Chapter Text
He's sat next to Pete, watching the dark waves of the ocean crash into the beach. His second beer has gone lukewarm, and the chill that had once stung his palm and fingers has melted away from the heat of his hand. Pete had his aviators perched at the top of his head, eyes glued to the crawl of water, pretending that he had nothing to say to Tom. Tom waited, watched, and waited some more.
The bar slowed down, and the yellow lights from the hanging lightbulbs illuminated their backs. Ron howled, and Tris, Tom's daughter, squealed in response. The sounds were a buzz, shaking, and slow compared to the gnawing feeling in Tom's chest that he concluded was the result of the one too many vodka shots he took.
Pete's face is dark and shrouded in darkness, but his edges glow. Tom's eyes traced the large curve of his nose, the tips of his ears, the tight pucker of his lips, and his fingers, wrapped around a weeping beer bottle (staring at the dark circles that still clung to his skin two years after Goose's death, weak, tired, and mourning). His thoughts, crooked and unusual, sang of things his sober mind would never dare to think of; he was paranoid that his thoughts were being said out loud.
There was Pete, and then there was Maverick. Maverick had been washed away in the green-stained water after the crash. Maverick, the hot shot, the best of the best, and Pete, Carole's Pete, the bane of Iceman's existence, everything Iceman wanted from the high-speed chase that was Maverick, ran away from the pain that threatened to drown him, sweep him from shore, and into the dark depths that had taken Maverick.
Pete must've felt Tom staring, eyes darting up to watch Tom, catching them for a moment before quickly snapping away, searching for the same spot he was diligently staring at before. The dark blue waves crept up the shore before retreating a few meters. Rinse and repeat. Inside, Carole laughed. Outside, Tom set down his beer on the deck. Elbows propped on his knees, back arched forward, hands clasped together, he let his wobbly thoughts spill out.
"I love you."
Pete, whose neck was strained with words he would not speak (the muscle at the side pulling tight), did not turn to face Tom. His grip on the bottle tightened and loosened. Tom waited for Pete, watching, and waited some more.
Tris giggled distantly. The waves were soft but heavy against the dragging of sand. Pete's face was illuminated with warm yellow light as he turned to face Tom. One glass of his aviators sparkled with it; his eyes were watery. A deep line had burrowed between Pete's eyebrows; the two forms tilted downward in an emotion that Tom felt in his chest, bones, and heart.
Tom felt sobered by Pete's expression. "Pete," he whispered. "I love you."
In a flurry of molten gold movement, Pete stood. His breaths came quickly, hurriedly, and scaredly. Pete looked down at Tom, eyes bright but pupils blown, shaken with emotion. Tom could see in his eyes that Pete despises the old lie he's heard before. The words neither sober Tom nor Pete were ready for, words that burned after Tom spat them out, like the long swig of beer he took (picking it up from the deck), clearing the burn for a different kind of pain that swarmed him with a drunken warmth. It was unlike the searing pain of a broken heart.
Pete said nothing as he turned and walked away.
Tom watched.
Tom watched his retreating back, waiting for his body to be swallowed up by the darkness as he ran from the light. The light that held a life in which neither Tom nor Pete could exist, one filled with laughter, warmth, and the everlasting feeling of the third type of warmth that Tom wanted them both to feel in their bones. The edges of Pete's body no longer glowed with that life, walking down a path that Tom also could not follow.
He limply held the bottle between his bent legs, looking away from the shadows where he lost Pete.