Our Bruised Bodies | Bradley Bradshaw

ACT FIVE - PART FIVE

It's not that Jake wanted to intrude. For he knew an intrusion would not be welcomed. All it would achieve would be a strain on their friendship he wasn't sure he could ever wash away again. Jake wasn't sure he could live with staining the only strictly pure thing in his life. His innocent love for a woman, who could never learn of it. Not the way he would like her to know of it. The way he would like those feelings to be named.

But Jake was no fool, he had seen the ring on her finger and had connected the dots. He knew that she had married Bradley Bradshaw, even though he wasn't entirely sure how that had come to be, for the last time he had heard of an engagement was her engagement and then the wedding with Admiral Simpson. Now she was married too, but to a different man. Jake wasn't sure he liked this option better.

Grace was off limits. Capital O, capital L. She had always been but that didn't change the fact that Jake thought he was a little bit in love with her.

He couldn't tell her for she would be all understanding about it. Grace would let him down slowly and gently, but he didn't want that. He didn't want her to be understanding and kind about it. He knew the moment she would realise what it was he had just admitted, their friendship would become something tender, but not in a good way. Something tender, like a bruise and he didn't want to be a burden, a bruise, a wound she would be afraid of reopening. Jake was afraid she would turn away from him then, thinking it was for his best. She would not seek his gaze any longer, for she feared it would open up an old wound, spill blood that had no purpose being spilled.

"Whatever it is that's going on inside your head..." Jonathan Bates began to speak, sitting on one of the lounge chairs in their shared accommodation, glancing at Jake over the rim of his book.

"Leave it be." He added, his gaze hardened as he watched Jake, who had been going over what he wanted to tell Grace once he had found the bravery within himself to go and knock on her door.

"Why should I take advice from you?" Jake asked Jon as he got up from his bunk and moved over to lean against the wall opposite to where Jonathan was sitting, their gaze on each other. "No offense, but if following your advice makes me as unhappy as you are, I rather pass." Hangman said, before he pushed himself away from the wall and moved over to the door, but Elrond's next words caused him to freeze.

"Do you really think you are in love with her?" Jonathan asked, before closing his book and setting it down before he got up as well, only to walk over to Jake, stopping a few steps behind him, facing the other aviator's back.

"Everyone thinks that for a while. It's just who she is. She captivates people and inspires them like I have never seen anyone else do before. It's hard to refuse her spell, I know, but it is just that, a spell. Snap out of it." Elrond advised, which caused Jake to huff before turning around to face the other aviator, before he took another step to get into Elrond's face. Satisfied over the fact that he was towering over the other man.

"Mind your own fucking business, hm?" Jake advised, before brushing invisible dust from the Lieutenant Commander's shoulder, before giving a sarcastic smirk.

"You will make it my business sooner or later." Elrond replied, which had Jake snort.

"Man, you really don't know when to back off, do you?" Hangman wondered out loud, before scoffing.

"You think she needs that? A friend, who was never her friend, who betrayed her trust, because all he ever wanted was to fuck her. On top of everything else that had happened as of lately." Elrond pointed out and Jake really had to control himself to not punch him into his face for accusing him of such a behaviour towards Grace.