Work Text:
I know that living for some is just
Waiting around like taxidermy
Eva doesn't usually take this route so late. Normally she cruises straight from her office to her quarters on the same floor, if she's even going to commit to trying to go to sleep in a bed. More often than not she simply catches a reluctant few hours on the couch in her office, just until the sun rises through the window enough to wake her up.
But this evening she'd ended up in the lower levels of the ship, trapped there well into the night, a conflict in the engineering department turning into an outright refusal to cooperate. The resulting mediation had dragged and dragged, drawing more parties in, more simple reasoning out.
They'd needed a deciding force. She, above all, was that.
It'd been a frustrating evening. One she could've spent doing far better things, far closer to her private rooms.
She cuts through the lab floors, familiar enough with their winding layout by now even in the dark. Here and there a few technicians are still tending to the more sensitive or urgent experiments, but for the most part it's dark rooms and blinking LEDs, computers left idling as they churned through data for the night.
The cell biology lab lights are on, though.
Eva slows. Either someone's working late, or someone's forgotten to lock up for the night. Whichever it is, she diverts her path without much thought.
She breezes through the rows of benches and equipment, checking down aisles and glancing into corners, looking for signs of anyone actively working. It's quiet and empty however, and she's already turning around to leave again when she gets to the last bench, casting a quick glance around, already calling it a night.
She jumps, when she sees somebody there.
Her brain registers it as Grace in an instant. That in itself is not all that alarming, nor surprising - it's more the fact he's sprawled on his stomach under the bench, a balled-up hoodie shoved under his face, one arm curled above his head, the other outstretched by his side.
Prone.
When Eva looks back on this, she won't know why she'd reacted so severely. She'll replay the image in her head and it'll be obvious he was asleep, that she could've nudged a foot into his side, woken him up easily enough.
But in the moment, for some unknown, entirely blind-siding reason, she panics.
It moves her without thinking. She lunges forward to shake him, her heart dropping out of her chest as everything pauses around her.
As soon as she's reaching to touch him though, he's startling awake. His sudden jolt away startles her in turn, and they both veer back, yelling their surprise.
Eva recovers herself first. She exhales with a groan, standing tall as she puts her hands behind her head, pacing a loose circle while she wills her heart to stop hammering against her ribs.
"You scared me," she tells him distractedly.
She never panics.
From the floor, Ryland reels at the statement. He pushes himself upright, gesturing at her in disbelief.
"I scared you?" he digs, his hand over his heart for emphasis. "I wasn't even awake! I thought- fudging- pirates were attacking, or something."
It works to pause her. Hands falling, Eva comes to a stop to look down at him, lost for how to reply to that. He looks back up at her, oblivious to the fact. From her vantage, she takes in the haggard image of him for a moment.
His hair is greased and scuffed into disarray, a usual novelty t-shirt pinched askew at his shoulders. Something about antiparticles today, she registers vaguely. There are imprints from the fabric of his jumper pressed into one side of his face, clear dark circles dragging under his eyes.
He looks exhausted.
"Pirates?" she remembers to reply then, only half-present in it.
Ryland groans. His head is spinning with a sick, dizzy sort of tired, the kind that makes his thoughts lurch and tip. He exhales again, letting his body drop to lie back down. The hoodie he'd been using as a pillow gets draped over his eyes, shielding them from the overhead lights.
"We're on a ship," he says, muffled, also only half-present. "That could happen."
Still staring at him, Eva huffs a laugh. It's a sound equal parts relief and exasperation; this is such a sudden, unexpected contrast to the evening she'd just had to fight through.
"We're on an aircraft carrier," she corrects, deciding to take his bait. "There's a difference."
Ryland drags the hoodie from his eyes, blinking against the light. He doesn't look at her, as he speaks.
"Have you seen pirate ships?" he counters, feeling loopy. "They're pretty big."
Eva just smiles. This was becoming commonplace now, with him: Grace always seemed to so easily throw her from the terse overwhelm of the rest of her work, from the dread of the impossible situation going on around them.
When she doesn't reply, Grace lifts his head in question, looking up at her as if only really registering what's going on.
"What are you doing here?"
He sits up again as he asks it, dragging his hands through his hair before casting around for his glasses.
"Lights were on," Eva answers shortly, coming over to snag them from the bench above him, handing them to him once the floor doesn't turn them up.
Grace takes them, still bleary eyed, with a nod of thanks.
"What are you doing here?" she asks him in return, watching as he clambers to his feet.
"Me?" he replies airily, gesturing to himself. "I was getting some quality shut eye. Before I was terrified awake, that is."
Still, Eva grins at it.
"On the floor," she points out, feeling like that needs addressing.
Grace just shrugs, already scanning the set-up on the bench in front of him.
"Did we not just talk about how huge this ship is?" he says, pulling an ice box closer to him, inspecting the reagents stored in there. "It's a twenty minute commute to bed," he grumbles, "and that's if I don't get lost."
He brings a small screw-cap tube closer to his eyes then, squinting at the information on the label.
"Easier to just sleep here," he continues, pulling a lab book closer to him and digging in his pockets for a pen. "Besides, I'll be up in-" he checks his watch, grimacing at what greets him, "5 hours, anyway."
He writes something down on the cramped page, then returns the tube to the ice. Apparently on autopilot now, Eva watches him check whatever row of samples were in front of him next, holding each one up to the light and flicking the tubes, seemingly looking for something in the clear liquid.
"Does this happen a lot?" she asks.
Grace glances at her. As he returns the last of the tubes to the rack he seems to remember his tiredness, turning to lean back against the bench and push his palms into his eyes.
Again, she watches him.
"Being woken by pirates? No," he says, pulling his hands away. "Sleeping under a lab bench? Yes."
Eva smirks at it. But she sees him do a double take on the floor then, his attention lingering there a touch too long, and she sobers.
With his disorientation only just starting to right itself, Ryland's brain catches up with the situation all at once. He looks to the floor, recalling the last time someone had shaken him awake in a panic, and the pieces slot dully into place.
It sets his jaw, and he tuts to himself.
He'd tried to kill himself one time, and people were apparently hell bent on scaring the living daylights out of him whenever he dozed off now.
He shakes his head, then hesitates.
Stratt, though. That's new.
He looks at her, confused, trying to read something from her presence. She looks back frustratingly neutral, an awkward flash of understanding passing between them.
Ryland clears his throat, trying to move past it. He turns back to the bench, shutting his lab book and setting about tidying the station.
"You do have piracy protocols though, don't you?"
It's an obvious, clunky step away. But again, Eva takes the bait. She's grateful for the opportunity to breeze past this detail - it's been a long night already.
"For modern piracy, yes," she allows, as Grace turns to her, readying to leave. "Wooden sail boats? No."
He grins, and they fall into step towards to the exit.
"Galleons, they'd be," he says, pausing them at a panel box to click a line of switches in succession, setting alarms.
Eva nods, her eyes bright despite her tiredness.
"I know."
The mood settles with it, something more regular and comfortable descending again. Ryland shuts the case, looking a little harder at Stratt; there's an air of weariness about her, despite her quick replies.
Still looking, he opens the door for them, gesturing her out first.
"Long day?" he guesses as she passes.
Eva exhales as she turns in the corridor, puffing her cheeks out with it. It makes Ryland grin, shutting off the lights to the lab and letting the door lock behind him as he joins her.
"Aren't they all," she sighs, as they start walking.
She seems more offhanded than usual, Ryland thinks. Maybe it's the late hour.
"Dr. Bowen said there was something going on in engineering," he says, making her look sideways. "That it?"
"Yes," she replies, eyebrows raising as Grace steps forward to hold another door open for her. "Many ignorant men around a table, posturing like peacocks."
"And that's your job to sort out?" he asks, following her through.
Eva laughs at it, amused to hear the thing she'd been thinking all evening voiced aloud. Ryland's pleased to hear the reaction from her, and he continues.
"I thought you were more on the sleeping pills and kidnapping side of things," he quips.
Again, Eva laughs. Again, Ryland's oddly pleased with the reaction.
"You'd be surprised how much of my job is navigating men's egos," she replies, waving her hand at it. "No," she laments, still smiling, flashing him another look. "Kidnapping you was just a highlight."
It shouldn't land as a joke - she had kidnapped him, after all. But Stratt says it so easily, smiling so genuinely. It's absurd; in the insane, isolated world of this ship, of the project itself, Ryland can't help a giddy laugh coming from him.
They're through a final door then, bringing them to a splitting stairwell. They pause in front of it: Eva's going up, Ryland going down. They stand facing each other, their goodbyes readying, until Ryland does a mental double take.
"Wait- that implies-" he trips, "did you not kidnap anyone else?"
He watches as her smile takes on a sly edge. Eva shrugs.
"You were needed urgently," she says, as if it's a simple enough reason. "It was more efficient, to get you here in that manner."
Ryland narrows his eyes at the rejoinder, astonished by the definite push of teasing in it.
"Oh- makes perfect sense, then," he returns, something in him coming alight with the sparring match of it all. "As long as it was efficient."
Another beat passes between them, another shared look.
"Turned out alright, didn't it?" Eva says.
Ryland scoffs at her easy confidence. He shifts on the spot with the challenge, dragging a hand over his face, trying to wipe the satisfaction from it.
His hands go to his hips then, and as they consider each other Eva nods, a finality in the movement. She takes a step back towards the stairs, schooling her face into something more formal.
"Goodnight, Dr. Grace," she tells him neatly, a slyness still lingering in the otherwise-polite tone. "Sleep well."
She turns away, leaving Ryland standing alone, mildly confused.
"Yeah," he says, watching her go. "You too."