Tight Quarters

by Annabeth Albert

  “So you’re gay?” Bryant sounded more inquisitive than surprised.

  “I’m pan.”

  “Pan?” Next to him, Spencer blinked.

  “Yeah, it’s a thing.” Bacon was more than a little defensive about this because he’d run into plenty of people who wanted to put him in other boxes, tell him how he wasn’t quite queer enough to claim a spot under the umbrella or how he was in some sort of denial.

  “I know it’s a thing. You just don’t meet many people who identify that way, that’s all. Wasn’t expecting it here.”

  “Well, congrats. You landed a unicorn.” Bacon did speed up then because he didn’t really want to dwell on this.

  “I’m curious about why you haven’t told your team.” Spencer easily matched his strides, even when the terrain started shifting uphill with more boulders and vegetation. “Not judging. Just curious.”

  “Because I don’t want to answer stupid or invasive questions.” Bacon sent him a sharp look. “Took me long enough to figure out where I belonged, you know? Don’t really need a ton of pushy opinions. And honestly, it hasn’t really been an issue because I haven’t dated anyone seriously in years. If I was seeing someone long-term, I wouldn’t ask them to stay hidden. I just haven’t wanted to put up with the trouble of telling everyone when it’s kind of a non-issue at this point.”

  “Fair enough.” Spencer picked his way between three large rocks as they started the more challenging part of their hike. They didn’t talk for several minutes, their breathing and the birds swooping the only sounds. And fuck. That wasn’t supposed to be the case. He’d been so caught up in the conversation with Spencer that he hadn’t noticed that his comm set had gone dead silent. They were supposed to be wired into the XO. He stopped to pull off his helmet, mess with the settings. Nothing.

  “You got any chatter?” he asked Spencer as he pulled out the backup radio their comm guy had given him while they were eating. Spencer being able to listen in was the whole damn point of bringing him along.

  “Nope.” Spencer pulled his helmet off too. His short silver hair stood up in spikes, somehow making him look even hotter than usual.

  “Fuck. Okay. Let me try to rouse Riddles.” He used the radio, trying the channel Riddles had said he’d be on.

  “Riddles, you there? Our comm sets seem to be down. Over.”

  “I’ve got you, Bacon.” Riddles’s heavy Maine accent crackled in his ear. “Be advised we’re dealing with...outages. I’ll try to have you back up and working shortly. Your orders are to continue to your coordinates and wait until the rendezvous. Over.”

  “I read you. Continuing. Over.” Fuck. He’d heard that pause in Riddles’s voice before. Either something big was up or LT didn’t want an open channel or both. And he hated not knowing. LT might have a good reason for not wanting Spencer listening in to whatever was going down, but waiting with nothing to do sucked.

  “Think everything’s okay?” Spencer asked as Bacon continued to the sheltered spot on the bluffs where they were supposed to wait.

  “Yeah. Feeling a bit like a kid sent snipe hunting, though,” he grumbled.

  “Snipe hunting?” Spencer took a long drink from his canteen as Bacon lounged against one of the rocks. They were well hidden behind the rocks, and an outcropping above them provided shade, but the ever-present humidity still had both of them sweaty.

  “Guess it’s a Midwestern thing. Older kids would trick younger ones into hunting for a creature that doesn’t exist. Run us in circles all night long.”

  “Where in the Midwest are you from anyway?”

  “Little town in Western Kansas. Barely more than a truck stop, grain mill, and trailer park.”

  “Ah. You go back often?”

  “Never.” His vehemence must have surprised Spencer because he took a step back. “My dad was a lot older than my mom. She was wife number three. I’ve got half-brothers old enough to be my parents but they’re just as bad as he was. After I’d been in the navy a few years, I got together enough money to move my mom out here. No reason to go back now.”

  “I see. That was nice of you, moving her to be closer.”

  Bacon grunted his agreement. “Least I could do.”

  “Run and hide, Junior. You go hide now.” Her voice, low and urgent, echoed back over the years.

  “You sound like a good son.” Spencer gave him an encouraging smile. “Does she know about you being pan?”

  That made Bacon laugh. “Yeah. She probably knew before me, to be honest. She’s always been great about...whatever people I bring to meet her.”

  For an instant, he wondered what his mother would make of the cultured and oh-so-smooth Spencer. She’d probably pat her hair a lot, not sure how to act. And Bacon had to smile at that image of a meeting that was never going to happen—even if something were possible between them, which it was most certainly not, Spencer was hardly the meet-the-parents type.

  “What?” Spencer gave him a bemused expression, letting Bacon know he’d been lost in thought longer than he’d assumed.

  “Nothing.” Bacon shrugged. “Damn. I wish we had some of Curly’s playing cards. Waiting sucks.”

  “Yeah, but you probably have to wait a lot on missions, right? Being the sniper and all?”

  “Yeah. I’m never the best at waiting, though. I like being around people. Being alone with my thoughts makes me do stupid stuff to pass the time.”

  “Oh? Like?” Spencer’s smile was encouraging but his eyes sparked.

  “Okay, you gotta promise not to laugh. Or add it to your article...”

  “I promise,” Spencer said solemnly, and strangely enough, Bacon believed him.

  “I recite song lyrics in my head. Or poetry. Little bits of stuff I can remember from different places. Or sometimes I write my own awful stuff and then if I remember, I transfer it to a notebook back on base.”

  “That’s seriously cool.” Spencer’s eyes were wide. “So...no chance of me seeing any of this?”

  “Not a one.” Bacon laughed. “I’ve got poetry in my tats but other people’s—nothing I write is good enough for the light of day.”

  “I highly doubt that.” Tilting his head, Spencer considered him. “But which lyrics are in your tats? Now I’m curious.”

  “You’re always curious.” Bacon groaned. He was on edge, the same sort of energy that made him climb forbidden objects as a kid. And right then, Spencer was every bit as tempting as a water tower with a ladder in jumping reach. “Tell you what... You show me your tattoo and I’ll show you some of mine. You could show me this tattoo your parents hate.”

  “You want to see my tattoo?” Spencer’s eyes went wide. “It’s nothing special. It’s very twenty-two-year-old emo.”

  “Hey, I wrote that book, man.” Bacon laughed. “I’ll show you mine, emo poetry and all, if you show me what you got.”

  “Deal.” Spencer swiveled. He hiked up his shirt and undershirt, revealing a medium-size tattoo on his left shoulder. It was a kneeling, weeping angel with drooping wings.

  “A fallen angel?” Bacon guessed. The tattoo was good quality for being older—lines still crisp and not blurry, but it was Spencer’s bare torso with miles of creamy skin that really captivated him.

  “Yeah. Told you. I was angry and emotional and thought my life was ending if I couldn’t dance professionally. I could have had it lasered off, but I’ve kept it as a reminder to never lose perspective again.” Eyes far away, Spencer shook his head as he lowered his shirt before turning back around. “Okay. Your turn.”

  “My biggest one is on my ribs.” Bacon still wasn’t quite sure why he was doing this—it wasn’t just the risk of being caught showing off his skin. It was the risk of letting Spencer in, sharing so much with him. But it was weird. A part of him seemed compelled to keep talking. There was so much he’d held in for years. Letting it trickle
out to Spencer’s patient ears felt far better than he ever could have predicted.

  He pulled up his shirt to display his tattoo with its big, blocky gothic font, Never to suffer would never to have been blessed. Next to the quote was a half-melted candle and Jamie’s initials. Obviously it wasn’t the sort of thing he could keep hidden—people he took to bed got to see it, as did the guys while changing, but he’d never deliberately showed it off before, opening himself up to inspection and inevitable questions. As he’d expected, Spencer peered intently at it, leaning closer.

  “Need a magnifying glass?” he offered. Then to cover his discomfort, he added, “Like I said, totally emo. And pre-enlistment. Don’t think I would have gotten it if I knew how much I’d be changing around other people.”

  “It’s a memorial tattoo?” Spencer asked softly. “I recognize the Edgar Allan Poe quote.”

  “Yeah. A friend. We were emo freaks together. Read Poe, listened to metal bands back in my room for hours.” Bacon pulled his shirt back down. Then he shocked himself by continuing to talk. “I told you earlier that my dad’s why I went navy and SEALs, but that’s not all of it. Jamie’s a big part of that story.”

  “I’d like to hear it.” Spencer settled on the dusty ground like he was ready for Bacon’s version of storytime. And Bacon supposed something in him wanted to share this story. Following Spencer’s lead, he sank to a crouch. He’d already told Spencer he was pan. Maybe this tale would remove some of his incredulity. And maybe Bacon simply needed to tell someone.

  “Jamie moved to town right before the start of seventh grade. Their grandmother lived a few trailers over from my folks. We were insta-best friends. And as we grew, we were our own goth clique at school—dyed each other’s hair, ripped our jeans, swapped band T-shirts. We were each other’s first best friend. First love too, but that took some time to come. Still by freshman year, two things had happened: we’d kissed on the top of the water tower at the edge of town and Jamie told me that they weren’t sure where they fit in, that they felt like both a guy and girl inside.”

  “What’d you say?” Spencer leaned forward intently.

  “I was young, but I knew that I’d never love anyone the way I loved Jamie. So I said that. Said it didn’t matter to me. I was...fuck. So young. Didn’t really think about what it might mean for me. I hadn’t ever heard the term pansexual before, wouldn’t until I was already out here, in the navy, but I just knew that Jamie’s gender didn’t make a difference in how I felt about them.”

  “Can’t imagine it was easy being genderfluid or nonbinary in a tiny town.”

  “It wasn’t.” Bacon hated this part of the story. “They’d done a bunch of poking around the internet, found people inventing pronouns and experimented with different things and different labels for themself. Our few friends didn’t care, but Jamie’s grandmother cared. Their parents cared when they could be bothered to come around. And the other kids were...vicious. I tried to protect Jamie as best I could, but I couldn’t take on the whole damn school.”

  “You were just a kid. Not a superhero.” Spencer’s voice was soothing, but did little to stem the acid churning in Bacon’s stomach.

  “Yeah.” Oh, how he wished he could have had superpowers. He’d give anything to have been able to make a safe space for Jamie. “But it didn’t matter what I did. They got more and more depressed. We used to lie on this big rock at the edge of the trailer park and daydream about escaping to New York or California, and I kept telling them to just hang on till graduation. I was always the more practical one—I didn’t want to run away with no way to get jobs, and I was scared about leaving my mom alone with my dad.”

  “All valid concerns.”

  “Fuck valid. And practical. Jamie killed themself three weeks before graduation.”

  “Holy fuck.” Spencer breathed out. His hands were visibly shaking, and he slapped one against his thigh. “I could see that coming and still... Fuck. What a loss.”

  It was kind of gratifying seeing Mr. Cool and Composed lose his composure a little because yes, it was a fucking tragedy. A loss to the whole world. “They were a great artist. Talked about learning tattooing. I took the candle in my tattoo from one of their doodles on my biology notebook.”

  “How did you get the strength to go on after that? You joined up shortly after that, right? Heck, I think I’d be comatose for three years in your shoes.”

  “My mom. She saw how toxic the town was for me, how much risk there was of me being next. She’d had a brother get out of town by joining the navy, put his twenty in before retiring to Florida. Got him to call me.” A decade on and Bacon could still remember every word of that crackly conversation, him sitting at the kitchen table, wobbly chair under him, Mom’s hand on his shoulder the whole call.

  “Sounds like a good guy. And a good idea on her part.”

  “He was. It wasn’t an ideal fit with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell still on the table and me still figuring myself out, but it was my ticket out of that hellhole. My uncle told me that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell wouldn’t last forever and that I could have a good career. Make a difference. Get enough money to get my mom out of there too. And maybe I couldn’t save Jamie, but I saved my mom—got her away from the town and my dad’s family that was sucking the life out of us both, and that’s something.”

  “It’s more than something.” Spencer’s voice was hoarse. “It’s pretty damn amazing. Few people would have that kind of strength.”

  Bacon shrugged the praise off. “I’m no hero. I came into boot camp pissed at everything—at Jamie for leaving me behind, at my dad for telling me I’d wash out of boot camp in two days. Pissed at the world for being so fucking awful that Jamie felt they had no choice. But I was absolutely fucking determined not to prove my dad right, not to let Jamie’s memory down. It was years before I stopped using anger as fuel, started thinking beyond my own narrow little tunnel of grief.”

  “I’m glad you found your way out.” Spencer squeezed Bacon’s hand. Electricity arced between them, swift and unexpected. He didn’t need Spencer’s pity, but this...compassion wasn’t unwelcome, warming long-frozen recesses of his heart. “When that military contact of mine committed suicide, it hit me hard, and I was a long-grown adult. I can’t imagine being as young or as emotionally invested as you were.”

  “Suicide sucks no matter what age you are, no matter how removed you think you are. And anyway, that’s part of why I haven’t come out to the whole team. Jamie’s death messed me up good. Took years before I felt ready for another relationship, and by that point I was fully invested in my career, long deployments derailing several opportunities.”

  “My career’s wrecked more relationships than I care to admit,” Spencer said with a wry laugh. They were still holding hands, so Bacon gave him a sympathetic squeeze before Spencer continued. “And I’m not here to urge you to come out to your team. Or judge you in some way. We all have to walk our own path.”

  “Yeah.” Even though a big part of him wanted to keep holding on, he forced himself to drop Spencer’s hand. Needing a distraction, he scanned the beach below them. “Oh fuck. This isn’t good.”

  A few team members emerged from the tree line, carrying a field stretcher right as his radio crackled. “Bacon? LT says to get your ass back to the beach. We’ve got a situation.”

  Chapter Eight

  Spencer followed Bacon back down the bluff, trying to keep up with his fast, nimble strides. He wasn’t even sure why they had had to do this hike in the first place—he guessed the two of them staying behind on the beach was a no-go, but he certainly understood Bacon’s irritation at how pointless the whole exercise seemed.

  They were silent as they hurried down to the beach, and Spencer kept searching for the right words to sum up how deeply Bacon’s story had moved him. To be so young and lose so much... He shook his head. He couldn’t even imagine. It also made more sense no
w why Bacon identified as pan instead of gay or bi, not that he needed an explanation or reason. And whatever Bacon identified as, he was strictly off-limits to Spencer. He’d be lying if he said that he was glad Bacon wasn’t straight—this was a complication he didn’t need. It would be easier if he could tell himself that there was no chance their attraction was mutual.

  Even this tentative...friendship was ill-advised. And sure, he’d made friends with sources before over the years, but caring always came at a cost.

  “What happened?” Bacon rushed toward the guys carrying the stretcher. The SEAL they all called Shiny was on the stretcher, struggling to sit up while the medic, Bullets, pushed him back down.

  “Shiny took a tumble. Suspect another concussion,” Bullets reported tersely.

  Another? As in there had been more than one? Now he couldn’t use any of Bacon’s story as fodder for his writing, but this could be an interesting angle for his piece, talking about how the military handled injury in its top operators.

  “How many concussions has he had?” Spencer asked Bacon in a low voice. Bacon shot him a look that said he didn’t like this line of questioning.

  “Two. Maybe three,” Shiny answered before Bacon could put Spencer off. “It’s no big deal. We all get our bell rung good a couple of times a year. This is probably my sixth twisted ankle too. Losing count of how many times I’ve sprained it. Guess my joints are just prone to sprains.”

  “Like my knee,” Spencer said, looking to build common ground. “When I ripped my ACL, even after surgery, it was still weak and prone to going out on me. Doesn’t take much for it to act up.”

  “Yeah. Like that.” Shiny made a pained face. “It’s like it never fully healed from the first sprain, but what are you gonna do, right? Not like I can stop walking or running.”

  “Of course not,” Spencer said, even as he was thinking that perhaps the navy should have given this kid more time to heal.

  “Our Shiny’s just injury prone.” Bullets rolled his eyes. “Get him to tell you about the time he got injured during a HALO jump. Could have died. And seriously, talking is good for him. Let me go see what the LT wants to do as far as loading up the boats and I’ll be back.”