at what point did alice and ice man become a thing?
all of this is a verse with val over at @fliesicecold because she and i ship it all, all the time. so we can blame her.
alice had been put with tom for a time as his RIO and before she fell in love with him, she loathed his existence. it was like something that had to develop naturally for her and it took sometime before she managed to get through to him or even he get through to her. when it did, alice was 100% serious about it. when she had the slightest inkling of potential love for him, alice stopped flying with him and went off to pilot. it was harder on them at first since they weren't always deployed together and more often than not, she was separated into different missions. in the starting point of most of this, she's never expected to even go this far with somebody she's dating. especially with them both apart of the military. it's very up and down for awhile before it's cemented that they last.
in the tg:maverick verse (not all maverick verses are exactly alike, this is one of many of the verses), they're married. 2 kids; tommy and josie (respectfully faced by jack and mercedes kilmer). we've kinda come to the conclusion that we aren't killing tom because val kilmer didn't survive his cancer for them to do that to ice, but he does have his struggles. alice is a captain and teaches at top gun, having stopped so far into the ranking because she believes in organically earning everything with her husband as admiral.
if you are a muse from the og gang, you don't have to know who alice is if you're not comfortable, but generally - alice is friends with the set group. fiercely protective of them, but probably that's her biggest blind spot.