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He didn’t know what he felt. He didn’t really know what he was doing either. Did he even want to leave? Was he really thinking straight? Well, probably not, considering the situation he was in.
But for now, he had one plan in mind. Empty his locker of polaroids from his time here already and take them with him. He didn’t want anyone that decided to snoop around his locker to go and take his stuff. Because if he loses those memories of the last few weeks of Goose’s life, then god. He wouldn’t know what to do with himself. Those last few fleeting moments captured in stills, physical objects he could hold and keep with him for as long as he wanted, which might as well be forever considering everything.
Maverick sighs through his nose and slows his pace as he nears the lockers. No-one else would be there, there were hops happening over his head and lessons going on everywhere else. A moment of peace he could have before the chaos of the rest of the class bombarded the rooms.
And then there was the door. He swallows and shifts his duffle to his left hand as he reaches for the handle, preparing himself for the cold and empty room just behind it.
Only it wasn’t empty.
Maverick stops dead in his tracks, the heels on his boots clicking on the hard tiled floor as he stares at the pilot sat on the bench.
Iceman wrenches his head up and stares at him.
He swallows, coming further in and letting the door click shut behind him, the motion creating the feeling of privacy in the already sound-proof room. “You alright?” he asks slowly, well aware that he probably was not.
Ice nods jerkily, looking back to his lap and shoving his left leg back down to the floor from where he’d lifted it up.
If anyone was okay, it was absolutely not Iceman. Even just by standing there, Maverick could see his shields of permafrost sliding back up around him, encasing him in his ever-present and ever-cold personality.
“You sure?” He frowns and edges slowly over to where he was sitting, putting his duffle on the bench to his right but leaving a respectable gap between the two of them.
“Mhm,”
Maverick narrows his eyes slightly, looking at him even though Ice was staring directly down onto the floor. “Really?”
“Yes Mav I’m fine,” There was an underlying hoarseness to his brush-it-off tone that Maverick suspected most people wouldn’t be able to pick up.
He waits for a moment, seeing if Ice would in fact do anything to prove his point, like get up and leave. He doesn’t, so he assumes it was alright to nudge him into telling him.
“You know you can tell me,” he says, looking at Ice’s hand near his own. “I’m not gonna judge you or anything,”
“Can I?”
“Yes,” He replies, relieved that he’d been able to invoke a response from the heavily shut-down blond sat next to him, reaching slowly for his hand. “Of course you can,”
Ice turns his head a fraction to look at their hands no less than a millimetre apart on the bench.
Maverick watches him for a second, then switches his eyes to their hands, letting him take as long as he needs. The tips of his fingers, as he’d kind of expected, somehow, were cold, despite it being as hot of a day as it was. But he doesn’t move his hand away as he gently lays his hand on top of his, which was not what he’d expected.
“Then.. I’m-” Ice sniffs. “Sorry... about Goose,”
Maverick lifts his head up to look at him, shocked to say the least. Ice was sorry? Ice was sorry about losing his RIO? What?
“I know how much he meant to you not just as a RIO but as a friend and I’m- just so sorry,” He says, his voice quiet and tentative, like he was scared to say the wrong thing.
“Hey, Ice it’s okay,” he exhales, gently sliding his fingers under his as best as he could with how much he was pressing down onto the bench and squeezing gently.
Ice shifts slightly, sniffing again, like he wasn’t used to the touch. Maybe he wasn’t.
That was a thought. “You don’t have to be sorry,”
“Yes I do-” he gets out.
“No you don’t..”
A sudden, unexpected sob rocks Ice’s shoulders, and he puts his head down and away from him, as if to dull it, to hide it.
If anything was not okay right now, it was the fact that Iceman felt like that. As if he was unable to let out whatever he was feeling, and Maverick for one knows entirely too well how that feels. He hated it, and could safely draw a conclusion that Ice did too. So he does the one thing he could do well.
“C’mere,” Maverick murmurs, shifting closer to him and wrapping his arms around him. To hell with the idea that they were both rivals. Especially since the two of them had experienced it more-or-less together.
There’s no more than a second of the two of them being in close contact like they were before Ice’s breath hitches and he buries his head into Maverick’s neck and unashamedly sobs.
Maverick shuts his eyes, breathing in the smell of Ice’s fancy citrus-scented shampoo. This was him grieving Goose, he realises now, obviously he hated exposing his emotions more than Maverick did, and the whole situation of crying in the locker rooms of TOPGUN of all places he could have let down his guard, was completely unnerving for him. And since it was so awkward and so formidable for him, Maverick was doing the best he could to make it just that little bit more bearable, letting him tell him what he wanted to at his own pace, not pressuring to get up and over the wave that had hit him like others might do.
Maverick detested showing his grief to people, whether that be strangers or even just people he wasn’t that close too. Obviously Goose was not one of these people. But now that what had happened had happened, he’d been struggling on with hiding these feelings of grief from even himself for the past week or however long it had been. He wasn’t exactly sure.
But the thing that he does know, was that Ice had let his guard down, intentionally or not, right here, on him, as the two of them sat there on the bench.
What was strange was that he had no idea that Ice even felt remotely sorry or guilty about the accident. He hadn’t done anything to make him believe he did, at all, even, except for a murmured sorry when he’d first come back into lessons, like everybody else had given him.
But Ice being so… open like this, this was unusual to even imagine. Iceman was, as his callsign suggested, ice-cold, emotionless, neutral in every situation.
But whatever this part of Ice was, it didn’t fall under the mental image Maverick had created of what his callsign covered and consisted of. No.
This felt like Tom Kazansky. Tom Kazansky being the pilot leaning against him muffling his sobs in the neck of his t-shirt. Tom Kazansky apologising for the accident that was nobody’s fault.
Not Iceman. Not Iceman who comes up with quips to Maverick as fast as he could accelerate. Not Iceman who was the shut-off, emotionless pilot who flies by the book and never breaks a rule and never takes off his mask.
This felt like Ice- Tom, whoever he really was, had taken off the mask he’d so obviously carefully created as a facade to hide what he was and what he felt. Whether that be grief or guilt or hurt or perhaps even all three. Maverick didn’t want to assume anything about him, like why he had come up with Iceman to hide? Protect himself? From the world with, or if Iceman was actually just to do with his flying. But he could guess if nothing else.
“Ice, are you okay?” He asks once he’d relaxed, slightly, against him in a more comfortable position.
“A little,” he says slowly, sniffing again. “If that’s even the right word to use,”
“What would be the word?”
Ice sort of shrugs and shakes his head. “I don’t really know,”
So he was still Tom, at least to Maverick’s detective skills of honing in on the uncertain word that was ‘really’. “That’s okay,”
But then he takes his head off Maverick’s shoulder and edges away from him, and Maverick watches, almost disappointed in seeing his frozen walls encase him once again. “Um, thanks but, I’ve gotta go now,”
He frowns, watching the blond push out an exhale as he stares at the floor, gripping the edge of the bench so hard his knuckles were turning white, then as he pulls his head up and attempts to set his shoulders back, stretching them out and acting quite well like he was going to stand up and leave.
Which would have fooled Maverick had he not gone still, shoulders still incredibly tensed up, and resumed his frozen stare at the floor beneath their feet.
“Do you have to go?”
“Yes,” Ice hisses, glancing at him, shooting daggers for a millisecond before he catches his eyes and he, for loss of a better word, melts again under Maverick’s gaze. “...No,”
“What do you wanna say?”
“The lessons almost over and if I start talking its guaranteed that they’ll be coming in here for some reason or another and see us talking together,”
“Is that a bad thing?” Maverick asks slowly, hyper-aware of the distrust Ice laced the word ‘us’ with.
“Yes- no, I mean- it- it’d be pretty embarrassing for the both of us getting caught talking to each other,”
“Okay.. what if, we go somewhere else, then?”
“Where do you… suggest?” he glances at him again.
“Like, the sea front or, somewhere private where its guaranteed no-one would find us?” he says, artfully sneaking in similar language to what he’d just used to prove his opposite point.
“That isn’t guaranteed,”
“Well it’s more-so than the others finding us here,”
Seeing as the day was very nearly over, they were able to get well away from the base before anyone even arrived in the locker rooms where they had been sitting. Maverick had managed to stuff the contents of the locker into his duffle bag as fast as he could, including the stack of polaroids that had very nearly fallen out of the sides of it. And then Ice wanted to get changed from the tan short-sleeved uniform that he was in, so he was able to drop off the bag at his house as he waited for Ice to join him.
Unfortunately, there was a thought that nipped the back of his head that was what if Ice just never turns up again?
Even worse, there was a worryingly high chance of that actually being reality, so Maverick spends the five minutes just about staying afloat in the ocean of insecurities and worries that were threatening to drown him, until Ice comes out again.
“Sorry for keeping you waiting,” The blond says as he turns to shut the door, now dressed in similar attire to Maverick, a dark royal blue t-shirt and black jeans.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Maverick says, brushing his apology off and trying to hide the exhale of utmost relief at seeing Ice again, which is something he’d never thought he’d feel.
Ice kind of smiles at him, it was a smile where he just pressed his lips together, no real upturn of them. He knew that smile like it was the back of his hand, he’d done one like it so many times.
The walk down to the beach was quiet, the stillness only broken by a few cawing seagulls overhead. Luckily, being a Friday, most other people would be either at the O Club or some other place like it, or on their way, so almost nobody took a second glance at them both on the path down to the beach.
The beach itself was clear of people, so there was unlimited space for them to sit anywhere they pleased, of which they chose a little space on the sea wall, nearby a collection of shells that someone had taken from the beach just below.
“So…” Maverick starts, breaking their silence that had followed them since they left Ice's house.
“So,” Ice repeats.
“What did you wanna say?” he asks, leaning back on his arms and glancing at him to his left.
Ice sighs, his eyes on the beach below them. “Like what I said before, I’m… sorry about Goose,”
“You.. you d-”
“Yeah, I know,” Ice interrupts. “I shouldn’t be, because it’s my fault,”
Maverick blinks at his confession. What?
“You don’t have to say it’s not, I know it is, I’ve been over and over it, all of what happened and it all sparks from when I-”
“Ice, woah, it’s- it’s not your fault?” Maverick steps in, obviously this conversation was uncomfortable for him, but even then, he was guilt tripping himself.
Ice glares at him. “I didn’t take the shot,”
“I wasn’t patient,”
“I didn’t take the shot because I was being too much of a perfectionist and therefore slowing everything down,”
“That isn’t what happened,” Maverick shakes his head, not wanting this whole thing to turn sour. “I know it’s not,” He’d been over what had happened as many times as Ice had, as it seemed like.
“I could have taken that shot and got tone and then it would have been over and you wouldn’t have had to try and take it yourself and got stuck in that-no, my jetstream, Mav!”
“Ice-”
“Everything about that day points to it all being my fault, so I don’t know how you’re accepting my apologies like it wasn’t,” Ice wasn’t shouting, it was almost worse that he wasn’t, it created a sort of deep ache inside of him just seeing him this upset.
“I know it feels like that for y-”
“It feels like that because it is,”
“No, look, please just listen to me,” Maverick says almost helplessly, unconsciously reaching for his hand.
“Don’t touch me,” Ice’s voice was full of venom as he yanks his hand out of his reach.
Maverick glances down for a second, compiling his thoughts into what he thinks would be a compelling argument against Ice’s own.
“You can try and change my mind but I doubt that-”
“Ice. Please, if you’re gonna believe anything I say please just believe that I don’t blame you, okay? I don’t blame you for what happened and I never will, I may blame myself but even then, the whole thing was an accident,”
“Accidents are done by someone,”
“Not this one,” he says. “Please don’t blame yourself for it,”
Ice stares at him, jaw clenched.
“Please,” Maverick looks back at him, quietly determined to get his point across.
“Why don’t you hate me?”
“Why.. why would I hate you?”
Ice doesn’t reply, turning his head away from Maverick’s gaze, tears in the bottom of his eyes catching the light that sparkled in the setting sun ahead of them.
“Ice…” He tilts his head, concern and empathy almost overwhelming his senses. “Ice I don’t hate you,”
“I killed your best friend, how could you even have a scrap of sympathy for me?” Ice’s words were breaking deep fissures into his chest, breaking his heart.
“You… you didn’t kill him,”
Maverick can only watch as a tear falls from his eye and drips down his cheek, helpless to try and alleviate some of the hurt he was feeling because he knew what Ice would do if he tried. But being Maverick Mitchell, he tries anyway.
“Ice come here,”
He shuts his eyes, tight, making no move toward him, but equally none away from him.
Maverick glares inwardly at himself, detesting the toxic idea of ‘being a man, and especially a military one at that, you don’t have emotions’ that society had indoctrinated into them both countless times over. So he decides to once and for all rebel against it, edging closer to him and sliding his arms around Ice’s shoulders, trying his hardest to get him to lean into him. “Come on, come on, let go...”
“Mav, I’m fine I swear-” Ice’s voice betrays him and cracks in two on the last word.
“Shut up no you’re not,” He says, running his hand through his hair. “And that’s okay. It’s okay to grieve, I’m not gonna stop you,”
Ice, no wait, Tom wraps his hands around Maverick’s middle, shoulders heaving with heart-wrenching sobs.
And that is where they sit for the next half an hour, Maverick gently murmuring reassurances to the pilot in throws of grief who was sobbing uncontrollably in his arms. Then when both of them felt like they could, they stumble back to Maverick’s apartment, switch on some ridiculous Friday night show, and eat the last of the oreos he had. Both of them thought that staying away from the lure of the ‘hey it’s Friday let’s all relax and get ourselves morbidly drunk’ and therefore drinking alcohol of any sorts, would be a good idea. So they don’t.
And then when Saturday dawns, they’ll wake up, awkwardly and embarrassingly close and squished against each other on Maverick’s couch, but not hungover and feeling a hundred times worse.