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Ice opens his locker and immediately freezes.
Theoretically, it should be empty aside from his stick deodorant, a copy of Crime and Punishment Slider got for him as a gag gift two Christmases ago that he keeps forgetting to trash, and his change of clothes. What should not be there is a three-pack of compression socks and a new thing of razors. They aren't the cheap kind either, the socks or the shaving equipment. In fact… they're the kind that Ice likes to buy himself if he'd done a particularly good job rattling the rookies or getting tone lock on Maverick in under five minutes (not impossible but seemingly getting more difficult as the months go on).
He reaches a hesitant hand toward them, and while he knows that no one in the locker room is paying him any mind, it's just Slider, Hollywood, and Sundown milling around; there's an itch of self-consciousness crawling up his spine.
People don't just leave things for Ice, especially the kind of people who have access to the Top Gun locker room. He's not being overly suspicious with those two facts alone. Still… he picks up the items and leans against the closed lockers next to his own to inspect them more carefully; for what? He doesn't know. Booby-traps maybe?
He turns the socks over his hands and finds that they're the correct size, even the material is the soft kind, not the itchy wool that the company sometimes batch mixes. When Ice accidentally throws those into his cart instead, it's the worst kind of surprise. The razors are also not tampered with. The box is unopened, and when Ice gives them a conspiratorial shake, nothing rattles unnecessarily.
His brows pull together in confusion.
From his left, Slider's locker slams closed without a care for the eardrums of the other pilots finishing up. He settles up next to Ice, and almost childishly, Ice has the urge to hide the two items behind his back so that Slider can't see them. He doesn't, because he's not a child, but it's a close thing.
"Treatin' yourself, Tom?" Slider's voice isn't particularly telling, but Ice still gives him a calculating side-eye all the same. As much as they're best friends, the other man doing something like this, outside of a birthday or some holiday, is slim to none.
Ice considers his options. Sundrop has his headphones in, and Hollywood has fucked off; probably going to hunt down Wolfman.
"Someone left 'em for me." Ice turns to face Slider and holds the items out for him to inspect as well. Maybe he's missed something in his confusion.
The other man straightens up and takes them, doing much like Tom had, running his fingers over the fabric of the socks and shaking the razors.
"Weird," is what he offers before handing them back, and Ice rolls his eyes, snapping his gum for emphasis.
"Weird? That's all you're gonna offer me?" Slider laughs and knocks his shoulder into Ice's.
"Not sure what else I can, princess; looks like you got yourself an admirer." He leans off the lockers and moves around Ice to head out. "Or," he says, looking over his shoulder to smirk wide and far too amused for Ice's taste, "a stalker."
Ice throws his towel at Slider's face.
The thing is… the gifts don't stop. For the next two weeks, every few days, there's something new waiting for Ice.
A pen, shiny and silver, to replace the one now scuffed with teeth marks and dull from where the oils from his hands had taken its luster. A new pair of aviators, the same brand and model as the ones that had cracked days before when Merlin had knocked into him, too excited post hop. They'd fall from Ice's face, sweat easing the slide, and when they hit the tarmac, Ice knew they were fucked almost immediately. He'd been wearing his spare pair and bitching pretty consistently ever since. There's also a book. Ice had nearly mistaken it for Crime and Punishment, the cover just as old and faded, but it wasn't. It was a book Ice had maybe mentioned twice, only to say he'd been having a hell of a time finding a copy for himself. Goose had brought up the fact he and his wife, Carole, had caught him at a thrift store in town, and Ice had explained himself without shame.
Ice had been wracking his brain since the first present concerning the who. He didn't bother pondering the why. He was vain enough to think someone was attempting to woo him, and changing that assertion wasn't at the top of his priorities. Still… he wanted to know who was taking the time to not only go out and find these things for him but secret them into his locker without detection. Ice was also curious about who was keeping such close tabs on him to know his favorite brands, usual habits, and what he liked.
The gifts were too thoughtful to be a stranger, but for the life of him, Ice couldn't look at any of the people in his surroundings and make it make sense.
Slider had been immediately ruled out. Wolfman and Hollywood were in each other's orbits so much that Ice didn't even consider himself more than a distant blip on their radar. Sundown and Merlin were good people, fun to get a beer at the O-club with and shoot the shit, but he didn't know them. Goose was married, and Ice had seen the way Carole Bradshaw had the lanky goof of a man wrapped around all ten of her fingers.
Then… then there's Maverick.
On a purely factual level, Ice recognizes that Maverick is the best and most likely option when he considers the people he's closest to. On an emotional level? Ice doesn't want to try and hope. After the whole Charlie thing, even though she'd gone and left as far as Ice knew, he'd taken the curling heat of attraction and rivalry for Maverick and tied it down, throwing it as far away as he could. It liked crawling back every time the smaller man sent him a wild-eyed smirk, a silent 'see if you can do better than that, Ice.'
However, four days after he finds the book, Ice has his answer.
There's no rhythm to when the gifts come, no timetable, and seemingly no pattern that Ice can discern. It's exciting, but any time there's a great length between them, he finds himself worried that maybe this admirer of his has given up, or, regardless of the thoughtfulness of the presents, it's been one giant prank. Get Ice invested and then drop him in the shit to see him squirm…
So, that being said, he's genuinely not expecting to find anything each time he opens up his locker.
It's morning, he's early (he tells himself it's not to try and catch this offseason Santa, but how much truth the excuse holds is only for him to know), and when he opens up the metal door, blurry-eyed but ready to shrug into his flight suit, there's a box waiting for him.
Ice immediately wakes up, blinks away the tiredness, and, checking that no one else is around to see, eagerly reaches in and takes the item out.
At first, when he opens up the wooden box, he's confused. There's nothing inside, just velvet lumped together, divots in the fabric, but no actual items to fill in the negative space. Then… then Ice actually looks. Since it's already open, he inspects that first. The velvet is crushed and cheap, like costume material, and Ice can see where it's been hot glued onto the wood, little solid globs of the stuff jagged like there had been an attempt to hide it, but it's still noticeable. Next, he closes it and drags his fingers over the rough edges. More glue, wood this time, is streaking the sides where the uneven borders had been pressed together to close, the little metal hinges at the back are screwed in with even more glue, but the biggest thing that draws Ice's attention is the lid. Carved in shaky lines at the top left corner, probably done with a pocketknife instead of a tool meant for the art, are his initials, and beneath them, his callsign. In the very center is, if Ice squints and tips his head, the cartoonish approximation of an F-14.
He doesn't realize he's smiling, cradling the ugly little box in his hands so clearly handmade, until the pull of his lips makes his cheeks ache. It's a struggle to school his expression, and he fails completely when he opens up the box one more time, realizing with a jolt how the cushioning inside is shaped in a tiny square and one lopsided circle. A laugh slips out and, checking to make sure he's still the earliest bird, puts the box down to slip his ring and watch off.
It's not a perfect fit, but it's close, and when Ice shuts the lid, not bothering to try the off-center latch included (also glued), it doesn't pop right back.
Once his flight suit is on, he carefully puts the box back on top of his spare clothes, leaving his ring and watch inside for safekeeping.
The other men filter in by the time he's dressed, Wolf and Sundown ragging on him for being first in, first out.
"Worried we'll see your junk?" Sundown jeers.
Ice slides past him with a roll of his eyes and a sharp smirk.
"Worried you'll get jealous, Down." As he goes to leave the room, a body knocks into his, a hand coming up to Ice's chest to steady themselves. Ice doesn't need to look to see who it is, he can feel the smaller presence, but he looks down anyway. Maverick is blinking up at him, bomber jacket thrown over his standard white cotton, hand still on Ice's sternum.
Ice feels frozen, caught by hazel green eyes, but he slips into himself like he always does, kicking the hogtied feelings he's had for the other man since day one, telling them to stay down.
"Jeez, Ice, watch where you're headed." There's no real heat, months of flying and showboating simmering down to friendly rivalry. When they're on the ground, they're good. It's only in the air that they're allowed to rip into each other as viciously as they want.
Tom's smirk widens.
"You mean you couldn't see me all the way down there, Mave- rick ?" Ice pops the end of Maverick's name and watches as Maverick's lips threaten to turn down at the edges. It's so easy, so satisfying to get under his skin.
This early in the morning, the other doesn't seem to have a comeback on his tongue, and instead, he's rolling his eyes like verbally sparing with Ice isn't worth his time. Ice, for his part, realizes that Maverick's hand is still splayed on his chest. He looks down at the spread fingers and feels his breath catch hard behind his teeth. It's a struggle to not let his expression drop into an approximation of shock.
Maverick appears to recognize where he's touching and snatches his hand back like Ice, contrary to his name, has burned him. He doesn't seem to realize Ice's current state, the tension rising in his shoulders, and checks Ice with his hip as he passes by, unaffected.
"See you in the air Iceman."
Ice doesn't know how he gets from the locker room to the tarmac, triple checking his jet before their scheduled hop. His brain is running a disbelieving loop of facts over and over.
Maverick's hand was cut, little things, nothing that had needed a bandaid obviously, but there were scratches across the sides of his fingers, a knife slipping. There were a few burns, too, like something hot had stuck to the tips too quickly for him to get it off without sustaining injury. Lastly, most damning was glue , dried tan and crusty at the edges, caught in the beds of Maverick's fingernails.
It was Maverick.
Ice doesn't do anything with the information for a few days. He sits on it, mulls it over, turns the box and every other gift he's received in his hands, and tries to make the puzzle come together. He's still vain enough to think the reason behind the presents is an attraction but now that he knows it's Maverick who's been leaving them? A shred of doubt settles in. Every item aside from the last can be written off and scoffed away, but not the box. The hideous little thing had been built with blood and sweat (and far too much glue), and there was no mistaking the effort that went into it. Ice couldn't write it off.
In the afternoon of the third day after the revelation, Ice makes his move.
He goes to find Goose.
It's Saturday, and he knows for a fact the other man is at his base assignment, probably with Carole, hopefully without Maverick. Somehow his luck hasn't run out, because when he reaches the cinderblock home, it's only Goose there, his wife and son out with Maverick getting icecream, at least that's what Goose tells him once the surprise of Iceman showing up on his door uninvited has worn off.
They linger in silence once he's over the threshold, but Ice didn't come here to stew in his thoughts any further.
"Why is Maverick leaving me presents?"
Even if Goose had wanted to lie, Ice catches the startled, almost guilty flash in his eyes and knows he's got tone. Goose seems to know it, too, because, after a second of attempted bluffing, he sighs heavily and slumps against the entryway wall.
"Maverick's never been really good at getting people's attention, not the right way, at least. I think he wanted to… I don't know, man; I think he's trying to win you over. Hell, I don't think even he really knows." Ice is no less confused, but he lets the taller man continue after he scrubs a hand down his face. "You know, Mav. The first time was just a spur-of-the-moment thing, flying by the seat of his pants, but I think Slider might have said something, tipped him off you liked it, and then he was trying, so I think that's what he's doing, just… trying."
'Maverick is…dumb.' That's the first thought Ice has. Immediately following it is, 'I'm going to kiss him.'
He does not voice either of these to Goose, who looks at Ice like he's waiting for him to start laughing or threaten the RIO's pilot. Ice doesn't do that, either.
"You know when he's going to leave another one?" There must be something in the way Ice asks the question because Goose only frowns for a second, then, like he understands precisely what Ice isn't saying aloud, beams and claps him on the shoulder.
"Yeah, man. You're not gonna believe the shit he does to make sure no one catches him…."
Roughly twenty-four hours later, Ice finds himself pulling up to Top Gun. He sees Goose's car and knows that the other man and Maverick are inside. Getting to the locker room unimpeded is ridiculously easy. Ice strolls in without a care in the world and nods to the weekend staff giving him odd looks but not questioning what he's doing at the school on a day off.
Goose is leaning outside in the hall, checking his watch, and then when he clocks Ice; he's smiling so wide Ice is worried it has to hurt.
"Just in time, man," Goose whispers at him. "He just went it."
When Ice nods and goes to move past Goose, the other man slaps him, overly friendly, at the middle of his back.
"Go get 'em, tiger."
Ice has to fight the smile as he slips into the locker room, careful to not let the door slam behind him. He can't stop his shoes from sounding off against the tile, however, and Ice watches the back of Maverick's head, standing in front of Ice's open locker, tip in his direction.
"I said I'd be quick, Goose, don't rush me."
Ice feels himself smirk and sets his hands to his hips.
"Tall, blonde," there's a sick spark of glee, seeing Maverick turn to a statue. "Not Goose, though."
Maverick turns, and Ice raises a brow at him, taking in the white as a sheet complexion and how his fingers are clenched in a death grip around the object in his grasp. As Ice had wanted to that first day but hadn't, Maverick, realizing he's been caught, moves the item behind his back, like he thinks he can hide it from Ice's calculating stare.
"Uh," Ice can see Maverick's brain turning, trying to come up with some excuse, some kind of reasoning. That's not what Ice is there for. He moves forward, practically stalking towards Maverick until they're almost chest to chest, Maverick stepping back until he's flush to the lockers. He's staring up at Ice, wide-eyed, a little scared, but still trying to force that ever-present cocky expression.
Ice wants to whip that bravado away and replace it with something more honest.
"Got something for me, Mitchell?" Maverick is clearly looking for some kind of exit, an escape route, but Ice has got him tone locked, and he refuses to let the other man shake him. Maverick must come to the same conclusion because there's an almost defeated slump in his shoulders from one breath to the next.
From behind his back, Maverick reveals the gift he'd been going to leave. Ice looks down as it's pressed into his chest. Maverick is continually defiant, even though the taller man can see how his neck is starting to flush under the harsh lights of the locker room. Cute.
When Ice lets his attention drift back to the present, he gets the same heart-pounding sensation he's gotten every time he gets a new gift and carefully reaches his hands out, taking it from Maverick.
The fabric of what Ice now recognizes as a scarf is soft and buttery against the dryness of his palms. It's probably cashmere. The color is a deep blue, dark but not navy, and Ice can already imagine himself wearing it; sees an image of himself with the long ends of the scarf wrapped loose and comfortable around his shoulders. Ice wonders if that's what Maverick had in mind, picking out the gift for him and how Ice would look wearing it across his throat.
Ice considers his next move very carefully. Maverick is looking skittish like he'll bolt if Ice backs down. So, with that in mind, Ice doesn't. He carefully unfolds the scarf, stretching it in both hands, so a few inches of the fabric remains between where he's holding it. Ice doesn't allow Maverick a chance to question. He can see Maverick opening his mouth to speak, and Ice takes the opportunity to loop the middle of the scarf around the back of Maverick's neck, pulling him off the locker and right up against Ice.
Ice feels the surprised gasp of breath on his jaw, and Maverick's hands come up to brace against Ice's chest, stalling him from dragging Maverick any closer. He's getting redder by the second, but there's that wild hesitance in his eyes again, so Ice holds himself still and doesn't push, not until he knows Maverick isn't going to punch him in the face on reflex.
"Don't-" Maverick's voice catches, and he clears his throat; Ice is patient as he waits. "If you're just trying to be nice, don't ." And oh. Ice feels a stab of guilt in his stomach. He should have been more clear. Maybe jumping Maverick in the middle of his weird courting ritual without offering an inclination of returned attraction hadn't been the best course of action.
He's lucky he's always been quick on his feet, though.
The last thing Ice wants is for Maverick to get the wrong idea.
"Is that what you've been doing? Leaving me gifts to be nice?" He doesn't ask it to be mean, but he's been around Maverick long enough to know how the other man operates and what he needs to step forward when he's wondering if his next move is gonna be the one that gets him. He needs the challenge.
Ice picks up the hardening around Maverick's eyes and the sudden set of his jaw; the determination.
The Maverick.
It makes Ice flash hot under the collar.
"No." His answer is solid, and Ice doesn't think he even realizes that he's digging his fingers into Ice's chest. "You," he falters this time, but Ice knows he can't be kept down for long, not even by himself.
Maverick takes a steadying breath.
"You deserve nice things, and I wanted to be the one to give them to you." And yeah, alright. Ice doesn't have patience anymore, not this close, not after that.
He uses the scarf to haul Maverick the rest of the way in.
The kiss is a little awkward at first, Maverick still in shock, but then he's melting, and fuck, it's like tasting sunshine after a few days of cloudy skies. Maverick opens up beneath Ice's lips beautifully, grabbing at his chest with intention this time, steading himself as Ice tips their heads and pushes in deeper.
Eventually, Ice pulls away because as much as kissing Maverick senseless is all he wants to do, he technically hasn't given Maverick an answer to all this wooing and gift-giving.
He smirks when he sees Maverick's eyes going cross, trying to keep a lock on Ice's face while he's still so close. It's hard not to lean forward and kiss him again.
"I know it's selfish," Ice says, voice low as he lets the scarf drape over Maverick's shoulders, using his free hands to cup the other man's cheeks, "but can I have one more present?"
It's clear Maverick isn't expecting that, but he's not upset, only amused, scoffing and rolling his eyes, smile bright, almost blinding as he turns it toward him.
"Yeah. Sure, Ice." Maverick's laughter is a puff across Ice's mouth. "What'dya want?"
Ice smirks.
"Just you."