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Maverick didn’t know how exactly he’d ended up here, gravel and broken glass pushing through the knees of his jeans. It probably should have concerned him, the gaping, dark hole in his recent memory. Maybe it would later. If he’d get a later that is. All things considered, it could go either way.
The next bottle shattered right in front of him, the spray of green glass and dregs hit him a split second before the raucous howl of drunken cheers. He didn’t flinch at the sharp, distant sting of shards against his cheek. All his concentration was locked on keeping himself upright. Keeping the body, he wasn’t even sure was his, balanced on his knees and not lying flat in the halo of jagged glass all around him. The last time he’d let himself fall back to sit on his ankles, someone had tipped their beer on him.
He remembered broadly, his string of poor precursory decisions. How he’d fled familiarity, found anonymity in the shadowed outskirts of civil society.
He’d strayed further than the omnipotent, prying eyes of the Navy could reach. Beyond the whispering, the pity, the accusation that followed him around like a miasma, all in equal suffocating measure.
He’d gotten on his bike and driven so fast the air had no choice but to enter his lungs, so fast the world had to let him breathe, if only for a few suspended moments. On stumbling feet he’d found a place where the only white at the bar quickly disappeared up a rolled dollar bill. Where the whisky burned so harshly the eyes on his back felt like winter sun in comparison.
Events became fuzzy sometime after the ninth back-to-back shot and his second trip to the bathroom with the sunken eyed man, who drifted between world weary patrons with the offer of a brief reprieve on his cracked lips.
It didn't matter tremendously. He would still be here, swaying ever so slightly in the increasingly blurry alleyway, wondering absently if this was something he’d walk away from. Whether he even wanted to.
Dull pricks of pain burst up the length of his forearm, wet foam soaked the side of his filthy t-shirt. Someone shoved his head forward roughly. His hands, previously hung limply at his sides, shot out in instinctive self-preservation. Glass bit deep into his palm, blood pooling almost immediately beneath them, turning the concrete slick. Shouts and jeers rattled his otherwise empty skull. A boot connected with his ribs, another with his quivering thigh.
Words with little meaning flew over him, like swooping carrion, overexcited and cruel. ‘Harder, kick him harder,’ they shrieked, ‘see if he’s still pretty when he cries.’
The next kick knocked him to his elbows. A rough hand clamped around the back of his neck, hard enough to darken his already spotty vision, pushing his face down, down, down-
“Get your fucking hands off him.”
Above the clamouring jeers, it might as well have been a whisper. For all the icy malevolence, it might as well have been a blizzard.
The vice grip around his neck loosened and he gasped shallowly, unfocussed eyes drifting across the glittering shards mere inches away.
“Who the hell are you?”
There was movement then. Grunts and thumps and the skrit skrit skrit of glass underfoot. The next hands to touch him were gentle, so striking in contrast to all that had come before that Mav actually flinched away, jerking further into the unforgiving, blood-soaked ground.
“Woah, hey,” said an equally gentle voice, smooth like velvet, rich like chocolate. “Maverick. You’re lying in glass, We’re going to get you up. Slider, get his other side.”
Twin points of pressure under his armpits dragged him all the way to a shuddering upright, sagging like dead weight against the hold. They carried him easily out into the mostly deserted street, sitting him down on the sidewalk under the dim, flickering glow of the streetlights.
Mav blinked at the familiar faces floating in front of him. Iceman’s gaze was hard beneath his furrowed brows; it made something unpleasant twist in Pete’s aching chest. He let his eyes drift over Ice’s shoulder, from Wolfman to Hollywood to Slider.
“Jesus kid, what did you take?” Slider hissed, suddenly right in front of him, tilting his head back and pulling at his eyelids. Mav winced but didn’t answer. He didn't know.
“I’m getting the car,” Ice announced, standing smoothly. With one last calculating look down at Maverick, he turned and stalked off into the gloom.
“Well, you’ve done in Mav,” Hollywood said dryly, once Ice had disappeared around the block, “you’ve officially worried the Iceman.”
Mav, who had seen no such emotion, frowned. Dragging his heavy tongue around his mouth, he slurred a quiet “why?”
Slider snorted, finally releasing Mav’s face. “You mean besides the fact you look like the victim in a Slasher film?” he asked in a tone that Maverick, even drugged all the way out of his mind, did not appreciate. His displeasure must have come across because Slider exhaled harshly. “We just found five guys trying to grate your face off in a pile of broken beer bottles. If he wasn’t worried about you, I’d be worried about him.”
They sat in heavy silence for a few tense minutes before Wolf shuffled over to sit beside Mav, tucking him carefully under his arm and against his chest. Mav didn’t realise he was cold until heat spread like honey from the point of contact. “What are you even doing out here, man?”
Mav’s throat constricted uncomfortably. “I don’t know,” he whispered. The arm around his shoulder tightened.
Maverick checked out of the conversation after that, only becoming hazily aware that he’d done so when he was being lifted off the ground and deposited in the back seat of Ice’s blue hatchback beside Hollywood. The other pilot stopped Mav from slumping forwards with a hand over his chest as he wrestled with the seatbelt. Hollywood had just managed to buckle Mav in when Wolf flopped into the spot beside him. Sandwiched between the pilot/RIO duo, the buzzing under Mav’s skin faded to a quiet hum he hadn't managed to achieve since Goose died.
Ice twisted around in the driver's seat, reaching out and tapping Maverick’s cheek to get his attention.
“You’re staying at our place,” Ice said, jerking his head towards Slider in the passenger seat, “We have a first aid kit, I can fix you up there.”
Maverick’s mouth felt like it had after he’d gotten his wisdom teeth removed, clogged with spongy gauze, lips loose and uncoordinated. He just nodded, hoping his gratitude could be seen under his heavy eyelids and clumped lashes. A hand on his knee, grounding one second and gone the next, then Ice was pulling away from the curb.
Mav could feel the allure of unconsciousness whispering around the edges of his mind. His head was pressed against Wolf’s shoulder, shifting with each bump and turn in the road as Ice manoeuvred the vehicle smoothly through the darkened streets.
There was a lot Mav wanted to ask. Mainly how they had known where to find him, and why they had bothered coming in the first place. Why they didn’t just drop him off at base hospital, higher than the planes they flew, and let the Navy’s no tolerance policy take care of him for good. Washed out and alone, the way he deserved.
But that could wait. For now, he let himself relax, with no choice but to trust these men, and finding he didn’t mind. Maverick closed his eyes.