Work Text:
It all happens so fast. One moment he’s peering down a microscope in the lab, observing some Astrophage in solution. His head aches - probably he’s been squinting too long - so he steps away for just a second to readjust and clear his mind. Things do not go to plan - he blinks, and when his eyes open once more, he’s staring at a very different ceiling, the surface beneath him is softer than the lab floor, and when he turns his head, he lays eyes on Stratt, seated in a chair by his bedside, flicking through some papers. “Ah,” she says, once she detects movement from him. “You’re awake. Welcome back to the land of the living.”
Confused, still fuzzy from (apparently?) having fainted, Ryland asks, genuine and earnest: “Wait, did I die?”
Stratt doesn’t bother dignifying that with an answer. She asks, instead: “Have you been keeping to a regular sleep schedule and eating three meals a day, Doctor Grace?”
“Uhhhh.” Ryland tries to remember, and can’t really (when did he even last eat?), which is… probably a no. Stratt sighs and gestures to someone he can’t see - probably medical staff, he realises, as the room he’s in takes better shape around him and he recognises it as the sick bay. “Do you remember what happened thirty minutes ago?”
He shakes his head; Stratt continues as one of the staff comes round the bed to flash a penlight in his eyes and check for concussion. “You collapsed in the lab and would have split your head open on a desk if not for Doctor Narender’s timely intervention. Medical staff rushed you here, where they checked your vitals and diagnosed you with low blood pressure, mild hypoglycemia, and exhaustion. Hence my question about your routine and habits, as the working hypothesis at the moment is that you have simply not been eating and sleeping enough.”
“Ooh,” says Ryland, beginning to understand (and feel sheepish - yeah, probably not a good idea to have tried to pull the kind of stunts he did in his university days, running on little sleep and junk food). “Yeah… that sounds like my bad. Jeez. I’m really sorry, guys,” he calls to the medical staff, receiving an assortment of grunts and waves in return. “Sorry about that, Stratt. Did I break anything important in the lab? Oh man, please, please say I didn’t.”
“If you had, I wouldn’t be here, I’d be cleaning up what would probably be a dangerous mess,” Stratt deadpans. She’s still frowning at him, and she waves the papers she’s holding, which Ryland realises now are his personnel file. “However, in the process of having you attended to, I’ve discovered a lapse in your information. Why don’t you have any next-of-kin listed?”
Ryland squints, baffled - isn’t the answer, like… sort of obvious? And, also: “Sorry, why is that important here? I mean… I’m stuck on your aircraft carrier with nowhere to go, it’s not like I’m going to end up in a car accident and need my dead Mom, God rest her soul, to find me at the hospital.”
Stratt glares so hard at him Ryland feels like he might sizzle. “You need to empower somebody to make decisions for you regarding end-of-life and postmortem matters. This is a basic life necessity,” she snaps. “If you had collapsed because of an aneurysm rather than bad habits, what would we have done? How would I have known who to send your body back to?”
“Thanks. Not morbid at all,” Ryland grumbles, then jumps when Stratt slaps his file on the bed next to him. “This is serious, Doctor Grace. Everyone on the ship has next-of-kin listed for safety and ethics reasons; I need you to put someone down.”
“Well, I don’t have anyone, which I thought you and your team of data-scrapers knew,” Ryland says, trying for petulant and landing on just… sad. “I was an only child, my parents are dead, and my extended family’s non-existent. I think you are well aware that most of my so-called friends disappeared after the UNESCO fiasco, and you poached me from Grover Cleveland so I no longer have colleagues who don’t already live on this ship. So, unless you are volunteering, Director Stratt, I really don’t have anyone who fits the bill. If that aneurysm actually happens, just donate my body to medical science and be done with it, so there.”
He really shouldn’t be this snarky with the boss, but he’s recovering from having fainted and they have him on a drip, like an invalid, so maybe she’ll let it slide this once. Ryland leans back onto the pillow and closes his eyes, just sits in the silence, waiting for Stratt to sigh in resignation and leave.
Instead, she eventually says, crisp and certain: “All right. Since we’re in international waters, coupled with the fact that political and legal systems worldwide are under immense strain, the process of registering a Lasting Power of Attorney would take too long and it might not even go through. The easiest and fastest way to make this happen would be to get married.”
Ryland shoots up like a speeding bullet; Stratt immediately frowns even harder. “Doctor Grace, please don’t do that. I don’t think the medical staff would advise sudden movements right now.”
“I don’t think the medical staff would advise giving me a heart attack!” Ryland gasps. “What are you talking about? Did I just hear you say ‘get married’?”
“Yes.” She pins him with a hard stare, no humour whatsoever in her expression. “Marriage is an age-old institution, and it is universally recognised anywhere in the world, especially if it is a heteronormative coupling, as it would be in our case. It comes with cast-iron legal and spousal rights. If anything were to happen to you - or indeed, to me - we would be mutually empowered to make important decisions about healthcare and medical attention. Which means that you would actually be able to have your body donated to science, rather than having it chucked off the ship into the ocean, never to be found.”
Ryland opens his mouth. Ryland closes his mouth. Ryland repeats this a few more times, his overtaxed brain desperately grinding its cogs to try and make sense of what she’s saying. He blurts out the first coherent thought he manages to put together: “Wait, are you also suggesting this because you don’t have a next-of-kin either?”
Her brief hesitation is the only answer he needs. Ryland almost laughs, less annoyed, more amused - of course, this is Stratt, always thinking ten steps ahead of him and everyone else, and coming up with ideas that solve three problems in one go. She has the grace to look slightly abashed, her tone gentling when she continues: “I have put a lot of thought into this suggestion, Doctor Grace. I don’t make it lightly. I think it would be practical and beneficial for both of us, I highly recommend it, but it is up to you. All I am asking is that you trust me.”
“I do trust you,” he says; it comes easily, because he means it. Maybe not with everything (par exemple, he wouldn’t go on holiday for two weeks and leave Stratt to feed the fish in his classroom; if a global crisis sprang up that would definitely be the end of it for the fish), but when he thinks about a darkening world, about the thousand terrible things that could happen just like that and turn his life upside down - yeah. He trusts her to do the right thing, even if it went against public opinion, or common sense, or even his will (although he hopes it doesn’t come to that). “Okay, sure, if you think it’s a good idea, let’s get married. For tax purposes,” he jokes. She does not laugh. “Oh, come on, we’re going to be spouses. You could at least indulge one joke.”
“Have a good rest, Doctor Grace,” says Stratt. “We need you back in the lab as soon as possible - and with better eating and sleeping habits this time.”
“So romantic,” Ryland sighs, and lies back down for a well-earned nap.
He’s released from the medical wing after half a day with stern orders to take regular meals, hydrate, and get seven hours of sleep - it feels so much like listening to the lectures he got from his doctor while doing his PhD all over again. Ryland’s just settling back into his own bed with a full glass of water by his side when there’s a series of knocks on his door. He stumbles over to open it; the second he does, Stratt strides in like she belongs there, looking stormy. No polite greeting, just straight to business: “Have you been cleared to return to work?”
“Uh, not yet. In two days - to be safe, they said. It would be bad to faint again while holding a test tube of Astrophage and end up vaporising the North Sea.”
“So you’re unoccupied tomorrow. Good. We will meet in the mess at 1800 hours for a wedding ceremony.”
Ryland chokes on air, eyes almost bulging out of his head. “Wait, what? Why are we doing a wedding? When did we decide this was happening? I thought we were just ‘getting married’ for practical purposes!”
“We are,” Stratt says through gritted teeth. “But I was overheard in the sick bay and the medical staff apparently have nothing better to do than gossip, and once Ilyukhina got wind of the news, the entire crew found out and are running away with it.” She exhales explosively, fingers pressed to her temples like this is the biggest headache she’s dealt with in all her time on the Petrova task force. “They are insisting on throwing us an impromptu wedding, and if I shut them down I fear there might be a mutiny. It is so utterly childish.”
Ryland can’t help but snort with laughter, turning it into a cough when Stratt shoots him a death glare. “Okay, in fairness, there’s not a lot of entertainment on the ship,” he reasons. “If it gives them a laugh and doesn’t affect the work, it’s not a big deal, right?”
“Yes,” says Stratt, clipped and terse. “Hopefully it will help with morale. I have made Ilyukhina swear it will be a quick ceremony, no frills, no nonsense. More importantly, we will sign the papers that register our marriage. We will temporarily be in German waters and our union will legally be certified under German law, which makes things convenient. Any questions?”
“What questions could I possibly have about our super-convenient union,” says Ryland. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then - going to the chapel!”
Another long sigh from Stratt as she exits his room. Ryland’s pretty sure that’s going to be an enduring feature of their marriage.
He only realises the next day that wow, Stratt was not kidding about possible mutiny if she’d put a stop to the joke wedding, because people are treating this seriously. Carl and DuBois barge into his room three hours prior, carrying a tailored black suit (where the heck did they even get it from?!) and corsage. He’s practically bullied into putting it on at gunpoint, yelping when DuBois pins his corsage and nearly sticks him in a rib. “You look sick, Grace,” he cheers when the outfit is finally assembled, while Carl straightens his jacket and brushes imaginary dust off his shoulders. “Dapper as hell - the wedding photos are going to look incredible.”
“What photos? Stratt confiscated all personal electronics,” Ryland says, bewildered, then groans when Carl waves a Polaroid camera with glee. “Okay, I get that this is really funny and all, but you guys know that this whole thing is literally just for legal conveniences, right?”
“Sure,” they both drawl, waggling their eyebrows; Ryland almost pulls a Stratt and rolls his eyes. “Forget it.” He glances at his reflection in his bedroom mirror; okay, he will give it to the guys, because everything else aside, DuBois is right - he looks sick. “Wait, if you two are here, who’s dressing up Stratt?”
Carl stares at him like he’s gone insane. “Herself, obviously. If anyone tried this with her, the boss would kill them with her bare hands.”
“What, so only I have to go through the humiliation ritual?” Ryland objects, and then an even more awful thought occurs to him. “Does that mean she’s going to be wearing normal clothes? While I’m in this getup?! Carl! You have to get me out of this right now - “
“Oh my God, relax, man, she requested a nice outfit from the quartermaster too,” says DuBois. “Or so I hear from Ilyukhina. You’re both going to look spiffy. Just perfect for a wedding.”
Ryland grunts, resigned, “I hate you. Both of you.”
“Real nice thing to say to your groomsmen, dude.”
What the actual fudge - oh, Ryland hates every single person on this ship. “Sorry, groomsmen?!”
“Yep,” says Carl cheerfully. “And all geared up to do the usual groomsmen duties. Speaking of which - are you ready for your super-impromptu bachelor party?”
“No!” Ryland yells, struggling as they drag him out of the room. “Hey! Stratt isn’t getting a party, is she? This is a double standard! Hey! Let me go!”
Stratt smirks - actually smirks - at him when she sets eyes on him two hours later. “Doctor Grace, I see you enjoyed your bachelor party.”
Ryland just keeps wiping whipped cream, chocolate sauce, and shampoo off his face, suit, and shoes. “I don’t know how, or when, but mark my words, Carl and DuBois are going to face dire consequences for this. Just they wait.”
She laughs and hands him more napkins. She looks perfectly put-together (of course - no duo of a-holes dragging her to the lounge and putting her through the Prank and Torture show - j’excuse, bachelor party from hell), and Ryland won’t lie, when he takes the napkins from her and their fingertips brush, he has to catch a breath. He’s always known Stratt was beautiful (hello, he has eyes), but tonight, she’s radiant. It’s the first time he’s seen her in formalwear (a suit too, cream with light grey accents that complement her hair), a light dusting of makeup, her hair falling loose over her shoulders. For the briefest moment, Ryland forgets that this isn’t real, that they’re waiting to be let into a mess hall on an aircraft carrier (no doubt gaudily decorated by an exultant crew) rather than a chapel. For a moment, sitting in front of him is Eva, just a smart, strong, determined woman he could’ve met in his regular life, fallen in love with the regular way, and gotten married for perfectly regular reasons too.
(It might not be real, but Ryland suddenly feels a surge of pride, gratitude, joy that he’s going to marry Eva Stratt, and that lasts beyond the moment.)
Shapiro pops her head around the mess door and startles them both. She looks too manically gleeful and Ryland has to close his eyes and prepare himself for insanity. “You two ready to get married?”
“Lead the way,” Stratt sighs. On instinct, Ryland offers his arm; she gives him a Look, but obligingly accepts, and they enter the mess together.
While they stand and suffer through Yao making a ‘speech’ (mostly complimenting Stratt, making fun of Ryland, and for some reason, going off-tangent about astronautical history?), Ryland leans close and whispers to Stratt: “Why is Ilyukhina standing at the… altar?” Well, he says altar; it’s just one of the mess hall tables with a cardboard box perched on top, complete with a horrible drawing of two interlinked hearts on the front face. He’ll bet ten bucks that’s Carl’s handiwork.
“For some reason, she is ordained,” Stratt replies, clearly weary. “She volunteered to lead the ceremony.”
“Which actually means she threatened to hide all the alcohol on the ship and hold it hostage if you didn’t let her do it,” Ryland guesses, and Stratt says: “Yes, well deduced.”
Ryland sighs. Yao finishes a series of jokes that only make sense in Mandarin and gracefully steps aside, gesturing them forward to Ilyukhina, who raises her hands for silence. “Colleagues and friends,” she says, deepening her voice to ridiculous levels. “Welcome to wedding of the century, between our world authority on Astrophage Doctor Ryland Grace and our great and powerful leader, Miss Eva Stratt.”
Stratt lifts her eyes to the heavens and Ryland has never so admired her patience. “Today in German waters we unite this couple in holy marriage,” she declares. “Now they will rule the Vat in wedded authority and together, save our Earth. It will be Avengers, but Hail Mary instead.”
Ryland hisses to her as the others laugh, “I will put chilli powder in all your vodka, Olesya.”
“Russians not fear spice,” she cheerfully replies. “Now, do you, Doctor Grace, take our director to be your lawfully wedded wife. You cannot say no.”
Ryland grinds his teeth. “I know that.”
Ilyukhina ignores him. “And do you, Director Stratt - “
“Yes. Move on. Please.” It is quite clearly not a request. Ilyukhina huffs, but her smile doesn’t fade when she claps twice and says: “Please now may we have the rings.”
One of the junior engineers happily hops up carrying two silver rings on a melamine plate. “For you, Doctor Grace - and this one for you, Director Stratt. Handmade by the science and engineering team, forged with our sincerest well wishes.”
Stratt, looking longsuffering, peers closely at her ring and says: “I have to ask. Do the words ‘resource shortage’ mean nothing to any of you?”
“It’s fine,” Rekha chimes in. “We made them out of scrap metal! Left over from the Astrophage experiments. Very resource-efficient.”
Stratt says, flat: “So my wedding ring is made of scrap metal?”
Ryland leans in to whisper to her, feeling the need to defend his team. “I don’t think you can complain about logistical misallocation and material quality, Stratt. You have to pick one.” He turns to shoot Rekha and the beaming science crew a thumbs-up. “Should I put it on you?”
He expects her to wave him off, tell him she’s got it; instead, Stratt hands him her ring and gestures for his. Ryland blinks and tries not to blush as she extends her left hand; he carefully slides it onto her finger and she does the same with him. The mess goes crazy, cheering their heads off; Stratt ignores the wild whooping and says, “Ilyukhina, the official papers, please.”
Ilyukhina brandishes them with a flourish and provides a fountain pen, clearly just for maximum drama. Once they sign where instructed, she snatches them back and waves the papers high in the air. “I now pronounce the couple Doctor and Director! Congratulations, Doctor Grace, Director Stratt, you are married in eyes of German law. All, applause.”
There is applause. Ilyukhina adds, with great relish: “You may now kiss the bride.”
“Ilyukhina,” says Stratt, low and very dangerous; Ilyukhina puts down the papers with a conciliatory gesture. “Fine, fine, end of fun.” She grins and does a little bow from behind the makeshift altar; there’s respect and real happiness in her voice when she addresses Stratt. “Спасибо, thank you for indulging our fun today. On behalf of Project Hail Mary team, we wish you a happy blessed marriage, all life long.”
She’s so sweetly sincere that even Stratt deflates. Ryland realises (knows Stratt must as well) that at the end of the day, while the crew does want a laugh and some entertainment to take their minds off the life-and-death stakes of their daily routine - they still genuinely care. In their own ways, both he and Stratt have made the project possible, have given people hope that their planet can be saved. And he can’t help but feel warm realising how much they mean it - how much they hope he and Stratt will have a future, because it means they’ll have one too. How can they be mad about that?
(He’s still going to prank the crap out of Carl and DuBois, though. That’s happening.)
Life, predictably, continues as normal. Ryland’s pretty sure that even if their marriage was legit, they’d still be operating exactly as they do - prioritising the project and the work, spending entire days apart without once seeing each other, because he’s stuck in the lab while she pulls hundreds of people and plans together. She gets him in for a couple of meetings and sometimes they’ll pass each other in the mess. It’s exactly what he expected and he’s one hundred percent fine with it.
He is, really. Well, maybe he thinks about alternative life paths when he can’t sleep at night, thinks about building a routine with her where they’d at least meet for dinner every night, talk a bit about their day. Which is stupid, because they aren’t really married, and they both have better things to do, and he doubts Stratt is all about that kind of life, anyway. But they’re just thoughts in his head, so it’s fine. They don’t stick around too long. He wakes up every day and keeps plugging on so their astronauts will have a ship to take into space, on a journey that (hopefully) will save them. That’s all, and that’s perfectly fine with him.
(He keeps wearing his ring, though.)
(Every time he sees her, she’s still wearing hers, too.)
The first time their arrangement takes on a new dimension is five months later when Stratt finds him en route to the lab, grabs his arm, and (quite literally) drags him into a meeting with some clown from Washington DC. “Play along,” is the only thing she growls as she marches him into the room - oh, such deja vu from his first time on the ship. Her hand is white-knuckled tight on his elbow when she hauls him in front of the snotty old bureaucrat and says, deathly calm: “Perhaps you will allow my husband - you may know him, Doctor Ryland Grace, the leading expert on Astrophage biology - to explain the nature of the engines we are installing on the Hail Mary?”
“Uhh,” says Ryland, shooting Stratt a confused look; she waves her hand, urging him to go on and say whatever the hell he likes, within reason. “Ye-es, of course.” He takes her cue and starts rambling about every single thing he can remember off the top of his head - the propulsion mechanism, adapting the thrusters, how they’ve been calculating the amount of Astrophage required for controllable acceleration. Stratt waits until he’s confused the bureaucrat enough to impress him, then cuts him off and leads him back outside with her ‘public smile’ pasted on her face. She drops it once the door shuts behind them, exhaling pure irritation. “Thank you, Doctor Grace. You were very helpful.”
“Um, great.” Ryland scratches his head, still a bit bewildered. “What… exactly was that about?”
“That was a misogynist stuck in the 1800’s who could not fathom a woman understanding anything about science, let alone global geopolitical discussions on resource management,” says Stratt through gritted teeth. “And I am already five minutes late for a far more important meeting, so I do not have the luxury of beating feminist theory into his head.”
“Okay, that makes sense, but, uh, what was with the ‘husband’ thing? You could’ve just told him who I am, right?”
She looks at him like he’s an idiot. “To further elevate your status in his eyes, of course. Once I said that, you were not just a scientist, you were now automatically a man in a position of authority - over me, specifically - because that is all these old misogynists think marriage is about.”
Ew. Ryland says, before he can stop himself: “You know our marriage isn’t like that, right? I’d never treat you that way.” Stratt looks at him, totally baffled, and Ryland immediately wishes he’d drop dead. “I mean, if we were actually married, as a couple, instead of for purely practical reasons. In that I - “ Oh my God, what is he doing, shoving his foot even further into his mouth? “You know what? I’m just going to go back to the lab,” he says desperately. “Glad to be of help, bye, see you later!”
“Stop,” says Stratt, and Ryland stops before he can flee, wincing. She sounds thoughtful, though, not aggravated, so maybe she isn’t actually going to slap the idiocy out of him. She continues, slowly, calculative: “Your work at the lab - is it urgent?”
“Er, no, nothing Lokken and the rest can’t handle.”
“Good. What you said has given me an idea. Come with me for the next few meetings,” she orders. “We will be more effective and efficient if we present ourselves as a united front. The idea that we are partners on both a professional and personal level might sway some of the more sentimental, weaker-minded people we need to impress.”
“Like a power couple,” Ryland says. Stratt nods agreement. “Yes, yes, whatever the children call it.”
“It’s not a - it’s not just children who - right, yeah, fine, okay,” he gives up, and resigns himself to trotting obediently after her.
The ‘power couple’ stuff turns out to be even more successful than either of them could have imagined. It turns out that there’s something about the idea of the currently most powerful woman in the world being married to the currently most famous scientist in the world that really gets people listening for once. Stratt is pleased, because it’s smoothing paths to diplomacy, capital, and resources. Ryland is pleased too, because it makes Stratt happy, and because he gets to see her more often, and he is never, ever, ever going to admit that to anyone out loud.
But it’s nice. After the first few weeks of having meals side by side, preparing for meetings in her office, running all around the ship at her shoulder, Ryland doesn’t think he could go back to the status quo. Not when he knows what it’s like now, to see her every day - to watch her in her element, at her best, for hours on end. Her voice becoming the soundtrack of his day. Memorising her gait, knowing her with the merest glimpse from the corner of his eye. His eye drawn to the way light catches on the glint of metal on her ring finger. My husband, she says, again and again, to make people sit up and pay attention during meetings, and he hasn’t gotten the chance to say it yet, but it feels more and more real to him, every day - my wife.
On balance, it’s funny to start falling in love with someone after you marry them. But then again, Ryland looks at the way his life has unfolded since that fateful day in Grover Cleveland, and honestly, falling for Eva Stratt is probably the least insane thing on the list of ‘insane things that have happened so far’. Even if she doesn’t love him back, which sucks, but hey, he knew what he was signing up for when she made her proposal. And maybe it’s a little pathetic that he could be happy just being by her side, nothing more. But the planet is freezing and people are dying and everything in their world is uncertain, so - there are probably worse things to be.
About a week after the Huge Duh Revelation that he’s in love with his legal-but-not-really-actual wife, Ryland finds himself knocking on the door to her quarters and wondering if the universe is playing a practical joke on him. “Come in,” Stratt calls. He enters to find that she’s already prepared her bed in the mere hour since it became clear he would need to bunk with her; there’s an extra pillow by her own and a stool next to the closet, acting as a second side table. “Have you got everything you need?”
“The essentials, I guess. I left most of my stuff in my room, I can always go back and get what I need from what is now a convection oven.” He sits heavily on the bed, resisting the urge to flop face first onto the mattress. “How long did they say it would take to fix the ventilation on our deck?”
“They don’t know yet. They are still investigating what happened to the cooling system.” Ryland buries his face in his hands and moans. “Calm down,” Stratt says mildly. “It could be worse - it could have affected the entire ship, or a critical location like the labs.”
“I know,” says Ryland, and he does know, but it still massively sucks that they’ve had to arrange temporary alternative sleeping quarters for a fifth of the crew just because the air-conditioning went kaput, okay? Although he supposes he has the advantage of being able to share with Stratt. Which is cool and great because he is apparently in love with her. And also horribly not cool and not great because, again, he is apparently in love with her. Ryland gives in to the urge, presses his face into the prepared pillow, and groans for a very long minute. This is going to send him off the edge.
Stratt decides to Not Be Helpful by giving him a few amused, condescending pats on the head, like he’s a dog who wants to go out for a walk. “The mess hall is not affected, thankfully,” she says. “Would ice cream improve your mood? It would help with the heat.”
“I’m not a kid,” he grumbles. After a pause, begrudgingly: “Ice cream does sound good, though.”
“Mm. Get up, then. We’ll go and get some, and then we need to prepare for the stress tests with the secondary flight crew.”
We. It’s ridiculous how something that simple can make him glow. Ryland manages to stop the smile from spreading across his face, though he does bounce back up with a little more enthusiasm than is probably warranted. “At your service, Captain.”
“Don’t call me Captain,” she grunts, but there’s no bite to it (that really shouldn’t make him smile either). “Are you coming? Keep up.” She exits briskly; he follows (and it flashes across his mind, the brief and slightly bittersweet realisation, that he’d be happy doing that all his life).
It takes just one night sharing Stratt’s room for Ryland to realise that it’s a hundred times better than sleeping alone. All of his worries about it being awkward or weird or his inconvenient feelings getting in the way fade to insignificance in the face of just… being in her space and having her in his. They don’t spend a lot of time there, busy as they are, and when they do, it’s quiet, peaceful. They work parallel to each other - Stratt with her paperwork, Ryland with his reports. Sometimes Stratt plays cassettes from her personal collection and Ryland enjoys getting to know that side of her through the melodies (she’ll hum idly along sometimes, and he’ll pause to listen, pay attention, let her voice fill spaces within him he hadn’t realised were there). He sleeps better with another warm body beside him, and he likes to think she does too.
The cooling system on his deck is fixed after two weeks; he gets the update straight from Stratt while they’re both sitting in her bed doing work. Ryland fiddles with his pens, staring at his lab reports and not really reading them for twenty minutes straight, before he asks, tentative: “So, I know I should probably be going back to my actual room now, but hypothetically, if I wanted to keep sharing yours, but I didn’t really have any good reason for it besides maybe sleeping a little bit better when I’m here - “
“You can stay if you like,” she interrupts, not turning a hair and going straight back to making notes on her files. No more than that, like it’s not a big deal at all. Ryland exhales a breath he didn’t realise he was holding, calming his thudding heart - Christmas Eve, he is so much more relieved and grateful than is reasonable. “Well, okay, great, then. That’s settled.”
And so he stays.
And thank God for that, Ryland thinks, three weeks later, when Stratt catches a cold from goodness-knows-where. She’s stuck in bed, shivering and congested and feverish, and Ryland realises very quickly that if she’d been on her own, she would have been working through it anyway, and this time, it would be her ending up in the sick bay (so much for criticising his habits, hey?).
“I’m fine,” she croaks, when he tries to take her temperature. “Give me the meeting minutes from last week, the one about crop yields in Southeast Asia.”
Ryland inches the pile of papers further away from the bed. “Not until you take your medication. Orders from the medical staff.”
“No. I'll take it later. It’s sleep-inducing, I won’t be able to get through my notes.”
“You can skip one day of meetings, Stratt, this is what you have minions for.” Ryland pushes the tablets insistently towards her. “You’ll recover quicker if you rest - don’t you want that? We can’t have our captain taken down by a cold, of all things.”
“Not your captain,” she grunts, but reluctantly washes her pills down with a long drink of water. “And shouldn’t you be at the lab?”
“They’ll survive one day without me too, they’re all smart people in there. Let me take care of you.”
“I don’t need taking care of,” punctuated by a sniffle and series of coughs that disprove her point. Ryland says, reasonably: “Well, think about it this way, then - I might have whatever you caught since we’re close contacts, so I shouldn’t go round the ship spreading it to everyone. That’s practical, right?”
Stratt grumbles, but is clearly too fatigued to protest. She tucks herself under the sheets and closes her eyes. “Just make sure the work doesn’t suffer for it. And if you are going to stay in here, keep an eye out for anyone who brings important messages. If they’re urgent, wake me up immediately.”
“Yeah, yeah, I will. Go to sleep, Stratt. Feel better.”
She’s out like a light in five minutes, probably a result of the medication and the exhaustion. Ryland tiptoes around the bed to neaten the files on her desk, put her stationery back in the correct drawers (realising, belatedly, that oh, he knows exactly where everything belongs in her room now, like the back of his hand). It hits him suddenly, a little bruised and sweet, that Stratt might not love him, but she does trust him - enough to fall asleep in his presence, enough to have faith that he’ll cover her how he can when it comes to the work. That was what their marriage was built on from the start, and for the first time, it feels like a real privilege to have earned it - something so precious.
“Rest,” he murmurs, overcome by a wave of affection. He eases into the bed beside her, tucks the covers a little tighter, warmer, over her shoulders, and works peacefully on his lab reports to the comforting sound of her breathing.
Before he knows it, a whole year passes them by. And he doesn’t actually know it (time moves weirdly on the ship; he gave up tracking it a long time ago), not until he and Stratt walk into the mess for dinner one evening and are instantly deafened by a wall of sound. Or more accurately, the entire crew yelling in their faces. “SURPRISE!”
“Holy moly,” he wheezes, clutching his chest; he almost jumped a foot in the air just then. Stratt, in comparison, does not look remotely fazed, despite being greeted by streamers and balloons dangling from the ceiling and a big, hand-drawn banner on one wall that says HAPPY ANNIVERSARY! Ryland squints at her, still catching his breath. “My God, you took that so much better than I would’ve ever expected.”
“I wasn’t surprised,” Stratt shrugs. “I knew it was happening.”
He squints harder. “You knew a surprise party for our so-called anniversary was happening?”
“Yes, Carl and Ilyukhina had to clear it with me.” Obviously, he hears. “Doesn’t that sort of defeat the point of it being a surprise?”
“There are no surprises allowed on my Vat,” Stratt replies with a perfectly straight face, and maintains the exact same tone when she turns to him and smiles. “Happy anniversary, Grace.”
“Yes, yes, one glorious year of wedded bliss, да?” Ilyukhina chimes in, popping up beside them and making Ryland jump again. “We prepared very nice feast, nicer dinner than we usually get. And we have wonderful cake, made by all of us.”
“What do you mean ‘all of us’ - “
“Ta-da!” Ilyukhina gestures with a flourish; Carl and Dmitri grin as they hold up a massive card with a three-tiered cake drawn on the front. “We all wrote nice messages on the cake, have a look,” Dmitri says proudly. “It’s our way of wishing you many, many more anniversaries ahead.”
Ryland gives Carl the side-eye. “I feel cheated. A drawing of a cake is not ‘a cake’.”
“Well, like Stratt is always saying, resource shortages. Also, paper is the traditional gift for first wedding anniversaries, so… suck it up?”
“Thank you very much,” says Stratt, clearly eager to stop an argument before it starts. “We appreciate the effort that all of you have put into the gift. Shall we eat?”
Everyone cheers, their attention immediately and predictably easily diverted to the food. Carl foists the gigantic card into Ryland’s hands and he struggles into a chair while standing it up on the floor beside him. “I’m amazed you actually approved this,” he says. “Did they threaten mutiny again?”
“Thankfully, no,” says Stratt. “But I thought it would be tolerable for the sake of morale-building. In essence, it is just a dinner party, after all. I can make allowances, especially when the planet is undergoing an extinction event.” She shrugs. “And… perhaps marriage has made me soft.”
Ryland chokes on a surprised laugh. “Oh, wow, was that an actual joke?”
“Mm. Perhaps I’ve been spending too much time around you.” She smiles, though, a real one, and it’s impossible for him not to smile back. She’s not dressed as formally or elegantly as she was a year ago, just her usual turtleneck and jeans, but she’s still every bit as beautiful as she was on their wedding day. Still the woman he loves (and loves a little more every day). Between the ‘power couple’ thing and ‘roommates’ thing, they do spend so much time together these days and it’s unimaginable now for it to be any other way - and yet, it feels like it’d never be enough for him.
He could tell her, Ryland thinks. Everyone has been kind enough (or annoying, really, clearly wanting to ogle the ship’s Favourite Couple from around the room) to leave them alone at their table, and they’re all occupied with their plates and their own conversations. It’s their anniversary - a milestone, regardless of the other circumstances surrounding their marriage. It’d be the perfect opportunity to take a risk, ask, and see what might come of it.
He could.
He wishes he was brave enough for that.
A month before the Hail Mary departs, the crew throws another party, this time in the lounge - both a celebration and an advance goodbye. Shapiro turns on the karaoke machine, drags DuBois over to it, and makes him sing a soppy romantic duet that has everyone howling with laughter. She creates a monster; everyone starts clamouring to sing, especially when they can rope unwilling partners up on stage with them. Ryland’s hands fiddle with the free cap that was handed out to all of them, trying to swallow down the lump in his throat as he watches Yao and Ilyukhina croon into the microphone. Stratt must notice; she leans closer to him, shoulder brushing his, when she sits back down with a drink for both of them. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah. I guess.” She raises an eyebrow, clearly not buying it - he can’t hide anything from her, can he? “It’s just - the party’s so… I mean, everyone’s so happy, and acting like it’s just another night out at the club, or something. Especially the flight crew. Even though they know that in a couple of weeks, they’re going to walk out and die for the cause.”
“They are very brave,” Stratt says quietly. “I am grateful for the sacrifice they are going to make, and I will make sure the world is as well.”
It feels weird to be asking her this over a cocktail while Yao and Ilyukhina are desecrating Wind of Change up front, but he doesn’t think he’d ever find the courage to do it any other time. “Was it difficult? Asking people to - you know?”
She doesn’t reply for a long time; her voice shakes, just a little, when she eventually does. “I have fought very hard for it not to be, Grace.” Ryland looks at her, the emotion she’s carefully concealing behind her eyes, and hears the unsaid: I have fought so hard for them, and for everyone else on this planet, and God only willing, we will succeed.
He decides she shouldn’t be sad tonight, at least not for these few hours - not when everyone else is putting away their pain too. Ryland finishes his drink and sets it aside, affecting as much casualness as he can. “So, I know you’re into music, what with all your cassettes, but do you sing?”
He can see in her tiny smile that she appreciates the blatant change in topic. “I do, actually. I used to sing in an Eastern German youth choir.”
“What?!” Ryland stares at her in genuine shock and delight. “How did I not know that? Why haven’t you shown off your singing chops before?”
“It has been a very long time, my voice is not what it used to be,” Stratt rolls her eyes; Ryland shakes his head adamantly, grasping her wrist and pulling her out of her seat before he can chicken out of it. “Come on, you’ve got to show me now. Those two are almost done, let’s get up there and do a song.”
“Doctor Grace,” she starts, clearly about to turn him down flat. He goes low and gives her a pleading look, puppy-dog eyes; isn’t really expecting them to work, but (amazingly!) she cuts herself off, sighs, and says, resigned: “Fine. Just one song. And only because it will entertain the crew and improve morale.”
“I love how much you tolerate for the sake of ‘building morale’,” Ryland laughs. She lets him guide her to the stage, hand on her arm. Everyone claps and cheers when Yao and Ilyukhina finish and Ryland swipes the mic from them. Calls of “Stratt! Stratt! Stratt!” and “Grace! Grace! Grace!” come from around the room, because apparently they’re working with children. Stratt ignores them in favour of looking through the song selections. “What would you like to sing?”
“You pick, you’re the professional,” Ryland teases. Stratt huffs exasperatedly and keeps scrolling; after a few seconds, she slows down and points at one of the options. “How about this?”
Ryland peers at her choice, double-takes. “You want to sing a Harry Styles song?”
Stratt glares at him. “And what exactly is wrong with Harry Styles?”
“Nothing! It’s just, all of your cassettes are either of classic bands from the 1970’s or earlier, or even older German artists I’ve never even heard of,” Ryland points out. “I didn’t even know you were aware of Harry Styles’ existence.”
“I brought cassette tapes onboard specifically because I prohibited personal digital devices, and they are much more portable than vinyl records or even CDs,” Stratt says, desert-dry. “Are you under the impression that most modern artists release music on cassette?”
Ryland holds up his hands in surrender, because fair enough. “Hey, I’m up for it. The kids used to love this song, they’d play it in school all the time. It’s a banger.”
“I don’t know what that means, and I do not want to,” says Stratt. She loads up the song to more delighted whoops from their audience. “Ready?”
Ryland nods, picks up his mic. Some people are still cheering at the music begins, hopped up on excitement - but then Stratt starts singing and, like magic, a hush instantly settles across the room. Ryland, too, is so taken aback that he forgets to sing along with her. Her voice is beautiful, clear and sweet, strong like her spine, and he just wants to keep listening to her forever. “Walk in your rainbow paradise, strawberry lipstick state of mind, I get so lost inside your eyes, would you believe it?”
Everyone’s staring at her, mouths wide open in awe; she just looks at him, raising her eyebrows, wordlessly questioning why he isn’t singing with her. He fumbles with the mic and shakily joins in. “You don’t have to say you love me, you don’t have to say nothing, you don’t have to say you’re mine.”
A few hushed ‘aww’s rise up from the crew when the chorus hits, and Ryland realises why as he sings along - from the outside, it must seem like the perfect choice for the married couple, full-on romance, doubly sweet when it was spine of steel, ice-cold, untouchable Eva Stratt who picked the song. Ryland watches his wife sing, swaying just the slightest to the melody, softer than she usually lets herself be when she’s on the job. Her left hand is wrapped securely around the mic and he can see her ring; she still doesn’t take it off except to sleep, and neither does he.
They actively present as a couple to pretty much everybody, he realises. They spend almost all of their time together. They even sleep in the same bed. She knows him better than anyone else, perhaps even himself. He thinks he knows her too.
They went into this on the same page, knowing that it wasn’t real, not like that, but he looks at her, he can’t stop looking at her (he never could), and the question echoes in his mind - all the way until the end of the song; until they go to sleep, side by side; long after - what’s more real than this?
Ryland lies in bed, cloaked by darkness and a loaded, heavy silence. It’s twelve hours and ticking to the launch of the Hail Mary; Yao, Ilyukhina, and DuBois left the Vat a while ago, packed off to NASA and going through the final checks and preps before they’re put into their comas and sent away to save the world. The mood on the ship has been sombre, anxious, everyone buzzing with nervous energy and desperate hope, and he certainly hasn’t escaped that. It’s one in the morning, but he can’t sleep, doesn’t think it’s going to happen any time soon. He listens to Stratt breathing to his right, and knows it’s the same for her.
She speaks up then, almost like she can read his mind. “You are thinking very loudly. It’s distracting.”
He laughs, low and assenting. “Sorry,” he apologises. “Can you blame me, though? There’s a lot to think about. Or worry about, but I guess that’s the same thing, at this point.”
Stratt says, gentle but firm: “It is pointless to worry now. We have done all that we can these past four years to give the mission its greatest chances of success. Now we have to leave the Hail Mary in the hands of the flight crew and keep doing the work we can on Earth to keep people alive.”
“I know.” Ryland stares up at the seemingly infinite blackness above him, thinks about the work Stratt means. They’ve already started on it, especially in recent months - once the Hail Mary was in its final stages, priorities slowly shifted towards developing plans and equipment that would help to mitigate the whole Sun problem while they waited for a miracle to return home. That part of his future is laid out for him, but the rest, the bit that comes after the miracle - he’s not so sure.
Buoyed by the quiet, the anticipation hanging in the air, Ryland asks: “Stratt? If it works, if we save the Sun, if the world goes back to normal - what are you going to do when it’s all over?”
They lie still; he can hear her pondering, too. “I would like to go back to Germany, if I can,” she eventually says. “We could live by the sea - in Lübeck, perhaps; I think you would like it. We could have a garden, and grow some of our own food. No more work - I think we will have made enough sacrifices for a lifetime to warrant a rest. We can live in peace - spend our time reading, listening to music, enjoying quiet nights in a world that will gradually come back to life.”
Ryland slowly turns to face her; when he does, he meets her eyes, realises she was already looking at him. There’s confusion, and wonderment, and disbelieving hope stirring in the pit of his stomach. “You keep saying ‘we’.”
“Yes, of course. You and me.” She tilts her head, thoughtful. “If you would prefer to return to the United States, I suppose it can be discussed. We would have to talk about where, specifically.”
“Stratt. What do you mean, we?”
She narrows her eyes at him, like he’s an idiot. “Is this confusing? As I said, you and me. We are married, after all.”
“But - “ His breath catches painfully in his lungs. “But that’s not real.” His voice is already shaking; he can’t stop it. “Right?”
Stratt’s expression softens; in the darkness, her hand finds his cheek, her touch lingering, gentle. “You don’t really still believe that, do you?”
Oh, man, the tears are coming now; Ryland tries desperately to stop them, and it doesn’t help when she brushes her thumbs beneath his eyes to sweep them away. He can’t help the indignance in his voice when he replies: “What do you mean? You never said anything to make me believe different, how was I supposed to know how you felt - ?”
She bites her lip. “I’m sorry.” It’s the first time she’s ever said that and it takes his breath away. “I just - didn’t want to pressure you into anything.”
He can’t help but snort laughing at that. “What? You’ve never minded that. Just the other day you ordered me to conduct a two-hour lecture on Astrophage biology for the new science team hires,” he points out. “They’re not even working with Astrophage, they specialise in agricultural biology. They thought they were being punished. Or pranked.”
“That was for the project, about making sure that they understand the interconnectedness of the problems we will be facing for the next decades,” she says, still serious. “This was - this is about us; I wanted you to be able to decide for yourself. We got married on my suggestion, my terms,” she says. “It felt only fair that making it ‘real’, as you say, was on yours.”
“Oh,” Ryland whispers. His heart is somehow falling and soaring at the same time, beating painfully hard. He never thought he’d get to feel like this - feel what it’s like to get everything he’s ever wanted. “I still wish you’d said something,” he murmurs. “So I could have been kissing you a long time ago, because I’ve wanted to for ages.”
She doesn’t hesitate; she closes the gap between them and presses her mouth to his - it feels like it lasts a lifetime, yet not long enough (never enough). He slides his fingers through her hair, tugs gently to keep her close, and feels her smile minutely against his lips. “Me too,” she replies (well, that was evident, and Ryland is so glad for that). “But we have time now to make up for it.”
Ryland thinks about the crew, en route to giving up their lives to buy them, and everyone else on Earth, that time. That future in a seaside home in Lübeck; reading after dinner in his living room, side by side with his wife; going to bed and knowing the shape of the morning to which they’ll wake up. He touches his forehead to hers and says: “I love you, Eva.”
He can just make out the curve of her smile - soft and sweet, the most genuine part of her that only he gets to see, now and for the rest of their lives. “Ich liebe dich, mein Ehemann.”
He’s picked up enough German now to know what that means, and he’s smiling too when he pulls her into his embrace, savouring the way she rests her head against his chest, right over his heart. “Sleep,” she murmurs. “Tomorrow we say a goodbye, and then we continue our work.”
We, we, we. Ryland whispers (a question): “Together.”
“Yes,” Stratt says (an answer, a promise, a lifelong vow). “Together.”