the-authoress-writes

[the-authoress-writes]

Until Every One Comes Home

Synopsis: Duke Mitchell finally comes home.

Warnings: Family member death, grief, funeral planning, funerals, slight cursing.

Author’s Note: I meant to post this for Veterans Day—obviously, I wasn’t able to, but hey, better late than never.

Are there going to be military inaccuracies in this story?

Absolutely.

Am I still posting this?

Absolutely.

I dedicate this story to all those who served their country, especially to those who made the ultimate sacrifice, and to those who have yet to come home.

Early morning sunshine shone through a small kitchen window, upon a certain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, though it wasn’t a patch on the affection warming the very marrow of his bones.

Earlier, he’d come down the stairs, toweling his hair dry from his shower, to see the front door of his half of his and Bradley’s duplex open, admitting a goose-patterned fleece blanket-draped Bradley.

“Morning, Dad,” he yawned, using the free hand not clutching his blanket to scratch his curls, causing his blanket hood to fall off his head. “What’s for breakfast?”

“Joining me, huh?” Mav ducked his head, trying and failing to keep back his touched smile.

Ever since they reconciled, Bradley had been making sure to eat and spend time with him whenever he could, and when they purchased the duplex together last year, some part of Mav wondered if the time they spent together would decrease, less absence making the heart grow less fond, and all that, but if anything, it increased—in fact, Bradley spent more time in Mav’s half than he did in his own half.

That Bradley made sure to spend time with him was something he’d never fail to cherish.

“Yeah, isn’t visiting the aged a corporal act of mercy?” the younger man smirked.

Despite the memory of the immediately-thrown AARP letter he got in the mail yesterday saying otherwise, he shot back, “I’ll show you aged, just you wait until hops today.

And are pancakes good enough for you, Baby Goose?”

“Say less, Dad,” Bradley replied, striding to the kitchen, and Mav followed, throwing his arm around his boy’s shoulder.

So, there he was, stirring his homemade pancake mix in front of the stove, waiting for the pan to heat up, while beside him, a more-alert Bradley leaned back against the counter, watching the coffee he prepared brew in the maker.

Mav quietly took in the scene, basking in all the warmth from inside and out, before smiling and laughing quietly.

“What?”

He looked across at his boy, “Nothing—all this just reminded me of something.

I’d come back from deployment, and you’d always ask me to be the one to make breakfast; you’d sit on the counter, calling yourself my “‘sistant”.”

Bradley chuckled, “Yeah, actually—you’d pick me up and set me on the counter next to you.”

“Can’t do that anymore,” Mav laughed, as he poured the pancake mix into the pan.

“Don’t you dare, Dad.

And I don’t think the counter would be able to handle it, for another thing.

You, maybe, me, no.”

Though it was a fact that Bradley had nearly six inches and at least fifteen pounds on him, he protested on principle. “Calling me ancient, and now short?

Getting the shots in early, huh, kiddo?”

“You were the one who said short, not me, and I called you aged, not ancient—I could call you venerable if it makes you feel any better,” Bradley smiled.

Mav was helpless to stop his chuckle. “Call me a classic, then we have an agreement.

Now be my ‘sistant and hand me a spatula, will you?”

Later, while washing the dishes, Mav noticed Bradley intently filling out a form at the table. “What you up to, Roo?”

“Uh,” Bradley shifted, idly twirling his pen, “it’s a form to volunteer for honor guard if any deceased Navy personnel come through North Island.”

“Oh.” A sad smile touched Mav’s face. “What made you want to do that?”

“I…” his son scratched the back of his neck, “I couldn’t stop thinking about what you said about your father, and then my father… I, I don’t know—I just, someone should be there for them, you know?

Those who come home.”

He had told Bradley the story of his father while they were growing back together, learning how to be father and son again, but he never expected this kind of reaction to that story. “That’s great,” he nodded.

Bradley ducked his head almost bashfully before looking up, a gravity in his eyes. “They still haven’t found Duke yet, have they?”

Mav inhaled and exhaled evenly while drying his hands on a dish towel. “No.

Not yet.

Maybe one day, though.

I’m just happy that he’s no longer called a traitor,” he nodded, remembering the day Viper and the other members of VF-51 had managed to get the record set straight, Duke having been posthumously promoted to Commander and awarded the Navy Cross.

“He’ll come home too one day, Dad, I’m sure of it,” his boy confidently said.

“That would be nice,” Mav said wistfully. “Anyway, any special requirements for volunteering?”

“Nah, just gotta keep my uniforms close at hand, probably will have to buy a set for base, just in case, but nothing else, really.”

“That’s wonderful that you’re doing this.

I’m even prouder of you, Bradley.”

Bradley’s mouth twisted, and he sniffled a little bit, “Thanks, Dad.

Love you.”

“Love you more, Baby Goose.”

Mav didn’t think much more of this, other than when Bradley would come down for breakfast or in the middle of the day in uniform, or when he spotted Bradley come out of the locker rooms in them.

They would just exchange grave nods, the older aviator immediately understanding what was going on.

And then, very early one day, even by navy standards, Mav woke up, not sure what had roused him.

A moment later, his phone dinged with a message; a grope around the nightstand later showed that the message was from Bradley.

“Hey Dad, got an early arrival.

I’ll see you on base.

❤️🐓”

He smiled, admiring how dedicated Bradley was to his honor guard duties, sending off a “❤️” of his own.

Just as he was about to doze off, his phone rang again, this time with a call, the tornado siren ringtone indicating that it was Cyclone.

The thought of ignoring the call flitted through his mind, but he thought better of it, not wanting to risk his posting as a TOPGUN instructor and CO of VFA-223, the “Black Cloaks”, consisting of everyone selected for the uranium mission detachment training.

“Mitchell,” he spoke into the phone.

“Maverick.

You’re required on base ASAP.”

The words were familiar, but the tone was new: it was… almost gentle?

“Sir?”

“Be here by 0630.

Wear your blues, Captain.”

And with that, the line went dead.

He’d be lying if he said that dread wasn’t making boulders sink in his stomach as he buttoned the jacket of his blues, tucked his cover under his arm, and grabbed the keys to his infrequently-used Jeep, given the dress blues.

Eventually, he arrived on base at 0625, and the dread in him increased tenfold when he spotted Cyclone and Warlock standing outside NAWDC Headquarters, in their own blues.

He exhaled bracingly before he picked up his cover, and placed it on his head as he stepped out of the car.

Given the seeming gravity of the situation, Mav deemed it prudent to stand to attention and snap off a smart salute, once he was within four steps of the admirals. “Sirs.”

“At ease,” Cyclone nodded. “With me, Captain.”

It took a while longer than it would have for him to realize the three of them were heading towards the hangars.

Cyclone stopped them inside the hangar where Mav sometimes had classes, and just stood there, watching the runways, facing the longer one, being used as runway 36 today.

In a few moments, a C-5M became visible, landed on 36, and turned onto the apron, halting there.

From another building, preceded by a vehicle, twelve dress blue-clad officers in two single file lines stepped solemnly onto the apron.

Even at a distance, he rationally knew Bradley was one of those officers, but was still perplexed as to why he was here.

“With me, Captain,” Cyclone repeated, and they walked to the honor guard.

As they got closer, Mav saw that Bradley was indeed one of the honor guard, the head of the line closest to him, in fact, and the emotion on his boy’s face was puzzling, but he didn’t have much time to make sense of Bradley’s expression, because three things happened at the same time.

One, he realized that the other eleven members of the honor guard were all the members of his squadron—his kids—every single one of them was here.

Two, he realized too late that he was in a position of precedence over Cyclone and Warlock, in their line perpendicular to the honor guard.

Three, a flag-draped casket was carried out of the C-5, preceded by an officer in dress blues, a Lieutenant Commander, by the sleeve braid.

The Lieutenant Commander stopped in front of the trio of Mav, Cyclone, and Warlock, and saluted.

The three of them returned it, and in a shocking turn of events, the Lieutenant Commander addressed Mav first. “Captain Mitchell.”

“Commander,” he said, managing to keep most of the confusion out of his tone.

“On behalf of the President of the United States, the United States Navy, and a grateful nation, it is my honor to return the remains of Commander Andrew “Duke” Mitchell to his family, and to the soil of the nation he died for.”

Mav felt his eyes widen, and his knees weakened in shock, but before he could hit the ground, he felt two pairs of hands supporting his body.

A glance up showed that it was Cyclone on his left, Bradley on his right.

“See, Dad?” Bradley tearfully murmured, “I told you he’d come home.”

“That’s him?

He’s home?” he asked imploringly, his grip on his boy’s arm tightening.

“Yeah, that’s your father, Dad.”

He took a few calming breaths, then nodded determinedly. “Let me up.”

The Vice Admiral and his son lifted him to his feet, and he stood to his full height, facing the Lieutenant Commander. “Thank you,” he murmured.

With a solemn nod, the Lieutenant Commander stepped aside, allowing Duke’s casket to pass between the honor guard, Bradley calling the squadron to attention as they all saluted.

The casket was carefully loaded onto the waiting vehicle on the tarmac, Mav magnetically drawn to the flag-draped casket.

He placed a hand on the sun-warmed fabric, head bowed between his shoulders. “Welcome home, Dad.”

He struggled to keep his composure, but the reality of the situation was hitting him hard, and against his not-insignificant will, a sob escaped his lips, and he swept his cover off his head to rest his forehead against the casket, tears falling onto the red and white stripes like a benediction.

How many years had he dreamt of this, hoped for this, prayed for this?

Now, it was no longer a dream, a hope, or a prayer—his father was here, home.

And that just made the tears come all the harder, silent, trembling sobs now wracking his frame, as Mav gave his father the loving embrace he’d been saving for over fifty years, the bill of his cover in his opposite hand hollowly ringing against the metal of the casket, like a bell finally tolling half a century late.

What could have been an eternity or seconds later, he felt himself tugged into Bradley’s strong embrace, hearing, more than seeing, the squadron close ranks around him, shielding his renewed grief from any prying eyes.

The next thing he knew, he and Bradley were seated in Cyclone’s office, the Vice Admiral talking about the funeral arrangements. “Your father will be buried with full honors, regardless of where, with provision for a flyover, location and weather permitting.

However, should you like him to be interred at Fort Rosecrans, all expenses will be paid by the Navy, up to and including re-interment of your mother in an adjacent plot.”

“Oh,” Mav breathed.

Fort Rosecrans was where everyone special to him was buried.

Goose.

Carole.

Ice.

It also meant that he’d be able to visit his mom and dad a lot more than if he had his father buried next to his mom in his hometown. “I’d like that—both of them together again.”

Cyclone nodded gravely. “I’ll start making the arrangements.

There’ll be some paperwork you’ll have to sign for the exhumation of your mother, among other things, but I’ll do my best to take care of as much as I can, make things easier.” Cyclone paused. “My condolences, Maverick.

He’s home now.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You and Lieutenant Bradshaw are dismissed for the day, as is your squadron.

Go home.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Mindless, and still in shock over the whole thing, Bradley guided him out of the office and back to the parking lot, where he helped Mav into the Bronco.

The drive back home barely registered in his mind, and eventually, Mav found himself on his couch, in his usual white t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants with red and black-striped fluffy socks (gifted by Jake), practically burrito-wrapped in Bradley’s goose-patterned fleece blanket, a hot bowl of spaghetti in his lap, Bradley himself next to him.

“Eat up, Dad, come on,” the younger man gently encouraged.

“How?”

“Uh, fork to mouth is how most people do it,” his son chuckled.

“No—I mean—my dad?”

“Oh.” Bradley swallowed, continuing, “well, the Commander in charge of organizing the honor guards asked me why I volunteered, and I said that my godfather’s dad had gotten shot down during Vietnam, and that they never found him.

He asked me for your dad’s name, said he’d look into it.

I was hoping for good news, but even I never expected this.

They found him on the side of a mountain.

It seemed painless, by the way, according to the report, based on what they could see on the remains.”

He nodded, grateful for small mercies, idly twirling the noodles onto his fork.

A gentle silence fell on them both, punctuated by the clinking of Bradley’s fork against his bowl, and his chewing.

Mav eventually wormed his hand out of his burrito, to rest it on his boy’s arm. “I can’t thank you enough, Baby Goose,” he breathed, voice breaking on the last word.

Bradley froze and slowly turned to face him, brown eyes shining, “Don’t thank me, Dad.

It’s the least I could do; after all, you brought me home—it was only right I bring someone home for you.”

Tears welled in his eyes again. “Oh, sweetheart.”

“Come here, Dad.”

It didn’t take much convincing for Mav to lean into the offered hug, tears he didn’t know he still had in him spilling over.

“I’m sorry I’m such a fucking mess,” he sniffled, however long after.

“You’re not a mess, Dad,” Bradley spoke into his hair, “you’re grieving your dad.”

“He died decades ago,” he protested.

“And he’s only come home now.

It’s not like you had time to process Duke’s death properly, Dad.

You had to take care of your mom, then you had to survive shitty foster home after shitty foster home, then you had to survive NROTC, then you had to survive flight school, and then—”

“I think I get the point, Brads,” he smiled through his tears.

“My point is, this is normal; don’t beat yourself up for feeling… feelings.

Lord knows you don’t deserve anything else to feel bad about.”

Incomprehensibly, his heart swelled with even more love for this kid, his son in everything but name and blood. “You know I love you so much, right, sweetheart?”

He felt Bradley’s smile on the crown of his head. “Mm-hmm—you only tell me a million times every day, Dad.”

“Only a million, huh?

That’s a horribly low number; I feel like that’s something I should say more—remind me, will you?”

“Ugh, fine.”

The warmth in his son’s tone was a clear contradiction of the seemingly-exasperated reply.

Swiping a hand over his puffy eyes, Mav glanced down at the now-cool bowl of spaghetti. “You worked hard on this pasta and I’m not even eating it yet,” he guiltily muttered.

“No problem, I’ll just stick it in the microwave for a minute.

And it’s jar sauce, Dad, it’s not like it’s your Nonna’s nine-hour marinara.”

“It’s made with love, so it’ll taste just as good.”

“Say that again when you tell me there’s not enough basil, okay?” Bradley chuckled, easily taking Mav’s bowl to the kitchen to heat it up again.

(There wasn’t enough basil in the sauce, but he didn’t mention it.)

As the days progressed, despite all of Cyclone’s help, planning his parents’ funeral was still a to-do—there were so many things to be decided; what date, what time, what caskets, what kind of rails for the caskets, what flowers, what photo (or hell, photos?) to display at the funeral, what chaplain, and most importantly—for Bradley, at least—who would be invited.

“Dad, come on, you got to invite the Flyboys and the Squadron.”

Mav sighed for what felt like the umpteenth time; Bradley had been pushing this for the better part of a day. “Brads, no, I don’t want to be a bother or a nuisance, okay?

I don’t want them to feel like they have to take time to go to the funeral of people they don’t even know.

For God’s sake, Baby Goose, even you don’t have to go if you don’t want to, I’d never force you.”

Bradley indignantly opened his mouth, closed and opened it repeatedly, before taking a deep breath. “You’re crazier than I thought if you think I won’t be there for your parents’ funeral, Dad.

I’m going, and that’s final.

Please tell me you’re inviting someone though?”

“Your Grandpa Viper, he deserves to say goodbye to his wingman.”

“Anyone else?” His son practically begged.

“Penny, because she’d probably throw me overboard the next chance she gets if I don’t, and she can even bring Amelia if she wants.

See?

I’m inviting people, Baby Goose.”

“Dad—”

“Bradley,” he evenly replied, a stern edge in his voice.

After a brief staredown, the younger man’s petulant sigh could probably be heard on the other side of the country. “Let it be known that I highly object to this, Dad.”

“Objection noted, kiddo,” Mav smiled weakly, reaching out to pat Bradley on the arm before changing the subject. “I like these for the flower arrangements—what do you think?”

Mav stared at himself in the mirror; today was his dad and mom’s funeral.

He carefully looked over his medals, making sure the order was correct—he still berated himself for, in his grief, screwing the order up for Ice’s funeral—only noticing the mistake when he took the jacket off that night.

Confirming that his Global War on Terrorism Service Medal was in the fifth row where it belonged, he stared at himself, wondering if his father would be proud of him.

It was pointless dwelling on what ifs and could have beens.

But, the fact remained that he was the only 86er still in the service who didn’t have at least one star.

From everything he knew, he and his father were so alike, even down to the way they flew, so maybe his father would also loathe the idea of stars taking him out of the skies.

A gentle knock snapped Mav out of his thoughts.

Bradley stood just outside his room, also in his blues. “You ready?”

“Yeah, just… thinking.”

“That seems dangerous, coming from you, Dad,” Bradley grinned.

“Well, I am dangerous,” Mav smirked in reply, quickly sobering.

“What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing, just… I’m a Captain,” he admitted.

“Yyyeah… you are, Dad.”

Mav sighed, “I—I’m the only 86er still in the service who isn’t flag rank, that—that’s the point.”

Bradley stared at him, the pieces snapping into place, and he approached, raising a hand to Mav’s shoulder. “I don’t know exactly what your dad was like.

I can’t.

But I know that he went down saving the lives of his squadron.

And I think… that he’d be so proud of how you always make sure everyone comes home.

I know I am.

I am proud of you, Dad.”

Tears, love, and old guilt welled up. “I’m sorry I couldn’t bring your—”

“Stop.

It’s not your fault, and it never was, no matter what stupid shit I said before.

It was an accident.

I don’t blame you, and my father never would.

Now, let’s get off this guilt trip, and get your dad and mom some rest, huh, Dad?”

“Okay.”

Bradley nodded, pulling him into a brief hug. “Alright.

Get your cover, and I’ll grab mine, then we can hit the road.”

The fact that Mav knew the route they would take by heart, able to tell even with his eyes closed, just when Bradley would take a turn, was a little bit depressing, and he prayed that this would be the last time for a very long while that he would have to go to a funeral, most especially a military funeral.

Even his first of those was one too many, he bitterly thought, glancing towards the section where Goose was, as they entered the gate of Fort Rosecrans.

Despite his somber thoughts, he was grateful that it was a beautiful day, with perfect weather for a flight, as he got out of the Bronco to approach the minuscule group of people standing behind the hearses containing his parents’ caskets.

Giving solemn nods of their own, Cyclone and Warlock waved off the salute he and Bradley were about to snap off, allowing them to instead turn to Viper who was with his granddaughter, Erin.

“Mike,” Mav warmly greeted the man who was like a second father to him.

“Kiddo,” the venerable aviator rasped, creaking forward to embrace Mav.

“Thank you for coming.”

“I’d have to be six feet under to miss this, Pete.

But even then, I’d find a way.”

His former CO had gasped in shock when he called the man several days ago to tell him his wingman had been found. “They found Duke?”

“They did.

He’s going to be buried at Rosecrans with my mom.

I’d like you to be there.”

“I’ll be there, no matter what I have to do to get there.”

“Hi, Uncle Pete,” Erin greeted, bringing him back to the present.

“Hey there, Diamondback,” he replied, using the nickname he’d given her years ago, moving to hug her too, mindful not to knock her cover off, the young woman having worn her Air Force blues for the occasion. “Thanks for coming.”

“We know how much this means to you, Uncle Pete, we wouldn’t miss it; and someone had to make sure Grandpa wouldn’t do something stupid to get here, or at least help him if he did.”

Mav laughed, smile only widening when Viper humorously interjected, “Quit talking about me like I’m not here, will ya?” as his still-sharp gaze landed on Bradley. “Bradley Bradshaw—it’s been much too long since I last saw you.

I remember when you were a little booger of a kid; now look at you.

Your old man would be proud.

Rooster, right?

With the 87 'Warriors?” Viper knowingly asked.

Bradley proudly nodded, “223 Black Cloaks now, under Mav, but, yes, sir.”

The retired admiral smiled as if Bradley had passed a test. “Quit it with the sir, son, but you let me know if Pete gives you any trouble, huh, Rooster?

Not too old to whoop this kid’s ass in a hop.”

“Quit talking about me like I’m not here, will ya?” Mav grinned, throwing the venerable aviator’s words back at him. “Excuse me,” he continued, spotting Penny and Amelia making their way to them, the latter striding forward and aggressively hugging him.

“I’m glad your dad came home, Mav.”

He leaned down, returning the hug. “So am I, sweetheart.”

She pulled back, looking back towards Penny. “I’ll let you talk to Mom.”

“Okay.”

After he gave Amelia a final pat, she strode off, declaring, “Hey, Chicken!”

Mav snorted, catching sight of his son’s expression at the moniker, but then his attention was drawn by Penny’s soft, “Pete.”

They had been taking it slow ever since the Uranium Mission, but seeing her never failed to make something in his chest flip flop. “Pen.

Thank you for coming, you and Amelia.”

“Of course.

Why wouldn’t we be here?” she murmured, placing her palm against his cheek.

He leaned into the contact, and her eyes softened even more. “You’re looking at me like that again.”

“Like what?” he smiled.

“Like I’ve hung the stars or something.”

His smile widened, “Only look I’ve got for you.”

She blinked, stepping closer to wrap her arms around him and gently kiss him.

Mav gladly leaned into the embrace, a sigh escaping his lips when she drew back. “Stay with me?”

“Didn’t have any other plans.”

A moment later, Mav decided to get the proceedings started.

Led by the honor guard and the hearses, they began the solemn walk towards the plots where his parents would be buried, Penny tightly grasping his right hand.

Eventually, he distantly saw the wreaths of flowers, the chairs, the twin holes the caskets would be lowered into, the easels with the photos of his parents, and Mav felt his breath hitch with emotion—reality was striking him more intensely than any G’s he’d ever pulled.

He clenched his jaw, willing the emotion back, and just as he felt like it was beginning to turn into a losing battle, he felt someone take his heretofore free left hand.

A glance in that direction showed Viper had replaced Bradley at his left, the older man sending him an understanding look, similar emotion shimmering in his own eyes, the two of them sharing a fortifying nod.

A further glance back showed his boy walking behind him and Viper, strong and steady, a sad smile on his lips, love and blade-sharp understanding in his eyes.

After what felt like an eternity, they arrived at the plots, and had just settled into their seats, when Mav started in surprise; a large hand had clasped his shoulder and a familiar voice whispered into his ear, “What do you think you’re doing, starting without us, Shortstack?”

Mav turned in shock, seeing Slider right behind him, with all of VFA-223, Hondo, Hollywood and Wolfman, Chipper, Cougar, and Merlin approaching, one and all in dress blues.

Here, more familiar faces started to arrive—the Darkstar team, a couple of his fellow TOPGUN instructors, various NAWDC personnel, and then various North Island staff.

Mav couldn’t believe it—at the end, there had to be at least thirty people assembled around the gravesite.

Dots immediately connected. “Why are all these people here?

How did they know?” Mav whispered to Bradley.

“Well, word gets around, Dad—and it’s not like North Island’s that big,” Bradley nonchalantly replied.

He hissed, “Bradley Peter Bradshaw.”

The younger man squirmed in his seat, sheepishly muttering, “The squad and I might have… facilitated certain ears hearing about this.”

“Brads—why—I told you—”

“Dad,” Bradley reached out, “People care about you—the Flyboys wanted to be here for you. Despite what that nasty voice in your head tells you, and like, ninety percent of the brass hating you, a lot of people like you and want to be here for you.

Everyone here clearly wants to be here for you.”

Slider huffed, “You’re not a nuisance, Mav.

You’re family.

The real nuisance was you not calling to tell us all, but good thing the Baby Goose went behind your back.”

Mav rose from his seat, “Sli, I’m sor—”

Slider gently tugged him into a tight embrace. “It’s ok, just promise you’ll remember what brothers are for next time, huh?

Not a lot of us left, we gotta stick together,” he said, referencing the loss of Sundown not long after Ice’s passing—a harsh blow to the Flyboys. “Don’t listen to that voice in your head anymore, Mav.”

Wordless, he nodded. “Thank you.” Mav lifted his head to see his brothers, Hondo, and his squadron surrounding him, not a trace of anger in their faces. “All of you.”

Warm smiles and reassuring murmurs came from them all, and Slider patted him on the back. “Let’s get to work, Shortstack.”

“Okay.”

The ceremony proceeded according to plan, and eventually, it was time for Viper and him to hammer their wings into his father’s casket, but to his shock, before anything could happen, Omaha and Halo rose instead, unpinning their wings of gold as they went.

They hammered their wings into the dark wood of his father’s casket, then saluted.

Next to stand was Yale and Harvard, then Fritz and Coyote.

(Thump)

(Thump)

Two by two, his squadron went up and hammered their wings into his father’s casket, then saluted.

Payback and Fanboy.

(Thump)

Phoenix and Bob.

(Thump)

Bradley and Jake.

(Thump)

As Bradley circled back to his seat, Mav caught his eye, a shocked and wondering expression on his face. “I know we’re not your dad’s squadron, but hopefully we’re good enough,” he softly said in response to the unasked question.

Tears were already tracing Mav’s cheeks at seeing his squadron give his father this honor, but it didn’t stop there.

He was just about to tearfully thank Bradley when his attention was drawn by Slider and Chipper striding forward as they too, unpinned their wings.

(Thump)

Then Wood and Wolf stepped forward.

(Thump)

Cougar and Merlin.

(Thump)

One and all, his brothers hammered their wings into the casket, tightly grasping his shoulder in affection as they moved back to their places at his wing while he struggled to maintain his bearing, his heart swelling with love for this family who’d chosen him.

When no one else stepped forward, it was here, that Viper rose and drew a battered pair of wings from his jacket pocket, steps slow but even as he approached the casket, now covered in gold wings.

He gazed at the wings, a small, proud smile on his lined face, then with a gentle nod, he lifted his hand to place his own wings on the casket.

The sound of his fist hammering the wings in resounded through the air, the elderly man snapping to attention to salute his late wingman one last time.

When Viper turned, Mav rose for his turn, gently setting down the neatly folded flag in his chair.

It was this part he hated the most in all the military funerals he’d gone to, even more than the flag presentation, because it made everything feel so definite, the proverbial final nail in the coffin.

But this time, it felt almost like a relief—for once, his hands didn’t tremble as he unpinned his wings, and as his fist struck the metal into wood with the rush of wind and roar of F-18s overhead, Mav felt a weight being lifted off his shoulders; with his final salute to his father, he felt one of the oldest wounds in his soul beginning to heal.

The next thing he knew, the funeral was over, and he was standing before his parents’ graves.

Everyone was filtering back to the road, but he was seemingly frozen to the spot, staring down into the freshly dug earth.

He felt like he was waiting for something, the expectation in the air so thick he could almost taste it, but Mav didn’t know what it was.

Unbidden, the words “Talk to me, Dad, Mom,” slipped from his lips, barely audible even to his own ears.

Just then, a rushing sea wind blew through the cemetery grounds, and in the distance, he could see two birds dancing in the currents of air, soaring upwards into the sky, gradually disappearing in the distance.

The wind abruptly gentled, and though his cover had stayed on during the flyover and through the rushing burst of wind, it suddenly flew off his head.

He turned to follow its path, finding it already in Bradley’s grasp, who had a hand held out towards him, Penny, his brothers, Hondo, and his squadron—his kids, all standing behind his boy, who had a careful, expectant expression on his face.

“Hey Dad, let’s go home?” Bradley called out.

Mav cast a final glance into the distance that the two birds had disappeared into, a profound peace now in his heart.

He stepped forward, wrapping an arm around Bradley.

“Let’s go home, Baby Goose.”

He did not look back.

The title is taken from the USO motto.

The Navy Cross is the second-highest military decoration given by the US Navy, second only to the Medal of Honor.

Mav’s maroon Jeep can be seen in a corner of the hangar during the first hangar scene.

NAWDC: Naval Aviation Warfare Development Command, under whose umbrella TOPGUN belongs.

The C-5M is a US Air Force aircraft, but the Air Force is tasked with bringing home repatriated remains, no matter what branch of service the deceased is from.

The speech given by the Lieutenant Commander to Mav is an adaptation of what is said at a military funeral, when the flag is presented to the next of kin.

I made use of my Italian heritage!Mav headcanon here, which I am quite fond of.

The order of Mav’s medals at Ice’s funeral was incorrect, and even though I didn’t have to mention it, I found a way to explain it!

I’m quite pleased with myself for that one…

VFA-87, the “Golden Warriors”, based in NAS Oceana, VA, is Bradley’s squadron in TG:M, as seen by the patch on his flight suit.

The procedures detailed for the funeral are a rough approximation of the protocol for burials at Arlington National Cemetery.

Clarence Gilyard Jr, who played Marcus “Sundown” Williams in Top Gun (1986), passed away on November 23, 2022 from an undisclosed protracted illness.

Technically, hammering wings tridents into the casket is a SEAL tradition, but 1), this is a thing in canon, 2), it’s supposedly spreading to the other warfare qualifications, and I don’t know, I think Duke deserves it after the Navy crapped all over his reputation.

Bonus: They had a potluck at the duplex later, because Bradley thought ahead and had the Daggers bring food to his/Mav’s place.

Taglist

@themareverine

@callsign-skydancer

@permanentlyexhaustedpigeon88

@tadomikiku

@malindacath

@aviatorobsessed

@lynnevanss

@djs8891

If you’d like to join my taglist, just send me an ask!

[the-authoress-writes]

It’s absolutely unjust—I’ve been to several weddings and nada.

And You Will Find Me

Summary: The last thing Bradley expected when he was assigned to the unofficial “singles without a plus one” table at an old friend’s wedding was to meet who he thinks might just be the love of his life. But that’s exactly what happened. 

Pairing: Bradley Bradshaw x Reader (no use of y/n)  (can be read as Forgetful Boy and Pumpkin from RYEWID, but not necessary to read that first)

Word Count: 3.8K 

Warnings: Language, fluff, love at first sight. 

Notes: Written for @roosterforme's ‘80s Rocktober Playlist Fic Challenge, and as part of The Forgotten Moments Collection, but can very much be read by itself. Song selection is Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper. 

The Forgetful Boy and Pumpkin first meeting one shot that I’ve been wanting to write since I referenced it in part three of RYEWID. The fact that I could do it for a challenge for one of my favorite people makes it even more exciting for me.  

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Bradley Bradshaw: Table Four 

He grabbed the gold trimmed cardstock with his name on it, sipping on a glass of bourbon as he made his way into the reception hall. It didn’t take long to find his placement with the elaborate centerpieces displaying calligraphic numbers. 

There were only two open seats left at the table, which was occupied by a group of people who were all staring down at their phones. He glanced around the rest of the venue, seeing all of the other tables bustling with conversation and laughter. He raised his eyebrows in surprise at the awkward silence that seemed to hang over this one in particular. No one seemed to know each other, and it didn’t look like they planned to make any effort to change that. 

He groaned to himself and wondered, not for the first time, why he had thought attending this wedding was a good idea. 

He hadn’t seen Sean in years, and had never even met Lucy. The two had been roommates for two years at UVA and had somewhat kept up with each other over the years, if only barely. They had always joked about how on the off chance either of them got married, they’d make each other's guest list. Bradley had laughed when he got the invite in the mail. He had waited until the last minute to send in the RSVP, but had ultimately decided why not? He wouldn’t know anyone there, and hadn’t managed to find a date in time, but he hadn’t been to Philly in way too long. He’d make a quick weekend out of it and see an old friend.  

He hadn’t realized until he got into town how awkward going to a wedding on his own would be. 

He sat in one of the empty seats, nodding to the guy on his right who forced a smile that looked just as awkward as it felt before turning his attention back to his phone. 

Bradley was glad he had thought to refill his drink before cocktail hour ended. 

He was scrolling through his phone when he saw a flash of orange out of the corner of his eye at the same time the seat next to him was pulled back. 

He glanced up briefly to offer a quick smile to the new arrival and looked back down at his emails, only to do the quickest double take of his life. His breath caught in his throat and he swore his heart stopped, only to start again three times faster. 

Holy hell. 

“Is anyone sitting here?” you asked, and Bradley had to blink a few times before he realized you were talking to him, because your voice was mesmerizing. 

“All yours,” he managed to say. He would have winced at how his voice cracked if he wasn’t trying to remember how to breathe. You offered a warm smile as you gracefully sat down. You were a vision in a long sleeve, burnt orange dress that looked like it would be silky to the touch. When he glanced down, he had to bite down on the inside of his cheek to stop from groaning when he saw the slit going up the side and the nude heels on your feet. You were the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and you were sitting beside him fiddling awkwardly with your place card as he stared at you.

“I’m Bradley,” he finally managed to introduce himself, extending a hand out. You looked at him in surprise. 

“Oh! Hi.” You took his hand with a soft, gentle grip, your eyes locking onto his as a spark went through his whole body. Your eyes widened a fraction and he wondered if you felt it, too. He almost didn’t catch your name when you said it because he was so distracted by the feeling. “So, bride or groom?” 

“What?” 

You laughed softly, and he worried about going into cardiac arrest at the sound. “Are you here for the bride, or for the groom? I assume since you’re at this table it’s either one or the other and not both.” 

“This table?” 

You glanced around at your other tablemates, still busy with doing everything they could not to make eye contact with anyone else. Then you leaned closer to him, and he couldn’t help but do the same. You whispered to him like you were sharing something salacious. “The singles table. The ones who came alone and who wouldn’t know anyone else, and who they’re kind of surprised RSVP’d ‘yes’ to begin with.” 

Bradley let out a loud laugh, and you giggled right along with him. The sound was like music. It earned you both curious and maybe even annoyed looks from all those at your table. He hadn’t considered that before, but now that he thought about it, you were absolutely right. 

“Groom,” He replied, “College roommates. You?” 

“Bride,” you told him. “Ironically, also college roommates.” 

“Well would you look at that,” Bradley smirked, and he knew the amusement that sparkled in your eye was mirrored in his. 

He was interrupted from saying anything else from the DJ tapping on the microphone to formally start the reception. As the bridal party danced their way into the room to Celine Dion, he kept stealing glances at you. To his pleasure, you were stealing them right back. By the time Sean and Lucy were seated at the front table and the DJ announced that dinner would be served momentarily, Bradley could barely look away. There was a smile on your face that indicated you didn’t mind at all. 

It continued that way through the meal that was eventually placed on the table. You didn’t speak much as you ate, both of you feeling like you were disrupting the other six people spread out on either side. But you kept catching each other’s eyes and smiling before you looked away, and his cheeks were nearly hurting at how big his smile was.

Fuck. 

Bradley barely even knew your name, and he was already down bad. 

You leaned over to him during the speeches that started immediately after dinner, and he caught another whiff of your perfume. He tried his best not to noticeably take a deep breath of the scent. “Do we think the best man is already drunk?” 

“Oh, he absolutely is,” he confirmed. The man in question was laughing hysterically at a joke he just told, already swaying on his feet. “I saw him throwing back an entire flask right before the ceremony.” 

Your nose scrunched up in the most adorable cringe he had ever seen. “Yikes. I don’t really blame him though. The maid of honor is his ex-fiance. I’m pretty sure she left him for groomsman number three, but I can’t confirm.” 

He looked at you with wide, curious eyes. “Did Lucy tell you that?”

“No,” you laughed, mindful of keeping your voice down to not draw any attention to yourselves as the slurred speeches continued. “I drove up last night and then was bored before the ceremony today. Social media is very informative, you know.” 

Bradley choked out a laugh, absolutely amazed at you. “Are you a private investigator or something?” he asked, genuinely curious. 

You picked up your wine glass with a smirk, and you winked at him before you took a sip. “A journalist, actually. But close enough.”  

A journalist. Bradley filed that information away in a new folder in his brain that had your name on it. 

Clapping drew his gaze away from you, and he realized he had completely shut out the rest of the speech. He cleared his throat and joined in, and the two of you watched as the bride and groom did their first dance. It felt like it lasted forever, but that was probably because he was itching for it all to be over so that he could talk to you again. He wanted to know more about you. In fact, he found that he wanted to know everything about you. 

Everyone clapped again when the dance came to an end, and Bradley was turning to you before the DJ even finished announcing the beginning of the party. 

“What are you drinking?” he asked, and he thought the look you gave him was a mix between delighted and amused. Your eyes cut to your mostly empty wine glass where he could very much see exactly what you had been sipping on. He felt heat creep up his cheeks in embarrassment. 

“White wine,” you said anyway. “What are you drinking?”

He fought the grin that was threatening to take over his face. You were keeping him on his toes, and he found he quite liked it. “Bourbon.”

“Ah. Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m about due for a refill.”

“Is that so?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. You glanced around the table where the other occupants were back to scrolling through their phones or focusing on anything that wasn’t another human being. He almost laughed at the look on your face when you turned back to him. You grabbed your clutch from the table and the two of you rose out of your seats at the same time without even having to say anything. 

“After you,” he grinned, and your smile made him dizzy. He ordered another whiskey while you got Pinot Grigio. He laughed when you told him you weren’t allowed another glass, because too much white wine apparently made for a very interesting night. He filed that little tidbit away, too. 

With fresh drinks in hand, you turned to walk back to your assigned seating. The lights had dimmed and the music had turned to something upbeat and very cliche, and the majority of the attendees had converged on the dancefloor. You navigated around them carefully. His hand hovered over your lower back, not quite touching, but wanting to. You drew to a stop when you were only a few feet from the table, your head tilted to the side. 

“I hate being seated at these tables,” you muttered. “Always makes me feel like maybe I shouldn’t have come.” 

Bradley had been thinking the same thing until you had sat down beside him and shook his hand. He couldn’t help but flex his fingers as he remembered how his skin had buzzed at your touch. He glanced around the whole venue again, not quite knowing what he was looking for until he caught sight of the patio through the large windows.

“Do you want to ditch and go outside with me?” he found himself asking before he could stop himself. He held his breath when your eyes snapped to his, slightly wide in surprise. But they softened quickly, and you nodded, tucking some of your hair behind your ear with your free hand. 

He held out an arm, and after only a moment of hesitation, you slipped yours into it. He almost felt like he was floating as he guided the two of you toward the open doors. 

The patio was decorated beautifully. It stretched almost the entire length of the building, and twinkle lights lined the ceiling and the pillars holding it up. Smaller tables and furniture were spread out amongst the concrete and the two of you settled into the soft cushions of one of the outdoor coaches. 

It was a mild night, even for early February in Philadelphia, and the heat coming from the fire pit in the middle of the table in front of you was enough for it to be comfortable. You sat in silence for a beat, but it wasn’t awkward. Your fingers danced over the rim of your wine glass and Bradley’s gaze followed as you brought it to your lips. You caught his eye as you swallowed, and he felt the heat creep onto his cheeks at being caught staring at you again. 

He cleared his throat, taking a sip of his own drink to gather himself. “So. A journalist. What do you write about?” 

“The hypocrisy of old men, mostly,” you shrugged, and Bradley’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion. You laughed at his expression. “I cover politics,” you explained. Your joke registered with the context and he chuckled. 

“So just how hypocritical are the old men of Philadelphia?” he asked, and you seemed delighted that he was going along with it. 

“Eh,” you said, shrugging your shoulders. “Very, I’m sure. But I cover Washington, which is definitely worse. I live in DC.” 

Bradley’s breath caught in his throat. Excited disbelief had his eyes widening. There was no way. In the back of his mind he had admittedly already been thinking of how often he could feasibly make the drive from Andrews to Philly, because he knew he had to see you again. Tonight couldn’t be the only time, not with how he was feeling and how he was pretty sure you were, too. 

“Small world,” he finally managed, trying to keep his voice steady despite his racing heart, and now your eyes were widening back. The happiness in them was hard to miss, and, holy shit, you were excited about this. He felt the urge to pinch himself. 

“You live in DC?”

“I’m at Naval Air Facility Washington doing extended training at Joint Base Andrews,” he told you, still in a bit of disbelief, but feeling giddy. 

“Ah. Navy man, huh?” 

It took a moment for Bradley to realize his cheeks were red again. He doesn’t think anyone has ever made him blush before, or at least not as many times as you had tonight already. 

“Naval Aviator,” he elaborated. 

You smiled, and it felt like the whole world disappeared except for the two of you as you held out your glass. He raised his to tap against it in cheers. “Here’s to small worlds, then.” 

“And to college roommates,” he added, and your laugh took his breath away. 

The two of you sat there with your drinks in hand, and the conversation flowed effortlessly, talking about everything and anything. He found himself hanging onto your every word. He couldn't help but be drawn in by every single thing about you. He learned that you grew up here in Philadelphia and, like him, you were an only child. You got your undergrad in journalism and then a masters in political science and moved to DC before the ink was even dry. You were a little bit addicted to coffee and true crime podcasts, and you were a huge Philadelphia Eagles fan. He told you about growing up in Virginia and being in the Navy, and about his love of the 80s and playing piano. 

But you talked about more than just the surface level stuff, too. As the occasional sound of laughter drifted outside from the dancefloor and the fire pit glowed in front of you, you told him how sometimes, you wondered if you were really cut out for your career, because the nature of what you had to cover drove you absolutely crazy, and you felt like people focused on the wrong things. You tended to have a self-imposed terrible work/life balance and your anxiety crept up on you because you’d ignore it for too long. You weren’t close with your parents, and your bucket list was full of things you were scared you’d never be able to do. 

In return, he let you in on the reason he wanted to join the Navy in the first place, and growing up with a single mother and what it was like when she got sick. He confided how he had a bad habit of hesitating both in and out of the air, and how he didn’t really have any connections or relationships outside of the Navy that went more than just skin deep or a memory of what used to be. 

He shared more with you than he had with anyone else, and somehow, it felt like the most natural thing in the world. It was like he had always known you, or at least like he was meant to now. 

You were so caught up in each other that neither of you realized just how much time had passed. Before you knew it, the music from inside was starting to soften and the lights were turned back on, and the servers came outside to start collecting empty glasses and trash. 

“Oh wow,” you breathed in surprise, “We missed the whole reception.” 

You stared at each other in silence for a moment, and then at the same time, you burst into laughter. 

“Can I walk you back to your hotel?” he asked you once you had calmed down. You had mentioned how you were staying just a few blocks away, and the thought of you walking alone or getting a car this late at night didn’t sit right with him. It was strange, how he already felt the urge to protect and care for you. 

Plus, he wasn’t ready to say goodbye just yet. 

“I’d like that,” you said softly, much to his relief. 

The bride and groom were inside wishing everyone goodbye, and you both took a moment to speak to your respective reasonings for being there. Neither of you lingered for long, and the balmy night air greeted you again when you exited the building after collecting your coats. 

You didn’t hesitate to link your arm with his when he held it out this time. He felt warm all over with you this close to him. Despite the late hour, the city was still alive with people out and about and laughter and conversation spilling out onto the sidewalk from every business you passed. He held onto you a little tighter when you walked by some decidedly way too drunk people, but you didn’t seem to mind. You kept the conversation going just as easily as it was when you were sitting on the patio, swapping embarrassing stories from your college days. You were walking through the park, nearly at your hotel, and it was when you mentioned something about dancing on a table at a frat party after too many shots of Fireball that he came to an alarming realization. He stopped so abruptly that you were slightly yanked back into his body, and you looked at him in concern. Before you could ask what was wrong, he was blurting the words out. 

“I never asked you to dance.” 

You gave him a confused look and then snorted in amusement. “I suppose you didn’t.” 

“Oh my god,” he groaned, tilting his head back and slapping his palm to his forehead. “I had the perfect opportunity to dance with you and I never asked.” 

You were still laughing, your feelings clearly not hurt at his lack of consideration. But he was already digging his phone out of his pocket and swiping open his music app. He held it out in your direction. “Pick a song,” he told you. 

“What?” you laughed. “Bradley!” 

“I’m serious! Pick a song.” 

He pushed his phone a little closer, and with an amused look, you finally took it. You bit your lip as you thought for a moment before you started typing, and then the soft sounds of Time After Time were floating in the air. 

“You said you loved the 80s,” you said almost shyly. But Bradley smiled, taking the phone back and slipping it into his jacket pocket. The music was muffled now, but you could both still hear it. 

“It’s perfect,” he told you. He held out a hand for you to take, and once you slipped your palm into his, he pulled you close. You rested your head on his shoulder as you began to sway. The night was quiet and serene as you danced, and he didn’t know what he did for his night to turn out this way, but he was so glad that it did. 

When the song came to an end, you stopped moving, but didn’t separate. You picked your head up and looked at him, your eyes locking together. You didn’t say anything at first, but eventually, you sighed and a soft, reluctant smile tugged at your lips. 

“I should probably get back,” you whispered.

“Are you sure?” he asked, desperate to stay in your presence for as long as possible. You had entered his life so unexpectedly, and he was wishing with everything in him that you wouldn’t be leaving it anytime soon. “You aren’t going to turn into a pumpkin once the clock strikes midnight, right?” 

You shook your head at his joke, giving him a playful wink in return. “I don’t know. This does feel a bit like a fairytale.” 

Your words made him grow a little more serious, and he swallowed thickly as a charged energy seemed to settle over both of you. You bit your lip as you stared, your gaze wide and saying a million things at once. You had the most expressive eyes he had ever seen. He wanted to look at them forever. 

"You know," he said, his voice lower now, like he was afraid to disrupt the moment by being too loud. He brought a hand up to your face, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear.  “This is not how I anticipated my night going.” 

The air between you crackled with unspoken words, his hand still lingering near your cheek. Then, in a move that felt natural and inevitable, he leaned in, and you met him halfway. Your lips touched softly, a spark of electricity passing between you. It was a kiss filled with promise, a taste of what could be. It was as if time stood still, the world around you fading away until it was just the two of you.

When you finally pulled away, both of you were left breathless. Bradley looked at you with a mixture of desire and genuine affection that should have scared him, but it didn’t. 

"Wow," you whispered, your lips curving into a shy smile. He knew exactly what you were feeling with that one word, because he felt it too.

He brushed his nose against yours, breathing you in. “Tell me I can see you again when we get back to DC,” he begged. 

You let your hand rest against his chest, and he was sure you could feel the pounding of his heart. “I was hoping so,” you said, and he breathed out a happy laugh of relief before kissing you again.  

Standing there under the soft glow of the lampposts, Bradley thought he might love you already. 

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Masterlist

Notes: I hope y'all loved this one as much as I did! I miss these two so much.

Special thanks to Mak and Em for all of their help, and to Mak for the banner!

Tag List: @roosterforme @mak-32 @wildxwidow @gretagerwigsmuse @lilyevanswhore @too-fangirl-to-fuction @fav-fanficssss @notroosterbradshaw @teacupsandtopgun @sometimesanalice @sunflowersteves @littlezee80 @je-suis-prest-rachel @khaylin27 @infamous-reindeer @hotch-meeeeeuppppp @yanna-banana @avengersfan25 @wkndwlff @sylviebell @lt-spork @indynerdgirl @greatszu

@mssleepy876b @kassieesworld @mizzzpink @a-serene-place-to-be @sexualparkour @sadpetalsstuff @almostgenerallyalways @alilstressyandlotdepressy @ccbb2222 @taytaylala12 @shelbycillian @mavrellover91 @vici111 @lunamooncole @blackwidownat2814 @pisupsala @bellaireland1981 @jynxmirage @shanimallina87 @na-ta-sh-aa @callsign-magnolia @chaoticassidy

*I do not give permission to copy/steal, translate, or publish elsewhere*

[the-authoress-writes]

Up Where We Belong Masterlist

Pete “Maverick” Mitchell x Writer!reader

Synopsis: When a writer experiencing horrible writer’s block goes to the Apple Valley Airshow for inspiration, she meets a certain older, daring naval aviator, leading to maybe a little more than just inspiration.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

[the-authoress-writes]

Up Where We Belong Part Three

Pete “Maverick” Mitchell x Writer!reader

Up Where We Belong Masterlist

Synopsis: When a writer experiencing horrible writer’s block goes to the Apple Valley Airshow for inspiration, she meets a certain older, daring naval aviator, leading to maybe a little more than just inspiration.

Warnings: Mentions of family member deaths, cancer, some to-be-expected cursing, age gap (reader is in their late thirties to early forties).

But really, this is just fluff.

Author’s Note: This was a pain to finish—you know the feeling when you know what you have to do, but you don’t know how to do it?

(Insert Ben Solo/Kylo Ren/Adam Driver gif here)

Yeah, that was this.

So many parts of this were so stubborn, even when I knew what the next story beat was; combine that with the inner critic being a bitch and the imposter syndrome impostoring, this was a labor of love.

Obviously, I pushed through, and here we have the final chapter of “Up Where We Belong”, which I am very proud of.

Again, I name a story after a song, from another movie about the Navy, funnily enough.

(Only three of my stories on my masterlist are not named after songs)

I can’t stop, apparently.

So here we go!

Even while her phone was telling her she was on the right path, she briefly wondered if she was, in fact, lost.

It couldn’t be more obvious that she was in the middle of nowhere, lonely desert stretching out before her for miles and miles, with nary another car in sight, much less a building that could conceivably be a hangar.

It comforted her to see a blue Bronco pass her by at a brisk pace as she continued down the route indicated by her phone, having not seen another car for the past fifteen or so minutes.

She eventually turned when her phone instructed her, the hills along the road she’d been driving next to giving way to an enormous desert plain, and the slightly heat-distorted sight of a building in the distance, probably a mile off.

A smile crossed her face, that had to be it.

As she drew closer, the nerves she’d been tamping down started to bubble up again, and she cursed herself. “Get a grip, woman, you’re here to review a scene, not to go on a date.”

Despite that, the fact that she’d spent nearly half an hour planning what she’d wear today felt like a Freudian slip—a loose orange tunic with small blue embroidered flowers on the hem and sleeves, dark wash skinny jeans and brown ankle boots—eventually deeming it not too much, but not like she didn’t care.

As she got closer, the building became more impressive, despite its rather homely outward appearance—from the white-painted wood panels worn down to their natural color here and there, the fading “United States Navy” emblazoned at the top, to the faint, sun-bleached squadron insignia on the open bay doors—it just felt beautiful in a wild way.

She parked about several yards away from the hangar doors and shut off the engine. “Okay, what’s going to happen will happen,” she muttered, “you’re going to survive it hook or by crook.

And besides, you don’t even know if he’s married or in a relationship.”

And with that rousing Crispin Crispianish speech, she picked up her messenger bag, slinging it onto her shoulder as she got out of the car.

The desert heat and silence washed over her as she moved towards the doors, calling out, “Hello?”

“In here,” came the reply.

She stepped inside the hangar, the shift to relative darkness briefly obscuring her vision, causing her to blink as her eyes adjusted, to see Pete standing by Bianca, looking somehow even better than she remembered, like something out of a movie.

His gaze was fixed intently on her, the slightest smile on his face, and she couldn’t help but match his expression, a “Hey there, sailor,” thoughtlessly slipping from her lips, which she immediately mentally kicked herself for saying; “Damn it, woman, how awkward can you be?” flashed through her mind like a neon sign.

Thankfully, he only brightly replied, “Hey, glad you could make it.”

Her smile widened. “Not going to miss it—for all I know, this is a one-time opportunity,” she truthfully replied, determined to make the most of this opportunity in regard to her novel—other… hypothetical motivations notwithstanding.

He shrugged, eyes sparkling, his movie star smile as devastating as a whole volume of honeyed poetry. “Who said it was?”

She chuckled, wrenching her gaze away from him before she said or did something stupid, settling for the sting of her teeth on her lip to knock her back to her senses.

Her eyes flit about the hangar, eventually landing on Bianca, the frontispiece of the whole room. “Great place you’ve got here, must’ve been hard to get, though, with it being Navy land.”

“Not that hard when you’ve got friends in high places,” he replied.

The sentence itself was vaguely humorous, something wry, an inside joke, but there was a weight to his tone, like the joke had lost its humor, and instead turned into something to grieve.

She tilted her head slightly, another enigma comprising Pete “Maverick” Mitchell revealing itself.

But before she could think too much, he broke the sudden silence. “Anyway, uh,” he clapped his hands, “you had a scene that needs checking?”

She blinked and raised the leather messenger bag on her shoulder. “I have my laptop right here.”

He gestured grandly to his couch, and as they moved towards it, she surreptitiously wiped her hands on her thighs, perspiration disappearing in the dark wash of her jeans, then busied herself with opening her laptop, finger fumbling on the start screen as she felt him settle in the seat next to her—realistically, she knew he’d likely sit next to her, but just because one knew something didn’t prepare one for experiencing it.

Again, the blinking cursor on her MacBook’s screen seemed to cackle at her, but she ignored it in favor of typing in her password, opening the laptop to the dreaded dogfight scene. “Here it is in all its misery,” she half-joked.

“May I?” he gestured to the device.

“Go ahead,” she sighed.

Pete picked up the device, leaning back with it in his lap, eyes darting about the screen, mouth moving slightly as he read, and in a matter of moments, his hands came up, mimicking the movements she’d written, while his face alternately made skeptical, approving, and a few amused expressions.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” she plaintively asked, bracing for the worst, when he carefully placed the MacBook on his coffee table what seemed like an eternity later.

“It’s not bad at all,” he shook his head, an earnest expression lighting his features. “There are some maneuvers there that are only plausible for the P-51 in a rare set of conditions, and a… couple that I’d say are more in line with the capabilities of the F-35–or the 18 in my hands—but overall, it’s pretty damn good for a self-professed newbie to writing a dogfight scene.”

Her jaw fell open. “You’re kidding me.”

“Swear on my wings,” he laughed, the sound so musical, it was almost annoying how perfect and beautiful this man was.

“How would you fix it?”

He pointed, “Do you have a pen and notebook?”

“Never go anywhere without one.”

That beautiful smile of his spread his lips. “Well, let’s turn and burn, then.”

They worked for a couple or so hours, Pete writing out more plausible maneuvers to replace the impossible ones, demonstrating them with some models he’d run off to another corner of the hangar to retrieve, both of them mutually deciding to leave most of the only slightly implausible ones in, save for the ones where the bounds of reality were a little too stretched for the aerial conditions she’d already committed to, while she elaborated on what he’d written, fitting it into the novel’s style.

Eventually, she released a breath of victory, and proffered the laptop to Pete again, now actually proud of the dogfight scene. “You want to read it again?”

“Alright,” he easily agreed.

He read it again, the scene before her the same as over two hours ago, but this time, the skeptical and amused looks were replaced with a captivated and admiring expression.

“Well?” she prompted.

He blew out a breath. “It reads even better than I thought it would, you’re really good at this.”

She leaned forward, needing to be sure she hadn’t imagined him saying that. “It’s good?”

Pete leaned forward, into her personal space, matching her, as he fervently said, “It’s amazing.”

Her breath caught as the moment stretched taut around them, the two of them close enough for her to see the light reflecting off the peridot and aquamarine flecks in the brilliant jade of his eyes.

She looked around the hangar again at his earnest gaze, the itch to do something stupid scratching at her skin once more—she had a feeling that that would be a pattern for her with Pete Mitchell. “So, tell me, what exactly is it you do for the Navy, Captain Mitchell?”

He froze minutely at the end of her sentence, swallowing thickly as he processed the question.

“If you’ll have to kill me, there’s no need to tell me,” she joked, as she literally saw his brain reboot.

He blinked and chuckled softly, coming back to himself. “No, no, nothing as secretive as all that; I’m an instructor at TOPGUN—basically, I teach the Navy’s best aviators how to be better.

That’s why I talked about students during our phone call.”

“We’ll have to compare notes sometime to see who got it worse—I used to be a high school English teacher.”

Pete winced. “Ooh, teenagers, I don’t envy you.

But imagine taking hotshot twenty-somethings who fly multi-million dollar weapons as a career, who think they’re the best and know everything, shoving them into one room, and having to show them quite vividly that they don’t know everything.”

She gave her own wince. “Ooh.

But come on, you can’t have it that bad—especially if you fly an F-18 anything like how you flew Bianca at Apple Valley.

You’re telling me they’d still act up after getting so thoroughly schooled?”

He tilted his head from side to side, amused. “You’d be surprised, but uh… well, let’s just say that most of the “old man” comments typically tend to lose their bite by the end of the first hop.”

She laughed loudly, throwing her head back, just imagining the reactions of those hotshot kids. “As they should—I’d pay to see their reactions, come to think of it.”

She looked back at him to see his gaze was intently focused on her, but it didn’t send a shiver down her spine—at least not in the unsettling way it usually did when men stared at her. “Maybe my next class cycle, you’d like to come down to North Island, sit in the control tower, listen in on the first hop or two,” he said.

“An opportunity to see an experienced naval aviator in his element; I must say that’s an appealing offer.”

“You just let me know if you want to take me up on it.”

It was sheer instinct to say, “You know, I just might.”

Lowly, he replied, “I’d like that.”

The honestly there was breathtaking.

A glance out the bay doors showed that the sun was starting to hang low in the sky, casting a yellow-orange glow on everything, and caution nipped at her heels. “It’s kind of getting late, and I don’t want to bother you into the evening, I should go.”

Pete’s face fell ever so slightly. “You’re no bother, but I understand if you need to go.”

The slight drop of his features felt like a fall from a high precipice, sinking like a stone in her stomach. “Thank you so much again for your help, I really can’t thank you enough for everything,” she reassured.

“It’s no problem,” he said, almost resignedly.

She felt an intense yearning in her soul to strip that lonely note from his voice, to lift the sadness from him which came in like a squall, so she said the first thing that came to mind, her heretofore carefully-maintained caution getting unceremoniously kicked to the curb. “Uh, this might be stupid, and I’m so sorry if I’m being a nuisance, so feel free to tell me off, but… would you mind if I called you again?

Honestly—I, I don’t really have anyone to talk to about this in much detail with, and—and I’d love to talk with someone who understands the perspective my granduncle might’ve had.”

To her happiness, he brightened. “Not at all, I’d li—it’d be ni—” he sighed, a little wry smile playing on his lips, “feel free to call.”

She resisted the urge to giggle at his fumbling for words. “Okay, I’ll do that.

Thank you.

I promise not to call at like, 2:00 in the morning, when you’re asleep.”

He laughed, but pulled a face that had her mentally frowning as they both stood; however, she didn’t mention it, and instead gathered her things before Pete escorted her to her car, opening the door for her. “I’ll uh, expect your call?”

If the former sadness in his tone tugged at her heart, the thinly veiled hope now there positively wrenched it, and caution was nowhere to be seen. “It might come sooner than you think.”

The boyish, excited expression on his face was enough to make her heart skip a beat. “I look forward to it.”

By the time she reached home, while eating some ramen on her couch for dinner, she found herself picking up her phone and going to Pete’s message thread.

She typed and retyped her message again and again, debating whether or not to send anything at all, but eventually settled on “Just thought I’d let you know that I survived the drive home to bug you another day 🤣”, and sent it off before she could think too much.

Her finger was on the verge of clicking her phone off, but then she caught sight of the typing bubble, and she absentmindedly chewed her lip as she waited for his reply.

Eventually, after about a minute of the typing bubble popping up and disappearing, a message finally came in. “I had every confidence that you would. 😉”

She leaned back, setting into her cushions as she figured out her next message.

The week passed by, and she didn’t pass a day without messaging Pete at least once—he was so easy to talk to about pretty much everything, and it was so comfortable, to just pick up her phone and ask a question or say something non sequitur, his reply coming within the hour, if not within the next ten minutes, starting a conversation by text or a subsequent call, either of which could last hours.

However, this had a drawback.

It meant she didn’t work on the novel nearly as much as she should, and she eventually found herself staring again at her cruel, blinking cursor as her mind stubbornly remained blank.

It wasn’t nearly as bad as her first block, or the block regarding the dogfight scene, but she was starting to get a little frustrated.

Deciding to take a little break from blinking at her laptop’s screen, she traded it for her phone, open, as usual, to Pete’s message thread. “Feeling a little frustrated right now…” she shot off.

Forty-five minutes or so later, she got his reply. “Sorry to hear that.

You want to talk?”

“You free?”

A beat later, her phone rang. “So—frustrated, huh?”

Just hearing his voice had some of the frustration draining from her. “Yes.

It’s absolutely infuriating; I know what happens next, it just doesn’t want to—” she gestured sharply even though he wouldn’t see it, “you know?”

He hummed, “I know the feeling, the same thing happened to me a couple of times when I was writing my paper for my Master’s.”

“You have a Master’s.” she restated, shocked.

“Two, actually—Aerospace Engineering and Physics.”

It was said so matter-of-factly that she simply blinked for several seconds, impressed. “Another layer to Pete Mitchell,” she said, once she found words again.

“Like an onion.”

His joke made her snort while he continued, “I’ll let you in on a little secret—you’d be surprised how many naval aviators are actually nerds.

Don’t let the flight suits and Ray-Bans fool you.”

She laughed, but soon grew serious. “Oh God, Pete, I don’t know what to do—I mean, the last time I productively wrote anything was last week, at your hangar.”

There was a long pause, so much so that she thought the call had dropped, but when she looked at her screen, the line was still connected. “Pete?”

“Yeah, I’m here.” He sounded tentative. “Uh, if, if you wanted, you could—could come down to the hangar this weekend—you never know, being where you were last productive might shake something loose.”

“Sure, I’d love to—I mean—anything to make any progress, and—and the company’s pretty good too.”

She tried not to sound too eager to see him again, but she knew she probably failed at that.

“…Is there anything I can do to turn that ‘pretty good’ to good?” the now-familiar smile could be heard in his voice.

“We’ll see what happens this weekend, Captain.”

This time, when she stepped into the hangar, Pete was kneeling next to one of his numerous motorcycles, hands buried somewhere in its engine, dressed again in a white t-shirt and jeans. “You know, I’m starting to think you live in a white t-shirt and jeans,” she joked, though it was undeniable how good he looked in them.

He looked up, a warm chuckle escaping him, “That’s not true; once in a blue moon, the shirt’s black, and you’re forgetting my flight suit.”

She grinned, “Oh, we have a comedian here, yet another layer!”

“I’ll be here all weekend,” he bowed and swept his arm out to the side before standing and wiping his hands on a nearby rag. “You’re welcome to make yourself comfortable in the living area, can I get you any coffee or anything?”

“Uh, maybe a coffee?”

“Sure thing; how do you take it?”

“Two teaspoons of sugar, splash of cream if you have it.”

With a nod, he strode to the trailer further in the hangar, and soon emerged from the silver Airstream, steaming cup in hand, which he set on the small table beside the couch, where she had settled. “Just ignore me and do what you have to do.”

“Thank you for letting me intrude on your space.”

“No problem, you’re a very welcome change from my usual routine and company.”

She placed a hand on her heart, “Gee, you sure do know how to make a girl feel special.”

A mischievous light entered those beautiful eyes of his, and he leaned down, placing a hand on the back of the couch, making her crane her head up to look at him. “Oh, you haven’t seen anything yet.”

She swallowed thickly, and he glanced down, tracking the movement, but her “Is that so, Captain?” had his eyes meeting hers in a flash.

“Yeah, I’d say that’s so.” The slight rasp in his voice could have been a trick of her imagination, but before she could think about it, he cleared his throat and stepped back. “I’ll let you get to work.

Like I said, just ignore me,” he said, tone light once more.

She wasn’t sure if ignoring him was completely possible, but she replied, “I’ll call you if I need your opinion on anything.”

He threw her an insouciant salute, before heading off into the depths of his hangar.

The blinking cursor of her laptop was just as evil as it always was, but it didn’t seem so daunting here, so she buckled down, beginning to shave out some progress with the soft sounds of tools in the background—it wasn’t as much as she’d like, but anything was better than what she’d been doing, or rather, not been doing the last few days.

After an hour of sitting and writing, she stretched and stood, looking for Pete, curious as to what he was up to.

“Pete?” she called out.

“I’m back here!”

She followed the sound of his voice to a workbench near a sink in the recesses of the hangar; he was looking through a jar of screws, placing the contents into several smaller jars. “You make any progress with the writing?”

“Mm-hmm—not as much as I’d like, but it’s something; I just wanted to stand and stretch for a bit, take a little break from my screen.

What are you doing?”

“I’m working on some upgrades to one of my bikes, but I, uh, got a little sidetracked and I am currently sorting my screw collection,” he sheepishly said.

“Ah,” she nodded, “I know the feeling, the side quest that you absolutely have to complete before you can do anything else.”

“Yeah,” he grinned, “it’s crazy, isn’t it?”

She laughed, a frown soon creasing her brow as she happened to look off to the side.

Involuntarily, she stepped closer to the photo-covered cork board on the wall, gaze fixed on a photo of a young, flight suit-clad Pete, helmet in hand, standing in front of a jet, a tall, familiar-looking man next to him.

The other man was the spitting image of Pete’s son, the only difference perhaps being perhaps ever-so-slightly lighter and straighter hair.

“Bradley looks exactly like him, doesn’t he?” Pete’s voice intruded on her confusion.

She looked to her left to see him standing beside her, an old grief shining in his eyes.

“Yes, he does,” she breathed carefully, knowing somehow that she was in different waters. “Who was he?”

“Nick Bradshaw—Goose—my backseater, back in the eighties, when I flew F-14s.

My brother in all but blood… Bradley’s father.”

The story he proceeded to tell was tragic and heartbreaking; she didn’t even have to see the muted grief in his eyes as he spoke to imagine the anguish he must have endured that day, having to hold Nick’s lifeless body in his arms for what undoubtedly felt like an eternity.

“I became Bradley’s legal guardian after his mother died of cancer, and… while there were a lot of rough years where we didn’t talk to each other, we made up late last year; came out stronger for it, I think.”

“I’m so sorry, Pete,” she breathed.

He smiled ruefully. “Wasn’t all bad, though; got some pretty good brothers out of all that, though I can’t say they’re all still here.”

The dots connected in her head. “The friends in high places?”

He nodded sadly. “My best friend—he was my wingman for decades until he became an Admiral, ended up the highest ranking one this side of the country, in fact.

He died shortly before Bradley and I made up; cancer.”

She didn’t know what possessed her, but she reached for his hand, lacing their fingers together.

His breath hitched, and he looked down at their linked hands, before turning glassy eyes to her.

She was caught in that piercing gaze, which seemed to look right into her soul, and something told her that she was incredibly lucky to be seeing this vulnerability.

The weight of that was almost enough to bring her to her knees, but she pushed that aside in favor trying to ease the sadness in his eyes. “Cancer really fucking sucks, doesn’t it?”

He burst into a watery laugh. “Yes, it fucking does.”

She laughed along with him, squeezing his hand, making the callouses on his palm press against the soft skin of hers. “You want some help with your screw sorting?”

He sniffled, chuckling, “I feel like you’re using me as a distraction.”

“Yes, I absolutely am; are you complaining?”

Pete looked down at the floor, shaking his head with a soft smile. “Not at all, but I’m giving you five minutes before I make you write again, I’m not about to be blamed for any lack of progress.”

True to his word, after the five minutes were up, he shuffled her off to the couch, and she was glad that he wasn’t enabling her procrastination, thankfully able to make a fair bit of progress from there.

Some time later, while in the middle of spell checking what she’d written, she looked up to see Pete place a fresh cup of coffee next to her before sitting in a chair opposite her, picking up a small stack of paperwork and a pen from the coffee table. “Just pretend I’m not here,” he whispered.

For a while, they worked together in silence, as the California sun set, but soon, curiosity began dogging her thoughts. “Doesn’t your wife mind that you’re here late?” she asked.

His gaze almost audibly snapped to hers, his jaw working as he seemed to carefully consider his answer. “…I’m not married.”

Her traitorous heart skipped a beat. “Girlfriend?”

“Don’t have one of those either,” he casually replied. “How about you?

Anyone waiting for you back in San Bernardino?”

She took a deep breath. “Not unless you count my neighbor, Mrs. Moscovitz.

She gets worried when I don’t come home before ten.”

A faint smile crossed his lips. “Good neighbors are hard to come by.”

“That they are.”

They worked in silence for another half hour before she stood and stretched; it was beginning to get dark, and while she was a little more confident driving the desert roads, she wanted to hit the highway before the sun fully set.

“Going now?” Pete asked.

“I want to hit the highway before it gets really dark.”

He smiled ruefully, “I understand, we got to get you back safe, I don’t want Mrs. Moscovitz to kick my ass.”

“And she could, believe me,” she laughed, gathering her things, and exactly like last time, Pete escorted her to her car, opening the door for her.

It was when she turned to face him that a thought body-slammed her. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“I’ve been writing a lot here, and I’ve thought of some of the best moments here, actually.

Um… I guess what I’m trying to ask is… would you mind if we made this—me coming over to write—a regular thing?”

He blinked, seemingly taken aback.

“If I’ve overstepped, please pretend I never—”

“I’m here every weekend, from Friday night until Sunday morning,” he interrupted.

“So that’s a yes?”

“Yeah, it’s a yes.”

“Okay,” she breathed, grinning. “I’ll see you next week, then.”

He matched her grin, “I look forward to it.”

Over the next three months, she made regular weekend visits to the hangar, the two of them learning each other, slowly growing closer as she told him about her life growing up in a family of pilots, her years as a teacher, leaving more and more of her heart behind in the desert each time.

Her heart panged remembering the day he told her why the P-51 was named Bianca.

“Uh, __?

I, er, kind of need some help,” Pete called.

Immediately rising from the couch, she walked over to where he was standing next to Bianca, hands deep in her engine. “What do you need?”

“Could you hand me that wrench there that’s out on the cart?”

After handing it off, a few turns of the wrench later, he stepped back, admiring the old girl while wiping his hands with a rag. “There we go, sweetheart, that’s more like it.”

“You spoil her, you know?” she shook her head.

“How can I not spoil her—look at her!” he replied, with a mock-affronted expression.

“Yeah, she is gorgeous, isn’t she?” she said, turning to look at the marvel of engineering Bianca was.

“She is,” he murmured, and something in his tone made her look back at him, only to see he also had turned to look at Bianca.

“Why’d you name her Bianca?” she asked, wanting to draw out the conversation before he would undoubtedly shoo her back to writing.

He sighed wistfully, “I named her after my mother.

Her name was Bianca Rivelli; Mitchell after she married my dad, of course.

She was from South Philadelphia—Little Italy in that part of town—and she met my dad when she was visiting friends in New York City during Fleet Week; it was love at first sight, she always said.” He hesitated, and a pit sank in her stomach. “She uh, passed from a heart attack when I was seven, but I know that it was heartbreak that really took her, after my dad was shot down and killed in Vietnam and branded a traitor, all because he died during an off-the-books mission.

She tried so hard to hang on for me, I know, and I don’t blame her for leaving—not anymore, not for decades—and when I got the P-51, I wanted to commemorate her somehow.

So I named her Bianca.”

She didn’t even think twice before lunging and pulling Pete into a hug.

He stood stiffly for a moment, and she was just about to pull away, but then he positively sank into the embrace, wrapping his arms around her.

“You’ve suffered so much pain, and it only made you kind,” she sniffled after a long while.

“I can still be an asshole sometimes, you know?” he said, voice wavering.

“Maybe, but you’re still unbelievably kind.”

Now, as she was once again driving to the hangar, trepidation settled at the forefront of her mind; she was nearing the end of the novel, and in fact, she was sure she’d finish it today; but what would happen without a reason to visit Pete?

This was the twenty-first century, a woman had the right to tell a man if she was interested in him, but if he didn’t feel the same, she might just torpedo the best friendship she’d had in a long time; she loved to talk to him, spending time with him was the easiest thing in the world, and not having that anymore seemed incomprehensible.

The hangar drew closer and closer, but she was getting more and more confused, and so decided to engage in the oldest, most revered of writerly traditions: procrastination.

She’d just hope that she’d find the opportunity, the thoughts, and more importantly, the courage, to say something to him.

Fear and nervousness dominated her emotions as she walked into the quiet hangar—much too quiet for a space inhabited by someone like Pete Mitchell.

“Pete?”

“You’re right on time,” he breezily said, coming out of the Airstream, cup of coffee in hand, “something told me to make your coffee already, and here you are!”

“Seems like you’re getting ESP,” she lightly replied, trying to belie the mess of emotions she was feeling.

“I don’t know about all that—maybe just for you,” he softly laughed, his eyes endearingly crinkling at the corners like they always did when he was genuinely happy.

And if that didn’t make her heart absolutely melt—truly, how this man was not married or in a relationship at this point, she didn’t know.

She settled into what she had dared to start thinking of as her “spot” on the couch, the coffee cup he was holding clinking onto the table beside her the next second.

“I’ll let you get to it,” he nodded, squirreling off to a corner of the hangar before she could get a word in edgewise.

With nothing else for it, she reluctantly began writing, and in a sick twist of fate, the words came easily, when she most wanted them not to come, in hopes of drawing this status quo out for just one more week.

One more week of driving to this lonely desert hangar, one more week of seeing those ubiquitous white t-shirts and Levi’s, one more week of hearing his voice, seeing his smile when he caught sight of her.

But fate was cold and cruel, and after roughly two hours, the draft was finished.

Tears welled in her eyes, but for completely different reasons than she would have said when she first began rewriting her Uncle Joe’s story.

“Hey, what’s wrong?

What happened?”

She looked up into Pete’s warm, concerned gaze, and didn’t that just make things worse? “I—I finished the draft.

It’s done,” she croaked.

“Hey, congratulations!

That’s great!” he encouraged, a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“Yeah… yeah, it is.

I… I can’t believe it’s over… and I’m really feeling sad right now,” she numbly breathed, deciding for a little honesty.

He moved to sit beside her, his leg pressed against hers, and her breath caught at the proximity.

“Well, that’s understandable, you’ve devoted a lot of time to this, and it’s something very important to you,” he softly replied. “But hey, I have every confidence that this is going to be a bestseller—every publisher is going to want you, and won’t that make everything you went through to get to this point worth it?”

His words made her remember her PopPop, when he encouraged her to write about Uncle Joe and Céline, shortly before he died, and it made her smile despite herself. “It will.”

“That’s the spirit.” He reached up, cupping her cheek, thumb delicately brushing away a tear she didn’t even know had fallen, and almost subconsciously, she leaned into his touch.

He seemed to swallow reflexively, eyes quickly darting down before he met her gaze again and lowered his hand from her cheek, leaving her feeling bereft. “Uh, since it’s not every day one finishes a first draft and all,” Pete gestured, “how—how would you feel about taking a little celebratory flight?”

Her eyes widened. “In—in the—in Bianca?”

A smile she would venture to call sad inexplicably crossed his face. “Mm-hmm.”

“I’d love that.”

What better way to celebrate finishing her granduncle’s story than a flight in the same plane he flew?

At the very least, if she crashed and burned her friendship with Pete because she happened to find some heretofore unknown reservoir of courage, she’d have something shining and beautiful to remember him by.

It felt absolutely surreal to sit in Bianca’s backseat, and it didn’t feel any less surreal as they cruised through the air.

Sitting up here, over two thousand feet above the ground, while she was happy with the direction she’d taken in her life, she felt she now truly understood why the better part of her family had dedicated themselves to the skies.

It was breathtaking and awe inspiring; with the mountainous desert vista out below, the clear blue sky above, she thought she’d never seen anything so beautiful in her life.

To get to see this every day, and to have the controls of a marvel of engineering beneath your hands as a pilot… the feeling was surely beyond exhilarating.

“How you doing back there?” Pete asked, voice tinny through the headphones.

“Just perfect—I can really understand now why you and my family do this for a living, it’s amazing up here.”

“I know, right?

There’s nothing like it,” he breathed, and she could almost feel the joy in his voice.

They flew on in easy silence for a while before he broke it again. “So, I have a question for you; we can keep flying nice and easy like this until you want to land or until we have to, or… we can have some fun—nothing like what I did at Apple Valley, but uh, it’ll definitely be a little bit more exciting than nice and easy.”

As much as she wanted to immediately say yes, she was still a little apprehensive. “You promise not to make me throw up?”

“Swear on my wings,” he solemnly promised, “and if you feel uncomfortable during anything, all you have to do is let me know, and I’ll immediately level off.”

She inhaled and exhaled deeply. “…Alright, go for it.”

“Okay, here we go!” Gently, he brought Bianca into a sweeping banked descent, and from there, while she was sure it was nothing for Pete, who’d done far more daring things in Bianca, and surely in his career as a naval aviator, this was the most thrilling thing she’d ever experienced in her life.

Before she knew it, Pete said, “We’ll have to land in fifteen minutes, so I’ll bring us back around, okay?”

Her heart sank. “So soon?”

He laughed, “We’ve been up here for almost an hour and a half.”

It felt like they just got up here. “What?!”

“Time flies when you’re having fun!”

“You’re corny, Pete Mitchell,” she chuckled.

“Guilty as charged!”

But the joyful mood didn’t last long—soon, the hangar and runway were in sight, and sadness suddenly overwhelmed her; she breathed mournfully, “How can I ever thank you for everything?”

“No need to thank me,” he replied, seemingly overtaken by the same sadness she was, though it didn’t have any bearing on how smoothly he brought Bianca onto the tarmac, and how he brought her back into the hangar.

The leaden pit in her heart and stomach seemed to grow even heavier; she’d been waiting the whole day for the time and courage to tell him how she felt, but she wasn’t able to find a moment or the courage to speak, and now her chances were slipping away, the sudden sound of silence as the engine cut and the canopy slid back feeling like the first handful of earth dropped on a casket.

“You need any help?” Pete’s voice intruded on her thoughts.

“No, I got it.” It wasn’t completely the truth, but anything to draw out the moments she had left.

With a nod, Pete eased himself up out of the cockpit and slid down the wing.

Finally, she was able to unclip herself from her harness and stand up, easing herself onto the wing—

“Ahhh!” she yelped, having lost her foothold on the wing, abruptly sliding down the warm metal, and then—

She suddenly stopped, toes just touching the ground, pressed against a firm chest, her hands fisting in white cotton, warm arms wrapped around her waist.

It was almost a replay of the day she met Pete, and it felt like fate was giving her one final chance.

She looked up into his eyes, knowing that if she didn’t say anything now, she never would. “Pete, I—”

The words died in her throat as he moved his hand to cup her cheek like he had two hours ago, and just like two hours ago, she leaned into the warmth of his touch, her breath hitching as she felt the gentleness with which his rough, calloused palm caressed her cheek.

He scanned her face, searching for something, and seemingly finding it, his viridescent gaze lighted on her lips, which had her heart stuttering in her chest and the air shuddering from her lungs.

“Don’t think, just do,” he muttered, leaning in, and like lightning, her mind sharpened; she leaned forward, pulling him the minuscule distance to her with a hand on his neck.

Suddenly, she found herself taking flight in a completely different way from five minutes ago.

Pete kissed her like he flew; with complete dedication, and like this was the last moment of pure, unrivaled, unfettered joy he’d ever have again, and her knees went weak, an entirely different thrill rushing through her, as she felt him push her up against Bianca’s fuselage.

She was breathless, she was taking the first breath of air she’d ever had—it was fire, it was light, it was incandescent.

She only realized the burn in her lungs when he drew back, both of them gasping for breath.

“God, you don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do that,” he breathed, voice deep and rough, eyes dark.

An actual whimper fell from her lips, and she replied, “Holy shit, I don’t care if it’s done, that’s definitely going in the book.”

He huffed a low chuckle, that devastating smirk on his face. “In that case, you want a little more inspiration?”

“Oh hell, yes,” she breathed, and pulled him back into her.

The End

Previous Part

I very much had an inner debate as to whether the ending of this story was too similar to that of TG:M, but after a lot of soul searching, I decided that this was the only conceivable way to end this.

It starts with the P-51, and it ends with her.

You could call her Mav’s wingwoman, I suppose.

The Hangar, as I learned from an interview I will not be able to dig up from my YouTube history, is actually owned by Tom himself.

He said it in the aforementioned interview, and I honestly should have seen it coming.

The hangar was even featured in the background of the iconic video where Tom took James Corden flying in the P-51, and I am somewhat ashamed to say that I recognized it from shots where you only saw the corner of the building.

Yeah, do me a favor and please don’t bring that up.

“Crispin Crispianish” is a reference to the St. Crispin’s Day speech from Shakespeare’s “Henry V”, from which the title of the WWII book and series “Band of Brothers” is taken.

“Turn and burn” is a colloquial aviation saying which describes being cleared to takeoff from the runway generally without having to hold short of it for any duration of time, which leads to the aircraft immediately turning onto the runway from the taxiway shortly before the pilots push the engine thrust levers to Take Off/Go Around, which produces maximum thrust, and presto change-o, you have a generally expedited takeoff.

“You’d be surprised,” is absolutely a reference to Bradley almost punching Jake’s lights out in TG:M.

Yes, I am aware of the amount of art imitating life here; my writer and myself were very much twinning in our frustration with what we were writing.

You can pry ADHD/Neurodivergent/Genius IQ Mav from my cold, dead hands.

Here we have the answer to why the P-51 is named “Bianca” in my story.

I headcanon Mav has Italian heritage, and I thought this would be a nice way to put it in here.

I also made his mom from Philadelphia, because there’s a Top Gun ‘86 costume test shot of Tom wearing an Eagles sweatshirt, and as a Philly-adjacent girl, I had to somehow reference that even obliquely.

“You’ve suffered so much pain, and it only made you kind,” is an adaptation of a line from “Doctor Who”, which I thought perfectly describes Mav.

Taglist

@ohtobemare

@callsign-skydancer

@permanentlyexhaustedpigeon88

@tadomikiku

@malindacath

@aviatorobsessed

@lynnevanss

@djs8891

If you’d like to join my taglist, just send me an ask!

[the-authoress-writes]

Up Where We Belong Part Two

Pete “Maverick” Mitchell x Writer!reader

Up Where We Belong Masterlist

Synopsis: When a writer experiencing horrible writer’s block goes to the Apple Valley Airshow for inspiration, she meets a certain older, daring naval aviator, leading to maybe a little more than just inspiration.

Warnings: Age gap (reader is in their late thirties to early forties), some to-be-expected cursing, depiction of the beginnings of a panic attack (it doesn’t become a full blown one).

But really, this is just fluff.

Author’s Note: I intended this to be a two part story, but as always, it didn’t turn out that way (my brain is like a mushroom farm at this point), and the third part of this (fingers crossed), is going to be the final part.

I’m choosing to look on the bright side and I’m telling myself I’m more than halfway done with this.

*sighs in frustrated writer*

This part is a little more MavDad than shippy, but it’s where this wanted to go, so…

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Again, I name a story after a song, from another movie about the Navy, funnily enough.

(Only three of my stories on my masterlist are not named after songs)

I can’t stop, apparently.

So here we go!

Pete “Maverick” Mitchell had been expecting a normal day when he met her.

Or, well, as normal as a day could get for him.

It was a bright and sunny weekend at the Apple Valley Airshow, where Mav had just flown an aerobatic sequence for the gathered crowds in Bianca, his beloved P-51, and Bradley had not taken much convincing to come out for a day with his dad and the chance to see planes, despite the fact that he was already around them Monday to Friday.

Most aviators were plane nerds after all, and airshows like these were heaven for aviators like him and Bradley.

“You okay back there, Baby Goose?” Mav asked through the comms, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the engine of the P-51.

“Yeah—yeah, I’m fine,” Bradley breathlessly replied from the backseat, his exhale turning into a weak chuckle. “You’re crazy, you know that, right, Dad?”

“Your father and uncles might have mentioned that a few times,” Mav grinned.

He gracefully looped the venerable Mustang around and brought her smoothly onto the runway, mindful of the P-51’s unstrengthened landing gear, gently flaring the aircraft so she caressed the tarmac, unlike the unflared, hard landing he instinctively would have done in any Navy aircraft.

After an uneventful taxi back to the flight line, he pushed the canopy back and climbed out of the cockpit, Bradley a second behind him.

“At least we didn’t have anyone shooting at us this time around,” Mav half-joked, patting his boy on the back, once he’d also jumped down from the wing.

“Thank Heaven for small mercies,” the younger man muttered.

“Come on, you can’t tell me you didn’t enjoy that, Brads.”

Bradley chewed the inside of his cheek, before amusement shone in his eyes, and he cracked a smile. “Okay, yeah, it was pretty cool.”

“She’s still got moves, huh?”

His son looked affectionately at the P-51. “Yeah, she does.

But it’s not the plane, it’s the pilot, isn’t it?”

“I’m willing to share when it’s this girl,” Mav grinned, patting her sun-warm silver fuselage.

After the two of them had stacked their parachutes and harnesses between the landing gear, Mav was busy putting the chocks on the wheels, when he heard a smooth female voice say, “Excuse me?”

“Yes?” Bradley replied.

“Is this the P-51 which flew a few minutes ago?

She is a P-51, right?”

“That’d be a yes to both questions, ma’am.”

A low, rich chuckle. “Are you the owner?”

Bradley scoffed amusedly. “Nah, that’ll be my dad.

Hey Dad, someone wants to talk to you!”

Mav ducked out from beneath the undercarriage and under a propeller, coming face to face with a very unexpected, but not unwelcome sight.

The first thing he noticed about the woman standing before him was her air of extreme competence, which immediately had him wanting to know more about her.

(He was decidedly ignoring the memory of Halo saying he had a competency kink after he’d told some stories from when he was in relationships at a Dagger Squad get together [non-explicit; the Daggers, especially Bradley, didn’t need to hear… intimate details of his life, after all].)

A quick appraisal had him estimating her to be older than Bradley, but younger than him.

She was beautiful, with lips glossed just right, shining, lush hair that he could already imagine running his hand through, a smile he could look at forever, and a figure that ticked all his proverbial boxes, visible even with her long, loose brown cardigan and cream button-down shirt over black jeans.

But what hit him like Mach 10 (and he would know) was the spark in her eyes, keen and intelligent, and they held a warmth and passion that called to him.

“Hi,” he began, extending his hand, ignoring the fact that he was stunned by this woman so he could attempt to be his usual self.

He’d been delighted to show her around Bianca, and he even went so far as to let her sit in the old girl.

Mav had not been expecting what she said about the book she was writing—her granduncle’s story hit home on practically every level possible.

He was absolutely honest with her when he said he wanted to help, but… he’d absolutely be lying if he said he didn’t give it with the hope that she’d call him in the first place.

It’d been years since he’d felt like this about someone, and he tried to stifle a smile as he recalled how they’d collided on Bianca’s wing, his quick reflexes preventing them from falling off the wing with a snapped-out right hand on the cockpit edge, his left instinctually protectively pressing her against him.

He’d never forget the way his heart raced as he realized their proximity, his battle-honed wits prompting him to swiftly move his hand before she could register his touch, though he kept his arm close enough to catch her if she began to slip off the trailing edge.

“What’s with that look, Dad?”

Bradley’s voice brought Mav back to the present, where he sat on his favorite chair in his hangar, Bianca’s flight log book in his right hand, pen in his left. “What look?”

Bradley shut the locker for the safety gear, the last thing on the P-51’s post-flight checklist, and strode over to the couch opposite. “You look sappy.”

“I’m just happy I had a great day flying in my girl, and with my Baby Goose, no less.” It was not a lie at all, but it wasn’t the whole truth either.

Any other person would have probably bought that excuse, but Bradley was one of the very few people he’d ever met in his life who could read him like a book in every situation, a skill unfortunately inherited from his father. “Uh-huh, sure, I think you’re just thinking about __,” his son incisively replied.

Mav absently bit his lip, “…That obvious, kid?”

“…It’s about as obvious as an F-14 in cloudless sky at 2,000 feet.”

“So, pretty damn obvious,” he squinted speculatively.

“Yeah.

You guys were like something out of a romcom, honestly.

Was that thing on the wing on purpose?” Bradley grinned.

“No, it wasn’t,” he smiled.

“Because you know, if you were any shorter, you might’ve ended up kissing her.”

Mav felt himself turn a little red, but was still amused despite himself. “Shut up.”

Heedless, Bradley continued, “You would have liked that, I’m sure.”

“You’re just as bad as your father,” he sighed.

His gosling’s grin turned sentimental. “Learned it from both of them.”

Bradley had openly called him “Dad” for years before, and again after their reconciliation, but statements like that never failed to warm his heart.

Helpless, Mav stood, and, going over to his son, stooped slightly to place a hand on his shoulder and a kiss at his temple. “Love you, Baby Goose.”

Before he could pull away, Bradley wrapped both arms tightly around him. “Love you too, Dad.

Mav was more than content to let the moment sit, the two of them still making up for almost twenty years of no hugs from the other.

Bradley eventually broke the silence with, “I’ll go heat up that pizza we got from the grocery last night, Dad, how about that?”

He frowned, pulling back, “I can do that, B,—”

“I’ll do it, Dad, you just sit and relax,” Bradley said, already walking towards the Airstream, and just as he was about to step inside the silver trailer, the kid fired off, “Think about your writer!”

Mav spluttered, looking incredulously at the Airstream’s door.

Bradley was really too much like Goose and him, he chuckled silently to himself.

The weekend’s end saw the two of them return to the duplex he and Bradley had bought together last year, sitting about fifteen minutes drive in the Bronco (about half that on the Ninja, at full Mav power) away from TOPGUN, where they were both posted as instructors; Mav himself permanently, Bradley, for a three-year period before his next deployment cycle.

Monday dawned, and he found himself glancing at the screen of his phone every time it dinged, so much so, that said son repeatedly glanced between him and the cellphone laid out on the Officer’s Mess Hall table over lunch.

“What?” Mav asked, confused at the younger man’s consterned expression.

“Who are you, and what have you done with my Dad?

You have not looked away from your phone since we sat down, Mav.

You used to have no idea what TikTok was, and now you look like Hangman after he posts a new photo on Insta, and I would know—God, he was insufferable that time in Sigonella.”

“…I’m guessing Insta is Instagraph?”

Bradley made a noise quite like his callsign. “l—you don’t even—Instagram, Mav, Instagram.

It’s like you’re expecting a call or so—” brown eyes excitedly widened as dots were abruptly connected, “—ohh shit; you gave her your number, didn’t you, your writer?”

Mav rolled his eyes, “She’s not my writer, Brads, but I… I did give her my number just in case she needed more help with—research.”

“Oh, research, sure, Mav; I bet you’d love to help her with her research,” the younger man chortled.

“You sound like your Uncle Slider.”

“Uh-huh—” Bradley brushed off, “we’re getting off topic here, did she say she’d call you or something?”

“No, she didn’t.

I told her to call if she needed me.” He wondered if, instead of being subtle, he should have just out and asked her to call him—or even just asked her out directly; the Maverick of over thirty years ago would have.

His son’s eyes comically widened. “Please, for the love of God, tell me you did not say it like that—that is as bad as you serenading that ex of yours with, of all the songs, “Abracadabra” by The Steve Miller Band.”

“Hey, that’s a good song!” Mav protested.

“It’s also creepy as hell—‘I wanna reach out and grab ya’?

Tell me you hear that?!”

Well, when the lyrics were said like that… “In hindsight, I hear it, no, I did not say it like that, and now who’s getting off topic, Roo?”

“Fine—so you were playing subtle, huh?” Bradley wrinkled his nose, tilting his head from side to side. “Well, we’ll just have to see if the subtle play works, because the Maverick charm was on max power, so you likely made an impression—”

“Thanks, kid?”

“—so I’d say… there’s a sixty-five percent chance she’ll call you,” was the determination.

Mav paused and raised an eyebrow. “Only sixty-five?”

“I’m taking into account the variable that she might not go for… people like you, you know.”

“…No.”

Mav could see both himself and Nick in Bradley’s shit-eating grin. “Old men.”

“An old man, huh?

Well, this is an old man who can still kick the asses of people less than half his age, and you too, Brads, six ways to Sunday, in the air or on the mats.”

A fork promptly got brandished daringly. “I almost had you when we did that demo on the death spiral two weeks ago, Dad, and if you hadn’t slipped my headlock on Wednesday, I’d have gotten you to tap out.”

Mav reached over and affectionately ruffled his son’s brown curls. “Almost only works with grenades, Baby Goose; now eat your shitty mashed potatoes.”

The week ticked by, and after every hop, he tried not to make it too obvious to Bradley, whose locker was right next to his in the Instructor’s Locker Room, that his phone was the first thing he checked.

By Wednesday evening, he was starting to lose what hope he had, and he ignored his son’s sad look as he surreptitiously looked at his phone.

On Thursday evening, Bradley slung an arm around his shoulder as they walked together to the parking lot. “I know I give you shit about being old, Dad, but you’ve still got more than enough charm and looks for women to be attracted to you.

I mean, you should have heard the stuff Phoe and Halo were saying about you during the detachment training—ugh, especially after Dogfight Football.

The thirst was real.”

At his confused look, Bradley continued, “Long story short, they said you were—bleh—hot.

I’m not repeating exactly what they said, even though I can, it’s all seared into my memory, unfortunately,” he finished, shuddering.

Mav laughed, “I’m sorry for the trauma, but, what, uh, brought this train of thought on, Baby Goose?”

He was pressed closer into a Hawaiian shirt-clad side. “I know you’re sad about not getting called by your writer.”

Knowing it was useless to deny it, he shook his head, “I won’t lie and say it doesn’t sting, because I really thought we had a connection, but it’s probably for the best, because I’m… well, you know.”

“No, I don’t,” his son adamantly stated. “Because you’re… kind and loving, with a heart about a billion sizes too big for his body, who gives so much of himself in literally everything—except maybe following orders; any woman would be happy with you.”

Mav reached and gave the vague vicinity of a shoulder a loving pat. “You give me too much credit.”

“No, Dad, you would make someone very happy—I want to see you happy,” Bradley squeezed a Nomex jacketed arm.

“I am happy, kiddo;” he cheerfully stated, “I can fly, I have the rest of the Flyboys, the Daggers, Bianca, and most importantly, I have you, my not-so little boy, who’s become a better man than I could have hoped.”

Bradley halted in his tracks, and tugged him into a hug with a laugh that could have been a sob. “Fuck, Dad, how do you just say shit like that?”

“Like what, that I’m so proud of you?” Mav beamed.

His son’s heatless “Shut up, will you, old man?” sounded suspiciously wobbly, but Mav chose not to remark on it, and hugged back before they continued walking after a moment.

“But back to my point,” the younger man pointed, “unless there’s something you’re not telling me about your relationship with Bianca, she doesn’t count as a woman in your life.

I know you have me, the Daggers, and the Flyboys, but it’s different from being in love and getting that love back.” Bradley suddenly snapped his fingers, “I know, I should start you a dating app profile!”

“Oh no, I’ve heard horror stories about dating apps, and I’m not desperate, Baby Goose.”

Bradley threw both hands up, “It’s not about desperation, Hangman has—okay, that’s not a good example—but you know, you need to put yourself out there more.

Meet someone.

Come on, Dad, please?”

The kid looked so hopeful, he couldn’t outright say no. “I’ll think about it.”

“Yes!

It’s not a no, I’ll take it.

I’ll look through the photos at the hangar tomorrow night—we gotta pick the right one—that can make or break things!

Maybe one of you in the dress whites or blues—or hey, ladies love the flight suit, and it’ll be even better if you’re in front of your F-18…”

At Bradley’s musing, Mav had a smile on his face all the way to his Kawasaki, and the whole way home, trailing in the Bronco’s wake.

After work early Friday evening, both men began the preparations for their weekly getaway to the hangar, packing their respective bags with whatever they deemed necessary for a two-day stay in the Mojave.

Mav was busying himself with checking his duffel before he hopped in the shower, when he heard clattering from his kitchen, and immediately, a dismayed “Damn it!” rang through the house.

“You okay, kiddo?” he called out.

“Yeah, I just—we’re out of Doritos!”

As amusing as it sounded, that did constitute a little bit of an emergency—the triangular chips were Bradley’s go-to snack, ever since he was a child, and he’d be bemoaning the lack of them the whole two days at the hangar if they really were out. “Did you check your kitchen?”

“I looked there first—we can’t leave without Doritos, Dad!”

A soft chuckle escaped him. “You still have time to go grab some if you want, I still have to take a shower, Brads,” he offered.

“Good idea, I’ll just go to the store and grab some, be right back!”

“Okay, drive safe!”

“Always!”

Mav waited to hear his front door shut before turning for his bathroom and starting the shower, tossing his shirt in the hamper on the way.

A few minutes later, he’d just begun to rinse off when he heard a faint noise from downstairs; his phone was ringing, he realized.

He initially paid it no mind—he’d been getting scam calls the last few days, which always ended up disappointing him—but then… it kept ringing.

And ringing.

And ringing.

And ringing.

Hope suddenly bloomed in his chest, and he hurried to get out of the shower.

He nearly faceplanted on his own bathroom floor in his haste, stumbling when his lunge for his towel missed, but he was able to keep himself upright and the second attempt had the fabric in his hand, then around his waist.

Mav dashed out the bathroom and down the stairs, tapping the green “accept call” button.

“Pete Mitchell,” he spoke into his phone, trying not to sound like he’d just run a marathon while his chest heaved.

A slight pause later, a hesitant “Hi,” came over the phone, and his heart leapt. “I don’t know if you remember me, we met at the Apple Valley Airshow—”

She had to be joking if she thought she was that easily forgettable. “__, right?

The writer,” he replied, pushing the dripping strands of his hair out of his face.

“Yeah, that’s me, you said I could call if I had any questions.”

“Uh-huh.

I’m guessing you have one,” he smiled.

The following invite to the hangar was twofold; he’d be able to help her without the hassle of dealing with emails or something like that, and he’d be able to gauge if she was actually interested in him.

He remembered the way she’d slightly frozen, when he stepped out from under Bianca, how she’d glanced at his hand when he’d extended it for a handshake.

But he’d been wrong about a great many things before, and he didn’t want to immediately assume she was interested, because everyone knew what the first three letters of assume were, and for all he knew, she really just needed help.

Regardless, he smiled while they bantered as easily as breathing; it was invigorating, and… maybe a little bit of a turn-on, if he was honest.

(Maybe Halo was right.)

Shortly after they said goodbye, Mav sent the address of the hangar with a “How does 3:30 sound to you?” to her number, and three beats after it registered delivered, a “That’s perfect—see you tomorrow 😊” message came in, which had him sigh like a teenager as he leaned against the counter for a moment, before he pushed off to get dressed.

By the time Bradley came back with four grocery bags full of Doritos, from two different groceries, Mav was already dressed in his usual t-shirt and jeans, ready to go. “You got enough Doritos there, Baby Goose?” he gawked at the sheer amount of chips.

“I’m restocking us, Dad, it’s not all for the weekend,” the younger man replied, emptying one grocery bag and a half into Mav’s snack cabinet. “I just need to put another bag and this half at mine, and the rest I’m taking.”

He bit down on his laughter and watched as his son dashed next door to stock his own snack cabinet, before returning in time to catch him staring at the “That’s perfect—see you tomorrow 😊” message on his phone.

“You’re looking sappy again,” Bradley squinted suspiciously at him. “It’s almost like you got a call from your writer.”

Mav tried to keep his face neutral, but as always, it was pointless with his gosling.

The kid’s eyes widened, “Holy shit, she did call you, didn’t she?!

Fuck, you still got it, Dad.”

He waved off, “There’s no guarantee she actually is interested in me like that, and she called me because she needs my help.”

“Oh, your help, of course,” Bradley grinned. “Well?

What’s the profile?”

Mav rolled his eyes. “She wrote a dogfight scene she can’t cut, and she wants to make sure the tactics are sound.

So I invited her to the hangar tomorrow so we don’t have to do any emails and stuff.”

The younger man whistled, impressed. “That was smooth as hell, Dad.

You have an idea of when she’s coming over?”

“1530ish.”

Bradley planted his hands on his hips with a sigh. “Well, that’s a good amount of time, but we’ll still have some work to do.”

“Work—what are you planning, Baby Goose?”

“We have to make the hangar a little neater than usual—make you seem like a responsible adult,” his son replied, as if it were the most obvious thing.

Mav burst into laughter while picking up his duffel. “If your father, your uncles, and nearly forty years in the Navy couldn’t do that, what makes you think spiffing up the hangar could?”

“Worth a shot, you never know—she might be fooled,” Bradley muttered, locking Mav’s front door behind them both.

“I heard that!”

When the afternoon set over the hangar the next day, now the neatest it’d been in a long time (admittedly, it wasn’t that bad, Mav just had a particular system, which didn’t much look like one in the first place), Bradley clapped his hands, “Now, I’m going to head into town, Dad.”

“What for?”

“Dad, your writer is coming in about ten minutes, and the last thing you need is me cramping your style, so I’m going to head into town, I’ll be back at around… let’s call it 2345–please don’t be naked when I come back—”

“Bradley!” Mav exclaimed, a little bit scandalized, though they were both hardly virginal.

“—and, and, prior notice of if I shouldn’t come back would be greatly appreciated.”

“Bradley!”

“What?

I’m just covering the bases.”

“There’s no bases to cover here, I’m just going to review her scene,” he replied.

“Annnd?” the younger man deadpanned.

“And then… we’ll see what happens.

But all I know is I’m not about to—whatever you’re thinking is going to happen.” Mav sighed, picking up a screwdriver that had fallen off the maintenance cart next to Bianca, and placed it back in the toolbox. “And I don’t… this probably isn’t going to go anywhere, because—I’m pushing sixty, kiddo, and really… I don’t think I have casual—anything—left in me anymore.”

Bradley slowly nodded, a proud look on his face. “Good for you, Dad.”

“Yeah?”

“Mm-hmm,” he replied, nodding, mustache quirking up. “I’m happy you know what you want.

But you gotta be more optimistic than this, because who knows, this could lead to your more-than casual something.” Bradley slapped him on the arm, “Come on, where’s the ‘I’m going anyway’ Maverick Mitchell who proved he could fly a suicide mission on a crazy profile, with fifteen seconds to spare?”

Mav scoffed self-deprecatingly, “Doing crazy pilot shit; that makes sense to me, Baby Goose, but… relationships—I’ve always FUBAR-ed them.

Oh God, I don’t actually know what I was thinking, giving her my number—this was a mistake,” he muttered, thoughts beginning to spiral as his breathing picked up.

Bradley grabbed both his arms, squeezing them to ground him. “Hey—hey, Dad, look at me—look at me.

Take a breath.

You did not make a mistake, you made a connection with someone, you offered to help them, and she took you up on the offer.

At the least, you help someone in need, and you come out the other side with a friend; if everything goes well, maybe you get more than friendship.

But like you said, you’re just checking the scene she’s having trouble with, like she asked.

Don’t put pressure on yourself—just see what happens.

You got this, Dad.”

“I got this,” Mav murmured, partly confirming his son’s statement, partly reassuring himself, and partly asking if he did, indeed “got” it.

“You got this; come here.” Bradley pulled him into a tight hug, one to which Mav clung, while he got ahold of himself.

When he pulled back from his son’s embrace and repeated “I got this,” a minute or so later, it was still slightly shaky, but held some of the classic Maverick confidence.

“That’s the spirit.” The younger man checked his watch, wincing. “I don’t want to cramp your style, and I’m cutting it close, but I don’t want to leave you if you’re going to spiral again.

You good, Dad?”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “I’ll be okay.”

“You sure?” Bradley frowned.

“Yeah, I’ll just check on Bianca a little while I’m waiting.”

His son exhaled heavily. “You do that, alright?

Don’t get in your head—don’t think, just do, remember?”

“I remember,” Mav smirked.

“Okay.

I’m gonna go now.” Bradley cautiously backed out of the hangar, as if ready to pull him into another hug if he showed the slightest tell of another mental spiral. “Call me if I shouldn’t come back, and remember, 2345!

Please don’t be naked!!”

“Go!!” Mav chuckled, feeling mostly like himself again, if not slightly nervous.

“Love you!”

“Love you more, kiddo!”

Soon, the sound of the Bronco’s engine rumbled through the dry air before it faded, leaving the air still and silent except for the distant sounds of the Mojave.

Before his and Bradley’s reconciliation, he was used to the stillness and silence, a consequence of choosing to make the hangar his home a few years ago, upon his assignment as a test pilot at NAWS China Lake, despite the long commute; he’d never liked base housing, and avoided it like the plague.

He’d even found the stillness and quiet comforting in a sadistic way, thought it was maybe something he deserved in cynical moments.

But now, the hangar which Hondo had once referred to as his “Fortress of Solitude”, was a place of life, love, and joy, the old silence and stillness now the strange one.

Before he could think too much about his relationship with silence, he went to Bianca and started some busywork with her engine, allowing his mind to get lost—and more importantly, his body to relax—in the process.

He’d gotten so absorbed in his beloved plane’s maintenance that he almost missed the sound of an unfamiliar car pulling up to the hangar.

Immediately, his heart started racing again, but he’d accepted that for better or worse, this whole thing was going to play out as it would; if that involved him fucking something up, he just prayed he could fix it.

Moment of truth; the car door opened.

“Ghostrider, up and ready,” he muttered to himself.

“Hello?” she uncertainly called.

“In here,” he replied.

Mav swallowed thickly upon seeing her; he liked to think he had a decent memory, but his memory did no justice to her.

The desert afternoon light streaming in through the open hangar door haloed her in an otherworldly way, only making her even more beautiful to him, the breeze blowing her hair around and billowing her loose blouse.

His eyes were drawn to the little smile at the corner of her lips, and it was only because he’d been looking there, that he realized she was speaking.

“Hey, glad you could make it,” he brightly said, hoping that that wasn’t too out of left field from what she’d said, because he’d completely missed it.

Her smile widened, “Not going to miss it—for all I know, this is a one time opportunity.”

The replies that immediately came to mind sounded creepy, stupid, or worse, so he settled for, “Who said it was?”

She chuckled, lighting up her already sparkling gaze, biting her lip briefly before looking around the hangar, her eyes soon landing on Bianca. “Great place you’ve got here; must’ve been hard to get, though, with it being Navy land.”

“Not that hard when you’re got friends in high places.” Mav recalled the moment Ice and the Flyboys gave him the title to the hangar for his fortieth birthday, which they were celebrating along with his promotion to Commander.

She tilted her head slightly, and he realized that she probably heard the somber tone in his voice—remembering Ice was still hard, but it was getting better.

“Anyway, uh,” he clapped his hands, pushing forward, “you had a scene that needs checking?”

She blinked as if clearing her head, and raised the leather messenger bag on her shoulder. “I have my laptop right here.”

Mav gestured to his couch, and as they moved towards it, he prayed that he wouldn’t somehow make a fool of himself today.

To be continued…

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Because the P-51 was an Air Force aircraft, her landing gear was not designed for hard, unflared Navy-style landings, which are flown in that manner for carrier operations.

However, even if naval aviators land on a full-length runway, carrier habits die hard, and if you watch planespotting streams, such as my favorite, L.A FLIGHTS, you can make reasonable guesses as to who was former Navy, as the landings will tend to have a shallower flare at landing.

Chocks

The Apple Valley Airshow takes place every year in the town of Apple Valley, located in San Bernardino, California.

(I considered setting this story at the annual Miramar Airshow, which takes place at MCAS (formerly NAS) Miramar, but I imagine that Mav would probably want to avoid going to MCAS Miramar for obvious reasons.)

The trailing edge of a wing is its back edge, the edge closer to the tail—its opposite is the leading edge, the edge closer to the nose.

The chair I write as Mav’s favorite chair is the one he sits down in in the opening scene of TG:M.

As Mav is a Maverick in most aspects of his life, I thought it was perfect for Mav to be left-handed—and as Tom himself is left-handed, it couldn’t get more perfect.

The F-14 is notable as being quite large as fighter jets go, and she is practically impossible to miss in the sky, once within visual range; and she is sometimes called the Flying Tennis Court, a nickname she shares with the McDonnell Douglas/Boeing F-15 Eagle.

Bradley and Mav living in what is essentially the same house, having bought a duplex together, is something I can see them doing after they reconcile, because to me, these two are basically orange cats with separation anxiety, and I feel like they would be the epitome of healthy codependency, if that’s possible.

Mav power is a play on words/reference to the engine throttle conditions of fighter jets; Max power is the maximum engine power with afterburner (wet power), and MIL (which stands for Military) power is the maximum engine power without afterburner (dry power)

Do not quote me on this, but as I understand it, in the Navy, you don’t deploy all the time.

There are years you are given a land-based assignment, like Bradley being assigned to TOPGUN, before you are put back on ship deployments for a similar amount of years.

TL;DR: Deployment cycles in the Navy have you rotating between ship-based assignments and land-based assignments every few years.

NAS Sigonella

“Abracadabra” by The Steve Miller Band

I chose this song because of this piece of art by @woodsywarbler, and “Abracadabra” is my favorite song by The Steve Miller Band, despite the really creepy lyrics.

A death spiral is this little bit of crazy pilot shit, as shown in TG:M. (Timestamp 7:34)

Nomex is the flame-resistant material which flight suits are made of, and it’s also what Mav’s green jacket is made of.

Doritos came out in 1964, plenty of time for Bradley, ‘80s baby that he is, to develop a yen for them.

(Flight) Profile: a graphical timeline of the operational characteristics, configurations, and speeds of an aircraft along a flight path in a specific phase of flight or maneuver.

FUBAR: Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition (or Repair, people argue which word the last letter is)

Fortress of Solitude

Ghostrider was Mav and Merlin’s operational callsign during the Layton Mission, and again, do not quote me on this, but you get to keep the operational callsigns you received during notable missions, a detail alluded to in the TG:M screenplay, so Mav uses it here to psych himself up.

Taglist

@ohtobemare

@callsign-skydancer

@permanentlyexhaustedpigeon88

@tadomikiku

@malindacath

@aviatorobsessed

@lynnevanss

@djs8891

If you’d like to join my taglist, just send me an ask!

[the-authoress-writes]

Up Where We Belong

Part One

Pete “Maverick” Mitchell x Writer!reader

Up Where We Belong Masterlist

Synopsis: When a writer experiencing horrible writer’s block goes to the Apple Valley Airshow for inspiration, she meets a certain older, daring naval aviator, leading to maybe a little more than just inspiration.

Warnings: Mentions of hospice and family member deaths, age gap (reader is in their late thirties to early forties).

But really, this is just fluff.

Author’s Note: The plot bunnies have reproduced at an unholy rate, and I am so stupid for writing this, especially since I have another chapter of “Wherever You Go”, to write, the first chapter of “Safe and Sound” and a MavDad story to finish.

The second part and another Mav story is lined up, but at this point, I’m not going to complain, because at least I’m writing, and Mav is finally getting more of my writerly attention.

We’ll see what gets finished next, 😂.

#writerlife

Again, I name a story after a song, from another movie about the Navy, funnily enough.

(Only three of my stories on my masterlist are not named after songs—I can’t stop, apparently)

So here we go!

She had always been somewhat interested in planes—it was hard not to be, when most of her family was in commercial aviation.

Her father had flown for nearly thirty years for American, her younger brother was currently a first officer coming up on his command upgrade with Delta, and her grandfather, whom she affectionately called PopPop, had flown for Continental.

Some of her fondest memories were looking over her grandfather’s maps and airport diagrams, and sitting on his lap while he taught her how to use an analog flight computer.

But one day, when she was home from her freshman year of college, where she was taking her degree in English, her grandfather took her up to the attic to show her something.

It was a footlocker from World War II, the faded paint on the outside reading “USAAF”.

“This was your granduncle Joseph’s—my eldest brother.

He was a P-51 pilot.

He ran many successful missions in his aircraft until he got shot down saving his wingman’s life, near the end of the war.”

PopPop opened the footlocker, revealing a faded American flag folded into a tricorn lying neatly atop several dark greenish-brown uniforms.

PopPop gently lifted the flag and uniforms out of the footlocker, uncovering yellowed, brittle-looking maps, a compass set, and a thick stack of letters, tied together with a black ribbon.

It was the stack of letters that PopPop lifted out, and held out to her. “Look at these, and read them.”

She did, and the story the letters contained was beautiful and heartbreaking.

Her granduncle had fallen in love with a woman who was a member of the French Resistance, named Céline, whom he’d met during a covert resupply mission, and they even had plans to marry after the war.

But she’d died in a skirmish with German soldiers in Paris, leaving him so bereft that he’d taken to writing letters to her specter, just to have an outlet for his grief.

The last letter in the pile was heartwrenching, where her granduncle Joseph talked about how he was only living because she would want him to, only being careful in the air because she’d want him to.

She’d cried reading the letters, and she’d asked PopPop why he’d wanted her to read the letters.

“I wanted someone else to know their story,” he’d simply replied.

“No one else knows?”

He hummed, considering his answer. “Sometimes you keep some things to yourself until the right person to tell comes along.”

A few years passed, and when PopPop was on hospice, the two of them were watching “Band of Brothers”, when she remembered Uncle Joe, as she’d taken to calling him in her head.

“What’s going on in that bright head of yours, darling?” PopPop’s voice interrupted her thoughts.

“Oh, uh, nothing much, I was just remembering Uncle Joe.

Thinking that he and Céline deserved better.”

“They did.”

She shook her head, “I wish I could write them a happier ending, you know?”

PopPop hummed weakly. “Well, why don’t you?

If anyone could do it, it would be you.

If you do that, I’m sure in a few years, those English professors of yours would be saying that they taught a great American author.”

She was shocked and touched. “Wha—I—well, I guess I could, but, are—y-you’d be okay with that, PopPop?”

He laid a cold hand on hers, “I wouldn’t trust it to anyone else, my dear girl.”

“Okay,” she smiled tearily, and nodded, the two of them returning their attention to the episode.

A week later, PopPop passed, and many things happened over the ensuing years that caused the idea of writing about Uncle Joe to be put on the back burner.

In fact, she forgot all about it, until she was sitting on her couch a couple of weeks after having been let go from her job as an English teacher at her local high school.

She was mindlessly watching an episode of some show she couldn’t even remember the name of, when her eyes landed on the footlocker which PopPop had given to her in his will.

The memory of PopPop encouraging her to write about Uncle Joe came back to her, and she paused the episode, strode over to the footlocker, carefully opened it, and drew out the letters.

Madly, over the course of the next several hours, she reread the letters, numerous research-related tabs quickly opening up on her phone, tablet, and laptop.

As months passed, she made good progress on her first draft, but somewhere along the way, about slightly less than halfway through her intended story beats, she hit the dreaded dead end, writer’s block in full force.

Rereading the letters did nothing—every line she wrote, she deleted; she felt lost, and like she’d completely lost Uncle Joe and Céline’s voices.

She felt right back at square one.

Then, one day, as she was looking at her brother’s latest Facebook reel from his layover in Korea, she saw an advertisement for the Apple Valley Airshow, which would feature an aerobatic demonstration with an actual, airworthy P-51.

Maybe seeing the aircraft her Uncle flew would shake something loose in her brain so she could move forward.

She didn’t even hesitate—she immediately booked a ticket, and prepared herself to take down a lot of notes.

The airshow was absolutely wonderful, and even though she never got as into aviation as the rest of her family, it was still something which fascinated her, and seeing the planes made her marvel all over again at the miracle that was aviation, how humankind had successfully taken the skies for itself through brutally elegant means.

Finally, it was time for the reason she’d come—the emcee began, “Now, everyone, you’re all in for a treat, because up next, we have a nearly eighty-year-old aircraft, a P-51K named Bianca, and she’ll be giving us an aerobatic demonstration!

So let’s give a warm Apple Valley Airshow welcome to Bianca and her owner and pilot, US Navy Captain Pete Mitchell!”

She clapped along with everyone else, eagerly awaiting the arrival of the P-51.

Soon, the sound of a propeller engine grew louder and louder, and then, there she was.

Bianca was gorgeous, gleaming silver with red markings, the American star roundel on her side.

The shining aircraft got closer and closer to the ground, towards the crowd, and just as she was about to worry that the P-51 was in an upset condition, the plane pulled up slightly, buzzing the transfixed people.

Laughing in awe and delight, she clapped with everyone, and watched as the daring pilot put the plane through a series of hair-raising spirals, rolls, dives, and elegant, breathtaking passes with such precision, skill, and ease, just knowing that whoever was flying that old girl had aviation in his blood as surely as it ran in hers; it made her wonder what her granduncle would say about how the venerable fighter was being flown.

Before she knew it, the demonstration was over, and with another low pass and wing wave, the P-51 flew off to land.

It actually took her a moment to come back to herself, she was so stunned by what she saw, and she knew she had to see Bianca up close.

After asking for directions to the flight line, she scanned the row of planes, eventually spying a flash of red.

She walked over, catching sight of a tall, mustached man a few years younger than her, standing in front of the aircraft, wearing a borderline-obnoxiously-loud Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned over a white tank and jeans, stereotypical Ray-Bans pushed up onto his head.

“Excuse me?”

“Yes?” the man replied.

“Is this the P-51 which flew a few minutes ago?

She is a P-51, right?”

“That’d be a yes to both questions, ma’am.”

She chuckled grimly at the idea that her age was maybe showing enough for her to be ma’am-ed by someone only a few years younger than her. “Are you the owner?”

He scoffed, good-naturedly. “Nah, that’ll be my dad.

Hey Dad, someone wants to talk to you!”

A moment later, a man stepped out from under the P-51, and she’d absolutely be lying if she said her breath didn’t catch.

First off, if she had to guess, he was older than her, but there was something about him which made him seem younger than his age.

Then there was the fact that he was absurdly good looking—ridiculously so, in fact; impossibly raven-dark hair, mischievously sparkling, brilliant green eyes, and a physique that people half her age would kill for, all sinewy muscle, visible with the snug white t-shirt and jeans he was wearing.

The final nail in the proverbial coffin was his smile—God, it belonged in a museum, because it was a work of art, and coupled with his roguish air, everything about him screamed the most delicious kind of trouble, sending echoes of Whoopi Goldberg’s voice saying, “You in danger, girl,” through her head.

“Hi,” he began, extending his hand.

Luckily for her, she was quick on the draw, and extended her own hand, proffering a “Hi,” of her own, though she kicked herself at the fact that the next words out of her mouth were, “Are you the owner?”

Oh, well—couldn’t win them all.

His grip was firm and calloused, but gentle, without the cool metal band she expected on his fourth finger, quick eyes observing the lack of even a pale band of skin on the same finger, and she shook herself from the observation in time to hear his, “That’s me—Pete Mitchell, you can call me Mav.”

At her quizzical look, he continued, “It’s short for my callsign, Maverick—I’m Navy.”

She nodded, “The emcee did say you were Navy, and that tracks; judging from that impressive demonstration, you don’t strike me as the kind who blends in.”

“Thank you—I aim to please,” he grinned.

Miraculously, she managed to ignore his brilliant, beautiful smile, somehow mustering a “Well, you certainly delivered,” before she introduced herself.

A cough from the younger man, Pete’s son, made her realize that she hadn’t let go of Pete’s hand, and vice versa, which caused the two of them to practically spring apart.

“Oh, uh, this is my son, Bradley,” Pete introduced the younger man, reaching nearly comically up to wrap an arm around Bradley’s shoulders.

“Nice to meet you, Bradley,” she replied, trying to recollect herself while her mind acted like it was the first time she’d interacted with a good-looking man.

“Nice to meet you too, ma’am.”

“I look that bad, do I?” she chuckled.

“Just the way he was raised,” Pete proudly said, patting his son on the back.

Embarrassingly, she just then remembered the reason she was here. “Oh, I—I actually had a few questions for you, Pete, about the P-51, because I’m writing a book, and I wanted to get some details.”

His eyes lit up. “Details about this old girl, huh?

I can do that; come on, let me show you around.” He moved to the side of the aircraft and gestured grandly. “Bianca here’s a Dallas-built North American P-51K, with a Packard V-1650-7 engine and an 11 foot diameter Aeroproducts propeller.

She was donated to the Civil Air Patrol in 1946, and I acquired her in 2001.

I’m not sure if she ever saw combat, because her military flight logs were lost, but I know for a fact that she routinely patrolled the California skies way back when.

Let me show you the controls.”

He nimbly boosted himself up to the wing and held his hand out to her. “Come on up.”

“Uh, is this a wise decision?” she asked, glancing between his hand and the wing. “She is nearly eighty-years-old.”

Pete laughed, “She’s stronger than she looks, and these girls were made to withstand this sort of thing, come on.”

Deciding to trust his judgment, she took his hand and jumped up to the wing at the same time as he pulled her up, causing extra momentum which propelled her body into his.

He caught them on the edge of the cockpit, and after a second, she realized that she was pressed up against his body, both hands resting against his…very solid chest.

She prayed that her suddenly pounding heart and the burning flush on her cheeks could be discounted as a reaction to her stumble.

“I’m so sorry,” she breathed, scrambling back to put some distance between them for her sanity’s sake, while trying not to fall off either wing edge.

“Eh,” he waved off, “that’s my fault, I should have said I’d pull you up,” as he shifted to kneel on the wing. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she replied breezily, “I believe you were about to show me the controls?”

“Mm-hmm, come here.”

They slowly adjusted themselves into a configuration that enabled them both to see into the cockpit, and he pointed out the many gauges—explaining each one—and the literal stick stick, which looked nothing like the controls of any aircraft she’d seen in person or in the movies, as well as her general flight capabilities and technical specifications.

A further glance to the right showed something she didn’t expect to see. “I thought the P-51 was a single seat aircraft?”

Pete absentmindedly rubbed the back of his neck, “They are—I made a… few modifications.”

“Oh.”

“You want to sit in her?” he offered, gesturing to the pilot’s seat.

She was not about to pass up an opportunity like that. “I—wh—sure!”

He carefully helped her into the cockpit, and once settled, she breathed in and out while she absorbed this moment, and imagined her granduncle sitting in a seat similar to this one, looking out at the boundless sky. “Wow,” she reverently murmured.

“I know, right?”

“This is amazing, that aircraft like this is still around and still flying, I mean—this is history,” she said, getting slightly emotional.

“It is; she is.”

After a few beats longer, she sighed, and reached for his hand so she could get out, and he carefully eased her out of the cockpit, onto the wing, then both of them back onto the ground.

“Thank you, for showing me around, this was really helpful, Pete, I think this really helped me.”

“You’re welcome,” he nodded easily. “If I may ask, what kind of book are you writing?”

For the briefest second, she instinctively recoiled from the idea of telling the story, but then, some part of her heart said that Pete Mitchell was someone she could tell this story to. “It’s uh, a fictional version of my granduncle Joe’s love story; he was a P-51 pilot during World War II, and he was in love with a woman in the French Resistance named Céline.” She turned to look at Bianca’s gleaming fuselage. “But they both died in the war; she was killed by the Germans, and he got shot down saving his wingman soon after.

I never even knew until my first year of college, when my grandfather told me the story through the love letters my granduncle and Céline wrote.

When my grandfather was dying, I told him that I wished they had a happy ending, and… well, he told me to write it for them, since I was an English major.

So here I am,” she shrugged, turning to face Pete.

He looked grave and touched. “That’s… that’s beautiful.”

“Thank you, I have to admit, I’ve wondered if what I was doing was disrespectful.”

“I know quite a few people who deserved happy endings that didn’t get them,” he glanced into the distance, a wistful, pained look in his eyes. “If I can help at least two people who didn’t have their happy endings in this world get it somehow, I’m more than willing to help.”

She sincerely replied, “Thank you for the validation,” wondering what his story was.

“You’re welcome.

And uh… you know what?

Gimme a second.”

He leapt back onto the P-51’s wing, and rummaged through the cockpit, pulling out a flight log book and a pen, hastily writing something on a page, before he tore it out, and leapt back down.

“Here, it’s my number—if you had any more questions, feel free to call, I’d be happy to answer them.”

If she had been placed in a similar situation as this maybe twenty years ago, she’d have probably done something to embarrass herself, because this—things like this didn’t happen to her—they only happened in movies, but here she was.

He gave her his number—yes, it was if she had any research questions, but still.

‘Get a grip, woman, just because you didn’t see a ring doesn’t mean he isn’t in a relationship,’ she told herself, trying to project “Respectable Professional Woman”, while her inner adolescent was trying its level best to come out.

“Th—thank you,” she managed to get out, with only a minute stammer on the first syllable.

“I’m serious, call if you need anything—I mean—there’s not a lot of people out there who can tell you what it’s like to actually fly one of these beauties.”

“Be careful,” she chuckled, already determined not to call unless it was absolutely dire, “You don’t know if I might take you up on that offer.”

“It’s what I gave you my number for,” Pete winked, and she commended herself for keeping it together.

Deciding to quit while she was ahead, and while she still seemed like a normal human being, she came in for final approach, as her dad would put it, with, “Alright—I better go, I’ve already taken too much of your time.”

“It’s fine, it’s always a pleasure to talk to someone about this girl.”

“Thank you again,” she stated, honestly grateful, feeling the creative juices flowing and simmering in the background.

“You’re welcome.”

And with that, she walked away, exhaling evenly for so many reasons.

That night, she wrote and wrote just as she expected, and the story was flowing.

That is, until she hit another wall just before the next weekend.

And this one was even more stubborn than the first.

It didn’t help that she had written herself into a corner with this dogfight scene she was on—she had no way of knowing if the tactics were sound, and she was thinking of completely cutting it, but it seemed so stilted without it, and she had no idea of how to avoid writing this scene.

But one part of that thought, she realized, wasn’t true.

Her gaze landed on her coffee table.

The sheet of flight log paper with ten numbers written on them stared tauntingly back at her, daring her to call Pete.

“Nope, no, I am not going to do it,” she told herself. “No—absolutely not.

I’m sure he has better things to do than answer stupid questions.

No—I will not call him.”

The paper raised a nonexistent eyebrow.

“No!” was her battle cry, and she turned back to her laptop screen, but it offered no relief.

The depressing reality of her blinking, unmoving cursor cackled at her in harmony with the flight log paper.

It was like that healthy cereal ad from years ago, with the little girl in a prim uniform, enticingly calling “Donuts?”

However, after ten more minutes, the dictatorship of the blank page grew too cruel and harsh, and she folded like a house of whatever was more insubstantial than cards.

“Fine,” she muttered, snatching up the paper. “I’ll call, but if he doesn’t answer, it’s no skin off my back—I’ll manage… somehow.”

At least that’s what she told herself.

She dialed the number, heart pounding as the phone rang…

And rang…

And rang…

And rang.

She was just about to breathe a sigh of conflicted relief and hang up, but then the line clicked, and she heard a slightly breathless “Pete Mitchell.”

“Hi,” she blinked, cursing herself for not thinking through what she was going to say. “I don’t know if you remember me, we met at the Apple Valley Airshow—”

“__, right?

The writer.”

“Yeah, that’s me, you said I could call if I had any questions,” she scratched her head.

“Uh-huh.

I’m guessing you have one,” she could hear the smile in his voice.

“More like a lot, really.

I’ve unfortunately written myself into a corner, it’s this dogfight scene, and there’s no way I can currently remove it without sacrificing practically all of my progress since last week.

I just need to know if the tactics are sound.”

“Huh.”

“I—you know, I can figure it out myself, if it’s too much trouble—”

He interrupted, “No, it’s no trouble, I’m more than willing to help, in fact… uh, this might sound—weird and uncomfortable—or—both, really, but if you want, why don’t you come out to my hangar tomorrow, we can talk about this, rework your scene if we need to, without having to do video calls or text or email.”

“Oh,” she breathed, eyes wide.

“I promise I’m not a serial killer or anything,” he chuckled.

“I—thank you for the reassurance, by the way—but I mean, that’s a lot of confidence in how well I can write a dogfight.”

“It can’t be all that bad,” he assured.

“I’ll just prepare to be ripped to shreds,” she half-teasingly replied.

Pete snorted. “Even if it were that bad, I wouldn’t rip it to shreds—I save that for my new students.”

She couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t know what’s worse, being torn apart or the porcelain treatment.”

“How about a balance, then?”

“I’d be very happy with that.”

“So… is that a yes to coming out to my hangar?”

“I… suppose it is,” she replied, before she could convince herself otherwise.

She was a mature, responsible adult, and she was capable of being said mature, responsible adult.

(And if time permitted, she was even capable of looking respectfully, when he wasn’t watching.)

(She was only human, after all.)

“Perfect, I’ll send you the address; I have to warn you, it’ll probably be a bit of a drive, is that okay?”

“That’s fine, after all, where else will I find someone with experience flying the P-51?”

“You could always try the local VFW post,” he joked.

“What are the odds my local VFW has a former P-51 pilot?

I’ll go with the expert I’ve already met.”

“Alright, alright, I already agreed to help, no need to butter me up,” he lightly said, humorously.

“Just send the address,” was her amused response.

And that was how she found herself on US-395 North making the three-and-a-half hour drive from her apartment in San Bernardino to the Mojave, praying that she wouldn’t somehow make a fool of herself today.

To be continued…

Next Part

Was part of this story inspired by Atonement?

Maybe.

I didn’t really have the movie in mind when I wrote the plot device, but I realized the similarity after the fact.

Analog flight computer

USAAF

Band of Brothers

The Apple Valley Airshow takes place every year in the town of Apple Valley, located in San Bernardino, California.

(I considered setting this story at the annual Miramar Airshow, which takes place at MCAS (formerly NAS) Miramar, but I imagine that Mav would probably want to avoid going to MCAS Miramar for obvious reasons.)

Roundel

I don’t think that most pilots would do very daring aerobatic stunts in a plane as old as the P-51, just because she’s a darn P-51, and she’s a flying piece of history, but this is Mav, he absolutely knows what his girl can handle, I’m sure he knows how to make something look more crazy than it actually is, and bottom line, let’s just suspend our disbelief, 😂.

Did I introduce Mav in that way just so I could use that gif?

Probably absolutely.

It’s a great shot, and I do not blame me.

“You in danger, girl.” Timestamp 1:35

All the information about the P-51 is taken from the information available about the model and history/registration of Tom’s P-51, except for the details of her name and the military flight logs being missing, as the history available for N51EW never mentions if she saw actual WWII combat.

She is registered in the FAA database with the serial number 44-12840, and her name since 2006 has been “Kiss Me Kate”.

(I know why she’s named this, and it hits something in my heart that Tom never bothered to rename her.)

Her name in this story will be explained later, but those who follow me on my main blog, @oh-great-authoress, might have a hunch as to why I named the P-51 “Bianca”.

The ad I mentioned was a real Kellogg’s Special K ad.

VFW

The travel time between San Bernardino and Mav’s hangar is estimated using the travel time from San Bernardino to NAWS China Lake, and then a further hour and twenty minutes from there.

Taglist

@valmare

@callsign-skydancer

@permanentlyexhaustedpigeon88

@tadomikiku

@malindacath

@aviatorobsessed

@lynnevanss

@djs8891

If you’d like to join my taglist, just send me an ask!

[the-authoress-writes]

Just wondering, I understand if yours totally busy or just lost interest, but I was wondering if you’d be adding on to your TG Tom Kazansky/ Iceman series anytime soon. It’s been a while and I read the posted works. I’m in love, however I really want the story to continue. Xo

Hi there, @notarobotipromise, thank you so much for asking about “Wherever You Go”!

I promise that I haven’t lost interest in that series (I’m haunted by that narrative at least three times a week, I think), it’s just that I got sidetracked by other stories (which you can see on my masterlist), and there are a lot of things going on in my life right now, which are kind of making it a perfect storm for the proverbial difficulty in writing.

But since you so kindly asked, I will probably give Chapter Three a whack soon, in my free time!

Let me know if you want to be added to my taglist!

[the-authoress-writes]

Safe and Sound Masterlist

Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw x Seresin OC

Synopsis: After leaving her violent and abusive husband, Anastasia Seresin has known nothing but fear for months.

Always looking over her shoulder, wondering if he’s found her and their son, Luke, again.

With nowhere left to go, she turns to her younger twin brother, Jake, hoping that finally, she’ll have fled far enough.

But when she meets Bradley Bradshaw, her world is turned upside down, and she’s left wondering…

Will she have the courage to love again, and to let herself be loved?

Prologue

Chapter One

[the-authoress-writes]

Safe and Sound Chapter One

Or: It’s the Great Karmic Bitchslap, Jake Seresin!

Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw x Seresin OC

Safe and Sound Masterlist

Synopsis: After leaving her violent and abusive husband, Anastasia Seresin has known nothing but fear for months.

Always looking over her shoulder, wondering if he’s found her and their son, Luke, again.

With nowhere left to go, she turns to her younger twin brother, Jake, hoping that finally, she’ll have fled far enough.

But when she meets Bradley Bradshaw, her world is turned upside down, and she’s left wondering…

Will she have the courage to love again, and to let herself be loved?

Series Warnings: Mentions and descriptions of domestic violence and abuse, mentions and descriptions of sexual abuse, stalking, PTSD, character(s) of faith (Catholicism), warnings will be updated as the series progresses.

This is a story dealing with very serious and sensitive topics.

Please be careful, and protect your own peace.

Chapter Warnings: Mentions of triggers, mentions of past domestic violence and abuse, mentions of Catholicism, mention of gaslighting, brief mention of assault, discussion of eating habits, stalking, and of course, military and legal inaccuracies.

Author’s Note: This story is one that is special to me; this was one of the first Top Gun stories I came up with, soon after I watched TG:M.

I’ve been keeping this to myself, because this is going to be intense and hard, but I know that if I don’t put this out there, I’ll never finish it.

So here we go.

Title is from the Taylor Swift/Joy Williams & John Paul White song of the same name.

Not breaking my habit of naming my stories after songs, it seems!

How had her life come to this?

Constantly on her guard.

Watching the way the shadows shifted.

Breaking into a cold sweat whenever she smelled anything that reminded her of his cologne, and when she saw or smelled red roses.

Living out of motels with her son.

How had she been so deceived?

How had she given her heart, mind, and body to the maniac she called her—thankfully—ex-husband?

All the things she gave up for him…

All the things he did to her…

All the things she let him do to her…

She shuddered just thinking about it.

All these thoughts swam through Anastasia’s head as she stared up at the ceiling, listening to her son, Luke, breathe.

Luke.

The only thing she didn’t regret about her marriage.

The only truly good thing Derek ever gave her.

Her beautiful, brave boy.

How she wished she could give him a better life than this.

A better life, the life he deserved, where he could just be the happy eight-year-old he was, instead of quiet, grave, and much-too responsible.

Tears welled in her eyes, and she pressed her hand to her mouth, not wanting to wake Luke and burden him even more than he himself was taking on.

She should have listened all those years ago when her twin brother Jake told her Derek was bad news, but Derek had fooled her so well, and she’d been so in love with him, or maybe she was just in love with love.

She would never know, now.

Regret burned in her heart as she remembered her last argument with Jake.

“Stash, I don’t like him.”

“God’s sake, not this again; you haven’t liked anyone I’ve been with, Jake.”

He rolled his eyes, “Not like this.

I have a bad feeling, Stash, he—something’s just plain wrong.”

“He loves me, Jake,” she defended.

“He says he does, but I don’t think he does; I don’t like the way he looks at you, why can’t you see it?” he said, voice rising.

“You know, I think you’re just jealous that I’m in a committed relationship, and you’re not!” she pointed.

“This isn’t about that!”

“Then what the hell is it about, Jakub?!”

Her younger brother inhaled and exhaled evenly. “I am concerned about you, Stacia.

You have to break up with Derek.”

Frustration flared in her chest. “See?!

You can’t even give me a straight answer about why I should!

And for another thing, why should I listen to relationship advice from you, when you have such a fantastic track record in your relationships?

You couldn’t keep one in high school to save your life, so why would you know the meaning of the word commitment?

Oh—sorry, not sorry, you wouldn’t know it, even if it hit you over the head!!”

Jake clenched his jaw. “I don’t want to get into an argument with you before I go back to Annapolis, Stash, but if you know what’s good for you, you’ll end it with him,” he said, voice shaking.

She scoffed, “You don’t want to get into an argument with me?

Well, too fucking late; I’m not going to break up with him, I love him, and he loves me, end of story.”

He threw his hands up, “You’re so fucking stubborn, you know that?!”

“Pot, meet Goddamn kettle!

I’m not breaking up with Derek, and that’s final, so you can go back to Annapolis, and while you’re at it, get the fuck out of my life, Jake!” At the shock in his eyes, spite sparked, hot and furious, in her heart. “And you know what?

If you hate Derek so much, I don’t have a brother anymore.”

Jake’s face fell. “Stacia—”

“No, I love him, and you’re wrong about him, so do me a favor and stay the hell out of my life, Jacob, because clearly, you can’t be happy for me, so you’re dead to me.”

That was the last thing she’d said to her brother almost ten years ago.

One year after her and Jake’s argument, she walked down the aisle without her brother on her side of the church, trading Anastasia Seresin for Anastasia Malloy.

And still, despite everything she’d said, Jake sent her a letter, that she read despite herself. “Dear Stacia,

I pray that you had a great day.

I pray that you have a happy marriage.

I’m currently in Pensacola for the next two years for flight training, and while I will respect your decision to cut me from your life, I just want you to know that you will always be my sister and I will always love you, Stacia.

With all my love,

Kuba”

She kept that letter, even though she initially wanted nothing more than to throw it away, eventually moving it to her Bible, between the cover and the paper lining, once Derek became abusive.

Over the next ten years, Jake sent her cards every time his duty station changed, something she only discovered while taking out the trash five years ago, finding his card detailing his assignment to VFA-151 in Lemoore, which mentioned the other cards he’d sent.

When Derek found it hidden in her dresser, he threw the card again, and she got a sprained wrist and slammed against the bedroom doorframe for it.

Unable to escape her memories and regrets, she lay restless in bed until it was time to get up.

The routine was just that; after washing up, she woke Luke, so the two of them could eat breakfast before she looked for jobs in the area—since it’d been four months since Derek last found them, she felt it was safe to start looking for at least a part-time job—and because it was a Sunday, they would go to church for Mass at noon.

The church was nice, and the homily was decent, but it just made her miss her old parish church.

She especially missed Father Janusz.

The grandfatherly priest was the one who encouraged and exhorted her to leave Derek; he and his sister, Bożena, his housekeeper, were the only ones who believed her when she first said she was being abused.

Because Derek hadn’t just fooled her, he’d managed to fool the whole community into thinking she was crazy and a cheater, and that he was a salt-of-the-earth Sheriff’s Deputy, suffering an unhappy marriage for the sake of his son.

Father Janusz and Bożena kept her anchored to the world, even through Derek’s relentless gaslighting.

She remembered the night she left.

“Go, my daughter,” Father urged, pulling her into a warm embrace.

“I’m scared, Father.”

“Be not afraid, Stacia.

Just drive; get away from here.

We’ll handle the rest, and cross the bridges when we get there.

Here, take this.”

Father drew back, and pressed a cellphone and a credit card into her hand. “The cellphone is one of the administrative phones paid for by the parish; don’t worry about the charges—and this is the card to a savings account in Bożena’s name.

I placed some money there for you from my personal savings.”

Tears welled in her eyes, “Father, I can’t take all this, you’ve already done so much for me and Luke,” she gestured at the ‘97 Toyota Camry Father had given her.

“You will—you must.

Do it for your boy, hmm?”

She nodded wordlessly.

“Now go, Stacia—I’ll file the annulment with the Diocese, as well as the divorce papers, request for custody of Łukasz, and restraining order, in the city tomorrow, first thing in the morning.”

“Okay—thank you so much for everything, Father—I can’t thank you enough.”

“No thanks needed, child.

Niech Bóg będzie z tobą, Anastasja.”

The divorce and annulment went smoother than she thought it would, but somehow, even with the testimonies of Father Janusz and Bożena, she still managed to come out the bad person, with the request for a restraining order denied, and Derek cleared on his charges of domestic and child abuse.

She comforted herself with the fact that at least she somehow got sole custody of Luke, and together, they ran to the other side of Texas.

She and Luke were beginning to settle down three months after the whole thing, when she got a call at half past midnight from Bożena.

“Hello?”

“Stacia, it’s Bożena.

You have to run.”

“What?” she frowned, sitting up.

“Janusz was attacked in the rectory.

He couldn’t identify who it was, but we both believe it was Derek.”

“Is Father alright?” Anastasia gasped.

“He’s as alright as he can be.

But he’s in surgery right now for a broken arm and leg.”

“Did they arrest Derek?”

“No.

There’s no proof it was him, and you know what they think of you and him in that stupid town, córka,” the elderly woman bitterly muttered.

How Sheriff Lackman and the other deputies could be so blind was truly astounding. “But they have to investigate!

Father was badly hurt!”

“And they will, but I have no doubt that “whoever” did it will never be caught and prosecuted for it.

Which is why you have to run.

I’ll put more money in the account Janusz gave you tomorrow.

Take Luke and go, fast,” Bożena urged.

And that conversation was what triggered her packing her life into bags and taking Luke, praying that Derek wouldn’t come after them.

But he had, and he’d found them nearly half a dozen times, to her terror.

“Mama, can we get waffles again for lunch?” Luke’s voice broke her from her thoughts as she stood in front of the door to the church’s parking lot, can of Mace in the hand which wasn’t holding Luke’s.

“Sure, sweetheart,” she absently said, intently scanning the parking lot and checking the corners before she opened the door and they stepped onto the sidewalk.

After checking the backseat and trunk of the car, she buckled Luke into his booster seat, and drove them to the local diner, where she barely ate, wanting to save as much of the money Father Janusz and Bożena gave them, keeping her head on a swivel, ironically using a saying her ex-husband was fond of throwing around with his fellow deputies.

“Mama, I can’t finish, can you help me?”

She looked down to see Luke looking up at her pleadingly. “You barely ate, Kaszek, and you finished the plate last time.”

“‘m not that hungry,” he muttered, tapping his thumb on his opposite palm, his tell that he was lying.

“Lucas Tymoteusz Seresin Malloy, we just came from church.”

He sighed, “Please just help me, Mama?

We can both eat.”

A dagger plunged into her heart; of course he’d noticed that she wasn’t eating much of anything—she’d finished her plate of fries ten minutes ago. “I’m okay, honey, you can finish it.”

The rumbling of her stomach gave a different answer.

“Please, Mama, let’s both eat, please,” Luke pled.

Tears welled in her eyes; her beautiful boy was so loving and considerate, despite all the abuse he’d been raised around. “I don’t want you to be hungry, Luke.”

“I don’t want you to be hungry either, Mama.”

With a sob, she pulled Luke into her arms, running her hand through his dark golden blond hair, the exact same shade as her own. “I don’t deserve you, sweetheart.”

“I love you, Mama.”

“Are you sure, you’ll get hungry later?”

“Mm-hmm.

You’ll be even hungrier than me later if you don’t eat.

Please, Mama.”

“Okay, I’ll eat a little.”

Luke’s smile lit up the room, and it reminded her of Jake’s smile, twisting an old knife in her heart.

She ate less than Luke probably would have liked, but her stomach was glad for the little extra food, and they even managed to enjoy the day, going to the library and the dollar store, where she let him pick out three things, the two of them later deciding to splurge on McDonald’s for dinner, where Luke managed to get the toy he’d wanted in his Happy Meal.

She had an almost optimistic outlook on things when they arrived back at the motel for the night, and she was maybe, just maybe, beginning to hope that she could finally start over.

“Okay, honey, get your clothes for tomorrow,” she said, doing the same and rummaging through her own bag, making use of the system she’d come up with months ago: they kept their clothes and important belongings in the car, just in case they had to make a quick getaway, that way, they would leave as little as possible behind if Derek found them again.

“You good, Kaszek?” Anastasia asked, shoving her clothes in her tote bag.

“Yes, Mama.”

“Okay, let’s go!”

She held Luke’s hand in her left, her can of mace in her other hand, carefully sweeping the parking lot and the motel building with her gaze.

She was just about to step up onto the sidewalk running along the motel building, when her eyes landed on the ground just before their room door.

She stopped in her tracks as fear shuddered down her back.

Because just there, lying innocently in front of their room door, was a single red rose petal.

Red roses.

Those were the flowers he’d always give her after he hurt her, as an apology, to show that he was a “loving and caring” husband.

“Mama.” Luke’s voice was heavy with warning, having obviously also seen the rose petal.

“Look behind us, Luke.

Is he there?” she breathed, trying to keep her voice from shaking, as she gripped her Mace tighter.

“No.

There’s no one, Mama.”

“Good.

We’re going back to the car,” she whispered, glad she’d already paid for the night yesterday, and they wouldn’t have to worry about local police coming after them for the motel room fee.

“Run, Mama?”

“Yes—go.”

They ran back to the car, Luke buckling himself into his booster seat, and she mentally cursed as her trembling hands dropped the key, the sound as it hit the car floor ringing like a death knell, but she managed to pick it up and insert it into the ignition.

To her horror, the car didn’t start, and it could be a figment of her imagination, but she could swear the shadows at the corner of the building were beginning to coalesce into an all-too-familiar figure.

The ignition cranked and cranked, but the car still refused to start.

“Oh God, please,” she cried, turning the key yet again.

The sound of the engine starting was like the most heavenly music, and she threw the car into reverse, speeding towards the highway—she had to stay off the back roads, especially now.

Once they made it to the highway, she felt the tension in her shoulders ease minutely, glancing back to see Luke’s frightened eyes on her.

“You okay, sweetheart?”

“Yes, Mama.

Daddy found us again,” he despairingly breathed.

“I know, I know.

I’m so sorry, Luke, you shouldn’t have to live like this.”

“I’d rather run with you than live with Daddy, Mama.”

Anastasia bit her lip to keep her sob from escaping. “Ja cię kocham, Luke.”

“Ja też cię kocham, Mama.”

“Try to get some rest, okay, sweetheart?”

“I’ll try, Mama.”

An hour later, he was finally asleep, and she allowed the tears she’d been keeping down, to come.

Was this what she’d be doing for the rest of her life?

Always running, always looking over her shoulder, wondering if Derek had found them again?

All she wanted was to be able to breathe, to live, to raise Luke in peace, but where would she be able to do that?

Because Derek had found them, every single time.

Suddenly, as she drove, a wild hope seized her, her thoughts turning to the card in her bag, which she received after Father Janusz was able to convince the mailman to deliver any letters addressed to her to the rectory.

“Dear Stacia,

I don’t know if you even get these, at this point, but since none of them ever get sent back to me, I’m going to keep sending them.

I’ve been assigned to NAS North Island in San Diego for the foreseeable future; I’m part of a new special, elite STRIKFITRON, VFA-223, called the Black Cloaks.

(You’ll never guess what our squadron callsign is)

God, I wish we were on speaking terms, Stash, I want to tell you all about my new squadron.

Without disclosing classified information of how we came to be, we’re the best of the best’s best, forged as a team through one of the toughest missions I think will ever have to be flown, under the command of the best officer I’ve ever met.

And I’d dare to say that we’re a real team… maybe even a family.

I wish I could introduce you to everyone.

I even have a real wingman again.

He was a bit of an acquired taste; we first met in Pensacola for flight training, but he’s not a bad guy, I’m actually happy to fly his wing.

You’d love Phoenix—and Mav, my CO, he’s the second-most charming bastard I know, after yours truly, and the best naval aviator I’ve ever seen.

He handed me my ass all through training for that mission I talked about, and he’s even better than the legendary reputation that precedes him.

He’s taught me so much, and he actually cares about us, not just because we’re valuable to the navy for our skills.

He cares about us as people, and I’m honored to serve under him.

Fuck, there’s so much I want to tell you, all the paper in the world wouldn’t be enough to write it all out.

I pray you’re happy, that I was wrong about everything—there’s nothing more that I want for you, Stacia.

You’ll always be my sister, and I’ll always be your brother, no matter what, even if we never speak again.

Ja cię kocham, Stacia.

All my love forever,

Kuba”

She could go to Jake.

There was no possible way that Derek could bullshit his way onto a Navy base without a military ID.

They could be safe there.

But her mind flashed back to the argument she had with Jake all those years ago, to the horrible things she told him.

Could he forgive her for what she said, for the years of silence, first voluntary, then forced by Derek—could he forgive her for all of it?

Anastasia suddenly shook her head; that was her pride talking—from all the letters he’d written, there was clearly nothing that he wanted more than for them to speak again, so why would he turn her away?

At any rate, she thought, looking at Luke’s peaceful face in the rearview mirror, even if Jake did turn her away, maybe California would finally be far enough away from Derek, and she pulled over to look up the address for NAS North Island.

It felt like it took forever, but finally, after hours and hours of driving, she pulled up to the gate of NAS North Island.

The guard peered into the car before looking expectantly at her. “Good evening—ID?”

She handed over her driver’s license, and the guard took one look at it, before saying, “I need your USID, ma’am.”

Anastasia mentally facepalmed.

The very requirement which would keep her and Luke safe from Derek, would be the same thing which kept them out.

“I… I don’t have one.”

“Then I’m afraid you can’t enter.”

Her heart sank. “Please, sir, my brother is assigned here, I need to get in—”

“Ma’am, without a USID, I can’t allow—”

“I need to see my brother,” she pled. “Please, sir, we haven’t spoken in years, so I don’t know his number, but I know he’s stationed here and living on base, and I need to see him.”

“Ma’am—”

“If you call him—surely his number is in some sort of database—he’ll tell you I’m his sister.

Please, I have nowhere else to go, sir,” she breathed, tears welling up against her will.

The guard stared at her for a long moment, and then turned to face the computer in his station. “Alright, I’ll call him, but if he says you can’t come in, or he doesn’t know you, you have to leave, ma’am.

Does your son have any ID?”

“No, sir.”

He ambivalently hummed, before typing something into his computer. “What’s your brother’s name?”

“Jacob Seresin.

He’s a pilot.”

He typed some more, then picked up a phone, the sound of the buttons seeming so loud in the night air, before the longest silence she’d ever heard deafened her, and she prayed that Jake would answer the call.

Blessedly, finally, the guard perked up. “I’m very sorry to wake you, Lieutenant, but I have a kid and woman here at the gate asking me to let them in, she says they need to get to your house,” the guard replied.

A short silence.

“The young man has no ID on him, but the woman’s driver’s license says Anastasia Malloy.”

This silence felt like an eternity, and Anastasia held her breath, praying that Jake wouldn’t turn his back on her, that her hope in him wasn’t unfounded.

“Alright, sir.

I’ll escort them to your housing.”

She sobbed in relief, leaning her forehead against the steering wheel.

“Alright, ma’am, your story checks out.

I’ll be escorting you to your brother’s housing, just wait here.”

Once the guard came back with someone else to man the gate, he drove up in a black Charger, instructing her to follow.

“Mama, we’re going to see Uncle Jake?” Luke asked.

“Yeah, we are, baby, hopefully, he’ll let us stay with him, at least for a little while,” she replied, trying to keep her voice even as the emotions were coursing through her.

“Do you think he’ll like me?”

“Of course he will, Kaszek, he’ll love you.”

Her brother had a soft heart under all the bravado he liked to show the world, and if he was still the Jake she remembered, he would love Luke, even if only because he was her son.

“I hope so, Mama.”

They drove past score after score of cookie cutter houses before stopping, and her breath caught in her throat.

Shadowed by the exterior lighting of his house, Jake stood on the path leading up to his house.

From what she could see, he looked much the same as a decade ago, but maybe with a slightly more muscular build, like he’d finally grown into the figure given to him by their father, his hair was disheveled as if he’d run his hands through it repeatedly, and there was a taut line of tension in his body, which she instinctually prayed was not going to lead to anger directed at her.

“Wait here, okay, sweetheart?”

“Yes, Mama.”

She stepped out of the car on shaking legs, walking to her little brother.

He looked her up and down, the tension seeming to pull tighter throughout his body, a furrow carving its way between his brow as he took her state in, and she fearfully looked into his eyes, their mother’s eyes, as tears she could no longer contain, traced down her cheeks.

The fear practically drained from her as she registered the look of warmth, love, and concern in those green eyes, and she murmured, voice trembling and breaking, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know where else to go.”

“Oh, Stacia.”

And as he opened his arms to her, she launched herself forward into his embrace, sobbing, feeling safe for the first time in what seemed like an eternity.

To be continued…

Previous Part Next Part

There is actually a sizable Polish community in Texas, and in fact, one of the oldest churches in the state is a Polish Catholic Church.

Which is just perfect, because here, the Texas-born Seresin twins have Polish ancestry and nicknames, since I headcanon that Jake has Polish ancestry, like his actor, Glen Powell’s supposed ancestry, so—

Polish Glossary

Disclaimer: this is all taken from Google—please don’t hesitate to correct me if I’m wrong, which, odds are, I am.

Jakub (pronounced YAH-coohb): Polish version of Jacob

Stacia (pronounced StAH-shuh): Polish nickname for Anastasia (the Polish version is Anastasja, pronounced AHNA-stAH-sheeya)

Kuba (pronounced COO-buh): Polish nickname for Jakub

Janusz (pronounced YAH-nuush)

Bożena (pronounced Boh-zhEHna)

Łukasz (pronounced WOO-kahsh): Polish version of Lucas

Niech Bóg będzie z tobą, Anastasja: May God be with you, Anastasia

Córka (pronounced TSOO-rkAH): Daughter

Kaszek (pronounced KAH-zheck): Polish nickname for Łukasz

Tymoteusz (pronounced TEA-moh-tAY-uush): Polish version of Timothy

Ja cię kocham: I love you

Ja też cię kocham, Mama: I love you too, Mommy

(Yes, Mama is Polish for Mommy)

NAS Pensacola is “The Cradle of Naval Aviation”, where all Naval Aviators and WSOs go for their flight training, and training can go from eighteen months to as long as two years.

I played it safe with two years.

VFA-151, the “Vigilantes”, based out of NAS Lemoore, is Jake’s squadron in TG:M, according to his flight suit patch.

STRIKFITRON stands for Strike Fighter Squadron.

Gee, I wonder what VFA-223’s squadron callsign is… 😉

USID: Uniformed Service Identification

It is highly unlikely someone could pull an Anastasia and get on base the way she did, but it’s all for the ahhhht, dahhhling.

My subtitle for this story was the working title this story was under until I came up with “Safe and Sound” as the actual title.

It’s derived from the classic Peanuts television special, “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”.

I thought about not putting it, but giving Jake the biggest karmic bitchslap was the entire reason I came up with the plot, so I’m putting it.

Taglist

@ohtobemare

@callsign-skydancer

@permanentlyexhaustedpigeon88

@tadomikiku

@malindacath

@aviatorobsessed

@lynnevanss

@djs8891

@httyd-marauders

@penguin876

@jbetches

@squidy-things350

@og-baby-ob14

If you’d like to join my taglist, just send me an ask!

[the-authoress-writes]

May I be added to the taglist for safe and sound please??

You got it!

First chapter comes soon!

[the-authoress-writes]

Safe and Sound

Or: It’s the Great Karmic Bitchslap, Jake Seresin!

Prologue

Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw x Seresin OC

Safe and Sound Masterlist

Synopsis: After leaving her violent and abusive husband, Anastasia Seresin has known nothing but fear for months.

Always looking over her shoulder, wondering if he’s found her and their son, Luke, again.

With nowhere left to go, she turns to her younger twin brother, Jake, hoping that finally, she’ll have fled far enough.

But when she meets Bradley Bradshaw, her world is turned upside down, and she’s left wondering…

Will she have the courage to love again, and to let herself be loved?

Series Warnings: Domestic violence and abuse, sexual abuse, PTSD, warnings will be updated as the series progresses.

This is a story dealing with very serious and sensitive topics.

Please be careful, and protect your own peace.

Chapter Warnings: Military inaccuracies 🤣

Author’s Note: This story is one that is special to me; this was one of the first Top Gun stories I came up with, soon after I watched TG:M.

I’ve been keeping this to myself, because this is going to be intense and hard, but I know that if I don’t put this out there, I’ll never finish it.

So here we go.

Title is from the Taylor Swift/Joy Williams & John Paul White song of the same name.

Not breaking my habit of naming my stories after songs, it seems!

Jake groaned as he blindly groped around his bedside table for his phone which was ringing its alarm.

He felt like he’d just fallen asleep—he’d only drank his limit at The Hard Deck, the night before, but it felt like he’d only gotten an hour of sleep.

Phone in hand, he squinted at the screen, his sleep-addled mind not quite comprehending what he was seeing.

It actually was about an hour since he fell asleep, and his phone was ringing not because of his 5:45 AM alarm, but because of a call from base gate security.

“Lieutenant Seresin speaking,” he rasped, pressing the phone to his ear.

“I’m very sorry to wake you, Lieutenant, but I have a kid and woman here at the gate asking me to let them in, she says they need to get to your house,” the guard replied.

Jake frowned. “Who are they?

Did you get their names?”

“The young man has no ID on him, but the woman’s driver’s license says Anastasia Malloy.”

Jake instantly shot up in bed, even though the action left him a little dizzy. “Let them in—that’s my sister and nephew.”

A minute or two later, he was standing outside his base housing, waiting.

Soon, the gate security car drove up with an ancient sedan in its wake.

The sedan parked, and the driver stepped out.

He knew it had to be his sister, but nothing in the way the woman who was walking towards him reminded him of the strong, capable spitfire he knew.

She stopped about five feet away from him before she looked up, tear tracks making shining trails down her cheek. “I’m sorry,” she breathed, voice broken, “I didn’t know where else to go.”

“Oh, Stacia,” Jake immediately opened his arms to his older twin sister.

To be continued…

Next Part

I know this section is so short, but the first chapter will be published tomorrow, I am just editing it today.

I’m very excited.

My subtitle for this story was the working title this story was under until I came up with “Safe and Sound” as the actual title.

It’s derived from the classic Peanuts television special, “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”.

I thought about not putting it, but giving Jake the biggest karmic bitchslap was the entire reason I came up with the plot, so I’m putting it.

Stacia (pronounced StAH-shuh) is the Polish nickname for Anastasia, which I use here because I headcanon that Jake has Polish ancestry, like his actor, Glen Powell’s supposed ancestry, so here, the Seresin twins have Polish ancestry and nicknames.

With more Polish details to come! 😂

Let’s just ignore the military inaccuracies, shall we?

*In Edna Mode voice* It’s for the ahhhhht, dahhling.

Taglist

@ohtobemare

@callsign-skydancer

@permanentlyexhaustedpigeon88

@tadomikiku

@malindacath

@aviatorobsessed

@lynnevanss

@djs8891

@httyd-marauders

@penguin876

@jbetches

@squidy-things350

If you’d like to join my taglist, just send me an ask!

[the-authoress-writes]

The story is now complete!

Up Where We Belong Masterlist

Pete “Maverick” Mitchell x Writer!reader

Synopsis: When a writer experiencing horrible writer’s block goes to the Apple Valley Airshow for inspiration, she meets a certain older, daring naval aviator, leading to maybe a little more than just inspiration.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

[the-authoress-writes]

Up Where We Belong Part Three

Pete “Maverick” Mitchell x Writer!reader

Up Where We Belong Masterlist

Synopsis: When a writer experiencing horrible writer’s block goes to the Apple Valley Airshow for inspiration, she meets a certain older, daring naval aviator, leading to maybe a little more than just inspiration.

Warnings: Mentions of family member deaths, cancer, some to-be-expected cursing, age gap (reader is in their late thirties to early forties).

But really, this is just fluff.

Author’s Note: This was a pain to finish—you know the feeling when you know what you have to do, but you don’t know how to do it?

(Insert Ben Solo/Kylo Ren/Adam Driver gif here)

Yeah, that was this.

So many parts of this were so stubborn, even when I knew what the next story beat was; combine that with the inner critic being a bitch and the imposter syndrome impostoring, this was a labor of love.

Obviously, I pushed through, and here we have the final chapter of “Up Where We Belong”, which I am very proud of.

Again, I name a story after a song, from another movie about the Navy, funnily enough.

(Only three of my stories on my masterlist are not named after songs)

I can’t stop, apparently.

So here we go!

Even while her phone was telling her she was on the right path, she briefly wondered if she was, in fact, lost.

It couldn’t be more obvious that she was in the middle of nowhere, lonely desert stretching out before her for miles and miles, with nary another car in sight, much less a building that could conceivably be a hangar.

It comforted her to see a blue Bronco pass her by at a brisk pace as she continued down the route indicated by her phone, having not seen another car for the past fifteen or so minutes.

She eventually turned when her phone instructed her, the hills along the road she’d been driving next to giving way to an enormous desert plain, and the slightly heat-distorted sight of a building in the distance, probably a mile off.

A smile crossed her face, that had to be it.

As she drew closer, the nerves she’d been tamping down started to bubble up again, and she cursed herself. “Get a grip, woman, you’re here to review a scene, not to go on a date.”

Despite that, the fact that she’d spent nearly half an hour planning what she’d wear today felt like a Freudian slip—a loose orange tunic with small blue embroidered flowers on the hem and sleeves, dark wash skinny jeans and brown ankle boots—eventually deeming it not too much, but not like she didn’t care.

As she got closer, the building became more impressive, despite its rather homely outward appearance—from the white-painted wood panels worn down to their natural color here and there, the fading “United States Navy” emblazoned at the top, to the faint, sun-bleached squadron insignia on the open bay doors—it just felt beautiful in a wild way.

She parked about several yards away from the hangar doors and shut off the engine. “Okay, what’s going to happen will happen,” she muttered, “you’re going to survive it hook or by crook.

And besides, you don’t even know if he’s married or in a relationship.”

And with that rousing Crispin Crispianish speech, she picked up her messenger bag, slinging it onto her shoulder as she got out of the car.

The desert heat and silence washed over her as she moved towards the doors, calling out, “Hello?”

“In here,” came the reply.

She stepped inside the hangar, the shift to relative darkness briefly obscuring her vision, causing her to blink as her eyes adjusted, to see Pete standing by Bianca, looking somehow even better than she remembered, like something out of a movie.

His gaze was fixed intently on her, the slightest smile on his face, and she couldn’t help but match his expression, a “Hey there, sailor,” thoughtlessly slipping from her lips, which she immediately mentally kicked herself for saying; “Damn it, woman, how awkward can you be?” flashed through her mind like a neon sign.

Thankfully, he only brightly replied, “Hey, glad you could make it.”

Her smile widened. “Not going to miss it—for all I know, this is a one-time opportunity,” she truthfully replied, determined to make the most of this opportunity in regard to her novel—other… hypothetical motivations notwithstanding.

He shrugged, eyes sparkling, his movie star smile as devastating as a whole volume of honeyed poetry. “Who said it was?”

She chuckled, wrenching her gaze away from him before she said or did something stupid, settling for the sting of her teeth on her lip to knock her back to her senses.

Her eyes flit about the hangar, eventually landing on Bianca, the frontispiece of the whole room. “Great place you’ve got here, must’ve been hard to get, though, with it being Navy land.”

“Not that hard when you’ve got friends in high places,” he replied.

The sentence itself was vaguely humorous, something wry, an inside joke, but there was a weight to his tone, like the joke had lost its humor, and instead turned into something to grieve.

She tilted her head slightly, another enigma comprising Pete “Maverick” Mitchell revealing itself.

But before she could think too much, he broke the sudden silence. “Anyway, uh,” he clapped his hands, “you had a scene that needs checking?”

She blinked and raised the leather messenger bag on her shoulder. “I have my laptop right here.”

He gestured grandly to his couch, and as they moved towards it, she surreptitiously wiped her hands on her thighs, perspiration disappearing in the dark wash of her jeans, then busied herself with opening her laptop, finger fumbling on the start screen as she felt him settle in the seat next to her—realistically, she knew he’d likely sit next to her, but just because one knew something didn’t prepare one for experiencing it.

Again, the blinking cursor on her MacBook’s screen seemed to cackle at her, but she ignored it in favor of typing in her password, opening the laptop to the dreaded dogfight scene. “Here it is in all its misery,” she half-joked.

“May I?” he gestured to the device.

“Go ahead,” she sighed.

Pete picked up the device, leaning back with it in his lap, eyes darting about the screen, mouth moving slightly as he read, and in a matter of moments, his hands came up, mimicking the movements she’d written, while his face alternately made skeptical, approving, and a few amused expressions.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” she plaintively asked, bracing for the worst, when he carefully placed the MacBook on his coffee table what seemed like an eternity later.

“It’s not bad at all,” he shook his head, an earnest expression lighting his features. “There are some maneuvers there that are only plausible for the P-51 in a rare set of conditions, and a… couple that I’d say are more in line with the capabilities of the F-35–or the 18 in my hands—but overall, it’s pretty damn good for a self-professed newbie to writing a dogfight scene.”

Her jaw fell open. “You’re kidding me.”

“Swear on my wings,” he laughed, the sound so musical, it was almost annoying how perfect and beautiful this man was.

“How would you fix it?”

He pointed, “Do you have a pen and notebook?”

“Never go anywhere without one.”

That beautiful smile of his spread his lips. “Well, let’s turn and burn, then.”

They worked for a couple or so hours, Pete writing out more plausible maneuvers to replace the impossible ones, demonstrating them with some models he’d run off to another corner of the hangar to retrieve, both of them mutually deciding to leave most of the only slightly implausible ones in, save for the ones where the bounds of reality were a little too stretched for the aerial conditions she’d already committed to, while she elaborated on what he’d written, fitting it into the novel’s style.

Eventually, she released a breath of victory, and proffered the laptop to Pete again, now actually proud of the dogfight scene. “You want to read it again?”

“Alright,” he easily agreed.

He read it again, the scene before her the same as over two hours ago, but this time, the skeptical and amused looks were replaced with a captivated and admiring expression.

“Well?” she prompted.

He blew out a breath. “It reads even better than I thought it would, you’re really good at this.”

She leaned forward, needing to be sure she hadn’t imagined him saying that. “It’s good?”

Pete leaned forward, into her personal space, matching her, as he fervently said, “It’s amazing.”

Her breath caught as the moment stretched taut around them, the two of them close enough for her to see the light reflecting off the peridot and aquamarine flecks in the brilliant jade of his eyes.

She looked around the hangar again at his earnest gaze, the itch to do something stupid scratching at her skin once more—she had a feeling that that would be a pattern for her with Pete Mitchell. “So, tell me, what exactly is it you do for the Navy, Captain Mitchell?”

He froze minutely at the end of her sentence, swallowing thickly as he processed the question.

“If you’ll have to kill me, there’s no need to tell me,” she joked, as she literally saw his brain reboot.

He blinked and chuckled softly, coming back to himself. “No, no, nothing as secretive as all that; I’m an instructor at TOPGUN—basically, I teach the Navy’s best aviators how to be better.

That’s why I talked about students during our phone call.”

“We’ll have to compare notes sometime to see who got it worse—I used to be a high school English teacher.”

Pete winced. “Ooh, teenagers, I don’t envy you.

But imagine taking hotshot twenty-somethings who fly multi-million dollar weapons as a career, who think they’re the best and know everything, shoving them into one room, and having to show them quite vividly that they don’t know everything.”

She gave her own wince. “Ooh.

But come on, you can’t have it that bad—especially if you fly an F-18 anything like how you flew Bianca at Apple Valley.

You’re telling me they’d still act up after getting so thoroughly schooled?”

He tilted his head from side to side, amused. “You’d be surprised, but uh… well, let’s just say that most of the “old man” comments typically tend to lose their bite by the end of the first hop.”

She laughed loudly, throwing her head back, just imagining the reactions of those hotshot kids. “As they should—I’d pay to see their reactions, come to think of it.”

She looked back at him to see his gaze was intently focused on her, but it didn’t send a shiver down her spine—at least not in the unsettling way it usually did when men stared at her. “Maybe my next class cycle, you’d like to come down to North Island, sit in the control tower, listen in on the first hop or two,” he said.

“An opportunity to see an experienced naval aviator in his element; I must say that’s an appealing offer.”

“You just let me know if you want to take me up on it.”

It was sheer instinct to say, “You know, I just might.”

Lowly, he replied, “I’d like that.”

The honestly there was breathtaking.

A glance out the bay doors showed that the sun was starting to hang low in the sky, casting a yellow-orange glow on everything, and caution nipped at her heels. “It’s kind of getting late, and I don’t want to bother you into the evening, I should go.”

Pete’s face fell ever so slightly. “You’re no bother, but I understand if you need to go.”

The slight drop of his features felt like a fall from a high precipice, sinking like a stone in her stomach. “Thank you so much again for your help, I really can’t thank you enough for everything,” she reassured.

“It’s no problem,” he said, almost resignedly.

She felt an intense yearning in her soul to strip that lonely note from his voice, to lift the sadness from him which came in like a squall, so she said the first thing that came to mind, her heretofore carefully-maintained caution getting unceremoniously kicked to the curb. “Uh, this might be stupid, and I’m so sorry if I’m being a nuisance, so feel free to tell me off, but… would you mind if I called you again?

Honestly—I, I don’t really have anyone to talk to about this in much detail with, and—and I’d love to talk with someone who understands the perspective my granduncle might’ve had.”

To her happiness, he brightened. “Not at all, I’d li—it’d be ni—” he sighed, a little wry smile playing on his lips, “feel free to call.”

She resisted the urge to giggle at his fumbling for words. “Okay, I’ll do that.

Thank you.

I promise not to call at like, 2:00 in the morning, when you’re asleep.”

He laughed, but pulled a face that had her mentally frowning as they both stood; however, she didn’t mention it, and instead gathered her things before Pete escorted her to her car, opening the door for her. “I’ll uh, expect your call?”

If the former sadness in his tone tugged at her heart, the thinly veiled hope now there positively wrenched it, and caution was nowhere to be seen. “It might come sooner than you think.”

The boyish, excited expression on his face was enough to make her heart skip a beat. “I look forward to it.”

By the time she reached home, while eating some ramen on her couch for dinner, she found herself picking up her phone and going to Pete’s message thread.

She typed and retyped her message again and again, debating whether or not to send anything at all, but eventually settled on “Just thought I’d let you know that I survived the drive home to bug you another day 🤣”, and sent it off before she could think too much.

Her finger was on the verge of clicking her phone off, but then she caught sight of the typing bubble, and she absentmindedly chewed her lip as she waited for his reply.

Eventually, after about a minute of the typing bubble popping up and disappearing, a message finally came in. “I had every confidence that you would. 😉”

She leaned back, setting into her cushions as she figured out her next message.

The week passed by, and she didn’t pass a day without messaging Pete at least once—he was so easy to talk to about pretty much everything, and it was so comfortable, to just pick up her phone and ask a question or say something non sequitur, his reply coming within the hour, if not within the next ten minutes, starting a conversation by text or a subsequent call, either of which could last hours.

However, this had a drawback.

It meant she didn’t work on the novel nearly as much as she should, and she eventually found herself staring again at her cruel, blinking cursor as her mind stubbornly remained blank.

It wasn’t nearly as bad as her first block, or the block regarding the dogfight scene, but she was starting to get a little frustrated.

Deciding to take a little break from blinking at her laptop’s screen, she traded it for her phone, open, as usual, to Pete’s message thread. “Feeling a little frustrated right now…” she shot off.

Forty-five minutes or so later, she got his reply. “Sorry to hear that.

You want to talk?”

“You free?”

A beat later, her phone rang. “So—frustrated, huh?”

Just hearing his voice had some of the frustration draining from her. “Yes.

It’s absolutely infuriating; I know what happens next, it just doesn’t want to—” she gestured sharply even though he wouldn’t see it, “you know?”

He hummed, “I know the feeling, the same thing happened to me a couple of times when I was writing my paper for my Master’s.”

“You have a Master’s.” she restated, shocked.

“Two, actually—Aerospace Engineering and Physics.”

It was said so matter-of-factly that she simply blinked for several seconds, impressed. “Another layer to Pete Mitchell,” she said, once she found words again.

“Like an onion.”

His joke made her snort while he continued, “I’ll let you in on a little secret—you’d be surprised how many naval aviators are actually nerds.

Don’t let the flight suits and Ray-Bans fool you.”

She laughed, but soon grew serious. “Oh God, Pete, I don’t know what to do—I mean, the last time I productively wrote anything was last week, at your hangar.”

There was a long pause, so much so that she thought the call had dropped, but when she looked at her screen, the line was still connected. “Pete?”

“Yeah, I’m here.” He sounded tentative. “Uh, if, if you wanted, you could—could come down to the hangar this weekend—you never know, being where you were last productive might shake something loose.”

“Sure, I’d love to—I mean—anything to make any progress, and—and the company’s pretty good too.”

She tried not to sound too eager to see him again, but she knew she probably failed at that.

“…Is there anything I can do to turn that ‘pretty good’ to good?” the now-familiar smile could be heard in his voice.

“We’ll see what happens this weekend, Captain.”

This time, when she stepped into the hangar, Pete was kneeling next to one of his numerous motorcycles, hands buried somewhere in its engine, dressed again in a white t-shirt and jeans. “You know, I’m starting to think you live in a white t-shirt and jeans,” she joked, though it was undeniable how good he looked in them.

He looked up, a warm chuckle escaping him, “That’s not true; once in a blue moon, the shirt’s black, and you’re forgetting my flight suit.”

She grinned, “Oh, we have a comedian here, yet another layer!”

“I’ll be here all weekend,” he bowed and swept his arm out to the side before standing and wiping his hands on a nearby rag. “You’re welcome to make yourself comfortable in the living area, can I get you any coffee or anything?”

“Uh, maybe a coffee?”

“Sure thing; how do you take it?”

“Two teaspoons of sugar, splash of cream if you have it.”

With a nod, he strode to the trailer further in the hangar, and soon emerged from the silver Airstream, steaming cup in hand, which he set on the small table beside the couch, where she had settled. “Just ignore me and do what you have to do.”

“Thank you for letting me intrude on your space.”

“No problem, you’re a very welcome change from my usual routine and company.”

She placed a hand on her heart, “Gee, you sure do know how to make a girl feel special.”

A mischievous light entered those beautiful eyes of his, and he leaned down, placing a hand on the back of the couch, making her crane her head up to look at him. “Oh, you haven’t seen anything yet.”

She swallowed thickly, and he glanced down, tracking the movement, but her “Is that so, Captain?” had his eyes meeting hers in a flash.

“Yeah, I’d say that’s so.” The slight rasp in his voice could have been a trick of her imagination, but before she could think about it, he cleared his throat and stepped back. “I’ll let you get to work.

Like I said, just ignore me,” he said, tone light once more.

She wasn’t sure if ignoring him was completely possible, but she replied, “I’ll call you if I need your opinion on anything.”

He threw her an insouciant salute, before heading off into the depths of his hangar.

The blinking cursor of her laptop was just as evil as it always was, but it didn’t seem so daunting here, so she buckled down, beginning to shave out some progress with the soft sounds of tools in the background—it wasn’t as much as she’d like, but anything was better than what she’d been doing, or rather, not been doing the last few days.

After an hour of sitting and writing, she stretched and stood, looking for Pete, curious as to what he was up to.

“Pete?” she called out.

“I’m back here!”

She followed the sound of his voice to a workbench near a sink in the recesses of the hangar; he was looking through a jar of screws, placing the contents into several smaller jars. “You make any progress with the writing?”

“Mm-hmm—not as much as I’d like, but it’s something; I just wanted to stand and stretch for a bit, take a little break from my screen.

What are you doing?”

“I’m working on some upgrades to one of my bikes, but I, uh, got a little sidetracked and I am currently sorting my screw collection,” he sheepishly said.

“Ah,” she nodded, “I know the feeling, the side quest that you absolutely have to complete before you can do anything else.”

“Yeah,” he grinned, “it’s crazy, isn’t it?”

She laughed, a frown soon creasing her brow as she happened to look off to the side.

Involuntarily, she stepped closer to the photo-covered cork board on the wall, gaze fixed on a photo of a young, flight suit-clad Pete, helmet in hand, standing in front of a jet, a tall, familiar-looking man next to him.

The other man was the spitting image of Pete’s son, the only difference perhaps being perhaps ever-so-slightly lighter and straighter hair.

“Bradley looks exactly like him, doesn’t he?” Pete’s voice intruded on her confusion.

She looked to her left to see him standing beside her, an old grief shining in his eyes.

“Yes, he does,” she breathed carefully, knowing somehow that she was in different waters. “Who was he?”

“Nick Bradshaw—Goose—my backseater, back in the eighties, when I flew F-14s.

My brother in all but blood… Bradley’s father.”

The story he proceeded to tell was tragic and heartbreaking; she didn’t even have to see the muted grief in his eyes as he spoke to imagine the anguish he must have endured that day, having to hold Nick’s lifeless body in his arms for what undoubtedly felt like an eternity.

“I became Bradley’s legal guardian after his mother died of cancer, and… while there were a lot of rough years where we didn’t talk to each other, we made up late last year; came out stronger for it, I think.”

“I’m so sorry, Pete,” she breathed.

He smiled ruefully. “Wasn’t all bad, though; got some pretty good brothers out of all that, though I can’t say they’re all still here.”

The dots connected in her head. “The friends in high places?”

He nodded sadly. “My best friend—he was my wingman for decades until he became an Admiral, ended up the highest ranking one this side of the country, in fact.

He died shortly before Bradley and I made up; cancer.”

She didn’t know what possessed her, but she reached for his hand, lacing their fingers together.

His breath hitched, and he looked down at their linked hands, before turning glassy eyes to her.

She was caught in that piercing gaze, which seemed to look right into her soul, and something told her that she was incredibly lucky to be seeing this vulnerability.

The weight of that was almost enough to bring her to her knees, but she pushed that aside in favor trying to ease the sadness in his eyes. “Cancer really fucking sucks, doesn’t it?”

He burst into a watery laugh. “Yes, it fucking does.”

She laughed along with him, squeezing his hand, making the callouses on his palm press against the soft skin of hers. “You want some help with your screw sorting?”

He sniffled, chuckling, “I feel like you’re using me as a distraction.”

“Yes, I absolutely am; are you complaining?”

Pete looked down at the floor, shaking his head with a soft smile. “Not at all, but I’m giving you five minutes before I make you write again, I’m not about to be blamed for any lack of progress.”

True to his word, after the five minutes were up, he shuffled her off to the couch, and she was glad that he wasn’t enabling her procrastination, thankfully able to make a fair bit of progress from there.

Some time later, while in the middle of spell checking what she’d written, she looked up to see Pete place a fresh cup of coffee next to her before sitting in a chair opposite her, picking up a small stack of paperwork and a pen from the coffee table. “Just pretend I’m not here,” he whispered.

For a while, they worked together in silence, as the California sun set, but soon, curiosity began dogging her thoughts. “Doesn’t your wife mind that you’re here late?” she asked.

His gaze almost audibly snapped to hers, his jaw working as he seemed to carefully consider his answer. “…I’m not married.”

Her traitorous heart skipped a beat. “Girlfriend?”

“Don’t have one of those either,” he casually replied. “How about you?

Anyone waiting for you back in San Bernardino?”

She took a deep breath. “Not unless you count my neighbor, Mrs. Moscovitz.

She gets worried when I don’t come home before ten.”

A faint smile crossed his lips. “Good neighbors are hard to come by.”

“That they are.”

They worked in silence for another half hour before she stood and stretched; it was beginning to get dark, and while she was a little more confident driving the desert roads, she wanted to hit the highway before the sun fully set.

“Going now?” Pete asked.

“I want to hit the highway before it gets really dark.”

He smiled ruefully, “I understand, we got to get you back safe, I don’t want Mrs. Moscovitz to kick my ass.”

“And she could, believe me,” she laughed, gathering her things, and exactly like last time, Pete escorted her to her car, opening the door for her.

It was when she turned to face him that a thought body-slammed her. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“I’ve been writing a lot here, and I’ve thought of some of the best moments here, actually.

Um… I guess what I’m trying to ask is… would you mind if we made this—me coming over to write—a regular thing?”

He blinked, seemingly taken aback.

“If I’ve overstepped, please pretend I never—”

“I’m here every weekend, from Friday night until Sunday morning,” he interrupted.

“So that’s a yes?”

“Yeah, it’s a yes.”

“Okay,” she breathed, grinning. “I’ll see you next week, then.”

He matched her grin, “I look forward to it.”

Over the next three months, she made regular weekend visits to the hangar, the two of them learning each other, slowly growing closer as she told him about her life growing up in a family of pilots, her years as a teacher, leaving more and more of her heart behind in the desert each time.

Her heart panged remembering the day he told her why the P-51 was named Bianca.

“Uh, __?

I, er, kind of need some help,” Pete called.

Immediately rising from the couch, she walked over to where he was standing next to Bianca, hands deep in her engine. “What do you need?”

“Could you hand me that wrench there that’s out on the cart?”

After handing it off, a few turns of the wrench later, he stepped back, admiring the old girl while wiping his hands with a rag. “There we go, sweetheart, that’s more like it.”

“You spoil her, you know?” she shook her head.

“How can I not spoil her—look at her!” he replied, with a mock-affronted expression.

“Yeah, she is gorgeous, isn’t she?” she said, turning to look at the marvel of engineering Bianca was.

“She is,” he murmured, and something in his tone made her look back at him, only to see he also had turned to look at Bianca.

“Why’d you name her Bianca?” she asked, wanting to draw out the conversation before he would undoubtedly shoo her back to writing.

He sighed wistfully, “I named her after my mother.

Her name was Bianca Rivelli; Mitchell after she married my dad, of course.

She was from South Philadelphia—Little Italy in that part of town—and she met my dad when she was visiting friends in New York City during Fleet Week; it was love at first sight, she always said.” He hesitated, and a pit sank in her stomach. “She uh, passed from a heart attack when I was seven, but I know that it was heartbreak that really took her, after my dad was shot down and killed in Vietnam and branded a traitor, all because he died during an off-the-books mission.

She tried so hard to hang on for me, I know, and I don’t blame her for leaving—not anymore, not for decades—and when I got the P-51, I wanted to commemorate her somehow.

So I named her Bianca.”

She didn’t even think twice before lunging and pulling Pete into a hug.

He stood stiffly for a moment, and she was just about to pull away, but then he positively sank into the embrace, wrapping his arms around her.

“You’ve suffered so much pain, and it only made you kind,” she sniffled after a long while.

“I can still be an asshole sometimes, you know?” he said, voice wavering.

“Maybe, but you’re still unbelievably kind.”

Now, as she was once again driving to the hangar, trepidation settled at the forefront of her mind; she was nearing the end of the novel, and in fact, she was sure she’d finish it today; but what would happen without a reason to visit Pete?

This was the twenty-first century, a woman had the right to tell a man if she was interested in him, but if he didn’t feel the same, she might just torpedo the best friendship she’d had in a long time; she loved to talk to him, spending time with him was the easiest thing in the world, and not having that anymore seemed incomprehensible.

The hangar drew closer and closer, but she was getting more and more confused, and so decided to engage in the oldest, most revered of writerly traditions: procrastination.

She’d just hope that she’d find the opportunity, the thoughts, and more importantly, the courage, to say something to him.

Fear and nervousness dominated her emotions as she walked into the quiet hangar—much too quiet for a space inhabited by someone like Pete Mitchell.

“Pete?”

“You’re right on time,” he breezily said, coming out of the Airstream, cup of coffee in hand, “something told me to make your coffee already, and here you are!”

“Seems like you’re getting ESP,” she lightly replied, trying to belie the mess of emotions she was feeling.

“I don’t know about all that—maybe just for you,” he softly laughed, his eyes endearingly crinkling at the corners like they always did when he was genuinely happy.

And if that didn’t make her heart absolutely melt—truly, how this man was not married or in a relationship at this point, she didn’t know.

She settled into what she had dared to start thinking of as her “spot” on the couch, the coffee cup he was holding clinking onto the table beside her the next second.

“I’ll let you get to it,” he nodded, squirreling off to a corner of the hangar before she could get a word in edgewise.

With nothing else for it, she reluctantly began writing, and in a sick twist of fate, the words came easily, when she most wanted them not to come, in hopes of drawing this status quo out for just one more week.

One more week of driving to this lonely desert hangar, one more week of seeing those ubiquitous white t-shirts and Levi’s, one more week of hearing his voice, seeing his smile when he caught sight of her.

But fate was cold and cruel, and after roughly two hours, the draft was finished.

Tears welled in her eyes, but for completely different reasons than she would have said when she first began rewriting her Uncle Joe’s story.

“Hey, what’s wrong?

What happened?”

She looked up into Pete’s warm, concerned gaze, and didn’t that just make things worse? “I—I finished the draft.

It’s done,” she croaked.

“Hey, congratulations!

That’s great!” he encouraged, a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“Yeah… yeah, it is.

I… I can’t believe it’s over… and I’m really feeling sad right now,” she numbly breathed, deciding for a little honesty.

He moved to sit beside her, his leg pressed against hers, and her breath caught at the proximity.

“Well, that’s understandable, you’ve devoted a lot of time to this, and it’s something very important to you,” he softly replied. “But hey, I have every confidence that this is going to be a bestseller—every publisher is going to want you, and won’t that make everything you went through to get to this point worth it?”

His words made her remember her PopPop, when he encouraged her to write about Uncle Joe and Céline, shortly before he died, and it made her smile despite herself. “It will.”

“That’s the spirit.” He reached up, cupping her cheek, thumb delicately brushing away a tear she didn’t even know had fallen, and almost subconsciously, she leaned into his touch.

He seemed to swallow reflexively, eyes quickly darting down before he met her gaze again and lowered his hand from her cheek, leaving her feeling bereft. “Uh, since it’s not every day one finishes a first draft and all,” Pete gestured, “how—how would you feel about taking a little celebratory flight?”

Her eyes widened. “In—in the—in Bianca?”

A smile she would venture to call sad inexplicably crossed his face. “Mm-hmm.”

“I’d love that.”

What better way to celebrate finishing her granduncle’s story than a flight in the same plane he flew?

At the very least, if she crashed and burned her friendship with Pete because she happened to find some heretofore unknown reservoir of courage, she’d have something shining and beautiful to remember him by.

It felt absolutely surreal to sit in Bianca’s backseat, and it didn’t feel any less surreal as they cruised through the air.

Sitting up here, over two thousand feet above the ground, while she was happy with the direction she’d taken in her life, she felt she now truly understood why the better part of her family had dedicated themselves to the skies.

It was breathtaking and awe inspiring; with the mountainous desert vista out below, the clear blue sky above, she thought she’d never seen anything so beautiful in her life.

To get to see this every day, and to have the controls of a marvel of engineering beneath your hands as a pilot… the feeling was surely beyond exhilarating.

“How you doing back there?” Pete asked, voice tinny through the headphones.

“Just perfect—I can really understand now why you and my family do this for a living, it’s amazing up here.”

“I know, right?

There’s nothing like it,” he breathed, and she could almost feel the joy in his voice.

They flew on in easy silence for a while before he broke it again. “So, I have a question for you; we can keep flying nice and easy like this until you want to land or until we have to, or… we can have some fun—nothing like what I did at Apple Valley, but uh, it’ll definitely be a little bit more exciting than nice and easy.”

As much as she wanted to immediately say yes, she was still a little apprehensive. “You promise not to make me throw up?”

“Swear on my wings,” he solemnly promised, “and if you feel uncomfortable during anything, all you have to do is let me know, and I’ll immediately level off.”

She inhaled and exhaled deeply. “…Alright, go for it.”

“Okay, here we go!” Gently, he brought Bianca into a sweeping banked descent, and from there, while she was sure it was nothing for Pete, who’d done far more daring things in Bianca, and surely in his career as a naval aviator, this was the most thrilling thing she’d ever experienced in her life.

Before she knew it, Pete said, “We’ll have to land in fifteen minutes, so I’ll bring us back around, okay?”

Her heart sank. “So soon?”

He laughed, “We’ve been up here for almost an hour and a half.”

It felt like they just got up here. “What?!”

“Time flies when you’re having fun!”

“You’re corny, Pete Mitchell,” she chuckled.

“Guilty as charged!”

But the joyful mood didn’t last long—soon, the hangar and runway were in sight, and sadness suddenly overwhelmed her; she breathed mournfully, “How can I ever thank you for everything?”

“No need to thank me,” he replied, seemingly overtaken by the same sadness she was, though it didn’t have any bearing on how smoothly he brought Bianca onto the tarmac, and how he brought her back into the hangar.

The leaden pit in her heart and stomach seemed to grow even heavier; she’d been waiting the whole day for the time and courage to tell him how she felt, but she wasn’t able to find a moment or the courage to speak, and now her chances were slipping away, the sudden sound of silence as the engine cut and the canopy slid back feeling like the first handful of earth dropped on a casket.

“You need any help?” Pete’s voice intruded on her thoughts.

“No, I got it.” It wasn’t completely the truth, but anything to draw out the moments she had left.

With a nod, Pete eased himself up out of the cockpit and slid down the wing.

Finally, she was able to unclip herself from her harness and stand up, easing herself onto the wing—

“Ahhh!” she yelped, having lost her foothold on the wing, abruptly sliding down the warm metal, and then—

She suddenly stopped, toes just touching the ground, pressed against a firm chest, her hands fisting in white cotton, warm arms wrapped around her waist.

It was almost a replay of the day she met Pete, and it felt like fate was giving her one final chance.

She looked up into his eyes, knowing that if she didn’t say anything now, she never would. “Pete, I—”

The words died in her throat as he moved his hand to cup her cheek like he had two hours ago, and just like two hours ago, she leaned into the warmth of his touch, her breath hitching as she felt the gentleness with which his rough, calloused palm caressed her cheek.

He scanned her face, searching for something, and seemingly finding it, his viridescent gaze lighted on her lips, which had her heart stuttering in her chest and the air shuddering from her lungs.

“Don’t think, just do,” he muttered, leaning in, and like lightning, her mind sharpened; she leaned forward, pulling him the minuscule distance to her with a hand on his neck.

Suddenly, she found herself taking flight in a completely different way from five minutes ago.

Pete kissed her like he flew; with complete dedication, and like this was the last moment of pure, unrivaled, unfettered joy he’d ever have again, and her knees went weak, an entirely different thrill rushing through her, as she felt him push her up against Bianca’s fuselage.

She was breathless, she was taking the first breath of air she’d ever had—it was fire, it was light, it was incandescent.

She only realized the burn in her lungs when he drew back, both of them gasping for breath.

“God, you don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do that,” he breathed, voice deep and rough, eyes dark.

An actual whimper fell from her lips, and she replied, “Holy shit, I don’t care if it’s done, that’s definitely going in the book.”

He huffed a low chuckle, that devastating smirk on his face. “In that case, you want a little more inspiration?”

“Oh hell, yes,” she breathed, and pulled him back into her.

The End

Previous Part

I very much had an inner debate as to whether the ending of this story was too similar to that of TG:M, but after a lot of soul searching, I decided that this was the only conceivable way to end this.

It starts with the P-51, and it ends with her.

You could call her Mav’s wingwoman, I suppose.

The Hangar, as I learned from an interview I will not be able to dig up from my YouTube history, is actually owned by Tom himself.

He said it in the aforementioned interview, and I honestly should have seen it coming.

The hangar was even featured in the background of the iconic video where Tom took James Corden flying in the P-51, and I am somewhat ashamed to say that I recognized it from shots where you only saw the corner of the building.

Yeah, do me a favor and please don’t bring that up.

“Crispin Crispianish” is a reference to the St. Crispin’s Day speech from Shakespeare’s “Henry V”, from which the title of the WWII book and series “Band of Brothers” is taken.

“Turn and burn” is a colloquial aviation saying which describes being cleared to takeoff from the runway generally without having to hold short of it for any duration of time, which leads to the aircraft immediately turning onto the runway from the taxiway shortly before the pilots push the engine thrust levers to Take Off/Go Around, which produces maximum thrust, and presto change-o, you have a generally expedited takeoff.

“You’d be surprised,” is absolutely a reference to Bradley almost punching Jake’s lights out in TG:M.

Yes, I am aware of the amount of art imitating life here; my writer and myself were very much twinning in our frustration with what we were writing.

You can pry ADHD/Neurodivergent/Genius IQ Mav from my cold, dead hands.

Here we have the answer to why the P-51 is named “Bianca” in my story.

I headcanon Mav has Italian heritage, and I thought this would be a nice way to put it in here.

I also made his mom from Philadelphia, because there’s a Top Gun ‘86 costume test shot of Tom wearing an Eagles sweatshirt, and as a Philly-adjacent girl, I had to somehow reference that even obliquely.

“You’ve suffered so much pain, and it only made you kind,” is an adaptation of a line from “Doctor Who”, which I thought perfectly describes Mav.

Taglist

@ohtobemare

@callsign-skydancer

@permanentlyexhaustedpigeon88

@tadomikiku

@malindacath

@aviatorobsessed

@lynnevanss

@djs8891

If you’d like to join my taglist, just send me an ask!

[the-authoress-writes]

Bravo, Sky!

You did a really good job with this, I love the fact that Tom is so in love with his girl—enough to run through the airport for her.

I honestly really love that for him.

And how he recounts everything he loves about her, it just makes me *hand on heart*.

Knowledge is a form of intimacy and love, and who couldn’t love someone who loves you so much to know you so deeply?

Great job!!!

Spare Key | Tom "Iceman" Kazansky x Reader

A/N: Did I really just churn this 1400+ word fic out in a single afternoon after not writing ANYTHING for literal months??? Also, there's definitely some angst here but I physically can't write anything that doesn't have a happy/satisfying ending. This is also my first time writing for Ice, so please be gentle with me. I used She/Her pronouns for Reader but no physical description or use of Y/N, but there are certain aspects of my own personality written into this reader, which is a writing trait I can't help.

I'd like to dedicate this little piece to @oh-great-authoress, and also to @hobbitmajora, who may not be into Top Gun but who's encouragement was really nice to have when I needed someone to show off to.

And now.... Spare Key.

“Stop! …Please!” 

“Tom? What are you doing here?” Of course the initial response came from his girl. Or at least, she used to be. She was almost always on the ball like that. 

Tom Kazansky hadn’t planned on any of this happening. 

Finding out about her flight home not even half an hour ago, rushing down to the airport to stop it, getting caught in traffic, running down the corridors and stopping her from boarding the plane? None of it was on the docket of things he thought he would be doing that day. 

In his car, on the way downtown, he remembered their break up. She had told him, to his face, that she thought he was out of her league and deserved someone better. The way she talked, she implied that maybe she believed there were more cracks in the foundation of their relationship than he thought. 

There was no doubt in Ice’s mind that he loved her, though. He loved her so much; he loved her almost as much as he loved flying. 

Their relationship had started not too long ago, after he met her during trivia night at the O Club. It was a tournament type of game, and it was him versus her in the final round. They were tied, and whoever answered the next question correctly first would win. 

The guy hosting the event read the question off a card. 

“Final Question! Name the famous Russian composer who wrote his ‘Leningrad Symphony’ during the Second World War?” 

Fuck. A music question. She’d been getting these a lot faster than he had. Before he even had time to think too much, she was hitting her buzzer to answer. 

“Who is Dmitri Shostakovich?” 

She was right, too. Damn, she was sharp as a tack. 

After she got her cheap plastic trophy and something to drink in celebration, Ice approached her at the bar. She read as mostly easygoing and incredibly friendly, despite her competitiveness. 

But she caught him watching her first, and she cracked a grin at him. It was contagious, so he couldn't help but smile back. 

“Hey, good game. I've never had someone come that close to beating me before.” Her smile grew even wider. 

“In my profession, there are no awards for second place.” Tom explained, though he was mostly messing with her. 

“Oh? What exactly is it you do, then?” She said as she crossed her arms. 

“I teach fighter pilots at TOP GUN.” 

Realization seemed to dawn in her eyes. “You wouldn't happen to be Tom Kazansky, would you?” 

Conversation was completely and utterly uphill, almost effortlessly, from that point after they had properly introduced themselves. He learned she worked at the Aviation museum on the base, she had a real knack for history of just about any kind. She gave tours and helped with basic maintenance of some of the older planes, and he caught her timed group tours on more than one occasion. 

Sometimes, he would pick her up after classes at Top Gun let out for the day, and they would go out. Sometimes to the O Club, sometimes to the local arcade to get a milkshake and play After Burner 2 together, sometimes to the roller rink. A lot of nights and weekends, though, they would just go back to her apartment and watch a rented movie or listen to music from her vinyl record collection which was absolutely huge. 

He remembered the day, about 6 months in, when she gave him her spare key. 

“There's something special about you, Tom Kazansky. I would trust you with all of my secrets.” 

Things only got better after that, even if some of the cracks in the foundation had begun to show. 

After she gave him her spare key, he took her to a couple volleyball games with the boys, where it turned out she also had a KILLER volleyball serve when he had just expected her to want to sit by and watch. 

He lost count of the times he walked up to her apartment door and heard her singing on the other side. She was usually doing dishes in the kitchen, and she usually sang along with the radio. 

As time went on, though, he encountered less and less of her. She took days off from her museum job, she wouldn't pick up his calls when he called her after work, something was definitely wrong. 

One weekend, he took that spare key and went over to her apartment to figure out exactly what was wrong. 

He found her in her bedroom reading at her desk, which was odd, because she usually read out on the couch in front of the TV. 

She looked over at him. “Hey, Tommy.” It was more of a sigh than a sentence. “I figured you'd come by eventually.” 

He sat on the side of her bed, which wasn’t made. 

“Will you tell me what's wrong?” He asked, because of course he was worried about her, or if he had done something to upset her. 

“It's me. I'm the thing that's wrong.” She let out in a choked sob. “You deserve someone better, so much better.” 

Tom was drawing a blank. 

“I'm not sure what you mean.” 

Her tears, though, began to flow even harder. “I'm so weak, pathetic, and selfish. You deserve someone you can show to your colleagues and students and be proud of.” 

“Is that what this is about?” He asked. “You don't like yourself?” 

She nodded. “You're totally out of my league. Sometimes I wonder if we were even supposed to happen.” 

Ice determined that maybe he had picked up some of his father's poorer traits, after all. Had he ever let his walls down with her at all, to tell her how happy she made him and how much he loved her? 

Though he couldn't fix the mistakes he had made in the past, he was confident he could start improving things right now. 

They sat there for hours, talking into the early hours of the morning. In spite of his heavy protests, she still took back her spare key and broke things off. She really believed he could do better than her. 

A couple weeks went by, and Tom was the textbook definition of miserable. He tried to throw himself into his teaching, but even his great love for flying did very little to distract him. 

He went to the Aviation Museum just so he could see her, even if she wouldn't talk to him. 

It was then that her boss told him that she had a ticket to fly back home permanently, and she had turned in her resignation too, so her boss assumed it was for good. 

He rushed to the airport, where he was lucky enough to see there was only one gate with a departure back to her home city. He ran for all he was worth to that gate, and he barely caught her as she had started to board. 

Which led him to the present moment. 

“Tom? What are you doing here?” She repeated. 

“Please stop. Please don't go.” He didn't like pleading, but for her, he would. 

“I failed you,” was how he started. 

“What?” She said, “No-” 

“Let me finish. I never was able to find the words to express to you how much I care about you. I don’t just love the things you do for me because you care about my happiness. I love you for who you are. I love the way you sing Snegurochka when you wash the dishes, I love the way you always want to spend time with me after work, I love the way you laugh at the same joke after I’ve told it to you for the hundredth time, I love the way you talk in your sleep and say things I’ve never even thought about before, I love the way your hand feels in mine, but most of all? I love the way you want to help people however you can. But now, it’s your turn. Let me help you by telling you that leaving is a huge mistake.”

Her face was bright red, but he still thought she was beautiful.  

“There really is something special about you, Tom Kazansky.” Was all she said, a very shy smile on her face. 

Before he could even blink, she was kissing him, and there was something almost electromagnetic about the way it felt. 

Without needing another word to be said, they both walked out of the airport, hand in hand. 

(And yes, he did eventually get the spare key back.) 

[the-authoress-writes]

Up Where We Belong Part Two

Pete “Maverick” Mitchell x Writer!reader

Up Where We Belong Masterlist

Synopsis: When a writer experiencing horrible writer’s block goes to the Apple Valley Airshow for inspiration, she meets a certain older, daring naval aviator, leading to maybe a little more than just inspiration.

Warnings: Age gap (reader is in their late thirties to early forties), some to-be-expected cursing, depiction of the beginnings of a panic attack (it doesn’t become a full blown one).

But really, this is just fluff.

Author’s Note: I intended this to be a two part story, but as always, it didn’t turn out that way (my brain is like a mushroom farm at this point), and the third part of this (fingers crossed), is going to be the final part.

I’m choosing to look on the bright side and I’m telling myself I’m more than halfway done with this.

*sighs in frustrated writer*

This part is a little more MavDad than shippy, but it’s where this wanted to go, so…

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Again, I name a story after a song, from another movie about the Navy, funnily enough.

(Only three of my stories on my masterlist are not named after songs)

I can’t stop, apparently.

So here we go!

Pete “Maverick” Mitchell had been expecting a normal day when he met her.

Or, well, as normal as a day could get for him.

It was a bright and sunny weekend at the Apple Valley Airshow, where Mav had just flown an aerobatic sequence for the gathered crowds in Bianca, his beloved P-51, and Bradley had not taken much convincing to come out for a day with his dad and the chance to see planes, despite the fact that he was already around them Monday to Friday.

Most aviators were plane nerds after all, and airshows like these were heaven for aviators like him and Bradley.

“You okay back there, Baby Goose?” Mav asked through the comms, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the engine of the P-51.

“Yeah—yeah, I’m fine,” Bradley breathlessly replied from the backseat, his exhale turning into a weak chuckle. “You’re crazy, you know that, right, Dad?”

“Your father and uncles might have mentioned that a few times,” Mav grinned.

He gracefully looped the venerable Mustang around and brought her smoothly onto the runway, mindful of the P-51’s unstrengthened landing gear, gently flaring the aircraft so she caressed the tarmac, unlike the unflared, hard landing he instinctively would have done in any Navy aircraft.

After an uneventful taxi back to the flight line, he pushed the canopy back and climbed out of the cockpit, Bradley a second behind him.

“At least we didn’t have anyone shooting at us this time around,” Mav half-joked, patting his boy on the back, once he’d also jumped down from the wing.

“Thank Heaven for small mercies,” the younger man muttered.

“Come on, you can’t tell me you didn’t enjoy that, Brads.”

Bradley chewed the inside of his cheek, before amusement shone in his eyes, and he cracked a smile. “Okay, yeah, it was pretty cool.”

“She’s still got moves, huh?”

His son looked affectionately at the P-51. “Yeah, she does.

But it’s not the plane, it’s the pilot, isn’t it?”

“I’m willing to share when it’s this girl,” Mav grinned, patting her sun-warm silver fuselage.

After the two of them had stacked their parachutes and harnesses between the landing gear, Mav was busy putting the chocks on the wheels, when he heard a smooth female voice say, “Excuse me?”

“Yes?” Bradley replied.

“Is this the P-51 which flew a few minutes ago?

She is a P-51, right?”

“That’d be a yes to both questions, ma’am.”

A low, rich chuckle. “Are you the owner?”

Bradley scoffed amusedly. “Nah, that’ll be my dad.

Hey Dad, someone wants to talk to you!”

Mav ducked out from beneath the undercarriage and under a propeller, coming face to face with a very unexpected, but not unwelcome sight.

The first thing he noticed about the woman standing before him was her air of extreme competence, which immediately had him wanting to know more about her.

(He was decidedly ignoring the memory of Halo saying he had a competency kink after he’d told some stories from when he was in relationships at a Dagger Squad get together [non-explicit; the Daggers, especially Bradley, didn’t need to hear… intimate details of his life, after all].)

A quick appraisal had him estimating her to be older than Bradley, but younger than him.

She was beautiful, with lips glossed just right, shining, lush hair that he could already imagine running his hand through, a smile he could look at forever, and a figure that ticked all his proverbial boxes, visible even with her long, loose brown cardigan and cream button-down shirt over black jeans.

But what hit him like Mach 10 (and he would know) was the spark in her eyes, keen and intelligent, and they held a warmth and passion that called to him.

“Hi,” he began, extending his hand, ignoring the fact that he was stunned by this woman so he could attempt to be his usual self.

He’d been delighted to show her around Bianca, and he even went so far as to let her sit in the old girl.

Mav had not been expecting what she said about the book she was writing—her granduncle’s story hit home on practically every level possible.

He was absolutely honest with her when he said he wanted to help, but… he’d absolutely be lying if he said he didn’t give it with the hope that she’d call him in the first place.

It’d been years since he’d felt like this about someone, and he tried to stifle a smile as he recalled how they’d collided on Bianca’s wing, his quick reflexes preventing them from falling off the wing with a snapped-out right hand on the cockpit edge, his left instinctually protectively pressing her against him.

He’d never forget the way his heart raced as he realized their proximity, his battle-honed wits prompting him to swiftly move his hand before she could register his touch, though he kept his arm close enough to catch her if she began to slip off the trailing edge.

“What’s with that look, Dad?”

Bradley’s voice brought Mav back to the present, where he sat on his favorite chair in his hangar, Bianca’s flight log book in his right hand, pen in his left. “What look?”

Bradley shut the locker for the safety gear, the last thing on the P-51’s post-flight checklist, and strode over to the couch opposite. “You look sappy.”

“I’m just happy I had a great day flying in my girl, and with my Baby Goose, no less.” It was not a lie at all, but it wasn’t the whole truth either.

Any other person would have probably bought that excuse, but Bradley was one of the very few people he’d ever met in his life who could read him like a book in every situation, a skill unfortunately inherited from his father. “Uh-huh, sure, I think you’re just thinking about __,” his son incisively replied.

Mav absently bit his lip, “…That obvious, kid?”

“…It’s about as obvious as an F-14 in cloudless sky at 2,000 feet.”

“So, pretty damn obvious,” he squinted speculatively.

“Yeah.

You guys were like something out of a romcom, honestly.

Was that thing on the wing on purpose?” Bradley grinned.

“No, it wasn’t,” he smiled.

“Because you know, if you were any shorter, you might’ve ended up kissing her.”

Mav felt himself turn a little red, but was still amused despite himself. “Shut up.”

Heedless, Bradley continued, “You would have liked that, I’m sure.”

“You’re just as bad as your father,” he sighed.

His gosling’s grin turned sentimental. “Learned it from both of them.”

Bradley had openly called him “Dad” for years before, and again after their reconciliation, but statements like that never failed to warm his heart.

Helpless, Mav stood, and, going over to his son, stooped slightly to place a hand on his shoulder and a kiss at his temple. “Love you, Baby Goose.”

Before he could pull away, Bradley wrapped both arms tightly around him. “Love you too, Dad.

Mav was more than content to let the moment sit, the two of them still making up for almost twenty years of no hugs from the other.

Bradley eventually broke the silence with, “I’ll go heat up that pizza we got from the grocery last night, Dad, how about that?”

He frowned, pulling back, “I can do that, B,—”

“I’ll do it, Dad, you just sit and relax,” Bradley said, already walking towards the Airstream, and just as he was about to step inside the silver trailer, the kid fired off, “Think about your writer!”

Mav spluttered, looking incredulously at the Airstream’s door.

Bradley was really too much like Goose and him, he chuckled silently to himself.

The weekend’s end saw the two of them return to the duplex he and Bradley had bought together last year, sitting about fifteen minutes drive in the Bronco (about half that on the Ninja, at full Mav power) away from TOPGUN, where they were both posted as instructors; Mav himself permanently, Bradley, for a three-year period before his next deployment cycle.

Monday dawned, and he found himself glancing at the screen of his phone every time it dinged, so much so, that said son repeatedly glanced between him and the cellphone laid out on the Officer’s Mess Hall table over lunch.

“What?” Mav asked, confused at the younger man’s consterned expression.

“Who are you, and what have you done with my Dad?

You have not looked away from your phone since we sat down, Mav.

You used to have no idea what TikTok was, and now you look like Hangman after he posts a new photo on Insta, and I would know—God, he was insufferable that time in Sigonella.”

“…I’m guessing Insta is Instagraph?”

Bradley made a noise quite like his callsign. “l—you don’t even—Instagram, Mav, Instagram.

It’s like you’re expecting a call or so—” brown eyes excitedly widened as dots were abruptly connected, “—ohh shit; you gave her your number, didn’t you, your writer?”

Mav rolled his eyes, “She’s not my writer, Brads, but I… I did give her my number just in case she needed more help with—research.”

“Oh, research, sure, Mav; I bet you’d love to help her with her research,” the younger man chortled.

“You sound like your Uncle Slider.”

“Uh-huh—” Bradley brushed off, “we’re getting off topic here, did she say she’d call you or something?”

“No, she didn’t.

I told her to call if she needed me.” He wondered if, instead of being subtle, he should have just out and asked her to call him—or even just asked her out directly; the Maverick of over thirty years ago would have.

His son’s eyes comically widened. “Please, for the love of God, tell me you did not say it like that—that is as bad as you serenading that ex of yours with, of all the songs, “Abracadabra” by The Steve Miller Band.”

“Hey, that’s a good song!” Mav protested.

“It’s also creepy as hell—‘I wanna reach out and grab ya’?

Tell me you hear that?!”

Well, when the lyrics were said like that… “In hindsight, I hear it, no, I did not say it like that, and now who’s getting off topic, Roo?”

“Fine—so you were playing subtle, huh?” Bradley wrinkled his nose, tilting his head from side to side. “Well, we’ll just have to see if the subtle play works, because the Maverick charm was on max power, so you likely made an impression—”

“Thanks, kid?”

“—so I’d say… there’s a sixty-five percent chance she’ll call you,” was the determination.

Mav paused and raised an eyebrow. “Only sixty-five?”

“I’m taking into account the variable that she might not go for… people like you, you know.”

“…No.”

Mav could see both himself and Nick in Bradley’s shit-eating grin. “Old men.”

“An old man, huh?

Well, this is an old man who can still kick the asses of people less than half his age, and you too, Brads, six ways to Sunday, in the air or on the mats.”

A fork promptly got brandished daringly. “I almost had you when we did that demo on the death spiral two weeks ago, Dad, and if you hadn’t slipped my headlock on Wednesday, I’d have gotten you to tap out.”

Mav reached over and affectionately ruffled his son’s brown curls. “Almost only works with grenades, Baby Goose; now eat your shitty mashed potatoes.”

The week ticked by, and after every hop, he tried not to make it too obvious to Bradley, whose locker was right next to his in the Instructor’s Locker Room, that his phone was the first thing he checked.

By Wednesday evening, he was starting to lose what hope he had, and he ignored his son’s sad look as he surreptitiously looked at his phone.

On Thursday evening, Bradley slung an arm around his shoulder as they walked together to the parking lot. “I know I give you shit about being old, Dad, but you’ve still got more than enough charm and looks for women to be attracted to you.

I mean, you should have heard the stuff Phoe and Halo were saying about you during the detachment training—ugh, especially after Dogfight Football.

The thirst was real.”

At his confused look, Bradley continued, “Long story short, they said you were—bleh—hot.

I’m not repeating exactly what they said, even though I can, it’s all seared into my memory, unfortunately,” he finished, shuddering.

Mav laughed, “I’m sorry for the trauma, but, what, uh, brought this train of thought on, Baby Goose?”

He was pressed closer into a Hawaiian shirt-clad side. “I know you’re sad about not getting called by your writer.”

Knowing it was useless to deny it, he shook his head, “I won’t lie and say it doesn’t sting, because I really thought we had a connection, but it’s probably for the best, because I’m… well, you know.”

“No, I don’t,” his son adamantly stated. “Because you’re… kind and loving, with a heart about a billion sizes too big for his body, who gives so much of himself in literally everything—except maybe following orders; any woman would be happy with you.”

Mav reached and gave the vague vicinity of a shoulder a loving pat. “You give me too much credit.”

“No, Dad, you would make someone very happy—I want to see you happy,” Bradley squeezed a Nomex jacketed arm.

“I am happy, kiddo;” he cheerfully stated, “I can fly, I have the rest of the Flyboys, the Daggers, Bianca, and most importantly, I have you, my not-so little boy, who’s become a better man than I could have hoped.”

Bradley halted in his tracks, and tugged him into a hug with a laugh that could have been a sob. “Fuck, Dad, how do you just say shit like that?”

“Like what, that I’m so proud of you?” Mav beamed.

His son’s heatless “Shut up, will you, old man?” sounded suspiciously wobbly, but Mav chose not to remark on it, and hugged back before they continued walking after a moment.

“But back to my point,” the younger man pointed, “unless there’s something you’re not telling me about your relationship with Bianca, she doesn’t count as a woman in your life.

I know you have me, the Daggers, and the Flyboys, but it’s different from being in love and getting that love back.” Bradley suddenly snapped his fingers, “I know, I should start you a dating app profile!”

“Oh no, I’ve heard horror stories about dating apps, and I’m not desperate, Baby Goose.”

Bradley threw both hands up, “It’s not about desperation, Hangman has—okay, that’s not a good example—but you know, you need to put yourself out there more.

Meet someone.

Come on, Dad, please?”

The kid looked so hopeful, he couldn’t outright say no. “I’ll think about it.”

“Yes!

It’s not a no, I’ll take it.

I’ll look through the photos at the hangar tomorrow night—we gotta pick the right one—that can make or break things!

Maybe one of you in the dress whites or blues—or hey, ladies love the flight suit, and it’ll be even better if you’re in front of your F-18…”

At Bradley’s musing, Mav had a smile on his face all the way to his Kawasaki, and the whole way home, trailing in the Bronco’s wake.

After work early Friday evening, both men began the preparations for their weekly getaway to the hangar, packing their respective bags with whatever they deemed necessary for a two-day stay in the Mojave.

Mav was busying himself with checking his duffel before he hopped in the shower, when he heard clattering from his kitchen, and immediately, a dismayed “Damn it!” rang through the house.

“You okay, kiddo?” he called out.

“Yeah, I just—we’re out of Doritos!”

As amusing as it sounded, that did constitute a little bit of an emergency—the triangular chips were Bradley’s go-to snack, ever since he was a child, and he’d be bemoaning the lack of them the whole two days at the hangar if they really were out. “Did you check your kitchen?”

“I looked there first—we can’t leave without Doritos, Dad!”

A soft chuckle escaped him. “You still have time to go grab some if you want, I still have to take a shower, Brads,” he offered.

“Good idea, I’ll just go to the store and grab some, be right back!”

“Okay, drive safe!”

“Always!”

Mav waited to hear his front door shut before turning for his bathroom and starting the shower, tossing his shirt in the hamper on the way.

A few minutes later, he’d just begun to rinse off when he heard a faint noise from downstairs; his phone was ringing, he realized.

He initially paid it no mind—he’d been getting scam calls the last few days, which always ended up disappointing him—but then… it kept ringing.

And ringing.

And ringing.

And ringing.

Hope suddenly bloomed in his chest, and he hurried to get out of the shower.

He nearly faceplanted on his own bathroom floor in his haste, stumbling when his lunge for his towel missed, but he was able to keep himself upright and the second attempt had the fabric in his hand, then around his waist.

Mav dashed out the bathroom and down the stairs, tapping the green “accept call” button.

“Pete Mitchell,” he spoke into his phone, trying not to sound like he’d just run a marathon while his chest heaved.

A slight pause later, a hesitant “Hi,” came over the phone, and his heart leapt. “I don’t know if you remember me, we met at the Apple Valley Airshow—”

She had to be joking if she thought she was that easily forgettable. “__, right?

The writer,” he replied, pushing the dripping strands of his hair out of his face.

“Yeah, that’s me, you said I could call if I had any questions.”

“Uh-huh.

I’m guessing you have one,” he smiled.

The following invite to the hangar was twofold; he’d be able to help her without the hassle of dealing with emails or something like that, and he’d be able to gauge if she was actually interested in him.

He remembered the way she’d slightly frozen, when he stepped out from under Bianca, how she’d glanced at his hand when he’d extended it for a handshake.

But he’d been wrong about a great many things before, and he didn’t want to immediately assume she was interested, because everyone knew what the first three letters of assume were, and for all he knew, she really just needed help.

Regardless, he smiled while they bantered as easily as breathing; it was invigorating, and… maybe a little bit of a turn-on, if he was honest.

(Maybe Halo was right.)

Shortly after they said goodbye, Mav sent the address of the hangar with a “How does 3:30 sound to you?” to her number, and three beats after it registered delivered, a “That’s perfect—see you tomorrow 😊” message came in, which had him sigh like a teenager as he leaned against the counter for a moment, before he pushed off to get dressed.

By the time Bradley came back with four grocery bags full of Doritos, from two different groceries, Mav was already dressed in his usual t-shirt and jeans, ready to go. “You got enough Doritos there, Baby Goose?” he gawked at the sheer amount of chips.

“I’m restocking us, Dad, it’s not all for the weekend,” the younger man replied, emptying one grocery bag and a half into Mav’s snack cabinet. “I just need to put another bag and this half at mine, and the rest I’m taking.”

He bit down on his laughter and watched as his son dashed next door to stock his own snack cabinet, before returning in time to catch him staring at the “That’s perfect—see you tomorrow 😊” message on his phone.

“You’re looking sappy again,” Bradley squinted suspiciously at him. “It’s almost like you got a call from your writer.”

Mav tried to keep his face neutral, but as always, it was pointless with his gosling.

The kid’s eyes widened, “Holy shit, she did call you, didn’t she?!

Fuck, you still got it, Dad.”

He waved off, “There’s no guarantee she actually is interested in me like that, and she called me because she needs my help.”

“Oh, your help, of course,” Bradley grinned. “Well?

What’s the profile?”

Mav rolled his eyes. “She wrote a dogfight scene she can’t cut, and she wants to make sure the tactics are sound.

So I invited her to the hangar tomorrow so we don’t have to do any emails and stuff.”

The younger man whistled, impressed. “That was smooth as hell, Dad.

You have an idea of when she’s coming over?”

“1530ish.”

Bradley planted his hands on his hips with a sigh. “Well, that’s a good amount of time, but we’ll still have some work to do.”

“Work—what are you planning, Baby Goose?”

“We have to make the hangar a little neater than usual—make you seem like a responsible adult,” his son replied, as if it were the most obvious thing.

Mav burst into laughter while picking up his duffel. “If your father, your uncles, and nearly forty years in the Navy couldn’t do that, what makes you think spiffing up the hangar could?”

“Worth a shot, you never know—she might be fooled,” Bradley muttered, locking Mav’s front door behind them both.

“I heard that!”

When the afternoon set over the hangar the next day, now the neatest it’d been in a long time (admittedly, it wasn’t that bad, Mav just had a particular system, which didn’t much look like one in the first place), Bradley clapped his hands, “Now, I’m going to head into town, Dad.”

“What for?”

“Dad, your writer is coming in about ten minutes, and the last thing you need is me cramping your style, so I’m going to head into town, I’ll be back at around… let’s call it 2345–please don’t be naked when I come back—”

“Bradley!” Mav exclaimed, a little bit scandalized, though they were both hardly virginal.

“—and, and, prior notice of if I shouldn’t come back would be greatly appreciated.”

“Bradley!”

“What?

I’m just covering the bases.”

“There’s no bases to cover here, I’m just going to review her scene,” he replied.

“Annnd?” the younger man deadpanned.

“And then… we’ll see what happens.

But all I know is I’m not about to—whatever you’re thinking is going to happen.” Mav sighed, picking up a screwdriver that had fallen off the maintenance cart next to Bianca, and placed it back in the toolbox. “And I don’t… this probably isn’t going to go anywhere, because—I’m pushing sixty, kiddo, and really… I don’t think I have casual—anything—left in me anymore.”

Bradley slowly nodded, a proud look on his face. “Good for you, Dad.”

“Yeah?”

“Mm-hmm,” he replied, nodding, mustache quirking up. “I’m happy you know what you want.

But you gotta be more optimistic than this, because who knows, this could lead to your more-than casual something.” Bradley slapped him on the arm, “Come on, where’s the ‘I’m going anyway’ Maverick Mitchell who proved he could fly a suicide mission on a crazy profile, with fifteen seconds to spare?”

Mav scoffed self-deprecatingly, “Doing crazy pilot shit; that makes sense to me, Baby Goose, but… relationships—I’ve always FUBAR-ed them.

Oh God, I don’t actually know what I was thinking, giving her my number—this was a mistake,” he muttered, thoughts beginning to spiral as his breathing picked up.

Bradley grabbed both his arms, squeezing them to ground him. “Hey—hey, Dad, look at me—look at me.

Take a breath.

You did not make a mistake, you made a connection with someone, you offered to help them, and she took you up on the offer.

At the least, you help someone in need, and you come out the other side with a friend; if everything goes well, maybe you get more than friendship.

But like you said, you’re just checking the scene she’s having trouble with, like she asked.

Don’t put pressure on yourself—just see what happens.

You got this, Dad.”

“I got this,” Mav murmured, partly confirming his son’s statement, partly reassuring himself, and partly asking if he did, indeed “got” it.

“You got this; come here.” Bradley pulled him into a tight hug, one to which Mav clung, while he got ahold of himself.

When he pulled back from his son’s embrace and repeated “I got this,” a minute or so later, it was still slightly shaky, but held some of the classic Maverick confidence.

“That’s the spirit.” The younger man checked his watch, wincing. “I don’t want to cramp your style, and I’m cutting it close, but I don’t want to leave you if you’re going to spiral again.

You good, Dad?”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “I’ll be okay.”

“You sure?” Bradley frowned.

“Yeah, I’ll just check on Bianca a little while I’m waiting.”

His son exhaled heavily. “You do that, alright?

Don’t get in your head—don’t think, just do, remember?”

“I remember,” Mav smirked.

“Okay.

I’m gonna go now.” Bradley cautiously backed out of the hangar, as if ready to pull him into another hug if he showed the slightest tell of another mental spiral. “Call me if I shouldn’t come back, and remember, 2345!

Please don’t be naked!!”

“Go!!” Mav chuckled, feeling mostly like himself again, if not slightly nervous.

“Love you!”

“Love you more, kiddo!”

Soon, the sound of the Bronco’s engine rumbled through the dry air before it faded, leaving the air still and silent except for the distant sounds of the Mojave.

Before his and Bradley’s reconciliation, he was used to the stillness and silence, a consequence of choosing to make the hangar his home a few years ago, upon his assignment as a test pilot at NAWS China Lake, despite the long commute; he’d never liked base housing, and avoided it like the plague.

He’d even found the stillness and quiet comforting in a sadistic way, thought it was maybe something he deserved in cynical moments.

But now, the hangar which Hondo had once referred to as his “Fortress of Solitude”, was a place of life, love, and joy, the old silence and stillness now the strange one.

Before he could think too much about his relationship with silence, he went to Bianca and started some busywork with her engine, allowing his mind to get lost—and more importantly, his body to relax—in the process.

He’d gotten so absorbed in his beloved plane’s maintenance that he almost missed the sound of an unfamiliar car pulling up to the hangar.

Immediately, his heart started racing again, but he’d accepted that for better or worse, this whole thing was going to play out as it would; if that involved him fucking something up, he just prayed he could fix it.

Moment of truth; the car door opened.

“Ghostrider, up and ready,” he muttered to himself.

“Hello?” she uncertainly called.

“In here,” he replied.

Mav swallowed thickly upon seeing her; he liked to think he had a decent memory, but his memory did no justice to her.

The desert afternoon light streaming in through the open hangar door haloed her in an otherworldly way, only making her even more beautiful to him, the breeze blowing her hair around and billowing her loose blouse.

His eyes were drawn to the little smile at the corner of her lips, and it was only because he’d been looking there, that he realized she was speaking.

“Hey, glad you could make it,” he brightly said, hoping that that wasn’t too out of left field from what she’d said, because he’d completely missed it.

Her smile widened, “Not going to miss it—for all I know, this is a one time opportunity.”

The replies that immediately came to mind sounded creepy, stupid, or worse, so he settled for, “Who said it was?”

She chuckled, lighting up her already sparkling gaze, biting her lip briefly before looking around the hangar, her eyes soon landing on Bianca. “Great place you’ve got here; must’ve been hard to get, though, with it being Navy land.”

“Not that hard when you’re got friends in high places.” Mav recalled the moment Ice and the Flyboys gave him the title to the hangar for his fortieth birthday, which they were celebrating along with his promotion to Commander.

She tilted her head slightly, and he realized that she probably heard the somber tone in his voice—remembering Ice was still hard, but it was getting better.

“Anyway, uh,” he clapped his hands, pushing forward, “you had a scene that needs checking?”

She blinked as if clearing her head, and raised the leather messenger bag on her shoulder. “I have my laptop right here.”

Mav gestured to his couch, and as they moved towards it, he prayed that he wouldn’t somehow make a fool of himself today.

To be continued…

Previous Part Next Part

Because the P-51 was an Air Force aircraft, her landing gear was not designed for hard, unflared Navy-style landings, which are flown in that manner for carrier operations.

However, even if naval aviators land on a full-length runway, carrier habits die hard, and if you watch planespotting streams, such as my favorite, L.A FLIGHTS, you can make reasonable guesses as to who was former Navy, as the landings will tend to have a shallower flare at landing.

Chocks

The Apple Valley Airshow takes place every year in the town of Apple Valley, located in San Bernardino, California.

(I considered setting this story at the annual Miramar Airshow, which takes place at MCAS (formerly NAS) Miramar, but I imagine that Mav would probably want to avoid going to MCAS Miramar for obvious reasons.)

The trailing edge of a wing is its back edge, the edge closer to the tail—its opposite is the leading edge, the edge closer to the nose.

The chair I write as Mav’s favorite chair is the one he sits down in in the opening scene of TG:M.

As Mav is a Maverick in most aspects of his life, I thought it was perfect for Mav to be left-handed—and as Tom himself is left-handed, it couldn’t get more perfect.

The F-14 is notable as being quite large as fighter jets go, and she is practically impossible to miss in the sky, once within visual range; and she is sometimes called the Flying Tennis Court, a nickname she shares with the McDonnell Douglas/Boeing F-15 Eagle.

Bradley and Mav living in what is essentially the same house, having bought a duplex together, is something I can see them doing after they reconcile, because to me, these two are basically orange cats with separation anxiety, and I feel like they would be the epitome of healthy codependency, if that’s possible.

Mav power is a play on words/reference to the engine throttle conditions of fighter jets; Max power is the maximum engine power with afterburner (wet power), and MIL (which stands for Military) power is the maximum engine power without afterburner (dry power)

Do not quote me on this, but as I understand it, in the Navy, you don’t deploy all the time.

There are years you are given a land-based assignment, like Bradley being assigned to TOPGUN, before you are put back on ship deployments for a similar amount of years.

TL;DR: Deployment cycles in the Navy have you rotating between ship-based assignments and land-based assignments every few years.

NAS Sigonella

“Abracadabra” by The Steve Miller Band

I chose this song because of this piece of art by @woodsywarbler, and “Abracadabra” is my favorite song by The Steve Miller Band, despite the really creepy lyrics.

A death spiral is this little bit of crazy pilot shit, as shown in TG:M. (Timestamp 7:34)

Nomex is the flame-resistant material which flight suits are made of, and it’s also what Mav’s green jacket is made of.

Doritos came out in 1964, plenty of time for Bradley, ‘80s baby that he is, to develop a yen for them.

(Flight) Profile: a graphical timeline of the operational characteristics, configurations, and speeds of an aircraft along a flight path in a specific phase of flight or maneuver.

FUBAR: Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition (or Repair, people argue which word the last letter is)

Fortress of Solitude

Ghostrider was Mav and Merlin’s operational callsign during the Layton Mission, and again, do not quote me on this, but you get to keep the operational callsigns you received during notable missions, a detail alluded to in the TG:M screenplay, so Mav uses it here to psych himself up.

Taglist

@ohtobemare

@callsign-skydancer

@permanentlyexhaustedpigeon88

@tadomikiku

@malindacath

@aviatorobsessed

@lynnevanss

@djs8891

If you’d like to join my taglist, just send me an ask!

[the-authoress-writes]

Up Where We Belong Masterlist

Pete “Maverick” Mitchell x Writer!reader

Synopsis: When a writer experiencing horrible writer’s block goes to the Apple Valley Airshow for inspiration, she meets a certain older, daring naval aviator, leading to maybe a little more than just inspiration.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

[the-authoress-writes]

Up Where We Belong

Part One

Pete “Maverick” Mitchell x Writer!reader

Up Where We Belong Masterlist

Synopsis: When a writer experiencing horrible writer’s block goes to the Apple Valley Airshow for inspiration, she meets a certain older, daring naval aviator, leading to maybe a little more than just inspiration.

Warnings: Mentions of hospice and family member deaths, age gap (reader is in their late thirties to early forties).

But really, this is just fluff.

Author’s Note: The plot bunnies have reproduced at an unholy rate, and I am so stupid for writing this, especially since I have another chapter of “Wherever You Go”, to write, the first chapter of “Safe and Sound” and a MavDad story to finish.

The second part and another Mav story is lined up, but at this point, I’m not going to complain, because at least I’m writing, and Mav is finally getting more of my writerly attention.

We’ll see what gets finished next, 😂.

#writerlife

Again, I name a story after a song, from another movie about the Navy, funnily enough.

(Only three of my stories on my masterlist are not named after songs—I can’t stop, apparently)

So here we go!

She had always been somewhat interested in planes—it was hard not to be, when most of her family was in commercial aviation.

Her father had flown for nearly thirty years for American, her younger brother was currently a first officer coming up on his command upgrade with Delta, and her grandfather, whom she affectionately called PopPop, had flown for Continental.

Some of her fondest memories were looking over her grandfather’s maps and airport diagrams, and sitting on his lap while he taught her how to use an analog flight computer.

But one day, when she was home from her freshman year of college, where she was taking her degree in English, her grandfather took her up to the attic to show her something.

It was a footlocker from World War II, the faded paint on the outside reading “USAAF”.

“This was your granduncle Joseph’s—my eldest brother.

He was a P-51 pilot.

He ran many successful missions in his aircraft until he got shot down saving his wingman’s life, near the end of the war.”

PopPop opened the footlocker, revealing a faded American flag folded into a tricorn lying neatly atop several dark greenish-brown uniforms.

PopPop gently lifted the flag and uniforms out of the footlocker, uncovering yellowed, brittle-looking maps, a compass set, and a thick stack of letters, tied together with a black ribbon.

It was the stack of letters that PopPop lifted out, and held out to her. “Look at these, and read them.”

She did, and the story the letters contained was beautiful and heartbreaking.

Her granduncle had fallen in love with a woman who was a member of the French Resistance, named Céline, whom he’d met during a covert resupply mission, and they even had plans to marry after the war.

But she’d died in a skirmish with German soldiers in Paris, leaving him so bereft that he’d taken to writing letters to her specter, just to have an outlet for his grief.

The last letter in the pile was heartwrenching, where her granduncle Joseph talked about how he was only living because she would want him to, only being careful in the air because she’d want him to.

She’d cried reading the letters, and she’d asked PopPop why he’d wanted her to read the letters.

“I wanted someone else to know their story,” he’d simply replied.

“No one else knows?”

He hummed, considering his answer. “Sometimes you keep some things to yourself until the right person to tell comes along.”

A few years passed, and when PopPop was on hospice, the two of them were watching “Band of Brothers”, when she remembered Uncle Joe, as she’d taken to calling him in her head.

“What’s going on in that bright head of yours, darling?” PopPop’s voice interrupted her thoughts.

“Oh, uh, nothing much, I was just remembering Uncle Joe.

Thinking that he and Céline deserved better.”

“They did.”

She shook her head, “I wish I could write them a happier ending, you know?”

PopPop hummed weakly. “Well, why don’t you?

If anyone could do it, it would be you.

If you do that, I’m sure in a few years, those English professors of yours would be saying that they taught a great American author.”

She was shocked and touched. “Wha—I—well, I guess I could, but, are—y-you’d be okay with that, PopPop?”

He laid a cold hand on hers, “I wouldn’t trust it to anyone else, my dear girl.”

“Okay,” she smiled tearily, and nodded, the two of them returning their attention to the episode.

A week later, PopPop passed, and many things happened over the ensuing years that caused the idea of writing about Uncle Joe to be put on the back burner.

In fact, she forgot all about it, until she was sitting on her couch a couple of weeks after having been let go from her job as an English teacher at her local high school.

She was mindlessly watching an episode of some show she couldn’t even remember the name of, when her eyes landed on the footlocker which PopPop had given to her in his will.

The memory of PopPop encouraging her to write about Uncle Joe came back to her, and she paused the episode, strode over to the footlocker, carefully opened it, and drew out the letters.

Madly, over the course of the next several hours, she reread the letters, numerous research-related tabs quickly opening up on her phone, tablet, and laptop.

As months passed, she made good progress on her first draft, but somewhere along the way, about slightly less than halfway through her intended story beats, she hit the dreaded dead end, writer’s block in full force.

Rereading the letters did nothing—every line she wrote, she deleted; she felt lost, and like she’d completely lost Uncle Joe and Céline’s voices.

She felt right back at square one.

Then, one day, as she was looking at her brother’s latest Facebook reel from his layover in Korea, she saw an advertisement for the Apple Valley Airshow, which would feature an aerobatic demonstration with an actual, airworthy P-51.

Maybe seeing the aircraft her Uncle flew would shake something loose in her brain so she could move forward.

She didn’t even hesitate—she immediately booked a ticket, and prepared herself to take down a lot of notes.

The airshow was absolutely wonderful, and even though she never got as into aviation as the rest of her family, it was still something which fascinated her, and seeing the planes made her marvel all over again at the miracle that was aviation, how humankind had successfully taken the skies for itself through brutally elegant means.

Finally, it was time for the reason she’d come—the emcee began, “Now, everyone, you’re all in for a treat, because up next, we have a nearly eighty-year-old aircraft, a P-51K named Bianca, and she’ll be giving us an aerobatic demonstration!

So let’s give a warm Apple Valley Airshow welcome to Bianca and her owner and pilot, US Navy Captain Pete Mitchell!”

She clapped along with everyone else, eagerly awaiting the arrival of the P-51.

Soon, the sound of a propeller engine grew louder and louder, and then, there she was.

Bianca was gorgeous, gleaming silver with red markings, the American star roundel on her side.

The shining aircraft got closer and closer to the ground, towards the crowd, and just as she was about to worry that the P-51 was in an upset condition, the plane pulled up slightly, buzzing the transfixed people.

Laughing in awe and delight, she clapped with everyone, and watched as the daring pilot put the plane through a series of hair-raising spirals, rolls, dives, and elegant, breathtaking passes with such precision, skill, and ease, just knowing that whoever was flying that old girl had aviation in his blood as surely as it ran in hers; it made her wonder what her granduncle would say about how the venerable fighter was being flown.

Before she knew it, the demonstration was over, and with another low pass and wing wave, the P-51 flew off to land.

It actually took her a moment to come back to herself, she was so stunned by what she saw, and she knew she had to see Bianca up close.

After asking for directions to the flight line, she scanned the row of planes, eventually spying a flash of red.

She walked over, catching sight of a tall, mustached man a few years younger than her, standing in front of the aircraft, wearing a borderline-obnoxiously-loud Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned over a white tank and jeans, stereotypical Ray-Bans pushed up onto his head.

“Excuse me?”

“Yes?” the man replied.

“Is this the P-51 which flew a few minutes ago?

She is a P-51, right?”

“That’d be a yes to both questions, ma’am.”

She chuckled grimly at the idea that her age was maybe showing enough for her to be ma’am-ed by someone only a few years younger than her. “Are you the owner?”

He scoffed, good-naturedly. “Nah, that’ll be my dad.

Hey Dad, someone wants to talk to you!”

A moment later, a man stepped out from under the P-51, and she’d absolutely be lying if she said her breath didn’t catch.

First off, if she had to guess, he was older than her, but there was something about him which made him seem younger than his age.

Then there was the fact that he was absurdly good looking—ridiculously so, in fact; impossibly raven-dark hair, mischievously sparkling, brilliant green eyes, and a physique that people half her age would kill for, all sinewy muscle, visible with the snug white t-shirt and jeans he was wearing.

The final nail in the proverbial coffin was his smile—God, it belonged in a museum, because it was a work of art, and coupled with his roguish air, everything about him screamed the most delicious kind of trouble, sending echoes of Whoopi Goldberg’s voice saying, “You in danger, girl,” through her head.

“Hi,” he began, extending his hand.

Luckily for her, she was quick on the draw, and extended her own hand, proffering a “Hi,” of her own, though she kicked herself at the fact that the next words out of her mouth were, “Are you the owner?”

Oh, well—couldn’t win them all.

His grip was firm and calloused, but gentle, without the cool metal band she expected on his fourth finger, quick eyes observing the lack of even a pale band of skin on the same finger, and she shook herself from the observation in time to hear his, “That’s me—Pete Mitchell, you can call me Mav.”

At her quizzical look, he continued, “It’s short for my callsign, Maverick—I’m Navy.”

She nodded, “The emcee did say you were Navy, and that tracks; judging from that impressive demonstration, you don’t strike me as the kind who blends in.”

“Thank you—I aim to please,” he grinned.

Miraculously, she managed to ignore his brilliant, beautiful smile, somehow mustering a “Well, you certainly delivered,” before she introduced herself.

A cough from the younger man, Pete’s son, made her realize that she hadn’t let go of Pete’s hand, and vice versa, which caused the two of them to practically spring apart.

“Oh, uh, this is my son, Bradley,” Pete introduced the younger man, reaching nearly comically up to wrap an arm around Bradley’s shoulders.

“Nice to meet you, Bradley,” she replied, trying to recollect herself while her mind acted like it was the first time she’d interacted with a good-looking man.

“Nice to meet you too, ma’am.”

“I look that bad, do I?” she chuckled.

“Just the way he was raised,” Pete proudly said, patting his son on the back.

Embarrassingly, she just then remembered the reason she was here. “Oh, I—I actually had a few questions for you, Pete, about the P-51, because I’m writing a book, and I wanted to get some details.”

His eyes lit up. “Details about this old girl, huh?

I can do that; come on, let me show you around.” He moved to the side of the aircraft and gestured grandly. “Bianca here’s a Dallas-built North American P-51K, with a Packard V-1650-7 engine and an 11 foot diameter Aeroproducts propeller.

She was donated to the Civil Air Patrol in 1946, and I acquired her in 2001.

I’m not sure if she ever saw combat, because her military flight logs were lost, but I know for a fact that she routinely patrolled the California skies way back when.

Let me show you the controls.”

He nimbly boosted himself up to the wing and held his hand out to her. “Come on up.”

“Uh, is this a wise decision?” she asked, glancing between his hand and the wing. “She is nearly eighty-years-old.”

Pete laughed, “She’s stronger than she looks, and these girls were made to withstand this sort of thing, come on.”

Deciding to trust his judgment, she took his hand and jumped up to the wing at the same time as he pulled her up, causing extra momentum which propelled her body into his.

He caught them on the edge of the cockpit, and after a second, she realized that she was pressed up against his body, both hands resting against his…very solid chest.

She prayed that her suddenly pounding heart and the burning flush on her cheeks could be discounted as a reaction to her stumble.

“I’m so sorry,” she breathed, scrambling back to put some distance between them for her sanity’s sake, while trying not to fall off either wing edge.

“Eh,” he waved off, “that’s my fault, I should have said I’d pull you up,” as he shifted to kneel on the wing. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she replied breezily, “I believe you were about to show me the controls?”

“Mm-hmm, come here.”

They slowly adjusted themselves into a configuration that enabled them both to see into the cockpit, and he pointed out the many gauges—explaining each one—and the literal stick stick, which looked nothing like the controls of any aircraft she’d seen in person or in the movies, as well as her general flight capabilities and technical specifications.

A further glance to the right showed something she didn’t expect to see. “I thought the P-51 was a single seat aircraft?”

Pete absentmindedly rubbed the back of his neck, “They are—I made a… few modifications.”

“Oh.”

“You want to sit in her?” he offered, gesturing to the pilot’s seat.

She was not about to pass up an opportunity like that. “I—wh—sure!”

He carefully helped her into the cockpit, and once settled, she breathed in and out while she absorbed this moment, and imagined her granduncle sitting in a seat similar to this one, looking out at the boundless sky. “Wow,” she reverently murmured.

“I know, right?”

“This is amazing, that aircraft like this is still around and still flying, I mean—this is history,” she said, getting slightly emotional.

“It is; she is.”

After a few beats longer, she sighed, and reached for his hand so she could get out, and he carefully eased her out of the cockpit, onto the wing, then both of them back onto the ground.

“Thank you, for showing me around, this was really helpful, Pete, I think this really helped me.”

“You’re welcome,” he nodded easily. “If I may ask, what kind of book are you writing?”

For the briefest second, she instinctively recoiled from the idea of telling the story, but then, some part of her heart said that Pete Mitchell was someone she could tell this story to. “It’s uh, a fictional version of my granduncle Joe’s love story; he was a P-51 pilot during World War II, and he was in love with a woman in the French Resistance named Céline.” She turned to look at Bianca’s gleaming fuselage. “But they both died in the war; she was killed by the Germans, and he got shot down saving his wingman soon after.

I never even knew until my first year of college, when my grandfather told me the story through the love letters my granduncle and Céline wrote.

When my grandfather was dying, I told him that I wished they had a happy ending, and… well, he told me to write it for them, since I was an English major.

So here I am,” she shrugged, turning to face Pete.

He looked grave and touched. “That’s… that’s beautiful.”

“Thank you, I have to admit, I’ve wondered if what I was doing was disrespectful.”

“I know quite a few people who deserved happy endings that didn’t get them,” he glanced into the distance, a wistful, pained look in his eyes. “If I can help at least two people who didn’t have their happy endings in this world get it somehow, I’m more than willing to help.”

She sincerely replied, “Thank you for the validation,” wondering what his story was.

“You’re welcome.

And uh… you know what?

Gimme a second.”

He leapt back onto the P-51’s wing, and rummaged through the cockpit, pulling out a flight log book and a pen, hastily writing something on a page, before he tore it out, and leapt back down.

“Here, it’s my number—if you had any more questions, feel free to call, I’d be happy to answer them.”

If she had been placed in a similar situation as this maybe twenty years ago, she’d have probably done something to embarrass herself, because this—things like this didn’t happen to her—they only happened in movies, but here she was.

He gave her his number—yes, it was if she had any research questions, but still.

‘Get a grip, woman, just because you didn’t see a ring doesn’t mean he isn’t in a relationship,’ she told herself, trying to project “Respectable Professional Woman”, while her inner adolescent was trying its level best to come out.

“Th—thank you,” she managed to get out, with only a minute stammer on the first syllable.

“I’m serious, call if you need anything—I mean—there’s not a lot of people out there who can tell you what it’s like to actually fly one of these beauties.”

“Be careful,” she chuckled, already determined not to call unless it was absolutely dire, “You don’t know if I might take you up on that offer.”

“It’s what I gave you my number for,” Pete winked, and she commended herself for keeping it together.

Deciding to quit while she was ahead, and while she still seemed like a normal human being, she came in for final approach, as her dad would put it, with, “Alright—I better go, I’ve already taken too much of your time.”

“It’s fine, it’s always a pleasure to talk to someone about this girl.”

“Thank you again,” she stated, honestly grateful, feeling the creative juices flowing and simmering in the background.

“You’re welcome.”

And with that, she walked away, exhaling evenly for so many reasons.

That night, she wrote and wrote just as she expected, and the story was flowing.

That is, until she hit another wall just before the next weekend.

And this one was even more stubborn than the first.

It didn’t help that she had written herself into a corner with this dogfight scene she was on—she had no way of knowing if the tactics were sound, and she was thinking of completely cutting it, but it seemed so stilted without it, and she had no idea of how to avoid writing this scene.

But one part of that thought, she realized, wasn’t true.

Her gaze landed on her coffee table.

The sheet of flight log paper with ten numbers written on them stared tauntingly back at her, daring her to call Pete.

“Nope, no, I am not going to do it,” she told herself. “No—absolutely not.

I’m sure he has better things to do than answer stupid questions.

No—I will not call him.”

The paper raised a nonexistent eyebrow.

“No!” was her battle cry, and she turned back to her laptop screen, but it offered no relief.

The depressing reality of her blinking, unmoving cursor cackled at her in harmony with the flight log paper.

It was like that healthy cereal ad from years ago, with the little girl in a prim uniform, enticingly calling “Donuts?”

However, after ten more minutes, the dictatorship of the blank page grew too cruel and harsh, and she folded like a house of whatever was more insubstantial than cards.

“Fine,” she muttered, snatching up the paper. “I’ll call, but if he doesn’t answer, it’s no skin off my back—I’ll manage… somehow.”

At least that’s what she told herself.

She dialed the number, heart pounding as the phone rang…

And rang…

And rang…

And rang.

She was just about to breathe a sigh of conflicted relief and hang up, but then the line clicked, and she heard a slightly breathless “Pete Mitchell.”

“Hi,” she blinked, cursing herself for not thinking through what she was going to say. “I don’t know if you remember me, we met at the Apple Valley Airshow—”

“__, right?

The writer.”

“Yeah, that’s me, you said I could call if I had any questions,” she scratched her head.

“Uh-huh.

I’m guessing you have one,” she could hear the smile in his voice.

“More like a lot, really.

I’ve unfortunately written myself into a corner, it’s this dogfight scene, and there’s no way I can currently remove it without sacrificing practically all of my progress since last week.

I just need to know if the tactics are sound.”

“Huh.”

“I—you know, I can figure it out myself, if it’s too much trouble—”

He interrupted, “No, it’s no trouble, I’m more than willing to help, in fact… uh, this might sound—weird and uncomfortable—or—both, really, but if you want, why don’t you come out to my hangar tomorrow, we can talk about this, rework your scene if we need to, without having to do video calls or text or email.”

“Oh,” she breathed, eyes wide.

“I promise I’m not a serial killer or anything,” he chuckled.

“I—thank you for the reassurance, by the way—but I mean, that’s a lot of confidence in how well I can write a dogfight.”

“It can’t be all that bad,” he assured.

“I’ll just prepare to be ripped to shreds,” she half-teasingly replied.

Pete snorted. “Even if it were that bad, I wouldn’t rip it to shreds—I save that for my new students.”

She couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t know what’s worse, being torn apart or the porcelain treatment.”

“How about a balance, then?”

“I’d be very happy with that.”

“So… is that a yes to coming out to my hangar?”

“I… suppose it is,” she replied, before she could convince herself otherwise.

She was a mature, responsible adult, and she was capable of being said mature, responsible adult.

(And if time permitted, she was even capable of looking respectfully, when he wasn’t watching.)

(She was only human, after all.)

“Perfect, I’ll send you the address; I have to warn you, it’ll probably be a bit of a drive, is that okay?”

“That’s fine, after all, where else will I find someone with experience flying the P-51?”

“You could always try the local VFW post,” he joked.

“What are the odds my local VFW has a former P-51 pilot?

I’ll go with the expert I’ve already met.”

“Alright, alright, I already agreed to help, no need to butter me up,” he lightly said, humorously.

“Just send the address,” was her amused response.

And that was how she found herself on US-395 North making the three-and-a-half hour drive from her apartment in San Bernardino to the Mojave, praying that she wouldn’t somehow make a fool of herself today.

To be continued…

Next Part

Was part of this story inspired by Atonement?

Maybe.

I didn’t really have the movie in mind when I wrote the plot device, but I realized the similarity after the fact.

Analog flight computer

USAAF

Band of Brothers

The Apple Valley Airshow takes place every year in the town of Apple Valley, located in San Bernardino, California.

(I considered setting this story at the annual Miramar Airshow, which takes place at MCAS (formerly NAS) Miramar, but I imagine that Mav would probably want to avoid going to MCAS Miramar for obvious reasons.)

Roundel

I don’t think that most pilots would do very daring aerobatic stunts in a plane as old as the P-51, just because she’s a darn P-51, and she’s a flying piece of history, but this is Mav, he absolutely knows what his girl can handle, I’m sure he knows how to make something look more crazy than it actually is, and bottom line, let’s just suspend our disbelief, 😂.

Did I introduce Mav in that way just so I could use that gif?

Probably absolutely.

It’s a great shot, and I do not blame me.

“You in danger, girl.” Timestamp 1:35

All the information about the P-51 is taken from the information available about the model and history/registration of Tom’s P-51, except for the details of her name and the military flight logs being missing, as the history available for N51EW never mentions if she saw actual WWII combat.

She is registered in the FAA database with the serial number 44-12840, and her name since 2006 has been “Kiss Me Kate”.

(I know why she’s named this, and it hits something in my heart that Tom never bothered to rename her.)

Her name in this story will be explained later, but those who follow me on my main blog, @oh-great-authoress, might have a hunch as to why I named the P-51 “Bianca”.

The ad I mentioned was a real Kellogg’s Special K ad.

VFW

The travel time between San Bernardino and Mav’s hangar is estimated using the travel time from San Bernardino to NAWS China Lake, and then a further hour and twenty minutes from there.

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