automatic stop, bradley bradshaw

forty-five.

ROOSTER GAVE SKYE A RIDE HOME AFTER THAT. THE ENTIRE TRIP BACK TO HER SHARED HOUSE WITH KATIA WAS SILENT, MUCH TO BOTH OF THEIR DISCOMFORT. they both didn't know what to say to each other after everything that had happened. so much between them was unspoken, especially at this point, he thought. 

though rooster wanted nothing more than to be completely honest and transparent with her, there wasn't anything he could do to settle the voices in his head that were screaming at him to be quiet. he would rather die than admit that maverick had gotten into his head, but that was just the truth.

he was so worried about being bad or wrong for skye that he had ended up hurting her, which was the exact thing he was trying to prevent by turning her down.

truthfully, rooster had barely even processed what skye had said. she had said that she had fallen in love with him. and it should've made him happy, considering it was all he'd wanted to hear for two years. 

and yet there he was, completely dumbfounded after hearing her confess her feelings. and there he'd been, turning her down. he wondered if it was the most stupid decision he'd ever made in his entire life, and reminded himself that it definitely was. 

he'd likely ruined whatever had been going on between them, and he knew that. as much as he hated to admit it to himself, he knew that he had ruined anything that he had hoped for with her.

but he couldn't help but become filled with jealousy as he saw hangman hold the door open for her. as he saw her laugh at whatever joke he'd made (which he was sure wasn't actually funny. or, at least, not any funnier than anything rooster could've said). 

he couldn't stop himself from feeling the same jealousy prick him as he watched hangman drive out of the hangar's parking lot with none other than skye sitting in his passenger seat. rooster wondered if she'd changed the music he was playing, or if she'd liked whatever it was that he had in his car. he wondered if she would've made him a playlist. 

rooster knew he didn't have any right to be jealous of all of this, though. he was the one who had turned her down. but he still loved her.

whenever he had something like this that needed immediate answers, there was only one place rooster could ever go. and so, as soon as he was dismissed, he drove to the graveyard. he'd almost forgotten to get fresh flowers, but he had somehow remembered the wildflowers that he always brought for his mother. 

there were many things that rooster couldn't remember about carole bradshaw. he'd been so much younger when she passed, and had honestly blocked out most of the details as he grew older. a therapist might've said that it was a defense mechanism, but he'd never gotten around to getting one of those. maybe it would've helped. 

rooster did, however, remember how much carole bradshaw loved wildflowers. she used to drag him to fields and parks to look at (or pick, or purchase) flowers. she would always go to farmer's markets and buy various flowers from the workers, going on and on about which ones she liked best.

if he'd known that these would be moments he'd wish he could've held onto, rooster wouldn't have groaned each and every time. if he could go back, he would've listened to his mother talk about every single wildflower for hours and hours on end. 

he set the flowers (all of the ones he could remember her enjoying) into the small metal vase that had been instilled in the ground between the two graves. the flowers were, of course, for both of his parents. but they always made him think of his mother. of the way that maverick had insisted that goose called her a wildflower, and of the way that she'd become obsessed with wildflowers ever since. 

one thing rooster somehow managed to remember about goose was watching him come home from deployments, or see his family after long periods without them. goose would always get flowers for his wife and some sort of plane for his son. rooster still had all of them, admittedly, though he couldn't remember receiving most of them. they were the last pieces he had of his father, though, and he'd kept most of them on display.