Chapter Text
“You can’t be serious.”
Ice stares in horror at the assault on his eyes that Mav has brought him to.
On the outside it’s a lovely beach bungalow with a good sized front porch, two-car garage and a horseshoe driveway with minimal landscaping. Mav had him sold on the fact that it was a four bedroom, two-and-a-half bathroom home with an office space, open kitchen/dining area and a sizable living room for hosting parties. When they’d pulled up with the realtor, it’d looked like a good prospect. It was located in La Jolla only a half hour away from the North Island base and only a 15-20 minute ride to the hangar and airfield Mav wanted to buy out for that P-51 Mustang he’s had his eye on. The house also came with a pool and was only a 5 minute walk from the beach that they could see behind the house.
It was the inside that was the problem.
What Mav had failed to mention was that the house had clearly been built in the 60s. While the outside had been updated and kept inoffensive, the inside was absolutely covered in what Ice felt were the most visibly offensive furnishings to date. The wallpaper on the walls was gaudy and looked like it belonged in the 50s, all of the carpet was shag and looked like someone had murdered the puppets from Sesame Street. It wasn’t even the same color throughout! The living room was Snuffleuffagus Brown, the office was Oscar the Grouch Green, and the bedrooms were Zoey Orange, Cookie Monster Blue, Elmo Red, and Big Bird Yellow.
(Don’t ask him why he can put a stupid puppet name to a color. Helping Carole and Mav babysit one adorable Bradley Bradshaw leads to watching a lot of children’s programming.)
Mav had the audacity to roll his eyes and grin at him.
“Oh get over the colors. Those are all cosmetics! Easily fixable. Stop looking at what’s on the surface and see the potential this place has got! For what they’re asking we can easily budget for new carpet and paint, so stop fussing. This place is way cheaper than the other places and buildings we’ve been looking at.”
“Mav, paying a crew to renovate and update this place is going to cost more than you think,” Ice huffed.
Mav gave him a strange look.
“Why on earth would we hire someone to do what we could easily do ourselves? I used to work construction while I put myself through college and ROTC, you know. I even have a degree in electrical engineering alongside my mechanical engineering degree. Just kinda made sense with what I was doing at the time, you know, with all of that onsite work experience? Who do you think fixed that dumb flickering light back in your room at the barracks? Sure as shit wasn’t Slider.”
Ice couldn’t help but stare at Mav. He hadn’t known that, to be honest. Mav wasn’t very open about sharing details about his past. He knew that Mav had double majored (it was in his file) but he hadn’t realized there had been a reason for it beyond wanting to fly.
“Alright,” Ice mused. “So sell me on this place.”
Mav just flashed him another grin and began to ramble on about carpets, wood floors and light fixtures and all of the various ways that they could fix the place up. The younger man had apparently visited this place twice before bringing Ice here and had thoroughly inspected it for himself. Ice honestly didn’t understand half of the words pouring out of Mav’s mouth but the more he talked, the more Ice could see that potential that he’d been talking about.
The house was a good size with plenty of room for themselves and guests. It was on prime real estate despite being on the market for over a year, and there were no structural damages to the property. It was just going to be a lot of work to get it looking like it belonged in the current decade.
“So?” Mav asked, an excited light dancing in his vibrant green eyes. “C’mon! It’s a great property! You won’t even be here for most of the renovations.”
That was true. Ice was scheduled to go on a 9 month long deployment in a couple of months before taking a position as a Commander at North Island. Mav would remain on land continuing his role teaching classes at Top Gun. When Ice came back they’d both be teaching again, but because of their new marital status Mav wasn’t allowed to work under Ice. They’d be working in the same place, but under different superiors. Mav would remain under Jester and Viper while Ice was given a different class section to teach with Slider, who was also sticking around to teach after their deployment. Merlin, bless him, was filling in Ice’s role as Wingman to help Mav teach at Top Gun. Both Merlin and Slider had been putting in a lot of training hours in the sims and even up in the air to refresh their piloting skills so that they wouldn’t let their pilots down when it came time to transition into their new roles. Ice wasn’t sure how he’d lucked out into having such great friends.
“Plus, we could turn this place around and sell it for a good profit when the contract is up and split the money in the divorce,” Mav suggested.
Ice hummed as he looked around once more. They were currently in the tacky kitchen/dining room with a look out onto the back porch, the pool, and a path down to the beach.
“...Do you really think you can get this monster looking even halfway decent by the time I return from the carrier?” Ice sighed.
“Oh I can make it look way better than decent,” Mav said with a cocky smirk. “Especially if I can bribe the guys to help out once in a while, but if it’ll make you feel better I can mail you weekly updates. C’mon, Ice! What do you say?”
Ice sighed, closed his eyes and mentally ran the pros and cons of the house through his head. A lot of the pros depended on if Mav could make good on what he was selling. He should say no. There were better (more expensive) move-in ready homes in the area that would net them a good price on resale after the contract for their marriage was up in five years… but the margin would be much larger with this property if Mav could do what he said he could with the place. But would it be worth it? It wasn’t a guarantee. Plus they were both men with not a lick of sense in what was considered fashionable or not when it came to the housing market. It was safer to just go with another property that already had everything that they needed in it.
Ice pursed his lips and was about to say no when his eyes met Mav’s once more. Those green eyes were shining in a way Ice hadn’t seen before outside of the locker room after a good hop that had them buzzing high on adrenaline. Mav was excited. The younger man really believed that he could turn this place around. There was that reckless aura about him that Ice had originally clocked as dangerous. It drew you in and dared you to watch him because he was going to do something against expectations. Ice had come to know that look better than anyone since becoming Mav’s wingman. For better or worse, Mav was prepared to do something spectacular and all that determination was aimed at this nightmare of a house.
God damn it.
“Fine,” he groaned. “But if I come back from deployment and this place isn’t move-in ready I’m filing for divorce.”
Mav whooped, did a jump of victory before pulling Ice into a hug before pulling away and beaming.
“I promise you won’t regret it, Ice!”
“I better not, or there’ll be hell to pay Mitchell,” Ice groaned, but couldn’t help but laugh at the other’s enthusiasm.