Page 14 of Stars

In the darkness of his soul, or at night when he couldn’t sleep, he still heard those voices, the insults he’d heard for decades. All the ways he’d been taught to hate himself. He still lay awake sometimes and wondered why he was this way, why everything had happened the way it had.

Now, mostly, he didn’t want to rip time apart and change everything. He didn’t want to suffocate himself in his own baby blanket, escape his life before he’d even begun to live it. And he had Sergey to thank for that. And Kilaqqi.

He shredded another strip from his beer label, not looking up. “I’m gay,” he said again. “And I… I didn’t know you could be gay and be an astronaut—and behappy. I didn’t know you could have everything.” He looked up, into Dan’s gobsmacked expression.

Dan’s jaw hung open, his round eyes wide. “You—”

“I was shocked, too,” Mark said. He smiled at Sasha. “Honestly? We all either thought you were way too stiff to be getting anything or thought you were secretly drowning in women. Being a military pilotandan astronaut? It’s a magnet for women. The single guys here, especially the military ones? The amount of sex that gets thrown their way?”

Dan finally collected himself and laughed at Mark. “I remember those days.” He winked. “Works with the guys, too. A flight suit and a pair of astronaut wings?” Dan’s smile turned salacious.

They laughed. Sasha looked away, cheeks burning, the infamous Slavic sexual embarrassment striking again. Russians were not known for their public attitudes toward sex. He wanted to crawl under the table sometimes, listening to the stories others told.

“But, I know what you mean, Sasha.” Dan nodded. “I wanted to be an astronaut as long as I can remember. Every year for Halloween, that’s what I dressed up as. I built rockets in elementary school, took flying lessons in high school. Everything I did was to get one step closer to this dream. And then… I realized I wanted to spend my time with the guys in the engineering club a lot more than the girls. All my friends were going crazy for girls, and I just wanted to see that bit of skin above a guy’s waistband. See his shirt rise when he stretched.”

Sasha swallowed hard. There weren’t many exposed waistbands where he’d grown up, but he’d faced the same slowly dawning dread: what he wanted wasn’t the same as other boys around him. He wasn’t like everyone else. He was broken. He was wrong.

“I thought I’d have to give up my dream. There were no gay astronauts. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was still in effect, and I was on my way to being a Marine Corps pilot. It was hopeless to keep on with my dream, I thought. But I wanted to be an astronaut more than I wanted anything else in the world, so I decided to just hide everything.” Dan shrugged. “Not the smartest idea ever, but every gay man has been there.”

Sasha nodded. Dan smiled sadly.

“And then DADT was rescinded, and I took a good long look at myself in the mirror, and I thought, if someone told me I could be an astronaut if I cut my own nuts off, I would grab a spoon if it was all that was nearby. Why would I let anything else stop me? Sowhatif there weren’t any gay astronauts, at least, at that time? And here I am.”

Their gazes lingered on him. Sasha felt their weight, felt the heat of the bar lights prickle on his skin. He was exposed, flayed open. “Things aren’t that progressive in Russia.”

“Are you out at all?” Mark asked.

“No. Only a few people know.” He was out to nine people in the entire world now, including Mark and Dan. “It’snotacceptable in Russia. Being gay. It’s not good. Icannotbe out.”

“You do a lot with the Kremlin, too. I saw you in the Russian news doing some media events with the president. You’re definitely a pretty face for the government and Roscosmos.”

It was Sasha’s turn to drop his jaw, staring at Dan.

“I looked you up a bit after last night and saw the Russian press on you. That’s got to be difficult—if you’re hiding being gay and you have to work with a government that hates you.”

“President Puchkov doesnothate gays. His government is not bad. He saved my life after I was attacked. My squadron discovered I was gay.”

Mark and Dan looked like they wanted to puke. Like Sasha had punched them in the gut. Mark reached over, grasped his forearm, and squeezed hard. “Sorry,” he grunted.

“It was a long time ago.” Sasha pulled away, pulled inward. They were too close, getting too close to the truth, the onebigtruth. “President Puchkov is a good man. He honored Evgeni Konnikov when he was murdered by terrorists. He opened the Moscow GLBT Advocacy Center. He’s trying. The rest of Russia…” He bobbed his head, waved his hand. “Ehhh… Not so good.”

“No kidding,” Dan snorted. “Does the president know you’re gay?”

Sasha’s lips thinned. He didn’t move. Didn’t say a word.

Dan and Mark shared a quick glance. Mark spoke up, trying to fill the thousand-pound silence. “Are you… active? I mean, do you let yourself be you, at least here? You’re free to be yourself and no one will attack you. If you wanted to meet someone, or have some fun, you could—”

“No.” Sasha shook his head. His voice was hard, firm.

“You don’t need to live like a monk. I promise you, you have nothing to fear here. Not from NASA, not from—”

“I’m seeing someone,” Sasha blurted out. “I have a partner. I do not cheat.”

Twin expressions of shock, again. “You’redating?” Mark gasped.

“Yes. The Red Robot dates. It is special coding. It was an added program to my base unit.”

Mark snorted.