Work Text:
As always, something had to be up with these conferences, held seemingly at random, in definitely random places dotted all around the country. This time it was raining, the kind of rain that soaked you to your skin in seconds and crept into your bones and you had to sit by some radiator for hours before it even started to dissipate.
Not that Maverick minded the rain though, he always liked it, it was refreshing and seemed as if it would clear away all his troubles and worries. This rain though, was just that little bit too cold. The cold was worse. Reminded him of the sea where he’d lost Goose.
He inhales, nudging Ice who was walking next to him down the slick, wet sidewalks to the hotel they’d been booked into.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he replies, trying a half smile.
Ice doesn’t even attempt one back.
Something was up with him, but Maverick just couldn’t put his finger on it. His gaze at the moment, or even, since they’d met up that morning to go to the airport to get here, matched the rain’s temperature. It was freezing, which was now usually uncommon for the blond to direct at him these days. Sort of.
They were friends. Kind of.
Well, Maverick had seen them as friends since the Layton rescue. Ice, maybe only saw him as an acquaintance. He liked him as a friend, maybe more if he was telling the truth to himself. Which he wasn’t right now, so he liked him as a friend. Not in any other way.
He inhales, and halts himself a second before smacking into Ice’s shoulder as he stops rather abruptly in front of what must be the hotel.
“This it?” he asks, looking up at him.
“Mhm,”
Maverick tilts his head up the path, smiling at him. “You can go first,”
Ice swallows, going up the path. “Thanks,” he mutters.
He didn’t like seeing Ice like this. Even though it was probably his more natural state, the one that got him his callsign.
The doors were automatic, sleek metal and glass, like the rest of the entrance. The lobby was strange too, modern, slick and monotonously coloured blue. It kind of dragged him down. Even the lights were silvery and bright white. He remembers Carole telling him to make up a room you had to have a little of coolness, or a little warmth to dilute the place.
She’d hate this, he thinks. Too cold, way too cold. Nothing about it was warm.
Which includes Ice, as he watches him and the receptionist exchange pleasantries and then she gives him the door key.
Maverick goes up to her, but she stands up and leaves right in front of him. His first thought is okay that was rude. His second was the feeling that he had that he and Ice were sharing a room.
“We in the same one?” He asks Ice, who stood by the corridor labelled ‘rooms 1 to 9’.
Ice nods once, and waits for Maverick to join him to go down the corridor.
“Which.. room?”
“Nine,” He says.
“Okay,”
The building silenced the rain outside, and he didn’t know if it was the corridor lined with blue carpet and walls painted in stark whites that made it feel freezing, or the tension around both of them. Maybe it was both.
He sighs a little, following Ice to the end of the corridor that wound around two corners before they got to room nine. The fire-exit was right at the end of the corridor, lit by a greenish-yellow sign, that was the warmest bit of colour he’d seen since he’d stepped inside.
“At least there’s a quick exit if there was ever a fire,” he attempts lightheartedness in order to ease some of the tension, pointing in the direction of the fire-exit.
“Yeah,” Ice says, opening the door and going in but holding it open for Maverick.
Not that it worked. At all.
And lo and behold, one bed.
Oh jesus. Maverick inhales deeply. “Was this the plan?”
“I don’t know, I don’t care,” Ice says tiredly, shrugging off his damp coat and hanging it up above a radiator. “What side do you want?”
He shakes his head as he hangs his own coat up next to Ice’s on the two-hook coat stand, running his hand down it and placing it on the radiator. Yep. Just as he suspected. It was off. “I don’t mind,”
“Can I take the left?”
“Yeah sure, you wanna use the bathroom first?”
Ice looks at him for a moment, Maverick holds his gaze, as chilly as it was. “Mkay,”
Maverick tilts his head and tries his signature smirk at him, the tension was eating him from the inside out.
Ice looks at him expressionlessly for another second or two before turning and sitting with his back to him on the left side of the bed.
He looks at the floor, gingerly taking his suitcase and propping it up against the night-stand.
Something was definitely up with his wingman. How to find out what it was, though, he had unfortunately no idea.
By eleven, he’d resolved to ask him, just one simple little ‘are you alright?’ Once he was finished in the bathroom, though. He’d been reading for a while, sat on his side of the bed, leaning on the headboard that he’d piled the two pillows from his side of it up against it. It was quite comfy, really. And the bedside light was a beautiful warm yellow-orange.
He looks at the bathroom door as he hears the Ice open it.
Woah. Ice was dressed in a thick cream cable knit sweater, the collar showed a black t-shirt he had on underneath, and grey sweatpants. His hair was… something else entirely, incredibly fluffy from being towel dried and not forced into immediate perfection by the multitude of stuff he knows he uses to tame it. He stares at him for what seems like a small eternity before blinking hard and staring back down at the book.
Ice goes over to his side of the bed without a single word, setting down the folded pile of stuff inside his suitcase he’d left open.
“Ice, um,”
“Yeah?” his tone of voice didn’t match the warm colours he was wearing one bit.
“I just, wanted to ask if you were… okay,” he looks at him even though he wasn’t facing him. “Are you okay?”
Ice’s straight glare at him made his throat almost instantly close up.
It made him feel like he’d just crossed a thousand uncrossable lines. Shit it was just a simple little question! And now here Ice was glaring at him. Maverick swallows, daring to hold his gaze.
“I’m fine,” he says, narrowing his eyes for the smallest second, and blinking in between the two words. Maybe he was overthinking it, but those two miniscule cracks of uncertainty in his frozen mask were telling him that he was absolutely not fine.
He makes his shoulders shrug and his mouth make a smile. “Alright, just… asking,” he says slowly as Ice turns his head back around and busies himself with putting the folded clothes back in the suitcase, that he’d finished.
Maverick opens his mouth to say something, but closes it and puts the book on the night-stand, before dragging the pillows down and going quietly to the bathroom.
At the very least Ice didn’t hate him enough to use up all the hot water. So the water was warm, but it ran off him like water off oily feathers, doing nothing to warm him up.
He stands there with the dry towel around him in the steam filled bathroom in front of the mirror for at least five minutes, before drying himself down and putting his most comfortable white t-shirt on, it was too big for him, so the sleeves came down to his elbows; along with a pair of shorts. He shuts off the light before opening the door, picking up his bundle of unfolded clothes and peeking out into the darkened room.
Ice had turned the light on his side off and angled the one on Maverick’s side away. It looked to him like he was already asleep on his left.
He looks at Ice’s sleeping form for no longer than a few seconds, before going to his side and sitting down. Then he dumps the clothes in his open suitcase still sat by the bed, finds the light switch and turns off the light.
It was peaceful, sort of in the darkness, despite the tension he could almost feel through the bed as Maverick laid down on his right, facing outward, not towards Ice. He still could not understand why the other pilot had acted like he had. Hopefully it would be better in the morning.
He’d let him sleep it off. It’s what Goose always told him.
~~~
Why Maverick was still awake, he didn’t exactly know. Well, he wasn’t completely awake, but he was for sure not asleep, otherwise he wouldn’t be thinking this.
Weird. He opens his eyes, a yawn tickling the back of his throat, and tries to move his legs, only slightly, because although they were cramping, he was hyper aware of Ice not half a metre behind him, who was definitely asleep.
He didn’t exactly know how Ice got to sleep so fast, he was acting really strange, even more closed off than he usually was, and this one-bed-situation probably was not helping whatever the blond was feeling.
It was raining, though, still, and Maverick listens to the soft patter of it on the window nearest his right side of the bed. It was calming, peaceful, and just as his eyes are about to close, Ice kicks him in his calf.
He inhales, finally having an excuse to turn onto his back.
From what he could see in the pitch black, the other pilot was still asleep on his left.
Maverick shrugs it off. He’d probably have kicked him if he fell had asleep first. No need to do anything. He didn’t want to extend Ice’s anxiety into the next day.
He stretches his neck, and turns back over onto his right. It was awkward enough to sleep facing someone you weren’t even that close with, let alone the someone called Iceman. In fact, especially the someone called Iceman.
Maverick shuts his eyes and tunes back into the rain, filtering out the occasional rustle from him.
But then, almost as if a switch somewhere was flicked, the rustles were more consistent, jagged as if he was flinching or something.
Just a weird dream, he thinks. I get plenty of those, so who am I to judge?
He barely caught it, but the room being as silent as it was, the uttered phrase was like an explosion.
“Mav no-”
He freezes, eyes open and glued to the ceiling, his breathing suddenly an eighth of was it was five seconds before.
...What?
More flinch-rustles and Maverick decides to turn fully over onto his left.
A dream, a vivid one at that, he could tell.
Almost inexplicably, his chest fills up with empathy for him. But he could do nothing to help him, he didn’t really know what to do.
Ice suddenly lurches up into a sitting position, he breathes hard and fast for a few seconds before Maverick could basically see the emotion hit him like a tidal wave and he curls into a ball, hugging his knees.
What the hell?
He’s never once seen Ice anywhere near a state like this one. He was the Iceman, he had few emotions and no feelings, but this emotional wreck a foot away from him was nothing like he’d expected.
Maverick sits up. “Ice? Hey..” He didn’t want to startle him, that would just make the entire situation a hundred times worse.
Ice keeps his arms around his knees, daring to lift his head a fraction to look at Maverick. His eyes, god Maverick would never forget the look he was giving him. The cool gaze that Ice usually looked at him with was replaced with one of blatant terror.
No words come to his aid as he looks into his fearful eyes, so he does the next most natural thing. Puts his hand gently on his shoulder.
The flinch that shoots out from Ice from the barest hint of his palm on his shoulder rocks him to his core, filling him with more concern than he’d ever thought he’d be able to feel.
Maverick retracts his hand and finally, words come.
“It was just a dream,” he says quietly. Obviously he was disorientated, and unfortunately he knew that feeling all too well, after his own nightmares, whether they be about Hop 31 or something completely different, all too often he’d wake up soaked in sweat and he wouldn’t know where he was for a few minutes. It felt awful, and if he was in the state Ice was in, he didn’t think he’d want anyone touching him either, no matter how well-meaning the action was.
Plus, Ice was hyperventilating, muffling his sobbing in his arms, Maverick could almost feel him shaking through the bed.
“You’re here, Ice, it’s okay,”
He couldn’t help but feel like his words were feeble nothingness, a miniscule attempt to calm the other down. Would they even help? He had no idea, and that was the problem.
And then Ice was suddenly right there, right in his chest, flopped into him like he’d just given up on supporting himself. But now, yeah, Maverick could safely draw the conclusion that it was okay to hold him.
“Shhh…” He exhales, wrapping his arms around him as tightly as he could.
Ice was shaking like a leaf, shoulders heaving with each heart-wrenching sob that ripped out of him.
“It’s alright, it’s alright,” he murmurs into his hair, running his hand slowly but firmly up his shoulder blades to the base of his neck, then further up into his hair, pushing his fingers through his signature frosted tips. It was soft, almost unbelievably so, even if the shortest parts were a little soaked in an unsettling cold sweat. Maverick could not care less.
“It was only a dream…”
Ice sniffs, then quickly sucks in a breath through his mouth between sobs.
Yeah this would not stand.
“Ice, try and breathe with me,” he says, moving his left hand until it was resting on the bottom of his shoulder blades.
His shoulders were heaving as he tried to intake the air like Maverick was doing, breathing as deeply as he could so Ice would be able to breathe with him.
“That’s it, there you go,” Maverick says softly, encouragingly, as Ice gradually got his breathing back under control. Every few, his breath would hitch a little with an echo of a sob, but in the main he slowed it right down.
His trembles stilled alongside, but he makes no move to say that he wanted to let go of him.
And if he was telling the truth to himself, which he was, he didn’t want to let go of Ice.
“Should we lay down?” Maverick says, unwinding his right hand from his head and running it slowly down his arm.
Ice sniffs in his shoulder and nods, lingering for a second before pulling away and rubbing his hand over his face.
Maverick catches his hand in his left as he lays down, silently sending signals that he didn’t mind if Ice stayed as close to him as he just had been.
The window, being on his side, cast a faint ray of moonlight from between the drawn curtains into Ice’s face, illuminating his hair and eyes.
He sniffs again, looking down between them at their hands, not in Maverick’s face, just letting him hold his hand, though not holding his back. He looked as if he wanted to say something, so he’d wait for him.
“I’ve had it before,” Ice says, his voice sounding like it was grating the inside of his throat, and Maverick squeezes his hand just the tiniest bit, wanting to reassure him.
He watches him trying to free the words.
“It’s- it’s the Layton but,” he exhales, shutting his mouth before trying again. “But worse because-”
Maverick strokes his thumb on the back of Ice’s hand.
“Because I lose you on it,”
“Ice-” Maverick had had few heartbreaks in his life, but this one, this one punched right through him and dragged him through waves as if it were a harpoon.
Ice exhales and moves his head down, hiding all the freshly springing tears in his eyes from Maverick.
“You’re not gonna... lose me,” he says, his chest feeling like he’d been badly winded. “I- I’m not gonna let that happen,”
Ice then squeezes his hand as tightly as he can, then there was a second of silence as he drew in a breath, only to push it back out again in a flood of hurried explanation. “There was so much blood, it was all over my hands and all over your flightsuit and they tried- the- transfusion didn’t work and I never got the chance to apologise to you about anything because y-you were gone in my arms- but I’m sorry- I’m so sorry about everything-”
“Tom...” Maverick stops him, exhaling, feeling tears spike his own eyes, imagining Ice’s dream in horrific detail, wrapping his arms back around his shoulders and pulling him as close as he could. “God- you’re never gonna lose me like that,”
“I’m so sorry-”
“Shhh…” he hushes him, pressing his forehead to his. “You don’t have to be sorry,”
“I was so scared-” Ice’s voice was hoarse. “I didn’t think you were going to make it,”
“Ice,” Maverick presses his hand onto his cheek, thumbing away the tears leaking from his eyes. “I’m here, I’m here now,”
“I’m sorry for acting like I have been today, I was just- I’m worried about the conference, and the rain wasn’t helping and I took it all out on you,” he sniffs, his chest heaving.
Maverick shakes his head. “No, that’s okay,”
“Are you s-sure?” And finally Ice looks at him, uncertain to no end.
“Yes, yes wingman I’m sure,” Maverick replies, sliding his right arm back around his tense shoulders. “Come here,”
Within ten more minutes of being in Maverick’s embrace, Ice’s breathing had returned to normal, and then it slowed further to give him the knowledge that he had again fallen asleep. And it’s not too long later, in the darkness and the easy silence of the room, after Ice succumbs to sleep that Maverick finally allows his eyes to slide shut, still holding Ice against him. They both needed it, he knew that now. They both needed the other ones warmth, be that physical or emotional.
He didn’t know which one he gave to Ice, but if he was still there in his arms, which he was, then that was good enough for him.