Chapter Text
The hangar still vibrated with the echo of engines shutting down when Maverick climbed out of the emergency jet. His boots hit the metal floor heavier than they should have, his body still shaking from the rush of adrenaline. The stench of fuel, smoke, and burnt steel clung to his clothes, but he barely noticed. One question kept pounding inside his chest:
Where is Tom?
They had taken off in formation, side by side as always. The sky was their territory, a place where trust was absolute. Iceman and Maverick: two names bound together in rivalry and in unspoken complicity. But this time, something went wrong. A sudden spray of enemy fire, a split-second maneuver, then silence on the radar. Iceman’s signal was gone.
The hours that followed were hell. Desperate searches, frantic voices over the radio, silence in return. For Maverick, time stopped existing. Every minute stretched into torture. When they finally found him, the jet was nothing but wreckage, smoke still curling up into the sky. And Tom—Tom lay unconscious, mask cracked, blood staining his uniform.
Maverick ran to him, his heart lurching into his throat. Seeing him like that was worse than any nightmare he’d ever had. He climbed into the ambulance without asking, ignoring every protest. He gripped Tom’s hand and didn’t let go, not even when the medics ordered him back.
—“Just breathe, Ice. Keep breathing,”—he whispered, voice shaking as if words alone could anchor him to life—“Don’t you dare leave me.”
The military hospital became his prison and his refuge all at once. The steady beep of the heart monitor was the only music he could bear. Maverick planted himself in the hard metal chair beside the bed, hunched forward, eyes fixed on Tom’s still face. He had seen Iceman hurt before, bruised, stitched up, but never like this. Never with machines keeping him alive.
Hours turned into days. Doctors came and went, their reports little more than static in Maverick’s ears. He nodded, pretended to understand, but all his mind repeated was a plea: don’t take him away from me.
On the third night, something inside him cracked. He pressed Tom’s limp hand against his forehead, eyes burning with unshed tears.
—“You can’t leave me here,”—he whispered, raw and broken—“Not now, not after everything. I’ve spent half my life not saying it… and if tomorrow I wake up and you’re gone, I’ll never forgive myself.”
The monitor answered him with the same steady rhythm.
Two days later, Tom stirred. Just a flicker of his eyelids, but Maverick noticed immediately. He shot up from his chair, heart thundering.
—“Ice…”—the name escaped in a trembling breath.
Tom’s eyes opened, dazed but aware. His lips parted, and the first word that came out was his name.
—“Mav.”
Maverick’s chest collapsed with relief. He gripped Tom’s hand, clutching it like the last tether to his own sanity.
—“I’m here. You’re gonna be okay.”
Tom gave the faintest ghost of a smile.
—“Don’t lie.”
And then came silence—different this time. Not the sterile, suffocating quiet of machines, but a heavy silence full of everything left unsaid. Twenty years of rivalry, of jokes, of knowing glances that lingered too long. Twenty years of hiding behind bravado.
Maverick swallowed hard.
—“You were always more than a wingman. More than a rival, more than a friend. But I kept it to myself because I was afraid… because I didn’t know if you—” his voice cracked—“And now, seeing you like this, I can’t keep it in any longer.”
Tom’s eyes softened, his hand squeezing his despite the weakness in his body.
—“I didn’t say it either. But you knew… didn’t you?”
Tears spilled freely down Maverick’s face. He nodded, lowering his head to press Tom’s hand against his cheek, clinging as if contact alone could heal decades of silence.
The nights after were different. Maverick still refused to leave, still slept in the chair, but now he talked. He told stories from their academy days, reminded him of near misses and reckless dives, teased him about moments only they remembered. And in fevered half-dreams, Tom whispered things he had never dared confess.
—“I waited for you,”—he murmured one night, barely conscious—“Always waited, Mav.”
Maverick felt his chest split open.
—“And I ran too long,”—he whispered back, brushing a hand over his forehead—“But I’m not running anymore.”
Recovery was slow, grueling. But Maverick stayed. He was there when Tom first sat up, when he stumbled through his first shaky steps, when pain forced him back down. He caught him every time, holding him with a fear he couldn’t disguise.
—“I won’t let you fall,”—he promised, voice steady.
Tom looked at him with the calm steel that had always defined him, though his eyes shone softer now.
—“I know. You never did.”
And Maverick realized it wasn’t about starting something new. It was about finally admitting what had always been there, waiting beneath the silence.
Weeks later, when Tom was discharged, they walked out together under the midday sun. No roaring jets, no orders in their ears—just them, side by side.
Maverick stopped suddenly, turned, and before he could think better of it, he kissed him. It was clumsy, desperate, years of fear breaking in one messy rush, but it was real.
When they pulled back, Tom was smiling faintly, breath uneven.
—“What was that?”—he asked.
Maverick grinned through his tears.
—“My last unfinished mission. And the first of many with you.”
Tom leaned into him, a quiet laugh escaping, and for the first time in years, Maverick wasn’t afraid of what lay ahead.