#Kit contains multitudes y’all

[torchflies]

Hi TG Fandom!

A little blurb I couldn’t get out of my head: 🤷

The stormy night before the mission, after they've just had their last round of mind-blowing reunion sex and Bradley is sleeping soundly against his chest — Jake tells him a story. 

He never talks about where he grew up, about his childhood. He still doesn't, but he shares a tiny piece of himself with a sleeping Bradley, who can't judge him for it.

“My mother’s name was Susie Wind, before she married my father and became a Seresin.” He pauses, biting his lip, because that isn't fair — not to her, not really. “My mother’s name was Beswewe, it means Echo Maker. When she was a baby, as I've been told, she used to mimic the sounds of the sandhill cranes that nested on the lake they lived beside. My grandparents were already elders when they had her, their little miracle. She was born on Gaa-waabaabiganikaag, the White Earth reservation, and my father took her away from them. She thought she loved him, but she was just a girl. By the time she realized the monster he was — there was me.” 

Bradley snuffles in his sleep, squirming closer, as if the pitter-patter of Jake’s tears on the sheets is enough to disturb him. “My grandfather named me, you know. He left the rez one night after I was born, the night of a really bad storm, and he used it as cover to sneak up to our shed. My mother was waiting there, wet and wild in the darkness, certain that my father would be close behind her and she hurriedly gave my grandfather the tobacco he needed to name me. Baashkikwa’am, it means He Who Brings Thunder.” 

The storm outside rages on, not unlike the storm that brought him into the world, and Jake smiles, wobbly and tearful. “When my mother was dying, she told me a story and it means that I'm going to ask you for a favor. I don't expect you to remember any of this, Bradshaw, but I’ll leave a note and if you love me, or if you ever did: bury me with moccasins on my feet. I have them… tucked into a box. I've had them since my first deployment. I need you to bury me as soon as possible in those, if I die tomorrow. So that when I walk through the lands of my ancestors, Gaagige Minawaanigozigiwining: the land of everlasting happiness, they will know my footprints. Then, you have to take the charcoal in the box and smudge it all over your face, so the death doesn't take you too. Sometimes, it gets confused.” 

Jake then curls his body around Bradley’s, dragging up the blankets to cocoon them both in the warmth for as long as he possibly can.