Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean – Book 3 Exclusive Excerpt!

I have something special for everyone this week! This week’s Bauer’s Bytes will be an surprise excerpt from Book 3 in the Executive Office series!

Here is a scene for you from Doc’s perspective as the team works to sneak back into the United States and rally together with Ethan to continue fighting. They’re operating under the radar, and striving for stealth. Doc follows the rules about as well as can be expected!

Enjoy!!

 


Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean

 

The airplane hummed around Doc, the interflight rattle of a jumbo jet hurtling at thirty thousand feet in the air, screaming halfway around the world. It was the second, no third, flight for the team, a mind-numbing series of trips that had spanned almost three days already. From Jeddah they’d flown to Riyadh, and from Riyadh to London. Now, from London to Seattle. Back to America.

 

Scattered around the cabin, not sitting together, not even pretending to know or care about one another, were the rest of the team. Sergeants Coleman and Wright, each snoring in window seats. Park, Ruiz, and Kobayashi, the remaining junior members left after Fitz’s murder, were sitting through their third round of inflight movies and numbly chewing crackers and pretzels.

 

And Adam, the L-T, was several rows up and to the right. He sat hunched and glowering in his seat, desperately trying not to turn around.

 

Doc rolled his head, looking to his left. A fat, snoring Brit sat between him and the last member of their team: Faisal.

 

For the length of each flight, Faisal had sat silently in his cramped coach seat, staring out the window at a shifting landscape of desolation and nothingness. His face stayed impassive, a practiced coolness and seeming serenity. As fucked up as Adam appeared, Faisal seemed practically impervious to even feeling emotion.

 

Doc knew that was epic bullshit, of astronomical proportions.

 

Fuck, the argument over Faisal coming with the team had been massive. He hadn’t thought Adam could get that pissed. Granted, he’d seen a brand-new side of him over the past few weeks, but the shit-fit Adam threw had been beyond anything he’d imagined possible.

 

And Faisal. Shit, did looks deceive. He stared hard at Faisal’s profile, remembering the final climax of Adam and Faisal’s argument. It had happened right in front of him, for fuck’s sake.

 

He’d been working with Adam in Faisal’s space-age kitchen, their truly astounding array of weaponry spread out in front of them. They’d already decided they were sneaking back into the States under the radar, which meant traveling commercial and ditching their military IDs. Which also meant no weapons… at least, none that could be found. Faisal had scrounged up two false bottomed bags, and Doc had volunteered to help Adam disassemble their untraceable assault rifles into all their thousand little hardened plastic pieces and load everything up.

 

And then Faisal walked in.

 

The argument between Adam and Faisal was already days old, stale in the broken air of the Jeddah villa. The whole team tiptoed, as if walking on shattered glass, questions burning from their eyes. What was up with the L-T and Faisal?

 

Doc knew. But he kept his damn mouth shut.

 

“You’re not coming,” Adam had hissed. “Jesus, Faisal. How could you even ask?”

 

Faisal’s eyes had narrowed. “How could you imagine that I would be fine with you leaving? Without being by your side?”

 

“I swore to your uncle—“ Adam’s voice shook, his words quaking as his hands had balled to dark fists.

 

“You said you never wanted to leave.”

 

“I swore to keep you safe!”

 

“The only times I have ever been hurt are when you are gone.”

 

Fuck, that had been a low blow. Doc watched Faisal’s words slam into Adam’s chest like bullets, each one driving the air from his body and making him step back as he paled, blood draining from his face.

 

“There’s no place for you!”

 

“You are down a man. I can fill in for Fitz. Let me help, Adam—“

 

Adam’s fists hit the counter. A disassembled rifle part clattered to the floor. “Not you! You can’t—“

 

And then, Faisal had moved. Hands darting out, he’d picked and grabbed from the pieces of ten different weapons spread across the counter, assembling, before their eyes, a flawless AR-15 in under a minute. He pressed the rifle stock to his shoulder, turned to the living area and raised the bore. The patio door had been left open, the breeze from the Red Sea floating through the house. He sighted the rifle, exhaled, and squeezed the trigger.

 

A perfect hole appeared in the center of the middle pylon on his pier. If a bulls eye target had been fixed to the wood, he would have landed his shot in the dead center.

 

Doc’s mouth had dropped open. He stopped breathing.

 

Faisal turned back, disassembling the rifle as he moved until it was nothing by pieces scattered on the counter again. “You forget where I came from, habibi,” Faisal whispered. “Or our history together.”

 

Silence. Doc’s eyes had bounced from Adam to Faisal and back again, like he was watching an invisible game of tennis.

 

Adam had walked out, shoving away from the kitchen counter with a snarl.

 

Later that afternoon, the rest of their supplies arrived, and that evening, they were on their first flight to Riyadh, Faisal sitting squished next to Doc. Since the kitchen, not a word had been spoken between Adam and Faisal. That was part of the plan, though. They were supposed to act like strangers to one another. Not know each other until they rallied back in the States.

 

Except, Doc thought, glaring at the back of Adam’s head, he was doing a shit job of acting like there wasn’t everything in the world that he wanted to turn to sitting four rows behind him and to the left. As Doc stared, Adam leaned forward again, wrapping both hands around the back of his neck, and tried to surreptitiously glance beneath his bent arms to their row.

 

Doc met his dark, hooded eyes. Adam looked away, fisting one hand and holding it in front of his pursed lips.

 

“Excuse me.”

 

The fat Brit snorted and glared as Faisal squeezed his way through the seats and into the aisle of the jet. Doc tried to catch his gaze, but Faisal, far more so than Adam, was keeping to their ruse of not knowing each other at all.

 

He turned, watching Faisal head down the aisle toward the rear of the plane. Passengers watched, too, Brits and Europeans with narrowed eyes and suspicious glances turned Faisal’s way, watching him with a predatory intensity. One man unbuckled his seat belt as Faisal drew near, as if he was readying himself to lunge.

 

Fuck it. Doc rose, heading down the aisle after Faisal. He glared at the businessman prepared to leap, now relaxing back in his seat since the Arab had passed him by. Shit, out of anyone, Faisal was the least likely to ever start something. He was the tech nerd, the skinny guy with the computers and the awesome house. He called Adam habibi, and he’d put them all up multiple times, never asking for anything. And, with the tiny bit that he did know about Adam and Faisal, well—

 

Faisal had put a roof over their head, food in their bellies, and intelligence in their hands, over and over again, even though it meant having his ex, a man he still loved, in his face. Using his palace like a personal base. And ignoring him, and their history.

 

Faisal didn’t deserve to be side-eyed like he was some kind of dangerous terrorist. Without him, would their team have accomplished even half of what they had? It was Faisal that put the pieces together with the Yemeni tanker and found Noah in Ma’an. Hell, they were all just Faisal’s muscle, at this point.

 

A part of Doc twisted at the thought, his gut clenching against that mental sucker punch. His words, thrown at Adam days before, echoed in his ears. Serious foreign influence violations. They all trusted Faisal, Adam especially. But why? What did they have to go on, other than Faisal’s endless consideration and politeness, and his and Adam’s mercurial connection?

 

What kind of world was it where Saudi princes became frontline allies against a rogue American general?

 

Doc followed Faisal to the back of the plane, catching every sidelong glance and lingering glare sent Faisal’s way. Even the flight attendants slipped away when Faisal neared, their heels click-clacking against the corrugated cabin flooring as they fled.

 

Sighing, Faisal leaned against the plane’s bulkhead, next to the rear door, and ran his hands over his face. His lips moved as if whispering, but Doc couldn’t hear a thing over the drone and rattle of the plane.

 

“Hey.” He leaned back, his shoulder blades digging into the knobs and toggles and levers along the rear compartment wall, the stowage area of bins and trays and carts the flightcrew used.

 

Faisal’s eyes popped open. He spotted Doc and snorted. “Of course. You would ignore the rules about not interacting.”

 

Doc shrugged, one corner of his lip curling up in a smirk. “I’m sure people just think I’m trying to get into the Mile High Club.” Faisal shook his head. His smirk faded. “How you doing?”

 

Faisal stilled, and a shroud descended behind his gaze. “Fine.”

 

Lolling his head toward Faisal, Doc’s eyebrows shot high on his forehead. He said nothing.

 

Neither did Faisal.

 

Time for a different approach. “I didn’t know you were such a bad ass. Thought you were just a computer nerd.”

 

Faisal chuckled softly. His eyes sparkled. “There is quite a lot you don’t know about me. I am an al-Saud. My family fought for control of the entire Arabian Peninsula, and we won when no one else could. United the tribes and built a nation. We may look like fat, wealthy Arabs, but we carry the hearts of warriors.”

 

“Now I see why Adam took an interest in you.”

 

Faisal’s eyes darkened, and his expression went brittle, like holding his tiny smile in place was all that kept him from breaking apart. He shrugged. “I suppose that is one reason.” He looked away, staring at the bulkhead and the jump seat for the flight attendant as if it were a priceless artifact.

 

“You guys okay?” Doc crossed his arms and frowned.

 

Silence.

 

Shifting made one of the knobs dig into the center of Doc’s shoulder blade. He leaned back, pressing into it. “I don’t really know the L-T all that well…” He trailed off. What the hell was he trying to say? He barely knew Adam at all. Adam had been their team leader for a little over a year, and he’d gone from being a stick-in-the-ass perfectionist, when they’d met him, to rough-edged brawler with the shadow of some huge weight dragging him down. Months ago, Adam had been thrown in the stockade by General Bell, and the team had gone out to drown their frustrations in liquor, anticipating their collective stand down and reassignment to a new team lead.

 

Color them all shocked—and hungover—when instead they were on a black ops White House mission to South America at midnight.

 

“I know he’s a private guy…” Doc shrugged. What he knew about Adam could fit in a paragraph. The most important of which was what he and Faisal were to each other. Not just, as Adam had claimed in the highland sands of Ethiopia, when they first ran to Faisal and his safety net, a source he’d worked with in the Middle East.

 

Adam seemed to unbend with Faisal, just slightly, around him and Reichenbach. Had at least acknowledged that Faisal was someone to him, someone special.

 

That all changed when the team arrived. Adam had locked up tighter than missile defense shield. Even Doc had felt the reverberations of his distance echoing painfully off Faisal’s confused hurt.

 

“Having the whole team here is probably hard for him,” Doc finished lamely, shrugging.

 

Looking down, Faisal nodded. “I appreciate what you are trying to do,” he said, meeting Doc’s gaze. “There are… larger problems, though.”

 

He shifted again, the knob grinding against his spine. “Like what?”

 

Faisal stayed quiet, his gaze seemingly turned inward, and Doc watched him pick and discard words as he licked his lips. “This is the third time he has walked away from us. Each has been difficult. The first…” Faisal’s voice faded away, and his eyes slipped closed. “I have never felt anything like that. And I never want to again. After the second, I tried to put us back together. I thought if I reached out, if we could just connect again—“ He shook his head.

 

Doc tried to add up what he knew in his head. He frowned. “When was this?”

 

“After Ethiopia.”

 

Doc thunked his head back against the cold metal. So, when they’d first ran to Faisal, when they were presumed dead, killed by their own government, Adam had found comfort in Faisal’s arms. And then left again. After Ethiopia, and after the White House, Adam had started his slow slide, his descent into gruff silence and barroom brawls, and a prickly hardness that had the whole team on edge. “And now?”

 

“This is the third time he has turned away from us. I thought, after the hospital, that things would be different. He seemed different. But it is all just the same.”

 

“He was fucking crazy at the hospital. I mean, just fucking desperate to get to you. I thought he was going to get himself killed. He wasn’t faking that.”

 

Faisal glared at him when he cursed, flat stares that broadcast his displeasure. He sighed. “Three times is significant in Islam. It is a number of Allah, a number special to Him. We do things that carry great meaning in threes. Al-wudu, the ablutions before prayers, done three times. In Salat, prayers are repeated three times. And—“ He inhaled, holding his breath. “Talaq, to divorce someone, must be done three times before it is final.”

 

Shit. Doc’s eyes flicked up the aisle of the plane, as if he could spot Adam in the rows and rows of passengers. “You think he’s trying to divorce you? You’re not married, right? I mean, I thought that couldn’t—“

 

“I think,” Faisal said, interrupting him gently, “that three times is three times too many. This hurt I feel is not right. This is not the way it is supposed to be. Pursuing this again would be wrong.”

 

“Then why did you insist on coming?”

 

Faisal’s expression softened, though his eyes shone with a cutting pain. “How could I not? I still love him, even if he does not feel the same. I will do everything I can to help him, shield him, uplift him. Always.”

 

Halfway up the plane, a man stood, stretched like he was a bad actor in a soap opera, and turned around, leaning against the front of his seat as if he wanted to stand for a while. He stared toward the rear of the plane, his eyes laser-like and seeking a target. He spotted Doc, and Doc stared right back.

 

He watched Adam look away, down at his seat cushion, as his fingers picked at each other, over and over.

 

“He doesn’t deserve that from you.”

 

“We have a long history.” Faisal smiled, almost wistful. “That is how I choose to remember us. What we were. Not this. Not what we have become.” Straightening he cleared his throat and rubbed his hands together. “It is time for prayer.”

 

“You’re going to pray on an airplane?” Doc’s eyebrows shot sky high again as his jaw dropped. “Do you want to get jumped? There are about twelve dudes out there right now who wouldn’t think twice.”

 

“Not my full prayers.” Regret laced through Faisal’s voice. “But the practice grounds me. I find peace in my prayers, when I seek al-nafs al-mutma’innah. My tranquil self. My peaceful self.”

 

“I think Adam could use some of that.”

 

Faisal sighed, a harassed, harried look crossing over his features as he stared at Doc. A moment later, he smoothed his expression back to his practiced neutrality.

 

“Sorry.” Both of Doc’s hands rose, and he shuffled sideways, trying to give Faisal space. “I’ll, uh. I’ll hang out here with you until you’re done. If that’s okay. Make sure no one bothers you.”

 

“More than okay.” Finally, Faisal truly smiled. “I have always hated being alone.”


Timestamp: Secret! Exclusive Excerpt from “Book Three of the Executive Office”.

Chipping At Walls – Sasha finds Sergey after the Langley blast

Bauer’s Bytes is searching for a new day! I’m looking at either Tuesday or Wednesday for the new posting. What do you think?

 

Today’s Bauer’s Bytes comes to us from Amelia. Amelia said, “One moment that struck me in EoME was after Scott, Sasha, and Sergey have rescued Ethan. As Sergey is talking to Jack, Sasha wets a rag with water and starts cleaning Sergey’s face and neck, and Sergey not only allows him to do so, he leans into Sasha! This seems to show an increased level of intimacy in their relationship, whether conscious or unconscious on both their parts. I would love to see any scene post coup with Sergey allowing such intimacy/closeness from Sasha or even craving it…”

 

A great prompt, and one I really enjoyed writing. 🙂  I hope you enjoy it as well!

 


Sasha trudged up the last slope, heading for their bunker at the top of the ridge. Loose black dirt and lingering remnants of trampled, muddy snow squelched beneath his boots. Finally, winter was dissipating in the mountains. It was just freezing, most days.

 

Living in the forest, deep in the Caucasus on the run from General Moroshkin, was not glamorous. It reminded Sasha of being back in training exercises from his Air Force days, when they were dropped in the Russian North with absolutely nothing and told to get back to base. Driving snow, ice storms, pounding rain. Bears and wolves. Sucking mud that was practically frozen coating his boots. The rub of hunger in his belly, an ache that wanted to be filled. And the stench. God, the stench.

 

As bad as those days were, this was worse. Those exercises had an end. He could look forward to sleeping in his bed again, a warm shower, and a hot meal, if he only endured.

 

What would be waiting for them all after this? Would there even be an ‘after’? How did a country put itself back together after two sides of the population tried their hardest to kill each other? History didn’t prophesy well. In the Caucasus, in the very mountains and the forest they were sheltering in, the endless, bloody Chechen wars had raged. There was no future to those wars, no happy ending, no settlement over a handshake and a brandy while people got on with their lives and learned to live in harmony.

 

When Sergey was back in Moscow, back in the Kremlin—he refused to think that anything else was possible other than Sergey’s return to power—how would he deal with Moroshkin? With the nearly half of the military that had joined his coup? Or the others that had simply melted away, vanishing from their oaths and posts into nothing?

 

The questions were too big for Sasha. He wasn’t a politician. He wasn’t in charge of a country, or was the man upon whose shoulders lay decisions that could shape the world, their nation, and millions and millions of lives. He could only do what he could do: fight. Fight, every single day, for Sergey. Give everything he had to Sergey.

 

Breathing hard, Sasha frowned as he reached the flat, empty patch of dirt they used as a parking area outside the bunker. It was empty.

 

“He went out.”

 

Leaning against the cold concrete wall of the bunker, Anton Aliyev casually smoked a cigarette, his cheeks hollowing as he sucked it down, the embers burning bright in the dim shadows. Sasha sighed, his hands on his hips. “Where?”

 

Anton jerked his head to the side. “Down the back track. He did not say much when he left.” Smoke slipped from his lips with every word.

 

Nodding, Sasha headed for the rear of the bunker.

 

He found the jeep, the one he and Sergey shared, halfway down the rear track, just as Anton had said. It was parked in the middle of the dirt path, thick branches scrapping the sides and roof. The track was just large enough to drive through, if the scrapes and scratches of the branches on the windows and the metal frame didn’t shred your eardrums.

 

Why had he just stopped? Was there something in the road? A fallen log, or a boulder dislodged from above, rolling into the track? Why was he just sitting there?

 

Picking his way through the branches, Sasha tugged open the passenger’s door and climbed inside.

 

And froze.

 

Sergey sat in the driver’s seat, hands clenched around the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were white and the wheel was shaking, trembling in his grip. His jaw was tight, his muscles straining, and he sat ramrod straight, like he was struggling to hold himself that way.

 

Half hovering over the passenger seat, Sasha’s jaw dropped. Guilt swept through him, flooding his body with heat. Of course. What had he been thinking? The news of Jack’s condition after the explosion at CIA headquarters had come through that morning.

 

Jack was gone. Sergey’s friend was gone.

 

“Sorry,” Sasha grunted. He backed away, all hands and feet and uncoordinated, stepping on the doorframe instead of opening it before his fingers fumbled with the latch.

 

“Stay?”

 

Freezing again, Sasha glanced at Sergey. Sergey had turned his way, staring at him with eyes that glimmered, red-rimmed and lost. Desperation leaked from his gaze, and something else. Anguish.

 

Sasha’s heart lurched. He ached to go to Sergey, offer himself up to ease the hurt. Open his arms, and welcome Sergey into his hold. Kiss away the tears that threatened to fall, rub his hands down his back when he cried, stroke his shaking muscles. Sooth his pain, his grief. Remind him that he was not alone, no, he was never alone.

 

He sat. Shut the door. Exhaled. “I am sorry,” he breathed. “Jack…” What could he say? He hadn’t known Jack like Sergey had. The connection Sergey and Jack had was strong enough to shake the world. They’d leaned into each other and built an alliance, a friendship, even. Made jokes in the press about the scandal of their closeness. Sergey had even risked the disgust of his nation to dance with Jack at his State Dinner. Friendships like that didn’t happen between world leaders, not anymore.

 

A sniffle, and then a shaky breath. Sergey gripped the steering wheel again, kneading the worn leather, and groaned, his teeth clenched. He sniffed again, exhaled hard. Tried to level out his breathing. Every breath quivered.

 

“Sergey…” Sasha laid his hand on Sergey’s trembling shoulder. What could he say? What could he do? His tongue sat heavy in his mouth, weighted down with uselessness.

 

And then Sergey cracked, fracturing down the center of his being. Curling forward, the first sob came, physically wrenched from his chest. And then another, an anguished moan. Tears followed, flowing down his cheeks as he shook, as he screamed through clenched teeth and shook the steering wheel like it was the cause of his agony.

 

Utter helplessness speared Sasha. Sergey’s pain was devastating, the grief of losing his friend and his country seeming to come out in one gut-tearing sob. It was awful, seeing a man come apart, consumed by soul-wracking pain.

 

Another night came back to Sasha, from months ago. Another night of grief and mourning, and a soul-shattering emptiness that had made him want to claw his own bones out. Escape his very skeleton. Be anyone, anywhere, other than who he was. Not have to face what had come of his life.

 

Sergey had held him through it. They were strangers then; he only knew of Sergey through the headlines and video clips he saw. Sergey knew of him only through his military record and Dr. Voronov’s retelling of his incident. But Sergey had cared for him, man to man, giving comfort freely when he saw Sasha’s aching emptiness.

 

His hand snaked up, rising from Sergey’s shoulder to grip the back of his neck. Tugging, he turned Sergey toward him, gently pulling and prodding until Sergey faced him on the bench seat.

 

Tears cascaded down Sergey’s cheeks, falling from his jaw like tiny diamonds. They splattered the leather between them, little splashes that Sasha swore he heard.

 

Sergey wouldn’t look at him. He kept his gaze downcast, his eyes closed.

 

Sasha wrapped both hands behind Sergey’s neck. “Look at me,” he whispered.

 

Sergey sniffed. He didn’t look up.

 

“Sergey. Look at me.”

 

Slowly, Sergey’s eyes opened, and from beneath his lashes, Sergey’s eyes met Sasha’s.

 

Pain. So much terrible pain. Anguish that stole Sasha’s breath away. Loneliness. Fear. Doubt.

 

He moved his hands, cupping Sergey’s wet cheeks, and held his face in a gentle hold. As if he was going to kiss Sergey. “I am here with you,” he breathed. “Always.” You’re not alone. You’re never alone.

 

Another sob wrenched free from Sergey, and he pitched forward, burying his face in Sasha’s chest. His tears fell into the scratchy wool of Sasha’s sweater, enough to soak through and dampen Sasha’s skin.

 

Tentatively, he wrapped his arms around Sergey, around his bony shoulders and his thin back. A part of him rejoiced—he was holding Sergey, cradling him close. Could feel the warmth of his skin, his breath. It was almost like his dreams.

 

Except not, because Sergey was sobbing, heartbroken, and lost, and devastation was the only thing they had to look forward to.

 

He shouldn’t be happy about having Sergey in his arms, not when the price was this many tears. This kind of hurt.

 

Sergey’s blond hair was mused and dirty—they were all dirty—but Sasha laid his cheek on top of Sergey’s head. His hands stroked over Sergey’s trembling back, mapping out his thin muscles. Counted the bones of his ribs, the knobs of his spine. Slowly, Sergey’s sobs subsided, quieting, until he was just sniffling against Sasha’s collarbone, one hand fisted in the loose fabric of Sasha’s jacket.

 

“M’sorry,” Sergey mumbled. His hot breath ghosted over Sasha’s skin.

 

Goosebumps erupted down Sasha’s arms, his legs, behind his knees. He fought not to shiver. Instead, he squeezed Sergey, wrapped his arms tighter around him. Drew him closer. “No sorrys. None of that. You cared for me once. I will do the same for you.”

 

Exhaling, Sergey lifted and dropped his fist against Sasha’s chest, once.

 

A moment later, Sergey tried to pull away. “We should—”

 

Sasha held tight, not letting him go. His arms encircled Sergey, keeping him pressed against his chest. “Not yet. Sergey, not yet.” He held his breath and closed his eyes. Had he just given himself away? Was he taking advantage? Where did him wanting to comfort Sergey end and his shameful desire begin?

 

He just didn’t want to let go yet. Not when Sergey’s back still trembled, and his eyes were still drenched and hollow. Looking down, he brushed one thumb over Sergey’s cheek, wiping away a tear that had slipped free from Sergey’s soaked eyelashes.

 

Their gazes met.

 

He fought for something to say, his lips fumbling through half-broken words as he tried to explain away what he knew was in his eyes. Never, ever, he hissed in his mind. You swore! Nothing can ever happen. Never ever!

 

Sergey’s eyes closed. His forehead rested against Sasha’s chin, and his body went boneless as he slumped into Sasha’s hold. “Maybe this is just a dream,” Sergey murmured. “Some terrible nightmare. Maybe I can wake up from this.”

 

Sasha’s terrible delight, and Sergey’s dark pain, all in one moment. A moment Sergey wished he could be rid of, wake from. Sasha’s lips twisted as he fought against himself, trying to hold back his own sudden grief. “Maybe,” he grunted. “You can try. Sleep, Sergey. Try to wake from this.” He kept his arms around Sergey, hoping his message was clear. Sergey could sleep in his arms, in his hold.

 

Sergey didn’t move. Didn’t say a word.

 

Finally, Sergey’s breathing leveled out. His jaw went slack and his head turned into a heavy, limp weight on Sasha’s shoulder. Since the coup, Sasha hadn’t seen him sleep more than a few hours at a time. Dark circles had grown beneath his eyes, paunchy bags that started growing their own bags.

 

This was his chance. Sergey was asleep in his arms, resting finally in his care. He could press his lips to Sergey’s skin, drop a kiss to his hair. Whisper everything he wanted to confess to Sergey’s palm before placing a kiss in the center. He could say, finally, what had grown in his heart. Paint his love all over Sergey’s skin with confessions and declarations, promises he’d swear to the stars.

 

No. He could not.

 

Leaning back, Sasha tried to get comfortable. The doorframe dug into his back, the handle gouged his spine, and the glass was cold enough to chill his blood. He didn’t move though. Didn’t readjust. Didn’t do anything that could wake Sergey.

 

As the hours crept on, Sasha stayed awake, stroking Sergey’s back as he held him close, sheltering him in his sleep. This was his terrible dream now: being, for a moment, the man who could love Sergey and could care for him. Be someone that could love him when his heart was broken.

 

When Sergey woke, his dream would end.

 

But, this moment, the closeness they shared. The comfort given and received. The warmth of skin on skin, and his promise to Sergey: I am here with you. For you.

 

The memory of that, at least, would remain.


Timestamp: Sasha and Sergey in the forest south of Sochi, in the Caucasus, post-coup and after reports of Jack’s “death” have hit the media.

In A Moment, Shame – Jack’s POV of Sochi

 

Happy New Year! Bauer’s Bytes is back!

After the holiday hiatus, and a break for the 12 Days of Gifting event on Facebook, I’m back with a brand new Bauer’s Bytes. This is a very special Byte, and one that has been requested more than a few times.

What was Jack thinking in Sochi? What went through his head? How did he “just forget Ethan like that?” If I had a penny for every time I heard these questions… 🙂

Today, Jack shares his thoughts. This story reveals what was going through Jack’s head during the Big Reveal at Sochi. As such, this story contains MAJOR SPOILERS for a critical plot point for Enemy of My Enemy, Book 2 in the Executive Office Series.

If you have not read Enemy of My Enemy yet, in its entirety, please do not read further.

Enjoy! And Happy New Year!


 

It can’t be.

No. It’s impossible.

But, right there, struggling against too many hands grabbing at her, holding her down, was Leslie.

His wife. His dead wife.

No. Not dead.

Alive.

He took off, running full speed across the cracked asphalt, heading for her. Overhead, the Osprey was coming in, lowering itself down as her two giant arms rotated up, turning the plane into a heavy helicopter. Road grit blew hard, peppering his cheeks and chin and eyes with sharp slices that he should have felt. The roar of the rotors, also, should have quaked his bones, sent shockwaves through his eardrums.

Instead, it was like he was underwater, plunged beneath the sea, everything distorted and out of focus. Hazy black shapes, the agents beside Leslie, moving too fast and too slow all at once. Blocking his path, no matter where they were.

Cotton-stuffed ears, the drone of a trans-Atlantic flight, and the dullness right before falling to sleep. Nothing came through; he couldn’t hear, beyond the molasses-slow haze that had descended over him. Had the world fallen to pieces? Was this the calm before the blast? In a moment, would it all be gone?

No.

That moment had already happened. The blast had already hit.

It had slammed square into his chest, into his heart, with Scott’s flick of his wrist, the removal of the hostage’s hood.

“Jack! Wait!”

Ethan. Ethan, Ethan. Where did Ethan fit into this suddenly-new world, a place where Leslie was alive? His brain wouldn’t process Ethan’s words, or Ethan’s voice, instead translating the sound into ravaging slashes against his heart, and bullet wounds digging into the muscles between his shoulder blades.

A few more steps, running through the thickened soup that seemed to separate him from her. As if the properties of the world had changed, in an instant, and what once was air, matter made light with buoyancy, was suddenly a viscous fluid, fighting against him with every step he took.

Had the world stopped spinning? Had the earth stopped moving beneath his feet? Without the planet’s spin, could he even take another step?

He slid the last foot, dropping to his knees on the loose asphalt. His pants tore, and grit dug into his skin, burning and stabbing all at once. Leslie kicked, screaming, and her arms flailed, a wild thing desperate for freedom. Fighting for her life, fighting against strange men who tried to hold her down. God, how many strangers had tried to hold her back, hold her down? What had turned his wife, the strongest woman he’d ever known, an Amazon warrior goddess, his own Wonder Woman, into this shrieking, flailing thing?

Sixteen years. How much freedom had she lost? How could the months, the day, the hours be quantified into moments? Into a life lost?

How many times had she struggled?

“Les! Les!” No more. She wouldn’t struggle again. Never again. He’d keep her safe, like he had sworn to do. Like he should have been doing, for sixteen years. “Les, it’s me. It’s Jack.”

She froze, as if she’d dropped dead. Had her heart gave out? He wouldn’t blame her. His was about to burst, tear itself to pieces, rend itself to shreds, bleed out inside of his chest. How did the heart handle the reappearance of someone they’d long given up as dead, as gone?

He got his first look at her, and wanted to vomit. Gone was his vibrant wife. Thick, dark hair, so long he could wrap her ponytail around his hand and make his palm and fingers disappear. He’d brushed her hair every night she was home, until the dark lengths had shone and she’d lean back against him, smiling that warm, honey-smile. A round face, her cheekbones made for hearts to fall from, and lips that could smile and tease and bark orders that made men’s spines stiffen from one moment to the next. Her strength, with muscles that seemed more impressive than his, so powerful on her frame, set against his softer lawyer’s body. She had been ferocity and suppleness, power and love, all wrapped in one body. She’d been his Venus, his Aphrodite. How could one body hold everything that she was, he’d often wondered. How did her bones and muscles contain all that she was?

They no longer did. Lank hair, stringy with oil and tangled with mud and dried blood, hung limp around her skeletally thin face. Sunken hollows lived beneath her cheekbones, and canyons had formed beneath her eyes. Years of scabbed and swollen lips had turned her mouth into a bruise, flaking with dried blood and peeling skin.

What had happened to her?

What had he abandoned her to?

“Jack,” she breathed. Her eyes, her beautiful eyes, that used to convey so much to him with just a single glance, darted over his face. That telepathy that couples had, were they could read each other in a moment, a single flick of the eyes, a breathless sound. He’d built that connection with Ethan; he couldn’t read her anymore. “Jack? How— What—“

“Mr. President.” Scott tugged on his arm. “We have to move, now!”

No. No, he couldn’t move past this moment. Things were going to happen when he stood again, and he couldn’t face those things. Not yet. Dammit, his heart already knew, though. Anguish crawled up his throat, clenching it shut. Fingers of grief, of rage, of agony clawed at his neck, and tears swam before of his eyes, obscuring her terrible face. Not yet. Not yet. He didn’t want to face this new world yet. He shook Scott off.

“How are you alive?” he whispered. “I thought you were dead.”

President?” she gasped, ignoring him. “Jack?”

“Mr. President!” Scott snapped at him, and tugged on his arm, not kindly. “We have to go! Now!”

The Osprey circled and then started its descent, only yards away. Bullets spattered against her massive metal frame, and in response, the doorgunner sent a never-ending volley back toward the shooters, bracing on a ridge overlooking the street. The hum of the bullets droned in Jack’s ears, like a mosquito buzzing too close, above the heavy whomp of the rotors, spinning too slowly in his mind. Like some terrible drum beat, the musical accompaniment to a the heart-rending scene of the movie. The sounds filled him, slithered through his veins all the way to his heart, where the thrumming tried to split apart the muscles and fibers, tried to dislodge the blood and spill it down his insides.  

“Go, now, now!” Scott, shouting for the crew to cover Jack. Preparing for his evac. Always a helicopter, always pulling him away.

It was all so unreal, so suddenly. This wasn’t right. This was a dream. A terrible dream. He’d wake up in a moment and grab Ethan and hold him tight. Ethan would wash his nightmare away with his hands, and then with his lips, and everything would be back to the way it was supposed to be. Not this. Not this terrible thing.

“Jack—“

Ethan, again. Leaning in. Brushing against Jack, his warm weight pressed against his side. Jack’s knees ground into the asphalt, twisting in his own blood, and streaks of pain shot up through his thighs, grounding him.

Not a dream. Not a nightmare. He couldn’t wake, not from this.

Ethan’s hands reached for Leslie.

“I’ve got her!” he snapped, almost manic. “I’ve fucking got her!” Ethan couldn’t touch Leslie. They shouldn’t be together, shouldn’t even be near. Could the universe survive the meeting of the two, or would some cosmic hole open up, a rend in the universe that would swallow Jack whole? The mobius strip of his life would come undone, torn down the center of his soul.

Ethan stared at him, his jaw hanging open.

Don’t look. God, don’t look.

He gathered her close, her painfully light frame nearly weightless in his arms. Scott came alongside him, wrapping one hand around Jack’s waist, and hauled him to the Osprey. As they ran, her hands clenched around his arms, her thin fingers digging into the soaked fabric of his torn shirt. Her face turned into his chest, burying in the valley between his pecs.

His stomach twisted, and then twisted gain. That spot wasn’t hers. It wasn’t her place any longer. His body had been given to Ethan, had become a temple for Ethan’s worship, and it was Ethan’s place to nuzzle at the side of his pec, press his lips to Jack’s skin and breath out, making Jack shiver. It wasn’t right, having another in the places that were Ethan’s.

But before his body was Ethan’s, it had been Leslie’s.

The Osprey saved his sanity, and his heart, from going any further. He set her on the flight deck, passing her to the hands of the flight medic. Her eyes went wide – another pair of unknown hands grabbing at her body – and she reached back for him, terror blazing through her.

This close, the roar of the rotors was too loud for any words to be spoken. He did what he could. Brushed her hair, flapping in the wash of the Osprey, off her face and behind her ears. Smiled at her. Squeezed her hands, like he did on their wedding day, a promise in every inch of his skin.

He had to turn away from her, but he didn’t want to. He had to face what was behind him, but he wasn’t strong enough for that.

She squeezed his hands back, and smiled.

His heart cracked, a dark fault line splitting him in two.

He turned, and strode back to where Sergey and Sasha were kneeling on the asphalt, still holding a defensive line that had crumbled away, the agents disappearing into the Osprey one by one. All save Daniels, still standing sentinel at Ethan’s side.

Don’t look. God, don’t look at Ethan.

He dropped in front of Sergey. “We’re headed for Turkey. We can take you, too. Give you political asylum.” Police sirens wailed, mixing with the rata-tat-tat of bullets and explosions blooming into the night, only blocks away. Screeching tires, shouts in Russian and English. The sounds of the world ending.

“No.” Sergey shook his head. “No, Jack. I have to stay. I have to fight for Russia. I have to help my people.”

No, not Sergey too. He couldn’t lose everything in so few minutes. It couldn’t be possible. “Sergey, that’s suicide—“

“Yes, Jack. Maybe. But I will die the right way.” Sergey grabbed him, holding his shoulders, and for a moment, Jack thought he’d shatter beneath his friend’s’ grasp. Break into a billion pieces, and collapse to the Russian street. Blow away in the wind. Part of him yearned for the release. “Go. Get out of here. Save yourself.” Sergey kept speaking, even as Jack swayed beneath his hands. “Sasha, you should go. You should—“

“No.” Sasha scowled at Sergey. “I will say with you.”

Vomit choked his throat. Sasha’s steadfast love, his eternal devotion to Sergey, even in the midst of the world falling apart around them. I had that love, he thought, wailing from the corners of his soul. I had that love. Beside him, Ethan’s presence was like a black hole, pulling at every atom of his being. I had that love, he whimpered again, as the remains of his heart shivered and shriveled, drawing up like a wounded, anguished thing.

He reached for Sergey, his one friend through everything, the man one half of a friendship that had redefined the world, and remade his own world. Was this goodbye? It was too much, too fast. Too many goodbyes, too many closed doors. Too much change, happening between one breath and the next. He couldn’t keep up. How was everyone else keeping up? How were any of them still standing?

“I will do everything I can for you. Everything.”

Sergey nodded once, and then moved off to the darkness at the side of the road. Sasha, ever faithful, shadowed his movements. Jack watched them disappear into the darkness. Do svidanya.

“Jack.”

Ethan. Ethan’s voice. God, if he turned, Ethan would be right there, ready to hold him, pull him into his arms, and shield him from this upside down world. He ached, God, he ached for that. Yearned. Ethan could make this right. Ethan was his shelter, his rock, his home. He’d carved a life between Ethan’s arms, laid his cornerstone beneath the shield of Ethan’s heart. They could get through this together.

No.

They couldn’t.

How could he reconcile loving Ethan when his wife was suddenly alive? He’d mourned her, sobbed for her, cried himself to sleep for a year, and had used every wish he’d been granted for five straight years on begging for her return. Every fortune cookie, wishbone, and birthday candle, spent on this very wish. That she was truly alive, hidden somewhere, and would come home. Would come back to him.

He’d lost faith after the years had passed. Accepted what was written fact, etched on a piece of parchment and a marble headstone in Arlington. His wife was dead.

He’d never asked for Ethan’s love, never sought it out. Never went seeking for a new life, and a love that had remade everything about himself. His soul, purified with Ethan’s love. His body, remade down to his veins with Ethan’s kisses, the caress of his hands, the stroke of their bodies together. He was a man reborn, like a phoenix rising from the ashes of his former life, his soul more radiant than he’d ever been before.

God, he loved Ethan. Loved him in a gut-punch purity, a fire that circled his heart. Loved him to his marrow, and beyond.

But how could it go on? How could they go forward with this?

He’d vowed to love Leslie until death did they part. She wasn’t dead. He’d made that mistake already. How many years had she been tortured? How many times? How many nights had she cried out for him? Whispered his name in the darkness, like he had hers? How much hope had she spent, and had she ever given up on him? Like he’d given up on her? How could he ever make this right?

Penance. Eternal, everlasting penance. He had to make up for the years, the months, the days, hours, and minutes that he wasn’t there for her. How could he ever be happy again, knowing what he’d left her to? Knowing what he’d given up on?

She, half-dead, forgotten, anguished and alone, and him, in love, glorious, soul on fire love, and happy.

There was no way for those two realities to coexist. No way for him to keep Ethan, keep his love, and serve at her feet, whispering apology after apology to the ground she tread on.

He could never be happy again.

Don’t look.

Don’t look at Ethan. Never again.

You don’t deserve happiness. You don’t deserve him. You, vile creature that found love and laughter while Leslie was tortured.

Don’t you dare look at Ethan.

He was weak, oh so weak, and he’d fall into Ethan’s arms if he looked into the burnished bronze pools of his eyes. If he felt the warmth of his skin, the gentleness of his hold. He’d fall, as hard as he’d fallen in love, but that path wasn’t open to him any longer.

The world had stopped spinning. His world had stopped, and it would never start again. Ethan would have to spin on without him.

And his own heart, whatever was left of it after the cold concrete of Sochi, would spin on, tangled with Ethan’s memory for the rest of his days.

He jogged back to the Osprey, his eyes picking out Leslie’s emaciated face in the hold. She was biting her lip, desperately searching for him through the mass of Secret Service agents and military uniforms. Her shoulders were drawn, tense in a way that he hadn’t ever seen before. Like a caged animal, wounded prey searching for safety. That wasn’t his wife. God, what had happened to her? What had turned her into this? What had he abandoned her to?

He hauled himself up into the hold, ignoring the agents and soldiers all trying to help him. His hands, bloody, slipped on the metal grips, and he stumbled, then crawled toward Leslie. Pain flared in the ground meat of the skin over his knees, squelching blood with every forward crawl. She kept her eyes fixed to him, hope and terror mixing in equal parts. He could never make her whole again, bring back the vibrant woman that she once had been.

Instead, he had to make do with his failure, his complete failure as a man, and as a husband. He would scrape together the pieces that remained, help her reassemble the fragile shards of her life, build her back up into a beautiful mosaic. He’d give her everything, everything that he’d taken for himself, while she’d been hidden away from the world, beaten and brutalized. He would lay the world at her feet, completely devoted to healing her soul.

Tears flowed over his eyes as he crawled to her, reached out with both of his arms. A strangled sob caught in her throat as he poured herself into his arms, curling against his chest and burrowing her face in the hollow beneath his neck.

He shivered, his skin not used to a body that wasn’t Ethan’s. Ethan’s, that space on his body was Ethan’s. He was meant to hold Ethan in this way. Was meant to be held by Ethan in this way.

Behind him, Scott’s gruff murmur slipped through the shouts of the crewmen, the rotors, the bullets, and the Osprey’s creaking frame lifting off from Russian soil.

“Are you with me?” Scott grunted. “You with us?”

Ethan.

Don’t look. Don’t ever look. You don’t deserve to look.

He squeezed his eyes shut, but tears flowed from the corners, cascading down his cheeks in dirty waterfalls. Leslie clung to him, but in his mind, he held Ethan, and spoke to him as he whispered into her hair. “I’m so sorry. I’m so God damn sorry. How could this happen? How?”

There were no answers for him. There was nothing but the grasp of her frail fingers against his arms, and the sounds of Ethan chambering a round in his rifle and taking up position against the hold’s open door.

His wife was alive, and his love, his life with Ethan, was at an end. It could not be his any longer. There was no more happiness for him, not in this world of his broken assumptions, failed promises, and a guilt that swallowed his soul. He tasted ash and fire on his tongue, the ruins of his life; no the ruins of three lives. Three lives destroyed, because of him.

He was nothing. Less than nothing. Worthless. Beyond worthless.

As light as love had made him, guilt, followed by the ravaging snarls of shame, suffocating, clenching shame, dragged him down deep within himself, until all that he was lived in the dry and dusty canyons of his once-full heart.  


Timestamp: Jack, in Sochi, after the reveal of the hostage’s identity as his long-dead wife, Leslie.

The Cut Out Heart – How does Sasha become Sergey’s right hand man?

A HUGE thank you to everyone who submitted prompt ideas and suggestions for more weekly stories! I will absolutely go through them all and write them for you. They were all fantastic! (A few were so fantastic that you touched on future plots and scenes from the novels! Great job!)

 

This week, I listened to the awesomely loud shouts for more Sergey & Sasha. (They are very special to me.) We’ll start off slow with a nice missing scene(s) excerpt. What happened with Sasha and Sergey between when they met in the recovery room and when they came to the US for Jack’s State Dinner? How did Sasha become Sergey’s right hand? How did he fit into the Kremlin, and so effortlessly into Sergey’s life?

 

This is, I believe the first missing scene I’ve written from Enemy of My Enemy. 🙂

 


 

 

Slowly, Sasha placed one foot in front of the other, taking careful steps across the cold tiled floor of his hospital room. One hand rested over the healing stitches above his belly button. The other made a loose fist, just barely trembling at his side. The hem of his baggy hospital scrub pants brushed across the floor, and his white undershirt clung to his sweat-damp skin. Spring sunbeams faded across the square tiles, fingers of cold light that poked at his bare toes.

 

Finally, he reached the far end of his recovery room. Resting one hand against the white wall, he exhaled, and then turned, readying himself to begin his trek again.

 

A figure slouching in the doorway made him jerk back, and he smothered a curse on his lips as fast as it rose. He straightened and squared his shoulders. Dropped his hand from beneath his shirt, pressing over his belly. “Mr. President.”

 

President Puchkov smiled slowly. “How goes the march?” He flicked a finger back and forth across the room, following Sasha’s pacing.

 

“Slow,” Sasha grumbled.

 

“The doctor tells me you have been at this all day. You have likely marched from Moscow to St. Petersburg and back.”

 

Sasha turned his head and glared at the blank wall. He said nothing.

 

“It has only been three days.” Puchkov padded into the room and dropped his bunched-up suit jacket on the end of Sasha’s bed. “Give yourself some time.”

 

Sasha glared at Puchkov as he stepped off the wall, petulantly placing one foot in front of the other as began his trek again. The bruised and swollen skin over one eye pulled with his scowl and started to throb.

 

It was Puchkov’s turn to sigh and say nothing. He shook his head, but a small smile played over his lips. Crossing his arms, he watched Sasha’s careful footfalls until he reached the opposite wall.

 

Sasha leaned back, resting, his hand rising over his stitches once again.

 

“We have made some inquiries,” Puchkov began. He cleared his throat and looked down, pursing his lips. “At Andreapol Air Base.”

 

Tension thrummed through Sasha’s body, stiffening his muscles and hardening his gut. His free hand fisted again, shaking, and his teeth ground against each other as his jaw clenched.

 

“The base commander insists that you have abandoned your post. That your squadmates saw you leave the base and not return.”

 

A bitter curse burst from his lips before he could stop it. “That is not true! I went back! I was there early for my duty! My car is there,” Sasha growled. “It is outside my hangar!”

 

“It is not at the base,” Puchkov gently corrected.

 

Sasha’s head whipped away. He blinked fast as he stared into the corner.

 

“My good friend is head of the FSB. Ilya Ivchenko. Do you know him?”

 

“I recognize the name.”

 

“I asked Ilya to look into this situation as a personal favor to me.”

 

“The FSB—“ Shocked, Sasha’s head spun back around. He stared at his president, his jaw dropping open. If the FSB were involved, there was no telling what way an investigation would go. What if they sided with his old commander? Or with his squadmates who had tried to kill him? What if the FSB believed he had gone rogue? Would he be punished, too, for his choked and sobbing admission to President Puchkov? Damn it, he’d been so weak! But, after that, after falling apart in Puchkov’s arms and not being turned away in disgust, he’d thought Puchkov was a good man, a man he could believe in, perhaps even trust. Would he turn him over to the FSB? Sasha’s stomach ached, fire burning in his belly.

 

“The FSB is very different now than when my predecessor was in power,” Puchkov interrupted. “I trust Ilya with my life, and with things even greater and larger than that. I knew he would get to the truth of this matter, and quickly. There is no one that I have trusted more.”

 

Sasha swallowed. He’d started to tremble sometime, his body shaking uncontrollably, and he couldn’t stop.

 

“Ilya sent his best men to turn this situation upside down.” Puchkov hesitated, and a frail, apologetic smile tugged at the corners of his thin lips. “They found your car dumped in a snowbank seventy kilometers away from the base. It looked as though a drunk driver had crashed it and then stumbled off into the snow.”

 

“That is not what happened!” He tried to take a step forward, toward Puchkov, but his trembles robbed him of his balance and his strength, and he stumbled back, falling against the wall as he cursed again. Sasha’s eyes slid closed, and he breathed hard through his split and swollen lip.

 

“I know, Sasha. I believe you.” Puchkov’s voice, low and almost growling, rumbled across the room. “We both believe you.”

 

Sasha met Puchkov’s gaze. Fractional hope, almost choked to death with his crushing fear, punched him in the gut.

 

Sighing, Puchkov sat at the foot of Sasha’s unmade and rumpled hospital bed. “But I do not know what to do now. The FSB of old would make this problem disappear. They would make the base commander, and all who attacked you, vanish. It would be a lesson to anyone who thinks they can do the same and get away with it. We would make an example out of them. All of them.”

 

Sasha’s breath faltered.

 

“But…” Puchkov shook his head, exhaling hard. “That is not the man that I am. That is not the country I want to live in.” His eyes slipped closed, and then opened and fixed on Sasha. “So it falls to you. Do you wish to press charges? Do we take this to the courts? Let the legal system work this out?” Puchkov shrugged. “Or try to work this out?”

 

His teeth brushed over the scab crusting his lower lip. Two days ago, he’d made the mistake of chewing on his still-healing lip, and blood had gushed from the reopened wound, down his front and into his mouth. Like a switch had flipped, he’d been transported back to the moment at Andreapol, his mind reliving the memories of the hockey sticks and the kicks slamming into him over and over again.

 

The men who had attacked him had been his friends. Men he’d trained with. Had flown with. Had visited in their homes. He’d honestly thought they had been friends. One day, he’d dreamed, he might be able to admit to what he was with them. If he could ever admit it to himself. Say the word out loud to his own reflection in the mirror.

 

How had they found out what he was? How had they discovered his deepest secret?

 

Did he want to see any of them again? Reopen the memories, like gnawing off his scab, and put his trust in the fitful Russian criminal justice system? What were the odds that one of his former squadmates—or the base commander, even—had connections with the Bratva, the mafia known as the Brotherhood? Could they pay off the investigators, or the judges? Would the entire thing be twisted and contorted until it was him rotting in a jail cell, or taken out into the wilderness again and left to die?

 

He’d seen it happen before.

 

President Puchkov kept silent, watching him think.

 

When would Puchkov’s support run out? When would Sasha be on his own again? He had to plan for that. As considerate and compassionate as Puchkov had been, that all had to have an end date. How could he pick up the pieces? How could he go forward with his life, in the wake of its total destruction? What was the right choice?

 

“No charges,” he mumbled, shaking his head. “No. Not that.”

 

“Sasha—“

 

“I do not want to,” he snapped, cutting Puchkov off. “I just want to live. Quietly. I do not want to be a martyr, or a figurehead, or a puppet. Or a cause. I won’t look over my shoulder every day.”

 

Silence.

 

Finally, Puchkov nodded. “I understand,” he sighed, and then gave a tiny quirk of a smile. “I am doing quite a bit of over the shoulder looking myself these days.”

 

Sasha frowned. He took a breath, held it, and then took another. His shudders were ebbing, finally slowing, and he pushed himself off the wall, taking careful steps until he stood in front of Puchkov, almost swaying. “The media says there have been threats against your life.”

 

Puchkov tried to grin up at him. “Quite a few, in fact.” He shrugged. “I expected as much. I am surprised I am still alive even now, to be truthful. To have lived to accomplish this, this purge of corruption. And, to still be alive three days later.” He grinned again, but it was tinged with weariness.

 

“You cannot die.” Sasha’s words were more grunted than spoken, soft and low.

 

“I am doing my best,” Puchkov said softly. His smile grew warmer, and then he slapped his knee and rose. He held out one arm, as he were offering it for Sasha to loop his own through. “Now, is this marching of yours strong enough to accompany me to dinner, one floor above, or should I have something brought here for us?”

 

Sasha gaped, blinking, as Puchkov took Sasha’s hand and looped it through his arm.

 

* * *

 

The bruises had faded and the scabs had fallen off, and his stitches didn’t sting anymore. The ache was mostly gone in his belly, and he could manage through most of the day before becoming exhausted. He still needed an IV every night of fluids and antibiotics, and he was still living out of the sterile recovery room. Each night, Dr. Voronov asked him about his day while he slid the IV needle into his arm, and Sasha regaled him with his very boring stories of pacing the halls of the Kremlin, and, once, trying to jog in the inner courtyard.

 

And, every night, President Puchkov came to his room to visit. He sat with Sasha through the IV, and then stayed after, bringing dinner or asking Sasha up to his presidential apartments to dine informally with him. Upstairs, they ate at Puchkov’s long state dining table, amid stacks of reports and binders stuffed overfull of papers and briefings, and maps unfurled and held down at the corners with small marble statues and crystal candleholders. It was nothing like what he expected the president—the office, the institution, and the legacy—to be. But it was exactly what Puchkov was like, as he was slowly coming to understand.

 

He’d started to look forward to the visits. Danger, his mind shouted. The president is not your friend. You have no friends. No anymore.

 

But he still welcomed Puchkov with a smile, and laughed at his dry sarcasm, and hung on his every word when Puchkov spoke about the changes rocking their country. Russian oligarchs that hadn’t been swept up in the corruption purge were holding court in Europe, wailing about Puchkov and his government from Paris to London. Workers who found themselves unemployed overnight and their workplaces seized by the government had hit the street, protesting everything, it seemed. The closure of their workplace. The corruption. Their money running out, and a creeping sense of terror and dread that their pain was only the beginning. Food rationing had already begun in St Petersburg. Riots had erupted in Volgograd.

 

“I am heading to the US in ten days,” Puchkov said one night, stretching out his long limbs and crossing his arms behind his head as he sat in the single bedside chair, the recovery room’s only furnishing. They were eating take out Chinese and sharing cartons back and forth. Puchkov had finished, and given the rest to Sasha to polish off.

 

Sasha hesitated, his chopsticks holding a piece of crispy beef over the paper carton.  

 

“A state visit. Jack’s first state dinner, in fact. And then we will announce the American investment plan. It is…” Puchkov sighed, and his hands scrubbed over his face. “My advisors are complaining. But this is what the people need. It will get them back on their feet and working again faster than anything else. We need to make sure our people are taken care of.”

 

“Traveling right now. That is too big a risk, no?” Sasha dropped his chopsticks into the carton and set it aside. The IV line tugged, but he ignored it.  

 

Puchkov hadn’t left the Kremlin once since the corruption purge. He was kept insulated, and his security services were scrambling to keep on top of every threat. Even their Chinese food—ostensibly ordered for a low-level businessman not even in the Kremlin—had been tested for poison before they could eat.

 

“Now you sound like Ilya.” Puchkov smiled ruefully. “But it has to happen. For now, I will put my trust in the people closest to me.”

 

Sasha stayed silent.

 

“You are one of those people, you know.” Leaning forward, Puchkov held Sasha’s gaze. His eyes twinkled.

 

Sasha scoffed. He jerked his chin toward their takeout carton and waved one hand around the recovery room. “I am one of those people so close to you because you cannot get rid of me. I am stuck here. I have nowhere to go.” His lips clamped shut after he spoke. Reminding Puchkov of his uselessness would only get him kicked out faster. And, if he was honest with himself… Sasha was just beginning to allow himself to enjoy being around there. Being around President Puchkov.

 

Puchkov frowned. “Would you choose to stay?”

 

Sasha glared at the IV in his arm, and then at the thin hospital sheet bunched beneath his knees. He couldn’t look at Puchkov.

 

“What if,” Puchkov finally asked, his voice soft. “There was a position here for you?”

 

He frowned, and his heart hammered out a pounding beat in his chest, a heavy rhythm that ached. What would Puchkov want him for? A symbol? As a project? A cause? Exactly what he never wanted to be?

 

“Ilya is stretched too thin. He’s running ragged with his people stretched across the country and around the world. He needs help.”

 

Sasha’s jaw dropped. “Ilya Ivchenko? The head of the FSB?”

 

“My very good friend Ilya.” Puchkov leaned forward, braced his elbows on his knees, and rubbed his hands together. “I have told him I want to appoint a presidential aide dedicated to him and me. Another person to help us try and make sense of the world. If that is even possible.”

 

“What purpose could I have in all of this?” If Puchkov was going where Sasha thought he was, Puchkov was a crazy man. He couldn’t possibly want Sasha for that. Puchkov and Ilya had been comrades for their entire life. Sasha had known him for a week. It would be an honor to serve at that level, to support Puchkov in the best way he could, but the thought was an impossible one.

 

“I think you would be a great man for that position,” Puchkov said softly. “And I would like you to stay. To choose to stay,” he corrected. “Everything I know about you—from your records, from spending time with you, from…” Puchkov swallowed, and he vaguely waved his hand through the air, as if he was referencing things he couldn’t say. “Everything I have learned about you makes me confident that you are the right person for this.” He smiled again, almost sweetly, and then ruined it with a wicked wink. “I know this,” he said, throwing his arms wide. “Because I am FSB, too. Reading people, and knowing them, is what I do.”

 

Sasha smiled back, though it was thin, and his lips pressed together hard.

 

“So.” Puchkov leaned forward again. “Will you stay? Will you accept?”

 

From Andreapol to the Kremlin. From the bloody fists of his former friends to the enigma that was President Puchkov. And Puchkov’s compassion. His care. The seemingly all-encompassing way he’d thrown himself into a friendship with Sasha. At first, Sasha had thought it was all due to some vague sense of duty. After all, President Puchkov had made supporting gay rights a pillar of his office, especially after the American president and he had become such firm allies. But…

 

For all of Puchkov’s friendly overtures and his gregariousness, some part of Sasha had still thought it was all an act. That Puchkov, somewhere inside, was like all powerful men who believed people were there to be used. He hadn’t quite figured out how he was useful to Puchkov, unless it was as some kind of budding charity chase. Or a publicity campaign. He’d been shielding himself for both possibilities.

 

But Puchkov had listened when he said he didn’t want to press charges against his attackers, and he’d accepted Sasha’s request for privacy. There was nothing about him or his attack in the papers, even though it could have bolstered Puchkov’s campaign for equal rights, and his new center for LGBT protections in Moscow.

 

But Puchkov spoke like he wanted Sasha for something more than just a political play. Or as a pawn to be moved around and then exchanged for a better move down the line. Unbelievably, Puchkov seemed to actually want him.

 

And Puchkov knew almost everything there was to know about him. Even his proclivities. Puchkov had held him when he’d fallen apart, when everything he’d tried to shore up within him had tumbled down spectacularly, and his soul had been rubbed raw against the edges of his complete and utter shame. So much loss, and so much agony, on the loneliest night of his life, sitting in an empty, bleak hospital room. And Puchkov had held him—a complete stranger—through it.

 

He’d be an absolute fool not to accept this offer.

 

But where would it lead? Where would this new path in life take him? Dangerous terrain lay ahead. He could practically hear the warning klaxons. Already, he was looking forward too much to Puchkov’s presence. Already, he was enjoying their stolen time together a bit too much. The first man to truly know him, know his shame and everything else, and he’d accepted Sasha. Unconditionally accepted Sasha and all of his mismatched parts and pieces of his life and his soul. It was unprecedented, completely so. Puchkov showed him kindness, showed him compassion, and Sasha turned to that like a tree growing out of the Siberian ice and greening into the sunlight. He wanted to stay. But would it be wise?

 

Everything he’d worked for had been ripped away from him, though. And this was more than a dream come true. It was a chance to start anew. Build a new life, a good life, where he could be useful. Still serve, and serve someone he looked up to with no small amount of hero worship.

 

So he’d grab on with both hands and make it work. No matter what. No matter if he had to cut out his own heart one day. He would do it. He would offer it up on a platter for Puchkov. For this man, his president, he would do anything. Whatever Puchkov asked. And whatever he needed. He could feel the conviction settling into him like a vow, deep into his bones and into his blood.

 

“On one condition,” he said, his voice low.

 

Puchkov’s eyebrows arched high.

 

“I will go with you to the US,” Sasha began.

 

Puchkov’s mouth opened, a protest forming as he scowled.

 

“And I will never leave your side,” Sasha finished quickly. “I will stay with you for your protection.”

 

Slowly, Puchkov’s protest turned into a soft smile. “A condition of my own.” He held out one hand. “You will call me Sergey now, as all my friends do.”

 

* * *

Three weeks passed in a blur.

 

Sergey arranged for a private apartment in the Kremlin for him, not in the palace itself, but on the grounds and within the red walls. They were, for want of a better word, neighbors.

 

He met with Ilya—fast talking, hawk-eyed Ilya, a cigarette seemingly perpetually dangling from his lips, bouncing up and down as he moved from topic to topic in rapid fire sequence. He sat in on the briefings Ilya gave Sergey—a riotous cloud of smoke and arguments. He started reading through the mountains of intelligence that Ilya and the FSB managed, the seemingly never-ending stream of analysis and collections. So much of it was focused internally on the reactions to the anti-corruption sweep. Watching and worrying over civil unrest. The rise of hardcore nationalists within Russia, and their belief that President Puchkov was poisoning Russia from within. That Sergey was a pawn of the Americans. That he, himself, was a degenerate homosexual and trying to destroy Russia with the vileness of the West.

 

He and Sergey still ate dinner together, and Ilya often joined them. Ilya invited himself to Sergey’s liquor cabinet afterward. That became a routine for them: Sergey, Ilya, and Sasha sharing drinks and slowly moving from discussing matters of state and the sometimes-blistering intelligence reports to more personal matters.

 

Sasha learned Ilya was divorced once and Sergey twice. Ilya was an outrageous flirt, and was currently working on a voluptuous bartender at one of Moscow’s premier lounges, but had never made a move on her, something Sergey teased him about endlessly. Sergey and Ilya wheedled stories about flying out of him. The first time he’d gone supersonic, and how he’d been convinced his jet was broken. The first time he’d seen the blackness of space and the curvature of the earth. He’d known, that day, that he wanted to go higher. To fly above the earth and among the stars.

 

He admitted his favorite hockey team was the Ugra Mammoths, and that he—embarrassingly—didn’t like basketball at all. Sergey liked the plucky, Far Eastern Amur Khabarovsk hockey team, preferred whiskey over vodka, books over films, and wanted to get away the Russian Far East once things had calmed down. Ilya wanted to go to Copacabana.

 

One day, a golden bust of Aleksander Pokryshkin appeared, casually sitting on the end table next to the sofa where Sasha always sat. It gleamed, shining with fresh polish, and Sasha had stared, jaw agape.

 

“You know this man?” Sergey had gestured to the bust, his eyes glinting.

 

“Of course,” Sasha breathed. “He is three-time hero of Soviet Union. The father of the modern Soviet Air Force. History says he won World War II.” He stared at the figure, at the man’s severe gaze and harsh, metal lines. “I learned about him in flight school. We all did.”

 

Ilya had chuckled around a cigarette, and Sergey had beamed. “It was gathering dust somewhere. Now it has a better home.” Winking, Sergey had nudged Sasha’s knee with his own and asked for another story of his days in flight school, when he was much younger and had been all feet and hands and fumbling more often than not. His call sign had been Likho, Bad Luck, for the string of calamities that had followed him around in training.   

 

The days and nights rolled on, as did the stories. Unbelievably, Sasha realized he was, for the first time in a long while, on the way to being truly happy. Content. Wholly accepted, at very least. And he didn’t even have to pretend to be something he wasn’t. When Sergey looked at him, he saw him. All of his broken parts and pieces.

 

And he, in turn liked spending time with Sergey and Ilya. He liked their jokes, their playful sarcasm, and how they’d bicker until inevitably Sergey would turn to Sasha and beckon him into their fast arguing Russian, egging Sasha into agreeing with his side of whatever they were fussing about. He also sat next to Pokryshkin’s golden bust every time he visited.

 

Finally, Sergey and Sasha went to America for President Spiers’s state visit.

 

Sergey kept his word, and Sasha stayed at his side. They only separated to sleep in different bedrooms, set apart by a small sitting area. Ilya remained in Moscow, and Sasha and he stayed in close contact throughout the trip. Other than Ethan Reichenbach figuring out the way he looked at Sergey had more to do with his timid, tiny heart and less to do with hawkish personal security protections, the trip had gone smoothly.

 

And then, Evgeni Konnikov’s body was dumped in Moscow’s Red Square.

 

When he saw the breaking news alert on his phone, waiting outside the Situation Room in the bowels of the White House, he’d been transported again, back to the cold concrete floor of the locker room at Andreapol. To the sneers and hatred of his squadmates, and his commander hovering above him, fist clenched and spiting in his face. “Disgusting,” he’d growled. And then the beating, the kicks and the hits and the broken bones, over and over again. Until blood was smeared on the ground beneath him, flowing from his nose and his mouth and his torn skin.

 

Why hadn’t they killed him? They’d done all but by dumping him on the side of the highway in the snow, but why hadn’t they finished the job by their own hands? Was he supposed to slowly suffer and see which would kill him first? The ruptured spleen and internal bleeding, or freezing in the snow?

 

Miraculously, he’d survived.

 

But another man like him had not.

 

Sergey appeared sometime later, his face ashen and haggard. “I’m so sorry,” he’d muttered, speaking in low Russian before pulling him away from the White House staff and telling him everything. About the murderer, his connection to Madigan, and the rogue general’s vendetta against President Spiers. And, it seemed, that hatred was shifting, attaching itself on to President Puchkov, and to the things he believed in. Supported. Cared deeply about.

 

Guilt by association was something Sasha was well familiar with.

 

* * *

 

He shoved his heart away in the lead up to Evgeni’s state funeral. He couldn’t think about it. Couldn’t dwell on the horrific murder, or on Sergey’s state honors for Evgeni. Both thoughts took him to two extremes, to places in his mind and his soul that he couldn’t go. So he shoved his heart down, as deep as it could go.

 

Until Sergey spoke to the nation about how great a man and a Russian Evgeni was. Never, ever before had he heard someone publicly call someone like him—a gay man—a great man. A great Russian. Sergey had said it once to him, in between his wrecked sobs as he fell apart, but he’d dismissed it as mindless comforts. Sergey didn’t actually believe that, did he?

 

For Evgeni, he did.

 

Perhaps, Sergey could believe the same for Sasha?

 

No. No. This was wrong. He knew it was wrong, and he’d warned himself against it. No. He wouldn’t let Sergey’s compassion, his kindness, his unconditional acceptance, unmake his heart and soul. Unmake his entire world. He’d sworn to himself that he’d guard against this. The warmth building in his chest, and the way a part of him, a fractional, tiny part of him, desired Sergey were dangerous signs, light towers warning of high terrain and deadly mountains ahead.

 

He tried to shove it all away. The burning hope, the screaming, wailing desperate desire for Sergey to see him as a man, as someone he could be proud of… even, perhaps, maybe, want. Buried it, fast and furious, under the rubble of his own broken heart. There is no future to this. There is no future to this desire. It is hopeless. Utterly, completely hopeless.

 

But his heart still thundered whenever he looked at Sergey, opening like a blooming flower with a silent yearn that scratched at his raw insides.

 

When the bombs went off in Moscow after the funeral, during the procession, he’d grabbed Sergey and thrown himself on top of him, taking on the role of one of Sergey’s security agents. He’d thought, for a moment, that bullets were flying, heading their way, and he’d prepared for their heavy bite and hot sting into his back. It wasn’t his job to take a bullet for Sergey, but he would. He’d do it faster, better than the security agents, because none of them cared for Sergey the way he did.

 

Instead, Sergey had grabbed him in return, holding tight as they sped through the streets and into the Kremlin, and even hours later, when they were all trying to make sense of what had happened. Sergey still stood too close. Hovered. Reached for him, for his arm or his knee, and touched him, as if he was reassuring himself that Sasha was still there at his side.

 

Of course he was there. He would never leave Sergey’s side. Not when he’d fallen so entirely in love with the man. He would rather cut out his heart.


Timestamp: Sasha and Sergey’s developing friendship in Russia after the corruption purge and before the state dinner; also, when Jack comes to Moscow for the funeral.

Readers Press Corps – Interview with Jack & Ethan

 

The Readers Press Corps!

A while back, I asked everyone what questions they wanted to ask Jack and Ethan, if they had the chance to be the White House Press Corps for the day. I got some amazing questions from a bunch of amazing people, and I put them together into an interview that YOU created. Enjoy, from the Readers Press Corps!


Christie: Mr. President, what’s the best kept secret in the White House? Not the Situation Room! Something good! Good food, contraband alcohol, or—wait—something in the attic?!

 

Jack: *laughing* About the attic. Apparently it’s haunted. President Harrison—the shortest serving president, at just one month in the White House before he died of pneumonia—supposedly haunts the attic, rummaging around in there. I haven’t heard that ghost yet, though.

 

Ethan: You’ve heard other White House ghosts?

 

Jack: I didn’t tell you that story?

 

Ethan: No… *frowns*

 

Jack: Whoops. I’ll tell you after.  As far as what’s the best kept secret? Hmm… There’s honestly so many. The private movie theater is pretty cool. Ethan and I watched a few movies there, on the weekends when he was visiting, but I would always squeeze into the same recliner as him, and then he’d complain about not being able to breathe—

 

Ethan: I did not! I just pointed out that they weren’t made for two.

 

Jack: I remember you groaning—

 

Ethan: Whoa, whoa. That was something else entirely.

 

Jack: *laughs* Thomas Jefferson also built a wine cellar beneath the White House, and it’s still there today. Some of the wine he stocked is even still around. The kitchens have their own personal beehive, so the honey is always fresh. Most people don’t know this, but the Press Briefing Room is actually built on top of the old swimming pool, and there’s still a trap door down to the deep end that works. You can climb up into the Briefing Room from the old pool. But the biggest secret, for a while at least, was me and Ethan. That’s got to be up there. What we were doing. What we were hiding.

 

Christie: Ethan, I know you’ve been involved in pranks a time or two for the Secret Service! What was the best prank you’ve pulled, and to whom and what did you guys do?

 

Ethan: We’re from the federal government. We have no sense of humor.

 

Jack: *snorts*

 

Ethan: *grins* But… There might have been a time or two a joke may have been had. So, the biggest one, and it’s not really a prank, but it’s a tradition. Agents are not supposed to end up on TV. We get photographed all the time, but we’re not definitely not supposed to get our ugly mugs on television. If anyone does… well, they owe the rest of the guys a round of beers. Every time we’re overseas, there is always some local camera crew that hangs out by Air Force One. We put agents around the plane on the ground, and the guys on board will sometimes razz them, especially if they’re really bored. They’ll watch the local feed and try to get them to turn into the camera lens. “Hey. Your ten o’clock!” *grinning* Sometimes we get free beer out of the new guys.

 

Christie: What else?

 

Ethan: *sly grin* Alright, you cannot tell Daniels we told you this. That guy is petrified of needles. Hates them. Well, we work in a lot of overseas locations, and that means we need a lot of shots. Before we went to Ethiopia, we all had to get Typhoid boosters and he needed his Rabies vaccine. So we got with the White House Medical Unit, and there’s one nurse there that’s a good jokester. He agreed to help us set this up. He got Daniels in the room for the Rabies vaccine, but he had, on his counter, a gigantic syringe. Something they’d use on cows or horses. Huge. Daniels was practically a ghost, but he was being brave. The nurse told him the shot had to go in his ass, and he’d give him a minute to get undressed.

So there Daniels was, bent over, gripping the bed, staring at the giant horse syringe, and sweating bullets. Well, Scott burst in, and he had stolen some silly string from his daughter. He sprayed Daniels’s bare ass and shouted, “Here’s your vaccine!” I have never seen someone move that fast!

 

Jack: That’s terrible!

 

Ethan: We should have gotten you involved. Would have been better if you had busted in on him.

 

Jack: He would never look me in the eye again. I wouldn’t do that to the man.

 

Ethan: He might surprise you. Knowing him, he would have rolled with it and turned the tables. Nothing like good old fashioned revenge. *grinning*

 

Jack: *shakes head*

 

Sheena: My turn! Ethan, how are you handling being a protectee? You’ve moved back into the White House, and now you’re the first gentleman. So… how’s being on the flip side?

 

Ethan: *silence*

 

Jack: *elbows Ethan gently* Yeah, Ethan. How’s that protective detail working out for you?

 

Ethan: *glaring* It’s a little bit stifling. Something I never thought I’d ever have to worry about. It feels… almost like I’m inside a zoo. And my detail are the handlers that are making sure I don’t go crazy and wreck the place. Make sure I don’t go ape shit and run away.

 

Jack: No, that’s what Scott does. His job is mostly keeping me in the White House.

 

*both laugh*

 

Christie: Oh, we’re being serious? Well then, Ethan, what’s the least secure place you’ve ever taken the president?

 

Ethan: Ethiopia, hands down. I didn’t want to go to Africa after the nuclear attack. I thought it was way too out of control, way too crazy. The intelligence seemed almost too good to be true. No threats? No security concerns? Of course, we now know that the intelligence was falsified. But it was a horrible situation, and I definitely didn’t want to be there. Didn’t want to take Jack there. Risk his life in any way.

 

Jack: *holds Ethan’s hand and silently strokes the back*

 

Ethan: *deep breath* Besides Ethiopia, I’d say some campaign stops can be intense. Whenever he was working the handshake line, we’d always have to watch for people who are overly excited. And, no one thinks about what they’re doing anymore. We’d have guys reaching into their jackets and drawing their cell phones, but to us, it looked like they’re pulling something else out. And, Resting Bitch Face is a real thing, and it’s always a pain to try and get a read on someone. Is the person just cranky? Is it a bad case of RBF? Or are they planning on making a hit?

 

Jack: You guys practice your own Resting Bitch Faces in the mirrors in Horsepower, don’t you?

 

Ethan: That’s classified. *winks*

 

Christie: Mr. President, what kind of international summits or conferences do you take part in?

 

Jack: Oh, everything. There are the global leadership summits, economic forums, the UN General Assembly, votes at the UN, security summits, trans regional summits, trade partnership agreements— There are just so many. They can be disruptive, too. The G20 this past year kept me and Ethan apart over Thanksgiving. I wasn’t pleased about that.

 

Shemayil: On that note, Mr. President, have you guys considered what effect your public relationship will have on international relations and the image of the US? Half of the world seems to be against homosexual relationships.

 

Jack: You’re right, it IS a global concern, and it has had a global impact on the world stage. Before Ethan moved back to DC and became the first gentleman, we were obsessive about being private. Keeping everything behind closed doors. I thought—we thought—that this would lessen the impact of our relationship around the world. *shakes head* Not so. When I went to the UN to put forth the joint resolution with President Puchkov, asking for the UN’s endorsement and backing for our united plan to address the Caliphate, certain nations specifically voted against our resolution because of my relationship with Ethan.

 

Ethan: *looks down. Looks like he’s about to puke*

 

Jack: *squeezes Ethan’s hand tightly* It’s been a learning curve. An adjustment for me, for sure. Europe and Canada, of course, have been accepting and welcoming. Other nations are less than cordial. Some have been outright hostile. I’ll never forget being treated like a leper at the UN. A few of my fellow world leaders have acted like I am disgusting, and have said so in their national media. Or when certain heads of state pretended I didn’t exist, even though I was standing right in front of them. There have been some surprises, though. Saudi Arabia has remained a firm and committed ally, and has never wavered from their friendship with the US.

 

You can read all about Jack’s adventures at the UN—as well as Jack and Ethan’s first Christmas together—in my holiday story, released from Ninestar Press this December!

 

Rita: How do you both define yourselves? Is it necessary to do so, in your mind? The press and the world’s media has labeled you, but how do YOU feel about that?

 

*long sigh, and Jack and Ethan share a lingering look*

 

Ethan: I’m gay. And I’m proud of that. I have been out ever since I left the Army. I’m not ashamed of my identity, and I’m happy with who I am.

 

Jack: *chewing on his lip* I fell in love with Ethan. After a lifetime of thinking, every single day, that I was straight… I ended up falling in love with my best friend. I don’t know what to call that. I don’t know how to define myself, and, honestly, I’m okay with not. How do I take my entire life, the entirety of my experience, and distill that down to one word? The fear I felt, when I first realized that I wanted Ethan to kiss me again? The uncertainty? My entire world was shaken. My whole life. My core. And I didn’t know where to turn or what to do. I got through that by holding on to what I felt. Turning into it, instead of running away. What does this mean for the future? How do I see myself? How do I define myself? I think it’s still ongoing.

 

Read all about Jack’s continuing explorations in his identity in Enemy of My Enemy, out October 24th!

 

Rita: Where do you see yourselves after your presidency? What’s in the future?

 

Ethan: *blushes*

 

Jack: *smiles* A whole lot of us! I want to spend my time after my presidency enjoying life. Spending my days with the love of my life. Waking up to him every morning. Being together.

 

Ethan: *furiously blushing* I’m with you all the way, Jack.

 

Rita: And, Ethan? Plans for you?

 

Ethan: I never thought I’d end up partnered with someone. I never had to think about making plans for a life that included anyone else. I was going to work until retirement and then enjoy a simple, quiet life, probably back in Wyoming. Now… I want to see where this goes. Spend my days at Jack’s side. I’ve never been happier than I am with him, and I’d like to keep that going.

 

Rita: And… marriage? Is that a possibility?

 

Jack: *laughs* If it is, then I’m certainly not going to blab about it in front of Ethan!

 

Ethan: *blushing so badly he’s practically a lobster* Never thought about it before. Never wanted to be married. *clears throat* But… I can understand the desire now. More than I ever could. Wanting to affirm that your lives are connected in a way that can’t be disregarded. It’s a legality, sure. But it’s an emotional commitment too. Maybe I ignored that in the past. Thought too little of it.

 

Jack: *swallows. Smiles. Can’t speak. Kisses the back of Ethan’s hand*

 

Rita: What did you do when you were parted? When Ethan was in Iowa and the president was in DC?

 

Jack: I worked almost non-stop, up until the time for our calls. I looked forward to those. Set my watch by them. They were the highlight of my every day. Aside from Friday. Then the best part was when Scott would pick him up and bring him home.

 

Ethan: I… didn’t do much. I couldn’t. I was hounded by the media. When I wasn’t at the office in downtown Des Moines, I was at home. Waiting for our calls. Watching football or baseball. Thinking about Jack. Trying not to be depressed about it all.

 

Rita: How about something a little more upbeat. Who is the more romantic? I have my suspect…

 

Jack: I would love to say I am, but Ethan has me beat, hands down.

 

Ethan: What?

 

Jack: Definitely. You’re the most romantic person I’ve ever met. I’ve never been treated anywhere near the way you treat me. It’s… amazing. *beaming* You make me feel… precious. I don’t know. It’s hard to describe. But it’s part of everything you do. Just… the way you love me.

 

Ethan: *clears throat. Looks down, trying to fight a smile. Gives Jack’s hand a long squeeze*

 

Nicole: Something a little more serious, now. Ethan, you’ve always been the more dominant partner behind closed doors. And yet here, you’ve let Jack take the lead. Do you feel a desire to be in that role with Jack? It seems like you’re holding yourself back, that you don’t show Jack all that you feel and all that you want. Agree? Disagree?

 

Jack: *watches Ethan, wide-eyed*

 

Ethan: *clears throat & adjusts in the chair. Doesn’t look at Jack*

Uhh, that’s a tough one. I, um. This, what we have, is different from everything. Anything from before. I never would have been like this with anyone else, but with Jack… *bites lip* I guess it started this way because I really wanted it to work out, and if this was the way it would work, then that’s how it would be. But then, as it got better and better, I realized I really enjoyed what we were doing. I wasn’t worried about roles or what was happening. I loved it all. How Jack was loving me. In all ways. And I guess I felt secure enough in us to try something new with him. I’m glad I did! There’s a saying that gets joked about a lot. ‘Somewhere, there’s a top who can make you believe you’re a bottom.’

*finally looks at Jack* I found mine.

 

Nicole: And… do you want more? Want to flip it around?

 

Ethan: Well, that’s not up to me. It’s up to Jack. I’m happy with what we are. With what we’ve found together. It’s been a learning experience for both of us. I’m very happy. If he wants to explore more, and if he wants to change things up, then I’ll be right there with him. But I’ll never say or do anything that might pressure him. Or make him think I want more, or I’m not totally content with where we are right now.

 

Jack: *raises their joined hands and kisses the back of Ethan’s*

 

Nicole: Alright, Mr. President. You never thought about Ethan in a romantic way. Not until Ethan revealed his feelings to you. You’ve never been in a relationship with a man before. What do you think when you look at him? You love who he is, but is he hot, sexy, or beautiful to you? Is the physical attraction the same as it was for your wife, or with other women?

 

Ethan: *looks down*

 

Jack: He is all of those things. Beautiful, gorgeous, and so, so sexy. When I look at Ethan, my heart beats faster. I feel like I can’t speak right sometimes, he just stuns me with everything about him. I get that zing inside me, and I want to reach out for him all the time.

 

Ethan: *smiles. Kisses Jack’s knuckles*

 

Jack: Was it like this when I first met him? No. No, I wasn’t physically attracted to him right away. I could see he was an attractive man. Could recognize that he was good looking. But it didn’t hit me personally. My… physical attraction to him developed alongside my emotions. The deeper I fell for him, the more attracted I became. His eyes went from being brown to burnished bronze. His face went from being like a statue—so serious!—to me noticing all of the beautiful touches and uniquenesses that were his. The way his lips quirk up, just before he smiles. A pre-smile, almost. How his eyes crinkle at the corners. I can read everything in that little crinkle. The way his eyelashes fall over his cheeks. The angle of his jaw, when he’s standing in the sunlight. How his five o’clock shadow grows in. The way his shoulders fill out his suit. *grins* His butt. He’s got a nice bubble. And his thighs. God, they’re so strong. His whole body. It’s powerful. I can never get enough.

*laughs at himself* So, as you can see, now that I’m deeply in love with Ethan, my physical attraction to him is over the moon. It’s just as, if not more, powerful than anything I have felt before. Because I discovered this. This amazing love I have for this amazing man. *leans over and kisses Ethan’s flushed cheek*

 

Ariana: OMG, that was so beautiful. What’s next? Ethan, you’re moving in? You’re going to be living together in the White House? What kind of role are you going to take in the public? You resigned from the Secret Service, so… What will you do now? Will you be the first gentleman full time? And what are your guys’ PR strategies for when your relationship goes public?

 

Read the answers to Ariana’s questions in Enemy of My Enemy, when Jack and Ethan navigate the next steps of their relationship as the first same-sex First Couple, Ethan takes on the job of first gentleman, and the world watches their every move!

Exclusive Excerpt from Enemy of My Enemy

Exclusive Excerpt from Chapter One of Enemy of My Enemy

Released on Oct 24, 2016


Today, I’m happy to bring you an exclusive excerpt of Enemy of My Enemy. This scene is taken from chapter one, early in the novel, and captures Ethan and Jack’s first morning together as the “First Couple.” It’s Ethan’s first day as first gentleman. What awaits them? What struggles will they face? With everything they have endured together, how will this affect their love?

And, how will the world react to the two of them?

Enjoy! Ten more days until Enemy of My Enemy is released!


 

White House

It was a well-known rule of politics: if you wanted to release controversial news, you did so on a Friday afternoon after three thirty. Hopefully, it would be buried in the market’s closing bell at four and the public’s general lack of care for political news that bled over into their weekends. Everyone would be distracted, the assumption went.

 

Pete Reyes, President Jack Spiers’s press secretary, released a one-sentence statement on a Friday afternoon following Ethan Reichenbach’s move back from Iowa and two days after Ethan stood in the Oval Office and told Jack he was coming back for good. To stay as his partner, publicly, and live in the White House with him.

 

It was unprecedented in American politics. There were no guidelines for this, for an unmarried couple sharing the White House Residence, much less two unwed men. Men who were lovers.

 

Pete exhaled as he posted the press release on the White House website and leaned back in his chair, biting his lip.

 

The White House welcomes Ethan Reichenbach as the president’s partner and first gentleman of the United States.

 

Thirty seconds later, his office phone rang. And rang. And rang.

 

✩✩✩

 

Monday morning dawned cold and overcast in Washington DC. A heavy snowstorm, unusual for early spring, threatened to descend over the capital, and ice clung to the edges of the White House windowpanes, crystalizing in fragile patterns across the glass.

 

Inside the White House Residence’s master bedroom, a banked fire smoldered, the last few coals still glowing from a late night blaze. Curled up in the president’s bed, buried beneath a heavy down comforter, Ethan pulled Jack close, nuzzling the sleeping president’s forehead with a slow kiss as he stroked his hands up and down Jack’s bare arms. One of Jack’s legs tangled through Ethan’s, their naked bodies warm and pressed together.

 

“Good morning, love,” Jack breathed, stretching into Ethan’s arms. He pressed a soft kiss to Ethan’s jaw before relaxing back, boneless, his eyes closed and a small smile on his lips. “Waking up in your arms will never get old.”

 

“Shhh,” Ethan whispered. “Stay asleep. Let’s ignore the world today.” He squeezed Jack’s shoulder, bringing him close for a tight hug. Swallowing hard, Ethan’s next breath caught in his throat.

 

If only they could ignore the world. Or the world could ignore them. Had he made the right decision? Had coming here been the right thing to do?

 

“Stop that.” Jack pushed up to his elbows, leaning over Ethan as the comforter slid down his shoulder. “Stop worrying. I can feel you working yourself up.” He leaned down, pressing a kiss to Ethan’s forehead. “Everything will be fine.”

 

Uncertainty flooded Ethan. “Your vice president resigned because of this,” he breathed. “Because of me.”

 

Vice President Glen Green had submitted his resignation—publicly, in a huge press conference called on Saturday afternoon at the steps of the Naval Observatory, the vice president’s residence—and announced that he could no longer continue to serve in the Spiers administration. In an administration that so blatantly and openly trampled on the values of the Republican Party. Unspoken was the statement that he couldn’t—wouldn’t—serve with a president in love and living with another man.

 

Tensions between Jack and his party had simmered just below boiling ever since his public announcement that he and Ethan were lovers. When Ethan had lived in exile in Iowa, and he tried to stay out of sight and out of mind, the grumbles of discontent had stayed—mostly— contained. 

 

But with one sentence on Friday and Ethan’s new role in Jack’s life, everything changed.

 

The roar of the press, the outcry from the loudest and most vitriolic in the Republican Party, and the reaction from overseas leaders nearly deafened the White House. Their first weekend together in the Residence had been fraught with cascading reports of bad and worse news.

 

Green’s resignation was one of several handed in over the weekend. There were spaces in the administration to fill.

 

“It wasn’t because of you. It was because of us.” A moment, and then Jack shrugged. One corner of his mouth quirked up, a wry grin. “I never liked him much anyway. He helped win the fringes of the Republican Party.” He wagged his eyebrows. “Don’t think I need to worry about placating them anymore.”

 

Ethan tried to smile. His hands stroked up Jack’s arms, over his warm skin and sinewy muscles. He wanted to pull Jack to him, kiss him senseless, make slow love to him for hours, and search for reassurance and safety in the wrap of his arms and the slide of their bodies. “I don’t want to do anything to hurt you,” Ethan breathed. “I don’t ever want to hurt your presidency. You do too much good. The world needs you.”

 

Smiling again, Jack shrugged and sat back on his heels. The blanket slid all the way down, pooling at his hips. A star-shaped scar puckered the skin over his left shoulder, the lingering remnants of a bullet fired by Ethan to save Jack’s life. “I’m okay with one term. Just a few years until we’re free. Then we can be us. Not have to worry about all this.” His hands found Ethan’s and squeezed.

 

“You’re worth more than one term.”

 

Leaning in for a kiss, Jack smiled as he spoke, hovering over Ethan’s face. “And you are worth more to me than this job.” A quick kiss to Ethan’s lips and Jack bounced back, stretching, before turning and sliding out of bed. He reached for Ethan. “Shower with me?”

 

After they had showered and traded flirty smiles and grins at the bathroom sinks while shaving, and after Ethan had scrambled eggs for the both of them, they padded toward the double glass doors at the landing above the main staircase, taking them down from the Residence to the public spaces of the White House.

 

As they passed the Yellow Room, Ethan slowed, glaring out over the Truman Balcony.

 

The doors to the Yellow Room had been left open, an attempt to grab as much of the gloomy light as possible to pull into the Residence. Through them, Ethan could hear the distant chants of the protestors held back at the perimeter fence of the South Lawn.

 

Sighing, Jack wandered inside, shoving his hands into his suit pants pockets. The cries of the protestors grew louder, and from the windows, they could both make out the distinctive coloring of the hate-filled signs and banners. Some stated that God hated both Jack and Ethan. Several called for God to kill them, and others cried out that this was God’s punishment on America. Still others proclaimed Jack the antichrist.

 

“Even this snow won’t keep them away, huh?” Jack called over his shoulder to Ethan. “They must really love shouting at nothing.”

 

When Ethan stayed silent, Jack made his way back to his side. Ethan looked down, avoiding his gaze.

 

“Hey.” Jack ducked, finally making eye contact. “Those nuts are meaningless.”

 

“I never wanted you to experience this,” Ethan finally grunted. He looked away again, over Jack’s shoulder, glaring through the windows toward the protestors. His lips pursed as he sucked on his teeth, and his chest tightened, hard enough that he had to suck in air through his clenched jaw. “I never wanted you to have to face this kind of crap. The press, the political attacks. Protests.” Ethan closed his eyes and thunked his head back against the doorframe.

 

This was everything he had wanted to shield Jack from. Screaming mobs filled with hate, political rivals jockeying for who could draw the most blood, and an intrusive media slinging accusation after accusation.

 

All because of him.

 

“What’s the alternative? We stay in hiding and sneak around? You stay my dirty little secret?” He shook his head. “We tried that. It didn’t work. This, us together? This is what’s right.”

 

Ethan’s eyes flicked back to Jack. He swallowed hard. Swinging from the Secret Service and a life dedicated to silent, steady protection to the oh-so-public life under the microscope as Jack’s—as the president’s—boyfriend was still a struggle. He’d made a career out of stability and steadfast surety. 

 

A life of careful footing, of not taking any unnecessary risks and following the rules, and then he’d met Jack. And he’d thrown his entire life rulebook out the window. Jack was a force of nature, a blue-eyed tornado that had sucked all the air out of his world. His smile had slammed into Ethan, throwing him off balance, but it had been his beautiful soul that had pulled him headfirst into the fall. And fall he had, so deeply in love with Jack.

 

Jack was right, at least partly. He—Jack—was worth it.

 

“I need to take my own advice, huh?” Ethan tried to crack a tiny smile. He’d welcomed three different presidents to the White House, each time briefing them on just how much their life was about to change and how public it was about to become. How much of a fishbowl the White House truly was.

 

Jack smiled back. “You told me to ignore ninety percent of the garbage that was thrown at me and play hardball with the final ten percent. Lob some surprise curveballs back at ’em.”

 

“I think you managed to surprise everyone.” Ethan grabbed Jack’s hand and laced their fingers together. “No one saw this coming.”

 

“Not even me.” Jack smiled and led them away.

 

Ethan took a deep breath. It was his first day as first gentleman of the United States.

 

Jack squeezed his hand as they headed down the stairs, never letting go. At the base, Secret Service Agent Levi Daniels smiled at them, waving good morning and holding out a tray with two paper cups of coffee from the White House mess, still steaming. “Two sugars for you, Mr. President, and black and burned for Ethan.”

 

Chuckling, Jack accepted the coffee with a grin. He turned back to Ethan and pressed a kiss to his lips. “Knock ’em dead,” he whispered.

 

He headed off as Ethan smiled, just faintly blushing. Jack looked back before the Secret Service agent striding in front of him pushed open the door to the West Colonnade, and he disappeared toward the West Wing.

 

Daniels stayed behind, sipping his coffee and standing with Ethan in the silent Cross Hall.  “Not going with the president?” Ethan frowned at his friend. Daniels was Agent Scott Collard’s second-in-command of the Presidential Protective Detail surrounding Jack. Ethan had once been the lead, but Scott took over after Ethan’s forced transfer to Iowa six months prior.

 

“Nah.” Daniels’s eyes twinkled. “My best buddy is going to his first day at his new job. I gotta support that.” Daniels gestured down the Cross Hall toward the East Wing and the domains of the—traditionally—first lady. Furious carpentry work over the weekend had changed all the signs in the East Wing to read “First Gentleman.”

 

Inhaling, Ethan nodded and set off, Daniels falling into step beside him. One of Daniels’s hands rose, gripping Ethan’s shoulder and squeezing for a long moment, but dropped before they turned and headed into the public hustle and bustle of the East Wing…


Timestamp: Chapter One of Enemy of My Enemy

Waiting For You – Jack, Alone in the White House

 

Oct 1st

 

There was something about the changeover from September to October. Something more than a flip of the calendar. There was a different hum to the air, a heaviness that perhaps came from the tilt of the Earth leaning over, almost as if she were sighing, and from the leaves falling like amber and ocher and apple-red brightness all around. A bite to the air, and a hiss against the skin. In politics, October regularly brought the “October surprise,” an event that always occurred before a presidential election, and even in non-election years, it seemed like October was the month where Washington held its breath, waiting.

 

Jack had outdone his predecessors. He’d gone ahead and delivered a September surprise, outing him and Ethan and their relationship. If he could have, he’d have started a countdown calendar the day he announced their relationship, like he’d done when he was a child, making a string of interlocking loops in colored construction paper that stretched around the Oval Office. He would have torn one loop off each day, a countdown until he was out of office, and—

 

And alone. Again.

 

But, Madigan and Black Fox had trumped even Jack’s earth-shaking announcement. An attempted coup. A nuclear weapon strapped to his chest that would have devastated DC. Madigan, so close to destroying the Middle East and upending the world.

 

But Ethan had come back. In the middle of the worst day of Jack’s life, when he was on his knees in the Oval Office with his once-friend, Jeff Gottschalk, strapping a bomb to his chest, Ethan had returned in fire and glory. A real-life action hero, just like in every movie he’d ever loved. The man of his dreams, come to save the day.

 

Weren’t they supposed to live happily ever after, then? After the dust had settled and they’d caught all the members of Black Fox they could, and worked toward healing the nation rocked with shock, weren’t they supposed to have their happy ending?

 

In a way, they did. Ethan was alive, and Jack wouldn’t trade anything for that. Ethan, alive, meant more to him than everything else—his presidency, his career, everything. Even their relationship. Had Ethan wanted to walk away after all that had happened, and say that loving Jack—loving the President of the United States—was too much, Jack would have understood. It would hurt, oh so deeply… but Ethan would still be alive.

 

But, Ethan still wanted to be with Jack, and Jack— Oh, he so wanted to be with Ethan.

 

They made it work. Ethan’s forced transfer. His exile to Iowa. Jack, alone in DC during the week, and hoping with everything within him that no international crisis stole away his weekends with Ethan.

 

Ethan’s transfer had happened two weeks ago.

 

In September, there was still the business of cleaning up after the coup, still rounding up sympathizers to Black Fox and Madigan, and Irwin was still awkwardly juggling the handoff of being the former director of the CIA and becoming Jack’s chief of staff. They were still helping the nation through the shock, beefing up intelligence collections, working with Congress as they opened investigative committees into what had transpired and, in closed door congressional sessions, issuing a sealed indictment against Madigan as a traitor and a terrorist.

 

The first week Ethan was in Iowa, there was still so much happening. The presidency was never dull—there was never an idle moment—and in between Congress, calls with their allies, and everything else, the days had passed in a blur. And then Ethan was back, and they had their first weekend together.

 

It was good. Really good. He’d been nervous, at first. Would Ethan want to keep up the long distance relationship, and a long distance relationship that was so far from normal at that? But, it had gone well. Great, even. Sometime between playing footsie under the kitchen table and Ethan kissing his hair and whispering he loved him before they feel asleep, Jack realized they could make this work.  

 

And then September turned into October, and the world didn’t quite seem like it was a top spinning out of control and about to wobble off kilter at any moment. The business of the presidency settled back around his shoulders. Irwin got his feet beneath him as chief of staff. The banality of politics, and of DC, surrounded him again. Working with—or working against—Congress to try and get traction going on his determination to strike at the Caliphate. To take them out, once and for all.

 

Leaves had fallen in the Rose Garden, blanketing the White House lawns in a carpet of gold and cranberry. He’d smiled that evening while leaving the Oval Office, heading back for the Residence next to Scott Collard, his new detail lead.

 

Occasionally, Scott would chat with him about the recent football game. Most of the time, Scott kept his interaction to polite nods and discrete smiles. Distance, and lots of it. The kind of distance he was supposed to have with his Secret Service agents.

 

Up in the Residence, one of the stewards had lit a fire in his study, and he walked in with a soft chuckle. Seemed his habits were becoming known. Retiring to his study, both with and without Ethan, had become something of his routine. A place to relax with Ethan—where they had spent so much time together when they were not-dating before The Kiss—and after, when Jack rested his head on Ethan’s chest and watched football or baseball with him, his hand stroking over the warmth of Ethan’s skin. And, when Ethan wasn’t there, it was a place he could retreat to, surround himself in memories, and try to get a little bit more work done in peace.

 

A mess of his files were strewn about the giant Victorian desk hovering at the back of the room, and over one arm of the sofa, a discarded T-shirt of Ethan’s lay.

 

Oops. Jack grinned. Apparently they had forgotten that shirt when they were cleaning up after—

 

He snagged the shirt on the way to his desk, holding it to his nose and breathing deep. Ethan. Even after everything—the outrage from his party, the barrage of the media, the confusion and disdain from the public—he’d still choose Ethan.

 

There was work waiting for him, always, endless work, but instead, Jack shoved away his spread open files and pulled out a fresh notepad. There was an endless assortment of notepads scattered around the White House, all emblazoned with the Presidential Seal and the address of his home: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC. Grinning, he spun the pad closer as he sat at his desk.

 

Maybe it was October. Maybe it was the changing of the seasons, and the weight in the air, the reminder that all things changed; all things had their moments of fire and gold before being tucked away, to either wither and perish in winter or be held safe and warm through the long, dark night. Maybe it was just that he missed Ethan, missed him in this second week of their long-distance relationship.

 

Dear Ethan,

 

He started and then stopped. How should he begin? Part of him wanted to put down, “My dearest Ethan,” but Ethan would no doubt snort at that.

 

Or, perhaps not. His lover was a man with a romantic heart, he was discovering. Bringing roses along with breakfast in bed. Waiting until Jack had fallen asleep, softly stroking his hair, before drifting off himself.

 

This house is empty without you here.

I’m sitting in the study, where we spent so much time together, laughing, talking…and other things… I can almost feel your presence, like I’m waiting for you to just come down the hall with another beer for the both of us. The air is heavy with my anticipation. There are times I swear I can hear you just around the corner, and I turn, waiting to see your smile.

The White House is creepy when you get right down to it. It groans and creaks, and plays cruel tricks on me, making me believe the settling wood of this ancient house is your footsteps.

And, so much history in these walls. How much they’ve seen! How many presidents have sat at this desk, perhaps composed letters here, even? This was once Lincoln’s office. To my right, his bedroom. To my left, his library. I’m walking the floors of men who have gone before me, men who are, when it comes down to it, my betters.

 

There was a thought. Frowning, Jack tapped the end of his pen against the paper. What had started out as a silly love letter to Ethan had turned, suddenly, veering into the murky uncertainties of his subconscious.

 

What he’d hoped for when he was elected — a prosperous, strong, independent America— and what he had hoped to accomplish had become entirely undone. By his choices, and by choices thrust upon him. Ethan, Madigan, and so much more. The Caliphate, and their rise in the Middle East. Russia, and President Puchkov’s mercurial behavior. The Russian president was friendly now, even said he was looking forward to seeing Jack at the upcoming G20 summit.

 

Not too long ago, Puchkov had called him a Russian faggot and hung up on him.

 

It was hard to forget.

 

Enough. Jack dropped his pen, abandoning his letter, and rose from the desk. His thoughts weren’t fit for love letters.

 

What was he doing? Who was he to be president? He’d wanted to stabilize the country, bring civility to politics, be a good man, and maybe even bring back some honesty to Washington. Who was he to lead the nation through the aftereffects of a coup? Of a madman, and a black hole of hatred sucking down the Middle East? And, of a world reorganizing along the fault lines of his choices?

 

Perhaps it had been a mistake to run for president. How could he run a nation when he didn’t even know himself, the newspapers said. His character had been trashed from coast to coast. Either he was confused about himself and his identity— and in no place to run the country— or a liar, and how could he be trusted ever again?

 

Sighing, Jack collapsed on the couch, lying back and grabbing his book from the side table. A biography of President Lincoln, his favorite president, and one he was rereading, trying to glean wisdom from between the pages. Part of him was trying to channel the old man himself, bring a piece of Lincoln’s wisdom and clarity into his turbulent mind. How had Lincoln managed to steer the nation when the country was so bereft around him? How could Jack possibly do anything similar?

 

He still had Ethan’s shirt with him, and he sniffed it once before settling it on his chest. Stupid, perhaps. Sentimental, for sure. But it was like an anchor for him, a soothing touch to his bones.

 

An hour passed, and then another. Almost time for his call with Ethan.

 

Rising, Jack set the book back on the table and pinched the bridge of his nose. He had too many questions, too many thoughts swirling in his brain. How did he do all of what was needed—

 

Creaking, down the hall, like heavy footsteps walking away, made him freeze.

 

He was the only one in the Residence The stewards were done for the night, and unless there was an emergency, they wouldn’t enter. They also walked differently, a different cadence to their footfalls, practiced decorum and whisper soft steps that faded away from hearing.

 

There shouldn’t be anyone with him.

 

Unless—

 

Heart pounding, Jack rose slowly, eyes wide, not blinking.

 

Not another coup. Not another attempt on his life. Please.

 

Not that he’d be surprised. So many hated him now. Secret Service agents were everywhere in the White House, even more so than before.

 

But no one should be up here with him. In his home.

 

Creeping to the doorway, Jack’s breath hitched in his chest, catching on his shaking lips. Should he call Ethan? If this was an attack, then whoever it was would have gotten past the agents below, and he was on his own. Should he call Ethan, say goodbye? Tell him he loved him one last time.

 

He hesitated, exhaling.

 

Down the hall, a door closed, the hinges creaking, the heavy brass doorjamb catching in the frame.

 

Jack pushed out of his study, staring down the center hall, down toward where the sound had come. The footsteps had stopped, their heavy, aching creaking, and none of the doors were open.

 

A drape twitched, though, a sheer bit of ivory fluttering amongst the heavy draperies over the East Sitting Hall’s fan window. Maybe an open window?

 

Swallowing, Jack hurried down the hall, looking right and left, and checked the windows.

 

All were closed.

 

Every hair on the back of Jack’s neck stood on end. A rush of cold flooded through him, like ice being poured down the back of his shirt. Exhaling, he turned, slowly, his eyes darting around the sitting hall.

 

The doors to the Lincoln Bedroom were wide open.

 

No. No, he wasn’t going there in his mind. He’d never believed in ghosts, never believed in the supernatural. Never believed in the hereafter, and only believed in God enough to hold a grudge. He was not going to stand in the White House, in his house, and believe in ghost stories.

 

Chiming from his pocket made him jump, and he cursed under his breath, pulling out his phone. Time for his call with Ethan. Finally.

 

Shaking his head, Jack glared at the doors again and strode back down the hallway to his bedroom and toward his conversation with Ethan. To normality. Ghost stories belonged in the past, when people were superstitious and came up with explanations for what they couldn’t explain. Doubtless, the footsteps he’d heard were simply the old house settling. He was prone to thinking the worst at times, what with coming out the other side of an attempted coup. Anyone would be jumpy at noises after that betrayal, after having a nuke strapped to your chest.

 

That’s all it was. His jumpy mind. The creaky old house with too much history. Him, too much alone without Ethan.

 

Well, he could rectify that. Smiling, Jack slid onto his bed and pulled his laptop close, opening Skype and dialing Ethan’s number. When Ethan answered, with that same nervous smile on his face that he wore every night, Jack’s worries melted away.

* * *

Curiosity, though, was like a virus.

 

While the Speaker of the House of Representatives wailed over the phone, lambasting Jack for torpedoing their party and making their jobs infinitely more difficult in the House, Jack pulled up a search on his phone. Lincoln’s ghost had its own dedicated internet article, and thousands of additional sites. The speaker kept railing into Jack, about how their party was destined to lose in the primaries, about how they were all considered lame ducks in Congress, about how the democrats were being purposefully obstinate in the face of their party losing all credibility within their constituencies, thanks entirely to Jack’s behavior.

 

“Mr. Speaker,” Jack finally interrupted. “Have you considered working with the democrats on this?”

 

The speaker hung up on him.

 

Par for the course, that one. Leaning back, Jack propped his feet up on his desk and scrolled through his phone. Lincoln’s ghost was said to haunt the bedroom that bore his name, but not because he had slept there ever. It was his Cabinet room. His war room. His presidential office before the Oval Office had been built, and where he had managed four years of the Civil War. Where he had drafted the Emancipation Proclamation. Where he had steered his Cabinet, and thus the nation, toward moving the 13th Amendment through the House of Representatives, and on to ratification.

 

How many sleepless nights had Lincoln spent in his office—at the time, just down the hall from his bedroom— wondering and re-wondering over his decisions. Ruminating, night after night, about the country he was supposed to lead?

 

In some tiny way, Jack felt a kinship with his predecessor. How did anyone unite people so vehemently opposed to you in every way?

 

He leaned over his desk and grabbed his phone, buzzing for his secretary. “Mrs. Martin, could you invite Congressmen Brussard up to the White House, please?”

 

A long pause. “Democratic Leader Congressman Brussard?”

 

“Yes, ma’am.” He smiled.

 

Of course, Mr. President.” 

* * *

Congressmen Brussard was a man who knew his party was on the rise. He moved in a swell of pride, smug arrogance in the swing of his arms and the curve of his smirk as he shook Jack’s hand and sat in the Oval Office. Jack tried to stay above it, ignoring the barbs and digs at his party’s current state —shambles— and his destined short-tenure in the Oval Office. “What matters is now,” Jack said, forcing Brussard’s gaze away from mentally redecorating the office. Brussard would be starting his own presidential primary run in a year. “What matters is addressing the world as it is, right now, and doing what we can to better our world. Today. For everyone.”

 

Eventually, Brussard left with narrowed eyes and a pinched expression, but he agreed to convene his party’s leaders and discuss Jack’s offer of compromise in exchange for their support of his proposal to take action against the Caliphate.

 

After Brussard left, Jack sank back on his couch, slumping and staring at the seal of the President of the United States sculpted into the ceiling. The eagle, supposedly fierce, seemed mocking, as if it were coming in to strike at Jack, tear him apart, an attacker instead of a vanguard.

 

“How did you do it?” he whispered.

* * *

He wandered to the White House Library after the day had ended, when the visitors and tourists and staffers had melted away, and it was just him and his Secret Service shadows. Most were friendly with him, smiling and saying hello, at least. Not a single one would broach the kind of friendship he’d had with Ethan, before—

 

But, he didn’t really want that kind of friendship with any of them. He just wanted Ethan.

 

So maudlin his thoughts had become, lonely and dripping with self-doubt. Sighing, Jack wandered the shelves in the small library, his fingers running over the spines of books collected by his predecessors. Pulp fiction and dog-eared paperbacks shared space with 19th-century hardback romances and even a few 17th-century treatises on philosophy and the French language.

 

What was he looking for? Something to give him answers? Some kind of presidential rulebook or handbook that could guide him in all his choices? Such a thing did not exist. He was wasting his—

 

His fingers stopped, hovering over the fraying spine of an old hardback, at least a century old, by the look. Letters of Lincoln scrawled over the faded fabric in ornate and patchy golden script.

 

He pulled it down and left the library.

* * *

Sleep evaded him, even after talking to Ethan for almost three hours. Day after tomorrow, and Ethan would be back with him at the White House for the weekend. Perhaps it was nervous excitement that kept him tossing and turning. Whatever it was, he flopped like a fish and glared at the ceiling, and, finally, turned on the bedside light.

 

Letters of Lincoln stared at him from his nightstand.

 

Grabbing his reading glasses, he pulled the old book into bed as he sat up and began to turn through the worn pages.

 

As he read, his heart hammered, and his breath caught in his throat.

 

“Til 1842 no men were ever more intimate,” Joshua Speed, Lincoln’s lifelong best friend, wrote. Until Speed’s marriage. Letters flying between the two men lamented the “requirement” of marriage in order to continue in politics of the day.

 

And then, after Speed’s marriage, Lincoln wrote, “Loving is a painful thrill, and not to love, more painful still. That surely ‘tis the worst of pain. To love and not be loved again. Yours forever, A. Lincoln.”

 

Pages and pages of letters. They spoke of everything: the dissolution of the union, the tensions tearing their world apart, just before Lincoln’s election and the outbreak of the war. Lincoln asking if Speed was happy in his marriage, if taking the plunge was worth it. Asking him to come visit, long paragraphs about missing the man, and the warmth of his body in their shared bed.

 

Jack kept reading. The hours passed, and the moon rose and fell, traveling across his bedroom floor.

 

And then, introducing the next segment of letters—

 

“Captain Derickson, close bodyguard of the President, was shortly on a footing of such marked friendship with him that he was often dining with the president. In fact, Capt. Derickson advanced so far in the president’s confidence and esteem that he frequently spent the night with him, sleeping in his bed, and making use of his excellency’s nightshirt! Thus began an intimacy which continued unbroken—”

 

Another letter from Lincoln, to his bodyguard.

 

My Captain, your presence at my side, as always, soothes my peace of mind. I have no doubts about my safety, not while you are near. But, more than just the safety you bring to my body, you give to me a sense of peace in my soul, the like of which I have not experienced for many, many years. I treasure you dearly, and I wait for you, eager for your presence every chance I get. Come, let us speak of the future, and of this nation, and together, we will whisper into the night, steadying this ship that has gone to off course. Come, and be that piece of my soul that I need. Come, my captain. I wait for you—

 

Creaking down the hall broke Jack’s reading, stopped the mumble of words tumbling from his lips. Jumping, he stared at his open bedroom door with wide eyes.

 

There it was again. Creaking.

 

No. Footsteps.

 

Heavy, hard footsteps over creaking wood. As if a man were pacing just down the hall from Jack’s bedroom.

 

The Residence had been carpeted over fifty years ago. There was no hard wood to pace over. There was no creaking floorboard to groan under a man’s weight.

 

Throwing back the covers, Jack jumped from his bed, still holding the book. He tucked it under his arm, like a football, and strode for the door.

 

Damn it, what was making that sound?

 

It couldn’t be—

 

No.

 

Slowly, Jack padded, barefoot, down the carpeted hallway toward the Lincoln Bedroom. The Residence was dim, all lights turned off, and only the moon cast through the windows of the East Sitting Hall scattered any light at all. Silvery and liquid, the moonlight danced over the walls and the silk couches and caught in the shadows of the corners.

 

Exhaling, Jack stood in the center of the East Sitting Hall, in between the Queen’s Bedroom – Andrew Jackson’s bedroom, once – and the Lincoln Bedroom.

 

The doors to the Lincoln Bedroom were shut.

 

He listened, closing his eyes.

 

Silence.

 

Until—

 

Pacing, again, coming from within the Lincoln Bedroom. Heavy footsteps, as if a man were walking back and forth, restless in the middle of the night.

 

Jack breathed out, shaking. He clenched the book close to his side. How many times had he heard the stories? Jokes on the campaign trail, laughter about the haunted White House, people asking if he’d dare sleep a night in the “haunted” Lincoln Bedroom. How he’d laughed them off.

 

And now, did he open the door?

 

Striding forward, Jack gripped the handle and pushed the door open, stepping into the Lincoln Bedroom in just his boxers and his undershirt. Perhaps not the attire to greet a ghost—the ghost of Lincoln, even— but there were stories that claimed Winston Churchill had met Lincoln’s ghost completely naked after a bath, smoking his cigar, so this had to be better than that.

 

Of course, that was supposing there was anything in the bedroom at all. The White House was old, and it creaked and groaned and settled every day. What if this was just more of the same? What if he was being ridiculous?

 

He stood in the doorway, one foot tapping on the dark paisley carpet. Lincoln’s giant bedframe rose against the far wall, and two floor-to-ceiling windows faced the South Lawn, hung with heavy drapes. An empty fireplace sat opposite the bed, with two Victorian silk settees facing each other just before the bone-white mantle.

 

Darkness swallowed the room whole, only gray moonlight coming from behind him and stretching into the bedroom. The pale fingers only went so far, leaving most of the room encased in a dense stillness, a weight heavier than just the night. The hairs on the back of Jack’s neck rose, and his breath slowed. A chill tap danced down his spine, a slide of ice that slithered through his bones.

 

The drapery at the far window, a heavy gold velvet, twitched.

 

Beneath the golden fabric, sheer ivory gauze blustered, moving as if a man were turning, turning back from gazing out over the South Lawn.

 

Jack’s breath caught and held, as the ivory gauze twitched again. There, standing in the darkness, was the shivering outline of a man. Tall, too tall, and gaunt. Sunken eyes, arching cheekbones. A short beard. Dark slacks, a white button-down without a collar, and a vest partially buttoned overtop.

 

“Holy shit,” Jack whispered. His hands clenched around the book, the book of Lincoln’s letters. “It’s you.”

 

What did you say when you saw the ghost—that you never believed existed— of the man you most admired as president, as your predecessor, and who you strove to emulate, and fell so incredibly short of his esteemed mark? Lincoln, and his presidential star fixed so immutably high in the heavens, and Jack’s, crash landed on earth in the wreckage of public opinion and a national tragedy.

 

He took a shaking step forward. Lincoln’s ghost went back to the window, gazing outward.

 

“What do I do?” Jack whispered. His lips trembled, and his voice. “Mr. President…what do I do? How do I—“

 

Slowly, Lincoln’s ghost turned back to Jack, staring him down. Faintly, almost as if Jack imagined it, a horse whined, and the clip-clop of hooves against cobblestones sounded, cobblestones that hadn’t been a part of the White House for nearly a hundred years.

 

Lincoln smiled. His etheric gaze turned soft, and even though Jack could see right through him, see the curtains and the wallpaper and the sconces beyond him, he was transfixed by Lincoln’s eyes, the warmth in their dark depths.

 

The horse whined again, and Lincoln’s attention shifted to the window. He raised one hand, as if waving to someone outside.

 

“Oh God,” Jack’s knees almost gave way, and he collapsed to the edge of Lincoln’s bed. “You’re waiting.” His voice shook, and he bit his top lip, one hand covering his mouth. “You’re waiting for him. For Derickson.”

 

Lincoln’s ghost gave Jack one more smile over his shoulder before fading away, leaving Jack entirely alone in the dark bedroom, hunched over on the end of the bed, shock rocking him to the core.

 

Shock, followed swiftly by loss. Aching, agonizing loss, so deep that Jack doubled over with it, curling in half, and gasping. Sobs overtook him, wrenched from his chest, and his teeth clenched together, gritted against the sudden anguish tearing through him.

 

Ethan…” His hands rose, covering his face. “God, Ethan. I want you back here. I want you here with me. You are the piece of my soul that I need. I want—“ He pressed his lips together. “I want to whisper into the night with you. Try and right this ship together. God, Ethan… I’m waiting for you, too.”

 

Slowly, the tears subsided, drying in the palms of his hands as his breathing slowed. The book he’d carried had fallen to the mattress, lying open on another of Lincoln’s letters to Captain Derickson, his bodyguard.

 

I thank God for good men like you, my captain, for if I were alone, I do not know how I would rise from my bed in the morning, much less gather the strength to face the people. I thank God every day for you, as well as await you and your stately counsel, woven through with tenderness, a gift you’ve given your very weary president.

 

“Ethan…” Jack breathed again. “I miss you so much.”

 

He flicked the book closed, and, glancing to the window, left it on the bed before he rose and headed for the door.

 

At the bedroom’s doorway, half in moonlight and half in shadow, Jack swallowed and stared back at the window where Lincoln’s ghost had stood. “I’m waiting, too,” he whispered, nodding. “I need him, too.”

 

When Jack walked back to his bedroom, he caught the faint sound of wood creaking and the heavy footfalls of a man pacing.

 

He tried to smile and closed his eyes as he nodded. “Me too.”

 

When he slid back into bed, he fished out Ethan’s discarded shirt, shoved under his pillow, and clutched it close, inhaling the fading scent of his lover. “It’s you,” he whispered into the shirt. “You give me strength, Ethan. And I’ll wait for you every night until you’re here with me.”


 

Timestamp: Just after Ethan’s transfer to Iowa.

Notes: The friendship between Joshua Speed and President Abraham Lincoln was often called “the most intimate relationship of Lincoln’s life.” Letters written between Speed and President Lincoln were filled with heartfelt declarations of everlasting friendship and intimacies, and the two lived together – and shared a bed – for over four years.

The quote introducing Captain Derickson, and that exclaims over how Derickson used “his excellency’s nightshirt”, comes straight from the “History of the 150th Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers, Second Regiment, Bucktail Brigade,” written by Lt. Col Thomas Chamberlain, the commanding officer of Captain Derickson and the Bucktails. The account of the Bucktail Brigade was reviewed by the members, and the passage about Captain Derickson and the president remained uncontested. It was published in 1895, but not examined in detail until the early 1990s.

There are only two surviving letters between Captain Derickson and President Lincoln, neither of which detail the specifics of their relationship. I have taken creative liberties with the content of the letters written by President Lincoln to Captain Derickson in this story.

And, Lincoln’s Ghost is a popular topic, and one that is always talked about in the White House! For more information, just hit up Google for a ton of great stories about his ghost, and the other ghosts that haunt the White House.

Hope you enjoyed!

Making it Work in Iowa – A Special Holiday Story Preview

I have something special for the Bauer’s Bytes this week.  I’m delighted to announce that I will be writing a holiday story this year, featuring Jack and Ethan and their first Christmas together in the White House. The story will be set right before the end of Enemies of the State, before Ethan returns to DC and says he’ll stay for good. Before he decides to become the First Gentleman of the United States.

Halfway through his exile in Iowa, Jack and Ethan’s first Christmas happens, and I’m happy to announce that you will get to enjoy their first Christmas together this December from Ninestar Press.

Here is a “sneak peek” of Jack and Ethan “Making it Work” in Iowa, and gearing up for their first holiday together…


 

“Mr. President?”

 

Jack glanced up from his desk, his reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose. Folders were spread out before him, analyses of the Caliphate’s operations in Syria and Iraq and the strength of their forces in the Near East. Different projections of what the US military could do, both alone and with allies.

 

And, in one folder, an offer from Russian President Sergey Puchkov. A potential alliance rooted in a UN resolution. The United States and Russia, working together to fight the Caliphate. Could it be done?

 

Jack tossed his glasses on the desk and waved Pete Reyes, his press secretary, into the Oval Office. He stood, stretching his arms over his head and rolling his neck. His suit jacket was draped over the back of his office chair, his tie loosened, and his sleeves rolled up. “What’s up, Pete?” Jack rested one hip against his desk as he crossed his arms with a tired smile.

 

Pete grinned back, ambling to the center of the office. Dusk clung to DC beyond the Oval Office. Snowfall from an early storm blanketed the lawns, turning the world beyond into a winter wonderland. The snow seemed to encase the White House, an almost-shield from the real world. At least, Jack could pretend it was a shield.

 

“Just a few things before I head home, Mr. President.” He flipped open his padfolio, lips pursed. “I’ve been sent to ask you one last time if you are absolutely sure you don’t want to add some kind of LGBT or pride element to the National Christmas Tree. Or to the White House. Or to any of the holiday décor we’re about to throw on the walls.”

 

Exhaling, Jack tipped his head back and closed his eyes. Pete fell silent, waiting.

 

Unease rumbled in Jack’s gut. Coming out about him and Ethan had been the right thing to do. The honorable thing, for Ethan’s memory when he thought he was gone, and for everything they had become together. He wasn’t about to kick the memory of what they’d started, what they’d discovered, to the curb because it was politically expedient after Ethan’s supposed death. He had started a real relationship with Ethan, and he’d meant it when he said he didn’t care what the media thought, or the world thought. He just wanted to fall in love with Ethan.

 

The agony of losing Ethan rubbed against the fatalistic pessimism he’d wallowed in after Ethiopia. It hadn’t mattered that the country was in shock because of him. That Russia was distancing herself from their almost-alliance faster than the Iron Curtain had descended. That overnight, he’d gone from a promising potential to a late-night-comedy sketch.

 

And then Ethan had come back.

 

And the world started to turn again.

 

It was different, trying to love Ethan in the spotlight instead of in their secreted, protected world from before. The media glare had intensified a thousandfold. Ethan had been stalked around DC, and reporters had hovered at his condo before he transferred to Iowa. And then, when he did move, the media circus followed him. He lived in a small, secured apartment, set up specifically for government employees on long temporary duty, and the media lingered just beyond the gates. Camped outside the federal building in downtown Des Moines. Stalked him in the grocery stores. Trailed his car.

 

And everyone was trying to shove Jack into a place he didn’t belong.

 

He wasn’t stepping out of a closet. He wasn’t admitting that he’d always desired men, had kept something hidden his whole life. That wasn’t what he felt. And, he wasn’t trying to change the world. He just wanted to love Ethan, and no one seemed to accept that. Everyone wanted something from him, some kind of statement or stance or public commitment. Something that tried to politicize his personal life, and his love.

 

Hell, Jack didn’t even know what to call himself. The world had decided on “Gay President of the United States”, which wasn’t right, but Jack couldn’t get his brain started to figure out what was correct. He’d fallen for Ethan, so was he now open to falling for any man? That thought derailed quickly. He couldn’t think about any person other than Ethan, man or woman. He didn’t want to imagine the possibility that they wouldn’t work out.

 

But, maybe this was something new about himself. Something he hadn’t known he was, all these years. So, he tried to surreptitiously scope out some of the more attractive men working at the White House. The Marine Corps guards and the attachés in the Situation Room. One or two of the political directors. He let his eyes linger on their shoulders, on their waists, or their asses.

 

Nothing.

 

But, when he thought about Ethan’s shoulders, and the flex of his muscles when he was working out, or the long lines of his thighs, or his round, strong ass and trim waist—

 

Well, he’d learned he couldn’t let his mind wander in Cabinet meetings any longer. There were only so many times he could ask someone to stay after for a sidebar conversation while he hunched forward and desperately tried to will his erection back down.

 

Was it just Ethan? Just their lives crashing into one another, and the forced isolation of the White House mixed with the intensity of presidential protection creating a perfect cauldron for their feelings to develop? Though, his sexual attraction to Ethan hadn’t developed until after Ethan had kissed him, and the possibility of something more had been planted in his brain. Was he sexually attracted to Ethan because he’d already fallen for him, their close friendship a bridge to his heart?

 

How did he simplify who he was to one word? Was it even possible?

 

What was true was this: he’d taken a risk, the biggest risk he’d ever taken in his life, and everything that came after had made him, on the one hand, the happiest he’d ever been, and on the other, the most frustrated and irate he’d ever been, too.

 

He was in love with Ethan. His best friend, and now his lover. That, at the end of the day, was true.

 

“Can’t we focus on something else?” Jack sighed, one hand scrubbing over his face. “Anything else? The country—the world— has been through a major shock. There are people we need to honor. Victims of the terrorists and of Madigan.” Jack shook his head. “Those are the real issues. It’s not all about me. It can’t be.” He snorted. “I’m not that interesting.”

 

Pete chewed on his lip, his eyebrows slowly rising as Jack spoke.

 

Jack exhaled hard. “All right,” he groaned. “Hit me.”

 

“You, and Mr. Reichenbach, are also a real issue. You’re the first out—”

 

Jack groaned.

 

“First out president, and you started a relationship while in the White House. It’s news. Everyone wants to know more.”

 

“Great. My first big achievement. Uniting the people in their fascination with my sex life.” Jack squeezed his eyes closed.

 

“You’re a lot of things to a lot of people. Crazy, deranged—” Pete grinned as Jack chuckled. “And inspirational,” he finished.

 

“Oh, don’t make me feel worse. Please.”

 

“You want your private life private. I get it. I’m just not sure that it’s realistic.” Pete’s gaze softened as he stared Jack down.

 

“It has to be,” Jack breathed. “Ethan’s suffering too much as it is. He’s not a part of this media circus like you and I are. His whole job was to stay out of the spotlight.”

 

“Speaking of him,” Pete started. “Des Moines news media picked him up at an arrest today. The Secret Service was catching some counterfeiters. They spotted him, chased his car down. National media is playing the clip over and over.”

 

Jack scrubbed his hands over his face. “He doesn’t deserve this. God…” He exhaled. “I just want to be with him, our way, in private, and dedicate everything else that I have and that I am to this office. Can’t that be enough?”

 

Pete sighed. “We can try, Mr. President.” 

 

Jack chewed on his upper lip. “You once told me that I should minimize this. Toss it aside like it was meaningless. ‘Do a Clinton,’ you said. Now you think I’m inspirational?”

 

“I…didn’t know how much it meant to you. You and him, I mean.” Pete cleared his throat. “You weren’t saying much, at the time, and no one really knew anything. Jeff, uhh, seemed to know a bit.” Pete coughed quickly and talked fast, getting past Jeff Gottschalk’s name in a hurry as Jack glared. “But I didn’t know what Mr. Reichenbach meant to you until you told the world you guys were in love.” Pete shrugged, and his shoulders held by his ears. “But you did. You changed the world in forty-five seconds. And now we have to work with that.”

 

“Do you want to?”

 

Pete’s eyes went wide, and he stared back at him, blank. “Do I want to…”

 

“This isn’t what you signed up for,” Jack said softly. “You joined my team when I was in the Senate because you knew I was going to make a run for the White House. You wanted to be the press secretary, and you worked your ass off, Pete. You did.” Jack smiled, but looked down, one foot scuffing against the floor. “I think I broke a lot of people’s dreams when I said what I said. I put all of us in a whole new world. None of you asked for this. We’re on our heels now. Eight years has gone down to the next three.” He looked up, an apology in his eyes. “You wanted to announce peace in the Middle East, a renewed America, and a stronger world.” Jack shook his head. “Now you’re dodging questions about my sex life.”

 

“At least, no joke, thirty times a day. You should really see some of these questions.” Pete whistled, and his tone was serious, but he broke into a smile. He calmed a moment later, closing his padfolio and holding it over his chest. “Mr. President, I wanted to be part of a team that was going to change the world. I knew you were that man. That you would be that president to do the next great thing.” He shrugged again, his lips pressed together. “So it’s not the way I imagined. But I am a part of something amazing. Something that I am damn proud to represent.”

 

Jack smiled. “Thanks,” he breathed. “Thank you. I’m…really glad you’re here.”

 

Pete held out his hand, and Jack took it, gripping tight. A moment later, he and Pete pulled back at the same time, snapping and pointing at each other in unison. It had started as a joke, but they kept doing it along the campaign trail, all the way up to the day they moved into the White House. Now, almost a year later, their ritual made a comeback. Jack laughed.

 

“You should get going, Mr. President. It’s almost nine.” Pete winked.

 

Jack pushed himself off the desk, pulling out his phone to check the time. “That it is!” Grinning, he flipped closed his folders and grabbed his suit jacket. “I’ve got to get ready for my date.”

 

* * *

 

Ethan plopped down in front of his computer and logged into Skype, ten minutes early.

 

Butterflies tangled in his stomach, each and every time. Three months they’d been doing the same routine, and still, Ethan wondered when it would all start to fade. When Jack wouldn’t make the call. Or when he would realize that he really didn’t want to put up with all of the crap that loving Ethan brought with it.

 

His computer chimed. Jack calling in, and he was early.

 

His throat clenched as he ran his fingers through his hair and straightened in his seat. He’d obsessed over the height of the monitor for the first call, stacking it up on books until he thought it looked right, and he didn’t look too tired, or the angle didn’t highlight the gray poking through at his temples. God, he wasn’t used to being the young one.

 

He never knew what to wear. Jack saw him in a suit every day at the White House. Should he be casual? He didn’t want Jack to think he didn’t care enough to not look good for him. Shirtless? Was that too forward? Maybe not for another gay guy, but Jack wasn’t just anyone. He settled on a shirt that was a bit too tight, wiggling into it, and his boxers. Jack wouldn’t see below the waist. They didn’t do that. Jack was classy. And Ethan didn’t push his luck.

 

Clearing his throat, he clicked to answer, smiling nervously.

 

Jack’s brilliant grin filled his screen. He was sitting on his bed in the Residence, one leg tucked up to his chest, dressed down in his suit pants and his white T-shirt. He was tired, Ethan could tell. He had his reading glasses on, and the very beginnings of dark circles beneath his eyes.

 

Jack was gorgeous. He made Ethan’s heart skip faster, made his body burn. “Hey,” he breathed. And just like that, he was finally smiling, for real.

 

“Hey you.” Jack tugged his laptop closer; the screen wobbled and then resettled, Jack’s face closer to the camera. His eyes dropped, seeming to linger over Ethan’s chest and shoulders. “How was your day?” he asked, dragging his eyes back up.

 

“Good.”

 

“Did you get your warrant? Catch the bad guys you’ve been chasing?”

 

Ethan chuckled. He looked down, rolling a pen over his desk. “Yeah, the team got the warrant this morning. Busted in on the counterfeiters in the motel room they were living out of.” Frowning, he cleared his throat. “The, ah, media found me at the scene. I didn’t get out in time.” He snorted. “Des Moines Secret Service financial crimes investigations have never made the national news, until now.”

 

Silence. He looked up.

 

Jack was gazing at him, an apology in his eyes. “I saw the clip. I’m sorry, Ethan.”

 

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

 

Jack sighed. “You don’t deserve to be hounded like that. I wish everyone would ignore us.”

 

Ethan looked away, for a moment.

 

“If we keep ignoring them, maybe they’ll give up?” Jack smiled hopefully.

 

“We can try.”

 

“Let’s be boring.” Jack winked. “Let’s be really, really boring.”

 

“You couldn’t be boring if you tried.” Ethan laughed. “It’s not in you.”

 

“I can do anything I set my mind to. I’m sure I could figure out how to be boring. I’ll just ask Senator Bryant.” He winked again. “Or Congressman Wills.”

 

Laughing again, Ethan felt some of the day’s tension uncoil from between his shoulders. “What about you? How was your day?”

 

Sighing, Jack scrubbed his hands over his face and through his hair. Dirty blonde and brunet strands stuck up at crazy angles. “Oh, just trying to figure out how to put together the right plans for the invasion. General Bradford and the Joint Chiefs were wargaming today, presenting me with… God, too many options.” He shook his head. “They have a model for every possible country joining us. Did you know that?”

 

“We like to be thorough when we’re presenting you with options.” It was Ethan’s turn to wink.

 

“It’s too much.” Jack pitched sideways on the bed, dragging his laptop with him. He propped himself up on his elbow, staring at the camera and Ethan. “I’m going to talk to President Puchkov about his offer. A combined Russian-American invasion force? And he wants us to take it to the UN together?” Jack shook his head. “I almost can’t believe it. He brought me a glass of champagne and a red folder with his proposal tucked in it at the G20’s closing reception. Said it was for me to read later and walked away. Classic Russian style.”

 

“Could it be a trap?” Ethan frowned. President Puchkov hadn’t been the most amazing world leader to Jack in his first year. Taunts before the UN summit in Prague, and then a tentative alliance ripped away after Jack’s revelation about their relationship.

 

“I don’t think so. I think it’s his attempt to rebuild what we were doing before. We haven’t really spoken much at all since—” Jack shrugged as Ethan squirmed. Jack never put words to describe what the press conference outing him and Jack was. “A joint deployment to combat the Caliphate, and under the auspices of the UN. That’s about as public an alliance and a commitment as you can get these days, in global politics.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe it’s his way of reaching out.”

 

Ethan nodded, and he tried to push away his creeping worries as he and Jack kept chatting back and forth, moving from politics to White House gossip.

 

“Oh!” Jack waggled his eyebrows. “Jeannette, that blonde reporter from the Herald? She got engaged to Benjamin in the Domestic Policy section today. He did it in the briefing room.”

 

“Really?” Ethan grinned. “Poor Vinny.”

 

“Vinny?”

 

“Secret Service. Vinny Brewsky. Good guy from Brooklyn. He was dating her for a while. Man, he was gone for her. She dumped him, though. She had her gaze set higher than just the Secret Service.”

 

Jack pressed his hand to his chest, his eyes wide. He tsked three times as Ethan chuckled.

 

“I can’t wait until Friday.” Jack smiled, gazing at Ethan.

 

“You’ve got the tree lighting this Friday night, right?” The National Christmas Tree, on the Ellipse near the White House, was decorated every year in December, along with smaller trees for every state and territory. The president—and historically the first family—always lit the tree the first weekend in December. It was a fun event, and festive, and past presidents had really gotten into the evening. Ethan knew Jack would be just as enthralled, feeding off the energy of the crowd.

 

“Yeah.” Jack nodded. “I’ll be there when your plane lands. Scott said he’s sending another agent to pick you up, since he needs almost everyone for the tree lighting. But you’re not going to be forgotten.” Jack grinned. “He’ll bring you back here, and I’ll escape as soon as I can.”

 

“You should enjoy yourself. Have fun. It’s a great event.”

 

“I want to enjoy myself with you.” Jack’s eyes glittered. “I don’t want to miss a single moment that you’re here. And, do you really think I’ll be able to even string a sentence together at all, once I know you’re home?”

 

Ethan chuckled. There was no talk at all about him joining Jack at the tree lighting. They’d decided long ago that they would keep their relationship far, far away from the public eye. No comments. No media. No public appearances. Maybe it was hiding. But it was their plan.

 

“Day after tomorrow.” Jack kept grinning, kept staring at Ethan like Ethan was something special. “I need a time machine. Need to speed up time. Thursday is just a waste. Let’s skip it. Go straight to Friday.”

 

Laughing, Ethan agreed and then watched Jack try to smother a yawn. “It’s late,” he said softly. “You should go to bed.”

 

“I am in bed.”

 

“You should get some sleep.” A smile played over Ethan’s lips. “Presidents need their beauty rest.”

 

Jack ran a hand through his hair, striking a pose as he lay on his side. “I’m gorgeous.”

 

“Yes. You are.”

 

That made Jack pause. He bit his lip, a flush rising on his cheekbones, and his gaze turned heated. “Friday,” he breathed. One hand reached for the screen, a finger tracing over Ethan’s face on his laptop as he blew a kiss. “I love you, Ethan.”

 

He had to fight through his clenched throat to speak, practically grunting. “Love you too.”

 

“Sleep well.” Jack smiled. “Talk to you tomorrow.” His hand slowly drew back, hovering over the mousepad. Any moment, he’d end the call. Ethan stared at him, breathing fast through his mouth, trying to make the seconds stretch longer.

 

And then the screen went dark.

 

Ethan rested his head in his hands, breathing out slowly.

 

Day after tomorrow. And then he’d see Jack again.


Timestamp: Three months into Ethan’s exile in Iowa, and three months prior to the start of Enemy of My Enemy.

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