FIC: True North (Top Gun, Iceman/Maverick, PG)

[carlyinrome]

TITLE: True North
RATING: PG
FANDOMS: Top Gun
PAIRINGS: Pete "Maverick" Mitchell/Tom "Iceman" Kazansky
SUMMARY: What Maverick learned was that to know where you're going, you have to know where you've been.

In flight school, before you're allowed to use any navigation equipment more advanced than a compass, you have to learn dead reckoning. Dead reckoning is the ability to tell where you are now by knowing where you started, how far you've flown, and how fast. Distance equals speed multiplied by time. There's more to it than that—hell, there always is—but what Maverick learned was that to know where you're going, you have to know where you've been.

***

They are in San Diego. It's October, and Maverick has forgotten that, in this part of the country, it hasn't gotten cold yet. In Fallon, where they've been since the end of '95, it will snow next week.

It is October 2011, and it is six a.m. on a Friday. Maverick is sitting up in the too big hotel bed with the sheets that smell like bleach, and he is watching dawn break on the horizon. Ice is still asleep behind him, his long, steady sleep breaths the same tempo as the early morning ocean tide lapping up on the beach outside.

In eight hours, Maverick is going to marry him.

Maybe that's why he can't sleep. Nerves, excitement, maybe. It doesn't matter to Maverick the same way it matters to Ice. He knows that. Love is love, and their love is true north. What's a piece of paper to the force that draws the compass needle?

Ice gave him a compass for their tenth anniversary. It's on Maverick's bedside table at home, propped up against the alarm clock, when it's not in his pocket or clipped to his flight suit. There's an inscription inside the front cover: Every road leads to you.

Maverick understood. All his roads lead to Ice, like they were drawn by a force stronger than gravity, like they were drawn by the Fates before Maverick took his first breath. He tries to think of when he first saw it.

It wasn't at TOPGUN the first time. God could have smacked him in the face then, and he wouldn't have noticed. He's grown a lot since then. Grown wiser and more patient. At TOPGUN, flying for the trophy against Iceman Kazansky, he could barely see past himself.

It wasn't the first year after Ice had come back to TOPGUN to teach, confined to a wheelchair for months after being wounded in combat. The first year was fun and hard and both inevitable and unexpected, but it wasn't definable yet.

The sun is starting to show her face, startlingly orange against the deep blue of the Pacific Ocean. Maverick averts his eyes to keep the worst of the glare out of them, and catches Ice's reflection in the window glass. He's still asleep, face placid and beautiful and as familiar to Maverick as his own.

By the end of their first year, Ice started waking Maverick when he had a nightmare, and that was a fix Maverick hadn't expected, but he recognized it when he saw it. Ice still does it, though the nightmares are much fewer now.

It was almost another year before either of them had said, "I love you," and Maverick yelled it in a tense moment, and then he felt everything shift.

The next sixteen years never seemed short, but sitting on this end of them, they feel like the blink of an eye. He woke up one morning 51 years old with a partner and a legacy and the President on TV telling them they didn't have to hide anymore. And in eight hours, they're going to stand in front of everyone who loves them and promise to always follow the road back to each other.

Maverick's doing this to make Ice happy. He knows there's not a force in the universe strong enough to tear Ice away from him, but he'd walk backwards into hell to see that smile.

Maverick feels something brush his leg, and he looks back to see Ice reaching out to find him. He's still asleep, but he's searching for him.

Maverick knows where north is. He knows where he's been, and he knows where he's going. Now he turns from the window and crawls back in bed with his true north, and he kisses him awake.