Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I love her, and that’s the beginning and end of everything.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald (about his wife, Zelda)

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And then one fine morning—

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

- The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Ice, fire or clear! Look at this! Jesus Christ, I can take a shot right here!”

“I need another twenty seconds, then I’ve got it.”

Tom Kazansky didn’t realize that he was in love with Pete Mitchell until he watched his plane crash into the ocean.

“Maverick’s getting impatient, Ice. Come on, take the shot.”

The morning of July 29, 1986 dawned like any other. Up with the sun just like always, and then they all assembled in the hanger for a full day of classes and hops. TOPGUN had been in session for three weeks, after all, three identical weeks, and no one had any reason to expect for this day to be anything different. Iceman remembered the day in bits and pieces: Jester’s morning recap of the current standings for the Top Gun trophy, the way Slider had smirked over at Maverick when his name was listed second, the words “Up first today is Iceman and Slider with Maverick and Goose”. After that, though, the next thing that was really clear in his memory was after they were already in the air, him squaring off against Maverick just like always.

“Ten more seconds, then I’ve got him.”

Tom Kazansky was the Iceman, he was good under pressure. He wouldn’t go so far as to say he thrived under it, he didn’t fly instinctually the way Maverick did, but one thing he could do was divorce himself from whatever was happening around him and not let it keep him from flying just as ice-cold and flawlessly as he always did.

“Ice, come off high right. I’m in.”

“Five more seconds.”

“Come off high right, Ice. I’m in.”

“I’m off. Shit!”

It had been three weeks, and one thing that Iceman hadn’t been able to figure out was why, when it came to Maverick, all of that seemed to go out the window. As he patiently tried to find the right angle for the shot and ignore Maverick’s loud complaints in his ear, the other thing that Iceman was aware of was anger, simmering barely contained under the surface. It was anger at Maverick, sure, because being angry at Maverick was pretty much the default state of anyone who knew him, but a significant portion of it was anger at himself. Because he was Tom Kazansky, he was the Iceman, he was going to win the Top Gun trophy, and he was absolutely better than this.

He jerked the stick up hard, mentally cursing himself and Maverick in equal measure. Frustration rolled over him in a wave, one that Iceman was powerless to avoid or ignore the way he usually did. When it was just him and Slider flying against Viper or Jester, or when it was him and Slider paired with literally anyone else in their class, he was able to do it. He was patient, and he could wait, bide his time and then swoop in at the first sign of a mistake. Never did Tom Kazansky give up a shot he knew he could make, because he never let anything past the Iceman mask enough to need to. Never, unless he was flying against Maverick Mitchell.

Flying against Maverick was the only time when Iceman felt like he was beside someone who matched him. But flying against Maverick also felt like he was chasing endlessly after something that was always just out of reach. He looked forward to it and dreaded it in equal measures. And so, he abandoned the shot to let Maverick move in, because he knew Maverick would take it. For Maverick felt things and if he wanted them, he went after them, sunk in his teeth and refused to let go, and winning was absolutely something that Maverick wanted. Iceman tried to shove the frustration and anger and admiration and jealousy and everything else he was feeling into a tiny box in his mind, where it could be hidden away in the shadows.

Struggling to accomplish something that he was usually able to do without a second thought, Iceman was blind to the world for a moment. The next thing he could remember was Goose’s voice over their shared comms, laced with panic as he yelled, “This is not good!”

His heart in his throat, Tom turned and looked down at the sky beneath the canopy.

The first time Tom Kazansky heard the name Maverick Mitchell was the night before their first day at TOPGUN.

He and Slider were sitting in the living room of the off-base house they would be sharing for the next five weeks. Slider was reclined on the couch, his legs kicked up and hands propped behind his head as he relayed everything new that he had learned about the program and the people who would be completing it with them. Ice was curled up in the armchair opposite him, focused more on the book in his lap than he was on his RIO’s words.

Most of the things Slider had heard about TOPGUN, Ice had already heard, too—they’d spent the past several months on an aircraft carrier living out of each other’s pockets, after all—so he offered the occasional hum of acknowledgement but mostly let his words filter in one ear and out the other. Everything that there was to learn about the people they’d be flying with for the next month, after all, he would learn on his own soon enough.

“... Yeah, so the two of them, and, shit, Bradshaw! Heard this morning that he got a spot last-minute. Man, I haven’t seen him in forever.”

This, unlike most of the things that Slider had said so far, was enough to give Ice pause. He looked up from The Great Gatsby to squint at his RIO. “Mother Goose? Isn’t he on the Enterprise? I thought Cougar and Merlin were getting that spot.”

Slider tipped his head to the side until they made eye contact. “They were supposed to, yeah,” he said, “until Cougar bugged out and turned in his wings.”

“He what?” Now, Ice shut the book fully and twisted around so he was facing Slider, who was grinning.

“Yep. Turned ‘em in yesterday, or so I heard. They were out on patrol and a MiG-28 got missile lock on him. Fucked him up enough that he went to the CO as soon as they landed. Bradshaw and his new pilot were second place, so they get the spot now.”

Tom’s heart was pounding in his ears as he slowly sunk back into his chair. He squeezed the book in his hands hard enough that the cardboard cover dug into his palms, but he barely even felt it. Slider was still talking, probably, but with the rest of the world filtering in like he was underwater, he wouldn’t have been able to tell.

It had been years since the last time Tom had seen Bill Cortell, but he knew he would never forget the months they’d spent together in flight school. He’d graduated at the top of his class at the Academy, but Tom had never truly felt like he belonged until he got to Pensacola with the sky spread out below him and with people who loved flying just as much as he did on his wing. Even back then, Iceman was determined to make it to the very top, to fly as much and as long as he could until he was the best, and when he’d met Cougar, he knew that he’d finally found someone who felt the same. They’d been inseparable after that, and up until he’d met Slider a few years later, he would have said that Cougar was the person in the entire world who knew him best.

Cougar was one of the few people who Tom Kazansky allowed to see the real him, but, he realized abruptly, the feeling had obviously never been mutual. He had thought it was, at the time, had thought that Bill telling him about his girlfriend and his parents and always sticking to his wing when they flew together meant that he’d trusted Tom, or some shit like that. And so Tom had opened up back—told Bill about his own family, why he’d picked the Navy, his goddamned hopes and dreams for the future. But apparently it had all been for nothing, apparently Cougar wasn’t who Iceman had thought he was.

Tom Kazansky loved flying more than he loved almost anything in the world. He couldn’t imagine giving it up, not for anything, not for a million near-misses with death. And he knew Bill loved his family, but Tom had thought he agreed, thought he understood what it was like to be drawn to the sky.

Well, he thought, ironic and rueful, apparently he’d been wrong about that, too.

“... Ice? Ice, you good? Ice… hey, Tom!”

Iceman forced himself to exhale, and it felt like it had been punched out of him. The world swam back into focus and he found himself face-to-face with Slider, who had stood from the couch and was looking down at him with his brow pinched in worry. Tom held onto The Great Gatsby, still in his hands, and took a deep, measured inhale. By the time he released it, everything felt a little bit more real. Cougar had turned in his wings, but Tom was there in Fightertown, his first day at TOPGUN was tomorrow, and he had Slider by his side.

“I’m fine,” he said, shoving Slider back with a hand in his face and mostly meaning it. Ice’s RIO let himself be pushed, collapsing back onto the couch even if he continued to watch Ice with a far too knowing look in his eyes. Desperate to change the subject before Slider could launch a full-scale interrogation, Ice rooted around for anything to say and finally settled on, “So who else is coming?”

Luckily, it worked. Slider blinked and the tension shattered. “What?”

“You said Mother Goose has a new pilot. Know anything about him?”

The thing about naval aviators was that there weren't really a lot of them. Even if Iceman hadn’t met all of them, people flew with other people enough on deployments that there were names they ran into over and over. Especially if this guy was good enough to get into TOPGUN, Ice expected to at least recognize his name.

That was not what happened. Instead, Slider snorted a little and shook his head with a half-smile on his face. Tom didn’t realize he was leaning closer in anticipation until his RIO raised an eyebrow at him, then he pulled back and tried not to blush.

“Never met him, but I’ve heard about him. He’s pretty young and he bounced between RIOs for years because no one wanted to fly with him. He’s reckless and impulsive and does whatever he wants in the air, so they say.”

Ice slumped back into his chair with a huff, wrinkling his nose. He wasn’t sure why he felt so disappointed. Even if this new kid was irresponsible, he doubted it would be anything that he couldn’t handle. For years, Iceman had been the best wherever he went—there was no way some hotshot who was offered a spot as a consolation prize would even be able to challenge him. “Sounds like he’ll wash out in the first week, then.”

Slider grinned wolfishly. “That a bet, Tommy?”

Ice worried the cover of his book where the cardboard was starting to split apart at the corners. He tried to meet Slider’s eyes, but trying to look him in the face right now felt like looking into the sun. Something in his stomach was still twisted up in knots. He tried to take a deep breath as discreetly as he could but didn’t even need to look to know that Slider had noticed. “Maybe, Ronnie. What’s his name?”

“Pete Mitchell,” said Slider. “Callsign Maverick.”

Tom mouthed the word to himself. There was something about that name, Pete Mitchell, that was familiar, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Not that it mattered, anyway, not if he was anything like his callsign suggested. Someone like that, he mused, was bound to cause destruction and take out everyone in his path. He would make things entertaining, for sure, but not truly challenging. Iceman was ice-cold, no mistakes in the air, he avoided mavericks in general and would avoid this Maverick in particular like the plague. He would watch once TOPGUN got started, but from a safe enough distance away so as to not get caught in the crossfire.

“Maverick,” Iceman said slowly, drawing the name out to get a feel for how it was to say. “Know why the spot went to him?”

Slider narrowed his eyes at Ice suspiciously, like he was seeing something he didn’t know how to interpret. Ice wasn’t sure what his RIO was looking for, so he kept his face carefully blank. Still, it was a relief when he moved on a few seconds later and actually answered the question. “I’m not sure. I heard something about Maverick disobeying orders to save Cougar’s life, but someone else said that Maverick abandoned him up in the air and that’s why the MiG was able to get missile lock on him in the first place.”

It was Ice’s turn to narrow his eyes. That was expected in some aspects, from the scant picture that was forming in his head, but unexpected in others, and they had no way of knowing which was true, not yet. Interesting. This was new, this was something different. Carefully, he leaned back in the armchair, making a point to never take his eyes off of Slider’s. He clutched again at The Great Gatsby. “Doesn’t sound like much of a team player either way.”

Something about the way Slider was looking at him gave Ice the impression that he was being handled, like his RIO was picking his words very carefully and listening closely to everything Ice said in return. It brought his hackles up, because Slider was one of the only people in the world who knew him well enough to be able to do it, and he really didn’t want his every move to be scrutinized while he was already distracted. A sudden sharp pain across his palm made him realize how tightly he was holding onto the book and he forced himself to let go.

By the look in Slider’s eyes, he didn’t miss this. But he didn’t comment on it, instead saying, “Doubt you’ll get along with him, then,” with a pointed sort of look.

Again, Tom found himself unable to meet that gaze. He hummed, tapping his fingers against the cover of his book but otherwise holding himself perfectly still. “We’ll see. Things are bound to get interesting.”

Slider shook his head and smiled a little half-smile. “Entertaining, you mean.”

And with that, he finally looked away and threw himself back down onto the couch. The tension in the room popped like a soap bubble. Tom’s shoulders slumped down before he could catch himself, but he knew that this time Slider wouldn’t notice.

“Right.”

It was getting late and they had to be up bright and early the next morning for their first day at TOPGUN. They would need to go to bed soon, but for now it seemed like Slider was still content to continue repeating everything he’d ever heard about everyone the two of them had ever met. And he was perfectly capable of and willing to carry on the entire conversation on his own, so Ice relaxed a bit more and let his RIO’s voice blanket him with a soothing hum of noise. Now that the tension from whatever that conversation had been was beginning to bleed away, it left him feeling tired in its wake.

Tom’s eyes slipped down to the book still in his lap as he listened to Slider drone on about Hollywood and Wolfman—a pilot-RIO pair the two of them had flown with on deployment once, years ago. He traced his fingers over the raised lettering that spelled out the words F. Scott Fitzgerald as he hummed in agreement with Slider’s assessment that they would beat Hollywood and Wolfman, and as he stared at the floating illustration of Daisy’s eyes and the green light trailing down her cheek, he thought one last time of Maverick Mitchell.

They didn’t fly any hops on their first day at TOPGUN, in favor of listening to Commander Metcalf and Lieutenant Commander Heatherly describe what would become their lives for the next five weeks. Ice sat beside Slider in the classroom and listened diligently to each of the presentations, because he knew he was going to be the one to win the Top Gun trophy, and he was prepared to do everything he needed to earn it.

But that also involved scoping out his fellow aviators, his rivals, and so he and Slider also paid close attention to everyone else who was in the classroom with them. Many of them were people he recognized or whose names he’d heard before, a few of the others there were people Iceman had flown beside on deployments in the past. It meant that he was able to gain a fairly accurate assessment, he thought, of the way everyone around him flew and what he would have to expect flying with and against them in the coming weeks.

Or, nearly everyone. There was one wildcard, of course, and it didn’t take Tom long at all to spot him.

Maverick Mitchell was short, had dark hair, and sat up in the front row beside Goose Bradshaw, whispering between themselves as they surveyed the room around them. They were too far away for Ice to hear what they were saying, but from the self-satisfied smile on Maverick’s face, they were doing what he had done and sizing up the others. It was equally clear that Maverick found those around him to be lacking, and the notion had Ice smiling to himself when he was sure no one else would see it. If Mitchell truly had snuck into the program at the last minute, then he wouldn’t have had time to riddle out what to expect, now would he?

When Viper got up to the front of the room and started talking, Maverick turned his attention to him and listened. Iceman listened, too, but Viper wasn’t saying anything that they hadn’t already heard a hundred times that day, so he didn’t feel bad about only giving him and his speech half of his focus. Mostly, he twirled his pen between his fingers and kept his eyes on Maverick, taking the opportunity to study the other man while he wasn’t paying attention.

Maverick was smiling a little as Viper described the way TOPGUN would push them to their limits, but if he was truly as careless in the air as Slider said, that wasn’t surprising. Neither was the way that smile grew when Viper said the word “dangerous”. Between that and the way he sat on the couch—both relaxed and self-assured, like he was confident that he was the best pilot in that room and nothing anyone else could do would change his mind—Ice had almost everything he needed to conclude that Slider had been right about at least some of what he’d said last night.

When Maverick’s head tipped backwards to face him, Iceman remembered abruptly that he was still twirling his pen between his fingers. The movement must have caught Maverick’s eye, he thought as their gazes locked. The unexpectedness of the action sent a jolt through him—he didn’t feel guilty for staring, especially considering that Maverick had been doing the exact damn thing himself—but he kept it from showing on his face. Instead, he lifted the hand that was still twirling the pen until the bright blue stone of his Academy ring was impossible for Mitchell to ignore. If Iceman was right about him, about why his name sounded familiar, then it should be enough to provoke a reaction.

Sure enough, Maverick quickly looked away.

He looked back over a couple of seconds later, under the pretense of following Viper as he paced down the aisle. This time, his smile was gone, face held carefully blank in a way Ice could tell was requiring a great deal of effort, and he looked Ice over with purpose. When Maverick’s eyes connected with his again, high on the knowledge that he’d been right, that he’d riddled something out, Iceman smirked at him, and kept smiling even once Maverick turned back around.

And then Maverick assured Viper that it was going to be his name on the Top Gun plaque, and Iceman thought about how Slider had said Maverick left Cougar alone against a MiG in order to go fuck around by himself.

Arrogance was something that all of them had in spades, but there was a big difference between being impulsive and leaving someone else to nearly die. A cocky claim to their instructor could be nothing more than the program’s newest alternate choosing to showboat, or it could be indicative of something more. Right now, Ice didn’t know enough about Maverick to say which one it was.

Once Viper dismissed them, Ice sat up straighter in his seat and grinned over at Slider. Even if he didn’t know what the look was for this time, his RIO knew what it meant, and he nodded. Ice leaned back and as Maverick and Goose passed them said, “The plaque for the alternates is down in the ladies’ room.” He could see the pieces all slotting perfectly into place in his head.

Iceman needed more information about Maverick Mitchell, and he knew exactly how he was going to get it. There was, after all, only one place someone like him would possibly be that night.

Ice dragged Slider along with him to the O Club that night, and they hadn’t even been there an hour when he saw Goose and Maverick arrive. Goose was tall enough that his head sailed above most of the crowd and Maverick was short enough that he was mostly hidden beneath it, but it was Maverick that Tom spotted first.

Maverick and Goose came to a stop on the other side of the bar from where he was politely listening to the girl who had been hanging off his arm for almost an hour, despite Tom’s gentle attempts to escape. He tracked their movement, grateful for the aviators he was wearing to hide his eyes from the rest of the room. Slider never failed to remark on how much of an asshole it made him look to wear sunglasses inside, but by now he’d given up explaining that he liked the way it prevented people from being able to read him the way he tried to read them, kept them from getting too close. Slider was probably right, anyway—Iceman knew how he was perceived.

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled and Tom didn’t need to look to tell that Maverick was staring at him, but his eyes were hidden, so he unabashedly looked anyway. Goose was staring, too, he quickly confirmed, meaning that the two of them were probably talking about him. He knew they probably wouldn’t be able to see it, but he lifted his chin in challenge anyway. Let Pete Mitchell try to figure him out all he wanted—it wouldn’t work, because Tom Kazansky was the Iceman, and many others had already tried and failed.

He was disappointed, almost, when Maverick looked away, but he did follow his gaze back to Goose and then to Slider as he passed by. He watched Goose pull Slider to a stop and it only took a brief glance from his RIO to have Ice politely making his excuses to the girl and heading to the other side of the bar. He slid his aviators into his pocket as he approached and was taken aback for a moment by how bright the rest of the world seemed in comparison. Maverick’s eyes slid to him as he shook Goose’s hand, but he didn’t let himself look over until Goose introduced him, formally, to Pete Mitchell.

“Congratulations on TOPGUN,” Tom told Maverick as they shook hands.

“Thank you,” Pete Mitchell said back with a smile that lit up his entire face. Tom distantly wished that he could put his aviators back on. He spotted a bowl of nuts on the bar next to where Maverick was leaning and set his sights on it. He was here, after all, for one purpose and one purpose only: to get information on Mitchell.

“Sorry to hear about Cougar. He and I were like brothers in flight school. He was a good man.” As he spoke, Tom reached for the bowl of nuts, leaning towards the counter and slanting his body so that he was facing Maverick. It cut Slider and Goose out of their conversation entirely and brought him right up close to Maverick and his fading smile and his dark hair and his eyes that Tom could now tell were green. He focused on all of it, focused so hard that it felt like everything else faded away and the world narrowed to just the two of them.

“Still is a good man,” was what Pete Mitchell answered.

“Yeah, that’s what I meant.”

“Thought so.”

Maverick didn’t know about the history that Ice had with Cougar and, again, he knew how he was perceived. That he had misjudged Cougar still stung, but he pushed it down, away, because he was good at that, and focused instead on Maverick’s reaction. He seemed to care about how Tom viewed Cougar, which went against Slider’s assessment that Cougar turning in his wings had been Maverick’s fault, and was infinitely more interesting than anything that had happened so far that day.

Tom braced a hand against the counter and leaned in close, even closer than he had been. He could already imagine all the shit he would get later from Slider for pulling something as overt as this, but he kept his eyes unwaveringly on Pete Mitchell. It did not escape his notice that Maverick didn’t look back for more than a second or two at a time. “Say, you need any help?”

That earned him a slightly longer bout of eye contact. This close, Tom could see the flecks of brown in Maverick’s green eyes, even in the dim lighting of the O Club. “With what?”

“You figured it out yet?”

“What’s that?” Maverick’s smile was back, but it was wary, like Ice was telling a joke at his expense and he was waiting for the punchline. It was, he supposed, not an entirely inaccurate statement at the root of things.

“Who’s the best pilot.”

Now, Maverick’s eyes snapped to his and held on like radar lock. They stayed there, intense and blazing like a fire, as he said, “No, I think I can figure that one out on my own.”

Mitchell had already made it very clear that afternoon what his thoughts were on who was the best pilot at TOPGUN. Tom would be willing to bet that he’d do anything he could think of to prove it, and he knew that meant there would be a lot of things that Maverick would be willing to do. He let himself smile because that, that had been a challenge, and Pete Mitchell had risen to meet it perfectly.

Tom lifted his eyes and stared just as unwaveringly back. It was time to see if his second assumption had been as accurate as the first. “I heard that about you. You like to work alone.”

Based on the way he’d done a terrible job of keeping his cool in class that afternoon, Maverick had a shit poker face. But his eyes never wavered from Ice’s, nor did his face slip from that same wary smile, until Slider called his name and the rest of the world came rushing back in all at once.

Reluctantly, Tom stood back up straight, but he studied Maverick for a few seconds more. He hadn’t denied the claim, but then, Ice hadn’t expected him to. Someone who flew like that had to know that the only place where promises meant anything was in the air. So he hadn’t denied it, because he was smarter than that, but he also hadn’t done anything that Ice could take as a confirmation, either.

Tom smiled. He would have to wait until he could see Maverick fly to get his answer, and he was surprised to find that he was genuinely looking forward to it. “I’ll see you later,” he said as he and Slider prepared to leave, because Pete Mitchell had risen to his challenge, so it only seemed fair to do the same in response.

“You can count on it,” Maverick told him.

He knew better than to do so, but for a moment, Tom wished that he could believe him.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Ice, what the fuck was that?!” Slider was yelling at him as soon as the door to their house closed behind him. 

Iceman, however, was unfazed, or at least that was how he made sure it looked on the outside. He could tell by the twitch in his RIO’s jaw that it worked, although he was careful to keep Slider from getting too close of a look at his face. He had known that something like this was coming, that it had been inevitable from the moment he’d gotten up in Maverick’s face the previous night at the O Club.

Even after last night, and even with his preliminary assumptions on Maverick Mitchell, Tom still hadn’t expected their second day at TOPGUN to go quite like that. From whatever the hell was going on between Maverick and their instructor Charlie, to learning more about Cougar’s final mission, to Maverick getting Jester by breaking the fucking hard deck on their first goddamned hop, to their face-off in the locker room afterwards… well. The day certainly hadn’t been boring, that was for sure, but the most distressing development was how very, very little of it had gone according to Iceman’s plan.

Not, of course, that he was going to admit as much to Slider. Not willingly, at least. And so Ice shrugged off his jacket and headed for the coat closet. “What was what, Slider? It was a long day, you’re going to have to be more specific.”

By the angry stomping of feet against the hardwood, Slider had followed him. Ice continued draping his jacket over the hanger with the same calm precision as always and refused to look over at his RIO.

“Oh, nuh-uh, you do not get to do this with me,” Slider bit out. He sounded angry, angrier than Ice had expected him to be, and his hands stilled for a moment on his coat. “Cut the bullshit and answer: what the hell were you thinking? You know that’s twice you’ve gotten in Mitchell’s face like that in the past twenty-four hours, right?”

“He’s dangerous,” Ice said, replacing the hanger in the closet and shutting the door. He thought about confronting Maverick about Cougar before the first hop and pointedly did not correct Slider’s count. “You said so yourself. And he’s reckless in the air. He needed to know it, because if he keeps flying the way he does, he’s going to get someone hurt someday.”

Ice kept his back to Slider, so he couldn’t tell what expression was on his RIO’s face, but the silence that descended between them was charged and heavy. He tensed up for a moment, then forced himself to relax.

When Slider’s voice finally came, it was steely, deceptively calm. His words, too, were short and clipped. “Tom. You snapped your fucking teeth at him.”

Tom Kazansky was the Iceman, so he did not blush. Instead, he studied the furniture in the living room at the end of the hallway as an excuse not to turn around. His eyes caught on the armchair he’d been sitting in the night before last—had it really only been that long ago?—and he thought about everything he and Slider had discussed concerning Maverick. They’d agreed, then, that Maverick would surely make things more eventful, and they certainly hadn’t been wrong.

“It worked, didn’t it?”

Slider let out a bark of humorless laughter. Something was twisting in Ice’s gut, hot and uncomfortable, and it made him angry. He took a deep breath and pushed it down, but he knew even as he did so that it would only work for so long, because this argument had been building for the entire goddamn day. “It worked? You’re trying to tell me that you did all of that on purpose? You stared at Mitchell all day in class yesterday, trapped him against the bar in the O Club, and then fucking bit at him because you were trying to, what? Let him know that you think he’s dangerous? What the fuck, Ice?”

The disbelief and the scorn dripping from every word out of Slider’s mouth was enough for Ice’s anger to bubble over, and he whirled around to glare at his RIO. “You saw what he was like out there!” He pointed accusingly in the vague direction of the base. “He challenged an instructor, he broke the hard deck in order to pursue a kill, and he abandoned Cougar in order to fuck around in an inverted dive with a fucking MiG. Excuse me if I thought that he needed to be taught a lesson.”

When he was so caught up in his anger that it was all he could think of, Ice had forgotten why he wasn’t turning around: if Slider could see his face, he would be able to look beneath the mask and see why he’d actually done it. Once he’d finished his speech, chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath, it crashed down on him, all at once, what he’d done.

It was comical, almost, the way Slider's expression changed. All the anger vanished in a second, replaced by understanding and something that almost looked like pity. He took a half step forward and reached out as if to place a hand on Ice’s shoulder. “Is this about Cougar?”

Without even thinking about it, Ice took a matching step back so that Slider's hand fell away into empty air. He was still breathing quick and shallow, but it was no longer from exertion, and he glared at his RIO with his coldest glare, the one that caused everyone to flinch and mutter under their breaths that he really was just like his callsign.

But because this was Slider, that wasn't what happened, and he met the stare head-on with a cool look of his own. Ice wanted to scream at him because his skin felt tight and itchy with the buildup of everything he was feeling, and Slider may think that he had everything all worked out, but he didn't understand one goddamn thing. “You’d like that, wouldn't you?”

Slider’s eyes narrowed. Iceman could see him thinking, back to trying to piece together a picture from his reactions, but he also saw the way his anger was building up again. Good. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It would be convenient,” he spat, “if I was acting out against Maverick because I felt betrayed by Cougar, right? Or whatever bullshit you were thinking? I hate to break it to you, but I don’t care about Cougar. He can turn in his wings if he wants, I haven’t seen him in years, it doesn’t matter to me.”

There was a cold feeling in his gut that told him that these words weren’t as true as he wanted them to be, but Iceman had already known that. It would take a lot longer than a day, he was sure, to compartmentalize everything that Cougar’s resignation made him feel. But what he’d told Slider still wasn’t a lie, not entirely, and Ice wished that it was. It truly would be simpler if the entirety of Ice’s feelings towards Maverick were defined by his feelings towards Cougar, because he was smart enough to realize that they were separate things. Even if he didn’t know how to separate them yet, he wasn’t the Iceman for nothing—he could put up a mask and be polite to Maverick if nothing about the way he was feeling was because of the man himself.

Some of the way Ice viewed Maverick was probably because of the way he’d learned about Cougar’s resignation. Especially with the revelation that Maverick apparently thought it was more important to showboat with MiGs than defend his wingman. But Tom had spent the past day studying Maverick, trying to figure out who he was and why. And he thought he had the big picture by now, but there were a few little details—small things that would be easy to overlook, like the way he’d shut down when he thought Ice was judging Cougar—that didn’t quite line up.

Tom Kazansky was, he could admit, an obsessive perfectionist. Normally, it wasn’t very difficult to pin a person down to their basic hopes, desires, likes, and dislikes, at least not once he’d watched them long enough. It had only been a day, but Maverick, Maverick, he could tell, was going to be different. And Tom wasn’t entirely sure yet how that made him feel.

“So what is it about, then?” Slider’s voice, both angry and tired, broke him out of his thoughts. Ice blinked to try and clear his head, and noticed the way Slider’s jaw was clenched, his entire body coiled tight. He looked like he’d gone through the whole range of possible emotions just in the time they’d been arguing and he was just one wrong move away from either snapping or giving up entirely.

Normally, Iceman was precise with his words. He knew the power they had, and he understood the merit of assigning the right ones to what he was feeling in order to best convey his thoughts. Normally, he’d thought things through carefully before he said them, because he knew it was the best way to manipulate a situation the way he wanted. He went into things as prepared as he possibly could be, it was how he stayed in control, because if he wasn’t it felt the same as trying to avoid crashing into the ground in a plane where both engines had gone out.

If there was an opposite end to that extreme, though, that was how Tom Kazansky had been feeling for the entirety of this conversation. He was reeling, grasping at straws to try and pull together a picture in his head that still wouldn't come out right no matter what he did. He felt off-kilter in a similar way to how he’d felt the previous night talking to Maverick in the O Club, and it was another thing contributing to the anger, to the itchy discomfort that was making him feel out-of-place in his own skin, like it belonged to someone else.

“It’s about Maverick.” Something about the words made them hard to get out, like Ice was telling Slider some dark secret instead of saying what he knew would win the argument. “Just Maverick. About how he needs to be stopped before it’s too late.”

The set of Slider’s jaw told Ice that he was preparing to snap back even before he’d finished speaking, but then he abruptly froze in place. “What do you mean, before it’s too late?”

A sickening feeling was beginning to rise in Ice’s gut. He took half a step backwards and staggered into the wall of the hallway. Neither of them had made it more than a few steps beyond the coat closet, some small part of his brain noted ironically. He studied the swirls in the hardwood in order to avoid having to meet his RIO’s eyes.

“Ice, what do you—”

“You’ve seen him,” Ice interrupted, because there was a part of him that was afraid to let Slider finish. “You’ve seen the way he flies. You even said it yourself, the night before we started TOPGUN. If no one stops him, eventually he’s going to crash and burn, and he’s going to take someone out with him.”

A silence fell between them under the weight of that revelation, a tense silence that was deafening from everything left unspoken. Iceman traced the planks of hardwood for as long as he could stand before finally forcing himself to look up and make eye contact with Slider. He found his RIO already looking back with an expression that he had no idea how to read.

Ice crossed his arms and tilted his chin in challenge, but nothing in Slider’s expression changed even a little. It was almost like he was looking through him, Ice thought, and he didn’t seem to realize that Ice was looking back. Slider no longer seemed ready to scream at him, which was probably a good thing because he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from yelling right back, but he wasn’t sure what about his words had done it, and wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“Slider?” Ice pushed off the wall and took a cautious step towards his RIO after the staring had gone on for several more moments with absolutely no explanation as to why. “Are you alright? Slider!”

Slider snapped back to himself just in time to bat away the hand that Ice was raising to place on his shoulder. Quickly, Ice withdrew it and stepped back, because Slider’s face immediately creased into anger as soon as he came back to himself. Iceman braced himself for another explosion, an explosion that he honestly wasn’t sure how he would combat, because he still had no idea what all that had been, but it never came.

Instead, he watched Slider take a deep breath and visibly steel himself. He lifted his head and looked Ice straight in the eyes. There was a seriousness, a coldness, there that hit him like a bucket of water to the face, but he forced himself not to look away. “I’m perfectly fine. But you need to get your shit together, Ice. We have five weeks of this, and if you let Maverick fucking Mitchell distract you from why we’re here, I swear to god that I will kill you.”

Something about the way these words were presented made Tom believe that Slider was giving him some sort of serious, dire warning. But if that was the case, he couldn’t figure out what it was—yes, Maverick was dangerous, and yes, Ice had been perhaps a bit too overt in letting him know in class that day, but the two of them were the best pilot-RIO pair there, and none of Pete Mitchell’s showboating was going to be enough to keep them from getting that trophy.

“He won’t distract me,” Tom said with all the conviction that he could put behind the words. He lifted his chin and didn’t look away even when Slider turned that same searching gaze from before on him. They stared at each other in silence for a few more minutes. Tom had expected yelling, he’d expected a big fight that had the two of them at each other’s throats. They couldn’t afford something like that right now and they both knew it, but Tom couldn’t help but imagine that by sidestepping it now, it would only be worse when things finally came crashing down around them.

Eventually, Slider clapped him on the shoulder and brushed past him to head towards his bedroom. Tom stared after him for a moment before collapsing back against the wall, the heels of his palms pressed against his eyes. He took several deep breaths and tried to run backwards through what a mess that conversation—that whole day —had spiraled into. A pattern was forming in the back of his mind, a pattern that Iceman did not like the look of.

He had no idea what sort of reassurance Slider had been looking for when he stared at him, but Tom had a horrible suspicion that he hadn’t found it.

The next week at TOPGUN passed in a bit of a blur. For the sake of his sanity, Iceman thought that was probably a good thing.

He’d been careful in the aftermath of his argument with Slider, and the two of them had managed to avoid coming to blows since that first day. Same with Maverick, although in that case it was more because Iceman restrained himself from commenting on every dumb thing Maverick did than it was because he stopped doing them. He and Goose were just as much the dynamic duo they had been on the first day, executing whatever maneuver Maverick thought the most fun at the time, and yet somehow never falling more than a few points between Iceman and Slider’s own score in the race for the Top Gun trophy. It was, in a word, infuriating.

Iceman wished that infuriating was all it was. But the more that he flew with Maverick, the more he looked, the more he began to realize something about the other pilot. To that point, Ice had been operating under the assumption that Slider’s initial characterization of Maverick was correct: that he was a decent pilot, sure, but that doing things because he wanted to do them would always be the most important thing to him, the best predictor of his actions. It was clear that nothing Ice could say was going to change anything about who Maverick was, so Ice had almost convinced himself to let the whole thing go by the time he saw the first inkling of something more.

Almost.

They were in the classroom after a hop, Viper and Charlie debriefing them. As the days progressed, more and more of the others had started being able to take out their instructors, but today two of the few who had avoided being shot down were Iceman and Maverick. Viper was going over the simulations of their maneuvers, picking out specific aspects that had gone wrong or right, and Iceman was not surprised in the slightest to see Maverick’s flight appear as the example of a bad decision.

As the simulation of Maverick’s plane played out across the screen, Tom had to admit that he was impressed despite himself. When he had flown the course, he was able to break away from the MiG early enough that he and Slider wouldn’t have been in any serious danger had they been in it for real. And if they had been in a situation like that in real life, he knew that was the way he would want it. He wasn’t insane, after all, and did not enjoy risking his life for fun. Viper, Charlie, and the Navy at large would agree that the way Iceman flew the mission was the best way to do so, and he knew it.

Maverick, on the other hand, flew dangerously close to the MiG, almost close enough for it to get a lock on him, and managed to escape only by pushing his plane and his skills as a pilot to the limit. It had worked, in the end, if one defined success in the broadest of terms. But something that dangerous, that difficult, could only be pulled off by someone who knew their limits, not the limits of their plane but of themselves, and knew exactly how to toe the line without ever stepping too far. He was flashy about it—too flashy, in Iceman’s opinion, which he had made known —but there was no denying that Maverick was good.

“The MiG has you in his gunsight, what were you thinking at this point?” Charlie asked, drawing up close to Maverick like there was nothing more important in the world to her than his answer.

“You don’t have time to think up there.” Maverick’s words were solemn, with an unusual sort of weight. Ice squinted at him from behind the lenses of his aviators. “If you think, you’re dead.”

“That’s a big gamble with a $30 million plane, Lieutenant,” Charlie said, and Ice couldn’t help but to smile. He’d seen the way Maverick looked at Charlie, so maybe he would listen to her telling him not to be a fucking idiot up in the air if he wouldn’t listen to Iceman. Nevermind that Charlie was a civilian contractor who had never been behind the controls of a plane in her life and understood even less about the way Maverick flew than Iceman did.

Tom could understand, objectively, Maverick’s attraction to Charlie—she was intelligent and, he supposed, pretty. But objective was all that it would ever be, as always when it came to matters of the opposite sex, and his opinion was not at all improved by the truly outlandish things the other pilot did to try and get her attention. Ice was embarrassed to watch, sometimes, and when that was combined with the fact that Charlie was their instructor with her own life and career that would only overlap with theirs for five weeks… well. But it wasn’t like Maverick was going to take Iceman’s advice about his love life, and there were other, more deserving things about Maverick he could be angry about. Tom could ignore this one, really, he could.

He repeated this to himself later, after they had been dismissed for the day and he caught sight of Charlie chasing after Maverick. They passed him in a hallway inside, and he didn’t care enough to follow either of them out to see what was going on this time. No one else was around, either, so Tom didn’t feel any remorse about the face he made at the door as it closed behind Charlie. He felt overheated and his chest was tight with anger, and he knew he was only making it worse by mentally replaying every word of their interaction. Tom collapsed bonelessly against the wall, forced a deep breath, and tried to think of something, anything else.

It was then that he remembered Maverick’s answer to Charlie’s question. What were you thinking at this point was a question that Iceman had asked himself many times when seeing or hearing about Maverick’s flying, but he hadn’t anticipated the answer. You don’t have time to think up there. If you think, you’re dead.

His first instinct, Ice thought as he continued staring blankly at the closed door, was to dismiss the whole thing. Every single move that he made when he was up in the air was thought out to the point of perfection. It came naturally to him at this point, his mind running through a list of necessary information almost automatically. All pilots had to have good instincts, of course, they wouldn’t need to pass tests that relied on them if they weren’t important, but it was impossible to fly only on instinct. Even Maverick Mitchell needed to use his goddamned head sometimes if he wanted to make it back to the ground, so the notion that you don’t have time to think was surely just as improbable as it sounded.

But then Tom remembered the way Maverick’s face had shuttered closed that night in the O Club, when they were talking about Cougar. He had said what he said— he was a good man, was—not because he believed it but because he had wanted to see Maverick’s reaction. If it was Maverick’s fault that Cougar had turned in his wings, then he should have been pleased that Ice didn’t hold it against him. But he’d been indignant, not pleased.

It had been over a week since then, but Iceman still hadn’t been able to figure out why. Everything about Maverick’s behavior was predictable, in line with the couple-sentence briefing Slider had given him the night before they started TOPGUN. Everything fit, except for that one, tiny detail, and it was why Tom hadn’t been able to move on, to dismiss Maverick as nothing more than a reckless flyboy the way he wanted to.

There had been that, that still is a good man, and now this you don’t have time to think up there. It was hardly anything, but it was enough for Tom Kazansky to realize that maybe he hadn’t figured Pete Mitchell out quite as well as he thought he had.

For nearly a week, sustained by this thought, Tom watched Maverick even more closely than he usually did. The possibility of finally being able to put this whole thing to rest was too attractive to ignore—it wasn’t affecting their performance in the race for the trophy, not yet, but if Ice let this get any further out of hand, it might. Slider’s warning from that first night, about Maverick and being distracted, nudged at the edges of his mind several times, and he forcibly pushed it down. It wouldn’t come to that, he would make sure of it.

Iceman knew better than to give in to something like hope. Knew that if he did, he would nearly always end up disappointed. He just hadn’t realized that that was what was happening until it was too late.

Hop 19. Maverick and Goose and Hollywood and Wolfman, up in the air against Viper and Jester. They were supposed to work as a team, so Ice knew even before they began that there would be trouble. He and Slider had already taken their turn—they’d been shot down by Viper, but they were still ahead of Maverick in ranking, which was what was most important—so they retreated to the ready room in their flight gear to listen in on the comms.

At first, things went well enough. Each group had been unpleasantly surprised, so far, to find Viper in the air alongside Jester, and the way they reacted to it, Ice was beginning to see, could predict a lot about what they would do next. He was skeptical right away when they heard Maverick say, “Hollywood, you’ve got the lead, I’ll cover you,” but Maverick did stick on Hollywood’s wing for longer than Iceman had expected, at the very least. They might have even been able to win, together they were good enough, if Viper didn’t know Maverick well enough to tempt him away from Jester and Hollywood with the promise of a kill.

When Maverick eventually did pull away, Ice wasn’t all that surprised. Maybe a little more so with the way Goose had been urging him not to, but everyone there probably understood Maverick well enough to know that him chasing after Viper had been inevitable. It was flashy, and it would be impressive if he was able to make the kill all on his own. Only, Iceman knew that Maverick wouldn’t be able to do it, and if Maverick bothered to think for more than one fucking second, he would know it, too.

“God damn you, Maverick.” Hollywood’s voice crackled over the radio, presumably as Maverick left him hanging, and Ice exchanged looks with Slider. If he was flying a combat mission, if it was life-or-death and it was up to his wingman to keep him alive, Ice thought, the very last person that he would want up in the air with him was Maverick Mitchell. He had no right to be as disappointed by this revelation as he was. Maverick was good, sure, better than most, but that was absolutely not enough to excuse his unreliability. Nothing was, and that should be it.

For the next several minutes, Ice, Slider, and several of their other classmates listened as Viper baited Maverick to come after him. It didn’t take long for Jester to get radar lock on Hollywood and Wolfman, and then they heard him come back around to ambush Maverick and Goose. For being the top one percent of all naval aviators—for being second in the race for the Top Gun trophy—it was almost too easy for Jester to take out the two of them.

Once Maverick and Goose were dead, everyone in the room around Ice erupted into conversation, a mix of gloating and griping. He was sure that bets had been placed about if Maverick would be able to do it—everyone knew that it was always him and Iceman vying back and forth for the lead—but Ice didn’t look away from the radio for long enough to check. Instead, he continued staring at it without really seeing it, listening idly to Jester, Viper, Hollywood, and Maverick RTB.

Virtually everything on that hop, Iceman thought, had gone exactly the way he had expected. Maverick Mitchell lived up to his callsign: he was impulsive and short-sighted. If Ice had known what Viper and Jester’s plan was beforehand, he would have been able to predict Maverick’s results down to the fucking letter.

There was something churning in his gut as he sat there and listened to the sounds of talking surrounding him, something that Tom would be able to identify if he tried to. But he had a feeling that he didn’t want to know for sure, so he shoved it down hard like that would be enough to make it go away.

He hadn’t showered yet or changed out of his flight suit—there hadn’t been time if he’d wanted to listen to Maverick’s hop. All at once, the world came rushing back and the feeling caught up to him. Overheated, sticky with sweat, and out-of-place in his own skin, Tom shoved himself to his feet and stomped his way from the ready room to the locker room. He thought he heard Slider and one or two others following him, but at that moment, all he cared about was getting a fucking shower, like the water could wash his emotions away with it.

It didn’t occur to him until he was there that Maverick fucking Mitchell would be showering, too. He and Goose were at their lockers, stripping out of their flight suits, when Iceman stomped past them. They were talking—or, more accurately, Goose was—but Ice didn’t let himself stop for long enough to listen or even look. Standing under the shower spray for all of three goddamned minutes shockingly didn’t do much to make him feel better, either.

As he stepped out of the stall and made his way back over to where everyone else was waiting, Ice heard a sharp whistle pierce the air and caught the tail end of Jester scolding Maverick. “... you never, never leave your wingman.”

Tom leaned against the pillar Maverick had vacated and scrubbed his hands across his face to give himself a chance to gather his thoughts. He went back over their flight, thought about the way the comms had been mostly silent for a few minutes in the middle, aside from occasional comments from Maverick to Goose and the way Jester had repeatedly praised Maverick’s flying. Maybe that had been motivated by the fact that Maverick had given him an actual chase and maybe it was because he knew Maverick hadn’t been able to hear him say it, but neither of those details changed the fact that it was true.

If it came down to it, Iceman wouldn’t trust Maverick to have his back in the air. But he wished more than anything that he could, because Maverick was good. For the first time in a long time, Tom felt like he was having to work to be the best, having to fight to remain in the lead. He’d begun to forget the feeling of having to chase after something elusive, forgotten what it was like to set his sights on a light blinking way off in the distance and know that, one way or another, he would reach it.

“Maverick, it’s not your flying, it’s your attitude.”

Maverick Mitchell had one leg propped up on the bench and was staring very pointedly at the completely uninteresting plain white ceiling. It was a move that made it very difficult for Tom to ignore that he was wearing nothing besides a goddamned towel. Which made sense seeing that they were in the fucking locker room, he wasn’t wearing anything else either, but he also knew he had to ignore it for the sake for his rapidly-fraying sanity.

Another thing that was clear was that by the look on his face, there was nothing Tom could say that would be able to touch Maverick. Right. He supposed it would be too much to hope for for them to be on the same page.

“The enemy’s dangerous, but right now, you’re worse than the enemy.” As he spoke, Tom stared at Maverick, poured all of his focus into trying to figure out what the fuck was going on inside his head. It reminded him of that first night at the O Club, when he’d looked into Maverick’s eyes and the world around them had gone silent.

There were several noticeable differences between that day and this one, though, the biggest of which being that Maverick was not staring back, but rather keeping his attention firmly on the ceiling, the bulletin board in front of him, Goose, anything and everything that would let him pretend that Tom didn’t exist. He kept speaking, though, because he had something he needed to say and he was going to fucking say it, trying to put all the force he could behind the words, like that would be enough to make Maverick listen. “You’re dangerous and foolish. You may not like the guys flying with you, they may not like you, but whose side are you on?”

There was a few feet of space between Tom’s pillar and Maverick’s bench, but it might as well have been an uncrossable ocean. He stood there and watched, clocked the set of Maverick’s jaw and the measured way he was breathing, and thought back to the first day when his Academy ring had managed to rattle Maverick and he’d done a shit job of trying to hide it. He had that same deliberately blank expression on his face now, from what little Tom could see of it, and he was sure that everyone around them—if, truly, anyone else besides Goose was listening—knew exactly what he was feeling. There was no fucking mystery. Tom had thought there was, but he’d been wrong. Maverick Mitchell really was no more than he appeared to be, so Ice didn’t understand why he was trying to pretend otherwise.

Tom stared across the chasm between them for what could have been seconds or years. He silently commanded Maverick to say something back, to turn around, to fucking look over, but it was like all of Tom’s words had bounced off and been deflected back at him, like Tom wasn’t even worth the effort it would take for Mitchell to turn his head.

Pressing his lips together, Tom Kazansky turned and walked away. He did not look back.

Chapter Text

“Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock.”

- The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

“This is not good! Shit, we got a flameout, Mav!”

The whole thing was over in less than two minutes. They were simultaneously the longest and shortest two minutes of Tom Kazansky’s life.

At first, he wasn’t entirely sure what was happening. He and Slider were above Maverick and Goose, so he couldn’t see the dizzying way their plane was spinning until he turned to the side and looked down. He was so caught up in trying to ride out the waves of anger and frustration rolling through him that he missed the first couple of panicked exclamations after Maverick flew through his jetwash. It was really probably only a handful of seconds where he was lost in his head, but time seemed to pass in fits and starts. It felt like it took days for Ice to turn and spot Maverick and Goose’s plane below him.

As soon as he did, he instantly forgot about everything else he was feeling, everything that had been so pressing just a moment before. The world narrowed so it was just him, the controls in his hands, and Maverick’s plane out the window, the engines flaring out one and then the other. Tom could feel the pounding of his heart and the way his hands were shaking, but he didn’t know what to do to make them stop. Trying to think felt like trying to swim upriver against a current, like he was frozen in place and not able to do anything except watch.

The next thing that pierced through the fog of Tom’s mind was the sound. Slowly, the high-pitched ringing silence inside his ears was replaced by voices. Maverick’s and Goose’s voices in his helmet, loud and panicked.

“Goose, I’m losing control, I’m losing control! I can’t—I can’t control it. It won’t recover! Shit.”

That was Maverick’s voice. He was talking quickly and urgently, frantically, in a way that felt at odds to the Maverick that Ice was used to seeing. Maverick was always confident, because he was the type of person who believed that everything he said was the most important thing in the world at that moment, but he couldn’t sound further from that now. It had always annoyed him in the past, but now Tom’s hands itched with a sense of wrongness, with the desire to reach out and fix it so that Maverick never sounded that way again.

Tom Kazansky was one of the Navy’s best aviators, and more than that, he wasn’t an idiot. For as long as he’d been flying, he knew that accidents and crashes were an unavoidable part of life if they wanted to do what they did. He’d had to learn how to think on his feet in a crisis, how to recover if he lost control of his plane, or, failing that, how to salvage the best of the situation and get himself and his RIO out intact. Iceman had had his fair share of near-death experiences—it came with the territory of being an aviator. He’d prepared as much as it was possible to do so, and he’d always managed to get himself and his RIO out safely. He was confident that he could handle whatever situation he’d find himself in.

But now, Tom was sitting safely in his plane and Slider was leaning forward behind him to peer through the canopy, but Maverick’s panicked voice was in his ear and his fucking hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Maverick’s plane was still spinning, looking way too fucking close to the very unforgiving ground, and Tom was watching it so closely that it took him several moments to realize that the reason his head was spinning, too, was because he’d been holding his breath and not because he was there alongside Maverick. Trying to unclench his hand from the stick and breathe deeply did absolutely fucking nothing, but he didn’t try to tear his eyes away for long enough to try more than once.

“It’s coupling up, Mav! We’re out of control! This is not good, this is not good!”

Goose’s voice, over his headset, sounded even more worried than Maverick’s had and even more strained than Tom felt. It was from the centrifugal force of all the spinning, a fucking useless part of Tom’s brain thought it fit to inform him, pushing him outward against the front of his plane. He’d been able to see all of it from above already, of course, but for some reason that was the thing that really hit him, that this was bad, serious and going to be hard to recover from.

There had to be something someone could do, because Iceman was still in the air and Jester and whoever the hell else they’d been chasing were too, they were seeing this, and they were the best fucking aviators in the Navy, so if there was anyone who could fix this, is was them.

“Mayday, mayday. Mav’s in trouble,” he relayed, taking a deep breath and forcing himself to be the Iceman, forcing his voice to come out steady. “He’s in a flat spin, he’s heading out to sea.”

For a few moments, there was nothing over the comms beside Goose calling their altitude out to Maverick as they continued to fall. Tom went back to holding his breath so that he didn’t scream. His hands were still shaking on the controls, he knew, and he let them, because if they were shaking that meant he wasn’t chasing after Maverick himself, because he couldn’t just fucking sit here, he had to do something, but there was nothing, nothing he could possibly do without putting himself and Slider in the exact same goddamned position and everyone there knew it.

When a new voice crackled over his headset, Ice was so relieved he could have cried. “One-oh-four, be advised. Search and Rescue will launch to your coordinates.”

“Slider,” he snapped and his RIO instantly relayed back a confirmation, his own voice tight and carefully controlled like he was trying just as hard to keep it together as Tom was. His chest was heavy with a dark, sinking sensation and the hope that had come with the voice over the comms was almost entirely gone. He knew there was nothing Maverick could do to save his plane by now, it was obvious by the spinning and how everything they’d already tried had failed, but knowing it, Tom was discovering, was something entirely different from seeing it.

That moment was when Tom decided that he never, ever wanted to be on this side of things again. Maverick and Goose both sounded terrified, sure, and obviously he didn’t want to find himself in a situation where one wrong move could cost him his life. But if he was there, alongside or instead of Maverick, at least he would be able to fucking do something, something other than sit in his own plane and stare and cling onto the stick in his hands and watch knowing that Maverick and Goose were going to crash and there wasn’t a single goddamned thing he could do to stop it.

Maverick and Goose were going to crash, Maverick and Goose were going to crash, Tom thought, trying to resign himself to the fact, because there was nothing he could do other than what he’d already done, and they were spinning out to sea because they’d flown through his fucking jetwash, and it was all his goddamned fault—

The edges of his vision were starting to go fuzzy and dark and Tom’s head was spinning, spinning just like Maverick’s plane below him. He knew it wasn’t real, it was just panic and all in his own head, but that didn’t do anything to stop the terror that arched through him like lightning. He tried to get a mental handle on his emotions, tried to grab them and shove them away where they belonged, where they couldn’t hurt him, but it felt like trying to grab hold of water. Tom reached and reached, drew in deep breaths to try to force himself back to the present, but no matter what he tried, he couldn’t. He was trapped in his own head, lost to the flood of his feelings and spinning out of control just like Maverick was.

Tom had been in perilous situations before, he’d had to eject a few times himself, but he couldn’t remember ever, ever feeling as afraid as he was in this moment.

Time slowed down and every sense felt like it was dialed up to twenty. He heard static and voices talking in his ear, but they all blurred together into one overly-loud drone. There was a hand on his shoulder, he thought, shaking him to try to get his attention, but it just made his head spin more. It must’ve been Slider, Tom thought, and he tried to brush his RIO off, tell him he was just making things worse, tell him he was fine, but he wasn’t sure if he ever managed it.

It was Maverick’s voice that finally cut through.

“Goose, you’re gonna have to punch us out! I can’t reach the ejection handle!”

Tom snapped up in his seat and tilted the plane down to catch sight of Maverick, where he and Goose had fallen even closer to the sea below. Slider’s hand fell away from his shoulder—he’d been right, a part of Tom thought distantly—and they both leaned forward in unison, eyes directed downwards, watching and waiting to see the two parachutes.

If Goose managed to reach the ejection handles, that was. Tom held his breath, his whole body tense as a wire. If he squinted, he could just make out the black of Maverick’s helmet and the red of Goose’s through the canopy. Both of them looked like they were struggling to move. Please, Tom thought without meaning to, please let them be okay.

The last thing he heard was Maverick’s voice—“Eject, eject, eject! Watch the canopy!”—and then a horrible, ringing silence.

The canopy pulled away from the plane in a shower of sparks. A moment later, two small explosions as the seats punched out and lifted their riders into the air. Maverick’s shot straight up, his parachute deployed, and for a split second, Tom breathed a little easier.

And then Goose slammed at full speed into the canopy.

It rolled to the side and his parachute deployed a moment later, but Tom had seen the force behind that collision, and he also saw the way Goose dangled, limp and unmoving.

Slowly, almost gently, Maverick and Goose drifted on the wind until they splashed into the sea. In Tom and Slider’s plane, the world had gone silent. He couldn’t stop replaying the fear in Maverick’s voice, the way Goose slumped forward as soon as the canopy fell away.

“Tom,” came Slider’s voice, quiet and trembling and barely distinguishable from the way the blood was rushing in Tom’s ears. “Tom, did you see…?”

For a moment, there was no response beside the sound of heavy, ragged breathing. It took Tom far too long to realize that it was coming from him. He lifted a trembling hand to his face, shakily lifted his visor, and pressed, hard, against his eyes. His hand came away wet, and Tom furiously wiped the tears on the fabric of his flight suit. “They’re gonna be okay, Slider. He’s going to be fine.”

“I don’t think—”

“Maverick is going to be fine!”

As soon as he said the words, Tom knew that they were a mistake.

“Maverick?” Slider asked, slow and cautious, and the fear was back, Tom trying again to push it down. This time, he managed to cling on by the skin of his teeth and shoved it away. He reached for the stick again and was able to stop the trembling enough to grab onto it. He steered downwards towards where Maverick and Goose’s plane had hit the ocean and was starting to sink, towards the bright green dye he could see drifting on the waves.

Slider waited a few seconds before he tried to speak again, but that caution was still in his voice when he said, “Maverick? Tom, what did you mean Maverick? Didn’t you see Goose—?”

“Of course I fucking saw Goose,” he snapped. “Goose is—there’s nothing we can do for Goose now, Ron. But we can still help Mav, we have to go get him.”

It wasn’t like there was anything Slider could do if he disagreed, Tom thought. He wasn’t the one flying the plane, so if Tom wanted to go after Maverick, they were going to go after Maverick. But his stomach was rolling and he was covered in cold sweat and when Slider finally crackled back an “okay,” some of the strangling pressure on his chest eased up, just a little.

Tom pushed the stick down and dove towards the green light floating on the water. From up in the air, it seemed impossibly far away. He heard Slider speaking over the comms, describing what they were doing, but it was all happening miles away. Tom was numb, aware of the stick in his hands but unable to tear his eyes from the green dye in the water, from the two bodies he could make out on their black raft if he squinted.

One of them tilted his head back as Tom flew lower—Maverick, he thought, hearing the sound of Tom’s plane and trying to figure out what it was. He guided them in a wide circle, spiraling down towards the sea. They were still too high for it, but Tom imagined that he could see Maverick looking back at him. It was enough to spike through the numbness, the idea that Maverick was relying on Tom to direct Search and Rescue, that without Tom he could be lost on the ocean for hours, and he had to clench his hands as tightly as he could to keep himself from going even lower, to crashing his plane into the ocean, too, just so that Pete Mitchell wouldn’t be alone.

“Slider,” he said, his voice trembling, “ATC can use our coordinates to direct SAR. We’ll stay until they come for Maverick.”

There was a tense, uncomfortable pause. Tom could feel his heart beating quicker for every second it drew out, but he didn’t stop guiding his plane in circles around where Maverick and Goose were floating, didn’t look away from the little black dot. Eventually, Slider said, “That could take hours, Ice. We don’t have the fuel for that.”

Logically, Tom knew all that was true, of course he did. But the thought of Maverick, adrift in the ocean, cold and scared and injured and alone except for Goose, had his heart beating up in his throat and his hands trembling on the controls. He swallowed and forced the image from his mind. “I don’t care. We’ll be fine. We’re not going to leave them.”

“Tom—”

“I’m not leaving him!” he snapped. His chest was heaving and he wished he could glare at his RIO, but he would have to turn around to look at Slider, and doing that would mean taking his eyes off of where he was flying, taking his eyes off of Maverick, of those green eyes that he could imagine looking back. “He could drift out to sea if we leave him, it could take them hours to find him. He’s hurt, Ron, he just ejected, and he could die if he’s out there for too long. Goose is—Goose is already dead, we can’t lose anyone else.”

“Tom, hey, Tom, take a deep breath.” Slider’s voice was carefully measured. Tom couldn’t spare more than a passing thought as to why. Panic was tightening in his chest like a fist at the thought of leaving Maverick and he refused to entertain any suggestions otherwise. “Maverick’s okay. He’s awake, he was able to swim over to that raft. SAR knows they crashed and they have our coordinates. They’ll get to him before he gets too far, okay? We don’t need to stay, Viper wants us to land.”

“No!” Tom bit out through clenched teeth. Viper could come up in the air himself if whatever he wanted to say was so fucking important. “No, we can’t leave, we have to wait for them. We can’t lose Maverick, too, I can’t, I—”

Tom cut himself off so quickly that his teeth clacked together and the whole world came to a screeching halt for the second time that day.

“Tom! Okay, okay, breathe! SAR’s on their way, we’ll wait, okay? We’ll wait, just breathe, Jesus Christ.”

He hadn’t meant to say it, he thought, it hadn’t been on purpose. He hadn’t meant to say it, but he’d been about to—he’d almost—

Love him.

Tom Kazansky hadn’t meant to say the words, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t true.

With numb, shaking fingers, he followed the course he’d set, flying in circles with Maverick at the focus. His mind kicked into overtime, his thoughts were whirling so quickly that the controls, the plane, the ocean, Goose, Slider, all of it fell away. There was nothing in the world except for him and Maverick far down below.

Tom loved Pete Mitchell. He realized that it was the truth as he thought it, but it slotted into place perfectly, like he’d found the missing piece of an unfinished puzzle and now was finally able to see the full picture. It did, he thought absently, explain a hell of a lot about the past three weeks.

Tom Kazansky was the Iceman, ice-cold, no mistakes in everything, not just his flying. That was the image he’d tried to portray, at least, the persona he’d carefully crafted. He’d dealt with hotshots before, although in the Navy they rarely got as far as TOPGUN, as Maverick Mitchell. But he’d never been so exasperated, so distracted, by hotshots before, and he’d never gotten up in their faces even a fraction of the amount he’d gotten in Mitchell’s. It should have been obvious that it all meant something, he thought now that he could finally see it.

The notion almost made him want to laugh, in a panicked sort of way. Until he looked down at the water, at the way Maverick was lying on the raft with Goose’s limp body cradled closely to his chest like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to earth. Just as quickly as it had come, the urge was gone and Tom had to take a slow, deep breath to push through the wave of nausea that swirled in the pit of his stomach.

Now was not the fucking time to be thinking any of this, because Maverick and Goose had been forced to eject after flying through his jetwash, Goose had broken his goddamned neck on the canopy, and Maverick was stranded in the ocean and could die himself, too, if help didn’t get there in time. This was no time to be distracted by feelings. He was the Iceman, he thought, it should be easy for him to push it all away. It was what he did, it was what he was known for.

If there was ever a time for Tom to be the Iceman, it was now. Ice-cold, no mistakes was what all of them needed in order to get Maverick back. But right now—with his hands still fucking shaking and his heart pounding with the world-shifting realization he’d just stumbled into—he was just Tom Kazansky. Iceman had never felt farther out of reach.

Iceman didn’t feel things like fear, but right now, Tom Kazansky was afraid. He was afraid of what he’d just learned and afraid that he would lose it as soon as he’d thought to want it. He was afraid that he—that all of them—were about to lose Pete Mitchell along with Nick Bradshaw.

Iceman would have been able to save Pete Mitchell. But maybe Tom Kazansky could, too. No, not maybe, he needed to, he would. He tightened his hands on the controls and spoke in his calmest, most collected voice. “Slider, what’s the status of SAR?”

There was a ringing silence that was tinged with disbelief somehow, Tom knew even without being able to see Slider’s face. He tried to run back through what the rest of the world had been doing while he was lost in his head and thought he could remember his RIO’s voice in his ear, faraway but insistent and loud. It was entirely possible, he supposed, that he’d been ignoring everything outside of Maverick for longer than he’d intended, then.

“Still haven’t launched yet,” Slider said eventually, once the silence had stretched long enough to express his incredulity. Tom didn’t know what his RIO had been expecting him to say. He didn’t know how to even begin trying to voice what he was feeling, wouldn’t have known even if they weren’t in the air and currently on open comms.

So instead, he resolutely ignored all of Slider’s worry and decided to operate as though the past few seconds hadn’t happened. He knew he’d get hell for it once he was back on the ground, but that was just hell on top of the hell that this entire hop had turned into. He could deal with it, he’d be fine, Maverick was what was important right then.

“Copy,” he said in that same purposely steady voice and, sure enough, could hear Slider scoff. “Continuing course. Maverick and Goose are drifting.”

They were, but it wasn’t enough that SAR would be unable to find them using Tom’s current coordinates. He could return to base now, land and be done with it, and things would turn out the same either way. Whether or not Maverick made it was up to Maverick now—the outcome wouldn’t be changed by Tom flying circles over his head until he ran out of fuel. Everyone knew that. He knew that.

But every time he passed close enough to Maverick that he was able to make out more than a black speck, he saw the way Maverick’s dark head was buried in Goose’s shoulder. The way Maverick held him carefully, keeping his neck straight and his body out of the water. The way he’d occasionally lift his head for a moment when the sound of Tom’s engines reached their loudest. He was too far away for Tom to see his expression, but he imagined that he kept looking up as a reminder that he hadn’t been left alone by Goose, that he wasn’t gone, too. There was nothing else he could do, but Tom could at least give Maverick that.

It wasn’t enough to calm the dread sinking in his stomach or the fear clawing at his chest, but it was something that Tom could do, and he damned well was going to do it.

Tom and Slider flew circles over Maverick and Goose for hours, until the sun began slipping below the horizon and a Coast Guard helicopter finally appeared. Equal parts relief and terror spiked through him as he watched them haul Maverick up, unlike anything he’d ever felt.

After that, Tom was sure he’d turned around, flown back to base, landed his plane, and talked to Viper, but he couldn’t remember any of it. He was standing on solid ground but his mind was miles away, caught in the light of the sun shimmering off of the sea, in Maverick’s green eyes so far below, always drifting just beyond his outstretched hand.

Classes were canceled the next day. Tom wasn’t sure how any of them would ever manage to get up in the air again.

Both Maverick and Goose had been rushed to the hospital and kept overnight, but all attempts by their TOPGUN class to find out more than that had been met with nothing. So instead of waking up bright and early to fly, Ice, Slider, and most everyone else in their class piled into the hospital’s reception area the next morning to wait for news. Tom hadn’t managed to sleep at all the previous night, and looking at the faces around him, he thought he wasn’t the only one.

He was the only one who had been there, though. The only one, apart from Slider, to have witnessed the entire horrific story from beginning to end. The only one to have come inches from losing the man he loved.

With a trembling breath, Tom stopped himself before he could follow that train of thought. There was hardly a time or a place for revelations like that, but even if there was it wouldn’t be fucking here.

Instead, he squared his shoulders and marched over towards the receptionist, who didn’t look up until he was standing directly in front of her and had cleared his throat pointedly. The look he received in response was dry and impatient and, sure enough, he was told in no uncertain terms that they would need to wait for the doctor’s permission before any of them were allowed to see Goose or Maverick. Ice thanked her through gritted teeth, stomped back across the waiting room, and all but collapsed into a chair next to Slider.

They must have been there for hours. People came and went, more people than Ice could count, but most of them gave at least somewhat of a pause at the group of uniformed young men, sitting more quietly than Ice would have previously thought them capable of. They stuck out like a sore thumb, which he thought was fitting because he couldn’t remember a time ever feeling more out-of-place in his own skin.

Some of the others had already begun to leave by the time Viper appeared in the doorway. In summer whites, he stood out even against their khakis and everyone remaining immediately sat up a little straighter. His eyes swept slowly over their group and Ice felt an unreasonable stab of anger by the surprise he could see over the fact that so many of them were there. Of course they were, he thought vindictively. Maverick was one of the best of all of them, and everyone liked Goose. Of course they’d come, because he was pretty sure all of them knew that they might not get another chance.

“Sir, what’s the status of Maverick and Goose?” Tom asked as soon as Viper was close enough. He asked because not knowing was driving him insane, but it was a struggle to keep everything that he was feeling out of his voice. Especially once Viper’s face fell and his lips pressed into a thin line. Tom’s stomach swooped down to his shoes, and dread immediately began clawing at his insides even if he wasn’t able to give voice to it yet. He’d been there yesterday, after all, he’d seen Maverick and Goose in the water and Maverick was still moving when SAR came to get him, Tom knew he hadn’t imagined that—

“Maverick is alright,” Viper said to the group at large and Tom immediately felt his shoulders slump. Relieved tears prickled against the backs of his eyes and he bowed his head so no one else would see. The only thing he was able to think was thank god. “A few scrapes and bruises, but he’ll be discharged today and back up in the air soon.”

Tom heard his classmates break out into murmurs, but he kept his eyes closed and his head down and just focused on breathing so that he didn’t cry. Maverick’s alright, he repeated on each measured inhale. He’s alive, you got him out of there, and he’s going to be fine.

He couldn’t convince himself to believe it even before he heard Wolfman ask tentatively, “What about Goose, sir?”

Viper paused for a long, horrible moment and Tom was sure all of them knew the answer before he said it.

“Goose is dead.”

Tom remembered the fire as Maverick and Goose ejected, the way Goose’s neck jerked forward when he crashed into the canopy. He heard someone around him ask, “What happened, sir?” and panic shot through him because they didn’t know, he was the only one to have seen it, and—

“They ejected before the canopy had cleared.” Viper’s voice was just as calm and matter-of-fact as ever and it made Tom want to scream. He still didn’t dare raise his head, but he could feel Slider place a hand between his shoulder blades. “Goose snapped his neck against it. He was dead before he hit the water.”

The silence that followed those words was even more deafening. Like Tom, no one seemed to have any fucking clue of how to adjust to the idea that Nick Bradshaw, one of the best of all of them, was gone. Just like that. From one mistake lasting less than two goddamned minutes.

Eventually, Ice lifted his head. He sat up straight enough that Slider’s hand slipped from where it had been resting between his shoulder blades and made a point of looking Viper in the eye. “Can we go see Maverick?”

Viper hesitated. He kept his eyes unwaveringly on Ice’s, like he was searching for something, and Ice squared his shoulders. Let him look, he thought. He wouldn’t find it.

When Viper finally broke their eye contact, his face betrayed nothing. “Kazansky. You stayed up there until they were picked up, didn’t you?”

His face, his body, his voice, they all gave nothing away. He was the Iceman. “Yes, sir.”

Viper nodded, once, twice. Jerked his head back to the doorway he’d emerged from. “He’s conscious, but resting. You can go see him.”

All the air left Tom in a rush and his shoulders slumped before he could stop them. Instantly, he was cursing himself mentally, because there was no way Viper didn’t see that, he never missed anything, and he couldn’t even suspect, not about any of this, or else Tom would be slapped with an OTH discharge before he could even blink.

And so, Iceman squared his shoulders, stood calmly and pointedly, and crossed the room towards the receptionist’s desk. She gave him Maverick’s room number this time, albeit clearly reluctantly, and he glanced once more at the rest of his classmates before heading down the hallway. Right before he turned away, Ice caught Slider’s gaze and shook his head at the silent offer to accompany him. It… it wasn’t like he was going to give Maverick any indication of what he’d realized about his feelings, it definitely still wasn’t the time for that, but this was still something that Tom needed to do on his own.

He also got a short look at some of the rest of his classmates and couldn’t help but notice the utter lack of surprise on all of their faces at the idea of Tom being the first and only person allowed to see Maverick. Thinking about it now, of course, he was able to see all those attempts to get Maverick’s attention for what they were, but the idea that everyone else had somehow realized before him…

Nothing good could come from thinking about that too hard, Tom decided. Especially not here. Forcing his mind to go blank took a monumental effort, but he did it.

His feet carried him down the hall on autopilot, but Tom hesitated when he actually reached Maverick’s door. His hand was on the handle when he froze, suddenly overwhelmed by the image of Maverick clinging to Goose’s body as he floated small and helpless on the waves. He’d made it, Viper had said he’d be okay and if Tom could just manage to open the goddamned door he’d be able to see it for himself, but he still couldn’t shake the worry.

Physically fine and mentally fine were two very different things, after all. Iceman knew that well. His hands were trembling when he finally opened the door. He clenched them into fists at his sides to get them to stop.

The room was tiny, with most of the space taken up by the bed in the center. Maverick didn’t react to the door opening, so Tom assumed he was asleep with no small amount of relief. This was the first time he’d seen him in person since before Hop 31, he realized. It felt so long ago.

Maverick lay on his back on the bed. He was hooked up to a heart rate monitor, a pulse oximeter, and an IV drip, but Ice was still surprised by how few machines and wires there were. When Viper had said his injuries were minor, he hadn’t been exaggerating. He was outrageously lucky for someone who had just experienced a plane crash, Ice thought as he stood there in the doorway. Especially when the other victim of the crash hadn’t survived at all.

He suddenly thought back to the night he’d met Maverick, in the O Club all those weeks ago. Guess you guys are lucky and famous, huh? Slider had said in response to the story about the fucking MiG, and No, you mean notorious, Iceman had said back. Slider had been right, after all, it seemed: Maverick Mitchell was one lucky son of a bitch to have made it through something like that unscathed.

Tom was so lost in his thoughts that the sudden sound of harsh breathing and rapid beeping yanked him through several layers of dream and back to reality. His eyes immediately snapped to the bed, to the small body that was now thrashing back and forth. Maverick’s breathing was ragged and his limbs were twitching like he was trying to physically fight whatever was happening in his head. It was such a Maverick gesture that despite his racing heart, Tom had to smile. He was across the room and by Maverick’s side by the time he opened his eyes.

He came awake slowly, unfocused green eyes slipping closed several times before he was able to keep them open. It seemed to take Maverick a moment to remember where he was and another to realize that he wasn’t alone in the room. It was obvious, though, the moment his eyes fell on Iceman and he registered who it was with him, because his entire body locked up in one quick moment before going limp again just as quickly. The pained grimace on his face as he relaxed told Ice that it hadn’t been because he wanted to and he had to press his lips together tightly to keep his feelings off of his face. This wasn’t about him.

It got much more difficult when Maverick croaked out, “Ice… what…” in the smallest voice that he had ever heard.

Physically, Maverick was small, but there was nothing about his presence that was that way. When he was swaggering through the locker room after a successful hop, cracking jokes with Goose, it was easy to get swept away in his current, to forget that he wasn’t infallible. Seeing him now, his shoulders hunched and his body curled inwards, felt like a slap to the face. Tom was out of his depth, he didn’t know how to approach this version of Maverick, and he was terrified of what would happen if he made even one wrong move.

He might’ve stayed frozen forever, standing stiffly by the side of the bed, if Maverick hadn’t tried to move. Tom saw the desperate look on his face as he tried to sit up and he also saw the way it was immediately replaced by pain, and it was that last that had him surging forward. He was reaching out, sitting by his side and pushing on Maverick’s shoulders to force him back down to the bed, murmuring comforting nonsense under his breath. “Hey, hey, no, lay down, you’re alright.”

Maverick wheezed like he wanted to talk but wasn’t able to get the words out. His hands scrabbled at Tom’s where they were pressing on his shoulders and this close, it was obvious how much he was trembling. Tom tried to ignore it—he had to before he started crying—and reached for a glass of water that was conveniently placed on a table next to the bed. He handed it to Maverick, who held it in shaking hands and drank greedily. Tom couldn’t make himself pull back too far, so he wrapped one hand around Maverick’s to help him hold the glass. Everywhere their skin touched burned.

By the time the glass was empty, Maverick’s breathing had slowed down and he wasn’t quite so tense. He’d wrapped his free hand tightly around Ice’s wrist, though, like he needed the touch to ground him to the present. Slowly, Maverick lowered the glass and Tom put it back on the table. He twisted his other hand until he could hold Maverick’s and didn’t even try to look away from his eyes. Even like this, hurt and tired and seemingly about two seconds away from losing it, his presence was overwhelming.

With a deep breath, Maverick appeared to muster every scrap of strength he could find to speak. “Ice. What’re you doing here?”

The look on his face was the same one that Ice recognized from their first day of class: the neutral expression that was barely able to contain everything swirling beneath the surface. It hurt to look at for too long, so Ice looked down and studied the plastic hospital bracelet wrapped around Maverick’s wrist instead. “The class and I came to check on you. How are you feeling?”

He was sure that they both already knew the answer, but it seemed to be the wrong question to ask. Even without looking at his face, Ice was still able to sense the way Maverick pulled into himself, his body curling inward until the hospital bed seemed to swallow him. “M’alright.”

“Bullshit, Mitchell.” Tom raised his head and forced Maverick to make eye contact with him. It took several tries before their gazes connected, and Tom felt a jolt streak through him when he realized Maverick’s eyes were full of unshed tears. He noticed, absently, that they still hadn’t let go of each other’s hands and wondered if Maverick had forgotten.

Maverick looked to the side and swiped his free hand angrily across his eyes. His cheek was hollowed like he was biting the inside and the nails on his other hand were digging into the back of Tom’s. It hurt a little, but there was no chance in hell that he was going to pull away. “I’m fine, it’s nothing, they’re gonna let me go soon. How’s… how’s Goose? No one would tell me anything.”

Just like that, Tom was back to the day before, to watching Goose launch into the canopy, to the hours he’d spent watching Maverick hold his RIO’s body so very carefully. It was another question that they both knew the answer to, but Tom owed it to him to say it. “He’s dead. I’m sorry, Mav.”

Maverick’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. He was clutching Tom’s hand so tightly by now that his fingers were starting to hurt. But Tom held back just as tightly, because it was proof that Maverick was okay, that he was there.

“Yeah,” he whispered. He ducked his head, but Tom still saw a tear slip down his cheek. “Yeah, I know.”

Tom’s throat hurt with the desire to say something, anything that would fix things, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say. Sitting there, watching Maverick fighting against his tears even as they began to fall, took Tom back to the helpless feeling he’d felt sitting in his plane and watching them spin out to sea. If there was anyone who would be able to help, it was Tom, and he should, because the man he loved was hurting, but he still couldn’t think of one fucking thing that would make things better.

Tom didn’t know everything that Pete Mitchell had overcome to get to where he was, but he knew enough. He’d had to fight tooth and nail for everything he had, and it was that just as much as his flying style that made him Maverick. He was unorthodox, but he was just as good at flying as Iceman was, and he loved it just as much as Tom did. No one in the world flew like Pete Mitchell did, no one in the world was like Pete Mitchell. Watching him fall to pieces, watching him have come so far just to lose it all again hit Tom like a blow to the head, and he wanted to fix it but he didn’t know what to say.

You don’t have time to think up there. If you think, you’re dead. Wasn’t that what Maverick had said? It went against the way Ice flew, it went against everything that Tom was, but it wasn’t like anything he’d tried so far had worked, was it? And so, Tom Kazansky took a deep breath and let go. Stopped thinking. He dropped Maverick’s hand and then slowly reached out and pulled him into his arms.

Instantly, Maverick froze. His entire body went stiff under Tom’s arms and he even stopped crying. Panic shot through Tom like lightning, because he couldn’t stop making things worse, goddamn it, and he started to pull away, stammering out apologies and already missing Maverick’s warmth.

But it seemed to jolt Maverick into motion. Right as Tom began to sit back, Maverick abruptly lunged forward and threw himself into his arms. His hands scrabbled at the shirt of his uniform and he buried his head in Tom’s shoulder and immediately broke down into loud sobs that shook his whole body.

It was Tom’s turn to freeze as all his thoughts came to a screeching halt. For a moment, he wasn’t able to process anything except the feeling of Maverick in his arms—how warm and safe it felt to have him there, but also the wetness of tears soaking into his uniform and how Maverick was shaking like he was about to come apart. Maverick shouldn’t look like that, Maverick was confident and joyful and shone brighter than the fucking sun, and it made Tom’s chest ache, how much he wished he could give all that back to him.

But he couldn’t—there was nothing he could do to fix things and nothing he could think to say. So instead he pulled Maverick closer with an arm around his lower back and, in a moment of weakness, tentatively settled the other hand on his head. Tom cupped the back of Maverick’s neck and tangled his fingers into the strands of hair at his nape. It was a little greasy from his time in the hospital, but just as soft as he’d imagined.

He lost track of how long they sat there for, him perched on the edge of the hospital bed and Maverick shielded in his arms. Everything outside of the four walls of the room might as well have been on another planet for all the thought that Tom spared it. The world was him, Maverick, and the fierce ache in his chest as he rubbed a hand up and down Maverick’s back and murmured comforting nonsense in his ear. Tom never wanted to see the man he loved hurting, of course, but there was a small part of him, buried deep beneath his own grief, that couldn’t help but be a little glad for it, for the way it granted him the ability to be there, then.

Of course, it couldn’t last forever. Tom wasn’t sure how long Maverick cried for, but eventually his sobs started to taper off and he released the death grip he’d had on Tom’s uniform. He tentatively pulled back and Tom instantly let him go, sitting up straight and trying to fix his uniform so that he wouldn’t look at Maverick or think about how empty his arms felt now. He heard a sniffle and then Maverick cleared his throat.

“Sorry.” His voice was rough and scratchy and Tom’s hands twitched as he stopped himself from reaching out to pull Maverick back into his arms. He busied himself, instead, with grabbing a tissue from the box on the table and handing it to Maverick. “Your uniform’s probably ruined now.”

Ice shrugged with a nonchalance he did not feel. “It’s fine. I can wash it.”

Maverick was also pointedly not making eye contact. Tom watched as he picked at the tape around the IV needle in the back of his hand. Still not letting himself think about it for too long lest he realize how much of a mess this whole afternoon had turned into, Tom reached out and carefully laid his hand atop Maverick’s. It let him feel the way the other man went still for a split second before he let out a shuddering breath and his entire body seemed to deflate. He twisted his hand around and laced their fingers together—confident and easy, like the motion was well-practiced—and Tom felt his heart miss a beat.

Hope was a dangerous thing. Iceman Kazansky knew this. But sitting there, in the hospital room that no one except him was granted permission to visit, his hand in Maverick Mitchell’s, with the memory of what it felt like to hold him, Ice could feel himself hoping anyway. He stared at Maverick, poured every ounce of his concentration into staring at Maverick, but Maverick still wasn't looking back. It felt like tumbling headfirst down a mountain, it felt like trying to reach out and catch the air, like Tom could do everything and it still wouldn't be enough. He could see the tense set of Maverick’s shoulders and feel the way he was clinging to his hand like he needed it to remind himself that he was still there, but the pieces weren't fitting together and Ice didn't know what any of it meant.

Maverick didn’t feel the same way about Tom as Tom did about him. But even if by some miracle he did, they would be risking their careers to even attempt anything. For all his life, flying had been the thing he loved above all else, the thing that made every sacrifice worth it. Flying had always been the one thing that Iceman knew, and he knew enough about Maverick to be sure that it was the same for him. Even if it turned out that they both felt the same way, Iceman was realistic enough to know that nothing would come of it. How could he give up his wings, how could he expect Maverick to?

Ice knew all this to be true. The sooner that his heart got with the program, the better. That started with keeping his feelings close to his chest where they belonged, with keeping his arms at his sides regardless of how much he wanted to hold Maverick and never let him go.

Sitting in that waiting room for hours, nothing had been more important to Tom than being able to visit Maverick, to see with his own eyes that he was safe. But now, on the other side of things, he was starting to realize that coming in here had been a mistake. Nothing was ever going to happen, nothing ever could. Now that Tom knew what it was about Maverick that left him feeling defenseless, he needed to cut his losses before things got any worse.

Tom Kazansky loved Pete Mitchell, but he couldn’t. It wouldn’t be fair to expect anything of Maverick right now. But he was the Iceman, he could get over this, he was well-practiced at pushing his feelings aside until they faded away.

Now, he’d confirmed that Maverick was fine. He was awake, remembered everything, and was sure to make a full recovery. He’d broken down in Ice’s arms, which he had to admit was one of the very last things he’d expected going into this, but that made sense, too, he supposed. All of them knew how close Maverick and Goose were. Mental recovery would take longer, but again, it was Maverick. He’d already overcome so much to get to TOPGUN, Ice was sure that he could overcome this.

And he was strong enough to do it on his own. He didn’t need Tom there to hold his hand, no matter how much Tom might want to. It was time to leave. He needed to wash his hands of this whole accident, wash his hands of Pete Mitchell. Get away before he lost sight of shore, before he went too far to ever make it back.

Ice was a little worried that Maverick would go back to trying to escape his hospital bed if he released his hands, but he supposed that was a problem for the nurses now. Slowly, he untangled his fingers from the death grip that Maverick had on them. Maverick let him do it, but Ice could feel those bright green eyes boring into the side of his head, even if he didn’t let himself actually look. Even visualizing the look on Maverick’s face was enough to feel like someone had taken hold of his heart and was squeezing—he knew that if he saw it his resolve would crumple in an instant.

Maverick sat and watched as Iceman pulled his hands away, but his entire body locked up when Iceman shifted his weight to stand. “What’re you doing?” he said, his voice tight and urgent and raspy.

Tom sank back down and allowed himself to reach out and rest his hand on Maverick’s forearm. “You need to rest, Mav. The rest of the guys are in the waiting room. I’ll let them know you’re alright and they can come visit you later, okay?”

Maverick was shaking his head before Ice even finished speaking. When he tried half-heartedly to pull back again, to stand up to leave, Maverick reached out with both hands and clung on to Tom’s bare forearm. He froze and looked up and his heart squeezed when he noticed that Maverick’s eyes were again filled with tears. It hurt to hold that gaze, but Iceman made himself do it anyway.

“No,” Maverick was pleading, “no, no, stay, please.”

Tom swallowed. “Mav, you need to—”

“I’ll rest!” Maverick spoke over him, his voice high and urgent like if Tom walked away it would be the thing to kill him. “I’ll rest, I promise, just please stay, Ice, please, don’t go—”

“Maverick…” Tom felt tears sting at his own eyes as he watched Maverick cry, and he focused on the crushing grip on his arm so that he didn’t start crying, too.

Ice couldn’t quite bring himself to tell Maverick no, and he seemed to realize it. As Iceman was trying to muster up the will to walk away once and for all, Maverick yanked on his arm with all of his strength. Tom fell forward, directly into Maverick’s chest. It was, some distant part of his brain pointed out, a very nice chest.

He could tell from the hitch in his breath that the force of impact had aggravated Maverick’s sore ribs, but his grip didn’t falter even for a moment. As soon as Tom was laying against him, Maverick released his forearm only to wrap his arms around Tom’s shoulders. He buried his face into the crook of Tom’s neck and grabbed a handful of his uniform in each fist.

It was unexpected enough that Tom froze in place—no one had ever been so desperate to be comforted by him before—and he had to take a deep breath to calm the sudden racing of his heart. He regretted it as soon as he did so, though, because he and Maverick were close enough that he was able to smell Maverick’s scent, faint under the antiseptic smell of the hospital but still there, and it made his chest ache.

Iceman was practical enough to know that Maverick was just clinging to him because he was the person who happened to be there. But for a moment, it was easy enough to pretend otherwise. Cautiously, he reached up and returned the embrace and, miracle of all miracles, all the tension bled out of Maverick’s body until he was slumped limply against Tom, like he would fall to the bed without his arms there to hold him up.

“Pete…” he started, and then instantly cursed himself. They weren’t… that wasn’t…

He was prepared for Maverick to tense up again and pull away, for him to kick Ice out of the room with a harsh, cold look in his eyes, and he already had a hundred desperate apologies on the tip of his tongue. But that wasn’t what happened.

Instead, Maverick seemed to relax even further, if it was possible. He turned his face into Tom’s shoulder so that he could feel the words Maverick whispered against the skin of his neck. “Tom. Please, don’t leave me alone.”

Tom gave a mental wave to the last scrap of his resolve as it dissolved into dust.

Maverick only meant it in the way that he’d just gone through something no one should ever have to, he told himself. If Slider or Hollywood or Wolfman had been the one to come visit him, Ice was sure that he would have said the exact same thing to them. It was understandable, and Tom couldn’t blame him for it even if he’d wanted to. He kicked the hope back down as he pulled himself out of Maverick’s grip enough to settle more comfortably on the bed.

Maverick’s head shot up when Tom let go of him, his green eyes wide and fearful, but he seemed to relax again when he saw that he was just bending down to unlace his shoes. It was reassuring, somewhat, but Tom’s heart was beating in his throat as he slowly slipped his shoes off and put his feet up until he was leaning against the pillow beside Maverick. He felt like a coiled spring, ready to snap, and he still wasn’t sure what he was doing there. Everything since he’d walked through the door of the room felt distinctly like it was happening to someone else.

When Maverick cautiously shifted over until he was leaning heavily into Tom’s side, his head a comforting weight on Tom’s right shoulder, the feeling only intensified. A part of his brain was screaming at him that he needed to stop this before he made things even worse for himself than they already were, that he needed to pull away because he could feel himself slipping and Tom Kazansky was always, always in control. But it was drowned out by the warmth that was spreading through his body from every point where he and Maverick were pressed together. If he died right then and this moment was the very last one he ever got, Tom thought he could be happy with that.

He dared to lift an arm and slowly rest it over Maverick’s shoulders. Maverick only hummed faintly, his eyes closed, and pressed closer into Tom’s side. His heart was beating so quickly he was sure Maverick could feel it, and he hardly dared to breathe lest the entire illusion shatter.

Giving in like this was only going to make things worse later on, Tom knew. But Maverick was injured and grieving—he could allow him, allow himself, this. And it was the last chance he was ever going to get, so Iceman even let himself enjoy it. He relaxed into the pillows, angled his body towards Maverick so his head settled more comfortably against Tom’s shoulder. Maverick made a small, contented noise, turning his face further into Tom’s shoulder.

It hit him like a flat spin, how right it felt to have him there, for Tom to be the one to bring him comfort. It was a dangerous thing to get used to, Iceman told himself as he slid his arm from Maverick’s shoulders to his waist and rubbed circles into his hip with his thumb. He was able to imagine the look he’d get from Slider if he told his RIO about any of this, but even that wasn’t enough to convince him to pull away. Tom didn’t think anything short of a nuclear explosion could remove him from Pete Mitchell’s side right then.

“Go to sleep, Mav,” he whispered into the soft black hair tangled under his chin. “I’ll stay until you fall asleep.”

“M’kay,” Maverick whispered back, sounding half-asleep already. His warm breath puffed across Tom’s skin, raising goosebumps in its wake.

It was only a few minutes later that Maverick’s breathing evened out and he went slack against Tom’s side. Tom kept rubbing circles into the fabric over his hip because there was no one there to see, to force him to stop. It would be so easy to bend down and plant a kiss in the wild locks tickling against his nose, but he didn’t quite dare.

It took a long time for Ice to muster up the willpower to slip away. He hesitated in the doorway, drinking in Maverick’s sleeping form like it was the last chance he’d ever get to look, but his expression was carefully, purposely blank by the time he opened the door.

Chapter Text

“There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.”

- The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Just as Viper had predicted, Maverick was discharged from the hospital later that same afternoon. He was grounded for at least a few days and given orders to rest, Viper informed the rest of them the next morning when they returned to class. He’d said it with an ironic sort of smile and Ice thought that the doctors were about to be severely disappointed if they expected Maverick Mitchell to stay in bed without being forced.

A picture of Maverick asleep in his arms rose to his mind and Ice pushed it away with the same firm resolve as he had each of the countless times before. He’d told himself that he needed to forget everything about that day, but so far all his attempts had been woefully unsuccessful.

Even without his injuries, Viper continued, Maverick wouldn’t be allowed back into the air unless the board of inquiry cleared him of fault for Goose’s death. At that news, their entire class had gone deathly silent. Ice had pressed his lips together tightly to keep from screaming, because if the goddamned board of inquiry had seen the way Maverick had clung to Goose’s body in the ocean for hours, if they’d seen the way he broke into pieces when told that Goose was dead, they wouldn’t need a fucking tribunal to declare him innocent.

From the look on Viper’s face, Ice could tell that their instructor felt the same. It was the only thing that kept Ice from doing something potentially disastrous in the heat of the moment. He was taken aback by the magnitude of the rage that surged through him on Maverick’s behalf, though, so intense that it worried him a little. He’d go head-to-head with the entire tribunal if it would keep Maverick safe, Tom realized abruptly as he was on his way to preflight, and stopped in his tracks suddenly enough that Slider walked straight into his back.

“Woah, you okay, man?” his RIO asked as they pulled apart, the concern in his eyes obvious as he scanned Ice from top to bottom like he was checking for injuries. Ice nodded, his practice at keeping his emotions off of his face the only reason he wasn’t blushing.

Slider, though, didn’t seem convinced. He glanced up and down the hallway to confirm that they were alone, at least for the moment, before leaning in, the look on his face as serious as death. “Are you sure? What we saw up there… that was some serious shit, Ice. It’s okay to not be okay about it.”

And just like that, Tom was back in the cockpit of his plane, the stick held in a death grip in his hands, and the sound of Maverick’s screams in his ears. He knew that no matter how long he lived, he would never be able to forget the helplessness he’d felt sitting there, never be able to unsee the way Goose had gone limp as he smashed into the canopy. He’d watched, and he’d been unable to do anything else, which… sucked, a little. But that was it—he wasn’t Maverick, he hadn’t been in the spin himself. He’d lost a friend, but it’d been years since they’d been at the Academy together. Ice liked Goose, but they weren’t like Goose and Maverick, attached at the hip, close as anything.

Most pilots weren’t half as close with their RIOs as Maverick and Goose had been, Ice thought bitterly. So why did it have to be them?

“I’m fine,” was all he told Slider, already starting to turn away. “Let’s go, we have a hop to take.”

Slider clearly didn’t believe him, but he didn’t say anything when Iceman continued back down the hallway. That was fine, he thought, squaring his shoulders. He was fine, everything was fine, he’d fly this hop, ice-cold, no mistakes, just as perfect as always, and then maybe they could start to put this entire disaster behind them.

When he’d arrived at TOPGUN a month ago, Ice had hoped to win the trophy. Maybe, if he was really lucky, he’d thought, it wouldn’t be as effortless as it always was and he’d find someone worthy of competing against for the first time in far too long. He hadn’t really expected it, but he’d hoped for it nonetheless. He’d been surprised by Maverick Mitchell—both pleasantly and unpleasantly. Just a few days ago, his biggest wish had been to take the trophy as a means of showing Maverick that he wasn’t God, that he couldn’t just fly however he wanted and damn the consequences.

He hadn’t wanted this.

Well, Iceman thought firmly, like if he repeated enough, he’d start to believe it, it didn’t matter now.

Iceman had watched the crash, but he hadn’t been in it. If he wanted to keep his wings, he didn’t have the luxury of being fucked up about it. He repeated this to himself all the way through preflight, up until the moment he was strapped into the cockpit and the entire world was plunged into an awful, muffled silence.

Taking off was muscle memory by that point: he launched into the air perfectly even if he wasn’t able to remember any of it a second after. The next thing Tom knew, he was alongside Chipper and Sundown, the RIOs scanning the radar for Jester, ready to dive like in like this was a normal fucking hop, like the last few days hadn’t happened at all. Like Tom didn’t see the image of Maverick shaking and crying in his arms every time he closed his eyes.

“Hey, Ice,” he heard Chipper’s voice over the radio, as concerned as Slider had been, but far less patient about it. “You okay over there?”

Slider—his RIO, his best friend—asking was one thing. Chipper—someone he hadn’t spoken to more than a handful of times—was something else entirely. Something that Iceman couldn’t afford. He took a deep breath and purposely relaxed. Tried to let go of the death grip he had on the stick and push the sickening sound of Maverick and Goose screaming out of his mind.

“I’m fine.”

“You sure ‘bout that? Because—"

“I said I’m fine!”

He caught sight of Jester flying low out of the corner of his eye and pushed down hard on the stick. Chipper swore and rushed to keep up, but Ice could hardly hear it over the ringing in his ears. The gray blur of Jester’s plane slipped into and out of focus ahead of him, and it took him a moment to realize that it was because his eyes were filled with tears. His chest was tight, his hands were trembling, and he was deafened by the sound of his own ragged breaths. He was strapped tight into the cockpit, Slider behind him and Chipper on his wing, but no, he was alone, alone in the air, drowning in his own panic, cursing himself for not taking the goddamned shot, because not even a pilot as good as Maverick could recover from a spin like that, he knew, and what kind of cruel irony of the universe was it to take away the man Tom loved the moment he’d thought to love him—

“Tom! TOM! Can you hear me?! Shit, man—"

A cacophony of overlapping voices. A high-pitched ringing reverberating through the cockpit. A sea of brown desert scrub ahead, approaching fast. Adrenaline swept in a cold wave through his body and Tom yanked the stick back as far as it could go until he couldn’t see anything out the canopy but the wide open blue sky. Carefully, he leveled out, his whole body cold and shaking as the adrenaline left his system. They hadn’t been that close to the ground, really—certainly not as close as Maverick liked to get on purpose sometimes—and Jester had gotten them in radar lock to snap him out of it. But it was still closer than Iceman had come to crashing since his early days in flight school. A week ago, it would have been unthinkable.

“Ice, Slider.” Jester’s voice. It was tightly controlled, but Ice thought he sounded a little strained. “Return to base immediately.”

“Copy,” he radioed back. Even he was able to hear the way his voice shook.

The five of them landed in tense silence and Ice and Slider were directed up to Viper’s office before they could even change out of their flight suits. The whole way up, Ice could feel Slider directing looks at the side of his head that he probably thought were subtle, but he was too lost in his thoughts to call him out on it. Maverick was the only other person who’d ever been called to Viper’s office so quickly after a hop, he thought somewhat ironically. He’d probably laugh if he could see them now.

Except, no, he wouldn’t. Ice imagined that he wouldn’t be able to laugh at anything for a long time.

Viper was sitting behind his desk when he called the two of them in, and Jester was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, beside it. Ice and Slider filed in and stood at attention, Ice with the distinct feeling that his life was happening to someone else. The past few days had felt like one sucker punch after another, and approximately none of it would have been recognizable to the Tom Kazansky of a month ago.

“Gentlemen,” Viper drawled, not looking up from his paperwork. They weren’t in trouble, he didn’t think, because no one had gotten hurt, no one had really been in immediate danger of getting hurt, and Maverick did dumber shit than that every other minute and Viper still let him get away with it. “Want to fill me in on what happened up there today?”

“It was nothing, sir,” Ice said, face sealed like a tomb. “I… got distracted. For a moment. A temporary lapse in judgment. It won’t happen again, sir!”

Viper looked up at that, and as loath as he was to do so, Iceman was too well-trained to not meet his eyes. The piercing gaze he found there was familiar from that day in the hospital and Tom tried very desperately not to let it show how much it unnerved him.

“Lieutenant Kazansky,” he said. “You’ve never lost a wingman, have you?”

The air in the room had gone tense. Tom’s throat was dry. He swallowed, but it didn’t do anything to help. “Never, sir.”

Viper was searching him and Ice forced himself to keep looking in the hope that maybe it would stop him from seeing Maverick’s plane as it spun out to sea. “That first death is something you never come back from. I’m not gonna lie and say it gets easier, because it doesn’t. But it’s something you’ll have to deal with for the rest of your career.”

Maverick, shaking and sobbing in Tom’s arms like the world was crashing down around him. He swallowed again.

Viper glanced quickly at Jester and sighed. “Today’s Thursday. You’re grounded until Monday, Kazansky. Take the weekend, do whatever you need to do, but have your head on straight when you come back. Don’t let it affect your flying again.”

It was the logical choice, Iceman knew, but it hit him like a punch to the gut. He wanted to scream, to promise that he could fly just as well as always, because he was the Iceman and things like this didn’t cripple him. But he couldn’t. He’d seen that he couldn’t.

“He won’t distract me,” Ice had promised Slider what felt like years ago. His heart in his throat, Ice kept his gaze unwaveringly forward.

“Yes, sir!”

And with a nod, Viper returned to his paperwork. “Dismissed.”

Ice fled the office as quickly as he could without running, but it wasn’t until he was in his room in that little off-base house that he let himself break down.

Iceman and Maverick returned to TOPGUN on the same day.

Not flying for the weekend was just as bad as flying, really, and Iceman came out of the weekend just as far away from normal as he’d gone into it. In the meantime, though, Maverick had spent several days recovering from his injuries and being cared for by Goose’s widow and son, and then facing the tribunal. He’d been cleared of any wrongdoing—the first thing that had gone right in the past few days—and was allowed back up in the air bright and early on Monday morning.

The thought of getting behind the controls of a plane still had Ice swallowing down on his panic, but there was a small part of him that was looking forward to it. Viper and Jester would surely send the two of them up together to try and undo the disaster that had happened last time. Maybe flying a successful hop with Maverick on his wing would be enough to finally put a stop to the nightmares. It had been almost a week since… since Goose’s death, and Tom hadn’t slept through the night once since then. It was getting more and more difficult to hide the dark circles under his eyes or to dodge Slider’s worried looks.

It was another reason why he was glad to be returning to work at the same time as Maverick was, because it meant that Maverick was the one getting all the condolences, the slaps and handshakes, the worried looks across the room when they thought he couldn’t see. Iceman had never been so glad to fade into the background and be overlooked, to have the chance to observe without being observed. Because Maverick? Looked like shit.

It was, of course, to be expected. Tom tried to imagine what he would be like if he’d lost Slider or Maverick, and quickly put a stop to that train of thought before it started to spiral. Of course, Maverick didn’t have such a luxury, and really, Ice was surprised to see him in the classroom at all, even if he looked like a stiff breeze could knock him over.

Hop 31 was the elephant in the room as Jester led preflight for their first hop of the day, somehow worse than it had been the previous week when both Maverick and Goose were gone. Then, it had been almost possible to pretend that they were both merely recovering from injuries. Now, the Goose-shaped hole was impossible to ignore, and everyone else in the room alternated between staring at Maverick—who was sitting in the very back with his head down, like he wanted to disappear into his chair—stealing glances at Iceman, and trying to pretend like nothing was wrong. His heart rate ticked up each time it happened, and by the time Jester dismissed them, Ice was so relieved to be out of that room that he almost forgot to be nervous.

Almost, at least. Once he’d changed into his flight suit, once he’d made it out to the runway, once Slider was standing by his side as they went through their exterior preflight checks, it slammed into him like a brick wall while going sixty. He had to take slow, deep breaths to banish the blackness creeping across his vision.

Sundown had volunteered to fly as Maverick’s temporary RIO, and Iceman wasn’t surprised that Viper and Jester decided to send them up first. Viper had even deigned to grace them with his presence on the tarmac, leaning against his F-5 and staring up into the sky like it would give him insight into Maverick’s thoughts. It wasn’t like they could see what was happening up in the air, and outside they weren’t able to hear it either. But Viper still stared off into the distance until Maverick, Sundown, and Jester returned to base. Partially out of curiosity at what Viper was going to do and partially to distract himself from his own thoughts, Tom stayed the entire time, watching from under the wing of his F-14.

It meant he was privy to the aftermath of Maverick landing. His touchdown was rocky in a way it never was, because takeoff and landing was something Maverick Mitchell did just as technically-perfectly as Iceman. It put him on edge, and he wasn't surprised to see the rigid, uncomfortable way Maverick held himself as he climbed down from the cockpit. It was more surprising to see the way Sundown stomped after him across the tarmac. Ice’s hand tightened against the hot metal of his plane and he was glad that he hadn't been able to listen over the radio. Slider glanced over at him, but he looked away before Ice was able to make out his expression.

They were too far away for Ice to catch everything, but he heard the way Sundown yelled after Maverick, and he definitely saw the way Maverick spun around and clenched his fists in the fabric of Sundown’s flight suit. The whole line of his body was tense as he got up in Sundown’s face and yelled through gritted teeth. Ice felt Slider’s eyes on him and purposely didn’t look over, straining his ears to try and see if he could get an indication of what had gone wrong.

“I will fire when I am goddamned good and ready! You got that?!” Ice was able to make out. He stared after Maverick as he stalked away to the locker room, shoulders tense, and he was sure everyone else on the tarmac was doing the same. Iceman was sure that everyone who had been able to see or hear that hop—who knew the way Maverick had evidently hesitated in a way Maverick Mitchell never did—was all thinking the same thing.

Iceman and Slider had their own hop to take. As was becoming a pattern, Ice wasn’t able to think about anything up in the air except for Maverick. He was on the ground, probably showering and changing after their hop. Ice would see him, probably, as soon as he finished his own hop, but up there, it all felt impossibly far away. His hands itched with the desire to return to base, but at least it wasn’t the same brand of disaster that last week’s hop had been.

Luckily, as the current leading contender for the Top Gun trophy—and Tom tried not to think about how it seemed like it would stay that way for the foreseeable future—they went next and Ice was able to make it back to the locker room, freshly showered and in his khakis, before Maverick left. He was dressed in civvies, his duffel was open on the bench behind him, and he was pulling things out of his locker.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what he was planning to do. Robotically, Tom returned his hairspray and brush to his locker and shut it. He stared at the door and its “ICEMAN” sign, thinking back to holding Maverick as he broke down in the hospital. It was all he’d been able to think about lately.

Maverick Mitchell was an open book, and Ice was able to read him to the letter. But he was also an enigma. Sometimes, Ice would stare at the fiery glint in his green eyes and have no idea what he was thinking. Right now, as they stood back-to-back, separated by only a few feet of space, he felt impossible to reach. He was slipping away, had been slipping away since Ice told him of Goose’s death and held him in the hospital. All of them could see it, he knew—he’d seen Viper and Jester staring after Maverick as he’d stalked away at the end of his hop. They were on the brink of losing him, if it wasn’t too late already.

Tom wished he could say something to help. His visit to Maverick in the hospital hadn’t exactly gone the way he’d expected, but he thought he’d still been able to offer Maverick some comfort anyway. A not-insignificant part of Tom wanted to cross that distance between them and gather Maverick in his arms again until he stopped being so goddamned quiet and let him in. His hands twitched with how much he wanted to reach out.

But, just as quickly as he’d thought it, his mind reminded him why it was off-limits. Maverick didn’t love him, not the way Tom did. He didn’t even like him all that much, probably. He’d never given any indication of it, at least, and Tom was good at noticing things like that. The only reason he’d clung to him that day in the hospital—the only reason he’d cried and called him Tom and said please don’t go was because he was hurting, adrift in the storm of his own emotions and reaching out for any scrap of comfort. That was it. Tom couldn’t let himself think otherwise, couldn’t let himself get his hopes up any more than they already were, but they were alone right now and he had to say something, because this might very well be the last time he ever saw Pete Mitchell.

That thought was like a bucket of ice water to the face, like a flat spin out to sea. Shakily, he turned so that he was facing Maverick’s back and suddenly noticed the way the other man had gone completely still, his body tense like he was waiting for something.

“Maverick,” he whispered, and had to clear his throat to repeat it louder.

Maverick didn’t respond, but Tom saw his head tilt like he was listening.

“I’m sorry about Goose,” he said, because the words weren’t coming to him any easier than they had nearly a week ago in the hospital. He wanted to kick himself for it, because this was important. One wrong move and Pete Mitchell would slip through his fingers forever. Tom couldn’t even let himself think about that, because meeting Maverick had been a breath of fresh air, different after years and years of the same, and Tom didn’t know what he’d do if he had to return to the ground after tasting the sky.

Maverick still didn't respond. Tom supposed he didn't blame him—he didn't know what he’d say to that, either. Thanks? So he opened his mouth to continue talking—probably to say something equally stupid, like I’m sorry again—but then he noticed, and he closed his mouth before he could get the words out.

Maverick’s hands were shaking. He could only see one of them, curled into a fist against the door of his locker, but his back was to Tom, his shoulders were drawn, and his hands were shaking. They hadn’t been a moment ago, he thought. Not until he’d brought up Goose.

Every time Tom thought back to watching Maverick and Goose crash, it sent him into a spiraling, trembling mess. The only reason he’d made it through this hop was because it was the first time he’d been more focused on the Maverick of the moment than on sitting beside him in the hospital. But keeping everything at bay by telling himself that Maverick was fine might not work for much longer.

It was like watching water slip through his fingers, Tom thought as he clocked the calm, controlled way Maverick was breathing. Even with his back still turned, it was clear how much he was hurting, and a void opened up in Tom’s chest cavity. Something, something, he had to do something. Last time, he’d gotten pretty far on instinct, but this was a time where his words mattered. Crossing the distance between them and pulling Maverick back into his arms wouldn’t help anything, no matter how much he wished he could do it.

Tom took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. He stared at the hard line of Maverick’s shoulders—they seemed infinitesimally more relaxed than they had a moment ago. And maybe he was imagining it, but Ice thought he was turned a little closer than he had been. Like he was waiting to see if Tom would say anything else. And with that, he blurted out the first thought that crossed his mind.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

That, finally, got a reaction. Instantly, Maverick’s whole body locked back up. He half-turned his head, so Tom was staring at the side of his face and the edge of one green eye. “What?”

“Goose. He… it wasn’t your fault. You had a better angle on the shot. You kept telling me to move. I… should have expected what you were going to do.”

Maverick’s hand was no longer trembling, but it was because he’d gone to gripping his locker door so tightly Tom could see his knuckles turning white. He turned his body back a little more and made eye contact with Tom for a split second. His eyes were red and shiny and Tom had to dig his nails into his palms to keep from reaching out.

“I was too close.” Maverick’s voice sounded seconds away from shattering. “I flew through your jetwash.”

“You couldn’t have known—”

“He was my RIO!” The words exploded into the space between them as Maverick slammed his locker door and spun around in one fluid movement. Tom could see all of his face now, see the way his chest heaved and his eyes darted back and forth between Tom’s like he was searching for something. Tom kept his face purposely calm despite the way his heart was breaking for the man in front of him. “My responsibility.”

“Mav, it was an accident. There was nothing you could have done.”

Maverick was shaking his head before Tom even finished his sentence. His eyes were welling up with fresh tears. “I promised I’d keep him safe. I promised.”

The pain in Maverick’s voice had Tom stepping forward before he was aware of doing so. He crossed the space between them and was about to reach out and wrap his arms around Maverick, but caught himself at the very last second. Instead, Tom settled for resting a hand high up on Maverick’s shoulder. He startled at the touch but quickly relaxed and looked up to meet Tom’s gaze. The tears in his green eyes made them shimmer, like light reflecting off the water.

“I’m sorry,” Tom said, allowing himself to squeeze Maverick’s shoulder comfortingly. “It wasn’t your fault. I’m sorry.”

Maverick broke eye contact at the words, hanging his head. “I promised, Tom,” he whispered.

It was so quiet that Tom was barely able to hear it. He wasn’t sure he was meant to, wasn’t sure Maverick even meant to say it. But his heart still flipped over at hearing that Tom from Maverick’s lips, out in the light of day and away from the strange other world that hospitals always seemed to exist in.

It didn’t mean anything, he told his heart sternly. He’d just about managed to beat the hope back down when he suddenly felt something against his shoulder and nearly jumped out of his fucking skin.

It was Maverick’s head, he realized once his heart rate had begun to tick back down, which of course sent it careening back up into the stratosphere. Maverick’s head against his shoulder, his forehead pressed into the side of Tom’s neck. The same thing he’d done that day in the hospital, a small part of Tom that was not panicking reminded him.

Tom could feel Maverick’s tears wetting the collar of his khakis and his hands curled into loose fists in the fabric of the shirt at his waist. He was pressing into Tom like he was trying to stop himself from falling apart and, as was quickly becoming a pattern with Maverick, Tom didn’t have the heart to stop him.

Instead, he stood as still as he could manage and let Maverick cling to him as he cried. Slowly, he slid the hand that had been on Maverick’s shoulder up until he could tangle his fingers in the hair at his nape. It was even softer than he’d remembered, now that Maverick had washed it. It was all he allowed himself—the last allowance he was ever going to get.

Tom pretended that his touch grounded Maverick, but either way, he eventually stopped crying. They stayed like that for a moment longer—a single instant frozen in time that Tom knew he would revisit again and again when it was all he had left of Pete Mitchell.

Eventually, though, Maverick pulled away. He lifted his head and Tom let go all at once, taking a step back. Something indecipherable flashed over Maverick’s face, but it was gone in an instant. And so, Tom watched from a step and an ocean away as Maverick grabbed his duffel and his jacket and turned towards the door of the locker room. Halfway there, he paused for a moment, looked over his shoulder, and made eye contact with Tom. He opened his mouth like he wanted to speak. Despite the way Tom was silently screaming at him to say something, anything, he closed it again, shook his head, and disappeared out of sight.

The locker room door fell shut, echoing across the empty space. Tom wasn’t sure how long he stared at nothing before he was able to make himself move.

“Yo, Kazansky!”

At the sound of his name, Ice looked up from his vodka soda to scan the packed floor of the O Club. A waving hand caught his eye and he followed it to see Hollywood, Wolfman, Chipper, and Sundown all standing in a bunch on the other side of the room. In their dress whites, they stood out in the way TOPGUN students always did, but perhaps not as much as Ice himself, also in his dress whites and sitting alone in a booth in the corner.

A few women had already tried to approach him, but he’d sent them all on their way with a few words and a polite smile. It had been awhile since he’d gone to the O Club, but he wasn’t there for any reason other than to drink. Slider had offered to accompany him, but Ice had turned him down. The past few weeks had been one sucker punch after another, and hopefully some time with his thoughts would help him get his head back on straight.

Ice didn’t want to be around Slider, and he certainly didn’t want to be around the rest of his classmates, either. He nodded at them from across the bar, hoping that they were there to socialize and try to pick up girls—things that normal fucking people did on a Friday night—but quickly abandoned that hope when he saw Wolfman and Sundown exchange looks before pushing their way through the crowd towards him. Hollywood and Chipper peeled off to the bar, but their RIOs ignored the obvious implications of him sitting in the corner with his sunglasses on to slide into the booth, Sundown beside him and Wolfman opposite. Ice looked back and forth between the two of them, contemplating taking off his sunglasses to make his glare more effective, but gave up all hope of convincing them to leave when Hollywood and Chipper approached with four beers between them. Hollywood sat beside Wolfman and Chipper beside Sundown, and all four of them immediately rounded on Ice. He took another sip of his vodka soda and prayed for strength.

“Ice,” Wolfman began, his voice gentler than Ice had been expecting. “We wanted to ask you about Maverick.”

Whatever Ice had thought they’d wanted with him, it certainly hadn’t been that. He bought some time to gather his thoughts by taking another sip of his drink and desperately hoped that his voice came out unaffected. “Why me?”

“You know him best, don’t you?” Hollywood chimed in, relaxing back in his seat and taking a pull from his beer, like he was saying something obvious, something that all of them knew to be true.

Iceman was too shocked to be embarrassed at the way he choked on his next sip of vodka soda. All four of the others perked up in concern. Sundown reached out and patted him on the back and Chipper reached over his RIO to hand Ice a wad of napkins. He accepted them, mopping at the table and then his uniform shirt. His cheeks were burning, and Tom focused as hard as he could on his task in an attempt to ignore everything happening around him. The world felt like it had been ripped out from under his feet and he had no idea what to do, because what the hell?

“I do not,” Ice said, as matter-of-factly as he could manage with vodka stains on his dress whites, once he’d gathered the composure to speak.

Wolfman and Sundown shared another look. Iceman squinted between the two of them, but whatever they were saying was over too quickly for him to decipher. “Yes, you do, man,” Sundown said when they turned back.

Something hot and uncomfortable twisted in Ice’s stomach. He thought about how right it always felt to be close to Maverick, but also how he could be standing right next to him and still have no idea what he was thinking. He opened his mouth to protest, but the others seemed to anticipate this and cut him off before he could begin.

“You and Maverick were always neck-and-neck in the sky,” Hollywood added. “It felt like you were the only one who could keep up with all his crazy shit. He respected you.”

Tom’s throat was dry. He swallowed, but it didn’t do anything to help.

“He liked you,” Chipper corrected, glancing between the two of them. “Never shut the fuck up about you, even if most of it was complaints.”

“You were the only one allowed to visit him in the hospital,” Wolfman pointed out with a look that was far more knowing than Iceman was comfortable with. “And I heard a bit of your conversation in the locker room on the day he quit.”

Iceman forced himself through the cold dread that flooded through him at those words—forced himself to take a step back and think about it rationally. No one could know about how Tom felt for Pete Mitchell, not if he wanted to keep his career. But that wasn’t what this was—wasn’t what Wolfman was implying. And even if it was, Ice sensed a sort of kindred spirit in him. He heard the “joking” comments Wolf and Hollywood exchanged.

Even still, it wouldn’t do any good to dredge such things up, especially right now, when it had been over a week since Maverick had last shown up to class. Carefully, Ice took a sip of what little of his drink he still had left, grateful for his sunglasses to hide his eyes. “It’s because we were there. Me and Slider. It was… it was my jetwash, and we were the only ones who saw Goose…”

The mention of Goose drew uneasy glances, as he had thought it might, but there was something about the way the other four looked at each other—Sundown and Wolfman especially—like they thought he was missing something.

Ice pressed his lips into a firm line. From the outside, sure, he could understand why it might seem like he and Maverick were closer than they were. Even he didn’t fully understand everything that had happened that day in the locker room, after all. But that was just it: from the outside. None of the rest of them had seen the way Maverick broke down over Goose, none of them had seen the way he panicked when he thought Ice was going to leave the room. Viper had only let him into that hospital room because he was decent enough to not leave his wingman, and everything that happened since was because of that, because Maverick had seemingly imprinted on him like a lost duckling.

There was a part of him that wanted to lay this out for them, explain the logic and the step-by-step process so that they could see the full picture. Iceman had put tremendous efforts into moving past Maverick Mitchell in the past few days, and all of it would be for naught if they kept up like this. But the bigger part of Ice—the part of him that had come to drink alone and escape the indecipherable looks from his RIO—knew that it wouldn’t make any difference.

And so, he changed the subject with all the grace he could manage. Which, admittedly, wasn’t much. “Even if I did know him better,” he said, “I still haven’t seen him in a week. Since his first day back, just the same as you. I don’t have anything to tell you.”

He was gratified, slightly, to see the others all look varying degrees of surprised by this. After that, though, was the disappointment, like Ice had been their last hope of possibly getting through to Maverick. His gut twisted to see it, because if there was something he could’ve said to make Maverick stay, he sure as fuck would have said it. He’d even had the chance, unlike the rest of them, and had handled it as carefully as he could manage, but had still fucking blown it anyway.

Ice reached out for his drink once again, only to find it empty. He contemplated ordering another one because he wasn’t sure he could make it through this conversation without something to do with his hands, but decided that he needed to be as clear-headed as possible as he was behind enemy lines, so to speak. As a compromise, he pulled his hands into his lap and curled his fingers into his palms until he could feel the bite of nails against his skin.

“I thought you’d gotten through to him,” Wolfman lamented into his beer bottle, “that day in the locker room. I… couldn’t hear all of it, but I heard you tell him it wasn’t his fault, and I thought that maybe if he wouldn’t believe the rest of us, he’d believe you.”

Iceman firmly pushed aside everything that this statement made him feel. His box of compartmentalized emotions was going to be overflowing by their graduation day, a distant part of him mused. Unable to stop himself, he said, “I… tried. I was too late. He made up his mind in the hospital after Goose’s death.”

“Think there’s any chance of him showing up at graduation?” Chipper asked, slumping back into the booth and the arm Sundown had stretched out across the top of it.

“Not if both Ice and Charlie couldn’t get through to him,” said Wolfman.

“Charlie?” Ice said, trying not to sound too eager, trying not to lean across the booth and get in Wolfman’s face. He dug his fingernails deeper into his hands.

“Yeah,” Wolfman shrugged like Ice’s entire world hadn’t narrowed to a razor-sharp point. “I called her after Maverick stormed out of the locker room. Told her about everything that had happened. It didn’t seem like she was able to change his mind, either. I asked her how it went and she just said that they broke up. I think they got into a pretty big fight or something.”

“Oh,” Ice said, because that was all that he could say without letting slip what he was feeling. A part of him was disappointed that Charlie was unable to stop Maverick from leaving, because walking away from fucking TOPGUN was career suicide, sooner or later. A not-insignificant part of him, though, was happy to hear that they’d decided to part ways. Even though it didn’t mean that he had a snowball’s chance in hell of being with Maverick, and even though it had been weeks since he’d last had to put up with the two of them making eyes at each other during lectures. Ice inhaled through his nose as slowly and subtly as he could and attempted to let all of it go.

“I think he’s done,” Sundown was saying when Ice tuned back into the conversation. “I can’t blame him, it’s gotta be hard going through something like that. It’s a shame, though. I don’t think anyone was more excited to be here.”

Tom thought back to the way Maverick and Goose used to sit up front in lectures and crack jokes to each other, to the way they would high five after coming back from a particularly successful hop. Maverick’s flying was technically-imperfect, and it may have driven Iceman crazy to see him doing whatever the fuck he wanted all the goddamned time, but he couldn’t deny the life it held. Maverick’s first and only hop after Goose’s death had been brief, and Ice hadn’t even been able to see it, but it still couldn’t have been further away from everything that made Maverick Mitchell who he was.

He was still Maverick, still Pete Mitchell. Still the man Tom Kazansky had fallen in love with. But he was in pain, he had pulled away from everything he loved because he was hurting, and there wasn’t a goddamned thing any of them could do. Tom had realized the truth too late. He’d been too late to save Goose, too late to keep Maverick from leaving, too fucking late, and now they’d lost him forever.

Hot tears stung at the back of his eyes, and Tom clenched his jaw tightly to keep from crying in the middle of the goddamned O Club in front of his fucking classmates.

“There has to be something we can do,” Hollywood insisted, leaning forward and drawing Ice’s gaze.

“He blames himself,” Ice said, not even aware he was going to say it until the words were out of his mouth. “For Goose’s death. He blames himself.”

He caught Sundown and Wolfman exchanging another look and squinted between them. It was getting suspicious by now—he didn’t think of the two of them as being particularly close. Sundown looked away first, turning to the side until he was able to make eye contact with Ice. He said, “It was an accident. No one else blames him.”

Ice scratched along the side of his thumb with his pointer finger, a tiny motion that allowed him to hold the rest of himself still. “I know. But he said… he thinks he killed Goose because he was flying too recklessly. Even… even if we all told him we don’t blame him or whatever, I don’t think it’d be enough. I don’t think we should try to change his mind. It’s… it’s up to him if he wants to come back.”

No one said anything to that for a long time, their booth quiet except for the background hum of conversation and music. Ice thought about the conversations he’d had with Maverick since the accident, and he was sure the others were too. He worried his Academy ring between his fingers, thinking of the first day at TOPGUN, when he’d shown it off to try and get a read on Maverick. It was funny, almost, how much things had changed in only a month since then.

Eventually, Hollywood blew out a long breath and slumped further back against the cracked leather of the booth. When they all turned to look at him, he said, “Shit.”

Wolfman snorted and shook his head fondly, but there was very little humor in his smile. Ice pursed his lips, wishing distantly for another drink. That, he supposed, wasn’t a bad way to put it.

Tom Kazansky desperately hoped that that day in the locker room wasn’t the last time he would ever see Pete Mitchell. There was so much he wished to say, even if their careers would make the risk of pursuing something impossible to justify. Selfishly, he hoped Maverick would show up at graduation, wouldn’t turn in his wings like Cougar had, because it had been far too long since someone made him feel the way Maverick did. He was a flame, burning brightly, that Ice never wanted to see extinguished.

But at the same time, he knew that being told it happens and keep your head up weren’t the things that Maverick needed to hear right now. What the hell kind of person would he be if he tried to hold onto him despite knowing the toll the past week had taken on him? Even if he didn’t understand why, Maverick had trusted Tom with that part of himself. He hadn’t asked him to stay the last time they’d spoken, even though it was all he wanted to say, and he wasn’t going to.

There has to be something we can do, said Hollywood, but no. No, Tom thought, not if they cared about Maverick’s wellbeing as much as they cared about his ability to fly planes.

If Maverick turned up to graduation, if he even stayed in the fucking Navy—whatever happened next wouldn’t be because of what Wolfman heard or what Sundown or Ice himself saw. It was up to Maverick, and only Maverick, and the only thing the rest of them could do was wait.

There was only a week left until graduation, but Iceman had a feeling it was going to be a very long week.

The cool breeze coming off of the ocean gently ruffled Ice’s hair as he sat with his legs dangling over the side of one of the railings. Ahead of him, the sun was setting, and the clouds were lit up in pink and orange. He could hear the cry of seabirds as they navigated across the sky, and, if he listened close enough, the crash of waves against the hull of the ship far below.

It had only been five weeks since Ice had last been on an aircraft carrier, but felt like a lifetime. He’d had a routine, practiced down to perfection, for when he was on deployment. It was mind-numbingly boring sometimes, sure—or, well, all the time—but rarely unexpected. The military was good at things like that, he thought with an ironic half-smile, leaning his chin on the railing and staring off into the distance. Which, of course, was what made everything that had happened at TOPGUN even more absurd to think about in retrospect. One Tom Kazansky had left a month ago to attend TOPGUN, but it felt like a completely different Tom Kazansky had returned.

Not least of which because in less than twelve hours he and Slider—and, potentially, Hollywood, Wolfman, Maverick, and Merlin—could be launching into a dogfight on a scale no one had seen in over a decade. Their TOPGUN graduation hadn’t even been a full day ago. Tom remembered the electricity that had shot through him the moment he’d made eye contact with Maverick from across the crowd, but they barely had the chance to say more than a few words to each other before Viper handed out the invitations to what could very well be their deaths.

Being back on a carrier felt strange, even though Ice had lived on them more in the past few years than he had on dry land. This was the Enterprise, Maverick’s ship, but they were all similar enough that it shouldn’t matter. Slipping back into routine should be just as easy for this—arguably the most important moment of his career to date—as it was coming back from shore leave. Slider at his back, his wingman at his six, and the sky spread below him was where he belonged. And Maverick had actually shown up for graduation that morning, meaning he was still in the Navy and not across the border in Mexico or any of the countless other things Tom had worried about in the late hours of the night. By any account, things were looking up more than they had been in the two weeks since Nick Bradshaw’s death.

And yet.

Today had been an unexpected ending to an unexpected month, and no matter what happened tomorrow, the words crisis situation assured him that things were about to irrevocably change once again. Iceman couldn’t even begin to imagine what would happen to him, Maverick, all of them on the other side of it all, but he knew that he needed to get away for at least a little bit if he wanted even a chance of making it through intact. Or, as intact as possible.

Watching the ocean move below him, unchanging and completely independent of anything that was happening in Tom’s life, had always been one of his favorite ways to forget the world for a little while. It was nice to know that at least some things never changed. He sat up straight, crossed his arms over the railing, and rested his chin on top of them as he stared out across the falling night. He would need to return soon—the others would start looking for him eventually—but allowed himself a break to let his thoughts wander. It was not a surprise when they wandered back to Maverick, because Tom hadn’t been able to think about anything else all day.

After his unintentional rendezvous with Hollywood, Wolfman, Chipper, and Sundown at the O Club, it took another week before Tom saw Maverick. He hadn’t come back to class at all in the next week, but Tom had expected that much. He’d held onto a reluctant hope that he would show up to graduation, just because of what it would mean for his career if he didn’t, but even in his own head Ice could admit that it wasn’t very likely.

When Maverick joined the crowd of celebrating students, he had looked like shit. His dress whites were perfectly pressed, but that was something the Navy had drilled into all of them for years. If he’d shown up with a wrinkled uniform, it might have been a sign that the world was actually ending. It was, however, just about the only positive thing Ice could comment on. Maverick’s eyes were pinched and stressed, like the last time he’d slept was on Ice’s shoulder in the hospital the day after Goose’s death. It was also impossible to miss the tension in his shoulders or the way he carried himself very precisely and deliberately, like he would break to pieces if he let his composure slip for even a second.

Seeing him made Tom’s heart ache, but he was there. Ice was in the middle of the crowd when he spotted Maverick on the edges. The Top Gun trophy was in his hands and Slider’s arms were around his neck in a hug and he knew he was supposed to be smiling for the cameras, but he couldn’t take his eyes off of Maverick. He looked like he’d gone through hell, but he was still kicking, so maybe things weren’t as hopeless as all of them had feared. The crowd of their classmates wordlessly parted for him as he made his way right down the center. To Ice.

Around him, the air was loud with the sounds of their classmates talking and celebrating. Everyone in Maverick’s path, though, had fallen silent, and Ice was vaguely aware of the way they turned to follow his approach. Everyone outside of himself and Maverick felt about a mile away, though, their voices and the music garbled and distorted by the time they made it to him. Tom didn’t know what his face was doing, surely he was smiling at Maverick like an idiot, but none of it mattered, and he didn’t think he’d have been able to look away even if he’d wanted to.

Some of their classmates slapped Maverick on the back or the arm as he passed them, muttering words of encouragement that Tom couldn’t make out. He turned to them as they did so, nodding or smiling, but didn’t slow down as he made his way to Tom. Even still—even when Maverick’s bright green eyes weren’t focused on him—Tom found himself powerless to look away. Maverick was a sun, and Tom was caught in his orbit.

At that moment, with the object of his constant thoughts standing before him for the first time in weeks, there was no place Tom would rather have been. He’d have given up the Top Gun trophy a hundred times over for Maverick to continue looking at him like that.

Finally, Maverick came to a stop before him, a hand extended for Tom to shake. He took it automatically, not looking away from Maverick’s gaze. Their classmates formed a circle around them, Slider by Ice’s side like he always was, but now Maverick was no longer looking around. He squinted against the sun as he stared up at Tom, but even still his green eyes were bright. Tom hadn’t seen them like that since before Goose’s death. It fed the small flame in his chest that, despite everything that had happened in the past two weeks, Tom had never quite managed to extinguish.

He’d been kicking himself for it every day before then, because he remembered Slider’s words from the start of their time at TOPGUN, knew the truth to them even if his RIO didn’t. Tom Kazansky knew what happened to hope. But with Maverick’s eyes on him, he couldn’t find himself to regret any of it. Maybe things would have turned out the same even if he’d never spoken with Maverick in the hospital or the locker room, but he liked to think that he’d helped at least a little.

Either way, Maverick was there, in front of him, then. He was standing tall, his eyes had that same determination they’d had before, his gaze was steadfast on Tom, and Maverick’s hand was soft in his. They still had a long way to go before things started to settle into a new normal, but maybe, finally they were on their way.

Tom stared at Maverick and Maverick stared back. Tom was hyper aware of their hands connected between them, longer than what was necessary for a handshake. He never wanted to let go.

He didn’t get more than a few minutes, though, to bask in this new warm feeling. Maverick moved on without saying anything more than a “congratulations”—although Tom deluded himself by pretending that he looked like he wished to say more—and then Viper swooped in almost immediately with their new orders. Something about rescue operations and foreign hostiles and the best of the best. He hadn’t been paying too much attention at the time, in favor of staring at Maverick as he read over his own letter.

(Being caught unprepared, for anything, was something that Iceman rarely ever let himself be. But it was fine, really, because he saw Slider take the letter from Viper and he trusted his RIO to read it over and give him a summary of the important parts with a minimal level of teasing. Which he had, mostly. And because this was the Navy, meaning they were sure to have at least two more briefings on their course of action, all probably equally maddeningly vague.)

Within the hour, the five of them had been on their way to the Indian Ocean. The long flight and the fact that he’d been unable to get more than a hundred feet from Maverick at any given point had given Ice the first chance to really think, think about what was coming and what it would mean. He’d been distracted by his thoughts up until they landed, to the point that Slider had definitely noticed, but Iceman still hadn’t come to a decision about what he was going to do.

No matter the details of the mission, Ice needed a wingman that he could trust. His two options for that person were Hollywood or Maverick. Tom loved Maverick. Watching him spin out to sea had ripped something fundamental from his very person, something that hadn’t begun to repair until he was able to be close to him the next day in the hospital. It was still healing, and Tom had a feeling it would be until Maverick himself recovered from Goose’s death.

Goose’s death had changed the way Maverick flew, that was undeniable. But it had only been two weeks since then. Two weeks since losing his RIO and best friend wasn’t enough for Maverick to go out there and fly like nothing was wrong. It was unfair to him to make him pretend otherwise, and unfair to the rest of them to pair them with a wingman who potentially wasn’t up to the challenge.

Tom remembered staring across the locker room at Maverick, saying “It’s not your flying, it’s your attitude,” and Maverick ignoring him completely. A cold knot of unease began forming somewhere behind his ribs, and Ice was glad to be alone for the moment. Eventually, he’d have to go back to the others, to the bunkroom he was sharing with Slider, Merlin, and Maverick, and pretend that everything was fine up until the mission tomorrow. He was glad to be alone for now, for the chance to get a handle on everything he was feeling. Because he would. There wasn’t any other choice.

Maverick Mitchell was one of the best aviators in the Navy, and they all knew it. But he wasn’t ready to fly this mission. Ice could only hope that their COs knew that, too, and that Maverick would be content to sit by and trust the mission to Iceman and Hollywood. It was just that he knew this hope wouldn’t get very far.

Regardless of Hollywood’s claim that Ice knew Maverick the best out of their TOPGUN class, he did know enough to be sure that Maverick wouldn’t admit that he needed time, and that he wouldn’t do anything about it even if he did. How could Ice trust someone who flew like that?

One way or another, things after tomorrow would never be the same. With any luck, it would be a good change. But, Tom thought as he watched the last of the sunlight bleed from the sky, luck hadn’t exactly been on their side as of late.

Chapter Text

“His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star.”

-The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Most of the time, change happened gradually. Sure, there were a few moments Ice could point to that had forever changed the course of his life: accepting his admission to the Naval Academy, his first day of flight school, when he shook hands with the tall brunet asshole that would become his RIO. Hop 31. Sure, there were events where Tom could look around in the midst of things and think, I’m not coming out of this the same, am I? But usually, major changes happened over years or months or weeks and he was already in the middle before he knew that he’d begun.

This rescue mission was not one of those rapid changes. This rescue mission blew every one of those rapid changes out of the goddamned water.

Nothing Tom Kazansky had ever felt compared to the paralyzing terror that ripped through him when Hollywood and Wolfman were shot down, leaving him and Slider to hold their own against five MiG-28s. Fucking five. He was one of the best—the Top Gun plaque was still brand-new and shiny back at his and Slider’s temporary housing, but well, that wasn’t worth one damn thing now, was it?

This, it occurred to him all at once, could be it. Death’s icy fingers were reaching out to grab him and all that stood between him and being shot down, too, was Maverick Mitchell.

Maverick Mitchell, who had lost his RIO two weeks ago as a result of both their actions. Maverick Mitchell, who was reckless and dangerous and had a habit of abandoning his wingman to chase after glory. Maverick Mitchell, who didn’t fly the same as he did two weeks ago. Maverick Mitchell, whom Ice loved. Whom he didn’t trust.

How the fuck was he going to make it out of this?

It didn’t surprise him, really, that flying through the MiG’s jetwash was the thing to cause Maverick to bug out, even though he recovered from the spin. If it had been any other way, maybe, but so close to Goose’s death… He couldn’t say he didn’t understand, but literally any fucking other time than when they were alone in the air against five MiGs when the goddamned catapult was broken would have been a better time for the rest of them to realize it.

There wasn’t time, in the middle of it all, for Ice to think of much more than I knew it and how fucking terrified he was. Their job was dangerous, they all knew it. It was one of the first things they learned, in fact, especially if they wanted to make it to a position that Iceman was today, or even higher, as he had long aspired to for himself. Although, he thought, it was beginning to look like he might not get lucky enough for that.

He wouldn’t get to be an admiral, a small part of Tom’s brain whispered to him as he dodged gunfire. He’d lost track of which MiG it was coming from. He wouldn’t ever see his family again, he wouldn’t get to go back to his squadron with his shiny new Top Gun trophy. He wouldn’t get to tell Pete Mitchell that he loved him. Everything the two of them could have had, everything they could have become … everything that Tom had pushed away because he couldn’t justify it to himself even if he wanted it, now he would never get the chance to even try.

His hands were shaking against the controls. It brought him back to Goose’s death. If he made it out of here, he thought over the pounding of his own heart, he would say it. He’d tell Maverick how he felt. The whole truth of it. It was his career if the wrong people found out, but what was the fucking point of making it to the top if he was just going to be lonely once he got there?

Love and trust, Tom had always thought, were two things that had to go hand-in-hand. It was impossible for it to be otherwise. He didn’t realize that he’d been holding onto some small bit of hope about that too—that Maverick would come through when it mattered. All logic suggested otherwise, but instinct was a powerful thing, especially for a pilot, and Tom Kazansky had never been able to imagine falling in love with someone he wasn’t able to trust. And so, even as Maverick hung in the air, even as Tom heard Merlin and Slider swearing in his ear, some small bit of him, buried deep beneath the rage and the panic, even now hoped.

Miracle of all miracles, he somehow was not disappointed.

There was the shadow of something passing behind him, and Ice had just enough time to worry about it being another fucking MiG when he heard, “Ice, I’ve got your MiG dead ahead.” It was like music. His heart was pounding up in his throat and he was so relieved he could have cried with it, but there was no time.

The next few minutes were strange.

Iceman had spent five weeks flying with and against Maverick, had been there for some of his highest and lowest moments both, and had watched the lead flip back and forth between them over and over again. Their flying styles couldn’t be more different, but Ice couldn’t deny that they were very evenly matched in skill. Several times over the weeks—usually when Maverick was off doing something impulsive that he would recognize to be stupid if he would just think—Tom had thought back to that conversation he and Slider had about Maverick the night before they started at TOPGUN. Maverick was different, Maverick was special, and Tom had known it, instinctively, even back then. He’d been looking forward to the chance to fly with him, for the challenge of something different, something that could be great.

Maverick and Iceman would work together well in the sky, he’d thought, if Maverick somehow managed to use his head and actually work with instead of against his wingman. After Goose’s death, Ice had given up all hope of the opportunity ever coming to fruition. Goose’s death had been the thing to make him realize the full scope of his feelings, so he couldn’t truly call it wasted, but there had always been a part of Tom that knew deep down that he’d just lost the chance for something life-changing.

That life-changing moment was coming now. The four of them would have to navigate entirely new waters if they made it out of this.

Working together, Iceman and Maverick shot down four MiGs. Four. Everything blurred together in the moment, and he wasn't able to remember most of the details after a few minutes. What he knew he would never forget were the things he always noticed about Maverick—how good it felt to be beside him when he was at his best, the novelty of flying with someone who was able to match his skills. But also the revelation of everything that was different—the seamless way the two of them worked together, the freedom that came with flying beside someone he could trust, unequivocally, to have his back.

They worked as a team to take down the MiGs, one after another, and maybe it was because Iceman had spent the entire time they were at TOPGUN trying to figure out Maverick Mitchell, but he couldn’t think of a single other person he’d ever worked with so smoothly. They made space for each other, they were easily able to anticipate what the other would do, they transitioned cleanly between who was leading and who was covering. It felt easy, natural, in a way Ice hadn’t felt since the first time he flew with Slider in the backseat, like a lock clicking into place, like this was how it was always meant to be.

That was the thing that was different. Ice hadn’t trusted Maverick before, but he had respected his skills as an aviator. But when Maverick and Merlin were being chased by a MiG and he heard, “I’m not leaving my wingman,” that was the end of it all. Every trace of doubt lingering in Iceman’s mind was swept away forever and he knew there was no way he was ever, ever going to be over this man.

The rest of the dogfight seemed to last for both two minutes and two hours. When the last two MiGs turned tail and headed back off across the sea, Tom wasn’t able to do much more than stare in disbelief. He heard Merlin radio back to the carrier, “Mustang, this is Voodoo Three, remaining MiGs are bugging out,” and it crashed down on him all at once with the force of a tsunami. Adrenaline ripped through him, leaving him cold and trembling in its wake as it circled in his brain that it was really over. The most important mission he’d ever flown, one of the most important moments of his entire goddamned life, and he’d made it out. He’d come inches from death, stared it down in the face, and somehow still made it to the other side. Maverick had saved him and Ice had saved Maverick in return.

Tom Kazanksy was the Iceman, but he had never felt less like it now. Not even after Goose’s death, when he was staring down at Maverick cradling Goose’s lifeless body as he drifted on the waves. He’d felt choked by helplessness, then, come face-to-face with the reality of losing a wingman, a friend, and knowing he would never be the same on the other side of it. Now, he sat, shaking, in his plane, following Maverick back to the carrier completely automatically, looking out the canopy every two seconds to reassure himself that Maverick and Merlin were right there, they were fine, they wouldn’t disappear as soon as he took his eyes off them. His head was swimming with the panic he’d felt facing off alone against five MiGs and the way he’d felt entirely unable to do anything but feel it. Iceman prided himself on being cool under pressure, so he was sure that the memory of having all of it ripped away from him was going to linger for a long time.

A sudden motion from the corner of his eyes snapped Ice from his thoughts. He whipped around, heart in his throat, hands tightening reflexively against the controls, and was met with a F-14 shining under the light of the sun. Maverick’s F-14. Instantly, Ice slumped back down in his seat and tried not to let any of the others hear his relieved exhale. He could barely make out Maverick’s face through both their canopies and his oxygen mask, but Tom thought his eyes looked concerned.

“Ice,” came Maverick’s voice a moment later, over their private channel, “you good over there?”

Tom inhaled as deeply as he could and nodded. “Yeah, I’m good.”

Maverick unclipped his oxygen mask and Tom was met with the full force of his smile, hardly dimmed at all by the space between them. “That was something, huh?”

It was impossible not to smile back. It was amazing, he thought, how even being in Maverick’s presence made everything just a tiny bit more hopeful. Tom unclipped his own mask so the two of them could grin at each other. It was the most settled he’d felt all goddamn day, and they weren’t even back to the ground yet. “It sure was, Mav.”

They were still, somehow, flying right on each other’s wings, and Ice was close enough to see the way Maverick’s smile turned mischievous. “Hey, Ice, you up for something fun?”

Ice was only able to raise his eyebrows. He had a feeling he knew where Maverick was going with this, and made absolutely no move to stop him. Maverick switched back to the open channel and said, “Mustang, this is Maverick requesting flyby.”

“Negative, Ghost Rider, the pattern is full,” came the predictable response. Maverick turned back and grinned over at Tom, slow and carefree and utterly intoxicating.

It was a high, having that smile directed his way. It was like injecting adrenaline straight into his veins. Tom felt on top of the world, untouchable, like he could do anything. He pulled his mask up to his face and said, “Mustang, this is Voodoo One requesting flyby for two,” his eyes locked with Maverick’s, smiling so wide he could hardly get the words out.

“Who is that guy?” he heard over the hot mic in the island, but Tom was no longer listening. Maverick dipped down, gathering speed as he dove towards the carrier, and Tom pushed down on the throttle and followed him. On his six, on his wing, by his side, where he would stay for as long as he could.

They buzzed the island side-by-side. Tom was close enough to see the way Maverick laughed, the rattle of the building from their speed, and the fingers pointing at the two of them from the deck. Tom and Maverick had just done the impossible, so he knew they wouldn’t get in trouble, even though Viper had ripped Maverick and Goose a new one for buzzing the tower at TOPGUN. Even still, Tom Kazansky never broke the rules, but he thought that he would, again and again, if it got Pete Mitchell to look at him like that.

Tom and Maverick landed on the deck to the deafening roar of cheers. People were swarming their planes the moment they’d taxied out of the way, screaming and clapping and celebrating. The air was electric, just as charged as the smiles Ice and Maverick had shared as they buzzed the island together. Being back on the ground felt a world away from the fear and panic of almost dying, and it was easy to get swept up in the atmosphere, to smile and celebrate the fact that they did it, they finished the mission, did the impossible, and didn’t lose a single person along the way.

The canopy pulled back and Ice stood, immediately turning around and extending his hand to Slider. His RIO, always by his side, faithful and unwavering. Ice knew he wouldn’t have made it even halfway to where he was if not for Slider’s (sometimes reluctant) support. They smiled, shared a moment of quiet relief that everything had passed, then descended from the plane into the crowd.

The SAR helicopter landed just a few moments later, and another knot in Ice’s chest loosened when he caught sight of Hollywood and Wolfman running past them. He followed their path just in time to see Wolfman come to a stop in front of Maverick, the two of them yelling in each other’s faces in joy and relief and everything. Tom grinned, more open than he usually would have let himself be, but he figured exceptions could be made today.

And then, Maverick stepped forward to hug Hollywood, Merlin quickly embracing Wolfman himself. It brought him closer to where Ice was standing, staring at him, alone in the middle of the crowd, and oh.

It all came rushing back at once. Tom had promised himself, up in the air, that if he made it back to the ground, he’d tell Maverick the truth of his feelings. He’d come so close to losing it all, and Tom Kazansky was familiar with loss and missed opportunities. He and Maverick fit together so seamlessly, so flawlessly. How could he justify giving something like that up just because he was scared? He had to say it, say it now, even if the thought set his heart pounding in his chest. He took a deep breath to steel himself and pointed at Maverick. “You!”

Slowly, slowly, Maverick turned. Took off his sunglasses. Made eye contact with Tom, holding it unwaveringly. A distant part of him remembered their first conversation, in the O Club on the first day of TOPGUN. Tom had approached Maverick on a mission, and he still had one now, but this day, he thought, couldn’t feel further from that night.

“You are still dangerous,” Tom informed Maverick, squinting against the bright sun, against the bright, bright light of Maverick’s green eyes. They were facing each other, inches apart, so close Tom could feel Maverick’s body heat like the warmth from a star. They were in the middle of the crowd, he knew, the middle of a crowd that was still screaming and cheering, but he couldn’t hear any of it. The world had gone silent around them, had narrowed, sharpened to a point with the two of them at its center. In that moment, Tom Kazansky’s world started and ended with Pete Mitchell.

Maverick’s face was serious and he shifted his weight like he still expected Tom to be taking the piss, even after everything they’d just done. For a moment, the tension hung in the air between them, but as Tom thought back over Maverick saving his life, him saving Maverick’s, buzzing the island side-by-side, the slow, steady warmth that spread through him every time he heard Maverick’s laugh… there was no stopping the smile that he could feel stretching across his face. A giddy sort of happiness bubbled up in his chest. He was so close to Maverick, he was smiling so widely his cheeks kind of hurt with it.

“You can be my wingman anytime,” Tom said, still smiling wider than he ever had in his life. He kept smiling as he extended a hand to Maverick, as Maverick shook it briefly only to pull away and hold on, tight and warm, to Tom’s shoulder.

I love you, he didn’t say, but oh, oh did he think it. He thought it, turning the words over and over in his mind as the two of them stood alone together. It was like their graduation day, it was like holding Maverick in the locker room, in the hospital. Like racing against him in the sky, like working together towards their goal as a team. Like every good memory he had of the man he loved, and every hope that he would get to make more.

If he was to die right then and this moment was the last one he ever got, Tom knew he could be happy with that.

Maverick eventually released his shoulder, but he didn’t pull back far. It meant Tom got to watch from up close as a lopsided grin tugged at his lips and then as it widened into a smile so beautiful it took his breath away.

Tom was so, so in love with this man.

“Bullshit,” said Pete Mitchell, “you can be mine.”

Everyone else on the Enterprise, Tom thought, was probably able to see the hearts in his eyes. Slider was still standing right behind him, he thought, and he didn’t even want to imagine the kind of shit his RIO would give him for this once they were alone. For the first time since they’d started TOPGUN, Tom was looking forward to it.

Maverick reached out and wrapped an arm around Tom’s neck. He didn’t hesitate before reaching back, resting his chin on Maverick’s shoulder and smiling to himself. This was the third time he’d hugged Pete Mitchell, and with a bit of a start Tom realized that while he’d touched him before, each time they’d really been close like this had been because Maverick had initiated it. The revelation made his head spin and Tom pushed it away for now.

They stood there and held each other for a long moment frozen in time. Tom turned his face slightly into Maverick’s neck and breathed in his scent—he understood, now, why Maverick seemed to like to do this to him. It was like being wrapped in a comforting blanket. He turned Maverick’s words over in his mind—“Bullshit, you can be mine,”—and I am, Tom thought. I am, I am, I am.

Of course, it eventually had to come to an end. They were still in the middle of an enthusiastic crowd, after all, and Iceman and Maverick were the heroes of the hour. Everyone on the deck still had jobs to do, also—he and Maverick and the rest of their team needed to get belowdecks for debrief, the ground crew needed to refuel and stow the planes. Eventually Maverick pulled back, because if it was up to Tom he might have just held on forever. Their eyes met for one more quick moment and the contentment, the joy that Tom saw in Maverick’s were so overwhelming that it took everything he had to not reach out and pull him back in, to kiss him right there in front of god and everybody.

It was Slider who pulled them apart, which Ice supposed shouldn’t have surprised him. He stepped between them and lifted Maverick in his arms, shaking him with his feet dangling a solid foot off of the ground. Both of them were smiling, Slider with excitement and Maverick indulgently, and it made Tom smile to watch them. His RIO had been against his feelings for Maverick even before Ice himself had even known what they were, so he couldn’t help but hope that this was acceptance, in Slider’s own way. That they were past the constant antagonization of each other, or at least as much as they could be. Unfortunately, Ice thought that was somewhat permanent, and imagined having to put up with the two of them snipping at each other years down the line. A part of him looked forward to it.

Ice, Maverick, Slider, and Merlin led the way to the stairs. Much of the crowd—those that didn’t have essential duties on the top deck—followed them, continuing to offer words of congratulations. Tom still hardly heard any of it, his eyes focused unwaveringly on Maverick, who was walking slightly ahead. Now wasn’t the time for serious conversations, but he had made a promise to himself up in the air, and he was determined to see it through. They’d been through a lot in the past month, in the past few weeks, enough that Tom could no longer justify it to himself if he kept silent. He was going to tell Maverick the truth of his feelings, and damn the consequences.

With the Uniform Code, even just saying the words out loud was grounds for a general discharge. Worse than that, if the wrong people overheard. If the brass decided to look back into his record, Iceman knew they would find enough evidence to justify an OTH discharge. And all of that was without even considering what Maverick said back. If he said anything back. If he hadn’t saved Tom’s life just because he had been unable to save Goose’s.

But with the way Maverick had looked at him and with the promises they’d made to each other, Tom thought that he finally, finally understood why, sometimes, the risk was worth it.

Tom Kazansky had lofty goals for himself, and he knew he could reach them. Even one small misstep would cost him all of that. Even after he visited Maverick in the hospital after Goose’s death, Iceman wouldn’t have been able to justify it to himself. But that had been before he knew what it felt like to fly side-by-side with Maverick, to be at the top of the world with the man he loved.

Iceman pushed all these thoughts aside as they entered the ready room, but his gut was churning for all of debrief, and he was unable to stop looking at Maverick.

Ice was lying in his bunk when Slider found him.

It had been hours since the mission, but energy was still high all across the ship. Everyone Ice had passed seemed to know what had happened, even the people who hadn’t seen it firsthand, and they all had to stop him to shake his hand and congratulate him. Maverick soaked up the attention like a sponge, all bright laughter and blinding smiles. Ice had retold the story more times than he could count, but eventually he was glad to leave his new wingman in the limelight and had slipped back to his room the first chance he got.

It was empty, of course, when he’d arrived. Ice had flicked on a light and immediately climbed up into his rack, stretched out on his back, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling just a few inches away. The hallway outside the door was quiet, but Ice could hear the sound of raised, excited voices filtering down from the floors above. He was grateful for the chance to close his eyes and just breathe. It was the first chance he’d had to be alone with his thoughts since last night. And there was a lot to think about.

Naturally, that was when the door to the room was pushed open. Ice wasn’t sure how long he’d been alone, but it wasn’t enough time for him to feel anything but exhausted. He picked up his head and squinted towards the door, but otherwise made no attempt to move. When he caught the gaze of his RIO, Ice let his head flop back into his hands with a long groan. He knew he needed to talk to Slider eventually, but it was still many, many hours before he would be ready for that.

Unfortunately, his RIO only laughed, stepping farther into the room and crossing his arms against the side of Ice’s bunk. “Why, hello to you too, sunshine.”

“F’k off,” Ice grumbled, rolling onto his side and curling up tightly. He scrunched his eyes shut like Slider would eventually go away if Ice refused to look at him. Unfortunately, they both knew better.

“Your wingman's wondering where you are,” Slider said. His tone was teasing, but there was something there under it that told Ice that this conversation was happening whether he liked it or not.

Reluctantly, Ice lifted his head to see that Slider had crossed his arms against the side of the bed and rested his head on them. He was looking at Ice with a shit-eating grin, because of course he was. Like his tone, though, something about it felt off, somehow.

“We can’t all be boundless reserves of energy,” Ice scowled, because he was an introvert, and extroverts baffled him.

Slider only rolled his eyes because both of them knew that wasn’t what he had been asking. Ice knew exactly what he had meant, why he was here. He took a deep breath to brace himself and then uncurled enough to be able to look his RIO in the face.

The grin had mostly vanished and now Slider was staring at him with as serious a look as Ice had ever seen. It was familiar, but not common. Iceman was more prone to overthinking between the two of them. Still, something about that look brought him back to previous conversations they’d had about Maverick, which was only heightened when Slider said, “So, it’s Maverick then?”

This was the closest the two of them had come to talking about it since before Tom realized the truth of his feelings. “Yeah. It’s Maverick.”

By the complicated series of emotions that flashed over Slider’s face, this was the answer he’d been expecting, but not the one he’d wanted. His next words were slow, like he was thinking them over carefully. “I saw the way you looked at him up there. Is it because he saved your life?”

Ice couldn’t stop the bark of laughter. “No,” he said, closing his eyes and thinking back to the terror he’d felt watching Maverick’s F-14 crash. Even the dogfight he’d just survived hadn’t been terrifying in quite the same way. “Before then. Hop 31. When Goose died and they went down… that was when I realized.”

Ice opened his eyes to clock the way Slider’s widened. He hadn’t been expecting that, it was clear, but didn’t ask any more questions about that day. Ice was immensely glad for the way his RIO sometimes knew him better than he knew himself. Instead, Slider propped his chin further up on his bicep and squinted at Ice with a thoughtful frown. “Why him, though? Reckless and impulsive doesn’t sound like your usual type, Tommy.”

He was tempted to snark back something like “you would know,” except as his best friend, Slider would know. He’d been there for some of Ice’s first experiences with men, back at the Academy, and some of the few that had come since. But this was different from those one-night things. Maverick was different. Ice propped himself up on his elbows and, for the first time in this conversation, made a point of looking Slider in the eyes.

“He's different. Maverick. He’s impulsive, but a damn good pilot. I’ve never met someone who flies like he does, Ronnie. And I’ve never felt the way I do when I’m flying with him.”

Slider swallowed. Ice watched his Adam’s apple bob. His own throat felt dry, he realized, and his heart was beating quickly. All these things he'd been thinking, about himself, about Maverick, about where they could go from here… he realized, then, that that was all they'd ever been. This was the first time that Tom was voicing these feelings to someone other than himself. They’d been real before—the way he'd hugged Maverick on the deck not six hours ago had felt pretty damned real—but it added a new dimensionality to the truth, putting it out in the open.

“Of course it comes down to flying with you two lunatics,” Slider mumbled under his breath. Feeling his heart rate begin to calm a little, Ice shifted his weight onto one elbow and flipped him off.

Slider rolled his eyes, but then something complicated made its way over his face. Ice narrowed his eyes, his stomach tightening with nerves. “So where are you gonna go from here?”

“What do you mean?”

Another eye roll. “You and Pipsqueak. Sitting there when he knows he wants something is definitely not like the Tom Kazansky I know.”

Ice leaned back onto both elbows, thinking about that hug on deck, and the two that had come before it. “I’m… going to tell him. I… I want to.”

Slider merely raised an eyebrow. Ice felt his face grow hot and scowled like that would keep his RIO from noticing. “Shut the fuck up. It’s just… he just lost Goose, and there’s the Uniform Code. Our careers… we’d be risking everything, Sli, and Mav’s already lost so much. I can’t ask him to give all that up, not for me. Not that he even feels the same.”

Ice was staring at his feet, so he saw Slider’s hand come to rest on his leg near his ankle and looked up in surprise. Slider’s mouth was pressed into a flat line and his eyes were serious. “Not that he feels the—okay. We will be coming back to that. But first: don’t you think that you should let Maverick make that decision for himself?”

Slider’s words were vehement. Tom felt hot tears sting at the backs of his eyes and couldn’t keep his RIO’s gaze. “It’s not worth it. Mav needs to focus on… on himself now, and Goose’s family. It’s not fair for me to throw all my feelings into it. It’s not his fault I’m in love with him.”

This was the first time he’d ever said those words out loud, he realized as he spoke them. It twisted something inside of his chest, like someone had wrapped a fist around his heart and was squeezing. He knew he was breathing shallowly, both to get enough air and to try to fight against the tears welling up in his eyes. He pressed his palms flat into the mattress to keep them from trembling and avoided Slider’s eyes to keep from seeing his pity.

There was a high-pitched ringing in his ears not unlike the sound of radar lock, and it took him several moments to realize Slider was trying to get his attention. When he felt a hand clench down on his shoulder, he jumped and his eyes snapped up automatically. Slider’s face was much closer to his than it had been—Ice thought he might have been standing on his own rack below—but there wasn’t any pity in his eyes.

“Ice,” Slider said, his voice firm like he’d repeated it several times before. “What happened between you and Mav in the hospital?”

That was so far outside the realm of what he’d been expecting that Tom could only choke out, “Wh-what?”

Slider steamrolled on. “Or in the locker room on the day he quit? Wolfman told me you talked to him. Or at our graduation, where the only person he talked to was you? Or just now, up in the air, when you, Mr. Ice-Cold-No-Fun buzzed the fucking island?”

“I don’t understand, what—?”

“Maverick didn’t do that with anyone else, Tom.”

It felt like everything, even down to the breath in his lungs, froze. He had no fucking clue what his face looked like, but Slider pursed his lips and his face softened. “Haven’t you noticed? Every time Maverick has opened up to someone after the crash, it’s been you.”

The world felt like it was spinning. Ice tipped his head back towards the ceiling and drew in a long, shaky breath. There was a lump in his throat that he had to swallow past in order to speak. “It’s just… it’s just because we were there, Slider. If… if it had been Hollywood or Chipper up in the air with Mav when they went down, he’d do the same to them.”

“I don’t think so,” his RIO said gently, as gently as Tom had ever heard him. “He hasn’t ever gone to me, for one. And I don’t think Hollywood or Chipper would’ve done any of what you did for him. But even if that’s true, you realized you loved him when his plane went down. Couldn’t he have, too?”

The lump was back and Tom’s throat ached with how much he wished for Slider’s words to be true. For a moment, he let himself imagine it. Imagine everything going exactly right the way it was unlikely to outside of his wildest dreams. If Maverick didn’t punch him in the face as soon as Tom said he loved him, if Maverick somehow loved him back, if they decided that they wanted to be together, then what? Maverick was made to be in the sky, and Tom wouldn’t be the thing to tie him down to earth when he was supposed to soar free.

“It doesn’t matter,” he told Slider miserably. “It’d never work. Mav belongs in the air.”

Slider was silent for several long seconds. His eyes were narrowed at Ice. It wasn’t the reaction he’d expected, so he pushed himself up a little higher on his elbows to watch. Eventually, he said, “Ice. Do you remember when I told you Cougar turned in his wings and you freaked out?”

“I… object to the term freaked out, but yes.”

“Why did you?”

Ice blinked several times and pushed down the instinct to deflect, answer immediately and brush the whole thing off. He forced himself to take a deep breath and actually think about it.

The thing he remembered most about that conversation with Slider was that it was the first time he’d heard Maverick’s name. But now, he made himself remember all the hurt and anger and shock he’d felt learning that Cougar had chosen his family over his career. He’d been pushing it away as best he could in the month since then, but he knew it’d been a part of the way he viewed Maverick up until his plane went down on Hop 31.

Iceman hardly had the chance to think Cougar’s name since then, he was so preoccupied with Maverick, but he let himself do so now. For the first time since he’d locked it away, Iceman let himself open the mental box where he’d shoved all the good experiences he’d had with Cougar in flight school and the betrayal he’d been unable to escape at the implication that he’d gotten all of it wrong.

Bill Cortell and his girlfriend had started dating near the end of Tom’s time in flight school. He’d ended up marrying her, although Tom had been on deployment at the time and hadn’t gone to the wedding. And he had a kid now, a baby. Tom remembered the way his friend’s eyes would light up whenever anyone asked him about his girlfriend, the way he’d spent hours on the weekends writing her letters, how happy he’d been the few times she’d come to visit. Tom had been happy for his friend, because he’d known from the beginning that nothing that happened between him and Cougar was going to last. He’d understood that Bill loved her, but Tom had never been in love with anything except flying. He hadn’t understood, when he’d heard that Cougar turned in his wings, how he could give up such a fundamental part of himself regardless of whom he was doing it for.

But the person Tom Kazansky was now was different from the person he’d been five weeks ago. In the time since, he’d seen the man he loved nearly die and had been unable to do anything to help. He’d actually lost a friend, a good man, partially through his own actions. Flying was a part of who he was, it was all he had ever imagined himself doing. But if he’d had a brush with death like Cougar had, like Maverick had, and it was a choice between giving up flying for the Navy and losing Maverick, Tom knew which one he would pick.

“I didn’t understand, then, why he did it,” Ice told Slider. “But now I do.”

There was a small half-smile on his RIO’s face, like he’d known it all along and was just waiting for Tom himself to realize. “I’m not saying it’d be easy. I don’t think either of you bastards know what that means. But if both you and Mav want the same thing and you think it’s worth it, you should at least give it a try. If you miss the chance because you chicken out, I’m not gonna listen to you bitch about it.”

Ice snorted at Slider’s last sentence, which was probably the only reason the tears pooling in his eyes didn’t fall. He thought that might have been what his RIO was going for and his chest warmed with gratitude. “Thank you, Ron,” he whispered. “You’re a good friend.”

“I’m an amazing friend, actually, and I don’t know how you’d survive without me,” Slider snarked back, but it didn’t do much to hide the way his voice shook.

Tom laughed wetly. “I don’t know, either.”

As Ice watched, the half-smile on Slider’s face turned into a real one, wide and fond and proud. It made his heart squeeze, to be on the receiving end of such a look, and Ice crawled to the edge of his rack and swung his legs over the side. Once he was standing on the ground, he pulled Slider down into a hug and held on tight. For a few moments, the two of them stood in silence in the middle of their tiny room, their arms around each other and the air heavy with everything that had changed.

He was still terrified, but Tom was finally ready to talk to Maverick.

Eventually, Ice and Slider returned to the celebrations. All of the naval aviators on the Enterprise, as well as a good portion of its other staff, were gathered in the mess hall. The room was filled with the cacophony of overlapping voices—it had been hours since the mission and it seemed like the atmosphere hadn’t died down at all. Ice took a deep breath to steel himself before wading into the crowd.

Everyone seemed to be concentrated around a particular table in the middle of the room, although at first Ice wasn’t able to tell why. When he got close enough, though, he spotted Hollywood, Wolfman, Merlin, and Maverick sitting in the center of the crowd, talking animatedly. They were probably still retelling the story, Ice thought with exhaustion, and contemplated turning tail and waiting out the rest of the night in his room. Maybe it would be better to talk to Maverick tomorrow, after all, once all of the emotion had died down a little.

The next moment, though, Maverick’s eyes caught Tom’s. Instantly, his face split into a grin so wide that his eyes crinkled at the corners and Tom’s stomach flipped over. He lifted his arm and waved it vigorously, as if Tom wasn’t standing just on the other side of the table and clearly able to see him. It was so fucking adorable that it made Tom’s chest hurt. Hesitantly, he smiled back and Maverick put his hand down, patting the bench next to him and looking back up with a hopeful smile. Tom made his way over to the other side and cautiously sat down next to Maverick, because what the hell else was he supposed to do when that expression was because of him?

Everyone around him was talking about something, Ice was sure. He didn’t know exactly how long he sat by Maverick’s side, gaze fixed steadfastly on the side of his head. It felt simultaneously like forever and no time at all, but in reality it must’ve been at least an hour. If he had to guess, he’d say that his friends were finding more and more elaborate ways to embellish the story, but Ice was blind to anything outside the green of Maverick’s eyes as he stared at his side profile or the way their legs were pressed together from hip to knee.

Maverick was radiant. Sat between Ice and Merlin, he was the center of the room, and everyone around them was drawn to him like moths to a flame. His grin was bright as he talked and joked, his laugh loud and carefree, his gestures excited and expressive. It was the most animated that Ice had seen him since Goose’s death. He knew one good day wasn’t enough to mean Maverick was over Goose’s death—of course he wasn’t, there wasn’t any being over something like that—but he hoped that this could be the end of something and the beginning of something better.

Pete Mitchell shone brighter that afternoon than Tom Kazansky had ever seen him. It was like a lock clicking into place, to be by his side and watch him, and some tight ball of tension that Tom hadn’t even realized he was carrying began to unravel. He gradually found himself relaxing, his shoulders dropping, his smiles coming easier as he let his friends clap him on the back or shake his shoulder. And when he hesitantly leaned into Maverick’s side only for Maverick to reward him with a beaming grin and lean back, it brought him back to that afternoon, when they’d landed on the deck and he’d felt almost drunk with how happy he was.

Curfew eventually broke them apart, late into the night. People began peeling off and heading back to their rooms, as all of them had to be up the next morning to do their regular jobs like today hadn’t been anything out of the ordinary. The mess gradually grew quieter as more and more people left, but up there in the center of everything the energy hardly faded at all. Slider and Merlin both slipped out at some point, and eventually the group was down to Ice and Maverick on one side of a long table with Hollywood and Wolfman seated opposite them.

Iceman was forcibly reminded of the last time he’d found himself cornered by Hollywood and Wolfman. But Chipper and Sundown were still back in Miramar, probably, and he only had to look to the side at where Maverick was grinning widely if he wanted an assurance of how much had changed. He stared at Maverick, who was smiling and talking animatedly, but didn't realize he was smiling himself until he turned back to the front and caught Wolfman looking at him with a shrewd expression. Iceman decided that whatever that glint in his eyes meant, it couldn't cause anything but trouble.

He wondered if Wolfman thought he was being subtle when he looked between the two of them with a giant shit-eating grin and said, “So, wingmen, huh?”

Ice felt his face flush and worked up a glare to aim at Wolfman, but was abruptly thrown off the rails when he saw that Maverick was blushing, too. It wasn’t that unexpected, really, and it could mean anything, but Ice sat back and kept quiet, leaning into the touch of Maverick’s leg against his.

“Save my life and you can be my wingman, too, Wolf,” Maverick grinned. His eyes darted momentarily to Tom’s, who had to fight down against the smile that wanted to instantly break out across his face.

Wolfman snorted. “Fuck no. No way am I getting in the middle of that.”

Ice remembered the conversation he’d had with his classmates in the O Club after Maverick quit TOPGUN and cold dread flooded through his veins. The looks—he’d noticed, even then, that Wolfman and Sundown kept looking at him—that, he realized abruptly, must’ve been what they meant. He’d thought that, with Maverick gone, he’d be able to keep the others from realizing the truth of his feelings. Now that they were together again, though, now that Maverick Mitchell had looked him in the eyes and said the words Bullshit, you can be mine, Tom knew he had no chance of keeping how gone he was off of his face.

Abruptly, an arm was slung over his shoulder and Tom almost jumped out of his skin. He jerked around to the side and found himself nose-to-nose with Maverick. It was even closer, a distant part of Tom remarked, than they’d been that first night in the O Club. The tip of his nose tingled from the tiny bit of separation between it and Maverick’s. It would take hardly any effort at all to lean forward the rest of the way and kiss him.

“Don’t worry, babe,” Maverick remarked, grinning impishly. “He’s just jealous.”

Hollywood and Wolfman, sitting somewhere on the other side of the ocean, scoffed. Maverick’s eyes never wavered from Tom’s, even for a second. Tom, for his part, was pretty sure he’d experienced a complete shutdown of higher brain function. A strangled sort of noise tore itself from his throat—one that, up until that very moment, he would have vehemently denied his ability to make.

Somehow, he managed to muster the wherewithal to speak, although his voice sounded tinny and hollow, far away to his own ears. “Babe?”

There were only two things that were clear to Tom in that moment. One was Maverick, so close and yet so far. Maverick and his gorgeous smile and his shining green eyes and the complicated expression that passed over his face. The other was his own heart, beating fast and loud in his chest. All he could hear was the rush of blood in his ears as his mind raced over and over through that sentence. Babe. Pete Mitchell had just called Tom babe.

“Yeah,” Maverick whispered, soft and gentle and just for them. Forget the other side of the ocean, Hollywood and Wolfman were on another planet, another galaxy, another fucking universe. “Is that okay?”

Tom intended to say, yes, absolutely, always and forever, but all that came out of his mouth was another choked sound.

The thing was, though, the thing was, that Tom had heard Maverick call Goose dear before. And honey. And darling. Goose and Maverick had always been the comedic duo, the inseparable pair that respected and trusted each other with their lives. Maverick didn’t have very many people in his corner. Now that Tom had saved his life, was this Maverick welcoming him in? Now that they were united in the unbreakable bond of brotherhood, had he earned that same sort of closeness as Maverick had once shown to Goose? His wingman, his best friend, his brother, nothing more and nothing less?

If that was what Tom had earned from Maverick, he thought he would be able to be happy with that. He had a brief moment to envision it in his mind: climbing the ranks, Maverick by his side. Growing older, maybe settling down, retiring, spending every day for the rest of his life pining for the beautiful, untouchable man next to him.

The next moment, Maverick pitched towards him. Tom opened his mouth, reflexively. Just in time for Maverick’s lips to crash into his.

Fight, flight, or freeze, wasn’t it? Tom Kazansky was a pilot, so he had to have good instincts. Stellar. He’d honed them through training and he’d demonstrated time and time again why he deserved his status as one of the best of the best. The Top Gun trophy sitting at his and Slider’s house in San Diego was a testament to the strength of his instincts. The fucking mission he’d flown just that day was a testament to his instincts. Fight, flight, or freeze. Time and time again, Tom Kazansky had shown that when placed in uncertain, perilous situations, situations wherein the proverbial rug had been yanked from under him and left him spiraling, he would always choose fight.

Pete Mitchell kissed him, and Tom Kazansky froze.

Maverick’s lips were soft against his, and his mouth was hot. His arm, still around Tom’s shoulders, was too, and it felt like a brand against the back of his neck. His presence was overwhelming, impossible to ignore. His touch and his skin and his heat and the taste of his lips against Tom’s were all that he could focus on, all that existed for him in the world right then. Every sense was infused with Maverick, alive, in front of him, kissing him in the way Tom had dreamed of doing himself, the way Tom had wanted to do for so, so long.

Iceman’s brain was still spinning circles like a car wheel stuck in the mud, so it was entirely on instinct that he opened his mouth to Maverick. Maverick tilted his head, used the arm around the back of Tom’s neck to pull him even closer, and for a split second, everything in the world was perfect.

The next, Ice shoved Maverick away so forcefully that he nearly tumbled off the bench. The arm that had been around Tom’s shoulders flew out behind him as he tried to catch his weight. His hand collided with the plastic bench with a harsh slap. For a long moment, the sound reverberated through the room. Maverick stared at Tom in disbelief. Tom stared back. He could see Maverick’s chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath and knew he was breathing just as harshly himself, although he couldn’t hear it over the rush of blood in his head.

If Iceman had been shocked still before, now his brain was trying to make up for it, thoughts rushing one after another so quickly that it left him dizzy. His heart was pounding—it had been since Maverick leaned in close and said babe, but this was a different kind of adrenaline that left him feeling cold and weak. He stared at Maverick, who was still gaping in shock, trying to wrap his head around everything that had happened in the last few minutes, and didn’t even know that he was going to speak until the words were out of his mouth. “What… what the hell was that?!”

“I kissed you,” Maverick responded. He still hadn’t moved, leaning against the arm that was flung out behind him, his entire body angled away from Tom’s. Tom felt hyper aware of every inch of distance, like electricity was crackling in the air between them.

Hearing it out loud did not make it feel any more real. It did, however, bring Tom’s attention back to their surroundings—to the fact that the two of them were still in the middle of the mess hall. Visions of him and Maverick being dragged off the Enterprise in handcuffs, of being court martialed, of ending up beggars on the streets, flashed through his mind. “Why?”

Some of the shock was starting to fade from Maverick’s expression. He looked both angry and adorably confused. “Because I wanted to? And I thought you wanted me to, also. You… said it was okay.”

Tom would’ve liked to comment on the fact that they were in public, and he fully planned on doing so until he heard Maverick’s words. He turned his head to the side and took a deep breath to collect himself, which was when he noticed that the mess hall was completely empty, save the two of them. Even Hollywood and Wolfman had gone, although Tom had no memory of them doing so.

He probably should care more about the fact that Maverick had just kissed him in one of the most public places in the middle of a fucking aircraft carrier. But all he could hear were the words because I wanted to, and all he could see was the earnest look on Maverick’s face as he’d said them, like he wasn’t saying one of the most batshit crazy things that Tom had ever heard come out of his mouth. And that wasn’t exactly an unimpressive list.

“You didn’t want to,” Tom informed Maverick, setting his jaw and tilting his head until he could look at him down his nose. Maybe if he said it with enough resolve, Maverick wouldn’t try to fight him and they could end this as painlessly as possible.

He did, of course. When had Maverick Mitchell ever taken the easy way out? Ice saw him clench his teeth and his eyes went narrow and flinty like he wanted to sock Ice in the mouth. It was a familiar expression from their first few weeks at TOPGUN, and Ice pointedly ignored the disappointment bubbling up in his chest. He recognized that expression on Maverick’s face. It did nothing to prepare him for the words that came out of Maverick’s mouth.

“What the fuck are you talking about? ‘Course I did. How the fuck would you be able to tell me whether or not I wanted to kiss you? Which I did, for the record. For a long-ass fucking time, actually.”

He was breathing hard, a little, after he’d finished speaking. His expression got progressively more pissed off the longer Iceman went staring and silently gaping, but he still couldn’t think of one single fucking word he wanted to say. He’d lost count of the number of times that day that Maverick Mitchell had rendered him speechless, and idly wondered if that was going to become something of a trend.

If there was one thing Tom had learned about Maverick in the past five weeks, though, it was that when he got angry and he felt it was justified, he did not hold back. Ice had been on the receiving end of it more than once in the early weeks at TOPGUN, but he didn’t think it had ever been quite like this.

In the absence of any sort of intelligent input from Tom, Maverick rambled on nervously. Each word that came out of his mouth was more unbelievable than the last.

“It was… it was hard, for me, after Goose’s death,” he said, fidgeting with his fingers and alternating between looking at Tom and looking anywhere else. “I mean, obviously. No one… no one really got it. Carole did, but she just lost her husband, and it was my fucking fault. I couldn’t do that to her, make her deal with… with me. Viper tried to help, I guess, and Charlie, but they just told me to fucking get over it. And then I left TOPGUN and it was like no one cared. But you visited me in the hospital and you told me it wasn’t my fault and, and you didn’t tell me to just move the fuck on with my life. And you were there, you could’ve blamed me or… or been an asshole, and you would’ve been right, but you didn’t. You… tried to make me feel better and you stayed in the air with me until SAR came to pick us up and you… and you saw me being a fucking mess and didn’t leave. You saved my goddamned life, Tom, and I don’t just mean today. So of fucking course I wanted to kiss you.”

He’d started out angry, but the longer Maverick continued speaking, the more the words seemed to take the wind from his sails. By the end, he was slumped in his seat. It was hard to see his face as his eyes were fixed firmly on his lap, but Tom could see enough to tell that his lip was trembling and his eyes were wet. He was tearing up a little himself, he thought, but his head was spinning too much to tell for sure.

His first coherent thought—aside from noticing Maverick’s reactions, of course, because Tom would always, always notice Maverick—was that he hadn’t thought Maverick was aware enough at the time of Goose’s death to realize how long Tom had stayed with him, or that he’d known who it was.

After another moment, his brain caught up a little and he realized how fucking stupid that thought was. Of course Maverick had noticed him, Ice had even seen him looking. And it wasn’t like there had been anyone else in the air with them on that hop for it to be. That was about as far as he got, though, before the rest of Maverick’s speech crashed into him. He’d come to the mess hall originally to talk to Maverick, he’d promised Slider that he would, and he was aware that he was doing a fucking shitty job of it, but what the fuck was he supposed to say to something like that?

It was Goose’s death that had been the thing to make Tom realize that he was in love with Maverick in the first place, but before Slider pointed it out, he never would have imagined that the reverse could be true. Even now, hearing unequivocally that it was, he still had a hard time believing it. A part of him, Tom realized now, had grown used to the idea of never saying anything. Now that the time was here—now that he found himself in a situation where he could speak up, now that it seemed like Tom’s feelings might, somehow, miraculously be mutual—he found himself freezing. He felt wrong-footed and out of his depth, like he was trying to fly an F-14 without having opened the NATOPS.

That did, however, sound like something Maverick Mitchell would do. Tom thought again about his resolve, how sure he had been that this was his chance and he was going to seize it, and how they’d ended up right back here, anyway. It made him smile, a little.

A hand, waving violently less than an inch in front of his face, jolted him out of his thoughts. He looked past it to see Maverick with a murderous expression on his face. His body was angled towards Tom’s, now, and he automatically leaned back at the tightly-coiled rage he could see in every line of Maverick’s torso. For a moment he was confused, but then he remembered that right, they were still sitting, alone, in the mess hall. Maverick had… Maverick had kissed him and then given the most rambly, most adorable confession Tom had ever heard. And Tom, for his part, had not kissed back, had almost shoved Maverick to the floor, and proceeded to sit there motionlessly, staring at Maverick with his mouth hanging open the entire time he’d been speaking.

Oh.

Stellar fucking confession, Tom mentally screamed at himself. Way to go, you goddamned idiot.

“Tom,” Maverick snapped, and Tom’s heart skipped a beat the way it always did. He didn’t think he’d ever, ever tire of hearing his real name from Maverick’s mouth. “Goddamn it. Will you say something.” 

And it wasn’t even a question, not really, but that was Maverick, wasn’t it? Brash and brazen, always sure when he wanted something, and willing to chase after it with a single-minded determination until he finally caught it. In some ways, he and Tom were alike in that regard—they were both dedicated enough, after all, to make it to the best of the best naval aviators, to make it to TOPGUN. But Maverick, Maverick carried that passion with him everywhere he went and wore his heart openly on his sleeve. It was something Iceman had always admired about him. It was something the Maverick that Ice had met would have said, the Maverick Tom had fallen in love with, the Maverick that he’d started to fear had been shattered when he went down in Hop 31.

Maybe that was why he finally said it. Looking into Maverick's eyes, at the way he was afraid but was stubbornly trying to pretend he wasn't, it was like he’d been pushing against a locked door that had suddenly been flung open. It didn't feel hard, anymore, to say the words.

“I love you.”

It was comical, almost, how quickly Maverick went utterly still. His green eyes were wide, and Tom could see the way the words had knocked him off his proverbial feet. He made no move, though, to take them back.

“I, you,” Maverick stuttered after several long moments. He still looked blindsided, but Tom supposed it was quicker than his own recovery had been. “What?”

“I love you.” It felt freeing, to say it again, and Tom could hear the smile in his own voice. Something warm and pleased had taken up residence in his chest. He’d never thought he'd get the chance to say it even once, and he liked the way the words tasted, liked the way they sounded when he said them to Maverick.

“No, you don't.”

The warm feeling evaporated and Ice couldn’t keep the scowl off his face. Well, he supposed this was probably how Maverick had felt. “Yes, I fucking do.”

“No,” Maverick said, and Ice frowned at the emphasis he placed on the word. “You don’t, you can’t, Tom, please, you can’t.”

He looked down and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, but not so quickly that Tom couldn’t tell that he was crying. A part of Tom was screaming at himself for ruining things when this was the happiest Maverick had been since Goose’s death, but Maverick had kissed him and Tom thought he might not push him away if Tom tried to comfort him. Cautiously, he scooted along the bench until their thighs were pressed together, reached out, and slid his arms around Maverick’s back. Like he had in the hospital—like he had every single time Tom had held him like this, he realized now—Maverick melted into the touch, clinging back like he was using all his strength to do it.

God, how could he have been so fucking stupid?

It was that to do it, for some reason, to convince him that Maverick had meant what he said when he’d told Tom you saved my life and of course I wanted to kiss you. The giddy joy that washed through him reminded him of how he’d felt buzzing the island with Maverick and he had to fight against the urge to smile and laugh and maybe punch the air like he was a teenager who’d just had his first kiss, because Maverick was still shaking in his arms and Tom could hear him taking shallow breaths to keep himself calm.

He didn’t stop himself, though, from cupping the back of Maverick’s neck with one hand, or from pressing a lingering kiss against his temple. “Deep breaths, sweetheart. Can you do that for me?”

Tom deliberately exaggerated his breathing and rewarded Maverick with another kiss when he felt him begin to copy the motion. He hadn’t meant to say the sweetheart, not really, but it had slipped out and now Tom wanted to say it a hundred times more.

Maverick pressed his forehead into the side of Tom’s neck and sniffled. “M’sorry. I keep… doing this, because I’m a fucking mess, Tom, and you can’t love me.”

“I can,” Tom told him gently, “and I do.”

Maverick gave a short laugh, but there was no humor in the sound. “Fucking how, though? My best friend’s dead and it’s my fault. I… I got into TOPGUN as an alternate, and I still almost dropped out. You’ve… you’ve said it yourself, I’m dangerous and you don’t trust me and you were right, because I almost fucking let you die, too. My parents, Goose, Charlie… everyone leaves eventually, and I don’t think I could do it, Tom, not if it was you.”

Ever since Goose’s death, Tom’s heart had broken for Maverick a hundred different ways, a hundred times over. He was so good, so wonderful and kind, and yet he’d been through so much that most people never had to experience in their lifetimes. He’d thought that he’d start getting used to this feeling, but it hadn’t happened so far. 

“I ask you not to speak like that about the man I love.”

Maverick’s only response was a sniffle, but Tom could tell from the hitch in his breathing that he’d heard. Absentmindedly, he rubbed a hand up and down Maverick’s back and tried to gather his strength. Words had never been his strong suit—he had to run through it forwards and backwards ten times over before saying anything. And even then, sometimes he wasn’t able to convey everything he wanted to. But Maverick had already taken his own chance, so Tom supposed now it was his turn to fly into the sun.

“Goose wasn’t your fault. I know you don’t believe me, but I’ll say it as many times as you need me to until you can. Neither was TOPGUN, or your parents, or any of it. They didn’t want to leave you, sweetheart, and I’m sure they’re so, so proud of everything you’ve done. I’m proud of you, Pete. You’ve overcome so much. And… I didn’t trust you at first, you’re right, but it was because I didn’t understand you. But I do now, and I’ll trust you with my life for as long as I live. I’ve… loved you since watching you go down on Hop 31, and I’m not going to leave you.”

With a shaky breath, Maverick lifted his head and reached a hand in between them to wipe at his face with the sleeve of his uniform shirt. He moved the other arm up to Tom’s neck and draped it across his shoulders. It brought them nose-to-nose, Maverick’s body angled towards his and so close that he was nearly sitting in Tom’s lap. He dropped both hands to Maverick’s hips with an unsteady breath of his own and tried not to think about how Maverick’s body felt under his hands.

“I think I’m gonna need you to tell me a lot. If… if you meant it, that you would.”

“I did.”

And that, finally, was enough to make him smile. It broke across his face like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. He dropped his other hand from his face, wrapped it around Tom’s shoulders on the other side. Iceman imagined the way they looked, what everyone else would see if they were to walk through the door right then. The mess was still empty, luckily, but there had to be staff still cleaning up in the kitchen, not to mention the possibility of someone needing either of the two of them and deciding to go searching. It was their careers if the wrong people caught them like this, but Iceman would sooner turn in his wings than pull away from Maverick, then or ever.

Tom rubbed his thumbs in circles in the divots of Maverick’s hips. The action made him smile for a moment, before he swung his other leg over the side of the bench. In one smooth motion, Maverick straddled the bench and climbed into Tom’s lap, pulling him closer with the arms around his shoulders. Tom froze. He had to look up at Maverick like this, and he looked smug at the fact. It wasn’t quite enough, though, to hide the genuine smile.

“I love you, too, by the way,” Maverick whispered, nudging his nose against Tom’s. “If you hadn’t figured it out.”

“You know, I did get that impression,” Tom whispered back, his voice hoarse. He could feel tears burning against the backs of his eyes and looked up at Maverick through a shimmering haze. He was blurry and distorted and the most beautiful thing Tom had ever seen.

Maverick gave a dramatically exaggerated pout. “Smartass.”

“You love it.”

“Hmm.”

Tom snorted and tried to shake his head in exasperation, but he knew it was ruined by the way he couldn't stop smiling. He didn’t know if he’d ever felt this happy in his life. Nothing—not graduating from the Academy, not winning the Top Gun trophy, not even buzzing the island with Maverick on his wing—nothing had ever, ever, compared to this. His heart was pounding, his hands were sweaty, and he felt giddy deep in his chest in a way that made him want to scream into the wind.

“Hey, Tom,” said Maverick. “When I said you could be my wingman, you know I meant it. Wingman, partner, whatever you want for as long as you want it, I’m yours.”

The entire world went very, very still. “It’s illegal, Pete. They’d court martial us if they found out. It’d… be dangerous.”

Maverick smiled winningly. “I am dangerous.”

Tom’s laugh sounded suspiciously like a sob, even to his own ears. “Yeah. Yeah, you are. God. It’s a yes, you know it’s a yes. Always. You’re worth it, Pete, you’re always worth it.”

Maverick sniffed. Removed a hand from Tom’s shoulder and wiped it against his nose. “Fuck. I love you, honey. Kiss me. It’s your turn.”

“It’s my turn?” Tom arched a brow, as haughty as he could manage with tears all over his face.

“Yeah.” Maverick wiggled impatiently in his lap and Tom’s hands spasmed against his hips. By the look on Maverick’s face he knew exactly what he was doing, the little shit. “I kissed you last, it’s your turn, now kiss me.”

“Bossy.”

“Oh my god, Tom, I swear to fuck—”

Tom laughed. He looked up into Maverick’s face, at his flushed cheeks, at his tousled hair, at his eyes, bright and alive, alive, alive. He lost himself in the green light in Pete Mitchell’s eyes, the light he’d been chasing for so long, then reached out and grabbed it.

Tom Kazansky closed his eyes, leaned in, and kissed him.