When Bradley keeps growing past the 6'5" limit of being a naval aviator Maverick lets out an internal sigh of relief. He's not going to be the one responsible for stopping Bradley from becoming a pilot.
Of course he thinks too soon because Bradley ends up falling in love with sky diving (an 18th birthday gift from Mav), and okay, that's a calculated risk. Mav indulges it. He understands that need to be risky although Mav can never understand why he'd want to jump out of a perfectly functioning plane. The fact Bradley has a bunch of honorary uncles who are all pilots means getting someone to fly him up for jumps is easy. He gets his licence before his 19th birthday.
He goes to college, studies, but he LIVES to jump out of planes. He works as a skydiving instructor and also does tandem dives with people - it pays good money.
He deliberately puts himself into spins and then recovers, over and over again. He makes YouTube instructional videos. He goes into spins when his parachute is deployed and has to do a release and use the reserve chute. He then collapses his chute only to extend it again. He's an adrenaline junky.
Over the next decade or so Bradley becomes an EXPERT in spin-recovery and ends up as a civilian contractor brought into train aviators on how to recover if they, or their parachute goes into a spin after an ejection.
Mav is a nervous wreck and Ice tells him he only has himself to blame.
(And can you imagine Bradley training Jake, Jake flirting (badly), and Bradley isn't impressed. His god father is Pete Maverick Mitchell, he has dinner with him and Admiral Kazansky at least once a week. Then Bradley decides to fuck with him. Tells him sure, he'll go on a date. And gives Jake an address to pick him up from. It's Ice's address... so Bradley pretends that Ice is his dad all the while Jake is pretty sure his life is now over.)
Edited 27th Feb 2024 - this is now a fic titled 'You need to learn how to fall' #You need to learn how to fall