Archive of Our Own

“You can be my wingman anytime,” Iceman says, finally allowing the smile on his face.
“Bullshit,” Maverick pauses for a millisecond, and anxiety slams it’s cold hand on Ice before he finishes what he was saying. “You can be mine,”
He lets out a breath, relief filling his head and shooing away the feelings of doubt. And he thinks, yes, yes, yes. Maverick steps half a step closer to him, he doesn’t know why, but Ice immediately wraps his arms around him, pulling him into a hug.
And Maverick does the same back, and Ice almost can’t believe it, but he has to, he was really there, really hugging him, really agreeing with him. Gotta be the first time he’s agreed with me on something, he thinks.
But it’s over too soon and Maverick releases him, smiling that smile that threatened to make Ice’s legs buckle beneath him. He squeezes his shoulder just before Slider comes in and picks him up, cheering along with the rest of them.

Ice follows Maverick away from the crowd, leaving the cheering on the deck as they enter the hull.
“Why are you following me?” Maverick says, slowing and turning to look at him.
“I... want to talk to you,” Ice replies, trying to square his shoulders and desperately trying to cling to his cold and confident persona, even though the pilot standing in front of him was looking at him like that. Maverick raises his eyebrows. “Talk to me?”
“Mhm,” Ice nods. “It was too loud up there,” There were too many people for his liking. This conversation needed privacy, and Maverick was hard enough to talk to as it is.
Maverick leans back on the wall, tilting his head a fraction. “Talk to me ’bout what?”

Ice glances down at the floor for the tiniest second, sorting out the words in his head as best and as fast as he could. “Just wanted to ask if you found it all.. okay,”
Maverick inhales sharply through his nose. “Yup,”
And Ice knew he did not find it okay, at all. “Why are you lying?”
His green eyes harden and Ice is all too aware that he may have just crossed a line. “I’m not,”
“...I don’t want this to turn tense,” Ice says after a moment, still fixing his eyes on Maverick’s.
“You should’ve made that decision yourself, earlier,” Maverick’s eyes were steady on his, and Ice blinks. What? “What do you mean?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean,” Maverick folds his arms, lifting his chin up.
Ice was lost, completely lost. “I don’t,”
He frowns, trying to work out whether Ice didn’t know at all, or if he was just saying that to irritate him more. “You mean you can’t remember saying that I wouldn’t be the proper choice for the task?”

Silence settles on them, and it feels like a cold wind just blew through Ice’s chest. That’s what he’d said. That’s what Maverick was holding against him because he’d heard him.
“You weren’t supposed to hear that,” is all he can manage.
“Oh yeah? But I did, Kazansky, I did, and you, oh great ‘ice-cold no mistakes’, can’t even think up why,” Maverick’s voice was vicious and mocking, it carved x’s across Ice’s chest.
Ice clenches his jaw and flicks his eyes around the corridor. “That was earlier Mav, before everything that happened, happened. I don’t feel like that any more,” He exhales. “I’m sorry,”
“Don’t call me Mav,”
“I’m sorry,” he says again. “But do you really think I’d ask if you wanted to be my wingman if I still thought that?”
He’s quiet for a moment, staring at the floor, his eyebrows still lowered. “No,”
“Exactly,” Ice says softly, moving his head to try and meet his eyes.

Maverick clenches his jaw and turns his head to the side, now refusing to look at him.
“Can we restart this?” Ice asks, hoping he says yes.
He sighs, dropping the tension from his shoulders and raising his head again. “Okay,” his voice has gone monotone.
Ice offers his hand. “Hi,”
Then he looks at him, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “Hi,” he replies, taking Ice’s hand.
Ice looks at him in the way he did when they first were introduced. No, they weren’t as bright eyed and ego-full as they had been, but Maverick was still cute, Ice couldn’t deny it from himself. “Congratulations on Top Gun,”
Maverick smirks. “Oh, okay, I see how you wanna do this,”
“Say your line then,”
“Thank you,”
Ice’s smile widens just so his teeth start to show.
Maverick looks down at their hands, which were still intertwined.
Then Ice looks down too, and he blinks as he wiggles his hand out of Maverick’s. He didn’t really want to be asked why he was still holding on.
Maverick’s green eyes lock back on his, and he tilts his head in question ever so slightly.
Iceman pretends not to notice.

“You really wanna be my wingman? I mean, you sure you wanna be stuck with me?”
Ice frowns slightly. “Well, I did think through that- you being dangerous, and- came to the conclusion, that yes, obviously I want to be your wingman,”
Maverick searches Ice’s face for a deeper meaning, but Ice had hidden the real meaning so deep, none of it showed on his face. “Why? I thought you didn’t like me,”
Ice swallows the words he wants to say. “Course I like you, Mav… erick,” he continues his name. “I mean, sure, it took me a while to trust you but, I- we were rivals, not enemies,”
“Mhmm,” he looks back down, still unsure.
I’ve liked you from day one. Ice thinks. “Come on, you’re a handful, I’ll give that to you, but it seems like we’re stuck with each other now, so we may aswell make the most of it,”
Maverick sighs quietly.
“Yes I wanna be your wingman,” He says, putting his hand on the side of his shoulder. “Believe me,” he could go on, he could keep saying why he wanted to be his wingman, why he offered it, why he feels this way. But he doesn’t, he doesn’t need to, Maverick’s looking at him, and Ice tries to ignore the highlights in the bottom of his eyes.
“Okay, yes,” he sniffs, blinking a few times. “I wanna be your wingman too,”
Ice gives him a smile, an encouraging one. He’d just have to wait for the right time, and for his courage to show up, and for him to say what he wished he could.

It’s a few months later, mid January of 87, when Ice is back standing, or rather, leaning on the railings of the side of a carrier. It was late, it was stuffy inside, and he couldn’t sleep. The sea air was refreshing, like drinking cold tap water while chewing mint gum, that kind of refreshing. It drives out the clogged up sensation of his too-hot room.
There’s no-one there except for his thoughts and the stars and their reflections on the sea below him. It was peaceful, it let him think. And god did he ever have to much to think about.
It was Maverick, Pete Mitchell, his wingman, in his head, next to him, at his twelve or his six, constantly. Ice had fallen for him almost instantly when they’d met, after he had spent a lesson with his eyes practically fixed on the back of his head, willing him to turn his head and look at him. And when he had, he’d turned his head back pretty quickly, and Ice couldn’t tell if it was a smirk of sparking rivalry or a smirk of confusion at why he had been looking at him. Ice told himself it was a smirk of confusion, but who smirks when they’re confused? He just didn’t want it to be a smirk of rivalry. Even though it was.
He just didn’t want to be alone in these feelings of love for him.

Ice blinks, and looks down to where he could hear the waves slapping against the side of the carrier.
At least he knows now why it’s called ‘falling’ in love.
It’s called falling in love because one can’t stop it from happening. It’s called falling in love because it feels endless.
It’s called falling in love because he couldn’t stop it.
He loves him, he loves the way he holds himself, his smile that was on a slight tilt, how his sparkling green eyes lit up, the way he would fly too fast and buzz the tower and not care about the consequences. He loves the way Maverick was drawn to danger, drawn to the most risky manoeuvrers, never being satisfied unless he was going mach two and breaking every rule in the book.
It sounded stupid of him, Iceman, the person who lived his life by the rules, to have eyes for he who did not. He noticed the little things about him, like there were these few strands of hair that he could never get to lay flat, and the way whenever something was worrying him or if he was confused, he’d clench his jaw, or look down, or half blink, or furrow his brow, even if it was only for a second. Blink and you’d miss it, but Ice didn’t miss it.

Over the past couple of months, he’d grown close to him, it was close like friends. But it was close, at least. Ice knows Maverick blames himself for Goose’s death, and he wished he didn’t. He also knows that he’s plagued by nightmares. Not every night, but it’s at least once a week. At least once a week where he wakes up in tears. He hated Ice seeing him like that, but Ice didn’t care, he would simply just sit there with him until he’d recovered. But he’d pretend he was okay, and that broke Ice’s heart every time he’d say it. He’d always been able to see through certain people in his life, and Maverick was one of those. He could tell at a glance what he was feeling, even when most others could not.

He wasn’t stood that far away from the door he came out of, so he turns his head at the sound of it opening suddenly. Somebody rushes out of it, it was too dark to see who exactly, but Ice could tell that they were not an officer. So he quietly follows them. He doesn’t know why.
He loses sight of them pretty quickly in the dark, and he thinks about going back to where he was, but that’s before he spots the figure leaning over the railing, and something glinting in their hands. That’s when he knows it’s Maverick.
So Ice goes slowly up to him, along the railing, he doesn’t want to startle him. “Wingman?”
Maverick jerks his head up and immediately freezes at the sight of Ice, holding his breath, staring at him even though Ice could see the tears on his cheeks.

“What’s wrong?”
Maverick turns his head to the left, looking out at the sea, then back to his feet, exhaling harshly. He tries to shake his head, to dismiss Ice’s concerns, to pretend he was okay, and that he wasn’t trying to breathe on the side of a carrier after a nightmare, stupid little thoughts rushing through his head, drawing his eyes to the sea.
Ice looks at him, shivering in the cold air, eyes looking everywhere apart from him, but being constantly drawn back to the endless blackness of the ocean, dogtags around his fist, and he’s just opened his mouth to ask, when Maverick slams his head into his shoulder, hanging onto the back of his sweater like his life depended on it, which it kind of did.

“Save me- take me away-”
Ice only just catches the hoarse words from Maverick, but everything clicks into place. So he carefully scoops his arms under his shoulders and picks him up. “Okay.. okay...”
Maverick was shaking in Ice’s arms, trying to muffle his sobs in his shoulder. He had hooked his legs around Ice’s hips, trying everything he possibly could to ground himself.
“Shhh…” Ice murmurs, slowly backing away from the railing and the sea. “Not now, wingman, not today,”
Ice’s words only makes him cry harder. He feels sick to the core, sick and scared, scared of his own head, terrified of what could have happened had Ice not been there. “I’m sorry-” he pushes out the apology, turning his head only to bury it closer into his neck.
“No, no... don’t be sorry,” Ice slides his left arm up to the back of Maverick’s head, threading his fingers through his hair, holding him in place.

Iceman carries him back inside, into the warmth, into his room, where he sits down on the bed with Maverick in his lap, still crying in his shoulder.
At some point, Maverick lifts his head up, but he can’t look at him. “Ice- I’m sorry- I’m sorry I’m so sorry...”
“Pete… you don’t have to apologise,”
“Yes I do-” he says, his voice unstable, “That was almost it- I.. I-” His words stop being so compliant, and he can’t say anything more.
“But you didn’t,”
“But.. if you weren’t there-” his voice is husky, scratchy, worse than Ice has ever heard it.
“I’m your wingman,” Ice says softly, pushing Maverick’s head gently back into where it was on his shoulder. “Through enemy planes and scares like these, I’m here for you,”

And Ice holds him until he stops shaking.
I love you, I love you so much, so much it hurts. He thinks, but he doesn’t say it. All he can do is press kisses so long to his head they feel like he’s resting his head on his.
They end up laying down on the bed, it was small enough to just feel right when they were both on it. Ice had put Goose’s dogtags on the bedside table, he had wrapped them so fiercely around his hands that he could see where they were sat. Maverick is pressed against Ice, laying there, slowly breathing him in. He can’t do anything else, not tonight.
Ice doesn’t ask why, doesn’t ask what happened, he can guess. It was Goose, a nightmare so harsh and violent, and intrusive thoughts making him feel there was no other way out. So he keeps his arms around him, holding him as close as he can, trying to use his actions to tell Maverick the words he could not.

February 14th, 1987. A month later.
Ice was no better, no less in love with Maverick. And he was dreading today. He was supposed to meet Maverick at this park place, but he thinks he’ll go introduce him to someone else. Someone else. Someone lucky enough to have Maverick. Someone lucky enough to have Maverick in the way Ice could only dream of.
He’s dreading it, absolutely dreading the whole ordeal.
Something unknown to him gripped him yesterday and he went to get a singular red rose. He doesn’t know why. He was torn between taking it and admitting to Maverick what he wanted, or not taking it and pretending he didn’t have it.
He was going to be late if he stood here for much longer, staring at the rose he’d put in a pint glass.
He doesn’t take it.

He meets Maverick as promised in the park, and he plasters a fake smile on his face and waits for the ‘here is so and so!’
But it doesn’t come.
“Hey Ice,” Maverick smiles at him, hiding one of his hands behind his back.
“Hi,” Ice was wary. Where was the other person he’d convinced himself would be joining them? “I got you this,” Maverick says, bringing out the flower from behind his back.

Ice can’t hear anything. It’s a rose. It’s a rose. The flower of love. But one crucial element was missing. It was yellow. And only the red ones mean love.
“What does it mean?” he asks, flicking his eyes back to Maverick.
“Friendship,” Maverick smiles.
And Ice has to swallow and look back to the flower because it feels like his heart has cracked in two. “Oh- thank you,”
“You’re welcome,” Ice can hear the smile in Maverick’s voice as he nudges him.
He tries a smile as he takes the yellow rose from Maverick, trying so hard to ignore the electricity he knew only he felt between their fingers.

They walk slowly together around the park, Ice makes himself walk a step to the side of Maverick, but Maverick doesn’t let him stay a step away from him. He’s continuously stepping back closer to him, and even goes so far as to wrap his arm around Ice’s to tug him closer.
Ice pretends he doesn’t feel affected by it. He didn’t want his heart completely shattered by the end of the day, especially since Maverick was doing so in a platonic way.
“Uh, strange question but uh, you’re not... dating anyone right now, are you?”
“No,” Ice says, it came out harsher than he would have liked. “Are you?”
Here it comes. Here it comes, here comes the ‘oh yeah, this is my partner so and so, they’ve been dying to meet you!!’ But again, to Ice’s surprise, it doesn’t come.
“What? God no, don’t have time for that, I don’t really want to right now, if I’m honest,”
“Oh?”
“Oh? What, you surprised?”
“Yeah..” Ice says slowly. “I thought you’d be showing me whoever today,”
“What! Hell no, I wouldn’t do that,”
Ice looks at him, decidedly confused. “Really?”
“Ice, are you serious?” Maverick looked genuinely concerned.
He doesn’t say anything.
“Okay, so, first off, I would say if I had a partner, I would ask you what you’d be doing today, then I’d-” Maverick stops, putting his hand on Ice’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t turn you into a third wheel,”
Ice looks back at the yellow rose in his hand.
“I would never do that to my best friend,”
And another knock to the heart.

And it continues like that for another three hours, Ice staring at Maverick when he’s not looking, talking together about random stuff, Ice buys them both a coffee in the middle of the day. When they finally say goodbye to each other at the end of the day, Ice thanks Maverick for the yellow rose again, and they mock-salute each other as Maverick leaves Ice at his door.
The fact that Maverick walked Ice home barely registers once he walks through the front door and locks his eyes on the red rose sitting in the pint glass.
By far the worst Valentines he’s had.
And that’s counting the one when everyone found out he was gay in high school.

Ice doesn’t remember ripping the red rose’s head off and throwing it’s scarlet petals on the ground outside, but his left hand is grazed by it’s thorns, and there’s a single red petal left in the water, contrasting beautifully with the yellow of the one Maverick got him.
He feels sick, sicker than he has for a long time, that kind of sick that sits in your gut and your chest and your throat and threatens to choke you.
It was unrequited. Everything that he felt for him, everything that he’d done, every night he’d sat and hugged him, every successful mission’s hug, every second he’d spent staring at him, it had all flown under Maverick’s radar and been misinterpreted as friendship.
But when had he ever picked up on Slider’s every move?
When had he ever stared at anyone else like he did to Maverick?
When had he ever saved Slider from suicide on the side of an aircraft carrier at four in the god-damn morning?

It was them, he realises, staring at the beautiful flower in the pint glass and the petal left from the other.
Maverick was the yellow rose, given to him by what ever kind of miracle that stopped Cougar coming to Top Gun instead.
Ice was the red petal, drowning in the water beside Maverick, a failed reaching out that didn’t occur and could never happen.
He bites his cheeks, hard, ignoring the spikes of pain, ignoring the lingering sensation of the rose’s thorns digging into his hands, ignoring that his eyes were stinging and his vision was blurred. Trying to suck air in and out of his lungs, trying to treat it as a stupid crush, trying to stop the feeling of his heart crumbling in his chest.
Empty of everything other than heartbreak, Tom sits on the floor of his bathroom with his head in his hands, and sobs.

It was December, Christmas Eve to be exact, before Ice got the chance to steel his nerves and try, for what seemed like the hundredth time, to tell Maverick how he felt.
What felt weirder was that it had been well over a year since everyone went away on their different paths after Top Gun. And Viper and Jester had invited them all back for a reunion. And Iceman was about to be late. Not a good second impression to give everyone. He and Maverick had flown back over to Long Island the day before, and stayed in a hotel.

“Ice?” comes Maverick’s voice from the room’s door. “You almost done?”
Ice stares at his hair in the mirror, doing one last check over it. Somewhat satisfied, having finally got that one piece to stay up, he sighs and turns around to the door, grabbing his coat on the way.
Nothing could have prepared him for what Maverick looked like.

Ice was unapologetically staring at him as soon as he had opened the door. Oh god he was handsome. Whatever they had put in these required formal Navy dress outfits, it made him so, so much more attractive than he already was. Ice was dressed in the exact same outfit, but god did Maverick pull it off better than he did. There was a slit for a flower on the left lapel, and Ice could oh so easily imagine hooking his fingers through it and pulling him into a kiss. But he doesn’t.
He swallows and smiles before Maverick picks up on his staring. “Hey,” his throat was dry.
He smiles, and Ice’s heart skips beats, like it always does. “You look- wait-” He narrows his eyes and reaches out to get a hold of his bow tie and straighten it out. “Hm, there we go, now you look even more handsome,”
Ice swears his legs were going to collapse beneath him if it weren’t for his hands flat on the door behind him. Maverick was so close to him, he could practically smell the gel he’d used to try and tame his hair with. “S-so do you,” he stutters out.
Maverick smiles and tilts his head, slightly embarrassed. “Thanks,”
Ice smiles back at him, and he wants to stay there forever, sandwiched between the hotel room door and the aviator in front of him.
Then Maverick has grabbed his hand. “Come on, we’re gonna be late!”

Luckily, they arrive on time, and Ice manages to tear his eyes away from Maverick as they greet everyone who was there. It takes a good while to get round everyone, and the relaxing and warm environment gets a lot more homely once Ice has his hand round a glass of the classic snowball. To anyone who looked at the drink, it looked boring and simple. It was not. Slider said it was very fitting for Iceman to be having a snowball cocktail.

Once everyone who wanted to talk to Ice, had talked to him, he puts his empty glass on the table for used glasses, and almost runs into Maverick on his search for somewhere to sit or eat those gingerbread cookies he’d seen around.
“Oh sorry Mav-” he starts, dipping his head, his shoulders automatically raised.
“Hah, it’s okay!” Maverick gently waves off his apology with a smile.
Ice smiles awkwardly, desperately trying not to look at him, before he finds himself helplessly lost in his eyes.
Maverick blinks and raises his eyes to above them.
Ice looks up too.
Mistletoe. Ice thinks about it for the smallest of seconds.
But Maverick immediately jumps out of the way, his eyebrows still raised, and the sudden movement making his hair begin to escape from where he’d put it.
Ice steps back too as soon as he sees Maverick doing so.
Lost it. Lost your chance, again. He frowns at himself and turns away from Maverick, putting his hand on his neck, his cheeks flaming.
Maverick stares at Ice as he turns away from him and begins walking away, muttering sorry under his breath.

I could have done it, I could have done it! Ice thinks, waiting outside for Maverick as he said his final goodbyes to Viper. But no, he had flaked out of it at the last second, like he always did. Maverick had been blushing too as soon as he had looked up and leaped out from under it. It.
Ice lets out a short sigh. The mistletoe.
The plant you hang up at Christmas and you have to kiss whoever the person underneath it is. The tradition was ridiculous, but Ice wished he’d done it. He could have stood there and pulled Maverick in by those fine-looking lapels and kissed him.
He rubs his hand across his face, giving up on his hair, it was falling over and sitting on his eyebrows. He does catch a glance of his watch in the half light under the streetlamp though. It said 11.54. If Maverick took any longer then he would miss his other chance to say Merry Christmas to him.

“Thank you again, sir. ...Oh, Ice! You didn’t have to wait,” Maverick’s voice makes him lift his head.
Ice shrugs. “Well, it’s dark out,”
“True,” The night made Maverick’s pupils expand as he looks at him, and Ice wished the night didn’t have to help with that.
“Should we go?”
Maverick yawns and nods, almost unconsciously reaching for Ice’s hand as they begin to walk, but he instantly retracts it once he realises what he was doing.
Then Ice deliberately takes his hand. Didn’t want to miss this chance when it sat there in front of him.
They walk in silence until Iceman checks his watch and holds it out for them both to watch the second hand tick over to midnight.
Iceman looks at Maverick at the same time as he does. “Merry Christmas Mav,” he says quietly.
He smiles, looking down and back up again. “Merry Christmas Ice,”

To Iceman, it felt like two seconds had passed since the ordeal with the mistletoe at Viper’s reunion party, but it was February again. And what does February mean? The worst day of the year. Valentines.
Ice didn’t want to do anything, he wanted to stay in his living room and ignore romance and love for the rest of his life. Other things in his life were picking up speed anyway, he suspected he was about to be promoted, and that could only mean more stress. He couldn’t handle any distractions.
Especially if the distraction went by the name of Pete Maverick Mitchell.
I am not in love with him. He thinks to himself. I am not in love with him, he’s gonna give me a yellow rose just like I’ve got him and I won’t let my heart be broken by his stupid smile and his beautiful eyes and his dark fluffy hair. Ice sits up, sighing.
He was most definitely still in love with Maverick.

And he hated it.
He hated how he felt.
How his eyes felt drawn to him, how he would stare at his hands, his eyes, his lips, the way he tilted his head, the way he’d stand, the micro-expressions of his, the subtle jaw-clenching, the way his expression softened when Ice would ask him how he was doing, his nervous foot-tapping before missions, the way he had his coffee, how his favourite colour was yellow… The list could go on.
God he was intoxicating. Ice hates his heart for longing for someone just out of reach.
They were friends, nothing less, and certainly nothing more.
Being wingmen made them closer, allowed them to have those late night talks in mess halls about whatever, allowed them to be physically closer than regular friends.
He knew Maverick was going to give him a yellow rose, which is why his own stood in a pint of water on the kitchen counter.
He did not expect, however, the doorbell to ring.

Ice frowns and gets up off the sofa, padding to the door and opening it.
“Maverick?”
“Hey,” he looks at Ice like he always does, but this time, there was more than just happiness in his eyes.
“You wanna come in?”
“Yeah sure,”
“Do excuse the.. uh, outfit, I wasn’t planning on doing anything today,” Ice says, standing back to let Maverick in, all too aware of his dark blue-grey hoodie and sweatpants.
“Ah, it’s okay,” he says, keeping one of his arms hidden behind him.
Ice pretends not to notice.

They were comfortable with each other enough for Maverick to sit on the sofa if he wanted, but he didn’t.
“Coffee?” Ice asks.
“Actually, uh, I..” Maverick clears his throat. “Since its.. um, …the fourteenth,”
Ice turns slowly around to face him.
And several things happen within seconds of each other.
Maverick. Standing there. Head slightly ducked. Holding a rose.
A rose.
A red rose.
“This one isn’t for friendship,” he says quietly.
And as soon as Ice’s blue eyes fix on his green ones, he exhales and doesn’t try to stop his knees buckling under him.
And then he’s on the floor, his hands covering his face.

“Ice?! Is that not okay?!” Maverick exclaims, dropping the rose and crashing to his knees on the floor in front of his shell-shocked wingman.
A rose a rose a rose a red one a red rose. Maverick wiggles his hands between Ice’s hands and his cheeks, his expression concerned, holding his face to make him look at him.
“Mav- I don’t... have the words,” He didn’t. He didn’t at all. His eyes were fixed on the rose a metre away and his thoughts were fixed on Maverick’s hands.
“Oh my god, Ice,” his voice was hushed, tinged with sweetness. “You’re such a softy,”
He blinks, finally looking at him. “I love you Pete,” And if his voice cracked, neither of them mentioned it.
“C’mere..”

And Maverick kisses Ice.
And Ice doesn’t have to keep himself together any longer, keep all his feelings for him inside of him, all that mattered was that he was kissing Maverick, finally, finally, after just under two years of wishing he could.

“I love you too Tom,” Maverick says when they break apart, still so close he was whispering into Ice’s mouth. “But next time, don’t leave me guessing, and just god-damn kiss me under that mistletoe,”
He can’t do anything except to stare into his eyes, blink to clear the blur of his vision away, and kiss him again.

Ice closes his eyes and exhales, it was almost a sigh, moving his hands up to hold Maverick’s head, leaning into the kiss, into the soul-freeing feeling spreading through him, flowing from Maverick’s hands through his hair.
The kiss feels like firecrackers in his chest, like the vibrating power of the F-14’s engines, it felt like heaven, like everything he’s ever wanted, and it was.