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“Hey, Bradley. Not sure if you’re flying out today or tomorrow but, uh. Figured I’d play it safe and call you now. Hope the flight’s not too bad. Maybe you’ll luck out and get a Navy pilot, huh? Heh. Anyway. If you get a chance to call me when you land, it’d be really great to hear—”
Bradley cuts off the voicemail and tosses his phone onto the nightstand before letting himself drop backwards onto the bed, splaying his limbs over the soft, fragrant sheets with a groan. It’s a good bed, he thinks with satisfaction, running his hands over it. Even the texture of the decorative cover is pleasant to the touch, a smooth silky sheen to the fabric that feels as good as it looks.
This was definitely a good idea.
Bradley tips his head back, closing his eyes and letting the gentle drift of the air conditioning play over his tousled curls and stroke cool fingers over his sweaty forehead. It’s warmer here than in California and even walking from his taxi to the hotel lobby had been enough to leave his skin dewy with sweat. He’ll get up and shower in a bit, he tells himself, and then he can nap. It’s been a long day, with the travel, the two-hour flight delay, and the picturesque but very long drive from the airport to the hotel.
And of course, he hasn’t really been sleeping well, not since—
But that won’t be a problem anymore. Not here in this beautiful room in this beautiful place, with the beach stretching long and golden a few steps from his door and the shimmer of the ocean beyond it. He just needs a quick nap, and then he’ll shower and head over to the bar and see if he can find some company, or just chill with a drink—shake off the dust of the journey and the dull ache that’s even now radiating from his shoulders and throbbing in his sore ribs.
Bradley shifts, spreading a hand over the tender locus of the worst of the pain, and for a moment the pressure feels like the tug of his harness, like gravity reaching up with clawed hands to wrench him away from the desperate billow of his parachute unfurling over his head—
He sucks in a deep, careful breath, pushing past the discomfort in his ribs. All that time spent sitting still today in cabs and airplane seats hasn’t done him any favors. He’s just stiff. He’ll nap, and then he’ll shower and stretch, and he’ll be fine.
He probably should get under the covers, but he lets his eyes drift shut and breathes in the gentle comfort of the room around him, letting the softness and the delicate fragrance of the air freshener lull him into a gentle sleep.
Three hours later, he’s showered and wearing his favorite shirt—dark blue, with sprays of yellow-orange flowers—leaning against the bar with a drink in his hand that burns gingery and spicy in his throat.
He’d liked the look of the hotel bar the moment he walked in, all airy whites and blues that probably look incredible in the sunlight, with broad windows sweeping from floor to ceiling spilling light onto the sand outside, moonlight glimmering distantly on the sea beyond.
Inside, little teardrop lamps hover at tasteful intervals; their soft yellow glow glints warmly in the shrewd brown eyes of Mara, who’s tall, with dark hair tumbling down her back in sleek ringlets, and who was interested but intriguingly unimpressed by Bradley’s casual oh, I’m an aviator. US Navy.
She’s on vacation from New York (“I work in analytics”) and is only here till the weekend, but she seems quite happy to spend some of the little time she has left in Puerto Vallarta on Bradley without reading anything into it, which suits him just fine. Maybe this will end in one of their hotel rooms and maybe it won’t; either way, she’s good company and he’s in no hurry, even if his artful slouch against the bar isn’t really doing his ribs any favors.
Bradley asks what Mara does on weekends and takes another slow, savoring sip of his drink. Its warmth sears down his throat but wisps away to nothing before it can touch the cold little knot in his chest.
He’s getting distracted; that won't do at all. He bites at the inside of his mouth and leans in a little closer to Mara, trying to hear her better over the buzz of conversation—
“Just the michelada for now, thanks, darlin’.”
The voice is right behind him, cutting through the soft ambient sounds of the bar. Bradley freezes, his glass arrested halfway to his mouth. The easy drawl, alight with that ever-present smile, the faint note of that familiar peppery aftershave… no. It can’t be.
Bradley lowers his glass and slowly, like he’s trying not to spook a predator, turns to his right.
The bar lights glint off honey-gold hair and sparkle in cool green eyes as Jake “Hangman” Seresin leans one elbow on the bar, deploying the charm of his sharp-toothed grin at the bartender, who’d smiled pleasantly enough at Bradley but is now directing a much warmer smile at Hangman.
Typical, notes the calm little pocket of Bradley’s mind not held frozen in shock.
Hangman hasn’t seen him yet. Bradley could shuffle away, could just nudge Maya—no, Mara—further down the bar, turn his back on what must surely be an apparition conjured by his tired brain and go back to what’d been a fairly pleasant evening.
He shifts his weight on his feet, prepared to do exactly that—
And instead finds himself straightening up from his slouch, setting his glass on the bar, and saying, “Hangman? The hell are you doing here?”
Hangman, who’s just turning away from the bar, drink in hand, stops dead and turns slowly to face Bradley; his face is blank with shock, and the sour-hot suspicion that had stirred faintly in Bradley’s mind dies as quickly as it arose. Surely not even Hangman is that good an actor.
Fleeting micro-expressions chase each other over Hangman’s mobile features: shock, surprise, a bright spark of something that surely can’t have been pleasure, and then, unmistakable, a brief but definitely annoyed scowl before it’s all smoothed out, packed away behind that too-bright, too-sharp smile.
“Well, I’ll be!” Hangman crows, drawl thick in his voice, turning fully to lean against the bar and regard Bradley with an exaggeratedly shocked expression. “Bradshaw, as I live and breathe!”
Bradley rolls his eyes. “That wasn’t funny the first time, Hangman.”
Hangman leers at him. “Not to you, maybe.”
Bradley’s grip tightens on his glass, ginger burning in the back of his throat. “What are you doing here, Hangman?” he repeats, trying not to grit his teeth.
Hangman raises his eyebrows, smile turning frosty. “Ah, my mistake,” he drawls. “I forgot you’re the only one allowed to book hotels and find travel blogs.” He cocks his head and then raises his glass to his mouth for a long sip. “Who’d you go with? Mexico Edit or Sunburnt Sojourner?”
A flush blooms in Bradley’s cheeks. “Sunburnt Sojourner,” he admits.
Hangman chuckles. “Well, even a stopped clock’s right twice a day.” He nudges Bradley in the ribs with a pointy elbow; Bradley tries not to let the wince show. “Now, aren’t you gonna introduce me to your friend?” He aims a sunny smile at Mara, who’s looking between the two of them, amused.
“Clearly you two know each other.” She’s giving Hangman a distinctly appreciative look over the rim of her glass.
Hangman returns it. “Sure do,” he drawls, and extends a hand past Bradley. “Jake Seresin, callsign Hangman.”
Bradley ignores the brush of Hangman’s arm against his shirt as he shakes Mara’s hand and takes in a few deep, subtle breaths, trying to soothe the spiky little flare of irritation that’s burst to life in his chest. It would probably help if every breath didn’t carry with it the warm spice of Hangman’s aftershave.
He sighs through his nose. “Hangman, meet Mara.”
“Callsign,” Mara repeats, interest gleaming in her bright, intelligent eyes. “You’re a pilot too?”
Bradley hides behind his drink as Hangman and Mara make light, easy small talk. He’s not sure why he’s so annoyed: he’s always been able to brush Hangman off before, and if anything, the events of the last two weeks should have made Hangman less irritating—their last conversation, at the Hard Deck before they departed for their respective leaves, had been positively cordial. Even Hangman's smile had been different, less the baring of a predator’s teeth and more an invitation to share the joke.
A different smile sears across Bradley’s vision for a moment: bright and sweet and transparently relieved, Hangman’s face crinkled with joy with his hair sweat-tousled and his eyes turned golden-pale in the light of the setting sun…
Mara’s bright laugh shakes him out of his thoughts and he tugs his attention back to the conversation, only to have his annoyance compounded by how well Hangman and Mara are getting along. Mara, he notes sourly, seems quite interested in Hangman being a Navy pilot.
Not exactly like he can blame her. Hangman’s laughing, now, that sharp delighted laugh that Bradley’s heard echoing down corridors and in classrooms and on carriers for years. He’s leaning on one outstretched arm, drink in the other, gesturing at Mara as he talks—without so much as a drop sloshing out, of course. The rim dusting the glass is smeared messily away in one spot; there’s a matching daub of bright orange at the corner of Hangman’s pink mouth. Bradley licks absently at his own lips.
And then Hangman is straightening up, reaching out to shake Mara’s hand again. “Well, I’ll leave y’all to it,” he says, favoring her with another one of those blinding smiles. “Rooster,” he adds, and when he turns the smile on Bradley there’s something sour staining it that Bradley can’t quite put his finger on. Before he can pin it down, Hangman has patted him obnoxiously on the cheek and swaggered off. Bradley watches him make his unhurried way down the bar, trying to tell who he’s here with, but though Hangman stops at a table to say something that makes it bloom with laughter, it doesn’t seem like they’re people he knows.
“Well,” Mara says awkwardly, and Bradley startles. “I should get back, Kate’s probably looking for me.” She drains the drink he’d bought her and salutes him with the empty glass before dropping it on the bar. “See you around,” she says with a faint smile, and then she’s gone.
Bradley scowls and turns back to glare at Hangman, who’s found a new victim at a completely different table and is now carelessly draped over one of the tasteful little white chairs. He’s not even looking at Mara. Typical.
It’s a couple of hours later that Bradley’s walking back to his hotel room, grimacing at the damp grit of sand in his shoes and distinctly irked to be walking down this corridor as alone as he’d been when he left for the bar; as alone as he’d been at the hotel restaurant and then on the beach afterwards.
Well. At least he had a nice walk.
He’s standing at his door, prying his keycard out of his wallet, when the guest two doors down says, “Aw, c’mon now!” in a very familiar drawl.
Bradley screws his eyes shut, beseeching every deity he knows for patience, and then turns to glare at Hangman, swaying a little and frowning intently down at his keycard, which seems to be giving him some trouble.
“Seriously?” Bradley asks of the universe, rhetorical and despairing.
Hangman looks up when he hears Bradley and smiles, broad and too wide and a little loopy.
“Bradshaw!” he exclaims, vowels stretching broad and syrupy in a way that tells Bradley he likely hasn’t left the bar all evening. Bradley frowns: Hangman loves an audience and always has, but Bradley knows how he drinks—a couple of those awful hoppy beers he likes is usually more than enough to loosen him up, and he very rarely goes looking for more.
“Aw, what’s that face for?” Hangman demands, a petulant whine in his voice; he’s slumped against the doorframe now, eyeing Bradley between long slow blinks. Bradley swears he can almost see him sliding down the frame.
“Fuck’s sake,” he mutters, and marches over, snatching the keycard out of Hangman’s hand and swiping it aggressively over the lock, which beeps apologetically and clicks open. Hangman whoops, echoing and too loud in the quiet of the corridor.
“Pipe the fuck down,” Bradley hisses, manhandling him through the door. Hangman giggles, listing dangerously into Bradley and almost toppling them both.
It’s like trying to prop up a wet noodle, but Bradley finally manages to bundle Hangman into the room; he shuts the door just in case Hangman decides to start hollering again and propels him, tripping over his own feet, to the bed.
“Awful forward of you there, Rooster,” Hangman sing-songs, right in Bradley’s face, his breath ripe with overpriced beer. Bradley rolls his eyes and deposits him on the bed. It doesn’t take much with the way he’s swaying: one light push is enough to topple him.
Hangman hits the mattress, bouncing lightly and somehow managing to sprawl aesthetically, like landing on the bed had been his intention all along. He spreads his arms out before tucking them behind his head and smirking, loose and lewd, at Bradley.
“I do like a man who takes charge,” he hums, and Bradley snorts, crouching down to deal with the boots that Hangman is definitely too drunk to bother with.
“I think you have me confused with Maya,” he says, picking the shoelaces loose. Jake wiggles his toes when his feet are liberated and Bradley curls a hand over each foot to hold it steady while he peels off Jake’s boring-ass gray socks.
“Mara,” Hangman corrects abruptly, and Bradley winces. Right.
“Surprised she’s not here,” he says, instead of giving Hangman the satisfaction. “What, did your whiskey dick scare her off?”
When he straightens up, socks and boots in hand so he can tuck them out of the way, Hangman is leering at him.
“You spend a lot of time thinking about my dick, Rooster?” he croons, voice pitched low. Bradley scowls, trying to will down the furious flush climbing up his throat.
“You fucking wish,” he says lamely, and then goes off to toss the boots in a corner and then duck into the bathroom to find a trash can for Jake to puke in if he needs to later.
When he comes back out, Hangman has somehow managed to slither out of his pants, which are lying in a crumpled heap on the floor beside the bed. The man himself is sprawled out on top of the covers in his shirt and boxers, face burrowed in a pillow.
Bradley stares at him for long enough to realize that Hangman’s actually fallen asleep and then sighs, tucks the trash can by the bed, and then retrieves Jake’s phone from where it’s fallen on the floor and plugs it into the charger coiled on the nightstand.
Hangman doesn’t stir; Bradley watches his back rise and fall for a few breaths before he slips quietly out.
Safely back in his own room, he closes the door, sighing out gustily through his nostrils and letting himself thump back against the door in defeat. So much for two weeks of peace, he thinks bitterly. How like Hangman to find a way to get under Bradley’s skin even here, apparently without even trying.
It’s a bright, beautiful morning, even if Bradley’s eyes are itching with tiredness behind his sunglasses; he’s never slept well his first night in a new bed and exhaustion still drags at him despite having slept in. Usually he’d try to be up to catch the sunrise, but it’s the west coast—sunsets are more spectacular anyway.
He shoots off a quick text message (flight was fine, call when I’m back) and then closes his eyes and leans back in his deck chair, enjoying the pleasant burn of the sun on his sweat-damp skin. It’s far along enough in the day that the pool is starting to get busy, chairs filling up on either side of him and the irregular splashing of indifferent swimmers mingling with the low hum of conversations cut through with bright laughter.
He opens his eyes at a particularly loud splash to scowl from behind his sunglasses at its source: Hangman, cutting through the water with clean, powerful strokes, muscles rippling in the morning sun. How Hangman has the wherewithal for swimming when he should by rights be nursing the hangover from hell, Bradley doesn’t know, but there’s no trace today of the dazed-eyed, unsteady man who’d struggled to get his door open. Hangman had sauntered over to the pool with all his habitual prowling grace, beach towel tossed over his shoulder and sunglasses perched on his tawny head; he’d paused to regard Bradley with a wide, mocking smile before he’d tossed his things onto a deck chair and executed a textbook dive into the water.
He’s swum five laps since, the last one no slower than the first; Bradley watches as he finishes his lap and then frowns, suspicious, as he floats lazily over to Bradley, pushing the hair out of his eyes with an exaggerated flex of his biceps, before crossing his arms over the lip of the pool to rest his chin on them, smirking.
“Not getting in, Rooster?”
There’s no way he’s not aware of what that pose does for the definition of his shoulders and arms.
“Some of us don’t feel the need to show off to strangers,” Bradley retorts.
Hangman cackles, dimples popping in the creases framing his sharp smile.
“It’s cute you think that describes you in any way,” he tells Bradley, before pushing off from the side of the pool. Bradley determinedly doesn’t stare at him, at the golden skin and rippling muscle under the shimmering surface of the water, the freckles on his shoulders and the powerful flex of his thighs and ass.
Movement on the other side of the pool catches his eye and he looks up to see Mara drop her bag and towel on a deck chair; she sees Bradley and waves before her attention is caught by Jake, who’s floated over to her. Their laughter drifts across the pool and Bradley grits his teeth before pushing to his feet and tossing his sunglasses onto his deck chair before diving smoothly into the water.
Jake calls something to him as he surfaces, shaking the water out of his face and slicking back his hair. Bradley flips him off as he makes his way to the end of the pool to start his own laps.
He’d been planning to swim anyway. The timing is just coincidence.
Even with the air conditioning turned up seemingly all the way, it’s still warm in the car. Bradley sighs and tips his head back against the seat, trying to ignore the headache pounding in his temples. He’s grateful he had the foresight to book transport back to the hotel, at the very least. Even if he should have been suspicious of the front desk agent’s immediately cheerful “We can send a car! There’s another guest that needs one too!”
In hindsight, he’s not sure why he was surprised when he’d trekked all the way up to the view point, feet blistering in his shoes from three hours of hiking, only to find a familiar figure leaning against the railing, obnoxious backwards baseball cap and all.
They hadn’t even been able to see the sunset he’d hiked all the way up there for, in the end—it had been too overcast. He watches Hangman flick gloatingly through all the pictures he’d taken, as if he had anything more to show for all his dedicated photography than heavy-jowled clouds in the steadily deepening purple of the sky.
Eventually Hangman stops looking at pictures, swiping over to smirk down at something Bradley can’t see.
“I have a table at El Cisne tonight,” he announces with spiteful glee, like he knows Bradley had tried and failed for three days to get a booking.
Bradley grits his teeth; his headache intensifies. “Good for you,” he grits out.
Hangman twists around to look at him; he’s glowing, warm with a burnished tan from days spent wandering around under the November sun.
“Aw, Bradshaw, did you not get a reservation?” He tuts patronizingly. “Let me guess: you just tried the website and then gave up.” He shakes his head, mock sorrowful. “See, this is why you’re never gonna get ahead in life.”
“They were booked up.” Bradley’s temples are pounding now, the hot sun-baked air in the car soupy and sluggish in his lungs.
“Had a table for me,” Hangman points out, smugness in every line of him. Only the blisters throbbing on Bradley’s feet stop him from asking the car to stop so he can just walk back to the hotel.
“Congratulations,” he grinds out.
“Thanks,” Hangman says lightly, spinning his phone in his hands. “You know,” he adds, contemplatively, “I might be persuaded to be magnanimous in victory.” He leers at Bradley. “For the right price, of course.”
For fuck’s sake. “I don’t want your reservation, Hangman.”
“And I ain’t offering,” Hangman chirps, shit-eating grin having now well and truly taken over his face.
Bradley’s too fucking tired for this. He sighs and rolls his head back to stare up at the roof of the car, pinching the bridge of his nose like that’ll help the headache any (it doesn’t).
“I’m not in the mood for games, Hangman,” he mutters. “Just say what you’re saying.”
There’s a pause, nearly imperceptible if Bradley didn’t know Hangman as well as he does, and then, in a much lighter tone, Hangman says, “I’m saying I might be persuaded to share the reservation with you.”
Bradley drops his hand into his lap, swiveling his head to stare at Hangman again. He’s settled back in his seat, hands resting easily on his spread thighs, a little smile playing about his mouth. He’s not even looking at Bradley.
“Share the reservation.”
Hangman hums. “Sure. Seems a shame to waste it.”
“You want to… you want to have dinner. With me. Why?” The headache is building to an unbearable crescendo.
Hangman smiles lightly. “Because I’m a paragon of generosity? Because we’re cribbing from the same travel blog and I’m a completionist? Take your pick.”
“And that’s enough of a reason for you?”
“Why not?” Hangman questions. He looks Bradley up and down, unmistakably suggestive and indubitably facetious. “I’ll even throw in the price of dinner.”
Later, Bradley will be hard pressed to put his finger on which part was the most breathtakingly insulting: the easy, mindless nonchalance of the offer, the way Hangman’s rubbing it in his face, the counterfeited interest at the prospect of actually sitting across a dinner table from Bradley.
The fact that Jake had just blithely offered to buy Bradley dinner at one of the most expensive restaurants in the city, as a joke. Like it was—like Bradley was—
“No thanks,” Bradley bites out. The car is crawling slowly along the broad, sweeping road that leads to the hotel. Not long now, thank god. “Unlike you, I’m not interested in being the consolation prize.”
Jake has straightened out of his slouch, warned by the snarl in Bradley’s tone. “Unlike me,” he repeats, voice low. His eyes are intent on Bradley and green, so green, in the golden tan of his face. Bradley’s traitorous brain offers up the memory of those eyes in the faint glow of a rising sun, staring out of an unsmiling face. You give ‘em hell.
“That’s right, Dagger Spare,” Bradley sneers, heart pounding in his throat and vision swimming with the pain throbbing in his temples. “Is your ego really so huge that all the glory hounding last week wasn’t enough to feed it? It wasn’t enough that you were the big damn hero who swooped in to save the day so now you’ve decided to score your points some other way?”
With almost comically fortuitous timing, the car coasts to a stop at the hotel doors. Bradley throws himself out of the car, barely wincing when the blisters on his feet throb in protest, and marches up the stairs to the lobby, the slap of his steps on the marble echoing the pounding in his head, vision burning with afterimages of the golden glow leaching out of a tan face to leave it sick and pale.
Something is behind him. Behind him in the cold and the dark, something he can escape if only he can run fast enough, but his feet drag like wet clay, the air thick and sluggish and clinging to his clothes, his hair, his face, with wet fingers that claw into his shoulders to pull him down—no, to pull him back—he needs to get away, why did he come here—what the hell were you even thinking?!—the ground falls away from under him and he’s falling, winded and on his back in the snow, and there’s someone above him, faint and far away, a small lonely figure in a sea of white, and he has to get to it, he’s not fast enough—he claws at the air but his body is weighed down, leaden, there’s not enough air, there’s not enough time, he’s too slow—I’m sorry, Goose—
I’m sorry—
Bradley gasps awake, the sheets churned around his body, sticky with sweat and crumpled under his clawed hands. His breath, jagged and rhythmless, stutters in his lungs for several endless seconds until he gusts out a thick sigh and collapses back onto the mattress, fingers and thighs cramping.
His sweat is cooling stickily on his hot face, his neck, his light tank sticking to his back. The air conditioning shirrs a cold draft over his skin and he shivers; the sheets are all tangled around his legs and it’s a few moments before he’s able to kick them free so he can lunge, twisting his body, for the nightstand and his charging phone. His hands are trembling as he navigates over to his voicemails.
Hey, Bradley. Not sure if you’re flying out today or tomorrow but, uh. Figured I’d play it safe—
Bradley cuts it off after a few seconds—it was enough to slow the gallop of his heartbeat, to banish the specter of that looming dread at his back. He drops his phone onto the nightstand with a clatter and scrubs his hands hard down his face, grimacing at the rasp of stubble against his palms and the slick unpleasantness of sweat that’s making him more and more uncomfortable the longer he sits here.
He yanks the last clinging remnants of the sheets off his body and stands to shuffle into the bathroom, where he takes a long piss and then washes first his hands and arms and then his face. The bright citrus of the soap cuts through the last of the thick haze; he splashes his face liberally with water and takes a moment to run a damp towel over his chest and arms. Much better. He catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror as he turns to leave the bathroom, a flashing impression of damp hair and his tank all askew. Well, it’s not like he’s got company to be presentable for tonight.
He’s pulling his sheets straight, wrinkled but obliging him by stretching reasonably taut over the mattress, when a door slams shut in the corridor outside. Bradley stills, listening, and over the gentle hum of the air conditioning he hears heavy footsteps shuffling past his door and fading away down the corridor.
He stills, pillow in his hands, frowning. There’s ten rooms in this corridor. It could be anyone. And anyway, this is a hotel; it’s not like they’re in a dorm with a curfew. People come and go. It could be anyone—but something tells Bradley it’s not.
On impulse, he swaps his sweaty tank for the t-shirt he’d left draped over a chair, tugs on his jeans, and shoves his feet willy-nilly into his sneakers before plucking his keycard out of the slot and slipping out of the door. He follows the quiet nighttime sighs of the ocean to the little patio at the end of the corridor and, just like he thought, there’s a figure sitting hunched over in one of the cane slipper chairs, moonlight frosting the familiar broad shoulders and glinting off tousled blond hair.
Jake lifts his head when Bradley opens the door to the patio, a slow, wary movement that freezes when he sees Bradley, before he lets out an unamused scoff and turns back to the ocean. Bradley pauses, but Jake doesn’t tell him to fuck off, so he drops into the chair next to him, both of them facing the heaving silver-black of the water beyond the white strip of sand before them.
For a few moments, it’s quiet, the only sound their breaths, the wash of the waves, and the creaking of their chairs as the cane settles. Then Jake sighs and sits back.
“Go back to bed, Rooster,” he says.
Bradley hums, making sure to keep facing the ocean and not be too obvious about sneaking sideways glances at Jake. He looks rumpled, the familiar sharp edges of him filed down till they’re worn and ragged. It’s a little unsettling, almost obscenely intimate and vulnerable; Bradley cuts his gaze away but then finds it drifting back again, unable to help himself. Like if he looks away too long, the wavering shadows coiled in the corners of the patio will slither out and swallow Jake whole.
“I’ll go back when you do,” he offers lightly, and Jake laughs, a sharp loud crack that cuts like a slap through the peaceful quiet of the night around them.
“Give me a fucking break, you hypocrite,” he snarls, and Bradley jumps, startled by the unrestrained venom in his voice. His mouth is a thin bitter twist, his eyes shadowed and stormy in the pale moonlight.
“Jake,” Bradley says slowly, and Jake sneers.
“Come out here like you think you’ve got shit to tell me. The fuck were you doing awake, huh?”
—too slow—I’m sorry, Goose—
Bradley swallows. “I got up to pee,” he says; his voice is thin to his own ears. Jake scoffs and drops his face into his hands; the silence stretches unpleasantly and Bradley shifts, stilling as the chair croaks protestingly.
“How was El Cisne?” he asks at last, and Jake grunts into his hands.
“Who’d you go with?” Bradley tries again, when nothing more is forthcoming, and Jake groans.
“Fuck’s sake, Bradshaw,” he grates out, scraping his hands down his face. “Who do you think I went with? How many fucking people d’you think I know in this place?”
It’s a wicked twist of an unexpected blade: Jake at that table surrounded by shining cutlery and exquisitely crafted tasting plates, face cracked into that blinding smile as he flirted with the waitstaff, until he was served and left to eat alone. Bradley remembers the extensive wine list on their website, the promise of a tequila flight. He wonders how often it was offered to Jake, and how often he said yes.
Remembers the slow drain of color from Jake’s face when Bradley had said it wasn’t enough that you were the big damn hero and they’d both known what he meant was you weren’t enough.
The image sours in his stomach, a sick wave of regret rising up; Bradley swallows it down. I’m sorry. But the words clog in his throat even as they turn the air bitter around them.
Jake sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Get outta here, Bradshaw. Leave me to my glory hounding and go get your beauty sleep. Fuck knows you need it.”
It’s a deliberate blow and it hits its mark—it leaves Bradley hollow, cored out, an open wound into which the shame, thick and acrid, can pour uninhibited. The words stick in his craw, choking, I’m sorry, I’m sorry but all that leaves his mouth is a thin breath, sour and useless.
He rises on shaking knees. If he can’t give Jake that, he can give him the solitude he asked for. Jake doesn’t stop him.
At the door Bradley pauses. “Don’t stay up too late,” he tries, and Jakes grunts without bothering to look up. Bradley takes one last look at him, a dark, still silhouette against the moonlit sea, and then slinks away.
*
When he walks past Jake’s room the next morning, the door is open, housekeeping staff bustling in and out, and Jake’s bag is no longer on the luggage rack.
It doesn’t matter. Bradley’s checking out tomorrow anyway.
Bradley lets his flip flops swing lightly off the fingers of one hand as he makes his way slowly up the beach; the low slopes of the Hotel Santa Maria, rising gently just beyond the treeline, are a distinct contrast to the chrome and glass elegance he’d left behind at the Paradise Sands this morning, but when he’d dropped his bags in his room, with its warmly decorated interiors and bright patches of color, he’d felt some unspoken tension loosen in his shoulders.
And it’s even better on this little curl of beach, right at the hotel’s doorstep and embraced by the cove it sits in. There’s a few people in the water, a handful of bright beach umbrellas fluttering in the soft breeze, but it’s quiet; a young mother is reading aloud to two curly-haired little girls who’ve abandoned their sand castle to listen, open mouthed, to the gentle tones of her voice. Bradley lets himself pause, lets an old memory pang in his chest, and then lets it out with his breath. Down by the water there’s a bunch of teenagers splashing each other, their laughter echoing along the beach, and beyond them a few swimmers bob like colorful little buoys as they drift to and from the shore.
Bradley idly tracks one of them, watches the steady rhythm of his arms as he cuts powerfully through the blue of the water until it’s shallow enough for him to stand. Bradley catalogues the flex of his shoulders and pecs as he gets closer, the warm golden tan of his skin, and then the swimmer shakes the water out of his hair, lifting a hand to sweep the dark blond strands back from his face—
Oh shit, Bradley thinks, just as Jake looks up and their gazes catch.
After the debacle of that last night at the Paradise Sands, Bradley knows he has no right to expect Jake to be pleased to see him. Still the deep chagrin that ripples over Jake’s face stings, and the fact that Jake doesn’t bother to hide it smarts even more.
Jake snorts and scrapes a hand through his hair. Bradley tries to ignore the flex of his bicep. “I shoulda guessed,” Jake mutters. He directs a sneer at Bradley, but even that feels half hearted. “You know, the Sunburnt Sojourner had this place down for Day Four. Late as usual, huh, Bradshaw?”
“I—I wanted to take my time,” Bradley stammers, still a little wrong footed from seeing Jake, from the way the water is running down his shoulders, drops clinging and shimmering in his chest hair.
Jake smirks. “Ain’t that what I said?” He shakes his head, visibly brushing Bradley off. “Well. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble avoiding me. Stick to your usual pace and we’ll be just fine.”
He brushes past Bradley and is already halfway up the beach when Bradley finally manages to blurt out, “Wait!”
Jake pauses and for a moment Bradley thinks he’s going to leave anyway, but then he turns around, crossing his arms over his chest and raising an eyebrow, that damnable smirk licking at the corners of his mouth that never fails to make Bradley want to punch his teeth in. Bradley wishes he would put a shirt on.
He draws a deep breath. “I—I’m sorry.”
The second eyebrow raises, slow and dramatic, to join the first. “You’re sorry?” Jake tips his head to the side, eyeing Bradley up and down with a dismissive sneer like he’s looking for something he already knows he won’t find. “Just out of curiosity, Bradley: do you even know what it is you’re sorry about?”
Shame burrows uncomfortably under Bradley’s skin; the afterimage of Jake, that night, still burns behind his eyelids: rough-edged and haggard, with shadows in his eyes that he’d made no effort to hide. And yet he’d been impossible to look away from, like Bradley's gaze had been forced to him by an invisible, punitive hand: look at the mess you made.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” Bradley blurts, and then winces at himself; it’s presumptive in the extreme, like Bradley has any right to believe Jake cared that much—but Jake’s face flashes with surprise and then goes still. “About—you doing it for the glory,” Bradley continues. “I should’ve—I didn’t mean it.”
Jake’s eyes are shuttered; when he speaks, it’s with all the habitual brightness leached out of his voice. “Then why say it?” measured and neutral like the answer doesn’t matter.
Bradley remembers Jake, in the back of a cab after an underwhelming sunset, voice light and unconcerned: seems a shame to waste it.
“I don’t know,” he admits, and Jake smiles lightly.
“Well,” he says, “when you figure it out, you let me know.” He’s turning away again, up the beach to a jaunty orange umbrella where a familiar beach towel is bundled on a chair, and Bradley would probably get socked in the face if he tried to grab Jake’s arm, but—
“Let me make it up to you.” The words land loud and heavy in the few feet of space between them, and Jake turns around again, eyebrows raised expectantly.
“Is—is that dinner invitation still open?”
Jake shakes his head slowly at Bradley; it’s a warm day on this golden beach drenched in sunlight but the knife-edge smile that spreads over his face is chilly and remote.
“That’d be a little difficult, wouldn’t it, Bradshaw, since El Cisne is all the way over in Puerto Vallarta.”
“I realize that,” Bradley says, fighting to keep the annoyance out of his voice. “I meant tonight. Wherever you were planning to go.”
Jake tips his head to one side again and gives Bradley a long, assessing look, a chill edge of menace to it that shivers over Bradley’s skin; it’s not a friendly look, but Bradley forces himself to endure it, and eventually Jake nods.
“All right, Bradshaw. You can take me out to dinner.” Another one of those wintry smiles. “Although I don’t think the place I had in mind is going to be to your taste.”
“It’ll be fine,” Bradley rushes out recklessly, stomach hollow with relief. “I’ll like it just fine.”
Bradley is regretting his confidence, the invitation, his trip to Mexico, and possibly the entirety of his life to date. His eyes are watering, his mouth is on fire, and his stomach feels like he’s swallowed pure lava. Jake had looked suspiciously pleased with himself as they’d made the short walk from their hotel to the tiny restaurant, which had turned out to be composed of a handful of creaky tables decked with blue and orange tablecloths set up right on the sand. Jake had sat down and immediately struck up a conversation with their grizzled server in rapid Spanish, smile broadening to one of almost maniacal glee—an expression Bradley had understood when dishes of fried fish, shrimp aguachile, and tortilla slivers with bowls of bright green and red salsa had been deposited on their table and Bradley had almost been able to smell the capsaicin in the air.
“Dig in, Cali boy,” Jake had ordered cheerfully, and Bradley had bit back the irrelevant protest that he’d been born in Tennessee before resigning himself to his fate and reaching for a plate, with the vain hope that it smelled spicier than it tasted.
It did not.
But Jake, across the table from him, is laughing at him, all the watchful stillness and chilliness from earlier melted away, his whole face crinkled with the force of his smile. He’s spent the whole meal inhaling their food with relish, gleefully maligning Bradley’s masculinity and crowing about his own spice tolerance. He’s sprawled easily in his chair, chest hair peeking out above the collar of his pale pink t-shirt, his hair ruffled by the breeze sighing in over the water. The beer sweating at his elbow—his first—is still only half empty.
Bradley gamely reaches for another chip and Jake chuckles.
“All right, all right, you can stop, we don’t need you torching your digestive system to prove a point,” and Bradley leans back, relieved and not wanting to examine why that we made him go warm.
Jake has put in an order for something in a long, melodic stream of fluent Spanish and is just exchanging a laugh with the server—Bradley suspects they’re laughing about him, but his knees keep knocking into Jake’s under the table and somehow that makes it so he doesn’t mind—when the lights strung overhead abruptly wink out. A few disgruntled cries echo around them and then their server says something: Bradley thinks he can make out vela and is proven right when, a few minutes later, someone appears out of the gloom with an assortment of short fat candles and goes around the tiny restaurant plonking one down on each table.
It takes her a while to work her way over to their table, and the cover of darkness while they’re waiting emboldens Bradley to say, carefully, “Jake, I—I really am sorry. About the other day.”
There’s a pause, an indrawn breath; Jake’s silhouette, frosted by moonlight and barely visible, shifts in silence for a beat and then he replies, equally soft, “It’s fine, Bradley. Don’t sweat it.”
Before Bradley can respond, one last flickering halo of light is making its way to their table; as the candle is set down, it illuminates Jake’s face, sharpened by the flickering light and shadow and wearing a wry, resigned smile that he aims first at the candle and then at Bradley before he thanks the server.
By the time their entrees, including Bradley’s more moderately spiced food, get to their table, they’re tucked into a little bubble of light in the darkness, Jake’s sharp edges smudged to nothing in the shifting shadows around them. The candle flame trembles in the soft whuffs of sea breeze, and the flicker of its light in those pale cool eyes feels for a moment like the only thing in the world, before Jake turns to their server and Bradley’s able to look away to add his mostly non-verbal thanks.
“Good?” Jake asks, after Bradley’s taken a cautious bite of his arrachera beef. His voice is pitched low, his gaze on Bradley alight with amusement and interest and something that feels too dangerous to speak into existence. Let it stay, unnamed, in the soft darkness beyond the flicker of their candle.
“Good,” Bradley confirms, voice raspy, because it is good and because Jake’s slow answering smile pools hot and syrupy in the pit of Bradley’s stomach. It must be the candle that’s causing them to lean in and speak softer, close enough that the breeze carries the peppery whiff of Jake’s aftershave, familiar and tantalizing. Just the candle—no other reason.
Later, after Bradley has paid and stumbled through a thanks in his rudimentary Spanish while Jake cackled at him, they turn by unspoken agreement to the beach instead of the road. It’s cloudy, moonlight filtering weakly through the haze obscuring the stars, and there’s enough of a nip in the air that Bradley thinks wistfully of his jacket, packed very prudently but now sitting unhelpfully in his hotel room.
Jake, of course, strolls easily beside him like he disdains being affected by something as prosaic as the weather; he’s quieter than he usually tends to be, contenting himself with the odd observation about the beach, the plants around it, and the warm sprawling houses they walk past, and for the most part they stroll side by side in a surprisingly comfortable silence, the chill in the air held at bay by an unnameable warmth slowly uncurling in Bradley’s chest.
They’re almost back at the hotel when it starts to rain. Bradley yelps and runs for the the awning that shelters the entrance to their block of rooms, but there’s no thump of footsteps following him, and when he turns around he sees Jake, rooted to the ground, face turned up into the spattering of raindrops like he’s receiving a blessing, eyes closed and pink mouth dropped softly open like he’s trying to catch raindrops on his tongue.
“Jake,” Bradley says, soft and airless, and Jake turns to look at him, hair slowly flattening to cling to the curve of his skull, raindrops chasing each other over the glistening gold of his skin before they disappear into the neck of his sodden t-shirt. Bradley finds himself drawn forward, stumbling in a daze out into the rain, summoned by the heat flickering in Jake’s eyes.
When their lips meet, slick with rain water, Bradley stops thinking.
The heat of Jake’s mouth is a shock of sensation, stubble bristling under Bradley’s palms when he cups Jake’s jaw between his hands to tip his head back just that tiniest fraction, sucking on Jake’s bitten lower lip before Jake groans and his lips part to let Bradley in his mouth. The burn of spice from their dinner is fresh on his tongue, like he’s pouring fire down Bradley’s throat, searing down into his lungs, every nerve ending energized, lit up, alive.
Jake’s broad hands are raking down Bradley’s back, hot through the sodden fabric of his shirt, and he presses himself into the solid heat of Jake’s body, shivering. His thigh meets the unmistakable hardness of Jake’s cock, hot through his damp pants, and Bradley nudges his thigh up against it, grinding into it until Jake breaks off the kiss, gasping.
“Inside,” Jake orders, low and wrecked, and Bradley’s never heard a better idea in his life. They stumble back under the awning and Bradley paws desperately at the uncooperative, clinging fabric of his wet jorts for his keys, fumbling with the large, ornate key that opens the door to the building. He’s barely got the door open when Jake is bundling them through it, silent and intent, breaths gusting out hot and heavy against the nape of Bradley’s neck. He stops Bradley before he can make his way down the hall to his room, dragging him over to one of the other rooms and digging out his own room key.
He pushes Bradley up against the door before it’s even fully closed, swallowing Bradley’s surprised huff of air with a sharp-toothed kiss and shoving a thigh so forcefully between Bradley’s legs that Bradley yelps into his mouth, head spinning with desire as he grinds down against it.
“Fuck,” he gasps, “Jake, fuck, we should—”
Jake grunts in agreement but keeps Bradley pinned to the door for several breathless seconds, rolling his hips until Bradley’s grinding into his thigh, groaning as Jake’s mouth latches onto his neck and his teeth worry at the skin till it’s hot and tender.
Eventually, Bradley manages to shove him off in the direction of the bed, Jake letting himself be propelled backwards and only detouring to flick the bedside lamp on. In its soft orange glow, Jake looks fey and dangerous, with his mouth open and his chest heaving while his eyes rake over Bradley’s body, dark with hunger like Jake is planning out just how to swallow him whole.
The thought draws a groan out of Bradley and he starts to hurriedly strip out of his shirt, the yellow-orange flowers a bright splash of color against the dark blue background as he tosses it onto the floor and it lands with a wet splat. His jorts are a little harder, clinging to his thighs as he tries to peel the wet denim down his legs. He’s half expecting a quip from Jake, who’s never made a secret about how he feels about Bradley’s clothes, but when he looks up, Jake’s still fully dressed, nipples pebbling under his soaked t-shirt and hands clenched at his sides like he’s holding himself back from pouncing.
“Jake,” Bradley whispers, and Jake bursts into motion, ripping his t-shirt off and tossing it aside before hooking his thumbs in the waistband of his linen pants and sliding them, and presumably his underwear, all the way off. Bradley freezes, greedily taking in every golden inch of his body, from the powerful thighs to that exquisitely muscled ass, up the firm stomach with the barest hint of vacation softness, to ample pecs and nipples so taut and pink he can actually feel his mouth water.
Jake, apparently tired of waiting, hauls Bradley in by the damp waistband of his boxer briefs to claim his mouth again, the heat of his body like a brand from knees to nipples; Bradley lets him, giving into the long-held desire to rake his hands down Jake’s back and gather up greedy handfuls of Jake’s ass, squeezing and lifting till he swears he can feel Jake rise up on his toes.
Jake makes a desperate, wild sound, hands coming up to snarl in Bradley’s hair and hold him still so Jake can plunder his mouth; they stand there, swaying and pushing into each other, desperately seeking friction, until Bradley gets a foot between Jake’s to shove him onto the mattress.
And the way he looks, Christ: spread out golden and inviting on the sheets, cock hard and going damp at the head, mouth bitten red and swollen from Bradley’s kisses, and those eyes.
Bradley scrabbles his boxer briefs off. “Tell me you have stuff,” he growls, because if he has to put clothes on to run up the stairs to his own bag—
“Kit bag on the dresser,” Jake tells him, still unmoving, chest heaving as he watches Bradley stumble over to the dresser to clumsily root in the dark blue bag for a condom and a dented tube of lube.
When he comes back to spread himself over Jake, he drops down to catch one of Jake’s nipples between his teeth, a little mean with it, and is rewarded with a deep groan that reverberates against his mouth where it’s pressed to Jake’s chest and Jake’s leg twining with his to drag them closer together.
Bradley loses himself to it, the smooth hot expanse of Jake’s skin an irresistible canvas for his teeth and lips, as he fumbles unseeing for the lube and squirts some onto his hand. Jake urges him on with a heel to the small of his back as he hurriedly coats his fingers before finding the tight, hot furl of Jake’s hole with two slick fingers.
“Fucking get on with it,” Jake growls, gravel-rough, but Bradley’s damn well going to take his time; he massages at Jake’s hole with slow, forceful sweeps of his fingers while Jake whines under him, hips bucking up into the touch, until he finally takes pity on Jake and breaches him slowly with first one and then two fingers.
“Fucking Christ,” Jake hisses as Bradley curls his fingers inside that vise-like heat; an insistent hand tangles in Bradley’s hair and drags him up Jake’s body so Jake can fuck into his mouth. It bends his wrist at a painful angle but no force on earth would have been able to pry Bradley off; he keeps going, slow, steady, adding a third finger as Jake bucks and writhes under him.
Tearing himself away long enough to roll on the condom is unbearable; Jake watches him with wild, dark eyes, lower lip red and tucked under his teeth. Bradley gets his hands under Jake’s thick thighs and muscles them further apart before leaning over Jake, cock nudging at his hole, to kiss him again so he can push into Jake’s heat with Jake’s tongue in his mouth. They’re both shaking by the time he slides all the way in, Jake huffing abortive little whines into his mouth as Bradley’s hips buck and settle, Jake’s cock trapped deliciously between them.
Bradley pauses, shaking, sucking a bruise into Jake’s throat, blood-dark and perfect just where his pulse flutters desperately under the skin. Jake’s answering groan rumbles against his tongue, the sensation so visceral and vivid it almost tips over into taste.
There’s no room for finesse, for teasing; Bradley gathers Jake’s broad wrists in his hands and pins them down to the mattress, tucking their faces together as he sets up a punishing rhythm. Jake’s legs twine around his waist and thigh, muscles bunching as he meets Bradley thrust for thrust. Their lips and teeth catch at each other as the bed groans quietly under them; Bradley grazes the tip of Jake’s ear with his teeth before latching on to suck the skin bright red. Jake’s breath gusts out over Bradley’s face and neck, their movements growing jerky and uncoordinated until Jake’s back bows and his head tips back against the pillow, a deep groan spilling from his mouth as he comes before Bradley can so much as get a hand on him.
The smell of him, the heat and strength of his body, the way he glows in the light of the lamp—it’s all too much and Bradley falls over the edge, convulsing against Jake’s body and distantly aware that Jake has twisted his wrists out of Bradley’s grip to cradle Bradley’s head against his throat as he comes.
*
Later, as Bradley’s dropping the lube back into Jake’s kit bag, he can’t resist commenting, “You certainly came prepared.” With his back safely to Jake, he lets his jaw clench at the memory of Maya’s laughing face, all the tourists and locals Jake has spent the last few days charming with his blinding smile.
Behind him, still sprawled on the bed, Jake scoffs. “Like you didn’t, Bradshaw? I know what a man looks like when he's fixing to get some tail.”
Bradley stares at his hands clenched in the dark blue fabric of Jake’s kit bag. “Convenient how that worked out, then,” he hears himself saying.
He turns back around to find Jake staring at him, sweaty and spent in the wreckage of the bed, body burnished gold by the lamplight but his face faintly silvered by the moonlight streaming weakly in through the windows.
“Yeah,” Jake says. He’s wearing that still, watchful look again, closed off and inscrutable. “Real convenient.”
It is convenient, is the thing. Having already established that they’re basically working off the same blueprint, it’s only too easy for them to fall in together; they have similar interests, similar levels of fitness, and, spice tolerances aside, similar attitudes to trying as much local food as possible. Jake needles Bradley into grudging acknowledgment of the advantages of his superior Spanish, but Bradley keeps his catalogue of the other advantages of their arrangement to himself: hiking side by side with Jake, watching the pump of his powerful thighs; the familiar tones of Jake’s voice and the ease with which it fills any silence; the gleam of the sun in his eyes; the way his lashes flutter with enjoyment when he eats and the tantalizing flick of his tongue over his perfect, pink mouth.
(The way he’ll lean into Bradley’s space, warm and smelling of sunscreen and sweat, to quip teasing and low-voiced right against Bradley’s ear. The way it’s so much easier to watch him—the way he walks, the way his eyes crinkle when he smiles, how much he’s drinking, the way his mouth droops when he’s tired—when Bradley’s right by his side.)
Bradley spends three mornings waking up convinced it’s finally the day he’ll be deemed uninteresting and left to fend for himself, and every day he’s relieved to be proven wrong. Jake seems perfectly happy to seek Bradley out; perfectly happy to turn to him, smile blinding even under the blazing midday sun, to suggest another hike, another walk, another shared dinner; perfectly happy to fall into his bed or Bradley’s at the end of every day. Perfectly happy to fall asleep, half in shadow and half in moonlight, while Bradley stares at the thin, bruised skin under his eyes and wishes he could do more for the bitter, painful twist of his mouth than smear it to softness against Bradley’s own.
They’re due back on base at the end of the week. Bradley doesn’t let himself wonder what, or who, will get to sweeten that bitterness for good.
He’s trying to run—he has to run, has to get to—no, he has to get away—someone’s waiting for him, in the cold endless dark, someone who eludes his grasping hands and he’s falling, falling, on his back in the snow, and he can’t stay here, he needs to—where is he?—anyone see him? does anyone see him?!—he has to get to him but he’s too slow—it’s not the plane—the darkness is searing away, enflamed by a burning blue sky—it’s behind him—all he has to do is reach out but he can’t, he can’t—I’m sorry—I’m sorry, Bradley—
“Bradley!”
Bradley gasps awake, air burning as it rushes into his lungs, the straps of his harness pulling him down—
“Bradley! It’s a dream! He’s okay! Bradley!”
Bradley slumps back against the mattress, blinking up at the shadowed ceiling of—yes, his hotel room in Mexico. He’s in Mexico. And those are hands on his shoulders, not harness straps; he blinks again and Jake’s face emerges from the shadows, pale and drawn, eyes wide.
“Jake,” he gasps, and then remembers and turns to the bedside table, scrabbling for his phone, but it’s not there—oh, this is Jake’s room, but where’s his phone—
“Bradley, he’s okay. He’s okay.”
Bradley freezes, then turns to stare at Jake, sitting on his haunches in the churned mess of the bed, hands held out like he thinks Bradley might fall and need to be caught.
“I—” Bradley coughs, swallows around his dry throat. “I don’t—”
“You were calling for him,” Jake says, slow and careful, watching him like Bradley will disappear if he looks away for a moment. “You called his name. Wasn’t much of a guess.”
Bradley swallows again; his throat clicks. “I need the bathroom,” he says, and escapes.
Inside, safe behind a closed door, he splashes water on his face and appropriates one of Jake’s towels to dampen and scrub over his arms and chest. His hair is soaked with sweat, ringlets sticking to his forehead; he rubs the dry part of the towel roughly over it. It’ll have to do.
He washes his hands again just to breathe in the calming sandalwood scent of the hand soap, in and out, in and out, until the tightness in his chest has eased. Then he scrubs at his eyes and looks in the mirror.
A pale face stares back at him, haggard and haunted, deep dark bruises under his puffy eyes. His hair, long past regulation, is wild and bedraggled. On his shoulders and ribs, the bruises from his harness are just starting to turn green-yellow.
Bradley screws his eyes closed again, trying to erase the image burned into his retinas, and then he sighs and pries them open before making his hair a little more presentable. Then, with a deep fortifying breath, he grasps the door handle and leaves the safety of the bathroom.
Jake is sitting on the edge of the bed, looking rumpled and tired, his hands squeezing at a full bottle of water; when Bradley emerges, he looks up, holding the water out; his face has fallen into that careful stillness that Bradley hates, that makes him want to cup that perfect jaw in his hands and coax out the smile that lives under the surface.
He takes the water bottle instead. It’s cool from having sat by the window all night, and he tips a trickle of water into his mouth, grateful for the way it soothes his parched throat, before allowing himself a couple more substantial gulps, eyes staring into the middle distance and ignoring the intent look he’s getting from Jake.
“You know…” Jake says, slow and careful in a way that has klaxons clamoring in Bradley’s mind; he’s proven right a moment later when Jake adds, “You should think about seeing someone.”
Fuck. The plastic of the water bottle crinkles protestingly in Bradley’s suddenly stiff hands. Jake licks his lips, cuts his gaze away to look out the window, and then huffs out a heavy breath and looks back at Bradley. Stop, Bradley pleads silently, so of course the most contrarian asshole in the Navy just keeps going.
“I’m serious. It ain’t all new age hokum. If you’re—it does help.”
Bradley’s hands are shaking. He hacks out a disbelieving laugh. “That’s fucking rich coming from you, Hangman,” he grits out. “You ever actually take any of your own advice, or do you just get your jollies dishing it out?”
Jake straightens up, face settling into more familiarly annoyed lines. “Now look here, Bradshaw, I’m trying to—”
“You gonna haul your ass back to base and find yourself a shrink, Hangman?” Bradley asks; his heart is pounding wildly in his throat, his vision blurry from a week of squinting at every drink in Jake’s hand wondering if it was one too many. “Or are you just gonna keep drinking too much and getting me to fuck you into exhaustion?” He scoffs. “Shit, doesn’t even need to be me, does it. Pick the first halfway willing schmuck—”
“Actually,” Jake raps out, loud like a whip crack, cutting through the panicked rattle of Bradley’s breathing, “I have an appointment set up for Tuesday. Same guy I went to after my ki— my first kill.” He tips his chin up and fixes Bradley with a clear-eyed, knife-sharp stare. “I can show you the email, if you want. And just so you know, I haven’t so much as looked at anyone else since you showed up at the Paradise Sands.”
The words settle, sour, into the air. Bradley swallows. He should drink more water, he thinks.
“I didn’t know you—that you saw someone back then,” he settles on saying, finally; the rest is… it’s too fucking much to touch, is what it is. His head is pounding.
Jake shrugs. “Yeah, well,” he says. “Fucking hated it, obviously, Felt like I didn’t need, ‘cause I was fine, right?” He shrugs, eyes drifting from Bradley down to his hands, clasped between his knees. “But I was sleeping like shit. That got better after I saw him a few times. So now I’m going back. Seeing if I can get that damn fifth gen outta my dreams. Stop watching you and Mav get blown up every night.”
The ground under Bradley’s feet feels unsteady, the room swimming before his eyes. “I didn’t know,” he whispers. “That you have… that you—”
“You didn’t ask,” Jake says quietly. He looks up at Bradley, unbearably open, unbearably unhappy. “You want the right to care about me, Bradley? Fucking ask for it, instead of telling me to my face that you think I’d let anyone else fuck me the way I let you. Christ.” He rubs at his face, clearly exhausted. “Drink the rest of that water, Bradshaw.”
Bradley obeys with numb lips and shaking hands, trying to wash down the words choking his throat. He doesn’t bother to ask if Jake has earned the right to care about him—the answer is obvious. He finishes his water. Screws the cap back on. Walks over on wobbly knees to set the empty bottle on the nightstand by Jake’s charging phone.
Eventually, he’s out of ways to stall.
“I’m asking,” he says, his voice destroyed. “I want that right, Jake, but I—fuck.” He scrubs his hands over his hot face. “Look at me. I’m barely taking care of myself.”
“Believe me, I know,” Jake says drily. “C’mere. Sit down.”
Bradley stumbles over to him, sits down with their knees and shoulders bumping comfortably together. Takes a deep breath, catches the familiar notes of that peppery aftershave, and feels a knot in his chest loosen.
Jake nudges his knee. “I’m not asking you to fix your shit overnight, Bradley,” he says quietly. Bradley peeks at him out of the corner of his eye. “I’m just asking you to stop running. S’all I want. All any of us wants.”
I’ve never had anyone make me want to stop running, Bradley wants to say. But he knows it’s not true. He has a friend who’s spent years refusing to take his bullshit lying down, who hounds him in calls and texts and emails till he’s bullied into telling her how he’s doing. He has someone who was willing to scuttle their entire relationship to secure what he thought was Bradley’s well being, who thought Bradley was worth his life, who’s called or texted Bradley every day for the last two weeks even when Bradley’s been dodging him because he’s afraid of the monsters that will slip through the cracks.
And it’s clear—visibly, breathtakingly, painfully clear—looking at the man sitting slumped on his hotel bed, his armor stripped away, with shadows in his eyes and a knife between his teeth, that he has Jake. That Jake is reaching out, asking, in the only way he knows to ask. All Bradley has to do is reach back. To let Jake see that he has Bradley in return.
He slumps like his strings have been cut, listing sideways and letting Jake take his weight. “I’m not sure I ever learned how.” he admits quietly.
Jake huffs a laugh and curves a hand over Bradley’s knee, thumb rubbing reassuringly. “I have faith in you. You’ll figure it out.”
“Yeah?” Bradley covers Jake’s hand with his own, slotting their fingers together. The warmth that’s been sputtering in fits and starts in his chest is seeping slowly down his limbs to his toes, his fingertips, chasing away the last of the cold. “You gonna wait for me to do that? Hangman?”
“Bradshaw.” It’s the same way Jake has always said his name: ostentatiously patient, endlessly condescending. It shouldn’t make Bradley grin the way it does. “If you really haven’t figured out the rules are different for you, you’re even more of an idiot than I thought you were.”
When Bradley wakes up the next morning, Jake’s still asleep: face slack, a genteel little snore rustling in and out, limned gold in the early morning light. Bradley nestles a hairsbreadth closer, breathing deep, letting the familiar scent of Jake—sleep, sweat, that damn aftershave—settle deep in his lungs.
Unable to help himself, he leans in to brush his mouth over Jake’s temple, light and fleeting; Jake makes a soft noise and his face scrunches briefly before he burrows back into the pillows. Bradley stays where he is for a while, taking him in, the soft shape of his mouth and the purple-gray bruises under his eyes—but there’s no urgency in it, no fear. He and Jake will have time. Bradley will do whatever it takes to make sure of it.
Careful not to wake Jake, he rolls out of bed and pads silently out on to the balcony, glad they’d left the door open last night. The air is cool, briny from the sea and sweet with late-flowering shrubs; his lungs are brimful with it.
He leans on the balcony railing and lets the soft wash of the incoming tide fill his senses. Dawn is crawling rosy-gold up the sky; seized by a sudden impulse, he ducks briefly back inside to fish his phone out of his pants pocket and then sets himself up by the railing and starts taking pictures.
He’s just lowering his phone, morning having well and truly broken over the horizon, when it buzzes in his hand. He looks down, knowing already whose name he’s going to see flicker over the screen.
Hey, Bradley, guess you’ll be heading back in a few days. Be great to see—
He stands there staring at the message preview until the screen fades to black, thinking. And then he wakes the screen up and navigates to a contact he hasn’t reached for in years.
He lets himself smile and hits call, before he brings the phone to his ear.
“Hey, Mav.”