Major Blaine Anderson knew he was going to be an astronaut on a chilly but clear October night when he was seventeen. The adolescent watched with wondrous eyes as the tiny speck of light, the Soviet satellite Sputnik, drifted across the Ohio night sky. From that moment on, everything Blaine did revolved around his dream of being one of the men that got to take to the skies. He graduated high school with a perfect GPA with Honors in Math and Science, as well as a scholarship to the Air Force Academy. He continued to achieve top marks in college, so that when he left the Academy, Class of 1962, he was not only Summa Cum Laude, but had received a job offer from the newly formed Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Blaine spent the next years as a relentlessly diligent worker, and his meteoric rise to the rank of Major was impressive to say the least.

But today it was all going to pay off. All the nights he chose to study rather than go to the drive-in with his friends, all the equations and formulas he subjected himself to instead of the music notes and song lyrics he would have rather been reading,  all the hours he spent with his books instead of dolls that wanted to neck in his dorm room. Blaine smiled at that last thought, he was so thankful that Rachel had always been so understanding of his dog-like work ethic. Anyhow, today would make all the sacrifice and discipline worth it, because today Major Blaine Anderson was going to be launched into space, he would circle the Earth just like the Sputnik did all those years ago. Today was going to be the best day of his life, even better than the night he proposed to Rachel, though he’d never dream of insinuating that to his fiancée.

“How are you feeling, Blaine?” General Stone asked the young man who was being strapped into his flight gear by various colleagues.

“Ready and eager, sir.” Blaine struggled to keep his formal tone from betraying all the giddy excitement bubbling underneath his decorous exterior.

“You wouldn’t want to sit this one out, would ya?” Major Hudson, also Blaine’s best friend Finn, questioned teasingly.

“Oh no, this is my baby,” he replied with a grin.

“Everything checks out, Major,” the General reported and Blaine’s smile increased tenfold.

“This is really your month, Blaine,”  Finn remarks as he and the other men in the room double check the Major to make sure he’s ready, “going up in orbit today and marrying Rachel in a couple of weeks.”

“Yes, and I look forward to that bachelor party you’re planning to celebrate when I get back,” Blaine told him. All the men shared a knowing chuckle.

“Don’t get too ahead of yourself now,” General Stone cautioned as he watched the astronaut lower the helmet onto his head. “You’ve still got a mission to complete.”

“No need to worry about me, General. I’ve been preparing for today for nearly a decade,” Blaine assured his superior as he shut the visor of his helmet with an air of finality.

0-0-0

“All systems a-ok,” one of the control operators said into his headphones, fiddling with one of the seemingly thousands of buttons on the large panel he and the operators sat at. “Ten seconds to firing…nine…eight…seven…”

Finn knew he shouldn’t be so nervous. He wasn’t even going up, and besides, no one was more qualified than Blaine to take on this mission. Nevertheless, he couldn’t contain the thrill that slid down his spine as the countdown progressed.

“…six…five…four…”

He wondered how Blaine was doing. He must be excited. And nervous. What if he had to pee? Talk about bad timing. Finn laughed to himself just the slightest bit, earning a few skeptical glares from his peers in the control room.

“…three…two…one…zero, lift off!”

Even though Finn was nestled underground inside the Space Center, he could still feel and hear and feel the rocket launching. A wave of jealousy swept through him. Blaine always got everything; he was promoted first, he got Rachel, and now he got this mission, it wasn’t fa—

The Major was shaken from his thought by an ominous tone that buzzed throughout the room. All of a sudden the operators were frantically conversing as their fingers flew over the various panels.

“What’s happening?”

The operator closest to Finn turned to address him. “The final stage misfired, he won’t be able to maintain orbit.”

Suddenly Finn didn’t feel so jealous anymore.

0-0-0

This was just his luck, this was just Blaine Anderson’s fucking luck. He labored a sigh full of disappointment and exhaustion as he hauled the last stack of wood back to the beach where he had been constructing the large SOS signal to alert any planes, boats, hell, any form of human life that he had been stranded on this godforsaken island three days ago. Blaine had been able to maneuver his rocket to crash on land instead of water thanks to his extensive flight training at the Academy, and even though he was safe and healthy for all intents and purposes, he couldn’t restrain the feelings of anger and frustration that were stirring inside of him. This mission was supposed to be his crowning achievement, he was supposed to prove to his seventeen-year-old self that hard work and perseverance paid off and, as corny as it sounded, made his dreams come true.

So much for that, Blaine thought to himself with a roll of his eyes as he placed the last bits of wood to complete the O in his SOS.

“Done,” he said to no one in particular as he stood up wiping his hands. He turned around to look at the ocean and the horizon in the distance. Blaine wondered how long it would take for the Air Force to find him, if they ever found him…

Blaine had tried to keep those types of thoughts to a minimum over the past few days. He kept telling himself that he would be fine, that the men were probably already on their way to wherever Blaine was at the moment. The astronaut wasn’t sure himself, but he estimated that he was probably somewhere in the Indian Ocean. He wondered how people back at home were taking the news—his parents, Finn, Rachel was probably beside herself in her signature overdramatic manner. Blaine chuckled to himself and wished he had some way to see his fiancée at the moment. He could just picture Rachel, dressed head-to-toe in black, sobbing loudly, lamenting on how she’ll never be able to go on…Blaine loved the girl, he really did, but sometime he couldn’t help but find her melodramatics downright comical.

He glanced back at the large letters spelled out on the sand when Blaine realized that one of the logs had strayed from formation. The astronaut remedied it quickly, but not a second after he placed the thin slab back with the others it rolled away completely on its own.

Blaine’s eyes widened and he shook his head back and forth a few times as he blinked in disbelief. He must be hallucinating, he knew that he must be dehydrated from the heat... but still. His curiosity getting the better of him, Blaine gingerly picked up the object and placed it in its previous position. And just like that, the log spun toward the ocean. Eyebrows furrowed in confusion and intrigue, Blaine reached for the log once again and upon studying it closer, he realized that the log wasn’t a log at all, it was some sort of ornately decorated bottle. He uncapped the bottle, which was a deep, rich purple hue with a small golden pattern painted across its circumference. Blaine looked inside and was only met with darkness.

“Hmmm,” the astronaut muttered to himself as he continued to examine the bottle. “I wonder how this ended up in a place like here.”

Blaine checked the perimeter of the bottle once again for any clues about its origins or owner. He could swear there was some sort of symbol or writing on one side of the urn, and when he rubbed smooth glass surface with his fingers, smoke began to billow out its tapered neck. Blaine let out an involuntary shout and dropped the bottle, yet even when the decanter landed on the sand, the smoke, it looked pinkish in hue, continued to waft from the bottle. A very stunned Blaine watched wordlessly as the smoke amassed to reveal a young man. He was dressed in a red vest with pink accents, and his pants were styled similarly, the fabric of the legs was loose, pink, and practically sheer while the waistband was a solid red with two identical sheer pink slits cut right along each hip. To top off the look, he sported some kind of headdress, like a red fez with a pink veil attached to it.

Well, this was quite possibly the last thing Blaine could have ever expected. He watched, still frozen, as the man sunk to his knees, his head bowed, and his palms pressed together as if he was praying. Blaine’s jaw dropped and rubbed his eyes furiously, trying to do all that he could to discern whether he was delusional or not. He was so awestruck that Blaine barely registered when the man spoke, though it wouldn’t have made much of a difference anyway since whatever tongue he was communicating in was most definitely not English. The man looked up at Blaine, and the astronaut realized that maybe using the term man was a bit generous, since the male gazing up at him seemed to be no more than a boy. His hazel eyes locked with the boy’s blue ones.

“Oh,” the boy moaned.

The next thing Blaine knew, the boy had risen and crossed the few feet of sand separating them. The astronaut, still paralyzed by the absurdity of the entire situation, didn’t react when the boy reached him and paused to study him once again, and hardly noticed that his blue eyes were full of adoration. He did however react to when the boy threw an arm around Blaine’s shoulder and pressed their lips together.

Blame it on the isolation, or the dehydration, but Blaine actually allowed himself to relish the sensation. After all, the boy’s lips were warm and soft and…they were a boy’s. Blaine quickly separated their mouths and took a moment to regard the boy staring back at him with wide, dreamy eyes.

“I must have gone farther into orbit than I thought!”