Chapter Text
“Pacific.”
Of course he’d be here. Of-fucking-course.
“Atlantic.” Callie mirrored Rooster’s cocked eyebrow. Pun totally intended, she thought as she slid onto the barstool another pilot had just vacated. She eyed the way Rooster’s tan stood out against the white tee beneath his Hawaiian shirt. He looked damn good.
“I hear congratulations are in order, Lieutenant Commander Bassett.” Rooster nodded at the shining oak leaf pinned to her collar. “You’re, what, twenty-three? Whose ass did you kiss to jump rank?”
Callie rolled her eyes and took a sip of the IPA Penny Benjamin had handed her across the bar. Ugh, she thought. Bitter. Just like Bradley Bradshaw.
“You know how it is, all the officers love ass-kissing, power-hungry females. Especially when we’re in our thirties.” She tipped her glass towards Rooster’s chest. “But maybe they promoted me because I actually wear my uniform. Like a grown-up.”
He ran a hand down the buttons of his shirt. “Hey now, Pacific. We don’t all live in luxury on the West Coast. This is the first beach vacation I’ve had in ten years.”
“Atlantic, Lemoore is two hours from the coast, and you know it. You’re literally stationed at Virginia Beach. I hear you’re constantly fishing ensigns out of the Bay.”
He grinned as he sat down and clinked his glass against hers. “While yours are getting fried out in the desert.”
This was the thing about being a TOPGUN grad—everybody kept tabs on everybody else. You stayed on a year or two after graduation, or more, sometimes, getting to know the newer cohorts while you taught them, and then you shipped out to teach someplace else. Callie and Rooster had overlapped, barely, when she arrived as an ensign and he was about to depart as a JG. Everybody talked shit about Rooster, but he was one of the steadiest instructors she’d had. She’d never say it to his face, but she modeled most of her teaching after his. Why he hadn’t been promoted yet was beyond her.
She kept her gaze focused on the window, where the sunset was melting into the darkening ocean. The bar had emptied out a bit, seamen and ensigns and JGs spilling out across the sand. “Your piano playing seems to have improved. Getting bored on that shiny new ship of yours?”
“The Avenger’s drydocked just like you, Pacific. Even shiny new birdfarms get stuck on land.”
A bleakness in his tone made her glance his way, but he had his eyes closed, his head tiled back against the wall. She stared for a moment at the tautness of his neck, then blinked and turned forward again.
“I saw the news a few weeks back. Brad—”
Rooster shook his head. “Don’t do it, Pacific. We can’t—”
Callie felt her chest tighten up and she set her glass down on the high-top. His eyes were still closed. She wanted to shake him.
“We can’t what, At-lan-tic?” She bit out what she’d called him ever since he first went east. These nicknames were supposed to be clever, a break from call sign jeers, not twisted into something that fell too close to anger. “Acknowledge the fact that this life is anything but fucking perfect? Talk about how many funerals you went to last month?”
Across the room, Penny had started wiping down the bar. There were only a few stragglers left, Phoenix and Coyote playing pool with Bob and Fanboy, Hangman chatting up a blonde ensign near the door.
Callie watched Rooster’s shoulders rise and fall. Grief is fucking everybody up, Rooster. Not just you. She pushed herself off the stool, but before she could grab her empty glass from the table between them, Rooster tucked it against his own. The shadows under his eyes looked almost like bruises.
“They were just kids, Callie.” His voice softened the edges of her name. “Just fucking kids.”
She’d overheard more than one hushed conversation in late September, mostly from POs on base. Suicide rates in the Navy were never good, but for one birdfarm to have three in a single week... It was heartrending. And the three on the Avenger... They were Rooster’s mates, maybe in the newest group of recruits he’d been training.
She reached towards him, his arm warm under her hand. She wished she could get a little closer and smooth the worry from his face, but that seemed too familiar for a guy she hadn’t seen in two years. Even if he was the best guy she knew. “I’m sorry, Brad.”
He knocked the glasses he held against her shoulder. “All we’ve got is life, Callie.”
She wanted to believe that was enough. For her, for Rooster, for the sake of whatever mission they’d been called up to do. But in the dim glow of the Hard Deck, Rooster still couldn’t look her in the eyes.