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He was shorter than she thought he’d be. Maverick. It felt impossible that someone who cast such a shadow over Bradley’s life and gave so much grief to the Navy only had a couple of inches on her.
And, god, he looked impossibly small, passed out on a berth in medical, scratches covering his face and the scent of burning engine oil lingering in the air. It took Phoenix two days to get that same smell out of her hair after the bird strike.
Across the aisle, Rooster looked even lankier in comparison, curled up sideways, turned towards Mav in his sleep. She took a picture on her phone before the thought really occurred, for posterity. Bradley was a picture guy, and she had a feeling he picked it up from Maverick.
Phoenix crawled onto the edge of Rooster’s bed and pulled her knees into her chest. Her joints were a little creaky from the mission, from the Gs and aerial maneuvering that had been more like an acrobatics routine, and from sitting on the floor outside Command, frozen in place, trying not to break down in sobs.
“Tash?” Bradley stirred, face scrunching into a grimace as he shifted uncomfortably. Some watered-down pain meds were probably nothing compared to ejecting from a shot down aircraft and a haphazard landing with one failing, antique engine.
“Hey, Honey.” It came out quieter than she intended. She tucked her knees higher under her chin as he stretched his legs out under bleached sheets. They really needed to avoid hospitals for a while.
“What are you doing in here?” he asked, groggy, but with soft eyes as he blinked past the painkillers.
“Come on, Bradshaw. You know I like the look of peoples’ faces when I’m in places I shouldn’t be,” she teased breezily, more lighthearted than she felt. Most people didn’t know she was his emergency contact, let alone his girlfriend. The entirety of the special detachment was hovering in the passageway and their faces when Phoenix’s demand for information had been fulfilled delightfully ranged from shocked to vindicated. Hangman had only been distracted from a newfound sense of concern for other people by trying to get money out of the Ivies from an old bet.
“Right.” Rooster blinked slowly again before his expression shifted from lost to scared, sitting abruptly with a sharp groan as his attention locked onto Maverick. “He’s-?”
“Okay. Stable.” she assured him, resting her palm on his ankle, the closest part of him. As much as she was itching to move closer, clasp his hands in hers, trace the newest scar in his handsome face, they were going to need some physical distance if she was about to finally fess up about Maverick. Because, apparently, there was more to confess than even she had known. That had been an annoying discovery, history repeating itself. “Miraculously, just an adrenaline crash, a bruised kidney, and swelling from a dislocated knee.”
“What? No. He was fine,” Bradley insisted, solemn eyes stuck on Mav. “We walked for ages.”
“Doctor thinks he popped it back in himself, maybe accidentally. He’s lucky he didn’t break both legs when he ejected at that altitude.”
“Better than the alternative,” Rooster croaked, regret and blame crossing his face before he slumped back into his pillow with another, louder groan. “What do they have me on?”
“A half-dose of morphine initially, but now it’s mainly baby aspirin,” she informed him, rattling off his condition she’d memorized. A hairline fracture in his wrist and whiplash from that hail mary landing; bruising from ejecting. Nothing compared to what could have been.
“Think I could get any more?” he joked weakly. Phoenix’s mouth twitched but the smile never arrived.
“You scared the fuck out of me,” she said and his entire face crumpled. Not with regret, just crumpled. They both made the choice they had to; him to go back for Mav, her to get Bob and Payback and Fanboy to safety. “It fucking sucked.”
There was no other way to sum it up.
“I had to.”
Except maybe that.
“I know,” she sighed and stiffly uncurled herself from around her knees to sit cross-legged instead. Maverick inspired a level of loyalty orders couldn’t compete with.
Phoenix remembered on the second day of training for the mission, she had already been in the briefing room serving as a classroom when Maverick had entered, notes tucked under his arm. He hadn’t stumbled or shown any sign of surprise at one of his so-called students beating him to the class. Phoenix had taken a sip of her coffee, studying him over the sensible white mug she’d stolen from the mess.
Her first observation had been one she couldn’t stop repeating: he was smaller than she expected yet his presence took up all the spare air. It was no wonder Rooster felt like he was suffocating.
“You’re here early, Lieutenant Trace,” Maverick said once he’d set up at the front. Phoenix wasn’t sure why he brought the book when he told them to throw it in the trash. Maybe today he was going to light it on fire.
“At least two cups of coffee are required to tolerate Seresin, sir,” she replied coolly. “I suggest three for the combination of him and the Ivies.”
Logan and Brigham, bless them, were pretentious bastards. Neil rounded them out so they’re pretentious and obnoxious. Jake dialed everything up to an eleven out of ten.
“And for the combination of Hangman and Brad- Rooster?” Maverick asked and she could hear it, the concerned man from a phone call she had never been able to forget. She hoped crying on that call wouldn’t impact her standing on this mission.
“Alcohol. But that has to wait until we’re off duty.”
Maverick’s responding smile was small, sharp, quick. It told her most of what she needed to know about him, filled in the blanks Bradley had left. Dissolved some of the mist that obscured the truth of a legend.
It had been a single day of working with him, but Phoenix could already tell Maverick didn’t have a poker face. Emotions filtered fast and strong over his face and into his voice but got wiped out as quickly, likely from decades of practice. It gave the impression that he was honest and genuine, two things which were tough to find in a CO. He also has a taste for the dramatic.
“You’re not worried about leaving Seresin and Bradshaw alone together?”
“I don’t exactly have access to the men’s locker room, sir,” she remarked, eyebrows raised. Javy could manage them for fifteen minutes. Reuben was big enough to get in between them if necessary. Billy was fast on his feet and good with excuses to get people out of trouble. Mickey knew where she was. And then there was Bob— she didn’t know what he was good for, yet, but she would figure it out soon.
“You can drop the veil of formality, Phoenix,” Maverick had said. “It’s good to put a face to the voice.”
Natasha ignored it, the attempt at familiarity. Phenomenal flying and unorthodox teaching aside, her opinion was far from unbiased and she hadn’t decided whether she liked Maverick or not. She remembered how obvious his love and concern for Bradley had been over the phone, yet here he was, letting himself be goaded into double helix death spirals and letting Rooster break the hard deck.
“They know how important this mission is and they’re both gunning for team leader. Jake and Bradley won’t come to blows unless it’s over something big. Maybe something about the size of the elephant in the room. Sir.”
Rooster spent hours the night before spilling his guts about Maverick, everything he had been holding back for as long as she’d known him. He fell asleep drained, exhausted. The thing was, almost nothing he said was anything she didn’t already know, hadn’t managed to pick up on in all the silences and careful omissions of what he had told her. Bradley was cagey but he was honest and that had always shone through when it came to Maverick. The new information had managed to finally put a picture into focus but it wasn’t much different from the blurry version. It wasn’t much different from the version Iceman and Maverick managed to paint over those emergency calls, either.
She should probably tell Bradley the truth about that. After the mission.
“He can fly this mission,” Phoenix said loyally. She believed it; she just needed Rooster to as well.
She saw it, a shadow of doubt, flickering, before Maverick wrestled it into a professional stare.
“Respectfully, Lieutenant, I don’t know if any of you are capable of flying this mission yet.”
“Respectfully, Captain, we wouldn’t be here if we couldn’t.”
Maverick’s eyebrow twitched, something that looked like approval and guilt and parental fear flashing over his features in fast-forward.
He didn’t doubt them, Phoenix had realized, he doubted himself.
“You’re good at that,” Maverick had said keenly.
“At what?”
“Belligerent compliance.” Maverick said it like a compliment, indulgent. “I’ve only ever managed the first part.”
A confession and a confirmation of the Navy’s rampant rumors. Genuine and honest. He was making it hard for Phoenix to dislike him.
“Must be where Rooster gets it from.”
Because, for all his adherence to protocol, Rooster could subvert an order like a motherfucker when it rubbed wrong against his conscience. Bradley Bradshaw was all heart. It was why she loved him.
It was also why she wanted to strangle him— he’d saved a decade and a half of attitude to take out on Maverick at the worst time possible, his heart and hurt pouring out of him like a broken faucet.
“That might be genetic,” Maverick’s expression glazed over briefly, loss and grief there and gone. “Carole could let loose a devastating bless your heart when called for.”
He didn’t mentioned Goose but he didn’t have to. Phoenix knew what it was like to be of a single mind with a back-seater and she knew what it was like to have a Bradshaw backing her every move. It was why she needed her Bradshaw squared away, proving he could be team leader instead of trying to prove he was good enough to someone he loved as a father.
Before she could say what she wanted to— that if Maverick stopped treating Rooster like Bradley then Rooster would stop acting out like a brokenhearted teenager— Fritz, Payback, and Fanboy crowded into the room, loudly complaining about sore muscles. Everyone else trailed in after, Rooster hiding behind Omaha’s equally large frame.
“Teach us to fly it like you would, Maverick, and we’ll fly it.” Phoenix balanced her empty coffee cup in the drink holder meant for waterbottles as Bob appeared beside her, expression quizzical. Natasha felt Bradley’s eyes on her back.
“Thank you for the insight, Lieutenant,” Maverick said, head dipping professionally but she saw the concession in the movement. He’d caught her meaning and agreed— rehashing the past could wait until after he’d taught them to survive their future.
“Giving fashion advice, Trace?” Hangman drawled as he dropped into a spot close enough to annoy her.
“Your fly is down,” she retorted with just enough conviction that Hangman, despite wearing his flight suit zipped to his fucking chin, looked down to check.
Behind her, Rooster snorted. In front of her, Maverick bit his cheek.
By the end of session— after hours of Maverick drilling into them about the mission parameters and flight plans and explaining to them how to do the impossible and come home alive— she had decided she liked him. After the disaster flight with the stunt Maverick pulled to get Coyote out of g-LOC and his voice in her ear during the bird strike ordering her to save them, fuck the aircraft, Phoenix had decided that she would get him and Bradley back on good terms if it was the last thing she did. After he risked ending his career— and a court martial— to save all their lives by proving the mission could be done without setting them up to die, she decided she would follow that man into the pits of hell with full faith he would lead her back out of them.
It was the only thing that had stopped her from turning around after Rooster. That, and Bob in her backseat, and Maverick in her head telling her to explain it to his family.
Rooster was Maverick’s family. Nobody had to explain that, especially not to her.
“That man loves you,” she declared to him now, not for the first time. This time, years later, Bradley was conscious and actually hears her.
“He didn’t have to take a missile to prove it.”
“I don’t think proving it was what he was thinking about, B.”
Rooster dropped his head back, eyes to the ceiling, and groans loudly at the motion.
“Whiplash,” Phoenix reminded him.
“The emotional kind,” he muttered and Phoenix saw the opening she needed to come clean.
“It’s not over. I have to tell you something, about the last time I had to be your emergency contact. Because I, um, I didn’t just talk to Iceman.”
Because she’d been honest about that, if only because she hadn’t been able to suffer the indignity that she’d blathered on the phone like an idiot to COMPACFLT and it was Rooster’s fault. She just left out how when Iceman texted her with the information for his medical files it was with Maverick’s phone number rather than the answers themselves.
“I know.”
She paused, sure she heard wrong. “You know?”
“Contrary to popular belief, I did review the forms. Eventually,” he adds, somewhat under his breath. “You wrote him in under Next of Kin.”
“I wrote myself in, too,” Phoenix says, somewhat facetious. Liberties where taken and it wasn’t just on his behalf. “You didn’t say anything.”
He fiddled with the corner of the sheet. “I almost did. I was pissed and I was going to call but you were in Japan-”
“That was months later!” And she’d been posted out of Lemoore for almost a year now, so this had happened ages before. He’d been sitting on this a long while.
“-and I realized with the time difference it was the middle of the night and I wasn’t going to wake you up to yell about it,” he met her eye and Phoenix almost flinched under his gravity. “By the time it wouldn’t be a dick move to call, I had realized getting mad at you for being braver than me was stupid and I made you my emergency contact because I trust your judgement. So, I left it.”
And Phoenix melted, because he was looking at her with grateful eyes and a soft determination she wasn’t sure she deserved in this case. She scooted up the narrow space left on the bed until she was perched right beside him, one knee bent and the other hanging down to the floor.
“I’m not sorry I did it but I am sorry I was sneaky about it.” She flashed back to a certain conversation not long after those phone calls and huffed. “And the lying. I’m sorry about that.”
“Hell of a poker face, Trace,” he retorted, thinking of the same conversation. “I finally confessed to you one of my deepest secrets and I just thought you were empathetic or some shit.”
“It would have been incredibly rude to go ‘yeah, I know, I already talked to him on the phone’ when you told me you-know-who was Maverick. I didn’t want to interrupt the heartfelt moment.”
“You must really love me.”
“Yes,” she agreed, quickly, easily, mindlessly. She had done it out of love; had been prepared to take the brunt of his anger when he found out, had learned to savour traitor in all its complexity. But he’d known for years and none of that had come to pass. Rooster’s hand found hers on top of the over-washed sheets, threading their fingers together until her palm was pressed into his. Acceptance, not forgiveness.
The monitors surrounding Mav’s bed beeped as he shifted. He got the full dose of morphine but neither Phoenix nor Rooster were surprised he was waking up.
“Karma found me anyway,” Phoenix sighed, longsuffering. “How’d you think they let me in here?”
“You’re my emergency contact and one of my next of kin, I’m pretty sure girlfriend is implied.”
“True,” she looked pointedly at Maverick. “But you’re both in here.”
Rooster’s confusion was glorious, if momentary, until Maverick opened his eyes and looked over at them. He smiled at the sight of Bradley, alive and awake, before his face turned sheepish at the sight of Natasha.
“Oh. Right,” he rasped.
Phoenix pressed her lips together to keep a straight face. Mav bore a striking resemblance to Bradley when he’d woken up from his morphine dreams the last time. “Runs in the fucking family.”
“What does?” Rooster was caught between the two of them.
“Filling out official documents without telling people.”
Maverick tried to clear his throat and Phoenix shoved off Rooster’s bed to spitefully offer him the paper cup full of water from the shelf. She crossed her arms stubbornly over her chest.
After a long drink, he cleared his throat again. “About that.”
“You can’t make someone your next of kin without ever meeting them, Mav!”
“I only put you on the notifications list,” he objected, weakly.
“Did you know they notified me when you went MIA after reaching Mach 10?”
“You did what?” Rooster squawked but it was unclear if he meant the forms, Mach 10, or going MIA.
“10.3 actually,” Maverick said. “And I didn’t, sorry about that.”
“You went Mach 10?” Rooster looked at Maverick in complete admiration. That solved the mystery on what he was surprised about.
“No, you madmen. This isn’t what you get to bond over,” Phoenix lightly seethed standing between their hospital beds. Crazy bastards. She suddenly understood how Admiral Kazansky had born the responsibility of the entire pacific fleet with dignity and grace. It was nothing compared to a Maverick.
“She sounds like your mom the first time I let you ride the bike solo,” Maverick commented, eyes bright enough for her to realize they were green. Bradley’s laugh was full of warmth and any ire Natasha could have had was blown out like a birthday candle.
“I’m going to designate Hangman as emergency contact in both your files,” she threatened and plopped herself back down on Rooster’s bed.
“No, please, I’m sorry,” Bradley said, laughing still even as he rubbed at the soft cast around his right wrist.
“Me too,” Maverick added, laughter fading quickly to something more serious. “I just wanted someone else he trusted to know if something ever happened to me. To help him.”
That much Natasha had been able to surmise on her own. It still didn’t change the fact that- “A text, Mav. A head’s up. That’s all.”
“You’re right,” he amended, but it’s with the same voice he used when Payback and Fanboy made the wager from hell. She didn’t trust that he was at all apologetic about it yet couldn’t find it in her to mind.
They quieted again and Phoenix knew it was only a matter of time before the medical staff came to start poking and prodding once more. And once they were done, her boys were probably going to get torn to shreds by Cyclone before he offered them a medal.
“What does Mach 10 feel like?” Phoenix asked, because she’d been dying to hear the answer since she’d gotten a phone call saying she might never get one.
The smile lines at the corner of Mav’s eyes pulled and crinkled as his smile turned soft with awe. “Like the world is standing still.”
“Wicked,” she whispered, and Bradley’s warm eyes found hers. She may not have ever hit Mach 10— at least not yet— but she had an inkling of what that awe felt like.