Work Text:
Space is a vacuum. ‘Everything about it sucks’, Namjoon’s mentor used to joke, and he would know. He’d been there twice.
Namjoon has lived his whole life on the ground until now, in the dirt with the millipedes and roly polys and tetanus. A mouthful of dirt could shut your jaw forever.
He could have used a good shutting up way back when he was talking his way into orbit, into an ambitious solo mission far, far away from the oceans, lakes, and mountains that mark his home, if he still has one.
Earth still clutches him in her desperate grasp even this far away, as the capsule window drifts over nothing but blackness. The small, round porthole scans over scattered galaxy arms and occasionally gives way to a star so far away, so deeply crimson that its death began and ended billions of years ago.
To have died but appear as if you’re still burning, to be gone and to have anyone that doesn’t know you well enough yet insisting that there must be substance left, some light they can hang onto, a truth you must have overlooked. Namjoon supposes that’s an apt description of what he’s been doing all these years.
He’s tumbling over the stratosphere right now, waiting to be retrieved and taken to the ISS. The thought of other people, a voice besides his own ringing in his ear fills him with dread. If anything’s been made clear by this vast, cold blackness, it’s that he was made to be alone, meant to be stale, quiet, unknowable.
Another clutch of stars passes the window. There’s nothing to do but wait, catch glimpses of ancient plasma, ruminate on all the missteps that brought him here, all the flaws that mean he won’t be allowed back.
Human eyes miss things all the time, good and bad. Namjoon’s eyes missed a great big everything and he didn’t even notice until this last year, when he was strapped into the vomit comet and for the first time saw stars that weren’t in the sky, celestial beings ripped from the back of his brain to account for the stability that was missing.
So much has been missing.
Some time ago, and Namjoon isn't sure when, he stopped trusting himself. One by one he stopped letting himself make decisions that involved other people, all in pursuit of a dream, in pursuit of the stars, of rocket engines and firepower that superseded his imagination. Now that he understands all of it, he’s just beginning to grapple with what he traded it for.
His family comes to mind. Casual dinners, too. Dates. All of those things that fell to the wayside in the interest of the space program and its rigors. That was the only thing that mattered, enough to fill his heart and then some.
But was it enough? Was it worth it? He keeps expecting the lights to come up as in a black box theater, a one-man production with the typical scattered applause of a community show. ‘It was all a joke!’, someone would say, ‘aren’t you happy now?’
Would he be happy? What would there be left of him, actually? He’s a stranger to soil. They haven’t acquainted themselves since he was seven years old. He knows his brain moves in abstract patterns, and yet he finds math accounts for all of it. There’s no mystery, no intrigue, no one to tell him to get his head out of his ass and go do something ill-advised and memorable. He’s not allowed that. He’s been labeled ‘brilliant’, and so, for the rest of his life, he isn’t allowed to fuck around, to fail or feel, just to strap in.
It’s all so cold, so utterly alone. Namjoon feels it down to his bones. A leak in the cabin and he’s finished, the tiniest hole and he’s done for good and yet, inside his suit, he feels himself struggling to breathe. This is it, he thinks. It’s all over. I will sit here, still, for the rest of my life, motionless and perfect.
The sun comes into view from the window. He closes his eyes. He thinks of fire, of plasma. It's all the same, fireplace or neutron star, wooded knoll or his childhood home ablaze, shuddering its last breaths on his ninth birthday. He should have known.
“Namjoon-ssi?”
A voice crackles to life over the intercom. He jumps.
“R-Roger,” he answers, his eyelids fluttering open. A voice on the other side sighs and laughs.
“Sorry about that delay—we’re on our way. I’ll be there in 3.”
“Alr—okay.” He rights himself, blinks in rapid succession to will the tears away (as if there was anything he could do to fix himself). He pulls himself toward the front of the capsule, readies himself for departure. Two breaths pass before he steps out and into the abyss to be taken by a fellow astronaut.
It happens quickly. The suit takes his hand, the cord, pulls them both to the space station. It’s all a blur, coming inside, taking off suits and adjusting to his new surroundings. He doesn’t know the name of his coworker, is overwhelmed by the sudden burst of languages, faces, the smile that greets him. It’s so much that Namjoon stumbles into the other astronaut as if forced, as if gravity itself pulls him into his body. He freezes.
“Apologies.”
“Don’t worry about it.” The man claps him on the shoulder. Namjoon blinks at a name on his uniform in foreign letters. He's too tired to make it out.
So he's allowed a hand. And more? What is he allowed to love? What's the procedure for that?
He's tugged forward through stale air and toward his quarters. The space decompresses along with some unknowable part of him.
“Welcome back,” says the astronaut. He turns to face Namjoon. Namjoon catches his eyes—dark brown, fierce, alive with the force of nitrogen, carbon, ATP. A forest fire.
Fire is fire is always the same.