Chapter Text
Maverick's always had the wings.
For as long as he can remember, anyway.
He's always had the wings; and he's always known he's not supposed to let them out. He's not supposed to let anyone see.
It's a curse—that's what he's told, over and over, when he's a kid. It's a curse, and everyone thought it would skip him, everyone hoped it would skip him, but it didn't. It was awful, such a painful disappointment, all that hope snuffed out, the day they came out for the first time—he was barely two, he doesn't really remember anything but the vague awareness that something was wrong, the sound of his mom's voice raised and pleading. Trying to get him to put them away.
That's part of the reason he never gets to stay anywhere for long, once his parents are gone; it's dangerous. If he makes a mistake, draws attention to the rest of the family, something terrible could happen. He doesn't want that, does he?
Of course he doesn't. Pete—back when he's still Pete all the time, little Pete Mitchell, such a loner—knows the answer to that question, easy.
People do fly. They fly, and they don't even have to be careful about it, don't have to worry who sees them. They just need to use a plane to do it. That's what makes it okay: a plane.
Pete Mitchell loves planes. That's allowed. Lots of little boys love planes. Lots of little boys want to be pilots when they grow up. It's even okay to talk about it—to say how much you want to fly, to run around with your arms spread out and pretend you're doing it.
You have to make sure not to point out how little sense that makes. You have to make sure not to talk about how your arms are the wrong shape for that, how they don't move right, how they're too narrow; how they can't catch the air the way they'd have to if they were going to give you any lift, can't flare the way they'd need to if you wanted to land, or curve like they should to get you up and over a thermal—
But Pete's smart. He learns fast. He knows what not to say. And he doesn't have a plane yet, so he can't fly very often. He can only fly when there's no one there, when no one will see. He gets a lot more practice pretending, running around holding his arms like the other kids do, than he does flying.
He doesn't forget how it feels. He doesn't forget how to do it.
But that's another thing he knows not to say.
Dad flew. He was a pilot, too; but Pete's pretty sure he flew. It makes sense. Nobody will talk to him about Dad, after. But just about everybody—aunts and uncles, Gramma, each of the distant cousins who takes him for a while, until they can't anymore—everybody tells him, grave, sighing, that it should've skipped him. Which means it didn't skip Dad.
It didn't skip Dad, and it must've been the same for him as it is for Pete. He must've made the same decision: that he'd fly however he had to, however they'd let him. That he'd take the secret satisfaction of it, flying right in their fucking faces, none of them knowing he could've done it without the plane.
They all say that he fucked up. That he must've lost control, gone off-course. But Pete knows that's not true. They don't know Dad could fly. They don't know shit.
Anyway, the point is—everybody thought it was going to skip Pete. Everybody thought maybe it would go away. But it didn't skip Pete, and it hasn't gone away. And that means he's a problem. That means he's trouble. That means he's dangerous.
He can't ever forget it. He can't ever let anyone find out. There's only one way he can get what he wants, do what he wants to be doing every second of every day, even if it's clumsy and artificial and not very much like flying at all.
He's going to be a pilot. He's going to be the only one who really knows how to fly—he'll show 'em. He'll show 'em all, he'll be better than any of 'em, and even if they never know what it is they're looking at, even if they never know why, they'll never be able to ignore him. They'll never be able to beat him. Not when he was born for this, in ways they'll never understand.
He doesn't have to keep the game running on spite forever, as it turns out.
He does actually like it. He loves it. It isn't the same as flying for real, but it doesn't have to be; he loves the power of it, the sheer fucking speed, having something to pit himself against—even when that something is just the other guys, during an exercise in flight school.
He's always kind of riding the edge of it, in a way. He can't help it. The secret, the pressure of it, never goes away. Maverick's always—half-tense with it, instinctive, strung just a little bit taut. The officers think that he's insubordinate, that he's got a bad attitude; the rest of his class thinks that he's a fucking asshole. He rolls with it, leans into it, because as long as that's what they think, all they think, they won't be looking for anything else. They won't be looking for another reason—
Whenever he gets praised for it, for the way he flies, for his feel for a plane or how intuitively he handles it, there's a part of him that's waiting for it. There's a part of him that's sure someone's going to guess, somehow, and throw it in his face: you're one of them, aren't you?
Which is nuts. Realistically, nobody's ever going to go there. It just wouldn't occur to most of them. Even if they've heard some of the stories, an urban legend or two—most people don't think there are any left. Nobody ever accused Mark Spitz of being a mermaid, even though there are actually still supposed to be a few of those hanging around the Everglades, Australia, Bali, depending on who you're talking to.
But Maverick knows it. He knows it, and he's braced for it, helplessly, mindlessly. He knows what he's hiding, can't ever forget that he's keeping it from all of them all the time. And it's like—
It's like they can tell somehow, deep down. It's like they can sense it. Because they don't like him, none of them.
To be fair to them, he's not good at being likable. He gave up on that about the eighth time he moved across the country in the middle of the school year; it was easier not caring, not putting the effort in, when anything he got right, he was going to lose in six months anyway. Hard to break the habit, even now that he gets to decide where he is, where he's going.
And maybe they can't sense anything. Maybe they just feel it, that distance. He's hiding something from them that he's not going to let out, and when they can't cross the gap, when he won't, what's left? They write him off. Kind of hard to blame them.
But it gets easier.
The thing is, at first, he does have something to learn. There are things that make sense to him, that he doesn't need to have explained to him—things like flaps, spoilers, stabilizers, control surfaces and airflow. But the actual controls, and the shit like radio protocol, reading the displays, which little drifting needle means what, that's all practice, studying, coursework and simulator hours.
After that, though—
He gets it. He gets it. He feels it, understands it, in a way that makes it fucking impossible to hold all the rules he's supposed to be following in his head. He just wants to do it, whatever it is that instantly, intuitively makes sense to him so he can accomplish what he's in the air to accomplish.
And, as it turns out, when he does that, the officers are so focused on dressing him down for not sticking to the letter of the law that they stop talking about his flying like he's doing something they know none of them can do.
They think he's out of control; they think he's a showoff. They think he's a wild card, a loose cannon, a crazy son of a bitch.
But they don't think he has wings, and that's all he needs from them.
He's not expecting Goose.
He's already rotated through a few different RIOs, before he gets Goose. He figures it'll go about the same as it always does: the guy will be friendly enough to start with, but Maverick'll rub him the wrong way a few too many times, push too hard or fly too wild. There's two kinds of RIO in this world—the ones who start giving Maverick lectures, like they think nobody's told him to quit fucking around, get serious, straighten himself out, before they took it on themselves to do it; and the ones who get out of the plane one day, try to punch Maverick in the face right there on the tarmac, and walk away. Usually, it doesn't take too long for Maverick to figure out which one he's got this time, and he doesn't have any reason to think it's going to be different with Goose.
Admittedly, he does have a little trouble pinning Goose down, that first day. Guy seems a little too friendly for the lecturing type, but a little too easygoing to be the type who's going to snap and throw a fist.
Doesn't get any more obvious the second day, or the third. A week is about the longest anybody's ever been able to put up with Maverick in the driver's seat; but Goose breezes through it like it's nothing.
He can feel it, Maverick's pretty sure, that distance between him and Maverick, just like everybody else can. But he—he doesn't seem to mind it, somehow. He doesn't seem to be looking to hold it against Maverick. He's got this way of watching Maverick, sort of thoughtful, measuring. But he smiles while he's doing it, and when he's done he claps Maverick on the shoulder and laughs, most of the time, and he doesn't ask for another pilot.
Maverick doesn't ask for another RIO, either.
They stick together. It works. Goose never stops asking whether Maverick wants to come out with him and his girl, when they've got an evening to themselves on-shore, no matter how many times Maverick claims he's got plans; finally, once, Maverick says sure, just out of curiosity, just to see whether Goose actually meant it.
He did mean it. He and his girl—Carole—like dive bars, holes in the wall where nobody minds if Goose takes over the piano for a few songs. They're in love, got eyes mostly for each other, but that just makes it easier, just means neither one of them wants anything in particular from Maverick. He's got nothing to prove, nothing to disprove. All he has to do is sit there, eat, laugh at Goose's jokes, listen to Carole's stories.
It's nice.
They're assigned to a carrier. It's exciting—active duty—but Goose has it kind of rough for the first few days, missing Carole. Maverick doesn't let anybody give him a hard time about it. He doesn't have anything helpful to say—he can't really remember what it was like, having anybody he didn't want to leave behind him—but he doesn't think Goose was expecting him to. He sticks a little extra close, sits with Goose on the deck for a while looking out at the sea and not saying anything at all. Seems like maybe it helps; or at least if it doesn't, Goose doesn't complain.
So they're—friends, kind of, by the time it happens.
It's a nice day. A beautiful day, really. The ocean's calm, glittering, stretching from the carrier to the horizon, bowl of the sky overhead, like there's nothing in the world but them and room to fly.
They get sent up. Supposed to be recon, but Maverick can read between the lines—it's the kind of recon that's really a show of force, a way of just so happening to have a bunch of fighters in the sky at the same time the enemy does, making it clear they're here and they're ready for anything.
The orders themselves aren't ambiguous. Follow the flight path; visual contact only.
But once they get up there, the stick in Maverick's hands, wide clear blue deepening steadily as they climb—the itch in his shoulders, so close to where he wants to be but never quite getting there, stuck with these fucking metal wings he can't actually move—
It's hard for it to matter. It's hard to make it matter. And when they make visual contact, half a dozen bogeys, so close to the flight path that it's obvious the enemy is fucking with them, well.
It's a warning shot or two, that's all. Maverick doesn't even aim at the bogey in front of him, isn't even really trying to shoot it down; just wants the guy in there to know that he could, that he could but he isn't, not today.
But somehow that explanation doesn't seem to make much difference to Commander Mercer, once they're in his office standing at attention after.
Maverick's familiar with the fundamental routine. He knows how this works, and he knows how to handle it. It's not a problem. It shouldn't be a problem.
"Were your orders somehow confusing to you, Lieutenant Mitchell?"
"No, sir," Maverick says, eyes on the wall.
"How about you, Bradshaw?"
"No, sir," Goose agrees.
He sounds a little tense, Maverick thinks, a little frustrated. He'd told Maverick it was a stupid thing to do. Maverick's never been any good at apologizing; but he'll have to try to grab an extra pudding cup or something in the commissary, hand it over later, hope that makes up the difference.
"Then I find myself wondering why it is you found yourselves unable to follow them," Mercer bites out.
Maverick clears his throat. "Commander Mercer, sir, it seemed like—"
"It seemed like? Lieutenant Mitchell, it is not your job to make high-level strategic assessments in the air. We are in a complicated and delicate situation here, gentlemen. We need to maintain ourselves in a state of the utmost readiness, without upsetting the apple cart."
"The enemy was moving in on our flight path, sir," Maverick says. "It was my estimation that a warning shot was—"
"Your estimation," Mercer says, in a marveling tone. "That's what it comes down to for you, Mitchell? You get up there, and suddenly you know better? Suddenly you disregard your orders whenever you see fit to do so?"
Maverick bites down on a sigh. Officers. They always claim they want him to explain himself, but the explanations never make 'em any happier.
But it's not the first time, and it won't be the last. He shifts his weight, splits it a little more evenly between his feet, straightens his shoulders and keeps his eyes on that back wall. The way Mercer's winding himself up, could be another ten minutes; could be another twenty. Might as well get comfortable.
And then Mercer says, "Christ, Mitchell," and sighs through his nose. "Guess I shouldn't be surprised, should I? Mitchell," he repeats, in a different tone. "Just like your father."
And Maverick feels the whole line of his back go taut, hot-cold-hot rush up through his face and down his spine, and finds his teeth gritting themselves in his mouth, a sudden ache beginning to build up in his jaw.
"You don't sort your shit out and get yourself in line, you're going to go the same way he did," Mercer is saying. "I heard your name, and I figured I knew why you were here: to do better. To get out from under what happened to him, to prove you're nothing like him. But this, pulling stunts like this? This is not going to get you there, Mitchell, understand?"
"Yes, sir," Maverick hears himself say, strange and strained, somehow far away.
Mercer keeps talking. Maverick can't quite hear him anymore. Probably for the best.
He's—he keeps standing, somehow. Stays at attention, because Mercer never put them at ease after they came in. His chest feels odd, tight. He can't catch his breath, even though nothing's happening, even though Mercer hasn't sent them to the floor like trainees to do two hundred push-ups.
He wants to get the fuck out of the room more badly than he's wanted just about anything in his entire life. He wants to escape.
And the wings are—the wings are there.
Not physically. They haven't come out; nobody can see them. But Maverick can—can feel them, the tense restless weight of them. They're aching, straining. They want to come out, want to stretch themselves open and lift him up, carry him away.
He inhales, exhales. Blinks. Holds them in. Mercer's still talking. Maverick shivers a little, swallows. Inhales again. He can't let them out, has to hold them in, but—it's never been this bad before, the effort practically physical, like wrestling with himself, having to keep himself pinned with the ref counting in his ear but the counting doesn't end, can't end, no tap coming to tell him he can stop.
Mercer pauses, at last. Goose says something, quick, deferent. Maverick repeats it, a mumble, without ever actually hearing it. Sweat has broken out across his forehead, his temples, the back of his neck. He inhales, exhales. He's got to hold them in.
Mercer's satisfied. Or—not satisfied, certainly not happy, but not pissed enough to keep them standing in here any longer, out of new ways to express his disappointment.
They're dismissed, fucking finally.
Maverick drops his arm. It's shaking, and not with the effort of staying at attention. His shoulders feel like they're on fucking fire. He turns around, gets himself the hell out of Mercer's office. Goose is right behind him—reaches for him, grabs his elbow. He's saying something; probably wants Maverick to answer.
Maverick can't figure out how. He shakes Goose off, sharp, and keeps walking, blinking hard. Inhale; exhale. He needs something, somewhere. A door he can get on the other side of, can close behind him. He needs to make sure nobody's going to see—
He shouldn't have such a hard time finding the nearest head. But his temples are throbbing, his vision blurring, and Goose won't stop fucking following him.
A hatch, a doorway. Maverick stumbles through it and drags it shut behind him, panting, squinting with the concentration it takes to make his arms and hands do what he needs them to do. Goose's voice is rising, turning sharp, and Maverick is just hanging off the hatch wheel, using his own weight to hold the door shut, because he can't quite figure out which direction he needs to turn the damn thing to lock it. One hand—he uses the other to yank at the buttons of his uniform shirt, rips something but he can fix it later; shrugs it off his shoulders, gets one arm out and then has to swap hands, fingers aching because he was clutching the hatch wheel so tight, to get the other arm out of its sleeve too.
But then, fucking finally, he's got the uniform shirt off. He shuts his eyes, lets his head drop—lets the wings out.
It's been a while. A long, long while. But the feeling is familiar anyway, a sweet fucking relief; it's like he's been trying not to yawn, trying not to sneeze, for half an hour straight. They burst into being, arching up over his head, primaries slapping into the walls—not a lot of room in here, and they're way bigger now than they were when he was a kid.
He stretches them, instinctive, as far as he can get them open in here, and for a brief sharp moment wants to just about cry with frustration when it's hardly anything, a quarter of their span at best—it's so bad his eyes get hot, a bright quick sting in the corners of them.
But at least it's—at least they're out, he tells himself, and he makes himself breathe, flexes them as best he can and shakes them out a little, the first ruffled burst of feathers settling, smoothing out.
"Maverick!"
Shit. Maverick blinks. He's still hanging off the door, but Goose is hammering on it, shouting at him. In a second, Goose is going to try to pull it open again—and as much as Maverick fucking hates it, Goose is taller than he is, has just a little more weight to put into the job. If Maverick doesn't turn the wheel—
He's shaking, sweating, just that fraction too far out of it; just that fraction too slow. He gulps for air, grips the wheel and feels his cold unsteady fingers slide against the painted metal, and before he can fix it, get a better grip, it's—that's when Goose pulls.
The hatch wheel jerks out from under Maverick's hands. Maverick makes a sharp helpless noise, like he's been fucking shot, as the door swings open, out. He feels like he's been fucking shot; he doesn't know what to do, can't think, can't breathe—stands there shivering, eyes wide, some mindless part of him waiting to die on the spot, spontaneously.
Goose is still in the middle of shouting, eyebrows furrowed, face twisted into half a scowl, framed in the doorway. "Maverick, seriously, what the fuck," he's saying loudly, and then it's—
Then it happens. He sees, realizes what he's seeing. His voice dies in his throat; the scowl falters, slides away. His eyebrows go up, and his mouth drops open.
"Oh," he says after a second, in a startlingly normal voice. "Oh, shit."
And then he jerks into motion again, and—slams the door shut.
Maverick blinks. Somehow that—that wasn't what he thought would happen.
A curse. That's all anybody ever said to him; and the way they said it, hushed tones, eyes down, tense all over, was enough to convince little Pete Mitchell they were serious. No one ever told him—what it was, though, how it worked. Some part of him thought it had to be instantaneous, unmistakable; he'd get struck by lightning out of a clear sky, or Goose would, or they'd both turn to stone. Something.
But apparently it's not quite as dramatic a curse as all that. Which is—he's not complaining. There was nobody else in the corridor, nobody else in that sliver of hallway he could see through the door while it was open. So it's—it was just Goose. Which means maybe—
maybe—
He swallows hard. He's fine now, everything's fine now. It was—the wings wouldn't stay in anymore, but now that they've come out, now that he's given in, everything's working the way it's supposed to. He breathes, sets his palms against the cool metal of the door and closes his eyes again, wills them away, and it's fine: they go. Within an instant, there's three times as much space in the head, the whole staggering mass of feather and bone vanishing to nothing; he sways through the change in his weight, in the distribution of his body mass and his center of gravity, and then it's done.
He clears his throat, twists around to grab his uniform shirt off the floor behind him and struggles his way back into it. God, he's lucky he got it off fast enough to save it.
"Um, Maverick," Goose says, hesitant now, on the other side of the door.
"Yeah," Maverick says, only a little unsteadily, and opens it again.
Goose looks up, sharp, when the door moves; he seems almost surprised when it's just Maverick on the other side, blinking, gaze shifting up over Maverick's shoulders and then around like he thinks maybe Maverick's just holding the wings behind him somehow, like they'll pop out again any second.
"But you," Goose says. "You. They—what did you—where'd they go?"
His voice drops to a whisper halfway through, but it's like a stage whisper, ridiculous; Maverick snorts despite himself, even though it isn't really funny, and his hands are a little steadier afterward, the last half-dozen buttons on his shirt a little easier to button.
"Put 'em away," he says, tone casual, voice low.
And he was panicking before, reflexive, but it's—this is Goose, he reminds himself. This is Goose, he can handle this. Goose is so easygoing, so ready to listen; he wants assurances, promises, and when he gets them, he believes them. Maverick can explain this, that he hardly ever lets the wings out, that he won't do it again, that nothing has to change. And Goose might not be happy about it at first, but if he'll just take Maverick's word for it to start with, give Maverick a week or two to prove it—with him, that might be enough.
He's ready to say it, ready to do it. Ready to make it real, whatever will make it the easiest for Goose to forget this ever happened.
But Goose keeps looking at him for a second, and then—steps inside the head, and pulls the hatch door shut behind him.
"Getting a little fresh there, Lieutenant," Maverick says, autopilot.
"Shut up, everybody knows I have a girl," Goose says. "If we're getting court-martialed for something that's happened today, it's going to be that stupid stunt you pulled up there, not because people think we're fucking in here. Get them out again."
Maverick blinks at him. "Goose—"
"Get them out again," Goose repeats. "I'm not crazy. Right? You were—you had—" He stops, throat working, shaking his head. His eyes are still wide. He looks—
He looks, Maverick understands slowly, kind of—amazed.
"Get them out," Goose says again, hushed.
Maverick swallows.
It feels stupid, undoing the buttons on the goddamn shirt again, twice in two minutes. He does it anyway, strips it off, keeps it in his hands this time; there's really not going to be a lot of space in here in a second, with Goose in front of the door, Maverick backed up against the head, and he does not want either his wings or his uniform getting dunked in there.
And then he wets his mouth, and does it.
No rush, this time. None of that hard aching itch. But it's still a little easier than it should be, the wings still restless. The echo of all his desperation to get the fuck out of Mercer's office hadn't exactly been soothed by getting caught by Goose, even if the wings had let him put them away, and it's—it helps, feels better, letting them out again so soon. Usually it's—years, in between.
The actual moment it happens is as quick as ever, as impossible: they aren't there, and then they just—are. They aren't inside him, they don't come—ripping out of his back, or anything like that. They're pushed away, to a place where they aren't real, and when he stops pushing, well. There they are.
Goose swears, staggers back, because suddenly three-quarters of the space that was left in the head is gone, full of feathers. The primaries are huge, long and dark, mahogany; the secondaries, the coverts, are barred in the same color, a little lighter everywhere else, broken up here and there with darts of white, an even darker brown, in certain spots almost kind of reddish.
"Told you to," Goose murmurs, "and I still half didn't think it was actually going to happen. Goddamn, you—you're the real thing."
And it's—Maverick wasn't wrong. The way Goose is staring at the wings, in the glow of the single harsh shitty light overhead; he isn't pissed, isn't upset. He isn't horrified. He isn't about to swing the door open again, run right back to Mercer's office and tell him they've got a freak of nature, a real-life bird-man, on board.
He's amazed. He's—awed, even.
"Everybody says there aren't any left," Goose is saying.
"Guess everybody's wrong," Maverick says, only a little unsteadily.
And that makes Goose look at him again, his face, instead of up at the wings, the joints, the curves of their leading edges stretching almost from floor to ceiling.
"Yeah," Goose says. "Guess they are."
Maverick swallows. He can't help flexing them again, a little, keeping them pressed against the walls but letting them creep open as far as they can. He hasn't had them out this long since—jesus, since before he enlisted, probably; he hasn't had the space, the privacy. He's put everything he wants from them, everything he's wanted to do with them, into his flying, years and years now. He'd almost forgotten what it felt like, having them out for real instead of the phantom-limb sensation of imagining it, pretending to spread them, waking up from dreams of flying with them and having to make sure they hadn't come out in his sleep.
He's not—comfortable. He still feels strung tight, helpless high alert, all that leftover strain and tension, fear, jangling its way through his body.
But he also feels kind of fantastic.
"How long have you had them?"
Maverick shrugs, feels the weight of them shift with his shoulders. "Forever. As long as I can remember, and I was born with them, as far as I know."
"Where do they go when you—put them away?" Goose says, something in the half-pause making it obvious he was remembering how Maverick put it, trying to make sure to use the same words.
"I don't know," Maverick says. "Just—away, I guess."
"But how did you," Goose says, halting. "I mean, who else—"
He stops short.
He must've guessed. He must've guessed.
But Maverick says it anyway, because for once, for once, he can.
"My dad."
Goose bites at his mouth, watching Maverick, and doesn't say anything.
"My family," Maverick adds, after a second, more evenly. "It's—it's only some of us. We call it a curse. And usually it skips, it—everybody seemed to be hoping I wasn't going to get them, until I did. So my dad, I think he was—I think he had them, too."
"Okay," Goose says, quiet.
And then he shakes his head a little, and clears his throat.
"Well, if that's a curse," he says, "it's the coolest fucking curse I've ever seen."
Maverick blinks.
"You ever fly with 'em?"
"Yeah, of course," Maverick says. "I mean, when I was a kid. I moved around a lot, but it was—mostly in the middle of nowhere. It was easy, out there. On a base, on a carrier, I can't really afford to. I'm—nobody's supposed to see them. I'm supposed to make sure nobody ever sees them. So—"
"Right," Goose says. "Right, okay. Well, if you need to pop 'em out for a minute to stretch or something, you let me know, man. Shut yourself in here, and I can watch the door or whatever. All right?"
And Maverick doesn't know what the fuck to say to that, hadn't even thought of it; but Goose must see it, somehow, must pick out something in his face, because Goose's whole expression softens a little, and he reaches out, bumps a fist into the ball of Maverick's bare shoulder.
"I got your back. You know that."
"Yeah," Maverick says, hoarse, because—
It had already been true, truer than it's ever been with anybody else. But now it's even truer than that, when this should've been the worst thing that ever happened to Maverick, the worst mistake he's ever made; and he shuts his eyes, leans into the press of Goose's knuckles, and breathes.
It does make a difference.
A bigger difference than Maverick's expecting, even. He still can't—let them out very much, or use them.
But just having Goose know about them, having anybody know about them, is more than he thought he'd get, more than he was ever even looking for. The way he grew up, the things he was told over and over and over again, he hadn't really believed it was possible—somebody outside the family knowing they were there at all, let alone seeing them, standing in the room with him when he let them out. It's supposed to be a bad thing, even if Maverick never quite understood how.
But it doesn't feel like a bad thing. It feels like a gift. And the longer he waits, braced, for something to go wrong, for something to make it clear he should've kept the wings a secret after all, and nothing does, well. It's hard to stay afraid of it the way he used to be. It's hard to heed it, that old bone-deep unreasoning dread; that belongs to Pete, to a kid who got told too many ghost stories, and not to Maverick, maybe.
The next thing that changes, Maverick isn't expecting any more than he was expecting the thing with Goose and the wings. But just because it's so hard to get his head around.
They swap squadrons; Mercer's had enough of them, probably. Their new commander, Jardian, is still an officer, obviously, but he's not so bad. And Maverick keeps his nose clean for a while, but it doesn't last forever. Getting himself in trouble—no surprise there. At least he made it a couple months without a lecture. But Cougar—
Cougar resigns. Cougar resigns, and the thing is, he was so fucking good. He was almost as good as Maverick, and on his best days, every now and then, he was a little bit better. Maverick had always kind of assumed, somewhere in the back of his head, that that had to mean Cougar felt it. Not quite the same way Maverick did, because he couldn't, but something close to it—the need to do it, wanting to fly more than anything, chasing after every chance at it, only ever feeling truly right when you were in the middle of it, and then it was like it was the only thing in the world, like there was nothing else your life was made of except the sky and being in it.
But Cougar gives it up. Cougar gives it up.
Flying—piloting—is the closest Maverick's ever going to get to being able to do what he wants to do. And if someone tried to take it away from him, he'd scratch their fucking eyes out. But Cougar's just surrendering it, without anybody even asking him to.
How can he do that? How can he bear it?
Maverick doesn't know what to say to him, can't figure out how to talk to him. They were friends, kind of—not like Maverick and Goose, but more than nothing. A little less distance than usual, if only because Maverick figured Cougar understood, as much as anybody could. But Cougar doesn't, as it turns out; and Maverick looks at him now and can't forget that, can't pretend the gap can be crossed anymore.
It's a relief, almost, to have Jardian tell them they're getting sent to TOPGUN. Means Maverick's not going to get stuck here watching Cougar's plane get repainted, poking at the gap like a missing tooth, the sudden awareness that Cougar's not actually like him at all, incomprehension so thorough it's like Cougar might as well be an alien.
They're shipped off to Miramar with barely twenty-four hours before their five weeks starts up. Not much to pack; not much to unpack. The base is as much of a self-contained world as the carrier was, but—bigger. Almost unreal, how much space there is in the barracks, how much stuff there is piled up on land; looking out around himself and finding the entire fucking city of San Diego, instead of endless shining water.
But Goose grabs him before he can even start trying to figure out what to do with himself, twenty-four hours to kill and no planes—hooks an arm around his shoulders, grinning, and says, "Hey, you know what we should do?"
"Find Carole and a piano?" Maverick hazards.
"Tomorrow, tomorrow," Goose says, "she's working today," and Maverick raises his eyebrows, expecting—who knows what; the pilots' club, or a bar, or for Goose to claim they've got just enough time to drive to Vegas and back.
But when Goose does requisition a vehicle from the base, herds Maverick into the passenger side of a Jeep and drives them out, he doesn't take them toward the city, the endless shimmering lights filling up the dusk as the sun goes down.
He goes the other way, out into the night—the low dark hills, the scrub, and nothing else for miles and miles except more of the same.
It's a nice drive. Goose turns the radio on, shouts along with it, makes up words when he doesn't know whatever the song is, until Maverick's laughing. And it's not like it would be strange, if that were what Goose wanted—a nice drive, a cool night, something to sing along to, shaking off the shadow of the look that had been on Cougar's face when he'd stepped out of Jardian's office.
But then Goose turns off the road all at once. Keeps driving out a little way, the ground just barely flat enough to let him get away with it without banging up the Jeep too bad even if he does scrape the undercarriage once or twice. It's the kind of thing Maverick might've done, if he were driving, but not Goose—and Maverick shouts, "Goose, seriously," right before Goose hits the brakes, kills the engine.
"Okay, here we are," Goose declares.
"Here we are? Where the hell is 'here'? You know you could've just murdered me in the middle of San Diego instead of dragging me out here, and saved us both an hour—"
"If I wanted to hide your body, I'd wrap you in a tarp and drop you in the ocean," Goose agrees. "You're little, you'd fit, I could tie up both ends with a foot to spare," and then he opens the door and swings himself out of the Jeep before Maverick can even get him in a headlock and force him to take it back.
"Goose," Maverick shouts after him, but he's walking away, doesn't turn around—waves a hand over his shoulder without actually looking back, beckoning. "Goose!"
What the hell. Maverick rolls his eyes, slings himself out of the Jeep.
Goose brought them to a stop at the base of one of the low rocky hills, rolling away in all directions out here like waves turned into stone. He's climbing up it, scrambling his way through gravel and scree—it's not great footing, but the slope's not that steep, and Maverick catches up to him by the time he gets to the top.
"If you wanted to climb a hill that bad," Maverick tells him, "we passed like five hundred of them on the way out here."
And Goose beams at him, unmoved, and says, "Go on."
Maverick looks at him.
He honestly, genuinely doesn't know what it is he's supposed to be doing. They're nowhere in particular, standing at the top of the rise, scrubby rocky not-quite desert stretching out around them. It's a clear night, half the sky taken up by the distant lights of San Diego and the other half stars, the sun long since down now, a generous slice of moon starting to follow it but still high.
"Go on," Goose says again, and then, before Maverick can even tell him he's not making any goddamn sense, "Get them out."
Maverick goes still.
"Get them out. Fly. You know you want to, man," Goose says. "We're off the carrier, we're off the base. Nobody's going to be looking for us until tomorrow. Nobody's out here but us, and if they were, they couldn't see shit in this light. Anybody spots you up there, they're going to think you're a fucking turkey vulture or whatever." He gestures, both hands, sweeping them sideways. "Get them out."
It's—Maverick hasn't done it again since that time on the ship. Knowing he could, having it in his back pocket, that he could ask and then shut himself up in the head anytime, that Goose would watch out for him while he did it, was enough.
But out here, like this, actually—actually flying—
He feels the want so sharply then, full-body, that he almost thinks the wings are going to come out on their own. He shuts his eyes, strips his t-shirt off quick, and it's barely cleared his shoulders before he—he just can't wait anymore.
The wings burst into being, and this time he can spread them, stretch them out wide, their full wingspan opening up around him.
"Holy shit!" Goose says, laughing, breathless, and Maverick feels himself grin—drops his t-shirt, drops into half a crouch, and then pushes himself up; jumps, and the wings catch the air so fucking easily, pulling him higher in an instant.
It's been such a long time, such a long time. He's clumsy as hell, at first. But it comes back to him fast—the feeling of it, the way he needs to move them, how the air currents shift against them, what to do next. Fuck Goose, he's so much taller than he was the last time he really flew; but the wings grew with him, wherever it is they go, and they're more than long enough, almost twenty feet across.
Flapping them is ridiculous, huge slow beats, but he gets more lift out of it than it feels like he will while he's doing it, Goose suddenly small below him, whooping and clapping down there like a kid. Maverick tries a dive, letting the wings fold up as he drops, snapping them out to catch himself before he hits the ground—his timing isn't perfect, but it's good, and he comes down without even twisting an ankle. He puts them away, jogs back up the hill and pulls them out again without slowing down, spreads them wide and throws himself off the edge of the rise again.
Again; again. He can curve them around himself for a second, twist into a barrel roll, straighten out with a thought—god, god, he loves the pilot's seat, he loves having a stick in his hands, and it's still so far away from this. How had he managed to forget that? He flies, flies, the world stretched out dark, barely-silvered edges, Goose cheering for him faintly as he circles up there, coasting on what's left of the day's warmth shimmering up off the rocks into the air, and it feels like—
It feels like maybe Goose was right: if it's a curse, it's a cool fucking curse, and maybe that's not really what it is at all.
The TOPGUN program starts, the next day.
The TOPGUN program starts, and everything's great until it isn't.
Goose dies. And Maverick would've done anything to save him, would've thrown himself out of the plane and used the wings in front of God and everyone if it had been—anything else, anything, Goose's seat or his chute, the wrong line snapping at the wrong moment—
But it isn't. It isn't any of those things. Goose dies, and Maverick can't do a single goddamn thing about it.
If he had them for a reason, if they were ever going to matter, if they were ever going to be good for anything—this should've been it.
But that's not how it happens, and he fucking hates them for it, and suddenly he's not sure he ever wants to fly again.
He should've known. He should've known, he should've listened; he should've been more careful, should never have let Goose see them. This is what they were warning him about, Uncle Fred and Aunt Sally, Gramma, everyone—they'd tried to tell him what was coming, and he hadn't listened.
This is because of him, because of what he is. He killed Goose. And there's nothing he can do about it except make damn sure it never happens again.
He doesn't think it's going to get better, but it does.
It takes a lot, to get it back—to want to. It takes Charlie, and Viper, and the Layton. It takes the Iceman; it takes the feeling, coming back to him up there for just long enough, that there's still something left even though Goose isn't there anymore.
It's not quite true. He's got nothing, without Goose, nothing that isn't on the wrong side of that endless uncrossable distance.
But he's proven he can bear it. He's proven he can survive it. And he can still save someone, save Iceman, fly—so maybe there's still something to hang onto there after all, somehow.
He takes the teaching position, for a lot of different reasons. Because it's a thumb in the eye of everyone who thought he couldn't cut it, who assumed he was going to wash out or fuck up; because it's proof, undeniable, irrefutable, that he's good enough, that he's still the best of the best no matter what the fucking exercise scores said. But—
But he also takes it, a little bit, because he doesn't want to leave Miramar, not yet. Because Miramar is the last place Goose was alive, the last place where he existed. He almost still does, sometimes, when Maverick walks down the hallways they walked down together, when he goes and sits in that fucking locker room they were all practically living out of.
It's not much. But it's all he has, and anybody who tries to take it from him is going to get their fucking eyes scratched out.
He's trying to get used to it, to having nothing where Goose is supposed to be—to the emptiness of no-more-Goose, for the rest of his fucking life. But it isn't quite working. Because the thing is, there's still the Iceman.
Maverick had known Iceman had come in at the top of the list, obviously. They'd gotten that far, before the news about the Layton had interrupted the end of graduation.
But that hadn't guaranteed anything. Maybe Iceman wouldn't take the spot they were holding for him. Maybe he'd decide he wanted a tour or two of active duty first. Maybe—maybe he'd learn Maverick had been offered a spot, too, and even if he'd decided he could trust Maverick on his wing when the chips were down, that didn't mean he'd want to be stuck working with Maverick every fucking day. That didn't mean he wasn't sick of Maverick's shit. Just because he'd—smiled, that stunning fucking smile out of nowhere on the deck of the Enterprise, the warm strong clasp of his hand, the weight of his body against Maverick's as he'd pulled Maverick in—
None of that meant anything for certain. None of that meant he wouldn't bail out, if he wanted to.
But he hadn't. He doesn't. When Maverick walks into Viper's office to report in, first day of training for new instructors before the next TOPGUN session starts in another five weeks, the Iceman is there, too. He's—he turns his head, watches Maverick walk in and meets his eyes and gives him a nod, before they both have to come to attention for real and get a whole fresh lecture about their new responsibilities.
And Maverick's got absolutely no idea what to do with that.
It doesn't work the same way, obviously.
It can't. Iceman isn't anything like Goose. Goose is—was—friendly, outgoing, open. Goose had let Maverick stick to him, had been willing to make it look like some of that openness, some of that warmth, might have been coming off Maverick, too. And it had worked pretty well, a lot of the time. People had treated Maverick like they treated Goose, like they liked him, even if it was only for the first five or ten minutes before they figured out the trick.
Goose had made it possible for everybody, even Maverick, to pretend Maverick was somebody else for a little while, somebody almost easy to get along with. And Maverick had kind of fucking loved that.
Ice isn't like that at all.
Ice is just—there. He isn't pushing like he was those first few weeks of TOPGUN, isn't always trying to make a point or put Maverick in his place. He's stubborn, and he always thinks he's right; he's blunt, and he doesn't mince words.
And he's patient, which is kind of a surprise. Maverick wouldn't have thought about it like that before, wouldn't have used that word. But Ice isn't really a talker, unless he's goaded into it. He's not the kind of guy who has to fill the quiet. He just—lets it happen, silences. He stands there and he looks at Maverick, and he lets it be fucking awkward, sometimes.
He knows Maverick's a fucking wreck, even if Maverick's getting better at hiding it. He saw it happen, he was there, and he knows.
It's not the same as what Goose knew, about the wings. But it's kind of like it: a secret, one Maverick's trying to keep from just about everybody he sees in a day, one that makes it so most of them have no fucking clue what it means to him every time he gets into a plane. But Ice does; and even after Jester, Viper, have stopped watching Maverick the way they were when it was really bad, right afterward—Maverick can still look up, any given day, and meet Ice's eyes, and know he hasn't fooled Ice for a fucking second.
It's not the same. But it's not—bad.
They're kind of stuck in limbo, for a while here. There's all this extra training they have to do, learning how to run the kinds of exercises they were doing before, going through the whole curriculum from the other side. Neither of them have ever taught anybody shit before. And they're living in instructors' housing, lined up next to the real officers down along the beach, and working together all the fucking time.
And if Maverick had wondered whether maybe the memory of the Layton was going to fade, whether Ice was going to start remembering everything he used to hate about Maverick instead, well, he'd have been wrong.
Ice is still goddamn annoying, sometimes. They still disagree three-quarters of the time; they still work out next to each other, silently competing, whoever can do the most reps the fastest walking around smug the entire fucking rest of the day. And Ice still gets kind of—remote, clipped and cool and condescending as hell, when he thinks Maverick did something stupid or wasn't paying attention.
But he doesn't freeze over again. That step forward he took on the Layton, suddenly closing the distance—he doesn't take a step back.
It's like it was back at the beginning of TOPGUN, but better: the two of them pushing each other, dogging each other's heels, keeping up with each other when nobody else could, but whatever there was in it that used to be bitter, sharp, just a little bit mean, is gone. It's—
Maverick had almost stopped wanting to be in a plane. He almost hadn't been able to remember why it had seemed so crazy to him that Cougar could just up and leave. Hell, he'd nearly done the same thing, or at least he'd come the closest he ever had in his life, sitting in that airport bar and feeling like he could, until Charlie had found him and stopped him—until he'd stopped himself.
But this, doing this, working with Iceman—flying with him, it's—he loves it again. Not all at once, but slowly, the feeling coming back to him an inch at a time, waking him up by slow degrees where he'd gone numb somehow in there. He finds himself just watching, sometimes, hands on the stick, Ice in the air ahead of him maneuvering, only just big enough for Maverick to pick out the shape of the plane: something Maverick could've done faster, wilder, feeling his way through on nothing but instinct, but he'd never have been able to do it as cleanly, as precisely, as Ice is doing it. Maverick had thought for a while there that Cougar would be the closest he ever got, and then it had turned out he was wrong; but Ice is—Ice is, maybe, the real thing. Ice wants it, getting up there, being up there. Ice feels it, not like Maverick does but so close it's like—it's almost like not being alone.
Maverick even—he catches himself, now and then, wondering what it would be like. Wondering if that's how Ice would fly if he had wings—real wings—too.
All of that, and it turns out there's one thing that never crossed Maverick's mind at all.
He's thought about Iceman a lot. He already was, during TOPGUN, just wanting to beat him, dreaming of getting that top score and laughing in his face—and then after, the Layton, the awareness of him like an anchor, the only thing Maverick had had to hang onto up there: I can't leave Ice. He isn't thinking about Iceman less often these days, when they're living right next to each other, driving up to the base together half the time, working out together and eating together and running drills together, going over the endless fucking coursework together.
But he hadn't—somehow he hadn't ever thought to wonder whether there might be something else he and Ice had in common, besides loving to fly and hating to lose. He hadn't ever thought to wonder whether there might be a secret Ice was keeping, one that feels just as serious to him as the wings are to Maverick.
As it turns out, there is.
Now that it's just them, the TOPGUN instructors and the base staff, instead of a whole active program full of pilots and RIOs, there are plenty of showers; more than enough.
But Maverick and Iceman still compete, now and then, over who gets their pick first.
That day, Maverick gets dismissed first. He goes for the door, and he can practically fucking feel Iceman about to take off after him—something about flying together all the time, maybe, the two of them brand-new when the rest of the instructors have at least some idea what the fuck they're doing, has given Maverick kind of a sense for how Iceman's about to move, what he's thinking and where he's going to go.
But then Jester says, "Hold on a minute, Lieutenant Kazansky—I want your input," and Maverick doesn't wait to hear the rest of it; out in the hallway, grinning, he lets himself start to run.
He's got it in the bag, for sure. Not that it's an actual competition, obviously, like this. But that just makes it a game instead, and a game he's going to get to enjoy himself playing. He's got enough lead time right now to get in the locker room, strip himself down, be right in the middle of rinsing himself off by the time Iceman makes it down there, too—he won't even be breathing hard. It's satisfying as hell to win by a hair, to know Iceman was that close and Maverick snatched it right out of his hands; but Maverick's not going to complain about beating him like this, either, even if it won't really count.
It's so fucking petty. But it's fun, the pointless stupid kind of fun that hadn't felt like it was ever going to be possible again, when he was down in the deepest blackest pit of it. Sometimes it still slips away from him, that kind of happiness, turns thin and insubstantial, like it was never really there, no matter how hard he tries to cling to it; but today it's easy, effortless—like flying.
He jerks the curtain out of his way, gets in under the water and pulls it shut behind him, and he's got the first rush of suds just about off him by the time he hears the sound of the locker room door opening.
As quick as that, he's grinning again, helpless, just picturing Ice out there scowling because Maverick beat him in here by a mile. He closes his eyes, keeps listening—there's always been a little bit of a thrill in it, the sound of cloth against itself, knowing Iceman's out there stripping out of his uniform; or being the one doing it, knowing Iceman's in the shower and maybe, maybe, listening just as hard to him.
But he's never thought about it all that hard. It's never taken up that much space in his head, compared to everything else.
And he's not going anywhere with it, even inside his own head. He knows what's going to happen next: Iceman's going to pretend nothing's happened at all, pick another shower like he didn't even lose, like he doesn't even think they were competing. If Maverick tries to prod him about it, later, he's going to play it cool, point out that Jester held him up and it wasn't a clean start; and he'll be right, which means he'll get annoyed, those pale eyes turning all sharp, a burn of frustration somewhere deep under all that ice, if Maverick pretends to disagree, calls him a sore loser—
The curtain moves, rings sliding. Maverick blinks water out of his eyes, swipes a hand up over his forehead, and twists around. Sounded close, closer than the next shower over, and it was: Ice is standing there, bare, hand on the curtain, looking at him, face unreadable.
Maverick's heart kicks, pounding; surprise, a little bit, but maybe something else, too. And—
And maybe it's stupid to be surprised at all. It isn't as if there was never anything going on; the way Ice had snapped his teeth in Maverick's face that once, leaning in close to do it, and the fucking volleyball game, all by itself. Pushing each other, picking at each other, wrapped in nothing but a towel.
But that was the kind of stuff anybody could get away with, the kind of stuff that would be treated as boys-being-boys if you just let it happen, if you made sure nobody had any reason to think twice about it. If you made sure you didn't do shit like walk into a shower another guy was already using, and look at them like you wanted to pretend you weren't asking a scary fucking question but you knew you were.
Except now Ice has shoved them both straight over that line, and he's waiting to find out what Maverick's going to do to him for it.
Maverick looks at him, leans back under the water. Ice's face doesn't change, his gaze doesn't flicker; he's watching Maverick's face, that's all.
"Yeah?" Maverick says, after a second.
Ice shifts a shoulder—playing it cool, the bastard, because of course he fucking is. "Just offering," he says.
But Maverick knows this. Maverick recognizes this, this particular kind of stillness, this particular kind of tension—knows what it takes, to let someone see the secret thing in you that you've learned you need to hide no matter what it costs you, the thing the wrong person might rip you apart for. He knows exactly what it means.
And he's never been able to do anything, with Ice in his face, but meet Ice where he's at, toe to toe, every time.
He lifts his chin. "You think you can handle me, huh?" he says.
That, at last, gets him something: a ripple passing across Ice's face, his eyes suddenly just a little heavier, just a little more intent; the beginning of it, that slow smooth smile that lands like a fucking punch, almost enough to keep Maverick from seeing Ice's shoulders drop a fraction of an inch, some silent tension easing.
"Oh, I know I can," Ice murmurs.
"Prove it," Maverick says, and that's the last thing Ice needed from him, the cover of a dare, permission granted; Ice steps forward, into the flow of the water, inside the curtain, and pulls it closed behind him.
The water's hot. Ice's hands are cold, and not just by contrast—jesus, Maverick thinks, he really was nervous about this, and it makes Maverick feel something strange, something between gratification and protectiveness: that Ice wanted this, him, badly enough to take a fucking risk, and a big one; that he couldn't have known Maverick wouldn't mind, and he did it anyway.
He tries to press Maverick back against the wall of the shower, and Maverick's not going to take that lying down—pushes back, holds Ice off with an elbow, and Ice grins, getting the picture, enjoying it. He gets Maverick by the wrist after a minute, twists Maverick's arm up behind him, but the footing's not great, wet slick flooring, and Maverick manages to catch him by surprise, shove him up against the wall himself.
They hit the controls on the way, and the water goes lukewarm so fast it almost feels cold. Ice snorts, starts to laugh, and then Maverick gets his free hand down in between them and Ice stops laughing pretty fucking fast.
He's hard, which isn't a surprise. He looks good wet; but Maverick already knew that, watching him come out of the showers in those fucking towels, stretching, sweeping water out of his face, arranging himself against the walls or one of the pillars in the middle of the room like he knew somebody was looking. His thighs are fucking unfair.
He's a little more patient, maybe, than Maverick had thought he might be. Maverick's done this kind of thing a handful of times, guys in the backs of bars while he was still in basic training, and that was—good, obviously, but also fast. Fast, and he'd never seen any of them before, knew he was never going to see any of them again; he'd wanted them in the way you can want somebody in five minutes, in the dark, when you're already a little buzzed.
But Iceman is—Iceman isn't like that. Iceman's been unignorable for fucking weeks, since the very beginning of TOPGUN, and if Maverick had known this was an option for dealing with it, hadn't gotten caught up in Charlie and then had the entire fucking world fall out from under him, maybe they'd have gotten here a lot sooner.
Makes him shiver a little, thinking about it: doing this back when the locker room had been full of other guys; having to stay quiet, having to hope nobody looked over and saw their feet in here together. He blinks water out of his eyes, bites at his mouth—touches Iceman's cock and watches his eyes fall shut, his jaw go slack, slides his hand up and then down and then around to see what Iceman's face does when he does it.
And Iceman doesn't make him stop fucking around, doesn't hurry him along. He's still got Maverick by the wrist, still pinning Maverick's hand behind Maverick's back, but now it's—it's more like he's holding Maverick against him with it, arm close against Maverick's ribs, gripping Maverick's shoulder tight with his other hand, thumb digging in hard, throat working.
Hell of a picture. Maverick's almost startled by it, when Ice starts trying to touch him back; he wasn't even thinking about it, all the space in his head taken up by the movement of Ice's throat, the growing tension in his thighs, the sweet redness of his dick in Maverick's fist, the water pouring over him.
But Ice says, "Fuck, okay—come here," in a low hoarse voice, and slides that one hand from Maverick's shoulder down his chest, his belly—Maverick hisses at Ice's thumb against his dick, because it feels like almost too much, and that's when he realizes he's so hard himself that it practically hurts. "Come on," Ice says again, and he's moving, using that grip he's still got on Maverick's arm to try to muscle Maverick around—
"Don't think you can just—"
"Oh, stop it, you stubborn son of a bitch," Ice says, but warm, half a laugh on the exhale. "I got it, I got it, you're dangerous. Do what somebody's telling you for once in your life, will you? Come on, just let me—like this."
"Sir, yes, sir," Maverick manages, and it even kind of sounds snide, not too breathless or anything; Iceman snorts, and pushes, and Maverick figures maybe it's not too much to ask after all, that Ice should get to move him around under the water, when Ice's hand is on his cock. Ice gives him a long slow stroke, another, and turns him at the same time, lets his arm go at last so he can brace himself against the wall and strokes him again, thumb sliding around the head—not as slick as you'd think, with the water washing everything away, but Maverick likes it, that stuttering little hint of friction, gasps and tries his best to move into it, and Ice curses against the nape of his neck and shudders all over.
"Fuck, fuck, yes—like this," Ice murmurs, breath hitching, and Maverick feels the weight of his dick, the hot line of it pressing—close, for a second, close enough to make Maverick almost want to squirm away, but—no, Maverick understands after an instant, he's not actually trying to fuck Maverick. Just pushing in there between his thighs, that's all; pressing up close, the whole hot weight of his body against Maverick's back, breath ragged against the side of Maverick's throat, the shell of his ear.
"Sorry," Maverick says, "I didn't know you had a whole vision here, my mistake," but Ice strokes him again in the middle of it and he gasps, which takes some of the bite out of it; he clenches his fists, swallows, turns his face up into the water and tips his head back against Ice's shoulder, and the next time Ice moves against him, thrusts between his thighs, it pushes Maverick's cock into his hand at the same time—fuck, fuck, that's so fucking good—
"Yeah," Ice grits out into his ear, "your mistake, Lieutenant," and he closes his hand a little tighter, jerks Maverick a little faster, a little harder; Maverick decides dimly to repay the favor, tightens his thighs and presses them together as close as he can, and Ice swears and moves against him, rubs the flat of his palm almost haphazardly up the line of Maverick's cock like he knows exactly how close Maverick already is, exactly how little it would take to get the job done, fuck.
"Come on, come on," Maverick hears himself say, and he pushes away from the wall, presses himself back against Ice's body; feels Ice's free arm tight around his ribs, Ice's hand on him steady but Ice's thighs behind him starting to really shake—
And then Ice does it, gives him one more nice long pull, squeezes just a little right when he reaches the head of Maverick's cock, and that is fucking it, Maverick's done; the wave crashes over his head just like that, a white-hot rush of surf all the way down to the tips of his fingers, the soles of his feet, carrying him over the edge and past it, that first perfect sweet throb repeating itself in echoing pulses.
Lucky for him he doesn't have to do much of anything, after that. A quick shuddering thrust between his legs, another, and then he feels Ice come, too—it's a little startling, the wet sticky rush of heat against his balls, the insides of his thighs, but not in a bad way. And then they're just—holding each other up, under the water, catching their breath; and okay, Maverick thinks dimly, that was—that was pretty good. That was fucking great, and if he's lucky, Ice is going to want to do it again just as badly as he does.
Ice does want to do it again.
They keep at it; they can't stop. It's probably not a great idea, but it feels so fucking good, which is exactly the kind of line Maverick's always loved to walk. The surprise, really, is that Ice keeps doing it; doesn't just make the leap once and walk away with the win, but takes the risk, again and again. Not that Maverick didn't know the guy was willing to rise to a dare, but he—he doesn't know. It never gets any less intense, somehow, never feels like any less of a gutpunch, every time Ice goes for it: how much it says, how much Ice must want him, to break one of the biggest rules there is to get him, over and over.
And it turns a little strange on them, now and then. There's these—these moments, sometimes, odd and quiet and stretching, where Ice is just touching Maverick's face, looking at Maverick in a way he can't quite parse, can't make sense out of.
Or—well. The first time Ice gets down on his knees, which frankly Maverick would've been a little too distracted by to think too hard about it, except for the way Ice looks up at him once he's down there. Mostly he does this, fucks Maverick, the same way he does pretty much everything else: cool, precise, confident, like he knows what he's doing, like nothing scares him. But the look in his eyes, down there—
It's like that moment in the shower, when Ice had smiled that perfect easy smile but Maverick had seen the way his shoulders dropped, the way part of him had been strung out tight waiting for something bad to happen. There's a cast in the way Ice watches him from down there, a sharpness in his eyes, that says Ice is waiting for it again: waiting for Maverick to say the wrong thing, to stab him deep in the belly before he can cover the vulnerability up again.
That's how Maverick knows it isn't just a blowjob, not to Ice—that it's not something Ice can do easily. That's how Maverick knows Ice feels like he's showing Maverick something, something about him he expects to get hurt for somehow, getting on his knees like that when Maverick hadn't even asked him to.
But Maverick doesn't want to hurt him. Strange in and of itself, having to come face to face with that when about three months ago, Maverick probably would've claimed he was ready to do just about anything to put the Iceman in his place—beat him for real, tear him down, make sure he knew better than to try to get up again.
Maverick doesn't want to hurt him. Maverick wants him, wants anything Ice has got to give him. He's hungry for it, he's fucking starving—that closeness to somebody, that new shared secret between them that's ten times better than just Ice knowing what a wreck he is. How not-alone it makes him feel, for half an hour at a time; for longer, every single day, every time he and Ice look at each other no matter how many other people are in the room, because they're together practically all the time even when they aren't getting each other off.
He craves it, if he's honest. Not just because it feels good, not just because it's sex and he's not made of stone. Because it's—
Because it's like the Layton all over again: because Ice is trusting him with it, every time. And he's so fucking grateful for it, that anchor. I can't leave Ice. He needs it.
Hard to imagine Ice needs it, in anything like the same way, to anything like the same degree. Hard to imagine the risk isn't going to add up, eventually, to something Ice can't justify to himself anymore.
But Maverick's going to take it while he can get it, that's for sure. And he's just going to have to hope Ice can't tell what it's going to do to him when Ice finally takes it away from him again.
The fucked-up thing about it is—the wings like Ice.
They might as well have been gone, right after—right after Goose. Maverick could barely feel them at all, and they were lying still; they weren't pushing back against him the way they normally do, weren't forcing him to hold them back all the time. It had been a relief, at first. He hadn't been sure he had enough left in him to keep them in, if they started trying to bust out again the way they had after Mercer ripped him a new one, even though he knew now, too late, what the curse of them could cost him if he let them out.
And then it had started to scare him a little, wondering if maybe they were just gone. Maybe they'd left him, maybe Goose dying had ripped them right out of him somehow, and if he tried to bring them out, they wouldn't be there at all. He'd thought about trying it, just to see, but—he hadn't wanted to know, wasn't sure he could've borne it. They're a curse, all right, but they're his, even after everything they've taken from him, even though he knows better than to love them anymore. And then—
Then, after the Layton, after the kind of flying that meant piloting had started to really come back to him—then, he'd been able to feel them again, too. That sense of their presence, the way they were always a little bit there to him, had come back; sometimes he moved ever so slightly wrong, trying to keep himself under the weight of them when they weren't actually there, or ducked an extra inch or two when he didn't need to, trying to keep the joints of them from smacking a doorway they couldn't smack.
And there's something about Ice, about what they're doing, once they start doing it, that makes the wings feel—closer, alive.
Maverick's only ever really struggled with them before when there's something he wants to get away from, something he needs to get away from, on that gut-deep fight-or-flight kind of level. That's the thing that usually wakes them up, makes them hard for him to control.
But this, this thing they're doing now, doesn't feel like that at all. It's something new, unfamiliar but instinctive, a strange restless feeling in them like they want out, because—what?
He doesn't know. It's weirdly hard to even let himself try to picture it, to follow the thread of the feeling far enough to figure out what it is he'd be doing with them, without accidentally letting them out for real then and there. And he can't—he can't. He can't do that, not to Ice. At the very least, he can tell himself that with Goose, he hadn't known, hadn't understood what the curse of them could do. But now that he does know—he can't. Not Ice.
Funny, almost, that Ice should've learned to take a risk right when Maverick's learned how not to, learned the cost really can add up to more than you can afford.
But the wings keep trying to—be there. They keep trying to be there, to stretch themselves out, spread and flex and shiver. They keep trying to tuck themselves up close against Ice's sides, fold themselves around Ice's shoulders; something, something stupid that they're utterly forbidden to do.
It gets a little hairy, after the first couple weeks he and Ice are fucking. Not bad, not more than he can handle. He won't let it get that far, no matter what it takes. But it's—hard, difficult, trying to hold them in, trying to make sure nothing happens when he and Ice are together.
He's pretty sure it isn't obvious. He hopes it isn't, anyway. He's got a lot of practice not letting them out, after all, and he's used to it, the effort it takes, the kind of quiet relentless habit he doesn't even have to think about most of the time. But—
Sometimes, maybe, he gets a little caught up in it. Sometimes, he's got to squeeze his eyes shut, twist his face away and swallow hard, trying to make himself focus on it, trying to concentrate so they don't get away from him, head full of ice, cold sharp awareness of what they'll take from him now if they get out. And when he's got them under control again, when he can afford to ease up and open his eyes—sometimes, every now and then, Ice is watching him in a close intent way, brows drawing together just a little, a line carving itself into the middle of his forehead.
It's not a problem. It's—Ice never actually asks about it, never says anything, never wants to know what the fuck is going on with him. Which is great, because Maverick doesn't know what the hell he'd say.
There's one time. One time when it gets as close to going wrong as it ever has since Goose.
It's late at night. The hangar, which is one of the dumbest places they could possibly do something like this, but Maverick can admit, if only to himself, that that kind of shit just doubles the rush of it, triples it—picking somewhere stupid, and putting his hands on Ice, and watching Ice decide to go for it, again; watching Ice want him enough to throw all that stark ruler-edged good judgment straight out the window, again.
Maverick's got Ice backed up against the wall. He'd worked Ice's uniform shirt out of his waistband, got Ice's belt open, his fly—dragged Ice's slacks down just far enough to let him give Ice's ass a good long squeeze, biting down on Ice's collarbone at the same time through the shirt, and Ice had made this noise in the back of his throat, shuddering against Maverick, that was almost as good as an orgasm in and of itself.
He manages to get himself together after another second, catches his breath in pants against the side of Ice's throat and brings his hands back around to the front—he already got Ice's fly about halfway open, and the bulge of Ice's cock is trying to push out from behind what's left of it, briefs stretching obscenely against the backs of Maverick's knuckles as Maverick works the rest of the way down the line of buttons. Maverick isn't careful, bumps Ice's dick, rubs the backs of his fingers against it like he's really struggling with those buttons, and Ice is cursing at him under his breath, fabric getting damp, starting to stick against the back of Maverick's hand, the Iceman himself getting all worked up.
Maverick grins, feeling fucking smug, on top of the world. And then Ice stops clutching at his hips, actually finds Maverick's waistband and gets a couple fingers into it, and "smug" isn't quite the right word for it anymore.
They end up doing it pretty much just like that: flies worked open, shirts untucked—peeling just enough out of their way that they can reach each other's cocks, and not bothering with any more than that. Makes it better, as far as Maverick's concerned; Ice looks so fucking pristine, crisp and perfect and untouchable, when he's in those uniform whites, starched to within an inch of their lives, the crease in his slacks so sharp you could probably shave with it. And getting to have that under his hands, getting to wrinkle it up and undo its buttons and peel it open—getting to see Ice looking wild, flushed and heavy-eyed and obscene, with those slacks shoved down and his cock hanging out—it's the best kind of pornography, a wicked little satisfaction.
They're crushed together, groping at each other and jerking each other. Ice is panting, drags Maverick in by the nape of the neck and digs his teeth into the meat of Maverick's shoulder, and even the pain is good, dulled just enough by Maverick's shirt, a blooming bruising feeling spreading out along his nerves. There's something about the—the indignity of it, almost, too; Ice with his mouth hanging open, letting his spit soak into Maverick's uniform, groaning perfect little noises out against the muscle of Maverick's shoulder because he can't muffle them for himself anymore—
That's when it happens.
It's like a cramp, almost, the way it comes over him, the sudden straining urgency of the feeling. The wings are—they're trying to—
Maverick jerks, makes a wretched strangled noise and presses his face into the lee of Ice's shoulder; screws his eyes shut and grits his teeth. He can't let them out, he can't let them out, he can't let them out. He has to hold it together, he has to. He can't move, can't keep his hand going on Ice's cock or his hips moving against Ice's hand. He can't think. He can't do anything, has no room in him for anything, except that.
It could be five seconds, or it could be five minutes; he doesn't know. He doesn't let them out, and he doesn't let them out, and he doesn't let them out—that's all there is, all he is, the frigidly urgent struggle of it the only sensation, the only thing in the whole world.
Eventually, the worst of the urge eases off at last. He doesn't ease up right away, because if they slip through his fingers after that, just because he let his guard down too soon—but no, he's got a handle on it now, he's got it under control; they're settling again, no worse than usual, nothing he can't hold in without needing to think about it.
He sucks in a breath, against—against Ice's shirt, he realizes.
It's like coming awake; everything had faded out so completely, he hadn't been thinking about where he was, what he'd been doing. But he's—he's still got his face pressed into Ice's shoulder. He blinks, shifts his weight, straightens up a little.
Ice isn't moving anymore. He's still hard, pants still open, but he's not doing anything about it, not trying to. He's just standing there, holding onto Maverick—holding Maverick up, keeping him in place. He must've been able to feel it, the sudden tension through Maverick's whole body, the way Maverick was wrestling it down, even if he couldn't have known what it was.
But he's not going to guess, Maverick tells himself. How can he? What are the odds? He's never going to guess. It's fine.
Maverick swallows, lifts his head and meets Ice's eyes; makes it a dare, because that's all he's ever really known how to do.
Ice's face is blank, utterly, immovably—unreadable, just about the worst Maverick's ever seen it. He doesn't move, except for the way his gaze is cutting back and forth over Maverick's face; and then does move, but just to lift his hand to the side of Maverick's face, his temple.
"Are you ever going to let me in there?" he says, very low.
Maverick swallows again.
He can't say yes. Can't say yes—can't say no, because even that is an admission that there is somewhere, something to be let into or not let into, and that in and of itself feels far too near to it, terrifyingly close to the bone, so much more than he can bear to admit.
He doesn't say anything. Doesn't say shit, and after a moment of it, stretching, agonizing—Maverick had thought Ice's face was blank already, hadn't known it could get any worse, but it does, something shuttering somewhere back there, a light going out.
He has to fucking say something. He can't.
And then—he doesn't even know whether to be happy about it, whether it's the best timing in the world or the fucking worst—there's a sudden loud clatter of metal from all the way across the hangar. A hissed swear, and a bunch of footsteps.
They jerk apart, reflexive. Maverick twists away and starts walking, quick and quiet, and he doesn't have to look back over his shoulder to know Ice is doing the same thing; getting as far away as possible, so even if one of them gets spotted, the other one might not—so it won't look like they were out here together, so they can't be pinned down in the same place at the same time.
He doesn't have to look back. He kind of wants to do it anyway.
But he knows how not to do things he wants to do, how to wrestle them down until they go still, until he's won; until they go quiet under him, suffocated, at least for one more day.
He keeps walking.
It isn't easy, that night. He's stuck a little too close to hard for comfort the whole drive back to the instructors' housing, for one.
And he's—he doesn't know what to think, whether to expect Ice to bring it up next time, whether he wants it to happen or not. There's a part of him that almost hopes that it'll happen, that Ice'll corner him at last and give him an ultimatum; that way, he can lash out, get defensive. That way, maybe, Ice will end it, walk away. That would probably be a good thing.
It doesn't happen. The next time, Ice is completely normal—he doesn't say a word about it, cool and closed-up, and Maverick feels a slow cold lurch move through him and doesn't know whether to call it relief or disappointment.
It isn't as if he hasn't thought about it.
Of course he has. It used to be his worst nightmare, nothing that even seemed possible at all, having people—know about him; and then it hadn't been; and now it's a thousand times worse, the awful certainty of the price he'd pay.
But if Goose were still alive, if it were still somewhere in that brief golden stretch of days where Maverick had thought maybe Goose was right about the wings—
It's not—what he's thinking about isn't telling Ice, because even if he knew for certain that Ice would be safe, even if he didn't have to worry about the curse at all, he wouldn't know where the fuck to even start. He barely knows how to have a conversation with Ice about anything that isn't the TOPGUN program, or the stick up Ice's ass, or how Maverick could fly circles around him any day.
But maybe he wouldn't need to. Maybe it could just happen.
An emergency. Not like—not like Goose. Something he could actually do something about. Something where he'd have to, where it wouldn't be his fault. Where Ice would have to eject, and his chute wouldn't work right, or a line would snap, and so Maverick wouldn't have a choice, not really. He'd have to let Ice see the wings; let him see them, and at the same time save his life with them, and that would have to be enough.
You don't meet more than one of Goose in a lifetime. Maverick knows that. But even if Ice was pissed off, even if he was furious that Maverick had been hiding them or thought Maverick belonged in a zoo—if Maverick had saved his life, well. He holds himself to a high enough standard that that would probably at least keep his mouth shut, because he'd owe Maverick one and he'd know it.
And even if it was the end of this whole fuckbuddy thing they've got going, even if he never wanted to touch Maverick again, it would be—he would know. Maverick would get to have that much. That would be nice. Cold comfort is still comfort; it would be better than nothing.
So, yeah, he's thought about it, brief guilty daydreams he'll make damn sure will never come true. What he'd do, what he'd say. How much to explain, and which buttons he might have to push to make sure Ice wouldn't give him up, wouldn't turn him over to get strapped to a table in some military lab somewhere. If he could be sure that the curse of them wouldn't touch Ice, that Ice could walk away clean and whole and alive—
He's thought about it.
But he hadn't thought about it happening quite like this.
It isn't either of them, in the end.
The next TOPGUN session finally starts. Maverick had thought he'd be grateful for it, something real and meaningful to do instead of reviewing a dozen exercises a dozen times apiece, instead of getting walked through rubrics and post-drill evaluations—and something to split the Iceman's attention, too, so Maverick could breathe a little easier, could be sure Ice had something else to think about besides how fucking weird Maverick had been and whether Ice was sick of it yet, had reached the end of his rope.
But instead, it's—it's strange. The circle of TOPGUN, the base, had narrowed down to Maverick and Ice, most days; Jester and Viper, sure, and half a dozen other officers, civilian consultants like Charlie, but it turns out that's really not the same as having forty or fifty pilots and RIOs running around, fresh off their carriers, stir-crazy and competitive and wanting more than anything to prove themselves. Having it all widen back out on him, it's—
It's a lot. Harder to see Goose, in hallways that aren't empty; harder to hear him, over a commissary full of guys shooting the shit.
It's fine. Maverick can handle it.
They're in the air almost every day—running exercises, serving as bogeys while the trainees try their best to chase them down, dogfighting. That part, at least, Maverick can lose himself in, most of the time.
But not always.
Barely four days in, it happens. It's a fucking bird strike. He doesn't even know which plane it is; he's out ahead, dodging a missile lock, about to break hard left and knock anybody who isn't ready for it out of today's drill, when the voices on his radio turn loud, tight with panic.
—lost an engine, repeat, we've lost an engine—
—coupling up, coupling up—I can't straighten out, we're going into a flat spin—
—eject! Eject!
Maverick blinks sweat out of his eyes. His chest is tight; he gulps for air, but it doesn't really help. The sun is so fucking bright, the glare abruptly dizzying. "Talk to me," he wants to say, but he still doesn't have enough air, and—
And Goose isn't in his back seat. Not anymore.
He has to get the fuck out of here, he understands distantly. He has to, and he can't. He's in a cockpit, in the sky. The exercise will be called, but he has to stay where he is. He has to keep flying the plane, land it, get debriefed even though he didn't see shit.
He has to hold it together.
He swallows. His throat aches with it. His back feels like it's on fire, every muscle locked with cramps, and it's not because of the Gs he's pulling.
He doesn't think about it. He can't. He has the stick in his hands, and he makes himself feel it, makes himself focus on it. Someone's talking to him; he can't figure out who, doesn't care anyway. He answers, somehow, follows radio protocol. He can't quite hear himself. He can't hear much of anything.
The straps across his shoulders, his chest, feel like a trap that's closed on him, feel like they're choking him, suffocating him—but they aren't, he tells himself. It's the speed, the Gs, the way he's leaning forward into them because the pressure of the seat against his back makes him want to scream—
He's not thinking about it. He can't think about it.
The orders come through. He has to land. It's fine; he knows how to do that. Hundred times easier here than it is on a carrier, with a nice long landing strip, no need to catch a three-wire so he doesn't go hurtling off the other end and into the sea. Piece of cake.
He does it. He doesn't—remember all of it, later, can't track the transition between sky and tarmac, but the Tomcat's in one piece, and so is he, and so is—
—not Goose. Not Goose, never Goose, and it's his fault, it always will be—
—Cipher, that's who it is, his back-seater.
They taxi toward the hangar, roll to a stop; the engineers, technicians, swarm all at once. The canopy pops open. Maverick can't get his straps to release right away, and he's never been claustrophobic but there's something cold and tight pressing down on his chest and he needs to get them off him—he struggles with them, jerks at them, and then Cipher says, "Whoa, hey, hang on, Maverick," and leans in over Maverick's seat, and suddenly one of them loosens, and then the other.
He scrambles up and over the side of the plane, and it's a fucking miracle he makes it down the ladder without tripping over himself and tumbling straight down onto the tarmac. There wasn't enough air in the plane, but there's—almost too much out here, his breath coming fast and harsh in his throat, his pulse hammering in his ears.
He needs to get away. He needs to get away. Every muscle in his back has tied itself into knots, and the wings feel so achingly horrifyingly present, so real, that he keeps catching himself reaching out to check, hands spread to the sides and a little behind him, heart in his throat expecting his fingers to tangle in feathers.
But they aren't there. He's kept them in, so far. He just—doesn't know how long it'll last, how long he can keep doing it.
The tarmac's full of noise, engines spinning down, techs and engineers shouting to each other, Cipher yelling behind him. It feels far away from him, insubstantial. He wets his mouth, makes himself breathe, makes himself move; starts to jog, and then to run.
He must talk to someone, somewhere along the way. He doesn't remember what they might've asked him, what he said. But he gets himself on his bike, and he manages to get somebody to let him off the base, through the gates, and he drives away.
Out, out, out.
He doesn't realize it's the same direction, the same way that Goose took him that once, while he's doing it. He's not thinking at all—but something about it must be familiar, must feel vaguely more right than any other way he could've gone, to the mindless frantic part of him that's doing all the steering.
He keeps going, pushing his bike hard, gunning it like he's being chased. Feels true, in its way; it must be—an hour, at least, but his heart doesn't stop pounding the whole time, his breath thin in his throat, furious driving terror. He's got to get away, so far nobody's going to find him.
—nobody's out here but us, and if they were, they couldn't see shit—
—anybody spots you up there, they're going to think you're a fucking turkey vulture. Get them out—
His eyes are stinging. He can't breathe at all for a second.
But he's far enough. He's got to be far enough. San Diego's a glow on the horizon, the sun already setting, the first real dark starting to swallow the sky, and he's—he jerks the handlebars sideways, sudden and idiotic, compulsive, and takes the bike skidding off the edge of the road.
He manages to keep a handle on it at first, rides out the lurch of a turn that sharp, the slant of the bike under him and the sharp spray of dirt and gravel out from under its wheels—
And then it's gone, lost. He sucks in a sharp breath, feeling it happen, feeling his own weight tip just that fraction of an inch too far past his center of gravity, and he's reeling, fucking exhausted, cramping bands of agony tightening across his back—he can't keep it together one more goddamn second, he can't.
The wings explode out of him. He squeezes the brake levers hard, not because it's going to save him but because it might slow the bike down just a little, might keep it from smashing itself apart against the rocks out here—and then he isn't anymore, the bike jerking out from under him, handlebars ripped from his hands, and the whole world's twisting around him.
He tumbles. Hits something, hard, and keeps rolling. The wings are—he didn't—he still has his fucking flightsuit on, hadn't even gotten as far as unzipping it, and it's shredded now, the whole back of the torso as good as gone. He's gasping, coughing, sticking his hands out to try to slow himself down, and he's scraped to hell and back doing it; the wings are, too, a bright hot sting flaring everywhere they hit the rocks or skid across the sandy earth, curling reflexively around him even though they're all thin delicate skin, long hollow bones—
Shit. Oh, shit. He comes up hard against a rock, grabs at it and tries to scramble up but his head is fucking spinning, his knees uncooperative under him. He squeezes his eyes shut tight, digs his fingertips into the rough edges of the stone and makes himself concentrate, because he didn't get far enough away from the road, he couldn't have, and they're out. He needs to put them away.
It doesn't work. It doesn't work, they won't go in again.
Fuck. He shudders, gulping air, but it's not fucking working, and he can already hear it, coming way too close way too fast—the sound of a car, a truck, the roar of an engine as somebody leans on the goddamn accelerator—
He can't get the fucking wings to go away. Shitty option but the next-best thing, the only chance he's got to get far enough away in time. He pushes himself up, stumbles away from the road and toward the nearest rise; barely even a hill, just kind of a bluff coming up out of the desert, but he scrabbles up the side of it, ignores the raw stinging skin and the ache in the bones and snaps the wings out wide as he throws himself into the air.
It's clumsy as hell. He hasn't done this since Goose, hasn't let himself think about it, has barely even dreamed about it. He's wrung out, shaking all over, fucking panicking, and he can't get into a rhythm with it, can't get any decent lift, hard awkward flaps that are barely getting him anywhere. Fuck, fuck, fuck—
Maybe he's higher than he thinks he is. Maybe he feels like he's hardly even moving in the air because he's out of his fucking mind. He gives in, desperate temptation, and looks down.
For a second, he almost believes it. For a second, he sees that figure under him, the light almost the same, pink-tangerine-violet spilling out of the west, the darkening desert stretching out to the east, the black ribbon of the highway and a Jeep pulled haphazardly off it, driven straight into the sand and gravel and low scrub, and all he can think is—Goose. As if the whole thing was just one long bad dream, as if he could dive down there right now and find Goose, alive, waiting for him.
And then he hits it like a fucking wall, everything snapping into focus with the worst kind of clarity, frigid sickening reality.
That's not Goose. It's Ice.
It knocks him right out of the sky. He doesn't even—doesn't even quite know what happens, feels struck by it, frozen, and just like that he's falling; and then he slams into something, jarred to his bones, and it's—it was the ground, and he hit it, he understands vaguely. He's disoriented, rolling again, as if he needed to get banged up any worse. One of the wings twists under him, quick hard stab of pain as it gets pinned against a rock and stops moving the same direction as the rest of him for a second, and then it's over.
After all that, everything seems—really quiet, for a minute. Or at least he can't hear anything except his own rasping breaths in his ears, lying there dazed, still full of that driving desperate need to move except his body isn't listening to him anymore.
But at last, eventually, he manages to drag his head up; blinks, once and then again, and swallows, gets an elbow under himself and starts to twist himself around—he'll get on his knees, he's thinking, on his knees and then on his feet, he'll fucking run, and if he gets far enough away then maybe the curse won't—won't fix itself on Ice, won't realize it was him—
It hurts a little more than Maverick expected it to. He grimaces, tries to fold the fucking wings up to get them the fuck out of his way and that hurts a hell of a lot more—knocks the breath clean out of him, for a second, and he just has to crouch there, bloody scraped hands braced against stone, trying to inhale and failing.
And then there's a scrape, a shuffle, a shower of scattering stones, and Maverick looks up just as Ice scrambles through a bunch of scrub and then stops short, maybe ten feet away, staring at him.
Two seconds ago, he couldn't breathe at all, it felt like; now he can't stop gasping. He tries, screwing his face up, eyes hot, last-ditch and frantic, but the wings still won't fucking go away. It's—it's too late now anyway, it's got to be, but he can't help but try: he folds them up as tight as he can instead, ignores the jolt of pain that shudders out of the joint of one when he does it. There's no way they'd fit, but he'd try to pull what's left of the flightsuit back up around them, the torn-open shoulders of it only just starting to try to slide down his arms, except he's—his hands are clenched into fists, and they're shaking, and he can't get them to unclench, can't get them to do anything—
"Maverick," Iceman says, low and cool and even.
Maverick blinks the worst of the stinging heat out of his eyes. Ice is just standing there; hasn't come closer to him, hasn't moved away. He's got his hands up, palm-out, and that first glimpse of him bursting through the scrub, Maverick would swear he'd looked shocked, but it's gone now, that familiar chiseled face wiped clean, perfect, unreadable.
In some part of his head, Maverick's dimly aware that he'd—he'd thought about this, once upon a time. Not this exactly, not—for real, he'd never wanted it to happen for real, but he'd thought about it.
But right now, he can't remember one single goddamn thing he'd imagined saying to Ice. His head is empty, and everything aches, and it feels like at least half the skin on his hands and arms is gone, and he has no idea what the fuck he's going to do.
Ice takes a single measured step closer.
And then, a slow stretching wait in between, another.
He's—watching Maverick. Maverick still can't pick even the tiniest fucking hint of what he's thinking out of his face; as if it matters, Maverick thinks dully, now that he's seen, now that he's dead too.
Another step. Ice's gaze skips away from Maverick's face, down and sideways—looking Maverick over for real, and there, at last, the briefest flicker in his expression. Because Maverick—
Maverick looks like shit, probably. He's bleeding, he understands vaguely, a hot trickle working its way down from the joint of that wing he'd twisted, and down his cheek, too, slow sticky warmth along his jaw, where he must've cut his face somewhere in there.
Not that that should matter to Ice, considering he's dead and all, but then Ice has never cared too much about Maverick's opinion of his decisions.
"Maverick," Ice says again, very quietly. "Stay here."
Maverick doesn't answer.
"Hey," Ice says, just a little more sharply. "Stay here a minute—you hear me, Lieutenant Mitchell?"
Maverick swallows, dry-mouthed, and it's pointless, it's all fucking pointless, but something in him can't help but rise up, mutinous, at having Ice talking to him like a superior officer. "Loud and clear, sir," he hears himself say, hoarse.
Ice huffs a breath out his nose, the barest shadow of a laugh, the line of his mouth twisting for a second. "Insubordinate as always," he murmurs, and then he turns away—then he's gone.
Maverick stays put. He ought to try again, fly away, run; he ought to hope maybe the curse won't work on Ice if Maverick just gets the hell away from him. But he can't make himself move, worn through, drained empty. And then—
Then Ice is back. Ice is back, and he's got something in his hands. A blanket, Maverick understands slowly. Must've grabbed it out of the Jeep.
And Maverick doesn't really want to start—being here again, thinking, existing, but something in his head is creaking into motion anyway. Ice crosses the hard uneven ground between them, spreads his arms and loops the blanket out and—and over the wings, and then says, "Think you can stand up?" because Maverick's still half folded up, still clutching the side of the rock he rolled into like his life depends on it.
Reflex, to give him a sharp look, to try to—push back somehow, even like this. "And what are you going to do about it if I can't," Maverick rasps out, "carry me?"
But Ice doesn't feel like playing along. "Yeah," he says, soft, level. "If you need me to."
And Maverick could've managed for a minute if Ice had just let him, could've let himself go through the motions without really needing to be there for it or feel any of it, but that's—that cuts the legs out from under him, makes it impossible to be anywhere but right here, warm scratchy weight of the blanket draping awkwardly over the fucking wings, Ice's hands wrapped in the corners of it: like it's some kind of net, like now that he's caught Maverick in it he's not going to let him go, he's going to take him home and keep him—like in the old stories, seal wives and hunters, catch one and marry it if you dare.
"Well," Maverick manages after a second, "I'm—I'm fine."
He makes it true, pushes himself up. His joints feel all weak, shaky; but then he doubled up the adrenaline crash of coming down out of the air with running out here, panicking, killing Ice, all in the space of maybe an hour and ten minutes, so no surprise there. He can stand, at least.
Ice must've jumped in one of the Jeeps on the base and driven right out after him. Once Maverick's up, holding the blanket for himself and staggering toward the truck under his own steam, Ice is as good as gone again for a minute—Maverick needs all his own attention to keep himself moving, can't spare any to figure out what the hell Ice might be doing, until he's made it to the Jeep, spread his hands against the door to hold himself up for a minute, and sees it. Ice went and found his bike, is loading it into the back of the Jeep and tying it down. It looks pretty scraped up—but not that much worse than Maverick is. It'll probably still run.
And then it's Maverick's turn, apparently. Ice gets the door open, helps Maverick work himself and the stupid fucking wings into the rear seats. Even though they're still folded up tight, it's tough; they're so long, Maverick's got to twist himself around, push them up diagonally so they can drape into the footwell, if Ice is going to have any hope of getting the door to shut without pinning them.
But the blanket's at least eight feet long, maybe ten, which helps. Maverick curls himself up under the wings, tucks his knees into his chest and shuts his eyes, because it's not like he can help; and Ice gets the blanket arranged over him, pulls it one way and then the other, bunches it up here and there to disguise the lines of Maverick underneath it, until Maverick must look like—some kind of equipment stowed back here, a surfboard, a pair of fucking skis.
Sooner or later, Ice seems to be satisfied; closes the door, comes around up front and gets in, and then starts driving. Bumpy as hell for a minute—but then he manages to get the Jeep back up and onto the road, and after that it's not so bad.
And maybe he's—maybe he's driving them straight back to the base, is going to tie Maverick up in that blanket and drag him out of the truck like an animal and turn him over, not even knowing he's already dead anyway, not even knowing they both are.
But it's hard to think about it. It's hard to care. Right now, there's nothing but the rush of air through the Jeep, the rumble of the engine, the uneven weight of the blanket. Maverick's sick and sore and fucking exhausted; and he closes his eyes and stops trying to think at all.
He's expecting to be roused out of it by—by the truck slowing, by voices. Ice'll take him back to the base, probably, whatever else is coming after that; whether he's going to turn Maverick over or just—drive around the side of the hangar, roll Maverick out of the car and tell him they're even, he's on his own from here, Ice isn't going to cover for him again.
But it doesn't happen. Maverick might think he'd missed it somehow, fell asleep for real and didn't hear a thing, except he's still half-awake; he can feel the pattern of Ice's driving change, long steady accelerations traded for a gentle stop-and-go, no hard braking, nothing unplanned or impulsive, Ice and that cool fucking piloting even when he's just moving through San Diego traffic in the evening.
The pace changes; the Jeep keeps moving longer, slows to a stop less often. Maverick can smell the ocean.
And then—and then they turn, sharp but careful, and the truck slows even more, sudden change of texture under the tires, and—a garage door, closing.
Maverick blinks.
He stays where he is. As if Ice might've forgotten he's back here, or as if maybe Ice will just—pretend to, walk away, let Maverick sneak out on his own and disappear.
But no such luck. Ice shuts off the truck, gets out; and then the near door moves, against Maverick's head, and Ice is there—flipping the blanket aside, looking down at Maverick and the half-exposed length of one of the fucking wings, and letting out a slow exhale.
And Maverick hadn't really tried to think about what it must be like for him, whether he—whether he half talked himself out of believing his own eyes, that whole long drive back into the city; whether he thought he might pull that blanket away and just see Maverick, looking normal, and if he asked where the wings had gone, Maverick might've just laughed and said, Wings? What the hell are you talking about? You got a pair on your uniform, too, Ice, like none of it had ever happened.
Well. Joke's on him. Maverick's been trying, whenever he can make himself think for long enough, a grim effort of will with no real hope in it—but the wings still won't go away. They've never stayed out for this long, and he has no idea what the hell to do about it; but Ice has already seen them, he thinks dully, can't get any more dead than he already is just because Maverick fucked up again, so what can it hurt, having them out a little longer now?
Together, they manage to get Maverick and the wings out of the truck in one piece. It's—their housing, Maverick realizes, the space they were assigned near the officers, down by the beach; must be Ice's, but it's laid out just about the same as Maverick's, garage leading into the entryway, pretty generous ground floor, open.
Maverick's got to duck down a little, the joints of the wings where they're folded up to fit through the width of the doorway coming up and over his head far enough that they'd hit the top of the doorframe otherwise. Gets easier to move with them once he's inside, but he doesn't really know—where to go, what to do; grinds to a halt, in the middle of Ice's fucking living room, and turns around.
Ice followed him in, and is just—looking at him, for a long second. Cuts a glance past him, makes a soft sound in his throat, and moves around the sofa to—to drop the blinds, Maverick understands, most of them down already to keep the sun out during the day, keep the house a little cooler, but Ice left a window looking out onto the beach.
But then it's done, the room secure. Ice drops the cord for the blinds, steps toward Maverick again, looks at Maverick and then at the wings, and his throat shifts.
He lifts a hand. "Can I?" he says, quiet.
And he's already dead, after all. What can it hurt?
Maverick nods.
It's—the first time anybody's touched them. On purpose, at least; trapped in the head with Goose on the Kitty Hawk, maybe a couple of the primaries had been brushing Goose's boots, Maverick doesn't really remember. But this, Ice—reaching for them, soft indirect pressure of his fingertips against the feathers, it's—even Maverick has never really touched them that much, and it's kind of startling.
Ice's hands are warm. It's hard to tell at first, muted by the thickness of the feathers, but the longer Ice keeps touching the wings, the more the heat of him starts to really bleed through them—gets trapped by them, the feathers and the air in between them, and lingers even after he's moved his hand somewhere else.
Maverick's been holding the wings tucked pretty much as close as he can get them since he came through the door. Since Ice got him into the Jeep, really. But they start to—relax a little, in Ice's hands, spreading into the touch, the pressure, the barest fraction.
"I've heard things," Ice says softly. "Everybody hears things. But I never thought—"
"It's a curse," Maverick bites out, feathers ruffling up reflexively for a second. "It's a curse, seeing them. You're dead. You're dead, now."
Ice goes still. He should be pissed, Maverick thinks, that Maverick wasn't more careful; he should be panicking. He should be demanding to know how to break it, or—trying to cut them off, ripping the feathers out of them by handfuls, anything.
But he doesn't.
"Is that so," he says, real evenly.
"Yeah, it is," Maverick says.
It comes out hard, harsh. But Ice doesn't react to his tone at all, doesn't glare at him; still, still, doesn't get pissed.
"You were trying to get away from the base before they came out," Ice says slowly, "because you knew they were going to. Usually you can control it. But today they got—stuck." He falls silent for a second. "Doesn't happen that often."
It isn't exactly a question, the way he says it.
But Maverick answers it anyway. "No. No, it's—this. Once. Sometimes it's hard to hold them in, but as soon as I do let them out, after that it's fine. They don't—they've never gotten stuck like this before."
Something's passing across Ice's face, the shadow of a frown, his gaze intent. "How often do you let them out?"
"Never," Maverick says.
And Ice does it again, goes still all over; watches him with sudden sharpness. "Never," he repeats.
"When I can't help it," Maverick says. "That's all. I—when I was a kid, I used to sometimes. When there was nobody around, when I was sure I was alone. But I already knew it was dangerous. The last time they—wanted to come out, the last time I had to let them, it was—Goose."
And that makes the whole sick mess of it rise up in him again, his throat tightening, full of bile; how stupid he'd been, how naive, to think he could get away with it just like he always did, to think every rule could be broken and no one would ever pay for it—
"Goose," Ice says slowly. "Goose saw them, too."
Maverick doesn't look at him, can't. Now he must get it; now he must realize what's going to happen to him, probably a matter of months at best.
"Your parents told you it was a curse, when you were a kid. You kept it a secret anyway, so it didn't matter whether they'd meant it. But then Goose saw them. Goose saw them, and then he died, and now you think—"
"I know," Maverick says sharply, because jesus, what more proof does Ice need? It's obvious, isn't it? "What, you think my whole family was lying to me? You think they made it up just so I wouldn't—"
"I didn't say that," Ice says, infuriatingly calm. "Probably feels like one, most days—carrying around a secret like that. Having wings when you're not allowed to use them, when you've got to spend all your time worrying somebody might see you with them—" He stops, swallowing. "Yeah, I bet that feels like a curse, sometimes."
And Maverick's got the sudden dim sense Ice isn't just talking about wings, not quite, not anymore. "Ice," he says unsteadily.
"But Goose, what happened—I don't think that has anything to do with it. You just wish it did."
For a second, Maverick doesn't even really hear it, doesn't understand what Ice just said. And then he does, but he can't figure out what to do about it, the hot bloom of fury lighting up his chest, ten different things he wants to do at the same time: scream, and sock Ice right in the jaw, drag him to the floor and pound his face into it until he's spitting out blood, until he takes it back. "The fuck I do—I wish—?"
"Because that way there was a reason," Ice says, soft and even. "That way it wasn't just an accident you never could've done anything about. If it was a curse, if it was you, then you can stop it from happening again. All you have to do is never let anyone see you, not ever. All you have to do is stay in control, all the time, and then you can be sure. Then you can be safe. Right?"
As if—fat lot of good that would've done, thinking about it like that, when Maverick's already fucked it up again. "Shut up," he shouts, right in Ice's face. "Shut the fuck up, you don't know a goddamn thing! This isn't about you being fucked up about who you want to fuck, this is real—you're dead, and I killed you—"
"No, I'm not," Ice says.
He hasn't backed off an inch, hasn't given way. He let Maverick shout at him, and he's just standing there, open gentle hands still curling into Maverick's primaries, because he followed the movement of the wings as they spread, instinctive, when Maverick started yelling. His expression is clear, now; he looks unshaken, strong, sure. But that's just because he doesn't get it, because he doesn't understand what Maverick's trying to tell him—
"I'm not. You hear me? You didn't. It's a dangerous fucking job, Maverick, and even if I do fall out of the sky in six months, a year, ten years—that's going to be because I do a dangerous fucking job, not because of you." And then he stops, sucks in a breath and shakes his head, and—this is real for him after all, Maverick understands distantly. This is—he means it. "Jesus, you—you saved me, remember?"
"Ice," Maverick says, hoarse.
But Ice is implacable. Implacable, intolerably gentle; he lifts a hand to Maverick's face, strokes along Maverick's jaw with his thumb. "You came back for me," he says, almost hushed. "You were—" and then the line of his mouth twists helplessly. "Christ, trust you to turn it into a bad joke, when I'm dead fucking serious: you were my wingman. You saved my ass up there, and if you hadn't, I'd have been dead without ever seeing this, you, at all."
And he's only touching Maverick the two places, his face and one wing, but Maverick feels like he's—like he's taking up half the room, somehow. "No," he croaks anyway, last-ditch. "No, you—I'm—I'm dangerous—"
Ice doesn't let go of him, doesn't back off, doesn't fold and tell him he's right and then kick him out. He's close, warm, utterly unmoved. "Yeah, you are," he agrees, low, "but this isn't why," and then—that's when he falters, just a little, presses his mouth into a line and swallows. "This is the least dangerous thing about you, Maverick. Trust me."
And Maverick—breaks. Sways into Ice all at once, because he can't do it anymore, can't hold himself apart; the distance between him and everything, everybody around him, used to feel inescapable, uncrossable, a fact of life, but now it's an effort, and he can't do it anymore.
Ice catches him, gathers him up; holds on tight, and Maverick's clutching at him, too, reflexive, the wings curling in over both of them.
Maverick doesn't know how long they stay like that.
It feels like a long time, clinging like an idiot to Ice, the strong solid shape of him, and breathing shakily against the front of Ice's shoulder, shivering for no good reason while whatever's wrong with him racks its way through him.
A long time—but not quite long enough, maybe, before Ice squeezes the nape of Maverick's neck and then shifts his weight, starts to let go.
"Ice," Maverick says, so hoarse it almost doesn't sound like a word.
"Just—give me a minute, huh?" Ice murmurs in his ear, and then does draw away, the shadow of a frown crossing his face as he looks at Maverick.
"Aye aye, sir," Maverick manages, and Ice huffs half a breath through his nose.
Maverick doesn't try to figure out what he's doing, doesn't track the sound of his steps moving through the house. It's enough work just staying standing without him.
So it's a dim half-formed surprise, when Ice comes back—faster than Maverick might've thought he would—with a bowl of water, a washcloth draped over the edge of it, a first aid kit in his other hand.
That's what it was, Maverick realizes belatedly, as Ice dips the washcloth in the water and then touches it gently to Maverick's face. That's what made him frown: the scrapes, the blood that must be drying along Maverick's jaw by now. Maverick had forgotten about it, the pain hardly anything compared to—everything else.
But now, the washcloth against it, there's the barest hint of a sting; a clean simple feeling, small and straightforward, almost a relief.
Maverick watches Ice's face, his eyes, as Ice wipes carefully along his jaw, his cheek, and then a spot on his forehead that Maverick's pretty sure didn't even bleed, just got itself skinned raw. Ice goes for the side of Maverick's throat next, his arm from the elbow down, his hand—half of it's just dirt, but Ice keeps at it, all that precision, all that focus, all that patience, till Maverick's forearm and palm and knuckles are pink and damp, clean.
It feels good. Good enough that Maverick isn't really thinking about what might come next on the list until Ice's gaze suddenly flicks up to meet his, until he realizes Ice has reached out not to his shoulder, but a little past it.
"Can I—?"
"You don't have to," Maverick scrapes out, all he can think to say. He didn't—it hadn't even occurred to him that Ice might try to—
"Okay," Ice agrees, with the faintest quirk of his mouth. "But can I?"
Maverick clears his throat. "Sure," he says.
Which is fucking stupid, but Ice doesn't hold it against him.
The first touch of Ice's fingertips against his left wing is almost startling, even though Ice gave him more than enough warning. It's—Maverick has to fight to hold still under it, to not yank the wing away, not because it's uncomfortable, that gentle tentative brush of Ice's fingers, but because it's—it—it feels strange, on the edge of wrong. Ice shouldn't even be looking at them, never mind touching them—
But either Ice is dead already, or he isn't; either Maverick's right, or Ice is. And whichever it might be, there's nothing Maverick can do about it now. So—so there's no reason, really, to try to make Ice stop.
Maverick tells himself this, and breathes, and forces himself to let it happen, to relax into it. That left wing spreads a little, into Ice's hand instead of away, because the goddamn wings always did know right where they wanted to be, and Ice—
Ice fixes them. Smooths the feathers back into place, one at a time, where they're ruffled up, crossing over each other at the wrong angles, twisting under each other in the wrong directions. He starts using the washcloth as he goes, too, swiping red-brown dirt, grains of sand, from the vanes of them.
Maverick doesn't even realize how much he's leaning into it until Ice laughs a little, unvoiced, half a breath, and says, "Feels good?"
"I—yeah," Maverick says, too honest, slow, blinking like he's trying to keep himself awake.
He is, a little bit. It feels fucking great, having the wings get—groomed like this, and not Maverick trying to stretch around and preen himself but somebody else doing it for him.
Ice keeps going. He moves around Maverick's side, makes Maverick spread the wing out even farther, even lower, so he can get to the small feathers closer to the joint, and the big primaries at the back.
The right wing is the one Maverick twisted under him when he came down. It mostly feels okay now, but it got banged up worse than the left one, and there's blood crusted over and between some of the feathers on that side, increasingly uncomfortable now that Maverick's thinking about it, noticing it.
Ice cleans that up, too—damps it with the washcloth, picks at it gently with his fingers in a couple spots where the water isn't enough to loosen it. He wipes it away, smooths the individual barbs back into place where the texture of the washcloth split them apart, runs his fingers along the feathers until they're lined up right again.
He started at the joint, on the right, the joint and the leading edge of the wing, because that was the worst of the mess. By the time he's started working his way back in toward Maverick's shoulder, though, it's—there isn't much left to do, most of the feathers already lying straight. He's not really grooming anything anymore, he's—
He's just touching them.
It's strange, the way it feels. Not bad; unfamiliar, that's all. Maverick can't feel Ice's hand against the feathers themselves, just the transferred pressure along the shafts of them, down to the—the skin, under there. Which Maverick had always known was kind of sensitive, because it has to be, to let him feel the air against his wings the way he does, but he's—it hasn't ever mattered before, when he's not flying.
He didn't know it would be like this. He didn't know exactly how impossible it would get, to ignore his own visceral awareness of Ice's hands against his feathers.
And then Ice says quietly, "So—Goose saw them. No one else?"
Maverick swallows, and shuts his eyes. "No one else," he says, and it's just a fact, but it comes out—odd, too raw, almost confessional.
"And you've never told anyone."
"No," Maverick says, almost angry again. "No, jesus, it was—not ever, no one. No one but me has even touched them before, for as long as I can remember."
He shakes his head, twists to look over his shoulder because he wants to make sure Ice is picking up what he's putting down, how serious this has always been for him, as if losing his shit over it for the past two or three hours hasn't been proof enough—
Ice is staring back at him. And Maverick understands, a sudden jolt, seeing the sharp hot thing in his eyes, that Maverick telling him that got him right where he lives: because he's just as much of a competitive bastard as he always has been; because he wants to be best, most, first, and Maverick just explained to him that he is.
"They wanted to come out," Maverick blurts. "Whenever you were—whenever we were—they wanted to come out for you."
"Jesus fucking Christ, Maverick," Ice says, low.
"I was trying not to let them. I couldn't just let them, but it was so goddamn hard—"
"Maverick," Ice says, and he's—he sways in suddenly close, the whole breadth of his chest against the back of Maverick's left wing, the nape of Maverick's neck against his hand; the worst fucking angle he could've picked for this, Maverick's head twisted halfway around, but he jerks Maverick backward against him just far enough to catch Maverick's mouth hard against his own.
They never—they never kissed, for all the times they've gotten each other off. That hadn't been what it was about, what they were doing; Maverick hadn't needed to be told that to get it.
But now, Ice has Maverick's lip between his teeth, half panting into Maverick's mouth, fingertips digging in powerfully along the side of Maverick's throat, like—
Like he wants it, like he's been thinking about it. Like maybe Maverick was never the only one who was holding something back, all along.
"Ice," Maverick gasps, and gets an arm up, clutches Ice's shoulder and folds his wing up tight so he can turn around without having to let go. "Ice—"
Ice catches him around the back, arm against the tiny feathers that layer their way across Maverick's shoulder blades. Maverick grabs at him, gets a fist in the shoulder of his uniform shirt, hauls him back in and licks into his mouth, over the stupid smug curve of his lip, and fuck, fucking hell; maybe he's the one who isn't going to survive this, he thinks dimly.
It's never been like this before. They've never been this fucking clumsy, for one—Maverick pops two or three buttons off Ice's shirt just trying to get it open, trying to get in underneath the goddamn uniform and the undershirt to find skin; and when he manages it, hand open across Ice's chest in there, Ice hisses into his mouth, sucks hotly on his lip for a second and then gasps, "Fuck—come on," and sinks, yanks Maverick down with him, the middle of his fucking living room floor instead of the couch three feet away.
Maverick's as good as shirtless already, flightsuit shredded by the wings back when they first burst out of him on the bike, torso loose; he can pull forward on the chest of it and slide the sleeves off his arms that way, and then Ice gets a hand on what's left of the collar, pulls it down, and the t-shirt Maverick had on underneath isn't any better, barely more than a rag, falling away with the flightsuit before Ice can even rip it.
Which he would've if he'd had to, judging by the way he rubs his palms up Maverick's chest, the way he clutches Maverick's bare waist—like it's an indulgence, a luxury, like he can't get enough of it. Maverick leans into it, shuddering; he'd always thought they'd touched each other a lot, really, a lot more than they should've, a risk every time, but compared to this, it had been—what? A brush of arms, hands around wrists, knees pressed into the outsides of thighs. Enough to get the job done, and sometimes a little more, if they could get away with it.
But this is—Maverick gets an arm around Ice's shoulders, drags him up to keep them pressed together, slides his tongue over Ice's lip and scrabbles for the waistband of his uniform slacks. It's hard going, the fucking button fly when neither of them are giving up an inch of space, hands in each other's way because Ice is jerking at the lower half of the flightsuit at the same time; but Maverick gets it to give at last, maybe four buttons total but that's all he needs to give himself room, slide the backs of his knuckles down the hot straining shape of Ice's cock in there.
Ice makes a sharp choked noise into Maverick's mouth, hips rolling up against Maverick's hand, and then says, "Jesus Christ," and drops back onto an elbow—Maverick's about to fix it, grab after him again, except he's—he's dragging his uniform off himself, catching his undershirt at the waist with both hands and yanking it up and over his head in a tangle, hurling it away. And that's good, that's so much better; Maverick makes a sound in his throat, involuntary, startlingly hungry even to his own ears, and follows Ice down, hooks an arm around the nape of Ice's neck and kisses him again, smooths his free hand greedily along the line of Ice's naked back even though his knuckles are rubbing hard against the carpet—practically the same thing Ice was doing to him a minute ago, but fuck, Ice had the right idea, because all that bare skin, it's—
The sensation is abrupt, a sweet sharp shock; his head jerks up and he chokes on air, back arching helplessly, hips driving down and forward with the shift in his weight. It takes him a second to understand where it even came from, what it was: Ice reached up behind Maverick's back, dug his fingers into the bigger feathers close to the base of one wing and pulled—enough of them at once to spread the feeling out evenly, not yanking them out, just a smooth tug of pressure, Maverick's skin prickling all over with it, fuck.
"Yes, fuck, Maverick," Ice is gasping, and he's—he curled upward somewhere in there, Maverick understands dimly, openmouthed against the arc of Maverick's ribs, hips trapped between Maverick's knees.
"No," Maverick says, nonsensical, but he means—he needs—"No, get—get out of those, get—"
He manages to feel his way down Ice's body again, reaches those hips, catches the sides of Ice's open slacks and his briefs underneath them; and Ice listens to him for fucking once in his life, takes the cue and shifts up until Maverick's hands are at his knees, until he can shuffle everything the rest of the way off his legs himself and kick it away.
And then it's—it's just him, all of him, under Maverick. Maverick thinks about it, and he's honestly not sure they've actually stripped naked to do this since—jesus, since that first time, since the showers. Because they couldn't do it, couldn't risk it, without the excuse, without a reason that had nothing to do with each other.
Suddenly he can't fucking stand that. He scrambles up, flaring the wings out over Ice to help him keep his balance, and shoves the rest of the flightsuit down his legs, climbs out of it and then pushes it away from him with his foot, because he doesn't want it touching him anymore. He's—he wants it like this, wants to be like this: exposed, the most exposed he's ever been, because if Ice is dead already then it doesn't matter, and if he isn't—
if he isn't, if this is—if it's real—
then Maverick isn't going to give any less of himself than Ice is giving him, goddammit.
He laughs, helpless, wild, at the ridiculous familiar feeling; he spun out, came apart, and Ice might just have figured out how to put him back together, and still, still, he can't lie down and let Ice beat him at anything.
He drops back down—doesn't realize until he's done it that because of the way he stood up, because Ice had shifted to make room for him to do it, he's—he's between Ice's legs now. He shifts forward anyway, and Ice pushes himself up at the same time, rises up to meet Maverick; Maverick catches Ice's face in his hands, kisses him harder, longer, deeper, practically sucking on Ice's tongue, and then Ice presses forward that last inch, the hot curve of his cock shoving in against Maverick's hip, the shaft brushing right up against the head of Maverick's dick, and fuck, fuck fuck fuck—Maverick cries out against Ice's mouth, stupid and too loud when it's nothing compared to all the fucking they've already done, but he can't stop it, not anymore.
And then Ice wraps an arm around Maverick's back, pulls Maverick halfway down with him, and it wouldn't—it wouldn't necessarily mean anything in particular, except he uses his other hand to catch one of Maverick's, drags it away from his face and down, around his thigh, back—
Maverick breaks away from the kiss, catches his breath, tries to make himself fucking think. "Ice—"
Ice meets his eyes. Ice's face is classic Iceman, expressionless, impassive; but there's hot hectic color striping his cheekbones, a flush up his chest and his throat and his ears that gives all that ice the lie in an instant. "Do it," he says, low, scraping.
It's stupid. It's so fucking stupid. There might be something Maverick could use in the first aid kit, if he's lucky, but that's still on the sofa, five feet away, five feet that might as well be a mile with Ice—looking at him like that, hard strong grip around Maverick's wrist, pinning Maverick's hand right where he wants it.
Maverick shuts his eyes. "Jesus, you're the one who's fucking dangerous," he rasps, and Ice laughs—sudden, sounding startled by it, like he wasn't expecting to do it any more than Maverick was expecting to hear it.
So that's—that's how they do it, in the end. Maverick doesn't get up, doesn't go anywhere. He pulls Ice closer, half into his fucking lap; follows the curve of that perfect fucking ass with his hands and slides his fingertips down until he finds what he's looking for. He presses a finger into Ice first, just because he wants to, and jesus, Ice is so—so hot, in there, so staggeringly tight, Maverick can't imagine how it's going to feel to actually be inside him.
Lucky for both of them Maverick's practically dripping wet by the time he gets that far, so it isn't like he's going for it completely dry. But it's not that much help; and the friction gets gritty fast, as he tries to push himself farther into Ice, a thick slow burn starting to build that keeps him from rushing it.
Which is great, because it's so fucking hard not to. With the Iceman himself wrapped halfway around him, those thighs folded up tight against the sides of Maverick's ribs, Ice's throat working helplessly, his hands clutching convulsively at Maverick's back and shoulders; his face, his fucking eyes—
Maverick gets about three-quarters of the way in and can't fucking take it anymore, pulls most of the way back out and then starts pushing in again, and it's slow, so fucking slow, because it almost hurts, but Ice makes this noise, fucking fuck, and Maverick grips his shoulders, holds him there and fucks into him again, wings shuddering, joints curling down close over Ice's head. "Oh, fuck—"
"Yes," Ice grits out. "Do it, do it, fuck me—"
"Ice," Maverick manages, and he can't, he can't take this; he thrusts in again, hard, straining, stuttering as the friction catches and grinds and then lets him go for a fraction of an inch, and Ice makes a surprised half-choked sound and pushes back into it, takes him deeper, and that is fucking it.
He comes in a hard white-hot wave, curling in over Ice, breaths sobbing their way through his throat as if he's in pain, wings curving in so tightly that he realizes vaguely that it's—he's touching Ice with them, too, the big joints pressing in close against Ice's shoulders, trying to wrap themselves around him except he's half pinned to the floor under Maverick.
"Maverick, Maverick, Christ," Ice is gasping, shifting helplessly against him; and Maverick catches his breath and belatedly fumbles a hand down, finds—fuck, Ice is so hard, thin scorching-hot skin stretched tight against Maverick's fingertips when Maverick touches him, and Ice shudders all over at even that much, thighs fucking shaking. Maverick gets his shit together, rubs his hand up Ice's cock once and then again, slides it back down and takes a second to appreciate the tense drawn-up weight of Ice's balls down there at the base of it, and Ice moves into the touch with a half-swallowed sound; Maverick jerks him twice more, long and slow, and on the second one, just as he reaches the head of Ice's cock, Ice shivers, head dropping back suddenly, and comes all over Maverick's hand, his wrist, half of his arm. Maverick hadn't quite pulled out, anywhere in there, and the squeezing is, jesus, just this side of too much—he drops down himself, gulping helplessly against Ice's shoulder, trying to remember how to breathe.
And then—
Then, Ice's hand settles against the nape of Maverick's neck, cradling Maverick in the shelter of his shoulder, and Maverick feels the soft press of Ice's mouth against his temple and squeezes his eyes shut; stays right where he is, the wings tucked in close around them both, every kind of distance that had been left between them utterly gone.
When Maverick wakes up, the wings are gone.
He can still feel them. But he—they let him put them away, somewhere during the night.
He and Ice had pried themselves apart, after a while, had made a half-hearted effort to clean up with that abandoned washcloth; Maverick remembers that much, remembers wrapping himself back up in Ice and sinking into sleep more quickly than he'd really wanted to. He'd wanted to keep being there, feeling it, for as long as he could get it.
But it's—it's morning, bright lines of sunlight creeping in at the edges of the blinds, and he's—they're still on the floor, naked, tangled up together. Somehow Maverick had expected it to all get undone, to vanish with dawn, a spell broken.
Instead, he blinks, once and then again, and realizes Ice is already looking at him, already awake, watching him with clear sharp eyes.
"There you are," Ice says, very low, and reaches up, touches Maverick's face—smooths his thumb along Maverick's jaw, and then leans up and in to kiss him, warm and fierce and sure.
"Here I am," Maverick agrees, when Ice is done with him.
And that gets him half a smile, for a second, before Ice lets it slide away again, throat working.
"Maverick," he says. "Can I—see them again?"
Maverick lies there, draws a long slow breath and closes his eyes. Maybe he's right; maybe Ice is already dead. But maybe he isn't; maybe, Maverick thinks, it's time to let go.
And he relaxes, lets it happen: lets them come, lets them out, free.