SHAME ON THE BUNNY 1

 Part 1 of The Lies We Told Each Other

Fandoms:
Top Gun (Movies), Thunderheart (1992)

Relationships:
Tom "Iceman" Kazansky/Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, Sarah Kazansky/Tom "Iceman" Kazansky, Sarah Kazansky/Tom "Iceman" Kazansky/Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, Walter Crow Horse/Ray Levoi

Characters:
Tom "Iceman" Kazansky, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, Carole Bradshaw, Sarah Kazansky, Jake "Hangman" Seresin, Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw, Ron "Slider" Kerner, Ray Levoi, Walter Crow Horse, Grandpa Samuel Reaches, Original Child Character(s)

Additional Tags:
Trans Male Character, Unplanned Pregnancy, Secret Relationship, Polyamory, Tom "Iceman" Kazansky Lives

Summary:
Tom "Iceman" Kazansky never imagined that a positive pregnancy test would be all it took to turn his life upside down. The Johnson and Johnson slogan sounds like a mockery "Results in easy-to-read colors. white NO. Blue YES."
Two hours later, he already has a plan for the next two months. The rest is vague right now, but he's sure he can pull it off. It will only be two or three VERY awkward phone calls, but his baby is worth it. He is Tom "Iceman" Kazansky, the man who makes no mistakes, and he has the craziest aviator in American history, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, on his side. Nothing can stop them.

INDEX: http://palabraspulsares.blogspot.com/p/the-lies-we-told-each-other-1-shame-on.html

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Chapter 1: 1990

Saturday, September 1

Sitting in the bathroom on a Saturday morning, looking at a blue-stained wood stick. This is how his life ends. Tom never expected this ending: he considered suicide once -but decided not to indulge Colonel Levoi-. He feared he would be beaten to death several times -some of his decisions as a teenager were not well calculated-. He chose a career that endangers his life every day. However, he never imagined that a positive pregnancy test was all it took to turn his life upside down. The Johnson and Johnson slogan looks like a mockery "Results in easy-to-read colors. white NO. Blue YES."

Tom allows himself ten minutes of panic sitting on the bathroom floor. Then, he washes his face.

Carefully, Tom collects all the test materials and returns them to their box. He puts the box in a plastic bag from the local supermarket. Confident that the house is empty —Carole took Brad to baseball practice, and they won't be back for hours— he walks through each room and empties their trash cans into the bag. Finally, he carefully removes all the leftover food from the fridge and puts it in the bag. He ties the bag, puts on his running shoes, grabs his keys, and starts his jogging routine -like every day-, but first, he throws the bag in the dumpster on the corner.

In the next block, there is a park where he does his usual warm-up. The weekly collection truck drives by three minutes later and hauls the trash off the block. That Ice was there and confirmed that no one touched the contents of the container is pure coincidence. He finishes his warm-up and begins to jog through the empty streets of Miramar towards the beach.

When he returns, he already has a plan for the Navy to prevent him from flying for the next two months. The rest is vague right now, but he's sure he can pull it off. It will only be two or three VERY awkward phone calls, but his baby is worth it. He's Iceman, the man who doesn't make mistakes, and he's got the craziest aviator in American history, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, on his side. Nothing can stop them.

 

Monday, September 3

Morning

Carole knows something is about to happen, but Tom told her he can't explain, and she accept it. Marrying an aviator taught her to recognize when she should demand answers and when she should let things slide. Ice can't tell her what he's planning because her reaction must be authentic. It will be hard enough to control his own emotions in the coming months.

He is the last one in the house. Carole took Bradley to school, and Tom stayed behind to prepare dinner before going to a meeting on the base. He thought it was a bad joke when they told him that a refresher seminar on technical improvements to flight systems would interrupt these two weeks off. Now he can only celebrate the timing, since he will be able to use his supervisors and colleagues as a cover.

The pot of hot water has almost started to boil in the kitchen. Tom arranges the pre-cut potatoes in a bowl on the left-hand burner. He takes a deep breath and brushes his right forearm against the pot. The pain is intense but brief. He takes a moment to check that the burn is just a little deep. Good. Now the second part.

He puts an oven mitt on his right hand, grasps a pot handle, and checks that he has reasonable control over the object despite the burn on the forearm. With a gesture, he drops the bowl of potatoes to the floor and then tilts the pot so that the boiling water bathes his forearm and hand. He knows he must let half of the water fall off him to guarantee second-degree burns, so he bites his lip against the pain and finally sets it on its side, among the sprawled potatoes on the kitchen floor. Tom steps back to avoid slipping, grabs a towel from the counter, wraps it around the affected area, and runs to his car.

There's no point holding back the tears. So Tom will spend energy on something other than it. He must get to the base hospital. 

 

Afternoon

Carol is scared. What could drive Tom to make such a radical decision? Because the accident in the kitchen while he was making potato salad doesn't convince her for a minute. However, she knows they won't be able to talk until Brad is in bed, so she does her best to calm the boy down and assemble dinner as expeditiously as possible.

Not that Bradley was horrified. He's used to Mav returning from his missions with some injury. He has also seen a broken arm or a bandaged head at his school. For Bradley, it's just a curious event that he can share as an adventure in his classroom because he doesn't understand the impact that arm damage can have on an aviator. On the other hand, Tom knows perfectly well what he is risking, and he did it.

As she serves up the macaroni and cheese and vegetable salad —which Brad eats with a minimum of complaint— she observes Tom but doesn't notice him particularly tense or upset. That's weird. Tom has been distracted since he came in from overseas last week. On Saturday, his mood changed; he began to look at Brad with a new focus and a little melancholic attitude. Later he went to sleep early, claiming tiredness, but she noticed the light under the door. She now understands that Tom was planning to burn himself over the weekend. That means he desperately needs to stay on land.

Finally, at nine o'clock, Tom comes down from reading a story to Brad - the boy insists that he or Mav read to him before bed when they are at home. She is waiting for him with a cup of tea in the kitchen.

"Can you tell me what's going on?"

Tom looks at her, sighs, and picks up the teacup, only to dump it in the sink. He then takes the box with bags of chamomile leaves out of the drawer and prepares himself a cup. He returns to sit next to her at the kitchen table and stares at the wisps of steam rising in the dim room.

"Tom?" Carol insists.

"The last month on the ship was difficult. I had dizziness when I got up. If I ate before mid-morning, I would vomit, and some odors became unbearable. The ship's doctor gave me antiemetics and joked about pregnancy symptoms. That made me think about what happened the last time I was on leave: I met Mav in New York in July. Twenty-four very intense hours after almost a year without seeing each other."

She listens to him with a growing feeling of fear in her gut. That was how she and Nick conceived Bradley, in a twenty-four-hour hiatus, eighteen of which they spent in bed. She remembers that Mav knocked on their door in the morning and almost dragged Nick away. But it can't be, right? Because Tom is...

"So last week, I drove to San Diego and bought a Johnson and Johnson pregnancy test in a neighborhood where I had never been, paying cash. I waited for you to take Brad to baseball practice on Saturday to do it alone. I liked the reassurance that whatever happened…"

Tom stops, takes a long swallow of his chamomile, and grimaces.

Carole wants to ask how a man can think of buying a pregnancy test and not say that his partner gave him some rare disease. Not that she believes that Mav would be unfaithful to Tom -that's ABSURD- it's that the whole line of thought exposed is also absurd. But before she can ask the question, he speaks again.

"That's what there is, Carole: we'll make you aunt. I can't drink more caffeine or alcohol. Of course, I can't fly again either. The only thing I could come up with to keep me from returning to the ship in a week was this -and holds up the bandaged left forearm- I'm working on a plan to get temporary medical leave and disappear. Don't worry; you won't find that mess in the kitchen again."

He finally shuts up. Carole opens and closes her mouth. Her mind continues to try to process what Tom has said in that resigned, determined tone that breaks her soul.

"But you're a man, Ice," she dares to say at the end. "You can't be pregnant with Mav's baby. You just don't have, you know, the equipment to make a baby."

Tom looks at her in surprise. He narrows his eyes and takes a deep breath. Her face twists into a bitter grimace as if he remembered something unpleasant.

It breaks her heart to tell him this truth, but if what she's witnessing is some kind of breakdown from the pressure of living in hiding all the time, she supposes sane Tom will appreciate her snapping him back to reality.

"Carole, I'm trans."

"What?" She can't have heard right.

"That I'm trans. I was born… when I was born, my family thought I was a girl. They named me Rachel Seresin. When I was seventeen, I ran away from home, stole Thomas Kazansky's identity, and joined the Navy. At that time, I wasn't very clear about my plans, but after I got on a plane for the first time…" he gestures with his shoulders, "nothing was the same anymore. I thought Nick told you."

"Nick?" That takes her by surprise.

"Yes, that's how we met at the academy. Nick caught me out of my corset one day but didn't say anything. He just asked how he could be of help. When you didn't object to my relationship with Mav, I thought you knew that I, well, I had my secrets too, and I wasn't going to betray him."

"No." She stops him vehemently. "I never objected to your relationship with Mav because I can see your love. No one should be in the way of something like that. Nick never told me about you. He was a discreet man." 

A question occurs to her suddenly. 

"Won't the real Kazansky come looking for you one day?"

"Relax. That Thomas Kazansky died in a car accident with his parents when he was one year old. I chose the identity because there was no family, and I could use a Jewish last name as an excuse to avoid stripping in full view of other people in the showers. You can't imagine how scared many people are at the idea of a naked Jew."

He laughs with an unexpected lightness.

"So you're not a Jew?"

He growls.

"My mother's family is Jewish, but she decided to "leave it behind" when she married my stepfather, Colonel Levoi. One of the many things we disagreed on. My biological father was a Sioux man who died when I was seven. I don't know much more about him than that."

"Okay, okay. This is all very unexpected, Tom. I… Well, mazel tov? Is that how it is said?"

"Thanks, Carole. Thank you so much."

The enormity of what is coming their way begins to take shape.

"My God Tom, how are you going to have a baby? What doctor will we go to? Mav! How will we tell Mav? We can't put this in a letter."

Tom puts a hand on her shoulder to calm her down.

"Calm down, Carole. I told you that I already have two months resolved. I'm working on long-term plans. As for Mav," he sighs, "as much as it hurts me, we can't tell him. Not only because of the danger of someone intercepting our message but because we both know that no one could stop him from returning, which would be the end of his career."

She bites her lip but nods.

"Trust me, it will be there for the birth. I'm Iceman, right?"

CHAPTER 2: 1991, March: https://palabraspulsares.blogspot.com/2023/08/shame-on-bunny-2.html