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“Sir, we still need to nail the first course. We can’t move on to coffin corner, yet.”
It’s cruel, really, what the Navy asks of its members. Maverick stops his trek across the tarmac to address Phoenix, though the other aviators are clearly hanging around to hear what he has to say. He wants to be able to tell them that he’s sure they will do okay — don’t get him wrong, Maverick completely believes they all have the potential (they just need to believe it too) — but it’s clear to anyone who opens the mission brief that this is a suicide mission. Someone won’t be coming home.
Before Maverick can reply, Phoenix’s eyes skitter over his shoulder, widening, followed by a stiff salute.
“Admiral.” Phoenix’s voice is strained, the tension still clinging to all of Maverick’s students as they follow form in saluting. Maverick feels a prickle down his spine as eyes land on him; eyes that he knows to be a cool grey blue.
He sets his jaw and begins to turn; a herculean task, seeming to fight against brutal rapids just to swing around his shoulders, hips — now plant the feet — lifting his arm and head into a salute to see that—
~
—Tom “Iceman” Kazansky is facing Maverick. He’s smiling wildly, the same as he did after Maverick became his wingman, though it’s diluted with something sweeter, softer. Maverick’s heart swells because, God, this man is so gorgeous, and every damn thing he does makes Pete want to carve a fucking cavern into his soul and tuck Ice away inside.
It’s ridiculous, and he truly has no idea how he came to be so in love with him, but with each meetup, call, letter, and flight (of course) that they share, Maverick feels a tenderness within him. Something, perhaps, similar to that soft sweetness in Ice’s smile — and with the Iceman radiating what is possibly pure warmth in his expression, Pete can’t help but look on in awe as Ice’s eyes look right…
Over Maverick's shoulder.
The rest of the wedding guests have turned to look at the bride, but his eyes stay locked on Tom Kazansky. Maverick is sure Sarah must look beautiful in her gown and, given Ice’s expression, must reflect a glimpse of the incredible future they will share. The music surges as Ice’s head turns following his about-to-be wife, away from Pete. The swell in his heart is too big now; it’s an aching wound, each pulse more painful than the last.
It’s okay, though.
Even as Maverick feels his throat catch, he thinks that at the end of the day, this is better for everyone. Ice gets to marry the love of his life, a woman, and Maverick will just have to get over this. He’s still young — much time is left for him to pick up women he meets at bars or make out with men in dark alleys behind them — and just maybe he could find someone else he loves as much as Ice.
Each vow the happy couple exchange is another line in Maverick’s sentence — the whole wedding may as well be a court trial — and he is fated to be left behind by those he loves in some way or another; in life or death.
Later, as guests let themself get swept up into dances, Maverick sits alone in an empty room, champagne in hand, grimacing when he hears the light, joyful tones of Ice’s voice near the door; somehow standing out against the loud—
~
—Bickering of the Navy’s best aviators on the comms. They quiet up quickly when they hear the Admiral’s coarse voice over the line and listen to his quick briefing of ‘the Navy is so proud — sorry that we’re sending you on a suicide mission — work hard, you guys’ and thanks them, though not before throwing in the line:
“--and I’m sure you will all prove yourselves greatly, with the help of an excellent teacher, of course.”
Maverick doesn’t even know what to do with that — so instead he blocks it out, lets a numbness take over his chest, and turns his place towards the training course area to go pretend to kill his students, as any good teacher does.
He finds himself realising he’s a little relieved; only as if Ice was going to choose any day to visit, it was nice of him to choose the one where Maverick would be up in the air, dealing with the crushing pressure of g-force rather than the one he would feel standing next to Ice in the observation room. He forces his thoughts solely towards the mission and the young pilots he needs to shoot down; lets himself loosen up enough for the sarcastic quips he favours, and that he knows endears him slightly to his students.
Then, Coyote almost dies because gravity’s a bitch, and as the panic’s adrenaline begins to wind down, it’s kicked right back up again when Phoenix and Bob have to eject after a bird strike.
He lands his plane, fends off the other stressed students (Maverick feels a little proud that Rooster puts aside his grudge to make sure his friends are okay) — assuring them ‘Yes I am going to check on them now, they will be okay, I will tell you when the doctors let them have visiting hours or leave, etc.’ — and hops on his motorcycle to drive over to the hospital. Because, of course, Maverick can never really outrun his sources of emotional turmoil, Ice is waiting for him outside the lobby — uncaring of the public’s curious glances or the gaping from those who recognise the COMPACFLT — and he smiles at Pete mildly before—
~
—Ice invites Maverick to the hospital to meet his first child.
Sarah Kazansky gives Maverick a tired smile, looking ever the angel she is, as she lifts her arms and gently deposits a bundle of fabric into his hold.
“My daughter.” Ice’s voice is thick with emotion, yet so proud, and while Maverick doesn’t raise his head to look at him, he can just imagine it; Ice staring at Pete holding this child — their child — with an indescribable amount of happiness.
However, the little girl in Maverick’s arms has the curve of Sarah’s nose and her mousy brown hair. Chubby red cheeks, flailing arms, and quiet coos; she is the living, breathing proof that Tom and Sarah Kazansky are eternally in love.
If I could give this to you, some horrible part of Pete thinks, could you love me instead?
Alas; fate, God, the damn universe decreed that Pete would never be able to give Ice this future: a happy legal marriage, a child born of their very flesh combined.
Ice extends a hand to caress his daughter's head.
“Her name is Danielle.”
“Danielle,” Maverick repeats in a whisper. “Hello.”
Danielle, making Maverick want to cry, clumsily extends a hand out to his face. This makes Ice huff out something joyful; Pete looks up at him finally and—
He’s smiling gently at Pete, eyes shining.
“She likes you. I knew she would — like father, like daughter.”
Pete’s heart clenches—
~
—as he and Ice sit side-by-side, his brain still flicking between worry for his aviators and a pained confusion over the Kazansky’s presence.
It’s awkward, and the quiet of the hospital waiting room is jarring after the constant roar of jets, warning alarms, and his motorcycle. It feels slightly surreal when a nurse comes up to the pair of them, waiting around like parents concerned for their children, to guide them to the rooms Phoenix and Bob have been placed in.
They’ve both gotten out relatively unscathed as far as ejections go — some mild bruising and frazzling of their nerves, but they’re brave kids — and the nurse says they’ll be released from observation later in the evening.
Ice watches Maverick from the corner of the room; he feels the eyes on him, hears the short exhale of laughter when Maverick goes as far as to offer Phoenix a fist bump when she says she’ll be ready to beat Maverick in tomorrow’s hop.
They leave the students in their rooms and exit into—
~
—The hospital hallway; white, clean, pristine — broken up by the giant figure of a pilot and other much shorter characters. Slider, long legs and all, was on deployment during the birth of Danielle, but he’s there for the birth of Ice and Sarah’s son; waiting with Maverick, little Danielle, Sarah’s sister and mother on flimsy plastic chairs. The nurse who opens the door asks for only a few at a time, so Slider and Maverick wait back more while Sarah’s family goes in first.
Slider sits back in his chair, crossing his legs.
“Can’t believe they’ve had two kids now. I only just got hitched last year!”
“Yes, I was there,” Maverick grimaces, “I remember… some? Of that wedding?”
The two look at each other a moment before chuckling at a lesson learnt; they really couldn’t and shouldn’t drink as much as they could when they were younger.
Despite the flash of drunken memories, Maverick sobers quickly.
“They are really in love.”
Something morose slips into his voice, and Slider catches it, tilting his head. Maverick turns his face away and pretends he didn’t say it like that. Slider doesn’t say anything.
Fifteen minutes later, Sarah’s family swaps out with them — Danielle already asking confused questions about what on Earth she has to do now as a sister at 2 years old — and the two men are greeted by the Kazansky couple.
“Ron,” Ice smiles when he grabs his friend for a hug; after which Slider moves on to greeting Sarah as Ice rounds on Maverick, “Mav.”
One syllable, and Pete is melting in the warmth that Ice says it with. As Ice moves forward with his arms going to encircle him, Maverick’s breath stops as Ice’s hands seem to skim over his forearms to reach his shoulders. They end up in what Maverick can only describe as an embrace, rather than a hug, Ice letting one of his hands sit over the back of his neck to hold him close.
He feels the years of stress (mostly from pissed off admirals) flake off him as he basks in Ice’s presence; gosh, Maverick wishes they could do this more often and for hours instead of the few measly seconds he gets four or five times a year.
He and Slider get to peer down at the newly born Christopher, still pink-faced from his previous crying (and looking quite startled at the two men suddenly staring at him), but have to leave before the parking fees on Slider’s car rack up too high, with the promise that they’d meet up soon at the Kazansky household.
Slider drives Maverick to the hotel he’s been staying at during this leave, but stops him before he gets out of the car.
“Maverick, hey,” Slider says, his voice neutral. Maverick pauses — he’d really just like to go to his room and lick the wounds that reopen every time he sees Ice happy in a way that Pete could never make him — but lets Slider continue.
“I could be wrong, and I mean no offence if I am, but I was wondering… Is it Ice?”
Maverick weighs his options. Did Slider see him drag a guy into some cranny to mess around sometime, and make connections from there? Or was reality — that the fabric of Pete’s existence is desperately interwoven with everything that Ice has ever done or said to him, so as not to fall apart from despair — just on more of a display than he thought.
“I don’t know what you mean.” Pete’s voice cracks over the words. Slider looks at him some more.
“I’m sorry, Mitchell. That you can’t… have who you love.”
Pete thinks about his father, his mother, Goose, the good-looking men younger Maverick would have loved to be able to flaunt in public, and, as always, Ice. Slider reassures him he won’t tell anyone — Unfortunate for the Navy members that would love to see him discharged, but very good for Maverick — and lets him escape the car to go—
~
—Back to his housing unit. Walking away from Ice is the best and worst thing that Maverick has done today. The house is quiet, as quiet as his old unit from TOPGUN in ‘86 after Hop 31 had felt, and all Maverick can do is—
~
—Collapse into the closest armchair as Ice closes the front door. Maverick babysits their kids while the ex-husband and wife go to court or their lawyer or whoever to finalise it (Maverick doesn’t really know how divorce works), and he thinks feebly about the one time he had fantasised about something like this. He had been drinking one night, after he’d had dinner with the then-happily-married Kazanskys, and his woozy thoughts twisted some fucked reality where a faceless Sarah coldly divorced her husband on the spot (something Maverick now knows take longer than a simple ‘We’re divorced, bye.’) and Maverick got to sweep a weepy Iceman off his feet and ride off into the sunset while passionately making out.
He had followed that up by drinking even more as he tried to drown out that which he knew revealed him as a horrible, cruel person.
Despite the amicable split — an easy distribution of assets, shared custody of children throughout the year, a good friendship that was only strengthened by their years of love — Ice still clearly sees the divorce as a failure on his end, and Maverick has to grit his teeth through his comfort of the miserable man as to not say anything he would regret like ‘Hey, now that you’re single, we could hook up!’ And so sitting around with a discontent Ice is—
~
—How Maverick finds himself the next day.
He’s back in a clinic with Ice, somehow.
(He knew exactly how; Ice showed up to his house, said ‘cancer checkup, come with me’ and how the fuck could Pete Mitchell say no to that?)
He listens to Ice’s main specialist discuss how he’s been feeling, has he talked to the other specialist in Washington, has he been taking precautions around sick people — oh, yes! How are your kids doing now… — the whole works that Maverick hadn’t heard since he sat in on Carole’s appointments.
Ice, Maverick notices, has grown bored of the checkup, sighing wistfully whenever he hears a plane pass nearby in the sky. A date is set for a follow-up appointment, and Ice leads him and Maverick out of the building. They took advantage of the warm afternoon weather to walk to the clinic from base, so they begin the journey back, walking down along the docks that are surprisingly quiet.
“How have you been?” Ice breaks the silence between them.
“I think I’m supposed to ask you that.”
Maverick doesn’t want to talk about himself. He fears Ice will see right through him. (How funny that he finds himself mirroring Charlie’s words, after all this time.)
This two sentence conversation was somehow part of the few words that they had exchanged over the recent years that weren't work adjacent or in regards to their mutual friends. Pete’s mind skimmed over the far past, the fond memories that only sharpen with time as he replayed them over and over in his mind. And then he reaches what tore him and Ice apart. That he, Maverick—
~
—had often worried that he would spill his precious, deepest secret during the various get-togethers he had with Ice over the years that resulted in a very tipsy Mav, but he never thought it would happen on a cold, extremely sober night, on a hospital roof.
“God, Ice, I… it’s treatable, right?”
“Yes. Various treatments; surgery, radiation, chemo.”
The sore throat Ice had complained about had made his voice gruff, but as the condition had worsened — revealed to be throat cancer now that Ice had finally made a doctor’s appointment — it left the words coming out of his mouth sound hoarse and rattled.
Maverick was worried, really worried — Carole’s death had been a long one, painful for her and her son, and it had turned cancers from ‘a thing that people sometimes get and die from’ to a real possibility for him and those around him he loved. And here, it had struck again, in the man that Pete loved so dearly.
“You’ll live,” Maverick injects any determination he can muster into his voice, “You’ll survive this.”
“Not going to– roll over… let it take me. No.” Ice says, before adding almost absently; “...Need to… trash cigarettes.”
Maverick has to smile. Ice is strong, always has been, in figure and spirit; there was a reason he was rising through the Navy’s ranks quickly, earning his reputation as the intimidating, unflinching Iceman. If cancer wanted to pick a battle with him, then it was certainly going to be a hard one.
“But… it’s later stage than doc– doctors like.”
Maverick’s smile drops. They’d been too late to catch Carole, and now, what, he might have to watch Ice fall too?
“Ice. Don’t. I’m not letting you go like this.”
Whatever sparked between them at TOPGUN, it’s bright and heavy; a star. Maverick knew how dangerous this is — let it burn too quickly, and it’ll collapse, becoming a black hole, consuming Pete’s entire being and dragging him into a void of loneliness — so instead, he lets it simmer over decades; a shining thing, always in the corner of his vision lest he hurt himself looking at it too closely.
But now, rather than the ruinous vacuum Pete feared, all his love for the maybe-dying man beside him has coalesced into a dense ball of chaos that plans to burst into a much more disastrous supernova.
Ice huffs, almost fond of Maverick’s insistence.
“Not really… how it works, Mitchell.”
“No, you– you don’t get it… I can’t let you go, period.” Maverick’s looking down a slope, puts one tentative foot forward, and tumbles all the way down. “I’m in love with you.”
The confession leaves the space between them colder than the late-night chill.
Everything between them is over; the thought clamps itself around Pete’s heart and squeezes — he’s spewed all his shameful star organs and space dust everywhere and Ice is just going to gather it up to form new baby planets of disgust and hatred that he will force to orbit the failed Maverick star like a cursed planetary system halo — and Ice is still fucking silent, not even breathing out until…
“Oh.”
‘Oh,’ Ice says, and now Maverick’s lean on the railing is the only thing keeping him up as he feels the little hope in his body being eviscerated.
It’s the same thing Ice had said to Maverick over the phone when he first heard of Carole’s fatal illness, followed up by his still awkward condolences, and it lets him know he’s just killed the greatest friendship he’s had since 1986.
(They don’t say anything else. Maverick leaves after saying bye to Sarah, Slider, and the kids; when he’s settling onto his motorcycle, he looks back at the hospital one last time. Ice is standing at the front, the sliding doors trying to shut but always opening again when they sense him again, and it’s such a strange, complicated look on his face that Maverick can’t even begin to figure out a single emotion that Ice could be feeling.
Ice never brings it up, and Maverick wouldn’t even dare. Communication between them is stilted; sometimes jagged and unnatural, sometimes so smooth it feels entirely fake. They just don’t really talk.)
~
“Maverick. We should talk.”
The sun hangs low in the sky, bouncing off the water and leaving shadows stretching far to meet the pavement that Maverick walks down. He can hear Ice walking close behind him — a position Maverick knew he hated; Ice was never a follower, always leading himself to his destiny — and his voice is rough as he speaks.
“...Maverick.”
He’s not ignoring Ice, but Maverick is still stripped raw by the stresses of the past few days — Coyote’s g-LOC, the birdstrike and ejection, the emotional tornado of Ice’s cancer checkup and general presence — he doesn’t know if his heart can handle ‘a talk’ right now. They’re almost at Maverick’s housing unit, he just needs to make it a block or two more—
“Pete!”
This time, his name is accompanied by a brush of fingertips over Pete’s shoulder, muffled by the layers of his clothes, but still sending sparks dancing through skin as it had every other time they’d touched. It’s the first time they’ve made physical contact with each other since Pete’s ill-timed (there never was a good time, he thinks, and there never will be) confession; besides in the soft daydreams that accompany him to volleyball nets on beaches, or in convenience store aisles with selections of spearmint gum.
Maverick stops walking, tries to alleviate what is probably the edge of a panic attack by tapping his fingers on his thighs, and turns, wholly unprepared for this conversation, to look at Ice.
“Ice.”
Maverick winces at his own cracked voice. He watches Ice draw back his still extended hand into a nervous fist before letting it fall to his side. The ring that Maverick’s never seen him without glints in the dying light.
“Pete, I…” Ice starts, but gets frustrated at the silence he can’t seem to fill, exhaling sharply and looking towards the bay beside them. The water makes quiet swishes as it laps against the rocks; Pete’s thoughts follow the push and pull. Should I just go? The option is tantalising; an easy escape route for the both of them.
“I’m sorry.”
Ice’s words freeze the movement of the tide in Pete’s mind. Maverick side eyes him, feeling a little incredulous.
“For what?”
Ice turns to face him fully again, and this time, their eyes catch, completely locked. Pete has never truly been able to look away from Ice, not in any way that matters, but now he feels like the other man is caught in that same trap he’s been willingly stuck in for decades.
“I ruined us. That night, when you told me how you feel,” Ice says each word with a startling conviction, but every gap between them is filled with hesitation; fear, “–or… felt. I was scared and stupid, and I disregarded your feelings even as a friend. And in doing so, I ended our relationship, which I want you to understand is something I cherish.”
Maverick’s thoughts get tripped on the use of present tense — cherish, not ‘cherished’ — but it doesn’t stop his brain from feeling flipped upside down because;
This is all wrong.
“Ice– Ice, no, you didn’t–” Maverick’s sentences are faulting, “It was all my fault, I shouldn’t have said anything; I could have just gotten over it all–”
Ice begins shaking his head at him the second he realises what Maverick is saying, and by the end, is so fed up with it that he grabs Maverick by the shoulders to shake him.
“Stop! Stop– Just. Listen. I was afraid; you know how my father was and the Navy with that shitty Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, and I was married at the time, but God, Mav, when you told me how you felt, they weren’t what scared me the most.
What scared me is that I felt the same. Still do. I’ve been in love with you for who knows how long, and I only realised it when you spelled it out with your own feelings first.”
Maverick wants to be able to wax poetically in a diary or something, later, that time stopped when Ice confessed or something equally romantic, but the world was still moving. The waves kept their rhythm, trees swayed in the light breeze, even a fucking pair of birds flew overhead. Ice kept squeezing his hands where they still sat on Maverick’s shoulders, and his breathing got a little harder and quicker with each stressful moment that Maverick stayed completely frozen.
It was almost unfair, how Ice was so here, warm and present, in the moment, but Pete was miles, years, away — he was attending a wedding, meeting someone else's child, a second child, a divorce aftermath, a dishonourable confession — he doesn’t know what to do.
He’s burning cold in the wake of the Iceman’s love, twitching as ropes from the trap he built around himself close in on his throat, his body is splitting itself open, and all his innards are coming outwards, guts on the floor; vulnerable.
Can Pete really be blamed for crying?
Ice is panicking — Maverick has never let himself break down like this in front of anyone, especially not him — and he ends up letting streams of worry, that he would usually hide behind his Iceman persona, waterfall out. Pete would probably drown in them if not for Ice’s arms coming down to encircle him, clutching at the back of his jacket.
Maverick grabs fistfuls of Ice’s coat right back.
“Ice. Oh God, Ice — Tom,” His harsh whispers are ugly and wet as they escape his throat, “I love you so fucking much, it eats me from the inside-out; it’s been so long I don’t know what’s left to– to give you. I wish I could have loved you, married you. I wish I could have given you children.”
Ice’s gasp is shaky, and his voice rasps; “These are possible now. For two men.”
“I couldn’t give them to you when they mattered.”
“Who said they don’t matter now?”
It’s said softly in his ear, not like a secret, but like something precious that should be protected just between the two of them — because it’s fragile, young, must be nurtured into something strong and sturdy with its own roots — so no one else needs to know right now except Pete and Tom.
Pete sobs a little harder at that. Tom squeezes him tighter in response. At some point during the whole ordeal, they’d sunk to their knees on the smooth pavement, Pete with his head tucked against the other’s chest; Tom running a soothing hand up and down Maverick’s back, the other still grabbing onto his jacket like he could blow away in the wind.
Pete finds himself syncing back up with the world again — the water, the sky, the Earth, Tom — and he drags his face back up to look Ice in the eye.
“If we both– can we– I–” Pete tries, but some cog in his works is still jamming up with some sense of terror or humiliation. What should be one of the best moments of his damn life is failing in real time thanks to his true worst enemy: himself.
(He’s always been his own downfall; it’s why he came second for the TOPGUN trophy, why Goose died, why he’s ended up deployed in the worst places by angry COs numerous times over his career, why he’s driven the closest thing to a son away.)
But Tom, Ice, his wingman. He sees him; knows him. He knows Maverick. He knows Pete. Loves Pete.
So, of course, the bastard knew exactly what Pete was asking for, gives him a beautiful, hopeful little smile, and tugs Pete closer so that—
~
—They can kiss now, says the officiant, but Pete and Tom had already started at ‘you may–’. Guests whoop and cheer. Bradley is attacking the scene with his father’s old Polaroid camera. Slider boasts something ridiculous about ‘always knowing’ to a nothing-but-amused Sarah. Ice’s kids are screaming with some overly hyped up Dagger Squadron members. Hondo is clapping and politely talking with a man, flanked by black-suits-with-sunnies, who may or may not be the President, but Pete can’t see clearly because his eyes are beginning to blur with tears.
Tom “Iceman” Kazansky-Mitchell is smiling out at the crowd; his hair is a distinguished silver, and his face is crinkled with laugh lines, lips and cheeks pinkening after their frenzied first kiss as married — married!!! — men. When he turns to face him, his smile changes. Tom looks right at Pete — not over his shoulder, not again — and there it is as he saw all those years ago; that soft, sweet thing;
Love.