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You had never meant to become one of the most important people in the world. Then again, you had also never imagined that you would be coerced into going on a suicide mission before. But it was the most important cause you could possibly devote your life to as the tertiary engineer on the Hail Mary, brought onboard at the last minute. Along with Dr. Ryland Grace, you were supposed to save humanity from the threat of Astrophage causing the sun to dim.
Back on Earth, a million lifetimes ago, you had been his assistant. The only one he trusted to be in the room with him as he made one of the most important discoveries on the planet. In a matter of weeks, Ryland had taught you all he knew about the alien life form. With your varied credentials, the two of you had been among the few most qualified people in the world to go on this mission. And now here you were.
Outside the safe confines of the Hail Mary was the cold, unforgiving vacuum of space. Even though you had gotten used to it over time, nothing could deter you from considering it even more beautiful up close. Just as you thought Ryland was beautiful, too.
Throughout your journey, you had found almost every waking moment of your existence occupied with thoughts of him. Ever since the two of you had woken up from your comas and he’d found out that you were still alive too, Ryland was there for you, always catering to your needs. For better or worse, he had been protective of you, even when his memories had been gone. He almost never let you out of his sight, if he could help it.
At first it had been a major nuisance to you. But in the end, you got used to it and slowly found it to be a constant comfort amid the uncertainty of your mission. You had come to the conclusion that some company was better than none. Besides, the two of you were the only ones who had survived the long journey into space.
And then you met Rocky. He had upended your entire worldview the more you got to know him. The three of you had embarked on a wild adventure, a race against time to save both Earth and Erid. But now it was all over. Your findings were on their way back to Earth, since you could never return there yourselves.
These thoughts occupied your mind as you performed a routine status check on the Hail Mary, exactly the way you had been trained to do. As the top expert in your field, you were there to make sure that the technology on the ship always worked properly. If anything broke down, you were the last resort; the last line of defense to fix it.
“Systems check complete,” the ship’s computer announced.
You scrolled through the wealth of available information one more time for good measure. You were no pilot, but you and Ryland had agreed to take turns ensuring that the Hail Mary continued on its current trajectory through space. It was one more reason to be grateful that both of you had survived the trip, let alone made it this far.
You had set a course for Erid several weeks ago. Thanks to the Hail Mary’s meticulously thought-out system and unfettered access to the entire span of human knowledge, you were still able to keep track of how much time had passed by. This would be the final stage of your journey, and unlike every other instance of your discoveries thus far, it would go undocumented.
When you were convinced that all was well with the ship’s navigation, you decided to go looking for your crewmates. The pair in question was never far away, spending most of their time in the laboratory. And soon enough, their voices drifted over to you in the relatively small space. It was impossible for you to tune out the specific nature of their conversation, especially when one particular sentence caught your attention.
“Grace want mate.”
Your skin started to heat as the words sank in. Words that had clearly not been meant for your ears.
Despite sharing almost everything else with you, Ryland had never shared much about his romantic history. The topic had only come up in passing before. It was something you had secretly thought about from time to time, though, the sudden desire for romance hitting you most often when the ship’s night cycle was active. Luckily, you weren’t alone, and you were far from lonely.
You inched forward just in time to catch Ryland’s reply.
“Nope; that’s not what I said.”
“Grace want mate,” Rocky repeated. “Have mate on ship.”
Your jaw dropped. Surely the software that allowed you and Ryland to communicate with Rocky had mistranslated what he was trying to convey. It was an occurrence that rarely happened, but there was always the possibility of an error. It was bound to be true of any sort of technology.
But deep down, you knew better. There was no translation error. Rocky was trying to set you up with Ryland.
He reached the conclusion at the same time. “Wait; you mean Y/N?”
It might have been your imagination, but there was a note of fondness to his voice this time around; far more so than when he usually spoke to you.
“Yes.” The enthusiastic affirmation caught you off guard. “You say Y/N name when you sleep. This happen many times.”
“Uh, no, no; that doesn’t mean anything. That’s just my brain–“
“Do not deny.”
There was a beat of silence. And then…
“Okay, you got me. Yeah, I like her, but I…I can’t tell her.” Ryland’s voice was slightly lowered, as if he knew that you were nearby and listening in on the conversation.
“Why not, question?”
“Because I, because she…” He groaned in frustration. You could imagine him running his hands through his dirty blonde hair, causing several strands to temporarily stand on end. The image brought a smile to your face. “Look; it’s complicated. Human relationships are complicated. There’s a lot of emotion involved, and it’s just…messy.”
“No, is simple. Grace tell Y/N how Grace feel.”
You wondered why Ryland had chosen to keep his true feelings from you. Up until that point, you had told each other practically everything. There was no reason to have any secrets when you spent nearly every waking moment together.
Before the conversation could venture any further, you entered the bridge of the ship.
“Systems check looks good, and we’re still on course,” you said cheerily. Then you looked around, taking in the scene before you. “Um, what’s going on here?”
Ryland looked up from his position sitting on the ship’s floor. His blue eyes were wide at first behind his thin-framed glasses, almost giving him the impression of guilt. Eventually, though, a smile crossed his face when he saw you. Any trace of awkwardness that might have lingered from his previous conversation vanished completely.
“It’s a party. Come celebrate with us.”
“What are we celebrating?” you wondered. You could think of any number of things that might qualify.
The answer turned out to be simple, yet all-encompassing. “Life.”
Ryland held up a party hat in your general direction.
“Yeah, okay.” After a moment of slight hesitation, you stepped forward and accepted the offering.
“Happy happy happy,” said Rocky as you and Ryland drew closer to each other.
Ryland kept his focus on you as you took your seat next to him on the floor of the ship. Normally you wouldn’t mind the kind, calm scrutiny behind his gaze. But now it bothered you, knowing that there was something he wasn’t telling you. Something he wanted to say. And you wanted it out in the open.
“Something you wanna tell me, Ryland?” You couldn’t help it if there was a bit of a challenge in your voice. The overheard conversation had made you bold.
He averted his eyes. “Shoot. How much did you hear?”
“I heard enough.”
Recognizing the perfect moment, Rocky moved closer to the two of you. “Grace Y/N mate, question?”
Heat rose to your face at the unexpected interruption. “Um…what? No. Where did you get that idea?”
You sent Ryland an accusatory glance. From what you had overheard, he was the one behind this situation in the first place. It gave you a small amount of gratification to see that his cheeks were flushed.
“Observation of human behavior.”
“I told you; we’re not mates,” Ryland protested, stumbling a little on the last word.
“I mean…” you hesitated for a moment. It was a risk, but you had to take it. “We could talk about it. If that’s okay with you, Ryland.”
You had ultimately decided that it would be best to just get the awkward conversation over with; it was clearly necessary, too.
Ryland must’ve had the same train of thought running through his mind. “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds great.” He leaned towards Rocky’s protective xenonite container as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “Hey, Rocky. Y/N and I are gonna need about 300 seconds to be alone, okay?” He lowered his voice in confidence. “Privacy. Human thing.”
“Yes. Privacy. Understand.”
With that, Rocky went back to his designated area of the ship. You glanced in the direction he had disappeared off to. No matter where he went, he would be able to overhear your conversation with Ryland, a thought that sent heat rising to the surface of your skin. At least you had a modicum of privacy to talk now.
“I do…I mean, I, um, have something I want to tell you,” Ryland announced. The words suddenly spilled from his mouth, as if they had been dying to be released. “I can’t say I’ve been obvious about it, but…I like you.”
It was a good start, despite how juvenile it sounded. But it wasn’t enough. “You like me?” you prompted.
“Come on, Y/N, you know what I mean. I have feelings for you.” He let out a small laugh. “There. Is that better?”
He blurted out sentence after sentence, almost too fast for you to fully process. And then it slowly sunk in. Having been presented with the perfect opportunity, Ryland had taken Rocky’s bold advice to heart.
“Since when did you have feelings for me?” you asked, keeping your voice light and almost playful.
“To be honest? Since we woke up.” He took a moment to think it over, seeming to change his mind. “Actually…no. A long time before that.”
A long time before that? But that meant…
Oh. Oh.
A silence filled the air as he waited for your response. And then you decided to put his mind at ease. “Well, I like you too, Ryland.”
It was true. You had liked him from the start, at least to a strictly professional degree. But all of his quirks and the constant array of corny jokes made it hard not to fall for the man. He was exactly your type.
And somewhere along the way, you had fallen for him, hard. There was no denying it any longer, now that you knew your feelings were reciprocated. Both of you had very little in the way of romantic experience, but you could find ways of working around it. You could move forward together at your own pace.
Your attention shifted back to Ryland, who was staring at you in disbelief. Before he could give you a reply, there was something else on your mind that needed to be said. “I can’t believe you waited so long to tell me.”
Of course, there was the obvious reason why he’d stayed silent all this time. The mission had been too important to even bother with anything else. You and Ryland couldn’t be anything beyond colleagues. Not when you had two planets whose survival hung in the balance, depending entirely upon your efforts to save them. But there was clearly something else that had held him back from confessing his true feelings.
“Yeah, well, you know me,” he said with a shrug. “Not the bravest guy in the world.”
“You are brave, though,” you countered, pouring every last bit of sincerity into your words. “And that’s exactly why I like you.”
You looked into his eyes, recognizing that it was your turn to be brave. Slow movements brought you closer towards each other, until his lips finally brushed against yours. It was a whisper of a touch that you blamed on your mutual inexperience.
Ryland shifted slightly, tilting his head at a different angle. And when both of you were comfortable, he deepened the kiss. The longer your lips met, the more you felt like you were floating; it was as if the ship’s gravity had been turned off.
When you pulled apart for air, you took in the sight of him, wanting to memorize it like never before. He reached up and adjusted his glasses, which had become crooked in the midst of your kiss. Your eyes darted to his lips again as they curved into a smile.
“Wow,” he said. “That was…”
“Yeah.”
Your mind drifted back to the relentless teasing from the entire team behind Project Hail Mary in the beginning, long before the mission had even begun. There should have been no shame in wanting to indulge in romance, considering the imminent disaster. Yet at the time you had been remarkably embarrassed by all of their insinuations…because deep down you knew that they were right. Ryland was the one you wanted.
“You know,” you mused, “I remember how hard they were rooting for us, back on Earth.”
Ryland’s cheeks flushed. He remembered it all now, too, crystal clear. “Yeah, I guess they knew the whole time.”
This prompted a light laugh from you at the absurdity of it all. Then Ryland joined in, his laughter mingling with yours. It was one of the most beautiful sounds you had ever heard.
“We’re a couple of idiots, aren’t we?” he asked when your laughter had dissipated.
“Yes. Grace Y/N hide feelings. Grace Y/N bad at saying truth. Rocky help.”
You turned to find Rocky observing you from his protective xenonite container. He had come back in the allotted time frame, as expected. A string of familiar, high-pitched notes burst from him; he was laughing, too. And this time, it wasn’t his attempt to imitate you.
“Well, bud,” Ryland said. “You were right. Guess I owe you one.”
“Yeah,” you added. “Turns out we like each other.”
You moved closer to Ryland, gaze focused on his lips. Sensing your intentions, he pulled you in for another kiss. It was like the two of you had entered into your own world, far apart from everything else. Except it was no longer just the two of you.
“Grace Y/N mate. Happy happy happy.”
· · ─ ·✶· ─ ·
Ryland’s hands drifted to your waist, holding you safely and securely. The slow trill of an instrumental ballad played from the ship’s speaker system. You couldn’t say whose idea it had been in the first place, but it hardly mattered.
The two of you had spent most of that first night and the next day after your confession practically joined at the hip, kissing at every opportunity that arose. It was as if you were making up for lost time. And now that your lives no longer hung in the balance, you had all the time in the world to indulge in each other’s company.
Rocky had agreed once again to give you and Ryland privacy. At first he had been reluctant, having recognized the perfect opportunity to observe human mating rituals firsthand…for science, of course. But in the end, he had given in and left you in peace. You and Ryland had been grateful for the time alone.
“Let’s pretend we’re on Earth and this is our first date,” you suggested, looking up at him. “Where would we go?”
Ryland gently spun you around in lock step with the music. “That’s easy. I’m thinking…the beach. Yeah.”
“Yeah? I’d like that.”
The picture formed with crystal clarity in your mind. The two of you would stroll across the sand, hands intertwined against the backdrop of a golden sunset. It would be a simple, private place where you would no longer need to worry about saving the world.
“But you know what?” Ryland asked, bringing you back to the present. He looked down at you, his expression fond as you continued to sway to the music. “This is really nice, too.”
The closer you got to Rocky’s home planet, the more another unspoken question hung thick and heavy in the recycled air of the ship. There were still things that needed to be said between you and Ryland. And finally, you were presented with the opportunity to address the subject.
The two of you sat in front of the ship’s hyper realistic rendering of a beach on Earth. You wanted to bask in the moment, but there was one last inevitable truth you and Ryland had to face before you reached your destination.
You stared at the holographic waves crashing against the shore. It was an approximation of the life you could’ve led, and would have to suffice in place of the real thing. “So what now?”
“Now we live our lives,” Ryland replied. “Together.”
“I like the sound of that.”
You shifted closer to him and rested your head on his shoulder. Moments later, Ryland’s arm wrapped around your waist, pulling you closer to him. His presence was as comforting as it had always been to you. The only difference lay in the fact that what had once been unspoken between you was now out in the open. And just like you had once been resigned to dying, you were willing to accept your new fate with him at your side.
For the rest of your journey to Erid, you would have all you needed. Enough fuel to last you for the trip, a new best friend, and even a mate. You felt safe and secure in all aspects of your life as the Hail Mary drifted through space, heading towards the distant planet that would eventually become your new home.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ ·
An alarm clock blared from your bedside table, pulling you from the depths of sleep. For a moment, in your dreams, you had been soaring through the endless void of space again…until you weren’t. A soft groan escaped your lips at the abrupt intrusion. Life on Erid was relatively peaceful, but lately, your mornings were filled with chaos more often than not.
Your husband rolled over in bed beside you and turned off the alarm. Within seconds, a blessed silence filled the room. You tried to savor it as much as you could before the anticipated chaos of the day began.
“Good morning,” he said, a slow smile accompanying his words when his gaze landed on you.
You responded in kind, sleep still evident in your voice. Ryland leaned over and gave you a lingering kiss. The two of you had quickly settled into your new lives over the past five years. It was hard to believe how much had changed in such a short time.
A year into your arrival on Erid, Ryland had asked some of the Eridians who specialized in crafting jewelry to forge a pair of rings for the two of you. He had kept it a secret from you until he’d felt that the time was right. And though you were adamant that you had all the time in the world to fully nurture your relationship, you hadn’t hesitated to accept his proposal. Your marriage would never be typical, at least according to Earth standards, but both of you had understood that from the beginning.
An insistent tapping came at the door, bringing you out of your reminiscing and back to the present. If there was an urgent matter that required your attention, one of you would usually be called upon to ensure that all was well. And today, you were determined that it not be you.
“I got this, honey,” Ryland said, giving your hand a gentle squeeze before he got out of bed.
The phantom sensation of his touch lingered on your skin long after he was gone. Ryland would soon be off to work, his passion for teaching having extended to his Eridian students. Meanwhile, you would spend your time tinkering with inventions and devices of your own making and had made a business of repairing existing ones.
This time, you left it up to your husband to greet your guest. There were a myriad of other things you still needed to accomplish in order to prepare for the day. The list always seemed to be endless.
Rocky hovered impatiently at the door, waiting for Ryland. He was encased in a new protective xenonite container in order to adapt to your environment. It had taken very little time for all of you to find a way to live that worked in your favor.
You listened intently as Ryland and Rocky talked in the living room. Neither of you needed the translator in order to understand him anymore; its last use had been over two years ago. You knew what question the Eridian was here to ask of your little family, and you knew that your answer would be the same as it always was. It would take much more time before you would even remotely be ready to return to Earth…if ever.
One phrase in particular stood out to you as the conversation wound down. “Let me see the tiny human! Hello tiny human!”
In that moment, the bed dipped in the space beside you that had just been occupied by your husband. Your little girl jumped into the bed, full of energy and ready for the day. Her actions were accompanied by repeated squeals of, “Mommy mommy mommy!”
“Good morning to you, too,” you said.
You focused your attention on her, indulging her when she told you about the good dream she’d had in the limited amount of language she had for it. Soon enough, though, her attention was diverted. She had noticed the absence of another important figure in her life.
“Where’s Daddy?”
Right on cue, Ryland appeared in the doorway of your room. He grinned when he saw her, still as much in awe of her as ever.
“There’s my brave little astronaut!”
She squealed in delight and ran to him.
Ryland caught her in his arms and tossed her up into the air a few times before quickly catching her again, the way she always liked. Her laughter filled the room before she was set back down on the ground.
You looked on with a smile as she headed over to Rocky and exchanged a clumsy fist bump with him. They had a lot to learn from each other, and you planned to make the most of every teachable moment when they would inevitably occur.
After finally getting out of bed, you hovered at the edge of the room. Ryland vied for your daughter’s attention again, attempting to lure her into the kitchen area for her breakfast.
“She looks just like you,” said Rocky, tilting his carapace towards you. You hadn’t noticed his approach, too busy lost in the sight of your little family.
“She really is something,” you replied.
“Yes, she is.”
This was the only life your daughter had ever known for the three years she had been alive so far. You and Ryland had agreed that she would grow up knowing the story of how her parents saved not one but two planets. You had even made a promise to teach her everything about humanity, the good and the bad included.
As she ran back to you, you studied her closely. Rocky had been right. Your daughter looked more like you every day. You and Ryland had ensured that she would grow up to be smart and kind, hoping to instill those traits in her along with a strong sense of exploration. And maybe someday, when she was old enough, she would want to return to Earth.
All these things would be true for your next child, as well. The one you had yet to tell your husband and your best friend about, not to mention your daughter. But the happy news could wait a little bit longer.
You didn’t want to focus on the broader picture of the future. Not anymore. You had already had more than enough of that for a lifetime. For now, this was all you wanted. A simple, safe place to live in the moment with your little family up in space.