Chapter Text
Maverick stands at the railing, his dark, damp hair whipping in the wind. He’s gazing out over the abyssal blue of the horizon, half hidden in the deep shadow of the Enterprise’s hull; Iceman would’ve missed him, if Maverick wasn’t always the first thing that hooked his eyes.
It’s been over an hour since the debriefing. The adrenaline of surviving’s long since seeped away, left Iceman hollow and bereft. He’s aching, sore, the tacky feeling of dried sweat the only vestige of the dripping cold fear that ripped through him not two hours before. Only habit and long-ingrained discipline keeps his spine straight.
It’s shit, but he’s fine.
Still, he’d been looking for a place to be alone. Somewhere private, somewhere to take a deep breath, to loosen the tension from his shoulders. Tough luck on a carrier; you can barely piss without giving someone an eyeful.
What he hadn’t been looking for was Maverick, but here he is now, unchanged out of his flight suit. Strangely still, backlit by beryl-blue sky and snow-white clouds.
He’s striking.
Iceman should leave. He should turn around and return to the hangar, slam shut the door that’s suddenly cracked open—the door that he’s kept closed and locked tight for almost all his life. He’s never had a problem, not until now, and the kicker is he knows exactly when the lock came loose.
I can’t leave Ice.
Too late. Maverick turns around like he feels eyes on him; sees him. His head tilts. The wind kicks up again, sending his short hair into roguish disarray. There’s wariness in his squint and the neutral line of his mouth, the same wariness he wore up on the flight deck earlier when Iceman demanded his attention. Before they’d stepped forward, as one, and yanked each other into an embrace.
“Something you need?”
“No,” says Iceman. “Let’s call it serendipity. You found the only uninhabited part of the ship.”
Maverick’s face relaxes. “Didn’t last long.”
“Never does.”
Iceman should leave. Instead, he approaches. He leans his weight on the railing, eyes on the ocean spread vast before them, the roiling waves and foaming spray. Maverick doesn’t move away; leans back, instead, elbows resting on either side of him.
“So what’s next for the Iceman? Heard you also got your choice of duty.”
Iceman twists the Academy ring on his finger. “Hm. Haven’t decided yet. You?”
Maverick throws him a smirk. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me,” says Iceman, because banter is so much easier than honest curiosity.
Because that’s what he is, in the end: perversely curious. You don’t easily forget someone who saved your life. You don’t easily forget someone like Maverick Mitchell, with his big doe eyes and a smile like the sun, charming and brilliant but always burning a little too brightly.
“Alright,” says Maverick, with the air of man about to make an earth-shattering declaration. “I was thinking about going back to TOPGUN.”
“You? An instructor?”
“Yeah. Got a problem with that?”
Maverick’s whole posture is laidback, but there’s a brittle edge to his voice. Iceman turns his response over in his head, once, twice.
Just this morning, his answer would’ve been an unequivocal yes, and Maverick damn well knows it. But he proved himself out there, today; proved his reliability, proved Iceman wrong. Because, for thirty terrifying seconds, Iceman was certain he and Slider were going to die—and then they hadn’t.
His mind recoils from it even now. Thirty seconds. That’s all it took. It lingers, the ghost of fear, so close to panic, balanced on the razor-thin edge of a knife; the memory of his heart trying to explode out of his ribcage, the feel of cold sweat trickling down his temple. He’d fought, with everything he had, to remain calm. Remain steady. Iceman, ice-cold—because Slider’s life had depended on it.
His ribs ache. His brain feels too big for his skull, pounding.
“You’ll give Viper and Jester a helluva time,” he says, in lieu of a proper answer.
“That’s not what I asked.”
Iceman sighs. “Why do you care what I think?”
Maverick shrugs. “You’re right,” he says. “I don’t.” Then he leans in, closing the distance until their elbows are only an inch apart. The corner of his mouth tilts up to reveal a flash of tooth. “But you were the one who said I was dangerous. Humor me.”
He’s so close that Iceman can feel the heat emanating from him. His hug had been warm, too.
“Alright,” he says, feeling out those two syllables with careful consideration, echoing Maverick. Crosses his arms, and keeps his eyes on the seafoam below. The rest of the words come out low and even. “I don’t have a problem with it.”
Maverick blinks. “What? Really?”
Iceman eyes him sidelong. “Subvert your expectations?”
Maverick draws himself up. “Of course not,” he says. Then his forehead furrows. The confused crinkle between his eyebrows is almost endearing; Iceman looks away again. “You’re serious.”
“I’m always serious,” says Iceman seriously.
“Don’t I know it,” Maverick mutters.
Iceman looks up to the clouds. They’re the wispy kind, only a handful of them dashed across the clarion sky. “It might even be something we need—flying out of the box, once in a while. Worth a shot, I reckon.”
When Maverick doesn’t immediately respond, Iceman glances over again. He raises an eyebrow.
Maverick’s staring at him. His face looks a little redder than before, though it’s hard to tell in the shadow they’re standing under. He gathers himself quickly under Iceman’s scrutiny, stands straighter. “I didn’t think you’d actually admit it,” he says. “You really think so?”
Iceman smiles slowly, easily. “I say it like it is.”
“Yeah.” Maverick sounds breathless, like he just got suckerpunched in the gut. “Yeah, okay.”
They settle into silence. Not quite comfortable, but not quite tense, either. Incredibly, Iceman’s actually feeling slightly better. Just yesterday, he would’ve laughed himself silly at the thought.
He pushes back from the railing, slaps it twice under his palms before turning about. “See you around then, Mitchell.”
He’s already five steps away when Maverick calls out to him. “Ice, wait.”
“Yeah?”
Maverick hesitates. Then presses his lips together, and meets his eyes. “Come to TOPGUN.”
A beat. “What?”
“You heard me,” says Maverick. His features remain set, unreadable but resolved. One of his hands clutches the railing, tight enough to go white-knuckled. “You said you haven’t decided yet. And I’m not the only one with real-world experience.”
Despite himself, Iceman feels laughter bubbling in his throat. “Need me to come help you out? Is this you finally admitting I’m the better pilot?”
Maverick bares his teeth in a facsimile of a grin. “In your dreams, Kazansky. So what’ll it be?”
In truth, Iceman’s already thought about it. Thought about it, and instantly discarded it, the moment Maverick told him his own plans. It would be better, he thinks, to keep his distance. Maverick’s dangerous, but not in the way Maverick thinks he is. The way Iceman thought he was, that very first day at TOPGUN.
No is at the tip of his tongue. It gets no farther than that.
“You’ll have to give me more than a second to think about it.”
“What is there to think about?” says Maverick, still radiating challenge. “You’ll be going up against the best of the best. Teaching the best of the best.” He flashes another smile, as smarmy as they come. “You’ll be going up against me.”
That’s the problem, Iceman thinks.
“You’ll regret that,” he says.
“Oh?” Maverick’s eyes sparkle. They reflect the sky above them, the steel gray of the hull, the olive green of his Nomex suit. A hundred things at once. It hitches something in Iceman’s chest, grabs the handle of that secret door again and cracks it effortlessly wider, lets whatever dangerous thing behind it spill through. “That sounds like a yes.”
Iceman isn’t about to make this decision here. Not with Maverick looking at him like that; not when his heart's already stamping yes, yes, yes against his sternum, primal and instinctive.
“You’ll just have to wait and see,” he says.
He walks away. Behind him, Maverick’s delighted laughter rises up with the wind.