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Ice hits the bolted wardrobe with a hollow thump that rattles the bulkhead. He’s pliant, his flight suit crumpled around Maverick’s fist, and silent, like he’d been the entire time Maverick dragged him through the passageways, far away from the boisterous celebration in the wardroom. A sliver of olive-green velcro peeks out from beneath his squadron patch, and Maverick can’t fucking keep his eyes off it—that glimpse of imperfection, of Iceman disheveled, not by wind or sun but by the vise of Maverick’s grip.
Ice’s chest rises and falls steadily beneath his knuckles, hypnotic, meditative. Bitterness coats the back of Maverick’s throat. Unfazed, even now.
“You knew.”
“I knew,” says Ice, and only now does he reach up, with his long fingers and trimmed nails and gleaming ring, to pry the fist from his collar.
The touch cracks through Maverick like the thunderbolt that splits through Ice’s patch. Skin-on-skin, hand-on-hand, a terrible sensation that blooms so sweetly from Ice’s fingertips, sizzling Maverick’s nerve endings like a thousand filaments of that very same lightning.
Then Ice pulls away, and it’s gone.
Soulmates.
It’s ridiculous. It’s—how is it even possible? Five billion people on Earth. By probability alone—
And it’s Ice. Ice, who crowded him against the bartop of the O Club with a smile dripping with condescension, who bared his teeth at Maverick in the locker room and pinned him for weeks afterward with apathy and steel.
But it was Ice, too, who’d danced so skillfully in the air with him not five hours before. Who had listened to him, trusted him, grinned at him out there on the sun-blasted deck, who’d pulled him in and Maverick had known, then, struck with joy and relief and a sharp jolt of pleasure when their cheeks pressed together, damp with perspiration, a savage thrill that lingered long after Ice stepped away—how could he not have known?
“When?”
“When what?” says Ice, still blasé, still so fucking nonchalant, leaned back against the wardrobe and towering over Maverick like nothing’s changed. Not touching him.
“When’d you find out, asshole?”
“A couple weeks ago.”
Maverick’s stomach crumples to his feet. “Weeks ago?”
“Yeah.” Ice looks down, adjusts his watch. “The volleyball game. When Wood got you in the head.”
“Oh.” Maverick remembers: the flash of dog tags, the sting of a sunburn on the back of his neck, the pain that exploded behind his eyes and Goose’s yelp of alarm—Goose. A knife carves itself into his ribs, nearly rips the breath from his lungs. He pushes past it, thinks to:
Ice on the bleachers, face pale, half-risen from his seat. His hand, the way it’d dropped, right before a frantic Goose had swallowed Maverick’s vision.
Maverick’s never put too much stock in soulmates. Not as a kid, and even less so as an adult. What was fate, anyway? Five billion people—like finding a needle in a haystack. A single ship in the ocean. And sure, it’s fine to be romantic, to join dating services, attend meet-ups, hire detectives, to wish and want and believe desperately that there’s someone out there for you, one person who’ll be able to understand you like nobody else allegedly can—Maverick’s been with plenty of women, plenty of men, too, whose eyes would go liquid at the thought—but the world’s about luck, chances, coincidences. You can meet them at ten, you can meet them at sixty, you can brush by them one rainy evening on the crosswalk and go the entire rest of your life without ever knowing.
Or—and Maverick draws up short, inhaling, exhaling, the sound of his breathing tinny and faraway to his own ears—or you can meet them at twenty-four, and discover that they don’t give a damn.
“Were you ever going to tell me?”
Ice’s face barely twitches. “In case you didn’t notice, we weren’t friends.”
“That’s right,” says Maverick. “We’re soulmates.”
Abruptly, it’s terrifying. The words hang between them, out in the open, irrevocable.
Ice’s hands fall from where they’re still fiddling with his watch-links. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
Yeah, it doesn’t.
They weren’t friends. They aren’t friends. They’re barely even civil. Maybe they could be; they should be, at the very least, by right of this enigmatic, arbitrary dogma that connects them. Two sides of the same coin, two halves of one soul—isn’t that what all this soulmate shit is supposed to be about?
You can be my wingman anytime. Ice had known. He’d known and if Maverick hadn’t moved to embrace him, if their skin hadn’t brushed, he would’ve let Maverick go on his merry fucking way, none the wiser.
“Is that what you want?” Maverick asks. His voice wavers. Chagrined, he snaps his jaw shut.
But Ice isn’t so spectacular at what he does for nothing. His gaze sharpens; he scans Maverick’s face, eyes flicking between Maverick’s own, searching for some unknowable thing just like he had that first night under the blue glow of the bar. It’s been weeks but Maverick still doesn’t fucking know what it is, what he’s thinking behind the cocky tilt of his mouth.
“What do you want?”
A wingman, is what first comes to mind. An ally. Goose. He wants Goose back, his voice and his laughter and the reassuring grip he always had on Maverick’s shoulder, a steadfast safety net every time Maverick found himself faltering on the ledge.
But Goose is gone, and it’s Ice who stands before him with cool curiosity, instead; invulnerable, stony, and oh, he can’t fool Maverick anymore. Not when Maverick saved his life. Not when he’s seen how Ice can smile with his whole face, when he’s felt how warm Ice can truly be.
Maybe that’s the truth of it: Maverick wants to see that smile again. Wants to feel that warmth again.
And maybe it was always going to come to this. Maybe, deep in his gut, Maverick has always known, from the very second he felt the inescapable urge to look behind him in a sunlit classroom two months ago.
He draws himself up. “I want a shot.”
“A shot at what?” says Ice shrewdly. “We can be friends, Maverick. It’s no big deal.”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
Ice scoffs. “Don’t you already have someone waiting for you?”
“Charlie’s gone to DC. We’ve been done for weeks.”
“So, what? Can’t go a couple weeks without another notch in your belt?”
“Ice,” says Maverick. “If you don’t want it”—if you don’t want me—“just say so.”
And Ice—
Ice falls silent.
The floor sways beneath their feet, subtle but unmistakable. Boats are never quiet, not with thousands of personnel aboard, not with hundreds of activities going on simultaneously above and below them at all hours of the day—but shut inside this tiny berthing, with nothing but its two-person rack and two-person wardrobe and two tiny desks and two rickety chairs—it’s almost like they’re actually alone.
At last, Ice says, “We don’t even like each other.”
“Do we?” Maverick takes a step forward.
They’re already close enough that Maverick has to raise his chin to meet his eyes. Now Maverick practically traps him against the wardrobe door, the toes of their boots a foot apart. His eyes catch on the angle of Ice’s jaw, the smoothness of his skin, the drop of his Adam’s apple when Ice swallows. A bead of sweat gleams on the bow of his upper lip, tantalizing.
“Maverick,” Ice snaps.
Maverick flushes. He glances further up.
Ice’s cheeks are pinker than they were a second ago. His hair is still matted from donning his flight helmet earlier, more brown than blond, shining and messy under the uneven, unfriendly light. There’s a strange, overbright glint in his eye.
“Don’t fuck with me.”
“I’m not,” Maverick says immediately. “I’m not,” he insists, when Ice gives him a dubious scowl. His pulse hammers a damning rhythm against his thoughts, damn near drowns them out. His palms grow hot under the unconscious curl of his fingers. “I… I’m serious about this. I think it’s worth a shot.”
A beat. Ice’s continued silence is answer in itself. Maverick draws back, even though every atom in his being strains to lean in, instead. “If you don’t think so, that’s fine. We were fine before I found out, anyway.”
Ice was fine, in any case. Maverick… Maverick’ll figure it out. How to live with this. How to live with the knowledge that he’s found the one thing millions can only dream of finding, the one thing they would kill to find—only to be rebuffed.
It’s well within Ice’s right. They can be friends. Wingmen. Maverick can settle for that.
“I don’t get you.”
“What?”
Ice continues, voice hard, flat, “I wasn’t even on your radar this morning. Is this really all it took? You spend weeks chasing after Blackwood like a dog, and then you find out we’re”—he pauses, nose wrinkling—“soulmates, and your mind changes? Just like that? I don’t buy it.”
Maverick’s chest stings. “It’s not like that.”
“Clarify for me, then.”
“What’s the point?” says Maverick, drawing back further. “You’ve made yourself pretty damn clear.”
Ice grabs him. It’s like another strike of lightning, the feeling of his fingers closing around Maverick’s wrist, and it shoots up his arm with such brilliant sensation that Maverick abruptly loses his breath.
“Jesus,” Ice whispers. But he doesn’t let go. His hand is damp and clammy. With a start, Maverick realizes he’s not the only one feeling a little hot under the collar.
Ice doesn’t try to pull him back in. Just stands there, holding on, struggling for words, and Maverick can recall only one other time Ice fought so hard to speak.
He runs his tongue over his chapped lips. They crack under the force of his teeth. “Ice,” he says. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Ice tears his eyes from Maverick’s mouth—fuck. Maverick is never going to recover from this. “It never came up. You left the court mid-game. Goose told us where you’d gone.”
“And after?”
“You know what happened, Mav,” says Ice. “I wasn’t going to bring it up when—” He cuts off. “I’m not that much of a dick.”
The two of them in the locker room. Maverick’s refusal to turn around. Ice’s stilted, uneven apology.
Maverick’s heart trembles. “But you thought about it? Telling me?”
Ice exhales through his nose. He says, “All the time”—and Maverick blinks hard against the unexpected blow. “I figured—one day. If we saw each other again. If we could figure out how to not piss each other off.”
“You hugged me, out there.”
Ice’s lips curl. “You hugged me.”
“And you thought I wouldn’t notice?”
“You didn’t notice when we shook hands. I took my chances.”
That’s right. Maverick really hadn’t noticed. What the fuck?
The science of the whole thing is still messy. Plenty of folks don’t believe in it. But it’s hard not to believe when you’ve got friends like Goose and Carole, who’d always seemed so transcendently happy, who could never seem to keep themselves off each other, who’d shared love, joy, and a clear physical connection Maverick had never fully understood.
(“Like magnets,” says Goose. “I dunno. I always want to be near her. And the closer she is, the more intensely I can feel her. Physically, I mean. Why, last night—”
Maverick’s hand shoots up between them. “I’m gonna stop you right there.”
Goose huffs. He reaches forward to dust off Maverick’s shoulder boards with a little more force than necessary. “You asked! But I hear it’s a little different for everyone.”)
“I would’ve wanted it,” says Maverick, mouth dry, “if I’d known. From the beginning. You have to know…”
I wanted you from the start.
He’d tried not to linger on it: the way his head had gone blank beneath Ice’s unfaltering gaze; the way his body had lit up like a fucking string of Christmas lights upon Ice’s approach. The way his mouth had filled with saliva when Ice had smiled lazily at him, like a cat curled beneath a sunbeam.
But he had. Even when he’d burned with frustration, even when Ice had grated against his pride like rusty old nails. He does.
And now, weeks later, impossibly, Ice says, quiet as the morning—“Me, too”—and Maverick’s heart jackknifes to his throat.
Ice releases him, but Maverick snatches back his hand before it can make a full retreat. Their fingers catch, tangle. Ice lets him.
He lets Maverick close the distance again, too. Doesn’t move, when Maverick’s palm grazes from his knuckles to the delicate underside of his wrist, up his forearm to the cuff of his rolled-up sleeve. Goosebumps erupt across the skin beneath Maverick’s fingertips; Ice’s shoulders go stiff. But he lets him.
Suddenly, it’s too much. Suddenly, it’s not enough. New sweat tickles Maverick’s spine. Static fizzes in his ears.
“Mav.”
Maverick looks up again. “Yeah?”
Ice leans in, and kisses him.
It’s like a straight-up injection of dopamine. Fire bursts across Maverick’s skin, searing through his veins down to the hammering behind his ribs. Ice’s lips are as soft as they look. So much goddamned time spent judiciously not noticing them, refusing to be distracted by them—enticed by them, all the same. They’re lovelier than Maverick ever could have imagined, and give way so very easily beneath his own.
He’s lurching forward before he even realizes it, grappling against the front of Ice’s flight suit, seeking closeness, seeking heat, seeking more. Maverick pushes and—holy hell—Ice yields against him, his big, broad hands circling the width of Maverick’s waist as they fall back against the—
Pain explodes in Maverick’s hip. He jerks away, startled, but Ice only tightens his grip. “Easy, Mitchell,” he says, and shifts them both aside, away from the wardrobe handle that had presumably been the culprit. Smiling that infuriating, insouciant smile.
Maverick grabs him by the neck, rakes his thumbs against the shorn hair behind his ears. “Shut up,” he says, “just—” before he surges up again, swallowing Ice’s forthcoming remark with another eager kiss. Ice’s mouth slips open, and—oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Why had Maverick ever looked away? He could’ve had this from the very start, if only—
At least he’s not alone. Ice maps a firm, insistent path up and down his back, the unforgiving curve of his ring digging into Maverick’s shoulder blade, and—and suddenly Maverick is desperate for it: for the heat of his bare touch, for the shocking sting of cold metal, for the sparks that throb everywhere they meet, damn the layers between them.
“Ice,” he gasps, against wet, open-mouthed kisses. He fights to withdraw, only to fall right back in, hopelessly lost. “Wait, I…”
Ice draws back instantly, like it’s easy. “What’s wrong?”
Maverick trails his hand down the fabric of Ice’s collar. His fingers close around the cool clasp of a zipper, green as the Nomex around it. Above the jut of a tanned collarbone, the tendons of Ice’s neck flex. His eyes go clear and sharp.
When Maverick had taken Charlie home, he’d known exactly what he wanted. It’d been second nature, then, to sweep her off her feet, to press intimacy into her skin, to lose himself in her and the softness of her body.
But this is different. This is… soulmates are supposed to be the one. The end-all, be-all, the one that ruins you for everyone else. A guarantee. God-given.
Maverick wants. That's nothing new. He’s wanted his entire life: family; freedom; the warmth of another body, the lurch of Gs through his bones; the dizzying sight of the world far below, hazy through a canvas of clouds. Acceptance. Recognition. But this—
He wants this so badly he thinks he might immolate on the spot.
(What if they’re all wrong? What if Maverick’s the exception, what if it doesn’t work out, it’s Ice, how could Ice ever—how could they ever—)
If Ice notices, he doesn’t say a word. He reaches out, instead; scrapes a thumb across Maverick’s cheek, gentle, and Maverick shudders through another crackle of pleasure.
“Jesus,” he says hoarsely. “Will it always be like this?”
Ice’s teeth flash behind his lips. “I like it.”
“You like getting a secondhand concussion?”
“Why, you planning on it happening again?”
“Maybe if you piss me off,” says Maverick, shifting to kiss him once more, closing his eyes to the feel of Ice’s mouth, the taste of him, peppermint and the faint, bitter tang of smoke. Ice’s thumb continues stroking his cheek.
Slowly, the shaking, white-knuckled grip Maverick has on Ice’s zipper relaxes. Maverick breaks away from the kiss. With a steadying breath—under Ice’s dark, expectant gaze—he proceeds.
The rasp of metal teeth is deafening in the scant space between them, smooth as butter, not a single catch. The rise and fall of Ice’s chest quickens. The blue polo he wears is only slightly rumpled.
How much will Ice allow? Maverick takes the zipper down to his stomach, riveted by the sight of the flight suit loosening over Ice’s shoulders. Ice shrugs out of it, sleeves falling by the wayside, and then there’s abruptly more skin for Maverick to explore, bare arms and sloping biceps and Maverick does so, can’t resist, the need to touch, to feel, to embrace that resonating wave of feedback through his own body. There’s something so inexplicably wondrous about it, the synchronicity. Irresistible. Like…
Like magnets.
Ice’s stomach tenses when Maverick slips a hand beneath the hem of his shirt. Maverick jerks to a stop, even as his own stomach clenches with the contact: overly warm, agonizingly intimate.
“You lookin’ for something, or…” says Ice, tone light, if slightly off-beat. Breathless.
Embarrassment rattles Maverick down to his toes, but he doesn’t remove his hand. Lifts his chin, instead. “Just trying to figure out where you store all that ego. Don’t get your panties in a twist.”
Ice grins. “Oh, yeah? Need some help with that?”
Maverick cracks a smile, too. “I think I can figure it out on my own.”
Ice tugs him in and Maverick gladly goes, seeking more of Ice’s quippy, wide mouth, anything Ice is willing to offer him. He rucks up Ice’s shirt and Ice doesn’t stop him this time; makes a quiet, hitched noise instead as Maverick charts an uninterrupted path around his ribs to the smoothness of his back, and holy shit Maverick needs to hear that again. But Ice is already undoing Maverick’s own flight suit, distracting Maverick with the textured heat of his own hands, and—yes, the ring, too, cooler than the rest of him, and Maverick shudders into their deepening kiss, drunk off his stifling warmth, his closeness, the hint of cologne, the salty taste of dried sweat at the corner of his mouth.
Then Ice nips his lower lip, and it’s fucking shameful how quickly Maverick’s blood rushes south.
“Oh,” says Ice, and two weeks ago the smugness in his tone would’ve pissed Maverick right off, except here he is, half-hard with Ice pressed right up against him, and there’s no place else Maverick would rather be. “You liked that.”
“Fuck off,” says Maverick, biting him in retaliation, and Ice chuckles. They’re so close Maverick can feel the vibration of Ice’s chest against his own rib cage; can feel the weight of Ice’s own interest, pinned against his hip.
Fuck. Ice actually—
“Did you like it the first time, too?” Ice says silkily.
“Dream on,” says Maverick, and doesn’t say that he’d gone home that night thinking determinedly of Charlie, had stuffed a hand down his jeans only for her face to slip away like water between his fingers.
“Am I?” Ice looks at him. His lips are red from kissing, his cheeks tinged with color. He glides a confident hand up Maverick’s abdomen, Maverick’s white t-shirt bunching up against his wrist as he goes, before his thumbnail grazes over a nipple. Maverick freezes; he catches Ice do the same, his mouth parting in surprise.
“Oh,” he repeats, softer this time, and does it again, firmer, and Maverick shoves his hand away before he can do something his pride won’t come back from, like whimper, because his entire world feels like it’s just been electrocuted.
Something unfamiliar flits across Ice’s face—a startling flash of hurt—there and gone and then back to steely calm, and no. Absolutely not. Maverick takes him by the jaw, yanks him down to kiss him fiercely, until the stiffness bleeds out of Ice’s shoulders. His finger hooks the V of Ice’s zipper, still caught below Ice’s abdomen.
“Ice,” he says, and Ice hums against his mouth, mollified. “Let me take care of you.”
“Here?”
“Where else?”
Ice pulls back to consider him. His thumb kneads circles into the sliver of skin at Maverick’s hip.
“I want to,” says Maverick, when he doesn’t receive a response.
Ice’s eyes narrow. “I don’t do things by halves, Mav.”
“I don’t either,” says Maverick. “You know that.”
Ice is silent for another infinitely long moment. “Yeah,” he concedes finally, quietly. “I do.”
He dips his head, and Maverick kisses him again. His heart throbs, aches like a healing bruise. When he slips a hand into Ice’s waistband, drags it down to wrap a good, tight circle around Ice’s cock, Ice shudders, violently—and Maverick’s right there with him, all five senses exploding into color, into too-vivid focus.
“Fuck,” says Ice. His fingers bite into Maverick’s hips, and that, too, is a brutal kind of pleasure.
“Good for you?”
“Shut up, Mitchell,” says Ice, and Maverick exhales a laugh. He withdraws just long enough to lick a long stripe across the center of his palm, then reaches back down; strokes him root to tip, slow and measured. Ice makes another stuttered, breathy noise.
Yeah. That’s good.
“C’mere,” Maverick breathes, pushing even closer, and Ice braces himself against the wardrobe, spreads his legs to accommodate him. Maverick nuzzles against his jawline, tastes the thin, salty damp skin of his pulse. It pounds furiously despite the ruthless control Ice has on his breathing. His hands are steady, too, when they seek Maverick in turn, cupping him through his layers, squeezing, and—Maverick starts, dissolves into a moan that he buries into Ice’s neck.
Ice wrenches off his ring. Pockets it. And then he reaches through Maverick’s open zipper, pulls him out of his briefs without a hint of hesitation, his grip broad and dry and scorching hot in the coolness of the compartment air, and oh, fuck, it’s nothing like Maverick’s ever felt before, already ferociously oversensitive, like a hundred miniature fireworks popping off in his veins. Like kerosene, the heat of Ice’s eyes on him the flicker of a match much too close.
But Ice, too, doesn’t seem to be faring much better. His skin glimmers with perspiration, pink and tacky. Like this, Maverick can see the way his chest heaves, the hungry swallow of his pupils. He smears the precum off the head of Maverick’s cock to slick up the rest of him, and the raptness of his attention burns through Maverick’s sanity.
“Wait,” he says. With a heroic amount of willpower, he knocks Ice’s hand aside. “Wait—like this—” and grabs both of them in a single grip. Their flushed heads slide against each other, the sound of it obscene; Ice groans and hunches forward, nails clawing into Maverick’s skin, strung tight as a bowstring.
Jesus. Like this, Maverick’s surrounded: by heat, by solidity, the redolence of Ice’s cologne, his hair gel, muted by sweat and the musk of exertion. Sharp pinpricks of pleasure zip twofold up and down Maverick’s spine, coiling hot and tight in his belly.
Ice hauls him in. Kisses him again, deep and messy, and this time Maverick moans openly, dizzy with it, desperate for it. He pumps them both faster and faster, the glide slippery and rough and deliciously tight, flourishing his thumb over both their cockheads until Ice is panting wildly against him, until the tension in Maverick’s gut swells and swells, cresting, breaking—
He comes over his fist with a gasp, muffled against Ice’s mouth. Ice immediately goes rigid, gives a punched-out groan, and it’s—holy fuck. It rages through Maverick, too soon. Too violent, all-consuming like a wildfire laying waste to the whole of him, raw and agonizing but—incredible. Euphoric. His ears roar. His vision blurs.
He does whimper, then. Buckles against Ice’s front, drained of strength, and Ice catches him, wraps a tight, shaking arm around his shoulders. Falls back with a clang against the wardrobe, and tucks him close.
Together they catch their breath, uncomfortably loud in the sudden silence. Somewhere in the distance, a metallic thud hits the deck. A vent fan whirs, a constant drone of white noise. A duct rattles overhead.
“That was…”
Ice’s voice rasps around the edges. He sounds astonished.
Maverick buries his face into Ice’s shirt. It’s soft and warm, and Ice’s heart races beneath his cheek, almost in tune with Maverick’s own. He squeezes his eyes shut.
Eventually, he feels a light press of lips against his hair, barely there. He looks up. The line of Ice’s mouth is relaxed and soft, the flush of his face hazy and sated. But his eyes are guarded.
“What now?” he asks.
“I should be asking you that.”
“Hm.” Ice traces the corner of Maverick’s mouth with the pad of his thumb. The touch still crackles under Maverick’s skin—weaker, now, more bearable. Even so, Maverick’s cock gives a valiant twitch.
The lines around Ice’s eyes deepen with amusement. Maverick ignores him in favor of pulling back, out of Ice’s arms. Hastily, he tucks himself back into his briefs and fumbles his t-shirt off over his head, uses it to wipe the come off his hand.
By the time he tosses it into the tiny hamper in the corner, Ice has straightened himself out, too, presentable again with his flight suit zipped up and ready to go. If not for his swollen mouth and the residual pink of his ears, it’d look like nothing had happened at all.
It’s like a punch to the gut. Maverick cuts his gaze away in favor of retrieving his duffel at the foot of his rack.
What now, really? He’d gotten what he wanted—sort of. He still…
He whips out a clean shirt and shoves it on, then ties the sleeves of his flight suit around his waist.
Behind him, he hears Ice exhale. “I can hear you thinking.”
“Psychic, are you?”
There’s a noticeable beat of silence. It rings with hesitation, so uncharacteristic of the Ice Maverick has come to know that he turns around.
Ice meets his eyes. A muscle tics in his jaw. “Have you thought of what you’ll do next?”
“Yeah,” says Maverick. “You?”
“Yeah.”
Maverick flinches. His hands clench.
Another pause.
“You know,” says Ice slowly, “the Navy has a co-location policy. For soulmates.”
“I know.” Everyone does. If you’re willing to document it, you can put in a request, just like married couples. Barring the needs of the mission, the Navy’ll station you as close to each other as possible. But Maverick doesn’t dare hope.
Ice watches him. “Mav,” he says, steady, even as he holds himself tense and still. “I can’t read your mind. Talk to me.”
Okay. Maverick takes a deep breath. “You thinking of asking for it? Co-location?”
“I’m thinking I want to stick together,” says Ice. “But if you—”
“I want to,” Maverick interrupts, immediate. “But that’d mean documentation, and—”
“So? What’s the problem?”
“There’s no problem.” Despite himself, Maverick's breaths come quicker. He forces the rest of it out. “I just didn't know if you wanted this on record.”
Bewilderment crosses Ice’s features. “You don’t?”
“No, I—” He’s not saying this right. He doesn’t know how to say this right. “I do. I mean—I don’t care, Ice. You’re my soulmate. It doesn’t matter to me what some paper says. But if it’s in our files, then that’s it. Everyone knows. Our squads, our COs. I don’t…” want you to regret that.
“You don’t—what? Want that?”
Maverick looks to the floor.
“You know me,” he says. “You know what I’m like. You saw it too, for yourself. They’ll see you, and think of me.”
“It’ll go two ways.”
“You’re the one with the shining record.”
Ice steps closer. “Maverick,” he says. Repeats, calm and quiet and unyielding as steel: “I don’t do things by halves.”
“I don’t, either,” Maverick whispers.
Warm hands cradle his jaw. His veins vibrate beneath his skin. Ice presses their foreheads together. This close, Maverick can see the flecks of blue in his irises. “You’re my soulmate,” he says, “and my wingman. We’re in this together.”
Something snags in Maverick’s chest. “You mean you’re my wingman,” he jokes. “Don’t get it confused.”
“We can iron out the details later,” says Ice, with a smile. He closes the last bit of distance between them, and Maverick nearly melts with relief.
He can’t believe he gets to have this. A soulmate. Ice, skilled and sharp and irreproachable, who wants him, who, despite all his prior misgivings, despite all the ways Maverick could drag him down, would share it with the world so that they might stay together.
Maverick wants it, too. Suddenly can’t bear the thought of Ice thousands of miles away, always, with only staticky phone calls and crinkled letters to tide Maverick over. Not when he’s just found this. Not when… not when he’s just lost so much. He doesn’t want to be alone.
“We should get back,” he says, as Ice presses one more kiss to his mouth. Mm. “Find Stinger.” He hesitates. “Get the forms.”
The process could take months. They’ll continue separately until then—better get it started as soon as possible, as much as Maverick is loathe to leave.
But Ice doesn’t seem to be in a rush. He casts his eyes around, instead, like he's taking in the berthing for the first time. “You’re sharing with Merlin?” he asks, when he sees the picture frames perched atop one of the fold-up desks.
“Yeah. Why?”
“I’m hot-racking with Tex and Zapper. They’re probably still asleep.”
“Okay,” says Maverick, brow furrowing. “What are you getting at?”
Ice looks back to him. “Let me stay,” he says. “I bet Merlin’s still celebrating with the others. Stinger can wait till morning.”
Maverick goes warm. “Everyone will talk.”
“They started talking the moment you dragged me out for a one-on-one.”
“Maybe I’m beating you up,” says Maverick, and Ice laughs. The sound zings through him, knocking around like ringing bells in his head. His stomach does a little kickflip. Jesus. He’s so fucked. He's so—
He's so glad this is real.
“You know we won’t have time for this later,” says Ice. He sobers with a sigh. “Not for a while.”
Maverick swallows. “I know.”
Tomorrow’s a new day. Heroes or not, they have taskers to complete, missions to fly. Ice, Slider, and the rest are due back to their own squadrons, a whole world away.
Resentment flares through him. How had Goose and Carole managed this, before? How does anyone? He and Ice—they’re finally on the same page. They need more time. Time to really get to know each other, to shed their bravado, to compare the threads of their lives and see how parallel they truly run. It’s not fair.
But the bitterness fades, just as quickly as it’d come. It’s life. It’s their job. It could be worse. It could be—
Maverick thinks of Carole. The clench of her hands in her skirt, her hair in disarray, the tears pouring down her cheeks. His heart twists like gnarled roots; a lump rises in his throat, too easily, a constant reminder.
It could be so much worse.
“Alright,” he says. He sits down on the rack behind him, reaches up, and jerks Ice down. Ice collides into him with a grunt of surprise. “Stay.”
They land backward in a tangle of limbs. Ice braces himself against the thin, pitifully flat mattress, rolling off Maverick and to the side. “Don’t sound so enthusiastic,” he says, deadpan, but goes quiet when Maverick loops an arm around his ribs, curling into him. “Mav?”
Maverick doesn’t reply. He feels the heavy weight of Ice’s regard, but Ice doesn’t pursue, either, and—soulmates. Is this what it's like? To have someone understand. To have someone know, without knowing. Ice settles down, and Maverick shifts closer, inhaling the scent of sweat and sex and the faintest touch of cologne, almost entirely gone now. Merlin’s gonna have a fucking field day when he opens the door.
Lying down was a mistake. Like this, exhaustion crashes into Maverick like a tsunami, submerging him within its depths.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he says. His tongue feels too big for his mouth.
Ice pauses. “I won’t.”
“You almost did.” All those MiGs, looping, spinning, roaring through the sky. Maverick hadn’t known, then. If Ice had died, he’d have taken this to the grave.
Understanding dawns on Ice’s features. “But I didn’t,” he says. He returns Maverick’s embrace, his hand tracing a soothing path down Maverick’s spine. “You know why?”
“Because I saved you.”
“Because you saved me,” says Ice softly.
“Which makes me the better pilot.”
He feels Ice start. Then his chest begins to shake, bubbling with quiet laughter. “It makes you no such thing.”
The corners of Maverick’s mouth twitch. “Whatever you say.”
They lapse into silence. Ice seems content to lie there. Maverick is, too, if it means Ice continues his lulling touch. It’s new. Foreign to Maverick, who has never really lingered in bed with anyone, who has always slipped out the door before his latest partner could bid him to stay. But it’s nice. It's... comforting. Maverick could get used to this. He wants to get used to this.
“So,” he says. He fiddles lazily with the little white button below Ice’s collarbone, stitched through with blue thread. Ice’s patch is still crooked.
“So?”
“Still think we don’t like each other?”
He can hear the smile in Ice's voice. “Oh, I positively despise you.”
“Hm. Tough crowd. You know what I think?”
“Lay it on me, Mitchell.”
Maverick hooks his finger on the delicate chain of Ice’s dog tags, warm from body heat. The tags clink together, muffled beneath Ice’s shirt. “I think you do like me,” he says, low, sweet, and sly. “I think you like the danger.”
Ice’s eyes gleam, silvery in the shadow of the rack above them. “Damn shame, isn’t it?”
Maverick grins. When Ice covers his hand, Maverick flips it around, intertwining their fingers. Their skin tingles where they meet. Gentle, like a fall of feathers.