#therapy is the second don't kid yourself baby goose

[pollyna]

au in which Ice and Mav send flowers to Bradley every time he gets a promotion or a merit because they know he won't read cards, but Carole taught him most of the meaning of the flowers and, even if he isn't going to keep it, he'll know how proud of him they are.

(Bradley doesn't keep them. Not all of them because Nat is allergic to some, he's mostly still fucking angry with them, but he always puts one of each type between the pages of books he takes with him. He writes dates in pencil and the meaning of the flower.)

((The day it's finally home, twenty years almost too late, a suicide mission and almost parentless for real this time around, for two days straight nobody sees Bradley. When he comes back from wherever he went, there's a plastic wrap around his bicep and the outline of a tattoo under that. I just want to remember that you never left, even when I did he signs, sitting on the right side of his dad's hospital bed, I chose my favourite of all the ones you sent me. It takes hours, but Bradley talks and talks about flowers and his books that are full of them, back home, and that when Tom and Pete are going to feel better, he's going to show them everything. Mav almost ends up crying, and Ice's hug lasts so long that the hours of the visit are done and then some.

Falling asleep that night felt a little easier than it had in years.))