#rest assured the evil side of me is having fun with the meaning of Mav's nickname

[thethistlegirl]

The fact that the term Maverick is actually a western term for unclaimed, unbranded feral cattle is making this post even better

I keep seeing Western AUs for Top Gun (basically just @forsty and @caveiratimida with the good stuff out here) so here's something I've thought of purely because I began watching someone new on youtube who's background music sounds like ragtime music.

Goose and Carole own a bar. Penny Benjamin also works here. Goose is not a cowboy, he plays piano and has a twirly moustache, getting his nickname from how he rode into town on the back of a cart carrying geese, and his laugh of course. They may not be cowboys (or girls) but they know their customers enough to know how to handle a gun. There's been enough bar fights over what song Goose plays that Carole and Penny have had to master the art of intimidation.

They're on good terms with the local Sheriff Thomas Kazansky and his deputy Ronald Kerner (this is from this specific post by @caveiratimida ). They're on especially good terms with Ron, nicknamed Slider after he fell asleep on his horse and slid off, who can sometimes be found frequenting their saloon after hours and has come out wearing the frilly shirts that Goose wears.

Some of the others are there too, Hollywood is called that (before hollywood was a thing) because he got a holly christmas wreath stuck around his head one Christmas. Wolfman is called that because he is rumoured to have been raised by the wolves on a mountain nearby. Chipper was a lumberjack, that's about it. Sundown rode into town (there's a lot of this but it's frontier times so this is just another new mining town out west during the gold rush, also yes the 1800/1900s are my favourite period in history) on a sunset and was the perfect picture of a cowboy. Iceman used to brag about taking cattle to the more snowier regions before (if that was even a thing) so he was sarcastically called Iceman, before he became a sheriff.

But then a rogue lone ranger comes into town starting trouble, starts a few bar fights in Goose and Carole's saloon, messes with people's horses and cattle. Turns out, after Iceman books him and he's in a cell, that he's a bounty hunter.

Iceman doesn't like him, hates that he can just go out there and do his job for him. Mav doesn't like that Iceman is so restricted by the law, if you want to do good, you do good despite the law because you know it's good.

Stuff happens, pregnant Carole riding a horse, pregnant Carole with a shotgun, Bradley with a straw hat walking around in the mud, Goose with a harmonica, western stuff