Work Text:
“Uh, Stratt?”
“Come in,” Eva sighs, resigned to her fate.
There goes my previously quiet morning, she thinks as she turns off the classical music she was listening to. There are some personality traits that she’d like to keep from Dr. Grace for as long as possible. It’s almost like a game to her: a point for each month it takes him to discover something new about her.
She gained six points when it took him seven months aboard the Gansu to figure out what her favorite color is.
“Morning. You busy?” He gives her a strained-looking grin and in return she narrows her eyes suspiciously at him.
Pretending to let him lead the conversation for a minute longer, she lowers her eyes to the paper she was annotating before the interruption. “I’m always busy, Dr. Grace. What is it this time.”
“What? Wha-what do you mean?” He laughs awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m just popping in to say hi!”
“I assume, from the way all conversation ends as soon as I enter a room recently, that the crew has some grievances to air out.” Never raising her head from her paperwork, she sends him a look over the top of her reading glasses. “You, as a chronic people pleaser, have been designated as the spokesperson who will complain about the heinous act I’ve done or condoned. Am I right?”
He nods feebly and shuffles his feet.
“Also, I could hear all four of you whispering outside my door just now.”
“Oh. How did you know I was with the astronauts?“
“I didn’t. You just told me.” He lets out a frustrated groan and looks to the heavens for…she doesn’t know. Inspiration for better scheming accomplices? She ignores it. “If this is about Antartica, I’ve already handled it.”
Her eyes go back to her work.
“That’s why I’m here, actually. We think it could have been handled a little more delicately.”
Shocked, Eva’s head pops up rather comically and her lower lip twists to the right in annoyance. (To this day, Grace has not been able to replicate this move.)
“He didn’t like it? But, it’s custom.”
She says custom like it should mean something to him, but to Grace all it means is that the sentiment the gift was trying to convey was malicious and on purpose. He’s sad that the crew and a few scientists were right, but he soldiers on.
“You can’t gift Leclerc a stuffed penguin right after you forced him to obliterate the only polar desert that defined his life’s work.”
“Why not? It’s made out of high-quality material.” Confused, she shrugs and leans back on her chair. “And anyway, it’ll be a long time before penguins return to Antartica since they might go extinct very soon—now he has a memento.”
“Couldn’t you have given him something more appropriate as a memento?” His puts his hands on his hips and manages to show how disappointed he is with just his posture. “Or maybe not a memento at all? Why do you want to remind him of the worst day of his life?”
“How is a penguin inappropriate? It has his children’s names stitched on the feet!” She pauses and scrunches her nose in distaste. “His wife died in a traumatic car accident. You’d think the worst day of his life included his wife dying.”
“…I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.” He tries to keep his face from showing too much horror. “And the children’s names? Yeah, that’s actually worse.”
“Why!” She sputters. It’s not often that she allows herself to be sentimental, but she thought that this was one of those occasions where it was important to acknowledge the sacrifices made.
“You put his children’s names, children who might die in the upcoming apocalypse, on the feet of a stuffed, soon-to-be-extinct animal who used to live in the habitat he nuked? He basically destroyed his life’s work, he doesn’t need a reminder!”
“… It was a very expensive stuffed penguin,“ she argues.
“Stratt.”
She hates it when he puts on his teacher ’s voice. So annoying.
“It’s supposed to be weighted to help him sleep.”
“Well, that’s a little better, I guess.” Only a little?
“I don’t understand what the big deal is. He likes penguins, I bought him a penguin. He loves his children, I quite thoughtfully included them in a gift to help him process his trauma.”
“I think you need to run these things by me, next time.”
“Well, there won’t be a next time.” She crosses her arms defiantly. “I was going to buy Carl a fake gun that squirts water, but not anymore.”
“After he got shot?! Protecting you?!”
“I thought he appreciated humor.”
“Stratt, you’re bad at jokes.” He shakes his head disappointingly. “Why would you think you’d be good at gifts?”
She stays quiet for a minute. He waits for her answer and watches as she uncrosses her arms and fiddles with her shirt sleeves. Finally, she rests her head on the chair’s headrest and closes her eyes.
“Alright. No more gifts.” Stratt says. Grace thinks her voice is too quiet. “One less thing off my plate. Thank you for the great news, Dr. Grace.”
Oh.
With a sinking feeling in his gut, he realizes that she really was trying to be nice. It’s not that he can’t believe it, he knows she has a very big heart! Heck, it was his first thought when the crew first brought it to his attention—it’s her way of trying to be nice. But darn it, he is a chronic people pleaser and he let their opinion eclipse his.
“He was very cute, the penguin. Just, maybe it was too soon, you know?”
She shrugs. He feels like he’s talking to a sulking teenager. It makes his heart squeeze painfully.
“It was a female penguin,” she corrects petulantly, eyes still closed.
“Stratt—”
“You can take it from Leclerc, can’t you?” She comes back alive as if nothing happened and begins organizing the papers on her desk. When he doesn’t answer, she clarifies unnecessarily. “The penguin?”
“No, no.” Grace says dejectedly. “He just needs more time with it, that’s all.”
“I appreciate you trying to protect my feelings, Dr. Grace, but I’d rather not have a re-traumatized climatologist under my care.”
Well, when she puts it that way…but it really was a high-quality stuffed animal. And the weight was juuust right. An idea pops into his head.
“…can I keep it?”
“No,” she immediately says.
“Why not?”
“Because it has the Leclerc children’s name on it?” She stacks her papers into a neat pile and puts it aside.
“Well, can I have one?”
“No.”
“We could get matching ones!”
Eva tilts her head at him and considers it. “What animal would you choose?”
“I like foxes!” He bounces on the balls of his feet but his excitement dies down when she purses her lips. “Come on, they’re cute!”
A cellphone chimes with a notification and she looks for her phone under all the sheets of papers on her desk. It distracts her into admitting what is now his favorite fact about her. “I like bats. They’re adorable.”
Grace’s jaw drops. She realizes her mistake pretty quickly.
“No,” she hisses sharply. “Forget I said that.”
“Oh, my god.”
“I’ll make you sign an NDA.”
“Is it because of Batman?”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“You’re a liar. It’s totally because of Batman.”
“And you will never be able to prove it.”