— 30000 foot butterflies
PAIRING: tom ‘iceman’ kazansky x reader (gender-neutral)
GENRE: fluff
WARNINGS: none
SUMMARY: iceman reveals a part of him that is evoked only in your presence.
At Top Gun, inflated egos are as common as dust in the air, as certain as the rise and fall of the sun. Arrogance is breathed coincident with oxygen. There are no exceptions. Perhaps there are degrees of self-assured confidence, but it is always present. Everyone is prideful; everyone thinks that they are the best.
Everything is a competition.
Unofficial records of everything are scribbled haphazardly on whiteboards in the locker rooms, copied in chalk in the rec room: the fastest times of every course, the highest kill count from every dogfight simulation, the lists of winners from each volleyball game.
And, Iceman notices with a considerable amount of annoyance, your name appears quite frequently. Sometimes, only three or four names separate the occurrence of yours. Then soon, your call sign seems to emerge from the columns of written letters before his eyes like it is rising from the board, breaking the two dimensional barrier. Breathless, he sees. Again, Breathless.
Breathless Breathless Breathless.
Inexplicably this evokes an urge in him to win your attention. It is childish, he knows, but he feels like he will drive himself crazy without your acknowledgement.
He finds himself wanting to talk to you, evicting an excuse to hear your voice even if only to reply to a snarky remark he makes. Proximity, he discovers, seems to diminish when you enter a room. Nearly subconsciously, as if pulled by gravity into the orbit of your solar system, he drifts towards you. He begins to notice your habits, observe you—not necessarily in a creepy manner—as he watches the skies while on a mission.
At first, he cannot tell if the sentiments you inspire in him are genuine feelings or more simply infatuation. The two are often similar enough they entangle together into an indistinguishable knot.
Then, the distance in your relationship shifts slowly as if life is leisurely changing gears. It does not happen overnight, nor a day, that he is sure of. A week? Two? He does not know. All he is certain of is that it is July.
Heat permeates the tarmac in departing California sun, washes over the boots of a half a dozen odd naval aviators. Warmth crawls under their pant legs, slithers over their shoulders, then the nape of their necks and causes them to sweat under their camouflage.
“Careful not to exert yourself too much, sweetheart, wouldn’t want you to get too breathless,” Iceman calls to you as each pilot climbs into their F-14.
“Wouldn’t dream of it, dear.” A wink. A smile. A blue pinprick of the gum you are chewing showing against the white of your teeth. You disappear behind the frame of your plane and the engine growls as it heats.
For once in his life, for a rare moment Kazansky Iceman is caught without a witty retort loaded and ready to return fire. He stands, one foot half in the cockpit of his jet, nearly stupefied. After weeks of little reaction, nothing more than a chastising shake of your head, what has changed?
“What’re you doing?” Slider yells from behind him. “Tongue frozen?”
Iceman bares his teeth at his partner in crime and slips into his seat. His muscle memory takes care of his flight routine—takeoff procedures, safety regimes—while his mind is distracted.
In the sky the world is washed red. The wings of each F-14 are gilded and soar like golden chariots sent into battle from Olympus. Every pilot is swathed in perilous conditions. They are captured in a metal tube thousands of feet above the ground, surrounded by tanks of pure oxygen, highly flammable equipment, a very powerful engine. Yet, none of them are gripped by fear; instead they feel almost high off the thrill.
Your plane glides upwards, rising until it is parallel to Ice and Slider. “Don’t get too cold, Snowman, lest your engine stall out,” he hears over the comm lines. He grins, knows that you are mimicking his remark from earlier. And then, in his mind, all he can think is a single word on repeat: Snowman Snowman Snowman.
A stupidly boyish beams invades his face. He is grateful, suddenly, that no one can see him and that Slider sits behind him.
“Eck,” your partner complains, emitting a noise that concatenates a false gag and a cough. “Get me out of this plane.”
“Take me with you,” Slider chimes.
You laugh and in Iceman’s ear it is filled with static, occasionally broken by the limits of technology. Still, he feels drunk off of it.
Now, Tom Kazansky has always been a by-the-book pilot. It is a quality that has proven valuable and served him well in carrying him to the top of his class. It is a characteristic that has fuelled his disliking towards Maverick. Nonetheless, what he does next is not recommended in any textbook except the one he writes for himself.
“Hey, Ice, what’s going on?” Slider cries as the plane begins to tilt right and then flips on an axis. They are upside-down when they pull above your jet. Slider is still complaining over comms but his voice becomes background noise that neither of you can hear.
“Close enough for nicknames?” He smirks down at you. Snowman.
It feels like you are nose to nose though several feet still separate the tops of your F-14’s. Sunlight shines across your skin. Across his. You both are bathed in gold.
You match his smile. Your sunglasses slip onto your forehead. “Take me out to dinner and we’ll see how close we are.”
Once more Iceman grins like a fool. Shivers race up his face, an almost uncomfortable excitement startles in his stomach. When was the last time he felt like this? Has he ever?
He is thirty-thousand feet in the air, he thinks. A million butterflies are trapped within his chest. It is the altitude, he assures himself.
— m. list
