Moonshot - Part 4
Clegan Astronaut AU. Official sequel to To the Moon and Back.
Masterpost Read on AO3
AU Summary: One year after Artemis 3. One year after Shackleton. One year after John almost lost his life and Gale almost lost his husband. But after a long, tough recovery, Artemis 4 is ready to launch, and it's Gale's turn to step foot on the moon. (And they are still obnoxiously in love. Even more so than before).
Author's Note: I'm alive! Hello, hi. I have no concept of how long it's been. I hope this update finds you well.
---
In the perpetual night, there is silence.
Sound doesn’t travel through space, where there’s no atmosphere to carry or reflect it. If not for com communication, no one could hear Bucky at all. No one would have heard what happened, what went wrong. There would be no record of any of it.
It happens so damn fast, faster than he can put together the things that he’s feeling and seeing. He’ll never piece the puzzle back together quite right. And every time he thinks about it, sees it, feels it… it’ll be different.
The line between awareness and unconsciousness is thin, like a shroud, and all he can hear is the rush of his own breathing as everything gets all jumbled around him. But even that fades to nothing.
He’s alone in the dark, but light pulses in his vision, spinning flashes of bright white that interrupt blinding black in a way that makes it impossible to tell down from up. He knows he’s tumbling, his vision tunneling, everything fading in and out and in and out, and the shroud suffocates him, blocking his airways until he can’t breathe.
There’s no oxygen left, and the pain stabbing, pulsing, ripping through his entire body wrenches a scream from his lungs until it burns so bad it makes him see red. No one will hear it, because his coms broke before the part of his brain that knew to cry out in anguish caught up with the sensation of dying.
By the time it does catch up, he thinks he might be breaking, shattering into pieces, and he wishes, more than anything, not to be awake, not to bear witness to whatever Hell he’s stepped into.
In that moment – he hates to admit – he wishes for death.
But he’s falling. He’s falling, and he can’t stop, and there’s nothing to hold onto. Distantly, someone calls his name, but they can’t help him, and then there’s nothing but silence.
Bucky falls and falls and falls until reality splits in two and he feels the force of his back hitting the bed even as he’s ripped away from it.
White and silver walls envelope him, the small capsule that acted as a refuge on this desolate piece of rock that was not meant for them. The cockpit of Starship is unmistakable with the glow of consoles and monitors reflecting in his eyes. Everything exactly where it’s supposed to be. Exactly how he and Curt left it before the EVA.
Except one little thing.
Beary Egan sits happily beside Bucky’s console, name stitched in red on his little shirt. Bucky reaches out curiously to feel the soft fur.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he tells the bear. He was meant to stay on Orion. At least that’s what Bucky thinks he remembers, but the plush feels as real as anything else.
Distantly, the pain is still threatening to tear him up from the inside, but it’s duller now, somehow. Drifting.
He thinks that maybe he should be dead. He knows what happened, even if all he has is flashing, teeth-grinding snapshots of something terrible, some sort of adrenaline-fueled forced consciousness keeping his head just above the water trying to drown him.
Certainly, at the very least, he should not be standing. He should not be walking. He should not be here.
This isn’t right.
His chest is getting tight, threatening to suffocate him, but he forces air into his lungs, forces his legs to move even though they don’t want to. He drags his fingertips along the inner wall of the lander, wandering away from the consoles, from the misplaced bear. “Curt?” he calls out.
But no one answers.
Distantly, Bucky knows that no one can hear him. There’s only silence.
The med bay is ravaged, supplies pulled haphazardly out of their containers in some desperate plea for someone’s life. Bucky finds Curt on his knees by the cot, and he walks up beside him.
It’s not like he didn’t know, and yet his breath catches when he sees his own body, laying still on the bed. The pain starts building again, burning, as he stares at his own hopeless life, on the brink of death. His eyes are closed, his face ghostly pale. His skin is bruised purple and blue from decompression, and there’s a splint on his leg.
He doesn’t know how Curt got him back into the lander, still breathing.
He never really will.
Curt is holding his hand, whispering something that Bucky can’t hear. He couldn’t hear it then, either. He might be crying, but even when Bucky tries to say his name again, he won’t look up.
Bucky can hear his own heart pounding in his chest, faster, faster, faster as the panic sets in. Sudden nausea rolls through him, and he recoils as what he’s seeing clicks into place.
He doesn’t want to see this. He doesn’t know what’s happening. He isn’t supposed to be here anymore. He’s better now.
He’s supposed to be better now.
Right?
They made it home. He made it home, even when they didn’t think he would.
Right?
He isn’t supposed to be here. He doesn’t want to be here.
He doesn’t want to go through it all again.
Please don’t make him do it again.
He turns to look out the window, and sure enough, there’s the surface of the moon, right where it’s meant to be. Dust and craters and shadows as far as the eye can see. Earthrise in the distance. As he stares at it, trying to understand, trying to find a way to make it not real, he hears the sound of a flatline.
When he turns back around, Curt is gone, just vanished into nothing. Slowly, warily, Bucky takes his place, kneeling at the side of the bed. His ears ringing, he reaches out to take his own hand, but it’s different now. His eyes follow the familiar lines of a toned forearm up, up, his breath shaking. Suddenly he feels no physical pain anymore, but then he finally focuses on that face. That perfect, beautiful face.
His husband’s face.
Gale Cleven lays before him in Starship’s med bay cot, his eyes closed. A disgusting, nauseating wave of grief grips Bucky from the inside as he stares at Gale’s broken body. Gale’s beautiful pale face bruised and bloodied, with red matting his blonde hair. Gale’s perfect skin splotched with purple and black. Gale’s hands, cold beneath Bucky’s fingers.
“Buck?” Bucky whispers. “Angel?”
He swallows thickly, feeling his face getting hot, his eyes wet, his jaw trembling, and every ounce of pain returns to him with all the force of the accident that caused it, pulsing through him.
He suddenly wishes it were him on the bed again.
“No. No no no no no… Gale, please.” His voice comes out soft and broken, strangled in agony. “Wake up. Wake up!”
He wants to take it back. Make it real.
Make it real, if this is the alternative. Please.
Because this is so much worse.
Bucky will take it if he has to. Just… not Gale.
But Gale’s chest is still. His pulse gone. The warmth of his body, gone. Everything that Bucky loves, his whole world, gone, right in front of him.
He can’t move. He can’t breathe. All he can do is sit there on his knees, press his forehead to Gale’s hand, and try not to scream as he feels every ounce of hope drain away.
He is the sole living, breathing inheritor of a vast, still moonscape outside, and he is alone.
He’s alone on the moon.
He’s alone in this life.
His ship might as well be lost at sea, and where it stands under a black, infinite sky, there is silence.
—
September 14, 2026 Houston, TX
“It’s been a while, since I had one of those.”
“How long?”
Bucky shrugs. “Couple months, probably.” He looks down at the ground, at the blue and white floral rug beneath his feet, the fringe along the edges. He thinks absently that it’s a rug his mother would’ve liked. But he’s not talking to his mother, no matter how badly he wishes he could.
He doesn’t want to look at the woman across from him, and he busies himself playing with the hem at the bottom of his t-shirt. Or is it Gale’s shirt? It feels a little tighter than it should, and he can’t remember getting dressed this morning. “I guess that’s not true,” he admits. “I still have them, they’re just… short. Not as bad. I don’t… I don’t wake up like that anymore, you know? I don’t wake up still feeling the pain.”
He tries to kind of tuck his chin to his chest, so he can smell the fabric. It’s definitely Gale’s shirt. It makes him feel a little better, but it’s just a little too tight on him, and he knows he’ll have to change before work or it’ll bother him all day.
“And what happened this time? When you woke up.”
Bucky closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, the memory of the dream still all too real. There are few things that annoy him more than talking about his feelings or crying in front of other people. He’s supposed to be strong, carefree, running into the wind. That’s how he’s always been. No one is supposed to see the ugly, vulnerable parts of him, and too many people have seen too much of those this year. But he glances up at his therapist, who’s waiting patiently for him to go on, and she gives him a reassuring nod.
“I…” He frowns, gathering his courage even though he feels miniscule in this chair, like an ant under a falling shoe. His chest hurts again, and for a moment, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to say it after all. “I woke up, like, crying, I guess. Everything hurt. I-I couldn’t breathe. I was crying so hard I th-thought I might throw up.”
He grits his teeth at the admission, at the sound of those pathetic words on his tongue, at the sound of his own stuttering voice. He’s not supposed to be doing that anymore, but sometimes, just like the shaking hands, it sneaks back in, especially when he feels like he’s losing control.
His face is hot. Distantly, part of him worries that the pain will come back somehow.
“My hands were sh-shaking, and they wouldn’t stop. A-And Gale…”
“Gale?”
“He must’ve been in the bathroom? He w-wasn’t there. And Pepper was crying.” Bucky presses his fist to his mouth, trying to hide. He wills the lump in his throat to go away as he remembers what happened last night, how inconsolable he was when he woke up alone in that bed. The room was spinning in a quiet darkness, but his ears were ringing as searing pain drove his vision red, this feeling of sickening loss wrapped around him in a wave of nausea. His lungs were on fire, and Gale wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there.
Bucky might’ve screamed. He might not have had the air to scream. He might’ve just sat there, paralyzed in fear. He doesn’t remember.
His eyes feel wet, but he desperately doesn’t want to cry right here, even though this woman has seen him do it before. It is her job, after all.
“And you thought he was gone?” she asks, when Bucky can’t make the words come out.
He nods, biting down hard on the inside of his cheek. He looks out the window, trying to focus on the fluttering green leaves of a tree right outside. It’s early in the morning, and the birds are still singing their songs to greet the day. Bucky’s jealous of them, waking up with music in their hearts instead of crushing grief.
“But he found me,” he finally says, when he can get enough air to form words.
“And then what happened?”
“He pulled me to him, like always,” Bucky tells her. “But I couldn’t calm down. I just kept th-thinkin’ about how warm his hands felt. I couldn’t even hear what he was sayin’ to me, but I didn’t want him t-to s-stop talking. I… I didn’t want him to let go.”
“Did the pain go away?”
Bucky hesitates, and he nods. Every time he has a real bad dream about the accident, his head hurts as bad as it did when he was on Orion. His leg is always sore, pins and needles digging into his skin while his pulse throbs around bone once destroyed. Sometimes, he thinks he can feel the IV needle in his arm, and it just holds him right there, making him question if he ever made it out after all. But it never lasts.
“Did you tell Gale about the dream?”
Bucky shifts uncomfortably and goes back to looking at the rug for a while. He scrunches his brow when he can’t quite find the words that he wants, feeling them slip further and further away. It leaves him sitting in drifting silence, this moment where he feels blank. After a while, everything in his head just disappears in a puff of smoke.
“John?”
“What?” He can’t remember the question anymore.
“Did you tell Gale about the dream?”
He blinks, blinks again, and it all filters back in. “I… I told him it was about Shackleton.”
“But not that it was about him,” she observes.
Bucky shakes his head.
“Why not?”
He looks at her, clenches his jaw. His thumb rubs over the silver wedding band on his finger. “He’s leaving in November.”
“You don’t want him to worry?”
Bucky scoffs. He knows Gale’s worried about him; that’s no secret. “No. I just know that nothing will change that. He has a job to do, and so do I.”
“Do you think the reason you had this dream, first bad one in a while, you said, is because you’re increasingly worried about him getting hurt like you did?”
“I’ve always been scared of that,” Bucky says truthfully. She knows that. That’s the whole reason why Bucky and Gale are required to go to therapy in the first place. It probably wouldn’t have been a bad idea to do it anyway, and Bucky is certain that they both still really, really would’ve needed it had they not had Artemis 4 looming over them. But that was the bargain. If Gale wanted to stay on the mission, and if Bucky wanted to stay in Mission Control, then they had to make sure they’d be able to cope.
“Of course,” she says. “But now you’re getting closer. It’s becoming more real. Especially after the T-38 accident.”
Bucky nods, but he feels his shoulders tense up.
“Do you find yourself thinking about that accident a lot?” When he hesitates and nods again, she says, “It’s normal, John.”
He chuckles. There’s that word again, still haunting him. Normal.
He bites his cheek again and shoves one hand between his knees, annoyed at the faint trembling in his fingers. He doesn’t want to do this anymore, but she’s just looking at him, waiting. He learned months ago that it’s easier if he just says what he’s thinking, instead of trying to be all evasive about it.
“I knew it would be hard… r-really hard,” he reluctantly admits. He takes a deep breath, looking for control again. “To watch him go. But I guess I thought… this is our job. This is our life. It’s who he is, it’s who I am… Maybe I thought that that part of me would take over, somehow. Like it always does.”
There’s this terrible disconnect between who John has always thought he was, who he wanted to be, and who he feels like he is. Sometimes it clicks, and sometimes he still feels so lost, like he’s being split into pieces that don’t quite fit right anymore. He’s spent this whole year trying to glue them back together into something that looks like the picture he has in his mind, but sometimes he feels like the picture has changed, like there’s something missing or maybe something new that wasn’t there before.
He wants so badly to be the person he’s always been. But… “People look at me differently now, even though I’m better,” he says. He can’t look at her anymore. So he looks out that window, willing his voice not to break. “And I dunno… I dunno if I’m still the same person. Makes me think maybe I can’t do this after all.”
He doesn’t want to admit that. It physically hurts to admit that. He so badly wants to be at that console for Artemis 4, and every time he’s talking to the crew over coms, monitoring a mock spacecraft or EVA, he feels like he’s comfortable in his own skin again. But it’ll be different, when it’s time for the real thing. When his crew is 239,000 miles away instead of 500 feet. When his husband is on the other side of the sky.
It’ll be different. And Bucky doesn’t know if he’s ready.
His therapist leans forward in her chair, though, forcing him to stop being avoidant and look at her. “John, you’re still you. You’re still the same person you’ve always been. And I have no doubt that you’ll be able to do this.” She waves her notepad in the air. “See? I have the power here, and if I thought you weren’t capable, trust me, NASA would know. You just need to try to accept that it might be a little different now.”
Bucky scratches mindlessly at his arm, vague memories of Rosie trying to get a fucked up butterfly needle out of it flashing in his mind. He knows she’s right. Everything is different now, and part of him knows that it probably won’t ever be the same again. He’s been through too much for it to be the same.
And honestly, he is so, so afraid.
But he woke up again this morning, still breathing. Gale was safe and sound at his side, and he smiled when he saw that Bucky was awake, and in that moment, it was okay. Bucky got himself here, and even though it hurt, it was okay.
And after this, he’ll go to work, like he always does. He’ll oversee the training of the next mission. Gale’s mission.
And somehow, it will be okay.
—
Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX
One of Bucky’s favorite things about working at Johnson Space Center is that he doesn’t have to think about anything else. Whether he’s so absorbed in his work that nothing else matters, or the chaos of the place just keeps him on his toes, it’s perfect for his busy brain.
The best part is, he never knows exactly what will happen each day. Even if he goes in with a plan – training exercise 9am, lunch with Gale 12:30, press conference 2pm, rant to Marge 4pm – pretty much none of it is predictable. Sometimes your CAPCOM sends you to an unpleasant death 10 separate times within two hours of simulator training. Sometimes you are that CAPCOM and you bang your head against the desk because this crew should be better than that. Sometimes a rogue reporter calls you a fag. Sometimes your public affairs officer carries an injured squirrel into your office begging you to help because “you’re a military man, you should know what to do.”
He did not, in fact, know what to do.
She was, in fact, disappointed with him.
And sometimes, you get out of your car after the world’s most draining therapy session to see your husband, shirtless and sweaty, leading his crew on their morning jog, and no matter what bullshit you were thinking about before, it makes your mouth go dry. Maybe one of the other crew members is passionately arguing against the act of taking the morning jogs in the first place. Maybe you realize your husband isn’t only shirtless, but he’s also covered in dirt, for some reason. And maybe you realize that one of the other crew members is holding what was your husband’s shirt with something bundled inside of it, and you really just have so many questions before you’ve even closed your car door.
This is exactly how Bucky’s day at the Center starts.
“What if I refuse?” Benny, new to the crew and the dynamic they’ve already established, is complaining as they approach. Gale instituted the Artemis 4 morning jogs sometime back in the spring, for team bonding and to make sure they’re keeping their endurance up. He tries to change up their routes, but no matter where they went today, it’s pretty late in the morning for them to be getting back.
“And miss out on the team bonding?” Sandra teases, elbowing Gale in the side. The two of them are jogging beside each other, a few paces ahead of Macon and Benny. She’s also the one carrying the bundle wrapped in Gale’s shirt, cradled in her arms as she runs.
Bucky leans against the hood of the car, enjoying the show as Gale and Benny bicker back and forth.
When they get closer, he shields his eyes from the sun with one hand and whistles like he’s catcalling someone. Because he is. It just happens to be the man who was foolish enough to marry him. “Lookin’ hot, Cleven,” he calls out. “Maybe you wanna come over here and give me your number.”
He can’t see it through the glare of the sun, but he’s certain Gale is rolling his eyes. Nevertheless, he drops down to a walk and heads over to Bucky’s car, the three other crewmembers in tow.
Bucky pushes off of the car hood and accepts the kiss that Gale leans in to give him, but it’s hard to ignore how much of a mess he is. Bucky reaches up to pull a small leaf out of his hair and looks him up and down, trying to make sense of the scrape on his arm and the dirt sticking to his joggers.
“What the fuck happened to-”
Bucky is abruptly cut off by the sound of a distressed, high pitched meow coming from inside Gale’s shirt.
“Buck saved a kitten,” Sandra tells him, looking as thrilled as can be. She shoves the bundle toward Bucky, and sure enough, wrapped inside the white cotton fabric is a tiny little orange tabby, staring up at him like maybe he can save it from its predicament.
“Climbed a tree and everything,” Macon chimes in. “Some firefighter ass shit.”
Gale shrugs when Bucky stares at him. “Heard it cryin’ during our run.”
And so, of course he’d stopped everything and climbed a damn tree to get it down. Of course he did. Bucky really, really wishes he had seen that particular little firefighter fantasy, and since he didn’t, he pulls Gale in for another kiss as compensation, to the dramatic disgust of the others. “Gale Cleven,” he sighs. “Local hero.”
“Yeah, I can see why you married him, Bucky,” Benny says. “Watching him yank off his shirt while sitting in a tree so he could save a baby cat? Ho-ly fuck. And I ain’t even gay.”
Bucky turns and narrows his eyes at him, pointedly dragging Gale’s arm around his waist. “Lay off my wife, Demarco,” he warns. Then to Gale, almost as an afterthought, “What are you gonna do with a kitten?”
“Give it to Marge.”
“Aw, you won’t keep it?” Sandra asks. She shoos Bucky away as she unwraps the kitten, pushing it into Gale’s arms. “A cat looks quite good on you.”
Gale looks down at the tiny creature in surprise, fumbling to keep it from falling, but it hardly even makes a sound, just curls right up against Gale’s chest with its head pillowed on his bicep. The whole crew makes a collective cooing noise, tilting their heads.
“You okay there, John?” Benny asks, poking him in the arm.
Bucky blinks. It’s not like he doesn’t get to look at Gale every damn day but come on. Shirtless, glistening in the sun, holding a teeny tiny kitten that has clearly imprinted on him?
He gives an aborted nod and pulls out his phone, taking a picture. It’ll match the one he already has of Gale, shirtless again, holding a 12 week old Pepper. “It loves you, Buck.”
Sandra leans in close to Bucky and whispers, “Make sure that gets to Marge. It’ll be perfect for media interviews.” She winks at him, and Bucky knows she’s right. As if the country isn’t in love with Buck Cleven as it is.
Gale shakes his head, even though he can’t hide the smile on his face. “I think it’ll have a better home with Marge right now.”
Macon and Benny boo, and Gale looks legitimately saddened by it.
Bucky decides to save him, swooping in and pulling the cat from his arms. He holds it up to eye level, and it fusses a bit before he cradles it more supportively. “He’s right, team. Between Artemis 4, Pepper, and soon-enough Meatball, the Cleven-Egan household will not be very kitten-friendly for a while.”
“Fine, fine,” Sandra mutters. She takes the kitten back, and it gives a big yawn before it curls right back up in Gale’s shirt.
Bucky looks at his watch. “Now if I’m not mistaken, you idiots are gonna be late for sim training.”
“You’re on sims today,” Gale points out, putting his hands on his hips.
“You know the rules, doll,” Bucky smirks. “If you’re late, I kick your asses in that thing.”
“But the cat!” Benny cries. “We had to save the cat.”
Bucky shakes his head. “No exceptions.” His eyes are still on Gale, though, who is just matching his gaze, stone faced. He’s looking at him all serious, challenging him, with sweat dripping down his abs and his biceps flexed.
“You heard the man,” Gale tells his crew. “Let’s go clean up so we can get this show on the road.”
Before they can head back inside, though, Bucky steps up close to Gale. He rests one hand on his peck, and the other down on his hip, his thumb tucking into the waistband of his sweats. “Now you,” he says. “Come to my office later.” The stone-faced expression leaves Gale’s face in a flash as he blushes, his lips parting as he looks down at the hand pressed to his chest.
“See you then,” he says, his voice low.
Bucky has to laugh at the chorus of disgust that rises around them. He kisses Gale one more time, and then he decides to give them a head start, hanging back while they head off to change into their flight suits. His phone buzzes, and he opens it up to a text.
“Should I show up with or without a shirt? Instructions unclear.”
Bucky chuckles and sends back, “Definitely without.”
—
The back left wheel of the lunar rover is currently stuck on the wrong side of a crater. Gale would like to say that it isn’t his fault, except for the fact that there is absolutely no world in which it isn’t his fault. There’s no use even pretending to save face. He just fucked up.
“You’re not a very good driver are you,” Sandra observes, arms crossed in the seat beside him. She’s not even trying to hide her smile, or the enjoyment she’s getting out of this.
“I’m a fine driver,” Gale argues, trying to get the wheels to turn.
“Oh yes. It’s your fine driving skills that landed us here.” Sandra glances out the window at the fake lunar regolith outside. “How did you even manage this?”
Gale grits his teeth, taking his hands off the wheel in defeat. “I don’t… I don’t know, okay.”
Gale and Sandra will be the first astronauts to drive NASA’s new pressurized lunar rover on the surface of the moon. While Curt and Bucky were stuck with the Apollo-era style LRV, open and exposed, Artemis 4 gets an enclosed cabin with life support systems, specially engineered for long distance traverses across the lunar surface.
It’s evening in Houston, stars trying to peek out through nearby city haze, and they’re in JSC’s Rock Yard, simulating driving the rover across lunar terrain in a mock EVA. Part of their job up on the moon will be collecting geological samples for the lovely scientists who have spent the last two years painstakingly trying to teach the astronauts how to describe basic geological features. Supposedly, lunar geology can answer questions about the moon’s relationship to the Earth, the formation of the Earth, and even the formation of our stellar system. On a good day, Gale thinks this is insanely cool and spends far too long talking to the geologists, trying to learn everything he possibly can.
This is not a good day.
Here they were, packing up from one geological site on the outer slope of a small crater to head to the next site, when Gale put the rover in reverse to change course rather than making a wide U-turn. Why? He couldn’t say. It didn’t seem like that big of a deal at the time. But as he was easing the rover back, they all of a sudden felt the back of the vehicle drop off, and sure enough, one of the wheels had gone over the edge of the crater. Attempts to simply drive out were unsuccessful, and instead sent the wheel spinning futilely against the rocky crater wall.
Gale swears he has driven this thing successfully before, but today it’s felt clunky, over- and under-sensitive at once, and all around difficult.
Anyone else will tell you that Gale pretty much always has issues driving the rover, whether he’ll admit it or not.
“Aren’t you a pilot?” Sandra asks.
“Yes, exactly,” Gale snaps. He takes a breath and mutters an apology. Then, “I’m a pilot. I fly things. In the air. I don’t drive finicky monstrosities over glorified dirt.”
“Most would think that flying a fighter jet or a spacecraft is harder.”
“Yeah, well.”
“Houston, I think I pushed one too many buttons,” Sandra says into her coms. “Major Cleven is giving me quite the angry look.”
Curt: “We’ve all been there, Lieutenant Westgate. He’ll be fine.”
Looking out the window to evaluate his options, Gale decides just to say fuck it and do what needs to be done so they can get on with it.
Gale: “Houston, be advised. We are going to exit the rover.”
Curt: “Come again?”
Gale: “Houston. I’m gonna get out and fucking push the goddamn rover.”
Curt: “Uhh… copy, Buck.”
Satisfied, Gale nods and looks at Sandra. “You’re helping.”
Outside, moving around in the lunar yard is a little awkward in their mock-up half-EVA-suits that kind of simulate the shape of an EVA suit without being an actual suit. They have fake oxygen tanks on their backs, the skeleton of a suit around their shoulders, chests, and upper legs, a visorless helmet, and EVA gloves. It’s clunky as hell, but not as cumbersome as wearing the real suit. It also doesn’t help that they’re doing this after sunset, in order to simulate working in the permanently shadowed landscape of the lunar south pole.
“It looks alright,” Sandra observes as they catch the back wheel of the rover in the light of their headlamps.
Gale: “The wheel appears undamaged.”
Curt: “Don’t talk to me about damaged wheels, Cleven.”
Gale rolls his eyes as he kneels down by the back end of the rover. It really shouldn’t be having this much of an issue climbing out of this thing.
Gale: “Good strategy, Biddick. Remind the astronaut doing geology on the moon of the time his husband almost died doin’ the same thing.”
Curt: “Well ain’t it a good thing you’re not on the moon yet.”
Sandra: “You’re breaking the illusion.”
Curt: “So sorry. Are you okay, Buck, or did I dig up too much trauma?”
Gale: “Just peachy, Curt.”
Curt: “I was there.”
Gale: “…I know, Curt.”
Gale sighs, closes his eyes, takes a breath. Then he shakes it off and glances at Sandra. He points to the stuck wheel, and she laughs. “That’s kind of pathetic, isn’t it,” she observes. “My car could get out of that hole.”
Gale: “Houston, is it too late to pass some feedback onto the rover engineers?”
Curt: “‘Fraid they may not take kindly to that, Buck. But we have been told that the one flyin’ up with you has been updated since the prototype.”
Gale really expected this to be more difficult, especially in full Earth gravity instead of the moon’s one-sixth G, but their predicament is far less cumbersome than he expected. The mock crater’s inside wall isn’t that steep. With thickly gloved hands, he and Sandra grab onto the rover chassis and haul the thing back up onto solid ground.
“Maybe I should drive,” Sandra tells him as they walk back around to the rover’s cabin. Gale is about to protest, when Curt lets them know that they want Gale behind the wheel today anyway.
Curt: “You have one more rover exercise before launch. That’ll be all you, Westgate.”
There’s a muttered “thank God for that” somewhere on the end of the line – it sounds like Croz – and Sandra cracks up laughing at Gale’s exasperation.
Back in the rover, they ease down the outside of the short crater, and then they’re bumping off across the rock yard to the coordinates of their next site. “See?” Gale says, looking pointedly over at Sandra as he maneuvers them around a small patch of uneven ground. “I can drive.”
The traverses in the Rock Yard are only a small fraction of the distance they’ll need to travel on the lunar surface, and they make it to Site B in no time. As they climb out of the rover, they both make a quick sweep with their headlamps to get a gauge of the area. The geology team has created some new features for them to practice on, looks like.
Curt: “Okay crew. Congratulations, you made it without any more incidents.”
Gale crosses his arms, unimpressed as he surveys the small outcrop in front of them.
Curt: “We’d like you to get the sampling cart off the bed of the rover. You’ll use the hammer and chisel to take chip samples from the outcrop. Then use the tongs to put them into sample bags.”
Gale: “Copy, Curt. Offloading the equipment now.”
It’s pretty much the same exercise they were supposed to do in the neutral buoyancy lab, before Gale went and crashed a plane into the woods and got himself grounded for a week. He hopes they can get that time back. The NBL is the best way to simulate the feeling of working in one-sixth gravity, and he wants to make sure he has a handle on working with the geology tools in an EVA suit under microgravity conditions. It wasn’t a walk in the park their first time around, and they need to make sure they’re more efficient before launch.
Working in the Rock Yard, though, is good for making sure they’re familiar with the geology they’ll be looking at, and for communicating more closely with the geologists who need them to be their eyes.
The small tools aren’t too easy to hold with the EVA gloves, but Gale gets a decent sample knocked off the outcrop and Sandra picks it up with the tongs, placing it gently in a bag.
Gale: “Okay, Ground. We’ve taken our first chip sample as directed. It’s in sample bag 3243.”
Curt: “Copy, Gale. Bag 3243. Go ahead with a description when you’re ready.”
Gale holds the bag up to eye level, trying to get good light on it without too much glare off the plastic. “We have a mostly felsic rock, looks like. Fine-grained. It’s light gray in color with some whiter veining. It broke off with some nice euhedral faces…” Gale frowns, about at the limit of his knowledge on how to describe this. It’s been a while since they had those geology classroom lessons. “Uh, is there anything else they need, Curt?”
There’s a moment of quiet as Curt confers with the geologists. “No, Buck, that’s good enough for us here. You can move on to the next sample.”
Once they have all of their chip samples and a few soil samples from the surrounding area, Gale and Sandra pack everything up again to head back to “base.” At the end of their mock EVA, which has carried their total workday well past the twelve hour mark, they work quietly alongside each other, exhausted and ready to get out of these suits.
Gale has drifted from thinking about what the real EVA will be like to simply thinking about falling into bed with his husband, when Sandra takes him by surprise.
“So, did you really go see Bucky earlier?” she asks out of nowhere.
Gale pauses his effort to strap down the collection cart and glances at her skeptically. “I usually eat lunch with him if neither of us are busy.” Honestly, there aren’t many days when they get time for a lunch break in the same hour, so it’s always nice when they do.
Sandra levels an unimpressed look at him, though, seeing right through his excuse. “But did you go see him?”
Gale doesn’t answer, instead working his jaw a little uncomfortably as he goes back to work.
Sandra gasps and smacks his arm. “You did!” she exclaims.
“Sandra…”
“Gale Cleven. I can’t believe you.”
He sighs deeply, finally unable to stall with the cart anymore. It’s as in place as it’s gonna get. “It’s not like we did that,” he says defensively, and he isn’t lying. It was just some good making out, that’s all. Some really, really good making out against the wall, and the door, and the bookshelf, and the desk.
God, yeah, Gale never gets tired of the way Bucky can lift him onto that desk. Hands in his hair, fingers trailing down his chest, his stomach, down to his hips. The taste of Bucky’s lips, his skin. The reminder makes him want to get the fuck on with this so he can go home and do it some more. If he can stay awake long enough.
“Right, okay,” Sandra teases. She double checks that the sample bags are secure in their storage box, and they both start heading for the front of the rover.
“I’m smarter than I look, Westgate.”
“Please, who could blame you.”
“Might I remind you, I’m married to him.”
Over their coms, Curt chimes in. “Crew, please be advised that you are not on a private channel.”
Gale: “Copy, Curt.” And thank you.
Curt: “Even if I’d love to hear about Buck’s sex life, I think the geologists would need way too much of a lore drop to keep up.”
Gale: “Fuck off, Curt.”
Curt: “If you were actually on the moon, you’d have plenty of time to fill them in on your way back.”
Gale: “Well, a wise man once said, ain’t it a good thing we’re not on the moon yet.”
Curt: “Soon.”
Gale hums, and Sandra agrees. “Soon.”
She climbs into the passenger seat of the rover, leaving Gale standing out on the coarse regolith, eyes caught on the sky.
He’s spent his whole life looking up, watching the stars, counting them, learning their names, dreaming of them. But it’s different now. It was different the moment he left the confines of this planet. The moment he floated in a glass cupola above the horizon. It’s different, now that Bucky has touched the moon.
Now that Gale is about to do the same.
This time last year, he would stand in the backyard, Bucky behind him with his arms around his waist, and they’d stare at that bright white rock in the night sky, reflecting the sun. “I can’t believe you’re gonna be up there,” Gale would say.
“I’ll be thinking of you the whole time,” Bucky would tell him, grinning as he pressed a kiss to Gale’s neck.
“No you won’t,” Gale would scoff, and Bucky would laugh and say, “You’re right. But I’ll think about you a lot.”
And then in the early days of winter, Gale would look up, and he’d think about Bucky on the surface, somewhere in the shadows of the south pole where the light barely reaches. It was strange, to look at an extraterrestrial body, so far away from the Earth, and know that his whole world was up there, not down here.
And after the accident, Gale would look at the moon like it had taken his husband away, but also like it was the only thing that could save him. That beautiful, treacherous, unforgiving, incredible final frontier. He’d watch the sky, and he’d beg for it to bring Bucky home.
And now here he is. He’s never taken his eyes off of the moon, and yet somehow, it’s changed again. He and Sandra will touch down on that alien landscape soon enough, right where Bucky once stepped. He’ll be the one without his feet on this planet, dust between his fingers, the Earth in the sky instead of the view he’s known his whole life.
It should scare him, but he feels this thrumming need for it deep in his bones.
He’s going to the moon. The goddamn moon.
He and Sandra will walk on its soil. See the Earth from its horizon.
Two people, and a whole world all to themselves. He wonders what that will feel like, the solitude, the darkness, the silence. A perpetual night.
“Are you coming Gale?” Sandra asks him. “Or am I leaving you out here all night?”
Gale blinks back to this timeline, takes one more look up at the stars. “Yeah,” he says. “Let’s go.”
...
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Part 5
