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He never used to have problems paying attention in briefings or lessons. He never used to bounce his heel, wiggle his pencil, or actively stop himself from running his fingers through piano scales across his thighs. Bradley used to pose, back straight, pen tip at the ready, attention rapt on whatever commanding officer had control of the laser pointer. But that was then, and now it's not.
Then, Bradley hadn't known the yielding heat of another pilot's body. Then, he hadn't felt the weightlessness of being lifted by arms just as strong as his own, hauling him around with ease. Then, Bradley had never felt the edge of competitiveness give way to mutual, blinding pleasure so strongly it damn near had a color, and a shape, and a texture all on its own.
Now, Bradley's squad has been shuffled; he's been given a secondary team that he's rotated. It's placed him directly behind an overly familiar blond head )two seats up and one across from where Bradley is parked). It means he has a front-row seat to a fresh toothpick held between long fingers, lifting it to a waiting mouth. Bradley can trace the callouses it rests on, the one that hedges around the thumb, and feel the rise of a scar across the pad, splitting the whorl of the print like he's still got his tongue on it. He knows the weight of the same ankles crossed beneath the chair the blond sits on as if they're locked around Bradley's middle, digging into his flank with their silent but insistent message to move.
So yes, Bradley is distracted, half paying attention (if that). His mind is spiraling out, trying to remember the specific scent of sun-tanned skin, beaded with sweat, pressed on top of freshly washed cotton. It's trying to connect the drag of wood across paper to the sound of nails scrambling against a headboard, the boom of jet engines outside to punched gasps and a thundering pulse, the summer breeze fighting to waft from semi-open windows to a shuddering breath against his ear. Bradley has figments of them all, pale imitations as he runs his tongue against his progressively drying bottom lip and rests his own fingers on the inside of his wrist, pushing to feel the tendons flex.
What makes it worse, Bradley thinks, is that he should be satisfied with the sense-memory, with the imitations and flash-bang flickers that fly across his thoughts each time Jake moves or fidgets, but he's not. There's a hook just behind his belly button and a heat sitting in the bowl of his stomach. His thighs are tense from how he's holding himself down, holding himself back. Bradley is poised to spring just as much as he is to stay statue still, body forward but eyes drifting as if pulled by the magnet that is Jake Seresin simply existing.
How Bradley had thought one night would be acceptable- would satisfy- he doesn't know, especially now that he's living the aftermath. Damned stupid was hardly enough of a chastisement, and so he's reaping what he'd sown. He's paying the piper for the gift he'd been given: shockingly easy submission, a slack, wet mouth, a freely offered place to rest his need and have it soothed with tongue and sex.
Still, even with the blood roaring hard in his ears, growing louder the more firmly he controls himself, his gaze drifts to the slope of Jake's throat as the other man tips his head to stretch the muscle, and Bradley is left wondering if the imprint of his teeth is still there beneath the collar.
The fact of the matter is, given everything, he'd do it again. He'd suffer this bottomless need pressing on him from the inside out, making his head muzzy, his attention short, just to lay Jake out again, just to lavish that body and have a fresh layer of paint put on the twin pictures of 'hunger' and 'glutted' that live in his head.
And given how Jake shifts, just a little, just enough, so that Bradley can see the glint in his sea-glass eyes, his wolf-sharp smile, he knows it too.