The Beach Episode

by UnSparkly_Ink

Summary:

It's the summer of Nineteen-Eighty-Something, and the Flyboys are going to the beach! 🏖

Notes:

Credit to CaptainTucker who kicked off this idea and lightsaberandpens who put the worm in my brain.

The Carl Vinson is docked at Rota. They’re on liberty. Miles and miles of sunny golden beach stretch into the distance on either side of the docks, already crowded with the expected amalgam of summer vacationers; tourists, local kids out of school, and everyone who made it off the boat earlier than them. They form a rowdy mob, if eight can be called a mob, rolling down the gangway in board shorts with beach towels thrown over their shoulders. Ice, whose become the de-facto leader of their group, spearheads their venture into the little town, guiding them unerringly into a convenience store for sandwiches and beer. They get lucky and the first place they try has an atm in the corner and a stack of coolers near the back. There are three in their group with at least a wobbly grasp of spanish: Hollywood, Sundown and, surprisingly, Maverick. Everyone had given Wolfman shit when discussing the trip the night before, more than one of them wondering how someone whose favourite accessory was a cowboy hat didn’t speak a work of spanish, until he’d finally reminded them that he was from Montana thank you very much. Wood and Mav flirt stiltedly with the counter girl until she rolls her eyes and dumps a couple scoops of ice into their new cooler gratis. Mav gets a glint in his eye, and leans over the counter while she rings them up chattering away in Spanglish and apparently asking questions. The girl’s gestures look like she’s giving directions. Chipper - the only one who’d managed to make the damned atm machine pay him - hands over enough for a dozen sandwiches, two family-sized bags of chips that Slider thought looked interesting, one case of bottled water (at the insistence of Goose), and no less than five six-packs. Maverick leaps to the head of the group, near bouncing on the balls of his feet.

“Okay guys, we’re going this way!” He points them away from the enticing golden sand, up into the distance between the winding streets.

Goose Honks out a laugh, the blue Zinka he’d applied before they’d disembarked gaining cracks as his nose wrinkled, “Mav, Honey, the beach is right here!”

“Why?” Ice’s question is quiet. He’s got his arms crossed over his thin t-shirt and his aviators make his eyes into black holes in his face.

“It’s so crowded out there!” Mav gestures wildly. He’s still bouncing. “I asked her if there was a less popular beach nearby, she gave me directions!” Approaching complaints founder at the prospect of beach they don’t have to fight people to spread their towels on. At Ice’s nod Mav skips gaily up the road, the rest of them following in a less-than-orderly march.

‘Nearby’ turns out to mean about a 45 minute walk, including several complaints about getting lost and at least one ‘are we there yet’ before the ocean once again heaves into view. Most of them have lost the shirts they wore for decency’s sake into town, and their shoulders have started to go pink by the time they find the entrance a rickety wooden walkway off of a tiny roundabout filled with shrubs and they wander another five minutes before they find a set of stairs leading down onto the beach, handily attached to a parking lot with a sign declaring this beach to be Playa De Punta Candor. There are dispersed groups of people dotted about on the sand, holding down colourful beach towels whose edges ruffle in the breeze while they tan. There’s a warning sign at the bottom of the steps, weathered reflective white with bright red text reading “ATENCIÓN: PLAYA NUDISTA MÁS ALLÁ DE ESTE PUNTO” Mav stops abruptly. Goose runs into his back. There’s a general pile-up behind him. Maverick blushes red to the tips of his ears and all the way down his chest.

“What, does it say sharks or something?” someone (probably Chipper) asks.

“No,” Sundown reads the sign over Mav’s head, “it says nude beach.”

There is a general pause. Then Ice moves, breaking left at the lifeguard tower towards a clear spot in the sand. Another awkward moment hangs in the air, then they all shuffle after him, eyes suddenly wide and heads turning like a flock of flamingoes. It’s not like they haven’t seen each other naked before, they share showers. And bunks for chrissakes! But this is somehow different . This is a public beach. These people are all civilians. There are girls here. Spanish Girls.

Ice is already sprawled out on his front on top of his bright green towel by the time they all join him. His shorts, crumpled in the sand by his head, flutter slightly in the breeze coming off the ocean, weighed down by the suntan lotion he kept in the pocket.

Slider hollers. “Woo Kazansky, lookit them cheeks!” Because he’s a bastard. A bastard that noticed his pilot adding extra squats to his workout routine after meeting a certain other pilot at topgun.

Iceman raises a languid hand and flips him off. No other part of him moves. Wolf plunks himself directly onto the sand with an exaggerated groan. “We are definitely taking a cab back to the boat.”

“Hell yeah! No tan lines!” Hollywood spreads out his own towel and flings himself down on his back, shimmying off his trunks and stuffing them under the towel to prevent them flying away.

“Jesus Wood, there’s children here!”

“What?” he squawks, jackknifing up to sitting and scrambling to cover his crotch. “Really?”

They all (except Iceman, who still refuses to move) look around frantically for little bodies in the sparse crowd of naked beachgoers.

“Well, there could be!” Goose defends himself. “This is Europe man, people are weird.” Chipper smacks him in the arm. Hollywood, apparently not content to take this lying down, throws off the towel and lunges for Goose’s shorts. He manages to catch the hem, but gets dragged off his towel when Goose dances out of the way, firmly gripping his waistband. Sand flies everywhere. Sunny takes some to the face and starts cursing. It’s in his eyes. It’s in his hair. Wolf’s hat gets knocked off by one of Goose’s flailing limbs and he sprints after it. Also cursing.

Their tussle has drawn the attention of one of the lifeguards, who jogs over towards them at the same time as Wolf stumbles back from the other direction, hat firmly wedged in place.

“¡Señores! ¡Disculpen Señores!” He waves, attracting all their attention and stopping the fight in it’s tracks. The thick layer of white zink on his nose giving Goose a warm glow of vindication.

“What can we do for you?” Chipper puts on his best boyish grin, shifting slightly in front of Sundown.

The lifeguard’s face shifts. “¿Americanos?”

They all nod.

“La playa - beach - es… uh desnudo, uh, no clothes. ¿Entrada?”

“What, all of us?” Wolf squeaks. “We have to?”

“Todos. Si.” The lifeguard looks relieved they’ve understood. “Sin ropa.” Wolf looks uncomfortable.

“Or what, are we gonna have to leave?” Slider is still holding the cooler. The expression on his face is of a man torn between two deeply unpleasant options and contemplating which one he could live with less.

“Si.” The lifeguard says again. “No clothes. To keep clothes, must leave. Sin playa.”

“All right, we’ll do that, thanks.” Hollywood takes the opportunity to yank Goose’s trunks down. Sunny strips his shorts off, so does Chipper. Slider sighs like a man condemned, and puts down the cooler.

“Gracias.” The lifeguard nods, and jogs back to his tower, 20 something asscheeks bouncing. Not that any of them are watching. No sir.

“ He gets to wear shorts.” Wolf whines. He wraps his towel around his waist defensively, shorts dropping onto the sand from underneath. Hollywood’s bottle of Coppertone smacks him his chest.

“Lay down and I’ll get your back.” Wolf shuffles his way down, laying the towel out by flopping spread-eagled on the sand, clutching at the top corners. He’s always been the most camera shy of the group, he’ll make jokes like the rest of them; they’ve all heard him joke about combat getting him hard over comms. But he times his showers to make sure none of them get an eye-full when he can, wearing a towel around absolutely everywhere when he can’t.

“Mav-e-rick.” Iceman drawls from his supine position, unchanged since they arrived at this spot. Mav’s attention is instantly caught, tracing the freckles over one nude shoulder. He obediently strips and spreads his own towel next to Ice at the flick of the man’s wrist. Ice’s forehead wrinkles behind his sunglasses with the movement of his eyes up Mav legs, enjoying the view. Mav strikes a pose, thrusting his hips forward and wiggling. Goose and Chipper laugh. Slider groans.

“Mav.” He drops his clothes in a pile next to Ice’s, and goes for the pockets.

Instead of the expected bottle of Hawaiian Tropic, which Ice, and therefore Slider, have stockpiled as long as anyone has known them, he pulls out a brand new tube of Orange Gelée. He unscrews the cap and squeezes out a tiny blob or orange balm. It melts into a silky oil on his fingers. The air fills with the scents of bergamot and sandalwood. “Hey Ice, this stuff is fancy !” Ice’s face, where it’s half hidden in the towel, lift in a salacious grin, just for Mav. Who responds with an answering grin of his own. He smears the oil onto one of Ice’s shoulder blade by pressing into it while he settles himself across the other man’s thighs. Mav idly walks his fingers over the freckles on Ice’s butt. He also can’t resist a light smack to the swell of his ass. It’s not his favourite part of Ice, but it’s a close second. And it’s right in front of him. He likes to watch it jiggle. If Ice is cursing his taste in men, none of the others would ever know, he stay completely unmoving aside from the rise of his back in a deep contented sigh. Mav squeezes a long line of the orange balm down Ice’s back, tracing over his spine with the metal threads. He caps it and sticks it upright into one of Ice’s lax hands. The rest of the group busy themselves applying their own suntan lotion or cracking open the beers to avoid watching the inevitable display that happens when the unashamed gets together with the unconcerned. At least neither of them is moaning.

Goose attacks when Mav goes down to do Ice’s feet.

“All right that’s enough lovebirds!” He cheerfully knocks Mav over onto his own towel and squirts an overly generous dollop of the Banana Boat sunscreen he’d and Carole had bought in bulk because Bradley liked the smell. Carole had done a lot of reading about skin cancer and sunscreen when Bradley finally got old enough to enjoy the beach, she’d insisted on buying the whole family suntan lotion in SPF 15 (which was an absurd number in Mav’s opinion), and they’d persuaded Bradley to get into the habit of wearing nosecoat by buying it in his favourite colours. It had also helped that Goose himself got pretty zealous about it after drifting for hours in the pacific ocean had left him with severe sunburns over his face that had taken weeks to heal. Maverick still feels guilty about that, he’d been trying to protect Goose’s neck, but still. The sophisticated scent of Orange Gelée is drowned out by artificial banana. Mav submits to the smothering with ill grace. There’s really no point resisting. Ice’s shoulders shake with suppressed laughter. He makes no move to help. They grin at each other, quietly enjoying the other’s presence. Hollywood is attempting to wheedle Wolfman into abandoning his towel in favour of rubbing Coppertone into Wood’s back, causing no end of grumbling when Wolf finally gives in, but takes the towel with him, tossing up yet more sand that gets stuck to newly oiled bodies. Sundown “I don’t need lotion” Williams, makes a noise universally understood to mean “ sucks to be you .” Slider, who’s back now sparkles after catching the bulk of the flung sand, shoves him. Eventually, they all manage to settle down. Some of them fall asleep. Slider starts snoring. Wolf and Wood continue to bicker among themselves. Ice and Mav lay with their heads turned to face each other, their pinkies inch closer until they can just brush together, trading lazy smiles.

The sun has moved noticeably in the sky by the time the nappers start to filter back to awareness. Wood steals Wolf’s hat and uses it to shield his eyes while checking the sky. He yawns.

“Time to flip over I think.” He begins squirming his way onto his back. Wolf steals his hat back but makes not move to flip. Ice, evidently agreeing with Wood, rolls over with a groan, one hand idly scratching his belly while the other reaches for the tube of orange balm, content to oil up his own chest without assistance. Mav turns over and rolls right into him, eliciting chuckles from Ice and no one else. He squirms away to steal the Banana Boat from Goose; if he’s going to be pasty he might as well be even . This line of thinking may or may not have been factored into Goose’s decision to tackle Mav in the middle of giving Ice his sensuous rubdown . A good RIO knows his pilot, after all.

Goose would like it known, for the record, that no amount of knowing his pilot could have predicted the next question Mav put to the group.

“We should put it on our dicks, right? Like, your dick can still get sunburned, can’t it?” Which is what he blames for his response.

“Well I dunno Mav, does your dick have skin?” Mav flushes scarlet.

“It used to.” Iceman sounds supremely unbothered from where he’s cracking open one of the beers.

“ It used to ?” Chipper sounds slightly strangled.

“Yeah. Before my bris.” He takes a swig of his beer, mostly to hide a smirk.

Slider, who has known Ice - and therefore his sense of humour - the longest, guffaws. “Guess you’re just gonna have a sunburnt dickhead then, Ice.” He props himself up on an elbow “I, on the other hand do not have that problem.” He rolls onto his back and gestures at his dick, lying flaccid against his thighs, intact foreskin on full display. Understanding rolls through the group, carrying with it a wave of groans and sniggers.

“Say, Slider, do girls ever freak out when they see that thing?” Chipper attempts to regain some of the footing he lost to girlish screaming not five minutes before.

“Fuck you Chip.” Slider rummages in the cooler and tears into one of the sandwiches. “I’ve never had any complaints.”

“But does it, y’know, feel different?”

“How the fuck would I know Wood? I’m not about to go get cut so I can do a comparison!”

“Betcha it’s not as good.” Wood mutters low enough he thinks only Wolf can hear.

“Does it still look like that when you get hard?”

Sunny is the one who speaks into the gap of Slider attempting to formulate a response. “Nah, it looks normal.” Under the weight of seven other guy’s stares he elaborates, “Some of my cousins aren’t cut, they showed me.”

“So Slider, why aren’t you…y’know?” Wolf looses steam halfway through the question, ducking his head to hide under the brim of his hat.

“Flower Power.” Slider growls, sounding the least flowery it is possible for a human to sound. Iceman chokes on a laugh. A couple of the guys make confused noises.

“He means his parents are hippies!”

“Yuuuup.” Slider drawls. “Peace, Love, and Pixie Dust or whatever.”

Some of the most disciplined men produced by the US of A (theoretically), immediately all start speaking over each other to volley a flurry of questions at the RIO.

“So did you, like, go to protests and shit?”

“Did you live in one of those compounds?”

“Did you live in the woods?”

“Did you go to school?”

“What did they say when you joined up?”

“Do you still talk to them?”

And Maverick, raising his voice over the din, “No wonder you stink Sli, you never learned to shower!” Slider throws his shorts at him. The mob shuts up in favour of watching Mav’s dramatic sputtering.

“Anyway, that’s why. My mom didn’t let me cut my hair until I was ten, much less cut off bits of my dick.” He flops back down, evidently finished talking about it.

Hollywood, of course, is the one that ends up taking it just that one step further. "So for the Suntan, do I, like, stroke it on? like lube? cause I know we're allowed to be nude here but I don't know if they really want my flag at full mast."

Iceman sighs like a particularly put-upon kindergarten teacher. “Slider, pass the spray?” There’s a grumble, a rustle, and Slider slaps one of the hoarded Hawaiian Tropic bottles into his hand. He gives it a couple of shakes, says “watch closely Wood” and sprays it directly over his crotch. He grits his teeth through the sensation of the cool liquid pelting onto sensitive skin. Then he gets Mav, who squawks, but chooses to be good and stay still.

“Well gee” Goose says in his best ‘aw shucks’ voice, “I sure wish you’d brought that up earlier.” They look over to figure out what he means.

Hysterical laughter rolls riptide through the group. While they had all been pestering Slider, Goose, with an instinct for dissipating tension honed through years of friendship with Maverick, had been slathering Zinka over his cock. From the same blue tube he’d used to cover his nose. He grins unrepentantly as the squad lose their minds in the sand around him.

“Dude!” Sunny is alternating between seal noises and choking on his on tongue, “You-hu, You gave yourself a smurf dick!” Which only makes them all laugh harder. They roll around, ribs aching, faces buried in the sand to muffle the noise, shoulders shaking, until the mirth finally dissipates and all they can do is flop onto their backs with exhausted groans. More beers get opened, sandwiches passed around. Their one bottle of spray suntan lotion makes the rounds. Slider stand up to get his whole front, maliciously causing lotion droplets to get in all of their sandwiches. Wood tries to quietly persuade Wolf to get over himself and flip over.

“Wolf, man, no one cares, no one’s even lookin’ at us.” He receives little more than grumbles in response. “You wanna get an uneven tan?” turns out to be the winning argument. But only once Wood had triple confirmed that “there’s no girls around.” Wolf finally, reluctantly, rolls up to sitting, accepting the proffered Coppertone with an air of resigned frustration. Sunny whistles.

“Damn, son, I didn’t know you were packing heat. ” Sunny is staring unrepentantly at Wolf’s junk. To be fair, so are the rest of them. Wolf is… a lot bigger than any of them expected.

Chipper joins his RIO in prurient commentating “Bro, you’re hung like a beast !” The sound of a mental lightbulb. “Hey, is that why your callsign’s Wolfman?” He gets only a searing glare in answer.

“Naw!” Wood snatches for the spray lotion, stealing it out of Slider’s limp hand. “It’s ‘cause he bites!”

“But- ” Mav cut’s himself off, wisely heeding the warning looks from Goose and Slider. Iceman’s grin turns sharklike, and he nips at the fingers Mav has unwisely left near his head.

Wood holds the bottle out of reach when Wolf lunges for it. “Uh-uh Wolfie, you lie back and think’a England, I’ll take care of you.”

“Jesus Wood,” Wolf hisses, “you can’t give it a rest for a single minute, can you?”

“Aw, C’mon Wolf, it’s only a bit of fun.”

There’s a derisive snort. “Yea, Wood. It’s always ‘just a bit of fun’. Well I’m not having any goddamn fun!”

Wood turns plaintive. “I didn’t mean anything by it!”

Wolf sighs. “You never do.” He stands abruptly and marches into the sea, manhood swinging with every angry stride, leaving Wood looking bereft. He eventually subsides back into passive sunbathing when it becomes clear Wolf is not coming back for a while.

The chatter of feminine voices floating up from the tide line, giggles rising over the shushing of the waves. Three women, naked, like everyone else on the beach, wander into view, long dark hair waving in the ocean breeze and doing nothing to disguise the assets bared to the summer sun. Hollywood, naturally, perks up immediately. “Hey, check out the babes!” He squints in concentration before turning to Sunny, “I didn’t catch it all, Sunny What are they taking about?”

Sunny answers immediately “Goose’s smurf cock.” They all chuckle. The sounds of feminine gossip begins to fade away as the women pass them and he picks his head up to listen more, lowering his sunglasses so he can better admire the trio walking away. “Well, well, sounds like they appreciate the goods.”

Wolf is on his feet in an instant. “Let’s go talk to them!” Sunny does not need to be asked twice. They hop up and swagger towards the girls, who unfortunately don’t turn them away at either their horrible Spanish or their terrible come-ons. Chipper, seeing their success, leaps up to join in the fun as rumbling snores begin to emanate from Slider once again. Wolf watches the group with a wistful, slightly forlorn expression. He crouches down from where he’s been wading at waist height until only his head and shoulders visible above the water. His cowboy hat is a single dot against the blue of the ocean. Goose, who is a happily married man he will have anyone know (ad nauseam), has pulled out a Spanish comic book, firmly ignoring the unsubtle - and increasingly obscene - flirting going on between his best friend and his best friend’s “wingman”. Plausible deniability is his cherished resources and if they keep going like that he will be rapidly leaving it in the rear-view mirror. He resolves to kick sand over them if they follow through with the idea of ‘lotioning up’ each other’s sensitive areas to make extra sure neither of them will end up with a burnt dick. “After all” they’re both agreeing, “it’s what any good friend would do.” Slider snorts himself awake, looks over at their pilots, and kicks the sand. There’s yelling, cursing, and the duo-of-complete-unsubtlety skitter down to the water to wash the sand off. Everywhere.

The ocean is big, in theory. Not big enough for Wolf to share it with Iceman and Maverick giving each other hand-jobs under the water. He slopes back to the towels, consoling himself with another one of the dwindling supply of beers. Ice and Mav have proceeded to dunking each other, though they’re both staying under the water for suspicious amounts of time, and are being studiously ignored for it. Eventually, Hollywood notices that Wolf has abandoned the ocean exile, and skips back to his RIO complaining of striking out in a way that is not supported by the looks he’s getting from at least one of the girls left behind. Wolfman, against his better judgement, accepts the quiet apology from his pilot and agrees to a walk in the other direction, away from Sunny and Chip and those Spanish girls, just the two of them. Slider opens one of the chip bags. He shares with Goose while they candidly share opinions they do not have on what is definitely not happening between their pilots, as well as general speculation around Wolf and Wood. Their pilots eventually return, much more worn out than the minimal splashing around they’d done would seem to justify.

The afternoon slowly ticks away. Chipper eventually strikes out and returns a little huffier than he left. Sunny disappears, presumably getting lucky with one of the girls among the scrub and beach trees above the tide line. Chipper thinks that it would serve him right if the sand gave him a rash on his cock, smooth bastard. Wolf and Wood eventually turn around and wander back towards the group, a little of the stiffness has worked its way out of Wolf’s back, his shoulder knocks occasionally with Wood’s. They spread out the last of the beer and chips, waiting for Sunny to be done with his tryst. The sun begins it’s slow change from bright yellow to deeper red and their shadows get longer. Maybe Sunny’s girl can recommend them a good dinner spot. Maybe she’ll bring her friends along and they can go dancing later.

 

Notes:

The discord discussion had this on the French Riviera, but the US hasn't had a naval base in France since the end of WWII, so I put it in Spain instead. The town is real and is really where the US has a Naval Air Station, the nude beach is also real, but I don't think they (or any other publicly open nude beach) is a 'nudity required' rather than a 'clothing optional' location.

The attitudes towards SPF portrayed in this fic are from the 1980's and should remain there, Maverick.
From one pasty face to another, please remember to use proper sun protection when going outside in the summer! (Also you definitely still need sunscreen even if you have a dark complexion. Don't be like Sundown, wear your SPF!)
If you really want the feeling of vintage tanning, try Vacation Sunscreen, they've revived the Orange Gelée of the 70's and 80's, but now with SPF 30. So I'd still consider it a tanning lotion, not a proper sunscreen, but I burn.