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1. The Launch
The week of the launch it was humid, heat piled up in the corners and a constant stiff ache that resided in Jake’s chest. He had Medical check it for him, knew space wouldn’t be as forgiving to injuries. He was fine of course—always had been. The heat lasted all until he was in the carrier shuttle, being driven to his pre-flight checks, all through his exercises and final send off calls. It lasted, along with the ache, until he was strapped into his seat, in the cockpit like so many times before. And somehow even when the heat left, the ache stayed.
They broke through the planetary fields just as the sun rose. Jake watched as the rays hit the ground, and then as they escaped home, shooting fast and away from that glowing light. Only when they were settled into orbit did he see the sun again, the earth, all blue, all beautiful and so big. The ache settled in his chest then, a small thrum—the tune of machinery keeping them here, miles from the ground.
“You’re spacing out again.” The laugh came from behind him, familiar and lukewarm.
“You’re one to talk,” Jake muttered back as he turned to him.
Smith laughed even more then, Jake didn’t understand why, but he looked out again, saw the clouds, like scrapes of mash still left in the blow, and felt a small laugh reside in him too, lingering like always.
***
In front of them the goliath space station hovered.
“Initiating docking procedure.” The main thrusters fell off with a jolt, he saw Smith flip up another switch and braced once again as the last thruster released and they went surging forward.
The Pacifica whirled with their descent onto it, the clamor of latches locking into place to anchor their payload, drowned out by the vacuum of space and the rush of blood surging through his ears. The doors open, depressurising the station entirely, Jake looks out at the expanse of the space station—it feels new, brandished and dull. All traces wiped thoroughly from its metal skeleton. They make their way through the ship, restocking and powering up the generators. Jake finds himself in the pod room. He reaches for the plastic stars he packed into his personal bag.
They feel tacky in his hands, gooey from the heat. He tries to reshape them regardless of the real ones outside. They shine at him through the portholes. It looks like the ocean, great mass stretched to all corners. His skin itches to swim. He writes it down in his company issued notebook for when he gets back. The lights blink to life in the room and it's only then that he realises that they had been off the whole time. Their third crew member makes her way over to him from the switch board.
“You alright?” Her voice is steady, booming into the vastness of the room. He called her Glasses as a joke once and it stuck, his Navy ways always rearing its head every time they talked.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” He casts her a raised eyebrow, smirk slwoly forming on his lips.
“Is Jake spacing out again?” The question resounds from the hallway as Smith turns the corner and enters into the room too, “wow leaving me out of the party? That hurts, you guys.”
2. The Faulty Valve
They set the coordinates for the move, Jake veers the ship into position and starts the engines of the Pacifica. They start moving towards the moon.
It's in the control room when Jake first realises it, two hours after take off, that both Smith and Glasses are avoiding his eyes. Avoiding him entirely where they could. He tells himself it's fine and tries not to linger near exit doors after he's left an area. But the whispers they exchange keep him rooted, wipe away all his social coding and he starts to hang just a breath short of the exits.
It's on the second day, when they’re just miles out from the moon, when it all comes out.
They’re back in the control room, Glasses at the helm this time with Jake at the back, he watches as Smith lingers off to the side, bouncing on his toes. Jake had known he was the antsy type, excitement bubbling over into raw anxiety but when he hears their rough whispers he knows this isn't that, feels it in the tension between them all.
He rechecks the calibrations then turns to them.
“Ok, what's going on?” They both jolt apart, eyes wide and it all comes out. A valve had come loose when they docked. It had slowly started to leak their oxygen supply. He reaches from the emergency panel and hits the dial button.
“We thought—,” he cuts them off, rage snapping into him like a second skin.
“No you didn’t.”
The line connects.
“We have an issue, our oxygen has been compromised,” his lungs feel ragged as he speaks, and the ache that he had been pushing down resurfaces.
3. The Rock Samples
There's a heavy load that resides within him as the news comes through. Two minutes. That's all they would get to be on the moon. After months of preparation and training, all those procedures, drills, simulations. All boiled down to a single faulty valve.
Jake excuses himself to their sleeping pods.
The pod room is quiet, eerie in a way only space can make. He digs through his draw of things, pulls it all apart, objects floating around him then falling stagnant at the lack of gravity, then organises, meticulous. In the same breath he reorganises his thoughts, collects the scattered pieces into a whole, though the gaps between the crashes still stay. That’s when he tastes it. The slight metallic sting in his mouth. The stringent taste stays even into what would be the afternoon, following him through their second set of preparations and the readying of their vessel ship. It doesn't lighten even when they're at their destination or when he suits up.
“We only have one shot at this okay?” Glasses knocks on his helmet to grab his attention. He scowls at her then nods when she doesn't move away.
“Ok, we have T minus two minutes to gather these samples,” she looks between both Smith and Jake, voice crackling through the speakers in their helmets, “headquarters has instructed us to be quick and brief, so it's get out and get back in, understood?”
The moon is vast. Planetary desert dressed in bone white, the beauty of it, haunting. Jake steps off the ladder, steady feet landing with a small cloud of dust, he wipes at his suit out of reflex. Like ants on a biscuit, they scatter quickly, to gather the samples. He finds himself near a wide crater, picks around it for a decent sized rock and files it away like Glasses and Smith. He bends down to gather some of the sandy breakoff into vials when he notices Smith approaching him.
“Don’t talk to me right now,” the words are sharp, pointed thorns that cross over their radio, Smith jerks away in shock and something close to concern. The heat simmers under his skin, face taut as he looks at Smith and only sees his reflection. Clammy skin and bloodshot eyes, they unravel him from the inside, showing something worse he had tried to hide for days now.
Taken aback he turns and decides to walk away. He wanders a little more, trying to chase away the anger but it holds him like a hand, guiding him further away.
When he turns around the earth waits for him. It takes everything he has to take her in, round and whole and home. His anger slowly washes away from him in his stunned awe and sits down, disregarding the timer ticking away at his right cheek and just feels the fullness in his chest.
Whole again after so long.
4. Bradley
The earth before him is dark now, illuminated only by the backdrop of sunlight, glows around the edges like an aquarium covered in algae. The space here is quiet. He looks over, eyes catching on the slivers of sunlight, mirage in a dessert the figure appears before him. Eyes twinkling with the stars cast out, lives reaching across time and space. It doesn't occur to him how much the ache has grown until his hands start to quiver in their gloves. Gone is the what and the anger and all that he has left now is the want and the reason. It starts small, the pull of air never reaching through his nose and into his body. The alarms start blaring at the thirty second mark worried that he might not make it all while his awe comforts the deep burn in his chest. The others start talking over the speakers, they get drowned out. He clammers closer to the figure, that smile, blinding toothy thing, a perfect shaped bite mark cast into his synapses.
He feels the hands before he sees them, the hard yank jostling him away from the figure, which was now sat on the ground watching the earth take its turns. He looks back and sees Glasses pulling him away, sweat gliding down her temple as she heaved.
“You told me no funny business!” She heaves him one more time, “you said you were alright!” He reaches back towards the figure, to their spot near the edge of a crater, fights against her hold to get back even just for a second, one more encounter. Another pair of hands grab him. If he didn’t know any better he would have stayed but his body’s morbid desire to live kicks in and he stops scrambling as they pull him one last time into the ship.
In the distance he glimpses the dying light and a tight-lipped smile as the hatch closes.
5. The Stars
It's a warm summer morning. Early enough that the dawn had yet to change the sky, clouds spread out across the horizon blocking the light just a little longer.
“Wanna go somewhere?”
“Where?”
“To see the stars. It always helps me when I can't sleep. And it’s a good night, tonight”
They drive out to the pond, where the grass grows unruly up through the uneven soil to their knees. Jake hovers near the path, watches as Bradley makes his way towards the small wharf. In the quiet he sighs and follows him along the trail carved out in the grass. Step after step, they wade towards the wooden deck—rocking in parts, sturdy in others. They sit down, then lay and stay laying there, looking up, waiting for the stars to slowly disappear into the light. Bradley tells him about his fascination with stars and Jake sees the love pouring out of each whispered breath. He can't help it when the tears start as he tells him about his father and ocean and sky. An ache blossoms within him that night.
“Eventually you learn it's just what it is but it’s so much more beautiful to think you go to the stars when you die,” he laughs as he says it though, it’s warm and carked at the edges, but Jake guesses that’s what residual grief does to people.
“Space is just the ocean reflected back to us, your dad died in the ocean he would’ve been closest to the stars there.”
Bradley falls asleep amongst the endives, tall water weeds brushing past his fingertips, lulled by the quiet and the comfort of the stars. Jake sits up and watches as the breeze pulls waves from the small pond, it washes over them, feeding into his bones—lingering.
He curls up closer to Bradley, seeking out the heat and comfort that only warm bodies gave, like a new fawn tucking into itself.
Later he wakes cast in light, his hair aglow where it catches the blonde strands. He inhales the grass and trees and the fading stars in the open sky. Beside him, he can hear Bradley, his clothes rustling and his weight creaking the wood of the wharf.
“Good morning sunshine,” Bradley laughs as he says it. The curtains of his mind strain the light, faltering and fluctuating, the flickers grazing the surface of each leaf and blade of grass.
There’s no more after that, the memory too shaky to be filed into the cabinets of his mind, pages lost to time.
***
He can't remember when he forgot that smile.
“You promised you were over this, I vouched for you to come back here!”
Jake can’t look at her, eyes still trained on the surface that is slowly drifting away now. The moon’s curve is littered with craters, nests of rock and debris, and maybe among them somewhere was Bradley—waiting.
“He’s gone Jake,” it’s Smith this time, from his place at the controls,“coming back here won't change that.”