Archive of Our Own

She approaches me after I walk out of the lab. I’m still in my lab coat, my head still in a headspace where microbes matter more than humans. She startles me while I’m trying to get the coat off and I drop it to the ground.

She follows my motions with her eyes, unmoved as always, as I bend to pick it up.

“Ryland,” she says, and that’s my first clue something is wrong.

She doesn’t call me “Ryland”. It’s always “Dr. Grace” or at least “Grace” if she’s particularly annoyed at me, which has only happened once in the five months I’ve been on the Vatt so far, so I count that as a personal success. She doesn’t do first names. She’d rather call someone “hey, you” or “Miss whoever” than use their names, even if she clearly knows them. She has done it, in fact.

I’m not sure how to respond, so I just tilt my head and wait.

She crosses her arms over one another, analysing me for a few moments. It’s unsettling, but she does it a lot; sometimes I feel as though I’m just a very interesting bug she’s stumbled upon on a walk and has decided to keep in a jar to see what it does. I hope that, unlike an insect in a jar, my greatest feat will not be trying to escape by banging my head on the lid.

“I need a favour,” she says and I have to hold back a flinch.

Stratt doesn’t “need favours”. Stratt gives you an order and you complete it; sometimes, it’s not even accompanied by a “please”, and sometimes, it’s reduced to a single word command thrown into the aether for some volunteer to complete, and quickly. That last category most often includes the word “coffee”.

“You need a favour.” I repeat. It’s not a very smart thing to say, but half my brain is still planning isoelectric focusing and I suddenly remember I need to ask Stratt to find me an analytical biochemist as soon as possible, because I don’t remember how to operate a mass spectrometer and I am not confident enough in my abilities to not worry I’d break it. So, all things considered, I think I deserve a little credit for saying anything at all.

“Yes.”

My mind is slowly getting back into the real world, where the words DEAE and Tris-HCl mean about as much as whatever nonsense a one-year-old could babble.

“Um. What favour?”

She rubs her hands together. I take a step back and realise I’m still holding my lab coat, and then I’m walking away from her to put it in the closet. I turn around, expecting to see her following, but she just stands there and gazes around the hallway uncomfortably. Her tablet isn’t even on and is instead tucked under her arm.

Gosh darn it, she’s nervous.

I make my way back to her as soon as I can. I’m glad the coat closet is in this hallway, or I would have worried she’d have disappeared by the time I was back; and I’m curious, now. She didn’t hesitate nearly as much when she asked me to look at space cells for her, and now I’m here, her employee or something of the sort, and she’s staring at the ground. Her expression isn’t anything out of the ordinary, but the rest of her body tells a different story.

“Stratt?”

She looks me in the eyes. She looks away.

“I need you to marry me.”

I choke on my spit and start violently coughing. She does nothing, only stares at me, her lips quirked into a small smile. It makes me think that maybe she’s joking, but Stratt also hasn’t ever told a joke, so whatever this is, it’s probably not that.

I’m bent in half, tears in my eyes. I hit my chest a few times, trying to regain control of my breathing. My coughing slowly subsides and eventually, after what feels like forever, I regain my ability to breathe without wanting to vomit my lungs up at the same time. I let myself take in some more air, still with my face to the ground, and look at her again.

“You want me to what?”

All her hesitation is gone now, or maybe she’s just hiding it better.

“Marry me.”

I wave my hands around, briefly out of words. My mind is trying to find some, though it’s mostly a mess of how and what and when and are you out of your mind, so I mostly sputter as she watches.

“Why!?”

She purses her lips and looks away again, only for a small moment.

“So you agree?’

I take a breath and start to say something, but she’s got me off guard again.

“No? I’m not agreeing to something this insane without a reason?”

She shrugs.

“I won’t tell you unless you agree.”

She begins to walk away. Despite some—likely intelligent—part of me telling me to leave her, I quickly fall into step next to Stratt.

“I think that’s coercion!”

She stops and puts her arm out straight in front of me, so I stop too, but not before almost falling forward over it. I glare at her. She’s unbothered.

“It’s not coercion for me to use your curiosity against you.”

I cross my arms.

“Yes, it is.”

She sighs.

“Marry me, yes or no? I’m not going to kneel.”

And I must be stupid, really. Some evil gremlin lives in my mouth and speaks before I can have any input into the words. The Astrophage are infectious and they’re eating my brain.

In reality, I’m just too damn curious. She knows how to bend a scientist to her will all too well.

“Okay, fine.”

She blinks. I’ve surprised her. She shouldn’t worry, I’m as surprised as she is.

“You… will?”

I shrug. Now that I’ve said it, it doesn’t seem that insane. Or rather, I’ve found that there’s a part of me that largely things “why not?”. Which makes me think I must have hit my head sometime between now and five months ago, but it feels like it’s already too late to go back, even though I haven’t even confirmed her question.

“Why not.”

Maybe it would stop Marissa from giving me the numbers of all her female coworkers.

She opens her mouth ever so slightly, closes it again, and then she’s making eye contact with me once more, already digging through her coat pockets.

“Here,” she gives me a credit card. My hand is shaking a little when I take it; I hope she doesn’t notice. If she does, she doesn’t comment on it. “I want something simple and not too showy. We have to match, so you’re going to have to be okay with gold. No rocks. Carl will take you to a jeweller by helicopter tomorrow.”

I’m sputtering again. I think I’m having a stroke.

“Stratt—what? Why? Why are we getting married? Get your own darn ring, I don’t—why do I have to buy it, you clearly know what you want?”

“I don’t have time to buy it and I don’t trust online stores. I’ll give you my size and a string measurement.”

I grab her hand when she starts to walk away. She looks at the place where our bodies touch, lets her eyes travel up, to look at me, and quirks a brow. She still looks impassive. It’s actually impressive.

I squeeze, so she knows I’m not going to let her get off scott-free.

“Why?”

She sighs.

“I’ll let you guess, Dr. Grace.”

It’s silly, but hearing her say the part of my name she usually uses makes me breathe easier.

“I don’t know,” I say.

She gives me a long look. I decide perhaps I should think about it, and about two seconds afterwards I feel like a complete idiot.

“Seriously? But it’s—it’s not the 1950s!”

“I don’t think they care,” she looks away. “The sexual proposals were annoying enough, but ultimately harmless. But the Middle East and at least three EU representatives have started to make hints now.”

I feel something heat up beneath my skin.

“What kind of hints?” I ask slowly.

She sighs.

“Something to the effect of ‘maybe if she was married, she’d make better choices.’ Would have been of no consequence, but they’re starting to whisper about a re-vote, now.”

I gawk.

“Can they do that?”

She grimaces.

“Unfortunately. We didn’t manage to get that clause removed. It would fail; they need more than just a majority. It would stall us, unfortunately. No funding until they figured themselves out.”

Part of me is grateful for that and finds it very reasonable that our world-elected dictator has an off-switch; a bigger part of me fills with some sort of righteous anger. I wouldn’t call myself a raging feminist but come on! They can’t honestly think she’s only the way she is because she’s single. If anything, I would be afraid for her husband, if she had one.

Wait.

“Wait, wait,” I let her go to hold my hands up. “Why me?”

She actually laughs for all of two seconds, more of a snort, really. She eyes me up and down again, her face relaxed.

“You were the only person who would even consider saying yes and not want anything in return. It’s not like I have many friends.”

She walks away, now, and I don’t stop her. I stand there, that credit card still held between my fingers and my jaw on the floor.

I guess I’m engaged?

And then it hits me, just as her heel vanishes around the corner.

“Hey, Stratt! Stratt!” I yell, then decide that I don’t care if she hears me. “We’re friends!?”

I buy the ring. It takes almost 40 minutes of talking to a jeweller who is clearly more invested in this than I am, but after the utter hell of pretending I know my “wife-to-be” in any capacity beyond “she’s my boss and she apparently likes gold”, I leave the shop with an order for two gold bands in some simple style that I don’t remember the name of. My hand is shaking a little from spending the amount of money that I did. Carl looks only sort of sympathetic and mostly is barely hiding that he’s laughing at me.

I drag him to a Burger King before we leave. He doesn’t want anything, so I get him fries and a milkshake and get a burger and more fries for myself, using Eva Stratt’s rich person credit card to pay for it all.

We sit down at a table, waiting for our order. Carl is flipping the receipt between his fingers and I drum my own into the sticky red plastic of my seat.

“Do you think I should propose to her?” I ask him, my eyes glued to the order update board. I only know he chokes on his spit because I hear it, and my eyes drag over to him as he coughs into his hand, eyes watery. I rush to explain. “I mean, does she want to make this a public thing? I think people have public proposals.”

If anything, that only makes Carl cough harder. I sigh and look away. I can feel a few people staring at us and it makes my skin crawl, but I assume they may have recognised me from when Stratt dragged me to a news conference and some journalist decided that slapping a photo of me stumbling through a coherent sentence on the cover of their article about progress with the Hail Mary project would be the absolute best idea. I haven’t been off the Vatt for any sort of strolls outside in the time that has passed, so it didn’t even occur to me to hide my face.

“I don’t think she wants you to propose,” Carl finally chokes out.

Our order number flashes on the board, and I get up to get it; he pushes me back down and goes himself. I sigh and roll my eyes. I’ve got the credit card in my hands again and I’m flipping the plastic between my fingers. That reminds me—I’ve been reading about flipases, because I’m pretty sure they’ll probably play a role in the arrangement and maybe even synthesis of whatever Astrophage have going on with light absorption—and I’m still trying to figure out those dyes—but I’m pretty sure a lot of them might be trapped between their cell membrane and something like a cell wall that they have; and it’s not a cell wall, neither is it exactly the same as the mycomembrane, though that would be the closest thing I could compare it to, with how special it is—

Carl sets a plastic tray down in front of me and I startle. His shoulders shake, but he’s merciful enough that he doesn’t outright laugh.

He sits down opposite me and starts to protest as I push the shake and fries in his direction. I give him my best encouraging smile, the same one I give students when I tell them they should try their hand at the Science Olympiad, really.

It works almost immediately. I cheer internally. I’ve still got it.

He picks at his fries, and I bite into my burger, let the simple sensation of eating take over my thoughts for a moment. It’s only that it doesn’t really work, because suddenly I’m thinking of the fact that Stratt hasn’t mentioned anything about the wedding proper and oh shucks, am I going to have to plan a wedding? I can’t do that. I don’t know how to do that. There are people you can hire for that, right? Yeah, there are, it’s fine, except I don’t even know what Stratt likes to eat and what if I have to pick a menu?

“…Grace,” I’m suddenly aware that Carl is waving a hand in front of my face. I wince and swallow the bite of my food I’ve been chewing. “You okay?”

I nod, not trusting myself to speak. I lick my lips.

“Has Stratt mentioned anything about the wedding?”

I try my best to keep it impersonal. I don’t think I can think about the fact that it’s our wedding for longer than 5 seconds before I start doubting my sanity.

Carl waves a hand, eating another fry.

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “She says she wants to elope once you get the rings.”

Oh, thank God.

I nod, pretending I haven’t just gone through a minor spiral.

This is going to be the death of me.

When we return, I take all of three steps out of the helicopter, still feeling a little woozy despite the multitude of trips Stratt has had me take in recent months, before Lokken catches sight of me and walks over. I stop, because she is also one of the people that typically ignores my existence, unless she has questions to ask about how it’s going breeding Astrophage more quickly, and the conversation usually goes along the lines of:

“How are—?”

“Bad.”

And then she walks off with a huff, probably to tell Stratt her top scientist is wasting time running membrane experiments. Even though they’re very useful and even though I’m still mostly focused on the breeding.

Stratt hasn’t gotten on my back about it yet, so either Lokken doesn’t actually run back to her to snitch on me or she doesn’t care.

Point is, this is the second time in as many days that a woman I don’t talk to, not for no reason, and whom I suspect of holding rather negative feelings about my person as a whole, approaches me.

I wave, tentatively. She doesn’t wave back.

“Stratt is in a good mood,” she says. I’m suddenly aware that I’ve got ketchup on my face and try to wipe it away, if only so I have something to do while I think of a response.

“Okay?” I end up saying. What am I supposed to do about that?

Lokken smiles at me, but then she says:

“And you don’t know anything about that, Dr. Grace?”

I furrow my brows. I guess maybe she’s happy I agreed to her crazy idea. I’m not sure if she’d want me to tell people on the ship, though, so I just shrug and shake my head no.

Lokken looks to the side and sighs.

“Well, it sure looks like somebody has—” before she can finish, Carl steps up next to me and says something to the effect of “Ms. Stratt wants you!” and suddenly, I’m getting dragged away by my arm. I’m not sure what that’s about. I can’t be mad at him, though, not when I wasn’t confident what was going on with that conversation anyway. I nod at Lokken, but she’s already started walking the opposite direction.

I half expect Carl to let go of me and just leave. He doesn’t. He eases his hold, still not giving me back my arm, and so I obediently follow as we make our way to Stratt’s office.

He knocks and doesn’t wait for a response. We come in. He stays by the door, with another member of security. I see them smile at each other from the corner of my eye.

Stratt is behind her desk. She doesn’t look up as we walk in, just keeps writing on a piece of paper in front of her. I can’t see what it is, but from the way her hand is moving, all tired and almost robotic, she’s probably been doing it a lot.

“Stratt,” I say. I’m not sure if I should sit down or not.

“Call me Eva.”

“No!” I say.

She looks up from her paper and meets my eyes.

“You can’t call your wife by her surname.”

I shake my head.

“Nuh-uh, no, I’m pretty sure I can.”

She sighs.

“Sit down, Dr. Grace,” she clicks her tongue when she finishes the sentence. “Ryland.”

I sit down. I cross my legs, decide I don’t like that and uncross them. I think for a moment, put one leg over the other, but my knee is going at it, shaking as if I want to run away, so I end up standing and sitting back down with them folded beneath me.

“Can’t you call me something else?” I ask. It’s weird. It’s similar to if Marissa suddenly started calling me “Rylie”. We don’t do that.

Oh no. I’ll have to tell Mary. Can I tell Mary? I was happy about telling her, before, but now I’m worried what she’ll say; which is dumb, because it’s not like this is a real marriage. It will be real only on paper, nothing beyond.

“I can call you my sweetheart, if you’d like that. My sweetheart.”

“No, no, no, Ryland, call me Ryland. Ryland is fine!”

It’s only after I’m done overcorrecting that I see the smile on her face. She was joking.

“No,” she says, and oh fudge, I’m actually in a weird dream, because she keeps smiling, and it’s not concealed, which is unusual. “I think I like sweetheart. I also heard kitten and baby are highly appreciated.”

I look to Carl. He shrugs.

I look back at Stratt. She’s still smiling. She’s leisurely pushing the cap on and off her fountain pen with the thumb of the hand she’s holding it in.

I slap myself.

At least she stops smiling.

Then she starts to laugh.

“Stratt—” I bite my tongue. “Eva? Uh… do you need an ambulance? That might be problematic. Right, they have helicopters—”

She shakes her head. The laughter fizzles out, her shoulder steady and her expression vanishes, though her usual solemnity is slightly more joyful. It’s not by a lot. I can somehow see it, in spite of that.

“Did you think I was an emotionless rock, Ryland?”

“Maybe,” I say, eloquently. I’m starting to realise I’m a very stupid man.

She lets through another smile. It’s starting to look more natural on her face.

“Yesterday was the first time in months I’ve had an excuse to call my parents and tell them something happy,” she says. “I don’t want to make this a spectacle, but I wanted to tell them. Make them believe I’m getting the… happy ending they think I need. It was nice.”

I nod. I realise I didn’t even think of the fact that she has parents. Of course she does, she didn’t just spawn out of thin air, but it’s the same brand of strange as realising your teacher was married when you were in primary school. Something silly, like “girl, you have a life outside of here?”—no, I’ve been spending too much time around middle schoolers.

I miss my middle schoolers. They’d go insane if they knew I was getting married.

“You’re happy,” I say.

She nods. She presses the pen to paper again and starts writing. I wait, not sure what for and likewise unsure if I’m allowed to leave or if I should wait until she dismisses me.

I remember the card in my pocket and pull it out, pushing it towards her on the desk. She doesn’t seem to notice. She’s absorbed in her paperwork.

Tentatively, I get up, begin walking towards the door. I’ve already got my hand on the handle when the sound of fervent scribbling cuts off. I freeze.

“When will the rings be done?”

I mentally run a calculation.

“About a month.”

“And exactly?”

I sigh.

“43 days.”

“Okay. I’m setting us up to sign a marriage licence in California and then elope at the courthouse three days later .”

“Wait—California?” I turn around.

She’s not smiling, not properly, but her eyes are scrunched a little like she wants to.

“I thought you’d like for Marissa to be there.”

I shouldn’t be surprised she knows about Marissa, really. She doubtless knows more about me than I do, because my memory isn’t the best and she’s had people trace every semi-alive end of my life from diapers. Something else strikes me, though. She thought about it, about what I might want in this crazy arrangement.

I swallow.

“So…”

She puts down the pen and looks up. I scratch my neck.

“We are friends?”

I didn’t want to ask it like a question. It comes out as one in spite of that.

She tilts her head.

“I thought that was obvious?”

I have half a mind to argue, but I decide that if Eva Stratt wants to be my friend, then you know what, good for me. I swing a little on my feet and turn around again, push the door open and leave before I say something stupid.

I barely remember to do so, but I manage a “Good day!” as the door swings behind me.

I think I hear her yell it back.

I call Marissa a week after the meeting in Stratt’s Eva’s office. It’s not that I didn’t want to tell Mary about everything earlier, but Stratt Eva dragged me to two consecutive conferences and later had me interview ten people that she thought would be good analytical biochemistry help.

She accepted it when I told her I would prefer that she hire five of them, instead of just one. She still had me do the interviews.

It’s the day, and I’m outside on the deck of the Vatt. There isn’t anybody in my close vicinity, though people do mill around a little farther. It’s pleasant, a nice wind on my face and I push Mary’s number into a disposable phone Eva gave me so I could make, as she put it “a maximum of three personal calls” and then throw it overboard. She’s so generous.

I smile at my own joke.

Marissa picks up on the second ring.

“Hello?” She says, and I remember that this is a call from an unknown number to her.

“Hi,” I say. I want to say more, but I can’t.

“—GRACE, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!?”

I pull the phone away from my ear, wincing. Right. I sort of vanished on her without a word.

“Hi, Mary—”

She’s still screaming. I give up and let her get it out as I stare off into the horizon.

I miss the beach. I haven’t been on one in a while. I miss the waves, the sand beneath my hands, and I can’t wait until the project is over so I can—

“OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND?!”

I sigh.

“Well, I—I can’t explain if you’re yelling at me, now can I?”

“Don’t use your teacher voice on me, Ry, or I swear—” she doesn’t finish, lets the threat hang. I suddenly feel a tear on my face and wipe it off quickly. I’m too emotional, God. It’s just my friend whom I haven’t talked to for 5 months. Nothing to weep about.

“I’m listening,” she says. “Explain.”

“Don’t you know the most of it already? I know there’s been some news about it.”

“I know you’re a celebrity. I guess I should thank you that you haven’t told people you know me or they’d be breaking down my door.”

I gape. What?

“Celebrity? What?”

She laughs.

“You’re the lead world expert on an alien microorganism; you work on a project to save the Earth. What did you think was gonna happen?”

I blank.

“Um… I’d go home and go back to normal afterwards?”

“I don’t remember you being this stupid,” she says, and it’s familiar and light. I grin and lean on the railing.

“So,” I say, because as much as I’m enjoying talking to her, I want to get all the revelations out of the way before we can do anything else. “I…”

I can’t seem to find a good way to say it. I’m not sure how much I want to tell Mary, not yet. Eventually, I’d prefer for her to know it’s not a romantic relationship, that it’s just convenience and a favour. Still, it feels…

It would feel good, to be part of this thing society has had for so long that I didn’t ever seem to be able to participate in.

I put on my best giddy voice.

“I’m getting married.”

She proceeds to try and blow out my right eardrum. I almost drop the phone into the sea.

“WHAT!?”

I let her yell some more, again. I think she would like Eva, after a while of knowing her, at least. I doubt they’ll ever spend enough time with each other to see that happen; it’s nevertheless a fun thought experiment.

“To who?” she asks.

I chuckle.

“To Eva Stratt.”

I think she’s hyperventilating. It sounds a little concerning.

“What? When? Why? How? What the fuck, Ryland?”

I laugh properly, this time. God, I missed her.

“In a little over a month. We’re eloping. I want you as my witness.”

“Right, not much time for a wedding, when you’re saving the world,” she comments, breathless. “Also, yes, I’ll be your witness, how—how long have you—?”

I blank. Oh no. I haven’t thought about this at all.

“Uh… 5 months.”

She quiets down.

“5 months? Do you even know this woman?”

No, I think with amusement. I know she doesn’t like cupcakes, now, because they offered them at one of the conferences and she promptly pushed her own towards me.

“Yeah. We’ve… I’ve had a bunch of time travelling with her to… to get to know her.”

I can’t see her, but I can imagine Marissa shaking her head through the receiver.

“Married… Holy shit, Ry,” she laughs. “Congratulations! I… I kind of didn’t think you ever would, honestly—But of course you would, you’re, I mean, you’re kind and vulnerable and a good man—”

“Now, come on,” I stop her, a little uncomfortable. I’m not really all those things she’s saying. I’m lying to her for my own amusement, for starters. “Save some for the courthouse. I expect you to talk me up to Eva.”

She laughs again.

“Oh, I don’t think I’m gonna need to do any of that. I will be bonding with your wife. You finally have a girl in your life that I can turn against you.”

Wife. What a weird concept. I think I’ll get used to it eventually. For now, though, it’s still all strange and new and something special, because I didn’t think I could ever say I have one.

I’m not sure why Eva came to me. I’m even less sure of why I said yes. I’m starting to realise, though, that she’s giving me more than I expected; probably than she’s expected, as well.

It’s just nice.

It feels like I’m finally doing something right.

It takes two days after my call with Marissa for word to spread. I was not as alone on deck as I had thought.

I wake up with a post-it on me. It hasn’t happened in a while, and I didn’t expect it, but I still read it diligently.

Eva wants me in her office.

Inside, she’s behind her desk, as usual. I sit down on the chair and stare at her while she writes. It’s something we do, a silly routine, where I pretend she hasn’t forgotten I exist, and she works until I finally decide I don’t want to waste my time anymore.

“Eva,” I say. She looks up.

“I’m going to have to pretend to like you.”

I can’t help it. I laugh.

“I thought we were friends?”

She gives me a flat stare, not that different from her usual, but I’m trying to learn her expressions.

“Okay, I get it,” I sigh. “I’m sorry, I thought nobody would hear me.”

She shrugs.

“Nothing we can do about that now,” she thinks for a moment. “I’ve decided I will hold your hand for five minutes per day. That should be sufficient.”

I blink. I blink again. She isn’t laughing.

“I think you may need to kiss my cheek, too,” I say, half-joking.

She nods solemnly.

“Good point. I’ll add a cheek kiss once per week.”

I wait. She goes back to writing.

“Stratt, no, are you serious?”

She looks at me, in that moment. For another few seconds, it’s just us making awkward eye contact, until she cracks and smiles.

“No, I’m not,” she lets out a slightly shaky breath, almost a small laugh. “Everybody already thought we were dating. Go back to work.”

I almost leave. She clears her throat before I can.

“Work in here.”

I do have my laptop with me. And if everybody on the ship knows now, then I suppose confirming that we’re “serious” by spending a few additional hours in her office is probably a good call.

I sit down again and put my laptop on her desk. This way, the tops of our screen touch.

She doesn’t say anything more, so I pull up Origin Pro and ImageJ and get to work.

Mary is wearing her pink dress. It’s nothing too fancy, but she wears it for special occasions only; it reaches her knees and has puff sleeves and a heart neckline. She’s done something with her hair—I don’t know what, exactly—and her face has some sort of subtle makeup on it.

I’m in a suit I asked Eva to order a week earlier. I have the rings in my pocket, and I can feel Marissa’s eyes on me as I approach. I feel underdressed despite having done my best to look professional.

Mary’s met Eva three days earlier, when we were signing the marriage licence. Normally, Eva would probably need some more paperwork, but I suppose while being Miss World Dictator doesn’t grant her immunity from misogyny, it does make it so that the government of San Francisco doesn’t care she isn’t a United States citizen.

Eva is wearing her normal clothes. The only difference is that she has a darker shade of lipstick and her shoes have a 2,5-inch heel instead of her typical flat or 1 inch preference. Yes, I know what shoes she wears now. I’m such a good fake husband.

With Eva, there are two other people.

Her mother is tall and fat. She’s wearing a dress, dark blue and mid-length; it’s simple enough that I think I see where Eva gets her idea of what is appropriate attire for what is essentially a wedding ceremony. Her hair is grey and reaches below her shoulders, dips into the folds of her skin where it’s uncovered. She has an expression so similar to Eva’s that I need to let my eyes wander between the two of them a few times to make sure I’m not seeing double.

Her father is shorter, though not by a lot. He looks utterly unremarkable, which would maybe be a mean thought but it’s true. Just a man in his late sixties, walking with a cane. He’s smiling at me, and that’s strange.

Eva and her mother are talking quickly, something in Dutch. I catch a word that I think I’ve gathered means “boy”, nothing more.

I realise I don’t know how to introduce myself, so I just approach the man and extend my hand.

“I’m Ryland Grace,” I say.

He pulls me into a hug.

Okay, then.

He starts talking to me in Dutch, and I try to tell him I don’t understand but I’m still being squeezed by this surprisingly strong almost-70-year-old.

He finally releases me. I can hear Marissa laughing. If I was a lesser man and not a very good teacher, I would give her the middle finger from behind my back.

“Florian Gijsbert Stratt,” he takes my hand and shakes it firmly.

His wife puts a hand on his shoulder and says something. He lets go and I’m suddenly very grateful that Eva’s mom exists.

“Hello,” she says to me. I almost jump. She has a beautiful, pleasant voice when she talks in English, a little lower than in her native tongue. “You’re Ryland, yes? I’m Katrijn. Good to meet you, finally.”

Eva smiles slightly. I nod at Katrijn, uncertain how to respond.

Mary places a hand on my shoulder, and I do jump this time. People have really decided they want to scare me today.

“Marissa, Ry’s friend,” she nods at the Stratts. “Are we going in?”

So we go inside. And then I get married.

The guard at the prison puts a hand on my chest when I try to walk past and puts his other hand out, palm up. I stare at it, more confused than anything.

“Your ring,” he says. I blink a few times, confused about what he means. I don’t wear rings, what is he talking about?

“Your wedding ring, Dr. Grace,” Eva says.

I quickly remove it and drop it into his palm, hoping the warmth on my face isn’t visible. I keep forgetting we’re married. It’s not as though anything has changed—she still drags me around various meetings, I still give her a weekly report, and she still shoots the one-word command of “coffee” in my direction sometimes and expects me to drop everything to see it done.

I look over to her, expecting her to hand her ring as well, but she doesn’t. Her hands are clasped together in front of her, and she starts arguing with the guard about not needing to be searched. I step in when they try to search her mouth, trying to do something like damage control.

She relents, eventually, and hands over her Taser. She must be tired, to let it go, though this also wasn’t an issue that deserved more of her attention, so I assume the efficient solution ended up being the one she opted for, even if she doesn’t appreciate it; and I don’t even need to look at her to know she hated to give in.

She tries to walk by the guards and forward. Easton clears his throat again and is already reaching out to stop her with a touch.

I quickly grab her hand; I don’t think any of us would survive this if she decided that Easton’s touch on her arm was a great disrespect, which she would have. So, I slide the ring off her finger while she’s still processing, and hand it to him.

“Your ring,” I tell her quietly. She blinks and nods. We walk into the prison.

It’s silly, but when we get out and I can put my ring back on, it’s a comforting weight on my finger. It’s only been two months. I’m already too used to it to not miss it when gone.

My Stratt-issued business phone buzzes and I open it to see an email that has no subject line. The sender is Eva, so I click on it, fidgeting with the ring around my neck as I relax into the couch in the breakroom.

There isn’t much in the message; only an attachment and a few lines of text. The attachment is a picture of me in the lab. My glasses are everywhere except where they’re supposed to be and I’m biting my lip, concentrating way too hard considering I’m only pipetting.

The text simply says “Jacobson wants to put this in an Instagram post. I think it’s cute.”

I walk to Eva’s office, though running would be a more accurate description. I grab my laptop, just in case I need a weapon to whack somebody with—her or me, I’m not sure yet.

“Eva,” I walk in without knocking.

She raises her head up. She looks tired and almost ready to yell before she realises it’s me. I find some comfort in that.

I close the door behind me.

“Since when do you call me…” I’m blushing. This is terrible. “cute?”

She shrugs.

“Do I need an exact date?”

“No, just,” I sit down. “It’s weird.”

“It is?

Damn her. Now I feel weird for bringing it up.

“Don’t put that picture up there. I’m gonna look like an idiot.”

“We already have one where you look like an idiot, and it’s apparently hot and you’re a sexy, smart scientist and I should—”

I put my head in my hands.

I get Eva’s suitcase from luggage collection and grab my own bag with my other hand when I am intercepted by a group of four people with notepads. One of them even has a microphone and what looks to be a portable recorder.

My mind goes blank.

“Doctor Grace, hi, I’m from—”

“Anne Lithe from US Weekly, would you like to—”

“Jeffrey, NYC Post, may I record—”

“I have to go find my wife!” I yell, because I’m stupid, so terribly stupid, and then I run with our suitcases through the airport and all but crash into Eva. She looks at me with her surprised blank expression, which is only different from her normal face in that her eyes are open wider and there’s a tiny crease in her forehead. She’s holding three coffees. She hands one to me.

“Something happen?”

“No,” I lie through my teeth.

So then everybody knows we’re married.

We go to a conference, and Eva holds me by the hand so that we don’t separate. I can feel the metal of her ring dig against my finger, and her cold hand rests comfortably in mine. It’s nice. I like holding hands with people. There hasn’t been much opportunity for that since my last romantic relationship, and those times, it felt different. A little more forced, perhaps.

She doesn’t pay attention to me. Come to think of it, I think I’m leading us through the crowd, because she’s on her phone. I should probably start paying attention.

It used to be that our seats would be awkwardly arranged to be together; or more so, Eva would show up with her pet scientist and people would pretend that was totally normal and push an additional chair up to the table. Eva mostly didn’t inform them I’d be there. She still didn’t, but now there was always a chair already there, closer to hers than the normal spacing.

It was stupid. I was her friend then, and I still am. But now it’s somehow special.

She lets go of my hand as we sit, and the conference starts and I’m not thinking about it anymore.

She puts her bag up on the bed and I hover in the doorframe.

“Are you waiting for something, Grace?” she started calling me Grace again, when we’re alone. It feels different, now. It’s a nickname without truly being one.

“No,” I say. I stretch out my hands and start sliding my ring around. “Why didn’t you tell them we needed separate rooms?”

She looks up.

“I forgot,” she looks to the side and sighs. “And do we?”

I’ve developed a sort of immunity to Eva Stratt shocking revelations, so I sigh and come inside, finally closing the door. I sit at the edge of the bed as she pulls out her toiletries.

“We’ve never slept together before.”

“I slept on your shoulder on the plane,” she says.

I roll my eyes.

“In a bed, I mean.”

“First time for everything,” she says.

Well. She is right.

I exit Eva’s office after our weekly meeting ran slightly over time and meet DuBois’ eyes. He’s moving his brows suggestively. My hand instinctively goes to fidget with my ring, which is still on a necklace because I was at the lab earlier and forgot to move it, and it’s a great fidget toy when it’s like this.

“Dr. Grace! How’s your…” he raises his eyebrows. “Wife?” He does so twice more.

I may be oblivious, but this is too much, even for me.

“Fine! She’s fine!” I croak.

I hate everybody on this darn carrier.

I shiver in my bed. I’ve piled two blankets on top of me. It was a futile effort to compensate for the temperature. The carrier has no central heating and so when it gets cold, properly freezing, we’re left to deal with it with only our clothes. The dormitory I sleep in now also has two other scientists in it—we’ve needed to reorganise room assignments as the crew of the ship expanded, so long gone are the days of me getting to sleep alone and have any real personal space. It’s not the best, but I get it. Problem is, I used to have a small heater in my previous room, and I’ve lost it when we reorganised.

I rub my arms, trying to regain a semblance of warmth.

I get a stupid idea. However, I’ve discovered in the past few months that many of my stupid ideas seem to work out for me, or at least have no negative consequences, so I think “heck, why not”.

I get out of bed, quietly as I can. I wrap a blanket around my shoulders to quell the shakes somewhat.

Eva’s room isn’t too far away. I knock, don’t wait for a response, and I come inside.

“Eva,” I whisper. She mutters something and I see a hand escape from the pile on the bed that I can faintly see the outline of. The hand waves and the pile shifts more into itself and mumbles more in Dutch. “Eva.”

I come closer and nudge her shoulder. I get slapped with her arm.

“Godverdomme, wie de fuck is—?” she stops herself. “Ryland.”

Most of her is covered with the duvet. She sleeps like she’s trying to trap herself in the bed, all wrapped up in the covers so that I don’t understand how she’s breathing in the night. Currently, I can only see her hand and the top half of her face.

“Can I sleep here?”

She yawns.

“Is there a problem with your bed?”

“I’m cold.”

She blinks a few times, clearly too asleep to understand me immediately. She fidgets, until she can open her duvet cocoon and pats the bed.

I lay down and she drapes herself around my back. Only a small bit of the duvet covers me as she once again becomes a ball of covers, but that was to be expected. She’s warm.

I decide it was a very good choice to come there.

Steve Hatch first interacts with me by yelling “Mrs. Stratt’s husband! A pleasure!” which makes me feel oddly warm. I can’t really place it. It’s nice, to be somebody’s something. Not an employee, a relation. A family.

Then he launches into a rant about the beetles. I start to think Stratt just personally hates me.

I wake up to Ilyukhina cheering loudly outside my room. I open my eyes, and it’s dark, and when I leave, it’s dark too, which means the auto-hall lights are off and its night. I check my watch, and sure enough, it’s only a minute past midnight.

“Happy Anniversary!”

Eva is pushed in my direction. She gives me a look that I’ve learned means something close to “I’m sorry” and “do something” and “watch out” so I grab her before she spins to the ground and let her steady in my arms.

“Gorzko, gorzko, gorzko!” Dr Sroka is yelling, and I didn’t even know she was here and I’m not sure what that means, but suddenly Ilyukhina joins in and then the other people who can pronounce the word do too.

“You have to kiss me,” Eva grumbles into my chest. I sigh.

“On the mouth?”

“I think so.”

I put my hand on the back of her head and push her up. Then, just to have fun with it, I move my other hand to support her lower back and dip her. It also serves to make more of a spectacle of what is a three second peck.

It’s quite nice. I haven’t kissed anybody in a while. I was never a big fan of making out, too much fluid was involved, but this is just kind of fun.

I peck her lips again, experimentally, and she reciprocates.

And in a flash we’re upright again and her hand is in mine and all I can think of as I bow like an actor and Eva crosses her arms, lets her hand link with mine again conspicuously, even if it means I have to hold my own arm at an awkward angle, is “yeah, we’re friends.”

Eva’s birthday is in August, which I find out about through her father. He insists I call him Gijs. I keep forgetting how to pronounce it.

He also loves to call me to talk about fishing. I don’t fish; I have done it maybe once in my life that I can remember. Gijsbert is not deterred by that fact. The fact that half of the words he says are in Dutch, which I can only slightly understand, is also not a bother to him. I’m starting to see that he is bothered by very little, and at the same time it’s becoming clear to me exactly what Eva got from him, personality and gene wise.

I’m not certain what I’m supposed to do for her birthday. I did nothing, last year, because I didn’t know, but back then there were less people on the carrier so personally invested in our marriage. I don’t know why they’re invested—it’s not like it’s a secret, not as if I’m hiding around corners with my boss to have sex. I just have a ring on my finger and a friend whom I occasionally bring food to when she forgets to eat for two days and nearly collapses in a meeting (it’s happened three times; she needs professional help).

Unfortunately, Mary also knows it’s Eva’s birthday, because she calls me to ask about it.

“Are you going anywhere?” she says, and I’m proud to say I quickly figure out what she’s asking me about. I’ve gotten marginally better at guessing.

“No—No, we’re not, Eva doesn’t have time.”

Marissa sighs.

“You should make her take a break. Take her out somewhere fancy, with steak and red wine. You like steak,” I try to imagine pulling Eva away from work with steak and wine and almost lose it right that second. We’ll be moving off the carrier in a month or so, so she has her hands full of planning for the transfer, on top of everything else. I think at that point I’d just end up overboard.

“She’s the one with the money, Mary, I don’t think expensive dinner is really our style.”

“Then do you have a gift?” I can hear that she’s doing something as she’s talking to me. I’m not surprised. She’s always been a ‘do the dishes while I talk to you’ kind of woman. “What did you do last year?”

Unfortunately for me, while I’ve gotten better at guessing when people are talking to me about Eva without saying so directly, I have not gotten any better at lying.

“Uh…”

“You didn’t do anything!?”

“No, no, I…” I rack my brain for something. What do people do when it’s their wife’s birthday?

Marissa doesn’t even let me finish. She already doesn’t believe me.

“Call her, and then you two are going out to dinner. I don’t care. Lisa’s husband works in management at that fancy place on Jackson, I’ll figure it out.” I cringe, though I couldn’t stop her if I tried. “Seriously, Ryland, I didn’t think you were this dumb.”

Eva didn’t take me anywhere for my birthday, and Marissa didn’t seem nearly as outraged by that fact, so I’m not sure why this is such a big deal. When Mary sets her mind to something, it’s happening, come hell or high water, so I can’t do anything now.

I pull out my non-personal phone and call Eva.

“Mary is making us go to dinner,” I say.

“I’m busy.”

“You’re going to dinner with me.”

“I’m not.”

“Believe me, I didn’t think you would want to, but Mary will have her friend’s husband spy on us.”

“I don’t care if Marissa is mad,” she says and I know she’s about to hang up so I rush the next sentence out as quickly as possible.

“She’ll be mad at me and then I’ll have to deal with it and I don’t want to deal with it!”

Eva sighs.

“You’re whining,” I can hear her type on her keyboard. “Fine. What time?”

I realise I don’t know. I tell her as much and she properly groans into the receiver. I smile. I like it—I like that I can hear her emotions, that she doesn’t just talk to me the same way as she does to everybody else.

“Happy birthday, honey,” I say cheerfully, and she swears at me in Dutch and finally hangs up.

I turn to see Shapiro in the doorway, giggling.

The restaurant is dimly lit. I’m sweating in my suit, the same one I wore for our elopement, and Eva has changed into a fully beige pantsuit at my plea that she didn’t look exactly the same as she did every other moment of her life.

I get a dish with lamb, and Eva gets a rib-eye that costs more than my weekly groceries when I was living on a teacher’s salary. She orders us wine and something called dolmathes as an entrée.

She sneaks a glance below the table as soon as our waiter leaves and I see the light of her phone as she types something into the mobile version of Microsoft Excel. I laugh. I almost make a joke about how the world won’t end if she takes a day off, but, well…

I try to shake the grim thought away. No, it’s okay if we take four hours away from the carrier. The world isn’t ending right this second.

I reach my hand out and lay it on the table, slowly walk it over to her left one which is lying flat near her plate.

She looks up when our skin makes contact.

“We put phones away at the table,” I say in my teacher voice. She looks at me as though she actually can’t believe I’m a real person, in that way that suggests I’m too stupid to exist. She does shut off her phone, though, so I count that as a win.

“Happy birthday,” I tell her.

“Oh,” she says. “It is? I thought that was a joke.”

I shouldn’t be surprised she didn’t realise. I still am.

“Your parents didn’t call you?”

“No, they did,” she shrugs. “I didn’t pick up. I thought dad wanted to rant about fishing again.”

“Oh, no, I’m getting all the talk about fishing. I’m pretty sure he calls me the second he even thinks about a fish. I know way too much about fishing, now.”

She frowns slightly.

“How often does he call you? It doesn’t impact your work, does it?”

I laugh.

“No, I pick up and use him as a podcast. Did you know that pike is snoek in Dutch? He caught a meter long pike last week. And he’s experimenting with new lures—”

She squeezes my hand.

“Stop talking. No more fishing.”

I pretend to be offended.

“But Eva! I love fishing! It’s the only thing I want to talk about, now!”

She puts her head in her hands and her shoulders start to shake. I’m pretty proud of myself; maybe Marissa was right. She was too stressed, and this will probably be the only time until launch when she can relax.

The waiter brings us the strange dish, which looks like stuffed leaves, and the wine. Eva is still silently laughing when he leaves.

I see a tear fall down her face. She wipes it off and clears her throat. She’s solemn, again.

“Thank you, Grace,” she says. “It feels like I lose a piece of myself every day. I’m glad you kept this one alive.”

I try to not start crying.

We talk about everything and nothing, about my favourite musical and about Mary and about Eva’s only friend from college whom she hasn’t seen in years, and about her flat in Almere and her favourite vacation spot in Norway, and about how she used to swim competitively in her teen years and about my favourite students. We don’t mention the project, not beyond me telling her my favourite microbiology fun facts.

“… so they don’t have the typical membrane,” I say, between sips of wine and bites of my lamb. It’s so flavourful and good and I don’t think I’ve eaten something this rich ever in my life. “They’re classified as Gram positive—I told you what that is, right?—but they don’t really fit there, build wise. They’ve got these really long acids in the membrane—it’s called a mycomembrane, by the way—called mycolic acids, but also interesting is that there’s this additional layer of a sugar polymer between the cell wall and this additional membrane sort of layer, and some of those acids bind to it! And the acids make them really resistant to a lot of treatments, because it means a lot of substances finds it hard to get through that thick layer, which is also hydrophobic because they’re fatty acids!”

Eva nods. She swallows a bite of her own food.

“What’s the largest bacteria?” she asks.

“Thiomargarita magnifica,” I say. “Wait, let me look up a picture, they’re a whole centimetre long…”

I don’t notice as the time passes, and I’m surprised that it’s fully dark outside when we leave. Eva arranges a private jet for us both and she lays her head on my shoulder, even though the flight isn’t going to be long. The wine buzzes in my veins pleasantly and I feel just tipsy enough to also lay my head on her own.

“Thank you,” she says again. “For being my friend.”

I feel like I should respond, but I don’t know how to. So instead, I simply grab her left hand with my own, let our rings clink quietly against each other as I squeeze it and hum.

Martin DuBois trips over something and falls down the stairs on his way out of a storage closet with Annie Shapiro, promptly breaking his leg, three weeks before launch.

Eva receives the news during our weekly meeting, while I’m sitting there and pretending not to listen in on the conversation. When she hangs up, she just stares straight ahead for a moment, her hand still wrapped around her phone.

“Eva…”

She picks up a pen and slams it, tip down, so hard into her desk that the wood splinters and it becomes lodged in. Her expression is as neutral as ever.

“I’m allowing myself three minutes of being absolutely livid.”

I nod. I assume that means I shouldn’t talk or even be there. I get up.

“No, stay.” She says. I sit back down.

I can hear her sigh loudly and swear under her breath for exactly three minutes. She takes a deep breath afterwards.

When I look at her again, she’s collected herself.

“I need to ask you a favour.”

I pale. The last time she asked me for a favour, we ended up getting married.

She breathes in deeply again.

“Not a favour, no. I need to tell you something,” I wait. “I need you to be the new secondary science specialist.”

I blink a few times.

“What? No.”

She isn’t joking. I clench my fists. My ring digs into the skin uncomfortably, all of a sudden.

“I can’t go to space.” I say.

“You can. You might have to,” she’s playing with her own ring, twisting it around her finger absentmindedly as she tries to catch my eyes. “You’ve been the tertiary science specialist all along.”

“Oh.”

It makes sense. I stare at my hands, feeling out of it. They don’t feel mine, they feel like they belong to someone else. My vision is a little blurry.

“For what it’s worth… I’m sorry.”

It’s not as if she’s already sending me to space. If everything goes well, Annie Shapiro will go. Just the thought, though, just the possibility that I’ll have to go, is sending shivers down my spine.

“What about all the other people on the list. There was a list, I remember, can’t you ask one of them?”

She sets her face. I haven’t had her angry at me since before we got married, and I’d forgotten how it felt to receive that stare.

“And what, you teach them in three weeks what it took you thirteen months to teach Dr. DuBois and Dr. Shapiro?”

I swallow. My hands are shaking.

“You can’t ask this of me.”

“I am.”

I sniffle and wipe my eyes.

“Can I at least think about it?”

I dare look at her. She looks up at the ceiling for a moment and takes another deep breath before looking at me again. Her expression is softer than before, but her eyes glare at me with some sort of unnamed ardour.

“When I married you, I married a brave man. Don’t let me be wrong about that.”

I take in a shuddering breath. Some part of me wants to be dramatic, to take my ring off and throw it in her face. I stay still, my hands squeezing my thighs.

“You married me because it was convenient.”

“I married you because I needed a husband and because we’re friends.”

“Friends don’t send each other to space to die, “ I say. My voice begins to raise hysterically.

“Then I will send you there as your wife.”

I don’t try to hide that I’m crying. It’s not the first time she’s seen it. I cross my arms and take some deep breaths, looking upwards.

I don’t want to agree. Her words shouldn’t help. They do. There’s something oddly tragic in it, and in a way, it feels like a big fuck you to everybody. Ryland Grace finally gets married and his wife sends him to space so he can die for the world. A poetic summary of my feelings about romantic relationships.

I don’t think spite is a good motivation to die for everybody. The idea that my kids will have to live in this hellscape that is about to come is also something that comes to my mind, and that sounds close enough to a good reason.

And then it’s the fact that it’s Eva who’s asking this of me. She has the world on her shoulders, literally.

“Okay,” I say. My voice breaks, but I don’t care. “I’ll be your secondary.”

She comes over to me. I don’t know what she’s going to do—half of me thinks she’s going to slap me so I don’t look like she just told me my dog died when I leave her office.

She wraps her arms around my head and pushes my face into her stomach. I automatically hug her legs.

A week later Annie Shapiro finds out she’s pregnant and thus comes my promotion to Hail Mary’s primary science specialist.

It’s two days before launch. I sit next to Eva on her bed, looking at our intertwined hands, at our matching wedding bands.

“You know,” I say, because I have to say something. “I’ve started to get the ‘I hate my wife’ jokes even less since we got married. I don’t even love you like that and I don’t think I could ever hate you.”

She turns to me. I don’t see her face either way, because of the angle, but I feel the movement.

“I’m sending you on a suicide mission.”

“Eh,” I say. “I’ve had two weeks to get good at denial.”

She squeezes my hand.

“You have to accept it eventually. Don’t let it compromise—”

I pull away so I can meet her eyes.

“You trust me, don’t you? I’ll make you proud.”

She smiles sadly.

“I’m sure you will.”

I have to start thinking about something else, or I’m going to start crying.

“You can make the joke, now,” I say. “My first husband turned into Tau Ceti, or something.”

“What?”

I laugh.

“It’s from “Avatar: The Last Airbender”. You’ve never seen it?”

She shakes her head.

“You should watch it. You’ll like Azula… and Katara too, I think.”

She purses her lips.

“I’d rather watch it with you.”

Well, fudge you too, Eva Stratt, I think. And I start crying.

They put me into a coma before we even launch to the ISS. There’s not been any time to give me necessary training, and it was collectively decided that I’d only freak out and cause problems. So I’m in a coma about two weeks earlier than either Yáo or Ilyukhina.

I blow Eva a kiss, feeling somewhat high, as they count me down. Carl is holding my hand and he squeezes it. She just smiles.

Someone has messed up and both Yáo and Ilyukhina remain comatose for the exact same amount of time as me—meaning that I spend almost three weeks alone in space.

Except I don’t. Because I meet an alien. Isn’t that cool?

The alien’s name—or rather, the name I assigned him—is Rocky. He looks like, well, like a rock. He’s an engineer whose crewmates are all dead, which makes me feel so very sympathetic towards him; I can’t even imagine what that would have been like, what I would have done if I didn’t know that I only needed to wait a while longer to see other humans again. We talk with the aid of a translator. Rocky asks me to watch him sleep, so I do.

He moves in just as Ilyukhina wakes up. That’s a fun conversation, especially fun because I’m half carrying, half pushing around a rather heavy ball with a rock inside of it when it happens.

To her credit, Ilyukhina takes everything in stride rather quickly. It’s a bit disconcerting. It reminds me of Eva’s dad.

“I’m Olesya,” she says after five seconds of staring at Rocky. “You?”

“Rocky,” I turn the laptop towards her so she can look at the translation.

She catches my eyes over the screen.

“I slept for how long?”

“Three weeks longer than me.”

She curses in Russian.

“I can’t believe I missed first contact!”

Then she finds out Rocky is an engineer and I have no hope of getting either of them back. I end up falling asleep, sprawled around Rocky’s ball.

What can I say? I get attached easily. I did get married five months into knowing a woman, after all.

The launch happened late December, which means none of us got to have a Christmas. I’m not particularly bothered, but Olesya bemoans the loss, and has been torturing us all by singing Russian carols. She likes to do it especially when I’m trying to work in the lab.

The natural conclusion of this comes in the form of me, Rocky and her, sitting together in the Don’t Go Crazy room and watching her favourite Christmas movies on a laptop. It turns out Ilyukhina has a horrible taste in movies. We’ve watched The Christmas Switch (which Rocky hated, because there was so much food), The Knight Before Christmas (which Rocky decided was great, for some reason) and Christmas Wedding Planner. Now we’re making our way through The Christmas Prince saga.

I turn to Olesya, to ask her if she’s had enough, so I never have to watch another holiday romantic comedy again; she’s had the audacity to fall asleep. Her head slowly slides deeper into my lap.

I sigh and lean more on Rocky’s ball. At least I’ve found gummy bears in our food storage, so I get to have something fun to eat while I suffer.

We’ve reached a wedding scene. I’m hoping that means the movie is ending and that my torment will end alongside it. Or that maybe Yáo has had enough time to steer us how we’re meant to be and I can go collect samples of Astrophage.

“What’s the meaning of ring, question?” Rocky asks. I stare at the screen and sure enough, the man character is sliding a ring on the woman character’s finger.

“Oh, it’s a way for humans to tell each other they’re taken. To remember,” I say, popping a bunch more gummy bears into my mouth. Rocky makes a disgusted sound and I smile as I chew. “It’s just a nice way of showing they have someone they committed to.”

Rocky freezes. I don’t notice for a good few seconds, not until I get the pressing sensation that he’s staring at me, his lack of eyes irrelevant.

I turn to face him. He’s jittering, something like shaking from excitement or anger, I’m not sure.

“Rocky?” I ask.

“Grace have ring,” he points, and oh no. “Grace have mate? Why Grace no say!?”

I hold up my hands before he can get too excited, though I can already hear a familiar sound, a repeating joyful and confused song start to escape from him.

“No, no, no!” he freezes again. Deflates, a little. I sigh and run a hand down my face. “It’s… complicated.”

“Complicated?” he asks, in that pitch that rings of human stupid. “So Grace no have mate? Why ring if no mate?”

I can feel myself blushing, and I instinctively look away from him a little. It’s not as though I have anything to worry about with him; he’s not another human, this isn’t going to be one of those conversations. It’s an instinct, though.

“I… Not exactly.”

“Grace make no sense.”

I swallow.

“I’m married—that’s the ceremony, the… officially becoming mates—but I’m not Eva’s actual mate. It was just convenient.”

Rocky tilts his carapace. I feel Olesya shift in my lap.

“So Grace have mate by ceremony but not real mate.” He mulls it over. “Confusing.”

“Yeah, pal,” I laugh. “But we were friends. Believe it or not, that’s more than some men can say about their wife—uh, female ceremonial mate. I just never really felt like I could have that; like I could be married. It was fun.”

That’s the moment Olesya seems to break and shoots up in my lap.

“You weren’t actually sleeping with Stratt!?”

So then I have to explain everything.

On a random night on the way to Erid, while we watch Yáo and Ilyukhina sleep, Rocky turns the laptop in my direction. He’s got it in a little enclosure that lets him type away on the keys with some robot arms without ever having to touch it. It’s convenient.

On the screen is something called the LGBTQIA+ Wiki. I think I’ve seen that website a few times. The one that is pulled up now has the word “Aromantic” in big letters and a flag on the side, with some smaller text beneath it all—what I assume to be a description.

“Rocky think Grace is this.”

I read a few words, scroll a little to read more, and laugh slightly.

“You know what, pal? Yeah.”