Chapter Text
Ilyukhina would admit, she had been pretty stereotypical thinking that Dr Grace was just another science nerd who had no interest in doing anything physical outside of lab tests and experiments.
Her first moment of surprise was when he had lifted a pretty hefty metal box and managed to carry it across the lab. Ilyukhina had seen Dr Lokken struggle with one of the same boxes the other day and extended an offer to help. Ilyukhina, of course, managed swimmingly with it but she was perfectly trained to do so.
She forgot about it after she was invited to drink and had plenty of fun that she didn’t quite remember.
She was kindly reminded when she went to bother Yáo in the cafeteria, a group of most of their main scientists were all huddled together in a corner. She tried to peek over their shoulders but failed— damn the men. Most of them were taller than necessary.
“What’s going on?” She asked and Yáo took a sip of his drink, using the mug to gesture towards them.
“Dr DuBois found a new cylinder container of coffee.”
Who knew scientists liked 3 in 1 so much?
In the corner of her eye, Ilyukhina saw a flash of dirty blond and gold-rimmed glasses enter the cafeteria and she automatically turned around to greet Dr Grace with a teasing poke to his side. He rolled his eyes at her, gave her the teacher-look, and greeted Yáo too. Yáo had asked about how all the science was going and Dr Grace was eager to explain his progress.
Ilyukhina multi-tasked. She listened to his explanations while she watched the group in the corner fiddle with the container and blinked as it fell out of Dr Shapiro’s hands and rolled over to their table. She ducked to reach it but Dr Grace’s feet were quicker and trapped it. Ilyukhina paused…huh.
Next, Dr Grace flicked the container back up into the air with his toes and caught it in the air. He inspected it before his entire expression lit up and the coffee club in the corner gained a new member while Ilyukhina was given more time to ponder on what just happened.
She decided to be a scientist and experiment! Not that engineers don’t experiment, she just felt that this was more like a science experiment than an engineering one. Ilyukhina procured a ball, all she had to do was convince Stratt that they needed more entertainment and managed to convince half of the senior team to agree. Thus, she has a football, which Dr DuBois and Dr Grace disgracefully called a soccerball. They didn’t like the name of it, and did complain about how it made no sense so she supposed they got some brownie points for being aware.
Bumping into a not-busy-Grace was hard, he was really busy most of the time. Any of the mealtimes were her best bet but that would depend on whether or not he actually showed up to eat. She found her success two days later during dinner and began mindlessly kicking the football around and passing it to Yáo who sighed heavily before indulging her. Dr DuBois and Dr Shapiro were probably off somewhere else in a bathroom or closet having sex so she didn’t have either of them to entertain her.
Once Dr Grace was in position just a few metres away from her, she “accidentally” kicked it his way and watched with smug glee as her hypothesis came true. He had stopped the ball without looking up from his giant stack of papers, he looked down and smiled before passing it back in one smooth movement and went back to the papers. Ilyukhina stopped the ball and turned to Yáo with a grin, “I told you!”
Yáo just let out a low hum and turned to stare at Dr Grace who was a bit further away now. He turned back around to Ilyukhina and said, “It was a normal pass. Make him do something more impressive.”
Ilyukhina scoffed and she decided to risk the coffee machine and kicked the ball harder, letting it bounce toward the counter. Dr Grace caught it with his shin before it could hit the fridge, popped it upward once, then sent it back towards her with an easy pass.
She then turned to Yáo again, “He did that subconsciously. I’m right.”
He sighed and wordlessly slipped one of his homemade cookies over to her with a resigned expression.
So Dr Grace had, at one point in his life, played football. He technically had an athletic background. This was exciting! Ilyukhina barely knew anything about the man’s past and this is considerably big in her book. It allowed her to be more physical with him, he could handle a rough noogie or two which was great fun and they could kick and pass a ball to pass time.
They were in the cafeteria again, Ilyukhina’s favourite place to cause mischief. This time, Yáo was not here but Dr Lokken was so she could act as an audience to their kitchen utensil fight. Ilyukhina had grabbed a roll of aluminium foil and swished it at him, Dr Grace snorted and he grabbed the closest thing on the counter to him (a pair of tongs that he held closed) and he got into a stance, balancing on the balls of both his feet. He swung at her with a…fléche?
She paused and gave him the timeout sign.
“What was that?”
“What?”
“That. Have you fenced before?”
“Yeah? I needed an extracurricular."
Okay, so he’s done football and fencing. The last one seemed out of the blue but now that Ilyukhina was thinking about it…it made some sort of sense. He seemed like the type. She turned to Dr Lokken who looked surprised and wrote that little fact in her notebook.
“I did track too, most of the soccer— ahem, football team did.”
What.
Ilyukhina stared at him for a while before looking down the hall. There were some people there but they were mostly off to the side. Dr Lokken gave her a look that said ‘don’t do it’. She ignored the look thrown her way and turned to Dr Grace.
“Race you to the end of the hall.”
The aluminium foil and the tongs dropped to the floor with a clang and Dr Lokken ducked down in second-hand-embarrassment as she heard the squeaks of their shoes push against the floor of the helicarrier.