#icesli

“...for flight 429B to San Diego. We are now…”

Slider - Ron now, or Captain Kerner - looks up towards the speakers, and sighs. “I guess that’s us.”

“That’s you,” Ice points out and takes another sip of his whiskey. “I still have time to finish this.”

Slider stands up, shaking his head in amusement, and Ice immediately misses the warmth of his thigh pressed against his own. He quickly gets up too to shake Slider’s hand, prolonging the moment of contact.

“I look forward to flying with you, Captain Kerner.”

Ice who's starved for praise as a kid, and then he meets Slider at the Academy. Slider's who's genuinely happy for him and excited for him and always celebrates his achievements, whether it's a perfect score on a test or a swimming medal.

Ice who realizes quickly that he has strong reactions to Slider praising him, and who's still surprised when Slider throws an arm around him and whispers that he did well into his ear, and he feels heat pooling in his groin.

Ice was wearing shorts. It was the first thing Mav noticed when he arrived at Slider's barbecue, a six-pack in one hand and a bag of paper plates in the other. His habit of arriving late had made him the de-facto "call him to grab what we're missing on his way over," which endlessly benefited the other flyboys, but put a dent in his pocket he was too kind to fill.

Back to Ice. He stood by Slider at the grill, beer already in hand, chatting up his RIO as if no time has passed. Mav set his load down on a nearby table, trying to not get distracted by Ice's calves and the gorgeous way his skin had tanned into a beautiful golden.

His intense staring brought him eye-to-knee with a smudge of black script above his scapula as Ice turned to greet the newcomer.

Mav squinted, trying to parse out the letters. Ad astra per aspera. He had seen that before, on Sli—

"Hey Mav,"

"You have the same tattoo as Slider," Mav blurted out over Ice's greeting.

Ice flushed, Slider descending into crackling laughter, the taller slinging his arm over Ice's shoulders, pulling the blushing man into his side.

"I lost a bet," Ice muttered.

"A very stupid one," Slider added. "But now the world knows he's my friend forever."

The tips of Ice's ears bloomed red like the rest of him.

When the RIOS start squabbling about who's the best between them, Ron has to step forward and defend his name.

"Wolf, the only thing anyone has heard about you is that you've been fucked more times than you've had hot meals."

Sue him, it's funnier than just calling the man scrawny.

He's lucky when Tom's bare shoulder rubs against his own, the pilot is still dripping wet and yet no less scathing than usual when he joins in, stealing Ron's deodorant under the excuse of borrowing it as he does.

"I heard it was neck-and-neck before he skipped lunch."

it's just – you fly with a man and the same guy is going to be your best man, and you love a woman and she's amazing, and he knows that, and that's the easy path forward for the rest of your respective lives. and Slider's got a girl he's going to be happy with. because you've both talked about, in as much as you can.

but you show up at the doorstep anyways and nothing happens, because it almost feels juvenile to, but there's a hunger to just laying down next to him so you can feel his breath rising and falling on the mattress besides you, the way its been since the Academy and on every deployment, the way it is in the cockpit when he's behind you and you know that that's where your other half is really tethered.

If Tom were a lesser man, he'd dig his fingers into the dark sunburn across the back of Ron's shoulders. He does not, because he isn't juvenile. And because Ron smacked him when he did it earlier.

"If you were less whiney about it, I might have bothered to care."

Tom almost calls it quits there and then, but the aloe vera is already on his hands and Ron is facedown on the couch, it'd hardly be as fun if his RIO didn't watch Tom leave him stranded to his own stupidity.

Instead, with a kindness he'll never admit to, he slathers aloe over Ron's burnt skin with gentle hands, fingers trailing up the back of his neck to cover the heated skin.

"Oh- Oh fuck, that's good."

Tom isn't shy about tugging down the waistband of Ron's sweats to better reach the rest of his sunburn, if he were shy about another man's body then he wouldn't be in the navy.

It speaks to the dynamics of their relationship that Ron never falters, he just melts under the touch.

"S'good and cold, my little Iceman."