Chapter Text
Captain Mitchell was an incorrigible flirt.
This was a widely known fact about him. It wasn't an uncommon thing for a man in the Navy to be. But what was different about him was that he flirted…respectfully. He avoided married women, never flirted with anyone serving under him, and backed off the instant it seemed unwelcome.
Phoenix had assumed that was a load of bullshit. A case of the man's mythical status smoothing the edges of his worse traits. No woman got this far in their career in the Navy - or any branch of the military - without learning very quickly which men could be trusted.
But as she's laying there in the infirmary, set up for observation for the night, she sees him chatting up a nurse outside the window, and she thinks she may have been wrong about him. The nurse laughs at whatever he says, shaking her head, before gesturing to the room she and Bob are in and brushing past him. Couple that interaction with the fact that he's never so much as looked at her any differently than any of the men in their class, and she finds herself pleasantly surprised.
He opens the door and steps into their room, and exhales a quiet, relieved, "Phoenix, Bob." There's a tightness at the corners of his eyes that hadn't been visible from the hallway, and his hair is mussed up like he's been running his hand through it restlessly. "You're alright," he continues, straightening up now that he's able to look them over.
"Yes, Sir," Bob replies from her right, lifting a hand to wave at him. Phoenix nods, too.
They were both bruised to shit from the harness straps digging into them during the ejection, but nothing had been broken. Assuming the observation period passed with no issues, they'd be allowed to fly again in a day. And, most importantly, they shouldn't be out of the running for the mission. She hopes.
But then again, she'd just lost the Navy a multimillion dollar aircraft. She wouldn't be surprised if Maverick decided that he couldn't risk the mission on her. She'd hate it, but she wouldn't be surprised.
"It wasn't your fault," Maverick says, like he can read her mind.
Her gaze snaps up to him in surprise, and she can all but feel Bob's eyes on her from the side. "Sir?" she asks carefully.
Maverick drags a hand through his hair, and there's something haunted in his gaze. "The bird strike. It wasn't your fault. You did good to punch out when I told you to."
Phoenix stares at him. And then glances sideways to meet Bob's gaze, and he just tips his head at her. Letting her take the lead, letting her decide how much to say. If she wants to say anything at all. Some of it was a blur of adrenaline-fueled fog, but she remembers barely hearing Maverick in her ear telling her not to start an engine, that it was still on fire. She'd already been pressing the button, moving on autopilot to try and recover at least one engine before they fell out of the sky, and she hadn't been able to stop the process in time. "Sir, you said-"
Maverick shakes his head. "It doesn't matter. You'd have been in as much trouble not starting up that engine as you were with it on fire. It wasn't your fault. And as long as you're cleared to fly, it's not going to affect my decision on who's flying the mission," he says evenly, his gaze locked on hers.
Phoenix swallows hard, but she doesn't protest, doesn't argue. "Yes, Sir," she says carefully. "Thank you, Sir," she adds, quieter.
Maverick's shoulders slump a little, and he seems to relax as he walks up to their beds, leaning over to place one hand on her shoulder, the other on Bob's. "I'm just glad you two are okay," he says, squeezing lightly.
Phoenix almost doesn't hear what he says, because as he leans over, she catches a flash of silver on a chain around his neck with his dogtags. A ring? It's there and gone in an instant as Maverick straightens back up, giving them both a reassuring smile.
"What about Coyote?" Bob asks, glancing over at Phoenix. She's starting to be able to read him better, and she's pretty sure he's noticed something. The man notices nearly everything that happens around him, whether or not he acts on it.
"He'll be alright too," Maverick replies with a nod. "I'm going to go check on him next, but I wanted to stop by and make sure you two were good. Get some rest, I'll see you tomorrow when the docs clear you."
He's already turning to leave when Phoenix pulls herself together to ask, "Sir-?"
He stops in his tracks, turning back to her with an eyebrow raised.
"Are you okay, Maverick?" she asks, searching his face. There'd been a panic in his voice over the comms that's stuck with her since they pulled the ejection handles. He'd never sounded like that, even chasing Coyote down to Earth. Besides, he'd seen so much combat that there was no way it was the first time he'd watched a wingman go down beside him. On top of it all, he had a haunted look on his face that hadn't quite disappeared until he saw them step out of the rescue helicopter. Even then, she had wondered if he'd just plastered over it with his trademark grin.
"What-?" Maverick looks genuinely surprised at the question, caught off-guard. But then he smiles, something softer than the one he'd given the before. "Yeah. Long as you kids are okay, I'm alright," he says easily. "Don't worry about me, and get some rest."
Phoenix nods, smiling back, though the words stick with her as he leaves. Less that he called a cohort of the best pilots in the Navy 'kids', and more the fact that it sounded like he was pinning a lot on all of them coming back from the mission. From a mission that was seeming more impossible with every day they failed their training. As determined as Phoenix was to be on that mission, she was also very aware that it was incredibly likely that one or more of them didn't come home from it.
The door closes, leaving them both in the quiet room, the only sound the humming of the lights overhead and the machines beeping in the background.
"What are you thinking, Phoenix?" Bob asks, watching her now that Maverick is gone.
"I'm thinking about how little we know about the man who's supposed to teach us how to survive a suicide mission," she replies thoughtfully. "Besides what Hangman said, but that-"
"Felt targeted?" Bob offers succinctly.
"Yeah," she agrees. "He hasn't shared much with us on his own."
"When would he have?" Bob points out.
"At the beach," she shrugs. "In the air, even," she laughs.
Bob shrugs. "Guess he wants us connecting with each other, not him," he muses.
"I guess…" Phoenix murmurs.
"Why, what did you notice?" Bob asks wryly, an eyebrow raised.
"He was wearing a ring around his neck, on his tags," she says. "But he's notoriously a flirt, so he can't be married…"
"Family heirloom?" Bob tries.
"Maybe…" she says uncertainly. "I don't think that's quite right, though."
"You think he's married, or something?" Bob shifts a little in his bed to turn and face her better.
"Yeah. Maybe 'or something'," she says, glancing at him before looking up at the ceiling as she thinks it through. "I'm sure if we started a betting pool, someone would be able to figure it out."
"You want to start a betting pool about whether our teacher has a secret relationship and/or marriage?" Bob asks, like he hopes the repeating of what she's just suggested might knock some sense into her. "What happened to Hangman's digging feeling targeted?"
"It did," she insists. "But he's wearing this ring. Surely someone besides me has seen it before." It wasn't exactly something that he seemed to be hiding that well, given that even under a shirt, the shape would stand out as non-standard.
"He's wearing it under his shirt," Bob replies.
Phoenix hums. "Then we just wait for one of the others to notice. You know Fanboy won't be able to keep it quiet if he sees it."
"If," Bob says wryly.
Phoenix laughs, but concedes the point, shaking her head in agreement.
"I admit, I'm more worried about whatever the hell is going on between Rooster and Maverick," she says after a bit.
Bob hums, his response to let her know he's listening and paying attention, without having to give some useless answer.
"I guess it has to do with what Seresin found, but still." She chews at her lip. Rooster had only told her about his papers being pulled, and she wasn't the type to share that, even with her WSO, who she was quickly learning to really trust. They'd bonded over their shared ribbing at Hangman, but it's more than just that. She likes Bob, likes his quiet attentiveness, his witty remarks that pick up exactly what she puts down. And he's entirely uninterested in pursuing something with her, which is a massive relief. She doesn't swing that way, and it got really fucking exhausting having a backseater with a crush on her. They usually never took the hint and kept flirting regardless of how nicely or meanly she let them down.
"You know something else about it," Bob says, and it isn't a question. But he isn't prying, either. He's just pointing out that she has more pieces to the puzzle, whether or not she shares them.
"Yeah, Rooster told me a little," she says apologetically. Bob shakes his head with a little smile, letting her know there's nothing for her to apologize for. "I just don't know if he can get past it. If he can't pull his head out of this mess that he becomes around Maverick, we'll be stuck with Hangman."
Hangman might be an insufferable asshole, but part of that was because he was that good, and he knew it, and he loved to shove it in everyone else's face. She's not blind. If Rooster isn't chosen as team leader, Hangman will be. No one else flies quite like him, except Maverick. And that already might be enough to get him chosen, really. Hangman had said it himself, just as offensively as possible, because that was his style. On this mission, a man flies like Maverick here, or a man does not come back.
"And Seresin will leave us hanging in the air for glory or to save his own hide," she sighs.
"All signs point to that being true," Bob agrees quietly. "Doubt that's something Maverick can teach."
"I'm not even really sure it's something Maverick knows," she snorts. She's heard of his legendary exploits, of how he and Admiral Kazansky had taken out four MiGs together just a couple of weeks after graduating from TOPGUN. But how do you take down four enemy aircraft without leaving your wingman? Three of those kills were Maverick's.
"I think he does now, if he didn't when he was younger," Bob murmurs thoughtfully. "But how long does it take someone to get there?"
"However long it is, we don't have that kind of time," Phoenix sighs.
Bob shrugs a little. "He's gotten better since we played dogfight football," he offers.
"He has," Phoenix has to concede. "Maybe that got through to him. That we're supposed to be on a team together, not fighting each other up there."
"Even if he's not team leader, he'll probably be the other single-seater," Bob continues.
"Let's just hope he's not ours," Phoenix huffs. She knows she could keep up with him, she just doesn't want to have to rely on him. She doesn't trust that he'd pull through for her and Bob. She'd love to be proven wrong, but not with her and Bob's necks on the line.
Bob smiles wryly, but doesn't respond, just nodding as he relaxes back into the uncomfortable bed.
The silence that falls over them is comfortable, and Phoenix lets it sit for a while. The aching relief that this is a companionable silence, that she hadn't lost her WSO. That she hadn't gotten Bob killed. "Hey, Bob," she says softly.
He cracks open an eye, looking over at her. He'd already started getting himself ready to drift off.
"I'm glad you're alright," she whispers. I'm sorry I landed us here goes unspoken. She knows he wouldn't accept the apology, so she doesn't try to push it on him.
His eyebrow curls, and it's clear he hears the guilt, the apology, without her having spoken it. "Yeah," he says, instead of pushing her on it. "Me too."
"Let's hope Payback or Fanboy come by later and bring us some food from the mess," she sighs, reaching for the controls to flatten her bed out so she can sleep. Or at least nap until someone comes by to bother them - there wasn't much else to do here, after all.
"One can hope," Bob replies, doing the same to his bed and laying back.
Phoenix doesn't bother him again, but she doesn't fall asleep, either. The dull ache she feels all over keeps her a little too aware to nod off. The exhaustion from the adrenaline come-down can't quite beat it yet, but maybe if she stares at the ceiling enough it will take her.
Until then, she finds herself musing idly about the ring she saw around Maverick's neck. She'd asked around for gossip about him once she learned he would be their teacher, but she feels like if someone had been insane enough to marry Captain Mitchell, they'd come up in said gossip. She's sure his partner - whoever they are, if they exist - has been given enough heart attacks to last a lifetime with the shit he pulls. But if he had one, somehow no one had ever heard of or met them.
Maverick wasn't exactly known to be shy, he loved to peacock around (from what she'd heard of his past exploits), so it made little to no sense that he wouldn't also feel the same about whoever he chose to spend his life with. She'd have expected him to show them off, unless they were also Navy, unless they somehow had even more of a reputation than Maverick himself and even the ultimate rebel was afraid to have his name attached to theirs.
She almost snorts aloud at the thought. She doesn't know of any Navy soldier with more of a reputation than Maverick. If ever a man had earned their callsign, Maverick had. Hell, it almost seemed like he'd been born into it, made for it.
This is going to bother her until she figures it out. Like any puzzle, any maneuver she's trying to master, she hated leaving something a mystery. Hated not being able to unravel it and uncover the truth to it.
She just has to hope Fanboy actually lifts his head enough to notice the ring and start the betting pool himself. Hopefully before she has to elbow him into doing so.
It's to that thought that she finally manages to drift off. Bob's even breathing just a few feet away helps slow her down enough to manage to get some rest, finally, and she closes her eyes to the warm late afternoon sunlight streaming through the window.