6 Intoxicating Inertia
I laid my head down in Maverick's lap, feeling the booze flow through my system and fog my brain. It felt good to relax finally, I closed my eyes ready to let sleep consume my being. Maverick was fiddling with my hair taking it down from the bun I had it in. He ran his fingers through the messy pieces causing my eyelids to get even heavier. I didn't know what it was but he had this ability to completely put me at ease. The car door closing woke me from my drifting, Goose and Crystal had disappeared.
"Babe, we're back," Maverick said to me. I groaned not wanting to move from my comfy position.
"What'd you call me?" I asked him, raising my head from his lap, and getting close to his face. I blew a stray strand of hair out of my face effectively hitting him in the face with it. I let out a giggle at his surprised reaction.
"Maeve, why would I call you anything else? I mean, unless you wanted me to," He replied with a tenderness in his tone, watching me with those hazel eyes, my eyelids wanted to fall even more.
"You're cute… I would like--" I stopped, thinking about how dark it was outside.
"Alright, alright let's get you inside and patched up," Maverick said softly to me, moving to get out of the car. He grabbed my hands as I pouted, not wanting to get out. He wouldn't be able to move me past the center console, he moved up the passenger seat and folded down the backrest. I crawled on top of the seat in its flattened position not willing to use my feet. I reached out to him.
"Up!!" I said, my voice taking on the inflection of a child hoping to get what it wanted. He moved in giving me a hug, I took in his smell, spearmint and apples.
"You smell gooood." I complimented him, enjoying his scent clinging onto him. He attempted to get out of my grasp with no success. Prying my hands off his figure, I groaned in his ear, annoyed that he wanted to get away from me.
"Thank you Maeve," He thanked me, a grin appearing on his face.
"Mavvvv stopp" I begged him to quit moving as he was making my world spin. He picked me up and threw me over his shoulder the sudden movement made my stomach churn unhappily. He shut the car door after successfully getting me out and walked towards the house, up the stairs, and to my room. He set me down in the chair near the desk.
"Stay here, don't go anywhere. I'll be right back." He told me as if I were a dog that was prone to not listening. I nodded, starting to unbutton my dress whites, I didn't get very far as the buttons were moving around. Frustrated, I wanted to just rip the shirt in half, but I kept trying, closing my eyes and feeling the buttons with my fingers instead of trying to focus on them. Although, closing my eyes made the room spin even more. As I got to the last button I sighed happily ripping the shirt from my arms, when it slipped over my right hand I winced feeling a small twinge in my hand. I threw the shirt in the closet and as I went to examine my wound Maverick walked back in with a small white box in his hands. He knelt down in front of me, took my hand, and placed it on the desk. He opened the box and retrieved an alcohol swab, ripping open the packaging.
"This might sting a bit," He instructed me looking into my eyes before looking back to the split skin on my knuckle. I watched as he pressed the swab down on my wound letting the tiny wipe pick up the now dried blood. I winced feeling the slight tinge of the alcohol as it hit the cut. I let out a hiss at the uncomfortable sensation. He lifted the swab and threw it in the trashcan, getting another and wiping around the cut getting all the blood off the skin that hadn't been ripped. Maverick then retrieved the ointment, placing it gingerly on my knuckle.
"You know, this probably needs stitches," He said as he went to grab a bandaid from the kit. I waved my free hand at him brushing him off.
"Whatever it'll be my newest addition to the collection… Just a new memory," My words were starting to slur and I knew it was only a matter of time before I fell asleep.
"A good one, I hope." He replied as he finished closing up the kit and moving back towards the hall bathroom to put it away. I nodded, standing up from the chair a bit wobbly on my feet. I trudged over to the bed trying to slip out of my pants as I walked. It proved a difficult task as I tripped over the excess fabric and fell.
"Fuck." I exclaimed as I hit the floor. Maverick came racing into the room, the look of shock on his face had me giggling again.
"Hell Maeve, I thought I told you to stay where you were." He said to me. I just smiled, closing my eyes. He held out his hand to help me up, but I had another idea, which was to pull him down to the ground with me. As I did he let out a grunt as he tumbled down next to me, avoiding falling on top of me.
"I should've seen that coming." He said as he let out a chuckle, his head next to mine. I could tell he was staring at me based on the direction his voice was coming from. I looked in his direction,
"You know I would never admit this sober but I think you and I could have made a real go of it," I told him the smile falling from my face. He propped himself up on his elbow looking at me more seriously.
"What do you mean could have?" He asked me. I opened my mouth attempting to phrase my next words carefully but my brain was going too fast for me to pick what I wanted to say. I shook my head ignoring my conscious voice.
"Do you ever think about what you would be doing had you not joined the Navy?" I asked him attempting to get us past the awkwardness that I felt pressing against me.
"We still can and I'll prove it to you," I heard him quietly whisper, not letting the subject slip from his grasp easily. I smiled attempting to hide the pain I was feeling in my heart from a past life. He continued to answer my question, "Not really, it was always one of my dreams. My father was a fighter pilot, lost during Vietnam. I always assumed he was killed in action but our family never received confirmation. What would you do?" He asked me.
"I'm not sure, I've always been this way. Growing up all I wanted to do was get away, the Navy gave me that. Now, I don't know after all I've been through following this path, sometimes I think I would have been better off doing something else." I told him, letting my eyes close, completely this time.
***
My alarm rang out loudly, pissing me off. I groaned, reaching over to smack the damn device off, when I did my hand ended up hitting something softer than plastic.
"Ouch, what the fuck?" I heard his voice clear as day and I knew who was in here with me, Maverick.
"Fuck, I'm sorry, but what the hell are you even doing in here?" I asked him, annoyed, my head starting to pound from all the loud noises.
"I must've fallen asleep… Sorry, I was watching–" He started as I grew more confused. He reached over to turn off the clock. I fell back onto the pillows covering my face with the extra one to block out the light. I grimaced, feeling the pain in my hand almost immediately when I tried to move it. I had no recollection of what had happened last night and wasn't sure I wanted to know.
"Can you get me some aspirin?" I asked him, changing the subject entirely.
"Yeah give me a second." He said as he moved towards the hall bathroom. I immediately flashed back to last night when Maverick was bandaging my hand, running back and forth between the two rooms. I sighed as I heard Maverick return from the bathroom with a glass of water and pills. I removed the pillow from my head, not willing to meet his eyes.
"Thank you," I murmured out. I threw the pills into my mouth and swallowed a sip of water with them. I could see him nod from my peripheral vision.
"Better get dressed. We've got class and flight time today from what I hear. Should be enough time to power through your hangover though." He told me, leaving the room to go to his own. I nodded, throwing the covers off my body and moving towards the closet. My hand gravitated toward my flight suit, picking it up off the hanger setting it down on the bed. I looked at the clock wondering if I had enough time to shower. It was 06:00 so I knew I had ample time. I had already put my toiletries in the bathroom yesterday so I knew I had what I needed. I went to the hall closet and grabbed a fresh towel before heading to the bathroom. I closed the door behind me, locking it before I started to get out of my clothes. I started the water, letting it heat up to the perfect temperature, and hopped in. I scrubbed myself until I felt the smell of booze was gone. I washed my hair to make sure that it wasn't greasy from last night. Once I was done I got out, dried off, and brushed my hair making sure to get every last tangle before I threw it into a ponytail, I would do the rest of the bun later. I wrapped the towel around my body and left the restroom for my room. I put on a clean undershirt and shorts then put the flight suit on followed by my socks and boots. I grabbed my flight bag and helmet and started down the stairs to the kitchen.
"Hey, how's the hand?" I heard Crystal greet me from the table across from the island. She was chomping on a bowl of cereal.
"Agh thanks for reminding me. What the hell happened last night?" I asked her as I grabbed some cereal, milk, and a bowl.
"Well, do you want the condensed version or the detailed version?" She asked me. I groaned, it was worse than I thought if that was her question to me.
"Detailed, I guess," I told her.
"How much do you actually remember?" She asked knowing it wasn't much.
"Well, I remember getting to the bar, getting drinks, talking to Iceman… After that, it kind of goes blank." I told her, pouring the cereal into the bowl, followed by the milk.
"Well, you chugged one of your vodka tonics because 'Don't Fear the Reaper' came on. Then you went to the bar to get another. Started a bar fight, kissed Maverick, and then I took us home before they called the cops… You really don't remember any of that?" She questioned. riddling off the list of things that were an absolute blur to me.
"I mean I kind of remember— wait, go back, I kissed Maverick??" I asked her.
"Yeah, just to fight some dude who pissed you off I'm pretty sure." She smiled as she took another bite of cereal.
"Well, I'm glad it wasn't someone else who woke up in my bed this morning," I told her. She practically choked on her food.
"WHAT?" She asked me, completely taken for a loop.
"Yeah, I smacked him thinking he was my alarm, rude awakening for him," I told her, walking over to the table to sit down.
"What happened?! Oh my god, does this mean??" She started rambling. I stopped her with my hand to quit.
"I don't know, I haven't asked him yet, and no it doesn't mean we're a couple," I told her, rolling my eyes and starting to eat.
"I remember him bandaging up my hand and that's really it. Fucking hurts like hell today, should've gone to the hospital honestly." I told her as I examined my knuckle, wondering if there was an Ace bandage stored around the house somewhere.
"Well Maeve, you should probably talk to him and figure out what happened between you two." She said as she took a sip of her coffee.
"No, because then it makes it a big deal and I'm not really sure where I'm at with the whole situation," I told her not willing to back down from my stance. She nodded as I continued eating.
"Where are they anyway?" I asked her, noticing that the boys were nowhere in sight.
"I think they're eating outside." She told me, the day shift and night shift were colliding and we had such different patterns. I groaned, not willing to move from my spot here just to talk to him about something so trivial and ridiculous. I would've rather not known anything at all but my curiosity got the best of me.
"How's the hangover?" She asked me.
"Ah, splitting my head in two, but I'll be fine, what time did we get back?" I asked her.
"Around 22:00." She answered. I normally recover fast from things like this. The regulations required us to stop drinking 8 hours before our flight time, so our flight time being around 10 am, we would've had to stop drinking at 2 am. Since it was more than likely that I stopped drinking by then I'd be legal and fine to go on the flight. I heard the door squeak open and close behind me and I knew our company had arrived.
"I see you managed to find the provisions that Crystal and I picked up Maeve." Goose said. I smiled as I felt him pat me on the shoulder and sit in the chair to my right, as Maverick took my left.
"How's the head?" He asked me.
"It'll be better when we get this class over with," I told him, not wanting to really do anything today but sleep until this passed.
"You happen to pick up an Ace bandage?" I asked him.
"Yeah actually with Crystal's proactive thinking, we did." He said as he looked to Crystal who handed me the bandage out of a Walmart bag. I smiled at her gratefully. It was black which would be fine with the uniform. I put down my spoon, starting to wrap my hand in a brace-like fashion. Maverick noticed I was having an issue with starting the wrap and grabbed the bandage from me without a second thought.
"Thank you," I told him quietly. He smirked at me as he finished up the wrap, placing his hand on it to make sure it was good to go. He lingered there for a moment before clearing his throat and standing.
"We should probably get going," He said taking my bowl from me and taking it to the sink. I grabbed my stuff again and headed towards the door, my keys in my hand.
"Crystal you wanna ride with me?" I asked her. She looked to Goose,
"Actually I was going to go with Goose, it'll give you and Maverick a chance to talk" She whispered the last part. Goose spun around looking for his keys to keep himself occupied as he had heard that last part.
"Alright Maverick, let's go," I grunted out to him walking towards my car and unlocking the doors. I waited for him, noticing that he wasn't near me yet, I spun around toward the front door.
"Mav!" I yelled at him, wondering where he went.
"Yeah, I figured we could take my bike?" I groaned, getting into my car and grabbing my Raybans before locking my doors and conforming to his decision. I put on my sunglasses,
"Fine," I said as I put my hand through the strap on my flight helmet and my flight bag on my back. He got on first and started up the bike. I followed his lead straddling the bike.
"Don't you dare kill me!" I told him as I gripped the metal behind me. He laughed, as he pulled out of the driveway slowly. He started going faster when we hit the highway, weaving in and out of traffic. He slowed down abruptly causing me to fall into his back. I wrapped my arms around his waist and I felt his breathing stop for a moment.
"Finally Reaper, Jesus." He said under his breath, I smirked as I realized he had been wanting that in the first place. This wasn't the time or place to talk about last night with him so I decided to just enjoy the ride. It wasn't too long before we pulled up to the security gate at the airport, I peeled my hands from Maverick's waist, giving my ID badge to the guard. They let us through, giving us the ID cards back. Maverick pulled up outside a hanger, parked his bike out of the way, and stopped the engine. I got off the bike and walked into the hangar seeing a makeshift classroom on the hard concrete inside instead of planes. It felt like home, just off the runway. I would love to renovate a hanger like this one into a home, but that was a far thought, almost no guy would want to live somewhere like this.
"Reaper!! Fucking awesome night last night. You definitely earned my respect, Mav, you better watch out, some of us might want a shot at her too." Iceman greeted me, I nodded sitting down and waiting for Crystal and Goose to show up, resting my head on my arms covering my face from the light.
"Yeah, I would expect you to be hungover from last night, you want some aspirin?" I heard Slider ask me.
"Please," I said as I heard Crystal's chair make a terrible squeaking noise across the floor as she arrived.
"Sorry." She whispered to me. I nodded ignoring the pounding that had started in my head. Slider handed me two pills out of his bag and a water bottle. I nodded in appreciation as he went back to sit down. Taking the pills quickly with the water, I knew I had some a couple of hours ago but more could only help at this point… Hopefully, it would solve all the issues I was having.
"Good morning everyone as you can see behind us your jets have been delivered. You'll be happy to know nothing arrived broken. We've already done a preliminary inspection on them just to be safe. While you're in this program you'll be trained and evaluated by a few civilian specialists. The civilians are here because they are our very best source of information on enemy aircraft. One of the most qualified is our TAGREP, callsign, Charlie. She has a PhD in astrophysics and she's also a civilian contractor, so you do not salute her. But you better listen to her because the Pentagon listens to her about your proficiency. It's all yours Charlie." Jester said to us as he stepped out of the way of Charlie who was currently strutting down our makeshift aisle in her high heels. I wanted to burn a hole through her heels with my eyes as the noise was very irritating on the concrete and did not help the migraine that threatened to take over. She spun around to face us, she had very pretty blue eyes that were complimented by her short curly blonde hair. I sighed pissed because more than likely she would have affairs every couple of months with the students in her class. These men were hard to resist, even to a woman of a higher stature, they embodied everything that someone could possibly want, but when you got to know them they were difficult to get along with. I almost envied her position, had I not gone the military route perhaps I'd be teaching and free of my past that plagued me every step I took.
"Thank you, hello, we will be dealing with the F-5s and A-4s as our MiG simulators. Now then as most of you know the F-5 doesn't have the thrust-to-weight ratio that the MiG-28 has, and it doesn't bleed energy below 300 knots, like the MiG-28. However, the MiG-28 does have a problem with it's inverted flight tanks. It won't do a negative G pushover. The latest intelligence tells us that the most it will do is 1 negative G…" She paused watching Maverick lean over to Goose and whisper into his ear. I rolled my eyes, apparently, it was already time to be a show-off and annoy all the other pilots and RIOs in the room.
"Excuse me, lieutenant. Is there something wrong?" She asked Maverick as he slid his sunglasses onto his face to block out the sun that was threatening our eyes.
"Yes, ma'am, the data on the MiG is inaccurate." Maverick cleared his throat before telling her that she was an idiot.
"How's that, lieutenant?" She asked him amused, preventing herself from laughing out loud. Maverick took off his glasses to emphasize some sort of point he was getting at.
"Well, I just happened to see a MiG-28 do…" Maverick started, Goose didn't let him get very far though.
"We... We." Goose said, looking at him pointedly, annoyed that Maverick had left him out, a smile broke out on my face. Fucking Goose, never wanted to be left out of the action that Maverick got them into. Crystal elbowed me,
"I taught him that," She said snickering. I almost lost my composure, these men were toddlers sometimes who couldn't find a way to stick up for themselves. But I'm glad Crystal had taught him where to find his balls.
"Sorry Goose." Maverick paused looking at his RIO before turning back to Charlie.
"We happened to see a MiG-28 do a four-G negative dive." He corrected himself, making sure Goose was included this time.
"Where did you see this?" She asked him more questions.
"That's classified," Maverick told her, I could tell he was smirking before I even heard the words come out of his face.
"It's what?" She asked this time confused.
"It's classified. I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you." Maverick continued to mansplain to her.
"Lieutenant, I have top-secret clearance. The Pentagon sees to it that I know more than you." She countered, I will admit it seemed she could stand up for herself. She almost impressed me, but barely.
"Well, ma'am, it doesn't seem so in this case, now does it?" Maverick replied his smart ass just couldn't stop with the snarky comments. I understood this in a way because civilians did like to pretend they were smarter than we were. It was almost as if they just thought we were there to fly and look pretty but didn't know anything.
"So Lieutenant, where exactly were you?" Charlie persisted in asking him.
"Well, we…" Maverick paused dramatically yet again to receive praise from Goose.
"Thank you," Goose replied before Mav continued.
"Started up on his six when he pulled through the clouds and then I moved in above him." Maverick started to explain finally getting to his point.
"Well, if you were directly above him how could you see him?" Charlie asked. This conversation was starting to feel a bit personal to both of them. I could feel eyes on my back which made me turn to see Iceman.
"True?" He mouthed to me. I shrugged, not entirely sure because it was before my shift that they were engaged with the MiG and we'd really never had a conversation about it.
"Because I was inverted," Maverick told her.
"Bullshit." Iceman coughed out.
"No, he was man, it was a really great move. He was inverted." Goose said, looking back to the perpetrator who had called them out.
"You were in a four-G inverted dive with a MiG-28?" She asked this time disbelievingly. She wasn't alone, no one really seemed to believe it. I wasn't sure what I believed.
"Yes ma'am," Maverick told her.
"At what range?" She asked continuing on her line of questioning. Maverick and Goose stopped answering to have a sidebar.
"About two meters?" Maverick asked Goose.
"It was actually about one and a half I think. It was one and a half. I've got a great Polaroid of it. He's right there. It must be one and a half. It was a nice picture." Goose explained to not only Maverick but the entire class as well. I heard two other pilots behind me stifle their laughter.
"Lieutenant, what were you doing there?" She asked.
"Thanks, I like my pictures." Goose was continuing on his random thought, "Communicating," Goose said to Mav giving him the answer.
"Communicating… Keeping up foreign relations. I was you know, giving him the bird." Maverick said unrelenting.
"You know, the finger," Goose told her as he flipped off our new instructor in question.
"Yes, I know the finger, Goose." She said, I smiled, I always did enjoy Goose's dry sense of humor. He could always make me laugh when it was needed.
"I'm sorry, I hate it when it does that. Sorry." He apologized to her putting his middle finger away.
"So you're the one," Charlie said to Maverick. I just about choked on the water that I had been sipping on for this entire conversation.
"Yes ma'am." He replied.
"All right, gentleman, we have a hop to take. The hard deck on this hop will be 10,000ft, there will be no engagement below that. Move it." Jester said from the back of the classroom breaking up the weird energy that had filled the room. I sighed, what had transpired in that classroom had made me want to puke, had we learned anything? No not really except that a MiG can in fact do a negative G pushover. I had a feeling that Charlie had manipulated that conversation out of Maverick in order to find out who the pilot was on the briefing she had read for that particular mission. Crystal and I walked down the hallway through the upstairs lounge and to the girl's locker room. I leaned my head against the cold metal enjoying the feeling.
"You gonna be alright for our flight?" Crystal asked me, genuinely curious as she put her books in her own locker.
"Yeah I'll be fine, let's go blow some bitches out of the water," I said to her putting my things away as well and heading out to the tarmac for the preflight.
