Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

April 22nd. The mission goes to shit.

Of course it does- needing no less than two miracles to actually pull the damn thing off, and no less than four more to get everyone home safely. The pass through the canyon goes alright, once Rooster stops thinking. Talk to me, Dad, is the last phrase that passes through his mind before he lets it go blank and flies. Maverick lands the shot, speeding out between the mountains like some kind of messiah, followed closely by Phoenix and Bob. Rooster hits his own shot, Payback and Fanboy whooping behind him.

The surface-to-air missiles nearly shoot all of them down, and the only reason Rooster doesn’t have to eject is because Maverick sacrifices himself. They’re ordered to come back, even though every single one of them is protesting, and Rooster goes for Maverick anyway.

He doesn’t see the missile coming until it’s too late.

And then he wakes up.

Some fucking dream. He can feel the burn in his chest, on his arms and legs, all over him.

“Jesus Christ,” he says under his breath, not nearly loud enough to wake anyone else in the barracks up. They spent the night on the ship, doing last minute prep for the mission the evening before. And now it’s nearly time. He goes to take a cold shower to try and scrub off the feeling of burning alive.

April 22nd. The mission goes to shit.

The same thing happens as in his dream, at first. He flies cautiously, then stops thinking and speeds up. Payback and Fanboy are laughing as they fly behind them, as stressful as this is, because they’re doing it . Both shots land on the base. Everyone makes it through the mountains.

Rooster sees the surface-to-air missile before he realizes he’s out of countermeasures. Maverick and Phoenix are both screaming over the comms and before he can eject, the missile hits.

He experiences what it’s like to burn alive for a second time.

And then he wakes up.

The third April 22nd in a row. He’s not an idiot, he’s seen Groundhog Day, he’s read his fair share of sci-fi novels that feature time loops. Whatever this is- he has to stop dying. He has to stop dying, and then maybe he’ll be allowed to continue on with his life instead of living in an endless loop forever. Dying kind of sucks, now that he knows it was real and not just a very scary dream. He’d rather not do it again.

Of course it’s not that fucking easy.

April 22nd. The mission goes to shit.

This time, he flies fast from the get-go. Hangman is teasing him over the comms and Maverick sounds impressed and Rooster can feel his entire body burning as he flies. He’s so distracted that after he lands his shot, he passes out from the force of trying to accelerate up and crashes into the mountain. He’s unconscious when he dies, but he can still feel it when-

-he wakes up.

April 22nd. The mission goes to shit. He misses the shot. He gets hit by a SAM right after he crosses the threshold, before he even has time to deploy any countermeasures. And then he wakes up.

April 22nd. The mission goes to shit. He makes the shot, gets to Maverick, shoots down the Mi-24 helicopter before it can shoot down Maverick. He flies past and the surface-to-air missile comes flying out of nowhere and the eject doesn’t pull and he burns alive again. And then he wakes up.

April 22nd. The mission goes to shit. He manages to eject this time, and his parachute doesn’t deploy. He gets to live through the wonderful experience of plummeting to his death and waking up in bed with the feeling of falling. Terrible.

April 22nd. The mission goes to shit. He and Maverick are running through the enemy base and someone is yelling and then there are three sharp gunshots before he’s waking up with a gasp. He can feel the phantom bullet wounds, two in his chest, one in his shoulder, and reaches up to rub at them with the arm that wasn’t shot.

“You good, Rooster?” someone asks blearily from the next bunk over. It’s- Hangman.

“Fine,” Rooster says, and his voice sounds hoarse. “I’m fine.”

April 22nd. The mission goes to shit. They get on the enemy plane, the F-14, and they nearly make it off the base before they crash into the bridge that’s in their way on the taxi lane. Rooster is kind of getting sick of blowing up.

April 22nd. The mission goes to shit. They get the F-14 off the base, and the two Su-57s making their way back from the patrol shoot them down easily. They blow up. Again.

April 22nd. The mission goes to shit. They eject as the F-14 explodes, and Rooster screams in pain as he descends, staring at the spot where his leg used to be. He dies from blood loss before they even hit the water.

April 22nd. The mission goes to shit. They shoot down both Su-57s, and then a third one shows up. It shoots them down. They die.

April 22nd. The mission goes to shit. He doesn’t disobey direct orders and he leaves Maverick to die and he feels terrible about it and everyone mourns and when he goes to bed he can’t stop crying and then- he wakes up. He wakes up and it’s still-

April 22nd. The mission goes to shit. This time he ejects and he and Maverick run and Maverick is the one getting shot down on the enemy airbase, and Rooster gets shot soon after.

April 22nd. The mission goes to shit. Rooster is so distracted from hearing in his head Maverick’s harsh breaths as he died the day before that he doesn’t even make it out of the canyon, slamming straight into the side of the mountain. He dies.

April 22nd. The mission goes to shit. They almost make it back. The third Su-57 guns them down. They die.

April 22nd. The mission goes to shit. He gets shot on the enemy airfield again. He dies.

April 22nd. The mission goes to shit. A surface-to-air missile takes him down. He dies.

April 22nd. The mission goes to shit. He leaves Maverick to die again. He wakes up and it’s the same day. He needs to get all of them out of this alive, not just Maverick.

April 22nd. The mission goes to shit. Maverick misses his shot. Phoenix and Bob are screaming. Phoenix and Bob get shot down. Maverick dies taking the hit that was meant for them, because even though he’s condemned to die over and over again that doesn’t mean anyone else has to.

April 22nd. The mission goes to shit. He dies. He wakes up.

April 22nd. The mission goes to shit. He dies. He wakes up.

April 22nd. The mission goes to shit. He dies.

April 22nd. The mission goes to shit.

April 22nd. The mission goes to shit.

April 22nd.

April 22nd.

April 22nd.

April 22nd.

The mission goes to shit.

But before the mission goes to shit, before they even get up in the air, Hangman looks at Rooster like he’s looking at a ghost.

“You okay, dude?” Rooster asks, exhausted and not the one to be asking that question when he himself has died, approximately, twenty-seven times. This is the twenty-eighth April 22nd in a row for him.

“Yeah,” Hangman chokes out. “I’m fine.” He shakes Rooster’s hand and squeezes much too tightly. “Give ‘em Hell.”

It’s not until Rooster’s already in the air, made the shot, out of the canyon that it clicks.

Oh. Oh.

Hangman’s started living April 22nd over and over again, too.

The surface-to-air missile hits just after his revelation. He burns again.

April 22nd.

Chapter Text

The first thing Rooster does upon waking up for the twenty-ninth April 22nd in a row is barge in on Hangman in the bathroom.

Well, it’s not the first thing he does. Normally Rooster is the first one in the bathroom, taking a cold shower to try and scrape off the rest of the burning feeling that tends to cover his body, or to stare at himself in the mirror while he pokes at where he got shot the April 22nd before. This April 22nd, however- April 22-29, he thinks- Hangman beats him to the bathroom.

Which means he was right- Hangman is in this weird time loop thing, too. Every April 22nd previous Hangman’s actions were exactly the same: wake up half an hour after Rooster, when the alarm to get up goes off; meet Rooster on the top deck and tell him to “Give ‘em Hell,” while shaking his hand; sit on standby and do nothing while they fly the mission. The few times Rooster came back alive, with Maverick or Phoenix or whoever else dead, Hangman would trail him around like he thought Rooster was going to break. Always the same.

Now, however, the second Rooster wakes up, Hangman is waking up too. They stare at each other through the darkness for a moment, just a moment, before Hangman is getting up and rushing to the bathroom. He doesn’t lock the door, however, so Rooster takes this as his cue to follow him inside.

Normally, he thinks, Hangman’s response to a situation like this would be to either smirk at Rooster and tease him, or just yell at him to get out. In this case, on April 22-29 and what is probably Hangman’s April 22-3 or 4, Hangman just stares at him, mouth slightly open, like he’s seeing a ghost.

Maybe he is.

“If I knew this was all it took to get you to shut up I would have done it a long time ago,” is the first thing out of Rooster’s mouth.

“What-” Hangman starts, shaking his head.

“No, don’t ruin it now,” Rooster interrupts. He makes sure the bathroom door is locked and then practically backs Hangman up against the wall so that he doesn’t bolt. “What number is it for you?”

“Excuse me?” Hangman says, but Rooster knows he didn’t get this wrong.

“What April 22nd is it for you?” he rephrases. “Come on. You’re looking at me like I died. And I did. At least twice for you, if my guess is right.”

“It is,” Hangman says slowly. “This is- this is the third time I woke up on the same day.”

“April 22nd,” Rooster confirms. “This is my twenty-ninth.”

“You’ve died twenty-eight times?” Hangman asks, looking… vaguely concerned, actually, which is an expression Rooster is not used to seeing on the other pilot’s face.

“More or less, I lived through a couple. I think to stop the day from repeating, I have to keep everyone from dying, and I haven’t managed that yet. I don’t know why you’re here though-”

“How’d you figure it out?” Hangman asks suddenly. “That I was looping, too? I knew the second I woke up and saw you laying in that bunk, but I tried to do everything I did the day before- or, the April 22nd before.”

“Dude,” Rooster laughs. “You looked like I was some unholy apparition, or something. You’re still looking at me like that. I’m alive. This is real.”

Hangman laughs, too, but it’s more of a nervous laugh than anything else.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, so we have to change it up to keep you or anyone else from dying. If I fly in your place-”

“Hell no,” Rooster says immediately. “I’ve got this shit down to a T.” He doesn’t. He’s still finding new and creative ways to die every loop. He just doesn’t want to risk Hangman dying, for some reason. “We just have to get lucky.”

“Alright,” Hangman shrugs, going with it easily, and his signature grin reappears on his face. For some reason, it makes Rooster feel better. “Then let’s get lucky.”

They do not get lucky.

In fact, they remain very, very unlucky. Rooster dies a total of sixteen further times. April 22nd, the mission goes to shit. April 22nd, the mission goes to shit. April 22nd, the mission goes to shit. On and on. Time and time again.

“Something isn’t working,” Hangman says on Rooster’s April 22-45. Rooster is getting very sick of dying, and he thinks Hangman is starting to get sick of it, too, because for the past four April 22nds in a row he’s started their little morning bathroom huddle meetings by checking Rooster over for any lingering injuries like a worried mother hen. “We need to change it up.”

“We’ve been changing it up,” Rooster points out. Hangman gives him a look. “Come on, dude. Trust me on this.”

“I would, if you hadn’t died more than forty times now,” Hangman retorts. “Have you ever thought about what it does to me, huh? Listening to you die over and over again?”

“Well, it’s not great on my end, either,” Rooster grumbles, crossing his arms and leaning against the sink. Hangman is glaring at him, no smirk in sight. Something’s about to snap, Rooster can feel it. “You try burning like three dozen times, see how you like it.”

“I would, if you’d let me fly in your place,” Hangman says. “I’ve asked to every damn day, Rooster. Just so you don’t have to go through it again. So you get a break. And you’re too fucking self-sacrificing to let me!”

“Well, maybe I’m trying to keep anyone else from having to go through that! Sorry I care!” They’re whispering, still, though they’re getting harsher and harsher. It would be a bit awkward if they woke anyone else up and had to explain, although, Rooster guesses, they wouldn’t remember the next April 22nd anyways.

“You’re a fucking moron, you know that?” Hangman snarls. “Good luck figuring this shit out with me on the sidelines.”

“You were put on the sidelines for a reason, Bagman. Stay in your place.”

Rooster knows, instantly, that he’s gone too far. But instead of feeling guilty, he just feels a sort of sick satisfaction. Is this what Hangman felt like talking about his father like it didn’t matter? Is this what Hangman felt like, grinning as everyone else tried to hold Rooster back?

Rooster leaves the bathroom before Hangman can say anything else. He doesn’t make it out of the canyon. They don’t talk to each other for the next-

April 22nd.

April 22nd.

April 22nd.

April 22nd.

April 22nd. Rooster’s fiftieth time living through the same day. He should hold a party to celebrate, he thinks. Instead he doesn’t make it off the enemy airbase.

On April 22-51, after he saves Maverick’s life in that snow-covered forest and ejects from his plane and Maverick punches him in the face, he breaks.

“I need to tell you something,” he says as he and Mav trudge through the snow.

“Is now the time, kid?” Maverick asks. He’s straining, and Rooster can tell he’s hurt.

“Yes,” he says. “You’re not going to remember this tomorrow, but I still need to tell you.” Now that gets Maverick’s attention. “I’m living the same day over and over again. This is the fifty-first April 22nd in a row for me. Every time someone dies, usually me, so I think I need to keep everyone alive in order to make it to tomorrow.”

Maverick stops walking. Stares at him for a moment.

“Did you hit your head too hard when you ejected?” he asks, taking a step closer. “Here, follow my finger-”

“Mav,” Rooster says, stepping back. Maverick drops his hand. “I’m serious.”

“Jesus, kid,” Maverick says, shaking his head. “Alone?”

“You believe me?”

“Hell no. But I’ll play along, if you go see a doctor when we get home.”

“Not alone. Hangman, too, but he’s gone through less than me.”

“Sure. And you haven’t figured it out yet, why? The two of you are smarter than anything when you’re not fighting each other.” Maverick looks like he’s about to laugh. Oh, he totally thinks Rooster is crazy. Maybe this was a mistake.

“We’re not talking right now.”

“Well, then, buck up and apologize for whatever the hell you did. Or if he did something, punch him in the face until he apologizes. Either way. Problem solved.”

“You have terrible ways of solving problems,” Rooster says. Maverick laughs, and they continue walking.

Twenty minutes later, Rooster holds Maverick as he slowly bleeds out from six gunshot wounds to the torso. He can hear the enemy soldiers approaching, guns raised, and he’s not about to die from torture after being captured, so he grabs the gun of the one soldier he and Mav managed to take down bare-handed and shoots himself in the head.

He wakes up with blood in his mouth, on his tongue, coating his teeth, and sprints into the bathroom to wash it out. There’s no wound anywhere, not that he can find, but the leftover blood is worrying enough. Hangman opens the door before Rooster can turn off the sink, and he’s there to see the remainders of blood being washed down the drain. He looks… completely aghast.

“I’m sorry,” Rooster says, taking Maverick’s advice. “That wasn’t fair of me.”

“Wasn’t fair of me, either,” Hangman says, eyes still on the sink. “What happened? You never came back on the comms or in the air.”

“Mav got shot down on the airfield. They were going to take me as a prisoner of war, so I shot myself in the head.”

Hangman just stares at him for a moment. Then he’s diving forward, pulling Rooster into his arms and holding him tight. Rooster completely freezes for a moment, shocked that Jake Hangman Seresin is hugging him, before he comes back and raises his arms tentatively to wrap around Hangman.

“Hey,” he says. “I’m all good, okay?”

“It’s not okay,” Hangman huffs, pulling back. “None of this shit is okay. Let me fly for you today. Please.”

It’s the please that gets him- it sounds so desperate, like Hangman needs this, so he relents.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, you can fly for me today.”

Chapter Text

Hangman flies for him three times, and he dies three times. 

The first time- shot down by a surface-to-air missile after successfully completing the mission. Maverick swerves to try and cover him, but doesn’t make it in time. Rooster decides that, for some reason he can’t put his finger on, Hangman dying is much, much worse than him dying himself.

Hangman doesn’t seem too fond of Hangman dying either, based on their little bathroom rendezvous the next morning.

“That sucked,” Hangman says, running his hands under cold water and then splashing it over his face. Rooster, as if being controlled by some otherworldly force, pulls Hangman away from the sink and checks him over for any residual injuries. “I’m fine, Bradshaw.”

“Just making sure,” Rooster says, raising his hands in surrender.

Hangman insists on flying again, and he gets shot down by a surface-to-air missile again. This time he doesn’t make the shot blind, he barely misses, and Rooster sitting on standby nearly goes into the air himself when he hears that Hangman’s managed to eject. But something in his gut tells him that the other pilot didn’t survive the fall.

He’s proven right the next morning, when he wakes up to Hangman shaking him awake and then dragging him into the bathroom.

“What happened?” he asks.

“Parachute didn’t deploy,” he says gruffly, cracking his neck. Rooster almost winces at how loud the pops are. “Dead on impact. But you already knew that, didn’t you?” He’s giving Rooster a sly look, like he’s got him all figured out.

Rooster doesn’t answer. 

The third time Hangman crashes into the cliff face.

“I was distracted,” he grumbles the next day, on Rooster’s April 22-54.

“That’s why I do the flying,” Rooster says, patting him sympathetically on the shoulder. He knows what it’s like to crash into a mountain. “I haven’t done that since, like, the twenties.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hangman snorts. “Hey, do you think we’ll age if we live this day forever?”

“I do not want to think about living this day forever,” Rooster groans. He gets an idea that’s come to him a few times, but nothing he’s ever acted on. “Let’s desert today. Take a plane and fly off. See what happens.”

They do just that- everyone on the comms is screaming at them, but they commandeer the plane that was supposed to be flown by Phoenix and Bob and fly as fast as they can for the mainland. Then they just- fly. And fly. And fly.

They disconnect the comms and manage to take out the tracker, and they talk as Hangman pilots them below radar. Rooster learns more about Hangman in those few hours than in the last however many years they’ve known each other combined, and he’s pleasantly surprised to find that, when they’re not trying to one-up each other, he actually likes Hangman. He likes talking with Hangman, he likes hanging out with Hangman, he…

Oh, shit.

Nope. He is not going to open that can of worms, not when they have bigger problems on their hands. They’re somewhere over the Alps and they’re about to run out of fuel. That’s the bigger problem. Yep. Totally.

“Hey,” he says, leaning forward slightly. “Want to crash in the Alps?”

“It’s always been on my bucket list,” Hangman replies, and approximately three minutes later they’re back in the bathroom on the ship.

There’s a red mark on Rooster’s back. He stares at it in the mirror for a moment while Hangman’s on the toilet, but tugs his shirt back on before the other can see.

Hangman flies the next few days, until Rooster finally gets sick of him dying. Hangman isn’t thrilled about it, but he seems sick of dying, too, so Rooster takes the mission. And the next. And the next.

He finds more red patches on his body, thankfully in places he can hide. On days he gets shot, there are bruises or remnants of dried blood. On one memorable occasion, after ejecting and his parachute not deploying, he wakes up and can’t move for a good five minutes.

“Sorry,” he says later to Hangman in the bathroom. “Didn’t want to get up.”

Hangman doesn’t look like he believes him. He doesn’t question it.

More days pass. More deaths come and go. Hangman looks increasingly worried when Rooster wakes up in the mornings. He figures he should probably say something, but brushes it off as not a big deal.

The day comes that, as it’s happened before, that Rooster takes the missile for Maverick instead of the other way around. He’s on the ground after a successful ejection (half-successful, considering he’s limping and he’s pretty sure he dislocated something) and the helicopter is coming at him and he knows Maverick is going to fly at him any second now-

Only Maverick doesn’t shoot, he crashes directly into the helicopter, and Rooster thinks fuck because now Maverick’s dead and he’s going to have to do this by himself.

He starts walking. It isn’t fun. He considers going back to the wreckage of Mav’s plane and the helicopter and looking for a flare or a gun or something just to get this over with when another enemy helicopter shows up. He curses, figures a spray of machine gun fire isn’t the worst way to go (but certainly isn’t the best) and closes his eyes.

And then a different spray of machine gun fire hits the helicopter instead. He pokes one eye open and watches, and just like it kept happening to him, Hangman ejects from his plane just before it’s hit with a missile.

Rooster is running without a second thought, going for the trees where Hangman was descending. He recalls what Maverick said to him over and over again whenever this was him in Hangman’s position, and a dozen other days come rushing back to him.

He sees Hangman standing, disentangling himself from his parachute, and his heart feels like it’s flying.

“Hey!” he yells, and Hangman turns and looks at him with a shit-eating grin. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah!” Hangman yells back. “You?”

Without a second thought, Rooster shoves Hangman. He falls back, hitting the snow, and his grin doesn’t drop from his face.

“What the hell!” Rooster yells. “Now we’re both going to die, that was pointless-”

“Maybe I got sick of seeing you die, huh?” Hangman snorts. “I want to see what the big deal about the Tomcat is, anyway.”

Rooster just stares at him for a long moment, then reaches out a hand to help him up. Hangman’s a fucking idiot, he thinks, and then right after that thinks my fucking idiot.

Nope. Nope. Still not going there.

It takes them a while to get to the airfield, especially with Rooster’s limp. He gets Hangman to pop his shoulder back into place, so his arm feels better than before, but he definitely fucked up his ankle somehow. Hangman’s half-carrying him by the time they get close, and Rooster has to put on a brave face while they cross the airfield to get to the F-14.

Of course they’re spotted, and shot at, and he throws himself between Hangman and the gunfire without a second thought. Rooster can feel the bullets piercing his back but he keeps propelling Hangman forward, because he knows dying by what’s basically an execution squad is a terrible way to go.

“What the fuck,” Hangman says the second they’re sheltered with the F-14. “What the fuck, Rooster- Bradshaw, can you hear me, are you?”

“I’m fine,” Rooster says, and he’s choking on his own blood now. “Fine, I’m fine.”

“You’re definitely not,” Hangman says, and he sounds like he’s choking, too, on something that isn’t blood- he’s choking on tears.

Now’s the time, Rooster thinks. Now’s the time to finally accept that he’s a little bit in love.

He dies right there, in Hangman’s arms, and he wakes up the next April 22nd in exactly the same place, mouth still filled with blood. He rushes to the bathroom and hacks it up quickly, spitting it down the sink, and looks up in the mirror to see Hangman standing behind him.

“I can explain,” Rooster says, wiping the rest of the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. By the time he’s turned around, Hangman is slamming into him.

“You fucking asshole,” he says, and he sounds like he’s crying again.

“It’s okay,” Rooster says, trying to be reassuring. “I’m fine.”

“Don’t ever pull that shit again, you hear me?”

“I hear you. I hear you, Jake.”

Hangman just hugs him tighter. Rooster hugs back just as tightly.

“You’re deteriorating,” Hangman says when he finally pulls away.

“I’ve realized,” Rooster says dryly.

“No, I mean- dying this many times, it’s going to kill you. Permanently. We have to get it right, and we have to get it right soon.”

“Alright, then,” Rooster says, thinking back to what Hangman said when they first figured out they were in this together. “Let’s get lucky.”

It’s roughly three dozen April 22nds later when the real plan begins to formulate in Rooster’s mind. It’s his April 22-104, and he can feel himself getting weaker even though he and Hangman have been trading off who gets killed. Hangman’s started getting weaker, too, and they need yet another miracle, and soon.

Which is when it hits him.

“Hangman,” Rooster says, grabbing his arm out of pure excitement. “I’ve got it. You need to come off standby.”

“What?” Hangman asks.

“We get it right. Mav and I, in the airfield. If we get it right, if we’re in the air, you need to come off standby.”

It takes them three more tries to get it right. But get it right they do. They successfully complete the mission. Maverick takes a missile for Rooster, Rooster shoots down the helicopter, they steal the F-14. They’re in the air. Hangman comes off standby at the last second and saves their asses.

There’s a huge celebration. No one on their team has died. The mission is successful. Rooster is on someone’s shoulders and he’s pretty sure it’s Hangman’s, and they go to sleep that night victorious.

And then he wakes up.

Chapter Text

April 22nd.

“Fuck,” Rooster says passionately the second he realizes. “ Fuck! ”

Hangman is there in an instant, dragging him to the bathroom before Rooster’s swearing has a chance to wake anyone else up.

“What happened?” he asks. “We did it perfectly, no one died, what-”

“I think I know,” Hangman says seriously. No grin in sight, just- Hangman. “Don’t interrupt me, okay?”

“Okay?” Rooster asks, because he has no idea where Hangman is going with this.

“I’m sorry,” Hangman starts. Rooster raises an eyebrow. “Don’t give me that look, you know I hate apologizing.” Rooster lowers the eyebrow. “I shouldn’t have gone digging into your past and I shouldn’t have brought up your dad like that. It was unfair of me. It’s not an excuse, but I was trying to press your buttons. Rile you up. If you act like you did in that moment- moving without thinking- that’s how you survive. That’s how you fly like Maverick. And that’s not an excuse, but- that’s why I did it. And I shouldn’t have. And I’m sorry.”

Rooster just stares at him for a moment, blinking, trying to process all that. Hangman grins at him sheepishly.

“I’m done now,” he says. “We gotta- get it all off our chests, you know? Make it right. Make everything right.”

“Okay,” Rooster agrees. “Okay, then- then we’ll make it right. We’ll do it right. I’m- I’m sorry for being a dick toward you. In the past. It was unwarranted, mostly. I think I was just- you know. You’re cocky, kind of rude, brash, you leave your wingmen behind-”

“We’re supposed to be making it right, Roo.”

Rooster pointedly ignores the fact that Hangman called him Roo.

“I’m getting there,” he says instead. “The point is- you’re all those things as a defense mechanism, I think. You’re just like the rest of us, I think, you just want to come home. But you’ve saved my ass more than once now and it- your friendship means the world to me. So. I’m sorry, too.”

“Friendship?” Hangman asks, grinning. “So we’re really, officially friends?”

And he’s got that smirk on his face, the stupid shit-eating one, and Rooster 

doesn’t

think.

He acts.

“Punch me if I’m out of line,” he says, even though he knows he won’t be, and he bunches his hands in Hangman’s shirt and pulls him in.

The kiss is like everything else between the two of them- passionate, a fight, intense. Hangman’s hands are on the back of Rooster’s neck, pulling him in tighter, and Rooster pushes forward. Hangman flips them, pressing Rooster against the counter of the sink, and only pulls back to breathe once they’re both satisfied.

“You’re not out of line,” Hangman says, and he sounds a little breathless. “You’re not out of line. Let’s go finish this.”

The mission is terrifying. Mostly because Rooster knows this is the last one, this is it, after today they’re moving on.

He goes slow, at first, thinking too much about it. Then he speeds up, going faster than necessary, but Payback and Fanboy are behind him. They’ve got his back. They’re up and over the curve, and he shoots blind when Fanboy’s laser fails and hits the shot perfectly on target. He doesn’t pass out from the G’s going up and over the mountain and he doesn’t get lost in the cacophony of “Dagger Three defending” and “Smoke in the air” and-

And Maverick’s shot down and they’re being ordered back and Rooster goes, shoots down the helicopter, ejects from his failing aircraft.

Maverick shoves him over after asking if he’s alright and Rooster just gets up and laughs and hugs him, and if Maverick is surprised by that he doesn’t say anything. They sneak across the enemy airbase and they get both enemy fighters down before the third shows up.

Maverick tells him to eject. Rooster reaches up, then grins.

The third fighter explodes. Hangman flies through the dust.

“This is your savior speaking,” he says, and Rooster has never been so glad to hear his voice. They did it. They did it.

There are people swarming them when they land. Rooster high-fives too many people before he’s able to hug Maverick, then Phoenix, shakes the hands of Bob and Fanboy and Payback before he can see Hangman.

He knows what’s going to happen and his feet are already moving, carrying him through the crowd as it parts. Hangman is moving for him just as fast, and as they collide their lips crash together again. There’s a fair amount of wolf-whistling, some yelling from Coyote and the others about bets to be paid off. Rooster ignores all of it, focuses on the press of Hangman’s lips against his.

“We did it,” he murmurs, keeping them close together, this moment just for them. This time he knows it’s true. They’ve done it.

“Yeah,” Hangman says, beaming at him. “Yeah, we did.”

They make Rooster and Maverick spend the night in the medical wing for observation. They have a long talk, and when Rooster gets called off to talk to Cyclone and Warlock, Hangman takes his cue and sneaks in.

“You’re definitely not supposed to be in here,” Rooster says with a grin. Hangman doesn’t even hesitate before he’s stepping forward, pulling Rooster against him with his signature smile.

“I think they’ll allow it,” he says. “We kind of just saved the world.”

“Hell yeah we did,” he says, and if Hangman spends the night in the medical wing, crammed into a bed that is absolutely not meant for two grown men, well- no one says anything about it. They kind of just saved the world, after all.

They wake up.

April 23rd.

Chapter Text

Even though he slept through the night, Rooster still falls asleep on Hangman’s shoulder on the plane ride back to California. The others tease them miserably about it the second they land, showing off the pictures that have been spread to a group chat with all of them- even Maverick, and Rooster has no idea why the hell Maverick would give his cell phone number to any of these chucklefucks.

They go to the Hard Deck as soon as they land, all of them living off the high of a successful mission and a week off to do whatever they want. Penny, who obviously knows everything already because she’s Penny, has a round waiting for them. Maverick doesn’t show up right away, which Rooster only notices because he can see Penny’s gaze drifting toward the door every few minutes.

But everyone else is there. Rooster kicks their asses at pool a few times, then lets Hangman win because he’s feeling generous. Hangman obviously knows that Rooster is just letting him win, but he doesn’t say anything about it, keeps the smirk on his face and cheers that he’s both the better pilot and the better pool player.

“Still gonna be saying that when I shove this pool cue up your ass?” Phoenix says brightly, wrapping one arm around Hangman’s shoulders and the other around Rooster’s. She turns them around, drags them off into a corner while the others howl with laughter.

“So why did neither of you tell me about this?” she asks conspiratorially. “Not that I didn’t see it coming-”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Hangman asks. He pulls a toothpick out of somewhere and sticks it between his teeth and Rooster has to try very, very hard to stay calm.

“Oh, please, you’ve been pulling each other’s pigtails as long as you’ve known each other.”

“That could just mean we genuinely hate each other,” Rooster points out. Phoenix gives him a look, and he raises his hands in surrender.

“But it didn’t,” she says triumphantly. “And now Bob and I are about to make two hundred dollars.”

“Two hundred dollars?” Rooster asks.

“Each.” She just looks proud as she pats them each on the back and turns around to high-five Bob. Hangman just stares, toothpick dangling on the edge of his bottom lip.

“We’re not even together or anything,” Rooster says dumbly.

“We’re not?” Hangman asks. Rooster gives him a look- he’s smirking again. “Come on, Roo. We’re totally together.”

There it is again- Roo. Rooster reaches up and plucks the toothpick from Hangman’s mouth, and before the other pilot can protest he presses a quick kiss to his lips and replaces it. Hangman grins.

“Yeah,” Rooster agrees. “Yeah, we are.”

“The question is, which April 22nd is our anniversary?” And God if Rooster doesn’t have to hold in a snort so they don’t have to explain the joke.

Maverick shows up and indulges Rooster in a round of “Great Balls of Fire,” because it’s basically tradition at this point. Rooster’s looking at Hangman the whole time he sings, which he knows everyone will give him shit for later. But that’s for later.

For now, when he stops singing to raucous cheers from everyone else in the bar, he slips outside. Walks down to the beach to get some fresh air, knows that Hangman will follow him. He waits until Hangman is locking their fingers together, both of them staring out into the sea.

“We did good, Bagman,” Rooster says proudly. He’s died more times than anyone else. He probably shouldn’t be standing here right now, to be honest. But he is, with Hangman at his side, and he knows that no matter what comes next, it’ll all be fine.

“We are good, Roo,” Hangman replies. “In fact, we’re really good.”