✔ᵉⁿᵍˡⁱˢʰ Starscream [Top Gun Maverick]✔

14

Half asleep, Kim rolled to the side, paused in her movement, and began to blink because something wasn't right. It took a second or two before her brain was reasonably receptive and she remembered what was wrong with this scenario. It was not her apartment, but Jake's, who was, elsewhere. Cliché and expectations completely fulfilled, that a guy like Hangman, the next morning no longer lay in bed, if this, a night with someone spent.

"Still here?" wanted to know Jake after a few quiet minutes, who came back to the bedroom in boxers and a cup, stopped in front of the bed and looked down at her while taking a sip from the cup.

"How kind you can be," Kims wearily ran a hand over her face, grumbling as she stood up and tried to get out of bed reasonably gracefully, without tripping and falling in her case, "You me too."

"How touchy you women always are in the morning," Jake countered, grabbing her hip with his free left hand, wrapping his arm around it so Kim couldn't get away so easily, and pulling her onto his lap as she sat down on the bed, where he still quickly set the cup down, "Morning. Did you sleep well? The night hadn't been particularly long."

"As if you know what women are like in the morning when you're gone beforehand or make sure they don't want to spend the night with you in the first place," Kim countered, placing her right hand on the pilot's cheek and stroking his chin with her thumb, "There you go again, getting what you wanted. Do me a favor, don't make me regret it. However, I assume that I will soon enough. Don't hang it on the big bell, a thing that would be enough for me already."

"At least it was worth it," purely a matter of opinion in Kim's eyes, but, and this could not now be forgotten, it was Jake from whose mouth these words came, "And you can't tell me it wasn't. For it was to be heard."

All right, this was Kim's cue to leave. Wordlessly, she reached for the cup Jake had set down on the floor and got up from his lap.

After last night, a few drinks and trying to catch up on dates, talking a tiny bit, now it was over again. As if nothing had ever happened. Sure, people don't change and certainly not overnight, especially not a Jake Seresin. He didn't have to, but a little less arrogance would have been nice.

Generally people don't change, at most they evolve or adapt to the (new) circumstances, their environment, but change? Never.

Away from that, and Kim had to hand it to the pilot. The night was anything but bad or terrible. On the contrary.