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Stratt was one of the most efficient people Grace knew. She always had her eyesight trained on the next goal, the next problem, never lingering in the present for long. To some, that made her cruel—to Grace, it made her cruel sometimes. Often, though, he found it admirable. His own mind was similar, thoughts commonly racing to what came next, but in his case, they likewise raced to the past, and to unachievable dreams and to his fears, all at the speed of light. Scatterbrained.
It was a useful trait in a scientist, and in a teacher. It kept him innovative, helped him keep track of what had already been done and what needed doing.
It was a tremendously problematic trait in the ‘real’ world. Grace had gotten used to it, but even then, often, he got into situations like this one.
Everything had started with a meeting. Stratt, in her utter efficiency, had called it in the lab, prompting Grace to have his earphones taken out of his ears by one of the older scientists, mid through the bridge of The Cure’s “A Forest”. He’d been momentarily startled, gazing around like a rabbit who had heard a twig snap, before Doctor Ochsner dropped them into his pocket.
She didn’t say anything, only pointed towards Stratt, who had placed herself behind the plastic window of the lab, with a paperweight on the button that activated the external microphone.
“Hello, everyone. I have 15 minutes and 14 seconds, I have a call with the Pope afterwards,” she said in lieu of any opening statement. “What’s your progress?”
All eyes fell to Grace. Naturally, they had. He was their lead scientist, Stratt’s First Officer, by popular opinion.
He cleared his throat, trying to ignore the unrelenting humming of some biochemistry-related machine he had not seen or used since his master’s, but that he remembered used to stand in one of the rooms with the HPLC equipment.
“We’ve got a better read on their membrane composition, and we’ve tried to test some common gases for MIC, though I still think that’s a waste of time since these little guys are scattered all over space. I’ve looked through the sequencing data again and I need a few different PCR primers, and a few of us are doing protein electrophoresis on—”
Stratt held up her hand. Grace fumbled, biting on his tongue at the sudden interruption. The humming hadn’t ceased and it was griding on his consciousness. Someone decided to start closing a laminar chamber, now, and its beeping filled the room.
Grace was only a little vindicated when Stratt’s sharp gaze jumped to the person, critical and cutting as she wrote something on her clipboard. Then she was looking at Grace again.
“I don’t know what you’re rambling on about, Doctor Grace. You’ll put all that in the report by the week’s end.”
“Then… then I don’t…” he tried to arrange his thoughts. The noise was unbearable. One of his hands, fortunately ungloved, found its way to his neck and he scratched down firmly, certain he was leaving red marks. Again. Again. “What is the purpose of this meeting?”
“Do you have any immediate news for me? Anything useful to the mission?”
“Oh,” that was right. If he wanted to tell her something, he’d have to call her (these days, the line was almost always busy) or go through the process of getting out of the lab. Neither seemed particularly speedy. It made sense for her to come to him. “They can’t be infected by any of the most common phage viral infections?”
Stratt nodded. She took a note on her clipboard.
“Okay. Thank you, Doctor Grace. Get back to work.”
She walked away, her boots echoing down the hall. Grace closed his eyes, pressed his hands to his ears, trying to block out the incessant noise. He bit down on his hand when that didn’t help, hit his wrists together a few times, before taking a few deep breaths. He pressed his earphones back into his ears and all but fell onto the nearest lab stool.
He tried not to look at anyone. His hands were shaking. He couldn’t think of what he had been doing, of what he was about to do, of anything. His concentration had been so thoroughly broken.
He wanted to run away from the lab, but there was still work to do. He’d been preparing for some kind of assay before, but he couldn’t remember what. He eyed the reagents on his bench, the open centrifuge with a few microcentrifuge tubes inside, his scattered thoughts floating around his head like helium balloons with the strings cut.
It took him an hour to remember.
It was late, the lab mostly deserted. Only Grace remained, still trying to make up for time lost during the day. He’d ended up doing something productive, setting up that PCR reaction so it could run through the night and hopefully leave him with enough of the sequence to begin figuring out what its function was—they were still a bit on the fence about what it coded for, if for anything. Two teams had gotten contradictory mRNA samples, so they were going to have to repeat that isolation and electrophoresis.
In the silence, his earbuds abandoned and lab lights dimmed, he spun a pen between his fingers, staring at a sheet of protocol he’d been steadily compiling.
He almost didn’t hear Stratt approach. Certainly didn’t look at her, not until she cleared her throat.
She stood just where she’d been during that daytime meeting, dressed the same way except now, she was wearing a sweater, and her clipboard was nowhere to be seen. Grace thought she may have wiped off her lipstick but couldn’t be sure in the dim light.
He got up on instinct. His arms came up to grip at his shoulders. Stratt said nothing.
“Ms. Stratt?” he asked. “Why are you here?”
She met his eyes.
“You’re overwhelmed,” Stratt said. There wasn’t any heat, any emotion behind the words. She was staring at him, hands clasped in front of her. She looked intense, as always, except she also looked soft. Her gaze was almost gentle, except it still had that underlying need for efficiency, that dry necessity everything Stratt did was tainted by.
Grace stared at her, gripping his shoulders with his hands so hard his nails were painfully digging into flesh.
“What do you want to do about it?” he bit out, more defensively than he’d intended. She’d use that against him. She was good at that.
Stratt shrugged. She had that same expression on her face she always had, something oddly sad and solemn for a resting face.
“I have tea and hot chocolate. I hear Americans like hot chocolate,” she said. She held his gaze for a moment more. She looked away slowly, eyes tracing the shape of the laboratory windows. “If you come with me, you can have some.”
Grace frowned.
“You’re not bribing me away from work with hot chocolate.”
Stratt’s eyes were back on him immediately. She frowned.
“Doctor Grace, you’re not getting any work done at this point no matter what we do. This is just a matter of if I let you go and stew in whatever state you have gotten worked up into, or if I help you come down from it.” She stopped, took a breath. He expected her to look away again, but she didn’t. “Considering my poor choices were partially to blame for this, I am offering help.”
Some annoying, petty part of him wanted to refuse. He wanted to tell her that he wouldn’t fall for it just so she could feel better about herself. That she’d dragged him there against his will, deposited him on this boat, and now she would have to face the fact that sometimes, people felt bad, and it would be her fault.
He knew, logically, that she was more than aware of that fact. If anyone knew about causing pain with what they chose to do, it would be Stratt.
Yet there she was. Offering to help.
Grace weighed his options. He could stay in the lab pretending his brain was anywhere close to operational and getting frustrated in the process, or he could join his boss for a cup of hot chocolate and go to sleep at a closer to reasonable hour.
He smiled at her, tentatively.
“I knew you’d want to bond with me eventually.”
Stratt pinched the bridge of her nose, looking for all the world like she already regretted proposing this. Grace methodically went through closing protocols, turning off equipment, sterilising laminar chambers with UV before turning them off, throwing out his trash. He was about to mix a solution of MEDICARINE to neutralise liquid waste from his previous work with a pathogen, when Stratt knocked on the translucent glass pane.
“We have lab techs for that, Doctor Grace.”
“All your lab techs have gone to sleep.”
“Then I wake them,” she shrugged. “Come out. Your hands are shaking.”
He looked down at them and found that she was right. He stripped himself of his gloves, took off his protective clothing and washed his hands in the designated spot. He could hear Stratt typing something on her laptop where she waited. When he appeared, she was holding it up to her face with one hand and comically pressing keys with a single finger of the other.
“You type like an old person,” he said, unable to help himself. She gave him a tight-lipped smile, but the crease between her brows relaxed.
“I see why you’ve chosen to teach middle schoolers.”
Grace laughed, then almost slapped a hand over his mouth. Stratt didn’t comment.
“This is their fault. I wasn’t like this before.”
“So, you’ve let your character be moulded by a herd of schoolchildren?”
He let out air loudly through his nose, the only indication he’d heard her.
Eva Stratt stood still for a few seconds longer, typing the last letters. She closed her laptop, put it under her armpit, and beckoned Grace to come closer.
“Do you know the way to my office?”
“Office sounds like an Australian saying ‘orifice’,” he mused, mind not fully in the present.
“It does not.”
Stratt grabbed his hand and began walking. Grace blinked in shock, following behind her obediently. She didn’t hesitate, the way she grabbed him. She did it like she did anything—precisely, and with purpose. Her hand was cold; a helpful break for Grace’s continuously overheated, overstimulated body. He knew his own skin had to have been dry from the antibacterial soap.
They stopped in front of Stratt’s office and she dropped Grace’s hand, using her own to look for a key.
“You know,” he quipped. “I knew how to get here.”
She looked at him, head bent as she was patting around her pockets.
“Well, I couldn’t take any chances, could I?” she said. “What if you’d met a schoolchild and they told you to walk off deck, hm?”
It made him think of all the times he’d told kids “and if your friend jumped off a cliff, would you follow?” and he smiled at her. He could feel the shaking now, tremors running up and down his arms, legs, torso. The irritated skin where he’d scratched himself ached, and his thumb hurt where he’d bit his hand. He tried to brush it off.
Stratt had unlocked the door. Grace didn’t even notice, absorbed in himself, until she gently but firmly grabbed his hand again and led him into the room. She pointed to the couch. Grace sat down but immediately turned to watch her dig through cupboards over the armrest.
“Should I help?” he asked.
“I think making tea and hot chocolate is a simple enough job. Your hands are shaking and your grip in your left is impaired in itself; you’d only spill things.”
He couldn’t bring himself to argue. He lay his head on the armrest, pillowed on his left arm, and watched Stratt make tea. She had non-descript mugs, white and black and teal with no inscription, just plain colour. Ryland liked his own mugs better—they said things like “Best Teacher Ever” and “I like my coffee like I like my women: with a modified purine ring and three methyl groups.” That last one was one of his favourites, mostly because nobody ever knew what it was supposed to mean. He didn’t know either.
Stratt poured boiling water over her teabag and grabbed Ryland’s mug.
“I’ll get milk from the canteen.” She said.
Ryland nodded. He was tired.
She lingered in her spot, watching him curiously.
“I...” she hesitated. Some part of Grace thought that was strange; he rarely, if ever, saw Eva Stratt hesitate. “I could bring you a blanket from your room, if you’d like.”
Grace tilted his head to the side.
“Why?”
She shook her head.
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it, Doctor Grace. I’ll be back in a moment.”
He didn’t move from his spot, too comfortable despite the strange angle of his head. His free hand found its way to the necklace he was wearing, a simple thick cord with a pendant that was a laboratory flask with red liquid (resin) inside. It’d been a gift from a student, one of many; he had another one with a DNA helix, yet another with the Earth, and another with a bacterial cell.
He began twisting the string between his fingers and playing with the pendant. He brought it to his lips and chewed on it slightly, like he’d done many times before. It was a good thing he could usually get a handle on his oral fixation when in the lab, or it would’ve been a problem. It most often went away when he was intently focused on something; but with long days in the lab, he found himself more tired in the after hours, more fidgety. He’d already broken a few of his pens as a consequence.
The door opened again and he lazily let his eyes wander over in its direction. Stratt stood there, a steaming cup in her right hand and a blanket with the periodic table printed on it hanging over her right arm.
Ryland blinked at her, still gnawing absentmindedly on his pendant. She closed the door diligently, walked over to the cabinets and set the mug down there, in the free space. She unscrewed the lid off a hot chocolate container, never turning her face towards Ryland.
“How much would you like?”
He felt somewhat pushed back towards reality, swimming through the tired cotton of his mind.
“Just… three teaspoons?” he asked. She made a hum of acknowledgement, her spoon clinking on the sides of the mug as she mixed.
She came over to the couch. It was small, narrow, barely fit for two people—he briefly wondered if she’d suggest they go to her room, but Stratt was silent. She set the mugs on the table before them. Hands free, she turned to Ryland.
“I brought you a blanket.”
He nodded. He slid down from the way he’d been sitting, now curled on the couch but facing forward. She looked at him, to the side, then at him again. Uncertain.
“Would you like it?”
He nodded. She carefully unfolded it from where it sat over her arm. Her eyes traced his face, as though searching for something. A few seconds passed, and she stood up. She walked to stand in front of Ryland and wrapped the blanket over his shoulders, smoothing it out like an afterthought.
He felt tired but energised at the same time. Strange. Like his mind was floating away from him, bit by bit.
She pressed the hot chocolate mug into his hands, wrapped his right palm around the handle and squeezed so that it closed around the ceramic.
“Don’t spill,” she instructed, reaching for her tea.
Ryland took a sip and pushed the cup away rapidly when the hot milk burnt his tongue. Eva placed her tea back on the table. Her hands quickly shot back to his mug and pried it from him, setting it down on the table next to hers.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I forgot how powerful that microwave is.”
She kept holding onto his hand for a moment, before realisation must’ve struck and she let it go; not rapidly, but carefully, like so many things that night. Like she was afraid to hurt him, though Ryland couldn’t wrap his mind around why.
His eyes felt like they were about to close. He reached for his pendant again, playing with it between his fingers.
Eva sat still, almost unbreathing. Her glasses were a little fogged up from steam, and Ryland suddenly got the urge to check if his own had followed suit. He reached up to pry them off, but Eva’s hand stopped him.
“You’ll drop them.”
He wrinkled his nose, unreasonably disappointed.
“But they’re foggy,” he guessed. Eva sighed, smiled a little, and reached up with the edge of her sweater wrapped around her palm. She wiped it down one lens, then the other. Ryland smiled at her. “Your glasses are also foggy.”
She reached to take them off and wiped them on herself.
“That they were. Thank you.”
She looked hesitant to do something again. Ryland didn’t know what kept her so on edge, not when somehow, he felt more relaxed than he might have in weeks. She kept reaching to the front with her hands, stopping herself and trying again. Every few of these motions, she’d reach up and tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She had nice hair, soft looking, even if it looked an utter mess too.
She finally grabbed Ryland’s mug and held it close to her face with both hands, blowing over the top of the hot liquid. Ryland watched her, head resting on the backrest of the couch and the pendant travelling between being gnawed on with his teeth and played with by his hands.
After maybe a minute or two, she pushed the mug to his face. He reached to grab it, thinking she’d let go, but her hands remained. When his own reached the handle, hers unwrapped from around it, but then closed over his as soon as he placed it on the cup. He caught her eyes, full of something strange and distinctly not dictator-Eva-Stratt, but he didn’t have the energy to make himself investigate it farther.
She motioned for him to straighten up.
“You can’t drink with your head like that,” her voice was barely above a whisper. “It’ll spill.”
Ryland did as he was told. She pushed the cup closer again, until the rim hit his lips. He needed a second to realise what was being asked of him but eventually opened his mouth wider so a combined effort of Eva’s and his hands could tilt the cup and let him drink. He tapped her hand, the one that was resting over the smooth, handleless side of the cup, when he was done, and she immediately retracted the cup. She let his hand free from the handle and put the cup back on the table.
Ryland yawned. Eva took a sip of her tea, winced as her mouth must have burnt. She turned to Ryland when he yawned again.
“Are you tired?”
He nodded.
“You can sleep. I’ll wake you up when it’s time for you to go to your room.”
The thought of leaving her made a part of him tremble again. He shook his head.
“No?”
Eva raised an eyebrow. It was the first time during the night that she seemed at all like the person he was used to.
He said nothing more, only shook his head again.
Eva sighed.
“You have to use your words, Doc—Grace—Ryland. Ryland.” She shook her head, her hair falling around. Ryland reached out a hand, let his fingers touch it, then retracted when she stared at him, startled. It was soft.
“Sorry,” he said.
She closed her eyes. Her chest moved in deep breaths, one, two, three, four, five of them. She opened her eyes, voice dropping back to a hushed, soft tone. She didn’t make eye contact again, only stared vaguely at the side of Ryland’s head.
“You can’t just touch someone with no warning.”
He wrapped his blanket around himself more. His right hand reached for the pendant again. His muscles shook in a half-panicked, half-angry tremble.
“Doctor Osher did!”
Eva hesitated again. She blinked a few times, as though remembering something. She raised a hand, then—
“I’m sorry about that. Can I touch you?”
He furrowed his brows, worried, now.
“How?”
“I want to put a hand on your shoulder. Is that alright with you?” a few seconds passed. “I apologise I touched your hands without asking, before.”
He nodded.
“’s okay.”
She still paused mid though moving, but eventually her hand rested gently on Ryland’s shoulder. He tensed for a second, the hidden gravity of the situation hitting some part of his brain that didn’t respond properly; as though that sector of his mind was being drowned out, buried in the ground.
He relaxed into the touch.
“You can…” he muttered. His head fell to where her hand lay.
“I can what?”
“Touch me. Don’t need to ask.”
Eva looked startled, eyes open wider than before. She opened her mouth, almost said something, but ultimately shut it again and only reached out her other hand, rubbing it along Ryland’s other arm. It felt nice. His eyes began to slip closed.
He felt himself slowly tip forward, felt someone wrap an arm around his back and put their hand in his hair. He cuddled into the person closer, letting his until then still tense shoulders relax, his arms wrap around them. His consciousness slipped entirely just as someone whispered something in Dutch.
“Ryland?” someone tapped his shoulder. He groaned slightly, curled more into himself.
The person sighed and tapped again.
“Ryland, wake up, please?”
“No,” he mumbled, pretending to be deep in sleep. “I’m very asleep.”
The sound that came from the woman talking to him was like someone holding back a laugh with all their might.
“You are not nearly as convincing as you think yourself,” she said. Ryland’s mind was slowly booting up—Eva was talking to him.
He opened his eyes. She was crouched in front of him, her hair in two braids that fell down to each of her shoulders. The room was dark, but she was illuminated by the light from her phone flashlight, which she kept angled downwards to not blind either of them.
“Your back will hurt if you sleep here. I cannot carry you. Come.”
She motioned for him to move.
Ryland recalled, through a haze, what she’d said before. They were going to go to his room, and she would leave him alone. It was an unpleasant thought, one that had him grabbing at the blanket he was wrapped-up in and chewing on the end as he looked away from her.
Her hand rested on his cheek, and she angled his head back towards her own. She pried the blanket away from his lips.
“You’ll ruin it. We’re just going to my room.”
Her room. Ryland cautiously pushed himself up.
“Together?”
She nodded. She extended a hand, hesitant, again, but he grabbed it eagerly. He didn’t remember where her room was, after all. Or maybe he didn’t even know? Everything was a little hazy.
They walked through the dim corridors of the ship. Ryland kept yawning, his vision blurry. It was only when they stopped in front of the door that must have been Eva’s dormitory that he realised he didn’t have his glasses. He tugged on her hand, humming quietly, until she looked towards him.
“Glasses?”
She pulled them out of her pocket with her free hand. He nodded, placated.
She opened the doors and let him through, dropping his hand. She turned the lights on, blinding Ryland for a moment. In his brightness-induced shock, shaking his head and hands with his eyes shut, he heard her whisper something like “sorry, manneke, sorry”.
He stood there for a moment, still covering his face with his hands, until Eva gently pried them away. He hesitantly opened his eyes, but found the room to be comfortably bright, now.
“You can lay down,” she whispered to him, pointing to the bed. “I will be back shortly.”
He let himself be pushed towards the bed. Once his shins hit the side, he dropped into the covers, boneless, his periodic table blanket still tight around him. He heard the sounds of Eva gathering her things and the door closing quietly.
He curled up with her duvet, very warm in his blanket and the covers. He spun around so that he was facing the door while laying down and waited.
He counted to 100, Eva still hadn’t returned. Counted again, and again, and again, until he was almost sure he’d reached a thousand. His eyes were falling close, but his heart was hammering, and Ryland Grace was getting worried that Eva Stratt had left him—
The door opened. She stepped inside, wearing a simple set of dark purple cotton pajamas, her day clothes and toiletries carried under one arm. In her other, she held a plastic bowl of water. She left her items on a chair and approached the bed with just the bowl. She beckoned Ryland up, and he complied with a groan.
“You have to brush your teeth,” her face was tinted red, and she was pointedly not looking at him. She left the bowl of water on the side and got up again, coming back with his toothbrush and toothpaste.
He grabbed them from her, almost entirely asleep now that she was back and his shoulders had relaxed again. He squeezed toothpaste out, almost missing the toothbrush, wet it in the bowl and began brushing. Autopilot took over, and he followed his usual motions, from the left side of his mouth to the right.
Eva hummed something, grabbing his hand.
“Too short. And you’re covered in toothpaste.”
He blinked, unable to respond. Her fingers pushed on his until he understood and let his hand fall off the toothbrush.
“Open your mouth,” she instructed. Still holding the toothbrush with one hand, she reached for the bowl of water with the other and positioned it below them both. “Left down, left up, right up, right down?”
He nodded. She reached for a tissue from the nightstand and wiped the burning mint toothpaste from his chin and mouth, then started to brush his teeth for him. She didn’t make eye contact, didn’t say anything, only hummed when she needed him to turn his head this way or that.
“Spit,” she brought the bowl to his lips. “Do you need to rinse?”
He nodded. She held up a hand and quickly walked out of the room, coming back barely a minute later with his toothbrush clean and a cup of water.
If he felt more conscious, less like he was thinking through cotton and less comfortable, he would feel embarrassed. But Eva approached everything as though it was normal, or at least as though she was eventually able to convince herself it was normal. She handed him another tissue, hesitated, and instead of putting it in his hand wiped his face herself.
She moved the bowl of water to the side. Her eyes remained on it for another moment, after which she sighed and got up, moving it to her small table-desk. She motioned for Ryland to move closer to the wall. Once he did, she turned off the lights and lay down next to him.
He was already almost asleep again, something blissfully calm and soft having settled over his mind. He felt her body settle and didn’t think much at all, only moved closer, wrapped his arms around her. He felt the motion of her chest pause and start again. A hand landed behind his head, pulling him closer.
Sleep welcomed him with no disturbance.
Grace woke up to an empty bed, which was usual, and the presence of Stratt’s perfume in the air and her voice, sharp and methodical, spitting Russian into the receiver of her cell phone. She was sitting in an armchair next to the only window in the room, using her free hand to brush her hair.
His mind raced.
“What are you doing in my room?” he demanded.
Stratt paused her monologue, eyes suddenly on Grace. She blinked, eyed him up and down, then finished her call with a few curt words.
“You’re awake.”
He rolled his eyes.
“No, I’m a-wedding.” She didn’t laugh. “What are you doing in my room?”
He could have sworn she smiled at that.
“This is my room, Doctor Grace.”
He pushed himself up on the bed rapidly, looking around. After he completed his third circuit of gazing around the room, he looked at her again.
“What am I doing in your room?”
She quirked a brow.
“You don’t remember?”
Grace furrowed his brows, thinking very hard. The meeting, the lab, then Stratt…
He paled.
“Oh god.”
She put down her hairbrush.
“It’s alright, Doctor Grace.”
“You brushed my teeth!?”
She rolled her eyes.
“It was much faster and cleaner than whatever you were doing,” she shrugged. “Only practical.”
He got up off the bed and put his head in his hands. After a moment, he let his fingers separate.
“What was up with me yesterday, what—”
“Oh, don’t be dramatic, Grace.”
She dropped the “Doctor” purposefully. He glared at her.
“How are you so normal about this?”
“I helped you, did I not? Do you feel distraught—by yesterday’s… ill choices of mine, I mean?”
He paused. His hands fell to his sides. His tongue darted out to lick his lips. His hands came up to fidget with his pendant.
“No.”
Her eyes trailed to his hands.
“You need a chew toy, Doctor Grace, or you’ll have a microbiology lab contained in that plastic,” and then, as though she hadn’t just said something utterly insane, “I need you to get out of my room, I have a meeting in 2 minutes.”