Archive of Our Own

Carl, as a rule, didn’t usually let himself get attached to people. Not in this business, either in the CIA or in the project, when the fate of the entire goddamn world rested on their shoulders. 

So when Stratt told him that they were going to talk to some scientist, a former genius turned washed-up middle school teacher (well, she hadn’t said that part, but Carl had heard it implied in her voice), he told himself that this would be just like all of the other doctors and engineers and astronaut candidates they’d visited in the past few months. That they would go meet this Ryland Grace, who would fiddle about in the lab for an hour before finding absolutely nothing worthwhile, and then they would all go home. 

That went out the window pretty quickly. 

Ryland Grace wasn’t what Carl had been expecting. That had been clear as soon as he’d pulled up in their ominous black van– seriously, they couldn’t get much more comical than this, it was practically like a movie with the suits and all the protocols– to see Stratt talking to a thirty-year-old guy wearing a yellow raincoat, a beanie, and glasses. He gestured with his hands as he talked, even as he was putting on his bicycle helmet and hooked a leg over the body of his bike, and his dirty blond hair peeked out from under his helmet all mussed. His glasses were crooked and his bike handlebars were wrapped with blue tape and Carl liked him immediately and then hated himself for it. 

Liking people is a dangerous endeavor, especially now, especially here, when Stratt discards whoever isn’t the most useful to the project and the sun is dying out over their heads. You start building rapport with the coffee delivery person, and then find out the next day that Stratt is sending them all to another continent and that you’ll never see the coffee delivery person ever again. Her name was Sara and Carl had tipped her fifty dollars from the expense account for every order she dropped off because he knew each one could be the last. And then it was.

It’s not as if he falls to his knees in grief every time they uproot their little base and move across the world to track down another scientist, another engineer, another billionaire who realizes money won’t matter once the sun burns out. It’s no great tragedy to lose someone you’ve only known for a handful of days. But each of those little losses start to add up, constant shifting generating a desire to have at least something stay the same, something to anchor onto, and Carl knows by now to not let it happen because everything will just get yanked away again. 

And yet, as this middle school science teacher argues with Stratt, as he fastens his gray bike helmet under his chin, plastered in stickers from various events and science facts and a rainbow flag, Carl feels that tug, that pull, the longing to be able to know someone. To not have to immediately say goodbye. 

He’s reluctant to get out of the car when Stratt beckons. Reluctant to be in the same space as Dr. Grace, without the partition, without the barrier. But he comes when she calls. Of course he does. He knows that Stratt’s using him as a sort of intimidation, a tall guy in a suit, assumedly CIA or private security or whoever else. So he plays the role. He says his name gruffly when Dr. Grace asks for it, doesn’t shake his offered hand, tries to be stone-cold. He holds the door as Dr. Grace climbs into the car and tries to remind himself of all of the other scientists they’ve gone through, all of the other people Carl has seen one time and then never again. It’s not worth it, he tells himself, to get attached only to have to let go. 

Carl braces himself for the letdown as soon as they step into the complex, as soon as Dr. Grace gets suited up and walks into the lab with those awkward, stumbling steps, looking like his own form of astronaut in the empty lab. Carl and Stratt and the military leaders and head of NASA and everyone else watched from the spectator box, feeling as distant to him as Mission Control feels to the ISS. Like two different planets, he thinks, but that makes him feel worse. 

He watches as Dr. Grace hunches over the microscope, adjusting all the little dials with nimble hands. He’s talking to himself, narrating everything he does half under his breath, so the microphone only catches snippets. Carl is willing to bet money that Dr. Grace is at least half of his students’ favorite teacher, and for good reason. There’s something charming about him. Something approachable, even as he rattles off all the scientific terms, even as he flits from machine to machine, flipping through light spectrums and x-rays and everything else. His excitement practically radiates off him in waves, even as most of the generals have turned away, even as everyone seems to have already decided that they’ll just need to call the next astrobiologist on the list. Some guy from Stanford, Carl thinks. He’s already dreading the drive. 

Carl refocuses on the lab. On what’s right in front of him. No use catastrophizing, he reasons, even if he knows his eagerness to watch Dr. Grace do his work is from something more than just the mission. More than just Carl’s civic duty to save the planet. Dr. Grace is threading a tiny needle into some sort of instrument. He’s squinting at the screen through his glasses and the clear plastic of the containment suit, when it happens. At least, that’s when Carl assumes it happens, because then Dr. Grace stands up and puts his hands in the air, proclaiming that they’ve made first contact. 

“It’s a cell!” Dr. Grace says, pushing back from the desk and turning to face them all. Stratt snaps at them all to wake up, for god’s sake, and the generals and scientists all snap to attention and try to feign that they haven’t been zoning out for the past hour.

Dr. Grace seems to have either not heard Stratt’s reprimand of them all, or is choosing to politely ignore it. Good. Too many of these scientists are full of their own egos. 

“They’re tiny cells.” Dr. Grace moves as if to rake a hand through his hair, but it just bounces off the inflatable plastic suit. It’s dorky in a way that’s charming. Carl can’t see his face through the lab wall and the plastic, but he can hear the smile in his voice. “Come on, guys, get excited. This is alien life we’re talking about.” He gestures like he’s hyping up a crowd, raising his hands. “This is huge! First contact, people!” 

Carl can’t suppress the twitch of his mouth, the hint of a smile. He glances over at Stratt, and finds her half-smiling back. Together, they raise their arms, and the room follows in a sort of rah-rah. “Now that’s what I’m talking about,” Dr. Grace says, doing double-thumbs up at their little glass box. “Let’s see what these little guys are made of.”

–

Carl should feel relieved when they’re water-based life forms. It’s not Dr. Grace’s area of expertise, which means that they’ll most likely have to find someone else, and as loathe as he is to continue trawling California for former doctorate students who wrote dissertations on the possibilities of extraterrestrial life, he should be glad to be rid of Dr. Grace and his irritatingly charming smile, his crooked glasses, his yellow raincoat. The worst part is that he’s not even irritating about it: the only irritating thing is Carl himself and his entirely unprofessional, entirely irrational feelings. It’s been half a day, for christ’s sake– he shouldn’t be looking forward to the possibility of more days in the lab, of finally having another normal-ish person to talk to. And yet he does. And yet–

Carl shouldn’t be involving himself in this, in Dr. Grace asking Stratt “that’s it?” when they leave the lab, when Dr. Grace asks to stay. When Dr. Grace glances back at Carl and says “so she’s really just letting me go?” and Carl forces himself to shrug and say nothing. When Stratt gives him exactly three astrophage and Carl is secretly pleased, because he’s staying, because maybe this way they can talk more, maybe Carl can puzzle out Dr. Grace’s mysteries, make him smile like how he did in the lab. Maybe the extra time will make the inevitable separation hurt less. He knows it won’t, but hope is necessary, and so he allows himself to pretend. 

And Carl resumes his wait up in the spectator box, and watches as Dr. Grace fiddles around in the lab, and feels an alarming fondness growing over the next few days as the numbers of people in the spectator room with him dwindle to nothing. It’s only been two days, but everyone’s too busy with the biology teams and the engineering teams and the various world governments to stay. And so it’s just him and Dr. Grace and the lab, and all of Carl’s internal alarms are going off as he does the crossword on his phone and tries to coach his expression and his brain into disinterest.

Of course, that doesn’t last for long.

“If you were an interstellar life form, why would you go to Venus?”

At first, Carl assumes it’s rhetorical. People don’t tend to address him directly, not in this whole mess. They assume he’s just Stratt’s driver, or security, or some random guy who doesn’t know anything about the project and who probably scraped through college. But when he glances back towards the window, Dr. Grace is looking at him, waiting, spinning a dry-erase marker between his fingers.

“Me?” Carl asks, and then feels immediately stupid for asking. 

“Yeah,” Dr. Grace says. It would sound insufferable in anyone else’s voice, self-obsessed and arrogant, who else would I be talking to? But the words from Dr. Grace’s mouth just sound… earnest. Like he’s glad to have someone to bounce ideas off of. “Why would you go to Venus, instead of Mercury? Mercury’s closer.” He’s drawn a little mock-up of the solar system on the board, with a dotted line to Mercury and a question mark. 

“Well, there must be something on Venus they want.” Carl leans forward in his chair. Dr. Grace nods and scribbles something on the whiteboard. “Some reason for them to travel from the sun there.” Dr. Grace uncaps the red marker and draws in the Petrova line, thick and bold. Carl bets he chews on pens. Or maybe not. Maybe there was some sort of scientific study about how chewing on pens reduces blood flow to the brain, and now it’s universally recognized as a bad practice and Carl just doesn’t know it yet. 

“But what?”

“Well, why does anyone go anywhere? Maybe they wanted some fresh air.” Carl leans back in his chair, kicks his feet up on the desk in front of the window because he can. Stratt’s paying for it all, anyway. 

“I wouldn’t exactly call Venus fresh air, though. It’s mainly carbon dioxide.” He taps the marker against his bottom lip through the argon suit. Carl tries to drag his gaze away, fails. It’s been a hectic couple of days and now there’s stubble shading Dr. Grace’s jaw, his cheekbones, making him look even more mussed and straight out of a magazine. Like a hot professor in a movie, he thinks, then kicks himself. Just in his mind, at first, but then he realizes how insane of a thought it was– unprofessional, Carl, keep it together– and does it under the table, feels the little spike of pain to remind himself why they’re here.

“Maybe carbon dioxide is their version of fresh air. We don’t know what the little space-guys want.” 

Dr. Grace paces for a moment, seemingly lost in thought. Carl watches him through the glass and the twenty meters of empty space and then the lab wall, wishes there were fewer divisions, then wishes that he didn’t wish that. 

“Do we have an expense account?” The walkie-talkie crackles. Dr. Grace holds it too close to his mouth, like how they do on television. 

Carl glances at him. He’s hunched over a counter, half-peering into a microscope. His hair sticks out around his ears from under his beanie. Keep it professional, Carl reminds himself. Keep it cool. 

“We don’t,” he says. Dr. Grace sighs into the microphone, straightens up from his position. Carl watches him move and then tries to pretend he didn’t. Tries to convince himself that it’s going all according to plan. That he’s not rushing headlong into something incredibly stupid or incredibly dangerous or both. “But I do.” 

Dr. Grace beams, glasses lopsided, hair a mess, looking as if Carl is his personal savior. Carl can practically see the red flags already, can hear the sirens, can hear Stratt’s voice in his ear.

Fuck it, he thinks. We’re all gonna die anyway. Might as well enjoy it. 

–

They go to the hardware store.

It’s a little unexpected. To be honest, Carl had been bracing himself to buy some sort of million-dollar gadget that he’d have to hire another ten-thousand-dollar forklift for to get into the hangar. Not that money is no object– not here, not now– but it still makes him cringe just thinking about it. But when Dr. Grace slides into the passenger seat of the obnoxiously large black SUV Carl seems to now be driving everywhere, he asks if they can go to Lowe’s. 

“We’ll build a replica Venus,” Dr. Grace says on the drive there, gesturing with his hands in the corner of Carl’s vision. “We’ll set it to emit IR light at the same frequency as CO2 and see what the astrophage does with it. Testing the Carl Hypothesis.” 

Carl chuckles. “I don’t know if we should call it that. It was your idea.” The thought of it is too-good, that he could have a part in this, that he could have a name on something. A bit of permanence before it’s back to shuttling people around and organizing logistics for whatever crazy plan Stratt dreams up the night before and tells Carl to accomplish. He thinks there might be a global coffee shortage by the end of the week, with the rate they’re going through bags of the stuff.

“No, it was totally your idea. Own it, man! The Carl Hypothesis.” Dr. Grace spreads out his hands, drops his voice to make it artificially dramatic, and Carl chuckles again. Dr. Grace smiles and turns up the song on the radio, some sort of retro hit, and he hums the lyrics under his breath for the rest of the drive.

The SUV is a pain to park, and thankfully Dr. Grace doesn’t comment on the fact that Carl has to straighten out twice to fit the car in one of those too-narrow Californian parking spots. But they manage, and then they’re standing in the entry of the hardware store and Carl remembers that he’s not exactly sure what they’re looking for. Well, maybe store is putting it generously. It’s a warehouse with shelves forty feet high that touch the ceiling and buzzing incandescent light strips that make everything seem washed-out. Like a cathedral built to 8mm nails and power tools. 

“What’s the plan?” He asks. The aisles tower all the way up to the warehouse ceiling, stacks of drywall and plywood and brightly colored boxes for various gadgets he can’t name. To be honest, he’s not much of a handyman. His expertise is on the coordinating, the logistics, the hiring of people to put whatever things from the hardware store together. 

“Well, we’ll build the box out of plywood, but we need to seal out any exterior light. So also duct tape. Maybe aluminum foil to be extra-sure.” Dr. Grace pushes his glasses up on his nose. In the car, he’d had them dangling from one ear down under his chin, but now Carl supposes it’s time to get to work.

Dr. Grace grabs a cart and beelines towards an aisle marked 37 by a sign strung twenty feet above them, proclaiming to contain plywood and wood stain. Carl follows. Of course he does.

“So, we’ll need at least four sheets. Maybe five to be safe. And some two-by-fours to support the whole thing.” Dr. Grace starts scanning the shelves as he talks, and Carl can tell from the way his fingers tap on the handle of the shopping cart that he’d be gesturing if he didn’t have to wrestle the cart with its faulty left wheel into going in a straight line. Carl feels, almost absurdly, like he’s on a home renovation show. Like some sort of HGTV late-night television instead of here, at the end of the world. It’s a welcome feeling. 

“Aha! Here we go.” Dr. Grace beams as if he’s won the lottery. He moves as if to take the sheets of plywood off the shelf by himself, almost a comically failed task with the way that they’re at his eye level, and Carl rushes to help him. He doesn’t want to think about what Stratt would do to him if one of their biologists couldn’t contribute due to a broken collarbone. At least, he tells himself that as an excuse for why he’s so quick to offer his help, so quick to jump into action. Just the project. He’s just focused on the project.

“Do you want four sheets or five?” Carl asks, trying to work around the awkward angle at which the edge of the plywood sheets are digging into his chest.

“Five. If that’s okay.” His glasses have slipped down his face, both too hands occupied with sliding the plywood off the shelf to fix it. Carl drags his thoughts away from reaching out and pushing them back up his nose. Tucking his hair behind his ear. Leaning in–

“Five it is.” Carl stretches his fingers apart to grab onto a fifth sheet. His hands hurt. He should’ve worn gloves for this. But he didn’t want to leave Dr. Grace to handle this all by himself. He wanted to help, somehow, in a way that was tangible, in a way easier to measure than just phonecalls and drives across California. 

“On three, we’ll move to the cart.” Dr. Grace is a good teacher, he can tell. Something about the gentle authority in his voice. Carl nods and focuses on the flecks of different colors in the plywood. “One, two–”

The cart rattles, but they manage to wedge it in. Carl lets go of the sheets as soon as he can, wipes his hands on his pants to try and ease the sting of the harsh lines across his palms where the edges bit in. Dr. Grace frowns. “All good?”

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry about me.” Carl’s used to being invisible. It’s odd, someone asking after his wellbeing. He can’t decide whether he likes it or not. Whether he wants to like it or not. 

“Well, the rest of it should be pretty simple. Just duct tape and aluminum foil.” Dr. Grace smiles, a little lopsided. His glasses have slipped even farther down his nose. “Maybe some safety glasses.” 

“I’m sure we can arrange that.” Carl’s a little breathless, and it’s not because he’s out of shape. He swallows and is grateful that the heat in his cheeks doesn’t show through his skin. Dr. Grace smiles even wider.

Carl wants to make him happy, he realizes. Wants to ease the rest of his experience on the project, however short. Wants to see him smile and pump his fist in the air again after some new discovery. For the project, he tells himself. Just because he’ll make progress on the project. 

So he follows Dr. Grace down the aisles, tosses a roll of duct tape in their cart, then another, then three more. And then Dr. Grace is grinning at him and they’re alone in the hardware store and they’re setting up the containers of aluminum foil like bowling pins, tossing the duct tape rolls down the aisle, watching them gain speed on the cement floor. 

They glance at each other, and Dr. Grace’s cheeks flush, but he doesn’t look away. He doesn’t look away, and Carl’s heart lifts, and for fifteen minutes in the hardware store they’re on top of the world. They buy safety glasses and throw bags and bags of sour skittles in their cart and on the drive back to the hangar, Carl feels a lot more hopeful than he has in a long, long time.

(He knows it’s worthless. He knows it’s a bad impulse, that this will just lead to even more pain, just like everyone else who’s joined and left the project at the drop of a hat. He does it anyway.)

–

After the jet had picked up Dr. Grace, Carl figured he’d never see him again. This was how these things went. Stratt off on her aircraft carrier, leaving Carl to handle the mess stateside. He stood next to the car and squinted at the sun until the dot of the plane vanished from view, zipping out across the Pacific, and then drove back to the hangar. 

It felt immediately emptier without Dr. Grace there. The lab was too-still, too-empty. No more glimpses of yellow raincoats around corners, no more abandoned sour skittle packets. He lasts all of four hours there before he decides to head to the hotel he’s been calling home for the past two weeks. He orders room service and charges it to his expense account and that just makes him feel worse. It’s stupid, he chides himself, to feel this way after only a week of knowing him. He should be used to this whole song and dance by now. The revolving door of people helping on Project Hail Mary, entering and then leaving when their part was done, dipping out of them and Carl’s shared sphere of the airplane hangar or the highways of California in a black SUV. He’d gotten used to it. He was supposed to have gotten used to it.

He misses Dr. Grace. It’s undeniable, unfortunately, as plain as their dimming sun, obvious as the Petrova line. (He thought maybe thinking about it in science terms would dull the ache. It doesn’t.) That’s okay, he tells himself. It’s okay to miss people. As long as he can still do his job. And he will. Whatever Stratt asks him to.

He has to remind himself of that part when she wakes him up by calling his phone seven times at three in the morning.

He’s used to being jolted awake by some call or another at the CIA, some late night breakthrough on a case, some need for backup, but with the mission it’s different. Every call could— quite literally— be the end of the world.

He rubs the sleep from his eyes, fumbling to switch on the hotel lamp. “Hello?” 

Stratt’s voice crackles over the line. There’s a sort of muffled hubbub, people talking, raised voices. Scientists. Engineers. All working on the project. 

“Be ready to fly out in fifteen minutes,” Stratt says curtly. “Someone will be here to pick you up then. Pack everything you need for the next two weeks.” A pause. “Maybe longer.”

Carl blinks hard at the wall, hoping that maybe he’s dreaming. This seems just uncanny enough to be a dream. Like when he had nightmares about calculus back in high school.

“If I may ask, what am I getting ready for?” He’s careful with his words. He’s always had to be careful with his words, and the habit’s stuck. Stratt shifts and the quiet chatter is muffled as she assumedly turns away from the crowd. He wonders what timezone she’s in. He would bet that it’s not 3 a.m. there, but you never know. Scientists seem to be the nocturnal type. 

“Grace is asking for you. He says that you’re his scientific muse.” Stratt’s voice is completely serious. Not joking. Carl stands up, starts towards the closet with the phone still to his ear. Be ready to fly out. He was supposed to be done. He was supposed to have moved on by now. Dr. Grace was supposed to have forgotten him, and Carl was supposed to forget about the hardware store and the two of them in the lab together, their lingering glances, the possibility of any of it. 

Carl shouldn’t let himself hope. And yet— well, isn’t that what this whole project is about? Hope, even in the face of the impossible?

“Try to not be too jet lagged when you get here,” Stratt says. “We don’t have time to wait for any more miracles.”

For a moment, Carl’s speechless. Dr. Grace, asking about him, requesting for Carl specifically to be sent on Stratt’s top-secret aircraft carrier out in the middle of nowhere. Dr. Grace cares. But Carl’s a professional, a trained agent, so he manages to get his mouth to work enough to say “roger that” before Stratt hangs up on him.

Thirteen minutes later, Carl has two suitcases with everything he brought with him to California. Dr. Grace was asking for him. Dr. Grace, thinking about him. He hates the way it makes a smile twitch at the edge of his mouth, hates the way his heart has kicked up. He knows he’s ignoring the obvious. Ignoring what’s staring him right in the face with crooked glasses and a 5 o’clock shadow. But ignorance is bliss, and he knows not to ask for too much with this project, not when he’s just gotten a miracle.

The flight is uneventful, and Carl walks down the stairs from the plane carefully, holding the guardrail so as to not eat it on the tarmac. The early flush of dawn tints the horizon pink, making everything a little hazy, floodlights still on but the sun creeping up above the ocean. Carl stops to admire it. Snaps a picture in his brain. A miracle, he’s decided. This whole thing is a miracle, and he should be grateful for it, however fleeting.

And then he’s on the ship proper, someone bringing his suitcases out from the belly of the plane, and–

“Carl!” 

Dr. Grace runs up to him, arms spread in greeting. He looks just as Carl remembers. Not that a whole lot could really change in the few days it’s been, but it’s reassuring, to see Dr. Grace still in his yellow raincoat with his beanie pulled down over his hair, glasses still slanted and sliding off his nose. 

And then–

Dr. Grace is hugging him. Carl’s mind shortcircuits. Dr. Grace’s face is pressed into Carl’s shoulder, his hands on Carl’s back, and Carl stands there as still as a statue until Dr. Grace pats him on the back and pulls away. His hands are still on Carl’s shoulders and the touch feels like it’s burning him. He wants to lean into it. He wants to jump into the Pacific Ocean right behind them. He wants–

“I’m so glad you came!” Dr. Grace says, practically beaming as he looks Carl up and down, as if making sure he’s real, and for a moment Carl wonders if he’s dreaming. 

“Of course I came,” he says instead, because Langley taught him that much to always respond when appropriate, and Dr. Grace’s grin somehow stretches wider.

“Come on, I’ll give you the tour,” he says, pivoting towards the body of the ship, one of his hands slipping down to grip Carl by the elbow. “Everyone here is so uptight,” Dr. Grace says, words tumbling out of his mouth in that way Carl’s so familiar with, the soothing sort of rambling he does to fill the silence. “It’ll be good to actually have someone to talk to.” He looks up at Carl and flashes a grin. Carl can feel his face heat, prays that Dr. Grace won’t notice. 

Stratt waits for them beside the entrance to the interior of the ship in the distance, looking tired. The lines around her face have deepened. Her and Carl lock gazes, and she gives him a tiny nod before vanishing back into the belly of the beast.

“—the food’s pretty good, all things considered,” Dr. Grace continues, and Carl blinks and tries to tune back into the moment, to go back to before he’d seen the dread in Stratt’s gaze. “Everyone’s trying to make the scientists happy. More productive that way, Stratt says.” 

“Is that why I’m here?” Carl asks, trying to make his tone light and joking, to sound normal. Dr. Grace blinks at him like he’s grown a second head. “No,” he responds. “Not just because of that.”

They’ve reached the entrance, and Dr. Grace lets go of Carl’s arm to crank the door open with the little wheel on the outside. A proper ship. It still feels a little surreal that this morning he was in his hotel room in California. 

“Here, I’ll show you your room. It’s a little— small,” Dr. Grace hedges, “but it has charm. Nautical charm.” He flashes another grin, a little more nervous this time. He’s nervous. He’s nervous, because he wants Carl here. Carl feels a little lightheaded. Maybe going down all these little gangway stairs and ladders is a bad idea right now.

“It’s alright,” Carl manages. “I’m used to small.” It’s true. Cramped hotels in Europe or D.C., safe houses back when he still did fieldwork. Anything is better than him, alone, back in the hangar. Hell, Dr. Grace could show him to a two-foot-by-six-foot square of floor marked off in masking tape and Carl would still be grateful just to be here. It’s pathetic, he chides himself, but the words have no bite. 

Dr. Grace beams again. “I’m glad you’re here, Carl,” he says, and Carl’s knees feel weak. He can’t stop himself from grinning back. “Me too.”

–

At first, it’s more of the same. Carl offers himself up to help with the administrative tasks on the ship– the Vat, as everyone calls it– ordering supplies and food and whatever the scientists need delivered. He rations coffee supplies and makes sure that everyone has some place to sleep, at least for a couple of hours. He stares at the metal walls in his room and misses Dr. Grace and then kicks himself for it. Of course, Dr. Grace is busy. He’s become quite important with the whole breeding-astrophage thing. And of course, Carl shouldn’t expect any more of his time. This is just the way things go, he coaches himself. It was always going to end this way.

Until Dr. Grace knocks on his door. 

Carl knows it’s him, because nobody else would knock. Not Stratt, not any of the scientists, certainly not the military members. And it’s a very Dr. Grace knock, too, a little staccato of three taps on the door. Carl can’t stop his traitorous face from pulling at the muscles by his mouth. A smile. 

“Carl? You in there?” Dr. Grace knocks again. There’s no disguising Carl’s grin, even as he scolds himself to get it together, to not look so much like a lost puppy eager for any human contact. “One second!” He raises his voice just a little, to carry through the metal door, and double checks that his tie is in the correct place. He smooths down his lapels. It’s early in the morning, but Carl always gets up early, in case that anything goes wrong, and he’s already dressed in his suit. Stratt had told him to pack for two weeks and so he has three matching sets of blazers and slacks and button-ups in the meager closet and he washes them religiously, irons them cramped next to the cot that passes as his bed. In case he has to make some important meeting, he tells himself, but he knows the real reason. The reason waiting outside his door for him.

He runs a hand through his hair and takes a deep breath. No use waiting. He opens the door.

Dr. Grace beams at him, wearing a tee with the words I wear this shirt periodically under the periodic table. He’s got stubble shading his jaw and his glasses are sliding down his nose and Carl releases a breath that he didn’t know he was holding. Rationally, he didn’t think that Dr. Grace would change all that much aboard, but he was worried about it anyways, worried that the man he’d known back in the hangar would be gone. It’s a relief to see him like this, still wearing his bad t-shirts, still refusing to fix his glasses. 

“Oh, good,” Dr. Grace says. “You’re already dressed. We’ve got a meeting in ten.” He’s carrying two to-go cups of coffee. Maybe he’s picked up Stratt’s habit.

“We?” Carl kicks himself for saying it as soon as the words leave his mouth. Dr. Grace tilts his head at him. “Well, I need your expertise on something, and I figured you would want to come along, but if you don’t–”

“No, I’ll come.” There are butterflies in Carl’s stomach. He has to clear his throat and hope that the lighting hides the smile lines around his eyes. 

“Great.” Dr. Grace seems relieved. “I was starting to go crazy, just talking to all these guys by myself.” He moves to make room for Carl in the corridor, and Carl steps out of his room and closes the door behind him, painfully aware of how the narrow ship hallways force them together. “Which way?” Carl asks, trying to not notice how Dr. Grace’s hair curls over his ears, the way that his glasses fog ever-so-slightly from the steam coming off the coffees.

“Oh, it’s down this way.” Dr. Grace nods in the direction that he’s closer too. Good. If Dr. Grace had to squeeze by Carl, he might just spontaneously combust. 

Dr. Grace starts walking, and Carl follows after him, trying to ignore the hunger starting to gnaw at his stomach. He hadn’t had anything for breakfast yet, assuming it would be another relatively quiet day of making sure that the physicists didn’t short out the electricity onboard again, and he’s regretting it as they progress down the hallways.

“How long will the meeting be?” Carl asks after a moment. At the CIA, a ‘meeting’ could mean a five-minute conversation about what hotel room Carl was staying in, or a four-hour interrogation over specific logistics and the number of vehicles they’d deploy. He’s hoping for the first option, but he doubts it. Nobody here seems to be able to agree on anything in a reasonable amount of time.

“No clue. Can never tell with these guys. They take forever on everything.” Dr. Grace frowns. It’s endearing, with how his hair sticks up in crazy angles, the way his t-shirt is a little wrinkled. He looks like he just rolled out of bed. 

Dr. Grace stops dead, and Carl has to scramble to not bump into him. “Sorry,” Dr. Grace says, and then groans. “I completely forgot. Here.” He hands him one of the coffees, large and pleasantly warm through the cardboard sleeve. “This is for you.”

“Thank you,” Carl says, pleasantly baffled. Most people don’t get him coffee. Usually, it’s the other way around, Carl arranging the catering, the supplies, all of the details. Getting everything just-so. 

“You’re so mysterious,” Dr. Grace says, amused, “I had to ask three different people for your coffee order.” Carl’s coffee order is, indeed, a closely guarded secret. Mainly because it’s silly. A stupid amount of cream and sugar that would doubtless be mocked at the CIA, too-sweet and too-caffeinated. He’s touched that Dr. Grace would bother asking around for it. “You didn’t have to,” he says, but Dr. Grace waves his now-free hand not carrying his own coffee dismissively. “If I’m going to wake you up before dawn to come to a meeting, I’ve gotta at least give you your coffee. It would be cruel and unusual punishment to endure something like this without caffeine.”

Carl hides his grin by taking a sip. It’s just how he likes it, half-and-half and three sugars. “I appreciate it.” 

Dr. Grace seems pleased. He has a spring in his step the rest of the way to the meeting room, making idle conversation all the while that Carl lets wash over him like a hot bath. It’s soothing. He didn’t really realize how much he missed this, the two of them, the mundanity of it in the middle of all this chaos, until he had it again. 

They pause outside the meeting room door, and Dr. Grace lowers his voice to whisper conspiratorily. “Be warned, they’re all pretty serious. No-nonsense types. They hate everything and everyone, so don’t take it personally.” 

“Thanks for the warning,” Carl whispers back, and Dr. Grace smiles again before pushing the door open.

Carl lets Dr. Grace go in first, and then steps in after him carefully, feeling acutely aware of his coffee cup still in hand, the fact that he didn’t press out all the wrinkles in his dress shirt as well as he should have. He feels the committee’s attention on him in a way that makes his skin crawl.

“Good morning, everybody,” Dr. Grace says with his usual cheer. “Ready for another productive day?”

Dead silence. Carl can already tell that this is going to be a long– well, however long the meeting goes for. He doesn’t think he could last more than three hours in this. 

Dr. Grace finds a chair near the head of the conference table and beckons Carl to sit next to him. Carl folds his hands on top of the table and tries to generally be as unobtrusive as possible. Dr. Grace said he wanted him here because he wanted his opinion on something, and Carl isn’t exactly sure what that means, but he tries to pay as much attention as he can to the task at hand. 

It takes him a moment to get the topic of the meeting. It’s outlandish. It’s, frankly, ridiculous. Near impossible. They’re going to try and pave over the Sahara desert to breed astrophage.

Stratt directs the conversation, letting each expert take a turn debating each other on how they could do it, if they even can do it, if they should do it at all. It would be a gargantuan task. It would require the cooperation of at least ten different nations. It would destroy the habitats for countless species of wildlife. Wildlife that will be dead anyway if the sun dies, someone points out, and the room dissolves into shouting for a minute before Stratt manages to quiet it again.

“Do we have any paper?” He asks Dr. Grace, and Dr. Grace slides him a legal pad and a pen. The pen is the expensive kind that glides smoothly over paper and Carl appreciates it as he writes down the figures, thinks of his contacts in North Africa, the CIA’s influence. They’d need millions– no, billions– of solar panels. People to maintain those panels. The local economy would be completely shot, but they can’t bother to worry about that, not now. He tunes out the rest of the noise as he scribbles down an idea for a supply chain. It would be one of the biggest projects mankind has ever undertaken. It would work, maybe. He gives it about a fifty-fifty on failure. 

“Carl?” Dr. Grace turns to him, and all the eyes follow. Carl startles a little. He’d forgotten about the rest of it, immersed in the legal pad, in the lines on the paper. “What do you think? Could we do it?”

Carl feels acutely put on the spot, but this is why he’s here, isn’t he? Logistics. Saving the world. And Dr. Grace looks so hopeful, looking at Carl like he has all the answers, and he straightens in his chair. 

“Yes,” he says, and he waits for the chaos that follows to die down before he speaks again. He clears his throat. “Yes, we could.”

Dr. Grace beams, and that makes it all worth it, even before Stratt pulls up the projector, even before the experts start examining his plans, even before the quiet whisper goes up that maybe this will work. 

“I knew you could do it,” Dr. Grace says, and Carl rides that high for the rest of the week.

–

Dr. Grace appears at his door again and again over the coming weeks, greeting him with those two coffees in his hands. A lot of it is just more meetings– talks about the Sahara project, communicating with government officials and company executives to get the solar panels in place, logistics for the transport of it all. Astrophage farms over the Sahara are visible from space in steadily growing black patches. 

But it’s not all meetings. Sometimes it’s just the two of them going to the cafeteria for breakfast, or lunch, or the awkward middle-of-the-night meal when something runs long or Dr. Grace wants company after tagging along with Stratt to some science trial for the project. Dr. Grace tells Carl about his classes, and Carl tells him about his younger years, about being abroad on various missions. He redacts most of the details, but Dr. Grace seems to hang onto his words anyway, asking him about the food in Prague, the weather in Novosibirisk. 

It’s nice. It’s comfortable. It’s friendly, Carl reminds himself in the mirror every morning. Dr. Grace wants a friend, a companion, and Carl is that companion. Nothing else. No use dreaming. No use thinking too hard about the way that Dr. Grace looks at him, or how he and Carl roam the ship together in the wee hours of the morning, or about how Dr. Grace had come to him first when Stratt had finally installed an ice-cream machine onboard at his behest. Friends, Carl tells himself as he fixes his tie. Just friends. 

–

Nothing good ever happens at karaoke. Carl knows this. Carl hates karaoke. He hasn’t been to a karaoke bar except on the job, and he only goes because for some reason European officials love to make deals over bad cocktails and poorly-sung covers of ‘80s songs. 

He knows this. And yet–

“There’s a party tonight,” Dr. Grace says. Carl looks up from his granola bar wrapper, which he’s been trying to re-fold into the shape it used to be before he ripped it open. 

“There’ll be karaoke and drinks. Everyone’s getting a night off.” 

Carl makes a noncommittal noise, giving up on the wrapper. “Oh?” He’s preparing excuses in his head. Tired, hungover, not feeling well. Need to talk to another American politician about why this is necessary. Or, just sorry, can’t. 

“We should go together,” Dr. Grace continues, and Carl’s words die in his throat. “It’ll be fun. You can really meet the rest of the team.” 

Carl’s very glad he’s sitting down, or else he fears he might’ve fallen over. Friends. Just friends. He bites down hard on his tongue and tries to keep his face neutral. But it’s hard, when Dr. Grace looks so excited about it, when Dr. Grace is asking him to come to a party– together– and looking at Carl like he’s the best thing on this ship. 

Carl hates karaoke. He reminds himself of this fact. He doesn’t even have a song to sing. He doesn’t know anything that would even be appropriate to sing at a the sun is dying let’s get drunk party. Hell, he doesn’t even know most of the people on this ship, much less Dr. Grace’s apparent friends from the Hail Mary crew.

“Yeah, sure,” he says instead. “I’d like that.” 

Dr. Grace beams, and Carl can’t help but smile back.

Of course, the happiness is fleeting. As soon as Dr. Grace has left for another trial on the astrophage fuel cells, Carl is cursing himself. He moves through the day with a sense of impending dread more fit for an execution than a party. But Dr. Grace asked him to come, and Carl’s not the type to flake. He’s already in too deep. 

One night of karaoke, maybe some drunken dancing from the astronauts or the chemists. Completely tolerable. Carl will show up, say hi to Dr. Grace, be introduced to his friends, have a respectable number of beers, and then leave. 

He re-ties his tie for the third time in front of the mirror, tightening the knot just-so. He doesn’t know what people wear to these kinds of things. He knows that the Vat has social events, of course, to prevent everyone from going crazy and clobbering each other over the head with microscopes, but he’s never been to one. Certainly never actively participated. 

So he’s wearing a suit. Again. It would feel wrong not to. He wonders if Dr. Grace has any opinion on that, with the way he always wears his t-shirts and ripped jeans. If he thinks Carl’s a corporate suck-up. 

Not now, brain, he thinks to himself. It doesn’t matter what Dr. Grace thinks of his outfit. It doesn’t matter, because they’re just friends, just colleagues, just two people keeping each other sane amongst the sea of no-fun no-nonsense military staff. It doesn’t matter.

Still, though, he’s wearing the one fun tie he brought, printed with tiny cats. He figured that Dr. Grace might appreciate that Carl put some effort into preparing for the party. That Carl took his invitation seriously. 

He exhales, slow and steady, trying to calm his racing heart. He feels like a teenage boy on prom night. Just friends. Just friends. 

He walks to the lounge as if in a daze, turning through corridors on autopilot. He has to fight the urge to keep messing with his tie. It looks fine, he tells himself, and besides, it doesn’t matter. 

Go into party. Say hello. Have a beer or two. Say hi to Dr. Grace. Do not sing karaoke. Leave at a respectable time. He rehearses his plan in his mind. Tries to think of normal things to say. Hi, I’m Carl, Dr. Grace’s friend. No, that sounds suspicious. Hi, I’m Carl, CIA operative. That’s worse. 

This was a bad idea. He knew that going into it. But as he hovers outside the door, he feels that fact all the more acutely. He could turn around right now. He could go back to his room and spend the rest of the night reading his book on birding in the South Pacific, or, better yet, just go straight to bed. 

But Dr. Grace asked him. Dr. Grace looked at him with those eyes and asked to go to the party together, and Carl can’t let him down, not now, not like this. 

He sighs. He opens the door.

Immediately, it’s almost overwhelming. He should be used to people talking over each other from all the meetings he’s been through in the past month, should be used to parties from all his years making bargains at the CIA, but his time on the Vat has re-sensitized him and so for a moment he has to pause to make sense of the scene before proceeding.

As promised, there’s karaoke, music blaring from one end of the lounge further from the bar. An Asian man and a woman he assumes is Russian from the fact she’s holding a too-large glass full of vodka are doing a duet of some ‘90s rock ballad. They’re both wearing crew jackets with the Project Hail Mary patch on the sleeve. Dr. Grace’s friends, maybe.

Carl turns his attention to the rest of the room. There are a couple of low couches in the middle, bolted to the floor so they don’t slide if the ship comes across choppy water. Barstools cluster along the counter on one side of the room, where someone Carl thinks is a physicist is mixing drinks. There’s a sad-looking aquarium that a few people are clustered around. It reminds him, almost absurdly, of house parties in college. Everyone just trying to forget life for a night to have some fun.

“Carl!” Someone calls his name from the far end of the bar, and Carl knows even before looking that it’s Dr. Grace. He feels himself smile as if on instinct. 

He steps into the lounge proper, angling towards where Dr. Grace and some of the Hail Mary astronauts seem to have set up shop at a high-top table. Dr. Grace is waving his hands over his head, beckoning Carl over, and Carl feels warm even though he hasn’t had anything to drink yet.

“I’m glad you came!” Dr. Grace stands up to greet him, offering both his hands for a double high-five. Carl chuckles, but obliges, and Dr. Grace laughs before patting him on the back. “Come on, let me get you a drink while you guys do introductions.” He’s holding a green bottle of Heineken, and Carl doesn’t want to pry about what beers the bar has, so he just says “I’ll have what you’re having, please,” which makes Dr. Grace smile even wider. 

“Aye aye, captain,” he says, doing a mock salute with his free hand before wandering off to flag down someone at the bar. 

And then it’s just Carl and the group of soon-to-be-astronauts clustered at the table, all looking at him like he’s astrophage under a microscope, and he remembers again why he doesn’t like parties. Or introductions. Or any of this, to be honest.

“Hi,” he manages, because it’s polite, because being nice to Dr. Grace’s friends is the least he can do, really. “I’m Carl.” 

There’s a chorus of hello, Carl from the group. It’s a little unnerving, but this is just how the scientist types are, he thinks. “We’ve heard a lot about you,” a woman says, extending her hand for him to shake. “I’m Dr. Shapiro, backup science specialist. This is Dr. DuBois.” She gestures towards a well-groomed Black man sitting next to her, and Carl shakes his hand as well. Oh, God. Is this how it’s going to be the whole time? Shaking hands, polite conversation? Just like a meeting, he tells himself. You can do meetings. 

“Dr. Grace has told us a lot about you,” Dr. DuBois says. Carl’s glad for the low light, because he’s not entirely sure what to do with his face. Of course. It makes sense that Dr. Grace would talk to his colleagues about him. Still, the thought makes something flutter in his stomach. 

“All good things, I hope,” he jokes, and Dr. DuBois laughs. 

“Ah! You must be Carl, yes?” The woman singing karaoke when Carl entered the room rushes over, her hair falling out of its messy ponytail. She’s downed whatever drink she was carrying earlier and her cheeks are rosy in a way that suggests she’s at least a little tipsy as she grins at him.

“You are taller than I expected!” She bypasses the bar entirely, coming up to him and clapping him on the shoulder while standing on her tip-toes to do so. Her enthusiasm is infectious, and Carl starts to relax despite himself. Maybe it will be alright. It seems like the scientists can carry a conversation by themselves, and he will helpfully butt in with as yes or a hmm occasionally and then leave at an appropriate time.  “I am Ilyukhina. The engineer.” She tilts her head at him, as if considering something. “Tell me, Carl, do you like to drink?” She waggles an eyebrow, and Dr. Shapiro gives her a playful shove. 

“Say no,” Dr. Shapiro says. “Last time I drank with her, I was hungover for days.” 

Carl chuckles, but it’s a little strained. This is pathetic. He needs to get out more often, if they all make it out of this. He thinks his palms are sweating more now than they were when he was planning agent extractions. Get it together, he scolds himself. It’s a party, not an interrogation. 

“It’s nice to finally meet you,” someone says next to him, and Carl’s glad that all the CIA training taught him not to flinch. “Sorry to surprise you. I’m Commander Yao.” He’s the man that was singing with Ilyukhina earlier, Carl realizes, as Yao offers his hand. He looks kind. Older than Carl would anticipate for an astronaut, but not by too much. Carl shakes his hand, hoping that it’s not too clammy.

“We’ve heard a lot about you from Dr. Grace,” Yao continues. “You are the Carl from the Carl hypothesis, yes?” 

“Well, it was mostly Dr. Grace’s idea—“

“Don’t listen to him. He always says this. Never wants to give himself enough credit, if you ask me.” Dr. Grace comes up behind him, bumping Carl’s shoulder with his own as he leans past him to put his own beer on the table. The touch is warm, even through his blazer and his button-up, and Carl’s grateful that nobody can see the flush on his cheeks. “Here,” Dr. Grace says. “This one’s for you.” Carl takes the bottle carefully, the outside slick with cold condensation. The top’s already been popped off and Dr. Grace taps his own beer against his in an approximation of a toast. “Come on, sit down. Make yourself comfortable.” He pats the stool next to his own.

Carl sits gingerly and takes a long sip of his beer, willing his nerves to ebb, trying to ignore how the stools are clustered so close together that him and Dr. Grace’s legs touch. He’s doing a good job so far. There’s nothing to be nervous about. Dr. Grace’s friends seem to like him, he has the night off from work, and the scientists aren’t as bad at karaoke as he thought, so that the overall effect is almost comfortable. 

“Now, Carl,” Ilyukhina says with a glint in her eyes, “we need your opinion on something. A tiebreaker.” 

Is this a test? It feels like a bit of a test. Academia is pretty exclusive. Maybe this is some sort of hazing. 

“Now, Dr. DuBois and Dr. Shapiro are adamant that the soft-serve machine is better with just one flavor. Dr. Grace and I agree that swirl is the clearly superior option. Commander Yao refuses to take a side, so it’s up to you to settle this once and for all.” Ilyukhina feigns seriousness, leaning in over the table to look him in the eye intently. “Your mission, should you choose to accept it–”

“Swirl,” Carl says. “You get the best of both worlds.” 

Ilyukhina cheers, and Dr. DuBois shakes his head, hiding his smile. Carl glances over to where Dr. Grace sits beside him and catches the edge of his grin. This whole thing seems to be going pretty well, so far. Maybe he can do this. 

The conversation continues in much of the same manner, discussing everything from opinions on the cafeteria food to the logistics for the spin drives and the Hail Mary’s engines. The crew makes an effort to include him, asking for his thoughts, stories about what he did before being recruited for the project, but thankfully for the majority of the time he’s able to just sit and let the conversation wash over him. Dr. Grace is perhaps the happiest Carl’s ever seen him– certainly the most intoxicated, although that’s a low bar, since before tonight they’ve never even had a beer together– and he keeps laughing, cheeks flushed with either the joy or the alcohol, throwing an arm around Carl’s shoulders as he tells the story of their Lowe's adventures. 

Maybe Carl should reconsider his opinion on karaoke, he thinks, after the better part of two Heinekens and an hour and a half of watching people sing classic rock songs in a mix of Mandarin, English, and Russian. This isn’t so bad.

Of course, that’s when it goes off the rails.

Dr. Grace stiffens next to him as Ilyukhina is explaining the logistics of Russian engineering school, and he mumbles an apology as he gets up from his stool and leaves, abandoning his beer on the table. Carl tries to turn and see where he’s gone off to, but he’s impossible to track in the crowd, not wearing his usual beanie. Dr. Shapiro sighs. “The perils of being second in command,” she says, and Yao replies with a mm-hm. 

Dr. DuBois seems to catch Carl’s lost expression. “Stratt probably called him over for something,” he explains. “She asks him about everything.” 

Carl finishes his beer and sets the bottle on the table, next to Dr. Grace’s. The warm lighting makes the green glass glow as if by magic, but the agreeable atmosphere from before is rapidly dissipating. Of course. The project. He’d forgotten, for a moment, that the world was ending. That they’re all here to stop it. That he has a job to do, a job that involves being Dr. Grace’s friend and nothing more, and that he can’t afford to distract him, not if Stratt needs him that much.

“I see,” he says, choosing his words carefully. “Will he be back?”

Ilyukhina shrugs. “Who knows,” she responds. “But we’ll still have a good time. I’m not blowing my chance at karaoke.” She stands, and extends a hand to Yao. “I’ll even let you pick the song this time.” 

Yao grins, and he knocks back the rest of his drink before following her into the crowd. Carl glances at Dr. Shapiro and Dr. DuBois, but from the way that they’re looking at each other, he can tell that they want to be alone. That’s fine. He’s accomplished his goal. He stopped in, said hello, even had a little bit of a good time. He should be happy to leave. And yet– well. 

He stands, mumbles some excuse about going to check out the aquarium, slips into the crowd. He dodges physicists and chemists and a few people he recognizes as military, talking or dancing or waiting in line for karaoke. Be grateful, he tells himself. You had a good night, and now you can go home and go to bed early, just like you wanted. Still, some part of him wants to linger, to try and catch another glimpse of Dr. Grace, to try and– 

No. Carl’s drunk, he decides, and tired. That’s why he’s not thinking clearly. That’s why he’s dreaming of things he can’t have. 

He opens the door to the hallway, slips out of the lounge. The metal walls and incandescent light seem like a slap in the face after the wood paneling of the bar. Good. Maybe this will sober him up. 

He starts to walk back towards his room, but he’s dragging his feet. He allows himself the indulgence, just this once, to imagine it. To imagine Dr. Grace coming out into the hallway, asking him to stay, maybe. He’d reach up and touch Carl’s face, and then they would– 

“Carl!” 

For a second, he thinks he’s dreaming. He pinches the back of his hand but no, still real. He turns around slowly, and there he is, just like Carl imagined, rushing down the hallway to catch up to him. 

“I thought I saw you come out here,” Dr. Grace says, breathless and smiling. “You’re pretty quick.” He stops to catch his breath, and for a moment Carl just looks at him, trying to get himself to process this. The hallway’s narrow, built for sailors to walk through and not much else, meaning that Dr. Grace is just a foot away even with Carl pressed against the wall, close enough for Carl to almost count the eyelashes that brush his cheeks. Carl’s heart is going at a speed that probably borders on dangerous. Just because he came out here to look for you doesn’t mean he likes you, he tells himself. You’re just friends. Just friends. 

“Did you have fun?” Dr. Grace asks, tilting his head in that way he does, like a curious puppy. Carl is too drunk for this. Carl is too drunk for the two of them pressed together in this tiny hallway, counting down the seconds until the sun goes out. 

“Thank you for inviting me, Dr. Grace.” He knows he’s dodging the question. He needs to get back to his room. He needs to get back to his room, and hide under his sheets and try to go to sleep and not dream about him, his five o’clock shadow and the way his hair curls at the nape of his neck and how he licks the corner of his mouth as he looks up at Carl, asking him if he had fun at the party he invited him to, on the ship he specifically requested he be on. He angles to brush past him, to walk away, but can’t quite bring himself to.

“Oh, please. Call me Ryland,” Dr. Grace— Ryland— says, and Carl stills. “Everyone else calls me Grace. It’s exhausting.” He smiles in a way that makes one side of his mouth quirk up. Carl has to rip his gaze away from his mouth.

No. No. You’re drunk, he scolds himself, and you’re being stupid, just like you said you wouldn’t be. You’re just friends. Just friends. He knows he should walk away. He tells his legs to move, tells himself to say goodnight and then leave, but he doesn’t move. 

“Alright, then. Ryland.” The name feels too good in his mouth. His blood feels like it’s champagne, all fizzy inside him. He’s had two beers. He shouldn’t be like this. Shouldn’t be doing something this stupid.

Ryland beams, one of those full smiles that feels as bright as the sun. His glasses are askew again. One side has slipped off his ear and the arm dangles uselessly next to his face. 

“Your glasses—“ Carl starts, because clearly he’s a lightweight and stupid, stupid, get away now before you do something you’ll regret, just go back to your room and sleep it off and pretend this never happened, you’re just friends just friends—

“Oh, they’re like that all the time.” Ryland laughs. His face scrunches up a little when he laughs, and Carl’s stomach does a little flip and the klaxon alarms in his head are blaring even louder than before. “I’ve given up on fixing them.”

He seems closer, but maybe that’s Carl’s imagination, maybe they were always chest-to-chest like this. His breath keeps catching in his throat. 

“No, it’s okay. Here,” Carl speaks without thinking and then he’s reaching up and tucking Ryland’s glasses back onto his ear and Ryland’s face is warm against his hand and the way he looks up at Carl makes his heart race and his pulse pound in his ears and stupid, stupid, you’ve gone and ruined it all. 

“Thanks,” Ryland breathes, and Carl’s gaze keeps catching on his mouth, too, and Ryland’s lifted his heels off the ground to give himself a boost because his face is dangerously close to Carl’s, and Ryland is blushing and Carl doesn’t think it’s just from the alcohol. Just friends. Just friends. 

Ryland’s so close. It would be so easy to just lean in and— no. Carl can feel himself swallow. No, he can’t think that. Just friends. But— maybe—

“Carl,” Ryland says, voice low, looking up at him through his eyelashes like Carl’s dreamed of for months, “can I kiss you?”

“Please,” Carl whispers, and then—

The lights are buzzing overhead in a way that Carl’s sure will give him a headache later and his feet hurt from wearing his dress shoes for so long and Ryland’s stubble is scratchy against his face but none of it matters, nothing matters except for Ryland’s kissing him and the way that Carl’s kissing back, soft, gentle, like the end of the world. Ryland loops an arm around his shoulders and Carl tentatively touches the side of his face and the universe has narrowed to just the two of them, to this ship corridor, to the space their bodies occupy and nothing else.

Ryland leans back after what could be either a minute or an hour, his cheeks flushed, his breathing coming a little harder than normal as he looks up at Carl. His glasses are askew again. “I’ve wanted to do that for ages,” he says, and Carl lets out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding. It still seems too good to be true, of course, but if Ryland’s wanted this, if this isn’t just a spur-of-the-moment thing, maybe they could make it work. 

“Yeah?” Carl asks. His hand is still on Ryland’s face. He doesn’t know if he should let go. He doesn’t know how the rest of this will play out. It’s been a long time since he’s been kissed, longer since he’s had any sort of real relationship, and the anxiety is creeping back up in his chest again that he’ll find some way to mess it up.

“Yeah,” Ryland says. “Since the hardware store. Since before then, maybe.” His hand slides down Carl’s chest to toy with the edge of his shirt collar, his lapel. 

“Did you invite me here just for this?” Carl’s tone is light, but he wants to know. Wants to know if that was the only reason, if Ryland didn’t see anything else in him. He keeps trying to ruin things for himself. But he has to ask or it’ll keep nagging at the edges of his mind, a little paranoia every time he goes into a meeting, did Ryland say I knew you could do it just to get with him. 

Ryland blinks up at him, clearly surprised. “Well, it wasn’t the only reason. You’re a good guy, Carl. You’re talented. I didn’t want you to be alone in California when it would be a waste not to have you here.” He pauses. “And I missed you.” 

Carl shouldn’t feel this pleased just at a few compliments. But with the way that Ryland’s saying the words, with the way that they all sound so genuine, it’s hard to do his usual trick of demurring. “I missed you too,” he says. “The hangar was too quiet without you.”

Ryland laughs. “Same here. None of the scientists know how to have fun.” 

“Well,” Carl says, having to pause to get the rest of the words to come out right. Normally he wouldn’t be this bold, but the world is ending and Ryland’s here, Ryland kissed him and told him he wanted him since the start, and Carl won’t let himself mess this up by being too cowardly. “We could have some fun together.”

Ryland kisses him again.

Carl’s surprised at first, but then he relaxes into it, Ryland with both arms around his shoulders, now, Carl with his hand still cradling Ryland’s face and another at the small of his back, the two of them in the hallway together, the universe so small as to just be the place where their lips touch and nothing else. Ryland feels sturdy against him, real, tangible, and Carl reminds himself of the fact that they’re alive, they’re still here, even if the sun is dimming, even if the world is dying, they’re not dead yet. 

They break apart again, and Carl takes a deep breath, another, feels the flush in his cheeks and the way his heart beats solidly inside his chest. Ryland grins up at him and it makes Carl dizzy. 

“Want to get ice cream?”

Carl blinks. He’s unsure what this means. He wasn’t the most active in the gay community even before being assigned to the project, and he’s sure the slang has changed, because he’s never heard of this one before. “I–”

“The cafeteria will be totally empty, since everyone’s at the party. We won’t even have to wait in line.” Ryland starts talking again in that rambly way he does, explaining all the details, and Carl relaxes. Ryland wants for them to go get soft-serve from the machine in the cafeteria. Carl feels a smile spread across his face, because it’s so Ryland in a way that’s instantly disarming, that gets all of the nerves that were bubbling up to the surface to settle down. 

“Yeah, we can go get ice cream.”

And then Ryland’s beaming and taking his hand and they’re walking through the maze of corridors together, and talking about the benefits of getting swirl soft serve– both flavors at once, Ryland says, just as seriously if he were presenting an academic paper– and Carl is suddenly very, very grateful that he didn’t let his hatred of karaoke steer him away from the party, from tonight, from everything afterwards.

They eat their ice cream out on the upper deck, looking out at the silent ocean and the smattering of stars clearly visible without any light pollution here in the South Pacific, and Ryland gets a smear of vanilla on the side of his face that Carl wipes off carefully with his thumb, and Ryland looks at him like he’s the best thing in the world, and Carl knows he’s done for.

They finish their cones, and Carl checks his watch. Past midnight. He winces a little, because he has to be up at five for a conference call with someone in Europe about the Sahara-paving project. Ryland picks up on it, tosses their cone wrappers in the trash, offers Carl his hand. “Here, I’ll walk you home.”

“A true gentleman,” Carl says once they arrive outside his room, and Ryland chuckles. 

“Well, I try.”

“I appreciate it.” 

Ryland blushes, waves a hand. “It’s no biggie.”

“No, I mean it. I really enjoyed tonight.” Carl tries to remember every rom-com he’s watched, tries to remember what to say. Hopefully that was good enough. It was true– he did enjoy tonight, even with having to deal with meeting Ryland’s coworkers, even with having to listen to physicists sing karaoke. 

“We could do it again sometime if you want. My schedule’s pretty open.” They both know that’s not true. But it’s somehow more touching for Ryland to lie and say it is, to make room for Carl in this way, and Carl lingers outside the door because he doesn’t quite want the night to be over yet. Doesn’t want to say goodbye.

“I’d like that,” he says, soft, and Ryland beams. 

“Does tomorrow work?”

Tomorrow. Sooner than Carl expected, but pleasantly so. His face is sore from smiling but he does it anyway. “I’ll put it on my calendar.”

Ryland blushes, fiddling with the hem of his shirt for a moment before he leans up to give Carl a quick peck on the cheek. “Good night, Carl,” he says, and Carl has to fight the urge to reach up and touch the spot that Ryland kissed just like in the movies to make sure that it’s real, that it really happened. 

“Good night, Ryland.”

–

And life continues. More of the same, more of all the typical routines, logistics meetings and conferences with the military leaders and the businessmen supplying the panels. Late nights and early mornings and Carl dragging himself to bed every night for a few measly hours of poor sleep, trying to ignore the rocking of the ship in the waves. 

But now there’s Ryland.

They do more than just go for ice cream, of course. They play cards in the lounge, eat together in the cafeteria. Carl gets invited over to Ryland’s room at night to talk– about movies they like, about things they did as kids, about everything and nothing. They haven’t put a label on it. Carl isn’t sure if Ryland wants to, and he’s not going to press. But whatever it is, relationship or no, it’s good. 

“Are you and Dr. Grace sleeping together?” Dr. DuBois asks, serving himself more pasta from the cafeteria line. Carl nearly drops the tongs into the roasted green beans. He’d tried to prepare himself for this. He knew someone was going to ask eventually. Still, it felt unexpected. He and Ryland hadn’t discussed this. Hadn’t thought about what they were going to tell everyone. For a moment, Carl tries to think through different scenarios, different ways of putting it– would an outright denial be considered rude to Ryland, dismissing their relationship? Would a ‘yes’ be an invasion of Ryland’s privacy?

Dr. DuBois pats his arm. “Congratulations,” he says, clearly taking Carl’s silence as an affirmation. He’s not exactly wrong. “It’s good to see you two happy.” He picks up his tray with a wink and goes off presumably to find Dr. Shapiro, leaving Carl alone and thoroughly confused in the lunch line. 

“Well, someone was going to find out eventually,” Ryland tells him that night after Carl’s recounted the story. They’re in Ryland’s room, the two of them trying to both fit onto the tiny bed, Ryland’s chin tucked into the junction between Carl’s neck and shoulder as he lays on top of him. They’ve been spending more and more nights together these days. They’re in their pajamas, Ryland wearing one of his nerdy t-shirts and shorts with dinosaurs patterned on them, Carl in a matching silk set he bought himself for his birthday last year. Carl’s started keeping a toothbrush and toothpaste in Ryland’s bathroom. They haven’t discussed it, at least not directly, but he catches Ryland looking at their toothbrushes side-by-side on the sink and seeming pleased, so he assumes it’s alright. 

“Is it okay that Dr. DuBois knows?” Carl asks. He knows that Ryland’s doing important work. That Stratt is requesting his opinion more and more, that Ryland’s been sent to interview tech experts and medical device companies for the Hail Mary. He doesn’t know if a relationship could jeopardize that. If Stratt would disapprove of Ryland having any potential distractions. 

Ryland chuckles, and Carl feels the vibration against his chest as he does so. “Of course it’s okay. I really like you, you know. I want people to know that.” Carl tries to hide the grin creeping over his face against the pillow, but Ryland sits up a little, leans so he can see Carl’s expression.

“No, no,” he says. “None of that. You have a pretty smile. I want to see it.” His thumb rubs circles over Carl’s cheekbone, and Carl looks up at him like an angel, silhouetted by the dim overhead lights. “You really think so?” He asks, and Ryland laughs. “Yes, I really think so,” he says, and then he kisses him, and Carl is suddenly very grateful for the tiny ship beds if it ends in moments like these.

–

Word travels fast on the ship, of course, and by the time that they’re relocating to Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Ryland’s assigned a trailer big enough for two.

They settle into a routine. Carl wakes up, goes for a run around the spaceport, seeing the framework of the launch pad rise in the distance. The weather isn’t too bad, this time of year, and he tries to make the most of it as he watches the sun rise over the steppes. Then he goes back to their trailer, showers, cooks breakfast. Eggs and bacon. The Project Hail Mary crew is not left wanting for much. It made him feel guilty, at first, the luxury of it while people are already starting to go hungrier than before, but then he remembered that they’re manning a suicide mission and they’ll probably all go to prison after this, and that makes him feel a little better about it.

Ryland wakes up to the smell of breakfast, and he pads out of the bedroom rubbing at his eyes, hair sticking out in every angle. They kiss good morning, eat breakfast together before they have to go their separate ways. More meetings. More planning. They’re nearing their launch window, and the tension is palpable in the air, as Carl negotiates contracts and arranges for shipments of materials, as Ryland accompanies Stratt to meetings with various governments. Carl just wants it to all be over already. 

But it’s tricky, he thinks, because he doesn’t know where he and Ryland will go from here. Doesn’t know if they’ll stay together without the project. He’d like to, of course– he’d like to wake up every morning with him there, make breakfast every day until the end, hold Ryland’s hand and watch the sun set. But he wouldn’t blame Ryland for wanting to forget all this. To retreat somewhere in the mountains or back to San Francisco and try to forget about the steadily dimming sun until they either have an answer or the end is near. 

They don’t really talk about the future, at least, not at first. Ryland’s frazzled from some meeting about the life-support technology and Carl is tired of speaking Russian for eight hours of every day trying to deal with getting supplies shipped over miles and miles of Kazakh steppe. A month passes, the two of them falling into bed too exhausted to do anything but sleep, stolen moments inbetween conferences just leading to a quick kiss, an exchanging of glances. The stress is getting to the both of them, and so, one night, Ryland proposes that they think of something to hope for.

“A light at the end of the tunnel,” he says, propping himself up in bed to look at Carl. “Something for us to do when this is over.” 

“Like a bucket list?” Carl asks, feeling Ryland’s us warm in his chest. 

“Sort of,” Ryland responds. “Just something to look forward to.” 

Carl thinks for a moment, mulls it over. Something to look forward to. “I’d like to drive the Pacific Coast Highway,” he says. “I’d make a real vacation out of it, this time.” He’d taken stretches of it when he was ferrying around Ryland and trying to arrange Stratt’s affairs in California, but he hadn’t had the time to enjoy it. To truly see what was around him.

Ryland scoots closer, leaning on his side. “I’ve driven it,” he says. “When I moved to San Francisco. I could give you the tour.”

“A road trip,” Carl says. “It’s very americana of us.” 

Ryland laughs. “We deserve to be cliche after all this.” He rolls over so he’s on top of Carl, a sprawl of legs and arms, settling his chin into the crook of Carl’s shoulder just how he likes. The weight is comforting. He can hear Ryland’s pulse and rubs circles into his back as he thinks, Ryland making a little satisfied sound. 

“Long day?” Carl asks quietly, and Ryland chuckles. “All days are long days.” Carl hums an assent. He’s not wrong. They’ve been working themselves to the bone. Carl feels more exhausted than he’s ever been. But it’ll be worth it, he reminds himself. For the cause. The project.

“But we’ll go on our road trip. And then we can sleep in as long as we want.” Ryland says the words definitively, as if he’s already sure they’re going to come true. “We’ll have all the time in the world after we fix it.”

His words are slurring a little, and he yawns against Carl’s shoulder. Carl presses a kiss to his temple. “All the time in the world,” he echoes, even though he’s half-sure Ryland’s already asleep. “I look forward to it.”

–

Things go off the rails. They always do. Carl just hadn’t expected it to be this bad.

He supposed he should’ve known something would happen. They were going too fast, sloppy, cutting corners with the safety of it all. Everyone wanted to be sure they’d launch on time. Everyone wanted to save the world. 

They hear the explosion, early morning on another gray Kazakh day, the blast rocking their trailer, and Carl knows before he even makes it outside and sees the plume of smoke rising what’s happened. He screws his eyes shut for a single second, feels just Ryland’s comfortable weight next to him in bed, pretends that something hasn’t just blown up. 

And then he opens them, because he knows how these things work, he knows that closing his eyes won’t make it go away, and he and Ryland stumble outside in their pajamas and the science facility is on fire and then they throw on clothes and socks and shoes and Ryland runs to the fence and Carl runs after him, already knowing what’s happened, already knowing that nobody in the building would have survived, already knowing who was in there, all his worst fears coming true.

That night, Ryland had sobbed against his chest, and Carl had held him and rubbed circles into his back and told him I know, I know, for hours, until Ryland had been too tired to cry and just hiccuped and stared off into the empty space of their bedroom, and Carl had shut off the lights and told him to try and get some sleep. 

The next morning, his phone rings. 

He extracts himself from under Ryland slowly, carefully, pressing a kiss to the top of his head as he answers the phone, as Stratt tells him the facts just like she did all those months ago telling him to be ready to fly out. Stratt tells him the plan, and Carl pulls on his slacks, buttons up his shirt, shrugs on his blazer. Stratt tells him she thinks Ryland will run. Carl tightens his tie, looks at Ryland sprawled in their bed, feels a pain worse than a bullet wound in his chest. 

He doesn’t know if he’ll see him again, he realizes. If he’ll be able to talk to him again. So he has to say it now. He has to say it now, before it’s too late, before he regrets it forever— more than he regrets any other part of this, anyway. 

“I love you, Ryland,” he says, standing in the doorway, and Ryland stirs a little, opens his eyes blearily. 

“Carl? What’re you doing up so early?” The words slur, Ryland reaching up to rub at his face, and Carl’s heart is breaking into pieces. “Come back to bed.”

“I can’t,” Carl says, and feels tears prick at his eyes. He strides back over to Ryland, kisses him again, softly, gently, tries to sear the memory into his brain so he’ll never forget the last kiss they have. Because he knows this is the end. Because he knows, maybe, that this was always how it would end. “Early meeting. You should go back to sleep.”

Ryland hums a sleepy affirmation, seemingly satisfied with Carl’s answer. “After we fix it,” he says. “We’ll sleep in as long as we want.” 

“As long as we want,” Carl replies. A tear slides down his face, another. He doesn’t bother rubbing them away. Ryland doesn’t have his glasses on, and so it is only Carl who sees himself cry, only Carl who knows the reason. 

“Goodbye, Ryland,” he says, and shuts the door behind him. 

–

He hoped it wouldn’t end this way. Hoped that Ryland would make the right choice, would realize what Stratt had always seen in him, what Carl had seen in him, that bravery, that moral fibre, that ability to make the world alright again. But Ryland ran, out through the facility and into the field, legs pumping hard, yellow raincoat fluttering in the wind, black beanie pulled down over his ears, looking just like he had when Carl met him all those months ago. And Carl chased after him, because he had to. Because the planet depended on it, every single life on earth depended on it, but he’d be lying if he didn’t say that for a moment he almost wished Ryland would be able to break free, to jump the fence, that they could live on borrowed time for a little while longer. 

He believes in what they’re doing. He believes in the cause, in the project they’re doing, in the billions of people they’ll save. He believes, but it still hurts when Ryland says his name, pushed to the ground, face crushed against the grass. When he looked up at him through tears and his crooked glasses and croaked out “Carl, Carl,” like he thought Carl was there to save him, like Carl would set him free, and Carl just had to stand and watch. 

“I can’t do it, Carl. Tell them I can’t do it.” His voice is thick with his tears and shaky with his sobs and he’s reaching out for him, he can see himself reflected in Ryland’s eyes, pupils dilated even under the gray sky because of the adrenaline or the fear or the knowledge of what will happen next. Of what has to happen next. 

“Carl, please, please, they’re going to kill me, I can’t do it, I can’t–” he’s crying, his chest is shaking from his sobs, and the security guards and the doctors are all around them, and the sun is dying and they’re all dying and Stratt is going to kill Ryland tomorrow up on that spaceship, on that Hail Mary. “Please,” Ryland chokes out again and again, “Carl, please.” 

And Carl– Carl–

He kneels on the grass, because he doesn’t care if anyone sees, he doesn’t care what the security guards tell Stratt. There will be grass stains in his suit but he can’t care, he can’t, not now. They’re all dying anyway unless Ryland can fix it, and Ryland will fix it, Carl knows he will, and he has to tell him before he leaves. Before they never see each other again.

He reaches carefully, gently, under his glasses to brush away the tear sliding down Ryland’s cheek. “You know who you are.” It’s not enough. No words could ever be enough. “You’re gonna do great.” 

“Carl,” Ryland gasps, hands digging into the grass, tears running down his face, too many of them for Carl to brush off, now. A needle is sliding into his neck and Carl grabs his hand because he should, because he has to, because he couldn’t live with himself if he let them drag him away and Carl didn’t at least hold his hand for it, if Carl didn’t offer him some comfort before they effectively kill him.

“It’s okay,” he says, over and over, even though it isn’t, even though nothing will be okay, not after this. “You’re okay. You’re okay. We’re going to fix it, remember? You’re going to fix it.” He swallows hard and his eyes water but he smiles anyway, in case some subconscious part of Ryland can see it, in case the universe will take mercy on them if only he thinks positively enough. "You're going to do great, Ryland. I know it."

He doesn’t let himself cry until after the ship takes off. That is what he promises to himself, because there are still things to do, there are still boxes to tick off on the checklist, and he owes it to Ryland to at least do everything he can to make his sacrifice not be for nothing. Sacrifice, that is what Stratt had called it, and Carl had to excuse himself from the building and ran out into the wilderness until he felt like his heart was about to beat out of his chest and walked back the four miles to base because Carl knows he has to do this. At the very least, he has to do this.

There was no question as to who would pack for Ryland. As for who would arrange his things, fold all of his t-shirts for him to bring aboard, fill his little canvas duffel bag with just enough personal items to hopefully make it through the trip to Tau Ceti. To remind Ryland of what he’s doing this for. And thusly Carl finds himself in Stratt’s office again as she tells him to get Ryland’s things together before the launch tomorrow, and it takes all of Carl’s CIA training to keep himself from crying, from screaming, from storming out of the room and sitting in the grass where Ryland had fallen. He knows what his job is. He knows why he’s here. He knows that Ryland can do it, and in this moment that’s all he can think, the only way he can help, and so he nods numbly and agrees.

The packing list is slim. He tries to ask around for what Yao and Ilyukhina are bringing aboard, and gets a few answers– favorite CDs, pictures of family and friends, sentimental knick-knacks and clothing items. He tries to hunt around in Ryland’s closet for any of those, looks in his nightstand to see if he had any good luck charm, curses himself that he didn’t know these things already. He sits cross-legged on the floor of their room and stares at the t-shirts he pulled out of Ryland’s drawers, wondering how you can sum up a human life in a duffel bag, wondering how he could be so cowardly as to let this happen. 

He hates himself for it. But that has to wait, because right now all that matters is Ryland, all that matters is the project and the Hail Mary and the fact that Ryland is being sent up there to fix it– and he will, in that Carl has no doubt, Ryland will fix it– and that Carl can at least do right by him by giving him fond memories of Earth, of the two of them, some encouragement in his lonely voyage, the suicide mission that Carl forced him onto. 

And so he packs. The majority of Ryland’s t-shirts, a pair of jeans, his beanie. Carl requests to print a few photos and thankfully the scientists have one of the nice printers for their experiments and papers, one that produces little one-inch by two-inch glossy rectangles of Ryland standing in the hangar, Ryland laughing with the Hail Mary crew, Ryland on the deck of the Vat looking out onto the ocean. Ilyukhina approaches him, and Carl doesn’t think that she knows what he did, doesn’t think that she knows what atrocity he just had to commit for the good of mankind, because she offers to print a photo she took of him and Ryland the night of the karaoke party, and Carl agrees. Because he’s selfish. Because he doesn’t care about Ryland’s feelings, he scolds himself later that night, hunched over the duffel bag at three in the morning, Ryland probably won’t even want to see Carl’s face after he remembers what he’s done. But Carl is sentimental, Carl is flawed, and he tucks it away inside a case with a spare pair of Ryland’s glasses. Carl hates how Stratt had them at the ready. Carl hates that he didn’t see the whole plan before, that he couldn’t have caught what Stratt was doing until it was too late, that he and Ryland didn’t escape to the Pacific Coast Highway together, didn’t find some secluded beach cabin to live out the end of the world together. 

But he doesn’t let himself cry. Not yet. 

Four bags of sour skittles. Drawings from schoolchildren. Ryland’s Earth hacky sack. Anything else that Carl thinks could be useful, as the timer ticks down, as the t-minus to launch approaches. Ryland had never mentioned a favorite book, a favorite movie, a favorite animal. Carl is faced with all the things he didn’t know, that he’ll never know, and it feels like a black hole yawning open inside him. He folds Ryland’s fox cardigan as neatly as he can and has to redo it three times because his hands keep shaking. 

He’s running out of space. There are only so many things, so many memories, he can fit inside the mustard-yellow bag. There is ten hours to launch and Carl hasn’t slept more than four hours in days. He hesitates. Uncaps a Sharpie. Writes Ryland Grace on the outside, because it had been such a hasty change that they hadn’t even had the time to embroider his name like the others. On the inside, You’re going to do great. 

He watched the shuttle launch, hand shielding his face from the sun, and only then do the tears start to fall. “You know who you are,” he says as the ship streaks across the sky, as it breaks through the atmosphere, rends itself free from Earth’s orbit. He wants to say something else, but every word he can think of is hollow and useless, dying on his tongue. “You’re gonna do great.” He knows Ryland won’t hear it. 

Stratt touches his arm, the closest she gets to a hug. She doesn’t say anything for a long moment, just the two of them and the wind and the receding point of the Hail Mary in the distance. 

“God willing,” she says finally. Carl shakes his head. “It’s not dependent on God,” he says. “It’s dependent on him. And he’ll do it.”

—

Grace swings his legs idly off the metal catwalk, the screens all around him and Rocky projecting fake ocean, fake sky, fake fields of wheat. “What do you miss about Erid?” He asks. He’s always talked too much, he thinks, but Rocky doesn’t seem to mind.

“My mate.” Rocky shifts in his ball, leaning closer to Grace, and Grace moves to welcome him before processing the words. “Wait, hold up. You have a mate?” That came out wrong, and his mouth twists. “Not that I’m surprised. You’ve just never said anything about— well—“ This is not going well. Rocky makes the little sound that Grace knows means he’s laughing. 

“What’s their name?” Grace asks. Of course, now it makes sense. Rocky has a mate. Something to return to. 

Rocky preens, as if pleased to be asked, and performs a long sequence of notes in different pitches and tunes. It’s hauntingly beautiful in the way most Eridian words are and makes Grace feel utterly inadequate with his little meat-sack body. But that’s alright. It’s alright, he tells himself, because they’re going to save Erid and save Earth, and nothing else matters. “It’s beautiful,” he says instead. Rocky chuffs happily and straightens up in the way he does when he’s proud. “How long have you guys been together?”

“One hundred and eighty-six years.” Rocky sounds bittersweet, as much as Grace’s artificially-generated computer voice can sound bittersweet at all. Grace whistles. “Wow,” he says, to bring the mood up. “You must really love each other. That’s a long time.” The scene has flipped, changed to a foggy beach with towering cliffs in the distance, the water frothing as it rolls up onto the sand. For a minute, Grace prepares to move, to get out of the way before the waves soak his sneakers, before he remembers it’s all digital. He’s more off his game than he thought. Maybe it’s like what Rocky says, scolding him to go to sleep. He doesn’t feel tired. Just… exhausted. Worn out.

“Not long enough.” Rocky sighs. Grace pats the outside of his ball. He’s bad at these sorts of situations, with too many emotions, where he needs to say the right thing. But the fact that they’re both alone, the necessity of their conversations for both of their sanities, has taken some of the pressure off. “We’ll get you home. You’ll get more time, I promise.” 

“Grace Rocky save stars.” Rocky leans against the side of the ball, and Grace leans in for their sort of awkward side-hug. He likes to imagine that he can feel Rocky’s body heat through the xenonite, even though Rocky’s engineered it so that none of his atmospheric heat can escape. It’s a comforting thought, the warmth of another being, the warmth of a friend. They stay like that for a moment, and then Rocky shifts to signal that the hug-time is over. Grace tries to not miss it.

“And you? Grace have mate, question?” The light bounces off of Rocky’s ball, refracts on the frame of Grace’s glasses. A foggy field, full of amber grass waving in the wind. He gets that tingling feeling at the base of his skull when a memory is on the edge of his tongue but he can’t quite taste it. 

“Yeah, I did.” Wheat sways in an artificial breeze. Dead dandelions with their fuzzy white halos and brown stems. Rocky taps the ball to signal Grace to continue, and so he does, because it feels fair to reveal this part of him when Rocky did the same. “His name was Carl.” He exhales shakily. The memories are still all jumbled, technicolor glimpses of a warm body, bright smile. Fluorescent-light buzz in the hardware store, and then later, on the aircraft carrier. The photo he’d found in his glasses case of them together, Ryland’s arm around Carl’s shoulders, Carl’s head thrown back in a laugh. “We understood each other, I think. We made each other happy.” 

The scene changes again, light slanting through tree branches. Grace sighs, then chuckles. “It doesn’t hold a candle to your relationship, though. We were only together for a couple of months.” The franticness of the situation, the desperation of the end of the world, fate pushing the two of them together in the hangar. Carl cooking bacon in their shared trailer, Ryland kissing him good morning. The promise of the Pacific Coast Highway. All the time in the world.

“Not long enough,” Rocky says. Grace looks up at the fake-sun through the fake-trees, feels just cold air on his face. “No,” he says, “not long enough.”