Work Text:
"Stirrup stays or garter?" Ice calls, abandoning his search and turning towards the bathroom.
Mav pokes his head into the doorway and makes a face around his toothbrush like a child.
"Oh, don't look at me like that." Ice warns. "You're the one who didn't want his shirt starched."
"Damn right, it's fucking awful. Stiff and then it rubs and you can't bend over or raise your arms - forgive me for wanting to be comfortable." Mav says, or tries to. It's really just a garbled mess of sound that leaves toothpaste dribbling out the side of his mouth even as he tilts his head back in a vain attempt to contain it. He stems the spill with his hand, disappearing from view to spit in the sink.
Ice rolls his eyes, twisting back to the tangle of elastic. "You knew this was the other option."
"So what's your excuse?"
"For fucks sake," Ice mutters under his breath. They do not have time for this today.
He swivels, gearing up to tell Mav just that when the sight of his partner, his fiancé, stops him short. Leaning against the doorframe, hair still wet from the shower, toothbrush in hand, engagement ring glinting on his finger and completely naked. Mav's grinning as if he knows exactly where Ice's mind has gone. Maybe he does, it's probably written all over Ice's face.
It's just - it's just that in all the years they've been together, Ice had never allowed himself the possibility that they would make it here one day. He had long ago submitted to the truth that Mav would only ever be a footnote in his file, a dirty secret nobody wanted to look in the eye. It still stops him dead when he remembers they're engaged and that it's okay to be so. It still takes his breath away that by tonight, in a scant two hours more like, they will be husband and husband. Legally and in view of others. Not friends, not housemates, not life partners, husbands. Married.
Not if Mav doesn't choose a fucking shirt stay though. Ice would give Mav the world if he asked, but he won't marry the man balls to the breeze. That's a sight that remains firmly within the confines of their home where Ice can do whatever he pleases about it.
"Choose one or I'm choosing for you." He says, gesturing with the elastic in his hand. The threat should be enough to force a choice. He waits. There's no response. "Mav."
Mav tilts his head, narrowing his eyes. "I'm debating."
"What is there to debate? You don't even like the garter! Do you know how many hours I've spent listening to you complain about how it rides up and pulls your hair? More than any one man should, that's for sure."
"Yes. And all of that is true, I thank you for your service." He smirks, spinning the ring with his thumb and drawing attention to it. "But you see… if I wear the garter, I get the pleasure of you taking it off me later."
Ice's brain short-circuits at the thought. At the potential of Mav being spread under him, his fingers stark again Mav's tanned skin as he unclasps the buckles, snapping the elastic against firm muscle and skimming it down his legs as he undoes Mav with his mouth following every place he touches.
Mav's sharp, warm laugh wrenches him from his thoughts. Fuck, Mav's going to be the death of him. They'll be lucky to make it out of their bedroom at this rate.
"That is an option," Ice agrees, willing his blood to divert from its rapid flow south. "But, if you want that then you have to put up with this for the next fifteen hours without complaining because I will not be listening. Copy?"
Mav's face wavers, nose scrunching in vague disgust. "Fine." He grumbles, sighing and disappearing once again.
Honestly, he doesn't know why he gave Mav the option in the first place. Ice grins, triumphant. "Stirrups it is."
It takes a little bit of wrangling and a whole lot of patience to separate the offending strips of elastic from themselves, the other sets of stays and several pairs of socks. By the time Ice has untangled, unkinked and then laid them atop the comforter, Mav has started clattering about in the bathroom in earnest.
Ice steps into the chaos, taking a deep breath at the half-destroyed space. It looks like Mav has pulled every product they own out and scattered them on every surface. He's crouched, head in the cabinet under the sink and a litter of bottles at his feet. It isn't hard to guess what he's after.
Ice clears a space on the counter just as Mav growls in frustration and starts shoving products back into the cabinet haphazardly.
"I've got it," Ice says, guiding Mav to standing with a hand on his elbow and gesturing to the newly created space. "Up."
It's a testament to how long they've been together that Mav doesn't argue, doesn't even bristle at Ice's interference. Just hauls himself up with one hand and waits while Ice rummages through the carnage. It makes something satisfied and possessive curl in his gut. Loving Mav is like loving the ocean, uncontainable in its vastness, unmappable in its depth, calm and destructive in equal measure. It's untameable, Mav is untameable. That's what people don't understand, you cannot control a force of nature. You just have to love it as it is.
Ice stands, ignoring the crack in his knees and is pleased to find that Mav has righted all the destruction within reaching distance. Mav makes to get down off the side but Ice places a hand on his thigh and deposits the supplies with the other.
"I can shave myself, you know." He grumbles, but there's not heat in it.
"I know." Ice agrees amiably. "But you never shave close enough and you always miss the same spot."
Mav rolls his eyes and opens his mouth to snap what would probably have been a witty retort but Ice seizes the opportunity to step between his thighs and whatever he was going to say dies in his throat. Thankfully, Mav's graduated to underwear sometime in the past ten minutes otherwise this would be significantly more difficult.
"Hold still," Ice murmurs, a little unnecessarily since Mav has frozen solid. He presses a warmed damp towel to Mav's skin and counts the seconds until his pores are open enough. It takes about half a minute for Mav's brain to come back online, noted when he raises his hands and meticulously rolls Ice's sleeves out of the way in precise but loose folds.
Every skim of his warm fingers against Ice's forearm sends him dizzy. It's intense like a weighty electric current that twitches his muscles and sends tingles through every nerve. It's been like this since the beginning, that first time when Mav brushed his shoulder in the locker room. Foolishly he'd thought the feeling might fade, might lessen if nothing else.
He pours the sandalwood and bergamot oil onto his fingers, smoothing it down Mav's face, around his mouth and down his throat. Is love like this for everyone? He wonders, encompassing and drowning and lifting in magnitudes. Surely not, because how can people be walking around with their gravity shifting, a pull directly from them to their partner? How can that be the case and nobody ever says a word? Is it him, does Ice just experience the world in a different way to everyone else? Or is it Mav, is he so magnetic he orientates the universe to himself?
Ice raises the towel again, wiping away the excess and checking if the prep has been enough. Mav shifts, thighs and abdomen flexing as he inches closer. Ice can feel the heat from him, the collection of powerful muscles that form Mav's adductors brush him with every breath. It itches like a nicotine craving, the need to be closer until they're one.
He doesn't give in to the thought. Instead he runs the tap, checking the temperature of the water every few seconds and heating the ox horn lathering bowl. It had been his father's, one of the only things Ice kept after his death. He'd been fascinated with it as a child, the deep brown streaked with yellow and cream. Being taught how to shave is one of the only uncomplicated memories he has of the man.
"For people on a timetable…" Mav murmurs into the quiet space between them, eyes reflexively checking the clock.
"They'll wait." Ice says simply, lathering the soap to a cream. Cedar and mandarin to complement the oil.
"Not sure I can." Mav whispers so quietly Ice would not have heard it had he been any further away. His heart stutters in his chest, fingers twitching around the brush. He doesn't know how Mav does it, just says things like that aloud and unafraid.
"You are the heart in my body, the blood in my veins and the air in my lungs." Mav had said when he proposed. He'd said it with enough certainty that that alone would have been enough. He'd laid himself bare unflinchingly and then guided Ice through the seismic shift that followed, as if it was his birthright.
"We've waited this long." Ice settles on, brushing a light layer of cream over Mav's skin and watching the shiver that runs through him. Ice brings his hand up, touching two fingers to the underside of Mav's chin to guide him.
The razor's an inch from his skin when Mav catches his wrist. Ice pulls back, changing the hand the blade is in and wrapping his hand around Mav's. He looks at Mav expecting uncertainty, if there's ever a time for doubts this is the last opportunity after all. Instead, his gaze is heavy, as if he's solved a puzzle and is unhappy with the result.
"You know," He starts, pausing to flick his gaze across Ice's face. "You don't need an excuse to touch me."
Ice drops his gaze, caught. He pulls Mav's wrist to his mouth, pressing a kiss to his pulse and feeling it under his lips. "Not anymore."
Mav studies him, searching for something though Ice doesn't know what. But then he nods and bares his throat. Ice lays one hand on the side of his neck, feels the pulse there too and places the blade with surety. He swipes in one, two, three long strokes before he swirls the razor in the sink and repeats the same motion. One, two, three, clean. One, two, three, clean. They almost have an accident when Mav swallows just as Ice reaches his Adam's Apple but quick reflexes and murmured apologies smooth the way.
Mav watches him, stares more like, as if he can't help himself. When he finishes the first pass, Ice wipes the cream away with another warm towel and grins when Mav tries to slide himself off the counter only to find that Ice doesn't move. He drops his hands to Mav's waist, keeping them both steady.
"I'm not done yet."
"You're not?" He asks, vaguely horrified. It's not hard to tell why, but for the sake of both of them, and primarily time, Ice ignores it. "What more is there to do?
"I have to make sure I didn't miss anything." He replies, pushing Mav back onto the counter, closer than he was before. Mav spreads his legs wide to accommodate without question, settling as if he belongs.
Ice trails his fingers feather-light down Mav's face, across his cheeks, down his jawbone, his chin then his throat and smiles as Mav's breath catches, as he tries desperately not to swallow as Ice's fingers come back up. He applies a second thin layer of cream to Mav's jawline, swipes it off in two deft strokes and then stares intently for another long moment, tilting his head this way and that.
"Ice-" Mav tries to protest.
"Almost done," He reassures, pulling out the balm, of the same product line with a reinforcement of scents, and rubs it attentively but expediently since they really don't have the time and stringing Mav out would be cruel.
Mav blows out a breath. "Thank fuck," he says then it's Mav's fingers on Ice's jaw, his cheeks, his throat, trailing scorching paths to tangle in the hair at the base of his skull. It's Ice that's being guided by pushes and pulls from feather-light touches until he's exactly where Pete wants him.
The brush of lips is emphatic, a slow, languid thing so vastly different from the frenetic violence that dominated the first decade of their relationship. When they'd been afraid half-out their minds that someone would rip them apart, that they would tear themselves to pieces and fought for every second of contact possible just in case it was their last. This is sure-footed, having long since learnt one another. Quietly commandeering in totality and lenitive like a balm. Halcyon in a way Ice never quite thought was achievable. Mav has expropriated him long ago, not that there had been much force required or fight put up.
Ice breaks away, pressing kisses to Mav's jaw, the hollow below his ear then up to his temple where he rests on the gray hairs that are undeniable proof that they've made it. Somehow, despite all odds, they've arrived at the start line. Nothing has killed them, despite their best efforts. Nothing has sundered them, despite the likelihood. They stand on the cusp of true victory. Graying, older and together.
He might be shaking a little, he realizes, but it doesn't matter because Mav's holding his head between his hands like Ice is precious and everything he cannot say is being reflected back in a perfect mirror.
Desperately he grasps for Mav's hand, tangling their fingers together until their rings bump against one another. Fifteen years he carried that thing before he managed to get it onto Mav's hand. Fifteen years of attempted proposals before there was even a possibility of that name for them. And even to that, Mav had beaten him there by seconds. "You remind me who I am when all I want is to forget. You love me even when everything else has been stripped away. You are the reason I come home."
Ice runs a thumb over both the rings, an accidental complementary set. The one on Mav's hand a silver band with an etched star and inlaid diamond. True North. Ice's a gold textured band like waves, twelve deeply inset stones. One for each of the times they flew together."We enter this the same way we started. As equals."
Ice rests his head against Mav's collarbone, letting himself be enveloped. They'd debated getting wedding bands too. It would probably cause more questions, if anyone ever looked hard enough. It's hardly usual for men to wear two sets. But then, they weren't usual people. And so the first bands became a representation of their history and the second ones as their future. Complementary inverses of one another, Mav's ring is silver on two sides encasing a band of gold and Ice's is two gold sides encasing a band of silver. Keeping the heart of one another safe.
Ice reaches into his pocket and pulls out the dual ring-box they need to put their engagement rings in. They'll get them back after the ceremony, he knows that, but there's something so deeply wrong about taking them off. It took so long putting them on. They'll be safe. Carole won't let anything happen to them. It's only from here to the venue. Bradley has the wedding bands.
He hesitates anyway. Mav brushes a hand through Ice's hair, pressing a kiss to the crown of his head. "Sweetheart,"
Ice shakes his head. This is so fucking stupid. Pete almost died the day he bought Ice's ring, what happens when he parts with it? Get a grip. If they die, at least it'll be together in the same car and none of it will matter. What a morbid thought for his wedding day. A therapist would get a lifetimes wage from that one.
Mav takes his hand, pressing a kiss to Ice's ring then gently, as if it's the single most precious thing he's ever held, places it into the box right beside his own. He closes it and slides it back into Ice's pocket. Well, that's a familiar weight.
"An hour and ten, sweetheart." Mav says like a promise and a reminder.
Ice nods, finally stepping away and letting him get down from the counter. He catches the first hand that aims for his ass with a laugh, because he knows every trick in the Pete Mitchell play-book. But then promptly fails to anticipate the second that sneaks in just as Mav is leaving the bathroom which makes Mav laugh instead. Well, nobody said he couldn't rewrite the book.
By the time he's stepping out the bathroom, hair finally styled and products safely back in their places, Mav is mostly dressed. Which is both a blessing and a curse because on one hand, there's a solid layer of protection between Ice and the miles of skin he longs to touch but on the other, there's nothing Mav doesn't look like sin incarnate in.
It's bad when he's fully, crisply and precisely dressed but infinitely worse when he isn't. When his cuffs are undone with the top two buttons of his shirt, slacks hugging his hips like they're made for him (which they are now he's had them tailored) and socked feet. It's a state of being that Ice knows for sure only he sees, a halfway marker between Mav and Captain Mitchell, just enough of Pete to thread through and bridge the gaps.
There's a knock on their door. Ah, Ice knows who that is. Anyone else would have just barged in, irregardless of funny foreign concepts like privacy, nudity and intimacy.
He's proven right a second later when the door cracks only an inch and Carole calls, "Are you decent?"
No. Mav looks anything other than decent. But that's not what she's asking, and may even be vaguely disgusted by the thought of that. "Yes," he calls back, picking the ring box up.
Carole opens the door fully and really is practically glowing with excitement in her floral dress. When her hair had grown back in after the chemo, it grew back thick and tightly curled. For years she hated it, said she couldn't recognize herself in a mirror and had done everything to keep it tamed and blonde. Today it's out in all it's glory, dark and surrounding her like a halo. It makes her look well.
"Tom!" She exclaims, drawing him into a hug and thankfully angling her head away from his shirt. Then she's off like a hurricane of sunlight, "God, look at you! Sarah called, she's got your mother and grandmother out the hotel room, finally. I love you dearly, Tom, but I do not envy either of you. She's about to drive Sarah up the wall-"
Which means that Ice will have a mounting pile of texts from Sarah each more frustrated and homicidal than the last. He can't help it, the happiness is infectious and suddenly he's laughing while Carole's grinning up at him as if he's been her brother his whole life. Fuck, how lucky they are she's still here.
"-Rick and Leo are picking up Viper as we speak. I think Hollywood's still half-scared out his mind at the prospect of driving him but he lost to Wolf so– oh, Merlin called to ask if you wanted red or white on the tables for the breakfast and I told him in no uncertain terms that you'd agreed to have both and if the venue's trying to short-change him then he needs to put his foot down. You still have the rings don't you?"
"Thank you, if they're giving him issues then I'll call them." He replies, handing the ring box over. A not insignificant part of himself recoils at the idea, at the prospect of entrusting them to someone else. But he shoves it down, forces his fingers to uncurl and watches like a hawk as she puts it in her bag. Only an hour or two until they're back on their hands for the rest of their lives.
Then Carole catches sight of Mav and her face crumples into tears. "Oh, Pete." She's across the room and hugging him tight enough to hurt in two bounds, murmuring shakily into his neck, "He would be so proud of you."
There's no prizes for guessing who. Pete makes eye contact over her shoulder, fighting tears of his own. Ice finds that he can't quite look at them, like he's crashing something he shouldn't be privy to. Something he's never quite been on the inside of and has never been able to tell if that's for the better or not.
Pete closes his eyes, choking on a sob as she continues, "I told him. I said to him 'Nick, they're going to make it even if they don't know it.' All the way back. He agreed –"
Ice steps out of the room, giving them a moment. He makes his way down to the kitchen, sliding a little on the tiles in his socks. He fills a glass full of water then cracks the seal on the whisky Goose never grew out of and pours a shot out. He braces his hands on the worktop, breathing through the decades old grief.
It's not a shock, the long reaching specter of Nick Bradshaw was bound to come back today. He's who should have been at Mav's side, holding Mav's rings and making embarrassing speeches. Carole's done a valiant job of keeping him alive all these years. Her and Mav both, never letting him fade into obscurity, never letting him dominate their lives.
Bradley has never once had the questions Pete use to live with about whether his father was a good man, a man worth remembering. Bradley honks when he laughs which has to be a genetic disposition, spins tales as long as he is tall and sneaks right past people's guards just like Goose did. He doesn't play piano like Goose did though, Ice saw to it that he had proper technique and not the slap-dash frenzy his dad played with. Goose is a well loved memory. The best they could make it.
Slider opens the back door, hefting a box onto the worktop. "Didn't expect you down here."
"What's in there?" Ice gestures with his chin. They aren't expecting anything delivered as far as he knows and all the decorations are already at the venue.
Ron slaps the top of the box with an obnoxious smile. "These," He intones with far too much glee, "are your thank-you cards."
"All of them?" Ice asks with not an insignificant amount of despair.
"Mhm, I thought there was too many but then I saw the pile of presents your secretary laid out and realized you may not actually have enough."
Ice eyes the box like a bomb, "Mav's going to hate that."
"Yeah, well, he knew going in what marrying an Admiral entails. This is just another part of it."
"It's meant to be private."
"And it is," Slider reassures, "but people want to express their happiness for you."
Ice presses his tongue into his cheek, running the numbers in his head. "That's one way of phrasing it."
Slider snorts, taking far more pleasure in Ice's irritation than he should. "Starting early?" He asks, changing subject and motioning the shot.
Ice grimaces a little, "Carole's upstairs."
"Ah." He says carefully. Yeah, that about sums the situation up. There's a beat where Slider debates with himself, calculating the angles like any good RIO. "Need me to go wrangle her? We need to go anyway, only fifty-five minutes to go time."
"No. I've got it." Ice says, pulling open the ice drawer, popping a couple of cubes out and double wrapping them in paper towels. Slider watches him work. The pull to be back with Mav is growing stronger, as it tends to do when they're in close-but-not-quite-close-enough proximity. He can't quite decide if it's irritation, sadness or love he feels for Carole, or whether any of that matters at all. It's probably better, on balance, for them to feel the grief now rather than later.
"Now," Ron breaks the quiet, "I don't know if anyone has said this to you. But you deserve to be happy, Tom."
That stops Ice short, he turns to Slider because the words just don't quite make sense. Happiness isn't about deserving, it's about earning.
"Christ, you're hopeless. Come here." Ron announces with the certainty of a man used to arguing with stubborn men. He envelops Ice in a hug, drawing him tight and waiting through the initial knee-jerk freeze response as Ice fights not to throw him off. It takes a moment but then Ice is hugging him back just as tightly, blinking back the burn in his eyes. God fucking damn RIOs.
"You deserve to be happy and so does Pete." Slider murmurs. Ice isn't sure that he has an answer for that but it seems as though Slider isn't looking for one. After a minute he pulls away with a smile of his own. "Okay, enough of that shit. Go retrieve your husband-to-be or we're going to be late."
Well, who is he to argue with that? Ice picks up the drinks and the cubes then heads back upstairs, opening their bedroom door with an elbow. Mav's the only one inside, Carole presumably having gone to fix her make-up. He's zipping himself back into his dress pants, clearly having just changed shirt as the other one, with mascara and lipstick stains, is crumpled in a heap. He looks up and smiles, a little worn at the edges, eyes still red and puffy.
"For Goose," Ice intones like an age old prayer, holding out the shot.
"May he never die." Mav recites, throwing it back in one. Ice holds out the water, which is also gone in the next few seconds, the glasses abandoned on the chest of drawers.
Ice gestures to the ottoman at the foot of the bed and Mav sits without question. Ice stands between his legs in a parody of an hour ago where Mav was above him. This time he tilts Mav's head back and gently swipes the wrapped ice across his face. Under his eyes, across his cheekbones, slowly and carefully reducing the swelling, cooling the skin.
It's probably futile, the chances of either of them making it through the ceremony without a couple of tears is minimal. But he knows Mav also doesn't want to turn up red-eyed and puffy faced, he would rather the tears be from happiness. He works in quiet, timing his breathing to Mav's and letting them both settle.
"Carole told me something funny about Bradley." Mav says, leaning into Ice's hands and bringing himself back into the room. Ice makes a noise to acknowledge he's listening while he picks up Mav's cuff-links and slides one into place. "She said that Bradley was bringing a plus-one."
Ice frowns for a second, "Lucky we have a spare plate then." He kisses the pulse at the soft underside of Mav's wrist then moves onto the second cuff.
"I didn't even know he had a-" Pete stumbles over the word, one that's never once applied to them. Both too big and too small. "-boyfriend. Didn't know he wasn't single."
"Seresin, Jake. They're flying the same squadron." He finishes placing the cuff-link then kissing the inside of that wrist too.
"How do you know that?" Mav asks, disgruntled, "How long have you known that?"
Ice raises an eyebrow at that, tugging on Mav's elbow to get him to stand. "Yeah, okay. Stupid question."
"It's not been going on that long, a few months at most." Ice flicks the collar of Mav's shirt up, running a careful finger over the top so it doesn't crease. He assuages, "I only found out yesterday, not from Bradley."
It eases the shadow of doubt, the line of insecurity that Bradley is keeping secrets. Again. Mav has done years worth of work to build the trust between them, though sometimes he forgets that it's natural for a child to keep secrets from his parents. Possibly because Mav never had that for himself, Ice and Sarah's pile of secrets is taller than them both.
Mav chuckles, "Well, talk about sink or swim, Bradley's just throwing him in the deep end."
"It's one way to meet the parents, that's for sure." Ice agrees, focusing on the Windsor and centring the divot.
"I'm just glad we never had to do any of that shit." That hurts even though he doesn't mean it to; is probably thinking of his own dead ones and not Ice's.
"You've met my parents." He shrugs Mav into his jacket, turning him to button it.
"Yeah, eighteen years later." The 'on your fathers death bed' goes unsaid.
That's always been a sore point for Ice, that his partner had to be so thoroughly hidden. It hardly seemed to touch Mav most days, content with the way they are. It's better now it's a choice but for almost thirty years it hadn't been. That Mav had only met his father once, not as Tom's partner, and only a handful of hours before his passing is not a point of pride. His mother gets along with Mav like a house on fire, which is to say, significantly more than ever tolerated while his father was alive but still with the weight of fifty years of rules on her shoulders. They'd still missed out on decades of time and the fact that that wouldn't have changed had his father known still tastes bitter in his mouth. Not that he would ever choose them over Mav. He wouldn't choose a single thing over his partner. Not now. Not ever.
He straightens Mav's medals then reaches for the sabre.
"Ice, look at me." He does not. "Tom."
His hands still on Mav's belt.
"Tom," Mav breathes, cupping Ice's face so gently it hurts. "Sweetheart-"
"It's fine. Today is not the day for regrets." He cuts Mav off, finishes securing the sabre.
Mav collects both of Ice's hands in one of his own, rubbing the space where his ring will rest. "Okay. Today is not for regrets. But sweetheart, I don't have any. Not one." That makes Ice look up finally and Pete's smile is only full of love. "I don't. We got here together. There's no other path I would have chosen."
He brings his left hand up and taps Tom's heart, "The heart that beats in my chest," he traces the pulse in Tom's wrist, "the blood in my veins," he lays his palm flat over Tom's chest and waits, "the breath in my lungs."
It's too much, Ice doesn't quite know what to do with the tsunami that threatens to overwhelm him. "That better not be in your vows. I'll cry like a child." he says instead and watches as the tension bleeds from his partner with a laugh.
"I make no promises."
Oh, fuck. Well, if there's a day to cry, today is it. The accumulation of thirty years of a relationship hard fought and gloriously won. It had hit him yesterday, halfway down the aisle for the dress rehearsal that this is real and it is happening. He knew before, but to stand there made it tangential. He'd hardly heard the instructions for today over the rushing in his ears and momentary divorce from his body. That had been hard enough, not that he had second thoughts for a moment, but that this is really happening. They're really showing their vulnerable underbellies to the world, because of one another, for one another. Mav hasn't had that yet, it's probably going to hit him right in the middle of the ceremony truth be told.
He kneels before Mav in the same way he has done a thousand time and will do endlessly more. He would crawl through anything for this ridiculous, resplendent man and knows that Pete would do the same, has done the same. Ice laces Mav's shoes, a gratuitous, immomentous thing.
"Look at you," Mav says with reverence anyway, then erodes the weight. "How many Captains get four-star Admirals at their feet?"
"Only one."
Then Mav glances at the clock and tenses. "Not to alarm you, but you can get into full regalia in under ten minutes, right?"
Ice laughs and stands. Isn't that the story of their lives; taking all the time in the world only to sprint to the end?
The tangle to get himself ready isn't stressful, but it is efficient. It's true, everyone would wait for them but honestly, Ice has had enough waiting for a lifetime. They stand for a moment before the mirror, side by side in all their glory. The two of them and the Navy just as it always has been. He loops an arm around Mav and presses another kiss to the grays in his hair. They've made it.
"I'm so glad you made me wear the stirrups." Mav admits, grinning. Ice just laughs, rolling his eyes. The phone rings downstairs.
"That'll be Sarah making sure we haven't eloped at the last minute."
"Let's go get married."
They close the door behind them and step into the sun.