icemav + stroking their leg
send me a pairing and a number! A/N: fem!mav x ice who is definitely in love with her and should probably wife her up already, but is too stupid to do so. when is this set? vaguely in the 90s. but what about women in combat? idc.
He comes to, and everything is sore. His head, his body, his teeth. Every nerve is screaming to make it all stop. He furrows his brow, willing the ringing in his ears away, and then—
Something else that doesn’t hurt.
A hand, gentle on his leg. Right below his knee, a thumb stroking his calf through a thin blanket.
He tries to open his mouth, but all that comes out is a moan.
The thumb stops.
“Hey! Hey,” the thumb’s person says. A woman. Soft voice, barely above a whisper. “Are you awake?”
He tells his eyes to open, but they stage a revolt against him. The world is blindingly bright, and he can’t make heads or tails of where he is before that gentle hand is back on his forehead, brushing his eyes shut.
“Take it easy,” the woman chides, amused. “Don’t overdo it.”
“Mmmph,” he responds.
“I thought I was supposed to be the reckless one between us,” she says. He reaches out for her hand, but his arms are jelly. They don’t even make it to the edge of his bed.
The woman sees it, because she takes his hand in hers and laces their fingers together. He lets out a sigh of relief, sagging into the bed. She must like that, since she uses her free hand to brush the hair from his forehead, gently combing through the sweat-gel-blood combination that’s gunking it up.
“Are you awake?” she asks again.
One more try. He tells his mouth to get it the fuck together and reply to her with words.
“Mav,” he croaks out.
The woman—Mav, because of course it’s Maverick, who else would it have been—sobs, and her hands tense in his hair and his hand. He squeezes back.
“Mav,” he says again. His body is finally coming online.
“Yeah, Ice, it’s me,” Mav whispers. “What the fuck were you thinking?”
He coughs, and Mav supports his body as the coughs wrack their way through his ribs.
“Ice?” Mav asks.
He hates himself in that moment.
Maverick sounds scared, and small.
He blinks, once, twice, and his eyes open. The first thing he looks for is Maverick, standing to his right, on his wing like she always is.
She looks terrible. Her hair is tangled and falling out of the remnants of a ponytail that may have once been a bun. There are tear tracks on her cheeks, and her eyes are puffy and red. He’s never seen her like this. Even in the days after Goose died, Maverick had never been so disheveled. Maybe she had, but she didn’t let him see it.
“Maverick,” he says and reaches up to swipe the tears away. “Why are you crying?”
She laughs, but it’s wet and sad. The breath shudders out of her chest. “Because of you, you dumb fucker,” she cries. She pushes her cheek into his palm and holds his hand there. He’s happy to let her, brushing the tears as they fall.
“I’m okay,” he tells her. “I’m okay.”
“Shut the fuck up. I’ll tell you whether you’re okay or not,” she orders furiously. He smiles, but that only earns him another glare.
“Sprained ribs. Shattered leg. Concussion,” she lists off. “Ice, they might not let you back up in the air after this. What the hell were you—”
“I needed you safe,” he cuts in, because it’s the truth. “I wasn’t going to let you go down like that.”
“Oh, so it’s okay for you to take a hit, but I can’t? Do you realize how stupid that sounds? You said wingmen, Kazansky, so fucking mean it!”
And this is a Maverick he knows, a Maverick he is familiar with. This is the Maverick he met in Miramar years ago, who got up into his face after flagrantly breaking the rules, covered in sweat with jet fuel running through her veins.
He squeezes the hand he’s still holding and tugs her forward until their faces are close, until he can feel her angry little puffs of breath against his lips.
“I did it because I had to, Mav. I couldn’t watch you fall out of the sky and do nothing,” he confesses. “I hated it the first time. I never want to see it again.”
“Ice,” she sighs. She rubs at his brow with her thumb, then presses her forehead against his.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“But not sorry enough that you wouldn’t do it again.”
“No. Not that sorry.”
“Tell you what, Iceman. You and me? We should just agree to not eject ever again. No more ejections, for either of us. Then we don’t have to argue about who has to take what hit. Deal?” She’s crying when she says it, but she’s smiling enough that he knows he’s forgiven.
“Deal,” he says. It’s the easiest promise he’s ever made. He’d agree to just about anything as long as it’s Mav asking him.
Mav hooks her foot around the leg of her chair and drags it across the floor, until it’s up against his bed. She drops into it unceremoniously, still holding his hand.
“Go back to sleep, flyboy,” she teases, but she says it the way that someone else might say lover. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
“Promise?”
She leans in and kisses his forehead. “Promise.”