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“This is ridiculous,” Ice snapped, killing the car engine and ripping the key from the ignition. There were only so many times he could slam the horn before the neighbours filed a noise complaint. “I’m going in.”
“If he’s in the shower, scare him for me,” Slider said seriously.
“Will do.”
Ice was halfway up the front steps of Mav’s base housing when Slider opened the car door and called, “I’ll give you twenty if you drag him out by the ear!”
“You’re welcome to come drag him yourself,” Ice replied, retrieving the spare house key from the empty plant hanger. The days were long gone when Ice believed Mav when he said he was going to buy an actual plant for it.
“Nah, I’m good.” Slider closed the car door.
Rolling his eyes, Ice pushed his way into the foyer. Without bothering to close the door behind him, he marched down the hall, loud enough to both announce his presence and broadcast his irritability.
Ice had told Mav he would pick him up at four. Multiple times actually. Had even written it on a vivid yellow sticky note and stuck it to the fridge. It was quarter past now, they were supposed to arrive at Wolf and Wood’s place within the next twenty minutes.
The amount of traffic laws Ice was going to need to break in the name of punctuality was truly despicable.
The house was still and silent. There was no groan of plumbing that accompanied every shower taken on Naval property. No buzz of a record player, no crackle of a radio.
The kitchen and living room were empty leaving only the bedroom.
Ice burst through the door without knocking.
“Mitchell, if you’re asleep I swear to god-”
He froze.
The room was, in a word, ransacked. Dresser drawers, fully removed from the main frame, were emptied onto the floor, their contents seemingly rummaged through then abandoned. Even the wardrobe, home to Mav’s khakis and small collection of formal wear, had been gutted, doors left agape.
It took Ice a few frantic seconds to spot Maverick amongst the chaos, tucked away in the far corner of the room. His knees were pulled tightly to his chest, one hand buried and clenched in the dark tangle of his hair, the other digging deep crescents into his calf in a way that seemed absent minded. He was still dressed in his sleep shorts.
Ice was across the room before he even knew he was moving, dropping to his knees in front of the other man. Now that he was closer he could see the distance in Mav’s dull, empty eyes. He didn’t even blink, just stared blankly at nothing in particular.
Mav seemed completely oblivious to Ice all together.
The thought sent a sharp burst of panic through his chest, white hot and jarring. Without thinking he grabbed Mav’s shoulders with bruising severity and shook him. Mav’s head bounced against the wall as he jerked against the hold.
Ice barely had time to feel relief at the first sign of life he’d gotten out of his wingman before Maverick was scrambling past him with a manic urgency.
He stumbled across the veritable warzone that was his bedroom floor, careening into the door frame with a painful sounding thud as he fled the room.
“Mav- Pete, wait!” Ice gave chase.
When he caught up he found Mav hunched over the toilet. The sound of retching was loud against Ice’s horrified silence.
Mav’s convulsive dry heaving only lasted a few seconds before his body gave up. He collapsed limply against the toilet seat, face squishing against the white plastic. The eye not hidden in the crook of his elbow fixed Ice with a hard stare.
Their relationship was a new thing, still stumbling on trembling newborn legs. They had yet to connect the individual puzzle pieces of their lives into one cohesive picture. It was exciting and for the most part, it was fun. But there were things they didn’t share, there were still skeletons in closets yet to be introduced.
Judging by the fear and apprehension Ice could see twisting beneath the bright green veneer of defensive aggression, this was one of those skeletons.
This time he approached with caution.
Ice lowered himself to the floor slowly, keeping a distance between them. There was something wild about Maverick, something animalistic, that he did not wish to startle.
The tiles were cool and a little dirty, the chill permeating through the fabric of his pants. Ice wondered how cold Mav felt, bare legs pressed against the hard bathroom floor. The niggling worry that maybe he couldn’t feel it at all stuttered in the periphery of Ice’s mind.
“Can you hear me?” His question was hesitant. He was in uncharted territory. They both knew it.
Mav’s reply was muffled against his arm but it was a reply nonetheless. Ice let himself take a steadying breath. Steeling his nerves, he shuffled forward a few inches.
“Do you know what happened? Why you…” he trailed off but Mav seemed to understand him anyway. He gave a single, shallow nod. “Okay. That’s… That’s good, right?”
The single, judgemental eye was tracing his face critically, looking for something, analysing each micro-expression Ice wasn’t aware he was making. Ice held himself still. It felt like they were at some sort of precipice and Ice wasn’t sure which way was the right way to fall.
At the pace of something ancient and tired, Pete lifted his head from the toilet seat, pushing his body up and back to lean against the wall. His head lolled a little but his eyes were sharp with awareness. Ice savoured it, rattled by the realisation that it was something he may need to savour.
“I guess.” His wingman’s voice was cracked, like the remnants of a shattered mirror with just enough shards to recognise the person peering out of them.
“Is there anything I can do?”
“No.”
Ice pressed his lips together. Mav watched him with that same calculation.
“Well can you tell me what happened anyway?”
The answering sigh was heavy. Green disappeared behind drooping eyelids, dark lashes brushing against the sickly, purple bags beneath them. Ice wanted to reach out and touch, to sooth without stilted, fumbling words, but wasn’t he sure if it would be welcome just yet.
“Dysphoria. The bitch that keeps on giving.” Mav’s tone was rueful.
Dysphoria. The term rang some distant bell in Ice’s brain, then a second, then a third. The understanding dawning slowly on his face must have been starkly apparent, if the way Mav seemed to shrink self-consciously was anything to go by.
“Right,” Ice said simply.
“Sometimes it just,” Mav gestured vaguely, “explodes. Like a pressure cooker, y’know?” Ice didn’t really, but once he had started, Mav didn’t seem to be able to stop. “I can ignore it most of the time, if it’s even there at all, but it all just. Builds up. Gets too much for my brain to store, and once I’m there all it takes is the smallest little thing and boom. Fucking DEFCON 1. Mitchell’s gonna blow.” Mav flailed a hand in the space between them.
There was a steadily building fire in his voice, in his eyes. A sort of hatred. An acidic, self directed loathing.
“I- I don’t even know what happened this time though, Ice, I really don’t. I just woke up and my fucking skin was wrong, man, everything was- and nothing fit right and my- my-”
He broke off with a strangled gasp. With vicious staccato movements he raked his nails across his chest, across the pale scars wrapping along the underside of his pecs. Ice jerked forward in alarm, grabbing the other man’s wrists to quell his attempts to pry open his own rib cage with his bare, desperate fingers. The skin around the silvery tissue was already blooming with jagged red lines.
“Pete,” Ice snapped at him, voice sharpened by his own fear. His grip tightened instinctively as Mav fought against it. “Stop it. Just stop, please. Please.”
Mav’s cheeks were wet with anguish when he stilled, startled by the sincerity of Ice’s plea. Or maybe resigned to the fact his current condition left him woefully outclassed.
Ice bridged the final stretch of tile between them, wriggling closer in a way that must have looked ridiculous, making a point to keep the exit within Mav’s sight line. Slowly, he lowered Mav’s fisted hands into his lap, loosening his grip incrementally until he was sure Mav wouldn’t jump straight back into tearing at his chest.
He settled his hands on Mav’s shoulders with what he hoped was a grounding pressure.
Grounding.
The task of grounding Maverick Mitchell had never seemed more insurmountable.
“You back with me?” Ice hoped his voice wasn’t as unsteady as it felt leaving his constricted throat.
“Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Today has just been… off.” Mav scrubbed at his face harshly. He sniffled pitifully and seemed rather annoyed by it. “I don’t- I don’t know how else to explain it, I can’t-” he choked, shuddering beneath Ice’s hands.
“Woah, no, it’s okay,” Ice said quickly. “We’re all good, you don’t have to explain anything.”
“But I do!” Mav burst out, “I need you to- I want to tell you. You deserve to know because- fuck. Fuck!”
“Pete, hey, listen to me. Are you listening?” Mav nodded miserably. “You’re working yourself up. Take a breath. We can talk about this when you’re feeling better, and I promise I'll be all ears. Alright? How does that sound?” Ice moved his hand to thumb at the tears leaking from Mav’s big, wet eyes. “How does that sound?” he repeated.
Mav opened his mouth, brow drawn. After a long pause, he deflated, tension unraveling from his muscles in one system wide shut down. “Okay,” he whispered.
Ice pulled Mav forward. He went willingly, sinking into the somewhat awkward angle of the embrace and hiding his face in Ice’s neck. Ice pressed his cheek against the close cropped hair, hand clamped protectively around the back of his wingman’s neck. They were quiet for a while, content with the tangible presence of the other.
“We don’t have to go,” Ice murmured finally. “I can go give Slider the keys and we can just stay here. You and me. We still haven’t seen that movie you rented. Into the Future or whatever.”
Mav snorted wetly. “Back to the Future. And I-” he paused, weighing his words before he spoke them. “I want to go. That’s kind of the problem. I don’t want to hide away and be miserable, y’know? I’ve been doing that all day and it’s ass.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I'm sure.” Mav pulled away just enough to press a chaste kiss to Ice’s cheek. “Thanks though. I… you being here helped.”
Ice hummed, turning to meet Mav’s lips with his own.
Mav pressed against him fully, letting himself be supported. Trusting Ice to hold him together.
It was a slow, shallow kiss. Reassuring rather than exploring, mouths moving in rhythmic tandem, tasting the gentleness and giving it in return.
Slider chose that moment to intrude.
His heavy boots were audible against the wood floor, giving them both enough time to break apart and drag each other up onto unsteady feet.
Slider appeared in the doorway, brow scrunched in clear annoyance at how long they’d made him wait in the car. When he saw Maverick, tear stained face, dressed in nothing but crumpled basketball shorts, he gawked.
“What happened to you?” he demanded with absolutely no tact.
“I saw a photo of your mother,” Maverick snapped, rising to meet Slider where he was at. He pushed past the man and stomped back into his bedroom. “I’m getting dressed.” The catastrophe within was hidden as he slammed the door behind him.
Ice felt the strange and disturbing need to thank Slider for jumpstarting Maverick back to his regular, confrontational self. He didn’t. It would only give his RIO a bigger head.
Slider stared at the closed door for a drawn out moment, expression contemplative, before turning to Ice. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes,” Ice said automatically.
Slider crossed his arms, raising an unimpressed eyebrow. He seemed awfully concerned for a guy who loudly claimed his happiest memory was watching Mav eat shit falling off a skateboard.
“No, not really I guess. But he’ll be okay.” He would be. Ice would make sure of that.
His RIO made a vague noise of acknowledgement. “I’ll wait in the car,” he said, turning on his heel and walking back the way he came.
Ice watched him leave then ducked across the hall. He knocked once before sticking his head into Mav’s room. “It’s me. You need help?”
In the centre of the room, shorts changed out for his usual jeans, Mav was picking through the scattered clothes. He seemed to find what he was looking for, straightening up and pulling it over his head. The t-shirt was a little large on him, falling loosely around his hips, Billy Idol emblazoned on the front in stylised text. Ice recognised it immediately as his own.
“I’m good,” Mav said, smiling faintly, aware he had been caught. He didn’t offer any excuses as he slipped past Ice, hooking their fingers and tugging him down the hall. He snatched a sagging, zip up gym hoodie on his way past the coat rack. Shrugging it on, he seemed pleased by the way his whole body disappeared within its folds.
Slider was waiting in the car as promised, but Ice was sincerely surprised to see he had taken up residence in the backseat. So was Mav.
“If this is some pity thing-” he began heatedly as he threw himself into the front passenger seat.
“The last thing I feel for you is pity, you pocket sized shit head,” Slider said with his usual biting flippancy. Pointedly so. Ice suppressed a smirk. “Maybe I'm just sick of being caught in the cross fire of that disgusting, besotted eye contact you two insist on making in the revision mirror.”
Mav flipped him off with a sneer.
“Glad to see everyone getting along,” Ice muttered sarcastically. He started the engine. “I wonder how pissed Wolf and Wood will be that we’re an hour late.”
“Oh please,” Slider scoffed, “They’re worse than you two. As long as they’ve got each other’s faces to suck on, they’ll be happy.”
Ice pulled out of the driveway smoothly. “Jesus Christ.”
“Am I wrong?”
And off Slider went on his well rehearsed tirade, condemning the sickening nature of ‘young love’.
Ice took the chance to cast Mav a sidelong look. As if sensing Ice’s worry, Mav turned away from the window, meeting the stare with one of his own. It was weary around the edges, wrung out in a way that went beyond physical exhaustion, but it was still Maverick.
He smiled, small and lopsided, offering his hand for Ice to take. Ice did so. The point of connection was a soothing warmth.
Slider’s sigh was long suffering.