-5-
A ladies night sounded great, in fact, exactly what she needed. This testosterone-ridden environment was exhausting, to say the very least. She needed some girl time.
So with Goose and Maverick watching Bradley for the night, Sarah, Charlie and Carole, with Carole in the lead, hit the town and took to - you guessed it - the O, apparently because Goose and Mav had been raving about it to Carole and she wanted to check it out.
For Sarah it turned out she was spending more time at this bar than she originally thought she would, but, at least after the first time, she was enjoying it. She recalled what her mother had always told her about first impressions - sometimes they surprised you.
And she was in great company. Not that she hadn't been before, but this was great.
"So I was sitting there-" From their booth Charlie pointed to the bar where she had indeed been sitting that fateful night. "And I was meeting someone."
"And they came over and did 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin','" Carole filled in.
"Exactly."
Carole rolled her eyes. "Well I apologize on their behalf."
Charlie laughed. "It's fine, it was quite entertaining."
"With how bad it was?"
"Yeah."
"It was pretty bad," Sarah agreed. "But they got the whole bar to join in, so that was kind of cool."
"Ugh, those too." Carole shook her head but said so affectionally. "You know they did 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'' the first time I met them too. Only the roles were reversed, with Goose singing to me. And he's not half bad."
"Okay, that's actually really cute."
"And clearly it worked."
"Well, it was charming. But I made him work for it." Carole winked. "And the rest, as they say, is history. Cheers ladies." She raised her glass in a toast.
"To what?" asked Charlie. "Certainly not to their singing."
"No! To us!" Carole grinned and took a big swig of her drink. "Oh I needed this!"
They talked about everything: work, marriage, men, the hot gossip of the day. Eventually it got to pilots and all that - clearly none of them were sick of it quite yet.
"So you're call sign's 'Charlie'?"
"Very original, huh. And you?"
"'Honey'." Carole winked.
"So we've got Charlotte 'Charlie' Blackwood and Carole 'Honey' Bradshaw."
"What about you Sarah?"
"Oh, I don't know. Something space related probably. 'Star', 'Galaxy', 'Constellation'." She shrugged.
"Fire," offered Carole, eyeing her from across the table.
"Fire? Where does that come from?"
"Pete told me how fiery you were - you shut him right down when he tried to put some moves on you in this very place."
"He told me about that too," added Charlie.
"Oh..." She wasn't sure how she felt about that.
"And I can tell too. We're all of us 'take no shit' kinda gals. So what d'ya think?"
"Sure, 'Fire' works." She wasn't sure if she herself thought of it as fitting, but Carole seemed insistent and Charlie clearly agreed. "Sarah 'Fire' Coleman."
"There we go! 'Fire', 'Charlie' and 'Honey' - what a team!" Carole raised her glass again. "Honey and Goose, Charlie and Maverick, and dare I say, Fire and Ice."
Charlie seemed to understand this, but Sarah didn't. "What Fire and Ice?"
"Goose told me all about you and Iceman. Tom is it?" Carole batted her eyelashes.
Oh, so that's what she was getting at. "That's just how he introduced himself to me. Name instead of call sign. I appreciated it. And what about us?"
"Oh just how well you seem to fit together, how you're always interacting, the flirting..."
Well, not always. And flirting? When had their interactions turned to some harmless flirting? Definitely right after the incident on the volleyball court. And the night at the O? Oh, yeah, that...
"I heard you nailed him." Now Carole wiggled her eyebrows.
"With a volleyball!" Oh God, what rumours had been spreading after her perfectly accidental act?
"Well whatever it is, I approve." Carole winked again.
"Me too," agreed Charlie.
"Thanks, but I'm pretty sure it's nothing."
"Oh my God, the karaoke! Come on ladies, let's liven this place up - show 'em how it's really done!" Carole was out of her seat and running over to the karaoke machine, Charlie close to follow, and honestly Sarah was just glad to move the conversation away from its current topic.
Her and Tom? Really? She rewound through her thoughts to all of their interactions, replaying them in her mind. She had meant it when she said she would never get involved with someone at work, and she would keep to that.
Wait-
She was smiling.
Against her wishes. She was betraying herself. No, no. Her new friends and their men were wrong, there was nothing going on between her and Tom, and she would keep it that way.
A song started blasting from the speakers then, filling the bar: Venus by Bananarama.
"Goddess on the mountain top
Burning like a silver flame
The summit of beauty and love
And Venus was her name!"
"Sarah come on! You burning beauty goddess!" Carole called, and through the microphone no less. Sarah was smiling again and headed over to join them.
Pretty soon the three were singing and dancing together, lost in their own world, not caring a bit what the other bargoers thought.
"We're Bananarama!" Carole laughed, followed by cheers from her companions.
Pretty soon Sarah's throat was dry and croaky from all the singing and while Carole and Charlie worked out what song to do next, she headed back to their table for a quick sip of her drink.
The bar crowd was picking up and she wove through people on her way back to the 'stage'. She was about halfway there when she very nearly collided with someone.
Now Sarah Coleman loved the universe, and sometimes it seemed to have a mind of it's own. Because the person she barely avoided crashing into was none other than Tom 'Iceman' Kazansky.
Instantly, Carole's words, backed up evidently by Charlie, filled her head: "Fire and Ice."
"You're going to take me down yet again," he joked, smiling down at her. "We really are making a habit out of this."
"Yeah, we've got to stop ending up like this."
He was casually dressed tonight, the first time she'd seen him out of any sort of uniform. Right now, he looked like any regular guy, no pilot, no Iceman, but Tom.
"You look like you're on a mission," he commented.
"Sarah!" came Carole's voice through the microphone again.
"Ladies' night," she answered, trying, and failing, to suppress a laugh. "We've taken over the karaoke machine."
"I can see that. And hear it."
The ladies had already started another song, this time an Elvis track: Jailhouse Rock.
"Well, the stage calls - see you around, Iceman." Even though he was Tom tonight, out of uniform and all, something in her just told her, just compelled her to use his call sign instead. Fire and Ice. But he would always be Tom, at least to her.
Fire and Ice.
I've decided I AM going to connect this story to one of my other Top Gun: Maverick stories, Call Sign: Elvis, so I had to have some Elvis reference/allusion here ;) The next chapter will pretty much be all Tom and Sarah, so stay tuned!
Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed! :)