Only the Good Die Young

***

Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.

Gustav Mahler

***

Jordan Seresin dies on a Tuesday. 

Looking up at a clear blue sky, the sound of wind through the trees broken only by desperate machine gun fire and the screaming from his team as they try to reach him.

He pulls the pin with the last conscious thought he has and can just see them, a line of faces, every Seresin going back to the beginning, out of the corner of his eye as the grenade goes and takes him and the attacking Boko Haram out of the world.

He turned thirty-eight the day before. The closest anyone in his family has gotten to forty in six generations.

But that's not where this starts.

***

It starts, unlike most things, somewhere in the middle. 

In the beginning, the first Seresin, or the two people that would make the first Seresin really, came over with the pilgrims and slowly made their way west as America became independent and started to expand. They got married coming across Oklahoma and stopped when she became pregnant with their first in a dusty stretch of Texas. 

They settled down, as much as Seresins were capable, and started a ranch and a family that grew quickly in the booming era of cowboys and outlaws. The men did double duty as Texas Rangers, and the women were just as known for their fast draw and sharp tongues as they were for the houses they kept and the children they raised. 

No one raised an eyebrow when those first few generations didn't make it to forty. 

Few did then.

It wasn't until the Civil War when an entire branch of the family was wiped out, that they began to take notice.

By the time the First World War had begun, they'd realized no matter what they did, no one made it to forty if they were a Seresin. 

They lost three brothers to the Great War, one of whom sent home a medal with gold lining and the word Valor carved into it.

Jake's great-grandfather died at a frozen reservoir on the finger lakes, and two weeks later, what was left of his unit brought home what was left of him and another medal with Valor carved into it.

His great-grandfather fathered the largest generation of Seresins ever, sixteen kids by four siblings, and the jungle took all but two before any of them were old enough to have babies of their own.

There was another valor medal mounted on the wall after that and two new rows in the family plot by the time that war was over.

No Seresin makes it to forty.

They've got a debt somewhere one of them forgot to write down, and now the rest of them are paying the price.

They carry it over their shoulders like a wooden cross, proud and broken and utterly defiant. Not a one of them ever tried to take the easy way out. They stopped believing in God; a few of them even stopped believing in the laws of men, and there are plenty of bodies buried on Seresin Ranch to prove it.

One of them tried to fight it. Jake's great Uncle, who locked himself in his house and never left, never took any risks and still died of a heart attack on his birthday. He was the last one to make it to forty.

And a cousin who tried to live a safe life. Who became a teacher and never drank or did anything dangerous and died at twenty-five, standing between one of her students and a gun.

Even bastards not carrying the family name weren't safe. It must be in the blood. And they actually found out about a great aunt's infidelity when a young man with no family medical history ended up being a bone marrow match to Jake's parents. Even with the donation, he died, and despite the aunt's denials, they buried him in the family plot.

Jake doesn't remember his grandparents. They died when he was barely walking, but he's been assured they loved him. Adored him and Jake doesn't doubt it. Their pictures that hang on the walls of the Seresin homestead depict two people who never looked less than deliriously happy.

They'd been born, lived, and died on the Seresin family ranch. His grandfather was the only child to survive to adulthood in his generation of the family. His grandmother was the daughter of the ranch's lifelong foreman. Her cousin runs the ranch for Jake now.

His grandfather had gone down in a blaze of glory, helping the local police track down a drifter who had been attacking families on his way through. Strung out on god knows what, he'd gotten in a lucky swing and severed John Seresin's carotid with a knife.

It hadn't been enough to ensure his freedom, though. Even bleeding to death, John Seresin had grabbed on and held on and choked the drifter to death before he'd succumbed to his own injury.

Six Deputies had carried his coffin, followed by a full procession of honors, before he'd finally been lowered into the family plot.

His grandmother had stood stone-faced as they'd lowered her thirty-six-year-old husband into the ground, holding their youngest, Jake's mother, in her arms.

She made it to thirty-seven and died of hypothermia, helping search and rescue efforts in a blizzard in Wyoming, where they ran cattle in the summer.

Jake's mother had two brothers, the sixth generation of Seresins. Well, the sixth since they started keep track, there were a hell of a lot more in truth, but the records are spotty.

Billy Seresin took after his father, working the ranch as soon as he started walking, and died without issue fighting off rustlers when he was barely twenty-one.

Jamie Seresin had dreams beyond the dusty stretch of land the Seresins had claimed a hundred years ago and went to EMT school before joining the fire department. He made it to twenty-eight before dying of smoke inhalation after rescuing a trapped family. His wife and unborn son died during childbirth two months later.

Mary Seresin, a decade younger than her brothers, never left the ranch. Picked one of the ranch hands, a good man by all accounts although a bit of a pushover where his wife was concerned, and doubled down, having seven kids in a span of ten years and doing her best to make sure the Seresin family would continue. 

Her shoulders had never stooped like some had. Jake had always watched her, waiting to see the signs of the Seresin curse. But she'd been too strong, too spiteful, to ever let them show.

Jake was the youngest of the seven, the baby, and spoiled accordingly. He had skin as warm as the Texas sun, hair as blond as the grass in high summer, and eyes as green as the moss that grew in the ponds and troughs. He was long-limbed and gangly when he was young, galloping across the fields like the colts and fillies they raised without a care in the world. He should have been the least worried about continuing the family. The spare's spare's spare's spare's spare's spare's spare.

But even when Jake was young, it was there. A shadow sitting out in the distance, like a storm gathering out over the prairie, waiting to roll in when they were all distracted. 

Everyone knew.

They said it through looks, expressions, hand gestures, tears. 

But they never said it out loud. 

No Seresin lives to forty.

When the ranch fell on hard times, his father stepped up and joined the military, sending home every cent he could. He flew fighters and would teach Jake and his siblings in a small twin-engine Cessna when he was home on leave. They would fly the fence lines and the roads, and by the time he was tall enough to reach the pedals, Jake knew every inch of the Seresin ranch like the back of his hand.

They figured he'd be safe. He was a Seresin by marriage, not by blood.

When Jake was five, the first of his generation, the seventh of the seventh, died.

Lily Seresin was bright eyed and as quick with a smile as she was with her fists. She wanted to work the ranch, she wanted to wear a badge, and she wanted to be happy. She joined 4H and Girl Scouts in elementary and kept it up all the way to high school. 

When she was fourteen and a freshman, rumors started going around about one of the football coaches. Friendly, easy-going, and hardly a threat, some of his best players dropped off the team, and then out of the Eagle Scout Troop, he ran.

Lily Seresin had always been small for her age, whatever it was. All Seresin women were but small and fourteen were enough to save the high school running back when she stumbled on the coach assaulting him on an Eagle Scout camping trip.

It wasn't enough to save Lily, whose strangled body was found the next morning. 

When the running back heard, he became the first of many to come forward, and the whole town made sure that coach never touched anyone again.

Jake knows exactly where he's buried, even though in the eyes of the law he's still listed as missing. 

There's a lot of bodies buried on the Seresin ranch.

The school renamed the football field in her honor. 

It only took two people to carry Lily to burial, but she's far from the smallest coffin in the family plot. 

Jake met Javy that same year. A dark-skinned boy from a family of Amazonian women and bardic men. No one was sure what made them braver, leaving New Orleans in the dead of night to escape an abusive father or moving to a small Texas town with more attitude than diversity.

Jake didn't know if they would have lasted if Javy's mother hadn't been one of the first to bring condolences to the Seresin's door. Despite being broke and close to starving, Amara Machado had spent what little extra money she had on groceries and talked the soup kitchen a town over into letting her use the kitchen. She'd shown up at the Seresin homestead with two casseroles and a pie and dry eyes as she told Jake's parents that their daughter set the standard for kindness.

A week later, the Machado's had moved into an old trailer next to the well, and then the two oldest boys moved into the bunk house, taking up work as ranch hands. Amara Machado had taken over the house while the family grieved and somehow managed to feed the entire ranch, just shy of forty people at that time, and kept everything clean and sixteen kids on schedule.

By the time Jake's parents managed to dig their way out of grief, the Machados were family and not going anywhere.

Jake and Javy, the youngest of their respective families, naturally fell together. Jake had his family's relentless drive to do something, and Javy had his family's steady caution and thoughtfulness, and their teachers quickly learned to keep them together or risk madness. 

Jake's father died overseas a year later. Thirty-five and decorated for bravery, he died at twenty-thousand feet going three-hundred miles an hour and in a thousand pieces, but his unit smuggled enough of the wreckage back to give Jake's mother something to bury.

Apparently, being a Seresin by marriage didn't save you.

One of his father's squadron mates retired after that fight and came to Texas looking for work that was as far from what he'd been doing as he could find. Being a ranch hand satisfied that and fed his family, a wife and young daughter who immediately fell in with Jake and Javy and didn't do as much to curb Jake's restlessness as anyone had hoped. 

Celia Warran was a beauty even when she was young, with big, big eyes and fair skin and dark hair. She was a tomboy, growing up on the ranch did that, and kept up with Jake and Javy easily. 

Javy had a crush on her from the first day he saw her but wouldn't do anything about it for years.

***

Years! Jake would lord over Javy for the rest of their lives.

***

Jake's mother died a few years later, at thirty-seven, during a stampede caused by an idiot in a sports car that didn't know it was a stupid idea to try and drive through a herd of longhorns. Jake and his siblings and the Machado kids were all working the herd alongside the regular ranch hands when it kicked off. Mary Seresin had seen it coming, spurring her horse Trigger so quickly across the field that Jake only remembers a blur as the dust kicked up, the cattle took off, and chaos erupted. 

No matter how small or how big, it took a Hail Mary to stop a stampede hellbent for the horizon, and the Seresin herd wasn't small. It swept through the camp and flattened the cattle chute and the idiot in the sports car, heading straight for the town before the dust became so bad Jake and the others had to pull back or risk going down.

The last thing anyone saw of Mary Seresin was her red bandana as she closed on the head of the stampede.

When the dust finally thinned, all Jake could see was Amara Machado and her long legs racing across the beaten ground with the grace of a gazelle and his mother's riderless horse leading the stampede away from town.

Amara didn't let any of them see what was left of Mary Seresin. 

Trigger led the stampede until it died down, and it took two days for the exhausted Quarter horse to find his way back to where his rider had fallen and another three before they could coax the heartbroken horse into the trailer.

There were a terrifying few days where they thought they were going to have to put him down, but Jake, after sleeping in the barn with him for a week, managed to coax him into eating. They retired him anyway, and now the gentle giant is the training horse for all the kids on the ranch to learn to ride.

Mary Seresin's funeral was attended by the entire county before they planted her next to her husband and daughter. 

The Cattleman's Association started a scholarship in her honor. 

The Seresin legend took off after that, their own personal ghost story for their own small corner of the world. 

Someone even wrote a book about them, though it didn't do very well, helped in part by the fact that none of the surviving Seresins were willing to work with the author, some prick historian who specialized in Western family histories and who showed up out of the blue one day and walked into the family graveyard and started taking pictures before even coming up to the house and introducing himself. 

Jake's oldest brother Brian punched him when he'd finally shown his face at the main house, while Celia, just as dedicated to the Seresin family legacy as the rest of them, smashed his camera into tiny pieces.

He wasn't stupid enough to try and come back.

They actually managed a few quiet years while Jake was in high school. Brian took over the ranch with Amara and Celia's father, and they all did their best to put the family legacy aside, even when that stupid fucking book came out. 

The only major event was when a half-drunk thug showed up one night with Javy's bone structure and a vicious mouth. 

Amara met him at the door with John Seresin's sawed-off, and they buried him out in one of the fields where no one would ever find him.

No one ever came looking, either. 

Things went downhill in Jake's senior year when he was finalizing plans to go to the Naval Academy. His father's son, he'd already been promised a place. 

As had Javy, because god save the fool stupid enough to try and separate them.

Brian died on the horns of a bull during his championship ride in Cheyenne, bleeding on the floor of the arena before anyone could get to him.

Jessie Seresin, the second oldest, died with a badge on his hip in a shootout with cartel smugglers the same day; neither of them ever knew about the other.

Michael Seresin died on the side of the road during a routine traffic stop at the hands of a fool who didn't want a hundred-dollar ticket two days later.

Then, it was just Jordan, Peter, and Jake left reeling. 

Jordan was already in the Navy, at BUDS, when Brian, Jessie, and Michael died, and Peter was at some Special Forces Selection in the Army.

They both came home for the funerals, even their commands horrified into compliance by the news that they'd lost three brothers in as many days.

Even through the grief and the shock, it was never far from anyone's minds that the largest generation of Seresins was halved in a matter of days. 

Jordan and his longtime girlfriend started trying for a baby and suffered three miscarriages before she died in a car accident, and Jordan gave up and threw himself into his career.

Peter, who'd always been more interested in boys, started looking into surrogates despite being unable to afford it and the doctor's concerns that he might not actually be able to father a child.

And Jake?

Jake knocked up Celia Warran a month before high school graduation and wasn't that the reaming of a lifetime when Amara and Celia's father found out.

Tempered with love and understanding, they'd let Jake explain. He and Celia had never actually dated, just been so close it'd seemed like that at times (by then, everyone but Celia knew Javy was in love with her), and Jake's grief and terror at the family end had resulted in one drunken night and one miracle.

Celia, who'd always been absolutely devoted to the Seresin family and the ranch, loved Jake enough to be a surrogate herself and figured that, at least this way, they saved money. 

The argument hadn't gone very far with her father, but her honest happiness about the pregnancy had.

Lily Grace Seresin had been born at three am on a Saturday morning while Jake was in his first year at the Academy. He'd gotten emergency leave and thrown a fit until Javy got the same, but they still missed the birth, arriving in time to see a small, pink-faced thing screaming her lungs out in the nurse's arms.

He'd loved her instantly and completely, and from then on, terror had lived in his heart, a constant worry over whether or not she was okay and safe and happy.

He'd barely managed to get on the plane back to the Academy a month later and only his own bullheadedness and Javy's help had kept him from having to repeat the year.

Celia had always seen her future in the grass on the prairie and the wind over the plains, and while Jake needed to wander, she wanted to grow roots in the land that had carried her family and his. So, Jake made her his heir, Jordan and Peter loved the idea, keeping it in the family for when something finally happened to the three of them, and she held the world together while what was left of the Seresin's scattered across the rest of it.

***

It took Jake years to convince Javy to ask her out, but we're not there yet.

***

It's not until he's in flight school, after finishing the Academy at the top of his class and three years of spending every free break back at the ranch with his daughter, that things change significantly.

Celia had taken to driving out to the Academy every other weekend, enjoying the road trip with whichever of Javy's siblings was around or her father. Amara didn't like driving, but she called often enough that Jake and Javy never felt very far from her. 

For better or for worse, Jake didn't bother making too many friends at the Academy. He needed top marks for the track he wanted, and he needed Javy to get top marks too, not that it was much of a stretch. 

What Jake had in relentlessness and hard work, Javy had in natural talent and dedication. 

Jake, despite what he managed to convince the world, was not naturally gifted in the aircraft. Or at math or the rest of the skills he needed to be a fighter pilot. But neither had his father been, and he'd ended up one of the most respected pilots of his generation.

But it turned out, that enough hard work, obsessive dedication, and pure bullheadedness was enough to make people think he'd been touched by god himself. 

Javy thought it was hilarious and almost blew the secret a few times when he couldn't help but laugh at the wrong time.

So, Jake spent his downtime studying with Javy and his free time with Celia, his daughter, and whatever family could come up with her that weekend and tried to do everything all at once. 

By the time he graduated he could take whatever spot he wanted and couldn't have told you the name of a single classmate besides Javy.

Life on the ranch made military life ridiculously easy, and Jake found that no matter how competitive the class, it paled in comparison to a few hundred heads of pissed-off longhorns, and god knew what critters that would strike when you weren't paying attention.

Right before he started flight planning, and still years before Javy gets his act together, Celia decided she wanted a second child. Specially, a full sibling to Lily Grace, and she and Jake prove they're miracle workers when she gets pregnant again after a single night together. 

As thrilled as they both are, it's enough to make them both swear never to sleep together again since Jake's happy with two, and Celia wants to have kids with Javy when he finally grows a pair.

Regardless, this time, the whole family is there when Dustin Seresin is born. 

Celia changes her last name to Seresin. She's already Jake's heir, and she wants to have the same name as her children, even though she has no intention of ever marrying their father. 

There are times when Jake is convinced she's more loyal to the name than he is. 

More determined to keep it going, to give it a future when Jake has dark moments and nearly convinces himself it'd be better if they just died out.

He's watching a video of Lily Grace pulling her brother around in a little red trailer when he first meets Bradley.

Bradley Bradshaw is all smiles, miles of muscle, glittering eyes, and a deep laugh that makes everyone around him sit up and look. He's older than all of them by a few years, happy to lend an ear or advice, and apparently too mature to get involved in any of the competition or squabbles that come with a highly competitive group of people. 

He's here to fly, and he'll help anyone who asks.

He's a lying liar who lies, Jake thinks, watching what he knows is a mask look back at him from among their cohort without a single crack, no matter how much of an asshole Jake is.

It takes Jake an embarrassingly long time to figure out that not even Bradley realizes he's wearing a mask.

And the thing is, Jake likes their cohort. More than he likes most people. So does Javy, who goes on and on those first few weeks about how they could be real friends, could visit each other between assignments.

Even Jake, who's never needed more than his family and the people on the ranch, starts to think it might be fun to do what all young people their age do and get drunk and lost at parties they shouldn't be at.

They even go to a few. Bradshaw, Lee, Avalone, and Lennox all somehow share an almost psychic ability to know where the best parties are, and between the three of them, Cohort 002-15 always has somewhere to go to blow off steam. Trace and Bassett, the only two females in their group manage to balance having fun with dealing with a bunch of drunk boys, while Vikander, Floyd, Fitch, and Garcia are usually the ones carrying someone home at the end of the night.

Jake and Javy fit in well, though they only ever carry each other home. Jake beat out Bradshaw to be class leader and he's wary of giving anyone in the class that kind of leverage over him. 

Javy's the only one he knows will go down with him if it comes to that, and Jake knows he's pissed off some people enough that it could happen.

He likes Trace the best. Natasha, although she doesn't let him call her that. She works just as hard as he does and faces twice the challenges with more grace than Jake will ever manage.

They bond over late-night study sessions when the others have already given up and gone to bed and Javy's sound asleep under the desk.

Jake even briefly imagines what it would be like to date her and quickly dismisses that thought when he realizes he would almost be dating himself.

And, for whatever reason, Javy doesn't really like her. Although, he's surprisingly reticent to tell Jake exactly why.

Add in the few times when it seems like she might actually be dating Bradshaw and Jake decides it's more trouble than it's worth when he's already got two kids at home.

Jake doesn't need a family; he's already got a great one and he's not going to risk his career for a fling in flight school.

Of course, there's also the fact that she probably wouldn't say yes if he asked anyway. Jake might look good, but she'd be branded forever, as stupid as that double standard was, and Jake wasn't that much of an asshole.

That said it's fun to flirt and argue with the only person that's driven enough to keep up with him. 

Jake even manages to make friends with Bradshaw when he can ignore that he's lying so hard his pants are on fire. Mostly, they both have to be very drunk, but they've figured out that three shots and a couple of beers will make them the best of friends. Enough to even duet at the piano a few times. Bradley taught himself, but the old lady the next ranch over who used to teach at Julliard taught Jake and according to her, he's classically trained. 

Jake only plays when they're all too plastered to realize what's happening, though, so it's years before any of them realize he can play.

Somehow, they get through their basic courses without any major issues. Jake and Bradley fight when they're sober, or as much of a fight as it can be when Jake critiques Bradley's every performance, and Bradley pretends to be mature by ignoring Jake completely.

There's a short period where Javy begs Jake to just sleep with Bradshaw and get it out of his system, and Jake has to explain exactly how much of a liar Bradshaw is, and then Javy wants Jake to stay as far away as possible.

It's not that Javy doesn't like Bradshaw. He's a good guy, and he'll throw down with anyone who says otherwise. But Bradshaw's got baggage that he can't even see and maybe if he'd met Bradshaw first, he'd be more willing to take the risk, but he met Jake first and Jake comes first and they've been brothers since the day they met, so Bradshaw's out of luck.

Javy does hope he figures his shit out eventually, for his own sake if no one else's, but he's not going to drag Jake along while he does it. 

Things get more challenging when they start training in their actual airframe. Jake, Javy, Bradley, and Natasha are all in the same class, and their late-night study sessions give Javy a chance to watch what's turning into a weird three-way dance they're doing up close.

He gets more and more concerned the longer they're there.

Jake and Natasha are friends, a shared drive and love of flying that could be the basis for something incredible. Natasha would never have to worry about where she stood. Jake's a lot of things, but he's never thought gender played a role in how good someone was at something, and he's blatantly obvious about how much he respects Natasha. 

And she might not be as sharp as Jake, but she's the same right back.

Her friendship with Bradley is softer, quieter, but no less strong. Javy knows she's cried on his shoulders on a few days that were just too hard and that Bradshaw had cried on hers one day a year. It's not something that had to be announced, the way Jake and Natasha's had been; it felt like it had always just been there, and everyone accepted it.

That made Javy nervous. 

Natasha and Bradly had been shooting down rumors that they were dating since the first day of class. And as much as part of that is just standard military gossip, there's something that sticks in Javy's chest and makes him worry.

Jake likes them both, though he won't admit it where Bradshaw is concerned. Admires the natural gifts they have that Jake doesn't and the fact that they help more than they try to lord it over anyone else's heads.

They're good people.

And Javy knows they're going to hurt Jake, but he can't figure out how or when, and until he can, he can't convince Jake of that.

I mean. I'm game if you want something casual. Just for fun. But I'm not going to date you.

Why not?

You're not the type of guy someone has a relationship with, Jake. 

Oh.

Jake hadn't known that. 

He'd thought he was pretty okay, datable at least. Celia had kids with him. He'd dated on and off in the past, was never short on people who'd share his bed.

He didn't abide cheating and always remembered important dates. He could listen and help and didn't mind sacrificing a few hours of sleep to help someone.

~tbc~