Archive of Our Own

Pylades: I’ll take care of you.

Orestes: It’s rotten work.

Pylades: Not to me. Not if it’s you.

— Anne Carson's translation of “Orestes” by Euripides

He stares at her, elbow on table and chin in hand as she works, typing away at her tablet.

"You're not taking this very seriously, are you?"

"What, my work? Because I assure you, I am always taking it seriously," she says. Unlike you, right now, is implied.

"Not that," he scowls. They're long past working hours, anyway. "Our marriage."

"What about it?" she asks, no longer really paying attention.

His scowl deepens. This is what he's talking about. She's not taking this seriously.

"Ugh," he tips back in his chair and groans, loudly, to make his displeasure known. She ignores him. Just as she has nearly every mention of them tying the knot, after it happened. Heck, she hasn't even kissed him since then.

If it wasn't for that Ryland knew he wasn't capable of imagining something that extraordinary, he would have thought he dreamt it.

Being kissed until he was lightheaded, dizzy and flushed and panting with it— yeah, there's no way he could have imagined that. Or the look on Stratt's face as she pulled away, glowing and satisfied and viciously pleased.

Yeah, no way.

"Grace," she sighs eventually, after she's put away her work for the day and Ryland is still moping around. (While being productive of course! He wouldn't skirt his work over this. Even if his shift technically ended hours ago; she is still working, so, so is he.)

And, yeah, he still likes the sound of his name when she says it. No matter how annoyed sounding it is.

"Ryland," he insists.

"Ryland. I signed the damn form, didn't I?"

"That wasn't the point," he grouses, sulking.

"Then what was?" she asks exasperatedly, but genuinely confused underneath it. She really doesn't know.

It makes Ryland want to crawl out of his own skin, for how frustratingly dense she is about this one specific thing, and for how embarrassed he is that he might have to spell it out. He doesn't want to. He humiliated himself enough when he proposed.

When he doesn't respond for long enough, she leaves him there, moping in his chair, with strict orders to lock up when he leaves.

He'll bet everything in him that if he brings dinner to her room later, she'll tell him with a furrowed brow that he doesn't need to do that.

And if he asks how she slept tomorrow morning, she'll say, "Fine," like she always does, and nothing else at all.

She's such a pain. Ryland thunks his head against the table and sighs. 

Ryland doesn't actually care about the not-kissing; like he said before, it's not the point. The point is everything in between: letting him care about her, letting him know her, letting him in.

Stratt hasn't been doing any of that. It's been driving him insane.

Papers are contracts. Stratt signs hundreds every day. Their marriage certificate was not special in that regard; just a document to legally bind them together, as Ryland had wanted.

It wasn't what he wanted though. Or, it wasn't all of it. With every day that passed that Stratt seemed no more inclined to let him past her walls than before, he came to the sinking realization that she had little intention of actually being married.

And Ryland wasn't lying when he said he didn't care for her to be a 'wife' to him, whatever burden that seemed to mean for her. But he had every intention of being a good husband, of taking care of her and being her support, but she won't let him.

She calls it unnecessary when he brings her food, says it's none of his business when he asks about non-work matters, and tells him he's wasting his time when he wiles away hours in her office after he's done with his shift for the day.

He's barely even her friend, let alone her spouse.

Ryland wonders why she even signed the damn certificate if she was going to be like this.

"I never know what you're thinking," he sighs.

Her brow wrinkles. "Don't you?"

"No," he says, exasperated.

"Huh." She considers this. Does she think of herself as being easy to read? She's not.

Ryland watches her more than anyone else on the ship and he can't even tell if she even likes him, most days.

He starts spending his free time in her office. Nighttime for everyone else becomes Stratt time for him (though he will never say it out loud— she hates his puns, and he doesn't want to risk getting kicked out for a particularly bad one).

He can't help it, his newfound clinginess. He was never like this before, while they were working on the launch of the Hail Mary, but in the ensuing years since while she was imprisoned he's had to go so long with her out of reach, only getting thirty minutes a month— and now he can see her whenever he wants? He'd be a fool not to take advantage of it.

They no longer work the insane shifts they did before launch, racing against a clock, rushing every day to get things done on time. Their work is still important to humanity, of course, but the lack of such pressing urgency means that they actually work reasonable hours, now; at least, all of them but Stratt do.

"Workaholic," he chides when he returns to her office after dinner and she's still there. He drops off a plate for her, as he's started to do once he realized she would never eat otherwise.

"You're one to talk," she says, not looking up.

He won't deny it; she's witnessed him ignoring other obligations in favor of his astrophage research on numerous occasions before; has occasionally fetched him for meetings he would have otherwise forgotten about or nudged him to pay attention when he got too into his reports. Still—

"I'm not as bad as you," he argues petulantly.

"Good," she says, which makes him deflate.

"C'mon, Stratt, take a break," he pleads. "Or better yet, go to bed for the day. No one should be working the hours you do."

"Is it because you were a schoolteacher," she muses, "that you have the natural instincts of a caretaker?"

"No, it's because I'm a normal person who knows that human beings should be getting at least seven hours of sleep. Which you have not been getting."

"In a moment, Grace" she says distractedly. "You may go. I'll see you at tomorrow's meeting."

Oh, absolutely not.

He plops down in the seat across from her.

She raises her eyebrows, not taking her eyes off her screen, but he knows it's directed towards him.

"I'm staying," he says, "until you leave."

"That's unnecessary."

"Well, too bad. I am," he insists.

Her brows draw. "You're wasting your nights, spending all this time with me."

"No I'm not."

"You are. You're no longer taking private jets to see me, yet somehow you're still wasting all your time."

"It's not a waste," he insists. "And besides, it's my time, and I'll do what I want with it."

Her mouth draws in a displeased line, but she lets the matter go. Allows him leaf through some of the less confidential papers on her desk to keep him occupied while she works.

And here, he thinks, there are some concessions she's made after their marriage. Before, she was more likely to shoo him away. She would have dragged him by the arm with him kicking and screaming if it suited her.

(He wonders if it's because when he proposed, he asked if he could stay.

This is her letting him, he supposes. It's not everything he wanted, but it's something.

Don't push me away, he thinks at her helplessly, even though she's right there. There is a chasm between them that he doesn't know how to cross. Don't push me away again.)

"Hey, do you know if Stratt has any preferences between these?" he asks one of the cooks in the mess hall, trying to choose between the selections of sides, and soups, and, well, everything, really.

He's already eaten his dinner with the others. He just needs to bring Stratt hers.

"Ms. Stratt doesn't usually eat dinner," she tells him.

Yeah, Ryland figured.

"You're… bringing her dinner, Dr. Grace?" she asks carefully.

"Yeah," he sighs, ruffling his hair. "It'd be easier if I knew what she liked," he grumbles.

When he looks up, she's wearing a badly-concealed expression of glee that he doesn't understand.

"What?"

"Oh, nothing!" she says cheerfully. "You'll be doing this every day?"

"I mean, ideally." If she doesn't end up kicking him out after all.

It'd be nice if she regained some of the weight she lost while in prison.

"Ohhh I see~" Ryland doesn't notice every person in the vicinity eavesdropping on the conversation. "You're really happy that she's back, aren't you, Doctor?"

"Yeah, I mean," he shrugs. "Aren't we all?"

"Of course!" she chirps, stifling a laugh. "Ah, if you're still having trouble deciding, I recommend these—!" She points out a few suggestions. "They're the most popular options with the crew, at least."

"Oh, thanks!" Ryland starts piling things onto a plate. "I hope Stratt will like them."

Someone coughs in the background.

The cook smiles too-bright at him. "I'm sure she will."

The influx of new scientists that came on board while Stratt was away meant that there were plenty of new crew who've never met her.

They'd been told about her, of course, from those who've been onboard longer, but meeting her in person was something else. Words could not describe the indomitable presence of Eva Stratt, after all.

Her reputation preceded her, when she came back. She intimidated half of those new recruits to death within the first week, rankled the feathers of many a too-pretentious scientist who thought they knew better than her, and had them all brought to heel by the next.

The best, or perhaps the worst, reactions are the ones who stare at her with a deep respect and admiration. Ryland gets it, of course he does. Beyond the stern countenance (and her tendency for kidnapping scientists), she is someone who inspires awe. No one else can do what she does. She is singular, and absolute.

And the large part of him is proud; she deserves the recognition, and she certainly didn't get it from the assholes who put her in prison.

(A small part of him, though, hates it. No one should be looking at her like that but him.)

Still, she rarely gives anyone the time of day to get to know her, even with their schedules becoming more lax. Some have tried, and none have succeeded.

She exists at the fringes of their lives, holding court and demanding attention when she steps into a room, and leaving it just as quickly. Her authority hangs over their heads, but never touches them unless necessary. She is more of a symbol than a person, most days; more caricature than human.

"You're too mysterious," he groans.

"No I'm not."

"You are," he argues.

"I fail to see how? Over half of my day is spent talking to people. These days, you, more than anyone."

"Yeah but," he protests, "that's just work. No one really knows you, Stratt. You don't let anyone."

"That's not true," she says simply. "You know me."

A train crash would move him less. That's perhaps the most open thing she's ever said about him. It's also not true.

He doesn't know her at all.

He continues to stay up late with her. It becomes his routine. After he's done with work for the day, his feet take him to her office, and he'll leave to eat dinner with the others and freshen up, but he'll always come back and stay until she's done working.

He brings his own tablet, or books, or work papers. Sometimes he'll just talk out loud to her, even though he knows she rarely listens.

Sometimes he'll end up falling asleep on her desk, and wake up with a blanket she started keeping in the office just for him around his shoulders.

He restructures his life around her, just as he's done from the day she stepped into Grover Cleveland Middle, and has not stopped doing since.

Generously, she never kicks him out, but that does not mean she doesn't complain.

"I still don't understand why you spend so much time in my office," she says one day, after he completed half a crossword puzzle book while she spent hours in a video conference with over twenty heads of state.

(She had been rapidly switching between four languages and still had the wherewithal to give Ryland hints when he slid the book to her when he got stuck, because she was brilliant like that.)

"Hello? Did you forget the part where we got married?"

"No, I remember. So, why are you here?" Don't you have better things to do, is implied.

"To hang out?"

"And why would you want to do that?"

… Yeah, forget it. There's no getting through to her. Completely stoppable force, meet immovable object, and all that.

Still, he could at least complain.

"Y'know, most married people try to spend time with their partners. And also talk to them. Like, talk, talk. With words, and stuff. I can't believe I didn't know you were in Siberia yesterday until I got to your office after work and you weren't there."

"My apologies Doctor, did you need something from me?"

"Yeah, a heads up would have been nice," he says, grouchy.

He had to find out about Siberia from Leclerc of all people; and half of the other science leads hadn't known either. Apparently there was, quote-unquote, no need for them to be notified.

"It was on her calendar," Leclerc had told him. "If you checked it, you would have known." Bah, Ryland hates that stupid calendar. It gives him a headache just looking at it, it's so full. And he wouldn't need to check it to know Stratt was in Siberia if Stratt just told him things. He's in her office nearly every day, for Christ's sake!

"And last week when you sprained you ankle— I didn't even find out until four days later. Four days! All this time I spend in your office, and you didn't even think to mention it?"

"It was a mild sprain, and Dr. Lamai had it taken care of. And you were unnecessarily fussy about it, as I knew you would be, so I thought it best you find out later and spare us all the headache."

"Jesus Christ," he groans.

See, this is what he means when he says she has no intention of being married to him. Forget trusting him, she doesn't even talk to him.

"You know what? Screw this."

He gets up and starts pacing, in the what feels like ten square feet of walking space in her office, and starts down a long-winding lecture about the importance of communication and actually fudging telling him things; and how actually spending time with each other is essential to maintaining a relationship but because she's always working and never takes a break, Ryland has to break into her office just to see her face most days—

She doesn't even look like she's paying attention for the first twenty or so minutes of it (which is fair because Ryland talks a lot, but still rude), until she is and suddenly Ryland is glancing over and sees her looking up at him, blinking, something dawning on her face.

"Don't look at me like that," he snaps, trying not to flush. "I'm trying to lecture you, darn it."

"Cheeky, lecturing your boss," she comments wryly. "Look at you like what?"

"… Like you're examining me under a microscope." Like I'm the full focus of your attention.

It's easier to talk at her when he knows she's preoccupied with at least three other things. Easier when her eyes aren't fixed solely on him. She's intimidating like this. (Intimidating in a way that makes his head spin.)

She tilts her head and he gulps, nervously, all bravado from before gone. How does she even do that? Just quiet all of the energy in a room until the focus is solely on her.

It drives him crazy. Does she even know she's doing it? The silence stretches for longer than he'd like. He's going insane.

Feels like dying when she says slowly, brows furrowed, like she's testing some hypothesis, "Grace. Do you want me?"

He sputters, instantly turning red. "What—?! Where did you even—?! We weren't even talking about that!"

She raises an eyebrow. "You just spent the better part of half an hour talking about how you would like to further our relationship. Was I not to assume that was your motive behind it?"

"No, it's not—" It's not that he doesn't want her, but that wasn't the point—

"Ryland," she tests his name slowly, and each time gives him the same butterflies as the first time she said it. "You can take whatever you want from me. That's what I agreed to, didn't I?"

(If he wants something, he can just take it, she thinks, like he took her out of prison. She'll let him.)

It's like being dunked in ice; he bristles so badly, recoiling at the idea of being with him something she agreed to rather than something she actually wants.

"No," he spits vehemently. "My God, you still don't get it. Good Lord."

He starts pacing again, aggravated, even as she looks on as confusedly as she can manage, for Stratt; which, isn't a lot. He glares at her.

"I thought I made it clear, but— do you even know why I asked you to marry me?"

"Because you're attracted to me," she says, matter of fact.

"I am, but no," he hisses. "We've been over this. Have you even been listening to me?" He's spent the last half-hour implying what he wants. Surely her listening comprehension is not so poor.

"… Okay, fine." She rolls her eyes. "You are attracted to me. You want us to 'communicate' more. You married me because you feel some manner of," her features scrunch, "care towards me and wished to be able to express it." She nods, certain, though she doesn't seem to like it. "Yes, I understand it."

She doesn't understand shit.

"You're closer," he grouses. "You're forgetting a key part of it, though."

She sighs, exasperated. "You're being very confusing, you must realize."

"No I'm not!" He messes roughly with his hair.

"You are. I'm astounded you are capable of it. You're usually very good at explaining things simply, but you are being convoluted about this one thing. I find it difficult to understand."

Ryland doesn't think it's hard to understand at all. What's so difficult about wanting to be trusted?

(Stop pushing me away. Let me in, let me in, let me in. Let me crawl into your ribcage and bury myself there.)

No, not even that— they aren't even at trust yet. They're— well. Ryland sighs internally, backtracking.

What's so difficult about wanting her to want to be cared about? About letting him spend time with her, and do little things for her, without being told 'it's unnecessary'? It's not that complicated.

Not to Ryland, who has been unsuccessful about getting her to want things since the day he made himself a nuisance to her in jail.

(But maybe he's not being very good at communicating what he wants. After all, like Stratt said, he's unwilling to say it.)

There are many things Ryland wants from Stratt, and none of them are simple, or easily said. Most of all to Stratt, who treats the concept of self-care like an untoward suggestion rather than practical advice. Stratt, who keeps everyone at a distance, and bulldozes through attempts at personal connection like they're an irritating waste of time.

To her, anything that is not work is a waste of time.

She always thinks about the world first, the mission first, and never herself. Ryland wonders if she even considers herself human, some days.

She is not a machine. She is not unfeeling. Is it so much to ask for that she feel things; that she want things for herself?

They play a guessing game, where Stratt guesses what Ryland wants from her, and he grades her answers like she's one of his middle schoolers.

He never stops going to her office after their spat, but he is more mulish about it. He got kicked out of academia for his horrible attitude; no one can accuse him of not being petty.

Stratt, while irked that he won't just tell her, seems to treat the matter as a stimulating side-puzzle; an intriguing break from her main job of keeping the planet from fucking freezing.

Ryland feels somewhere between indignant and embarrassed that they need to talk about it this much at all.

"You want to shackle yourself to me," she guesses, which is not wrong, but still missing the mark.

"Bzz bzz," he says, annoyingly. "40 out of 100."

She scowls. "I've never gotten such poor scores on anything in my life," she informs him.

He laughs. "Wow, first time being bad at something, Director Stratt? Who would have known your only area of weakness would be marriage."

"Shut up. You're being exceedingly difficult."

"Oh?" He raises an eyebrow. "I can leave, if I'm making your life so much harder," he says, knowing that he won't. He won't leave even if it kills him.

Still, it surprises him when she leans back heavily in her chair, and says, "Stay. That's an order."

He feels bad immediately. "Hey, are you doing okay?"

She seems exhausted. Perhaps even more than usual. She's been pulling more late nights these days, and he wonders if maybe it's because he's been distracting her.

(He wouldn't have left if it killed him, but he would if he was making things more difficult for her. It was never his intention to do that.)

She waves him off, unconcerned. Still, he can see the way fatigue drips off her frame when he looks at her. "I'll figure it out, Grace," she says, like a threat. "Mark my words."

She says it the same way she says, 'I'll find a solution to the sun dying.' Like it's just another thing on her tasklist to be checked off. Another problem to be solved. Like she cares enough to do it, because it is her duty, but only that.

And that, in its own way, stings.

She does not want anything for herself, he is reminded again. She does not care to be known or to know others. She would not care about this— about him— so much if she did not sign a paper saying she had to.

(Once again, he is reminded that this marriage is something she agreed to, rather than something she wanted. Ryland wanted it. She simply gave it to him.)

Ryland wonders bitterly if she would have accepted a proposal from Lokken or Leclerc just the same, if she cared so little, personally. He is not special, no matter how much he wants to be.

Her legal binding to him is just another of many contracts she had signed away her life with to various entities all over the world.

So what if she admitted to being attracted to him once? It was only once, and attraction does not equal care. Even if he still believed she was attracted to him, he would not dare to assume she cared.

No, that's not entirely correct; she cares about him because she has to, because she cares about every human in the goddamn world, because he is important to the project, because she signed a paper promising in sickness and in health.

But, and this is the part that's important to him: she does not care about Ryland as a person. She does not really care about him at all.

It's unfair.

He revolves his life around her because he cannot imagine doing otherwise, and she only expends energy to figure him out out of obligation to. She lets him torture them both with these mind games out of her obligation to.

He finds that he hates being an obligation to her.

He is so, so bitter.

Think about me more, or don't think about me at all. Rip our marriage certificate to shreds if you care so little. I do not want to be your duty, or something you agreed to.

I want you down to the bones, but I don't want to take them unless you want me to.

It's not just bitterness he feels; no, it would have been simpler if he was just bitter.

But there is guilt there, too.

When had his emotions become so difficult to manage?

Hadn't he only wanted to take care of her? He'd only wanted her to rely on him so he could better do that. He wasn't supposed to want reciprocation.

Ryland doesn't think of himself as a good person, no matter what Stratt says, but still, he is ashamed; this is a new low, even for him. When had he gotten so greedy?

"Do you desire romantic companionship from me? Is that it?" she says, the moment he steps through the door. "Good evening, my love," she tries, and then cringes the moment she says it.

He does too. "Stop that," he scolds. "It's not that. I told you, you don't have to do that kind of thing." She's hurting them both, honestly.

"Is that not how married couples should behave?"

"Yeah, other people, I guess, but not us."

"I wondered if you would want us to be more like that. You wanted that, right? For us to feel more 'properly married.'"

He shakes his head. "That's different. I don't want you to be anyone you're not."

"You're so confusing," she sighs. "The person I am is not very good at being married," she tells him frankly. Which Ryland thinks is true, but about a matter other than this.

She cannot help that she is bad at trusting him. (She cannot help that she doesn't actually care.)

But that's neither here nor there.

"I know you have hangups about bring a traditional wife or whatever, but I don't care about that. You were my boss and world dictator long before we got married. That's not going to change because we signed a paper."

She blinks, then exhales (dare Ryland say, relieved). "Alright, Doctor. We will proceed as we have, then— without the, ah, endearments."

He nods. That's for the best. 

She'd insinuated, before, that he wanted her.

And that wasn't wrong, per se, but more than that, he wanted her to respect herself, first.

No-nonsense persona and stubborn pride aside, she is catastrophically bad at it; taking care of herself, and seeing her own value. She does not treat her body as precious (she got a prison tattoo for fuck's sake, and Ryland is still mad about that) and she does not know how to take kindness that is not transactional.

Ryland does not want his care for her to be misconstrued as something he only does because he's attracted to her. He wants her to know that she is cared about, first and foremost, in a way that has nothing to do with attraction.

If he's going a step further, he wants her to want to be cared about, instead of just skeptically taking it whenever Ryland offers it. He wants her to want things in general; for herself, not for the world.

(And a deep down secret he doesn't want to ever voice, even to himself: he wants her to want him.

And he shouldn't, because this was supposed to be about her, not him, and she already has enough on her plate without his needy self adding to her burden, but he can't help wanting her to look at him, and see him, not just as her leading scientist, but as Ryland. Again, he wonders, bitterly, when he got so selfish.

He doesn't want her to love him necessarily; romance isn't really the issue here. But the thought of being just one of many scientists, as he's always been, leaves him feeling a little brittle, a little hollow. He doesn't want to be her lover, but being her coworker is not enough. He wants more, ugly as that greed is.

He thinks about her all the time. Looks at her all the time. He just wishes, sometimes, that she would look back.)

Ryland gets what Stratt means, when she says he is being confusing about this whole thing. He's confusing himself with what he wants.

That's is the problem with emotions. That's is why Stratt avoids them so much. Ryland can see the appeal in it; would try being as unsentimental as her if he didn't already know he was incapable of it.

He feels too much. That's the problem with him.

"—ace. Grace. Ryland," she taps him awake, after another day that he falls asleep at her desk. The blanket is around his shoulders. She must have draped it over him ages ago. It's warm.

"You done?" he mumbles, groggy. When he rubs his eyes and yawns, she frowns.

"Look at me," she demands, and when he just blinks, too out of it to process, she takes his face and leans in herself.

She scrutinizes him with furrowed brows, but all he can do is sit there and doze off in her hands, thinking that her hands are cold.

She tsks at what she finds, and then herds him to his room herself.

He knocks out as soon as his head hits the pillow, and when he wakes up, he's all but forgotten the encounter.

After that, her all-nighters in the office get a little less frequent, and he wonders if it's because she doesn't want to make him stay up with her. It's a self-centered assumption, and not something he confirmed to be true, but the thought of it makes his chest ache nonetheless.

Still, work is work, and Stratt is the busiest person in the world, so a few here and there are unavoidable.

He's glad, though, that she's sleeping more. She needs the rest.

"Do you want my heart?" she asks, one day. "I don't necessarily have one to give you."

He doesn't necessarily want her heart, per say, he just wishes she would trust him with it. (He wants her to want him by her side, also, but that's another matter that he will not ask of her.)

He shakes his head, puts his head in his hands and sighs.

"You are exceedingly bad at using your words today," she remarks. "Even more than usual. Why are you so bad at explaining anything outside your field?"

He flaps his hand in the air without looking up. It's been a long day at work. It's been a longer few weeks, with their game progressing nowhere.

"Useless," she chides, though not very meanly.

"I teach middle school science. Not…" he trails off. He doesn't even know what field of study this conversation qualifies under. Despairs that they're the kind of people who talk about their emotions under the lens of psychology and academia at all, rather than like normal human beings.

Then again, he doesn't know if Eva Stratt has ever been normal a day in her life.

"You don't want my heart; you reject my body," she sighs. "What do you want from me?"

You, he thinks. Just you, plain and simple. Let me know your mind, trust me with your soul. Simple as that.

If only it were that simple at all.

She spares much more thought for their game than he expected her to.

She must be occupied with a thousand other things, but she always spares time to discuss it with him. She has a new guess nearly every other day.

Those scraps of attention make him preen, as much as they make him feel guilty.

He hadn't meant to take up so much of her time on him, or so much of the space in her brain with figuring out his stupid feelings just because he was too petty, or too cowardly, to say them outright. He hadn't meant to cause her more exhaustion.

He had only wanted to relieve her burden. He hadn't intended to become another one.

(He wonders if, in wanting to create a tangible connection between them, he had just become another shackle to her. The thought of it makes his stomach curdle even more than looking at that fucking tattoo.)

She tells him one day, somewhere between frustrated and guilty, that she doesn't know what she can do for him, which is just shocking. "You've been bringing me dinner for months now. Keeping me company for hours when you could be doing anything else for months now."

Did she learn nothing from when he visited her in prison? Keeping her company was literally the only thing he wanted to be doing with his time.

Spending time together did not benefit her as much as it did him.

"You shouldn't do anything for me," he protests. If anything, he wants her to be more receptive of him doing things for her. He brings her dinner, sure, but she still won't even tell him her favorite food.

"Yes, I should. You want something from me, and I don't know how to give it to you, but I don't know what else I can give you," she grits out, stressed.

Stressed about him, on top of shouldering the burden of literally the entire world.

And that's just— no.

 He gets up and rounds her desk.

"What are you doing?" She eyes him cautiously. Her forehead is still creased with tension.

"Giving you a massage. Let me."

"Why?"

"Oh my God, just let me do this, Stratt."

She grumbles, but after a short standoff he refuses to back down from, obliges. She lets him work at her still-too-thin shoulders over her sweater and feel the tension slowly drain from her body.

"Just tell me what you want," she sighs, exhausted. "I'm out of guesses. If you wanted my body, I would give it to you, but you already turned that down."

(She would sleep with him, if he asked, but he insisted that wasn't his intention, despite it being fairly obvious to her that he wants to.

She had no idea why he's so resistant to it. Some unasked for chivalry, perhaps. Or— maybe— maybe, he doesn't want her as much as she thought.)

"I can't give you a normal romance, or be a normal wife, so then what? What can I do for you, then?" she wonders aloud.

And that hurts his heart more than anything.

"I've only ever wanted for you to take better care of yourself," he says honestly. He hits her shoulder lightly when it looks like she has something untoward to say. "Drink more water," he scolds, "without me needing to stop by your office throughout the day to make you."

"You don't need to be doing that in the first place."

"You'd die if I didn't," he says primly. "I'm surprised you're not dead yet already. Stop drinking so much coffee. It can't be healthy for you."

"I need it to live," she insists.

He rolls his eyes. "No you don't. And take more breaks. Stop using the minutes you have between meetings to do paperwork."

"Your concern is unwarranted."

And that dismissal, as always, is exactly why it's warranted, in his opinion. She doesn't care about herself, and she doesn't want anyone else to care about her either. If Ryland doesn't, who will?

"None of those requests are for you," she says exasperatedly.

"Yes they are," he insists.

Her brow furrows, no clue why he's being so unreasonably insistent about this. "No they're—"

"Oh my god, Stratt, just try, won't you? You wanted me to tell you what I wanted, and this is it. Just say that you will. Lie about it, if you have to."

She looks up at him backwards, still with that furrowed brow, and the sight is so devastating it nearly knocks the air out of his lungs.

"I wouldn't lie to you," she says.

He scoffs. "Yes you would."

"… Okay, I would. But not about this."

He raises an eyebrow skeptically.

"… Okay fine, I might. But I won't. I will try," she says, sincere, though she doesn't look happy about it. "Tell me something else," she insists, still. "Something for you, this time."

He opens his mouth.

"Not about my well being," she says sternly.

(And, oh, doesn't that give him butterflies, to delude himself into thinking she might care about him after all, outside of being her lead scientist and on-paper spouse, for her to be so insistent about this.)

He stares helplessly, hands still on her shoulders but not really moving anymore. She stares up at him patiently.

All the things he wants most are for her. For her to eat better, and sleep better, and not be so stressed all the time. But those are things he's already asked for, and half are things he knows she cannot do.

The things he wants for himself…

He gulps, ashamed, and wonders if he's allowed to be selfish. Wonders if he's allowed to ask for this.

"Eva," he tests out, going for sincerity, and she gets pinched around the nose. Yeah, still no then. Ryland didn't really feel right saying it either. "Stratt," he amends. "I don't want anything you can't give. Or anything you can't afford to." She can barely afford to give him her time as it is, even outside the restrictive rules of her cell. "Just give me all of the in-betweens. If you have a spare five minutes in your day, come see me, or meet me for coffee.

"Complain to me more; God knows you don't complain enough about your terrible job like the rest of us do. And tell me about your childhood sometime, too. And the things you like. And your plans for the next twenty years, now that you're no longer spending them in prison.

"And if you have room in your heart to trust me, then give me that, too. You don't have to give me too much, but give me everything you can."

She looks up and considers him, silent, for a long time. He's gotten used to her assessing him like this, but it still makes him want to squirm. He fidgets with the fabric of his pants uselessly.

"You ask for too much," she says finally.

His heart sinks a little, but— "Two weeks ago you said the same thing when my lab put in that request for equipment, but you got it for us anyway, didn't you? Isn't it your job to give us impossible things? Isn't doing impossible things what you're best at?" he fires back, unable to help being cheeky.

She's never really scolded him for talking back before (and he's even been able to get her to concede once or twice), but he sometimes wonders if this time might be where she draws the line.

It never is.

She sighs. "... That's true, isn't it? I'll see what I can do."

And it's begrudging, like she doesn't really want to consider it, but she's conscientious to the bone so she will, and that's victory enough for him, hollow as it is.

(It's never not disheartening, her doing as he asks simply because he wants something, but not because she wants it herself. Their marriage was like that, the kiss they shared was like that, and now, they're adding to the list.)

"I feel like I'm always making a mess of myself when I'm with you," he sighs, later.

She considers this. Returns, "I feel quite off-kilter myself, in these discussions."

Ryland stares, amazed. Stratt attempting vulnerability. Impossible things really do happen.

If he didn't know better, he might say she squirms a little under his gaze, too, but it's Stratt, so he dismisses it.

He realizes, too late, the drawback of not having anyone else who cares about her: she doesn't know how to be cared for.

Not in the surface level way he's been annoyed about all this time. She is not being obtuse, or purposefully difficult, as he'd thought.

She genuinely does not know how to take it. She doesn't know how to deal with it, or what to do when it's offered. She could have kindness shoved in her face and her first reaction would be either offense or confusion.

She has no friends or family; the only person she is close to now is Ryland. It's not a matter of not letting him care about her; she doesn't know how.

And that's not something that can be taught in an instant. Only slowly learned over time.

It makes him feel like an ass, to have been so obstinate about it all this time, when she has always been trying to meet him in the middle.

Ryland is a pretty okay teacher, though. He hopes that, in time, he can teach her this, too.

Wonder of all wonders, she does as he asked.

She gets a water cooler for her office, which— Ryland is first shocked that she actually does, and then, after thinking about it, is even more appalled that she didn't have one before.

She takes breaks more often, which means she takes breaks from her paperwork to walk around and supervise the crew's affairs, which Ryland doesn't think counts but Stratt insists does.

Surprisingly, she follows the more personal request too, sparing time for Ryland where she can. When she goes for coffee, she detours to see if he wants one too. When she passes by him while going from place to place, she always spares him a few words, even if it's just to check on his work.

"Good for you," Dimitri claps him on the back, when Stratt sits in his lab in the ten minutes she has to spare between meetings to listen to him ramble about astrophage numbers she already knows instead of working on paperwork like usual. She pats him on the shoulder when she leaves, and it makes him flush a little because she usually just does that to his chair, which has half of his assistants politely looking away to snicker at him.

Somehow, it's more embarrassing than when everyone thought they were sleeping together.

(Which is a rumor that he totally, for sure, one-hundred-percent, nipped in the bud back then.)

It makes him giddy and guilty in equal measures for her to be so considerate of him; to be taking up so much of her time.

But even though he knows it's selfish, he likes it too much to ask her to stop.

Her attention is like a drug. Once Ryland got addicted, there was no going back.

(And he's been addicted for far longer than he'd like to admit.)

She still occasionally wears the clothes he got her. He'll see her, sometimes, in the slightly ill-fitting turtlenecks or the oversized sweaters she'll layer over dress shirts. It makes his heart seize every time.

It's so unbearably cute (which is such an un-Stratt like word that he feels insane for even thinking it) that he needs to turn away whenever he sees it lest he start screaming.

Once, late at night, she gets up to retrieve the purple sweater she said she'd liked from who-knows-where she was keeping it in the office, and slips it on in front of Ryland's eyes. He can only watch, slack-jawed, as she curls back into her chair with a sigh, the cuffs forming sweater paws over her hands.

She gets back to work. He does not. How can he?

After several minutes, she leans over to tap Ryland's cheek twice. "Staring," she chides.

He snaps his jaw shut, but doesn't stop looking.

She rolls her eyes, exasperated, but lets him.

She even wears the socks. The nondescript monochrome ones, of course.

He found that out ages ago, after the whole sprained ankle fiasco, like this:

"How's your ankle, by the way?" he had asked the moment he entered her office, approx of nothing.

Stratt rolled her eyes. "This again? It's fine."

"Stratt, you could be shot in the chest and still say you're fine. Show me."

"What?"

"Show me," he demanded, then circled the desk to kneel at her side. "Was it this one?"

She huffed, figuring it was quicker to do what he wanted than to argue. A smart choice. Arguing with him would have taken twice as long.

He eased her shoe off the injured foot. And there were the socks.

"You're not wearing the fun ones," he pouted.

She rolled her eyes above him. "Why would I?"

"You love the silly socks."

"No, I hate them."

"No you don't."

"..."

"..."

"... Okay, I don't. So what?"

He whooped loudly, and she shushed him, scandalized, before rolling her eyes. She did that too often around him, frankly.

"I don't see why they're such a big deal to you," she'd grumbled, but he thought she might have just been uncharacteristically embarrassed.

It made something warm and pleased light up his insides.

Obviously he couldn't give a professional medical diagnosis, he wasn't that kind of doctor, but he took her foot in hand and rolled the ankle gently, carefully watching her expression for any discomfort.

"Is this necessary," she complained. "Dr. Lamai already gave me the all clear."

"Yes!" he'd insisted, even though it wasn't. "I need to be sure. I don't trust you to be honest about your own health."

Her face twisted in offense, but, again deciding that it would be faster to cooperate than fight him, she sighed and said dutifully, "It's fine. I elevated it properly. I iced it, too. You know that. That's how you found out about it," she said, exasperated.

He did know that. The memory of it made him flush a little: of entering her office to find her leg propped up, trouser pulled up to the knee, and Stratt leaning over to press ice to the injury.

He'd slammed the door shut, face red, only to open it again the next instant to barge in and fuss over her.

She'd nearly kicked him out of the room for it, back then. He panicked whenever he saw her walking for a week (which was often).

Now, he just hummed when he was finally satisfied that it was okay and slipped her shoe back on.

"Did I ever tell you," he said, still holding on to her ankle, "about the time one of my students sprained their ankle badly enough they had to use crutches for a while? It was this spry kid, Jeremy. I think he was in my fourth period that year. It was on the same side foot as yours." He tapped his fingers where they were wrapped around her skin, lost in recollection.

And she let him ramble, telling story about student after student, for so long that it took him an embarrassingly long time to realize he was still sitting at the floor by her feet. And he still hadn't let go of her.

He yelped, scrambling up, flustered by his own audacity.

She paid him no mind, having started working again the moment he deemed her ankle alright, but even after making a fool of himself like that (and considering burying himself in a hole and hiding there forever), all she did was command him: "You were talking about Nicole and the injury from her tennis game. Continue."

And he was kind of shocked that she even paid attention to him while doing her work, let alone that she wanted him to keep talking, but— well, she told him to. So he sat in his seat, and did.

He learns, belatedly, that in another secret vote, she'd nearly been put into prison again.

"Why didn't you tell me about it," he hisses, furious, holding up his tablet with the emailed details from one of the politicians he'd worked with to get Stratt out of there.

She takes one look at it and shakes her head dismissively. "I took care of it. It was nothing you needed to know."

He recoils, hurt. She doesn't understand why.

"I thought you would stop pushing me away," he snarls, then laughs bitterly. So much for that.

It's prison. She could have gone to prison again, and he wouldn't have known until it was too late. He feels hysterical just thinking about it. He feels like he's going out of his mind.

She's looking at him like he might be crazy.

He shakes his head. "I should have known. You're Eva Stratt. I should have known."

Sure, she did what he asked of her. She's been trying to take better care of herself, and she's been talking to Ryland more— but apparently, not about anything that mattered.

She didn't trust him, and the worst part of it is that Ryland isn't so much mad at her as he is himself, for expecting something she never agreed to, for wanting something she didn't know how to give.

He knew she was used to being alone. He knew. And yet he is so, so bitter, and because he is bitter, he takes it out on her.

"Grace—"

"Ryland," he insists, even when he's upset.

"Ryland," she corrects, "Why are you—"

"Figure it out yourself," he cuts her off. "You're smart aren't you? I'm sure you can do it." And it's too rude and sarcastic towards the person who is still his boss, but he just wants to scream at something and it's after hours and he's beyond caring.

Without another word, he stalks out of the room and leaves.

He had said before that he only wanted trust if she had room in her heart to give it to him, but damn it, he thought that they got there. Maybe that's why it stings so much. He'd deluded himself into thinking he was worth more to her than he was, and now they're here.

And it hurts, realizing that she catered to his wants the way an owner might indulge the requests of their pet, but it's all superficial because she still doesn't trust him with anything that truly matters. And why would she? Why would she tell her fucking lapdog about her burdens and concerns? She was right; what could a mutt like him do?

Still, even if he couldn't do anything, he wishes he could at least share her burden. Be a sounding board, or even a reassuring presence. He doesn't want her to have to shoulder things alone, as she's always done before.

He might just cry from frustration. He wants her to rely on him, but he doesn't think she knows how.

The next day, she comes to see him just fifteen minutes before his shift ends. "Dr. Grace," she says quietly, and he's still upset at her, but of course he listens. "Please come see me at your earliest convenience."

"Yes ma'am," he sulks, and she nods before leaving.

He would have shown up anyway. It's distressing, in its own way, that she doesn't know that.

"I'm sorry," she says, first thing when he steps into her office.

His brow furrows. "Hey—"

"I'm sorry I made you upset," she clarifies. "I don't…" And here she struggles with her words, which Ryland has never seen her do. "I still don't understand what I did," she says carefully, "but I know it hurt you, and I am sorry for that. It's—" Her face twists, helplessly. "I'm not good at this sort of thing. Relationships. Being close to people. I don't know how I can make it better."

And it's frankly an astounding display of self-awareness, because Ryland did not think Stratt capable of admitting to her own weakness, but it's also alarming because, well—

Ryland has never seen Stratt apologize to anyone, ever, even when when she nearly killed him around the time they first met. Even to all the people she threatened or coerced or kidnapped. But she's being sincere. He sees it in her eyes.

And it sucks because she doesn't deserve his ire, not really. Not when half of it was the fault of his own misguided expectations.

He sits down and sighs heavily, the anger draining out of him, leaving a deep-seated tiredness.

"Just tell me things," he pleads, head in his hands. "If you're hurt, if things are difficult, if you're just angry, even— Fuck, talk to me here, Stratt. It's like I'm talking to a wall, sometimes. I'm going insane."

"I don't even know what qualifies as things I should tell you," she admits. "Almost everything is difficult, but equally so, to the point that difficult things are so ordinary that nothing is difficult at all. And I don't really feel hurt or angry by anything, unless being frustrated by someone's stupidity counts."

That's… horrifying.

He looks up at her in disbelief. "The politicians you work with day in and day out tried to throw you back in prison, and you weren't hurt by that? You weren't angry?"

"No," she shrugs. "It was all quite expected really. A major inconvenience, for sure, but not something you needed to concern yourself with. I had it under control, and there was nothing you could have done anyway."

"That's not the point," he says, and he feels like a broken record. "Tell me these things anyway, just because they happen. Tell me them to take the weight off your chest. Let me share your burden. Even if I can't do anything about it, I can at least support you and listen."

"I don't need that kind of support," she says, matter of fact.

"Well I want you to have it anyway. I want to be that support, for you."

And he doesn't know what kind of face he's making when he says it, just knows that he feels desperate with it, and he breathes out in such relief when she finally says. "Alright. I'm sorry. I will."

He's sitting in the chair backwards, entirely too casual for Stratt's office, but after the emotional mess of the last day or so he's kind of beyond caring.

"You own my life," he complains after they've made up. "You could at least stand to trust me a little."

And something about his tone makes a quiet realization dawn over her face, some long poured-over puzzle piece finally clicking into place. "Grace, was that what you wanted?"

"What?"

"You just wanted me to rely on you? All this time? That was all?" She says, fully exasperated. She finally got it. "Did we really need to get married just for that?"

"Yes," he stresses. It was entirely necessary. He really couldn't think of anything else.

The conversation they had while she was in pretrial still scars him.

He was already her second in command, and the person she was closest to in the whole project, and she still pushed him away when things got bad for her. He was practically her only friend (even though neither of them would ever admit it) and he was still thrown to the curb.

The only way to close the gap, he figured, was to irrefutably become her closest person, both in the eyes of the law and in her own.

She could cut off her first officer, but would she be so quick to cut off her spouse?

She didn't give a shit about Dr. Grace, but would she still be so uncaring if he became Ryland to her?

So, yes, marriage was necessary, even if theirs wasn't the most conventional one.

She rolls her eyes. "Has anyone told you you're quite obsessed with me?"

He scoffs. "Only about everyone on the dang ship. Congratulations, Director, you're the last one to figure it out."

"Sarcasm," she chides.

"Oh hush, you think it's funny."

She raises a brow. "Do I, now?"

"Yes," he says, all too confident.

He knows she secretly finds his arguments with Lokken amusing, when they're not at the expense of her own time.

"Grace—"

"Ryland."

She glares at him. Sighs heavily. "Really now. All this fuss, just for that."

It's not just for that. He needed to be someone she could lean on. He might actually die if he wasn't.

She laughs, incredulous. "What am I to do with you?"

Talk to me, he thinks, about anything and everything. Let me know your mind; let me make a home there. Let me in, let me in, let me in.

"For the record," she makes sure he knows, "it's not that I don't trust you. I ask for your input on all important scientific matters, do I not?"

"But that's just my job," he argues helplessly.

She raises an eyebrow at him, like he's stupid. "The matter of putting the astronauts into comas had nothing to do with your field of study. It was not relevant to your work."

And— huh. That's true. It was so long ago that he'd nearly forgotten about it.

"That was the most difficult decision I've ever made," she says, matter of fact. "I've been using you as a soundboard for difficult decisions for years now, whether they're related to your job or not. If I ever had doubts, you were my first call. I could come up with a whole list of matters that did not require your input, where I asked for it anyway. Simply, about the prison matter, I knew I had it taken care of."

Oh. Oh. Maybe, in ways he didn't realize, she's already trusted him, for far longer than he knew.

One side of her mouth quirks wryly. "I'm not saying there is no chance that I will go back to a cell, but I wouldn't have, without a fight, after you worked so hard to get me out of there. I wouldn't do that to you, Ryland."

"You would," he chokes.

"I wouldn't."

And, oh, maybe she does care about him after all.

The first time she gets off the phone with one prime minister or another and starts cursing them out, eviscerating him so thoroughly the walls would bleed if they had ears, Ryland nearly falls out of his seat in shock.

"What?" she says meanly, when she catches him staring, wide-eyed.

It's days after their conversation about him wanting her to talk to him more.

"You wanted me to complain, didn't you? So sit there and listen when I tell that this sorry excuse for elected official had the gall to tell me that I couldn't requisition any more of his country's scientists for my ship. Who does he think I am? What does he think this project is? When the Earth is frozen over in twenty years and the world will wish we had done more to stop it then, he better wish that he'll be well in his grave before I can get the chance to tell him 'I told you so.'"

Ryland laughs in equal parts disbelief and delight. He doesn't think he's ever heard her talk so much, ever. He doesn't think anyone has.

He jokes, teasingly, that she's really starting to sound like a dictator talking like that.

She harrumphs. "I was practically elected to be a dictator," she snides. "So forgive me, dear doctor, for being overbearing when I dictate."

He wants to snicker; she is not often sarcastic, but she is so funny when she is.

Two days after that, she tells him her scathing opinions on the mess hall spinach casserole he brings, and he delightedly never gets it for her again.

She complains about everything and nothing a little more often, which might be annoying if she wasn't so funny about it. Besides, Ryland asked for it, and he's also not one to judge— even after this new development, he still talks three times as much as she does.

When he watches movies from his laptop while she works (there's only so much work he can do from her office outside his lab every day), she starts giving snide commentary when she can tell a character is being stupid purely based on the dialogue (that he didn't know she was paying attention to; but of course she's able to multitask that too).

It honestly adds so much schadenfreude-laden joy to his viewing experience that he starts rewatching films he's already seen just to get her opinions on them.

She catches on to what he's doing, and then demands that he watch something new, claiming that he should have to suffer the absurdity of the decisions made in these films for the first time as well. Just for that, he starts curating a to-watch list of the most horribly rated films he can find.

One day, he wakes up and tsks when he checks his email and sees that he's gotten something from Stratt, long after they both retired the previous day, far later than he'd like her to still be awake. When he opens it, it's a spreadsheet of her ratings and opinions on every item served at the cafeteria.

Nevermind— this is more valuable than gold.

When he only gets her things she relatively likes from then on, she doesn't mention it.

Two days later she sends him an identically formatted file where she ranks his stupid shirts on the scale of 'amusing' to 'frankly unprofessional'.

That one, he does not take into consideration.

It's exhilarating.

They're all small things on their own, but it's like being privy to a side of her no one else can see.

It feels like the beginning of being something beyond what they were.

He becomes exceedingly relaxed in her company and she does the same; or, as much as she can, for Stratt. She lets the exhaustion and frustration become visible in her face and her posture more often, at least, and he marvels to think that she's been hiding it from him all this time.

He takes all of it, greedily, and takes her burden wherever he can, too. Speaks to any scientists she's having trouble with on her behalf, helps delegate and organize, and does other generally first officer type of tasks until she reminds him, for the nth time, that he is first officer. Whoops.

They still spend most of their time in silence, of course; there's only so much you can say to the person you're with practically day in and day out, but when they do talk, he finds that their conversations are more frank than they were.

Not that they really beat around the bush with each other in the first place, but there was always a barrier of hierarchy that he was conscious of in the back of his mind. With her being more candid around him, he finally feels like he might be something closer to a friend.

He's having an off day, which isn't really unusual but is also not pleasant. He's been stuck on the same issue in the lab all day— all week, really—, and the persistent tiredness and ever-present weight of the project bear down on him.

Stratt can tell the moment he sits down in her office and can't stop the jitter in his leg.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he snaps, then winces in apology.

She looks away from her screen to fix her gaze on him. "No, tell me. What's wrong?"

He grimaces. She's read his progress reports. There's nothing about the wall they're hitting in their research that she doesn't know about.

She's not blaming him; she knows their team is doing their best. Still, he feels chastised all the same, even though he shouldn't be.

That's neither here nor there though. She's not asking about his work. She's asking about him.

"I'm just… stressed," he settles on. "Restless. I don't know." And exhales heavily with it.

She hums, considering. "Would you like some tea?" she ventures. "I have a stash of it on that shelf."

"Nah, I'm not really a tea guy. Just tastes like leaves to me."

"So uncultured," she tuts. "Why not retire for the day, then? Have dinner early, then try to relax and get some rest. Lord knows you need it."

The same could be said for her, but he doesn't say it; it'd be redundant.

He shakes his head, though. He'd rather be with her than alone. Besides, he think it might drive him even more crazy to be by himself with all the jumbled thoughts swirling in his head.

He can tell Stratt doesn't like that her suggestions are unhelpful.

She brings her fingers to her chin, ruminating other alternatives to make him feel better. It's so Stratt, trying to come up with a solution for everything. It's probably not a great response to emotional situations, but it's kind of sweet, in a weird way, that she extends her fix-it mentality to his mood swings.

Or, it is sweet, until she suggests, "Do you want to use me as an outlet? Studies show that physical contact reduces anxiety and regulates stress hormones. It could be effective."

If he was drinking something, he would have spit it out. As it is, he just gapes for a solid minute, then points at her and shouts, "No! Nuh-uh. We talked about this, for God's sake." He rakes his hand through his hair, immediately more agitated than he was a moment ago. Suggesting sex as a method of stress relief. Good Lord.

Stratt raises an eyebrow. "No," she says slowly. "You said that the physical aspects of a relationship were not your main reason for marriage to me, but as far as I'm aware, you do still want me, to an extent. Am I wrong?"

This is awful. She's not wrong, but her wording of the whole thing always gives him the ick. She talks like she's okay with him taking liberties with her without her own feelings being factored in.

So what if he wants her? There's no point unless she wants him too.

Sometimes, he thinks that he respects her more than she respects herself.

He's silent for too long, pouting mulishly at the floor.

Stratt tilts her head, probably trying to piece together why he's upset again.

"Apologies," she says haltingly. "This is… difficult for me, you must understand. Attraction and desire are uncomplicated for me. Affection is… less so."

Grace wants to wrinkle his nose at what he feels towards her being called affection, which feels much too soft for him or her, but it's true, isn't it? Even though he doesn't like to admit it.

"I fail to see why sex within our marriage is so disagreeable to you, when I believe we have already established we are both partial to it. You may do as you like with me, outside of working hours and within reason, of course. Unless, ah—"

She hesitates. Ryland feels somewhere between lightheaded and delirious, hating every aspect of this.

"You never kissed me again, after the first time. Perhaps I've misunderstood. It appears I've conflated the extent of your desire towards me." Her brow furrows, uncharacteristically abashed. "My apologies for being untoward, Dr. Grace. We can forget about this matter, if you'd like."

And— what?

Ryland so incredulously baffled, he has to sit back heavily in his chair just to process it. What the actual fudge. He's been trying to respect her boundaries, and because of that, she thinks he doesn't want her??

"How can you even think that?" he says, feeling insane.

He's wanted her since the first time she told him to do something, and expected with unflinching confidence that it would get done. Since the first time she looked at him with the quiet challenge that he live up to her expectations, and exceed them.

"My wanting of you is not the issue here." If anything, she's the one that doesn't want him.

"Then break it down simply, please. Help me understand."

He drags his hands down his face and groans.

"I don't want you to want me to use you," he tells her frankly. "Actually, remove the word 'use' from your lexicon. I'm banning it. It's degrading," he wrinkles his nose in disgust.

Ryland doesn't want to take anything she won't give. The world has taken enough from her, hasn't it? He just wants to give and give and give. He wants to be good for her. He wants to relearn, in her name, what it means to be kind.

"Ah, noted." Her expression clears. "I will make that amendment to our arrangement. Thank you, Dr. Grace."

"Ryland."

"Ryland."

He slumps back, exhausted. This has got to be the weirdest marriage in the world.

"More like, I'm baffled that you think that's okay in the first place," he rambles. "Your partner shouldn't use you for things, least of all your body. I would have thought you, of all people, would be more stringent about that than anybody."

He doesn't think anyone would dare to try, but she's always struck him as someone who would sooner verbally eviscerate someone than let them touch her without consent.

She shrugs, as if it doesn't matter. "Women in male dominated fields," she explains. "You seem to think me indomitable, but concessions are inevitable. Especially to get as high ranking as I did. It is impossible for a woman to advance so far without being told a million times that they should bend. You get used to some things."

It's such a terrible thing to answer. Ryland hates it. The patriarchy should die, he thinks sourly.

"So if anyone else was married to you, you would have offered the same thing?" he asks hypothetically, even though he hates the thought of it. "To 'use' you?"

She looks at him like he's stupid.

"Ryland," she says slowly, like he's missing something obvious. "I wouldn't have married anyone else. I only agreed to marriage because it was you."

And— what the fuck does that mean?

"What the fudge?" he says out loud.

She looks at him incredulously. "Did you think I would have married just anyone?"

"I don't know!" He throws his hands in the air. "I still don't know why you agreed to marry me."

They're both wearing the same disbelieving expression for completely different reasons now. It's almost comical. They've turned her office into a circus.

"Ryland," she says slowly, again. "Come here."

"Why?" he asks, but he's already halfway out of his chair.

She rolls her eyes. "Because I asked you to. Now, come."

He stands in front of her, let's himself be subject to her assessing gaze.

Then without warning, she yanks him down by the collar.

"Hey—!"

"Shh," she shushes him, and pulls him around until he's right where she wants him, which is apparently two centimeters from her face.

He has no choice but to look her right in the eye.

He gulps, feeling the heat rise to his face. He tries very hard not to think about the last time they were this close.

Not taking her eyes off of his, she takes one of his hands and moves it towards her stomach to span her ribcage. The firm contact of her hand atop his and her body underneath the layers makes him feel feverish. He has no idea what she's doing. Still, he does not move. Does not take an inch more than he is given.

"See?" she asks, nearly against his mouth. "You want to know why I married you? This is why. You're obedient," she lists, and every breath ghosts his cheeks. "You know how to respect boundaries. And most of all—" She pulls back slightly, then, so that he can see her face in full seriousness. "I know you will not undermine my authority just because we are wed. You will not de-prioritize the project, or question my decisions in it. That was vital to your prospects as my marriage partner. Everything else was negligible."

He swallows. "Seems like a pretty low bar to me," he says roughly.

"Indeed. Yet so few are able to meet it."

"It's an honor," he manages to say. "But then why marry at all? You could have just rejected me and stayed single. Surely that would have been easier for you."

She looks at him quizzically. "But you wanted to marry me."

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean you wanted to marry me, did it?" Sure, she'd admitted before to being attracted to him, but that and marriage were different things.

It feels a little like they're talking in circles, but at the same time, it's maybe the closest they've come to understanding each other.

Stratt thinks about how to word what she wants to say, carefully, like it's important. "The things you want…" she tries. "If there are things you want, Ryland, I'd like to do what's in my power to give them to you."

And it takes him a long moment to understand, but when he does, it floors him because— wasn't that the same way he felt about her?

Wanting to give her things simply because she wanted them, as a gesture that he cared— wasn't that what he'd wanted to do for her this whole time?

"And if it's me you want," she continues. "Well, I can give that to you. If I can please you with something as simple as signing a marriage certificate, I will."

It wasn't that simple. They both know it wasn't. "You signed yourself to me just because I wanted it?" he whispers, faint.

"Yes." She peers at him cautiously from beneath her lashes. "Is it so hard to believe that I care about you, too?"

He has to close his eyes against that, for the way his heart seizes in his chest. She cares about everyone. She cares about the world. And he wanted to support her while she did that.

He never really imagined she cared so much about him, specifically.

"Ryland?" she asks, fingers reaching out to graze his cheek. It renews the feverish feeling there, a flush rising to his face instantly. It's stupid— she hasn't even kissed him, and yet his stress has long since gone away.

In its place is— he doesn't know. Elation, maybe. Something confusing; bubbling and bright and viciously pleased, but confusing nonetheless. He needs like, a business week to process it. Or at least a good night's sleep.

"Okay," he rasps, standing upright and trying not to stumble as he drags a hand down his face. "Okay, great conversation, thanks for that. I might need to, um—"

"Sleep on it?" she suggests.

"Yeah," he laughs breathlessly. "That."

She smiles at him, faintly amused, and perfectly unruffled as ever. He feels like a disheveled mess in comparison.

"Do you think you will be able to relax, now?"

"Yeah," he answers honestly.

"I'm glad. You should get the rest. Goodnight, Dr. Grace."

It's the first time since their argument weeks ago that he retires to his room before she does, but this time, it doesn't feel like a setback.

Night, Eva, he thinks as he goes.

It takes a few hours of turning their conversation over and over again in his head for him to hear the truth hidden in her words:

When I told you that you could do as you pleased with me, it wasn't an act of self-disrespect. It's because I knew that if I asked, you would stop.

He would. Of course he would.

He's hotheaded and brash, but he respects her, gosh darn it. He'd go celibate the rest of his life if she wanted. He'd brighten the Sun if she asked.

So, given the nature of their conversation, he really doesn't know how he got where he is the next day: standing in front of her while she, sitting in her chair, tilts her head up and asks for a kiss. Well—

They were nothing but professional during the day, of course; they've long been under mutual silent agreement to never let anything that happens in the after-hours of her office affect their work.

But when he comes by in the evening, instead of letting him sit down as always, Stratt commands him to stand before her instead, exactly where he was yesterday.

It brings a nervous tingle of butterflies to his gut and he tries not to squirm with how awkward he feels.

"I have done some thinking of my own after our talk, Dr. Grace."

And she sounds exactly as she would if she were talking about the meetings they had earlier on resource management or production variables, but he knows she's not talking about that. He wouldn't be here if she were. It makes him swallow.

"I should preface with this: I understand that you have been trying to convey these past few months that you care about me in a way that is removed from the physical aspects of a relationship, and I suppose I should thank you, even though I still find your efforts wholly unnecessary—"

Fucking rude, why is she like this—?

"But I have my own thoughts, Doctor."

And the look she levels him with, molten and heavy, makes him freeze where he stands.

"You can be assured that I know of your regard, but reason me this: if you and I have mutual attraction to each other, why deprive ourselves of acting on it out of your misguided sense of propriety? Surely you realize the inefficiency in that."

He rolls his eyes against the heat rising in his face. "What's it with you and efficiency anyway?" he grumbles, stalling for time as he tries to make his brain process any of that without stuttering to a halt.

Besides, well. He's not wholly convinced she wants him, still. I mean, she's Stratt; she could literally have anyone she wants, and she's never given any indication she wanted him like that aside from that one kiss. 

"Grace, for such a genius, you are the densest scientist on this damn ship," she informs him when he tells her as much, which makes him sputter.

"I'm not—"

"Grace," she sighs, interrupting him. His arguments die in his throat when she looks up at him. "Do you want to kiss me?"

She tips her chin upwards in invitation, unbearably attractive just sitting there under the fluorescent office lights.

"Go ahead," she murmurs.

"I don't want you for your body," he reminds her futilely against the gnawing want in his gut, even though already she said she knows. He doesn't know if he trusts her to know that. Stratt, he's learned, can also be dense about the most vexing things.

She tilts her head, knowing that despite what he said, he still wants her. She blinks slowly, intentional, in a way that makes Ryland trace the shape of her eyelashes in his mind.

"In that case, then, I want it," she says. "You said you would give me what I want, didn't you, Doctor? Well I want you to kiss me. Do it now," she says, still looking up at him, eyes dangerously half-lidded.

"Are you a siren?" he can't help but ask, choking out the words.

She smiles crookedly, with that half-tilt to her mouth that makes him insane. "Depends. Will you kiss me faster if I say I am?"

And he knows he's being manipulated, he knows, but she's been tempting him since yesterday— since longer— since years ago, frankly— and all he can do is mumble about how unfair she's being as he leans down to seal his mouth over hers, cutting himself off on her lips.

She so rarely asks things of him after all, and in the end, he'll always do what she wants.

She hums, satisfied, against him, sending a thrill down his spine. Her gentle breaths across his face are intoxicating.

She let's him set the pace, conceding control for once, and he's so unsure and careful that he kisses her slow, slow, slow; until she reaches for his hand and drags it to her cheek, leaning into it. And it's such a small gesture, but it lights a fire in his veins like nothing else.

It's that little display of control, he thinks dizzyingly, that drives him so crazy. That indication that if she wants something from him, she'll take it.

He finds the audacity to kiss her deeper for it. Slides his tongue past her lips and tries to learn the taste of her.

Kisses her fervently, reverently; makes her the alter he prays at.

She makes no sound, despite how Ryland is breathing heavily across her face and gasping every time she grazes his lip with her teeth, but she's smiling into it, just a little, and it drives him insane with how much he likes it.

Just seeing that smile is a luxury. Feeling it against his mouth is a high like nothing else.

He feels like he's trying to devour her, after that, seeking her lips again and again, and she gives no indication that she minds until he starts to become lightheaded with it; becomes sloppy and graceless.

She places a hand on his chest (which prompts its own flurry of butterflies in his stomach for the memory it conjures), but it's to halt him, gentle but firm.

He pulls away, somewhat reluctantly, but then he hones in on the way she looks like this: smiling faintly with her eyes still closed, lips kissed-red and swollen, still leaning into his palm at her cheek. She's a vision. He devours it with his eyes, greedily.

There's a vicious rush of pride that he was the one who did this, that he put that look on her face. She is always so stern and composed, usually, but the Stratt in front of him now just looks blissfully content. It's such a nice look on her. And, if she lets him, he'll do whatever it takes to make her look like this again and again and again.

"So, Doctor?" she asks, opening her eyes to pin him with that ever-piercing gaze. "Are you willing to consider making this a more permanent amendment to our arrangement?"

"Depends," he replies, distracted by the curve of her lips, and the grey-blue of her eyes. He licks his lips. "Will you let me kill every other person who's kissed you like this?"

She laughs, quiet and sharp. "So possessive," she remarks mockingly, reaching up to fiddle with the short hairs at his nape. "There's been no one else in a long time, Dr. Grace. Right now, there is only you."

And it better stay that way, he thinks mulishly, unreasonably fixated on how 'no one else in a long time' means there were others before, and Ryland briefly contemplates the logistics of building a time machine to murder them.

It's probably visible on his face. "Jealousy is unbecoming, Dr. Grace."

He groans, leaning forward to bury his face in her shoulder and breathing in the scent of the standard ship-wide issued shampoo, and beneath it, a scent that's just her.

She combs through his hair properly, now, and he sighs at the sensation.

"Tell me about them, those other people," he demands, petulantly.

"You don't want to know about them," she chides, calling out his bullshit.

He sulks. Yeah, he doesn't, but also— "I want to know everything about you." That's not a lie.

She clicks her tongue laughingly. "Silly man."

"Your husband," he reminds her.

"My silly husband," she amends, rolling her eyes. That's better.

(It's good for her to think of him as her husband. Maybe then, if she nearly gets thrown in a cell again, she won't be so quick to throw him away like last week's trash.)

"And what silly thoughts are my silly husband thinking now?"

He flushes, because that mockingly amused voice is the bane of his existence, and he grumbles that they need to eat dinner; it's getting late.

"Go enjoy your dinner, Dr. Grace," she dismisses him. "And try not to argue with Dr. Lokken too much. You scared one of the junior scientists during the morning briefing."

"Only if she's not being an unreasonable jerk again. And don't think you're getting out of eating," he points a finger at her warningly. "I'll be back in half an hour with food. Stay."

"Pet's learned how to give orders," she remarks dryly. "Of course I'll stay. Where else would I be?"

He pauses. Thinks about it.

He's always her delivered meals to her office, but technically, she shouldn't even be working this late.

"Would you like me to bring the food to your room?" he offers. "You can freshen up and relax a little before you eat. I'll dry your hair for you."

Her eyebrows rise. "Dr. Grace," she says. "Are you inviting yourself to my room?"

"No—!" he yelps, an aborted, strangled sound making its way from his throat. He flushes hot all over again.

She laughs, sharp and inherently a little mean sounding, and Ryland might fall for her all over again. (Not that he's in love with her! He's not. It's just—)

"I'm joking, Doctor," she soothes. He wonders how she knows, by instinct, that he'd prefer to take things slow. "Dinner here is fine. I have more emails to respond to anyway."

He frowns, willing his flush down. She always has more work to do. She almost never rests.

She snorts. "Don't make that frowny face."

"I'm not," he says, one hundred percent making the face.

She coos, sweet and a little degrading, because she's mean. "It's fine, Dr. Grace, it won't take long. I'll be done by the time you get back. And we can put on that new movie you were talking about and watch it while I eat, alright?"

"Alright," he says petulantly, because if he can manage to convince her to play the movie on her desktop, then she can't work while she eats.

It's only as he's leaving for the mess hall does he realize how attentive she's being, remembering whatever movie he was blathering on about the other day and committing it to memory. And earlier, changing the topic when he was uncomfortable and making him feel safe.

He ruffles his hair, pleased and ashamed all at once.

He's been doing all of this so that he could help her. He didn't count on her caring for him back. There's some guilt there because he had never intended to add to her workload, or be the burden of someone else she had to care for on top of the global population at large.

Still, she is Eva Stratt, the most cold-hearted, caring person he knows. He doesn't know why he expected this to go any other way.

He sighs, and resolves to take care of her better in turn, because it's the least he can do for the person who takes care of him, and the ship, and the world.

She kisses him when they part at the end of the day now, and that's a dizzying new addition to their routine.

It's rarely more than chaste, but it still makes Ryland feel like one of his middle schoolers, for how it always makes him weak in the knees.

She tastes like coffee and whatever he brought her for dinner that day, washed away by water from the cooler that he's still mad she didn't get earlier.

Sometimes, when he holds her, it's the clothes he bought her under his hands, soft.

Sometimes, when he kisses her, she murmurs his name into his mouth and lets him chase after her when she pulls away, laughing and mean.

They still have not slept together, still have not been to each other's rooms, even, but Ryland is glad for that.

He has no intention of being disingenuous with his affection for his too-stern boss, and he's pretty sure that half the time, she doesn't know how to believe him when he says he cares about her beyond that.

Sometimes, he gets the feeling that she still thinks she's ruining his life, and that giving him her body will in some way make up for that.

He has no idea what to make of that, really. Has no clue if she thinks like that due to her upbringing, or her religion, or what. All he knows if that he dislikes it immensely, and would be glad if she were to permanently rid herself of the thought.

If she really wants to give him something, she should tell him more about herself. For as close as they've gotten, there's still so much he has yet to know about her. What she was like as a kid? What were her dreams when she was younger?

If they're going to be wasting away their nights together, she might as well tell him about herself.

Who would she be if she were not this?

But then again, Ryland knows he wouldn't have it any other way.

"Ryland, why me?" Stratt asks him.

"Why you, what?"

"You asked me before why I agreed to marry you, but I could ask the same. Why me, instead of literally anyone else? Surely there are others who would have suited you better."

Part of him wants to be offended on her own behalf, but he does see her point; they're not the most compatible pair. Still—

"There's no one else."

"That seems highly debatable."

He shakes him head stubbornly and runs his hand through his hair. "There's no one else," he insists. "No one else knows me the way you do. I—" he swallows. "There's no one I care about more than you. No one else I want more than you."

"… Alright," she says, and knocks her foot softly against his under the table. The gesture, so uncharacteristically innocent, gives him more butterflies than if she'd kissed him.

I want you, Eva. Though he's still afraid to admit the extent of it out loud. More than you'll ever know.

He wants her to get the tattoo removed. She won't.

Ryland hates that thing. He glares lasers at it every time he sees it, as if he could burn it off just by looking.

"Were you really going to spend the rest of your life in prison?" he complains.

"Yes."

"Really?" He raises his eyebrows disbelievingly.

"… Well, no. My people would have gotten me out when the time was right. If it ever was right," she amends.

He takes a second to process of the implications of that. And then wants to bash his head against a rock.

"Dang it Stratt, that's just not cool! So you could have gotten out whenever you wanted?!"

"No, no," she reassures him, lyingly. "It's not like that. You were very essential to my release. Thank you, Ryland."

"You know I can tell when you're lying to me, right?" he accuses. "You could have left that entire time and you didn't?!" he exclaims. "Unbelievable. Wait, if you were eventually gonna get out anyway, what was the tattoo for?!"

"It was never a certainty that I would be released," she deflects.

She's not telling the full truth.

"Stratt," he warns.

She sighs. "I was trying to deter you," she admits, wincing, "from caring so much. I'd hoped that if you accepted my fate, you might give up on me."

His body suddenly feels cold. Oh. So it was like that.

"Was the idea of me caring about you really so abhorrent to you," he snarls, petulant, a little bit hurt.

"Yes."

They've come a long way since then, but still— it's like the first time he visited her as a pretrial detainee all over again.

You don't get to make decisions for me about who I care about, he wants to spit. You don't get to control that part of me too.

"Not anymore, though," she says, reaching for his hand— and that diffuses the fight right out of him. She is so rarely one for simple affection. She meets his eyes. "I'm not scared anymore, Ryland. If you want to know me, then know me. I'll let you, now."

It's like being bestowed divine challenge.

Then, she smiles, brilliantly. "Though if I may, Dr. Grace," she says quietly, like it's their shared secret, "you already do."

(He tried to follow her to prison, and that scared her to death.

A good man like Ryland Grace going to that extent just for her—? She had to nip it in the bud, before his obsession ruined his life.

It's too late now, though. When he married her, it already did.

She feels less bad about it than she should.) 

"What's your favorite color?" he asks, another day. He'd wanted to play twenty questions. She allowed three.

"Blue," she answers eventually.

"Blue like my eyes?" he jokes.

She rolls her eyes, but he can tell it's amused. "Sure," she indulges him. "But, let's see. Blue like… the ocean," she says. "Blue like the sky on a clear, sunny day."

They have not had such sunny days in a while, what with the sun dimming, and all. Still, he smiles. "I like that color too," he says.

"And you, Doctor? What's your favorite color?"

He scoffs. "As if you don't know."

"I have my guesses," she admits, "but I would rather hear it from you." And how can he not tell her when she puts it like that?

"Yellow," he says. And she grins victoriously, because of course she had guessed it right. Smug is a good look on her; or it would be, if it wasn't so annoying to him.

"Okay, next, what do you like to do in your free time?"

She sighs. "Another one?"

"What do you mean another— it's only the second question! And you agreed to three," he argues.

She looks exasperated, still. "I just don't see the point of this. Don't you know me well enough?"

"No."

He knows her better than most, sure, but he also knows next to nothing about her. She doesn't reveal enough about herself to. Meanwhile, she has his extensive candy order for mainland shipments filed in her memory and knows which of his t-shirts are his favorites and which he only wears when he's forgotten to do his laundry all week.

That's why they're playing this game, even though Stratt is being very uncooperative about it.

"Your free time, Stratt," he repeats. "Answer the question."

She pulls a face, but answers dutifully. "I read," she says, which is expected. "Listen to music. Spend hours cooking a meal for myself." She gestures helplessly. "I liked going to museums, but I haven't had the opportunity to in a long time."

Yeah, Ryland can imagine that. Not a lot of museums on an aircraft carrier or in high security French prisons.

"If we ever get the chance to go to San Francisco again," he says, "let me take you to the California Academy of Sciences. It's… probably not the type of museum you're usually going to, but it'll be fun, I think."

She hums, considering, then closes her eyes, as if imagining it. "Alright. If the opportunity arises, and it still exists, then, then we'll go."

He grins crookedly. "It's a promise. I usually reserve it for Grover Cleveland students only, but I'll make an exception and give you the Mr. Grace special tour."

She laughs. "I look forward to it, then."

He basks, for a moment, in the way they grin at each other before he clears his throat and moves on.

"Next question. What are you gonna do for the next twenty years?"

When she looks at him, in the way that screams 'really?', he raises his brow in challenge.

"And you can't say jail, this time."

"I might."

"Vetoed. Denied. Thank of something else."

She sighs. "Will you believe me if I say I really don't know?"

He hesitates. "Well, yeah, but… I don't know, I just expected you would. You always have a plan."

"I always have a goal," she corrects him. "And my goal is to protect the Earth as much as possible until the beetles come back, and to reduce as many deaths as possible. Same as everyone else's. But the specifics and the in-betweens? I don't know." She shrugs, the most helpless he's seen her. "This job is kind of everything to me," she admits. "I don't really have anything outside of it."

His heart aches for her. So much burden on a single person. No one should have to bear it alone.

"Well, you have a long time to figure it out," he reassures clumsily. "And I'll be your side as you do. When you think of something, tell me then. Think about it for a long time."

She nods, quietly grateful. "I could ask the same of you. What's your plan, Grace?"

"Me?" Isn't it obvious? "I'm going to keep working on the project, of course, and studying astrophage. I'm going to be your right hand, and make sure you're eating and drinking and sleeping enough. And I'm going to follow you. I'll follow you to the ends of the Earth."

"You're being too clingy, Doctor," she chides. "Please do something about it."

Though, he has a feeling she doesn't really mind it.

"… And if the Earth ends before twenty years are up?" she asks. And there is a faint disquietude there, one that will never go away so long as the Sun is still dying.

"That won't happen," he laughs. "After all, you're here to save it."

"So confident," she sighs.

"Of course. There's no one I have more confidence in than you."

(He makes her answer another question, since she couldn't answer the last one: "Who's your favorite crew member?"

He's fishing for compliments a little, he knows, but he can't help it. He wants to know he's her number one.

"Dimitri," she replies, with no hesitation.

"Hey!"

She laughs, in the sharp and bright way that's secretly Ryland's favorite, and rounds the table to kiss him quick and sweet to ease the sting.

He's still pouting as she pulls away though. Dimitri. How dare she.)

"I think part of the reason I find our marriage difficult to navigate at times is because it is so different from my parents'," she admits to him once.

It's startling, because she still so rarely offers personal information about herself, especially not related to her upbringing.

Ryland's told her about his family before, and about how they had a falling out after the fiasco with Ryland's education. They've been no contact for years, but Stratt probably knew that long before he told her, thanks to all those background checks she ran on practically everyone on the ship.

It's honestly best not to question what Stratt already knows about him, and just tell whatever stories he wants like she hasn't already heard them. He reasons that it's fine; after all, it's not like Stratt's dossiers on him had all the silly little details from his perspective, or his exceptional narration accompanying it.

And, well, if they get too boring, she can always just not listen. She's always multitasking through them anyway. She's pretty good at pretending to hum along in the right places, though. Just another thing Eva Stratt excels at.

Anyway, Ryland talks about himself a lot, but Stratt rarely tells him about herself. He doesn't even know if her parents are still alive; she's never mentioned them before.

"What was your parents' marriage like?" he asks.

"Quiet," she says. "Cordial. My father worked more than he was home. My mother was a housewife, as was expected of her, even though her mental arithmetic was faster than anyone's I knew. I always wondered if she would rather read than do chores, but she always kept the house spotless anyway, and she always had food on the table at mealtimes. I do not know if she was a very good mother, but she was practically a textbook wife. As she was raised to, she deferred to my father for everything."

That Stratt was raised the same way is implied.

Ryland is starting to understand why being a 'wife' is so abhorrent to Stratt now, with such a severe standard of comparison. A Stratt forced to stifle herself is unimaginable.

It makes it all the more baffling, why she decided to sign herself away in such a manner to Ryland.

"I don't want that from you," he makes sure she knows, again. "I only wanted to make life easier for you. I wanted you to have the reassurance of company, so you are not so alone."

He feels a bit bad though; he hasn't really done much for her, rather the opposite instead. He's caused her a fair bit of trouble navigating their relationship, he knows. He takes up her time, and space, and energy. He'd wanted to make life easier for her; he hadn't intended to make it more difficult, but in many ways he had, anyway. He wonders if his company was worth the price of all that.

While he's wallowing, she considers what he said.

"I did not consider myself very alone, before," she says, haltingly. "But then again, even before our marriage, I had you."

… Wow. Okay. Yeah, yeah she did.

But she's going to make Ryland cry or something if she keeps casually saying things like that, so he really wishes she'd stop. It's bad for his heart, for her to be so unknowingly soft.

"Anyways," Stratt says, back to being brisk, "I have been considering looking into books on marriage advice to rectify my lack of knowledge on these matters. Do you have an opinion?"

Ryland rankles immediately. "No," he says. "Absolutely not."

One, because he refuses to risk her running into more of that 'traditional wife' nonsense and start getting ideas (he has nothing against traditional wives, he just doesn't think Stratt should try to be one when she doesn't want to); and two, because this is exactly what he meant by her troubling herself over their marriage, when he married her with the intention of the opposite.

She shouldn't waste her time like that just because she thinks she's bad at being married. So is Ryland! They can be bad at it together, then.

Their marriage is whatever they make of it. They'll figure it out at their own pace. Isn't that the most married thing they can do?

"I've already started reading one, though," she says, much to his despair.

"Any chance you'll forget about it?"

"Unlikely. My memory happens to be quite good."

Yeah, Ryland knows.

He groans heavily, rubbing the heels of his palms into his eyes. "Okay, hit me with it," he sighs, resigned. She wouldn't have brought it up if she didn't read something she wanted to suggest implementing. If it was something bad, they might as well nip it in the bud now.

"Why are you so skeptical of published literature?"

He scoffs. "You say that like you're not the most skeptical person I know."

"Well I read your paper on water-based assumptions and evolutionary models, did I not? I can't be that much of a skeptic, then."

He scowls. That was personal.

"I hate those types of help books," he grumbles, to answer her question. "I mean, sometimes there's good advice, but following them as the textbook standard on how to live your life is rubbish. Too many parents who live by those parenting guide books end up not knowing how to give their kid the help they need, because they would rather listen to the words of a stranger than just talk to the kid." He exhales, frustrated, just thinking about it. "Those books don't have the nuance or context of every situation. And applying the wrong advice in the wrong scenario is just asking for things to go wrong. It can really impact a kid's life when that happens. It's just not right."

When he looks to Stratt when he's done ranting, he finds her smiling at him, strangely.

"What?"

"Nothing. Just, it's always a delight to be reminded of what a teacher you are."

Ryland doesn't know whether to bristle or to blush; knowing Stratt, she might be mocking him, but the softness in her expression makes him think that she's not.

She hums, bringing them back on topic. "I understand your qualms with the resource materials, but well, hear me out at least. Most of what I read was obvious to the point of being redundant, so I won't bother, but there was this one point that I think you, specifically, might need to hear."

Well that's insulting. "What is it?"

"In summary? Marriage is not about one party or the other constantly being on the receiving end. It's supposed to be mutually beneficial. What I'm saying is—" She crosses her arms across the table, leaning forward to look at him in earnest. "It wouldn't hurt for you to let me care about you, too, Grace."

… It might though. It really might. It'll make him want too much, get too greedy, beyond what is manageable. And also—

"… You shouldn't have to," he manages to say, around the lump in his throat. He feels like she's staring right into his soul. "You already care for everyone. I don't want you to have to care more about me, on top of that. You already have a lot on your plate."

She smiles, tilting her head arrogantly. "Who do you think I am? I can handle a little more."

"But you shouldn't have to," he insists. That's literally the whole point. To take some of her burden, and not add to it.

She considers him quietly. "Grace," she finally says. "Ryland. Caring for you is not the burden you seem to think it is."

He has to breathe in deeply through his nose. "Isn't it?" He's a lot. And he knows it better than anyone. Too talkative, too fixated, too brash, too much.

"No," she says. "I do not find it to be difficult at all."

And he hangs his head, mouth trembling, then, because it was difficult for his parents, difficult for his ex-girlfriends, and difficult for so many other people who should have been closest to him. So why is it not difficult for her?

"If I am expending energy to care about you Ryland, it is because I want to. Because you have given me so much that I want to give to you in turn. Can I do that, Ryland? Will you let me?"

This, maybe, is her own proposal, a mirror to the one he made months ago.

He presses the heels of his palms into his eyes to hide his tears.

"Yeah," he chokes out. "Whatever you want."

And he can't see her, but he can hear the satisfaction in her voice. "Good."

"I wish you would want things more," he says.

She tilts her head. "Is it not enough that I want you?"

He tries very hard to will away his blush to they can properly have this conversation.

"Not really," he admits. "And sometimes, it's hard to believe that you want that, either."

He's just Ryland. One of many scientists on board, and one of the least qualified, to boot. Just a dork who talks too much and jokes around and leaves candy wrappers all over his lab. He's not nearly impressive enough to catch the attention of someone like Stratt.

"Grace," she says, looking faintly aggravated. "You're the densest person on this bloody ship. Come here," she demands.

"Why?" he asks, already out of his seat.

When he reaches her side of the table, she leans up to wrap her arms around his shoulders and drag him towards her. He steadies himself against the chair's armrests.

"I do not often want things for the sake of wanting them," she says, which he already knows, "but I want you. You are one of the few things that I desire, just for me. You say you want me to want things, and I shouldn't, but I do. I want you. Do you understand, Doctor?"

And it's not so much a question as it is a demand. He swallows. "Yeah."

"I want you all to myself, you know? No one else is allowed to have you." And the curve of her smile is so dizzyingly alluring. "Does that make me selfish, Doctor?"

"No," he murmurs, leaning in to kiss her, helplessly. He doesn't even know why she would say that; who else would even want him? That the most magnificent woman in the world does is a miracle in itself. "Not at all."

Be greedier, he thinks, gasping when she parts his lips. Want more things. I'll give you all of them.

"You're being too obvious, Dr. Grace," she tells him lowly after a meeting one day.

They're the only ones left in the room, and he spent almost the entire end of it glowering at the scientist who sat on the other side of Stratt leaning way too close to her, explaining the concepts of something or another over the pages of a report.

Ryland was right there. He could have easily explained it, without needing to be nearly as up in her personal space.

"It was a reasonable distance." Stratt says. "You're overreacting."

He's not.

"Let people do their work, Grace," she sighs, when he pouts.

"I am," he says stubbornly. It's not like he did anything but look, anyway. Look, and glare a little.

"You're not," she says. "Last week, you made two of the new recruits in Engineering rewrite their report for not following my suggested formatting template. Which, might I remind you, was a template that was very much a suggestion."

"People with doctorates should really learn to format by the rules," Ryland huffs.

"I could have read it fine, Grace," she rolls her eyes.

"It was a mess," he criticizes. "Who writes their analysis in that order, anyway? It would have taken an extra fifteen minutes, at least, to figure out what they were trying to say from it; I would know. Better not to waste your time with that, and make them learn how to write properly instead," he insists.

"And why are you proofing the reports from new hires that get sent to me anyway? They're not even from your department."

"For incidents like last week, so you don't have to read any of that rubbish," he says. It's not like they were confidential. The newcomers don't really work on any of the important stuff yet, and Stratt usually ends up forwarding Grace the reports relevant to him, anyway.

"And what of non-work related matters? I've gotten word that for months now, you've been asking the kitchens to make foods specifically among my most liked meals."

… Yeah, he did do that. So what?

"I did not send you that list with that in mind, Grace."

"So what?" he whines petulantly, knowing she has a point.

She sighs. "You're being too obvious in your obsession, Dr. Grace," she tells him mildly, in that way that means do something about it.

"It's not like it was a secret," he mutters. He once got the entire crew to go on strike to get her out of prison. Everyone knows he's obsessed with her.

"Well that doesn't mean you get to cause trouble for the crew over it."

He thinks they're long past that point (again, refer to the strike), but he begrudgingly knows she's right.

"From now on, please stick to normal lead scientist-slash-second in command duties, yes?"

"But—" He doesn't even know what he wants to protest.

It comes down to this: he doesn't know how to fixate on things a normal amount. He wasn't normal about his theories in grad school, and he wasn't normal about astrophage for the first five years or so since the discovery of it. (He's still not normal about astrophage, he just spends less sleepless night pouring over it now that they've mostly figured out how it works.)

He doesn't know how to be normal about Stratt, either. Not with the way she commands a room, or the sound of her voice when she's giving orders. Not when he wants to please her as much as he does.

He doesn't know if she's a mind reader or what, or maybe it's just another one of her Stratt-superpowers, but she reads the helplessness in his eyes and knows what he means.

"There is an obvious solution to your dilemma, if you were to only take it," she tells him.

He has no idea what she's talking about.

She finishes gathering her things, and pats his shoulder as she leaves the room.

"You are always welcome in my room, Dr. Grace. Surely, we can find some way to indulge your fixation there."

She goes, but the suggestion lingers, and he curls his nails into his palm so hard he bleeds.

He does end up in her room, but not really in the way either of them expect. It's not even her room, really.

For a moment, he has no idea how he even got there.

He wakes up one morning with a heaviness like being run over by a truck, the way one gets after sleep that lasts a little too long.

His mouth feels tacky and his limbs don't really want to move.

It takes an astoundingly long time in between getting a feel for his motor functions and turning his brain online that he registers that there's a weight on his arm and warmth against his side.

And when he looks down, there is Eva Stratt asleep next to him.

Who in the world let them sleep in like this, he wonders. Don't they have jobs to do?

And then he remembers that they're in another country, and their morning plans had been canceled the night before, the moment they landed, and they're both horribly jet-lagged.

Neither of them are really used to air travel, the way they used to be.

They hadn't had any mainland meetings in a while, due to the stunt they pulled getting Stratt out of prison. They weren't exactly the most popular among the delegates of the UN in the months following.

Funnily enough, the lack of invitations to events was meant to be a snub, or a punishment, but it worked in their favor. They could actually focus on getting their work done.

A pity that with time, that had come to an end.

They'd boarded a jet the night before, and since the moment they landed he'd trailed after her, following her to her room to continue rambling about ideas for his next lab project when they got back, and surprisingly, she hadn't stopped him or kicked him out. Just let him talk.

He'd perched himself on her hotel bed as she went through a methodical routine of hanging up her coat and unpacking, and throughout it all he just sat there, dozing off as she showered.

He has no idea why he didn't leave. The thought hadn't even occurred to him.

And he must have fallen asleep, then, because the next thing he knows, he's here, and it's late morning, and he's looking at Stratt's sleeping face.

She has the lightest scattering of freckles, who knew. And she sleeps in an oversized t-shirt and baggy pants, which Ryland marvels at.

He's only ever been this close to kiss her, and in those moments she's always flustering him half to death. It's a distraction. The sheer gravity of her is such a distraction when she's awake that he's never really gotten a chance to just look, like he's doing now.

She doesn't really look any younger, like this, like books describe. Just slack, and less stern, which is a look he kind of likes on her. (Even though he likes the stern looks, too.)

It's all so odd, and he's not really thinking this fresh out of deep sleep, so he doesn't really have any intention when he reaches out and pokes her cheek. Or when he keeps doing it, mindlessly.

Her nose scrunches, predictably, and she swats his hand away, with much better control over her limbs than he has. "Ryland," she glares at him, and that his name in a rasp is the first thing she says— that the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes is him— bowls him over a little bit; wakes up butterflies in his gut.

"Stratt," he says back, voice even worse than hers, and he likes that her name is the first thing he says, too. "Morning."

If he didn't know better, he might have thought she shuddered a little bit. As it is, she just closes her eyes, briefly, against the sound of his morning voice.

He wonders if she likes him, like this. Wonders how much she likes him, at all; which is a wholly absurd thought, for how much she's constantly reaffirmed it. (She must, at least somewhat, right? She didn't kick him out of her bed, after all. Somehow, that is more significant than her signing the document to marry him.)

"This is too domestic," she sighs.

He rolls his eyes. "We're allowed to have domestic things every once in a while. Give us a break, Stratt."

She concedes, though by the look on her face, it's unwillingly. Damn workaholic.

"C'mon" he says, making no move to get up. "Let's get some breakfast."

"Alright," she sighs, and leaves him to get ready.

He listens to her bustle around, still lying in bed lazily. He thinks about his empty room down the hall, and wonders about the chances that he could convince her to book a single room when they go on business trips from now on.

(Wonders if, when she had grazed her fingers against his stubble before she left, she had wanted to press a kiss there, brief and quick.

... He's probably just projecting. Groggy mornings make him susceptible to wishful thinking. It'd be nice if she did, though.)

When he glances at her getting ready, there, in the privacy of her hotel room where only he can see, she's wearing the fox socks. She must have worn them to bed last night. It's so terribly cute.

And what a vision: her, bundled in soft and warm things, wearing the socks he gave her. The faint light through the window makes her hair glow.

He feels warmed him to his core just looking at her, endlessly pleased.

When she looks at him questioningly when he gets out of bed, he realizes it's because he's grinning like a lunatic. He doesn't tell her why.

When he comes back after absconding briefly to his own room to freshen up, he finds her dressed for the day, perched in a chair by the window.

"Ready to go?" he asks.

She hums. "Just a moment, Grace."

"What are you looking at?"

She doesn't say anything, but when he steps closer, she points out a view of the park their hotel overlooks. Children play merrily, despite the overcast day, and their guardians have taken up nearby benches and tables to chat over coffee and watch.

All of their days are overcast now, but that does not prevent them from having fun.

Stratt looks at them with a gaze softer than she's looked at anything for as long as Ryland's known her.

"Do you like kids?" he asks.

"I like children as much as I like their parents," she responds. "Just as I love the pedestrians walking their dogs over there, or the people who built the park years ago for them all to enjoy."

This woman, he thinks, is just too selfless.

"I like kids, myself," he tries at levity. "Middle school teacher, and all."

She hums distractedly, but she's smiling. Her eyes crinkle at the corners when they close. "Yes, I imagine you are quite good with them."

"The best," he jokes.

She turns her gaze back to the park, and at once he sees her: daughter of Earth, mother of humanity.

"Do you ever blame them?" he asks quietly. "The people who put you in jail."

"No," she responds, voice neutral, but still with that underlying tenderness. "I love them."

And Ryland looks at the tattoo on her neck and thinks, then, I'll hate them for both of us.

Before they leave the room, he holds her and kisses her neck, there, for the sake of it.

She sighs and lets him. "God, you're sweet."

"Grown men in their forties aren't sweet," he bites out.

"Yes you are." And she strokes his hair as he keeps her close and he wonders how despite trying to do things for her, he always ends up being the one given things instead.

He wants to bite that damn tattoo off of her neck, sometimes; that's how much he hates it. It's especially bad when they kiss and he has to see it up close, or feel it underneath his fingers, or his mouth.

When he tells her as much, she sighs and tells him, "You're not actually a dog."

He leans near her neck and snaps his teeth just for the sake of it. She yanks him back by the hair and sighs.

"Ow," he complains.

She shakes her head. "What are we doing to do with you?"

Someone finds out that they're married, and it becomes a whole thing. How it gets found out doesn't really matter, so much as that it does.

Most people are delighted about it, or deeply shocked.

Yeah, Ryland gets it, who would have thought he'd manage to get married to someone like Stratt? Who would have ever thought Stratt would agree to marry him?

There are a few hearts broken, which Ryland is unsurprised but secretly pleased by. He knew Stratt was well admired. Now, maybe, they'll admire her in ways less personally offensive to him.

(He never knows about all the hearts he broke as well. Despite being very clearly obsessed with Stratt, he's even more fancied by the crew than she is.)

A lot of money, candy, and various other goods exchange hands, and Ryland doesn't even want to know the insane betting pool that must have been settled just now. He despairs to know that the Russian crew had kept such good tabs on it. Dimitri, his closest friend (the traitor), is the bookmaker, position inherited from Ilyukhina, who manages to be a meddling force from beyond the stars.

Still, there are some questioning voices.

But you don't wear rings! someone says, which, duh. With their professions, it's simply impractical. And it's not like they had a ceremony, either. Signing the paper was the important part, anyway.

But Stratt doesn't act very much like a wife, does she? someone comments sneeringly during dinner in the mess hall, and Ryland is so disgusted he recoils. It's not the first time he's heard the sentiment throughout the day, but it's the first time it's been spoken so loudly, and pointedly, and right in his vicinity.

What does that even mean, and why do people keep saying it? Stratt is Stratt. Marriage was not supposed to magically change her, nor did he want to it.

He has no desire for her to fit into whatever box these misogynistic pricks thought constituted a 'wife'.

Anyway, he promptly gets into a fight.

It takes four scientists, two engineers, and Dr. Lokken whacking him over the head with a food tray to knock him out of it. He's still pissed, though. Won't stop ranting about it even half in hour later in the infirmary, as one of Dr. Lamai's assistants presses an ice pack to his face.

"Please stop gesticulating," Lamai remarks. "You're making it harder for us to do our work."

He does feel a little bad about it, after making them patch both him and the other guy up, so he sulks silently instead. He's not in the wrong though. He's not.

When he leaves the infirmary, Stratt is stationed beside the door with her tablet, typing away. As usual, she's working late into the night, but she came all this way just for him.

"… You could have just come inside," he says, throat dry at the sight of her. He's not wrong, but he feels bad for the trouble.

"And create another spectacle? No thank you." She turns off her tablet and tilts her head towards the direction of her office. "Let's go."

He follows her, ever the faithful dog, because what else can he do?

"Please don't get into fights on board again," she sighs. "Especially not on my behalf. It's unbecoming, and bad for morale."

"I should get into fights especially on your behalf," he declares, incensed.

"No, you shouldn't. I don't need my lead scientist bruised and beaten up. Have you ever even thrown a punch before today?"

No, but that's besides the point. Some things couldn't be settled without using fists. The matter of Eva Stratt's honor was one of those things.

"Men," she says, exasperated. "What am I to do with you?"

You could help kiss it better, is his first intrusive thought, promptly dismissed to the oblivion of his mind. She'd probably sooner give him another punch to the face.

"I take it that people are… surprised," she says politely, "about our marriage. Would it help anything if I were to act more like a traditional wife?" Stratt asks, even though she looks repulsed at the thought.

"Don't," he scowls. "We've talked about this. I don't care what they think, you should be yourself. Besides, you wouldn't do it anyway." He is confident about this. "You can't undermine your authority by catering to the misogynists on board."

She assesses him. "You know," she starts, "I still fail to see why you think you don't understand me when you read me perfectly well." She sighs. "You're right, I will not be compromising myself to appeal to our more traditionally-minded staff. I didn't really care about their opinions on me anyway. But…"

She touches his face softly, where the ice pack is pressed to it.

"I didn't intend to make trouble for you," she says quietly.

"You're not," he insists. "They're the ones who made trouble. It had nothing to do with you."

"Alright," she says, frowning slightly. "Do let me know if any other issues come up. I will not have my lead scientist be disrespected on my ship." She pauses. "I will not have my husband disrespected either," she says, absentmindedly.

He grins. "Aye-aye, captain."

"The crew is being annoying," he groans, not even a week later. It was an open secret that he hung out in Stratt's office in his free time, before, but after the news broke, the lingering glances, too-wide smiles, and suggestive eyebrow raises when he made his way there were getting excessive.

Ryland can only pray it dies down with time. He doesn't know if it will. He thinks Annie and Dimitri might be scheming together to hold a ceremony, good Lord.

"Are they being disrespectful?" Stratt asks, paying him a little more attention than she otherwise would have, even though she tries to be subtle about it. It warms his heart a little, her covert concern.

"Nah," he says, "Just… I don't know. Enthusiastic, maybe. A little too involved in our lives." Or, Ryland's anyway; he doesn't think anyone is brave enough to bug Stratt about it (though, Ilyukhina might have, if she were here). "Can't you do something about it?" he complains. "Put the fear of Stratt into them or something?"

She relaxes imperceptibly in her chair, once she's affirmed it's not a matter of serious concern. "Let them talk," she says mildly, already back to signing paperwork. "A bit of gossip every now and then is good for morale."

"Well it's not good for my morale," he grumbles. "You're not the one who has to deal with them."

"Poor pet," she mocks, and he has to clench his jaw against the way his face threatens to burst into flames.

And she's not even paying attention, Christ.

"Would you like to have some fun with it yourself, Dr. Grace?" she asks after a moment, faintly amused.

Ryland is suspicious immediately. "What are you thinking?"

"Well… you could play into the situation," she says. "I do not think your strategy of indifference is a bad response to being disadvantaged. But, have you heard this saying? The best defense is a good offense."

Great, now she's advising him about tactics. "Just spit it out, Stratt."

"I could leave you a hickey—" he chokes. "Somewhere obvious. Like… right here." She taps fingers high on her neck, just under her jaw, where it would be immediately visible to anyone. "Do you think anyone will dare to ask, if we are so overt?" She smiles.

Ryland imagines wearing a mark of her there, for everyone to see, and can't stop the heat from creeping into his neck.

(Worse, he imagines her leaving the hickey there, tilting her head into his neck and putting her mouth, warm and wet, on his skin there and sucking— and has to stop immediately before he gets turned on in the middle of her office.)

"What, are you trying to mark me, or something?" he jokes hoarsely, trying to diffuse the tension that he's pretty sure only he's affected by.

"Maybe," she says indifferently. "It might do some good for certain crew members on board to be a little more aware of what's mine."

He has no idea what that means, other than that it does nothing to alleviate his body setting itself on fire.

"I don't think there's anyone who doesn't know that already," he protests.

"A reminder never hurt anyone."

"A hickey is excessive, don't you think?"

"You're right," she says mildly. "A collar, then?"

Ryland despairs that this is the woman he married. Stratt doesn't do romance, but she can talk dirty to him while she's doing paperwork within an inch of his life.

"Christ, Stratt, let me breathe," he wheezes.

"I don't particularly feel like it, though."

"Mercy, Stratt." Or he'll need to leave to take a very cold shower.

She hums absently. "Convince me."

His mouth drops open, speechless. "And how do I do that?"

"Please figure that out yourself, Dr. Grace. I'm not going to babysit you."

He groans, face aflame. And he's under the fair impression that this is barely more than small talk to her. "Stratt, can't you just be normal?"

She makes a disdainful face. "On one hand you say you want me to be normal, on the other you want me to be myself. Just what do you want from me, Dr. Grace?"

"… Yeah, touche. Be yourself, then."

She nods primly.

"But can you please be yourself in a way that makes me want to throw myself off a cliff a little less?"

"No."

Christ.

"Get to it, Ryland, before I end up buying that collar after all."

And— well.

He could think of a few things he could do. He could get on his knees, as he's always wanted to do, and find out if he could convince her, hands gripping her thighs, or clasped behind his back, from underneath her desk.

That's probably what she wants him to do.

But, like it always does when his desire gets too strong— too big against the tightness in his throat— a trickle of cold fear settles in his gut.

He wants more than anything, but he is so scared to take.

The enormity of his desire scares him at times, to the point of being paralyzing.

So instead, he gets up like a puppet on strings and moves in front of her, turning her chair around to have her face him and hoping that what he can offer right now is enough.

"Come here," she murmurs, taking in the expression on his face and sliding a hand behind his neck as he leans down. "Shh, I've got you."

Somehow, she always knows exactly what he needs, and tries to meet him where he's at.

"Good, that's right," she praises as he presses kisses to her cheekbones, her forehead, her jaw. And when he finally presses his mouth to hers, she tells him, "You're perfect, just like that Ryland," and lets him try to please her with his lips and tongue and his thumb against her jaw.

He's clumsy at it, though. For all that he wants to take care of her, he is not good at being in control.

"Ryland," she breathes, in the space between kisses. "Do you want to please me?" He nods, mindlessly, into the brush of their lips. "Then trust me. I'll make this good for both of us."

And he does trust her, so he cedes control and lets her hold his face in her hands and kiss him until his brain feels like mush and his legs turn to putty underneath him.

He ends up on his knees anyway, but he doesn't feel the fear of losing control in front of her because she's in control here; she always has been.

And then— she takes his arm and sucks and bites a bruise into the wrist of his dominant hand, far up enough to be easily concealed with his long sleeves, but that will leave a lingering ache that will remind him of this whenever he uses that hand for the next day.

And she lets him shiver and gasp through it, kneeling there on her floor until she's satisfied that it's deep enough. Neither of them pay any mind to the tightness in his pants.

"There," she says, when she releases him. "Proof that you've convinced me. I don't need to let everyone know you're mine, so long as you know it."

He keens, high in his throat.

Yeah, he'll need that shower after all.

Word gets around, unfortunately, even off the ship.

They're at another event on the mainland, and someone has the audacity to refer to Stratt as 'your woman' as if she's not the singular force behind the preservation of all of their lives, and Grace wants to gag because she is no one's but her own.

What do these people think marriage is?

Ugh, seriously, no wonder why Stratt has all those weird hang ups about what it meant to be 'his wife', or whatever. These people are insufferable about it.

And he can't even be rude to them because Stratt would kill him if he was, so he just has to bear it and hope clenching his fist is enough to hold back from how much he wants to punch someone again.

"This is why I hate these stupid events," he grumbles to Stratt, returning with a plate of hors d'oeuvres for her to snack on.

"Hush. If you must, say it quieter," she insists. "We still rely on these people for funding."

He groans (quietly, of course, because she asked) and can't wait until they're back on the ship, in the quiet of her office, where they can be themselves without the fancy garb and pleasantries making everything seem fake.

"Let them think of me as just a woman," she murmurs, for only him to hear. "It's of no matter to me. It will only make them easier to deal with, when they eventually turn to me for answers, and they learn that I am a woman who will not bend to satisfy their petty, fragile egos."

Ryland shudders, and he can't tell whether it's from fear or something else. Her face did not change when she said it, but her voice was very low, and so, so dangerous.

He wonders if maybe he's crazy for liking that in a woman, but then again, he's not above admitting that she's always made him a little crazy, since the moment they met.

She challenged him to be more than who he is, she would challenge every too self-important man in this room to heel at her command, and she will challenge the Sun to stop dimming within the next thirty years.

And Lord, Ryland cannot wait to stand by her side while she does.

"Grace," she says lowly, still in that voice that makes him shiver. "Stop staring."

"I can't help it," he mumbles, unable to look away despite the command.

"You're not helping the rumors."

"Let them think of me as a besotted husband," he returns, distracted by the way her hair falls over her suit. "Maybe it'll make them less inclined to insult you to my face."

"Ah, you underestimate the stupidity of powerful men," she sighs.

"They're worse than middle schoolers, I swear," Ryland grumbles.

She laughs quietly, and Ryland takes quiet pride in being the one who caused it.

"Hey—" he starts, about to make another joke, but she pulls at his sleeve before he can.

They're being approached. He sighs internally, but dutifully pulls his game face back on. Duty calls.

He can't wait for this to be over.

Apparently, Stratt couldn't, either.

She'd been entirely professional during the event, of course, even though Ryland was much less so. He was always bad at talking about anything that didn't have to do with the science. Especially with people who are like, thirty tax brackets above him or something.

Ryland tries to shoulder as much of the buzz about their relationship status has he can, helping redirect the conversation so that Stratt can actually talk about the project. You know, the thing that's actually important to the survival of the world.

It's exhausting. The only thing that makes it bearable is Stratt's presence at his side, and her cool voice being a welcome balm on his nerves.

He wouldn't have even known she was fed up with it if he wasn't so attuned to the minute crease in her forehead, the imperceptible furrow of her brow.

And when it was finally over, and they'd taken the elevator up to their floor, Stratt started shedding layers, uncaring who might be watching. (Only Ryland; the floor was thankfully empty, which is good because Ryland would have murdered anyone who'd been there.)

She shrugged off her suit jacket, and tossed it carelessly in Ryland's direction. Then she loosened her tie, and made him hold that, too.

He could only stare at her back as she did, helpless but to follow her back to her room since he was holding onto her clothes. Helpless but to follow her anywhere, in general.

And then—

He pulls back from kissing her, breathless, against the door inside her hotel room. She had dragged him down moments ago to cage her against it, and he couldn't resist her mesmerizing eyes pulling him in.

"God," he breathes, nosing at her collarbone, her clothes he was holding long dropped to the floor. Several buttons are undone on her dress shirt. "Are you trying to make me more obsessed with you? What happened to wanting me to heel?"

She hums against his mouth. "No, I wanted you be be more subtle with it. I've given up on making you heel ages ago."

"You? Gave up? The sun will rise from the west tomorrow."

She yanks on the short strands of his hair in chastisement, but he just ends up groaning into her mouth, liking the sting.

"Ryland," she breathes, dragging his hand to rest on her ribcage, as she did months ago to prove he was a dog who knew how to stay. "What are you waiting for? My permission? You've long had it."

How can Ryland explain that he's hesitant because it's Stratt; because she is so, so important, to both him and the world, and he's so scared of messing up, of ruining this, like he's ruined all his relationships before. That it's like flying too close to the Sun, and being terrified that if he crosses that line and gets overzealous, he'll burn and fall.

"Eva," he whines helplessly between kisses, and she huffs at the name but runs her hands soothingly down his back regardless.

"Aw, what's wrong, pet?"

He shuts his eyes against the burning in his face. "I'm scared."

"My poor, cowardly scientist," she laughs, pausing in kissing him for a moment to cradle his face in her hands, swiping her thumbs over his cheeks and letting him just hold her close. "What are you scared of?"

"Of losing you," he says, though maybe it's an odd thing to say, outside of his own head, to correlate sex to loss instead of increased closeness.

Still, he is scared. He fears being too much, the way he always is with her, and scaring her away, like he did all his ex-girlfriends. He is scared of losing her, like he did to the bars of a French prison, but this time it'll be worse because she'll be right there, on the Vat, and she'll be staying away by choice.

"You're thinking too much," she chides him abruptly. "If my silly husband has time to be thinking silly things, then you should just think about me," she says, matter of fact.

"I am thinking about you," he whines, leaning into her hands.

"Well clearly not enough," she rolls her eyes. "Or you would know me well enough to know that I would never let go of you, unless the fate of the world depended on it."

"You might," he whispers. "I'm too much. You might."

"Well lucky for you then that I quite like taking care of needy pets. Especially ones as obedient as you are. Take up my time as you please, Dr. Grace; I know you won't go overboard. Have me in whatever way you want, because I know you'll stop if I say so."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because it's you," she says, overwhelmingly certain.

"You really won't get sick of me?"

"No," she says, as sure of this as she is everything. "You don't bother me. Your overbearing affection doesn't bother me."

He sighs, nuzzling against her collarbones, taking comfort in her promise until she pulls him up into a kiss.

"If that's out of the way, then fuck me, Ryland. Don't make me wait."

He shivers.

"You're so aggressive," he sighs, tremblingly, as if that isn't one of his favorite traits of hers.

He likes her so much like this, greedy and demanding. Wanting things, just for the sake of wanting them.

It's exhilarating, being the focus of her desire like this.

"What happened to your asceticism?" The one she held onto so steadfastly behind bars.

She smirks under his mouth. "I have come to the decision that if I want something, and the having of it doesn't put the world at risk, then I should just take it." And she yanks him back by the hair to look him in the eyes when she says, "And if what I want is you, then I should make sure you are mine. So, what? Will you stop me, Dr. Grace?"

Of course he won't, he thinks, recapturing her mouth with his.

He'll give her anything she wants. And if what she wants is him, then he'll gladly become hers.

He's been hers for a long time now. Doesn't she know that?

But still—

She's always done everything she can to get her way, in a way that is pragmatic and ruthlessly efficient. If she wants Ryland Grace to be even more obsessed with her, wrapped even tighter around her finger— well, she's scarily good at that, too; he already is.

And maybe it should be concerning that she's becoming even more arrogant, taking even more liberties with him.

But as he takes her to bed and leans in to kiss her again and again and again, head spinning, he thinks, that's fine by him.

Adding to the list of things he learns about Eva Stratt: she smokes after sex. And she is devastatingly attractive when she does. Go figure.

"Stratt," he says, exasperated. "I'm not a mind reader."

"You read mine well enough."

"No I don't. So I'd appreciate if just told me things sometimes, like that it was your birthday three weeks ago. How was I the last to find out?!"

"Oh. It wasn't important. There was no need for you to know," she dismisses.

We've talked about this, he thinks despairingly, but he knows better than to complain. They've worked out a lot of things, but they're still themselves, and Stratt has always had difficulty telling him things about herself. Difficulty finding things personal to herself important. They'll work on it. Ryland will make sure of it.

For now— "Oh hell no, birthdays are literally the most important day of the year," Ryland protests vehemently. He's a middle school teacher. He would know.

"Election days are more important."

"Absolutely not. We're celebrating yours."

"No we're not."

"Yes we are," he says. "It's non-negotiable. Included in the marriage certificate fine-print. Married to Ryland Grace, and forced to be subject to birthday celebrations. You can't get out of this one, Stratt." He points a finger at her threateningly, and before she can get another word in, storms off to plan.

He requisitions one of the smaller, less-used conference rooms for a night, spends the next few nights before bed creating paper streamers and garlands and crowns, and puts in a special request with the kitchen. The resulting product is entirely to juvenile for a woman as severe as Eva Stratt, and one that would make his old middle school class proud.

She arrives, already dressed down for the night, wearing the purple sweater he got her ages ago. It's as soft as she described. She looks soft in it.

Dinner is nothing too fancy, just a few simple Dutch cuisines pulled together with whatever the kitchen staff already had stocked onboard, and two-person serving of tiramisu for dessert.

"I figured you wouldn't like anything too sweet, but you still need something to put a candle in, so…"

He sticks the candle into the dessert and lights it. Its flicker illuminates the dim room.

"Happy birthday, Eva." And this time when he says it, it doesn't sound wrong to either of them.

She looks at him, steady and assessing, for a long moment. He's gotten used to these kinds of gazes from her, and lets her look.

"Do you happen to know the phrase: to be loved is to be known?" she asks quietly.

"Yes?" he says. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"Nothing," she shakes her head, but she's smiling faintly, and blows the candle out. "Thank you, Dr. Grace. Let's eat."

"Ryland," he corrects.

"Ryland," she agrees. "Thank you."

No, thank you, he thinks, for being born into this Earth, for existing, for discovering me and seeing what I could be, rather than what I was.

"We should celebrate again, next year," he says. "What would you like to do?"

"Next year?" She thinks. "I think I would rather like to celebrate your birthday next year, Ryland."

He scrunches his nose. "That's not what I asked."

"No, but I would like it regardless, and you will grant my request, won't you?"

He will, damn her.

She reaches over to pat his hand briefly, and he remembers what she said a long time ago: just as he wants to take care of her, she wants to care for him too.

It makes him feel warm and pleased; makes him think that this whole marriage thing worked out alright for them after all.

They're celebrating her birthday today, but with just that sentiment from her, he feels like he received a gift too.

"So will you get the tattoo removed?"

"No." He scowls at that. "I might still go back, you know. My abuses of power haven't ceased yet."

"You won't," he insists viciously. "I won't let you."

"That's not how it works."

"Yes it is. You're my spouse, now. You're stuck with me for life."

"For life?"

"For life."

"That's a long time."

"And I'll be with you for all of it."

She laughs. "Yes, alright," she agrees, "I suppose I can live with that."