Summary: When the Hail Mary reaches the halfway point to Tau Ceti, only two crew members remain: you, the mission's pilot-commander, and Ryland Grace, the chief scientist who doesn't remember being appointed chief scientist.
# # TAGS: Semi-Canon-Adjacent, Long Form, Male!Pilot Reader, Eventual Rocky (No Rocky Here Yet), Surprisingly Domestic Space Fluff, Ryland Falls First, Reader Falls Harder, Slowburn-ish, I'm Still Bad at Tags, Part 1 of ???
# # WARNINGS: Canon-typical Space Dread, Mentions of Dead Bodies, Mentions of Isolation, Nothing Too Crazy, Author is Nowhere Near An Astrophysicist And Most of the Science in This Fic was Either Googled or Ripped Directly From the Book
NOTES: A dash of book-canon here and there, some minor divergence from the film timeline. There are no specifications of reader's height nor form. Reader's pronouns are he/him. No use of 'Y/N'. 5.6k words.
“What’s two plus two?”
Thinking shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did, but the cold feminine voice — once it broke through the ringing in your ears — heralded a throbbing headache and an instant stinging behind your eyes. You couldn’t remember the last time you had felt pain like that. And to your concern, it didn’t seem like you remembered anything at all.
“What’s two plus two?”
You groaned. The second thing you identified was the desert that was your throat. You shifted in place, only to be restrained by both fatigue and what felt to be a myriad of plastic wires and tubes.
“What’s two plus two?” repeated the persistent voice. A machine’s, you deducted.
Though your tongue felt like a dry stone in your mouth, you felt your lips move. The action resulted in a hoarse voice that you later registered to be yours.
“F… Four.”
“Correct.”
You heard a shuffling beside you, like someone was trying to scurry away.
You groaned again. Your face was scrunched up into a pained frown. It took a worrying amount of effort to pry your eyes open. And when you did, it wasn’t much help. White blurriness blinded you and elicited a hiss.
“Eye movement detected. What’s the cube root of eight?” the machine asked.
As your vision and hearing properly adjusted, you caught sight of one robotic arm. It spun and whirred as it attempted to touch and pry at your body. You regained control of your head and neck, which was achieved by your evasion of its metal claw.
“What’s the cube root of eight?”
“Fuck. Off.”
“Incorrect. What’s the cube root of eight?”
After a few harsher blinks, your eyes seemed to return to their functional state. You breathed through your dry mouth as you observed the space around you. LED lights, cameras, more robot arms. A monitor next to your bunk began to beep as your heart rate elevated. You couldn’t recognize anything. And when you searched your mind for some semblance of a name, none made itself known.
The voice kept at it, desperate to know the cube root of eight. You were about to raise your hand to smack it away when another voice said,
“Just try to answer it. It’s not gonna stop until you do.”
Your breath hitched. That voice was no machine. It was entirely human, shy and hesitant and far away. You furrowed your brows. ‘What?’ you wanted to ask. Instead what came out was a confused,
“Huh?”
“What’s the cube root of eight?” The machine again.
You groaned. Though you felt like you’d just been run over by a semi-truck, the answer came easy to you.
“Two.”
The robotic hand backed off. The answer seemed to satisfy both the machine and your disorientation. For all the agonies your body housed, you felt the strength to sit up. It was exhausting to do so, but you managed. You raised your hand to touch your forehead. Tubes followed uncomfortably. You lifted your eyes and took the rest of the room in. It was as foreign as it was familiar.
In the corner, a man was on his knees, hiding behind a desk. You frowned as you made the mess of his sandy blond hair and bespectacled blue eyes. He looked ridiculous, cowering like you might get up and punch him.
“Are… Are you awake?” he asked.
You looked at yourself, at your half-dressed body, the machines and monitors you were hooked up to, then back at him.
“What’d’ythink?” Responding with more than one syllable was apparently difficult. Your words, though clearly sarcastic, came out slurred.
The stranger sighed in relief.
The rest of the process was odd and obtrusive, but you had managed to retain some of your dignity; which was a fragile thing in that cold and sterile room. The robotic arm continued its methodical work, its movements precise and impersonal as it detached the last of the monitoring straps from your chest.
The blond stranger — no longer hiding behind the desk — anxiously waited for the procedures to finish.
“What is your mission designation?” the synthetic voice asked.
You hesitated. The words felt slippery, buried under layers of drug-induced fog. Remembering proved troublesome, but an answer came regardless.
“Hail Mary… Pilot-Commander.”
The blond man gasped. You frowned at him, but returned your attention to the machine.
“Correct. What is the destination star system?”
“Tau… Ceti.” The name came slower that time. You could picture the star charts from training, the long elliptical transfer orbit, the Astrophage-fueled spin drive pushing you to a fraction of lightspeed. But the details felt distant, like someone else’s memory.
The arm retracted with a soft whir, leaving you floating in the gel residue. You gripped the edge of the bunk to steady yourself, muscles, which were impressively intact, protesting the sudden demand for coordination.
The stranger bit his fist. “Careful, careful!”
You scowled. “Who the hell are you?” It felt slightly easier to talk then. Your words were cohesive, but the corners of your mouth were still relatively numb.
His name was Ryland Grace, and he had little to no idea who he was, or why he was there.
“I woke up two weeks ago,” he said. “Same coma situation, only Armando wasn't as nice to me. And I didn't wake up as well as you did. God, I thought you were dead.” His voice cracked near the end, like he was on the verge of tears. You looked up at him to realize that he actually was. “I-I was just waiting for you to wake up. Your monitors were looking after your vitals and keeping you in the coma because your body wasn’t ready.” He sniffled. “At least that’s what it told me.”
Ryland Grace wiped at his eyes with the heel of his hand, clearly embarrassed by the display. His shoulders trembled once before he forced them still. In the dim med-bay lighting, the tears made his sharp features look younger, more vulnerable than the brilliant scientist you were slowly starting to remember from pre-launch briefings. You didn’t intend to look as indifferent as you did, but you felt too exhausted to sympathize, still slightly drowsy from your years of sleep.
Your eyes drifted past him to the floor beside your bunk, where a haphazard pile of spare blankets and a single pillow made for a makeshift bed. A small tablet lay nearby, its screen still glowing faintly with medical readouts. Next to it sat a half-empty water bottle and a crumpled wrapper from one of the emergency ration bars.
He noticed where your gaze had landed. He shifted his weight and cleared his throat. “Oh, that. Yeah… I wanted to make sure I’d be here the second something went wrong with your vitals. I’m not entirely sure what half of the charts mean, but I figured it was smarter to stay close in case the robot glitched or your readings spiked.”
Your brow twitched. “Are you the only one here?”
Grace nodded slowly.
That wasn’t right, you thought. He shouldn’t be the only one. Wasn’t there supposed to be more of you? Four? No, three? You looked at his tired eyes and saw the restless nights he’d spent staring at you, listening to the constant drone of your machines, uncertain if you would ever wake up. He was alone, and lightyears away from home. He must have been so afraid. You knew you would have been. Finally, an emotion other than tired confusion surfaced from your chest; guilt.
“Olesya.” The name left your lips before you could think of it.
Ryland caught his breath. He knew the name, too. Except he didn’t know it because he knew the woman it belonged to— he knew it because it was the name of the corpse he hadn’t yet moved from the airlock.
Sensations flooded you without warning, the sharp sound of her laugh burning the brightest. Olesya Ilyukhina was the chief engineer of the Hail Mary. She’d snuck three bottles of vodka into the ship. You had spent a summer in Russia. She’d attempted to sneak into the Kremlin. You kept her from getting arrested. The sudden wave of grief told you that you knew her well, but you hadn’t the memory to support it. You knew her, and now, she was gone.
You stayed seated on the edge of your bunk for a long time, head bowed, fingers pressed against your temples while the med-bay’s low lights hummed overhead.
“It’ll come back,” Grace told you. “It just takes a while.”
For all his worries, it was clear that he was relieved. He might have been stranded on a ship in space with no clear recollection beyond his name, but at least he was no longer alone.
And what a wonderful thing it was, not to be alone.
Your recovery lasted for a few days. A good percentage of your strength was impressively intact, and it was mostly just a matter of relearning how to have it. You walked (or climbed) the expanse of the ship, familiarizing yourself with the areas, a good exercise for both your mind and body. And when you knew you could move without the numbness in your joints, you set out to give Olesya a proper burial.
Olesya’s body had remained in the airlock since Ryland’s own awakening. The state of her face, the deep circles under her eyes, and the hollowness of her cheeks, told you that she’d been dead for quite some time. Her body could not survive. The experimental hibernation had always been a gamble, even for the rare individuals who carried the gene that made it possible in theory. For years, the ship’s medical system had kept her stable, suppressing her metabolism to a fraction of normal as the Hail Mary burned toward its destination. But somewhere along the way, her body began to fail in ways the automated systems could not correct. There was only fate to blame.
You cycled through the inner door without thought. The airlock was cramped, utilitarian in the way its walls lined with emergency EVA suits and tether lines. Olesya lay secured against the far bulkhead. You had dressed her in her uniform. You took her calloused hands, held them together, and pressed photos of her family into her palm. You kept one to remember her by: a polaroid picture of her 28th birthday. Cake had been smeared across her grinning face, her eyes bright with laughter. You tucked the photo into your breast pocket.
Ryland stood just a little ways beyond the archway, silent, his hands clasped loosely in front of him. He feared to intrude, but then you invited him in. “She was your crewmate too,” you said, wiping a tear with your fist.
He took his place beside you, rueful.
You spoke no grand words, for there wasn’t any need to, and Olesya would have mocked you to death for ‘being such a cornball’. The memories of her that returned were enough: her laugh cutting through tension in the ready room, the way she’d sneak alcohol and call you “flyboy” with that sharp Russian edge. She had kept her promise to keep the ship singing if you kept it pointed true. Now it was your turn to send her on.
Together, you positioned her near the outer door. Ryland keyed in the sequence on the control panel. The inner door sealed with a heavy thunk. The airlock’s atmosphere vented in a controlled hiss, the sound fading to nothing as vacuum took hold. Through the small viewport, the stars waited, indifferent and eternal.
You gave the final command. The outer hatch slid open. Olesya drifted out slowly, pushed by the last puff of residual air, her shrouded form turning gently in the void. You watched until she became another point of light against the black.
Not even the worst medical-induced coma could take your intelligence from you, it seemed. While some memories were blurred, your skills came naturally. Instinctual, second-nature.
“This is the Control Room,” said Grace, who’d been trying not to appear obvious in his concerned hovering. He remembered how he felt the first few days since he’d woken up. He couldn’t fathom how you were moving so much.
You glanced at him with a quirked brow. “I know.”
You sat in the chair that was quite obviously yours. The ship lit up in response. ‘Pilot detected,’ it chirped. You leaned back and sighed. Even the arm rests seemed tailored to your size. It felt good to be there. Cohesive, in a way. Like sliding two puzzle pieces together. Finally, something unequivocally, and undeniably right.
And your memories did come back to you; better than Grace’s. It wasn’t perfect or entirely whole, but by the third day of your resurrection, you were showing him around. You walked Ryland through the control room, the lab module, and the narrow corridors, explaining redundancies and emergency procedures mostly just to hear them out loud— as though to check if it sounded right. The relief on Grace’s face was unmistakable. The tension in his shoulders eased with every system you named and every checklist you ran from memory. At least one of you knew what you were doing.
As Olesya was the engineer, you were the pilot; which left the role of scientist to Grace. You would have come to the conclusion regardless. He had an obvious knack for the field. And whenever he stood in the Lab, it felt as right as when you sat in the Control Room. Some things just happened to fit. But it took you a while to understand what to make of him. It felt odd that it appeared easier to regain memories of Olesya than it was of Grace. If the three of you were the designated crew for the Hail Mary, wouldn’t you have spent an ample amount of time pre-launch? The gap felt unsettlingly deliberate, and the thought of it often kept you awake.
There’d been other things you had to explain to him. He didn’t know how to access the ship’s confidential logs. Of course he had a passcode that would get him through, but he’d be damned if he could manage to remember it. The amnesia was normal, you assured him. Though it was slightly troublesome that it was taking him longer to recover. You gave him access to the specifics of the mission, the details of the Petrova Line, the trip to Tau Ceti, the need to understand what makes one star different from the rest. Ryland knew most of what you were telling him, but hearing it from another voice made it seem as though he was digesting it all over again.
“It just doesn’t feel right,” he said. “I’m not– I’m not that kind of scientist.”
You’d eat with him in the mess hall trying to resurrect his life on a small whiteboard. You wanted to remember him as much as he wanted to remember himself.
He told you the helpful details: he knew he was a school teacher, and that he had a PhD in molecular biology. He had bits and pieces of a woman named Eva Stratt. He knew the specifics of Astrophage. He knew the sun was dying, he knew the world was ending. And then there was the less helpful stuff: like his favorite icecream flavor, and why the Marvel Cinematic Universe should have stopped at Endgame, and how he ‘felt like a big Beatles guy’, which he’d topped off with a handful of fun scientific facts.
“Do you remember picking your shirts?” you asked him one simulated morning, ducked beneath one of the consoles and ensuring everything was operational. “I’m just trying to wrap my head around it. It’s the night before liftoff: you’re packing your things. You’re going to spend the next decade saving the universe and you think, hell yeah,these shirts will do.”
Ryland was drinking a cup of warm tea. He was sitting on the threshold that separated the Control Room from the corridor. “I don’t remember packing them,” he said. He looked down at the lame scientific pun printed across his chest. “But sadly, yes, these are very much my shirts.”
He liked having you around. He lingered in your space, finding excuses to sit on that same threshold or lean against the console while you ran diagnostics. His shoulders would loosen whenever you entered a room, like the simple sound of another human voice or another set of footsteps eased something tight in his chest. When a small alarm chirped (for something as minor as fluctuation in the thermal regulator,) he would whip his head toward you like a deer that heard a twig snap. It didn't matter if it was a weird noise, a loose panel, or a faint creak of the hull under deceleration thrust. His eyes would find yours every time. And in them, he'd search for the calm confirmation that it was nothing.
“Do we panic? Is that something we should be panicking over?”
“Even if a hole is blown through our fuel tanks, Dr. Grace, the last thing we should do is panic.”
You found it amusing. You were fairly certain that he was at least a little bit smarter than you. Yet there he was, the man who named and bred the star-eaters, looking to the pilot for reassurance over a rattling bolt.
You had a week before your arrival to Tau Ceti. There was time to kill.
You'd explored and catalogued every nook and cranny of the ship. Which, ideally, you would have recognized from the start. But with the amnesia you were still actively recovering from, you couldn't risk not relearning the Hail Mary like a forgotten mother tongue.
In your efforts, you discovered a couple of things. One: that Eva Stratt had somehow managed to supply the ship with an impossible amount of media. (from music, to films, to games, to electronic novels.) Two: that you had some involvement in the engineering of the ship itself. (Your name was credited on the lower-right portion of the main blueprint.) And three, that you had a polaroid of Ryland Grace wedged between one of your notebooks. The latter, you told him over dinner.
Ryland choked on his ramen, which he’d been having for the third night in a row. “You what?”
“Yeah, right here.” With no elevated emotion, you placed the photo on the metal table. “That’s you, isn’t it?”
Slightly creased in one corner, the polaroid was of a charmingly disheveled Ryland Grace, dressed in a lab coat over a faded university shirt, goggles pushed haphazardly against his hair. His glasses hung in a uniquely awkward way, clinging to his ear and jaw. He wasn’t looking at the camera and was instead beaming at the person behind it. It was candid and blurred in a way that made its edges soft; like it was taken without thought nor warning. He seemed to have been distracted from peering at a microscope. The photo caught him mid-smile.
Ryland’s cheeks turned pink. He had never seen a picture of him like that in his entire life. “W-Where did you say you found it?”
You showed him your notebook, that battered old thing. You raised it up like you were presenting your license to a patrolling officer. It was a navy-blue moleskine with the NASA logo embossed on the cover. It was decorated with a few tattered stickers of your favorite band. There was no one reason you kept it. Some pages had aerodynamic computations while others had your grocery lists. It seemed you had it for anything.
Ryland put his ramen cup down. “And what page was it on?”
You shrugged. You flipped it open, pages fluttering until your thumb pressed to a stop. You turned the notebook towards him to show a spread of what looked like an engine. It was covered in your handwriting, words and numbers scribbled about. It was an early concept of the ship’s cable separation system— which was the mechanism that allowed the upper section to detach from the fuel module and spin on Zylon tethers for centrifugal gravity. But it might as well have been written in Chinese for Ryland. And to his surprise there actually was some Chinese text in there.
“Huh.” Grace sheepishly scratched the back of his head. “So you've got a polaroid of me bookmarked on some sort of astrodynamic floor plan… why?”
You shrugged again, snapping the notebook shut. “Beats me, Doc.”
Grace cleared his throat. “You… don't remember taking the picture?”
“No.”
“Maybe we're closer than we remember.”
“Maybe.” You sat across from him. You tilted your head at his nervous expression. “Maybe you asked me to hold onto it.”
“Hold onto what?”
“The picture.”
“Oh.” He nodded. “Why would I do that?”
You shrugged a third time. “It's a good picture.”
A second whiteboard was born that day. It accompanied Grace's, housing its own questions, bulleted by fragmented facts. It was clear that there were plenty of things you were yet to remember yourself. You knew the flesh of things, the shape of them, but you couldn't see the bones. You'd spend hours staring at the board, chewing on the cap of your marker as though you could will those missing memories to return.
“Any luck over there?” You peered over to Grace's side of the room. His was messier than yours.
He whipped his head around so fast that his chair spun a little. “Huh? Oh. No, just the usual.”
You leaned over to catch a glimpse of his whiteboard. You'd unintentionally grown familiar of his handwriting. He had written questions about who you might be to him. He'd listed the possibilities in red ink:
Friend?
Neighbor?
Labmates?
Hung out with on Taskforce?
Always known as crewmate?
Then, at the very bottom, faint and hidden beneath a thin layer of erased ink, you could make out the ghostly outline of the word:
Boyfriend?
You turned back to your own board and smiled.
“Uh, let's try this.” Grace clapped his hands once. “How ‘bout we just throw rapid-fire questions at each other and see how well we can answer them? Theoretically that should jog our memories.”
You nodded your head. It beat staring at a wall. “Alright.”
Grace grinned. He didn't expect you to agree. “Okay, uh– I'll go first: where'd you grow up?”
You took a slow breath in. Your eyes narrowed like you were trying to see something far away. “Too long ago, can't remember.”
“Oh, sorry.” Grace nodded. “Okay, what about where you lived? Before launch, I mean.”
“I moved around a lot.” The faint image of bags and suitcases fluttered in your mind. Five different house keys, seven different addresses. “I went where the work took me.”
Grace raised his brows. “Okay. Good. That's something.”
You made a sound between a scoff and a laugh. “Alright, MacGyver. Your turn. Where'd you teach?”
He tapped the top of his whiteboard with his pen. “Grover Cleveland Middle School. Remembered that a little while back.”
You whistled. “Not bad.”
“Hold your applause. Where'd you graduate?”
You leaned back, arms crossed over your chest. “You're giving me the hard ones.”
Grace laughed at the accusation. “Am not!”
“I wanna say… MIT.”
“Is that a guess?”
“I'm saying what feels right. Do you play any sports?”
“No, and I don't need to be recovering from amnesia to know that.”
Your questions went on, quick exchanges tossed back and forth while you worked, ate, or sat in the dimmed mess hall. Some were easier to answer than others, some made your head hurt if you thought about it too long. But for what it was worth, it did help. Being prompted to think about things acted as a sort of trigger. It didn't matter how mundane. Were you a morning person or a night person? What was your favorite food? Favorite color? What shows did you like? What books did you read? Were you allergic to anything? Did you like coffee or tea? It went on for days.
“What do you miss most about Earth?” Grace's voice was soft and tired, muffled by the arm he leaned his cheek against. He was slumped over a table. You had accompanied him in the lab. He said he wanted to familiarize himself with the equipment.
You hadn't caught his question right away. You were leaning on the doorway, staring at one of the viewports. It was the night before your arrival to Tau Ceti and you were running calculations in your mind. “What?”
“Miss most about Earth,” he repeated. His eyes were closed.
You smiled. You thought long and hard for an answer, rummaging through memories as though you were searching for a wrench in a tool drawer. None came up.
“I think you should clock out, Grace.”
He hummed and mumbled what might have been a protest, but got up and dragged his feet back to your dormitory anyway.
You didn't have the luxury of getting your own rooms. The shared sleeping area was made to be efficient with space. With Ilyukhina's quarters vacant, you and Grace had three bunks between you. There was some privacy to spare, but it wasn’t often that you were present in your dorm together. The two of you slept in shifts, knowing it would be better if one of you was awake and could easily act on an issue.
“Good night, Captain.”
“Good night, Doctor.”
You spent the rest of the evening in the Immersion Node. It was a room of average size, wrapped in large LED screens that showed you virtually anything you could come up with. Grace had taken upon calling it the Don't Go Crazy Room, which was technically what it was. He spent more time in there than you did. He seemed particularly fond of the beach scene.
But you, you missed the fields.
The screens, in all their artificial brightness, projected a warm rural afternoon. A soft breeze passed over a long expanse of wheat. It didn't look like it would take long before they were ready to harvest. Clouds speckled the bright blue sky, moving in a gentle crawl, obedient to the direction of the wind. Your chest felt heavy. There was a lump in your throat. You took a deep breath. You sat on the ground with one knee propped up, your wrist resting against it.
When you woke, the field was gone. You opened your eyes leaning against one of the screen-walls. There was a sign blinking at you. Warning: Engine Cutoff. Action Needed.
“Cap!” It was Grace's voice. He was shaking you awake. His hair was a tousled mess and it looked like he'd just gotten up, too. “She's counting down!”
You shook your head. “What?”
“Mary! She's counting down! There's something about the engine shutting off? What do we do?!”
His frantic questions did not go well with Mary's cold and mechanical counting. You got up, wiping your eyes with your thumb and forefinger. Grace followed you with clumsy speed. You climbed up to the Control Room, where you sat in your seat, checking the screens.
“Ten, nine, eight… Pilot detected… seven, six…”
Your brows furrowed in focus. Grace anxiously took the seat next to yours, watching your face, waiting for you to give him permission to panic. “What's gonna happen at zero?”
“Calm down, this is supposed to happen. We're approaching Tau Ceti's orbit and the engine is about to stop.”
“W-What do I do?”
“You give me a minute to think is what you do.” You frowned at one of the gauges. “I'm making sure everything's in optimal condition. Sit tight, Grace.”
He did not sit tight. In fact, he had been freaking out so much that he didn't notice you buckle your seatbelt in. “I just feel like we should be–” Mary stopped talking. The counter had finished. There was a noticeable absence in the ship, like a fan had been turned off. The silence only scared him more. “Okay, what's–”
“You are now orbiting Tau Ceti.”
Grace started floating. He squealed an impressively high-pitched scream and started floating. He grabbed the closest thing he could, which had been the backrest of his seat, but his grip loosened and he was wriggling on the ceiling. The Control Room was thankfully small, and there were not many places he could float off to, but there were plenty of buttons for him to accidentally press.
“Grace. Alright– Grace, calm down.”
“What the heck! What the fudging heck!”
“Give– stop that. Look, breathe. Give me your hand–”
He managed to get himself spinning somehow. He'd kicked a stray pack of peanuts off somewhere and he was hovering further away from you. You clicked your seatbelt off, shaking your head. Grace helplessly called for your name. You pushed off your chair. You caught him, miraculously. But gravity was a tricky thing and the force sent you both spinning for a while. Like a pair of dancers on a music box. Grace clung onto you. He buried his face in your neck as you used your arm to brace yourself against one of the control panels.
“We trained for this,” you grumbled, straining to keep yourselves steady.
“I don't remember that!” His legs were floating up behind him, dragging you both. One of his knees bumped your thigh, then his elbow caught you in the ribs. He immediately tried to apologize and only made it worse by pushing off you too hard, sending both of you drifting sideways in a slow, lazy spin.
“God–” You were getting frustrated. “Grace!”
“I’m sorry, I'm sorry!” He yelped when his back bumped gently against the ceiling. “Mary, turn gravity back on!”
“Request unclear.”
“What? I want down!”
You managed to hook one foot under a handrail and pulled both of you closer to the console. You had bunched up a fistful of his shirt and grabbed him towards you. The motion swung Grace around and he ended up facing you, chest to chest, his nose only inches from yours. His blue eyes went wide.
“You’re doing great,” you said dryly, one arm looped around his waist to keep him from drifting away again.
“I don't appreciate the sarcasm,” he muttered, but his grip on your jumpsuit tightened anyway.
Grace swallowed thickly. There was barely any distance between you by then. He could feel the rising and falling of your chest. Were his ears getting hot? When was the last time he had gotten this close to anyone? It was a jarring feeling and an explosion of sensations. Grace didn't dare name them.
You braced your other arm against the panel and gently pushed off, guiding both of you back toward the pilot’s seat in a slow, drifting arc. Ryland’s legs kept trying to find purchase and only succeeded in tangling with yours. At one point his knee bumped your hip and he apologized so sincerely you almost laughed again.
“I'm gonna sit you down now,” you whispered, for he was so close that there was no need to raise your voice. You were unaware of the chill it sent down his spine.
You turned so that he was beneath you as you floated down. You sat him on his chair, one hand holding his shoulder as the other strapped his seatbelt in. Your eyes were focused on locking the buckles, but Grace was looking directly at your face. Your knee bumped his thigh as you anchored your foot against the deck to keep from drifting away. And when your hands snaked to the back of his waist to secure the strap, his breath hitched.
“Uh.” Grace blinked. He was safe in his seat then, no longer floating. To his horror, he was still holding your shoulders. “Thank you, Captain.”
You laughed. His heart stuttered. “Hopefully that pre-launch training kicks in sometime soon.”
Grace laughed too, but it was soft and nervous. He moved his hands from your shoulders to the armrests of his seat. “Yeah, I hope so.” He cleared his throat. He watched you move to buckle yourself into your chair with ease. “Can we turn the gravity back on?”
Your eyes were on the monitor. Your hands glided across the haptic interface, checking the parameters, one eye on readouts. The ship was still settling into its new path around Tau Ceti, the big main screen showing the slow, graceful curve of the planet below.
“Gravity's not something you turn on,” you said. Your tone was calm again and it soothed him. “We’re in microgravity now because the main drive cut out for orbital insertion. The ship has a centrifuge mechanism, but we only use that when we need stable conditions for lab work. And we need to conserve energy.”
You glanced over at Grace, then threw him a smile. “Besides,” you added, returning your attention to the panel as another status light blinked green, “we’re still adjusting to the new orbit. Spinning the whole section right now would throw off the stabilization thrusters. Give it a few hours. You’ll get used to floating.”
Grace let out a shaky breath and tried to nod, but the motion only made him drift a little in the harness. He caught himself on the armrest, ears flushing darker. “Right. Centrifuge. Cables. Lab work. Got it.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I think I do remember something about a centrifuge, actually. Did you know they used it to make butter in the Civil War?”
You laughed again, which pleased him. And for the shortest while, he thought dying in space might not be as bad as he thought.
FLUFF(?) ft. — neteyam+mreader, shroom consumption, teenage drvg usage, they switch personalities after getting high
In honor of older siblings who always had to be the one with the responsibility🫡
“Tried these before, forest boy?” You grinned, sitting down next to him on the rocky area you always found him near. He looked at the shrooms you threw on to his lap with concern, eyeing you with a question filled face that asked ‘are these safe..?’
“Obviously not.” He bit back with an eye roll. “Do you think we can find this in forest?” Huffing, he grabbed the glowing plants that looked inedible and inspected it. “What even.. is this?”
“It’s safe..ish.” Neteyam looked at you with a glare. “I promise. You eat them, and i swear it feels like you hear eywa talking to you.”
He looked around with a hum— no lo’ak, no kiri, no tuk.. no mom, and most importantly, no jake. Just the two of you (you, with your stupid, boyish smile) accompanied by the ocean and the rustling of trees.
He let out a quiet sigh, shrugging as he mumbled out a quiet “Fine.” which you let a loud, happy trill to.
🍃
20 minutes later, the two of you lay flat on your backs, laughing at random things that weren’t even the least bit funny.
“Bro.. why does that yerik have a dick?” He giggled, pointing at a rock far ahead to the ocean. You squint your eyes to look at it in confusion.
“I don’t know..” mumbling, you closed your eyes, going back to lying down.
“Do you think lo’ak and tsireya will be mates?” He laid down on his side, eyes that were blown wide staring at your face. You turned your head to him and met his gaze, grimacing.
“You’re so weird,” he must have found the way that you said it so sincerely funny- or he ingested way too many- because he immediately burst out laughing as he clutched his chest.
You blinked before breaking into a lazy grin at the sound of his laugh. “You know.. you should laugh like this more.“
“Maybe bring some of those more often, and i will.”
The two of you spent the whole day comparing clouds to living beings, taking a dive to grab fishes and conversing with them like they could talk back, letting out the burdens your two families put on you until eclipse soon started to show. Just as the two of you called ilus to ride back home to, neteyam suddenly started to talk.
“Hey, bro?” He looked back at you with a soft smile that seemed free. The ones he let out when he was still back home. You stared at him, stunned for a moment before humming.
“Promise me. When this all settles down.. let’s do this again. Next time, we should name every fish in the sea.”
“Okay. I promise.” you let out your own smile.
He was the one who made that promise. So why was he the one to break it?
SMUT ft. — erwin smith+mreader, power dynamics, dom erwin *drool* & sub reader, degradation
can yall tell i really like oral🌝🌝 ACKKK i hope i did decent. Also, feel free to give requests! I do sfw works too
“Cadet.” Footsteps approach your kneeling form. “C- capo.... ‘m sorry” you whispered, throat dry and raw, your arms numb from the hours of being tied up. “Swear! I swear i didn’t mean to cause trouble..!” looking up, you feel tears start to fall from your eyes.
The footsteps stopped in front of you. “No.” Erwin gripped your hair and pulled it back, enough to cause discomfort to your breathing.
“I told you one thing yesterday, cadet. One thing. To let. me. handle. them.” He dragged his other hand across your neck, palm caressing your adam’s apple. “It was an order you disobeyed.” He brought the hand on your neck hand up in the air before slapping your cheek, making your head turn to the side.
“Ugh.. nhhn..” you sobbed, feeling heat crawl up your cheeks. “Open your mouth, boy.” He was still using that same eerie calm tone of his that made you feel secure when in battle, but for some reason, it made you shiver hearing it now.
Obeying him, your opened your mouth and he instantly let go of your hair, two of his fingers pressing down on your tongue. “Shorrry.. weally.. uhck—!” You gagged, his fingers ending up down your throat.
“Suck.” He murmurs, thumb caressing your upper lip. Mumbling unclear apologies, your tongue licked between his fingers, glossy eyes staring up at him.
“Fuck— boy.. making me crazy over here..” the curse slips out as erwin releases a shaky sigh, unbuttoning his pants. He pulls his fingers out your mouth and takes his cock out, slapping the hardening flesh on your lips.
“You don’t really think saying sorry’s enough, do you?” He raises a brow at you.
SMUT ft. — tsu’tey x gnreader (no specific gender mentioned.. i hope😓), blowjob w/ tsu’tey receiving, public sex but they don’t get caught
"Hggh-! Mmn- mmh!" The muffled noises were like fuel to fire. It was delicious listening to the great warrior Tsu'tey try to stay quiet as your mouth took his length skillfully.
The man suddenly whines as his thighs quiver, pushing his hips up into your mouth while he bites his palm as your choked attempt to breath air makes your throat tighten up around him. He pants as his body relaxes as you stop for a second. His body leans against the tree once again, hand gripping your hair.
Your eyes lit up, all too amused by this situation. Future olo’eyktan out here in the forest, trying to stay quiet as his comrade sucks him in open view? fucking hot.
You slowly let his member leave your throat, lips moving their way up to his tip before you released it from your mouth with a small pop.
"We stop this, now." He says, out of breath. You roll your eyes before removing your tewng, the inside of it drenched and clinging on to your skin.
"You say this all the time, but do not stay true to your words. Have fun, tsu'tey. Let loose."
SMUT ft. — ronal+tonowari+gn!reader (no specific pronouns mentioned), cunnilingus w/ ronal receiving, pussy drunk tonowari.
"Ma'ronal." You warmly greet your Tsahik with a sweet smile and a peck on the forehead as you and Tonowari enter the marui where the three of you resided in.
Ronal manages to hum an acknowledgement at their return before giving them a look that causes the pair to show off their bodies.
"Good, good.. no injuries." The female lifts her lips an inch up while inspecting the body of the two Na'vi. It was a relief to her and the two that they hadn't sustained an injury from the hunt.
You smirk and slyly sneak an arm around her waist, burying your face in her neck. The Tsahik felt a shiver shock her spine at the sudden intimacy from her mate, and as she was about to scold you for the abrupt touch, a gasp leaves her precious lips at the feeling of hands going underneath her top.
Tonowari sets his spear down and walks towards them. As he nears, he goes to the front of ronal and removes the knot holding up her loincloth before his large fingers find their way to her pussy. Some of them plays around with her clit while the other teases her entrance, only entering the tip of it as he relishes in his mate's euphoric sounds of pleasure.
"Sound so delicious, yawnetu.." You mutter against her skin, eyes filled with hearts as you guided her to lay on the woven mattress filled with soft materials that you had gathered from your short adventures in the forest.
"You look pretty, Ma'ronal." Tonowari kneels infront her, whispering. His face neared her folds, giving a lick that instinctively made her close her legs, only to have you hold her legs still, letting Tonowari eat her out like a starved man.
"So good.." Tonowari dazedly mutters, sucking and licking inside her, letting his tongue flick and thrust inside her. You groan at this, Tonowari's face covered in Ronal's sweet juices while the woman just moaned and whined with her back pressed against your chest, unable to do anything but let it happen as you held her down.
You were painfully throbbing inside your loincloth. You wanted nothing more than to have you and 'wari pleasure her at the same time, stimulating her as she gasps for air while her hands flail around to search for something to grip, beautiful hair spread out on the ground while the two of you toy with her with different speed and roughness. Unfortunately, a child was inside her..
Your gaze snaps towards Tonowari, who's body grew increasingly hotter with your gaze on him. Your eyes wandered on his body, trailing on the tattoos that your lovely wife gave him before your lips turn to a grin, amused at the sight of your mighty husband reduced to a mess only by eating ronal's pussy. He was grinding his hips down on the ground, creating a friction against his hard dick.
A glint in your eyes shone, before they go back at the loud cry of pleasure escaping Ronal as she released, her body tensing up before they releaxed against your hold.
"Yawnetu?" You whisper as you feel her go limp in your arms before you loved aside and gently set her on the mat. Your eyes snap towards Tonowari. He had already taken off his loincloth, dick hard and pressed up against his thigh.
"So needy, Tono?" You said with a teasing grin that turns even wider as you saw the look he had on his face. He was basically saying Fuck me with his eyes alone. Dear eywa..
"Come." You beckoned him over to your lap and he comes rushing. He was about to sit infront of you before your hands grabbed his waist and made him sit on your thighs.
"I'm too heavy-" Tonowari tries to voice out before silencing upon seeing your sharp look towards him.
"Sit. now. or i will let you sleep without release." You warned him and he nods, relaxing in your arms. He whined beautifully, back arching as you palmed his erection.
"Please no teasing, Ma'[Name].." He begs as he lays his head on your shoulder, his arms hugging your neck. You laughed silently, looking at his twitching member.
titsay
stormborns
gummygunk