imma be honest I want to make a fic of this one day but for right now you just get me running wild with this headcanon
you know how there's those videos of surgeons being "inspirational" to their interns and then saying the meanest shit in the world? yeah, I think that's Iceman as an instructor at TOPGUN.
Just the dry, rough sense of humor? The perfectly attenuated phrase in order to knock the arrogance out of some of these scrappy pilots? That's Iceman. The evidence is there in TG86! it's ICE who is saying the most bratty shit to Maverick. His criticisms are almost always valid or born of a real curiosity that's worth looking into, which I think is key, but he expresses it in the rudest and most inciting way possible.
"Who was covering Cougar while you were showboating --"; (in response to Slider's calling Goose and Mav "famous") "I think you mean notorious"; "I don't like you 'cause you're dangerous" -- I mean Ice is right but he's also a bitch. (we don't have time to unpack ALL of what went into Ice goading Maverick seconds after meeting him with "need help figuring it out? who's the best pilot?" like my god man).
So, some contenders for some of the commentary Ice might have for his students --
"Keep flying like that, I'm going to assume you're getting kickbacks from the military hospital."
"I can only hope one day you fly for the enemy."
"I was thrilled to hear the Navy's policy initiative for accommodating more disabilities went into action this year, however, I do think they should reconsider sending me blind pilots."
"Are you on your wingman's life insurance or something?"
"What did I say about making the same mistake twice?" "At least tell you I've learned something?" "No. What I said is don't."
"Resist the urge to help me."
"I'm not looking for the best you can do. I'm looking for the best, period. So if you can't do any better, I suggest trying to emulate somebody else who can."
"Well, you're no Artful Dodger, but artless dodging kept you alive well enough this time, I suppose." (I think it would be funny if he incidentally gave this poor pilot the callsign Dodger because of this, or A.D. for Artless Dodger)
"Did the Academy change its curriculum? Emphasize the element of surprise?" "Um... why do you ask, sir?" "Because you fly like you've never been inside a plane before."
And I think he might say this to a colleague trying to pull rank over him that he neither respects nor cares about:
"I've neither the time, nor the crayons, to explain this to you."
I think Mav would be so annoyed, too. "why do I have the reputation for being hard to work with when you're going around saying the meanest crap to these kids?"
All Ice would do is laugh. "Sounds like a personal problem."
Not to say that Ice is an asshole without restraint. Hell, the Iceman is all about restraint. He doesn't kick people when they're down. He doesn't say cutting stuff like this to people who are genuinely trying and not being a showoff. This is to knock overly arrogant kids down a few pegs, not send people into a shame self-doubting spiral, and Ice is usually pretty damn good at walking that line.
Like, I imagine one of the students not understanding something to do with the physics portions of their classes and so he goes to Ice super nervous about getting reamed, and Ice is very patient with him. When Mav comes in and starts talking to Ice about instructor stuff, the student goes "oh, I can come back later, you know I think I'm getting it!" out of fear of wasting Ice's time and Ice would chuckle and be like "no, you clearly don't get it, and that's fine. Easier to teach you on dry land as opposed to up in the air, so let's keep working through it. Long as Mav's not about to talk to me about anything confidential --" which Mav shakes his head no "--alright, then how about you sit right there and keep working at it until you get it, and you will get it. If you've got the time, I've got the time, so let's get it done," and the kid stays in the office and keeps working at it for hours, occasionally checking his work with Mav and Ice until, voila, he does actually get it and also has a whole new understanding of Ice.
Or if, god forbid, anyone had an accident, Ice would be all over trying to help with that (and help Mav work through it too) and protecting the students from any fallout from the brass because fuck them, they don't know what it's like to be in the air anymore.
I also think that before the TOPGUN class starts, Ice would find Mav checking on all the canopies of all the jets and, once Ice realized that was what Mav was doing, would spend the next several hours with him helping out and making sure everything was operating properly, even though engineering had already looked at them. Can never be too sure, and if it provides Mav peace of mind, then Ice will do it, no questions asked.
And so, despite saying some of the rudest crap most of these students have ever heard, they all love him. They all respect the ever-living-crap out of him, and learn to find him actually just kind of funny. It'd be a lot harder to like him if he were wrong, but he's so rarely wrong that in the end even the ones who do get pissed off at him manage to calm down. Students, as they graduate and leave TOPGUN, would probably talk to other graduating classes when they meet them on deployments like "oh my god, what did he say to your class?" "he once said --" "I didn't find it funny then but now I laugh every time I think about it -- " "he helped me figure out how to do..." so on so forth.
There are a couple of the brass that aren't amused, but I think that's where Mav would come into play in his own way. Because Ice is good at what he does, and Mav sure as hell wants him around, and so should everyone else. Ice is just also not afraid to be an asshole about being good -- which the last person this is news to is Maverick.
Maverick's just the only one Ice has encountered who can give as good as he gets, which is why as instructors, they do a pretty damn good job working together to whip their classes into shape. It's just funny that never in a million years did Mav think he'd be the "good cop" in their good cop/bad cop instructor situation, but he's resigned himself to his fate all the same.
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