FIC: i don't want to have to go where you don't follow (Top Gun, Iceman/Maverick, PG-13)

[carlyinrome]

TITLE: i don't want to have to go where you don't follow
RATING: PG-13
FANDOMS: Top Gun
PAIRINGS: Pete "Maverick" Mitchell/Tom "Iceman" Kazansky
SUMMARY: "I can time travel," Ice said dully. Written for Day 9 of Writer's Month 2019 for the prompt time travel.

It was Maverick’s night to pick tapes at the rental place, which is why they were watching Back to the Future on Ice’s couch.

He stuffed an enormous handful of popcorn into his mouth. “Hey, Ice, if you could time travel, would you go forwards, or backwards?”

Ice sighed. He ground his head back against the couch’s supple leather cushion.

“I can time travel,” he said dully.

Maverick didn’t look away from the screen. He laughed at something Marty said. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” Ice said, “but I can only go backwards, and I don’t get to pick the destination, or when I go, or where.”

Maverick caught his tone, dull and detached, and he paused the movie. Turned to him, gave him all his attention. Ice was still looking straight ahead, not at Maverick but also not at the television, and every muscle in his body looked tense. “What’s up, man?”

Ice took in a long breath through his nose, his mouth pinching. “Nothing.”

“Bullshit. Honesty, Tom, remember? It’s something we’re working on.”

Ice’s eyes lit on him for a moment. In the dark, with nothing but the illumination of the television lighting him, they shone radiant blue, almost glowing, a neon light burning in the dark alley of his current facial expression.

“I’m tired,” he said.

Maverick scooted in close, threaded his fingers through Ice’s hair, his palm curving around the back of his skull.

“I know, man, we’ve been grinding, and I know you’ve not been feeling great. Talk to me.”

Ice spoke slowly, carefully. “In therapy, Rachel tells me this is a process, and that … that I need to accept that I’ll have ups and downs and good days and bad days, but sometimes the bad days just stretch on and on, and it feels … it feels like it’s going to be forever.”

“But it won’t.”

“I know that. But what I know and what I feel—they don’t go together sometimes.”

“And you believe what you feel,” Maverick said.

“I hate that I do, but yes. Always.”

“Tell me about the time travel, Tom.”

Ice’s jaw clenched. Maverick petted his back. “Come on, man, you can talk to me. If it’s too much right now, we can—man, I don’t know, whatever you want. Whatever will help. You want to do some square breathing first?”

Ice shook his head. “No,” he said softly. “No, I’m okay.” He took a deep breath, and his jaw relaxed, and he looked at Maverick for the first time since they’d started the movie. “You know earlier, when—when you asked me to stop by the store on my way home from work, get your coffee, and I said—I said I forgot?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t. I’m sorry, that was a lie, but I—I went, but I left without buying anything.”

“Why?”

Ice shook his head. “It’s the stupidest fucking thing—”

“Tom. Talk to me, please.”

“Some dumb bagger kid drove a huge line of shopping carts into a display of Sunny Delight, and it just—it made this noise, the crash and all these heavy bottles falling to the floor, and I just … jumped. In time. All of a sudden it was 1991 and I was in the Gulf, on the Farragut, and … it was the night of the air raid. I wanted to go up, take the planes down, or at least … at least force them away from the ship, but my CO thought it was too dangerous, and he was probably right, but … all night, we just sat in the belly of the ship, listening to the bombs, feeling the ship rock, and somehow we got through it and I wasn’t—I wasn’t even hurt, Maverick, but I’ve never been so frightened in my whole life, not even when I was shot down, not even when I woke up in the hospital after and they told me I might not walk again, and I just … it was six years ago, but it was also four hours ago, Mav, as real as me and you talking right now.”

Ice looked at him, his expression raw, open, like he’d just given him a part of his body. Maverick could see the fear on his face, a very specific fear, the fear that Maverick was thinking, what the fuck, Ice, that’s insane. But he wasn't.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Maverick said, and he put his arms around Ice, and he pulled him close. Ice exhaled, his taut muscles loosening up as he let Maverick take his weight.

“You’re my anchor,” Ice murmured. “Without you, I’d drift away.”

“No, baby,” Maverick said, “you could do this on your own. You’re the strongest person I know. I’m just glad you’re letting me come along for the ride.”

Ice pulled back. Met his eyes.

“I love you, Mav.”

Maverick leaned in. Kissed him softly. “I love you, too, Ice. Time traveling and all.”

He leaned back into the couch cushions, pulling Ice down beside him. Ice nestled in close, Maverick’s arm around him, his head on Maverick’s shoulder. Maverick found the remote, and pressed play. The television buzzed back to life.

“Where would you go?” Ice asked after a while. “Forwards, or back?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Maverick said, “I’d go anywhere, as long as I got to go with you.”