Page 158 of Stars
“I told you once before. In a choice between Russia and you, I pick you. I will always pick you.”
He told the story haltingly, choked-out words describing Zeytsev and General Yaluyevsky and Oleg’s confession. “It was over the moment Zeytsev took control. He and Yaluyevsky were working together. They wanted me gone. Zeytsev wanted the virus and the Soviet satellite. Lazarus wanted to destroy America, and the world. Just imagine what could have happened if you hadn’t stopped them.”
“I didn’t stop them from hurting you.”
“I chose to leave. I could have fought it. I didn’t, because what I wanted more than anything wasyou.” Sergey kissed his forehead. “Now I am no longer President Puchkov. I am only Sergey. Only Sergey, who loves Sasha.”
Sasha was quiet. “It wasn’t just me who stopped Zeytsev and Lazarus. It was everyone. Mark and Phillipa and Sarah. Rafael and Michaela and Jim, and even Joey. Everyone together.”
“They are all heroes. All of you are.”
“I can never go back. Not with what happened.”
“NASA says they will be building a new space station to replace the ISS. You could be a part of that future. Or go to the Lunar Gateway. Mars, even.”
“Rafael’s and Michaela’s bodies are still out there somewhere. And Phillipa, Joey, and Sarah… Anyone who goes into orbit will be flying through their atoms.”
Debris raining from the sky. Ash coating his lips.He kissed Sasha again, holding him close, their chests pressed together. “All I cared about was getting you home,” he whispered. “I was willing to giveanything, everythingfor that. Russia, Zeytsev, the generals trying to steal power. I did not care. You are the only thing I care about.”
Sasha was quiet. He ran his fingers over Sergey’s chest, wrote in Russian with his fingertips,I love youandforeverandhome. “You know I have wanted to go into space my whole life.”
“Yes.”
“When I was finally up there, the only thing I wanted was to look down and find you.” Sasha rolled onto Sergey, covering him, and cradled his face in his hands. He gazed into Sergey’s eyes, and for a moment Sergey flashed back to his nightmare, to the creature who wore Sasha’s face hovering over him in the exact same way.
Sasha’s thumbs stroked down Sergey’s cheekbones. “I never want to spend another moment apart from you.”
Sergey kissed his wrist. “You never have to. I’m yours forever.” Oleg’s two million dollars was still in the Swiss bank account. It was enough to start a new life for them both, somewhere—anywhere—else. “No more politics.”
“No more space.”
He kissed Sasha slowly, savoring his love. His hands ran up Sasha’s sides, tracing his skin, his jutting hipbones, the ridges of his ribs. Their crotches pressed together, and he felt Sasha harden against his thigh, begin to rock against him. He spread his legs. He wanted Sasha inside him, now and forever.
Sasha entered him slowly. Sergey was open and slick after hours of their lovemaking, Sasha’s come still inside him. Sasha entered him like a curl of flame blooming into Sergey. He never felt more alive than in these moments, when he and Sasha were perfectly connected. “Sashunya, I love you.”
The words weren’t enough, weren’t large enough or deep enough to convey how he felt about Sasha. The love he had for him went beyond words, beyond language. He loved Sasha deep in his soul, in the particles that made up his being. All his life he’d thought he was whole… until Sasha’s blue eyes found his. He was incomplete as a man, as a human being, without Sasha.
He loved Sasha enough to walk away from a nation. The presidency meant nothing without a reason for living, and Sergey’s reason was Sasha. He would live in a shack if it meant he was at Sasha’s side. He would move to the end of the earth and live on a black shell beach, fishing for their food as they sheltered beneath a tree. He would do anything, go anywhere, for their love.
Sasha kissed him as he pushed into Sergey and held, and then pulled out and thrust in again. “I love you,” Sasha breathed between his kisses. “I have only ever loved you.” He grabbed Sergey’s hands and laced their fingers together, held them over Sergey’s head as he stretched his body on top of Sergey’s. Sergey gasped, inhaling Sasha’s breath, gazed into his eyes—
For a moment, a fraction of time, their souls seemed to slip, slide free of their bodies and merge. Atoms joining, dancing around each other in joyous orbits, reunited for an instant since their separation at the formation of the solar system. Sergey felt, in a breath,everythingof Sasha, all the parts and pieces that built him, formed out of the same quarks and gluons and protons and neutrons that built Sergey. Two bodies and one soul, split at the start of time, forever seeking out their other half and trying to recombine, make their lives whole once more.
For a fractal second, they were.
Time spread like a wave flattening to glass. Their souls merged, particles shifting and caressing in excited states, vibrating as four billion years of separation was erased in a moment.I am you, Sergey thought.
I am you, he heard inside of himself in Sasha's voice.
He met Sasha’s gaze, that perfect blue gaze, like the color of the universe in the moment before the Big Bang, before they were separated, the color he’d spent a million lifetimes chasing, from star to galaxy to distant nebula, until he finally found it, here, now, inside Sasha. Inside the other half of his soul.
Screaming, Sasha exploded inside Sergey as Sergey clenched and shouted, erupting between them. He roared, clinging to Sasha, and tried to recapture that moment, that second where they had reunited back to the dawn of time.
Sergey cupped his cheeks and held his face. He searched Sasha’s gaze, searched that perfect blue.You felt that, right?
Sasha smiled.I felt it.
They kissed, and the moment passed, the waves of time rolling forward, leaving the lovers behind as they separated into their bodies once again, joined only by their breaths and the soft thrust of their hips as their lovemaking continued on, and on, and on.
