FIC: You're the Permanent One (Top Gun, Iceman/Maverick, PG-13)

[carlyinrome]

TITLE: You're the Permanent One
RATING: PG
FANDOMS: Top Gun
PAIRINGS: Pete "Maverick" Mitchell/Tom "Iceman" Kazansky
SUMMARY: Maverick went back to TOPGUN, and Iceman went back to deployment, but it's not like things just stopped. Written for Pink_and_Velvet for the prompt a kiss on a falling tear. Title from "The Tracks of My Tears" by the Miracles.

Maverick went back to TOPGUN, and Iceman went back to deployment, but it's not like things just stopped. Things with Charlie lasted a few months, but even before she left, Maverick and Ice talked, phone calls from one end of the earth to the other, postcards from San Diego sent to FPOs in response to ones with lettering in Asian languages Maverick couldn't identify by sight. And then when Ice was up for shore leave, Maverick said without thinking, "You should come here," even though living with Iceman for two weeks, sharing meals and a bed, was something very different than quick, desperate fucks in the locker room or Ice's bunk on the boat right after that flight, something very different than talking each other off over the phone twelve hours and thousands of miles apart.

Ice came. He showed up with a grin and a small duffel, and they were barely two steps into Maverick's place, the door not even closed all the way, before they started kissing. They had sex against the door, as soon as Maverick could pull away enough to shut it properly, and then on the couch and the stairs before they finally got to Maverick's bedroom.

After a few hours in Maverick's bedroom, they went out for dinner, a seafood place on the beach. Afterwards, they walked along the surf, feet bare, boots in hand.

It was getting dark. Maverick looked at the silhouettes of the boats still sailing against the red-orange of the sun low on the horizon.

"It's a year since Goose," Maverick said. "In two days. A whole year."

"I know," Ice said.

"Carole—Goose's wife—is having some kind of get together over the weekend. She—she's a really good woman, Carole."

"I'll go with you," Ice said hesitantly. "If you want. Only if you want."

Maverick hadn't expected, in the days after Goose, to ever have someone who would have his back like that. Someone who would ride out his bullshit and see the good parts. Someone he could trust.

He and Ice were still getting to know each other. Getting to know somebody like that, the way he'd known Goose? That took a long time. But as soon as Ice said that, Maverick knew Ice was willing to wait. He would put in the work, if Maverick would let him.

Maverick felt a hot tear escape his lashes, travel down his cheek. It was getting dark, and Maverick didn't know how Ice saw it, but in a second he was pressing in close, and he was kissing Maverick's cheek, interrupting the path of the tear, literally kissing it away.

Maverick leaned into him.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, Ice, I'd like that."

They stood in the surf, silhouettes against the setting sun, silhouettes entwined.