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There are several things that Tom has grown to appreciate about getting old.
First and foremost, of course, is that he’s much less self-conscious than he used to be. Over three decades spent behind a desk and two battles with cancer means that for Tom a good body is one which pumps well-oxygenated blood to his head and his heart, no matter what it looks like. He still takes care of his appearance, of course, but if he’s gotten a little softer around the middle- well, it’s a sign that his appetite is finally back, isn’t it?
Second, he now answers to no one. For his whole career, Tom was a good sailor, followed orders. His life was the Navy, serving his country. But, well, after witnessing a suicide mission impossibly survived, and his own seemingly losing battle with cancer miraculously moving back into remission, it hardly seemed important, anymore. He’d handed in his six-month notice to the President so quickly that he was almost convinced he needed a psychological evaluation.
But he was done, he couldn’t do it anymore.
Shortly thereafter, he’d held Sarah’s hands in his own, and, with all three kids out of the nest, and the new administration putting Tom’s career in politics on hold, they’d agreed, tearfully, that they could let each other go. He’d always love her– his rock for the last twenty-five years and the mother of his children– but he could never love her the way she deserved.
So, Tom Kazansky now answers to no one. No boss, no wife.
And finally, and maybe most importantly, Tom has perspective now. Long ago, Tom learned, both personally and professionally, the importance of making the right decisions. He’d made a lot of choices, throughout his life, choices which made him the man he is today: recently retired four-star admiral, recently divorced father of three. Before, he’d mulled over the many decisions that lead him here, time and time again. Wondering: should he have chosen differently? What would his life look like if he had? But now, he hardly entertains those lines of thought. Instead, he focuses on what’s in front of him, what defines him now. And right now, he’s the new owner of an ocean-front bungalow, with nothing but time and money to spend however he pleases for the rest of his life.
And at first it was glorious. He’d wake at whatever hour he wanted, would eat whatever he wanted, would do whatever he wanted.
With his doctor’s approval, he’s finally been exercising some, again. His new house has a pool, so he swims, a lot, finds it easy on the body. It’s also close to Slider’s, so they spend a few evenings a week together, like the good-old-days. He’s finally getting pretty good at the crossword, and compares his result with his eldest over the phone, every Sunday. He even got into gardening, and has started working through his late-mother’s recipe books. At one point, he briefly considered getting a dog, but couldn’t quite make up his mind on a breed. And well- he likes to travel, or at least the idea of travelling, one day. Doesn’t need another thing to worry about there.
There are, of course, some decidedly less glamorous side-effects of aging, though.
His joints don’t have the same range of motion they used to. Even just walking down the stairs sometimes gives him trouble, especially first thing in the morning– hence the bungalow– and he finds he actually has to do the exercises his physical therapist prescribed after his first of many knee surgeries over the years.
People act like he’s senile, sometimes. It drives him insane. When he reaches out to previous colleagues about work matters– which sure, are no longer in his purview, but he thinks he can offer useful counsel, regardless– they respond with the email equivalent of a condescending pat on the shoulder. His children speak to him more slowly, now, like he’s not as quick on the uptake, just because his hearing is going and he still has to use speech-to-text, most of the time.
He can’t eat anything with sugar past five or he sleeps like shit. Even a single glass of wine makes him horribly hung-over, and beer is entirely out of the question, with its ungodly amount of carbs, replaced by a singular gin and tonic if he’s feeling good and just the tonic water if he isn’t (which, to his dismay, is more often than not).
But, most importantly, when you’re old, starting over is a near-impossible feat.
So, while Tom Kazansky now answers to no one, he still answers to decisions past.
It’s fall, almost a year after his retirement began, and the kids are back at school for the semester. He’s officially in full remission, now. Intensive speech therapy means he finally has his voice back, just in time for his two younger children to start speaking to him again, after a month or two of radio silence after he and Sarah first broke the news of the divorce to them. (They had blamed him, understandably, and it was only after Sarah finally managed to convince them that it was as mutual and amicable as could be that they had come around.) He’s almost done with all the work he needs to do for his new house to be exactly how he wants it– just needs some outdoor furniture for the deck, a proper bed to replace the air-mattress in the guest bedroom, and to modernize the plumbing in the pool house. He still doesn’t have the dog, but he has a modest collection of herbs, fruits, and vegetables growing in the back garden and can make a mean lasagna.
Life is good.
But Tom is bored.
And more than that, he’s lonely.
“It’s not too late for you, you know.” Ron had said one night back in July as they sat on the steps of his back porch, watching the sun set over the pacific.
At Tom’s quizzical look, Slider just laughed and knocked him with his shoulder.
“You’re sixty, not dead,” he said, with a shrug. Then more seriously: “If you wanted to try it again with someone else, you’ve still got time.”
And while at the time Tom had brushed him off with a scowl, he’d be a liar if he said that he hadn’t been dancing around the very same thought since before his divorce was finalized.
Which is how he finds himself in his BMW (which his children very rudely called his mid-life-crisis-mobile, until he reminded them that it was more like an end-of-life-crisis-mobile, which shut them up pretty quick) making the ill-advised trip east to a set of GPS coordinates in the Mojave, because apparently Maverick’s new digs are so far off the grid there isn’t even a street address.
His navigation system is saying he’s two minutes away, and he’s half sure he must have gotten a digit wrong– that, or he’s falling into some elaborate plot in which he ends up the victim of a mini-series documenting his mysterious disappearance– as he turns off the main road onto a non-descript gravel path. It’s only when he’s close enough to the lone metal structure to read the big block letters reading U.S. Navy in peeling blue paint that he remembers that someone mentioned Maverick was living in a hangar, now. Tom had assumed it was a joke about how he refused to be grounded.
Underneath him, the ground turns from gravel path into a large swath of concrete– a taxiway– as he pulls up outside the front of the thing, under the meager shade that will soon disappear as the Sun continues to shift westward.
“Ice!” Maverick shouts with a wave from the large entryway as Tom shifts his car into park.
He looks good, in his blue jeans and white t-shirt. They’ve both changed a lot over the years, but it seems like Maverick’s sense of style hasn’t, down to the ridiculous cowboy boots that Tom doesn’t think anyone else could pull off as casually. Some things are new, though, such as the slight unevenness in his gait as he approaches the vehicle.
Tom waits for the dust around him to settle before opening the door - already cringing at how much it’ll cost to get his vehicle detailed, after this. Maybe he should have asked to borrow Slider’s truck. He walks the few steps around the front of the car to meet Maverick where he’s standing, waiting for him.
“I’m so glad you could make it!” Maverick grins, grasping his forearm and pulling him into a brief but firm embrace. (This is also a new development, or at least as of the first diagnosis. Turns out when you’re dying of cancer, people become worried that the last time they see you will be, well, the last time they will see you, so they touch you a lot more. It took some getting used to.) When he pulls away, he keeps a gentle hold on his arm. “When you said you were coming, I thought- I’ll believe it when I see it!”
“It’s good to see you,” Tom says, ignoring Maverick’s attempts at levity, and the subtle jab at his declined invitations from over the years. It isn’t that he hadn’t wanted to visit, it’s that, well, Tom isn’t an idiot. He knows that the joking and jostling merely serve to cover the fact that they don’t know how to do this anymore, how to be friends.
Their relationship has taken some hits, collateral damage from time and distance. Things have been awkward, between them, for a while now. There’s no animosity, not really, but they’d drifted apart, at some point. He can’t quite trace back to when.
Maybe it started when Maverick left Top Gun, the second time, not two months into their time as instructors. Maybe it started when Tom started climbing the ranks while Maverick remained in them until he was forced up. Or maybe it was when Maverick got back together with Penny Benjamin, or when Tom married Sarah and made Slider his best man, or maybe it was when Carole Bradshaw died and Tom couldn’t attend the funeral, stuck on assignment in Japan.
Still, they always had each other’s backs, through the years. When they were both still officers, Tom was aware of his ongoing reputation as Maverick’s ‘Guardian Angel’, doing what he could to help keep Maverick in the cockpit. What their colleagues hadn’t known, of course, was that that particular street went both ways.
While Tom kept Maverick in the air, Maverick had his back on the ground. On more than one occasion, Tom received an email from Maverick, alerting him of gossip within the fleet that might affect him, in his steady ascent up the ranks: a jealous Captain, a resentful Lieutenant. No one wanted to talk trash around the Iceman– youngest to be promoted to Commander/Captain/Admiral since World War Two– but they held no such reservations around Maverick, who evaded promotion like prey. This information was crucial for Tom’s successful navigation of a system which depended upon owing and holding favor.
But it also went deeper than that. When Tom was first diagnosed, back in the early turn of the century, he called Slider, who called Maverick, who showed up at his doorstep not forty-eight hours later. Didn’t matter that they hadn’t seen each other in years, Maverick went to every single appointment– sitting through hours of scans, consults, and treatments– all so that Sarah, who was pregnant with their youngest, at the time, could stay home and take care of the kids.
So, sure, more often than not, being around Maverick felt like being around a stranger, but they had each other’s backs for the big things, and that’s what mattered.
“Yeah, man,” Maverick nods, and more sincerely this time: “It’s good to see you, too.”
Maverick shows him around. It’s not a bad set-up he has here, actually. It’s cool, thanks to the cement floor and several larger industrial box fans. The hangar is large enough to accommodate an Airstream along it’s backwall, and Maverick even took the time to set up some sort of outdoor living room, well-equipped with a sofa and a pair of armchairs on opposite sides of a large, wooden coffee table. There are stairs leading up to a metal platform, in the far corner, and the corrugated metal walls there are covered with plaques and photographs from over the years. Tom makes a mental note to go look at those, later. Below it is a workbench, which is covered in all sorts of tools and spare parts- organized chaos. There’s a row of vintage motorcycles in various states of disrepair along the Southern wall, and of course, the Mustang P-51 he’s restoring taking space front and center. It’s a beautiful plane, and Maverick seems to have done well with it- the new paint job glistening in the late-afternoon sun.
Tom tells him as much, and his heart squeezes in his chest at Maverick’s prideful grin.
“Thanks, Ice. That means a lot,” Maverick says as he drags his fingers along the hull, under the stenciled star behind her wing. “Bradley’s been coming up to fly her with me, most weekends. I’d say we should take her for a spin, but the engine has been acting up. Should be a simple fix though- give it a couple weeks and I think she’ll be air worthy again.”
“How is the kid? You two work things out?” Tom asks, handing him a wrench from the nearby tool cart unprompted as Maverick hops back up onto the small stepladder by the engine.
“He’s good- uh, yeah. All good, for the most part,” says Maverick, grimacing a little as he does. “It’s going to take time, I think, but well– we have that now.”
Tom smiles faintly. He can’t help but think it’s funny how the closer they get to running out of time the more they appreciate just how much can be done in the little of it they have left. Another perk of aging, maybe.
“What about Penny?”
“Ah- that ship’s sailed,” Maverick laughs, shakes his head. “Literally– she’s somewhere off the coast of Oregon, now, I think.” He spares a glance in Tom’s direction, must see his confusion, and clarifies: “It’s over.”
“I’m sorry,” Tom says, sincere. He liked Penny. “What happened? Last we spoke it sounded like a sure thing.”
“Uh, basically- hm.” Maverick winces, makes a funny noise. His eyes are fixed in front of him, suddenly apparently very interested in loosening the bolt in front of him. “Well-”
And Jesus, this is hard to watch. Tom feels compelled to put him out of his misery.
“It’s alright Mav, you don’t have to tell me-”
“She asked me to marry her.” Maverick blurts out.
“Oh. Oh!” Of all the things he could’ve said, this hadn’t made Tom’s list. “And you said..?”
“No, obviously,” says Maverick, a little pained, waving his left hand around for emphasis. No ring.
“Right.”
“Anyways, she didn’t want to waste time with someone who wouldn’t settle down,” Maverick continues, rambling in earnest now. “I tried to tell her that just because I didn’t want to get married didn’t mean that I didn’t want to settle down. I just- I mean, I’m fifty-six, for Christ’s sake. I’m too old– no offense– to get married.”
“None taken,” Tom says, amused.
“So anyways, then she goes: well, what’s to stop you from leaving, then? To which I say: people get divorced all the time, Penny! And well– yeah. You can imagine how well that went over.”
Tom has to work hard to contain his laughter, now.
“So anyways,” Maverick starts, again. “How’re yours?”
“Mine?” Tom raises his eyebrows.
“The kids, the family,” and then, Maverick’s eyes widen comically, and Tom can’t help but wonder how he made it in the air so long with a delayed reaction like that, and he starts apologizing profusely: “Shit– shit! Ice. Oh my God. I’m such an idiot. I forgot about, um-”
“My divorce?” Tom smirks, Maverick nods, a little red creeping up to the back of his ears. “It’s fine, Mav. You can make divorce jokes around me.”
Maverick makes a noise of disagreement, but Tom presses on, answers the original question, instead.
“And the kids are… good. Dean is on his last year at Stanford, if you can believe, finishing up his law school applications. Claire is at UMass, studying… shoot, I don’t know. Micro-cellular biology? Something like that. She takes after Sarah, that one,” he blinks, glances down at his right hand, where he used to wear his own sapphire ring. “And, uh, Paul started at the Academy last year.”
“The Academy, huh?” Maverick shoots him a lop-sided smile. “One of them had to follow in your footsteps.”
“I wish he hadn’t,” Tom murmurs.
“Why’s that?” Maverick frowns, holding a piece of tubing steady in one hand, squeezing a small tube of sealant along it with the other. He caps the sealant with his teeth, and then he’s digging around his pocket for something. It’s been a long time since Tom has seen the inside of an engine, but he makes an educated guess and grabs a clamp and a roll of electrical tape from the work bench.
“Ah- let’s just say I’m starting to understand why Carole wanted Bradley’s papers pulled,” Tom explains, gently touching a hand to Maverick’s ribs through his t-shirt to get his attention, handing him the tape.
He takes it gratefully, but meets Tom’s gaze with a complicated expression, “Well, obviously you did the right thing letting him go. We all know how that worked out, for me.”
“And how it almost didn’t.” Tom mutters, darkly, blinking against flashes of a pair of F-18s getting shot-down over the Russian tundra.
“Don’t- don’t do that, Ice,” Maverick shakes his head. The words are a little warbled from where he has the roll of tape between his teeth, hands occupied with tightly twisting a strip around the apparent air leak in the coolant tube. He should probably just replace it, but Tom trusts Maverick’s judgement, with this. Once he’s finished, he takes the roll and shoves it into his back pocket. Tom hands him the clamp. “Trust me, it’s not worth torturing yourself over. Besides, if Caine has it his way, there won’t be any more manned missions.”
Tom appreciates the comment, even if it was said with a little ire. He knows that since the last mission, since both of their retirements, that Maverick has, albeit reluctantly, changed his tune some when it came to the Pentagon’s funding of unmanned aircraft.
If they could spare themselves of any more loss, they would.
“They miss you, you know?” Tom says, suddenly. “Their favorite Uncle Mav.”
“Ah, I’m sure that’s not true,” Maverick dismisses, “I haven’t seen them in what- three, four years?”
Tom hardens a little, at the memory. The last proper Christmas party he and Sarah had thrown, before the second diagnosis. More importantly, it had been the last time they’d been all together as a family. Dean had just come back from the first semester of his undergraduate, and Claire was busy studying for the SATs. Paul was just starting high-school, at that point still dead-set on becoming a professional tennis player.
“Yeah, something like that,” Tom says, “but they still miss you. Paul especially. He always looked up to you, though I can’t say I know why.”
“Hey- I’m a delight!” Maverick protests, but there’s no heat behind it. Satisfied with his repair, he removes the clamps and sets about closing the engine back up, lest it gets covered in dust. “And apparently, the most decorated Naval aviator of our generation, if you ask the San Diego Air and Space museum.”
“Right,” Tom nods, mock-serious, thinking of the text Ron had sent him- pictures of a promotional flyer for the museum’s upcoming exhibit. The front: a portrait of Maverick, dolled up in his dress blues, under a headline reading, Callsign – “Maverick”: A Look into the Life of the Fastest Man Alive. On the back was a selection of pictures from over the years, including, at the very top, the famous one of the two of them on the deck of the Enterprise. He thinks for a second, Take the shot, Ice. “Well, maybe it’s a sign, then. Sarah and I are hosting Thanksgiving this year. You should come.”
“I- what?” The wrench he’s holding clatters to the ground with the force with which Maverick turns around. Tom’s just happy he didn’t spin clean off the stepladder.
“You, Bradley,” Tom shrugs, bending down to pick up the tool and holding it out to Maverick. “Hell- bring a date, if you have one.”
“Uh, Ice,” Maverick winces, ignoring the proffered wrench. “That’s- that’s a kind offer, but…”
“But what?” Tom frowns.
“I mean, wouldn’t it be weird?” Maverick asks, brow furrowed.
“Why would it be weird?” Tom, genuinely confused, doesn’t understand what the big deal is. He racks his brain for a possible explanation but comes up short.
Maverick turns to face him, for a moment, something imperceptible on his face.
“Ah, you’re right, never mind,” he says, finally accepting the tool and turning back to the plane. “Go find my green notebook, will you? We’re gonna time how long she stays cool with this patch job.”
He watches as Maverick continues his laser-focus on tightening the bolts for a second, considers whether he should push for an answer, but decides it’s best to let it be. He then heads towards the workbench in the corner, in search of said notebook, left wondering what his reaction was all about.
They manage to avoid complicated topics of conversation for the next several hours, opting to instead gossip about former colleagues. After Tom stepped down, the new President at the time– to both his and Maverick’s continued exasperation– picked Caine, of all people, as Tom’s successor. Tom had recommended Bates, but well, the new guy was an idiot.
The younger generation keep Maverick in the loop about more mundane day-to-day things, such as the Darkstar officially getting shut down due to NASA budget cuts, or rumors that TOPGUN may get moved back to Miramar for good, if Cyclone has it his way.
Maverick tries needling Tom for information on his potential bid for SECNAV, now that there’s a Democrat in office again (though registered as a Republican, Tom has privately been voting blue since two-thousand-and-eight), but Tom’s not lying when he says it’s not on his radar, at the moment. Plus, he’s not even a quarter of the way through the mandatory retirement period before he’s eligible for the position, anyway.
They’re sitting side by side on the outdoor sofa, watching the last of the Sun disappear over the horizon through the hangar’s open doors. There’s a breeze, the coolness washing over them a pleasant change of pace from the stifling dry heat of the desert. They’re both a few stiff drinks in– something that Tom will deeply regret in the morning but makes everything pleasantly fuzzy, for now– when the subject comes up again.
“Hey Tom, can I ask you something?” Maverick slurs.
The use of his given name gets his attention.
“Anything.”
“What happened, with you and Sarah?” He asks, voice low. “I, uh, I tried to get Slider to tell me, but he wouldn’t.”
It’s a perfect parallel of their conversation from earlier: Tom stumbles over his words, Maverick waves him off with a you don’t have to tell me.
“I want to,” Tom assures, takes a steadying breath. This is what he’d come all the way out here to do, after all. “When I married Sarah, it was the right thing to do. We’d been friends for a while, and she and I wanted similar things. We both wanted kids, but more than that, we were both ambitious, focused on our careers. She needed a husband who could understand that. I needed a wife who understood that just because I wasn’t always around didn’t mean… anyway. It was the right thing to do.”
He takes a steadying breath. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Maverick’s gaze locked on him, expression serious.
“But I also knew, when I made that choice– to marry her– that it wasn’t entirely… honest,” Tom continues. This was the hard part; the few times he’d had this conversation before. “There was a part of me that I had to let go of, if I followed through.”
“What do you mean?” Mav asks, voice soft.
“I’m…” – God, this never gets any easier – “I’m gay, Maverick.”
The silence is deafening. Tom can hear his pulse in his ears. There’s no one– nothing– else around them for miles. Apart from the faint roar of a car speeding down the freeway in the distance, it’s dead quiet. Tom distantly wonders if he shouldn’t have had so much to drink. He can’t drive like this, if Maverick decides he has a problem with it.
Thing is, he kind of expected Maverick to be okay with it.
“I- are you sure?” Maverick asks.
Tom raises an eyebrow.
“I just mean- really?” Maverick winces, as he says it, and something squeezes painfully around Tom’s heart.
“That’s not much better.” Tom mutters, a little annoyed, now. He wipes a sweaty palm on his pant leg, horrified to find his hands are shaking.
“I- shit, just give me a second,” Maverick huffs. “This is a lot.”
Tom couldn’t agree more.
He forces himself to focus on keeping his breathing even, occupying himself with tracing the outline of the Mustang with his eye- up the edge of the propellor on an inhale, down the nose on the exhale. Its silhouette is stark against the purple and orange hues of the Southern California sunset fading in the distance. Nothing but a barren expanse behind it. It’s quite picturesque, really: like something you’d see on a postcard.
“Ice,” Mav starts again when he’s ready. “How long have you known?”
It’s a surprisingly complicated question, but also one he has been asked enough times now that he has a rehearsed response, a simplified version of the truth.
“Forever, I guess,” Tom shrugs, refusing to look at Maverick, lest he crumbles. “When I was a teenager– though I didn’t really have the words for it, not back then– I knew I had to pick: this part of myself or flying. It was an easy choice, at the time. This, or the Academy. This, or the Navy. And then I just kept making the choice. Through USNA, through flight school, through those early deployments.”
“Through Top Gun,” Maverick interrupts.
“Yes,” Tom agrees, finally meeting his eye, “through Top Gun. And then, well. I kept picking until- until one day I woke up, nearly half a century later, and realized. Well. No more Navy. I don’t have to pick anymore.”
“Easy as that?”
“Easy as that,” Tom nods. “Well- I guess I’ll have to tell the kids, eventually. That won’t be easy.”
Maverick doesn’t laugh at the attempted joke, instead seems to mull this over for a while.
“You know,” Maverick starts, his eyes fixed on a spot on the ground by Tom’s feet. “Back when we were at Top Gun, the first time, I thought… Well, I thought maybe you were.”
Tom’s heart kicks up in his chest.
“Oh yeah?” Old habits die hard: it takes a lot for Tom to keep his voice steady, not to get defensive, to convince himself it’s not an accusation. Hell, even if it were- it hardly mattered, now. Plus, he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t had the same thought about Maverick. Each time he caught him looking, a playful grin on the corner of his lips even as they went for each other’s throats.
Oh, to be young.
“Hm,” Maverick nods. “All the… the staring. And the– fuck, ha– the snapping.”
The back of Tom’s neck gets hot at the memory. Subtlety was something he hadn’t mastered yet.
“But then- I don’t know,” Maverick shrugs. “After Layton, you stopped. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you were a hell-of-a-lot nicer to me after that, but…”
He trails off, but Tom knows what he means. After surviving the inescapable dogfight (which, would go on to become the thematic of their lives– living through one unsurvivable battle after another), after they clutched each other on the deck of the Enterprise and told each other wingmen, anytime, Tom, eventually, let Maverick go.
“You had Charlie,” Tom points out, only realizing a moment too late, the unintended admission: I was pursuing you.
“I did,” Maverick nods, “But then she left.”
“And so did you,” Tom looks at him again. He’s frowning, deep in thought, but his expression is otherwise unreadable. There was a time, many years ago, where he thought he understood Maverick perfectly. But that was a lifetime ago, now.
“I did,” Maverick echoes, “But only because…” Maverick turns to him, meets his gaze. His eyes are bigger, wetter, than Tom ever remembers seeing them. He licks his lips, once, tilts his head. “I thought you wanted me to.”
“What- why?” Tom asks. This is news to him- that couple of months they spent teaching at Top Gun together were the best of his life. They got to fly together without the actual risk of combat or the competition of a trophy, and afterwards, they would drink together, watch the game together. They were friends. Good ones, at that. It was nice.
“Ah- shit, Ice,” Maverick shakes his head, looks away again, leaving Tom to stare at the side of his face, his handsome profile. He briefly thinks about how unfair it is, how well Maverick is aging, compared to the rest of them. “I overheard you. Talking to Slider.”
Tom frowns. He has no idea what Maverick is talking about.
“You- you said, I don’t think I can handle him, not with Charlie gone,” Maverick says, lifting his hands to make air quotes. His movements are sluggish from the drinking. “And well- you were up for promotion, if you kept your post, and I couldn’t ruin that for you. So I put in the request.”
Tom swallows around the lump in his throat.
“That- you misunderstood,” he says. His tongue feels thick in his mouth. He must have been drunk, because the memory of that particular phone call is hazy at best, but the sentiment has lived in his chest since the moment he laid eyes on Maverick in July of 1986. He never could handle the storm that is Pete “Maverick” Mitchell. He’d said a lot of things he didn’t mean, back then, but calling Maverick dangerous- that was true.
Maverick turns to look at him again, smiles a little.
“I know that now.”
The sofa feels small, all of a sudden. There’s about half a foot of space between them, but Tom swears he can feel the heat radiating off of Maverick. He feels like a teenager, again, as he starts to sweat at just the proximity alone.
Maverick shifts a little bit closer.
Every atom in Tom’s body is telling him to abort. Years of carefully crafted walls, strongly adhered to boundaries, are beginning to crumble. Altitude- pull up. His chest tightens, and he chokes on an inhale, covers it with a cough. He blinks, hard, tries to regain control of his breathing. He’s down half a lung, and it shows, sometimes.
“I- hey,” Maverick says, settling a firm, warm palm on his back, between his shoulder blades. “Breath, Ice.”
Tom takes a shaky inhale, focuses on the featherlight brush of Maverick’s fingertips against the nape of his neck, over the collar of his shirt.
“It’s- shit,” Maverick laughs a little. “It’s okay, Tom.”
And, well. Tom hadn’t realized that he was waiting to hear that. They’ve been talking about it for nearly five minutes at that point, but Maverick hadn’t said it out loud.
“Are you sure?” He asks, feeling a little pathetic.
“Yeah,” Maverick nods, removing his hand, bumping his knee against Tom’s. “Of course it is.”
Tom nods, looks down at the new point of contact.
“I just-” Maverick starts, interrupts himself with a breathless laugh, runs a hand through his hair. “I wish you’d said something.”
Tom jerks his head up.
“What?”
“Mhm,” Maverick shifts closer again. Their thighs are practically touching, now. “’Cause then I would’ve have done this a hell-of-a-lot sooner.”
And then- and then Maverick leans across the inch of space left between them, until his breath is ghosting over Tom’s cheek. He stays there, for a beat, which is when Tom’s brain helpfully informs him that he’s waiting on Tom, waiting for permission.
Tom has gotten used to picking. This, or USNA. This, or flight school. This, or Top Gun. This, or the Navy. All he has to do is choose different. Take the shot, Ice.
He turns his head.
Maverick’s lips brush against his. It’s hardly a kiss- Tom can’t move, not yet. He feels like a statue, frozen in place.
Maverick’s nose bumps against his. It’s larger than Sarah’s, than that of anyone he’s ever kissed before. It knocks Tom’s glasses askew, but it doesn’t matter, his eyes are closed, anyway. His stubbled jaw grazes roughly along Tom’s own cheek, sending a sharp shiver down his spine. His lips are dryer, more chapped, as they chastely kiss the corner of Tom’s mouth.
“This okay?” Maverick asks, voice a mere whisper, sending a warm puff of air over Tom’s lips.
Tom can’t bring himself to speak. His throat is tight with unresolved questions– and he really should ask, some of them– but he doesn’t want to break the spell, ruin the moment. So instead, he wills himself to move, tilts his head ever so slightly, slots his mouth against Maverick’s, and kisses him back.
He can feel Maverick’s answering smile.
It’s overwhelming.
Now, Tom isn’t a saint– his three children are living proof of that– but this is uncharted territory. One of Maverick’s large hands is back on the back of his neck, holding him steady, calloused fingers smoothing the fine hair there. Tom’s own hands are firmly planted on his own thighs, because he has no idea where he’d put them, otherwise. Maverick’s tongue traces at the seam of his lips, and Tom lets him in, careful not to bite down when Maverick gently pushes his way in. He tastes like the Japanese whiskey they’ve been drinking, where their tongues meet, and Tom finds he has a hard time keeping up, feels a step behind as he tries to match Maverick’s rhythm. Part of him wishes he was sober for this, but then again, he’s not sure he could do it, without the liquid courage.
Maverick pulls away first. His cheeks are flushed- whether from the alcohol or the kiss, Tom can’t be sure. His lips are parted around shallow breaths, pupils blown wide. Tom imagines he must look similarly.
“I’m still pissed, you know,” he says, his other hand reaching up, thumb brushing along Tom’s bottom lip- there and gone just as fast.
“Pissed?” Tom frowns, a little dazed, and forces himself to play catch-up.
“Hm, yeah.” Maverick nods solemnly, but there’s still a sparkle in his eye. The hand behind Tom’s neck slides down to gently grip his bicep. It’s grounding. “We could have been doing this the whole time.”
Tom laughs. He feels dizzy. One of the other unsavory consequences of aging is that his arousal doesn’t kick in as quickly as it used to, but Tom feels grateful for it, now. This is already more than his heart can take.
Maverick laughs too, but there’s still something sad behind it.
And maybe it’s something about being recently divorced, or being retired, firmly in his sixties, or maybe it’s beating the cancer- twice, but Tom doesn’t really care to contend with the what-ifs anymore.
“Did you know my mother was a historian?” Tom asks, searching for Maverick’s free hand with his own.
Maverick tilts his head a little, curious. “No, I didn’t.”
“Studied at Smith,” Tom nods, a little wistful, intertwining their fingers. “Well, anyways- she told me something, once. It’s stuck with me ever since: ‘The compass was invented before the clock, because direction was more important than how long it took to get there.’”
“That… That’s nice.”
“Hm,” Tom agrees. “The way I see it- we were always heading this way. Just took a little longer to get there.”
Maverick leans his head against his shoulder. Tom wraps an arm around him. The alcohol has a pleasant way of lowering his inhibitions.
“So. Thanksgiving. What do you say?”
That conflicted look passes over Maverick’s face again. Tom should probably ask what it’s about, but he figures Maverick will tell him, in his own time. For now, he lets him be. In a way, it’s nice that, even after all these years of friendship, there are things that they don’t know about each other.
“Ah, I guess I can swing it,” Maverick says, eventually, lifting his chin to grin up at him. “Can I still bring a date?”
Tom pinches his side, for that.
“Just so you know, though,” Maverick continues, voice going low and serious, “I won’t marry you, either.”
Tom laughs. “Noted.”
“I’m serious,” Maverick says, gesturing at his leg, where it’s propped up against the coffee table. “It’s practically half-titanium now, after the last ejection,” he sighs, rubbing at his thigh for emphasis- Tom’s not much better, with his new hip and the bolt in his knee. “We’re old now. Can’t walk down the aisle with a limp.”
“You or me?” Tom frowns.
“Ah- both of us.” Maverick honest-to-God giggles. He can only hope he’s not picturing Tom in a white dress. Jesus Christ.
“Don’t worry, Mav,” Tom says, smiling, but sincere. He lifts Maverick’s hand in his own, places it over his heart, and squeezes it, once. “I’m in it. Don’t need papers and a ring to prove that.”
Maverick looks up at him, then sideways at their intertwined fingers, and then back up. For all the distance that has canyoned between them, if Tom knows one thing about Maverick, it’s how hard he falls, for the people he loves.
“Yeah?” He asks, rubbing a thumb along the ridge of Tom’s knuckle.
“Yeah.”
The next morning, they’ll wake up tangled in the sheets of the too-small mattress in the Airstream, heads pounding from their inevitable hangovers. Tom will bitch about his hips and his knees and Pete about his back. They’ll get out of bed, eventually, in search of Ibuprofen and coffee, and Pete will rub his shoulders as Tom dry heaves into the bushes behind the hangar- moaning about how he’s way too old for this shit, now- and while it’s gross, and unsightly, and there’s bile staining down the front of his shirt, Pete will still kiss him (after they both brush their teeth) and shyly tell him he loves him, and that- Tom thinks- that’s another nice thing about getting old.