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It was just supposed to be a scouting run. A late night stealth flight, pairs of two mapping out the edge of their patrol sectors and searching for new enemy installations.
Of course, Maverick should have known better. They'd had a few successful nights so far, and that could only continue for so long.
He'd been paired with Ice again, and he'd rather die than admit it, but it's not so bad, actually. The Iceman can be fun, sometimes. Rarely. He's even got a sense of humor.
And, more importantly, he can actually keep up with Mav.
He definitely doesn't spend too long looking at Ice's gorgeous white wings as he soars ahead of him, swooping wide around the hill they'd already covered the day before. Mav had joked once that they should spray-paint those wings black if he was going to be doing stealth runs, but Ice had been less than amused. And, he'd pointed out, out here in the snow, his wings actually blended in better than Mav's obsidian-black.
Maverick had countered that that was only true on the ground. Looking up, his wings disappeared into the night, and Ice's would be far more visible. And that he didn't know about Ice, but he preferred working in the air than wandering through the snowy forests.
Ice had rolled his eyes at the time, but they definitely ran their flights a little higher up, in the hopes that they'd be too small to be easily spotted from the ground anyway.
Something catches his eye, pulling his attention from Ice. Some glint in the snow, something metal.
He almost thinks he imagined it - though ready to swoop back for a second look - when he sees it again. A flash- a scope.
He looks over at his wingman, just a few meters ahead of him, and when he sees the red laser on his wing, he stops thinking.
"Ice!" he shouts, flapping his wings down hard, using that extra power to surge forward and slam into Ice, shoving him out of the way.
He doesn't even hear the sniper shot, in the end. Just Ice's indignant "Mav what the hell-" before there's suddenly a hole in his right wing.
Mav lets out a choked cry, and then he's no longer flying level with Ice. He can't use his right wing, even trying to keep it spread spikes agony through him, and his left wing manages little to slow his fall.
"Maverick!" Ice had steadied himself within moments of being knocked off course, just to see his wingman was no longer there.
Maverick can't respond, trying to remember how to breathe and brace himself for hitting the ground swiftly rushing up at him.
Ice dives after him as Maverick twists around, trying to keep from spinning out of control with just one functioning wing. And then Ice's hands are on him, catching him by the arms and then pulling him in tight. "Hold on to me," Ice has to shout to be heard over the rushing wind.
Maverick tangles his hands into the straps of Ice's flightsuit, hooks his legs around Ice's hips, and pulls both wings in so he doesn't smack Ice's.
"I've got you," Ice says, curling around him as they fall together. A few moments later, apparently relatively certain that he's got a good grip on Mav, he snaps his wings out wide. They start to beat, heavy strokes that Mav can almost hear, and their fall slows drastically.
He's pretty sure the only reason he's still conscious is because of the adrenaline, but he refuses to be a literal dead weight in Ice's arms. More than he's already being, anyway, useless as he is for flying. He hopes they're out of sight of that sniper, at least. They're even bigger of a target right now.
No other shots follow, though, so he guesses they must have. That or Ice has steered them somehow while they were plummeting to the earth.
He doesn't have long to think about it, as Ice shifts his angle, and Maverick glances over his shoulder to see that they're dropping into the trees. Ice must have found a clearing, lowering them down until he lands, light as anything. As if Mav weighed little more than a few feathers. A textbook landing, perfect for perfection's sake.
Maverick unwraps his legs from around Ice's hips, stumbling a little as he tries to get his feet under him again. Ice is still holding onto him, steadying him, gaze raking over him as he looks for the injury.
"Where are you hit?" Ice asks, his voice tight with stress.
"Wing," Maverick answers roughly, though he doesn't unfurl the wing to show him. Now that he'd folded it tight, he can't quite make it open again.
"Fuck," Ice murmurs, looking past him suddenly. "We're too far to walk," he continues with a frown.
"You can make it back," Maverick reminds him. "You can tell them where I am."
Ice's gaze snaps to him with such freezing anger that Maverick stalls, wondering how he'd offended him. "I am not leaving you, Mitchell," he growls. "Knowing you, you'd keel over the moment I took off."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Maverick fires back, bristling.
Ice sighs, making a conscious - and obvious - effort to calm himself down. "It means that I'm not leaving you to bleed out and freeze to death out here," he says. He shakes his wings out, clearly irritated, but instead of folding them back up, Maverick suddenly finds himself with a snow-white wing wrapped around him.
"What-" he rasps, though he cuts off a moment later.
"C'mon, let's find somewhere we can sit," Ice says, not at all acknowledging the fact that he's curled his wing around Mav like he's…like he matters to him.
"Ice-"
"If you're about to say something stupid, don't," Ice replies gruffly, tugging him almost gently out of the clearing and into the woods. They walk for a little, until they find a fallen log, and Ice helps lower him down to sit on it. It should be a little warmer than the snow, at least.
"Ice, you gotta- we gotta tell them we went down," Maverick insists, through the adrenaline crash he can feel coming on.
"They'll find out in a little bit when we don't report back," Ice points out, curling that wing around him a little tighter. And then he pulls his other wing around the front of them both, and cuts off the wind that had been digging into Maverick's bones.
"Flare-?" Maverick suggests. He's pretty sure he has his emergency flares still.
"Why don't you let me worry about contacting our people and just focus on not dying on me, okay?" Ice asks, very patiently.
"Fffine," Maverick concedes, letting his head drop onto Ice's shoulder, shuddering a little as the cold starts to leave him finally. Ice's wings wrapped around him are shielding him, keeping him warm, protecting him from cold and wind both.
With that discomfort mitigated, and the pulsing pain digging into his wing, Maverick decides he'd like to be unconscious, he thinks.
"I've got you, Mav," Ice murmurs, softer. "Just rest. Hang in there for me."
Maverick hums wordlessly in agreement, letting his eyes slip closed.
He trusts Ice. Ice has him. He's safe, he'll be okay.
He can have a crisis about what all of this means later, after they're rescued. Why the Iceman, who had barely even seemed to tolerate him before, would use his wings to comfort him, keep him safe. Is that just what he'd do for any squadmate? Is it just because Mav got hurt trying to protect him?
It feels different.
He loses his grasp on consciousness before he can spiral any further on that, slumping heavily into Ice's side, into his arm. Into the warmth of Ice's soft feathers wrapped around him.
