by Bauer, Tal
Oleg headed their way, moving slowly across the ballroom, stopping to say hello and chat with a few other oligarchs, a few politicians. Ilya grumbled and slid off, disappearing into the crowd. Beyond Oleg, Sasha caught Sergey’s eye. Sergey winked.
Oleg finally greeted him with a warm hug, and Svetlana offered her hand for a kiss on her gloved fingers. Sasha assumed they were only being polite, there to say hello before moving on as they’d done with nearly everyone else. But Oleg lingered and kept talking, asking questions about NASA and America and being an astronaut. He waved a waiter over and ordered fresh drinks and a juice for Svetlana, and then urged Sasha to keep sharing stories. He hung on every word, laughing in all the right places.
“And you flew your jet here? To Moscow?” Oleg’s jaw dropped as Sasha finished his story about flying over the Atlantic, a single jet crossing half the world. “I’m shocked the Americans allowed that.”
“I had to sign my soul over to the US government.” Sasha shrugged. “I’m sure they own my left kidney and right leg in exchange now.”
“Much, much more than that!” Oleg laughed, and then brightened, smiling over Sasha’s shoulder. “Mr. President. I’ve been listening to stories from Russia’s newest astronaut.”
Sergey’s hand slid down his back and rested at the base of his spine. “Our astronaut is amazing, is he not?” Sergey beamed.
Oh, Sergey had been slipping drinks while he was greeting his guests. His eyes were whiskey bright and soft. The world had already gone fuzzy on the edges for Sasha. Now they were two tipsy lovesick fools, well on the way to drunk. He recognized the danger like a warning light flashing on his flight controls.
He let it blink. He smiled back at Sergey. Leaned slightly into his touch.
Oleg cleared his throat. “The jet is still here? You will be flying it back, yes?”
Sasha nodded.
“Mr. President. I have an idea. Why don’t you take a ride in Sasha’s jet?” Oleg launched into a sudden plan, outlining an entire Russian television special he could produce as soon as tomorrow. Russian President Rides in Astronaut’s Jet. The restart of the Russian space program. The president and a certified hero of Russia flying the skies over Moscow. “What do you think?”
“I have flown with him once already. That was enough!” Sergey growled. He couldn’t keep the wicked smile off his face.
“I saved your life!”
“You crashed us into the ice!”
“I got you out!”
“You shot us out of the plane like we were a circus cannon! Ejection seats are not meant to go sideways!”
“I saved your life,” Sasha repeated.
“After you crashed.”
Oleg’s gaze bounced between them. Sasha crashing the rusted-out junk bucket of a Russian ice plane in the Arctic on the run from Madigan’s attack squads hadn’t made it into the Russian film, President/Insurgent. In that movie, Sasha’s character had died in a sacrificial recon flight over the Ural Mountains, and the hunky, sexy president had visited the wreckage of his grave with his new girlfriend, Svetlana Shevchenko, his insurgent commando that helped him retake the Kremlin. Oleg, like everyone else, had never heard the story of Sasha crashing Sergey into the ice.
“And!” Sergey said, his hand squeezing Sasha’s shoulder. “What about the other jet? The one you punched out of!”
“I was shot down!”
“As I said, your arrival this week was the first time I’ve ever seen you land a plane successfully.” Sergey winked at Oleg. “This is the man we want to send to space, hmm? And you want me to fly with this man? I see your plot, Oleg, I see through it clearly. This is a coup attempt! You are after my job!”
“Please.” Oleg laughed and batted Sergey’s fake outrage away. “You do not make enough money for me to be interested in your job.”
Sergey snorted.
“But, Mr. President. Mr. Andreyev. Would you consider it? Flying together? I can promise you, ratings would be through the roof. All of Russia would love it. Their hero president and the first Russian astronaut in a generation.” He held out his hands. “What do you say?”
Sergey’s hand was back on the small of his back. Sasha felt his thumb stroke down his spine. Their eyes met.
“What do you say, zvezda moya? Want to try and kill me again?”
Sasha grinned. The slip of his nickname in front of Oleg went sailing right over his head, as did the narrowing of Oleg’s eyes, the assessing gaze Oleg slid from one to the other. The way his lips pressed together.
“I’ll take you for a ride, Mr. President. I will give you the ride of your life.”
* * *
True to his word, Oleg was ready to film a New Year’s Day special of President Puchkov flying with Astronaut Sasha Andreyev the next day.
They pushed the start time to the late afternoon. Four rounds of whiskey and five glasses of champagne, and Sasha pushing Sergey against their bedroom wall, ravishing him, sucking his cock to the root in a sloppy, deep-throating blow job before shoving him onto the mattress and fucking him until Sergey bellowed his name, necessitated a later start. Sergey limped out of bed at noon, stretching, and Sasha held his head in his hands as he downed three cups of coffee.
They made love after lunch, though, and then had more coffee, and Sasha declared himself fit to fly. “I would not go up with you if I had a hangnail,” he’d said, kissing Sergey’s temple. “I won’t ever risk your life when I fly.”
“Again. You already crashed me into the ice once.”
“And I got you out.”
“That ejection should count as another flight. I’m certain we reached whatever speed threshold there is that designates flight.”
Yuri and Mikhail drove them to the airport, the four trading holiday stories and plans for the upcoming week vacation across the country. Yuri and Mikhail were going north to Sergey’s dacha, while Sergey and Sasha stayed ensconced in the Kremlin.
At the airfield, Oleg had marshalled his resources and he’d persuaded the Germans to release the jet from the hangar with a signed letter of request from President Puchkov, tipsily penned the night before. Sergey’s signature was sloppy and the handwriting trailed off on a diagonal angle, but it worked. Bless the Germans and their religious dedication to bureaucracy.
Sergey followed Sasha as Sasha did his preflight checks, and then did them again, an almost microscopic check for anything loose and out of place, anything touched or changed since he’d signed the jet over. He grumbled about a smear on the canopy lid, but pronounced everything in working order.
Sergey let Sasha dress him, guiding him into the flight suit Oleg gave him, mysteriously in his size and with his name already on the front of the chest. Two G-suits appeared: Sasha’s and another lifted from one of the military units at the air field.
Film techs mounted cameras inside the T-38, facing both Sasha in the front seat and Sergey in the second seat. Their radios were connected to a recorder that logged everything they said. Sergey held Sasha’s gaze as the techs checked the signal, the playback. We are simply friends. Nothing more, not on this flight.
He’d have to tell Sasha how amazing he was later. With his mouth. And more.
Sasha laid out charts of Moscow’s airspace and started building a flight plan, diverting around air traffic at the four major airports. Oleg waved him off. “No, I’ve made a call. I had the airports ground everything for an hour and hold all incoming flights. The skies will be clear for this.”
Sergey blanched as Sasha’s eyes went wide. Oleg had flexed more power with “making a call” than Sergey held as the president of Russia. Grounding all Moscow flights would take his entire cabinet, an emergency declaration, and the signing of presidential orders. Oleg had made a phone call, maybe two.
Not for the first time, Sergey wondered where true power lay in Russia. Whoever controlled the most guns seemed to be the answer, throughout history and now. Six months before, that had been a close call between him and Moroshkin. Very, very
close.
Sasha plotted a flight over Moscow at Oleg’s urging, and then north into the forests and toward St. Petersburg. “We will get excellent shots on the cameras. Make sure to perform tricks, too, Mr. Andreyev.”
“If I puke, you’re not showing that on Russia One.”
“Mr. President, if you puke, that will be on Russia One every day for the whole year.” Oleg’s eyes glittered.
They both glared at Sasha. Sasha stared at his charts, a flush rising on his cheeks, turning the tips of his ears fuchsia.
Sasha did one last pre-flight ground walk of the jet. He had Sergey follow, trail his hands over every part of the T-38. Sergey couldn’t see what Sasha saw in the hunk of metal, the bucket of bolts and moving parts. Sasha hummed, almost purred as he stroked the jet’s wings, the fuselage. Sergey ran his hand over lumpy metal and split seams, over dents and divots. Oil dripped from the engine on the tarmac. The whole contraption looked like a giant washing machine with wings, stretched into a pointed arrow. If it were anyone other than Sasha flying, he wouldn’t climb into the thing.
But he did, following Sasha up the ladder and into the cockpit. The ground crew helped him strap his helmet on, affix his oxygen mask. Sasha ran through his instrument checks, and then Oleg spoke over the radio in both of their ears. “Audio and video are coming in great. You both will look amazing tonight on prime time.”
“You’re going up after me, Oleg!” Sergey called. His voice was muffled through his oxygen mask.
Air traffic control crackled through their headsets. “PUM 1, taxi to runway zero-nine.”
Sergey heard Sasha hiss over the radio. He couldn’t see him. He was facing Sasha’s back, staring at an instrument panel that meant gibberish to him and the back of Sasha’s ejection seat. “Sasha?”
“PUM 1,” Sasha choked out.
Presidential Flight, President on Board. In America, they called such flights Air Force One.
He’d flown with Sasha before, disastrously, though that was no fault of Sasha’s. It was Sasha’s flying that kept him all alive. But he hadn’t truly been president then, had he? He’d been an insurgent, fighting to reclaim his presidency. And there hadn’t been any air traffic controllers in their ears pushing Sasha’s face in the reality of who he was carrying.
Think about the cameras. The audio. “I’ve never been prouder to fly with a pilot, Mr. Andreyev.”
He heard Sasha’s exhale crackling over the radio. “Acknowledge, ATC,” he said. “PUM 1, taxi to runway zero-nine.”
The jet whined, thrumming beneath Sergey, engine shaking and jerking as they taxied, lined up for takeoff. “PUM 1, ready for takeoff.”
“PUM 1, cleared for takeoff. Safe flying.”
“Mr. President,” Sasha said. “Hold on.”
The jet leaped forward, afterburners kicking in, hurtling them down the runway faster than Sergey was ready for. He grabbed the controls, the dead console, the canopy, as if somehow hanging on would do anything to help. G-forces pressed him into his seat, and he felt the legs of the G-suit inflate, pushing blood back to his core. Seconds, only seconds, and they were airborne, tearing through the sky and punching a hole in the clouds over Moscow.
“Blyad!” he shouted. “Fuck!”
“Are you all right?” Sasha’s voice was tense. He twisted his head, trying to look over his shoulder.
“I’m fine!” Sergey patted himself, checking that everything was still there. He’d never moved that fast in his life. He tried to spot the airfield, a speck of dark beneath them. They were already miles and miles away. “Govno…”
Sasha pushed them higher, bursting the low-hanging gray clouds, and then higher still, through the billowing puffy towers that seemed to rise forever, until suddenly all those thick and impenetrable clouds vanished beneath them and only blue sky soared overhead.
It was a different blue than Sergey had ever seen before, a color in between every shade of blue he’d ever known. Darker, and pulsing, filled with something that was alive, that beckoned. Sky shaded with space, with the beyond and all of the stars.
Outside the claws of gravity and the atmosphere, blackness beckoned. The edge of space, and above that, humanity’s first touch of the heavens. The ISS. The Lunar Station. He craned his neck and tried to take in everything.
Now he knew why Sasha had struggled to describe the first time he’d seen the edge of space.
“It’s beautiful.”
Sasha leveled them off, balancing the jet between the thinnest layers of sky and stars. Everything was smooth, the flight almost like floating. The violence of the take-off, the way Sergey thought he’d been thrown in a blender and set on high, melted away. All the dents and divots, the uneven places, the leaking seals he’d seen on the ground, the ugly washing machine bundle of wires and steel, had fused together, the pressure of flight tightening the jet into a perfect precision machine. A knife sliding through the sky, humming at perfect pitch.
“Enjoying yourself, Mr. President?”
“Immensely! How much higher until we reach space?”
“Another forty kilometers.”
Forty kilometers. That was nothing. It was less than the distance from the Kremlin to the airfield they’d taken off from. A moment away in a jet this fast. So close he could almost touch it. He pressed his gloved hand to the glass canopy roof.
He understood, to his bones, why Sasha craved space so ferociously. So close and yet so far. An impenetrable divide.
He'd felt the same about Sasha and his love for the man. He’d thought his love would be a yearning that would go unfulfilled for the length of his life. Sasha was so close, and yet always untouchable, unknowable.
But here they were. He was dusting across the edge of space in Sasha’s jet, and Sasha was going to fly between the stars soon, fulfilling his own lifelong dream.
And at night, they held each other close. Kissed and kissed until Sasha’s inexhaustible sex drive had him sliding between Sergey’s legs again, pushing inside of him, until Sergey was babbling incoherence as he rode another orgasm and Sasha filled him once more.
Yearning fulfilled. The unknown known. Perfection.
He couldn’t say anything in front of the cameras or while every sound of his breath was recorded. Tension hummed in the cabin, Sasha twisting, trying to look at him every other minute.
“Astonishing, Sasha,” he finally said, his voice choked. “Absolutely astonishing.”
Sasha twirled them slowly, drifting higher, tendrils of atmosphere and veiny clouds parting to reveal more of the blur between midnight blue and darkest black and the twinkle of stars in distant galaxies. “I’m glad you like it, Mr. President,” he said. His voice was also thick, full of more than simply radio static and forced oxygen through the mask.
Oleg’s thin voice, so distant, crackled in the headset. “All right, how about we give the viewers something to really enjoy. Mr. Andreyev? Want to have fun?”
“Oh, govno,” Sergey groaned. He grasped the restraint harness across his chest in both hands.
“Mr. President.” This time, there was a smile curling through Sasha’s voice. He could see it, in his mind. Sasha, when he wanted to be, was downright devilish. “Hold on tight.”
* * *
He didn’t puke, but it was close. The last twenty minutes of barrel rolls, loops, S-turns, and hard banks were a private civil war waged against himself, his mind versus his stomach. You are the president of Russia! You will not hurl all over national—international—television! If he repeated it enough, it would be true.
He was jelly legged when they landed, but Sasha took his time taxiing in until Sergey said he could feel his feet again and his knees had reformed into bone, away from the liquid sludge they had become on the flight. An applauding ground crew met them, along with a beaming Oleg and Yuri and Mikhail, shaking their own heads and trying not to smile.
Oleg showed them footage of the flight, video of Sergey’s breathless wonder at the edge of space to his horror at Sasha’s
Mach 3 plunge to Earth, screaming straight for Moscow city center before leveling off. Sergey remembered their turn being only inches above the skyscrapers, but the video and the altitude readings said they were thousands of feet away. “Those readings, those instruments, are clearly broken!”
Tricks followed, turns and loops and spins, high into the sky, screaming to the ground, leveling over forests and fields and skirting up mountains. Sasha looped around St. Petersburg once and out over the Baltic Sea, edging the Gulf of Finland.
“Will we get a complaint from Finland for that?”
“I stayed away from their airspace.”
“They’ll complain anyway.” Sergey shrugged. “They’re Finnish.”
“Imagine if they’d scrambled fighters and found out they were facing off against PUM 1?”
Oleg seemed delirious at the possibility. “I am certain this will be on all the major news networks, Mr. President,” he said. “But if that had happened, then we would be guaranteed international coverage. It’s been thirty years since a president was in a fighter jet, and even then, that was only a short flight the US president took to an aircraft carrier. No tricks. You, Mr. President,” Oleg said, holding out his hand, “you are far superior.”
He shook Oleg’s hand, but stared into Sasha’s eyes. There was adoration mixed with heat, a slow burn that had ignited somewhere in the skies above. He raked his gaze down Sasha’s body, still encased in his flight suit. Sergey’s cock hardened. Maybe flying jets was the secret to Sasha’s virility. Or was that buying into the propaganda of jet pilots?
Whatever it was, when they got home, they weren’t getting out of bed again for a long, long time.