Jake knows they’re in a decaying orbit. Getting back from the edge of death only made it harder to avoid the tug of gravity.
At some point, Jake Seresin and Bradley Bradshaw are going to crash together, but he’s not sure what that fallout will be.

He’s thinking about the way he looked climbing out of a smoking F14– about the blood caked down from a cut on his neck, scars standing out in stark relief with the splotchy flush to his cheeks.

He’s thinking about the warmth of their hands, the way Jake had held on while Bradshaw spoke and how he hadn’t really heard a word of it— he’d stayed focused on the heave of his chest. The dozens of little signs that Bradshaw was alive, standing strong and bright and fucking real in front of him.

There’s a part of the process for orbital decay that Jake remembers learning in sophomore earth science.
Some decays end in stellar collision, both the forces swallowing each other up until they’ve collapsed into a black hole or erupt into the silence of space, but there’s another option.

In the process of the decay, the smaller object burns, explodes, or breaks up in the larger object's atmosphere– there’s a force, small but bright, that’s so drawn in by the other that it’s willing to crash into it just to be together.

Jake’s never been a big force. He burns, he burns, he burns.

Right when the sun makes it past the horizon and the glow spreads across the whole of the ocean, illuminating the town behind them.
The moon, though, is still holding out– just for those few scant moments, the sun and the moon coexist at their fullest moments.

Jake thinks about the spill of the rays over Bradley’s soft hair and the quiet wash of waves around them, sand shifting under their shirts and sticking to the backs of their knees.

He thinks about waking up to folded sheets and the downturn of eyes in the cafeteria; about eight-six on the jukebox and the buzz of someone’s gaze on his lips.

He thinks about firing the missile for his second kill and the way he didn’t hesitate.

The sun follows the moon, the moon follows the sun. A familiar cycle that’s guaranteed– no matter the weather, no matter how rocky the waves.