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thesunisatangerine · 4 months

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against all odds (to wait for you is all i can do) – part ten

alexia putellas x photojournalist!reader

warnings: none (im pretty sure)

(a/n in the tags) [parts: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve]

word count: 5.8k

The melodic chirping of birds in time with the gentle beat of Alexia’s heart roused you, your back delightfully warm, and for what seemed to be a long time you felt well-rested–felt as if the leaded weight that made its home in your bones finally melted away because, truly, you’d forgotten the lightness of being one felt upon waking from a night’s sleep or, even more so, the lightness one felt when waking in the sheltering arms of a lover. So you sighed, content and at peace, as you breathed Alexia in when you nestled further into the safety of her neck where faint wintergreen and her delicate, earthly scent lived, familiar and evermore comforting.

When you finally drew your eyes open, the world came to focus and revealed, in its center, Alexia already awake, her head propped on her arm with her honey eyes, just like molten gold in the resplendent glow of the morning sun, lidded as she gazed at you with a lazy smile, soft and relaxed but it ignited you with a gentle flame all the same, whose radiance only intensified upon meeting your eyes.

“Good morning.” Alexia greeted you and it struck you just how much you missed the sound of her voice in the morning, low and soft with just the right amount of rasp that never failed to incite the desire to kiss her right then.

“Good morning.” You replied in the same tone, cheeks warming to a gentle simmer in the face of your lover’s tender demeanour. She brushed the back of her fingers on your cheek while a silence filled the space between your eyes, intimate, as you soaked each other in. But when you could no longer sustain the weight from her gaze–when you chest had filled twice over that it felt in danger of bursting from the sheer joy of being looked upon by such earnest affection–you whispered, “you’re staring.”

Alexia tucked your hair behind your ear before she countered in a voice so tender your heart ached.

“And you’re beautiful.”

No words could translate the gravity of what you felt in that moment, so you spoke the only language that could ever come close to conveying it: you cupped her jaw and caught her lips between yours, seared the missed ‘good morning’s’ and the lost ‘hello, how are you’s’ into the kiss, the pace languid but sweet, savouring the way her lips parted in this silent conversation–relishing the way Alexia tasted like summer on your tongue.

Alexia tugged you closer, and closer still but still not close enough, with a gentle pressure from her hand against the small of your back, the other now over the nape of your neck.

But the conversation was cut short, too short, when a small gasp reached your ear, electrifying you in an unpleasant way your eyes flung wide open, darting immediately to the direction of the sound to find Elisa standing at the last step of the stairs, her hair ruffled from sleep, her loose shirt creased and draped slightly to the side, mouth wide open in disbelief as she gawked at the sight of the two of you.

And what a sight the two of you must have been.

In your haste to extricate yourself from Alexia, you ended up flopping down against the tiled floor, the carpet doing little to cushion your fall, but you recovered quickly and now you stood there not quite knowing what to do with your arms or what to even say. Alexia, on the other hand, remained half on her back and half sitting up, her weight against an elbow, the other arm frozen outstretched towards you, a clear attempt to save you from when you fell down. If the situation had been different, you probably would’ve laughed especially at Alexia’s expression: her face contorted in part mortification and part worry, brows upturned, eyes agape, and lips partially opened–if only you weren’t too flustered yourself to do so.

Alexia got her bearing faster than you, though–damn her and her athletic condition–because she, too, now stood from the couch (and did so with a lot more grace than you did). She cleared her throat, fumbled with her hands as it looked like she tried to stick her hands in her jacket pockets before it dawned on her that it remained still on the coffee table, so she resorted in putting them in her jean pockets instead.

“Good morning, Elisa. How are you?” Alexia said in English and her voice wavered at the end, the question infused with a guilty inflection.

With bated breath, you waited for your daughter’s reaction as trepidation filled you, which only worsened when Elisa’s eyes darted at you, then to Alexia, then back to you again. Numerous scenarios fleeted through your mind and out of all the images your mind conjured, what happened next was not one them: you didn’t expect the way with which Elisa’s surprise morphed into smug delight, her once opened mouth now curved into a coy smile, not dissimilar to a cat’s, that only served to accentuate the mischievous gleam in her eyes.

“Are you guys dating?” Each word deliberately drawled out as Elisa posed them, punctuated by a teasing cadence that set your ears and cheeks aflame. The question, thankfully, brought you back to yourself because only you could save you and Alexia from this situation.

“Okay, I think I need to have a conversation with you so up you go, young lady, back to your room for now.” You said as you approached Elisa who you guided towards the stairs with a gentle hand on her back but not before you placed a good morning kiss on the crown of her head. Elisa whined, but she heeded your words nonetheless, although she did sneak a wave and a cheeky thumbs up to Alexia on the way up, leaving you with an amused smile on your lips at her antics as you thought fondly, shaking your head, ‘Oh my god, this child.’

When Elisa was finally out of sight and you heard her bedroom door shut, you let out the breath you were holding. That really could have been a disaster, and when you looked over your shoulder, you found the same thought written in Alexia’s face. You dragged your feet back to where Alexia stood who, as soon as you got close enough, was quick to pull you back into her gentle arms. With your cheek pressed against her collarbone, her arms loose around your waist, and her chin resting on your head, you were grounded back to the moment, your muscles relaxing as apprehension began to leave you.

“That was mortifying.”

Alexia let out an airy laugh, the remnant of her nervousness still apparent. “I know. At least we didn’t do it last night.”

“Alexia,” you groaned as your cheeks burnt anew, “please, don’t–I don’t even want to imagine that right now.”

Melodic laughter filled your ears again before it tapered off which, once again, left you two blanketed in the subtle refrain of the waking world and the warmth of the sunlight that streamed through the window. You didn’t know which of you moved first but in the next moment, you found the both of you swaying to a gentle rhythm as you held each other.

“So, what now?” Alexia asked, breaking the silence.

“I… I don’t know.” You answered truthfully. Sure, the both of you agreed to take everything slow, but where to even start? When intimacy and familiarity were already there, strong and incessant in their pull, how could torn lovers begin to mend the fragments–to keep everything tentative and slow? Where should the lines be drawn, the boundaries set, when a profound desire that transcended physical affection already made its home in your heart, a yearning that constantly craved for not only Alexia’s company but also her thoughts? Because with Alexia, you wanted–and would always–want more.

“I think, for now, I need to talk to Elisa about this–about us.” Sighing, you continued, “what do I even tell her?”

“Well, she seems to approve.” At that, the both of you chuckled, then Alexia spoke again, serious but her tone remained light when she did. “Tell her whatever you’re comfortable with. Slow, remember? No labels for now, it’s just you and me.”

She placed a kiss against your ear and you hummed, nuzzling her neck in gratitude.

Another pause.

“I think I should go.”

Hard as you tried, you couldn’t hide your disappointment at what Alexia just said even though it was probably the best thing to do right now. There were much you needed to talk to Elisa about alone: her nightmares and her therapy, and now this. The only thing that eased your heart was the fact that Alexia seemed as reluctant to go, too, with the way her hold on you tightened and you responded to her touch by falling further into her, clutching the fabric of her shirt in an attempt to let her know you’d rather she stayed.

“I know. Me, too,” Alexia sighed seeming to understand what you were feeling as she kissed your temple. “How about this? If you and Elisa are feeling up for it, I could take you some place tomorrow? I did tell you before that I’d show you around.”

At the reminder, the memory fleeted through your mind and a sense of melancholy filled you but you swallowed it down before it could take root. Then you hummed in agreement, “I’ll ask Elisa about it. What’s on for you today?”

“Apart from waiting until tomorrow comes?” Alexia joked which made you giggle. “I’ll probably visit La Masia, check with Josep for next week’s schedule, then head home or visit Mamá and the family.”

“That sounds fun.” You said as you began to kiss her, knowing that your time together for the day would end any second now. As you punctuated each word with a kiss, you continued, “alright, I should let you go now, then.”

The rumble from Alexia’s chuckle radiated beneath your palm on her chest as she whined, “you’re making it really difficult to leave.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll stop now,” you giggled and just as you began to pull away, Alexia cradled the nape of your neck and sealed your lips together again for a deeper kiss. Then she pulled away but not before dragging down your lower lip with her thumb as she untwined herself from you and gave you a look that made you burn all over.

“Call me later?”

You nodded.

Alexia grabbed her leather jacket, gave you a smile and one last peck on your cheek, before she strode out of the door.

The feeling of loss that arrived upon her departure did not go unnoticed by you but before it could settle in your heart, you made your way to Elisa’s bedroom. As soon as you entered though, Elisa shot you a question without any preamble, practically buzzing in her excitement.

“Mom, why didn’t you tell me you’re dating Alexia?”

Your cheeks burnt at Elisa’s bluntness.

“Before we get to that, ladybug, I need to talk with you about something first.” You said as you set yourself down next to her on the bed. Elisa regarded you with a look that said she already knew what you were going to talk with her about. You wrapped an arm around her and squeezed her shoulder. “I’m worried about your nightmares and your therapy. Do you think we need to switch to a different therapist?”

Elisa gnawed on her lower lip before she spoke in a soft voice. “I like my current one. She’s cool and she makes it easy for me to talk about what happened. But I can take more sessions if you want me to.”

“Do you think you need more sessions?” You looked at Elisa pointedly, emphasising the fact that the choice was hers to make. “All I want is what’s best for you and your wellbeing, Elisa. I’m not trying to make you do anything, especially if you know yourself you don’t need them, but I also can’t just stand by and watch so I’m just here to tell you that there are options. If you need more sessions, we can do it. If you want to change therapists, we’ll both find you a new one. As long as it’s going to help you get through this, we can do it.”

“I’m not sure… Can I–” You caught her eye again and you raised your brows at her chosen word, and you watched as Elisa nodded, understanding what you meant, before she began again, “I will talk to my therapist about it and see if I do.”

You beamed at her, proud as you squeezed her shoulder again. She smiled back.

“So, what do you think is causing this spike in nightmares?”

“I… I don’t know. I think I’m just nervous? Also, maybe too excited?” Then Elisa added with a small laugh, “or both? I don’t really know.”

“About what, ladybug?”

“Going back to the Academy.”

At this information, you couldn’t help but frown, confused. “Is something happening in the Academy?”

Concern must have been too apparent in your tone because Elisa quickly looked at you and said as she waved her hands in reassurance, “it’s nothing bad, Mom, don’t worry! It’s just, Coach told us there are scouts coming some time around the end of the year and I’m… I really want to play for Barça, Mom.”

You understood her apprehension but her answer didn’t tell you why her shoulders looked like they’d taken on an invisible weight again with the way her spine curved inwards, almost dejected.

“That’s a really big opportunity, ladybug, so I understand that pressure is there for you to perform your best. Is it the pressure that’s making you think about what happened?”

Elisa shrugged, quirking her lips to the side in an unsure manner. A moment later though, she nodded and admitted in a small voice. “I just don’t want to let them down. I don’t want to let you down.”

“Elisa,” you took her hand in yours. “Never, never. If your parents were here, they would tell you how proud they are of how far you’ve come already. You’re so strong, ladybug, and you don’t even know how much. And if you happen to fall down, we’ll be here to support you until you’re ready to stand back up again. Just know that whatever happens, you will always be enough. Always, Elisa. ”

Elisa leant her head against your shoulder then she turned her head and gazed at you with wide eyes. “You really think I can make it?”

“I believe in you, ladybug. Do you?” You pinched her arm playfully which earned you a giggle from her. When she looked back up at you and you saw the determined gleam in her eye, the worry in you was put to rest.

“Yes.”

At that, you couldn’t help the warmth that surged through you and you hugged her. “There you go. I’m so proud of you, ladybug.”

After a moment of silence, Elisa asked in a teasing tone, “so… Alexia, huh, Mom?”

Your cheeks warmed. “What about her?”

“Are you together?”

“It’s… complicated right now, ladybug. We’re working on it.”

“Was that why you always looked sad whenever we talked about her? Before now?” You raised your brows in surprise. You’d always tried your hardest to school your features whenever Alexia was brought up because you didn’t want Elisa to worry but you didn’t think that you were that transparent.

“Did I really?”

“Yeah. I don’t know how to explain it but whenever you tried to smile, it didn’t quite reach your eyes.”

“Oh.” Pause. “I… I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

Elisa shook her head. “There’s nothing to be sorry for, Mom. And it’s different now. Now you look happy.”

“I am.” You admitted with a small smile. “How… how do you feel about us, though?”

“I’m happy that you’re happy, Mom. It’s going to take awhile to get used to the Alexia Putellas being around but I’ll be fine. And as long as she treats you well, I’m alright.”

Your chest expanded at her words. “Thank you, ladybug, that… that means a lot.”

Elisa hugged you then and you hugged her back.

“Speaking of, Alexia offered to take us around the city tomorrow. What do you say?”

At that, Elisa practically jumped up, unable to control her excitement and you laughed.

True to her words, Alexia pulled up in her car the next day a couple of hours before noon. Alexia looked comfy in her white sneakers, ankle length socks, shorts, an oversized t-shirt, and a baseball cap, and upon opening the door for her, she took you in her arms and kissed you. Her eagerness amused you and you laughed against her lips but you tangled your fingers in her hair to deepen the kiss anyway.

“I missed you.” Alexia spoke between kisses.

“It’s only been a day,” you smiled into the kiss, charmed. “And I missed you, too.”

Time slipped you as you lost yourself in Alexia’s arms and lips, and you didn’t know how long the both of you were there by the open door, but it was apparently long enough that Elisa needed to interrupt you two. A terse cough made you pull away and, turning to look at Elisa who was standing just beneath the archway that lead to the living room, offered your daughter an apologetic smile. Elisa only stood there with her arms crossed, clearly unimpressed with the way her brows were creased.

“Hola, Elisa.” Alexia said with a shy wave which drew your attention back to her and you bit your lip at the state of her face. You reached out to wipe away the faint smudge of your lipstick on the corner of her lips and, upon realising what you’d done, Alexia quirked her brows up as she smiled at you, sheepish.

“Hi, Alexia.” A pause. “Wait, should I be calling you Aunt Alexia now?”

Alexia opened her mouth then closed it, seeming to be completely disarmed by the question. And when she looked at you with plea in her wide eyes asking you silently how she should answer it, you knew just how much the question definitely caught her off guard.

“Uh, if you want to.” Her words lilted with so much uncertainty it sounded more like a question than a statement.

Then Elisa grinned at the both of you, practically beaming. “I’m just messing with you, Alexia.”

She then continued to skip between you two, bounding through the door and down the porch stairs, and you held your laughter in as Alexia looked after her with a bewildered gaze, mouth agape. Once Elisa got to where Alexia’s car was parked, she started to wave the two of you over.

“She’s… she’s very funny.” Alexia laughed nervously, eyes still fixed at Elisa. Then she whispered conspiratorially, pointing to Elisa for good measure. “Are you sure she’s the same kid I met at the Olympics?”

“Yes.” You chuckled as you locked the door and began descending down the stairs. “She’s only like this when she feels comfortable around people. So, do you know what that means?”

Alexia shook her head.

You smiled at her, cupping her cheek before you pressed a light kiss on the other. “It means she likes you.”

At that, Alexia smiled back at you with lightness in her eyes before she grabbed your hand, intertwined her fingers with yours, and kissed the back of it. And the gesture warmed you more than Barcelona’s summer sun ever could.

Then, once the three of you were in Alexia’s car, you asked, “so, what do you have planned for us today?”

Alexia adjusted her rearview mirror to look at Elisa at the back seat, smiling. “First of, who’s hungry?”

After a delicious–and a quite scenic–brunch at a restaurant located by one of Barcelona’s waterfronts, the three of you took a short walk down a nearby landing connected to the port. By this time, the sun had already reached its peak, and with the vacant sky and the high tide, the view was one someone would expect to have come out of a film; the blue tinge of both the heavens and the sea was so vivid that you knew your camera would have trouble capturing the essence of it. Image after image, you captured your surroundings and as the three of you walked on, rolls of film were exposed to the light of Elisa and Alexia, and these images, you knew, you would cherish forever.

At one point during the walk, Alexia asked you to teach her how to work your camera, and so you did. With Elisa between you looking over at the sea, you guided Alexia’s fingers over the camera and taught her how to hold it properly, before you told her about the rest. As soon as she got it, she slung your camera around her neck and immediately started taking photos of you and Elisa. You laughed when she held the camera at arm’s length in an attempt to take a selfie of the three of you, adjusting it as best as she could to get the right angle before she set the timer. You told her as all of you returned to her car that you’d send her the fruit of her labour the moment you developed the negatives.

About half an hour later after hitting the road again, the three of you ended up at the second stop for the day: Camp Nou’s Barça store–much to Elisa’s delight. When Alexia parked the car at a less crowded spot and began to take her seatbelt off, you fixed Alexia with a reluctant gaze, speaking in Spanish so Elisa wouldn’t understand.

“Is it really wise for you to just march in the store? You’re the Alexia Putellas, after all, there’s no way no one would notice.”

In response, Alexia held a finger up to indicate you should wait and shifted so she could grab the hoodie that was hanging over the back of her seat. She put it on, zipped it up and pulled the hood down over her cap, then she put on a face mask and her sunglasses, her light brown hair spilling out to frame her face.

“Voila!” Alexia waved her open hands. “What do you think?”

You looked her up and down. All of her tattoos were covered but even with her attire and her face concealed, you could still recognise her–maybe you could chalk that up to you intimate familiarity with Alexia’s being but still. So you said as you schooled your features, your voice monotonous. “Wow. You really look like a whole new person.”

Alexia threw her head back, laughing. Then, “we’ll treat it as an experiment and see if they will.”

“That’s very modest of you,” you countered, tone still dry.

“Thank you,” she retorted in a saccharine tone while she flipped her hair over her shoulder, and that, in turn, made you laugh.

So then it was decided that you and Elisa would also wear face masks as all of you went on ahead in your quest to infiltrate–as per Alexia’s words–the store. Much to your surprise, Alexia’s disguise worked although she did draw some unwarranted glances, ranging from suspicion to pure amusement, due to the nature of her getup. And to your chagrin, once the three of you got back to the car with your bags of merch, Alexia smirked at you, smugness all too evident in the curve of her lips.

After that, Alexia took all of you for a drive up a mountainside with the windows rolled down that let the fresh, summer breeze rush inside. With the wind in her hair, she began to sing along with you and Elisa to the music playing on the radio, nodding her head to the beat of the music. At the end of the ascent, Alexia parked the car at your third stop, which turned out to be the Tibidabo Amusement Park.

You knew this place was pretty high up, but the moment you stepped out of the car, even from the parking lot, the view hit you: it was incredible. The city of Barcelona stretched out far into the distance, expansive and seemingly never-ending, and you could just see the strip of blue that bordered the ports, and the colours of the city’s structures were made ever-vibrant by the radiance of the sun. The view pulled you towards the edge of the parking lot, where you put the viewfinder to your eye to capture it.

“The view is stunning, isn’t it?” Came Alexia’s voice from beside you.

“Yeah…” you said, breathless, dragging you eyes from the cityscape to Alexia and as you did the remainder of your breath was completely taken away, cheeks warming when you found Alexia gazing at you, her smile as tender as her eyes, while her loose brown hair fluttered to the breeze which added to the softness of her demeanour. The urge to kiss her then became too much so before you fall into temptation, you closed the distance and simply rested your head against her strong shoulder, an arm around Elisa’s shoulder when she stepped into the space beside you.

Soon, you began a short trek upwards to get to the entrance, and if the view from the parking lot took your breath away, it was nothing compared to what you found at the top: from the regal immensity of the structure of the Temple of the Sacred Heart of Jesus that greeted you, to the Torre de las Aguas de Dos Ríos that stood proud just behind the Temple, to the perspective that overlooked the other side of Barcelona. After another round of picture-taking, the three of you finally entered the park.

The day went by as the three of you amused yourselves with the park's attractions. And since you'd all forgone wearing masks, Alexia was, as expected, recognised by people and was stopped more than a handful of times for photos and signatures during different points of your excursion. And you watched with Elisa on the sidelines, appreciating the way Alexia interacted with her supporters, and smiled at her with encouragement and reassurance whenever she looked at you two with an apologetic gleam in her eyes.

By the time the three of you left the park, the sun had begun to set.

It was another drive around the mountain side that lead you to the last stop for the day: Mirador d’Horta. Alexia parked the car in such a way that the trunk faced the cliffside before she urged the two of you to step out and you gasped.

You’d seen some magnificent scenes today, but this one was definitely your favorite.

There you stood, taking in the way the lights of the city burned like embers embedded in the earth. There was something about witnessing the city at night that never failed to make you feel connected, elevated, when you see the million tangible proofs of existence: under each light was a person, a family—lovers—all in their own worlds at their corner of this world you shared with them. And in your corner, in the opened trunk of Alexia’s car, was your world right beside you, and there was nowhere else you’d rather be. The three of you sat there in silence, Elisa in the middle of you and Alexia gazing over the city lights.

It wasn’t long until the day finally took its toll on Elisa, and she ended up settling her head on your lap and dozing off into slumber. You smiled down at her, brushing back her hair behind her ear as you watched her breathe deeply, feeling relieved when you noticed the peaceful smile on her lips.

“So her battery does run out. Sometimes, I forget just how much energy kids have.” The pure awe in Alexia’s voice made you let out a quiet laugh.

“It has its way of catching you off guard.” You shook your head fondly before you met Alexia’s eyes and teased, “I can’t believe she tired you out; aren’t you supposed to be the athletic one?”

“Hey! I’m only human; thank you very much. And what’s a thirty-year-old compared to a twelve-year-old?" Alexia raised an eyebrow in challenge.

“Touché. Ah, to feel young and full of energy again.”

Alexia cringed before she laughed out. “Please, stop. You’re making me feel old.”

“I’m making us feel old.”

The both of you chuckled, then took a momentary pause. You turned to Alexia and asked, "Did you run your parents ragged as a kid?”

The inner corners of her brows lifted—it was subtle, but you were familiar enough with the intricacies of her demeanour that you caught it—exposing more of her eyes, which looked pensive in the dim light, her lips pressed in a melancholic line before she smiled, wistful.

“Oh, yeah, but I’d like to think I wasn’t a menace. It’s just—you know, when you get so focused on something that you forget the time?"

You nodded. She continued.

“When I was much younger, there were times I was so intent on winning that I’d forget about dinner. So, one of them would look for me around the streets or the square. But after I got into Sabadell, my energy finally found the right outlet, and most days I’d gone home tired. Papá–” Alexia bit her lip, her eyes glazing over for a moment as she receded somewhere—a tender memory—then she shook her head. You watched the way her throat moved as she swallowed before she continued, voice raspy and quiet, “He, uh, he’d always exclaim, ‘She’s finally tamed!’ whenever I’d slump down on the couch after a practice. It was ridiculous, but it never failed to cheer me up.”

You grabbed her hand and squeezed it, expressing silent gratitude for the memory she imparted, as you smiled at the image of young Alexia with red cheeks in a sweat-soaked shirt, hair matted to her face, being chased and dragged back home to have dinner.

“No, I can’t imagine you being a menace. Mischievous, yes, and probably hot-headed, but never a menace.”

She laughed, winking at you. “Yeah, hot-headed is probably what people who knew me then would say about me. And I can’t imagine you being a menace, either.”

You raised your brow at her, smiling slyly. “Are you sure about that?”

Alexia opened her mouth as if to reassert her claim, but you saw the way her confidence wavered as she regarded you. Then she closed her mouth, now looking more unsure.

“Wait, are you being serious right now?”

You allowed her confusion to linger for another moment before you finally broke your character. “No, I wasn’t a menace, but you really should’ve seen the look on your face.”

Alexia squinted at you and muttered just loud enough for you to hear, her tone dry. “Are you sure about that?”

“Hey!” You yelled quietly, giving her shoulder a playful nudge but being careful not to accidentally jostle Elisa awake before you took her hand again. You intertwined your fingers together and pressed a kiss on the back of her hand, meeting her eyes. Then you took a moment to soak her in.

“Thank you, Alexia, for today. You don’t know how much this means to Elisa... how it means to me.”

Alexia squeezed your hand, smiling softly.

“I’m glad you both enjoyed it.” Alexia squeezed your hand as she regarded Elisa with a soft eye. Then a sincere smile lingered on her lips as she caught your gaze and said, “I think I needed something like today more than I realised. It feels good to be spending time with you again.”

Warmth bloomed in your chest, clearly understanding what Alexia meant.

“I know the feeling,” you whispered. And I missed you, too.”

With her other hand, Alexia reached out over the space between you and brushed her thumb over your cheek, tucking a strand of loose hair behind your ear as she smiled at you with her eyes and her lips. With the city lights behind her, the soft glow of the car light bathing her features in its golden glow, and the summer breeze playing with the soft strands of her hair, Alexia looked so tenderly human, the embodiment of warmth and all that the word entailed, gentle and, oh, so soft.

The two of you sat in silence, just soaking each other in, until a ping from Alexia’s phone interrupted the moment. Alexia looked down, read it, and then locked the screen with a sigh. When she met your eyes, hers were apologetic. You smiled in understanding.

“Time to go?”

“Yes.” Alexia sighed as she stood up and tucked her phone back into her pocket. “It was Josep. He reminded me I have a full day tomorrow.”

You nodded. You gently roused Elisa, watched her drag her feet to the back seat, and nearly chuckled when she fell right back to sleep after putting her seatbelt on and closing the door. You turned to Alexia, and as soon as she closed the trunk, you cradled her jaws in your hands and pulled her down for a kiss. Immediately, Alexia wrapped her arms around your waist, pulling you closer to her.

“I wanted to do that all day.” You whispered against her lips.

Alexia gasped when you nipped at her lower lip before she buried her fingers in your hair, deepening the kiss. “You have no idea.”

On the way back to Derek's house, Alexia kept one hand on your thigh. And with the radio playing softly as the car passed under a tunnel with lights overhead, it felt like you were in a movie.

After Elisa had gone back inside the house after thanking Alexia for the day and bidding her farewell for the night, you kissed Alexia’s cheek in gratitude. Then her lips.

With her forehead resting against yours, she whispered, “I’ll see you Tuesday?”

“Yeah.” You brushed your nose against hers before you kissed her again. You began to pull away. “Have fun tomorrow.”

“I will. I–” Alexia’s cheeks flushed before she smiled. “Bye, for now.”

Later, when you were in bed about to go to sleep, you received a message from Alexia. She sent you a link to a tweet containing a photoset that contained pictures of the three of you but mostly pictures of a hooded Alexia taken from a distance by the photos’ grainy quality, captioned, 'Alexia, what are you doing????’ followed by a string of laughing emojis.

At that, you couldn’t help but laugh. Her disguise was ridiculous in person, but captured like this, you thought it was a work of pure comedy.

You messaged her back, 'I guess you do have reason to be modest after all.’

#ap11 #not proofread #mine #my writing #a/n:#this was meant to be longer but i decided to split it into (or else this wouldve been like 10k long or something lol)#sorry for not updating last week id been in pain for the last 2 weeks so it was hard to concentrate #not to mention i got hit by a writer's block so i needed to just take a step back lol #anyway i just need to tie up some loose ends in the next part and then against all odds will be finished in two weeks time 🥲#also i apologise for any style inconsistency #i may or may not have been rereading frankenstein while going through some parts of this lol #will fix any grammar/spelling/prose mistakes later #woso x reader #alexia putellas x reader

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compacflt · 10 months

Note

For the requests/open inbox, this may not be the lane you're looking for, but you made a throw a way mention in a response to the ask about Ice's enforcement of DADT that Bradley and Ice probably got into it at one point about Ice being totally okay with DADT as a policy (which I love your read on Ice being like, 'yeah, nobody should ask and nobody should tell. what's the problem here?') I would love to see that argument go down. Or honestly, just any Ice and Bradley interaction after the reconciliation that suits your fancy. I find that dynamic in your world super interesting. Bradley sees him as a father, Ice sees him as the person whose father I killed. I love the drama.

Five times Ice was so obviously Rooster’s dad + one time he explicitly wasn’t.

[Carole. 1994.]

He’s such a nervous man. Usually that’s not the word people associate with him. Nervous? Never! But he is. Carole Bradshaw’s more a religious woman than a spiritual one. She’s never put any stock into “chockras” or “ouras” or whatever the other girls her age were fooling around with in the late sixties and early seventies. But she does believe that you can understand a person just by looking at him or her, and when she looks at Tom Kazansky, she sees a little anxious creature, shivering in the cold, like one of those tiny spindly dogs who always needs a sweater. Maybe it’s her southern maternal instincts, something primal and animalistic inside her, I need to take care of you—and when he nudges her with a nervous shivering shoulder and whispers, “Can I bum a smoke?” —she reaches down to take his hand and says, “I only have one left. We’ll have to share.”

She knows she makes him nervous. His ears are red, and so’s the back of his neck. It’s early on a Saturday morning, and the church is crowded, and he’s self-conscious about the fact that she’s holding his hand. Good. It’s so rare she gets to make a man nervous anymore. She waves to Bradley, proud in his little striped button-down and his little blue bow-tie, where he’s lined-up with all the other aspiring pianists against the stage along the far wall, under the bare postmodern crucifix. The recital isn’t going to start for another five, ten minutes, and it’s organized by age, so Bradley’s somewhere in the middle. If Tom Kazansky needs a smoke, Carole Bradshaw will bum him a smoke.

They exit out the side door, and the low murmuring of the other proud parents in the church fades to the quiet of the alley. Birds chirping nearby. The sound of a latecoming car on gravel somewhere far away. Her cigarette and the flick of his lighter, her eyes on his mouth and his puff of smoke—it’s lit. He takes a drag, closes his eyes, then passes it to her. “Sorry to make you share,” she says, and she’s watching the red flush creep up the side of his throat with a silent pleasure. When she takes her own pull, she looks down to see that the filter’s gone the sweet red-pink of her old lipstick. Kind of like a kiss, sharing a cigarette.

“That’s okay,” he says. Nervous spindly little dog. “Uh, what’s he playing?”

“Beethoven. ‘Für Elise.’” Then, before he can think to judge, she goes on quickly: “It’s more complicated than you’d think. Goes up and down and all over the place.”

“It’s a good song,” Tom Kazansky says, “though I don’t know too much about piano.” He pauses. “I’m learning a little German, though. I think it’s E-leez-ah. She must’ve been an alright girl if Beethoven wrote a song for her.”

Carole Bradshaw doesn’t know what to say to that. So she says this instead: “Thank you for coming. It made Bradley—well, over the moon, I guess.”

Tom Kazansky smiles shyly. “Sorry Maverick couldn’t come. I know he wanted to.”

Of course he brings up Pete Mitchell. Drags her back into reality. “He’s in Washington again, isn’t he?”

“Correct.” He reaches out for the cigarette; she gives it to him. “TOPGUN’s biggest advocate. I keep telling him he should go into politics. I just talked to him yesterday—he told me he went to the Natural History Smithsonian on Wednesday—he bought Bradley a dinosaur picture book, I think. Does Bradley like dinosaurs?”

Carole Bradshaw shrugs. What nine-year-old boy doesn’t like dinosaurs, but… “He’s more into sea life these days. Whales, sharks, fish.”

“Some fish used to be dinosaurs, they think,” says Tom Kazansky, clearly just trying to fill the silence. Ears red, lips red. Smoke out of his mouth like a fire-breathing dragon.

Carole Bradshaw doesn’t know how much dinosaur history she actually believes. So she says, “It’s still really nice of you to come. You know, Bradley—Bradley thinks of you and Maverick as his—well, his fathers, I s’pose. So it’s nice for you to be here.”

She watches his reaction—just nervousness. Straight anxiety. He doesn’t meet her eyes, like she’s just kicked him in the ribs. He does not want to be Bradley’s father.

She says, “You don’t have to sign any papers, Tom. You don’t have to put a kid seat in your car. I’m just saying. Don’t worry about it.”

He says, “I can hear the kids starting inside—we should probably go back in.”

So Carole Bradshaw drops the cigarette butt to the ground and steps on it with the bottom of her flat. They go inside, and wait for a kindergartener to finish an overly simple “Canon in D” to take their seats again. She takes his hand. He lets her. After another half-hour, Bradley sits down on the bench in front of the hand-me-down Steinway and busts out “Für Elise” without a single missed note. It still shocks her, sometimes, to watch him play—it still shocks her, sometimes, that she is the mother of all that talent. And now maybe Tom Kazansky is the father of all that talent. How did that happen?

At the end of the recital, Tom Kazansky lets go of her hand. She knew he would. Knew his fatherhood is only temporary. But he lets go of her hand to accept Bradley’s great-big hug in the parking lot: “Gosling, that was so good.” Bradley’s proud smile is missing a few teeth. It makes Tom Kazansky laugh.

And after he drops them off at home, and peels away with a wave and a smile, Carole Bradshaw lights another cigarette from the half-full pack she’d brought with her to the recital and brings Bradley out to the backyard so he can play and she can watch him. But before she lets him go, she looks down at him and says flatly, “If kids at school ask you about Uncle Tom and Uncle Pete—you need to tell them they’re just friends.”

And in his eyes, she can see the confusion of a little boy who hadn’t been aware that Tom Kazansky and Pete Mitchell were anything other than just friends—the confusion of a little boy learning about duplicity for the first time in his life.

“Okay,” he says, so she lets him go.

—

[Maverick. 1998.]

“Don’t go easy on him,” Maverick hollers breathlessly over his shoulder, fishing around in the ice chest in the sand for two cans of Coors; “He just joined the J.R.O.T.C.; don’t go easy on him; he’s tougher than all your squadrons combined; beat him into the dirt…”

“Thanks, Uncle Mav,” shouts Bradley from across the volleyball court, where he’s getting initiated into one of the volleyball teams of younger fighter pilots.

Maverick flashes him a thumbs-up and finds his T-shirt on the first bleacher bench, pulls it on with one hand, and then hops up the rest of the benches to sit with Ice, who’s got his CVN-65 ballcap on and a book open in his lap and is offering informal career advice to one of the other lieutenants: “Yeah, so, in my opinion, it’s all down to what you think you can stomach… If you want me to look over your C.V., I can totally do that—I think I’m free Monday at around thirteen-hundred, if you want to stop in to talk. Not a problem. Not a problem. Alright. See you later.” He watches the lieutenant go, then lolls his head over to look at Maverick, who’s tossing an ice-cold can of Coors up and down. “Hey. Good game. —Coors, Mav? This is an insult.” But he takes the offered can anyway, looking out onto the court, where Bradley—fourteen and just entering his beanpole phase of evolution—is currently spiking the ball. “Cool.” It’s a nice summer Saturday, a casual opportunity for the officers of Miramar to socialize with their families (Ice is wearing a golf shirt and jeans), and by now pretty much everyone knows that Maverick Mitchell’s raising his friend’s kid and that he and Captain Kazansky are good friends, so this is pretty nice. Not much to hide.

“C’mon,” Maverick says, popping open his own can, “you and I were having a scintillating conversation, a few minutes ago.” He’s hunting around for the sunscreen so the tops of his feet don’t burn to ashes in the sun.

“Scintillating. That’s a big word for you. Wow.”

“You’re rubbing off on me, Sir Reads-a-lot—”

“See, that’s funny,” Ice interjects, “because I seem to recall, before you so-rudely interrupted me to go play volleyball with the kids, I was telling you that it’s really not that interesting. It’s actually, Maverick, quite boring.”

“Well, I’m intrigued now. Go on. Finish it off, I wanna know.”

Ice slaps his book shut and gives the long tired sigh of a man who is very self-conscious about the fact that he’s about to turn forty. He pops the tab on his can of Coors and huffs in exasperation when it foams all over his hand. “I mean it, my family history’s really not that interesting. Typical eastern-European immigrant shitshow. U.S. officials change one letter in our last name and everyone loses their goddamn minds… Actually, that story might be apocryphal, I keep forgetting which former Soviet Socialist Republic I’m actually from, I just can’t remember, all the borders got redrawn so many times, one of ‘em…”

Maverick smiles and pulls his TOPGUN ballcap back down onto his head, tugs the brim down low over his eyes so he can tip his head back and not go blind from the summer sunshine. He’d thought Ice would be reluctant to share his family history, but it turns out that most people are just afraid to ask him, and he’s actually pretty eager to talk, if you just ask. Maybe over-eager. He’s rambling. Maverick cuts him off: “Yeah, you do have a left curve to you, don’t you. Genetic.”

The dirty joke strikes Ice dumb for a second, but then he forges ahead, wisely choosing not to engage. He keeps going, oblivious to the fact that Maverick’s not really listening… “Anyway, my grandfather was Jewish, but he died literally the second he stepped foot in America, so it doesn’t count…my grandmother was Orthodox, crazy story how they ended up together; actually, that story’s probably apocryphal, too…she’s the one who raised me, pretty much. I told you that. She brought my dad out to Southern California when he was a little kid, but I don’t know if you’ve noticed, So-Cal’s not exactly the Mecca of Orthodox churches or anything, so he wasn’t very religious at all… My mom was from Milwaukee, I think. Or maybe Minneappolis. Some kinda Protestant. Forget which kind. The preachy kind. But then she died and I didn’t have to go to church anymore, so I didn’t.”

“You just never believed?” Maverick mumbles, half-joking.

“Nah. I mean, I always had too many questions no one wanted to answer. For instance: okay, say you’re bad. Say you commit sin…”

“I’ve never sinned, sir. You’re talking hypothetically.”

“Right. Me, neither. Hypothetically speaking. So you go to Hell. Well, the devil’s there, too, ‘cause he’s a sinner, too. But why’s he want to punish you? What does he get out of it? You’re both in the same boat!”

“Probably a sexual thing,” says Maverick, watching the purple-green imprints of the sun dance around behind his eyelids. “He probably gets off on it. The devil, I mean.”

Ice laughs and laughs. “Sure. Try saying that in front of my mom and see if you survived. I learned pretty early on that they don’t want you to be too curious. So I kept all my questions to myself.” He’s also joking, not taking this super seriously, but that’s a pretty in-character answer. “What about you, Mav?”

“If I’ve told you my family’s history once, I’ve told you a thousand times…” That’s a joke. Maverick’s the one who doesn’t like talking about his family history. Ice hasn’t heard any of it, and for good reason. Maybe someday he’ll tell him about it. “Later. But, remember, I used to be Southern Baptist? Jesus, I was serious into that shit, Ice.”

Ice snorts. “Yeah, right. You.”

“Not joking. I had about eighty girlfriends between fourteen and eighteen, but that’s the most pious I’ve ever been. Lotsa loopholes to make my relationships biblical. Was thinking about being a youth pastor. —I’m not joking. It was my whole personality, for a while. Most of my childhood, anyway.”

Ice is still laughing in disbelief. “Oh, yeah? And then what happened?”

Maverick smiles. “…Got hooked on sinning.”

“…Yeah,” Ice replies, and Maverick can hear the nervous smirk in his voice, “I guess I’d know a little something about that.”

And normally that would be the end of the conversation. But Maverick’s feeling a little sun-drunk, a little giddy, and he’ll never, ever, ever grow out of instigating stupid arguments with Ice just for the fun of it. From beneath the brim of his ballcap he mutters, “…You think Carole’s brainwashing her kid?”

Ice huffs a laugh, and says through a lazy yawn, “I’m not militant in my atheism, no.” But he, also, will never, ever, ever grow out of instigating stupid arguments with Maverick just for the fun of it, and his curiosity’s clearly been piqued. He stews in it for a second before he snaps, “Do you think Carole’s brainwashing her kid?”

“I’m just saying she has him readin’ outta the Bible, like, five times a day. She sends him to church camp. Does something to a kid.” He has no dog in this fight, but this is fun.

“And what did it do to you?” Ice says, reaching down to shove his shoulder good-naturedly. “Weren’t you just telling me not five seconds ago how you used to be the perfect model of Christian charity?” Maverick mumbles a retort sleepily; Ice pushes on through it: “Bradley’s a human being. Either he grows out of it like you did, or he doesn’t, in which case, whatever, land of the free. That’s the First Amendment. You swore an oath to the Constitution. Maybe you should read it.”

“I’ve read it. I’m not Congress, shithead. How’s it go, you want me to cite it to you directly, ‘Congress shall make no law…’ actually, I don’t know what comes after that. Got me there.”

“Don’t call me shithead, dipshit. And whatever. Good thing he’s Carole’s kid and not yours, then. He’s got a mom who wants him to go to church. It’s up to him if he wants to listen to her or not. That’s growing up.”

Maverick tips up the brim of his ballcap to look at him, sprawled out in the bleachers very unprofessionally for the CO of this entire volleyball court, and snaps back, “Well, he’s a little bit my kid. The same way he’s a little bit your kid.”

Ice just flicks his sunglasses down onto his nose and purses his lips and neither confirms nor denies this allegation.

They watch the game together for a while, Ice’s toes pressed against Maverick’s lower back discreetly, trying to work their way under Maverick’s T-shirt. Until one of the young pilots approaches a few minutes later: “Sir!” / “What’s that kid’s call sign again?” Ice mumbles to Maverick, prodding him with his foot. / “Hooker.” / “No shit.” / “Sir!” says Hooker again. / “Which one of us, kid?” says Maverick. / “Captain Kazansky, sir. We’ve got a spot opening up. Wanna play?”

Maverick looks up at Ice expectantly. Ice sighs and harrumphs and waffles for a minute— “I’m too old for this shit.”

“Sir,” says Maverick, “it’s not a competition, but if it were, I’d be winning.”

Lighting the fire of competition under Ice like that is always a good strategy. He rolls his eyes, but immediately stands and tugs off his shirt and rolls up the cuffs of his jeans; “I’ll only play if I can play with the kid.”

So Maverick watches the teams get scrambled again with a smile, and sits up to watch Ice join Bradley in the sand. Bradley’s only just now taller than Ice, and Ice clearly isn’t used to having to reach up to curl an arm around his shoulders to strategize, his eyes narrowed like an eagle’s, staring down the competition. Maverick can read his lips from across the pitch: Alright, kid, I’ve been watching for a while, and I think I know these guys’ strengths and weaknesses…okay, here’s what we’re gonna do… And the game begins when Bradley spikes the ball.

Ice won’t always be this fun, this down-to-earth, this human. The admiralty and the guilt and the grief of the years to come will strip it all away from him, bring him back to the cold, remove him from his own humanity. And maybe, even if it isn’t conscious, Maverick can recognize that, right now, watching Ice dive into the sand with a laugh: this summer sunshine is only temporary. It’s gonna have to end at some point. So he doesn’t take it for granted. He keeps his eyes open and watches and tries to commit it to memory.

And after the game, Ice and Bradley come over so Ice can finish his beer and put his shirt and his baseball cap back on, and Maverick can make fun of them for losing. And: “What were you guys talking about for so long before the game?” Bradley asks Maverick with a grin.

“Whether or not your mom’s brainwashing you,” Maverick says.

“Oh!” Bradley says mildly. “…No, I don’t think so!”

“Oh, that’s a great start,” Ice laughs. “You would’ve made a great Soviet. No, I don’t think I’m getting brainwashed. Hey, by the way, Gosling, if you want a beer, Maverick and I won’t tell anyone.”

“Aw, really?” whispers Bradley. “Thanks, Uncle Ice!” And he races down the bleachers towards the ice chest in the sand.

Maverick watches Ice watch him go, fingers still pinching the brim of his CVN-65 ballcap, clearly worrying about something the way Ice always is.

Then he looks down at Maverick, stares openly for a minute, and says, “You don’t think we’re teaching him to rebel too much, do you?”

—

[Bradley. 2000.]

“Kiddo! You’re here early!” It was Uncle Ice, walking through his own front door, catching a glimpse of Bradley watching the Astros-Nats game on the TV. He was still in uniform, but smiling wide, and he set his bag down near the couch and leaned over to ruffle Bradley’s hair goodnaturedly.

“Practice ended early today.”

“Oh, okay. Cool. Maverick should be home soon, still at work—your mom’ll be here in about an hour—she told me to put the chicken breasts in the oven, but you know me, every time I use this oven I set off the fire alarm, so you oughta help me with that…”

“And,” Bradley said, watching Uncle Ice wash his hands in the kitchen sink, “I got here early because I wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh, sure!” chirped Uncle Ice. Then he paused, sensing a trap. “What about?”

“Advice,” Bradley mumbled. He took a deep breath, and stood to follow Uncle Ice into the kitchen “I was just—I was just curious. If you had any advice for me joining the Navy. You know, with me being gay, and all. How do I—I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. It’s kinda been weighing on me. Do you have any advice?”

Uncle Ice was still drying his hands off on a kitchen towel. Rubbing them red and raw. And when he raised his head to speak, there was something dull and startled in his eyes: “I don’t, um—no, I don’t—I don’t know anything about that. —You should ask Uncle Maverick about that.”

“I did,” Bradley said desperately, because he had. Yes, he’d gone to Uncle Mav first. “He—he told me to talk to you.”

“…Oh,” said Uncle Ice, now standing in front of a shelf to return one of his books to it. This surprised him. Maybe hurt him a little. “No. I—I, I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“But—”

“And there are probably better people to ask than me or Maverick. I—I don’t know—that’s not really my…I don’t know.”

“Okay.”

Uncle Ice swallowed, put the book back on the shelf, then clasped his hands together and set them on the shelf, too, as if leaning over his captain’s desk to chastise someone. He blinked for a long moment. Clearly shifting gears. Becoming someone else so easily. Why couldn’t Bradley do that? “But I can tell you this,” he said, and his voice had gone grave and dim, “and I know you and I don’t always see eye-to-eye on politics—but I can tell you this, professionally, because I respect you, and I care about you, a lot—you’re going to have to keep it a secret.”

Dismayed, Bradley said, “Why?”

“Why’s a funny question to ask about something like this,” said Uncle Ice curtly. He shrugged. “Why? Because it’s the law. That’s why.”

Bradley swung his bat at the hornets’ nest. This was always dangerous with Uncle Ice. “It shouldn’t be a law. Don’t you think?”

“Doesn’t matter what I think. It’s the law. And we get paid to enforce the law, internationally speaking. And the military doesn’t work if personnel refuse to follow the rules in broad daylight. So.” He trailed his fingertip along the spines of all his precious books, then eventually found a different one, started flipping through it absentmindedly. “And even if it weren’t the law, it’d still get enforced extrajudicially. You know what that means?” He did that, when he was intentionally being cruel; used big words that Bradley didn’t know to make himself sound smarter. “It means outside the law. The way people talk to you. The way people respect you or don’t respect you. And this business, the one you want to go into, is all about respect. Being a pilot is kind of like being a knight: you have to be noble, you have to be honorable, you have to respect your service and your adversaries and yourself. And because I respect you, and because I care about you a lot, I’m just telling you the truth—you’re going to have to keep it a secret.”

Bradley blinked. There was something crushing and overwhelming about the truth—maybe the fact that it was the truth, maybe the fact that he hated the fact that it was the truth. It made sense. But it also meant his future was unspeakably bleak. He tried to speak over the lump in his throat when he said, “Yeah. That’s what Maverick told me, too.” And what he’d wanted to hear from Uncle Ice was that Uncle Mav was telling a lie.

Something went soft and slightly wounded in Uncle Ice’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” Uncle Ice said gently. “I wish I could give you better advice than that. But that’s all I know. I don’t know any more than that.”

“Don’t you want to know more than that?”

“No.”

And thus did the generational gap widen into a chasm.

—

[February 2003.]

Dear SN Bradshaw, / Please call/email/write me back when you get a chance. / Love Uncle Iceman.

…

[August 2003.]

Dear AN Bradshaw, / I hope you’re doing all right. I hope at some point you and I can get in touch to talk. Please let me know if there is some other address I should be sending my letters to. I am not sure if they are finding you. / Love Uncle Iceman.

…

[May 2004.]

Dear AN Bradshaw, / I wanted to congratulate you on your acceptance to college. Yours is a very good AE program & you should feel very proud. Please let me know if there’s anything you might need as you prepare to start your first year. / Love Uncle Iceman.

…

[August 2010.]

Dear LT Bradshaw, / I wanted to let you know that I’ll be at NAS Oceana for a conference from December 6-9. I understand that’s your neck of the woods—would you be interested in having dinner with me on either that Tuesday or Wednesday night? I would love to hear how you’ve been doing. You can reach my secretary at the number below. / Love Uncle Iceman.

…

[October 2014.]

Dear LT Bradshaw, / We Maverick and I want to wish you a Happy Birthday 30th Birthday. We heard you are deployed out in the Atlantic now—we hope you will be able to enjoy the enclosed gift card when you make it back to terra firma. Our updated personal cell numbers are below. / HAPPY BIRTHDAY! FROM UNCLE MAVERICK & Uncle Iceman.

…

“Haven’t heard back from the kid yet.”

“…You think we ever will?”

The longest silence.

—

[Pacific Air Type Commander Beau Simpson. 2016.]

You could see it in the way they held themselves. An utmost similarity. Aristocratic propriety. Maybe a little sense of entitlement: look how hard we’ve worked to be here. All three of them had it. More accurately: Captain Mitchell and Admiral Kazansky both had it, and had passed it down to their son.

“Captain Mitchell.” Everyone was watching. The sun had only just set; the sky was melting from horizon-red through orange and yellow and teal up to midnight black above them.

“It’s an honor, sir,” said Captain Mitchell, accepting Admiral Kazansky’s handshake. God, you’d never know it by looking at them. Half the people here on this Roosevelt flight deck knew about them, but they were so convincing that more people weren’t sure. TYCOM Simpson glanced at Rear Admiral Bates, who glanced back in confusion—I thought they were…? They were, TYCOM Simpson signaled, just abnormally good at keeping it a secret.

“Honor’s all mine, Captain,” said Admiral Kazansky, and he passed by without a second glance.

And when he made it down the line of aviators to Lieutenant Bradshaw—you could see it. The similarity in the way they held themselves. Straight and rigid and unyielding. Cold and dismissive beyond belief, even to each other. Admiral Kazansky held out a hand. Lieutenant Bradshaw took it, but refused to make eye contact. Quiet rebellion under the radar: Admiral Kazansky had taught him well.

TYCOM Simpson glanced at Captain Mitchell, to gauge his reaction. And for once, he and Captain Mitchell were clearly thinking the exact same thing.

Like father, like son.

You could see it in their stubborn determination. How far they were willing to go. How hard they were willing to push. How long they were willing to hold their own hands to the fire, if it meant the familiar painful comfort of staying warm. “Ice-cold, huh?” TYCOM Simpson asked him the next morning, trying to pin down their strategy, trying to secure a guarantee that their family would do what their country asked of them, even if that meant death. Even if that meant the ultimate sacrifice.

“Only when I have to be,” replied Admiral Kazansky, which meant always, and—soon thereafter, he ordered Lieutenant Bradshaw to his death.

But also, Lieutenant Bradshaw went willingly, too.

“Dagger One is hit.”

“Dagger Two is hit.”

Loss is supposed to hit a man in stages. Isn’t that the truth? —Not so for Admiral Kazansky, whom grief obviously swallowed whole in just an instant. He did not break, or bend under its weight. Just stood there staring at the E-2D AWACS screen with wide wounded eyes—not disbelieving eyes. They were gone. Captain Mitchell and Lieutenant Bradshaw were gone. He was in no denial whatsoever. He had leapt straight to acceptance.

“Sir,” said TYCOM Simpson hesitantly, and he reached out to touch him—the stars on his shoulder—guide him back to reality—what must it be like, to lose a son?—to willingly forfeit your family?—

But before he could make contact, Admiral Kazansky drew a breath, moved away, and closed his eyes for just a second. Perfectly composed, even with the waters of grief closing over his head, even with three dozen observers in this C2 room all scrutinizing him for his response. Perfectly composed. How did he do it? How could he manage? How was he possibly still this proud?

“Vice Admiral Simpson,” he said calmly, “I relinquish my command to you, until you deem me necessary to return to my post.”

“Sir,” said Rear Admiral Bates, darting panicked, sympathetic eyes to TYCOM Simpson, but it was too late—Admiral Kazansky was already leaving the room. Head held high and steady.

Some confusing weeks later, after Captain Mitchell and Lieutenant Bradshaw returned from the dead, TYCOM Simpson and Rear Admiral Bates would casually debrief the mission together in the lobby bar of the Waldorf-Astoria in Washington, D.C. No hard liquor, just beers. Just barely enough alcohol to give them an excuse to philosophize. “You think pride is a sin or a virtue?” TYCOM Simpson found himself asking, tracing the rim of his gilt-edged Stella Artois glass with a finger, after having recounted the above testimony.

“Neither,” said Rear Admiral Bates. “Gotta be a vice.”

“A vice.”

“Yeah. Good men die because of pride, bad men die because of pride…we send our sons to battle because of pride…wars are fought and won and lost because of pride… every war in human history, when you boil it down, begins when someone says, ‘You’re wrong and I’m right, and I’m proud of my own righteousness, proud enough to kill, proud enough to die, proud enough to send my sons to die…’”

“Oh, okay. That’s the root of all human conflict, then, according to you, Warlock. Okay.”

Rear Admiral Bates smiled and laughed at himself, too. Pride, he mouthed. Then shook his head. “We’re a proud species. It’s our vice.”

TYCOM Simpson was thinking about the two proudest men he knew, Admiral Kazansky and Lieutenant Bradshaw, and wondered what it was, exactly, that had driven a wedge between them, you’re wrong and I’m right and I’m proud enough of my own righteousness to send you to your death/inflict my death upon you… And then he remembered the warnings he’d previously received about Lieutenant Bradshaw and Lieutenant Seresin and their open relationship, and then he remembered Admiral Kazansky coldly shaking Captain Mitchell’s hand… and he wondered if the wedge between them was exactly that: the matter of pride.

—

[Tom. 2018.]

“Merry Christmas and a happy new year, and all that,” says Pete, raising his glass and reaching over the dining table to clink rims with Tom and then Bradley. “A good year! A really good year! —Sorry your guy couldn’t be here, Rooster. We’ll call him tonight before you go. Tell him we miss him.”

“Where is he again?” Tom asks.

“Washington,” Bradley says with a smile. “Big conference at the Pentagon. I’ll see him next week.”

“You know,” Pete says with a sly grin directed at Tom, “I’ve never actually heard the story of how you two got together.”

“Oh,” Bradley says, shrugging as he tears open a dinner roll, “not that interesting. Pretty much what you’d expect. Inter-squadron competition-turned-sexual tension. Not exactly within regs, but we did meet each other before D.A.D.T. got repealed, so it wasn’t like we’d’ve ever been within regs, either…” (All the while, Tom’s smirking over the rim of his wine glass at Pete, No, Mav, I’m not gonna tell him I had them reassigned to the same boat…) “We broke up when I got sent to TOPGUN. But we figured it out eventually.”

“Glad you did. Sorry he couldn’t be here.”

Bradley hesitates, then says, “You know what I just realized? I never heard how you two got together…! You’ve never told me that story!”

Tom glances over at Pete, do you want to take this or shall I, and when Pete motions all yours, he sighs and says, “Uh, we don’t really know. We’ve just been telling people nineteen-eighty-six because it’s easy. But in a much more real sense…” He thinks about it, then shrugs. “Whatever. If you really want to know. In nineteen-ninety-three, right after I came back to San Diego to take command at Miramar, he and I had a drunken one-night stand. By accident. Which then turned into twenty-five years of accidental one-night stands. So.”

“Oh, c’mon. You guys bought a house together.”

“Yeah, that,” says Pete, “that was, uh, to facilitate the accidental one-night stands. Make it more convenient for everyone.”

“Cut out the middle-man,” Tom supplies, then shrugs again at the look on Bradley’s face. “That’s our story, kid. It’s not super romantic. We weren’t thinking about it that way. We didn’t know how.”

Pete raises the wine bottle to refill Tom’s glass—though it’s still halfway full—and then raises his eyebrows when he “notices” the bottle’s empty. Changes the subject as he stands: “Okay, what’s everyone feeling? Red, white, what’s next?”

“Red,” Tom says absently. “Anything big, I guess—first cab you see…” But then he thinks about it, and he amends his order before Pete leaves earshot: “Actually—we’ve got that petite sirah we gotta drink—two-thousand-four. Israeli. Might be somewhere in the back, sorry. But now’s a good occasion, I think, to bust it out for the holidays. No reason to save it.”

“Israeli sirah two-thousand-four,” Pete repeats, “okay. I got that.”

Then he steps outside, leaving Tom and Bradley alone. It’s not awkward—they’ve worked really hard over the last two years to make it not-awkward, after the mission—but human beings are human beings. Prideful, stubborn creatures. There will always be a little guilt between the two of them, and a little blame.

“I have to be honest,” Tom says after a moment, interested in being honest for Bradley’s sake, “sorry we don’t have a better story to give you, about us. It is a little hard to talk about.”

“Why?”

“Well—we don’t know the words we’re supposed to use, for one. It’s your generation who sets the standard for that kind of thing. You young people. We’re a little out-of-date. And…well. I guess we’re just jealous of you. It’s hard to talk about.”

“Jealous?” Bradley repeats quizzically. “Why?”

Tom leans back in his chair and really thinks through what he wants to say. This is one of those impromptu speeches you never really intend to make, but are probably still important to get off your chest. “Maverick and I,” he starts carefully, “will never stop feeling guilty about what we did to you. Ever. You need to know that.” And when Bradley scoffs and huffs and tries to interrupt, he goes on, “Not just pulling your papers from the Academy. It goes back further than that. We will always feel like we deprived you of your father. The merits of that feeling are debatable, sure, but it’s a fact of life. A fact of our lives, anyway. And it’s dictated so much of how we live, and how we’ve lived, over the past thirty years. Part of the reason I came back to Miramar in nineteen-ninety-three was to be with you and your mom. Because I felt I owed you that, in return for what I’d taken.”

“You didn’t kill him,” Bradley says. “Or, at least, I never blamed you for killing him. You or Maverick both. You guys were my dads. You didn’t take anything from me. —Excepting the obvious, the Academy, but that was mostly my mom, I guess, so, whatever.”

“I’m just telling you what our lives have been like since the day I met you. Why we did what we did.”

“Okay. But I still don’t understand why you’re jealous.”

Tom smiles, a little faintly. “Because the other part of the reason I came back to Miramar in nineteen-ninety-three was to be with Maverick,” he says, “and I’m jealous of you because I didn’t recognize that at the time. —Everyone hopes, when they have kids—because, look, I’m not your dad, but you are my kid, really—everyone hopes they can bring their kid into a better world than the one they had when they were a kid, and we did. But no one prepares you for how jealous you get when your kid grows up in a better world than you did. I’m not sure people your age understand how hard it was for us when we were your age.”

“I do.”

“Sure, but I don’t think you do. I—I didn’t…” He sighs. “I never meant to fall in love with Mitchell. He never meant to fall in love with me. There certainly were men in relationships in the Navy back then who could make it work—we weren’t those guys. We looked down on those guys. Most people did. And when you were an officer, your job security and your paycheck relied on your subordinates’ respect for you. If we’d rocked the boat, traded away our respect for our relationship, well, we’d have each other, but we’d be out of a job. And then, if we’d been fired—what did we kill all those people for? For nothing! What a waste of all the lives we took! It wouldn’t have been honorable. Would’ve disrespected the Navy, our careers, the men we killed. So we didn’t talk about our relationship. You know that. Didn’t talk about who we were, or what we were doing, or why, because we were afraid of losing our own honor. Didn’t talk about it until the day you two died and came back from the dead. That’s what it took. Maverick still hates talking about some of that stuff, all the labels, all the words—that’s why I sent him to get a bottle at the back of the fridge, he might be out there a while…”

“Cunning,” Bradley says softly, but leaves the space open after he speaks.

Tom looks away. “Maybe this is getting too deep into the weeds. I’m just trying to tell you what it’s been like for us. Not sure how much of this you want to hear.”

“All of it. —All of it.”

Tom clears his throat. “…Well, Maverick keeps trying to convince me that we never wasted any time. And I know there is some truth to that—we didn’t start out liking each other at all—even if we’d been as brave as people your age are nowadays, even if we’d been open with each other about that kind of stuff, we still probably wouldn’t have ended up together. I mean, we really didn’t like each other. Especially right after your dad died, and especially after you left, in two-thousand-two. So maybe it was better for us in the long run that we didn’t talk about it. But I look back on the thirty years I’ve spent with him, and…it still all feels like a waste to me.” Maybe he really is too deep into the weeds. But he just wants Bradley to understand. “Look, Mitchell is, beyond any possible shadow of a doubt, the love of my life. Always has been and always will be. Right? —I just wish I’d known that at the time. I’m jealous of you because you’re exactly the age I was when I came back to Miramar to be with you and your mom and Maverick, and you’re already married, and you won’t ever have to sacrifice any of your honor for your marriage. You’re one of the most respected men in the Navy.”

“So are you, Ice, and you’re also married to another man.”

“I’ll remind you, though it hurts a little, that I’m almost exactly a quarter-century older than you, and you and I got married within a week of each other. I had to wait for times to change.” He holds Bradley’s gaze for a moment, then finishes the last of his dinner and sets his fork down on his plate. “So, if you were ever wondering why Mav and I are a little bitter around you and Jake, well, it’s because we are.”

“Oh,” says Bradley. “See, I always thought it was just because you and Maverick are both notoriously bitter people.”

“We are,” Tom admits through a laugh. Then he continues, “But—you should also know how proud of you we both are. How proud of you we’ve both always been. We’re not very brave men—well, we are, of course, but maybe not in the way that matters. It’s pretty gratifying to have a kid who’s braver than you are. Every parent’s dream, whether we want to admit it or not. You’re brave enough for all of us.”

It’s at this moment that Pete opens the garage door and sticks his head inside and hollers, “Ice, I can’t find it. What about a merlot? Can we do a merlot?”

“No, baby, the sirah,” Tom answers without turning his head. “It’s on the second shelf, you might—have to rearrange some of the bottles—we have too much wine. We need to drink more, me and you.”

“Not a problem,” says Pete, and he shuts the door again.

“It’s on the third shelf,” Tom tells Bradley in an aside. “He’ll find it eventually. He would’ve tried to change the subject six times by now. —The previous Secretary of the Army—he actually just got married this week, I think; I need to send a card—also gay. He and his partner invited Maverick and me out to dinner the last time we were in D.C. Most uncomfortable I’ve ever seen Mav in my whole life. Asking us questions like, ‘How did you guys get together…?’ ‘Was it easier for you guys because you were in the Navy…?’ ‘When did you…know…?’” When Bradley laughs, Tom does, too. It’s really nice, it turns out, to joke about this stuff with someone who understands. “We just made our answers up out of thin air. I was uncomfortable too, admittedly. That’s what I’m saying. Mav and I never learned the vocabulary to answer questions like that.”

Bradley starts taking their plates to the sink. What a good kid. “You know,” he says from the kitchen, glancing over his shoulder when Tom joins him at the counter, “it’s so funny you bitch that you and Mav don’t have a romantic love story, or whatever. When I was a kid, you and him were literally the pinnacle of romance.”

“Oh, really.”

“Yeah. There’s something romantic about the secret, too. When Jake and I made our relationship official—the first time—I begged him to keep it a secret just for a little while. You know; it was sexy, for a few minutes! Something only he and I knew!”

“And you immediately discovered how awful it is, I’m sure,” Tom says noncommittally. “I’m jealous of you that you learned that lesson young. —Yeah, real romantic. Maverick and I could’ve ended each other’s careers fourteen thousand times over. Real romantic.”

“And trusted each other not to,” Bradley points out—

—which makes Tom reconsider.

Yeah, okay, maybe it’s a little romantic. The way Grimm’s fairytales, once you wipe away all the blood, are just a little romantic. “I’m of the opinion that the only thing getting old is good for is looking back on your life through rose-colored glasses. Sure. Historical revisionism it is. It was a little romantic.”

“What’s a little romantic?” says Pete, stepping into the kitchen and triumphantly brandishing his 2004 petite sirah; “Have I missed something funny? —It was on the third shelf, by the way. Could’ve told me that before I went and reorganized the whole fridge.”

Tom graciously accepts the half-annoyed kiss to the cheek, and answers, “Nothing you would’ve laughed at, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, one of those conversations,” says Pete, hunting around in the drawer for the corkscrew. “If you were planning on continuing, I can go out and rearrange the wine bottles by region instead of by year—” and scoffs when Tom kisses him back to reassure him, conversation’s over.

“Did you know,” Bradley says, “your husband is now openly calling you the love of his life?”

“Oh, yeah,” says Pete with a smile, popping the cork from the bottleneck, “he tells me that all the time. Nothing new.” Tops up their glasses, then deftly changes the subject: “Oh, gosh. I never asked. This is the big news. How are you and Hangman enjoying SOUTHCOM?”

“Oh, God,” says Bradley, rolling his eyes. “Let me tell you…”

“I think we did good,” Pete says later that night—they’re alone now, so he’s fine talking—as he tugs loose the tucked sheets to clamber into bed, and when Tom moves to turn off the light he adds, “No, you can keep reading.”

Tom sets his book down onto his chest and pulls his glasses off anyway. “Well, you and I are known for doing ‘good,’” he muses after a second. “We’re pretty universally renowned for being good at stuff. But, regarding what in particular? —Raising our kid?”

“Yeah. We did good.”

Actually, they didn’t do very well at all. But of course that’s not what Pete means. Pete means: it’s shocking and stunningly fortunate that they did as poorly as they did and still somehow ended up with such a good kid. Tom’s looking up at the ceiling and feeling very small. “How did that happen? Genuinely, how did that happen? I did always build getting married into my plan for my life—but I never thought far enough ahead to consider having kids. And now you and I have a kid who’s in his thirties. How’d that happen? I remember when he could barely walk!”

Pete yawns and rolls over onto his side and closes his eyes. “You and I have a kid who earned a Medal of Honor.”

“I know exactly how that happened” —and doesn’t like to think about it too much. “I suppose we’re just a family of overachievers. A lot of failing upwards, you and me. Somehow we failed our way upwards into a very happy lifelong relationship, a superstar kid…a few dozen medals each, ourselves…”

“That’s life,” says Pete sleepily.

“That is not most people’s lives. You’re aware that our lives look nothing like the average person’s life, right? You understand that?”

“That’s our life.”

Tom considers this. Yeah, it is their life. Wild how that happens.

He smiles at the singular word life, sets his book on the nightstand, presses a kiss to Pete’s bare shoulder, and turns off the light.

#happy Father's Day!#some light discussion of religion in this one but u should be used to that with me #this one is long bc it hits a LOT of prompts sry it took a minute #going thru my inbox: for this anon obv #and FTAW (for the anon who) wanted more competitive icemav #for the FOUR anons who wanted ice and bradley to talk about queerness in the navy #FTAW wanted rooster to explain how hangster came to be #FTAW wanted more ice breaking the rules (‘management tier asshole’ lol)#for the THREE anons who wanted more soft 90s icemav #which is hard for me to write bc those years are kinda boring #it’s literally just: they wake up together. Go to work together. raise their kid together. eat dinner together. fall asleep in the same bed #occasionally fuck. Keep it a secret. don’t talk about it.#for 5 years. like… narratively speaking it’s v boring but yeah they’re happy :)#FTAW wanted more of ices prenavy backstory (this isn’t really much but…)#FTAW wanted icemav’s relationship with religion #tom iceman kazansky #pete maverick mitchell #top gun maverick #top gun #icemav #top gun fanfiction #you guys sure love ur anonymity don’t u #i wanna know who’s sending in asks!!! my dms are open!!! Please come say hi!!!#there are some timeline issues wrt Carole in this one sorry. u can deal.

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