#hollywood & wolfman insight

[sassenach082]

Oh no, I decided! I'd like to know more about the whole scene in ch17 where Wolf and Wood come to help with Bradley!! Please

OKAY SO BUCKLE UP EVERYONE I'm finally answering these directors cut questions because it's helping me process the upcoming chapter scenes that I need to write.

Spoilers under the cut about this, it will touch on parts of upcoming chapters but not at length, so read at your own risk!

Basically Tom is on a carrier right and he's very cranky about it but he also still loves Pete (that man says what he means and means what he says, and he does love Pete even if he's currently irritated with him). So Tom swans onto the carrier cranky af (you'll see yourself in CH 18 just you wait) but Slider is a Meddling Meddler Who Meddles. He makes his usual phone calls and then and decides to call the boys, who tell him that Pete called about Bradley not talking, so then he goes hmm interesting and asks them what they're going to do it about it.

Wood: why do we have to do anything about it Wolf: not my circus not my monkeys Slider: i'm not there to knock some sense into him and neither is Tom so that leaves you idiots Wood: no seriously why is this my problem Slider: i'm making it your problem Wolf: this is because they're fucking isn't it Slider: so what if it is bradley's not talking so fucking do something about it or I will break your face

Fast forward to their week and then they just kind of blow it off, but then Slider calls again and tells them he'll break their legs if they don't go help his nephew (he gets attached easily okay what can I say) which of course leads to them going over there because Bradley is asking for them (after his week of Not Talking To Anyone) (he's more like Pete than he realizes but I digress).

Only Wood and Wolf only have half the information right?? They only really have Slider's intel, which is half-hearted from Ice because that man does not want people in his personal business and is busy being a cranky bastard instead of talking about his feelings (head knocking to follow) but anyways, essentially, they go over there thinking that Pete did something dumb.

To be fair to them, operating under what they know is that Mav can be impulsive and Tom is very much the opposite as a general rule (in fact in their friend group he's the one that thinks things to death and drives them all crazy). They saw the impulsiveness seat-of-your-pants'ness in Top Gun, they saw it in class, they saw it in the sky. They know Pete but they don't really know him all the way yet, they got to know him a little and then Goose died and they got the watered down version of him, and they've all heard stories (see: Ice's "yeah, I've heard that about you" in the bar about Mav working alone).

Naval Aviators are like any other profession and gossip like a bunch of old hens, is the thing, so they think they know what's wrong only they don't. And because they are young cocky men they're convinced they've got it figured out which is why they go in with the "Mitchell is being an idiot again" angle even though that's not it at all and Ice is going to be pissed at them for assuming so, but that's a whole other can of worms (and precisely why Tom prefers to handle his own problems and not get his idiot friends involved).

SO long story short, they show up at Pete's house (they weren't actually stonewalling him, Pete's anxiety is just at an all-time high and he's not sleeping which is making him irrational) and see that Pete is clearly and obviously Not Okay and proceed to freak out because a) they know Ice and Pete are fucking and b) they are freaking the fuck out because they should have been there days ago, and c) Bradley is obviously struggling and they were just too busy to notice/didn't realize how serious Slider was when he phoned them about it because haha sure kids don't talk right!! Only they actually realize oh they were serious when they said Bradley didn't talk for seven days and that's... a bit of a problem.

Then they feel guilty, especially Wood, because he ignored Pete just in the standard I'm busy (like when you see a friend called and mean to call them back and then it's Saturday and you don't know where the time went kind of thing). It definitely wasn't intentional, but he feels guilty because he does think of Pete as a friend, but he knows a bit about what Tex is doing and tries to apply his own life experiences of being not-straight to Pete's situation, and assumes he's freaking out about the gay thing, only that's not really it at all either.

Wolf then swans in with dick jokes because he's Wolf, and Wood doesn't really get to finish the conversation, but they'll talk more just the two of them and Wood will realize that it's a lot more complicated, and that Pete didn't actually fuck up and he would have done the same to save Wolf if it came down to it even if it meant Wolf never talked to him again because that's what you do when you love someone. And Wood is thinking about all of this during that scene, but he'd distracted by Wolf acting like a ten-year-old boy and then Mav brushes it off and he lets him because he can see he's uncomfortable, but it bothers him for days hence the park outing when he definitely discreetly pins him to a bench and makes him talk about it while Wolf howls and chases Bradley around the play structure and gets stuck in a slide because he's An Idiot but Wood loves him anyway.