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Jake’s not sure how long ago the hallucinations started. They come and go, and they’re not all about the same thing. This one’s new. Also new is that if he closes his eyes it goes away. Well, Cam and the guy Jake doesn’t recognize go away. The noise doesn’t. Zach—Zach doesn’t. But there wasn’t enough left of Zach to send home in an urn, let alone a box, for all that he was given full burial honors.
Jake has just enough sanity left to know there’s no way in hell (this one or any other) Zach is standing here with his old squad mate.
“Don’t touch him,” Skittles says. It’s clearly intended to be sharp, but neither of them has had anything to drink in probably about twelve hours now, maybe a little more. Skittles’ attempted growl isn’t going to keep one of them from being dragged out of here again today. It should be Jake. Give Skittles more time.
Jake tries to focus on where his hands are. Everything hurts, but if he can just find his hands and push himself up they’ll take him. He outranks Skittles and as soon as he made their captors aware of that it kept them more interested in Jake anyway.
He’s just found his hands when the Cam-hallucination says, “Whoa, Jake, you’re not looking great. It’s okay, stay down, we’ll help you out of here once we’ve cleared this corridor.”
Jake blinks over at the three Navy SEALs in the door. He sicks up the blood he keeps swallowing from the molars they pulled as he lowers some of his weight onto the festering burns on his left palm. Once he’s gotten some breath back into his lungs, he says, “Lieut-tenant.”
“Sir?” Skittles asks, sounding unusually wary. They’ve gotten to know each other pretty well by now.
“Keep the c-cell warm for me. I’ll be right b-back after me and these nice g-gentleman have a talk.” It’s odd, they’ve never waited this long before. Normally they just come in and drag him out however they feel like it. Also, fuck he’s freezing. It’s always cold, but today feels particularly brutal. He hates it when he can’t stop shaking.
“Jake,” the Cam-hallucination says, uncertainty writ large in his features. Then, more confidently, “Lieutenant Commander Seresin, Lieutenant Vincent, we’ve been sent to this location to retrieve you and Lieutenants Stanton and Danner if—”
“They’re dead.” Jake counts himself lucky he’s not seeing them right there beside Zach, who doesn’t even have the decency to be judging Jake with his expression. Just watching, worried, like the younger SEAL Jake doesn’t know.
“Acknowledged,” The Cam-hallucination says gently. Looking at Skittles he continues, “The Lieutenant Commander and I have met before, but I’m Commander Cam Schneider, and this is Lieutenant Amir Khara.”
Skittles looks at Jake. Jake shakes his head and then regrets it when he nearly has to vomit once more. “Sorry, I think I’m hallucinating again.”
He’s tried to keep it to himself, but Skittles has definitely gotten caught up in it once. The Khara-hallucination says, “Corridor’s clear, sir.”
The Cam-hallucination nods. “All right, we need to move. Vincent, are you good to move on your own?”
“I’m helping with the Commander, sir. He’s been running a fever for…a while now. I’m not sure he understands what’s really going on.”
Jake frowns at that, looking up at where the maybe-SEALs are standing. “C-Cam?”
The maybe-not-hallucination says, “Hi Jake.”
“Cam, Zach is standing right next to you.”
Cam nods tightly. “Yeah, okay. I see how that’s probably confusing, kid. But I bet he just wants to make sure you make it out of this situation safely. So can you let me and my team get you and Lieutenant Vincent here back onto US Navy property? Then I promise you, if he’s still standing next to me, we can discuss at length. Deal?”
Jake looks at Zach, who raises an eyebrow. Jake says, “Deal.”
Two Months Earlier
A week after Jake rejoins the Vigilantes following the conclusion of the Top Gun recall, he makes certain to set up a vid call. His mom answers on the first ring despite the fact that he’d been good about calling while on land, when his access wasn’t limited. “Hey mom, happy birthday.”
“Hey baby,” she grins. “It’s so good to see your face. How’re things on the open sea?”
Jake shrugs. “Looks like that promotion is going to come through sooner rather than later. You’ll tell dad?”
She gives him a Look. “Absolutely not. That’s your news, you tell him. But awfully nice birthday present for me.”
He rolls his eyes. “Your present should have arrived in the mail.”
“It did. Thank you, I can’t wait to start reading it.” Quietly, she asks, “You okay, Jake? We know you can’t tell us anything, but—” She touches her fingers to the screen.
The problem, Jake thinks, with having a father who’s a Navy captain in his own right, is that he knows enough to know that when you come back from a mission that’s top secret and are awarded a few medals and suddenly have a new air-to-air but nobody can actually say anything, Some Shit Definitely Went Down.
And Jake’s parents had worried more about Jake than they had about Zach from the get go. That fact has always felt a little heavy in Jake’s stomach. Even with Zach having been KIA over six years ago it remains the truth.
“I’m okay, mom, I promise.” He is. He’s lonely, like always. And he’s considering making some terrible, dangerous decisions his parents would in no way approve of. But he’s okay. “Read the book, you’re gonna love it.”
They have a tradition, Jake always sends her a book they’ll both find interesting on her birthday, then they read it and discuss.
“Did you cheat, Jacob Seresin?”
Jake laughs. He absolutely cheated. “I plead the fifth.”
The first Seresin in Jake’s line to land on North American shores had done so out of the desperate need to feed himself. He’d scrimped and saved to get himself on a cargo ship and come in through Galveston in the late 1800s. The story should have gone that he got himself farm labor in Brazos Valley or somewheres about, like the other Italians who came into Galveston. But in a twist of fate that would determine the story of countless Seresins to come, that Seresin—by all accounts a sturdy and outgoing sixteen year old by the name of Enzo—charmed a few of the crew into teaching him how to work on a ship.
When he got to the port, he continued in this vein, staying in Galveston to apprentice himself to other sailors.
Enzo enlisted in the Navy at the outbreak of World War I, and his eldest son, Mateo, joined a year later upon turning eighteen.
There is not a single Seresin man who has not served in the Navy since. Jake’s maternal grandmother, Louisa, had been a Navy nurse during the Second World War. His Aunt Emilia, dad’s younger sister, is the first woman in the family to serve in peace time.
Jake’s the first in the family to choose aviation. He loves his family, and he knows they love him. Every once in a while when he thinks about his shift to the sky over the water, though, he wonders if it’s more of a metaphor than he realized when he was just a seventeen year old who liked vector formulas and going fast.
Present
They sedate Jake on the helo. He’d like to say he remembers why but Jake got into the habit early of only lying when he needed to. There’s been some damned important shit in his life he’s needed to lie about, and the more you lie, the easier it is to get caught in one. His dad taught him that.
He wakes up to the smell of antiseptic and beeping, which usually means a carrier medbay, but he knows the sounds and feel of a carrier, and this has neither. For one thing, it might not be quiet, but it’s quieter. There aren’t any pulsing engines, and while the sound of humans isn’t completely missing, the close-quarters nature of a carrier is. Later, he’ll be embarrassed he doesn’t realize he’s been taken to a hospital. Right then, Jake freaks the ever-loving-fuck out.
Unshockingly, going from unconscious to having a full-fledged panic attack in the space of about ten seconds brings a bevy of medical personnel flying into the room. What brings him back from the edge is his mother’s, “Jake, sweetheart, look at me. Look at me. You’re safe.”
He looks at her. She has the shadows around her eyes that he thought would never fade after they handed dad Zach’s flag, and her hair is a mess. She’s real, though. He knows, because the next thing she says is, “You ever scare me like that again, Jacob Grant Seresin, and I swear to fuck I will kill you myself, you got that?”
And yup, that’s definitely his mom. He takes a breath. “Wher’m’I?”
She looks up at the assorted medical personnel and nods them off. A few linger to get readings, most of them disperse, though. She holds a cup with a straw to his lips. The water is room temperature and absolutely delicious. When she takes it away after a few sips Jake forces himself not to chase after it.
“Navy hospital at Yokosuka. It was the closest to where you—it was closest.”
Yeah, Jake supposes that makes sense, given what area of the world they’d been in when all this had started. “Where’s Skittles? My—”
“The man they brought you in with.” She smiles, her finger brushing his hair. It’s the best feeling in the world. “Cam thought you might ask. He’s a couple rooms down. His fiancée has come in every morning since she arrived, asking about you for him. They’re going to release him to outpatient treatment in the next day or so.”
Jake blinks at that. Blinks again. “How—how long?”
“You haven’t really been with us for the better part of a week. You’ve woken up here and there, sort of. There were a couple of operations, the first when you got here, and then another, a few days after. Your immune system was doing a shit job of things. They put you into an induced coma for a couple of days to help.”
Jake looks down at his body and thinks, in a vague way, that he must be on some deeply good shit, because he should probably feel at least some of what’s bandaged up. More presently he thinks that his mom, who already lost one kid, had to sit at this one’s bedside while he was off in an induced coma. “I’m sorry, mama.”
“Don’t,” she whispers. “Jake. Don’t.”
He presses his lips together and looks away because she means it, so he won’t. Doesn’t mean he isn’t sorry. Instead he asks, “Dad okay?”
“He was here. He just had to leave to work on getting FMLA lined up, he’ll be back as soon as—”
“He doesn’t need to—”
“I love you with everything left in my soul, but if you finish that sentence, sweet honey child of my blood and body, I am going to asphyxiate you to death with the hospital pillow currently doing very, very little to support your head.”
Jake is going to pass out again in about thirty seconds. He uses that time to say, “I think you should call Dr. Pfarr,” referring to the grief counselor she’d seen after Zach died.
“I called Pfarr a week before some guy in the Navy even leaked it to your father that you were MIA, Jake.”
There was a lot in that sentence and Jake definitely needs to deal with all of it. For now he starts with, “Some…guy?”
“David said he introduced himself as Pete. In any case, I appreciate Sir Pete the Mysterious, because until the call from Cam in Japan, the Navy was stonewalling us, essentially saying that it was need to know. You’ve been MIA for almost a full month.”
It’s all Jake can do not to apologize again, for himself, shit, for the damn Navy. He doesn’t, though, because she’s told him not to, and she called Pfarr while she was still being gaslit by the defense agency her husband and her son serve. Also, he can’t stay awake any longer no matter how hard he tries.
A little over three weeks prior
Leaving work early isn’t a luxury afforded admirals, let alone four star ones. Even on the good days, the days where nothing has gone wrong and everything is business as normal. Days where radar has been lost on four F-18s last seen over international waters are not those days.
Worse, the audio they do have from prior to radar loss is concerning to say the least.
Tom doesn’t get home from the office until a little after ten that night, which means it’s after midnight on North Island, where Mav is consulting for the week. He uses the secure line to call anyway.
Mav picks up on the second ring, slurring out a half-awake, “Babe? You okay?”
Even with everything going on, Tom can’t help the surge of satisfaction that simple recognition of their relationship—allowed now that Mav has officially retired—brings. “Mav, I didn’t make this call, okay?”
“Yeah, course.”
“One of your Daggers went MIA with his wingman and a pair of Eagles while doing a basic recon over neutral waters. Initial radar clocks six other aircraft in the vicinity, but it’s possible there were more. Comms were jammed, and one of ours was down before we even really saw them coming, which suggests tech that we haven’t seen before now.”
“Bradley?”
“Jesus, no, I wouldn’t—no. It’s Seresin.”
“Fuck.”
Tom draws a breath in through his nose.
“I know that silence.” Mav suddenly sounds like he’s bolted a full pot of coffee.
“He’s legacy.”
“Yes, I actually read the files of the people I was training to fly a suicide mission.”
Tom lets it sit for a moment.
The penny drops. “They’re not letting anyone tell Captain Seresin.”
“We still didn’t have this conversation, Mav.”
“That is his child, Ice. There’s a reason you would have told me differently if it was Bradley.”
Tom rubs a hand over his face. “His CO is coordinating with SEALs on SAR. I’ll keep you updated.”
Mav says quietly, “Ice. Hangman’s brother was a SEAL. KIA.”
“Yeah, I caught that. I’m going to have a conversation with Seresin’s CO.”
Mav waits a beat. Says, “Get some sleep.”
Tigger, who’s flown on his wing for the better part of two years, is dead before any of them even know they’ve got an issue. They don’t know their comms to the boat are jammed because for the preceding five minutes before one of them is ripped out of the sky, there’s no good reason to talk to the boat.
Jake is the senior officer, the lead from the Eagles being a LTSG. They have choppy comms among themselves, which is probably what ends up saving himself and Skittles. He’s able to communicate enough for a defense game plan between the remaining three planes. That said, they’re outnumbered, with planes that have tech that’s unaccounted for, and out on the open ocean. It’s not a lot to work with.
He’s still not certain how many of the enemy there was up there. At first four, for certain, but at one point Skittles called a fifth. Where the fuck had they all come from? They’d been in neutral airspace.
Skittles is alive, but unconscious. Jake’s losing less blood to shrapnel wounds than Skittles is, but his struggles to get to the others have left him woozy. Still, he gets himself and Skittles consolidated onto a single chute; trying to raise the ship. Even forgetting the jamming, his personal comms are fried, and hours later, as the sun begins to sink and the possibility of bleeding out or dying of exposure both become significant threats, he releases the dye from the chute, hoping against hope that they’re found by friendlies first.
Present Day
The smell of coffee with coconut creamer has Jake asking, “Dad?” before he even opens his eyes. His dad puts coconut in everything.It’s only after he’s asked that his mind catches up to the fact that he interrupted a conversation, and for a moment, the heart monitor ticks up, as Jake finds himself panicking that he’s having auditory hallucinations again. Opening his eyes puts that concern to rest. His dad is there, and now coming closer, a hand reaching out to rest against his cheek. “Hey, Jake, it’s okay.”“Sorry, I—” His gaze looks out a little past his dad. “Mav?”“Hi, yeah, I should—”“The Admiral was in the hall.”“Retired. I really, please call me Pete.”Jake is still on regular doses of Oxy and he thinks, given the conversation he somewhat remembers with the doctor from yesterday, possibly even some level of morphine. He knows his dad’s face, though, and it might be politely incredulous at this moment, with the politely being a bit of an overstatement. His dad can fight his own battles about decorum. Jake has more important things to address before he passes out again. “We’re in Japan. I’m not…I didn’t get that wrong?”The hand on his cheek slips around to the back of his neck, warm and steady. “We’re in Japan, bud.”“I’ve always liked Japan,” Mav says. “And, uh, I wanted to make sure you were okay. With my own eyes. I didn’t mean to intrude. Now that I’ve seen, I’m gonna head out. If you guys need anything, your dad has my contact info. You guys call. I’m serious.” Mav nods at Jake, then his dad. “Good to see you, Hangman. Pleasure to meet you in real time, Captain.”When he’s almost at the door, Jake’s dad calls out, “Sir.”Mav spins, “Yes?”“Thank you. For the call. When… I don’t know how you got the information, and I imagine you weren’t meant to tell me. It was…for my wife and I, it was a lifeline. We can’t possibly repay you.”With the tiniest shake of his head, Mav says softly, “If your son could tell you this, he might tell you that any debt accrued was already doubly prepaid.” For a second, Mav looks down at his shoes. When he looks back up, his eyes are just a shade too bright. “I’m not a father, not in the strictest sense. Close enough to know the kinds of calls that matter.”A little full-body bob and Mav’s out the door. Jake’s dad asks, “That mission you couldn’t say squat about?”“Mm,” Jake agrees, still thinking about what Mav just said. “Dad, has anyone texted Javy?”“I’m not sure. I can check into it.”“I need to talk to him. He should still be deployed on the Bush.”“Okay, we’ll work it out.”“Mom said you took FMLA.” Jake lets that rest between them for a moment. His dad is a good man, a good father. Aside from taking time for the funeral, the man hadn’t taken any grief leave when Zach had been killed in action. Not a day.“You talked with the doctor?”Jake nods. His dad keeps his voice level. “Then you know that to even think about getting back in cockpit, you’re looking at months of physical therapy.”Jake does know. He knows that he’s looking at extensive physical therapy for things as basic as regaining full range of motion in his left hand, walking and jogging (let alone running), and living a life where the levels of chronic pain are manageable, rather than constantly needing medication. Flight is not a promise, it’s a possibility. At the moment, it’s not even clear that an erection is a promise, although the doctors seemed optimistic about that. (And bemused that it was a distant second priority of Jake’s after flight.)“I could handle this, dad. I’d be on a base—”His dad sits gently on the bed, careful not to jostle him. “I’m going to tell you something that your mother would absolutely kill me for telling you.”“Uh.”“You weren’t planned.”“What?”“After we had Zach, Caro was so down. Back then we didn’t know there was a name for it, and I thought it was my fault with us moving so much and her being cut off from her support system, not something you could get help with. It scared me. And I loved Zach,” his voice breaks; Jake forces himself not to look away, “from the minute he came into the world, but I didn’t want to risk that again. We agreed we wouldn’t try again. Caro went back on the pill and I used rubbers.”“Holy shit. You’re telling me I was an accident. Why didn’t mom get an abortion?”His dad shrugs. “There’s a difference between accident and unplanned, Jake. Once you were a consideration, we wanted you.”“I was a collection of cells, dad. Mom was—”“We wanted that collection of cells. Shut up, you’re not letting me get to my point. Anyway, she had you, and the post-partum happened again, and I almost left the Navy I was so terrified to go on deployment, but some of her friends on the base promised they’d be there for her and one of them found her a night nurse and those first two years, they were still rough, but she got through it, and Jage,” he laughs, using Jake’s oldest nickname, a shortening of his first and middle initial, “you were such a good kid.”“I was a little shit, dad.”“No, you were a kid. And you did kid things. You also were always making cards for your mom, and finding the silliest things to send to me on deployment, and learning about boats and ships even though it was clear from early on you preferred planes but it made me and poppy happy that you’d read up on our stuff. You were always willing to help Caro so that Zach and I would have birthday cakes, you never bitched about when we had to pick up and move even though it clearly wasn’t easy for you to make friends, and yeah, you were competitive as hell with your brother but you never let it get in the way of loving him.”“We have very different memories of how infinitely patient Zach was with me,” Jake mumbles.Sighing, his dad says, “When the Adm—when Pete called, all I could think was I got this miracle child, against all odds, and I lost his older brother, and now I was going to lose him and I’m not even sure either of them knew how much I loved them.”Jake frowns. “What?”“I have time, and unless you don’t want me helping you, I just, I can’t stand the thought—”“No, stop, not that. I got that.” Jake takes several breaths, trying to will the scent of his dad’s coffee to help his mind work the way he needs it to.“Dad. When Zach found out I was gay in his senior year and held a Family Emergency Talk Jake Out of Going Into the Navy Meeting, you were the person who trusted me to know what was more important: who I dated or if I flew planes. You were the one who taught me how to hide in plain sight, fly under the radar, do all the things necessary to keep my nose clean and you never once blinked at the fact that your son was a nancy boy.”“Don’t.”“You know what I—”“I do, and I said do not.”“My point—.”“I take your point, Jage. I’m still saying, unless you don’t want me taking the time, I’m taking it.”Jake takes several breaths and realizes the heart monitor is going pretty fast. When he’s managed to slow it down he says, “Of course I want you to take it.”His dad smiles. “Get some rest. I’m gonna see about getting you a call with Javy.”
There are a lot of benefits to having had as many family members in the Navy as the Seresins have had. Not the least of which is, even when David doesn’t have a direct connection to tap, chances are his dad knows someone who knows someone, or his sister knows someone, or Jake does. In this case, though, David doesn’t need an assist: he’s known the XO of the Bush since they were NROTC kids back at Rice. Matt was a couple years ahead of him, and light years smarter, but they’ve always gotten along.He sends an email asking that it be worked out for Lt. Javier Machado to have a satellite call with room 311, NMRTC Yokosuka, at a prearranged time. Matt gets back to him within hours, which is impressive on a number of levels, saying, “Absolutely. I hope everything is okay.”As it’s no longer a secret that there were four F-18s shot down the prior month—due to an enterprising journalist and the Navy playing just enough ball to keep things from unraveling even further—David responds, “My son was one of the pilots shot down. He’s recovering here. Machado has been his wingman since flight school, and there’s something he needs to discuss. I very much appreciate you helping me out with this.”“Tell me what time works for your kid, Dave. Unless Machado’s actively in the air, we’ll figure it out.”“I owe you one.”“Nope, not a chance.”
Two Weeks Earlier“Sir, you need to eat,” Skittles is saying, very fucking loudly.Probably not. Probably Skittles is saying that in a completely normal to somewhat soft tone of voice, but Jake has a dehydration headache, paired with a headache that hasn’t complete gone away from the 72 hours their captors hadn’t let them sleep. It seems pretty loud.Jake swallows down the urge to vomit from the pain…everywhere. He doesn’t remember the last time he ate, and dry-heaving would be uncomfortable as fuck on his broken ribs. Also, they caned his palms a few hours ago. He doesn’t want to have to push himself off the floor. He might be able to handle recovery position on his right side. It’s the less injured side. He holds that thought just in case it becomes important.All the same, he doesn’t want to sit up right now or use his hands. “Later, Skittles.”“They take the food if we don’t eat it.” Skittles says this with incredible patience. They both know this.“Eat mine.” Not like the extra calories wouldn’t be useful for the guy. He’s got scarecrow proportions and nothing about this situation is helping with that.“No, sir, c’mon, you need the fuel. I know you feel shitty, but just—”“Skittles, for fuck sake, fuck off.” It’s snapped, but with the same lack of energy he has for everything at the moment.“Mm.”The next thing Jake knows, he’s being carefully righted and settled against the wall in a way that avoids the worst of the damage from the whipping he took right after the seventy-two hours of sleep deprivation when he’d hardly known his own fucking name, let alone any Navy secrets. But he had known his name and his rank, which is what he’d given them.The wall at his back—not to mention moving—hurts so damn much he comes close to losing consciousness. He manages to claw his way back with shallow, slow breaths and willpower.Skittles puts the cup of water to his lips. “Drink, sir.”“Don’ think y’re s’posed t’be givin’ the orders,” Jake slurs back at him. He also drinks.“I lost my wingman, Hangman,” Skittles says, particularly soft and cutting. “And I can’t force our captors to focus on me. But I can do my best to keep you alive. So that’s how we’re doing this. You can court-martial me for insubordination when we’re back stateside.”Jake side-eyes him. Skittles holds up a spoonful of the thin rice-pudding-thing they’ve been bringing. “Do you need me to play the ‘plane is going in the hangar’ game, or are you gonna open up like an adult?”“Touchy,” Jake says. He also opens his mouth and eats.
“Why Skittles?” Jake asks, then coughs so hard he brings up bile and might lose consciousness for a couple of seconds. He’s not sure. He’s definitely very dizzy when it’s all over. The waterboarding did a number on him, but it’s cold as Dante’s ninth circle and he’s too hungry to sleep. Even when he can sleep, most of the time he wakes panicked from nightmares he only wishes he couldn’t remember. He’d rather talk. “Love ‘em? Hate ‘em?”“Neither. My mom’s a marketing VP at Mars Wrigley. She’s always sending me the upcoming or newest flavors. I don’t mind’em or anything, but it gets old quick so I always hand’em out and see what other people think. Mom and her research people like knowing in any case.”“Oh. You’re a Chicago kid?”“All the way through NROTC at UIC. Why Hangman?”Jake lets that breathe for a few minutes. “You don’t believe the rumors?”“Not unless your CO was a real shit, no.”It’s an out. Jake appreciates being given one, especially after days—a week?—of the penalty for not answering a question being literal torture. Slowly, he says, “I was a Navy brat. Moved a lot growing up. We’d play games. If we were driving, license plates games. Flying, then Tic Tac Toe, I Spy, whatever. Word games were my favorites. Hell, I think for like four years running my stocking stuffers were travel Scrabble, travel Taboo, travel whatever-the-hell-wordgame my parents could find. Anyway, brought the habit along as an adult, was always just starting a game of something in downtime, but usually the only materials around were paper and pencils or pens. And there was already a Tic Tac flying at the time, which would have made Tic Tac Toe confusing for everyone. Hangman it was.”“There…is not a lot to spy in this shithole,” Skittles says.The burst of laughter the observation startles from Jake sets off another round of coughing. It’s totally worth it.
PresentJake’s waking up from a post-PT nap, and about an hour off being able to take more Tylenol now that they’re working on trying to lessen his Oxy dosages when Javy’s call comes through. Javy opens with, “I swear to fuck, Seresin, this had better have been some fucking Black Ops shit.”He also sounds like he’s going to cry in the phone bank of the carrier. Jake says, “I’m okay, I promise.”“You’re in a Naval hospital. After going radio silent on everyone for nearly a month. Immediately after four F-18s from your ship were shot down. Maybe you wanna try again?”Jake presses his lips together. They both know he can’t say anything. “Hey.”Javy sniffles a bit. “What do you need? Tell me what you need.”“Mom and dad are here. Dad’s gonna take some FMLA. I don’t need anything except—”“Jake?”“It’s gonna seem weird.”“We’ve survived worst. Literally and metaphorically.”“Mm. There are some things we don’t really talk about.”Javy pauses for a few beats. “Um. In the Don’t Ask way? The It’s-Been-Almost-Six-Years-Since-I’ve-Been-Allowed-To-Ask-And-I-Don’t-Because-I-Know-You’re-A-Bit-Fucked-Up-About-It-Even-Though-I-Actually-Know way?”“I’m not fucked up about it,” Jake says.Another pause. “I don’t really want to fight right now.”Jake sighs. “I’m not, I’m just fucking discreet.”“I caught you behind a bar getting hate-crimed in downtown Pensacola.”“First off, that’s victim-blaming, don’t be that guy. Secondly, my dad taught me how not to get caught in the Navy, not how not to get caught in Florida, two very different environments. Thirdly—”“I feel like we’ve lost the plot a little bit, here.”“You think I have internalized homophobia. I don’t. I’m just aware that the Armed Forces’ homophobia didn’t disappear because the Democrats willed it so.”“I’m literally the only person you know beside your parents who knows, and you were also forcefully outed to them. I’m not judging, Jake. This world’s hard enough without an extra helping of bullshit. I’m just…observing, is all.”The first part of that sentence isn’t precisely true, but now’s not really the exact moment to open that can of worms. “You ever keep a secret for so long you stop knowing how to…it’s like, maybe there was a moment when you could have stopped keeping it, but that moment came and went and now—now you can’t?”Coyote swears under his breath. “Sort of, but nothing like this. That said, Jake, people come out in their fifties, there isn’t some kind of moratorium on—” There’s some more quiet swearing.“Have you been hanging out with sailors?”“Hilarious, you’re a regular fucking laugh parade. What the fuck did you actually call me about, asshole?”“I maybe very very purposely didn’t pay attention to where the hell Rooster went after we all split up.”“I know I’m too smart to be asking this but why do you need to know now?”“It’s not what you’re thinking. Rooster actually is straight, that’s why I allow myself to look that way. It’s not fun, but it is safe. Maverick did my dad a solid when the Navy was stonewalling him and I just want to tell Rooster to give the old man a call. It’ll make him happy.”Something about the silence that follows makes Jake nervous. He knows why when Javy says, “Rooster did what the rest of us did: he chose to finish up the stint he’d been on before we were recalled instead of taking the option of another posting. He’s at Atsugi for another six months.”“Oh.”Yeah, there’s no chance Mav doesn’t know Rooster’s an hour down the road. Right. Okay then. At least that visit makes slightly more sense. “Well,” Jake drawls, “Guess that’s one less call I need to make.”“Jake,” Javy says quietly. “Maybe…maybe I should’ve made you talk about this more.”“Hanging up now.”“You’re not always going to be able to hang up.”Jake doesn’t want to even now, truth be told, would stay on for hours if he thought Javy could be afforded the time. He finds himself saying, “It’s good to hear your voice, man.”Javy’s, “Yeah, yeah, yours too,” is choked out.Jake doesn’t hang up.
One week before rescueThey take Skittles the first time after the day with the electricity, and Jake hates himself for feeling relieved when it turns out he can’t do shit to stop them. He’s worried that Skittles has been giving him more food than he’s taking for himself—not that Jake has the appetite for much, or can keep much down. At least one of Jake’s wounds is infected and it’s taking a toll, extra food or no.Even if the guards hadn’t outnumbered them and been armed, Jake’s not confident he would have been able to take them. As it is, all it had taken was one guard using the butt of his rifle on one of the electricity burns and he was down, throwing up what little he had in his system from the pain. Skittles was screaming at Jake to let them take him, only, it’s bad enough that Jake quietly wanted the reprieve from the pain, from reminding himself that there were reasons not to break: Javy, the other Vigilantes, his dad. Bad enough.He has a responsibility here as Skittles’ senior officer. Jake comes from a long damn line of officers. He knows what it means to be in the senior position. And it’s sure as shit not letting the people under you suffer for you. His dad would be ashamed as fuck of him if he knew that Jake allowed that to happen.Jake has no idea how much time passes before they bring Skittles back. Even if time was easy to tell inside the cell, his internal clock is all messed up and he keeps passing out, at times seeing things he’s pretty sure aren’t there. Eventually, though, they drag Skittles back, bloodied and not keeping his feet well. Jake manages to get his feet under himself after a brief struggle and catch the more wiry man when they toss him back, lowering Skittles as best he can. “Shit, um, okay. Lemme—”He brings Skittles what water they have left and has him drink a bit, slowly. Skittles gives him a small smile and rasps, “Gonna pass out for a bit, sir.”“I’ll wake you for breakfast,” Jake promises him.
PresentSkittles comes into the room with his fiancée just as visiting hours are about to wrap up. “Sir.”“Skittles,” Jake says. “Ma’am.”Both Skittles and his fiancée are Chicago natives, they met at UIC. Jake learned a lot about Ms. Camelia Jeffries in that cell. Skittles looks him over and seems to relax a bit at finding him in one piece. Jake knows the feeling. Now that he’s once again not drugged to the gills, sleep has gone back to being fickle and a hell of a lot more rocky when it does come.Without knowing he’s going to, Jake asks, “You have someone you can see who’s not Navy?”Skittles’ eyes widen. Camelia, though, says, “Yes. I mean, no, but he will. We’ll figure it out.”Jake nods. “How much longer they keeping you near?”“That was actually what I came in here to tell you. Transport back to the States the day after tomorrow.”Jake worries his lip. “Long flight. They’re sure you’re up for that?”“It’s mostly bruising at this point. I have to do some check-ups once I’m stateside, but I’m more sore than anything else.”“What’s your leave situation like?”“Another week recovery, then I’m taking FMLA for a month. They’re assigning me shore duty on return.”Jake nods. “All right. Get a message to me when you’re safely back, if it’s not too much trouble.”Skittles rolls his eyes. “You keep in touch. Let me know when you’re heading back stateside, and what your recovery situation looks like.”Jake considers saluting, but even the thought feels painful, so he fires off a sarcastic, “Sir, yes sir.”“Asshole.” Skittles steps back from the bed. “You need anything?”Jake says, “I’m good. You know my parents are here.”“Yeah.” He puts his hand to Camelia’s back and they both give a wave, beginning to head out. Skittles turns back. “Oh, I know what I keep forgetting to tell you. That SEAL? The Commander who took us out of there? He said to get hold of him when you woke up. He wanted to make sure you were okay.”Jake nods. “Will do. Thanks.”
The next day, just as Jake is drafting a “still kicking” message to Cam, an email from Javy comes in. It says, “Know how you mentioned I could drop a line to the others?” and Jake feels like that’s sort of stretching things, but he’ll allow it. “I got an email back from Fritz sounding relieved. In the weirdly relieved sense, given that I wasn’t aware you guys had ever spoken more than about ten words to each other. In any case, maybe send the guy a wave.”“Fuck,” Jake says aloud.This is another thing he hasn’t spoken to Javy about. Mainly, Why Jake’s Been Convinced for the Last Decade and a Half That Billy Avalone Wouldn’t Cross The Street to Piss on Jake Seresin if the Latter was on Fire. (And why Jake doesn’t entirely blame him.)It’s never been a sure thing. Billy’s not much of a talker, and Jake’s always been too chickenshit to ask, just in case the answer was yes. (Billy’s callsign comes from the fact that his CO actually was a dick, and allowed the bullying about his tendency toward silence to make others in flight school with him ask him if he was “on the fritz”. Jake refuses to use it.) But until now, he’s felt the odds were better than sixty/forty in the “yup, absofuckinglutely” column.Jake has known Billy since they were teenagers. The Avalones aren’t quite legacy in the same way the Seresins are, but Billy’s mom is a commander in the JAG corps, and her and Billy’s dad met in the service before his dad mustered out. His grandfather on his mother’s side was a ship’s captain at the time of retirement, and the great-grandfather on that side served in WWII.Billy and Jake met in high school, when both their families’ were stationed at Newport for a time. It was Billy with whom Jake had his first kiss. And it was also Billy whom Zach would catch Jake with.In teaching Jake to be safe, Jake’s father had taught him to never shit where he ate. Oh, he didn’t put it that way, but Jake read between the lines. And Billy and his family were Navy. Even if Billy didn’t end up going into the Navy, Zach had figured it out, others might as well. Jake couldn’t risk it.The best thing to do, Jake thought at the time, the most logical, would be to make himself so sharp-edged that someone like Billy—who was quiet, and thought in ways that were different from anyone Jake had ever met, and said sweet, funny, off-the-wall things when they were alone—would never want him.It took a few tries, but he managed. Oh, he managed.He…maybe hadn’t considered that they’d end up running into each other over and over again. That he’d have to see Billy watch him with those too-smart eyes, like someone taking apart a puzzle where they have all the pieces, they just keep putting them in the wrong order.“Fuck,” he repeats again, with even more feeling.
After nearly two and a half full weeks, the hospital discharges Jake. The doctors aren’t nearly ready to let him travel yet, though, and if Jake’s being honest, the idea of trying to travel that far makes him want to sob; so that’s probably for the best. The problem being that in the meantime the only place for him and his parents to stay is base housing.Jake attended Embry-Riddle in Daytona and stayed on campus all four years. It is for this reason that he can say with certainty that in the family and officer housing, there’s more privacy than a college dorm. This is about the only improvement. It’s not anywhere a self-respecting human over the age of twenty-one who is able to afford better is going to choose to live.One of the largest issues is the filth of so many people living in the same space one after another and no real cleaning happening. The day before the move, Jake’s mom and dad get into the unit with enough bleach to build several weapons of mass destruction and go wild, as well as going to the Exchange for some new sheets and pillows and other basics that will allow for as much comfort as possible while they are staying there.Jake is doing his best to get himself put together and ready to go, waiting for them to come pick him up when Mav pokes his head in the door, a taller man following behind him in pressed jeans, a button down, and a Navy-branded baseball cap on. Mav says, “Hey, Hangman, how are you? You’re looking a lot better.”Jake blinks. “Thanks. I didn’t realize you were still in Japan.”“Oh, well, you know, Bradley’s at Atsugi, so I stopped by there, but then I wanted to make sure you and your parents were doing all right. Your dad mentioned they were still trying to get the housing finished up and I asked if I could help. He asked if I thought you’d mind riding with us? Just so they’d have one less trip. I said I’d ask.” Then, “Jake, this is my fiancé, Tom.”“Nice to meet you,” Tom says, holding out his hand.Jake has had a hard couple of months, okay? If asked, this is why he did not immediately recognize the man whose picture is on every American Naval base in the western half of the U.S. and the Eastern Hemisphere International bases. He’s there, now. He gets himself standing and salutes. “Sorry, sir. Pleasure.”“Okay,” the Commander of the Pacific Fleet says quietly, taking the cap off. “Hate wearing those things inside, but I’m thinking you can imagine what it’s like when people start recognizing me out there.”“Sir,” Jake says, in one of those tones that’s neither agreement nor disagreement.“Did you hear anything this miscreant babbled at you before, or did it all kind of get lost?”“Ice,” Maverick sounds on edge, Jake can identify that much, like when Rooster was making him nervous before they settled their differences. Jake’s not sure what’s causing the problem. Everything feels too intense at the moment. He doesn’t usually feel like this in front of superiors, not even when he knows he’s about to get chewed out.“Let’s get you sitting back down, Commander,” Admiral Kazansky says, before carefully guiding him to the edge of bed and down to a sitting position. He pulls up a chair so he’s sitting looking up at Jake and asks, “Better? Any dizziness?”Suddenly it all clicks together. The picture from Top Gun with Rooster’s dad and Maverick and the man sitting in front of him, the legendary Layton rescue, Maverick having managed to hold onto a captaincy as long as he had. “You—you’re who told Mav. About me.”“Hey, that’s my fiancé you’re talking about,” Mav says mildly.Jake blinks at Mav. “You retired to get engaged. To the Commander of the Pacific Fleet.”“Don’t say it like that, he’s a catch.”Jake is aware that there are so many things he should be thinking right at this moment. The one that won’t stop looping in his mind is, “Javy’s going to laugh at me until he’s sick. And I’m going to deserve it.”“If you and Lieutenant Machado were engaging in speculation about my romantic life, I’d very much prefer not to know,” Kazansky says.That shocks Jake’s soul back into his body. At least what’s left of it after that trip around the cosmos. “No. No, not at all, sir.”After a long, searching look, Kazansky nods. “Let’s try this again, shall we? I’m Tom, Mav’s fiancé. It’s nice to meet you.”Jake takes as deep a breath as the ongoing healing of his ribs will allow and grips the hand in his best he can, still sporting bandaging and working on regaining dexterity. “Jake Seresin. It’s an honor.”
Billy’s squadron is stationed at Lemoore, so getting an email to him is the easiest thing in the world. All Jake has to do is write it and push the send button. Four days after hitting compose and sticking Billy’s email in the “to” line, he still has nothing more than, “I owe you an apology.” Admitting defeat, he ends up sending just that.A few hours later he receives back, “You’re shitting me, Seresin.”Weirdly, that helps. Because as much as he’s aware they’ve both changed in the sixteen years since they were kids fooling around together, he still knows who Billy was at heart. He’s pretty certain that hasn’t changed. “I know I’m the one known for talking but we both know that’s because I use it as a decoy. So let’s cut the shit. I’ve assumed all this time that you were pissed at me, with good reason. And I was too much of a coward to ask or to try and win back your forgiveness. But Javy said you seemed…not indifferent that I wasn’t dead, and so no, I’m not shitting you. I owe you an apology. Or probably several. But I’d prefer if I could give it in person or at the least over the phone. You don’t have to talk, promise.”At noon the next day—Jake does the math in his head; it’s seven in the evening the day before for Billy—there’s a call to the unit they’re staying at. His mom picks up the phone with a somewhat puzzled, “Seresin residence.”Fair, because Jake had forgotten they even had a landline. It’s only due to the fact that it’s base housing that they do. He hasn’t given the number to anyone, but then, the Commander of the Pacific Fleet moved him in. The Navy sure as hell knows he’s here. Her voice warms up and she says, “Holy shit. Billy Avalone, if that isn’t a blast from the past. How are you?”There’s murmuring on the other end of the line. She says, “Yes, he’s here, one moment.”She makes silly eyebrows at him while handing him the phone which causes him to mouth an exasperated, mom, but he also makes shooing motions, which might undermine the sentiment. Fuck. Closing his eyes he says, “Billy.”“Hangman.”Okay then. “You know—” Jake sighs. Not the point. And Billy might not talk much, but he’s very good at using his words, deflecting with them. Jake focuses. “I’m sorry. I was a shitty kid in high school, and maybe I’m still a shitty person, I’m…I actually don’t know. Right now. But I know for sure about that. I panicked. I knew what I wanted, and I wanted to fly Navy, and then there were people who knew about us, and sure, they were my family and they would never tell, but it didn’t fucking matter. In my head, your family was Navy, too, which meant that if I committed my sins where I lived they would be discovered and I couldn’t have that. So I cut you out. Because I knew if I let myself so much as be nice to you, for a second, that I would—”Jake’s chest hurts. He’s having a hard time remembering what he needs to say, even though he’s been practicing. He has a good apology. “Wait. I would—If I—”“Hangman.”“Wait,” Jake says. He thinks he may have accidentally wrapped his ribs too tightly that morning. “There’s more, I—I haven’t gotten. I’m sorry, wait.”“Jake!” Billy’s voice is sharp, cutting through some of Jake’s panicked disorientation. “Jake, stop. You need to breathe.”Oh. Oh, it’s not the wrapping. Okay. Billy is doing a breath count on the line and Jake tries to focus on it, tries to use it to get himself to exhale. It works just as the edges of his vision are beginning to fade, and he can’t say how long he simply breathes to Billy’s voice before he feels like he’s in his skin again. His hands are still shaking when he says. “Right, then. In any case. I’m sorry.”Softly Billy says, “You broke my fucking heart.”Jake closes his eyes. “If it’s any consolation, I broke mine, too.”“Yeah. I’m kinda getting that. I’m kinda thinking you’re a lot more broken overall than me.”Jake hasn’t forgotten this, exactly, the way Billy can ride that edge of just-too-much honesty. It’s that it’s not the kind of thing that you ever entirely get used to. “Probably,” he acknowledges.There’s a pause and Billy says, “Apology accepted. Don’t be a stranger.”He hangs up without waiting for Jake’s response.
Jake’s dad ambushes him while helping with his at-home PT. “Your mom says the Avalone kid called the other day.”Jake finishes up the twelve count of fist squeezes he’s in the middle of suffering through. “Mhm.”“She, ah, might have overheard some of your conversation.”Base housing: also not particularly large or well sound-proofed. Jake chooses the path of staring warily at his father.Said father runs a hand over his face and mumbles something that is very probably fuck behind the hand. “I think I messed up, Jake.”Jake goes back to doing his fist squeezes and counting. The mind-numbing pain is genuinely preferable to whatever the hell is happening right now.His dad, naturally, waits him out. “Okay, that’s fine, you don’t have to talk, just listen. When Zach found you and Avalone together, and he…” David appears lost for words for a moment before he settles gingerly on, “brought his concerns to us—”And has to pause, since Jake laughs at that. “Freaked the fuck out.”“Sure. At the time, I…” David looks away. “Actually, I think I shut down, a bit.”“I’m not following.”“I’m not asking this to make you feel bad, but do you have any idea how many colleagues, men I’d served with, got discharged in the late eighties and continuing through until well into the nineties when it became clear that they were HIV positive? The Navy would build a case backward from there, they’d be DD’ed, no health insurance, and a few months later they’d be dead and it was considered suspicious for those of us who had served with them to even pay our respects. And that was assuming they could afford a burial. A lot of them couldn’t.” David presses his lips together, breathing through his nose. “Those men were my friends. People I cared about. But I—I had your mom and your brother and you to think about, and so I didn’t help, I stayed away. And I have to live with that, will always have to.”“Dad,” Jake starts, but David shakes his head.“The point is this. When Zach came to us, I had two options: I could look at you and I could make you think that I wanted to clip your wings, or I could tell you how the men who hadn’t gotten caught had done it. And I chose the second option. I thought it was the right one. And I was so careful to tell you to be careful in all the ways I thought mattered.”“You were. I’m safe, Dad. I’m healthy. Other than the recovering-from-torture, which is Navy-based, but unrelated.”David coughs out a high-pitched laugh at that. “Asshole. But that’s not the point, Jake. The point is that…you’re thirty years old and you’ve never once mentioned a romantic interest to your mother or myself.”Jake blinks, slowly. “I don’t understand.”“DADT ended five years ago, Jake, heading into a sixth. And you’re not the only gay in the Navy.”“You know I want stars, how many gay admirals—” Jake stops right in the middle of the question.“At least one,” David says quietly. “And evidently, he’s been managing to hide his partnership for a minute. With both of them serving.”Jake swallows.“I never meant for you to understand my advice as a life sentence. As ‘you get one or the other’ and certainly not in the wake of the military making it legal for gay servicemembers to serve. I’m sorry.” David’s eyes are bright, but he’s keeping his tears from falling. He takes a deep breath. “I’m so sorry.”Shaking his head, Jake says, “I’ve been an adult for a long time, dad. This isn’t as simple as one conversation we had when I was a teen.”“Maybe not. But it started there.”Jake squeezes his fist. It hurts enough to draw tears. He’s told that if he keeps at it, the tendons will heal.
Two days later, Rooster shows up at the door looking unsure if he’s going to be let in. It’s not a great look on someone who’s generally unthinkingly confident. Jake, from where he’s sitting at the kitchen table—something to be said for the close quarters of Navy housing, decent sightlines—says, “Get in here, Bradshaw.”From behind Rooster, David raises his eyebrows in confusion. Jake’s troubled relationship with Rooster has been the topic of more than a few rants since flight school. Jake gives him the look that means, later.David says, “Your mom and I are going to run out to the commissary, you need anything?”“Cereal and bananas, please.”“Yeah, we actually know you, kid. Okay, see you later, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Rooster, still looking pretty fucking uncomfortable, says, “No sir,” and looks like he’s considering saluting.Jake rolls his eyes. “Sit down, asshole.”Rooster does, settling into his skin a bit once Jake’s parents have slipped out the door. He puts a linen shopping bag on the table. “I come bearing gifts.”Jake chooses to ignore that for the moment. “The Commander of the Pacific Fleet tell you to come, a retired Admiral, or was it Javy?”“Hard as it might be for you to believe, dickhole, you’re not an easy read, so there’s been a bit of a…discussion about how to approach visitation.”Jake tilts his head. “That’s not an answer.”“Javy said to give you space, Mav said, and I quote, ‘man saved our lives, Bradley, take a day,’ Ice hasn’t said a fucking word because he knows when to keep his own counsel, and Phoenix said to give you time to get out of the hospital but then get my ass up to see you before you thought I didn’t give a shit, and Javy might know you best, but Phoenix is smarter than all of us, so I went with her read.”Jake locks his features so hard he might be grimacing. It’s not exactly intentional, he’s just afraid of what will happen if he allows anything else to pass over his face. He’s had a hard time regulating his expressions since…since getting shot down.“Hangman?”Somehow, he manages, “Didn’t know Phoenix cared.”After a second, Rooster stands and grabs something from the bag. “You guys have a teapot?”“Uh. Electric. On the counter.”Busying himself with the business of heating water, Rooster says, “I brought a loose leaf hōjicha and a strainer, in case that wasn’t something you guys had on hand. It’s something that’s helped me not be quite as jittery since, uh, coming back. And it’s not as bitter as a lot of the other tea that’s popular around here.”It’s thoughtful. Jake, feeling decidedly knocked off-balance by this version of Bradshaw, by Phoenix’s insight into his psyche, just asks, “Anything else in the bag?”Rooster grins. “Six different weirdo flavors of Kit Kat.”Jake blinks. “Javy told you I have a sweet tooth?”Rooster has his back to Jake. Even so, Jake can hear the confusion in his response when he says, “Fritz, actually. I wasn’t aware you guys knew each other that well.”“Mm.”They exist in a not-completely uncomfortable—although not entirely comfortable—silence for a bit as Rooster prepares the tea. When he sits back down, setting a steaming mug with the base’s logo on it in front of Jake, he says, “You look like shit.”Jake flips him the bird with his left hand, which hurts but is doable. The right one will shake if he tries anything with it at the moment. “Better than you.”Rooster laughs, bringing the mug to his mouth to blow on it. He uses the moment of relative ease to say, “I don’t imagine it will surprise you to find out I’m terrible at this sort of thing.”“This sort of thing,” Jake echoes, the hint of a question in the words.“Talking anything other than bullshit.”Jake smiles wryly. “That what you’re here to do?”“I’m here to be a friend,” Rooster says quietly.Truth be told, Jake feels like shit. Rooster has always been a sore spot for him. Too attractive to look away from, too much in the way of competition to get to know deeply enough to let real feelings bloom, and too straight to have his ego hurt by the lack of equal interest. Even so, there’s a sharpness to the inequality of it that Jake refuses to acknowledge even on his best days. His instinct is to lash out.There’s too much at stake, though. In the air, Jake often flies instinctively. On the ground? He’s spent his entire adult life and a chunk of his adolescence calculating every decision he’s made. Jake’s not willing to throw away his connection to Mav, the possibility of recovering a friendship with Billy, evidence that Phoenix doesn’t hate him, for the chance at a second or two of one-upping Rooster.He takes a sip of the tea. “They’re not certain I’ll fly again.” Another sip. “Or fuck. So not sure how I look matters much.”Rooster takes a sip. After a minute. “Said that to anyone else?”Jake shakes his head slowly. “Nope.”“Okay, well. We might be less shitty at this than previously expected.”Jake coughs on the sip of tea he was taking while Rooster made that statement. Rooster rubs between his shoulder blades and apologizes. They share a shinshu apple Kit Kat and Rooster talks about the stuff he still wants to see before his tour here is done, showing Jake pictures of places he’s been.Jake can barely keep his eyes open by the time his parents get back a couple of hours later. Rooster leaves the tea with instructions for how to make it and where to get more. When Jake wakes up from his nap, which he manages without nightmares, Rooster has texted, “Be back next week.”
Two days later, Mav shows up as Jake’s ride to PT. Jake says, “Mav.”Mav has the decency to look mildly sheepish as he says, “Your dad is still under the illusion that I am a legitimate retired admiral.”Jake is almost tempted to inform Maverick that he is a legitimate retired admiral, just to see the look on the man’s face, but he’s aware that Mav’s rank has fuckall to do with his father’s respect for the man in this instance. His dad believes he owes Mav. And that, Mav would truly hate hearing, even if he must suspect it. Instead he says, “My father has a respect for the Naval chain of command, you miscreant.”Mav grins. “Says his son, the man who was nearly court-martialed for arguing with an admiral so hard and long that ground crew was already prepped by the time he was given permission for take-off.”Even though Jake’s aware Mav would have had access to his debriefing reports, the response brings him up short. His blink is a second too long, his expression a hint too blank, he can feel it. He manages, “Nearly only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.”“Don’t have to tell me that, I’m still standing here because of it.”Jake gets himself in the car with only minor help from Maverick. He’s dizzy, and unsure if that’s from the effort of getting dressed and to the car, or from the conversation. When they’re on their way, Maverick asks, “I’d like a why, though, if you were willing.”“Why.”“Why’d you argue with Cyclone like that? Risk your job?”“Isn’t that why you made me spare?” Jake glances at Maverick through his peripheral vision. “I didn’t stop that day in the…that day, when you told me it was enough. I didn’t stop. I figured you chose me because I’d do what I wanted to regardless.”Maverick’s laugh is bright, but in a sharp way Jake isn’t sure how to read. “Jesus. Ice is going to fucking cackle at me. No, that wasn’t—I’m not that smart, kid.”“Bullshit.”Mav shrugs. “Believe what you want. Maybe I am and I didn’t have the emotional remove to read into the situation like I would have needed to. Regardless, no. I chose you because you fly like a fucking demon, and that’s what I was going to need if one of us was in trouble. And because Coyote wasn’t viable for spare one.”“Ah.”“Is that your answer? You did it because you wanted to?”“Not good enough?”Mav is silent for a moment. When he speaks again, it’s soft, considering. “Your family’s service to the Navy goes back how many generations? Three? Four? More? Your brother was a SEAL who was KIA. So, no, you’ll forgive me if I don’t think you risked a court-martial over mere wanting. But at the same time, I chose you as spare because you never indicated the ability to be a team player. Tell me what I missed, Commander.”Jake looks out the window. Trying to figure out how to explain his entire adult existence to a man who has chosen a different path and yet managed to successfully navigate the Navy and queerness is…certainly something. “There’s a difference between never letting anyone close enough to see who you are, and not looking back to make sure the person behind you is still alive. And I—I suppose, yes, I chose to cultivate the persona of someone who is doing both. It can be easy to forget, when you’re terrified of the smallest thing giving you away, that nobody can see your truth.”After several moments where Jake wonders if he might actually die sitting in a car with one of his previous commanding officers after surviving being prisoner of a foreign country, Mav says, “Huh.”“Huh?” Jake says, somewhat incredulous.“Oh, it’s just. One of the ways Ice and I have always complemented each other is that I’m terrible at people, in general, and he’s pretty brilliant at them. As long as it’s not me. He was dumb about me, but I can be a weird exception to a lot of Ice’s rules, so we tend to set that one aside.”“You did okay with us,” Jake says.“Not really, you guys just had the skills necessary. But that’s beside the point. The point is, Ice told me you were one of us and I told him not a chance.”“The Commander of the Pacific Fleet knows I—”“Holy shit. Breathe, Hangman. Seriously, I will pull this car over and make us late for PT and everyone knows to be scared of the PT docs.”Jake has just enough sanity left to be aware this is true and manage to get his breathing under control.“You okay?” Mav asks softly.“Nobody knows.”“Your family?”“My family. Coyote. Nobody else.”“Right. Ah. Just checking, here, but you got that when I called Ice my fiancé, I meant that in the traditional, we’re-getting-married sense, yeah?”“I didn’t think it was a metaphor.”“Okay. Point being, we’re not exactly going to judge. Ice has always gone out of his way to make sure queer service members within the Pacific Fleet weren’t being harassed or treated differently if he could manage it. He’s not an idiot, he knows he’s missing things, but there’s a reason three of the Dagger cohort are openly queer and still made the cut without anyone saying a damn word.”“Three?”“Bassett, Avalone, and Vikander.”He’d known about Callie and Billy. “Is Neil pan? I’ve met his wife.”Mav frowns. “Hangman. He…he went shirtless for dogfight football. He wasn’t being sneaky about the top surgery scars.”Oh. “I’d never seen it before. And he’s, ah—nice to look at. I just figured maybe he’d been in an accident or had an illness. I don’t know, they’re not egregious or anything. I didn’t even notice them at first. Also, it’s not exactly polite to ask people about their scars, okay?”Mav snorts, laughing at him but not cruelly. “Yeah, okay, kid.”“Anyway.” Jake shrugs. “You asked me why I am the way I am.”“Mm,” Mav agrees. “Maybe what I should have asked is if, knowing everything you know now, you still want to keep flying so far ahead of everyone else?”Jake closes his eyes as the hospital comes into sight. “Who says I can fly again at all?”
Jake’s released to fly home roughly three weeks after getting out of the hospital. Even going back up in meds from where he’s weaned himself down to, the flight is…long. After the twelve hours into Hobby, it’s all Jake can do to get himself through customs and back on the hour and a half connection into Brownsville. He doesn’t cry at the sight of his gran waiting outside security for them but it’s closer than he’d like to acknowledge.Their home is less than fifteen minutes’ drive from the airport. It’s a three bedroom, two bath ranch that was built in the eighties and that poppy bought from a bank in 2009 with a USAA loan just after retiring. They put in nicer tile floors about five years’ back, and Jake knows they’ve done practical things, such as roof and window replacement, to make the house more efficient, but it looks like a house built the year he was born.He loves it. The kitchen always smells of something his gran has been baking, even when he’s pretty sure she hasn’t been baking recently. The mattress in the guest room where he always stays is a damn work of art. Best of all: there’s a pool in the backyard.Right now, the sum total of what Jake wants from life is to get out of a moving vehicle, be gently hugged by his grandparents, take another round of pain meds, stand under a shower head for about ten minutes and be horizontal until…he decides not to be. TBD on when that might be.Once he’s collected on one careful hug each from gran and poppy—both of whom look him over with discerning eyes, gran’s mouth twisting at the sharp edge of his collarbone, poppy’s whole face narrowing like a displeased hawk at the surgical scars on Jake’s hand—poppy serves up the grilled red drum he’d caught earlier in the day along with some of the vegetables from the box garden he just keeps adding to out front. Gran follows it up with her World Famous Lady Fingers served with a side of her equally World Famous Hot Fudge Sauce. Gran’s never been much of a cook; she was a full-time school librarian until after poppy retired, and Jake suspects she misses it a bit now that’s she’s retired, too. But she can bake anything half again as well as the best pastry chefs in fancy-ass professional kitchens, and she’s always enjoyed it when she had the time.Gran and poppy keep up a pleasant chatter, updating Jake on their shenanigans—and truly, they do manage to get up to some—as well as his aunt and his cousins. Stomach full, Jake takes the next round of painkillers and says, “I’m sorry gran, pops, I—”Poppy fixes him with the least impressed look Jake has ever seen on the other man’s face, which is saying something. “Go shower and get yourself in bed, young man. We’ll still be here in the morning.”Gran kisses the top of his head. “I got new towels for you. Nice and soft. Good to have all of you home.”Jake doesn’t cry. He doesn’t. Nobody calls him on it, and that must mean it hasn’t happened.
Jake sleeps ten hours, unsure if he wakes to the sun struggling through the blinds of the east-facing window or the scent of poppy’s coffee: instant and dark. He pushes himself into a sitting position, taking a few deep breaths. Mornings, he’s come to recognize, are a mixed bag. The pain has lessened with rest, but if he’s slept this much he’s also well overdo for at least some naproxen and acetaminophen. If he wants those (and he does) he’ll need to get some food in himself. The thought is nauseating, the pain still significant enough that his body has no interest in cooperating. Jake has gotten very good at ignoring what his body thinks about all of this.A few more breaths and he pushes himself to his feet, shuffles to the kitchen in search of cereal. Gran, to nobody’s surprise, has stocked enough of it to last them through an apocalypse. She pours him his first choice (of six options) with two percent milk and makes him, “Real coffee, Anthony,” otherwise known as drip.Jake doesn’t laugh. Not much.He eats his breakfast and drinks the coffee and lets his mom help him into swim trunks that fall to his knees and a long-sleeved UV top. She puts sunscreen on his lower legs and his face, finger bopping his nose as she quietly says, “It’s just us here, you know?”He tries his best to give her an insouciant smile, and knowing he’s failed, he kisses her forehead. “Thanks, mama bear.”His morning is spent alternating between PT exercises while in the water and sleeping in pool chairs. At one point he wakes up to a text from Billy that reads, “Coyote says your dad’s parents have a place in Brownsville and you’re healing up there. Your gran still got the best fingers any lady ever had?”Jake chokes on the sip of water he’d evidently been dumb enough to take before opening his texts. “Are you seriously disrespecting my grandmother, Avalone?”“Disrespect? I would die for those lady fingers.”“Jesus Christ,” Jake mutters to himself. In a text response he says, “You signed up for the Navy; being willing to die isn’t exactly novel. Also, you’re an asshole.”“Pot, meet kettle. And being an asshole isn’t mutually exclusive with having respect for a woman’s baking wizardry.”Jake winces. “Touche.”
The two closest Naval clinics are in Kingsville and Corpus Christi, which are two hours and two hours plus by car. However, there’s a VA Clinic in Brownsville and after an epic amount of paperwork and not a few strings being pulled by Maverick, Jake’s current CO, and—apparently—Cyclone, the Navy was able to run Jake’s benefits through the VA for the time being so that he could see a PT nearby. He had sent all three men involved thank you cards (typed, his penmanship is still shit at the moment) and a personalized gift that Rooster, Skittles, and Coyote, respectively, had helped him come up with.He has to be at the clinic three times a week for in-person PT. The idea of having to make a four hour (or more) round trip makes him want to lie down in the middle of the road and just wait for things to be over.It’s a fifteen minute ride to the one in Brownsville, and the ride back home after a session still brings on that desire.After a week of what even Jake—who, yes, is out of practice, sue him—can recognize as Flirting With Intent (at least on his side, Billy’s a hard read even when Jake has something more than text to go on), he distracts himself on one of these rides by forcing himself to acknowledge and act on the fact that he needs more information. This leaves him with some options, none of which are great.Option one is Javy. But Javy is just going to have to ask someone else the things Jake needs to know, and also, it means Jake will have to Talk to Javy about Stuff, which Jake is not ready to commit to at this time.Option two is Rooster. Same problems as Javy with the added problem of Jake having to come out to Rooster first. Also, if Javy ever finds out Jake went to Rooster, Javy will feel betrayed and Jake’s life will no longer be worth living. Hard pass.Option three is Bob. Rooster has informed Jake that Bob knows fucking everything about everyone like the stealth fucker he is. The problem with Bob is that he will one hundred percent tell Phoenix that Jake asked, and even if Bob somehow already knows more shit about Jake than Jake would prefer, and has told Phoenix, this is one of those conversations Jake should have with her first. He’s enough of an adult to know that. Since he’s not ready to, that takes Bob out.Which leaves option four: Halo or Omaha. They’re the last two who will absolutely know the answers to his questions. Now that Mav has kind-of-sort-of-not-exactly accidentally outed Omaha, it makes sense that the other man has always been incredibly standoffish. Jake had just figured it was a combination of personality and Jake’s reputation doing him no favors. Now he sees that Omaha was treating him as a possible threat. The worst part is, Jake can’t even really blame him. He’s known enough trans service members—granted, usually transwomen, here and there a trans nonbinary member—to know it’s not paranoia on their part, any more than it is on ciswomen’s.Halo, on the other hand, has never seemed bothered by Jake. Unimpressed by him, sure, but Halo’s unimpressed by everyone; that’s her modus operandi. They’ve overlapped on shore duty at Lemoore a bit over the years and although he doesn’t know her well, the times the Redcocks have been out with the Vigilantes, Jake and she have always rubbed along well enough.Decision made, Jake flips open the end-to-end encryption texting app the group chat is in and pings Halo privately. “Have a moment?”She doesn’t respond immediately. That works out, because by that time they’ve reached the house and Jake needs to take some Naproxen and pass out for an hour or so. He wakes to her having responded, “What’s up?”Jake doesn’t let him think about the next step, just forces himself to type out, “Billy still seeing that guy he has a few pics with on Insta?”Jake watches the typing dots go. And stop. And go. Finally, Halo responds, “Listen, we’re all trying to be chill, because you’re not the worst and what happened to you was, and because Coyote will 300% find us in REM mode and murder tf out of us if we’re not, but that’s so deeply fucking not your business.”“High praise,” Jake responds. “I’ll call Coyote off, I’m not a fucking desert orchid.”“I don’t think that’s a thing.”Fucked if Jake knows. Also, not the point. “Halo, I’m not asking about the Billy thing to be a dick.”“Then why are you?”Jake must spend a little too long trying to just say, “Because I’d like to shoot my shot, but also, not get humiliated,” because his phone rings, Halo’s number flashing. He picks up.She says, “That was a weirdly long silence and I got suspicious. I need you to tell me I’m being crazy over here, because there’s no fucking way you’re asking because you’re bi and being a damn gentleman about Billy.”“Uh,” Jake says.“If this is a bicurious thing, then absolutely not, Hangman. Billy is too damn old for that bullshit. Go find someone who’s looking for a third or something.”“I don’t—”“I’ll explain the right apps, I will help you discover your queerness, it’s fine.”“Halo, I’ve known I liked sucking cock since I was fourteen. Receipts and all.” Jake blinks. “Um. That’s. That’s not usually how I come out to people.”“There’s not a wrong way.”Jake laughs as a way to stave off panic. “It’s not something I have a lot of practice with. Could be I’m just developing my style.”Halo snorts.Softly he says, “I’m not bi.”After a moment she says, “Huh. My gaydar is usually better. Your level of narcissism really throws things out of whack.”“Yeah, people don’t look too close at what they don’t care about.” Jake says it casually. He means it that way. It was one of the things his dad taught him, ways to not catch people’s notice. If you annoy people or irritate them, they’ll tune you out.“Okaaay. So, you’re pretty fucked up about being gay, which isn’t really a great argument for me letting you know the dating status of one of my best friends.”“Jesus Christ, not you too. I’m not fucked up about it. I just always knew I wanted to fly Navy and you might have noticed that back when we started doing that, it was a bit of an issue.”“Sure, sure, except you just struggled to come out to me, an openly queer person, five, almost six years after the end of DADT. Does anyone else even know?”“Not to put too fine a point on it, but the current Commander of the Pacific Fleet.” Yes, this is an avoidant answer. Jake is fine with that.Halo is momentarily distracted, “Oh man, it’s weird that Mav is affianced to a real adult, isn’t it?”“That is what you think is weird about Mav and Admiral Kazansky?”“Yes, but thanks for making my point for me.”Jake sighs. “Halo, I’ve been living this way since I was fifteen. Nearly half my life. And yes, I probably should have worked on stopping when the repeal came through, but I’m an ambitious asshole and I—”“Fifteen.”“What?”“You said you knew you liked sucking cock at fourteen.”“Right, but I didn’t really start hiding as much until—”“Oh shit.”“Halo?”“You’re him. You’re Jase. It’s not like JC, it’s a play on JS. Jake Seresin.”“Halo, what the—”“You’re the kid who broke Billy’s heart and totally fucked him up for years.”Jake could lie, he knows he could. He just doesn’t particularly want to. “Yes. I—I didn’t realize he talked about me.”“He had college-level debt in therapists bills over you at one point, asshole. No way am I telling you shit, Hangman.”“Halo, I swear, I swear we talked about it, and I apologized. You can ask him.”“Fuck. Fuck.”“Halo. Callie.” Jake presses his lips together, exhaling out his nose. “Just. I’m asking, because he looked happy in those pictures. He looked…at ease. And if he has that, I’m not going to fuck it up. I’m never going to hurt him again, not if it can be helped.”“I’m so infuriated with you right now. I take back everything I said about you not being the worst.”“Acceptable.”“And I’m telling Neil, who’s totally going to tell his wife, so that’s two more people who know your secret.”“Understood.”“Fuck.”Jake waits.“Sasha broke up with Billy while you were missing. Which I thought was an unusual level of shittiness that up till then he hadn’t really shown, given that Billy was…already pretty freaked. Weirdly so, or at least, it seemed. But a lot of puzzle pieces are coming together at the moment.”“Am I allowed to set Coyote on Sasha?”“Oh, have Coyote gimme a call. We can dream team that one.”“Absolutely.”“Seresin, I’m not fucking around. You mess this up even just the slightest bit and nobody will hear your screams.”“Welp, been there, done that, but good to know you’ve got the rerun party all set.”Halo doesn’t laugh.“Too soon?”“Nobody-even-left-the-fucking-parking-lot-from-the-funeral-yet-too-soon, you fucking psycho.”“You did retract my not-the-worst status, so I figure—”“You need so much therapy,” she tells him, and hangs up.“Yeah,” he says to nobody in particular. “You’re not the first to mention it.”
It’s slightly after midnight the next night when a text from Billy comes through. Jake is still up, on his third attempt to calm himself through a pretty fierce bout of hypervigilance without waking anyone else. Water walking didn’t do the trick, and the guided meditation app that’s usually helpful almost ended in a full-blown panic attack, so he’s onto coloring the adult coloring book Fanboy sent as part of a care package from him, Payback, Phoenix, and Bob. The coloring book’s theme is swear words and is entitled “Dipshit,” which Jake is choosing not to take as a coded message.The coloring is a kind of physical therapy in and of itself, and Jake knows he’s going to be feeling it when he stops vibrating out of his fucking skin, but that is a problem for has-managed-to-get-some-sleep!Jake.Billy’s text reads, “Callie says the two of us should talk about our exes. I told her you don’t have any aside from me.”Jake texts back, “You can’t know that.” And then immediately says aloud, if quietly, “Not the point, Seresin, holy Christ.”His phone buzzes and he picks up. Billy asks, “Why are you still awake?”“Evidently I have PTSD.”“Wild,” Billy says.Jake smiles down at the incredibly ornate “fuck off” he’s been working at for the better part of half an hour now. It’s a masterpiece of greens and blues from the edges in. “Mm.”“You don’t have any exes.”“Oh?” Jake forcefully keeps his shading as light as the question.“You give good face. It’s ninety-seven percent bullshit, but that’s only noticeable to someone who knew you before you built the person you decided to be for the sake of the Navy. But it is noticeable, Hangman. And you didn’t fuck both of us up six ways from Sunday just to keep a secret boyfriend tucked away somewhere.”“Maybe,” Jake mumbles.“Definitely.”Jake switches from teal to a forest green. “You have exes.”“Three. I wasn’t feeling a whole lot better than you about hiding a full-on relationship, and for a long time I wasn’t in a place where I’d gotten my shit together enough after us to do that to anyone else. But by 2012, yeah. Brent and Miguel each lasted around a year. Sasha and I only made it four months.”Jake winces. “Halo said he…didn’t like that you were upset about me going down.”“One, don’t act like you ejected in a training exercise, which is scary enough. By the time any of us were told anything, it was because the fucking Washington Post was breaking a story about four F-18s having been shot down in neutral airspace near hostile territory. And even after that, you were MIA, at best for a full ten days. Two, that was the straw. We just weren’t good for each other. Dating civilians has pros and cons.”“I didn’t realize he was a civilian.” Then, “How do you even meet a civilian?”“You, uh, have had sex since we…”“Yes, Jesus. I just find a bar.”“Well.”“Billy. Most of the time I don’t even go further than the bathroom of those places. I definitely don’t take anyone’s number.”“But surely you realize you could? Also, there are these things called dating apps. They’re still pretty new, so I can see how—”“Oh, fuck off.”“You asked.” Billy laughs. After another moment, he says, “For a while, I thought you and Machado. Then I realized he’s actually straight.”“No accounting for taste.”“Mm.”Jake’s hand hurts enough for him to acknowledge that he’s going to have to finish coloring another time. Something tells him there will be another night when he needs the steadiness of it. The lack of anything to do with his hands makes it hard to say, “It’s been lonely.”Billy releases a slow breath and repeats, “Mm.”Jake doesn’t say, “I’ve missed you.” Instead, he says, “I need to take some ibuprofen and see if I can maybe sleep, and you should definitely be asleep.”Billy scoffs, “You’re not the boss of me.”“No, but the US Navy is, and her mornings wait for no man.”Billy sighs. “Facts. All right, until tomorrow, asshole.” He hangs up without waiting for a response.
The therapist Mav sends Jake the name of—who gets him in immediately, quick enough that Jake has to wonder if someone else got moved around—is in Idaho, of all places, but he sees clients virtually.Dhruv Pack, LICSW, has sharp features, an abundance of curly hair that apparently has no interest in being tamed, and a variety of pictures of sea turtles up on the wall behind him.“Sea turtles, huh?” Jake says, instead of, “Hi, I’m Jake Seresin.”“I find them calming. They’re on the opposite wall, too, just in case that was the follow-up question.”Jake laughs. “Good to know. You owe Mav a kidney or something?”Dhruv’s smile is surprisingly mild, given that he responds, “My life.”Jake tilts his head. “Pilot?”“Rotary, not fixed wing. Marines. It was complicated. And has been classified to the moon and back.”“Sure.”“Also, over a decade ago. He’s never asked for a single thing until now.”“Yeah.” Jake rubs a hand over his face. “He thinks he owes me his godson’s life.”After a second, Dhruv asks, “Does he?”Jake shrugs. “I was doing my job.”“Were you?”Jake flips the toothpick in his mouth, considering. “I’m not like him. It’s not any shade on myself. Ask anyone who knows me: I’m just fine with who I am. But I’m not a hero, I’m just a guy whose entire family has been Navy since they landed on these shores and who wanted to fly planes.”“You know I read your file, yeah?”Jake should have realized that. “What does the redacted one say these days?”“Lone wolf-type, which two of your commanding officers have found odd in a legacy kid. There’s a lot that’s not so much redacted as just unsaid, which is: you’re not like your dad, not in the ways people can see. Arrogant motherfucker, skills to back it up. Only aviator of your generation with two air-to-airs. Prisoner in hostile foreign territory for nearly a month. The other surviving aviator, Vincent? He doesn’t agree with your assessment of yourself any more than Mav does. There’s a commendation in there from a Marine Commander, so I tugged on that thread and found your brother’s years of service. I didn’t look any further.”Dhruv shrugs. “Nobody’s calling you a team player, but more than a few people think you could be a leader if you were willing to let go of whatever it is that makes it necessary for you to make sure everyone knows you’re best there is.”Jake tries to think of how to respond to that. He must think too long, because Dhruv asks, “Was I supposed to soften up my insights?”The question is asked evenly. It’s a genuine inquiry.Jake shakes his head. “No, sorry. Got lost.”“Taking what turn?”“Not significant to the—” Jake stops. Hears Javy’s gentle assertion that he’s a little fucked up about his queerness ringing in his mind. Sees the shattered look in his father’s eyes, so worried that he’d been the one to mess Jake up. Feels Halo’s anger at what he’d done to Billy, her condemnation of his continued silence. Thinks about how smart all three of those people are. About how much two of them, at least, care about him. Thinks that maybe…Maybe he should consider that he might be outnumbered on this one. And that, perhaps, the so-called “other side” just wants to help.He takes a breath. Another one. A third.Dhruv asks, calmly, “Are you capable of slowing your breathing?”“I’m in the closet,” Jake says before he can use the excuse of lightheadedness to allow himself off the hook.“Okay,” Dhruv says, “I would still like you to slow your breathing. If you can’t, hold up your left hand and we’ll work on that.”But now that it’s said, the words are out there, and Dhruv is more concerned about whether Jake is going to pass out than who he gets crushes on, Jake finds himself able to take a slower breath. He still has to concentrate, focus on the feel of the table’s wood grain beneath his palms, the way the light from the window is falling over his fingers. He can, though.When he’s managed, Dhruv nods. “That was well done. We can work on other techniques, and probably should, but it’s obvious you have practice.”Jake can’t help it: he starts laughing. “The last few months have been kinda rough, doc.”Dhruv snickers. “Not a doc, and sure. I’m thinking, if that was any indication, the last decade or so has been.”“Longer,” Jake admits.“Does anyone know?” Once again, the question is asked without judgement or even much tone. There’s sympathy in Dhruv’s expression, but only enough to let Jake know the other man is listening.“My parents. They’ve always known. Almost as long as me. Javy, uh, Lieutenant Commander Javier Machado. Lieutenant Callie Bassett, Lieutenant Billy Avalone. Mav. His fiancé.” Jake has decided not to think about that being the Commander of the Pacific Fleet. “Probably Lieutenant Neil Vikander. The last two not from me.”“Pretty small list,” Dhruv says quietly.“It was my parents, Billy, and Javy until about a month and a half ago.”“Lonely.”“Yeah.” Jake means to just say it, a quick response. It comes out choked, stuck in his chest and his throat all at once. He coughs, clearing his throat. “I thought we’d talk about the thing where I was held captive. I thought that was what I was here for.”Dhruv smiles, or rather, the edges of his lips curl up. “How are you sleeping?”Jake is fucking exhausted. “I’ve slept better.”“Mm. We’re going to start at three sessions a week. Believe me: that’ll get talked about somewhere in there. The human brain doesn’t love working in a linear fashion. Makes my job harder, but if it was easy, then you wouldn’t need a professional, would you?”“Touche.”
Jake sometimes gets into the pool after waking up from nightmares if it’s light enough to be considered morning. Basically: after oh four hundred. He’s made it to slightly past oh five thirty the morning after this third therapy session, quite the victory. After doing roughly a half hour of water walking and PT in the water, he’s thoroughly exhausted. Nowhere near ready to try sleeping again, mind you, but bushed.It’s for this reason he nearly misses the text that’s come in from Omaha while he was in the water. A simple, “Call.”Jake hits the call button. “Everything all right?”It is, after all, just rounding oh four hundred there, and Omaha, so far as Jake is aware, isn’t afflicted with PTSD.Omaha says, “I don’t think it’s any secret that I’ve never particularly liked you.”Okay then. “Don’t take this personally, but you and most of the Navy.”“Mm. If you’d gone a little harder on the homophobia, I might have clocked what your issue was. As it was, I thought you were just a raging asswipe. Not convinced I was wrong there.”Jake fights down the instinctive urge to argue about his internalized homophobia, since Dhruv has asked him to just sit with that. He’s doing his best. Also, this doesn’t seem like the time. “Not to cement that view of me, but is there a reason we’re having this delightful conversation?”“You fuck Billy up a second time, Seresin, and there won’t be a body to find.”Jake pulls the phone away from his ear, looks at it like it might answer his many, many questions, and then puts is back to his ear. “Are you giving me a shovel talk over being friends with him? You get that most of our text chains are about my quest for higher quality colored pencils and my mom and me working our way through the new food truck landscape of cosmopolitan Brownsville, Texas, yeah?”“Taking all of that in reverse order. Yes, Halo and I have had more cravings for pupusas in the last week alone than the last decade of our existence. Yes, he’s started asking all of the people in his squad with kids about colored pencils. And yes. Don’t pretend you don’t deserve it.”Something twists in Jake’s stomach, warm and sweet at the thought of Billy doing anecdotal research for the right colored pencil. For that reason, Jake allows, “Fair enough.”“Hangman.” Here, Omaha’s tone becomes hesitant. “Callie says she’s never heard you use his callsign. Billy’s.”“Never have, never will.”There’s a pause. “He doesn’t like yours, either.”“Mine’s about games.”“Started out that way, didn’t it?”Jake bites his cheek. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”“Is that your way of saying you’d like to hang up now?” Omaha laughs.“I’m a tactful guy.”“Absolutely,” Omaha agrees. “The fucking soul of tact.”
If he can, Cam calls every week to check in. Otherwise, he emails or lets Jake know he’ll be in a communications blackout for longer than a week. Most of the calls are pretty quick. Cam says something like, “How’s PT been treating you?”And Jake says, “Here I thought I came back to the States for a break from torture,” and Cam says, “Lies, all lies,” before checking in on his parents, making sure everyone is doing okay. Just touchpoints.After Jake has been back stateside for a couple of weeks, he tells Cam, “You know you don’t need to call. Things are—I’m set.”To say he’s okay would be something of an overstatement. He dissociated three days before when he cut himself trying to shave, more from the smell of the blood than anything else. Of course, he shouldn’t have been trying to shave in the first place, given that neither of his hands has recovered that kind of motor control. But he’s in a safe environment and he’s working on getting it together.“Mm. You know your brother was the closest thing I ever had to real family before I met my wife?”Jake frowns at the non-sequitur. “I, uh. I remember you coming for Christmas that one year when I was still in college. But no.”There’s a quiet release of air on the other side of the line. “I grew up in Delaware, around Laurel. Although, since even when we had a place we were usually getting evicted every three months or so, we kinda jumped around a bit. I don’t know who my dad was. I’m not convinced mom knew. She had me when she was sixteen. Her parents cut her off, and she didn’t have much of a support system. A much older brother who lived out of state already, that was about it. I suspect she always had a bit of an alcohol dependence, but at some point that became a meth problem, and then there were opioids and, just. She was a mess.”Cam doesn’t say this with any judgement. If anything, he sounds sad. “I forged her name and took my GED halfway through senior year, and as soon as I hit seventeen, I forged her name on the enlistment form. I told her I was leaving for college. She was so proud. First Schneider ever to go to college. I almost told her I was lying right then.”“You went to college,” Jake points out.“Online degree. Did it while I was active. Your brother convinced me. She’d been dead nearly three years when I started.”“Still the first Schneider to go. And you finished.”“Jesus, kid. Sometimes it’s like Zach’s still in the room when I’m talking to you.”Jake knows he looks like Zach did. Nobody has ever talked about him acting like Zach, though. It knocks him off-center for a moment. “He was the smarter Seresin.”“Not according to him. According to him, you’d invented the sun and the moon.”Jake closes his eyes, missing Zach so much he can’t remember how to breathe for it. “When did you meet?”“I applied to the SEALs three years in to my Navy career. He was coming in from college. He’d commissioned, but we still were in that year of training together. A lot of the college guys were…they needed work in terms of camaraderie. Zach decided I had all the fucking knowledge in the world because I’d been serving full-time for the time he’d been in ROTC.”Yeah, that checked out. Zach had tried to convince their father to let him enlist first and return to school later, despite having gotten offers to MIT and Northwestern. (He’d gone to UCSD. Not as flashy or high ranked as either of the others, but 15 minutes from Coronado. Zach in a nutshell.)Quietly, Cam says, “I know you don’t need anyone to look after you, Jake. And I also don’t know what twist of fate allowed me to be on the team that got you out.”Oh, Jake has a pretty good idea on that one. Mav’s fiancé is evidently as much of a menace as Mav is, he’s just better at hiding it.“But what I do know,” Cam continues, “is that I miss Zach every day of my life. I suspect you do as well. So, if it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll continue to call.”Jake swallows something roughly the size of a tennis ball and says, “I’d be okay with that.”
Jake’s on the phone with his CO regarding possible reassignment for shore duty at NASK, at least for the next six months, when someone knocks on the door. His gran calls, “I’ve got it, hon,” so Jake doesn’t pay much attention, focusing on the logistics both of detailing to another unit entirely, and of taking a teaching position without any flight elements involved. His CO doesn’t seem concerned about making it work. More than anything, she seems relieved Jake isn’t on his way to a medical discharge.After hanging up, Jake is so exhausted he barely makes it to his bed. He’d like to think the frustration of how little it takes to make him a zombie these days would keep him awake, but he’s learned better. He’s not certain he’s entirely horizontal before he’s asleep.He wakes to something he hasn’t heard in years. Half his life. He has the thought that he’s begun hallucinating again and has to cycle through one of the breathing exercises Dhruv has him working on for staving off panic a couple of times. When he’s done that, he can still hear someone playing violin.Getting up, he goes into the kitchen for water. Gran is there, baking. He kisses her cheek. She says, “Oh, hey there, sugar. I was just about to come get you up. Your friend is outside.”“My friend?”“Billy Avalone? He arrived while you were on the phone. I was going to intercept before you went to go nap, but he said to let you rest.”Jake presses on one of his still-healing ribs and sure enough, the pain hits. Gran scowls at him. “What in the seven hells are you doing?”Shaking his head, Jake says, “Did we know Billy was coming?”“David told us he was, me and your poppy, a few days ago. I assumed you did.”Jake guesses it’s possible that between PT, talk therapy, and trying to get his career somewhat back on track, he missed this or forgot about it. Neither feels incredibly likely. “All right.”Taking the water glass he came to the kitchen for, Jake goes to the back where, sure enough, Billy’s sitting in the shady corner in nothing but a pair of swim shorts, playing his violin. It’s an arresting sight. He stops the moment Jake comes out.Despite being early evening, the heat is still significant. Before he even knows he’s going to, Jake finds himself asking, “Isn’t this heat terrible for your violin?”Billy blinks. “I was trying not to wake you.”“I didn’t know you still played.”Billy starts carefully packing away the instrument. “Hi, Jake.”Quietly, Jake asks, “What are you doing here, Billy?”“Taking some annual leave. Seeing a friend.” He shrugs. “Do you not want me here?”Jake doesn’t know what the fuck he wants. He’s just woken up from a nap and he’s still exhausted. He wants to not be tired and in pain. He wants the world to not be so interested in who he fucks. He wants to be sure he’ll fly a jet again. He wants a lot of things. When it comes to this in particular, though, he has no idea. “I don’t want to fuck this up.”True enough, especially given that he’s not even sure what this is. As an answer, it works.Billy appears to chew on that. “We’re not fifteen year old kids.”“Maybe not you.”“Jake.”“Why didn’t you let my parents tell me you were coming?”“I was afraid you’d tell me not to.”“And if I had?”“I’m not sure. I really wanted to see you.”Jake tilts his head. “But?”Billy plays with the clasps on the violin case. He’s always had a way of making his stimming look like mere fidgeting if you don’t know what it is you’re witnessing. “You’ve had a lot of agency taken away from you recently.”Jake looks off to the side. Tone.“I should have asked.”He shakes his head. “I mean, probably, yes. But I’m glad you didn’t. I would have told you not to come and…and I’m glad you’re here. It’s good to see you.”Billy looks at him, then, gaze really taking him in, lingering on the mess of his hands, the scars on his forearms. He meets Jake’s eyes. “Yeah. It is.”
Jake emails Javy before going to bed to mention that Billy is there and say, “There’s some stuff I never told you, but not because I didn’t trust you. Because it wasn’t completely mine to tell.”He wakes up from another nightmare he doesn’t remember at zero four twenty two. He gets up and goes to the kitchen for a glass of water, then shuffles into the den, where he’s been keeping his growing collection of adult coloring books. Evidently word has gotten around that he’s fond, since last week one arrived with the theme of cyberpunk air travel, compliments of Mav. The note accompanying it had read, “Couldn’t find one just with jets, but this is pretty cool.”Javy, who is aware that he finds falcons and owls to be unreasonably interesting, had sent him one with birds of prey. Phoenix sent him one with mandalas and the note, “Chill tf out, Bagman.”He opens Phoenix’s. It is strangely calming. He’s been working on a sunshine mandala, all in oranges, yellows, and reds. He grabs the small manual pencil sharpener he bought about a week ago, and begins sharpening one of the oranges, which is getting too short. He’s going to need to replace it soon.Setting aside the sharpener, he starts in on the first layer of a section. Turning his head at the sound of footsteps, he sees Billy and asks, “Shit, I wake you?”Billy shakes his head. “Went to the bathroom and noticed the light.”“You should get some more rest. It’s not even…” Jake glances at his phone. “Zero three hundred where you came from.”“Funny thing about being on leave, you can take naps.” Billy says this as he roots around in the backpack he’d set down on the couch yesterday. Pulling something out, he extends it toward Jake, “Got these for you. Have it on good authority that they’re the best for this sort of thing.”“Billy,” Jake says flatly, looking at the 150 count of Prismacolor colored pencils being offered to him.“Take the pencils and shut your face, Jake.”Jake takes the pencils. He opens them and runs the fingers of his right hand—too sensitive this morning, as opposed to numb—over the options for oranges. “You didn’t have to bring anything.”When he looks up, Billy isn’t looking at him. He’s considering the far wall. “I called the therapist I’d gone to for years when it was clear you were missing. I was—” He tucks his lower lip, chewing on it for a moment, the same way he did as a kid. “I was a mess. I was scared out of my mind, pissed that I cared, all these different emotions. I thought, really I did, that I’d gotten you out of my system. You know what my therapist said?”“Run? Run back to that nice boy you’re dating?”Billy rolls his eyes without even glancing Jake’s way. “That something he had never said to me when we were working to get me past all my shit from you was that nobody, not even teenage boys with raging hormones, change from being in love to disdain from one day to the next. And that maybe the only way to get closure with you was to ask what had happened, and I was fearing that I might never be able to do that.”“Was that it?”Billy does look at him, then. “No, Jake. Because I already knew you were lying. But he was right in that I needed to talk to you again. He was just wrong about what I needed to ask.”Suddenly, Jake knows where this is going. “Billy, don’t—”“If you could do it again, would you change anything?”Jake closes the coloring book. “We don’t know what we don’t know, Billy. Do I want to tell you yes? Yeah, of course I want to tell you that. But I’m still not out beyond my immediate family, you, and a few people who basically found out by accident. I’ve never told my grandparents.”Softly, Billy asks, “Why? I don’t mean at first. I get before, when it was dangerous. But it’ll have been six years next month that we can serve openly. Somewhere in that time…”“I want to be an admiral. First Seresin to—”“Bullshit.”“No, I really—”“Yeah, I know. I’m calling bullshit on that being the reason.”Jake raises an eyebrow.“You think I don’t know how many records you’ve broken?”“My COs haven’t always loved my attitude, so it’s a mixed bag.”“You’re smart, you’ve kept it to where it won’t affect anything in the long run.”“Oh?”Billy flips him off. “I know you, Seresin. If you want admiral, you’ll be an admiral, pesky sexual orientation or no.”Jake blinks at this bald-faced assertion.“Huh,” Billy says.“Huh what?”“Evidently the answer to my question is that you don’t know you.”Jake turns that over in his mind. Slowly, he says, “I’ve spent a lot of years doing my best not to be me.”“Yeah.” After a second Billy nods, once, decisively. “Yeah, that’s too bad. I liked you.”With that, he gets up and wanders back to bed. Jake spends another half hour coloring with his new pencils before going out to the pool. He’s never missed being able to run so badly in his life.
Jake knows he’s going too hard at physical therapy that day. Even if his body wasn’t telling him, the physical therapist’s decision to stop with the exercises mid-way through the session and do some dry needling would. He falls asleep on the car ride home and while he imagines Billy or his mom wakes him up to get him inside, he doesn’t remember that. He wakes up in his bed, hours later and sincerely regrets not taking meds before passing out. “Fuck.”He wants meds, but the idea of eating to take those meds, or say, getting out of bed to eat to take those meds, makes him want to light himself on fire. It’s a bit of a quandary.That’s how poppy finds him, stuck in bed, trying to convince himself that getting up won’t be the worst thing he’s ever done. (It won’t, but tell his fucking brain that.)Poppy settles on the mattress next to him. “Hey there, kid. Brought you something.”In his hand is a plate with toast smeared with peanut butter, a couple of pills to the side. If Jake says anything, even a thank you, he’s going to start crying. He nods and works to get himself sitting. Poppy puts the plate on the nightstand and carefully assists. Jake shakily takes the toast in his hand and forces enough of it down to feel safe taking the meds.Quietly, poppy tells him to drink the rest of the water, so Jake does. He’s leaning back against the headboard, trying not to pant from exertion and to give the meds time to kick in when poppy says, “Jake. You, ah. You know there isn’t anything in this world that could cause me and your gran not to love you, right?”If Jake could move with any amount of ease at the moment, he’d pinch the bridge of his nose hard enough to break it. “Was there anyone asleep in this house this morning?”“Jakes, I don’t know how to explain this to you because you haven’t had children. Maybe you don’t want any, I dunno. But our world stopped for bit, there, while you were missing. The fact that you were given back to us…nobody’s trying to spy on you. We’re just all afraid if we take our eyes off you, you’ll disappear again.”The meds are slowly starting to kick in, enough that Jake’s breaths are coming a bit easier. Not enough to allow him to curl his knees up to his chest, the way he wants. “’M sorry.”Poppy shakes his head. “I’m sorry I overheard. That was your thing to tell me when you decided.”Jake sighs. “I’m not so good at that. There’s nobody I’ve ever really chosen to tell.”“Know how to change that? Pick someone. And tell them.” Poppy stands then, kissing his forehead and leaving the room.
Dhruv says, “Man has a point.”“Poppy almost always does. It’s one of his most annoying attributes.”“Mm. Know who you’re going to tell?”He’s talked about it with Billy and narrowed it down to four options: Skittles, Cam, Rooster, or Phoenix. Rooster is probably the safest. He was partially raised by Maverick and Admiral Kazansky. Skittles knows worse things about him. Cam’s mentioned queer members of his unit casually.“Phoenix. Trace.”Dhruv tilts his head. “I had my money on Bradshaw or Cam. Why her?”“Mostly because I owe Javy, and he’s trying to ask her out, which is hard to do if he has to be keeping my secrets. But a little because she’s been pretty standup about helping Javy keep the squad apprised and not too nosy even though she doesn’t like me all that much. Seems...fair.”“Telling someone who you are isn’t about giving them a weapon against you. And it’s certainly not about evening some score that shouldn’t exist in the first place.” Dhruv says this matter-of-factly, which is unusual. He rarely states things.“You were in the military, yeah?”Dhruv doesn’t even deign to respond to that. He lets things sit between them for a moment before saying, “I’d prefer Bradshaw. He seems like a bit of a weirdo, but the kid was kinda raised by Mav, so he didn’t have much of a chance, and you’re not much better. All that aside, your first time telling someone should be a friend or someone who cares about you. But I don’t get to make that decision for you.”Jake can’t decide whether to be offended or not about the weirdness comment. It feels like too much effort. Also, it’s hard to tell from inside the bubble, but he has a vague sense that naval aviators might all be…a type. He mutters, “You flew fucking helos, you’re one to talk.”Once again, Dhruv just waits this out, seemingly already aware he’s a weirdo or unbothered by the revelation. Dhruv is hard to deflect. Jake fucking hates it. “Phoenix is not not a friend.”“Which isn’t really the same thing as a friend.”Jake shrugs. The fact that he seems to have three of those who aren’t Javy to choose from is kind of wild to him. Sure, he inherited one and made the other one by accident, aka, getting shot down and held as prisoner for a month, but a friend is a friend. He says, “I don’t want it to be a friend.”“Run me through that.”“I’m already freaking out about it. I don’t want to feel like—” Jake bites the inside of his lip. “I don’t have a lot of friends. I never have. Phoenix can say something dumb or kind of jerky, but she can’t really—she can only fuck me up so much more than I already am.”Dhruv nods. “Makes sense.”Jake forces himself to take a breath. “Now I just have to do it.”“How have you historically convinced yourself to do things that scared you?”“Brute force.”“Right. Maybe try thinking up a reward for yourself, instead?”“Pretty sure the reward is having done it.”“Well, you know, try living a little, Seresin.”
Billy is only in town for three more days, and Jake doesn’t want this hanging over his head the whole time so when he finishes the session he texts Phoenix. “Can you call when you get a minute? Not an emergency.”She calls at 0730 CT the next morning. He picks up with, “Thanks for getting back to me.”“What’s going on?”He opens his mouth and chokes.“Hangman?”“Sorry. Uh. I guess I’ve only said this to three people, and one was my therapist. Jesus, fuck, that sounded creepy, sorry, I’m not—”“Hey.” She doesn’t raise her voice, but the word cuts into his anxiety spiral. “Let’s switch to video, okay?”“I don’t think—”“It wasn’t really a request, Bagman. Switch to fucking video.”He switches to video. She’s in workout clothing, but he doesn’t think she’s actually left for the gym yet. She says, “Whatever it is, it isn’t as big a deal as you’re making it in your head. I promise.”“You have no idea what it is.”“Okay, if the next thing you tell me is that you’ve been serial killing children for the last decade, that’s a big deal, I’m turning you over to both the MPs and the regular po po.”“Just children, though? I could have been serial killing adults and we’re good?”“Adults are the worst. You think I give a fuck about you offing a few of them here and there?”“This escalated quickly.”“It happens like that, sometimes.”“I’m not a serial killer,” Jake says. “I’m gay.”Her eyes go wide and the silence stretches between them for a moment before she says, “Shit, shit, I didn’t mean—I just. Javy doesn’t know?”“Javy knows. I never told him. He found me getting beaten up behind a gay bar in Pensacola during Flight School and kept the Don’t Tell half of things for me.”“Oh.”“Almost everyone who has known in my life up until you has found out kinda by accident.” He forces himself to hold eye contact as he admits it. “My parents, brother, paternal grandparents, Javy, Omaha, Billy, and Admiral Kazansky. I told Halo. But even that was mostly an accident.”“You…accidentally came out to the Commander of the Pacific Fleet?”“No, the Commander of the Pacific Fleet is a gay man who’s been in the Navy since the early ‘80s and whose fiancé I recently served under and he clocked me.”“Ouch.”“Mav missed it.”“Well, you aren’t a plane or Bradley, so that tracks.”Jake laughs, surprising himself. Phoenix grins, wide and warm and sincere, the way he remembers her looking after he’d brought Bradley and Mav back to them. Softly, she tells him, “I don’t know why you chose me, but I’m honored.”Something burns in his chest in a way he likes, a hearth fire not a conflagration. “Thank you.”“Hang—Jake. Anyone gives you shit about it, you send’em to me.”“Anyone with half a brain knows you don’t wear iron combs to keep the bun in place, Trace, but I don’t think this is the time to start letting others fight my battles for me.”“So let us fight them with you, asshole.” She raises an eyebrow.“How’d you learn to be so balls to the wall?”“Probably by not having balls.”“Point.”“Point my ass, game set match, bitch. Call the others. Javy and Bradley deserve a break on being your gatekeepers, and everyone else deserves to see for themselves that you’re alive.”Jake blinks at this directive.Phoenix sighs. “The fact that I actually know you’re smart makes it all that much more annoying that you’re kind of a complete idiot, but you’re a boy, and very probably suffering from PTSD, so I’m going to give you a pass.”“Magnanimous.”“Don’t waste it.”He rolls his eyes. “I’ll call.”“I’m going. Some of us around here have to actually work, was there anything else?”“Just—” He smiles, maybe a little tight around the eyes, but real. “Thanks.”She shakes her head, smiling, and blinks out of existence.
Jake manages to sleep for a while after the call, almost two hours, waking up not to his own terror and restlessness but the sun pouring in the window and the soft sounds of the household. He wanders out to the den, where Billy is evidently in the process of getting every reading recommendation his mother has ever thought to give, noting them with careful diligence in his phone. Jake hates how adorable he finds it.His mom sees him first. “Morning.”“Hey mom.”She stands up, saying, “I was thinking before PT this afternoon we’d hunt down that chilaquiles truck we’ve had on our list.”“Perfect.” He bends his head so she can kiss him on the cheek as she passes.After she’s left, Billy, who’s busy getting his violin out of the case, asks, “How’d it go with Phoenix?”“I think I surprised her.”“Huh. I didn’t know anything surprised her.”“I’m singular.”Billy rolls his eyes, putting the violin on his shoulder and beginning to tune it up.“She told me to call the others. Not, like, to come out. Just to let them know I was alive.”“Not a bad idea.”“If we wanted to get technical—”“Which we probably don’t.”Jake ignores this. “—it could be pointed out that I’ve spoken with her, Rooster, Javy, you, Halo, and Omaha. Counting me, that’s over half the squadron.”“Makes it easy then, to finish up.” Billy starts to run through some bowing exercises. Jake’s still mulling over how much Bob really gives a fuck whether he’s alive or not when he realizes that Billy is playing a song.“Are you playing Air Supply?”“You’re the one who knows enough to ask,” Billy comes back, ever so reasonably, not even a fucking break in the notes.“The classics are called that for a reason, Avalone, I just wasn’t…don’t you usually play something a little more, uh—”“Traditionally classic?”“Sure, we can go with that.”Billy finishes the song and tucks the violin into his side. “Suppose it depends on how you look at it. I play a lot of Fritz Kriesler’s compositions, and he was writing largely in the early 1900s, but all of his works are based on older works and therefore sound much more in the vein of what people tend to see as classical works.”Jake narrows his eyes. “Fritz, huh?”“Interesting fact, most people think I got my callsign because of my deep dive on his works. Weird how people get their stories about callsigns wrong.”“You could’ve just gotten a new callsign,” Jake says softly. “People change them.”“I could have,” Billy agrees, easy as anything. “But I’m smarter than the assholes who thought they were branding me.”“You’re smarter than three quarters of the fucking Navy, Billy, what does that have to do with anything?”“I don’t have to accept idiots telling me who they think I am, Jake. I decide who the hell I am.” He shrugs. “So I did.”“Maybe that’s what I did.”“Nah, you used what you had to hide, like always. Clever, but not the same thing.”Jake rubs a hand over his face. “Can you just play Journey, or something?”“See, you were talking shit, but joke’s on you.” He breaks into a rendition of Faithfully.
Jake calls Yale that evening. Billy’s busy charming his grandmother into parting with her pecan sandies recipe. Jake isn’t precisely friends with Yale, but they’ve known each other since Indoc, and Yale’s never been as put off by him as a lot of other aviators. It’s as good a place to start as any.Maybe better, because he leaves a message that’s basically just, “Hey, I’m doing a bit of reconnecting,” and two minutes later Yale’s ringing back. Jake picks up to Yale saying, “Seresin, I say as a man whose pilot has an IQ of 146 and cannot, for love or money, remember to pack socks when leaving for deployment, you are several lightbulbs short of a full Christmas tree set.”“That’s not a real saying.”“What is wrong with you?”Jake’s brain supplies him with so many answers to that—both honest and sarcastic—that he fails to provide anything.“Sorry, that might have been too harsh.”“No, it’s—”“I just meant people have been worried. I get that you talked to Coyote and Rooster, but it—it’s different, getting a call.”“Yeah.” Jake closes his eyes. “You’re right.”“I probably shouldn’t have yelled.”“No big. Have Harvard call, would you?”“I will. He’s gonna tell you to stop being a pussy and speak up in the group chat. Fair warning.”“Looking forward to that, then.”Yale laughs. “Really is good to hear your voice again, Hangman.”Jake hangs up and goes to see if Billy’s had any success. It’s easier than thinking about how maybe he’s been wrong about his relationship to others this whole time.
Jake calls Payback the next morning. He’s at Lemoore, which means waiting until around 0700 hours to have a chance of catching him. Payback picks up, though, which either means Jake has timed it well, or that the grapevine has done its job. He knows there’s a group chat he’s not in, he doesn’t have to ask Billy or Javy to figure that out.“Hangman,” Payback picks up with. “How’s it—er, to what do I owe the pleasure?”Jake laughs softly. “Hey man. It’s come to my attention that people would appreciate a call.”“Wow, Nat wasn’t kidding when she said you’re kind of an idiot, huh?” The thing about Payback, Jake has found, is that even when he’s talking smack, it’s so chill it’s kind of hard to be fussed.“Can’t be the best pilot of our generation and a genius, I suppose.”Payback barks a laugh. Softly he asks, “How you doing, man?”“Worse days and better days.”“What’s today so far?”Jake hesitates over how to respond. Pain-wise, it’s been on the worse side of the scale, which always makes him anxious about recovery, and that tends to cause a certain level of spiraling. But Billy is still here, which makes everything better, and the calls are going well. “Middling.”“All right. You need something, you call.”“That’s—”“Seresin. Stop acting like you weren’t one of us in the end. It’s pointless, and unworthy of you.”“I did my job. I did my job.”“You argued with the Air Boss and you bent the frame of your damn F-18. Fuck you, you did your job. I have your job, asshole.”Jake turns that over in his head. “I taught myself how not to be part of something.”“Yeah, that’s pretty clear. Unteach yourself.”Picking at a thread on his shorts, Jake says, “Sir, yes sir.”
Billy’s once again tuning the violin when Jake comes out to the living room, the house having fully woken up by 0730. Without looking up he asks, “So?”Jake lowers himself slowly onto the couch. Yeah, it’s going to be a bad pain day. “You know Payback. He could be more chill, but it would probably take quaaludes.”It gets a laugh from Billy. He tucks the violin under his chin and starts playing. Jake blinks. “Oh fuck you very much. I know you don’t like Allison Krauss. You called me a hick for listening to her when we were kids. And I didn’t even grow up in the South; I was a Navy brat, which you knew.”Billy keeps playing. “First off, you can take the hick out of the South, taking the South out of the hick? Much harder. Secondly, I reconsidered Allison Krauss. You were right about her. Don’t let it go to your head.”Jake flips him off with his better hand. “Go for a swim with me.”“Ploy to get me half-naked, Seresin?”Jake rolls his eyes. “See you out there in fifteen.”It takes him that long to change. He makes himself eat some toast with butter so as to be able to take meds. By the time he gets to the pool, Billy is cutting through the water smoothly, end to end. Jake eases himself in. Billy pops up and says, “You’re late.”Jake nods, beginning to stretch out in the water. Without looking at Billy, he says, “I—I want to ask a favor. But you should definitely say no if you’re uncomfortable.”Billy doesn’t say anything, just waits Jake out. Jake throws a glance at the house behind him, making sure nobody is watching. Quietly he asks, “I was wondering if you’d let me blow you?”Billy slips on the bottom of the pool and comes up sputtering. When he’s gotten his breathing under control he says, “Jake. Um—”“Okay, no, I know. I know how it sounds. But, uh, there was—they would use me. That way. I don’t even think it had anything to do with the interrogation, or if it was, only to break me down, you know? Not really to get anything. They never asked questions when they did that. Just threatened Skittles if I bit, so I—I didn’t bite.”Jake swallows. “And we still don’t know what the over under on me getting back in a cockpit is, or my dick getting back with the party, and I just—I don’t want this to be something else that was taken from me, is all. I could go to a club, but I’m worried I’ll freak on a random dude, which seems like a bad idea—”“Jake, stop.” Billy says it softly, but it gets Jake to stop talking.Instead he pretends to be caught up in doing stretches in the water. Billy asks, “Can I touch you?”“I’m not fucking broken,” he snaps, which probably proves Billy’s point. Sighing, he murmurs, “Sorry, yeah.”Billy puts a hand to his cheek, but doesn’t force him to look up. Slowly, Billy gets closer, so that their foreheads are touching. Jake repeats, “I’m not broken.”“No more or less than anybody else human is,” Billy mutters.Jake huffs a laugh. Billy asks, “Where the hell are we gonna do this?”“That a yes?”“That’s a logistical concern.”“I convinced the elders to let us have the house for a few hours this evening.”Billy draws a slow breath in, lets it out. “All right. We can try. But I have full rights to call it.”“Yeah, of course.”“I mean it, Jake.”“I know. I do too.”Billy’s breathing is slow, forcibly regulated. “All right. You want me to help me with your stretches?”Jake feels like he’s going to come apart any second. “Please.”“Go stand by the wall before you fall over.”Jake follows directions.
They make dinner together, or well, Jake reads instructions and Billy does whatever they say to do, since Jake is feeling a bit like he’s been tied to the back of a truck and pulled along at high velocity. His nerves are pretty shredded, too. It helps having something to focus on.Once they’re actually eating, Billy says, “We could just have an easy night, J.”Jake blinks. It’s been a while since anyone has called him that. Shaking his head, he reiterates, “I wanna try. If you’re okay with it.”“Believe me when I say that I’ve thought a lot of things about you over the years, most of them involving violence and spreading a few rumors about your sexual health, but I’ve never once considered turning down that mouth of yours.”The way Billy says that last part, a little slow and with his eyes on Jake’s lips, like this is something he’s thought about, it punches a hole in Jake’s chest. Arousal without the physical component of it is strange, but not unpleasant. Jakes breathes. “Maybe just…be nice like that, while I’m trying?”Billy nods. They finish the meal and clean up together, and Billy takes Jake’s hand—the better one—loosely, and leads him back to the guest room. Quietly he asks, “What’s going to be most comfortable for you?”Kneeling is a bad idea. Physically and mentally. But he also wants to have some level of control. After a moment he decides, “Me sitting against the headboard, you standing between my legs?”“Sure.”Jake goes to sit and Billy hesitates. Jake asks, “Issue?”
“Just, uh, I know you don’t like taking your clothes off right now, and I’m not asking, but it feels a bit weird, getting naked with you dressed.”Jake considers that. “Probably should work on that, too,” he says slowly. “Just don’t…don’t stare.”The look Billy gives him is incredulous. “I know you mean at the scars, but fucking seriously, man? Are you not gonna stare a little bit at me? Because if that’s the case, frankly, I’m gonna be a bit insulted.”It catches Jake so off-guard he doesn’t realize he’s laughing until he hears himself. Through the laugh, he says, “Yeah, well, you don’t look like a war orphan.”“Jake,” Billy takes the hem of Jake’s shirt but doesn’t tug it upward, waiting to be given permission, “let me be the judge of what the hell you do or don’t look like, yeah?”Slowly, Jake raises his arms. Billy pulls the shirt over and glances down. “Admittedly, I’m not an expert on war orphans—”“Fuck off.”“But if they’re all this hot, how are they not getting top notch care?”“Naked, asshole, my turn.”“Pushy.” Billy laughs as he strips.Jake’s mouth waters at the smooth planes of skin on display. Having bared all, Billy sets his fingers lightly at the band of Jake’s linen pants. Jake swallows. “Billy.”Billy waits, his eyes soft, fingers staying where they are.“I can’t—my dick isn’t working. You know that.”“I do know that. I don’t care. You’re more than your cock.”Jake sighs and nods, lets Billy push the pants to the floor along with his boxers and stands there, trying to find even just a hint of all the confidence he’s gotten used to slathering on himself like sunscreen.Billy says, “C’mere, you stupidly gorgeous asshole.”“Your sweet talk has really improved over the years, I see.” Jake lets himself be pulled into a hug, though. It feels like it should be awkward, both of them naked, just friends and only tentatively at that. It’s not. Billy’s hands are steady and sure, soothing along his back, calming him.“Shut up,” Billy says softly, one hand going to the back of Jake’s head, massaging there until the worst of the tension has left Jake’s body. “You love my sweet talk.”Jake laughs. At first it’s just a small crack. Then it’s open mouthed cackles against Billy’s shoulder. Billy shuffles them both onto the bed as Jake is losing his shit over a joke that wasn’t even that funny. It takes a bit for them to get settled because Jake is laughing so hard. When he finally settles a bit, he’s up against the headboard, Billy kneeling between his legs. Jake won’t even pretend that it’s not something of a mindfuck, being here with Billy as a man. He’d been cute as a teenager, smart and wryly funny and talented, but all the same a kid, just like Jake.Neither of them are children anymore, and Billy…Billy grew up beautiful. Jake has known that before now, for all that he’s done his best not to look. It’s different, though, when he can.It’s also different being allowed this slow ease with someone. All of his other consensual sexual encounters have been in bathrooms, alleys, motels, places useful for anonymity.Quietly, he asks, “I know I didn’t, that this isn’t…I just. Can I kiss you?”Billy’s smile is soft, the callouses of his right hand sending pleasant chills up Jake’s spine when he cups Jake’s cheek. “Nah, I think I’ll kiss you, Seresin.”And oh, holy shit. Billy has worked on his kissing skills. Jake has kissed people before, he’s always liked it. He’s kissed Billy before. He’s never felt like his entire nervous system was being gently and slowly played like a fucking harp from a simple kiss. His hands scrabble at Billy’s hair, afraid he’ll stop, but Billy shows no indication of that, taking his time rewriting Jake’s entire worldview on kissing.He has no idea how much time has passed when Billy pulls back and presses one last, soft kiss to the side of his lips, all he knows is that he makes a terrible, desperate noise. Billy rests his forehead against Jake’s, his breathing heavy, and whispers, “Believe me, gorgeous, I’d love to keep at that all night. But you asked me for something, and we only have the house for so long.”Jake nods without dislodging Billy’s forehead. He wants to hold onto this moment of intimacy for a bit longer. Then, “No, you’re right.”“We don’t have to. We can just kiss some more. If you need—if you need the other thing, in the future, we can figure out a way to make that happen. There’s no rush.”Jake says, “I’m not a tease, Avalone.”“Hey.” Billy pulls back, and his tone is different, dead serious. “Hey, eyes up here, sailor.”Jake makes himself meet Billy’s gaze. It’s canny, careful. After a moment, Billy says, “Whoever called you that can go fuck themselves with a rusty chainsaw and no lube.”He says it calmly, with no evident heat behind it. Jake isn’t fooled: if Jake gave Billy names right now, Billy’d hunt people down and murder them in their beds. Jake was always turned on by that, the fierce sweetness under Billy’s calm exterior. Evidently that hasn’t changed. He runs a hand up and down the length of Billy’s back. “It was a long time ago. I—my first couple of times might’ve been false starts.”He’s not even sure what made him say it. He hasn’t felt that kind of insecurity in…not since he’d been on shore duty after Zach’s death and made his way through about a third of the queer men in Fresno.“Let’s lie down, okay? C’mere,” Billy helps get him situated on his back and then drapes himself carefully over half of him. “I’m just going to kiss you some more, if that’s okay?”“Now.”Billy laughs. “Nice to see some things haven’t changed.”
At some point, Billy chivvies them both back into their briefs so they won’t be found curled up naked together if someone should poke a head in his room looking for Jake, but otherwise convinces Jake to stay where he is. Jake doesn’t have it in him to fight. He’s felt fatigued every moment of every fucking day since getting sprung from the hospital, his slowly healing body taking its constant and ongoing pound of flesh. But he hasn’t felt this ability to sink into the mattress and simply close his eyes.It hurts a bit to grasp onto Billy’s wrist, but he does it, saying, “Wake me up if you get up before me, okay?”Billy’s silent for a moment. He responds with a soft, “I’m not going to leave, Jake.”“I did.”Another pause. “You apologized, and I forgave you.”Jake yawns. “Makes one of us.”“Yeah.” Billy’s sigh feathers through Jake’s hair. “Get some sleep.”Jake does, mostly because he can’t keep himself awake any longer. He wakes to his normal panic while it’s still dark out, heart racing and a scream stuck in his throat. A soft voice is murmuring, “You’re safe, hey, you’re safe. You’re at your grandparents in Brownsville, Texas, and it’s…0324 hours Central. You need some water?”Jake shakes his head frantically, grasping onto Billy with his left hand because the right has locked up completely.“Okay, okay, no water. I’m staying right here, I promise. You gotta slow down your breathing, though, and let me see your hands.”Easier said than done: now that he’s wrapped the left around Billy’s wrist, it has no interest in opening up again. He works on his breathing and lets Billy manipulate him until his hands are where Billy wants them. Billy murmurs, “Tell me if this hurts too much, okay?”Billy massages carefully at the muscles and tendons of the right hand, stretching it out in the way he’s seen Jake do with his parents’ at the PT’s behest. It hurts, but in the way it’s supposed to, so Jake slows and deepens his breathing and rides the pain until he can flex the hand on his own. Billy works the left, which isn’t as badly damaged, out.Blowing out a long, shaky breath, Jake says, “Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you.”Jake can feel Billy rolling his eyes. All Billy says is, “This bad every night?”“Mm.”“Your ribs and the stuff on your front are healed enough you can lie on your stomach, yeah?”“Yeah?”“Flip over.”Jake thinks about asking why. Then he realizes he doesn’t really give a fuck. It takes him a few minutes to find a comfortable position. If he puts his arms up it pulls on the newly-healed skin of his back, which feels weird, but keeping them at his side is awkward. Billy puts them at a 45 degree angle out to the side, and rearranges his upper body with pillows so that his neck’s not at an awkward angle.“Gonna be okay if I sit on your ass?”“Asking for a friend?”Billy laughs. “J, seriously. I’m not trying to cause more trauma, here.”Jake thinks it over. Decides, “I guess we’ll know if I freak out.”“Reassuring.” Billy straddles him and lowers himself carefully onto Jake’s ass, not resting too much weight on it. There’s enough skin that’s newly healed there to pull a bit, but it’s not painful, just…odd. “Okay?”“Okay,” Jake agrees.There’s the sound of a cap popping and then, a minute or so later, Billy’s hands, warm and smooth with lotion on his back, up and down in broad, warm strokes. Jake tenses against the touch at first, feeling somewhat defenseless and discomfited by the idea of Billy feeling what a mess his back is. Billy tells him, “Breathe.”He does and it’s hard to hold on to the anxiety with Billy’s gentle touches reaching everywhere. It’s not a massage, not really. There’s no digging in or releasing of any knots, just repetitive soft, warm caresses until Jake is nearly back asleep. Billy climbs off him then, tousling his hair. “I’m going to get you water. I’ll be right back, I promise.”Jake mumbles something incoherent and then possibly falls asleep, because the next thing he knows Billy is making him sit up a bit, enough to drink a few sips. That done, Billy climbs in behind him and curls around him protectively. “Go back to sleep.”“Mhm,” Jake says, and does.
Jake wakes with the sun well in the sky and just about gives himself a heart attack. “Shit!”“You’ve got another hour,” Billy murmurs, still cuddled up around him. “I was going to wake you in about ten and pour you into the shower. Gran’s got coffee waiting for us.”Jake works to re-orient, the triple whammy of having finally slept, woken up to thinking he’d managed to sleep through PT, and the casual warmth of Billy all around him making his brain useless. After several slow breaths, he manages, “Did gran, uh, come in here?”“No. Knocked on the door. I told her we’d been up late talking and you stayed.”“My grandmother isn’t dumb.”“No.” There’s a careful note to Billy’s response.Jake figures it out. “She thinks I’m too fucked up to be having sex, doesn’t she?”“I probably would have phrased it more…without the term ‘fucked up’.”“Sure.”“You’re not. You’re traumatized; reasonably so.”Jake closes his eyes again. He feels better this morning than he has in a while and it terrifies him. Billy doesn’t push. He gives Jake a few minutes before squeezing gently at his hip and saying, “All right, lazy, up.”It’s too easy to allow himself to be herded into the shower. When he finishes and comes into the kitchen, Billy hands him a travel mug. “Morning.”Jake takes a sip. It’s exactly how he likes it.
That evening, Jake is the last out to the car for dinner, which is how he discovers that his parents and Billy have conspired against him. The only seat left is the driver’s seat. Jake peeks his head in at his Dad, riding shotgun, and says, “Y’all.”His father raises an eyebrow. “Longer you stand there, longer it takes us to get to dinner.”Zach and his mom taught Jake to drive the summer after he turned fifteen on the backroads between dairy farms about forty minutes from the base. Jake had known it was a way to try and see if they could get him to come out of the shell he was already constructing for himself post-Billy. He couldn’t get a permit until sixteen in Rhode Island. They’d taught him on a manual, and while Jake has driven automatics now and again—rental cars and the like—manuals have always been what he feels most comfortable driving.Of course, that’s never accounted for him not trusting his own damn body. His hands.A door closes and suddenly Billy’s standing there, watching him. “J, when you took off from the deck, did you know you could get to Mav and Rooster in time?”The question is whisper soft. Jake blinks. “What?”“You heard me.”Jake frowns. “No, of course not. There was no way to know that.”“You told Simpson you could. Way Hondo tells it, you were pretty damn insubordinate insisting on it.”“No use in not believing it. What the hell was I supposed to do, huh? Assume failure and sit on my ass?”Billy just looks at him.“Fuck.” Jake opens the driver’s side door and gets in. He’s shaking with nerves, something he can’t remember ever doing before, not prior to doing something. After, sure. After has always been when the worst of it hits him, adrenaline and bullheadedness all crashing at once.His dad puts a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve got this, kid.”Jake adjusts the rearview mirror, nods at Billy, and turns the keys in the engine.
After driving to dinner and back, not to mention eating dinner, Jake is considering the merits of amputation. His mom sets a couple of the prescription strength NSAIDs that he’d managed to wean himself from on the table next to a glass of water with a look that doesn’t bear arguing with. “It’s going to feel worse tomorrow, let’s just head some of that off.”He swallows the meds. His dad, meanwhile snaps a couple of ice towels into cooling down, and wraps his hands. After that his parents and his grandparents wish them a good evening and head off to their respective rooms. Jake has the sense he should be embarrassed, but until the meds and the ice do their job, emotions aren’t going to be something he has room for.Billy sits at the table with him, and must see something shift, because when the meds begin to kick in he takes the less-damaged hand in his own and carefully stretches and massages it through the towel. Quietly he says, “I’ll put some of that cooling lotion on before bed, hopefully that will help as well.”Finishing with that hand, he pulls Jake’s arm toward him and kisses the space immediately above where the wrapping ends. Setting it down, he goes to work on the other arm.Jake says, “I’m pissed at you.”“Because I got you to drive?” Billy sounds unbothered.“Because I was okay on my own. And then you showed up here.”“You’re full of shit, Jake. I don’t know why I thought you’d have grown out of that, the evidence was fucking everywhere, but for the record: full of shit.”“I didn’t say thriving.”Bill just shakes his head.“I’m not the lead of a rom-com, I don’t need someone else to make me whole.”“First off, the reason you think it’s a problem to be the lead of a rom-com is because our society devalues women’s-focused entertainment. Seriously don’t ever let Neil or his wife hear you say something like that, you’ll be in for a two day lecture on why you’re being a fucking misogynist. Secondly, you’re not aro, and people who aren’t might not need a romantic partner—or, well, I guess partners, depending on their mono or poly bent—but the drive toward it tends to be fairly high even when fulfilled in all other ways. The idea that we can pretend that need isn’t there so long as we’re content with ourselves is bullshit. Humans with romantic leanings are going to be drawn to romantic relationships.”After taking a minute, Jake says, “A lot just happened.”Billy looks at him.“Do we know someone who’s poly?”“Are you serious with this right now?”“It just seemed like an odd—” He catches expression in Billy’s eyes and swerves. “No, right, I was listening. I was.”Billy—fairly—seems unconvinced.“I was,” Jake says softly. “But gimme a break, Avalone. I can’t sleep for shit most nights and nine times out of ten I wake up thinking I’m back in a fucking hole in the ground where I’m going to die. The thing that’s kept me on my feet since I was a kid, that I clung to with everything in me after Zach died is…it’s a maybe, at best. The one thing I’ve known how to do through thick and thin was keep myself to myself. My parents have barely been inside my walls since we were kids. Javy’s the only person outside of my family who knows there are walls as opposed to just pure asshole.”Jake swallows and takes a slow, shaky breath. “But I slept last night. I let Phoenix in, a little, and I listened to her when she told me to call the others, even if I haven’t finished. So excuse me if I’m…”“Freaking the fuck out?”“I was going to go with ‘mildly unnerved’.”“I’m certain you were.”Jake would flip him off, but the thought of moving either of his hands in that way makes him pre-emptively nauseated. He settles for a solid bitchface. Billy is entirely unmoved. Jake reassures himself that adding hand motions wouldn’t have gotten a rise, either.Billy takes a breath. He says, “I’m going back to my job tomorrow because we’re both adults and there’s no world in which me going AWOL for you is helpful to either of us.”“Yeah, obvi—”“Shut up, my turn. But Jake, you lovable dumbfuck, I took a week off and flew to Brownsville, Texas in summer instead of, you know, literally anywhere else in the known fucking universe, because I couldn’t fucking sleep through the night. I’d wake up and I’d have to check that your texts were recent. My CO was about to forcibly put me on medical. Geographically, yes, I’m going somewhere, but I’m not going anywhere. If you have to call me in the middle of the night, I’ll leave my phone on—”“Your CO—”“Still talking. If I have to take another week and come back, we’ll figure that out. I’m not going to, because you’re in therapy, doing the work, and you have your family here, but if I need to, I will.”“Dad has to go back in a week.”“I know. And I know that both of you are terrified about that. But I swear to you, Jake, for all that healing isn’t linear and there are a billion times where it gets worse before it gets better, I swear, nobody is going to leave you in that fucking hole. Not me, not your family, not the SEAL who’s adopted you, not Coyote or Mav or Rooster or Phoenix. Shit, not even Neil, and he honestly doesn’t like you.”“He really doesn’t,” Jake murmurs.Billy leans in and presses his lips to Jake’s, chaste and fleeting. He pulls back just far enough to say, “You’re not alone.”Jake asks, “Stay with me tonight?”Billy says, “I was going to, invited or not.”
Jake instinctively reaches out in the morning to try and keep Billy in bed, grabbing at his wrist, and nearly blacks out at the strain in his tendons.Billy says, “Shit. Okay, don’t move,” as if Jake is capable of doing anything other than attempting not to vomit all over himself while still in bed. He clearly loses time, since he doesn’t even realize Billy has left and come back when he’s being carefully pulled into a sitting position. Billy puts a piece of toast to his mouth. “Eat up, you need meds.”Jake takes slow bites. Billy tips cool water into his mouth after each, and it helps a little with the nausea. It still feels as though it takes forever to finish the bread. He swallows the meds Billy has brought after he manages. Billy helps him lie back down, then, curling against him and kissing at the curve of his shoulder.Without even realizing he’s going to, Jake starts crying. Not heaving sobs, but not silent either. Billy rubs at his stomach and doesn’t say anything. Jake says, “Fuck, sorry. I’m fine,” even though he’s clearly not. There’s a code here, though, Billy can’t call him on it.Billy snorts. “No you’re not.”Jake blinks through his tears. “You’re—that’s not—.”“Tell it to someone who cares, Seresin.” Billy manages to sound sleepy while saying this.“’Time’s your flight?” Jake asks.“Not until the afternoon. Plenty of time for those meds to kick in and me to drag you into the kitchen and wheedle cheesy grits out of your poppy.”“Poppy wants to trade me in for you, I don’t think there’s gonna be much wheedling involved.”Billy bites his shoulder gently. “Maybe a last morning swim?”Jake turns and tucks his face into Billy’s chest. “Would you play for me?”“Mm. What do you want to hear?”“Anything. Doesn’t matter.”Billy brings up a hand and runs it through his hair. “Yeah, I can do that.”Jake sniffles a few more times. Fully aware of how petulant it sounds, he says, “I’m fine.”“You aren’t,” Billy says calmly. “But you will be.”
Bob calls Jake the evening Billy gets back to the base and Jake picks up. Asks, “Everything all right?”After a beat, Bob says, “You tell me.”Jake writes himself the mental note “talk to Dhruv about how to human again.” Swallowing back a sigh, he tries, “We’re not exactly conversational buddies.”“Sure,” Bob says easily. “Phoenix said if you hadn’t called by when Fritz came back to call you. And the line between bravery and idiocy is pretty much ignoring Natasha Trace when she tells you to do something, so here we are.”Jake’s pretty sure he just got called an idiot. He can’t be fucked to defend himself. He’s spent the last four hours tired from the painkillers and too anxious about trying to sleep for that to be of any use. Instead he asks, “Billy settling back in okay?”Bob’s quiet in response to that for an unsettlingly long time. Long enough that Jake finds himself asking, “Bob?”“I…don’t do as well, when I can’t see faces.”“Hm?”“I’m saying that it’s hard to know if I can push right now because you already went through something incredibly, facially shitty, and we’re on the phone and I can’t read any of your expressions to know if I should just…leave things or if you maybe need me to say some stuff to you.”“Well regardless of whether you should or not, now you’re going to,” Jake says, closing his eyes.Bob still hesitates, but in the end he asks, “How long has Fritz been in love with you?”That isn’t what Jake was expecting. He finds himself choking out, “It’s not like that.”“Bullshit it isn’t. I thought you didn’t know, which is why I stayed out of it, but despite initial impressions you’re not an idiot and no way did he spend seven days there without you clocking it.”“No, Bob, it’s not—fuck. It was. When we were kids, it was like that for both of us.” And what do you know? It actually does get the tiniest bit easier with each instance. “But I fucked it up and it hasn’t been like that since. He just came as a friend.”“Huh. Turns out my original assessment of idiot was completely correct.”“We talked about—”“Sure, but did you listen to him or all your internalized trauma? Which I clearly underestimated, and I’d already been approximating it at ‘stronger than the average bear’s’.”“You…are really mean.” Jake’s feeling a bit dumbstruck by this realization and also like maybe he’s an idiot for being dumbstruck by it. Bob might have a point about his idiocy, not that he wants to admit it.“I’m wounded. Answer my question.”Jake takes a breath. “He just needed some closure, Bob. We’re…we’re working on reconstructing a friendship.”The silence this time is heavier, louder than the ones before. Bob breaks it with, “How’s that working for you, seeing as how you’ve evidently been in love with the guy for about half your life?”Jake frowns down at his phone. “Really fucking mean.”
Jake’s dad goes back to work. He’s on shore duty, but in Tennessee. Even that is a stroke of incredibly good luck. Normally he would report back to Portsmouth, which is…a ways. Jake suspects intervention on the part of Mav, which means that the Commander of the Pacific Fleet asked colleagues in Fleet Forces to pull strings because Jake is an invalid. He tries not to dwell on it too much.He does tell Dhruv, who says, “Or, if that freaks you out, you could frame it as ‘my friend asked his fiancé to help my family, because we’re going through a rough patch.’”Jake stares at him. Dhruv says, “Let’s do some breathing.”
On his first day back at work, Jake has an audio recording already waiting in his text chain with Billy when he wakes up. He listens twice through to the song Billy has played for him, breathing to the rhythm. Shakily he texts back, “I don’t know this,” and goes to pour himself in the shower. It’s a Naval Base, there’ll already have been a million rumors about him before he even steps foot on it; he’s not going to show up looking like he rolled out of bed.When he gets back to his phone, despite it still being Way Too Fucking Early in California, Billy has responded, “Learning to Fly, Pink Floyd, you heathen.”Jake pulls up the YouTube even as he texts back, “You competing with Bradshaw to see who can yell loudest about the kids on his lawn?”Billy responds with a middle finger emoji and, a second later, “You’ve got this.”Jake eats breakfast, brews himself a travel mug of coffee, and walks to base with poppy. Poppy’d driven him out to Kingsville and moved him into the apartment Jake had rented solely because it was within walking distance of the base. He’d then stayed past the weekend, informing Jake he wanted to see some old colleagues. Jake’s seventy-three percent certain that’s code for “make sure you don’t get your ass kidnapped by enemy combatants on the way to work,” but hey, they’re all dealing with trauma in their own ways.Standing out front, Jake unable to move and incapable of remembering the box breathing pattern that he and Dhruv have only practiced three thousand nine hundred and eight times (approx.), poppy says quietly, “You can do this, kid.”Jake nods. Sort of. He jerks his head. “I know.”“Not sure that’s true, but that’s all right. You don’t have to know. You just have to put one foot in front of the next, and you’ve been handling that just fine.”“There have been whole days I haven’t gotten out of bed.”“And then you did, the day after that.”Jake looks down at the sidewalk. He finds himself laughing.“Share with the class?”Slowly, Jake explains, “I was scared when—when they had me. Scared of the pain after a while. Scared of not seeing you guys again. Scared I would fail Skittles.” He shrugs. “Scared. But I…the fear made sense. Of course I was scared, I would have been an idiot not to be. Here, I’m scared that they’ll see how tired I am, how much effort it still takes to concentrate, how I—how I’m not the me that I built, even though they’ve never met that me, and that fear is so acontextual that it feels worse, in some ways than the kind in that hellhole.”“I dunno,” poppy says slowly, carefully. “That makes a lot of sense to me.”Jake looks over at him.“We’re all scared, kiddo. People who have no fear should be feared. The condition of living is one that incites fear in some way or another. Seems to me you have some pretty solid reasons at the moment.”Jake finds it in himself to take a deep breath and nod, really nod, this time. “Okay.”“I’m just going to…be around. For a few hours.”Jake darts over to kiss his cheek and gets himself inside before he really is stuck there for the whole day.
He does it. He even does it damn well. Granted, NAS-Kingsville isn’t Top Gun, but the pilots he’s teaching aren’t slouches and they know their own worth.His reputation—and the rumors, whatever they are at the moment, about why he’s doing shore duty at NAS-Kingsville—has proceeded him. There’s a little bit of uninhibited awe from the younger pilots, a little bit of wariness with admiration from the older ones. And a healthy dose of competition running through all of it.The second the day is over he gets himself to the office they cleared out for him on base. It’s an airless, windowless thing that makes him a bit panicky to be inside of. He tries to get himself to eat a protein bar so he can take some meds. At the moment, the thought of walking back to the apartment makes him want to set himself on fire as a less painful alternative.He’s taking slow sips of water to try and control his nausea when there’s a knock on the door. If the door didn’t have a window to the hallway, Jake would ignore the knock, but since it’s fairly obvious he’s in there he calls, “Come,” and tries to look like he’s not ten seconds off puking all over himself.He also gets to his feet when he sees that his visitor is a CWO-4. He won’t swear to the quality of his salute, but he manages to say, “Ma’am,” without being sick or dissociating.“Sit down, commander. I’m Veronica Moore.”She seats herself as well. Jake asks, “Was there something I could do for you?”“No, I wouldn’t even be bothering you, but I promised Em I’d check in on you your first day, and you know her, she’ll turn me inside out if she finds out I didn’t.”“You’re friends with my aunt?”“We’ve known each other since WOS.” She rolls her eyes the exact same way Aunt Em does every time she mentions Women’s Officer School. “I’ve actually met you before, not that you’d remember. The summer you and your brother came to visit her when she was serving at Sigonella. You were cute kids.” After a pause. “I was sorry to hear about Zach.”Jake had been eleven that summer. He’d wanted “real pizza” and to go to beaches. Zach wanted to meet a pretty Italian girl. The pain makes it harder to be polite, to simply say, “Thank you.”“She’s worried, commander.”Jake blinks. He feels like he’s missed something. “What did Isaac tell her, exactly?”His cousin Isaac is four years younger than him, an orthopedics nurse at the naval hospital in Beaufort, and now pursuing an online DNP at UNC. He’d gotten a few days leave and come out to see Jake and his parents when they’d first made it back to the States. Aside from being glad to see Isaac in general, it was fortuitous for Jake, since Isaac was able to help deal with a bunch of the logistics of the physical therapy situation, and also check that nothing was happening or being done that didn’t make sense.“Isaac’s not the problem. Fifteen minute calls, emails when there’s service, and she’s on the ship for at least another two months, that’s the problem. What she knows is your dad took FMLA and you’ve been on medical for over three months following four F-18s going down over neutral air too close to very not neutral air for anyone’s safety or comfort and everything is so damned confidential people are all but crossing themselves if the topic so much as arises.”She knows a bit more than that, but Jake doesn’t say anything. Aunt Em wouldn’t have been able to tell her friend, so he can see how the wires got crossed. And her description of the situation isn’t too far off. Jake takes another sip of water. He’s aware that his hand is shaking—he’s been trying to get it to stop for ten minutes now—but it’s let her see that, or risk being sick in front of her.Quietly, Veronica asks, “She right to be worried?”Jake shakes his head. “I’m all right. Healing, like I told her. Some days are just harder than others.”“Like a first day back on the job?”If Jake is honest, he suspects tomorrow is going to be even worse, his body given the chance to get mad at everything that’s been done to it today overnight. Still, he nods. “Like that.”She tilts her head. “I’m keeping an eye on you, commander.”Jake can’t help it, he laughs.“That funny?”“No, or well, yes, sort of. It’s just. You, probably five or six of my poppy’s spies, add in another four or so from my dad, hell, I can’t be sure Cam hasn’t set a few on me. And Mav definitely did, either in cahoots with Coyote or independent of. If it’s the latter, then I wouldn’t put it past Coyote to have found one or two as well. At this point, there’s a squadron in this base dedicated to looking after me. Makes a man feel real secure in his adulthood, lemme tell you.” He smiles as he says it, though, to soften the statement a bit.“Well, I suppose if you didn’t want a regiment of spying babysitters, you shouldn’t have gone and gotten yourself shot down.”“You make a solid point, ma’am, I’ll do better next time.”She smiles and stands. “See that you do. Need anything before I go?”Softly, he says, “Tell her I’m okay.”She narrows her eyes for a moment before turning and, with a rap of her knuckles to the frame of his door, heads down the hall.
Jake is right: the next day is absolute ass. As is the one after that. Truth be told, by the end of the first week, he’s considering taking medical discharge more than he’d be willing to admit to anyone aloud. He sits for an hour after his workday and just watches the jets taxi in and out. It helps.That night Mav calls after dinner. Jake picks up, startled. They’ve been keeping in touch with texts here and there, but they haven’t spoken since Jake came back to the States. Mav greets him, “Hangman.”“Sir.”“How was the first week?”“I’m a better teacher than you, rest assured.”Mav laughs. “Yeah, I didn’t have any concerns on that front. How are you feeling, kid?”“All tendons and bones are fully healed,” to the extent that they ever will be, but Jake doesn’t feel the need to say that, Mav might not have gone through what he did, but he’s taken serious damage to his body over the years, “now it’s just a matter of continued strengthening. The doctors and PTs think I should be able to get back in a cockpit in about four to six months.”Jake doesn’t say that he can’t imagine it right now. That it seems likely to actually tear what’s left of his body apart.Mav says, “Not what I asked.”Jake takes the call onto his small balcony. “What are you looking to hear, sir?”The sigh on the other end of the line is sharp, tight. “Hang—Jake. I called to ask how you were. Not Commander Seresin, not one of the Navy’s best active pilots, you. Because you just went back to work this week in a pretty stressful environment at something of a disadvantage, and I thought maybe you could use a friendly ear.”“I’m not an active pilot,” Jake says.“So, pretty shitty,” Mav says.“You know the funny thing?”“No, nothing about this seems funny, enlighten me.”“My students, they’ve been informed that I’m not engaging in any practical demonstrations because I’m recovering from an injury obtained in active service, and so far as I can tell they take that at face value and it doesn’t affect their respect for me one bit, but every time I can’t make it clear that something is possible to them by way of getting in that damn jet, I feel broken. I feel like a failure. Both on a personal level, and as a teacher.”Mav’s quiet for a moment. Then, he says, “Did you know, I’ve actually been assigned as spare on a number of missions for all kinds of reasons, and Layton was the only one of those times that I left the deck?”“Ah…no?”“When he was a kid, Bradley used to ask me what the hardest mission I’d ever flown was. And I’d always tell him about Layton, mostly because enough of it was declassified to make it safe for the telling. But the truth was, the hardest ones were always the ones I couldn’t fly. Having to sit there, knowing that at any moment something could go wrong and I might or might not make it in time to help? Absolutely horrific. But you need a spare, Jake. Because as we both know too damn well, even if I never left the ship any other time, the one time I did saved the life of my future husband. And if you were spare in a thousand more missions in your career and never launched for any of them, the one time you did saved me and my kid’s life. So yes, I understand. Being stuck on the ground for any reason, let alone because you’re in pain and feeling broken is a nightmare. But if it’s necessary, then you do it. And right now, for you, it’s necessary.”Jake takes a deep breath in though his nose and says, “Thanks.”“Go take some meds and get some sleep.”Jake is going to do that as soon as he can get himself to move again.
It does get easier, though. Perhaps it’s that Jake takes Mav’s point enough for it to help. Or maybe it’s that time and his commitment to making sure he does all of his PT as prescribed means the pain is slowly lessening. By the third week of classes, he can not only make it through dinner without falling asleep every evening, he can occasionally stay up long enough to have a phone call with Billy.Sure, he’s in bed with his pajamas on and the lights out by the time this happens. And the first time he falls asleep in the middle of telling a funny story from the classroom that day. Still, it counts.In the fourth week, he gets up early two of the days to do a quick swim in the apartment complex’s pool before the day starts. At the end of that week, the PT he’s transferred to at Kingsville approves him for more strength training than he’s been allowed since the surgeries. She still wants him holding off on any high-impact cardio, but given that Jake’s not completely certain of his ability to do any of that without falling on his face, that seems like a reasonable trade off.He mentions this in a series of texts to Billy, right before he asks, “Can I tell Coyote about us?”It’s not late enough in the day for Billy to be off-base yet. Jake’s appointment was at four central, so it’s nearly the end of the work day where he is, but that means another two hours for Billy, and depending on what the squadron is doing that day, he could have access to his phone or not. Jake forces himself to stay late, get some paperwork handled, then walk back to the apartment.The phone rings while he’s in the middle of eating dinner. Jake’s barely hit accept when Billy’s asking, “Coyote doesn’t know about you and me?”“No?”“Was that a question?”“No, Coyote doesn’t know. I’m just not sure why you’re… I told him when you visited that there was some stuff he didn’t know. And that it wasn’t entirely my story to tell.”“Jake, I’ve been publicly out since December 2011.”“Maybe I just haven’t wanted Coyote to know what an asshole I am.”“I hope that you can feel me rolling my eyes from there,” Billy tells him.“It could be that. I’m not the shining hero of that tale.”“Coyote knows who you are, J. That’s why the two of you are such good friends.”It’s a dead on assessment. All Jake says is, “You haven’t given me an answer yet.”“You can tell whomever you want, Jake.”“Is. Is there anyone you’d like to tell?”Billy’s silent for a long moment. Eventually he says, “No. Not until you’re really ready.”“Billy—”“You asked, I answered.”Jake closes his eyes. “Okay. I hear you. I hear you.”
Javy’s at Jake’s apartment only slightly over twenty-four hours after his ship makes berth. He parks the 1970 Chevelle he and his dad rebuilt from parts when Javy was too young to even drive it on the street, which Jake has literally never, in all their years of knowing each other, seen him do, and bounds up to the front door. Jake’s already there. He heard the car.As they’re hugging Jake says, “You can park in my guest spot, man.”Javy laughs a little wetly into his shoulder. Jake doesn’t call him on it. Instead he says, “C’mon, get your sweetheart re-situated, then come in, take a shower, I’ll heat you up some food and you can pass out. I’ll still be here tomorrow, promise.”It’s a Wednesday, so Jake will have to go to work, but he’ll come home in the evening. It counts. He can tell, though, by the way Javy has a hard time going back out to the car, leaving the living area to take a shower, generally doing anything that takes Jake out of his immediate eyesight, that’s going to be rough. After they’ve both brushed their teeth, Javy knocks on the frame of his bedroom door, the look on his face one Jake isn’t familiar with.Jake frowns. “Javy?”“You can say no; I know this is kinda weird.”Jake sits on the edge of his bed. “Okay.”“Could I stay in here tonight?”Jake blinks slowly, taking in the lines around Javy’s eyes, the way the lines of his cheek and jaw are sharper than he’s used to. He’d assumed it was merely the transition of getting off the ship, getting the car out of storage, and driving nearly twenty-three hours. Now that seems unforgivably naïve. “When was the last time you had a good night’s sleep?”“Jake—”“When?” He keeps his voice even.“I wasn’t the one who was tortured.” The response is sharp, fierce in the way he forgets Javy can be because it’s so rarely turned on him.“My therapist, Dhruv, he says there’s a kind of control in telling yourself all the ways you weren’t harmed, and that it can be useful, but it can also be vicious. You know the first time he explained that to me?”Javy looks uncertain if he wants to know—smart, Javy’s always been smart about people, about Jake—but nods all the same. Jake says, “When I was telling him that I didn’t have the right to be this fucked up, that I still had all my limbs.”“Oookay.”Jake acknowledges the sentiment with a crooked smile. “It felt like control to me.” He looks pointedly at Javy. “When was the last time you had a good night’s sleep?”Javy comes into the room and sits on the bed. “I slept okay on the nights we spoke. But…good? I dunno. Probably before I suspected something was wrong.”“It’s been almost half a year.”“Yeah,” Javy says quietly.Jake looks away so Javy won’t see him wince. “Well. Not sure how much sleeping with me will help. Still a solid eighty-twenty split on whether I’ll wake up screaming any given night, and I have to be up at ass of the clock, but my bed is your bed, and all that.”Javy squeezes his shoulder. “Thanks. Promise I won’t do this the whole time I’m here.”Jake says, “Maybe it’s nice, being able to help. Being the one who can stand on his own two feet for a moment.”“Jake,” Javy’s tone is impossibly fond, “you’ve never known a damn thing about when you were being the one to help unless it came in the form of you in a damn cockpit.” He knocks his shoulder against Jake’s. “Now, if it’s all the same to you, I’d really like to pass out.”He goes to turn down the cotton coverlet but Jake catches his hand, squeezing back as much as the strength in his hand will allow. It hurts in the best way.
Javy picks him up from the base after work on Friday and says, “I booked us an AirBnB in Corpus for the weekend, already packed you a bag. Yes, your meds, too.”Jake shrugs and gets in the car. He texts Phoenix, “Marry Javy. He’s wasted on me.”(Hours later she will text back, “Taking those in reverse: self-evident statement; I like to go on at least a couple of dates before I engage in matrimonial paperwork.”)The AirBnB is a cute apartment in the Marina Arts District, making it easy for them to walk and get tacos and a couple of beers before coming back to turn in early. The apartment is a one bedroom with a fold-out couch, but Javy doesn’t even bother making it up. Like the last two nights, he simply slides into bed next to Jake and passes happily out. Jake isn’t far behind.They sleep in the next morning, for certain values of sleeping in, tumbling out of bed around zero seven thirty. Jake had woken up dead in the middle of a panic attack sometime around zero three hundred, and even with Javy helping it had taken a good hour to get settled enough to go back to sleep.He takes a hot shower and comes out to Javy having made coffee. Jake says, unironically, “I love you.”“Yeah, love you too,” Javy says, which is a thing they do now, evidently. Jake’s letting him have it for the moment, because he’s pretty sure Javy didn’t go back to sleep last night. Javy showers while Jake sips at his coffee and puts sunscreen on. He’s wearing a UV top and shorts that go to his knees, there’s not that much space to cover.They drive out to the Michael J. Ellis side of Whitecaps Beach, and find a place to set their towels, settle in. Jake takes a picture, texting it to Billy before kicking off his flip-flops and padding down to the water in the cool of fall morning to stand in the chill of the Gulf waters. He’s not sure how long he’s been standing there just letting the world feel wide and open around him, the water a constant sweet shock over his feet and ankles when Javy joins and says, “Hey.”“Billy Avalone and I knew each other as kids.”“What?”Jake nods. “We…dated, I guess.”After a moment, Javy says, “Shit. He was the kid Zach caught you with.”“Yeah.”Javy winces. “Jake. What did you do?”Jake’s smile is painful. There’s something to be said for being known. “His family’s legacy Jav. And it wasn’t like I fucking knew he was going to be an aviator, he wasn’t like me, forever with one direction. I thought my biggest problem was that the Navy is a small community at the end of the day. I figured as long as I made sure he never wanted to see me again, everything would be fine.”“You’re lucky he didn’t out you.”Jake rocks back on his heels. “You know the funny thing? For every other way I worried about being found out, that was never one of them. Not even when I saw he’d gone into aviation.”Javy lets that sit for a while before asking, “How was his visit?”“We talked a lot of shit out.”Glancing at him, Javy asks, “That who you been texting non-stop?”“It’s not non-stop.”“For you it is. I thought maybe it was your mom or something, or Skittles, I didn’t wanna—but it’s him.”“It’s just friendship.” And for all that it’s the truth, Jake can hear the lie even as he says it.“Maybe,” Javy says quietly. “But it’s helping. Nat said you came out to her.”“That wasn’t Billy.” Jake scrunches his face up, glaring a little at the horizon. “Not entirely.”Javy hums. “Not not entirely.”“I’m a group project, Machado.”Javy shakes his head, but doesn’t argue. He has before, he will again. This morning all he says is, “Thank you. For telling Nat. You didn’t have to.”“I didn’t do it entirely for you.”Javy smiles, sharp and sad and knowing. “Not not entirely for me.”Jake tilts his head. “I’m sorry—”“Please don’t. I know I’ve given you shit about being in the closet. It’s always come from a place of wanting to see you happier. You’ve spent years perfecting the performance of being the world’s largest misanthrope when in fact you’re a fucking extrovert. You’ve always deserved to have people, to have a person, and I wanted that for you. Want it.”“I know—”“But somewhere along the way I forgot to mention that I understood why you made the choices you made, and that I believed they were yours to make. That it wasn’t anyone else’s right to decide when or even if you came out to others.” Javy swallows. “Sometimes, in the nightmares, when I remember them, I’m back in Florida. And you—you look like you do now. Almost thirty. But I’m too late and you’re—” His breath catches.“Javy. You found me that night. I had a couple of bruised ribs, a black eye, and I pissed blood for a few days afterward. They wouldn’t let me in the simulator for a week and I was more mad about that than anything else.” Jake says this not because Javy doesn’t know. It’s a balm, and the only one he has. He’s never allowed himself to consider what would have happened if Javy hadn’t found him. Nothing good can come of asking the question.“Remember that time I had a CO who was a raging racist dick a few years after flight school and I don’t know how, but you got him transferred?”“I told you, I didn’t—”“Don’t bullshit me, Seresin.”Jake crosses his arms over his chest and stays silent. It was the one and only time he’s called in a favor to his grandfather, who has a couple of friends in the Admiralty. Jake doesn’t actually know what all happened. All he’d said was, “Javy needs a transfer that doesn’t look bad before this fucknut does something that screws his career,” and the next thing Jake had known, the CO was…elsewhere.“If I could pass…I don’t know what I would do. There are certain things I—” Javy presses his lips together. “But I see what it’s done to you, what it does to others who make that decision in one way or another. Regardless of what I would or wouldn’t do, I respect it as your right, the same way you’ve always respected my right to take care of myself except in that one instance. Which was probably going to end with me getting extremely fucked, so. I guess that’s all right, then.”Jake bumps his hip into Javy’s. Javy bumps back. Jake says, “I’m gonna go for a swim. My endurance is fucked so I probably have about half an hour in these waters. Then I’m gonna pass out in the sun for a bit and wake up wanting brunch.”“Spot you,” Javy says, already wading in.
Javy stays with him in Kingsville a few days longer than originally planned. Jake knows the headiness of finally getting a semi-decent night’s sleep, though, and he’s missed him. All to say, Jake feels no need to push him out the door.It takes close to a week to readjust to being on his own. He spends a lot of time when he’s not working or at the gym—rebuilding his strength at the speed of expired molasses in the winter—coloring and listening to songs that Billy sends him. When that doesn’t help with the frustration he feels at himself for being a grown-ass adult who can barely get along on his own these days, he works on the breathing exercises Dhruv has drilled into him. It’s still sixty-forty at any given time as to whether they get him anywhere.When he uses that phrase with Dhruv, the other man says, “That’s not really what it is.”Jake raises an eyebrow.“It’s not. You’re feeding yourself, doing laundry, cleaning the bathroom, getting yourself to work.”“Halfsies on most of that except the last.”“Yeah, you and every other working adult. Your living-on-your-own skills are fine. You’ve just spent your entire adult life in group environments. This is probably the first time you’ve served at a base where you weren’t with your squadron. It’s got to be lonely as fuck, and that’s not even counting that you’re actively recovering from serious bodily and emotional trauma.”Jake looks away from the camera. It’s a spot-on assessment. The worst of it is, until now, an assignment like this—perhaps not the actual job itself, but the context, away from others he’s served with—would have been ideal. Now it’s just exhausting. Lonely.Dhruv asks. “What’re you doing for Thanksgiving?”“Mom, gran and poppy are coming out here. They’re going to leave me a car. It’s getting to the point where I could probably make the drive to them. Maybe not twice in a day, and maybe not tired, but.” Jake shrugs.“That’s serious progress.”“Yeah.” Jake knows his relief is bleeding into his voice.“Jake.” Dhruv waits until Jake looks up, at him. “Even if is sixty-forty? That’s damn good.”
The Monday of Thanksgiving week, Jake’s in the middle of a flight exercise explanation when there’s a small knock on the classroom door. He calls, “Enter.”Blinking at who does, he pulls his shit together and salutes even as he says, “Officer present.”Mav returns the salute and tells the class, “At ease.” He smiles at Jake, holding out his hand. “Commander.”Jake shakes. “Admiral.” Then, “Class, meet Admiral Pete Mitchell, retired, callsign Maverick.”He feels the wave of interest and awe ripple through the students. Turning back to Mav he asks, “What brings you to Kingsville, sir?”“Visiting friends for the holiday. They’re about an hour outside Houston, but we were taking Ice’s Cirrus so I asked if we could do a stopover first.”Jake, manfully, does not get stuck on the fact that they have a Cirrus. Instead he asks. “I don’t suppose you discussed assisting me with the—”“I had Ice discuss it. He gets better results, even on the Fleet Forces side. I’m yours to use as you wish.”Jake smiles. Well then. “All right, new plan for today.”
Once the students have cleared out—it takes a while, they all want to spend every last minute they can with Maverick, and Jake senses his shine may have been repolished a bit just from proof of having flown with the man—Mav asks, “Where are me and Ice taking you to dinner?”“I don’t remember agreeing to let you guys treat.”“Agree now. At least with me it looks like you gracefully conceded, Ice’ll just be a sneaky asshole.”His curiosity getting the better of him, Jake asks, “Because he doesn’t want to order a subordinate to let him pay the bill, or because that’s just how he is?”“Yes,” Mav says.“When you scratch the surface, your relationship tracks a lot more than is immediately evident.”“I’m aware. Dinner plans?”“Any preferences?”There’s a second where Mav hesitates. Jake almost misses it, it’s so quick. Then he shakes his head. “We’re easy.”Jake frowns. “Mav—”“Is there somewhere that has hot tea on the menu?”Jake thinks for a second. “The steakhouse, probably. I’ve never checked, but they’ve got a little bit of everything, so seems likely. Kingsville Steakhouse, 1930?”“See you then.”Jake walks back to his place. He does his PT, takes some Tylenol, takes a quick shower and changes into jeans and a lightweight henley before calling himself a ride. He’s still there early enough to text Billy, “Explain to me how tf it is that I’m about to go to dinner with the COMPACFLT. Wtaf.”Then he puts away his phone and does breathing exercises until he sees his dinner companions step out of a car. “Welp,” he says under his breath, “guess we’re doing this live.”
Once they’re seated with waters for the table, and a hot tea with honey and lemon on the way for Ice, Ice types out something on his phone and turns it to face Jake. Jake reads, “I’ve spoken a lot today. I’m going to use text for this evening.”Jake nods. “Of course.”Mav starts telling Ice about how they’d run through the training exercises, drawing Jake in before he knows what’s happening. Even without the ability to get in a cockpit just now, Jake’s proud of how far his students have come since the start of session. He only has this group for another few weeks, and then the next comes in. He’s looking forward to it. It’s not flying, nothing ever will be, but it’s a challenge in its own right.When they finally wind down, Ice types, “Kingsville has been maneuvering to keep you.”Jake stares at the screen until it goes dark. Ice takes it back and types something else, pushing it to him again. “Scuttlebutt has it that Murton told her immediate superior, ‘Unless he’s not medically capable of getting back in a jet, I will light that base on fucking fire before that happens.’”Having served under Murton for almost three years, Jake can imagine that. “She probably would limit the arson to areas that could be easily repaired.”Mav grins and then makes an “oof” sound, clearly having been hit somewhere below the table by Ice. Who is typing with his dominant hand. Impressive. He turns the phone to Jake who scans the message, “I’m more concerned about an inter-fleet contretemps.”Jake looks up at Ice. “Are you telling me to be less competent at my job?”Ice just stares back at him, flatly. Jake looks at Mav. “He’s shitting me.”Mav says, “Oh, absolutely, but he doesn’t get to do it much these days, so you know, let him have his fun.”When Jake looks back at Ice, the other man is smiling the tiniest bit as he sips his tea. Jake’s emailing Bradshaw when he gets home and congratulating him on not being even more of a fucking nutcase than he already is. Intent on saving his own sanity for the moment, Jake refocuses himself and spends the rest of dinner grilling the two of them on the Cirrus.At the end of the night, while they’re waiting for their respective rides, Ice puts a hand on Jake’s shoulder and says, softly, “Don’t worry about anything other than getting well enough to get back in the box.”He squeezes the shoulder, gives Jake a nod, and leaves Mav to say his goodbyes. Mav, for his part, tucks Jake into a hug and says, “Talk soon. Have a good holiday.”“Yeah,” Jake says, “yeah, you too.”
They talk sooner than Jake is expecting, because Mav calls Jake the week after Thanksgiving. Jake picks up with, “What’s wrong?” causing Mav to respond, “You have to stop thinking I only want to talk to you in the instance of emergencies.”Jake swallows down his first two responses, which are, “Force of habit,” and “PTSD is a thing,” and instead manages, “I’ll work on that.” He can’t quite get himself to apologize.Mav makes a noise that sounds a lot like “bullshit” being covered up by a cough, but there’s a small chance it’s just a bad connection, so Jake doesn’t ask. Besides, Mav is already asking, “How was Thanksgiving?”“Laid-back. Yours?”“Slider’s wife, Emmy, always tries crazy new dishes that sound horrible and then three hours later Slider is literally carrying you away from the table, bitching about his back and how he’s too old for this shit—which, for the record, he’s been saying since we were in our thirties—and you’re crying about cruel and unusual punishment to Ice, who is a merciless asshole and has probably always loved Slider more.”“Okay,” Jakes says. “Rooster wasn’t kidding when he said shit could get a little weird when you and Ice got around some of your old squadmates, huh?”“Can it, kid, I’ve seen the weirdness that goes on whenever you get within ten feet of someone else in the Navy. Which reminds me of why I’m actually calling.”“And that would be?”“Some of the Dagger team is getting back together at Lemoore for New Years.”“It’s been mentioned,” Jake says.Mav laughs, apparently catching the note of irony. “Yeah, well, I know you probably still don’t have much leave, but you have got the first off, being on an instructor’s schedule.”“Sure, and I looked into it, but getting from Kingsville to Lemoore is a fucking hike if you’re not flying Navy.”“Or, say, have a private plane that really needs to be flown more.”Jake doesn’t say anything. Can’t.“Hangman?”“Why are you doing this?”“Offering to do a round trip in the Cirrus so you can be with your friends on New Years’ Eve?”“That, checking in on me at Kingsville, staying in Japan for as long as you did, hell. Why’d you tell my dad I was missing?”“Saving me and Rooster’s life not enough of an answer?”“I did my job. Why the fuck does nobody believe that?”There’s silence for a moment and then, unbelievably, Mav starts laughing. Not a small laugh, either. No, he’s hurtled right past chortling and straight into guffawing territory over on the other side of the line. Jake mutters, “The fuck.”“Sorry,” Mav says. He says it several times before he manages to get himself under control. “You know how you made yourself into a weapon, all sharp edges, so nobody would get too close?”“Mm,” Jake agrees. He doesn’t see what’s funny about it.“And you forced yourself to be better than everyone else, to be the best, so that even if they got too close, it would be problematic, getting rid of you?”“That was the idea.”“You can’t do your job at two hundred percent all the time and have it just be doing your job. That’s not how it works. You’re in a group of overachievers, so most days it goes a little unnoticed, maybe. But some of the time, Hangman, sometimes, it’s going to get noticed. I don’t know what to tell you. You risked your career to come get my kid. And you can tell yourself that’s the job all you want, maybe for you that’s all it is. But he’s my kid. And you gave me time with him.” Mav takes a shaky breath. “There isn’t a hell of a lot I wouldn’t do to say thanks. You wanna ride in Ice’s fancy pants plane and spend some time with your friends? You tell me how often.”Jake rubs a hand over his face. “Mav. Assuming we ever weren’t, we were square the second you made that call to my dad.”“Maybe. Maybe not. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. And you don’t get to decide for me. All you get to do is tell me whether you’ll get in the plane if I make a flight plan and come pick you up on the 31st.”Jake stares out into the distance. He misses Javy and Billy. Hell, he misses Phoenix and Bob. A night out with friends would be good. Better than, really. “Yeah, all right. I appreciate the ride.”
On the tarmac, Mav asks Jake, “You keep your civilian license current?”It makes sense that Mav knows; that information is in his record. He’s had his private license since his second year at Embry. “If you know I have the license, you know it’s current.”“Yeah, my problem is that I’m not sure you do,” Mav says, beginning to climb into the plane.Jake doesn’t like the way it echoes uncomfortably with Billy’s assertion that Jake doesn’t know himself anymore. Pushing that to the back of his mind, he follows Mav up and says, “All joking aside, the only people who have more power over my career than Ice are the Secretary of the Navy and the President of the United States, I’m not thrilled about the idea of taking his personal property for a joyride.”“Joyrides don’t have filed flight plans with the pilot’s name on them.”Jake glares at Mav, who shrugs. “I’m listed as a second. Worst thing that happens is I fly.”“I’m not cleared to fly.”“Jets. You’re not cleared to fly jets. It’s a different ballgame and we both know it.” Mav takes a breath. “Jake. It’s a milk run.”The worst of it is, underneath the freeform panic pounding at him, Jake wants to fly the damn plane. She’s a beauty, and he wants to get his hands on her, see what she can do. He knows this is well within his ability, but the thought of stepping into the cockpit makes his throat close up like the room has some kind of deadly allergen.In the end, he does what he’s always done: pushes past the fear. This time, sure, it ends in what might be several minutes of dissociation—if the look on Mav’s face when Jake resurfaces is any indication—but once he gets himself leveled out, he takes a breath and says, “Okay. Let’s do this.”“Ah, wait, let’s just take a moment.”Jake does not take a moment. Jake starts going through pre-flight check.Behind him, Mav mutters, “Okay so we’re doing this.”Jake says right back, “Don’t start none, don’t be none.”Apparently Mav doesn’t have a comeback for that.
Trace, Floyd, Javy, and Billy are waiting at the tarmac. And the Commander of the Pacific Fleet, but that’s probably just to check on his plane. Or because Mav is putting a ring on it. Either way, it’s not about Jake.Mav squeezes his shoulder the minute they’re through post-flight and says, “Textbook perfect, commander.”Softly, Jake asks, “Calling me boring?”“Hangman, ask Ice how I flew after the accident that killed Rooster’s dad sometime. If anyone knows there’s a time when you have to engage in some basics, it’s me.” He pauses. “You flew the plane, that’s what matters. Now go see your friends.”He hears Mav start to leave and calls. “Mav.”“Yeah?”“Thanks.”“Mm.”“Thank Admiral Kazansky for me.”“Yeah yeah. Go.”Jake rubs a hand over his face. Both hands are sore. His whole body is, after the way he’s been clenching his muscles, focusing on a million things that he knows he knows by heart. He stands and makes his way out of the plane, where Javy grabs him before he’s even on the ground and pulls him past the last few stairs into a hug. “Happy New Year.”Jake returns the hug. “Hey.”He isn’t sure how long it is, maybe a minute, before Trace pulls him away from Javy and says, “All right, break it up, he didn’t come for you, Machado.” She fits her forehead to Jake’s and says, “How about we make this year slightly less fraught, yeah?”Jake laughs. “I’ll see what I can do.”“Get on that,” she tells him.Floyd claps him on the back. “Glad you could make it.”Jake smiles tightly in appreciation, jerking back on the instinct to say something douchey and vaguely off-putting in the neighborhood of, “Couldn’t leave y’all to try and throw a party without someone decently fun, now could I?”It’s not even that he wants to say it, exactly. It’s that his habits of a lifetime are making sure people don’t get near enough to see him, and right now, all of these people are seeing him. They might as well be skinning him alive. Then Billy puts his arm around Jake, knocks their hips together, and says, “Hey there, killed any students yet?”“Term’s still young,” Jake says, and for no reason at all, everything is easier.
Jake falls asleep with his head in Billy’s lap while Omaha’s telling a story. They descend on Omaha’s place because like the married adult Omaha is, his place is more “home” and less “place I occasionally burn food.” It turns out Omaha’s wife is a carpenter by trade, which probably helps with that.Jake is in no way bored by the story Omaha is telling, nor does he mean to fall asleep. It’s just that the couch is offensively marshmallow-like, he’s nowhere near to gotten back to his energy levels prior to captivity, Billy is playing with his hair, and evidently flying was a bit taxing.Billy wakes him up by squeezing his hand and saying, “Hey there. You up for dinner?”After the fifteen or so seconds it takes for Jake to orient, he goes, “Fuck, sorry, didn’t mean to pass out. Lemme go splash some water on my face, I’ll meet you guys out at the car.”On his way out to the car, he passes Omaha and his wife, Esme, and says, “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to be a dick, promise.”Omaha grabs the keys to the house. “Are you…apologizing for falling asleep on my couch?”“No, that would be dumb, couches are multi-purpose furniture, they’re partially intended for sleeping.”“Right, so—”“I didn’t mean to fall asleep while you were talking.” Jake walks out of the house with the two of them, holding Omaha’s gaze.“I think you might be overcorrecting a bit, here.”“What do you want from me, man? It’s rude to fall asleep in the middle of conversations. Believe it or not, my parents raised me to know what was socially correct.”Omaha’s brows fly almost to his hairline. “You just consciously chose to be a complete cuntwad?”Esme goes, “Dude, we’ve talked about this.”“Sure,” Omaha says easily, and restates, “cock snotrocket?”“Much better,” Esme approves.“That is a good one,” Jake has to agree. Also, “Yeah, I did. You might not have liked me, but you also never got close enough to consider the reasons why I was the way I was. What I did kept me safe. You chose differently, and maybe that makes you better, I don’t know. What I know is that I can’t go back and change the choices I made. I can only try and make different ones now. So. I’m fucking sorry I fell asleep while you were talking, okay?”Omaha stares at him for a moment and then laughs. “Yeah, okay.” He starts walking toward the cars. “Hurry up, weirdo, you’re making us late.”Esme sighs. “He wasn’t raised in a barn, either. Not that you’d know it.”Jake grins and offers her his arm. She rolls her eyes. Then she takes it.
They go from dinner to a civilian bar afterward. It’s early enough that with Payback, Fanboy, Bob, Halo, their respective girlfriends, and even Mav, Hondo, and his wife having joined for a bit, they easily manage to hold one of the pool tables in the back. Jake buys the first round, raises his beer and finds he has no voice. After thirty seconds too long, he manages, “To reunions.”Everyone echoes him and takes a drink.Phoenix buys the second round. Her toast is, “To friends finding their way back to us.”Jake takes a drink and then goes outside. He needs to breathe. She follows him out after a bit. “Should I have chosen something generic?”He shrugs. “You could have said ‘l’chaim.’ Hard to know what fucks me up these days.”“Okay, I get that this isn’t the point of that, but…l’chaim?”“I had a real thing for ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ as a kid. Probably it was about the idea of something that was central to how you lived your life and saw the world being something people hated you for, I just hadn’t figured out all the details yet. Or it could have been a fascination with the idea that having to pick up your whole life was a tragedy when we did it every few years. Who knows? Maybe I just liked musicals and that was the only one we had.”“The Billy and you thing is starting to make more sense.”Jake doesn’t look at her. He doesn’t tense up. He keeps his voice even ask he asks, “Billy and me?”“If you guys didn’t want it to be noticeable, maybe he shouldn’t have gone to Texas, or come to the tarmac today. I don’t know what the story is, but there’s a story.”“We’re friends. We’ve been…we’ve known each other a long time. It’s just complicated.”“Hangman, I say this with all the love in the cold, hardened pit I occasionally refer to as my heart: nobody looks at a friend the way either one of you looks at each other.” She lets that breathe for a moment before giving his shoulder a gentle punch. “C’mon. You’re the guest of honor, asshole.”“Mm.” He imbues the sound with the full meaning of “bullshit” but he follows her back inside. Once there, he pulls Billy over to the bar, with a, “C’mon, your round.”Billy takes the hint. He also asks, “Everything okay?” as soon as they’ve been swallowed by the growing crowd.“Yeah, just.” Jake tries to figure out where to start.“Hey,” Billy stops short of the bar and pulls Jake so that they’re facing each other. “We don’t have to be here.”Jake shakes his head. “Billy, that’s not—Phoenix, she—”“I need to kill Phoenix? I gotta tell you, that’s gonna take some planning, but—”Jake can’t say exactly what it is: the easy way Billy’s hand is on his arm, buffering him against the crowd, or the casual-but-serious offer to protect him against one of the scariest people in their group hands-down, or maybe just the way he looks in his worn Dave Matthews’ Band tee. Maybe none of those things. Maybe Jake has been in love with Billy half his life and Billy is in front of him, not hating him—if Trace is to be believed, possibly something more—and Jake just can’t stop himself.Whatever the reason, Jake cuts Billy off by cupping his cheek with his hand, the one that still has more dexterity, more control, and says, “I want to kiss you. Not for practice and not as a friend. And I know I don’t deserve it, I know I’m a mess—”Billy cuts him off by way of kissing him, soft and careful. “Shut the fuck up, Jake.”“Yeah.”“We’re saving the rest for midnight.”“Okay.”“The group’s probably watching.”“Hundred percent.”“Want me to do the talking?”Jake sighs. “Let’s just order the next round and go back over there.”“Game time decision.” Billy nods and goes to get the drinks.
Given the givens, the only people who look even mildly surprised by this development are Payback, Fanboy, and Hondo. And all of them have the good grace to keep their surprise subtle. Even so, Billy’s toast is, “To second chances and fucking up anyone who decides to start shit about this.”“Mazel tov,” Phoenix responds, dry as the fucking Sahara, before drinking.Billy seems unsure how to take that. Jake smirks a bit, and drinks. Billy shrugs, drinks, and tells Jake, “Go play pool, I didn’t bring you here not to watch your ass in those jeans.”Jake salutes, and goes to play whoever the winner between Esme and Halo ends up being.
Around ten, Mav says, “Walk me out.”Hondo and his wife, Ann, join them. Once they’re in the front, Mav says, “Ice sends his greetings. He didn’t want to make things weird earlier today.”Internally, Jake thanks his lucky stars that Mav’s fiancé has more discretion, or at the very least awareness of his own position, than Mav does. “Tell him happy new year.”“Flight’s at six tomorrow, do you need a ride to the strip?”Jake shakes his head. “Someone will get me there. See you then.” He thanks Hondo for coming out and tells Ann it was nice to see her again.Just as things are starting to get at the awkward lingering stage, Mav says, “Oh good, I wasn’t sure how much longer I could drag that out.”Jake’s about to ask, “What?” when he follows Mav’s gaze and sees, “Holy shit. Cam?”Cam has him in a hug at the same time as he’s saying, “Sorry about that, Captain, I got out as early as I could, but traffic was a complete nightmare all the way up. Hey Jake, you remember my wife, Mel?”Jake blinks. “Ah.” He’s pretty sure he only met Mel once. Probably a decade ago. He shakes her hand. “Nice to see you again.”“Cam,” she says, sounding exasperated.“Right.” He turns to Mav, shaking his hand. “Thanks again, I really appreciate it.”Mav grins, “No problem, Commander, have a good evening. Night, Jake!”Jake waves as Mav leaves with Hondo and Ann. Turning back to Cam he asks, “What are you—what?”“Your dad mentioned you were coming out to Lemoore for New Year’s Eve, and I was going to be in Coronado. I asked him to get me in touch with someone who’d be able to let me know the plans for the evening so I could meet up with you guys.”“It’s a five hour drive.”“Closer than Kingsville.” Cam grins. “C’mon, introduce us to your friends.”Jake goes inside with the two of them, stopping by the bar to pick up drinks. Back at the pool table, where Nat appears to be destroying Mickey, Jake takes Cam around, doing quick intros for pretty much everyone minus Javy, who’s more familiar with the situation. Billy, who’d been on the other side of the table, comes over to join the three of them as they’re chatting, and Jake says, “Billy, this is Commander Cam Schneider and his wife Mel Brevins, Cam, Mel, this is Lieutenant Commander Billy Avalone, my…” he looks at Billy, head tilting slightly.“We’re working on labels,” Billy says, holding out his hand. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Commander. Thanks for bringing him back to us.”“Cam, please,” Cam says, as he takes Billy’s hand. He’s glancing between Billy and Jake, expression neutral. “Zach would come back and fucking haunt me all the rest of my days if I did anything less, but I suppose you’re welcome. Also, he’d be glad that Jake found a nice guy.”Jake narrows his eyes, because Cam does not sound surprised. Cam winces. “A few years before he died, Zach and I were…doesn’t matter, and I can’t tell you, point is, he ended up with some rebar in him, and they gave him the good stuff after they got it out of him. Turns out he had a bad reaction to whatever they gave him. He said some stuff while he was coming out of it. I asked about it when he was back in his right mind and he was never able to lie to me for shit. He made me promise I’d never let you know I knew.”Billy’s hand closes around Jake’s wrist, tight enough to feel sturdy, loose enough not to hurt. Jake swallows. “He—he didn’t want me to go into the Navy.”Cam shakes his head. “No, Jake. He didn’t want you to hide. He didn’t believe there was any part of you that deserved to be hidden. And you knew Zach, better than me, even, you knew how much the Navy meant to him, but he hated it for what it did to you in this one instance.”Jake takes a slow breath. “I need a drink.” Either that, or to hide in a dark room and cry for about a week, but the first seems more viable at the moment.“Yeah, that’s gonna be on us,” Mel says. “What can I get you?”“Old Fashioned, tell them to use the Michter’s US*1,” Billy answers.Mel looks at him, and he nods. Then, looking over at Billy he asks, “How do you know my drink preferences?”“Javy,” Billy says, like it’s completely obvious that he would have mined Jake’s best friend for random shit like cocktail favorites. Jake drinks a cocktail maybe once every three months or so. Otherwise he sticks to beer and the occasional glass of wine with a meal. Also, Jake suspects if he tried the same with Halo or Omaha he’d be killed in his sleep. At the very least, he’d be fed false information meant to make him look like an idiot. Jake will have to problem solve that at some time that is not New Years’ Eve in a crowded bar.For now, he reaches over and squeezes the hand holding his wrist as a silent show of gratitude. To Cam, he says, “I’m really glad you’re here. You and Mel, both.”Cam smiles. “Nowhere we’d rather be. Think I could get in on this pool tournament?”Billy calls, “Nat! You’re playing Cam next.”
At midnight, Billy kisses him, deep and intent, tasting of rum and Coke. They toast with drinks they’ve been nursing for at least an hour. Billy says, “To you getting back in the air this year.”Jake says, “To us.”Billy smiles, clinking their glasses together. “Definitely that.”He drinks, then kisses Jake some more.
After agreeing on a place to meet for brunch, everyone heads off to their respective beds a little before two. Jake hugs Mel and Cam tightly, telling them to sleep well and that he’ll see them in the morning, and then gets dropped off back at Billy’s place.Billy lets them in and gets them both glasses of water. The apartments were probably built in the 80s, and they don’t appear to have been updated much since. The kitchen is tiny and in shades of yellow and tan, the living room has light brown carpeting, and the bathroom was not made for a grown human male of any proportion. All the same, Billy’s done a decent job with the place.He has pictures of Parc Guel and one of the mosaics inside Cattedrale di Monreale handsomely framed on one wall of the living room. The refrigerator is filled with magnets of opera and symphony houses from throughout the States and Europe. His towels are sage, large and fluffy. They match his crisp sheets.Overall, it’s the home of someone who’s learned to make impermanent spaces his own while he’s in them.Jake drinks his water and looks at the pictures of Billy with his parents at graduation from flight school, the pictures of him with some of his squadron, other pictures that give him pieces of Billy he lost the right to all those years ago. Billy refills his water glass. “Want a shower?”Jake shakes his head. “In the morning. Unless you want me to before I get in bed.”“Morning is good. C’mon. PJs, teeth brushing, bed. You’re falling asleep standing up.”“No you are,” Jake mumbles, following Billy.Billy snorts. “Wow.”Jake smiles, his eyes half shut. He almost runs into the bedroom door except for Billy saving him at the last minute. Billy laughs. “Hey there.”“I might be a little tired.”“Mm,” Billy says, and herds him into the bedroom. Jake manages to get himself in his pajamas all by his lonesome, thank you very much. They brush their teeth next to each other, and Billy makes Jake drink another half glass of water and take a couple anti-inflammatories before getting into bed.“Hi,” Jake says, once they’re there, curling into Billy. He’s missed this so much he can’t even give voice to it.“Hey,” Billy says, fitting Jake in closer to him and caressing the back of his neck a bit. “I’ve got you.”
Billy wakes Jake up with another glass of water, a cup of coffee, a piece of toast, and some painkillers. Jake croaks out, “I know you drank last night, too.”“Not as much as you, and my tolerance is a little better,” Billy says quietly. Once he’s gotten Jake to hydrate and take the meds, he slips back into bed with him. “But trust me, I did the same hydration-caffeine-medication cocktail.”Jake hadn’t gone hard. He’d had a whiskey after the old fashioned, and prior to those two he’d had a couple of beers. Still, that was more than he’s had in a night in a year. His head isn’t thrilled. The liquids and meds are starting to kick in, though, and having Billy there, warm and still smelling of sleep helps too.After a bit, Billy murmurs, “Shower, c’mon.”“Counterpoint,” Jake offers, “we text and cancel and stay in bed.”“Cam.”Jake sighs. “Fuck, fine, have it your way.”He’s less grumpy about it when Billy is massaging shampoo into his hair. Groaning, Jake asks, “When’d you get so good at this?”Billy laughs, tipping his head back. Instead of answering, he says, “I’ll teach you how.”Since that means getting his hands on Billy, Jake says, “Yes, please.”It’s a stupidly long shower.
Jake spends brunch sandwiched between Cam and Billy, snarking lightly with the others. Halfway through his omelet, he realizes nobody has talked about flying in front of him, not once since he’s gotten there. He excuses himself to go to the bathroom and instead goes outside to think.He’s obviously out there longer than he realizes, because Billy finds him. Jake glances over. “Sorry, needed some air.”Billy shrugs. “Just wanted to check.”“You, or everyone?” Jake asks, voice flat.Billy lets that sit for a moment. Then, carefully, he says, “It’s not the worst thing in the world to have friends who give a shit about you, J.”Jake rocks back on his heels. “Sure. But I’m not broken. You guys can mention the thing we all fucking do professionally, I’m not going to melt or some shit.”“Yeah, listen, asshole: nobody thinks that. We think you were held by enemy combatants and sustained serious physical and emotional damage and are still recovering, which in part includes that you haven’t been able to get back in an F-18, an experience that literally none of us can empathize with, so we don’t want to be accidental dicks about it. Give us a break.”And, okay, put like that, Jake can see how in their position he might not know what the fuck to do either. He rubs a hand over his face. Nodding, he says, “Okay.”“If you want to stay out here a bit more, I’ll just tell them. Nobody’ll bother you.”“No, I’m coming.” Jake follows Billy back and takes his seat again, appreciating that everyone keeps chatting around him like nothing is happening.Across the table, Javy says, “Ordered you another cappuccino.”“Marry me, darling,” Jake jokes.Javy jokes back, “Too high maintenance, babe.”“Oh, that’s the issue?” Phoenix asks, deceptively mild.Jake toasts her with his cappuccino, and drinks of its nectar.
A position in the Stingers comes open toward the end of Rooster’s Japan deployment and he applies in order to get himself transferred to Lemoore. It’s still several hours from where Mav and the Admiral are, but it’s not across the country. The transfer gets approved, leading Rooster to take a week of leave and make the drive there. He calls Jake to tell him all of this and ask, “Mind if I stay with you for the night on my way?”Jake, who knows how to read a map, says, “Kingsville is completely out of your way.”“Is that a ‘no’? Or a ‘it’s really nice of you to take a detour to give me all those Kit Kat flavors I’ve missed from Japan’? Hard to tell with you.”“Kobe pudding?”“And hojicha, yes. And a few seasonals I thought you might be interested in.”“Far be it from me to keep you from putting extra wear and tear on your vehicle.”Rooster snorts. “My plan is to be there February 10th, if that works.”Flipping to his calendar, Jake says, “I can’t take off, so I won’t be home until seventeen hundred fifteen or so, and I’ll be out the door by oh seven hundred latest the next morning.”“I wasn’t expecting otherwise. I’m going to need to drive both days anyway. I figure we can have dinner, catch up a bit, and I’ll get out of your hair.”“Guess I’ll see you in February,” Jake says.
They’re halfway through dinner when Jake says, “Whatever’s got you being awkward, just fucking say it.”Rooster takes a long pull on the beer he’s drinking, swallows, and says quickly, “Nat told me about you and Fritz. Nat and Fanboy. Because evidently you guys were kissing in public so it’s not a secret.”Jake digs his fingernails into his thighs under the table and reminds himself that Rooster is correct: it is not a secret. He’s not certain how long he’s been silent when Rooster asks, “Hangman?”“It’s not a secret,” Jake manages.“Okay.” Rooster pushes some food around his plate. “Uh. Was it? A secret?”“Yes. For me. The gay part. Billy and I are—new.” It’s not exactly a lie. They are this time around.Rooster looks up, locking gazes with him. “I wouldn’t have— Not even when I thought you were the actual worst. That’s not something I would do.”“Believe me when I say it had, has, fuckall to do with you.”“Yeah, Mav, Ice, and I might have missed a lot of each other’s stuff, but I was there and mentally present for all of the nineties.”Jake nods his head slowly. “How did they…”Rooster sighs. “From what I’ve pieced together, and I want you to know that I hate you from the bottom of my fucking soul for having to say this aloud, I think it helped a lot that Mav slept with more women than the entire naval fleet put together before him and Ice started up, and Ice at least gave good face on that end. I also think it helped that people thought one or both of them had something going on with mom for a long time.”He takes another drink. “It was also that there was the excuse of Ice helping out with me, both of them being career-focused in different ways, and they were just careful. It fucked them up. There were fights. Bad ones. I’m pretty sure they broke up for a couple of years before mom’s diagnosis, but—”“Hey.”Rooster asks, “You wanna know my big secret?”“Um,” Jake says.“Mav and my mom, they always talked about how much my parents loved each other, this whole…I dunno, fairy tale, I guess. And I believe them. But Mav and Ice? I think they love each other more. I can’t imagine loving anyone the way the two of them love each other.” Rooster shrugs. “I think they made it work because they couldn’t bear not to.”Jake thinks of all the years he locked himself away so that he could have access to the sky, to the feel of Mach 2 under his palms. “Yeah. I can see that.”
Less than a month later, he passes the last physical he needs to be cleared for flight. He sends Billy a check mark as soon as he leaves. Billy calls that evening, and Jake can hear the noise of the base in the background; he must have called as soon as he got out of the building. Jake says, “I haven’t scheduled anything yet.”“Hi to you, too,” Billy says.Jake smiles. “How was your day, dear?”“Yeah, okay, fuck off. When can you get something scheduled?”“Probably in the next day or two.” They’re still trying to keep him down here. Jake doesn’t trade on their interest for the most part because he has no intention of staying. He knows his spot in the squadron has been taken, but there will be another single-seater squadron out of Lemoore opening up sooner or later, it’s just a matter of patience. Still, he knows he needs to get himself back in a jet. In large part because he can feel some hesitation on his part.Dhruv seems certain this is normal and has been working with him on ways to combat the anxiety. Jake’s never been hesitant to get in a jet in his life.Billy asks, “Want me to talk about something else?”“Desperately.”Billy laughs, but he also fills Jake in on the latest crazy ass shit out of Lemoore that he hasn’t wanted to put in text, or just hasn’t thought to. He mulls over whether it’s worth the money to go see Hilary Hahn play at the Hollywood Bowl. Jake doesn’t know who Hilary Hahn is. It seems like it would make Billy happy, though, so he says, “Do it. Other than coming to see me, what have you been spending your money on?”“My sour straws habit has gotten out of hand, you can’t even imagine.”“You hate sour straws, you think they taste like someone cloned a lemon without the soul.”Billy’s quiet for a second too long. Jake asks, “Billy?”“I said that when we were fifteen.”Jake frowns. “I know, I was there.”“Yeah. Yeah. I guess I just…I think I told myself you forgot about me. After.”“Hang on.” Jake takes his phone away from his ear and sends Billy a text. “My parents’ numbers. Ask them. Ask them how much I didn’t forget. Shit, ask Cam, since I’m starting to think Zach told him a lot more than—well, just ask him, if you want.”“No, I don’t—”“Billy. Ask them. And go see this Hilary person. She’s a musician, I’m guessing? If she’s playing the Bowl?”“Violinist, yeah.”“Right.”“I’ll do it if you schedule your flight.”“Blackmail.”“Absolutely. Text me tomorrow with a confirmation.”“Maybe,” Jake says.“Definitely,” Billy says right back, laughter in his voice, and Jake hates it a little that he knows he would get a time scheduled just to hear that sound again.
Commander Moore is manning the tower for Jake’s flight, which he doesn’t imagine is coincidental. It is appreciated. Her voice is confident and focused, and best of all, a known factor. Jake, who generally doesn’t keep personal items in his jets, has a picture of himself with Zach and his parents from about fifteen years ago sitting on his dash. He does his pre-flight check twice, and box breathes for three straight minutes once given permission to take off.Moore prompts, “Hangman?”Taking one last deep breath, he confirms readiness and pushes his muscles through take-off patterns. The familiar-unfamiliar pull of Gs that begin as he ascends brings a sense of calm he hadn’t known he could expect anymore. He’s missed it, though. Once he hits cruising altitude he’s surprised to find the certainty that’s always settled over him when in the air is still there. There’s a layer of experience in the quiet space of his mind that wasn’t there before, the same way there was after his first kill, or after the uranium mission. It doesn’t interfere with his reflexes or decision making. Perhaps it changes the tenor of those decisions in small ways, matures them in a manner Jake can’t see in himself. But he knows who he is as a pilot, and he’s got this.Yeah. He’s got this.
Given options, Jake would have preferred to have a bit more flight time before being back in the cockpit as an instructor. A week or two, perhaps. His commanding officer schedules him on the hop for the next day, though, and Jake’s clear on how the chain of command works, so up he goes. In the end he can admit it’s the right decision. He spends the entire session much more worried about dumb shit the students are doing—largely due to inexperience in their case, although there’s a dash of arrogance mixed in—than controlling his plane. That he can do in his sleep. He’s learning to remember that.He files a request for transfer back to an active squadron without mentioning it to anyone aside from his parents. His mom’s quiet when he tells her. He asks, “Should I apologize?”“For living your life?” she asks.“For scaring you, when I could make other decisions,” he pushes back. He’s not sure anyone in his family has ever suggested to his mom that she might be more important than the Navy.“Oh baby. You say that like you woke up one day and decided on a career in the Navy. Or like you casually decided that it might be fun to fly a jet. Do you know what your third word was?”Given the context of the question, Jake can hazard a guess. “Not Zach, I take it?”“Nope, that was your second, after mama. Your third was Navy.”“It’s amazing dad even acknowledges me as his child.”“Your dad was on a carrier when you began speaking. I sent videos. Which doesn’t really do anything to undermine my point, kid. Next question: you remember your first air show?”This Jake does remember. “Jacksonville, summer of ’92. Poppy was stationed there.”“You got the signatures of every damn pilot on that team, baby. And you cried for almost a full day after it was over because we had to go back to the base at Great Lakes and the Chicago show just wasn’t viable for us that year, even with your father having a training position rather than being at sea.”“If your aim is to embarrass me, you can stop, mission accomplished.”His mom laughs. “Jake. Most people spend their whole lives figuring out who the hell they want to be. And I know you struggle with pieces of that. But this piece? The Navy Fighter Pilot piece? No. That was set from day one. I know better than to think doing something else when you can do this would be the right choice for you. And if I can’t look at you and tell you it’s easy for me to accept that, then I can look at you and tell you all I’ve ever wanted for you was to feel like you fit in your own skin. I’ll set myself on fire before I get in the way of that, Jacob Grant Seresin, just see if I don’t.”“Thanks for the new nightmare material, Jesus, mom.”Her laughter is wet this time. She doesn’t apologize.
A spot comes free in VFA-192 after the promotion of one of its members and Jake is sent transfer orders to report to Lemoore come the end of the current teaching cycle. Three mornings after his superior officer alerts him to this, Jake finds himself on the floor of the shower of his apartment, the water freezing, no memory of getting out of bed or undressed or anything after going to bed the night before. His chest hurts so bad he’d think he broke a rib or was having a heart attack if this was his first rodeo. He’s not sure whether it’s reassuring that he knows exactly what has happened, or terrifying as fuck.When he manages to stumble out of the shower and get a towel around himself, he finds his phone and discovers he’s been dissociating for close to three hours. “Fuck.”He calls back the last number to call him. When his immediate superior picks up with, “Where the fuck are you, Commander?” he opens his mouth to say something about hitting his head in the shower and instead coughs for a solid minute. He’s very cold. Also, he’s lucky his face wasn’t immediately under the spray, but he suspects he breathed in a fair bit of water. When he manages to get the cough under control, he says, “I think I passed out in the shower. I’m taking a cab to base medical.”It’s not ideal. But he’s disoriented and nauseated enough that he can’t be entirely sure he didn’t hit his head, and he’s not willing to fuck around with a head injury.When he only just manages not to get sick until he’s gotten out of the cab, he figures coming in was the right move, one way or another. A CT and an MRI later, he’s declared concussion free, just badly in need of blood sugar, fluids, and rest. They put him on an IV to get him kickstarted with the first two. He’s letting himself float a bit when his phone buzzes. He opens one eye and checks to see who it is. Picking up he says, “Did you have your fiancé tag me in the system? Because that’s creepy stalker behavior.”“The fact that you think I’m the stalker in our relationship is evidence of how I continue to be the only person on earth who actually knows that man,” Mav tells him.Jake pauses before explaining to Mav, “There are times when lying to a person isn’t the worst thing. Because now I have to live with the awareness that the Commander of the Pacific Fleet is keeping his eyes on my medical condition. Personally.”“Not to harm.”“It’s still—”“Invasive. I know. He knows. Which is why he had me call. I don’t think he looked at what’s actually going on and if he did, he definitely didn’t tell me. All he said was that you were at medical and to call and make sure you were okay.”Jake thinks that over. In the end he admits, “I don’t know.”“Wanna talk about it?”“Not really.”Mav laughs, quiet and knowing. “When’s your next appointment with Dhruv?”“Couple of days.”“Promise me you’ll talk to him about it?”Jake’s bones feel heavy in his body. Not in the way the force of gravity causes, just as though every bone has become solid, the rest of him hollow. “Promise.”“They letting you go?”“No. Keeping me for observation. I think it’s just because I haven’t got anyone to take me home.”“Tell them someone will be there in an hour.”“What?”“I have to make a call. Just tell them. And call your mom.”“You have no power of command over me.”“Don’t make me get Ice on the phone.”“Oh, fuck you.” Jake hangs up. But he tells the staff someone will be there in an hour, and he calls his mom.
The someone who shows up is a tall red-head in her late fifties/early sixties with a Northeastern accent that Jake can’t place. Maybe Maine or Massachusetts. Something New England-y and on the water. She says, “Jake Seresin? I’m Emmy Kerner. Mav said you needed someone who could get here in an hour and stay the night. I think he was trying to send Ron, but without telling you the whole crazy ass schedule of the Kerner clan, I’m what you’ve got.”Jake says, “Evening.” Then, his memory pinging vaguely: “Wait, aren’t you Mav’s friend who lives outside of Houston? Did you fly here?”“What good is running a private flight charter company if you aren’t occasionally going to privately charter yourself somewhere?”“That was…Mav shouldn’t have sent you. One night in medical wasn’t going to kill me.”Emmy tilts her head, consideringly. “Maybe, maybe not. I think it might’ve killed Mav, though, so let me take you home, all right?”She gets him out of there with an efficiency that speaks either of having been in the Navy or of being Navy adjacent for a long time. When they’re in the Lyft on the way back to his place, he asks, “Did you serve with Mav?”“Mm, no, my family’s got some Navy, but on the ship-serving side, and none of the women. Mostly war-time service. I’m Ron’s second wife, we met when Ice had just gotten promoted out of the cockpit. I was tutoring for people looking to get their private license back then, trying to figure out if I was going to take over the family business—charter company up in Maine—or get into consulting. A mutual friend introduced us. He took me on a date, and by the end of it suggested opening our own business.” She shrugged. “I took him up on it. That’s how I fell in with the Navy boys. If Ice hadn’t been behind a desk already Ron would have been impossible to woo away from career Navy, but.” She shrugs again. “And Mav, that asshole just wants someone to love him.”Jake chokes on his own saliva. Emmy slants him an unimpressed look. She doesn’t press, though, instead saying, “Hospital instructions said it’s fine for you to eat. Anything sound good?”
Taking a deep breath, Jake makes himself consider the question. In the end he shakes his head. He’s not nauseated anymore, but that’s about all he can say at the moment.She nods. “I’ll figure something out once you’re home.”“I can order something,” Jake tells her.“Sure, but then I’m just going to be bored.”“I have a television.”“Hard pass, but thanks.”Jake closes his eyes. He’s too tired to argue, and he gets the feeling she’d win even if he wasn’t. She says, “Don’t fall asleep, kid, I’m too old to carry you into your apartment.”The statement shocks a laugh out of him. “Pinky swear.”
While Emmy is playing Iron Chef in his kitchen, Jake calls Billy and says, “Can you just talk to me?”“Sure,” Billy says. There’s a hint of concern in his tone, but all the same he starts yammering about the book he just began—so far, not great—the video game Halo’s been teaching him that he’s finally catching onto enough to occasionally not lose ugly when playing against her, and the candied pineapple his mom sent him, which he’s been parceling out because he’s going to cry when it’s all gone. He asks, “Want me to send you some music? You could listen to it while you work out.”“Yeah. That.” Jake takes a breath. His chest is still sore. “Thanks, babe.”“You okay?”“They’re gonna make me pass psych again.”“Something happened?”“Panic attack. Bad one. Lost about three hours.”“On base?”“No, thankfully.” Toeing off his shoes, Jake curls onto his bed. “Do you think—am I…I dunno. Is it dumb of me, doing this? What if I am a danger to myself? To others?”“Is that how you feel?”Jake takes a bit with the question. “Maybe. I hurt you, didn’t I?”“Jake.”“Sometimes, in my nightmares, it’s you and Javy and Mav and Phoenix or some combination of people I would do anything to protect in the jets that were shot down that first day. And even that feels shitty because there were people in those planes, people I liked and respected.”“Okay.” There’s a beat. “That’s your brain being a dick, you get that, right?”Jake laughs, and if it comes out as more of a half-sob, well. Billy’s not going to tell anyone. “Maybe.”“You don’t have to get back in the box. You don’t have to do a damn thing. But if you want to, if this is what you want, then you know you can. I know you can.”“I think you might be a lot more sure than I am.”“What’s a boyfriend for?”“I was promised hot sex and possibly someone to bring me coffee in the morning.”“By who?”Jake laughs again, surprised, but pure and real.
In the morning, Emmy walks with him to work. He tells her she doesn’t need to and she says, “No, I don’t, but I’m going to spend an hour sitting in a plane and then the rest of the day handling AR paperwork. This is the most body movement I’m going to get all day and I’m a Woman of a Certain Age, Jacob, I need it.”Jake laughs. “Sure. Between you and Mav in hand-to-hand, I know who I’m putting my money on.”“Well, sure, he’s a slippery thing, but once you’ve got his number, still a shrimp.”“Please, please invite me to dinner with both of you at some point.”“Sure thing. For now, though, let me tell you a story about the Kerners.”“Your husband’s family? Or—”“Yes. Ron’s family immigrated to the States from Germany when said States were still the colonies. I’m not sure how versed you are in European military history, but Germany—Prussia at the time—didn’t really build up a Navy until the nineteenth century. Even so, Ron’s ancestor, the one who came, had served in the small, small naval fleet they did have during the Seven Years’ War and stepped up to serve again when the Continental Navy was formed. Every single generation of Kerners has served since.”“I say this with respect, holy shit.”“Mm. Point being, I saw the photos at your place, so I know you’ve got a lineage, and I’m saying this from a place of knowing a little something about that. Ron, when I met him, he was intent on being a lifer, just like most of the Kerners before him since the dawn of the ice age.”“But?”“I asked him the same thing when I realized how big a decision he’d made upon meeting me and he said, ‘well, sometimes life isn’t what you expect it to be.’” She purses her lips. “Jake, I don’t know what’s going on. I didn’t ask Mav and I’m not asking you. But you looked like shit last night, kid. And whatever anyone has told you, including yourself, the Navy isn’t all you are. It might be what you know, sure, that doesn’t make it all you can know. If it’s not serving you anymore, then stop serving it. Find answers outside of it. And if it is still serving you, then remember that’s because it needs you, you don’t need it. I promise.”They’ve gotten to the gate at this point. Jake turns to her. “Thank you. For everything.”She soothes down his already starched collar. “Take care of yourself.”He nods. “Doing my best.”
Dhruhv gives him the assignment of considering what he would do if he weren’t to be flying for the Navy. After three days of trying to come up with a single thing, Jake tells Billy, “I think I might be boring.”“Not something I’ve considered before, but tell me more.”“Apparently the things I enjoy outside of flying jets are, one: games played in bars, two: adult coloring books, and three: the occasional weird memoir or history book.”“That’s three whole hobbies you just listed.”“When mom said I could do anything I wanted, I don’t think she considered pool hustling. Pretty sure she’d have a few things to say about that as a career choice.”“I…don’t understand the conversation we’re having.”Jake laughs at the confusion in Billy’s voice and tells him about the assignment. Billy hums. “I ever tell you I almost didn’t go Navy?”The record in Jake’s brain screeches to a stop. When it starts revolving again, it’s skipping. “Come again?”Billy laughs quietly. “Yeah, I went to Eastman for a year, pursued a BM in Applied Music Performance. It’s only because I was also doing a minor in Mathematics through the college of arts and sciences that I wasn’t hella behind when I switched over to Hajim and did aerospace engineering as my major.”“You went to school for violin,” Jake says, feeling stupid for stating the obvious, only it feels anything but obvious to him. Billy is one of the best pilots of their generation.“Yup. Thought I’d get myself as far away from memories of you as I could, stop being what everyone expected of me in that way that only eighteen year old douchebags can want to piss everyone off, and well, play. Because I love playing the violin.”“Why’d you change your mind?”“Bunch of reasons. Being out in the civilian world is…”“Yeah,” Jake says. He remembers that emotional vertigo, too, and he went to a school that has a higher than average percentage of people looking to go military.“It was good for me,” Billy says carefully. “In some ways. It helped to be out of a space where I so heavily felt both the weight of legacy and the echoes of you, but also…music kids aren’t the best about not being dicks about the military. And we can both acknowledge that the system has its faults, but I wasn’t going to shit on three generations of my family so that I could fit in. Which meant I mostly just didn’t fit in. In the end, though, it was actually that the spring concert my freshman year had this one piece, a Granados. I like a lot of his work, but this one…not my thing. The fingering was killing me, not even because it was that challenging, my fingers just weren’t fucking cooperating and I was frustrated with myself, my instrument, everything. And for the first time in my life I found myself dreading practice. This piece of my life that had always given me comfort and joy and safety was suddenly something I wanted to avoid. I called my mom, so afraid she’d be disappointed in me, not being able to make this thing that I was supposed to be so good at, love so much, work. Instead, at the first waver of my voice she said, ‘honey, what the fuck did you think college was for?’”Jake sniffs. “Your mom’s pretty cool.”“Don’t you forget it.” Billy pauses. “My point, J, is that your job doesn’t have to be your reason for getting out of bed in the morning. It can be the thing you do because capitalism is a thing and we all gotta eat. And the rest of your life can be what gets you vertical. I promise.”Jake frowns. “You don’t love flying?”“I—No, I do. But I’m not you, and I’m definitely not Mav. I’ve always known I was probably going to retire at the point of up or out. Do private consulting or maybe go commercial, I haven’t decided yet. The point being, this isn’t my forever job and I’ve known that since I first decided on it. Hell, Jake, it’s not your forever job. Admirals don’t get in jets.”Jake, admittedly, spends a lot of time forcefully not thinking about that. About the fact that even at the level of Captain, he’d likely need to have a larger command in order to get to where he wants to end up.“Just. Figure out what you could compromise on. That’s what he’s asking. Figure out what would be enough that you could do it well and then focus on all the other things that matter.”“I might not be great at compromising,” Jake says, voice flat.“Yeah, babe. I’ve noticed from time to time. But you are good at working for things when they’re important to you. And I don’t think Dhruv wants you to have this list so you can immediately quit and change your whole damn life. He wants you to have it so you know that deciding on something different isn’t failure. Sometimes just being aware of that fact is enough to relieve some of the pressure.”Jake thinks about that for a bit. “I’ll work at it.”“All anyone is asking.”
Annoyingly, Billy and Dhruv are right. Over the next week, Jake comes up with a list of five things he could see himself doing if not in the Navy—with the exception of one, all things that involve him being his own boss—and if it’s not easy to pack up the life he has made in Kingsville and get himself ready for Lemoore, or, well, not as easy as he remembers transfers being, it’s at least not panic inducing.He finishes up his last class on a Friday, and Commander Moore takes him out for drinks. His family has also come down the evening, and they join. It’s a nice night. Gran and the commander trade funny stories about his aunt, his mom sits with her hand on his knee, poppy watches, quietly happy. He wishes his dad was there. They call him after drinks and vidchat as mom helps him toss the stuff he doesn’t need to take into donation boxes she’ll take with her.She stays with him that night instead of at the motel gran and poppy got for themselves. They read together, and when Jake wakes from nightmares he can’t remember, she sits with him in the wee hours of the morning without the expectation that he talk about anything. He mumbles, “Love you.”“More than anything, kiddo,” she says back.His transport leaves at 0800. He meets gran and poppy at their motel for coffee at 0600, then hugs his family, shoulders his duffels and gets himself on the plane. He falls asleep to the familiar bumpiness of essentially being cargo and wakes up in California. Smiling down at his feet for a moment—maybe the answer to his sleeping troubles is just to be flown around for eight hours a night—he decamps to find Javy, Nat, Bob, and Billy on the tarmac. “Um, hi?”Nat rolls her eyes. “Um hi, he says.”“I didn’t tell y’all what transport I was taking.” Mostly because he hadn’t even known until two days earlier and then he just figured it was too late to inconvenience anyone, rideshares were a thing.“You’re an idiot,” Billy says, all wide smiles, and kisses Jake, taking one of the duffles.“Says the man attempting to play the entire catalogue of Arctic Monkeys’ songs on the violin.”“Everyone needs a goal, babe.”“Wow, you two get even weirder when you’re in each other’s presence,” Nat says, turning to head toward where they’ve parked. “Is it catching?”“Much like gonorrhea,” Billy tells her.“We’re leaving them,” she tells Javy.Javy grins at Jake. “Good to have you back.”
That evening, after Nat and Javy have left Jake’s assignment, everything as set up as it’s going to be for the moment, Billy asks, “Come back to my place?”“My décor not to your tastes?”“Your Navy-issued mattress sure as shit isn’t.”Yeah, Jake is going to need to do something about that. “Lemme pack an overnight.”When they get to Billy’s, he asks, “Mind if I put music on?”Jake’s tired and achy, but not quite ready to sleep. “Go right ahead.”He uses Billy’s shower and changes into a pair of boxers and a tee. When he wanders out, there’s something classical that feels familiar, but he couldn’t name it if asked. “What’d you pick?”“Vivaldi, Winter. From the Four Seasons.”Jake folds himself onto the couch. “Tell me about it?”He mostly just wants to hear Billy’s voice. Billy comes and sits next to him on the couch, tugging at Jake until Jake’s lying down with his head in Billy’s lap. Billy cards his fingers through Jake’s hair. “The year after dad left the service, we were in Bremerton. Mom had a deployment and about a month in I was missing her and mopey, so dad took me into Seattle to see the symphony. They were doing the Four Seasons. Honestly, I think my dad just figured it would be cool for me to get to see professional violinists, and that it was a famous piece, so I’d probably recognize some of it, which would be good for a kid. But.” Billy shakes his head. “I guess the easiest way to explain is that it felt like flying does.”“Yeah?” Jake asks quietly.“That’s not the only reason I chose it, though,” Billy says, his words careful, slow.“Hm?”“Vivaldi, he wrote poetry to go with the piece. If you study it, you can see where each element of the music aligns with the actions happening in the poetry. Like a concept album, almost. Winter, in the third movement, we’re almost there, it starts with someone carefully traversing an icy landscape. Slowly, the person becomes more confident, and then, of course, they fall. But then, in the next stanza, they get back up again.”Jake looks up at where Billy is staring straight forward, determinedly not glancing at Jake. He takes Billy’s free hand and kisses the back of it. Billy squeezes his hand. Together, they listen to the third movement.
Skittles meets Jake for dinner the second week he’s back. They settle at the table and Skittles says, “You look a hell of a lot better than the last time I saw you in the flesh.”Jake grins. “Same, asshole.”Skittles asks, “Squadron okay?”“I bought first round after work on Tuesday. It’s good.”“That’ll do it.”“You used to fly with Oscar, yeah?” Jake asks, referring to one of the guys he hasn’t flown with yet.“Been a minute, but yeah.”“Thoughts?”“He’s more introverted than actually grumpy, is proficient but is never going to be a super impressive flier, smart, though. Real fucking smart.”“Thanks.”“You know Bob used to be Grant’s backseater, right?”Jake pauses in his perusal of the menu. “No. I didn’t.”“Mm. The grapevine has it that they just didn’t have compatible communication styles, which happens. Bob never gives the pipeline shit to talk about where he’s concerned, and neither do any of the people he’s flown with, so people just make shit up, but I’m pretty sure that’s legit. I’ve seen them in the same place as each other, and Bob didn’t do that thing he does when he doesn’t like someone, that real polite ‘they’ll never find the body’ shit.”Jake laughs at the accuracy of that observation. “The grapevine, huh?”Skittles rolls his eyes. “You spent three full days pumping me for Navy gossip when we—at first. You know I have my sources.”“Keeping that one in my back pocket.”“Yeah, yeah.”“How’s wedding planning going?”“The only real fight we’ve had is over the cake.”“If you’re gonna go to the mats over something, that seems like a reasonable thing to do it over.”“See, you’re joking, but she wanted the entire cake to be lemon, which is an abomination before G-d and mankind and probably would have cursed our marriage—”“I like lemon cake.”“And I wanted something reasonable for our guests to eat, like vanilla with chocolate frosting or something equally universally beloved, but you can’t mix lemon and basically anything—”“Aside from lime and tequila and—”“Fuck all the way off, anyway, her mom saw the reasoning in not having a niche flavor for the entire cake unless we wanted to be eating it the rest of our lives and we are having two moderate sized cakes instead of one large one. Otherwise, we’ve both been pretty good about figuring out compromises where we have differing opinions on things.”“Glad to hear you’ve avoided pre-nuptial divorce so far. Listen, incredibly awkward and rude question—”“Your normal, then.”Jake flips him off. “Did you plan on giving me a plus one?”Skittles nods. “Her family does the single-adults get one rule. Why, there someone you’re thinking of bringing?”Jake takes a deep breath and asks, “You know Billy Avalone?”Skittles waves his hand back and forth. “We’ve crossed paths. I wouldn’t call it knowing each other.”“We—we got together back at the beginning of the year.”“Huh.” Skittles blinks. “I’m just, in this moment, realizing that you never said a damn thing about your love life while I prattled on about my fiancée in there.”“I didn’t really talk about it. Or. I didn’t actually do anything about it, until recently.”Skittles nods his head a bit. “I’m glad you want to bring him. But I think I’m more glad you told me you want to bring him, if that makes any sense.”“It makes sense.” Jake smiles. “We’d better decide what we want. If that waiter makes a fifth pass by this table and we’re not ready, I’m pretty sure he’s going to spit in whatever we end up ordering.”“Justifiably.”
“I wiped the floor with Sonic and Grasshopper in training today.”Billy looks up from where he’s filling out paperwork to where Jake is standing in the door of his office. “I need a hint of how I’m supposed to respond to this news. Because if you’re looking for surprise, I’m too neurospicy to pretend that way. Fanboy’s office is—”Jake rolls his eyes, coming into the office and shutting the door behind himself. “Wheaties gone for the day?”“On a hop,” Billy says about his office-mate. “But he always leaves base from the ones this late in the day. What’s…?”“In Kingsville, I couldn’t really tell if I could still fly, or if I could just control a jet.” Jake doesn’t elaborate. Billy will understand the difference. “I would have taken the former.”Billy laughs. “No, you wouldn’t have.”“No,” Jake acknowledges. “Probably not. Not with any amount of grace, at least.”“Okay, so you’re still the Navy’s Best Bitch, why are you in my office, looking like a pill bug someone sprinkled salt on?”“That’s a weird simile.”“Jake.”“You say it doesn’t bother you, not having sex.”Billy sets aside the paperwork. “Right. I say that because it’s true.”“Do you just generally not…”Billy frowns for a second. “Are you asking if I’m not that interested in sex generally?”Jake nods, relieved he doesn’t have to spell it out.“No, I figure I’m interested a pretty normal amount for a thirty year-old guy. I don’t feel like I’m going to lose my shit if I don’t jerk off twice a day, the way I did in my late teens, early twenties, and I’m long past the point of being interested in quickies with randos, but Jake, trust me: lack of interest isn’t an issue.”Jake has been talking about the ED, about his skittishness regarding intimacy overall a lot in his last few therapy session. Apparently, without his either recognizing or approving of it, his brain had formed a thesis that if he could just get himself stabilized in the other parts of his life, this one would be fine. When he explained this to Dhruv, and his dawning awareness that the belief was egregiously wrong, Dhruv said, “Yeah, our brains can do weird protective shit that screws us in other ways.”Dhruv sent him some books on recovering from sexual trauma, both in terms of assault and issues stemming from being in the closet, saying, “I’m not sure the assault is the cause of what’s going on here, so much as perhaps the trigger.”Jake finds that infuriating, but the more he reads, the more he suspects Dhruv is right.“Jake?” Billy asks.‘I’m…I’m not saying that I was pining, all those years. That’s not it, exactly. But I’ve never loved anyone else. It’s always been you. And I’ve tried—I’ve worked—” Jake swallows. “I made a decision to be a brave enough to try being real so that I could be with you, and I’m still held back from the things I want by my own fear. I hate it.”“It? Or you?” The question is so quiet, Jake barely hears Billy asking over the sound of the air conditioning.“Is there a difference?”“Hypothetically, if everything about our relationship was the same, but I was the one who wasn’t ready to have sex, would you be this shitty to me?”Even the question makes Jake a little nauseated. “It’s easy to say no because I know that’s the right answer. I have no idea. I’ve never—the way I want you…I can’t fucking imagine what I would be doing. I don’t know.”Jake’s not sure what he’s said, but something causes Billy to tilt his head slightly, his eyes narrowing.“Billy?”“We should go home and make out a bunch now.”Jake begins to agree.“And then you’re going to sit and tell me how much you want me while you watch me jerk off for you.”The feeling of arousal without an erection is strange and remains a bit discomfiting, but Jake can’t be fucked to notice that at the moment. “Yup, yes, that is what we should be doing right the fuck now.”
At Dhruv’s urging, Jake also sees a urologist, who confirms that the problem is at least partly physical and will need the intervention of medical science. Jake leaves the appointment, goes and does his job, then goes to the gym he prefers on base and works out until he can’t feel several of his limbs. Javy finds him there, lying on the floor after attempting to stretch out, staring at the ceiling. Jake can feel the other people in the gym pretending he’s not there. In fairness, he’d probably do the same. Of all the things he’s pissed off about—and there are so, so many—that’s not one of them.Javy lays down next to him. “Wanna talk about it?”“Not in this life or the next.”“Okay, then I’m going to peel you off this floor, put you in the shower, and take you to Billy’s.”“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” Even exhausted, Jake can feel the anger in his blood, pumping throughout the entirety of his body.“You mad at him?”Jake blinks slowly. “How do you know I’m mad?”“Maybe because we’ve known each other almost half our lives at this point, and you only try to kill yourself at the gym when you’re pissed and scared it’s going to make you do something shitty you can’t take back?”Jake grunts in response to that. “No. It’s not Billy.”“Yeah, I didn’t think so.”Jake lets his head fall so that he’s looking at Javy. Javy tells him, “Jake, you might have more reason to be angry about everything that’s happened, but if you think I took up tai chi because I thought I looked cool doing it, bud. Nat didn’t level up in MMA because she all of a sudden got that much more awesome. Four of our own were shot down, two of them killed, two of them held prisoner and tortured and we had to let the diplomats sort it out because of a map discrepancy and because nobody actually wants a nuclear war. But Jake, Jesus Fucking Christ. If you think the rest of us aren’t fucking angry, I don’t know what to tell you. Because we’re all working our hardest just not to be pissed when we get in our jets and go to do our damn jobs.”Jake doesn’t want to cry on the floor of the gym. Even if it’s three-quarters anger, frustration, and exhaustion, that’s a hard no for him. He rolls over and pushes himself to his feet. “Shower.”Thankfully, this particular gym has cubicle showers. Jake pulls the curtain, turns on the water as hot as it will go, and sobs into the stream, biting his lip against the screams that desperately want to be let out. He shampoos his hair twice and lets his conditioner sit for longer than normal just to give himself time to appear somewhat put together when he emerges. He dries himself off and pads to the locker area, where Javy is sitting, reading something on his phone. Without looking up he says, “Billy made dinner, but it’s spicy, so he said if you’re nauseated we might wanna pick something up on the way back.”“I promise I can get myself home on my own, mom.”Javy, unimpressed, continues to ignore him. As soon as Jake is dressed and ready to go they head out. Jake bitches about leaving his car, but the truth is he can catch a ride from Billy in the morning, so it’s not a huge deal. When they arrive at Billy’s, Nat, Rooster, and Halo are hanging out. Jake sneers, “What, are we having a sleepover?”“Keep it up and the answer’ll be yes,” Nat says.From behind the kitchen divider, Billy laughs. “Better go find pillows, Nat.”Jake rolls his eyes and follows the sound of Billy’s voice. “Hey.”Billy steps away from the stove. “You look like someone put you in the blades of a Huey.”“With lines like that—”“C’mere, asshole.” Billy pulls him in gently with a grip on his neck, thumb soothing up and down.“I don’t want to be here,” Jake murmurs against his shoulder.“Oh?” Billy asks.“Gonna fuck it up.”“You’ve already done that once and we seem to be doing okay.”Jake huffs out a disbelieving laugh. “Fifteen years later.”“Well, we were kids. We can probably shave a few years off this time.”It gets another laugh out of Jake. “Babe.”“I know you’re an asshole. And I know you’re struggling. I’m still in love with you.” Billy says quietly. “And, newsflash, I’m an asshole and struggling, too. We all get to have bad days. Bad weeks. You’re doing your best. I’m not asking more of you.”Jake box breaths. Over and over, the smell of Bicol Express and the sensitive skin detergent Billy uses filling his senses, calming him as much or more as the patterned breathing. Finally, he says, “Love you too.”Billy shifts them so he can kiss Jake, once, soft and sweet, an acknowledgement as much as a kiss. “Let’s eat.”
Jake waits until he’s sure he’s secured leave to ask Billy, “You think you can get leave Friday, November 9th?”“Dunno. Probably. Especially if I agree to cover a Veteran’s Day shift that Monday. Why?”“It’s Skittles’ wedding weekend.”“Are you asking me to go to the wedding with you, or to go on a trip with you and hang with you while you’re not at the wedding?”Jake frowns. “The wedding.”Billy’s expression is a little more surprised than Jake is entirely comfortable with. “Okay. What’s the dress code?”“We can wear our whites. I asked. It’s not black tie, but it’s formal, and I don’t even remember the last time I bought a suit.”“I have one.”“Really?” Jake asks.Billy shrugs. “If I’m going to the symphony by myself I’ll roll in in whatever. Jeans, I don’t care. But if I’m on a date, I dunno. That always seemed kinda trashy. As a plus, we didn’t get dirty looks if we went to a nice restaurant before.”“Your ex went to the symphony with you? Is that…” Jake thinks. “I haven’t even gone to the movies with you. Jesus. I suck at this. Why didn’t you tell me I suck at this?”“If by ‘this’ you mean dating, it’s a little different when you don’t need dates to get to know each other. But sure, we can go on dates. Doesn’t have to be to the symphony. I don’t need you to compete with any of my exes. That would suck.”“I know you probably haven’t noticed, seeing as how I work to keep this under wraps, but I’m a pretty competitive person.”“You don’t say,” Billy mutters.Jake grins. “I get to plan our first date.”“Sure,” Billy says.Jake’s already looking at their calendars. “Saturday evening, two weeks from now?”“Send me an invite.”Jake does, and slips his phone back into his pocket. “Do you think I should get a suit? I’ve got time—”“Don’t even consider it. Come November it’ll have been nearly two years since I saw you in whites.” Billy doesn’t even glance up from where he’s working at the world’s most annoying jigsaw puzzle on the living room floor. He still manages to get across the “or else.”Jake blinks. “That’s a thing, huh?”Billy does look up at that. “Are the doctors sure there wasn’t TBI resulting from—”“Wow, okay, mean.” Jake is holding back a laugh as he says it, though.Billy doesn’t bother, laughing right in his face. “Jake, men in uniform is a thing. In like, the world. The history of time and space. For me, yes, you in particular in uniform moreso, but what the fuck.”“Yeah, forgive me if coming from a line of Navy men that stretches back to my greatest of great great greater grandpaps doesn’t make me shiver with aroused abandon when I see a man in Navy dress.”Billy just laughs harder. “Telling me you don’t have a daddy kink, then?”Jake’s well aware he looks the part of someone who would, but, “Nope, found that out fairly early.”
Billy doesn’t stop laughing. He does, to his credit, attempt to seem sympathetic. “Ouch.”“Not my best sexual encounter, for sure.” Of the consensual ones, it might have been his worst. He foregoes mentioning that.“I’ll wear the suit.”“What a fucking prince.”“You know it.”
Two Saturday evenings later, Billy is standing in one of the hangars of the Fresno aircraft rental center Jake drove them both to, looking for all the world like a man who does not want to seem impressed. After a moment, he pinches the bridge of his nose. “Jake.”“Relax, the Duchess is for me. She’s just our ride.” Jake hesitates. “Unless…I actually don’t know if you have a private license. Do you want to fly her?”It is a mark of how stupidly gone for this man Jake is that he’s offering. Jake paid over a grand to rent the Beechcraft for the night. He could have gone with something cheaper, but he’s always had a bit of schoolboy crush on the Beechcraft line, and the Duchess is a particular favorite. Billy, however, rolls his eyes. “All yours. I actually like leaving work at work.”Jake mutters, “It’s not like that,” but doesn’t actually argue, since it probably is a little like that.Take off to touchdown, it’s roughly thirty minutes to the private airport in San Diego, and Billy spends almost all of it guessing what Jake has planned. Jake just makes humming noises and flies the plane. Jake gets them a rideshare to the Monarch next to the Del Mar Fairgrounds, and they order seafood and beers, watching the sun hang low over the water. Billy says, “I know I can be a little picky about having seafood that tastes like it originated in the sea, at least for a guy in the Navy, but you did not fly me out here for good mussels.”Jake takes a sip of beer. “No.”“Jake.”Jake smirks. “Being with me not keeping you occupied?”Billy rolls his eyes and steals both of the last two from the plate of mussels they were sharing. Jake doesn’t mention he was going to let Billy have them anyway. He pays the bill and leads them over to the fairgrounds where Billy sees the signs and says, “Oh.”Jake smiles, not looking over at him. “Not a symphony, but I figured—”Billy stops him with a hand to his elbow. “Jake, I need you to look at me.”Jake turns, uncertain. “They’re on your phone, a whole discography, I didn’t snoop anything but your playlists—”Billy kisses him, fast and sharp, an interruption more than a declaration. “Jake, I fucking love Black Violin. And pretty much never get to see them because they’re never where I am when I’m there and I can’t justify traveling for every little show I want to see. That’s not—I know you’re competitive. I know that. But I meant it when I said you didn’t need to compete. And I can’t have you thinking that you have to always do these kinds of things to be my favorite. You were my favorite even when I wanted to light you on fire and watch you burn. I couldn’t have felt that way if you weren’t.”Jake looks at him for a long moment and then slowly shakes his head. “That’s not it. Or, maybe a tiny bit, but not the important part.”“What’s the important part?”“I thought I could give you up. We can dress up what happened back then however we want. But at the end of the day, I decided I could trade what we had for the sky. And maybe that was how it had to be or maybe not, I honestly don’t know anymore, but it doesn’t change the fact that I was wrong. I was never really able to give you up. So now I’m going to spend time valuing you the way you should be valued. If right now that looks like taking you to an outdoor concert and being with you while you’re happy, cheap at twice the price, babe.”“Okay,” Billy says softly. “Okay. But. I would have been happy with a night of playing cards and ordering in. I need you to understand that. I’m never going to need anything more than that from you.”“Sure,” Jake says. “That doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to want it.”
Jake hasn’t exactly given up on his dick, but his hopes of recovering the ability to get an erection have long since stopped being high. None of the meds they’ve tried have done anything so far, and therapy hasn’t cracked the case. He’s been telling himself that he might be out of miracles for a while when he wakes up one unremarkable Thursday morning to the feeling that something is wrong. Or, maybe not wrong, but different.It takes him longer than it probably should to realize his dick is half-hard between his legs. When he does, he blinks down at it and rasps, “Holy shit.”“Fuck, Jake, we’ve talked about this. No talking before the alarm.” Billy does his best to disappear into the bedding.“Uh. Babe.”“No. Seriously.” Billy doesn’t even emerge from his blanket cocoon to make this pronouncement.“Equally serious.”Something in his tone must clue Billy in, because he peers out of the covers enough to say, “This had better be so, so good.”“Could you maybe try and jack me off?”Billy blinks. “Wait, seriously?”“So seriously. The most serious.”“Okay, this is an exception to the talking rule. I’m granting this exception.” Billy throws the covers back and stares at Jake’s dick like it’s a piece of modern art. He fumbles behind himself for the nightstand drawer in order to grab the lube. He squirts some on his hand and doesn’t even take time to warm it, which means the feeling of his hand wrapping around Jake’s dick is cold and—after so long—a little on the too-intense side. It’s also, weirdly, just right. Jake leans in and kisses Billy, morning breath and all.Billy laughs into the kiss. “Hi, hey there.”Jake grins and pats around on the bed until he finds the lube, squirting some into his hand and giving it a moment to warm up before taking Billy’s dick in his grip. Billy mutters, “Fuck, yeah, just like that. You? Is this—”“Yeah. It, uh. I might not—”“Hey, just, this is good, babe. You feel so fucking good.”“Okay,” Jake says. “Okay.”He’s gotten good at knowing what Billy likes. They’d spent a long time with Jake perfecting his handjob skills before they’d ventured into blowjob territory. Jake’s gotten some serious practice at that, too, now. Occasionally, Billy will fuck him, achingly tender with it, but convincing Billy that was a thing Jake wanted had been an achievement, and it’s still something they rarely indulge in unless Jake is willing to spend the time it takes to get Billy relaxed over the idea.Billy has held his dick during fucking, a warm, loose grip that’s more comfort than anything else. But this is the first time he’s ever had a chance to try and actually get Jake off.Jake isn’t exactly surprised that Billy knows what he’s doing. He certainly knows how to top. Even so, there’s something about the fact that he just seems to know how to take Jake apart by instinct.It’s not fast. Despite Jake starting on Billy’s cock after Billy had started on his, Billy comes well before him. By the time Jake is digging his fingers into Billy’s arms, gasping, the orgasm spilling out of him, Billy’s wrist has to be aching, if not his whole arm. When Jake’s breathing settles, though, and the lethargy of being post his first orgasm in literal years, Billy says, “Babe,” somehow managing to smile with his whole damn body.Jake drawls, “Love you,” his whole body feeling as though he’s made of melting chocolate.Billy snuggles up to him. “Good exception to the talking rule. Let’s practice this exception lots.”Jake laughs, and pulls him in tight. “Copy that.”
EpilogueBilly looks so damn good in his suit. Jake’s aware of his responding arousal—that can still be hit and miss; sometimes his body reacts like he expects to, and sometimes he’s just left with a sort of fruitless desire—but quickies aren’t a thing he can do, it’s always a bit of a process with his dick, and on the occasions when both of them are physically interested Billy has instituted a hard and fast rule that they both get off.“Like training a dog,” the asshole had said, smirking. “If your cock knows it’s going to get a reward, maybe it will behave more often.”That hadn’t ended in sex, Jake’s body not cooperating in that instance, but it had ended in some pretty hot tussling and making out. Jake is slowly learning to be at peace with the rhythm of their physical relationship. It’s possible Jake is the dog in this equation.While Jake is busy staring and calculating how long they need to stay at the reception, Billy says, “Damn. Okay, after this I’m sucking you with the uniform on and you’re just going to deal with it.”Jake makes a face. “You know what a pain it is to dry clean these things.”“It’s a hard life,” Billy says, entirely without sympathy. And, well, Jake can’t deny that the idea is doing its part to keep low-level interest simmering.He rolls his eyes. “We’re gonna be late.” By which he means “less than fifteen minutes early.” But Billy’s also career Navy. Both of them are like this.In the end, they are a little over five minutes early. The wedding is quite the to do. Both Sprinkles and his fiancée have large families, work colleagues, and friends, not to mention the friends and colleagues their parents must have felt the need to invite. For all that, at its heart, it’s lovely. The bride and groom make each other laugh quietly in parts of the ceremony, the vows are impossibly sincere, the kiss sweet and a bit silly.The color scheme is tasteful, the band is excellent, and the food is solid for catering at a three-hundred person event. Jake and Billy stay at the table, seated with two of the guys from Skittle’s old unit and their wives, as well as one of the women he currently works alongside and her wife, until Skittles and his now-wife make their way over. His wife gets to Jake first and smiles, joy radiating from her. “Hey there. Nice to see you not in a hospital bed.”“I much prefer this state of being myself,” Jake tells her.She leans in to hug him and says into his ear, “Thank you. Again. Always.”He shakes his head, but she holds on. “Also, introduce me to the hottie you brought with.”Jake laughs, and does as told. Billy asks, “Did you organize this whole thing? And if so, would you consider joining the Navy? We have a serious need for people with logistics skills.”She grins, “Oh, yes, good job,” she tells Jake, as Skittles joins them, hugging Jake. “Thanks for coming, man.”“Of course. Of course. Congratulations.”“You’ll be at the brunch tomorrow? When I can maybe actually talk to you and him for half a second?”“Yeah, we’ll be there.”“Great, I have to go…do the thing.”“Yup, go do that.”Sprinkles goes back in for another hug. “Glad you’re here.”When they walk off, Jake leans into Billy’s side to say, “Hey, ask me to dance.”“Dance with me, gorgeous.”“That wasn’t a request.”“No,” Billy smiles. “It wasn’t.”Jake dances with him, the two of them holding each other in a dance cradle. Billy murmurs, “Couple more dances, some cake, and you’ll let me take you home?”Jake would let Billy take him now. He thinks Billy knows. He hopes. “Sounds like a plan.”Billy kisses his temple. They keep dancing.