Chapter Text
It was ridiculous.
Truly, utterly, ridiculous.
June S. Levant was no stranger to standing out. It was not something she did on purpose—simply something that happened when you skipped years of school and ended up surrounded by teenagers at ten and young adults at fifteen.
It was fine. She didn’t mind that.
You know what she minded?
The warning. Or lack thereof.
She arrived at the waiting room a little late, eyes drifting across the space—already occupied. Seven others. Spread out just enough to avoid interaction, but close enough to observe each other without being obvious about it.
All dressed like they belonged at a retirement home for very disciplined people.
Structured. Neutral. Intentional.
T-shirts tucked into training pants. Clean sneakers. Watches. The ID badges clipped high on their chests like they had been placed there with a ruler.
That was fine.
June didn’t mind that.
What she did mind was the fact that no one else had a lunch box.
Why didn’t they?
The email had explicitly mentioned lunch. Lunch will not be provided. That was a direct quote. She remembered because she’d reread the entire message twice, then once more out of caution.
So why—
Her gaze dropped, just slightly, to the object in her own hand.
Bright. Plastic. Blue.
A shark.
Not subtle. Not professional. Not… anything remotely aligned with the room she had just walked into.
Her grandfather had packed it the night before like it was a mission-critical component.
“You won’t remember to eat.”
She would have.
Probably.
The point was now irrelevant.
Because now she was standing in a room at Johnson Space Center—the Johnson Space Center, astronaut candidate intake, first day—and she was the only person holding a shark-shaped bento box like she had taken a wrong turn on the way to elementary school.
Silence held.
No one said anything.
But she felt it—the shift. Subtle. Controlled.
Attention redirected.
Assessed.
She didn’t look up immediately.
Instead, she adjusted her grip on the handle, almost absentmindedly, and stepped further into the room like nothing about this was unusual.
A chair near the wall. Open.
She took it.
Set the lunch box down on her lap.
Still bright. Still blue. Still aggressively shaped like marine life.
June crossed one leg over the other, posture settling into something composed, deliberate.
Then—finally—she looked up.
Seven pairs of eyes, in varying degrees of subtlety, looking back.
She held the eyes.
Half a second longer than necessary.
Not a challenge.
Just… acknowledgment.
Then her eyes moved on, one by one, cataloging.
Pilot.
Pilot.
Medical.
Engineer.
Another pilot.
Patterns emerged quickly.
They were older.
Not dramatically—but enough. Early thirties, mid-thirties. Built differently, too. Not just physically, but in how they held themselves. Less internal, more… deployed.
Operational.
Her eyes paused briefly on one of them—a woman, late twenties maybe, posture sharp, attention already narrowed. Watching her directly, not pretending otherwise.
June tilted her head, just slightly.
Then moved on.
Someone moved in their seat.
A man—early thirties—leaned back a little, eyes flicking from her face to the lunch box and back again, like he wasn’t entirely sure which part of the situation he was supposed to process first.
June followed his gaze down, as if noticing it again for the first time.
Ah.
Right.
The shark.
She rested her elbow lightly on the armrest, chin against her knuckles.
“…there was an email,” she said, tone calm, almost thoughtful. “About lunch.”
A pause.
Then, quieter:
“I assumed it was… literal.”
Silence again.
Then—just barely—
a breath of something like a laugh from somewhere to her left.
Small. Contained.
The room didn’t relax.
But it changed.
Just a little.
June leaned back in her chair, eyes drifting toward the far wall now, expression settling into something neutral again.
As if nothing about this had been unusual at all.
The silence didn’t last.
It never really did, in rooms like this. Someone always cracked first—not out of weakness, but because tension without purpose was inefficient. June could almost predict who it would be before it happened.
It was the man who had glanced at the box twice. Messy hair. Shirt a little untucked.
He moved in his seat again, leaning forward this time, forearms resting loosely on his knees. There was a kind of easy confidence in the movement—social. The kind of person who filled space because he was used to people letting him.
“Bold choice,” he said, nodding once toward the shark bento.
His tone wasn’t mocking in the slightest. Just… testing.
June glanced down at it as if considering the statement seriously, her expression unreadable for a second longer than most people would have held it.
“It’s limited edition,” she said simply.
Just fact.
There was a beat—half a second where he tried to figure out if she was joking.
Then a small huff of amusement slipped out of him anyway, his head tilting slightly as if conceding the point.
“Of course it is,” he muttered, almost to himself, before straightening a little and extending a hand across the space between them.
“Ethan. Rourke.”
June looked at his hand, then at his face, then back again—not hesitating, just… processing. She shifted the lunch box slightly on her lap to free her hand and reached out, her grip firm, precise.
“Levant.”
He blinked once.
“Levant,” he repeated, like he was testing the shape of it. “That’s—”
“Saint Levant,” she added, releasing his hand. “June.”
“Right,” he said, a quick nod, a small smile forming like he’d just found his footing again. “June.”
His eyes lingered a fraction longer than necessary—not inappropriate, just… interested. She was younger than the rest of them. That much was obvious. Not just in her face, but in the way she sat, the way she didn’t carry the same physical weight of years of fieldwork or flight hours.
But she didn’t feel out of place.
That was the part that caught.
“So,” he continued, leaning back slightly now, one arm draped over the back of his chair in a way that suggested he was settling in, “were you forced to bring it? Did you lose a bet or something?"
June tilted her head, just slightly.
“No, it was recommended,” she said.
“By?”
“My grandfather.”
Ethan nodded once, like that made perfect sense.
“Smart man,” he said. “Sets a tone.”
“Does it?”
“Yeah,” he said, glancing around briefly, then back at her. “Memorable.”
There was something lightly flirtatious in the way he said it—not heavy-handed, just enough to register. Casual confidence. The kind that usually landed well.
June didn’t respond.
She just looked at him.
And that was when the clogs in his head turned a little.
Because now that he was actually looking—really looking—the earlier impression sharpened. Not just young. Young.
Not in a vague way. In a specific, uncomfortable way that suddenly forced recalibration.
His eyes flicked over her face again, more carefully this time. The bright eyes, the absence of wear, the clarity, the… lack of anything that usually came with a decade more of experience.
His expression changed—subtly, but fast.
Brows lifting a fraction.
“Wait—” he said, the word slipping out before he filtered it. “How old are you?”
The room didn’t react immediately.
But attention moved to them.
All at once. Obvious.
June watched him for a second, deciding whether the question itself was worth engaging with. Then her eyes flicked briefly across the room—taking in the others, the way they had gone just slightly more still, slightly more attentive.
“Twenty-four.”
Then back to him.
“Twenty-four,” he repeated, quieter now.
“Yeah.”
Another beat.
Then he exhaled, short, almost a laugh—but not quite.
“Okay,” he said, dragging a hand over the back of his neck. “Good. Good.”
He nodded once, like he was trying to convince himself he hadn’t just walked into a different conversation than the one he thought he was having.
“Thought I might’ve just—” He stopped himself, shook his head. “Never mind.”
June’s expression didn’t change.
But her eyes did something small.
Focus sharpened.
“What?” she asked.
Just that.
Ethan looked at her again and gave a small, helpless shrug.
“Nothing bad,” he said quickly. “Just… details.”
“Details,” she repeated.
“Yeah,” he said, a little more carefully now, “like… context details.”
“Context for what?”
He opened his mouth.
Closed it again.
And for a second, it looked like he might actually answer honestly.
Then—
The door opened.
The shift in the room was immediate.
Not loud. Not dramatic.
Just structural.
Three people entered at once. Not candidates.
Not relaxed.
Official.
Same organization energy, different category entirely. Clean lines. Purposeful movement. No hesitation in how they crossed the room.
Conversation would've died without anyone announcing it, had it been existing anywhere else but with June and Ethan.
Even then, the latter stopped mid-breath, turning his head slightly like he’d just been pulled back into the correct version of himself.
One of them glanced at a clipboard. Another scanned the room like it was already a checklist.
June felt the change in atmosphere immediately. Something told her every other candidate did as well.
Ethan leaned back fully now, wiping whatever expression had been on his face a second ago and replacing it with something neutral.
But before he fully turned away, he glanced at her one last time—quick, sideways.
Like:
we’ll finish that later.
Then the room stood up into something else entirely.
The staff didn’t introduce themselves in a way that felt personal.
They didn’t really introduce themselves at all.
They just assigned reality.
A few clipped instructions, a walkthrough of schedules, then movement—corridors, doors, badges scanned again at different points inside Johnson Space Center. The building itself felt less like a workplace and more like something designed to quietly erase uncertainty through repetition.
Everything here was repeated twice. Sometimes three times. Not because people were confused—but because the system didn’t tolerate ambiguity.
And June understood what they were going for. She really did.
She wasn’t expecting a cake with her name on it for her first day.
But how hard was it to make it… tolerable?
A short tour, maybe. A coffee break. Lunch at an actual reasonable hour. Then in the afternoon—start light. Introductions. Meet the senior astronauts. Ease them in properly.
But no. Of course not.
Why would they?
Because the morning didn’t start with introductions at all. It started with a surprise simulation—no warning, no warm-up, just dropped into chaos. At least that part was useful; it forced names to stick faster than anything else could have.
Then, when what should have been lunch came around, the supervisors decided to drop them somewhere else entirely.
The gym wasn’t announced so much as it was arrived at.
One moment they were walking through corridors at Johnson Space Center, badges clicking through another checkpoint, air turning slightly cooler, more controlled. The next, the doors opened and the space just existed—large, bright, too clean in the way places are when they’re meant to be used hard and often.
No speeches this time. Just motion.
Someone at the front lifted a hand, pointed to stations, and that was it. They spread.
June followed the flow without needing direction.
Most of them did.
The first circuit was simple enough that it almost felt insulting to call it a test.
Until it wasn’t.
Not because it was hard in isolation, but because it never stopped being next. As soon as one thing ended, another was already there waiting—no pause long enough for anything to settle.
And June didn’t need a high IQ to understand what was happening. She was behind.
Not failing. Not collapsing. Just… behind.
Marcus Holloway, 38. Navy test pilot.
He tried to lead the group during the simulation earlier, but it hadn’t really worked—there were too many variables, too little structure. Out here, though, he was different. Calm. Efficient. Didn’t even look like he was breaking a sweat.
Daniel “Danny” Mercer, 35. Air Force rescue pilot.
He moved with him easily, like the two of them had been dropped into similar environments before and just defaulted to coordination. No friction, no hesitation.
Then there was Sofia Valdez. 29. Commercial test pilot, ex–Air Force Academy.
She didn’t talk much during the simulation, so June had assumed she was just quiet.
She wasn’t.
“Your left side is off,” Sofia said once during the circuit.
Not a greeting. Not even a glance. Just passing correction, like it was obvious and therefore not worth extra words.
And the comments didn’t stop there. Nothing dramatic—just constant, precise little cuts. Observations. Adjustments. Like she was watching June just to catch her mistakes.
June could feel it. That low-level pressure in the air. Not hostility exactly. Something sharper than that. Pure, raw, competitiveness.
The only relief came from the others.
Aisha Khan, 30, biomedical engineering and human physiology. Kenji Tanaka, 38, robotics systems. Maya Collins, 33, flight surgeon and emergency medicine.
Aisha didn’t try to lead or correct anyone. She just observed, occasionally speaking like she was commenting on things only she could see.
Kenji barely spoke at all, but when he did, it was precise enough that it always felt like it mattered.
Maya watched people more than the exercises, like she was tracking strain levels instead of reps.
They weren’t necessarily better at the physical side than June—but they weren’t trying to dominate it either. And that made it easier. Less noise.
Still, June stayed aware of the gap.
Not emotionally. Just… structurally.
By the time they actually got to lunch, it was three in the afternoon.
June barely remembered sitting down in the astronaut office space they were eventually led back to. Just the shift from motion to stillness, like her body had forgotten how to decide what to do without instruction.
The room was quieter now. Not relaxed—just depleted.
She sat, finally, lunch box still absurdly bright in her hands, and let the noise of the morning settle somewhere behind her eyes where it couldn’t demand anything else for a moment. The other members of the crew went out to buy sandwiches from the vending machine down the hallway.
Outside, the day kept going. Inside, everything just paused long enough to pretend it was normal.
One would’ve thought the second part of their afternoon was easier.
One would’ve thought wrong.
By the time she got home at the end of the day, June was operating on something that could barely be called stamina anymore. More like delayed obligation. The kind of fatigue that didn’t sit in one place—it just spread out, quietly, until everything felt heavier than it should’ve been.
She closed the apartment door behind her with a soft, final click and let out a long breath through her nose, dropping her bag by the entrance like it had personally offended her.
It hit the floor with a dull thud.
“That didn’t sound like a good time.”
The voice came immediately.
Too immediate.
June didn’t even turn her head at first. Just stood there for a second longer than necessary, eyes half-lidded.
Then—
“Alright, time to pack everything up, Junie. Let's go back home.”
That one earned an actual reaction.
She exhaled, slower this time, and finally kicked off her shoes with little precision and even less care. They landed neatly by the door. Of course they did.
“I just escaped you guys,” she said flatly, already walking down the hallway.
She stepped into the living room.
And there they were.
Sprawled across her couch like it had signed a lease agreement with them. Everest had an arm over the backrest, completely at ease. Monroe had claimed the corner. The TV—her TV—was on something vaguely loud and entirely unnecessary.
Neither of them looked particularly bothered by her arrival.
In fact, if anything, they looked comfortable.
“Why are you two still here?” she asked.
She should've known their proposal to come and help with the moving process was too generous.
Finally, Monroe turned his head slowly, like the question required effort to process.
“Because,” he said, as if this was obvious, “we live here.”
June stared at him.
“No,” she said. “You're visiting here. Uninvited. At an inconvenient time.”
Everest finally looked up from the TV.
“You have snacks.”
“That is not an argument.”
“It should be,” he shot back.
June pinched the bridge of her nose for half a second, like she was trying to physically compress the day into something more manageable.
“I went through baseline physical conditioning, an unannounced simulation, and what I can only describe as structured humiliation disguised as training,” she said evenly. “And you two are sitting on my couch and stealing my food."
“Sounds like a you problem,” Monroe replied immediately.
That got him a look.
A long one.
The kind that suggested she was calculating whether violence was worth the energy cost.
He noticed.
And wisely adjusted his tone.
“Okay,” he added quickly, “but also, how was your first day?”
June didn’t answer right away.
She walked past them, grabbed a bottle of water from the kitchen, and leaned against the counter.
Then, finally:
“A mess. Where's grandpa?"
"He left for Pasadena right after you did for work."
She hummed softly, staring at them for a minute longer. "And you two didn't go with him because..."
Monroe didn’t even hesitate.
“Because someone has to make sure you don’t spiral on day one and quit,” he said, like it was obvious.
Everest snorted from the couch, shifting slightly but not enough to look like he was going anywhere anytime soon.
“That, and you have better Wi-Fi.”
June stared at them.
For a second, she didn’t say anything. Just stood there with the bottle in her hand, taking them in like she was trying to decide which answer annoyed her more.
“Right,” she said finally. "Doesn't explain you eating my cereal.”
“Fuel,” Everest answered. “For our emotional infrastructure. We can't provide what we don't have."
June took a slow sip of water, eyes still on them over the rim of the bottle.
She pushed off the counter and walked back into the living room, stopping just short of the couch. Close enough that they had to acknowledge her presence properly now.
Neither of them moved.
Of course.
June looked down at Monroe's legs, stretched just far enough across the space to make a point.
“…move.”
“No.”
She didn’t even blink.
“I’m going to step on you.”
“That feels aggressive.”
“You’re in my way.”
Monroe sighed dramatically but moved anyway, pulling his legs in just enough to give her space without fully surrendering the position.
A compromise.
June sat down at the far end of the couch, the cushions dipping slightly under her weight. For a moment, she just leaned back, head resting against the fabric, eyes closing briefly like her body had been waiting for permission to stop.
It lasted maybe three seconds.
Then—
“What kind of mess?” Monroe asked, softer this time.
June opened one eye.
“The annoying, organised kind,” she said.
“That’s the worse.”
“It is.”
A pause.
She moved slightly, adjusting her posture without fully sitting up again, eyes still closed.
“They don’t tell you anything,” she added after a moment. “They just… move you. From one thing to the next. You figure it out while it’s already happening.”
Everest muted the TV without looking away from the screen.
That was new.
“Like what?” he asked.
She exhaled quietly through her nose.
“Simulation first,” she said. “No warning. Just dropped into it. Then gym. No break. No proper lunch until three.”
Monroe winced.
“Yeah, that tracks.”
“You say that like you’ve done it.”
“I’ve met people who have. You remember Justin?" he said. “Same energy. Less complaining, though.”
June turned her head slowly to look at him.
“I’m not complaining.”
“You’re describing it monstrously.”
“That’s because it was monstrous.”
Everest let out a quiet laugh at that, leaning back into the couch again.
“So you survived,” he said.
June considered that.
“Yeah.”
That answer sat there for a second.
A confirmation.
Monroe leaned forward slightly, elbows on his knees now, actually looking at her properly.
“What about the people?” he asked. “Anyone interesting?”
June’s eyes opened but stayed on the ceiling for a moment, replaying the day in fragments rather than sequence.
“…they’re older,” she said.
“No surprise there.”
“Not just older,” she added. “Settled.”
That got a small nod from him.
“Like they’ve already done something,” she continued. “And now they’re here to do something else.”
“And you?”
June didn’t answer right away.
Her fingers tapped lightly against the side of the bottle—once, twice.
“I’m here because I haven’t done anything yet,” she said.
Everest glanced over at her, studying her a little more carefully now.
“Anyone annoying?” he asked.
That got a reaction.
Small, but immediate.
June’s eyes narrowed just slightly.
“Yes.”
Monroe grinned.
“There it is.”
“She’s very…” June paused, searching for a word that didn’t sound like a complaint and failing slightly, “…precise.”
“Meaning?”
“She corrects things that don’t need to be corrected.”
“That sounds like you,” Everest said.
June turned her head toward him.
“It’s not the same.”
“How?”
“I wait until it's actually relevant.”
Monroe huffed a quiet laugh.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s definitely worse.”
The room settled again after that.
Not silent. Just slower.
The kind of quiet that comes after a day of too much, when no one feels the need to fill every gap anymore.
June moved slightly, sinking further into the couch without fully realizing it.
Her body was starting to catch up to the day in a way her mind hadn’t yet.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Everest glance at Monroe briefly.
A look passed between them.
Then Everest reached over and grabbed the throw blanket from the back of the couch, tossing it lightly in her direction.
It landed half across her lap.
June looked down at it.
Then at him.
“…what is this?”
“Emotional infrastructure,” he said.
She stared at him for a second longer.
Then, without comment, adjusted the blanket slightly so it actually covered something useful.
A few minutes passed.
The TV stayed muted.
No one rushed to turn it back on.
June’s eyes drifted closed again, slower this time.
No resistance.
From the other side of the couch, Monroe’s voice came quieter than before.
“So,” he said, “you quitting tomorrow?”
June didn’t open her eyes.
“No.”
“Good,” Everest muttered.
Another pause.
Then June, barely above a mumble—
“I just need to survive the first week.”
Monroe leaned back again, exhaling through his nose.
“Yeah,” he said. “Do that.”