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He smirked the second he saw his ex. Bradshaw. Still wrapping himself up in his dad’s shirts, too, he saw. He hated how much he felt drawn to his ex still even to that day. It was like this anchor that made sure Jake never strayed too far away. And, unfortunately for him, he hadn’t. In years.
Fucking Rooster.
Well, now that the blast from the past was here, he decided to make the most of it, veering to the old jukebox Penny had set off to the side.
He’d show Rooster just how petty he could be.
Asshole.
He stopped for half a moment, setting the bottles he had bought earlier on top as he poked 86 in, knowing it’d drive his ex insane.
Was he playing with fire? Yep. He had been burned before, though, and he wasn’t afraid to prove to Rooster he could still handle all the heat between them. He handed off the beers thoughtlessly. Because while he was thirsty for it to numb the feelings that were simmering inside, he was hungry for something else.
“Bradshaw!” he called out, stalking his prey while biting his lower lip. “As I live and breathe.” His soul ached, pleading to go to its other half. His mint green eyes remained locked onto the beautiful whiskey browns he could always get lost in. Not even pausing to stop, he grabbed the cue from the stealthy nerd earlier.
“Hangman.”
So Roo did remember him. How sweet.
Rooster wasn’t done with him, though. “You look . . .” The whiskey browns darted down as if to check him out properly “good.”
Yeah, that’s right, honeybear. You get a good look at what you threw away that night.
Leaning down, making sure to give Rooster a real good look, Hangman bent over the pool table, making sure to stick his ass out as far as he could like the needy ass bottom he was. As soon as he had the shot lined up, he made sure to glance up to look at Rooster.
“Well, I am good, Rooster.” He shot the cue ball without looking, holding that darkening gaze locked onto him as he sunk the ball easily. “I’m very good.” He straightened at once as if challenging his ex to call him out right then and there in front of all the others. He doubted the asshole would ever admit the truth to himself even, much less to them.
He smirked back at his ex when he saw the incredulous look on Rooster’s face.
What’s wrong, darlin’? Cat got your tongue again, hmm?
“In fact, I am too good to be true,” he drawled, catching Rooster’s eyes instant dart to Phoenix.
Yeah, she can’t help you now, Roo.
Not when he had been living for this exact moment for ten years. Nope. He was getting his damn revenge right here and now in front of God, that hot old man at the bar, and all their peers.
Rooster could fuck himself for all he cared.
Hangman wasn’t ashamed of who he was, whom he loved. Nope, no siree, he was not. He didn’t give a flying fuck what anyone thought of him. Not anymore.
That asshole had broken his heart, left him, him, naked in bed after two goddamn phen-fucking-omenal orgasms and a deliciously sore ass filled to the brim with cum without so much as an explanation as to what the fuck happened. And when Hangman tried to get one, tried to show how badly he was willing to fix whatever it was that happened sometime between the best fucking sex of his damn life and the slamming of a door, Rooster had the fucking audacity somehow to get himself transferred halfway across the world, thus ensuring their paths wouldn’t cross again until this very moment.
So, yeah, no, he was going to be a petty bitch about this. He was for fucking sure going to push every single one of Rooster’s damn buttons until his ex snapped. And he was going to do it all with a goddamn smile on his face so that son of a bitch—in his god fucking awful Hawaiian shirts thinking he was too good for the uniform, to play by rules—believed the lies Hangman told himself in order to survive from the deep, soul-shattering wounds left behind from Rooster’s sudden departure from his life.
“So,” Payback called out awkwardly, likely sensing the tension between the two pilots, “anyone know what this, uh, special detachment is all about?”
Hangman feigned being bored by that question, leaning over the table again in a ridiculous attempt to line up his shot. God, he might as well just rip off his uniform for all that it was doing here honestly. Rooster was barely even reacting. Damn fucker had gotten better at hiding himself away over the years, which if Hangman weren’t so fucking pissed still over the break-up out of fucking nowhere, he might have been impressed by it.
You want to stay in the goddamn closet? Fine. But you’re not dragging me in there with you again, honeybear. I am so over you and that fucking log in your pants.
“No, mission’s a mission,” he replied dryly, needing to say something. Because at the end of the day, that was all it was. Orders were given. Orders were received. Orders were executed. The end. Nice and simple. Neat and orderly. Just the way he liked it. “They don’t confront me.” He would follow orders at the end of the day because he was a damn good officer. The best in fact. And Rooster fucking knew it, too. “What I want to know: Who’s going to be team leader”—he shot his shot, watching the balls smack together. His eyes then met each of the others’ eyes as he declared—“and which one of ya’ll has what it takes to follow me?” His eyes finally landed heavily on Rooster, the man who used to follow him behind closed doors, who used to hang on Hangman’s every word.
He’d force that prick to acknowledge him even if it meant laying himself and all his many wounds out for everyone to see if they looked closely.
He’d burn the goddamn world down if it meant Rooster finally explained why the fuck he had walked out that night, why he had abandoned the man he supposedly loved more than anything in the goddamn fucking world like Rooster had admitted once before he stuffed Hangman’s ass full of that delicious cock of Rooster’s.
Whiskey eyes fell to the side instantly.
Yeah, you better feel guilty for what you did, asshole. We could have been married by now. We could have been looking at homes, filling it with our six kids. Instead, you left, you goddamn coward. You left me. And you didn’t even have the decency to explain it to me once. You just fled as if I was nothing but a hole for you to fuck when you needed to let off steam. As if we meant nothing to one another when you fucking knew we meant everything!
“Hangman,” Rooster finally said, forcing Jake to listen to the voice he knew too well, “the only place you’ll lead anyone is an early grave.” Their gazes locked, challenging the other.
One of Phoenix’s new disciples let out a loud ‘Whoo!”
Oh . . . oh, that was . . .
He straightened, blatantly ignoring his shot for favor of the rope Rooster threw him to continue.
All right then.
Two could play that game.
He knew exactly where to strike, too.
As he passed Phoenix, knowing she would step in if this continued any further, he gave her a look to ease her fears. He wouldn’t hurt the precious chicken. At least not too much.
“Hell, anyone who follows you is just gonna run out of fuel,” he retorted, finally giving into the urge to come stand in front of his ex, to breathe the same air. He leaned back casually onto the pool table, giving off his most ease look. They were finally going to have this out in the open. “But that’s just you, ain’t it, Rooster?” Time to apply a little more pressure. Goad him a little bit more. He almost had him right where he wanted that son of a bitch. “You’re snug on that perch”—Rooster nodded slowly as Hangman continued—“waiting for just the right moment”—he took a couple steps forward to get up close to those lips he used to kiss like there was no tomorrow—“that never comes.”
Your move, darlin’.
He smirked in glee when those sinful brown eyes darted down to Hangman’s lips. Was Rooster thinking of those many nights alone in their bunks wrapped up in each other, too? Of whispered promises as they rutted against one another, chasing after their eternal bliss while the rest of the Navy slept unaware of the two men fucking their hearts out to one another in secret?
Time to go in for the kill. To ruin the man who ruined Hangman all those years ago.
“I love this s—”
Those fucking lips that had damned Hangman decades ago slammed against his. He stumbled back into the pool table, having been slightly off balance when Rooster decided to play tonsil hockey with him out of nowhere.
What the flying fuck?!
Rooster’s hands firmly held Hangman’s face, forcing Hangman to take every firm thrust of Rooster’s devilish tongue into his mouth.
He should have stopped it.
He should have absolutely pulled back.
Instead, he pulled Rooster closer, though, whining with need and spreading his legs to make it easier for Rooster to press against him. The minute he felt Rooster against his thighs, he hooked his legs around his ex’s waist, needing their bodies to be pressed even closer together for all to see and know that . . . that . . . something . . . oh fucking Lord Almighty . . .
He had missed this.
His fingers curled around the loose material, making sure not to grip too tight since he knew it was Rooster’s late father’s and thereby one of Rooster’s most prized possessions.
If Rooster pushed him down any further, Hangman was going to be on his back atop the pool table, legs up in the air.
Fuck!
Their lower bodies rubbed maddeningly, adding to the drunken stupor he was feeling.
His hands were still out at his sides, his left holding the cue and his right bracing them against the pool table.
He released the cue once he realized he could hear the cracking, knowing Penny would absolutely give him a tongue lashing his future grandchildren would feel if he broke it. The cue clattered noisily onto the ground.
Rooster was kissing him . . . no . . . wait . . . this wasn’t Roo . . .
This was . . . was Bradshaw . . . his Bradley.
The amazing man he spent a solid month sobbing into his pillow over, five years moping onboard a carrier when he was deployed to sea duty not long after the break-up that he told no one about (not even his best friend Coyote), ten years of dreaming of their reunion that would be complete with lots of hate sex followed by making up eventually.
Because . . . because at the end of the goddamn day . . . he had never stopped hoping, stopped praying he’d get Bradley back. Not once did he truly think he couldn’t fix it, fix whatever it was that broke them up. Because he knew he could. He was ready to.
Doubt started creeping into the edges of his lust-hazed mind.
Luckily for him, it was short lived. Someone poured a large bucket of ice on Rooster and him.
Both men came up screeching loudly as a result, sending the ice cubes clattering onto the floor and scattering out further.
“Consider yourselves lucky it was just ice, gentlemen,” Penny announced, empty bucket in hand. Her head then turned to the side. “You can handle it from . . .” Her voice trailed off in confusion before she sighed. A second later under her breath she muttered, “Of course he’d leave me to clean up the mess again. Goddamn you, Pete.”
Hangman was confused by her statement, but he caught Rooster’s instant stiffening and loss of color in his face.
“Dad’s here?”
Penny sighed exasperatedly before she glanced back at them. “Well, he was. I don’t know where he’s run off to this time but I haven’t heard his ridiculous bike yet.” She then pointed at them sternly. “You do that again in my bar, gentlemen, I’m throwing both of you overboard. And I really don’t give a damn whose kid you belong to either so don’t even start that shit with me.”
“Sorry, Mom,” Bradley muttered, glancing down at his shoes.
Hangman’s eyes narrowed on them, wondering in what crazy Twilight Zone episode he found himself in now.
“You two know each other, ma’am?” Phoenix asked, clearly snapping out of the surprise quicker than any of the rest of them.
Hangman noticed Rooster start to shrink in on himself, wondering what the story there was.
“A long time ago we did, I thought,” replied Penny neutrally before she turned away and walked through the crowds of people inundating Jimmy with orders.
“Uh, okay, what the fuck just happened here?”
“Well, it would seem Hangman and Rooster are bitter exes,” answered the WSO nerd in glasses.
“We’re not bitter,” Rooster argued instantly, an edge creeping into his voice.
“You might not be, but I am,” Hangman replied with a scoff. How dare that asshole tell him what he was feeling? He was so fucking fed up at that point that the words just slipped out. “You left me, Rooster. Just upped and vanished for no reason, and now you decide you want me back? Which is it? Are you hot or cold?”
Distracted by searching the crowd for someone, Rooster replied, “I can’t get into this with you.”
Hangman felt his hackles rise instantly. Nuh-uh. Not happening. Rooster wasn’t walking away from him with no explanation a second time.
“Funny. You said that same thing right before you left. Course that’s all you do, isn’t it, Roo?”
Rooster’s eyes darted back sharply. “Excuse me?!”
All right then. Hangman would put it in little terms the chicken could understand. “You used me for sex. And then things started to get too real for you, you ran, leaving me to wonder what the hell I did. You made me wonder for ten whole fucking years that! And then the moment we run into another again, you—”
“I can’t do this with you, Jake! Not now!”
Hangman snatched hold of Rooster’s forearm roughly. “Why the hell not? Huh?” he challenged. “Afraid your buddy Phoenix over there will know what sort of guy you really are then? Or, hell, Penny, since you seem to know her so well?”
He was lying to himself if he weren’t jealous of the fact that Rooster had called her mom to her face, whereas he had known her for three years now, sobbed on her shoulder a half-dozen times during the really shitty nights, and babysat her kid occasionally so she could focus on the bar.
How many more secrets was Rooster hiding exactly?
How many more men were lurking in Rooster’s closet where he shoved them when he got his itch scratched enough to satisfy that itch?
“Let go of me,” Rooster growled, trying to yank his arm back.
“No! Not until you tell me why you left!”
“Let go, Seresin!”
Yeah, fuck that. He was getting his ten-year-old question answered come hell or high water.
“Tell me, Bradshaw!”
“Because everyone who has ever loved me dies or nearly dies, okay, asshole?!” was the snarled reply leveled with such vitriol Hangman let go of Rooster immediately and took several steps back even. “You happy now?!”
“Rooster,” murmured Phoenix, stopping the second angry brown eyes darted her way.
“Everything was fine until you had to say those three damn words!” shouted Rooster, causing a hush to fall onto the bar. “You just had to tell me you loved me. You couldn’t just keep that shit to yourself! No, you had to tell me!”
“Because it was true, jackass! I loved you! I still fucking love you! I love you so damn much it hurts, Bradley. When you left me, it felt like someone was using me as their own voodoo doll, stabbing me over and over again. I didn’t know what to do. I tried to talk to you, but then you were gone! What else was I supposed to do? Huh? The man I fucking loved more than flying ran practically butt ass naked from our room because I dared to tell you the fucking truth.” All the anger that had been simmering for so long boiled to the top, exploding and frothing over the sides. “I loved you, you mustached ass, and I’m sorry that scares you for some goddamn reason, but that’s the honest to God’s truth. I love you, you fucking dumbass! And I will continue to love you until we burn in.”
A loud shrill whistle erupted from near the bar.
Hangman’s attention strayed to find out what the hell that was about now. He found Penny’s furious gaze locked onto Rooster and him. He swallowed when she pointed angrily to the doors.
“Mom—” Rooster started to say before she stormed over and grabbed them by the ears, dragging them towards the back patio doors.
Images of his own mother doing this to Hangman and his late brother Justin flashed in his mind. They had pushed Penny too far.
She released them the second they were outside. Pointing sternly, she snapped, “I’ve suffered through this idiotic bullshit since 1986 with another pair of dumbasses. I’m not going to have a repeat of history, therefore, being reenacted in my bar. Do you understand?”
“We understand, Penny,” Hangman answered, hating the churning in his gut at upsetting her.
“Tell him the truth about that night, Bradley Mitchell Bradshaw,” she ordered firmly.
“Yes, Mom.”
Penny’s eyes then flitted to Hangman. “And you listen without jumping down his throat, Jacob Seresin, or we are going to be having a discussion you most assuredly will not enjoy, young man.”
“Yes, Penny,” replied Hangman, glancing at her as he spoke.
“Excellent. Now, try not to kill each other and work this shit out like adults, boys. Do that, and you can rejoin your friends.” She turned back to head inside, reaching for the doors behind her.
“Wait! You’re leaving us out here?” Rooster croaked.
She whirled around and glared at him. “Yes, Bradley, I am. Because you’ve avoided this conversation with him for ten years, and I, for one, am tired of all the men in our family being complete and utter emotionally constipated dumbasses with one another. Your dad and pops are bad enough. I will not go through this with you and Jake as well.”
“Why can’t you just stay out here with us and make sure we don’t—”
Hangman could have kicked him, but he resisted the urge just barely. However, it was only because Penny’s hand flew forward and swiftly covered Rooster’s mouth up with it.
“Zip it.” She then sighed heavily. “Instead of doing my job and taking care of my customers, now I have to find wherever the hell your dad ran off to, thanks to you two idiots.”
Rooster pulled her hand down slowly with a sad look. “He’s really here?”
“Yes, sweetie, he’s really here. At least he was.” She sighed, letting her hand fall to her side before she raised it back up to rub at the side of her head. “And when you’re finished with Jake here, I’ll make sure to bring him out to you, so you and Pete can finally hash your bullshit out, too. And maybe when it’s all said and done, you two will realize that running from your problems hurts the ones who you love you because they’re the ones who have to pick up the pieces when you do this crap.”
“Did Pops—”
“Bradley,” she warned, giving him a sharp look that said he best shut up. “Talk, gentlemen. Or leave my goddamn bar. Those are your orders.” She spun around and closed the patio doors behind her.
Hangman glanced towards Rooster warily, knowing his ex wouldn’t start things off. Talking about things was always the equivalent of pulling teeth with him.
“I thought you said your parents were dead?”
“My biological ones are,” Rooster sighed heavily. He slid his hands through his hair, sweeping his dark locks back. “Penny and Mav adopted me when I was six a year after my real mom died.
“Oh.” Did Hangman know Rooster at all, he wondered. He would have thought that would have come up at some point in the year and a half they were together. “I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“So was you leaving me.”
“What do you want me to say here, Jake? Huh? That I’m sorry?”
“Would be a good start.” Why did everything between them have to turn into a fight?
“I’m not. Okay? I’m not sorry about leaving that night because I had to go. I couldn’t stay, letting you fall harder for me when I didn’t feel the same way yet.”
“You could have talked to me, Bradley.”
“And you could have kept those words in a little while longer.”
“No,” Hangman replied, shaking his head. “I couldn’t. I needed you to know how I felt. I knew you weren’t there yet. And I wasn’t expecting you to say it back to me either, Rooster. I just wanted you to know you were loved by me. That was it. Because I was so damn happy that night with you. Happier than I had ever been. And I wanted you to know that.”
Growing up as he did, having to hide away his being gay so as not to be dishonorably discharged like so many others and not letting his father down, he swore after DADT’s repeal he would never hide that part of himself away again, never feel ashamed just because of who he loved. His liking dick didn’t affect his skills as a pilot in the slightest. It was part of his identity, yes, but it wasn’t what made him so damn good.
“You’re right, okay?”
Hangman waited for Rooster to elaborate further, but he didn’t. “What am I right about exactly?”
“I could have talked to you. Let you in.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I told you.”
“Tell me again,” Hangman replied. “Because I don’t get it still. I thought we were happy.”
“We were.”
“So, why did my telling you the truth scare you so damn much to make you flee like I was trying to murder you instead?”
“I told you, Jake.”
“Tell me again,” he repeated firmer than before. “Help me understand it. Because I don’t understand a damn moment about that night now.”
“Everyone who has ever loved me dies or nearly dies,” Rooster answered vaguely again. “I lost my parents before I was five. I nearly lost Dad . . . Mav that is . . . anytime he flew it felt like after he promised he would always come home to Mom and me. And then when he pulled my papers so I couldn’t get into the Academy, I yelled at him, screamed right in his face how I wished he had died instead of my father. This was the man who raised me as his own officially for twelve years and unofficially since I could remember. Do you know what happened that night, Jake? He took my yelling and screaming, stood there like it didn’t bother him in the slightest. Like I wasn’t ripping his heart out with each scream. And when I was done, he put his hand on my shoulder and told me he loved me . . . and left. He calmly walked out the front door, got on his bike, and was gone. The next time I saw him again, he was unconscious in a hospital bed having been thrown off his bike and left in a ditch an hour after he left the house. The doctors had told us how lucky he was to be alive. How much worse it could have been. I’ve gotten so many of those emergency calls since that I actually start to panic the second I see the number pop up on my phone. I always wonder if this will be the time when I have to bury another of my fathers in Rosencrans.”
“And that’s shitty of the guy,” Hangman said. “But him saying ‘I love you’ didn’t cause his accident, Bradley. It just happened.”
“My biological father said the same thing to me that morning he died, Jake,” Rooster stated. “He picked me up and hugged me and told me how much he loved me. Four hours later he was dead after breaking his neck upon ejection. And my mother? She wrapped me up in her arms like it was any other day. Just like my father had. And several hours later, I’m getting picked up from school by my Uncles Hollywood and Wolfman who weren’t their usual selves. I didn’t need to hear the words to know she wasn’t coming back. That she was with my father.”
“Those are all horrible things, Bradley, but it wasn’t why they died. Telling someone you love them isn’t a death sentence. It’s a prison release.”
“Not in my life it hasn’t.”
“Well, I haven’t nearly died on you, and I told you it.”
“Because we were apart. Because I walked out before it hardened. I made you hate me instead just to keep you safe.”
“That wasn’t up to you to decide.”
“I wasn’t going to go through another funeral, Jake. Let alone have it be yours.”
“Oh, darlin’, everyone dies eventually.”
“Not in their twenties they don’t.”
“Was there anything else?” He caught Rooster’s resigned look instantly, knowing right then that there was something else. “What is it?”
“It wasn’t . . . wasn’t just you telling me you loved me and me panicking.”
“Okay.”
“I . . . that is . . . I had to go home,” Rooster said lamely.
“Why?”
He thought back on that night, remembering Rooster vaguely saying how he was going to get a washcloth to clean him up. They had been flirting back and forth. And he remembered Rooster being so damn gentle, asking him annoyingly every few seconds if he was still doing all right since his ass was raw as hell.
Wait. There was something else, wasn’t there? Something he was forgetting.
As if Fate herself had been listening, a familiar text alert chimed out.
“Who texted you that night?”
Rooster stiffened, staring back numbly.
“Bradley, who texted you that night?”
“Pops,” he answered barely above a whisper.
The nuances weren’t clicking in Hangman’s mind yet, but he knew that was referring to a third person in the tight knit family.
“What did he say?”
“Jake . . .” His voice cracked, pleading with Hangman not to push further.
They were so close to the truth that had alluded him for so long. He couldn’t stop. Not yet.
“Bradley, what did your pops say to you that night?”
“Mom and Mel were in the hospital.”
“Why?”
“Someone ran a red light when Mom was driving them back from her dad’s. He couldn’t get a hold of Dad, so he reached out to me instead.”
“I told you a few seconds after you read that message that I loved you, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
There was his answer. Right there in front of him.
“You should have told me about your family. I would have driven you to the hospital.”
“And then we could have been hit by some dumbass running a red light, too. Or a semi. Or a random piece of building from a high rise. You were safer away from me. I don’t regret that for a single moment.”
“You love me, Bradley. You can throw up all the drywall in the world, paint it all the colors in the rainbow even, but you love me. And I love you. And that’s not going to change.”
“I know.” He sighed heavily, holding his head in his hands somberly. “I never stopped love you for the record. And it scared the hell out of me because . . . because I had never felt that way about anyone before until I met you.”
“I ruined you?” he teased half-hardheartedly.
“You did, you cocky ass.”
“Other than Penny just now reading us the riot act, what changed? What made you kiss me?”
Rooster sighed deeply before he reluctantly met Hangman’s eyes.
“Honestly? I think it was that I genuinely missed you, being with you. Plus, you know how much I love you bent over like that. And . . . and we were good together. Until I ran that was.”
“I so badly wanted to hate you, but I couldn’t.”
“Yeah.”
“So . . . now what?”
“Guess that’s up to you. I mean, I wouldn’t blame you if . . . if after this detachment’s over with, you decided I’m too much a hassle.”
“I knew that long before I fell in love with you,” Hangman snorted. He then shook his head, unsure of his next moves. “I want to pick up where we are, but . . . but this seems to be an all-hands-on deck situation, you know?”
“It has to be if they brought Dad into it. It’s the only way Pops would get him talked into it.”
There was so much there he wanted to unpack, but he also wanted to head back into the bar before anyone started to get anxious about them being out here so long.
At Rooster’s hand lightly touching his arm, he glanced at him.
“I’m sorry, Jake. I should have told you this sooner. Not run away. But I thought I was doing what was best for you at the time.”
“Well, it wasn’t.”
“Yeah, got that.”
“I tried to contact you every way I could think of.”
“I know.” Rooster’s eyes fell to the floor guiltily. “I blocked your number on my cell. And then you started to write to me, so I . . . I talked to Pops. Asked him to transfer me somewhere far from you.”
“And he did? Just like that?”
“He’s pretty high-ranking,” explained Rooster. “And he collects favors like they are candy on Halloween. No, I’m not joking. Plus, he has to do that sort of stuff with Dad all the time because Dad loves to piss admirals off. So, transferring me was probably something Pops did in his sleep.”
“Well, case you were wondering, you’re not . . . exactly forgiven yet, but it’s a start. We both could have handled the situation a little better than we did. I could have stopped being so damn clingy on you, and you could have talked to me.”
“I missed you.”
Hangman smiled faintly. “Likewise.”
It was a start.
And that was all he was ever really hoping for honestly.
“Jake?”
“Yeah?”
“For the record, um, I, uh, I’d follow you if you get chosen for team leader for this. You might be an ass at times, but I know you care about us deep down.”
“Some of you at least.”
Rooster smiled with an eye roll, causing Jake’s heart to flutter in response.
Three weeks. He could wait three weeks until after the mission was completed and every single member of brass kissed their asses for yet another miraculous save.
A mission was a mission after all.
But building a life together was forever.
They had a lot of time to make up.
But Hangman wasn't called that because of his proclivity of hanging anyone out to dry, which he rarely did in combat scenarios, when it was the real thing. His record spoke for itself there. No, his call sign was because he hung off people's every word, especially when that was Rooster's.