Archive of Our Own

Rooster found it with Mav’s stuff. It wasn’t really clear what it was until he fully yanked it out of the cardboard box from under a few other old jackets: a long sleeve shirt, heathered gray, FALCONS in blue on the front in tattered letters where the silkscreen had worn off– his.

Eureka. 

“Woah,” he said. He held it out at arm’s length to snap the dust off. It was just a warmup, no ‘Bradshaw’ on the back or anything, nothing you’d put up in a frame on the wall, even if it hadn’t belonged to a highschool baseball team. A pretty bad highschool baseball team. 

Rooster kneaded it in his hands, inspecting how it had aged. Down the hall in their bedroom, Mav put down whatever he was carrying with a clatter and came out. 

“What’ve you got there?” he asked, dabbing at the sweat on his temple. He was beautiful and San Diego was beautiful. The door to their new place had a yellow window in it that let golden-tinted light into the living room-kitchen-front hall, which was where they’d dumped everything that was small enough to carry solo. 

There wasn’t a whole lot to move in between them, all told. Together, they were making good work of it. Rooster had decided that the hangar— the trailer, really, bless it— was just too small. The world’s most isolated bachelor pad, even for a man in his mid thirties that had never really dated and a man pushing sixty who had never ‘moved in’ beyond a toothbrush in someone else’s bathroom. He’d spent too many nights folded up beside Mav inside that baked potato to allow them both to live in there together, at least on a permanent basis. People over six feet deserved to sleep without bending their knees, he decreed. That was an inalienable human right. So here they were, braiding their stuff together in a one bedroom a twenty minute drive away so Mav could still take his bike over to work on his plane. Not that there was a lot of junk to mesh in the first place. 

Rooster turned the shirt around so Mav could see the front. 

“You kept this?” he asked. Something was flopping around in his chest. 

Mav raised his eyebrows. “Oh, yeah. That thing.” 

“I’m impressed you held onto it. I figured you took it to the dump.” 

“I hung on to more than I’d like to admit.” 

Mav could make Rooster’s heart race without even trying. “You remember how terribly I pitched, that season?” he asked. It almost came out shy. 

“Falcons? Of course I remember.” Mav’s eyes crinkled with a soft smile. “Or else I wouldn’t have kept it.” 

Rooster huffed a laugh, threw the shirt over his shoulder, so he wouldn’t lose track of it as he busied himself with the boxes again. 

“That coach was trash,” he said, sorting out the bathroom things that had ended up in with his shirts. “No game sense.” 

Mav pulled a big utensil holder out of a box, put it on the kitchen counter, and started loading beat-up cooking spoons into it. “He wasn’t the best you’d had,” he said. 

Sometimes, Mav felt all new, every inch, like they were doing all of this for the first time– because they were. Rooster still woke up trying to blink out the dream of Mav beside him in bed, most mornings, stupified by his good fortune. But sometimes, the depth behind what they were together was all Rooster could think about. 

“God. I wanted you to fuck me so bad, back then,” he said, offhandedly, arms full of a few types of surface cleaner.  

Mav paused, looking a little startled. 

“What, wasn’t it obvious?” Rooster asked. “That was when I feel like I got obvious.” 

“When? That season?” 

The time window was pretty specific. There weren’t many games Maverick had been able to make it to, with that team.

“Do you remember the game against Cypress, the doubleheader? We got rained out?” Rooster asked. “You gave me your jacket to wear afterwards because I was so cold and your t-shirt got all wet. It was a lot. I think someone gave me shit for staring.” He wondered if Mav remembered that he was hovering around sixteen, back then, and didn’t say anything, not wanting to spook him. 

“Oh, huh,” Mav said. “Remember the game. Don’t remember that at all.” He carefully put away the slotted spoon he was holding as Rooster watched. He was probably used to people staring at him, Rooster realized. Especially back then. 

“Hey, Mav.”

“Yeah?”

“Did you ever notice me?” 

“Define ‘notice.’”

“Like, look at me back. While I was freaking out over you.” 

Mav was considering something in another box, rooting around for it. He wasn’t meeting Rooster’s face.

“Sexually?” 

“Well, it for sure was on my end.” 

“Huh. I don’t— I haven’t really thought about that in a long time.” 

It wasn’t a ‘no.’ Rooster’s breath caught. “What do you mean?”

Mav leaned against the counter and made the face he threw when he was thinking about how to change the subject, run some kind of interference. A distraction.  

“Don’t gimme that face, Mav. You can’t just leave me hanging.”

“What face, it’s my face,” Mav muttered. Finally, he gave a slow, small nod. “Yeah, I guess. Sometimes, I did.” He started to fiddle with the spoon in his hands. 

“You–?” 

“After one of your practices, when you came home all dirty. We were just hanging out, talking in the kitchen, before you had to take a shower. I don’t even remember what we were talking about.”

“Probably the coach,” Rooster interjected, autopilot, mouth gone dry enough he had to unstick his tongue from the roof of it to speak. 

“Yeah. Probably. I remember you reaching up to get a glass, and seeing how your arm looked–” he raised his own a little, motioning along his bicep, “–strong. The rest of you, too. And then I thought, ‘Woah. Bradley isn’t small anymore.’ That stuck with me. If I had to pick a, uh, first time.” 

“You like that, that I was strong?”

“It was, frankly, kind of bewildering. But yes, I liked it.” 

“Were there more times after that?” 

Mav went quiet. He’d stopped moving. 

“Mav?”

“You don’t hate me, do you?” he asked. His voice was level. His talking-to-the-brass voice, at least when he was penitent. 

Rooster dropped whatever he was holding onto a bedside table floating in the middle of the entryway and hustled over. Mav let himself be taken into Rooster’s arms without effort, his chest pressed to Mav’s back, hooking his chin over his shoulder. Go figure, thirty five years deep into being a Bradley-Maverick duo on planet earth, and both their weird sexual hang ups had to do with fucking baseball. 

“Talk to me,” he commanded, and he felt Mav sigh. Deep, put-upon. 

“I shouldn’t have told you that. It was wrong.” 

“You don’t understand.” Rooster shook his head, letting Mav’s short, soft hair brush his face. He smelled like the same two buck shampoo he always used, which Rooster smelled like now, too, because he mooched it. “I would have basically killed myself, back then, if I thought that could make you touch me.”

Mav made a twisted sound, like Rooster had made it worse. “I’m the only father you ever had, and I was looking at you— like that,” he said, turning his face into Rooster’s shoulder like he couldn’t bear the thought of himself. 

“And?” Rooster asked. “You were the hottest thing I’d ever seen. Still are.” Mav scoffed a laugh at that. Rooster squeezed, halfway to exasperated. “Look at you. What else was my dick supposed to do?”

“Be normal?” 

“Little late on that one, man.” 

“Mine, at least, then. Should have been.” 

Rooster shivered, at that. He thought about Mav craving him when he was still only in high school and oh, god, this was gonna get him sprung, wasn’t it, right here in the littered piles of moving boxes. He tried to shift his hips back so Mav wouldn’t feel the brazen push of his erection on the seat of his pants. Or maybe he should press it forwards? 

“Listen, Mav, I don’t think I can talk about this without getting a boner. Can we go somewhere else?”

Mav seemed to consider that, for a second, long enough for Bradley to start to worry. Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything. Maybe he’d just blown everything up. Re-fucked what they’d spent the last few months carefully mending back together, convincing Mav that he was a freaking weirdo instead of the center of his entire universe. 

“Hah,” Mav said. “Yeah, okay.” 

They made their way over to their bedroom. They had no bed frame yet. In fact, there was virtually nothing in the room except the mattress on the floor. Sleeping on it the previous night had felt cute and college-like, somehow, though both of them had gone through the Naval Academy and only knew the plastic-cased twins of the barracks. Rooster laid down on half of it and beckoned Mav beside him, who came more slowly. It was made with the gray jersey sheets from Rooster’s old place; a little torn up, but soft. Rooster took Mav under his arm, settled him close. He fit there, completely, the shirt squeezed between them like a membrane of the past. At one time, a few decades back, Mav could have lifted Bradley’s whole squealing-giggling body with one arm and still had room to play piano with the other. 

“It’s not like you don’t…. Like me how I am now, right?” Rooster asked, tentatively, brushing his hand up and down Mav’s shoulder. 

Mav looked scandalized but also mostly annoyed. “Bradley.” 

“Right. Word. So, we’re on the same page,” Rooster said. “It’s okay, Mav. I promise it’s okay. I don’t care. I still love you.” 

“I know.” 

“In fact. It’s more than just okay. I, for one, think it’s fucking hot.”

“I can see that.” 

Both of them were having a difficult time not looking at the obvious hardon in the front of Rooster’s shorts. 

Rooster knocked his forehead into Mav’s. He was losing his mind. 

“Okay, bad timing, maybe. But. Would you let me, very much a loving consenting adult, fuck you?” he asked. “Right now?”

Mav laughed. It sounded real, and relieved Rooster to hear. He could back them down from that edge, for now, circle back around, later. They’d already christened the mattress the night before but he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to be able to think about any of this straight until he sorted it out with his dick.

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Mav said, as he went soft, arms falling to the bed as he let Rooster roll him onto his stomach. 

— 

Being roused early by Mav on a Saturday for the doubleheader against Cypress had sucked ass. 

Dragged out of bed at an hour Mav affectionately called the crack-o-crack-o-dawn, too early for even the world itself, everything brutally blue except the warm rectangle of light from the hallway shone in when Mav opened the door to wake him up. It was a long way to Anaheim. 

Mav had helped him throw his gear together, grabbed their bags, then hustled him out and onto the driveway at speed like it was some kind of naval operation, Bradley still squinting through the heavy dregs of sleep. 

“Water bottle?” Mav interrogated, standing in front of the open hatch of the trunk, where Bradley tossed his duffle. They seemed like two crooks trying to figure out how to dispose of a body. 

“Yeah, I got it.” 

“Cleats?” 

“Yeah.”

“Uniform?” 

“I’m good, Mav.”

“Then let’s hit the road, baby,” he said, slamming it shut.

Rooster remembered flopping into the passenger seat of the Land Cruiser, hoodie pulled grumpily around his face to avoid Mav’s good cheer and the cold of near-night time in the desert, his too long legs bent up so his knees bumped against the glovebox in the passenger seat every time Mav turned or tapped the breaks. It was really Mom’s car that they’d both sort of inherited, after she died. Bradley drove it mostly but sometimes they both used it. Bradley didn’t even know Mav was licensed to drive anything but a motorcycle until he started taking him to baseball games. 

They drove north, the tick of the road lines feeding under them, Bradley fading in and out of sleep. He loved baseball almost as much as he hated having to get up early for no real good reason on a weekend, canceling everything out into a numb, liminal neutrality. Mav didn’t talk, just kept a comfortable silence, playing soft rock on the local radio as far as it would stretch, then searching for LA stations once they were north enough that the reception fuzzed. He looked fucking peppy in his ball cap and jacket (both Falcons blue), wide awake, gently tapping out drum cycles on the wheel. These hours were his bread and butter. Bradley had his hands folded stubbornly under his armpits and his sweatpants tucked into his socks. The sweatpants had officially grown from ‘pushing it’ to ‘too short’ in the past few weeks. He was sore, and a little hunched, in the foundational way of screaming wide-open growth plates and uncontrollably long limbs. He rattled like tall, dry grass when he moved; Mav handled him good naturedly. 

The sun came up, slowly, as they journeyed their way up the Five, ocean pinkening to their left. Once Bradley was awake enough to talk, Mav tossed him some cheerios in a plastic bag and a banana. Let him sip a little bit of the coffee out of the thermos jiggling in the center console cup holder. Chatted. 

“Do you think they’ll be good?” Mav asked. “That one guy, the lefty, I heard he bats a two point nine.”

“Higher.”

“Damn. Gotta be a DI commit. You were saying that, right? UCLA?”

“I guess.”

“You’re gonna give that kid a hard time, baby. Don’t forget about your changeup.” 

Bradley pushed his head back against the headrest. “Jesus. It’s just pre-season, Mav,” he croaked, ornery. 

“What?” Mav was smiling. “I’m excited.” He’d slipped his aviators on to shield against the sunrise, so familiar on his face that they might as well be a grown part of his head, like his ears.

Bradley had to look away, scowling. Blinded. 

When they finally arrived at the diamond, he’d dragged himself out, semi-dreading the island of coolers and rustling bags of Subway sandwiches and gatorade where the rest of the team was beginning to set up camp near the dugout. He was starting to get more nervous, than anything. He always got nervous. 

Mav rolled down the driver’s side window, looking at him over his shades. “Knock ‘em dead, champ.” 

“I will.” 

“And keep your stride open.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” 

“I’ll be over there if ya need me,” he said, hooking a thumb over towards the stands. 

“Thanks, Mav,” he said. He didn’t say that he’d rather crawl back into the warm car. Listen to a few more songs on the radio station they’d found. He went over to the team, instead, bag pulling his gait a little off kilter. 

The Cypress games were some of the only ones Mav had made it to. More precious than anything. Bradley remembered looking over during every inning, sitting in the dugout with his cleats stretched out, trying not to cut too many glances over to Mav on the bleachers. He was too handsome for the rest of the dumpy, stupid parents, he thought. Too good for them. He looked weird sitting out there with them, cheering, talking them up, so obviously better than just a dad; he was, defying all other description, a Mav. 

Bradley cringed at the corniness of that thought and told himself to shut up and watch the game, which they were losing. 

It rained. A storm, in fact, in southern California, pretty much some kind of omen for its rarity. Instant downpour. Bradley was up on the mound when they called it off, officially, flicking drops off his glove, curly hair flattened to his head, shoulder cooling off from pitching a mediocre second game. 

Mav was full of platitudes once he came up from the dugout, streaming out with all the other annoyed kids, parents packing up and getting out of dodge. 

“They must’ve prayed for the rain,” he said, throwing an arm over Bradley’s shoulder, or as over as he could get it, considering Bradley had been taller than him for the past however long. “A few more innings and you would’ve had ‘em.” 

Bradley had nothing to say to that because it wasn’t true, and he was freezing, rainwater dripping off the tip of his nose. Cold seemed to go right through him, those days, skinny, body too busy growing to focus on staying warm. He looked forward to getting back into the car and going home. A hot shower. 

“God, Bradley, you’re shaking.”

“Huh? N-no, m’ not.” 

“Here.”

“Mav–” 

Mav draped the stupid blue jacket over his shoulders so he couldn’t wriggle out of it. It was still warm with the remnant contact of his body. He was wearing a skintight white t-shirt that he’d probably started wearing in the eighties and never stopped, which was growing progressively wetted down as they stood there, kids in uniforms streaming around them, aluminum bats clinking together in bags. It hung close to his chest and torso, which were devastatingly perfect. He had soft, clear pecs and actual ab muscles. He was compact and touchable in a way that Brad wanted to do something to, or with. 

“Brad?” 

“Huh?”

“You good?”

“Uh. thanks,” he said, resettling the jacket on his shoulders, cheeks suddenly hot. It would take him well through his academy years, the image of Mav standing there, getting wetter. 

He remembered the ride back, only vaguely. Climbing into the passenger seat beside Mav at the end of the day, a loser, technically, drenched with old sweat and rain, but none the worse for it; none the colder. 

— 

The truth was: he would’ve wanted Mav, even if he wasn’t beautiful. Would’ve loved him just as painfully, as deeply, even if he was the homeliest motherfucker to have crawled into a cockpit from bumfuck wherever. He didn’t give a shit. Rooster wanted Mav inside of himself and visa versa in any way he understood he could, from birth henceforth. 

— 

They were putting together the bedframe a day or two later when he tried to broach it again. 

“So,” he said, playing with the hex wrench between his fingers. Mav was knee deep in the criss crossing bones of the Ikea frame. 

“What?”

“I had an idea.”

Mav was tightening a bolt. “That sounds like trouble,” he grunted. He came off like such an old man when he said stuff like that. Rooster didn’t mind, though.

“So, basically, we have sex.” 

“Okay. I’m on board so far.” 

“But.” 

Maverick turned to look over at his shoulder, up at him. “That is a pretty loaded-sounding ‘but.’”  

“I wear the baseball shirt, during.”

“The Falcons one?” 

“Uh huh.” Rooster took a bracing inhale. “And I pretend that I was me, back when I got that shirt.”

Mav blinked.

“And you pretend to be you,” Rooster said. “Back when I got that shirt.” 

Mav was never good at hiding what he was thinking or feeling. 

“You didn’t fuck me in the head, or anything, Mav, I promise,” Rooster said, quickly. Mav opened his mouth “Or. Okay,” he continued, cutting him off. “For the sake of an argument, maybe you did, twenty years ago. Plausible. But, let’s face it, there are a lot of other factors. Also, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Sorry. I know, this is a lot–”

“I…don’t think I’ve ever pretended to be anyone else during sex,” Mav said, quietly. 

“Wait, what? Really? Like, not even—”

“Just me.” Mav shrugged helplessly. Rooster was actually impressed. He revisited the mental note he’d made to save Mav from his last few decades of boring vanilla fucking, and underlined it. 

“Whatever, don’t think about that part, yet,” he said. “Besides, you wouldn’t be someone else, you would be you. Just younger. Main thing is, this is the best my life has ever been, because you’re in it. So if that’s a worry.” 

Mav reached up and put a hand on his calf, holding on over top of his jeans. His hand was warm. 

“I’m sorry that I pushed us apart,” he said. 

Rooster clambered down onto the floor with him, in the guts of the half-constructed bed, gently re-folding Mav’s hand back into his lap and holding it there. “It was two-sided, and you were trying to help me. I would do it again. All of it. I mean, if banging you all the way though wasn’t an option.” He wasn’t a therapist by any stretch but he did love Maverick so much that he knew he was going to die doing it. 

“Fair enough,” Mav said. 

Rooster remembered when they couldn’t be in the same room together for fear of screaming about this. They’d done pretty good, he reckoned. 

“So, I have a plan. Would you listen, if I told you about it?” 

Mav considered him. “Alright. Shoot.” 

He explained it, trying not to feel like he was in some alternate universe as he did. Mav listened quietly. By the end they were just sitting on the floor across from each other, cross legged. 

“So. Thoughts?” he asked.  

Mav thumbed at his chin. “Seems…. Interesting.” 

“Would you be down?”

Mav had piloted a plane at Mach 10 successfully, without flinching. 

“I think,” Mav said, looking sheepish, “Well, I think I’m getting a semi.” Rooster laughed a little, pushed into his space, insistently, so he only had to speak at a near whisper, mouth close to mouth. 

“Can you say it, out loud? I’m worried you won’t mean it.” 

He felt Mav’s warm breath on his face, looked down into the thick fan of his closed eyelashes, and waited. 

“Yeah, Rooster. I’m down,” Mav said, slowly, tipping his chin up to be kissed. 

—

Day of, he heard Mav stop as he passed him in the bathroom on his way to the base for a morning meeting. Rooster had left the door open deliberately. 

“Oh, god, don’t— don’t really get rid of it, Brad,” he pleaded. “I thought you were joking.” 

Rooster, who was leaned close to the mirror in concentration, holding the skin of his cheek gently taut as if he hadn’t been poised in wait to hear the thump thump thump of Mav’s footsteps in the hallway, as if he was just being very careful, slid the buzzing clippers up his lip. A hunk of hair floated down into the sink. He looked over at Mav, who seemed genuinely sort of horrified. 

“Oops. You’re about, uh, two seconds too late?” 

Mav didn’t say anything else so Rooster kept going with sweeps of the razor until it was all gone. He rubbed a hand across his muzzle, brushing off any hangers-on hairs. 

It felt weird, but good-weird. He’d been keeping his mustache, in one shape or another, since graduating from the academy, and when he looked in the mirror, he balked a little. He definitely looked younger. The scars on his face popped out more. Mav came closer, seeming equally transfixed. 

“What d’ you think?” Rooster asked. 

“Huh.” 

“Hope you didn’t think I was joking about the rest of it, because I wasn’t.”

Warm finger pads came up to trace Rooster’s upper lip as Mav put hands on his face. 

“How does it feel?” Mav asked, quietly. 

“Less like Dad.” 

“Yeah.” 

‘That a good thing?” Rooster asked, suddenly insecure. Maybe Mav— maybe this was all because— 

Mav’s tongue flicked out to wet his lips. “Yeah. It’s good,” he said. His eyes were wide and glittering. For the first time, Rooster saw something in there that could be described as lecherous.

“Shit,” Rooster muttered, dragging Mav in by the back of the neck.

“Hey, watch it, you’ll get hair in my mouth—“ 

—

They’d laid out in detail how they were doing to do it, earlier, briefed on it, but Rooster could only sort of remember what they’d decided because he fell helplessly into the clutches of the fantasy as soon as they started.

First, after their days, they’d put away the groceries. Mav had cooked something easy and Rooster had cleaned it up, Mav puttering around in the background in the meanwhile, locking the place up, turning overhead lights off and low lamps on. They’d watched TV together for a bit. The TV was still propped up on boxes because they hadn’t been able to build the console, yet. Rooster curled up against Mav on the couch (his old couch) in a way he’d started to since they began seeing each other, half in Mav’s lap so he could have maximal contact while keeping his eyes on the screen, but now, in the context of what they were about to do, he realized it was more of a return to form. It was how he’d always slotted himself next to Mav. He felt the ghost of his younger self sucking at the edges of him, already. An NSYNC reference on whatever show they were watching made the spell thicker. 

When the show finished, they went back up to their room and Rooster had asked, calmly, if he should go change. If Mav was ready. 

Rooster had been the one to heed Mav’s little nod and go into the bathroom in the hallway, wadded up baseball shirt in hand. 

But now he was Bradley, pining to crawl into Maverick’s bed on a school night. The lights were out. Mav’s choice. 

Bradley stepped cautiously into the room on socked feet. The shirt was a little too small on him, straining across his arms. He didn’t notice. 

“…Mav?” His voice croaked without meaning to, in that unevenly settled way. Deepening but not yet deep. The word hung there for a minute, long enough that Rooster became briefly terrified that Mav was about to call the whole thing off. 

The covers rustled. 

“Bradley? What’s wrong?” Mav’s voice even sounded authentically textured by an interrupted REM cycle, somehow. 

“Can’t sleep.” 

“C’mere, champ.” 

It should have been corny, but wasn’t. A word like a hand on the shoulder, a warm squeeze around his bicep. It had been a very long time since he’d heard it, and he leaned towards the comfort of it, walking over cautiously. He didn’t know this room in the dark, yet. 

“Bad dream?” Mav asked, kindly.  

Rooster flinched a little as he remembered: he used to have a lot of those. Mom was just freshly gone, now, no padding of a decade or two to thin out the grief. He’d almost forgotten the blackness of that year, after she died, and how tenderly Mav had guided him through. The nights when the grief had become so overwhelming that Mav let him fall asleep beside him from crying on the couch and stayed there with him until morning. 

“Yeah,” he said.

“Bad one?” 

“Uh huh.” 

He saw the pale blue flash of the covers being flipped back. An invitation. 

Rooster, leaning down on the bed with one knee, became Bradley more fully, teenaged and wanting. It wasn’t hard to remember how that particular brand of want felt. It was a heavy sun in his throat, burning. 

He slid wordlessly in beside Mav. 

It was all new. His bare face slipped against the cool pillow. The shirt chafed against his chest, soft and a little too tight. 

“You’re alright,” Mav murmured, there when Bradley reached for him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders automatically. “It’s okay, now. Wanna talk about it?” 

“Nuh uh,” Bradley said, turning on his side so he could press closer. Mav felt much larger and warmer, now, like Brad could just hide his whole body up inside the hot nook of his armpit and never come out. 

“Okay, buddy.” 

Mav was rubbing big, open-palmed circles on his back. It was okay, and warm, defended against whatever else was out there. He curled himself into the bliss of their bodies fitted together. This place was better than earth. He’d been half a head taller since the tenth grade but that didn’t matter; he may have whimpered with relief. His erection, which had been interested since he put the shirt on, was very much throbbing at full hardness against Mav’s leg. 

“Oh,” Mav said, like he’d just noticed at the same time. 

“Sorry,” Bradley said, the realness of his awkwardness and uncertainty making him even harder. He didn’t move. 

“S’ okay. It happens.”

Mav’s hand kept rubbing circles on his back, sweeping up and around and down. “Need help?” he asked. 

They’d talked about this part. The plan. Or at least, the jumping off point. Rooster was fast losing track of any next bullet points on the agenda. 

Bradley nodded into his shoulder. 

Mav took him by the back of the knee and hiked up his leg onto his hip, shifted him up so that Bradley's groin was pressing more firmly onto his thigh, which sent a dull throb of pleasure up him through the layers of sleep clothes. Bradley gasped. 

“How’s that?” Mav asked. 

Bradley jerkily nodded an affirmative, his heart beating in his mouth. He was afraid to speak. 

“You can do whatever you need to do,” Mav said, evenly, with only the barest lace of tremble to it. “Whatever you need, honey.” 

Bradley moaned, softly, with the relief of permission. Slowly, and then faster, he began to rock back and forth, moving his hips in little jerks, pure sensation. He was the hardest he’d ever been, dick shoved up against Mav’s hip and belly. 

“Feel good?” Mav asked. 

“Yeah,” he huffed. 

“Good.” Mav kissed his forehead, which was getting sweaty already. “What do you want, baby?” 

Bradley closed his eyes at that. Baby, baby. He wanted Mav to call him that one hundred times. He was Mav’s baby. 

He grunted, still rubbing on Mav’s wide, strong thigh. He wanted unending stimulation on his dick, greedy for it. 

“Anything?” he grit out. 

“Whatever you want.” He could feel Mav’s own erection bumping around between them. 

Bradley was stunned stupid by his wealth of luck. The sheer pleasure of Mav’s body, given freely as a comfort. “Want you to be in me,” he blurted. “Y-your cock, the whole thing.”

He’d just discovered his asshole, by this age, and was thrilled by it. The season of hairbrush handles and Vaseline and pretending it was Mav fucking him. 

“Sweetheart, you’re—” Mav took a deep breath in, brow furrowed for a second as he closed his eyes, as if in pain. “You’re not ready for that, yet.” 

Bradley frowned and wriggled. Rooster wasn’t sure if he should push Maverick further, if he was inhibited by shame and needed Rooster to work a finger into the loosened knot of it, or if this was his fantasy, and what ended up coming out was genuine– almost bratty– impatience: 

“Why not?” Bradley at this age would have fully whined, and he could barely restrain himself, rutting his dick on Mav even harder. “Put stuff up there all the time.”

Mav’s eyes snapped open. “What stuff?”

“Whatever feels good.”

“Christ, Bradley.” 

Mav was very, very hard. He was holding on to Brad’s hip tightly, the other arm looped beneath his neck above the pillow, helping shift Bradley, keep the pressure nice and firm, their faces close. 

“You.” Mav’s throat closed on the dry click of a swallow. “You never had a cock up there, right, sweetheart?” 

“No,” Bradly said, immediately. He couldn’t hardly remember the girl he’d lost his virginity to in high school, someone on debate team, probably around this time. The first guy, a dude who ran track, was later, just before college. They were both gone. Dust-crushed history. Suddenly, the idea of Mav being his first was all he wanted, the absolute hottest thing he could imagine. Every sexual preference, every experiment, each yuck-turnoff or piece of ironclad boner fuel– instead of being just informed by Mav, it was born directly from him. From his hands. The idea that he’d never been touched by anyone else; poached by Mav for himself. 

Rooster could weep. Nearly twenty years and every first, he’d been denied. 

“Never had anyone. Nobody but you,” he bleated, doubling down, rutting hard. God, he felt like he was going to cry, or maybe come, and wasn’t sure which. 

Mav’s face was contorted, like he wanted that too much, and Rooster was desperate to know if the virginity stuff was doing as much for Mav as it was for him. That seemed impossible. 

Suddenly, he was pulling away, unlatching. A gust of cold air. Bradley’s dick pulsed, dumb and jilted, in his underwear. 

He squirmed. “Hey—”

Mav settled down between his legs under the tent of the blanket. He could just make out the sharp cut of his jaw and the dark shape of his head in the shadows, the feeling of his knees boxing out Bradley’s own. “Cool it,” Mav was saying. “Just not yet. I didn’t say never.” His hands fell, heavy, to Bradley’s waistband. 

“Let me take care of you. Alright, baby?” 

“God, please.” 

Maverick got his cock out of his underwear, which was already over sensitive from the rutting, and took it into his mouth. He’d sucked Rooster’s cock probably five billion times since they started hooking up– the men’s bathroom at the Hard Deck, to start, an incredible cliche, then in the trailer, and Rooster’s old place, and whatever other places, enough that Rooster started to worry for his knees– but he’d never sucked Bradley’s. He did it so lovingly that Bradley thought he was going to explode, trembling with it. The way he’d want it if it was the very first time, hot and easy. Mav sped up. Bradley realized he was making low panting-whimpering sounds. 

“Okay, sweetheart?” Mav asked, once he’d slid Bradley out, off his tongue. The blankets fell back off his head, showing his strong shoulders. Bradley’s legs, for a second, felt bandy and skinny and small.  

“Feelsgood,” he grunted in a rush. The pleasure of it was too big for his body, the zap of the serotonin of Maverick unadulterated in his brain with all the punch that made him jack it twice a day or more for longer than he’d like to admit. 

“Good,” Mav whispered, then swallowed him down again. 

“Oh, shit.” Bradley thrust a hand in his hair, too afraid to do anything besides grab at it, but also worried he was going to fall off the face of the earth, otherwise. 

“Thank you, thank you, fuck,” he babbled, hardly able to thrust into Mav’s mouth once or twice more before he was coming into it. It took no time at all. None. He was pretty sure his brains were melting out his dick. 

When he returned back to himself, Mav had already scooted up, tented over Bradley’s belly, and was making quick work of his own dick down inside the covers. Bradley could see the flexing of his arm and shoulder as he stripped himself with short, desperate strokes. The head of his cock winked out on each downstroke. 

Rooster rested his hand sleepily on Mav’s quivering hair. “Love you, Dad” he said, softly, petting. 

“Bradley,” Mav gasped, tortured. “Bradley.” 

—

“Did you really fuck yourself?”

“My best jackoffs of my life were with a hairbrush handle up my ass and one of your dirty shirts draped over my face.” 

Mav covered his eyes with his hands beside him. “Holy shit. That’s some information.” 

“I’m surprised you never heard me. Or missed the shirts. What?” Rooster asked, when he caught Mav peering at him through a crack in his fingers. 

“Well,” Mav said. 

Rooster reached over and thwapped him with a pillow. “And you were so embarrassed just a minute ago!”  

“I definitely knew when you were going at it, a few times. Didn’t make anything easier.” 

“Knowing your kid was crankin’ it to you in his room?” 

“Believe me, I didn’t know it was over me. That would’ve—“ he paused, searching for the right words, “probably made things more complex.” 

Rooster was intrigued by that thought, but shelved it. Another time. They were just wading into this. 

“It was Mom’s old brush,” he blurted, then lay there for a second “Wow, I never thought I would say that out loud.” 

“I always wondered why that stuck around,” Maverick said, absently. Rooster couldn’t tell if he was being serious or indulging him. He didn’t care either way. 

They lay there for a while, tangled together, until Maverick spoke again: 

“When you were real little, your mom had someone over who was about to have a baby — I think it was a neighbor. You were totally fascinated. And the lady explained that when moms and dads love each other very much, that bump was what happened, and that was a baby in there. 

So when I came to visit, you grabbed one of your stuffed animals and shoved it up your shirt and wouldn’t stop carrying on about how you were going to have my baby.”

Rooster laughed into Mav’s neck.

“Sometimes you would pull it out, like, ‘here Mav, hold this,’ and make me cradle it for a while, and then shove it back up there and waddle away. Your mom was beside herself. She thought it was the cutest thing.”

“Which one was it?” 

“Oh, boy. I think it was the Padres teddy bear your uncle gave you when you were born?” 

“Oh my god.”  

“You were very serious. It was cute.” 

“I’d still have your babies.”

“Mmm.”

“I wanna do you taking my virginity, next time, if you’re down. Would be hot as shit.” 

Mav didn’t respond. When Rooster looked over, his eyes were tightly closed. 

He was shaking in his arms. 

“Mav?” Rooster was in auto-assessment mode, eyes flitting around, checking Mav over for damages. Shell shock. Crash injury. “What’s wrong?” 

Mav’s teeth were bared in a grimace. “You’ve no idea how—How long I spent pretending that I didn’t want.” He stopped. 

“That?” Rooster finished gently. 

Mav nodded, like it was an appropriate level of ambiguity to describe exactly what he meant. “That,” he said. 

Rooster’s heart beat frantically. “But you had a good time?” 

“I’m a little worried about how much of a good time I had.” 

“Oh.” 

Rooster readjusted them, so he could prop himself up on one elbow and look down over Mav. 

“Sorry, I’m a little overexcited. In case it wasn’t clear: it is literally the hottest thing I could ever imagine.” 

“You were so young,” Mav whispered hoarsely, tossing his pretty head against the pillow. “Can’t say I won’t hate myself for it.” 

“Only a little, though?” 

“A little.”  

“Good. We can work on that.” 

Rooster paused to shift one of his feet between Mav’s calves, then continued. 

“What if I told you the only part that upsets me is that it took twenty years to get to you. And the only thing I really want to do for the next twenty is make up for it.” 

“Damn. I’m old. A creepy old man.” 

“Yeah, and what if you are? I want you.” 

Mav looked at him silently. 

Rooster kept going: “Look. Are you proud of me?” 

“Beyond words.” 

His heart clenched at the crack in Mav’s voice. 

“Did you ever realize, then,” he said, “that even if you fucked me up, somehow, you also gave me every good part, too?” 

“Carol–”

“I mean, yeah. My mom. But I don’t think you understand how much comes from you, Mav. How badly I wanted to be you, and everything you were.” He felt like he was making crazy eyes, the way he was searching Mav’s face, who had a small frown line between his eyebrows as he gazed back, like he couldn’t wrap his head around it. 

“Maybe even more than I wanted to fuck you,” Rooster added, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Which was a lot.” 

When he looked over again, Mav was smiling, in that sad-sweet way full of wizened knowing that you probably only get to once you pass the half century mark. At least, Rooster guessed so. He felt no mastery of it. 

“Aren’t you ever going to get tired of me messing with you?” Mav asked. He didn’t seem scared, or frustrated, now. Just curious. He had boundless energy and it kind of freaked Rooster out. The idea of him being truly aged, sluggish and inert and incapable, was actually impossible. 

Rooster shook his head. “I want you to screw me up completely. I’m talking beyond fucking recognition,” he said, craning over. He kissed Mav a bit, then more, the kisses thickening, opening. His mouth was warm, at first, and then eventually became the same temperature as everything else, via makeout entropy. His hand found its way onto the stretch of belly that sat softly above the waistband of Mav’s boxers. Pleasant. 

“I love you, too” Mav said, when they finally pulled back. His eyes were growing heavy lidded, finally, drowsing a bit. Rooster waited, arms wrapped around him, until Mav’s energy finally dwindled enough for him to fall into sleep, which was unusual, because he typically went to sleep pragmatically, like it was a decision. Turned his body off, Navy-made. 

Rooster lay there and looked up at the bedroom ceiling which was really their ceiling, now. He clung to Mav‘s body like a desperate scavenger. 

Never, he thought. 

Never could he tire.