Chapter Text
Hospitals. Waiting rooms. White walls, sanitized beds and papery sheets. Military infirmaries. There’s a grey coldness to this peculiar world, a repulsive aura that never fails to make Rooster’s throat tighten and go dry. Flying from the open windows, dancing through the old lace-y drapes hanging on them, the wind feels like the breaths of a thousand ghosts on his burning skin; tickling, gnawing at his sanity.
Death sleeps and feasts in such places, her smile wide and toothy, forged in a million of sharp objects laying there.
Sitting on a tiny bed in the medbay, Rooster shivers at the thought – she’s right there, next to him. Her claws hovering above his shoulder, her fangs scrapping over his rib-cage; she’s tasted him all day long. She was close, so close to eat him alive – not flying fast enough, being saved by Maverick, saving him back, being hunted in the skies. He’s felt her sucking on his bones like the greedy, disgusting sin that she is, and he’s survived; but now, she’s sticking around, laughing against his skin.
There are whispers, here and there, behind his ear and along his spine and in the hollow of his neck. I have your mother with me, and your father too, she taunts. Come, join us, little boy. We’re waiting for you.
Frost is spreading over glass and mirrors, its icy jaw biting slowly but deeply into Rooster’s nerves. Any trace of adrenaline has left his organism – sweat drops roll down his nape, lick at his shoulder blades – and cold swallows him whole.
“Fuck,” he rasps, watching his muscles getting stirred by spasms.
His breath is shallow, his mind dizzy. The room around him has become a blurry thing and the floor is now indistinguishable from the ceiling-
Where is he, again?
He’s terribly alone, for an eternity.
Until he isn’t.
Maverick enters the room, his silhouette dark and nuanced and contoured – a living thing apparently so strong that Death barely blinks before running away to a corner like a wounded animal; a living man so exceptional that a sunny warm veil follows wherever he goes, scaring the night and the chills away.
The orange hue of the sunset settles back in the infirmary immediately, light and heat radiating from everything, called back by this singular old man who smiles kindly, humbly, as if he didn’t know he is a god.
Rooster’s lungs get filled again as his eyes lay on the hero of the day – the hero of a lifetime – and he blinks in realization that, no, Maverick truly has no idea about his godlike nature.
Considering the relief showing on his face when his eyes land on Rooster, Maverick has been looking for him. Well, he may or may not have avoided the medical check-up on the carrier, sleeping through it all, only to come to the Top Gun infirmary once they got back on land.
“Bradley, you’re here! Are you alright?”
Am I alright, he asks. Am I alright-
Death is fucking gone. Rooster feels more than alright.
“Yeah,” he answers weakly, gulping down any remnants of fear and smiling back as Maverick walks to him. “M’waiting for the nurse.”
The older man nods at that, looking around for a sign of life from said nurse.
“Apparently, there’s this truck accident that got every doc excited and the nurses all over the place,” Rooster explains, because babbling casualties is so much smarter than simply staring at Captain Mitchell like he’s a fallen angel. “A guy got burned. I’m the one to wait though, d’ya believe that? He certainly didn’t, well, fly through hell and back every two minutes for hours, right?”
His voice is rough with exhaustion and tainting it with humor feels like a necessity. Rooster’s not ready for the serious conversations at the moment. He’s not; staring at Maverick from up close, talking to him, smiling at him – in the obvious urgency of a certain death in enemy territory, it was easy, it was something human and hopeful to hold on to. But now, in the aftermath of the mission, in the aftermath of everything that they’ve been for each other their entire lives, it all strikes him as utterly complicated and outstandingly tiring.
Rooster watches as Maverick laughs briefly, taking a chair from the nearest table and dragging it next to the bed he’s sitting on. The older man spreads his legs to sit backwards on that thing, leaning his forearms on the backrest; and he keeps smiling.
Rooster can’t believe he’s doing that. He hasn’t seen the man smile sincerely since their paths collided, or at least since the beach day. He looked so carefree that day, lighter, younger.
“I see,” Maverick says, eyes sparking with the same humor Rooster is feeling. “The audacity of him.”
They’re messing around, they’re talking and it’s weightless. It should be good, it’s what Rooster wants right now – except it’s not. He realizes – he wants all the conversations they never had, as hard and tricky and draining they’ll be, he wants them. Wants to make up for lost time, so they can start something that is entirely theirs. He doesn’t have to be ready for it; Maverick cannot possibly be ready either.
Rooster thinks of the other guy, burned all over. It could have been him, them. He winces, too worn out to dare think of Maverick dying on his watch, but not enough for it to not sting cruelly.
“I hope he’s okay,” he whispers.
I hope he’ll survive to sit in front of his family and smile, knowing that he’ll keep breathing for them.
Maverick’s face softens. “Well, he’s got all the nurses. I know for sure he’s in the best hands possible. And you, you have me.”
Rooster stares at him, wide-eyed. “I have you?” he repeats, unable to stop a grin from growing on half of his face after that.
“Yeah, I can check on you. I’m authorized.”
And just like that, Maverick gets up, hands roaming around in search of something. Rooster frowns.
“What? Since when?”
“Well,” the older man says, opening and closing a drawer. “Since your father, actually. I passed the, um. The exam, for medical officer. It wouldn’t have changed anything but, I did it. It just. I can save a life now.”
Disinfectant and bandages in hand, Maverick comes back to him. Speechless for a dozen of seconds, Rooster merely watches. The mattress squeaks as Mav joins him on the bed. This is… This is Serious Convo Number One – and Rooster feels a weight slightly stirring on his chest. It’s not trying to dig further into him, no – it’s ready to be lifted.
Maverick’s fingers reach out to him, but they hang there between them, hesitant to touch him. A silent question appears in the man’s eyes and Rooster can only nod because what the fuck-
“You saved me,” he simply states, drinking in the open expression of the older man.
The hard, stone-like masks have fallen; and Maverick looks up, his fingers twitching on Rooster’s shoulder where they have landed to gently pull at the collar of his shirt. There’s a cut there, Rooster feels it.
“You saved me.” His voice is strained and his chest rises, his lungs somehow getting wider beneath the bones. “You did everything right, Mav.”
The older man gasps, eyes wide and lips parted. His fingers tighten on the thin material of Rooster’s t-shirt. Rooster knows he’s said something important, and he should keep the rest for another day, a moment where they’ll be rested and ready. But will they ever be both, at the same time? So he keeps going.
“You saved me, and if you need it, I allow you to feel like you saved a part of him too.”
Maverick removes his hands from Rooster as if he’s been burned and looks away, with a ragged breath.
Rooster watches.
“I need you to know, Mav. Since we’re, hopefully, going to be- friends, now. That I’ve never held you responsible for his death.”
Maverick clearly wants to run away. But he won’t, Rooster knows that. His form is tensed, and he has trouble breathing now, overwhelmed, but he stays exactly where he is.
"I’ve never hated you, for anything. Not for my dad, not for my papers. If anything, your silence and your absence, all these years. All my life. This is what angered me. I’ve only ever wanted to meet you, truly meet you.”
“Bradley-”
“And you saved me.”
Maverick finally looks back at him. Fragile, vulnerable. This is not the pilot who flies like a madman, not even the instructor who taught them how to come back home from the mission.
Rooster realizes – this is the man, the one who sang and laughed and messed around with his father. This is the person Rooster longs to meet.
“And it could be all I need to know about you,” he continues softly. “But, I’d like more. And uh, I’d like to think that you feel the same. So. If it’s the case, how about we leave the past behind us? We could, I don’t know. Share something, that would be just ours.”
Maverick stares back. He doesn’t answer anything, not even a single word, not the slightest nod, nothing. Yet it is everything.
He only puts his hands back on the bottle of disinfectant, pours some on cotton and begins cleaning the small cut on Rooster’s neck. He’s gentle and quiet, and once again, this is a man galaxies away from the pilot Rooster has flown with. Rooster tilts his chin, giving him better access, and after a while feels the cotton on his cheekbone. Small cuts. It’s only small cuts. How would Maverick be acting if this was much, much worse?
“There,” the older man whispers. “As good as new.”
He then sticks a tiny bandage on his neck; his skin on Rooster’s makes the younger man relax and breathe in deeply, calmly. This is way better than screams and tension, isn’t it? This is normal. They can try normal.
“You look fine, but if you wanna get out of here, I need to do the entire procedure and fill in the papers. Okay?”
Rooster nods.
“Yes, doc. Hit me.”
Maverick chuckles.
“Alright. And um. Friends? Is that what we are now?”
He smiles. “Well. If you want? We’ve got time to name it, whatever it is.”
Maverick hums, throwing bloody cottons in the trash. And Rooster thinks-
Time, because you gave it back to us. You stole it, years ago, but you’re giving it back. And I’m here for it, Mav. I'm here for my life.
"Can we rest, first?"
"We can rest," Rooster chuckles. "Yeah, rest is a good start."
"Fantastic," Maverick sighs. "Because the aftermath of your little stroll off the beaten track? It's kinda reminding me that I'm getting old right now."
"What do you mean, my little stroll? I'm not the one who decided to go for a hike in the snow in enemy territory!"
"Well, who put me there, huh?" Maverick is menacing him with the bottle.
"I was, uh. Testing your wingman reflexes, is all."
"Yeah, my reflexes. Watch out for your own, champ."
And the man throws the bottle at his head as he gets up.
"Hey!" Rooster whines. "I'm a wounded man, here!"
Maverick smiles. Yeah, friends is good. Maybe they'll even become family. Would be nice, wouldn't it? But anyway, they are on the right track. Everything is gonna be easier from now on - it has to be.
And whatever this warmth settling in his heart is, Rooster would soon be able to name it.