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"What the fuck? Ice?"
Tom "Iceman" Kazansky jumps out of his seat with a yelp that would lose him that name in two seconds flat. There was nothing ice-cold about it, and the way he tripped over the leg of his chair and ended up on the floor was definitely a mistake. He breathes in sharp, panting gasps as he looks up at the man now crouched over him.
"How did you get in here?" he hisses.
The man, an older fella with black hair just starting to gray at the roots, green eyes, and an amused smile, reaches out to ruffle Tom's hair. "Apparating? I guess. I don't know what they call it. Whatever. I say this with all fondness, but you're a damn baby, Tom. What year is it?"
Ice can't even comprehend the question. This guy knows his name—both his names—and Ice can't recall ever meeting him at all. Why the hell did he ruffle his hair like that? Like they were... friends?
"Am I fucking hallucinating?"
"You wound me, Ice, really," the man chirps. "Seriously, what year is it?"
All he can do for far too long is work his jaw until he manages to croak out a whisper of, "1980."
The man makes a face before grinning again. "Well, no wonder you're all baby-faced and shit. In my day, you were the COMPACFLT and all your blond hairs had gone gray. A tragedy, really. You thought those frosted tips were so cool for the longest time."
The COMPACFLT?
Tom?
The fuck?
"You've gotta be, what, maybe a couple months from graduating from the academy? Damn."
"What...? How do you know that?"
The smile fades a bit, finally, and the stranger offers Tom his hand. "Sorry. I promise I'm not trying to freak you out. My name is Pete Mitchell, but you can call me Maverick. It's about six years too early for us to meet, but it's a pleasure all the same." The man's, Maverick's, expression softens on him, a mixture of sad and earnest that twists Ice's heart a little. "It's really good to see you again, Tom."
The sinking feeling that he's dead in the future this man knows hits him like a truck. He wouldn't believe this guy for a second normally, but the door of his dorm is closed and the windows are locked. It's fucking nuts, but he believes it.
"I'm dead where you come from," Tom says.
Maverick winces, but he doesn't pull his hand back. "Forgot how fucking blunt you are, but yeah. Do me a favor and quit smoking. Those things will literally kill you."
Ice's eyes go wide. Maybe six people here at the academy know he smokes, and some old stranger certainly wouldn't be one of them. He swallows hard. "Uh.... Okay?"
"Damn. I'm probably still scaring the shit out of you, huh?" Maverick muses, wiggling the fingers of his hand until Tom finally jitters himself hard enough to recover his bodily functions to get up and shake it. "Before you ask, no, I don't know how I got here, and, no, I don't know how I'm supposed to get back." He touches the corner of the desk and makes a noise. "Or if my physical body is right where it should be and my... spirit, or whatever, is here, because I can pass through that shit no problem if I want."
"So, you're... a ghost? From the future?"
Maverick shrugs. "I guess. We'll call it that. I don't think I'm dead, though, so does it really count?"
Ice's brow furrows. "How can you tell?"
After of moment of deliberation, Mav feels around on his wrists and neck. "I have a heartbeat. And I'm warm. Aren't those signs of being...? I don't know? Alive? I wonder what's going on with my physical body right now."
"Can I...?" Ice trails off, unsure how to phrase a request to touch a damn ghost/spirit/whatever-the-fuck.
"Sure," Maverick answers, easy as that. Trusting.
Ice pokes him in the shoulder, finding it solid and only just then taking in the assortment of patches on his leather bomber. "That's a lot of patches."
"You don't know the half of it, Ice," Mav chuckles. "I had to keep the rest of 'em in a locker because I've got so many. I'm probably the most highly decorated captain in the history of fighter pilots."
"You still a captain and piloting at your age?"
Maverick gasps and presses a hand to his chest. "Calling me old, Kazansky? That's a hell of a way to treat your wingman."
Ice smiles despite the situation. Not many people care for his cold personality, but this guy clearly knows how to handle his straight-forward attitude and sharp speech. It's nice that Maverick isn't making this weird. It's nice to feel wanted. "I feel like if you'd been dealing with me as long as it sounds like you had, I called you a lot worse."
"You've got no idea."
"Not yet, anyway."
The older pilot claps Ice's shoulder with a smirk. "That's the spirit." He leans over the Ice's desk and flicks through a few pages of his textbook. "I recognize this book."
Ice glances at his watch with the reminder of his classes and blinks. "Shit. I've gotta get to class. Are you gonna tag along?"
"Sure. Why not? I've never been here before."
"Oh, yeah? Why's that?" Ice asks, grabbing his bag and stuffing his books inside. He grabs his fatigue jacket and slips his boots on in a hurry.
Maverick walks with him, keeping up with Ice's long legs with the ease of practice. "The Navy wouldn't let me into the academy because I'm Duke Mitchell's kid. They made up some scuttlebutt to cover up what they were doing across enemy lines, and it kinda ruined my life."
Ice slows to a stop. Duke Mitchell's kid? "I know that name."
"Everyone does," Maverick says agreeably. "Hurry up. We don't want to be late."
Rather than wasting time to ask questions he really doesn't have time for, Ice picks up his pace and heads for the lecture hall. He doesn't hear Maverick running behind him, but he must be—that, or floating. Once inside, his feet automatically head for a seat close to the front, but not right up in their instructor's face. Maverick peers around the room, arms crossing as another student walks right through him.
"That's gonna get old, quick."
Ice quickly realizes he can't open his mouth around Mav, or ese he'll look like a loony. Thankfully, Maverick seems to realize that, too, and he sits in the chair beside him. "So, if you didn't go to the academy, where are you right now? Younger you, I mean."
"Honestly?"
The way he says it makes Ice think he might regret asking. "Sure. Honestly."
"Probably getting the shit kicked out of me somewhere at school."
Ice looks up from his books, now spread perfectly on his small section of desk to have space to work and still leave room for another person to sit down on his other side if someone does show up. It's strange how protective he already feels over his new—sort of old—friend. Ice will go with retro. That works: his retro-friend. "What?"
"Duke Mitchell's kid, remember? A lot of people hate me. It's all old hat to me by now, but what can you do?"
Oh, Ice does not like how casual he is about that. "That's not okay, Mitchell."
"Aw, you do like me," Mav snickers, kicking back in his chair and tipping it on two legs. "In all fairness, once I made it out of the foster system, I built up quite the attitude. I'm sure I was asking for it at least some of the time."
Before Ice can respond, a familiar face joins him on his other side. "Heya, Ice."
"Hey, Cougar," Ice greets. He almost introduces Maverick before remembering that no one else can see him. "Did you have a late night again?"
"Late night. A few beers. Take your pick."
Mav laughs beside Ice. "Good ol' Cougar. We get stationed together on the Big E a few years from now. Nowadays, he's retired with three kids and... I think, two grandchildren."
Ice doesn't outwardly react to that, but he files the information away for later. "Sounds like both to me, Coug."
"Well, who can blame me?" Cougar grins, grinning that same crooked grin he wore the night he earned himself his callsign by mistaking a fifty-year-old for a younger chick. The woman was flattered, and it's not like Bill regretted it, but it was still funny as fuck.
Right as Ice might've answered, a metallic clang echoes through the room. The feet Mav had kicked up on the desk before are gone and he's on his ass on the floor now. He stares over the edge of the desk with wide eyes. The pain in his expression is immeasurable.
Ice follows his eyes to one Nick Bradshaw.
Goose stares at the collapsed chair in confusion. "I was going to ask how you balanced that chair on two legs, but I guess there's no point now. You're not usually one to screw around, though."
"Just wanted to see if I could," Ice says absently, still more focused on the look on Maverick's face.
"Ha!" Goose beams, leaning forward to clap Ice on the shoulder. "Man, you know what? That's a first. You sound like my little brother. He's always gettin' up to something. Just this morning when I called my fiancée, she said the little shit was home for spring break and tried to change the porch light by standing on a flimsy cardboard box. Broke his pinky when it buckled, but he did it!"
Ice can't help a chuckle. "He sounds like a hassle."
"Oh, he is, but he's just got this cheerful smile that makes it hard to stay mad at him for long and we just love him to death."
On the floor beside him, Maverick makes a choked noise. It takes everything in Ice not to turn when Maverick whispers, "He's talking about me."
"Say, Goose?" Ice starts. "This is the first I've heard of you having a brother. What's his name?"
Goose's expression flickers for a moment, the first sign of potential aggression Ice has ever witnessed on his face, but he recovers with a curling grin. "His name's Pete."
And just like that, any remaining doubts Ice might've had fly out the window. Goose, gentle and easy-going Goose, would clearly be glad to come to blows with him over his brother if he so much as looked at the kid wrong. Maverick sounds like he's on the verge of a breakdown and there's not a damn thing Ice can do about it without getting locked up in the loony bin.
"I bet he's a good kid," Ice answers, a genuine smile on his lips.
"He's the best," Goose agrees, relaxing and climbing over the table to sit beside him.
He sets the collapsed chair back up, giving Ice his first good look at Maverick since he tipped it over in the first place. Mav stands over Goose's shoulder, a watery smile on his face and silent tears falling down his cheeks. Ice knows he lost Goose early by that look alone, and it's a much older hurt than Ice's death. Ice's death was like a sad thought, something he hadn't had time to process. Maverick didn't have time to miss him, yet.
But he's smiling.
Ice figures that means, no matter how shocking this unfortunate meeting, he found peace with whatever happened.
Maverick reaches out, carding a ghostly hand through Nick's hair. Goose's eyes flutter closed and a long exhale leaves his chest. Ice can't imagine all the feeling threaded into that single touch. Mav could touch him, truly touch him, if he wanted, but it'd freak Goose out. How long has it been since Mav saw him?
"Miss you, buddy," Mav murmurs.
Goose blinks his eyes open and starts pulling his books out, slow and distracted. "Think I'm gonna have to call home after class. I just got the weirdest feeling."
Ice doesn't correct him. "I'm sure Pete would appreciate that."
Maverick spends the rest of the class sitting cross-legged on the desk between Goose and Ice's books, craning his head to see their notes, cracking jokes at the instructor's expense, and pointing out familiar faces in the crowd. Ice tries not to get distracted by all the information pouring in. Mav may not have attended the academy, but he knows faces. He knows names. He remembers everybody he ever met.
Especially the people who were assholes.
Ice can't say he's too fond of the commentary whenever Mav casually throws out, "Oh, hey, that was another one of those fuckers who beat the shit out of me in flight school."
Even as old as he is, Mav, apparently, has boundless energy. He fidgets and jabbers and snickers when he pushes Ice's pen around the page a bit, because he knows Ice can't do shit about it. Goose had a point about him being hard to stay angry at, though. He just looks so happy to see them both and be around them.
Then, Ice isn't sure how the topic of the class changes, but someone brings up ejections for upcoming exams and Maverick bolts toward the front of the room. He makes it in a flash of brown leather and disappears behind the projector screen, and Ice hears the faint sound of chalk tapping against the chalkboard behind it. Without warning, the blank projector screen rolls up into its case, revealing a scrawl of math and an explanation of intense yaw from a flat spin creating a low-pressure zone above the cockpit of an F-14. 'Delay ejection for canopy tear-away' is underlined three separate times with seven exclamation points.
The instructor blinks at the information, then turns to the class. "Must have been left by another instructor. Write it down anyway."
Ice stares up at Mav for a long moment when he settles down on top of their desk again, then dutifully writes it all down in his notes. If Mav wanted to share what that was all about, he would. As it stands, Ice chooses to trust him on it.
After all, who knows how many people Maverick saved with that one lesson?