Chapter Text
Ice has been thinking. Filtering information through the growing holes in his head for the past hour.
The alarm will go off soon, but until then his body is still, calm like the surface of a mountain lake, held together by Maverick’s arms around his waist.
Their bodies have been pressed together all night, hearts beating in sync, skin seeking eachothers. Ice’s fingers are buried in Maverick’s hair.
Vanilla coats his tongue and with every inhale, it soaks into his pores. He clenches his jaw, fighting not to pull Maverick up and wrench his head sideways to bite into his scent gland.
This is what Ice has been thinking about since the first time they officially scented. It started, an itch in the back of his head. Now though… he’d woken up, skin hot all over. Inches from snapping.
Yesterday seems like an eon ago now. Ice has been watching Maverick, trying to figure him out. Trying to trust him. His only other option is an unbearable pain in his chest. Curling poker hot fingers around his ribcage and crawling up his throat, piercing the backs of his eyelids.
He knows Maverick has an effect on him, and Ice suspects it's much more than even the bond. Even though that does have the added benefit of dragging them closer to each other everyday.
Ice drifts into half sleep, mind swirling, basking in their scents.
The alarm goes off.
Maverick shifts minutely and Ice can feel the energy coiling in his muscles like it’s in his own body.
He fights not to tighten his fingers in Mavericks hair as the man's arms clench around his waist, pulling them impossibly closer, pressing his face into his chest.
Ice finds his fingers carding through it instead. It’s deceptively soft, and Ice wonders if he uses hair gel at all. Maybe an expensive conditioner?
Another wave of vanilla hits him, and he drags Maverick’s head up to meet his eyes: wide and green like beams of sunlight filtering through a kelp forest.
Ice swallows.
He fists his hand and pulls on Maverick’s hair, tilting his head back, exposing his neck. Just to see if he can.
Maverick lets him, and melts into it like butter. Silently sighing.
His skin is burning beneath the surface, sluggishness and content filling up his chest.
Then he feels shocked.
Maverick is laying there, just letting Ice move him. Vulnerable in the semi dark.
“Maverick.” Ice says.
He watches Maverick shutter.
He watches Maverick bumping shoulders with Goose as all the pilots flow out the door, walking towards the tarmac. The daily drill is about to begin.
Ice thanks god because flying will help him focus, center his thoughts and get his mind off this morning. Relax all the muscles in his body that want to latch on to the man in front of him and never let go. Ice is objective enough to admit, that’s the reason he’s tense today.
Slider walks beside him jauntily, helmet tucked under his arm.
“Did you know they were betting money?” Ice asks, eyes still glued to Maverick’s back.
“Nah, or else I would have joined.” Slider says, picking at his teeth.
“You couldn’t have joined. The bet was also about you.”
“I would’ve found a way.” Slider shrugs.
Ice scoffs and taps him on the chest with the back of his hand, “Sure man.”
Their pack bond feels like a warm blanket across Ice’s shoulders. He watches Goose and Maverick bicker in front of them like an old married couple. Maverick straightens suddenly and they perform an elaborate high five.
Ice isn’t sure he would ever use the word elaborate to describe something as simple as a high five, but there's a first time for everything. And there really isn’t another way to think about what he just witnessed.
He’s glad for the new connections, he realizes.
“He’s insane.” Ice says.
“Maverick?” Slider asks.
“Yeah.”
“I think he’s good for you.” Slider says, then lapses into silence. He knows Ice will talk when he’s ready.
So Ice consolidates the picture in his head. Maverick in the air: flying like a (brillant) suicidal maniac, free, and happy.
Maverick on the ground, loud, pushy, maybe slightly off balance, drawing people to him like moths to a flame, then burning them up before they can get too close.
Maverick on the beach: full of energy, basking in the sun, staring at the water like it’s a second home.
And Maverick, waking up in the morning: like a marble statue spread across his sheets, coming to life like someone lit a fire in his heart. All at once vulnerable and pliant like clay.
God, the duality makes Ice dizzy.
Being in the air is calming, he knows exactly what to do there. When they finally take off, he can breathe again.
In the sky he can feel the distance between him and Maverick, they’re as close as they can get in separate aircraft.
There are clouds today. Cumulus, big and fluffy, that reflect off the canopy of Ice’s jet in a kaleidoscope. Today the wingmen were switched around, most likely due to their report to Viper so he’s on Mavericks wing.
Jester is angled up, trying to mess with their visual, aiming for the only clear piece of sky. Maverick stays on him and so does Ice.
“Level out underneath the clouds.” Maverick tells him through comms.
He clearly wants Jester to lose sight of Ice, so they can ambush him later. So Ice does. He keeps below the cloud cover, following their blips on his screen.
He feels like there's a fishing line caught beneath his collarbone, pulling him towards Maverick.
Because Maverick’s about to do something stupid, Ice can feel it.
“Go low.” Maverick’s voice orders.
Ice goes lower, scanning the field. He’s coasting above the hard deck now.
A feeling in his chest. Anticipation, excitement.
His palms prickle with adrenaline.
“Maverick-,” he growls.
Maverick’s laugh crackles through the comms.
He can hear Goose curse too.
“Fuck.” Slider says.
Ice looks up.
The clouds part.
His heart stops, the scene before him looks like a painting. Two jets falling out of the sky, like angels on a canvas. The light coming through the clouds illuminates the planes like ghosts.
Maverick has somehow forced Jester into a nosedive.
And he’s inverted. Again apparently.
Jesters flying the more advanced aircraft, but Maverick’s matching him, then passing him. Speeding up and falling towards the hard deck in a maneuver that’s faster than any Ice has seen before.
What. The. Fuck.
Ice speeds up.
Jester exits the dive early with a slight wobble.
Then Maverick’s banking so hard to avoid the hard deck that Ice imagines he can feel the seatbelt pressing into his own chest.
“On me.” Comes Maverick's breathless voice through the comms.
But Ice is already there.
Target lock.
They win.
“Motherfucker.” Slider says.
Goose yells with exaggerated swagger, “Goodness gracious-” Then Maverick joins in.
“-great balls of fire!”
“Maverick.” Ice grits into the mic. “What the hell was that?”
Ice isn’t mad.
He couldn’t be with the way elation is filling him up, and it doesn’t help that he can’t tell if the feeling is coming from himself or Maverick.
But he is annoyed.
“I’ll tell you what that was.” Maverick’s cheeky grin is audible. “That, Ice, was us winning.”
“Mav.” Ice stresses.
“Hey, I didn’t break any rules.” He sounds high as a kite.
“You didn’t tell me, your wingman, the plan.”
“I didn’t know the plan yet.”
“What.” Ice says, because really. What. Why is he surprised?
“I just did what I felt.”
“You can’t fly intuitively like that when you fly with other people.”
“I just did.”
“It’s not safe.”
“You were right there.”
“Because I’m a good fucking pilot.”
“Exactly. You were right there.”
Ice pauses, Maverick might not have broken any rules but that was still reckless. Most likely he was still going to get punished for that nosedive with Jester. That’d had danger written all over it.
But was Maverick flying like that because he knew Ice could follow through?
Because Ice had been right there, he’d automatically known the drill, even without knowing the full plan. Just like he would have for any other wingman.
Maverick’s always pulling stunts, sure, but Ice has never seen him do one that big during training. It’s also occurring to Ice that they’ve never flown as a team before this.
Ice’s body is still flooding with leftover adrenaline, the fish hook in his chest digs deeper.
“Maverick, man,” Slider chimes in. “How in hell did you get Jester into a nosedive?”
“I just did? I mean he had to go down at some point.” Clearly, Maverick’s still smiling.
“Man.” Slider chuckles.
Goose laughs, “harsh Mav.”
“What did I expect?” Ice sighs, before moving his mic away from his face.
He takes in the clouds for as long as he can before they land.
As soon as he gets close enough to look in Maverick’s eyes on the tarmac, his blood pressure spikes. He sees a playback in slow motion of two jets crashing through the clouds.
He feels like his bones are shaking but he schools his body into neutral, limb by limb. He’s fine.
Then Ice grabs Maverick by the shoulders, swiping his wrists harshley across the other alpha’s neck, practically drenching him in his scent.
He drags his eyes over Maverick to satisfy the nagging the back of his head. Following the contours of his flight suit from his feet to his hips then up his neck and the line of his jaw.
He swallows and watches Maverick track the movement, he feels hot.
Vanilla fills his lungs.
“Debrief.” He grits out.
“Okay.” Maverick says softly into the bubble between them.
Then it pops.
The next two days pass in a blur.
They sleep in Ice’s quarters and wake up holding onto each other for dear life. They have these moments in the in-between. They don’t talk, they just breathe each other in. Ice tries not to falter, and just sink his teeth into Maverick’s neck. Marking the alpha as his forever.
Objectively, Ice is in deep shit.
So far the other pilots have no idea, they just assume Maverick and Ice stay close because of the new pack bond. They don’t question how their scents have blended more than they would in a normal pack bond.
Goose manages to schedule and reschedule their meeting with the specialist three times, moving it back and forth and back again.
Finally, they get an appointment to stick.
It’s just Ice and Maverick that go, walking into the warm office. Sunlight making all the wood produce a homey glow. They sit stiffly together in two chairs opposite a very large desk after introducing themselves. There’s papers with notes scribbled all over them everywhere.
A man with circular glasses observes them, he has dark hair and looks like he hasn’t slept in a week. His name is Dr. Burg and according to Goose, the vacation this professor had been on was actually some business conference. He jumps right in. Ice appreciates the lack of pleasantries.
“An emote bond is special,” He adjusts his glasses, “you have probably also heard the term ‘lifebond.’”
Ice and Maverick nod.
“Based on my research I prefer the term soulbond.”
Ice’s chest throbs.
“Soulbonds, connect the souls. The core of a person you could say. This results in the ability to feel your partner's emotions, and a general pull and desire to be near each other. This pull is painful when a bond is unstable.”
Ice can feel Maverick’s frown without looking at him. The doctor continues.
“Soulbonds are the most volatile type of bond before they are sealed. They are the most powerful connector between two people, and the most stable once they are, however.”
“Do you know how they form?” Ice asks.
“Numbers make this difficult to say for sure but soulbonds are involuntary, they happen when two people have over 90% compatibility biologically as well as over 90% compatibility emotionally.”
Ice raises his eyebrows. “Emotions are hard to quantify.” he says.
“They are,” Dr. Burg agrees. “But you agree that two people who share a passion, goal or motivation, are more compatible compared to those who do not?”
“Yes.” Maverick answers.
“It’s a similar principle. It’s hard to quantify a soulbound connection. The reason I call it a ‘soulbond,’ as do many of my colleagues, is because for all intents and purposes a soulbond is shared with your ‘soulmate.’
“What.”
“The bond fundamentally connects two people on contact but you have to understand the pull you feel towards each other is directly proportional to your feelings and compatibility, not the other way around.”
Ice’s lips form loosely around the word ‘soulmate.’ His ears are ringing.
“Now this doesn’t always mean romance, it depends on the pair, if you happen to be worried about that.”
Ice’s hands clench and unclench in his lap and Maverick’s shoulders relax.
“How do you seal it?” Maverick asks.
“We’ve been scenting and staying close, but the feeling is getting worse.” Ice says.
“You seal it like a traditional mating bond. Accepting you claim each other for life by marking each other's scent glands. Like a mating bond, you both have to want it to work. Unlike a mating bond, if it doesn’t take, your connection is still permanent and unstable.”
Ice is frozen. The image flashes of Maverick baring his teeth, sinking them into Ice’s neck.
“An alpha, alpha soulbond is virtually unheard of.” Dr. Burg continues.
“Virtually?” Ice says, the question slipping out in surprise.
“Not counting you, there have been a total of five documented cases in the world.”
“Really?” Maverick asks.
“It’s inconclusive because of the numbers, but the major difference between an alpha and omega soulbond and an alpha, alpha soulbond is the strength of hormones. Omega and alpha hormones balance each other chemically more easily. Alpha bonds, as far as I have seen, progress faster, and have a higher intensity.”
Ice swallows.
“Again, this is speculation, because of the numbers, “ Dr. Burg flaps his hand about as if that annoys him. “But in the known alpha alpha bonds, the compatibility is off the charts.”
“Great.” Maverick says, the tension in the room is like a bowstring.
“I can fax you my analysis if you would like. I’ll send it through Carole.”
“That would be helpful, thanks.” Ice says.
The room is silent for a moment before Dr. Burg squints at them and sighs.
“You need time to process this information.” He says, and it’s not a question. “I would like for you to answer some questions for me but I’m thinking now is not the time.” He adjusts his glasses.
“I can send that paper work along as well.”
“Thanks.” Maverick says.
Ice plasters on a smile. He feels distant from his body though. Like his heart knew all this before his brain and now he’s trying to catch up.
Even more distantly he thinks about how much Maverick hates paperwork. He wants to laugh.
Slider he knows will definitely laugh when Ice relays this information. Cue more teasing.
They walk out of the office shoulders pressed together.
When they get outside he examines Maverick. His face is flushed and he’s staring at the sun beginning it’s decent like it holds all the answers.
“That was interesting.” Maverick says.
“It was.” Ice agrees.
They breathe together.
“I need a bike ride.” Maverick says, rubbing at his chest right over his heart.
Warmth spreads between Ice’s ribs and he rolls his eyes.
Maverick puffs up his chest, cocky.
“You have a problem with my motorcycle or something?”
“Not at all.” Ice replies, picking at his nails for show. “I have a problem with people who don’t wear helmets.”
“Oh fuck off,” Maverick says, bumping into him, grin sneaking onto his face.
Ice smirks, getting caught in the jade of Maverick’s eyes for a moment.
Yeah, Ice thinks.
Slider’s definitely going to laugh when they tell him.