Work Text:
Stratt is reviewing reports from the Astrophage labs when it happens. Something scratches at her throat, then she's coughing up a single white petal. It lands on the blue folder, a soft and dainty little thing. She holds it up to the light, puzzled.
Probably blown in by the wind.
Never mind the fact that she's indoors, on a ship in the middle of an ocean, and the only plant around is the remains of the salad that Grace dropped off with the files.
The petal ends up in the bin under her desk.
—
Lokken waves at her from the deck where they used to smoke together—well, smoke near each other in silence. She nods in reply as she walks by.
It's been a month since she'd quit smoking, thanks to Grace's nagging and Lamai's medical advice that it doesn't help the persistent cough she'd suddenly developed.
She absently scratches at her arm, where today's nicotine patch is.
The cravings have lessened, but she finds herself picking the skin around her nails more than she'd like to. She wears longer-sleeved sweaters, ones that go past her hands, but it doesn't escape the notice of her lead Astrophage researcher.
Grace gives her a spinner ring to fidget with, red-faced and stammering when she opens the box and raises her brow. It's silent and discreet, perfect for when she's in meetings.
It replaces the decoy ring on her finger. It's a good gift.
She doesn't stop coughing.
—
Her bin fills up with petals, a mix of pristine whites and old rotten ones.
The coughing fits become more intense, and harder to hide.
She's working from her office this week, claiming illness. Nothing too serious, but she doesn't want to risk infecting the crew. Technically not a lie.
There is timid knocking at her door, and she hears crinkling of plastic before her visitor leaves. She knows from the cadence of the knock, from the sound of his footsteps that it's Grace. He'd left a care package containing her preferred tea, some herbal remedies, crackers, lotion, cozy socks, and a soft scarf, from everyone on the ship. The sticky note, however, only has one person's handwriting.
"Get well soon, boss. It's getting rowdy out here without you. - Grace"
She doubles over as another round of wheezing and hacking starts, and bits of gardenia litter her desk.
—
Dr. Lamai recognizes it immediately.
Hanahaki disease, she said. An illness of one-sided love. Fatal, if unreciprocated or untreated.
Absolutely ridiculous.
A disease that makes one's survival entirely dependent on another person returning their feelings, or risk a surgical procedure that removes every trace of that love.
Stratt combs the Internet, reads every journal article she can get her hands on. It's all of them, thanks to her government access.
She hadn't even really thought of herself capable. Not of love—she loves many things and have been in relationships in her youth. But of love so deep and encompassing that it had literally taken roots in her lungs, growing and growing until it chokes the breath out of her? Inconceivable.
She stares at the soup cooling on her desk. Another delivery from Grace. He'd waited for her to open the door this time. She thinks of how the worry in his brow shifted into a bashful grin when he realized that she's wearing the scarf from the care package, one he'd evidently picked out.
Fondness squeezes at her heart, and her sigh makes her cough up a small petal, this time.
Of course it's him.
It's always been him.
—
She really mucked things up for herself, she thinks, surfacing from another round of filling up her poor desk bin with petals. Her throat aches, and tears streak her cheeks, body protesting against the foreign objects lodged in her lungs.
She'd gone over Ryland Grace's file cover to cover, read his controversial (and oddly defensive) paper, and heard firsthand accounts of his outburst at the UNESCO conference. A stubborn, persistent, and highly intelligent scientist with a background in astrobiology with a special interest in non-water-based life forms. He could be of use to the Taskforce.
Then she saw him through the glass on the classroom door, quietly staring up at a planetary diagram and a red tape Petrova line, the whiteboard behind him filled with equations and lecture notes and a doodle of a balloon dog, for some reason.
That should've been sign enough to leave him alone.
She expected someone proud and arrogant. She's used to dealing with men like that. But there she was, standing in front of a guy making knock-knock jokes at a stranger and talking about lava beanbags.
Then there he was, on her boat, wearing nerdy (frankly unprofessional) shirts, eating Twizzlers he'd pluck from behind his ears, but still managing to earn the respect of the other scientists on the project with his smarts and good-naturedness.
And because he is who he is, he brings her coffees, and nags her about sleeping and eating well, as though he isn't guilty of the same with his overtime lab activities and steady diet of cheap candy. He becomes her number two without realizing it. It took her a while to realize it too, but by the time she did, it seemed the most natural thing in the world.
Of course it's him.
She stares at the gardenia petals in the bin, delicate and pure. Touches her chest, where they bloom beneath her ribs.
What she feels for Grace is a precious thing.
It's a small flame, stoked every time he walks into a room and smiles in her direction.
A soft warm glow, wholly hers.
But Ryland Grace is not.
—
This cannot go further.
For the sake of the mission, this cannot go further.
—
Stratt emails Dr. Lamai and schedules the surgery.
—
Recovery's going smoothly. Luckily the damage wasn't too extensive, as they'd caught it before she started expelling full blooms. She had to go off-ship for the procedure, but thanks to modern medicine and access to the most advanced medical technology due to her affiliation with the project, the surgery wasn't as invasive as an open thoracotomy.
Stratt is still taking it easy on her lungs on doctor's orders, but otherwise she is back on her full workload, like nothing ever happened.
Well, almost nothing.
She picks up her own meal from the mess hall, and nods at the table where some of the staff are gathered. Komorov applauds jovially, exclaiming how great it is to see their dear Comrade Director back. Grace has a fork halfway to his mouth, and his eyes go to the container of food in her hand before panning up to her face. He gestures at her with his fork, but his smile doesn't quite reach his eyes.
Must've been an off-day for him.
She eats inside her office.
—
"Glad to see you up and about," Grace says, falling in step beside her, as he's always done.
"I trust everything went well even in my absence?"
He grins. "We held the fort down."
"Good to hear."
She holds her hand out for today's reports, and he stares at it until she calls his name.
"Sorry," he says, chuckling awkwardly, before launching into a summary of the latest development on their Astrophage breeding research.
After, in her office, Stratt inspects her hand for what Grace got fixated on.
No cuts, no scars, nothing unusual.
She's wearing her plain gold band again. She had stopped picking the skin around her nails at some point and needed the spinner ring that Grace had given her less and less. It sits in her desk drawer.
It was a good gift. She just has no use for it anymore.
—
She catches a glimpse of her surgical scars in the mirror while she pulls on a sweater, and she pauses, tracing the small incisions on her chest with a finger.
What a fascinating thing to suffer from—love.
Who would've thought it would happen to her, and to such a destructive extent?
She tilts her head, trying to recall. The face of the one she loved. Anything about them at all. It appears as an amorphous blob in her mind, and some part of her twinges. How sad to have had such strong feelings for someone that it almost destroyed her from the inside out and to have no remnants of it at all. She supposes that's the point of the surgery, and it was a success.
She shrugs on the sweater and finishes getting ready for the day.
The mission comes first.
—
Grace is trying to quit.
Well, he's trying to go home. Says his work is over.
He's talking incessantly at her as they walk, a little fly in her ear. He has a tendency to do this.
"I miss my freedom. The stupid little things. Walking the pier, going to baseball games, eating ice cream... "
"There’s ice cream in the commissary."
"It’s not the same. I’m talking about fresh soft serve. It's not about specifics, I just miss life."
"I understand," she says, stopping in her tracks to really look at him. "But that's the exact thing we're trying to save here."
He wilts in front of her, looking so disappointed, and an extraordinary urge to reassure him, to make him feel better, bubbles up in her, and she speaks before she knows how the sentence will end.
"I need you to stay."
His blue eyes widen and glimmer with something like hope, so bright that she has to look away.
"You're…needed here in other capacities, Dr. Grace," she says, swallowing down a lump in her throat. "I hope you'll continue to assist us in the mission."
She nods in his direction and leaves.
Grace does not call after her.
An ice cream machine shows up at the mess hall four days later, to loud cheering from the Gansu's occupants.
—
The first thing she becomes aware of upon awakening is the crick in her neck, then the lack of circulation in the arm where her head is currently pillowed. She must've fallen asleep in her office again. The next is delicious warmth, and the smell of wood and iris, familiar and comforting.
Grace's knitted fox cardigan is wrapped around her shoulders.
She lifts her head, and there he is: laid out on her couch, his laptop on the floor, papers littered around him like confetti.
He'd taken to dropping by her office when they're both working late. She'd said that she didn't need company and that she functioned better without distractions. He argued that body doubling actually increases motivation and efficiency, promising silence and an ornamental presence. That one he bulldozed through the first night, but somehow she really did end up being more productive, and a routine was formed. Most nights they finish up at a decent (debatable) hour and manage to crawl back to their respective beds before sunrise. Some nights are rougher.
She walks over to where he's sleeping peacefully with his arms crossed. Observes his relaxed brows and the lines on his face etched by his cheery personality, the crinkles around his eyes that deepen every time he smiles. He'd made himself valuable to the project by his brilliance, and to the crew by being an excellent teacher and a friend. Everything is just a little lighter when he's around.
He makes things bright, she thinks. Like the sun.
She tries to suppress a cough but it makes its way out anyway, and his eyes flutter open at the sound.
"Sorry," she whispers.
"Is it time already?" he asks, still half-asleep, shifting to rest on his left side. More papers scatter to the floor.
"No, it's still early," she says, draping the cardigan over him. "Go back to sleep."
"Mmm, okay," he mumbles, nuzzling into the warmth.
Something in Stratt's chest tightens, and she grits her teeth against it.
—
She'd just finished four consecutive meetings when raucous noise erupts from somewhere in the ship. Her radio remains quiet; no one has pinged her about any emergencies.
A good number of her crew and staff are gathered—decidedly not at their stations—on the flight deck, with some leaning over the rails, some pointing excitedly at the horizon.
Some of them fall quiet as they register her presence. She's used to it.
Grace whips around, and his face breaks into a wide smile when he spots her. He waves her over. "Stratt, you gotta see this!"
"Dr. Grace, I'm quite busy—"
He jumps down from where he's standing on a lower rung and jogs over to where she is, breathless. "Five minutes. Just come look. I promise it's worth it."
"Come on," he says, tugging at her sleeve. He's not even really touching her. She lets herself be dragged anyway.
Ilyukhina claps in delight as Stratt and Grace rejoin them, and Yao raises a pair of binoculars back to his eyes after greeting Stratt. Tension broken, the crew starts tittering again, searching the water for something.
Sunlight gleams off the waves rippling across the surface of the ocean. It's lovely, but nothing they haven't been seeing all this time they've been on the carrier. Then—
"There!" Grace says, hand suddenly clamping around her wrist. She stares at him in surprise, but he's looking out into the water, as is everyone else. She follows their gazes, and she gasps.
A humongous whale breaches the surface, emerging from the wine-dark depths with a leap, spinning as it flops back into the ocean.
Several whales from the pod follow, some spraying water from their blowholes, some fluking, lifting their tails into the air before descending into deeper waters.
Beautiful, majestic creatures.
She wonders how much they know. If they can feel the Earth dying.
Surely they can tell that there's something wrong with the water. Do they have their own plans to save their species? Or have they resigned themselves to a fate they can't change?
If the Hail Mary succeeds, maybe the whales will get to live too.
She looks at Grace, who's already gazing intently at her with eyes so blue she could drown in them. His hand is still on her wrist, his touch searing.
Then he grins at her, and she finds it absolutely devastating.
—
She'd told Grace that camaraderie does nothing for her job.
It doesn't mean that she doesn't care for these people. It's just not helpful to her work or to anyone's for her to outwardly care.
She orders shirts and caps emblazoned with the mission patch for the crew to keep. She doesn't need to own one.
Eva won't be able to look her friends in the eyes knowing that they will dim in the furthest reaches of space in a coffin she'd built for them, which is why she doesn't have friends. Stratt has colleagues. She will shake their hands and thank them for their sacrifice, making sure that their affairs are in order on Earth, their families taken care of after the launch.
Eva would plead to stay with her staff and see this project to the end, continuing to do whatever is necessary for the human race to survive. Stratt will present her wrists for the cuffs, marching to a cell with her head held high, because they can take her work away and lock her up, but the absolute knowledge that she did what she could will always be hers to keep in her heart.
Grace had described the crew party as "weird." In a way, it is: Li is singing with a glass in his hand, forgoing musical accompaniment; Shapiro and DuBois are whispering to each other, as if they're the only two people in the room; and Yao, Ilyukhina, and Sood exchange stories animatedly, ignoring the lovebirds. The rest of the staff mingle and drink and laugh and hug each other, without a care in the world.
Not weird, she thinks. Warm. She lingers by the door, like a camper would near a bonfire on a cold night, hands held up to the flame.
Grace is by himself at the bar, scribbling something down on some papers. It's so odd for him to be so isolated, especially in this crowd.
Maybe that's what drives her to cross the room and pick up the mic. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to be weird with her crew, just this once. They could all chalk it up to a dream.
"Just stop your crying, it's a sign of the times / welcome to the final show / I hope you're wearing your best clothes"
The entire room watches her, entranced, and she couldn't stop the smile that breaks out on her face if she tried.
It feels good to let her voice out like this again. To sing, instead of commanding; to use someone else's words to convey a message, poignant and hopeful, instead of her own terse ones.
Her eyes catch on Grace, whose full attention is now turned to her, his soft gaze following her every move.
The song is for the crew, and they cheer, raising their drinks to her.
This part is for him, and she meets his eyes, unflinching.
"Remember everything will be alright / we can meet again someday / somewhere far away from here"
A smile plays on his lips.
Her chest rumbles, and she loses her nerve. Her throat starting to constrict, she ends the song and makes a quick exit, avoiding everyone's eyes as they applaud.
She feels his eyes on her anyway.
She all but runs to her quarters, bypassing the bin under her desk, straight to the bathroom, where she unloads lungfuls of white petals into the toilet.
Damn it.
—
"Stratt, hey. Stratt!"
She jolts awake to Grace kneeling in front of her on the bathroom floor, shaking her by the shoulders.
Grace is here. He's here. Is he?
He watches her eyes flit to him. "Are you okay?"
"I had them taken care of," she mumbles, half-delirious. "Why are they back now?"
He ducks his head low to look at her face, alarmed. "You—Hanahaki—what did you do?"
A thought flickers at the edges of her consciousness, but she's too exhausted to even think.
She nods in reply.
His face twists, expression pained, for a second. It happens so quickly she isn't sure she did not imagine it.
They sit in silence as she slowly comes back to herself. Grace speaks after a while, and despite herself, she smiles a little. He could never stand long silences, preferring to fill dead air with random trivia or some inane commentary.
"I can't believe you had surgery. That's really hardcore."
She huffs, feeling chastised. There's something that feels almost childish about this situation, although it could just be the fact that they're sitting in front of her toilet with their heads so close to each other that loosens her tongue.
"What else was I supposed to do? I have a project to lead."
"Uh, I don't know, actually confess?"
"And get rejected? I refuse to die from love."
He flinches at the word, and she realizes that it came out more bitterly than she'd meant. She's just so tired of having these feelings she neither asked for nor wanted.
Wanting.
The literal root of all this.
"You're not going to die," he says, like it's a simple fact of life, certain and final.
"And how do you know this?"
"Anyone would be out of their minds not to love you back." He shrugs. Looks away.
Right. She scoffs at the notion.
"I'm serious, Stratt. Any person you choose to love should be so lucky."
The concept of her choosing who gets to rake over her lungs to make a garden in it is so absurd it makes her laugh.
"Grace, why would I choose any of this?" She wheezes, and a couple of petals make their way out into the hand she'd raised to cover her mouth.
He stares at the flowers in anguish.
"Tell me who it is," he pleads. "I'll get them."
"That won't be necessary. This is between me and my flowers."
She tries to stand up but Grace reaches for her wrist, and the warmth of his skin on hers, and his knitted brows, beseeching, makes her chest tight. She doubles over with another coughing fit, one that scrapes her throat raw, and gardenias scatter across the tiles, a few landing on Grace's jeans despite her best efforts.
He gathers her to his chest when it subsides. Rubs comforting circles on her back with his thumb.
"I'm tired."
"Sleep," he whispers. "I'm here."
The fight drained out of her, she lets herself lean into him. She basks in his warmth, his heartbeat in her ear a comforting reminder of his presence.
There is no choosing, Dr. Grace, she wants to say.
And as she drifts off to slumber, the persistent tugging in the back of her mind comes to focus.
It's only ever been him.
—
She wakes up cozy in her bed. For a moment she thinks that she’d dreamt about Grace and the bathroom, but a soft clicking noise draws her attention to him typing on his laptop from an armchair.
“Wh—,” she tries, but only a croak comes out.
Grace is out of the chair and pouring her some water in record time. He’s taking care of her, as he always does. Not that she’s ever done anything to deserve it, of course. This is just the kind of person he is.
Her stomach twists.
She sits up, pushing past the ache in her throat. "Why are you still here?"
His face falls, but he recovers quickly, the corner of his lips quirking up into a half-smile.
"Hey, I'm pretty sure I mentioned I'd be here,” he says, matter-of-fact. He puts the glass on her nightstand.
"I wanted to send for Dr. Lamai, but I wasn’t sure if that’s something you would’ve wanted."
There’s that word again. Wanting.
It hurts to have him here. It’s not his fault, but it hurts to have him around as a reminder of Eva’s weakness. Of her inability to excise the part of her that craves affection. Of her selfishness, the thing that will jeopardize the entire project for the sole reason that she cannot stop wanting someone who simply does not love her back.
The whole thing is one big cosmic joke, and she’s the punchline: Let her try to defy love. Watch her fall again.
She stares at the wall to her left, gripping the sheets.
A sigh escapes from Grace, then her mattress dips as he sits on her bed.
"You're thinking of getting the surgery again, aren't you?"
She looks at him then. "There's simply no other choice."
"Yes, there is," he insists, leaning closer. "There is."
"And if they don't love me back?"
"Impossible."
She doesn't understand why he's so adamant about this. She doesn't know how else to explain to him that her love is not worth anything, least of all the fate of humanity.
“Okay. Say it’s you.”
“Okay.”
“Say it’s you I’m…in love with,” she says, carefully, like carrying water in her cupped palms, hoping it wouldn’t spill. Desperately, desperately trying not to betray the truth.
He swallows, waiting for her to finish the question.
“What would you do if I told you, not feeling the same way?”
She might as well have taken a knife to her chest and offered up her bloody still-beating heart to him.
His brows wrinkle the way they do when he's contemplating a particularly complex problem. Likely trying to figure out how to let her down easy.
“See," she says, trying for a smile she cannot feel. "It’s impossible. You can’t force yourself to love me more than you can force the sun to shine at night.”
“Stratt. The sun still shines at night, the Earth is just turned away,” he says, gently.
He is so annoying.
“Oh, you know what I mean," she scoffs, rolling her eyes.
“No, no, what I’m saying is that if it was me," he says, shaking his head. "If it were me you are in love with, you wouldn’t need to suffer these flowers.”
“What?"
He releases a deep breath. Stares at her head-on, her own blue eyes reflected in his.
“I love you. I always have.”
She stills.
"You can't just be saying things like this," she manages to say, attempting to keep her voice steady. Tears start to prick at the corner of her eyes. “I know you’re trying to prove a point, but don't you think this is rather cruel, Dr. Grace?”
He scoots closer to her. “I know it’s bad timing to confess like this when you’re thinking about someone else, but I need you to understand that being in love with you is an honor, and anyone who can't see that is stupid and isn't worth your time."
She digs her nails into her palms, trying to wake herself up from this dream, and he notices, of course he notices, because he's always looking at her. He reaches for her hands, soothing the little pink crescents with his thumbs.
"Watching you in your element every day, seeing you command rooms of world leaders and argue with powerful men to give the mission every possible advantage, taking on the monumental task of saving as many people as we can, all the while making sure that your crew is comfortable and happy. You're stern and frankly kinda scary and smart and beautiful and kind, and I've never met anyone like you.
"You're it, Eva Stratt," he says, simply.
He loves her.
It feels like the first drop on a rollercoaster ride. Weightless. Infinite.
She laughs, the sound pulled deep within her chest, and she realizes that she's breathing in a way she hasn't been able to in months.
Grace, confused, starts to pull away, but in place of her flowers is a new boldness that Stratt did not possess before, and she refuses to let go, lacing her fingers in his instead.
"It's you, Grace. It's you," she says, not bothering to tamp down the smile that spreads on her face.
"I'm what?"
"The flowers. These ones, and the ones before."
"Are you—Stratt, what the heck?!" His face twists in despair, but he doesn't try to pull away from her again. "What if the first surgery took?"
She raises a brow. "It’s not like you’ve said anything to me before. Coward.”
He considers this in silence, rubbing his thumbs on the backs of her hands.
"Well, we can be cowards together.”
"Shut up."
"I won't, actually," he says, laughing. "You love me. I will literally never shut up about it.”
Suddenly feeling self-conscious, she ducks her head and looks up at him through her lashes. “And you love me?”
He nods, slowly, emphatically. "I’m so in love with you, it’s ridiculous. I’m the laughingstock of the project. Ilyukhina is bullying me on the daily."
Laughter bubbles up out of her again, and he pulls her into his arms, tucking her under his chin, and she marvels at the way she fits so neatly against him. Finally home where she belonged.
She looks up at him and the grin he gives her is dazzling. Life-giving.
And as he dips his head, claiming her lips, warmth washes over her like fire, bright and all-consuming.
Her sun, Ryland Grace.
This is what they're fighting for. The Hail Mary will launch with three brave souls onboard and the hopes of the hundreds of thousands of people who worked on the project with them, and if they succeed, billions of people will live. To usher in a new generation. To plant seeds and harvest them. To provide and to lead and to serve. To make art. To sing and dance and make music, as they please. To laugh and cry and rage and rejoice.
To love and be loved in return.