Work Text:
His hands are flitting around his bedside table. There’s something missing. Nausea rolls through his stomach as his hands move increasingly faster, where the fuck is it? He moves the table itself and hears the small noise the piece of metal makes as it hits the concrete floor of his barrack. Sudden relief floods his system as he picks it up, runs his fingers along the coolness of it, and unclasps his dog tags and settles the ring where it belongs amongst his dog tags.
It was his dad’s ring. One of the few things he took with him when he left.
He has a copy of his mother’s Bible (he stopped believing in the promise of Heaven long ago, but he liked the sentiment of it, and the reminder of his mother), his father’s wedding ring (a reminder, promise to himself even, to never end up like the man), and placed carefully in the back of the Bible are three photos of his older siblings (two sisters and a brother– Kirsten, Lanie, and John Jr.). He reminds himself that his brother was the one with the family honor of being a “junior”, of carrying both the Seresin surname and the name of the man who turned them into who they are today.
A family of Austin-based ranchers who had done their duty and served their country is what they were. His father reminded them often and always that he had built the Seresin name and he could take it down just as easily.
Kirsten and Lanie both became Army surgeons, John Jr. ended up just like his father, but just a shade more tragic. A sergeant in the Army, shot dead in a war, empty casket buried and a slap across Jake’s face as a reminder that he was, and never would be, what his father wanted.
Jacob Seresin thought he was breaking free by joining the Navy. It felt cathartic at the time, like a rejection of the name he seemed cursed with upholding, but he realized later that he was still doing a version of what his father expected or wanted, still following the rule of his iron fist, just in something that didn’t inherently already have the Seresin name attached. It was a subconscious attempt to make the name mean something, once again, a last grasp at gaining his father’s approval or at the bare minimum, his attention.
“Makes sense, it’s the fucking faggot branch of the military anyways.” Is what his father had shot at him. Jake had pressed the tears deep back down in his eyes, told himself when he looked in the mirror right before that he had cried enough in his damn childhood, to stop the foolishness. He had steeled his soft palms, not yet tarnished with holding thorns, into fists at his sides as his father talked, focusing too much on trying to release the anger that was slowly festering inside him that he missed when his father swung a right hook at him.
“Look at me, faggot, look me in the eyes and tell me you’re not my son, that I didn’t raise you this way, or you give up the Seresin name before you fuck it up. Every day, I wish it had been you that was gunned down, John Junior was everything you couldn’t be.”
He’d let the words sting. Let himself remember the hurt and the anger that roiled within him. Had hung his head low and recanted the Seresin name. Listened to the anathemas his father spit, took them to heart. His father slapped him clean across the face and told him to get the fuck out. Forever a pleaser, Jake obliged, stopping by his parent’s room for a few things before he went. He saw his mother, frail and withering on the bed. He pressed a kiss to her forehead, told her he loves her, and left behind the Seresin legacy, tarnished with the stain of a faggot son, in Austin, Texas.
He’s in San Diego now. He flies like he means it and like he has no one left on the ground for him when he inevitably burns up in a show of talent (it’s because he doesn’t). He has Javy, but he feels bad for the son of a bitch because Javy isn’t enough to erase everything from his childhood, can’t make Jake feel like he’s worth sticking around for. He feels bad because he knows the guy will be the only person at his funeral, that he’ll bear the brunt of grief (whatever small amount he may feel for Jake), and Jake knows that’ll hurt him. He hopes someone (God, maybe, if he exists, or perhaps he’ll meet the Devil) will forgive him (or more fittingly punish him) when he goes. For the hurt he caused his family, himself, and for poor Javy, who tries to remind Jake everyday that there is something more out there than the weight of the Seresin name and of his father’s palm he can’t seem to distance himself from.
Every day, when he thinks about Bradley Bradshaw at Top Gun, he reminds himself of everything his father said. Instead of thinking about the heat of their kiss, he thinks instead of the heat of his father’s palm against his cheek. He thinks of the pure disappointment he’d seen in his eyes. He thinks of the tears in his father’s eyes as John Jr.’s casket lowered into the ground but the rage that had been present when he had hit him at the funeral. It’s Pavlovian, almost, his response now to Bradley Bradshaw, who becomes a stand-in symbol for all the hurt and pain in his life. He acts out, hurts Bradley back, trying to win back some semblance of control for the childhood he lost.
What he doesn’t tell anyone about, not even Javy, is the grief that rips through his bone marrow and within his synapses, the anguish that comes with every hot rush of blood. The pure utter loss of losing his family, his brother, his mother, and even Lanie and Kirsten when he left. Doesn’t mention that he has a mind plagued with remorse, that laments every day that he couldn’t have gotten shot up and left to turn to dust in a warzone and that an empty casket could’ve been buried in his name at a funeral that his father would’ve actually shed tears at. He doesn’t let anyone in that in the dark of night, after the teasing of the bar has faded, that he cries into a pillow like a fucking child, and hopes that someday someone might just take matters into their own hands and kill him. He’s too much of a pussy to do it.
He feels like he’s slowly goading Bradshaw into doing something stupid, with how much he’s pushing all his buttons. He doesn’t want his blood on Bradley’s hands though. His blood doesn’t have the privilege of staining the hands of the only man he’s ever thought he was in love with. He also knows Bradshaw like the back of his cigarette-burned hands. Knows that he would never hurt Jacob Seresin, not with his big doe eyes and his soft hands and his squishy, malleable heart that he leaves on display for anyone to take and rip apart bare-handed and Jake fears he might just be the motherfucker to have done that.
The look Bradley gave him, when Jake nearly spat at his feet and told him he didn’t love Bradshaw, didn’t love his sweet gestures and his kind words and the way he could take Jake apart with a single glance, showed nothing but pain, suffering. For a short-lived moment, Jacob Seresin knew he’d finally made his dead daddy proud, proud that he’d hurt a faggot’s heart, the way they deserved . He’d seen the way Bradley’s face had twisted into something rotten, contorted with the shock of what had just been spit at him.
It makes Jake wish he had grown up in a normal household, makes Jake wish he was capable of the not-so-careful emotion Bradshaw displayed any moment someone gave him the time of day. It’s almost childlike, the way Bradley lets anyone in, and Jake realizes, sitting alone in his barrack at night, twisting his father’s ring around his index finger that the two of them aren’t so different. They’d both lost family, Bradshaw literally and Jake by choice (every day he wishes he could change what he knows in his core: that he likes men in a way he shouldn’t, in a way that’s condemnable), but that they’d dealt with their emotions on two opposite sides of the spectrum. Outliers in a data set, one swinging so far that every emotion was suppressed except for burning hot anger, the other letting every emotion out that came to him. They’d come together in a fiery combination, like the creation of a star, but more realistically like the thick clouds of rain that come together before a horrible storm that washes away lives and homes. Jake realizes by his own doing that he had torn down everything, had washed away a life with Bradshaw, let his own hot rage consume him and pour torrentially on a man who had given him his heart.
Years pass, and when he hears of Bradshaw’s achievements he can’t help but think that he had been weighing him down when they’d met. Look at what he’d achieved without you around, his mind had supplied. Something settles deep within his chest and he finally allows himself to accept something that’s been thrown at him since he was just a little gay boy in Texas, soft and doughy around the edges, as he began to ruin his family’s name.
He was going to Hell.
…
He’s called back to Top Gun, what for, he doesn’t know, but he hopes the Devil finally smiles at him when he’s done there.
He wouldn’t call himself a believer, no, not at all, at least not in Heaven, not for himself. He believed in the idea of Hell. He takes a sick fucking satisfaction at the idea of being bound limb-by-limb and torn apart, paying penance for a life he never fucking asked to live in the first place. He hopes the confirmed kill that hangs over his head, that people treat like a badge of honor, has him never knowing peace.
Javy knows what that did to him, hanging in the air, watching limbs fall apart in fire and slam into the ground below. Jake had vomited into his mask and was choking halfway to death when he landed, so full of grief and pain for someone who wished him so much hurt and a sick part of him thinks he should’ve let the fucker kill him instead. It’d’ve probably been more fitting anyways.
He hopes that his second confirmed kill, the one of Bradshaw’s heart, has him hung from a pole in the fieriest pits of hell. Prays that it has him shredded apart limb by limb and thrown from the sky down in fire just like he did to that poor son of a bitch a couple years back. He thinks he’s finally made it to Hell when he sees none other than Bradley Bradshaw’s dopey face enter the bar. He closes his eyes for a long second, takes a deep breath of air, and thinks, take me, Lucifer, rip me apart and force me to face everything I’ve pushed deep into the pocket of my chest where my heart should be.
When he opens his eyes, he’s sad to see that he’s where he started, at The Hard Deck, looking at the man who stands as his culmination of a life of repression.
He likes to believe in the idea of Heaven. For his mother, his brother, for Javy, for Bradley Bradshaw. Likes to imagine that they’ll get peace, they deserve it. When he finally returns home from The Hard Deck, he pulls his mother’s Bible from his side table. He carefully places the photos of his siblings to the side, and runs his fingers over her annotations. The careful marks of a devout woman who was a saint walking if Jake ever knew one.
She wrote in the sides, deepening her understanding of everything she held at her core. He can almost feel her through the page, can feel her warmth. A woman, pious and devoted, who had still loved her faggot son, who held him in her arms as he cried, who blotted his cheeks dry when the redness had faded and the only thing left had been traces of tears and blood, subtle scars forming that he would carry for the rest of his life (reminders that he was and always would be the Seresin no one wanted) . But yet he had his mother, a woman who still somehow thought Jake was deserving of the Seresin name.
He wonders how she let a man like John Seresin Senior take over everything she was, drown out the Margie Polak and leave behind her husk in favor of Margaret Seresin, but then he remembers how he damn near about gave up his life for Bradley Bradshaw and he understands.
He flips to a page he bookmarked long ago, carefully, with his original Navy recruiter’s information card.
1 Peter 4:8
Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.
He recognizes where his mother wrote a small note along the side, “love covers all”, and he reminds himself of this. He reminds himself of his mother’s love covering over the scars of his father, the way she tried to soothe him with lotion and words after the cigarette burn this time had eaten through the top layer of his dermis, fuck, he even thinks of the way Javy has tried desperately to cover over the harsh phrases his father had spit at him. He can’t think of anything, however, without being reminded that not even Bradshaw’s love was enough to cover over the lifetime of sinning he’s done. Bradshaw’s love, unconditional and fiery, pure heat, real passion, true love, even, if he so dared to say it, could not cover all of his sins. It only furthers the idea that he belongs in Hell. If the most saintly of women (his mother) and of men (Bradley Bradshaw and even Javy) could not absolve him, then nothing, no one, could.
He spends the next hour flipping through the pages, trying to beat into his thick skull that none of this is real, not for Jacob Seresin. This is real for someone like Margie Polak, John Jr. Seresin, Javy Machado, Bradley Bradshaw.
For the first time since he took the damn thing and walked out of his Austin ranch house to get on the next bus to the airport to deploy, he picks up a pencil and makes his own annotation in his mother’s Bible. His hands shake as he underlines the words, as he pens his own note in the margin.
John 15:13
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends
Those who are deserving, who are loving, sacrifice for those who they are closest to.
He reminds himself of his callsign. A permanent weight. Ironic, he thinks, this whole time, he’s metaphorically dropped the Seresin name in favor of something that signifies what a sinner at heart he is. His father would approve, his mind supplies. Being a Seresin meant giving up everything for someone else (dying like John Jr. did), being Hangman meant making every selfish decision someone of his type would make. A man willing to let others die in the name of self-preservation.
That’s the furthest fucking thing from holy, devout, from Heaven, there is.
There’s something heavy in his heart as he watches Bradshaw fly. He could be the best, with a little more speed, he could live and earn his righteous place in Heaven but only after a life well-lived, not cut short. Bradley Bradshaw would send his ass to Heaven about 50 years too early if he kept flying the way he did, and Jacob Seresin cannot, will not, let that happen.
He watches, heart caught in his throat as he spirals down and down in a pissing match with Maverick. He watches as Bradley starts to burn just like Jacob Seresin does, and starts to let anger control his moves. He wants to grab him by the face and shake him, shake off the Jacob Seresin impact where he’s controlled by anger. He’s tarnished yet another person, he fears. But then, he watches from the sides, hidden in the shadows, as Bradley falls apart on the tarmac, tears and snot and sweat pouring down his face, and Jake remembers that Bradley still cries, still cares. That somehow the impact of having Jake Seresin, Hangman, in his life hadn’t completely destroyed the man.
Bradley Bradshaw deserves a place in Heaven, after all, and Jake decides that even sinners like himself can do something good every once in a while.
He can’t do it without hurting Bradshaw, because he’s still a sinner at his core, but he tries with everything in him, despite their history, to push Bradshaw to fly a little faster, a little sharper, and live for his spot in Heaven, but only when it’s his time. He can see the confusion flick onto Bradshaw’s face as Jake directs his attention onto him. He’s sure Bradshaw thinks it has something to do with their history, and it does, but just not in the way he might think. Bradshaw thinks Jake is doing this out of hatred, still motivated with the vile emotion that he’d thrown at him back at their first stint at Top Gun. Jake can read him like a book. What he wishes is that he could tell Bradshaw what exactly he’s doing, that he’s trying to get him to live goddamnit, because even if Jake wasn’t going to Heaven that didn’t mean he was going to let people burn as fast and as hard as he planned to.
He’s reminded very suddenly where he stands in the hierarchy of Heaven and Hell. When he brings up Bradshaw’s father, he sees the old Bradley, the one not as motivated by rage with Maverick’s presence, the one who lets emotion pour over his face. He clenches his hands down at his side, reminiscent of that time with his father in the kitchen, right before he left, and closes his eyes, waiting for the right hook to follow. Trace and the others have pulled Bradshaw away, and Jake’s glad. He smiles, like a damned bastard, he knows it’ll hurt Bradshaw more if he was nice and perfect and then burned himself alive trying to save him.
He’s glad Bradshaw doesn’t hit him, he deserves to, but he once again remembers that the blood of his face does not have the privilege of staining Bradley Bradshaw’s hands. He brings himself back to his barrack, opens the Bible again, heavy in his hands, the weight of everything in his life in the sum form of a book that he does not even believe he deserves to own.
1 Corinthians 13:4-5
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others.
He laughs to himself as he reads this line, looks over his mother’s annotations, and tears are in his eyes before can really will them away.
“Be patient, be kind, be not arrogant, be love”
He feels as though the life he’s led since he left the ranch house is in complete disrespect to his mother. A life of arrogance and boasting, knowingly overdoing it to try and recoup the praise he never got as a child. He is not patient, he is not kind, it is certainly most not love. Especially not with the way he just dishonored Bradshaw, his family. No matter his intentions, he is cursed with the afterlife of Hell, cursed with hurting those around him. A small part of his brain reminds him of the poor bastard Javy, who’s stuck with him all this time, who he has yet to hurt, but Jake knows that when he crashes, burns away in jet fuel and pine, that he will hurt Javy infinitely, doing something unforgivable, and continue his reputation.
He feels like a liar, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, when he has his dog tags changed to say CATHOLIC where previously no religious affiliation was marked. He thinks of Jacob from the Bible, coined as the righteous deceiver, and now Jake feels like he doesn’t deserve his first name anymore either. How could he hold the same name as someone who had upheld the Covenant, when he himself, Jacob Seresin, was the collection of everything worthy of condemnation?
He feels like he doesn’t deserve to wear the words, CATHOLIC, to claim the same level of piety that his mother once held. It feels like a prayer, which is why he keeps it, to run his finger over the bumpy edges of the lettering and remind himself that there is something after it all, where he can finally receive what he has been deserving since he was born Jacob Seresin in Austin, Texas.
He tries once again, a last ditch effort to make his mother proud, not to change his life’s trajectory, but to tell himself he’s earned the right to hold his mother’s Bible in his hands and write in it like she once did.
He apologizes to Bradshaw. Tries to explain to him that he was trying to help, but he knows the words come out clunky and misshapen and he wishes for just a moment that he wasn’t sentenced to eternal damnation because that look from Bradshaw, the one of forgiveness, forgiveness he doesn’t deserve, is enough to make him repent for everything and try his damndest to get into Heaven with him. But he knows deep down that there’s no indemnity for him against his imprecation to Hell for everything he’s done before this moment, not even if Bradley Bradshaw seems like he’s forgiving him.
He goes down to his knees when he gets back to his room after apologizing to Bradshaw, says a prayer for Lanie and Kirsten, even one for John Jr. up in heaven and of course for both Margie Polak and Margaret Seresin. He prays that they find or have found peace, that they forgive him for tarnishing their holiness with his heatheness. That they do not miss him when he gets a taste of what he finally deserves and burns in oil, metal, his flight suit, that they do not cry when an empty casket is buried into the ground. He prays that the CATHOLIC stamped on his dog tags is burned into his skin, fused with his sternum when he goes to spend eternity where he belongs.
It stings when he’s not chosen for the Mission. He feels bile and acridness boil up his throat when he hears Bradshaw being chosen. He runs his finger over the stamped letters on his dog tags and tries to calm the rushing noise in his ears. He evokes the image of himself being the hot, thick clouds of a thunderstorm, he who poured down on Bradshaw not too long ago. He tries to remember that it’s not him who can save Bradshaw, that only the eternal peace of Heaven could do that. He’s quite the opposite actually, as the storm that once took the man down, that once ripped his heart apart into tendons and musculature and had let hot blood run down his forearms and had taken pleasure in it, in finally doing something his dad would’ve slapped him on the back for, in a good way.
Love. It does not dishonor others.
He’s lost the privilege of saying he loves Bradley Bradshaw. He has dishonored him, been boastful and hurtful and now he’s losing him, permanently, it seems. He vows to himself that if Bradshaw went down, the most undeserving of them all to die, that he would have to go down too.
Exodus 21:24
Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot
Seresin for Bradshaw, heathen for saint, hatred for love, Hell for Heaven
It’s a false equivalence, Jake tells himself. The original verse is about the equality of punishment, of loss, and it’s not fair to Bradley Bradshaw and his family lineage to say losing him is the same as losing Jacob Seresin. But in the totalness in the universe, in the ever-waging war of the good versus the bad, losing one Bradley Bradshaw can only be atoned for by the death of one Jacob Seresin. It’s not a loss, maybe only to Javy, who Jake can only hope will hate him after he dies.
It’s the night before the mission and he finds himself up late, thumbing once again through the pages of his mom’s Bible. Most pages are adorned now, with annotations of both his and hers, and Jake can almost feel her wiping his cheek as he reads through them. He lets himself drop to his knees and cry tears into bed sheets and pretend like he’s praying for something other than for Bradley Bradshaw to live. Not to save Jake Seresin himself, but to save the man who Jake had hurt.
He reads one last verse before he falls into a restless sleep.
Proverbs 21:3
To do what is right and just is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.
He takes this to mean that it is not enough for him to sacrifice himself in the idea that the people whom he knows deserve to be cleansed of him, it means that he must also do what is just. What is right is self-sacrifice to save someone not already condemned. One Bradley Bradshaw. He amends his earlier vow to himself, instead of saying that when Bradley goes down he will too, that instead he will ensure that Bradley never goes down in the first place, because he will instead.
He tells Bradley Bradshaw to “give ‘em Hell” and he means it. To give them the same pain he should’ve given Jacob Seresin when he broke his heart all those years ago, to send them down to the depths of the Earth where Jake will be able to punish them when he’s down there too. He tells him to give them Hell because Bradley doing anything less would mean he wouldn’t come back. He tells him to give them Hell and knows he’s sinning as he does, revoking the CATHOLIC branded on his neck from where his dog tags clung to his collarbone in stress sweat. It was the closest he could get to the words being burned into him permanently before they are when he dies. He should not wish Hell on anyone, but he does onto those who hurt Bradley Bradshaw, including himself.
Everything he’s read in the past few days comes back to haunt him as he hears that Bradshaw’s down. Then he's back up but it’s seeming like certain death for him. Blood rushes through his ears, his head is thick full of emotion and suddenly before he even realizes it he’s taking off. He can feel his mother’s hand on his cheek as he speeds to where he knows Bradshaw is located. It happens in a flash, him taking down the jet and seeing the glorious face of Bradley Bradshaw. He opens his mouth, like a sinner, to say something prideful, something braggartly. He feels like a lucky bastard for a moment, it feels like they’re both going to survive this.
But that’s before he notices the bright influx of light and fire, and oh, that’s his jet that’s going down. As he falls from the sky, blanketed with gunmetal and heat, a revelation starts to hit him. As much as he believed in his eternal damnation, as much as he still does, his study of his mother’s Bible that was falling apart at the seams had soaked through into some deep part of his brain.
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others.
Love covers over a multitude of sins.
More acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.
He had done what he had vowed himself to do. Done what was right and just, laid down his life for a friend, he had not been boastful or prideful. He thinks he hears Bradshaw scream as he falls to a certain death and he wonders what for. What will Bradley Bradshaw miss with Jacob Seresin gone? He says a final prayer for Bradley, and also for Javy, and apologizes for leaving him this way. He says one final declaration of love to Bradley Bradshaw, and hopes that above all else, the Devil is waiting for him the next time he comes to.
...
Pure heat, fire, and pain rush through his veins, arteries, and along his spine when he awakens. Finally, he thinks, finally the culmination of everything. When he opens his eyes, he’s hit by the blinding light of fire reflecting off snowy banks and pain is rippling through his back and his chest. There’s something searing against his chest and when he tilts his heavy head down he sees he got his wish, flames are licking around the sides of his cockpit and something has burned his dog tags into his flight suit and chest. Something urges him to push from his seat, to press himself out of his one-way ticket to Hell and enjoy the cold of the snow before he spends the rest of his life burning. There’s blood trickling down his legs as he throws himself into the embankment. He swears he can hear his mom’s and his brother’s voices, they’re telling him to run, and he wonders why they haven’t given up on him yet, especially when everyone else seems to have already.
His mind also decides to start the punishment of Hell early, by replaying Bradshaw’s scream in his mind over and over. Even in his sacrifice, he has hurt Bradley Bradshaw.
He’s not sure for how long he lays there, letting the snow sink into his flight suit and cool some of the burns he knows are branding him. He hears the sound of chopper blades cut through the sky and for the second time today, he thinks it’s finally his time to go.
He blinks several times, trying to clear his blurry vision when he thinks he sees Bradley Bradshaw climb down from the helicopter. He has to be in Hell, enduring some new form of psychological torture. He can feel hands scoop around his body, and yes, this is Hell, with how badly Bradley Bradshaw, a saint among men, is hurting him right now, hands brushing against scrapes, bruises, burns, and it feels he’s finally being torn limb from limb, like something within his chest cavity is tearing him apart from the inside out, breaking bone and sinew to burst through. He cries out, screams even, it feels like letting the beast from inside out. There’s tears in his eyes and this is so much pain, he can’t believe he ever wished this on himself. But he thinks about the disappointment in his father’s eyes, the sting of the slap across his face, the empty casket at his brother’s funeral, the look in Bradshaw’s eyes when he broke his heart, and he knows he made the right decision. He knows that he has finally gotten what he’s always deserved. He reminds himself that greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends, that it is always an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, a heathen for a saint, Heaven for Hell.
His vision fades in and out of darkness, he can feel himself rise to the sky, and no, that’s not right, he’s supposed to be sinking right now. He can hear voices still, can hear Bradshaw’s frantic one especially loudly, even over the head rush that has his ears ringing. The voice sounds like it’s begging him to stay, to hold on, and Jake feels like crying.
The corners of his vision fade even more and he can feel his head roll heavy like lead out of someone’s hands. He swears he hears another scream, a sob ripping through someone’s body, and he tries to let out an I’m sorry, for the pain he’s causing Bradshaw right now, but he’s sure it comes up heavy and thick-tongued. He knows some words make it out, and he forces himself to open his eyes and look straight into Bradshaw’s as he says these next few phrases, even if it’s a figment of his Hell-tortured imagination.
“My love for you does not absolve me of my sins, but I love you anyways. You are patient, you are kind, and I would lay down my life for you.”
He’s not sure what comes out coherent, what comes out jumbled, but he lets himself reach a hand to Bradshaw’s face, run his hand along his jaw, because what is he if not a masochist? It’s been forever since he’s touched Bradshaw. He hasn’t deserved it, honestly probably still doesn’t, but he lets himself enjoy the torture, find pleasure in it, the curve of his jaw, the slope of his nose, even if just for a few moments. He can feel tears wet his hand. His vision fully fades to black and his arm limply falls to his side.
…
When he awakens, there is nothing but bright, blinding light, and the sensation of a hand gripped tightly in his. He can hear the soft chanting of something and Jacob Seresin lets himself believe for half a second that he’s in Heaven, that he’ll see his mom and his brother and maybe his devoutness at the very end had been enough. But he knows that’s not true, not when the whispers are eerily familiar of the saint he knew who walked on earth alone. He can feel shifting, almost fidgeting from the person next to him, and Jake cracks an eye open to see none other than Bradley Bradshaw. His hearing dials in and he’s taken aback.
“I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth…”
The shifting and fidgeting was the counting of rosary beads.
“...Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name…”
There is a crushing weight in Jake’s chest when he realizes that Bradley Bradshaw is praying the rosary for him. He wants to open his mouth, call out to Bradshaw and tell him he’s not worth this effort, not a man condemned to Hell and Hell alone and who had torn apart his family and Bradley Bradshaw before his very own eyes.
Instead he falls silent, for who is he to deny someone religious comfort? After everything he’s sought, all the justifications he’s rendered, he does not get to decide who does what with their religion. He does however, fully open his eyes, hoping silently ( a prayer , a small part of his brain supplies) that it will make Bradshaw stop. Listening to him cry over the rosary over Jacob Seresin, listening to the gasped out solatium like Jake will never forgive Bradley Bradshaw is making his head spin. For what does he have to forgive him? For what has Bradley Bradshaw ever done to Jacob Seresin that he wasn’t deserving of? The man hadn’t even hit him, he had the chance, the opportunity, Jake was ready for it, and he hadn’t. The man sitting and praying by Jake’s bedside was not the person who caused all this pain, but the one who’d accepted it from Jake himself all those years ago. A man, who had little religious affiliation as far as he knew, was setting it aside, above all, to pray for Jacob Seresin.
He twists his head ever so slightly, to look at Bradshaw, see if any of this was real, and his eyes light up, saintly in form, at Jake.
“I thought I’d lost you,” Bradshaw choked out, eyes watering, hand squeezing tight in Jake’s and for the first time since Jake can remember he doesn’t feel the weight of the expectation of Hell on his shoulders. He should, logically, because he knows his father would beat him if he saw him holding hands with another man right now, but instead Jake finds himself focused only on looking into Bradley Bradshaw’s eyes. He can’t find the words to respond, but Bradley does not care, because of course he doesn’t. He just places the heavy weight of his forehead against their clasped palms and lets out a soft thank you.
Jake finds it funny that after all this time Bradley Bradshaw is thanking God for him, Jacob Seresin. He doesn’t think he’s ever had that happen before. When has anyone been grateful for his life, for his presence? Javy maybe, but he wasn’t religious.
“What happened to me out there?” Jake finds the strength to ask. It felt like Hell, but he wonders what it was like to those on the outside, those not accursed as he was.
“Well, you came back and saved me and Mav, and as we flew away I looked back and you had gotten shot down, and I screamed, but Mav was flying like our lives depended on it and we couldn’t go back. Finally, we waited and waited until a ping came from the locator on your plane and we convinced them to send search and rescue. That’s when I found you, cold and bleeding out on the snow, covered in burns-” he chokes up as he speaks, “-and you told me you were sorry, and mumbled something that sounded like a Bible verse and you passed out. Does that jog any memories?”
Jake notes silently that Bradshaw did not mention flying down to the depths of Hell to pick up Jacob Seresin, didn’t mention the branded CATHOLIC on his sternum and most of all he was disappointed that his final words to Bradley came across as a mumble of a Bible verse, rather than everything else he had meant them to be. He finds the strength within himself, it’s easier now, he feels like he’s survived Hell and back and now that the weight of condemnation has lessened. So he repeats, like a prayer:
“My love for you does not absolve me of my sins, but I love you anyways. You are patient, you are kind, and I would lay down my life for you.”
He watches as Bradley’s face buckles, falls apart and Jake worries again that he has hurt this man. For once in his life, he practices the virtue of patience, letting Bradley gather himself and his words. Even sinners make the right choices sometimes.
“Honey,” Bradshaw starts, his voice cracks. Jake’s inner conscience pipes up that he does not deserve this sweetness, not from a man he’s hurt this badly. Instead of continuing, Bradley cries, and cries hard, and then Jake’s face pales and he’s scrambling to fix this situation, all the while his inner judge, jury, and executioner tear him apart for hurting him again.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to hurt you,” Jake says, chanting it like a prayer over and over and there’s tears welling in his eyes too.
“What could you be apologizing for?” Bradshaw asks, head snapping up to Jake, and there’s a spotlight directly on him now. How does he describe to Bradley the inner war he’s been fighting for years? How does he describe wrestling with and finally accepting the idea that he is a sinner who cannot be absolved, who hurts those around him, castigated by the Lord himself and denounced to Hell? He decides to go with what’s simplest, with what his mother, his patron saint Margie Polak, Margaret Seresin by another name, would say that he should do: apologize for what happened all those years ago.
“I’m sorry for hurting you, back at Top Gun, and this time around, I’m sorry for causing you pain when you found me like that. I’m sorry for all the times I’ve hurt you Bradley, you haven’t deserved any of it, it’s just what I do, and I’m sorry you got caught in it all.”
“Sweetheart, there’s so much to unpack there, but I love you, I love all of you. I forgive you for the hurt, for the pain, I am just so fucking glad you are here with me now.”
That’s how Jake knows this man is a saint, that after all Jake has done to tear him down he has not only gotten back up but rebuilt himself enough to forgive him too. Jake looks down at his chest, disappointment filling part of his psyche when he sees that there is not a CATHOLIC branding on his chest. But he is confused when he sees a set of dog tags. Bradley notices.
“They’re mine, and my dads, and my mom’s cross that she used to wear around her neck is there too,” he admits, almost sheepishly, hand on the back of his neck, “I felt like you needed their protection, and yours were lost in the fire when we found you.”
Jake feels heavy with the weight of being entrusted with Bradley’s most prized possession. He must’ve thought he was worth something then, even with the dark cloud of sin washing over his head and his body and his hands and he doesn’t realize he’s been speaking out loud until Bradley stands up and presses a kiss to his lips, hand still so tightly laced in his.
For the first time in Jacob Seresin’s life, he does not think of his future in Hell, of all the hurt he’s caused, instead he focuses on everything in front of him, what he can feel right now, thinks of how love covers a multitude of sins and for once it feels like Bradley Bradshaw’s might just be enough to do that.
He prays in that moment, for his mother, his brother, his sisters, Javy and Bradley. But for the first time, he prays for himself too. Prays that he is deserving enough of all of this, prays that he can change his condemnation. Prays that there is acceptance somewhere for him.
He prays for Jacob Seresin, and with that, he is reborn.
…
Months later, Jacob Seresin, reborn into Jake, someone who’s slowly learning to accept love, who’s starting to believe that maybe he’s not eternally cursed or damned, gets on his knees and prays. Not to God, not even to the Devil, but instead he worships Bradley Bradshaw, everything he has to offer, for everything he’s worth. He whispers prayers into Bradley’s skin as he brings chants to the other man’s lips, it’s Heavenly in nature, he realizes, the way he and Bradley are made for each other, the way they take each other apart. He realizes that perhaps all this time he’s been believing in something to justify the hatred from his father he experienced as a kid, to help accept the love his mother gave him. Maybe he’s not condemned to Hell at all. He starts to believe that Heaven and Hell are what each believer makes of them. Heaven is here, with Bradley Bradshaw, still saintly among men.
Heaven is love passed between lips, secrets whispered onto skin, fingers laced tightly together, reminders to the other that no decision he made as a child would’ve promised him only suffering for the rest of his life. When Jake has a hard time shutting out John Seresin Senior, when he has trouble not imagining himself burning to pieces, falling from the sky, CATHOLIC branded onto his chest, Bradley Bradshaw gathers him in his arms and reminds him that his love for Jake is patient, and kind, and never waning. That despite it all, the pain and the suffering, they are still here. He is reminded, often and always, that Bradley Bradshaw loves him unconditionally, loves him not in spite of who he is, but because of it all.
Seresin for Bradshaw, lover for lover, each other for each other.
That is where he finds his peace now.