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polar-equinoxx · 2 years ago

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Cross posted on ao3 <3

Angst, grief/mourning, arguing, resolved argument, emotional hurt/comfort

1.9k words

≻───── ⋆✩⋆ ─────≺

Even Ice Melts☁️

third person

“You’re dangerous, Mitchell,”

Maverick exhales, but doesn’t look around to Iceman.

“You may not like the guys flying with you, and they may not like you, but what kind of excuse is that for what you just pulled up there?”

“I knew I could take the shot,”

“And leave Hollywood struggling in your dust like that?”

“Why are you doing this?” Maverick turns around to face him.

“What?”

“Pinning the blame on me?”

“Pinning the blame-?! It was your doing,”

“So why are you defending Hollywood?”

Ice looks incredulously at him. “Because that could have gone so wrong up there,”

“You don’t think I know that?” Maverick steps into Ice’s personal space, closing the gap between them.

“Of course I do,” Ice lifts his head up.

“Then why are you making an argument about this if your so sure it’s my fault?”

“Because I know it’s your fault,” his voice was cold.

Maverick was glad it was just them both in the locker room when Ice says the next thing.

“You don’t know that you’re dangerous. You don’t know how much trouble that could mean for anyone else, and you don’t care about the consequences for any of your actions because you never had anyone to teach you about them,” he says.

Maverick’s frown deepens. “Don’t bring that up,”

“Being dangerous up there only leads to crashing and burning on the way down. You’d know that if your surname wasn’t so infected by tragedy,” Ice had hit a nerve, and he was so full with concern for Hollywood and Wolfman that he didn’t care that he was pressing down on it harder than he should.

“It is not infected by tragedy,”

“It is, that’s why nobody likes you,”

Maverick goes silent, the anger inside him making his blood boil, and he didn’t want to escalate the tension in the room more by rising to Ice’s bait.

“No one will be there to mourn you when you crash and burn,” Ice hisses slowly.

Oh how he hated Iceman.

“Then let us hope I crash and burn tomorrow,” he says harshly, still somehow maintaining eye-contact with him.

Ice’s gaze was cold, freezing in fact, as he watches Maverick turn around and leave without another word.

~~~

Then the next day does come. Hop 31, and it would cast a shadow on Maverick for the rest of his life.

It all happened so fast, almost too fast for Maverick to comprehend. But he’s all too aware of the blood on his hands.

The blood that stains his flightsuit.

The blood that felt so hot compared to the salt of the sea water.

The blood of Goose’s that was all his fault.

He was in the water, holding him up, he doesn’t know how long for, but it was cold. It was so cold it seeped into his bones and felt like it was tainting the edges of his soul. Goose was gone, and it was all his fault. It was exactly how Ice had said.

The day before he was stupid, doing some risky manoeuvre that almost pushed Hollywood and Wolfman into a spin, and even though it didn’t, it gave them all a scare. And then now, today, he was too impatient, like he always is, he went to get the shot but at the cost of a flat-spin and the sickening noise of Goose’s head meeting the canopy roof as it failed to come off.

Maverick called for him to pull the handle because he couldn’t reach it, the gravity that shouldn’t have been there pushing him forward, his hands trapped under him.

And now he really didn’t have anyone to mourn him, since he’d murdered the only person who was his family.

He didn’t know if he was still in the water or in the stuffy helicopter. It didn’t make a difference.

Maverick felt sick, so sick, so numb and cold yet so hyper-aware of everything. The whir of the rotors, the blood on his hands that was still there, despite having his hands cleaned of it, the way his feet were soaked in his boots, the way the cupboard attached to the wall was ever so slightly open. The way a paramedic was trying to talk to him. The way the door was closed between him and Goose’s body. The way he could see his cracked red and white striped helmet through the slit of glass in the door.

~~~

That night he was sat on the bed in the hospital, and he didn’t know what he felt. He was cold, colder than he’d ever been in his life, and he regrets taking those two cold showers in a row; the night before and in the morning. The t-shirt he had on was too thin to do anything to his shivers, which were escalating each minute as the temperature outside dropped and as rain lightly pattered on the window.

It was July, late July at that, why was he so cold?

But he knows. It’s because the sea seeped into him. It’s because he killed Goose. It’s because he was alone.

But soon, way too soon, his thoughts switch on to that blue-eyed blond-haired pilot who he had that argument with yesterday. Iceman Kazansky. But despite the argument, despite the hard stares he’d give him, despite his frozen personality, he was the only person Maverick wanted to see. He knew that was going to be impossible unless he left the hospital and went to his house. Which he didn’t really want to do. Just by looking at the drizzle outside the window, Maverick knew it would only cool him down more.

But then again, he felt like a slave to the heart-wrenching feeling inside of him. He knew it would come for him like it came for him after his mother’s death, but he didn’t realise it would hit him this badly.

The grief felt like chest-ache and heartburn and seasickness all at the same time. It felt like his chest had been crushed. It felt like he couldn’t breathe.

He wanted to go to Ice. He didn’t know why, or even what he’d do if he did go to see him, he just knew he needed somebody. Somebody to hold him, somebody to sit next to, and somebody was better than nobody.

He didn’t care if they were frozen.

He was colder.

Iceman stands at his door, staring at the handle of it.

Go. Don’t go. Go.

Don’t go, he hates you.

Go, he needs you.

Don’t go. Go.

He doesn’t know what to do.

Ice sighs heavily, frowning at the door, wishing for his mind to say one thought to him. Wishing he could make a decision on whether to go and see Maverick at the hospital or stay at his house. Maverick hated him, he knows that.

Ice wishes he didn’t say what he did to him. He wants to turn back the clock and never even start to talk to him, never even have had the thought that said ‘tell him what he’s done’.

But Maverick is in the hospital, in a room, all by himself. He can’t even begin to imagine what was going through his head, what he was thinking; but Ice wanted to go and see him. To at least try to mend his mistake, to try to alleviate some of the pain Maverick must be feeling.

But Maverick hated him. He’d made sure of that when he’d said he would have no one to mourn him. When he’d said he had no one to teach him how dangerously he was behaving. When he had said all of the things he had.

He just wanted to fix what he’d said.

And suddenly they were face to face, the orange light from a lamppost above them illuminating the rain coming down on them.

Iceman stands there in front of him, and Maverick can hardly see his facial expression in the dark and through the rain, but most of all he doesn’t know why he’s stood there.

“I know what you said,” Maverick says quietly, clenching his jaw, trying to forget about the void inside of him and the rain dripping off his chin.

Iceman just looks at him, the rain making his hair shiny and dull at the same time in the light from the streetlamp.

“And now its true but- I just don’t know what to do,” Maverick stops himself there, if he let the words he wanted to say flow there’d be no stopping them.

Then Ice does something he wouldn’t have ever expected him to do; he steps closer to him and slides his arms around him.

Maverick was suddenly encased in the taller pilot’s embrace, and he suddenly felt like he couldn’t breathe, or move, or do anything.

“Breathe,” Ice says quietly.

It wasn’t an order, but Maverick does so anyway, releasing the breath he’d been holding and sucking one in again, squeezing shut his eyes.

It’s only when his head meets Ice’s shoulder that the last lock on his barely-held-together floodgates breaks.

And he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about his reputation as the fearless pilot. He doesn’t care about the tears streaming down his cheeks and his sobs that he tries to muffle in Ice’s shoulder.

“Mav I’m so sorry,” Ice whispers against his head. The grief was choking him, so all Ice can do is hold him as tight as he possibly can, and pretend he wasn’t crying himself. The rain helps with that. He didn’t feel at all like his callsign and the personality it came with. He felt like Tom, like the kid who was nerdy and studied too hard and felt too many things until he’d made up Iceman to hide behind.

“Pete, you’re freezing,” He says once Maverick had stopped crying so hard against him. The shorter pilot was shivering, clenching his jaw to stop his teeth from chattering.

He doesn’t say anything.

“Lets go back,”

“D- don’t leave,” he stutters. He’d only sink back into the gaping hole in his chest if Ice left him now.

“I’m not going to, no way, not tonight,” Ice murmurs.

Maverick keeps himself as close as he can to him as they walk slowly back to the hospital and he leads Ice back to the room he was supposed to be in.

And he keeps himself there as Ice pulls a grey-blue, slightly scratchy woollen blanket around them both as he sits back on the bed with him. His shivers were diminishing the longer he pressed himself up against Ice, but he still felt cold inside.

“Maverick, I’m sorry,” he says after a few moments. “Yesterday, I.. I wasn’t thinking, I didn’t mean any of it,”

Maverick stares at his hand for a few seconds before he takes it. “I know,” his voice was gravelly as he pushes his fingers through Ice’s.

Ice looks at their hands, then at Maverick, leaning on his shoulder, looking so devoid of his normal aura of bright sunshine. “It’s not your fault,”

Maverick sniffs and keeps his eyes on their hands, half not knowing how to respond and half being too drained to do so.

Ice wasn’t expecting him to reply. He stays there with him the whole night, never once letting go, especially when the drizzle outside brings thunder and distant flashes of lightning. Or maybe Maverick was holding him at that point because he felt him tense up and flinch at the thunder.

Either way, maybe Iceman Kazansky wasn’t as cold as he seemed to be.

#ms tg #ms fanfics #ms art #ok so i wrote this and cried so don’t blame me if u cry too #and i just watched willow and . omg?#ok bye i love them #wet hair is so hard to draw-#icemav #top gun #top gun 1986 #pete maverick mitchell #tom iceman kazansky #icemav fanfic

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