Archive of Our Own

“This feeling of love, it transports me, it makes me happy. At the same time, it consumes me and makes me miserable, the way all impossible loves are miserable.”

― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

He hasn’t touched the envelope, not since he pulled it out of his duffle and tucked it into his locker, where it wouldn’t be disturbed by the wind or the dust.

But he pulls it out, now, along with his own box of effects from those days. (He was never as organized as Tom, but he was doubly as sentimental- his own box filled with a myriad of tokens from their time together.) He’s had a drink (or three), and he’s feeling a bit sorry for himself, what with Bradley off in Hawaii- Ice’s old stomping grounds- and Penny and him on the outs again. They’ll work it out, but he’s in no place to apologize, and she’s in no place to accept it, so, might as well lean in.

He’s at the hangar, because it’s quiet, here, and it’s one of the few places that he and Ice spent time together that he can still come back to.

Ice hated the hangar. Well- he said he hated the hangar, but Pete always thought he liked it well enough. Certainly enough to come by every few months, for a while there.

He’d been putting this off, but it’s time, now. Pete takes the box and the envelope to the workbench, which he’s cleared off for this, and carefully tips the envelope, allowing the contents to spill out.

Three manilla folders, and a scattering of photographs.

A whole significant component of his life, and this is almost all that’s left.

Proof of something that he’d almost been able to convince himself was nothing.

[August 1986 - Honolulu, Hawaii, USA]

They’re in Honolulu, shaking hands with the Commander of the Pacific Fleet, accepting congratulations for a job well done. Over the next few months, they’ll be doing this all over the country- first Washington, then wherever they’ll get sent to next.

Later, they decide to hit the local bar scene- far from base, from where anyone who might know them. They’re dressed in civies- blue jeans and white t-shirts, very all-American- and they’ve got baseball caps pulled low over their foreheads, shielding their faces from anyone who may have read the papers.

They stumble out of the bar, drunk beyond comprehension.

“Ah, Maverick, can I bum one?” Ice sighs, patting his pockets and coming up empty.

Ice still says his name like it’s three words strung together- Mav-er-rick. Pete finds it a little off putting and a lot arousing, though he tries not to let himself linger on the second.

“I don’t smoke.” At Ice’s affronted look he shrugs, “Sorry.”

“You don’t- Then why-” Ice shakes his head. “Okay.”

It’s a fair question. Why did he volunteer to join Ice for a smoke break? He’s too jittery to know and too drunk to really care.

Ice starts stalking down the street.

“Hey- where are you going?” Pete calls, stumbling after him. Slider, Merlin, Hollywood and Wolfman are still in the bar. They’ll be waiting for them to come back.

Ice doesn’t answer, just keeps marching on, and Pete, unthinkingly, follows him up the block. Ice takes a right, and then a left, and then they’re at a gas station.

“How’d you know this was here?” Pete asks, as they open the door to the convenience store. The little bell rings, alerting the cashier, who looks half-asleep (reasonable, given the hour), of their arrival.

Ice shrugs. “I know my way around.”

That’s right, Pete thinks. “You grew up here.”

Ice ignores him, grabs a pack of American Spirits- shooting him a silly smile over his shoulder that tells Maverick there’s a joke there, even if he’s not privy to it- and then beelines for the counter.

He exchanges some loose bills from his back pocket for the carton, and then he’s already making his way back out into the darkness.

Pete sees something that catches his eye behind the counter and pulls out his wallet. He passes a twenty under the Plexi-glass divider. “Hey, can I have one of those?”

They’re back in the alley behind the bar. Ice is finishing his second cigarette, and is a little more settled from it.

Pete gets it. He’s been the same, since they landed. The adrenaline crests and crashes in waves. One minute he’s on top of the world, the next he’s swept away by grief and terror.

He’s a killer, he’s killed, he could’ve gotten someone killed, he could’ve been killed.

And he’s not just thinking about the MiGs.

“What’s that?” Ice says, nodding toward the box in Pete’s hand.

“Oh!” Pete winces, suddenly a bit embarrassed. “It’s a camera. Supposed to be disposable. You take few pictures, bring the film in to get developed, and then just throw the casing out.”

“Huh,” Ice says disinterestedly.

“Goose liked taking pictures,” Maverick explains.

“Oh, right, yeah. I remember that,” Ice nods. “He was like that at Annapolis, too.”

Pete nods too, not sure what to say. He’s getting used to Ice’s funny way of talking. He remembers the first time they spoke, at the O-Club. How Ice had said that Cougar was a good man. Or, later, after, how he said everyone had liked Goose. Pete had taken it all so personally, back then, but he’s learning that for all that Ice parses his words, he’s clearly never learned how to express his emotions.

“Here, let’s take one,” Ice says, stubbing out his cig on the wall behind him, dropping the butt to the pavement. He grabs the camera and shakes it out of the box. He glances at the instructions, but if he’s faring anything like Pete is right now, the words are probably dancing across the page. He clicks the casing open, tips it so that a foil-wrapped cannister of film slides out into his palm. Ice uses his teeth to tear into the foil around the film, jams it into the casing, and then turns the wheel until it clicks.

Ice takes off his baseball cap, shoves it into his back pocket. He runs a hand through his golden hair, which has been plastered down, ends sticking out to the sides. Maverick forces himself to look away, takes off his own hat, too.

“C’mere,” he says, tugging at the sleeve of Pete’s flight jacket, until they’re shoulder to shoulder. Pete goes easily, in his current state. Ice holds out the camera so that the lens is facing them. They both grin as Ice clicks the shutter.

He pulls the camera back, twists the wheel.

They take a few more- one dead serious, another where Pete sticks his tongue out, childishly.

“One more,” Ice says, twisting the wheel.

“Hey- that cost me ten bucks,” Maverick protests weakly, “leave some for the others.”

“Last one,” Ice promises, holding the camera back out. But instead of clicking the shutter, he turns his head to face Pete. Pete turns to look at him too. From here, he can feel Ice’s breath ghosting against his lips, smell the alcohol on his breath.

He’s catapulted back to a moment from two weeks back: him and Ice, standing face to face in the locker room after their first hops, adrenaline coursing through their veins. Ice calling him dangerous, his eyes flickering down to Mavericks lips- if only for a second. It was all heat and tension back then. It was all so easy. The stakes were so low, even if they didn’t know it.

Goose wasn’t dead.

This is something else, though: the way Ice still has one hand gripping Maverick’s sleeve by his bicep, the other shakily holing up the disposable camera, eyes lingering low. Entirely inappropriate. Line crossed. But Maverick’s doing the same- the hand he had on Ice’s shoulder for stability creeps up to grip the back of his neck. This is crossing the line!

But before he can convince himself to pull away, Ice is leaning in, and-

Maverick’s been told he kisses like he flies: hard, demanding, reckless. Well, Ice does too. It’s like he’s trying to map out the terrain of his mouth with his tongue, figuring out the best possible approach, the optimal outcome. He’s patient, but unyielding.

Pete’ drowning in it- the hot, wet heat. The smoky taste of cigarettes over a lingering bitter flavor of beer. He loses himself in the occasional clash of their teeth when one of them gets over eager (Maverick), the soothing licking that follows (Ice). Ice is clearly as lost as he is because when Maverick’s free hand grips his hip, instinctively pulling him closer, needing friction, Ice follows, tugging Maverick towards him until-

A door slams in the distance, the sound laughter flooding out.

They jump apart.

“Shit,” Ice curses, drops his arms- the one clutching Maverick, the one holding the camera is already trembling by his side. He looks around wildly.

So does Pete, but the alley is deserted. He tries to step into Ice’s line of sight, says, “It’s okay. It’s fine.”

But it doesn’t matter, Ice is already panicking.

“We- I gotta-” Ice stutters. He won’t look at Pete. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Ice look this undone. Even when he was shitting himself over the comms after Hollywood and Wolf were shot down. But then he takes a steadying breath, and he’s right back to Iceman- cool and collected. “Let’s go back inside, before the others come looking for us.”

“Yeah,” Pete agrees, because what else is there to do?

He never did get that camera back.

Or those pictures, which aren’t in the folder, either. He wonders what happened to them.

Eventually their victory tour ended, and Pete took up his teaching billet at Top Gun.

He spent the next two months in Miramar trying to forget about that night with another competent blond, but Charlie eventually got sick of his hot-and-cold attitude and fled back to the Pentagon. Pete knew he should feel something- hurt, or guilt- but he couldn’t stop thinking about that night, about Ice. Part of him was certain he’d imagined the whole thing, but then he’d feel the ghost of Ice’s stubbled jaw in his dreams and he’d know it had been real.

It started to affect him at work. One day, Viper summoned him to let him know that Kazansky indicated interest in taking up his own teaching slot, and he offered to recommend Maverick for the newly established VF-194- It’ll be two years of training out of here until you get sent anywhere. Even then, he realized he was being given an out. He was a shit instructor at the time and he knew it- younger than most of the pilots they got sent, not over Goose’s death enough to be tactful about it.

Those two years with VF-194 would end up being a bit of a waste, for his career- their carrier wing was disestablished before their first cruise- but they would be the happiest years of his life.

[January 1987 – San Diego, California, USA]

“Look at what the cat dragged in,” Maverick grins, leaning against the doorframe of what used to be his office.

Ice looks up at him from where he was hunched over a file box, straightens up and offers a hand. “Maverick. It’s good to see you, man, how’ve you been?”

“You’ll find out in about two months when you’re as sick of this place as I am,” Pete shrugs, returning the firm handshake. Ice’s palm is searing hot, calloused fingers gripping around his own.

“I hear you’re not straying far, though,” Ice says, letting go of his hand and resuming his shuffling through the office. “VF-194. Not a bad gig.”

“Could be worse,” Pete agrees. “First briefing with the Commander tomorrow,” he steps in, drags his hand across the dusty windowsill overlooking the tarmac. “I think I owe you a beer from that one night in Florida,” (he does not) “What do you say- you, me, O-club. Tonight.”

Ice glances up at him, clearly sees right through him, but then he nods. “Sure. Eighteen-hundred work for you?”

He gets to the O-Club a half hour early, ball cap pulled low and aviators shielding his eyes. By now, news of his impressively short tenure at the Weapon’s School has made its way around Fightertown and he doesn’t need to add fuel to that fire by being seen licking his wounds, kissing up to the new instructor.

He’s halfway through his first beer when Iceman saunters in, looking like something out of teenaged Pete’s wet dreams in his civvies- blue jeans and a collared shirt.

Keep it together, Mav, he says to himself, under his breath. He straightens up, holds up a hand.

Ice nods to him in greeting but heads to the bar to grab a drink first.

Then he’s sliding into the booth across from him.

He learns, very quickly, that Iceman can be funny.

His sense of humor is nothing like Maverick’s own, nothing like Goose’s was. It’s dryer, almost witty. No, he’s undeniably smart. He acts purposefully a bit obtuse, and then just when you think you have the upper hand, he snakes around and you’re the butt of the joke.

But he’s not doing this now. No, he’s telling this story- the kind that Maverick has heard a hundred times over- but, somehow, coming out of Ice's mouth it makes him laugh, anyway. “So, you know, me and Slider pull off to the side, and then we hear this crash. It reverberated in my fucking skull, you know what I mean? And we whip our heads around, like, what the fuck was that? And sure enough, there’s Dozer, front landing gear all caught up in the arresting line. Get this- he forgot to lower the tail hook. Still don’t really understand how the guy’s not dead.”

But more than that, he learns that Iceman is pretty nice, when he wants to be.

Apparently, their last sortie went awry in more ways than one, and while Ice chalked himself another kill, he wasn’t all that put out about being stateside, for the time being.

“So, yeah,” Ice says, dragging his finger along the edge of his Academy ring. “Slider wants out of the air, at least for a bit, so I figure, no better time than to take up our teaching slot.”

He’s learning, that in Iceman speak, that translates to: I can’t do this without my friend, I can’t do this without my RIO, I can’t do this without my wingman.

Maverick knows a thing or two about that.

He downs the rest of his drink. “Wanna get out of here?”

Ice meets him at his house. When Pete first came back in November, he’d opted to rent something off base. He figured he might like the anonymity.

He’s certainly thankful for it now.

“Nice digs,” Ice says dryly, noting the lack of living room furniture.

“Haven’t exactly had a lot of time to go shopping,” he shoots back. Plus, he spent most nights at Charlie’s over the last couple months.

He’s just thinking about how he’s going to play his next move, how he’s going to signal to Ice that it’s okay, it’s just them, when Ice beats him to the chase:

“Look,” Ice says, seriously. “I don’t do this. This is…”

“Dangerous?” Maverick supplies, aiming for light.

Ice doesn’t so much as smile. “Yes. Extremely.”

“I know.” Maverick says, squaring his shoulders and his jaw, trying to show Ice that he's serious, that he understands- because he does.

“I don’t do dangerous,” Ice repeats, gaze still hard, but he’s looking right at Pete, holding eye contact.

He’s looking for reassurance.

“I’m just as fucked over as you are, if, you know,” Pete swallows, “anyone finds out.”

“Have you done this before?” Ice asks.

It’s a risky question to answer. If Pete says yes, and Ice leaves…

“I have,” Maverick says. “Have you?”

Ice looks at the ceiling, as if summoning all his strength. “I have.”

“Well then,” Pete says, “Mutually assured destruction.”

Ice lets out a short laugh, but then he’s frowning again.

“Just,” Pete takes a step closer, reaches for his elbow. “Just- trust me?”

I saved your life, once, he doesn’t say. You can trust me.

Ice nods, but he still has that deer-in-the-headlights look about him.

So Maverick drops to his knees.

It was obvious from that first night together that it wasn’t Ice’s first time with a man. Pete hadn’t necessarily assumed he was lying, but he hadn’t expected the expertise he apparently possessed. He was familiar with the necessary procedures, deft with his fingers and mouth in a way only achieved through repetition. And even though he was almost always in a hurry, and refused to acknowledge it outside of the moment, he was always careful not to hurt Maverick.

Still, it was only sex.

But it also wasn’t. They didn’t go on dates, not that Maverick would have expected them to, but they did go for drinks, or to check out new restaurants together, or even the occasional movie. Sometimes Ice got weird, and would make Maverick go in ahead without him or wait five minutes before leaving, but it was fine because they would laugh, and share stories from before they knew each other, or about Viper and Top Gun.

It was nice.

He learned a lot about Ice, in the bits and pieces he offered in conversation. He learned that his father was a Rear Admiral, but Ice was adamant that had nothing to do with his own successes, and there was almost nothing he’d rather talk less about than his parents. Ice was an only child, which meant he was pretty good at being alone, but he preferred not to be, if he could help it. He learned that Ice was set on being an aviator from the first time he saw a jet at the age of seven, but that he could appreciate the engineering behind subs all the same. He learned that when Ice made friends it was for life, that he’d met Slider back at the Academy and they’d been inseparable ever since.

Ice wasn’t shy about his body (though none of them were, given how much time they spent in locker rooms), but he learned that Ice didn’t like to be called anything during sex- not baby, or sweetheart, or even his name- but he tolerated Maverick’s enthusiastic dirty talk as long as it stayed pretty vague. He learned that Ice didn’t want to be held after, or to stay the night, but he would linger in bed for a smoke, and maybe even stroke a hand through Pete’s hair as he did. Ice didn’t kiss him again, not that first night together, or any of the ones that followed, in the eighties and early nineties. He did a lot of other things with his mouth and his hands and his hips, but he didn’t kiss Maverick on the mouth.

But of course, in the locker room or the gym or the showers, Maverick wasn’t allowed to look, so Maverick also got answers to a lot of his other questions about Ice: like, yes, he did have other moles hidden under his clothes (including some in some pretty unexpected places) and that his narrow hips and broad shoulders were not just an illusion created by the silhouette of his flight suit. His trim waist fit perfectly between Maverick’s hands, though he did squirm if Pete held him there for a little bit too long.

So it was just sex but it also wasn’t. They were young, and it was simple. It felt like they had all the time in the world.

They were both in San Diego for three years.

And during those three years, Ice met Sarah.

[June 1990 – San Diego, California, USA]

“Man, I can’t believe you’re getting married,” Pete says for the umpteenth time, shaking his head slowly. “Should’ve known you’d be the type to grow up, eventually.”

It’s the night of Ice’s stag, the last night for bachelorhood debauchery: excessive drinking, dirty jokes, ogling scantily dressed women in bars- the kinds of things one doesn’t do when they’re married. Pete is keenly aware that what they do- what they just did- falls under those things one doesn’t do when they’re married, but he’s been too afraid to ask if it’s really the end. Which is fine, Pete should probably start looking for a nice girl himself.

Still, he just figured they had more time.

Ice is quiet for a while. For so long, actually, that when he does speak, Pete is almost startled, having assumed Ice had fallen asleep, where they’re lying side by side on the motel mattress.

“It’s different for me than it is for you,” Tom says lowly. It’s one of those things he only says when he’s sated from the sex and still a bit drunk.

And ouch.

But Ice has that look on his face, the one that tells him he’s slipping back into his shell.

“Stay,” Pete says softly, as Ice stands and begins to gather his clothes off the motel floor. “You shouldn’t drive like this.”

“I can’t, Mav,” Ice sighs, tugging up his jeans. “You know that.”

Pete just nods. He should go, too, anyway. This is one of those real seedy joints that still lets you pay by the hour. He wouldn’t be surprised if there are bedbugs in the mattress.

He goes to get out of the bed, thinking about whether he should chance a shower even though the bathroom is definitely harboring some sort of fungus or mold, but Ice stops him.

“Stay there,” he orders, grabbing the old camera they’d been lugging around that night and holding it up. “For posterity.”

So this really is the end, then, Pete thinks. He tries to argue, but the words die on his tongue.

He barely has a chance to tug the sheets over his dick before the shutter clicks.

“There,” Ice says, smiling all smug and self-satisfied. “That’s a good one.” Ice lifts the camera, “I’m taking this with me. I’ll get ‘em developed and then you can have it back.”

Pete’s remiss to argue, this always has been on Ice’s terms.

In the end, it hadn’t stopped there.

He’d been so drunk that night, so hungover the next morning, that he’d somehow forgotten about the photograph altogether. Ice hadn’t shown him this one, when he went back for his camera a few days later and they cringed at the proof of their transgressions. The worn surface and crinkle in the corner make the skin on the back of his neck flush. They all had material they took to sea, but for Ice’s to have been one of him was something else altogether.

He files the photograph back away in the envelope.

He flips through a few more- innocuous group pictures, polaroids of a young pre-Top Gun Maverick that Ice must have gotten from Carole (had she given them to him, or had he stolen them?), the thick stack of postcards (the early nineties- both of them rotating through different assignments, only overlapping in the same city for a night, maybe two), the letters (late nineties- still rotating assignments but both stateside: regular addresses, regular communication), the personnel files (sentimental bastard).

The letters bewilder him to read. He regrets not keeping more of Ice’s. Reading his own writing from those days is unsettling. He’d been so desperate for Ice’s attention, back then. He skims over one from the year Chris Kazansky was born, dated early 1992, just as Maverick was coming back from a sea tour.

[December 1992 – San Diego, California, USA]

“God, Mitchell. I’m quitting, after today, I swear,” Ice says as he takes a pull of his cigarette. Pete watches as the smoke curls into the air away from his lips. He’s never been much of a smoker, himself, but he can appreciate that it’s undeniably sexy, especially in bed, like this, the smell of sex still heavy in the air. “I don’t think I really understood it, not until I held ‘im for the first time. No reason to.”

“That’s pretty bleak, Kazansky,” Pete says, frowning.

“It’s true,” he shrugs.

The afterglow always makes Ice loose lipped and honest. It’s only really in moments like this that he says anything real, anymore.

And right now, he’s talking about quitting smoking. After years of Pete and then Sarah trying to convince him to, apparently fatherhood is what it takes. Pete supposes that’s fair enough, seeing as he himself would do anything short of giving up his wings to keep Bradley safe, and he’s not even his blood.

Still, a cruel, bleak part of him can’t help but feel put out. It’s ridiculous. Ice has a kid now. It was always going to go like this.

But then again, Ice is here, letting Pete fuck him in a motel room in the middle-of-buttfuck-nowhere instead of home with said child, so Pete thinks it’s pretty reasonable for him to feel like he’s getting mixed-messages.

“Didn’t peg you as the suicidal type,” he says bitterly. He still doesn’t. Ice wouldn’t- couldn’t- kill himself. It’d be dishonorable, and Ice is anything but, but he does think maybe he has gotten a bit depressed, in recent years.

(He thinks maybe it started around when Ice got engaged. It’s different for me than it is for you, he’d said.

Back then, Pete had assumed it was about expectations. Everyone has high expectations for Ice- always did. He’s going to get fast tracked right to the top. Everyone expects him to do things right: marriage, children, promotion after promotion… But then Ice met Sarah- lovely, smart, beautiful Sarah- and instead of ending things and giving himself over to a happy marriage and a happy life, he kept sleeping with Pete and sunk further into himself.

That’s when it occurs to Pete that maybe what’s different is that Ice can’t love a woman. Maybe Ice is gay- like, completely- unlike whatever Pete is. Interminably horny, is what Goose would have said.  And, in a way, that makes him more insecure. This is a choice, for Pete. He could’ve kept seeing Charlie, or the other girls in between, but he chooses to see Ice, instead, despite the risks to himself and his career. Maybe Ice only sees him because it’s convenient, safe. Like Maverick had said himself, the first time: mutually assured destruction. Maverick won’t tell- he can’t!)

Ice shoots him a warning glare. It’s not the kind of thing you say about another sailor, even as a joke. But then again, there are a lot of things they say to and about one another that you don’t say about another sailor.

“So, what, you’re saying that you had nothing to live for, before?” He pushes, never one to walk away from a fight.

But instead of rising to the bait, Ice levels him with a look so pitying that Maverick has to look away.

He thinks he might get it, though. “You know, after Goose died,” Pete starts, but then he trails off. After Goose died, I got close, is what he was going to say. Not to doing anything drastic (except, maybe, career suicide), but to thinking about it, which is close enough, he thinks. Instead, he asks, again, because maybe he’s a bit of a masochist, “There’s nothing else?”

A pause.

“Well, maybe something,” Tom says softly- so quietly that Pete isn’t sure he even actually said it.

He reaches up and snatches the cig right out from between Ice’s lips, careful not to singe himself.

“Hey- you’re really going to take a man’s last cigarette?” Ice says indignantly, but also clearly thankful for the change in topic.

“Ice, I’ll believe it when I see it,” Pete huffs, taking a drag. At first it’s smooth, almost pleasant, and, if just for a moment, he thinks he might understand it, but then he exhales too sharply and it burns coming out his nose.

“I don’t know how you always fuck it up,” Ice says, taking it back, and for a split second that amused-but-fond expression that he tries so hard not to let show passes over his face. “It’s not exactly rocket-science- and you’d be actually pretty competent at that, I bet.”

It’s almost sweet, when Ice says stuff like that. It always makes Mav’s heart do something funny in his chest.

“Yeah, yeah,” Pete says once he’s stopped coughing, ribs aching. He’d had to eject, a few weeks ago, and still wasn’t fully recovered. “Laugh it up. I’m not the one who’s going to croak from the nasty habit.”

Ice stubs the cigarette out on the makeshift ashtray he’d crafted from the carton.

“You up for another round?” He asks, glancing back up at Ice, who is clearly twitching to light another and working very hard not to make it so obvious.

“Sure,” Ice says easily, shifting so that he’s hovering over Pete. “But this time I’m fucking you.”

Pete grins up at him. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

He files the letter away. Yeah, that isn’t a memory he’s particularly fond of.

But it wasn’t all bad.

Like the night Ice kissed him for the first time since 1986.

[November 1993 - Seattle, Washington, USA]

They’re celebrating Maverick’s thirtieth, if a couple months late, and it happens to also coincide with the news of Ice’s impending promotion.

“Commander,” Pete repeats, lips an inch from the rim of his glass. He washes the word back with a swallow. “Big shit.”

Ice looks away bashfully.

“No, seriously!” Pete traps one of Ice’s feet under the table with his own. They’re in a booth in the back of a civilian joint downtown. It’s fine. “Do you know where they’re sending you, yet?”

Ice looks at him again, lips twitch up. “VF-51.”

“No shit,” Pete says slowly. He himself has been shifted to the F-18, but, VF-51 and VFA-97 are both part of the same carrier wing. (He doesn't mention that VF-51 was his father's old squadron. Ice knows this already, Pete's talked about it enough times for him to be sure of that.) “So I guess we’ll be seeing more of each other.”

Ice nods.

He’s become more reserved, over the years. Pete tries not to read into it too much.

They walk out of the bar, both a little buzzed. Ice dips into the alley for a smoke (Pete knew he wasn’t actually going to quit, but he can’t say he’s happy about being proven right, this time), and when Pete sees a convenience store across the street, he tells Ice he’ll be right back and crosses the avenue without giving Ice the chance to protest.

When he comes back, disposable camera in hand, he feels suddenly nervous, again, but Ice just glances at the box and smiles obligingly.

“Here, follow me,” Ice says, nodding up the street.

Pete follows him blindly, and it’s only when they’re piling into two available seats on the bus and he glances at the map on the wall that he frowns, “Hey, I think we’re on the wrong bus. The hotel is south of here.”

“I know.”

“This bus is heading north”

“I know.”

Okay, he knows. Fine.

About fifteen minutes later, Ice tugs on his sleeve.

Pete follows him off the bus. Outside, he glances around. He doesn’t recognize where they are- hasn’t spent enough time in this city to be familiar with much beyond the airport and the pier and the transport line up to Whidbey Island, but the street signs tell him they’re at the intersection of Broadway and Union.

“Where are we?” He asks, but Ice just nods down the block.

As he follows Ice east down the block, peeking into dark alleys and tinted windows, he becomes increasingly aware that they’re not in just any neighborhood.

They’re in a queer neighborhood.

Pete reaches out and grabs the back of Ice’s shirt. “Ice, I’m not sure-”

“Just-” Ice spins on his heel, the look on his face is unfamiliar, pleading. “Trust me?”

Maverick looks around. He’s never seen people that look like this, at least not stateside. It makes him profoundly uncomfortable. But Ice is asking him to trust him, the same way Maverick asked him for his trust seven years ago, so he nods.

Ice flashes a small smile and continues down the road until they end up outside a non-descript black-paneled building. There’s an over-sized red awning that reads THUMPER’S along the front of it.

Ice takes a deep breath, a behavior that Pete learned early on means he’s steeling himself, before opening the door and holding it for Pete.

It’s a piano bar, which sort-of feels on brand for Ice, but then it becomes extremely clear that it is also a gay bar.

Ice orders them drinks at the bar and then pulls him to a standing table along the back wall.

“I hope you like gin,” Ice says, sliding him a glass.

It’s still relatively early, so it’s not too crowded, but Maverick can still feel the eyes on them. Even out of uniform, he knows they don’t look the part, with their hair cut to regs and the stiff way they carry themselves.

Maverick has been to fringe joints in search of a certain kind of attention, before, but this space is different. There are a few men sitting at the bar, nursing beers. There are some small tables and chairs arranged around the stage, which is by the front window, where a woman is playing a large grand piano. A few of the tables are occupied by men- couples- heads tilted close in low conversation.

Ice takes a sip of his drink. “Did you know I lived here for two years?”

Pete shakes his head, dragging his gaze back to Ice. “I didn’t.”

“Yeah, after Hawaii. Dad was at Whidbey helping with the transition to the A-6,” Ice nods. “Anyway, Mom didn’t want to be stuck alone up there, so we had an apartment in the city. Commute was long, so Dad was gone practically eighteen hours a day. After school, he wouldn’t be home until near twenty-two hundred hours. So I would take my bike or my bus pass and explore the city. The university district, the pier, downtown. But I liked this place best- well, this place wasn’t actually around, but the owners frequented this other joint in the neighborhood I went to, sometimes. Now that place-”

He looks away, suddenly shy. Maverick tries to keep his face passive but internally he’s reeling- keep talking! Tell me everything!

“Anyway. I dunno,” Ice shakes his head, drops his aviators back down to his nose from where he had them resting in his hair. Mask back on. But then he does something unexpected. He flags down a young man wiping down the table adjacent to theirs, and says, “Hey, mind taking a picture of my buddy and me?”

And so Maverick hands this kid the camera, which he fortunately had the foresight to get loaded while they were on the bus, because then, before the shutter even clicks, Ice is fisting the front of Maverick’s t-shirt and dragging him in and kissing him square on the mouth.

Ice pulls away first, nods once, and then glances at the kid, takes back the camera with a “Thanks.”

The kid mumbles a no problem, then leaves them be.

“What was that for,” Maverick breaths, taking Ice’s hand where it sits on the table. He’s no longer wearing his wedding band- must’ve slipped it off when Pete wasn’t looking.

Tom shrugs, giving him a shy smile, and says, “Happy birthday.”

Pete flips the photograph, smiles sadly at his messily scribbled wingmen.

That night in Seattle would be the first of a series of Big Efforts that Ice made over the course of their relationship that sustained it. The kind of things so devastatingly romantic or sweet that Pete actually had to take a step back and ask himself if it was in fact Ice that was holding them back, or if was really Maverick all along. But of course, par for the course, these Big Efforts only bookended long periods of trademark coldness.

[August 1996 – Kingsville, Texas, USA]

“I just don’t understand why you can’t-”

“I already told you, Penny, I just don’t know-”

“Okay, you don’t know, but it sounds kind of like you don’t want to-”

The phone rings.

“One sec,” he steps to the landline, takes it off the wall hook. “Hey, Ice,” he ignores Penny’s eye roll. “Yeah, now’s a good time.”

“This is exactly what I’m talking about, Pete,” she says lowly before storming out and slamming the door behind her.

“That? Nothing,” Pete grimaces. “Oh, you’re in town? Yeah, of course you can come by.”

“You should really treat her better,” Ice says, as he unbuttons his shirt.

Maverick pulls his own tee over his head. “Can we not talk about Penny right now?”

“She told me she’d marry you, if you asked, you know,” Ice says, shucking the sleeves off his shoulders.

Maverick’s hands still on his belt. “You’re a dick, you know that?”

Ice has the audacity to look surprised- offended, even.

“I mean it- you called me, remember?”

Ice retreats, shaky hands shoving his shirt into the bag he’d brought with him.

“Wait, stop,” Maverick sighs. “Don’t go.”

“This is getting too complicated, Maverick,” Ice says, idly twisting his wedding band around his finger. “I thought we were on the same page.”

“We were- we are,” Pete says, clasping his hands around Ice’s shoulders, holding them there until Ice meets his gaze. “I just don’t want to talk about Penny right now, okay?”

Ice quirks his lip, “Yeah, okay. That’s- that’s fair.”

The sex is fine. They’re both still a little twitchy. Ice lets Pete fuck him, something he only does every once in a while, when he’s feeling particularly happy or particularly unhappy. Usually the latter.

Afterwards, though, Ice doesn’t make a move to get up, nor to reach for a smoke. Maybe it took the birth of his second child, for him to finally actually quit.

“Can I tell you something?” Ice says, finally.

“Shoot.”

Ice keeps his eye trained on the ceiling. “It keeps me up at night, sometimes.”

Maverick stills where he was idly tracing his fingers along Ice’s chest.

“I’ve killed a man,” Ice says out loud. His voice is steady, but Pete knows him well enough now to know that he’s nervous. “I mean, doesn’t that make you…?”

Pete grapples for the right thing to say. He doesn’t want to screw this up. He’s also kind of pissed, because Ice knows what keeps him up at night, and it’s not a few dead Soviets.

“Never mind,” Ice mutters, squirming a bit under Pete, who’s curled up against his side

“No- hey,” Pete tightens an arm around his chest to still him. “It keeps me up, too.”

Ice seems to accept this, takes a deeper breath, shifts around a little on the mattress.

“Can I stay here, tonight?” He asks, quietly, from where he’s still letting Pete hold him, his broad back pushing against Maverick’s chest, belly rising and falling under Pete’s arm.

Pete takes a breath. Ice and his dichotomies. Sure, Tom, you can sleep in my bed after telling me to marry my girlfriend, he thinks. But he doesn’t say that. “Yeah, ‘course.”

Ice nods, and then, for the first time, falls asleep in Maverick’s arms.

This is how Pete remembers it: In the eighties, they were just two hotshot aviators looking to blow off some steam and having a damn good time doing it. Ice was the first person he’d fucked who met him exactly where he was at. If after that it was a bit of an addiction, he chalked it up as a vice. The early nineties were rough around the edges. Things were getting serious for Ice’s career- and, not to mention, his personal life- and Mav was proving himself useful only when he was catapulted off a carrier, so they only saw each other sparingly, when Maverick’s boat docked and Iceman could find an excuse to not be on base or with his young family. The late nineties were a pocket of relative normalcy- if you could call it that. Carole got sick, so Maverick came home, accepting a position training strike teams on the new fleet of F-18s in Southern Texas, where the Bradshaw’s were living, not far from where Pete grew up himself. He spent a few years helping to take care of Bradley while Carole’s health declined while Iceman took command of NAS Miramar, overseeing it’s transfer to the Marines, rising comfortably into Captaincy. The ground may have been unstable beneath them, but at least they were on common ground, even if they couldn’t always find their footing.

Pete can admit that his recollection of the nineties is probably rose-tinted.

And then it was the two-thousands.

[January 2000 – Guam, USA]

Why did you bring me out here?

“Happy new year!” Ice calls, stumbling down the beach toward where Maverick is standing ankle-deep in the lapping waves.

He pretends to squint at his watch. “Hate to break it to you, Captain, but you’re about seventeen hours late on that one.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Ice shrugs, shucking off his shirt and abandoning it on the shore to join Pete in the water. “It’s finally the great year two thousand back home. We’re all there, now, and nothing catastrophic has happened.”

Why did you bring me out here?

“Yet,” Pete interjects. It’s still nineteen-ninety-nine somewhere. It sounds like a joke Goose would have made, maybe, if he’d gotten to live long enough to see the new millennium. “I think we’re still waiting on a few.”

Ice ignores him in favor of reaching down and cupping some of the impossibly blue water in his hands and dumping it on the back of his own neck.

They’re in Guam, where Ice is serving as interim Commander while he finishes up his second master’s degree over the phone. Pete is here, ostensibly, to advise on preparations for the reinstatement of the neighboring air station, but it’s so far out from his usual scope of expertise that there is no logical explanation for his being here other than Ice wanted him to be. Except, ever since he landed almost five days ago, Ice has been ignoring him, spending instead his limited spare time with Slider, who is here under the same orders as Pete.

It makes his head spin.

Why did you bring me out here?

“How is the family?” Pete asks, stepping deeper into the ocean, so that it’s just passed his knees. He looks down at his feet, which look fragmented where the sun hits the surface of the sea.

“All quiet on the Western Front,” Ice says, laughing under his breath at his own joke.

“Are you drunk?” Pete frowns.

“Huh?” Ice frowns back. “No, not drunk,” then he shrugs, smiles bashfully, looking younger than he has in years. “Okay, maybe a little. But I’m not working today, it’s fine.”

Neither of them are.

Why did you bring me out here?

“How’s Bradley?” Ice asks, a little sharply, apparently suddenly annoyed again.

“You know as well as I do,” Pete snaps. The kid is living with his grandparents in San Antonio, now. Pete tried to ask Carole for guardianship, but she didn’t want him having anything to do with the Navy, made it abundantly clear. She even made Pete call Ice to block his Academy application and everything. Hell of a painful thing.

They stand in charged silence for a bit, letting the waves crash against them.

“I don’t want to fight,” Ice sighs, finally breaking the silence.

“Me neither, Ice,” Pete says, chancing a glance out of the side of his aviators.

Why did you bring me out here?

“C’mon,” Ice says, gesturing with his head up toward the beach. It’s not deserted, but there isn’t anyone within a hundred-foot radius. The few who were closer moved further out when they saw Captain Kazansky appear from out between the palm trees.

They sit side by side on the sand, facing the out toward the horizon. The sun will be setting in the next hour.

“Look,” Ice says, nervous but clearly spurred on by whatever he’s been drinking. (Vodka, if the smell of his breath if anything to go by.) “I just- I just wanted to say-”

“There you are!” Slider comes tumbling out from the brush behind them. “Jesus, Ice, I was looking for you everywhere, man.”

Pete moves away, if only a little.

Slider knows. Well- Slider found out. A story for another time.

Ice assured Pete it was a non-issue, but Pete is still a bit unsure about it.

“Yo, Slider, did you bring the bag?” Ice calls as Ron puts himself between them and the view.

Yo, Pete thinks. Ice is definitely drunk.

“Right here, buddy,” Ron grins. He reaches inside for a plastic water bottle. Though the liquid is clear, judging by the way the plastic is crinkled and the label has been stripped, Pete suspects that it’s not filled with water.

Ice grabs for the bag, rummages for a while, and then pulls out a Polaroid camera, holds it out to Slider. “Take one of us, will you?”

His tone is easy, but it sucker punches Maverick.

The camera is exactly the same as the kind Goose had.

“Sure, man,” Ron says lightly, taking a few steps back to get a better angle, but there’s an underlying tremor of anxiety as he looks around. “Here?”

Ice nods, slinging an arm around Pete’s shoulders companionably. His skin is hot where they’re touching, searing him.

Pete, unsure he’ll be able to school his expression into something casual, turns to give Ice a joking peck on the cheek instead as Ron clicks the shutter. He hands the photograph to Ice, who starts to fan it.

“Okay, there,” Ron says, clearly a bit embarrassed for them, shoving the camera back in his bag, but Pete stands on shaky legs and takes it from him.

“You’re turn,” he says, nodding toward the now vacant spot by Ice.

Later, he finds himself at Ice’s off-base housing, a quaint stand-alone bungalow with four bedrooms, clearly intended for his family, but Ice always insists they stay back in San Diego for the normalcy.

Pete thinks it’s stupid, but it also makes this easier, so he can't really complain.

Despite his earlier annoyance, he lets Ice push him down onto the mattress, lifts his hips to help him tug off his swim trunks. He gasps when Ice dives down, feeling himself grow harder in his mouth with each pass of his tongue.

It’s been a while since they’ve last done this, since they’ve even been in the same room, let alone alone. Even though he knows Ice hates being watched, Maverick pushed up to his elbows, peers down to see Ice looking straight at him.

They lock eyes.

Ice stills, but he doesn’t pull off. Before he can get too spooked, Pete shifts his weight to one arm, reaching with one hand to gently stroke his hair, which is loose and soft from the sea breeze and starting to turn grey at the edges. It’s the stress, Pete had told him, when he first noticed it.

Immediately, Pete learns it was the wrong thing to do, because Ice pulls off harshly, dislodging Pete’s hand, and starts on his own clothes, fingers shaking. He pushes Maverick over onto his stomach.

Afterwards, Ice still won’t look at him. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly, eyes tracked on the ceiling, as they lie side by side.

“It’s fine,” Pete says, staring at the side of Ice's face, trying to figure out what he's thinking. He’s a bit sore from the lack of preparation, but it wasn’t bad. Rough, but they both like it that way, sometimes. Still, a heads up would have been nice.

“It’s not,” Ice sighs. He continues, hesitantly, “I really appreciate you coming out here. I know I put you in an awkward position.”

Pete looks away, tries to disentangle the annoyance he feels towards Ice meddling with his career and now with Bradley’s, from his frustration with their unsatisfying arrangement. “It’s fine, Ice. But you know, if you want to see me, you could just say so.”

Ice seems to mull this over. The letters have slowed down, on both of their ends. Neither of them have needed to say why- both of them are keenly aware of how the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell witch hunts have been going.

They have to assume that all communication- phone, email, written- is being closely monitored.

“Look,” Pete continues, “do you have email? I mean, like, a personal one?”

“Obviously.”

“Why don’t- why don’t we just use that?”

“Mav-”

“We’ll still be, you know, discreet,” Pete assures him. “Just- it’s faster than writing and easier, too.”

Ice takes a deep breath. “Sure, Pete. We can email.”

He thinks that’s the first time Ice has called him by his first name.

They did end up emailing some, in the end. Pete hasn’t tried to go back and find them in his inbox, though he doesn’t think there would be anything revealing in there if he did. Their emails had to be kept brief and professional, given the circumstances. Maverick couldn’t even access his account, eleven months out of the year, from late 2001 to early 2009, for the sake of operational security.

The letters ended when the emails started, leaving Ice’s folders sparser, after the turn of the century.

But he continued with one habit, apparently.

He lines the personnel files up on the workbench. One from every six months, according to the retrieval dates printed in the margins.

He realizes, now, looking at these documents, that these were the only way Ice could keep track of him, back then. Pete couldn’t tell him where he was going, unless he was directly under his command, which happened a few times, over the years. Like in the fall of 2004.

[October 2004 – USS Abraham Lincoln, Western Pacific Ocean]

They’re in Ice’s stateroom, the nice one they reserve the Captain of the ship. It’s got a real bed, and a desk, and a comfortable chair in the corner. Most importantly, it has its own bathroom and a small fridge.

To Pete, it’s heaven.

He’s stretched out on the bed while Ice finishes up some work. He’s up for Rear Admiral, in the new year, and has been keen on proving himself deserving. To this day, Ice’s work ethic astounds Pete. He thinks it might be the thing he admires most about him.

Not for the first time, Pete wants to tell Tom he loves him.

The impulse to say it has been living under his skin for a while, but has become increasingly urgent, going from a simmer to a rolling boil.

He feels it when they kiss, of course, or during sex, but it also takes him in the most surprising of times: when Tom answers his family’s phone calls with a splitting grin, when Ice reprimands a junior officer during a debrief, when he shakes Maverick’s hand professionally in front of their colleagues or thumps him amicably on the back in front of their friends.

Or in quiet moments like these, where they’re in each other’s company just for the hell of it.

The problem, of course, is that he doesn’t think Tom wants him to say it.

“What are you thinking about?” Tom asks, finally settling onto the bed next to him.

“Mm, nothing,” Pete says, but he knows his face is probably betraying him. He won’t tell Tom what he’s actually thinking about, but he figures that maybe he can run a litmus test. “Did you get that memo from Clark’s office?”

Ice stiffens next to him. “I did.”

“Do you think it has any merit?” He asks, gently. He really isn’t trying to start an argument, but the news of the lawsuit that Log Cabin is bringing against Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is still on his mind, has been since it came across his desk.

“I don’t know, Mav,” Ice sighs. It’s hard to tell if he’s Tom or Ice, right now, actually. “Maybe. I wouldn’t count on it, though.”

Pete nods, shifts closer until their shoulders touch. “What if it does, though? What then?”

Ice turns his head away, so Pete can’t look at his face.

It’s only after a few minutes of near silence that Pete realizes Tom is crying.

“Shit, Tom,” Pete whispers, crawling over him to force Tom to look at him. “I’m sorry. It’s okay.”

Tom shakes his head, his eyes screwed shut. Pete resists the urge to wipe away the stray tear running down his cheek.

Pete waits him out, straddling his hips, one hand holding one of Tom’s over his chest, the other twitching nervously at his side.

“I’m sorry,” Ice says, once he’s gathered himself. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“Fuck, Tom,” Pete sighs. “Don’t apologize.”

Tom ignores him, just shakes his head sadly.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Pete says, pushing away his own frustration. He can live with it, if it means he doesn’t have to see Tom cry again.

Tom nods, scrubs at his face with the hand that’s not in Pete’s. “I do hope it goes through,” he says, eventually. “The suit. I just don’t think it will.”

Pete bites his lip. “I’d say the odds look pretty good.”

“Well,” Tom says, lips twitching up despite the despair in his eyes, “I really hope you’re right.”

After a few minutes, Tom extracts himself from Pete’s hold to go wash his face.

Pete doesn’t let himself think too hard about why Tom is so upset. It’s not that the topic doesn’t make Pete emotional, but the way Tom cried was so unexpected, such a visceral reaction, that Pete suspects there is something else at play.

Tom flicks the light off and crawls back into bed. Pete turns, expecting Ice’s hands on him, but instead, Tom just tugs him over and arranges them until Pete is pressed up against his chest, holds him there.

“If it does, though," Tom whispers against the back of Pete’s neck. "I swear…”

He doesn’t finish his sentence.

“I know,” Pete whispers back, even though he doesn’t really know what Tom would have said, what he was going to promise.

It takes him a long time to fall asleep.

For all that Ice manipulated Pete career before, after he got that first star, he practically made it his life’s purpose to keep Pete safe, professionally.

Even then, Pete knew it wasn’t a coincidence that when Ice made Rear Admiral he himself received an invitation to attend the Test Pilot School, despite not having applied, interrupting a never-ending rotation of combat tours.

Though it made him uncomfortable, Ice’s interference in his career, it also made him hopeful.

He pulls out an old program for the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space Exposition, dated March of 2008, from his own box of memories.

[March 2008 – Washington D.C., USA]

He’s been waiting for a quiet moment to find Ice, and now, as the reception hall is emptying out for the evening after Ice’s talk, he thinks he’s found his chance.

It’s been almost a year since they’ve seen each other, now. Pete was sent on a few more special operation tours, cutting off his communication with the outside world for months at a time.

Pete was worried, about seeing him again, but now that he’s walking up to Ice, who’s looking imposing in his dress blues, shaking hands with the SECNAV, he’s downright nervous.

It’s not a feeling he’s accustomed to.

When the Secretary finally leaves, Maverick makes his approach.

“Ah, Captain Mitchell, thank you for coming,” Ice says, shaking his hand. He’s wearing a passive expression, but there’s a slight sparkle in his eye that lets Pete know they’re okay. “I’m sorry I missed the promotion ceremony.”

“It’s no trouble, Admiral,” Pete says. “I really enjoyed your talk.”

Ice looks around, then leans in and whispers conspiratorially, “God, do you think they bought it?”

Pete laughs, relieved. “Yeah, you were pretty believable. I was actually getting a little pissed off.”

“Good,” Ice sighs, removing his glasses (which, that’s a new development, since Pete’s last seen him, but he can’t say he hates it) and wiping them with a small cloth he procures from his breast pocket. “I fucking hate those things. Future of aerial warfare my ass.”

He’s talking about UAVs- unmanned aerial vehicles, drones. But Ice is being groomed for bigger and better things, so when he was asked to present on the topic, he probably felt he couldn’t say no, despite the shiny new stars on his shoulders.

“Say,” Pete starts, glancing around to make sure no one is listening in too closely. “I have some additional questions about how the integration of UAVs will change the future of recon Opps for the Navy’s air forces,” (he doesn’t- in fact, he’d really rather not think about it at all) “would you happen to have some time this evening to discuss?”

Ice makes a point of looking at his watch, and at the small paper program he has in hand, and then looks back at Pete. “I think I can manage dinner, and a drink afterwards, if that suits you.”

Pete nods, smiles. “Lead the way.”

He walks with Ice toward the elevator, where Ice pushes the button to head up instead of that to descend, which would take them down to the lobby, and to the restaurants. “Forgive me, Captain,” Ice says, “but my wallet is in my room.”

“No worries, Admiral,” Pete says, schooling his expression. “I’ll ride up with you.”

Tom doesn’t kiss him until they’re safely locked in his hotel room. The hallway of the fifteenth floor was deserted, but still, he and Ice took practiced precautions, Ice subtlety slipping him a key card and slip with a room number during the elevator ride up, Pete taking a left instead of a right when they get to the floor and looping around the hall for a few minutes, staggering they’re entrances.

It’s potentially a bit excessive, but it’s not worth finding out.

“I missed you,” Tom says, pushing Pete up against the closed door. “I was scared they weren’t going to let you come.”

Pete grins. “I think I would’ve flown myself here if they didn’t.”

Tom laughs, a delighted thing that loosens the last of the anxiety in Pete’s chest. “I bet you would’ve.”

He wonders if something happened to make Ice so eager, but he knows better by now than to ask.

Pete starts working on the buttons of his coat, but Ice stops him. “Hold on, I’m still taking you to dinner.”

“What?” Pete whines, surprised. “I- the whole wallet bit?”

Tom steps back, sheepishly grabs his wallet from the hotel dresser. “Not a bit,” he shrugs.

“Unbelievable,” Pete laughs. “Okay. Dinner, then,” he steps aside. “After you, Admiral.”

After dinner, Pete gets what he wants. The sex is good. Too good, almost. It makes him wonder how he went so long without. Tom takes his time working him open, which he hardly ever does, usually in too much of a hurry or too ashamed to deal with the procedure of it all.

He fucks him hard, but he also kisses him the whole time, which is also new, and Pete’s almost embarrassed by how much he likes it.

He takes advantage of this new side of Tom to trail his hands all over his body- his firm biceps, the smooth expanse of his back, the planes of his chest and stomach. He’s always been a bit envious of Tom’s chest hair, of his naturally long and lean composition.

Afterwards, they shower together (also new) and then collapse back into bed. He keeps expecting Ice to kick him out, but he doesn’t. Tom just mumbles something about setting an early alarm so they can stagger their exits, and falls asleep.

Pete is once again revisited by the urge to tell Tom he loves him.

He didn’t end up telling Ice that he loved him, not that night, not ever. But of course, he didn’t know it would be never, at the time.

Not long after the conference, toward the end of 2009, Tom got his third star and was made Air Boss, and Pete, in what Ice insisted was nothing but a coincidence, was offered a job as a test pilot for a classified-to-hell hypersonic scramjet development project at NAS China Lake.

For one whole year, they were both in the same corner of the world again. He saw Ice almost every week, whether it was at Tom’s family home, or the shitty shoebox apartment Pete kept in San Diego, or at the defunct naval hangar he found on one of his commutes to the testing facilities. Tom’s eldest, Chris, was heading to Stanford in the fall of 2010, and his daughter Lucy would graduate high school soon herself. There was an election coming up, in a couple years, and the odds of the forty-fourth president signing the repeal were high.

For a moment, there, he was certain Ice was gearing up to divorce Sarah.

But no, that wasn’t the case.

He slips the program from the conference into the chronology he’s been constructing along the workbench. Ice had his pictures, his postcards, his letters; Maverick kept hotel key cards, restaurant receipts, and other physical mementos.

Like a hospital bracelet.

[May 2010 – San Diego, California, USA]

“Captain Mitchell,” Pete says automatically, taking the phone off the wall hook.

“Oh, good, I wasn’t sure I had your number right-”

“Sarah?” Pete frowns.

“Yes, sorry, where are my manners… Hi Pete, how are you?”

“I’m… fine, are you alright?”

“Yes, no, fine,” she huffs, impatient but not unkind- Californian, through and through. “Look- I hate to ask but Tom needs a ride home from the hospital. I was going to get him myself, but Lucy seems to have the flu so I can’t take her to school and I don’t think-”

“Hey, it’s- slow down,” Pete heart kicks up in his chest. “What- which hospital?”

“The University one. He should be all set to go, he just can’t drive like this, and he’ll be waiting for me, and I don’t want him taking a cab-”

He cuts her off. “It’s fine, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Thanks, Pete,” Sarah sighs, relieved. “You’re a good friend.”

He doesn’t feel like a good friend, not when he’s checking Ice out of the hospital half-an-hour later, from what is apparently his third chemotherapy appointment this week.

“You’re mad,” Ice says- a statement, more than a question- once their seatbelts are buckled and Pete is pulling out of the parking lot.

“You’re just lucky my neighbor was home and let me borrow her car,” Pete huffs. Yeah, he’s mad.

“I was going to tell you,” Ice says, a little petulant. He sounds exhausted.

“When, Tom?” Pete says harshly. He’s distantly aware that Ice must be feeling awful, but his anger burns sharp. “You had plenty of time to last weekend.”

A whole forty-eight hours together, camping out in the old hangar that Maverick’s been slumming it in when he’s up at China Lake.

(It was pretty much the perfect weekend. They rented a truck to bring Pete’s new trailer up, and spent the better part of Friday afternoon getting it hooked up to the gas and electric lines. After a dinner of hotdogs and beer, they slept in the small bed in the Airstream, pressed up against each other for warmth in the desert chill. The next day, Tom helped Pete clean out the storage room, while Pete yammered on about all the plans he had for the space- where he’d put the bikes, and how he was in the market for a plane. Not just any plane, Ice, he’d said, I’m going to find me an old war bird. Something sexy, like a Hellcat, or a Mustang. Ice had laughed, said, good luck with that, Maverick. They ended the day with takeout from the local diner, and some awkward fumbling in the trailer. The next day, Pete added procuring outdoor furniture to his to-do list.)

He could hardly believe that Ice was sick. He’d looked good, he’d sounded fine. Pete doesn’t even think he’d heard him so much as cough.

“Didn’t wanna,” – a yawn – “ruin the moment.”

Pete forces himself to let it go until he pulls into his driveway. It’s only there, that he realizes he probably should’ve driven Ice back to his own home.

He leaves a still-sleeping Iceman in the passenger seat of his neighbors car, and walks inside to use the phone (he still can’t reliably figure out his Blackberry).

“Hi- Sarah?” – “Yeah- sorry.” – “Yeah, he’s with me.” – “Well, look, I was thinking, since the kid is sick…”

So he hauls a drowsy Ice inside, shoves him down onto the sofa.

“You really don’t have to do this, Maverick,” Ice sighs, as Pete adjusts his legs on the cushions.

Pete ignores him, brings him a glass of water, and a piece of buttered toast. Bland, for the nausea. He remembers this from when Carol sick. He places the tv remote next to the plate.

“Eat. Drink. I’ve gotta go make some calls,” he glances up at the clock. He should’ve been on base an hour ago. He’s going to hear for this one. “Just- take it easy, okay?”

Tom grabs his wrist before he can get too far. “Hey, Pete? You’re a really good friend, you know?”

And maybe that’s the problem.

“Anything for my wingman,” he says.

That marked the end, for their relationship, as it was. They wouldn’t sleep together again.

Ice would never go back up to the hangar, they would never book another motel. They wouldn’t slip into each other’s rooms at conferences or on carriers, in the rare occasions they overlapped.

Ice wasn’t sick for long, the first time- it took just under a year for him to enter full remission- and a year after that, in late 2011, he was made Commander of the Pacific Fleet.

A few months before his formal instatement, the repeal was officially enacted. A month later, Pete got drunk, and angry, and mailed the official memo to Ice. He never got a response, but Ice always did hate talking about it.

Still, they didn’t stop being friends. Ice invited him to Thanksgiving every year, and the occasional family affair: his and Sarah’s twentieth wedding anniversary, Lucy’s high school graduation, Ice’s fifty-fifth birthday party. Pete still has the invitations to each.

The favors didn’t stop, either. He kept Maverick in the sky longer than he deserved, always managing to smooth things over when he inevitably pissed off another Admiral, coming up with increasingly creative ways to delay his looming retirement or promotion.

They texted, often, too. Ice liked to ask for his opinion on work matters, despite Pete’s lack of appropriate security clearance, and he regularly asked Pete for pictures of the Mustang or updates on Darkstar.

That last weekend in the hangar, Tom forgot a shirt behind. An old t-shirt from the Academy, so worn and threadbare that Pete was certain it couldn’t survive another round in the wash (though he’d never dare find out). He lifts it out of the box, brings it to his nose and inhales. Every time he does this (it was often, at first- but has become more sporadic, over the years) it smells less like him, but the faint scent of his cologne lingers.

Maverick reaches back into his box, flinching when his fingers brush against metal.

[October 2016 – San Diego, California, USA]

It’s only when he’s rushing down the hall towards Ice’s room that he hesitates, wondering if he should be here at all.  But then he sees Sarah, face buried in her hands, and he forces himself to walk the last few steps to where she’s sitting.

She looks up at him, eyes wet, “Maverick,” she stands, pulls him in for a brief hug, “thank you for coming.”

“How long?” He asks, giving her a quick squeeze

“A few hours, at most,” she says, pulling away. “It’ll be soon.”

He nods, wipes his sweaty palms on the legs of hid flight suit. He wishes he could’ve gotten changed, before coming here.

Sarah had told him there was nothing left to do, a few days ago, when he’d gone to see Ice. But for some reason, he still expected that, somehow, Ice would make it out. They’d survived worse odds, together. It seems impossible that something so normal would do it, in the end.

“He wants to see you,” she says, wiping her tears with a crumpled tissue. “The kids are with him now. He’s pretty out of it, but he’ll nod, or smile.”

Pete feels the sudden need to confess. “Sarah-”

She stops him with a raised hand. “Pete. Please, don’t. Not now.”

He can’t be certain she knows what he was going to say, but he nods, anyway.

The door to Ice’s room opens, Chris and Lucy step out. It’s been a few years since he’s seen them, both having left the nest, so to speak, years ago, now.

Seeing Chris startles Pete. He looks the spitting image of his father, when they met. He’s a young man, now- almost as old as Ice would’ve been, back then. Maybe just a couple years younger. His hair is darker, and he’s taller, but their faces, their eyes, are the exact same.

“Uncle Mav,” Lucy says softly, accepting a side hug.

“Hey, kiddo,” he says, kissing the top of her head.

He shakes Chris’ hand. Chris doesn’t say anything, though, so Pete doesn’t either. He hopes that’s the right thing.

Chris releases Pete’s hand and turns to his sister. “Coffee?”

She nods, and Pete watches the two of them disappear down the hall.

“You’ll have to forgive him,” Sarah says softly. “He’s having a hard time with it.”

Pete shakes his head. “Nothing to forgive.”

She gives him a small smile, and then nods toward the door.

Pete takes one more moment to gather himself, and then walks into Ice’s room.

The smell is familiar- antiseptic and rubbing alcohol, and the faint floral aroma of the arrangement in the corner of the room- but it’s quiet, without the beeping of a heart monitor. For all that he tried to prepare himself, the sight still destabilizes him down to his core.

Ice is lying down in the hospital bed, as expected, but he’s not in a gown. He’s in his own clothing- a thick sweater, scarf piled around his neck. A quilt Pete recognizes from Ice’s home is draped over his legs. There’s a single IV in his arm, and he’s on oxygen, but otherwise he’s not hooked up to anything. It makes sense. Sarah had told him about the advanced directive. No life-saving measures. He’s actually surprised that Ice let them take him to the hospital at all.

Pete eases the door shut behind him. The click makes Ice open his eyes.

He smiles.

Pete starts to cry.

Ice frowns, beckons him over weakly.

“I’m so sorry,” Pete says, sinking into the chair next to Ice’s bed, clutching his cold hand between his own. “I’m so sorry, Ice.”

Ice just shakes his head.

Pete screws his eyes shut, tries to fight the tears. It’s a hopeless endeavor.

When he blinks them open, Ice is still smiling. The bastard.

He realizes, suddenly, that it’s his last chance to say the words.

“Ice, just want to say-” Pete says, bringing their joined hands up to his lips, brushing a kiss on Ice’s knuckles. “Tom. I need to, I have to tell you something.”

Ice looks away, shrinks in on himself.

Pete wants to scream. Even in the face of death, nothing scares Ice more than acknowledging this part of himself.

He doesn’t yell, though. Instead, he kisses Ice’s hand one more time, and says, voice wobbly, “you always were the better pilot.”

Ice looks at him again, shakes his head with a wry smile. Mouths, No, you.

Pete takes a deep breath. It’ll have to be enough.

He sits with Ice a while longer. He doesn’t speak, can’t figure out what to say. Ice doesn’t say anything either, understandably, but he occasionally flexes his fingers in Pete’s hand.

At some point, his breathing becomes slower and more labored, and Pete knows.

He leans down, kisses his forehead, and then forces himself to leave.

The service ended an hour ago.

He knows he should go, there’s so much work left to do. Ice would’ve wanted him to go, to make sure that everyone comes home safely.

Sarah finds him by the headstone.

Only his name and rank are engraved. That’s all he’ll be remembered for, here.

“He would have wanted you to have these,” she says, handing him a silver chain- Ice’s dog tags.

He swallows thickly. “Thank you.”

She leaves before he can say anything else, which is probably for the best.

The last thing he can do for Ice is keep his secrets.

He pulls out Ice’s tags, turns them over in his palm.

Later, after surviving the mission that he was sure would reunite him with Tom in heaven or hell, whichever they deserved, he found out that Ice left him some money. Nothing outrageous, but a generous sum nonetheless, with an accompanying note to use it to finish up the Mustang.

It made Pete furious at the time. He didn’t want, or need, Ice’s money.

Still, he cashed the check, used it to pay for the last few bits and pieces he needed to finish her engine, and for the insurance appraisal and final inspections, and even put part of it towards his private license.

But it’s only looking at the pictures now, the memories rushing back, that he finally understands that the check was not pity, but a gesture- a recognition. It was Tom’s way of saying he wanted in, even if it was too late. A final way of communicating that he was on Pete’s wing.

The box and envelopes are now empty, all the evidence laid out before him.

He still hasn’t decided what to do with all of it. He keeps getting stuck on the question- what would Ice have wanted? His gut instinct is that Ice would have wanted him to burn them, but then again, he’s the one who kept them all these years! That has to mean something.

His next impulse is to return them to Chris, but the kid seemed pretty sure about his decision to hand them off to Pete.

He stares at the unopened envelope, sitting at the end of the bench. There are essentially two possibilities: it’s either a confession (I loved you. Always did, always will. Sorry I never said it, sorry it never was. But I’m saying it now…) or it’s a final refusal (Let it go, Maverick. Yes, you were right. Times are ah changing. It’ll be better for our kids and their kids after them. But you and I are old dogs, so let’s let it lie.)

Maverick’s not sure which one would hurt less.

There’s a thought exercise, for this, he thinks. Schrodinger’s cat, or something like that. If the letter remains unopened, then Maverick’s heart is neither broken nor unbroken. Except, won’t his heart break either way?

Before he can lose his nerve, he carefully runs his switchblade across the top of the envelope, tearing it open.

There are two thick pieces of paper, folded into threes, and a photograph. He nearly chokes on his inhale. It’s that first picture they took together, back in Honolulu. Faces inches apart.

He reaches for the letter.

The first thing he looks for is a date. His heart seizes in his chest when he sees it, in the top right-hand corner, where Ice always put it.

October 23^rd, 2011.

A month before Tom made Pacific Fleet Commander. A month after the repeal passed.

He grabs the envelope, looks at the mailing address again. His heart sinks. Tom addressed it to the hangar. The hangar, which doesn’t have a mailbox. The hangar, which was deserted at the time. No wonder it never made it to him.

He’d spent the past fifteen years convinced that Ice never wrote him back.

He’d been wrong.

His hands tremble, and he has to press the sheets of Pearl Harbor stationary to the surface of the table to steady the pages enough for the handwritten words to be legible.

Dear Pete,

                  I hope this letter finds you well. I’m writing from my new office in Honolulu, and I am reminded of when we spent some time here together, a quarter of a century ago, though I must admit my recollection of that night is hazy at best.

                  I received your note, and accompanying photograph. It’s a beautiful plane. A P-51, is it? I would love to come and see it, next time I’m in your neck of the woods. Or neck of the desert, I suppose.

                  Sarah called me yesterday to tell me she thinks Chris may be like you and me. It terrifies me to think that he might have to suffer like we have, that he might be afraid of this part of himself. He’s considering applying to law school. This has me thinking of what Viper said to us, on our first day at Top Gun, the day we met. He said, civilians write policy, we are merely instruments of it. I didn’t understand what he meant then, as I do, now.

                  It brings me comfort to know that Chris is entering a safer, kinder world than we were, at his age. That is in part due to the actions of the men and women responsible, those courageous enough to take a stand. I wish I was a braver man. I’ve always envied admired that about you, Pete. Your bravery.

                  Anyhow, I’m not writing to tell you were right, as you might expect (but, of course, you were, and I sincerely look forward to hearing your I told you so in person), though the news of the repeal is a great relief, and it brings me peace to know that your life may be a little easier, in its wake. Instead, I’m writing to let you know that I have been asked to serve, when Walsh steps down. I’m sure it goes without saying that this is not yet public knowledge, but I trust you will be discreet. I know you won’t understand, but this also means that even though yes, you were right, I cannot make good on an old promise.

                  I understand if this upsets you, and for this I am deeply sorry. I want you to know that the time we have spent together over the years has been the happiest of my life. I hope you don’t see it as time wasted, and I hope we can still be friends.

                  With love,

                  Tom

He nearly jumps out of his skin when a hand touches his shoulder. He spins on his heel, nearly socks Bradley across the jaw on impulse.

“Woah- Mav, it’s me,” Bradley says- uselessly, now that Pete can see him- dropping his hand from Pete’s shoulder.

Pete quickly folds up the letter, carefully tucks it back into the envelope. “Christ, kid, what are you doing here?”

“Got in last night, forgot to call, sorry,” he hesitates, expression scrutinizing. Pete hopes his eyes don’t look as wet as they feel. “And Penny called me, this morning. She said you left in a hurry, seemed really freaked out.”

Pete grimaces. “She’s overreacting.”

“Still, thought I’d check in on you,” Bradley says easily. He looks over Pete’s shoulder, frowns for a second. “What’s all this?”

Pete clears his throat. “Chris Kazansky gave them to me. You remember him?”

“’Course! Practically my little cousin,” Bradley says, stepping around to look at the spread on the workbench. Pete tucked the most incriminating photos away already, so he lets Bradley look. “How is he?”

“Not great,” Pete admits. He hadn’t told anyone- not Penny, not Bradley- the real reason he was in Boston, instead made up some excuse about a presentation at MIT. “His mother died last month. He passed these on before the funeral last week.”

“Jeez, Mav,” Bradley looks at him with an expression that’s equal parts unimpressed and apologetic. “I know you three,” – meaning, of course, him, Ice, and by extension Sarah – “were close. You should’ve said something.”

He just shrugs. How does he explain that, for him, it was so much more complicated than that?

Bradley lifts one of the photographs, a picture of him and Ice standing tall next to an F-18 when they were getting certified on the new fleet in ’88.

“You should donate these to a museum,” Bradley says lightly, holding it up for Pete to see.

Some horrible feeling settles in Pete gut. Ice would not have wanted that, that much he is sure of. He walks past Bradley towards the couch, grabs a beer from the Airstream on his way.

He cracks it open, watching out of the corner of his eye as Bradley looks through the pictures. He knows Bradley will come to the same conclusion Chris had, eventually.

He sets the folded-up letter on the coffee table and wraps the chain of Ice’s dog tags tight around his fingers. He thinks of the advice he’d gotten from two of the best men he’d known, thirty years apart: it’s time to let go. But what has that gotten him?

And what about Ice, the hypocrite. Clearly, he hadn’t let go. No, he’d just kept it close to his chest. In the basement or the garage or the attic (or perhaps more aptly, in the closet- he could be funny like that, sometimes).

Yet, no matter how much he tries to be angry, all he feels is hollowed out.

He looks out over the horizon. The sun is starting to set.

“How long?” Bradley asks, sitting across from him, bottle in hand.

“Late eighties. Then on and off in the nineties,” Pete licks his lips. “And again, in the early two-thousands.”

“I had no idea,” Bradley says, under his breath. “I’m, uh. I’m sorry. Must’ve been hard.”

Bradley had told Pete about his own on again off again thing with Seresin shortly after the mission. It still surprised him some, hearing about openly gay officers, but it certainly filled some gaps for him as to their behavior during training.

Pete shrugs. “No other way it could’ve gone.”

Bradley grimaces at his response, but it’s true. That much he knows. Ice was never going to change. The letter proves that, once and for all.

“Look, Bradley,” Maverick sighs. “I’m just thankful for what was, okay? Let’s leave it at that.”

Bradley nods, takes a swig of his beer, and then pushes on, anyway. Stubborn. “Just- if you ever just wanted to talk about him…” he trails off. “Well, I’m here to listen.”

Maybe it would be nice. Cathartic, even. Maybe saying it out loud would make it more real.

Even with all the proof laid out in front of him it feels like it was all a dream, sometimes. A fabrication.

He wasn’t evading, when Chris asked him if they were together, and he couldn’t give a satisfactory answer. They never named the relationship. Dates were set, locations arranged, or they crossed paths organically. As they got older, Ice did his meddling, and Pete kept himself available.

He thinks of what Ice wrote, I hope you don’t see it as time wasted.

Does he? He’s not sure.

He doesn’t feel used- if he did, then he would be the hypocrite. He’s never been good at relationships, even when they were simple- Charlie, Penny. Maybe that’s precisely how he and Tom lasted so long. No expectations meant no failing to meet them.

Still, he wishes he had more than just these artifacts, these fragments, to remember it by.

Even Ice’s letter hardly offers any closure. He can’t help but wonder why Ice never tried to send it again, or why he couldn’t say the words, even in the end.

And even if the letter had made it to him, back then, Maverick has no idea how he would have felt about it. It's almost a confession, but it's also not. Though he can now guess what the promise would have been, he's not sure what he would have done with that information, at the time. One thing was obvious: Ice was ending it, even though he didn't say what 'it' was.

“It’s really not that nice of a story,” Pete says, after a few minutes of silence.

Bradley smiles kindly. “They never are.”

Pete nods. He thinks of all the loss, over the years. First his father, then his mother not long after. Then Goose and less than fifteen years later Carole. He lost Bradley, too, for a while there, almost lost him again just days after burying his wingman. He supposes Bradley’s right. The best stories, the one’s worth telling, are never all happy.

He picks up that first picture, from the summer of 1986, the one Ice enclosed in the envelope.

It’s as good a place to start as any.

“Well, we met- your dad introduced us, actually- back in ’86, the night after our first day at Top Gun…”

I wrote a letter on a nothing day

I asked someone "Hey, could you send my letter away?"

"You are too young to put all of your hopes in just one envelope"

I said goodbye to someone that I love

It's not just me, I tell you it's the both of us

And it was hard, like coming off the pills that you take to stay happy

Someone above has seen me do alright

Someone above is looking with a tender eye

upon your face. You may think you're alone, but you may think again

If I could do just one near-perfect thing, I'd be happy

They'd write it on my grave or when they scattered my ashes

On second thoughts I'd rather hang around

And be there with my best friend if [he] wants me

- Belle and Sebastian, If She Wants Me