#I'm still fucking sobbing and I don't think I'll be able to ever recover from this.

[loustica-lucia]

DATV — All That Remains🪴

DO NOT KEEP READING IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED DRAGON AGE THE VEILGUARD!!!!!!

All That Remains🪴(Lace Harding & Calico "Rook" Aldwir)

Wearing his coat... like a nice hug from a lost friend😭

[nerdthatsiriuslylovesteaxx]

Helpless part 55, how lucky we are to be alive right now

"PERCY JACKSON YOU BETTER FUCKING TELL ME WHY MY BROTHER ALMOST DIED!" An iris message appeared in his cabin, making Percy fall back onto his bed. It was around eleven in the morning; the words didn't process in his mind for a few seconds. Hazel had tears streaming down her face, eyes red with bags under her eyes as if she hadn't slept.

"Hazel, what are you talking about? He's been in the infirmary... Will is- he was fine I-"

"WHAT THE FUCK GOING ON? THIRD FUCKING TIME, WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING."

"I'll go check on him okay?" Hazel took a deep breath,

"Thank you Percy, I'd like to have some words with Solace when I get to camp, Reyna would to, I'm sure." The anger in her eyes would have made anyone else run in fear, he understood the pain, the anger, the fear, the sadness.

"H-hey I'm sure he'll be fine." He forced the words out of his mouth, he was also pretty fucking mad at Will, he'd told them he'd be safe in the infirmary, what the fuck happened? He waved his had through the message, breaking the connection before running to the infirmary. He tried to stay calm, he needed to, he knew it couldn't be Will's fault, Nico would be fine, he had to be fine. He opened the door, unlocked as always.

"Solace! Where are you?"

"He's in the second room, to the left, he's been a wreck all morning so be careful and be gentle."

"Thanks Kayla."

"No problem." He walked towards the room, the door had just been left open, he pushed it open and was scared of what he saw. Nico was laying on a bed, the only movement being the rise and fall of his chest which was likely induced by one of the machines hooked to him, next to him, sitting on the floor was Will Solace, head down in the knees crying silent tears. He sat down next to him,

"Everything okay?"

"Shit I'm so sorry, did anything happen?" Fuck he was meant to be working,

"Hey, man it's okay. Take a breath, what happened?"

"I- I was off for a little while and Nico- he- we think he shadow travelled out. He started drinking, the amount would have been okay for most people but it was in such a short span of time and he's already really weak because he still hasn't recovered from using his powers and he used them again and he lost a lot of blood not that long ago. He's in a coma, he probably will be for a while, I don't know if he's even going to wake up, ever. I know I was meant to tell Hazel and Reyna but I'm too fucking scared to and, shit there's something I need to show you." He spoke through sobs, his heart breaking with each word, hands shaking as he took off the blanket that was covering Nico. Dark shadow-like streaks covered his arms and neck probably covering his entire body, when Will touched them his hand went through. His skin was even paler than normal, he was cold to the touch, the only thing that made him alive was the fall and rise of his chest. Percy was too stunned to say a single word, he look at the small boy, so close to death and he felt guilty. He hadn't been able to help, it was too late, he hadn't been able to protect him, to stop all the horrible things from happening.

"I don't know what else to do, if we increase the dose of nectar it might start to burn him, I'm going to try so mortal meds soon. I don't think any of them are made for underworld power exhaustion butthey might help, I mean legally I can't give anything to him, he has a history of drugs and legally I'm not allowed to give him over a certain amount because it's bad for addiction. Right now none of that matters, I just need to keep him alive."

"Mate, I know it's your job to take care of others but please remember to take care of yourself. You look like shit, maybe get someone to cover for you for a day or two. There's a lot going on, a war ended pretty recently, there's a bunch of new campers coming in, your brothers missing and you've got a lot of people in the infirmary so just remember to let yourself breathe for a second yeah? You're not in this alone; also Hazel and Reyna already know."

"Did Jason call?"

"No, Hazel can feel when people are close to death or have died. Wait Jason found him again? Shit, I hope he's holding up, last time he was worried sick, we both were."

"He had Leo with him, I hope that helped him."

"It probably did, I'm gonna go, I- it just scares me to see him like this. If you ever need help in any way I'm free okay?"

"Thanks Percy, tell me if you hear anything about Austin."

***

[vexicwrites]

Emotional

Summary: in which I continue to ask the question but what if no murder in season 3?

Warnings: Dick Grayson actually has emotions? shocking

Dick breathed a sigh of relief when he and Dawn returned to the manor to find Hank still alive. Superboy had managed to disarm the bomb and remove it, flying it out of the building mere seconds before Dawn had pulled the trigger that Jason had rigged to set it off. Dawn had collapsed in grief when she'd realized and now she was sobbing and apologizing to Hank, kissing him while he recovered in bed from the impromptu surgeries. Dick opted to let them have some privacy and focus his attention on finding Jason, ignoring the jealousy that threatened to surge forward as he headed down to the Batcave. Gar was using the Batcomputer when Dick entered the room.

"Anything interesting?"

Gar shook his head and turned to face him, "nah, Jason's gone off the radar again. You look like shit, did you even shower when you got home?"

Dick ran a hand through his hair and sighed, "no, I wanted to make sure Hank was okay first."

"How is he?" Gar asked and Dick shoved his hands in his pockets, crossing over to take a better look at the computer screen.

"Alive, thanks to Conner. But Jason's still out there somewhere and I need to find him before he does anything else."

Gar frowned, "I don't get it. What made him turn bad?"

The question kept echoing in his head as he showered. Jason had always been a good kid, a little hotheaded maybe, but never truly malicious. So what had made him into the violent sociopath he was now? He had no answer, no matter how much he tortured himself with the question.

He was towel drying his hair when he heard a soft knock on the door. He tensed momentarily, still on edge from the day's activities, but relaxed when he recognized Hank's voice.

"Hey, can I come in?"

"Yeah, sure," he called out, quickly finishing drying off and pulling on a pair of sweatpants.

Hank entered the room, looking better than he had before but still pale.

"How are you feeling?" Dick asked, yanking a shirt on as well.

"I've been better," Hank replied with a wry smile.

"Sorry, dumb question. Should you be up?"

"I haven't been able to be up, I'm fine. Besides, you still owe me that pizza." He joked and Dick cracked a grin.

"Don't think they deliver this late. I'll make it up to you tomorrow. How's Dawn?" Dick asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.

Hank's smile softened and he sighed, "she's better. Still shaken up but better."

Dick nodded and they lapsed into silence.

"I'm sorry. About all this," Dick said after a while, gesturing aimlessly.

Hank snorted. "The fuck are you apologizing for? You're not the one who put a bomb in me."

"I'm the one who asked you to come here in the first place, if it wasn't for me-"

"Fuck off, Grayson, I'm a big boy, I make my own decisions. If I didn't want to come help you out I wouldn't have. Besides, I'm the one who made the choice to go help the little shit without telling anybody because he pretended he needed someone. If anyone besides Jason is at fault for what happened it's me for letting him get the drop on me."

Dick was silent for a long moment before he spoke quietly, "I was worried about you."

Hank looked at him, eyebrows raised in surprise.

"I know we don't always see eye to eye but you're my friend and I was worried about you." Dick continued.

Hank didn't say anything, just looked at him for a beat before placing a hand on Dick's shoulder.

"I thought about when I hung up on you all fucking evening, wondering what if that had been the last time we'd talked and I hadn't even fucking said goodbye. We lost Donna and Jason and I didn't want to think about losing you too," Dick admitted, feeling exposed.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd laid his feelings out like this, the last time he'd ever been vulnerable with another person, probably the answer was never.

"Dick-" Hank started, squeezing his shoulder.

"God, Hank, I can't...I can't lose you." Dick muttered, massaging the bridge of his nose and forehead as though that could make the stress and uncomfortable vulnerability go away. He suddenly felt so incredibly tired and could feel a headache beginning as the day finally caught up with him.

"Hey, it's okay, I'm not going anywhere," Hank reassured him, sitting next to him and pulling him into a gentle hug.

Dick resisted for a beat before finally giving in and relaxing into the embrace, feeling the tension begin to drain out of him. They sat there for a long moment before finally pulling away and Hank gave him a small smile.

"Get some sleep, kid, you look like you're about to fall over."

Dick nodded and Hank let himself out, leaving Dick alone in the room. He sat there for a moment before finally lying down, his mind racing with everything that had happened. It was a long time before he finally fell into a fitful sleep.

[babeydollx]

Heartbreak {JJ Maybank}

Warnings: cursing

Pairings: JJ Maybank x fem!Reader (break up)

Summary: JJ Maybank comes to your place and ends up breaking up with you, not giving much explanation to why he left you but, later you find out.. He was really trying to protect you from his father.

Word Count: 1255 words

a/n: ik this is a sad one, I could make a part 2 if enough ppl want it

You sat on your bed worried. JJ had just messaged you 'we need to talk..' That is never a good sign. You had replied to him and told him that he could come over to talk and, you were terrified.

JJ was the best thing that has ever happened to you. You were terrified of losing him. You tried not to think about that. Maybe it has nothing to do with breakups and heart ache but, the longer he took, the more anxious you got.

You didn't want to message him to ask him where he was or why he was taking so long either. You still tried not to worry and got up. You started to unknowingly pace in your room. You couldn't help it. You were trying to distract yourself but you knew it was going to be something bad. You could feel it.

You herd a soft knock on your bedroom door.

"Can I come in..?" You herd JJ say softly.

"Yeah.. come in.." You said quietly. JJ walked into your room. You could tell by his face that it was something bad.

"What uh- what did you need to talk about baby?" You asked, you could feel butterflies in your stomach, and not the good kind.

"I- uh-" He paused and looked at you. You could see his eyes tearing up but, he was trying to hide it from you. You could tell there was something bothering him. You walked over to him and you kissed his cheek then held his hand.

"What is it baby?" You asked quietly.

"I- it's just.." He gently pulled his hand away from yours and walked to your window looking out it. You looked down at your hands and messed with them.

"I can't see you anymore, y/n.." He said quietly. His words shattered your heart. Your eyes started to tear up and you could feel your heart racing.

"I- why..?" You said, you were beginning to cry.

"I just can't see you anymore, ok?" He said.

"I- JJ please.. I- I love you.. I can't lose you." You sobbed.

"Look.. I'm sorry y/n.. but it's over." He said turning to look at you. You basically collapsed to your knees and put your face in your hands sobbing.

"JJ.. please don't go.. please don't leave me.." You said sobbing as you looked up at him.

"I'm sorry.." JJ whispered as he quickly walked out of your room and left. You sat there on your floor sobbing. You didn't want to do anything anymore. You loved JJ so much and seeing him walk out and leave you shot pains through your heart.

You don't know why he wanted to leave you or if it was even something you did. JJ was the only person you wanted to be with. He was your soulmate. You could never imagine yourself with anyone else but JJ.

You got up and crawled onto your bed sobbing. You didn't want to leave your room. You didn't want to go out. You didn't want to go to school. You didn't want to go see your friends. You just felt numb and lonely.

~A few days later~

You were finally out of the house. This was your first time leaving since JJ broke up with you. You were feeling a little better but you didn't even know if your heart would ever fully recover. You missed him.. so fucking much.

You were hanging out with Kiara and Sarah. They insisted on taking you out to try to make you feel better.

"Look at how cute this dress is.. you would look so hot in this y/n." Sarah said smiling.

"I- yeah.. it's cute." You said with a small smile.

"I'll buy it for you." Sarah said.

"I can pay for it.." You chuckled a little.

"No.. let us pamper you. We know your going through hard times right now and we want to make you feel better." Sarah said.

"Yeah just let us spoil you for today." Kiara said with a chuckle.

"I- fine.." You said, knowing you would not be able to change their minds. The three of you got some stuff and then walked out going to another store when... the three of you ran into John B and JJ.

"I- hi guys.." John B said with a chuckle.

"Hey!" Sarah said smiling. You just looked away. You could feel JJ looking at you and you couldn't look back at him. You knew if you made eye contact with him you would start sobbing again.

"I- uh- I'm gonna go grab us some food." JJ mumbled walking away. The second he walked away.. you started crying a little. Kiara sighed and hugged you and Sarah gave your hand a comforting squeeze.

"I- I don't even know why he left me.." You sniffled. "Did I do something.." You sobbed a little.

"I- no.. you didn't do anything.." John B said.

"I- what?" You let go of Kie and looked at John B. "How do you know.." You sniffled.

"Uh- JJ.. told me why he broke up with you.." John B said.

"I- why did he do it then..?" You whimpered.

"Are you sure you want to know?" John B asked.

"Yes JB.. I'm sure.." You said with a nod.

"Alright, alright.. he told me he broke up with you because he was protecting you." John B said.

"I- protecting me? From who?" You asked confused.

"From his dad..." John B said. "His dad was threatening to hurt you.." John B mumbled.

"I-" You froze in place. You could not believe that his father was doing all of this to JJ.

"So he broke up with you to keep you safe.." John B said.

"I can't believe his dad would say shit like that.." Sarah said.

"I can.. his dad is horrible.." Kiara said. JJ walked back over and you looked at him, concern filling your eyes.

"Why didn't you tell me JJ.." You whispered.

"I- tell you what?" JJ asked.

"About what your dad said.." You said quietly. JJ looked at you, shocked that you found out then he looked at John B.

"I had to tell her JJ.." John B said. JJ looked at you trying to find the right words to say.

"I just.. yes he said it and when he says shit like that.. I don't take it lightly.." JJ said.

"I know.." You sighed. "But I can handle myself.. we can overcome anything together JJ.." You said. JJ looked at you and sighed softly.

"I just.. don't know if I can see you though y/n, for your own safety.." JJ said.

"But we can get through this together J.." You said. "I know we can.. we have got through so much together." You said.

JJ looked at you debating on something for a moment before walking over to you. He pulled you into his arms and kissed you.

a/n: I hope you enjoyed this story! I was gonna make a part two with his dad and shit but idk if I am gonna unless y'all want it lmao. Feel free to request!

[minimckee]

Sometimes I think about love, and what it's done to me, and I ache.

Christians talk about love all the time. How it fills them and surrounds them and holds them, and I just get so angry because they know nothing. Their love is so broken, and they don't even know it. How sad. How infuriating.

Was it love, when I degraded myself to nothing for our god? When I stripped myself bare and knelt on cold tiles, my nose to the floor, made myself as vulnerable as I could, and wept as if I was nothing more than a worm because I was worthless without him? Was that love? Was it love when I did it all by myself, no one even having to tell me to do it, because I knew what I was worth?

What about when I would sob myself to sleep? Or everytime I'd crash and burn into self-loathing when I came home from one of those camps dedicated to him? Was that love?

It was ingrained into me from birth that I was nothing without him. And I believed it. I still believe it. I can't stop believing it.

I used to talk about having a cross-shaped hole in my heart. It was supposed to be beautiful, talking about how Jesus fulfilled me, made me whole and complete. But it's not beautiful because, even without him, it's still there. That hole never left, and I don't think it ever will. I'll never be a complete person because of him. Because of his love. I'll never recover, never be able to love and to hold and to feel because behind it all is that damned gaping hole.

How can they call it love, when he placed the very thing he despised me for within me by his own two hands. With his own breath. All my longings and beings come from him, and he hates me for it. How is that love?

Isn't it fucked how I now crave submission to feel like I'm even worthy to exist? Is it an innate need from within me, or is it something beaten into me from years under his watchful eye? How is it fair to my partner, to never know if they're continuing the cycle of abuse? To never know if they're hurting or helping me? I'll never know if I actually want it, or if I've just been taught to want it, and it tears me apart inside.

I'm not even a whole person anymore, just seven fractured parts stuffed into one brain, trying to pretend we're human. I'm so broken, right down to my very core, and all I've ever known it is as love.

How can I accept anything else? I can't. I can't take any love or compassion without feeling I've earned it, because I intrinsically know I don't deserve it. I don't get love unless I'm perfect. Unless I'm up to his standards. Unless he says I'm good enough.

"But that's love!" They tell you. "You don't have to be good enough, because he already is!" As if the impossible standards aren't crushing to young souls forced into this world by selfish parents who think they have the right to 'be fruitful and multiply '.

But what does it matter? I'll always have a cross-shaped hole in my heart, and I'll never feel I'm good enough. I'll never be a whole person, and I'll always crave to be beneath someone. It's all I know. Does that make me broken? Maybe I'm just human. All I know, is that they, that he, does not know what love is, and neither do I. Maybe I never will.

[the-night-writer1]

Life advice

Part 2)

This is a sickhowl fic, lmk ocs ship.)

Update 2:

I hate my life, I haven't answered his calls but that stomach bug may be something more serious. I'm keeping it to myself for now so no one goes on another wolf hunt if I'm just overthinking things. I'll also be following some advice you guys left me about talking to bro.

As much as I don't want to drag him into depths of my emotions. You all made a good point that Ex could get to him. I'll talking to him later after my doctor's appointment. Clear things up and make sure he doesn't let Ex walk back in to my life without my consent.

What am I going to do if it's more than a simple stomach bug? PD and Baba lose their minds and bro's mentor is already wanting to kill Ex. I'll refer to him has SW. He's somewhat creeper in all honesty. You'd expect he be more interested in my brother but he creeps on me just as much.

He snuck into my room as I was sleeping and was just sitting there when I woke up. How he got through my locked door is a feat and half. This ass climbed through my damn window!

I understand being concerned but really? My bro didn't climb through my fucking window! He left food at my door. Total break of privacy but then again when has SW been normal?

Stories for another time. I don't want them to kill Ex. I may be dying inside and still sobbing my eyes out in my sleep. (Thanks for pointing that out SW) But I am no monster. Just a burden, not a monster.

No matter how much someone may hurt me, I deserve it partly for how much I cause issues for my loved ones. They do so much for me and I'll never be able to pay them back.

Anyways my appointment is on Monday.

Update 3:

I got into a fight with bro as I am concerned about his relationship. Which I feel justified in being concerned since my own romantic relationship turned out to be fake. My brother is literally dating a guy who was trying to kill him before! A bull demon for crys sake!

I wasn't being racist I assure you, I just thought it be better to warn him that his BF could be doing the same thing Ex did to me! Using him to get to SW. He started to accuse me of being jealous that his relationship was real while mine wasn't.

So I may have slapped him. Okay I definitely slapped him. He slapped me in return and we started hitting each other before M(his bff and just my friend) and his oh so lovely boyfriend broke us apart. No one is on my side about being concerned history could repeat itself.

What was I expecting honestly? Since when am I ever considered if I'm not sick... I just stormed off after we were broken apart and I was being yelled at by bro that I am just an asshole. So yeah no feelings being shared now.

M tried to bring a little peace to the situation saying that I was still recovering from my break up but I didn't stay around for her full thing. I'm curled up on my bed only thinking of Ex again. Thinking of all the warning signs I missed.

Bro could miss them too! Gods he could miss more than I did. Still waiting on the test results from my doctor.

I miss having someone to myself... Someone on my side. However Ex was never on my side was he? I still miss him so much.

I know it's stupid but I loved him. I thought he was a sweet caring guy with a tough exterior. So am I so awful for missing him? Yeah I am. I always will be.

Always been a love sick

Update 4

Still not talking to bro, he tried to talk to me this morning. Possibly to apologize but I said my head hurts. I know I'm awful for ignoring his attempt to apologize but I just don't want to deal with it. I just don't okay? I probably am jealous you know?

PD came into my room after the fight last night after the fight. I forgot to lock my door.

He didn't say much just hugged me. Gods im a asshole.

[ma-gic-gay]

"Get. Out," Jason says, glaring at the mobster in front of him. "Aren't you supposed to be in a prison cell?"

"I was released on bail and wanted to see how-"

"Say her name and you'll be the one in the hospital bed."

"Is that a threat?"

"A promise," he smiles fakely, enjoying the fact he's the one with power in this situation. This sick bastard is the reason that his... Carly is traumatized and hurt.

"Please, leave," Carly requests softly. For a minute, Jason almost forgot she was there. He immediately goes back in his chair and wipes away her tears, which are coming fairly frequently. "I want him out of here and back in his cell."

"You heard the woman. Get out or I'll have security remove you."

"I own part of this hospital, Mr. Morgan. I'm on the board-"

"Not anymore," Michael answers, walking in with his kids and Willow. "Last night, the board took a vote. ELQ bought out your shares and the board decided you're no longer a part of it. So if I were you, I'd get out of here while you can still move."

"Are you threatening me, Mr. Corinthos?" Cyrus asks, amused. "That won't fly with anyone, really."

"You made a mistake, underestimating him," Willow chimes in. "I'd leave pretty quickly if I were you. After all, we know you're going back to Pentonville, where I look forward to you rotting in a prison cell until you die a slow, painful death."

"Ms. Tait-"

"It's Mrs. Corinthos, actually," she says, glaring at him while showing her engagement and wedding rings. "Because, you see, I love Michael and he loves me. That's what these beautiful rings mean. Something I doubt you'll ever be able to experience. Then again, maybe prisoners like knowing that their fellow prisoner is a kidnapper and rapist. Maybe not. I guess you'll find out."

"I have no reason to leave," Cyrus answers a non-existent question. "There's no need for me to. I just wanted to check on Carly. I do hope I can call you that, Mrs. Corinthos?"

"No," she answers, voice weak and tears still streaming down her face. "Please, leave. You know what you did to me. So do the cops, so does everyone else in this room. Enjoy your last few weeks of freedom if you insist, but otherwise, Cyrus, get the hell out of my room."

When he still refuses to move, Jason presses the "call" button near Carly's bed and Epiphany enters the room. "Mr. Renault. Unless you need medical attention, get out of this hospital."

"Nurse Johnson," he greets. "Nice to see you."

"Security!" Epiphany shouts instead of answering his greeting. "Cyrus is in 3115!"

A few moments later, a security guard enters and escorts Cyrus out, much to the man's protests. "I'm not doing anything wrong by visiting a friend!"

Epiphany casts a glance towards Carly, "You want a sedative or something?"

"No, thanks," the blonde responds, noticing her grandkids are in the room and breaking into a fake smile. "Hey Wiley, Ophelia! Did you two have fun playing with Donna and Avery yesterday?"

"Grandma, why are you crying?" Wiley asks. "And why aren't you at home?"

"I got a really bad booboo and so I'm stuck in here for a little while. Don't worry, bud, I'll be out of here and playing with you two again as soon as I can. Maybe we'll go get some ice cream to celebrate when I get out, how's that sound?" Carly asks her grandson, simplifying it greatly.

"Yay! Ice cream!" Wiley cheers while his sister just smiles.

"Hey, Mr. Wiley, I think you have to get to school," Michael says after glancing at his watch.

"But I want to help Grandma's boo-boos feel better!" He protests.

"Grandma needs her rest, Wiley. Tell you what, maybe your dad will take you here after school and you can tell her all about your day. How's that sound?" Jason offers, compromising.

"Will you make sure she gets her rest, Jason?" Wiley asks and they laugh at the young boy's concern.

"Yes, I will. But you've got to get off to school first."

"Okay. Bye bye, Grandma and Jason! I'll be back after school."

He waves as Michael takes him out of there, Ophelia still with Willow. "Ophelia, do you wanna say bye to her? Say bye bye," Willow urges, smiling.

Silence follows that. "She's being rude, sorry about that," she jokes before bringing her out to join Michael and Wiley in the car.

As soon as the door closes behind Willow, the silent tears multiply and Carly's loudly sobbing. "How did he get out, Jason? They promised me he'd go to jail, that he'd never see the light of day again. I know it's the PCPD, but they made a promise to me! And now he's walking around town, free to see me and make me feel like I'm back in that room and he's about to-" she trails off at one point, sobs overtaking her vocal cords.

"I don't know. I'm calling Diane; this isn't making any sense."

"No need to call, Jason. I'm right here. Heard Cyrus got let out?"

"He paid a visit to us, actually, only a few minutes ago," Carly says, abruptly ending her sobs.

"Well, the DA is going to take this case. Which means Robert Scorpio is your lawyer. I'm going to be assisting him, however, and I expect that Cyrus will be put away rather quickly. If he doesn't plead guilty, than you'll go to trial. His arraignment is happening tomorrow and he's out on bail until then. After that, he will be sent to Pentonville to either await trial or start serving his sentence," Diane summarizes quickly. "Carly, when are you expected to get out of here?"

"In a couple of days, but I think they'd let me out for a court date."

"You're not leaving until the doctor's deem it safe," Jason counters quickly. "If you can't go to the arraignment, I will. I'll tell you exactly what happened."

"Well if the doctors say I can go to court-"

"Look. I'll talk to the nurses and figure out what's going on here. You two can fight about this later. In the meantime, you need to be prepared for the possibility he'll plead not guilty and take this to trial." Diane interjects. "Robert will be by later today to discuss this with you."

"If he pleads not guilty and we go to trial, how fast can we get one?" Jason asks.

"A couple of weeks, probably. Which means keeping a low profile. No business talk, no crazy ideas. Just a coffee importer and a victim of what Cyrus did to you," Diane warns. "You two don't exactly have the best reputation."

"Hey, I'm a respectable businesswoman and he's a respectable businessman. We'll be fine," Carly smiles and Diane cocks an eyebrow at Jason.

"We won't do anything stupid."

"Good. I'm going to go talk to the nurses. Carly, rest up. We'll want you at court tomorrow." Diane says before leaving, her heels clacking along the tile.

"Don't tell me you want me to stay in the hospital," Carly says, starting up that argument again.

"I don't. But if it's the best way for you to heal-"

"It's not. I'm already bored to death and, as much as I enjoy your company, I want to be at home. Or at work. Back to running the world, you know? Not cooped up in this hospital bed, screaming every few hours because I feel like I'm back in that room above Jake's, which used to be such a fun spot but now it makes me want to die inside, thinking about it. Thinking about what he did, it taints almost all of our memories there and I think that's the worst part of it," the blonde admits, smiling through her tears.

"I can think, you know, about how we got our start, and when I focus on just you, it makes it all seem so much easier. When I don't, and I let my mind wander, somehow I end up thinking about what Cyrus did. I can't even indulge in nostalgia without thinking about him, Jason. The physical, yeah I'm sore but I'll be fine. Eventually, I won't have any physical mark of it. But the emotional one, what if it never goes away? What if whenever I think of us, and that little room, I always end up thinking about Cyrus? What then?"

"Then you'll just have to think of our other memories. At the penthouse, at any of your houses, with Michael, at the hospital, any of the years worth of other memories," he offers. "They're not our only good memories, Carly. They're just a few."

"My boy on the side, remember?" She asks and they laugh. "Robin couldn't find out and neither could Tony."

"Yeah," he smiles. "We were determined to never speak to each other outside of the bar and that room. It was pretty much our only rule."

"I never did like following rules."

"Not even the ones you came up with."

"Well, if I'd followed the rules, then you wouldn't know me nearly as well and you'd be leading a sad life without me in it. You wouldn't have nearly as much fun without me," she says confidently.

"I'd also have way less headaches."

"And be dead by now."

"Yeah, probably."

"I think I've earned a thank you."

"Thank you, Carly."

"You're welcome." Smiling, she realizes something. "Hey, I just realized that you didn't kiss me that nightmare."

"Did you really want me to kiss you in front of Cyrus?" He asks.

"It would've drove him nuts."

"Yeah, well Michael, Willow, and your grandkids were in here too. Michael's already barely not killing us for having sex, I don't feel like testing that."

"No one's here now."

"Is that your way of telling me to-" he gets cut off by the feeling of her kissing him.

They pull apart a few moments later, Carly having a satisfied smile on her face. "So, how long does this whole kissing me every time I have a nightmare thing last?"

"Until we decide to stop it," he answers simply, refusing to label whatever the hell is going on here. At least, none of that until she's more recovered from this, maybe when Cyrus is behind bars.

To be continued after I actually do school because fuck the education system

@ryleighjosephine i dont know what the song is sorry

[hangmanssunnies]

Every single thing May writes is absolutely amazing. However, this work really takes the cake. I am leaving some in-depth thoughts on this work below. If you are one of my followers and are interested in my thoughts they are under the cut. I do not recommend reading them until you have read this fucking amazing breathtaking fic first.

I had to take the last two days and give it a second reread before I felt emotionally prepared to share my thoughts. I'll start off simply I sobbed. I sobbed so so hard, like a baby. I started crying 4 paragraphs in, and I did not stop crying until about half an hour after I finished reading this. I almost hyperventilated reading when I got to the part that said:

"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."

HOW COULD YOU PHRASE THAT SO PERFECTLY? HOW HE HAS TRIED SO HARD TO BE LIKE GOOSE, BUT ALSO, OH MY GOD, HE IS LIKE GOOSE, A DEAD MAN, A GHOST THAT HAS HAUNTED HIS LIFE.

This is probably my favorite characterization of Bradley Bradshaw I have ever read. I loved how he was open and honest about not wanting kids or getting married. The concept that it would break him to be alone again, but what right did he have to take anyone else's dreams? Let alone the woman he loves. Stunning, mature, and also so so SO in character for this man who has lost so much in his life, and with the life path he decided to take.

I'm not going to lie, I am reading through this for a third time to pull quotes and reference specific moments for this review, and I am literally crying again. It is a sign of honest to god, fantastic writing to be able to get me to cry on the second read of something, let alone a third.

Other lines and moments that punched me through the chest so severely I had to stop reading to try and take deep breaths and calm down because I was crying so hard.

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

( I have felt that same sort of feeling in my soul, and then just seeing it written down like this , it was lot.)

---

"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 ... Something that demands to be felt instead of thought."

( I can't actually fully write down how these two paragraphs made me feel. I can't find the right words. But it was a lot. this realization he goes through was so so good. )

" 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."

(Brad bestie I'm sobbing too. )

 " so gently it breaks something open inside of him, “Bradley. You’re not your father.” "

( FUCK ME. WHEN YOU LIVE YOUR WHOLE LIFE, BEING SOMOne CONSCIOUSLY, UNCNCIOULY THEIR GHOST HAUNTING YOU. only to have the person you love, validate you ground you. It's too much. way way too much. )

" He’s been preparing for an early exit since he entered... He wants to haunt someone."

(These paragraghs. Wow, yet another thing I felt with my whole chest. When you are always prepared to die, yeah, you can't live a real whole life. Here once again, feelings I've felt for so long put so perfectly on the page.)

WHEN HE ASKS CAROLE IF SHE HAS REGRETS. as a Carole stan, someone who loves that woman with my whole chest, I will never recover actually. maybe ever. I want to say more about that moment, but I don't think I can. hurts too much trying to find the words.

Keeping happy memories a secret under the bed......... that's all I'm going to say about that. Can't say more at this time, just like with Carole, but know. that HIT

There were so many other amazing heart-wrenching beautiful lines and moments. I'm am being legitimate in saying those are just a handful of the many that resonated with me, and made me cry, and hurt, and smile all in one.

The smut was also hot. And fucking oh so tender just like it needed to be. It really did fit the tone of the whole rest of the fic so well. Breeding kink done in literally the best possible way.

May, if you read this random jumbled crazy review, I just have to say thank you. Thank you so much for writing this. It was so so amazing. You deserve all the possible praise I could give. I want to leave you a million likes, reblogs, and a million reviews for this. If there is some better way to compensate you tell me.

10/10 🥐

TBH this is a million/ 10 🥐 but the scale technically only has 10 roles.

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.