actuallyitsstar
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if we make it through december, we'll be fine by actuallyitsstar
Fandoms: Top Gun (Movies)
26 Dec 2024
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It's just one of a million pieces of wisdom, accidental or not, from Goose; words Maverick now carries with him, that he knows he'll carry til the day he dies. Christmas is about having people around who care enough to remember you. It's a philosophy that had felt unexpectedly right until he'd realized that he didn't. Year over year, December 25th has been about the same thing for Maverick: what he doesn't have. And what he doesn't have isn't about material goods or money or fortune; it's people, and ever since the day he was born, one by one, he's been losing them. Forgive him, then, if the holiday never held much significance, but he tries his hardest to celebrate on behalf of the people he loves who love him anyway, right up until there's no one left to bother trying for. And until, for the first time, Christmas is not about what Maverick doesn't have, not this time- for once, it's about something he's getting back, and it might just be enough to make up for every shitty Christmas he's ever had.
Or, five Christmases of Maverick's that are defined by what he has lost, and one that is all about what he's finally, at long last, gained. -
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we have mostly wasted time / half-asleep and half-alive / waiting for the faintest lie / and waiting for these wounds to heal
but we're never as lost or as found as we think we are
this is the classic, the saga: the drawn-out story of Maverick and Bradley and the family that they built and lost, and how they came to reconcile with each other in the end. heart, fluff, and angst in the beginning, plenty of anger and bitterness in the middle, and just enough self-indulgent hope and comfort at the end to (hopefully) make it up to you. told in chronological snapshots & eventually a few consecutive ending chapters. complete; now with an epilogue! this fic is the main, branching work of its series, though chronologically, it is not necessarily the beginning.Series
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Maverick taught him how to build a fire when he was eight years old.
Now watch what happens, kiddo, he’d said, and Bradley had, attention rapt and gaze unwavering. The orange-yellow flame had started small and wavering, but it had touched the edge of a crumpled sheet from The San Diego Union-Tribune and the ink and paper had melted into a shrinking, retreating ring of ash and char, and it had sprung to life just like that- strong and hot and ever-growing.
That’s why you never, ever play with matches, sweetheart, Maverick’s voice in his memories still warns him, but he remembers it- and he thinks about how unfair it is, that Maverick turned on his word. That Maverick came to play with matches. By extension, Maverick teaches Bradley how to really build a fire, an inferno, when he is eighteen years old.
He doesn't learn how to let it go, how to want to let it go, until fifteen years later, when everyone else is letting go around him. -
all this effort to make it look effortless. by actuallyitsstar
Fandoms: WKRP in Cincinnati
18 Jun 2023
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Jennifer's eyes are on his face. "Would you ever just disappear, and leave Bunny and little Herb alone with their mother for days on end?"
Herb presses his lips together, a rueful expression settling over his tired features. "Months," he corrects her softly, "and no." He still looks steadfastly away.
"Then you deserved better too." Jennifer never thought she'd say such a thing to Herb Tarlek, but she also never thought she'd find out a single human thing about him. A lot can change in an evening.
During the historic blizzard of 1978, the WKRP family gets snowed in at the station. It's not exactly what anyone wanted for their Wednesday night, but they're all prepared to make the best of it- except for Herb. Something's going on with their sales manager, something more than usual, and it's up to the station family to figure out what. Complete. -
no use ignoring that i've stayed too long. by actuallyitsstar
Fandoms: Tomb Raider & Related Fandoms, Tomb Raider (Video Games)
17 Nov 2019
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jacob makes a very sudden switch from keeping kitezh's existence and secrets away from lara, to allowing her to find the answers and helping her pursue them. he knows the consequences- so what changed his mind?
introspection/missing scene. lara is only present in the third person.
Recent series
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the years pass like a ferris wheel (in the rearview mirror) by actuallyitsstar
Fandom: Top Gun (Movies)
23 Dec 2023
Summary
(everything is clear in the rearview mirror, the coast highway and the golden hour
everything fits when you tell your story, the blurry portraits in the halls of former loves gone
but nothing was lost)
Maverick doesn’t have a home, never has, never planned to, but he has people that feel like it. Assembling a family like mismatched puzzle-pieces snapping together comes unnaturally to a boy who'd bounced throughout foster care and early adulthood like some unwanted stray, but they fit together anyway, and as quickly as he learns to hold them together, he learns what happens when they are ripped apart. Even in loss, there is solace, though; there are memories and polaroids and the grace that Maverick carries those things with, forever and always. There is a photo collage, like a constellation of love on the wall, and everything that it implies- the reminder that families, by nature, are strong, and hard to break; and that the ones Maverick is dedicated to keeping are somehow even stronger.~welcome to star's silly lil top gun cinematic universe, branching out from time takes no prisoners (you'll see) to share everyone's stories 💗~
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It turns out Bradley is an inveterate cuddler.
He seeks out Jake wherever he is—sleeping, reading, doing odds and ends around the house—and wraps his huge, overwarm body around him. He’s like a particularly persistent octopus, winding his limbs around Jake and nuzzling at his neck. Jake groans long-sufferingly and snarks each and every time it happens, but secretly he can’t get enough of it.
(In which Jake is still often freezing and Bradley, his human furnace boyfriend, feels morally obliged to do something about it at all times.)
A series of slice of life snippets post the events of low key in love, not necessarily in chronological order.
Series
- Part 3 of low key in love
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Jake’s always been sharp and soft, but not in the right configuration.
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Or, 5 times Jake can't always get what he wants + 1 time he gets what he needs
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- Part 2 of Flying Conditions
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Bob had never liked fireworks. When he was a kid, the unpredictable bangs used to cause him to flinch and cover his ears. His dad used to bark at him to suck it up and not be such a baby, sometimes he’d even earn himself a smack over the back of the head for it. It didn’t help him flinch any less.
Funny thing is, if you get hit enough times for being scared, it becomes a Pavlov’s dog kind of response: you hear a loud noise, and even if that childhood fear of the noise has drifted, the locked in fight-or-flight from the expectation of a slap holds solid as concrete. That’s what it did for Bob anyway.
But the years had passed, and he’d learnt to hide his reactions; Bob was good at it. His stomach would drop at a loud noise. A friendly smack to the shoulder would come a little too fast and sharp and set his insides reeling. Drunk patrons laughing that bit too abruptly at the Hard Deck would make his fists clench. But no one ever saw.
And that was the way it stayed for years, until he joined the Daggers.
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Bob is reminded of some bad childhood memories at a fireworks show, Ice and Mav are dad-shaped and help the WSO out.
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What if the flat spin ejection turns out a little differently, and instead of Goose dying, Mav ends up comatose in the hospital?
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Jake has trouble coming to terms with the fact that Maverick chose Rooster for the mission. Luckily, he has Javy around to knock some sense into his dumb ass.