#The Rooster and The Ice

[almondcroissantsandink]

they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery :)

(a silly 4-pg comic I've loosely titled Seeing Double, for fun! I know it's only mid-September, but I'm so so so getting into the Halloween mood)

[took-my-breath-away]

art idea: icemav in the stands at one of bradley’s baseball games (elementary, middle, or high school — i feel like he played for a while). i would love to see them in baseball caps, cheering, with sodas and hot dogs and the whole nine yards.

i love icemav doing different activities (especially on romcom esque dates), so if that jogs anything either, i’d love to see it! thanks for making such great art.

he struggled for months to hit it right, nerves wracking through him.

but this time he waited... for the right moment. it finally came.

[whohasthecards]

Bring your grandpa/dad to work day, but Jake got attached to this old man named Tom.

Tom was some old guy he snarked off at a coffee shop once and was pleased when the older man calmly gave a witty retort.

He keeps on bumping into the man in the same coffee shop, but he bumps into the old man at the park and grocery place at well.

Surprisingly they hit it off, and Jake looks forward to seeing Tom even though he'll never admit it. Tom's getting fond of the boy. Especially when he realized 3 months in that this was the same Jake "Hangman" Seresin who saved his husband and Baby Goose.

One day there was a bring your dad/grandpa/son to work day. Jake was talking about it to Tom, sad that he doesn't really have anyone to bring and was planning to call out because even tho Mav is great and Javy's family always welcome him, he feels like an outsider in those events. Tom hesitantly offered to come, not wanting to overstep, and Jake looked overjoyed.

Tom comes to the event and Jake was showing him around the base, and the shenanigans he gets into with his squad (Tom is delighted to gain some more blackmail against Mav). He also starts introducing Tom around, and some people are staring wide-eyed or straight up choke when they see Tom.

Why the fuck is the COMPACFLT here and in civvies!??? AND HANGMAN IS CALLING HIM, TOM???

Iceman makes sure to give his trademark glare to everyone who even thinks about mentioning his title or saying something to Jake. Everyone just snaps their mouths shut and smiles awkwardly.

It continues with Jake dragging THE ICEMAN around like an excited puppy, and Tom looking fond and ruffles Hangman's hair every few minutes. The base didn't realize how young Hangman really is until that day.

Eventually Tom and Jake run into Mav and Bradley and both have their mouths wide open as Jake introduces Tom to them.

Eventually ends with Mav saying, "Hey! I adopted him first!" While pouting.

"He takes after me more," Ice says giving Mav a grin as he slung an arm around Jake's shoulder to pull him against his side.

[pollyna]

au in which Mav speaks a lot about their child, and Rooster gets insanely jealous of someone he doesn't know because he is supposed to be their only kid, okay?!

At least until Mav doesn't invite all the daggers to his home, and Ice is sleeping with said kid on Bradley's favourite armchair. But instead of a human child between the Iceman's arms, there's a cat. The cutest fucking cat ever seeing on the face of the planet but still, a cat.

Months later, Uncle Slider is still teasing him for being jealous of a cat while Ice pats his curles and "as if we would ever replaced you, baby goose."

[blueeyeddarkknight]

TOP GUN NATION!! 🗣️

Brad Koepenick (Facebook) just posted a new picture of Val ❄️ and Miles 🐓 on the set of tgm (funeral scene)! 🥹😭❤️🧊❄️

[military-newsboys]

Ice: [making mashed potatoes] it feels like you don't trust my cooking Mav: [also making mashed potatoes] don't be silly, darling

[hang-a-roo]

Phoenix: Look I get it, most your guys’ fathers are gone or they suck-

- everyone offended -

Rooster: Not mine. I fucking love my dads.

- Mav and Ice doing cute husband things and Ice having Icepops sense -

Ice: ….I think baby goose called us his dads to the squad again.

Maverick tearing up: that’s my boy

[the-ace-with-spades]

(another unfinished post i found on the way to glasgow - that was the longest train ride in my life - I'm sorry in advance)

When Ice finally passes away, at the age of 73, in his sleep, Bradley moves Mav into their house the same day.

He gets the call in the morning, while trying to simultaneously cook Jake's breakfast and try to make their daughter put on a rain jacket. It's not Mav, but someone from the hospital. Jake doesn't know this — Bradley's face twitches only for a second and then he's back to the nagging, relaxing tone and telling their daughter it's raining and it won't stop. Jake only finds out when he comes back home from the school drop-off and Mav is already there on their couch. Jake doesn't even get the full explanation until that night, just a quick, "Ice passed away overnight."

There's only their three youngest living with them at the time — their 18-year-old daughter who attends UC San Diego, and their 15-year-old son who is still in high school, and their 7-year-old daughter — so Mav takes one of the vacant bedrooms.

The first few nights, Bradley sleeps in the same bed with him. Neither of them looks like they get much sleep. They don't really eat, either, just drink coffee and nibble on the crackers.

The kids start coming back home, and their oldest helps Jake arrange most of the things for the funeral, at least for the first few days. Mav is... numb, not really there, and Jake understands — he would, too, if he woke up one day and his husband died in his sleep next to him. Bradley is silent, mostly, the way he usually rambles to fill out the silence, the way he hums, the way he sings at any given time when there are no words spoken, it's all gone and Jake doesn't know how to fill out the silence either, how to ask, how to make it better without asking.

Bradley doesn't cry, or at least not the way he knows Mav does — he can see Mav's red eyes every morning — but there's something empty in his gaze, in the way his eyes follow Mav and in the way he melts whenever Mav is around, always close, always brushing against him. Mav spaces out a lot, doesn't talk much, doesn't—well, doesn't do much. Every time he tries to help with something, paperwork, the funeral arrangements, the hospital bills, even just sorting out the kids' school leave or Jake's own work leave, he fumbles a bit, not really able to focus on anything for long, and it's like his mind is completely scrambled. Jake doesn't know how to help him — doesn't know if they even can.

The kids, well, did not take it well, as expected. The oldest two try to be brave and help Jake with everything, keep the house going, but their youngest daughter doesn't really understand why her pops isn't back, the middle kids don't understand why now — Ice was in remission, in good health, would go hiking with them once a month, play with them in the backyard, talking about plans for the future with them, nothing that would tell them to expect their pops passing away. Mav and Ice had taken care of all of them for years, while Jake and Bradley were still deployable, and helping out as much as they could. Ice was a huge part of their lives, since the very beginning.

Bradley is certainly not doing any better but one couldn't be able to tell if they didn't know him well enough. He's always been more for packing his feelings into a tight neat box, compartmentalizing until there is too much and it all overflows in some explosive way. His focus is mostly on Mav and the kids, trusting Jake to take care of anything he can't.

Jake can't even ask him how he's doing until the night before the funeral.

Mav tells Bradley he wants to be alone that night and Bradley lands in their bedroom.

He acts normal — checks the kids are in bed, checks on Mav, prepares stuff for breakfast in the morning, has a shower. Only when he sits down in their bed, their dress blues, cleaned and pressed sitting on the hangers hooked up on their wardrobe, right in front of him—only then he freezes, a blank stare still on the uniforms.

Jake sits down next to him on the bed. "Talk to me, Bradley."

"I knew it was going to happen at some point, I just," "I just thought we would have a few more years."

Bradley sleeps curled up on his chest — he sleeps the whole night, soundlessly, and Jake is almost settled.

Almost. Mav is a couple doors down, alone.

Ice's been—had been retired many years now, but he had been high enough in the ranks that the Navy still insists on making a military funeral. Jake tried to take away as much of the flashy bullshit as possible, but there are still things leftover — the sailors with the flag, the flyover. But there's no one who wasn't close with the family at the ceremony, there's no speeches, and no one tries to hand either Mav or Bradley a flag.

The wake has an even smaller amount of people, all packed in their house — Mav hasn't been at his own house since — and thanks to Slider, mostly, and his 'the bastard wouldn't want us to mope around', it's less sad and quiet.

Mav eats two slices of cake, which is the most Jake's seen him eat since, and even laughs at some stories about Ice people are exchanging.

Ice had a good life. A big family. A big happy family that loved him.

But life goes on without him. Jake goes back to work first, then the kids have to go back to school, then Bradley has to back to work. After a couple of days alone at their house, Mav starts bringing up moving back to his own house.

He's not really doing great. He's still quiet, still spaces out more often than not, still forgets himself sometimes, still freezes whenever he tries to say something and the we he uses is one person short. He's—lifeless, for a lack of better word, and seems like he's noticing it now that Bradley isn't with him most of the waking hours.

"That is our home," Mav tells them. "I can't abandon it forever, I'd be abandoning him, too, if I—"

Jake—Jake gets it. He doesn't like it, but he gets it.

Bradley's been fielding off any suggestions of Mav moving out but he's pretty sure that soon Mav is going to pack his stuff and up and leave without asking for permission.

"If he wants to move back home, we can't exactly hold him here. against his will."

"Jake," Bradley says. "I feel like—if we let Mav go back there alone, he's going to die of a broken heart and I won't have either of them anymore."

"Sweetheart—"

"I know it's selfish," he interrupts, "but I can't lose him, too. Not now."

Jake can't make Mav stay with them — so he finds the best solution he can and instead, they all move in with Mav. Hell with it, he's going to try to get everyone to live their lives to the end. They'd done it before, Mav, Ice, Bradley, Jake and their two kids under one roof, when their oldest two were their only two kids.

The two of them and two of their youngest; two of their kids move into their house so they don't have to sell it.

Mav lives on. They try to occupy his mind by throwing their youngest at him — ask him to take her to school, pick her up from school, take her to her gymnastics class, do her homework with her, teach her how to play piano. The other kids pick up on it, too, and their high schoolers would wrap Mav into doing math workbooks with them, or ask him to drive them to their friends' house, and the kids that have moved out ask Mav to go to lunch together or call him to ask him things about car and house repairs that don't exist.

Mav gets brighter every day. Never as bright as before, but no longer so numb.

Their daughter ends up never moving out and so do they.

They all get older but Mav holds up pretty well. He does break his hip when trying to wash the windows, had a limp and terrible back ache ever since, had to stop driving because he can't see shit, had to stop piloting even sooner, and his memory is also shit, but Jake is pretty sure his cholesterol is lower than his own and he has better blood pressure than Bradley. Bradley and Mav are the ones cooking after all, Jake is the one eating all the tasty but not healthiest food, and Mav's life revolves around spoiling his cute great-grandkids and Bradley's is filled with the constant stress of managing Navy's top flying school.

For his ninetieth birthday, Mav flies a fighter jet as a passenger, the oldest person to ever do that — his youngest granddaughter is the one to take him up in the air, a junior grade lieutenant herself. They have a birthday party held at their house, Mav falls asleep in the armchair, Bradley makes fun of him and promptly falls asleep on the couch, too. Jake loves them both so much and still kind of can't believe he has this — house full of grown-up kids and grandkids of his own, his graying husband of over thirty years, his father-in-law coming to an age he wanted to see his mother at.

They're cleaning up, their two daughters who still don't have kids and didn't need to go home helping, and Mav tells them he's going to get some fresh air on their veranda. "I've got a terrible headache," is all he says.

Half an hour passes, they've packed all the clean and dirty dishes, and Bradley huffs to himself. "He fell asleep on the bench again, didn't he," and goes outside.

Bradley shouts for him in less than a minute. The ambulance is there in eight. Within the half-hour and a CT scan in the hospital, the neurologist tells them Mav is too far gone to survive the day. Within six hours, every single person from their family has come to say goodbye. When they pass the seven hours mark, Jake stands up from the plastic chair behind Bradley — he's not about to tell Bradley he should rest, but he's been holding Mav's hand since the minute they admitted Mav to the ward and hasn't eaten or drunk anything all day. He tells him he'll go grab them a coffee and bagels and gets a little nod and a smile.

Jake comes back twenty minutes later and Bradley doesn't even look up from where he's gripping Mav's hand.

"Can you get the nurse for me?"

[wngmn]

Don't think about Ice reading bedtime stories to Bradley and 20 years later, Bradley reading stories to Ice on his hospital bed

Don't think about Ice feeding picky toddler Bradley peas doing airplane noises and 20 years later, Bradley feeding Ice ice chips on his hospital bed

Don't think about Ice updating Bradley about Mav's plane adventures when he misses his dad and 20 years later, Bradley updating Ice on Mav's plane adventures when he misses his husband

Don't think about-

[romcomxdd]

Ice being a father to Bradley.

When Bradley needed help with maths homework, he would go to Ice. The general was more than happy to spend hours helping the boy, and they'd work through each question together.

Maverick was jealous of it at first, hurt that Bradley went straight to Ice, but after taking a glance at what the two were working on he was more than happy to let them do their thing. It's not that he didn't get it, one didn't get as far in the navy as Maverick without having some degree of understanding in mathematics. In fact he was pretty decent at it, but that didn't mean he had to enjoy it. At all.

Ice being there when Mav couldn’t be, when Bradley really just needed a shoulder to cry on.

[fangirling-tussisque-noncaelatur]

[During the first briefing]

Maverick: Any questions?

Hangman: *raises his hand*

Maverick: Yes. The guy Bradley has a crush on.

Dagger Squad: *blinks*

Hangman: *blushes hard*

Rooster: *stares at Maverick in disbelief*

[unlawfulchaos]

Mav: You know, when I was your age-

Rooster: You know, when I was your height...

Mav:

Rooster: *already running away*

Mav: GET BACK HERE YOU LITTLE SHIT!

[whohasthecards]

Jake always had to be Hangman in front of the brass and the higher ups, he's always prepared and composed when at work. But, he got soft around Mav, the Dagger Squad, and even Cyclone and Warlock. They see Jake, he lets his guard down around them. So, when Mav invites him for a BBQ, he only expected the Daggers, Mav, Cyclone, Warlock, and maybe the mysterious husband Mav has.

But holy shit, Mav invited the Top Gun legendary class of '86, which consists of current and former high-ranking Navy officers. Including THE COMPACFLT, ICEMAN. Who is Mav's husband. All the Daggers are having fun mingling around and talking to others, but Jake was thrown off.

He was expecting a casual event, he didn't think a bunch of his superiors were here. He never had to interact with his superiors without any prep. Jake awkwardly hanged out at the edges or stuck close to Mav, Cyclone, or even Bradley because he suddenly lost all social skills because fuckfuckfuck his hair wasn't combed, he wasn't in uniform, and his clothes aren't even halfway decent. He's not Hangman and it’s only recently he’s gotten used to being Jake around the Dagger Squad. He was shy and only spoke when spoken too and only started to loosen up when he was primarily surrounded by the Daggers.

Although, when he was hanging by Cyclone, the class of '86 asked Cyclone if Jake was his son, which made Jake flush and look at Cyclone worriedly, afraid that he would be offended. He wasn't. He was flattered.

Mav was confused and worried about Jake's recluseness, but decided to wait until later to confront him about it.

Ice was confused because Hangman was quite far from what the rumors say or even what Mav says. (Later on he realizes that Jake was similar to him. Separating Hangman and Jake like how he separates Iceman and Tom/Ice).

[pollyna]

Ice raises his voice with Mav once in a fucking blue moon and never, ever, when Bradley is around. It happens only once when he's there and the kid is five, and Ice never sees him so scared, and he's scared of him, and for Mav too because he moves in front of him like he's trying to protect him from Ice.

("Apples never fall far away from their trees," his grandma used to say, looking at him, and only him. "And bad apples fall even closer to them")

Ice is out of the house, and the neighbour so fast Mav and Bradley are still there, in the kitchen, looking at the spot Ice was occupying seconds before.

("Just like his father," she added, the day she opened the door to a seventeen years old Tom, wearing his uniform "just like his father in every other aspect too.")

It takes two weeks of forced isolation on Slider's couch, and it takes Bradley knocking at the door before Ice even thinks about getting back. It takes even more before Ice can consider spending time when he's less than calm with Mav and Bradley.

He says, to Mav, the first night they sleep in the same bed, "it can't happen again. It can't happen ever again." And it takes Mav a long minute of silence to understand what he's talking about.

"It won't" he answers.

"You cannot know that. My mom used to say the same thing when my dad shouted, but it happened and happened and happened so many times I-"

"Tom. You're not your father."

Tom laughs and laughs until he's crying because "Yeah, yeah, I'm him in more ways. I like to admit to myself, but I can't be like him with you. I can't have you or Bradley be afraid of me. I would prefer to be shipped in Siberia and never get back than having you being afraid of me."

"We're not, Tom. We are not afraid of you, and I swear that the moment that is going to change, I'm going to dump your ass so fast you want to realise what is happening, okay, honey?" Mav answers, Ice's face between his hands.

"Okay, okay." He answers, trying to calm down a bit.

"Okay," Mav says, kissing his forehead. "It's going to be okay, babe, I swear."

[highwaytothedangerzone502]

Iceman: What’s your blood type?

Maverick: How would I know?

Iceman: How would you not!

Maverick: Who am I, Karl Landsteiner, discoverer of blood groups?

Iceman: You don’t know your own blood type, BUT YOU KNOW WHO DISCOVERED THEM?!

[military-newsboys]

Mav: Have I ever told you what a good cook you are?

Ice, frying a salad: You have not.

Mav: Yeah, there's a reason for that. Get out of my kitchen.