predictable as analysts liked to pretend. All that activity kept them busy as they passed the time, recording everything they were seeing and switching off in shifts. They exfiltrated after nightfall, and all too soon, they were on the plane ride home without a single shot fired. Usually, those kinds of missions left Bradley as antsy and in the mood for a fight as the rest of them. Bishop was game for heading straight to a strip club after landing to do away with some of his pent-up frustration, whilst Alvez and Haskell were trying to cajole Carlisle into joining them on a run before he disappeared off home to Shannon. Jason had yet to decide what he was going to do with himself, uninterested in either of those options and unable to glean any direction from Bradley. He was the only one at ease tonight, sleeping away most of journey like he had made peace with the anti-climax.

“Hey, baby,” Bradley murmured when Jake answered his call once they were inside dropping their gear in their cages. “Happy birthday.” He laughed over whatever response he received, and his voice took on the sarcastic, teasing lilt that was his default nowadays when they were on the verge of bickering. “Better late than never, you ungrateful asshole.” He laughed again and then listened for a moment, humming afterwards like he was pleased. “Yeah, I thought your place could use some brightening up. Hm? Well, Christ, tell me when they do and I’ll send you fresh ones.” Bradley scoffed. “Yeah, it is that simple. You know, you’re making it real tempting to pretend like I’ve forgotten when it is next year…”

Jason rolled his eyes to himself, tuning out the finer points of Bradley’s conversation as it devolved from there. He pulled out his own phone and scrolled through his most recent notifications, debating his options as it dawned on him that he probably wouldn’t want to be at home today. When Bradly switched from taunting Jake to flirting with him in Jason’s peripheries, Jason tapped on the first name he saw in his contacts list as he turned to leave the room, confident that someone from his roster would want to keep him occupied until tomorrow.

Chapter Text

“Heard a rumour you finally got yourself a sweetheart, Bradshaw?” Boone, one of the guys from another team in their squadron, asked after stealing Bishop’s stool right across from Bradley and Jason as soon as it was vacated.

Jason wasn’t his biggest fan, Bradley even less so.

There was something about his entire attitude which had never sat right with them. He was nothing but an egotistical, misogynistic, subpar sailor, who put everyone that didn’t fit within his narrowminded worldview at the butt of his jokes. How he had been married three times was a mystery to Jason, one which made him pity each new bride more than the last. They endured his company because they had to. On this specific occasion, especially, because the joint operation that they had been drilling all week was cancelled at the last minute thanks to some bullshit bureaucracy far above their paygrade, and they all needed a drink or two as a unit to commiserate their wasted efforts. Jason had staked out a table in the corner of the room with the hopes of avoiding this exact kind of confrontation when they arrived, but he should have known that Boone never left well enough alone.

“What do you mean ‘finally’?” Bradley asked with the kind of genuine confusion that Jason thought was justified when he had never tried very hard to hide his relationship status in the past.

“Dude, you’ve got that feral cat thing going on,” Grady, one of Boone’s buddies chimed in as he propped an arm on his shoulder to make himself comfortable since there were no other seats available. “Word is, this one’s something serious.”

“Might be.” Bradley shrugged, the picture of nonchalance. “What’s it to you?”

“Just catching up, man,” Boone shrugged too. “Y’all have been riding the bench so hard last few months, ain’t surprising you found someone to keep you busy.”

Grady smirked Jason’s way whilst Bradley scoffed over that remark. “Must be breaking your heart, Jace,” he taunted, “not getting that Sereshaw wedding you were always secretly rooting for?”

“I don’t know,” Jason said with a forced chuckle as he glanced Bradley’s way, stifling the urge to roll his eyes where he knew Boone and Grady might catch sight of his true feelings and decide to take it personally. “Pretty sure it’s still on the cards at some point down the line.”

“Damn straight it is,” Bradley murmured, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards over the thought of what they were hinting at, even as the rest of his expression stayed largely guarded.

“C’mon, give us something,” Boone said, something in his tone making Jason’s skin crawl. “What’s her name? What’s she like? You got a picture you’re gonna show us?”

Jason had to wonder whether Boone knew that he was misgendering things, and whether that was the motivation behind this approach of his, or if there was something else going on in his mind preventing him from catching sight of the minefield he had just stumbled across? Maybe he was just plain ignorant?

Bradley’s shoulders squared, his voice tight and mistrustful as he replied, “his name is Jake. And he’s pretty fucking special, man.”

There was a long beat of silence before Boone responded, time which Haskell spent surreptitiously looking around for backup, whilst Jason braced for a negative reaction, and Bradley simply sipped nonchalantly from his beer bottle.

“Shit,” Boone laughed, shoving Grady away from him as he leaned forwards to rest his elbows on the edge of the table. “Didn’t know you swung that way.”

“Didn’t know it mattered,” Bradley retorted, a bite to his tone which compelled Jason to laugh in agreement with the hopes of drawing some heat away from his friend.

“Are you kidding?” Haskell cut in at the same time, sounding as defensive as Jason felt. “Keep up, man. Everyone’s fair game so far as Bradshaw’s concerned.”

“They were,” Bradley corrected. “I’m only good for one man these days.”

“Yeah,” Boone scoffed, looking around himself too, as if to hedge his bets, before he added, “bet the guys are glad to hear that, huh?”

“Why?”

“Can’t say I’d be all that happy about having you around trying to chase tail on mission…”

Bradley snorted. “You really think any one of the ugly motherfuckers we work with are my type?”

“Well, you know what they say about your lot…”

“I’m sure you’re about to enlighten me.”

“Every hole’s a goal, right?” Bradley cursed under his breath with a disbelieving chuckle, but before he, or anyone else, could put voice to an actual response, Boone clicked his fingers together like something just occurred to him, a nasty smirk marring his expression. “Wait, not so much anymore, hm? Since you’re a one-man kind of guy now?”

Jason’s jaw would ache later from how tightly he had it clenched, but he knew better than to fight Bradley’s battles for him. Haskell was almost definitely in a similar position. The rest of the team would be as well, if only they were within hearing distance. This was far from the first time they had faced this kind of challenge. And Jason knew, from past experience, that they didn’t need to go spouting their mouths off just to prove they had Bradley’s back, even when they wanted to.

“Genuine question,” Bradley said as he eased forwards in his seat, propping his chin on one hand, expression fixed in the expressionless mask he tended to affect when he was seconds from losing his temper. “What is it about me exactly that gives you the impression I’m the one topping?”

If Jason weren’t quite so pissed off on his friend’s behalf, he would have laughed long and hard at the comical series of emotions Boone’s face worked through as he tried to figure out if he was supposed to take offence to that question. A smarter man might have quit whilst he was ahead. Boone wasn’t someone Jason would ever consider smart though, so he was far from surprised when he opened his big mouth and dug the hole that he was currently in even deeper.

“Well, we always knew you were Seresin’s bitch,” he drawled with a spiteful glance in Jason’s direction. “It’s sweet of you to share, man, I’m sure this Jake guy loves getting your sloppy seconds.”

“You’d be best off keeping his name out your mouth, man,” Jason warned, any reservations he had about overstepping when it came to defending Bradley out of the window the instant that his brother was mentioned by someone that he didn’t consider a friend.

“What,” Boone laughed, gesturing between Jason and Bradley with a delighted spark in his eyes as he leaned even closer to them. “Don’t tell me you’re in on this, too? Is there some sort of deal going on where Bradshaw gets passed back and forth between you and Jake, or does he-”

Jason didn’t even register moving until after he was already using the element of surprise to catch Boone off guard and slam his head into the table. In the split second he bought himself by stunning him that way, he was on his feet. He hauled Boone out of his seat and twisted one of his arms up behind his back hard enough to threaten spraining something if Boone wasn’t careful.

Later, he would learn that Haskell had moved at the same time as Jason to sling an arm around Grady’s neck and hold him back before he tried getting involved in Boone’s defence, whilst Bradley simply sat back in his own seat to watch the show, most likely having guessed that this was where they would end up the moment that the conversation began. He was sipping at his beer again when Jason glanced up to check on him, expression neutral, but eyes dark and calculating. There was a lull in conversation all around them, though Jason barely clocked how much attention he was garnering right then, and couldn’t bring himself to care about the scene that he had caused after the fact.

Perhaps this was an overreaction, an escalation, but Jason had very little tolerance for bullshit.

“Say, Bradshaw?” he drawled in a deceptively conversational tone.

“Yes, Jace?”

“Boone here seems dead set on not taking my advice, how about you give him a surname to work with?”

“Why that’d be Seresin, Jace,” Bradley said, his eyes flickering down to meet Boone’s as his lip curled with a distinct measure of reproach. “Jake Seresin. Maybe you’ve heard of him?”

They all knew he would have, at some point or other.

It was a point of pride for Jason, how talented his brother was, and how much of a name he had built for himself within his chosen field. He had never been shy in bragging about his accomplishments around the rest of their squadron.

He was also notoriously overprotective of his loved ones.

“Go ahead, Boone,” Jason murmured, twisting his arm even further and relishing the pained moan he tried to stifle far more than he knew he should. “Keep shit-talking my baby brother, see where that gets you.”

“Didn’t know it was a family affair, Jace,” Boone grunted out.

“Even if it weren’t, ain’t no reason to be running your mouth. Learn some basic goddamn respect.” Jason pushed Boone’s shoulder to its absolute limit, drawing another suppressed grunt out of him as he murmured just quiet enough for him alone to hear. “Speak out of turn about my family again, you’ll spend the rest of your days drinking meals through a straw. Copy?”

“Yeah, got it.”

“Great,” Jason dropped his hold on Boone, leaving him to catch his own balance. He was back to his usual, more affable self in an instant, grinning a little too widely as he glanced between Bradley and Haskell. “Let’s bounce. This place blows.”

Afterwards, when they were alone in private, Bradley would remind Jason that people like Boone were hardly exceptions in their world, that both he and Jake were used to being the butt of those kinds of jokes and that they had thick skins, which made relegating it all to background noise very easy. That reacting wasn’t worth the effort. Later still, the following morning, Alvez would pull him aside to remark that, even though he respected his motivations, he also needed him to work harder to keep his cool in the future, for the good of the squadron. And Jason would regard them both with the same cool composure as they spoke, listen to what they had to say, and then tell them both that that was bullshit. They could both choose the path of least resistance if they so wished, but that would never be Jason.

Chapter Text

The difference between Bradley waiting to catch sight of Jake, and Bradley waiting for Jake to catch sight of him once the Daggers started crossing the parking lot as a unit at the end of their work day, made Jason want to laugh long and hard. Of course, he wanted to act all cool and collected once his stupid goddamn boyfriend was around, even though he had almost worn a hole into the tarmac with all his restless energy just minutes before now. Five months separation was apparently too much these days. The minute that they had more than two consecutive days of leave lined up, Bradley was looking up flights to California.

No one would ever get him to admit as much out loud, but Jason’s heart warmed immeasurably at the simple joy which eclipsed Jake’s expression the instant that he noticed Bradley. He rushed to close the gap between them and slammed into Bradley for a hug with enough force to make them both stumble, which was also an unexpectedly heartening thing to watch. What Jason didn’t need to see however – ever, not just right now – was the depth of the kiss Jake laid on Bradley a second later, mostly because he couldn’t think of a single reason why he would need to hear the delighted half grunt, half moan which stuck in the back of Bradley’s throat in response to such treatment ever again.

“Hi, gorgeous,” Bradley murmured lowly once they broke apart, making Jason roll his eyes for how corny he sounded whilst Jake downright preened.

“Hi, yourself,” Jake replied, kissing Bradley again, even deeper than last time. “Fuck, I missed you,” he added between another series of kisses that Bradley willingly submitted to before finally deigning to look elsewhere for long enough to add, “what’s up, Jace?”

“Think you could quit sticking your tongue down Bradshaw’s throat for long enough that we can get out of here?”

“I’ll give it the ol’ college try,” Jake drawled, throwing his arm around Bradley’s neck as they moved a few steps closer to the truck. Jason hopped down from the hood to land on his feet in the time it took Jake to ask, “did you guys meet the squad yet? I can’t remember.”

“Not officially, I don’t think,” Bradley said for the both of them, smiling when he caught Javy’s eye. “Hey, Jav.”

“Bradshaw,” Javy replied in a mirthless tone.

There was something hiding in the look that they shared, which Jason knew related to the shovel talk that Bradley was overdue on receiving.

Javy was equally as close to Jake as Jason was Bradley, after all. Where Jason had struggled with threading the needle of overprotectiveness between the two of them in this respect, Javy was apparently quite relishing the opportunity to finally give Bradley a piece of his mind. Jason respected that that was only fair though, when all was said and done. Whilst he had been kept in the dark throughout the hardest parts of their relationship to date, blissfully unaware of just how awful they could treat one another, Javy had been knee-deep in the trenches. He was the one who had acted as Jake’s sounding board all this time. It was only right that he now got to experience the unique privilege of making Bradley Bradshaw nervous.

“The brother’s Jason,” Jake said for the rest of the squad’s benefit as he gestured between them. “Boyfriend’s Bradley.”

“You guys are SEALs?” someone asked, a look of keen interest in his expression.

Jason couldn’t help himself from snorting and saying just a second before Bradley could, “no, we work in logistical support. Who gave you that idea?”

The poor guy glanced to Jake with a confused blink, like he wasn’t sure how seriously he should take that response. Jason didn’t have to check to know that Bradley would be wearing the exact same nonplussed look as him whilst they pretended to hide behind their covert identities.

“For fuck’s sake, Jace,” Jake said. “What is wrong with you?”

“I-”

“Ignore them, Payback. They’re assholes. You get used to it.”

“Hey, what’d I do?” Bradley asked with a laugh.

“You brought him with you,” Jake muttered with a glare in Jason’s direction. He shoved at Bradley as if he intended on pulling away, but between the arm secured around his waist and the lack of actual force behind it, he stayed tucked in beside Bradley.

“We’re a package deal, babe, you know that,” Bradley insisted, drawing Jake in for a kiss he clearly wanted to act like he wasn’t happy to be on the receiving end of.

Whilst Jake harrumphed like he wasn’t impressed by that response, Jason fought against the smile which was trying to turn up the corners of his mouth, hoping he didn’t look too surprised or happy to hear Bradley say that without even a split second of hesitation.

He turned his attention back to Payback to clarify, “we are with the teams, yeah.”

“Is the training really as tough as they make out?”

Jason grinned. “It’s something, alright.” He chuckled to himself, knowing the exact kind of reaction he’d get when he added, “Bradshaw made it through selection though, so you know, there’s proof it ain’t that bad.”

“Bitch, please,” Bradley snapped back, losing all interest in Jake in an instant. “You’d never’ve made it through BUD/S without me.”

“I dragged your ass through, Bradshaw. Get it right.”

“Stop trying to rewrite history, dickhead. I-”

“Jesus, guys, you’re both pretty,” Jake cut in, tone weary with the kind of patience he had always tried to affect when stepping in between them. “Can we take this literally anywhere else, please?” he added, pushing Bradley towards the truck whilst Javy took care of explaining to the rest of their squad exactly how competitive Bradley and Jason were about to get for no real reason.

“So,” Jason said, shoulder checking Bradley as he joined him at the bar in the Hard Deck hours later.

It was the first chance he had had to talk to him alone since Jake had separated them in the middle of a darts game with a pointed remark about not embarrassing him in front of his squad with their competitiveness. Bradley was bothered enough about that kind of thing that he took the warning to heart, where Jason couldn’t bring himself to care either way what others thought of him.

“What’s Phoenix’s deal?”

“Dude,” Bradley snorted, “she’d eat you alive.”

“That is the goal, yeah,” Jason grinned when Bradley barked out a laugh. “So…?”

“Pretty sure Jake mentioned something about the guys ganging up to give her fiancé a shovel talk she later reamed them out for the other week, but feel free to shoot your shot, man, I’m sure they’d all get a kick out of it.”

“Yeah,” Jason blew out a resigned chuckle, cursing his bad luck, “I clocked the ring. Was kind of hoping it wasn’t what I thought it was.”

“Jake’s known her since their academy days. Him and Jav would string you the fuck up if you tried pushing your luck anyway.”

Jason hummed contemplatively. “Speaking of… I notice you’re still breathing, so I guess he took it easy on you?”

“Apparently, we need to sit down and talk sometime just the two of us so he can get a bead on what kind of man I really am,” Bradley said, tone dripping with the kind of arrogance Jason loved to see in him. He could only hope that was the approach he had adopted with Javy, rather than deferring to his status as Jake’s best friend. “I told him to name the place and time.”

“Shit,” Jason laughed, “weren’t you supposed to be getting him onside?”

“Yeah, well, don’t get me wrong, I’ll eat all the crow I have to when I need to eat it, but there comes a limit to how much relationship advice I’ll take from a guy too chickenshit to even take his girl home to meet the parents.”

“He hasn’t done that yet?” Bradley hummed in confirmation. “But it’s been years, and his parents are so nice?”

“Jake said he’s searching for the perfect moment…”

“Christ,” Jason laughed, gaze wandering around the bar, in part searching Javy just to see how he was faring in the aftermath of his conversation with Bradley, and in part scanning for prospects. “That poor motherfucker.”

“I know I can’t really say much with where me and Jake are at, but dude’s lucky as hell she’s still waiting for him to get his shit together.”

“You can say that again,” Jason agreed, doing a double-take as his eyes alighted on where a few members of Jake’s squad had gathered around a pool table. “What about Halo?” he asked, trusting Bradley to follow as he dipped in-between topics of conversation.

“Same as Phoenix,” Bradley replied with a chuckle.

“Which part?”

“They’re fucking sharks, man, you’d never keep up.”

“So…?”

“I don’t know, to be honest,” Bradley conceded with a shrug. “Jake’s not as close with her, but she is the baby of the group, from what I understand, so tread carefully.”

Jason took a minute to consider his options whilst Bradley beamed a smile at Jimmy, the bartender, when he stopped in front of them to take their order. They chatted for a little while, catching up while they had the chance. Jason was happy to sit on the peripheries of the conversation, as he tended to whenever they ran into someone Bradley knew whilst they were in California. Eventually, Jimmy dropped a handful of bottles on the bar for them and left to serve another set of customers. Bradley sighed once his back turned and tilted his head sideways to frown at Jason, picking up right where they left off.

“Jake really likes this squad.”

“Yeah,” Jason murmured, examining the bottle that he nudged towards him with more interest than it deserved as a means of ignoring Bradley’s reproach. “So?”

“Maybe don’t shit where he’s eating for once?”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

“He’ll be pissed if you fuck this up for him.”

“I ain’t scared of my baby brother.”

“Yeah, I know. It’d make my life a hell of a lot easier if you were sometimes.”

Jason laughed, loud enough to annoy some of the people around them, and clinked his bottle against Bradley’s in commiseration for what that said about his relationship. “Do you really think I wouldn’t be able to handle her?”

“Just look at ‘em, Jace,” Bradley said, twisting to lean back against the counter as he nodded to the pool table Jason had clocked earlier. He noticed then that Javy and Jake were sat slightly separate from them, heads bowed together as they looked to be debating something. Rather than focusing on that though, Jason’s gaze zeroed back in on where Halo was currently whispering something to Phoenix as they analysed her next shot. “You really think they got to where they are without being able to see right through your kind of bullshit with their eyes closed?”

“Well-”

“Dude, they’re not impressed by us. They have no reason to be.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Okay, buddy,” Bradley chuckled, taking a sip of beer in the smug way that said he was about to try destroying Jason’s ego. “First of all, most of your moves revolve around you dropping the fact that you can’t talk about what you do for a living and then humble-bragging anyway. Which won’t work here, because they already know what you do, and like I said before, they don’t give a shit.”

“That’s-”

“And, more to the point, Jace, they’re female fucking aviators. Go ask Mav what kind of bullshit they’ll have had to live through getting to where they now are in their careers, and then come back and tell me why they’d have any reason to be impressed by anything we have to offer.”

“Well…” Jason found it very hard to pick a counterargument which would hold any weight. “Okay, I see your point.”

“But?”

“Bradshaw, I have to shoot my shot, it’s basically the law.”

“Jesus Christ,” Bradley chuckled, gathering up the rest of the bottles he had ordered. “Whatever you say, man. I’m going to go make the most of my time with my boyfriend. Can’t wait to see you crash and burn.”

“Your support means the world to me,” Jason called after his retreating back, waiting until after he was out of earshot to sigh and second guess whether he really was going to make an attempt at pursuing another of his brother’s squad mates.

Chapter Text

Jason didn’t know how he had known that it was coming – hand to heart, he never consciously picked up on any signs – but he was far from surprised when Bradley murmured over breakfast that he needed to check-in with his parents whilst he had the chance. They headed to the cemetery later that morning, and it was only as they pulled into the parking lot that it occurred to Jason how uncharacteristically unsure of himself Jake was acting, which was all the confirmation Jason needed to understand that he had never before had the privilege of seeing this particular side of Bradley.

That didn’t say as much about their relationship as it might seem at face value.

Jason could count on one hand the number of people who were allowed behind the curtain to this extent. Most everyone else on that list who wasn’t him, and now Jake, had known Bradley since he was in diapers. He sent up a quick prayer as he threw their rental into park that Jake would be able to appreciate this for what it was without needing to be told outright.

They walked down the row that Bradley’s parents were buried in in subdued silence, each lost to their own thoughts.

Jason always felt strange and out of place here. He and Jake were weirdly lucky in this respect. They had a large family, sure, but those they had been unfortunate enough to lose – their grandparents on both sides, older aunts and uncles, more distant relatives they had never had the chance to know on a personal level – had all departed either before they were born, or when they were far too young to properly register the loss. Jason understood and respected that as best he could. Whether the same could be said for Jake…

Jason sped up his last few steps before they arrived at the familiar and time-worn headstone, so that he would be the first to reach it rather than finishing that thought.

“Mrs Bradshaw,” he drawled, dragging the words out and infusing his tone with more smarm than the situation strictly called for with the hopes of diffusing some of the tension in both Bradley and Jake. He dusted his fingers along the top of the cross to knock the leaves there to the floor as he passed behind it, the gesture subconscious enough that he didn’t even realise he had done it until after he clocked how closely Jake was watching him. “Looking ravishing as always,” he continued. “Love what you’ve done with your hair.”

“Stop embarrassing yourself, Jace,” Bradley said with a growing smile, speaking with the kind of fondness that showed he knew exactly what Jason was doing and why. “My mom’s so far out of your league.”

“Can’t blame a guy for trying.” Jason looked up to wink at him before glancing back down at the cross with his sleaziest grin. “Goose was a lucky man…”

“And you’re done,” Bradley snorted. “I think that’s a record, man, congrats.”

“Oh, I ain’t going nowhere yet, Bradshaw. I’ve got a couple stories I’ve been saving up.”

Jason dropped into a crouch and rolled back on his heels to sit next to the cross, draping his arms over his knees as he made himself comfortable. Bradley’s favoured position was front and centre. And Jake visibly hesitated over where he was supposed to fit in all of this, before he settled on the ground beside Bradley and pulled his hand into his lap to hold. When neither of them immediately made an effort to continue speaking, Jake threw another confused look Jason’s way, one which Jason answered with the subtle shaking of his head. Bradley took all the time he needed to get his thoughts in order, no more than a few minutes at most, before taking the deep, steady kind of breath that signalled to Jason that he was ready for whatever he wanted to throw his way.

Which Jason did.

His stories were meaningless, insignificant, harmless jokes, selected for the express purpose of settling Bradley’s nerves. Things they were eager to reminisce about from the missions they had worked since their last visit. The time Bishop had lost a bet over Bradley’s ability to hit a long-distance target and went streaking as forfeit, the group of kids they inadvertently adopted mid-football game when they had more downtime than they knew what to do with at home one weekend, the million and one different examples there now were to prove just how head-over-heels in love he was with Jake… things which were easy to talk about, which brought a smile to Bradley’s face and took some of the weight this place added to his shoulders off again.

It wasn’t Jake that Jason was talking to, nor Bradley, but rather some essence all around them that he had never been able to name. Something abstract and intangible. This wasn’t something he did anywhere else, or for anyone else. Hell, he didn’t even believe in ghosts. But he had been through this routine with Bradley countless times, and past precedent dictated that the easiest way to get him bouncing back to his usual self was by dragging him out of the fog feet first.

Bradley laughed properly for the first time all day, using his hold on Jake’s arm to steady his balance as his head threw back in line with his amusement.

And that was Jason’s signal to leave him alone.

He made eye contact with Jake and nodded his head towards the exit in wordless instruction. In the process of standing up, he announced, “I think that’s enough of Goose’s mad-dogging for me today.”

Jake hadn’t said a single word all morning. He stayed quiet, even as he pressed a quick kiss to the back of Bradley’s knuckles and stood as well. It was disconcerting behaviour, so far as Jason was concerned. All he had ever known was his baby brother, the egotistical loudmouth people loved to hate. He may as well have been body snatched for how much he was acting like himself. Once they were far enough away from Bradley that it was safe to talk, Jason shoulder-checked Jake and then slung an arm around him to drag him into a one-sided hug, barely slowing in their walk across the parking lot.

“So, are you planning on telling me what crawled up your ass and made a home today, or is it up to me to guess?”

“Shut up.” Jake shoved him away with a loud scoff. He fell quiet again for the time it took them both to climb into the front seats of the car and make themselves comfortable, before he finally asked, “is this what the rest of my life’ll be like?”

“What?”

“Getting to tally up how much better you know him than me?”

Jason barked out a laugh. “Didn’t realise it was a competition?”

“Me either,” Jake murmured. “Then I had to sit there and watch you fake hit on his mom while I don’t even know how she died…”

Jason sat with that revelation for longer than he intended to, simply because of how much it surprised him. “Wow,” he said when he found his voice again, drumming his fingers against the underside of the steering wheel in contemplation. “You’re really making this about yourself?”

Jake’s gaze snapped over to meet Jason’s, the lack of a sympathetic response no doubt being taken as an insult. “Following your lead, dickhead.”

“I’m gonna need you to take at least half off again there, good buddy.”

“Don’t start, Jace.”

“I ain’t the one who neglected to figure out the bare minimum basic information about his boyfriend,” Jason insisted with the roll of his eyes, that gesture barely sufficient to express just how much exasperation he felt over Jake’s continual inability to treat his relationship with Bradley like he would anyone else. “I mean, Christ, Jake, how long have you known him?” Jake’s mouth opened like he wanted to argue back, predictable as ever, but Jason cut him off first, uninterested in turning this into the kind of pissing contest Jake excelled at. “Cancer. He was seventeen. She…” Jason took a breath, struggling to repeat the words Bradley had said to him only once in the entire history of their friendship. “She suffered. It was found late, and it was aggressive. No more than a couple months between the diagnosis and her being gone.”

“Jesus.”

“He doesn’t talk about it for a reason. You’ve got to push for details if you want ‘em.”

“Easy for you to say,” Jake muttered. “You ain’t the asshole who once decided to throw his dead dad in his face when you were mad he wouldn’t break up with his girlfriend at the time…” Jason choked on the sudden laugh he tried to stifle, more surprised by how surprised he felt than that that was something Jake had done with everything he now knew about his and Bradley’s past. “Fuck off.”

“Do I even want to know how your messed up little mind connected those two things?”

“Wish I could tell you,” Jake admitted with a bitter chuckle. “It was forever ago. All I remember is saying it and how hurt he looked afterwards.”

“Wait, which girlfriend?”

“Sabrina.”

“Christ, that’s a blast from the past.” Jake hummed in agreement, leaving Jason to add this to the timeline he was building in his head. “So,” Jason snorted, “you remember the girl, but not the actual interesting parts of that story?”

“Notice how I didn’t fight it when you said I’m messed up?”

Jason chuckled quietly to himself, refraining from poking any more at that particular sore spot. “He must really love you,” he murmured when that thought occurred to him a moment later. “You’ve got to be the only person he’d ever let off the hook for that kind of bullshit.”

“Yeah…” Jake sighed, heavily, and then leaned forwards to bury his head in his hands as that sigh turned into a groan. “You talk to ‘em like they’re really there,” he said in a smaller voice. “How do you do that?”

“To him, they are.” Jake tilted his head to squint at Jason, his confusion evident enough to show he was struggling with the concept as much as Jason once had. Jason shrugged as he explained, “he carries them with him. He has for as long as I’ve known him… I mean,” he snorted, “it’s like- so he has this tell, right, for when he thinks shit’s gone sideways on mission. He’ll start muttering about having Goose talk to him. That’s how he gets himself focused for working the problem.” Jake nodded his understanding as he slowly straightened up, eyes locked on Jason, his face a picture of complete and wholehearted focus. “I thought he was off his fucking rocker doing that ‘til I spent some time round Mav and put together where he got the habit from.”

“Yeah, Mav says that all the time. Like, under his breath to himself, but you know…”

Jason nodded, reaching behind himself on a whim to grab Bradley’s jacket off the backseat and, more importantly, the wallet that he knew was abandoned in one of its pockets. There was an old, creased photograph stored inside which he handed over to Jake without much ceremony, the image more than familiar to Jason with how often Bradley had turned to it in search of comfort over the years.

It pictured Bradley as a toddler, sandwiched between the angel that was his mother and the father he had grown up to be a clone of.

Jason’s greatest wish would probably always and forever be having had the chance to meet the people who had created his best friend. He recognised that feeling in Jake as he watched him swallow his emotions whilst he stared down at the photograph in his hands.

“He has her eyes,” Jake murmured, one fingertip tracing over them.

If he felt like being honest, Jason could have admitted that he had never really noticed that to be the case before. He might’ve also pointed out that it was far too intimate an observation for him to be making in the first place. Neither of those technicalities were all that pertinent here and now, however, so he let them pass him by without acknowledgement.

When Bradley joined them a short while later, he shuffled along into the middle of the backseat and leaned forwards to rest his elbow on the seat above Jason’s shoulder. His other arm stretched around Jake’s and his hand settled over his heart for a moment, before Jake raised it to press another kiss to the back of his knuckles.

“I don’t know about you guys, but I am craving pancakes,” Bradley said to break the silence. When Jake hummed with enthusiastic agreement, Bradley chuckled and patted against his chest before sitting back to buckle his seatbelt. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

That likely would have been enough on its own merit to reset the equilibrium between them, but Jason couldn’t help when and where his brain triggered certain memories. With the way he snickered out loud as he pulled out of their parking space, he knew the others would expect him to share his thoughts regardless of how appropriate they were.

“Hey, Bradshaw,” he murmured. “Remember the last time we were here, when I sucker punched you?”

Jake backhanded Jason’s arm in reprimand, indignant at that reminder as if he hadn’t already gotten even on that particular front months ago, whilst Bradley simply burst into delighted laughter. It felt like one of those full circle moments, which was only further confirmed for Jason when Bradley piped up from the backseat again.

“More things change, the more they stay the same, eh, Jace?”

Chapter Text

“Who the fuck are you supposed to be?”

Jason flinched back and away from the woman, Malia, that he had spent the last half an hour flirting with, to find a guy stood at their elbows with a comically furious expression.

With all of his experience, Jason could recognise a no-win situation with his eyes closed. He suppressed a sigh to himself as he took stock of not just the guy and all of his anger, but also the apologetic wince Malia couldn’t quite hide. This wasn’t the first time that he had inadvertently found himself here. If anything, he was getting rather frustrated with how poor his luck was when it came to flirting with women who weren’t actually as single or unattached as he assumed on first approach.

The thing was, he could have chosen the antagonistic response, he had done before in the past when he felt like escalating a situation rather than peacekeeping, but he had somewhat outgrown that bad habit in recent years, preferring his relationships to be simple and easy.

“No one,” Jason replied, adopting a defensive posture and losing as much of his height and bulk as he could while he put some more space between himself and Malia. “It’s, uh, my sister’s birthday coming up and I noticed your friend’s perfume, so I was asking about it.”

Embedding lies within half-truths was Jason’s favourite way of speaking, especially when whoever he was with was also in the know and they were hiding something together from a third party. Jason’s opening line with Malia had in fact been about how good she smelled, but she knew from the conversation they had shared already that he didn’t have a sister, and he hadn’t expressed a lick of interest before now in learning what brand she was wearing.

“Yeah, right,” the guy scoffed, evidently finding that story hard to believe.

“Swear to God, man, I ain’t even- I’m spoken for.” Jason snorted to himself, almost glad this had happened now that he had the opportunity to mess with all parties involved just a little bit. “My boyfriend’s waiting on me, actually,” he said, hoping he was selling the lie through his smile. “I should get back.”

“Seriously?” the guy deadpanned. “You’re gay? That’s what you’re going with?”

“Come meet him, if you like,” Jason said, cool as anything.

He made a point of ignoring the incredulity in Malia’s expression, winking at her behind the guy’s back and grinning even wider when that only added to her confusion. There was part of him that hoped he might get the chance to explain himself to her at some point, but if he was being honest, that was less of a priority now than getting Bradley on board with the plan he was making up as he went along.

By some small miracle, Bradley and Jake weren’t too closely intertwined on Jason’s return. Bradley’s elbow was braced on the side counter behind Jake’s barstool, his thumb kneading absentmindedly against the spot between his shoulder blades whilst they talked in low tones. To anyone who knew them, it was apparent just how comfortable they were in one another’s personal space, but there was just about enough distance there for Jason to work with. He sidled up to Bradley’s free side with all the confidence in the world, already congratulating himself on a joke well played.

Bradley, saint that he was, barely batted an eye when Jason slung an arm around his shoulders and purposefully leaned too much of his weight on him. He didn’t question it, even before he clocked the company Jason had brought with him. Once he did though, he visibly stifled a sigh as he met Jason’s gaze, the obvious question in his eyes.

“This guy doesn’t think we’re a couple,” Jason said with a nod to him, fighting back a laugh over the successive curses both Bradley and Jake muttered under their breaths.

The fact that Bradley actually straightened up and away from Jake to lean further into Jason without stopping for even a millisecond to debate the issue was one of the main reasons why Jason had always loved him.

“And we should care, why?”

“He thinks I was hitting on Malia here,” Jason nodded her way and smiled at the pleased look in her eyes, hoping she had pieced together something of the truth by now where the guy just looked more uncertain than ever. “Got real upset about it.”

“You sure know how to pick ‘em, Jace,” Bradley murmured under his breath, prompting a snort out of Jake, which helped to reassure Jason that he wasn’t taking any of this personally. At a normal volume, he added, “you stepping out on me?”

”Never,” Jason said, sidling in closer to beam at him the way that he had seen Jake do a million times just this weekend.

“You guys are seriously together?”

Bradley suppressed a laugh, tapping his thumb against Jake’s back a few times as his expression turned more speculative than anything. “That a problem?” he asked, close to sounding like he was enjoying himself.

“You just…” the guy grimaced, eyes darting around the entirety of the group they made as he swallowed awkwardly and seemed to second guess himself. “You guys don’t look gay.”

There was a beat of stunned silence as everyone processed that statement before they all more or less reacted at the same time.

“You’re the one who decides that, are you?” Jake challenged, his tone scathing as he shifted on the balls of his feet like he wanted to step forwards and escalate everything solely because of that slight. The only thing that stopped him from doing so was Bradley grabbing a fistful of the back of his t-shirt to hold him in place whilst he laughed under his breath.

Malia, surprisingly enough, looked just as pissed off as Jake. She shoved at guy’s arm as she hissed, “Dean, what the hell?”

And Jason, to prove a point mostly, but also as a fuck you to Dean and whatever other assumptions he had about what gay men were supposed to look like, raised a hand to take hold of Bradley’s chin and tilted his face towards him, unceremoniously planting a big, fat kiss on his lips.

Bradley didn’t kiss back, but he also didn’t pull away.

The entire thing lasted perhaps only a second or two at most, which was more than enough to draw a line under the matter, so far as Jason was concerned.

It took every bit of willpower Jason had to not look for Jake’s reaction first instead of glaring at Dean, but he managed. “Your gaydar’s fucked, man,” he said. “We done here?”

“Yeah, whatever, my bad.” Dean scoffed, “you make a lovely couple. Malia, let’s go.”

Though she looked like she wanted to stay, Malia flashed Jason the exact same apologetic look that she had earlier, sighed, and followed Dean towards the door without another word. It was frustrating, letting her go like that, especially since Jason’s chivalric instincts were screaming at him to intervene, but his hands were tied without her explicitly asking for help.

The moment they were out of sight, the arm that Jason had around Bradley was shoved hard enough from the direction Jake was standing that Bradley was almost disbalanced from his stool in the process. Jason laughed, making sure that Bradley wasn’t actually going to fall before he pulled away, and then he threw a taunting smirk in his brother’s direction, feeling like he had won something as soon as he saw that it was the principle of the situation that Jake was upset over.

“You couldn’t think of any better way to handle that?” Jake snapped, hooking an arm around Bradley’s neck himself. “Quit kissing him, for fuck’s sake.”

“We ain’t used that cover in years, calm down,” Jason replied with the roll of his eyes. “You make it sound like I’m doing it every other week or something.”

“This ain’t a boundary I should have to spell out, Jace. He’s literally my boyfriend now.”

“You don’t get a monopoly on kissing Bradshaw when it’s for the greater good.”

“Thank you, Jace,” Bradley cut in. “Super helpful, man.” He squeezed at Jake’s waist like he was trying to get his attention before he spoke again, and went so far as to grab his chin when his efforts went ignored, similar to the move that Jason had made on him just a few minutes ago.

“Absolutely the fuck not,” Jake said, dodging Bradley’s lips and disentangling himself from Bradley’s hold to stalk away. “You ain’t kissing me straight after you kissed my brother.”

“He kissed me!” Bradley objected with a disbelieving laugh, scrambling to chase after Jake. “C’mon, baby, don’t be like that.”

Jason snorted to himself as he tracked their trajectory across the room. They disappeared down the alcove towards the bathrooms, and the last that he saw of them until breakfast the next morning was when Bradley curled around Jake from behind, still failing to coax a kiss out of him. He allowed his gaze to wander slowly around the bar afterwards, taking a moment to mourn the loss of Malia’s company, before his targets locked on a redhead across the room and he dove into the fray once again.

Chapter Text

It was his and Bradley’s phones chiming at the exact same time which told Jason that they were needed back at work before he even had chance to check the details.

They were a few days shy of an entire week’s vacation. Jason supposed, in hindsight, that they should be grateful their luck had lasted so long as it did. That wasn’t a regular occurrence. Even so, they didn’t take time off lightly. Every second mattered.

Bradley was faster to react than Jason. He slammed the tool in his hand down onto the cart beside him with a low curse and immediately whipped his phone out of his back pocket, pressing it to his ear a second later as he glared sightlessly at the open engine of Maverick’s mustang. Jason sighed as he watched that play out, glancing to Jake belatedly to find that he was staring at Bradley from across the hangar with a heartbroken expression. Mav dropped the mugs of coffee he had just picked up back down onto the counter and braced his weight against it like he was needed a moment to steady himself.

“Tell me this is some messed up fucking prank the guys cooked up to-” Bradley said down the phone. Jason guessed he was speaking to Alvez, the faint notes of deference in his tone a dead giveaway. He cut off to listen to the response and then groaned in frustration, throwing his free hand up as he spoke. “Of all the- yeah, yeah, I know.” He dragged that same hand through his hair, pausing to listen again before he added, “no, we’re at Mav’s, we’re in the middle of the fucking Mojave, it’ll take us a minute to get back. Mhm, yeah, keep you posted.”

Bradley kicked irately at the base of the tool cart after he ended the call, pocketing his phone in the split second he had before Jake engulfed him in a hug from behind.

Jason glanced around himself to check that they wouldn’t be leaving anything important behind whilst he allowed them the chance to mourn together, telling himself as he did so that it was fortunate it had happened at this point in the day, at least, and not any later. Most of their stuff was packed up in the truck already. They were supposed to be going camping. Some of the Daggers were due to be meeting them that afternoon so that they could set off as a group. Bradley had taken the opportunity in the interim to hang out with Mav in a low-stakes, no pressure environment, managing to get along with him better than usual whilst they had a project to work on together. Jake had followed Jason’s lead in keeping back and out of the way to let them get on with it. Which only made it that much more disappointing for everyone involved that the nice moment didn’t get to last any longer than a couple of hours.

Bradley had turned in Jake’s arms by the time Jason looked back to them. They were wound so tightly around one another it was hard to tell where one started and the other ended. It wasn’t often that Jason resented the nature of the lives he and Bradley led. Now, however, he almost couldn’t bear to acknowledge the consequences.

“I thought we’d have more time,” Jake complained in a small, broken voice as Jason passed them by to escape outside.

He took a deep breath as he came to a stop by the driver’s side of the truck, slammed the heel of his palm against the side of the hood when his frustration momentarily got the better of him, and pasted a smile which had zero emotion behind it on his face when he heard footsteps approach him from behind.

“Never gets any easier watching you guys leave,” Mav murmured after Jason turned around to meet his gaze.

Jason laughed defeatedly and countered, “never gets easier being the ones to leave either.”

“If I say this to him, it’ll end up being wrong somehow, so just…” Mav sighed and threw a frown over his shoulder at where Bradley and Jake were now making a valiant effort to climb inside one another by the mouth. Concerned uncle was a side of Mav Jason rarely got to see, he felt strangely disheartened by it now. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“Well, that gives us a lot of leeway.”

“Doesn’t it just.”

Jason couldn’t quite return the warmth of Mav’s smile, but he gave it his best effort. “Probably goes without saying, but, uh, keep an eye on Jake for me?”

“Definitely goes without saying, Jason,” Mav replied. “He’s family. You both are, you know that.”

Family was a complicated notion where Mav and Bradley were concerned. Jason never had needed it overstating how privileged a position he, and now Jake, were in. Even so, it was nice to have verbal confirmation from time to time.

A long, quiet pause passed between them whilst Jason allowed Bradley the opportunity to extract himself from Jake in his own time, before he sighed and resigned himself to the fact that he was, once again, going to have to be the biggest asshole present.

“Uh, sorry,” he said in an aside to Mav as he tugged open the driver’s side door. “We don’t have time for this shit.”

Mav frowned, “what are yo-”

Jason laid on the horn.

He choked on a laugh at the sight of Bradley and Jake flinching away from one another, especially once he noticed Bradley was laughing as he rubbed at his lower lip and guessed that Jake had been startled enough to bite him.

“Let’s move out, Bradshaw!”

Jason trusted Bradley to appreciate the wisdom of not dragging out their goodbyes, Jake was the one who would end up holding a grudge. He had the look of a kicked puppy as he trailed along behind Bradley once they made their way out of the hanger, latched onto his arm like he thought he might disappear in front of his very eyes if he wasn’t careful. When they reached the truck, Bradley looked to Mav first without quite meeting his gaze, sighing deeply in the way that told Jason he was taking his time with choosing the right words.

“We, uh, chances are we’re spinning up soon as we get back. Might be going dark for a while.”

“I know the drill, kid,” Mav said. “Speak when you can.”

The dejected picture that Mav painted as he walked back towards the hangar alone unnerved Jason in more ways than he cared to consider, but he swallowed down the irrational burst of guilt he felt over a situation he had no control over, and turned his focus instead towards climbing into the driver’s seat.

“Baby, I have to go,” Bradley said to Jake, managing to get so far as opening passenger door before he was caught and slammed up beside it for Jake to kiss him silly all over again.

Jason pulled out his phone to text the team’s group chat and complain about Bradley whilst he had the time, which is when he discovered what Bradley likely already knew from his brief phone conversation: that they were being recalled for a briefing on an operation that had been on hold for over six months now, awaiting a greenlight from the powers above. They would be happy about this news once they had linked up with the team and had a chance for it to properly register, but right now, it was ironic how disappointing this felt.

Bradley laughed as if he was happy enough to stay put forever, and yet he still worked to manoeuvre himself free as he promised, “I’ll call you as soon as I can.” Jake nodded his way into yet another kiss. “I love you.”

“I know.”

“I really have to go.”

“I know.” Jake bumped his nose against Bradley’s, the smile he had pasted on visibly wavering despite his best efforts. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“That’s Jace’s job.”

Jake snorted out a laugh, and maybe Jason was supposed to be annoyed that a dig at him was the thing which finally allowed Bradley the space he needed to get into the truck, but really, he was just glad they were making progress. As he was closing the door behind himself, Bradley rolled the window down, and he reached through it afterwards to pull Jake closer by the collar of his t-shirt, stealing one final kiss whilst Jason started the engine.

“Give ‘em hell,” Jake murmured as he finally stepped back.

“Always do.”

Because he could ruin the moment this way without actually ruining it, Jason leaned forwards around Bradley to sarcastically call out, “love you, too, Jake.”

“Yeah,” Jake laughed half-heartedly and offered him a jaunty little wave which was all bravado. “Later, Jace.”

Chapter Text

If he were thinking about it harder, Jason might have been able to pick up on all of the signs that he wasn’t coping well with the outcome of this mission, with the deaths he felt responsible for, but in the moment, all he cared about was the satisfying crunch of some stranger’s nose under his fist.

Blood-soaked sand was still caked under his fingernails, the type that would never wash out. Innocent children screamed in his ears, the boom of an explosion made his hands shake. If he had taken the shot when he first had it, instead of following orders and waiting to monitor the target, then maybe, maybe, maybe…

The team wouldn’t be happy with him for how this situation had escalated. They had, as a group and in one-on-one cases, all told him at some point or other to find healthier outlets for his frustrations. But that didn’t change the fact that they were all there watching his back and mucking in with the fray anyway. Bradley was the one who managed to get the main guy, who Jason had squared off against at the beginning of this, into the kind of headlock which settled matters once and for all.

Jason resented the intervention, even after the red fog of fury began to dissipate.

“Feel like calming down, dickhead?” Bradley asked, a rhetorical question which the guy answered by throwing an elbow behind him. It connected with Bradley’s nose. Though he staggered backwards on impact, Bradley was strong enough to keep his hold, and that retaliation only motivated him to drag the guy away from Jason even faster. “Jesus Christ, man. You don’t know when to quit.” Bradley shoved the guy towards the sidewalk once he reached it, hardly seeming to care when he tripped in the process. “Do the smart thing and leave,” he added when it seemed like he was going to rise to his feet again, “while you still can.”

“You’ve got a little…” Jason gestured at where Bradley’s nose was bleeding as they stepped back to watch the guy’s friends gather him up and make themselves scarce.

He was glad they had taken this outside.

Cool air refreshed him after the adrenaline rush of hand-to-hand combat.

“For fuck’s sake,” Bradley muttered to himself, whipping off the floral overshirt he had been wearing to wad up and press against his nose. That left him in just a white tank top, looking dangerously dishevelled from fighting. When he pulled it away again in the course of the rest of the team cataloguing their injuries, he wrinkled his nose and murmured, “it doesn’t feel broken?”

Jason stepped in to examine his friend, grabbing his chin to scrutinise him from a few different angles before he decreed, “it ain’t. Lucky for you.”

“Lucky for you more like,” Bradley countered with a snorted laugh he looked to immediately regret. “What?” he continued when Jason frowned at him in confusion. “I’m not the one Jake’ll be stringing up when he finds out how it happened…”

Jason scoffed. “Ain’t scared of my baby brother, Bradshaw. What’s he gonna do?”

“I hope we never have to find out.”

“Quit snitching on me anyway, dumbass. He doesn’t need to know everything we get up to.”

“I don’t have a choice, man,” Bradley laughed, offering up a clean side of his ruined shirt for Bishop to press against his busted lip, before it was ultimately discarded as a lost cause. “If this bruises,” he gestured at his nose, “and he sees it, I’ll have to tell him what happened.”

“Why?”

“I don’t lie to him about my injuries.”

Jason took a beat to think over when he had heard him say that before, the words sounding familiar, but the memory taking a moment to click. He laughed when it did though, feeling like a lifetime had passed since he first found out about Jake and Bradley’s relationship.

“You know, I meant to ask you before, what’s that all about?”

Bradley sighed out a self-deprecating chuckle, drawing the curiosity of the rest of the team enough that Jason’s actions were dismissed in favour of making him the centre of attention. Carlisle led their way back inside to where Alvez was already dropping a new round of drinks on a table in the farthest corner from the door. Though they received a series of sidelong glances from other patrons in the bar who had been here when the fight was initially shaping up – Jason worst of all for his role as instigator – they were thankfully left in peace for the rest of the evening. It was a dingy place, so it was more the general disturbance than the actual fists flying that anyone cared about. There were peanut shells covering the floor, a thatch roof, and no real walls to the establishment. The humidity had the entire squad sweating, and the swamp around them was only making things worse. There were electric lamps spotted about in an attempt to fend of the mosquitos, but they made no real difference.

No one cared about Haskell lighting up a cigarette as they sat down, which only emboldened Jason to reach out and steal one from him, a relapse he didn’t think the team would judge him for.

Smoking was a safer vice than most of his other options.

“God, okay,” Bradley began once he had sat down and met Jason’s expectant gaze, accepting that he wasn’t going to get out of this. He sighed heavily, causing his nose to start bleeding for a second time, but Bishop appeared with a wad of napkins in hand before he could ruin a second shirt and dumped them on the table as he claimed his own seat. Bradley offered him a grateful smile, taking a moment to smother his nose. When he spoke, his voice was somewhat muffled. “A few years after me and Jake first started hooking up, we-” he sniffed and readjusted the napkins, making it easier to understand what he was saying. “Do you remember, Jace, that arms dealer with the fucking grenade launcher that nearly buried us?”

“Yeah,” Jason nodded. “Half the team was medically discharged because of that shit,” he elaborated for the others’ benefit. “Bradshaw ended up with a shattered fucking collarbone, he was a mess.”

Bradley smiled, took the time to check his nose had stopped bleeding again, downed his beer in a few long gulps, and continued his story.

“So, I was pretty fucking beat up, right? Jace and I headed to Texas to recoup, because what else could we do, and Jake rocked up on leave a couple days later. We were in this weird spot of not knowing where we stood with each other. You know, we’d been doing the on-again, off-again thing for a while by then, but we weren’t talking about it like we should’ve been. So, he was all for jumping back into bed the first chance we got some alone time, and he wasn’t best pleased when I was, like, ‘hey, this is great and all, but my dick is definitely going to take longer than you’re giving me to get in on all this action’.”

“Hang on,” Jason cut in after a long drag on his cigarette, genuinely invested, even though this was verging upon being too much insight. “Where were me and mom in this?”

“Oh,” Bradley chuckled, “asleep, probably? Jake used to sneak down to the living room to, you know, ‘hang out’ after you guys had gone to bed.”

“Yep, fair enough,” Jason said, making the conscious decision not to think too hard about the wider implications of that whole arrangement.

“So, anyway, we have this nice period of calm, he’s taking care of me when no one else is paying attention, all that shit. But he keeps asking all these questions about what happened, he wants to know every fucking detail, and I won’t tell him anything because I can’t. You know, all our training is rattling around my head and I’m still a little too green around the gills, and that just pisses him off. Like, it wasn’t a screaming match or anything, when it all kicked off, because we were always pretty good at keeping that shit private, but it was still a nasty fucking fight. We both say all this shit we don’t mean, it’s all hitting way too far below the belt, and it’s…” he took a breath. “Honestly, to this day, it’s one of our worst ever fights, and with us that’s saying something.” Bradley shook his head ruefully whilst a few of the guys chuckled softly over his bad joke. “In the end, he tells me I have one chance to tell him what really happened, and I give him the party line again which, you know, he knows is a lie.”

“I thought this’d be a funny story…” Bishop muttered in the brief pause Bradley took before he realised that he had already finished his drink and couldn’t use it as a distraction.

“Never said it was, man.”

When Jason nudged his own bottle towards him to share, Bradley threw a grateful look his way, which Jason dismissed, too busy stubbing out the end of his first cigarette. In turn, he made grabby hands at Haskell for another, which resulted in him being passed the rest of the pack to devour over the course of the evening.

“Jake didn’t talk to me all through the rest of that leave,” Bradley continued. “He was, you know, it was him pouting because he hadn’t gotten his way technically, but it was also a little bit me being too proud to see it as an opening for us to talk our shit through properly.” Bradley scoffed to himself over his memories before he shook off the melancholy with a crooked smile. “He left without even saying goodbye, and I kept telling myself that I’d make it up to him next time I saw him, but then he started dating this fucking asshole, Garrett. Do you remember him, Jace? The law school dickhead?”

“Yeah,” Jason frowned, unsure where exactly Bradley was going with this. “They were together a while, weren’t they?”

“Year and a half,” Bradley murmured, tone haunted and smile more bitter than Jason liked to see.

“He was no fan of yours…?” Jason said leadingly, wondering not for the first time how he had missed this when it was all happening beneath his nose.

Bradley hummed out a quiet, humourless laugh. “Jake told him we had history when he brought him home to meet the family, so he went out of his way to get me alone so he could put me in my place.”

“He did?”

“Shit, Seresin,” Haskell cut in with a taunting chuckle. “I don’t mean to be a dick, but how’d you never notice this was going on?”

“I honestly cannot fucking tell you at this point, man. I had no idea Bradshaw was this good at lying…”

“No, it’s not-” Bradley laughed frustratedly, far from amused and yet still trying to make light of it all. “I was lying by omission. That’s easy to do, isn’t it?” Though he sounded annoyed, he was smiling when he showed off exactly how self-aware he was by adding over the others’ amusement, “it took me a decade to get my shit together, guys, there’s no way I was going to be all mature about it a couple years in.”

“Dude, it’s cool, you don’t have to explain that shit,” Jason said.

Bradley waved one hand dismissively as he took another sip of the drink he had appropriated. “This is a big part of why we were a mess for so long, Jace.” He smiled to himself, less bitter than resigned this time around. “Jake only told other guys about me when he felt like I needed punishing for something, because they’d get jealous over his,” he grimaced like he was debating something, “ex-whatever-I-was being part of the family and take it out on me, and then I’d go pick a fight with him because I hated that they were even around in the first place, and he’d get to sit on his high horse the whole time and tell me I have ‘no right to feel any way about him because he’s with someone else and doesn’t need me’…”

“Christ, Jake,” Jason muttered under his breath, rubbing at the bridge of his nose in despair.

Bradley smiled gamely, letting a contemplative beat pass before he took another breath and picked up his story again. “Point is, this Garrett guy, he started throwing his weight around after Jake told him about me, saying I needed to stay away from them and all this other shit that doesn’t bear repeating, and then I went and told Jake his boyfriend’s an asshole, and he hit back with this line about how ‘Garrett might be a dick but at least he’s never lied to him’, and I was, like, wracking my brains trying to figure out what the fuck he was talking about, because I don’t lie to him, as a rule, I never have… except when it comes to what happens on the job.”

“God damn, Bradshaw,” Alvez muttered, voicing the incredulity most of the team was looking at him with out loud on their behalf.

“Yeah, not done yet,” Bradley said with a tired grin. “Jake broke up with Garrett not long after we had that fight, for other reasons, and you’ll probably remember this, Jace, he called you, and we made the trip out to Fort Worth to see him because he made out like he was feeling shitty about it?”

“Yeah…?”

“I can’t remember how, but he engineered it so that Jace was distracted with this girl-”

“Marianne from his squad!” Jason interjected with the click of his fingers. “I dated her for like six weeks after that.”

“Yeah, so me and him had his place to ourselves for the night, and we- you probably won’t want to hear this Jace, but you know, it’d been a while since the last time we’d slept together so it was a lot, and then afterwards, he looks me in the eye and it’s like no time passed at all because he asks me the exact same fucking question he did about what happened on that mission as he did before, in the exact same tone of voice and everything, and it was like… a test, you know?”

“Like, he was giving you the chance to do it over again?” Carlisle chimed in, looking so invested in the story as he sipped on his beer that Jason almost wanted to laugh at how surreal it felt to be finding out about this so many years after the fact.

“Exactly, yeah. And I’m an idiot, sure, but I’m not that big a fucking idiot, so I tell him the truth this time around. Or, well, you know, as much of it as I can when the whole op’s still classified…” Bradley smiled to himself, fondly now, as if he found all of Jake’s behaviour endearing and wasn’t the slightest bit bothered by how irrational any of it sounded in retrospect. “And, this is the thing, he knows me. He knows when I’m trying to bullshit him and when I’m being honest, and he can see for his fucking self whenever I’ve got some new scar or whatever that needs explaining so… yeah, I learned the hard way not to lie to him about my injuries.”

Chapter Text

“Last man,” Jason called as he ducked his way into the small, shack-like building that Haskell had located on the map for them to regroup in.

He hauled a corrugated sheet of tin across the entrance and glanced around himself to take stock of how all the others were, before pulling security alongside Bishop like he had been ordered. Alvez was communicating with their command centre to update them on this stalled progress to their exfiltration point. Haskell was also on security duty, across the opposite side of the shack, watching out of a small, shuttered window for any signs of enemy movement, whilst Carlisle and Bradley eased the pilot that the team deployed to rescue, Lieutenant Commander Adams, into a sitting position against the wall.

The sun beat down from above them, miserably oppressive.

They were lucky they had found such a defensible position to hole up in, all that Jason could see for miles outside was a barren landscape of grass tufted dunes and pathetic spots of shrubbery. That made him wary of relaxing. Dilapidated as this shack was, it couldn’t exist without someone having a use for it.

“Alright, Commander,” Carlisle said, leaving Bradley to support her weight whilst he focused on unzipping his pack, “I’ll need to get a look at that arm now.”

“Yeah,” Adams laughed humourlessly, looking far from pleased that that was the case, “any chance you’ve got some morphine I could get a look at?”

“All in good time. Bradshaw, get her free of that flight suit, would you?”

“Familiar territory for you there, eh, Bradshaw?” Bishop quipped, the levity in his tone somewhat forced as they all tried to keep things light for the benefit of the Commander.

The fact that she had survived as long as she had – alone, lost on foreign soil, with no way of knowing when, or if, backup would be coming – was a miracle. They were all more than impressed by how well she had managed to muddle through by herself before their arrival. Now, they just had to regroup, patch her up, and get her home safe. Simple, or so they had thought. The route that they were supposed to hike towards their primary exfiltration point was compromised en-route, and the Commander had lost enough blood with her injuries that retracing their steps in the direction of the secondary one was far from an appealing option.

“Don’t make it weird, man,” Bradley replied with a low chuckle, wincing sympathetically over Adams’ pained expression when her elbow was required to bend in order to be freed from her uniform.

They lapsed into a pseudo silence, broken only by Alvez’s continued communication with command as he worked out the logistics for their next move. Adams hissed through her teeth when Carlisle straightened out her arm in the process of patching her up. She had been cradling it against her chest ever since they found her, and it was quite obvious now, as Carlisle got to cleaning up her up, that she had taken shrapnel damage from her crash landing.

“What did that mean?” she asked, seemingly out of nowhere, looking at Bradley with enough hope that it became obvious, when Jason looked around out of curiosity to check, that she was in need of distraction. She nodded in Bishop’s direction as she clarified, “what he said about familiar territory?”

“Oh, nothing.” Bradley reached out a hand for her to take hold of as she gasped in pain again, wincing a second time when she squeezed a lot tighter than he was prepared for. “My partner’s a fighter pilot, too.”

“Oh, really?”

“Bishop’s full of shit though, I don’t get to see the uniform even half so much as I’d like.”

“Yeah,” Adams breathed out a pained laugh, “I can’t imagine our kind of schedule would really gel with your lot.”

“We make it work.”

Adams laughed again, the pitch of it rising as a delayed reaction to the shock set in. “I’m supposed to be getting married in April.”

“Well, we’ll do our best to get you home in time,” Bradley promised, to the team’s general amusement since that was well over half a year away. “What does your partner do?”

“Oh, he’s, uh, he’s a contractor. He runs his own business.”

“No joke, that.”

“Bit different to all this though, huh?” Bradley huffed out a laugh to acknowledge that Adams had spoken, but left the option to her on whether she still needed to be distracted by conversation. A minute or so later, the waver in her voice revealed how at her limit she was with her pain threshold as she asked, “what’s the callsign they go by? Your partner?” Jason looked around when the appropriate time in which Bradley should have answered passed without a response, to find him avoiding eye contact. “You don’t have to tell me,” Adams murmured. “I’m just curious if our paths might’ve crossed?”

Bradley breathed out a slow, closemouthed chuckle. “It’s nothing against you, Commander. I just prefer to keep certain worlds separate.”

“I’d say you sound paranoid, but I know exactly what you mean. Eric asks me about my day sometimes, and I have no idea how to talk to him. Isn’t that sad?”

“No, you’re preaching to the choir there,” Carlisle cut in.

“He’s getting hitched next year, too,” Bradley murmured conspiratorially.

“August, so I hear,” Carlisle confirmed. “I’m not actually allowed to be involved in the planning.”

“Oh, you’re one of those, are you?” Adams asked, the sound of a smile in her tone.

“I want to be involved. All my ideas kept getting vetoed though, so I asked her if she was even interested in hearing my input, and she told me I had so many other skills, I didn’t need to worry about adding wedding planning to my resume.”

”Wow. I don’t know whether to respect her, or feel bad for you.”

”Respect her,” Carlisle insisted, tone suffused with love. “She knows what she wants, all I’ve got to do is give it to her.”

Adams laughed hard enough that it ended in a gasp of pain, and yet that didn’t stop her from asking Bradley, “no wedding bells in your future yet then?”

“No, there are,” Bradley assured her with an awkward chuckle. “But I have to, you know, actually pop the question first.” Jason could sense Bradley’s reluctance to share from across the room, but Adams was desperate enough not to have to think about herself that she kept pushing him to keep speaking about Jake anyway. It was only pity really that had him entertaining this, Jason suspected. That, and the fact that none of what he had to say was really news to anyone. “We were a hot mess for a long time,” he explained, his voice barely audible above the sudden sharp breath that Adams gasped in. “We even broke up at one point because it didn’t look like we’d ever walk down the aisle.”

“So, what’s the- motherfucker that was a big piece.”

“Almost done, Commander,” Carlisle promised.

“What’s the hold up, if you’re back together now?” Adams asked in a breathless voice, intent on using Bradley still despite his reluctance.

“It’s still early days,” Bradley said with a laugh. “We only got back together, like, six months ago, and we’ve spent a grand total of two weeks of that actually in the same place.”

“Oof,” Adams groaned her way into a laugh, “long-distance is not for the faint hearted.”

“You can say that again.”

“Eric and I lived apart for a while. Not when we first started dating, but a few years in. It was tough.”

“How’d you cope?”

“Powered through, it was a temporary reassignment. And we had so much phone sex there was no time for him to go out and meet someone else.”

Bradley laughed approvingly. “Good for you.”

“You’re all patched up there now, Commander,” Carlisle said a moment later, drawing a line under the conversation. He handed her a water flask as he advised, “just drink this and take it easy.”

“We good to go?” Alvez asked fast enough that it was obvious he had been waiting for exactly that so that he could start handing out orders.

There was another long hike that they had to suffer through, at a slower pace than they would usually move, thanks to the Commander. In the midst of a gunfight, they managed to link up with the QRF that had been scrambled to pull them out of the fire, and finally made it onto a helicopter, which carried them back to base.

After patiently waiting almost a full twenty-four hours with the question burning up inside him, Jason found enough privacy on the flight home to corner Bradley so that he could ask about his uncharacteristic caginess where Jake’s name was concerned.

“What’s got you all paranoid?” he said, confusing Bradley as he roused himself from the nap he had been seconds from drifting off into. “Your whole separate worlds bullshit with the Commander?”

“Ah,” Bradley chuckled to himself as he straightened up into a sitting position beside Jason. “It’s nothing, man. It just- it felt weird, you know, talking about Jake out in the field with someone we don’t know? I couldn’t do it.” He shrugged. “Besides, Mav got in my head about fraternisation charges.”

“Seriously?” Jason scoffed. “Why? Ain’t like you’re in the same command?”

“Yeah, but he’s still an officer where I’m enlisted, so it’s not great on paper. And either way, being realistic, it’s probably not smart, us advertising we’re a couple to everyone we meet on the job.”

“What do you mean?”

Bradley cocked his head around to frown at Jason, speaking like he thought he was being stupid when he explained, “Jake’s going to make Admiral one day.”

“That’s basically all he’s talked about since he left for the academy, yeah. He wants to be Ice 2.0.”

“Right,” Bradley nodded, “so last thing he’ll need while he’s climbing the ladder is war stories floating round about what his boyfriend’s been getting up to over the years. Especially now, when his whole squad’s got such a big spotlight on them.”

Jason took a moment to consider things from that perspective. “Sounds like pretty long-term planning you’ve got going on there?” he said after a long pause.

Bradley nodded again, even slower this time, before knocking his head back against the side of the aircraft with a small sigh. “Can I tell you something without you freaking out?”

“Sure…?”

“When we were home, I was planning on stealing some time alone with Mav so we could take a trip to the bank, but I never got the chance.”

Jason snorted, surprised by the mere prospect of Bradley willingly considering spending one-on-one time with his uncle for such a mundane errand. “Okay?”

“We have this safety deposit box; Mav keeps the key for it at the hangar. It’s where we keep all the shit he’d have lost by now if we weren’t careful about it. You know, our wills, birth certificates, the important shit you don’t really need on hand on the regular.”

“Uh huh.”

“My mom’s ring’s in there, too.”

Bradley said that slowly and carefully, as if he was braced for a negative reaction, but if he was being honest, this was no surprise to Jason. The implication was there, after all. And with all of the marriage talk between Carlisle and the Commander before, Jason would have to be far stupider than he was to not add two and two together.

He knew his brother better than he knew himself, as well.

There were expectations Jake had about how his life was going to pan out. A husband, and kids. The perfect white picket fence. Him on top of the world with the most wonderful life and amazing family. It would be a fuck you to their father of epic proportions, for him to be the one who rocketed up the chain of command, to bright and brilliant to be ignored. The one who carried on the Seresin name, and gave it a brand-new legacy worth chasing.

But it felt too soon.

It really had only been about six months since Jason found out about them, they had spent a fraction of that actually in one another’s company, and Bradley was bad at commitment, he always had been. He seemed dead set on seeing this through though, and something about that earnest sincerity of his terrified Jason.

“After my dad died,” Bradley continued, speaking in low, careful tones despite the nonchalance of his posture, “she had their wedding bands joined together so she’d always have a piece of him with her. Wore it for the rest of her life. I need to dig it out so I can get it resized before I give it to Jake.”

“Is this… are you asking for my blessing?”

“No,” Bradley snorted, “God, no. I meant what I said to the Commander, we’re a way off from that shit. I just thought you’d like to know where my head’s at, as my friend.”

“Ah” Jason laughed, far more relieved than he was proud of. He had come to terms with them dating by now, but an engagement was a whole other level of commitment. “Well, friend to friend, my mom’ll for sure be angling for a big ass white wedding when you get there, and it’s gonna be real fucking difficult to turn her down.”

“I figured. Any chance you feel like settling down first, save me the trouble?”

“Not on your life, Bradshaw. If I ever get there, and that’s a big if, I want it done quick and dirty.”

“Just the way you like it.”

Jason snorted out an ugly laugh, the kind that only Bradley brought out in him, which Bradley quickly matched. With them egging each other on, the exhaustion, and latent adrenaline from a gunfight lingering in their systems, it didn’t take long for them to lose all composure. They ended up braced against one another, almost to the point of tears, only laughing harder and more openly once Alvez shouted a reprimand down from the other end of the aircraft for them to knock it off.

Chapter Text

“For fuck’s sake, Bradshaw, would you lie down already?” Alvez said from the bunk above Jason, having forgotten, or perhaps just resenting, the fact that Bradley’s restlessness was the fault of their orders and not something that they could control. “Go to sleep.”

Jason had warned Alvez to expect this before they even boarded their transport that morning, and he hadn’t listened. He only had himself to blame as Bradley paced up and down the narrow space between berths like a caged beast. Jason couldn’t be mad at this feral, scowling, distracted, irate version of Bradley. None of them could, even though his behaviour had been slowly driving them insane all day. He had every reason to be upset, after all.

Imagine finding out in a briefing that you were transferring onto the very same carrier that your boyfriend was deployed on, and then being told you weren’t allowed to contact him whilst you were on board to preserve mission integrity.

In reality, it had been Jason that the brass focused on when handing out those orders, but Bradley still took them personally. Jason’s relationship with Jake was public knowledge, but he was trusted to not indulge in any desire to seek out his brother enough that they weren’t concerned about a conflict of interest. Bradley, however, was in an awkward spot where formally disclosing his relationship was concerned. That hadn’t mattered too much before now, because why would it? The likelihood of them crossing paths professionally had been all but non-existent. But fraternisation charges were nothing to sniff at. Even though the odds were that all they would get was a slap on the wrists and a warning to keep below the radar as they already were, disclosure was a risk that they had to be strategic about taking.

All Bradley wanted to do tonight was look Jake in the eye. Well… he almost certainly wanted to do an awful lot more than that, but Jason didn’t plan on letting his imagination flesh out the details. Bradley had developed this obsession with keeping in touch with Jake, which he had been incredibly disciplined about since their visit to California especially. Jake’s recent deployment made their already limited windows of opportunity for contact even narrower. It was small wonder that he had begun to lose his mind.

They all understood that the mission was classified, that their presence on board this carrier wasn’t happening, that their entire existence right now was under black-ops regulations and that nothing could risk jeopardising that, but temptation was a devious thing.

“I would be back so fast,” Bradley said, his tone taking a wheedling edge. He stopped in front of where Jason was lying to fix Alvez with an increasingly desperate beseeching look.

“What part of ‘zero footprint’ do you not get?”

“The part where he’s right-”

“Yeah, he’s right there. I heard you the first billion times. It’s getting a little tired, Bradshaw.”

“What do you want me to do?” Bradley whined, making his way back towards the door again. “I don’t even have to talk to him if it’s that big a deal, I just-”

“Orders are that we’re confined to quarters when on board, unless moving to or from transport. That’s not me saying that, that’s straight from command.”

“Who’s he gonna tell?” Bradley asked rhetorically, speaking under his breath. “I just want to see him,” he said, punching ineffectually at the door in front of him. “Broke his heart leaving early last time we were together, and it’s been months since then. I just want to see him.”

Jason tried to turn his attention back to the thin paperback he had brought along for entertainment without success, wishing he didn’t have to witness this desperate, pining performance with every fibre of his being. All the rest of the guys had followed Jason’s lead and kept out of this as much as possible, leaving the Chief to handle talking Bradley down by himself, but where they were mostly asleep by this point, Jason couldn’t switch off when Bradley was so wound up.

“You know, you’re not the only one who’s always leaving the people you love…” Alvez drawled, and Jason had to commend his bravery when that was the absolute worst thing he could have said.

“Don’t start with that shit,” Bradley warned. “It’s different, and you know it.”

“Bradshaw, you’re not-”

“He lives on the other side of the country, Nick,” Bradley snapped as he whirled around, “it’s not the same. We land back in Vah Beach; you all get to go home to your families. We’re in the same fucking place for the first time in months, and you won’t let me go track him down because of fucking orders when you know, you know, I won’t be seen by anyone?” Bradley stalked forwards, pressing a hand to the edge of the bunk that Alvez was lying on with a surprising measure of restraint. “You saw Tash before we rolled out, didn’t you? There’s no way you left without saying goodbye. I had to send Jake a freaking text, because he’d’ve been asleep when we were gearing up. One he probably won’t even have received yet, because you know we’re out of signal range this far out. And now he’s right there, and you’re telling me I can’t go tell him I love him in person? Can you not just let me have this?”

When Alvez didn’t respond, Bradley ground out a sigh through his teeth and stalked back towards the door again to resume his vigil.

“Seresin?” Alvez called after a few minutes tense, awkward silence.

“Chief?” Jason replied, putting every effort he had into keeping his nose in his book so that he wouldn’t have to look at Bradley.

“Over-under on your brother keeping his big mouth shut about a surprise visit?”

“No question. Just have Bradshaw be honest.”

“About everything?”

“Within clearance.”

Alvez audibly groaned his way through mulling over his options, whilst Bradley went so still it looked painful. There was no explicit, verbal permission granted, but all of a sudden, Bradley’s spine straightened and he twisted around to fix Alvez with a disgustingly hopeful expression. Jason rolled his eyes over how dramatic his friend could be. There was a beat of silence where anything could have happened. And then Bradley sprang forwards to snatch his sweater from the bunk across from Jason, and tugged it on over his head.

It was the perfect kind of garment to help Bradley look inconspicuous.

Jason made a bet with himself in the back of his mind that this would be the last time that he saw it for a while.

“You get caught, you’re on your own,” Alvez warned as Bradley was flipping the hood up and dragging both of his sleeves up to sit just below his elbows.

“Got it.”

“You’re not back within the hour, stay gone.”

“Yup.”

“Bradshaw,” Alvez said, catching Bradley’s attention at the last moment before he turned for the door again. “Do not make me regret this.”

Bradley’s grin was the exact opposite of reassuring, but Jason trusted him to pull this off without jeopardising mission success. He checked his watch out of morbid curiosity once the door clanged shut, starting an unofficial timer.

“Why didn’t you just do that when we first boarded?” Haskell asked, breaking the quiet that descended over the room in the wake of Bradley’s departure. The sudden question made Jason flinch. He had thought Haskell was one of the first to fall asleep earlier.

“Couldn’t make it too easy on him, could I?” Alvez replied with audible chagrin. “Fucker plays dirty when he wants to.”

“Fucking first named you, Nick,” Carlisle laughed, leaving Jason with the distinct realisation that his team were cowards to a man where Bradley’s despair was concerned. “Shit got real dark there for a second.”

“Did you see Tash before we left?” Jason asked, tilting sideways to look out over the edge of his bunk in preparation for the glare Alvez sent down his way. Last that he had heard, they were more off than on with their marriage, but it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that Bradley understood the nuances of that dynamic better than him.

“Mind your business, Seresin,” Alvez warned, which made Jason burst out laughing as he shouldered his way back into a more comfortable position for reading.

An hour and some change later, the door eased open again.

Jason hadn’t been intentionally waiting up for Bradley, but he also hadn’t been able to sleep knowing that he was out and about with no one to watch his six. He had to laugh when he checked his watch a second time. Despite Alvez’s instructions, Jason knew it didn’t matter that he had technically missed his deadline. Bradley was nothing if not skilled at toeing the line of insubordination.

“How is he?” Jason murmured once Bradley was lying down on the bunk across from him. He was still wearing his sweater with the hood drawn up, which surprised Jason after the assumption he made about it becoming a souvenir for Jake of their brief reunion.

Bradley sucked in a breath through his nose and sighed it out again. “Fine.”

“So… he’s pissed?”

“No.” Bradley shook his head as he rolled over onto his side to face Jason, one hand tucking beneath his head to support it, the other laying across his chest. “We just never seem to have enough time.” Bradley sighed again, but a little smile played out across his face as he thought back on the last hour. “He said to say hi, he misses you.”

Jason huffed out a quiet scoff, finding it hard to believe that his brother really had the bandwidth to think of him when Bradley was around. He opened his mouth to say as much, but ended up swallowing the words instead, when he noticed Bradley’s eyes slip shut on a pitiful sigh. It would have been easy to make a joke of it, to needle at Bradley’s nerves and force him to get over his heartache for the good of the mission, after all, but Jason knew when to push and when to leave well enough alone.

It was a few hours later, once they had woken, geared up, and were sneaking out of their room and onto a speedboat without leaving behind any trace of their presence, that Jason wondered whether Jake would be ballsy enough to engineer a final goodbye. When he didn’t, there was no surprise on Jason’s part, just a small pang of melancholy as he was left to wonder when he would next get the chance to see his brother. He sent up a silent prayer that the rest of his deployment was uneventful, that he made it back home safe, as he watched Bradley watch the carrier shrink out of view behind them.

Chapter Text

Jason wasn’t worried when he couldn’t immediately locate Bradley, but he did start moving with more haste as he checked off another entire floor of the embassy building that they were holed up in. Logic dictated that it shouldn’t be this difficult for one man to hide, and yet Bradley had a way of surpassing expectations.

The building itself was unremarkable. Jason had lost count of the number of embassies that he had visited in his career. So far as he was concerned, they all looked the same. They had the same sort of atmosphere, and the same types of diplomats were always drawn to them. It was some law of the universe, he supposed. Of all the types of places that their work could take them to, of all the assignments that they could draw short straw on, in his opinion, protection details were the worst.

Jason hadn’t realised the significance of today’s date until it was nearly over.

He caught it in the corner of his eye whilst he was running through the remainder of the senator’s itinerary with Alvez, Haskell, and the aide whose name he hadn’t bothered remembering, and it struck him as an important one. Even then, it wasn’t until hours later that what he had forgotten before clicked, and he was left kicking himself for the oversight. In his defence, Bradley had been acting like even more of a closed book than usual since his run-in with Jake on the carrier, and the team had enough else going on to keep them busy and distracted from the little things. Still. Jason hated to think he had let his friend down by taking this long to check in and make sure he was sufficiently grounded on the anniversary of his mother’s death.

“-it was like charring around the edges but still raw in the middle, I’ve never seen anything else fucking like it, and Mav was tearing his hair out because he couldn’t figure out why it’s wasn’t cooking properly.”

Bradley’s voice carried easily across the roof.

Jason cursed himself for missing the obvious before now. Bradley liked heights, of course he would seek out some comfort and isolation when he was off duty. He was perched sideways on the wall running around the perimeter of the roof, leaning back against the balustrade with one leg crooked up in front of him and the other hanging down over the edge. One strong gust of wind might push him over if he wasn’t careful, but he seemed strangely at ease despite that.

He was speaking into a satphone, and the lightness in his tone was enough to give Jason pause even though he didn’t much slow in his approach.

“And then mom came home from work early, the kitchen looked like a fucking bombsite because, as you can imagine, Mav’s not exactly one for cleaning as he goes when he’s baking, and she was like playing catchup trying to figure out what the hell we were up to…”

As Bradley paused to listen to whatever was being said on the other end of the phone, he glanced over in Jason’s direction and nodded to acknowledge his presence.

Jason raised one of the beer cans that he had pilfered during his search as an offering and smiled when Bradley pinned the phone between his shoulder and ear to raise his hands in preparation for catching it. Afterwards, Jason raised his brows in the form of a silent question, happy to leave him to it if he wanted privacy. Bradley simply smiled and mouthed Jake at him with a point at the phone, as if he thought Jason hadn’t already figured that one out. Taking that as permission to stay if he so wished, Jason eased his way into leaning against the wall between where Bradley was sat and the next balustrade along, facing the view of the city around them. He wasn’t anywhere near so much of a fan as Bradley of heights, but they didn’t strictly bother him, so long as he made sure not to look down and trigger his vertigo.

“Yeah, exactly,” Bradley laughed. “So, then she goes ‘did you follow the recipe properly?’ and Mav was like ‘yeah, pretty much, I did add a couple eggs in too though because what cake recipe doesn’t have eggs in?’” He laughed again, louder this time. “Yeah, that’s what mom said! Like, the entire thing was fucked because he thought he knew better than the literal recipe right there in front of him. And that’s before he was doubling the heat of the oven as well because ‘it’ll cook faster that way’. We had no chance.” He breathed out another chuckle through closed lips. “He was like ‘Bradley thought it was a good idea’, and mom goes ‘Bradley’s eight, what’s your excuse?’.”

After another short pause from Bradley, punctuated by a quiet hum to show he was listening, and then a heavy sigh, he finally cracked open his beer. He seemed in relatively low spirits, which was understandable, and yet he was actually talking about his mother today, which was a marked improvement to years gone by, where he had barely been able to acknowledge the significance of the day for how much he was hurting.

That was Jake’s doing, Jason supposed.

Which was strange in and of itself.

Not because Jake cared about him, or had learned his lessons about when and how to push on Bradley’s soft spots for his own good, but because Jason just wasn’t used to having his thunder stolen right out from under him by the person that Bradley was dating.

If he had to guess, Catelyn never even bothered finding out the date to mark it for commemorating. And most of Bradley’s other girlfriends hadn’t been around for long enough to earn this kind of privilege, even if they might have been considerate enough to help him through it. Sabrina was the only one Jason would have put any faith in, but if she had done anything, it wasn’t remarkable enough for Bradley to have mentioned it at the time. In any case, the point was that Bradley had never been great at dating people who cared about him in the ways that he needed before. It was something of a marvel to see him being treated right for once.

“I wish she could’ve met you,” Bradley continued in a more subdued tone, tipping his head back to knock against the concrete behind him with his eyes screwed shut. Despite the fact that he sounded on the verge of tears, he still sighed through another quiet chuckle over whatever Jake was saying to him. “Oh, no doubt about it, she’d’ve strung you up for all that shit, but after that she’d be your best goddamn friend.”

Jason snickered to himself over the implications of that comment. He had heard a million and one stories about Carole Bradshaw over the years. She was a firecracker of a woman, who would have made Jake’s life hell for putting her son through the ringer before welcoming him into her family with open arms. Jason didn’t need to have met her to feel like he knew her. He understood that everything Bradley had to say was filtered through the rose-tinted glasses of grief, but even so, she seemed like the type of person that the world was a little dimmer without.

He had never known the version of Bradley that didn’t have this weight to carry around, these losses, but it wasn’t often that he felt the urge to wonder what kind of man his friend might have become in different circumstances.

There was every chance they never would have met.

Jason’s thoughts returned to Ice’s letter, not for the first time, in which Ice had contemplated the exact same thing.

Carole made her wish for Bradley to stay away from the Navy known a long time ago, not that that mattered much in reality. Maybe there were other worlds out there where he had listened, where Mav’s intervention had been successful, where Bradley simply had no militaristic aspirations. Just like there had to be ones where she was still alive and supported his ambition to follow in Goose’s footsteps. Perhaps there was even a world out there where Bradley crossed Jake’s path as a pilot, and they fell in love the traditional way. Jason snorted to himself at the thought of meeting Bradley as Jake’s boyfriend first and foremost. People thought he gave Bradley a hard time when the Big Feelings Reveal happened last year, but that paled in comparison to any hypothetical shovel talk he would have given if they weren’t already friends.

No one would ever be good enough for his baby brother, not even the real Bradley, who was currently squinting at Jason in confusion whilst he struggled not to laugh out loud over his own imagination.

Jason shook his head to dismiss his friend’s curiosity, popping open his own beer can afterwards and tapping it against Bradley’s. He raised it to the sky before taking a sip, a silent toast to the fallen Bradshaws.

Bradley was still speaking to Jake all that while, recounting an embarrassing story now, about how overly excited his mother had been the first time he brought a date home to ‘hang out’ after school, thinking that it was safe to do so because his mother was supposed to be working late that afternoon. She swapped her shifts with another nurse that week and caught them red-handed with his pants around his ankles. Carole’s enthusiasm to get to know the poor girl despite the awkward circumstances was, strangely enough, the only thing which saved Bradley from being dumped right there and then, though the relationship had later fizzled out in its own time.

It was a story that Jason had heard before, but not for a long time.

From the sounds of it, Bradley was hamming up the details extra hard specifically for Jake’s entertainment.

Jason wasn’t sure if Jake knew that he was present, he certainly hadn’t heard Bradley mention his arrival, but he found that he didn’t mind. He was here to lend support to his friend on one of the toughest days of the year for him, he had no need to participate in the conversation.

Chapter Text

A clatter of dishes in the kitchen as Jason shut the front door behind his date, Leila, told him that that Bradley was still up and about despite the late hour. Which wasn’t an issue, but it was less than ideal when Jason had plans involving Leila that didn’t need derailing by wasting time with unnecessary introductions.

“Still want that nightcap?” Jason asked.

“I’d settle for some water, to be honest,” Leila replied with a light, tinkle of a laugh. “That last glass of wine went straight to my head.”

Jason grinned. “One water coming right up.”

They entered the kitchen to the sight of Bradley pulling the plug in the sink. He glanced around at their arrival with a curious frown which broke into a smile at the sight of Jason.

“You’ll never guess what your m-” he cut himself off as his gaze flickered to Leila. “Oh, hi there. One sec, I’ll get out of your hair.”

“You’re good, Leila just wanted some water,” Jason replied so as not to make things unnecessarily awkward. He shooed Bradley out of his way and went about filling a glass for her as he asked, “what am I supposed to be guessing?”

“Nothing, man,” Bradley said with a chuckle, drying his hands on a dish towel before offering one to Leila to shake. “Bradley, nice to finally meet you.”

“The famous Bradley, in the flesh?” Leila grinned slyly enough that Jason had a split second to wonder whether he should have put more effort into keeping the two of them apart as he nodded her towards one of their kitchen chairs. “Jace has told me so much about you.”

Bradley laughed, delighted. “He makes up a lot of shit to make himself look better, just FYI.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Leila murmured, her smile softening into something more affectionate when she looked to Jason as she accepted the glass from him.

“So, I should,” Bradley clucked his tongue as he threw a thumb over his shoulder, already moving backwards in the direction of the hall.

“Wait, hold up,” Jason said, resigning himself to the fact that he needed to know. It would bug him for the rest of the night if he didn’t have at least the inkling of an idea as to what Bradley wanted to tell him. “Seriously, what am I supposed to be guessing?”

“Oh, uh,” Bradley chuckled to himself as he stalled in his progress across the room, turning back to face Jason with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his sweatpants. “Your mom called earlier, updated me on the latest Heather drama.”

“Fuck, don’t tell me Derek’s back in the picture?”

“He showed up at her work, with roses.”

Jason rolled his eyes. “Even when he tries it’s sad.”

“Heather hates roses, they trigger her asthma,” Bradley clarified for Leila’s benefit, smiling when she made a small ah sound in understanding. “Anyway, she told him to leave and he kicked off, so security ended up escorting him out the building.”

“That fucking guy.” Jason scoffed, mulling things over for a few seconds before he thought to ask, “she alright?”

“She will be, yeah. Val said she convinced her to stay at home a couple days, just to be safe, but from the sounds of it they’re not expecting anything more to happen.” Bradley’s eyes darted in Leila’s direction quickly, as if he was debating continuing to speak, before he added with a small grin, “I offered to rally the guys so we can scare some sense into him, but she didn’t think much of that idea.”

“Shocker.”

“Exactly. Anyway,” Bradley said again, “I’ll leave you to it.” He smiled in Leila’s direction. “It was nice to meet you.”

“You, too,” Leila agreed, waiting until after he was gone to return her attention to Jason. “I like him.”

Jason smiled, unsurprised. It took a lot for anyone to dislike Bradley upon their first impression. “Yeah, he’s alright.”

“Um, your mom calls him just to chat?”

“Yeah,” Jason laughed, only just then realising how strange that might sound without the requisite context. “He’s basically her third son. I think she likes him more than me and Jake combined sometimes.”

“That’s sweet,” Leila said, smiling as she stood. “She sounds like a gem.”

Jason hummed in agreement, but then she came into his orbit with obvious intention, and talking about his family became the absolute last thing that he wanted to do.

The next morning, he dropped Leila off at her office with enough latent charm that this would be all her colleagues talked about for the rest of the day. That wasn’t even Jason’s arrogance speaking, it was exactly what Leila reported to him after the first time she stayed the night. Chivalry came naturally to him, and playing chauffeur was the obvious solution after Leila joked about how much of a pain being on the wrong side of the city would make her commute. She hadn’t expected the door-to-door service that morning until he was toeing sneakers on and following her outside, which made it all the much more worth it. She kissed him with a furious possessiveness once she was done listing out some of the compliments her colleagues paid him later the same evening, which didn’t hurt either.

Bradley hummed appreciatively over the coffee Jason handed him after returning to their apartment, his eyes lighting up even brighter when it was followed up by a still-warm breakfast burrito.

“Fun night?” he asked once he had inhaled both, sat at their kitchen table across from where Jason had opted to hop up on one of the counters.

Jason shrugged. “She’s good company.”

“Should I bother remembering her name?”

“Don’t fucking say it like that, man.”

“What?” Bradley laughed. “When’s the last time you went on more than, I don’t know, three dates with someone?”

“Yesterday.”

Bradley snorted, seeming more pleased than put out to be corrected. “Four, then?”

“You’re worse than mom.”

“We just want you to find a nice girl to settle down with,” Bradley said, sounding sweet as pie and patronising as hell. He grinned when Jason flashed his middle finger at him. “You’re not getting any younger, you know.”

“Speak for yourself. Talking to mom alone’s risky, ain’t it? Bet you got yourself another lecture about giving her grandbabies.”

“Not this time, actually.” Bradley shrugged when Jason frowned. “I bounced some proposal ideas off her, kept her pretty distracted.”

“Proposal… as in marriage proposal? To Jake?”

“No, to my all my other boyfriends,” Bradley snarked, rolling his eyes afterwards with a little scoff. “Of course, to Jake.”

Jason stared at his friend for a long moment, unsure why he was acting so surprised when he knew that Bradley had been thinking about gearing up for this for a while now. “Y’all are really going in on the white picket fence deal?”

“Well, I don’t know that there’ll ever actually be a fence in the picture, but yeah, our version of it.” Bradley snorted over whatever Jason’s face did in response to that confirmation, and shrugged again, raising his hand to scratch at the back of his neck as if to bide his time, before he said, “I’m still putting my plan together, Jace. It won’t be happening straight away, but this is something we’re working towards, so I’m gonna need you to make your peace with it.”

Jason scoffed. “If this you asking for my blessing, you’re going the wrong way about it.”

“Nah, man, we’re a way off all that. But I want to be able to talk to my best friend about this stuff, because it freaks me the fuck out, and I can’t do that if your panties are gonna get twisted every time I so much as hint at our future.”

“I don’t-”

“Jace,” Bradley intoned with a flat, unimpressed stare.

“I just…” Jason huffed frustratedly as he spread his hands out before himself, wishing the answer for how he felt about all of this might manifest between them before he had to figure out how it put it into words for himself. “You know, this ain’t at all where I thought we’d be this time last year?”

“You think I did?”

“No, but-” Jason ground out a sigh, unsure exactly what he was so bothered about in the first place. “What’s the big rush? Don’t people usually date years first before they start thinking about the whole marriage and babies schtick? I don’t get why you’ve got to speedrun everything? Ain’t like he’s going anywhere.”

“We’ve been at this for more than a decade, Jace. I think it’s safe to say we both know what we want by now.”

That had all the potential of being the most truthful thing that Bradley had ever said.

And Jason wasn’t sure what to do with it.

The thing was that he could see the future stretching out in front of them with all the clarity of a brick wall. He had never understood how Jake did it, with his all his life plans and ambition, and now he had Bradley on board, doing the unprecedented. Jason wasn’t quite sure why that scared him, but he wanted to get past it.

“Don’t get weird about me asking this,” Jason began, prompting a laugh out of Bradley.

“Great start.”

“Shut up.” Jason rolled his eyes up to fix on the ceiling, already wishing he had kept his mouth shut. “Look, just-” he scratched at the side of his jaw and took a breath, before going right ahead and diving in head first, “you falling for Jake, that was because of the sex, right?” Bradley laughed again, but quietly, like he had attempted to stifle it. Jason dropped his gaze to meet Bradley’s with a glare, self-conscious over how his cheeks were heating up with embarrassment. “Y’all hated each other.”

“Not exactly…”

“Whatever, you thought you did. It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, right?” Bradley nodded, unashamed. “So, what, y’all were so good in bed together that just eventually cancelled out all the bad blood?”

Bradley took a moment to think, visibly fighting the grin breaking out over his face, before he said slowly, and like he thought Jason was stupid, “you know, you only really ever got the worst highlights of what we were like together?”

“What’s that mean?”

“Dude, it’s not like you were with us twenty-four seven. I know it must’ve looked like we were always at each other’s throats, but we actually had a fair few nice moments in-between all the bullshit.”

“So, what made you…?”

“I don’t know that there was any one specific thing.” Bradley sighed, looking down as he began drumming his fingers on the table. “You know, I used to be a hot fucking mess-”

“Used to be?” Jason cut in just to be an asshole, laughing when all Bradley did was flash his middle finger and continue speaking.

“-I needed someone to call me out on all my bullshit and then still look at me like I was worth something afterwards. Jake did that without even realising he was doing it sometimes. And I did it for him.”

“So, it was the hot and cold routine that made you catch feelings?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Bradley grinned, “we’re both a little fucked up that way. We got off on it a lot of the time.”

“Dude,” Jason wrinkled his nose with displeasure.

“Don’t get all precious on me, Jace. The hate sex was a big part of it. Damn sure made it so that I couldn’t ever stop thinking about him.”

“Yeah, but I’ve never gotten that. Sex is supposed to be fun, why would you want to do it with someone you ain’t even sure likes you?”

Bradley’s expression cycled through a series of emotions, before he settled on a wry, somewhat patronising smile. “Jake has a real nasty temper when the mood strikes. I’ve learned a lot about myself from all the shit he’s pulled over the years.”

“In a good way?”

“Yeah, man,” Bradley promised through another laugh. “That’s why it’d never work for me with anyone else, they weren’t him.”

Jason hummed consideringly as he processed, marvelling over Bradley’s conviction most of all. He knew, when all was said and done, that this level of devotion came from the complicated mix of time served and the unique circumstances that made things extra difficult for Bradley and Jake to become a real couple, but in that moment, he couldn’t help the flash of jealousy that struck him. Much as he had liked each of the women he had dated, he had never met anyone with whom he shared such passion. Who challenged him, or switched up his worldview, or ruined him for anyone else. He wasn’t even sure if he needed that in a relationship to make it last past a few months, or how to go about meeting such a person when it had happened for Bradley and Jake by pure chance.

“After we reconnected, Ice ended up being who I vented to about Jake most often,” Bradley added unprompted. “You know, since you weren’t an option.”

“I could’ve been!” Jason said defensively, mostly to hide his surprise. He remembered getting that kind of inkling from the letter Ice had left him, but suspecting it was different to having verbal confirmation. “You never gave me a chance.”

“I know,” Bradley agreed with a guilty chuckle. “I’m a fucking idiot, what do you expect?” Jason harrumphed, leaving that point of contention there so that they could move on to whatever point Bradley wanted to make by invoking his uncle’s name. “Anyway, he gave a lot of advice I more or less ignored because I was never really in a place to hear it. One of his favourite things to say was ‘love shouldn’t be complicated’, which always bugged the hell out of me, because he was right, but by that logic, me and Jake shouldn’t be together.”

Jason cocked his head curiously, wondering where exactly Bradley was going with this. There was a measure of enlightenment to the way that he spoke that was unnerving as much as it was reassuring.

“And then, these last few months, I realised of course he thinks it’s supposed to be easy, it always has been for him. You know, him and Sare, they met, they fell in love, got married. Forty happy years together. He used to tell their story all the time, and he’d say, ‘all you need to do is find your Sarah, son, and everything’ll come together’. He never got that Jake is my Sarah, even though things were never simple.”

Bradley took a moment to finish the last sip of his coffee, before he sighed and leaned forwards to look at Jason with the kind of openhearted sincerity that made hard truths easier to accept. Even though Jason had already technically received this advice direct from the source, it meant more now, being spoken out loud by the person that he trusted most in the world.

“You know Jake, he has something to prove to everyone. He’d never give something up just because it didn’t come easy for him, he’s too stubborn. And I- I’m so used to being burned, I expected the worst from him before he even had a chance to prove me wrong. We had to fight everything to work out, but that doesn’t make what we have any less valid than Ice and Sarah, we’re just different people.”

Bradley shrugged like he knew that his advice wasn’t actually giving Jason anything tangible to work with. Almost as if that was the point of all this, that there was no perfect template to be followed.

“He’s my compass, Jace, I’d be lost without him,” Bradley concluded. “I don’t know what you’re looking for, who your Sarah is supposed to be, that’s for you to decide. Just don’t fight it when you find it.”

Chapter Text

“Seresin,” Alvez said after waking Jason from the doze that he had settled into once they were airborne on the way home from their latest mission. The rest of the team were still asleep, and Jason couldn’t help feeling a little bit resentful before he learned why he had been singled out. “Listen, don’t freak out, but Jake’s in the hospital.”

A million different emotions burned through Jason in an instant.

“He’s fine,” Alvez grimaced. “Should’ve led with that.” Jason forced himself to breathe in and out deeply through his nose, a concerted effort to take control of himself, even with adrenaline coursing through his veins. “Davis got the call a couple hours ago; I made the choice not to pass on the message.” Alvez led Jason in glancing in Bradley’s direction, the apology in his expression dissolving into something which looked a lot closer to reproach than sympathy. “I couldn’t risk either of you losing your heads out in the field.”

Jason refused to say as much out loud, but he could respect why that choice had been made. Bradley would likely hold a grudge, towards Alvez for making the call in the first place, and Jason for not looping him in right now in this instant. That didn’t mean that Jason had to like this though, or act grateful, or anything else in between.

“What happened?”

“Engine malfunction on some training exercise. The hospital thing’s a formality, so far as I could tell. Word is, he managed a textbook landing.”

“Shit,” Jason felt himself deflate with a mixture of relief and exasperation. “Textbook landing.” He scoffed to himself. “Of course it fucking was.”

“Hey, you’re the one always saying he’s got more talent than sense.”

“Don’t mean I need him proving it.”

Alvez hummed in agreement before sighing heavily and moving to stand, no doubt so that he could go find somewhere to bed down himself for the remainder of their flight. “Want me to handle telling Bradshaw?”

“Nah, I’ve got it.” Jason nodded in Bradley’s direction, knowing that his friend wouldn’t be able to stay still as a result of his nerves until he had spoken to Jake once he found out he had been even tangentially in danger. There was by no means enough space on this plane for them to be dealing with that until they were closer to signal range. “He’ll be pissed either way, might as well leave him asleep while we can.”

“You know what,” Alvez chuckled, “I give you so much shit for how well you two know each other, but I’ve got to say it comes in handy times like these.”

“Yeah,” Jason agreed, adding when the Chief turned to leave, “hey, Alvez?”

“Mhm?”

“First time it’s happened on mission, thank God, so you get the benefit of the doubt on making a judgement call,” Jason murmured, keeping his voice low so that it sounded steadier and more even than he truly felt about the thought of having to repeat this experience, let alone with a potentially worse outcome. “You’d be best off not keeping news about my family from me in the future, even if we are downrange.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Call it a fair warning.” Alvez scoffed without giving away any real indication of how he felt about that, and raised his brows as he glanced Bradley’s way again, the obvious question left unspoken. “Just me,” Jason clarified, knowing his friend well enough to recognise when and where he needed saving from himself.

Alvez regarded Jason for a long, unblinking moment, before smirking as he nodded his understanding, and turning to walk away. True to his word, he kept his mouth shut, even after they landed and began making their way towards the team room to drop off their equipment. Jason could feel him watching as he considered his approach, but he ignored that external pressure. With all the time he had to overthink the situation, he realised soon enough that he was being too cautious and making things more complicated than they needed to be.

Once they were in the team room, Jason dumped his duffel in his own cage to free up his hands, and then slipped into Bradley’s behind him. Because he was still half-asleep and unprepared for an attack, he did nothing more than yelp in confusion when Jason wrestled him to the ground. It was over in a matter of seconds. Jason hooked his foot around Bradley’s ankle to trip him and catch him off guard, before cinching his arms around his waist and toppling him down onto one side with an arm trapped beneath his chest. From there, he rolled him onto his front and then sat on him to keep him pinned whilst he pulled out his phone to call Jake.

“What the hell, Jace?” Bradley griped through a laugh, sounding breathless and confused. His head turned from side to side as he squirmed to try and free himself without success.

“I’ve got to make a call, and I don’t need you freaking out before we know what’s going on.”

“What do you mean, ‘what’s going on’?”

“Jake’s in the hospital.”

“What?” Bradley momentarily went still, before redoubling his efforts to escape. If not for the fact that one of his arms was trapped underneath his chest then Jason would have had less of an advantage, but as it was, he just about managed to keep his position for now. “Get the fuck off of me.”

Jason stared at his phone screen, willing the call to connect with all his might, whilst in the peripheries of his vision, he realised that some of the others were watching the show from a distance with equal parts amusement and confusion. “Chill out, would you?” he said, sounding calmer than he felt. “It was just a training accident, he’s probably fine.”

“Just a training accident?” Bradley echoed, something haunted in his tone that Jason didn’t have the wherewithal to decipher when he had bigger priorities.

“Hey,” Jason said, ignoring Bradley’s upset as Jake’s face popped up in front of him, hospital equipment in the background of the call. All of the worry that Jason had been pretending he didn’t feel before now, washed away at the sight of his brother’s tired, but otherwise easy smile. “Heard your engine tried fucking you over today, you alright?”

“Yesterday, technically, but yeah, I’m good,” Jake promised. “I thought y’all spun up, I figured I’d be out of here before I heard from you?”

“Landed just now.”

Jake nodded, his eyes tightening momentarily before he asked, “Bradley with you?”

“Yeah.” Jason tilted his phone to show where Bradley was trapped beneath him, pout and all, and patted his shoulder placatingly. Bradley raised his free hand expectantly, but Jason stood up rather than handing him the phone, leaving him to sit up in his own time. “Before he takes over,” he said to Jake, “there anything mom needs to know?”

“Nah. There’s more concern about troubleshooting the engine than my wellbeing.”

Jason scoffed. “Typical.”

“It’s cool, I want to know what went wrong, too.” From the look on Jake’s face, he was probably already running logistics tests in the back of his mind, which did little to soothe Jason’s nerves, but was just like him. “They had me in overnight for observation, but really, I’m fine. I’ve got an eval scheduled for tomorrow, should be cleared to fly again sooner than later.”

“Call me after, let me know how it goes?”

“Will do.”

Jason nodded in farewell, passing the phone to Bradley afterwards without a word. He was still sat on the floor, and the moment that Jake was in sight, it was as if his entire world narrowed down to the size of the screen in front of him.

“Hey, gorgeous,” he murmured quietly, an emotional waver in his tone. “You look good.”

Jake’s laugh was hearty enough to make Jason smile as he left the two of them in their little bubble. Alvez caught his eye and nodded him over whilst the other guys dispersed, some of them leaving the room entirely where the rest went back to minding their own business.

“Not quite as diplomatic as I would’ve handled it, but I guess you got the job done,” Alvez said wryly as he crossed his arms over his chest.

Jason shrugged, not taking that as a criticism. He looked back over towards Bradley with a sigh, telling himself that – dejected as he looked hunching over the phone like that might somehow bring him closer to Jake even as they remained stuck on opposite sides of the country – this was the best kind of outcome they could ask for from this situation. Jake was fine. He would be back to work in no time. There was nothing to worry over.

Chapter Text

Jake always looked younger when he was asleep. He could reach a level of peace and serenity while unconscious that his waking self never managed. It reminded Jason of years long past. Them, as kids, running one another ragged every which way they could whilst their mother worked her parents’ ranch. Jake never quite fast enough to keep up with his older brother, their cousins, everyone that bit bigger than him. The way that he would beg for piggyback rides when he was losing steam, but still too eager to be involved to stop for long enough to catch his breath. Sprawled across the front bench of a truck as they drove back to the main house at the end of the day, slumped onto Jason’s lap, mouth open, drooling blithely away, his leg twitching every so often with how deep under he had fallen.

Five years didn’t often seem like that large of an age gap between them.

Jason felt every single second hit him like a gut punch in moments like this.

He and Bradley had just arrived home late into the evening following an inordinately long debrief of every mistake that they had made during a training roleplay. A miserable experience, which only felt twice as awful today as any other because of the double-edged sword that was them taking loss after loss against the current Green Team cohort, struggling to nail the perfect formula for success. They were both exhausted, and yet Bradley lit up with a thrum of energy the moment that he saw Jake passed out on their couch.

Though Bradley had been talking on and off about Jake visiting during his leave for a while now, with increased certainty since their last time together, Jason was a little surprised to actually see his brother in person. In part because he hadn’t been involved at all in Jake’s planning this time around, where he used to be the one Jake was here to see whilst Bradley made himself scarce, rather than vice versa. But also because his leave was scheduled to fall over their mother’s birthday by complete coincidence, and though Jake had previously been adamant about spending all of it here in Virginia, he ended up having his conscience to grapple with. There was a point where Bradley had been convinced that Jake would only have time to head to Texas, and yet here he was anyway, despite the inconvenience.

It was nice of Jake to put in the effort, Jason thought, in an unprecedented, saccharine, throw-up-in-the-mouth kind of way.

The TV was on low, playing some too bright and happy commercial for this time of night, but the yellow of the lamplight softened the entire scene, even as Jake let out an unattractive snore which had Jason fighting back a laugh.

Bradley hurried across the room; his backpack carelessly dumped along the way to free up his hands. Jason picked it up in his wake, setting it aside with his own, before toeing off his boots, one eye on his brother as the lingering concern over his recent hospital visit finally worked its way out of his system. The surprise of this ahead-of-schedule arrival hadn’t been for his benefit, he knew that, and yet he appreciated being tangentially included by default.

“Hey, gorgeous,” Bradley murmured as Jake stirred in response to the fingers gently carding through his hair.

Jake scrubbed a hand over his face with a defeated chuckle. “Hi, baby.” He raised up on one elbow to greet Bradley with a kiss before adding, “Tried waiting up for you.”

“I figured. C’mon, let’s get you to bed.”

Bradley shifted to rise from the crouch that he had fallen into as Jake sat up properly. “Woah, wait, hold up,” Jake’s hand locked around his bicep, almost toppling him over to keep him low enough that he could tilt his face to a better angle for examining. “What the hell happened to you?”

“I caught a stray elbow in training, it’s no biggie.”

Jake hummed disgruntledly, thumbing at the edges of Bradley’s black eye. “Looks painful.”

“Says the guy who survived another emergency ejection the other week?” Bradley grumbled. “I’m fine, I’ve had worse.”

“Ah,” Jake breathed out a tight, humourless chuckle, and shook his head with a grimace, “last thing I want to hear.”

“I-”

“Sit,” Jake ordered, winding around Bradley to stand with a gesture for him to take his place on the couch.

Jason sniggered to himself over his brother’s attentiveness for Bradley’s wellbeing, glancing over his shoulder to watch Jake stalk down the hall towards the bathroom. He was too mission-focused to even peripherally acknowledge Jason’s presence, which Jason might have summoned the energy to take more personally if he weren’t quite so dog-tired. After linking his hands behind his head and twisting from side to side until he felt something pop in his lower back, Jason fixed Bradley with an incredulous stare for the simple fact that he had actually done as he was told without complaint or question.

He received a resigned shrug in response.

Bradley had mentioned something about hoping the bruise would fade before Jake managed to get a good look at it whilst they had been kicking around earlier for their debrief to start, and while Jason hadn’t really thought much about why before, now he understood that Bradley had been expecting this exact kind of overreaction.

When Jake returned, it was with a small tube in hand, one Jason and Bradley could recognise the purpose of on sight. Though Bradley petulantly groaned out his displeasure as Jake crossed the room, he stayed put, not needing much scolding to acquiesce under Jake’s instruction.

“I know,” Jake said, unsympathetically shoving his way between Bradley’s knees. He dropped the tube onto the cushion beside Bradley’s thigh once he had squeezed some of the cream out onto his palm. “This helps that go away faster, baby, suck it up.”

It was weird, for Jason, to see this side of Jake.

He was the baby of the family; he didn’t often assume the role of caretaker.

“It stinks,” Bradley griped as gentle, attentive fingers smoothed around his eyes socket and across the bridge of his nose. That prompted a laugh out of Jason, which made Bradley sneak an arm around Jake so that he could flip him off.

“Yeah, well, if you’re lucky I might still kiss you better after I’m done.”

“Shared living space,” Jason chimed in on instinct.

“Literally no one asked you to stick around and watch, Jace.”

“I could be bleeding out over here for all you know,” Jason complained, oddly put out that his brother had taken so long to acknowledge his presence. Jake scoffed, and even though he had his back to him right now, Jason knew that he had just rolled his eyes. Jason tilted his head in an attempt to catch Bradley’s attention as he asked, “did you still want to get food, or am I just ordering for myself?”

“I could eat.” Bradley jostled Jake with his knees as he asked, “you want anything?”

Jake shook his head, leaning down to kiss Bradley as promised, before picking up the tube again. “I’m good. I’ll go put this away, get this shit off my hands.”

“Want your usual?” Jason asked whilst Jake did just that, finally moving further into the room himself to claim one of their arm chairs and settle in for what was left of their evening.

“Yeah, thanks, man.” Bradley shifted to sit cross-legged on the couch, his eyes drooping shut as he dropped his head back to rest on the cushion behind himself with a tired sigh. “Hey,” he said with the subdued tone of an afterthought, “do me a favour and add on a thing of fries on for Jake, would you?”

Jason frowned to himself, even as he tapped back out of the checkout screen to do just that. “Thought he said he didn’t want anything?”

“Just means he’ll end up stealing mine,” Bradley murmured, the corners of his mouth ticking up into a smile.

Chapter Text

“I just don’t get why I couldn’t sit in and watch,” Jake complained, “I’m Navy, too. Ain’t like I’m some civvy trying to sneak on base.”

“One,” Alvez countered from across the table, holding up a finger to begin list off his points with. “I’ve worked with your brother long enough now to know exactly what to expect from a Seresin sitting back and watching.”

Jason snorted to himself, hiding his smirk behind his beer. Bradley was also fighting back a laugh, though his reaction was easier to hide with Jake sat on his lap facing the rest of the team. The bar they were in was pretty packed. The team had almost not been able to secure a table together when they arrived. With Jake and Bradley showing up a few hours later than the rest of them, they had only been able to pilfer a single chair from another group to share. Jake was far from bothered by that arrangement, and much too agreeable in general, in a way that had made Jason nervous. He discovered why soon enough, after Jake took advantage of a suitable lull in the conversation to air his grievances.

“And, two, the last thing I need when the team’s running drills is one of my shooters distracted because he’s got someone to show off for.”

“I’m a distraction?” Jake asked, twisting around to direct the question predominantly to Bradley.

“Plead the fifth on that one, babe.”

“How am I a distraction?” Jake asked again, returning his attention to Alvez.

“I refer you back to point one…”

“I’d be a motivation, that’s what I’d be,” Jake insisted, earning himself a pacifying pat against his stomach from Bradley, which he ignored. “All I’m really hearing here is I had to stay home today because of this asshole?” he concluded with a sideways gesture in Jason’s direction.

“Of course it’s my fault,” Jason drawled under his breath before taking a long drag of beer.

“Look,” Alvez said with the standard measure of exasperation most people expressed when facing off against Jake’s stubbornness. “It really was nothing against you, most of what we do is classified.”

“You were training?”

“We were running drills for a potential future op.”

Jake twisted again to ask Bradley, playing dumb even though he knew, “what’s the difference?”

“It’s need to know, and you’re not.”

“Wow.”

Bradley snorted and murmured, “you asked,” as he leaned forwards to buss his lips against the back of Jake’s shoulder in the process of reaching around him to grab his drink for a quick sip.

“You know, I think y’all just don’t want me seeing you in your element. You’re scared I’d show you up.”

Jason failed to fight back a laugh, speaking over the other guys’ protests when he muttered, “Jesus Christ, Jake.”

“What?”

“You just never know when to quit, man. I’m getting flashbacks to high school football try-outs.” Jason chuckled to himself, softening his voice and raising the pitch to imitate a younger version of Jake as he quoted, “‘why can’t I just run with the ball once, Jace, I’m ten times faster than any of these guys’.” He reverted back to his own voice and continued, “you were nine, half the size of everyone else, and you weren’t even supposed to be there so mom would’ve strung me the fuck up if you even so much as broke a fingernail.”

“I was faster than all those guys!” Jake insisted, the joke going right over his head, much to the team’s amusement. “Notice how we didn’t start winning ‘til after you graduated?”

“Yeah, because Coach Marsden sucked. Willis actually knew how to do his job.”

“No, it’s because I’m better than you at football.”

“Must be nice, Bradshaw, having this snapshot of the rest of your life,” Carlisle murmured in an aside to Bradley, which Jason heard only peripherally whilst Jake was defending his pride.

Bradley smiled gamely in Carlisle’s direction, sighing heavily to himself as he leaned around Jake to place his glass back on the table. “You know, I can’t speak for high school,” he cut in before Jason could let Jake know how delusional he was. “But Jake has been training with Mav for a little while now, odds are he’s picked up a trick or two…”

“So, now your old man’s some star athlete, too?”

“No, dude,” Bradley groaned under his breath and glared at Jason from behind Jake in the way that said he had missed something. “That’s not what I-”

“Mav’s a fucking legend, there ain’t much you’d outshine him on.”

“Oh,” Jason laughed harshly over his brother’s arrogance, “okay, there’s my proof you’re full of shit. We know very different versions of the guy.”

“Yeah, see that’s because he actually likes me. He just puts up with you.”

“Sounds like a fighting stance there, Junior,” Bishop drawled, ignoring Bradley’s exasperated glare. “Care to put your money where your mouth is?”

“Anytime, anyplace.”

“You sure you can afford this, flyboy?” Haskell asked. “We bet with cold, harsh cash here.”

“Oh, believe me, I’m aware. That’s why Bradshaw’s always too broke to ever take me anywhere nice.”

“I took you somewhere nice tonight!” Bradley protested to deaf ears as the team all jeered around him. “We literally came here from a date because that’s what you wanted.”

“Alright, enough talk,” Alvez led them in standing up. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

Jake was first out the door behind him, the other few guys close behind them, whilst Bradley took his time in standing, finishing off the last of his drink before placing the empty glass on the table with a resigned sigh.

“Not how you thought your night would be panning out?” Jason asked, making a confident guess about where his frustrations lay as they headed towards the door together.

“I teed up the perfect out for you, man. We’d still be sat down if you’d used it.”

Jason snorted, “bringing Mav up? That’s an out?”

“You get him talking about his training instead of ours, he tuckers himself out bragging, I take him home early, everyone’s happy,” Bradley explained, his logic making too much sense to be flawed. “Instead, here we are,” he gestured across the parking lot to where most of the guys were lined up ready to race one another in a dead sprint, “dealing with this bullshit because you can’t keep your goddamn mouth shut.”

“Seresin,” Bishop called, “c’mon, man, fall in. Let’s go!”

“Good luck,” Bradley murmured, sounding like he thought Jason needed it as he side-lined himself by joining Carlisle in marking out an impromptu finish line.

“You, too, Bradshaw! C’mon, don’t be a coward.”

Bradley laughed and shook his head. “I’m still hoping to get laid tonight, man. This isn’t a question I need answering.”

Jake snorted to himself, looking inordinately pleased with that reaction, whilst Jason rolled his eyes, and the others laughed to varying degrees. Though he was focused on the race, his inner competitiveness amplified with Jake around due to their never-ending sibling rivalry, Jason also began mentally sifting through his roster to assess his options. Though the thought hadn’t occurred to him before, he realised now that he would probably benefit from somewhere that wasn’t his own home to sleep tonight.

The funniest part of all of this, which Jason had neglected to consider before riling his brother up, was that Jake had a much lither frame than all of the guys on the team. Not because he was necessarily weaker than any one of them, but because he needed that narrowness to fit inside the cockpit. And he had always been lighter on his feet than he looked. Bishop came in at a close second, age on his side, and Jason just about edged out the other two. Which he blessed all of his saints for, his pride unable to handle losing to anyone older or less in shape than him.

In the time that it took the others to catch their breaths, Jake bounded up to Bradley like a Golden Retriever, excitedly celebrating his win with a quick kiss and bragging like he thought Bradley might have somehow missed it.

Bishop called for a rematch that Haskell and Alvez bailed out on participating in, and whilst Jake was game to race for a second time, he was delayed in joining them at the starting line as Bradley wound his arms around his waist and whispered something in his ear. Jason could guess that it was a valiant attempt at convincing him to leave, but it made no difference. Bradley audibly groaned as Jake wormed out of his hold, and yet he was smiling as he watched him walk away.

“A warning would be nice next time,” Bishop griped as he hopped up onto one of the stools around the high-top table that they had to settle for once they headed back inside. The one they forfeited use of when they went outside earlier had already been claimed by a different group, and there were only a few seats available in this corner.

“Fuck around and find out,” Bradley said with a smug grin. “You guys wouldn’t have listened, even if I had tried to step in.”

“He’s like a goddamn Whippet.”

“Yup.”

Bradley’s grin widened as he held Bishop’s gaze, before it trailed back across the bar to where Jake was waiting to catch the bartender’s attention. After all, Jake knew how to properly assuage the egos of men equally as proud as him when it mattered. He volunteered to buy the next round the moment that he finished making a show of counting his winnings. Jason found himself watching his brother as well, more impressed than he had expected to be that Jake so thoroughly trounced the rest of them without even breaking a sweat. He was arrogant in his success, and he lorded it over the rest of them, but there was nothing malicious in it. This was no different to when he had been trying to keep up with Jason and his friends as a pre-teen, unsure of how to make his voice be heard in such a big, close-knit group unless he was showing off just a little bit.

As they watched, some random guy sidled up next to Jake and struck up a conversation.

His approach was so transparently flirtatious that even Bishop couldn’t miss it.

“Better go stake your claim,” he teased. Jason glanced over to check when Bradley didn’t respond straight away, only to find him watching Jake with a frown that seemed more speculative than anything. Bishop nudged him, as if he thought Bradley hadn’t noticed, his grin widening. “Ain’t you going over there?”

“Not unless he asks me to.”

“Seriously?” Jason said, unimpressed as his instinctual overprotectiveness began to rear its head.

“What?” Bradley replied, gaze darting away from Jake for long enough to squint at Jason, before it snapped back to Jake. “He can handle himself.” Jason took another assessing look at the guy who was still merrily flirting away with his brother, something tensing in his gut as the thought that he hardly looked the type to take ‘no’ for a complete answer occurred to him. “Jace, he’s fine. He’ll let me know if he needs backup.”

It took less time than Jason had worried it might for that promise to be proven true, but still more than he liked.

The others returned with pilfered seating, bunching in around the small table as best they could to keep the group together. Conversation picked up around them, and the only people who weren’t truly participating were Jason and Bradley. There was no delusion in this for Jason. He knew that Jake was good looking, and he knew that he received more than his fair share of attention from random strangers out and about in the world. Though Jake had never been the unfaithful type, Jason understood that more than a few of his shorter-lived relationships had fizzled out over issues with jealousy and lack of trust. It was probably a good thing that Bradley was doing nothing more than watching from a respectful distance.

Even so, Jason couldn’t help being suspicious of the stranger hassling his baby brother.

It was impossible to miss the glance that Jake threw over his shoulder when he gave up on handling this problem by himself. With laser point precision, he locked eyes with Bradley from across the room, and Bradley burst into action, much to the rest of the team’s amusement. In a matter of minutes, he was across the bar and sending that guy packing, and Jason found himself wishing that he knew what exactly he had said to have the stranger looking so cowed and small all of a sudden. Begrudgingly, Jason had to admit, it was a good system they had set up. There weren’t many ways that he could imagine that being handled more efficiently.

“I’m fine,” Jake said unprompted once he made his way to Jason’s side a minute later, bottles in hand which he quickly distributed to the others. “I had it handled.”

“Uh huh, sure. That why you called Bradshaw over for backup?”

Jake shrugged, glancing over his shoulder at where Bradley was pocketing his wallet and making his own way across the bar, carrying the remainder of Jake’s round for him. “I just think it’s hot when he threatens to kill some guy for looking at me funny.”

“Ain’t no way he said that,” Jason scoffed, knowing Bradley too well to believe he would be that direct. He let his physical presence do the talking more often than he spelled out his threats.

“No,” Jake conceded, “but we both know he was thinking it.”

There was an incredibly short lull in the team’s conversation after Jake and Bradley made the most unsubtle exit ever, before Bishop, Haskell, and Carlisle began to gang up on Jason, gushing over how cute they were as a couple like a bunch of teenagers for the express purpose of winding him up, until they eventually realised that he trying to ignore them and moved on to more interesting topics.

Alvez leaned over once their attentions had shifted, the sound of a smile in his tone when he said, “you can crash at mine tonight if you don’t feel like heading home.”

“Thanks, man.”

“Be the couch though, Tash’s sister’s staying with us at the moment.”

“The one I met before?”

“No, the older one.” Alvez paused, leaving enough of an opening for Jason to ask, before he added, “she’s single, just FYI.”

Jason huffed out a laugh, keeping the thought that the last thing he needed was Alvez and Tash for in-laws to himself as he changed the subject.

Chapter Text

It was during the long moment that Jason spent watching Bradley make coffee in the kitchen whilst humming Bob Seger to himself that he realised he had made a mistake in coming home first before heading to work this morning. He had spare clothes in his possessions cage; he wasn’t sure what had made him think changing in private was worth the payoff of seeing this. Bradley had a series of deep red welts running up the length of his spine with fingernail crescents gouged into his skin at the base of them. There were more random bitemarks along the curve of his neck than warranted counting. Faint bruises were beginning to take the shape of four fingers wrapped around one of his biceps, just above the crook of his elbow. And the curls at the back of his head were a complete riot of a mess.

Jake and Bradley were pretty shameless, but this felt like a new low to Jason.

He understood that they had sex, and he could be an adult about it, for the most part. By this point, he had had enough time to become somewhat desensitised to the idea. That didn’t mean though that he would ever, ever need to see this much evidence of what they got up to when they were alone together.

“Jesus, Jace,” Bradley snapped, flinching after he turning enough to catch sight of him in the corner of his eye. “You scared the shit out of me. What are you doing?”

“I should be asking you that, dickhead,” Jason retorted, shaking himself out of the funk he had been lost in for long enough to enter the kitchen properly. “Fucking Night Moves? Could you be any more obvious?”

Bradley at least had the decency to blush as he turned back to focus on the task at hand. “It’s a good song,” he said quietly, fighting a smile.

“It’s way too fucking early for this shit, man.”

“Coffee?”

“God, yes.”

Jason hummed appreciatively over the mug he was handed, leaning against the corner counter behind himself as he worked hard to wake up properly. From this angle there was yet more evidence that Jake had been a little too heavy handed in leaving his mark last night across Bradley’s torso. Jason sighed, heavily, wishing he didn’t need to speak up at all, and yet knowing he would regret it in the long run if he didn’t set this boundary now that the opportunity had presented itself.

“What?” Bradley prompted, as if he could sense Jason’s discomfort without him needing to say a word.

“I say this with love,” Jason replied once he had gulped down a large, fortifying sip of coffee. “You’ve got to go put a shirt on before I fucking barf.”

“Yep,” Bradley agreed straight away, the redness dusting his cheeks making quick work of spreading down the back of his neck as well. He picked up the other two mugs in front of him to take when he left, a sheepish grin stealing across his face. “Yeah, I was just thinking I should go do that.”

Jason purposefully left his mind to go blank as he went through the motions of getting ready for the day ahead. If he didn’t think about it, this insight couldn’t hurt him. He banged on Bradley’s bedroom door on his way back past a few minutes later, the only heads-up that he would offer before he left him to make his way to work. Bradley had his own transport, he was more than capable of driving himself, but if he lingered too much on the goodbye this morning then he wouldn’t just be late for training, but also torturing himself unnecessarily. Jake was flying to Texas later today, to check in at home before he headed back to North Island, and then they wouldn’t be seeing him for a while.

Between Jake’s trip to the hospital, the fleeting nature of this visit, some random guy hitting on him blatantly enough to necessitate Bradley intervening, their respective possessive tendencies, and the fact that they were both staring down the barrel of months-long deployments which would make their contact even more sporadic than usual, it was small wonder that they had taken their emotions out on the other so blatantly last night. Jason couldn’t hold that against them. He just longed for years gone by when he had been safe in the ignorance of not knowing how feral the two of them could act as he headed for the front door.

Five minutes later, just as Jason’s resolve to leave without him had been about to manifest, Bradley slipped into his passenger seat. “Fifty bucks says he’s missing his flight,” he said with a smile whilst Jason started the engine.

“He’s got mom’s cooking to look forward to, I’ll take that action.”

Bradley snorted like he knew something Jason didn’t, which Jason made a point of not overthinking. “You got in early this morning,” he murmured after spending most of the drive in companionable silence. Jason hummed to acknowledge that Bradley had spoken without giving him an actual answer, mostly just to annoy him. “Did you meet someone?”

“Crashed at Alvez’s.”

“Ah. Appreciate that.”

Jason hummed again, eyes fixed on the road in front of him and mind decidedly blank. He latched onto the first absent thought he had that didn’t relate to his brother to keep their conversation going. “Pretty sure he was angling at setting me up with Tash’s sister…”

“The younger one, or the older one?”

“Older. She’s here sightseeing for the rest of the week, apparently.”

“In need of a tour guide, huh? You get her number?”

“I have enough in-laws on the team already, man.”

“True,” Bradley laughed. “Still. You never know…”

“She’s looking for a husband. That ain’t me.”

“It could be.”

“Don’t start.”

“Dude, I’m just staying, it could be.” Bradley shrugged when Jason rolled his eyes in his direction. “Jake tell you he thinks he’ll be up for promotion soon?” he said as they joined the short queue of cars waiting to get through the barriers on base. “The whole squad’s looking to be fast-tracked into command positions, apparently.”

“What does that mean for him?”

“Good things, I think? I’m not sure exactly how it’ll work, but with him basically being Mav’s shadow and everything, he’s pretty confident he’ll have his pick of stations once he makes rank.”

“That mean he’ll be coming back this way?”

“I don’t know. You remember he used to say he’d move closer to home when he got the chance?”

“Uh huh,” Jason said, waiting until after their IDs had been checked and they were waved through the barrier to add, “mom’d die happy if he ended up in Corpus Christi.”

“Yeah, exactly. But he also really likes North Island. He hasn’t actually said as much yet, but I think he’s kind of wishing he could stay there. Maybe not forever, but for a while longer.”

“Oh.” Jason swallowed down a pang of disappointment, even though that made complete sense to him. California had never felt further away than it did in that moment. “What about you?”

“It’d be weird moving back there after all this time, but I’m not ruling it out.”

“What the fuck are you gonna do in North Island?”

“They’re always looking for BUD/S instructors…”

Jason pulled into a parking spot with a sense of resignation, cutting the engine and twisting to look his friend in the eye. “You’ve put some thought into this,” he said, trying to keep the accusatory notes out of his tone as he reminded himself that this would be a positive development if – when – it happened, even though it would mark the end of an era.

“It’s been on the mind lately.” Bradley shrugged. “I think I’d be good at it.”

“Well, yeah. But you- what happened to having your own team one day?”

“That was always more your thing.” Bradley sighed his way into a crooked smile, looking off into the middle distance for a moment before returning to meet Jason’s gaze. “I don’t know. It’s not like I want to give up operating, I’m just not sure how many more goodbyes I have in me.”

Jason deflated back into his seat as he took stock of that admission, accepting it as best he could, even as a part of him began to grieve. It was hopelessly self-centred, but all he could think about was the things that he would be losing. They had been a package deal for so long that Jason wasn’t sure he knew how to function on his own.

“Goddammit,” he said out loud, unintentionally working to lighten the mood as a belated realisation hit him in the process of them walking inside.

“What?”

“I fucking hate California, and you’re talking about moving there.”

Bradley burst out laughing, and much as Jason hated to think so, he knew that that was just another tick in the pro column for this plan so far as he was concerned.

Chapter Text

“There’s Mr Man-Whore back home now with another new dance partner,” Bishop drawled with his eye glued to the scope of a rifle.

“It’s creepy how close you’re watching that apartment,” Bradley replied, even as he dutifully filled out their logbook.

They settled in this sniper hide a few days ago, and had another few still to pass before this mission would be over. The four of them – because they had been lumped with the new kid to babysit on this overwatch detail – were tracking patterns of the locals living and working in this area in preparation for a diplomatic event that was taking place in the courtyard that their hide overlooked at the end of the week. It was getting to the point where tedium was setting in, where they had spent just a fraction too long living on top of one another in cramped confines, and it felt like they had lost themselves in purgatory.

“No one should be that flexible. How are they even doing that?”

“Dude, seriously,” Bradley intoned, his tone deservedly weary, “for all our sakes, move on.”

“They’re right in the window! I can’t not see it.”

“You have over a hundred windows in front of you, pick a different one.”

Jason took the opportunity to stretch as their bickering devolved, rolling out his neck slowly and then his shoulders, working through each independent muscle group down his arms until he reached his wrists and fingers. His lower back was killing him, but they switched off positions in shifts for a reason. He could ignore it until the kid came to relieve him.

Bishop made a point of reeling off the activities occurring in a few different apartments for Bradley to jot down, as if to deflect attention from his ongoing interest in that particular resident’s sex life.

They were expected to write everything down as they mapped out the mundane and largely uninteresting lives of the civilians that they had been tasked with watching. The other half of the team were out there on the ground with the rest of the taskforce they had been attached to, and there were other hides positioned in different buildings covering the corners of the courtyard that theirs couldn’t from this vantage point.

“Okay,” Bishop said a few minutes later, still preoccupied by the same subject as before. “But is it, like, a gay thing to-”

“Bishop,” Jason warned without taking his eye off of his own scope, “if I were you, I’d think real careful before finishing that question.”

“It wasn’t going to be anything bad,” Bishop insisted with the kind of ignorant defensiveness that he always adopted when he knew he was pushing the limits of his teammates’ patience.

“Everything you’ve said about the guy since we first logged him has been borderline offensive, why would this be the exception?”

“Maybe I’m just curious?”

“You thinking about switching sides?” Bradley asked with nothing more than plain curiosity in his tone.

He winked at Jason when he glanced up and around to squint at him. In part, Jason knew, to assure him he had this handled, and in part, to pre-empt him for what kind of tangent he planned on taking them down. They hadn’t been able to discuss Bishop’s questionable behaviour during this stakeout with anything more than sideways looks and a hell of a lot of mindreading, but Jason knew that their patience had been wearing equally thin. It was nothing that Bradley wasn’t used to, which was a bigger problem than Jason was prepared to confront in this particular setting, but at least he knew how to get his own back when it came to low-grade and largely unintentional bigotry from someone that they considered a friend.

“No,” Bishop spluttered out an almost horrified laugh, “the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Simple question, man. Didn’t mean nothing by it.”

Bishop chuckled a little more awkwardly this time around. “Trust me, you’re doing a standup job holding up that side of the team’s diversity quota all by yourself.”

“Okay. What’s your deal with this guy, then?”

“I just don’t get it,” Bishop said. “How is he getting this much action?”

“Oh, you’re jealous?”

Jason failed to fight back a laugh over Bradley’s tone, but he continued to stare down the scope in front of him, searching for anything which looked like it might be out of the ordinary.

“No, not like-,” Bishop groaned frustratedly as he struggled to explain himself. “It’s just, dude’s got game, clearly, but where are all these guys coming from? He’s basically had a different one every night of the week? How’s he getting ‘em all to come home with him?

“He’s probably not doing all that much, to be honest.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” Bradley snorted, “look at him, and look at the guy he’s brought home.” After Bishop, inexplicably, felt the need to refocus his scope on the window to do just that, he hummed consideringly. It was pitiful behaviour. “Who approached who?”

“Isn’t it kind of offensive to cast one of them in the role of the woman?”

“It’s offensive you thought that’s what I was doing by asking that question…”

“Fair enough,” Bishop agreed after a weighted pause where it seemed as if he was regretting even starting this conversation. “So, how do you know he was approached?”

“Dude’s been getting fucked like he does it for a living all week.” Bradley paused contemplatively, before adding, “to be honest, he might, now that I think about it…”

“Nah, it’s his place,” Jason chimed in. “They’re the ones doing walks of shame in the mornings. He’d never bring ‘em home if he was getting paid for this shit.”

“True,” Bradley conceded, the sound of a shrug in his tone. “Anyway, guys like that, girls too, they sit and wait for people to come to them, because someone always will. They don’t chase themselves.”

“Speaking from experience there, are you, Bradshaw?”

“Is this something y’all need to be talking about in front of me?” Jason asked, uninterested in participating in this any longer if Jake’s name was about to be mentioned.

“Obviously,” Bradley said in answer to Bishop, before adding for Jason’s benefit, “and I’m not talking about Jake, Jace. Be real, you know him better than that.”

Bishop laughed. “So, Jake’s the chaser then? Interesting.”

“Not exclusively. He’s just not afraid to go after what he wants when he wants it. Dude over the road, I’d bet any money you couldn’t say the same for him. And that’s not a bad thing, for the record. We’re all different for a reason.”

“Starting to sound like a fortune cookie there, Bradshaw,” Jason muttered, earning himself a quiet snort from Bradley.

The new kid returned with plastic bags full of food in the lull of conversation that passed as a few different observations were thrown out from both Jason and Bishop for Bradley to note down. Hot and freshly cooked meals were a luxury they didn’t often get with these kinds of postings. Jason wasn’t convinced that the kid appreciated it as much as he should be.

A stakeout was far from the most conducive environment for them to put him through his paces, especially when he had never been to sniper school, but Alvez had wanted him to try and learn something from Jason and Bradley. Jason wasn’t sure why, or when, or how he became the responsible one, but Bradley had been transparent about his lack of interest in taking on a protégé without even needing to say so out loud, so who else was there to do it? Bishop was their fourth simply because of some bet he had lost against Haskell. He treated the confinement as a punishment in comparison to the groundwork taking place, and had nothing meaningful to teach the kid apart from bad habits.

Wyatt was alright, really, for one of the greenest recruits that Jason had ever seen drafted.

Most of the guys who were that naïve and eager washed out of BUD/S in the first week. Wyatt hadn’t though, and Alvez clearly saw some sort of potential in him, since he was the one with final say on their team’s selections.

“So, who did do the chasing?” Bishop asked once the four of them had eaten, swapped positions, and were settled in for the next shift, one of his arms hooked behind his head as he took the time to stretch out his spine. He picked up the conversation again like no time had passed, so it was no surprise that it took Bradley a moment to realise that Bishop was talking to him.

Bradley chuckled slowly as he settled into his perch, skilled enough at what he did that Wyatt looked like a toddler imitating his older brother next to him. “I can think of, like, a billion more interesting things to talk about right now,” he muttered under his breath.

“Since when?” Bishop asked, swapping out his arms to begin stretching the other one. “Last I checked, your man’s your favourite subject?”

“He’s moping, in case you didn’t notice,” Jason said, concentrating upon cracking his own back now that Wyatt was situated in his place. Bishop frowned at him in confusion, clearly having missed all the signs that were neon lit in Jason’s view, whilst Bradley rolled her eyes and muttered a denial under his breath. “How many days has it been now?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Since what?” Wyatt asked, even more confused than Bishop, both because he had missed the beginning of this conversation, and because he didn’t know the rest of them very well yet.

“Since I last talked to Jake,” Bradley said, raising his head for long enough to shoot Jason a disapproving glare before he trained his focus back down his scope again.

“What, you didn’t say goodbye before we spun up?”

“Couldn’t. Our comms windows haven’t lined up for a while, I’m still waiting for him to text me back.”

“Shit, man,” Bishop laughed sympathetically. “I don’t know how you fucking do it.”

“Right, I forgot he was in the Navy, too,” Wyatt said to himself at the same time, before he glanced around himself uncertainly like he was trying to assess the wisdom of speaking his mind. Because he was curious to find out what the kid had to say, and knew Bradley was focused enough for the both of them, Jason allowed this momentary lapse in security. “Must be tough trying to settle down in this life?”

“Can’t say I’ve ever tried it,” Jason said.

“Pretty sure he was talking to me there, Jace,” Bradley murmured.

“Yeah,” Wyatt confirmed. “I mean, not that I don’t appreciate the insight, Seresin, but I was looking for actual advice.”

“You didn’t want to ask me?” Bishop said as he headed over to the minifridge in the corner of the room.

Jason barked out a laugh at that question, raising his hands to catch the bottle of water Bishop waved in his direction as he asked, “when’s the last time you had a steady girlfriend?”

“Does Ruby count?”

“Who’s Ruby?” Wyatt asked.

“His favourite stripper,” Bradley said. “And, no, she doesn’t, Bishop. You literally only ever see her when you want a lap dance.”

“That’s not true, we’ve grabbed breakfast together a bunch of times.”

Jason cocked his head as he frowned at Bishop, stunned speechless in a way that very rarely happened. In the corner of his eye, he saw Bradley raise his head to look at Bishop with the exact same measure of surprise, whilst Wyatt squinted between the three of them like he wasn’t sure who was confusing him most.

“Are you paying her to do that?” Jason asked after a much too long delay, unsure what answer he wanted to get as he made eye contact with Bradley to confirm that they would circle back to debrief this later.

“No, dude. I enjoy her company, fucking sue me.”

“Unless you want to waste the next ten years with your head in your ass, or end up like one of those two,” Bradley said to Wyatt, sounding like he was making a concerted effort to keep an even tone as he moved them all onwards, “I’d go talk to Carlisle when you get the chance.”

“Why him?”

“He settled down with none of the dysfunction,” Jason said, grinning to himself when Bradley flashed him his middle finger before returning his attention down his scope.

“What dysfunction?”

“That’s a story for another time,” Bradley said, with the definitive air of someone intent on ending a conversation. “Jace, the grandma on the ninth floor’s home about an hour earlier than usual.”

Jason hummed in acknowledgement and jotted that down in the logbook, kicking at the back of Wyatt’s stool afterwards to remind him, “eyes down the scope, young grasshopper. No gossip for you if you can’t multitask.”

Bishop snorted as he settled back into a seat near Jason. “Says the fucking king of gossiping.”

“Kid needs to learn how to do as I say, not what I do.”

“Yeah, that’s just what we need,” Bradley agreed with a sarcastic laugh, “another Jason Seresin.”

Chapter Text

Jason pushed the cap that he had tipped over his eyes whilst he was napping back atop his head at the sound of a commotion outside their sleeping quarters. It was a narrow, rectangular room on the second floor of the safehouse that they were working out of for the duration of this mission. There were cots laid out at regular intervals against the two longest walls. The wooden double doors which led out to the hallway sat at one end, with a communal ensuite bathroom on the other. Jason’s gaze darted over where Bishop, Carlisle, and Wyatt were laid out sleeping on their own respective cots before he moved to stand and investigate further, only to freeze partway in confusion when Bradley burst through the door.

“It’s called protecting our cover, Brad,” Sawyer was saying as he followed, hot on Bradley’s heels.

A veritable storm cloud swarmed around Bradley’s head, a British asshole was chasing after him, and Jason had no clue how to react.

This entire operation had been cursed from the get-go, precisely because of that asshole’s presence.

Technically, it was a joint taskforce with the SAS formed to apprehend a target.

Literally, it was Bradley’s worst nightmare.

Jason had been counting down the minutes to impact from the moment they arrived here a week ago and were greeted by the smiling face of the man otherwise known as Bradley’s Worst Mistake. There was a time where their fleeting romance had been a big joke that the entire team lorded over him – hooking up with a tall, blond man named Jason Sawyer was far from his smartest move, after all – but it had quickly lost its lustre. Even though the others only had the faintest outlines of the full picture, they had been able to sense when the romance soured. They had never been exclusive, and yet Jason still remembered exactly how toxic Sawyer became over text after they agreed to stay in touch and before Bradley blocked him.

Despite the cover of professionalism that he liked to hide behind, it was obvious Sawyer had been of the belief that they would pick up right where they left off with this mission, even though they hadn’t spoken in years. And despite Bradley’s blatant disinterest, it was obvious that Sawyer still held out some degree of hope for something more from him, even now.

From the look on Bradley’s face, Jason had to guess that he had finally pushed his luck this evening.

Jason tucked one leg beneath himself as he settled into a sitting position on his cot in preparation for providing backup if Bradley needed it, and pulled the cap off of his head, using the motions of breaking in the brim even further as a means of distraction whilst he waited to see what happened next.

Bradley strode across the room in the direction of the ensuite, only stopping when Sawyer grabbed his elbow from behind.

“Would you grow up?” Sawyer snapped. “You should be thanking me for thinking on my feet so the whole op didn’t get blown.”

“I suggest you remove that hand before you lose it,” Bradley replied, a thousand layers of fury hidden in his tone.

“Alright,” Sawyer released him, palms going up defensively as Bradley span on his heel to stare him down. “Listen, it’s-”

“If you have to make out with your partner to protect your cover, you’re not half the operator I thought you were.”

Jason pursed his lips to himself as he took stock of that revelation, trying in vain to fit the context of them kissing into the stakeout they had gone out on. Haskell or Alvez would hopefully have more information for him later that would make it make sense if Bradley didn’t feel like sharing, but that didn’t help him with understanding how to act in the here and now. Jason resented even more now the fact that he hadn’t made the cut for tonight’s excursion.

“When did you get so dramatic?” Sawyer asked with the roll of his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest. “It’s one kiss. If you don’t want it to mean anything, it doesn’t have to-”

“It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Fine, then it never happened.” Sawyer shrugged like he didn’t care, and yet there was a mirthful glint to his eyes which unsettled Jason, even from this distance. “You don’t even have to tell the boyfriend.”

Jason could sense Bradley’s growing ire from across the room. He could tell that his jaw had clenched without even needing to see it. His hands formed into fists, though Jason knew that would be more from an attempt at restraint than because he was about to start swinging. A heartbeat later, Bradley span on his heel again and continued to stalk across the room without another word, storming through the doors down the opposite end to disappear into the bathroom.

Jason stood to intercept Sawyer when he moved like he was about to keep following him. “You’d be best off keeping your distance,” he warned, impressed with himself for how even toned he sounded. Sawyer’s head cocked like he was weighing up the threat Jason represented, and yet all he did was scoff and walk away in the opposite direction after Jason added, “don’t give me a reason.”

Once he was satisfied that Sawyer was gone for now, Jason headed for the bathroom himself, making more noise than came naturally to him as he opened the door to avoid startling Bradley. He was furiously brushing his teeth as Jason popped a hip against the ceramic sink next to the one he was using, and barely even looked up to acknowledge his arrival.

“You good?”

Bradley spat out his toothpaste, raising the brush back up to his mouth as he replied, “I feel like I want a fucking acid shower.”

Jason tutted disappointedly. “Then all you’ll have left is the memories.”

“Not in the mood, Jace.”

“Catch me up? What happened?”

“Wait for the AAR, should made for a good read.”

“I’d rather hear it from you…?”

Bradley sighed heavily through his nose, taking all the time in the world to run his brush under the tap and put it away before finally facing Jason. He looked upset, though Jason couldn’t tell whether that was with himself, Sawyer, or the situation as a whole. “The target entered this known kink club and me and Sawyer were sent in after him.”

Jason scoffed. “Why you?”

“Why do you think?” Bradley huffed out a humourless laugh over the face Jason pulled. “Yeah, I’d say it was all typecasting, but it was also bad luck we happened to be in the car closest to the door. Alvez tried stepping in, said anyone could do ground recon, but to be honest, it would’ve taken too long for us to swap positions. And then Haskell offered to go in my place, but Sawyer started in on all this BS about us two knowing how to blend in best, which is just fucking awesome to have go out over the radio, and the Brits’ leader pulled rank.” Bradley scrubbed a hand over his face, linking his hands behind his neck afterwards as he breathed out a slow sigh. “All his improvising lit a fire under Alvez, he’s ripping into their command now.”

“As he fucking should be,” Jason said, annoyed that the Chief hadn’t worked harder to shut this all down before it even happened.

“It was amateur hour, Jace. He kept trying to get me to talk to him off comms and that shit’s probably what got us made in the first place.”

“Well, next time they want the sniper doing ground recon, I’ll go, and we’ll see how he gets on laying one on me.” Bradley grinned weakly, but his amusement was short-lived. He dropped his gaze to his feet as he moved to mirror Jason’s posture. An uncomfortable beat of silence passed before Jason worked up the nerve to ask, “what are you going to tell Jake?”

Bradley’s head raised slowly, a challenging look in his eyes that hardened once he met Jason’s gaze. “Are you asking that as my friend, or his brother?”

“Which one do you need it to be?”

Bradley sighed, chewing at the inside of his cheek whilst he mulled everything over. “I can’t keep this from him,” he said eventually.

“Then don’t,” Jason said, trusting that Bradley knew what he was doing. He couldn’t say with complete certainty that he would have taken the same stance in his position, but there were a lot of ways in which Bradley could be considered the brave one of the two of them. “He’s gonna be pissed.”

“He has every right to be.” Bradley scoffed, dragging a hand through his hair as his posture sagged in defeat. “Fuck, of all the fucking people we could be working with.”

“Does Jake even know about him?”

“Of him, yeah. Kind of. You know what he’s like, I never went into detail.”

Jason nodded to himself, expecting as much. “Probably for the best,” he said. “Never did learn how to share, did he?” Jason reached out to clap Bradley on the shoulder cajolingly. “He’ll understand.”

“You think?”

“Ain’t like you did it on purpose.” Jason shrugged his way into hooking his arm around Bradley’s neck and began to lead him out of the bathroom. “C’mon, it’s late. Let’s go scrounge up some food, we’ll figure the rest out tomorrow.”

Chapter Text

“Dad knows,” Jake said when Jason answered his call.

It was all he needed to say, if they were being realistic, to convey the problem he was dealing with, how he was feeling about it, what he needed from Jason, and why exactly he had called him and not Bradley in this moment.

They were sat in a diner booth with Wyatt for company, ticking off yet more local hotspots for the kid as they worked to make him feel at home in Virginia.

Jason sighed as he contemplated what approach to take. Avoiding Bradley’s gaze, he eased back into his seat and drummed his fingers against the table between them in an effort to expel some of the frustration that he was now feeling without having it come across in his tone.

“I didn’t even know he was back in the country,” Jake added in the lull where Jason should have said something helpful and proactive. “Apparently, he’s been doing the rounds, checking in with everyone the couple last weeks or so, so, you know, he’s heard it from a few different people…”

“But not you?” Jason asked.

“No.”

“There a reason for that?”

“I-” Jake sighed. “I don’t know. I just didn’t want to deal with it, I guess.”

“Well, you have to now,” Jason said, purposefully being an asshole, because he could sense from Jake’s tone, and what he wasn’t saying, that there were countless reasons for why he had created this problem for himself, and that he just didn’t want to admit as much out loud.

He knew his brother, after all.

Far better than they both liked sometimes.

“Gee, thanks, Jace, never would’ve guessed that without your help…”

“Hey, I ain’t the problem, man. Don’t start getting-”

“Sorry,” Jake said, backtracking on his attitude already. “Sorry, I, um,” he sighed again, “mom said she’d call if he stops by, but if it gets that far, then it’s gonna turn into a whole thing and-”

“She won’t say shit, Jake, you know that,” Jason promised, purposefully not looking in Bradley’s direction even though he could see in his peripheries how his head had cocked with obvious concern. “She’ll just say it’s between you and him.”

“Like that’ll help anything.”

“Well, what else do you expect her to do?” Jason asked with a half-suppressed laugh, feeling equal parts frustrated by and for Jake having to deal with this. It wasn’t like he could relate. Every issue Jason had with their father paled in comparison to anything Jake had ever experienced.

“I don’t know,” Jake said again. “I just-”

“Wait, you weren’t-” Jason cut himself off as he realised all of a sudden that he would need to tread carefully with Bradley across the table listening in. The way his back was ramrod straight, even as he chatted half-heartedly with Wyatt, was enough to tell Jason that he was drinking in every word that he could. “It ain’t a secret?”

“No! No. It’s just…” Jake scoffed, “you know how they feel about each other.”

Jason sighed, because he did.

He still remembered the day Bradley met his father with painful clarity. It was after their first full rotation as freshly drafted SEALs, in a rare bout of downtime that Jason felt obliged to spend at home to make up for lost time with his mother. Bradley tagged along on that trip since he had nothing better to do, whilst Anthony had been up to something in Texas that he never really shared details on, medically retired by then, but still incapable of sitting still. Jason remembered receiving orders to join his father for a friendly poker game one evening, not realising until after the fact that Anthony only wanted him around to live vicariously through whilst he and his old teammates relived their glory days. Bradley joined the game with an open mind, prepared to form his own opinions on Anthony. Even though Jason did what he could to prepare him ahead of time, it was the kind of thing that never compared to seeing it in person. Anthony drank and gambled away most of the evening, gradually becoming louder and more belligerent, but it wasn’t until Jake’s name came up in passing that his true self was revealed.

The exact moment that Anthony lost Bradley’s respect, Jason could pinpoint to the millisecond.

Anthony was too blind to his own propaganda to recognise the truth of the matter, but like Jason, Jake joined the Navy in spite of their father and everything he stood for. He liked to think that Jason followed in his footsteps because he admired him, and he had never been impressed by the world of aviation. After one particularly vicious jibe at Jake’s expense, Bradley did the one thing that no one, not even Jason, had been expecting: he stepped up in Jake’s defence. Jason realised afterwards that he should have known better. Bradley and Jake had done enough to cement their mutual dislike in his mind by that point, but Bradley wasn’t the type to sit around and pretend like he wasn’t also out and proud when that kind of gauntlet was thrown down in front of him. It was a red flag to a bull, which only made more sense now that Jason knew how deep and irrevocably Bradley had always loved Jake.

That was the first time that Jason accepted he would gladly lay his own life down to protect Bradley’s.

It was the first time that Jason saw just how small and insignificant his father was in comparison.

And it was when Jason first realised how much more selfless Bradley was than him.

Through every subsequent run-in of theirs over the years, Bradley maintained an air of indifference about Anthony, never questioning why he was still a part of the family in the first place when every other Seresin merely tolerated his presence. Until Anthony would invariably say something pigheaded either to or about Jake, at which point Bradley doubled down on his position against him in a masterclass of pettiness. He flaunted his feminine side at family gatherings like he wanted Anthony to start a fight, taking on his ire to deflect it away from Jake whenever they were all in attendance, allowing Seresin nieces and cousins to paint his nails, playing princesses, and on one particularly memorable occasion, wearing a miniskirt to a Fourth of July barbeque after losing a bet to cousin Paul. Over a few years he purposely took advantage of their lax dress code standards at work to grow out his hair so that it was long enough for braiding, before giving that look up for a mullet. And every chance he had to talk to Jason when only Anthony was in earshot, he reminisced over intentionally too-graphic stories about his one-night stands with other men. He had an arrogant, fuck around and find out what’ll happen if you take a shot at me attitude that he adopted whenever Anthony’s resentment became a little too blatant, which Jason hadn’t been brave enough to start emulating until after he saw how pathetically his father responded to someone who wasn’t scared of him.

And yet… Bradley was still the one who held out the most hope of all of them that Anthony might one day come around. He couldn’t help himself, his weak spot was father figures. After the tragedy of losing Goose too young to really remember him, and the rocky relationship he struggled through maintaining with Mav, it was no real surprise that he wished for something better, easier, more wholesome for the people who mattered most to him.

If only Anthony had earned that kind of optimism.

“He’ll come out with some bullshit about how this is just a phase for him.”

“It ain’t.”

“Yeah, I know that and you know that, but you remember how smug he used to act whenever Bradley brought his girlfriends around. That’s gonna be his first fucking argument against us being together, ain’t it?”

“Do you?” Jason said instead of agreeing with Jake, some deeply ingrained instinct from a lifetime of knowing how his brother thought telling him there was a bigger issue here for them to work through than his fractured relationship with their father.

“What?”

“Know that?”

“I don’t-” Jake cleared his throat, “what?”

“Hang on,” Jason moved to stand with a small, suppressed sigh. “Back in a sec,” he said to Bradley and Wyatt, offering them what he hoped was a reassuring smile before he headed outside. Jake tried speaking again whilst Jason was walking, which he shut down with a pointed hum, waiting until he was seated on a bench across the road facing the diner to speak again. “It ain’t a phase, Jake,” he murmured as he leaned forwards to brace his elbows against his knees. “Bradshaw ain’t built like that.”

“Yeah…”

“C’mon, talk to me.”

“I’m the only guy he’s ever properly dated. What if…?”

“Jake, we’ve already had this conversation. He never seriously dated other guys because they weren’t you.” The lengthy silence Jake brooded through over the phone line was enough to have Jason feeling nervous. “Y’all are solid, right?”

“I think so.”

“You think so?”

“I-” Jake sighed gustily through the phone. “I thought we were good. Great, even. You know, we settled into a groove and figured ourselves out, but then that fucking guy kissed him, and now there’s all this bullshit with dad going on, and you know, we’re starting to hit all kinds of milestones I never actually thought we’d reach, and I-” Jake took a breath, “I don’t know. I love him so fucking much it’s stupid, but I’m scared I’m going to end up losing him anyway.”

“I think the distance is starting to get to your head,” Jason murmured, adopting a tough love approach. Jake’s insecurities were valid, his concerns about Bradley’s commitment issues weren’t baseless, and he had every right to resent each of the problems their relationship had been butting up against, but that didn’t mean there was any need to indulge the way he was spiralling around them. “You’re making mountains out of molehills, and treating him like some dirty little secret you don’t want dad to know about. You’re being an idiot.”

“I-”

“Stop self-sabotaging,” Jason insisted. “He’s crazy about you. You ain’t got nothing to worry about.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“I mean it, Jake.”

“I know! I know,” Jake insisted. “I swear, I used to be able to fucking deal with never seeing you.”

Jason snorted. “C’mon, dude, be real. You ain’t gonna break my heart being honest here.”

“I do miss you too, Jace…”

“Ain’t the same though, is it?”

Jason couldn’t even find it in himself to feel bothered by the lack of an argument from Jake in response to that. He had come to understand and respect exactly where he came in the pecking order these days. And he was glad, if he was being honest. All Bradley had ever deserved was someone to love him as unreservedly as Jake did. All Jake had ever deserved was the same in return.

“Do you want me to talk to dad?” he asked after a short paused, to distract them both as much to refocus them on the crux of the matter.

“No, I’ll do it.”

“Do you want me to be there?”

“Yeah,” Jake laughed, a little too bitterly for Jason’s liking. “But fuck knows when you’ll be home next and this can’t wait. Don’t worry, I’ll get it figured.”

Jason hummed in understanding. “Keep me posted?”

“Will do.”

“And loop Bradshaw in, would you? He’s gonna be a fucking nightmare to deal with ‘til you talk him down.”

Chapter Text

“Hey,” Jason said, sidling up next to Naomi, the translator whom they had been working with on their latest mission. They were finally on their way home, which seemed like the safest time for an intervention. He used the cover of grabbing a can of beer from the plane’s communal cooler to make it less awkward that this was the first time he was directly speaking to her since they started working together. “Not for nothing, but you should know Bradshaw’s spoken for.”

“Yeah,” Naomi huffed out a short laugh. “Don’t worry, he already let me down gently.”

“Oh,” Jason grimaced, feeling a little embarrassed over being beaten to the punch like that, “sorry.”

“No, it’s cool. He was pretty chill about it. And it’s obvious he’s really into the guy he’s dating, so it’s not like I could even really feel disappointed.” Jason focused on opening his beer, close to wishing he hadn’t even bothered trying to spare her feelings now. “Uh, could you do me a favour though?” Naomi asked before he could go back to minding his own business.

“Sure?”

“Just point out which members of the team are available so I don’t risk making an even bigger fool of myself?”

Jason snorted and pointed to himself first, “chronically single.” He gestured to Haskell next as he worked around the plane from where they were standing, “married with a third kid on the way.” After skipping over Bradley, he pointed to Carlisle, whom he was talking to, “engaged.” Alvez came next, mid-conversation with Davis and another of her subordinates, “separated, technically, but it’s on-again, off-again complicated.” Finally, he came to Bishop, “and, honestly, I have no fucking clue. Last I heard, he had this weird, open-relationship thing going on with this stripper he was seeing, but I don’t know that that shit really counts…”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“You guys are in better shape than I thought you’d be.”

Jason barked out a laugh. “If you say so…”

Naomi made a show of slowly looking Jason up and down, her grin turning the kind of sleazy that made him want to laugh over being on the receiving end of for once in his life. “What makes you chronically single, as opposed to the regular kind?”

“That is a long fucking story.”

“Good thing we’ve got nothing but time?”

Jason pursed his lips contemplatively, glanced around the plane again to check that no one was paying them any undue attention, and tipped his head towards a quiet corner where they could take a seat together with a modicum of privacy. Naomi grabbed herself a fresh beer from the cooler before following along, plopping down next to him and leaning back against the side of the plane to make herself comfortable. She kicked out her legs to cross them at the ankles and cracked open her drink, looking to Jason afterwards with an expectant stare.

“It’s kind of hard finding a nice girl that my mom’ll approve of to settle down with when this is the life I live.”

Naomi snorted unsympathetically and cocked her head to gesture down the plane. “Those guys all seem to have managed?”

“Yeah,” Jason agreed good-humouredly. “Only, Bishop’s shit doesn’t really count as a relationship when he’s technically paying her to hang out half the time. Tash, she used this metaphor about the job being Alvez’s actual wife and her being the mistress when she asked for a divorce the first time around, and no offence to them, but that ain’t exactly changed since they started things up again for this latest go round, so call me a sceptic, but do you really see that working out in the long run?”

“Okay, fair enough, but-”

“Carlisle and Shannon, they’ve only been together for, like, two, three years? And sure, they’re happy now, but only time’ll tell whether they’ll be able to hack this long-term.”

“Now I want to call you a sceptic.”

“Yeah, well, she’s a surgeon, so she’s got her own crazy schedule to keep her busy, but…” he trailed off into a shrug to show off his uncertainty.

“Uh huh, okay. I guess I can give you that one.” Naomi took a sip of her beer and then squinted sideways at Jason as she asked, “so what’s the problem with Haskell’s wife?”

“Well-”

“Oh, my God, I was kidding!” Naomi laughed loud enough to earn them a few curious, but passing glances. “You actually have a problem with her?”

“No, not- Scarlett’s great, it’s just…” Jason huffed out a defeated laugh himself, feeling like an asshole even before he said this out loud. He lowered his voice conspiratorially as he explained, “people say you shouldn’t stay together just for the kids for a reason, and now they have a third one on the way.”

“Wow.”

Jason huffed out another laugh, downing half his beer, before he muttered, “you asked.”

“So, are you going to rag on Bradshaw’s relationship next, or are you the kind of asshole to give him a free pass just because he’s gay?”

“He’s bi, for the record,” Jason corrected out of habit. “And Bradshaw’s the worst of the bunch, I promise you that.”

“He seemed pretty loved up to me?”

“Right,” Jason snorted, “he is now. Him and Jake took around a decade to get to this point though, and it was a messy fucking road along the way, believe me.”

Naomi hummed contemplatively, staying quiet whilst she considered everything that Jason had told her. “So, what I’m getting from this,” she said eventually, “is that you’d rather just stay single than risk failing like they all are?”

“Beats getting your heart broken.”

“I’m not so sure,” Naomi said, smiling at him again more cryptically this time. “I don’t think any one of them would go back and choose not being with the people they love over what they’ve ended up with, even if it’s not as perfect as it could be.”

“Oh, I’ve been around the block enough to know perfect’s just a pipe dream. That really ain’t what I’m looking for.”

“Just… someone mom approves of?”

“Pretty much.” Jason shrugged when Naomi looked at him like she was surprised he had conceded that point so easily. “I ain’t looking to make my life more difficult than I need to bringing home someone she’d hate.”

“Got high standards, has she?”

“She thinks Bradshaw and my brother are soulmates, so that really depends on your definition of ‘standards’.”

Naomi chuckled, shaking her head to herself as she murmured, “just when I thought there was hope for you.”

“Hm?”

“You’re kind of a bitch, you know?”

Jason barked out a laugh and tipped his beer at her in acknowledgement of that assessment before making a point of finishing it. “You want another?” he asked rather than having to tell her she was right.

“Sure, yeah.” Naomi took another sip of her current drink as Jason stood. “And then, when you get back, you’re going to tell me exactly what kind of women your mom approves of.” Jason looked down on her with a confused scoff, but before he could question her curiosity, she rolled her eyes. “I want to help, Seresin. I’m a pro at matchmaking.” She waved for him to carry on as she ordered, “now, go get my beer. Seems we’ve got our work cut out for us, finding you a soulmate.”