Eight reviews!!!!! I'm really excited :D You guys are the greatest.
And Bluestar1 gave me an idea, soooo, the map: It has spoilers, though, so don't read it till after this chapter or something... :)
its-all-a-secret . deviantart . com /art/ Without-Restrictions-Spoilers - 144439561
Enjoy!
EDIT
As reikoraza pointed out, I had a huuuuuge mistake in this chapter. I copy/paste stuff from my google docs onto a word doc and then upload here... and totally messed up and copied in half of another chapter. My mistake.. I found that yesterday and was just... yeah. Quite embarrassing. But it's fixed now! And thanks to reikoraza for pointing it out :D
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
It was, in all honesty, a very weak excuse to have a party. The school had been given a new plane, to replace one with a broken engine; Sundown and Merlin had somehow managed to talk Jester into letting them borrow his house to throw a party. Hollywood half suspected it was just a gimmick to rise morale in general. It had been painfully low as of late, mostly because of how Goose's death weighed heavily on everyone's shoulders, an unwelcome reminder of their own mortality. And, individually, moods were apathetic at best. Maverick was mourning Goose, Iceman was sulking about something, Slider was tense and Merlin was edgy, Hollywood himself was short-tempered, but he supposed that was just the stress of trying to keep Wolf from falling apart. It wasn't an easy task, considering how he'd missed the doomed relationship that had led up to it.
Hollywood had been wondering how to ask Wolf if he was going; doubtlessly, Wolf was going to ask whose idea it was. Stressing about it had almost lost him the dogfight, and he decided to get it over with before even reaching the ground. Hollywood tried to plan how to avoid it.
It was hard to focus; Wolf was humming, and it was pretty distracting.
"Hey, Wolf," Hollywood called over his shoulder, "goin' to the party tonight?" Wolf's absent-minded humming ceased.
"What party?"
"Celebrating the new plane."
Wolf laughed at that. "Yeah, sure. Whose idea was that, anyways?"
"Uh…" Hollywood started easing the plane closer to the ground, "Sundown and someone or other."
"Well, sure" Wolf sounded cheerful, "sounds fun!"
Hollywood had to wonder how long he could dodge that bullet; probably as long as Wolf had kept the information from him, he figured. What really got to Hollywood was how he'd had no idea what Wolf had been going through, all that time. Every single day, he'd had no clue that something was wrong. Wolf had seemed perfectly happy, talking nonstop and humming in the mic's and becoming Hollywood's better half, but he'd had no idea. None at all. Going on that, Hollywood supposed Wolf didn't need to be protected like this, but all the same, Hollywood couldn't resist the instinct to keep Wolf from getting hurt. He couldn't do much, he knew that, but if he could dull the pain even a little, Hollywood was going to try.
Hollywood had very high hopes for the party, and so far, he wasn't disappointed. Tonight, it was far more likely Wolfman would die of laughter than a broken heart, and Hollywood wouldn't have it any other way. Seeing his RIO so broken was unbearable. Like the whole world had just shifted, into some surreal degree where it didn't belong.
"You can't have five aces! You just can't!" God, but Hollywood had missed the way laughter ran rampant through that southern drawl.
"Watch me!" Rio slammed down his hand- five aces- and snatched Wolf's meager collection of pen caps and coins.
"No way, man, that's cheating!" Sundown rolled his eyes, "if you're gonna cheat, at least do it in a subtle way."
"Good policy" Hollywood laid his cards face down on the small table, "is that why you keep winning?"
"I'm just sayin'," Sundown made a face at him, "that it's impossible to have five aces when we're using one deck, it's not exactly subtle."
The rest of the group was watching an action movie, while the four played poker at a little table in a corner of the room. It didn't escape Hollywood's notice that Wolf would glance over at the other half of the room, and he was completely aware when Wolf's expression suddenly went dark. Hollywood chanced a glance, and saw Merlin and Slider slipping past them, out to the back porch.
Hollywood could practically see what happened out there, just by looking at Wolf's face.
So it's him, then. Hollywood watched the way barely-concealed misery resurfaced, saw that Wolf hadn't been fine at all, all that time, Merlin was trying to make Wolf into Slider and couldn't. They're nothing alike. Wolf can't be even second best to someone so different.
"You okay?" he asked, as Sundown and Rio wandered away from the table, bickering about wins and losses and cheating. Wolf's gaze snapped over to him.
"Yeah."
"You lying to me?" Hollywood asked, and Wolf ducked his head.
"Yeah."
Hollywood was just thankful Wolf was easy to distract. One mention of some weird card game he'd heard about, and Wolf was babbling about something he'd seen, not a card game, but a game with cards, he said, (hell if Hollywood understood what he meant by that) and then Wolf was sticking a card flat over his mouth and demonstrating, catching the ends between his teeth.
"And I'm supposed to do, uh, what?" Hollywood smirked. Sundown and Rio had since disappeared, to scream about the movie with the rest of the guys, leaving him and Wolf alone in their corner. Wolf let the card flutter to the table.
"See, you kinda bite the edges and the card stays on your mouth, and then you have to pass it to the next person! My friend played it in college with this girl, and- " Wolf flushed a light scarlet, "well, yeah, it was a cool game." It was damn cute, really, how coy he could be. His gaze flickered over to the other half of the room for a moment, then back to Hollywood's face, like he could pretend he'd never been looking at all.
"Show me that again?" Hollywood asked, and Wolf obliged, grinning. Hollywood went to take the card from him, and he couldn't say for sure if it was intentionally or a sweet coincidence, but the card fell and his lips met Wolf's instead.
Hollywood knew it was going to shatter his already crystal-fragile balancing act, but- but he'd do anything to help Wolf forget. He couldn't bring himself to care that he was only confusing himself further, only making everything more tangled and harder to figure out, but all he could think about was how Wolf hadn't been himself since the argument with Merlin. How maybe, in all the time Hollywood had known his RIO, maybe Wolf had never been entirely himself.
But in that moment it felt like, maybe for the first time, Wolf wasn't thinking about Merlin.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Maverick was looking for Iceman.
Twenty minutes ago, he'd been wandering around the school, hoping he would, by chance, run into Iceman, but had since given up the pretense and could admit to himself that, yes, he was in fact actively searching for Ice. He chose yet another hallway, peeked in all the classrooms. Ice was nowhere. He'd disappeared after the dogfight; Ice had won, but the maneuvers weren't made with his usual calculated precision, and Maverick was finally starting to admit to himself that he was worried.
He pulled open the door to the locker room, stuck his head inside. Maverick had a short battle with his conscience, and slipped inside the doorway, tiptoeing past the back of the lockers until he could crouch down behind a laundry basket.
"Back the fuck off, Slider." Maverick recognized Ice's tone. He knew what a mistake it was to ignore its warning.
"Ice." Slider tried again, as Maverick heard the locker room door wrenched open, "why's he killing you like this?"
Maverick felt ice start to steal across his heart at those words.
"He doesn't know" Iceman said quietly, "he doesn't know."
The door slammed shut, and the echo resonated before sinking into silence.
Xxxxxxxxx
"Now that's what I call genius." Sundown stood in the middle of the rec room, watching Rio teeter atop a small ladder, affixing a pulley to the ceiling.
"That's what I call overkill." Hollywood flopped down on the couch, looking up at Rio. "Why the hell are you tying the remote to that contraption?"
"You'll see. It's Superbowl season, man. Desperate times and all that…" Rio clamped the screwdriver between his teeth as he fixed the string on the pulley. "'is way we can keep th' r'mote away throm th'm."
"So we can keep the remote away from them," came Sundown's translation, "you see, hockey's on at the same time. And if we keep the remote away, you hockey maniacs can't get it away from us."
"It's sheer brilliance." Rio hopped down, nearly knocking the stepladder down as he did so, "watch this." He knotted the string around the TV remote, and set it on the table, "go ahead, Sundown." Sundown obliged, yanking on the other end of the string. The remote shot up to the ceiling.
"Y'all're gonna smash that thing against the ceiling." Wolf strolled across the room and settled himself in Hollywood's lap like he owned it. "Can ya? It'd be cool to watch."
"No." Rio was pouting, wiggling the string to get it uncaught from the pulley, "It's to save the remote so the not-football-watchers can't get at it."
"Very… thorough." Wolf had sprawled across Hollywood's lap, and had tilted the brim of his hat up to see the pulley on the ceiling. "Can't just hide it, can ya?"
"Hiding is for amateurs" Rio scoffed, grabbing the leashed remote and throwing himself into an armchair. The motion was pointless, however; as soon as he turned on the game, a touchdown was scored and Rio and Sundown had both jumped up cheering. Hollywood was rather pleased to see that Wolf didn't join them as he usually would, just stayed settled where he was, leaning back against Hollywood's chest. Hollywood rested his chin on Wolf's shoulder and said absolutely nothing. There was plenty he knew he should say- should ask where they were supposed to go from here, ask whether Merlin was still Wolf's end-all-be-all, ask to have what he couldn't admit to wanting. He could practically still taste Wolf on his lips.
Hollywood knew he was in more of a mess than before; the only thing he wanted was another kiss from Wolfman.
Even though Wolf had restricted himself to the one man who would never want him back.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Maverick was starting to get used to the calm, sunlit mornings. He always woke up first, but it was increasingly easier to convince himself to stay. What if he makes breakfast later? He can cook better than I can. And what if I wanted to take a shower before I leave and ran out of shampoo? I don't know where the new bottle is. What if I left and realized I'd forgotten something? Then he wouldn't let me back in, Maverick let his thoughts meander in the quiet morning, What if he needs me? He trailed his fingertip over Ice's arm, if he did, I would want to be here. It wasn't going to happen, he knew it, but it was a convincing thought. Even if Ice never showed any sign of need, or about any other emotion, Maverick knew he felt it.
After all, the evidence was right there on Ice's wrists.
Maverick knew that, despite all other reasons, that was why he stayed.
Maverick twisted around in Ice's loose embrace, turning his face into Ice's chest. Ice's words were still resonating in his mind, had been since the previous day. It wasn't what Maverick had expected to find haunting his thoughts. That Ice was plagued with guilt for killing Goose- Maverick couldn't blame him. He could blame the entire world, had already blamed himself, and the fate that had placed them in the air at that exact moment in time, but he couldn't focus any blame on Ice.
He doesn't know, Ice had said, he doesn't know.
Maverick hated that he'd hurt Ice so much. That Ice wouldn't-couldn't- tell him. He didn't want to dwell on it- not about what had happened, what he'd done, why he cared so deeply- Maverick just couldn't. He snuggled closer to Ice, holding on tight.
"You're more reliable than an alarm clock," Ice mumbled, waking slowly, "lemme guess. Seven-thirty?"
"How'd you know?"
"I think the earth would crash out of orbit if you woke up one minute before or after it." He ran a hand over Maverick's back slowly, "good thing, too."
"Yeah?"
"If it was six AM, you'd be sleepin' on the floor."
"Thanks."
"You're here, aren't you? Be grateful, it beats the floor, or bathtub, or whatever." Maverick could hear the smile in Ice's voice.
"You know even if I was sleeping in the bathtub, you'd wanna be there with me."
"So?"
"That's pathetic."
"You're really askin' to get kicked out of here." Ice nudged him, and Maverick laughed softly.
"Want me to say sorry and kiss it better?" Maverick pushed himself up on one elbow and pressed a kiss to Ice's lips, before curling back up against Ice's hard chest. "Now quit complaining."
"You're just a fountain of sympathy."
Maverick mumbled some sort of reply. "How can you be so warm?" Mav asked distantly, slipping one hand around Ice's back, skin warm against his palm. "It's funny that you're not all cold. Maybe you can't feel it 'cuz it's just your heart that's ice?"
That he could see so much fury in Ice's glare was alarming.
"That came out really, really wrong, you know…"
"Yeah, sure it did." Ice snapped, "Wouldn't say it if you didn't think it, Mav. That's all I am to you, isn't it?" He'd drawn away, glaring down at Maverick. Maverick grimaced.
"I meant... I didn't mean that. I didn't. You're not. It's not. It didn't. I didn't. I shouldn't have." He pushed Ice back down, straddling Ice's hips and looking down into those amber eyes, "I'm sorry." Maverick drew in a slow breath, "you're more than that to me."
"Yeah?" Ice's gaze was unforgiving, "Sure doesn't seem like it."
"You are. You're... to me, you're something you aren't to anyone else."
"What?"
Ice's gaze was unforgiving, hurt lurking behind the anger in those amber eyes, but it would take even longer for Maverick to forgive himself for what he'd said. Ice was right. Sometimes, Maverick couldn't help thinking of Ice, first and foremost, as a rival pilot. Restricted himself to think of Ice in those parameters, to keep whatever it was they had within the bounds of what he could handle.
It was a mistake, but it was one he kept making.
Maverick leaned down, pressed a soft kiss to Ice's lips, "You're Tom."
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Charlie considered herself an expert on Iceman's cologne. Or that of any of the pilots or RIO's, in fact. She'd spent enough time debriefing that she'd become familiar with it. Between all the individual meetings and lectures, she knew. Maverick's, she knew, was called Temptation. On date nights like tonight, normally, that scent would be there and make her swoon.
Iceman's was probably called Deep Night or Dominance or Ultimate or something rogue-sounding like that, but he wore it like it was called Arrogance. Admittedly, a nice scent. When welcome.
Tonight, it was not purely Temptation.
She could smell Ice on Maverick.
xxxxxxxxxxxx
Hope y'all liked that.
I would absolutely love it if you reviewed :)
Love ya,
Sunshine