Title: Nuclear Sunrise
Author: Jo Carthage
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 12/19/2023
Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 90900
Genre: Historical, historical/1950s, science fiction, romance, interracial, bisexual, gay, military, blue slips, scientific installation, Idaho desert, family drama, physical and mental abuse, homophobia, racism, sexist language, othering, in the closet, Atomic Age, science romance.
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Description
It’s 1951, and US Air Force Captain Brian Flynn hails from Roswell, New Mexico. He’s twenty-six, queer, and back in the closet thanks to his homophobic father. And he’s deeply tired of alien jokes. But Brian has bigger worries than his hometown’s recent extraterrestrial reputation. Brian’s the new security director at a top-secret atomic energy research facility in the sage-dusted plains of Idaho. His job is simple: keep any plutonium from walking out the door, keep the scientists safe from themselves, or, failing that, keep them from killing anyone else.
Nuclear physicist Dr. Aaron Antares is a cowboy in every sense of the word: the boots, the attitude, the homoerotic overtones. But in addition to gleefully violating every security procedure Brian can come up with, he’s also keeping a secret.
Brian knows Aaron is dangerous long before he discovers his out-of-this-world secret. The man flirts too freely, laughs too loudly, and can’t play straight to save his life. But Aaron’s amber eyes and gen-tle offers of a ride home in the flurrying Idaho snows are wearing down Brian’s defenses.
Will these two men find love in the high desert, or will they be kept apart by the cruelties of the Atomic Age?
Nuclear Sunrise
Jo Carthage © 2023
All Rights Reserved
The Mello Dee Club and Bar of Acro, ID was hot, crowded, and fetid on Friday night. It had nothing on the beach-smooth bodies of West Hollywood or even the rowdy cowboy bars of Roswell. It was something in between, all isolated men and the few women who made their lives in Arco, vying for attention that no one was actually going to get.
No one, except Dr. Antares.
He’d been dancing since he walked in the door, drinking a few beers but always finding a fresh partner when the fiddle players picked up a new tune.
Brian got it; he did. The simple pleasure of a warm hand on his arm during a hot dance, another hanging on the back of his neck, carefully painted lips hovering over his ear. He got it.
Hodgins had given him a ride into town. He’d picked up new pairs of pants and boots at the general store while the others got settled at the bar. He’d thought about finding a new coat but decided to wait until his paycheck came in. If he saved every penny, it would only be seven more months until he could make the down payment on a new truck.
Now, Brian was sitting in a back booth, shopping bag behind his knees, sipping a single beer and waiting. He hadn’t made a space for himself on the packed dance floor, hadn’t particularly intended to dance. He’d been sitting there for two hours, honoring the same beer, mechanically raising it to his lips when he felt someone’s eyes on him. A few of the others had tried to call him up, but with women so light on the ground, the more men who stayed off the dance floor the better time the rest of the fellas could have. Hodgins had already disappeared with an older blond woman, seeming to forget he was Brian’s only way home. Aside from watching Dr. Antares dance, Brian had mostly been occupying himself with trying to decide who he’d ask for a ride back to the barracks.
Antares was heel-toe dancing in his real, broken-in cowboy boots. Brian had seen him wearing them every night they’d been keeping each other company in the lab, but this was the first time he was seeing them used the way they were supposed to be. They were good boots, work boots. Nothing like the faux-cowboy chic some of the men affected the instant they crossed the Rockies. Brian remembered hearing Dr. Zinn tell one of the nurses that Dr. Antares had been a ranch hand before he got into physics. That he’d worked his way through school, over and over again, just fighting his way through, working summers at the ranch and winters in the lab.
A few times, Antares had caught his eye from the dance floor. And Brian thought—no, he hoped—no. He wondered. Was Dr. Antares wishing it was him in his arms? Was Dr. Antares wishing he could dance with Brian, could twirl him around or be twirled around by him?
He watched Antares dip a giggling woman who could have been old enough to be his mother.
And then it clicked.
The whole night, Dr. Antares had been picking the safe ones. The ones who’d come in with a girl they were tight with, the ones who weren’t getting picked by the cowboys or scientists: the bar owner’s wife, the cowgirl in ill-fitting Sunday clothes. He was picking them and dancing with them, but there was none of the tension the other men brought to it.
Brian let that realization give him courage, help him to stand, set down the beer that had probably been empty for half an hour. He stepped into the flow. He let his hips move a little, his hand close to his chest, and when Dr. Antares caught his eye again, he paused. Antares twirled his partner once more and let her go as the song ended. And he stepped into Brian, eyes only for him. He ducked his head.
“Need a ride?”
Brian nodded. “I think Hodgins is staying in town. If you’ve got the space, I’d appreciate it.”
“Lead the way.”
Brian used the chaos of the room to slip his hand, once, just barely there, across Antares’s belly. He felt his stomach jerk against his fingers as the raucous, throbbing crowd around them moved, and then Antares was brushing past him to snag his black cowboy hat off the rack by the wall, long legs carrying him to the door.
Brian caught Dr. Eisenberg’s eye, and there was a flick to Antares, something—like a two-by-four to the chest.
And he’d know.
By the time they’d made it out to the parking lot and Brian had caught a face full of snow, he felt chilled all over, hugging his arms around himself, shopping bag swinging from his elbow. He wondered what the fuck he thought he was doing. He sucked in the cold air, felt the stretch of scars on his back.
And remembered.
Antares looked at his hunched posture, took a step farther away, then carefully handed Brian his keys.
“I’m too drunk to drive.”
“Then why did you—”
He cocked his head at Brian, considering. “Hodgins gave you a lift in, right? And then left with the widow Kleimeicher?” Brian nodded, and Antares rolled his shoulders.
“I don’t particularly enjoy being trapped someplace without a way home, and I figured neither would you. The hoedown will still be here next Friday.”
Brian grimaced. “I wish I could offer you a couch, but all I’ve got is a twin bed across from a kitchen the size of a closet.”
“I’ll sleep it off in the lab. The drive to your place is long enough for me to sober up enough to be able to make my way to the lab without running myself into a ditch.”
“I can catch a ride with someone else or drop you at your place—”
But Antares was already opening his passenger door. “I live in a cabin way up in the mountains, Airman. Just let me take you home.”
Brian wanted to argue, but by the time he got around to the driver’s side door, Dr. Antares was already asleep against the passenger window, cowboy hat cocked over his knee. Brian let himself look for a bare, moon-slivered moment in the quiet of the parking lot. His mouth was a little open, his hair ruffled by the dozen hands of all of the women he’d danced with. A curl arced over his closed eyelid. Brian’s fingers itched to tuck it back behind his ear.
He gripped the wheel, got the truck into gear, and headed east on Highway 26, keeping his mind as blank as the dark-water emptiness of the high desert. They could be driving straight through to the Pacific or right out into space for all the land on either side of them gave up its secrets.
Brian glanced over at him once they pulled up to the airmen’s barracks, the blank windows of his team’s bedrooms staring down at them. He reached out a careful hand, fingers stiff with driving, and nudged the doctor’s shoulder. Antares woke with a start, jerking forward until his hands smacked the dash, fingers flexing as he caught his breath.
He muttered, “Waking up always feels like a crash landing.”
Brian wondered what planes Dr. Antares had been landing in out in Wyoming.
“You sure you’re okay to drive?” Brian asked. Not that he relished the idea of everyone seeing Dr. Antares’s truck in front of his barracks in the morning. But he wanted the man safe.
“I’m good,” he said crisply.
“What’s the chemical formula for table salt?”
“NaCl.”
“How many electrons in U-238?”
“Ninety-two on the dot.”
“Who’s the US President?”
“Abraham Lincoln—no, don’t give me that look and don’t take my keys. It’s Harry S. Truman. Good night, officer.”
Brian slid out of the cab, meeting Antares in front of the truck. He pressed the keys into the doctor’s hand as the other man caught him around the wrist, fingertips light over his pulse point.
“Thanks for the ride, Airman.” Antares drew him in slowly, as slow as breathing. His face went to Brian’s shoulder and pressed a kiss to the soft skin right behind his ear.
Brian froze, eyes shifting up to the watching windows, heart choking him for a long moment until he felt Antares drop his hands, heard him get in the truck, start the engine, and leave, taillights red in the distance.
Shit.
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Jo Carthage is a bi, cis woman living in Silicon Valley. In her career, Jo has worked with survivors of labor and sex trafficking in DC, helped get incredible women and queer folks elected to state and national office in three states, and thinks politics and science fiction go together beautifully. Jo’s grandfather worked as a nuclear physicist at Oak Ridge in the 1950s, but it wasn’t until a 2019 family road trip veered off course and she spent an afternoon at EBR-1 that she started to write Atomic Age fiction.
Jo was honored to have Nuclear Sunrise favorably reviewed by the Director of the Mescalero Apache Cultural Center and intends to donate a portion of proceeds to their important work. As a writer, Jo loves slow burn, hurt/comfort, queer history, enemies-to-lovers, and happy endings.
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