Chapter Text
The morning of the first Hop 31, Maverick wakes up at his desk with the F-14 NATOPS as his pillow, a thin line of drool permeating through the page he was reading. Scowling, he wipes it away and hastily turns off his beeping alarm clock. 0500, thirty minutes before he has to report for Hop 31. Scrambling to get his flight suit on and his ass in gear, he all but flies out of his house and to the base to get ready for preflight.
“Okay, gentlemen, this is Hop 31. It leads to graduation. Top Gun trophy’s still up for grabs, so every point counts.” Jester’s voice sounds through the radio as they taxi to the runway.
“Bottom of the ninth with the scores tied, it’s time for the big one,” Goose jokes as soon as they’re up in the air.
“You up for this one, Maverick?” Even from separate cockpits with the glare of the morning sun, Maverick can sense Ice’s smug grin.
“Just a walk in the park, Kazansky,” He responds, sending back a smirk of his own.
Slider reminds them of the task at hand, looking down at the water. “Multiple bogeys 1-6-5, two miles. Looks like they’re going away from us.”
“Oh, I see ‘em.” Maverick looks down, spotting the bogeys. “Tally-ho, right two o’clock. I’m in.”
“I’m in.” Iceman says with all his usual bite.
The rest of the run goes par for the course for how their other hops have gone, Iceman and Mav spinning around each other, dancing in the skies, taking out the bogey. That is, until Iceman hesitates in taking the final shot.
Now, if truly pressed, Maverick will admit – through gritted teeth – that Iceman is a good pilot. Excellent, even. If he wasn’t a good – excellent – pilot, then he and Goose would far and away be leading the race for the Top Gun trophy, leaving the rest of their classmates in the dust. Even though his icy and precise demeanor is different from Mav’s, he’ll admit that it’s effective. So, given his (at least) effective and (at most) excellent flying, why the hell is he taking this long to line up the shot? Even Slider is chiming in with him now, trying to get him to just fucking take it.
As soon as Iceman cuts out, that’s when everything goes to shit. The entire F-14 shakes with the effect of the jetwash, sending it into a flat spin. His heart is in his stomach, and his brain is in overdrive as he tries to get control of the jet. He’s losing control, both engines are gone, and the ocean is only getting closer.
Shit, shit, shit.
Eject, eject, eject.
He’s not even quite sure what he’s yelling, just that one second he’s seated in the F-14, the next second he’s cradling Goose’s unconscious body as they drift in the Pacific Ocean. He doesn’t remember much of the next parts, not the helicopter coming in and taking his RIO from him, not making it back to base, not being assessed by the medical staff.
He snaps back to reality when a nurse enters his small hospital room, a pitying glance darting between him and the clipboard in her hand, no doubt Goose’s file. “Lieutenant Bradshaw is in surgery now. He’s stable now, and they’re doing everything they can to keep him that way.”
Even though she says he’s stable, she doesn’t exactly make any promises about whether or not Goose will make it out. Then again, she doesn’t make any comments about him not making it out, so Maverick supposes he’ll have to take that small victory. He nods wearily and starts leaning back against the bed, gearing up for a night in the uncomfortable hospital room. He knows when he’s pushing his luck, and going AMA for the fifth time isn’t something that he needs to pile on top of everything else.
And, Christ, is the ‘everything else’ of his current situation ever so fucked up. What’s he going to tell Carole? What’s he going to tell Bradley? When Goose makes it out of surgery (Maverick doesn’t even dare to attach an ‘if’ to that statement), the recovery process is still going to be long and painful.
He doesn’t even realize that the nurse was trying to continue talking to him or that his hands had begun shaking violently until he feels a soft hand cover his own.
“We’re going to keep you here for observation, just for tonight. You have a few broken ribs and some significant bruising from ejecting, and we just want to make sure there are no underlying issues we should be worried about. Is there anyone we can call to update on your status?”
He feels his hand start to quiver again. The only person who would be listed under anything of that matter on his file would be Goose. The Bradshaws were truly the only family he had, what with his being an only child, an orphan, and not exactly prone to forming close friendships with the exception of his RIO.
He’s about to say as much when a soft voice sounds from the doorway. “Me.”
Maverick peeks around the nurse to see the source, and his brow furrows upon seeing Iceman standing there, still in his flight suit. He looks like shit, plain and simple. His hair, normally reaching for the high heavens, lies flat. His uniform, almost always crisp and neat, is in a similar state of unusual disrepair.
“Lieutenant Kazansky?” The nurse glances down at the file in front of her. “I don’t see you listed anywhere here as–”
“I came here to check on Mitchell and get an update on Goose,” Iceman says; Maverick’s eyebrows are creeping to his hairline: not only is Iceman (apparently) here to check on him, but he also just interrupted somebody. “I’m not listed anywhere, but we’re classmates.”
The nurse purses her lips, looking down at her paper again. “I’m not technically allowed–”
“It’s fine,” Maverick says, surprising everyone, including himself.
She acquiesces at that, giving them both a more detailed rundown of his various injuries and their various treatments, much of which he tunes out. It’s nothing he hasn’t dealt with before, and the jolt of energy – anxiety? panic? – he got from getting an update on Goose is quickly wearing off. He’s practically asleep by the time the nurse leaves and Iceman approaches his hospital bed.
“Why’d you come?” Maverick asks, drowsiness slightly slurring his words.
“Everybody likes Goose,” Iceman sits down in the chair next to him, not at all answering Maverick’s question. “Not as many people like you, but we’re still brothers. In arms, that is.”
In Maverick’s drowsy, mourning, and guilt-ridden brain, that makes sense. At least, he knows that he would have come to the hospital had the roles been reversed, although likely at Goose’s insistence. That’s probably why ‘everybody’ likes Goose and why ‘not as many’ people like him. Even the thought of Goose has his thoughts spiralling again, and either Iceman catches onto it, or he’s anxious to get out of the hospital and back to his quarters, because he speaks up again.
“Mitchell.” Iceman’s voice is firm, as always, but has the softer quality that it had when he had first spoken to the nurse.
They’re the only two times that Iceman has talked to Maverick without his usual snappy, barking quality, something that, for some reason, his brain is clinging to right now.
“Kazansky.”
“You did nothing wrong. I know it, Goose knows it, Jester knows it, Viper knows it, everybody knows it.”
“Fuck you.” Maverick bites back, tears shining in his eyes.
Iceman sighs. He opens his mouth to say something more, his eyes directed at the ceiling, but instead opts to stand up and leave the room, not sparing Maverick a second glance.
Now alone in his room, Maverick stares up at the ceiling and exhales deeply. His head spins with all that’s happened within the last few hours. He had Goose, and now he might lose him. He had exchanged barbs with Iceman, and now it almost seems like the blonde is going soft on him. Maverick runs a hand through his hair, then drags it down his face.
Fuck, he’s tired.
Sometime between reliving the flat spin and thinking about how piercing Iceman’s blue eyes were, he falls asleep.
~*~
Maverick expects to wake up in the hospital room, preferably later in the day, seeing as it’s supposed to be Saturday. Key word supposed. Instead, he wakes up in the same position as the day before, drool leaking onto the page about in-flight engine fires. He stares in shock at the NATOPS, the beeping of the alarm clock fading into the background as panic rises in his throat.
No. No, this could not be happening. There had to be some other explanation for it, some other, better explanation for this other than–
“It’s like, you wake up, and suddenly you feel important; you feel a rush,” Goose had explained to him, rather drunkenly, when he had asked him about how he knew that he and Carole were soulmates. “It’s like that, every day.”
“You’re lucky, though, you only had to live through five iterations,” Maverick had remarked, nursing a beer of his own.
“I’m lucky for a lot of reasons,” His RIO had responded, his eyes drifting from Maverick and towards Carole and Bradley in their kitchen.
Fuck.
He’s tempted not to even show up to training. After all, he knows that the next day is just going to be the same. Give it to Maverick’s shit luck that the day he makes a connection with his soulmate is the worst day of his life. Jesus. To top it off, he doesn’t even have the slightest inkling of who it could be.
Charlie? Maybe, given that he’d seen her that morning before preflight. A bit late to start the loop, maybe, but from his (limited) research, the soulmate thing was more of an art than a science, because how do you quantify “a romantic spark”, anyways? With that broad of a scope, it truly could have been anyone. It could be the guy that had hauled him out of the ocean and into the medevac helicopter. Like he initially thought, it could be Charlie. It could be the nurse who’d taken care of him in the hospital.
He put his head in his hands. Today of all days? He sighs, running a hand through his hair and finally shutting off his alarm clock.
Death, taxes, and Peter “Maverick” Mitchell getting his ass handed to him by the universe.
He decides to show up to training, rationalizing it in three ways:
1) Goose was in stable condition last he’d heard of him. Their staff are some of the best medical professionals in California. He would likely pull through.
2) He can anticipate everything now and prevent the flat spin from even happening in the first place.
3) He can win the hop and stick it to Iceman.
Those three reasons are good enough for him to slip his flight suit on and get to base in time to see Goose’s shining face there to greet him. Maverick practically launches himself at him, wrapping his RIO in a fierce hug.
Goose lets out a slightly weirded-out chuckle. It’s not like they don’t hug, but most mornings, Maverick can’t even pull himself out of bed, never mind be awake enough to tackle him.
“Aw, excited to see me, honey?” He teases as soon as Maverick lets go.
“As always, dear,” he quips back, just fucking relieved.
Relieved that Goose is in front of him, beaming through his mustache. Relieved that he gets a chance to make this right.
“Ready to kick Iceman and Sliders’ asses?” Maverick grins as he slips his aviators on.
“You already fucking know it.”
~
As on edge as he was this morning, getting into his cockpit is a breath of fresh air. When the canopy slips down and they run through all their final checks on the runway, Maverick is the most normal he’s felt in the past twenty-four hours. It’s a factory reset, a routine they’ve run through so many times, seared into the back of his brain.
That feeling slowly dissipates as they get into the air, reliving the same conversations and moves as the day before. He quips back with Iceman all the same, Slider spots the bogeys at the same time, and everything is going exactly the way it was the day before.
Maverick starts sweating under his collar the second that it comes down to the final shot.
“Just let me take it, Iceman,” he says through the comms, trying his hardest not to sound like he’s begging.
Because, if he’s in the lead to take the shot, that means that there’s no jetwash, no flat spin, and no limp Goose lying against him as they wait for S & R. Maverick prays to a God he’s not even sure he believes in that Iceman will change his mind today; that things will be different.
And, maybe he needs to start praying more often, because Iceman’s voice crackles over the radio, “It’s all yours. I can’t get a shot lined up.”
Maverick doesn’t need to be told twice. He dives in for the shot as Iceman gives him a sizeable amount of space behind, and gets tone within a minute.
“Good job, gentlemen,” Jester’s voice sounds through the radio. “Hop 31 is now complete for the both of you, Maverick and Goose win. Report back for postflight and debrief.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Whoo-ey,” Goose says on their private line as soon as they turn back towards Miramar. “What the hell do you think possessed Iceman, letting us take the final shot?”
“I don’t know, but I’m sure as hell happy he did,” Maverick unclips his mask. “We’re leading now.”
“Hell yeah, we are, baby,” his RIO lets out a gleeful giggle. “That trophy is ours.”
~
They walk into the locker room as Slider is seemingly mid-rant.
“--Had the shot, why the fuck did you let them take it?”
Maverick and Goose both exchange glances before deciding to duck behind the other row of lockers, staying out of sight. Even though they can’t see Iceman and Slider, Maverick can picture the pair of them: Slider as scarlet as the redwoods he’s so often compared to, and Iceman with his chest puffed out as usual.
There’s a beat of silence from Iceman’s end, until: “I couldn’t get the shot lined up. I would have had to cut out eventually, and I wouldn’t want them getting caught in our jet wash and having something bad happen. We have more than enough hops to catch up to them.”
Maverick’s stomach drops at the mention of the jet wash, Iceman’s uncanny description of what had happened yesterday (or, today, he supposes) serving as a sobering reminder.
Unaware of his mini-crisis, Goose slaps him on the back and enters their locker row. “Nah, you’re never gonna catch us.”
Iceman scowls at their arrival. “Remind me who was leading the scores for so long before hop 28?”
“Only because of the hard deck bullshit Jester insisted on during the first hop,” Maverick scoffs. “You had all the momentum after that.”
“We don’t need ‘momentum’ to kick your ass,” Slider pipes in. “We’re just gonna do it regardless.”
“Whatever you say, Sequoia,” Goose snaps his towel at him. “Just remember that time during Plebe Summer–”
“Oh fuck off, that was ages ago,” Slider groans, snapping his towel back in retaliation.
~
Maverick stares at his ceiling, watching his fan spin around as he weighs his options. He’s nowhere near being able to figure out what the hell is going on with this whole soulmate business. Lifting himself off his couch enough to grab the scrap paper on his coffee table, he scrounges up a pen and starts writing down possible options.
Charlie? He hadn’t even seen her this morning, what with his clinging to Goose like an octopus.
The medevac guy? The nurse from the hospital? He hadn’t even seen either of them today. And, thank God for that; Maverick isn’t sure what he’d do if they’d gone into a flat spin like that again.
That leaves him stumped. The only other people he’d even talked to both days were Goose (obviously not an option), Jester ( obviously not an option), Hollywood and Wolfman (who seemed to have their own thing going on), and Slider ( no.) He considers the rest of his options; there was always Iceman, who had talked to him that first night, too.
He nearly writes down his name before stopping himself. No. No way. Right? Aside from the beginning of their conversation the previous night, they’d been nothing but snappy with each other since arriving at Miramar.
Soft glances and hushed voice from yesterday aside, Iceman is still Iceman. Maverick is still Maverick.
No fucking way.
~*~
Maverick wakes up on the NATOPS again, wincing at the crick in his neck. Of course, on top of everything else that happens on his repeat day, waking up in the worst possible position is one of them. He wipes off the drool and silences his alarm. He’s a zombie – or, more of a zombie than usual, at least – as he goes through the motions of getting dressed and getting himself to base.
He completely zones out during Jester’s preflight briefing (nothing he hasn’t heard before) and focuses instead on who else he might have interacted with. Frustratingly, he doesn’t come up with any other good options.
The deck officer? That’s a stretch and a half.
The runner who got him coffee in the morning ? Even more so; the kid still has pimples, for Chrissake.
Jester is about halfway through his brief when Maverick feels the weight of a stare on his back. He spares a glance behind him and catches Iceman’s eyes just before they snap away. Turning back around, he shakes his head briefly. No. No way.
~
He makes his way through the motions of preflight and bickering with Iceman and Slider, the routine all but seared into his brain already. But as soon as he clears the runway and soars into the sky, his brain clears. With the California desert laid out in front of him, he can almost pretend that this is just a routine hop and not what it is.
That bubble bursts as soon as Slider spots the bogeys and as soon as they engage. He sneaks in a few new moves – because of course he does – trying to shoot down the first bogey in less time than the previous days.
His heart still crawls into his throat as Iceman goes to line up the shot against the last bogey. He gives him more distance than he did before, because who the hell’s to say that Iceman will act differently today, but still thumbs the trigger, eager to get the shot in. He’s still Maverick, after all.
Unfortunately for him, though, Iceman somehow seems to have gotten his shit together between the first two iterations, and gets tone in less than a minute.
“Good job, gentlemen,” Jester’s voice sounds through the radio. “Hop 31 is now complete for the both of you, Iceman and Slider win. Report back for postflight and debrief.”
“Nice to see us reclaim our lead, right, Slider?” Maverick can hear the smug smile in Iceman’s voice.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” he snarks as they await landing clearance. “Goose and I’ll be back to winning before you know it.”
~*~
The next day, Maverick gets too eager, Iceman waits too long, and they have to eject again.
It all goes black after that.
~*~
Maverick has never been more grateful to wake up in a pool of his own drool. He can’t quite remember what happened after the crash yesterday, but the fact that he wakes up immediately after he recalls feeling the prop blast from the parachute isn’t a great sign. He sighs, cradling his head in his hands. His alarm sounds off in the distance. He lets out one last long-suffering sigh before hauling himself up; time to get to base.
Iceman is looking at him funny when he and Goose enter the briefing room for preflight. His eyes won’t leave Maverick’s, which, given the fact that Iceman had nearly given himself whiplash the other day trying not to get caught staring, is a bit odd.
Iceman’s weird behavior aside, everything else goes to plan. Maverick tries out a few new maneuvers when they pursue the first bogey, but, as per usual, stalls as soon as they get to the second. What’s Iceman going to do today?
“Do you have the shot?” Maverick asks over the radio as his thumb brushes over the trigger.
He doesn’t want another yesterday – he’s really trying to choose to ignore the fact that he woke up immediately after the ejection probably means he died in that iteration. But, at the same time, he doesn’t think he can handle another iteration of Iceman and Slider leading the competition and not him.
“I– I don’t have it. You go in.”
He gets tone in less than thirty seconds – a new record – and hoots and hollers with Goose while simultaneously trying not to collapse from pure relief.
“Good job, gentlemen,” Jester’s voice sounds through the radio. “Hop 31 is now complete for the both of you, Maverick and Goose win. Report back for postflight and debrief.”
~
Maverick expects the same rant from Slider as the first time Iceman gave them the shot. Instead, he’s met with absolute silence, aside from the rustling of clothes, when they reach the locker room.
“Silently stewing on our demise, I see,” Goose jokes as the two of them walk up to their lockers.
“Oh, shut up, Goose,” Slider snaps.
Silence from Iceman. Maverick regards him from the corner of his eye as he peels off his undershirt. His eyes are cast down, civvies seemingly forgotten at the top of his locker as he just stands in his towel.
“Let ‘em stew all they want, Goose,” Maverick pipes up once he tears his gaze away from Iceman. “That trophy is ours.”
Still no response from Iceman. He exchanges a look with Goose before motioning to join him back to housing.
~
Maverick is finally going to tell Goose. He’d been too scared the second day when the residual panic of almost losing him was still fresh. He’d been too angry the third day after losing to Iceman and Slider. And the fourth day… He tries not to think about it too hard.
Besides, Goose, of all people, deserves to know. He’s probably going to be pissed as hell that it took this long for Maverick to tell him. Not that he’ll have many tips for Maverick on how to deal with all this: By the time he and Carole reached five iterations, they already had everything figured out.
He wishes it were that easy.
“How long?” is Goose’s first question as he leans forward, beer perched in his hand.
“This is the fifth day.”
“And you’re just now telling me? Some friend you are!” He holds his hand to his chest in mock affront.
“It could be the fourth time I’m telling you,” Maverick points out. “You just wouldn’t remember.”
Goose raises his eyebrows at him with his now-patented Dad Stare. Maverick hangs his head.
“Yeah, I’m just now telling you.”
“Do you have any ideas on who it is?”
He lets out a heavy sigh. “ No. I figured it might be Charlie, because I saw her in preflight that first day. But haven’t seen her since. Same with the nurse and the medevac guy–” He chokes up before quickly clearing his throat.
Goose raises his eyebrows even further, if that’s even possible. “Medevac?”
“That first day, we got caught in Iceman’s jetwash trying to get the second bogey. We had to eject, and you clipped the canopy on our way out. We were both in the hospital that night, and you’d just gotten out of surgery.
“And then, yesterday, the same thing happened, but to me, I think. It all just went black after we ejected, and I woke up upstairs again.”
“Pete–”
“I’m sorry, Nick.”
“It’s not your fault.” Goose gets up from his armchair and settles down on the couch next to Maverick, slinging an arm across his shoulders. “Hey. It’s not your fault, and it’s not Iceman’s fault. It’s nobody’s fault.”
“I guess,” he slumps. “I just– God, out of all the days to repeat–”
Goose snorts. “Just your luck.”
“Just my luck.” He lets out a heavy exhale. “Now, if only Iceman would make up his goddamn mind about whether or not he’d like to take the shot, I might be able to finally just figure out how to get rid of that second bogey in peace.”
Goose doesn’t speak for a moment, but Maverick can feel his stare.
“What? Did I get something on my face?” He wipes his thumb against the corners of his mouth, swiping away phantom crumbs. “Goose?”
“You said you don’t know who it could be?” His voice is slow and calculated, like he was talking to a farm animal or a very dumb toddler.
“Yeah, I’ve got no idea. I’m so desperate I even considered the deck officer, Lyman, because he’s the only person I see every day that’s not you, Jester, or one of our classmates.”
“Huh.”
“Why?”
“No reason.”
Maverick turns and squints at him. “Your mustache is doing that thing again. Who do you think it is?”
“My mustache isn’t doing anything,” Goose says as his mustache twitches again. “And I–” he checks his watch like it’s the most interesting thing in the world. “Have to go call Carole.”
Maverick frowns. “It’s eleven o’clock there. Is Bradley even going to be up–”
“Oh, you know him,” Goose pulls on his jacket and boots, nearly falling over on himself as he tries to get to the door. “Tell me about this tomorrow, okay? Every detail you said today. Every. Detail.”
“Okay,” Maverick says slowly as he goes to shut the door behind Goose. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
“See you tomorrow!” Goose shouts over his shoulder as he rushes to his Bronco.
As Maverick putters around in the living room, clearing out their beer bottles, he sees Goose peel off deeper into bachelor housing – the opposite direction of where he should be in family housing. Well then.
~*~
Maverick tells Goose the next day, and the next, and the next. He flies the same hop the next day, and the next, and the next. Flying – something that he’s always loved, always cherished with every part of his soul – is starting to become monotonous day after day. Even when he adds new maneuvers to the hop, the bogey almost always goes down in the same manner.
The only thing keeping him on his toes is Iceman and the final shot. There haven’t been any incidents – not like that first hop, and thankfully not like the fourth – but he still can’t seem to make up his mind on whether or not he wants to take the shot.
“Kazansky, c’mon, let me have it,” Maverick grouses somewhere around the fifteenth iteration; Iceman is hesitating again, and he just wants to get this over with.
“No, I’ve got it.”
Maverick rolls his eyes, but gives him space regardless, even if he’s fidgeting with the trigger the entire time. Iceman gets tone, Jester announces the winner in the same way as usual, and Maverick makes his way through the motions of postflight and debrief.
He tells Goose after dinner, like he always does, and Goose hurries off deeper into bachelor housing, like he always does. This time, however, Maverick follows him. Thankfully, the speed limits on base are pretty low, and the Bronco isn’t the quietest car in the world, so it only takes a few minutes for him to find where Goose has parked it.
Unsurprisingly, it’s the housing for one of their classmates. Surprisingly, the classmate in question is Slider.
He supposes he shouldn’t be too shocked; Goose and Slider graduated in the same class at the Academy, and both did flight school at Pensacola. Pocketing that information for later, he stalks back to his house, hands shoved into the pockets of his bomber jacket.
~*~
They’re hovering somewhere in the twenties – he’s honestly lost count, at this point – when Maverick decides to just call Goose out on his shit.
“Can you just tell me what the hell’s going on?” Maverick asks. “Instead of just bolting to Slider’s, which I know is what you’re about to do.”
Goose pauses midway through rotating his wrist to “check his watch”. It would be almost comical if Maverick weren’t absolutely at his wits’ end. The iterations are almost making him dislike flying, for Chrissake. He needs to get out of there, and he needs to get out of here soon.
There’s another pause before Goose speaks.
“In the time loop, everyone acts the same, day after day.” Goose’s words are slow, calculated. “Depending on reactions to what you’re doing, they might act slightly different, but even then, it’s nearly the same.”
Maverick snorts. “Yeah, I know that. If I have to hear Jester’s same preflight debrief one more time, I might lose my mind."
“No, I–” Goose runs a hand across his face. “God, I’ve raised an idiot.”
“Hey!” Maverick squawks.
Goose gives him a very pointed look. “What was it you were saying about Ice's flying?"
Oh. Oh.
Oh, shit.