Archive of Our Own

The first thing he notices is the sand.

He’s lying almost face down in it; an itchy, moist sensation that scrapes his cheek unpleasantly. Then there’s the sound of waves, mild rushes of lazy water somewhere close behind him. Something soaks his big toe. Closer than he thought.

The next thing he notices is the humming.

It’s surprisingly clear despite the low volume, drifting in and out with the waves in a significantly off-key rendition of what he’s mildly surprised to be able to recognise as Careless Whisper.

Awareness seeps into him slowly, like molasses through a sieve. Now that he notices it, there’s a mild ache in his neck, like he’d slept on it too weirdly for too long, and he’s also sticky with sweat and seawater, the oppressive heat of the sun doing nothing to help matters. It occurs to him that his eyes are closed, so he attempts to crack them open, but the burst of light that shoots straight to his brain makes him scrunch them shut again. He groans.

The humming stops. There’s a shuffling noise, and then a shadow falls over him.

“Hey man, are you awake?” A clear voice says softly somewhere above his left eyebrow. He manages to make some sort of mangled noise of affirmation. The voice chuckles.

“Okay, take your time.” There’s a shifting movement, and the shadow settles. The humming resumes.

He lies there for a couple more minutes, before finally working up the courage to open his eyes again. This time, with the shadow, it’s significantly easier. He lifts his lids slowly.

There’s a knee in his face. Said knee is attached to, upon further assessment, a man who is sitting cross-legged next to him and thumbing absently through a tattered book. He’s in a white tee and what looks like green cargo pants. The sun backlights him, a golden silver adorning his silhouette. The humming stops, and the man turns to look at him. A smile bursts across his features.

“Hello,” the man says, the very picture of an angel.

With a little effort and the other man’s firm grip on his bicep, he manages to sit up and take in his surroundings completely. They’re on a stretch of beach, the sand gray with specks of black and the horizon vast and unbroken. There’s a few palm trees dotted along behind them, where the sand gives way to a grassy hill. The sun shines merrily without a cloud to stop it. He squints, and then turns away from it only to unwittingly look his companion in the eye.

The angel smiles. From this angle, he can see that the other man is actually in what looks like a flight suit that’s been unzipped to the waist and tied up.

“I’m Maverick,” he says, offering his hand. He hesitates, but takes it. “And you?”

“I’m—” he blinks. Nothing springs to mind. He racks his brain, but all he can remember is the feeling of sand against his cheek. “Uh.”

Maverick looks at him, the smile dimming slightly as a serious look falls over his face. “You can’t remember?”

“No,” he says, and his voice is croaky with disuse. He clears his throat awkwardly. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Maverick says reassuringly, “You understand me. That’s enough for now. Give me a minute?”

At his nod, Maverick turns back to his book. His brow scrunches in concentration as he flips through it. Now that he’s more alert, he notices the thickness of the book and its burnt edges.

“What is that?”

Maverick looks up. “Manual for a helicopter.”

“You fly?”

“For the U.S. Navy.” There’s a hint of pride in Maverick’s voice. “Not usually copters, though, so,” he wiggles the book.

“Huh.”

Silence stretches over them.

“Are you going to fly one?”

“I was flying one,” Maverick corrects, and he notices for the first time that not unlike the book, the other man is also slightly singed.

“Was, huh?”

“Had to land a little… unexpectedly.” Maverick admits. “On account of the volcano.”

“The— sorry?”

Maverick looks up at him. “You really can’t remember anything?”

He tries, but a blank expanse of nothing yawns back at him. He shakes his head. Maverick looks contemplative for a moment, before seemingly arriving at a conclusion.

“I was flying a SAR operation,” he says, “Trying to find a missing aircraft. Commercial, but you know how politics are.”

“Don’t remind me.” Maverick snorts, and it’s unfairly attractive.

“So I was off the books. Anyway, last notice of its signal was around —” he gestures behind them, “— here. A whole chain of islands, middle of nowhere, right on a tectonic boundary. Long story short, sudden eruption warning, I lost signal, engine started crapping out over the volcano, and I landed it. Relatively intact. And after all that, no eruption. Disappointing, really.”

He gives Maverick a once over. “You look like you went a few rounds with a bonfire.”

Maverick shrugs. “I said relatively, not completely.” He flips through the manual some more, before sighing and clapping the book shut with some finality.

“We gotta go,” he tells him, and stretches before hopping up onto the balls of his feet. “It gets dark fast around here.”

“Wait, hang on,” he stumbles over his words, and then over his feet as he rushes to follow. Maverick grabs out at him, the firm grip allowing him to regain his balance. He’s a lot shorter than he looked sitting down. “Just— hang on. What do I have to do with any of this?”

“Oh!” Maverick clicks his tongue, “I found you washed up on the shore. You can’t confirm my thinking — because, well, your memory — but you might be from the plane I’m trying to find. And even if you’re not, I’m a SAR officer. It’s my job to take care of you, so I figured we might as well stick together anyway. Not like there’s anybody here anymore.”

He mulls it over. Maverick has a point. And then—

“Anymore?”

A ten minute walk from the beach, and they’re standing on the edge of a ghost town.

The town sits in the middle of a shallow valley, shielded by what seems to just be hills with a scattering of tree clumps here and there. Towering over all of it in the distance is a large mountain, which Maverick points at and mouths volcano. The buildings are low-level; dilapidated squares of concrete that dot the space, covered with a thick layer of ash. Despite the evident abandonment, trash cans still sit on the curbs. A child’s bike, soot-covered, lies tossed on its side. Someone’s mailbox has the flag up. All signs of a life left hurriedly.

“Guessing an eruption forced the move,” Maverick says off-handedly, as he picks his way through the gray streets. He notices that they’re following a set of footprints, and it dawns on him that Maverick’s probably been awake a lot longer than he has, and with a lot more experience. “Most houses are fine inside, and there’s still cans of food. I set up in…here.”

They stop in front of a four-storey block, which—

He can’t help the bark of laughter that escapes him.

“Why,” he snorts, and flushes immediately at the genuine grin directed his way. “Why did you pick a building so…”

“Pink?” Maverick finishes for him, and they both look back at the block. “Well, it’s definitely unforgettable.”

“I don’t want to know what the color was like before the eruption.”

“I feel the same way. Come on, have you eaten?”

Maverick’s base is a small studio apartment on the second floor with an intact fire escape just outside the east window. It’s a corner unit facing the street, with a view of the majority of the valley. He marvels for a second at the military efficacy with which the space was chosen, before taking a proper look around at what was there.

A ragged mattress on a double bed, some cabinets, a couch that did not weather the ash as well as the building’s paint did, and a gas stove hooked up to a cylinder. The edge of a large plastic tub is visible through an ajar door; the bathroom. There’s also a dining table and one and a half usable chairs, but they’ve been pushed into the corner to make room for the ridiculous amount of books and manuals strewn across the living space. Upon closer inspection, the texts seem to be about a range of survival topics, but there’s more than one helicopter manual in the mess.

“Did you bring all of this?” He can’t help but ask. Maverick laughs.

“No, I found them in the library. Thought I might as well try to find a way to fix the radio, at least.” The sun’s almost gone, so Maverick flits about the apartment, lighting a small army of tea lights.

“Smart,” he says, and Maverick does a little preen at the praise which makes his heart flutter. “I feel kind of like dead weight here.”

A hand falls on his shoulder, and suddenly a pair of intense hazel eyes bore into his.

“You’re not dead weight,” Maverick says, so suddenly serious that he nods partly out of fear. “I’m really glad you’re here, and we’re going to get through this together. Okay?”

“I— yeah. Okay,” he manages to say, and Maverick is all smiles again.

“If you want, you can help me make some soup,” he offers, and smiles at the nod he gets in response.

“I can do soup,” he assures. He can’t remember ever using a stove, but he knows he can do it, which is a weird feeling to experience and has him second-guessing his own confidence until he looks down and realizes that he’s halfway through the motions on autopilot.

“Huh,” he says. Maverick peeks over his shoulder.

“Nice,” he grins, and then pauses. “You still don’t remember a name?”

“Um. No. Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Maverick assures him, “But I might give you a nickname then. If you don’t mind.”

“Go for it.” It’d be nice to have something, he decides, anything except for the empty chasm where memories were supposed to be.

Maverick studies him intently. It’s veering on the wrong side of uncomfortable when he says, “Hondo.”

“Excuse me?”

“I used to watch this western on TV at a home I was in. About this guy, Hondo, who basically went around stopping fights. Kind of diplomatic. I can’t remember a lot of it, but I thought he was super cool. A lot angrier than you are, though.”

“Hondo,” he says, rolling the letters around his mouth.

“You just strike me as the Hondo type,” Maverick says quickly, “You don’t have to—” “No, no,” he cuts him off. “I like it.”

The corners of Maverick’s eyes crinkle. It’s unfairly beautiful.

“Nice to meet you then, Hondo.” He holds his hand out.

“Nice to meet you too, Maverick,” Hondo says, and takes it.

They spend the first few days indoors in the dusty apartment at Maverick’s insistence, on account of Hondo’s alleged plane crash survival and any hidden injuries it might have come with. Maverick does a pretty thorough medical examination, through which he diagnoses Hondo with a mild concussion, weakened muscles, and severe retrograde amnesia which gets the same prescription of “You need rest, buddy.”

“You’re surprisingly good at this for someone who isn’t a medic,” Hondo tells him during the process. “Minus the prescription.”

“Been in your shoes too many times; it stuck with me after a while,” Maverick replies, and then strikes Hondo’s knee so efficiently that Hondo kicks him in the face.

Despite Hondo’s relative wellness, the houserest is declared mandatory and Maverick passes the day either reading, working out, or fiddling with a mess of wires he’d torn out of the helicopter. Hondo, for lack of anything better to do, also picks up a couple of books, gets well acquainted with the native birdlife of the Congo basin, and tries not to stare as Maverick does a hundred elevated pushups in a row without straining. Dinner is often something tinned, and then night falls and they go to sleep — Hondo somewhat guiltily on the bed, and Maverick on the couch.

In between all that, they talk.

Hondo doesn’t have much to say because he can’t remember anything, let alone anything worth saying, but Maverick talks enough for the both of them. He’s almost jovially optimistic despite the fact that they’re both stranded on an abandoned island, and tells Hondo about his job as a naval aviator turned SAR officer, his whirlwind on and off (currently off) romance with an admiral’s daughter, as well has ridiculous anecdotes about his friends from Top Gun.

“God,” Maverick says, wiping tears from his eyes as he finishes recounting a spectacular tale involving three naval aviators in their prime, a camera where it probably shouldn’t have been, and a feral cat locked in the base housing at 0200. Hondo’s side hurts from laughing too hard. “Would you believe one of them is a three-star admiral now?

“I hope you whipped that photo out at his wedding,” Hondo manages to choke out through his laughter.

“No, I saved an even worse one for that occasion,” Maverick grins. “Two words: swim call.”

Hondo stares at him. “You didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?” Maverick says innocently, and then his brow furrows slightly.

“Hondo, I’ve been talking about the Navy for three days straight now,” he says out of nowhere.

“Um,” Hondo says, “Yes?”

Maverick stares at him.

“What's a swim call?”

Hondo blinks.

“Uh, when y’all jump into the ocean, flood the lower decks to swim; that kind of shit, right?”

“Yeah, more or less,” Maverick says, looking contemplative. “How do you know that?”

“I —” He blinks again. “I just do.”

“No memories?”

“Still none.”

“Huh,” Maverick bites his lip in thought. “Maybe you’re Navy too.”

“Maybe,” Hondo says, and it’s a nice thought. They probably would’ve never run into each other, but the idea isn’t awful. They couldn’t have been friends, because Maverick hadn’t shown any sort of recognition, but maybe their circles overlapped. He wonders what he would’ve been like on a carrier; maybe as an LSO or even just a yellowshirt, making sure pilots like Maverick launched and landed safely. Or maybe he was an admiral. The thought makes him laugh out loud.

“What’s so funny?” Maverick nudges him.

“No, nothin’.” Hondo grins, “Just wondering. It’d be nice if I was. Navy, I mean. It’d make a whole lot of sense too; I just wish I could remember anything.”

“You will,” Maverick promises, “I’m sure you will.”

“Thank you, doctor,” Hondo tells him, and Maverick gives him a light slap on the back.

“I’ve never met anyone with amnesia,” he admits, “but they always get them back on TV, so.”

“Very reassuring.”

“I’ve been told I’m very good at that.”

When Hondo blinks awake the next morning, Maverick’s already up. There’s a lukewarm mug of watered-down coffee waiting for him on the floor by the bed.

Maverick looks up from the mess of wires on the floor and smiles. Unfortunately, a head torch that shines just a smidge brighter than his grin is wrapped around his forehead, blinding Hondo.

“Christ.”

“Oh, shit,” Maverick reaches up hurriedly and rips it off, “Sorry, sorry man. You okay?”

“Yeah, ‘s fine,” Hondo squints as spots dance across his vision. “Why the torch?”

“Why? Oh. Well, come over here and have a look. Don’t kick over the coffee.”

Hondo gets out of bed, gingerly avoiding the mug. He pads over to the middle of the room and bends over to take a closer look. Up close, the mess of wires resolves itself somewhat into a slightly less messy circuit, wires criss-crossing and connecting across a motherboard. There’s a small radio body dangling off the side.

“It’s from the heli,” Maverick explains, “I’d have kept it connected if I could’ve, but it just —” he waves vaguely, “Didn’t want to stay connected. I’m trying to turn it into a handheld.”

Hondo squats down. “May I?”

At Maverick’s gestured go ahead, he takes the mechanism carefully. Turns it over. “Hm.”

Something in his gut tells him to exchange two wires, so he reaches in to pick them apart. Too late, he hears Maverick’s soft intake and realizes belatedly that he’s just tearing apart the other man’s hard work like a feral cat.

“Sorry,” he begins, but Maverick shakes his head vehemently.

“No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean — please, continue.” Hondo tries to see if he’s lying, but Maverick just looks curious. So he continues.

A couple wires. Then a few more. Removing one or two, trimming another. At some point, Maverick hands him a screwdriver silently. Then, he disappears entirely from Hondo’s periphery. He can still hear him walking about the space, but Hondo’s too focused on the slowly coming together device in his hands.

After a while, there’s a tap on his shoulder. He looks up to see Maverick holding out a protein bar.

“You’ve been at it for two hours,” he says, “Come on, eat.”

Hondo rubs his burning eyes. “I think I need glasses. I can’t see the smaller bits.”

“I didn’t see any around you,” Maverick frowns, “But that’s fine, tell you what. After you eat, let’s go out and get some.”

“Get some?”

“There’s an optometrist on the other side,” Maverick points in a vaguely westerly direction, “And I think we could hit a couple of the less ashy stores on the way. Glasses don’t expire, do they?”

Hondo’s first venture outside in four days is relatively underwhelming. It’s all much the same as indoors, since Maverick tore down the thick curtains for them to use as blankets and half the windows no longer have glass for some unknown reason. Still, Hondo tries to appreciate the moment, before having to jog slightly to catch up to Maverick’s purposeful strides.

They cut through streets, walking past snapshots in time preserved in a thin layer of ash. Hondo is reminded, bemusedly, about Pompeii. He wonders if the people who left their lives behind miss it.

Maverick stops them outside a very dusty shoplot. The sign is illegible under the soot, but there’s knocked over stands of glasses in the display, so Maverick goes to open the door. It doesn’t budge.

“Who locks their shop while they’re running from a volcano?” he mutters, and with a frown starts peeling off his t-shirt.

“Uh,” Hondo says, “I don’t like that look,” but Maverick’s already wrapping the fabric into a ball around his fist and taking aim.

The sound of shattering glass echoes down the street.

Maverick reaches gingerly around the shards with his other hand and unlatches the door. He pulls it open with a flourish.

“It’s the only one I have,” he grins. “After you.”

Hondo doesn’t know how optometrists should work, but he finds a couple of pairs ready for collection with powers written on them. Neither the thin square ones or the chunky circles do much more than give him a headache.

“These would look good on you,” Maverick suddenly says, and Hondo turns to see him hold up a pair of thick-rimmed, almost round, black frames. He takes them doubtfully.

“I don’t even know if they’d — huh.” His vision clears as soon as he puts them on. He picks up a faded invoice and holds it at arm's length, and snorts good-naturedly as he reads every word clearly. They’re perfect. “Well, damn.”

“Clearly I’m magic,” Maverick laughs, and Hondo does elbow him then.

They climb into the window of a basement thrift store at the protest of Hondo’s back and walk out with veritable treasures as compensation, including a brightly coloured poncho several sizes too big for Maverick, and a collection of ugly tropical-patterned button downs for Hondo. Maverick spots a chemist and they ransack boxes of expired ibuprofen, as well as sports tape, leading to Hondo getting thoroughly bludgeoned by the fact that the man is fifty and not just shy of his mid-thirties when he explains it’s for his knees. There’s an IT repair shop next door, so Hondo lets his gut direct him around until he has a small pile of tools. He’ll just have to wait to see whether any of it is useful.

On the way back, Maverick shows him the small grocer where he’d been getting their meals from; with most of the fresh food having long rotted away and everything in the fridges spoilt beyond saving. Maverick grabs multiple packs of tea lights before heading straight for the canned goods aisle for more tins of soup, corned beef, and beans. Hondo spots a tin of peaches too, so he takes it. Maverick looks surprised but pleased at the action, as if it hadn’t occurred to him until then that he could take anything that wasn’t scouts-standard fare. They end up with several more tinned peaches.

The sun is setting as they leave, so they hurry back to the apartment, not wanting to be outside in pitch darkness. Maverick sets up their new candles as Hondo makes some of the corned beef and cracks open a tin of peaches. It’s sickly sweet and neither of them can finish their portion, but the taste is refreshing even with the lukewarm temperature. By the time they finish, there’s nothing outside except the pale light of the moon.

“It’s too late to work on the radio,” Hondo says, a little dejected, because his mind is suddenly buzzing with ideas. It’s still unsettling, the remembrance of skills with the absence of experience to support them, but he’s getting more used to just letting himself discover what he can do now. Not thinking too hard, and just doing it.

Maverick pats his back.

“We had a busy day, Hondo. There’s always tomorrow.” he grins, before turning and stripping off his flight suit. Hondo stares at him, and then blushes fiercely as Maverick turns around and winks.

Hondo takes the opportunity to scramble to his own pile of new clothes and hurriedly change into something that wasn’t crusty with dried seawater. It turns out to be a Guns N’ Roses shirt and a pair of boxers with ducks printed on them. He looks up to see Maverick staring at him, an unreadable expression on his face. He’s wearing the hideous poncho and nothing else, which on anybody else would’ve been laughable but on him just looks… normal. Good, even.

Hondo tears his eyes away, about to get into bed before realizing that he should offer it to Maverick, especially with the new knowledge of his age.

“Do you want —” he trails off as he gestures to the bed, unsure how to phrase it without sounding rude.

“Yes,” Maverick interrupts, before striding across the room and surging up to kiss him.

Hondo’s brain short-circuits.

Every cell of his body screams in either celebration or terror or confusion, a cacophony that overwhelms him until he can’t tell what is what anymore except for the feeling of Maverick’s chapped lips on his and his hand curled into the back of his neck. Dimly, he’s aware he’s not kissing back, and that Maverick is faltering, backing away.

“Sorry, I think I misunderstood,” he says, and Hondo wrenches focus back into himself. Maverick’s face is closed-off, carefully neutral.

“No, it’s not. Uh,” Hondo says, and Maverick seems to retreat even more into his stupid poncho, “Maverick. Mav.”

“I don’t need the bed,” Maverick tells him, apropos of nothing, and turns. Hondo’s hand shoots out to stop him.

“Please, Maverick, hang on,” he stutters, “It’s not that I don’t want… you. I’m just — I don’t even remember my name, man.”

Maverick blinks, and then looks chastened. In the flickering candlelight, he looks impossibly young.

“God,” his jaw flexes, “I never really took it to heart when people told me I move too fast, but I’m starting to see what they mean. I’m sorry, Hondo.”

“Don’t be,” Hondo tells him automatically, but he finds that he does mean it, despite a slight unexplainable feeling that’s settling in the pit of his stomach, not unlike trepidation. “I did enjoy it. Just surprised me, that’s all.”

“I’m not very good at thinking ahead,” Maverick admits. “And I’ve always been a bit easy, if we want to be polite about it. You’re just pretty much exactly my type, personality included even if you can’t remember your past, and I don’t actually know why I’m telling you all this.”

Hondo isn’t sure either, but he’s definitely flushed something fierce and heavily flattered that someone who looks and acts the way Maverick does would be attracted to him. “I’m just that approachable, I guess.”

“That and then some,” Maverick doesn’t bother to hide the way his eyes rake over Hondo in a way that’s downright filthy, before seemingly catching himself and giving a cheeky but sheepish smile.

That, somehow, is the thing that breaks Hondo’s indecision. And as Maverick laughs into his mouth, gravelly with want, he thinks he might also hear relief.

“Hey, what if I was actually a virgin and I didn’t remember?” Hondo asks afterward, slightly breathless as he collapses next to Maverick’s boneless body, sticky with sweat.

“I’d tell you,” Maverick groans into the mattress, “And believe me, you weren’t.”

Maverick is dead asleep the next morning, and Hondo wonders absurdly if he’s someone managed to fuck the man unconscious before deciding that it’s not actually that surprising in hindsight. He’d never actually seen Maverick sleep in the five or so days they’d been together. And then he thinks about how it’s only been five days.

Shoving away the nagging discomfort that nips at the edge of his thoughts, he extracts himself from Maverick and quietly tries to make some coffee. He scoops out some water from the tub in the bathroom, which had been filled since before his arrival. It makes him wonder just how long Maverick had been by himself as he sets up the pot on the stove. While the water boils, he does a cursory wash as well. They’re not running low on water yet, but he makes a note regardless to ask just how much they have to go on.

Stepping out of the bathroom, he glances over at Maverick, who is still fast asleep, snuffling quietly into the pillow. The pot comes to a boil, and he pours out the water into their mugs. A moment or two of silence, as he watches Maverick sleep, and then he puts a mug by the bedside and quietly slips out.

He doesn’t go far. He doesn’t even leave the building. Hondo climbs up to the roof instead, and squints across the bright summer horizon.

They’re in a valley, but it’s shallow enough that he can catch glimpses of the black sand beaches where they had met. Hondo casts his gaze around, absently trying to pick out if he saw anything of interest, but there’s nothing that catches his eye.

“Hondo?” A voice floats up. Maverick’s awake.

“On the roof,” Hondo calls down, and moments later a messy lump of hair sticks itself out from a window below. Maverick looks up at him.

“Whatcha doing there?”

“Taking in the view.”

“Hope it’s nice,” Maverick calls back. “Thanks for the coffee, sweetheart.”

“No problem, honey. It’s beautiful. How’s your back, by the way?”

“Sore. Any other stupid questions?”

“Nope. My bad.”

Hondo spends the morning tinkering with the wires as Maverick seemingly does all the sleeping he hadn’t been doing since they met in one go. Sometime around three, he gets up to wash, and Hondo remembers to ask him about their water situation. It turns out that there’s a river not too far from them, and that Maverick had spent an entire day hauling buckets before he found Hondo. This leads to a discussion about just how long Maverick had been here, which he, oddly enough, despite his openness about everything else, shrugs off.

“Maybe two or three,” he says, now reading about the Boeing Triple Seven. He looks fairly agitated, and Hondo watches as it increases the more he reads.

“Show me where the river is?” he asks finally, “That way I can get water if something happens to you.”

Maverick seems to startle out of his panic, but he nods. “There’s a pretty big landmark for it, so you can’t miss it. Wanna go now?”

Hondo can’t quite place the look on Maverick’s face; the same, concealing neutrality with elements of something else. It looks like fear.

“Why not?”

The landmark is Maverick’s helicopter.

Looking at it, Hondo feels as if the phrase “relatively intact” had been a very generous way to describe the state of the aircraft.

“I am honestly surprised you survived,” he says numbly as they pass the wreck. Maverick shrugs.

“I pulled you out of the sea. Could say the same for you.”

“Touché.”

They fill up a couple of large PET bottles and turn to head back. Before they leave, Hondo very carefully pokes into the assumed cockpit of the copter and unearths a couple of tiny transmitters that Mav must’ve missed when wrenching out the components. He pockets those.

Once back, he barely stops to think about dinner as he settles with the radio, determined to get the most of the daylight hours. Maverick doesn’t say anything about it and just starts doing his usual morning workout routine, albeit a few hours later than usual.

The sun is streaking twilight over them when Hondo snaps something in place and a burst of crackling static shoots through the room. Maverick’s head shoots up in surprise from his book on stress and strain curves.

“Was that…?” He drops the book and darts over. Hondo stares down at their little mess, now slightly more tidy and sporting a fiddly antenna. No casing still, but he wasn’t focusing on aesthetics.

“Maybe?” he tries to turn the knob. Another burst of warbled sound. Maverick looks at him, wide eyed.

Hondo’s heart is hammering in his chest. He tries again, trying to find a frequency—

“— They’ve done it! The third playoffs and they’ve done it!”

A voice bursts forth from the speaker, crackling but understandable. Maverick’s hand shoots out to grip Hondo.

“Holy shit,” he says.

“Holy shit,” Hondo says.

They listen to the broadcast for a while, shocked and elated. It’s about baseball, Hondo thinks, which is an odd channel to get in the middle of nowhere, but he figures sports fans have the determination for it.

After a while, Maverick frowns.

“This is a rerun,” he says.

“Huh?” Hondo listens closer, to the crowd and the announcer, but nothing’s standing out to him.

“Yeah,” Maverick cocks his head. “I went to that game years ago. With my godson.”

“You have a godson?” Hondo says, turning around to catch a quick flash of something he can’t place flit across Maverick’s face.

“Mm,” Maverick doesn’t elaborate, so Hondo doesn’t push it.

“So what, this channel only does old sport play by plays?”

“I don’t know,” Maverick murmurs, but he seems transfixed, brow furrowed, almost like he’s trying to grasp something that’s slipping away from him. “Can you try seeing if we can get a message out?”

Hondo tries, but the radio does nothing more than static bursts before going back to the same game, no matter how much he tries.

“I’ll try to fix it tomorrow,” he finally says, as the last bits of light fade away. Maverick, in all the excitement, had forgotten to light the tea lights, so they sit in darkness, listening to the stadium roar.

“I’m going to bed.” Hondo says quietly. Maverick nods absently. “Night, Maverick.”

“Night.”

Hondo wakes up the next morning with Maverick’s face buried into the crook of his neck. It’s too hot to be sharing a bed, but he still feels slightly euphoric at the implication that the night before last hadn’t just been for relief, even as the nagging feeling returns. Feeling a bit bold, he ignores it and gives the bird’s nest of hair tickling his nose a kiss. Maverick snuggles in even closer.

“Hey, Mav.”

“Mmugh.”

“What time did the broadcast end?”

“Mmmmm.”

“Helpful.”

The radio is at the foot of the bed, like a dog Maverick had let on out of a desire to be closer to it. It’s not making any noise at all, not even little crackles of current, so Hondo decides that it probably needs another look.

He’s just about to reach down to it when it screams a shrill tone, scaring the shit out of him and making Maverick sit bolt upright. They stare at the radio, which makes what can only be described as an electrical gurgle before another two voices crackle out.

“—ing your radio, asshole.”

“Nobody’s on the air, man, we’re in the middle of fucking nowhere. I’m freezing my balls off, let me complain.”

“Be serious, Bagman. I’m not getting into shit again because of you.”

“We’re in Alaska. Hate to break it to you, Phoenix, but we’re already in deep shit. They’re trying to kill us. Spending New Year’s Eve doing cargo runs out of this place? Death would be kinder.”

“I agree. Your death would be kinder to us all.”

“Do you know them?” Hondo says, listening to the two people on the air bicker.

“Not a clue,” Maverick mutters, “But they’re not here. New Year? Alaska? Is this radio just picking up things from the past? And how the hell is it getting onto naval channels?”

“Feel like that’s impossible,” Hondo says weakly, but he can’t explain it either. “I’m going to try and talk to them.”

Again, the radio is unyielding to his fiddling, and after slightly too long of two grown men sitting in a bed yelling at it, decides it’s had enough and shuts off completely.

“Goddamnit.” Hondo lets it fall back onto the mattress, defeated. “I give up.”

The radio working — for lack of a better term — seemed to have ignited a spark in Maverick. He asks Hondo to stay with it in case anything else comes through, and disappears off with single minded determination for the better part of three hours before returning with an odd mismatch of camping gear scavenged from the other apartments. There’s even a tent.

“I don’t like that look, Mav,” Hondo says as he watches the other man dump the gear onto the manual-strewn floor.

“It’s the only one I’ve got,” Maverick replies easily, his thoughts running so fast Hondo can practically see the exhaust coming out his ears as his eyes dart around brightly. “We should see whether it works in other spots,” he says, “And do a sweep of the perimeter. Maybe there’s land we can’t see, or a pier of some sort. Up for a hike?”

“Why does it feel like I don’t have a choice,” Hondo says, and ignores Maverick’s large grin. He’s actually fine with it. It’s not like he has anything better to do.

They spend one last night in the apartment, and a very small part of it actually resting. Hondo’s starting to wonder if Maverick can only sleep after sex. He lies awake, on his side as Maverick octopus grips him from behind, already lightly snoring, and tries to take stock of his life.

That unsettling feeling that he had had since their kiss remains; in the heat of the moment everything else overwhelms it, but Hondo can’t shake it in the aftermath, or when he’s alone with his own thoughts. Now that he’s sat with it for a couple of days, he’s fairly sure it’s the absence of worry.

He can’t quite explain it, but it’s something about how okay he is with the whole situation. He’s got amnesia, he’s stranded on an island with no real hope of rescue, and to top it all of he’s in some sort of odd unestablished relationship with a man who he met a week ago, and something tells him he’s irrevocably in love with Maverick, regardless of if Maverick feels the same way. And he’s okay with it all. He should be frustrated, cautious, desperate for survival. But he can’t bring himself to feel more than a mild annoyance, before wanting to move on and do something else. Preferably Maverick.

Hondo tries to understand this, sliding his thoughts around into categories like Maverick does for the books on the floor, but conclusions remain elusive. The more he tries, the more he realizes he can’t establish a benchmark because of his missing memories, the more the anxiousness rises, and the more he doesn’t feel it despite knowing it should be there.

It’s too still. The sticky heat of the summer night is relentless without any sort of breeze to assuage it. Maverick starts to weigh on Hondo both physically and mentally, until he can’t take it anymore.

“Sorry, Mav,” he whispers, before getting out of the bed and moving towards the couch.

If Maverick thinks anything about him moving away, he doesn’t say it. They leave with their packs on their back and the radio in Hondo’s hands as the sun breaks across the horizon sleepily, and head off in the direction of the volcano. Maverick hadn’t walked the perimeter before, so with no real benchmark for the island’s size they decide to climb to the highest point first, where the town would at least still be visible.

They make the journey to the base in good time, and Maverick mutters out some calculations before deciding they could probably drop their packs halfway up on a plateau if they made it before noon. It may have jinxed their progress, because they quickly find out that the climb is just on the wrong side of challenging; not quite a walk up but not quite a bouldering exercise either, and stretches on forever. Even Maverick stops once to stare up and say, “I honestly don’t feel like we’ve moved at all.”

“If you think that, imagine how I feel,” Hondo grumbles.

They make it to the plateau just barely before one, which means that Maverick goes through yet another round of muttering as he paces around and squints at the sun position while Hondo lies on the ground and inhales a protein bar. The radio had crackled twice more on the way up, but with no discernable words. It sits next to Hondo silently.

Hondo gives the antenna a nudge. Then a bigger one. Then he picks it up and starts holding the entire thing in the air, attempting to get somewhere with it—

“—ow, the weather for the week of 28th July, 1986 —”

“Now it’s just fucking with us,” Hondo sighs.

“Yeah,” Maverick says, and he sounds just a little strangled, which Hondo chalks up to the ridiculous amount of mental math he’d been doing for the last ten minutes.

The volcano is inactive, allegedly, but Hondo quickly vetoes going anywhere truly near the crater. They manage to get to a unique outcrop that gives them a 360 degree view of everything, and stop their progress there so Maverick can scramble up it like a monkey.

“I can see pretty much all of the coast,” he calls down, “So it’s not huge. Maybe a 50 mile perimeter, at most.”

“50 miles is a fair fucking amount,” Hondo says, already exhausted. “Man, I don’t think I was in the Navy anymore.”

“You’ve done really well if you haven’t,” Maverick grins at him. He lifts up the radio and gives it a few tweaks, but nothing sounds off. With a sigh, he carefully picks his way back down.

“Sun’s going to go down in less than an hour,” he says, “We’re going to have to camp on the plateau. That sound alright?”

“Do I have a choice?” Hondo groans theatrically. Maverick thumps him jovially on the back.

It’s a lot colder up there than down below. Hondo shivers a little and looks out over the vast space as Maverick builds a small but toasty fire. The view of the setting sun is ethereal, painting the landscape in hues of orange and turning the sea into crystals of gold. Maverick looks up at him, a soft smile on his face, and backlit like this he looks like an angel again, haloed by the sun.

His heart aches. He doesn’t know anymore if he can be the same person he was before his memories left. Before Maverick.

Maverick seems to see something on his face he’s not showing, because he clambers over to kiss Hondo and say, “How’s this for a first date?”

Hondo grins despite himself. “Could be better,” he informs him, and Maverick laughs a full, wheezing kind of giggle that Hondo makes his life mission to hear forever.

“We’ll find the plane and any other survivors,” Maverick says, determined optimism in his voice as he points across the coastline. “And then when we’re off the island I’ll take you on a proper one.”

Hondo laughs. “Man, they’ve probably already found the plane without you. I don’t think we’ve got to worry about it anymore, just us.”

Maverick stills.

“Why would you say that?” His voice is carefully level. Wrong thing to say.

“I mean,” Hondo fumbles, before waving his hand helplessly, “If it crashed into the sea, it’d have sunk by now.”

“Maybe it crashed on land.”

“But you pulled me out of the sea,” Hondo doesn’t quite know what the tone of Maverick’s voice is, but everything feels like he’s slipping out of a well oiled routine into something much more volatile. “Look man, is it that important you find this wreck?”

“Plane. Hondo, I— I do SAR. It’s my duty,” Maverick says, jaw set like a challenge.

“I’m not— Mav, I’m not telling you to give up. Just — it doesn’t have to be you personally, right? Your colleagues could’ve found them, man, it’s been six days. We haven’t seen a single sign of human life except us. Who’s looking for you?”

That seems to stop Maverick. He blinks, eyes suddenly lost as the anger leeches from them slowly.

“It’s still my duty,” he says, but the simmer is gone from his voice; replaced with uncertainty. “They’ll find me. Us.” he amends.

“They better,” Hondo mutters, and hides his relief as Maverick cracks a smile at that. “Look, we keep looking. But we gotta see if there’s a way off for us, man. Keep our options open.”

“Yeah,” Maverick says quietly. He closes his eyes. “I was outta line, Hondo. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. We can talk about it, if you’d like?”

“I don’t — not now. Tomorrow.” It’s slightly too dismissive for Hondo’s tastes, but Maverick just looks contemplative.

“Alright,” Hondo says, “Tomorrow.”

They don’t get to talk, because they oversleep and Maverick all but runs them down the back way of the mountain where he saw the river flow towards so they can refill water there instead of having to go back to the town. And when they do stop to rest, Maverick’s too focused on the radio.

It isn’t until when they reach another basalt beach, sand inky black, that Maverick says, “I think we can camp here for tonight.”

The sun is still blazing in the sky, but Hondo isn’t going to question any possible excuse for a stop and has his stuff on the ground before Maverick even finishes speaking. His ankles hurt, and so does his back. Maverick puts down his own pack and stumbles a little before stabilizing, which Hondo feels a little pang at.

“Come here,” he says softly, before he can think about it.

Maverick looks at him, and there’s that guarded, neutral look, so out of place but so familiar to Hondo now. Hondo waves him over with a little more insistence.

Maverick approaches slowly, and Hondo pats the ground next to him. “Lean against the pack.”

“I’m fine, Hondo.”

“I know you are. Now lean.”

A huff of a chuckle. Maverick does as he’s told, sliding down with just a small groan, soft amusement on his face. Hondo lifts his left knee into his lap and starts to massage it cautiously, watching closely for any signs of discomfort. Maverick just tips his head back with a quiet exhale, eyes closed and lashes stuck against his sweaty cheek. His hair is spiked and mussed from being run through so many times, damp with the exertion of the day. The muscles under Hondo’s fingertips twitch.

“Does the tape help?” He asks.

“Somewhat,” Maverick replies, not moving, and Hondo doesn’t continue the conversation.

They set up the tent as dusk falls over them, stars dusting the sky above and long shadows cast by the palms streaking across the beach. Maverick manages to start a fire that only smokes a little bit too much, and they roast some canned sardines. Hondo can’t help but stare out into the horizon, so vast and empty, and wonder if he’ll ever be able to be a person again after Maverick.

The next three days are spent making slow progress around the island by following the coastline; Maverick starts off strong, but Hondo soon notices the slight limp and puts his foot down. After some arguing, Maverick acquiesces to a lighter load and slower pace, and they continue their uneventful walk. The radio no longer responds to their attempts, but rather bursts to life merrily as it pleases; often playing a mix of old music, sports play by plays, and conversations between ships and aircraft of commercial and military grade.

Maverick doesn’t quite withdraw into himself; he still exchanges easy barbs with Hondo and they discuss their surroundings, but gone are the stories of the past, bright and full of life. Hondo tries to subtly poke him, but Maverick is good; he darts easily away from any topics that don’t concern their current predicament. He’s razor sharp, tensing at every crackle of the radio and a simmer of manic energy under an easygoing exterior Hondo can’t help but now see as armor. Give away just enough of yourself, and nobody notices what you’re hiding.

The coastline stretches on forever. There’s nothing on the horizon, just a never-ending stretch of unbroken, glittering ocean.

On the second night, Maverick swings his legs over him into a straddle, and leans down to nuzzle at his neck. The tent rustles.

“We are both so gross right now,” Hondo breathes out at him, and grins at Maverick’s little taken aback laugh.

“You could never be gross to me,” Maverick says, and despite the joking tone he still sounds so damn earnest, and it’s been a week, and Hondo wants to reach in and untangle the unsaid statements that wrap them both up to try and make any sense of it all.

“Who are you, Mav?” he says. “How do you make me feel like this when we’ve just met?”

It’s hard to see Maverick’s expression in the dark of the tent.

“I could say the same for you,” he finally says, and there’s an undercurrent of something, “I’m not a good person, Hondo. I fuck everything up, monumentally, all the time, and yet, even against all the odds, you—” he breaks off, jaw shifting as he bends over again, his fringe sweeping Hondo’s collarbone with how close his face is. He reaches out to Hondo’s wrist and curls his fingers around it, a tremor in his hand. “Please don’t push me away just yet.”

What can he say to that? Hondo nods, a barely noticeable shift against Maverick’s scalp, and Maverick breathes out in what feels like prayer.

“Tomorrow,” he raises his head up to meet Hondo’s lips, “You can hate me tomorrow,” Maverick says, as if Hondo could even begin to do such a thing in the first place.

Tomorrow comes with a crack of light that falls across Hondo’s face from where they had forgotten to zip up the tent. A slow stretch and a look around confirms that the space is empty. He can hear movement outside.

Maverick’s putting out the small fire they left burning the night before. He looks up at the tent rustling as Hondo crawls out, a broad grin on his face.

“Hey, Hondo.”

“Hey, Mav.”

“Sleep well?”

“Can’t complain.”

“That’s good,” he turns to look at his watch, and then to the horizon. “We should be coming back around to the beach where we met. Get back to the apartment; get some rest, check out the inland parts another day?”

“Sounds good,” Hondo sighs, “No sign of anything?”

“None,” Maverick hums. He seems a completely different person from the night before. Like he was the first time they met.

Hondo doesn’t know what to make of it. He keeps not knowing what to make of it as they pack up camp until Maverick, back to him as he ties up his pack, says lightly, “Do you like baseball?”

“Huh?” Hondo says.

Maverick doesn’t quite meet his eyes yet. He just waves his hand, continuing on with adjusting his pack for wearing.

“I feel like I’ve been unfair,” he says, suspiciously casual, “I’d really like to get to know you, Hondo.”

“I don’t even know myself,” Hondo says, bewildered. Maverick shrugs the pack on and turns to him.

“I think you know more than you think you do,” he says, “You don’t need your memories to think about what you did or didn’t like. Just feel it. Like the wires of the radio.”

Hondo stares at him. Like the wires. He thinks of baseball, of how he knows the rules and the equipment, the positions and players.

“Maybe I did,” he says. Then he thinks about whether he’d play it. Thinks about other sports. Some he can remember more than others. With a giddiness, he realizes that for the first time, the gaps between everything are giving him slivers of a life.

It’s not a lot, but it’ll do.

“Think I liked volleyball too,” he murmurs. “Football as well. Or maybe I just knew a lot about them.”

“Volleyball, huh,” Maverick grins, “I used to play in the afternoons with some other pilots. Missed a couple of dates with how invested I’d get in winning.”

“Of course you did,” Hondo laughs, as they set off.

Just before the stretch of beach where their first meeting happened, they stumble onto a broken down dock.

It must have connected to the town at some point, but hardened pyroclastic debris encase any pathways heading inland. There’s a decent-sized rowboat half buried in the sand.

“How’s the options looking?” Maverick asks, mirth badly hidden as he gestures to the boat, crouching down next to it. Hondo rolls his eyes and flips him off.

The radio crackles.

Both of them ignore it at first, because it had done frankly shit all in giving them anything useful or current since the first screech of static. And then the crackles resolve into a voice, muffled and frantic.

“—yday, mayday, mayday. United Flight 3—”

“It’s a distress call,” Hondo says with some surprise, as the pilot rattles off the plane number and position.

“It’s the plane,” Maverick says, and he reaches around to grab the radio from where it’s tied to his pack, staring at the tinny speaker. “Those are the coordinates I got.”

Hondo’s heart is in his throat. The pilot is talking about uncontained right engine failure, his voice colored with worry.

“Control, anyone, can you hear me?” The voice says, and then swears. “Damn it, Bradshaw, we’ve lost communications.”

Maverick’s breath hitches.

“Can’t be,” A lower, rumbling voice joins, “Fuck, it’s on fire. We gotta land.” The muted sound of multiple system failure alerts can be heard in the background.

“Flight deck to cabin crew, prepare for emergency landing,” the first voice goes distant, presumably to make an announcement. The one referred to as Bradshaw stays on, continuing to repeat the mayday.

“—eriencing total engine failure on the right side —” a loud, horrific bang reverberates through, making Hondo jump. “Shit!”

Hondo doesn’t dare breathe. Maverick’s suspended like part of a frieze, face obscured as he stares at the radio like it’s something holy.

“Losing altitude,” Bradshaw yells. The sound of groaning metal rips through the speaker. “Oh, fuck, fuck.”

There’s now muffled screaming, and a litany of panicked swears.

“I don’t have control anymore,” Bradshaw says; his voice is surprisingly level, but there’s a strong undercurrent of fear regardless, “Attempting to reorient—”

There’s a wet sob, and Hondo realizes with numb horror that it’s the other pilot crying.

“We’re gonna die, man.”

“We are not,” Bradshaw’s voice cracks, and he sniffs as well, choking on his words. “Going to die. Not like this.”

No voices sound for a bit, just the muted cacophony of warning beeps, tearing metal, and heaving sobs. Then, Bradshaw lets out a loud, anguished Fuck!, there’s a thudding sound like someone hitting a wall in frustration, and the silence stretches, the lack of human conversation emptying the space despite the background noise.

“I love you, mom.” The other pilot says, quietly. It takes Hondo a moment, but the understanding kicks him in the teeth. There’s no hope for them. The least that can happen now is their loved ones getting their last words.

Bradshaw doesn’t say anything.

A minute of the agonizing, faraway din, and then a crashing, monumental boom rips across so loudly the speaker skips and crackles to shrill incomprehension.

The explosion cuts off; the radio lets out a final burst of static, and then goes silent.

“No,” Maverick says, “No, hang on—”

The radio crackles again, and Hondo watches helplessly as Maverick grips it so hard the veins on his hand jump.

“— located the plane,” a static-filled voice says, “It sank to the bottom, but it’s in shallow waters.” A pause. “No survivors found so far.”

“Can you confirm it’s the correct plane? United Airlines?” Another voice asks.

“Affirmative; Black box recovered, as well as the pilot's bodies.” The voice makes a sympathetic tongue-click. “Horrible way to go. Poor guys. Listen, we’ll rendezvous at 1700. Over.”

“Copy. Over.” The radio clicks off, a merry and anticlimactic stop to possibly the worst five minutes of Hondo’s life.

Maverick doesn’t react, doesn’t move, frozen in the half-kneel he’d gotten into three minutes ago when the radio sparked to life. Even the air around him is still, like something had suspended him in time. Hondo almost doesn’t dare to breathe. He can’t see Maverick’s face, turned away like this, looking down at the jumbled wiring that had never given them anything more than baseball reruns and old banter between passing vehicles. Until now.

“Maverick,” he finally says, voice hoarse. A warm ocean breeze brushes by him. Gulls sound in the distance, and the palms around them sway with the wind. Maverick doesn’t seem to register any of it, never mind Hondo. Hondo stands there, numb with horror. It occurs to him to wrench himself into reality; the sun’s going down, they need to get back. Maverick stays still. Awkwardly, he approaches; he’d never attempted comforting, but—

“Hey, Mav.” he says cautiously. “Maverick.”

He reaches out tentatively, places the tips of his fingers on Maverick’s shoulders, but the other man is a statue, and Hondo feels the dread from the broadcast escalate into full blown worry.

“Okay. We’re just gonna sit for a while, yeah?” he puts his whole hand on Maverick and pushes him gently into a sitting position, also crouching down to settle onto the ground. Maverick goes pliantly, like a ragdoll. Hondo arranges himself next to him. They sit there for a couple of seconds, Hondo looking at him and wondering if he should say something more, when Maverick’s head comes up and he sees his face.

Maverick, in the few weeks Hondo had known him, had always been optimistic, and a little mischievous despite their circumstances, wearing his emotions in the crinkle of his eyes or the furrow of his brow. Even when closed off, a little guarded with flickers of conflict that flashed across his face, there was still a glimmer of mirth and determination.

Now, there’s nothing. His stare is vacant, sending shivers down Hondo’s spine.

“I don’t like that look, Mav.” He chuckles nervously. Maverick doesn’t respond, staring at nothing. “Mav?”

Hondo reaches out, shakes his shoulder, and finally, finally, Maverick turns to look at him.

“Hey, man, please. Talk to me. Say anything, come on,” Hondo murmurs, a hint of a desperate plea in his voice. Maverick’s eyes, hauntingly beautiful, slide to meet his and don’t quite make it.

“Bradley.”

It’s so soft Hondo thinks he’s exhaling at first, and is in the middle of still counting that as a win when the sigh registers as a word.

“Bradley?” he repeats, and a spark flashes in Maverick’s eyes, but it’s not his usual one. Like lightning, his gaze snaps to Hondo’s, completely present as a terrible, terrible anguish tears across his face, transforming the usual hypnotic draw of his presence into something so horrific and destructive Hondo feels the other man’s grief sear his soul.

And just as quickly as it appeared, the emotion vanishes.

Maverick doesn’t wail, doesn’t scream or cry. He lets out a single, choked-off sob; more of a quiet gasp, and then there’s nothing. He stares at the sand, a chilling blankness in his eyes, and nothing Hondo tries will take it away.

Hondo doesn’t really remember how they got to the town, let alone the apartment, but his back aches like a bitch as he deposits Maverick and all their gear carefully onto the bed. He manages to heat up two tins of soup almost on autopilot, before hunger hits him and he all but inhales his portion. He tries to feed the other man, but the food does nothing to shake Maverick out of his stupor. With the sun setting and nothing else to do, Hondo arranges him in the bed and, after some deliberation, shuffles in next to him, hesitantly pulling the limp body into a cuddle.

“I’m here,” he murmurs into the spiky hair, stroking Maverick’s back slowly. Despite the unresponsive state, Maverick’s breaths are even, and the rise and fall of his chest reassures Hondo somewhat. “I ain’t going anywhere, Mav. I’m here.”

Maverick remains the same in the morning.

Hondo finds himself suddenly thrust into the role of caretaker, a reversal from the early days of knowing each other, but takes it in stride as worry wins out over any qualms he might have had. He makes coffee and opens one of the tinned peaches, gets Maverick wiped down and changed into that awful poncho that’s growing on him a bit, and sets up next to him in bed with a book titled Ontology for Dummies. He pulls Maverick’s head onto his left thigh as an approximation of a pillow. Maverick’s hand brushes it as he goes pliantly.

Maverick’s breathing remains even and still, lying on his side and looking into nothing. Hondo starts reading, occasionally reaching down to card his fingers through the other man’s hair, stiff with dried sweat and a little coarse.

Slowly, very slowly, Maverick’s breathing changes, a short stutter, like surprise, and then faster even breaths. His hand balls into a fist by Hondo’s thigh and he presses it into the flesh slightly, before curling up tighter, drawing his knees up. In this position, drowning in the oversized poncho, he looks smaller than ever.

“Hey, Mav,” Hondo murmurs. Maverick doesn’t respond, but he buries his face into the crack between Hondo and his own kneecaps. For a moment he doesn’t move, and Hondo had just opened his mouth to ask if he’s hungry when the tiny body shakes.

A quiet, muffled sniff sounds out.

Hondo closes his mouth. He puts his hand on Maverick’s back and leaves it there, a hopefully comforting weight and presence. Maverick cries silent, trembling sobs that don’t stop even as the sun starts to set; fiery, beautiful, and completely indifferent to the grief contained in a small abandoned studio apartment in the middle of nowhere.

He wakes up to Maverick sitting upright, wearing one of his shirts and staring out the window.

It’s late in the morning, by the sun’s position. The light falls across the bed, Maverick’s face just shielded from the direct glare by the shadow of the wall. His eyes are red and a little puffy, and there are slight streaks down his cheeks where the tears cut through the dusty grime that settles on them inevitably.

“Hey, Mav,” he murmurs, and Maverick turns his head slowly. His eyes are dull, and for a fearful moment Hondo wonders if he’s about to lose Maverick to inscrutability again, until—

“Hey, Hondo,” Maverick rasps, voice rough, and cracks a small, tired, shaky but ever handsome smile.

The steam from the mug curls up around Maverick’s nose as he sits up on the bed, knees drawn up to his chest as he cradles the hot coffee between the space left. Hondo stays silent, just watching him.

Maverick drifts in and out of what seems to be a fugue state; mostly lucid and able to give Hondo short yes/no/not now statements when prompted, but sometimes his eyes slide towards vacancy and his jaw clenches, brows knit together as he stares at nothing. Sometimes a tear or two escapes.

There’s no framework for grief that Hondo can work with, no experience he’d ever had with the feeling. He doesn’t even know what Maverick is grieving. Perhaps the loss of the plane he had tried so hard to find. Perhaps something to do with the name Bradley. Whatever it is, he’s too wary of asking immediately; Maverick will tell him when he’s ready.

“I’m going to sleep,” Maverick says quietly, starting Hondo out of his thoughts.

“You need to eat,” he replies, “It’s been almost a full day.”

“Not that hungry, Hondo, thanks.” Maverick puts down the mug on the windowsill and curls up on the bed, impossibly small in Hondo’s goose patterned t-shirt that was two sizes too big on himself, never mind Maverick. Hondo looks at him helplessly, but decides not to push it. He sets up the stove for dinner instead, and makes a batch of soup with some saltines. He keeps it aside for when Maverick feels like eating.

“I’m going out,” Hondo says, and there’s a mumble of affirmation from the ball on the bed.

He goes up to the roof. The sunset streaks the valley all shades of pinks and oranges. It’s beautiful here, Hondo thinks; he can’t remember ever seeing a sunset this rich.

Of course, he wryly adds to his thoughts, he can’t remember anything past this island anyway.

He doesn’t know what to do when they get rescued. There’s probably a procedure in place for getting all this done, for people who don’t remember themselves. Maverick would probably walk him through it, or hand him over to someone who’d help. Maybe, after it’s all settled, they could do their second date.

There’s the likelihood of Maverick never looking his way again after rescue, which may remain the most probable outcome but Hondo doesn’t even entertain it. He can’t do it. Whoever he was before, whether it was like him or not to fall so hard in such bizarre circumstances, didn’t matter. All he knows now is life in love with Maverick. That’s all he needs.

It’s probably not all Maverick needs. It’s like a countdown has started, time slipping away like the grains of sand through their fingers, to some potential outcome that Hondo fears like a flicker out the corner of your eye; never quite formed but always there.

They need to get rescued before anything happens.

There’s a clanging sound from downstairs, and then Hondo sees the soft light from the tea candles slowly appear. He’d been up on the roof for hours; the sun completely gone and the pale light of the moon illuminating the landscape.

He heads down, making plans to set up some signaling methods for passing ships, maybe work on the radio a little more to try sending out distress calls again, hopeful that Maverick might be in the mood to eat with some rest behind him.

When he enters the apartment, Maverick’s standing in the middle of the room, holding the radio. He looks up at Hondo; his eyes, while exhausted and pained, are the most alert Hondo’s seen them since the broadcast.

“I’ve got something to confess,” Maverick says.

Thirteen years ago, Maverick pulls his godson’s papers. Calls in multiple favors to make sure the boy never would take flight in the same way his dad did, haunted by one dead parent and another soon to follow. It’s hard to say now if the one truly haunted was the boy or Maverick himself.

Said godson finds out four years deep in a business degree he doesn’t want; he blows up at Maverick, cuts him off, and moves clear across the country to become a commercial pilot. He’s single-minded, determined, and soon flying as a first officer, then a captain before he’s thirty. Maverick, in the least creepy sense possible, keeps tabs on him to a slightly obsessive degree, going as far as to track the journeys he makes in real time.

Captain Bradley Bradshaw, flying a route to Cape Town out of Fort Lauderdale for United Airlines, sends out a warped 7700 signal via transponder before his plane disappears off the radar.

Captain Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell, a naval aviator grounded for insubordination at Pensacola and pending a court martial, intercepts the request from a nearby ground radar facility for a SAR unit to be mobilized. The fastest they can mobilize is six hours. Within one, he steals a Seahawk, flies out to the coordinates given, and believes in a stubborn hope.

Things don’t go to plan, and then he sees Hondo, washed up on the shore of an ink-black bleach.

“Have you told me anything that’s true?” Hondo asks, slightly numb and completely unsurprised.

“The stories,” Maverick says quietly. “They were true.”

“And when were you going to tell me the rest?” That nothing you’ve said, nothing you’ve pretended to be, was real. That even after rescue, what awaits is a whole lot of courtrooms, questions, and no welcome home.

Maverick’s jaw sets. He looks guilty, but not enough. “I’m telling you now.”

They don’t really speak to each other for a bit. Hondo feels a little guilty, because Maverick has just lost his godson, but he’s trying to grapple with the facts that nobody is coming for them and if someone did, the man he’s currently with is probably going to jail. Maverick had mentioned an admiral who might try, a friend who had already exhausted favors on his behalf, but had failed thoroughly at even sounding convinced of his intervention.

“They’re going to come looking for us, right?” Hondo had asked, and then, “I really don’t like that look, Mav.”

Maverick had shrugged, a little helplessly.

“The Navy won’t just leave you to die.”

“After this? I’m not sure about that.”

Hondo takes the couch that night. He lies awake, staring at the flaking ceiling and wondering just what they could do now.

Nobody is coming. If they don’t get the radio working, if they don’t get off the island, send out some sort of communication, it’s over. Maybe not right away, but as the days wear on, as food runs out, as their resources dwindle… They’re as dead as Bradley is.

There’s a shaky hiccup from the bed.

Hondo shifts to look at the dark mass of curtain-blanket, silhouetted by the moonlight. It shakes again in an unmistakable sniffle.

He hesitates, and then sighs a deep, upsetting sigh.

Damn what the man had lied about. If it wasn’t for Maverick, he probably wouldn’t be alive.

Maverick stills as he moves across the room and slides next to him, curling around to bracket in the smaller man. “Hondo—”

“Shut up,” Hondo mumbles, and Maverick shivers. “Sleep.”

Maverick doesn’t move for a bit, and then he relaxes into Hondo’s hug, reaching up to hold his hand.

“Thank you,” he whispers.”I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Hondo says, and as always, is a little surprised to realize he means it.

“Why did you do it?” Hondo finally asks, hours later as they stand side by side on the rooftop, holding lukewarm cups of coffee. Maverick’s still in his shirt.

The other man doesn’t respond immediately, and when Hondo sneaks a glance he can see the calculations running through his head. Then he says, voice a little sad, “I was scared. His mom was scared. He wasn’t ready. It’s a dangerous job.”

“And yet, here you are,” Hondo tells him, and now Maverick frowns at him.

“It’s different for me,” he says, voice hardening, “No one’s going to mourn me when I burn in.”

“Bold thing for you to say when I’m standing right here,” Hondo replies. Maverick seems to start at that, and Hondo feels brave, so he adds, “Bold of you to think Bradley wouldn’t have, either.”

Maverick shakes at the past tense, and Hondo for a terrible second feels like he may have gone overboard, but all the other man does is take a shaky breath in.

“I know the risks. I’ve lived the risks. I just— he’s all I have — had — left, Hondo. He was the last family I’ll ever have. I couldn’t live with myself if something happened.”

“But,” Hondo says, gently, and almost falters when Maverick lets out a tiny sob, “Something happened anyway, didn’t it?”

“What are you trying to do, man?” Maverick replies; his tone isn’t aggressive, or antagonistic, or even frustrated. It’s just tired.

He looks at Maverick, beautiful, electrical Maverick, and knows then and there he’ll never get to keep him.

“You can’t just clip someone’s wings like that,” Hondo murmurs, “They’ll get to fly, sooner or later. All that does is hurt them when they take off.”

Maverick trembles. “You think I don’t know that?”

“I know you know,” Hondo reaches over, grasps his hand. Maverick squeezes it. “But knowing isn’t doing. You had to let go, Mav.” he cups Maverick’s chin with his other hand, lifts up the weathered face until the other man is looking at him, the emotion in his shining eyes hypnotizing. “I’m so sorry it ended up like this.”

Maverick just leans into his touch. He closes his eyes. A teardrop catches on the long lashes, before rolling down his cheek.

“I didn’t know how,” he says, and his voice cracks as he crumples into Hondo’s arms.

They fall into a routine, the next few days. Maverick seems to have somewhat compartmentalized his grief, focusing all his energy instead onto either getting them off the island or getting the radio to work. Hondo knows it can’t be healthy, shoving it all down like that, but Maverick seems fine. More or less.

Hondo doesn’t like how much the other man looks out the window.

“I’m going to unbury the boat,” Hondo tells him the next morning, “You’re coming with me, I need help.”

If Maverick picks up any other underlying reasons Hondo wants to keep him close, he doesn’t mention them. Just nods in assent and goes back to rummaging among the books until he finds one.

“A Crash Course to Sailboats,” he reads aloud.

“If we magically find a sail, you can do the honors,” Hondo says, and Maverick chuckles. “Got any digging stuff lying around?”

They reach the dock around midday, and dig in the blazing sun with a couple of sturdy shovels from out the back of someone’s garden. The radio, having been suspiciously silent in the last few days, remains so.

It’s almost evening when they take a break. The boat’s nearly half uncovered. It looks fairly sturdy still, wonder of wonders, but Hondo is wary of jinxing them by voicing it out loud.

Maverick hands him a bottle of water. He nods in silent thanks and takes a swig, relishing in the cool taste of the river. As he drinks, he looks out onto the glittering sea, as calm as usual, the horizon never-ending to the right and cut by a land mass not unlike their island to the left.

A land mass.

Hondo turns his head back so fast he gets a crick in his neck. The water splashes onto the ground as he drops the bottle.

“Whoa, Hondo, what —” Maverick stops short.

Hondo doesn’t dare take his eyes off the island in the distance, close enough that he can see the speckles of houses near the coast. “Maverick, man, are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

Maverick seems frozen. “I… don’t know.”

“I do not,” Hondo says shakily, “Remember that.”

“No,” Maverick agrees, sounding shell shocked, “It’s a bit hard to miss.”

“Maybe it’s a mirage.”

“A shared hallucination?”

“I don’t know.”

They continue to stare at the land.

“I’m looking away,” Maverick suddenly says, “Look away too, and then we can turn back to see if it’s there. Together.”

“What sort of idea is that,” Hondo says, baffled, but he turns to look at Maverick. It’s only a mild surprise to find the other man staring back at him.

“Ready,” Maverick all but whispers, “Go!”

They both whip their focus back. The island remains.

“We cannot have just missed a whole other island less than two miles away from us,” Maverick says, voice bordering on disbelief.

“Well,” Hondo says weakly, “At least we have a destination.”

It takes another day of digging to dislodge the boat, a second to clean out the residual sand and test its buoyancy, and a third to ransack the entire town for a pair of oars.

The island stays put, almost mockingly close.

“I could swim there,” Maverick had said, mildly threateningly, as they bang the door of yet a third fishing shop closed, “I’ll do it.”

“Don’t let it get to you,” Hondo had replied wearily.

They set off early in the morning, packs full with supplies and water in case. Maverick rows first, and Hondo’s fairly sure he could’ve easily rowed the full distance if it wasn’t for his abysmal control of direction. After the third accidental drift back, Hondo forces a takeover.

He’s only marginally better.

It takes them half a day, in between the drifting off course and the slight bickering, but the boat finally bumps against a much less broken dock than the one they left. Neither of them have any idea how to fasten it, so they just wind the rope around a pillar and hope for the best.

The little port they’ve arrived in is markedly different from the town. Immediately, Hondo notices the utter lack of dust, and the general care for the boardwalk. The place is much larger, much more gentrified, and just as empty.

The wind blows through. Another ghost town.

“Well,” Hondo says, “It’s an upgrade.”

“It’s too familiar,” Maverick says, quiet. “Hondo, I don’t like this.”

“Hey,” Hondo reaches out to him. Takes Maverick’s hand into his. “We’ll just look, okay? If it’s too much, we brought the tent. We don’t have to stay here.”

Maverick just squeezes his hand hard. He nods.

They walk away from the pier, deeper into the town, which gives way to detached suburban bungalows lining wide roads. The space is much, much bigger than their little ash-covered town, and after a while Hondo looks back to realize he can’t see the sea anymore.

The radio sparks to life.

The feed is staticy and warped, just barely intelligible. It’s a song, Hondo realizes, a man belting out alongside a piano accompaniment, the chatter of a bar or restaurant in the background. He repeats the words over and over, as if he didn’t quite remember them but the tune was all that mattered.

Maverick grips his hand so hard he feels the blood flow cut off.

“Mav,” he says, but Maverick’s already grabbing the radio, punching at the buttons and bending the antenna forcefully.

“Turn it off,” he hisses as he rips a wire. The radio keeps going.

Maverick stares at it. Hondo watches his hand twitch, and then launches to grab it just a split second before Maverick smashes the entire thing onto the ground.

“We should leave,” Maverick says, as he stares at the radio, still crackling. “Something’s not fucking right here, Hondo, please, we should go.”

Hondo sighs, and acquiesces. Maverick’s shoulders sag in relief. He hoists his pack and they turn around.

The radio sparks, and the feed becomes clearer. Hondo looks down at it.

“Huh.”

Maverick looks up, and shakes his head. “No, man. No, Hondo, let’s just go —-”

“Mav.” he puts his hand on the shorter man’s shoulder. Maverick looks up at him, and he looks terrified. “Maverick. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about,” Maverick shoots back, but there’s no confidence behind it.

Hondo takes a step in the direction he’d been facing when the radio sparked. The volume gets marginally louder.

“It’s leading us somewhere,” he says with wonder. Maverick makes a sound like a deflating balloon. “Stop throwing a tantrum and come with me.”

They follow the radio and the seemingly never-ending loop of the man singing the same four lines of a song over and over, laughing around the piano. At points, a group of voices, all off key, join in for a few verses, before melting out into the background noise. The radio leads them down more and more suburban roads, all blurring together, until they pass a fenced up park and Maverick looks up, wide-eyed.

Hondo looks up too, and follows Maverick’s gaze to a set of batting cages at the end of the park.

“Thinking of playing ball?” He jokes awkwardly. Maverick doesn’t quite smile, but his eyes soften in something like reminiscence.

“Something like that,” he says, and then seems to decide on something. Watching Maverick almost transform physically into a persona would never get old, but this felt slightly different. Like watching him shed a burden instead.

“Let’s get this over with,” he says, looking up and giving Hondo a hesitant smile. He reaches out his hand, and Hondo takes it.

In front of a cute, slightly shabby but evidently well loved bungalow, the man finishes his loop to rancorous cheers. The audio cuts out. Hondo looks up at the house.

“Guess this is it,” he says, and Maverick just clutches his hand harder before clearing his throat.

“What’s past is past,” he says, almost to himself, and strides up to the door, Hondo in tow. He rings the doorbell.

Nobody answers. The door is already ajar, showing Hondo a glimpse of a slightly messy hallway. Maverick waits, and then pushes open the door fully to step into the house.

It’s a fairly typical suburban nuclear family place; if not one that looked like it came out of the eighties, and Hondo still doesn’t know how to feel about it until he sees Maverick in a photo frame.

Maverick, impossibly younger than he is now and smiling, him and a tall, mustached man flanking a beautiful woman with a radiant smile carrying a baby. They’re sitting outside on tarmac, Hondo notices, and then notices the jet fighters flanking them. He looks up to see a picture hanging on the wall; a class photo. He steps over to it carefully, mindful of the baby scooter in the middle of the hallway.

Top Gun Class of ‘86, it reads. And then, on the top line in the middle, LTJG Pete Mitchell. LTJG Nick Bradshaw.

And Hondo understands.

The stairs creak as they walk up them. Maverick seems to be trying to absorb the house, looking around it with a little manic edge around his eyes as he runs his fingers reverently along the chipped bannister.

The landing is a narrow hallway that has three doors opening onto it, all of them ajar. Hondo falls in line behind Maverick, letting the other man slowly make his way down as he looks at the carpet, the photos on the walls, the pile of CDs in the corner.

The first room is a cozy bedroom with a queen sized bed and shelving laden with trinkets. Maverick pauses in the doorway, but doesn’t make a move to go in. He just chuckles, and then moves on.

The second room is a bathroom, connected to another room. Maverick doesn’t seem to dwell on it much either.

The third room has a child’s drawing taped to the door; the approximation of four figures holding hands in a line at…

Hondo squints.

It’s a Naval base.

The drawing, for some reason, has put the subjects strictly into the path of an incoming plane. One of the figures has crudely drawn wings on it.

My family has been written underneath it, in scrawled childish letters.

Maverick pushes open the door and gasps. Hondo looks away to see him staring into the open room. It’s a young child’s space; posters plastered against the walls and toys strewn across the floor.

A boy, about six or seven, sits in the middle of the bed, cross legged, playing with two toy jet fighters. He looks up at Maverick’s intake of breath, strawberry blonde hair falling into his face as it breaks out in a smile.

“Took you long enough,” Bradley Bradshaw says.

Maverick runs to him, slides down to his knees by the bed, and pulls him into a deep, frantic hug.

“Bradley,” he says, over and over, like a prayer, “God, Bradley.”

Bradley hugs him back, burying his small face into Maverick’s shoulder. “Hey, uncle Mav.”

And then he turns to Hondo. His brow furrows.

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

Hondo blinks.

“Sorry?”

Maverick looks up, eyes glistening with tears, and shakes his head, “No, Bradley, that’s Hondo, he’s my,” Maverick pauses, looks at Hondo, “— friend.”

“I know,” Bradley says, and he sounds a little annoyed, and maybe a little upset too. He looks up at Hondo, and Hondo is struck by just how much his eyes look like Maverick’s; not just by color, but by how old they seem.

Nothing about this makes sense. Never mind the existence of the house itself; Bradley Bradshaw is thirty and dead, not a child with what seems like universes in his eyes. Hondo wonders if they’d somehow already died on the island, and this was just a very bizarre afterlife welcome. He looks at Maverick a little helplessly, but the other man just looks back at him with equal confusion.

“Bradley, kid, what do you mean?” Maverick asks gently. Bradley shakes his head.

“He’s not supposed to be here anymore,” the kid says, and Hondo feels something rise in his chest. Anger, maybe. Dread, definitely.

Maverick must see something in his face, because he looks at him a little warily before turning to Bradley and firmly facing the kid towards him.

“I’m going to need you to start from the beginning, sweetheart.”

Bradley shakes his head. “This is the beginning. I’m here to start a beginning. What happens before then isn’t anything, really.”

Maverick’s face scrunches in confusion, “Bradley—”

The kid cuts him off, evidently a little agitated. “You’re supposed to make things right. That’s what my job is. I just— I needed a little help.”

“What do you mean, you needed help?” Hondo asks, voice hoarse. The kid looks at him.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Bradley asks, “I needed you to help me get him here. And now he’s here. You shouldn’t be. Why are you still here?”

Hondo decides he’s had enough

“Okay, I don’t know what the fuck you’re trying to say,” he begins, and Maverick cuts him off with a frantic wave and a hissed chastisement at the swearing, which is completely bizarre sensing that the Bradley holding on to his hand was very obviously not actually a seven year old.

“Hondo! Wait, just —” Maverick breathes in deeply, “Just give me a second.”

He turns to the kid again.

“Okay, Bradley, what are you doing here?”

“I’m bringing you home. To the real me. The one you’re so afraid of losing.”

Maverick stutters. He stares at the kid, not daring to blink. When he does speak, it’s a hoarse whisper.

“The real… you?”

“You’re remembering now,” the kid says, and suddenly he sounds so old, so sad, and it’s disorienting hearing such a tone in a young boy’s voice, “Bradley Bradshaw, who’s a naval aviator. He’s one of the best, and he’s going to Top Gun. You’re so scared for him, Mav.”

Maverick doesn’t move. His eyes widen, and they glisten as he takes in a shuddering breath, never breaking eye contact with the child in front of him.

“I’m here to make you realize you can still fix things.” The faint sound of the hallway clock ticking floats into the room. “Before you run out of time. Make you experience the worlds where he did as you said, and you lose him anyway. It took some time; I’m not very good at this. But hey, it worked out in the end. Now you know. You know how to let go.”

Maverick’s next words are so quiet Hondo barely hears them.

“Who put you here to do all this?” he whispers, as he stares at the ghost of the last piece of family he has left.

The kid laughs.

“Don’t be silly, uncle Mav,” he says, like he’s the one talking to a child. “You did.”

They stand on the porch, the house now suddenly somewhere else, separated by an empty road from the beautiful sands beaches of Miramar. When it’s a child who controls the universe, anything can be possible, Hondo supposes. The infernal god-kid — Bradley — looks around, before tugging on Maverick’s hand

“Do the right thing,” he tells Maverick sternly, looking up at him, and it’d be almost amusing if Hondo wasn’t feeling so hollow.

He doesn’t exist.

As Maverick made Bradley in the image of the past, Bradley had made Hondo in the image of the people in Maverick’s life, as well as Maverick himself. A guide, to help him when he hadn’t been able to do it himself. The ultimate support.

There’s no memories for him to recover, because his life had started with Maverick’s story.

“Hey,” he says, sounding far away to his own ears.

The kid turns.

“What?”

“Is this it?”

He frowns. “I don’t get you.”

“What happens now? You what — you send Mav back? To reality, or another universe or whatever it is, and then we just stay here?”

“We don’t exist,” the kid says, “My purpose is fulfilled. This space will fade away as Maverick leaves it. You will too. So will I.”

“Seriously?” Hondo stares. “What, he leaves, and this world disappears, including us? Do we have a choice?”

“What’s wrong with not having a choice?” the kid says hotly, “Our reason for existence is over. Isn’t it enough?”

“No!” Hondo yells, and Maverick starts, opening his mouth warningly before the child stops him with a Quiet, uncle Mav. It’d be funny if Hondo wasn’t so mad.

“You should have faded away before he left the other island. I don’t know what happened—” At that, he looks a little annoyed, “—but I can guess. He fell in love with you, didn’t he? Enough to make it so that you’ve evolved from just the purpose I made you for. And you fell in love back.”

Hondo looks at Maverick, who’s looking straight at him, jaw set. He doesn’t deny a thing.

“Mav,” Hondo murmurs, at a loss.

“It’s our job to love him,” the kid continues. “To make him face what he won’t on his own. It’s also to leave when the time is right. It’s all I’ve been waiting to do.”

He looks up at Maverick, who looks down at him, face broken apart into a swirl of emotion. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

Hondo looks then, at this godson, this god, who created Hondo just like he was created, who’s only goal in life is to see Maverick happy. A pang echoes through his heart.

He thinks about the nights spent, trying to piece together a life that never existed, trying to figure out the person that he was, the desire to know the past slowly giving way to the desire to experience the future.

“It’s not what I want,” he says.

The young boy looks at him. “What do you want, then?”

Hondo closes his eyes. Thinks hard. Opens them, and levels his gaze at him.

“I want—,” he says, voice dangerously close to cracking, “—a life. I want a life that I get to live; beginning to end this time, with no damn interference from you, or anyone else. No meddling in fate. I make my own choices, and fuck me if they’re bad ones, but at least they’re mine.”

The boy looks bemused. Then his face softens, and he laughs, shifting his head to bury his mirth into Maverick’s shoulder. Hondo shifts his gaze to his friend, who adjusts their hug so the kid can lean into him more. Maverick’s looking at him. His gaze is carefully neutral.

“A life? In reality?” Hondo nods. Bradley lifts his head up and mulls over it for a moment.

“Okay,” he says, smiling now as he looks at Hondo. “Yeah. I can do that.”

Hondo feels a rush of relief through him, starting in his heart and flooding his limbs, making his stance relax. “You better.”

“God, you’re just like him,” the boy says, and it’s fond in a way that makes Hondo think he’s not talking about Maverick.

Speaking of.

“Bradley, hey. Could you give us a moment?” Maverick is saying gently, and then he turns to Hondo as the kid leaves to go play on the sandy beach, evidently now uninterested in adult talk. Hondo resolutely looks at the glistening ocean and not Maverick, approaching with the same gentle caution he’d done with Bradley.

“Hey.” Maverick murmurs. “You okay?”

“Mm. Not really,” Hondo replies, “But I’ve been worse.” We’ve been worse, he doesn’t say. Maverick’s known him his entire life. Hell, Maverick, in a way, made him.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Maverick tilt his head.

“Hondo, please, look at me?”

His gaze reluctantly slides to meet Maverick’s pleading tone. Maverick looks exhausted. Happy, but tired in a way that isn’t just physical, and there’s that still, careful veneer over his eyes hiding something deeper – something magnetic – and Hondo can’t look away.

He’ll never get rid of that pull, the way he orbits Maverick like a satellite, because his whole world, and his whole existence, boils down to a short, middle-aged man and what’s left of his fractured family. But he can try.

“Look,” Maverick begins, “I didn’t know. I couldn’t have known any of this, you understand that, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Maverick says, and then runs his hand through his hair. The breath of a sigh leaves his lips, but is cut off. His jaw flexes as he furrows his brows and looks at Hondo, a desperation in his eyes he’d only seen once; the day Maverick heard Bradley die on the radio.

“I don’t like that look, Mav,” he says, aiming for lightheartedness.

“It’s the only one I’ve got,” Maverick replies, his smile not quite reaching his eyes. “You’re — you’re really going to go? Live out a whole life?”

“Are you se– yes, Mav, of course I’m going,” Hondo blinks, and Maverick raises his palms quickly in placating surrender.

“No, I’m not— I’m not trying to stop you. You should go. I’m— sorry I did this to you. Really. And Bradley’s sorry too. Aren’t you?” He calls over to the kid, who gives a dismissive noise of affirmation back. Maverick rolls his eyes, as if to say, kids these days, but the worry doesn’t leave them. Hondo watches him swallow, searching for something—

“I’m just. I just wanted to—,” And he understands. Hondo sighs, cutting him off.

“I know what you’re going to ask.” Mav looks at him, and his eyes crinkle.

“So I don’t have to say it?”

“No, you little shit. Go on.”

Mav laughs, and it’s a little hoarse and wet, accompanying the sheen over his eyes. Hondo feels an ache build.

“Will we meet again?” Maverick asks.

He loves this man. He loves Maverick so much he can’t think of anything else. Loving Maverick is a law, as immutable as gravity, and it’s his reason to live.

It’s also his death knell.

He can’t love Maverick. Not like this, on the terms of someone else. Not in a world where he doesn’t exist without him. He has to try it again — in another time, another place, where he’s got more than just the man himself — to know whether what they have is real.

Whether he can be real.

“It’s up to you, man.” Hondo says, and his voice does crack this time. “You gonna come find me?”

Maverick’s eyes shine, and then he hiccups, and then Hondo gets a hundred and fifty pounds of pilot slamming into him for a kiss. He stumbles back, one arm shooting around Maverick’s waist to stabilize them.

“You know I will,” Maverick says tearily into his mouth when they break apart, his hand coming up to cup Hondo’s neck and bring him down, resting their foreheads together, “Don’t make it too hard.”

“I’ll do my best,” Hondo murmurs back, his words also thick with emotion. Maverick chuckles and steps away. Wipes his eyes, blows his nose noisily on his sleeve, and laughs at Hondo’s disgusted look. Hondo does the more distinguished action of using the back of his hand. Mav turns and gestures for the kid to come over, before kneeling down and murmuring something.

The kid looks up at him. Bradley, Hondo knows he should call him, but it’s not exactly the guy himself even if Maverick calls him that. Bradley Bradshaw, wherever or whoever he is, only has as much say in this as the memory of a dead father.

He hopes Maverick does the right thing.

“Mm,” the boy says, and then turns to Hondo, bright eyed. Hondo gives him an awkward nod.

“Mav wants a fighting chance,” the boy tells him. Hondo blinks.

“The same time period at least,” Maverick grins, “Maybe the same look too. I gotta have something to go off.”

Hondo’s mouth twitches into a smile uncontrollably. “Fair enough for both.”

“You’re both done, then?” the boy asks. Maverick looks back at him, and then clasps his hand as he stands up.

“Yeah, we’re done,” he says, voice gentle. Hondo sees the love in his eyes, and for a terrifying split-second, almost changes his mind. Almost asks to be able to know Maverick in his next life as well. “You’re ready to go?”

“Are you ready?” the boy asks Hondo, in lieu of answering. Maverick straightens up, and looks at him too, with that hypnotic, overwhelming, laser-focus of his. Hondo swallows. It’s scary, he realizes, the chance to fly without clipped wings.

“I don’t know,” he says shakily. Maverick’s eyes blaze bright.

“I’ll find you,” he replies vehemently, and it’s a vow, stronger than any I love you they’ve never exchanged. The boy squeezes his hand.

“Okay,” Hondo says weakly, “Okay. Yeah. I’m ready.”

“Okay then,” the kid says, “Thanks, Hondo. Have a good one.”

Maverick raises his free hand in a wave, his mouth opening as if to say something; he inhales, and Hondo blinks, and —

He’s running late.

This isn’t usual for Hondo; he arrives early to on-time for work every morning, but his bike had gotten a puncture and there just aren’t that many rideshare drivers out in the middle of nowhere, which means he’s almost twenty minutes late for a very important meeting.

He scrambles into the hangar, apologies on the tip of his tongue, when the person he’s meeting turns around and Hondo gets a face-full of the most attractive man he’s ever seen in his life.

“Hey,” the man says, his eyes crinkling at the edges as a megawatt smile breaks across his face. He looks genuinely happy to see Hondo despite the tardiness, and Hondo falls in love just a little. Briefly.

“Sorry I’m late, man,” he begins, but is cut off by the man striding across to meet him halfway, arm already outstretched in greeting.

“Don’t worry about it— I just got here, actually. My godson had his thirtieth last night and I’m still recovering,” he says, grasping Hondo’s hand firmly and clasping his other hand over it. He looks up at him and his eyelashes honest-to-god flutter. Hondo adds a few more years to his age estimate based on the godson information, and wonders vaguely if the man even realizes he’s being flirtatious. Pretty privilege does that to people. “I’m Maverick. Call me Mav.”

“Hondo,” he replies lamely, and gives the firm grip a shake of his own. Maverick lingers just a second too long, eyes wide and roaming across Hondo’s face, before he breaks away.

“Good to meet you, Hondo,” he says, stepping back but not breaking eye contact. He says the name like he’s savoring it, a fond smile on his face.

“You too,” Hondo replies, heart thudding. “You’re the test pilot?”

Maverick nods. “Sure am.” He looks up at the plane and Hondo sees his eyes shine with love. “God, she’s beautiful.”

“Wait til she takes you for a ride,” Hondo replies automatically, and regrets it for a split second before Maverick barks a laugh that dissolves into a chuckle and he decides to then make it his life mission to hear that sound more often.

“Don’t tease me,” Maverick replies easily, but he’s not even paying attention to Hondo anymore. He runs a hand over Darkstar’s underwing reverently, and Hondo suddenly remembers the reason they had to meet in the first place.

“Hate to break bad news on the first meeting, but you’re not going up for at least another three months,” he says, and Maverick’s gaze snaps to him so fast Hondo feels like a deer in the headlights.

“What?” Maverick says in disbelief.

“Admiral Cain restricted our clearance. It’s all red-tape stalling so he can pull part of our funding for his program — look, it’s a whole thing. But she’s airworthy in all aspects except legal. Sorry to disappoint,” Hondo says, and there’s a pang of anger and sadness that goes through him. He’d had to say it to the team a couple days ago, and it hadn’t gotten easier.

Maverick does look disappointed, but then his features suddenly smooth into a neutral, contemplative look. He looks at Darkstar. Then to Hondo. His brows knit together slightly and his mouth parts, slowly stretching into a faint mischievous grin as he cocks his head. A sinking feeling pulls through Hondo’s chest, but at the same time there’s a small glimmer of hope that yawns.

He wouldn’t—

Would he?

“I don’t like that look, Mav.” The words tumble out of his mouth unwittingly.

Mav looks up, surprised, and then a grin splits his face like he can’t believe Hondo just said that. His eyes blaze.

“It’s the only one I’ve got,” he replies, and there’s a rush of wonder in his words, like he’s been waiting to say them his entire life and can’t quite believe he’s finally getting the chance.

Hondo makes a choice.