Current Rooster and Young!Mav in TG:M timeline
I desperately need more fics of Maverick being de-aged to his OG Top Gun age (or somehow time travels to the future to replace his current self) and Bradley has to deal with a young!Maverick who has no idea about everything that will come to transpire between the two of them in the future.
This would be pre-reconciliation Bradley and all the conflicting emotions that Maverick brings with him (along with an odd sense of protectiveness that seeing Mav so young and a bit broken after Goose died).
Like, how is Rooster supposed to hate him when he’s looking at him with those shiny, green anime eyes and dark, heavy lashes?
Though his height hasn’t really changed since then, 55 year old Mav finally has some muscle to his frame, while Rooster can pick up 25 year old Mav with one arm and toss him across the room (if he could catch him).
Mav doesn’t understand what he could have possibly done to get Rooster to hate him so much in the future. This just compounds the guilt he already has because the one thing he thought he could do was be there for Bradley and he evidently couldn’t even do that 😭 (insert morose and extra guilt ridden Mav).
Mav having to find out that Carole dies young and he wonders why he’s just cursed to lose everyone he loves 🥺
The Young Guns crew are a bit baffled that this Maverick is gonna be their instructor (this younger than them, crooked teeth, baby faced pretty boy is gonna teach them?)
Hangman especially is thinking this would be a piece of cake, only to get wrecked later. (He and fiery young!Mav are going at it over the comms. He’s still hot for teacher though, especially when Mav gets tone on him and rubs it in a little afterwards.)
Meanwhile, Rooster is fighting some inner demons because something in the back of his brain is convinced that if he hate f**ks Maverick, everything will be solved. (He doesn’t do it, but they have a few charged moments that scared the both of them. Mav is scared because in his mind, Bradley is still knee high and tiny, not this big, beefy, 35 year old man that he would absolutely let wreck him. Rooster is scared because behind all that hate is a bunch of love and repressed desire lol )