Chapter Text
Tom doesn’t know how they got into his mess-he just knows he has to get Pete out of it before someone realises he’s an omega.
The only saving grace is that they are alone. With Goose still injured and Ron as his mate sidelined due to the complicated and often confusing rules surrounding mates in the service it’s the two of them. This was supposed to be a routine mission after all, this was supposed to be a routine fly by, the two of them in single planes—okay not ideal but better than nothing Stinger had said and then all of a sudden they had been surrounded. Even before Stinger his voice confused and then rapidly turning to panic (and wasn’t that a shot of fear to the gut?) could get more men out to them Pete had taken a hit and had ejected and Tom had not been far behind both of them landing in the snow of some God Forsaken part of Russia.
He doesn’t even know what kind, doesn’t even know what part of this mission they had been supposed to be accomplishing…the whole thing is just a mess of confusion and pain and panic and God only knows what else. All he knew as he climbed out of the wreckage of his plane was that Pete was somewhere here and Tom was going to find him.
His feelings for Pete Mitchell are a complicated mess he likes to keep private. He knows in the same way he knows the sun is bright, that Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell does not love him. Not in the all consuming way that Tom ‘Iceman’ Kazansky loves him. And that’s fine…no really it is. Tom is under no illusions of his relationship with Pete. Since Top Gun they have been friendly, always borderline flirtatious but to be fair that’s Pete all over. He’s flirtatious by nature, Tom doesn’t even think he knows it half the time. He’s the sun and here’s Tom the thundercloud perfectly happy to bask in the warmth.
Besides…if there was one thing that his father had drilled in him in the eighteen years of forced proximity he had to endure it was that men like Tom, men who liked other men, alpha’s who did not get their cocks hard by beating their omega’s about…well…they did not deserve happiness.
It’s just sometimes…sometimes it’s hard not to want what you can’t have. He’s wanted Pete since the first time he clapped eyes on him, wanted to bite and fuck and mark and now that they’ve moved past the animal lust stage he finds that he wants to do a lot more with the other man…he finds he wants to be on the receiving end of those smiles, the warm domestication of their nights together, he looks at Pete with little Bradley Bradshaw on his hip and he thinks that he too wants that with him, another green eyed Mitchell perhaps with Mav’s big smile and cocky attitude and his green eyes—not the flying—Tom doesn’t think he will survive another Mitchell learning how to fly even if it part him but…but he thinks that he wouldn’t mind the rest of it. Ron had put Bradley in his arms the other night and he’d held the boy as he’d slept and thought that despite him always thinking children were not for him…he wouldn’t actually mind one with Pete Mitchell.
But that thinking was dangerous. Because when Tom Kazansky allowed himself to think he was worthy of good things something bad always happened…case in point…this. Right here. today.
Now.
Fuck. His. Life.
Reverently.
Pete staggers out the plane and Tom is there at his side dragging him upwards. He would very much like to stick his nose there in the scenting gland right above the mating gland but he’s quite sure that’s a step too far. Pete has never given any indication he wants a mate—the last Tom had left it he’d given up on that ending when Charlie had upped and left him—though he had not seemed too bothered about that all things considered.
Pete winces, there’s blood from a cut on his head and Tom watches it tracking it for any kind of move…like a cut is going to do something (clearly he is losing it) alpha howling at him to fix the problem but the truth is that it’s shallow, it’s bleeding because it’s shallow and there’s nothing here he can do. Right now he breathes in the scent of ocean breeze and sea salt and spray and lets it wash over him and he makes attempt to make what he can taste on the air enough even though it is not.
“You okay?” he asks and Tom nods.
“I don’t know what happened I don’t…I mean what the hell was that?” he asks and Pete shrugs as if he too doesn’t know how a random fly by has turned into two planes wrecked beyond all recognition and two pilots stranded behind enemy lines.
“What do you think is happening?” he asks and Tom shrugs. He wants to say that Stinger has launched rescue jets, he wants to say that the tracker that they both have on it transmitting and that soon a rescue will arrive but the truth is he doesn’t know. He remembers when the truth came out about Pete’s Dad post Layton that they never bothered going back for him. It comes with the job and he knew that going in but he’s loath to admit it.
“We cannot stay here” he says flatly. Pete’s jet is on fire and his own is seconds away from going up and the black smoke is like a warning beacon to any hostiles looking for them.
Pete nods and he turns and then…
He walks smack into a gun.
Fuck. Tom’s. Life.
Said reverently.
Sir, Yes, Sir.
He doesn’t remember much about being captured. A part of him, the alpha part of him wants to fight though he knows it’s a suicide attempt. He cannot bend over and raise his legs, submit his neck easily as if it’s the only thing that he has going for him anymore. He cannot do it, he’s too ingrained to fight, both the Navy and his father have given that to him in spades. He has to have some kind of a fighting chance but all it takes is one alpha, one fucking Russian alpha slamming his hand on Pete’s neck and sending the omega crashing to his knees looking dazed that has his hands raised in surrender.
They can taste victory and Tom would feel the humiliation burning at him if he wasn’t so terrified about what was happening to Pete. Pete who is dragged up next to him as they are marched onto trucks, whose still half out of it when they arrive. Tom doesn’t know what is going to happen but he knows that all these people have to do is threaten the man that he loves and he knows it will cost him.
And the irony is that Pete doesn’t feel one tenth of the feelings that Tom feels for him and usually that would be fine, he’s learnt to live in his bed of unrequited love but right now two alpha’s have their eyes on him and it’s setting his teeth on edge. He doesn’t know what to do, he can’t move towards Pete because that might push him into alpha overload to say nothing of the fact that he doesn’t want these fuckers realising that Pete is the way to get to him. He is going to be the subject to intense interrogation he knows, it’s alpha on alpha and he can feel his own rise to the challenge. He wants to fight, he can taste the blood in the air and he wants to fight but at the same time…at the same time…
The truck stops and he has a moment where green eyes lock onto his and they stare at each other. For all the world Tom would drown in that look but then they are being dragged off the truck and into a dark tunnel. Pete doesn’t look at him again.
But Tom does.
Tom looks.
Tom will always look.
Perhaps it is in the contradictory nature of man that neither one of them realise what is happening.
How could they? How could Pete and Tom know the ancient hold hatred that exists between their fathers such as to lead to the events that come to this?
They don’t know what yet is going to happen to them, they don’t know yet what is going to happen…there was a baby in the works, a drug that would ensure this baby would survive, months of agony either side…they don’t know it then but they will.
Tom doesn’t know how they got into his mess-he just knows he has to get Pete out of it before someone realises he’s an omega.
They drag them into a cell…they drag them there together. Tom barely has a moment to turn on his haunches before the door is slammed shut in his face. He pauses…because hey, well would you blame him if you were in his position? After all how do you deal with it?
Pete looks at him for a second and then he lets out a hollow, broken kind of laugh and Tom turns to look at him feels an ache in his stomach…in his soul that makes him want to crawl on his knees through broken glass for absolution. Pete is not his omega and yet he feels like an alpha…he feels like he has to protect…
It’s a hard world that he lives in he has to admit.
For a second green eyes meet blue and then.
“Fuck” Pete…Maverick…says into the silence. “We are really in the shits now aren’t we?”
Tom opens his mouth to answer but what can he say? Instead he skids across the floor until he is close to Pete…close but not touching and again green eyes meet blue.
“I will get us out of here” he promises, he vows almost.
For a second Pete stares at him and then he laughs as if what Tom is trying to say is funny. Tom doesn’t know what else to say about it he really doesn’t. Pete looks away and then looks back at him and his gaze seems to speak a thousand and one emotions all at once.
There was a pause and then…
“Ice…don’t make promises you can’t keep”
For a second Tom doesn’t know what Pete is on about and then the truth of it hits him with a hundred miles an hour like he’s just taken off the deck with all his jet fuel blazing. He has to look away to get his temper under control.
“I am not going to give you up Pete”
Green eyes look at him again and Tom has a sense of drowning.
“No” he says finally. “No I know that Tom”
They both recognise the first time that Pete has used his first name rather than his callsign.
“Then…then trust me…I will get you out of this”
Pete watches him for a heartbeat and then.
“Tom—don’t make promises you can’t keep”
Tom opens his mouth and then closes it again. Pete flashes him a smirk and then looks at the door and then.
“Don’t mention that I am an omega?”
Tom rolls his eyes.
“And why would I do that?” he asks pretending that the cockiness and the arrogance that he is clinging to as a mask will protect him from the hurt that is coursing through him like acid at the thought that Pete thinks he would give up this information freely. He also pretends—and Pete lets him—that the Russians don’t already know what he is.
Pete smiles and there is a lifetime of something else behind that smile that Tom Kazansky is never going to understand from Pete Mitchell at least…not until much later…
“No reason” Pete says and his smirk is plastered on his face all Maverick and no Pete and Tom hates it, he hates it more than he hates his father (and that is saying something).
“No reason. Nothing at all”