Spencer looked up from his laptop as the speakers crackled. “Cockpit here, and we’re hitting some rough air, so we’re flipping the seatbelt sign on.”
Next to him Bacon had been notably quiet since his dramatic arrival. He’d fetched a small paperback from his bag and had been absorbed in what looked to be a biography of Marilyn Manson. And hell if that little detail didn’t make him all the more intriguing. Bacon, he of the no first name, had a Midwestern accent—flat vowels, not quite Southern, but definitely country—and the sort of wholesome good looks that would make him more at home in a small-town parade than at a rave.
“Fuck.” Bacon found the seatbelt he hadn’t bothered with before, and Spencer did the same. “Can’t read with all this bouncing around. Not sure how you’re managing to write.”
“Years of practice. I’ve written during all sorts of turbulence. My ex was based out of DC for a large chunk of our marriage. I wrote most of my first book on cross-country flights from LA.”
“I’m impressed you guys managed to make the long-distance thing work.” Bacon laughed, seemingly much more at ease talking about Spencer’s life than his own.
“Well, clearly we weren’t all that great at it, seeing as how we split up and all,” Spencer admitted. “But to be honest, it wasn’t the distance that caused the divorce. We were just two different people. Too independent or something, I guess.”
“Distance is always hard,” Bacon said with the sage wisdom of someone who knew. “You have no idea how many post-deployment breakups we see around here.”
“I bet.” Spencer nodded, gripping the armrest as they bounced through another rough pocket. Talking to Bacon was far preferable to trying to type through this. He hadn’t been lying about being able to write through anything, but he’d never turn down good conversation. “How about you? You have someone back in San Diego?”
“Nah.” Bacon’s expression turned decidedly sour, and something in his tone warned Spencer off further inquiry about his personal life. “There’s plenty of guys here partnered up if you want to write about military families—Curly’s getting married, Donaldson’s married to a Southern woman with the patience of Job, and the senior chief has an amazing family. His wife is seriously the best. The guy you met at BUD/S, Wizard, has a new husband who’s a great guy.”
“That’s great. Having family that supports your career is so important.” He couldn’t help the decades’ worth of resentment that crept into his voice.
“Yours doesn’t?” Bacon sounded surprised, eyes going wide. “I’d think anyone would love having a globetrotting reporter for a son.”
“Well, thank you.” Despite himself, Spencer felt his neck heat. The compliment felt far better than it should have. “But I wasn’t supposed to end up in journalism.”
“Really? How come?” Bacon seemed genuinely baffled and like he really did want to know. The plane continued to rattle and bump with turbulence, but Spencer leaned back, settling in for a story he didn’t share all that often.
“My mother was a ballerina who retired when she married my art-dealer father. She had me in dance lessons from toddlerhood on. I was on my school paper in high school, but it was supposed to be an extracurricular to help me with my NYU performing arts application, not be the start of some lifelong passion.” Spencer sighed at the memory of how carefully he’d plotted his future back then. “And I had a good career at Tisch, several solos and promising performances.”
“Seriously? Like in tights and all?” Bacon’s head tilted, a smile tugging at his full lips. And he didn’t seem as repulsed by the notion as Spencer would have thought. Spencer was trying to not read too much into him naming Wizard and his husband among his contacts—Bacon was most likely simply a decent guy with a broad social circle. A decent straight guy. But still... Some inner sense of Spencer’s tingled, suggesting that maybe guys in tights did it for Bacon. More and more intriguing...
“Lots of tights,” he confirmed. “I minored in journalism because I’d enjoyed it in high school, and it was nice to get away from the performing arts buildings every now and again, but I knew dance was my future, even though I struggled with my choreography classes.”
“What’s not to like about choreography?” Bacon’s forehead wrinkled, exactly like a guy who had never sat in an eight a.m. theory of movement class.
“Everyone always thinks choreography sounds easy and fun, but the reality—all the different factors and personalities to consider and the competing egos...”
“I guess I can see that. I know a thing or two about competing egos too.” Bacon’s tone was light and on another man, in a different place, Spencer might have thought they were flirting. “But I bet you had a lot of talent.” The tips of Bacon’s ears flushed red. “In dance I mean. A lot of dancing talent.”
Okay. They were not flirting, but Bacon was just rattled enough to be adorable. And Spencer wouldn’t let himself actually flirt with the guy, but he didn’t see the harm in continuing to enjoy the conversation. He did, however, remind himself yet again that Bacon was most likely straight. And he was Spencer Bryant, the guy with unimpeachable ethics, who had never once mingled business and pleasure. He could enjoy this talk all he wanted, but it didn’t matter what Bacon’s orientation was—Spencer wasn’t biting at that bait.
“I suppose I had enough.” Spencer tried to be humble, but his sigh held a bitterness that not even two decades had managed to erode. “But I blew out my knee in my first Broadway audition call-back my junior year. My big break turned into my big break.”
“That fucking sucks,” Bacon said, looking surprisingly sympathetic. “Curly and I know a guy who almost washed out of BUD/S with a broken leg. Came back and got it on his second try, but it seems like a lot of guys have stories like that, of injuries derailing their plans. Sucks that it happened to you.”
“Thanks. I was left with an almost finished, useless dance degree. Neither teaching nor choreography interested me enough to keep going. But then one of my journalism teachers told me about an internship I could do while I recuperated from surgery, and eventually, I switched to a journalism major, took an extra year to finish it up, and then got my start as an arts-and-entertainment writer in Los Angeles on a recommendation from that same professor.”
“Wow. So like this whole time, you’ve been wishing you were a dancer?” Bacon’s eyes narrowed, considering. “Because I’ve read your stuff. You’re good. Like really good. I’d never guess that it was second choice for you.”
“Thanks.” Spencer had to admit the compliment did a pretty good job of warming him on the chilly flight. “And it’s not second choice. I mean, maybe it was at first. But I found my voice working for the paper in LA. Grew into my own person for the first time, grew to love being in print, working in the newsroom, stretching my writing muscles every bit as much as I stretched my body dancing. It’s been a hell of a career, and not one I regret in the slightest.”
Bacon nodded. “I kind of know what you mean. Sometimes life gives us a really unexpected direction. And we roll with it, and it ends up making us the people we are today.”
“Is that how you ended up here? As a SEAL?” Spencer had been in this business long enough to sense a story here, one he definitely wanted to hear, on or off the record.
Bacon waited a long time before nodding. “Something like that. But it was different than you with your parents all thinking you were born to be a star.” A weariness in his words made him seem decades older. “My old man never wasted a chance to tell me I’d never amount to a hill of beans.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Bacon waved away his concern. “Him telling me there was no fucking way I’d ever be a SEAL and that I’d wash out of boot camp in two days was the best thing for me. Lit a fire in my belly. I hadn’t ever thought about being a SEAL until he told me I couldn’t be one, and then it became this burning desire for me.”
“What did you want to be before that? When you were a kid, I mean.”
Bacon’s eyes took on a faraway glassiness, and he licked his lips. “A musician,” he said softly. “I was gonna be a singer.” He laughed then, a harsh, low sound. “Too bad I was tone deaf and one of only a couple of goth punks in a tiny town about as far from a music scene as you could get.”
“I bet your singing isn’t that bad,” Spencer said lightly.
“There are injured cats who sound better.” Bacon grinned at him. He really did have a stunning smile when he unleashed it. “And like you said, sometimes plan B works out better, makes us stronger. I like who I am now, like the life I have just fine.”
“I’m still stuck trying to picture you as a goth punk.” Spencer had to laugh. This guy was about as all-American as they came, a walking spec ops recruitment ad. “Like did you dye your hair? Tattoos?”
“Oh yeah. Black dye. Doc Martens boots. Couple of tattoos I wasn’t really legal for. Pierced ears.”
“If I promise it’s one hundred percent off the record, could I see a picture?” Damn. Did that sound flirty? Creepy? Sometimes Spencer’s curiosity got the better of him.
“Don’t have one on my phone.” Bacon seemed neither as put out nor as guarded as he’d been yesterday. “Left those years long behind, right alongside all my dad’s criticism.”
“The past never truly leaves us, though. I still have a lot of dancer friends. Still take classes when I can and when my body allows.”
“Yeah, I could have guessed you were a dancer,” Bacon mused, then blushed. Adorable. Still not flirting, Spencer lectured himself.
“And I bet you’ve still got some of that goth kid in you.”
“Maybe.” Bacon smiled and motioned at his book. “Can’t completely squash my emo side. And I’d offer to show you my Slipknot tattoo for additional cred, but it’s already cold in here.”
“All your tattoos are hidden?” Spencer was trying to sound like a curious, detached journalist, not an aging horndog who just wanted to see Bacon’s skin.
“This one’s not.” Bacon rolled up his sleeve to show his forearm and a small tattoo below the bend of his elbow. “It’s in bad shape because it was one of my first ones. Someday I’ll get it cleaned up, but I’m kind of sentimental about it.”
“A scorpion?” Spencer was guessing because the lighting was poor and the simple black tattoo was the sort of blurry that all old ink got.
“Yeah. It was this or a skull, but J—my friend had this thing about insects.” Bacon’s eyes were far-off and his smile tender. “Didn’t hurt either that my old man hated them.”
“I bet. Mine hates my tattoo.”
“You have a tattoo?” Bacon’s jaw dropped. “You really don’t seem like the type.”
“I had just wrecked my knee. I was twenty-two and angry at everyone. A tattoo seemed like a giant F-U to the world,” Spencer admitted. “Luckily it’s on my back, so not something my parents have to look at often.”
“What’s it of?”
“Not telling, Petty Officer Bacon who doesn’t have a first name.” Spencer was hoping to goad a name out of Bacon, but all he got was an exaggerated eye roll.
“I’m going to be Chief Bacon soon. Not gonna need a first name then either.” Bacon fished a pack of gum out of a pocket. “And you’re lucky you got me and not Curly. I can pretty much guarantee this rough air has his stomach rolling.”
“Poor guy. But I’ve been in worse and not hurled.” Spencer accepted a piece of gum when Bacon offered. It was just ordinary gum, and he was still jonesing for coffee, but still the offer was nice. It felt like they were turning a corner, becoming less antagonistic. “So you’ve sat for the chief’s exam?”
“Yeah. Second time. Just waiting to hear.”
“Good luck.” Spencer meant that too, wanted nothing but good things for this complex guy he already liked far more than he should.
Bacon yawned. “Fuck. I thought gum would wake me up, but it’s not working. If I fall asleep mid-conversation, don’t hold it against me.”
“I won’t,” Spencer promised. He had a brief moment of nostalgia for having someone to talk to late at night, falling asleep while talking, legs and hands entwined. Steady now. Don’t go wanting what you can’t have.
“If I slump your direction, just shove me back. That’s what Curly always does.” Bacon laughed and so did Spencer, but inside he doubted his ability to shove this guy away, even though keeping his distance—on all levels—was absolutely critical.