Chapter Text
Eva Stratt was confident in her assumption that she knew everything she needed to know about Ryland Grace.
It wasn’t difficult – he’s infuriatingly easy to read, displays his every emotion on his face like it’s his job. He’s kind, gentle, naïve and cowardly at times, but an excellent teacher, to both his students and to Dubois and Shapiro. He has an irritating habit of swinging wildly between staggering hubris and unbelievable modesty about his intelligence and scientific capabilities, but will gladly spend hours arguing in favour of his hypotheses to anyone who’ll listen. He appears to be physically incapable of accepting a compliment. He has no clue that he’s her second-in-command, somehow. He’s friendly with almost everyone he meets, but is reluctant enough to get close to anyone that he doesn’t seem to have many actual friends, especially not from before the project, bar a woman named Marissa who sometimes sends him care packages comprised of almost exclusively Twizzlers and Sour Skittles.
And yes, maybe he has seemed a little…off, this past week or so. The Hail Mary is only four months out from launch, so Eva assumed Grace’s unusual behaviour was due to the looming anxiety. He’s seemed warier, a little withdrawn, maybe. The astronauts all reported that he was being a little strange towards them, as well, almost clingy. Eva herself has noticed him developing a nervous habit of double-tapping the nearest surface whenever he asked a question.
But still, all of this fit into what Eva thought she previously knew about Grace. He is, as a rule, a very anxious man, and he was acting strangely because he was nervous about the launch, clearly.
And she also thought she knew that he didn’t have any friends from before the Project, other than Marissa and a few other teachers who he sometimes got drinks with. Eva certainly didn’t think the new engineer and biochemist she’s showing to their workstations would be at all relevant to Grace’s odd behaviour.
She was wrong.
“Everyone, if I may have your attention, please.” Eva calls out across the hangar and its maze of desk spaces separated by clear plastic sheeting. It’s almost comical to watch dozens of scientists and engineers’ heads pop up above their cubicles in synchrony. Except Grace, of course; he always stays working whenever she makes an announcement, knowing that if it’s truly important she would have already let him know before telling anyone else. She gestures to the two people behind her. “This is Dr Rocky Astera and Dr Adrian Astera. They’ll be joining the engineering and biochemistry teams respectively, and they outrank almost everyone here in accomplishment, so I expect their instructions to be followed accordingly.”
There’s a general noise of agreement and greetings from around the hangar, and everyone returns to their work. Eva is just about to lead Rocky and Adrian (they both insisted on their first names so strongly she didn’t feel it worth it to argue) to their workstations, until she realises that Grace isn’t working anymore.
Instead, Grace is making a beeline for her, Rocky and Adrian with the biggest smile she has ever seen in her life plastered onto his face.
She blinks, tries not to let the surprise show on her face (he hasn’t smiled at all in six days). “Rocky, Adrian, this is-”
Eva doesn’t get to finish before Rocky makes an unintelligible high-pitched noise and launches himself at Grace, who catches him and honest-to-God spins him like they’re in a cheesy romance movie.
“Grace.” Adrian says softly in their musical accent that Eva for the life of her cannot quite place.
“I take it you three know each other, then?” Know feels like the understatement of the century with how Grace and Rocky and Adrian are staring at each other in, again, a way Eva has only seen before in the cheesy movies that her sister used to force her to watch. She schools her face into neutrality as Grace turns to her, Rocky firmly attached to one of his arms and Adrian setting a hand on his other.
“Yeah, you could say that.” Grace beams – beams being the only word that comes to Eva’s mind to describe the sheer luminosity of his smile, twice as bright as the sun at full strength. Something in her twists at the sight in a way she doesn’t really have a name for. “We’re…old friends, I guess.”
Still, Eva isn’t one to let herself get distracted, especially not in such dire times. She nods. “Well, then, I’ll allow you to show them to their workstations. There will be a meeting in thirty minutes in the usual room to debrief and assign your duties; I trust you’ll both be able to get your desks set up in that time.”
Eva doesn’t wait for an answer, simply turns on her heel and heads back to her office, shooting glares at the scientists who’ve abandoned their work in favour of craning to stare at Grace, Rocky and Adrian. Behind her, she can hear the three of them whispering and giggling together like children, or like old friends.
In her office, she closes the door and settles at her desk, creaking slightly under the sheer weight of all of the paperwork, blueprints, research papers, angry letters from heads of state. She stares at it all for just a moment.
Eva doesn’t like surprises. She doesn’t like not knowing things, doesn’t like when the situation doesn’t go as she expected it to. Really, none of whatever just happened between Grace, Rocky and Adrian is important or relevant enough to be distracting her the way it is; so Grace has friends she didn’t know about. It shouldn’t be a problem, sentimental as he is, Stratt still can’t imagine Grace would let his personal life get in the way of his devotion to the Project. They’ll all do their jobs, and the Hail Mary will launch, and nothing else needs to matter right now.
There’s just that strange twisting feeling she got when she had looked at them, like she’s missing something, like there’s something important she doesn’t know.
Eva shakes herself. Like she said, it’s not important. Maybe she’ll remind Grace to keep his focus on the Project after the meeting, if he seems distracted.
Speaking of, Eva has twenty-seven minutes remaining to chip away at some work. She opens her laptop and starts typing.
<><~><>
Ryland feels like there’s electricity humming under his skin as he leads Rocky and Adrian towards his room, away from the rest of the Stratt-napped scientists who could eavesdrop on their conversations. The second they all crowd into his tiny shoebox of a room and he shuts the door, Ryland finds himself being essentially body-slammed onto his bed under the weight of two human-shaped Eridians.
“Missed you missed you missed you,” Rocky is mumbling into his hair while Adrian squeezes him with the vice grip of a boa constrictor. Ryland clings back just as hard.
And yeah, maybe this is a little overdramatic for only a week of separation, but Ryland can’t actually remember the last time he went that long without hearing from either of them, and it’s felt like genuine torture today not being able to properly talk to them without anyone else watching. He’s pretty sure Stratt already thinks he’s somehow even weirder than she did before after she saw him spin Rocky around like in a cheesy romance movie. It was worth it, though, for the way it made him laugh.
Eventually, Rocky and Adrian seem to realise that they’re cutting off his entire circulatory system, so they clamber off of him and rearrange themselves on his tiny bed. Ryland ends up with his head in Adrian’s lap and Rocky lying on his chest and feels fairly certain he could fall asleep right there.
“Sorry we took so long.” Adrian says softly. “Earth bureaucracy stuff. Your governments are really inefficient without being able to thrum.”
“Mhm.” Ryland lets his eyes slip closed. “Everything’s kind of insane right now with the whole Petrova problem and everything, but it does help that Stratt can basically do whatever she wants and nobody can say anything about it. When did she kidnap you guys?”
Rocky’s brow furrows against the side of Ryland’s neck. “Yesterday, I think. There were a lot of planes involved. Earth transportation is even more inefficient than your governments.”
“Mhm.” He’d normally argue against that, just for the principle of defending his species, but he’s too darned tired right now to bother when he finally feels safe enough to sleep for the first time in a week.
There’s a shuffling noise, and then Rocky pulls away and Ryland forces his eyes open to find him staring at him with a frown. “How long ago did you last sleep, question?”
Ryland tries to remember and fails, which is kind of an answer in of itself. He has been trying to sleep, at least as much as he can when working as Stratt’s little science lapdog (i.e. working until four in the morning when he has a meeting at eight o’clock sharp) but it’s been a struggle. He averts his eyes. “A few days, probably.”
“Ryland.” Adrian admonishes sternly as Rocky rolls his eyes and cuddles back against him, which is actually a badly disguised method of pinning him down so he can’t get up.
“I know, I know. It just feels wrong to sleep without someone there.” He admits. The Ryland of years past would probably felt embarrassed to admit that (even though he was, technically, the Ryland of years past right now, which was something he wasn’t going to spiral about thank you very much), but he knows Rocky and Adrian will get it. He’s going on a hundred years old, now, and hasn’t slept alone since he was thirty-three.
That’s another thing he’s still getting used to – the whole ageing-slow-enough-that-he’s-probably-going-to-live-as-long-as-Rocky-and-Adrian thing. They figured out when he got to seventy without a single wrinkle or grey hair, and so far he’s been trying not to think about it too hard. At least, right now, the time-travelling is a more pressing concern.
And even more pressing than that, Rocky and Adrian have both started humming and the vibrations of it are making Ryland’s eyes too heavy to keep open. He yawns, and Rocky snuggles closer.
“Get some rest, Grace. We’ll watch.”