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At the end of it, she takes his hand. Well, not even his hand, really. Her long fingers circle his wrist. Sort of. The touch is featherlight, barely there. He looks up at her. Her gaze is shadowed, elsewhere.
“Stratt?”
“Before you answer my next question, know that had there been a need I would have sent you on that ship with or without your consent. Will you come home with me?”
That’s altogether too many words for him to possibly process. As is the fact that one of her fingers has curled up under the sleeve of his coat and the back of it is resting against his skin. She will not meet his gaze. Which, yeah, okay. Seems right.
Around them, the celebration of a successful launch grows louder. Busier.
Her chin tucks in slightly towards her chest.
“Yeah,” he says, the words tripping over themselves on the way out of his mouth. “Wait, where’s home?”
-
Home, it turns out, is a little house overlooking Upper Lake Constance. They’ll fly to Zürich and… wait, what?
“Are you buying a car?”
She blinks at him. “I bought a car, past tense.”
“Yeah, but–”
“Get in, Dr. Grace.”
The new-to-her-car that Stratt bought sight unseen doesn’t smell like a new car. It’s small. It’s sleek. It’s dark gray. All around, it is a perfectly indistinct car. She opens the trunk, lifts her bag in, and it’s only when she reaches for his that his brain kicks into gear and, yeah, no he can put that in, no worries. He gets into the passenger seat and sticks his knuckle in his mouth.
He doesn’t like cars.
-
It is notably not as bad as a fighter jet. He clings to that thought as she shoots across the Swiss highway system far too fast and far too carelessly.
-
They arrive at the little house in the dark, so he doesn’t really see it. She plugs the car in. He gets their bags out of the back of the car and follows her inside. She doesn’t turn on a light so he sticks close behind her and manages to only stumble a little.
When she does finally flick on a light, it’s in a bedroom. He has to blink several times just to get used to the light. The room is small. It is painted a soft green. An intricate quilt covers a bed. Stratt opens another door, into a bathroom. Shuts the door behind her. It’s a pretty quilt: blues and greens and browns and white, each piece smaller than makes sense in his brain. He reaches out a finger to trace a seam. The quilt is soft. Old. Wonderful. Clearly handmade. At some point, he hears Stratt come back. He looks up to ask a question about it, but his brain short circuits instead.
Stratt. Skin. Stratt. Bare back. Stratt. Fingers behind her back, popping open her bra. Stratt. Stratt. Stratt.
She seems… entirely unconcerned that he hasn’t left the room yet. She seems entirely unconcerned about the way her garments are creating an untidy pile at her feet. She seems entirely unconcerned that he’s staring at her like an imbecile as she twists, reaches down–
Stratt. A glimpse of the side of her left breast. Stratt. Her back muscles jumping at the motion. Stratt. She fishes a heavy gray something or other out of her suitcase and rolls over her head. Stratt. She frees her hair from the collar of it. Stratt. She steps out of her pants.
Has she forgotten that he’s there?
No, because she says, without turning around, “Dr. Grace, if you would prefer to sleep elsewhere–”
Huh? Wait, no, he must have made a noise or something. He’s supposed to be paying attention to what she’s saying, but he can see her legs. He can see so much of her legs.
“Dr. Grace.” Oh, she’s turned around. Her eyes are on him, all liquid, all exhaustion, all… contented victory. Has he ever seen her look this at home? What a dumb thought. This is her home. Oh, she took a step towards him. Another. Her hand reaches up and lands on his cheek. “Dr. Grace,” she says, again. “I am going to go to sleep. It would be amenable if you join me in this endeavor. If you would be more comfortable elsewhere–”
“Nope,” he says, feeling his jaw crack amplified by her fingers against him. One of them, the pinky, maybe, skates over the bottom of his ear. “Here’s good. Here’s very good.”
She steps away from him. She reaches into her suitcase again. She rolls a pair of leggings on. She puts on a pair of bright pink fuzzy socks. She folds down the quilt. She lays down on the right side of the bed. She just… looks at him. He can’t look away from her.
“Dr. Grace,” she says, “do you plan to sleep in jeans and a button down?”
“Uh.”
“Please hurry up, I am quite tired.”
Right. Marching orders. Good. He can do that. He yanks the shirt over the top of his head and strips down to his boxers. He digs through his suitcase for his toothbrush and a fresh pair of boxers. He scurries into the bathroom. It is absolutely imperative that he accomplish these tasks as quickly as possible.
She’s watching him, when he emerges. Her face is open. He steps around to the other side of the bed. “May I?” Does his voice shake? Probably.
“Yes, Dr. Grace.” It might be the softest thing he’s ever heard her say.
He slips in under the covers. They are as close as they have ever been and feel as far away as they have ever been. She twists, turns off the light. He can feel her twist back, but they’re in the dark again. He swallows. “Who made the quilt?”
“My grandmother.”
“Oh.” He waits. He starts up again. “Hey, so, by, come home with me, did you mean–” he shuts up because suddenly he is speaking into her lips and she is on top of him and it’s all so warm and soft.
“Please, please,” she says, “go to sleep.” She doesn’t move off him. She tucks her face between his neck and shoulder.
Which, yeah, okay. He is really tired. She’s really tired.
The sun will rise for at least another morning.
-
He wakes up coughing and has to pull her hair out of his mouth. It tastes like hair, which is gross, but like also she’s curled up on top of him like a cat and there’s definitely worse reasons to wake up. Except, oh, no, he really has to sneeze. Um. Okay. How to sneeze when there’s an Eva Stratt shaped weight draped across him and he can’t move his head and if he sneezes where he is he’ll get snot in her hair and, uh. Maybe he should just… stop breathing? That seems like a reasonable solution to this predicament. If he can’t breathe, he can’t sneeze.
Stratt curls in on herself, whines, releases all the tension in her muscles. Slides off him just enough.
He turns his head to the side and sneezes. The force of it ripples through him.
Oh. It’s morning. There’s light peaking through the curtained window.
Oh. It’s not morning at all. There’s a clock on a bedside table. It’s several hours after noon. It’s an analog clock. Does it have ears?
Oh. He’s in Eva Stratt’s house. In her bed. Because she would be amenable to it.
This might be the best day of his life and so far all he has accomplished is a sneeze.
-
Wait, he doesn’t know how to get her coffee.
-
What if she wakes up and wants coffee?
-
Also, he kind of really needs to pee.
-
The clock definitely has ears. Is it supposed to be a dog?
-
Okay. So. He has two missions. In order to accomplish either, he first needs to escape from his absolute starfish of a… hrm… what would be an appropriate word to describe her? He wriggles, just a little. She chuffs some sort of noise and falls off him further. Eventually, slowly, he manages to wiggle all the way out from under her and is then confronted with a new problem: he is falling off the bed.
Right. So. At least that wasn’t a problem he had to think about for a long period of time, because it resolved very quickly. Ow. He pops his head up to make sure that didn’t wake her up. Her nose is scrunched up. Aww.
No, c’mon, Grace. Focus. Don’t get distracted by wanting to run a finger down her nose to smooth out all the wrinkles. Mission first, especially now that the mission isn’t strapping a couple astronauts on an untested engine and firing them off on a one way– nope, nope, nope, it’s done, don’t need to think about it right now.
-
Okay, so she’s still asleep when he emerges from the bathroom. He digs a t-shirt out of his suitcase but doesn’t bother with pants. He steps out into the hallway. He looks around. There’s very little light in the hallway, but more comes from down the stairs, so that’s where he goes.
Reconnaissance update: the downstairs has four rooms: dining area, kitchen, a living room, and a library that is absolutely packed full of books. Also, there’s a massive back sunroom that looks out over an even more massive lake. Like. Huge. Even after spending years living on an ocean, it’s the sort of view that demands several rapt minutes of his full attention. It’s so… bright and sparkly. It looks so full of life. There’s sails, off in the distance, cutting around and about.
None of that is coffee. So. Kitchen.
-
New problem: there is clearly a coffee machine on the counter. There is clearly coffee beans, newly purchased, in a cabinet. Actually, the entire kitchen is stocked with food. Even the tiny little refrigerator is stocked. Everything looks new. She must have ordered ahead, anticipating her return. So, the materials are available to him.
He has absolutely no idea how to work her coffee machine. And he doesn’t even know how to find internet access to look up how to work the machine.
So. Experimentation?
-
He hears her. She’s talking to someone on the phone as she comes downstairs. In German, so he doesn’t understand what she says until there’s a farewell when she’s right behind him. She snakes her arms around his waist and buries her face in his back.
Please let it be known, he does not startle at this. Nope. He is perfectly calm and smooth and suave.
She says something, muffled, in German, before pausing. She pulls back a little, and he can feel her chin against his spine when she says, “Louise will bring the girls around in an hour. Thank you for trying.” She steps around him and takes one sip of each of his experimentations before pouring them all down the drain. In very short order, she hands him a mug of what is quite possibly the best coffee he’s ever had.
“When you said on Lake Constance, you meant on Lake Constance.”
She looks up at him from above a mug of coffee. Her eyes are… hrm… flower petals, dappled with mist and sunlight. “We’ll go sailing tomorrow.”
“Stratt,” he whines, “we’ve lived on a boat for years.”
“Dr. Grace,” she says, stepping to a different part of the kitchen and happening to end up someplace where the afternoon sun set her entire being aglow. “This will be an entirely different experience."
Then she sets her mug down. She reaches out a hand towards him. He goes to her, easy, quick, sans his own coffee. Her hands wrap around both his wrists and he comes to a stop just before her. There’s something entirely different in her face now. He’s not sure he has a name for it. He shifts under her scrutiny. Eventually, she says, simply, “I am glad you are here.”
She releases him. She picks up her coffee mug.
He sways, a little, without her support. He looks down at the floor to try and ground himself.
She’s still wearing fluffy pink socks.
-
He’s washing dishes when the front door springs open and there is an immediate rush of noise. Barking?
He pokes his head into the dining room, which opens on to the entrance way. It takes him several seconds to process the sight before him.
Eva Stratt, kneeling on the ground, her face pressed into the flank of an incredibly wiggly big black dog. Another dances around her, darting in and licking her face before spinning in a circle and then jumping on her again. And then, a different noise. A higher pitched bark, a growl.
In front of him is the fluffiest dog he’s ever seen. It’s tiny. It flashes its teeth at him. “Zeger,” Stratt says, “Halt, komm.”
The little dog turns and shoots over into the fray.
“We must be nice to Dr. Grace, no?” Stratt says. “No growling.”
Eventually, she gets to her feet. “Sitz.” All the dogs plop down at her feet. “Dr. Grace, please be known to my girls: Zeger, Zutun, and Tulip.”
He blinks at her. He blinks at the dogs. “Uh. Hi.”
“Zeger is a Pomeranian,” she says, gesturing to the little fluffball. “Zutun and Tulip are Rottweilers. Proper German girls, not like that American branch of the breed.”
-
The little house feels much more full of life and energy and noise. The last of the tension in Stratt’s shoulders flushes away whenever she reaches down and strokes her fingers down one of the girl’s heads.
Oh, he thinks. She loves these dogs more than anything.
-
She goes to sit in the sunroom. The dogs and he all follow.
-
Eva Stratt then proceeds to do absolutely nothing. It’s so weird.
-
Eventually, he gets bored and goes to take a shower. She’s still doing nothing when he returns. Zeger is curled up in a ball on her lap. One of the Rottweilers is sprawled across her feet. When he sits down next to her, the other one comes over and sniffs at him and then shoves her head into his lap. He tentatively pats her head.
“Which one–?”
“Tulip. She’s a big dumb softie. Zutun is much more intelligent.” Her words are full of affection.
-
Eventually he gets bored again and goes and pokes around in the library. She has an entire bookshelf dedicated to magazines, all current, all categorized, including Nature. Delighted, he picks one out at random and returns to the sunroom. He sprawls out on a chaise on the other side of the sunroom this time. Tulip hops up immediately and sprawls out over his legs, which is not the most comfortable thing but she is nice and warm.
At one point, Stratt takes out her phone and has a quick conversation he doesn’t understand. Then she goes back to sitting erect, almost perfectly still, her eyes on the horizon and her hands moving gently over Zeger’s fur.
Much later, Zutun jumps to her feet and barks. Zeger’s off like a shot, into the house. The doorbell rings.
“Dinner,” Stratt says, standing. She stretches.
He blinks at her.
“Tulip, komm.”
Tulip whines, but slides her way off the lounger and trots over to Stratt’s side. They disappear into the house together.
-
They eat Chinese takeaway and watch the sun set over the lake. Stratt yawns. “Bedtime.”
-
She removes the quilt from the bed, folds it, and puts it in a closet. She curls into her side of the bed. He gingerly slides into his. “Hier,” she says, sleepily.
Two and a half giant dogs are suddenly on the bed with them.
Stratt’s little exhale is the most contented noise he’s ever heard her make.
-
He might love these dogs more than anything, if they make her this happy.
-
The next morning, an alarm. He groans and tries to dig himself deeper into the bed. It is oddly, newly very cold. He forces himself to blearily open his eyes. His vision is suddenly very full of Eva Stratt, blurry in the mid-dark of morning, without his glasses.
“Go back to sleep, Dr. Grace,” she says, soft. “The girls and I are going for a walk.”
She leans forward. Her lips mold softly over the tip of his nose. Then she’s gone. He rolls over into her side of the bed, blankets tangling in his feet, and goes back to sleep.
-
He wakes again to one of the dogs licking his face. Gross. Gross, gross, gross.
-
There’s a mug of coffee on the counter for him. She’s in the sunroom again, sitting erect, a very big dog curled half in her lap and a much smaller dog sitting upright between her feet. She has a very large book propped up on the dog’s back. It is such a relief to see her doing something. He sits down beside her and continues working through that edition of Nature.
-
They eat lunch. They wash up. She looks up at him, eyes alight.
-
She sails the way she drives: carefree, vibrant, delighted. He slouches in front of her and tries to obey her instructions to lean this way or that way without also getting smacked in the head by the boom.
It is quite cold.
-
They take the dogs for a very snowy run. Or, more accurately, she goes for a run and he just kind of follows her. Stratt hands him Zeger’s leash and takes off like a shot: two lean, remarkable Rottweilers by her side. She is magnificent in motion. Fast. Sleek. He and Zeger attempt to keep up, but they’re both awkward runners. They flail about. Zeger barks up a storm.
Eventually, they catch up to the others a ways down the trail in an open, snow-dusted field. The girls are off leash. The play fetch. Stratt teaches him bleib and bravo and aus and hol.
-
The rest of their things are waiting in boxes outside the house when they return. As is, apparently, Louise.
“Louise,” Stratt says, when they arrive, “my partner, Dr. Ryland Grace. Dr. Grace, Louise.”
He shakes Louise’s hand and tries not to appear completely befuddled by Stratt’s word choices at the same time. He probably doesn’t succeed.
Apparently, Louise and Stratt were roommates shortly after college. Louise has looked after the house and the dogs in Stratt’s absence. She eyes him with frank curiosity.
“Eva, [to be honest, I don’t see the charm].”
“[No. I would not expect you to. He is… very human].”
“Ahh. Good.”
He just blinks at them.
-
They eat dinner. Louise says good night. He washes the dishes. He comes to stand in front of where she is curled up on the couch, a blanket wrapped over her shoulders. Oddly, there are no dogs pressed up against her: they’re all in a pile in a dog bed in the corner of the living space.
She looks up at him. “Hello.”
He shoves his hands in his pockets.
“Dr. Grace?”
He bites the bullet. “I don’t know what to do.”
She cocks her head to the side.
“It’s just. You asked me here into your house and into your bed and you called me your partner but, like, I don’t know when that happened? Or what I’m supposed to do about it? Is there no work you need me to do? Like– what happens with the farms now? What– what do I do now?”
“You rest,” she says, like it’s easy. Like she’s not Eva Stratt, who has worked sixteen to twenty hours every day for the last four or so years.
“Huh?”
“My contract included a six months sabbatical should the Taskforce be successful at the first stage of its mission. Realistically, I will not elect to take all six months: there are simply too many critical steps to take, but a few weeks, potentially a few months of our own inaction will not worsen models substantially so. Dr. Leclerc and his team modeled it out. We will be better suited to handling mitigation efforts if we are well rested.”
“Oh.” He continues looking down at her. Her eyes are… somber. Soft. Embers. “And me? What am I doing here?”
“You agreed to come home with me.”
“But why?”
Her brow wrinkles. She looks confused. “I cannot speak to why you agreed, Dr. Grace.”
“Why did you invite me?!” He yanks his hands out of his pockets and buries them into his hair.
“Oh,” she says. “I want you here.”
What?
“I want you by my side.”
Oh, he thinks. Oh. “For project stuff?” He manages, his voice croaking somewhat.
“Yes.” She puts aside her book and sits up. The blanket rolls down from her shoulders. “Not exclusively. I like having you in my home too.”
One of the dogs huffs and rolls over, causing a flurry of sleepy outrage as the other two reposition and resettle.
“Okay,” he says. He fixes his glasses. “Okay. Um. That still doesn’t really give me an answer on what I should be doing?”
“Would you like to have sex?
“Yes. Wait, what?”
-
Thankfully, the dogs stay downstairs at Stratt’s quiet command.
-
He’s always been kinda bad at having sex. He thinks Stratt is kinda bad at it too. But it’s okay. She buries a furious giggle against his collarbone, and he thinks everything is kinda most definitely amazing.
-
Tulip is his favorite, if only because she decides that he’s her favorite human. It’s really unfortunate, because out of all of them, she has the far stinkiest breath. Or maybe she's just the one most prone to licking his face.
-
Spending time having sex does help his restlessness, but it’s still… odd to have absolutely nothing to do. He misses his lab. He misses Drs. DuBois and Shapiro. A few days into this truly mind-bending period of time, Stratt looks up at him from some deep, thoughtful tome or another. “You do not sit still well, Dr. Grace.”
He looks down at the piece of A4 he has methodically torn into little squares and folded each tiny square into a paper flower. Had he written anything important on that? Probably not. “Yeah,” he agrees, because that’s not something he can really deny.
“Would you prefer German or French?”
“What?”
She continues to look at him, steadily. “The community center down the road offers language classes. Of course, I would prefer it if you chose German but French has its uses.”
“...are you trying to get rid of me?”
She wrinkles her nose. “I will resume taking a minimal number meetings next week. You are disruptive if not occupied.”
That makes him blush. It also makes him bold. He stands and shifts so that he’s in front of her. He leans down, putting one hand on either arm rest of her chair. “Director Stratt, you are adept at occupying me.”
One corner of her mouth twitches in something he thinks might be disgusted humor, and then Zutun headbutts him. He startles. One of his hands slips off the armrest, into her lap. He flails, loses his balance, and crashes downward. He ends up kind of crumpled over her, his head in her lap. Zutun is still nuzzling at his side like she deserves attention after causing this mayhem. Stratt strokes his head twice and then gently shoves him off of her. He ends up sitting cross-legged in front of her, somewhat dazed.
-
So, he goes to German classes which mostly only serve to make Stratt shudder slightly less whenever he tries to get the dogs to do something or other.
He rehangs the cabinet door that was crooked. He strips wallpaper from her guest bedroom and repaints the whole room, trim and all. He installs a chain of little solar powered lights that lead down to the water. He fails to teach Tulip how to speak. Zutun, the smug bastard, picks up the command immediately. Zeger only speaks when Stratt gives the command.
He shovels the early spring snow, when it comes. For Stratt. For the neighbors.
He plops his chin on her shoulder one evening while she’s reading something for fun. “I’m bored. Can I please go back to work?”
She inhales, sharp and cutting.
“...what’s that noise for?”
She seems to shrink, somewhat. “Do you–” she clears her throat and restarts. “Do you not like it here?”
“Huh?”
“I don’t want you to go,” she says, small.
“Why would I go?”
“Dr. Grace,” she says, carefully, slowly. “You work in San Francisco.”
He blinks at her. He steps around to the front of the couch. He kneels in front of her. “I work for you. I just… I meant… with astrophage again. Or whatever you need. I don’t want to leave.”
A noise he doesn’t understand bubbles out of her throat. She folds in on herself and then tilts forward and suddenly it seems like he’s holding all of her weight against him. And then she’s… crying? Oh no. Oh no. Abort conversation. Abort. Abort. But he can’t abort because she is in her arms and seems to be trying her hardest to burrow inside him. It takes him awhile to figure out what she’s saying but all of sudden he realizes he does understand her: [please don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.]
“I won’t,” he vows, clutching her against him. “I won’t.”
-
Tulip licks his face in the middle of the night. “Nein,” he whines at her. She whines right back. And then he has enough cognitive function flooding back into him to realize that Stratt, still asleep, is… whimpering? It is an entirely incorrect sound for her to be making.
He sits up, disturbing a very grumpy Zeger who snorts and then hops off the bed. “Stratt?”
She freezes, still asleep. He reaches out to touch her shoulder, and as soon as his fingers land on her she screams. Zutun and Tulip startle up and away. He snatches his hand back.
Words babble out of her. He understands some of them. And then, heart-wrenching, “Ryland! No!”
He reaches out again, tosses his arms around her, and yanks her on top of him. The top of her head connects with his chin, but the rattle against his teeth is fine. It’s fine. Her wail is not fine. The way her whole body spasms is not fine. “Eva!” He cries, desperate.
All at once, she freezes. Two heartbeats later, all the tension in her body collapses. She sprawls out on top of him, quivering.
“Hey,” he says, voice choked and hoarse. He reaches up to stroke her hair. “I’m right here. I’m right here.”
“Yes,” she says: all quiet and bleary and not quite believing. “Yes. Ryland.”
“That’s me,” he offers, unsure of what to say.
She rubs her face against his chest. She inhales. One of the dogs bounds back on the bed and shuffles up against them. She does not roll away.
What was it she’d told him, before asking him to come home with her? Some nonsense about her making him be one of the astronauts sent on a suicide mission to Tau Ceti? That must eat at her. If she loves him a fraction as much as he loves her–
Whoa. Okay.
But, like, oh, yeah that makes total sense. He must have been totally in love with her for a while now. And she’s repeatedly indicated she wants him by her side so maybe…
“Need anything?” He asks, sleep rasping at his voice.
She makes a grumpy little nose indicating a negative and then mumbles under her breath, “just you.”
Oh. Whoa. Double whoa.
-
She’s very clingy in the morning, but so is he. So it’s all fine. It’s all fine.
-
He comes home after a German class desirous of a nap. He lies down on the couch. He can head her in the library on some call or another. Her couch blankets are very fuzzy and soft. It’s still rather cold. “Tulip,” he calls, “komm.” Nails skitter across the floor and then there’s a cheerful woof and whomp and Tulip vaults herself onto his chest. “Oomph,” he exhales. She sticks a slobbery face into his. “Ew.”
Another weight lands on his legs and he peers around Tulip’s head to see Zutun turning in circles on the other end of the couch.
He is no longer cold. It’s nice. Not as nice as sleeping next to Stratt, though.
-
Later, she wakes him up. Her hair is damp. Her favorite sailing outfit is damp. Her eyes are light beams and weightlessness and calm waters.
“Hi,” he says, dumbly. She is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. “Good wind today?” he manages.
“Excellent,” she says. “Join me in the shower.”
It is a request. It is not a request. Neither dog is pleased with the rapidity he escapes from beneath them. He takes her hand in his and laughs when she yanks him up the stairs.
-
She’s a very affectionate person. It must have been hell for her, on the PLAN Gansu, to not really be able to touch anyone. She touches him all the time. A hand on his shoulder, on his elbow, in his hair. She’ll pluck a magazine out of his hands, install herself on his lap, and then hand him the magazine back without any fanfare. She buries her feet beneath him on the couch. She sprawls on top of him in her bed.
He tries to return the favor, but there’s a little voice inside him, every time, that says no, no, no, not allowed. Thankfully, it’s a relatively easy voice to not listen to.
So, when his hands get cold, he sticks them in her pockets. If she’s in her chair in the sunroom, he’ll scooch his chair even closer and toss his legs over into her lap, disturbing whichever dog had claimed the spot of honor. When they’re walking the dogs, he’ll shuffle so close that their arms intertwine. He’ll fiddle with her hair if they’re on the couch together, tying it into knots that he then has to carefully unpick before bed each night.
-
After the second day of the hair thing, she dumps a book on different braid styles in his lap, which is delightful. It means he gets to practice properly.
-
She takes three hours of meetings in the mornings. She takes three hours of meetings in the afternoons. She gets him a project laptop, and even if he can’t run any actual experiments right now, it’s nice to have something to think about. It’s nice to have time to collate all the little ideas and abandoned thoughts because getting the Hail Mary off had taken all the time and capacity he’d had. There’s so many other avenues to explore with astrophage.
-
“I want to revisit the commercial battery issue again. Astrophage and lithium are such a bad combination, but there’s other cell structures that could–”
-
“Sorry, what did you say?”
-
“I’ll be over in a bit, just broke math and need to fix it before I lose my train of thought.”
-
“Tulip. Get off, I’m busy. Halt. Nein.”
-
“Dr. Grace.”
He hms acknowledgement at her, but does not look up from his calculations.
“Dr. Grace?”
“Yeah, boss?” He looks up just in time to watch a full body wince shudder through her. Huh. That’s not good. She’s in a sailing outfit: all sleek and warm and weather-resistant.
Her mouth compresses into a thin line. “Get changed, we’re going sailing.”
“Can we go tomorrow? I want to finish–”
She leans forward and gently taps the lid of his laptop down. “You said that yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that. Come sailing with me, Dr. Grace.”
Well, when she puts it like that…
-
She tacks them out into the middle of the lake and then releases all her pressure on the sail. One hand stays on the rudder. Her gaze stays fixed ahead of them. But all the motion and energy typical of their voyages fades from her face. Sometimes, on the water, it is easier to say things.
“You are right beside me,” she says, not glancing down at him. “Yet I miss you.”
He gapes up at her. He hasn’t gone anywhere.
“You disappear into your laptop and it feels like we’re back on the ship again. Even when you’re not working, you’re thinking about it.”
“Yeah, but–” He frowns. The past four years, his life has revolved around dealing with astrophage problems every moment of every day. “Isn’t that… isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?”
“We’re on sabbatical,” she says, her voice barely lifting over the gentle creek of the wind and light motion of the water. Her eyes are lidded and heavy: a distant storm.
Oh, no, so he’s fucking up big time, somehow.
“You worked for twelve hours yesterday,” she says. The matter-of-fact tone of her voice is familiar, but it feels aching. “There will be time enough for work to come.”
“But–”
She looks down at him. Her lower lip is caught between her teeth. “Dr. Grace, for once in my life, I want to be selfish. I do not know when I will next have the chance. Please. Please focus your attention on me. I will inform you when it is time to redirect the full force of your attention.”
He swallows. His throat is dry. “Uh. Yeah. I can– I’ll do my best.”
-
She takes three hours of meetings each morning. He sits in the background, off camera, without speaking, on some of them. He takes notes, flashes her his concerns on notebook paper that sometimes is just covered in emojis or doodles of Zeger looking absolutely furious that Tulip would dare have the temerity to upturn a water bowl on her head. He exchanges emails with Drs. Komorov and Sood and Li and some of the miscellaneous technical project staff that are all still mulling over the astrophage problems in one way or another. They don’t tackle anything specific: things stay in the theoretical.
She takes three hours of meetings each afternoon. He lays down with his head in her lap and tries to learn the basics of so many disciplines. They will need everything for the mitigation to come. His expertise in just astrobiology is sufficient in many ways, but not so much when it comes to interdisciplinary approaches to problem solving. There are many, many ideas for what could be done with astrophage and a least having some sort of idea of what expert to contact with questions about any given field will be useful.
The rest of the days they play with the dogs. They read for pleasure. They cook and eat and clean up together. They appreciate the slightly warmer weather as spring begins to nip at the edges of the lake. The wind doesn’t bite quite so fiercely when Stratt speeds them across the surface of the lake.
-
When her alarm goes off, she makes a desperate, sad little nose. Grumpily, he rolls over to her. Even from a few inches away he can feel it. She is far warmer to the touch than normal. With visible effort, she forces open her eyes. “Ryland,” she breathes, looking at him without seeming to really see him. “Take the dogs out?” She closes her eyes and lets out a distressed, honking snore.
Okay, so that’s one of the most terrifying things ever. He goes downstairs and fills a glass with water. He trots back upstairs and puts it on her bedside table. He fetches bottles of surprisingly unexpired acetaminophen and ibuprofen and puts them beside the glass. He calls Louise and leaves a voicemail.
Out loud, he congratulations himself on not freaking out too badly.
“Komm,” he tells the dogs. He takes them out. They stop at the bakery and the little market closest to the house. Zeger is particularly anxious, so he asks Zutun to watch her. Zutun, the cleverest of them by far, hops over the little dog so she is caught between Zutun on one side and Tulip on the other. Tulip is, as always, oblivious. They make it back to the house in short order.
He makes a little plate of toast and yogurt with berries and makes two mugs of ginger tea. It’s the only tea they have in the house. The dogs follow him up the stairs. Zeger immediately hops up on the bed, but Zutun and Tulip stay down. He gestures them towards their bed at the foot of the bed and they both curl up with a whine. Zeger paws at Stratt’s arm until he tells her to stop, but she doesn’t wake.
He lays down beside her and goes back to bed.
-
When he wakes, his mouth is full of cotton and his head is full of bees. He’s definitely feverish. He reaches out, blindly, and finds Stratt’s form across from him. She sniffles and turns towards him. Zeger huffs at the disruption and climbs over top of her to curl up between them.
“Ryland,” she says, teeth chattering, unfocused. “[I’m cold.]”
It takes a few moments to think through that statement and another few more to decide what to do. He croaks out: “Zutun, Tulip, hier.” In short order, there’s a Rottweiler sprawled out at her back and another serving as the best sort of hot water bottle against their feet. “Better?”
“Hm,” she murmurs against his chest. “Soft.”
“Go sleep,” he says.
“You first.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Ryland.”
“Eva.”
She burrows closer to him, disturbing Zeger once again. The little dog quickly barks her displeasure and then immediately lays down on top of them both. “I like that,” she says. “I like being more than Stratt to you.”
Oh. He hadn’t even thought to ask permission for that, but it’s amazing. It’s wonderful. It’s– “you’re everything to me,” he admits, before falling immediately back to sleep.
-
Wait, he forgot to cancel her meetings.
-
Well, maybe someone else can see to that problem for the day.
-
He wakes to Louise bustling in with two bowls of soup. “Wakey wakey,” she calls, way too loudly. “Time for lunch. Why hello there. Who’s a good dog? Are you a good dog? Yes. You’re a very good dog. Yes, you are. Yes, you are.”
He protests at the noise, but not nearly as much as Eva does. She says many German words very quickly but they’re muffled and he’s too tired and senseless to make them out.
“You are both going to sit up, drink water, and eat something. I’ll be back shortly. Come along, girls.”
The bed is much colder without the dogs. He doesn’t like it.
He likes it even less when Eva lets out a breathless sort of cough and pulls away from him. “Nooooo.”
She crawls backwards, propping herself up against the headboard. She drinks water. “Dr. Grace, we should do as instructed.”
He likes that even less. He shuffles closer to her and presses his lips to her thigh. “No Grace.”
“No?” Her fingers land heavily on his hair. “Not Grace?”
“Wanna be Ryland,” he mumbles against her pajamas. “Just with you. Wanna be Ryland and Eva. Eva and Ryland. Wanna be.”
“I would be amenable when we are in private,” she says, in the extra formal voice she uses whenever she’s trying not to cry. He thinks it might be a good cry, for once. “Eat something.”
-
They’re both fed and watered when the dogs come crashing back into the bedroom. Louise is not far behind them. She clears away the mostly empty bowls, returns with fresh water, and then turns on the little television in the corner that they have never used. “Now,” she says, “since you’re both sick, you’re going to stay in bed and watch all the best movies you’ve missed out on lately.”
Eva makes a desperate, caught noise.
“And you’re going to like it,” Louise says, with glee. “Now drink plenty of water and take your medicine. I’ll be back later to see to the dogs again.”
“I need my phone,” Eva says.
“Absolutely not.”
He tries to nod his head in agreement with Louise’s statement but it just makes him feel dizzy.
“I need my phone to cancel my meetings today and tomorrow,” she says.
“Just that?”
“Just that.”
“Promise?”
“Louise!”
“Okay, okay, I’ll get it.” She presses play on the movie. She disappears and returns with Eva’s phone and then disappears again. Eva spends twenty minutes typing out emails, then sets her phone aside. She looks over at Ryland. Her eyes are glassy reflections of whatever is happening on the TV: he hasn’t paid a single jot of attention to it.
“You’re amazing,” he says and then closes his eyes. “I love you.” He feels her hand in his hair again, stuttering. Then she grips it tight and tugs, just a little. He forces his eyes back open. It’s hard work. “What?”
“Say that again when you’re not feverish.”
“‘kay. [I love you].”
The noise she makes is wild and uncontrolled. Maybe he should be able to devote more attention to whatever those sounds mean, but he’s tired and all his limbs are too heavy and it’s so easy to close his eyes and go back to sleep.
-
Eva hits post illness enthusiasm before he does. She takes the Rottweilers for a long run. She comes home and lays a hand on his cool forehead. “Still unwell?”
He sighs. “Better. Just tired.”
She nods, seriously. “Then lay back,” she says, her hand jumping down to his shoulder. “I’ll make you feel good.”
-
He returns the favor thrice over as soon as his energy returns.
-
The first spring flowers start poking their heads up through the dirt. He does a better job keeping up with her on their runs, enough so that sometimes they’ll leave Zeger at home and each take a Rottweiler. Racing is fun, even if he loses all the time.
-
“What comes next?” He asks, late one night. His hands are in her hair, slipping strands around each other in a complicated braiding pattern he hasn’t quite managed yet. “After… after this?”
“Reorganization,” she says. “I’ll probably be based out of New York City. Potentially Nairobi. I’ll send you the list of astrophage labs and you can pick where to base from. Perhaps you might enjoy Dr. Li’s lab in Shenyang.”
His hands still. “Not… in Nairobi or New York?”
He doesn’t think he imagines the tremble that runs through her. “You will be most effective if you are based in a premier specific lab. If you do not travel with me.”
“Eva,” he breathes. He drops the braid, another attempt lost. “I want to be selfish. New York or Nairobi. Wherever you will be. Wherever the dogs will be.”
She looks at him over her shoulder. Her eyes are cloudy. The storm tossed waters of Lake Constance stare out at him from within her. “The dogs will return to Louise.”
“What? No!”
“Dr. Grace–”
He slaps his hand over her mouth, startling them both. He pulls it back immediately. “Sorry. No. Sorry. Just. Uh. You have to take them. You love them so much.”
“I do,” she says, simply. “I love you, too. I will likely travel often. If you are open to it, I would enjoy including you on my trips whenever feasible.”
He rubs his face, knocking his glasses askew. He leans back, away from her. “No,” he says. “No, that’s not good enough. I want to be with you.” She stands and steps back from her. He immediately springs forward and closes his hands around her wrists. She will not meet his gaze. “Please, Eva,” he begs. “Please. Figure out how to be selfish, again. For them. For me. For you.”
Little shakes race up and down her entire body. She takes another step back and he lets her go immediately. She clasps her own hands around her wrists. She sniffs. “Why did you have to ask? Why did you have to know? We still had time, Ryland.”
He stands too. He turns around. He turns back to her. “Because I need you to solve this, Eva. I need you to not send me away. You told me to stay! You told me!”
-
She takes the sailboat out at twilight. Tulip keeps him company on the dock, watching the lights on her bow, stern, and mast twinkle in the distance.
-
When she comes back, hours later, they work through the act of tying down the boat and caring for the sail together. Her face is tear streaked. She doesn’t reach out for him: in the little boat house, in the sunroom, in their bedroom, in her bed. She also doesn’t send him away.
Is that worse?
He doesn’t know.
-
She’s on her phone when he wakes. She’s still on the phone when he gets home after taking the dogs out. She’s on the phone over breakfast, and lunch, and dinner.
He does not reach out for her once. She does not touch him once. But the worst part of it all is Zeger and Zutun and Tulip all turning to look at him with confusion when she ignores them too.
All three dogs look between them that night, when he lugs out extra blankets for the couch, when he carries his pillow downstairs. Eva just stands there, in the dining room, unfocused. The dogs mill about, uneasy. He lays down. He turns off the light. He says a quick, short, goodnight in the German she had asked him to learn for her.
He hears her slowly climb the stairs. Zutun whimpers. He tries to speak to them, but nothing comes out. He wets his lips. “Los,” he manages. “C’mon, go to bed. Verwärtz.”
He can still hear their nails clipping about downstairs. He sits up. He points upstairs. “Los!”
They go.
-
Does he hear her, in the night, rent asunder? Or is it just an echo of his own soul? His feet never used to get cold when he slept.
-
Had there been a need, she would have sent him on the Hail Mary, whether he agreed to go or not. That was her statement before this little vacation ever began. She has only ever been honest with him. She loves it here, in this little house she bought in the hometown of her best friend. She loves Zeger’s anxious stubbornness. She loves Zutun’s clever quickness. She loves Tulip’s affability and eagerly given affection. Maybe she loves him too.
All of them alone, all of them together, pale in comparison with how much she loves the whole wide world.
She has only ever been honest with him. One chance to be selfish. Nothing promised. Nothing vowed. Nothing but this retreat away from responsibility. Nothing more than a hope for feasibility in her future scheduling.
-
He shivers.
-
When he wakes, his feet are warm. He can feel a weight there. Tulip or Zutun must have come downstairs. He blinks. He turns his head. It’s still dark, but the lamp in the corner is on. Eva’s in the chair, her grandmother’s quilt wrapped twice around her. Zeger is in a ball in front of the chair. Zutun is in the dog bed beside her.
He can’t see her eyes clearly: they’re shadowed and puffy and fixed on his.
“You have seen how I am at work,” she says, her voice barely carrying across the space between them. “Why would you want me?”
“You believe in me.”
“Oh,” she says, still quiet. Still too far away. “I will still do that, even if you are half a world away.”
“Not the same,” he mumbles.
“And if I allow you to stay by my side and then work the whole day away? When I come home only to sleep, if that? When I have no energy to spare to ask you how your day was, what you are working on, what your hopes and dreams and fears are? You will resent me, no? You will want me to be someone I am not. Ryland, I do not have the capacity to love you as you deserve.”
Frustration burns inside of him. It comes out petulant. “So what? You love me anyway.”
Her intake of breath is sharp. “I will never give you children,” she says. “A family. I will put the planet before you again and again and again. I cannot guarantee your safety. I can guarantee that I will work you to the bone whether you are by my side or a world away. You are incredibly useful, Dr. Grace. When this trip ends, when I return to responsibilities and spreadsheets and choices about who dies to save other lives… I will benefit from your usefulness far more than your love.”
He sits up and pulls his legs out from under Tulip. She gives him a very disgruntled look, trots in a circle twice, and lays back down. “You have both,” he says, voice raised. “Freely given!” His glasses are not on his face to be knocked askew. “Besides, you’ve seen how I work too. I’ll be perfectly capable of ignoring you because I’m too distracted by something else anyway. Can’t we at least try?”
They sit in the dark for a long, long while. When she finally speaks, what comes out is a quiet, breath-caught, “yes. We can try.”
-
She takes no meetings the next day. He braids her hair into a complicated updo. They take the dogs to the park and play fetch, because they’re both far too exhausted to run. They prep food together. They eat.
Things feel cautious. Tentative. Firmer. Safer. Scarier.
He’s doing the dishes when she puts a finger on his elbow. He looks at her, cautious.
“Would you regret renouncing American citizenship, if it came to that?”
He blinks. “What would be the alternative?”
There’s something like a joke behind her eyes that he doesn’t fully understand. “Deutschland, Dr. Ryland Grace.”
Ah. Right. Okay. “I would be amenable,” he manages to say, his voice breaking.
She nods and turns away.
-
They go for a sail and for the first time, she lets him control the rudder and the mainsheet at the same time. They do not capsize, which feels like a minor miracle.
Even when she turns to him, a brilliant, magnificent smile splitting her face in two, he keeps a firm hand on the boat.
-
She hangs up on a meeting and comes to find him working in the little garden plot in the front of the house. “I have accepted a proposal to cede the authority of the Petrova Taskforce to a merged Taskforce-UN council for disaster mitigation. I will hold a dual role in transitional leadership for this new effort and as a special advisor to the World Trade Organization. I will be based out of Genève.”
He blinks up at her, but she does not stop.
“UNIGE will be in contact. I expect you will be able to name your terms as far as the degree of interaction with students you desire. Their astrophage lab will welcome you regardless. I will need to report to Genève in two weeks. Is this an acceptable solution?”
His hands are caked with mud. He stands, slowly. “We’ll live together?”
“Yes, Dr. Grace.”
“We’ll take the dogs.”
“I have yet to identify accommodations,” she says, not making eye contact with him. “Their presence will be factored into any such decision.”
“But they’ll come.”
“Yes, Dr. Grace. Potentially not immediately.”
“You’ll still travel?”
“Some. Not so frequently as before.”
“You’ll call me Ryland?”
Her eyes snap to his. They’re the deep-sea, endless, adoring. “If you would be amenable, I would rather call you husband.”
He kisses her, then, because he can’t possibly do anything else. He gets mud on her face and in her hair and it doesn’t matter because all he can do is try and pour every last drop of affection he holds for her into her each and every cell.
-
He talks to the folks at UNIGE. He probably won’t get to teach as much as he would like, but they have an entire lab gearing up for him and the time and resources to let him keep working to save the world.
-
He takes Eva to bed and keeps her there until long past when they’re both sweat-stained and ruined. He maps each flex in her hands, each smile line that stretches across her cheeks, each little noise she makes. He lets her offer the same in return and wonders: “what do you see? What are you memorizing?”
“Constellations,” she breathes against his skin. “How you fit together. What makes you tick.”
“You,” he says, easily.
She smiles her megawatt grin at him. “You have much more depth than just that, Dr. Grace.”
“Eva,” he whines at her.
“Ryland,” she echoes, before stretching up and pressing her lips to his again.
-
What a blessing, this is.
What a gift.
-
She gives him a simple silver ring. There’s a design stamped on the inner wall that he doesn’t recognize. A wheat field? He looks up at her, questioning. Mischief fills her voice. “You asked me to call you Ryland.”
Oh.
Rye.
Huh.
That’s… aggressively silly and also so sweet he thinks he might melt into a puddle of goo and never recover.
-
He orders her a black ring with a blue and silver nebula shimmering through the center. It will take forever to arrive and the creator will contact him to confirm he wants a man’s ring sized for a woman’s hand, but she’ll review the order listing with a soft, fond look on her face and nod.
-
They have an end date now. Two days in advance of reporting to work. They’ll move to Genève. Carl will be returning as Eva’s head of personal security. A six person team in response to the anticipation of more serious discontent emerging in the future. A safeguard. She will be advising on plenty of unpopular decisions. She will be telling plenty of powerful people what they must do. There are those who think her actions are already unforgiveable, that her immunity should be revoked, her mandate vacated. In light of this: a gated lakeside house in Versoix and a separate apartment downtown. Security will base at the apartment, but it will also be available for late nights and early mornings.
They will take the dogs. They will take the slightly bigger sailboat. The one docked at the marina that he’s never even seen before.
-
“You own two sailboats?” he asks, incredulous.
She looks out over Lake Constance, wistful. “I am made of water, Ryland.”
“Water, and sunsets, and stars.”
She smiles at him, and, yes: her eyes have the glistening sparkle of calm water, the deep peace of a sunset, and the distant shine of stars. “Sap,” she says, soft.
He wrinkles his nose at her. “I feel like I deserve something more poetic than sap.”
“Oh?” She stands and steps over to him. She sits down on his lap and puts both her arms over his shoulders. His hands come up to her waist. What a marvel, to be allowed this freedom. She touches their foreheads together. “You are the biologist. You should know that sap is lifeblood. It is sustenance, for trees, for others. It is essential. You are necessary for survival, my dear.”
His hands clench and relax against her. They breathe the same air for a long, long time.
-
Zutun wanders around the house, clearly aware that something is occurring. Zeger sticks close by Eva’s ankles at all time. Tulip just bounces between them, as dumb and cheerful as ever.
Louise comes over to help them pack, to keep the dogs busy, to tell Eva many things in French that he does not understand but thinks must be horribly profane about marriage: Eva generally has a much better poker face, but she goes bright red whenever Louise starts speaking French. He wonders why Louise has resorted to French. His German can’t have improved that much. Right?
-
“It will be time to transition, soon,” she says, her fingers skating over his temple. “I am trepidatious.”
He leans into her touch. He waits for her to continue.
“This break has been wonderful. And yet the future, our future… it will not be smooth, no?”
“Should I remind you that the day we met you kidnapped me?”
She snorts. “Hardly. You asked to stay.”
“And I will keep asking,” he says. He shuffles forward and presses a kiss against her eyelid. Her nose. Her eyelid again. “Let me stay, Eva, and we’ll be okay. You’ll plan. We’ll prepare.”
“It a long, cold dark is coming. Humanity will suffer. You will suffer. I will have to watch you suffer.”
There is nothing he has to refute this, besides things she already knows. Besides the fact that they will throw their entire beings into mitigating the upcoming disaster, into ensuring that there’s enough humanity left to benefit when the beatles return. He just smooths her hair back behind her ear again and again.
“I love you, Dr. Grace. Thank you for staying by my side.”
This, this he knows how to respond to. “I love you, Director Stratt. Thank you for giving me a home.”
-
“I will miss you,” she says, “when you’re not by my side every day.”
-
“Tulip,” he whines, as she wakes him by licking his face again, “nein.”
-
They take the little boat out again for the last time. She cuts across the water with grace. He manages to lean with her almost as if it comes natural to him. The sunlight catches in her hair and shines like fire.
-
“Tulip, sitz. Bravo!”
-
“Tulip, speak!”
The big dumb idiot barks her head off and bounces around him in a ball of gleeful, enthusiastic energy.