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January 2021: Somewhere just outside of San Diego
"...will now give his inauguration speech." Bradley hears this from the tv as his head pokes out of the engine of the P-51 Mustang. Faintly, he hears the droning of a prop plane coming in to land at the strip.
He washes the grease off his hands in the sink and walks to the door of the hangar just in time to see Pete Mitchell and Amelia Benjamin taxiing in from the runway.
"Gotta work on that spin recovery, kiddo. Your landings are getting better now. Just remember to account for crosswind." Pete tells her, as they climb out of the cockpit.
Bradley grins as he walks over to help tie down the plane while they conduct a post flight check.
"How's my Mustang looking?" Pete asks, clapping a hand on his shoulder.
"Almost done. Just need to put the panel back on, but the engine should be good to go." He replies. He trips over the line in his hurry to untangle it.
"What's the hurry?" Amelia asks, setting her checklist on the passenger seat.
"I want to hear the President's speech. It started a couple of minutes ago." He finishes tying off the final rope and makes a beeline back toward the hangar.
"Don't I always tell you not to mind the politicians? The only sure things about them are that they don't know a thing and always make a mess." Pete follows on his heels, despite his comment. Amelia locks up the cockpit and follows behind.
"Gotta get to know my new commander in chief, right?" He turns up the volume.
"...and to any foreign nations who consider threatening our allies or our interests, we issue you this warning: We are prepared to respond, and will respond at any and all cost. The brave men and women of this great nation have the drive and the spirit to see..."
"Mav, mom's asking if you wanna go out for steak tonight." Amelia interrupts, looking at her phone.
"Sure, tell her I'll be ready by six." Pete replies.
Bradley drives the volume up again on the tv.
"We live in turbulent times, but we've weathered them before. We face threats that look new and terrifying, but in reality, we face nothing now that we haven't faced before, in one form or another."
The tv cuts out abruptly. The picture turns to snow. Some audio is still coming through, but it's garbling so badly they can only catch every tenth word.
"When are you going to replace this thing, Mav?" Bradley asks. Despite his earlier rush to see the speech live, he knows he can just replay it on Youtube later.
"It's a classic!" Pete protests, hanging up his jacket. "You can't throw it out! It's got grit."
"Just like you, right, old man?" A grin spreads it's way over his face.
"The "classic" part or the grit?"
"Both." He laughs when a greasy rag hits him in the face.
"I can't believe you'd call me old." Pete grumbles, as they head out the door to Amelia's car.
"I'm just goofing off. You can still fly circles around me in a jet." A pause... "Old man." He finishes with a flourish.
"That's it!" Pete takes off after him, and Bradley turns it into a race to the car.
"Shotgun!" He calls out, slamming himself against the passenger door.
"Not unless you're my date for steak dinner tonight!" Amelia calls out, smirking. She grabs Pete's arm to stop him from tackling Bradley away from the door.
Feeling all the blood drain from his face, Bradley hurriedly pulls on the handle of the back door of the car.
"Oh, come on! I'm not that ugly." She retorts, through laughter.
She releases Pete's arm and he proceeds to charge straight towards Bradley.
Having found the door locked, and it being obvious Amelia is fully intending to watch the two of them fight over the "old man" comments, Bradley does the one thing he feels he can sanely do in the situation and preemptively hits the deck and covers his head.
When nothing squashes him from above, he cautiously glances up to see Pete grinning over him.
"Got you." He says, and walks away, getting into the car as though he hadn't just charged with the force of a freight train.
After a moment, Bradley decides that he isn't about to get the wind knocked out of him and meekly climbs into the backseat and buckles up.
"So, how long do you have left on leave, Brad?" Amelia asks, eyes on the road.
"Just a week and a half."
As much as Bradley always hated leaving the family he'd found for himself, he was always itching to get back in the air.
After the strike mission three years ago, he'd been getting much better at both flying and shooting. His sorties were largely uneventful, no more special missions had presented themselves, and aside from the catapult takeoff and the typical hair raising experience of landing on a pitching deck and catching a cable, things had been downright boring. Training was simple enough, nothing overly demanding, just enough to keep the proficiency people happy.
But despite all that, flying was still where his heart was. He was never totally happy unless he was up there in the bubble canopy, daring the clouds to come any closer, daring himself nearer to the waves, king over all he could see until someone interrupted the solitude with an order or report over the radio.
Pete always told him that if he wanted some excitement, he could always sign up to be a test pilot.
"Bradley! Did you hear me? Hey! Where'd you go?!"
He glances up to see Amelia staring at him in the rearview mirror.
"Sorry! Just thinking." He says. "What did you say?"
"I asked you if you were going to try to the hot sauce this time." She smirked.
"Uh, no. Definitely not." He'd only had to agree to that once to know that it was not in his health's best interest.
"Chicken."
"Rooster, if you want to be exact." It pops out of his mouth before he can stop it.
Amelia rolls her eyes and goes back to looking at the road.
"Not my point, Birdbrain."
"Geez, do I have to listen you two siblings argue the whole way to the restaurant?"
Pete groans and rubs his temples theatrically. "You're giving your old man a headache."
They pull into the restaurant at that moment, sparing him their response.
Penny Benjamin waves from the driver's side of her car. Pete bounded up to her and greeted her with a peck on the cheek and a hug.
Bradley feels a smile on his face. He'd never really thought anything of the Hard Deck owner and main bartender until Amelia told him about the two of them seeing each other in the hangar while Maverick had taken her mother flying.
While he thought of Amelia as a sister, nearly ten years his junior, he could never quite think of Penny as his mother. Orphaned at fifteen, he'd grown to see Pete as a sort of surrogate father up until the incident with his Academy application. But he could never see anyone else but his mother whenever he thought of mothers in general. Hers was the face that always came to mind. But Penny was certainly always a welcome face.
"Bradley! How've you been?" She envelops him in a hug.
"I've been pretty well. Hangin' out with Mav most days."
"Mom, I challenge you to a hot sauce duel." Amelia says, when they sit at their table.
"Um, no. Not again." Is the prompt response.
"Who's playing?" Asks Mav, squinting towards the tv. Although alright for flying and driving, he has been starting to need glasses for reading and sometimes for things at a distance when tired.
"Looks like Patriots and Dolphins." Amelia supplies.
"I'm calling it! Dolphins will win." Bradley slams a two dollar bill down on the table.
"Where did you get that? Is it real?" Amelia picks it up and examines it.
"You've never heard of a two dollar bill?" He asks, surprised.
"No... Was it a thing? I've never seen one before."
"Yes, they're rare, but they're still around. They didn't teach you that in school?"
"Uh, I didn't really learn anything in school. That's kind of the point of school." She rolls her eyes.
"Old enough to know better, still too young to care." Penny interjects.
"Patriots are going to score a win this time around. I know it!" Pete lays a couple of fives on the table.
"Guys, no betting at the dinner table please." Penny again.
They each take their money back, a silent glance passing between them promising words and bills to be exchanged later after dinner.
-o0o- -o0o- -o0o-
Sitting silently on Pete's old porch swing, Bradley gazes up at some distant lightning flickering inside cloud forts.
Stars are spilled across the sky in messy abandon above them. Every few minutes a meteor or two falls towards the flashes.
"Patriots. Pay up." Pete's voice.
Bradley hands him a twenty. A satellite passes overhead. Probably a Starlink. They've been launching a lot of those.
"You thinking of becoming an astronaut now?" Pete asks.
"Not in a million years. No dogfighting up there. Only EMP's and maybe a couple long distance lasers." He replies.
"If things keep going the way they're going, there'll be plenty of both down here too."
"I know." There had been a lot of threats from several major powers about launching nukes. So far, there hadn't been any real change in things. A few preparedness drills on board ship, nothing more. The US has been sitting at DEFCON 4 since mid 2023.
"How's it been looking here, Mav?"
"The same as before. People are worried, but I haven't seen toilet paper and canned food flying off the shelves yet." He shrugs.
"Do you miss it?" He looks over at the older man. Pete's eyes are fixed, as they always are when he's not in conversation with someone, on some distant point in the endless horizon.
"Always." He replies.
"They might have promoted you. You could have stayed in and still flown airshows."
"With my record, do you think the Navy would ever have accepted my request to perform at an airshow?" Pete laughs.
"You never know. They were certainly willing to promote you after that last mission, even with your record."
"No. They would put me as far away as possible from any aircraft short of a backyard ultralight if I'd taken that offer. They would have hired me as a consultant, then ignored everything I ever said."
"That's bureaucracy for you."
Silence between them, peaceful and comfortable.
"There's always that test pilot job."
"I want to fight, Mav. I always did. I can't be anything other than a combat naval aviator. It's who I am."
"Well, I can understand that." Pete smiles.
A/N Just a short chapter to get writer's block away so I can start. This will probably be edited later. :)
Edit: This has been edited. I've removed the insanely long original author's note and made a minor change to the text. :) As always, thank you for reading.