FIC: Benediction (Top Gun, Iceman/Maverick, PG-13)
TITLE: Benediction
RATING: PG-13
FANDOMS: Top Gun
PAIRINGS: Pete "Maverick" Mitchell/Tom "Iceman" Kazansky
SUMMARY: It is 0200 hours, four hours before Ice has to be at the airport for his transport back to the Gulf. “Stay,” Maverick whispers.
It is 0200 hours, four hours before Ice has to be at the airport for his transport back to the Gulf. Maverick slept a little, and woke from a nightmare of Ice’s plane shot down over the ocean to find Ice awake, sitting up in bed beside him. He’s looking out the window, the full moon filtering in between the slats of the blinds lighting him oddly, making his honey brown skin look silver, his pale eyes glint like a wild animal’s. He feels Maverick stirring and looks over, and Maverick has a wild, irrational thought: Maybe they woke up from the same dream.
“Hey,” Ice says. “Can’t sleep?”
“You either,” Maverick says, and sits up. “Were you dreaming?”
Ice frowns. “What?”
“Nothing.”
Ice scrubs a hand over his face, and turns toward Maverick, angling his body down and pushing his head against Maverick’s shoulder until Maverick clues in and puts an arm around him. Ice snuggles against him, toying absently with Maverick’s dog tags. In Maverick’s dream, Ice’s parachute tangled around him in the water, and he sank.
“Stay,” Maverick whispers.
“Four hours,” Ice says.
“No,” Maverick says, stronger this time, “stay.”
Ice takes in a long breath, releases it slowly. “I can’t. I have orders.”
“Request a transfer.”
“You request a transfer,” Ice says. “Come with me. We can bunk together. We can fly together. You love flying with me, Mav. It’s almost as good as sex with me, right?” He grins. “Almost.”
Maverick doesn’t say anything, so Ice continues, the grin dropping off his face. “Unless, of course, you love your job, and it’s a huge part of your identity, and you don’t want to leave it for someone who wouldn’t do the same for you.”
Maverick swallows thickly, frowns. Ice nods, his plush mouth thinning into a harsh line. “That’s what I thought.”
For a while, they don’t talk. Maverick runs his hand down Ice’s back, his fingertips dipping into the little valleys between his vertebrae.
“Be careful,” Maverick says.
“Hmm?”
“Out there. In the Gulf. Be careful.”
“I am, Maverick.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I.”
Maverick looks down at Ice’s placid, beautiful face, the planes of it as familiar as the one he sees in the mirror.
“I had a dream you were shot down,” Maverick says softly.
“Never happen,” Ice says, whip quick, like he knew what Maverick was going to say before he did.
“It happens.”
“Not to me.”
Maverick has the distinct feeling that he should drop this, but he bulldozes past it. “Why not? Because you’re the damn Top Gun? That was a decade ago.”
“I’ve only gotten better,” Ice says smoothly.
“Ace pilots get shot out of the sky every day.”
“Stop it,” Ice says sharply, and Maverick can’t decide if he sounds angry or scared, but he stops.
Instead of talking, Maverick pulls Ice closer, and presses a kiss to his forehead. A benediction, a prayer: Please, God, let him come home to me.