#making love short film | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

chaostheoryy · 1 year

Text

In My Darkest Hour [Bradley Bradshaw X GN!Reader]

Summary: Despite his positive attitude and immeasurable confidence as a pilot, Bradley Bradshaw is prone to nightmares about his rocky past and dangerous lifestyle. Fortunately for him, you’re always there to make sure he crawls his way out of the dark.

Rating: Teen+

Warnings: Nightmare imagery including mentions of blood, death, and canon-typical violence (i.e.: dogfights, fist fights, etc.)

Word Count: 3.4K

A/N: It took me a thousand years to write this for some reason (probably because work has been very, very busy) but hey, it’s finally finished. Enjoy the angst. And, as always, no beta reader. I choose a warrior’s death.

He’s alone.

So alone.

Surrounded by darkness, there’s nothing to orient himself. Not a sound or a smell or even a feeling to guide him. Up is down. Left is right. Right is wrong.

And suddenly, from somewhere in the darkness, he hears crying. Soft, muffled whimpers start to echo in this seemingly endless space and coax him into exploring the void before him. He can’t figure out where the sound is even coming from but he is determined to find its source nonetheless.

Two steps become three. Three steps become twelve. Twelve become too many to count so he just stops keeping track. It feels like he’s been walking for an eternity and yet, at the same time, it’s as if he just took the first step.

The crying is getting louder now. It sounds like he’s getting closer. There’s a clearer quality to the sound, less reverberation.

It’s a woman, he realizes. Somewhere in the expanse of this shadow world, there’s a woman crying. Even though it sounds as if she is close-by, her sobs are quiet. It feels private, as if she doesn’t want anyone to hear.

As if she doesn’t want him to hear.

One blink of the eye and now there’s something aglow. A streak of warm light that breaks through the darkness and gives him the first inkling of hope that this strange eternal gloom is not all that remains of the world he thought he knew. There’s something out there. Something that will change the course of this journey.

The closer he gets to the light source, the heavier the darkness feels. It weighs on him in a way he doesn’t understand. It feels like dread.

He doesn’t know how it’s possible for him to know, but something is wrong. The woman that’s crying shouldn’t be in this kind of agony. It’s not like her. She’s supposed to be laughing and singing and making him smile like the sunrise.

Why does he know this? Why does he know her? He can’t even see the face of the woman who sheds these unseen tears. Everything about her is a mystery and yet he feels it deep in his gut that he knows her. It’s engrained in him. It’s in his blood, in the very fabric of his DNA. He’s returning to her the same way that salmon feel the pull to fight their way upstream. Or the way that birds know to fly south in the winter. He doesn’t think about it. He just follows the instinct that encourages every creature to find comfort in the safety of their home.

Home.

He’s going home.

The laws of nature are not at play in this mystery realm because now, without moving any faster or looking any harder, he is pushing some unseen force to enter the sliver of light before him.

A door opens and he steps through to find himself standing in the dim light of a bedroom, one that he swears he has seen before. It’s so familiar. He’s been in this room so many times and still he can’t remember a single moment where he’s occupied the space.

The crying is so painfully clear now. It’s no longer distorted by closed doors or vast, empty space. The sound is in this room. The woman whose suffering has brought him to this sacred unknown bedroom is somewhere in here with him.

“Oh, honey, what’re you doin’ up?”

He turns and finds himself looking at the tear stained face of his mother.

Her eyes are red and the messy blonde hair atop her head is even more unkempt than usual. Never before has he seen her like this. Carole Bradshaw doesn’t just break down in tears, even when she’s struggling through a brutal low. It takes an entire army to break through the barricade of her exuberance.

“Mommy?”

His voice is so much higher than it should be. It sounds shrill. Innocent. It sounds like…A kid.

No longer is he the sturdy, mustached pilot he stares at in the mirror every morning. He’s that goofy little blonde boy with the chubby cheeks and crooked teeth that he’s seen in old family photos. The kid that wanted nothing more than to fly jets and touch the clouds just like daddy and Uncle Mav.

“Why are you crying?” He asks as he crosses the room to where she’s slumped on the floor beside the bed.

She tries so hard not to break. Her lips quiver as she forces a smile but it doesn’t last more than a second. A soft whimper seeps from her lips in place of the violent sobs her body wants so desperately to expel.

“C’mere, baby,” she whispers. “Give mama a hug.”

He does as she asks and sinks into her open arms. The soothing heat of her body envelopes him like a cocoon that he never wants to leave.

He’s missed this so much. The safety of her embrace. The warmth of her love. No matter how much time has passed and no matter how hard he tries to forget the pain of his childhood, he will never let himself forget this.

A jingling sound rings in his ear, drawing his attention to the hand holding him at his stomach. There’s something metal wrapped around her fingers. He’s seen that silver chain before.

Like any curious child would, he reaches down and grabs it. One little tug and he can see there’s something hanging from it. It’s made from the same material as the chain itself and has tiny indentations scattered across its surface. A closer look and he can see those indentations form letters.

At the time this memory happened, he’d been far too young to understand what it all meant. He didn’t know that the tears in his mothers eyes were the tears of a woman in mourning. He didn’t know that the metal necklace in her grasp was a dogtag that bore the name of his father. And he most certainly didn’t know that Nick Bradshaw, beloved husband and father, was dead.

But he knows now.

He knows it all too well.

The dogtag in his palm is immeasurably heavy. Far heavier than a piece of sheet metal should ever be. And it stings like the singe of hell fire against his skin. Surrounded once again by the darkness of the netherworld he first found himself in, the tag is the only thing he sees. He reads the engraving over and over again:

BRADSHAW, NICK

“GOOSE”

U.S. NAVY

There’s an unbearable burning sensation in his eyes as tears threaten to break free of their organic reservoir. He doesn’t want to cry. Not anymore. He’s spent too many hours crying over the death a man he has so few memories of.

But the pain is too much. Even after all these years and all of the new memories he’s made to fill the gaps where his father should have been, he still suffers. It’s an agony he can’t describe, one that leaves him cold and shaking, even on the hottest days of the cruelest summers.

And still he refuses to cry.

So he drops to his knees and settles for a scream.

“Rooster! Evade! Evade!”

With a gasp, he suddenly finds himself back in the cockpit of his F-18. There are tears in his eyes still but they’re no longer a product of his mourning. These are tears of unadulterated fear. The kind of fear a man feels when he’s on the brink of death.

He can’t breathe. His heart is beating so violently in his chest that it feels like it’s going to burst right through his sternum. Alarms are going off all around him and Maverick is shouting at him through the comms with a desperation that makes it impossible to even process the words coming out of his own mouth.

“I can’t shake ‘em! They’re on me, they’re on me!”

Fingers wrapped tight around the joystick between his knees, he tries his hardest to avoid the incoming missile. The F-18 may be fast and agile, but the enemy missile that has locked onto his tail is even quicker. There’s only so much a pilot can do to try and outmaneuver one and he’s exhausted every last attempt.

The mission may have been a success, but he now he’s going to pay the ultimate price.

Just as he prepares for the impending missile strike, a shadow soars overhead and he looks up to find Maverick’s jet coasting backward above his cockpit. Flares shootout like big red fireflies and intercept his deadly pursuer. An explosion rocks the sleek metal frame of his plane. He comes out unharmed.

But there’s more smoke in the air.

A second missile strikes the tail end of Maverick’s F-18 and sends him careening toward the snow-covered earth in a flurry of flame and black fumes.

“Mav, no!”

Instinct and years of training drives his body to maintain the course but not a single thought in his head is telling him to return to safety. Even when he sees the wreck of Maverick’s jet crash into the rocks and hears his teammates begging him to let go, the desire to survive the dogfight is not enough to allow his mind to accept the loss.

He can’t do this. He can’t lose the only family he has left.

Please, he thinks as he prepares to turn back, Don’t do this to me. Losing my parents was enough. Don’t make me lose you too.

In a series of snapshots, images of his life’s most painful memories—both real and fantasized—start flashing before his eyes.

His mother crying on the bedroom floor. Blood soaked dogtags in the palm of a child’s hand. Green smoke tainting the sea as two pilots—one alive, one dead—float helplessly in the water. A gravestone with his father’s name etched into the marble. Maverick’s bomber jacket draped over the dining chair where Nick Bradshaw once sat. His mother’s hand on Maverick’s shoulder while he stares with bloodshot eyes at a photo of the best friend he can no longer take to the skies in his back seat.

Rejection. A room full of future aviators celebrating their acceptance into the Academy while he sits in the corner and wonders why he isn’t among them. Shouting. Arguing. A fight that separates him and Maverick for years. His fist striking the infamous Captain in the jaw while Maverick just stands there and takes it. A hand reaching for his shoulder in an attempt to make amends only to be shoved away before it can even make contact. Hazel eyes that are normally so bright and full of optimism, now soiled by guilt and brimming with tears. An old red and black Kawasaki driving off while he stands there suffocating in a cloud of his own rage.

Coffin’s corner. The blinding fear that overtakes him as he narrowly clears the peak of a snowcapped mountain. Alarms blaring in his ears. Missiles flying through the air towards him like white, metal cobras ready to strike. His fist slamming the flare button. The countermeasure release mechanism firing nothing but air. A moment of panic. A shadow falling across his cockpit. Maverick’s F-18 soaring overhead to take his place and embrace the SAM’s wrath. Fire and smoke and the unmistakable sight of a broken jet falling to the earth. The bright flash that comes with an explosion fueled by circuitry and petroleum. The visor of Maverick’s red, white, and blue striped helmet blood stained and broken atop a blanket of snow.

Three graves standing in line amongst the fading cemetery grass. Nick and Carole Bradshaw are beside each other just as they should be. But on the other side of his father’s headstone, a freshly laden patch of lawn covers the plot of a newcomer. Black lettering carved neatly into the marble reads:

IN MEMORY OF

PETE “MAVERICK” MITCHELL

CPT

U.S. NAVY

JUL 3 1962

MAR 27 2022

Kneeling down, he places Maverick’s now polished helmet in the grass beside an array of flowers and folded letters. There’s a picture of him there too. Its edges are worn and the color has faded but he can clearly see the face of the man within its white borders: an overbearingly hopeful, young Pete Mitchell flashing him one of those big, charming grins.

He touches the photo gently with the tip of his finger, wishing he could feel the warmth of his skin or the crushing weight of his embrace. But all he feels is the gloss of photo paper.

So instead, he places a hand over the smooth crest of the headstone and presses his forehead to the marble just above Maverick’s name—the only remnant of the man who gave his life to prevent Bradley Bradshaw from taking his place in the grave beside his parents.

***

A violent shout startles you awake.

Despite the initial jolt, the groggy haze of your exhaustion keeps you still. But the sudden realization that the bed is moving pulls you right out of your sleepy stupor. Something’s wrong.

Propping yourself up on your elbows, you finally see the cause of the commotion. Bradley is thrashing in his sleep, fighting off a nightmare that has left his face covered in a mixture of sweat and tears. He’s gasping and groaning, his brow furrowed so deep that it’s threatening to give him an eternal headache.

With his military history and childhood trauma, nightmares aren’t anything new around here. Most of the time, he jerks awake in a cold sweat and wanders to the kitchen to grab water or decompress in the living room by watching a comfort movie. Then, when he feels confident that the wave of bad dreams has passed, he crawls right back in bed beside you.

But something about this nightmare seems particularly terrifying. The way he’s clutching at the sheets and grinding his teeth as he jerks his head tells you that he’s not going to get out of this on his own anytime soon. He needs help.

He needs you.

“Bradley,” you murmur quietly as you reach out to place a comforting hand over the curve of his shoulder.

But the gentle touch is not enough. Whatever lurid imagery is plaguing him seems to worsen as the fearful jerks fade into heart-wrenching sobs.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles breathlessly between the cacophony of whimpers, “I’m so sorry…”

Okay. That’s enough. You need to get him out of this now.

You lean over and cup your hands over his cheeks, holding his head as if it were the most delicate jewel ever unearthed.

“Bradley, wake up, baby.”

You can see his eyes lurching from side to side beneath the cover of his eyelids—a surefire indicator that he’s still lost in the current of REM.

Dammit.

“C’mon, babe, you gotta wake up,” you say sternly.

He doesn’t.

The time for gentle persuasion is over. Sliding one hand behind his head to raise it up off of the pillow, you start patting his cheek with the other.

“That’s enough, baby. Get up. Bradley. Bradley!”

The final shout of his name is just loud enough to break through the veil of sleep. He stops shaking beneath you, eyes slowly fluttering as he starts to regain consciousness. Then, as if he’s been stabbed directly in the chest, he gasps and jolts upright.

You sit back and watch in a state of utter confusion as he fights to catch his breath. He’s murmuring to himself, more tears brimming in his eyes as he buries both hands in his hair.

He whispers to himself. “I killed him. It’s all my fault…I shouldn’t have let him…It should be me, not him.”

Like a tamer approaching a dangerous and jumpy wild animal, you reach out slowly and touch his shoulder again. He twitches at the sudden contact but immediately settles when he looks over to see you next to him.

“It’s okay, baby. I’m here.”

The hand at his shoulder slides over to rub his back in soothing circles. Even through the layer of cotton that separates your palm from his skin, you can feel the tension in his muscles. His breathing is still labored.

“Please tell me it’s not real,” he finally murmurs when his heart rate starts to calm down. “Tell me he’s still alive.”

“Who?”

“Maverick.”

His voice cracks when he says the name. It’s a name you’ve heard a million times in a million different contexts. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell: the man who saved Bradley’s life. The same Pete Mitchell who flew with his father when he was young and helped raise Bradley after the tragic training accident that killed Nick Bradshaw. And Pete Mitchell, despite his recklessness and passion for dangerous aviation techniques, is still very much alive.

You nod and brush the loose hairs from his sweaty forehead. “Of course Maverick’s alive. Why wouldn’t he be?”

Relief washes over him like a tsunami. A shaky breath escapes his throat and the muscles in his shoulders finally start to loosen. But the tears pricking at the corner of his eyes don’t cease.

You know it’s risky to ask, but the question comes out anyway. “What happened in your dream, baby?”

“I…” He hesitates, his focus on you immediately fading as he starts to replay the images in his head. “I saw my mom. On the night she…The night I found out about dad’s accident. She was holding his dogtag. And when I grabbed it, I saw that it was…stained with his blood.”

The tears welled in his eyes start to make their escape, sliding down his cheek toward the corners of his mouth.

“I saw dad’s grave. And I saw the fight I had with Mav after he pulled my papers. I shouldn’t have hit him but I did. I was stupid and angry so I punched him. I said the most fucked up things to him and treated him like dogshit the entire time we trained for the mission and he still…”

He clenches his fist. You can tell he wants to hit something so badly, to let his emotions out in the same way so many other young men do. But he abstains, settling instead to cross his legs and hug his knees. It makes him seem so small. So…helpless. Never in your relationship have you wanted to hold him more than you do right now.

“In my dream he didn’t make it. Maverick. He took the hit in his F-18 but he didn’t survive. After all the crap I gave him, after spending years of my life hating him…He still didn’t hesitate for a single goddamn second to give up his life for me. And I know what I saw wasn’t real but I just—“

His lip quivers as he bites back a sob.

“I didn’t deserve it.”

Your heart shatters right alongside his composure. All the sorrow and guilt that has been slowly eating away at him finally breaks free from its containment to feast like wolves. Pressing his forehead to his knees, he cries harder than you’ve ever seen him cry before.

Instinct and love pushes you forward. Wrapping your arms around him, you pull his head to your chest. He may be the hero risking his life to protect his country but it’s not the country that protects him in return. It’s you. You are the one who’s here to protect him. And the way he instantly melts against your torso tells you that he knows fully well that’s true.

With his face buried in the crook of your neck, you stroke his hair and whisper sweet nothings to settle his frazzled mind. You murmur affirmations of adoration and support against his brow, telling him just how much he not only means to you but to Maverick as well. No matter what his brain has tried to get him to believe, you reassure him that the people he loves most see nothing but the best in him. Bradley Bradshaw is, and will always be, worth saving.

After several minutes of soothing whispers and caresses, his sobs fade away. The labored breathing that had left your collarbone hot to the touch is finally easing to gentle exhales. The weight of his body pressed to your chest is even heavier now—not because he’s actively digging deeper into your embrace, but because he’s actually relaxing. This is the weight of relief. The weight of love and trust.

“Thank you,” he murmurs as he presses a lazy, tender kiss to your jaw.

Smiling softly, you place a gentle hand on his cheek and tilt your head just enough to steal a kiss with your lips. “Of course…Whenever you need me, I’ll be here. I promise.”

#Ngl this nightmare sequence is one of the coolest things I've written in a while #I would pay money to see a short film of it #I do love to make grown men cry #RIP Bradley's mental health though #Bradley Bradshaw X Reader #Bradley Bradshaw X GN!Reader #Rooster Bradshaw X Reader #Top Gun: Maverick #Top Gun Fanfiction #Reader Insert #My Fic #GN!Reader #Top Gun Reader Insert #Miles Teller X Reader

136 notes · View notes