Work Text:
Stratt stepped carefully out of the fighter jet, unbuckling her helmet and mask and handing them to the waiting officer. “Thank you,” she called over the roar of the flight deck, taking back the small bag she had brought with her to a conference at ESA’s headquarters. It had been strange, being back in a building she had spent a bit time in, even seeing people she had known, if only cursorily, before she had become something akin to the leader of the world.
She strode across the deck, intending to go first to her office. As she walked, she found herself scanning for Grace — foolish, she knew, she was perfectly capable of existing without him. And yet she’d felt a small pang when she’d determined their schedules wouldn’t align for him to travel with her, only made worse when he had pouted at her mildly, had hinted they could have stolen a personal dinner away in Paris, could have “made a date of it”.
She kept up her musing until she made it to her office, and… still hadn’t seen Grace. Strange, she thought — for years, almost since the beginning of the project, he’d had a knack for finding her, greeting her almost as soon as she landed, when she had to travel without him. Their excuse — for it was an excuse, she could admit to that — was for him to update her on anything that had occurred during her absence. An excuse that had still become so second nature, so engrained, that she automatically assumed that her first order of business when stepping back onto the Vat would be a meeting with Grace, even had the time blocked off on her schedule on the days she flew. So, for him not to be here…
Never mind that, she ordered herself, rolling her shoulders before taking out her tablet, her laptop, a small stack of files. A large portion of his days now consisted of teaching DuBois and Shapiro about astrophage — certainly their session just ran long.
So she set to work. Blessedly, the days she traveled often had fewer meetings, and so she had several, uninterrupted hours of work time, reviewing files and documents, reports, acquisition requests, memos and updates, until an ache in her back forced her to stand, stretch.
And realize that she still hadn’t seen Grace.
She shouldn’t worry. He was an adult, and she wasn’t his keeper. And he was prone at times to missing meetings, lost in science and knowledge, this wasn’t out of the ordinary.
And yet. He didn’t tend to miss meetings with her.
She needed to stretch, and a walk would do her well — is what she told herself as she made her way towards the biology lab. It was a hive of activity as always, but as she scanned, counted heads, she found that he wasn’t one of the bees.
Checking her phone, she confirmed that he hadn’t texted or called, so she stopped the first scientist she saw — a Dr. Rai, she remembered. “Excuse me, where is Dr. Grace?”
Her features turned sympathetic. “In his room, I assume — had a horrible migraine, last I saw of him this morning. Tried to power through, but just couldn’t focus — lights were bothering him too, so we convinced him to go rest.”
“Thank you.”
She let Dr. Rai go, turning on her heel and towards crew quarters, an… odd feeling, squirming through her belly.
Stratt was not his keeper. Even Eva, the woman underneath, was not. Then why did she feel this way?
At his door, she hesitated for a moment — it was always him knocking on her door, and rarely the opposite; it felt… intimate. She pushed aside the feeling, they’d certainly been more intimate than this, and knocked.
It took a few moments, but then she heard his voice, just barely through the door. “Yeah?”
She carefully pushed inside, poking her head to find the room dark, in near darkness, a towel taped over the window to block out the light. She could just make out the shape of him in his bed, the sheets tangled around his legs like he’d been tossing and turning. He lifted a damp towel that he had over his face, and even in the low light she could see the squint of his eyes that meant he was still in pain.
“Hey,” he greeted, and still offered her a small smile. “Knew you were coming back today. Happy to see you.”
She stepped inside, softly closing the door behind her. She found a small lamp in the corner of the room, flicking it on, and saw him wince. “Sorry,” she murmured, angling the lampshade away from him, and then stepped towards his bed, sitting down on the edge. “Heard you have a migraine.”
He gave her a wry smile, removing the cloth from his face completely and setting it on his bedside table. “Yeah. Guess someone has to have them when you’re not here.”
She smiled gently, stroking his cheek. “And of course, you would take up the mantle.”
He smiled, his eyes slipping closed, and reached up to take her hand, press a kiss to it. “Not willingly.”
She snorted, turned her hand to stroke his jaw. “How long have you had it?”
He sighed, obviously trying to think through the fog, and a little stab of sympathy went through her. “All day? Think I woke up with it. Feels fuzzy, really. Tried to go work, but just couldn't… think.”
She hummed, stroked his cheek again. “I heard you were at the lab. You were convinced by the biology team to go lay down, it sounds.”
“Mm, they did tell you. I told them not to bother you with it when you landed.”
“They told me only after I asked, after I went looking for you.” That odd feeling returned to her belly again, roiling, anxious, uncomfortable. “You told them not to tell me?”
“Yeah.” Hearing something in her voice, perhaps, he cracked an eye, looked up at her. “Should I not have?”
“I—” the feeling squirmed again, and she hated that what she was feeling was insecure, worried, annoyed. “I just would have liked to know you were feeling poorly enough to need to take a sick day.”
He opened both eyes now, squinted, and he squeezed her hand where he still held it. “I just didn’t want to worry you, you have a lot of work to do still. It’s just a migraine, it’s not something worse.”
“And did you think perhaps that even if not dire, I would still like to be informed when one of my lead scientists is down?”
“You don’t get told every time there’s a scientist down, that would take up all of your time.”
“I didn’t say a scientist, I said lead scientist.”
“That’s just — I’m not—”
“You are.” Her voice had become sharp, and she stopped, took a breath. “You are,” she repeated softly. “Like it or not, you’ve ended up in a position of importance.” She squeezed his hand, found herself getting to what she realized was the root of the matter. “You are invaluable to this project, carry a schedule nearly as busy as my own, and yet you still find time to care for me when I hurt. Is it so hard to believe that I would want to do the same?”
He was silent a moment, an almost comical look of surprise on his face, as if he truly hadn’t considered the notion. He sighed then, soft, and his eyes slid away from hers, not before she thought she caught a sheen of tears in them.
“Eva,” he whispered, and released her hand. She watched as he pushed himself up on his elbows, then wavered, his eyes squinted — she could all but see the waves of dizziness and nausea roll off of him. She pushed him back down, then stood, shedding her coat then her shoes before crawling onto the bed. She nudged him over until she could sit propped against the wall, then coaxed him closer until he lay with his head in her lap.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, his eyes closed again. “I just didn’t want to worry you — really. But I can, ah. See what it would feel like, on the other side. How it would hurt not to be told.”
Eva sighed, her hands falling to his temples, pressing lightly. “Perhaps I overreacted,” she admitted, and scratched one hand through his hair. “But I—” she paused, feeling unusually ungainly with her words. “I would like… I want to show you… love, in the same way you show it to me.”
He cracked an eye, smiling softly at her, and she couldn’t help but smile back. “I’m sorry I deprived you of the chance to take care of a man made whiny and pathetic with pain.”
She flicked a finger lightly down his nose. “Do you find it annoying to care for me when I’m in pain?”
His eyes flew open, then he winced, closed them, cracked one open again. “No! No, never, it’s—”
“Then why would I?”
She ran her hand gently over his hair, saw the sheen of tears build again even as he stared at her, awe etching his features, and something that looked like skepticism fading away from them.
He swallowed hard, and she brushed her thumb over the corner of his eye, smiling when his eye slipped closed and his body relaxed further into her.
“That’s, ah,” he took a deep breath, “very hard to argue with in any way that makes sense.”
“Good,” she said, a quiet statement, an end to a debate. “Then don’t.”
He chuckled softly, brought a finger up weakly to his brow. “Aye-aye, captain.”
She allowed herself a small smile, running her hand through his hair one more time before she turned her touch back to his temples, rolling her fingertips across the spots he taught her. “Can you try to sleep? I can stay here a while.”
He cracked an eye again, quirked his lips. “Eva Stratt doesn’t have anywhere to be?”
She actually did have a meeting in just under an hour, but she considered, thought it wasn’t critical — not when he lay in her lap feeling ever so fragile, and she thought that perhaps his tenuous grip on his belief that someone could care for him could be strengthened, if she took this moment for them, together. Just sat with him, for a while.
For once, she decided, the world could turn without her. “Not for a while.”
Ryland sighed, smiled, and then turned, shifted until he lay on his side, his face pressed to her belly. She scratched at his scalp again, a silent assurance, a comfort, a promise she hoped that he could feel that she loved him, loved him, loved him.
“Thank you for… caring for me,” he whispered after a while, his voice small, thicker with emotion, but there was a veracity there that sent her heart warming, sighing, a smile curving on her lips before she even realized.
“It’s not hard,” she whispered back, and reached a hand around to stroke the back of his neck, massage as he always did to her. “Believe me, it’s not.”