Work Text:
Eva awoke to the sun rising through her window.
The first reminders of spring had begun to make themselves known in Salzburg, and she was pleased to hear the morning birdsong accompanying the glimmering beams of light streaming onto the bed, mottled by the branches of an ancient tree that was just starting to bud.
It had been surprising how fast the bird population had rebounded after the first wave of Taumoeba had been sent to Venus, coaxing the world out of its state of hibernation. She hadn’t realized when she first heard chirping outside her morning window, having been swamped with interviews and press conferences and meetings about the success of the Hail Mary and her sudden apotheosis in its wake, so unlike the near-universal abhorrence she had grown used to. If she hadn’t had her right hand at her side, she didn’t know how she would have done it.
Eva rolled over to face the warm mass beside her, tucked under a jumble of covers. He let out a raucous snore, and she thanked the Lord that she was a deep sleeper because she wouldn’t have been able to keep her eyes closed otherwise.
“Ryland,” she murmured, gently stroking a few tendrils of his wispy golden hair that just barely poked out from beneath the sheets.
“Mngh,” Ryland mumbled, wriggling closer to her touch. She never had understood how the man didn’t get overheated, always pressed up against her under a mountain of blankets.
It was sweet though, no matter how many times she had to shove the covers his way in the dead of night because they had encroached too much into her side of the bed during sleep.
Ryland snored softly again, and Eva let out a small laugh.
“Ryland!” She poked him a little in the stomach this time, in that spot where she knew it would rouse him.
Sure enough, a mop of messy hair slowly turned towards hers, and Eva was greeted with Ryland’s sleepy eyes, blinking up at her in dazzling blue. His voice was still soft and bleary with sleep as he muttered, “Eva?”
She chuckled slightly in response, running a hand through his tangled hair, which looked almost ethereal now, glowing a goldish-orange in the morning light. He leaned into her touch, a lazy smile on his face. “Good morning, Ryland.”
He sat up in the bed, still beaming as she moved to join him.
“What time is it?” he asked with a yawn, craning his neck to look at the clock on their nightstand.
Eva took a quick glance. “It’s 6:37.”
“Wow. Sun’s really coming up early now,” he said sleepily.
“And at full luminosity,” Eva teased. “Thanks to you.”
“Oh, come on,” he retorted. “You were the one who led the whole project.”
“Well, I didn’t prevent an astrophage mishap that nearly killed both science specialists and vaporized the entire research center three days before launch. Or fix a major bug in the medical robot’s algorithm on the same day,” she smirked.
“Ahh, fine, fine,” Ryland relented. “How about I go make coffee, and you get changed in here?”
“Ah, I thought it was my turn to get the coffee?” Eva retorted.
Ryland bowed exaggeratedly. “Consider it my treat, my liege.” Eva laughed as he disappeared into the other room, then began changing into her day clothes. She had just finished putting on her socks when Ryland reappeared with two cups of coffee, one in each hand. She didn’t have to ask which one was hers; it was the one that wasn’t lighter than her own skin. Seriously, Grace, how much creamer can one person consume?
She sipped her coffee, gazing back at their bedroom window as Ryland got changed behind her. She counted seven tiny leaves before Ryland signaled he was done. She turned around to see him adorned in a faded blue t-shirt reading, “Cations are Paw-sitive!” with a graphic of an atom in the center, each nucleon bearing a tiny cat face.
“You know, if you don’t want to get recognized, maybe you should start wearing something else,” Eva said, gesturing to the shirt as they stepped outside, each still holding a steaming coffee. The weather was still chilly, but it was warmer for this time of year than it had ever been in the past three decades.
“I’m the one who has a problem with getting recognized?” Ryland scoffed, taking a sip of his hot sugar water poorly disguised as coffee. “You’re, practically, like, the most famous person on Earth!”
They both opened their mouths at the same time to qualify.
“Excluding the astronauts,” Eva said, speaking for both of them.
“Besides,” Ryland continued, wrapping his arms around himself as a particularly harsh gust of wind buffeted them, “I thought the reason we came out here so early was to avoid getting recognized?”
It was true. This early in the morning, even the first of the morning commuters had not yet emerged from their home, and the city was still and quiet. The only sounds that could be heard were the gentle warblings of the birds and their footsteps on the cobblestone.
And truth be told, Eva enjoyed the peace. A sort of distance from the hustling mass of people that had once consumed her.
Now, thirty years out, she still got the occasional interview–particularly right after the astronauts had gotten home–but her life was mostly quiet and still, like a pond undisturbed by any scattered stone. Maybe she was just getting old, but she quite liked it that way.
“I can’t believe it’s been five years since they got back,” Ryland said as they got to their destination, voicing what she had been thinking.
“Yeah,” Eva murmured, her eyes already lost in the swirling currents of the Salzach river. They stood in silence and thought about nothing as the water before them rushed onwards.
Eva had taken off her glasses and let her vision lazily blur into painterly rivulets of blue and gray when the first honking of a car’s horn startled her back to reality. She glanced at Ryland and saw the glaze in his eyes fading as well, and they both turned wordlessly away from the river in sync.
“Well, I guess we should get going,” he said after a beat.
“I suppose we should,” she replied, holding out a hand. He took it, and they climbed back up the stony bank, Grace half-stumbling the entire way. When they’d made it back to the cobblestone, Eva moved to release her hand, but Ryland squeezed it tighter.
As they made their way back, Ryland’s incessant chatter began once again, although they would both stop talking and conspicuously duck their heads whenever another person walked past. The sun had fully emerged from the horizon, now, and the sky was painted a pale blueish-gray, the dark blue above them the only remaining evidence of night. When they arrived back at the modest home with the large maple tree that Eva’s grandparents had once owned, Ryland held the door open for her.
“Ladies first.” He made a sweeping gesture for her to go inside. Eva rolled her eyes and playfully jabbed him with an elbow on her way in.
“What would you like for breakfast, Dr. Grace?” she teased, donning an innocent expression as she made her way over to the kitchen.
“Oh, you know what I like,” he retorted as he came into the house himself, slipping his shoes off at the door. She raised an eyebrow at him but didn’t reply as she began to make his daily fare–a classic PB&J bagel, with only smooth peanut butter, as she had learned the hard way.
After Eva toasted her own bagel, and cut some fruit, she placed their dishware on the tiny kitchen table as Ryland pulled out one of the two opposing chairs to sit in. It was too small for him to sit in, and his knees bumped the table as they ate, but times had been tough, and they had grown so familiar to the mild discomfort that their newer, more comfortable table sat unused in the garage.
“What would you like to do today, Ryland?” she asked, smiling as she speared a strawberry on her fork.
“Hmm, I don’t know,” he replied, grinning. “Well, we’ve gotta do our daily crossword, of course. And maybe we can listen to some more of that audiobook you found the other day. But first, I’m a little tired from our walk, and cold, too. Why don’t we go back to bed and you can warm me up?”
Ryland flashed her a cheeky grin, and Eva couldn’t help but relent, not that she didn’t want to anyways.
After they finished their breakfast and cleared the dishes, the pair headed back to their bedroom, only to find their cat, Flaumig, somehow taking up an entire half of the bed despite his small size.
“Dummerchen,” Eva murmured under her breath, but did not make any move to relocate the slumbering feline.
“Guess we’ll just have to squeeze in!” Ryland beamed, flopping onto the bed and already taking up more than his fair share of room. Flaumig let out a small complainant mrr but didn’t move.
Eva rolled her eyes as she climbed into bed in a more dignified manner. As soon as she slipped under the sheets, Ryland immediately threw an arm over her chest to drag her closer. He pressed his head into her hair, and she could feel his warm breath against her neck as he nuzzled there.
“Ryland, can you breathe?” Eva giggled as he squirmed even closer to her, wrapping a leg around her thighs.
“Mmm,” he murmured contentedly. Cuddling of this sort had been commonplace when the world was frozen over and most people couldn’t afford decent heating, but even after the planet had thawed, Ryland still enjoyed being wrapped around her, and for reasons she couldn’t quite verbalize, Eva enjoyed it too–though she was quite hot. A gentle tug on a pull cord solved that problem as the overhead fan spun in lazy circles above them in a hypnotic rhythm that nearly lulled Eva to sleep. She had hazy memories of sleeping in this bed as a child, falling asleep to the leisurely orbits of the blades. This sort of thing would have been unthinkable just five years ago, when the world had been plunged into ice–it was one of life’s simple pleasures to be able to be mesmerized by this once again.
The soft snoring beside her indicated that Ryland was already unconscious; even in sleep, he still gripped her as if she could be ripped away at any moment. At times, she would find this uncomfortable; now, she just settled back against his chest and let his warmth draw her back to sleep once more.