slow down (you're doing fine) sequel unrevised snippet because I'm procrastinating on finishing slow down itself and having Mav&Brad feels
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The light from the living room turned on — he was covered by the terrace curtains enough that it was merely a warm shade coming from the cracked door. He heard bare footsteps, and a shadow flickering through the heavy fabric, until a familiar figure showed up.
Mav closed the terrace behind himself, plopping on the sandy wooden panels, until he was sitting down on Bradley’s left. He looked at his hands, at the phone, at Jake still left on read on the screen — Bradley switched it off and put it under his thigh.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked. He rubbed his eyes but didn’t look that sleepy either — just a bit tired, in that long-drawn, frustrated way when one wanted to rest but couldn’t no matter how hard they tried.
Bradley shrugged. He probably could sleep, he’d slept after he had done and said far worse things than today. He didn’t want to, it was almost like a punishment, staying awake until he fixed the problem. Until he stopped running away. He couldn't make himself fix anything, staying stagnant as the ball of anxiety and the dread about the inevitable grew.
“Still thinking about Hangman?”
He didn’t answer and maybe it was an answer in itself — Mav gave him an affectionate sigh.
“You remember that time when my deployment ran longer last minute? When you were about twelve.”
He gave him a glance — it was an out-of-nowhere question. “Yeah I was so upset that Ice took me flying the day after you were supposed to get back. In the Tomcat.”
It hadn’t been long after Ice came back from Bosnia. Bradley had been missing Mav so badly that he would cry himself to sleep whenever Ice wasn’t looking careful enough — he was still a bit messed up after his mom’s death and scared that one day, Ice’d have to tell him Mav wasn’t coming back.
Mav was supposed to be gone twelve weeks but last minute, Ice told him it’d take some more time before Mav’d come back, and it ended up closer to four months rather than three. Bradley had yelled at Ice’s face, then cried in his arms for about an hour, until he fell asleep, begging him to get Mav back to them.
“It didn't run over,” Mav said after a moment. His breathing was loud and Bradley saw him shake his head in the corner of his eye. He turned to face him and Mav’s eyes were already waiting at him, full of regret and fear, his mouth just slightly quirked. “I didn't know what I was doing, Bradley. Both my best friends were gone, I was never supposed to be a dad and here you were, completely dependable on me having my shit together, and then we were doing so well with Ice, and it was just so much—”
He hadn’t known. In his eyes, they always seemed to have a grip on everything, always seemed to have the answers to all of Bradley’s problems. They were the heroes of Bradley’s life.
“I knew I was going to fuck it up somehow, you and him, and I thought, better sooner than later, right.”
It was familiar — waiting on the other shoe to drop, and when he had been waiting and waiting and nothing fell on his head, removing himself from the situation before he got hit. Better to disappoint from the start than wait infinitely until they find you out for who you really were. Can’t be hurt if you never let them hurt yourself. Can’t hurt them if you’re not long enough for that with them.
That was a lie, no matter how hard he’d pretend to believe it — there was always someone hurt.
“So I didn't tell Ice anything and stayed in Virginia instead of taking a layover flight to California with everyone. Gave Merlin a letter to hand Ice when he met him at the airport and realized I was nowhere in sight.”
Bradley had always thought he was a coward, not facing Jake, just leaving in his absence when things became complicated, when they became too tied to each other. Maybe it was a family thing.
“I can't do it, please don't wait for me. Take care of Bradley. That's all it said.”
Mav creased his eyebrows, shook his head, almost like he was doing it at his past self.
Bradley didn’t know what to say.
“Took me almost three weeks to get back in my right mind. I showed up at home at two in the morning absolutely ready to beg him to forgive me and instead he told me to stay quiet so I wouldn't wake you up and then said I'd be doing laundry and the dishes for a month if I didn't go straight to sleep. Slept with me in the same bed the first night back, even."
Mav bit down on his lip, huffed, just a tiny, humorless sound, and looked at his hands — he was twirling his wedding ring around on his finger.
“I don't know how I could even think that I could ever live without you in my life, those three weeks. Both of you.”
That was the difference between the two of them. They might have both been cowards, running away from something great, that could turn bad at any moment — Mav came back.
Mav came back and Ice was already waiting for him, expecting him back. He faced the consequences and fixed everything, faced the option that he could fuck it all up at any moment and accepted the risks to gamble for something better and sweeter.
Mav kept on trying. Bradley’d only kept on running away his whole life.
He had been running so long that it didn’t feel like he could stop. Like he deserved to stop.
"So I could tell you that you deserve him but I know it's really hard to believe it, sometimes, and no amount of saying it will change your mind," Mav continued. "But it’s not about deserving him. He chose you, Bradley. He chose you, who are you to decide he’s wrong?”
Bradley—blinked. It was impossible to hear, to understand — he’d always thought it more as if Jake was sentenced to loving him. People didn’t choose their sentences.
They did choose to commit the crimes.
“It’s hard to believe you deserve it, but he chose you and he’ll keep choosing you,” Mav said and the wobbly note of familiarity made him felt dangerously seen. “So until you can believe it, you try your best to be the man he deserves to have, until you’re ready to believe it. You come back, how many times it doesn’t take—"
He bit down on his tongue, taking in a big, unhelpful gulp of air. His eyes were watering and he couldn’t stop it, the wetness itching in his nose even as he squeezed his eyes shut — Mav bumped their shoulders just as he sniffled stiffly.
"I think we should have talked about it more, show you more that we struggled too. We always tried to keep you out of the loop if we thought we could make it without you being affected and I always thought that it was just something parents were supposed to do," he said. "Maybe if we didn’t then you wouldn't feel like this now."
Bradley could only shake his head rapidly, because that wouldn't be true. His parents did his best with him, he had been doomed to turn up a little fucked up the minute his dad died, at least, if not the day his mom herself got orphaned and met Mav in the foster system. Maybe their family was just meant to turn up all bent out of shape.
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