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It was only a training exercise.
It was only supposed to be a training exercise.
Everybody had been looking forward to it. It was part of what made TOPGUN special: yeah, there were the instructors, the courses, the hands-on experience; riding yourself as hard as you could, knowing you were the best of the best and it was making you even better. But there was also the link.
And two weeks in, they finally got to actually try it out.
They had to make it past Jester first, of course. He wouldn't let them line up for their injections until he'd given them the whole spiel again, same as they'd gotten from the doctors on base but at twice the decibels.
"The link is not about capability, and it is not about mental acuity—luckily for all of you. It is about distance. That simple. A pilot and his RIO are two feet apart: the barest effort will connect you, and the barest effort will disconnect you. You are learning how it feels to link, and you are learning how to concentrate while within an active link, and that is all. You will be linking for the duration of this exercise only. If you feel an echo after disconnection, report it! That is what these fine medical professionals get paid for.
"When you receive a long-term assignment after graduation, you will be deliberately positioned at a distance from each other, and you will need to make an actual fucking effort. But not today. Today, for the first and only time during your tenure at TOPGUN, we are asking you for the bare minimum, and no more. Understood?"
He made them all shout, "Yes, sir!" two times before he was satisfied that they meant it.
And then, at last, they got to step up in front of the doctors with the trays of syringes, and they were given the shot.
It wasn't instantaneous. Everybody knew that. That was half the point, even—so you could get up in the air without having to worry about it. So you were already flying, smooth and easy, on a course you could manage with your eyes shut and one hand behind your back, before you found yourself with another guy in your head.
The wait got boring fast, though.
"You're going to do something stupid, aren't you?" Goose shouted, after about a minute of flying straight and even, and not the slightest tickle in Maverick's head to show for it.
"Yours working already?" Maverick said.
"Nah," Goose said. "I've met you, that's all."
Maverick grinned.
It wasn't big stupid. It wasn't even that dangerous. They were flying in a looser formation than usual, spread out, so even if somebody bobbled a little when their link settled, they weren't going to cause a problem or dunk anyone in their jetwash.
So how much could it hurt, really, to do a roll or two?
"Cool it, cowboy," a voice said in Maverick's ear, flat and steady, and it wasn't Goose's.
Just proof of exactly how dull it was, flying in big broad circles like this. The Iceman didn't let himself snipe at Maverick during flight exercises, most of the time. Too focused for it, too level-headed. Too busy following every goddamn rule he could find.
"Something bothering you, Iceman?" Maverick inquired, and kept his tone sounding like he honestly had no idea.
He wished, idly, that he could buzz Iceman as readily as buzzing a control tower. But Iceman wasn't next to him; that was Hollywood, Wolfman. Iceman was on the other side of the formation entirely, Maverick was pretty sure.
It was so easy to picture him there, in his own cockpit. His eyes sharp, fixed on the horizon. Hands steady on the stick. And mouth—mouth twisting just the barest degree, the only expression he'd allow himself to show to acknowledge how much Maverick's flyboy showboat bullshit irritated him—
That was when it happened.
Maverick sucked in a harsh breath, and jerked in his straps, and for a second he couldn't tell which way was up, even though he'd leveled out and wasn't rolling at all. It was—he felt opened up, wide to the sky, like his canopy had come off and he was right there in the heart of the screaming wind.
There was a second where he could probably have done what he was supposed to. There was a second where he could feel it all: the bright spark of Goose just behind him, right there waiting for him. Hollywood, Wolfman, further off and dimmer, at the edge of Maverick's range. And they'd—they'd already done it, found each other, though Maverick wasn't sure how he knew that, how it was he could tell.
But the last thing in his head, before it happened, had been that picture of Iceman. And it wasn't—he didn't even decide to do it, not really. Like this, having the impulse, experiencing it, was acting on it, because the thing that was acting was his mind. The flicker of the thought was all it took, and he was gone.
It was hard. It was like flying, in every sense of the word. The sheer force of it, Gs piling up and the pressure squeezing right down to the bone; doing whatever the hell you could think of just to keep your nose up, just to keep yourself pointed at anything other than the ground, where it was waiting down there to smash you apart.
But Maverick was a pilot. He took it, and he hung on. And all of a sudden it was there, the target he'd been waiting for. He could feel it, he could practically fucking touch it; he gasped for breath and reached out for it, and it was reaching for him too—
"Maverick! Maverick! I don't know if he's conscious, sir, he's not answering—"
"Goose," Maverick choked out.
He couldn't—god, he couldn't fucking think. He felt confused, disoriented, like his head was going too many directions at once for him to keep track of. He blinked his streaming eyes open and squinted down at the control panel: the heading seemed right, and then wrong, and then right again, even though the numbers, the view, weren't changing.
"Maverick!" someone said.
He couldn't breathe. He couldn't unclench his hands from his stick. He was going to throw up, he was going to die—
"Slider," he forced out, steady, because that was what he did. He stayed steady, he kept his head, he was the goddamn Iceman.
He—
He was—
"Breathe," somebody was snapping into his ear. Into his—ears. There was the barest echo, a split-second delay, like he was hearing it out of two radios that weren't quite synced.
"Maverick?"
"Ice—Ice. Kazansky, what the hell—"
"Get them on the same bearing, now."
"Hey, you listening? I said, are you listening?"
"Yes, sir," he croaked.
"Close your eyes."
"Sir—"
"Close them!"
He closed his eyes. He closed—all of them.
"I can see you. All right? I can see you. I know where you are, I know how fast you're going, I know your altitude. You've got the stick. All you need to do is listen to me. You got that?"
He did. He got that. He was pissed off; he was afraid, cool relentless trickle of it down his spine; he was clear, focused, sharp and brilliant as a flare. He could do this, if anybody could. He could do this.
Both of him.
Maverick couldn't have said how they'd pulled it off, later.
It might not even have worked with anybody but him and Iceman, link or no link. Coming in for a landing like that, eyes closed, Jester talking him—them—through it, right on each other's wings. And any other time, they'd have been dead. They'd have had to eject instead, eject and fucking pray.
Obviously, it was going to get fixed. It had to get fixed. There was nothing Maverick wanted less than having the Iceman inside his head.
But he had to admit there had been something to it. Flying like that, it was—it was all the glorious singing high he'd gotten from inverting over that MiG, except this had kept on going. Him and Iceman, perfect, smooth, simultaneous, flying two planes like they were one person, because for a minute there they practically had been. There weren't two other pilots in the world who could have landed that close alongside each other, wingtips inches apart. Never mind doing it in such exact step, a dead heat, precisely synced.
But they had. They could hardly have helped it. And god, that part had been sweet.
Iceman snorted, a sharp dismissive breath through his nose. He wasn't even looking at Maverick, now, but it didn't matter. Maverick could feel the slow cold roll of his disdain, his icy fucking fury, a frozen midwinter sea.
"Well, shit," Jester said, and sighed. "Can it, Maverick."
Maverick blinked. "Sir," he said cautiously.
Jester raised an eyebrow. "Your new best friend gave you away. Whatever it is that you think is more important than what I'm about to tell you, you're wrong. Put a lid on it, and pay attention."
A flare of irritation—a sour burst of resentment. Maverick couldn't even tell for sure which was him, and which was Iceman. There was a repeating refrain in the back of his head, thoughts that were more a sharp reverberating disbelief than they were actual words; but if they had been words, those words would've been god, I can't fucking believe this, what the fuck, fuck him, I can't believe he did this to me, that son of a bitch—
He wasn't sure which one of them that was, either. Maybe both.
And then the door to the office opened, and Viper stepped in, and in there where they both were they went still and quiet in an instant.
"I can't help but suspect," Viper said, sort of meditatively, "that perhaps you gentlemen don't fully understand exactly how serious this is." He came around, past Iceman, in the corner of Maverick's eye; but Maverick had been reamed out way too many times not to know better than to look. Straight ahead, at attention, face blank. It was—
It was almost easier, a little, with the link there. Feeling how Iceman was holding his face, from the inside out, without having to look—letting his own settle into the same lines and stay there, Iceman's steady hands at the stick for both of them.
"Do you know how far apart we position a pilot and a RIO, if we want them to link without difficulty for a minimum of a year?" Viper said.
It wasn't the kind of question where he was actually looking for an answer.
"Ten feet." He paused, looked at one of them and then the other, as if he were waiting for visible evidence that this fact had sunk in. "And do you know how far apart we position a pilot and a RIO if we'd like to double the length of that assignment?"
Maverick swallowed, and felt the nape of his neck prickle. He had no idea. But suddenly he was pretty damn sure the answer wasn't going to turn out to be at opposite ends of a deliberately enlarged air formation.
"Twelve feet," Viper said.
Shit.
"You two were a goddamn quarter-mile apart. According to all the records we've got—and we've got all the records there are, when it comes to the link—that shouldn't even have been possible." He stopped, and sighed sharply through his nose. "I wish I could tell you we knew what to do about this. As it stands, the medical team's going to be working a lot of long days trying to give us some options."
"Congratulations," Jester said, with the air of a helpfully-offered translation. "For the foreseeable future, you kids are stuck with each other."
No. No fucking way.
Maverick went hot and cold—or maybe that was Iceman, and god, even having to think to himself that he couldn't be sure, that none of himself was entirely his anymore, was infuriating.
There had to be some way out of this. They'd done this to themselves; they could undo it. If all it was going to take was the same degree of effort in reverse—
Cold hard disbelief, pointed, disdainful, swept him like a tide. Who the fuck was he fucking kidding? Hadn't he been listening to a single goddamn word Viper had been saying? Didn't he remember what it had been like up there? Feeling like they were spinning out, like they were coming apart; gritting their teeth and clinging on through it, about half an inch from passing out. As if they were going to be able to pull that off again on command—
"I said, you're dismissed," Viper repeated, eyebrows raised.
And at the very least, Maverick got a tiny, petty zing of satisfaction out of knowing for sure that Iceman hadn't heard him the first time, either.
They stalked down to the locker room without speaking, roiling with irritation, throwing half-formed thoughts back and forth like punches. Realizing, once they got there, that they'd gone the whole way in perfect step with each other didn't help.
"There has to be something," Maverick finally spat, because at least if he said it out loud Iceman wouldn't be able to drown it out with a wave of disembodied scorn.
"Like what?" Iceman bit out. "I don't know if you've noticed, but we aren't exactly going to be able to ignore each other."
The reflexive urge to insist on proving him wrong as good as did the opposite: Maverick could see Iceman feeling it, the briefest shadow of a bullheaded expression crossing his face and Iceman's own coldly disgusted frustration chasing it a split second later.
"There has to be something," Maverick repeated. "Ice, if we can't get this under control, we can't fly."
And that hit home just as hard as he'd known it would. Because for everything about the Iceman that rubbed Maverick the wrong way ten times over, he'd been sure even before they'd had a link to tell him—even before he'd been right there in Iceman's head feeling it for himself—that the one thing they had in common was that they fucking loved to fly.
Iceman didn't have nerve, and he didn't have guts, and he didn't have any fucking soul, at least not in any form Maverick had been able to recognize. He flew like a goddamn machine, like somebody had programmed him for it.
But even Maverick could admit that that also meant he was fucking good at it. That kind of precision, that kind of control—not just anybody could do that. And he wouldn't have made it his life, wouldn't have thrown every fraction of himself into doing it as well as he had to to have gotten into TOPGUN, if it didn't mean a hell of a lot to him.
And now, well. Now, Maverick really had felt it for himself, all the proof he hadn't needed right there in his face anyway.
Iceman looked at him. Maverick felt a sudden hot awareness that Iceman must have—must have felt him think all of that, must have followed that train of thought as clearly as if it had been his own.
The corner of Iceman's mouth moved, like maybe someday, in twenty or thirty years, it was thinking about what it might be like to smile.
"Yeah, okay," Iceman said at last. "But I wouldn't get my hopes up."
As it turned out, they were both right.
On the one hand, they could get a good enough handle on it to keep flying after all.
It worked better when one of them was on the ground. It was harder to get confused, then—it was easier to realize whose eyes were whose, whose view was whose; who had the stick in their hands, and who didn't.
And it was hard to resent the necessity, when it felt the way it did. Maverick could hardly get out of a plane without wishing he were right back in one. But like this, he could fly even when it wasn't him flying. He could slide in right next to Iceman and feel everything: the weightlessness, the intensity, the sheer fucking speed. Nothing in the world like it, and now he had it even when he didn't, feet planted on the tarmac and all the rest of him up there soaring anyway.
But on the other hand, it definitely wasn't going anywhere.
The docs hadn't come up with anything solid, at least not yet. Truthfully, Maverick wasn't a whole lot more eager to try disconnecting it by themselves than Iceman had been, back in Viper's office. He didn't know if he could stand to go through that again, again except upside down and backwards, and—
And alone, coming out the other side of it.
Because the worst part of the whole thing was, Maverick was starting not to care whether they got it fixed.
He tried not to think about it. He tried not to think about it because he didn't want to, and he tried not to think about it because Iceman was bound to catch him at it. He didn't stay up nights in his bunk swooning over how great it was that he and Iceman were sharing a brain.
But it was hard to keep resenting a guy for existing when you were—when you were part of him, when he was part of you. When you knew what he was thinking, and why; when you remembered everything he remembered. When you understood him, better than you were ever going to understand anybody else on the face of the earth for the rest of your life.
Maverick got kind of a kick out of it, even. Just because everybody else was still stuck with the Iceman, that cool steady stare, that unreadable face like it was chiseled out of stone. But Maverick didn't even have to look at him, didn't even have to be in the same room, to know exactly what was going on behind that.
Iceman could be funny, sometimes. He could be funny, he could be scathing. He could be quiet, too: not just on the outside, but on the inside. Quiet, and cool, and still. Maverick was never like that. There had always been something in him that itched, restless, clawing away, something that couldn't be soothed. But he learned to like it, the way that he could—he could wade into Iceman, into the lake of him, smooth calm water under a cloudless sky. He could wade in there and close his eyes and breathe; and Iceman would let him.
They still weren't friends or anything. But it was working. It was working, and they had a handle on it, and they probably weren't going to kill each other.
Maverick figured that was about as good as it was going to get.
He wasn't expecting the volleyball game.
He didn't even realize what was happening, at first. Not until Goose said, "I don't suppose you guys are interested in a point getting scored before next week?"
Maverick stopped short, blinking the sweat out of his eyes. The ball wasn't where it was supposed to be, it wasn't where Iceman's last volley should have put it. It was—Slider had grabbed it, snatched it out of the air before it could cross the net.
Iceman was standing on the other side of the net, staring back at Maverick and reaching up to wipe the sweat off his forehead with one forearm. He was alight, warmed up, muscles singing just like Maverick's were, and somewhere underneath it, as puzzled as Maverick was.
Maverick turned and looked over his shoulder, using the opportunity to catch his breath.
And Goose was standing there behind him, arms crossed, eyebrow raised.
Maverick thought back. Goose—hadn't moved in a couple minutes, at least. Or Maverick couldn't remember that he had; he reached, looked, and Iceman couldn't either. Maverick had registered Slider moving to stand off to one side, practically out-of-bounds entirely. He hadn't thought twice about it, except for a brief spark of what he was only now realizing might have been satisfaction.
Because he wasn't here to play against Slider.
He swallowed, and his eyes went back to Iceman. Who was still watching him, and had tilted his chin up; and his mouth was flat, but it didn't matter. Maverick could feel that he wanted to laugh.
Because they hadn't scored a single fucking point against each other. Not one. Maverick hadn't even noticed. He'd been so caught up in the sheer straightforward competition of it, volleying back and forth, diving for a save whenever Iceman had spiked the ball—and he'd been able to send it right back every time, seeing through Iceman's eyes and his own at the same time, understanding exactly what angle he'd need.
They couldn't help but counter each other, precise, perfect. Because they each knew exactly where the other was moving, feeling the decision and the motion like they were making both themselves, and they could get where they needed to be before the ball even crossed the net, most of the time.
"Guessing it's not going to work any better to put you on the same team," Slider was saying with a huff.
"They're going to kick our asses," Goose agreed, but he was already moving to duck under the net anyway.
"Yeah, we are," Iceman said, and did the same, without looking away from Maverick.
They gave up a handful of points, in the end. It had to happen: now that there wasn't one of them on each side of the net, they couldn't know whether the ball was about to be set or spiked, where it was headed or how fast it would be going.
But they could just about make up for it with that reflexive, wordless synchrony. They didn't have to shout, didn't have to gesture. They didn't have to think twice about who was headed where, who'd take the dive and who'd send the ball back over after the save—it took a second, less, to trade impressions, to tell who was closer.
Maverick was expecting them to get snarled up about it, at least a couple times. To argue, to try for the same ball and trip over each other and end up in the sand, baring their teeth at each other.
But instead, it was—it didn't feel like they had to. They were each both of them, they were—sometimes Maverick wasn't even sure where exactly he was, whether he was looking out Iceman's eyes or his own. Maybe he was moving Iceman's hands, or maybe it just felt like he was, the thought-impression of Iceman's motion transferred so immediately to him and his own impulses flying right back so smoothly that it was six of one, half a dozen of the other.
It was fucking amazing.
There wasn't even room to be disoriented by it. It had been too long, now, and they'd been practicing too much. They'd learned to handle one of them in a plane and the other on the ground; being down here together, same place same time, was a walk in the park by comparison.
And maybe Maverick had sold them both a little short. Maybe there was more than one thing they had in common after all. Because he could feel the hot bright burn of determination as clearly in Iceman as he could in himself: the focus, the intensity. Wanting more than anything to win, and to do it so thoroughly it felt like it had never been in question. Except without any of Maverick's showboating cowboy bullshit—
Oh, shut up, Maverick thought back. But he didn't mean it, couldn't, and there was no way Iceman didn't know it.
By the time they'd racked up an easy twenty-one, Maverick discovered he was grinning so hard his face ached; Iceman had let his eyes fall half-shut, heavy-lidded, smug and self-satisfied. Even Slider's sour expression, Goose grousing at length, couldn't put a dent in the way it felt. The way they felt. Maverick didn't have to turn and look at Iceman to acknowledge it, obviously. So when he did it anyway, it was just because he wanted to. And there was something about that, the sheer—indulgence of it, Iceman shirtless in the sun and looking right back at him, that stole all the air out of his chest for a minute.
Yeah, Maverick found himself thinking. Yeah, okay. He could learn to live with this.
(He didn't think about it more than that. He didn't let himself. He didn't want to, not where Iceman was going to see it, feel it; not in a way Iceman would have to do something about. Because if Iceman wasn't right there with him, wanting what he was starting to think he wanted, there wasn't going to be any way for Iceman to hide it—it would be obvious, impossible to un-know. It would be unbearable. Maverick could live with this. That was all he needed.)
And then Goose died.
There was no technical or medical limit to the number of links a pilot could have at once. The problem was purely practical: they got less useful, the more of them you had—too much input, too much to sort through, too many thoughts for anybody to keep track of. Nobody could focus with a dozen different people in there at once. Nobody could fly like that.
But even with Maverick and Iceman stuck the way they were, it turned out Maverick could still manage a link with Goose.
It was easier than he'd thought it would be. The distance between you when you took hold of each other didn't just affect how long the link stuck, how easy it was to do or undo. It also made a difference when it came to how deep it went—how strong it was. With him and Iceman, it went all the way down; they couldn't keep a thought to themselves if they tried. And for Maverick, that had been the baseline. That, as far as he knew, was what a link was like.
But it was lighter, less intense, with Goose. The benefit was still obvious—Goose didn't have to say a word to let Maverick know who was on his tail and where, how far away, what angle, and Maverick could acknowledge just as fast, could let Goose know what he was planning to do next just by thinking about it. It was straightforward, comfortable, and Maverick relaxed into it readily.
Maybe that was why it happened. Maybe he—
Maybe he should have been more careful. Maybe he should have flown a little more like Iceman, and a little less like himself.
But as it was, he was on top of the fucking world. He felt like he could do anything, and he cut it way too close, and Goose paid the price for it, no matter what the board of inquiry said later.
And he knew the rules. He knew that the second they caught that wash, the second he felt an engine so much as sputter, he was supposed to get the hell out. He was supposed to get clear and stay there, close himself back up inside his head as tight as he could—for Goose's sake, as much as for his own, because the risks were astronomical either way.
But he couldn't do it.
He felt the spike from Iceman, on the ground somewhere down there: a rush of sudden sharp attention, tight focus, a cold steady ache mounting with a speed that made Maverick clench his teeth without thinking. What the hell was he doing? What the hell was he thinking? Eject. Eject, you stupid stubborn bastard—
He couldn't. He couldn't, because that meant accepting the loss, even if it didn't happen, even if they were both fine. He couldn't bring himself to. He couldn't. He hadn't built himself that way, and he didn't know how he could bear it.
The eject sequence started. The canopy blasted up, and Goose's fingers closed around his ejection handle, Maverick could feel it, and then he pulled, and then he was gone.
It was that quick, that complete. He was gone, and in Maverick's head, where he had been, there was a black sucking nothingness, and it ate Maverick whole and he let it.
It was dark, and it was silent.
He was gone. He was supposed to be gone.
Something had him. Something was holding onto him—holding on tight, tight, when it should have had the sense to let go. He had let go. He had let go, because there wasn't enough of him left for anything else.
There was nothing left at all, except the dark and the silence. And whatever it was that had him, it should have realized that, and gone away.
Don't give me that bullshit, you motherfucker. Come on.
A whisper, that was all. But it was like a shout, the way it shattered that perfect endless silence, and he flinched from it helplessly.
No. No, he couldn't get back. There was no way he could get back. It was too far. He'd slipped away, he was gone—
The fuck you are. Come on. Don't quit on me now. You never have before, even when I damn well asked you to.
It was too far. He'd sunk too deep. But whatever it was, the whisper, the voice—it wouldn't let go of him. It stuck, it clung. It dragged at him, and it wouldn't stop, and he couldn't let it think it had the better of him. He couldn't let it do all the work.
He scraped, he strained, he clawed.
And the dark, the quiet, started to give way around him, one grudging inch at a time.
Maverick came to in the medical wing of the base.
It was dim—night, he thought vaguely. But it wasn't starless void, it wasn't nothing. There were lights, little ones, some blinking and some steady. There was beeping, soft, somewhere close by.
And there was Iceman.
His eyes were open. Maverick could see the shine of them. He was—he was crunched in next to Maverick on the infirmary bed, so close their knees and shoulders were touching, and he had his hands wrapped tight around Maverick's, and he was awake.
"They said you were fucked," Iceman said, low.
Maverick let his eyes fall shut, and swallowed.
"They said you were never going to come out of it. They said I was lucky you hadn't dragged me under, too." He paused for a second. "I think I might have punched one of them."
Maverick squeezed his eyes shut tighter, and let a breath that wasn't quite a laugh out through his nose.
And then one of the hands around his let go, and moved—came down again, careful, tentative, against his face, the line of his jaw.
"I knew better," Iceman whispered, fierce, unsteady. "Understand? I knew better. I didn't let go."
Maverick bit down on the inside of his cheek, hard. "I know," he said hoarsely. "I know you didn't."
And then Iceman pushed forward across the sheets, and Maverick knew why, knew what he was going to do—felt it like he was doing it himself, when Iceman tipped his face up and pressed their mouths together.
It was hard, harsh. It almost didn't seem like a kiss at all, at first; it was just another way to be touching, another way to get closer, and never mind that they were inside each other's heads, that there wasn't any closer they could get. Maverick had felt dull, numb, half-asleep. But now he was coming awake for real, and he began to understand that that low tight ache in his gut, that sick sore feeling in the back of his throat, weren't just his alone.
Iceman had been right there, front-row seat. Iceman remembered the whole damn thing better than Maverick did; Maverick had a hazy suspicion that it had been Iceman, not him, who'd managed to use his hands to reach his ejection handle and pull, who'd gotten him free of his straps and seat and made his chute deploy. Reaching through him, filling all the space where he hadn't been anymore—getting his body out of there whole, so he'd have somewhere to come back to, because like hell was he not coming back. Like hell—
Definitely Iceman. Maverick sucked in a startled breath against Iceman's mouth at the sheer stabbing force of the memory. And something about that movement, that he wasn't just lying there letting himself be kissed, flipped a switch somewhere. Because it was a kiss, a real one, and he was lighting up with it, helplessly conscious of the mass and heat and breadth of Iceman's body, the shape of Iceman's mouth against his.
It was everything he hadn't let himself think or feel, after that volleyball game. After all of it had started to add up on him: feeling Iceman fly from the inside out; learning him, understanding him, finding shelter in him. Watching him run around bare to the waist for forty-five minutes in the sun hadn't changed anything, not exactly—had just made it clear to Maverick what the sum was going to come out to, and that he couldn't afford to do the math, not if he wanted to be able to keep a handle on this. He liked being out of control, but only on purpose.
Except now Iceman was kissing him. Giving him what he'd never have so much as thought about letting himself ask for, because with them thinking about it was doing it. Maverick had a dull cold split second to be afraid that this meant Iceman had found it anyway, dug down deep inside him, and was letting him have what he wanted—
Iceman slid his tongue over the curve of Maverick's lip, pointedly, and in his head he was giving Maverick that level stare of his. Yeah, of course. He was suffering, here. This was a wrench, having to do this just to make Maverick feel good; lucky he was such a generous guy.
Maverick only had about another two seconds to absorb Iceman's wry amusement, the undeniable crackle of sparks underneath it, before Iceman tightened his grip on Maverick's face a little, held it there and eased away, and let out a quick breath. "Hold that thought," he said, soft, unwavering. "Get some actual rest."
He was probably right. The Iceman was always fucking right.
But Maverick was shaking his head anyway, turning his cheek, his mouth, into Iceman's palm. "No," he said. "No, please. Please. Don't make me—"
His voice cracked. He bit down on the rest. He didn't—he didn't want to fall asleep. It felt too close to going under again, and he didn't want that. He didn't want to end up back there, in the space where Goose wasn't. He wanted to be here, right here, with Iceman. He wanted that cool steadiness, that still fucking lake, that blue blue sky. He didn't want to be in his head, and he didn't want to be alone, and he wasn't, and that was such a gigantic fucking relief he felt his eyes sting, hot and wet and mortifying.
"Shit," Iceman muttered. His hand moved, curling around the side of Maverick's throat, the nape of his neck. "Like I want to."
And Maverick realized right then, with a distant jolt, that half the fear jangling along his nerves wasn't his. It was Iceman's.
Almost the same. Almost the same, but not quite. A mirror image. Because Iceman wasn't afraid of slipping away, Iceman wasn't afraid of getting lost. Iceman was afraid of being the one left behind doing the losing; of looking away, loosening his grip, for one single fucking second, and feeling everything he'd just barely figured out he wanted sliding through his fingers.
Maverick shuddered a little, helpless visceral sympathy. He hadn't even had a chance to try to hang on, with Goose—god, Goose—
"I'm sorry," Iceman murmured against his cheek, and Maverick might have hated him for it except that he could feel it, too: he could feel what it meant to Iceman to say it. "I'm sorry about Goose. But I'm—I'm not sorry about you." He shook his head a little, leaned in and pressed their foreheads together. "I'm not sorry I could save you."
He meant that, too. He was desperately glad to be lying here, with Maverick whole and alive under his hands—where Maverick belonged, that was what Iceman was thinking, and Maverick couldn't decide whether that was ridiculous or the best fucking thing he'd ever heard in his life.
They hung there, curling into each other, trembling on the edge of it without quite tipping over.
And then Iceman said unsteadily, "Fuck it," and skimmed his hand down Maverick's shoulder, his side: found the loose drawstring waist of the scrubs or whatever that they'd put him in, and touched him.
It was like the kiss, for a minute. Hardly even felt like it had anything to do with fucking. Iceman was just smoothing his hand along Maverick's hip, following the dip at the small of his back; sliding up under the edge of his shirt, too, thumbing along the curve of his lowest rib. And in his head it was three-quarters desperation, undeniable. Iceman wanted the reassurance of it, and he wanted it so badly Maverick could practically taste it.
And then Maverick reached back. Iceman was wearing an undershirt, dogtags spilled out loose in between them, and flight pants or something—too dark to tell for sure, not that it mattered. Maverick shoved the undershirt up, spread his hands out wide over Iceman's chest, and lying there feeling him breathe, feeling the sweet fucking relief flooding high inside him like a tidal wave, was better than half the actual sex Maverick had had in his life anyway.
But then they kept touching each other. They didn't need to, they were both alive and they knew it, but they didn't stop. It was—suddenly Maverick couldn't get enough of it, mapping out the shape of Iceman's body with his hands, the hard curves and slopes of muscle; a body he knew from the inside the way he'd only ever expected to know his own, but he'd never felt it from the outside, never touched it. How had he managed to pull that off? How had he managed to talk himself out of doing this every single time he was within arm's reach of Iceman?
"Jesus," Iceman gritted out, and reached for Maverick's face again, kissed him. Slower this time, deeper, tongue sliding over Maverick's teeth. It was dizzying for a second—because it was Maverick's teeth under that tongue, but Maverick could feel the bright sharp line of them like it was his tongue, too. He was—he was the hip and the thumb skimming down the hollow of it, the jagged smattering of scars across the back of Iceman's shoulder and the fingertips that had found them, he was kissing and he was being kissed. He was swallowing a noise and making one, and he knew his cock had gotten heavy, hot, against his thigh, but he wasn't sure whether he was the one reaching down to grip a cock or the one who was shivering and shoving up greedily into that grip.
"Holy fuck," he said hoarsely, drunkenly, against Iceman's mouth, and Iceman laughed a little and couldn't seem to stop stroking the thumb of his free hand along Maverick's face, his cheekbone, the skin just under his jaw.
"Yeah," Iceman agreed, the most breathless Maverick had ever heard him. And okay, it was Maverick's cock after all: Maverick's cock, Iceman's hand around it, just loose enough that Maverick didn't even mind it was practically dry, because jesus, the friction felt good. The burn of it, spitting sparks all up and down his suddenly raw nerves; the furthest thing he could think of from the silent endless dark—
Iceman heard the thought, had to have, and pressed even closer, hooked a knee over Maverick's so his hand was just about trapped between them. "You're not going anywhere," he said. "You understand me?"
Yes, Maverick thought, because he couldn't say it, because his throat was aching and his tongue wouldn't work, because he couldn't do anything out loud right now but gasp, shoving his cock clumsily up through the circle of Iceman's fingers. Yes, yes—and Iceman tightened his hand, leaned in and kissed Maverick again, bit at his mouth, and that was it.
It was hot, bright white, and it roared through Maverick like a fucking jet engine. Iceman didn't stop touching him, jerked him straight through it and then still didn't let go, and it took Maverick a dazed couple of minutes to realize that he couldn't—that the shockwave of coming like that had swept straight through Maverick and spilled right into Iceman, that he was shuddering half in sheer surprise, because he'd been hard but he hadn't been that close, jesus.
Maverick felt his mouth slant and couldn't stop it. Nobody would ever call him Iceman again, if they could see him now.
Iceman snorted, soft, and bit Maverick's lower lip again in retaliation, and then kissed him some more. Gentler. There was something almost cautious creeping into it, after a second, and Maverick had only just started to frown, reaching out curiously into Iceman's head to see if he could figure out why, when Iceman eased away and cleared his throat.
"They still don't know whether they can—break us apart," he said.
Fix us, he hadn't said, and Maverick grasped instantly that he hadn't used those words because he hadn't wanted to. Because he didn't feel like they were the right ones, not anymore.
"If they do figure it out," Iceman added, and then stopped. He had the Iceman face on, every inch of it, even though it didn't matter. Even though Maverick could tell what he was feeling underneath, clear as day. "If they do figure it out, Maverick, I don't want to."
He stopped again. Maverick looked at him.
"We can," Iceman said, after a second, evenly. "It'll be fine. But I don't want to. I guess I thought you should know that."
Maverick swallowed.
"Yeah?" he said.
Iceman's brow drew down, just a little. And there was no reason not to let him see, when he was obviously about to go look for it anyway. That Goose was dead, that Maverick had gotten him killed—that he'd almost dragged Iceman down along with both of them, that Iceman had already done more than enough just hauling him back out of there again when he hadn't had to—
"Jesus," Iceman said softly, "shut the fuck up," and kissed him again. "You stupid stubborn bastard. You're not going anywhere. And neither am I. Not unless you want me to."
Maverick closed his eyes, and thought about lying. Except there was no point; Iceman already knew what Maverick wanted. He had to, because Maverick sure did.
"Okay," Iceman said. "Okay. I got you," and Maverick knew it for the truth that it was, and held on tight, and didn't let go.