Author's Note: Having too much fun to leave this as a oneshot, so here's another chapter. Not sure how much I'll pick at this since I'm working at a bigger Transformers piece, but I'm blowing off steam messing in Maverick's head. Enjoy.

Mayday

Lost to the Sun

XxxX

There was little more gratifying than watching young bucks pump out two hundred pushups apiece while your chugging down a cold water and stuffing your face with an energy bar in the shade. In his defense, they had asked for it. Being cocky in the seat was a hell of a lot different than making experienced, ballsy decisions. These kids may have been the best in the world, but best didn't cut it in the sky when you had a MIG locked onto your tail.

The latter characteristics were borderline nonexistent in the naval aviators he'd been commissioned to train. Their hotheadedness had landed him kills all morning and afternoon, sending their asses to the tarmac. At distance he watched them all go through their earned pushups, only chuckling as they all shot daggers at him. If it were looks that were able to kill, well, he'd be in the grave.

They probably felt like he did thirty years ago. Well, like he did right now. What did I do to deserve this, what did I do to get here? The thought spun his brain like a rotary, memories of his first experience at Top Gun cutting him to the bone. He'd never imagined coming back to Miramar at this stage in his life - at this age - as a Captain. So many of his mistakes trailed through his mind like smoke.

Maybe if he'd made better choices, hadn't been such a maverick, he wouldn't be here…

The Hard Deck's lot was practically empty save the Indian motorcycle parked outside at an angle, tire snugged up against the parking stop. Maverick didn't remember seeing the bike before, but didn't think too much of it. He was tired with the early throes of a headache and had dismissed the ranks earlier than intended, schedule be damned. Their strained bodies and whipped egos hadn't invited an after-assignment debrief. It wasn't necessary anyway, they'd picked up what he threw down in the air after knocking every one of their asses out of the sky.

He'd sent them off to hit the showers while trying not to laugh, Rooster cutting him a look cold enough to freeze the devil. That alone was enough to kill any motivation he had to prepare tomorrow's lecture. If Goose only knew what a pain in the neck his kid was. Scrubbing his face with a hand, Maverick nudged open the door with the toe of his boot, and slipped inside the dim light, cool air from a roaring AC smacking him in the face.

He needed a drink.

No one was behind the bar to tend to the few late-afternoon drinkers, low country tunes humming from the Jukebox in the corner of the room. He smiled at Amelia, who was reading a textbook in her lap while sitting cross-legged on the bar's surface. She spun a pen through her fingers, her hair piled into a high and perfectly-pinned knot. Maverick still couldn't believe she'd grown so much, and how much she looked like her mother. He felt every ounce of his age as he straddled a barstool across the bar from her.

"Studying hard or hardly studying?" he teased. Folding his hands on the bar, he made a point of looking around. "Mom took a day off or what?"

Her head snapped up and around, and she smiled when she recognized him. "Hey Mav," she spun around on the counter and dropped the pen between the pages of the book before closing it. "Mom's just solving a tomato crisis with Fabio in the kitchen. She'll be back." He nodded slowly and drummed his hands on the bar before she quirked a brow at him. "You want something?"

He chuckled and nodded. "Would I have come here if I didn't?" She rolled her eyes, set the book off to the side, and hopped off the counter.

Pete watched her retrieve a pint glass and move to the taps like she'd been doing it her entire life. He rose up out of his seat to stop her and almost hit the deck when his foot slipped off the barstool. His fumble whipped her head about and she twisted her lips into a contained smile, looking exactly like her mother. She pulled the tap, tipped the glass, and the golden brew swirled into thick, bubbling foam.

"Ease up there, kiddo. I think you just gave the man a heart attack," the smooth tone was glib, a hint of a chuckle evident in the woman's tone.

It took him a second to recover his pride before his eyes moved a few stools down the bar. His spine snapped to attention and he blinked, taking in the figure now leaned back against the bar, elbows resting on the surface. He was disarmed, his tongue feeling like cotton in his mouth as steel blue eyes flickered over him briefly before finding his own, a slow smile parting the woman's' lips.

"Howdy, stranger," she nodded to him, sat up, and crossed a leg over the other. "Fancy runnin' into you here." Her tone was light and teasing, but contained the slow drawl that could be expected from a Montana cattle family. "Maverick, right?"

Pete couldn't help but smile. He remembered Mae and her Appaloosa mare, Scout. She'd flown in like her tail was on fire looking to make a quick patch job on a horse that needed stitches. She'd been a spitfire of a thing, but had shaken his hand after simmering down and some conversation. She was the woman of every man's daydreams, their meeting like something out of a raunchy, dimestore paperback. Mae was hardly forgettable, considering he'd been looking for her since they'd parted ways.

Just his luck she was here, and he was freshly showered and sober. He stood from the stool, shoved a hand into his pocket, and moved down the bar to lean against the walnut wood. His fingers slipped across the bar easily.

"Maverick's right. You remembered," his smile prompted another from her and the stool squeaked as she swiveled about. He narrowed his eyes and pointed at her, making a show of trying to remember. "Mae. And Scout." As if he could forget.

She nodded, laughing. "Yeah, that's right." She reached for the pint of dark beer in front of her. Taking a sharp pull, it cracked back down to the walnut bar. "I'm surprised to see a swabbie here during business hours." She'd called him the slang term the first time they'd met, her fondness less than evident. She seemed to have gotten over her mad.

He shrugged and slowly sat in the stool behind him, leaving an empty seat between them. Before he could answer Amelia stepped up to the bar, a tottering, foamy Budweiser wobbling in her hand. It found the bar in front of him with relative ease. The majority of the drink was foam, but her cocksure and crooked smile lit up her eyes. His brow lifted and he turned to rest arms on the bar, giving Amelia a skeptical look.

"You know I think something's wrong with this picture," he gestured between them and then to the booze foaming up onto the bar. Narrowing his eyes, he glanced over to the stranger called Mae, who had lifted her brows in surprise at the minor working behind the bar. "This beer is way too foamed up."

Mae snorted and turned in her stool, resting elbows on the bar. She dropped her chin into her hand and wrinkled her nose as she stared at the pint glass. She smiled at Amelia, who crossed her arms over her chest and gave him a flat, disapproving look. He figured she would start tapping her foot at any moment.

He tossed a look over to Mae, trying to placate. "Don't you think?" It took her a moment to respond and her eyes moved between Amelia and him before she put up her hands and shook her head, leaning away from the bar.

"Don't put me in the middle of this," she inserted. "I don't want any part of this felony situation you have going on here." Waving a finger between them, she took another drink of her brew. He just laughed and shook his head, pulling the pint glass forward to stare into the golden foam.

"Yeah, Maverick," Amelia said his name with teasing, hot spite. "Mom would tell you to shut up and take what you're given or ring the bell." She thumbed to the small bell mounted behind the bar, with the legendary disrespect-the-Navy-and-women-and-pay-a-round plaque not a stone's throw from reach.

He nodded and shrugged, reaching up to rub the back of his neck. "Not wrong." He gestured back to the textbook she'd left. "Hit the books, kiddo, and learn something for me."

She rolled her eyes and tossed a coaster at him. "Use this and don't be a slob." Moving back to her former position, Amelia hopped up onto the bar and went back to digesting her reading material. The pen spun between her fingers easily and out of habit.

Mae snorted beside him after the girl had settled in and pregnant silence unfolded between them. "Friend of the family?" He raised his brows at her as she lifted the glass to take another drink. He could see she was fighting to hold back a smile. When he didn't respond and his brows lifted, she added, "She isn't yours. Looks nothing like you. Less wrinkles." She tried sounding confident in her answer, but the question lingered.

He nodded slowly and tried not to laugh, skipped his finger over the rim of the pint glass. Collecting some of the foam, he licked off the bitter bubbles, and popped it against the wall of cheek to make a sound. Lifting a shoulder casually, he offered the woman a half smile. "Good to know."

Maverick couldn't help the heat that lifted to his nose. A woman hadn't made him blush since he was a young buck, usually it was the other way around. He took a drink of beer and hoped the hoppy brew would explain the sudden color on his face.

She wrinkled her nose and laughed and didn't seem to notice he was off his game. "I didn't say it was a bad thing," she chimed. He tried to cover his surprise, but instead choked on the hops in the brew. She snorted beside him and he set the wobbling beer back to the bar, doing his best not to laugh, smile, and choke all at the same damn time.

She giggled. "You okay there, chief?" Leaning over the seat between them, she gave him a firm smack on the back. "You may have a couple lines but you ain't ready to die yet. Come on," she teased. He was working hard at not laughing, and his ribs felt every ounce of his attempt.

After he managed not dying, he almost snapped out of his chair when she picked up her beer and coaster and plunked into the seat beside him. His gaze swept over her so quickly that he didn't catch her sparkling eyes looking him over, until her gemstone irises lifted and held his attention. A slow smile spread her lips, revealing attractively crooked teeth, the glossy red lipstick making her teeth look like sparkling snow.

Something about her punched him in the gut in all the right ways. Her steel blue eyes matched the color of the very fighters he was commissioned to fly, the planes he had dedicated his life to and that he loved so much. Her eyes made him feel the way flight did when he was at full bore, tail-on-fire speeds. He hadn't felt this way in a long time.

In and out of relationships over the years had turned him off to the idea of dating women his own age, much less women half his age. Pete couldn't tell if Mae was actually teasing him or just simply being a young woman, he'd lost track. All signs and gauges pointed to the former, but he kept his guard up.

What would a young thing like her want with a middle-aged, almost-past-his-prime fighter pilot? He recalled that she was widowed.

Dumbfounded for anything to say, he blinked when her eyes dropped to half mast. "Thanks again for your help with Scout the other day," 'the other day' was actually two weeks ago, but who was counting? He'd only been halfway looking around Fightertown for her, hoping to catch glimpses of her rig. "She's doing great. Stitches are holding. Vet said any more inflammation and she wouldn't have been able to close."

He nodded slowly, turning his head slightly to the side. He only paid half attention to mention of her equine. "That's good," he left the statement hanging, trying to discern if she was probing for something or simply making conversation. He added, "Haven't seen you around, otherwise I'd have asked."

She lifted a shoulder. "Haven't seen you either." Disarmed, he had nothing to retort.

She took a long drink, Maverick watching the hops slip past ruby lips. A dribble of beer slipped down her chin but she didn't notice, and his gaze fell to watch it fall down the length of her throat. He lifted his gaze before it could drop farther past the neckline of her dress.

His jaw clamped closed. Something in his gut twisted and reminded him that this girl could be his kid. Young, beautiful and she could hurt him without even trying. The mystery girl called Mae could be better suited for Rooster, or Hangman, or any other of the young men situated under his command. One look from her and they'd be lost. The idea of them seeing her here, a young and hot item, sent unexpected knives between his ribs, stabbing at the sensitive mesh of his chest.

Then, some hot feeling of not wanting to forfeit her to irresponsible young men who could hurt her as much as she could hurt him seared into his consciousness. He shook the thought out of his skull, trying to drop the idea. You didn't forfeit things that didn't belong to you. Besides that, if anyone was gonna get hurt by eyes the color of fighter jets, it would be him. It beat breaking up with women with crow's feet.

He blinked, trying to get over the fact that she'd insinuated that she'd been trying to keep tabs on him.

Glancing out the front window of the bar, he spotted the Indian motorcycle. His brow wrinkled and he looked back at her. His eyes dropped to consider her clothes, which surprised him more. Before she'd been in jeans and a button-up Wrangler shirt with a snapback hat. Now, she was in a sundress, looking tan and beautiful. She couldn't have driven a motorcycle into Miramar in a sundress, right? A glance at her hair, slightly ruffled and flat from a helmet, disarmed his argument.

He gestured to the machine and changed the subject. "That Indian….isn't yours, is it?" He opened a hand on the bar, pointing to her before his eyes skipped over her form. He saw her shoulders draw back and she swiveled to address him, looking skeptical at his question. He straightened and righted on the stool, putting his hands up in surrender. "Not that it couldn't be, but you, in that dress –"

Before he had time to even finish the thought, she grabbed the hem of the floral printed sundress and hiked it up her thigh. He went slackjaw at the gesture, flabbergasted for a brief moment before she snapped the seam of a pair of tight black shorts. His gaze lingered on the meat of her exposed thigh just long enough to make his mouth dry, until she replaced the hem of her dress.

She snorted, putting an elbow back on the bar. "Haven't figured me out yet at all, have you?" Her booted foot bobbed to the lazy tune of music in the Jukebox, a tune he didn't identify and wouldn't have been able to discern anyway beneath her smug look. He bit the inside of his cheek before folding his hands on his lap, slumping in his chair.

"Guess not," he said, resigned.

She laughed, finished her beer, and cracked it back down to the walnut wood. "I guess they lied when they said older men had a bit more sense." This made him chuckle and shrug, her smile unfolding. It complimented her clean appearance, rosy cheeks and sun-kissed skin. She was a little darker than he'd seen her before. Blemishes on her skin told her age, but complimented her. "So. Maverick. That your real name?"

He shook his head. "No, call sign."

She nodded slowly. "Ah. Still an active aviator, huh?"

He shrugged, lazily tracing his finger around the rim of his glass again. "You could say that." It didn't seem fitting to unload his teacherly duties and woes on such a young soul removed from the trials of his career. Decided it was better to withhold that intelligence. "My name is Mitchell. Pete Mitchell."

She smiled at him slowly, blue eyes sparkling. "Well, Mitchell Pete Mitchell," she teased, slipping off the barstool. She looked up at him without lifting her head as she smoothed the skirt of her dress. "I'm gonna go off on a limb here and guess that you're picking up on what I'm laying down here, and that you're as into me as I am into you."

Her bluntness made him snort into what was left of the hops. Before he could respond, she added, "You wanna go somewhere?"

He cracked the glass back to the bar before turning to slip off the barstool, watching her slowly back away from him. He deposited money on the bar enough to cover them both. Like a siren she beckoned him to the front door. It took focused effort to put one foot in front of the other. He raised his brows and lifted his chin as he shoved his hands into the pocket of his jeans, reaching for the aviators on his head.

He propped open the door over her head and leaned against it, staring down at her now. "Where is it you think you wanna go?" His brow perked behind the lenses of his dark aviators.

She rolled her eyes up to the sky, pointed, and shrugged teasingly. "Take a wild guess, Maverick," she probed, turning sharply on the heel of her boot. He watched her mount the Indian, slip on the helmet, and kick the bike to life like something out of a wet dream, sunlight glinting off the metal flake swirling through the deep red paint of the bike.

Throttling the Indian, she sat back, flipped up the visor on her helmet, and tipped up her chin. "Only if you think you can handle it, Mav," she called above the pummeling growl of the engine like she had known him forever. His fingers curled against the woods of the door, resolve quickly crumbling beneath the heat emanating up from beneath his collar.

He pushed off the door, strode for his bike, and chased the woman named Mae out of the lot, fearing for a moment he would lose her to the sun.