HI! Here I am, an entire decade later! Thank you for sticking around!

I'm leaving this fic as-is but if you'd like to read the first six chapters with slightly less awful POV changing, I have it posted on AO3 as well with edits! You can find me at ao3 with the username ice_hot_13 !

xxxxxxxx

Pete wished the breakup had been any number of things that didn't characterize Charlie: messy, public, noisy. He found himself wishing for an audience, for loudness, for things that could drown out what was really happening.

Charlie invited him to her house, sat him down at the table out back, and folded her hands on the tabletop. "You're cheating on me." Pete's blood ran cold, and he couldn't even look away, staring helplessly back at her. "I don't know if this is some sexual exploration phase for you, but I'm not interested in finding out the meaning."

If she'd never loved him, this would have been easier, but despite the cool, straightforward words, Pete knew that was the easy way out. She loved him, but not in the young, overwhelming way where she'd allow that to keep her with him, to let him hurt her again. Charlie was a woman who respected herself, and hadn't that been the thing that drew Pete to her? It wasn't just confidence; she honored herself, like the queen of her own country.

"You didn't deserve this," Pete managed, all he could come up with. Charlie tilted her chin up.

"Of course I didn't."

"It wasn't because of you. It wasn't – it wasn't ever because of you." He fiddled with his sunglasses in his lap, worrying the stem between his finger and thumb. He just didn't want to – to send her off damaged, and did he even have that kind of power? Not over her, but – what about Ice? The thought rose up unbidden. In the middle of Charlie leaving him, he was thinking about Ice. He wished again that she was shouting at him, maybe in the middle of class, in front of everyone, a place where he could run away surrounded by people.

"I loved you," Charlie said, and her gaze hardened just a fraction. "I love you."

"I'm sorry."

The silence stretched.

"You take risks on behalf of other people," Charlie finally said, her gaze unwavering, "and you think it's bravery."

xxx

There were moments where Wolf missed him. Moments where he wondered if he could ever love anyone else in good faith again, if he'd given away a piece of himself he couldn't function without – and there were moments where he forgot everything.

"Do you believe in soulmates?" he asked, staring up at the black, black sky and the stars that were going to vanish before he got back up there again. Beside him on the rooftop, Hollywood gave a little motion that might have been a shrug.

"Is this what you do when you're drunk? Ask philosophical questions?" And, well, yes. Which Hollywood definitely knew, because Wolf did it all the time. It didn't feel like a philosophical question; it felt so tangible and present, an answer Wolf needed.

"Is there just one person for everyone?"

"Statistically unlikely."

"I think we wish there was, and there isn't." It would be easier, a right answer to a cosmically huge question. Wolf thought they were just too scared of the alternative, of the chaos of coincidences and all the things that could affect them, all the outside forces and unseeable things and unknowable timing. It would be easier to fall into a life with someone else if he knew that their presence in his life guaranteed that Merlin had only been part of the path to find them; knowing his life could have branched in a thousand different directions made it feel like unstable ground, unpredictable.

"Does that mean I could ever measure up to him?" Hollywood's voice cracked, and when Wolf looked over, it felt like he was really looking at Hollywood for the first time. "Tough act to follow, after all," Hollywood looked away, reddening, and Wolf reached over, touched Hollywood's cheek. He felt like he was reeling beneath the endless sky.

"You shouldn't be my rebound. You shouldn't have to be compared to anyone."

Hollywood seemed to understand what Wolf couldn't say aloud: he deserved better, deserved to have been much earlier or to be later, but this broken, hurting time was not where he belonged. Maybe they were soulmates, but maybe one of them wouldn't be there when they met back up again further down the road. Maybe they would, and it would feel like the culmination of a lifetime reaching there.

Hollywood leaned over, kissed Wolf once, and then he walked away. Wolf didn't move to follow, just stared up at the sky like he could find the end of the darkness just by looking hard enough, and not by waiting. Wolf closed his eyes, began the long wait until he found himself again, when he'd outgrow the hurt and forget the sadness, when he'd look at Hollywood and just see him, love him without comparison.

It was coming; sure as the dawn, it was coming.

xxx

Everyone graduated.

Everyone left.

Tom never stopped seeing Maverick entirely; their paths crossed in arcs, diving away and then coming back together, and they hovered, seemingly endlessly, on the cusp of any number of things. Everything felt like waiting; Tom felt like he'd been frozen over, everything put on ice until an indeterminate later. Everything he'd felt, everything he'd done, paused in its place until he could come back for it. He flew, landed, and eventually returned to the school to teach, and everything was waiting. Cold.

He taught, watched students just like they'd been come through and graduate and fly away; he watched his old classmates go on with their lives. Slider was extraordinarily high ranking these days, Merlin had gone overseas, Rio married a woman he flew with, Wolf and Hollywood left for the private sector and had a little house that Tom couldn't visit without his heart aching. Hollywood had named their dog Wolf, and found it hilarious that he could call and have both his dog and husband come to him at the same time. Tom wanted that: the husband who came when Tom needed him. The house. Not the dog. The long history of a couple that found each other eventually. It was easier to handle when he didn't feel the depth of the ache, when he felt nothing but cold.

And then came the day when he killed Goose all over again, and everything, frozen as it was, shattered.

xxx

When the call came, Pete dropped everything and raced home like he hadn't been holding off on going there for nearly two years. If he could have flown himself there he would have, and he felt every agonizing minute as it passed. All the time he'd spent away was such a waste, he could have been there already, could have been there two years ago, ten. Could have never left Ice's side, never have had to run to him, could have already been there.

"What's up," Pete had answered the late-night phone call, "didn't know you were in town. On vacation?" Because Ice only ever called when he was nearby, and wanted to find Pete as he'd been left, waiting for his touch.

"Can you come here?" Ice asked; in the silence of Pete's night, the noises on the other end were startling. Wherever Ice was, it was daytime. Pete heard a siren, maybe a police car.

"What?"

"Please," Ice had never sounded like that. Quiet, pleading, honest. "Please come here."

"Where? Where are you?" Pete had sat up, looked around like there was something he should have been scrambling for – clothes, so he could leave immediately? A pen so he could write down an address? He had no idea, just felt like his hands were suddenly too empty. "Are you back at the school? Right?"

"Mav," Ice said, and then there were other voices, and he'd hung up.

Pete had gone to him. No one had understood his urgency – not the airlines, who didn't have two AM flights to San Diego, not the taxi driver, not the flight attendants who gave a drawn-out safety demonstration before they would get any closer to San Diego. Certainly not the head of the school, who didn't understand why Pete called him to accept the offer to teach after two years of stalling. No one understood; Pete had to go to him, and he had to stay this time. Ice had never needed him before, and when they were young, Pete had sworn to be there when Ice finally did.

Ice needed him now. Pete wasn't there.

It felt like entire days later, but suddenly there he was, knocking on the door he should have had a key to, at the house where he should have been living all along. Ice opened the door, and in one motion, Pete was through the door and holding him.

"It's my fault," Ice was saying, "it's my fault he's dead, it's my fault."

Pete took him, led him into the dark of the bedroom, held back apologies about not being there, and waited until Ice could tell him.

A student was dead. Ice had watched from the ground, even more helpless than he'd been last time, and Goose's tragedy had played out all over again. Another dead student, another widowed wife, another orphaned child, another blue sky fatality on an otherwise perfect day. No one had been to blame.

"You didn't kill him," Pete said, soft. "You didn't kill him, and you didn't kill Goose, either." This time, he'd stay, he'd tell Ice over and over until Ice believed him, he'd stop being brave only in the easiest ways and risk his own heart, stay here and love him without restrictions.

It took seven more months, for Ice to say what he'd been holding back for over ten years. Pete's last class had run late, and when he met Ice for dinner, they'd lost their reservation and had to make a new one at a place that opened later, go walk along the water while they waited for the new time.

Pete knew the spot where he'd found Ice a decade ago, staring out at the water in the middle of the night. He stopped there without meaning to, the waves quiet beneath the night sky.

"I loved you, back then," Ice said, and that he loved Pete now wasn't news, but back then felt like a new revelation. Pete stared at him, tried to repaint twenty-four-year-old Ice as being in love, recolor memories. They'd been so young. "I loved you and I was going to tell you, and then I killed your best friend. I ruined you, and I knew I didn't deserve you, after that."

Pete drew in a breath, exhaled slowly. The sky stretched even beyond the ocean, endless; he'd been here ten years ago, under the same sky, with the same man, but this time, it didn't feel like a world built to contain him. This time, he felt freed.

"You saved me," Pete said, reached for Ice's hand to hold it, something his younger self in this very spot never could have done. "I had to face scarier things on the ground than I ever did in the sky, and you scared me the most." And Ice hadn't been scared of him. Drawing back for other reasons, but never scared, not the way Pete had been. He'd let Pete kiss him, had done nothing but kiss him back, and all Pete's fear had melted away. And now – he'd brought Pete back to him, asked for help and brought him home. "Ice," he said, and how strange, that years ago he'd have said Tom in his softest voice, but now Pete called him that all the time, and this was what made his heart melt even more, this harkening back to their youngest days, to when they were colliding towards each other and didn't know what to do.

"I loved you from the beginning," Ice said, like it was still a confession to admit to being in love with the man he slept next to every night.

It felt like one, and Pete wanted to take it back to his younger self, place this confession carefully in his hands, and tell himself there's a man who loves you beneath all that ice, but he didn't have to. Here they were anyways, Ice leaning over to kiss Pete's cheek like he'd done a thousand times, Pete leaning into Ice's side; even if Pete had gone back and told his younger self he leaves you in the end, he still would have kissed Ice, still would have fallen in love with abandon, would have glared down his older self and insisted I'm going to love him anyways.

"I didn't know," Pete said, and Ice laughed.

"It didn't stop you," Ice said, and when he looked over, Pete thought this might be the happiest he'd ever seen Ice. Given one chance, he wouldn't go back and tell himself there were feelings beneath the ice, that Ice had real feelings hidden away; Pete would go to Ice, young, hurting Ice, and tell him.

"Nothing could have." Many things nearly had: fear, misplaced bravery, tragedy, but here Pete was despite it all, here they were, together.