#ice & mav having an actual wedding included

[compacflt]

Thank you thank you thank you so much for sharing your writing with us - I really have enjoyed every word!! Seeing the edges of Ice and Mav's wedding was lovely, but I wasn't expecting them to have invited VIPER of all people. Can I grab a full guest list of the people who you think they would have wanted there to bear witness to the legal proof of their relationship?

they invited viper for the meta reason of “in my fanfiction he basically got ice & mav together & then i kinda forgot about him as a character when he was their friend & coworker at miramar for over a decade oops” & also i think age gaps closing as you get older is super interesting… viper not being mav’s dad figure anymore cause they’re both old as shit… they’re just pals now… drinking buddies… the earth is healing…

i am still secondhand embarrassed for ice & mav actually having a wedding, seems super out of character, i only made them invite their friends because it was the climax of the friendship arc in Slider but imo it otherwise doesn’t make any sense, the wedding would’ve been actually excruciating to write in any detail

but here’s an off the cuff wedding invite list sure

slider, sarah (😏), Cougar, sundown, hondo, rooster, hangman, Hollywood, wolfman, chipper, [it’s been so long since I’ve seen top gun i forgor the other pilots’ call signs so add your favorite background character here], viper, rear admiral chester cain for the meme (he RSVPs no), extremely select members of ice’s staff (COS e.g.), a couple of mav’s friends if he has any (unlikely)… Penny? no. she’s an ex. it would be weird.

[tgmsunmontue]

You need to learn how to fall 4/10

Hangster (and IceMav) - Bradley is too tall to be a naval aviator and instead becomes a sky diver, specialising in spin recovery. He is a civilian contractor to the Air Force and Navy to teach pilots how to survive parachute spins from ejections. A more in-depth version of this post.

PROLOGUE 2003-2006 2007-2010

2011-2015 – The later years

                He’s approached about doing his doctorate and he does a double-take, reading through the email again. They’ll pay him a stipend, as well as his study costs, and his travel to a variety of free fall simulators around the world in order to carry out research. It seems too good to be true, so he reads through it carefully. And then again. It’s specifically for military freefall (MFF), which includes both high altitude low opening (HALO) and high altitude high opening (HAHO) operations. They’re versatile techniques used by Special Forces and Bradley is already familiar with the Free Fall Analysis and Simulation Tool (FAST). He’d be building on the work already undertaken, further developing understanding of dynamics of MFF and spin recovery.

                Holy shit.

                Holy.

                Fucking.

                Shit.

                He prints it off the email and contract that came as an attachment and takes it to show Ice and Mav, wants them to look it over incase he’s missed something. Is quiet while they read through it, Ice reading over Mav’s shoulder.

                “Do you want to go back and study?”

                “I hadn’t thought about it to be honest. But this would be so cool…”

                “It’s not here, but sounds like they’re flexible around location. And would pay for your travel and accommodation. This is a very generous offer…” Ice says, and his eyes are narrowed and he looks suspicious; Bradley knows then that he’s going to find a catch. He knew it was going to be too good to be true.

                “Your name needs to stay on the research. Any papers they publish in the future, they need to reference you by your name, not the funder of the study. Add a clause that states until you have, say, twenty publications, you remain a key contributor.”

                Bradley hadn’t thought that was a big deal, but he shrugs, guesses Ice knows better than him.

                “That’s assuming you want to go into research and doing this for something other than just… for the fun of it?” Ice says, his tone shifting and Bradley realizes that he was maybe reading it as if he himself was going to do it and why would Ice want to be involved… It’s then that he realizes that he could potentially save lives with research. Knowing how to fall out of plane, work a chute, get out of a spin fast, land. Those are all skills that you can learn, that’s he’s learnt, is busy perfecting and practicing as much as he can.

                “Yeah. This would be great to do too.”

…             …             …

                Tom stares at the press release, the word CONFIDENTIAL stamped through as a watermark. His hands shake a little before he catches it and stills them. He can marry Maverick. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is being repealed. After tomorrow his proposal of a year and a half ago could actually mean a wedding. He doesn’t want a wedding, not really. What he wants is to be married to Pete, and not have his career suffer for it. Although he’s definitely decided to fuck off and leave the Navy if they have a problem with him and his life with Pete. There are some things more important than the Navy, and while it may have taken him a few years to realize it, his cancer had been a good reminder. He pushes back from his desk and goes to find the man in question, of course in the garage tinkering on the one bike Tom lets him keep at the house. If he didn’t place limits their place would resemble a junkyard.

                “I love you…” he says, and it’s quiet words and Pete immediately looks to him, grinning and abandoning whatever it is he’s working on, wiping his hands on a rag and stepping in close.

                “I love you too… what brought this on? Empty house?” He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively, like Bradley being away somehow offers more freedom when he has a completely separate

                “Hmm,” he hums, noncommittal. “If we could get married tomorrow what would you want?”

                “Uh… what do you mean?”

                “Lots of people? Us in our dress whites? Flowers? Big sit-down meal?” Tom asks, thinking about the weddings he’s been to.

                “Uh… what? What’s wrong? Why are you asking me this? Ice? Tom…?”

                He realizes then that Pete thinks that maybe the cancer is back and he shakes his head.

                “I’m perfectly healthy, and I’ll prove it to you later. Just let me dream…”

                “What would you want?”

                “Just us and Bradley, maybe Slider and his family. Quiet and not a big fuss.”

                “Yeah, that sounds perfect.”

…             …             …

                His first time in a free fall simulator is fun for the novelty aspect. It’s nothing like actual skydiving but the amount of data they can collect is immense, and he gets to try out some risky moves he wouldn’t actually ever attempt in the air. It’s exhilarating when some of them pay off and sobering when they don’t. Working with people who find skydiving as exhilarating and as interesting as he does is a separate thrill and results in his first long-term serious relationship. She’s whip-crack smart, challenges his ideas and best of all she gets on with both Mav and Ice. When they end things after nearly three years they remain friends.

…             …             …

                Pete watches Bradley walk across the stage to accept his doctorate and claps until his hands are red and painful. Grins at Ice, brushes his fingers over the platinum band on Ice’s ring finger in his silent way of saying I love you.

                “Our son is a doctor of skydiving…”

                “No. He has a doctorate in physics. There is a difference.”

                “Doctor of skydiving sounds cooler…”

PROLOGUE TAKE 2 - 2016 onwards (NEXT PART)

[the-ace-with-spades]

Trying to make myself write like a monkey pilot and so random bits from worldbuilding of this fic that are only mention or not even included (this is trans Bradley fic, for people who have not read it, but some bits are universal - I'm sorry for the rambling)

Merlin has a flight school in Nevada - this is where Bradley gets his commercial pilot licence, not long after he starts medical transition. Merlin runs it with his second wife, Nandini, who was the original owner and main flight instructor. They met through Slider, who got his commercial through her school, and they got two kids and their daughter had a crush on Bradley everyone in their family holds against her any time they meet for family gatherings.

Slider, by the way, retired from the Navy the same year as Mav started on the path to become a test pilot, and got a commercial and then airline pilot licence. Mav makes fun of it constantly.

Jake and Bradley (then pre-transition) talked extensively about their future life together and in Jake's mind, it was a given they would get married and have kids eventually, they'd just wait for the right timing or until they were at certain ranks/positions. Bradley did want all of it, he just never thought/imagined how it'd actually look with him as wife/mother, only vaguely with Jake as a dad and his own image completely avoided (kinda hard to explain but it's like a very blurry picture where his own figure would be even blurrier).

Bradley still wants to get married and have kids. Once the whole wife/mom bit became husband/dad thing, he's no longer uncomfortable about the topic. He knows being pregnant would be difficult because society sucks but he's pretty sure he's at the stage of confidence when he can pull it off.

Jake's mom is the nightmare mother-in-law people joke about. For real. She is terrible to all of her kids' partners, but she is especially terrible to Bradley (pre and after transition) because Jake is her little miracle baby.

Coyote joined Jake's squadron just as Bradley left the Navy, which means he met Jake in the middle of a heartbreak and well, that's basically why he's not the biggest fan of Bradley (even if sometimes it shows in ugly ways).

Bradley and Jake also had very different mindsets about their relationship during the break-up period of six years. Bradley had been a bit in denial and tried to force himself to move quickly, thinking that ever being with Jake was impossible (or you know, a fantasy only possible in his head...). Jake up until he sees Bradley, now after transition, at the Hard Deck, thought they were like magically destinated to be together and they'd meet again at some point. He dated some girls, mostly on Coyote's insistence, but he never hit it off with any woman, liked to say he was 'ruined for life' for Bradley and never stopped believing they'd find each other again despite the years apart piling on.

Mav and Ice renewed their vows and had a second wedding after Ice went into remission. Bradley was the officiant, mostly because Ice and Mav had a massive fight about whose witness he should be.

This is implied ?? but Ice's cancer went in remission because I imagine Bradley being there and Mav being there more often because of Bradley meant Ice'd go to the doctor earlier than in canon and had better chances given it was at an earlier stage when it was found. You know, a butterfly effect and all that.

Bradley and Ice spent weeks after Bradley's top surgery playing DCS, most often in the F-14 sim with Bradley in the RIO seat, sometimes with Slider providing commentary. As stated in the fic, Slider is the one to pop the idea and install the whole thing. Ice and Mav often play while goes through his oncology treatment and Ice often uses his puppy eyes to make Mav play as the RIO (rather than have two planes and Jester AIs)

Jake has a strange view on gender, which isn't necessarily bad, but it can be disheartening to Bradley, especially at the beginning. It's almost as if he doesn't see people's gender but who the people are (kinda like similar to not seeing skin colours??) which can be great when you don't want to be perceived/treated by just gender (like Bradley pre-transition) but can be ignorant if you do (like Bradley after transition). He is also terrible with labels and doesn't really believe or use them.

(A bit nsfw/tmi ??) Bradley chose his preferred type of top surgery based on the desire to keep the sensation of his nipples (buttonhole has a higher probability of keeping the feeling), mostly because it was a really sensitive part of his body, but ended up not keeping the full sensation on one side, which is always a possible outcome with any top surgeries, and after a few more months on T realized that his chest isn't really that sensitive anymore anyway. It's probably one of the very few things he misses.

I'm absolutely ecstatic because readers picked up on it, but Jake's been so jealous of Mav the whole time the fic's been going on and it'll continue until he realizes who Mav is to Bradley actually. You can only imagine how horrified he is when he realizes how terrible of a first impression he made on Mav.

While Mav is not a fan of Jake, Ice is trying to be very neutral. Objectively, he's not the biggest fan of Jake either, mostly because he's never going to be a fan of any of his baby boy's partners, but he thinks Bradley is an adult and should be able to make his own decisions. He also knows that a lot of people would have told him Mav is no good for him and it's not true at all so he's trying to trust Bradley's judgment.

someone please make me write, i just stare at the open document and change words in already written dialogues

[calkale]

Okay because i put my thoughts in the tags the first time heres some of my spn au thoughts

Also disclaimer i am changing the supernatural story so dont get mad at me for not including things or changing things you like this is my house and i write the au <3

Characters: Dean -> Mav, Cas -> Ice, Sam -> Slider, John Winchester-> Duke Mitchell, Mary Winchester -> Slider’s mom (her name is also Mary in my Slider lore so), Bobby -> Viper, Ash -> Goose, Ellen -> Carole, Jo -> Bradley (he’s like a teen in this but don’t worry theres no Jo and Dean content 🤮 thats his godson) 

-slider and mav aren’t actually related, they were both 6 (mav older by a few months) when their parents got married, duke was a widower and mary was never married 

-Getting this out of the way although i love the chevy impala i am a truck freak so mav drives his dads black 1990 toyota sr5 with an extended cab 

Backstory: -viper and duke were both navy pilots now “hunting buddies”, they took mav and slider out hunting occasionally but whenever they went on long “hunting trips” they left slider and mav at home, that’s because these hunting trips were monster hunting trips

-the same thing that happens to sam and deans mom happens to mav and sliders mom but when they’re both around the age of 10, since they’re older and not stupid they have a lot of questions that duke can’t just bullshit answers to so he tells them about monsters and what he thinks took their mom (because he doesn’t actually know at this point)

-since they no longer have a house they stay at vipers or go on the road with duke 

-once they both start high school slider wants to stop hunting and stay with viper to focus on school, his relationship with duke gets weird after that because duke wants him to keep hunting to find what killed his mom but slider wants to do well in school to make his mom proud, they come to an agreement where slider stays with viper but once a month he has to come hunting

-slider leaves for university (idk what hes studying), mav graduates but stays with duke, he starts hunting on his own 

Now time: -This au starts in 2005 like the show

-duke picks up a lead on the thing that killed mary but is super vague about it when telling viper and doesn’t tell mav anything, he says he’ll be gone for a week but a week and a half later theres no word from him, viper refuses to go after him because “he’s gonna get himself killed” and “ive been telling him to let it go for years” but mav still has to go look for him

-mav finds slider and this basically carries out exactly how it does in the show, he agrees to help for one day, when he gets back his gf is dead, agrees to ditch school 😎 to come help look for duke

story wise thats all i've got so far, i want ice to come into the story a lot sooner than cas does in the show and i dont remember when ash, ellen and jo come in but i want them to come in sooner too. hopefully ill actually work on this more but i hope you guys enjoy

Character descriptions:

Mav: -has the classic dean necklace given to him by slider

-dresses basically the same as 86 movie mav but with flannel 😎

-does wear his cowboy boots but he’s normally wearing work boots

-eyebrow scar eyebrow scar eyebrow scar!!!

Slider: -wears his mother’s wedding ring on a necklace, duke gave it to him after she died

-dresses like early season sam, carhartt jacket, hoodies, tshirts and baggy jeans

-silver eyebrow piercing 😎

Ice: -exactly the same as cas but with a dark grey trench coat

-his eyes always glow a little, not enough that its noticeable unless its in the dark

-has a grey hoodie and black jeans for when he needs to look a little less “formal” 

Goose: -has a mullet its a key part of ash’s character so 

-just think mater from cars personified mixed with goose idk

Carole: -dresses exactly like ellen 

-her classic curly meg ryan hair stays tho

bradley: -just a mini goose

Duke and Viper: -they look pretty much the same, just some dad with a mustache and flannel

-only difference is duke always wears his wedding ring

[mollymauk-teafleak]

darlin', darlin'

This was an anniversary present for my wonderful gf @nb-fearne. We both wrote each other icemav fics inspired by Jerry Maguire scenes so if that doesn't tell you why we've been together for six years, nothing will. Love you baby 💙

Please reblog and go leave a comment on Ao3 if you liked this!

---------

As far as weddings that weren’t weddings went, Tom thought it had gone pretty well. 

All day long and well into the night, their little house had been full of noise, laughter and music and clinking glasses. But now the record on their old player had finally wound down and no one was replacing it. The plates and glasses were piled up on nearly every flat surface and all the guests had staggered home. Expect for a handful who hadn’t made it past the couches.

Tom was hardly surprised, he even came prepared. He moved through the living room as quietly as he could, arms full of the blankets he’d set aside, dodging abandoned wine glasses and kicked off high heels to cover the snoozing Kerner twins, their mother who was slumped over the arm of the couch, her hand stretched out to loosely entwine with Slider’s, who looked like he’d fallen from a great height to collapse in Ice’s armchair. One for his sister, Sarah, whose face looked less like his own when it was gentle and relaxed in sleep, though she curled up in the same tight ball he did. Another for Carole, curled up on the floor in a tight little ball, her head pillowed on Alice Kerner’s jacket and one arm draped with a natural protectiveness over little Bradley. 

Sundresses instead of gowns, linen shirts and jeans instead of suits and definitely instead of navy whites, a room full of exhausted parents spending what was left of the morning sleeping off cheap beer rather than a lavish hotel. Their wedding that wasn’t a wedding and it had very little of the things that made an actual wedding. 

But Tom wouldn’t have traded it for anything. 

Once their guests were as comfortable as he could make them, he whipped around and gathered as much cutlery and glassware as he could carry without dropping it and undoing all the hard work he and the booze and food had done. It wasn’t far to their tiny little kitchen where he was a little unsurprised to find his new sort of husband with his shirt sleeves pushed up to his elbows, wrist deep in dish suds. He’d promised to be on his best behavior after all. 

Maverick caught the movement in the corner of his eye and turned with that brilliant smile, not even dimmed with how long he'd been awake, “Hey, baby. Everyone out for the count in there?”

Like always, Ice couldn’t keep from smiling back if his life had depended on it, “Quietest I’ve ever seen those Kerner girls. And that includes Alice.”

“If I ever want you dead, I’ll tell her you said that,” Mav winked, “Come on, stick those dishes in here, I’ll do them.”

Tom did, moving to grab a dish towel instead, ready to do his part. He nodded towards the water and chuckled, “Don’t lose your ring in there, you only just got it.”

“Thought of that!” Maverick lit up like a school kid with the right answer, catching his dog tags on one sudsy thumb and showing off his wedding ring, dangling there on the chain alongside the steel stamped with his name.

Ice beamed, leaning and pressing a kiss to his cheek, “Smart and pretty. Good thing I locked you down when I did, Mitchell.”

Mav nudged him with his hip, grinning, “I’m basically the whole package…I was thinking I could maybe keep it on there? Say it was my mother’s if anyone asks?”

Tom fought for his smile to stay in place, to keep the sudden pain confined to his own rib cage. Everything he knew told him even that small lie, that wink and nod, was too much. It was skirting far too close to the lines he’d drawn around parts of himself. Tom had been planning to keep his own ring well out of sight, he was wearing it today but after that it was going in the same box he kept all his precious weak points- his babushka’s recipe book, sheet music done in his mother’s shaky hand, the drawing his sister Sarah had done in preschool when she’d been asked to draw her family and had only done the two of them, side by side. In Tom’s mind, hiding was safe. Hiding was the only way. 

But that fear was his own and Tom was determined to keep it that way. He wouldn’t clip Mav’s wings, certainly not today. 

“That would be sweet,” was all he said, kissing his cheek again because he just had no other answer to Maverick’s reckless bravery, “Come on, we should really get these dishes done before we go to the airport…”

Mav laughed, “So we’re just giving up on the idea of going to bed, huh?”

Tom waved his hands, indicating the clock on the wall, the rising sun outside and the living room full of sleeping friends in one swoop, “I’ll owe you a wedding night.”

“Hey,” Mav’s eyes softened and he nudged him again, “We’ve got every night for the rest of our lives, baby. I’m easy.”

And they really did. The words they’d said to each other, out there in their tiny backyard with the ocean rolling behind them, didn't mean anything legal and Tom had little faith they ever would. There were no contracts or documents to back up that ring hanging there alongside Mav’s dog tags. But like Maverick himself had said, when they’d come up with this a month ago, curled up together in a tangle of blankets and limbs and crazy ideas, a wedding was just a party. You got everyone you loved in one room, or at least as many as you could, and you told them all hey, I’m nuts about this guy and I want to be with him forever. If the government was honestly happy for them to risk their lives but not while openly loving each other, then they- in Maverick’s words- could go fuck themselves. They weren’t getting an invite. 

Tom didn’t need Mav to write his name on a piece of paper to know he loved him. He trusted his wingman. 

Suddenly, getting the dishes done didn’t seem all that important. The old record player was still sitting in the corner, half covered under the bomber jacket Maverick had thrown aside after enough dancing to flush his cheeks. But he knew the disc he wanted wouldn’t be in the pile stacked up next to it, threatening to topple over and slide onto the tile. Those were all party tunes, songs from their teenage years they were dragging into this new decade, songs for Slider to pick Alice up and swing her around to, songs for little Bradley to bounce around to with his mama’s hands in his own. But Tom wanted something slightly different. 

“Thanks for your support!” Mav called out sarcastically as he watched him disappear into the hall where the shelves of books and CDs and vinyls were neatly arranged by type then genre then color. 

By Tom, naturally. He’d once caught Mav putting a CD in the wrong case just because it happened to be closer. And somehow he’d married him. 

“Something occurred to me,” Tom said airily, coming back with the record he wanted, setting it into the player before Mav could see what it was. They had it on CD too but Tom would always prefer the way vinyls crackled, “Besides, Slider can do the dishes when he wakes up. I’m mad at him for that speech.”

“Because he made you cry?” Mav smirked, wiping off his hands. 

“Maybe,” Tom grunted, gently setting the needle down. 

“I thought it was adorable…so what occurred to you?”

After that static scratch and pop, there was that smooth, rhythmic plucking of strings, like the notes were going down a set of stairs, accompanied by those bright, happy barks of brass. Stand by Me, the original Ben E. King version naturally, Mrs Rosie Mitchell’s favorite and the one of the many soul tracks that had scored Maverick’s childhood. One of the ones he claimed to have gotten sick of but he’d still always reach for when he was given the chance. 

Tom turned and offered out his hand, “We never got a first dance?”

And it was true, after they’d said whatever they wanted to say to each other out there in the yard, after Slider’s best man speech had made Tom cry and Carole’s had made Maverick laugh so hard he blew champagne out of his nose, they’d all just piled back inside to drink and dance and sing. It had been a brilliantly hectic whirlwind since then, this was probably the first time Tom and Mav had been alone since they’d kissed under the rosewood tree out back. 

But this was one part of a traditional wedding Tom thought he’d like to have. And if the smile on his face was anything to go by, Pete agreed. 

Two steps brought Maverick into his arms, just as the words began. He placed a hand on the small of his back, the other joined with his husband’s in a loose hold. Neither of them were really dancers, they couldn’t manage more than a simple step and sway without their legs getting tangled or knocking into the counter, but that hardly mattered. As Ben E. King sang about how he wouldn’t be afraid, the golden sunrise painted the two of them into a Klimt, into something more than beautiful. Something that didn’t need to be seen to know how precious it was. 

Tom found himself humming along without even realizing, formless sounds that became words as his heart ran away and left his usual nerves behind, as Mav’s hair tickling his nose and their fingers threading together became much more important than how he sounded. Maverick beamed and tucked his head in against his husband’s chest, so he could feel the words as well as hear them. He always insisted he loved his husband’s voice, as hard as Tom found it to believe, always asking him to sing for him when he was feeling under the weather or in the quiet moments when that incessant Maverick branded energy finally wound down and he became soft and clingy. One of those things Tom was prepared to do for Maverick and only Maverick.

And he sang for him now, gladly, not caring that his voice was rough with beer and the lack of sleep or that he dropped out of lines to kiss Mav’s forehead. There were so many things Tom struggled to say, simply because he hadn’t been taught they existed, let alone how to put them into words. So he sang them instead, he rubbed small circles into the small of Mav’s back instead. And he trusted his husband would hear them all the same. 

Tom didn’t quite know what he was going to do when the song finally ended. Of course it said something about him that he was here in this warm, loving moment and already worrying about when it would end but Tom wasn’t about to linger on that. Not on his wedding day. 

But as he was inhaling the amber smell of Mav’s cologne and that edge of jet fuel he never seemed to lose, as he was singing in his rough rumble to ask him to stand by him whenever they were in trouble, there was the sound of footsteps. Footsteps that weren’t swaying over slightly cracking linoleum. 

Tom lifted his head, chuckling as he watched a tuft of blonde, curly hair waver behind the counter like a submarine periscope. 

“Mr Bradley Bradshaw, you have not slept long enough to be on your feet,” he laughed, watching the tuft come to a guilty stop. 

A set of blue eyes peered up over the edge of the counter, “Sun’s up!”

“The sun may be up but you went to bed at three in the morning,” Maverick snorted with laughter, peeking up at him in a similar way over Tom’s shoulder.

Bradley’s gap toothed smile followed his eyes, “I can’t sleep…”

Tom kissed Mav’s cheek and let him go with some reluctance, going to lean on the counter so he could see the kid grinning up at him, wobbling on his tiptoes. His hair was a cloud of curls, so blonde in the sunlight that they seemed white, like he was wearing a halo along with crumpled overalls and striped socks. 

“How about your mama, is she still asleep?”

Bradley nodded, “I tucked her in!”

“You’re a good kid,” Tom reached across to pick him up, swinging him safely into his arms, his heart warming as Bradley laughed and clung to him. 

“Whatcha doing?” his little fist grabbed for the chain of Tom’s dog tags like a reflex, the way he did with Mav too. 

The way he’d probably done with Goose.

“We’re dancing,” Mav grinned, coming up and poking his cheek lightly, “It’s our wedding, you see.” 

Bradley made a sleepy grab for his finger, “Nah…that was yesterday…now it’s today…”

“Well, that's the fun thing, you see,” Maverick could have pulled back easily but he let himself be caught in the toddler’s free hand, “After you have your wedding, you get to be married to that person forever and ever. And you get to dance in the kitchen every morning, if you feel like it.”

Tom could hear the record crackling as the needle scraped through empty valleys and came to a halt. He smiled.

“And you get to go on vacations together. Which we’re leaving for in a half hour and I’m guessing you haven’t packed yet?” he grinned at Maverick. 

Mav did in fact blush lightly and laugh, “Yeah…I’ll go get on that…”

He gave Bradley a kiss on the cheek, Tom a longer one on the lips before heading off to the stairs, still whistling Stand By Me. 

Bradley seemed to have no desire to get down from Tom’s arms, though maybe he wasn’t quite as awake as he thought, yawning against the shoulder of his dress shirt before mumbling, “Can I come on vacation?”

Tom chuckled, “I don’t think we’ll be doing anything you’d find fun, kiddo.”

In fact, he had very few plans when they got to the little rental on a Hawaiian beach, chosen mostly for its seclusion rather than its luxury, beyond closing the door, pressing Maverick into the bed and fucking him every which way he could think of. Maybe reading some poetry books while his husband caught his breath. 

Bradley huffed softly, his grip tightening, “But you’ll be gone so long…gone forever…”

Tom held the kid a little tighter. He knew Bradley was too young to be so used to goodbyes, too young to know how ‘gone for a while’ could turn into ‘gone forever’. He pulled back so he could take Bradley’s hand in his own, helping him put up five fingers. 

“This is how many days we’ll be gone, kid. And then we’ll come home. I promise.”

Bradley fluttered his five fingers, humming thoughtfully, “That’s not so many?”

Tom smiled, “Nah. We’ll be back before you know it and I’ll even bring you back something cool.”

“When you come back,” Bradley nodded, still clutching that thought like a talisman. 

“When we come back,” Tom closed his little fist, holding it safe within his own so the promise held fast, “Everything we love is here.”

Bradley held onto that as Tom coaxed him back into his mama’s arms, back into the sleep which the toddler was clearly losing the fight to. He certainly seemed pleased as a still sleeping Carole wrapped her arms around him and brought him close, burying his face against her as Tom gently fixed the blanket back around them. 

He took a moment to glance around the room again, making sure that everyone was sleeping soundly. The twins were still curled around each other like puppies, Alice and Slider’s fingers were still loosely threaded together like even crashed out on their friend’s couch, they were looking for each other. Tom smiled as he took his house key off the ring and left it by his RIO’s head. 

By then, Maverick was waiting for him at the door, bags at his feet, whispering, “Ready to go?”

Tom grinned, lifting the man he loved right off his feet, muffling his soft noise of surprise with a searing kiss. 

“I’m very ready.”

Carrying Maverick to the car, stealing kisses between half hearted protests and laughter, Tom took a brief glance back at the house, dark and silent now but full of everything and everyone he loved, the life that was hidden but safe for all that. 

Maybe he didn’t have to be afraid of what would happen when the song ended. 

Maybe Tom could just believe there would always be another. 

[boasamishipper]

i love your playlist for out along the edges! are you also going to make one for there's a raging fire in my heart tonight?

thank you so much!

i actually never thought of making a whole playlist for raging fire -- mostly because it doesn’t have as many action scenes or love scenes that warranted songs like in OATE -- but i do have a few songs that go along with the story. listed below, as follows:

unchained melody by the righteous brothers

this is for the opening scene, where ice and mav are in bed together. i think it’s very soft, which fits their relationship at that point, but also foreshadows the rest of the fic in a way (I've hungered for your touch / A long, lonely time...)

hot stuff by donna summer

this is the song i envisioned playing during the scene where ice talks with maria at the bar in bakersfield, mostly because of the line ‘Lookin' for a lover who needs another’ lol.

i don’t want to walk without you by harry james (from the film ‘sweater girl’)

this is for the section that illustrates ice’s grief during the five year timeskip (and possibly the section right before, where ice is watching their wedding tape).

mighty wings by cheap trick

the title of the fic comes from this song, so i’m legally obligated to include it lmao. but this song comes into play during the beginning of the final battle, when the fallen avengers all come back and wong magics up two fighter planes for carol and ice so they can join the fight as well.

reunion by burkhard dallwitz (for the truman show soundtrack)

this is, as you can guess from the title, the song i envisioned playing during the icemav reunion after the final battle. the song starts off slow but i think it fits the feeling of ice’s utter heartbreak just right -- and then his joy upon reuniting with mav for good.

it’s been a long, long time by harry james (vocals by kitty kallen)

this is the same song from the end of avengers: endgame (from the scene where steve dances with peggy) but i think that it fits equally well with the very end of the fic. if raging fire was a movie, this would be the song that played at the very end, specifically the last three paragraphs, and then go into the end credits (STARRING: VAL KILMER, BRIE LARSON, ROBERT DOWNEY JR., TOM CRUISE, etc. lol)

not as extensive of a playlist as OATE’s, but here is the spotify link if you’d like to listen to it. (if you’d like to make any suggestions, feel free to do so!)