Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tom sniffs.
Hay-fever was the worst. He always had to ask for tissues seemingly constantly as soon as it starts to get warm. Attempting to relive the burden of his ever-stuffy nose, he fishes around in his pockets for a tissue. But, oh. Of course he’d used the stack he’d taken up at school.
He rolls his eyes and continues on his way home, it was such a short walk, and his parents didn’t... mind? Care even? That he was walking back on his own at his current age of eleven.
The spring flowers and cut grass spewed everywhere over the brightly lit sidewalks were beautiful to get a whiff of, but if he breathed too deeply near them, his nose would run more than it was already doing. So that would be fun.

He’d only recently started slowing his pace once he gets near the house, looking out to see whether his mother had finished collecting his older sister, Sarah, from her high school. If she hadn’t, he’d have to wait outside sitting on the porch steps for her. He didn’t have to worry about his father much, not until he came home at six.
Dragging his sleeve under his nose, he spies his sister waving at him from the bottom of their driveway.
He waves back and quickens his pace to rush up and greet her.
“Hey, Tom! Nice day at school?”
“Yeah it was good,” he replies, squeezing her in his arms.
“Do anything fun?” she asks as they turn towards the front door.
“Nope,”
“Aw, well, there’s always next week,”
“Kids, come on, get inside,” Their mother calls.
Tom gets a hold of Sarah’s hand and drags her up toward the door their mother was holding open.

“Nice day at school?”
“Mhm!”
“Always good to hear,” His mother smiles as she shuts the door. “Alright, you two go play,”
“Wait can I have a… a-” he sneezes, covering his nose at the last second. “Tissue?”
“Bless you,” His mother smiles and pats him on his shoulder, fishing a couple of tissues out from their box on the side. “Here you go,”
“Thank you,” he takes the tissues, pressing one straight to his nose and kicking his shoes off.
“Hey, put those away, your father’s coming home early today,”
“Oh- is he?”
“Yes, now go on, put them away,”

He sniffs again, as he was sat at the table, at his usual seat that faced the stairs.
“Who is that sniffing?” His father asks, slamming down his knife and fork, they clatter against the china plate.
Tom swallows. “Me,”
“Would you stop it? It’s distracting enough and- don’t use your sleeve,”
“Sorry,”
The bunch of flowers in the middle of the table were not helping the ever-tense situation at what was the Kazansky dinner table.
“Well my day was absolutely awful, this son of a gun was trying to negotiate this deal he made up on the spot and was managing to not make it work in any sense of the word,”
He tries to concentrate on his fathers elaborate re-telling of his day, he was a very respected man, known for his work with both the Navy and Army, didn’t care much for the Air Force, or the naval-aviator aspect of the Navy. Tom, however, found that absolutely fascinating, he’d sneak on trips to the public library when he’d say he’d be going to see his friends to school just to scour through the books on flight they had.
“Thomas,” his father says loudly, snapping him out of his thoughts.
“Yes?”
His father raises an eyebrow. “Did you hear my question?”
“No,”
He sighs loudly. “What did I say about zoning out?”
Tom looks to his lap, and sniffs. “Sorry,”
“And that god-awful sniffing! If you can’t eat quietly without including that heinous racket, I suggest you go somewhere else,”
“Sorry,” he shifts in his seat, picking at the skin around his nails and staring directly down at his lap, hyper aware of his nose about to drip. “Sorry- can I be excused for a minute-”
“N-”
“Yes Tom, go get a tissue,” his mother steps in.

He scrapes back his chair on the sleek wooden floor, and winces, but just as quickly dashes to the kitchen and the saviour that was the box of tissues. Three left. Oh great.
He takes them anyway, and presses one straight to his nose, pocketing the other two. Having done so, he steels his nerves and goes back to the table, sitting back down and breathing in through his mouth.
“Sarah what did you do today?”
“I had a great time with Anne and Maggie in the afternoon, we were laughing so hard for ten minutes so we-,” she says, smiling fondly at whatever she had been doing.
“No, not with your friends, I meant, what did you learn?” Their father demands, arching his eyebrow.
Tom sniffs and glances to his sister in sympathy.
“I.. well, we were practising creative writing in english language today-” Her eyes light up, slower, but still so at her favourite subject. Tom loved hearing her talk about her stories, he always marvelled in wonder at how she managed to come up with the ideas for them.
“No, Sarah, not that sappy creative writing,” His father says, disgusted at her enthusiasm. “Real subjects like mathematics that will get you somewhere,”
“We.. didn’t have that today,” she says quietly.
“Pah! What have the schools come to? Not teaching the younger generations of useful subjects? Abigail, what do you think about this?”
“Well, I think its quite absurd,”

Tom sniffs, all-too used to his fathers rants about this or that or the other, and his mothers accepting agreements of them. He didn’t think that his mother really agreed, but he was too afraid to ask.
Instead, he sips his glass of water, giving his sister another compassionate glance. “Thank you for the meal, mom,” he says, willing to divert the tenseness that forever hung over them. “It’s really good,”
“Oh, thank you Tom,” she smiles at him, beyond thankful at his simple gratitude.
“Yes mom, thank you,” Sarah replies.
Their mother smiles warmly, looking between them. “Thank you both,”
“Mhm, mhm, yes, quite good,” Their father says hurriedly, itching to move the conversation onwards yet again.
Tom can’t help but notice the ever so slight disappointment flicker in his mothers dark blue eyes.

“Thomas,” he says.
“Yes?”
“What did you learn at school?” he rephrases the question he used for his sister, making sure that there would be no mistaking in what he wanted the answer to be.
“Um,” This would be a difficult one. They didn’t have mathematics on Fridays, only english and art, both subjects his father made evident that he detested. “We were doing division,” he lies, they had done that yesterday.
“Again?”
“Yes,”
“Hmph,”

Tom was filled with a gut-wrenching anxiety at the report card he held in his hand. His favourite subjects, art and english, were both A’s, but they did absolutely nothing to ease the fear at the simple B by science and C by maths.
He was so, so screwed.
He really didn’t want to show his parents. His mother, maybe, would be a little forgiving, but his father, no way in hell would he escape the day without some sort of punishment.
Oh god.
He sniffs, swallowing. What a great start to the first term of high-school. He wanted to chuck the piece of paper into the nearest bin and not come home until nine. But the house was there. And so was his fathers car. Sarah and his mother were both out at what they called a ‘ladies shopping trip’ so they wouldn’t be home until late. Leaving him alone with his father until they did so.
Tom inhales, his hands clammy, and he grips onto the paper with such force his knuckles turn white. Then he opens the door.

The hallway was silent. Dead silent, not even with the radio or television on, which was a very bad sign.
He kneels down and unties his shoes, putting them in the closet by the door, along with his coat, still hanging onto the card despite his hand shaking. Padding quietly further into the house, he leaves his bag at the foot of the stairs, in case he has to run up there and hide away in his room.
He was so screwed and now the anxiety was revealing a sick feeling too.
He sniffs again.
“Thomas is that you?” his father’s voice booms from the living room.
Oh jesus.
“Yes,” he calls back.
“Come in here,”
Tom’s throat dries out before he could acknowledge the order. “Coming,” he says hoarsely, then swallows, going as slowly as he dared to the living room.

“Did you get the report card?”
He nods, standing three metres away from his father who lounged on his chair.
“Give it here,”
End of my life in three.
He steps closer and gives him the card.
Two.
He watches, dread choking him as his fathers stone grey eyes slide down the results column.
One.

“Mathematics is a C?! Science is a B?!” His father roars, flinging the card back at him, and he only narrowly dodges it as it flutters to the floor behind him.
“Yes, sir,”
“That has got to be a mistake! No Kazansky has ever gotten a score as hideously low as that!”
“No, sir, it’s not a mistake,” Tom sniffs, directing his eyes at the overly complex patterned rug, bracing himself for the worst.
“Thomas,” his father says warningly, standing up. “For once in your life you’d better be lying to me,”
“N-no, I’m not,” he slides his feet backwards.
“You are a good-for-nothing disappointment to this family!” he yells, and it was all a blur as he lands his hand right on his cheek. “You are not enough for this surname,”
Tom flinches, reeling back away from him even more. “Yes sir,” his voice catches.
“You disgust me. Go to your room,”
“Yes sir,”
Tom spins on his heel, sniffing and walking as fast as he can to the stairs, grabbing his bag by the straps and running up them.

Full of the all too familiar animalistic prey fear and that sour adrenaline that spiked through his blood, Tom shuts the door as quietly as it allowed, and turns and presses back on it. His heart was beating so loud and fast and hard he was surprised to look down and see that it was not in fact, thumping out of his ribcage. He squeezes his eyes shut, pressing his hands to his cheek that was flaring up with a sharp sting. This was him getting off lightly, but no doubt he’d be staying there for the whole evening. He wouldn’t dare show his face to his mother, and he’d try to hide it from his sister. She’d probably get him to open his door at some point during the evening.

Chapter Text

Tom sits in his room, at his desk, stacks of books open, making his usually spotless room a messy nightmare. His nose was blocked and a throbbing headache was attacking the inside of his skull, despite having refilled and finished the pint of water beside him twice.
His parents had said not to stop revising until the exams had finished, and they expected everything to be at the very least an A. Of course they did. The final of the finals, Mathematics Higher, his worst and most hated subject, was tomorrow. Then they’d all have a day or so off and then Friday was graduation.

He’d already made up his mind that as soon as tomorrow’s exam was done and dusted, he would not be coming back to school, not even for graduation. He would pretend to go in, but go to the library instead, he still wanted to be deadly sure that everything was going to go to plan over the summer. Nobody would miss him, to everyone else at the school, he was the weird cold-hearted gay perfectionist with no friends.
What hurt the most, though, was that they all were horribly right.

He felt so ill.
He’d been stuck inside for hours, and if he wasn’t at school stuffing as much information inside his head as possible, he was at home, doing the same. And he was tired, so, so tired. He hadn’t missed this many nights of sleep in his whole life.
Tom stares at the paper. Sniffs.

88x² + 73x - 35 = 0. Find x.
Jesus.
So if he… just did that… thing, that he definitely knew how to-
THUNK.
“Ow-” he mumbles, lifting his head up from the table. Now his head felt like it was going to actually explode. What’s more, the letters and numbers were literally swimming below his eyes.
Shit.

“Tom? You good?” Sarah asks from the door.
“Mhmm-” he’s hardly bothered to make an effort for the sound.
“Can I come in?”
He nods, still holding his head.
“Whatcha doin’?”
“Equations,” he says, looking at her from the corner of his eyes. “I dunno how to do this, I know I’ve done it before but nothing- is- working,”
“Woah woah, little bro,” she says, catching his face in her hands and turning it so he looks at her. “Slow down. You look dead,”
“I am, but fathe-”
“Ah-” She halts him, releasing his face and folding her arms. “No, shush. You’re more important than these finals,”
“Not to him,” he says unemotionally, looking at her through half lidded, bloodshot eyes.
“Tom...” She says sympathetically, tilting her head. “Get in bed,”
“No,” he protests.
“You are sick. You are more than a little sleep deprived. Nothing is going to be sinking in. Get in the bed,”
“I gotta revise Sarah-” he tries again, leaning his head back on his hands and staring at the book that was filled with hundreds, if not thousands of nonsensical questions.
“Tom-” she drags out his name and gets a hold of the back of his chair, tilting it back just a smidge.
“Hey!” he cries, leaning forward to alleviate the panic from having less than four chair legs on the ground. “Don’t do that!”

She sighs, replacing all of the chairs legs on the floor. “You are going to feel like you’ve been hit by a freight train tomorrow if you don’t get in the god damn bed and get to sleep right now. Please would you just listen to me on this one occasion?”
He stares at her, knowing full well that she’s right. He pushes out a long, exasperated sigh and finally agrees. “Fine,”
Sarah smiles. “I’ll get you some water,”
“Can you put some… ice in it?”
“Sure thing,” she replies, picking up his empty glass and leaving to refill it.

Tom gets up from the desk covered in paper and books and pretty much staggers to his bed, where he fights with the military-perfected corners of the duvet for a few moments until he can drag it open enough so he can fall, ungracefully, into it. Face down.
He sniffs.
The sniffs weren’t even from hay fever, despite it being summer. It was a nervous thing now.

“Woahh… you are so sick,”
He can hear Sarah’s voice from where he lay, and he sighs in acknowledgement.
“Here’s your water, and ice. But just go to sleep, I’ll wake you up for dinner in a few hours and you can decide if you want any,”
He attempts a thank you, but it sounds more like a “’ank cue,” Naturally his mouth no longer possessed the ability to form any sort of plosive.
Sarah runs her hand across his shoulder. “Alright, Tom,”

She shuts the door after turning out the light, but he keeps his head in the pillow, and lets his mind go. For once.
How he wished he could be as free as Sarah, as outgoing, their father despised her talent for creative writing, always telling her she’d get nowhere and it would lead her down a path of disasters until the ‘inevitable dead end’ that he’d called it.
Now look at her. Home for the last couple of weeks before beginning university on one of the top creative writing courses in the country.

He wanted to get out too, head straight to flight school as soon as he was finished with these finals. The stacks of books on the Navy and flight he has hidden under his bed weren’t sitting there for no reason.
He knew it would be hard. But given that he’d sacrificed all but two of his teenage years for getting the best exam results he could and being the best kid there was in the year, he would know what to do.

There’d be other struggles, as he’d already found out. Being gay was not a walk in the park. Maybe it never would be. Only Sarah knew and he’d like it to stay that way.
Tom knew from numerous occasions and discussions that increased in intensity that neither of his parents were very… accepting, to put it lightly, of what he knew he was. Sometimes he wished he wasn’t. Sometimes he wished he’d never got that cute guy Charlie who was in his class that Valentine’s card when he was fifteen. Sometimes he wished he could have a crush on some- hell, even any of the girls in his classes.
But no, the fact that his sexuality was kept in secret, from his parents and from what would be the world, had blown all of those wishes out of the water like a god damn depth charge.

He longed to fly.
He needed his wings.
He needed to finish these exams and get the hell out of this sickening inferno that was his life at home. He always called it home, it never really felt like that. Maybe a better phrase would be ‘walls and a roof that I share with people who don’t really like me bar my sister’.

But then his door is suddenly thrown open and his father’s loud footfalls across the floor make him jerk his head up and turn onto his side so fast he almost sees stars.
“Thomas, what the hell are you doing sleeping?!”
“I... I-” He attempts, thrown into unwanted, uncomfortable consciousness, squinting at the almost unbearable brightness that came from the light that was suddenly switched on.
“No excuses! You have an exam tomorrow and I am expecting you to do better than last time,”
“Last time I got an A,” He says hoarsely. I can’t get higher than A’s on maths, and I should know, I’ve been trying for four years. He adds silently.
“Exactly! Not an A star! Mathematics is the stuff that’ll get you where I want you to be, and you will be doing as I say! Now get up and get on wit-”

“Father stop it,”
Tom sniffs and looks around him as his father turns around slowly to the door.
“What did you just say to me young lady?”
“Tom is sick,” Sarah says.
“His name is Thomas, I expect you to call him that,”
“Tom is sick, he has been studying for this exam non-stop for two days, let him off,” she says, defiant.
Tom was scared for her. He shakes his head, silently begging her to stop defending him.
“Thomas will be doing as I say and he will not be influenced by your silly little dreams of becoming an author or anything as ridiculous as that, and those are my final words on this matter,” He spins back around, and Tom flinches, sucking in a breath. “Get up,”
Tom swallows, sniffs, both his fists clenched on the sheets. “No,”
“What?”

“I said no, I don’t care about the stupid exam, I’m not doing as you say, not any more,” He was forcing the terror coursing through his blood into confidence, turning the trembling in his voice into something below freezing.
“You will do as I say!”
The hit was fast, red hot, with a fire that stung every nerve inside him.
“No,” For the first time in his life, he glares at his father.
“Why you little-” His father raises his hand again.
“You hit my brother one more time!” Sarah shouts, springing between them.
“You hit her and we’ll leave, right now,”
The pure acid that was spewing from their father’s stone grey eyes seemed to evince his personality, his hatred towards both of them, the perfectionism he threw onto both of them.
He turns, silent, fuming, and leaves, not before slamming the door so hard the bed shook.

“Holy shit-” Sarah exhales, turning to face Tom. “Are you okay?”
He manages a nod, his breath shaky.
“Come here oh my god,”
Tom leans forward and wraps his arms around her middle, trying to breathe through the spikes of agony coming from his cheek, trying to breathe in her perfume. “He’s gonna kill us,” he whispers, sniffing.
“Not today,” Sarah replies, leaning back and sitting on the bed in front of him.
“What am I gonna do?” he exhales.
“Get out of here, you can come with me,” she says, running her hands through his short brown hair before holding onto his hands. “This weekend, tomorrow even, I can get us away and you can get into that academy you’ve been wanting to, alright?”
He sniffs. “I need his permission, I’m eighteen,”
“Yeah,” she smiles. “You’re an adult,”
“I thought that was twenty one,” He frowns.
“That’s drinking,”
“Oh-” He smiles, slowly, then pauses. “Do you... really mean it?”
“Yes, for gods sake of course I do,”

Here was his chance, his light that had suddenly appeared at the end of this eighteen year long tunnel.
And just behind it, was freedom, were his wings, his dream that could finally begin making a reality.
He was going to do it. He was going to fly from his nest. Sarah had done it, and now this was his shot.

Chapter Text

Iceman takes another sip of the vodka rocks.
It was loud and full of the smells of various types of alcohol in the bar, in this Officers Club his best friend and RIO, Slider, had made him come to on the very first day of Top Gun.
Woah. He inhales. Top Gun.
He was twenty three, in dress whites, gold wings on his chest and stripes on his shoulders, beginning his five week evaluation and improvement of his skills at none other than Top Gun. Or, the US Navy Fighter Weapons School based in Miramar, California. A hundred thousand miles away from where he’d started.
He hasn’t spoken to his parents in years, and he doesn’t want to change that any time soon. His sister had published her first book, he had a copy of it ready to read back at the house he and Slider were sharing accommodation for. And Slider, god, the best radar intercept officer and friend Ice could have asked for.
He was taller than he was, strong, has the outer personality of the most annoying person ever, but in reality, he was soft, cared deeply about him, and Ice had more than once called him a teddy bear. He and Slider met rather early on in flight school, he was just nineteen, and had recently earned his callsign, Iceman, thanks to the personality he’d worked years on crafting. Slider had been following him about, walked into a glass door, earned himself his callsign, and then Ice had said why not. And that was it.
Sli didn’t mind about Ice’s sexuality. He’d even taught him how to go round it, how to act with women. Now it was Sarah, and Slider that knew. Well, so did Goose.

Goose, Nick Bradshaw if he was going the formal route, was one of the nicest people Ice had ever met. Mother Goose, as he had called him, earning him the callsign. Most people thought it was because of his honking laugh or silly goose personality, but the Goose in flight school would stop fights and incessantly mother everyone and anyone he could.
Apparently Goose, being a RIO like Slider, had acquired his own pilot a year or so ago, maybe more, by the name of Maverick Mitchell. Huh.

He draws himself gently out of the memories by taking another sip of the vodka rocks in his right hand, it was nice, watered down by the sheer amount of ice-cubes inside the glass, but elegant, like he’d become. If he could even say that.
He doesn’t care. He was elegant. Especially as he wore his aviators. He was inside, it was dark out, but if those electric lights weren’t bright he doesn’t know what was.
And, no one would dare mention it, anyone who was anyone in the US Navy knew about Iceman Kazansky.
He was determined to make his surname his own, as opposed to his fathers. He’d done everything in his power to keep away from his fathers vile and abusive personality, and thank god, because he’d done it. Turning his anger into frozen nothingness as opposed to red hot violence, shoving down all the emotions he hated feeling. The one thing he’d taken with him was his sniffing he couldn’t stop whenever anxiety or nervousness showed up.
Oh well.

Now where the hell was Slider.
Ice scans the rest of the bar, and in amongst the small ocean of dress-white clad pilots, he could just about see his curly-haired brunet RIO. He sighs through his nose and begins weaving his way through everyone to get to him. It looked like he was talking to someone. He takes off his aviators, not wanting to make an impression that he completely hated the idea that he was there.
“That’s Mister Iceman to you,” Slider says, gesturing to Ice now that he was there.
“Hey, Mother Goose, how’s it going?” He says, smiling at his friend standing opposite Slider. So he was here, good to know.
“Aha, it’s good,” Goose replies, shaking Ice’s hand that he offered him. “Tom, this is Pete Mitchell, Tom Kazansky,”

Ice turns his head to the short pilot next to Goose who had been silent as of until now, and offers his hand. Oh. This was Maverick Mitchell.
Maverick takes his hand and shakes it, smirking just a little.
“Congratulations on Top Gun,” Ice says smoothly, casting his eyes over him.
“Thank you,” he replies, having to look upwards at him.
“Sorry to hear about Cougar, he was a good man,” He says, reaching around him to get a handful of bar nuts from where they were sat on the bar top just behind him.
“Still is a good man,” he says, a frown just appearing on his face.
“Yeah that’s what I meant,”
“Thought so,” Maverick says as he looks to his right for a moment.
“Say, you need any help?” Ice asks him, putting his hands on his hips. He was getting a little close to him, but he didn’t really care, intimidation was his thing after all.
Maverick sips a little from his Budweiser he was holding, continuing to avoid Ice’s eyes. “With what?”
“Figured it out yet?” He’d overheard he was wondering who the ‘best’ pilot was earlier in the lesson, so he decided to bring it up, wanting to continue the conversation as long as he could.
“What’s that?” This guy was good.
Ice smirks. “Who’s the best pilot?”
“No I think I can figure that one out on my own,”
He nods a little. “I heard that about you,” Then he looks at his striking bottle-green eyes again, as opposed to his lips. “You like to work alone,”
He stares at him then, and he does back, testing each other, Ice asking a hundred different questions a second.

“Mav you must’ve stalled under a lucky star huh, I mean first the MiG and then you guys slide into Cougar’s spot,”
Goose takes it for his pilot. “We didn’t slide into Cougar’s spot, it was ours, okay?”
“Yeah well some pilots wait their whole career just to see a MiG up close. Good thing that you’re lucky and famous huh?”
“No you mean notorious,” Ice says, after taking a shot along with Slider and swallowing, keeping the smile on his face even though the alcohol was ripping down his throat. Then he looks back at the shorter pilot, smiling still. “I’ll see you later,”
“You can count on it,”

Ice makes his way to a less crowded part of the bar, Slider following.
“Intimidation?” Slider asks him.
“Yes,”
“Or was that…” He raises his eyebrows a fraction.
“No,” Ice’s eyebrows shoot down again. “No,” he repeats, trying to dislodge whatever his RIO was thinking about the way he was acting with Goose’s pilot.
“Sure,”
He only just registers the music being cut out, a song named Lead Me On stopping suddenly in the background. Huh. He liked that one. It was one of the more recent ones he knew of and didn’t detest.
“Why’d it stop?” Slider asks. “I was enjoying that,”
“So was I,” he replies, deciding to put his aviators back on, the lights distracting him more than anything.
“I’m surprised you can see with those on,”
“I’ll have you know I have perfect vision-,” Ice remarks, stopping when he hears a drone of some song being sung. Awfully out of key.
Then a second voice, much more in-key, which sounded disconcertingly like Goose.
“Someone tryna chat up some girl d’ya reckon?”
Ice rolls his eyes as what sounds like the entirety of the gathered pilots minus himself and Slider join in. The combined efforts made it slightly more in-key.
“But baby, baby I know it,
You lost that lovin’ feelin’
Whoa, that lovin' feelin'
You lost that lovin' feelin'
Now it's gone, gone, gone, whoa-oh,"
The pilots and RIO’s continue with ‘ba dum’’s and then they all stop, obviously whoever started it had been impressive enough to get a seat. Who that might be though, Ice didn’t know, didn’t really want to know, despite having a gut feeling that it may have been Maverick Mitchell.

Oh.
Ice didn’t care.
He swallows. Yes this Maverick was quite… well, hot, in his eyes at least.
Oh god.
Ice, no, he warns himself. This’ll only end badly.
And then who does he spy sneaking out behind a wavy-haired blonde on her way to the bathrooms?
Yep. Maverick.
Ice sniffs. Shit. He was already down so bad. And being down so bad only meant he was seconds away from crashing and burning.

Ice resists, for what feels like the hundredth time, to steal a glance at Maverick. He could no longer deny it, he was hot, and he was crushing on him. Yet there’s only a few thousand chances for Ice to see every single day that he only had eyes for their blonde, also tall, instructor. That coincidentally, he sang that song for in the bar, thinking she was just a regular civilian, but being well and truly humbled when she turned up the next day as their not-so regular civilian instructor.
And right now, he was irritated, and he would for sure sink directly into annoyance if anyone pushed it. Maverick was not only being a complete magnet for Ice’s every waking thought, but also getting vexingly close to his current score on the leaderboard for the trophy.
He sighs.
Ice knew this was a bad idea, but he equally knew that Maverick wanting to date their instructor of all people, was an even worse idea.
Growing up as he had, it was difficult to say the least to express his emotions, having become an expert on shoving them all down as far as they could go.

So he had a problem. Two of them, in fact.
Problem number one. Maverick.
Problem number two. Maverick wanting to date their instructor.
God dammit what was he supposed to do in this situation? Let Maverick’s heart get broken or let his own get broken when at the end of the five weeks he runs off with Charlie or someone else luckier than him?
He didn’t even know why he felt so… so defensive of the heart of someone he’d barely had a positive or even neutral exchange with.
He knew Maverick disliked him, saw him as a rival, not as an acquaintance and certainly not as a friend.
He had to tell him, or warn him. Or something.

He had Goose to tell him about Maverick. Goose was one who didn’t judge, least of all about his sexuality. So here he was, the lounge at the base, sitting on the left of the couch, one knee up and leaning into the arm of it.
“Ice, what did you wanna talk about? Somethin’ bothering you?” Goose asks as he makes his way over to where he was sat.
He sighs.
“What’s on your mind?”
“Lotta things,” he admits. “Lotta.. questions I wanna ask,”
“Well, try me, I’m always open,”
“For one thing, Maverick,”
“Mav? Why? He getting too annoying for you?” Goose jokes, but he stops smiling once he sees Ice’s deadly serious expression. “Oh, oh you’re serious,”
“Mhm,”
“Well, I’d say… I mean, what- what about him?”
“Is he with Charlie?”
Goose’s eyebrows fly up to his hairline.
“That was too blunt, sorry,” he apologises.
“No- it’s fine, I told him to be careful, but… yes, yes he is,”
“Huh,” Ice exhales. “Right,”
Unrequited love. For gods sake of course it was – why did he even think otherwise?

“May I ask why?”
“Thought you might be able to tell,” He replies glumly, sniffing and looking ahead of him, leaning his arm on his knee and his head on his hand.
“You’re-?!”
“Unfortunately. I don’t claim to know the way he… swings, but,”
“Ice my man you have luck half on your side for now, that pilot of mine, he swings both ways,” Goose says. “I mean, I didn’t want him to get dishonourably discharged on the first day tryna flirt with.. well,”
Ice blinks. What?! If what Goose was hinting at was true then…
“So, being the caring mother that I am, I told him to try, find a woman, and you can see how that little challenge turned out,” He sighs, exasperated. “But, if you’re both careful, I could, hint at the way you... feel,”
“For the love of god do not tell him, please,” He says hurriedly, sniffing again. “I wanna tell him, if I can even get up the courage to,”
“You sure?”
“Mhm,”
“Alright then,” Goose pats his hand on his shoulder. “That all you wanted to tell me?”
“Yeah,” Ice looks back at him, smiling as gratefully as he can. “Thanks, Goose,”
Goose smiles a little. “Anytime,”

Now Ice had a conclusion.
Maverick could have swayed his way, he didn’t, his chances of being discharged from his career this early on into it were exceedingly high if one took into account his fathers reputation and his own of disobeying orders and breaking rules.
Oh yeah, and he wasn’t Maverick’s first choice.
But somehow, even through that, Ice felt magnetised towards him and his cocky attitude, his rule breaking and sometimes downright life-endangering manoeuvrers, his aura that practically oozed sunshine, that ridiculously cute smirk and spiky black hair that looked so unbelievably soft.
God he was so gone for him.
When he was going to make his move though, he didn’t know at all.

Chapter Text

And just like that, Goose was dead.
Ice was shot suddenly into shock. Slider could barely make himself stand up.
Maverick… Ice didn’t know.
Maverick was just a few metres away and as many doors as needed from where he and Slider sat, most likely in complete shock, being treated for whatever injuries he may have sustained through the flat spin and ejection. That much, Ice knew of. Anything else, like how it had affected him mentally already, he didn’t have a clue.

“How...” Slider whispers.
Ice stares at the tiled floor under his feet. He didn’t have an answer for his RIO.
The both of them were still dressed in their flightsuits, helmets sat together on the spare chair between the two of them.
Neither of them know how long they sit there in the simple, brownish-beige waiting room of the base hospital in silence for, but a nurse soon suggests they get home, rest up there.
Ice can’t make himself move.
“Ice, hey,” Slider says, putting his hand on his shoulder. “Hey,”
He traces the dark brown grout between the tiles with his eyes. It was the simplest pattern he’d seen, especially compared with his childhood home where everything was ornate and had as many different colours as whatever it was could get.
“Kaz,” Slider says again, trying to get his attention. “Let’s go home,”
“I wanna go see Mav,” he whispers.
“We’re not allowed, he’s in shock,”
“He’s lost his RIO. I want to,”
Slider swallows. His throat clicks. “I know, but, at least come get changed first, please?” He holds out his hand.
Ice takes it wordlessly and Slider pulls him to his feet.
“You can come back if you want,”

He does exactly that.
Now dressed in one of his most comfortable hoodies, comfortable because it was just a little too big for him so he could hold on to the ends of the sleeves, and jeans. The nurse was the same one who had told him and Slider to go home, and he doesn’t have to say all that much to her for sympathy to ripple across her face and guide him to where they’d put Maverick for the night.
The door to Maverick’s room four was shut, as expected.
Tom looks down at the handle. Inhales. Holds it. The metal was cold. Turns it.
He sniffs as he opens it and looks around the silent, air-conditioned to freezing point, room.
Maverick was there on the other side of the room, facing away from him, his head bowed. He looked so… small. It was unusual, seeing him in such a subdued state, even from this much of a distance away.

Ice registers the door clicking shut behind him as he enters the room. The nurse hadn’t followed him in, so he thought that she could probably tell it was best to leave the two rival pilots alone on a night such as this. He steps closer to Maverick’s hunched form, carefully, he didn’t want to startle him.
“Mav,” he whispers, sitting slowly down on the bed near to him.
Maverick turns his head towards him like like he had a crick in his neck. His eyes were bloodshot, equally empty and grief-stricken, his face strangely pale beneath the mess of his salt-ridden black hair.
“Come he-”

Ice doesn’t get a chance to finish his sentence before Maverick has buried his head into his shoulders, beginning to cry like Ice only had to sit there to break down the feeble wall that acted as his floodgates.
His throat seizes up, he was suddenly full of awful, unbottled emotion, and hearing Maverick, the confident and reckless pilot sobbing so openly against him, it switched something either off or on deep inside of him. So deep, it feels like he’d never received what he was about to give him. Iceman gives him one of the few things he knows how to give.
A hug; wrapping his arms so tightly around him.
“I’m so sorry,” Ice murmurs, shutting his eyes to hide his own hot tears spiking the corners of his eyes, holding onto him as he broke into pieces in his arms.
Maverick was shaking, shivering like he’d been standing outside during a blizzard that so frequently blew over the mountains in winter.
The neckline of his hoodie was damp but hot from the tears leaking from Maverick’s eyes, pressing into his skin alongside his hair. He didn’t mind.
It wasn’t as if he was going to tell Maverick to pull himself together and get off him. He didn’t think he could.

He was never going to be as vile as his father. Vile as in how, even if he’d got the slightest hint that he was upset or had been during the day, he would come crashing right into the ten year old Tom’s face and scream at him until one of two things happened.
The first thing being that he would, as kids do, burst into tears and run or hide away for as long as he could; or the second, hold his ground and agree to every single point that his father was making, despite everything inside of him shrieking to disagree with. The second thing happened most of the time. But after his father would leave, he’d finally become aware of his legs shaking and he’d collapse onto the floor and sob as quietly and as much as he dared to.

But being yelled at like that for expressing the baseline of human emotion, it had done something. Changed something deep inside him. Ice wasn’t sure if that was a bad something or not. It felt bad, but he didn’t understand why. And that was why.
As his callsign suggests, Tom was now Iceman, cool, calm, collected, one who flies with such textbook precision that one could not usually find any sort of mistake. But the name goes further than that. Further than his taught perfectionism at flying.
It felt like his only personality trait.
That didn’t feel good. He’d learned the hard way how to be emotionless from a young age, how to hide away his suffering and all of those negative emotions that now felt so hard to express.

Maverick shifts ever so slightly against him, trying to pull him more onto the bed.
Ice sniffs, swallows, and moves slowly with him, keeping his arms around the smaller pilot’s middle.
But then something that felt worryingly like fire was beginning in his chest, and for a minute, he panics, immediately loosening his hold on Maverick because that was the fire he recognised as his father’s anger. That anger that caused his unspeakable violence.
He was terrified, because god dammit if that anger got out of his control then-

“Ice- please don’t go…”
He freezes entirely at Maverick’s hoarse, emotional words that formed a heart-aching plea.
“Stay…” He utters, stretching out his hands and closing them into fists in the dark blue material the hoodie was made of, as if that would stop him from leaving.
It works.
Ice exhales, sniffs the next breath back in, and gently, ever so gently, re-wraps his arms around him. There were tremors escaping him still, his shoulders vibrating under his hands.
Who the hell was he to leave Maverick on a night like this? He’s just lost his RIO for gods sake! Ice tells himself, frowning just a little.
“’m not going,” he murmurs, running his right hand down his spine and his left slowly across his shoulder blades. Maverick was only wearing a t-shirt, so the warmth of his skin was seemingly evaporating through the thin white material. He felt colder than Ice did.
A whole-body shiver suddenly courses through the smaller pilot, and he exhales, and the huff of warm air directly onto Ice’s collarbones soaks him, somehow, in warmth.
What?

His left hand reaches the base of Maverick’s neck and he pauses for a moment, before pushing his fingers through his soot black hair.
Maverick downright sighs as Ice cards his fingers through it.
It seemed like the simplest thing in the world, running your hands through another’s hair, but to Ice, and Maverick, as it looked- it was one of the most intimate sensations either of them had experienced in a long time.
“You’re so.. warm,” Maverick whispers, moving his head just slightly, and even the lightest indication of his lips brushing past Ice’s neck, even if it was only for a millisecond, feels like a Fourth of July show was happening in his chest.
He was warm?
Iceman ‘ice-cold no mistakes’ Kazansky was… warm?
What even was this feeling?
Being in such close contact as this with him, and feeling that unnerving fire in his chest, he realises, it wasn’t his father’s fire that fuelled anger and hatred, no. Not by a long shot. This was Maverick’s fire. It was hot and inviting, but caring and… selfless, in a way.
Was this what Maverick was?
Was he not just another cocky flyboy with an ego bigger than his jet?
God he’d been so wrong. So assuming that Maverick was nothing but your typical argumentative and irritating rival, whereas he was just… just Pete Mitchell.
Ice didn’t claim to know him, not at all, not yet, but god he could hope if nothing else.

In the days following Goose’s death, Ice had all the time in the world to think over and rethink and change everything about Hop 31, from when his jet no longer had contact with the earth, to when he said he was going to go for the shot, to the second he called mayday down the radio.
He’d kept an eye on Maverick, of course he had, those clash of emotions he’d felt that night had made him feel like he’d opened some kind of mental bridge with the other pilot. Maverick hadn’t turned up for many of the lessons, and he’d clocked Charlie always trying to get a hold of him when he was in them, or talk to him outside of them.
He didn’t know if Charlie and Maverick were still a thing, it did not seem so, no-body had disturbed the two of them that night. Which had put a dampener on his anxiety about being found there in the hospital literally spooning a fellow pilot. That wasn’t the part that scared him the most, though. It was the fact that he didn’t actually hate the feeling of Maverick pressed as close to his chest as he had been, for the whole night.

Maverick hadn’t flown, he’d been grounded until the trial, but soon enough it had been and gone, proving the accident to be no-body’s fault. But when it was over, everyone, everyone but Ice himself had said to Maverick at least once that he’s gotta get up there and fly again just like he used to.
Ice thought that that was absurd. He agreed, that Maverick should get up and fly again, so goes that saying about if a horse bucks you off you get back on. But pressuring him to the breaking point? No.
He’d seen, either the first or second time he’d been up, that he hadn’t taken a shot when he could have. Sundown, his surrogate RIO for that hop, was questioning him why he hadn’t taken it, and then Maverick had just... snapped. He’d reeled round and got right in Sundown’s face, yelling at him something about he’ll fire when he’s ready.
Ice had wanted to go and find him after that, just to speak to him, but he was going up, and by the time he’d landed, Maverick was no where to be seen. He knows Maverick thought the accident was his fault.
Try as he might, the back of his mind keeps telling him that it was his.

Like most of the nights now, Ice couldn’t get to sleep.
He lays there on the standard twin bed he had, on his back, eyes unblinking and glued to the plain, dark ceiling.
The trial had proved it to be no-body’s fault. The jetstream that Maverick had flown into had been invisible and unpredictable in it’s ability that it would push him into the fatal flat spin.
But it had been Ice’s jetstream.
He sniffs, blinks once and resumes the furrow in his eyebrows.
His jetstream that Maverick had unknowingly flown into. His jetstream that had knocked Maverick’s jet into the flat spin.

He couldn’t see it, he didn’t know it was there.
Ice would never blame Maverick. He would never let him blame himself, that night had showed him, even before it had been a full twenty-four hours after it was done, that he did already, and did badly.
He thinks it was some of the reason that Maverick had spent the whole night with his face buried into his chest, as some sort of safe place to hide from the damage he thought he’d inflicted on both his RIO and himself.
But no. It wasn’t Maverick’s doing.
It was Ice’s because it was his jetstream.
It was Ice’s because he didn’t take the shot.
It was Ice’s because he had doubted in his own jets ability to take the shot.

Ice shuts his eyes and curls up on his left, shoving his head down into the covers, as if that would help the onslaught of thoughts attacking his mind.
It doesn’t.
It felt like he was ten, or twelve, or fifteen, or any age that he’d been and his father was yelling at him for some reason or another.
He was too slow. He had not taken that shot that he could have. He had doubted himself in taking that shot that it had cost Goose his life. He didn’t even have to have taken that shot, he could have just moved, just the tiniest bit upwards at some point that was the tiniest bit sooner and then Maverick could have taken the shot and taken down Jester and then all of them could be back on the ground and Goose would still be alive.
Then Maverick would be as normal, flying as recklessly and crazily as he had done so. And Goose would still be here, still joking around and mothering his pilot like he did. And the both of them, Iceman and Maverick, would still be rivals, neck and neck for the trophy. And… and Maverick would still be with Charlie.

Ice blinks a few times, sniffing and lifting his head up just a fraction from the comforting blackness of the duvet.
So… so he’d.. done, what exactly?
To his knowledge, Maverick no longer wanted nearly as much human interaction as he did. No longer wanted or no longer felt like he needed? It was probably the latter.
But then… Charlie had this promotion coming up in Washington, so…
He sniffs. He had no idea if they had ended their relationship already, or if something else entirely was going on.
So he needed to talk to Maverick.
Nothing had changed in that retrospect, then.

Chapter Text

It was graduation, and, jesus christ the past week or so had been an emotional ocean thunderstorm that Ice had to navigate in what felt like a flimsy raft made of logs bound together.
Maverick had almost left, he’d apologised to him in the locker rooms and somehow, somehow that had changed his mind. Then they’d spent the rest of the day together, and Ice had managed to keep his heart from beating out of his ribcage at the tantalising form less than a metre away from him that was Maverick Mitchell.
Charlie had left for Washington on the same day, coming in to their lecture near the end to say goodbye and good luck, and she’d waited to say it again to Maverick. He’d stuck by Ice, though, so that made for an especially tense goodbye; what with Maverick refusing, or unable (Ice couldn’t tell) to look Charlie in her eyes as she had mentioned again going up and beating ‘you know who’. That being Ice.
But when she’d said that, Maverick sidestepped into (what felt like exceedingly deliberately), his side. He’d given Charlie a respectful nod and told her good luck, but the unbearable crackling tension that was surrounding the three of them at that point was resembling Ice’s own family discussions.
At least Maverick was stood next to him.

Slider lands an elbow in the crook of Ice’s arm. “You good?”
“Mhm,” He blinks a couple of times and grips the edge of the trophy to rid his mind of the weird memory of that day. He attempts a smirk. “Course,”
There’s a familiar hint of doubt that flickers across his eyes for half a second, but his RIO dismisses it as if it never happened. “I think some families are coming later on,”
“Oh, yeah, I think it’s safe to say mine aren’t coming,” He states. He was hoping to see Sarah, but her job could be pretty demanding, and he wasn’t sure if she could make it. “Yours?”
“Mhm, I think my mom is, maybe she’ll give me a new recipe,” Slider says, raising his eyebrows and smiling a little at the prospect of baking something new.

“New recipe?” Maverick asks.
Ice looks at him, still stood on his right.
“Yup,” Slider says.
“Of what?”
Slider flicks his eyes to meet Ice’s for a second.
Ice rolls his eyes. “Don’t be difficult Sli,” he sighs. “He’s a pretty good baker, his mom taught him most of what he knows,”
Maverick looks instantly relieved at Ice’s exasperated telling off of his RIO. “Oh, oh cool,”
Ice looks back to Slider. He still looks doubtful, wary almost of the shorter pilot. “Slider he’s complimenting you- oh my god,”
“Right, yeah um, uh- thanks,” he stutters.
Ice shakes his head, sniffing once. “Mav isn’t gonna like, bite you, you know,” He says, trying to break up the tension he hated so much.
Maverick muffles his laughter at Ice’s comment. “Nah, but I might go for your knees,”
Now it was Ice’s turn to smile.
“Nah-ah, short-ass, you gotta catch me first,”
“Alright mister baker, try me,”
Ice puts his right hand over his mouth as he tries to stop the sudden laughter that sprung from the interaction between Maverick and Slider.

It’s later on in the afternoon that Slider’s mom arrives, and, as predicted, she does give him a new recipe, for a layered cake that could be made with any flavour, be that sponge or buttercream or icing. Slider vows to make it the next day.
The graduation party gradually simmers down enough for people to start spreading out and going their separate ways. Maverick asks Ice if he wanted to just go down and sit on the sea wall or something. He agrees.

There’s a calming kind of stillness over the both of them as they sit next to each other on the wall, helped by the soft woosh of the waves over the sandy beach just below them, the sounds of the party faded into the background.
Top Gun was over, and now he didn’t really want to leave the pilot next to him.
“What are you going to do now?” Maverick asks.
Ice inhales. “I don’t know,”
“Can I join you in that?”
He turns his head to look at him, a smile tracing his lips. “Yeah sure you can,”
“Thanks,” Maverick smiles at him.
Ice opens his mouth, just about to say something, when-

“Tom!”
He twists around to see Sarah waving at him. “Oh my god- you made it!”
Maverick stays sat, but watches him as he gets up from the wall and goes over to her.
“Ahh, I’m so proud of you!” She says happily, getting her arms around his shoulders and giving him a short but fierce hug.
He smiles, ducking his head at her compliment. “Nothing to be proud of here,”
“Oh shut up, yes there is, you did it!” Sarah says, reaching up to brush off invisible dust from the shoulders of his dress whites. “Look at you… my lil brother,”
“Sarah..” He sighs, embarrassed, glancing back at Maverick, but his expression falling when he registers Maverick’s closed off posture, he was facing back to the sea but looking down at his hands. “Come back over here?” he asks her, walking slowly back to him.
“Oh-” she laughs. “Sure!”

He looks back up at them both as Ice begins to introduce them to each other.
“Maverick, this is Sarah,” He says, introducing them both. “Sarah, Maverick,”
“Hi,” Sarah smiles warmly as she offers her hand.
“Hi,” Maverick smiles a very obviously fake smile, maybe it was so only to him, but he does at the very least shake her hand.
Ice frowns for a second. That wasn’t how Maverick acted normally, what was up..?

Oh. Oh he probably was thinking that she was his girlfriend who’d finally showed up. Shit. He sniffs. “My sister-” He says quickly, his voice tight with apologies.
And then his green eyes light right up, and he can hardly suppress the smile escaping across his lips. “Oh, sorry, I- yeah,” he swallows. “Sorry,”
Ice allows himself a tiny smile, nudging his shoulder. “It’s fine,” Did that mean- did Maverick think of him in that way…? No-one else’s eyes had lit up like that when he’d mentioned his relation to Sarah before, so did that mean-? Oh woah. It could. He inhales, the sea air clearing his head of his thoughts that were about to slip from their tethers and run wild.
“So what are you two to each other? Rivals? Colleagues?” Sarah asks.
“Uhh,” How he wished he could say partners. Maybe one day.
“Um, friends?” Maverick fills in the quiet. “Could we say that?” He tilts his head a little as he looks up at him.
God that was cute. “S-sure, yeah,”

“Have you.. finished my book yet?” Sarah asks after a moment, and he looks back at her from Maverick. Oh god- from Maverick, had he been staring at him for that long?
“Oh yes, I did! I loved it so much,” he says quickly.
Sarah grins. “Aw yay! I already have a plan for the sequel,”
“You’re an author?” Maverick asks her.
“Oh- haha, yeah I guess you could say that,” she puts her hand on her neck.
“You definitely are,” Ice says, raising his eyebrows.
“Am I?”
“Yes?” Ice smiles. “I think a pretty good definition of ‘author’ is that you’ve published a book you’ve written, so, yes, you are,”
“Tom-” she sighs.
“Seriously, I think that’s so cool,” Maverick says, he sounded so genuine.
“Aw, thanks…”
“Would it be weird to ask if I could read it?”
“Oh my god, you want to read it?” she asks.
“Yeah..!” He smiles.
“You can borrow my copy of it if you would like,” Ice says.
“Or, I could get you one, it might take a day or so, but who knows the what the state of his is in,”
Ice rolls his eyes. “I keep my books in perfect condition, I’ll have you know,”
Maverick smiles again. “Thank you for the offer, but it’s okay, I can borrow Ice’s for now,”

Chapter Text

Ice is tugged gently into consciousness like he almost never is these days, by a kiss on his cheek.
“Good morning baby,”
He smiles at the voice of his partner before even opening his eyes.
Maverick kisses him again. “God you needed that sleep huh,”
“Mhmm,” He opens his eyes to Maverick leaning over him from his side of the bed.
“You glad you took this leave now?”
“Yes,” he says through a yawn. Usually he’d be woken up at half five by his alarm, and be at the base by seven. But today it was… he didn’t even know. “Wha’s the time?”
“I dunno, like ten?”
Woah. That was a long sleep.
He sighs in the soft, sweet smell that was their bed. Their bed. Maverick was his, and had been for a good few years now. Actually, since a few weeks after graduating Top Gun.
They’d stayed on as instructors for a while, and on one of those nights Ice had been so overwhelmed with guilt that he went around to Maverick’s house in the dead of night. He’s opened up to him, more than he’d done to anyone else, and then confessed, accidentally. But contrasting to the thought that was that Maverick had no feelings for him and only liked him as a friend, he’d said the same thing. And that was that.
Sometimes he still could not wrap his head around it.

“You’re still smiling,”
“I know,” he says, fixing his eyes on Maverick’s own. God he was gorgeous.
“May I ask why?” He says, a hint of blush over his cheeks.
Ice lifts his head up to put it closer to Maverick’s, turning to lean on his forearms, the smile still on his face. “You,”
“Me?”
“Yes, Mav, you, you’re so..” he kisses his cheek. “So beautiful, so,” another kiss. “Handsome, I love you so damn much,”
“Tom…” Maverick ducks his head, coincidentally exposing the side of his neck, so Ice immediately presses a kiss there, too. “C’mon, you know you’re the beautiful one,”
“Nooo!” He protests as Maverick plants a kiss on his temple. “You are,”
“Bullshit, come on, you are!”
“Pete… you’re the beautiful one,” Ice grabs his face in his hands, pushing his hair back from where it was flopping over his forehead.
Maverick pouts. “You are bab-”
Ice kisses him again, shutting him up.

If only every morning could be like this. Wake up at ten, forget about work, and then be kissed by the love of his life. God that would be bliss.
Unfortunately, that would not work out. Being a Lieutenant Commander was stressful most of the time, but every so often, every few months, he would take just a couple of days leave, just because he could. Maverick was mostly on deployment for much of the year, so when he was home, the only obvious thing for Ice to do was take a few days off from the incessant paperwork he had to complete between deployments, and spend it with him.
Why wouldn’t he?

“Mav would you like a cup of tea?” He asks, poking his head around to the living room that afternoon.
“Oh god yes, please,” Maverick replies, looking back at him, upside down, from where he was sat on the couch. “You know I only have one when you make it,”
“Mhm,” He was glad about that, having gotten Maverick to like tea. Sarah would always make one for him at home, and the smell and taste of it would always, no matter what kind, would always bring a sense of home to him. And so now his home was here, with Maverick.

Sarah had published three books, from the same series, and was wildly successful already, he couldn’t be prouder than he was. She’d always send them a copy of the most recent, signed with love, from her. Ice knew she also sent their parents a copy too, but she never received anything back.
He knew that must be hard on her. Sarah, being the oldest of the two of them, was closer to their mother, but ever since he’d reached his teenage years, she’d changed to be more closed off and accepting of their father’s ways.
He hadn’t expected them to reach out to him, either. They hadn’t, but it gave him a sense of triumph instead of sadness. He’d done what they’d told him not to. From that day when he was sick and could no longer revise any more of that ridiculous Mathematics Higher, he’d done the opposite of what they had told him.
His father more specifically.

He still remembers his anger that exploded out of him like when a missile hits a hostile MiG, the lock he’d get on him before the strike that felt like tone when somebody locks on you. But Ice being Ice, had done everything in his power to stop that from becoming part of his personality. It had worked, but there was one thing he could not shake.
His fear of not being good enough.

Ice sighs as he gives the teas a last stir, doing as he always does, a few turns clockwise, then one anti-clockwise, it stills the spinning liquid inside the cups, any less chance of spilling them would always calm his nerves about what would happen if he did.
Like if he did, at home, give it three seconds and his father would be there screaming at him and then he would…
He sniffs to clear the awful memory he knows he’s never going to be able to forget, before running his hand over his right cheek, picking the cups up and going to the living room to where Maverick was sat reading.
“What chu reading?”
“Sarah’s first one,”
He smiles. “You love that one,”
“Mhm,” Maverick looks up at him as he puts the teas on the coffee table and sits next to him. “Thank you for the tea, Tom,”
“You’re welcome honey,”
Maverick smirks as he closes the book and reaches for his tea.
Ice adores using that nickname for him, Goose used to call him that all the time, before… Hop 31. The name doesn’t affect him badly though, otherwise he would never mention it.

“Ice,”
“Mhm?” He looks over to Maverick, gazing at him from over the edge of the teacup.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Nothin’ much,”
“But the something much?” He asks, changing the position of his legs so his right was hanging just over the edge of the couch.
Ice waits a moment, then just decides to come out with the truth. “You, how I’m so lucky to have you here and be here with you,”
“Nah, I’m lucky to have you, baby,” Maverick tilts his head and puts his hand on Ice’s thigh. “I never thought that I would have the stunning greek god of a pilot Tom ‘Iceman’ Kazansky of all people fall for somebody like me,”
The compliment dives directly down into his chest, melting him like Maverick’s warmth and fire was able to do so without a second thought. He lifts the cup up in a feeble attempt to hide the flush of pink that flew onto his cheeks. “Mav… I’m not-”
“Oh shut up yes you absolutely are that gorgeous!”
Replacing the cup on the table, Ice hides his face in his hands. “No I’m not!” He clocks the sound of Maverick putting his cup on the table and doesn’t have even half a second to inhale before he all but wraps his arms around him and squeezes him as much as he could.
“Yes you are and I will tell you so as much as I need to before you believe it yourself,” Maverick states, nuzzling his head into the side of Ice’s and kissing him. “Alright?”
“Mhm,”
Despite doing everything he could, he could just not hide the smile on his face and beautiful warmth that was emanating from wherever Maverick had contact with him. Which was with most of him.

“Baby gimme a kiss,” Maverick says, winding his hands around his to get a hold of his cheeks, absent-mindedly stroking his thumb over his right cheek as he always did now, now that Ice had told him that secret.
He lets him manoeuvrer his face towards his, then he kisses Maverick so suddenly he looses his balance and falls backwards onto the couch.
“Woah!” he says, before Ice pretty much covers his face in kisses. Pete lets him kiss him, but then presses his hands on his chest and pushes him off and onto his back so their roles are reversed. “You’re gonna squish me,”
“What chu gonna do about that?”
“Squish you back…” he says, lowering himself down so all his bodyweight was now on Ice.
“Okay-” he laughs even through the sudden loss of ability to breathe.
Maverick leans his elbows on his chest, looking down at him.
Ice looks back at him, then a slow smile creeps onto his lips at the though of the compliment he was about to tell him. “Cutie pie,”
Maverick’s jaw drops. “What!”
“Yeah Mav you heard me,” He replies, delighted at his reaction.
“Alright, sweetheart,” he says back, green eyes narrowing mischievously.
Tom grins, his cheeks were starting to ache from all the smiling he’d been doing but god damn it it was so worth it.
Pete kisses him again.
Tom kisses him back, running his hands through his hair and when he sighs he feels utterly complete.

“Do you know how much I love you?”
Maverick shakes his head.
“Not enough,” Tom murmurs.
A smile, his real, perfect smile shoots across Maverick’s face, lighting up his eyes like he was watching a sunrise; just before he smashes his lips back against his, kissing him as if tomorrow would never come.
And Tom thinks, yeah, this is it.