#mav doesn't have a driver's license

[pollyna]

Bradley grows up in the front seat of his mom's car and in the backseat of his uncle Tom's - soon to be called Pops - car. If Mav had a driver's licence, he would probably have sat a little here and a little there. It becomes part of his universe, and Bradley will end up cherishing every single conversation he had with both of them while they were driving. He won't get the chance to drive his mom around, to young to even reach all the pedals, but he is going to be old and capable enough to drive his pops to the hospital and back every time he needs to, and he will confine dad in the back because he made the mistake of having him in the front once and he got this close to stopping and leaving him miles from home.

At some point, it becomes pretty normal for Ice to sit on the back with Mav just so they can have a conversation, all three of them, with Maverick translating Ice's sign language.

[carousel-crows]

even more icemav incorrect quotes

ice: I'm sorry. Please talk to me. mav: ice: Hello? World's most amazing person?? Sweet pea? Precious cinnamon roll that's too good for this world, too pure? mav: 'Sorry' doesn't bring back my fucking M&Ms.

——

mav I got us matching friendship bracelets, and you say I don't care about our relationship. ice: These are handcuffs. mav: Yeah, 'cause we're partners in crime!

——

ice: What's this? mav, hugging ice: Affection ice: Disgusting. ice: …Do it again.

——

mav: Which is correct, seven and five IS thirteen, or seven and five ARE thirteen? ice: Neither. ice: Because it's twelve.

——

mav: You’re my best friend, I would do anything for you. ice: I want you to eat 3 meals a day and have a decent sleep schedule. mav: Absolutely not.

——

ice: How do you want your coffee? mav: Black, like my soul. ice: ice: mav, your soul is a latte.

——

ice: You spent all our money on THIS?? mav, putting tiny raincoats on ducklings: They live outside. They need this.

——

mav: Caffeine no longer keeps me awake while I work, so instead I have ice periodically send me texts saying ‘we need to talk.’ mav: It gives me the right amount of adrenaline and fear I need to keep going.

——

mav: I'm gonna get my driver's license. I've already got a pilot's license and a cosmetology license, that's two of the big five licenses. ice: The big five licenses? mav: Driver's license, cosmetology license, pilot's license, fishing license, and… license to kill! I can't wait to get that one.

——

ice: mav, you’re offered 500,000 dollars, but, if you accept it, the person you hate the most in the world gets 1,000,000 dollars. Would you take it? mav: Of course! I mean, why wouldn’t I want 1,500,000 dollars?

——

mav: Go big or go home! ice: Please, for once in your life just go home. I'm begging you. Go. Home. mav: I'm going big!

——

mav: How many vampires do you think have been hit by a car backing up in a parking lot because the driver couldn’t see their reflection? ice, drunk: I’ve never considered it but you’re really shining light on what’s probably a very serious issue.

——

ice: The saying “it is better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission” no longer applies to mav.

——

ice: I'm going the fight the next person who insults mav. mav: I hate myself. ice: Alright, square up.

——

ice: mav… mav: Oh no, 'mav' in B flat. mav: You're disappointed.

——

mav: What are you drinking? ice: Vodka. mav: Straight? ice: No, gay. Why?

——

mav: If we don’t get out of this alive… If we’re both about to die… I love you, ice! Neither of them die ice: … mav: … ice: So do you wanna talk about somethi- mav: No thank you.

[compacflt]

okay "normie median Biden voter ice" got me. That's funny. But also so true! It prob took him a bit to vote dem too (though I believe that Ice would have never voted for Trump). Would love to hear more thoughts on Ice and Mav's politics. Also the list of who they would have voted for if you're willing to share.

i do worry that posting my extremely in-depth headcanons about some of this stuff will have the JKR “wizard shit” effect on my writing and ruin it a little, but ask and ye shall receive

copy-pasted straight from my list of “unhinged compacflt!top gun headcanons” that ive been keeping since september: on ice & mav's politics

16. Since their friendship began, Ice has always told Maverick who to vote for, since Maverick doesn't care enough to pay attention to national politics. They are begrudging ConservaDems (conservative political views, would vote conservative every election if Republicans weren’t actively sending them to war/actively promoting fascism). Ice’s voting record (and after 1988, Mav’s too) 1980-2020—note that he has always considered himself an “educated moderate”: 1980: Reagan. 1984: Reagan. 1988: Bush. 1992: Bush. 1996: Clinton (reaction to aftermath of PGW. Doesn’t care that Clinton enacted DADT because “I’m not [redacted], so it doesn’t apply to me”). 2000: Gore (refusal to vote for another Bush). 2004: Kerry (Mav votes Bush this year out of spite as he and Ice are going through their break-up). 2008: McCain (Navy loyalty). 2012: Obama (liked him as a person/worked closely with him, didn’t like his policies so much). 2016: Clinton (no other alternative). 2020: Biden (actually liked/previously worked with Biden, and now actively married to another man and therefore had to make some liberal concessions). 2024-onwards they will vote for any Democrat as long as they aren’t a “socialist.”

17. Also, Maverick didn’t vote in 2016. Partially because in my universe the TGM mission takes place that November, very near the election, and he has bigger fish to fry (something Ice will later take him to task for), and partially because I genuinely think he wouldn’t be able to stomach either mainstream candidate and probably would’ve voted for Libertarian Gary Johnson, which might have torn his relationship with Ice to shreds a few days before schedule. “Are you fucking kidding me? Johnson? Pete, this moron’s moronic party wants to abolish the driver’s license—” / “—Yeah, and then I could ride your sweet wheels with no problem whatsoever—maybe he’ll abolish pilots’ licenses, too, I’d like to see that—” / “If you vote for Gary fucking Johnson, I will very happily stop footing the bill for your piece-of-shit airplane, and you can see how useful your pilot’s license is then—” / So Mav didn’t vote in 2016. 

35. In terms of what he Tweets: I do foresee, post-retirement, Ice basically becoming a neoliberal military intellectual type on Twitter a la Mark Hertling (look him up on Twitter). Bio: “Retired @SECNAV. Advisor @WhiteHouse and @VoteVets. Contributing writer @TheAtlantic. Interested in geopolitics & modern warfare. Aviator, husband, Padres fan. [American flag emoji]” Only posts pictures of himself and Maverick at three specific annual events: 1. their wedding anniversary (“36 years with this fool and he’s still surprised to find out that I like the F-5 better than the A-4 #happyanniversary”), 2. every EAA Airventure (huge airplane convention), 3. San Francisco’s Fleet Week (which of course they MUST attend, they even headline it in 2018). Informative, analytical, highly-respected. Maybe goes on CNN or NBC all the time to talk about civil-military relations shit (aversion to FOX since the start of the Iraq War). Gonna say he had like four really viral threads about Russia and Ukraine in April or May and so has 300k followers or something like that. He has a personal website that links back to his Twitter and every essay he writes for international publications, with a pretty braggadocious bio (something along the lines of “Tom Kazansky has directly almost started global nuclear war twice in his life, and in the thirty-year gap in between, sold the Swiss half their entire goddamn Air Force and directed an entire Fleet during the Iraq War”). Lots of tweets like “Military aviation hot take: Compared to the F-22, the F-35 is a waste of money. Source: husband with 400+ hours of F-35 experience.” / “[Quote tweet of Russian Foreign Minister boasting about Su-57 production lines] Oh, so you guys finally figured out how to make more than one every other year?” / “Analysis of the failure of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Ukraine, from an ex-US Pacific Fleet Commander’s perspective: a short [thread emoji] [This thread gets 26k likes and 4k retweets]” / “This weekend my husband & I flew in to @EAA Oshkosh #OSH19 & took home first place for best P-51. Not to brag, but.” (A reply to this tweet: “Sir, you really know how to bury the lede that your husband is Adm. Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell. I had to look it up on Wikipedia.” / @TKazansky: “What, was it not obvious? Who else could it have been?”) Also, I see him writing a whole bunch of op-eds for international political magazines a la Tom Nichols (look him up on Twitter too). Writing analyses of recent geopolitical/military events for the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Bulwark, the Navy Times, the Atlantic, Bellingcat, etc. Not so much focused on domestic issues (but VoteVets [socially progressive vets’ group] board member, and ardently pro-democracy, yay!). He’s a smart guy.

37. This is not a headcanon, just kind of a… a real-life implication. My Ice was Deputy Commander of Third Fleet in 2003, meaning he’d have been there in command of the USS Abraham Lincoln when President Bush gave his “Mission Accomplished” speech aboard that ship in May less than 2 months after the initial American invasion of Iraq. Very premature & embarrassing. Ice would’ve been in direct contact with Bush/Cheney/NSC bureaucrats many, many times during the war. I genuinely believe this is what pushed him over the edge into firm liberal territory.

[deadrlngers]

spare some maeve facts please please please pleaplspleapsleapelsdlfjsgfhdjgj 🤲🤲🤲

i'm squeezing out all the maeve facts i can rn like an orange juice, THANK U BONES MWAH

i guess it's already pretty clear that they aren't exactly the chillest guy around, and they never been. they got suspended a bunch of times at school. fighting, breaking the nose of a guy they didn't like, smoking weed at school, broken a few windows with rocks, etc etc..they literally graduated high school only because their friends forced them to actually put a touch of effort

they went to college too (art student, u can tell..) and graduated despite threatening to drop out 30 times in a week but they did only out of spite. rowan joked that maeve could never be the type for college and maeve took it personally and enrolled just to prove him wrong lmao

they live on their own since the moment they turned 18, they don't have a good relationship with their parents (still thinking of details) and they even tried to run away from home a few times before leaving for good at 18 (needless to say that she spent a few very rough years)

they are fluent in spanish, their parents spoke the language at home almost all the time

mav can play the bass beside singing and sometimes perform with a guitar too (i'm not immune to bassist's swag) + they can also draw, sometimes you can see them randomly sketching things or people, their bandmates or anything else really

while they enjoy competition, they don't play fair at all. they once teared out all four tires of a competitors' car for..fun, maybe they were a bit pissed. everyone knew maverick was the culprit bc they very proudly flaunted it on social media too

it takes under 2 seconds for maverick to start a fight. actually they ended up in MANY fistfights, 85% of those were started by mav themself and the rest are either ppl getting tired of their shitty behaviour or mav literally joining other's ppl fights just for the fun of fighting

they spent the night in a jail once (or maybe even more than once) after one of those fights but got out free of charge the next morning. they once fought a cop in a club but luckily escaped before they could get arrested bc the place was packed with crowd. oh also their driver license got suspended at some point for driving drunk

maverick is not the easiest to deal with and she surely ISN'T kind with their fans, they said publicly that being a fan doesn't make u their friend and that u should stay in your place multiple times. their ig comments section is like witnessing a battle half of the time

STILL they are very kind and affectionate with their friends, they buy gifts and offer to buy food/drinks and they are extremely silly and funny :^)

they have a scar on their left ass cheek from that time they lowkey got stabbed there on accident (inspired from that one the bear scene that has me obsessed)

maeve LOVES animals, they used to have an hamster as a teen and these days they have a dog named spike as their pet (a jack russell it's my final decision..maybe, i keep changing it skfjsk)

[pollyna]

I'm really sorry okay :)

During the summer of his sixteenth birthday, Ice teaches him how to drive a car. During the first lesson, Mav and Slider sit in the backseat, but three miles down the road, Ice kicks them out and leaves them in the middle of nowhere because kids have better behavior than you two. 

It's the same summer Mav and him fix the Bronco, and Slider finds the perfect blue to repaint it.

In September, Bradley drives them to the airport, his driver's license proudly displayed in his wallet and tissues strewn about because seeing his father and uncle deployed still makes him cry a little, even after all these years.

Ice hugs him against his chest and Bradley wants to never let him go because summer was too short and he promised to let Bradley take them to his favourite spot after he passed his test. We're going to get there, okay baby goose? he asks, before kissing him on the forehead once I'm back, whether it's winter or summer. Okay, dad, okay he answers, already half engulfed in his uncle's arms.

By the time Ice and Slider are back, a year and a half has almost gone by, Bradley is studying to pass with a straight A to go to Annapolis, and then he's out of the door and out of their lives because of a promise Maverick won't talk about.

It takes time. Fifteen years and most mornings, Bradley wakes up in his bed and his first thought is he betrayed me. He's working on all that anger with his therapist, but sometimes, less and less every day, it is still difficult and leaves him without energy. When he walks out, his car is particularly blue, that's all thanks to Uncle Ron, his secret supplier, and four hours of work. Bradley can feel in his bones that today is a good day to go back. Not alone. Not this time.

He texts Mav first; he doesn't know if he could have the strength to ask over the phone, and his un-his pops answers He would have loved that. I have a hop in 20 minutes, so take your time.

The road is almost deserted, and the parking lot is occupied by a single lonely yellow car that Bradley vaguely recalls being there the last time they passed by. He was fourteen and eager to show off his new swim truck to every pretty girl and boy around the shore. All his uncles were around that day, with too much food, too many things to say, and not enough sunscreen to spare everybody from sunburn. Bradley can see all of them moving around clear as day, half of them without a swim truck because Good god Mav, you could have told us it was for swimming! Half of his uncles are no longer alive, and the other half are out of reach. That's something else that leaves him on the verge of panic.

When he sits down, his dad is to his left, the sun is already high in the sky, and the wind crisps the water. See, dad? We made it. It took us maybe a little too much, but I finally drove us here. He could see his dad, just like he could see his uncles moving around, young and healthy as he was the last time he saw him on a carrier, six years prior, when he had run away because who gives a fuck about Admiral Kazansky and his fucking speech? He can see him smiling and patting his head like he used to do after Bradley told him he was too grown up for kisses on his cheeks and ruffling his hair. He can see him talking and he can hear him telling him all the ways Mav tells him how they found that place, almost thirty and drunk as hell after their second mission together. He can feel it too, against his back, his dad's arm hugging him and murmuring I'm so proud of you, kid. 

(That's what he wrote to him, after he was called a Top Gun for the first time.)

But for how much Bradley can see and feel and hear, sitting on that shore, it's just him, an urn, and all the things he's never got the time to say. Ah, dad, he murmurs, I'm so fucking sorry, I don't even know where to start, but the start is a good place, right? Yeah, yeah, okay.