Work Text:
Andi Elloumi doesn’t talk about her job much. She swings her Vans over the barstool at Lede’s and listens to her friends instead: law degree, in medical device sales as he studies for the bar; music degree, at Starbucks and moonlighting as a bartender; environmental science degree, freelancing for big tech. It’s the end of the world, after all — it’s not like the job market was going to get better. They gossip and complain about the small apocalypses that buffet D.C.’s white streets instead, and how glad they are to not be working nights at Shake Shack anymore.
Andi used to be a good kvetcher, but the problem is that she really, really likes where she works now. She still gets a big goofy smile on her face when people ask. First she has to clarify that she’s not doing any of the actual space stuff, but yes, she works at NASA — the digital newsroom! — and yes, she gets to go to the launches if she wants. She’s a PA, so she does fetch quests for a living. And she works for a man she’d trust to walk her to her car.
She’d trust James Ayala with a lot, actually. He’s a wild-haired, usually-bespectacled anchor and content writer who told Andi to call him “Jay” on her first day, and seemed to actually mean it. He’s also far more soft-spoken than you’d expect someone in a newsroom to be. Andi figures he’s just an excellent listener. Four days in, they went to the best little Mexican hole-in-the-wall Andi’s ever had, and Jay let her pour her heart out about the terminal elitism at NYU. He commiserated with some stories from his journalism degree that had them both giggling, and then at the end of the day he looked down at her (Andi is 5’3, Jay is… considerably taller) and said, Miss Elloumi, I am so glad we met.
Fine, she had a crush on the guy for a minute. Not that he isn’t twice her age, and so deeply, obviously not into women — there’s just something about being talked to like you’re the only person in the room. Anyway, she feels like that’s why NASA keeps putting him in front of cameras. He could have the world’s leading expert in stiff upper lips smiling in no time.
If her boss is known for anything nowadays, it’s being one of two faces on TV when the first images came back from the ArcLight probe. He really cringes at that footage. I was just out of college, he says, and feeling like a drugged cat. Andi came to work for him after that, and after years of doggedly turning down offers to host segments on the astrophage crisis. Jay prefers what they affectionately refer to as the Hubble beat: sharing the latest from JWST, Voyager, Juno, TESS, the ISS.
Andi doesn’t blame him. Working for NASA doesn’t give you the most optimistic outlook right now. Still, she proofs scripts for Jay on the wonders of deep space and sits at Lede’s on Thursday nights, head in the stars.
There are a lot of stonefaced professionals at NASA, and they’re all crying when the Hail Mary reenters Earth’s orbit. Andi tries to hide in her to-do lists, but Jay catches her red-eyed and offers her a hug. Holy shit, did Andi need a hug. He pets her hair and rocks her even though he’s crying, too.
She can’t remember a sun that wasn’t dying. He was her age when the Mary launched. The newsroom has the busiest week they’ve had in years, and at the end of it everyone goes out for drinks and fresh fruit on the government’s dime, and they all do a lot more crying. Andi has a cocktail and a half before things start getting fuzzy. She’s a lightweight, but it’s a party — anyway, she falls asleep in a booth to someone singing “Amazing Grace”.
When she stirs it’s to a bump in the road, and a dim city-glow. In the rearview mirror, Jay tweaks a grimace. “Sorry.”
She’s bundled in his coat and curled in the backseat of his very modest sedan. Andi recognizes another PA by their decadent afro, dead asleep on the passenger side and fogging the window with their breath. “Augh,” she mumbles, and then, “ ’m sorry.”
“No worries, hon. We’re heading to Michaela’s place first, then yours, okay?”
“Mkay,” says Andi. “Y’know, my friends who are assistants usually drive their drunk bosses home. Not the other way around.”
“I’ll have my fête off company time.” Jay flicks his turn signal, and murmurs, “The whole world’s a party right now.”
“ ’re you happy?”
His eyes flicker to hers, and then disappear in the wick of light across his glasses. “Of course. Why do you ask that?”
“Iunno.” Andi hunches in her turtleneck. It’s a frigid summer night in D.C. “Sometimes you look sad when no one is looking. I worry about you.”
She should not, under any circumstances, be saying anything like this to her boss, least of all when her breath is still damp with soju and her head throbs from scrolling the international uproar. Andi feels like a sponge too much of the world soaked into. Jay tap-taps his fingers on the wheel — a nervous habit as long as she’s known him — and says, “It’s been an emotional day, hasn’t it?”
“Yeah. ’M sorry.”
“There’s some water in the cupholders.” She knows that tone. Gentle, as he is, but closed for discussion.
There are in fact bottles of reclaimed water in the cupholders, so Andi reaches for one. She wakes again with her hand grazing the car flooring, her fingers in a loose cling, the passenger seat vacant and Jay humming along to Mariah Carey.
Andi doesn’t talk about her job much. Lately it’s because everyone seems to think that just because she works at NASA, she’ll have the inside scoop on Dr. Ryland Grace.
Honestly, she wishes. PR is a very exciting place to be right now. But Jay gets to report on the Mary’s captures from Planet Adrian, which is, they agree, pretty fucking cool. It looks absolutely alien: like a color inversion of Starry Night. Andi’s favorites, which she can only spend so much time looking at before she gets dizzy, are the ones where the Mary’s onboard cameras have the Lilliputian silhouette of Dr. Grace in the foreground.
Extremely loud and incredibly close, she thinks, studying the umbilical tethers that trail off Dr. Grace’s suit. She wonders if Adrian was a claustrophobic shock after the vast everything-nothing of deep space. If the Taumoeba felt like much-needed (albeit microscopic) friends. When Andi dreamed of being an astronaut — because come on, who didn’t? — she imagined returning from her first spacewalk to gush and cry into the arms of her crewmates. Dr. Grace was completely alone. No one to share the awe with, or the fear. Andi likes to think the souls of Captain Yáo and Ilyukhina were with him until the end, but not everyone believes in God and definitely not everyone believes in ghosts.
She knows it’s impolite, but literally everybody speculates about Dr. Grace. He’s made a scant few appearances since touchdown; once at a NASA press conference Andi was not invited to, once to accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom, once to present at the U.N. — and that was a very, very secretive affair. She’s seen pictures, of course. He’s a good-looking guy. Sort of haggard, but what do you expect after saving the Earth all alone in another star system? Last week he was on The Rapport, and a lot of people got to hear him talk for the first time at length. He has a nice voice, too, and a nice laugh. His eyes look like they would’ve crinkled if he really smiled. He came off very scripted, but having worked with painfully socially awkward scientists on livestream, Andi knows how that goes. At the end there was an eleven-minute standing ovation for Dr. Grace, Savior of the Universe, and at the four-minute mark a man in black came to escort him offstage because he’d started crying into his hands.
Not that Andi’s judging. She’s impressed he’s doing appearances at all. The guy did insurmountable things for humanity in the span of months, and now he’s coming back and hopping right on a media tour — he’s crazy, Andi thinks, with absolute admiration. But who else would volunteer for an at-the-time suicide mission days before takeoff?
She wants to be pragmatic about this man, this Dr. Grace. She fails the moment she appears in the doorway to Jay’s office, a broom closet shared with digital content marketing, blessedly empty (for now). Jay looks her over and says, “Don’t tell me, aliens are real,” then clicks his tongue. “Ahh, wait. Too late.”
Andi absolutely does not hear him. She says, “Dr. Grace wants to come on your show.”
“Pardon?” Jay’s knuckles go white around the hilt of the pen he’s holding.
“I was on the phone with Lenore Sachs,” says Andi, fumbling her phone like it’s a live grenade, “who’s in public outreach, and she says they want to do a full circle segment — like, Full Arc, they’re calling it, it’s clever — and they want you to interview Dr. Ryland Grace.”
Jay’s brow climbs steadily towards his hairline. He tugs his glasses off, twists the pen a bit, pushes a hand through his hair, and says, “Holy fucking shit.”
“So I should — should I tell Lenore you’re doing it?”
“Is she on hold?” Jay drops his voice and gestures to the phone. Andi nods. He scrubs his palms over his face and says, “Yes, of course, I’ll do it. Are they sending a list of questions?”
“I’ll find out.” Andi’s heart is pounding. She swings back around the corner, then pauses once, to mouth Holy shit!! at Jay.
He mouths Holy fuck!! back at her.
Lenore sounds calmly, evenly pleased to hear that Jay is interested, which makes Andi feel all the more like the Energizer bunny on steroids. She tells Andi they’ll be sending questions, yes, as well as a list of accommodations for Dr. Grace and his security. Well — Andi balks a bit, but of course Dr. Grace would have a protection detail. Her mother’s church has been preaching hellfire at the thought that life originated at Tau Ceti; surely some crazy evangelists aren’t the worst of them.
An intern overhears the call and asks her what it’s all about, so naturally the whole newsroom knows by end of day. Jay leaves early to write at the ration bar across the street, which leaves Andi to sit at his desk and browse catering websites, tapping her foot in a relentless staccato, wondering if impossible burgers will be acceptable fare for the Savior of the Universe.
The day of, Jay wears his contacts. Andi has her hair in braids for the first time in about a year — tied up with red ribbon, for the Petrova line. Everyone is wearing their Project Hail Mary buttons (free, on homecoming day).
Her boss is the absolute picture of professionalism. He sits at the desk and goes over his notes with steady hands. Andi is glued to Slack, fielding updates from her fellow assistants. As of an hour ago, Dr. Ryland Grace is in the building, though no one has seen hide or hair of him since.
She feels like she’s going to throw up. She has no idea how Jay is so calm. He told her he was sweating through his jacket on ArcLight day, but you’d never be able to tell, of course.
The stream starts at 9:00AM Eastern. At 8:55 Andi sits down, decides she’d rather stand, starts toward crafty to get a bottle of water, sees the line and scuttles back to set, and then it’s 8:59. Lit against the big screen, where a painted graphic of the Hail Mary animates in a loop, a makeup artist dabs a bit of shine off Jay’s forehead. He catches Andi’s eye and winks.
“Dr. Grace flying in,” says the A.D. “Mr. Ayala, good to go in three… two…”
And just like that, Jay is on. He smiles into the lens. “Good morning,” he says, in the trim, approachable anchorman voice. “Today, it’s my high honor to introduce a man on a mission.”
He agonized for hours over this intro. Andi fidgets. “He is not an astronaut,” Jay continues, “but an educator, whose dedication to humanity and the future began in a sixth-grade classroom. For him, it was science,” and pause, Andi recites, “and discovery,” and pause, “that lit the way. Known today as the Savior of the Universe, Earth’s furthest explorer, and captain of the Hail Mary…” (Andi’s misting up — ) “all of us here at NASA are thrilled to welcome to the studio: Dr. Ryland Grace.”
Then the Savior of the Universe shuffles in from the wings.
He looks smaller in person.
He is definitely good-looking. His hair is a bit tousled, a bit floppy. He’s wearing a button-down, a jacket, a tie… and jeans; it’s very San Francisco. His hands swing at his sides a bit like he’s not sure what to do with them, and he straightens his jacket as he reaches across the desk to shake Jay’s hand. It’s all so, so incredibly normal. So human. He must have taken his seat just like that in the lab aboard the Hail Mary, Andi thinks, studying Taumoeba to bring home and save the stars.
Above all, he has a kind-looking face. Like its default state is a smile. Sources say Dr. Grace was sort of a goofball before the mission; a kidder, a cool teacher. It all sounds a world away from the stately, tired man in front of the camera.
Jay settles himself, and says, “Thank you so much for being here, Dr. Grace.” He says it with all the sincerity that caught Andi completely off-guard: Miss Elloumi, I am so glad we met.
Dr. Grace stands up and knocks over his stool.
Time stops. He wears an expression like nothing Andi has ever seen before. Like something is rotting to the bone right in front of him. Dr. Grace takes a few staggering steps back, his hands open and clutching at nothing, all the lines scored deep in horror on his face. Horror or something; whatever this is, all of a sudden, he doesn’t look human at all.
Is it PTSD? Andi’s breath is caught in her throat. They’re live, oh my God, they’re live. Jay soothes his shirt with a hand, and says, soft and level — “Are you alright, Dr. Grace?”
“It’s you,” says Dr. Grace. He’s hoarse as if he hasn’t spoken in days. “Oh my God, it’s you.”
Andi watches Jay’s eyes move in an uncertain geometry. The set is dead silent. Dr. Grace drags a hand over his mouth, turns his head so quickly it’s like a wince. “You,” he says, his eyes skipping over the A.D., the boom op. Andi. “All of you… you set me up? Did you do this? You knew?”
Right then he sounds exactly like any other angry man. Andi shrinks in a way she’s not proud of. Dr. Grace’s ears are flushed, his eyes shining under the studio lights. Again, he wipes his mouth and looks at the crew like they’re hunting dogs. He points a shaky finger past the camera at the A.D., who has tried to turn and speak quietly into her walkie, and rasps, “Why didn’t you say something?” His voice is wet. “Why did you…”
Jay hasn’t moved in his peripheral, but Dr. Grace abruptly whirls on his heel and lunges over the desk. Andi jumps — Jay gasps, flinches — then his hands are gripped in Dr. Grace’s. “It’s you,” he’s saying. “It’s you,” and then something, ends in -ky? — “They’re not gonna believe me, so just tell them, okay?” He’s started to cry. “Tell them.”
“Dr. Grace,” says Jay. Andi has never heard his voice that small.
“No, just Grace,” says Dr. Grace. His eyes are still bright: absolute relief, like a drowning man on a lifeline. “You call me Grace.”
Louder into her walkie this time, the A.D. says, “CUT IT.”
The camera light flicks off. Jay’s chest is stuttering; his hands quiver violently in Dr. Grace’s grip. He tries to pull away, but Dr. Grace draws them closer, to his chest. “It’s you,” he says, “thank God,” and then there’s something else that comes much quieter between them. Andi’s still frozen solid when another man appears from the wings. Tall, imposing, in meticulous government black — he’s the one who had helped Dr. Grace offstage on The Rapport.
“It’s alright,” he says, holding his hands up to the set: placating. A bodyguard, maybe? “Come on, Dr. Grace.”
A palm finds Dr. Grace’s back, and he seizes up like he’s been shot. “No,” he’s saying, “Carl, don’t — I need to talk to him, Carl,” as the bodyguard, Carl, pries him off Jay. His fingers are clenched and digging into Carl’s sleeves. “Don’t — don’t fucking take me from him! Carl — Rocky! Rocky!”
Jay gets up so fast he trips a little. Again, he brushes over his jacket, his hair, and walks with his head down off the set. Andi clutches her phone to her chest and scrambles after him. She’s trying not to look at Dr. Grace, now red-faced and trying to fight like an animal out of his bodyguard’s arms. Wailing. “Rocky!” he sobs. “Rocky!”
Tears burn in Andi’s eyes. She doesn’t know why. Fuck. Because people don’t act like that. What is wrong with him? No, no, she needs to find Jay. Down the hall, the bathroom door closes with a click and a bam!
“Jay!” Andi yells. What does it matter? Her teeth are clenched so hard they’ve started to rattle. She knocks until her knuckles ache, and calls, again, “Jay!”
No response. A coterie of crew are scuttling down the hall to meet Andi. Distantly she can hear the A.D. snapping at people beneath the ragged, inhuman keening. “Jay,” Andi tries, “please, are you — ”
The door cracks. Andi barrels in and pushes it shut with her back.
When the black spots have left her vision, she sees Jay’s cornered himself against the wall. He has a hand over his mouth and it is, of course, shaking.
She opens her mouth, but he says, “Are you okay?”
“What? Jesus Christ, I’m fine.” Andi wipes her eyes with the heels of her hands. “Are you…”
Jay takes more than a few seconds to nod. Yeah, like Andi was going to believe that anyway.
“Did he hurt you?”
“No,” says Jay, “no. Just… squeezed hard.”
Dr. Grace had looked like… Andi doesn’t know. Like he was trying to wring something out of Jay’s skin. “What did he,” she starts, and then swallows. “What did he say to you?”
Jay’s fingers drum a rhythm into his cheek.
“I don’t know,” he says. “He said… I chose wrong. He said, I missed you.”
Two hours later, someone knocks on their office door.
Andi opens it to find Carl, the bodyguard. He does look exactly the way you’d expect a man in black to look. His expression is completely smooth as he says, “Miss Andrea Elloumi?”
“Yes,” says Andi. No one’s called her Andrea since college. “Can I help you?”
“I’d like to speak with Mr. James Ayala.”
“Back here,” says Jay, behind her. Andi steps aside to where he’s been reclined at his desk, tossing and catching a hacky sack out of the air. She’s been playing phone solitaire and back-listening to Pod Save America. Nobody’s going to scold them for not working right now.
“Excuse me,” says Carl, and steps past Andi. “Would you give us a minute?”
Andi looks uncertainly at Jay, who has caught and is steadily kneading the hacky sack. He nods.
“Sure,” says Andi, and steps outside.
And hustles to the break room. She comes back with a glass, which she presses to the office door and cushions with the pads of her fingers, just like her sisters showed her. The bottom of the glass is a cool shock against her ear. It was someone’s ice water. Whatever.
“... been well,” someone is saying. Carl.
“It’s not a problem.” That’s Jay. To Andi’s ear, his voice is brittle and strange. “It was just a shock.”
“To that end,” says Carl, “we’d appreciate your discretion in this matter. We’ll release a statement advising on Dr. Grace’s health, and that should be the end of it.”
“Not a problem,” says Jay, again.
Carl’s voice goes low, and Andi grinds her ear against the glass. “... accosted you,” he says. “And make sure he didn’t disturb you.”
“No,” says Jay, and a several-second-long silence fills the room. The door between them doesn't do much to muffle that awful, skin-prickling, suffocating sensation. Andi waits for the shifting of fabric, footsteps, anything that might mean run.
Then her boss continues, faint even through the glass: “Is he happy?”
Silence. “With respect, Mr. Ayala,” says Carl, “that’s none of your business.”
Jay hums. “Fair enough,” he says — cool, closed tones. “You have my discretion.”
“Thank you for your cooperation.” Fabric shifts. “We’ll be in touch.”
Andi peels away from the door and darts around the corner. Seconds later, it opens and Carl steps out. She watches him go, taking in all the light in the hall, his shoulders high and broad in the coat. His head inclines just slightly. Up, down.
“What’d you hear?” says Jay, who is right there next to her. Andi jumps and smothers a yelp.
“Sorry,” she says, with a flush.
“Don’t be. That was weird.” He sighs and looks down the stretch of empty corridor. “That man said Dr. Grace is alright. Apparently he has these, these… episodes.”
“They could have warned you.”
“Yes, they could have. I’ve never seen anything quite like that. Twenty years in journalism, on the…” Jay’s smile is crooked, rueful. Andi’s never seen him like that. Regretful? She doesn’t know how to read anything anymore. “On the Hubble beat.”
He folds his glasses, slips them into his pocket. Andi fiddles with the water glass as it weeps condensation into her palm.
Then Jay straightens up and says, “Okay, darling. Lunch on me?”
Oh, wow, Andi is starving. She’s had a protein bar and a mint today, and the wave of hunger that hits her then almost bowls her over. “Do they…” No, she needs to not ask stupid questions right now. “You don’t have to go anywhere?”
“Absolutely not,” says Jay. He punctuates it with a pat to her shoulder. “So let’s go. Something expensive. We need to be happy people, don’t you think?”
“We’re gonna suck at that,” Andi says. She has to smile over a lump in her throat.
“Yes, we will,” says Jay, and offers her an elbow. She takes it. “By God, it’s better than the alternative.”
It’s a nice day. They eat outside.
The sun is shining.