Work Text:
Eyes scanning left and right, Bradley crouched down, crawling out from under the bench. He then shook his head, soft hairs spreading out just like hyphae, and walked towards Carole.
“Carole,” He hissed, tugging the hem of her shirt, “can we go home? There is nothing here.”
Carole turned around. Then Bradley saw the black, flowing stream under his mother’s eyes.
And the church bell rang— one, two, three. Released the White doves. Sang a requiem from the choir. Slowly, Lieutenant Nick Bradshaw’s coffin was lifted.
Tom meant to close the locker gently. Instead, it slammed shut with a loud bang, nearly startling the other two.
“Mitchell.” He said, “About Goose. I’m sorry, we all like him.”
He stared at the celling with a breath caught halfway in the lung. How he wished Pete to say something, but Pete just stood there with his back to him, fists clenching and loosening, not a word. Tom hovered, breath in and out; then he left the locker room.
They hadn’t spoken for days, and everything was in the state of congestion.
Tom used to say that Pete Mitchell is a dangerous man. Whenever someone tried to approach him, he will fix his gaze on them in order to drag them down to drowning. And he will end up killing everyone.
Now there was no more eye contact. Pete seemed to be avoiding looking at anyone. Gone with the unambiguous, hormone-fueled staring when they exit the plane, and the sharp, hook-like glance they exchanged in the shower. No more sex nor kiss. This was the fifth day since their friend had dead. The waves lapped against the shallows, and seabirds screeched.
Pete was out of it. Once, Tom had seen Viper enter the shower room — because Pete had broken off mid-flight, ignoring the calls on the public channel. He didn’t even dare to perform basic dives or rolls. After landing, he walked away without a glance back. Sundown cursed after him. It had made Pete stopped for a second, however he still didn’t turn, only picking up the pace after. By the time the others reached the locker room, Pete was already gone. No one knew where he had gone.
Tom, too, had become quieter than usual. Something quietly slipped out of his control. It lingered in him restlessly. After sunset, he no longer went to the Hard Deck. He had even nearly come to blows with his own RIO a few days ago.
“Whoa Ice, what’s with you?” Slider exclaimed, “If it’s about Goose—you gotta know, that wasn’t on us.”
Tom nod, flicking his hand to dismiss Slider. Exhaustion pressed down on him that forbid him for speaking. He thought it’s all because that he hated changes. When he was young, he used to have a cat. Then one day the cat went out on the street and was crushed by a car, since then he started to hate cats.
That night, after washing up, he was in his dorm writing homework from the theory class when the screech of the iron door hinges being pushed open slowly shattered the silence. Pete poked his head through the opening.
“Is Slider here?” His first word in days.
Tom shook his head: “He’s staying over at the chick’s place. The one he picked up days ago.”
So Pete slipped in through the narrow slit, sliding himself into the room—though why he didn’t just open the door wider, Tom couldn’t tell.
“First time I’ve seen you without the gel.”
Tom felt silent, waiting for him to continue. But Pete said nothing more. Instead, with a careless ease, he moved to the desk, swung one leg over, and settled astride Tom’s lap, his back pressed against the hedge of the table. He seemed about to speak, mouth opening and closing. Finally he chose to close those lips, sliding his arms around Tom’s waist, binding them tightly together.
“Trying to play cowboy, are you? Hmm?” Tom murmured, lowering his head.
Pete looked at him with his green eyes ringed in gold. His nails dug hard into Tom’s flesh, pressing crescent-shaped bruises into his skin. He curled his lips into a smile — like a cat — and brushed a kiss against Tom’s lips.
Tom looked back at him. At the high bridge of his nose beneath his deep-set brow, then at the tiny mole beside his nostril. He tried to find that gleaming gaze within the shadowed sockets, but only emptiness embraced him. Pete’s eyes did not focus. There was nothing in them at all.
“Have you been drinking?”
“Your heart’s racing.”
“Have you been drinking?”
“Does it matter?” Pete said. “I’m here. You’re here. What are you afraid of, Kazansky?”
“Mitchell—”
“Stop.”
So Tom Stopped. And instead, he bit down at the curve of Pete’s neck. Muscle twitched beneath his teeth. Pete let out a low, breathy laugh, tilting his head back, eyes fixed on the ceiling where the moon’s halo projected. The fog kept swirling, that light then brightened and dimmed.
They strangled each other like they were fighting, kissing with a force but made no sound. At some point, the lamp was switched off. A muffled noise slipped from Pete’s throat. Neither of them spoke that word. They just drifted into sleep under the hush of the tides. How funny that the sea was just as pitiful as we were in the night. Silent. Parched. It waited for the sun to come.
The next day, Lieutenant Pete “Maverick” Mitchell withdrew from TOPGUN.
Tom almost slammed the locker shut. The sound went off like an explosion, startling everyone in the room.
Slider glanced around as someone started to look irritated. He silently stepped up to Tom with a hand settling on his shoulder, the other gesturing toward the door.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he said before they even made it outside. “You’re pissed like a damn bull.” — Shaking.
“Okay enough. Don’t brush me off. Maybe the others can’t tell, but I’m your goddamn RIO—we almost got locked by Viper today!” —Wordless.
“… is it Goose or Maverick?”
“Tell you what, Slider,” Tom finally spoke. “Why don’t you go find that chick of yours—and leave me alone?”
His hand braced against the wall, jaw ticking tight. That morning, Wolfman had come up to him and said it plainly: Maverick had quit. After that, everything blurred, time congealing to something that completely suffocated him. He suddenly remembered that cat, now he wasn’t just simply hating it.
“I just need some time… you know that, some time. I will never make you pay for my mistakes. You also know that.”
The way Pete had made his RIO pay his. They must have both thought that at the same time, but everything was normal on the surface. And they brushed past one another, walking in opposite directions.
Because of all the unresolved anger, Tom decided to go to Hard Deck tonight. Under the dimming light, the bartender flicked him a glance—said it had been a while. Tom ordered a whiskey, downed it in one swallow, then another, and then another. He lined the empty glasses into a rectangle, pressing them close together, angling them just so until, at a certain tilt, the light could be refracted straight into his eyes.
Searching for that angle, for a moment, he almost lost his sight. When the dizziness passed, he noticed someone standing next to him, someone who shouldn’t be here. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell—white T-shirt, bomber jacket—leaning against the bar as if he had always been there. Neither thinner nor broader, neither taller nor smaller. He was just there, looking at Tom.
“I thought you would never come back.”
“No.” A small shake of the head. “Kazansky—no.”
“You’re a dangerous man, Mitchell,” Tom muttered. His grip tightened around the glass as he stared at Pete, forcing the man to turn his head away. The small mole by his cheek caught the light, flickering, steeped in intoxication.
So Tom let out a low, humorless laugh and reached for another drink. Before he could take it, a hand intercepted. Pete caught the glass the bartender had been offering, then shook his head. Slow. Deliberate. And then, he seized Tom by the collar and bit down on his upper lip while eyes flicking toward the bartender.
By the time the bartender left and the two of them tangled together, Pete stopped all at once. Tom tugged his head into the hollow of Pete’s shoulder, breath burning hot against his ear.
“You haven’t told me why you came.”
Pete straightened, looking at him—at the way Tom bent toward him— and for a moment, he suddenly lost all the interest. He saw the flat and endless sea. Fluorescent dye blooming outward with the tide. He saw himself. And his RIO. Nick Bradshaw was still breathing in that moment—he thought. They had torn them apart. And from then on, the world had only lost something insignificant, and a small, worn fragment of breath ripped away from Pete.
He witnessed Tom said something close to his ear. Suddenly, he pulled him close, arms locking tight around Tom.
“Stop,” Pete said. “Stop talking.”
So They went back to Pete’s place with only one mattress.
“I’m moving soon.”
“Don't say anything,” Tom said, already pulling his clothes off. And they kissed. On the bare mattress, in an empty room.
After, Tom stood out on the balcony, letting the wind pass through him. Behind him, Pete came quietly, resting his arms on the railing in imitation, staring out at the sea that could be caught just beyond the glass. “I just don’t understand… God, I want him back. Do you know that, Ice—I want him back.”
Tom turned to look at him. Pete said nothing more. He just stood there in the wind. Then after a while, and then a while longer, he went back inside, back to the mattress.
It was the sixth day since their friend had dead. They saw each other every day after that night. Met at night, listening to the cold, harsh sea as it carved along the coastline. Pete liked kissing. Tom liked action that could leave marks more. Most of the time, they were just on the mattress in Pete’s place. When Slider was out, they were in Tom’s dorm. They didn’t really do anything—just used sex to mitigate some desire that refused to be named.
No matter where they met, Pete never stayed long. However, Tom is a heavy sleeper who rarely woke during the night. Morning arose the second his head touched the pillow. And by then, there would be no warmth beside him, no trace of Pete in the room, making everything looked like an aftermath of an absurd dream.
Just once—this time he woke up mid-sleep, parched. Sitting up, mind still fogged with sleepiness, he glanced to his left and saw Pete, fully dressed, pulling open the bedroom door.
Pete hadn’t expected it either. He had merely glanced back at Tom before leaving, but their eyes met, causing him to hesitate for a moment before he turned and fled once again.
What had that glance meant? Tom tried to make sense of it later, but again he failed. Tom should never try to make sense out of it. Something had happened, something had been lost, but he was alive, they were alive. That was it; there had been nothing in Peter’s eyes.
Later he learnt that Pete had simply gone to the bar afterwards, drinking until it was the closing time in the morning, then gone home and threw himself to the bed until it was 4pm. And Tom—nothing else for him except for training. He was just waiting for it to end. Slider never argued with him again after that; they flew steady with occasional slips, but nothing too bad. For the most part, everything settled back into its proper course.
Tom then never encountered Pete anywhere but on bed. He was too busy to dwell on the distortion of whatever lay between them. He just let it run its course. It was like a landing stretched along an overlong runway; you know that you could land at any moment yet compelled forward by a curiosity about what will be there at the end of it.
Of course, there always had to be an end. But the process was, undeniably, long. Restless nights, a mind raw with agitation—they were also natural. Sometimes Tom thought he had split cleanly in two: one half cold, precise, capable of thinking through flight with perfect clarity; the other circling endlessly around Pete Mitchell.
Even when he stepped forward to receive the trophy, the sound of last night’s sea wave still echoed in his head. It wasn’t until Slider pulled him into a rough embrace that something like a smile finally broke across his face.
Winning the trophy had never been in doubt, especially after Pete left. He watched his fellow pilots raising glasses. The heavy trophy lay heavy felt weightless in his hand. A quiet satisfaction settled into him. Surrounded by the hysteria of sleepless nights, something at last brought a fleeting satisfaction of balance and warmth.
And then Pete arrived. He was late. Cutting through the crowd like a blade through softened butter. “Congratulations,” he said, gaze lingering on the trophy for a moment, then lifted to Tom. Tom was in full white dress uniform—just as he had been the first day they met. “Thank you,” Tom replied. On the surface, they were restrained and distant. Just like the first day they met.
The air stilled unusually. Pete looked like he was waiting to be kissed, but again, didn't he always look that way? Tom had this sense that something that was about to happen and so it actually did. Not the kiss. They names were called and they were reassigned to the USS Enterprise.
That night, Pete didn’t come for him since tomorrow he might return to the cockpit.
The next day, they gathered aboard the carrier and Stinger briefed them the situation: Intrusion. MiGs. A rescue operation. Tom would fly. Pete would remain on the ground on alert five.
Tom glanced sideways at him and saw the sheen of sweat across Pete’s face, just like a thin veil of water. Pete Mitchell should have stayed where he belonged, in that small, contained space on one side of his mind. But there was another Pete who just appeared on the other side. These two figures pounding against the barrier between them, the rooms collapsing into one another. Tom breathed in. Out. Trying to steady the fragile barrier.
After dismissal, he stepped forward. “Excuse me sir. This is not personal,” “But with regard to Maverick, is he the best backup that —”
“I know what's on your mind, Kanzansky, just get on it.” No. Tom almost laughed bitterly, the guy didn't know. The fragile wall he had built inside himself gave way again.
They were launched. Tom focused—just as Goose had once said, he was ice-old, no mistakes, he wore his enemy down, and strike. Everything seemed to going their way until six enemy aircraft appeared. Hollywood was shot down almost immediately. Command launched Pete into the air. For a single second, Tom’s heartbeat faltered. He forced himself back into focus. Voices flooded the channel. Pete had taken off—
—and then left before he even entered the engagement. Just like what happened before in TOPGUN. Meanwhile he heard something about the broken catapults for the two planes on the carrier, reinforcements were ten minutes out.
Tom felt something close to relief that only he did. He angled the aircraft sharply, slipping into a position that should buy him time. It held for a while, before exhaustion swept through him.
“He’s firing! Ice, he’s firing—shit, hard right, hard right!”
Tom turned the stick, numb. In the old myths, Icarus flew too close to the sun; his artificial wings melted by the heat and he felt into the ocean.
—Sorry, Slider.
The sound of explosion tore through the right engine—at the same moment the channel erupted with shouts. Pete was reengaging. They moved together seamlessly. Too seamlessly like they had always partnered. Even with a MiG on his tail, Pete didn’t break away.
“I am not leaving my wingman,” his voice came through.
Tom almost laughed. Something in it felt absurd. Fragments of their nights flashed through him. Pete sometimes was talkative, more often silent. He didn’t smoke, only drink, extremely quiet when half-drunk.
“Do you love me?” Pete had asked once, on that thin mattress. Before Tom could even steady himself around the word, Pete had turned away, eyes fixed somewhere beyond the window. Tom knew that Pete didn’t need to love him. Just as now—this, too, could be nothing more than a reason. A way to mitigate something unnamed.
In the end, they returned with triumph. Slider hauled Pete up, lifting him in a fierce embrace. The others gathered around him. Tom stood at the edge of it all. Peter deserved it. He watched him carefully—this hero—and saw the first unguarded smile in weeks break across his face. Eyes narrowing, fine lines branching at the corners like veins in a leaf.
And then Pete seemed to remember something. He glanced towards Tom’s direction and their eyes met. He blinked, bathing in excitement, with the motion of smiling on his face. But that single glance sufficed. Because in that glance, through those green irises ringed with gold, Tom still saw nothing. He somehow saw himself inside, standing alone in cold northern waters where his once been, waiting for the tide to rise and quietly swallow him whole.
Pete had never truly changed. And Tom should have known this. This was Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, the man who could still shoot down three MiGs and completed the mission two weeks after his friend’s death. It was simply the pain he could not endure. The rest mattered nothing to him.
All he need was just console, whether if it’s from the pleasure of the body.
In the nights they shared, they could kiss, lie close. But their heart will always be somewhere else, waiting for the tide to carry them away. Perhaps one day they would truly understand. But that moment would only come when the tide also swallowed their body, when the net of time strangled into their flesh and left marks that would never fade. Maybe by then a real heart would grow out of the death of somebody else.
The heart suddenly started racing. Breath. In. Out. And what about now? Tom looked at Pete. Pete, who understood nothing. They had only lived in a brief flash under the stimulation of dopamine and adrenaline; and had been left stranded forever on that edge of a shallow shore.