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Jake had heard, over the years, that Maverick Mitchell was a man who wore his heart on his sleeve.
He just didn’t realize quite how literal that statement was.
Here’s what happened — Maverick whipped his shirt off on the beach that day and stunned all of the Daggers into silence within a matter of seconds.
Because nobody had expected the man’s t-shirt to be concealing a lifetime’s tale all catalogued in tattooed ink across his body.
And yet, there it was. Plain as day. Dark ink contrasted sharply against tan skin.
Maverick’s entire torso and upper arms were covered completely by tattoos, which seemed to continue down past his waistline, covered by the rough denim of his jeans.
He stared at them all plainly through his aviators, propping a hand on his hip as he waited for their brains to reboot. As soon as Payback said, “Damn, Captain, that’s a lotta ink,” Maverick grinned and dipped down to pick the blue football up from the sand.
“Play ball, aviators,” he said, tossing it into the air for emphasis.
So sure, you may think it ended with that. After all, tattoos in the military were not that remarkable, but most men also weren’t Maverick, the greatest pilot of his generation. And Maverick’s tattoos were not like most tattoos. No, Maverick’s tattoos lived on his body like a tapestry, there to tell a story. Everything from the little half-faded star on his stomach that was clearly a handmade stick-n-poke he’d probably done on a dare as a teenager, to the rough-edged silhouette of an A-4 Skyhawk on his collarbone, an F-14 Tomcat reflected on the other, all the way to the only splash of color on his whole body, the lavender shaded cause ribbon on his hip.
The aviators found it intriguing. So intriguing that after their Captain had survived a death-defying mission alongside five of their own, during a night out to the Hard Deck, it came up.
“So when did you start getting ink, sir?” Coyote questioned.
“If we’re not counting the stick-n-poke—“ Maverick held up a stipulating finger, pulling a few chuckles from the table, “My first tattoo was done in a back alley shop on downtown Dallas back in 1981.”
Payback whistled, “Which one came first?”
Maverick rucked the sleeve of his t-shirt up on his right shoulder, revealing the faded drawing of a paper outline with a shadow in the shape of a fighter jet, “I was fresh to NROTC and I promised myself I’d get my wings one day, hence the plane.”
“Always a pilot at heart, huh Pops?” Jake ribbed.
“Yeah,” Mav smiled, the expression ever-so-slightly too soft and genuine around the edges. The look of a man in love with his career.
“What made you wanna keep getting them?” Phoenix asked.
“I…” Mav waffled for a moment, “Was a very melancholy individual, at that point in my life, and there was a time where I never thought I’d see myself live long enough to become an aviator like I’d always dreamed.” The whole table went quiet as the man took a sip of his beer.
“So that first one felt like a promise to live, and every one after that was a reward for continuing even when it was hard,” Maverick said quietly, fiddling with the label of the bottle, “And at some point, I found it easier to memorialize the people I wanted to remember with ink than I did by mourning at a grave.”
“How many memorial tattoos do you have?” Bob asked gently.
“Eleven,” Mav said solemnly.
The entire table reckoned with that thought for a moment and unprompted, Mav explained, “I got the Skyhawk on my collar for my dad, then I got a Larkspur flower on my back for my mother, I got the Tomcat—“ he gestured to his other collarbone, “For Goose,” he paused to take another sip of his beer.
“A robin on my lower back for a pilot I taught at TOPGUN that was killed in combat in 2004, a lasso for a friend who was killed in a car accident, the monarch butterfly at the base of my neck for Carole,” he gestured to Bradley, who smiled sadly, “The snake around my arm here,” he grasped his fingers around the edge of his t-shirt sleeve, “For my CO who taught me when I came to TOPGUN, the pulse line on my ribs—“ he took a deep breath, “For a miscarriage, I got a little family of geese for all of the Bradshaws on my hip, I have the date of my father’s death and the date his mission data was ruled unclassified so his reputation as a traitor was cleared written in roman numerals on my chest, and the cause ribbon on my other hip was for both Carole and Ice.”
The entire table took a moment to digest the information, understanding that their CO had undergone a lot of loss throughout his life.
The moment was broken by Jake, “Do you have any you just got for fun?”
“Oh yeah,” Mav laughed, nodding, “Yeah, I’ve got a sports bike as a tramp stamp on my back that I got because I lost a bet back in ’92,” all of the aviators laughed along with him, “Uh, there was the playboy bunny logo on my thigh that was a drunken dare in college, a dolphin on my calf that I got in Hawaii the first time I was stationed there, Goose and I had a matching ‘need for speed’ tattoo right here,” he ran his finger over his pectoral, where it would rest over his heart, “That we got together one of the first times we got drunk together after we became pilot and RIO, I may or may not have had an ex-girlfriend’s name on my stomach that I got covered up with a lightning bolt,” he grinned sheepishly as the rest of the table laughed.
“So most of them have meaning, then?” Fanboy asked curiously.
“Yeah,” Mav nodded, “I got my tags done when I made Captain,” he gestured to the space where one of his most impressive pieces rested, a pair of hyper-realistic dog tags made to look just like the ones he wore around his neck, “I got my wedding band tattooed when Ice and I got married,” he held up his hand, wiggling his ring finger, the only visible tattoo on his body being the black band that wrapped around the base of said finger.
“I got a little pair of wings under my shoulder blades after I graduated flight school, I got a little clapboard with a drawing of a cowboy hat on it for a couple buddies of mine when they got married in 2003 on my calf, I got this done—“ he lifted his sleeve again, this time on the opposite arm, to reveal three black arch lines that formed a rainbow-like shape, “When Don’t Ask was repealed, I got a bouquet of poppies and bluebonnets on my leg when I moved to California permanently,” Mav shrugged, “If it’s on my body, there’s a damn good chance it’s got a meaning, if not a meaning then a good story.”
“Do you have any you regret?” Phoenix asked.
Mav smiled into the mouth of his beer bottle, “Not a single one.”