It doesn't look anything like Lance had thought it would. He should have known better. He learned a long time ago that there are things of beauty and horror beyond his ability to imagine.
There's no big bang, no ball of fire. There is a giant inhalation, and then there's just nothing. Nothing. There's nothing and no one left, and Lance forces himself to loosen his white knuckles from the railing of the viewing deck.
There's no one left.
*
Lance and Joey had dinner with Tom Hanks once when Joey was making the movie, and then again after it came out. The last time, Tom had been the one asking all the questions.
"We had to use a green screen," Tom admitted. "For all the hero looking back to planet Earth shots. I never knew what it actually --"
Lance nodded, and because it was Tom Hanks, he tried to explain, even though he knew there weren't words big enough for the sight of a perfect sphere from a half million miles away.
*
JC said during PopOdyssey that he wrote "Space Cowboy" because a psychic had told him the world was going to end. The idea of having to sit them each down and explain their tragic fate was too much, he said, but he couldn't just not say anything at all.
"Baby, you gotta tell us when your lyrics are supposed to make sense," Chris said. "Cause I stopped listening somewhere around 'freaky deaky.'"
"I understood what you meant," Lance said. He hadn't, not really, except that he knew that JC still wrote love songs about the two of them. He looped them on ninety-nine cent generic Walgreens tapes, a dozen a cappella variations taped on a handheld recorder and left under Lance's pillow on the bus between shows. The hooks were always star-crossed and heartfelt, but they hadn't had sex since the day after Lance's twenty-second birthday. Even so, he thought he knew what JC was trying to say.
*
Everyone asked except JC. The publicists gave Lance a few key phrases to use over and over, vague and inadequate words like "inspirational" and "infinite" and "history-making." Lance knew that it was better not to improvise, and so he said those things every time someone wanted to know what space was really like.
They stood at the foot of Lance's hotel bed, after he'd been poked and prodded and declared relatively fit for reentry. JC kissed Lance's forehead, and each of his closed eyelids, and the corner of his mouth.
"I was thinking," JC said, "while I watched, when you went up and then down again." Lance nodded under the light touch of JC's fingers on his jaw. "I think it must be like love. You can write a thousand songs and it only sounds right if you were there."
Lance didn't say yes, but he breathed out into the crook of JC's neck and unbuttoned JC's pants one-handed.
*
Things got bad, and then they got worse very quickly. Arms races became presidents and prime ministers running for their lives. One more shuttle for civilians who qualified and Lance hung up the first time because he thought it was Justin and Chris crank calling him.
It wasn't a joke, and all Lance wanted was to die with his friends. Or, if somehow the projections were wrong, to wander the barren landscape with the same four guys who'd gone everywhere else with him.
The guys didn't really agree.
Chris punched him.
Joey drew his lips in a tight line and said, "You know I can't leave her, but you. You could."
Justin still looked surprised that all the things he did best weren’t going to be enough. All he said was, "Just make sure to take some good tunes, man. It's the desert island question for real."
Lance thought, it's funny how fast a little world war put being in love into perspective, made it taste like fresh air after ten days' recycled oxygen.
"No," he said again, and Chris clenched his fists.
"Please," JC said. "Please, I love you." A thousand songs and he'd never said it quite like that.
Lance shook his head. He didn't care what JC thought was on the horizon. JC had no idea what it meant to know there was something to come home to. It was the only thing Lance had believed in out there, where the pull of gravity and God were nothing more than carefully memorized lyrics.
"I love you," JC said again, and Lance bowed his head.
*
The day of the launch was clear, sun setting over the Gulf like it knew its days were numbered. Lance had stopped thinking things were beautiful when he said he would go. JC mostly looked tired and the sky mostly looked dead.
JC touched Lance's hip and then bit his thumb.
"Up there, soundwaves go on forever," Lance said. "If I could open a window, your songs could wind up in another galaxy." JC shook his head and Lance let his hands linger on the smooth skin of JC’s face. Whispered lyrics across a pillow echoed in the space between them.
JC pressed a tape into Lance's palm and said, "Save yourself."
END.
Credits: For Kel’s birthday. I stole JC’s "Space Cowboy" excuse from her You Can Read In Whatever You’re Needing To. The rest I blame on Anya. Thanks to Younger, G. and Glace for beta.