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it was ugly, like what they all did to me
and they did to me what i wouldn't do to anyone
you know that's for sure
tell me all the time not to worry (worry)
and think of all the time i'll, i'll have with you
when i won't wake up on my own
held close all the time, knowin' i'm half of you
—nettles, ethel cain
Viper hears Maverick before the kid even gets to his door. That bike of his can be heard from a mile down the road no matter what’s flying overhead. Corinne meets his eyes over the top of her book, and he nods. Snapping the book shut, she says, “I’ll get some coffee brewing.”
The doorbell rings.
Every joint in his body groaning in protest, Viper stands. Too many years pulling too many G’s has left him bone-deep bruised.
A boy needs a dad. He needs someone to lead and teach and pave the way for him. Viper wasn’t there when Pete needed him, but he can be there for Maverick now.
He opens the door before Maverick knocks, and for a beat they stand before each other in silence. Maverick, with his fist poised mid-air ready to knock, Viper with a slow-burning ache building at the base of his spine.
“Lieutenant,” he says. “To what do I owe the honor?”
Mav’s fist clenches before dropping to his side. Staring at his shoes, he chews on his lower lip before saying, “I just didn’t know where else to go.” When their eyes finally meet, Mav’s are reddened, face rubbed raw and wind-chapped.
Gesturing for him to come in, Viper sits him on the living room sofa. Corinne hands him two cups of coffee. “I’ll be in our room if you need me,” she says, cupping his cheek, kissing him warm and brief, then disappearing.
Looking back to him, Maverick bends forward, forearms braced on his thighs, staring into the boring beige carpet Viper keeps meaning to have replaced. Viper hands him one of the mugs and takes a seat perpendicular to the sofa so his toes brush the tips of Mav’s boots.
“Sorry to bother you on a Sunday, sir,” Maverick says. The setting sun comes in through Corinne’s lace curtains to halo Mav. His dark hair turns to flame, sends his face into shadow. Goddamned beautiful even as he’s been torn ragged from all sides.
He sits hunched in on himself, the skin around his nails picked bloody. Staring into his coffee, Viper knows he’s a million miles away. What did the old timers used to call it? Shell shock? The shrinks down at the VA are calling it PTSD now.
“What’s on your mind?” he prods.
Swallowing, Maverick sits back and stares at the array of photos Viper’s walls have accumulated over the years. Various ports, naval bases, places he’s called home. Corinne arranged them by year, starting with his grandpa’s portrait before shipping out for WWI to a group of them in Duke Mitchell’s backyard. Mav’s eyes linger on that one.
“It’s your dad, isn’t it,” Viper says. Grabbing the picture off the wall, he passes it to Mav. “There you are,” he adds, pointing to a surly-faced baby squinting against the sun. “Your mom was taking the picture. Duke was the first of our cohort to have a kid.”
Mav’s lower lip quivers, but his face doesn’t fall. His knuckles turn white where he grips the frame, and Viper spares a thought for things like shattered glass.
He taps Duke’s face. Viper asks, “Is this why you fly the way you do? Trying to prove something?” Mav’s brow furrows, looking askance. “You’re a lot like him, you know. He was a natural, heroic son of a bitch.”
It’s quiet, barely there: “So he did it right?”
The question takes aim and hits Viper square in his soft, underbelly. “Yeah,” Viper says, giving himself permission to skim along Mav’s knuckles, “he did it right. I’m gonna tell you something, Lieutenant, that could end my career. It’s classified.”
Viper leans back in his seat. Lets Maverick’s shaky inhale wash over him. Viper closes his eyes, briefly, and sees that day two damn decades ago as clear as he remembers seeing Corinne’s face this morning. The one thing he’s always been good at is putting those kinds of memories in a box. He knows lots of guys who bring it home to their families, to their wives. He’s never been like that. Instead, he parses through memories the way you go through a picture album: blow the dust off, leaf through yellowed pages, then laugh at how everyone used to do their hair.
“We were in the worst dogfight I ever dreamed of—bogies like fireflies all over the sky. His F-4 was hit. He was wounded, but he could’ve made it back.” A note of pride creeps into his tone. “He stayed in it. Saved three planes before he bought it.” In the moment, Viper had screamed himself hoarse over the comms telling Duke to get out. Had worn his fingers to the bone making sure the rest of them got back safe. Had to do something to make Duke’s sacrifice worth it.
Almost a snarl, Mav says, “How come I never heard that before?”
“It’s not something the State Department tells dependents when the battle occurred over the wrong line on some map.” What Viper doesn’t say is I’m sorry. He doesn’t say I should’ve been the one to tell your mom or I should've taken care of you both.
“And you were there.” Maverick doesn’t phrase it like a question.
“I was there.”
A couple of minutes pass between them in silence. Outside, the crush of the surf is white noise for whatever’s racing around Mav’s mind as he stares at the picture.
“What else are you thinking about?” Viper says, breaking the quiet.
“My options, sir.” Mav passes the picture to Viper.
“Simple,” Viper says, turning it over to slip the photo out. “You’ve acquired enough points to show up tomorrow and graduate with your Top Gun class. Or, you could quit. There’d be no disgrace. That spin was hell. It would’ve shook me up.”
Tucking the photo into his jacket, Mav says, “So you think I should quit?”
“I didn’t say that.” Viper pauses, thinking about what he wanted someone to say to him and what was actually said and what he wishes he could say. “The simple fact is you feel responsible for Goose, and now you’ve got a confidence problem. Now I’m not gonna sit here and blow sunshine up your ass, Lieutenant. A good pilot is compelled to always evaluate what’s happened, so he can apply what he’s learned. Up there we gotta push it.” Viper looks out the window, at the far-off horizon and brutal blue sky he’s spent his life chasing. “That’s our job. That’s your option, Lieutenant. All yours.”
“You know, I haven’t even cried,” Mav admits, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I fucking wish I could, but it just— it won’t happen.”
Viper remembers watching Duke die; he remembers not shedding a tear at the funeral even while his widow sobbed into Corinne’s shoulder. All he did was stoically take Pete from her and kept him occupied through most of the service at Arlington.
“It wouldn’t be a shame to quit. I said it, and I meant it. Now, I think you’ve got what it takes to make something of yourself. To get yourself out from your dad’s shadow, to be your own man. But the choice is yours and yours alone. It’s not something you can make for anyone else, least of all a ghost.
“I don’t know what to do without him,” Mav says, he stares wide-eyed at his hands like he’s surprised he’s even saying the words. Sudden understanding hits Viper like a tidal wave. “This whole thing—the Navy— it doesn’t work without him.”
“Aw hell, kid. I don’t know what to tell you,” Viper says. He’s known guys who quit because of losses like this, has lost too many to suffocation by nightmares and nervous breakdowns. Viper’s never reacted like that himself—he was raised to take everything on the chin and keep moving forward. He’s always had someone depending on him, he didn’t have time to fall to pieces.
“I just want— I want someone to tell me what to do. I want it to not be my choice.”
Squeezing Maverick’s bicep, he says, “We’ll figure it out.”
Mav’s eyes fall shut. “I want him back.”
“I know.” Viper shuffles to sit next to Mav on the loveseat. Ushering Mav to his side, he says, “Come here, kid.”
Mav collapses in on him as though all his strings have been cut. He curls into Viper’s side, wriggling like he could somehow sink into Viper’s skin before tucking his face into the hot nook of his armpit. God, he misses when his kids were young enough to want to be close to him like this. His girls still hug him, but his son grew out of it around puberty. He misses being needed like this, having something to give easily and freely and without end.
“I remember when you were yay high or so,” Viper says for no good god damned reason—the kid’s not even watching him. He rubs Mav’s back in wide, open palmed circles and barrels on: “Running around, getting into everything. Your dad thought you were gonna be a track star.”
Maverick radiates heat like a furnace. It rolls off him in waves from every inch of skin, bleeding between the cotton of their shirts into Viper’s skin. His daughter just had a baby a couple of months ago, and the doctor placed the squirming infant on her bare chest. Still covered in amniotic fluid, his grandchild inhaled her first breath and wailed. One of the nurses said something or other about how the baby needs to feel the mom’s skin as soon as possible. He doesn’t know why. If he had to hazard a guess, he’d say so the baby knows its mama or so it feels safe. It’s their first time living, after all.
Viper scuffs a hand along Maverick’s hair, lightly scratching at the nape of his neck. The kid says something, but it’s muffled. “What’d you say?” Viper asks.
Mav sits back, downcast eyes and all, and says, “I actually was pretty decent at track. Couldn’t ever make the team ‘cause I kept getting moved.”
His cheeks burn red, and for whatever reason, that makes wires cross in Viper’s mind that shouldn’t even be in the same zip code because he thinks Mav’s never looked more handsome. He’s the spitting image of his mom, but that attitude is all Duke. Sitting here in Viper’s living room with his guts spilled out on the floor, he’s just himself. Viper wouldn’t want him any other way. It’s what makes the kid the best; it’s what makes him out fly his dad’s legacy.
“Listen to me. You’re going to get back in that cockpit. Not because I told you to, but because you know that’s where you belong.” Taking Mav’s chin between thumb and forefinger, he adds, “Will you let me show you?”
He tracks the movement of Maverick’s Adam’s apple as it bobs on a dry swallow. Eyes falling shut, Mav nods wordlessly. Mav lets himself be dragged upstairs to Vipers’s guest bedroom that was once his daughter’s. He tries not to think about his kids, about how he knew Mav when he was small enough to fit in the crook of Duke’s arm; he tries not to think about things like legacy and politically inconvenient deaths.
Mav stands at the threshold of the room. Something about him seems fundamentally out of place with bruises accentuating his eyes and weighed-down shoulders. This room—this house—has seen so many happy days that Maverick’s abject misery sticks out like a smudge on a window.
Taking Maverick by the elbows, he pulls him into the room and shuts the door. He rubs Mav’s elbow back and forth, hovering close enough to pick up all the varying hues of green in his eyes. Finally, Viper leans in and connects their mouths, dry and chaste. He wraps an arm around the kid’s waist to hold him upright because Mav almost instantly goes weak against his chest. “Easy,” Viper says into the nothing space between their mouths. He cups Mav’s jaw and scratches behind his ear. Traces the curves and smirks at the shudder that ratchets through him. “Let someone else call the shots.”
When he kisses Maverick again, it’s not chaste. He licks his way behind perfect, crooked teeth, hooks a finger in Mav’s belt loop and hauls him onto his thigh. Mav’s cock bumps his hip, insistent and burning.
“Sorry,” Mav mumbles.
“I want you to cry for me,” Viper says instead of Don’t be or something equally as soft. Something that would give away his hand. He doesn’t order it, per se, but he watches a shiver rocket through Mav. The tips of his ears burn red, and Viper squeezes his cock through his jeans.
“I don’t know—” Mav starts. “It’s been so long.”
“I’ll get you there.”
Viper steps back, leaving Maverick poised mid-air. It’s a pretty picture, and Viper wishes he could snap a polaroid: flushed, straining at his zipper, eyes half-lidded. He’s something out of a girlie magazine come to haunt Viper’s every waking moment and most of his sleeping ones, too.
Mav’s eyes blink open slowly then all at once. He watches Viper trepidatiously as Viper pulls a chair out from Corinne’s writing desk, sits, and lights a cigarette. The only sound in the room, briefly, is the flicker of his lighter and Mav’s labored breathing.
“Get your clothes off,” Viper orders, blowing out a stream of smoke that hangs overhead like his and Mav’s shared history.
Taking a shaky inhale, Maverick strips his shirt off. He hesitates, holding the shirt and staring at Viper like he wants another command. Slow-moving heat washes up over Viper at that—at Mav being wrong-footed and waiting for him. “Well?” Viper says, “fold it, Lieutenant.”
Mav bites his lip and does as bid. He places it on top of Viper’s dresser and follows it with his jeans. His hand hovers over his cock, over the damning wet spot staining his briefs translucent. With his brows furrowed, he’s almost boyish. Uncertain and needy.
“All of it?” Mav asks, voice cracking like the teenager he isn’t anymore.
“All of it.”
When the briefs puddle around his ankles, Mav’s cock hangs thick and heavy against his hip. Hard, flushed, wet at the tip. His cheeks are burning hot, blush flooding into his chest, and Viper’s teeth ache to sink into all that skin. Completely bare, Maverick stands at attention, hands balled into fists at his sides, deliberately not looking at Viper.
It takes Viper five minutes to finish his cigarette. Once he ashes the butt, he stands, stretches, and makes his way to Maverick in three strides. Mav has to tip his chin up to look him in the eye even if there’s only the slightest difference in height between them. Viper cups his shoulders, slips down his chest and rakes his nails along the tan skin. Reddened welts rise in his wake, and Mav shivers. He leans in until his mustache scratches the flushed shell of Mav’s ear, “You gonna let me take care of you?”
Swaying, Mav spills into him and nods against Viper’s shoulder.
“Come on then, kid.”
Maverick lets out a small, half-swallowed noise at that while Viper leads him over to the bed. Viper tucks that away for later and watches Mav lean back against the pillows. He’s a vision with his cut thighs and slight waist. He can’t decide how on display he wants to be—bending his knees, laying them flat, shuffling beneath the weight of Viper’s gaze.
Viper makes the decision for him. Grabbing Mav’s knees, he pushes them flat, and murmurs “Easy, Lieutenant.”
Maverick doesn’t settle at that, but he does marginally relax. A tiny bit of tension eeking out of his thrumming muscles.
With Maverick laid out on his back, Viper traces a hand down his abdomen. Viper pins Mav’s arms above his head and urges him to grasp at the rungs of the headboard. Starting with Maverick’s pec, Viper curls his fingers around the swell of it and lightly scratches his nail along one pink nipple. Further down, he finds divots of ribs that generate rippling laughs, which Mav muffles against his bicep. Viper can barely make out the corner of his smile, his squinched-eyes, but it’s beautiful and boyish, and maybe he’s a little sick in the head for this kid.
“Sir,” Mav complains. He wriggles a little, testing the boundaries of whatever this is.
With two heavy hands on Mav’s hips, Viper stills him. He rubs aimlessly at the protruding hipbone, follows the line down to the crease of his thigh before easing his legs apart. Viper insinuates himself in that hidden space, idly tracing his fingertips along the sensitive, velvety skin. It’s softer here than elsewhere, and Viper wonders how many people—if any—have gotten to see this part of Maverick. He presses the pad of one dry finger against Mav’s hole and lets it sit, getting him used to the sensation of something there. Reaches into his back pocket for his wallet and awkwardly pulls out a strip of lubricant packets and a condom one-handed. “You ever done this before?” he asks, pushing Mav’s knee out and up. Mav grabs it. Kid’s got good instincts, Viper thinks, half-hysteric.
Brow furrowed, Mav bites his lower lip, worries it, and releases it.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Viper prods, ripping open one of the lube packets and squeezing it out around his finger. Adding a little more pressure, he’s pleased when Mav’s body parts to accept his finger. “Promise.”
“No.” It comes out as a hoarse whisper, but when their eyes meet, Mav’s are hot and hungry and wanting. “But I’ve thought about it. I want it.”
Viper crooks his finger and grins when Mav keens, back bowing into an arch. He’s burning hot; Viper can damn near feel his heartbeat pulsing. All that blood rushing in his veins—Viper remembers being young once. Remembers when it felt like he could fuck and fight and never be satiated. “That’s it. Nice and easy for me, Maverick,” he says, all gravel.
The tendons in Maverick’s neck tense, his jaw flexing, scrabbling at the sheets for purchase. Slowly, tentatively, his hips start rocking down onto Viper’s hand, and Viper’s eyes latch onto the ripple of Mav’s stomach muscles. Poor kid working so hard for it. Pride warms his chest from the inside out. A flare of sparks shoots up his spine when Mav plants his feet, thrusts down several times in rapid succession, and lets out a frustrated moan. “Oh God,” Mav exhales all in a rush.
Viper’s world narrows down the stretch of Mav’s body around his knuckles. The dusky pink furl of his hole relaxing, easing, opening for Viper the way it was always meant to. Lube glistens along his skin like little pearls of starlight.
Reaching down, Mav fumbles for his arm, grips it tight enough that the skin turns white. “You’re okay, son,” Viper says the way he talks down a sailor having a flashback. “Breathe for me.”
He remembers being fucked like this for the first time. How the sensation of being pried open for another was both exhilarating and deeply terrifying. He rubs his thumb along the bumps of Mav’s ribcage, kneads the dip of his waist. “How’s that feel?” he says, curling his thumb and pushing it deep into the soft skin behind his balls.
Mav whimpers, fucking down onto his fingers almost without thinking.
“Maverick,” he prods.
“‘S good,” Maverick moans, cracking like a teenage boy again. Viper missed that time for Maverick, but he remembers his own son like it was yesterday. If Duke and Johanna hadn’t both died, would he even be here? Would he have stayed in the service as long as he has? Would he getting ready to fuck the same boy Duke carried around baby pictures of? Beneath him, Mav rubs his forehead fretfully against the sheets. “Oh, Jesus, sir.”
A warm, California breeze slips over them. It tastes like salt, or maybe that’s sweat from his upper lip. The first time Viper fucked another man, it was in the crowded, humid heat of an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Pacific; the other man retired back in ‘63. He didn’t want to go to Vietnam, he said. He saw the writing on the wall long before any of them did. Viper was still looking for a reason to stay alive.
“You’re taking it good,” he says, palming Maverick’s lightly-furred thigh, thumb digging into the sweaty divot of his knee. “Keep breathing.”
The third finger spreads Mav impossibly open, and it goes in easy, so goddamned easy, it makes heat roil in the pit of his stomach. The wet sound of his fingers, their harsh pants, blend with the shush of the ocean, and for a moment, there’s no one else on earth besides the two of them here, in Viper’s guest bedroom. No Corinne, no Goose. No ghost of Duke Mitchell. It’s just him and Maverick, who trusts him in the air and with this secret.
Sweat pools in the hollow of Mav’s throat. Viper leans in to lap at it, sinks his teeth into a collarbone and worries a purpling bruise into the skin. That day Goose died, when he found Mav in the hospital bathroom with blood-shot eyes but no tears. Viper had wanted nothing more than to have Maverick right there—to rip those white briefs off him and fuck him over a standard-issued sink and try and get him to forget the weight of his best friend dying against his chest.
Viper studies Mav’s face now. Watches each eyelid flutter and peek of teeth from his lower lip; soldering iron burns and childhood battle-scars Viper should’ve been there for. He’s red-flushed down to his nipples, cock leaking onto his stomach, and Viper can’t help but marvel at how beautiful he grew up. Viper presses the pads of his fingers into Mav’s prostate and works him over and over until Mav’s cock kicks and dribbles even more. His stomach caves in with a high, almost animal noise, fumbling for a grip on Viper’s arm.
“You gonna fuck me?” Mav slurs through half-moon eyes. Viper swipes the damp hair out of Mav’s eyes and fights back against a rush of arousal as Mav nuzzles into his palm.
“I’ll give it to you, kid,” Viper says.
With trembling hands, Viper slicks the rubber down his cock along with more lube. If he’d had the presence of mind, he’d have stored a bottle of the stuff in the guest room. Less mess than scattered foil packets he has to go back and throw away. Mav’s breathing picks up even more, heavy and labored, and his chest heaves like the women in those bodice rippers Corinne’s always reading. He hitches Mav into his lap, grabs the base of his cock and guides it in. He pushes and pushes, watching Mav’s face go through a flurry of emotions, not giving him time to back out.
Once he’s all the way inside, Viper leans over him, braced on his forearms. Maverick’s hands come up to cling to his shoulderblades, brow furrowed. But Viper’s sweating bullets, and Mav can’t get a good grip, so he just scrabbles at Viper, pulling him downdowndown until their chests meet. Viper tucks his nose into Maverick’s temple. Grits his teeth and breathes around the arousal coursing through him telling him to punch it.
“How’re you doing?” he says against Mav’s ear.
“Gimme a minute,” he says, half-whine, half-slur.
Dizzy, Viper nods. He grinds into Maverick’s ass, easing him into the stretch, the sensation of someone working you open like this. Head tipping back, Maverick moans, long and loud. His voice breaks on the tail end as his legs wrap around Viper’s waist to hold him in place.
“How’s it feel, Lieutenant?” he says. Grabbing Mavericks’ jaw, he forces the kid to look him in the eye.
Though it takes him a minute to parse through the command, Mav blinks through a thick fan of lashes and says, “‘S good, sir. Better than I imagined.”
And isn’t that the goddamned worst? The image of Maverick in his barracks, in an aircraft carrier twin bed, in the showers after a hop, with a couple of greased up fingers inside himself, trying and failing to create this sensation. Viper wonders what Mav imagines when he gets off—if it’s Miss Blackwood or some random hook up or—
“I’m going to fuck you now,” Viper says into the skin of Maverick’s shoulder. He pulls out an inch, pushes back in as a tease, testing the limits of Maverick’s body. It shoves a moan out of him. Mav reaches up, claws at his arm, pants into the pillow. He nods.
Viper thrusts with intent this time. He puts his back into it, so Maverick’s whole body jolts. His spine twists and rolls with the force of it, yelping and fingernails biting into Viper. “Oh, God—” Maverick manages. “Fuck, sir.”
“Yeah,” Viper says, nosing behind Mav’s ear to mouth along his hairline. “That’s it.”
“I need—” Mav says, half-slurred. His fingernails bite into Viper’s skin, drag angry-red welts that send a scatter of sparks down his spine. Mav bears down, tight as anything, and whines high and thin. A near-animal sound.
Viper digs into his limp frame, settles deep inside, cuts a heady, thundering pace that knocks Mav up the bed with each thrust. There’s no room for Mav to meet him, all he can do is hold on to Viper and be brought along for the ride. Each rough cut of hips knocks another shattered noise out of Maverick, and heat simmers along Viper’s skin, swelling and roiling.
I’ve thought about it. I want it.
“Say his name, son,” Viper says, his own voice jumping. He sits back on his heels, pushes Maverick’s legs back, and picks up the pace. It’s graceless, humping at his ass, but when he grabs Maverick’s jaw and squeezes it, the sight of Mav’s wet, frightened eyes sinks like painful, perfect needles all over his skin. Heat surges through his veins. “You thought about this before. It was Bradshaw, wasn’t it?”
Maverick’s face falls, devastated and twisted, but he doesn’t deny it.
Viper grabs Maverick’s cock and squeezes the base of it, mean. Mav writhes and tries to cover his face, but Viper pins his wrists back and says, “I want you to say his name. That’s an order—”
“Ah, Nick.”
Viper doesn’t even finish his sentence before Maverick says his name, face crumpled like it kills him to admit. It probably does. He’ll probably go home on that death trap of a motorcycle of his praying for a death wish, praying to be put into the grave next to Goose, but right now, there’s some sense of absolution here for both of them. Naming the thing makes it real, brings all the ugly out into the open, but provides opportunity for the wound to heal.
He’s got Maverick spread open in his lap now, the kid’s knees falling apart and held in place by his palms. Viper finds a rhythm and sticks with it, watching, waiting, calculating for each hitch of breath, each roll of body, each tremor across Mav’s limbs. Mav manages to cover his face with both hands, and Viper hears a tell-tale sniff, a crack in his throat. Feels a sob bounce through Maverick.
Peeling away Mav’s hands, Viper groans at the sight: red-limned eyes, blotchy flushed cheeks, tear tracks disappearing down his temples into his hairline.
“There’s my boy,” he says, cupping Maverick’s cheek and swiping along his cheekbone. He kisses Mav’s warm, wet cheeks like he did for each of his own kids, but that only makes Mav cry harder. He shushes Mav, slowing to a heady rocking motion. An easy push-pull of using Mav’s body to get himself off, of watching Mav’s eyelids flutter and crystalline tears bead up on his lashes before falling, overflowing. “C’mere.”
He eases Mav’s arms around him and lowers his body until they’re flush, with only the thick cotton of Viper’s shirt separating them. It rubs against Maverick’s nipples, chafing, but that only seems to turn him on more. Mav’s back arches to get more friction, pulling Viper in tight and holding him with a grip hard enough to bruise.
“G-oose,” Mav stutters out between each of Viper’s forceful thrusts, and it’s like a dam broken the way he sobs out the callsign in between hiccups. He’s crying in earnest now, and God damn the poor kid must’ve been holding all of this back for so long. Nobody had given him permission, nobody had told him it was okay to mourn. Nobody had told him he was just as much a widow as Goose’s wife.
“You’re alright, kiddo. Dad’s got you,” Viper says, low and as tender as he can manage. Slowing to a grind, he curls a hand around the back of his neck, tight in the hair at the nape of his neck. He places a kiss to the corner of Mav’s eye, damp with tears that won’t stop coming. “My boy,” he breathes, soft, fond. It’s wrong, it shouldn’t be coming out of Viper’s mouth. Goose should be here in his place, but nothing’s gonna bring him back, and he’s all Maverick’s got now.
Viper shushes him with a father’s instinct, holds him close and lets Mav cry it out while he fucks him. Maybe they’re both sick. Maybe this is what the military does to you—eats away the human in you until you’re forced to find solace from whoever’s offering. “Let it out. You’re doing great. I got you.”
Maverick cries out and comes, sniffling thick. Viper feels Mav’s grip on his shoulders tighten, feels Mav’s cock kick where it’s pressed between their bellies, feels the wet heat seep through his shirt. “I just want him back,” Mav says through a veil of tears, hands futilely trying to swipe them away.
“I know you do,” Viper says, helpless because no parents wants their child to suffer, but this is their lot in life. “You’re where you need to be.” Closed-mouth, Viper kisses Mav’s temple and grinds against his ass. Mav whimpers and squirms, and Viper knows he’s hitching past the high point. If Viper were a less selfish man, he’d pull out, get Maverick in the shower, put him to bed. Instead, he rocks his hips as fast as he thinks Mav can handle until he comes himself with a bone-deep groan. Sweat drips off his hair to splatter against Mav, Mav’s heels digging bruises into his lower back, and all the wound-tight heat in his belly unspools at once.
He breathes into Maverick’s hair as he comes down from the high, heart thumping madly in his own ears. “Fuck,” he mutters, rubbing his forehead against the pillow. “Let me get you cleaned up.” With two fingers holding the condom in place, Viper eases himself out. Takes a minute to watch the way Mav’s hole stays open before tying the condom off. The guest bedroom has an ensuite bathroom, so he stiffly pads over to get a washcloth.
When he returns, Maverick’s curled on his side like a kitten, face rubbed raw. Taking a seat on the edge of the bed, he stares at Mav’s face and wipes away crusted tear tracks, sweat and spit. He cleans off half-dried come and lube.
Before he can chuck the washcloth in the hamper, Maverick grabs his wrist. He won’t look Viper in the eye, but he says, “Sir. Thank you.”
Viper lets himself be pulled back into bed. He sits against the headboard and pulls Maverick into his side. Lights a cigarette and waits for Mav to work up the nerve to say whatever else he needs to.”
When Mav speaks again, it’s muffled against Viper’s abdomen: “You won’t tell anyone, will you?”
“No, Lieutenant.” He doesn’t say that this is just as much a risk to his career as it is to Maverick’s; that Corinne’s leniency with him only goes so far. He doesn’t say Maverick needs to learn to school his features when he talks about Goose because it’s written all over his face. Viper rubs his back and takes another drag off the cigarette. “You should get some sleep, yeah?”
Mav’s halfway there already. Dozing, Mav confesses, “I don’t know what I’m gonna do without him.”
He kneads the spur of bone at the base of Maverick’s skull. Stares at the first winks of starlight over the Pacific like fireflies, like bogies on a radar. There is so much of Duke in Maverick, even this. A thousand things catch in his throat, unable to throw themselves into the open. Viper sighs, pulls Maverick close, and says, “We’ll figure it out, kid. Promise.”