Only The Good Die Young (Top Gun fanfic)

Whiskey Lullaby

***

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.

Pablo Neruda

***

The first Tuesday in August is hot.

The hottest on record for San Diego in forty years when Javy Machado prepares to bury Bradley Bradshaw.

But we're not there just yet.

***

It's still July.

Hot in its own right. Heavy, lazy summer days where training is half-hearted at best, and everywhere they go off duty is packed with kids and tourists.

It's also time for personnel reviews.

The bane of Jake's existence.

Of any leader's existence because no one wants to sit down and go back over all their achievements and failures, strengths and weaknesses, every quarter.

Really, he's just here to stand up the squadron, and then he's out. This should be someone else's problem, but when he attempted to shuffle it off on Callie, she threatened to castrate him.

The thing about people is that they're all mad.

Crazy.

Senseless.

Never in his life has Jake heard more shit that he never wanted to know than when he's done personnel reviews.

Vixen used to love making up shit about her sex life to see how much it took to make Jake uncomfortable. It had become a competition between the two of them that had escalated to a pretty impressive level before Cole stepped in and made them stop.

People don't like personnel reviews because everyone is uncomfortable facing their own weaknesses. Even Jake had to force himself to learn for the first few.

There's value in them if you can face them honestly, but it takes work to get there.

They're supposed to happen every quarter in the military, but they don't always, naturally. Things get in the way, it's a lot of additional paperwork, and it pisses people off. Most of the time, they only get completed when someone fucks up and the higher-ups need a paper trail.

Cole is not one of those leaders.

Neither is Jake.

Thankfully, neither is Cyclone, who tells Jake he'll do Jake's personally once Jake has finished the Dagger teams.

Which really means he's going to invite Jake over for a homemade meal and a drink after Jake pretty much destroys his personal relationships with everyone.

Mother fucker.

Javy's sympathetic. Mostly. He takes Jake out for a drink, just the two of them, the Friday before the review weeks start, and they run through the list of pros and cons for everyone while getting progressively drunker.

Most of what they come up with will never actually get brought up because none of it's work-related, and anything alcohol-fueled is automatically disqualified from being brought up in a professional setting.

By the book, personnel reviews happen in a professional setting—someone's office at work during business hours.

Jake can barely get the others to fill out their reports correctly; the idea of getting them to sit still for an hour-long review already sounds like a losing battle.