04/09/2022: I Love Smart Aleck And Bradley So So Much, Every Time You Write These Little Blurbs About

15/08/2022: HERE WE GO AGAIN!!!! i’m going crazy over this story, your writing flows so easily to me and i love their relationship!!! the fact that they’ve been together for 6 months since part 1 makes me very happy (the way i’m craving to know what they did together during this period of time, like how they developed together as a couple!!!!) but you REALLY weren’t kidding about the angst… i am in so much pain (but this is good!!! i loved getting her perspective!!!) this was beautiful and sad and you have such a way with words!!!!!! from dialogue to descriptions and setting a scene… just so much talent!!! i’m so glad i get to read your work!!! pls never stop <3

“There’s no way raw flour tastes that good,” you’d let out between your giggles, but he was relentless.

“Must just be you then…” i hate that you start with the cutest and most romantic stupid scene of all time only to shatter the atmosphere a couple of paragraphs later. cruel.

and bradley has a pasta maker!!! cute!!!

“and had taken to working longer hours when he was gone, pushing yourself to the limit to think about something, anything other than the fact that you hadn’t told your boyfriend of five months that you were in love with him yet.” ooooh now i’m curious to know when bradley said it (i’m assuming he said it first???and her reaction???)

“Instead, you’d merely blurted it out as he was making you coffee the next morning. He’d just smiled and said I love you, too - like it was so obvious that you were ever in any doubt and that he even needed to say it.” i hate this rear admiral person for ruining the moment and not letting her say i love you like she planned but i also love that bradley responds to it so easily later 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 he knows 🥺🥺🥺 we know 🥺🥺🥺

“- Sweetheart - ” my heart is starting to crack open!!!!!

“God, you were not a girl who cried easily.

(Lies, you just didn’t let anyone see you.)” she’s so real!!!! same!!!!

“contrary to popular belief, you did understand how important Bradley’s job was. And you understood what it meant for him and his career to be presented with an award at something like this. It wasn’t quite a Medal of Honor or anything like that, but it was still important. It would still mean something.

Something to Bradley. Which meant something to you.” SOMETHING TO BRADLEY!!!!! WHICH MEANT SOMETHING TO YOU!!!!! AND ISN’T THIS POSSIBLY ONE OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THINGS ABOUT A RELATIONSHIP AND BEING IN LOVE?????????? and this is like extra special because we know she doesn’t like the military!!!! i’m crying!!!

and now she’s overthinking in the shower and crying and i’m so sad because i just know he has a plausible reason (i hope otherwise i will deactivate!!!!!!!)

“No, no, no. He would never do that. You couldn’t believe the thought had even crossed your mind. Bradley loved you. Bradley wanted to be with you. Bradley put up with all your neurosis and your late hours at the office and made you cum so hard you occasionally cried and held you in his arms all night.

Bradley loved you.

(Didn’t he? He’d said he did.)”

okay so many emotions here!!!!!!!! my favorite part!!! i think???? I LOVE YOUR WRITINGGGGGGG!!!! ❤️‍🩹

“Maybe you just wanted Bradley to love you like you loved him - openly and without restraint or abandon. You wanted him to love the you that he had first met. The strong, confident girl at the bar, who wasn’t afraid to call him out on his shit. Not the one who was so scared her boyfriend was going to break up with her that she had taken to savoring every last kiss, touch, and I love you between the two of you because you just knew it was going to end. He was going to end things.” but he does love you like you love him!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so much pain!!!!!!

“Bradley loved you.

(Didn’t he? He had told you a couple weeks ago.)” this repetition is pure poetry and it is breaking my heart!!!!

“So, why hadn’t he asked you to go to this awards gala with him? Why didn’t he want you?” THE WAY SHE JUMPS FROM THINKING HE DOESN’T WANT HER TO GO TO THE EVENT STRAIGHT TO HE DOESN’T WANT HER PERIOD NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! NO NO NO!!!!!!

“Bradley had moved your clothes from the vanity to the hooks right by the shower so you didn’t have to tiptoe across the room, tracking water along the way. The silly and inconsequential, but still stupidly thoughtful, action made your heart clench.” no because my heart is clenching too!!!!!!! favorite little detail!!!!!!!! it’s such a simple act but it feels like a white flag in here? he definitely knows she’s upset but didn’t want to push her!!!! so he does this little something 🥺

“Eventually, when you saw that Bradley had turned off the lights in the bedroom, you left your bathroom sanctuary and made your way across the other room, crawling into bed beside him. You burrowed your face in his chest, clinging onto him desperately as if you could will him to love you more.” the way i can visualize this entire scene in my head so vividly!!!! AND AS IF YOU COULD WILL HIM TO LOVE YOU MORE????? YOU DON’T NEED TO WILL HIM HE ALREADY DOES I KNOW THIS!!!!!! STOP THIS!!!!!

“Neither of you said anything, you just laid there, holding each other, his hand slowly rubbing your back, until you eventually drifted off into an uneasy sleep, the steady beat of his heart reminding you that he was still there with you.” is this what they call hurt/a tiny little bit of comfort???? ajdhsyyxhshdhs loved the way you wrote this line. the beat of his heart reminding her he’s still there!!!!!! 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

and then as if we are not in enough pain you end it with “At least for now.” CRUEL.

i can’t wait for part 2!!!!!

and even when we’re wrong in every way, we come out the other side okay (part 1.5/2)

Summary: in which bradley is getting honored with an award and his girlfriend tries to be there for him…even though her feelings towards the navy are complicated to say the least

OR you take on the pacific fleet’s awards gala

Pairing: Rooster x Fem!Reader

A/N: listen…even spunky, smart aleck girlfriends get down sometimes! so this little snippet is literally just angst (sorry!). but our favorite slutty couple will be back at it (literally) in all their depraved glory soon enough in part 2. takes place 6 months after Part 1. i wasn’t originally planning on showing anything from our best girl’s pov, but lord she needed to get this one out 😭 thanks to sol for all the encouragement and help on this one! (2.5k)

would it be enough if i could never give you peace?

Continuar lendo

15/08/2022: dear shannon!!!! heartfelt is one of the first fics i read as soon as i gave in the urge to read about top gun maverick and it’s been such an incredible ride so far. (i sent a couple of anon compliments since the first chapter was out, but now i have this new blog to really pour out all the love directly and just scream about my favorite paragraphs and what not). i went into this for the jake x reader of it all but you really got rooster out here trying to steal heart again, i really wasn’t expecting to be so tempted to change sides, and YOU ALMOST GOT ME!!! (i’m a sucker for exes to lovers idk and i’ve been reading a lot of rooster fics so i might be a little bias right now) but i’m still team jake over here for this character. anyways!!! this chapter is one of my favorites!!! i think you closed their relationship really well and leave her ready for the future with hangman!!! i love it, it’s perfect!!!

“You fight the urge to sneak up on him from behind and slide your hands down the front of his chest around to his back and press your body against his. It’s odd, acknowledging that the urge is still there, even after the events of last night. You’ll always care for him though. That urge might always exist.” THAT URGE MIGHT ALWAYS EXIST?????? break my heart, throw it off a cliff…

“Maybe your love for him will always eclipse your disappointment.” oh this one hits deep.

“Since when are you the purveyor of spontaneity and surprise?”

“He hums. “Seeing you again reminded me how nice surprises really are.” this line!!!!!! how dare he!!!! how dare you!!!! butterflies on my stomach!!!! jake stand up!!!!! do something!!!!

“You’d released Bradley. You should feel lighter, but you don’t. Something is still tugging at your chest and in that moment you realize it was never Bradley pulling the invisible string. It’s been Jake this entire time.” AND THIS BROUGHT ME RIGHT BACK TO JAKE!!! BEAUTIFUL!!! yep!! he’s it for her!!! go get him!!!

the way you wrote the yearning for the previous relationship with rooster was incredible!!! the feelings were so vivid!!!! you’re really good at setting a scene and them taking us there and making us experience everything. i can’t wait to for the future last parts, i already miss the interactions with jake!!!

HEARTFIRST {pt. VIII}

– In which a trip down to the San Diego Naval base  to visit an old friend turns out to be more than a simple reunion, as the reader finds herself in the presence of an infuriating, cocky blonde and an old flame she thought had long fizzled out. –

Jake “Hangman” Seresin x Reader, Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw x Reader

Word Count: 2.5k

Contains: Bi!Natasha | Reader is old friends with Natasha “Phoenix” Trace | Reader has a past with Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw” | Reader has a lot of feelings about Jake “Hangman” Seresin

Warnings: more angst this time around ya'll, explicit language

A/N: Part eight! I low-key love this part & I really hope y'all do too! My apologies, in advance :) Tag-list is at the bottom, go ahead and send me a message or reply to this post if you'd like to be added for future parts of this story. Most importantly, I hope you enjoy! Also hope you forgive me for the angst here lol <3 If you'd like to go back and read part 1, you can do that here. Or, read part 2. Or 3. Or 4. Or 5. Or 6. Or 7. Also, check out my playlists for the dynamic of each guy & reader, you can do that here: Hangman x Reader & Rooster x Reader

...

8:

The walk across base was longer than you anticipated. Not by distance, though. The air hangar where Bradley holed up after training wasn’t actually that far from the common rooms. The weight of your heart that dropped and landed somewhere between your chest and stomach makes every step ache, though, your feet heavy as you cross the street towards the large metal building. Natasha told you where to find him after you sent a text labeled “urgent” her way as you stormed away from Jake. Part of you wishes that you didn’t, wishes you would have thought about it for half a second before walking out on him. He looked hurt, after all, but you had to see Bradley. Foolish as it was, you had to make sure he’s okay. He might not even want to see you, might have nothing to say to you – you’re not even sure you can stand to see him after last night. Regardless, you had to try and figure it out. You can’t leave without knowing. 

It’s a quiet evening on base, the tension palpable in the air, the silence washing over you as you stumble out of the impending night and into the air hangar. The scent of oil and jet fuel fills your nose, your stomach churning in an unconscious response. A familiar tune plays faintly in the hangar, echoing off the metal walls, and you hum along quietly to yourself as you pad across the concrete floors in search of Bradley. 

You cross behind the small jet sitting in the middle of the hangar, admiring its glory, stopping briefly in front of an open electrical panel. Bradley’s soft humming mixes with yours, pulling your attention from the plane. You step away and continue making your way around, your eyes landing on him. Bradley sits at his work bench on the opposite side of the hangar, tinkering with tools you can’t name. He rarely looked up while working, getting lost in the tools and parts, a fine line settling between his brows as he pieces together the puzzle he’d made for himself. You sigh, taking in the sight of him from behind: his broad shoulders strained underneath his black t-shirt as he works, his light brown hair flecked with gold as the setting sun casts him in the few remaining minutes of light. You fight the urge to sneak up on him from behind and slide your hands down the front of his chest around to his back and press your body against his. It’s odd, acknowledging that the urge is still there, even after the events of last night. You’ll always care for him though. That urge might always exist. 

Looking over your shoulder out the garage door, you spy the sun halfway through its descent in the sky, painting the base in a golden orange hue, shadows stretching over the concrete outside. It’s something to behold. You breathe in and let your eyes fall shut for a moment. Birds call to one another in the darkening sky, inviting one another home for the evening, returning to their beds for the night. You consider for a moment calling Bradley away from his work, asking him to return home with you, but you remain in your spot, knowing he won’t return your call. So, why do you secretly hope he does? You don’t want him to come with you, do you? You’re upset with him, aren’t you? Maybe not. Maybe your love for him will always eclipse your disappointment. You came here to check in on him, after all. Or, was that really all? Maybe you’re hoping for more and maybe that’s foolish, especially with Jake on the other side of the door.

“I know you’re there,” Bradley says, breaking the silence. You turn back and find him spun around in his seat, wiping his hands on a stained white towel, his eyes intent on you. He doesn’t smile. Neither do you. 

“You caught me,” you reply, holding your hands up in innocence. He cracks a small smile at your gesture and your heart pulls at your chest. “What are you working on?” 

Bradley sighs, rising from his seat and tossing the rag onto the workbench. His brows knit together as he looks from his tools to you. He shrugs and tucks his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “You want to talk about the electrical panel of an old F-15?” 

“Well, I thought we might ease into the other stuff…”

“I didn’t think you’d come looking for me.” 

“Why’s that?” 

“I figured you wouldn’t want to see me after last night.” 

“I admit, it’s a little harder to recognize you without that blonde woman all over you.” The words feel like venom on your tongue and you watch them cut him, his lips flattening into a thin line. Restraint is difficult for you today, it seems. You sigh, not quite regretting the words, but not proud of them, either. 

“Okay, I deserve that.” He shifts his weight from one foot to another, crossing and then uncrossing his arms in the same breath. He sighs, running a hand roughly along his jawline. The action is familiar to you, a physical manifestation of his discontent. “You’re mad. I get it, I don’t expect you to forgive me.” 

“I can never stay mad at you, Bradley, that’s the problem.” It’s quiet for a moment, crickets chirping loudly in the distant night. You watch as Bradley’s face softens as he takes in your words, a wave of relief washing over him. You’re not finished, though. Taking a breath, you gain the courage to continue. “Why’d you do it?”  

“I don’t know.” 

“Bradley,” you breathe, shaking your head. “You have to be honest with me. I mean, we have to be honest with each other now. Please.”

He sucks in a breath, his eyes dropping to the floor. “She works there – at the Hard Deck. We’ve flirted a handful of times over the years and she came onto me last night. I didn’t push her away because I was scared.” 

“Scared?” 

He nods. “And upset.” 

You look at him as he reconnects his eyes with yours, confusion apparent in your gaze. 

Sighing, he continues. “Scared to get close to you again because of this mission. I don’t know what’s gonna happen out there. If I get picked, I don’t know if I’ll come back.” 

You choke on your breath, the air hitching in your throat. The gravity of the situation hits you, knocking at your chest, but you remain standing in your place, curious to hear him out. He watches you intently, his eyes softening as he sees the realization hit you. 

“Upset because,” he begins, “because I saw you with Hangman.” 

“Bradley, I-” 

“Not just last night. I saw you the first night, kissing him, before you knew I was here. You looked happy, care-free. I hadn’t seen you like that in a long time, so I left you alone. I thought, maybe, I could let you be happy, you know, let you have your fun. And then we ran into each other the next night and I then knew I couldn’t.” 

You’re not sure what to say, but thankfully Bradley continues on. 

“And then he kept looking at you.” 

“Hangman?” 

Bradley just nods.

“And that bothered you?”

“Still does… but then you smile back at him,” he says, “and I know I’m just fucking everything up and pushing you away, pushing you into him, but I don’t know what to do.” 

A tinge of pain strikes your chest hearing him reference exactly what Hangman said to him earlier in the day. He’d clearly taken it to heart, just as you suspected. A feeling of guilt follows, knowing you heard everything. 

You take a step into him, curious to see if he’ll move. To your surprise, he does, taking a step towards you, too. Your heart thumps loudly against your chest as you pull him in for an embrace, wrapping your arms around his middle, your hand rubbing his back, working to soothe him. He relaxes under your touch, exhaling a heavy breath. Your head fits perfectly under the curve of his chin, his head resting in the soft nest of your hair. 

“You don’t have to know what to do, Bradley. But you have to know what you want.” 

Silence feels the space between you, the song playing from the radio in the corner of the room seeming to grow in volume. He hums something low, his chest vibrating against you. The song is familiar, one you know he loves. Bradley starts to sway, his right hand staying in its place behind your back while the left skims your skin as he moves to lace his fingers through yours, holding your arms up at a loose ninety degree angle. You shake your head as he sings along quietly to the music. You look up at him, but he’s already looking at you, his expression soft, his eyes on your lips.

“I want to dance,” he sighs. “I love this song.” 

“I meant about us, Bradley.” 

“I know.” He spins slowly as the chorus of the song hits, pulling you closer to him. “Right now, I want us to dance.” 

“And what about later?” you press, steadying yourself against his chest. 

“Do we have to have a plan?” 

You nod. “A good plan prevents mishaps.” 

“They also are the killer of spontaneity and surprise.” 

“Since when are you the purveyor of spontaneity and surprise?” 

He hums. “Seeing you again reminded me how nice surprises really are.” 

“Bradley,” you whisper, shaking your head as he continues to sway along to the music. Looking up at him, into those enchanting brown eyes as he speaks such magic, you could choose to stay here with him forever. The sun is almost set now, shadows of the night casting across his face, highlighting the faded scars marking his left cheek. You reach up with your free hand and run your fingers across them.

“What are you thinking?” he asks, interrupting your private thoughts. “What do you want?” He spins you out of his grasp as the song fades out. For a moment, your fingers slip through his, but he catches you just in time, twirling you back into him. This time, he wraps his arms around you as your back is pressed against his front. He hugs your waist, dipping his head to rest in the crook of your neck. His breath is warm against the exposed skin underneath your ear. Lost in a haze of him, your eyes fall shut as you breathe him in.

“I want things to be different this time,” you begin. “But I can’t change it by myself.” 

He sighs, “I can’t change the job, you know that. I don’t know how much I can change.” 

You open your eyes now, your gaze landing on the far corner of the room with no real focus, your eyes blurry. Your stomach flips at his words, the sting no different than when he said them the first time two years ago. 

Swallowing hard, you open your mouth to say something, but you’re cut off by Bradley’s gentle gasp.

“What’s this?” he asks, lifting his head from your neck to brush his fingers through your hair, pushing the strands aside to get a better look. Your heart drops into your stomach, your breath catching in your throat. 

“Nothing,” you lie. Flinching, you lift your hand to your neck, covering the mark Jake gave you last night. You’d totally forgotten. 

“What was that thing you said about honesty earlier?” He releases his grip on your waist and you spin around to face him, sighing. 

“It’s from last night,” you admit. “From Jake.” 

Bradley sucks in a breath. You think about explaining everything, telling him that what happened with Jake didn’t go any farther than this mark on your skin. Something stops you, though. What’s happening between you and Jake doesn’t involve Bradley. That was a decision you made and though it might have started in spite of Bradley, that didn’t mean he was entitled to know. After all, you’re here with Bradley, not Jake. You’re asking him to change, not Jake. Shouldn’t that be enough?

“What does he want?” Bradley asks, breaking the silence. 

You look up at him. “I don’t know. I came to you.” 

“What if I can’t give you what you want?”

“Then I think I should give you your sweatshirt back.” 

He shakes his head. “Keep it.” His voice is soft as he speaks, as if the undeniable truth of the fate of the two of you is just starting to hit him. “Just don’t light it on fire this time, hmm?” He raises an eyebrow, his lips lifting into a half-smile. 

“I promise,” you reply, wrapping your arms around him. He looks taken aback, but he doesn’t stop you, wrapping his arms around you, too. His arms are strong around your waist and you breathe him in deeply, working to commit the smell of his cologne to memory. For a moment you think about kissing him, one last time, but you know you can’t. You shouldn’t. It’s bittersweet, this moment. But for once, you feel in control, saying what you need. This decision isn’t just his, it’s yours, too. 

“So is this goodbye, then?” 

You look up at him, admiring the cutting edge of his jaw from below before your eyes find his.

“It’s ‘see you later’, Bradshaw,” you say, swallowing hard to hold back the tears threatening to escape. “After the mission at the Hard Deck – your friends are my friends now, remember?” 

He laughs lightly, nodding. “I’ll look forward to it.” 

The feeling of his lips on your cheek are the last thing Bradley leaves you with. As much as you wanted to stay, you couldn’t. He offered to drive you back to your room, but you couldn’t drag out your goodbye any longer. You untangled yourself from him and shared one last embrace before you left the hangar and wandered out into the cold night. 

You’d released Bradley. You should feel lighter, but you don’t. Something is still tugging at your chest and in that moment you realize it was never Bradley pulling the invisible string. It’s been Jake this entire time. 

Natasha was right: you had to see him through. You had to know what he wanted – why he came to see you earlier – but it’s anyone’s guess if he’ll see you now. Not likely after you left him for Bradley, after you accused him of being the villain. Sighing, you turn your head up to the dark sky and breathe in the night, the scent of salt water and damp sand filling your lungs, cleansing you from the inside out. 

...

Tag List: @arianna-bradshaw @n3ssm0nique @blue-aconite @supernaturaldawning @revolution-starter @saramaple @bittergomez @coco-loco-nut @unluckymonaghan @jointherebellion215 @supernaturalstuff83 @kkrenae @littlebear423 @shadeds-library @malums-trash-can @maggiedanikka  @rintheemolion @tallrock35 @thebeautifullydamnedone @slyther1nserpent 

A/N: Well, here it is, the long(??)-anticipated part 8! I'm honestly really curious to see what y'all think of this and where the story is going...What do we think of Bradley? Of reader? Of Jake? So many things! Also sorry it's kind of bittersweet, but that's kind of my favorite thing ever, sooo. Anywho, I hope y'all enjoy this -- your love on this fic and your kind words mean literally the world to me and these fics are all I can give in return <3333

03/10/22: MAY WRITING FOR ROOSTER EVERYBODY CHEERED I CHEERED I CRIED I LAUGHED I GOT SHOT HAD EPIPHANIES!!!!! sweet may, i will never get tired of saying how much i absolutely ADORE your writing. it’s so special, i don’t know exactly WHAT IT IS ABOUT IT, but there’s something here or a combination of factors idk i just adore it i would read your grocery list!!!!!! anyways this was adorable and i had to highlight my favorite parts because 😭❤️‍🩹

“You can’t help it - you laugh. It’s a sound that punches from somewhere deep inside of you, that comes with a certain amount of relief. That echoes through the darkness of your hotel room, bounces off the ceiling and back into the shadows.” bounces off the ceiling and BACK INTO THE SHADOWS. HELLO??? POETRY???

“Don’t laugh at me.” 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

“By all means, Bradley could be a star in an 80s porno, what with the mustache and those Hawaii shirts. And the embarrassing dirty talk.” stop i love him!!!

“What you hadn't exactly planned on, though, is that your boyfriend, apparently, is really, really bad at phone sex.” STOP IT’S HIS FIRST TIME HE’S TRYING 😭😭😭😭 POOR ROOSTER

“You’re really good at dirty talk in person.”

He’s quiet for so long you think maybe he’s hung up. When you draw the phone away to glance at the screen, you miss half his sentence.

“... easier when you’re there,” he’s saying by the time you got the phone back up to your ear, and you can hear the note of uncertainty in his voice. It’s endearing, but then you’re totally whipped for him, so that doesn't say much. “Like this, I just get self-conscious. I don’t know.” EASIER WHEN YOU’RE THERE BECAUSE THEY TRUST EACH OTHER SO MUCH ❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹 (not me absolutely making up headcanons about a BLURB- anywaysssssss)

“Bradley,” you say, and hope your words are as sincere over the phone as they would be in person, “I think you’re the hottest person alive, you know? You’ve sort of ruined me. I get wet when I see an airplane now sometimes. I don’t think there’s anything to be self-conscious about. Just act like I’m right there with you, okay?” NOT HER GETTING TURNED ON BY AIRPLANES SKJCJSJXHHDDHDHDHDDH also: comforting him!!!!!!!! i think you’re the hottest person alive 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲 they’re so cute!!!!

“Another moment of silence, and then he hums an okay, and his voice has reached just that pitch that makes you think the phone should be vibrating. And like. That’ll do it. You shove your hands back into your panties, where you’re still swollen and wet and aching to be touched.” HIS VOICE GOING DOWN AND IT’S ENOUGH TO GET THE BACK ON TRACK I LOVE THIS.

MISS SEASONSBLOOM I MISSED YOU!!!

romeo - "i want you to kiss every inch of my body." with rooster?

your blurbs are always so incredible! congratulations on 1.5k!! 🫶🏻✨ hopefully i’m not too late, i’m awful at time zones as well 😅

♡ pairing ; rooster x reader

♡ wc ; 600

♡ warnings ; 18+ only, minors do NOT interact; explicit language; phone sex; this is really sort of silly

♡ note ; anon I’m sorry, i read that dialogue prompt and it sort of made me laugh??? so then this was born, I apologize.

“I want you to kiss every inch of my body.”

You can’t help it - you laugh. It’s a sound that punches from somewhere deep inside of you, that comes with a certain amount of relief. That echoes through the darkness of your hotel room, bounces off the ceiling and back into the shadows.

Tinny, distorted by the miles and miles between you, Rooster’s voice says, “Don’t laugh at me.”

The comment does what it does most often: It makes you laugh harder.

“I’m sorry,” you say, breathless, giggles cascading in an unsteady stream. “You just… you sound like an 80s porn star, Bradley.”

Bradley harrumphs and you hear sheets shifting, imagine him rolling around on the mattress. “Honey, I don’t think you’ve ever even seen an 80s porno.”

“You don’t know about my porn consumption,” you say, immediately, and then you start laughing again.

By all means, Bradley could be a star in an 80s porno, what with the mustache and those Hawaii shirts. And the embarrassing dirty talk.

“I’m not great at this, am I?”

That stifles your humor. He sounds… not exactly hurt, but a little insecure, maybe. Your heart drops and you back-pedal straight away.

“It’s okay, Bradley,” you rush to say. “We’ve never done this, and I think it’s awkward anyway. This just works better over text, you know?”

It’s true. When Bradley’s gone, most of your correspondence happens via emails or scheduled video calls in computer rooms he shares with other aviators. Which means that most of your sexual endevours during his absence are restricted to your right hand or a vibrator and the wide-ranging expanse of your fantasy.

Now that it’s you gone for a change, though, you gone and Bradley all alone in your bed at home, you’d really wanted to try. See how this thing might play out. What you hadn't exactly planned on, though, is that your boyfriend, apparently, is really, really bad at phone sex.

“It’s funny,” you tell him, shoving your phone between shoulder and chin as you roll over onto your stomach and fold your arms beneath the pillow. The throbbing between your legs has receded to a dull intensity somewhere at the back of your mind, like the tides licking lazily at the shore. “You’re really good at dirty talk in person.”

He’s quiet for so long you think maybe he’s hung up. When you draw the phone away to glance at the screen, you miss half his sentence.

“... easier when you’re there,” he’s saying by the time you got the phone back up to your ear, and you can hear the note of uncertainty in his voice. It’s endearing, but then you’re totally whipped for him, so that doesn't say much. “Like this, I just get self-conscious. I don’t know.”

“Bradley,” you say, and hope your words are as sincere over the phone as they would be in person, “I think you’re the hottest person alive, you know? You’ve sort of ruined me. I get wet when I see an airplane now sometimes. I don’t think there’s anything to be self-conscious about. Just act like I’m right there with you, okay?”

Another moment of silence, and then he hums an okay, and his voice has reached just that pitch that makes you think the phone should be vibrating. And like. That’ll do it. You shove your hands back into your panties, where you’re still swollen and wet and aching to be touched.

And still, you can’t help yourself. You just have to. Biting the insides of your cheek to keep the grin out of your voice, you drawl, “Now. Let’s get back to it, stud.”

“Now who’s the one stuck in an 80s porno?”

22/04/23: GOD, THIS STORY IS JUST SO WONDERFUL!!! i binged through the whole thing this morning and my brain can’t focus on anything else. i have so favorite many parts i wanna properly highlight later but “You stay on my left, and I’ll stay on your right.” REALLY GOT ME!!!

the dynamic between joel and reader is too good to be true, you’re building something wonderful here. i love their interactions so much and the interactions they have with the other characters, like ellie and tommy <3

“Fix her leaky tap my ass,” Tommy muttered, earning him a grunt from Joel.”

and i also love that you made her stand her ground!!! NO DAMSELS IN DISTRESS HERE!!! although there will be a lot of distress to come apparently jefhhshddh

everyone is so in character it’s truly insane like THIS IS ALL CANON TO ME NOW IDC, your attention to detail and their mannerisms and the way the TALK TO EACH OTHER just makes sense and it clicks and it’s perfect.

i send you an anon talking about how much i’m loving the story but it wasn’t enough i need to run my mouth a bit more!!!

reader’s backstory and what we know about her so far, her relationship with cal and everything just brings so much more depth to her and how she is able to connect with joel and WHY THE FIT!!! it’s so well written (as is everything you’re writing) and i think it just makes her such a memorable character.

“Walk of shame,” Cal crooned lovingly from the kitchen table when you returned home. You flicked him off with a laugh, hanging up your coat. “Seriously, do you even live here anymore?” THIS BROUGHT SUCH A STUPID SMILE TO ME LIFE!!!

i’m also fucking loving the SUBPLOT THAT’S HAPPENING I SEE YOU!!! the moment you said the new guy was from “CAN-” i already started to 👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀 and yeah. i don’t trust him. people are going missing. i love the tension it’s bringing to the story and to the scenery that is jackson, because in most fics i’ve been reading it’s almost like a safe haven (which i get and it fits if a story is like that) but i just love your twist on it!!! and i’m so excited to see where it leads everything.

in summary: this is definitely one of the best joel fics i’ve ever read (and just one of the best fics in general) and i’m be so so so excited for the next chapters!!!

under the night | part four

summary: joel can't always be in control

pairing: joel miller x f!reader, set in jackson after the end of tlou part I

warnings/tags: [18+ only, minors dni] language, sex, angst, jealousy, immature/possessive!joel, canon typical violence [infected feature], violence, injury/blood, vomit, hurt/comfort, and so on and so forth

word count: 9k

a/n: teeing things up for the bigger story arc here, and i'd like to clarify this is not a damsel in distress story lol you'll see

part three

The patrolmen in Jackson were dedicated. Every morning, on a rotational basis, a group of them ventured out past the gates of the settlement and explored set routes. They took down infected; they searched for essential items like soaps and medicines; but most all, they kept the town safe. Admittedly, when you first heard them called patrolmen you’d rolled your eyes, knowing damn well there were multiple women doing the job. But Tommy had just shrugged amiably, assuring you that those women weren’t bothered with the title.

That morning in particular, Joel and Tommy were scheduled to do a routine sweep of what they called the “south patrol”. Joel had never complained about how quickly he fell into the job upon his arrival in Jackson. It made sense to Tommy and Maria that he would join the team, considering the vast experience and knowledge he’d acquired in his year roaming cross country with Ellie. Never once had he begrudged his brother for being given a job and a place to live, and a warm home to sleep in.

Until, that is, he had to leave you in his bed for the sake of a fucking patrol.

“Fuck Tommy,” Joel grumbled into your neck. You laughed sleepily, pushing him off you.

“Get out of here, Joel,” you mumbled unconvincingly, rolling over to shove your head back into the pillows. It was earlier than you would’ve chosen to wake up, but you knew there was no hope of drifting back to sleep with the way the sun shone through his large bedroom window.  With a huff, he was getting out of bed, and you listened drowsily to the sound of the shower running, and then to the rustling of him pulling his clothes on.

When a silence settled over the room, you risked opening your eyes a crack, only to see Joel watching you from the doorway.  He stared forlornly, his eyes raking over your naked torso before you yanked the blanket back up to cover yourself.

“You’re makin’ this real hard for me you know,” he said, his forearm propped up against the doorframe. 

You cracked a smile, and let your eyes shut slowly, listening to the sounds of his boots padding softly down the stairs.

A week had passed since your first night together, and it was true that you and Joel struggled to spend more than one consecutive night apart. Laying in his bed, surrounded by the smell of him, you remembered the day after like you were experiencing the moment all over again.

The knock at your front door had come after 10pm, and you’d startled at the sound, wondering who would be bothering you so late. Cal had been out at Louisa’s, so you’d tentatively walked over to the door, opening it just a crack to glance out, and then tugging it open swiftly upon seeing Joel standing on your doorstep. 

“Hey there,” he’d offered a tense smile, eyes flicking down to your feet and then back up to hold your gaze.

You gripped Joel’s pillows and remembered the way he’d stepped inside your home, asking if you were alone.

“I can’t stop thinking about it. About the way you sounded… the way you felt. Can’t get you out of my damn head.”

You were drunk on each other, on the intimacy. Both enveloped in these new and devastatingly consuming feelings for one another that you were finally able to express. In the entire week, you’d only spent one night away from one another, because you had stood your ground and admitted you needed to spend some time with Cal.

From Joel’s bed, you listened to the sounds of Ellie messing around downstairs in the kitchen, no doubt trying to make herself something edible for breakfast. After the teenager had caught you leaving the house, you had been shy around her. You didn’t want your relationship to change because things with Joel had. Although Ellie had seemed enthused by the progression, you feared the dynamic would shift between you, so you tried to remain stealthy with your comings and goings from their home.

When you were sure the younger girl had left the house, you took your time with showering, and dressing for the day.

“Walk of shame,” Cal crooned lovingly from the kitchen table when you returned home. You flicked him off with a laugh, hanging up your coat. “Seriously, do you even live here anymore?”

“Fuck off, man,” you rolled your eyes, settling down in the chair opposite him. You accepted a mug of coffee with a grateful nod, and brought the liquid gold to your lips.

He chuckled quietly, pushing his bowl of oats towards you as a peace offering. You stole his spoon and cleared the rest of the food in minutes.

“How are you though?” he asked after a while, his eyes soft and genuine. You admired him, and the way his blonde hair was getting longer, flopping down over his eyes.

“I’m good, Cal,” you assured.

“You look happy,” he squinted at you, the teasing lilt returning to his voice. “You’ve got the glow of someone who’s finally made some fucking friends.”

“Took a leaf out of your book,” you winked.

Your heart felt full. For so many years, you and Cal had been one another’s salvation. You’d relied on each other for survival, for companionship, but amongst it all, there had been stretches of time so dire that you didn’t laugh for weeks at a time. To be sat with him, in your home, somewhere safe like Jackson, and laughing together… even after so many months there, it still struck you sometimes how lucky you were.

It was a few hours later, when you ventured toward the stables to check in on Dot, that you bumped into Tommy and Joel returning from patrol.

The brothers were putting away their saddles when you pushed the gate open.

Tommy greeted you warmly, although his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. Your gaze drifted slowly from him to his older brother, trying to gage the tense atmosphere.

“Hey guys,” you wrapped your arms around yourself, shivering from the bitter weather. Joel leaned against the stable wall, fiddling with the bit in his hands, his eyes hard on Tommy. “Who died?” 

Joel’s eyes snapped to you, his expression grim.

“Woah,” you said lowly. “What the fuck, did someone actually die?”

“We found a body out there,” Tommy admitted quietly, stealing a glance over his shoulder to check if anyone else was listening.

“Where?”

His face seemed hesitant, as if he were unsure of sharing much information with you. He rubbed the back of his neck in the same way Joel did when he was trying to find the right words. “A few miles away. A woman. No one from here; we didn’t recognise her.”

“Bitten?” you asked quietly, your breaths short. The idea of anyone being outside those gates made your chest hurt suddenly, as the memories of life out there raced through your brain.

“No,” Joel answered gruffly, and you looked at him. “It must’ve been raiders, but the snowfall last night means there wasn’t much for us to do by means of tracking them.”

“We’re going out again tomorrow,” Tommy butt in firmly, staring at his older brother. “I want this shit figured out.”

You didn’t know what made you say it, but the words tumbled from your mouth. All fear forgotten, you blurted, “Let me come with you.”

“What?” Joel huffed sharply, glaring at you. “Fat chance.”

You scowled in his direction, looking at Tommy. “I lived out in the open for years, I can help you with tracking, even through the snow.”

Joel ground out your name, his eyes flashing with a warning that you couldn’t quite decipher.

“She has a point Joel,” Tommy held his hand up towards his brother, stopping the interruption he knew was coming. “Plus, we could use the extra pair of hands. Someone to watch our six.”

You would have never admitted it, but Tommy was right. The concern you felt for Joel all of a sudden was an unwelcome, painful feeling. After the past week, the idea of him going out past the gates made your throat tighten. You wanted to be out there with them, watching their six – keeping him safe.

“I don’t like it,” is all Joel said, eyes staring at the ground. “We can take Jesse.”

He’d rather have a 19-year-old kid on patrol with them, than you?

“Fuck, Jesse. I’ll be here tomorrow morning at 7,” you told Tommy, who nodded once.

“We should get going,” Joel pushed off the wall, and you looked to him in confusion. “I promised you I’d fix that leaky tap in your kitchen.” You didn’t remember ever having a conversation about your kitchen tap, but you nodded slowly anyways, sparing a glance in Dot’s direction before surmising that you’d check in on the horse properly in a few days.

“Fix her leaky tap my ass,” Tommy muttered, earning him a grunt from Joel. He put his hand on the small of your back and encouraged you out of the stables, leaving Tommy laughing as he finished packing up their equipment. 

Walking down the street in the direction of your house, you braced yourself for Joel’s frustration. You could tell he was tense in the stables, and unhappy with your decision. But you couldn’t help the way anxiety ticked away in your chest. Nothing good comes from wanting. Yet there you were, with Joel so close finally, and a reminder had been served to you that he could be taken away so fucking easily. Letting people in meant opening yourself up to pain, and you were suddenly terrified by how fast things were moving between you two; how much he meant to you after a single week of being anything more than friends.

“Joel,” you started quietly.

“We’ll talk about it later,” he said quickly, squeezing your shoulder before lowering his hand once again to rest on your lower back. You nodded slowly, glancing around the street and noticing Rosie Paulson, a girl around Ellie’s age, staring at the pair of you from her front porch. Instinctively, you brushed off Joel’s hand, putting a wider berth between you.  

“That Paulson girl is staring at us like we’re naked,” you explained under your breath, walking faster.

“Nosy fucking kids,” Joel grunted in response, not even glancing in the girl’s direction.

You remembered the impression you’d gotten of Joel when you first arrived in Jackson; that cold, private person who kept to himself. The other people in the town saw the same in him, and you knew it would’ve been cause for curiosity; for them to suddenly spot him walking around town with you by his side.

Your house came into view, and you started to chuckle. “So, what’s all this leaky tap business, Miller?”

He gave a short laugh and looked at you from the corner of his eye. “Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

“Needed an excuse to get you alone.”

You barked out a laugh and led him quickly up the stairs to the front door, unlocking it hastily. Before you were fully inside, his hands were on you, prying the zip of your jacket down.  He kicked the door shut behind him with a slam, and pushed you up against it, his fingers pressing against the skin underneath your shirt. All your anxieties blew away in the wind when you felt his hands on your body.

“Fuck,” you gasped in shock. “Your hands are fucking freezing.”

“Sorry, sorry,” he mumbled into your mouth, pressing his lips to your urgently. “Help me warm ‘em up.” 

Putting your hands on his chest, you pushed him off you. “C’mon,” you encouraged, leading him to your bedroom. It was a painful dichotomy; fearing getting so close to him, so quickly, and yet not being able to keep your damn hands off him. When you clicked the bedroom door closed, you turned to find him standing at the edge of your bed, watching you with dark eyes.

“I really didn’t want to leave this morning,” he spoke lowly. “Wanted to stay in those sheets all wrapped up in you.” Through the admission he seemed somewhat shy, a flush still rising in his cheeks when he bared his feelings to you so honestly. Though you’d spent your nights together, no conversation had been had about what exactly you were doing. You’d admitted you liked being near each other, but not much else. And you decided you were okay with not knowing; if it meant you got to have Joel in any capacity.

You hummed, stepping forward to place your hands on his cheeks, and running your fingers through the coarse bristles of his beard. He leaned in and kissed you gently, his tongue swiping along your bottom lip before pressing eagerly into your mouth. You sighed softly, breathing in the scent of him. Your heart still raced like it was the first time.

You stripped each other’s clothes off hastily, until you were clad in nothing but your underwear, and cold fingers didn’t matter anymore because your skin had grown hot with desire. 

You pushed gently on his chest and when the back of his calves hit the bed, he fell onto it with a huff of surprise. He shuffled backward until his head hit the pillows, and you crawled up to straddle him. Your fingertips trailed lightly over his skin and through the soft smattering of hair on his chest.  

His eyes flashed dark with desire, and he grit his teeth. You felt powerful astride him, with your hands pressing down on his shoulders to keep him pinned to your bed.

“This how you want it?” he rasped.

“What can I say,” you smirked. “Save a horse, ride a cowboy.”

He let out a sharp laugh, but it was cut off by a grunt when you ground down against him. You sighed at the feeling of him pulsing against your core, only two thin pieces of fabric separating you now. His eyes closed involuntarily, face relaxing at the feeling of you rubbing against him. But then they snapped open, trained on you again. You remembered what he’d said during your first time together. I don’t want to miss a single thing.

One of his hands left your waist and drifted between your thighs. He pulled your underwear to the side, and you exhaled heavily as one of his thick fingers dipped between your folds.

“Christ,” he exhaled. “You’re wet already, baby.”

“Can’t help it,” you whimpered, the pet name causing a flood of heat to rip through you. Your stomach tensed as he swirled his fingertip over your entrance, and spread the wetness upward, finally making contact with your pulsing clit.  He drew light circles around it at first, enjoying the way you held your breath at the feeling, and then would sharply gasp for air as he changed his rhythm.

“That feel good?” he asked, watching your expressions.

“So good,” you breathed, eyebrows pulled together tightly as you grinded against his hand.

He slipped a finger inside you, sighing huskily at the feeling of your walls tightening around him. You loved the sounds he made when his hands were on you; as if he would die happy just from having had the chance to touch you. After a moment, he pushed a second digit inside, curling them against your walls and scissoring them, stretching you out for him.

You kissed him messily, teeth nipping at his bottom lip, before running your lips down his jugular. You tried to stop yourself from leaving marks in your wake, although you knew Joel wouldn’t be bothered.

“Fuck Joel,” you huffed, lips pausing on his skin when his fingers hit a particularly sensitive spot inside you. “Stop.”

His hand stilled instantly, eyes searching your face in confusion.

“I need to fuck you,” you said firmly, pushing his hand away from your body and leaning back to tug your panties down your legs. Joel followed suit, desperately yanking his briefs down his legs before grabbing your hips to pull you back over him. Unintentionally, when you rested above him, the head of his cock nudged against your folds, and he moaned deeply.

“God,” you sighed, reaching down to grip him in your hand. You pushed his head through your folds, letting your slick coat his already weeping tip.

He groaned your name, fingertips digging into your hipbones. “Love how wet you get for me.”

You whined and couldn’t help but press your entrance down onto his head, longing to feel him inside of you. But common sense flared in the back of your mind, and you reached over desperately to grab a condom from the bedside table. Shuffling down to sit on his thighs, you ripped open the foil with your teeth, enjoying the way he stroked his cock and watched you with hooded eyes.

You knocked his hand away to roll the latex down his length, giving him a firm tug once it was on. Not wasting a second, he lined himself up to your entrance, and you sunk down onto his length.

You gasped, eyes shutting instinctively. For all the nights you’d spent together that week, it was the first time you’d ridden him. The position helped him hit a spot so deep inside that it had you seeing stars behind your eyelids.

“God damn it,” Joel spat, eyes rolling back in his head. One of his hands gripped the blanket, and the other held your waist in a vice grip.

“Shit Joel,” you whimpered. “You’re so deep like this, f-fuck.” Your breathless tone drove him crazy, and he begged you to move.

“You can take it, darlin’,” he encouraged. “Show me how well you can take me.”

You clenched around him, your slick dripping down and coating both of your thighs. Slowly, you lifted up before dropping back down, crying out as he instantly hit that spot inside of you again. Hungry for more, you got to work; lifting up and grinding down in a beautiful rhythm that had him making filthy sounds beneath you, reaching up to pinch and tug on your nipples. 

“Look so fucking good like this,” he grunted, his eyes flicking between your face and the way your tits bounced with every movement.

You grabbed his hands and shoved them into the pillows beside his head, leaning over him so he could suck one of your nipples into his mouth. He moaned into your skin, nipping gently at the painfully tight buds. With your torso bent forward, your clit brushed deliciously against the coarse hair at his base, and you couldn’t help but just grind yourself against him for a moment, letting out soft whines.

“That’s it, baby,” he groaned into your chest. “Fuck yourself against me.”

With the sensation of him deep inside you, and the friction on your clit, an orgasm hit you out of nowhere. You cried out in shock, gripping his shoulders as your body bowed into his chest.

“Fuck,” he yelled into your skin, his hands wrapping around your back to hold you to him. You’d come to learn that your orgasm was often what pushed him over the edge, and could tell he was holding back, waiting.

Your body was shaking as the pleasure rolled through you, and Joel’s mouth sponging kisses across your chest did nothing to lessen the intensity of the moment. As your body relaxed, he began nudging his hips upwards, making you whimper.

“Not done with you yet, baby,” Joel rasped, his fingers dragging down your back as he fucked up into you. He was so thick, so heavy, inside you, and even in the minutes after an orgasm, you had to steel yourself in preparation for another. With all your strength, your pushed herself back into a seated position.

“You’re too far away,” he grunted, attempting to push himself up so you were chest to chest.

“Uh uh,” you tutted breathlessly. Your hands were on his chest, holding him against the bed. “Thought you didn’t wanna miss a thing, Miller? Watch me.”

His eyes flicked down from your face to your chest, your stomach, all the way down to where you were connected. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his neck was flushed red. You could only imagine that you looked the same way, as your chest heaved with exhausted breaths.

“So beautiful,” he breathed out, and your cheeks burned. The moment was almost too intense. Post orgasm, with him deep inside of you, saying words you struggled to accept about yourself.

“Fuck me,” you begged him, and he obliged.  

His grip on your waist was bruising, using his strength to hold you still while he thrust up into you. You were sure there would be fingerprint shaped marks on you the next day, and the thought made you shiver.

“Y’feel so,” he grunted. “So fuckin’ good for me.”

You leaned back and rested your hands on his thighs for leverage, moaning lowly at the new, tighter angle.

“Oh,” you sighed. “Oh, you’re gonna make me cum again, Joel.”

He cursed loudly, his rhythm breaking for a second before starting up again at a faster rate. “C’mon,” he encouraged, dark eyes bearing into yours. Holding his gaze, a shiver ran down your spine as you noted a hint of frustration. Joel was being rough, pounding into you with no mercy, desperate for you to cum again. It seemed the tension from the conversation in the barn hadn’t disappeared entirely.

Choked sobs fell from your mouth involuntarily as he bounced you on top of him. His teeth were gritted as he snarled, “Want to feel you cum all over my cock. I know you can.”

His words were enough to send you over the edge a second time, and a guttural cry tore out of your throat as you toppled into your orgasm. Joel followed close behind, his hips snapping messily into yours over and over again, while he let out rough curses and mumbles of your name.

Heavy breaths filled the air around you as you collapsed onto his chest. You left feather soft kisses along his collarbones, your eyes closed in exhaustion. He gripped your waist and spun you slowly so your back hit the pillows, before pulling himself out of you.

“I meant it,” he said a short while later. You’d cleaned up and were laying in bed, hands stroking each other’s skin absentmindedly. You looked at him in confusion. He reached out and traced a finger along the scar on your cheek. “You’re so beautiful.”

You cringed quickly, tucking your face into the pillow.

“Don’t do that,” he pleaded in a whisper. “Don’t hide from me.”

“It’s hard,” you muttered, still not meeting his eye-line. “This all feels very… intense.”

He nodded slowly, eyes watching you warily. “Is that… bad?”

“It’s not bad,” you rushed out. “It’s just different. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a… a you.”

“Long time for me too,” he said. You stared at each other for a moment, not saying anything. Finally, you leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to his lips.

“I need to eat something,” you mumbled into his mouth, eager to change the subject. “Or I’m gonna pass out.”

“Can’t have that. Need you to keep your energy up,” he replied, his palm gripping your ass quickly. “Can’t have you tirin’ out on me.”

You scoffed, jumping off the bed to tug on a pair of underwear and a random singlet.

As you walked down the hallway into the kitchen, he called out, “I’m hungry too!” You replied with a laugh, and a “yeah yeah!”

You rifled through the kitchen cabinets for a few minutes and contemplated heating up a can of soup, until your eyes landed on the bag of oranges you’d picked up a few days beforehand.

You grabbed one with an eager smile, and began pealing the rind over the sink, not noticing the front door opening in your periphery.

“Jesus, aren’t you cold, freak?”

“Shit!” you jumped, almost dropping the fruit. “You scared me.”  

Cal was leaning against the kitchen doorway, staring at you in incredulity.

“Not my fault you’re wandering around in your underwear with your head up in the clouds,” he was laughing.

“Shh, shh,” you hushed him with a snort. “Joel’s here.”

“Oh shit,” Cal said, eyes wide with mischief. “Grumpy old Joel Miller in our house?”

“Give it a rest,” you rolled your eyes, starting up on your peeling again. “How was your day?”

“It was good,” he trailed off, eyes flicking down the hall over your shoulder. You could hear Joel’s footsteps approaching the kitchen, but held focus on the orange, tearing white strands off the juicy flesh. Your cheeks flushed at what the two of you must’ve looked like; half dressed, with messy hair and tired eyes.

“Hey Joel,” Cal nodded politely, raising his hand in a wave.  

Joel settled directly behind you, and your eyes went wide when you felt his bare chest press against your back, and his hand come down to land on your stomach. His long fingers splayed against you, pinkie resting dangerously close to the band of your underwear.

“Howdy,” he said quietly. His thumb toyed with the hem of your singlet, brushing underneath the fabric along your bare skin. You turned your head slightly to see Joel out of the corner of your eye, but he was staring directly at Cal. Your heart started to beat a little faster at the sudden awkward tension in the air. What was he doing?

Joel’s face was devoid of emotion, even the skin between his eyebrows was uncharacteristically smooth. But everything his face hid, his body language screamed. His knee brushed against the back of your leg, and where the contact would normally have made you shiver, you found herself stunned into silence by what you realised was a clear display of possessiveness. Joel was marking his territory in front of Cal, and you wanted no fucking part in it.

“How are you?” Cal asked warily, clearly confused by the dynamic between the two of you.

“I’m grand,” Joel said with a tone of finality, and no indication of wanting to continue the conversation. Your brain flashed back to the first time you’d met him, and what you’d thought; rude motherfucker. The adoration you’d felt for the man only minutes before was long gone, replaced with a burning frustration at his behaviour.

The silence was agonising, but you didn’t know how to break it. Cal fidgeted, eyes glancing at Joel’s hand before looking to the floor uneasily. Your stomach twisted as Joel leaned down a pressed a chaste kiss to the side of your neck. Cal cleared his throat into his elbow and finally muttered something about heading over to Louisa’s. Willing yourself to move, you gripped Joel’s hand and pried it off you. You turned and stalked back towards the bedroom; the orange forgotten on the counter.

When he entered the room behind you, you spun around angrily. “What the hell was that?”

“What?” he asked innocently, hands raised in the air.

“You practically propped your leg up and pissed on me back there,” you grunted. “Like a dog marking your fucking territory.”

He said your name softly, arms lowering.

“Don’t say my name like that,” you said. “What the hell was that?”

“What, I can’t touch you?” he asked defensively.

“Did you see how uncomfortable he was? Your hand was practically up my shirt!”

“Well good,” he growled, and you paused, mouth falling open. “Maybe I wanted to set the record straight.”

“Set the record…” you stared at him wide eyed. “What the fuck are you talking about, Joel?”

His face relaxed suddenly as he realised how appalled you were by him, and he made a quick step toward you. “Okay, look,” he surrendered, hands reaching out to you. “I’m sorry, okay?”

“Why did you do that?” you pushed, stepping back.

He breathed your name again, his eyes darting to stare at the wall. He gripped his hands together in front of him, cracking his fingers roughly. “Look, I-I can’t help but think about you and him living in this house together sometimes… knowing what I kno-“

“Jesus Christ,” you interrupted, pulling a pair of trousers from the chest of drawers, and beginning to tug them up your legs.  

“Now listen,” he said from behind you. “I’m sorry, but-“

“But what, Joel?” you turned back, zipping your pants. “I was honest with you, before any of this started between us. I told you more about my history, including what happened with Cal, than I have with another person, ever. I trusted you, thought you’d take it at face value. But then here you are, on a weird possessive kick, trying to lay some sort of claim on me in front of him? Cal is like my fucking brother, I told you that.”

“I do trust you, but I doubt it’s the fuckin’ same for him,” he ground out, his face reddening. This wasn’t the soft spoken, kind man you had gotten so close with. He was frustrated and angry, and you didn’t like this side to him. “What am I supposed to think? How do I know that he’s not just holdin’ out hope, waitin’ for you to change your mind?”

It was as though all the tension from the past few hours bubbled up inside of you. The stern words in the barn, Joel thinking he could make decisions for you, stop you from coming on patrol. And now this. If anybody else in Jackson dared to do these things, try to tell you what to do, you’d have their fucking tongue for it.

“Because you’re wrong!” you shouted, unable to help yourself. Your chest was heaving with sharp breaths; the situation astounded you. Is he fucking serious? “And you know what Joel, Cal will always be in my life. He’s been with me for a long time before you, and he’ll be with me for a long time after you. And if you can’t fucking handle that, then I don’t know what to tell you.”

Your mouth had moved faster than your brain, and you regret the phrasing as soon as it came out. But it was too late to take it back, so you steeled your shoulders and held your ground. Joel’s face fell quickly, his mouth turning down in dismay.

After you, you’d said. After you.

His hurt expression made your chest ache, but he cleared his throat and covered it up in a second.

“Well then,” he nodded, bending down to yank his clothes off the floor. He dressed in silence, not looking at you again, before turning and walking out of the room. You watched him leave with wide eyes, tears threatening your water line. Left standing alone in the house, you could only wonder what the fuck had just happened. Maybe you’d been right; wanting never brings anything good.

The nightmares returned that night. After a long week of peaceful deep sleep, the fear was paralysing, and somehow, you’d forgotten just how awful it felt. You slept fitfully, drifting in and out with no reprieve from your own mind.

By the time 6am rolled around, you tore out of bed to start the day. Washing your face in the bathroom, you ran your finger along the scar on your cheekbone, glaring at your reflection. No matter what you did, it would serve as a reminder of how weak you’d been made to feel, all those years ago. You weren’t supposed to be beautiful; you were supposed to be strong.  

It was bitterly cold outside. As you trudged towards the stables to meet Joel and Tommy the wind whipped painfully against your skin. Shoving your hands deep in your pockets, you tried to ignore the feelings of regret you had over pushing so hard to come along on the patrol. The argument with Joel rung in your head on a constant loop, and you cringed to think of how tense things were about to be.

His pained expression flashed through your mind, but you willed it away as quickly as it came. You were angry with him. If he’d just told you how he felt, maybe you would have understood, but instead he acted like a child. You rolled your eyes thinking about it. Maybe it was for the best this had happened early on in your... situation with him.

“Oh, hey!” a voice called suddenly, and your head whipped around to spot the newbie jogging in your direction.

“Lincoln,” you nodded at him. “How’re you settling in?”

“Settling in well,” he grinned, his cheeks rosy from the cold. “Surprised to spot anyone else out and about so early.” You gave him a wry smile, doing your best to be polite. It was too early for small talk, and you’d heard from the girls at the stables just how chatty he could be.

“Headed out on patrol,” you said shortly, sighing quietly when he changed his course of direction and fell into step beside you.

“Oh, wow!” he said, too loud for your tired brain. “I thought I’d heard you worked at the stables?”

You could see the barn at the end of the street. So close.

“I normally do, just helping out Tommy this morning.”

“Well,” he stopped walking, and you found yourself pausing too, reminding yourself to be respectful. “I’ll leave you be. Be careful out there. Never know what kind of madness you might come across outside those gates.”

You stared at him for a second, brain struggling to catch up with his shift in tone. Lincoln’s cheery smile was gone, and his face seemed almost solemn as he gave the warning. 

When you didn’t respond for a moment, he spoke again. “You be safe then.”

“Always am,” you quipped, before turning to stalk towards the stables.

Joel and Tommy were already preparing the horses when you arrived. Tommy gave a friendly wave when he spotted you, beckoning you over.

“Morning, you remember how to use one of these?” he held a rifle out to you. 

“Yeah,” you nodded quickly, stealing a glance in Joel’s direction. He was adjusting the saddle on his horse, and didn’t acknowledge your presence. You shouldered the gun and let out a quick huff of exasperation. Fine.

“Joel saddled Dot up for you,” Tommy said. “We’ll head out in a second.”

Your annoyance waned ever so slightly, and you stared at Joel’s back curiously. He still didn’t turn; whatever he was fiddling with on Percy’s saddle must’ve been pretty damn interesting.

“That’s nice,” you muttered.

“Yeah,” Tommy muttered, gaze flitting awkwardly between the two of you when he noted your disingenuous tone. The contrast from when the three of you were last in the stables together was vast, and the younger Miller’s confusion was palpable. 

Joel didn’t say anything as you mounted your horses and rode out of the gates. You hung back, trailing behind their horses while you gained your bearings outside the walls of the settlement.

Large mountains decorated the scene, dusted so beautifully with snow that it would be picturesque if you weren’t so uneasy. It had been so many months since you arrived in Jackson, and being back outside caused your heart rate to kick up a notch. The landscape was vast, and memories of extensive stretches of time spent wandering aimlessly through the country played in your mind. So many cold winters spent hidden in dilapidated buildings, huddled underneath thin blankets, praying you wouldn’t lose your toes to the cold.

“So, we’re going back along the south patrol,” Tommy called back to you. “Same as what we did yesterday. Don’t worry too much about where we’re going, just follow us. Keep your eyes and ears open for anything strange.”

“Roger that,” you called back.

The three of you rode in silence for the first hour. You didn’t mind it much. Your shoulders were tense as you focused on your surroundings. Your ears were sensitive to the smallest of movements, body twitching at the slightest sounds.

“There she is,” you heard Tommy say up ahead, and your breathing hitched. “Fucking hell, the animals must’ve gotten to her.”

Dot trotted into step beside Tommy’s horse, and with a rolling stomach you looked down and spotted the body.

The dead woman was mangled, gory tears in her flesh clear even through the light smattering of snow that had fallen upon her. Animals had clearly gotten to her through the night, and you cringed to see the blood splattered on the bright white ground around her body. Joel was silent.

The three of you tied your horses to a nearby tree and set off on foot, looking for any signs the raiders might have left behind.

“I’m tellin’ you Tommy, we won’t find anything,” you could hear Joel grumbling under his breath up ahead. “She probably just fucking froze.”

“Let’s just be sure, Joel,” Tommy said firmly.

Joel exhaled heavily, and was turning his head to say something else, when you heard it. it was faint, almost too quiet to notice, but your ears pricked up.

Clicking.

Your feet ground to a halt. “Shut up,” you hissed.

“I beg your par-“ Joel turned to look at you for the first time, but stopped speaking when he saw the alarmed expression on your face.

You held a finger to your lips. Listen, you mouthed. Tommy and Joel shared a brief look, before Tommy gripped your jacket collar and hauled you forward to stand in between them.

“I thought they froze out here in the Winter,” you said quietly, eyebrows furrowed.

“Not all of ‘em,” Joel grunted.

“Alright, we move slowly,” Tommy whispered, eyes darting across their surroundings. “As quiet as possible. There shouldn’t be many, so we’ll sort this fucker out and then get back to the gate.”

“We’re gonna kill it?” you asked, eyes wide. Never in your years in the wild had you actively sought out any infected. When you heard clicking, you went the other way. “We should just head back now.”

“It’s part of the patrol. Gotta clear out any infected we come across,” Tommy told you, eyes apologetic. “You’ll be fine.” You refrained from admitting that it wasn’t you that you were worried about. As much as you and Cal had done your best to avoid them, you’d had to kill plenty of infected in your lives. But you were hit with the sudden realisation that you hadn’t even brought a knife with you. Jesus, I’m out of practice. 

Quietly as possible, you checked that your rifle was loaded, and the three of you walked toward the noise with your weapons raised. Your heartbeat thudded rhythmically in your ears, and the ache of anxiety grew in your chest. The clicking grew louder the further you walked, and your heart stuttered when they finally came into view. Not one, but two.

Your palms were sweaty against the rifle, and you cursed quietly, reaching down to wipe your right hand on the thigh of your pants.

“We’re good,” Joel whispered. You could see him watching you, out of the corner of your eye, but your gaze stayed trained on the duo up ahead. They were close together, twitching and writhing underneath a tall tree a few hundred metres ahead.

The way the creatures transformed with time never ceased to amaze you, in a morbid way. Fungal plates grew out of their heads, hues of bright orange and blue. After a year or so of infection, the fungus had solidified their bodies, making them stronger; more impenetrable. These should be the things that haunted your nightmares.

The three of you crept forward, and the infected were unaware of your presence, until a twig snapped painfully loud under your boot. They let out loud screeches, heads snapping in the direction of the sound.  

You grunted as your right side roughly bumped against Joel’s left, and you realised that you’d both moved to step in front of the other. “Get back,” he barked, staring through the scope on his rifle.

“I got the left,” Tommy shouted, all attempts at stealth thrown out the window. A deafening crack rang out as Tommy shot at one of the clickers. Joel took a shot at the one on the right but growled in frustration when the bullet sizzled just past it. He went to empty the bullet casing and swore when his gun jammed.

You could hear Tommy somewhere to your left, warning you that there was a third infected. Stepping forward, you shot at the one running at you and Joel. The bullet lodged solidly in its torso, but it was too close at that point, and within a second it was on you.

“Fuck,” you yelled, the wind getting knocked from your lungs as you landed on you back.

Your hands pushed at its neck, holding its snapping mouth as far from you as you could. It was snarling and screaming in you face, and white noise rushed in your ears. Its arms flailed, hands swiping viciously towards your face. It landed a heavy blow to the side of your head, and you screamed in pain. A thunderous shot rang out, and a wet sensation splashed across your face. Your head smacked back against the ground as you recoiled, the clicker collapsing above you with its head split open.  

The body was heavy on top of you, and a painful buzzing in your left ear had you grimacing in discomfort. You cupped your ears in attempt to soothe the ache. The weight on top of you finally disappeared, and you took the opportunity to roll onto your side. Warm hands were on your back, your arms, grabbing you.

Joel’s urgent voice finally reached you, calling your name, and you opened your eyes. His knees thudded heavily into the snow beside you, hands gripping the lapels of your jacket and dragging you into a seated position.

You stared at him in a wide-eyed daze. His hands ran over your body frantically, tugging your collar away from your neck to touch your skin, and checking your bare hands. He snapped your name, trying to get your attention. “Are you bit?”

Your face was so wet. As you slowly returned to clarity, it was all you could feel. And in a horrifying moment of realisation, it was all you could taste. The smell of metal and rot had invaded your mouth, your nose. You pushed herself back from Joel just in time to empty the contents of your stomach onto the snow between you.

He gripped your hair at the base of your neck, rubbing your back in short, rough circles. Somewhere far off, you thought you could hear speaking, but it was muffled.

“Is she bit, Joel?” Tommy was saying. Your stomach twisted violently, and you vomited again. When you managed to settle, Joel tugged you up onto your feet, his arm wrapping around your waist.

“Joel?" Tommy urged louder.

“She’s not fucking bit!” Joel yelled, his eyes tight with concern as he wiped the blood off your face with a rag. He walked hastily in the direction of the horses, and when you finally reached them, he tried to get you on his horse with him.

“I can ride,” you mumbled, your own voice sounding muffled.

“Just come wit-“

“I can ride on my own,” you asserted, allowing him to help you mount Dot.

The ride back to the gate was long. Joel rode right next to you, not speaking but never letting you out of his sight. The shock was wearing off, but you felt like you had vertigo; dizziness made you grip the reins tighter, and you prayed internally that you wouldn’t fall off. When the gate finally came into view, you could’ve sobbed from relief.

On Maria’s orders, you weren’t allowed to leave the gate check in point until the settlement’s doctor came and gave the all the clear. Tommy and Maria watched you like a hawk, but you paid them no mind. You were sat on the ground, cradling your aching ear, while Joel made futile attempts to clean up your face. He couldn’t do much though, without warm water. No one said anything. 

“You’ve got a perforated eardrum,” Dr Llewellyn told you, after shining a light into your left ear. It was leaking a clear, blood-tinged fluid that made your skin itch. “I’ll give you some antibiotics to help ward off any infection, but it should heal up on its own within a fortnight or so.”

“Okay,” you nodded slowly, accepting a small bottle of pills. “Thank you.” Considering you were covered in blood and brain matter and dirt, you were surprised by how unfazed Llewellyn appeared.

A low whistle rung out and you turned to look at Tommy. “I’m impressed,” he said quietly. “You held your own out there. We could use someone like you on the patrol team.”

“Tommy,” Joel started, but you interrupted him.

“Can you take me home?” His head swung to look at you and he was nodding quickly, gripping you hand to pull you up off the ground.

He was quiet, on the walk back. It wasn’t out of character, but you could sense a unique solemnity to it. One of his hands was on you at all times, and his head darted around constantly to see if there was anyone on the street who would spot you. Your demeanour would definitely cause alarm, and he wanted to avoid it if possible. The hearing in your left ear was almost entirely muted, and you walked in a daze, wincing at the headache pulsing in your skull.

Cal was still out when you got back, and Joel ushered you into the bathroom. He started the shower and helped you strip out of your ruined clothes. When the water was warm, and you were standing naked in the middle of the room, he turned toward the door.

“Joel,” you whispered, tears brimming on your waterline. As the shock wore off fully, you felt panic flare inside of you again. “Please stay.”

“Of course,” he hushed, putting his hand on your shoulder. His face looked tired, eyes and mouth downturned in concern. “Let’s clean you up, okay darlin’?”

You nodded meekly, allowing him to walk you into the shower and underneath the warm spray. He kicked his shoes and socks off, peeling his clothes off quickly before stepping into the stream of water beside you. Red and brown water ran down your body, and you shut your eyes quickly. You hair was matted thickly to your head, dried blood glueing it to your scalp.

Joel’s hands rubbed water into it, gently working out the tangles until it was clean. When the blood and grime was gone, he shampooed and conditioned it, nudging your head back softly to wash the suds out. You kept your eyes closed, tears still welling in them. The sense of failure and shame bubbled painfully in your chest. Why couldn’t you keep yourself safe? Why did you always get hurt? You felt like a fucking liability.

He pressed a quick kiss to your forehead, signifying that your hair was clean, and began rubbing soap over your body.

“Joel,” you said his name again urgently, voice thick with unshed tears.

“I’m here,” he soothed.

“I need you to check,” you said, voice so low he almost didn’t hear you.

“Check what?” he asked after a moment, his tone steely. Your eyes opened, and a tear rolled down your cheek as you stared at his blank expression. His hands had stopped moving.

“Please, just,” you gulped. “Check for bites. We might’ve missed something.”

 “You’re not fuckin’ bit,” he ground out.

“Please,” you begged, a sob racking through you body. “What if there’s one and we just haven’t seen it? Please.”

“Okay, okay, I’ve got you,” he acquiesced finally, realising that your panic wouldn’t subside until he did this for you.

With painstaking care, he resumed his ministrations along your body. Dragging the bar of soap along your skin, checking for bites on your neck, your back. His fingers traced the length of your arms, down to your fingers. His knees cracked loudly as he crouched beside you, hands brushing down your legs, checking.

When he stood back up, he wrapped his arms around you and tugged you into his chest. “You’re safe,” he murmured in your ear, grip tightening as you cried. “There’s nothing, you’re safe.”

Joel had you wrapped in a blanket and in front of the burning fire in your living room within the hour. He’d rifled through Cal’s room looking for a beanie, and gently tugged the navy hat on your head when he returned.

“He won’t mind I’m sure,” Joel muttered while dropping down onto the ground on your right side. He stared affectionately at how cosy you looked.

“He won’t. We share clothes all the time,” you said softly, gaging his reaction. He nodded slowly, eyes staring into the fire. The moment reminded you so strongly of the night a few weeks prior, when he’d found you wandering Jackson late at night in search of firewood, with a busted face.

“I’m sorry,” he said, the sincerity in his tone surprising you. His gaze held on the flames, but his hand drifted under the blanket to rest on your knee. “I was out of line, and I acted like a jealous kid. I don’t know what came over me.”

You didn’t speak for a moment, mulling his words over in your head. All the anger you’d felt towards him was so foreign now, after your near death experience, but you knew you had to talk about it. The way he’d held you in the shower, cleaned your skin... you weren’t ready be done with him.

“I suppose I’ve been relying on myself for so long,” he continued. “That I gotta … adjust to having other people in the picture. I had to adjust with Ellie, and now with you… I’m adjusting again. And it’s a good change; I want you in the picture.”

“You do?” you asked, wishing he would look at you. His cheeks were red from the warmth of the fire, and he cleared his throat nervously, nodding.

Finally, he turned his head to meet your eye. “I think I’ve wanted you in it since the first time I met you.”

You rolled your eyes, “That’s bullshit, Joel.”

“Okay,” he laughed quietly. “The fourth time I met you, then.”

You stared at each other. For once, you didn’t feel like hiding as his eyes slid over the features of your face, taking you in.

“Cal’s my family,” is all you said.

“And I won’t get in the way of that,” he held your gaze.

“Are you sure?”

He breathed your name. “It terrifies me to admit it but… I want you in any way I can have you. If Cal is your family, then I’m not going to fuck with that. I trust you.”

“He’s happy, you know,” you started, resting your hand on top of his. You chose your words carefully. “That you’re… in my life. He thinks you’re a good person.”

Joel’s eyes softened further, and he had the good grace to appear embarrassed.

“I need to say something though,” you continued, and his face tightened with alertness, hanging on your every word. “After everything that I’ve been through, the way I’ve lived… being in Jackson has brought order back to my life, Joel. And I need that. I need to feel in control of my life, and my decisions. If I want something, like going on a patrol,” his eyes darkened, but he stayed silent. “then I will. And you need to accept that about me. My decisions are my own.”

“They are,” he said firmly, squeezing your knee.

After a beat of silence, you gripped his hand tighter, and admitted, “I want you too. In my picture.”

He nodded, leaning in to rest his forehead against yours. “I know, darlin’.”

“Gonna have to stay on my right side though, with this bum ear,” you sighed.

“We can handle a perforated ear drum,” Joel chuckled quietly, his nose brushing against yours. “You stay on my left, and I’ll stay on your right. We only need two workin’ ears between us."

And as sweet as it was, the moment was broken by the front door of the house unlocking loudly, and Cal stumbled into the room. He took in the picture quickly, watching you both with a distressed look on his face.

“Cal?” you asked, eyes wide. You figured he'd heard what happened on the patrol and rushed home to see you.

“You okay?” Joel stood, taking in the younger man in confusion.

“Sorry,” he breathed heavily, pushing his snow slicked hair back off his forehead. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“Don’t apologise,” Joel said, offering a sheepish smile. Cal watched him warily, and looked to you.

“Someone’s gone missing,” he said, catching you off guard. Your shoulders tensed, and you nodded.

“Milena, right?” you asked. “I heard the other day. I thought she’d just left Jackson.”

“Who?” Cal frowned, his hands shaking. “No, it’s Rebecca, from the patrol group. I just ran into her husband; she didn’t go home last night, and he hasn’t been able to find her today. They’re putting together a search party.”

14/08/2022: OKAY!!! HERE WE GO!!! i read this one a couple of days ago and can’t stop thinking about it. this bradley has crawled inside of my brain and refuses to leave (and honestly, i don’t want him to!!!)

jordan, this is the first fic of yours i had the pleasure of reading and it blew me away?????!!!!!!! i read the sneak peak and just kept coming back to your profile to see if you had posted the full thing and then you did!!!! and i was so ready to dive into this!!! so now that i’ve (tried to) collected myself enough to try and write something of a coherent and worthy enough review, here it is! spoiler alert: it’s just me screaming over your beautiful writing :)

the description really had me hooked from the beginning, we love a smart, bratty girl!!!! i love her personality so much just as much as i love bradley’s and for you to be able to make her just as real and multidimensional… REAL TALENT!!! she’s opinionated and stands her ground and is funny and so smart!!! i just love her and think she’s such a good fit for rooster.

“Plus, he liked smart girls. There was something about them. It didn’t hurt that the ones he had come across were always a little prissy, a little spoiled - a little uptight.

A little bratty.” of course bradley rooster bradshaw has a thing for bratty girls. of fucking course.

“Over the last two weeks, you had been texting frequently, starting off the day with your Wordle scores and a fun fact. It was cheesy and a little nerdy, but you were a big trivia fan - and San Diego County Barstool Trivia Champion - and Bradley had wanted to impress you. It was important that he impressed you.” in love with both of them playing wordle together and separating little fun facts for each other???? bradley thinking it was important that he impressed her!!! he’s a whore but he’s such a romantic and kind of can’t help it??!!! he really likes her and wants to prove himself even with little things like this 🥺

“You were both on drink number two and the awkwardness of your earlier outburst hasn’t quite dissipated yet. The sexual tension on the other hand? If Bradley had thought it was high earlier, it was stratospheric now.” love this!!!!! LET’S GO STRATOSPHERIC!!!!

“If you’re gonna be a brat about it, at least get my title right, sweetheart,” he snapped, the first time all night. He shoved his knee in between your legs, widening the space between your thighs just slightly. “It’s Lieutenant.” no this whole ranking thing is making me go a little insane… just a little… of course he was gonna take the chance to correct her!!!

“Bradley hooked his foot around your barstool and dragged it even closer to him. You let out a squeak and had to brace yourself by holding onto his shoulders.” AND I HAVE PASSED AWAY. JUST LIKE THAT. ABSOLUTELY NO WORDS. HOW DARE YOU DO THIS?????? WHAT IS THIS?????

“And that was when he knew. Knew as well as the sun was going to rise tomorrow morning that you were going to fuck that night.” please stop i can’t functionnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn THIS IS SOOOSIDHSHHDHSD

“What the fuck did you say to her?” Phoenix hissed in Bradley’s ear, snapping him out of his daydream.

He startled and then gestured wildly. “It was going fine for a while and then I told her I was in the Navy and she started going on about defense budgets and misappropriating government property and Uncle Sam sucking my dick - I don’t know, Phoenix!” PHOENIX MY BFF LOVE OF MY LIFE, LOVE HER LITTLE CAMEO!!!! and bradley’s answer 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 the way he’s just so dumbfounded by their interaction so far!!! he’s so stupid!!! i am in love with him!!! this was so in character!!! you nailed it!!!

“Fuck. He wanted you - desperately. And worse than that, he liked you. Liked how smart you were, liked your sense of humor, liked you. And some part of him felt bad for setting you up.” AND WORSE THAN THAT HE LIKED YOU!!!!! YEAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! I LOVE IT WHEN WRITERS EMPHASIZE THIS LITTLE THING!!!!!! because liking someone means so much!!!! and him realizing he did kind of unintentionally hid what he does for a living from her because, let’s be honestly, it normally should’ve come up sooner than it did. anyways, i like that he understands!!!

“You let him take you by your elbow and guide - read drag - you towards the exit, barely stopping to allow you to grab your clutch off the bar top. Knowing Hangman and Phoenix were no doubt watching the entire series of events unfold, Bradley threw his middle finger up over his shoulder, and then let the door close firmly behind his back.” HOT!!!! THE MIDDLE FINGER!!! DRAGGING HER AWAY!!!!!! THIS IS DOING IT FOR ME!!!!

“No, I’m gonna take you home and fuck you so hard you won’t be able to walk straight in the morning, that sound good, sweetheart?” You nodded dumbly. “And for the record, it’s not a truck, it’s a Bronco.” STOP i just know he has the time of his life when he gets to correct her on anything!!!! like he finally has some advantage shhfhshcjshdhdhd AND HIS MOUTH IS SO FILTHY I LOVE HIM I CAN’T HELP IT.

“Fuck. Imagine if you weren’t so blissed out getting finger fucked and you could talk back at him? This time he let out a groan.” ABSOLUTELY NO WORDS. I NO LONGER EXIST. AGAIN WITH THE ADVANTAGE!!!!! AND THE FACT THAT HE’S DOING THIS TO HER YOU KNOW!!!! IT’S ALL HIM!!!! ROOSTER’S EFFECT!!!!! I CAN SEE HIS EGO INFLATING LIKE A BALLOON!!!!

“Shh, shh, that’s a good girl, yeah? Such a good girl for me.” NOT A GOOD GIRL DROP. INSANE INSANE INSANEEEEEEEEEEE.

“A few moments later, the Bronco practically rolled into his driveway on two wheels. Thankfully, Bradley had left the porch light on so the house wasn’t entirely dark. You looked at the house critically and he desperately wanted you to like it.

It was important to him that you liked it.” NO BECAUSE HE WAS ALREADY UNCONSCIOUSLY THINKING ABOUT THE FUTURE OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP!!! HE NEEDS HER TO LIKE THE HOUSE!!!!! HE’S SUCH A ROMANTIC I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL!!!!!! i love this change in the narrative in between their heated moments so much. it adds so much depth because it’s slowly becoming so much more than just lust. i feel it’s always been a little morr than just lust with them? ❤️‍🩹

AND THEN HE CARRIES HER FROM THE CAR TO THE HOUSE!!!!!! EVER THE GENTLEMAN!!!! I LOVE THEM SO MUCH!!!!

“In turn, you smacked his back. “And you would know all about that - making demands. Hostage negotiations, CIA blacksites - mmmhh!” she’s ridiculous i love her and this made me laugh!!!

“Navy’s good for one thing, I guess,” you muttered against Bradley’s neck while your hands ran over his body.” SPEAK YOUR TRUTH!!!

“When he eventually pulled away, your eyes met, and he rested his forehead against yours.” favorite little detail 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 tenderness in the middle of so much frantic want!!!!

“Fuck me, Bradley - please?”

You said his name. Not lieutenant or asshole or some other slightly condescending moniker. You said Bradley. As in you wanted him - the guy who had originally asked you out. The one you had tried so hard to impress all those days and nights spent texting.

And who was he to say no to that?” was he getting a little insecure? MY BABYYYYYYY I GO BALLISTIC WHEN HE GETS EMOTIONAL!!!!

“Please,” you whimpered sometime later. It was a simple, one word response, but it proved to be his undoing.” i forgot the name of this kink but rooster definitely has it!!!!! anyways IT PROVED TO BE HIS UNDOING????? DUDE I LOVE YOUR WRITING SO MUCH.

AND PAUSE- NOT HER TRYING TO TALK ABOUT CO2 EMISSIONS WHILE RIDING HIM HOW IS HER BRAIN STILL FUNCTIONING LIKE THAT??? in the next line of dialogue i know she doesn’t remember the amount or whatever but the fact that she even tried to bring it up shdgshchhshdhdhd silly!!!

“The absolutely blissed out expression on your face made him groan. “God, look at you now, all cock dumb for me. What happened to that smart girl from before?” GODDDDDDDDDDD.

AND THEN HE LISTS THE PRESIDENTS I CAN’T-

“Good boy,” you just managed to get out before Bradley really felt himself losing control.” IT WASN’T ENOUGH FOR YOU TO THROW THAT GOOD GIRL IN MY FACE YOU HAD TO BRING A GOOD BOY DROP INTO THIS AND EXPECT MY BRAIN TO STILL BE ABLE TO ABSORB ANYTHING AFTER? how???? and the fact that he likes it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ugh!!!!!!

“Gotta wait a couple more dates before we start talking about kids, sweetheart.” THE WAY MY STOMACH STARTED CARTWHEELING OVER HERE LIKE IT’S THE FUCKING OLYMPICS MY GOD. FAVORITE FUCKING PIECE OF DIALOGUE I DON’T EVEN KNOW ANYTHING ANYMORE.

“You both laid there, side by side, chests rising and falling heavily. Fuck. Neither of you knew what to say - if there even was something to say. It had never been like that with anyone else - ever.” IT’S NOT LIKE THIS WITH OTHER PEOPLE!!!! between all the banter and teasing they just really like each other so much!!!!! yeah!!!!

“So, how do we really feel about the stache?” You brought your finger up to his mouth and dragged it across his mustache and then to his lips.” skchjsjdjdjdjdjd i love her!!! and this is my second favorite detail. but absolutely do not mess with the mustache.

“You’ll change your mind after riding my face.” WHORE!!!

“He kissed your nose. “You know us military guys, ready with a moment’s notice.” You yawned. “Or maybe not…” i think i take it back, this might be my favorite detail. the fact that he notices the yawn and probably of course notices that she’s getting tired and sleepy so no round 2 for them at that moment but maybe later 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 rooster my beloved!!!! (the bar is very low i am aware).

“He so rarely allowed himself that time during the week - the ability to ‘just do’ and not over think everything. To do whatever he wanted. But that Saturday morning was different.

Because that Saturday you were there.” HELL YEAH BECAUSE THAT SATURDAY YOU WERE THERE AND IT CHANGES EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!!

“Morning,” he rasped as he opened his eyes. You were staring at him, looking like a deer in headlights. “How’d you sleep?” like a deer in headlights! i love this comparison, it made me visualize the scene perfectly!!!

AND YOU HAD TO GIVE US A SCARE I REALLY THOUGHT SHE WAS GONNA LEAVE FOR GOOD I WAS STARTING TO GET SO SAD. very mean of you.

“You think you’re funny, don’t you?” He tried to keep a straight face, but couldn’t hide his smile or the relief he had felt.” ❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹 babies!!!! it was all for fun and giggles, a little humor in the morning!!!

“You know, I’ve been thinking…”

“Smart girl.” FUCKING KILL ME.

“You ignored him. “You already fly in that death trap plane and can handle all the g-force so the astronaut training programs shouldn’t be - don’t look at me like that, all surprised I know what g-force is, I’m not an idiot.” i can see him just staring at her in awe while talking about this!! i can see it!!!! he’s so amused!!!!

“He wasn’t about to give up on this just yet.” *JUST INSERT SO MANY HEART EMOJIS* one of my favorite lines!!!!!

“He pulled his lips away from yours. “- Wait, wait - it’s not okay for me to exploit foreign nations, but it’s okay for me to potentially colonize space?”

You straddled his waist, barely moving your lips away from his neck as you gave a reply. “Shh, shh, we can work out the details later…” no because i’ve been watching for all mankind on apple tv+ for the past month and that’s exactly the plot of the show (and there are so many elements in it that connect to the top gun universe) like, bradley’s right on this one sjdhjshdjdjdsjjdjd this made me laugh!!! and it was a perfect ending for the part 1 of their story!!!! i love their relationship so much!!! i love the way you write!!!!!!

and even when we’re wrong in every way, we come out the other side okay [part ½]

Summary: in which lieutenant bradshaw has a thing for smart girls - and maybe ones who hate his guts on principle. a lie by omission is still a lie after all and bradley never exactly told you what he did for work…

OR you take on the us military industrial complex one hinge date at a time…well sort of

Pairing: Rooster x Fem!Reader

Warnings: 18+, explicit language, explicit sexual content (oral (m receiving), vaginal fingering, p in v, and slight dom/sub and praise and rank kink elements), idk basically she’s a bit of a brat? and he likes it? it’s kind of filthy, but it’s supposed to be kind of funny and a little silly?

A/N: thanks to everyone who liked the sneak peek and provided such positive feedback! but i really have to give a shout out to my buddy sol (desertsagecelestial) for being the absolute best sounding board with this fic! definitely check out her wip, it’s amazinggggg. anyway, enjoy! (9.9k) Part 1.5

Continuar lendo

28/09/22: i’m so excited to see where this fic is gonna go!!! the summary was so bittersweet and i’m a sucker for these stories so <3 this first chapter set up the universe really well and i NEED MORE ALREADY. here are my favorite parts:

“Now, is that anyway to be talking to your husband?”

“Bradley!” You shrieked, hiding your burning face in your hands as Mrs. Miller’s words rang in your ears. “You promised you wouldn’t tease me about that.” 

The boy simply shrugged, popping a raspberry between the ghost of a smile on his lips.” THE TEASING!!! BUT THE SUMMARY SAID UNREQUIRED LOVE SO I’M HURTING ALREADY THIS WAS SO CUTE!!!

“Nothing else could be real but the two of you sitting on the sandy beach, gazing at the night sky and eating fresh raspberries as he poked fun at you in his soft, steady voice.” nothing else could be real but the two of you!!!!!!!!! beautiful!!!!!!! MY FAVORITE LINE!!!

“I always knew you were a smart boy,” she praised him, teasingly. “And smart enough to stay out of trouble, I hope.” smart? yes. enough to stay out of trouble? absolutely not.

“Those two will be halfway to the courthouse by the time Pete finishes flipping that burger.” 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

“Mrs. Petunia shook her head. “High school is far too young—”

“Thank you—”

“—for Bradley to get a proper engagement ring. You be patient young lady or he’ll propose to you with a plastic ring from the arcade!” love interruptions like this truly. i love cliches.

“You just remember, when you’re surrounded by all those college girls,” Mrs. Dempsey told him sternly before he left to swap out with Maverick at the grill, “that you’ve got a perfect, little duck waiting for you back home.” OH THE FORESHADOWING I SEE IT ALREADY!!!

“For a moment, you thought you felt Bradley stiffen, but it passed so quickly you felt you could have imagined it. And then Bradley — your Bradley who bathed his tongue in raspberries and his skin in moonlight — let out a quiet chuckle.” i am already saaaaaaaaaad!!!

i love mrs. dampsey already and the kettle story was so cute!!!

“and Mrs. Dempsey liked to joke that the noisy kettle was actually Mr. Dempsey messing with you when he felt you were too in your head. Neither of you could imagine making tea with anything else.” i cried.

“Maggie Lawson was a single mother of two who had cried literal tears of relief when you walked into her flower shop with the “help wanted” sign at 17. You were sure there were many times you could have left — the flower business wasn’t exactly booming — but you never did. Not when you were 17, not when you graduated high school, and not now. You loved the flowers too much. You loved Maggie too much. You were perfectly content with working there your whole life.

Even if your high school self didn’t agree.” i love how you described that duck really likes her job it wasn’t what she envisioned doing forever when she was younger!!!

“How do you—” He hesitated for a moment. “How do you say ‘I’m so sorry I spilled iced coffee on your favorite shoes, I promise it was an accident. Now would you please forgive me already?’, but in flowers?” I’M SO CURIOUS TO FIND OUT IF/WHICH ONE OF THE PILOTS WAS THIS THAT SPOKE TO HER!!! THIS WAS ADORABLE!!!

“Duck?” SCREAMING!!!

AND ALL OF THEM JUST STANDING THERE CRAMPED INTO THE SHOP SJHCJSHD WHAT IS GOING ON? YOU GOT ME HOOKED!!!

“But your eyes stayed fixed on the man you hadn’t seen since you still knew how to win plastic rings at the arcade.” did she really get an arcade ring? i’m also super excited for more flashbacks 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️

amazing introduction to this story and i can’t wait for more!!!

If It Looks Like a Duck and Quacks Like a Duck

summary - Weirdly, being in unrequited love with your childhood best friend wasn’t really a huge problem for you. Though you suppose it’s a lot easier to deal with when he’s halfway across the country and not, you know, living exactly one block away from your childhood home for the foreseeable future. And for a man who hasn’t spoken to you in nearly three years, he sure seems happy to see you.

warnings - language, brief allusions to death

word count - 3.0k

afterglow masterlist

Continuar lendo

i wish i could feel the same way i felt when i read this for the first time. one of my absolute favorite pieces of writing ever. i think about it all the time.

COMPLETED (2/2)

Part One: “Devils Roll The Dice”

JJ and Y/N‘s friendship has been different since they secretly started hooking up. With new feelings stirred up by the recent change in their relationship, Y/N avoids JJ until the Pogues gather them together for a Fourth of July party that can only end in chaos.

Warnings: Implied sexual content, strong language, alcohol consumption, angst, implied physical abuse, and mild violence.

Word Count: 17k

Part Two: “Angels Roll Their Eyes”

Hurricane Agatha approaches Kildare Island during the aftermath of the eventful Fourth of July party. JJ and Y/N are determined to continue avoiding each other after what happened at the party, but John B, Kiara, and Pope have other plans for them.

Warnings: Smut, strong language, angst, implied physical abuse, depictions of anxiety/panic attacks, and sickeningly sweet fluff.

Word Count: 24k

(gif: @jackpearcsn)

13/08/2022: i’m just wanna start this by apologizing. i’m sorry this review is ridiculously long and very stupid because it’s just me copy and pasting my favorite parts and screaming and throwing up over them with emojis. may, your work is probably the best i have read in a really long time. i connect with it so much, your writing makes me feel so much!!!! i was so excited when you said you were working on a rooster fic (because i read bad habit when it came out and almost passed away!!!) and then i finally read this one and it just… no words. it was EVERYTHING. this is everything. anyways you’re super crazy talented and here is me screaming and throwing up because of your lighting in a bottle:

“Suddenly he’s taller than Goose ever was, older, ranked higher. He wants to say, wait, hold on, go back. Wants to rewind to a time when he felt closer to his father, when he could remember what his voice sounded like, what it felt like when he tucked him into bed. When he thought if he just sat by the front door long enough, his father would inevitably walk through it again, hoist him into the air, and press tickling kisses to his cheeks.” THIS MUST HURT SO MUCH. the imagery of bradley growing further away from his dad because he’s going to keep living and now the years are passing and WHAT THEN WHEN HE HITS THE AGE GOOSE WAS WHEN HE DIED???? WHAT THEN WE HE GROWS EVEN OLDER???? it’s cruel. it hurts. it shouldn’t happen this early.

“Part of Bradley thinks it’s unfair, his whole world crashing down and him not even remembering it. Like he’s arriving late for a movie and can’t make sense of the plot.” this makes me really sad. it’s a horrible feeling.

“Mav doesn’t say much, just drives him back to his college dorm and pulls over to the curb, doesn’t even turn off the car. They sit there in silence, with the blinker going and the engine purring.

Finally, Mav says, “Sometimes, you remind me so much of your father, it scares me.” OOOOOOOOOOOOH STOP IT. I CAN HEAR HIS VOICE!!!!!!!

“So it’s like Bradley always suspected. It really is a futile thing, trying to escape the memory of his father. His ghost lives inside Bradley’s chest. Rattles against his bones.” i love descriptions that make these feelings and emotions go literally bone-deep!!!!!! it makes it so much more weighted to me, idk???? i love it. and this one HURT!!

“And he loves him, even if he doesn’t remember him. Thinks that love is some intrinsic, primordial thing. Something that was there before he was born and will be there after he dies. Something he can’t fight. Unstoppable like the tide.” I AM IN LOVE WITH THIS IDEA!!!! IN LOVE!!!!

“It’s good for a while because it feels like he has a purpose, a goal. For so long, Bradley has been drifting at sea, unmoored, unbound, with no sense of direction. Now he’s swimming toward something, broad strokes, every move deliberate.” he was just starting to find himself a little bit only for that to be taken away from him, it’s so sad!!!!

“So Bradley remembers his mother every time he gets into a car. But his dad? Him, he can only get above the clouds.” no!!!!!! no no no because this just adds so much more weight to the “talk to me, dad.” scene in the movie. he only feels close enough to goose in the sky!!! when he’s flying!!!!!! beautiful!!!!!!

AND THEN YOU HAVE TO REMIND ME HE GRADUATED AND HAS NO ONE TO CELEBRATE IT WITH HOW DARE YOU???!!!!!!! everyone in his class with family members and loved ones cheering around while he’s just there by himself…

“His mother always used to say he was a functional dreamer. He had his head stuck in the clouds, sure, but he knew exactly when to pull it out of there too. Maybe that’s why he’s such a good pilot.” FUNCTIONAL DREAMER!!!!!! because he never allows himself to get lost in it too much. oh. i need to know his entire birth chart right now. his sun, his moon, his rising, HIS VENUS, OH GOD.

“So Bradley still is a functional dreamer. He knows that this is something he can never have, can never allow himself to have. He knows the pain of it too well, too intimately, still feels it every time he catches sight of his reflection in a mirror, the golden streaks of sun in his hair, the mustache, the split second of pure, blank horror, of oh god I look like him, I look so much like him, and feels it slice right through him like a knife through butter. He’s been carrying his father’s ghost for so long, sometimes it feels like his spine will crack under the weight.” STOP JUST STOP THIS IS TOO MUCH. i’m feeling all of it with him!!!!!!

“And then he meets you.” gets me every fucking time!!!!! AND THEN HE MEETS YOU AND OF COURSE IT CAUSES A RECKONING INSIDE HIS HEART I CAN’T DO THIS-

“A smile that settles in his heart. A smile that’ll never leave again.” beautiful!!!!!!

“I don’t think….” He trails off, wonders why it’s so easy for him to talk to you, why he can’t stop spilling truths like leaking water taps. “I don’t think I’ll be good for you.” PLEASE STOP ☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️ SPILLING TRUTHS LIKE LEAKING WATER TAPS YOU ARE A POET!!!!!!!!

“For the first time, it feels like he knows peace, even with his feet on the ground.” EVEN WITH HIS FEET ON THE GROUND BECAUSE HE LOVES FLYING SO MUCH ITS A NEED ITS WHAT KEEPS HIM GOING BUT ON THE GROUND HE HAS YOU!!!!!!!!! ENOUGHHHHHHHH

idk why but i love when people use the word “ache” in their descriptions it makes my stomach flip flop like crazy!!! such a good word!!!!

“It doesn’t matter that he loves you. It doesn’t matter that he only feels at peace when he’s with you. It doesn’t matter that for the first time since he was four years old, the ghosts have gone quiet.” SHUT UP!!!!!!!! THE GHOST HAVE GONE QUIET!!!!!!!!!!!!

“give you a child.” NOT THIS TINY LITTLE PEACE BY TAYLOR SWIFT REFERENCE YOU ARE SO CRUEL!!!!!!

“Only you don’t leave.” HELL YEAH!!!!! CLING TO HIM!!!!!

AND THEN YOU FOLLOW THIS UP WITH “I want you more,” you say, and that’s that.” SHE WANTS HIM MORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“And Bradley - selfish as he is - accepts it. Because he doesn’t want to lose you. Because as much as he tries to convince himself of the opposite, deep down, he knows he’s not a good man. Just like his father wasn’t. They’re both just men willing to leave the people they love behind. Brave enough to fight for the “greater good”, but never brave enough to stay.” it breaks my heart that he sees himself and goose that way. selfish and not good????? bradley… 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

“And sometimes, when you’re asleep, Bradley puts his hand on your stomach and imagines a bump there, imagines a baby growing beneath it, and that’s when the ache gets so strong he thinks he can’t breathe.” THE IMAGERY OF THIS BROUGHT ACTUAL TEARS TO MY EYES!!!!! AND THE WORD ACHE AGAIN!!!! BECAUSE IT HURTS SO FUCKING MUCH!!!!!!

AND THEN HE DREAMSSSSSSS “He dreams he’s thirty-five, and he marries you. He dreams he’s thirty-six and holding his baby. He dreams it’s a little girl with your smile and his eyes, and he loves her more than he thought he was capable of, so much it almost breaks him apart, so much it puts him back together. So much it’s worth it all.” this is so so beautiful i can’t think about any other adjectives my brain has stop functioning.

“It’s all he can allow himself—an ocean in a seashell.” NOT ME CRYING BECAUSE OF A SEASHELL COMPARISON YOU ARE SO EVIL.

“Up in that F-14, that’s when he realizes. The brink of death is a bleak place. It’s a place of memories, a place of despair. It’s a place of hope.” IT’S A PLACE OF HOPE!!! THE CATHARSIS OF IT AL!!!!!!!

“It used to be a relief. Nobody to mourn me after I’m gone. Now it feels like a punishment.” i just really love this character development.

“Your hands leave wet prints against the fabric of his shirt, like something primeval pressed to cave walls, like something that’s been happening for centuries, something that is happening right now, something that will happen again tomorrow and next year and the year after that, and distantly, dumbly, Bradley thinks, Oh. I’m alive. I’m here.” I THINK THIS IS MY FAVORITE PART??????????????????????????? their love is infinite it’s been happening forever for centures and at that moment!!! and it circles back to the beginning when you wrote “Thinks that love is some intrinsic, primordial thing. Something that was there before he was born and will be there after he dies. Something he can’t fight. Unstoppable like the tide.” THE PRIMORDIAL CONNECTION!!!!! SOMETHING THAT WAS THERE BEFORE HE WAS BORN AND WILL BE THERE AFTER HE DIES AND WITH HER IT’S THE SAME THING!!!!! yep. favorite part. favorite quote.

“Suddenly, the thought of you alone in this house is unbearable. Waiting for a man that never comes back. History repeating itself in the worst of ways.” but he came back!!!!!!! it’s okay!!!!!!!!

and then he says he wants to have a baby and she says no!!!!!! because it’s too much all at once she compromised!!!! she became the same type of functional dreamer bradley was before he met her!!! she wanted him more so she got used to the idea of never having one. so much pain.

“Suddenly, he feels a sob building in his throat. To realize how much he’s hurt you, not just today by springing this on you, but by how selfish he was, again and again. By letting his past stand in the way of your future.” STOP PUNCHING ME IN THE GUT!!!!!

“But losing you… Bradley always assumed he was going to be the one to go first.” KILL ME NOW.

“I…” And he knows he’s the one who brought it up, but suddenly all the doubts come crashing down. Suddenly the ghosts crowd around him. “What if I die? What if I leave you? What if we have a baby and I’m not… there?” he’s so scared he’s always been so scared and sad. i want him.

“Oh, Bradley…” Something on your face melts. You step closer, put a hand on his cheek, fingertips still pruned from the water, and say, so gently it breaks something open inside of him, “Bradley. You’re not your father.” and then the dam breaks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AND THEN YOU WRITE THE MOST HEART BREAKING PIECE OF WRITING EVER WRITTEN:

“For so long, Bradley was trying to let go of a world that didn’t want him to leave. He’s been preparing for an early exit since he entered, has been so caught up in dreaming he forgot to live. So caught up in thinking he forgot to do. He thought he would be content to go out of this world and leave nothing behind, to disappear without a trace, without a word, without a ghost.

But now he sees it clearly. Now he understands.

Bradley doesn’t want to stop existing. He wants to cling to this world like someone clinging to the edge of a cliff, like a leech, like a cancer. He wants to haunt someone.”

i have no words. i am just crying and throwing up everywhere because this is SO HEAVY THERE IS SO MUCH TO UNPACK HERE AND IT IT SAD AND BEAUTIFUL AND IT CRACKED MY HEART OPEN!!!!!

when you threw in the carol flashback ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

“Bradley has thought about his life in boxes. Big cardboard ones, the kind you get when you move apartments. He tucks the good parts away beneath his bed, stows them, hoards them like a secret. Like his mother kept her grief. But all the bad parts - the pain and the sadness and the sorrow - those he lets pile up everywhere, in hallways, in living rooms, on kitchen tables. He stumbles over them on his way to the bathroom. He stubs his toe halfway to the closet.” PLEASE STOP MAKING ME CRY!!!!!

“This long, terrible, winding road that led him here. That led him to you.” this reminds me of one of my favorite songs of all time “ceilings” by lizzy mcalpine where she says “Lovely to sit between comfort and chaos” there’s so much good in the bad and bad in the good. it’s all mixed together. it’s life. it’s sad and beautiful and it rips us open and there is chaos and comfort and sometimes the worst things can lead you to your happy ending!!! anyways!!!

AND THEN SHE REMINDS HIM THEY ALREADY HAVE A LIFE TOGETHER!!!!!!! THIS WHOLE TIME IT HASN’T BEEN LEADING UP TO ANYTHING. IT’S BEEN HAPPENING ALL THIS TIME!!!! beautiful. i love her for reminding him. i love you for making her remind him.

“Bradley Bradshaw,” you say, and there’s only a little bit of amusement in your voice, “you’re the love of my life.” ROMCOM MOMENT EXCELLENT!!!! except where is no com here!!!!! no comedy!! i am a crying mess!!!

“Bradley feels like somebody’s poured liquid sunlight into his chest.” 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹

and then it starts going frantic and they go to the counter because of course they do!!!! I LOVE IT WHEN THEY GO TO THE COUNTER!!!!!! TURN IT UPPPPPPPPP!!!!!

his breeding kink. if i speak- (so many thoughts going through my head!!!!!!!)

“He surges forward, lips against yours again, and you’re so alive beneath him, heart racing, breath heaving, fingers grappling along his neck, his shoulders, his chest, his arms, and Bradley wants to devour you. Wants to sink his teeth into all this life and never let it go again. He wants to exist, right here, in this moment with you forever.” HE WANTS TO EXIST, RIGHT HERE. IN THIS MOMENT WITH YOU FOREVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR probably my second favorite part i love this!!!!!!!

“and the softness in your voice cracks something in him. He swears he could cry again.” I NEED TO KNOW THIS MAN’S ZODIAC SIGN RIGHT NOW!!!! THE SOFTNESS OF HER VOICE ALMOST MAKING HIM CRY AGAIN!!!!! GIVE ME HIS BIRTH CHARTTTTTTTTTTTTT (this made my tummy go a little crazy btw).

AND THEN HE WHISPERS “I’m gonna marry you”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i go feral for moments like this!!!!!!!!!!

“Bradley thinks he’s going to die, but this time it’s nothing like it was up in the F-14.” RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SMUT!!!!!!! SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!!!!!!!!

“Your mouth tips open, your eyes not straying from his for a second as he goes slow, as he goes deep, as he goes home. There’s an answer in that too.” AS HE GOES HOME!!!!!!!! 😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

“and you’re all mine, and I’m yours.” i am, once again, screaming and crying and throwing up. he’s such a romantic!!!!!!!!!

“When he glances down at you, at the eyes wide with that much trust, as he realizes you would let him do just about anything to you, that you’ve both opened yourself to each other completely now, no barriers and no ghosts standing between you, it’s like a dam breaking.” NO BARRIERS!!!!!! NO GHOSTS!!!!!!!!!

AND THEN YOU THROW THE PILL IN THE MIDDLE OF IT ALL… AND HE DOESN’T EVEN WANNA THINK ABOUT IT BECAUSE IT’S TOO MUCH “Don’t say it. Let me live in this fantasy. Let me dream a little longer.”

“It’s the thought of it all - a bump beneath your dresses, a baby in your arms, tiny fingers wrapping around his thumb, it’s about the long, long stretch of life ahead of the two of you. It’s about a house filled with love and free of ghosts. It’s about the first glimpse of the ocean after listening to its roar in seashells all his life. It’s about giving himself over to you completely, after years of only dreaming of it.

Do you know? he wonders. Do you know that you’re holding his whole life in your hands?” THE SEASHELLS AGAIN!!!!!!! A HOUSE FILLED WITH LOVE AND FREE OF GHOSTS!!!!!! their happy ending!!!!!!! by this point i was a mess 😭😭😭😭❤️❤️❤️❤️ you need to listen to “all my ghosts” by lizzy mcalpine i think you like magically translated everything that songs encapsulates into this story!!!!!!! anyways!!!! beautiful!!!!!!

“It’s never felt like this before - like dying and coming back alive.” NOT YOU WRITING THE MOST EARTH SHATTERING SMUT OF ALL TIME AND THROWING IN THESE THINGS IN THE MIDDLE OF IT THEY TAKE MY BREATH AWAY!!!! THERE’S SO MUCH EMOTION HERE, SO MUCH MEANING!!!!!!

“Bradley’s heart clenches. Maybe, he thinks, his ribcage is going to crack open. It seems impossible for one person to hold so much love inside.” 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 no words. just the crying emoji!!!!! 😭😭😭😭😭😭

“I got you” I AM PASSING AWAYYYYYYYYY

“You shake your head, lift one hand to run a finger across his mustache the way you like to do sometimes.” favorite little detail!!!!!!

“I’m trying to keep my cum in you. Maybe we’re like super extra lucky, and it works out on the first try.” HE IS SO STUPID I AM IN LOVE WITH HIM.

“Then you’re laughing together, breathless, loud laughter, the bending-at-the-waist kind. The belly-hurting kind. The kind that doesn’t come often.

And it’s good. It’s beautiful. It’s the kind of peace he’s never known before but has wanted always, always, always.” ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

“I love you,” he says, “more than I thought I could love someone. Thanks for loving me back.” THANK FOR LOVING ME BACK?????? THIS IS MOST ROMANTIC SHIT I’VE EVER READ IN MY LIFE???????!!!!!!!! AND IT’S SO ROOSTER!!!!!

“For the first time, Bradley doesn’t think about dying, doesn’t think about leaving. He thinks about living. He thinks about staying.” AND THEN YOU END IT LIKE THIS!!!!!!!!!!! IT’S PERFECT.

perfect. perfect. perfect.

ocean in a seashell . ( rooster )

pairing ; bradley bradshaw x female!reader

synopsis ; bradley has lived with his father’s ghost for long enough to know he’ll never make the same mistakes he did. and then he meets you.

wc ; 10.5k i'm sorry

warnings ; 18+ only, minors do NOT interact; bradley bradshaw's sad, sad life; angst, literally SO much angst; mentions of canon past character death; near-death experience; alcohol abuse; explicit language; explicit sexual content (breeding kink, cumplay, p in v, dirty talk, fingering, idk?)

note: ... yeah i don't fucking know either goodbye. stole the title from "sidelines" by phoebe bridgers aka god.

sol. sunderlust... none of this would be possible without you, thank you forever.

Bradley doesn’t remember much about his father.

These days, he recalls him only in fractions: Hawaiian shirts, mustache, hair that stood up spikey like grass covered in the first tentative November frost. He had big hands, Bradley remembers that, and he used to swing him up on his shoulders and let him ride around living rooms in Army commissioned houses they never stayed in longer than a few months. He always smelled of engine oil, and he played pianos like he didn’t even know the meaning of the word embarrassment.

Bradley based his whole life on the fading glimpses of that man he carries locked in the chambers of his heart. The older he gets, the more gaps he finds.

Suddenly he’s taller than Goose ever was, older, ranked higher. He wants to say, wait, hold on, go back. Wants to rewind to a time when he felt closer to his father, when he could remember what his voice sounded like, what it felt like when he tucked him into bed. When he thought if he just sat by the front door long enough, his father would inevitably walk through it again, hoist him into the air, and press tickling kisses to his cheeks.

Sometimes, Bradley wishes he could go back to when he thought bad things happened only in movies. When he had a father and a mother and an uncle and the bone-deep, unconscious conviction that things would always stay this way.

He can’t remember the day Goose died. Can’t remember Mav coming to the house, can’t remember the dog tags pressed into his mother’s hands. Strange how the most significant day of his little life remains in his memory as just another day - morning cartoons and PB&J sandwiches and his mom reading him a bedtime story. Part of Bradley thinks it’s unfair, his whole world crashing down and him not even remembering it. Like he’s arriving late for a movie and can’t make sense of the plot.

Not once did he see his mother cry over his father. He’s sure she must have shed tears, remembers now the empty tissue boxes and the eyes rimmed in red, understands now what he was too young to see then. But Carol carried her grief like a secret. She locked it behind the mahogany of her bedroom door, she hid it behind the veneer of her smile.

Bradley is nineteen, standing at his mother’s open grave, when he decides he’s never going to do to someone what Goose did to her. What he did to him.

For a while, he wants nothing to do with the memory of that man. Wraps himself in his mother, toys with the idea of taking her maiden name. Goes to college and gets drunk, gets high, gets himself into trouble. Thinks sometimes, in his very darkest moments, that maybe the best thing he could do for the world is to stop existing.

One night lands him at the police station. And it’s not like he got arrested or anything, they just take him in to sober up and tell him to call somebody to come get him. Mav is in town, thank God, and he comes in wearing his old aviator jacket and a wistful expression. Bradley’s call probably pulled him out of some bar or some girl or both.

Mav doesn’t say much, just drives him back to his college dorm and pulls over to the curb, doesn’t even turn off the car. They sit there in silence, with the blinker going and the engine purring.

Finally, Mav says, “Sometimes, you remind me so much of your father, it scares me.”

Bradley doesn’t know what to say to that, so he says nothing. Sits there for a little longer and watches as frat bros and law students and cheerleaders cross the street on their way to hook-ups, to parties, to midnight fast food runs. Envies them just for a moment. Then, without saying goodbye, gets out of the car, goes to his room, and buries himself beneath the weight of his blankets.

So it’s like Bradley always suspected. It really is a futile thing, trying to escape the memory of his father. His ghost lives inside Bradley’s chest. Rattles against his bones.

And he loves him, even if he doesn’t remember him. Thinks that love is some intrinsic, primordial thing. Something that was there before he was born and will be there after he dies. Something he can’t fight. Unstoppable like the tide.

So he embraces it instead. Tries growing a mustache he’ll only be able to pull off much later in life, gets those old Hawaiian shirts out of storage. Decides to give into the underlying current of longing he’s felt every time he tipped his head back and looked at the sky.

Accepting that he loves his father is much easier than he thought it would be. Much easier than hating him.

It’s good for a while because it feels like he has a purpose, a goal. For so long, Bradley has been drifting at sea, unmoored, unbound, with no sense of direction. Now he’s swimming toward something, broad strokes, every move deliberate.

Then Mav pulls his papers.

The worst part of it all, worse than the betrayal, worse than the anger, is the confusion. He thought Mav would understand. Mav of all people. 

(It’s his mother, setting a casserole on the table, smiling at Bradley and saying Pete over here, he’s the craziest pilot the Navy’s ever seen. It’s his sixth Christmas, the second one without his dad, and Mav gives him a model of a plane they’ll build together. It’s Mav staring at him with eyes gleaming with moisture the time he stole the Navy hat from his uncle’s head. It’s Mav in every memory of his life, laced so tightly to him he thought they were inseparable, woven together. Now the seams are coming apart.)

Mav, who keeps flying, who seems only to be a real, complete person for those few, short, fleeting moments just after he steps off a plane. Who’s never happy unless he’s going break-neck speed miles and miles above the ground, jumping off death’s shovel, laughing, flipping the bird, and saying look, I can fly!

If Maverick doesn’t understand why Bradley wants to fly, why he needs to fly, then who ever could?

Mav wants to explain it, calls him, shows up at his apartment. Bradley declines the calls, turns off all the lights, and sits on his couch in perfect silence, pretending he isn’t in.

He doesn’t want to hear explanations, doesn’t want to listen to excuses. He wants to fly.

Back when his mother was alive, she wouldn’t even let him get on an airplane. His whole childhood, they only left their state once to go to a funeral of some distant aunt or cousin or uncle, Bradley can’t remember, and his mother drove the whole ten hours there and back. It didn’t even register as anything weird to him - it was all juice boxes and gas station ice cream and goldies on the radio. It was his mom’s laughter and her smile and her fingers carding strands of hair warmed by the sun out of his eyes.

So Bradley remembers his mother every time he gets into a car. But his dad? Him, he can only get above the clouds.

He doesn’t give up. He finishes college, works odd jobs for some money, drifts further and further from the orbit he used to inhabit. And then he applies to the academy again, and then he goes to Top Gun, and he graduates top of his class and wonders what it would feel like if there were somebody to be proud of him. If somebody were congratulating him, taking him out for a celebratory dinner, or just somebody to hug him. What it would feel like if he weren’t so alone.

It’s what he dreams about sometimes, in the very darkest pockets of the night. A house with a swing set and a big, smiling, dumb dog and a pretty wife and a whole gaggle of children running through the garden. Bradley would teach them how to throw a football, and he’d carry them to bed at night, and his wife would smile at him, and there would always be food in the fridge and brownies on the table, and every room would be filled with love, and there would be no ghosts to haunt him.

It’s a dangerous fantasy. It’s a trap door, a slippery slope, it’s a snare, it’s a cliff’s edge. If he stays in it too long, he’ll be lost.

His mother always used to say he was a functional dreamer. He had his head stuck in the clouds, sure, but he knew exactly when to pull it out of there too. Maybe that’s why he’s such a good pilot.

So Bradley still is a functional dreamer. He knows that this is something he can never have, can never allow himself to have. He knows the pain of it too well, too intimately, still feels it every time he catches sight of his reflection in a mirror, the golden streaks of sun in his hair, the mustache, the split second of pure, blank horror, of oh god I look like him, I look so much like him, and feels it slice right through him like a knife through butter. He’s been carrying his father’s ghost for so long, sometimes it feels like his spine will crack under the weight.

Maybe people that live life like he does, like Mav does, like his father did - up in the sky, heads in the clouds - aren’t meant to have anything on the ground. Inevitably, they always end up leaving it.

He decided the day of his mother’s funeral, before the long procession of I’m sorrys and If you need anythings, before he let real estate agents into a house overflowing with cards and flowers - flowers in every room, flowers blooming and wilting and dying like a garden watered by his grief, like a garden watered by his ghosts - that he would never have a family. Not a wife to mourn him, not a child to miss him.

So there’ll be nobody to carry the burden of him.

And then he meets you.

It’s not momentous - it’s easy. Natural. Quicker than he thought possible. It’s stolen glances across a room and a smile that brands him like a mark, that cuts right through to the bone. A smile that settles in his heart. A smile that’ll never leave again.

In the beginning, he tries to fight it. Tells himself not to engage, not to get involved, to stay out of the mess he knows he’ll make here inevitably. To shield him, but to shield you too, to protect you from whatever hurt he’s going to inflict sooner or later.

But then it goes like this:

“Are you never going to ask me out, Bradshaw?” you ask him, smiling as you pluck his Ray Bans from him, as you place them on your own nose, and blink at him from over the rims.

The sun is casting you in gold. Bradley wants to catch the moment in a mason jar and put it on his bedside table. Let the glow illuminate his nights.

“I don’t think….” He trails off, wonders why it’s so easy for him to talk to you, why he can’t stop spilling truths like leaking water taps. “I don’t think I’ll be good for you.”

You don’t miss a beat. One eyebrow raising, you say, “And don’t you think that should be my decision?”

That’s when he knows that for him, you will always be it. That it’ll never be this way again with someone else. It’s not even a question. It’s just the truth.

When he’s with you, for the first time since he sat shotgun in a car with his mother, head nodding along to Elvis on the radio, Bradley feels like he belongs somewhere. Like he’s reached a shore, maybe. Like he can breathe.

For the first time, it feels like he knows peace, even with his feet on the ground.

His mother would have loved you.

You have a long conversation about it. About how he knows you want it - the diapers and the first days of school and the family Christmases. The pitter-patter of children’s feet, the cribs, the tiny fingers curling around your thumb. He knows you’ve dreamed of it all your life. And Bradley also knows, as much as it hurts, as much as it aches, that he can never give it to you.

He needs to be honest. He needs to put all the cards on the table so you know your options, see the truth about him. So you can walk away before you get any deeper into this.

Part of him is sure you will. Thinks it might be better, the safest option for both of you. Hopes you will, fears you will.

It doesn’t matter that he loves you. It doesn’t matter that he only feels at peace when he’s with you. It doesn’t matter that for the first time since he was four years old, the ghosts have gone quiet.

What matters is that he wants you to be happy. What matters is that if that happiness lies somewhere else, with someone else, with someone who’ll give you everything you dream of, give you a life, give you a child… Bradley will let you go. It’ll be the hardest thing he’s ever done, but he will.

Only you don’t leave.

You think about it for a very, very long time. Sit at his kitchen table with your hands folded on the tablecloth like you’re praying, with your head turned down, without looking at him, and then finally you say, “Alright. Fine with me.”

And Bradley’s protesting, pushing, saying, “Honey, you want this, I know you do, you want a family, you….”

“I want you more,” you say, and that’s that.

There’s no lie to it. It’s the truth, naked and beautiful and awful.

And Bradley - selfish as he is - accepts it. Because he doesn’t want to lose you. Because as much as he tries to convince himself of the opposite, deep down, he knows he’s not a good man. Just like his father wasn’t. They’re both just men willing to leave the people they love behind. Brave enough to fight for the “greater good”, but never brave enough to stay.

Regardless of it all, it’s the happiest Bradley has been in years. With you, he doesn’t feel like something is missing from him. He actually feels whole.

Your job as a freelancer allows you to travel with him, and he’s unspeakably grateful for it. He tries to show you, tries to be good about bringing flowers and cooking dinner, thinks if he can make you even a fraction as happy as you make him, he’ll have succeeded. When he gets deployed, he spends days memorizing your face, the shape of your throat where your pulse point jumps, the pattern of your heartbeat, the feeling of you beneath his arm.

And sometimes, when you’re asleep, Bradley puts his hand on your stomach and imagines a bump there, imagines a baby growing beneath it, and that’s when the ache gets so strong he thinks he can’t breathe.

That’s when he hates himself for not being something else: a doctor, an accountant, a real estate agent. Anything other than what he is. Could he have it then, this thing you both want so much? Could he let himself have it?

But eventually, when the fantasies fade, he always circles back to the truth: Bradley isn’t a doctor or an accountant or a real estate agent. He’s a pilot. Always has been, always will be.

He’s just too much like his father. That’s the whole point.

When he gets called back to Top Gun, three years after he met you, something shifts. He doesn’t know to explain it, but from the very first moment he sets foot on North Island again, something about it tastes like the beginning of an end. At night, he can’t settle, roams through the little house you rent off base like a sleepwalker. Checks in on you like he’s afraid you’re going to disappear. Can’t concentrate up in the air, can’t shut his brain off.

It’s like his father’s ghost travels with him in his suitcases, tucked between his neatly folded shirts, climbs out when no one’s looking. No matter where he goes, that ghost goes too. He can’t shake him.

You love California. You like the sunshine and the ocean. Like the Hard Deck and Penny and Phoenix. Turn your face into the warmth like a sunflower, and then you bloom, go brighter and brighter as Bradley goes the opposite direction. As something in him dims.

“Is it because of Mav?” you ask him softly, in the quiet of your bedroom. You’re carding hair from his forehead, fingers gentle, voice gentler.

Bradley can’t look at you. Shame coils low in his stomach.

“Yes,” he says, even if it feels like a lie in his mouth.

You sigh, no annoyance, only affection. Your head is heavy on his shoulder as you press the shape of a yawn into his skin.

“I know he hurt you, Bradley,” you whisper. “It’s okay to be hurt. But I think you need to talk to him.”

He nods into the darkness. You’re right. You’re always right.

“I know,” he agrees, even though he knows he won’t.

When you’re asleep, Bradley slips out of bed. Pats into the living room and sits on the floor, back leaning against the couch. Pulls his knees up to his chest, closes his eyes, and then he dreams.

He dreams he’s four riding on his father’s shoulders through the living room. He dreams he’s ten, in a car with his mother, turning up the radio. He dreams he’s twenty, and he lets Mav explain. He dreams he’s thirty-five, and he marries you. He dreams he’s thirty-six and holding his baby. He dreams it’s a little girl with your smile and his eyes, and he loves her more than he thought he was capable of, so much it almost breaks him apart, so much it puts him back together. So much it’s worth it all.

Bradley’s earliest memory is of the giant, bone-white seashell on his grandmother’s mantlepiece. He remembers how heavy it was, remembers how cold it felt against the side of his face when he pressed it to his ear. He remembers hearing the distant, muffled hum of the waves, the song of the sea, remembers imagining what it might look like. 

It’s no comparison to the real thing, years and years and years later, he knows this, but it’s something. It’s better than nothing.

It’s all he can allow himself—an ocean in a seashell.

The mission is a disaster, even if it is successful. Later, Bradley won’t remember what he was thinking up in the air, when he hit the target, when Mav went down, when he decided to go after him. He won’t even be able to tell if that is because he’s in shock or because he really wasn’t thinking anything. Maybe for the first time in his life.

If he had been thinking, Bradley likes to believe he would have kept his plane on course. Would have flown back to the carrier and then back to you, home, home, home. Wouldn’t have gone back for a man he still hasn’t spoken to, not properly, someone he loved once and now barely knows.

But all the ghosts of the people he’s loved and lost crowd up on him in that cockpit - his father and his mother and even Admiral Kazansky and their sad, sad eyes. There’s no room for Mav to be up there, too, he thinks.

So at first, you don’t cross his mind at all. He just follows his instincts like he’s never done before, could never bring himself to do. So much of Bradley’s life has been about dissecting just those urges, dismantling them, disabling them. Making himself into a creature of logic and second-guessing. Now, for the first time, he gives in to the currents and lets himself be rushed away.

And then his plane goes down, and he drifts into the white white white of snow he hasn’t felt in so long - and still, he doesn’t think. But every instinct from the moment of impact on, the moment his feet hit the ground, every instinct centers on you.

Home, he thinks. I need to get home to her.

Up in that F-14, that’s when he realizes. The brink of death is a bleak place. It’s a place of memories, a place of despair. It’s a place of hope.

All he can think of is you. How he’s leaving you with nothing. How he’s going to die here, miles above the ocean, and what will happen then? Who’s going to bring you his dog tags, the way Mav had brought his father’s to Carole all those years ago? Phoenix? Hangman? How are they even going to retrieve them if he goes down in enemy territory? Will anybody even remember the girl in that house, the one he didn’t even marry? And why didn’t he anyway? Why didn’t he put a ring on your finger, buy you a house, get you a dog, give you a baby?

What will remain of him now, in this world after he’s gone?

Nothing, he thinks, and his lungs fill with water, high up in the sky. You made damn sure of that, Bradley.

There will be nobody to haunt. He will disappear, and he will take his mother with him, will take his father with him, will take Mav with him. Nobody to remember him. Nobody to mourn him except you, all alone, carrying the terrible burden of his ghost.

It used to be a relief. Nobody to mourn me after I’m gone. Now it feels like a punishment.

Home, he thinks, remembering the content of your smile and your eyes gleaming in the darkness and your face turning, always turning, toward the sun. Like a child, as he closes his eyes, as he tries to accept the inevitable, he thinks, I want to go home. I just want to go home.

And then that’s what he does—he and Mav. Incredibly, inexplicably, illogically, they go home.

From far away, as he walks up the driveway, the little house with the gardenias you planted blooming pink and red in front of the windows looks like an oasis at first. Then it seems to grow longer, taller, goes from beckoning to daunting. He almost doesn’t make it inside. Almost doesn’t dare to get out his keys, unlock the front door, push through and toe off his shoes. Feels like he’s doing something forbidden, like he’s an unwanted guest in his own home.

You’re in the kitchen, elbows deep in sudsy dishwater, and when he walks through the doorway, when you hear the pat of his socked feet against the tiled floors, you look up at him with an open face full of love, full of relief. It almost bowls him over.

“Bradley,” you whisper, voice soft, and then you’re crossing the room, bubbles and foam and water dripping from your wrists across the tile, and he blinks at the trail you leave for a moment. Then you’re there, arms wrapping around his neck, face pressing against his shoulder, saying his name again and again, like a benediction, like a prayer of thanks.

Automatically, he pulls you against him with both arms crossed over your hips. Inhales deep, lets the familiar scent of you envelop him. Listens to your breath echoing against the dip of his collarbone, to the steady rhythm of your heart.

Your hands leave wet prints against the fabric of his shirt, like something primeval pressed to cave walls, like something that’s been happening for centuries, something that is happening right now, something that will happen again tomorrow and next year and the year after that, and distantly, dumbly, Bradley thinks, Oh. I’m alive. I’m here.

He feels packed in cotton. He feels submerged. He feels not-real, not-present, not-normal. He feels like he’s going to fall apart, and no one will notice.

When you draw back, it takes you only a split second to realize something’s wrong. You frown, the furrow Bradley likes to smooth out with his thumb appearing between your eyebrows, eyes swimming with a concern he doesn’t deserve.

“What happened?”

It’s classified, all of it. There’s so much of his life Bradley isn’t allowed to share with you, even if he wants to. There’s so much he doesn’t want to share but knows he should.

From far away, he hears himself say, “My plane went down.”

He can feel the panic in your body, feels it go through you like a spasm. You try to draw back, but he holds you where you are, afraid he’s going to shatter all across the kitchen floor the moment you’re gone.

It’s not fair, he thinks, how he keeps looking to you to hold him together. It’s just that at the end of the day, you’ve always been so much stronger than him.

“Bradley…” you begin to say, but he can’t hear it. He doesn’t want to hear it. He doesn’t want to hear how scared you are every time he leaves, he doesn’t want to hear how it made you feel to know that he almost died because he already knows. He knows.

“I want…” he says into your hair, a fragment of a sentence, a statement that trails off halfway, that goes nowhere. He doesn’t even know what he’s trying to say.

In some ways, he feels stuck in that F-14. Like time kept moving, but he didn’t, remained static and crystallized like somebody dipped the moment in amber and preserved it on a bookshelf. Nothing makes sense to him. Rationally, he knows he’s standing here in his kitchen with you in his arms, knows he isn’t dead, knows he survived, but it doesn’t feel like it. 

So Bradley tries to remember grounding exercises, focuses on little things, mundane things, things that shouldn’t exist on the verge of death. The bubbles popping in the sink. The specks of dust dancing through the room. The curve of your spine beneath the worn fabric of his Navy shirt.

Suddenly, the thought of you alone in this house is unbearable. Waiting for a man that never comes back. History repeating itself in the worst of ways.

“I want to have a baby,” he says, out of nowhere, out of some madness that took hold of him up in the air, or maybe when he touched the ground, or maybe at some other point he can’t name, can’t even think.

And it’s not a conscious thought. It’s not a decision he makes. It’s just something that spills from him, something that has been there unnoticed all along, words taking shape on his tongue before he can overthink their meaning, but then they’re out, and they drop between you like an anvil, and it’s like a relief, it’s like a breath he’s been holding for years, it’s like a sigh, something inside of him finally unlatching, finally escaping the shackles he put on it himself.

Oh, he thinks. He’s known this about himself, always, but it’s the first time he says it out loud. It’s always been a want, an ache, a yearning, but now it goes from all that to a need, a thrumming inside of him, something that cannot be ignored. Something that demands to be felt instead of thought.

In his arms, you stiffen.

With your palms on his chest, you push him away from you, take a step back, take the warmth and the scent and the anchor with you. Bradley is surprised he doesn’t float right up to the ceiling.

The openness of your face has shuttered now. You look at him with something unreadable crossing your features, something unfamiliar, and say, “What did you just say?”

Bradley swallows around a lump in his throat. “I want to have a baby,” he repeats, his voice smaller now, quieter, but the words more assured.

Because he does. Because it’s true. Because he’s always wanted this and doesn’t know how to explain to you that now he needs it. How now it’s the only thing that makes sense in a world that’s gone off the rails.

Your face falls, something crumbles, and it hits him like a punch to the gut. 

“No,” you say, turning away from him. You step right into the trail of water you left earlier, it soaks into your socks, and then you’re leaving footprints too. Everywhere you go, you leave your mark like a brand. Not one part of Bradley has been left untouched.

Confusion zaps through him, but it’s a muted feeling. Muffled by all the chaos.

“I thought you….” It’s a great effort to form words, like pulling teeth. “You want children. Don’t you want this?”

“Not like…” You pause, rake your fingers through your hair, exasperation crackling from you like sparks from a burned-out socket, and Bradley can’t make sense of it.

You want this, he knows you do. So what’s the problem now? What did he do wrong?

“I don’t….”

“Don’t go there.”

There’s a finality to your voice, and he sees you drawing back from him, sees your shoulders come up, your face turning away, something wilting.

The idea of losing you, of pushing you away now that he’s finally decided to let you in, really let you in, the panic of it finally slices through the haze. Lifts the fog.

Bradley crosses the room and says, “It’s your decision too, honey, of course, it is, but I love you, and I want this, and….”

You whirl on him, and it punches the air out of his lungs. There’s real anger on your face now, your eyes sparkling with unshed tears, and Bradley’s heart clenches in answer.

“You don’t get to do this,” you say, voice heaving with the barely contained emotion, a ship on a stormy sea, “not after I compromised, not after I spent so long trying to get used to the idea of not having a baby, not after giving that up for you, Bradley. You don’t… don’t get to just come in here and change your mind just because it suits you, because you had some near-death experience and you’re full of adrenaline and… and….”

Bradley frowns, moves to touch you, but you flinch away from him, one arm going up to hug your own ribcage. As if you have to shield yourself from him.

Suddenly, he feels a sob building in his throat. To realize how much he’s hurt you, not just today by springing this on you, but by how selfish he was, again and again. By letting his past stand in the way of your future.

“It’s not that I changed my mind,” he begins, trying to string together something that will make you see the truth of it, make you understand what he means.

You interrupt, “You said you didn’t want kids.”

Bradley pauses. Did he say that? If he did… 

“And it…” You gasp for breath, the tears now streaming freely down your face, and god, it hurts, it hurts worse than thinking he lost Mav, hurts worse than thinking he’d die in that F-14 because all of that he’d been prepared for, had been practicing for his whole life. Losing Maverick, losing himself, all of that had been inevitable. But losing you… Bradley always assumed he was going to be the one to go first. 

“It’s fine,” you go on. “I was fine with it, Bradley, I gave that dream up because… because I wanted you more, and I was okay with it. It was my decision, and I don’t regret it, but for you to just… to just….”

“I do want children,” he says because he doesn’t know what to do except explain it, except make you see the truth of it all. “I’ve always… I’ve always wanted children, honey. I just… after what happened to my dad, after what that did to me, what it did to my mother, I didn’t… I didn’t want to do that to you. I couldn’t do that to you.”

For a moment, you say nothing, eyebrows furrowed, lower lip caught between your teeth.

“You…” You look like you’re trying very hard to understand it. “Are you saying you decided not to have children with me because you thought it would hurt me too much if you died?”

When you say it like that, out loud, logically, through your tears, it sounds so incredibly stupid.

Bradley opens and closes his mouth, once, twice. Finally, he nods.

He expects you to start crying harder, to hit him (all valid reactions, really), but instead, you do the one thing he doesn’t expect: You laugh. It’s a watery sound, barely amused, but it is a laugh.

You bury your face in your hands, then reemerge after a moment, eyes rimmed in red, and say, “God, Bradley, you’re so stupid.”

“I…” He doesn’t know what to say to that. Probably, you’re right. “What?”

“You just…” You exhale a long, shuddering breath. “You keep trying to make decisions without me.”

“... I do?”

“Yeah!” Your voice rises a little, then settles, and you say, “This is my decision as much as it’s yours. If I say I want it, if I say I know the risk and I know the danger, then you don’t get to tell me no. Do you think I’m dumb? Do you think I don’t understand what goes on when you get deployed? Do you think I don’t know that you’re risking your life all the time?”

“No, I… I know you know that.”

You shrug, and it’s a gesture of such helplessness that Bradley’s knees almost buckle.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. I don’t know if… if one day there’s going to be a mission you don’t come back from. I don’t know that, Bradley. I can’t know that. But until then… can’t you just let us be happy?”

Bradley’s shaking. Head to toe, tremors that run through him like the tides. Unstoppable. Unrelenting.

“I…” And he knows he’s the one who brought it up, but suddenly all the doubts come crashing down. Suddenly the ghosts crowd around him. “What if I die? What if I leave you? What if we have a baby and I’m not… there?”

“Oh, Bradley…” Something on your face melts. You step closer, put a hand on his cheek, fingertips still pruned from the water, and say, so gently it breaks something open inside of him, “Bradley. You’re not your father.”

And Bradley can’t help it - he cries. It’s an ugly sort of crying, the sort that leaves you with a headache and snot dripping down your face and eyes that hurt. The one you feel in the morning. But it’s a relief too. A release. Rain after years and years of drought.

For so long, Bradley was trying to let go of a world that didn’t want him to leave. He’s been preparing for an early exit since he entered, has been so caught up in dreaming he forgot to live. So caught up in thinking he forgot to do. He thought he would be content to go out of this world and leave nothing behind, to disappear without a trace, without a word, without a ghost.

But now he sees it clearly. Now he understands.

Bradley doesn’t want to stop existing. He wants to cling to this world like someone clinging to the edge of a cliff, like a leech, like a cancer. He wants to haunt someone.

Only there’s something else, too. 

A week before his mother died, when she had gone all quiet, when she had lost the vibrancy she used to carry around like a glow, when she had slept longer and spoke less and Bradley had known, somewhere deep inside of him, that things were ending, that they were truly ending, he’d gathered all his courage and asked a question he’d been rehearsing for weeks, months, years.

“Do you regret it?”

Do you regret loving my father now, knowing all that would come after? Knowing the landslide it really was?

And Carol had just smiled, something of that old light returning for a moment, a tenderness so big it felt like violence, and she’d said, “I could never regret him. Not even the heartbreak or the grief or the pain. After all, he gave me you, didn’t he?”

Maybe, he thinks, it’s time to let the past be in the past. Maybe it’s time to let himself have a future.

Maybe it’s time to let go of the ghost.

And you just hold him as he cries like he hasn’t since he locked himself in a bathroom stall after his mother’s funeral, cries until it feels like he’s going to throw up, cries until the gnashing teeth of grief of pain of hurt of anger finally leave him be.

After half an eternity, you pull away, warm hands cupping his face, tugging him gently away from the crook of your neck, so he has to look at you, can’t look anywhere but at you, and then you say, “Bradley, what happened to your father was a horrible, terrible accident. But he loved you. You know that, don’t you?”

He nods. His father, the hazy shape of him, the ghost he’s carried for so long - frosted tips and Hawaiian shirts and the smell of motor oil. Large hands and a mustache and rides around living rooms. So much of him is shadowed, fractioned, incomplete, but not this. This he knows. When he thinks of his father, there’s nothing now but the hazy, easy warmth of love. 

“Do you really think,” you say softly, “that they made a mistake when they had you? Your parents? Do you really think they shouldn’t have done it?”

Bradley has thought about his life in boxes. Big cardboard ones, the kind you get when you move apartments. He tucks the good parts away beneath his bed, stows them, hoards them like a secret. Like his mother kept her grief. But all the bad parts - the pain and the sadness and the sorrow - those he lets pile up everywhere, in hallways, in living rooms, on kitchen tables. He stumbles over them on his way to the bathroom. He stubs his toe halfway to the closet.

He never looks at those good parts, afraid they’ll become tainted somehow if he thinks about them for too long, afraid they’ll lose their appeal or their strength. But there’s so much good there too.

Goose loved him, he knows this without a doubt. Carole loved him. Mav loves him, Phoenix loves him, you love him… At the end of it all, even despite all the terrible things that have happened to him, even with the ghosts that have haunted him for so long, Bradley has been loved, and he has lived, and he has been happy.

Shouldn’t that be worth something, too?

“No,” he says, voice soft, “no, I’m glad they had me.”

His life has been a long, long road. Difficult to walk sometimes, full of potholes, some as big as canyons. But there’s so much happiness there, too - car rides with his mother, Mav telling him stories about his father, the moment when the wheels lift off the tarmac at take-off. This long, terrible, winding road that led him here. That led him to you.

You brush your fingertips across his cheekbone, and Bradley capsizes.

“I love you,” he says, and it’s the truest thing he’s ever said. It’s the truest thing he’s ever known. “I want… I want to have a life with you.”

“You do,” you answer. “You have one.”

Bradley’s tears have dried so the sound he makes isn’t really a sob, but it’s damn close to one. 

“Do you…” He clears his throat. “You love me, too?”

It’s a dumb question, unnecessary because he already knows the answer. But he needs to hear you say it anyway.

And when you smile, your whole face lights up. It echoes somewhere inside Bradley, somewhere at his core, goes through him like a current.

“Bradley Bradshaw,” you say, and there’s only a little bit of amusement in your voice, “you’re the love of my life.”

His heart jumps like a jackknife in his chest.

Before he recognizes that he’s made the conscious decision to do so, he’s bridged the space between you and has pulled you into a searing, soaring, slow kiss. He fumbles it a little, teeth knocking against yours, but you just laugh into it, going up on your tiptoes, arms wrapping around his neck, pulling yourself closer to him like you want to meld yourself to his bones. Bradley feels like somebody’s poured liquid sunlight into his chest.

Somewhere it goes heated, goes desperate, goes near frantic, all the adrenaline, all the fear, everything pouring from him in a shower of want. Somehow he’s got you pressed up against the counter, tongue tangled with yours, fingers in your hair, fingers on your back, fingers pulling up the edge of the shirt you’ve stolen from him to find the warm, soft skin beneath.

Breathless, heart stuttering, Bradley pulls away, looks at your lips swollen from the tug of his teeth, your eyes with the heavy lids, the hair mussed by his fingers, and he needs to hear it. Needs to know you want this as much as he does. The ache in him twists like a knife between the ribs.

“Tell me,” he whispers, afraid the moment will shatter if he makes a wrong move, speaks too loudly. It’s so fragile - he wants to protect it so fiercely. Presses the tips of his fingers into the place where your pulse hammers away. “Tell me you want to have a baby with me.”

“I want…” And you sigh, a sound like a spring day, a sound like a rushing mountain stream. “I want it.”

He surges forward, lips against yours again, and you’re so alive beneath him, heart racing, breath heaving, fingers grappling along his neck, his shoulders, his chest, his arms, and Bradley wants to devour you. Wants to sink his teeth into all this life and never let it go again. He wants to exist, right here, in this moment with you forever.

“I love you,” he mumbles into your neck, lets his mouth move over the column of your throat, down to the sharp points of your collarbones beneath the soft skin. Sinks to his knees on the kitchen tiles like he’s kneeling at an altar to pray.

“Bradley,” you whisper, fingers going to tangle in his hair, to smooth along the sides of his face, and the softness in your voice cracks something in him. He swears he could cry again.

He doesn’t even know what he’s doing as he nuzzles his nose against the sloping curve of your upper thigh, as his fingers tighten on your hips. He just wants to be close to you. And you’re so soft, so warm, you smell like home, and it tears through him, blazes everything in its wake, to realize just how close he came to losing it all.

“I’m gonna marry you,” he whispers, babbles, barely coherent, pressing his face against the fabric of your panties, inhaling your scent, opening his mouth to push his tongue where he knows your clit is. “Gonna make you so happy, baby, I promise, it’s all I want. I’m never letting you go again, I’m never….”

Above him, you whimper, hips knocking forward, arching into the movement of his tongue for a moment, and he wonders if you’re wet, thinks about the hot, tight vice of your cunt, and groans against you. His cock jumps.

Then you’re tugging him away from you by the hair, and Bradley goes reluctantly, mouth still open, wishing he could stay where he was forever. Drowning in you. 

You’re looking down at him with eyes blown wide.

“Bradley,” you say, and there’s something unsteady to your voice. “Take me to bed.”

He doesn’t need to be told twice. It’s a tumble all the way to your bedroom - he kicks off his shoes on the way, you lose your shirt, and he’s somehow, miraculously, gotten down to his boxers by the time he drags you backward with him onto the mattress.

“I love you,” he says as he drags you on top of him, your legs opening around his hips like the petals of a flower. The mattress dips where your knees press against the springs, your weight grounds him. “I love you, you’re so perfect, you’re….”

He has no idea what he’s saying. His brain checked out a while ago, and it’s all just feelings now, just emotions coursing through him, and every once in a while, one will plunge its head through the surface, and then he’ll tell you something nonsensical, something dumb, something important, something he needs you to know, something…

You lean down to kiss him, to shut him up, his brain buzzes, your breasts press to his bare chest, and he’s so hard in his boxers it hurts.

“I love you, too,” you whisper against his lips, smile into the kiss. The curve of it burns against Bradley’s face.

He sits up, grasps you by the thighs to drag you closer, drag your core across his cock, and you both moan against each other. Your fingernails scrape over the back of his neck, where his hair is buzzed so short he knows it feels like prickles, and he shudders, sighs, lets his tongue run across your teeth.

For a while, you just stay like that, rutting against each other like fucking teenagers, tongues lazy, fingers eager, mouths hungry. Even through your panties, he can feel your wetness, wonders if it’s going to leave stains on his underwear, across his thighs. Bradley thinks he’s going to die, but this time it’s nothing like it was up in the F-14.

It’s difficult in your position, awkward, but he gets a finger first on your clit, and then, when he finds you wet and swollen and open, he slides it right inside you. Watches your face as you squeeze your eyes shut, as your mouth falls open on a muffled gasp, as your head tips backward.

You’re the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

He fucks his finger in and out slowly, adds a second to stretch you, and then he’s saying, “Baby, honey, you’re so tight, you’re so fucking wet, god I….”

You whimper, and then you’re pulling off him, shimmying out of your panties, leaning down to tug his boxers off.

“Gotta have…” Your throat moves when you swallow as you clamber back into his lap. “Want you inside me, please, Bradley. I’m ready.”

He groans, something in his stomach yanking tight, and he’s pretty sure he’s leaking precum steadily by now.

There’s no time to tease, no need for it either, not when you’re both aching for it, not after what you’ve just gone through. The hot slide of him inside you, feeling you all around him, Bradley thinks that might be the only thing that could make him realize he’s actually back here, that it isn’t all just a dream, that he didn’t actually go down in that plane and has been stuck in some kind of cruel limbo for the past few days.

But there’s the other thing too. The need he can’t explain. The selfish, horrible, depraved thing he can share with nobody but you. That nobody but you would ever understand.

Slowly, tentatively, he places his palm on your stomach, fingers splaying wide, and leaves it there. He’s too scared to look at you, too scared of what you’ll think of him, too scared of what you’ll do once you find out how deep his desire runs, how desperately he wants this. Will you hate him? Will you be disgusted? Will you draw back, pull away, leave him alone with all his depravity and all his fears and all his sorrow? 

“I need… I want…” He can’t even finish the sentence, brain too foggy. Too scared to meet your eyes, Bradley just blinks at the sight in front of him, his big hand on your skin, and his heart seizes, his insides clench, and he can’t breathe, can’t, he’s going to…

Slowly, your fingers wrap around his wrist.

“Yes,” you breathe above him.

It’s a visceral thing. The words burn through him, wrap around him, curl into him. He surges forward to kiss you, desperate, a choked sound escaping him, and licks into your mouth. Around his wrist, your fingers tighten.

He pushes you back into the sheets, crawls over you and spreads your legs, slides between them where he belongs. When his gaze falls to your face, there’s so much trust there, so much love, and it cleaves him in two, just how much he loves you, just how much he needs you. He doesn’t have the words to express it, can only hope you understand what he means when he plunges into you without preamble, when he whispers your name against the shell of your ear, when he curves around you like he wants to shield you from everything bad in the world.

You moan, fingers coming up to grasp his arm where he’s balancing his weight on the elbows. Your mouth tips open, your eyes not straying from his for a second as he goes slow, as he goes deep, as he goes home. There’s an answer in that too.

“You’re so beautiful,” he says, voice choked as he bottoms out, as he holds himself perfectly still. “So tight and beautiful, and you’re all mine, and I’m yours and….”

“Bradley,” you stop him. Wrap your legs around his hips and pull him in. “It’s okay. You can move now.”

So he does.

It’s frantic from the first moment. It’s all the tension that’s been building up for years and years inside of him, all his love and all his longing finally laid open, and he can’t hold back anymore, not when he feels like he’s going to burst out of his own skin at any moment now.

The wet squeeze of your walls around his cock has his eyes rolling into the back of his head.

“Fuck,” he curses, hips pushing forward at an unsteady pace, as he leans down to kiss you again, as you open your mouth for him easily, as he nips at your lower lip.

And it’s so dumb - he’s inside of you, curled around you, his tongue tangled with your own, but Bradley wants you closer, still. Needs to know that you’re there with him, that he’s here with you, that he came home and he is letting himself have this, you’re letting him have it, and he loves you, he loves you, he…

Bradley takes his weight off his elbows, gets his arms around you, plasters himself to you, chest to chest, hip to hip, mouth finding the side of your neck, your collarbones. Like this, with his arms around your shoulders, it feels almost like he’s pulling you down to him with every thrust, like he slides just half an inch deeper into you.

You try to muffle a moan into his hair, but Bradley pulls your face away, keeps his pace as he says, “Wanna hear you. Let me hear you, baby, tell me how much you like it. You love it, don’t you? Love my cock, yeah? Love it when I fuck you?”

Maybe it’s pathetic, but Bradley needs to hear it. Needs to know you’re as desperate for him as he is for you. Needs to know you want it just as much.

On a thrust in, your walls flutter around him, and you whine, back arching a little, head sliding across the pillow as you nod.

“Yes,” you gasp, “I love it, Bradley, I love your cock. Thought about it while you were gone all the time, every night, I….”

Bradley groans, shudders, suddenly so close to the brink he needs to squeeze his eyes shut against the image of you - the glossy eyes, the swollen lips, the absolute ruin he’s reduced you to.

“Can’t say shit like that, baby,” he whispers, leaning to press tender kisses to the column of your throat. “Not when you’re this fucking wet, not when you’re making these sounds… you’re gonna make me cum.”

You giggle, then moan, head lolling to the side to give him better access. 

“Good,” you say, legs hiking higher up on his hips, his cock sliding deeper, “that’s the plan, isn’t it?”

If there were any air left in his lungs, Bradley would laugh with you. As it stands, he just ups the ante, going a little harder, watching as your eyelashes flutter, feeling your fingers spasm against the skin of his back.

It’s so hot in the room, both of you sticking to each other with sweat, and maybe that, too, should be disgusting, but Bradley doesn’t care. When he leans down to lick a long, wet stripe along the edge of your jaw, he tastes salt on his tongue.

“I’m gonna….” When he glances down at you, at the eyes wide with that much trust, as he realizes you would let him do just about anything to you, that you’ve both opened yourself to each other completely now, no barriers and no ghosts standing between you, it’s like a dam breaking. He moans, so loud it echoes through the room, leans to plunge his tongue into your mouth, desperate, and then he’s saying into it, “God, I’m gonna fuck you so full, honey, gonna fuck you until it takes, yeah? Gonna keep you right here and fill you up, again and again, gonna make sure to get a baby in you, fuck, you’d be so fucking pretty, honey, so pretty all full of me, I know it, I can….”

And you sob. Full-on. Back arching off the bed, legs sliding off his hips, spreading so wide it must hurt.

“Bradley,” you say, fingernails breaking skin, forehead pressing against his throat to hide your face. “Bradley, fuck, I… the pill….”

He’s shaking his head, cutting you off with his mouth on yours. Conveying what he can’t speak, what he’s too far gone to formulate, here where logic has become a distant, remote concept, here between your legs. Don’t say it. Let me live in this fantasy. Let me dream a little longer.

It’s the thought of it all - a bump beneath your dresses, a baby in your arms, tiny fingers wrapping around his thumb, it’s about the long, long stretch of life ahead of the two of you. It’s about a house filled with love and free of ghosts. It’s about the first glimpse of the ocean after listening to its roar in seashells all his life. It’s about giving himself over to you completely, after years of only dreaming of it.

Do you know? he wonders. Do you know that you’re holding his whole life in your hands?

“I love you,” he mumbles, repeats it as he sinks into you again and again, as he buries himself in you, as he holds onto you like he’ll be back in the cold, cold, cold of all that snow the moment he lets go, like he’ll go back to the cockpit with the ghosts like jailors around him, like he’ll float right off the face off the earth. You have always been his anchor. “I’m gonna give you a baby, honey, I promise, gonna cum inside of you, you want that, right? You want me to come right here in this pretty pussy, fill you up all nice and wet, and….”

Your mouth moves against his clavicle, the feel of it spreading like wildfire through him, and you’re saying, “Yes, yes, Bradley, give it to me, please, I wanna feel it, want you to come inside me, please, please, I need it, I….”

A yell punches from him as he thrusts inside one last time, buries himself to the hilt in your warmth, and then he’s panting, his ears are ringing, his veins are buzzing as he cums, as he paints you with his release. He can’t do anything except hold onto you, bury his face in your hair, inhaling your scent, jerking his hips forward erratically, little sounds escaping him. It’s never felt like this before - like dying and coming back alive. The release of it is so big he feels shattered under its weight. 

And you’re saying something to him, whispering words sticky with honey into his ear, pouring them right into his heart, and he can barely hear you over the hammering of his own heart, but it doesn’t matter. You hold him as he trembles, as he shakes, as he tries to collect himself, to control his breathing, hold him and stroke lazy, soft circles up and down his back, trace patterns against his spine, leave soft kisses on any inch of skin you can reach, trapped beneath his weight as you are.

Finally, after an eternity, Bradley pulls away an inch or two, careful not to let his cock slip out. There’s a little embarrassment spreading through his stomach now because he can’t believe he came that fast, can’t believe he didn’t even make sure to take you over the edge with him.

But you barely seem to think about your own lack of an orgasm.

“Are you okay?” you ask, voice gentle, face full of concern.

Bradley’s heart clenches. Maybe, he thinks, his ribcage is going to crack open. It seems impossible for one person to hold so much love inside.

“Are…” He clears his throat, suddenly unsure. “Are you?”

You nod immediately, smile, and the relief floods him. Then you shift, gasp, muscles fluttering around his softening cock.

“Well… I…”

He doesn’t let you finish, shakes his head, says, “You did so good for me, baby. Let me take care of you, yeah?”

He’s already looking at the place where you’re still connected, where his cum is beginning to drip from you in silvery trails. The sight of it is enough to make something like madness descend again, something like that earlier haze, the frenzy of the heat.

Bradley pulls out, sighs at the feeling, and your mouth opens as if in protest, but before you can form any words, he’s replaced his cock with two fingers.

You whimper, eyes closing, a muscle in your stomach jumping.

“I got you,” he says, keeps his eyes on the mess of your swollen cunt, the wet spot soaking into the mattress just beneath, the evidence of his pleasure, smooths his free hand over your chest to settle you. “Relax, honey. I got you.”

Your answer is a moan of his name, fingers twisting into the sheets. He can feel your walls bearing down on the motion of his fingers and knows you’re close, desperately, frantically, torturously close to the brink.

So he speeds up the movement of his digits, swipes his thumb through the sopping wetness, and then across your clit as he fucks his cum back into you. Not letting a single drop go to waste.

“Bradley,” you sob, mouth opening, fingers grappling for something.

Knowing what you need, knowing without you asking for it, he catches your hand with his own and interlaces your fingers. Then he leans down, leans over you, leans in. Finds the seam of your mouth with his own. It’s less of a kiss than both of you panting against each other, finding the same rhythm.

“You can let go now,” he whispers into you. “I’m here. I’ve got you, honey. My perfect girl.”

You come with his name on your lips, cunt clenching around his fingers, arching off the bed and into him, and it’s like a prayer. It’s like a song. 

It takes you a while to come down, and he coaxes you through it, brushes kisses against your lips and your jaw and your ear. Hopes he can ground you the same way you ground him.

Finally, softly, voice faint and fragile, you say, “That was… intense.”

Bradley hums in agreement, and then a laugh rips from him. Because it’s all so ridiculous and so monumental, and he doesn’t know where to go with all these emotions.

“I… yeah. It really was.” He pauses, feels shame curling through him. “I’m sorry I sprung that on you.”

You shake your head, lift one hand to run a finger across his mustache the way you like to do sometimes. 

“It’s okay,” you say, and he knows you mean it. “You must have carried that for a long time.”

It chokes him up, the way you know him so well. Better than anybody else.

“Yeah,” he agrees, drops his head into the crook of your neck. “It… I want you to know that I really want this. It’s not… it’s not adrenaline, and it’s not just almost dying, it’s… It’s you. I want this with you. Only with you.”

He can feel the curve of your smile against his temple, can hear it in your voice.

“I want it with you too, Bradley. Only with you.”

Bradley’s so afraid he’s going to start crying again that he springs into action instead. Reaches around you for a pillow to push beneath your hips, angle your lower body upwards.

“What are you doing?” you ask, laughing a little.

“I’m trying to keep my cum in you. Maybe we’re like super extra lucky, and it works out on the first try.”

Now you’re laughing in earnest, and he gets the impression it might be at his expanse.

“Still on the pill, Bradley,” you remind him, eyes luminous with your happiness.

Feeling a little sheepish, a little embarrassed, a little elated, he shrugs helplessly.

“Can’t hurt,” he says. Then adds, “Besides… I don’t want all my hard work to go to waste.”

Then you’re laughing together, breathless, loud laughter, the bending-at-the-waist kind. The belly-hurting kind. The kind that doesn’t come often.

And it’s good. It’s beautiful. It’s the kind of peace he’s never known before but has wanted always, always, always.

It’s so much better than anything he could have ever dreamed. Because it’s real. Because it’s true.

All his life, Bradley thinks, he’s been listening to oceans in seashells. It’s good, fun even, for a while, but it’s no replacement for the real thing. It’s no comparison to standing at the shore of the Pacific Ocean, watching waves crest and crash and throw themselves against the beach again and again, like a devotion that never ends. How big and beautiful and terrible the truth of it is.

And he’d thought the whole world was in that seashell.

Once the laughter has died down, once you’ve fallen back into the kind of comfortable silence that can exist only between people that really, truly love each other, Bradley strokes his thumb against your cheekbone, watches your eyes flutter closed.

“I love you,” he says, “more than I thought I could love someone. Thanks for loving me back.”

It’s bumbling, and it’s inadequate, and it doesn’t convey half of what it should.

But you smile at him, eyes opening, face so tender his heart stutters, and you whisper, “It’s an honor, Lieutenant Bradshaw.”

For the first time, Bradley doesn’t think about dying, doesn’t think about leaving. He thinks about living. He thinks about staying.

27/11/22: super quick adorable read!!! domestic bradley bradshaw will always be my favorite he’s so malewife it hurts me it pains me. he was born to be a husband!!! this was so cute and i could picture everything and i saw the little note where it said you haven’t written in 5 years, well, i for one am VERY HAPPY you decided to start again and share this with us!!! my favorite parts are below 💞

“Rooster hummed, looking up at you, small smile on his face. He’s been wearing that smile since he returned from his short detachment, happy to be in your presence again.” 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🤲🤲🤲 so precious!!!

“Rooster’s cheeks grew hot, and he was up off the couch to follow you out to your car, pinching your behind as you two went.” the little teasing because he likes to eat healthy 😭

“Rooster, who had the basket in his free hand, hummed in content as your thumb slowly rubbed his hand. “So why the sudden desire for cookies?” my favorite part!!! i could picture this so well!!! the basket in one hand and holding HER hand in the other!!!

and the way he was worried about her trying to reach the high shelfs by herself when he was gone 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

“I’m really happy you’re home.” You admitted, having missed these late nights of domesticity and simple pleasures.” ❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹

hi pals! top gun: maverick has once again stolen my heart, but this time i need an outlet, so here i am! a more formal post will come sometime soon(ish) with who i’ll write for/what i’ll write, but for now, i leave you this <3

w/c: 

summary: late-night grocery shopping with rooster, female!reader

warnings: none

Continuar lendo

YOU HAD ME AT “BRADLEY GOES AS TED LASSO FOR HIS FIRST HALLOWEEN” HOLY SHIT DID YOU CRAWL INSIDE MY BRAIN????? ABSOLUTELY SHUT UP!!!!!! THE MUSTACHE!!!!!!! jordannnnnnnnnnnnnnnn i’ll never be over this. amazing, perfect, incredible, showstopping, i can keep going…

bradley being a boy’s dad!!!!!!! and a coach!!!!!!!!!!!! stop it!!!!!!!!!!!! AND JEALOUS!!!!!!!! and of course he gets handsy 😭😭😭😭🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

bradley and smart aleck are my beloveds and i got a littleeeeee teeeenyyyy bit emotional about knowing they’re gonna have kids together one day!!! also: the mav mention <3

rooster jealousy fic 🥵🥵🥵

I want all of them

this probably isn’t what you imagined BUT it takes place in an eventual universe where bradley and smart aleck have kids. and yes in my dreams bradley goes as ted lasso for his first halloween with smart aleck and it kinda evolves into peewee soccer coach bradley bradshaw when they have kids since his girl digs it so much (it’s the fucking mustache i stg) - enjoy???

ask prompt

"Did you see that? You saw that, right?"

Bradley sputtered, frantically pointing across the soccer field to where you were chatting with Max's dad, Zach.

Fucking Zach. Bradley hated Zach. And his stupid crisp button downs and his smarmy face and his shiny loafers and his ridiculous fucking Shelby Cobra that was in no way safe for a child to ride in, unlike Bradley's family-friendly Land Rover. Plus, his son, Max, was a biter.

But more importantly, Bradley hated the way Zach got so close to you to talk about emerging markets or stock options or some shit like that. Fucking prick.

Beside him, Gil frowned. "See what? Mommy?"

"Yes, mommy," he sassed the five year old, not taking his eyes off you from behind his aviators. Wait, was he - no, he did not just put his hand on -

"- TWEEEEEEEEEET," Bradley blew the whistle hanging around his neck, causing his small battalion of five year olds to immediately freeze where they were aimlessly running on the field. If it also caused Zach to retreat his hand from where it was about to touch your arm then that was just a happy coincidence.

"Alright," Coach Bradshaw clapped his hands together a couple times, rounding up the troops, "good job today everyone - especially you, Maddie S, that flower crown looks dynamite on you, wanna see that energy on Saturday for our game against the Yellow Frogs, alright?"

Maddie S preened under the praise, while the rest of the kids nodded seriously. "We gotta keep that defense tight - that means no getting distracted by Jacob R, okay Emily? Yeah, heard about you at nap time the other day, little grabby for kindergarten, I think? That being said, I think Mrs. Armstrong brought orange slices and apple juice if you all want to head over for your snack - "

They dispersed without another word, except Gil, who was drawing what Bradley thought was a - dinosaur? a dog? he didn't really know - on his play whiteboard. He hazarded a glance across the field to see that you still were talking to Zach. God, your ass looked fucking perfect in your work skirt. How the hell you weren't sinking into the grass with those heels of yours?

"Hey, buddy?" Gil looked up. "Why don't we pack up all this stuff and go get mommy? Think she's talking to Max's dad..."

Gil made a face. “I don’t like Max -”

“- Well, I don’t like his dad,” Bradley muttered, hoping Gil didn’t hear, but the little boy giggled. 

The two Bradshaw men made quick work of picking up all the cones and practice pinnies and tossing them into a mesh bag along with the five or so soccer balls. Gil tried to carry the bag, but ended up dragging it, so Bradley picked it and Gil up and made his way across the field to you. The kid was too old to be picked up, but it made getting over to you quicker - Gil had short legs.

While Bradley and Gil had been cleaning up, Emily K’s dad, Adam, had joined Zach’s little tete-a-tete with you. Of course, none of them had their kids with them. Fucking typical. Emily was probably aimlessly walking around with orange juice dripping on her cleats. Bradley scowled as he approached the group, while Zach tossed him a quick wave. 

“Hey, Brad.” Bradley fucking hated being called Brad. 

“Hmmm, hi.”

You turned around at the sound of his voice and a huge smile lit up your face once you saw Bradley and Gil. 

“Mommy!" Gil squirmed in Bradley’s arms until he put him down, wanting to be let go.

“Hey, little man!” You ran your hands through Gil’s hair as he latched onto your legs in a hug. Suddenly, Bradley was jealous of his five year old and he gave you a longer than probably appropriate for six o’clock on a Tuesday kiss.

“Did you see me? I scored a goal!” Gil exclaimed, dancing on the spot.

You shot a quick glance over towards Bradley to double check. He nodded slightly, knowing you hadn’t seen that part of practice - and not because Zach and Adam had been monopolizing your time.

“Of course, I did! Amazing, as always, did daddy teach you that?” Gil giggled and then burrowed his face in the hem of your skirt when he realized there were two other men standing there.

Bradley took a step back towards you, resting his hand on the small of your back. You leaned into him and gave him a quick smile. “Zach was just talking about setting up a playdate with Gil next week - and then Adam thought maybe Emily could come over, too?”

Absolutely fucking not. The ink on Zach’s divorce papers was barely dry and Adam was - well, Adam wasn’t too bad and he probably had just wanted to see if Emily could have a playdate with Gil. They were in the same class, after all. And she wasn’t a biter. Even if she was a little handsy.

Bradley clicked his tongue. “You know, I think G-man’s a little booked up next week? We got a birthday party and then we’re gonna see Papa at the base.”

Gil looked up at him and his entire face lit up even though they were doing nothing of the sort - well, at least not yet. Clearly, when Bradley called Mav later, he would understand and extend the invite.

“Ahhh bummer. We were just exchanging numbers,” Zach nodded towards you, “so, maybe we can do something the week after?”

“Yeah, of course,” you said politely, “maybe next - ahh - week?”

Zach and Adam frowned at your sudden exclamation, but what they hadn’t seen was Bradley slide his hand underneath the waistband of your skirt and lace panties and dig his fingers into the top of your ass. Or the way he started drawing little circles with the pads of his fingers and dragged his nail down your spine. You swallowed.

He could see the goosebumps rising on your arms. Thankfully, your backs were both to the field and not the mass of parents and five year olds eating oranges.

“We uhh, we can work out the details on - Satur-day?” you stuttered out as Bradley dug his fingers into a rather sensitive knot on your back. 

“Sure, that’s fine...guess we’ll see you two around then?”

Bradley smiled at the two men for the first time since the conversation had started, but his good mood was more attributed to your slightly heaving chest, which he had perfect view of thanks to his height advantage. “Have a good night.”

With a brief glance back at the three of you, the two men set off to find their children - which they should have been keeping an eye on in the first place. Bradley retracted his hand.

You bit your lip and glanced up at him. “So, Coach Bradshaw, you gonna make me stay after practice for some one-on-one training? Promise I’ll try harder..."

“Nah, I got you booked for a private session later.” He leaned forward and kissed you, wrapping his arms around your waist, while you clasped yours around his neck. God, you smelled so pretty - he’d take you on the goddamn soccer field right now if there weren’t about twenty parents and five year olds around them.

Bradley only came back to himself and pulled away when he felt a slight tug on his joggers. He looked down at Gil. 

“Daddy? Can we get ice cream since I scored a goal? Please?”

A wicked smile crept across your face. “Yeah, daddy, can we get ice cream?”

Bradley threw back his head and groaned. God, you were fucking killing him tonight. He shot Gil an amused look. “If you can carry this bag,” he nodded towards the mesh bag at his feet, “all the way to the car, then we can get ice cream.”

Gil considered this and then grabbed the bag with his little hands. “Okay, I can do it! I can do it!”

The two of you laughed watching him slowly drag the bag across the grass and towards the parking lot. Bradley threw his arm around your shoulders pulling you close. 

“So, Zach’s dad, huh?”

“Hmmm.”

“What do you mean hmmmm! I could see him making eyes at you from all the way across the field -”

“- He was not!” you protested.

Bradley snorted. “And you just happened to wear that tight little skirt to come to practice, huh?”

“Noticed that, did you - Gil, wait until your father and I catch up before going into the parking lot!” You glanced back up at Bradley. “I like when you get jealous, bubs, it’s cute -”

“- Cute!” He scoffed. “Hardly -”

“- Well, I suppose that’s not true, you were practically groping my ass on the field - isn’t that a Title IX violation or something?”

Bradley groaned. “Sweetheart, at least wait till we get home to start the dirty talk.”

“I make no promises - coach.” You winked and then walked ahead to meet Gil, shaking your hips with every step. “I’ll take Gil to Dairy Queen and we can meet you at home?”

Bradley stopped by his car. “You want ice cream, too?”

You turned around and scrunched your nose. “Not really, I actually have other plans in mind for dessert tonight...” Bradley groaned. “See you at home, daddy.”

thanks for reading x