Amarillo By Morning

***

"Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell."

Edna St. Vincent Millay

***

Lily Grace says she's old enough to sleep alone on the couch, and she gives Javy a look of such disdain when he suggests otherwise that Bradley has to fight back a laugh lest she turns her attention on him.

Dustin refuses to let go of Jake, so he's in with them.

Bradley offers to take the floor, but Jake insists that if he has to get kicked in his sleep, so does Bradley.

Javy doesn't bother to smother his laughter.

Lily Grace refuses to let any of them tuck her in, either.

And Jake and her mother hover fruitlessly for a few seconds before they give up and go to get ready for bed themselves.

Bradley gives her the TV remote and the wireless headphones because he had a hard time sleeping after his mom died and learned how not to keep Mav and Ice up, and she actually says thank you.

And then, we need to talk, but not now.

Bradley's so scared all he can do is nod and run away.

Dustin is sound asleep by the time Bradley gets there, and Jake laughs at Bradley's wide-eyed terror.

"She's thirteen. She can't actually hurt you."

"She's your kid."

"Fair point. Be afraid. I taught her to shoot."

Bradley makes a half-hearted attempt to smother him with a pillow, but neither of them wants to wake up Dustin, so there's no real effort.

Bradley's never had to share a bed with someone so small.

How he takes up so much space, Bradley has no idea. 

The first kick to his abdomen is a life lesson, and he can hear Jake snicker from across the bed when he groans.

"He's going to be a soccer player."

"Kicker."

"Go to sleep. Your Texas is showing."

Jake does grab his hand under the pillows.

It ends up being the only body part safe from Dustin's nocturnal sparring. 

***

He wakes up with bruises and vague plans to show Jake's family around San Diego, but no one's in the mood, so they spend the day crammed together on the pull-out couch watching Disney movies.

Bradley'd forgotten how many there were.

Mav and Ice bring lunch, cautious and polite, until Jake asks what's wrong with them, and Ice snaps back that he's surprisingly mouthy to his boss's boss. Lily Grace jumps in and insists they can't do anything without her dad, and neither of them wants to argue with her, so they have to agree Jake is the best and the lynchpin and the most important.

It takes Bradley getting a hand over Jake's mouth to stop it.

Lily Grace staunchly refuses to let them sit down if they take any of it back, and Mav looks like he's sucking on a lemon, but he keeps his mouth shut and sits down.

"No one flies better than my dad." Lily Grace, staring Ice down.

It takes Bradley a second to realize Lily Grace is trying to start a fight.

"There are Drill Sergeants less intimidating than you." Ice, and he sounds fond??

"My dad taught me." Daddy's girl until the end.

"What else did he teach you?"

"How to ride. How to fly. How to shoot."

Bradley shoots Jake a look at that, and Jake hides his face in Javy's shoulder. 

Javy just looks gleeful.

"You know how to fly?" Mav, naturally.

"Our Cessna. We use it to monitor the fences and the herd."

"Why do you need to monitor fences?" Bless Mav. He's never spent a day of his life outside the military.

"So, we know if they break. Or someone breaks them." She says it like it's the most obvious thing in the world, and Bradley will never, ever admit he was wondering the same thing.

"Right. Your dad flies something way faster than a Cessna. It's pretty impressive."

"I know. He taught me."

"What did he teach you?"

"How to barrel roll the Cessna."

There's a moment of silence then.

"Jake…."

"It was perfectly safe!"

"It's totally fun, mom."

"Those are not the same thing. Javy, did you know about this?"

"….No."

"You lie for shit, Machado."

"Shut the fuck up, Seresin."

"Language!" 

"Cessna's are a bit slow, aren't they?" Mav, desperately trying to head off the fight. "Can they break a hundred knots?"

"A hundred and twenty-four cruise, one sixty-three max."

"Your dad's plane can go a thousand miles per hour."

"One thousand one hundred and ninety. Don't you fly the same thing?"

"…Yes."

"What's the engine model?"

"General Electric, 414, twenty-thousand pounds of thrust."

"F414 and it's twenty-two. I'm embarrassed for you."

And then Mav is sputtering, and Ice suddenly needs to go get everyone drinks, and they can all hear his laughter from the kitchen.

"Did you memorize the specs?"

"Yes. For all Navy aircraft."

And Bradley's pretty sure he sees the moment Jake's daughter becomes Mav's favorite person in the whole world.

"I can take you up in one."

Her mother makes a noise that says that's not happening.

"My dad is taking me up first. Maybe after."

"Sure, kid."

"Lily Grace Seresin."

"Pete Mitchell. Maverick."

"What's happening?"

"I don't like this."

"I have veto powers on anything you two agree on." Ice, safety first.

Lily Grace and Mav spend the rest of the day looking at Bradley's dusty plane models and criticizing Hollywood depictions of Navy fighters.

They stay up watching movies until well into the evening before it finally comes up that they need to start the drive to Texas the next morning. 

Ice and Mav can't drive with them, but Bradley opts to instead of flying, and they stick around to help them pack up Jake and Javy's pickups the next morning.

Cyclone texted everyone that they had a month of leave, although he still doesn't like Mav, so Ice had to flex his rank to get Mav the same. 

No one involved in the situation seemed to take it personally, though. Bradley figures it'll just be the way of things from now on.

Dustin wants to stick with his mom, and Lily Grace wants to interrogate Bradley so neither truck is cramped, and they decide to just go same day, same way, and meet up at the ranch.

***

Robert 'Bob' Floyd is the son of historians. He grew up in a house with more books than his local library.

His mother, Abigail, specializes in American History, his father, Mark, in Military History.

They were proud and terrified when he joined up, and they've done an honorary history paper on each unit and military school he's gone to to make sure he understands how proud they are.

They'd both been published and had a couple of best sellers between them.

Neither of them can stomach actually watching him fly, though. Academics comfortable in classrooms, not at airfields, but it doesn't bother Bob. He can't stomach having to talk in front of large crowds, so he figures to each their own.

His father is the one who recognizes the name, but it's his mother who finds the book.

On one of her own shelves, no less.

Gathered as part of her research into American families involved in founding American states, the Seresins hadn't made the cut for Texas, but mostly because when his mother had looked into it, she didn't like how the original author had treated the family. 

And she wasn't sure what to think about the so-called curse.

All the families she researched had legends surrounding them, but the Seresins are just sad, and she was wary of adding to the problem if it turned out they were just troubled like the Kennedys. 

But they'd started digging after Robert had told them about his fellow pilot at North Island, and by the time their son gets back from his mission, they'd amassed a very large amount of very depressing information.

They debate telling him. 

It's not really their information to share, but then he calls them in tears and tells them the Seresin he's flying with just lost his brother, and he's headed to Texas for the funeral.

They overnight him everything they've found, with a note to please apologize to the Seresins if they get upset and to assure them they're not going to share anything they found.

Bob stays up the entire night before the flight to Texas reading what they found and ends up throwing up when he reads about Mary Seresin, Jake's mom, and what happens to someone caught in a stampede.

Nat drank herself to sleep hours ago, so he tries to be quiet as he brushes his teeth and sticks his face in a sink of cold water.

He needs to repack his bag so there's room for the books and notes his parents found. 

If nothing else, he's going to give them to Jake so he can do what he wants with them.

Bob's probably going to burst into tears at the sight of him.

Maybe he should start drinking?

Seresins die young, his mother had written, no lives past forty.

Seresins die fighting, his father has scribbled, violently, protecting. 

There's a clipping of a newspaper article about Lily Seresin. Another about Brian Seresin.

John Seresin's obituary. 

A lot of obituaries. Running all the way back to the first newspapers in Texas.

And Bob doesn't mean to tell the others. He was just off balance after everything and didn't pack his bag well, and the book fell out in the airport and Fanboy was just trying to be helpful by picking it up.

None of them believe it.

Not at first.

Well, Fanboy does, but he comes from a long line of superstitious women and believers, and Bob didn't realize how fast he could read because he finishes Seresin on the plane ride to Texas and narrates the entire thing to the rest of them. 

Robert can see why his mother didn't like the book. The author dedicated it to his wide instead of the family, and his acknowledgments are more about his own achievements than the family he's supposedly celebrating. 

It's forty percent well-researched fact and sixty percent salacious pandering.

The Seresins, according to Ted Gore (the stupidest pen name he's ever heard), are Texas royalty ala the Kennedys and the Rockefellers, but not nearly as rich unless you count the ranch they've managed to keep against all odds.

He spends the first chapter discussing the family's looks. Fair-haired and green eyes and built to ride and survive and rope.

Built to fight.

He goes on and on about how their tendency towards violence is a knife-edged balance between their dedication to their country and their baser instincts. How they've excelled on the most brutal battlefields in American history, and they can't always turn it off when they get home, reputations for bar brawls and frontier justice well into the 21st century.

He's a hair away from calling them a Texas mafia.

No wonder the family didn't like him.

Robert doesn't like him, and he's never even met him.

His mother's notes discount most of Gore's claims. 

Most of the bar fights were when they were young, and there are no police reports about any of it.

And the frontier justice claim seems to be solely based around the death of Lily Seresin, Jake's older sister, whose story takes up three chapters by itself and on whose behalf Robert would willingly beat the shit out of Gore.

He calls her a 'typical Texas beauty queen in the making,' sweet, popular, the pride and joy of her family, only daughter among six brothers, and somehow manages to imply that she'd been asking for her death when she stuck her nose where it didn't belong.

The man responsible had never been charged or arrested or even caught.

Hadn't been seen since two days after her death.

And even if Jake's family did something to him….well, Robert's not going to lose any sleep over it.

Thankfully, that seems to be the consensus of their cohort. With Halo and Nat in full rage and Harvard, whose father is the Chief Prosecutor of the State of Massachusetts, remarking that his father would never allow the family to be charged if it was his case.

Sometimes, there's a difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law; his father says you have to use your best judgment.

Well, Harvard's best judgment is the sick fuck got what he deserved, and it doesn't particularly sound like anyone's missed him since.

According to Gore, Jake is the youngest of seven, which none of them knew.

Lily was first.

His oldest brother Brian was a promising bull rider and died on the arena floor, pictures included. 

It's amazing how blood shows up so clearly in old black-and-white photographs.

Brian was followed by Jessie and Michael, who both went into law enforcement and both died for the badge.

The picture of the two of them is so reminiscent of Jake and Jordan that it's hard to look at.

Jordan was next.

Peter is the oldest now, followed by Jake, who Gore dubs the least controllable child, the baby who was babied. Spoiled. Knocked up his high school girlfriend in the last chapter. 

Gore talks a lot about members of the family. 

About John Seresin, a hard man by all accounts, another who died for the badge, and his brother, William, who died in the jungles of Vietnam and maybe left behind a girlfriend in Saigon.

He hints at a love child, but if he's right about this curse, she's long dead.

He talks about Mary Seresin but only briefly mentions her husband, Davey. Calls her tough as nails and hardened by life, and somehow, they all know there's so much more to her than that. 

He talks in graphic detail about her death and what happens to someone when they're caught in a stampede, and Yale has to excuse himself to puke in the bathroom, the same way Robert did the night before.

The only Machado mentioned is Amara, who must be Javy's mom, they figure, who stopped Mary's children from seeing her body when the stampede is over.

He reaches back to the founding days of Texas, but the information is sparser with each generation, and it's pure rumor once he starts in on those pre-World War I.

And all of them dead by forty.

Yale does the math because that's what he's comfortable with. Seventy-seven percent of the Seresins died in combat in a military uniform. Thirteen percent died with a badge in hand. 

At least of the ones Gore mentions in his book.

The remaining ten either died tragically young or in some once-in-a-lifetime horrific event. Like Jake's great aunt, who was a schoolteacher killed protecting her students during a school shooting. 

Or his great-great uncle who died out on the plains in a freak hailstorm that still holds the state record for both the largest hail and the deadliest storm of the decade.

One of his ancestors died building the railroad when a spike rebounded and went through his eye.

That's how it was written up, anyway.

None of them can even imagine how that happened.

It reads Nat notices, like someone who heard of the family and googled them. Not like someone who knows them, and Bob thinks she has a point. 

One of his mother's notes had been about the family's unwillingness to cooperate with Gore, something about an assault charge, and after witnessing Jordan at the Hard Deck, it's not hard to imagine what might have happened if any of them felt their family was threatened. 

They've got so many questions for Jake that may or may not be in their rights to ask.

Nat just has one for Bradley because she'll die on the altar of caring for her best friend, who's already had a tough enough life.

And Robert has a bad, bad feeling.

Since when are curses real?

***

By the time they reach Texas, Bradley's given Lily Grace most of his life story, and they've gotten through all the usual first date questions he and Jake still haven't gotten around to.

"Favorite color?"

"Green."

"Animal?"

"Flying squirrel." Jake had laughed and laughed.

"Favorite ice cream flavor?"

"Chocolate."

"Favorite food?"

"A good burger."

"Favorite place?"

"My parent's house."

"Who's your best friend?"

"Nat."

"Favorite actor?"

"Val Kilmer."

"Favorite actress?"

"Hedy Lamarr."

"Favorite movie?"

"Dive Bomber."

"That's a good one. Favorite base?"

"San Diego."

"Why?"

"It's home. I grew up there."

He doesn't think he's really impressed her, but Jake looks more and more amused as the questions roll on, so Bradley plays along, and they all go out of their way not to talk about anything serious or painful.

Jake and Lily Grace insist on timing the drive just right, so they drive up to the ranch as the sun rises on day three of their drive.

Just as Ren and Peter arrive with the rest of their cohort.

***

Nat has been stewing since they landed and finally had to put away everything Robert's parents sent them.

They'd managed to cram everything back into Robert's bag and get off the plane without pissing off the rest of the passengers, but they have to stop in the hallway on the way to baggage claim to collect themselves and figure out what to do.

Nat refuses to lie to Bradley.

No one disagrees.

But Reuben refuses to bring it up when there's a funeral coming. So do Neil and Billy.

It's not right to come at Jake when he's just buried his brother, Mickey agrees.

It's no one's business, but theirs, Harvard, Yale, and Halo agree. And Bob.

Nat doesn't disagree; she doesn't want to hurt Jake, but she isn't going to let Bradley get hurt either.

It's Yale, son of lawyers, who finds the middle ground.

None of them will say a word or ask any questions until the funeral is over, and at some point, before they do, Nat will talk to Bradley.

They're all rather proud of themselves for being so adult about this.

At least until they get outside and realize they have no idea where they're going or how to get there.

Peter is apparently the saving grace of the Seresins, and there are audible sighs of relief when they spot his waving arms above the crowd of heads. 

"Nobody says a word," Mickey reminds them as they force their way through.

And their worries about accidentally spilling the beans are forgotten in the wake of a new face.

Her name is Ren, spelled exactly like it sounds. Her father is Tor, head horse trainer for the Seresins, a job her grandfather and great-grandfather held before her father and one she'll take over when he's ready to retire.

She's wearing dusty jeans and dirty boots and has a heavy braid of dark hair that falls to her waist. There's a slant to her eyes and a warmth to her skin that speaks to Native American blood, and Harvard trips over himself trying to shake her hand.

Grinning like a fool while he shakes her hand much longer than is typically appropriate. 

Until Yale breaks in and rescues his pilot from further embarrassment. 

Thankfully, Ren just seems amused and doesn't bat an eye when Harvard calls shotgun in her truck before they even start trying to figure out who's going where. 

They figure it out in time to spend two hours driving under a dark Texas sky, and they reach the ranch road a few minutes before Jake and Javy's trucks.

Apparently, they planned the whole thing because the ranch is best seen at first light on your first visit.

So, they're all standing at the end of the winding ranch road.

Lily Grace is planted firmly between her father and Bradley, Dustin on his father's shoulders because Celia and Javy have been apart for a while, and Dustin's always been a bit clingy with Jake anyway.

Harvard's making eyes at Ren, while Yale tries and fails to lessen his pilot's embarrassment. 

Ren just looks amused.

Robert's plastered to Nat's side. She tried to catch Bradley's eye once before Bob was suddenly there, and now she's stiff and unyielding next to him, and Robert looks like he's trying to hide being worried. 

Neil, Billy, Reuben, and Mickey are actually paying more attention to their surroundings than the people. 

And Peter's just leaning on the hood, relaxed, despite all the drama he can feel building. 

When the sun finally breaks above the horizon, it comes with the starting realizations that always come from the darkness and the dawn.

~tbc~