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The O-Club was loud enough that Maverick could feel the bass through the soles of his boots, glassware clinking in counterpoint. He and Goose had claimed a high-top near the bar, Goose nursing a beer while Maverick leaned back on a stool, elbows hooked on the table edge, scanning the room for trouble or entertainment.
Slider and his usual shadow sat across the space—except the shadow itself wasn’t usual at all. Maverick blinked, leaned forward, then leaned again.
The guy—Kazansky, he thought, but hadn’t confirmed—was textbook regulation in posture and uniform. Except for the ears: triangular, set high, swiveling as if tuned to every voice in the club. And the tail: flame-point striped, curling slow arcs against the back wall. Maverick caught the flash of elongated canines as the man bent toward his drink. Not sipping. Lapping.
“Goose,” Maverick muttered. “What the hell is that thing?”
“Top of his class at every stage,” Goose said, not looking up. “Sharp. Deadly. And you’d better watch your mouth unless you want sensitivity training on day two.”
Maverick stared as the catboy fixed him with pupils blown wide in the dim light. It wasn’t the casual scan of one stranger clocking another. It was the unblinking intensity of something deciding whether to pounce.
“He fell asleep in class today,” Maverick hissed. “Curled up in a sunbeam and batted a pen around when he woke up. You cannot tell me this guy knows how to operate complex machinery.”
“You had to be there,” Goose said, shaking his head. “Trust me. He’s the real deal.”
Maverick glanced away for a breath and lost him. A blur at the bar, and suddenly his beer was knocked sideways, glass exploding on the floor. Foam spread across his boots. The bartender sighed—like this was the fiftieth time tonight—and fetched a mop without a word.
Across the wreckage, Kazansky straightened, tail lashing, vodka glass in hand. Still watching Maverick with that same patient, unnerving focus.
Maverick sputtered. “Goose. What the fuck? Goose—what the fuck.”
Goose tipped his beer back and said, “That’s Iceman.”
The classroom at Miramar was all harsh light and long shadows, white chalk dust drifting in the air. Maverick sat with his boots hooked around his chair legs, twirling a pen. Goose was already filling notebook margins. Up front, Viper tapped a yardstick at diagrams—jet silhouettes, angles of attack, the neat geometry of combat.
Maverick wasn’t listening. He was watching Kazansky.
Ice had taken the desk near the window, where sunlight pooled bright across the floor. Too hot in uniform, but he sprawled like it was made for him, chin on folded arms, tail twitching slow arcs beneath the chair. His ears rotated like radar dishes. His eyes slid half-shut.
“Is he—” Maverick leaned toward Goose. “Is he sleeping?”
“Looks like it.” Goose didn’t look up. “Don’t worry, he’ll ace the quiz anyway.”
Maverick leveled a glare towards the window. Sure enough, Ice’s breathing had settled, ears flicking faintly at the drone of the lecture. The tip of his tail ticked in rhythm.
When Viper passed too close with the pointer, however, Ice’s arm shot out. Claws flashed, fast as a switchblade. He hooked the stick, yanked it free, and laid it beside his desk like a trophy. Viper bent, retrieved it without a word, and kept a careful distance after that.
Goose smothered a laugh into his sleeve. “See what I mean? You gotta see it to believe it.”
“This place is a zoo,” Maverick muttered.
A mote of dust drifted through a shaft of sun. Ice froze. Pupils widened, black swallowing blue. His head twitched as if calculating a strike. The dust bobbed closer. His hand lashed out, claws snatching empty air. The speck spun free.
Ice’s ears flattened. His tail thumped once, twice. Then he refocused on the chalkboard as if nothing had happened.
Later, it was a spider. A cellar spider dropping on a line of silk. Maverick tracked it absently—until Ice sat up straight, pupils blown huge, mouth opening in a rapid chatter. Goose looked up in alarm.
“Oh no,” he whispered.
The spider dangled within reach. Ice caught it with two fingers, flicked it into his mouth, and chewed. His face remained blank. Goose pressed his notebook against his forehead. Maverick gripped his chair.
“What the fuck,” Maverick hissed. “What the fuck, Goose—”
“Don’t,” Goose said, voice muffled. “Don’t engage.”
Slider, seated beside Ice, didn’t blink. Chin propped on one hand, he let Ice methodically groom the hair on his forearm with tongue and teeth. Every few minutes Ice switched arms. Slider scribbled notes with the other, the resignation of a man long past resistance.
“He’s licking him,” Maverick whispered in horror.
“Try telling him to stop,” Goose whispered back. “See what happens.”
The lecture turned to laser designators. Ice’s ears snapped forward, tail lashing. His hand shot up before anyone else.
“Permission to speak freely, sir.”
Viper, wary, nodded.
Ice’s diction was perfect, his tone absolute: “Any individual who shines a laser pointer at aircraft should be court-martialed. And executed by firing squad.”
Viper blinked. The class stared. Ice folded his arms, satisfied.
Goose leaned toward Maverick again, whispering, “Sharp. Deadly.”
Maverick’s gaze lingered on the flame-striped tail twitching in the sunlight. He swallowed, looked back at the diagrams, then slid his eyes sideways again. Ice was kneading the desk with slow, rhythmic presses, eyes closed, purring faintly. A thread of drool edged toward his sleeve.
“Goose,” Maverick said.
“Yeah?”
“You think he’s sharp and deadly in the sack, too?”
Goose groaned and dropped his head onto the desk.
The sky over Miramar shimmered with heat, blue stretching endless above the desert scrub. Maverick loved it up here—stick in hand, engines screaming, the F-14 carrying him like an extension of his own body. This was where he belonged.
Which made it all the more infuriating that his rival in the skies was, apparently, half-housepet.
Slider’s voice cut over the radio, strained but resolute. “Focus, Ice. Bandit at your two o’clock.”
“Copy.” Ice’s voice was clipped, calm.
And then his Tomcat folded into the turn like liquid poured into a new shape. The maneuver should have stalled him, should have spun him into a death spiral, but somehow the jet snapped upright again, poised perfectly on target. The instructor pilot lost him in the glare and broke away.
Maverick grit his teeth. He had to admit it: Kazansky’s flying was unreal. Calculated, ruthless. The man was a natural predator.
Until he wasn’t.
Two hops later, Maverick pulled into formation and caught sight of Ice slumped low in the cockpit, helmet tilted back. Through the canopy glass, Maverick swore he saw the flick of an ear.
“Goose,” he hissed, “tell me he’s not asleep.”
“Not…entirely,” Goose said carefully.
Then Ice’s voice drifted through comms, dreamy: “Warm…so warm…”
The Tomcat drifted with him.
“Jesus Christ—” Maverick started, but Slider cut in with the practiced weariness of a man who’d lived this before. “Ice. Wake up. You can nap in class.”
A pause, then a sharp, staccato chatter crackled over the frequency. Teeth. Maverick blinked.
“Uh, Slider?”
“He sees something,” Slider said, dry as sandpaper.
Sure enough, Ice’s jet pitched hard. He pressed both palms against the canopy, swatting at empty air like he could claw the opposing jets out of the sky. Maverick’s radar lit up with warnings as Ice broke formation, weaving in lunatic arcs.
“What the hell is he doing?” Maverick demanded.
Slider’s sigh rasped over static. “Batting practice.”
No one could hit him. That was the maddening part. The instructors pushed them hard—aggressor runs, missile locks, close-range guns. Maverick got tagged once, twice, ten times. Everyone did. Everyone but Ice.
His flying made no sense. Sudden reversals, throttle cuts no sane pilot would risk, dives that should have torn the wings off. Twitch-reflex direction changes, lunges, retreats. Moves that had no place in a Tomcat.
But it worked. Missiles missed him. Guns couldn’t track him. He was always where no one expected, like he could smell the shot before it fired.
On the tarmac afterward, Maverick hurled his helmet hard enough that it bounced. “That’s not flying, Goose, that’s chaos.”
“It’s survival,” Goose said, retrieving it before it rolled under a truck.
“Survival my ass.” Maverick jabbed a finger toward Ice, who was sliding out of his cockpit on the far side of the hangar, tail lashing lazily. “He spent half that hop pawing at my jet instead of engaging Jester.”
“He also didn’t get hit once.”
Maverick scowled. The bastard was even grooming his gloves now, neat little rasps of tongue along the leather like it was a post-mission ritual. Slider stood beside him, resigned, carrying the flight book. Maverick swore Slider’s soul was leaving his body by inches.
“Greatest fighter pilot in the world,” Goose said lightly.
“He’s the absolute fucking worst,” Maverick declared.
The locker room at Miramar smelled like jet fuel had soaked into the concrete, layered with sweat, damp towels, and the sour tang of adrenaline burning off. Maverick slammed his helmet onto the bench, half for emphasis, half because his hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
“He’s insane,” he announced. “Completely—no, Goose, don’t look at me like that—completely out of his mind.”
Goose peeled his flight suit to the waist, calm as ever. “You’re just mad he ran circles around you again.”
“Circles?” Maverick barked a laugh. “Goose, he was asleep. Then he woke up, saw a flock of geese, and tried to paw them out of the sky. That’s not combat tactics, that’s—what even is that?”
“Catboy,” Goose said. “That’s what that is.”
Maverick dragged both hands through his hair until his scalp hurt. “And everyone acts like it’s fine! Like it’s normal that he’s swatting at jets while the rest of us are out here trying not to die.”
Across the aisle, Hollywood and Wolfman exchanged looks, biting back grins. Chipper muttered under his breath. Slider, still half-groomed down one arm, just rubbed at his temples, hollow-eyed.
“You’re missing the point,” Goose said, tugging his undershirt over his head. “He didn’t get hit. You did, though. Multiple times. What does that tell you?”
“That I’m flying against a lunatic,” Maverick snapped. “Who cheats physics every time he twitches. And people say I’m unreliable.”
“So…maybe you should pay attention to how he does it, is what I was getting at.”
“Oh, come on—”
Maverick broke off because Kazansky himself had entered, cool as ever, sliding his helmet into his locker with precise care. He peeled out of his flight suit one long limb at a time, tail flicking with each movement, ears angled back as if filtering the chatter. Not once did he acknowledge Maverick’s rant.
“Hey, I’m talking about you,” Maverick said, louder than necessary. “You nearly rammed me out there.”
Ice ignored him. He folded his undershirt, set it neatly on the shelf, then hooked both thumbs into the waistband of his briefs. The flame-striped tail lashed once before slipping free of the slit as he tugged everything down in one motion.
Maverick went silent.
Goose sighed.
Ice walked away, stark naked, toward the showers. His back was a study in clean lines and muscle, shoulders tapering down, tail curling lazy figure-eights as punctuation. Water hissed on tile a moment later.
Maverick kept staring long after he was gone.
“…What if I hit that?” he said finally, quiet, almost reverent.
Goose didn’t look up from his locker. “Do not. Even think about it.”
From the benches around them came a murmur:
Hollywood, half laughing: “He’s not kidding, man.”
Wolfman, shaking his head: “Catboys are federally protected, man. Don’t be stupid.”
Chipper: “You knock him up, you’re paying child support till 2004.”
Slider, bone-tired: “Don’t do it. Trust me.”
Maverick bristled. “What, like I don’t know what I’m getting into?”
“Exactly like that,” Goose said. “You have no idea.”
Maverick gestured helplessly at the showers. “Look at him! He’s—he’s got claws, Goose, he’s—” He bit down on the word beautiful. “He’s a menace.”
“Uh-huh,” Goose said, unconvinced.
The whispers faded to mutters, lockers clanging shut, boots scuffing tile. Maverick slumped back onto the bench, glaring at his hands like they’d betrayed him for wanting to touch.
The water cut off. Steam rolled into the room.
Maverick didn’t turn his head, but his eyes darted sideways, sharp as a thief.
Sunlight filtered through the half-broken blinds, lighting the vacant office in thin stripes. Dust floated in the beams, turning every motion into something deliberate, cinematic.
Kazansky sat at the desk with the same precision he sometimes carried into the cockpit. His tail curled tight around one chair leg, ears angled forward, the only sign of unease a faint flick of muscle beneath the skin.
The pill bottle was almost empty. He turned it in his hand, rattled it once. The sound was thin, final.
Slider leaned against the doorframe, flight suit hanging loose at the waist. His eyes tracked the bottle, then Ice’s face. “Mail delays again?”
Ice didn’t look up. “Seems so.” His voice was flat, measured. He set the bottle down, exactly aligned with the grain of the wood, then flicked the bottle with one claw, a soft tap that echoed too loud in the narrow room. His expression never changed.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said finally. Cool, precise. “We’ll manage until it arrives.”
Slider studied him a long moment. Then he nodded, slow, like a man resigning himself to weather he couldn’t control.
Ice leaned back, ears flattening briefly in the silence. His gaze slipped to the window, where dust swirled gold against the blinds. For a heartbeat, he stilled, pupils wide. A shadow passed. His tail lashed once, sharp, before settling again.
“Yeah,” Slider muttered. “We’ll manage.”
The bottle sat between them, mute and almost empty.
Miramar base at night should have been quiet: barracks full of pilots grabbing what sleep they could between sorties, the coastal air a welcome cool to the daily heat. Instead, the night vibrated with a noise halfway between a scream and a moan, rising and falling in long, ragged wails.
Iceman was in heat.
Maverick sat cross-legged on the unfurnished patio of his temporary quarters, a half-finished beer dangling from his fingers. He was tipsy, which made everything funnier. Every time Ice’s yowling faded, Maverick would whistle or call out softly, “Hey, pretty boy,” and sure enough the noise would double in volume.
Across the courtyard, a window banged open. “Mitchell, for Christ’s sake!” Hollywood’s head poked out, hair mussed, face murderous. “Stop egging him on!”
Maverick just grinned. “What? I’m not doing anything. Hey, Iceman, baby, come over here—”
Another wail split the night. Then came the thunder of footsteps—no, claws—and Iceman came tearing down the walkway on all fours, tail puffed out and streaming, eyes glowing with fever-bright intensity. He made straight for Maverick’s ground floor apartment, on a collision course with the sliding patio door.
Maverick burst out laughing, lurched to his feet, and ducked inside. He shut and locked the door just in time for Ice’s body to slam against it, claws raking plastic siding and glass.
The sound was like sandpaper dragged across bone.
“Open up, Mitchell!” Ice hissed through the glass. His voice was ragged, desperate. A tail thudded against the door like a whip.
Instead, Maverick leaned his forehead against the frame and laughed until his ribs hurt. “Oh, you are so mad. Look at you.”
Ice yowled again, long and mournful, and pawed at the glass panes. His claws squealed against the material with enough volume to make everyone in the vicinity wince.
A second floor window screeched open across the courtyard. “Shut him up!” Wolfman bellowed. “We’ve got sims at six, and no one’s slept in two nights!”
Slider’s voice followed from two doors down, flat and exhausted: “I told you. Pills didn’t come. Nothing to do but wait it out.”
“He’s your pilot,” Chipper shouted. “Why don’t you deal with it?”
“I’ve been dealing with it!” Slider snapped back. “Do you think I’m getting any sleep with him howling in our room?”
Maverick slid the door open a crack. “He-ey, Ice.” His grin was wicked. “You look—”
Ice lunged. Maverick slammed it shut again.
The impact rattled the curtains. Maverick staggered back, doubled over laughing.
“Cut it out!” Hollywood shouted. “You’re making it worse!”
Maverick wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand, gasping. “He wants me,” he wheezed, “he really wants me—”
As if on cue, Ice let out a rolling scream, pitched high enough that the glass buzzed. Then he dropped into a crouch, ass in the air, tail thrashing, pressing himself against the stoop like it was the only thing in the world that mattered. Elevator butt, right there on the barracks doorstep.
From a window above, Sundown yelled, “I’m putting in for combat pay if this keeps up!”
Maverick clutched the doorframe, still laughing, half-drunk, half-entranced. Ice rolled onto his back in the dirt, writhing, claws tearing at tufts of grass. Then he was on all fours again, sprinting laps around the courtyard, tail a banner of agitation. Every time he passed Maverick’s stoop he slowed, eyes fixed, pupils blown wide as floodlights.
“Goddammit, Mitchell,” Wolfman groaned. “He’s going feral out here and it’s your fault.”
“Not my fault,” Maverick called back through the slimmest crack in the door he could manage, raising his beer in salute. “I’m just appreciating the view.”
Another chorus of groans rose from the barracks. Doors cracked open. Faces appeared: tired, furious, some openly despairing.
“Mitchell, I swear to God—”
“Someone get him a tranq gun.”
“Slider, leash your damn pilot!”
Maverick leaned against the door again, voice pitched low and coaxing. “C’mere, Ice.”
Iceman charged the door at full speed. Maverick yelped and shut it just in time, beer sloshing over his wrist.
Goose appeared at the top of the loft stairs, hair sticking up, shirtless, looking like he’d aged ten years in as many hours. “Mav,” he said flatly, “go to bed.”
Maverick raised both hands in mock innocence. “What? I’m not touching him.”
“You don’t have to touch him,” Goose said. “You’re encouraging him. He was quiet for twenty minutes before you whistled at him.”
Ice shrieked again, a sound that could have woken the dead. He threw himself down, rolled in the dirt, then leapt up to slap both palms against the door, claws scraping glass like chalk.
Maverick couldn’t stop laughing. He was crouched down, shoulders shaking. “Look at him! He’s completely gone!”
“Yeah,” Goose said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “And so are we if you don’t cut it out.”
Another door banged open: an MP on the night shift. A question thundered across the courtyard like the voice of God. “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON OUT HERE?”
Silence fell, except for Ice, who immediately launched into another yowl.
Maverick tried to straighten up to close the curtains, beer still in hand, but laughter broke through again. He couldn’t stop.
The MP stared down the scene: Ice clawing at the patio door, Maverick doubled over laughing, half the squadron leaning out of barracks windows looking homicidal.
“Lieutenant,” the MP said slowly through the glass doors, voice colder than the desert night, “go to bed. Now.”
Maverick gulped air, saluted sloppily, and stumbled backward, still giggling.
The last thing he heard before turning around was Iceman’s claws raking across the glass again, long and longing.
Morning sunlight cut sharp angles across the lecture hall, bouncing off whiteboards and the polished tips of flight boots. The place felt hungover without the benefit of drinking: pilots sagged in their chairs, hair unkempt, faces slack from sleepless hours.
Maverick strolled in whistling, flight jacket thrown casual over his shoulder. He looked like he’d gotten the best night of his life.
The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.
Every head turned to glare at him. Hollywood’s eyes had murder in them. Wolfman had actual bags under his eyes, deep purple smudges that made him look like he’d gone a round with a MiG and lost. Chipper just mumbled into his hands.
“Morning, sunshine,” Goose said brightly, but it was the kind of bright that meant he’d been practicing the line since dawn to keep from strangling his best friend.
Maverick smirked, spinning his pen between his fingers. “What?”
“You,” Hollywood said flatly, “are an affront to God.”
Slider slouched in the back row, arms folded. He looked worse than anyone else, like a man hollowed out from the inside. “You people think you’re tired? He’s my neighbor and you’re all across the courtyard. Try getting your room broken into and clawed in your sleep when he mistakes you for a scratching post.”
“You could’ve moved him to the infirmary sooner,” Sundown muttered.
“Don’t you think I tried?” Slider snapped. “Took three corpsmen and a vet tech to strap him down. He’s still yowling in there, and they don’t know if they have enough medication to calm him down enough to finish the session. And you know why?” He jabbed a thumb toward Maverick. “Because this asshole wouldn’t stop teasing him. He would’ve snapped out of it on his own by now otherwise.”
The entire room turned as one.
Maverick raised his hands innocently. “What? I wasn’t teasing. I was—look, I was just talking to him.”
“You were calling him ‘pretty boy’ through the door,” Wolfman said. “Every time you did, he screamed louder.”
“That’s not teasing,” Maverick argued, grinning. “That’s—uh. Positive reinforcement.”
A groan rippled through the class.
At the podium, Viper pinched the bridge of his nose. “If I get one more request for illicit sleeping pills out of this squadron—”
“Sir,” Chipper croaked, hand raised, “Please. Just this once. He was in the vents last night.”
“And now he’s strapped to a gurney,” Hollywood said. “That beautiful creature. Miserable.”
“They released him a couple hours ago,” said Slider. “Bedrest.”
“Was miserable,” Hollywood amended.
Maverick leaned back in his chair, folding his arms behind his head. “I don’t know. Doesn’t sound so bad to me. I heard there’s other ways to knock them out of heat, though. Been reading up on it, actually. No prescription necessary.”
The silence was immediate, heavy.
Goose stared at him. “Mav. No.”
Maverick tilted his head, thoughtful. “I mean—what if I hit that?”
The room erupted in overlapping voices:
“You stupid bastard.”
“Federal protection, man!”
“Catboys are endangered, Mitchell! Hybridization is detrimental to the—”
“Whore.”
“You knock him up in this facility, Lieutenant, and we are all stuck with the fallout until retirement.”
Viper looked like he wanted to throw his yardstick.
Maverick just grinned wider, basking in the outrage. “What? You’re all thinking it.”
“No,” Goose said firmly. “None of us are thinking it. Only you.”
Maverick’s smirk didn’t falter. “Guess that makes me special.”
Goose tipped his head back with a painful moan that only could’ve come from his soul.
The corridor outside Ice’s temporary apartment hummed with bad fluorescent light and worse decisions. Maverick rapped once, knuckles to wood, already grinning.
The door jerked open on the chain. Two vertical pupils filled the gap.
“Maverick,” Ice said, voice roughened to velvet and gravel. A hand came through the crack, claws nicking the chain latch. It popped. “Inside.”
So much for playing coy. Maverick stepped in on reflex and had his back to the door before it even shut. Ears canted back. Tail slashing. Heat rolling off the man like a furnace.
Easy, he told himself. Easiest lay of your life.
It wasn’t.
The door barely shut before Ice’s weight slammed Maverick back into it. Teeth grazed his throat, claws cut his shirt clean down the middle. Maverick barked a laugh even as he twisted sideways to keep his jugular intact.
“Christ, you’re feral,” he gasped, fumbling for Ice’s wrists. “Gonna make me fight for it?”
Ice hissed into his ear, grinding against him hard enough to leave bruises, and shoved him toward the couch. Maverick toppled backward, half-sitting, half-sprawled. Ice followed like a predator taking prey down in grass, straddling him.
Fabric tore. A button skittered across the floor.
“Easy,” Maverick tried, already grinning, already hard. “I’ve got you.”
He got claws in his shoulders for that—warning scratches, shallow but stinging. Maverick didn’t flinch. He just shoved Ice’s sweats down, pulled his hips close, and pressed inside warm, wet heaven with a groan that punched the air from his lungs.
“Oh, fuck, yeah,” he rasped, forehead resting against Ice’s. “That’s wet. Take it. Just like that.”
Ice’s answer was a high, keening cry that could have woken the base all on its own. He rode Maverick hard enough to make the couch frame snap, driving both of them sideways into a half-roll. Maverick braced one hand against the wall, laughing through it, and gave it back stroke for stroke.
Ice bore down, leaning forward to wrap his arms around Maverick’s shoulders. Claws raked down Maverick’s back. Teeth worried his collarbone. Sweat stung his eyes. He loved every second.
“You like that, huh?” Maverick goaded, voice raw with exertion. “You like it rough, baby? You’re mine tonight. You hear me?”
Ice moaned like sex was the only language he understood. His tail lashed, wrapping around Maverick’s thigh like it wanted to pin him in place.
Next door someone pounded on the wall. “SIRS. HAVE SOME DECENCY.”
Maverick barked a laugh into Ice’s shoulder and thrust harder. “Yeah, not happening.”
The rhythm spiraled into chaos—thrusts breaking, bodies colliding in frantic angles. Ice came with a scream that rattled the glass panes, clamping down so tight Maverick saw stars. Maverick lost it seconds later, groaning against Ice’s neck, still rocking through it as what remained of the couch groaned in protest.
They collapsed in a heap, sweat-drenched, panting. Ice’s body went slack on top of him, ears tilted sideways, eyes hazy. He shifted to one side, still on his stomach, and loafed—arms tucked under his chest, head pillowed on folded hands, tail twitching. A motor-deep purr filled the room.
Maverick thought maybe—maybe—it was done. After a few minutes, he started drifting off. Ice’s body went loose next him, rolling again until he felt a chest pressed to his. Maverick dared a hand along taut abs, more curious than horny.
Snap. Teeth on his wrist. Not hard, but final.
Maverick froze, then laughed. “Okay. Boundaries.”
Ice licked the bite mark in apology, then groomed his forearm with slow rasps of tongue. Maverick, dazed, let him. “Sure. Why not. Go ahead.”
The grooming became more deliberate, more possessive. Ice nipped his shoulder. His tail coiled.
Maverick groaned. “You’re not done, are you.”
Ice slid off the couch with unnerving purpose, and removed his clothes entirely. Wordlessly, he finished undressing Maverick as well. Then he rummaged under the table, and came up with a dented tin. He flipped it open, revealing green dust.
“You’ve gotta be kidding,” Maverick said, sitting up. “Catnip?”
“Medical,” Ice said, deadly serious, then pushed Maverick onto his stomach.
“Wait, what—”
Ice tapped the tin once against his palm, then crouched low, tail flicking. He tipped out a careful pinch of green dust and leveled it into a straight line across the curve of Maverick’s ass. Maverick craned his head back, choking on a laugh.
“Oh, my god. This is actually happening.”
“Hold still.”
Ice didn’t rush. He bent close, eyes narrowed, lining it up like a firing solution. Then he pulled a folded bill from his discarded sweats, rolled it smooth between his fingers, and set it to the edge of the stripe.
Maverick yelped when Ice inhaled deep, suction dragging heat across his skin. The laugh snapped into a groan. “Jesus, Ice—”
Another neat line vanished, sharper this time, Ice’s nose pressed hard to him, mouth brushing his hip with every pull. Maverick clenched his fists in the couch cushions, torn clean in half between laughter and arousal.
Ice straightened, pupils blown to eclipse. He shook himself like something sluicing rain from its fur, and then the drugs made themselves at home.
It was like watching a thunderhead form. One second Ice was there, the next he was everywhere: a blur over the back of the fractured couch, a thud off the drywall, a vault to the kitchen counter that sent a bowl pinwheeling into the sink. He ricocheted off the hall door, paused midair to slap a hanging planisphere map hard enough to leave claw marks, then landed on all fours beside the couch with a delighted chatter.
Bang, bang, bang from next door. “SIRS. IT IS A WORK NIGHT.”
Maverick, wheezing and grinning, pushed himself upright. “I should be embarrassed,” he said to nobody, “and I am not.”
When Ice came back to him it was with the single-minded focus of a hunter returning to a favorite toy. Maverick’s hands immediately found purchase where they needed to—here, here!—because if he didn’t treat this like a high-speed merge with surprise vectors he was going to get clawed into ribbons. He still got clawed into ribbons, but he managed to choose where.
“Again,” Ice said. He grabbed Maverick’s hips, flipped him back over, and straddled him again in one motion, facing away this time. A little reverse cowboy action, then. Maverick blinked down at the sudden biological reveal between their bodies.
“Holy shit,” he muttered, dazed. “There’s…a lot going on back here. Does it matter which one I pick?”
Ice hissed impatiently and ground down against him. Maverick shook his head, grinning, filed the mystery away for later, and shoved himself back inside.
Round two was faster, messier, all claws and sweat. Ice clawed at Maverick’s thighs, bounced like the end of the world was imminent, and keened like the devil itself was inside him. Maverick slapped his ass hard enough to make him jolt forward and laughed when Ice moaned.
“You love it,” Maverick rasped. “You love me ruining you. Say it.”
A sound tumbled out of Ice that was equal parts moan and growl. He writhed, purring and hissing, utterly lost.
“That’s right,” Maverick groaned. “Mine. All mine.”
The pounding on both walls returned, desperate. “I’M CALLING VIPER. RIGHT NOW.”
“Do it!” Maverick shouted back, thrusting harder. “I don’t give a fuck!”
Ice came with a full-body shudder, claws carving welts down Maverick’s legs. Maverick lost it moments later, voice breaking against shredded couch fabric.
They collapsed again, wrecked and trembling. Ice rolled onto his side this time, tail twitching, eyes glassy. He turned around and began grooming Maverick’s leg with more slow, deliberate licks, rasping tongue dragging over every scrape. Maverick just stared at him.
The grooming turned to affectionate gnaws, then headbutts against his jaw. Maverick’s cock stirred again helplessly. “Holy hell, you’re relentless.”
Ice let him climb on top this time.
Round three was brutal in its steadiness—less frantic than before, but relentless, grinding, claiming. Maverick pinned Ice’s wrists above his head, and Ice’s teeth sunk into his shoulder every time he thrust deep. Maverick laughed raggedly through the pain, egging him on.
“Yeah, that’s it—harder. You want it, don’t you? You want me to fuck you through the floor.”
Ice purred so hard it rattled his ribcage. His tail thrashed the shredded couch cushions into fluff. His eyes were unfocused, fevered, desperate.
Maverick gritted his teeth and gave him exactly what he asked for—pounding into him until the couch legs snapped, until the picture frame above them rattled loose and crashed to the floor. Ice came with a scream, claws locked into Maverick’s wrists. Maverick followed with a shout, his whole body seizing in white heat.
For a long moment, all he could hear was the thunder of his pulse and the ragged rasp of Ice’s breath.
Then, slowly, Ice arched up into him, pupils narrowing back to something human. He took hold of Maverick’s hips and turned them both, curled half on top of Maverick, tail draped over his thigh, body heavy and warm. The purr returned—low, satisfied, unending.
Maverick pressed his mouth to damp hair, still laughing weakly. “Best bad decision I’ve ever made.”
Ice hummed agreement without words.
Maverick tried to move, failed, laughed again. “Alright. Round’s over. I’m a few doors down if you need me.”
A clawed hand caught his wrist, squeezed once—possessive, not pleading—and let go.
Maverick pulled his ruined shirt back on, staggered into the hall. Slider cracked a door, hollow-eyed.
“Please tell me it’s done.”
“For now,” Maverick said, grinning like the world’s happiest idiot, and limped away.
Back in the apartment, the purring never stopped.
Morning sunlight slanted through the classroom blinds, merciless and bright. The students dragged themselves in one by one, uniforms crisp, eyes bleary.
Then Maverick walked through the door half an hour later.
He looked like he’d gone twelve rounds with an entire flight deck: fighting and then fucking, in that order. His collar was torn, one sleeve hung by threads, and the side of his neck was raked with fresh claw marks. His knuckles were bruised. There was a bite-shaped welt on his jaw that makeup hadn’t even tried to cover.
He dropped into his chair beside Goose with a groan and then, unbelievably, a grin.
Nobody spoke. Everyone just stared.
Slider sighed the sigh of the damned.
Hollywood mouthed what the fuck across the row. Wolfman turned his notebook around and began writing out Maverick’s obituary.
Even Viper, mid-lecture, stopped dead with the chalk still in his hand.
Maverick stretched, winced, and announced to the room, “That was fucking hot.”
The silence deepened. A few jaws dropped.
Viper set the chalk down with great care. “Mitchell, if I have to call Naval Psych because you can’t keep your dick out of a federally protected species—”
Maverick just leaned back, hands behind his head, grinning wider.
Goose slid lower in his seat, covering his face with both hands.
The days at Miramar blurred into drills, debriefs, and the endless roar of jet engines. For Maverick, it was supposed to be his proving ground—the arena where he’d finally show the world just how good he was. For Ice, it was apparently a particularly sunny cat shelter.
In class, he still sprawled in sunbeams like they’d been laid there for him personally. Head pillowed on folded arms, tail curling lazily around chair legs, he dozed openly while Viper droned about closure rates. Every few minutes his claws flexed reflexively against the tabletop, kneading in a slow rhythm. Drool darkened the sleeve of his whites.
Maverick glared from three seats over. “I can’t believe he’s just pretending nothing happened,” he whispered. “Did you see him this morning in the locker room? Just turned his back on me. And when I said his name, he just blinked. Slowly. Like he was having a stroke or something.”
“You fucked him, you didn’t rewrite his DNA,” Goose whispered back. “At least he’s not hollering down the stairwells at night anymore. Be grateful you did that much.”
Viper paused mid-sentence as Ice purred loud enough to rattle the pencil cups. The sound vibrated through the floor, deep and unending, like a power tool someone had forgotten to switch off. The class stared. Ice did not stir.
Slider endured a casual headbutt to the shoulder without blinking. He had the resigned air of a man used to being used as furniture.
Then Ice’s eyes snapped open—slit pupils, unblinking—and landed square on Maverick, who made the mistake of looking back. The purr doubled in volume. Ice’s expression didn’t change; his mouth remained flat, posture disciplined. But the noise was obscene in its intensity.
Goose folded his arms. “Looks like someone’s got a fan after all.”
“Shut your goddamn mouth,” Maverick hissed, face heating.
Viper’s chalk snapped against the board. “Liutenant Kazansky, control yourself.”
Ice closed his eyes again, utterly unbothered. The only sound after that was the ceramic thud of Air Boss Johnson’s mug hitting the floor in the hall.
After the heat, Ice changed. Not in performance—he was still lethal in the air, still top of the scoreboard—but in behavior. Specifically, toward Maverick. More often than not, Ice ignored him. Not the usual cold shoulders of a rival, not terse replies. Full feline indifference. Ice would enter a room and turn his back deliberately, tail flicking as he sat with perfect posture, pointedly facing the opposite wall. If Maverick tried to bait him in the locker room, he was met with silence. Even his ears angled away, like radar tuned to someone else’s frequency.
Maverick ranted about it for days. “He’s doing it on purpose,” he insisted to Goose, pacing their quarters. “Turning his back on me, like I don’t exist. It’s an insult. It’s—”
Goose didn’t even look up from his crossword. “It’s a cat thing, Mav. He trusts you enough to ignore you.”
“No. No, Goose, it’s disrespect. I’m telling you, he—”
“He trusts you,” Goose said again, shading in a six-letter word. “Also, shut up. I’m begging you.”
Maverick collapsed onto the bed, hands in his hair. “Unbelievable.”
Goose filled in another square. “You brought this on yourself.”
The sky was clean that afternoon, the horizon sharp and glittering with heat. Maverick and Goose banked into formation, Ice and Slider paralleling them to port. Jester’s Tomcat cut across their path, gunning for a lock.
“Two o’clock, coming fast,” Goose called.
“I’ve got him,” Maverick said, tightening his grip on the stick.
But Ice’s comm cut across the channel, voice suddenly high, breathless: “Birds!”
“What?” Maverick snapped.
“Starlings,” Ice said, reverent. “Oh, there’s so many of them. Thousands.” The comm picked up a rapid-fire chatter—teeth against teeth with an underlying mutter of the vocal chords.
Then Ice’s jet broke formation entirely, rolling hard into a dive. His afterburners flared as he tore straight toward a cloud of black specks darting low over the desert.
“ICE—” Slider’s voice cracked.
“Get your ass back here!” Maverick barked, hauling his own Tomcat sideways to avoid collision. The canopy glass flashed as Ice’s wingtip swept dangerously close.
The comms dissolved into chaos: instructors screaming, classmates cussing, Goose swearing into the radio. Ice ignored them all, chattering ecstatically as the flock twisted and wheeled beneath his jet. His Tomcat lurched into an erratic chase, following the birds’ impossible patterns, rolling and stalling like a predator at play.
“Goddammit, Ice, this isn’t a nature documentary!” Maverick yelled, fighting to stabilize. “You almost killed me, you lunatic!”
Static hissed back, followed by the sound of claws scrabbling faintly against controls.
“He’s batting at them,” Goose realized with dawning horror. “Mav, he’s trying to paw the birds.”
“I know!”
By the time Jester scored a kill-shot lock on Maverick’s jet, Ice was still darting after the starlings, ignoring every scream of command in his ear.
Back on the ground, Maverick jabbed a finger across the hangar, where Ice climbed out of his Tomcat cool as marble, tail curling smugly behind him.
“You’re insane!” Maverick shouted. “Completely out of your goddamn mind!”
Ice just licked one gloved hand, slow and meticulous, and smoothed it over his hair.
That night, Maverick lay in bed staring at the ceiling, replaying the day’s insanity. The near miss. The chatter over comms. The way Ice had barely looked at him all week.
He turned his head toward Goose’s room across the hall, both doors open as always to facilitate late-night brotherly conversations. “I hate him. What an ass.”
“Sure you do,” Goose said, and turned out the light.
Alert horns wailed across the deck. The sea looked hammered flat under a white sun; heat bled off the steel like a mirage. Maverick and Goose jogged the last steps to their Tomcat, helmets under their arms, crew already moving around them in practiced lines. Far down the deck, Ice and Slider climbed the ladder to their own bird, tail numbers flashing in the glare.
“Layton’s dead in the water,” Goose read off the update as he strapped in. “Two friendly helos orbiting. Multiple bogeys inbound, angels low.”
“Copy.” Maverick dropped his visor, breathed once, and let the world narrow to stick, throttle, horizon.
Catapult. Whiteout. Then air.
The ocean opened underneath like a second sky.
“Bandits at two o’clock, ten miles, low.” Goose’s voice came steady. “MiGs.”
“Got ’em,” Maverick said, rolling right, sun cutting hard across the canopy. “Ice, you with me?”
A long, low vibration came over the net—at first just a sound, then obviously a purr run straight into the comm. Ice’s voice followed, flat as ever. “I’m with you.”
Slider, dry as sand: “Weapons hot on your call, Ice. Not paws. Weapons.”
They met the MiGs over water, black triangles knifing the blue. Maverick pushed up into high cover and took a quick look left.
Ice’s Tomcat was already playing with the lead. There was no other word for it. He drifted close enough to make the other pilot flinch, wings rocking in a taunting shimmy. His gloved hands pressed flat to his canopy—smack, smack—as if he could tag the MiG’s tail with his palm and call it.
“Use your weapons,” Slider said, weary. “Please.”
“Guns can’t solve everything,” Ice said, and cut inside the MiG’s turn at an angle that made Maverick’s stomach flip. He didn’t shoot. He slapped the canopy again like he meant to spook it into the kill zone.
“Jesus Christ,” Maverick muttered, rolling after him as Goose called bearings. “Stop flirting and kill it.”
“For you,” Ice said, and herded the black jet with two savage rolls, driving it wide.
“Don’t you dare—” Goose started.
The MiG, rattled, squirted straight into Maverick’s nose. “Fine,” Maverick snapped, took the shot clean, and watched the plume blossom white. “One down.”
“Gift accepted,” Goose said. “Thank you for your service.”
“Bandit high, bandit low,” came the airborne controller’s voice. “Layton reports near-range threats. Keep them off our deck.”
“On it.” Maverick peeled left to cover the ship. Spray feathered off the prow far below, the hull a blocky shadow in the water.
“Birds,” Ice breathed, and Maverick’s skin crawled. For a heartbeat he thought Ice meant starlings again and pictured a midair collision replaying over the ocean.
“Negative,” Slider cut in fast, reading his scope. “No birds. You’re looking at a specular reflection, Ice. Stay on task.”
“Copy,” Ice said, too calm, and then chattered into the mic at the sight of a second MiG cutting low over Layton’s wake.
“Break left!” Goose barked. “He’s spiked you.”
Maverick broke, vapor curling off the wings. A missile streaked past his right side in a hiss and vanished into glitter. “Flares,” Goose said, and the countermeasures kicked in. “You good?”
“Peachy,” Maverick said through his teeth. “Ice, I need the high guy off me.”
The purr returned, louder.
“Don’t—” Slider began.
“Let him purr,” Maverick said, hauling into a vertical pull. “If he’s happy he hits things.”
Ice hit things. He shredded the high MiG’s nerve with a dive that looked suicidal and then wasn’t, snapped across its nose with a burst of guns that stitched silver into the wing root. The black jet peeled away smoking.
“Fox Two,” Ice said at last, almost bored, and took another one out with a perfect spray of bullets like the whole swatting routine had just been foreplay.
“Imagine if you did that the first time,” Slider said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm.
Maverick punched back toward Layton and caught sight of another MiG running dry, pilot panicked, lining up to escape. Ice rolled above it like a cat over a toy mouse and then—of course—nudged it with wake turbulence, lazy and cruel, guiding it onto a line that would put it straight down Maverick’s throat.
“Stop gifting me prey,” Maverick snapped, sliding to avoid it anyway. “I know it's your instincts or whatever, but it's fucked up. I’d rather you just shoot them down.”
“It is efficient,” Ice argued, as though he were the only reasonable person in the vicinity and everyone around him was an utter fool. “You like easy kills.”
“I like my own merges. Shoot your toys, Iceman.”
“Focus,” Slider warned. “Bandit four at your six, Ice. Bandit five, low. Layton wants those two off.”
The ocean flashed under Maverick’s canopy in hard bands as he dove low to protect the ship. The MiG down there was lining up a pass so close Maverick could see the pilot’s helmet.
“On him.” Maverick pressed, felt the nose bite, got tone, and fired. The MiG exploded into a flat sheet of smoke and falling hardware that frothed the water.
“Layton says thank you,” the controller intoned, voice too even to be anything but adrenaline. “More inbound.”
Ice made a noise halfway between a trill and a giggle. Whatever it was, it felt deeply wrong to hear over secure comms.
“Cut that out,” Slider said, which only made the trill louder.
Two more MiGs tried to bracket Ice from high and low at once. He responded with a move that looked like bad physics: throttle chop, nose high, a stall that should have tumbled him. His jet hung for a blink, impossible, then fell off the line and slid under both bandits in a roll that left them shooting empty sky. Maverick watched the whole thing with his mouth open.
“Guns,” Ice said obligingly, and walked tracers into the lower MiG’s intake like he was threading a needle. It coughed black and went quiet.
“You are allowed to be normal,” Slider said faintly.
“Normal is for transports,” Ice replied, and broke hard toward the next problem.
A MiG latched onto Maverick’s tail; Goose’s voice sharpened. “He’s got you. Break right, break right—chaff!”
Maverick dumped chaff, rolled until the horizon went sideways, then screamed back up the deck angle. “Iceman, cover.”
The purr came again, obscene and affectionate, and Ice cut across the field of view with a move so close Maverick saw the seam lines on his flaps. The MiG chasing Maverick flinched, made a bad correction, and in that heartbeat of wobble Maverick reversed and took the shot up its throat.
“Gift to me, from me,” Maverick crowed, elated, and Goose whooped once, the sound ragged in his ear.
Static popped; another voice cut in—someone on deck, maybe Layton, maybe Enterprise’s Air Boss, hot mic with fury in it: “Whatever motherfucker keeps knocking my mugs—”
The net clipped mercifully back to clear, and the final wave arrived: three more black jets in tight formation, low and fast, aiming straight for the ship. Time telescoped. Everyone talked at once.
“Three incoming, low.”
“Layton clear your helos.”
“Mav, don’t chase, defend the deck.”
“Ice. Weapons. Not hands.”
“Mitchell, do not do anything you call ‘fun’ right now.”
Maverick let the first two go—dared them to pick him—and met the third head-on. Closure rate screamed. For a moment it was all canopy and sun strobe and the white dot of a helmet and then the bandit flinched, broke, went wide.
“Ice, now,” Goose said. “Take those two.”
Ice refused to line up like a normal pilot. He darted, swatted, herded. One MiG snapped at the bait and pulled into a turn that forfeited speed. Ice rolled under him—so close his tailplane nicked wake—and the purr over comm rose a full octave. “Fox Two.” The MiG blossomed.
The last one went for the ship with the stubborn death-drive of a bad decision. Maverick cut him off with a dive that made his vision gray at the edges. The bandit tried a desperate climb. Maverick stayed with him, throttle firewalled, stick heavy.
“Tone,” Goose said, strained.
“Tone,” Maverick echoed, and squeezed. The missile streaked, found heat, and the last black triangle folded in on itself over open water.
“Splash. Splash,” the controller said. A pause. “Layton is clear.”
No one spoke for a long breath. The ocean looked calm again, like the fight had never happened. Maverick exhaled and only then noticed his hands were shaking on the stick.
“Iceman, status,” Slider requested, all business because he had to be.
“Hungry,” Ice said, and Goose made a sound like he’d just aged five years.
“RTB,” the controller told them, voice finally softening. “Bring it home.”
They formed up for the return. Ice slid into position off Maverick’s wing with that same irritating perfection. When Maverick glanced left—just a sliver, just a check—Ice’s head tilted the barest degree, ears tipping in the helmet, and the purr threaded the net again, smug and bassy.
“Don’t encourage him,” Goose murmured. “Please.”
“I’m not,” Maverick lied, and lined up on final.
The trap felt like a handshake with gravity. Hook, scream of cable, jolt. The deck swallowed them. Moments later, Ice’s Tomcat thumped down and caught the wire like it had been designed solely to demonstrate how little drama landing needed.
Taxi. Chocks. Canopy up. The sea wind hit with salt and kerosene.
Maverick stood on the ladder and looked across the deck. Ice was already out of his cockpit, helmet under his arm, tail (somehow) managing a flick through the flight suit slit as he paced toward the island. Slider trudged behind him, carrying two kneeboards and the burden of God’s least restful job.
“You gonna thank him,” Goose asked quietly, “or yell at him?”
“Both,” Maverick said, and jumped to the deck.
They did not hug. They did not say much beyond the ritual exchanges of men who had almost died doing something very stupid. The only overt act was Ice stepping close enough to bump his forehead gently to Maverick’s shoulder—a headbutt, restrained, an acknowledgement.
Maverick rolled his eyes at the sky, which was so blue it looked fake. “Yeah, all right,” he said. “I guess this is what you look like when you like people. See you around, Iceman.”
Ice’s mouth didn’t move. The purr bled into the wind anyway, pleased and unrepentant as ever.
“Get below,” a deck chief yelled, and the spell broke. Men moved. Jets snarled. The ship got back to the business of being a floating city with too many problems.
Layton steamed on, safe again. The ocean closed over the oil slicks of the MiGs without a ripple.
The deck smelled wrong. Hot iron, salt, oil slick, the char of jet fuel that never burned all the way clean. Beneath it all, the faint metallic tang of blood—his own, but no one else could smell it.
Maverick’s footsteps receded down the steel, lighter than they should have been for someone who strutted so hard. His voice had been all concern, half-bark and half-demand, but Ice had brushed it aside. Of course he had. Weakness was leverage, and leverage was death. He knew that bone-deep, the same way he knew where sun would pool in a room before the blinds were drawn.
He let one hand rest against his stomach, quick and discreet. No one saw. No one could. The shape of his body hadn’t changed yet, but he could feel it—a weight shifting inside, an ache that wasn’t from g-forces or bruises. Something private. Something his.
Ears tilted against the wind, he scanned the deck without turning his head. Always watching. Always hunting. But not just for himself anymore. He needed a place—dark, hidden, safe from the deadly movement of jets and from men’s curious eyes. Instinct tugged at him in new ways: find shelter, devour and bury the scent of birth, and keep the kittens silent until they were more secure—or, in the worst case scenario, until they could defend themselves from threats without Ice’s assistance.
Humans called it paranoia. Ice called it survival.
Behind him, men worked the deck, shouting over turbines. None of them looked his way. Good. He smoothed his expression into bland nothingness, tail flicking only once before he stilled it.
Maverick had turned his back on him—again. Not in a cat’s way, but in a man’s way: Goodbye, he said. Ice allowed himself a thin smile. Let him go. For now. The less attention, the easier this would be. The secret was safe as long as no one thought to pry.
He walked toward the island like nothing hurt, hands loose at his sides, posture perfect. A cat in parade rest, hiding claws, hiding teeth, hiding everything except what he chose to show.
The ache in his belly pulsed once more. He ignored it.
No one would know. Not yet.
The Enterprise was a floating hive, steel stacked on steel, voices layered over the groan of turbines. To most men it was noise, background. To Ice, it was a map.
He padded the narrow corridors in regulation boots but soundless as any prowler worth its talons. His ears flicked against the drone of machinery, filtering high from low, parsing the heartbeat of the ship. Metal tremors carried through his soles, vibrations telling him where bulkheads pressed, where compartments widened, where shadows lasted longest.
Restricted signs hung from hatches like challenges. He ghosted through them anyway. Rules were human things, and he had no interest in playing human when the ache in his belly deepened with each passing week.
He catalogued spaces:
—A disused storage closet, smelling of bleach and forgotten mops. Too exposed.
—The laundry room, heavy with fabric and detergent. Warm, but too busy. He dragged claws through a stack of uniforms once, just to test the weave. Strong. Tearable.
—The engine room. Heat radiating, metallic thunder thrumming from floor to skull. Dangerous to most. Comforting to him. Predators didn’t like noise. Predators didn’t like constant vibration. He could raise kittens here and the racket would drown their cries.
Instinct whispered: this place.
He slipped back out unseen, tail twitching under the slit of his uniform, and filed the choice away.
Months later, two engineers went to check a coolant gauge and froze in the doorway.
At first, it looked like a pile of shredded uniforms dumped under the auxiliary piping—a nonsensical laundry spill, maybe, except it was moving. Then came the sound: soft, high-pitched squeaks. Tiny. Hungry.
And then Kazansky lifted his head from the nest, flame-striped ears flat, eyes glowing gold in the shine from the sudden light. One arm cradled something small and pink. His tongue rasped once over a dark crown of hair before he looked up, calm as death.
“Close the door,” he said.
The engineers obeyed.
Word spread anyway. Of course it did. Whispers slithered through the ship like smoke: five of them. A litter. In the engine room.
By the time Stinger stormed down the ladder, Ice had made himself comfortable, tail curled around his offspring like a barrier. The nest was elaborate now—strips of laundry woven together, regulation towels shredded into soft bedding, even a few stolen blankets arranged in careful layers. The babies writhed in the heat, each delicate form a riot of tiny fists and mewls, their hair already showing tabby and tortoiseshell streaks near the base of their ears.
“Not in the goddamn engine room,” Stinger snapped, voice carrying over the turbines. His face was red with fury—though whether from the risk of fire hazard or the verified fact of Maverick’s DNA mixed into this mess was anyone’s guess.
Ice didn’t flinch. “The location is ideal.” He bent, licked one daughter’s head with clinical precision, then looked back up. “Predators fear machinery.”
“Predators—? Kazansky, this isn’t a wildlife refuge, this is a warship.”
“Same principle.”
The Captain arrived, drawn by the commotion. His presence was quieter, heavier. He took in the scene—the nest, the kits, Kazansky crouched over them like a stone idol—and for a long moment he just rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Son,” he said at last, voice measured, “I understand the natural instinct to hide the young. But you simply cannot keep your children here.”
Ice blinked once, genuine in his confusion. “Why not?”
“Because the engine room is a busy place. Lots of movement, loud noises, hazardous equipment. Also—” the Captain gestured vaguely at the pipes, the humming machinery, the men frozen at their stations— “you’re not even supposed to be down here in the first place. Someone will be getting a talking-to about that.”
“The noise will deter threats,” Ice insisted. “The movement will confuse them. This is optimal.”
“You’re raising children in a goddamn turbine chamber,” Stinger snapped.
“Optimal,” Ice repeated, cool as always.
The Captain exhaled through his teeth, like a man confronting not just disobedience but cosmic irony. He glanced at Stinger, whose jaw looked one sentence away from fracturing. He glanced at the engineers, who were still pretending very hard to be invisible.
Finally, he looked back at Ice.
“I’ve served thirty-five years in the Navy,” he said. “Seen more bad decisions than I can count. But this—” He stopped, shook his head, pinched the bridge of his nose again. “You know what? I’m too old for this paperwork. I’m due for retirement anyway. Someone else can explain to Washington why there’s a catboy raising a litter in my engine room.”
He clapped Stinger on the shoulder, heavy enough to stagger him. “Congratulations, son. It’s your circus now.”
“That’s not how this fucking works, Brian,” Stinger sputtered.
But with that, the Captain turned and walked away, muttering something about fishing boats and inner peace.
Miramar, TOPGUN classroom, late afternoon. Fluorescent lights hummed above neat rows of flight students. Chalk rasped against the board under Maverick’s hand, sketching a quick intercept diagram—clean, confident, like he’d finally slipped into the role of instructor instead of hell-raiser.
“Closure rate’s not about guts,” he was saying. “It’s about math. You do the math, you stay alive. You don’t—”
The phone on the wall rang.
Maverick froze with the chalk half-lifted, eyes flicking to the receiver.
“Sir…?” a student prompted.
He waved them off, wiped his hand on his khakis, and picked up. “Lieutenant Mitchell speaking.”
A voice came through, flat as asphalt: “Lieutenant. This is Navy Personnel Command. We’re notifying you of a dependent support obligation.”
Maverick frowned. “What?”
“You owe child support,” the clerk said, with the bored cadence of someone reading a grocery list. “For five dependents.”
The chalk slipped from his fingers and clinked against the tile. Broke clean in two.
Maverick’s mouth worked soundlessly.
“Sir,” the clerk continued, unbothered, “under federal statute you are required to provide financial support for dependents identified as your offspring. In this case: five children. Age: newborn. Custodial parent: Lieutenant Commander Thomas Kazansky. Names of dependents: Ginger Mabel Kazansky, Callie Fernbud Kazansky, Lulu Clementine Kazansky, Willow Poppy Kazansky...”
The thousand-yard stare settled on his face like a bad dream. Maverick’s eyes unfocused, gaze fixed somewhere far beyond the wall, past the chaparral, past the ocean, staring into a bleak horizon of diapers and parent-teacher conferences.
“Sir?” a student asked. “Are you okay?”
He didn’t answer.
“Sir?” another tried. “Do you…need a trash can?”
The clerk droned on. “...and Mittens Charlotte Kazansky. Failure to comply may result in garnishment of wages, reassignment of duties, and disciplinary action up to and including—”
Maverick hung up without a word. The receiver thunked against the cradle. He left it swinging there like a noose.
Silence pressed in.
Students glanced at one another, unease creeping in. One raised a tentative hand. “Sir, uh…is this going to be on the test?”
Maverick turned, slow, eyes still vacant. His voice was hoarse, like it had come back from a thousand-mile march. “No,” he said. “There is no test. Only life. And there are no answers in the back of the book.”
He walked out of the classroom without another word, boots echoing down the hall.
The chalk lay in two pale shards at the base of the board.
The Enterprise came to port under a pale morning sun, sailors lining the deck in crisp formation. Families crowded the dock, flags waving, kids on shoulders. Maverick stood just behind the barrier, Goose at his side, trying not to sweat through his khakis.
And then he saw him.
Kazansky, immaculate as ever, striding down the gangplank with regulation duffel slung over one shoulder. His expression was cool, unreadable. His tail twitched once through the slit of his whites.
Strapped to his chest was a modified combat vest—on loan, or filched from the Marines, most likely. From its many pouches protruded five tiny heads. Dark tufts of hair, gently pointed ears, bleary eyes blinking in the first sunlight they’d ever seen. They squirmed faintly, emitting soft mewls swallowed by the dockside clamor.
Maverick’s jaw unhinged. He looked like he’d just been hit with a carrier deck blast.
Goose didn’t even blink. He leaned forward, hands in pockets, and muttered, “Congrats, Daddy.”
Maverick made a strangled noise.
Ice didn’t break stride. He walked straight past the crowd, straight past the line of brass waiting for salutes, and stopped in front of Maverick.
“Mitchell,” he said evenly, voice barely raised over the gulls. “Meet your offspring.”
Maverick’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. No sound came out.
One of the babies sneezed.
It set off a chain reaction. The five of them stiffened, tiny ears twitching, and then—hisssss. All teeth and spit, the sound ridiculously small but coordinated, like they’d rehearsed in the womb. Little claws flexed against the fabric of the vest. One even spat in Maverick’s direction, in stature and sound no bigger than a hiccup, but deadly serious about it.
Ice looked down, unbothered. “Good,” he said, voice calm as ever. “Instincts are intact.” He tapped one small nose back into line with a claw-tip and tucked the flap of the vest more securely. The hissing dwindled to faint grumbles.
Maverick swayed. His vision tunneled for a second, all gulls and sunlight and the sudden realization that five tiny lives were prepared to fight him to the death on sight. Goose’s hand shot out to steady him.
“Breathe, Mav,” Goose reassured, though he was smirking, too. The bastard.
Maverick staggered sideways, found a crate, and sat down hard. His mouth opened once, closed again, then he bent forward with his head between his knees. Around him the crowd surged, the gulls screamed, and Ice adjusted the babies as if nothing at all were wrong.
Goose leaned down, voice low. “Don’t pass out on the dock. It’s undignified.”
Maverick lifted his head, pale and sweating. “They hissed at me, Goose.”
“They sure did,” Goose said, utterly delighted. “Welcome to fatherhood.”
They were married within the month.
The ceremony was small, hurried, and deeply awkward. A Navy chaplain officiated, face carved in stone, reading from the manual like he wished the manual would combust. Carole cried through the whole thing, not from romance but because Goose had whispered the details into her ear as they unfolded: five of them, Carole, all at once. He’s never picking up the drink tab again.
Maverick said “I do” like a man signing for a delivery he hadn’t ordered. Ice said “I do” like he was reporting a kill ratio.
The reception was in the O-Club, paid for with Viper’s discretionary budget. No one danced. Someone bought a cake. Air Boss Johnson lost two mugs that night and threatened to write to Congress about it.
It had to be done. Marriage meant housing, and housing meant Maverick was spared the ruinous tide of child support. They were assigned a squat, beige box of a house near base, the kind of place that smelled faintly of damp carpet no matter how many candles you lit.
Ice made it his own immediately. He ignored the master bedroom entirely, instead dragging armfuls of blankets, towels, and shredded laundry into corners. He stripped bark from decorative landscaping trees and carried it inside for “insulation.” Maverick watched, silent, as nests grew in every room like strange altars. Sofas disappeared under piles of cloth. Closets filled with shredded uniforms. At one point, the bathtub vanished under a drift of bedding stolen from neighboring clotheslines.
The kittens thrived, their milestones slightly accelerated by Ice’s catboy blood. Soon they learned to lurch across carpet matted with borrowed wool, pointy tails swinging side to side; to purr loud enough to rattle picture frames; to knead Maverick’s chest at three in the morning until he gave up on sleep entirely.
Neighbors stopped dropping by. Rumors circulated. Kazansky has a litter. Mitchell’s stuck for life.
Maverick said nothing. He went to work, flew his hours, came home, and stood in the doorway watching Ice curl himself around the pile of their children like a lion around cubs.
Sometimes Maverick’s eyes softened. Sometimes they narrowed with the chilling realization that his life, once defined by speed and freedom, had narrowed to beige walls, screaming kittens, and a mate who thought air vents were excellent hiding spots.
But he didn’t walk away.
He couldn’t. Something stopped him every time.
The Wendy’s parking lot was nearly empty, sodium lights buzzing over faded yellow lines. Maverick sat in Goose’s truck with the door open, shoulders heaving. His face was blotchy, his shirtfront damp.
On the driver’s side, Goose held a red cardboard tray heavy with chili cheese fries. He balanced it carefully, the steam fogging the windshield.
“Mav,” he said gently.
Maverick let out a broken noise somewhere between a sob and a snarl. “Ten months, Goose. Ten months! He wasn’t even fully in heat.”
“I know.”
“He just—he just looked at me with those ears half-cocked, and his tail swishing, and said, ‘We’ll need more towels.’ Like it was nothing. Like it was Tuesday.” Maverick buried his face in his hands. “I can’t—I can’t do this again.”
Goose nudged the tray into his line of vision. “Eat. Salt helps.”
Maverick sniffled, took a handful, and shoved it into his mouth. Cheese stretched, beans tumbled, chili smeared across his fingers. Tears tracked through it all.
“I was supposed to get a vasectomy tomorrow,” Maverick choked through the fries. “I made the appointment. I circled it on the calendar. I was free, Goose. I was free.”
“Sure you were.” Goose handed him a napkin.
Maverick ignored it, snatching up more fries with the desperation of a drowning man. Chili sauce streaked down his chin. “I can’t even afford this meal. Do you understand? This is the last spontaneous purchase of my life. After this, it’s formula and—” His voice broke. “—more goddamn blankets. And towels. Goose, they all know my name at the Bed, Bath & Beyond.”
Goose patted his shoulder. “There, there. Bite, chew, cry. In that order.”
Maverick wailed around a mouthful of cheese and beans.
From across the lot, a teenage employee dragging trash bags paused to stare. Maverick met his gaze through tear-reddened eyes, chili dribbling down his jaw.
“This is my life now!” he shouted into the night. “This is my life!”
The teen dropped the bags and bolted back inside.
Goose passed him another napkin. “Finish the fries, Mav. Then we’ll get you a Frosty. I’m buying.”
Maverick sobbed harder, but he kept eating.
Maverick carried the books home in a stack so high he couldn’t see over them. Parenting manuals, childcare guides, even a volume on Exotic Animal Husbandry: A Practical Handbook. The librarian had raised one eyebrow when he checked out the last title. Maverick hadn’t explained—mostly because he wasn’t sure if that would make it better or worse; he just really hoped his selection wasn’t racist.
He spent a full weekend building.
First came the base: two mattresses pushed together on the floor of the spare room, covered edge to edge in fleece blankets. Then came the insulation: pillows, quilts, comforters layered until the whole thing looked like a padded cell designed by Martha Stewart.
Heat lamps arrived next, assembled in a triangle so the temperature could be regulated “like a reptile terrarium, but cozy.” Maverick fussed over angles, adjusted switches, muttered calculations under his breath.
He added a humidifier. He added a litter box, which he’d read somewhere might be useful. He added a scratching post, then two, then gave up and shoved in an entire cat tree from PetSmart.
The pièce de résistance was a crib mobile he’d repurposed with miniature F-14s, which circled slowly over the nest while tinny music tinkled.
When it was finished, he stood in the doorway and wiped sweat from his forehead. “Perfect.”
Goose leaned in behind him, chewing gum. “Looks like a petting zoo collided with a daycare.”
“Shut up,” Maverick muttered. “This is going to work. He’s not doing the engine room thing again.”
They called Ice in.
Ice appeared in the doorway, ears angled forward, tail low. He stepped into the room, sniffing the air delicately. He circled once, twice, like a cat inspecting a carrier. He crouched, poked at a blanket with one claw, sniffed again.
Maverick waited, chest puffed with anticipation.
Ice straightened. “Oh,” he said evenly. “I see.”
He turned on his heel and walked out.
Maverick blinked. “Wait, what do you mean you see?” He gestured at the nest. “Look at this! It’s perfect! Blankets, lamps, airflow, everything!”
From the hallway, Ice’s voice drifted back: “Optimal. For you.”
The next day Maverick found him asleep in the linen closet, kittens curled around him like socks.
Two days later he found him sprawled in the garage under a pile of old moving blankets, tail twitching, surrounded by empty detergent boxes. Brow furrowed in concentration.
The nest remained pristine, untouched. The heat lamps hummed uselessly, the mobile spun alone.
Maverick stood in the doorway one night, fists on his hips, staring at the ridiculous fortress of bedding. He could almost hear the books mocking him from the coffee table.
From the garage came the faint sound of purring.
“Unbelievable,” Maverick muttered.
Goose popped his head in, glanced at the untouched nest, and grinned. “Should’ve just gave him the boxes it all came in.”
Maverick hurled a pillow at his head.
The garage smelled of oil, old cardboard, and damp concrete. A single bulb buzzed overhead, casting harsh light on the spectacle unfolding below.
Ice was sprawled on the floor, back arched in a long stretch of released tension, striped tail lashing in sharp jerks. His uniform shirt had been stripped away along with his pants, claws dug deep into a discarded towel, breath hissing between clenched teeth. Around him, six tiny bodies wriggled, slick and raw, voices no louder than squeaks but together forming a chorus of mewling.
Each one bore the unmistakable marks of their kind: a twitching tortie tail, triangle ears folded flat against wispy-haired skulls, eyes sealed shut. Part-cat, part-human, wholly impossible.
Maverick was on his knees a few feet away, hands pressed to his face, keening into them like he’d come back from a warzone. His shoulders shook with every noise, half in love, half in disbelief.
“This isn’t happening,” he croaked into his palms. “This cannot be happening. Not the garage, Ice, not the garage—”
Ice ignored him. He bent and licked one newborn’s head with even, rasping strokes, purring faintly between breaths. The sound reverberated through the space, as if nothing at all were wrong.
Maverick dragged his hands down his face, leaving streaks of oil from the floor across his cheeks. He stared at the cluster of tiny tails, voice breaking. “Six. Six, Ice. Six of them.”
“Yes.” Ice’s tone was calm, clinical. “Efficient.”
“Efficient?! We’re in a garage! There are spiders living in here!” Maverick flailed one arm at the dark corner, where a fat brown recluse sat immobile atop a dead cricket. “There are—there are oil stains! There’s a wrench under your hip!”
Ice shifted slightly, tail curling around the pile of newborns. “It’s warm enough in the Summer. More importantly, it’s dark and isolated.”
Maverick made a noise like he’d swallowed glass.
Then something else occurred to him, and his voice went hoarse with horror. “Where’s the placenta? I left to pee after you…you know.”
Ice glanced up with flat calm. “I ate it.”
“You—what?”
“To avoid attracting scavengers.” He licked another infant’s damp ear, unbothered. “Would you prefer coyotes scratching at the door?”
“There are no coyotes in base housing!” Maverick sobbed.
“There are coyotes everywhere,” Ice said, unruffled.
Maverick clutched fistfuls of his hair, rocking in place. “I cannot—cannot believe this is happening to me right now. I used to be the best. I used to be a legend. I was going to—”
“Help me move them.”
Maverick blinked through tears. “What?”
Ice flicked his ears toward the corner. “Behind the washer and dryer. It’s warmer. Less exposed.”
“You cannot be serious.”
“I am.”
Maverick shook his head wildly. “No. No, no, no. Absolutely not. This is insane. This is feral. This is—”
A chorus of wails rose from the litter, sharp, urgent. Ice lifted one with careful hands and held it out toward Maverick, who flinched as if he’d been offered a live grenade.
“Take her,” Ice said firmly. “Gently.”
Maverick hesitated. His fingers twitched. Then, slowly, he reached out. The newborn’s tail flicked weakly against his palm. She fit no heavier than a handful of wet sand.
Maverick’s throat caught. His eyes burned hotter. Love swelled up inside him like a flash flood.
Ice bent and picked up another, already moving toward the washer. “Quickly, Mitchell. They’ll chill.”
Maverick stumbled after him, still cradling the kitten-child, voice cracking. “I flew a combat mission over the Indian Ocean. I stared down MiGs. And now I’m—now I’m tucking babies behind a fucking Whirlpool. My fucking babies.”
“Yes,” Ice said, settling one into a nest of torn towels wedged between the washer and dryer. His movements were precise, instinctive. “The survival of our young is more important than our feelings about it.”
Maverick pressed his newborn against his chest for warmth, tears running hot down his face. “Oh my God,” he whispered. “Oh my God, I’m a dad again.”
“Correct,” Ice said. He turned, took the baby from Maverick, and nestled her with the others. Six tiny tails twitched as they pressed together, warm in the machine’s shadow. “The repairman for the oven is coming tomorrow. If he sees them, you’ll have to help me move them again. There’s a good spot in one of the dresser drawers.”
Maverick sank down against the wall, hands limp in his lap, staring at the heap. His voice came out hollow, disbelieving. “This is my life now.”
Ice crouched, tail curling over his knee, and headbutted Maverick’s shoulder with calm finality. “Yes,” he said simply.
Maverick tipped his head back against the wall, tears streaming unchecked. “Unbelievable,” he muttered. “Un-fucking-believable.”
From the laundry corner came the sound of broken, unrefined purring stacked six-high, loud as a whole fleet of engines.
The house was chaos. Blankets in every corner, laundry baskets pressed into service as nests, stray toys scattered across the floor like debris from a storm. The air was full of sound—mews, chirps, chattering, laughter, the thrum of purring that seemed to radiate from the walls themselves.
Maverick sat cross-legged in the middle of it all. One kitten was climbing his arm, claws sharp through his t-shirt. Another batted at the chain of his dog tags with single-minded intensity. Two more were curled against his thigh, asleep in a tangle of tails.
He sighed, long and low. Not quite defeated. Not quite content. Just—full. Overwhelmed in every direction, hemmed in by tiny bodies and the realization that this, improbably, was his life.
Across the room, Ice watched with unblinking calm. He looked like a sentinel carved of marble, except for the slow lash of his tail and the faint purr vibrating in his chest. Then he stepped forward, crouched, and pressed his forehead to Maverick’s temple. A deliberate, affectionate headbutt.
Maverick huffed out a laugh, shaky and real. His hand came up, cupped Ice’s jaw, thumb brushing the edge of one flame-point ear. “Guess I’m not going anywhere,” he said softly.
Ice’s pupils widened, catching the light. His tail curled around Maverick’s shoulder possessively.
The kittens wriggled closer, purring loud enough to shake the floorboards.
Maverick closed his eyes, surrounded on all sides by warmth, by noise, by family.
And for the first time since the phone call, he didn’t feel like running.