Title: Belonging
Fandom: Top Gun
Pairing: Maverick/Iceman
Rating: NC-17, to be safe.
Word Count: 1260
Disclaimer: Clearly not mine. The movie would've had more smut and less McGillis if they were.
Summary: A decade or so on, Iceman and Maverick meet again.
***
Ice hasn't changed. Not in the slightest.
They met again when Maverick was 35, almost distinguished, a senior instructor there in Miramar. He teaches theory but mostly practice and all the students always think he's God or at least a minor deity. He's risen a rank. But Ice had made Commander by then.
It turned out Ice is two years his senior, but he still looks almost exactly the same. The hair is greying and there are a few more lines around the eyes but if he hadn't been briefed and found out he was coming up on 38, Mav wouldn't have been able to guess it. They shook hands rather than exchanging salutes. Then they retired to the office that had known two different commanding officers since Viper retired. It's Ice's now. He's taken command of Top Gun. They're working together again.
Three weeks later, he found out Ice was divorced. An Admiral's daughter, no less, three kids living in DC that he sees maybe twice a year. Mav has never married, hasn't had the heart to since Charlie left him. They'd been engaged for three years without ever setting a date so maybe that should've told him something, but he was still shocked when it happened. She moved out to DC and married some PhD with a double-barrelled surname Mav still can't pronounce. She works at the Pentagon these days. He doubts he'll ever see her again, but he doesn't see that it really matters.
Ice's hands are warm. In fact, the only part of him that resembles his callsign in any way is his hair, that bright ice-blonde that's greying these days - the rest of him is warm, through and through, warmer than Maverick, warmer than he ever thought he would be, running hot all the time to the point where Maverick has no idea how he manages to keep his cool the way he almost always does. He has respect for that and so he guesses he has respect for Ice, who won't go drink in the bars near the base, who refuses invitations to games of beach volleyball though he could thrash them all, who seems to lock himself away from the rest of the world at large. At first, Mav thought it was from some kind of odd conceit, the arrogance he remembers from their time training at the base all those years ago. Now he knows it's nothing like that; Mav can hang out with the guys all he likes and that's okay, that's accepted, but Ice is the CO. He's a role model. He knows he has to be untouchable.
But sometimes, he does let himself be touched.
They had dinner one night on base, leftovers from the canteen that they ate in Ice's office while they talked business. For the first time in months, eight months, since Ice had come back, the conversation wandered away from the base and from flying and the service, got personal once past their respective career retrospectives. Ice talked about his ex-wife with a strange sort of calm that Maverick should've expected from him, as he sipped from a glass of overly expensive single malt. Mav cracked a joke he doesn't remember, something probably vaguely dirty that he didn't exactly mean and just came out tasteless. Ice stared at him; something about that look or maybe the time that had passed made Maverick feel just fine about backing down and apologising, embarrassed for it and totally sincere. Ice told him it was fine, he knew what he meant. Then he rounded the desk and beckoned him to his feet.
The kiss was hard and rough and tasted like whiskey, unexpected but not unwelcome. He knew even then his lips would feel bruised in the morning.
They fucked leaning over Ice's desk, papers scattered, a glass spilled around his hands, Maverick's fatigues pulled down around his knees and his shirt pushed up over his back. Ice wasn't quiet and wasn't gentle but that was exactly what Maverick wanted; Ice's groans spoke volumes about how close he was to slipping out of that tight control, his hands gripping hard at Maverick's hips all the while as he buried himself in him. Mav pushed back against him, taunting him as he did so, the kind of fundamentally meaningless banter he knows pushes all of Ice's well-concealed buttons, and that just made him thrust into him deeper, harder, as expected. He was radiating heat. Mav felt like it would burn him up.
And then it was over. Ice came hard with a strangled moan then jerked Maverick off while he was still inside him, making him stand back against his still clothed chest so he could murmur a hundred filthy things by his ear, probably smirking in amusement all the time, while rough, hot fingers stroked insistently at his cock. He came with a shudder, on the desk, and made Ice laugh like it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen; he didn't get the joke but there's a lot about Ice that he doesn't get. He doubts he ever will. He's not sure that he'd want to.
He left soon after that, pulling Ice in for a rough kiss by the door and the way he responded, hands in Mav's hair, teeth tugging at his lip, gave him every reason to believe it would happen again. It has, so many times, off base and on - they've fucked in Ice's bed, Mav once blew him in his office, maybe more than once. But he's not kidding himself, he knows what this is. They're not lovers, they're not even friends; it's like scenes from every gay military porno he's ever seen all spliced together in a random order and titled Mav's Life. They might make out like they're teenagers, Mav's hand in Ice's boxers, maybe fuck in front of the TV some nights, Ice on all fours while Maverick pushes into him, complaining about his knees, the two of them getting off while watching Ultimate Fighting Championship or the NASCAR highlights. But that's all they do. They're nothing more.
He pulls on his uniform, one of the best. There's a class graduating today and he has to be there - he actually likes to be there, maybe because he missed his own Top Gun graduation. And Ice will be there, of course. They'll probably be sitting right next to each other up in front of the class, wearing too much clothing for the weather, and there'll probably be the traditional buffet and booze to follow. They might have a drink together, standing up very straight and sounding very official when they talk. Then they might go back to Mav's place and watch whatever sports might be on once they've changed out of their uniforms, talk about the graduating class or the time they were there together, rehashing that old argument about who exactly is or was the best until Ice leaves or they end it with a rough, breathless kiss.
Buttoning down his jacket now, readying himself for the day, he can't say how it will end. Ice might stay the night, he might be gone by morning, and it doesn't really matter which. They're not close, and sometimes Maverick thinks he's too old for this, these sorts of games, that he should put in for a transfer somewhere exotic or maybe just the Academy. But he knows he won't, and that isn't for Ice. He just belongs here.
But some part of him guesses that Ice does, too.