One Giant Leap

by Kay Simone

What a relief it is to be able to let his thoughts about the CAPCOM flow — not to have to police every nice thought he has about the man waiting for him on earth.

“That’s what being an astronaut is,” Curt says. “Being sure about things when there’s no way to rule out doubt. Ignoring the doubt and taking a leap of faith. I just know, Patrick.”

if he’d have known that the seemingly impossible was going to happen to him: that he would fall in love with someone on that shuttle.

But only when Hermes rolls to a surprisingly gentle stop, only when Curt says “Mission control, Hermes I is home,” does the floor erupt into celebration.

They’re back. Curt is on earth. Patrick is on earth.

Everything in his life led to this successful completion of the Hermes I mission — and no matter what happens after this moment, he realizes, he will always always have been a success. He's 27 and it's the first of July and Patrick Harte knows what it feels to reach a goal so long sought after that it has defined the fabric of his life, his personality, himself.

Curt has a much smaller audience in mind as he looks into the mirror. An audience of one.

He can't imagine a world in which Patrick is anything but perfect. It already doesn't matter to Curt how he looks. He'd fallen in love with Patrick Harte before laying eyes on him, and nothing about the physical package would change the brain — the heart — that Curt knows he loves. Never in his life has Curt had a purer emotion. Never has he been so certain.

He looks further down the line, trying to find a familiar face, trying to find the one unfamiliar face that matters to him more than any other. Curt knows he's being rude. He doesn't care.

Beside Laxmi, a man stands several inches out from the line, craning his neck to see the crew. He's shorter than Laxmi with black hair and eyes that Curt can see — even from this distance — are an impossible shade of light, bright green.

the force that had just been holding Curt to earth is now dragging him viscerally towards Patrick Harte. Curt breaks away from the line. His short, careful steps are long forgotten. He's trotting and then loping and then in a full-out run and he hits Patrick so hard that they almost both lose their balance. Time spirals away from Curt impossibly, everything slowing down and the scene around him falling away. There is only the body in his arms, warm and moving and — once it is steady again — moving to embrace him, too.

😭😭😭😭

"Curt," Patrick says — at once fond and familiar and desperate. "Oh my God, Patrick. You're here. We're here."

Patrick is more than he could've hoped for

The young man is blushing deeply under an artful constellation of freckles across each cheek.

Ugh we LOVE freckles 😭😭

"You're perfect, Patrick."

The man begins to say something but it's lost because Curt is kissing him — a kiss that wants to be rushed but that refuses to continue that way the minute their lips are together.

You think that kid was ready to be thrust into the spotlight like that?" Curt hadn't thought about that. Of course he hadn't. He hadn't thought through the moment at all — it had just... happened. "Jesus," he says, shaking his head. "Yeah," Allan says. "Christ, Curt — is he even out? I mean, I guess I should say was he because he's certainly out now."

"Astronauts' husbands and wives don't typically meet for the first time in the middle of a high-profile mission and conduct an extremely fucking long-distance romance without notifying HR," Allan says.

What an understatement 😂😂

God, it's fascinating to watch him think. Curt knows from talking to him enough that a statement like this is the opener to something more profound — but when he was on Hermes, he'd never had the pleasure of actually watching Patrick's mind work. His eyes focus on one spot, but his body moves as he thinks, turning his head this way and that, hands tracing different surfaces idly as he works out what to say.

"You know something Patrick? I think I love watching you think."

"There's no going back now," Curt says, grinning. "No getting rid of me, either."

"You're too far away for a conversation like this," Curt says, "and I've already spent enough of my lifetime not getting to hold you."

Patrick is better than any dream, from the curve of his body where ass meets thigh to the softness of the skin on his belly when he dares to tease up under Patrick's shirt.

The silence between them is... comfortable. It is the unburdened silence of two men who are entirely at ease with living alone for long stretches of time — of two people who don't feel the lack of conversation as a burden but as its own form of communication.

Patrick allows himself to be gathered up into Curt's arms. Nothing has ever been so perfect.

"You don't understand creepy." He presses a kiss into the skin just under Patrick's jaw. "Creepy is the 8,000 times you're going to wake up in the next year to me staring at you while you sleep because I still cannot goddamn believe that I'm here and you're here with me and you're mine," Curt says. "Wait until you live through that and then tell me what creepy is."

What's thirteen years compared to the whole history of the galaxy?"

“I’ve got too much shit to do to worry about some asshole like Sherman Wolfe,” Curt says. “You really think I’d fuck up my night with you to get the last word in with an insect like that?”

Insect omg 😆

There’s a squeeze around his heart. This is all he’s ever needed from someone. Not concern or questions or prescriptions for something better or a different way of doing things. Just a simple, small accommodation.

Every minute together is a discovery.

“‘Oh wow,’” Curt says, cutting in. All three of them laugh. “‘Just wow.’ How about no?”

He’s such an ass 😂

Every hour or so, Patrick would begin to feel insecure. “Are you sure this is what you feel like doing?” he’d ask, looking up from Curt’s lap. “There is nothing in the world I’d rather be doing,” Curt had replied, over and over again until Patrick didn’t bother with the question anymore.

I love that Curt is so patient with him 🥹🥹

Patrick wonders if the other three feels as much like a child as he does in that perfect moment: unburdened, accepted, and with a happiness that comes easily.

"Beside the fact that you started dating someone while you were in space?" K.C. asks.

Curt strokes a hand through Patrick’s hair. He remembers those first few days — the dampened despair he'd felt at the certainty that he would never be close to the crew of Hermes I. And now they are here, laying across each other like they've known each other their whole lives.

I've found my family.

“Impromptu road trip,” Curt says. “We’re Big Bend-bound. You up for it?” Patrick is laughing at the absurdity of it. Will life always be like this with him?

After our program aired, another narrative began. Larkin found himself falling in love with an unlikely coworker – and, as a result, falling in love with life on earth again.

Label at bottom reads CURTIS HARTE-LARKIN, HERMES I COMMANDER and PATRICK HARTE-LARKIN, HERMES I CAPSULE COMMUNICATOR)

UMMM!!! 🥹🥹

Of all of the billions of lives that had crossed the surface of the planet -- as

insignificant as the cells of any single organism, living and dying in the relentless cycle of the planet -- of all the chance encounters, trajectories, years, and epocs, the two of them had found each other.

They had both spent separate lifetimes searching for meaning – had achieved greatness as a result of that toil – but they had only found the meaning they needed in the other’s arms.

The face of the earth is no longer a stumbling point, a prison, a place that Curt resents. It is a place for him to explore with the most important

life that’s ever graced its surface by Curt's side. Patrick is the world. He kisses Patrick then, drawing the smaller man to him in the bed of the truck, knowing that in the infinity and chaos that swirls around them, they have fulfilled their purposes: to live their lives with less suffering, to further humanity’s...