𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐒𝐈𝐗



↳ 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐲𝐬 'I said it's just a boys' game, but girls play too'









━━ 𓄼 𓄹 ━━

MIRAMAR NAVAL AIR STATION San Diego, California



𝐈𝐓 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐎𝐍𝐋𝐘 a matter of time before Fritz and Berlin got paired with Hangman.

So far, Maverick's pairings had been met with no successes. Not one team had managed to take him down. It was slowly becoming less about the mission and more about who could avoid getting tagged out.

Once they were hovering at 6,000 feet in the air, Hangman wasted no time. "Ber-lin," He drawled the name out. "Heard they had to drag you out of a swamp in Florida. Rumor has it that you were pulling for even more time in the reserves." He chuckled. "That just ain't natural."

"You wanna talk about things that aren't natural? I was wondering about your hair. There's no way in hell you don't dye it," she simpered. She knew full well that everyone in the rec room could hear their conversation on the radio.

Jake turned his head and shot her a glare through the cockpit. "I do not dye my hair."

"I found a bottle of dye in the locker room yesterday if you were looking for it, pretty boy," Fritz goaded.

Cam grinned with silent laughter as she clipped her mask all the way on.

Right on time, Maverick's F-18 flew right between them, cutting so close her plane banked towards the starboard side. "Greetings, aviators. Fight's on."

"Strap into that carseat, Fritz," Hangman said. "Bank left, Berlin." As soon as her plane cut towards the left, Hangman nosed down into a steep drop.

"Oh, come on!" Fritz lamented, smacking a gloved fist to the canopy.

Cam watched as he flew overhead. First Omaha, now Hangman. Coyote had also done close to the same thing yesterday. They were all out for themselves, risking their wingmen for the sake of saving face and proving they had what it took to be team lead.

"Berlin, make your move!" Fritz said behind her. "Tally, nine o'clock. Mav's on us."

The chase moved on over the desert heat. Cam tried every evasive maneuver she could safely pull above the hard deck, never daring to move into an offensive position. Eventually, there were no other options. "Can you at least pretend we're on the same team, Hangman?"

All that echoed in her headset was the sound of his laughter. "All in due time, Berlin."

"Berlin, switch to offensive!" Fritz told her, only slightly panicking. "Hangman isn't gonna help us."

Her heart raced, thoughts splitting like cracked glass. She had a window but it was closing fast. Indecision was the fastest way to get killed. Her mind was screaming in a voice that sounded like Kit's. You used to be good at this, you used to know what to do.

It was a sloppy move. An attempt to pull up and let Fritz get a shot off on Maverick. Hangman's goading commentary didn't register in her mind as anything other than a blur of sounds. Cam saw it coming a second before it happened. Hangman moved into the defensive position. She and Fritz were sitting ducks.

The kill tone echoed loud in her ears and she snapped back fully to reality. And then came the voice of Maverick, saying once again, "Smoked. Berlin, Fritz, you're done."

Two hundred push ups later, her arms were aching. Her body was moving on auto-pilot, fueled entirely by spite. Maverick had ended their round as soon as he tagged them out, leaving Hangman free from punishment.

As soon as Hondo walked off, Fritz rolled out of the pushup position and sat with his knees up. Breathing heavily, he squinted into the sunlight. "Why did you do that?"

"Do what?" Cam groused, wiping the sweat that was dripping from her forehead. She knew what.

"You pretty much let Mav hit us. You could've screwed over Hangman and everything, just like you did to Coyote. But you didn't." There was only concern in his voice. "Why?"

She stood up and offered him a hand, dragging him to his feet. The explanation clawed at her throat. She could tell him about the thoughts that still plagued her, the apprehension that still appeared at the worst times. He deserved to know before they were in too deep. Even better, he had been friends with Kit too. He would understand the grief.

But before she said anything, the next group of pilots walked out. They were now within earshot, and none of the F-18s had begun their deafening roar yet. Phoenix and Bob were getting ready to go up in the air with Rooster. It made for a suddenly crowded tarmac.

Hangman still hadn't gone inside. He ambled over to Fritz and Cam as if gracing them with some god-like presence. "I'm still finding this all a little strange," he remarked.

"What do you want me to say to that?" Cam brushed her hands off on her pants and rolled her eyes. "Good for you?"

He gave a cold laugh. "I'm just wondering how someone goes from Whiting Field to Top Gun. Best of the best, and all that. You must've had something real special to offer them to crawl your way back up here. Or is that not really the case?"

Fritz was at her side, and she knew everyone else on the tarmac was now listening to the conversation with rapt attention.

Her stomach twisted, but she remained composed. "What's your deal, Hangman? Spit it out," she said blandly.

His irritating face twitched up in a sly grin. "Let's just say, I did some digging into your file. The rest of us, we're all here because of our talents. You're here because of a threat."

"Hangman–" Fritz began to interrupt.

Cam squared her shoulders. Sweat still clung to her black tank top. "No, let him go. I wanna hear where he's going with this."

Over Jake's shoulder, Bradley met her eyes, brow furrowed with confusion. Standing with his helmet hanging at his side, Bob looked slightly nervous as his focus flitted between Cam and Jake. And Natasha was looking at Cam with an expression that couldn't be mistaken as anything short of entertained.

"I just thought it would be fair for everyone to know. After all, we'd hate to have a liability up in the air with us, right?" Jake spread his arms, gesturing at the rest of them.

Natasha rolled her eyes. "Who the hell is we, Hangman?"

Undeterred and maybe even more confident, a grin loosened his features. "When's the last time you even flew an active mission, Berlin?"

Cam bit her inner cheek until she tasted blood. "Just because I was training pilots doesn't mean I wasn't flying."

"You don't even want to be here, do you?"

"Are we twelve? What I want is nothing of your concern. This isn't some little game of desires."

"Oh Berlin," he patronized, blue eyes alight. "You can talk the talk all day, and you used to be able to back it up in the air. What happened to you? You let the old man take you down without even putting up a fight."

It echoed against the dull roar of her mind. What happened to you?

"Listen," Cam said, stepping close with gritted teeth. "There is nothing you can say to me that I haven't already heard. Whatever you're going to try and hold against me, I can guarantee you someone else already has. Believe me, you're not as important as you think you are."

The desert wind rolling over the runway brushed at her neck as Cam turned away. Not willing to abandon an argument without the last word, Hangman spoke up one more time.

"It's very clear that they wanted Nikita Kasper. They settled for you, didn't they?"

Not a thought crossed Cam's mind except for the snide grin on his face. In an impulsive split second, her arm was swinging towards his jaw, knuckles making impact in a clean right hook. Jake stumbled backward before tripping and falling on his ass.

The yelling broke out immediately.

"Cameron!" Fritz exclaimed at the same time Bob let out a shocked, "Woah!" In her periphery, she saw Bradley push past a wide-eyed Natasha.

"Say it again," Cam dared, standing above Hangman with a murderous glare. "Say her name again, and I'll make sure you don't have enough teeth to pronounce it!"

A steady hand grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back. "Berlin, let him go. It's not worth it," Bradley said in her ear.

She whipped her head around. His eyes met hers, pleading with her to stop. Suddenly, she didn't know what to do. Caught and exposed, she felt like he was looking straight through her.

Quickly, she shook away his grasp and glanced one last time at Hangman. He clutched at his jaw, pride wounded more than his face.

"Get up," she snarled. "You're embarrassing yourself."

Fritz helped him up, only for the sake of erasing the evidence of what Cam had just done. She could kiss her days in the air goodbye if Jake said a single word to Admiral Bates. The only consolation was that Jake would be hard pressed to complain that he had just been punched in the face by a woman.

For some reason, Bradley was still standing right next to her. "Man, I don't think I've ever seen him at a loss for words."

"Aren't you supposed to be going up in the air?"

"Yeah. Why, are you gonna punch me too?"

Exhausted, Cam pressed her hands to her eyes and let out a low groan. "I can't believe I just did that."

It started out with a snort. Cam opened her eyes again and suddenly, Bradley started laughing uncontrollably.

"What?" Cam demanded.

He glanced at her before looking over at Hangman, who was currently dragging himself back inside. Bradley's cheeks reddened with more laughter. "His face, he was scared out of his mind. I haven't seen anyone cut him down to size in so long."

She pressed her mouth in a line in an attempt to not laugh, too. A snort still escaped. "I thought you were going to stop me."

"It was all for show, I couldn't if I tried." He shook his head. Then he met her eyes again with the honest smile that she had memorized. "Plus, it's hot when you lose your shit on people."

The little thrill that passed through her at his words was very unwelcome. "Play nice," she said as blandly as she could muster.

He ran to catch up with Natasha and Bob, calling out over his shoulder, "Don't hit anyone else until I come back!"

She watched him jog off, arms crossed over her chest. Despite herself, she smiled like a fool.

"That's the best mood I've seen Rooster in this entire time," Fritz remarked, walking back over to her so they could head inside.

"Seeing Hangman laid out on his ass will do that to a person."

"'Course, I think it helped that it was you that did it," he told her.

Cam blinked. "What is that supposed to mean?"

His expression gave nothing away as he shrugged. "Oh, nothing."

She let it go.

The best way out of this was to pretend nothing had happened and pray to God Hangman didn't say anything to anyone else. With any luck, word wouldn't even get around.



𓄼 𓄹



𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃 got around very quickly.

Apparently, the window in the rec room was the perfect vantage point to see where they had been standing on the runway. Coyote had watched the whole thing. It was only a matter of time before word got Maverick.

And indeed it did. Cam received a request for her presence that very night. The only thing that pointed to this ending in not a complete disaster was that Maverick had only asked her to meet him in the rec room and not in Simpson's office.

When she opened the door, Cam found him sitting alone on one of the chairs. She stepped through the threshold, unsure if she was supposed to sit too. She hadn't spoken to him one on one since that night at the Hard Deck.

Maverick glanced up at her. "Do you know why you're here?"

Sunlight was streaming through the windows. She moved slightly to the right to keep it from reflecting in her eyes. "Insubordination. Taking matters into my own hands after I was disrespected. I'm not going to apologize to him."

He almost laughed. "No, we'll get to that. Do you know why you're here? Why you're back at Top Gun?"

Her eyes caught on the pictures on the wall. Faces of pilots, all of the people that had once walked the halls of this place. "Sir, I'd just like to know if I'm being sent home."

He crossed his arms, head twitching with a barely perceptible shake. "I have to turn you over to Admiral Bates if Hangman choses to file an official report."

That would be an automatic ticket out of Top Gun. And, given the circumstances that Jake had so graciously reminded her of, a permanent grounding. "And did he?"

"No. Hangman came to me first, told me it was his fault that it happened."

Shocked, she turned her head to fully face him. "He did?"

Maverick nodded. "He did. But I'd suggest keeping yourself under control. Your next victim might not have an ego the size of this base keeping them from filing a report."

The relief that passed through her was a foreign realization. She wanted to stay, to remain and to prove to herself that she was still what she once could have been. "Understood, Captain."

"You can drop the formalities for now. My working hours have technically ended for the day." He waved his hand with an absent sigh, reclining onto the couch. "Jesus, Cameron. Punching someone in the face? I thought you would have outgrown that habit."

He would, of course, be remembering the time she was suspended for a similar incident in middle school. And then the time she came home with a bloody nose after getting into it with a girl who was repeating the ninth grade. Cam had broken not only bones but also records, specifically the one for most yellow cards received by a single player on the varsity soccer team.

She should have known better than to risk so much.

When she didn't respond, he said, "You never answered my question. Do you know why you're here?"

Cameron took a seat in the chair across from him. Thanks to Hangman, pretty much everyone knew the circumstances of her time in the reserves. "I'm here because Nikita Kasper is no longer alive."

"You have just as much right as any of these other pilots to be here. The best of the best."

Her patience fractured. Hangman, and now Maverick. No matter whose mouth the words came from, it still sounded like a bold-faced lie. "If Kit was alive, I wouldn't be here."

"They wouldn't have even had the idea of calling you back if you were a second choice. You can play the what if game all you want. Top Gun is a place for the elite, and you're here for a very specific reason."

Cam gritted her teeth. "I was a second choice, my commanding officer at Whiting Field made that very clear. I'm not looking for pity, I know the truth."

She stood up to leave, irritated. But as her footsteps echoed towards the door, he said, "What about your kills?"

She stopped in her tracks. Without turning around, she said, "What kills?"

A piece of paper rustled as he read. "Two alleged air to air kills, unconfirmed enemy radio transmission totalling two downed planes. And then further down, we've got: Wreckage reports near search and rescue response concur."

She whipped her head around. "How did you get that report?"

He shrugged. "It isn't classified."

An indignant noise escaped her throat. "You'll note that the words alleged and unconfirmed are used in the same sentence. People have claimed it didn't happen."

"I happen to know the truth. I did my research."

She set her jaw and made up her mind to stop dragging her heels. The truth was, that report had burned her. Even after everything, she had no way to prove what had happened. For the longest time, she wanted the story set straight. Now, she would rather it stay forgotten so she could quit hearing the name Nikita Kasper.

"I shot down both of those planes. Is that what you wanted to hear from me? That glory means nothing when the only eye witness died because I failed at my job."

To her great annoyance, he remained unshaken. "Like it or not, you're here because of your combat experience. Your talent, your expertise. Two air-to-air kills is more than any other pilot here."

"Not you," she managed.

"No, not me. I still have you beat," he agreed. It was impossible to stay mad at him. "But I also happen to be in the unique position of understanding what it means to lose someone under your watch. To feel like everything you've done, all you might ever do, all of it will always amount to a zero sum because when it mattered most, you failed."

It stunned her to silence to heat her own thoughts reflected in his words. Cam slumped back down on the couch, defeated. She pressed a clammy hand to her forehead. "Tell me something. Does it ever get better?"

"The guilt?" He set the paper back down on the table. "It becomes easier to find understanding within yourself."

Cam swallowed hard. "And if her family never forgave me?"

"Well, I do know a thing or two about that." He leaned forward and balanced his elbows on his knees. "If you can believe it."

She let out a watery laugh and blinked up at the ceiling. Spilling her guts to a commanding officer was the last thing she expected to do at Top Gun, but then, it seemed that unexpected was the theme of this assignment. "Nikita had a younger sister, Lanie. She lives with their parents in Missouri still. I've spoken to them a handful of times since, and they've held nothing but understanding for me."

"But?"

She took a shaky breath. "Nikita was engaged. Her wedding would have been almost exactly a month after the accident. Her fiancé wouldn't even meet my eyes at the funeral, and he made it very clear that he blamed me. Hated me, even. Still does, I would imagine."

"Learning to forgive yourself is the hardest part," Maverick told her sagely. "You can't control the cycle of grief for other people. What you can control is yourself."

A sardonic laugh passed through her lips. "If you dug into the depths of my file, you'd know I'm doing a shitty job of that, too."

"We're all learning to let go, Cameron. No one has a natural gift for it."

"You must have had a point for calling me up here and confronting me," she reasoned. "Why waste your time?"

"Because I need you to believe in yourself again. It's vital to your success here, but it's even more essential to the rest of your life."

"No one spends twelve hours floating in the Pacific Ocean and comes back unchanged. I don't–" she shook her head "–I don't think I can ever be who I was before."

With Maverick, it felt so easy to let the story spill from her chest. He had been her hero when she was little, the man on the motorcycle in the desert who answered to no one and made his own rules. Even now when she saw so clearly where he had failed, she knew she would always look up to him.

"I'm not here to tell you that things will go back to normal. The grief, the trauma, all of it makes it impossible to fit back through the doorway of your old life. What you need to do is turn around and look ahead of you. Reach out to the people around you, don't make the same mistake I did and close yourself off from the world."

The corner of her mouth twitched. "Too late for that."

He shook his head. "It's never too late, Cameron."

Her focus turned to the window where the blue sky was beginning to take on an orange glow. For once, her chest did not fill with dread at the thought of the coming days. It's never too late.



𓄼 𓄹



"𝐒𝐀𝐘 Rooster, mind if I ask you a personal question?"

Bradley leaned his head back against the seat. He had high hopes that Hangman would've gone home to reflect on his personality after Cam decked him, but he should have known better than to put that much faith in the brain power of Jake Seresin.

"Would it matter if I did?"

Apparently, it wouldn't. "So what's the story with you and Maverick? It seems like he's got you a little rattled."

"It's none of your business," Bradley said dryly. "Don't you remember what happened when you asked too many questions yesterday? Or did she hit you too hard?"

"Berlin doesn't pull her punches." Hangman laughed it off. "Maybe she could teach you a thing or two, Rooster."

Bradley didn't hide the annoyance behind his tone as he turned his attention back to the sky. "Now where the hell is he?"

Maverick's voice came over their coms. "Been here the whole time."

Like a ghost materializing from nothing, the F-18 swung upwards to hang above him, canopy to canopy.

"Ho-ly shit," Hangman said.

"You see me now?" Maverick asked, meeting Bradley's eyes through the acrylic plastic.

Everything blurred red. Pete Mitchell had been his hero when he was little. Like the old Westerns about cowboys that played on the late night cable channels of his uncle's TV. The motorcycle, the hangar in the Mojave desert, the leather jacket. All the accolades of a man who cared for no one but himself. Maverick was larger than life with his arrogance, and Bradley saw through that thin veneer as he glared upwards, face contorted in fury.

Pete Mitchell was supposed to look out for him, to be the father he had lost.

Now he was just an obstacle in his way. Another person who had left him in the dust to fend for himself.

Maverick's helmeted head cocked to the side. "C'mon, let's get it over with."

In a seconds decision, Bradley nosed down in a steep dive. "Fights on!"

In his ear he heard Hangman say, "What is with these two?"

He had an opportunity to level out, but there was no way in hell he was backing down. Locked in a cobra maneuver, the two F-18s twisted through the air headed straight for the rocky earth below.

"Alright. You put us here." Maverick's heavy breathing echoed on the coms as gravity pressed in. "How you gonna get yourself out?"

"You can bail out any time!" Bradley yelled.

"How low you wanna go, Rooster?" Maverick seethed.

He shook his head, eyes narrowed. "I can go as low as you sir, and that's saying something!"

He saw Maverick glance down, presumably at the altimeter. "What's past is past! For both of us!"

"You'd like to believe that, wouldn't you?"

"Hard deck is five thousand feet, fellas. You are running out of room!" Hangman said, still observing from above.

The altitude warning flashed yellow as the numbers flickered lower and lower. Still, he didn't pull up. Maverick had embarrassed him enough times in the last week. This time, the tables were going to be turned.

"Your strategy is about to run us into the ground, what's your move?" Maverick demanded.

The computer rang out as they hit 3,000 feet. Altitude, altitude, altitude.

As they crossed 1,000 feet they leveled out. Seconds apart, Bradley took satisfaction in knowing he had stayed in the dive slightly longer than Maverick.

And now he was in the perfect offensive position. They flew above the desert far below the hard deck.

"C'mon Rooster, you got him! Drop down and take the shot!" Hangman said.

He would be the first. No one had managed to tag out Maverick yet. This was his chance to prove he was worth all the extra effort it had taken to get to this point in his career after Maverick held him back. To prove that he was worth the time Maverick had failed to give him.

And still, Bradley hesitated. "It's too low!"

"Too late, had your chance!" Maverick said. Bradley could only watch as the F-18 slowed and hovered above him. Maverick dropped in behind, and the next sound was the kill tone echoing in his ear. The disappointment in his voice was clear. "That's a kill."

"Damn it," Bradley muttered. He was never going to hear the end of this one.

"Same old Rooster," Hangman goaded with a laid-back sigh.

As Maverick peeled off, he reminded him, "Go see Hondo about your push ups."

Bradley bit his inner cheek. He was going to fly in this detachment, no matter what it cost. He would do his push ups, he would play Maverick's game.

He would tell himself that the approval of Pete Mitchell meant nothing until that lie became the truth.



━━ 𓄼 𓄹 ━━





































a/n WHEW!

I get so freaked about posting these chapters for no reason. I haven't been this excited for a fic in a long time so I hope you guys are enjoying this as much as I enjoy writing it!

I wanted to give mav and cam a moment to shine in this chapter to then contrast it to bradley's perception of maverick the desert cowboy 🤠. cam and bradley are both unreliable narrators in their own special way.

we're slowly unraveling more of cam's history! she's got a lot going on and not only does she have two air to air kills, she has also taken out one (1) hangman 💪

--nat <3