FIC: The Fulcrum (Top Gun, Iceman/Maverick, PG-13)

[carlyinrome]

TITLE: The Fulcrum
RATING: PG-13
FANDOMS: Top Gun
PAIRINGS: Pete "Maverick" Mitchell/Tom "Iceman" Kazansky
SUMMARY: “You need to wake up because I can’t do this without you.”

“I’m going to stay home,” Ice said.

Maverick was adjusting his uniform using the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, and he looked over his shoulder at Ice, who was still in bed at 7:45 on a workday.

“Nope,” Maverick said cheerfully. “I’ve got shit with the brass all day today; I cannot be short another instructor.”

Ice sighed, but he didn’t get up. “I feel like shit.”

“You’re probably hungover.”

“I didn’t have anything to drink last night. That was you.”

“Oh, yeah.” Maverick came over to the bed, sat on the edge of the mattress. Ice sat up to regard him, sleep-creased and bleary-eyed. Maverick held the back of his hand to Ice’s forehead, reflected briefly how surreal it was to be at a point in his life where that was a normal thing to do to Thomas “Iceman” Kazansky, once his rival, then the object of an atomic bomb intensity sexual affair, then his partner, now … now, the goddamn fulcrum on which Maverick’s life rested.

“No fever,” he said. “Get up.”

Ice grumbled, but he obeyed.

***

Maverick was two hours into a four hour meeting when one of the Top Gun students burst into his office. His initial reaction was anger, and a brief look at the officers gathered around the conference table confirmed that he wasn’t the only one, but then he saw the look on the kid’s face. He looked scared.

“Commander Mitchell,” he said, “I’m sorry. Commander Lee told me to come get you. She said it’s an emergency. They took Commander Kazansky to the infirmary.”

Maverick excused himself, and he ran through the halls of NAWDC until he reached the infirmary. Jubilee was there, but Ice wasn’t.

Her arms were crossed over her chest; it looked like every muscle in her body was tense.

“They took him to the hospital, Mav,” she said. “They couldn’t get a pupillary response.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Maverick said. “What does that mean?”

She sighed. “It means he needs a hospital. Come on. I’ll drive you.”

“No, stay here. I can do it.”

“Yeah, then there’ll be two of you in the hospital. I called off classes for today. Get in the damn car.”

***

Ice was already in surgery by the time they got to the hospital. He and Maverick had only been married two years, since DADT was repealed, and they’d had to go to California to do it. Same sex marriage still wasn’t legal in Nevada, but that little piece of paper from the courthouse in San Diego was enough to get Maverick an audience with Ice’s doctor, and Maverick kicked himself for every single argument he had against getting married. He’d done it to make Ice happy, and if he hadn’t …

The doctor said a lot of words Maverick didn’t know the definitions to, but that scared him in a deep, primal way. Ischemia, thrombosis, infarction. Maverick asked for numbers. Tell me the odds.

“We’re hopeful,” was all the doctor would say, and then he was called away.

Jubilee put her hand on his arm, and they waited together in the scratchy upholstered chairs outside surgery recovery. It felt like hours, but in reality only about forty minutes passed before a man in scrubs, a mask hanging down around his neck, head covered, came out and called Ice’s name. He put emphasis on the wrong syllable, and Maverick’s heart sank, because he knew that meant Ice wasn’t awake and coherent enough to tell the man his name himself.

“We removed the blockage,” the surgeon said, “but he’s still only giving us limited response. He’s not conscious.”

“Well, how long until he wakes up?”

“Maverick,” Jubilee said quietly. She was behind him, her hands on his arms. She sounded like she was crying, and so Maverick didn’t look back to look at her, because he couldn’t see that right now. “Maverick, he’s saying he might not wake up.”

Maverick didn’t believe her. The doctor said, “She’s right. I’m sorry,” and Maverick still didn’t believe it.

***

Visiting hours ended hours ago, and Maverick sent Jubilee home, but those rules weren’t for him. They had shaved several inches of Ice’s hair off his right temple and up to the top of his head for the surgery, and Maverick kept thinking about how pissed Ice was gonna be when he woke up and saw his uneven hairline.

“It’ll grow back,” Maverick said, “and it’ll cover the scars.”

Ice looked like he was sleeping. He had fallen, Jubilee had said, right in front of the class he was teaching, just fell, out of nowhere fell, and there was a bruise on his cheek from hitting his desk on the way down, but Ice had had bruises before. Maverick had slept beside him almost every night for the last twenty years, and he’d seen him a lot of ways, including just like this, bruised and stitched up.

Maverick closed his eyes. He listened to Ice breathing. It was the soundtrack to his nights, and he knew the rhythm better than he knew his own heartbeat. He put his head in his hands, scrubbed his brow. Exhaled slowly. Opened his eyes, looked at Ice’s still visage, put his hands on Ice’s arm, feeling the familiar smooth texture of his skin, his familiar warmth. He ran hot. How fucking ridiculous, that the Iceman ran hot.

How fucking ridiculous, every part of this. Ischemia and wedding bands and a mortgage and praying, praying to a God he wasn’t sure he believed in that Ice would just open his eyes and tell him everything was going to be okay.

It felt like the world had stopped. Ice wasn’t dead. He was warm and he was breathing, and Maverick could look up at the heart monitor hooked up to him and see the spikes of his pulse printed out on the black and green screen.

“Dear God,” he said, and then stopped. He looked at Ice, the familiar shape of his features. He’d know him blind. He would never forget an angle or an expression or a freckle or a scar. He knew Ice’s face better than he knew his own. He was Maverick’s reflection, the reflection in the mirror when Maverick held the glass up to his life.

“Tom,” he said, “Tom, you need to wake up, because I can’t do this without you.”

***

Maverick sat by Ice’s bed for two days, almost without moving. Jubilee came and brought food, offered to sit with Ice so Maverick could stretch his legs or get some sleep, offers he summarily rejected. The morning after Ice’s surgery, after Maverick’s first unsleeping night, he’d thought to call Ice’s sister and let her know what was going on, and by that same afternoon she was there, harassing the doctors for updates and doing everything she could to keep Maverick comfortable. Sasha had held Ice in her arms on the day he was born, and she was swallowing everything she felt and comforting Maverick. After Goose died, Maverick had never expected to have a family again, but he’d gotten one, because of Ice. He had made Ice his family, and in turn, Ice’s family had come to love Maverick the same way they loved Ice.

Visiting hours were over again, and the girls had gone. Maverick sat alone in the chair at Ice’s bedside, the lights out, the room dark except for the small light above Ice’s head, and the lights of the monitors. Maverick was halfway between sleep and waking when he heard, in a soft rasp, “Maverick?”

Maverick startled so severely that he dumped himself out of his chair. He scrambled to his feet, grabbed Ice’s hand. Ice was blinking up at him, his pale eyes almost glowing in the dim light, and his brow furrowed.

“Mav?” he said.

Maverick threw his arms around Ice’s neck, then remembered Ice was hurt, and drew back, touched him with timid hands.

“Shit, man, are you okay? I—fuck, I gotta get the doctor.”

Maverick was about to run into the hall and start screaming for help, but Ice grabbed his wrist. His grip was weak, but it was enough that Maverick stopped. Ice pressed the Call button on the remote tethered to his bed, and then he looked up at Maverick.

“I’ve been dreaming about you,” he said, and smiled.