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A/N: Shoutout to the strattlandia discord server that inspired this quick little piece of fluff! I hope it provides a nice bedtime/breakfast/lunch break story for everybody! Thank you my strattlands.
Title from Paper Rings by Taylor Swift. 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 get some fluff up in here!
He learns pretty quick after splashing back down to Earth that no one really knows what to do with a man they all presumed was dead.
NASA keep him for six months. And he’s delighted, because he’s been in space for twenty years, and it turns out it’s very difficult to readjust to life on Earth after that. The sea legs from living on a boat have nothing on his body adjusting to the gravity again.
He loses his mind a little, he thinks. But finds it again, asking the younger people who drift past questions about the last twenty years. All of them stare at him starry-eyed, stammering when he addresses them by their first names, and he can’t help but shake his head.
Becoming a hero is surreal. Odd enough when Adrian tackled him to the ground on Erid so hard he broke a finger on landing for saving Rocky (it never healed right).
Returning to Earth and being stared at like he’s some sort of superhero makes him feel weird. Itchy. He learns to let the attention roll off him, but he still shakes his head thinking about it.
They tell him that he’s doing well enough now to go on international television and not terrify the entire population of the planet. And they hand him the list of people who will be at his first public appearance, their names and occupations and head shots like he’ll remember any of this.
He finds her name at the end of the list. Eva Stratt - former director of Project Hail Mary.
She was the first thing he made NASA tell him. That she went to prison for fourteen years, that she broke out, that she was formally pardoned when the Beetles got back to Earth and revealed he was alive. That he’d done it. That she was right about everything, and most of all him.
He gets a stylist for his reintroduction to the world as Doctor Captain Ryland Grace. Hero of Earth, defeater of astrophage. They don’t do much beyond tidying his hair and insisting he keep his glasses on his face correctly, zipping him back into his yellow jumpsuit, one manicured finger running affectionately over his name embroidered above his gold wings.
When he looks at himself in the mirror, he almost wants to flex and say some sort of cheesy action hero line.
Guards usher him to the car - he can’t remember today’s name, misses Carl - and he looks up at the sky. Thinks about watching the Eridians barging happily into Rocky’s sides, the translator pinging the word HERO HERO HERO over and over again. Watching Rocky and Adrian rest against each other, and feeling his eyes prickle with tears.
When his security detail opens the door, he sees why they gave him four guards, all broad-shouldered and sunglasses and imposing.
The screaming smacks him around the head immediately, and he fights back a wince, raising a hand to wave and trying to smile.
So many people, flushed eager faces and starlit eyes. Jumping up and down and waving BELIEVE IN THE HAIL MARY banners and posters.
He sees a vendor selling shirts emblazoned with his face and does a double take. Honestly, if he wasn’t terrified he’d be crushed he’d step through the crowd and buy the ones marked HAIL MARY, FULL OF GRACE. That’s clever.
The President is the first one to step forward when they leave the street and enter the building, and he understands that’s because he’s American. But he doesn’t want to talk to steely blue eyes and an ice-pick smile.
A hand on his shoulder and a, “Come on, son,” from his President. He can’t remember the guy’s name right now.
The doors sweep open, and his hand is being shaken by half a dozen anonymous people, pats on the back and a cornucopia of different accents saying, “An honour, Doctor Captain Grace.”
He sees her through the shoulders of two suits. Silver in her hair, pulled back from her softly lined face. A tattoo on her neck, beneath her ear, and he sees her notice him notice that, the way she pulls her hair forward to hide it.
She visibly tenses when he gets close to her, and he wonders what she thinks he’s going to do. If she thinks he’s going to shout or raise a hand to her, the flat disc of fear in her eyes.
He smiles at her, and quietly says, “Director.”
Her smile is wan, and it falls into genuine open-mouthed shock when he gets to one knee.
“I missed you,” he starts, and the very important fancy people surrounding them are all staring, and Eva’s face is getting slowly redder and redder, her lips pressed tight together. “I remembered you. All of you.”
Someone makes a choked sound, and Eva’s blush gets brighter, and he winces and says, “Heard it after I said it. Yeah, I know we weren’t fully involved before. Unless we were, and that memory hasn’t come back yet?”
She shakes her head, silver-streaked copper waves falling forward to hide her red cheeks, and he wipes a hand across his brow. “Phew. I think I’d actually be really freaking mad to not remember that.”
A soft laugh, half-rolled eyes, and he feels affection soften his face. “I love you,” he says softly, and she gazes at him, her face bright red and open and perfect. “You’re everywhere in my memories, Eva. You’re what made Earth worth coming back to.”
She tilts her head, licks the corner of her mouth, inhales, and he says, “I’m sorry I don’t have a coffee for you. The big guys said we couldn’t stop at the drive thru in case someone tried to pull me out the car window or something. And the weather is just so much better than it was that morning. Do you remember? When I brought you coffee and we talked about the potential of the future?”
A nod, and he smiles, withdrawing the carefully constructed xenonite box from the chest pocket of his jumpsuit, his ribcage sighing in relief to no longer have a corner digging into it. “I brought something better than coffee this time,” he says, and her beautiful eyes go wide. “I don’t know what you’ve been doing for the last twenty years, Eva. And I don’t care. I just want you to spend the next twenty with me.”
He clicks the lid off the box - lefty tighty, righty loosey - and reveals the ring. A xenonite band and a chipped off rock from his biodome, the same colour as her hair.
“Eva Maria Stratt, will you marry me?”
She inhales sharply, her chest rising and falling staccato, and gets out a soft, “You are crazy, Grace,” before she starts crying.
He closes the ring box with a snap and gets to his feet to hug her, gentle reassuring, “Hey, hey,”s leaving his mouth. “Holy shit, Eva, I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“That’s a bad word,” she hiccups into his shoulder, and he smiles.
“Yeah, Rocky’s a total potty mouth,” he says, and lifts her head from his shoulder, pulling the cuff of his sleeves over his palm to dab away her tears. “Do you really think the ring is that ugly? I’m sorry, they don’t have diamonds on Erid.”
“It’s beautiful,” she breathes, and blinks up at him. Tears in her eyelashes, her face softened to bright pink, and the corners of her mouth twitch up in a smile. “Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes, I’m in love with you,” she says, and he feels the grin split his face. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
“Oh fuck yeah,” he breathes, and her startled laugh turns into a squeak when he pulls her off her feet and into his arms, breathing in rosemary in her hair and a softly scented moisturiser on her skin. Rose, maybe.
And then he kisses her. Tastes her soft lips, faintly stained with coffee, feels her cool fingers against his cheek, turning him just slightly the way she wants him.
The world falls away. And when she pulls back, her face bright and her forehead tilted tenderly against his, he presses a reverent hand to her cheek and says, “Yep. Definitely our first kiss. I’d remember that.”
“Ring,” she orders shortly.
“Bossy-”
“You knew that,” she says, and he pops the xenonite box open, slips the ring onto her finger. To his surprise, it’s a perfect fit. Maybe Rocky is the best engineer in his or any galaxy.
He reels Eva greedily back into another kiss, and watches her while he talks to the press. Sees her staring down at her hand, her ring, the softness in her eyes and her cheeks, the tenderness in her smile.
When he’s finally released, he’s right at her side, his hand linked through hers, a kiss to the top of her head.
An assistant brings her an old familiar yellow raincoat from the cloakroom, and she looks at him and breathes, “Don’t say anything.”
“I’m just smiling, fiancée,” he says, and grins wider at the way a helpless smile tugs at her mouth. “God, I missed you.”
“You missed your boss?”
“I missed the love of my life,” he says, and rolls his shoulders. “You have no idea how good it feels to not fumble my confession again.”
“It was very cute, Grace,” she teases. “Asking me what I was doing for the next twenty years.”
“It was meant to be suave-”
“You are not suave-”
“No?” he asks, eyebrow arching in a challenge, and pulls her into a low dip and a lingering kiss.
She’s giddy when he rights her, her cheeks pink and her eyes sparkling, and he takes her hand in front of the crowds and waves again.
They watch the news reports all leading with Doctor Captain Ryland Grace’s shock surprise proposal to recently redeemed former Director Eva Stratt, and he pulls her more firmly into his side, her slim fingers gliding elegantly down his bare chest.
“What if I told you we did kiss before?” she asks softly, and he bolts upright. “After karaoke.”
“What?” he snaps. “Oh my God, I hate this. What else hasn’t come back? Am I gonna remember we had sex and it was so hot and that right now wasn’t our first time and you pretended to be impressed I guessed your turn ons so well because actually you already told me twenty years ago and-”
“Darling,” she says, and he shivers at the pet name. “I’m fucking with you.”
He gazes at her for a second, and pins her to the bed with a, “God, you’re insufferable.”
“You are marrying me, Grace-”
“Yeah, well,” he breathes, kissing a trail down her neck, lingering over her prison tattoo. “I’m a glutton for punishment.”
She grabs the remote and turns off the President waxing lyrical about the honour of welcoming home an American hero, and he smirks his way down her body, and gets lost in the love of his life.
(They’re married within a month. Registry office, signed papers, a cream blazer for him and a blue dress for her.
After all, they’ve known each other twenty years. Neither of them cared much for a big white wedding.
He kisses his wife back into their wedding car, and gives Carl a thumbs up in the rearview mirror before Eva pulls him down into the backseat, her lips around his ring finger and warming up the newly-placed circlet of xenonite.)