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Maverick is angry. Or maybe he’s hurt. He’s not sure. He feels like an idiot. Class is over, but he’s still in that moment, something tender and hopeful crystallizing inside of him as he’d started to understand what Charlie had been saying to him. Something shattering as the reality of her betrayal had set in.
Had it been betrayal, though, really? He’d made himself vulnerable to her, but that didn’t mean she owed him anything. It’s never really meant that, not for him, but it’s not her fault that he’s never been able to learn that lesson.
He finishes up in the locker room as quickly as he can, shrugging off Goose’s concern. He wants to get out of there. He wants to be anywhere but on base, under the eyes of the men who’d watched him get dismantled. He wants to be alone.
Just when he thinks he’s nearly home free, he exits the colonnade outside the building and pulls up short. Ice is leaning up against his bike, glasses on and head tilted up to the sky, seeming lost in contemplation.
He’d been lingering in the locker room too, trying to seem busy at his locker, moving things around without really accomplishing anything, casting increasingly unsubtle looks in Maverick’s direction. He’d cut out abruptly when it became clear that Maverick wasn’t about to bite.
Maverick walks the rest of the way cautiously. When Ice hears him coming, his eyes snap to Maverick. He pulls off his sunglasses and hooks them in his pocket. He’s still in his uniform, looking as neat and freshly pressed as when he’d first stepped into it that morning.
Maverick stops an arm’s length away from him, crossing his arms over his chest. He’s in no mood to deal with Ice’s bullshit along with everything else. It might put him on his back foot, but he refuses to make the first move, no matter how much he wants to get on his bike and go.
“She was wrong, you know,” Ice says by way of greeting. It’s soft, unexpectedly so.
Maverick snorts. “Rich, coming from you.”
Ice offers a half shrug, then pushes off the bike in way that’s too casual to be anything but practiced. Maverick circles around him, carefully keeping his eyes on him the entire time. He can’t figure his angle here.
“Yeah, coming from me,” Ice says, something vaguely mocking in his tone. “I know what I’m talking about.”
He snorts again. Like the Iceman is God’s gift to flight. Charlie has a PhD and she can’t stop dogging him. And speak of the devil – behind Ice, he can see her exiting the building that he’d just left and making a beeline towards them. He can almost hear the rhythmic click of her heals, tapping out the staccato beat of her anger.
His eyes snap back to Ice. “Listen, are you coming, or not?”
“What?” Ice asks.
He’s not really sure what had spurred the offer – the air of something unfinished between them, maybe, or the desire for the validation Ice seemed to be offering – but there’s a certain satisfaction in the way Ice’s face scrunches up in confusion.
Charlie is getting closer. He swings his leg over the bike, mounting it, and turns back to Ice as he puts the key into the ignition. “If you want to talk to me, get on the back. We’re leaving.”
Ice gets on the back, fitting himself to Maverick’s body easily, like he does it every day of his life. His hands land heavy on Maverick’s hips, grip firm but not tight. He moves with the bike when they pull away.
Maverick looks back as they go, past the line of Ice’s body, to see Charlie standing on the curb staring after them, hands on her hips, her face a mask of rage.
“You want to get a coffee or something?” Maverick asks, stopped at an intersection a couple minutes later once they’ve rounded a couple corners and the rush of flight has left him.
“Sure, Mav.” Ice’s breath is a warm puff of air against Maverick’s neck. “Let’s get coffee.”
He drives them to a diner just off base. He orders a milkshake and Iceman gets a beer and they each tack a burger onto that. For a moment, it feels almost normal, like going out with one of the guys, killing some time, or it might if he’d ever had anything like that with anyone other than Goose. Then it’s just a reminder that he’s never fit in, that Ice is only here because he wants to have it out with him.
Maverick waits until their food arrives, until he’s gotten some grease and fat into himself, then leans back in his seat and looks at Ice. “So, lay it on me. What did you want to say back there?”
Ice looks up from his burger and takes a moment to wipe his hands on his napkin, a precise, almost persnickety, motion. He pins Maverick with his clear blue eyes. “I told you. That she was wrong.”
He can’t help snorting again, like he did the first time.
Ice shakes his head. “Blackwood might be a genius, but she’s not a pilot. And she didn’t have the right to say that to you.”
“Like you do?” he asks, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu.
Iceman’s shrug is as disarming as it is eloquent. He looks younger when he grins, boyish in the way his smile reaches his eyes.
“What’s your deal, anyway?” Maverick asks. He’d expected this out of Ice just as little as he’d expected the turnabout from Charlie.
Ice just keeps smiling at him, guilelessly. “I’m just trying to exemplify the qualities of leadership that the Navy expects from all of us.”
Maverick almost thinks he’s serious. God, he is serious. Except there’s something in the set of his jaw, the minute twitch of his lips. He’s delivered enough lines like that himself to know.
“God, you’re such a piece of shit, Kazansky.”
Ice shrugs again. Maverick flicks a piece of his balled up straw wrapper at him. They kick at each other’s feet under the table for a minute before Ice seems to remember that he’s still in uniform and they both remember how old they are. There’s a faint blush on the back of Ice’s neck as he takes a pull on his beer.
When the burgers are gone and only a few limp fries remain, Ice tries again. “You’ve been out there,” he says.
Maverick nods. It’s not really a question. He’s famous, infamous, notorious, whatever. He’d been proud of it and then defensive of it and then maybe a little ashamed for reasons he can’t quite pin down.
“You’ve seen a MiG,” Ice says. There’s only a hint of envy, a touch of avarice, to the statement. “Flown against it up close.”
Maverick nods again. He shifts back in his seat and folds his arms. He doesn’t want to hear about Cougar again, not when Ice wasn’t even there.
Kazansky leans forward a bit. “Be honest with me. Did it take anything less than everything you’ve got?”
He thinks of all the bravado, all the posturing, the jokes. Then he thinks of Cougar, breaking down, unable to land, about to get himself and his RIO killed. The veneer of calm that had settled over him, instilled by his training. In that moment, everything had been clear, but it hadn’t been anything like easy. He shakes his head. “No. It didn’t.”
Ice nods and settles back in his side of the booth. “That’s all I’m trying to tell you. The textbook exists for a reason, but it doesn’t always apply. And anything I’ve said to you? It hasn’t been personal.”
He can’t help but bristle, because it sure as hell had felt personal at the time, every time. “Fixing me isn’t your job, Kazansky. It is hers.”
The subtle moue of Ice’s lips tells Maverick he’s disappointed him, but he’s not sure how.
“She was overstepping,” Ice says, voice flat and oddly insistent.
For the first time, Maverick starts to feel like what he’s been doing with Charlie is wrong, not just dangerous or complicated or any of the other ways he’s described it. It squirms in his gut, makes him want out. Out of this interaction, out of the diner, out of Miramar.
“Yeah, well, I crossed that line first,” he says, defiance rising like a shield to protect him, like an old familiar friend.
“Not your responsibility,” Ice insists.
He frowns. Wasn’t it? He’d tried to sleep with her, even after he’d known who she was. He’d flirted with her, held out the MiG as an enticement when he knew it was important to her. He’d wanted her and he’d gone after what he wanted.
“Look, Mitchell,” Ice starts with a sigh. “When people look up to you—” Maverick opens his mouth to protest, and Ice’s eyes harden. “When people look up to you, you need to be careful.”
“Like you?” he asks again, trying to piece together what Ice is trying to tell him, knowing that he’s failing somehow.
Ice’s grin sharpens and he can see something in it, teasing around the edges, no longer stern and disappointed. “Sure. Let’s say I’m talking about me.”
But people do look up to Ice, he knows that. People respect him. Ice had taken him down in the locker room and nobody had said shit to him. Because they’d all known that Ice was right, but more than that, they’d known that Ice was looking out for them, even if it hadn’t been his place to do it.
Maverick is about to say as much when Ice sits up straight, squares his shoulders, then leans in.
When Ice speaks, it’s with his voice pitched carefully lower, to keep what he says between the two of them. “I’m being very careful here.”
When he pulls back, there’s an implication there, in his eyes, that hits Maverick straight in his gut. Things click into place as he recontextualizes their previous interactions. Ice’s eyes on him in class. Ice leaning in close at the bar. Ice waiting for him at the top of the stairs.
Something about it leaves him breathless.
It’s not that he’s never thought about it before. He’s thought about it. He’s never had the balls to do anything about it, despite the way he can ever help chasing after the next pretty thing that catches his eye. Something about that kind of attraction has always felt like it would be just a shade too far to come back from.
And it’s not like Ice doesn’t disapprove of him. Ice has made it clear that he does, just like he made it clear just now that disapproval isn’t the only thing he feels.
Maverick looks up at Ice, into carefully neutral blue eyes. God, but Ice is so fucking pretty. He can’t deal with it. He grabs a balled up napkin, then dumps it back on the table before he can start fidgeting with it.
“I’m beat,” he says finally. “Let me drive you home.”
Ice nods slowly, a grin blooming on his face like it’s not a dismissal. He watches Maverick wipe the grease off his hands with a fresh napkin, then ostentatiously announces that he’s going to hit the can to wash his hands.
Maverick makes his way to the cashier to pay the bill while he waits, then goes outside and settles on the bike. They’re close enough to the flight line that he can hear the jets taking off, the roar of it soothing something in his soul. He closes his eyes for a moment and just listens.
Kazansky doesn’t announce himself when he comes out, just settles behind Maverick on the bike, the same as before. Maverick takes a deep breath in, then lets it out, pressing his weight back against Ice for a moment, and Ice takes it, leans in until his breath is hot on Maverick’s neck. He lets himself relax for a beat, two, then opens his eyes and starts the engine.
The ride is quick. Ice and Slider are staying on base just a few doors down from him and Goose. Slider’s car is already in the driveway. He could cruise right past it and make Ice walk back if he wanted to, but he idles in the street out front.
He feels Ice hesitate for a moment. Then, instead of getting off the bike, he leans in, the hot line of his body pressed against Maverick’s back.
“Call me this weekend,” Ice says, leaning in close to be heard over the engine, his lips grazing the shell of Maverick’s ear. “Take me out for a ride and I promise I’ll give you a fair critique.”
Maverick smiles slowly, something in him unwinding. “I’ve got some other things going on, but I’ll see if I can make some time.”
Ice chuckles, a low, throaty sound. “Sure, pencil me in.”
He pats Maverick’s thigh, then he’s gone, throwing Maverick momentarily off balance and the weight on the bike shifts.
Maverick guns the engine and tears off down the block, past his own place where Goose is probably waiting for him, just to feel the wind in his hair. Charlie is a distant thought.