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A/N: Hello again Strattland nation! I took a whole five days off for the work week, but they have genuinely consumed my entire being. This feels like 2016 when I watched Vision say 'for people to see you as I do' to Wanda and I was never the same.
I had to go funny premise this time! Alternating funny premise, feelings premise, and freak premise feels like the right thing to do. Please enjoy all these words of pathetic wet cat jealous Ryland. Unfortunately me and the wife have now developed an attachment to ex-husband Stefan and invented a name for a possible daughter (Evelynne Annette Beckman-Stratt for the curious) from the first marriage, so perhaps they will both turn up elsewhere.
Title from Jessie's Girl by Rick Springfield. I'm on tumblr and twitter @ heavensbeehalls, so come connect! If you enjoy, leave kudos or a comment or a funny quote tweet! Let's goooooooooooo
He has a sixth sense for when Eva is in a bad mood.
And everyone would say the whole ship does, that they all know to disappear into their offices and training and labs when they hear the sole of her boots slapping the metal floors a little harder. Menacing.
But he would say he knows before they do. He knows by the buzz of her clipped vowels through the door of her office, shifting from foot to foot with her coffees clutching between his forearm and his chest.
The door jerks open, and he immediately comes out with a bright, "Director Stratt!"
She takes the coffees out from his arm, her fingers brushing against the front of his shirt, immediately drains half a cup in a single swallow (he doesn't find this sexy). Her eyes flick up to his, dark and stern, and she says, "Meeting in fifteen minutes, Grace. Tell everyone."
He gives her a salute, and catches the soft touch of a smile on her lips before he turns away, zipping up his sweater to hide the coffee stain on his T-shirt.
Eva stands at the head of the table in the meeting room, the crew sprawled out in their chairs. Ryland offers his bag of Skittles to Yao, and wonders if he's the only one that notices that Eva's hair isn't lying as perfectly as usual. Like she's been fidgeting with it.
"This will be brief," she says. "I am facing questioning about the financial resources we are using here. There will be investigative visits. And you must all prove that we are not being wasteful here."
He feels the tips of his ears turn red and lowers his Skittles below the edge of the table, and Shapiro raises her hand and asks, "What does that mean for the snack drawer?"
"And the bar!" Ilyukhina shouts to giggles.
"I trust you can all hide any excess we may have onboard," Eva says. "And please, be on your best behaviour. I know that it's worth it, but they will not take my word and insist on seeing for themselves."
As the rest of the Vat crew file away, Ryland approaches Eva, despite the wide eyes of his colleagues. Even though her shoulders are visibly tensed, and her mouth is thinned, he just smiles and asks, "Can I do anything?"
"I'm sure I can trust you to eat all of the candy we have onboard," she says, and he flushes. "And I will need you to meet with these people, Grace."
"Me?"
"I wish to roll out the world's leading expert on astrophage to people like this," she says. "You are my secret weapon, Grace."
"I am?"
"Please dress nicely," she says, and turns away with a swirl of her copper hair that briefly hypnotises him.
Her dark mood continues in the week until the officials bring their helicopter in to land on the boat's helipad. She gets snippy much faster than usual, fidgeting with her clothes and her hair, and he finds her staring moodily at the list of officials to expect in her office, gently asking, "Memorising the names?"
"You should too," she says, and thrusts a file at him, names and photographs. Person after person in dark suits, people with years-long prestigious careers and even longer screeds of knowledge about their field.
He feels singularly unqualified to meet them, and he wears his best sweater when they arrive. Catches Eva, in a grey turtleneck and her usual black slacks, looking at him before she comments, "This is rather minimalist for you, Grace."
"I want to look professional," he says, smoothing the white and blue stripes of his sweater into his jeans.
Eva smiles at him, and he realises by the sound of clicking that she's wearing heeled boots. Bringing her a little closer to his shoulder. She could rest her chin there, not need to bounce onto her tiptoes for her mouth to meet his cheek.
He shakes off that thought, and follows her to the sound of helicopter blades beating against the wind. Yao and Ilyukhina and DuBois are waiting for them, Yao and Dubois in suits and Ilyukina in a tailored blue jumpsuit, everyone dressed up for their visitors.
When the doors to the entryway open, the wind comes flying in, and Ryland grabs instinctively for his glasses.
It just blows Eva's dark coat back like even the wind has to respect her aura, and a man immediately steps forward to shake her hand.
Then it's a blur of names, of hearing Eva say over and over again, "And this is Doctor Ryland Grace, the world's foremost expert on astrophage."
He shakes hands even after the Hail Mary trio are allowed to drift away, finds himself explaining to some real movers and shakers in the financial world authorities how he discovered astrophage's properties. Can hear his teacher voice slipping in, and wonders if any of these people have heard of him. Doctor Ryland Grace, disgraced academic. Maybe they're wondering what he's doing here.
But Eva looks at him with pride warming her eyes. Ryland pauses to take a drink, and she says a soft, "You're doing great."
"I'm intimidated-"
"They're just as scared of you as you are of them," she says, and he laughs.
"Doubt that-"
"Look at their eyes," she says. "You are a big deal, Doctor Grace. They are a name on a list. You will have biographies written on you."
"That'll be embarrassing-"
"I will be very complimentary when they ask my opinion on you," she says, and he blinks at her.
The moment is broken by a footstep, a shadow, and he looks at the man approaching them. Taller than him, broader, holding out a hand and saying, "Doctor Grace. It's an honour."
"Thanks," he says weakly.
"Stefan Beckman," the stranger introduces himself, and Ryland just nods.
He bristles when Stefan's eyes slide to Eva. Notices the way she stiffens almost imperceptibly, her face steadying, her eyes flickering. Stefan smiles, a businessman's smile, and says, "Director Stratt."
"Mr. Beckman," she says, and shakes his hand loosely, fingers barely touching. "Perhaps you can gather up your people and I can begin showing you around."
"I would like to look around alone," he says, and Eva's eyebrow lifts ever so slightly.
"There is a lot of delicate equipment on this ship-"
"I won't touch," Stefan says, all grin. Ryland hates him already. "Let them have a little more fun listening to your scientists, and make sure there is coffee."
Eva is visibly bristling when Stefan turns away, and before Ryland can speak or soothe she turns away, walking out of the room. The door closes so softly behind her, worse than a slam, and Ryland moves to the edges, head spinning slightly.
Ilyukhina is leaning against the doorway, hip popped casually, a bowl of popcorn in one hand, and he asks, "Can I have some?" She offers the bowl to him, and only then does it hit him to think to ask, "Why do you have popcorn?"
She glances sideways at him, mischief in the corner of her mouth, and asks, "You didn't hear?"
"Hear what?"
Her eyes gleam, and he's known her long enough to know that doesn't mean anything good, and she leans eagerly forward to whisper, "The last man in? The tall one?"
"Stefan Beckman?"
She nods, her teeth shining when she grins like a shark scenting blood. "He is Stratt's ex-husband," she says triumphantly.
And the bottom of Ryland's stomach clenches. "How do you know that?"
"Carl told Yao, Yao told me," she says, wiping a grease stain from her popcorn across her chest. "Stratt is not doing a good job of hiding that she dislikes him."
Ryland stares across the room at Stefan again. Tall, broad, dark Stefan, with his suit that probably cost more than his entire year's teaching salary and his fancy gold watch and his fancy finance job title that takes thirty seconds to say.
Even his tie is grey. The same shade as Eva's turtleneck. If you squint.
Ryland grabs for another handful of popcorn, shoving it into his mouth. Feels the sharp sting of a kernel getting neatly stuck in his gum.
"It is funny to think she had a life before Mary," Ilyukhina says, and if she wasn't so sweet Ryland would want to tell her to shut up, shut up, shut up right now. "I would not have expected a marriage. Do you think we will find wedding photos?"
He imagines Eva in a white dress, a veil, smiling sunlit at another man, and feels slightly sick. "She probably burned them," he says, trying for a joke.
"Or threw them into the sea," Ilyukhina muses. Her eyes flicker over him, and she says, "You look sweaty."
"Hot," he says around another mouthful of popcorn.
He tosses and turns in bed half the night, thinking about Eva and Stefan. Her wearing heels. To be taller for him? Does she miss him? Does she want him back? Did he leave her and break her heart? Was he always so assured and tall and broad? Was he always going to end up with the sort of success that shows itself in a silk tie and a heavy watch?
When he dresses for the lab, his fingers graze all of his slogan T-shirts and move swiftly away. He picks out another sweater, a vivid purple gingham, twitches his glasses on.
He feels the floor shift out briefly from beneath him when he sees Eva and Stefan at the same table. He's picking at a bowl of muesli, scrolling emails on his tablet, and she's sat with her two coffees in front of her, studying a report and picking at apple slices.
They look like the word divorce has never occurred to them.
Ryland slams his tray down hard between Yao and Shapiro, and Ilyukhina looks him up and down and asks, "Woke up on the wrong side of the bed?"
"No," he snaps, spooning up a resentful mouthful of cornflakes and staring at Eva.
She's not looking at Stefan, idly scratching her neck just above the collar of her sweater. But Stefan is looking at her, his eyes soft, and Ryland hates him. He hates him so much. Him and his stupid suit and his stupid watch and his stupid shiny shoes.
"How do you think they met?" Yao asks quietly, glancing at Eva and Stefan. "Carl said they split eight years ago."
"We should ask," DuBois says.
"Can we assign you that task?" Shapiro says, raising her eyebrows over her morning herbal tea.
"Not her, obviously," DuBois says. "Ask Stefan. He looks like he likes the sound of his own voice."
"Maybe they have kids," Ilyukhina says, her face bright.
"There is no way Stratt is a mother," Shapiro says.
"Well, how much do we really know about her?" Ilyukhina asks, spooning up her cornflakes. "She could totally be hiding a kid. Photos in her office."
"There's no photos in her office," Ryland says shortly.
"Maybe she keeps them in a drawer," Shapiro says. "She has to maintain how mysterious she is."
"But she allows her ex-husband here-"
"She didn't want him here!" Ryland snaps, and they all look at him, startled. "You didn't notice how grumpy she was after she found out he was coming?"
"She is always grumpy-"
"She is not!" he snaps, and eyebrows shoot up around him. "Sorry. Sorry. Didn't sleep well."
He spends the day shadowing Stefan and Eva around the ship, scuffing his feet across the metal floors while they talk. They keep to English, and he's sure it's for his benefit, curses himself for not deciding to learn German like fleetingly crossed his brain.
Eva pulls him forward when he falls too far behind, asks him to explain what Stefan is looking at. And maybe he does talk fast, and maybe he does use the expressions he would around other scientists instead of the easy language he uses in most explanations. Maybe he does take pleasure in seeing Stefan's brow crease in confusion more than once.
"Tell me, Doctor Grace," Stefan says, standing too close to Eva. And Ryland totally doesn't puff out his chest a little, drawing himself as tall as he can (still shorter than Stefan). "How did Director Stratt seek you out?"
"Came to my classroom," Ryland says. "Big surprise."
"She is good at strolling a surprise into your life," Stefan says, his dark eyes twinkling at Eva.
"She is brilliant," Ryland says defiantly, and juts his jaw out obstinately. "Project Hail Mary is going to save the world."
"I'm sure it is," Stefan says, thick brow arching. "But I am here, Doctor Grace, to make sure there will be money for the saved world."
"There won't be a world if we run out of money before launch, Stefan," Eva says thinly, and Ryland hates the way Stefan smiles at her.
"Eva, allow me to be the harbinger of fiscal responsibility, and you keep saving the world," he says, and Eva visibly bristles.
Some of the officials who came to the Vat drift away. But Stefan keeps staying, hanging around in a cloud of wood and leather cologne, his perfectly gelled hair, his array of silk ties. He charms the crew, has some spices flown in to add to their meals, regales them with stories of the many places he's been with work.
Ryland can't stand him. The boom of his voice, the heavy way he walks, the superior silk of his mouth. His shiny cufflinks and his crisp collars. The day that he beats Ryland to Eva's office in the morning, and Ryland finds them already leaning over a paper together.
Stefan only brought her one coffee thought. Clearly she's picked up the two coffee habit since the divorce. And she drinks both of the ones Ryland brought her. She talks very fast for an hour after that.
Ryland still hates seeing Stefan around. When he notices the tan line on his third finger, he has to go inhale half a share bag of Skittles about it. He can't stop seeing the way Stefan's eyes soften when he looks at Eva, the way Eva stiffens under his attention, the way she's still wearing heeled boots around the ship. Bringing her up to Stefan's shoulder, and he can blink and slide the lines from their faces and see what they must have looked like when they were married.
Total power couple. World domination at their fingertips. If they get back together, he can see them accepting medals and keys to cities and highest honours together.
Stefan gets comfortable on the Vat as the days turn to weeks turn to two months since his shiny shoes hit the metal floor. Sits with the Hail Mary crew at dinners, his blazer button open and his tie loosened, and Ryland seethes at the corner of the table. Smashing the tines of his fork into the base of his bowl while everyone else seems to find Stefan so goddamn charming, Ilyukhina putting her hand on his arm and asking, "How did you and Stratt meet?"
"Oh, Eva wouldn't want me to tell you that-"
"What Stratt doesn't know won't hurt her," DuBois says, grinning.
"Well..." Stefan says, and Ryland watches the rest of the crew lean eagerly forward. "She called me an asshole at a debate club meeting. Did not like losing our debate. And she was so beautiful I asked her for a drink instead of getting angry."
"How sweet," Yao says. "I met my wife when she crashed her bike into me in first week of university."
"You are still married?" Stefan asks, and Yao nods, smile playing at the corners of his mouth when he touches his wedding ring. "Well, one point to you."
"You don't seem like someone Stratt would've been married to," Ilyukhina says, taking a sip of her drink. "You are very...chill. And she is not."
"I was wound tighter when we met," Stefan says, stretching his legs out in front of him in his shiny, pointy-toed shoes. Ryland hopes they're giving him a killer blister. "I have mellowed with age. Eva, well...she is the same woman I met."
"I think it's inappropriate to talk about Stratt like this," Ryland says shortly, his toes clenched in his sneakers.
"Am I crossing a line?" Stefan asks, hands out in a benevolent gesture of surrender. Dick. "I am only complimenting her. She is a force to be reckoned with. Always has been. I was not the man for her."
"How long were you together?" Shapiro asks, and Ryland kicks under the table, hoping to hit Stefan in his long legs, or one of his stupidly long feet.
"Twelve years," Stefan says. "Married for ten. I proposed when we graduated, and we just did the quickie wedding. Eva didn't want the circus."
"I can see that," Yao says thoughtfully.
It's too much for Ryland, and he climbs up from the table and out of the mess hall. Takes the narrow metal steps up onto deck, looking out at the silver shadows of the emerging stars, the last orange glow of the sunset, and yelling his frustration out into the sky.
"Are you alright, Grace?"
He startles, and blushes when he sees Eva leaning against the railing, looking out over the sea. A lit cigarette caught between her fingers, winking red in the falling night, and he definitely doesn't stare at the way her lips purse around the end, the plume of smoke that she blows out.
"I'm fine," he says, brushing himself down. "Are you alright? I didn't know you smoked."
"Only in moments of true stress," she says, and takes another drag. "It's incredible I'm not smoking more on this ship."
"You good?" he asks, and she nods sharply. "I just...it can't be easy to have your ex around. If I ever saw my college ex again, I'd run away."
"You didn't marry yours," she says, and shakes herself. "Apologies. I am frustrated."
"It's okay," he says quietly. "You can talk to me."
"Hasn't he charmed you?" she asks. "He usually does. That is why he works in finance. Quite the salesman."
"No, I'm not charmed," he says, and bites back some of the acid that wants to stick to the syllables. "He talks a lot."
Eva laughs in the night, low and soft, and says, "He does. You should've heard his proposal. All about how we were going to take the world on together."
"What stopped you?" Ryland asks, and she winces. So slightly. But he's attuned to her, every piece of her, and he notices enough to softly say, "Sorry. You don't have to tell me."
She takes a drag of her cigarette, and says, "It became clear that our ambition did not fuel each other, but clashed. And I did not want to compromise myself to hold a marriage together."
He nods. "Noble reason to say you're divorced," he says.
"We are the same sort of bad person," she says. "And I thought our marriage would've rotted if we stayed. I was the one to leave."
"You're not a bad person," he says softly, joining her at the railing.
His hand hooks around the metal, close to hers. And he thinks about inching his palm along it, about their pinkies brushing, about her turning her smoke-stained mouth to his in the dusk.
A whine of feedback below them sounds, and a cheer goes up, and she quietly says, "I don't think they will believe the karaoke machine is fiscally responsible."
"Fiscally responsible fun," he says, and she laughs again, sweet and smoky.
"I should supervise," she says, one more quick drag on her cigarette.
He stands there for a moment too long, smelling the smoke from her mouth. Then he drops back into the bar, finding DuBois butchering What's Love Got to Do With It while Shapiro whistles at him.
Stefan is sitting at the bar, drinking two fingers of whiskey, and waves Eva over, nudging a tumbler towards her too. "I remembered," he says, and Ryland hears it, and his gut goes sour.
He sits near them like a chaperone, telling himself it's just because he's Eva's number two. Definitely not because he's watching familiarity between them, the tick of Eva's jaw when Stefan applauds DuBois, his grin when Ilyukhina bounces up to the mic and immediately starts rapping.
"Eva," Stefan says into the next silence, while Ryland grumpily drinks his bottle of beer. "You should sing."
"No-"
"You can sing, boss?" Ilyukhina pipes up, her face bright.
"Eva's a wonderful singer," Stefan says, and his stupid eyes are bright on Eva. "Used to tear up the karaoke bar near university. Do you still sing in the shower?"
"I am not singing," Eva says sharply, and drains her drink. "I have work to do."
"Oh, don't be a spoilsport-"
"I am responsible for this ship, this mission, and everyone on it, I do not have time for this," she snaps, and walks out.
The silence holds frozen for a second, Ryland staring after the spot where Eva closed the door, and then Ilyukhina chirps, "Can you sing, Stefan?"
"A little," he says, all false modesty and his slick grin.
Ryland gets up from his stool, leaving half his beer behind, and follows where Eva went. She's not in her office, but he straightens her stack of paperwork, walks her coffee cup to the kitchen and leaves it in the sink to be washed up by whoever is on dishes.
He knocks softly on her bedroom door and calls out, "Eva?"
"Yes?"
"Can I come in?"
He waits for long enough to get fidgety before he hears a faint, "Just you."
And he pushes the door open and finds her sitting in her bed, knees tucked to her chest and her chin pillowed between them, hands anxiously pulling through her hair. He watches the copper flashing in the warm lamplight for a moment, swaying back and forth, before she says, "You can sit."
He perches awkwardly at the end of her bed, keenly aware that they're so close, before he swallows and asks, "Are you okay?"
"Have you ever spent extended periods of time in close and inescapable proximity to an ex, Grace?" she asks, and he shakes his head. "Don't."
"I couldn't even tell you where any of my exes are in life," he says, and she sighs, stretching her legs out.
Her feet end up in his lap, still caught in her heels, and he doesn't know what to do to comfort her except ease them off, dropping them to the floor by her bed. There's a hole forming in the toe of her sock, and he instinctively presses his thumbs into the balls of her feet, watching the way her body rolls into the touch.
"Thanks," she says softly.
"Why are you wearing heels and not your sneakers?" he asks, and she tucks her hair behind her ear and doesn't answer. "Stratt?"
"I thought it would help me feel less...discomfited around him," she says. "He is very tall."
"He is," he agrees, and she laughs. "He's big." He stares at her grey covers, and says, "Not what I thought you'd like."
"What did you think I'd like?" she asks, and he flushes. "I'm curious now, Grace."
"I just...I can't picture you married to a finance guy," he says.
"I'm not married to him anymore," she says, and tosses her hair back over her shoulder. "I walked out on him and filed for divorce the next morning."
"I'm glad you're the one that walked," he says, and she arches an eyebrow. "Just...I mean, Stratt, how could anyone leave you?"
"Stefan would've if we'd kept waiting, I'm sure," she says with a slight shrug. "By the end the only thing we had in common was sex."
His fingers contract on her ankles, so tight she hisses, and he says, "Sure. That sounds awful."
"It was," she says. "Very lonely to find no happiness in your marriage."
"I'm sure," he says. "Do you know when he's leaving?"
"He says next week," she says.
"So...so you and him, you...you talk privately?"
She nudges her toes into his thigh, and he glances at her to see a smile on her lips. "Are you jealous, Grace?"
"No-"
"You don't have to be," she says, and when he looks at her she's looking back. Hooking her legs over his lap, pulling herself down the bed and closer to him. Meeting his eyes in the warm lamplight.
He swallows to wet his dry throat, breathes, "Eva-"
She cuts him off leaning into to kiss him, her lips warm with whiskey, and his fingertips dig into her calf across his lap, awkwardly tilted on the bed to kiss her back. His back twinges and he hisses against her mouth, and she pushes him gently out of the kiss, slinking into his lap.
"Don't hurt yourself," she breathes, and sinks her weight into his lap before she presses her mouth back to his.
They end up toppled back into the bed, her knees pressing into his hips, his fingertips snuck beneath the hem of her turtleneck, pressed into the warm skin of her back. And he's kissing Eva Stratt, and his head is spinning, and her neck smells like jasmine and her mouth tastes like whiskey, and her hips are starting to shift against his.
A knock at the door and she pulls away, sitting up on top of him and calling out, "Hello?"
The door swings open without warning, and with nowhere to hide Ryland flies his hands to his face to cover his blush when Stefan steps in, his shoes creaking. "Ah," he says, and smiles. "I just came to say I am sorry for crossing a line. But you are clearly busy, Eva."
"We'll talk in the morning, Stefan," Eva says, and Stefan just gives Ryland a long look.
"Good luck, Doctor Grace," he says, and swings the door shut.
"What did he mean by that?" Ryland asks, looking back up at Eva.
She smiles, and pulls her sweater over her head, pressing her hand to his chest. "You want to talk about my ex-husband, Grace?" she asks softly, her voice a low purr. "Or do you want to fuck?"
"Fuck," he says, and she leans down to melt their mouths together, her fingers unravelling his belt.
Stefan leaves two days later, and gives Ryland a twinkle-eyed look before he kisses Eva's cheek. "You're doing good here, Madam Director," he says. "I will recommend that we continue to give you the same budget. Contact me directly if there's any need for increase."
"Thank you," she says.
"And Doctor Grace," Stefan says, and clasps Ryland's hand tight in his to shake, "take of her, huh? She is a special woman."
"Please leave now, Stefan," Eva says tightly, and Stefan drops Ryland a wink before he turns towards his humming helicopter.
(A year and a half later, they receive invitations to Stefan's wedding. His new wife is tall, silver-blonde, striking.
But Ryland spends the wedding with his hand on Eva's bare back, exposed by the halter neckline of her black dress. Kissing the constellation of freckles on her shoulder.
He only puffs up his chest a little in front of Stefan. He swears.)