Escape Velocity
Title: Escape Velocity
Team: AU
Rating: G
Fandom: Got7, Ikon
Pairing: Gen, mentions of past JB/JR
Summary: Getting the chance to explore a new world means having to leave home behind. And that's exactly what Jaebum is looking for.
Author's Note: Thank you to my wonderful team for all the love and support ^^
Prompt Used: Ailee - Singing Got Better, supplementary prompts
"Wow."
Hanbin grins at Jaebum. "Space, man. You never know what you'll find out here. Now aren't you glad we waited for you?"
"And I almost said no to the mission, damn it." Jaebum keeps his eyes on the ultra high resolution display screen. There's a planet down there waiting for them, one with a complex water-based weather system and rich green photosynthetic flora that filled the atmosphere with wondrous, wondrous oxygen. "We got lucky, huh?"
"Definitely." Hanbin glances at the spectrographic analysis at the corner of the screen. Everything seems normal. Habitable. Earth-like. "Yonghwa's crew reached their planet a couple of years ago. Their clouds are made of methane."
Jaebum snorts. "Methane. That's one planet off the list."
"Space, man."
"Yeah." Jaebum reaches out and expects moist air on his hands, but all he gets is the disappointing warmth of a flat crystal display. "Space."
Minhyuk is the best xeno-ecologist on this side of the galaxy. Or so he claims to be.
"Okay, I've done all the the analysis I can based on remote drone analysis." He has a pile of paper in his hands that he doesn't bother to offer; Jaebum and Hanbin aren't known for their interest in academia. "It's human-friendly, definitely. Up to a given level of confidence."
They're sitting in Jinhwan's hangar. Jaebum was studiously inspecting (for the hundredth time) the landside equipment that they'll be bringing with them to the surface before Minhyuk sought him out. "Didn't we already know that?" Now he's just attending to personal matters.
"We had a hunch," Minhyuk says. "A scientific hunch, fine, based on thousands of calculations from a couple of light years away using tools that can only look at a dozen things at a time. Actually being in the planet's gravity well and studying the atmosphere up close makes me feel better about the whole thing."
Jaebum snorts at how Minhyuk takes his field so personally. "That's a relief. I wouldn't want to have travelled all this way just for you to feel bad about our chances for survival."
"After how long it took you to say yes?" Minhyuk shoots back. "After, what, three months of us waiting for you to join the crew, you'd back out if I said I had a bad feeling about it?"
"I'm glad to hear that I'm so special to you guys," Jaebum teases.
Minhyuk shrugs. "Of course not. I'm actually very excited to send you and Hanbin to your deaths."
Jaebum blinks at the laser gun he's polishing. An actual laser gun. That Jinhwan, their engineer who can fix everything they throw at him, keeps pointing out is impractical and has no place at all in their array of advanced technology and where the fuck can he get one of those. "You're joking, right?"
Minhyuk sighs in defeat. "Yes."
After all these months of being cooped together, Jaebum still can't tell when he's being comedic.
It hasn't sunk in yet that they're not home. Which Jaebum feels is the understatement of the century. "Remind me again where we are?"
Hanbin's tone is completely flat. They've had this conversation literally dozens of times. "On a planet from a solar system several billion miles away from Earth."
It all happened too fast: one day he was at home tending to Jinyoung, then the day after he'd started on the mission briefing. Or maybe he's still starstruck, he's finally doing what he's always dreamed of since he first read about exoplanetary colonization.
They're descending through the atmosphere but Hanbin's answer is still technically correct. Hanbin is piloting the lander, Jinhwan stayed in the ship to plot out orbital patterns and Minhyuk knows better than to get his academic hands dirty. Leave the exploration to the people actually hired to do the exploring. "Mind if I ask something?"
"Hmm?"
"I notice you keep your hands on that honest-to-god laser gun of yours whenever you feel nervous. Security issues?" Getting to know teammates is Hanbin's way of calming his nerves. Which helps in its own ways even if it slightly distracts him from piloting. They're still in the upper cloud layer, anyway, there's nothing much to see and the lander's sensors are quiet.
They'll be working with no one else but each other for the next couple of months. Maybe even years if Minhyuk's bosses extend their contract. Jaebum figures it's time to open up. "Sentimental value, actually."
"Ah." Hanbin nods. They break through the cloud layer and their field of vision fills with shades of green. His expression remains blank. "She's waiting for you at home?"
Jaebum might as well tell the truth. "Not anymore. And for the record, you used the wrong pronoun." Besides, it's not like Hanbin can do much, now. "Got a problem with that?"
Hanbin actually blinks at the revelation. A couple of times. Then he turns in his seat to grin at him. "Not unless I'm self-hating."
"I fucking knew it."
"Should've asked Jinhwan to fix your gaydar."
Their make camp by the mouth of a shallow cave, close to running water and with a wide enough field of vision to give them a false sense of awareness. The lander has everything that Jinhwan and Minhyuk can think of, which means that it has everything that Jaebum and Hanbin will ever need.
Jaebum surveys the line of foreign but not-so-alien trees half a kilometer away. "Think this area's safe?" After the initial surprise of being on a planet that can support carbon-based lifeforms, Jaebum finds himself worrying about what other surprises this world has to offer. Who knows what the woods could be hiding? After all, even the forests back home aren't completely friendly.
Hanbin drives one of their security pylons into the ground. "You're the one with the laser gun."
"If we have to resort to my gun to protect us after all the technology Jinhwan developed, then we might as well be dead," Jaebum says. It's true enough: if something gets past the electric fields, auto-targeting microwave blasters, sonic cannons, flechette sentries, and everything else they carried with them, then the best they can do with with Jaebum's gun is to kill themselves so they won't have to learn first hand what unknown alien predators do to their prey.
Minhyuk said his readings were devoid of macro fauna ‘up to a certain level of confidence', which is Minhyuk's way of saying ‘I guess'.
Hanbin stands up straight and surveys their surroundings with something passing for acceptance on his face, a sigh that says ‘this will do'. "You said ‘not anymore'."
"Huh?"
"Your laser gun," Hanbin reminds him. "With its sentimental value and that I should not have said ‘she'."
"Ah." The sunlight turns deep orange. Almost golden. Jaebum goes to stand beside Hanbin, sunsets feel majestic if you watch it with someone else. They don't feel as lonely. "He passed away. Blood sickness. Right before we left for the mission. His name was Jinyoung. This gun is his last gift to me to bring on this mission. It's what I have to remember him by."
Hanbin had been looking at him fondly, but he quickly averts his eyes at the news. "Oh. Sorry. Shouldn't have asked."
"Nah." Jaebum places his hand on his Hanbin's shoulder. Here, small reassurances mean the world since there's no one else to give them. "Why, were you checking if I'd moved on? Are you gonna hit on me now?"
"That would be horrible for our dynamics," Hanbin says, self-deprecating laugh a little too stretched. "Maybe I would have in a different world."
Jaebum snorts and heads back inside the lander.
Jaebum cleans his gun nightly. It doesn't matter where he is and what time night falls, the behavior has become ingrained through sheer repetition.
"All I see is a mass of tiny wires and sparkly things," Hanbin admits. He watched Jaebum do it before, back when they were still on the way out of man's first solar system and they needed to learn how to live together.
"Honestly, it is just a bunch of tiny wires and sparkly things."
"And that sparkly thing that's bigger than all the rest?"
"This?" Jaebum raises the piece that Hanbin referred to, a crystal disk the size of a pea. "It's the lens. Pretty much the whole point of my gun. Made of special diamond. The only one of its kind."
"Oh. Is that why you refused to let Jinhwan have a look at your gun?"
"You know he'd have wanted to upgrade the whole thing." Jaebum places the lens back in its slot. He knows Hanbin can see how wistful he gets when putting the gun back together. But let that be another mystery.
They transmit their first batch of data back to Minhyuk at dawn the following day.
"Do you really have to be symbolic about this whole thing?" Minhyuk asks them drily. He's flickering slightly on screen, the orbiting ship is currently on the other side of the world. "First on-ground data during your first sunrise in your new world?"
"So it took us a while to set up your sensor equipment." Jaebum sips from his mug and winces visibly. "Tell Jinhwan that this coffee tastes terrible."
"A coffee machine was not on the initial requisition list," Minhyuk reminds him.
Jinhwan calls out from off screen. "Tell him he should be thankful I was able to throw something together at all." He shoves Minhyuk aside to glare at Jaebum through the video. "At least you're getting coffee. All we have is hot water."
Jaebum raises his mug in cheers. "Where did you get the coffee, anyway? We didn't bring any with us from Earth."
"Don't ask, don't tell."
Minhyuk pushes Jinhwan away. "Back to my data. When can I get the tectonic readouts?"
Jaebum glances at Hanbin blearily rubbing at his eyes. Hanbin had barely been able to fall asleep, and the only reason Jaebum is already up at this hour is because he didn't sleep at all. "Sorry, couldn't hear you, you're breaking up-"
"Pathetic, don't even try that, our communications technology-"
"-I'll catch you again later when you're on this side of the world, okay?"
"Im Jaebum-"
"What's happening?" Hanbin asks just as Jaebum shuts the video down. The blanket creases on his face make Jaebum feel strangely at home.
"We have a few more hours to sleep if you want." Jaebum offers him his mug. "Coffee? Just don't ask where it came from."
Everything in the perimeter of their camp is untouched since last night. "If there's macro fauna anywhere around here they seem to be leaving us alone." Hanbin doesn't sound as reassured as Jaebum expects him to be.
"That, or the defenses hold up perfectly."
"I guess we don't need your laser gun after all."
"Jinyoung would have been glad." Jaebum catches the strange look Hanbin throws at him. "He didn't want me to leave Earth. Said I might die the moment I actually step foot on the planet. Said who knows what could be out here and that I'd get eaten by the first alien dinosaur we'd find"
Hanbin laughs awkwardly. "Such little faith in you, man."
"He was fighting something that was killing him from inside." Jaebum readies the electric land rover that Hanbin fondly calls his baby. "That's why it took me so long to say yes to the mission. I stayed with him until the end."
Hanbin loads their equipment into the rover's storage compartment. "Is that why you bring your gun everywhere? Is it his way of protecting you?" Minhyuk would kill them if they don't set everything up by tonight. Or worse, he might start telling them jokes.
"I guess you could say that." The sky, at least, doesn't look so alien from down here. Clouds never look like anything too strange.
Jinyoung had liked looking up at the clouds after kicking ball the whole day. He'd said yes in the end. There was no point in Jaebum to stop chasing his dreams just because Jinyoung would be stuck on Earth for the rest of his too short life. He'd wished that Jaebum could somehow take him too, then he laughed because they both know it's never going to happen.
One of the many things that compose the human body is carbon. Properly cremated, the body's carbon can be processed into diamond. And diamonds can be cut into anything.
Even lens.
Wherever Jaebum goes, Jinyoung will be there to protect him. And Jaebum will show him all these worlds he once only dreamed of seeing.
Team: AU
Rating: G
Fandom: Got7, Ikon
Pairing: Gen, mentions of past JB/JR
Summary: Getting the chance to explore a new world means having to leave home behind. And that's exactly what Jaebum is looking for.
Author's Note: Thank you to my wonderful team for all the love and support ^^
Prompt Used: Ailee - Singing Got Better, supplementary prompts
"Wow."
Hanbin grins at Jaebum. "Space, man. You never know what you'll find out here. Now aren't you glad we waited for you?"
"And I almost said no to the mission, damn it." Jaebum keeps his eyes on the ultra high resolution display screen. There's a planet down there waiting for them, one with a complex water-based weather system and rich green photosynthetic flora that filled the atmosphere with wondrous, wondrous oxygen. "We got lucky, huh?"
"Definitely." Hanbin glances at the spectrographic analysis at the corner of the screen. Everything seems normal. Habitable. Earth-like. "Yonghwa's crew reached their planet a couple of years ago. Their clouds are made of methane."
Jaebum snorts. "Methane. That's one planet off the list."
"Space, man."
"Yeah." Jaebum reaches out and expects moist air on his hands, but all he gets is the disappointing warmth of a flat crystal display. "Space."
Minhyuk is the best xeno-ecologist on this side of the galaxy. Or so he claims to be.
"Okay, I've done all the the analysis I can based on remote drone analysis." He has a pile of paper in his hands that he doesn't bother to offer; Jaebum and Hanbin aren't known for their interest in academia. "It's human-friendly, definitely. Up to a given level of confidence."
They're sitting in Jinhwan's hangar. Jaebum was studiously inspecting (for the hundredth time) the landside equipment that they'll be bringing with them to the surface before Minhyuk sought him out. "Didn't we already know that?" Now he's just attending to personal matters.
"We had a hunch," Minhyuk says. "A scientific hunch, fine, based on thousands of calculations from a couple of light years away using tools that can only look at a dozen things at a time. Actually being in the planet's gravity well and studying the atmosphere up close makes me feel better about the whole thing."
Jaebum snorts at how Minhyuk takes his field so personally. "That's a relief. I wouldn't want to have travelled all this way just for you to feel bad about our chances for survival."
"After how long it took you to say yes?" Minhyuk shoots back. "After, what, three months of us waiting for you to join the crew, you'd back out if I said I had a bad feeling about it?"
"I'm glad to hear that I'm so special to you guys," Jaebum teases.
Minhyuk shrugs. "Of course not. I'm actually very excited to send you and Hanbin to your deaths."
Jaebum blinks at the laser gun he's polishing. An actual laser gun. That Jinhwan, their engineer who can fix everything they throw at him, keeps pointing out is impractical and has no place at all in their array of advanced technology and where the fuck can he get one of those. "You're joking, right?"
Minhyuk sighs in defeat. "Yes."
After all these months of being cooped together, Jaebum still can't tell when he's being comedic.
It hasn't sunk in yet that they're not home. Which Jaebum feels is the understatement of the century. "Remind me again where we are?"
Hanbin's tone is completely flat. They've had this conversation literally dozens of times. "On a planet from a solar system several billion miles away from Earth."
It all happened too fast: one day he was at home tending to Jinyoung, then the day after he'd started on the mission briefing. Or maybe he's still starstruck, he's finally doing what he's always dreamed of since he first read about exoplanetary colonization.
They're descending through the atmosphere but Hanbin's answer is still technically correct. Hanbin is piloting the lander, Jinhwan stayed in the ship to plot out orbital patterns and Minhyuk knows better than to get his academic hands dirty. Leave the exploration to the people actually hired to do the exploring. "Mind if I ask something?"
"Hmm?"
"I notice you keep your hands on that honest-to-god laser gun of yours whenever you feel nervous. Security issues?" Getting to know teammates is Hanbin's way of calming his nerves. Which helps in its own ways even if it slightly distracts him from piloting. They're still in the upper cloud layer, anyway, there's nothing much to see and the lander's sensors are quiet.
They'll be working with no one else but each other for the next couple of months. Maybe even years if Minhyuk's bosses extend their contract. Jaebum figures it's time to open up. "Sentimental value, actually."
"Ah." Hanbin nods. They break through the cloud layer and their field of vision fills with shades of green. His expression remains blank. "She's waiting for you at home?"
Jaebum might as well tell the truth. "Not anymore. And for the record, you used the wrong pronoun." Besides, it's not like Hanbin can do much, now. "Got a problem with that?"
Hanbin actually blinks at the revelation. A couple of times. Then he turns in his seat to grin at him. "Not unless I'm self-hating."
"I fucking knew it."
"Should've asked Jinhwan to fix your gaydar."
Their make camp by the mouth of a shallow cave, close to running water and with a wide enough field of vision to give them a false sense of awareness. The lander has everything that Jinhwan and Minhyuk can think of, which means that it has everything that Jaebum and Hanbin will ever need.
Jaebum surveys the line of foreign but not-so-alien trees half a kilometer away. "Think this area's safe?" After the initial surprise of being on a planet that can support carbon-based lifeforms, Jaebum finds himself worrying about what other surprises this world has to offer. Who knows what the woods could be hiding? After all, even the forests back home aren't completely friendly.
Hanbin drives one of their security pylons into the ground. "You're the one with the laser gun."
"If we have to resort to my gun to protect us after all the technology Jinhwan developed, then we might as well be dead," Jaebum says. It's true enough: if something gets past the electric fields, auto-targeting microwave blasters, sonic cannons, flechette sentries, and everything else they carried with them, then the best they can do with with Jaebum's gun is to kill themselves so they won't have to learn first hand what unknown alien predators do to their prey.
Minhyuk said his readings were devoid of macro fauna ‘up to a certain level of confidence', which is Minhyuk's way of saying ‘I guess'.
Hanbin stands up straight and surveys their surroundings with something passing for acceptance on his face, a sigh that says ‘this will do'. "You said ‘not anymore'."
"Huh?"
"Your laser gun," Hanbin reminds him. "With its sentimental value and that I should not have said ‘she'."
"Ah." The sunlight turns deep orange. Almost golden. Jaebum goes to stand beside Hanbin, sunsets feel majestic if you watch it with someone else. They don't feel as lonely. "He passed away. Blood sickness. Right before we left for the mission. His name was Jinyoung. This gun is his last gift to me to bring on this mission. It's what I have to remember him by."
Hanbin had been looking at him fondly, but he quickly averts his eyes at the news. "Oh. Sorry. Shouldn't have asked."
"Nah." Jaebum places his hand on his Hanbin's shoulder. Here, small reassurances mean the world since there's no one else to give them. "Why, were you checking if I'd moved on? Are you gonna hit on me now?"
"That would be horrible for our dynamics," Hanbin says, self-deprecating laugh a little too stretched. "Maybe I would have in a different world."
Jaebum snorts and heads back inside the lander.
Jaebum cleans his gun nightly. It doesn't matter where he is and what time night falls, the behavior has become ingrained through sheer repetition.
"All I see is a mass of tiny wires and sparkly things," Hanbin admits. He watched Jaebum do it before, back when they were still on the way out of man's first solar system and they needed to learn how to live together.
"Honestly, it is just a bunch of tiny wires and sparkly things."
"And that sparkly thing that's bigger than all the rest?"
"This?" Jaebum raises the piece that Hanbin referred to, a crystal disk the size of a pea. "It's the lens. Pretty much the whole point of my gun. Made of special diamond. The only one of its kind."
"Oh. Is that why you refused to let Jinhwan have a look at your gun?"
"You know he'd have wanted to upgrade the whole thing." Jaebum places the lens back in its slot. He knows Hanbin can see how wistful he gets when putting the gun back together. But let that be another mystery.
They transmit their first batch of data back to Minhyuk at dawn the following day.
"Do you really have to be symbolic about this whole thing?" Minhyuk asks them drily. He's flickering slightly on screen, the orbiting ship is currently on the other side of the world. "First on-ground data during your first sunrise in your new world?"
"So it took us a while to set up your sensor equipment." Jaebum sips from his mug and winces visibly. "Tell Jinhwan that this coffee tastes terrible."
"A coffee machine was not on the initial requisition list," Minhyuk reminds him.
Jinhwan calls out from off screen. "Tell him he should be thankful I was able to throw something together at all." He shoves Minhyuk aside to glare at Jaebum through the video. "At least you're getting coffee. All we have is hot water."
Jaebum raises his mug in cheers. "Where did you get the coffee, anyway? We didn't bring any with us from Earth."
"Don't ask, don't tell."
Minhyuk pushes Jinhwan away. "Back to my data. When can I get the tectonic readouts?"
Jaebum glances at Hanbin blearily rubbing at his eyes. Hanbin had barely been able to fall asleep, and the only reason Jaebum is already up at this hour is because he didn't sleep at all. "Sorry, couldn't hear you, you're breaking up-"
"Pathetic, don't even try that, our communications technology-"
"-I'll catch you again later when you're on this side of the world, okay?"
"Im Jaebum-"
"What's happening?" Hanbin asks just as Jaebum shuts the video down. The blanket creases on his face make Jaebum feel strangely at home.
"We have a few more hours to sleep if you want." Jaebum offers him his mug. "Coffee? Just don't ask where it came from."
Everything in the perimeter of their camp is untouched since last night. "If there's macro fauna anywhere around here they seem to be leaving us alone." Hanbin doesn't sound as reassured as Jaebum expects him to be.
"That, or the defenses hold up perfectly."
"I guess we don't need your laser gun after all."
"Jinyoung would have been glad." Jaebum catches the strange look Hanbin throws at him. "He didn't want me to leave Earth. Said I might die the moment I actually step foot on the planet. Said who knows what could be out here and that I'd get eaten by the first alien dinosaur we'd find"
Hanbin laughs awkwardly. "Such little faith in you, man."
"He was fighting something that was killing him from inside." Jaebum readies the electric land rover that Hanbin fondly calls his baby. "That's why it took me so long to say yes to the mission. I stayed with him until the end."
Hanbin loads their equipment into the rover's storage compartment. "Is that why you bring your gun everywhere? Is it his way of protecting you?" Minhyuk would kill them if they don't set everything up by tonight. Or worse, he might start telling them jokes.
"I guess you could say that." The sky, at least, doesn't look so alien from down here. Clouds never look like anything too strange.
Jinyoung had liked looking up at the clouds after kicking ball the whole day. He'd said yes in the end. There was no point in Jaebum to stop chasing his dreams just because Jinyoung would be stuck on Earth for the rest of his too short life. He'd wished that Jaebum could somehow take him too, then he laughed because they both know it's never going to happen.
One of the many things that compose the human body is carbon. Properly cremated, the body's carbon can be processed into diamond. And diamonds can be cut into anything.
Even lens.
Wherever Jaebum goes, Jinyoung will be there to protect him. And Jaebum will show him all these worlds he once only dreamed of seeing.