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*indicates sexual content
**trigger warning
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THOR ODINSON
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(drabble) like everyone else, you just couldn't take your eyes off of him. luckily, it seems he feels the same way about you.
PETER PARKER (TASM)
✦ labyrinth ✦
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VIKTOR
✦ somethin' stupid ✦
(one-shot) the ever-brilliant viktor finds himself drowning in feelings for his colleague, so what does he do? bury them, of course... until he learns that love is not something you can just ignore.
SAM WINCHESTER
✦ last kiss ( one | two | three | four | five** ) ✦
(series, complete) you and sam were inseparable; two like-minded souls brought together by a life of saving people and hunting monsters. when the world is about to come to an end, he's forced to make a choice, one that might just haunt you forever.
DEAN WINCHESTER
✦ everything has changed ( one | two ) ✦
(series, ongoing) once again, dean lands in the reality where he’s just a fictional character played by jensen ackles. it’s annoying the hell out of him and he just wants to go back home, until he doesn’t.
BENEDICT BRIDGERTON
✦ don't they know? (it's the end of the world) ✦
(series, ongoing) ravaged by a relentless virus, the world as you knew it falls into ruin. survivors are hardened by the blood on their hands and the horrors in their minds. amidst the end of everything, benedict proves that there is still hope, and perhaps something more, for the two of you.
RYLAND GRACE
✦ hazy cosmic jive ( one | two | three ) ✦ kryptonian!reader
(series, ongoing) the hail mary is pulled into adrian, threatening to end grace and rocky's mission to save the stars. the stars send a savior of their own.
THE CORINTHIAN
✦ call it what you want ✦
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✦ i know places ✦
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so sorry for the delay on chapter 4 of hazy cosmic jive my loves 💔 i've been on a bunch of side quests lately (i'm runway modeling next week?!?!?!)... my heart yearns to write more kent and grace shenanigans 💔💔💔💔💔 rest assured as soon as i find the time i WILL have these next chapters delivered to yall 🫡🫡🫡
word count: 4k ish
pairing: din djarin x reader
a/n: [old timey radio voice] interrupting your regular schedule of bat boy to bring you [does jazz hands] yet another man that could kill u! i will apologise for not updating wtssf and instead giving this but i do not control the brain worms <3 hopefully this is still tasty for sum of y'all ! title from NFWMB by hozier
synopsis: Din gives you an unexpected gift. A dagger crafted with beskar, a fine weapon, a courting gift. You misunderstand. It doesn't take long for you to catch back on. inspired by a convo with my beloved @djarinova
By now, the constant hum and rattle of the Razor Crest around you was nearly unnoticeable.
You travel enough light-years with one stubborn screw in your cot, almost always returning to the spacecraft with one injury or another, and eventually the low lull becomes something more familiar.
Almost, if you'd let yourself admit it, a comfort.
Sleep is funny on the Crest. You'd been a light sleeper for most your life and it had saved your skin more time than you cared to count. Yet, it was the simple knowledge that a Mandalorian roamed in the cockpit above that allowed sleep to drag you deeper than usual.
It had taken months to let your guard down, to realise there wasn't going to be blade buried in your gut as you slumbered defencelessly. In the safety of his company, for the first time in decades, you dream when you sleep.
He hates having to wake you, only doing so if it's absolutely necessary. It's always with the lightest of touches, the leather of his gloves pressing softly against your shoulder, your name murmured and diluted through the modulator of his helmet.
Despite his gentleness, it never stops you from jarring awake.
You shudder awake with a violent twitch, pressing up on your elbow in a split second, prepared to move. You're stopped from moving further by Din's hand on your shoulder. He's knelt beside your cot, visor fixed on you.
You're on a new planet. The foreign atmosphere gives that away in an instant, the chalky taste in your mouth and the swarming heat on your skin. Your jack-rabbiting heart calms a bit.
"Din?"
You know he's only waking you because he must. The momentary calm banishes again as you push yourself up again. Din lets you this time, his gloved hand retreating to his side.
"It's not an emergency." He says, knowing your train of thought already. He tilts his head slightly, gesturing towards the ramp door. "I need to leave the ship. I didn't want you to wake and..."
Your trailing gaze darts back to his visor quickly, swallowing as you fill in the end of his sentence. Din doesn't finish it, but his shoulders readjust in a minuscule motion.
"I'm getting supplies. Watch the kid. Please."
You're nodding before he's finished his sentence. The sleep in your system is already dissipated and you push up, shifting onto your feet and trapping your pained hiss behind gritted teeth as Din rises to his full height.
There's a beep from his valance as he punches a button then a soft hiss as the pressure changes, the ramp door beginning to lower.
It's habit to watch the sliver of the outside grow, the new terrain stretching out before you as the mouth of the ship opens. As expected, a seemingly endless spread of sand greets you. You wrinkle your nose.
Din hadn't indulged the reason or destination of this particular trip. You hadn't asked. A deep slice in your thigh courtesy of a vibroblade and a mouthy Twi'lek had kept you off your feet and eager to rest.
The slice had been by pure luck—or so you thought.
But Din's silence following the patch up in the ship, his quietness suddenly uncanny, left you beginning to wonder if he was questioning your ability to fight. Weighing up your ability to defend.
And if those things were up for debate, certainly so was your position on his ship.
It had just been passed 3 years, almost six cycles if you counted how time passed on your home planet, since you had joined his crusade. Your job had one very simple, very crucial objective.
An objective that was now babbling at your feet, tiny claws reaching out for you.
"Hey, you," You say, reaching down to scoop Grogu up into your arms. He reaches his arms up as he does, making a happy gurgle as you tuck him against your hip.
His round, dark eyes peer up at you, his big ears twitching mischievously and you couldn't help but smile. You turn so he could see the stretch of desert and are surprised to find Din still in the mouth of the ship. He's turned back, his dark visor giving away nothing of his expression.
It's then you get the feeling once more; you're being evaluated. Your usefulness being weighed up. You shift beneath the weight of his gaze, unmoving but still not speaking.
"Did you forget something?" You ask, just to break the silence.
Din finally shifts, his helmet giving a small shake in answer. He doesn't speak, just stares another moment, before he's turning, his cape catching the wind as he strolls down the ramp.
You watch him go, heart in your throat, pondering with an ache of melancholy if your time on the Crest was coming to a close.
Another burbling noise from the little green monster in your arm tugs your attention away. You look down, smile already pulling at your mouth at his clawed hand reaching for you.
"At least I know you still like me," You murmur, letting his cling to one of your fingers. "You wouldn't fire me, would you?"
Grogu makes a noise of agreement, gripping your finger tight. Then he opens his little mouth and tries to direct your finger into it, the clearest declaration of his hunger he can give.
You huff a quiet laugh, turning back to the ship, mentally tallying up your list of things to do.
—
By the time of Din's return, the sun has dipped low in the sky and the dunes glow a scorching orange in its rays.
You see him coming in the horizon, the only figure out on the desolate landscape. You wonder, for not the first time, if he's burning up beneath all his armour. He never seems to use the fresher to cool off like you do.
It's as he reaches the ship, his footsteps heavier than usual and betraying his tiredness, do you realise he's returned with a bag. Your eyes glue to in instinctively but you bite your tongue and swallow the burning question of what the contents of the bag is.
"Get what you need?" You ask instead, hands laying flat on your knees, avoiding the bandage on your thigh.
You're knelt besides the ship wall, sitting on your feet, one of the panels hanging haphazardly by a single screw and a box of tools beside you.
There's a function for cooler air on the Crest but it's been busted since a gnarly shoot up leaving the atmosphere of Coruscant months ago. You've been trying to fix it for weeks, each time with no avail.
Today is no different.
“You haven’t fixed it.” Din says candidly, instead of answering your question.
That suddenly familiar worry of your usefulness shirks up within you.
“Yet.” you counter, aiming for optimistic. It’s impossible to tell what the immovable expression of Din’s helmet means. “It’s not the same problem as I started with, at least.”
After a moment, he gives a short nod as if he understands — which is mean because there isn’t a single thing you can think of that Din Djarin is bad at. Besides talking to Jawas, of course.
He passes you and you force yourself to keep facing forward, even as you long to trail his broad figure. You squint at the tangle of wires within the panel and sigh. It’s feeling pretty fruitless. You were hardly a mechanic to begin with and—
A loud clatter beside you makes you startle, something heavy dropping into your toolbox.
You jump back and after a quick second, realise that it’s Din who had dropped something purposefully. Trying to calm your racing pulse, you lean forward and peer in.
“This might help.” He says.
You blink down at the new tool he’s given you. It’s the one spanner size that’s missing from your toolbox.
The last one had been lost when you lobbed it at an intruder’s head in a blind panic. Not your proudest moment— even if it did distract the guy enough for Din to put him down.
You swallow your heart in your throat. “Thank you.”
You don’t hear him retreat but the part of you that fizzles like a freshly born star when he’s near dims, a giveaway to his movements. You curl your fingers the new tool and try to tell if this a good sign or not.
Behind you, Din clears his throat.
You peer over your shoulder, your brows knitting together — it’s not often he calls your attention so forwardly, much preferring to stand and wait, staring long enough til you notice and flush.
He’s still standing in the hull, one hand curled around and holding the bag he returned with. You twist fully, letting him know he’s got your attention.
For a long moment, he doesn’t move. You stare, waiting patiently and try not to let your eyes roam—especially after the last comment he made when he absolutely caught you staring at the broadness of his shoulders, eyes drinking in the cut of his figure.
You’d be a terrible criminal, cyra’rika.
What’s that supposed to mean? You had retorted, flustering just a bit.
He had turned and fixed you with a tilt of his helmet that meant he was likely smirking underneath it.
You have shifty eyes.
Your face had glowed fiercely at the reminder that just because you couldn’t see his eyes, that didn’t mean he couldn’t see yours.
Across from you in the Crest now, Din coughs awkwardly.
“I,” He starts. One of his hands clenches, the leather crinkling as he does. “I have something. For you.”
Surprise piques up inside you, fiery and delighted. It warms your stomach and there’s no fighting the smile that pulls at your mouth even if you wanted to.
Gifts from a bounty hunter are few and far between and he’d already replaced the spanner. Your bounty hunter in particular doesn't like to spend his credits unwisely.
Even less commonly does he acknowledge that something is a gift—but you've learned to love the quiet hum he gives you when you thank him for something.
"Oh?"
He shifts his weight ever so slightly, the most obvious indication that he's nervous.
You sit up a little straighter. The anxiety from earlier pools in quickly.
He gives a tiny, almost inaudible huff and then, instead of reaching into the bag, he pushes back his cape and reaches back. His skilled hand unclips something sheathed at his waist. He drops the bag and steps forward, his hand outstretched.
You hold your breath without realising.
It's... a dagger, you realise.
A very beautiful blade by all standards. As you press up to your knees, rising to get a closer look, the details of its intricacy begin to call out to you.
The hilt is twined in a delicate, leathery fabric, not yet moulded to any hand. The pommel holds a promise of a shimmer as though it's embedded with a mineral. And the blade itself... A darker metal curls through the lighter one that encases it, like smoke on a sunlit sky.
It's expert craftsmanship, with a precise balance of two metals — and if you stare a moment too long, you swear the darker one matches the hue of Din's armour. His beskar armour.
"Will you accept it?"
It's with the gravel of Din's voice do you realise you haven't moved. You haven't reached out for it, haven't even blinked since he offered it out to you. You exhale, suddenly feeling a little lightheaded.
It's elegant beyond words. It's too much.
Too much for you, too much as a... a... What was it?
A gift? A reminder of your sole duty on the Crest? Of what you nearly failed at during your last mission together? The wound on your thigh seems to throb painfully as if in response.
He's never got you a gift that's anything less than helpful.
"I," You breath, finally tearing your eyes off the dagger and looking up at the visor fixed on you. "Din, I—"
Your gaze drops back to the blade in his hands. This time, you're certain it's beskar twined within the steel.
"It's very beautiful but..." I'm not worthy of beskar. "I couldn't, it's— it's too much. I can't accept it, Din."
The words come out clumsily and you wonder if in your attempt at being polite, you've gone too far in the other direction and offended him. You wring your hand against your thigh, pressing your knuckles into your wound. The pain dances along your nerves, a welcome distraction as you force yourself to meet his gaze.
The hum of the ship fills the space between you and like almost always, you have no idea how to read his silence.
"I understand."
And then he's stepping back, resheathing the blade into its holster in one fluid motion. He does it so quickly you don't see the tremble in his wrist, his hand just a touch unsteady. Above you both, there's a beep in the cockpit.
This time, you do manage to clock his body language, well aware of the way his guard has suddenly been wrenched up and the anxiety in your veins quickens with a sinister twist. Oh stars. You've definitely made it worse. You should've just accepted the dagger.
He turns and wordlessly heads towards the ladder to the cockpit and you watch him desperately, a dozen words caught in your mouth and none of them the right ones to say aloud.
"I—"
Din pauses, one gloved hand on the rung of the ladder, facing forward. He gives you a moment to speak. Your mouth dries.
When it's clear you aren't going to, you catch the slight sigh he gives, his shoulders dropping an inch.
"Grogu will miss you."
What?
You don't even get a moment to consider what he’s said or to digest the implications before he’s climbing the ladder, deft and quick. By the time you’re on your feet, the swish of his cape is disappearing into the hatch on the ceiling.
You stare at it a moment, all your unsaid words suddenly transforming into confusion. Your mouth opens then closes, your hands held out in front of you in evident bewilderment.
“What—” You begin as you take the rungs twice as fast, following Din’s path up to the cockpit. “—is that supposed to mean?”
You’re halfway up when The Crest suddenly lurches to the side with a rumble, the powering of engines thrumming beneath your feet and you stumble to catch your balance. Below you, you hear the familiar hiss of the ramp closing.
Stars, what is he doing? He hasn’t been this eager to leave a planet since a bounty back on Hoth.
“Where are we going?” You ask, forgoing your unanswered question. You shift forward as the Crest continues to rise with a powerful whirling sound.
Casting an eye at the passenger seat, you’re relieved to find it already occupied by your favourite green friend. Grogu coos in your direction at the sight of you and despite the situation, you can’t help but smile.
“I can take you wherever you wish to go.” Din’s flat response has your smile fading, your head whipping around to face him.
But he doesn’t take his focus off the control in front of him for a moment, stoic and silent as he continues to initiate takeoff. The Crest rises higher, the sandy ground of the planet out the window growing smaller and smaller.
Wherever you wish to go?
Does he— does he think you want to leave?
Your head spins in a tizzy as you try to clue together how the hell he had come to that conclusion. The Crest rocks as it breaks through the atmosphere and you stumble again, struggling to keep your balance.
For whatever reason he’s thinking it, he’s wrong.
Action finally possesses you. You surge forward and slam your hand onto the console, killing the power to the thrusters.
The ship stalls with a loud droning noise, coming to a shuddering stop before it begins to float in the darkness of space. The only light is the glowing orange of the planet and stars beyond the glass.
“Why do you think I want to leave all of a sudden?” You demand hotly.
For a moment, you think Din will continue the silent treatment that he’s all but mastered. His helmet, visor gazing out through the windshield, doesn’t move — until he tilts his head toward you slightly. He sighs quietly.
“I don’t imagine after…” He waves a hand idly and you scan his figure intensely, searching for what he could possibly be referring to.
After…?
It suddenly seems quite obvious.
Even if you had no idea what it had meant to Din, clearly this has to do to you turning down his gift.
“Din,” you say very quietly.
His helmet turns another inch, his chin tilted up to show he’s listening.
You swallow and it feels like your heart in is your throat, burning and bursting all at once. But you have to ask.
“What did the dagger mean?”
Now he averts his gaze, his helmet dipping as he mumbles something, nothing, his voice almost too low for his modulator pick up, a gift, but in the gravel of his murmuring, you hear one unmissable word: courting.
Oh.
Oh.
It was a… courting gift.
A dagger blended with beskar, given as a courting gift from a Mandalorian. It meant you- and him — the hope you had been harvesting, the hope of something more blooming between you two, it had not been unrequited.
Your mind casts back to the exact phrasing as you turned what you believed to simply be a gift too prized for you— it’s too much, I can’t accept.
Maker. No wonder he thought you wanted to leave.
Whatever is crossing your face must be the opposite of subtle because as you grapple to find a response to that, Din’s head tilts back up.
“You didn’t know.”
There's a tiny wobble of relief in his voice.
“No,” You breathe. Blinking hard, suddenly you feel a bit wild because Din all but proposes to you but doesn’t even think to check if you knew the depth of what he was offering? Of the real question behind his gift?
You shake your head. “No, I didn’t know, Din.”
Silence lulls between you, charged and heavy. Even without seeing his face, you know Din must be squirming beneath his helmet — his intentions, his feelings, out in the open and you still staring at him speechless.
You manage to find your voice.
“May I see it once more?”
The request comes out softer than you intend, your courage suddenly quivering in your chest. You will it to rise, to embolden you. Din had been brave — now it's your turn.
Without a word, he shifts and reaches back to release it from its sheathe on his waist. For a split second you see it, the hesitation in his hand.
Then he's holding it out, balancing in his open and trusting palm, held out for you. The thickness in your throat grows.
You swallow tightly and grip your courage, searching within you for that warm, safe feeling that beats like a drum, Din, Din, Din. You seize it tightly.
Eyes fixed on the blade, you ask quietly, "Would you... offer it to me again?"
It's impossible to draw your eyes up, too nervous to see yourself reflected in the darkness of his visor.
"Yes."
Your heart becomes a supernova.
"Will you?" You whisper, finally daring to look up at him.
Your protector, your partner, the man who showed you the softness of his heart and asked for nothing in return. "Will you offer it to me again?"
The subtle motions of Din are something you've come to learn with the years you've spent at his side. Now, staring up at you, the inclination of his armour gives away his surprise.
Then he's rising to his feet only to step before you and sink down, brought to his knees before you. His hand remains steady, the offering held out, and this time the meaning of it cannot be misconstrued in any way.
"Cyare," He murmurs — and it's beloved, it's please, it's don't part from my side for as long as you'll have me.
Something within you trembles and your bottom lip quivers in emotion and then you're moving without thinking, sagging until you're on your knees too.
Equal heights, each of you in a position of devotion, facing toward each other.
Hand reaching out, you clasp your fingers around the hilt of the dagger and say thickly, "I accept."
There's a ragged exhale through the modulator of Din's helmet. He shifts, moving to strip the gloves from his hands and the sight of so much skin from him is enough to make you falter. But there's barely time to recover your stolen breath before his bare hand curls around yours, far larger, the dagger gripped in both of your hands.
His skin pressed against yours burns like starlight. You stutter out a breath, your smile coming so easily at the sight of your joined hands.
Din's other hand raises up and pauses momentarily, halting as if he's unsure if he's allowed before it settles gently on your cheek. You lean into the warmth of his skin and hear another sharp inhale through the modulator.
"I—" He begins, quickly cutting himself off. His thumb on your cheeks begins to wander, soothing over your skin lightly. He urges you forward and you bow your head, forehead pressing to the cool beskar of his armour.
"Thank you."
"You're thanking me?" You chuckle wetly, emotion clinging to your words. His thumb on your face traces another soft circle and you shudder beneath the loving touch, eyes fluttering closed.
“You could have been clearer." You chastise lightly, though your evident joy means your words don't have any real bite.
“I offered you beskar, cyra’ika,” He murmurs, voice warm and full of love. His thumbs draws another delicate circle. “How much clearer could I be?”
His point makes you laugh, eyes opening and seeing your own reflection in his visor. "I don't know," You say, averting your eyes down to your still intertwined hands. You squeeze your hand and feel him echo the motion. Your heart sings.
"Use your words?" You suggest with a cheeky smile, well aware that words were not a strong suit of your Mandalorian.
Din sighs, a faux long suffering one, and the mere familiarity of it makes your heart ache in the best way.
The worries of earlier bubble up within you, the reminder of why you had been so sure the dagger had some other meaning.
“I,” You begin, pulling back lightly and casting your gaze towards Grogu, who had been suspiciously silent as if knowing the significance of the moment before him. “I wasn’t thinking about the beskar, I was being stupid.”
With your free hand, you cover Din’s hand with yours, hiding your face away, which suddenly feels a little warmer. The nudge of your hand against his does nothing to alleviate the glow.
“I thought it was, like,” You mutter quietly, embarrassed. “You were saying I wasn’t doing my job well enough or— or something and I started worrying you were gonna…”
You can’t even finish the sentence with how foolish you feel.
“You thought I wanted you to leave?” Din asks, his voice dubious and warm. Like the mere thought of that is so far from believable that it’s amusing to him.
“Shut up,” you groan, eyes closing as if it can save your from your further flustering.
“Didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t need to.” You murmur.
His hand in yours tightens, the other on your face coaxing you out of hiding with the gentlest of nudges.
"Never. As long as you want it, I want you with me." He says and in his voice you hear nothing but utter devotion. "Close your eyes."
You follow his command without hesitation, darkness cloaking your vision and you feel his hands retract from yours. The dagger remains in your palm, still cradled in your fingers. Then, there's the tell-tale hiss of his helmet and you inhale sharply.
"Cyare," He says and this time, it's with all the richness and roughness of his natural voice.
The timbre of his voice is like gunpowder sprinkled across your soul and when his hand finds the curve of your cheek once more, it's set alight.
"May I?" He asks. You can feel the soft heat of his breath fan across your lips and feel your heart quiver in response, bursting forward, as if trying to reach him. His thumb soothes across your cheek, full of wanting.
Your nod would be imperceptible if it was anyone other than Din — if his gaze wasn't trained on your face, drinking the details like a starved man, finally with uncloaked eyes.
He moves forward, presses his mouth against yours, and finds home.
looove ryland grace down but i am NOT gonna calculate the time dilation going on for my fanfic 😭 I REFUSE. yall get a cute fic with wildly inaccurate science and thats it!!
you wake up in space without any knowledge of how you got there with two corpses for roomates. and oh, if it's any consolation, there's also another person—just that he's as disoriented and clueless as you are.
key: ❀ fluff | ۶۟ৎ angst | .ᐟ smut
°⋆. 01 no ordinary love | ۶۟ৎ
°⋆. 02 kiss of life (upcoming)
additional tags: the reader is the last kryptonian alive (no clark/kara/zod) and was raised on earth, reader is basically clark kent, superheroes don't exist you're just an anomaly, LOTS of fluff, mutual pining, rocky is the best wingman, grace and rocky geek out over reader's physiology, canon near-death experience, starmora if peter was a complete nerd and gamora was nicer, sunshine x sunshine, some science stuff i made up based on google searches
synopsis: the hail mary is pulled into adrian, threatening to end grace and rocky's mission to save the stars. the stars send a savior of their own.
author's note: decided to make this one a little shorter than originally intended! we'll save the really goofy stuff for the next one... but this is also the start of our slow burn 👀👀👀 also i just realized this fic can be read as just clark kent x ryland grace, so that's another option for y'all!
masterlist | read on ao3 | << previous | next >>
CHAPTER 3: STOOGES
Rocky has a new favorite person. Person. He made that very clear when Grace called him out on it.
“You is human. Is Rocky favorite human. Kent not human but is person. Kent is Rocky favorite person.”
Kent and Rocky got on like a house on fire, to say the least. He’s constantly chanting “amaze amaze amaze” at everything Kent does, which Grace can’t even be mad about because he’s just as in awe of them as Rocky is. It also helps that Kent can survive Rocky’s atmosphere. Grace nearly had a heart attack the first time he saw them cramped into Rocky’s makeshift “bedroom,” casually waving at him as if it was no biggie that they were withstanding over 200°C temperatures and pressure 29 times stronger than Earth's.
Yep. No biggie at all.
They’re the crew’s veritable superhero— in every sense of the word. They do all the insanely difficult physical work that Grace and Rocky can’t, given that they’re both still healing from their injuries. Plus the fact that Kent is so immensely powerful that it’s just easier (and safer) to let them do these things. Grace thinks it helps them in a way. Kent gets antsy when they’re not actively being of help to the crew. Besides that, their patience is also much longer than both Grace and Rocky combined. Individually, the two of them like to believe that they’re pretty patient and determined people.
…But being stuck on a small ship with the weight of saving your planet on your shoulders is a bit stressful. Sometimes Grace is stupid (according to Rocky), Rocky gets sassy (according to Grace). They both get snippy.
Enter, Kent.
It usually goes like this: Grace makes a mistake, Rocky berates him for it, Grace gets mad, Rocky gets mad, Kent steps in, Rocky immediately concedes because they like Kent and then Grace looks like an asshole, Kent attempts to make Grace feel better. It usually works; they’re very charming. They remind Grace of the best people he ever met. Unhealthy as it sounds, it makes him cling to his newfound friend a little more. Besides everything on this ship, they’re all he really has of Earth before he makes his return trip. If he even manages to survive it.
But Kent’s optimism is really rubbing off on him, so he chooses to look at the bright side and the bright side is this: Rocky was right. Life is reason.
Within seconds, the Astrophage he dropped into the sample from Adrian was eaten and killed. Single-celled and voracious and goddamn beautiful. He can already feel himself tearing up, his chest heaving as his heart threatens to leap out of him.
“Oh my god. Oh my god! Guys! Get in here!”
Kent stumbles into the lab in their hurry to get there but otherwise effortlessly carrying Rocky in his ball.
“Doc! What is it?”
“You find answer, question? You find answer, question???”
“It works! The organism from Adrian is killing the Astrophage!”
Kent sets Rocky down gently before rushing over to pick Grace up in celebration. As expected, they lift him like he weighs nothing, but the shock of it all is quickly replaced by sheer joy. They’re so close to the finish line, they had the answer to everything right here.
“You guys did it!” Kent cheers, eyes practically sparkling with mirth.
“We did it!”
Rocky joins in on the fun by making his jazz hands, his excited whale song complimented by his translator’s constant “Amaze amaze amaze! Grace Rocky complete big science!”
Grace encourages Kent to check out the microscope, giggling like schoolchildren as Kent shuffles over to where Grace was standing earlier.
“I never thought I’d be so happy looking at this stuff,” they murmur, in awe at how such tiny things could be the key to saving both Earth and Erid and every planet out there with an infected star. They pull away from the microscope to look at Grace, smiling, “What’ll you name them?”
“Yes yes. What will you name Astrophage destroyer?” Rocky immediately agrees with the notion. “Cannot say no. Is Earth culture.”
“Yeah, doc, is Earth culture,” Kent parrots, grinning.
Grace smiles and mulls it over for a moment, his eyes scanning the labelled containers scattered across the lab. His thoughts drift back to the organism: single-celled. Not bacteria, but amoeba.
“How about… Taumoeba?”
Rocky makes his jazz hands again, pleased with the name (much to Grace’s surprise). Kent nods in agreement, heading over to encode the name into Rocky’s translator like Grace taught them to.
“Taumoeba good name. Amaze,” Rocky clenches his claws, pressing them against his ball. “Fist my bump Grace!”
Kent doesn’t immediately process what Rocky just said, but as soon as they do, they lose it. Their normally perfectly normal—and honestly, just extremely polite—laughs turn into maniacal cackles as they slowly fall to their knees. At some point the cackles turn into helpless wheezes. The stainless steel desk bends from their grip.
“Okay, yeah, yeah. Laugh it up,” Grace sighs but he’s still smiling. His hands are on his hips when he turns to Rocky, “You just love to embarrass me, don’t you?”
Rocky does his best attempt at a shrug, something he picked up from Grace. He taps the xenonite with his fist again. “Fist me!”
Kent is practically writhing on the floor, one hand trying to reach for Grace. It doesn’t work. Their cheeks are starting to hurt from laughing so much.
“Rocky, no!”
“Do it!” Kent manages to squeeze out between gasps.
And so he does.
“Amaze.” Rocky makes his celebratory jazz hands again. “Now what?”
──────────────────
Finding out that Taumoeba can’t survive in nitrogen-rich atmospheres nearly sent Grace and Rocky into a downward spiral, but thanks to the magic of xenonite (which Grace vows he will understand someday), Rocky was able to make breeder tanks to create new nitrogen-resistant Taumoeba. It was a slow-going process, taking weeks, and required little intervention besides the monotonous routine of checking the tanks, taking note of the Taumoeba’s condition, removing the weak Taumoeba, adding more nitrogen; rinse and repeat. It was boring on all levels, almost as bad as when they had to make that 10 kilometer xenonite chain.
Grace shudders at the memory.
Since they couldn’t really help with any of the science-y stuff, Kent spent their time making more external repairs to the Hail Mary under Grace and Rocky’s instruction. They’re surprisingly good at it, picking up the basics pretty fast. Soon enough, they didn’t need the EVA suit at all for its radio, which meant they worked even faster. The space equivalent of Bob the Builder, they had joked to Grace once.
Sometimes they would fly close to Tau Ceti to take in its light for a little while to regain their strength. Grace and Rocky would watch them from the Petrovascope, both staring in wonder at the glowing blip on their screen. Kent is another mystery of the universe that the two scientists hope to understand someday.
The not-so-quiet moments in between their respective duties shone bright, too.
“I have a question, statement,” Rocky says. Grace looks up from his laptop, where he was reading a paper on selective breeding.
“Yeah, bud?”
“No. Question for Kent.”
Kent is startled by the sudden mention of their name. “Me? What is it?”
“How did you come to Earth if you are not human? You have a ship, question? Did baby Kent fly to Earth?"
Kent sets down their notebook, seeing Grace do the same with his laptop, ready to listen. They hadn’t really expounded on their story about the alien pod that delivered them to Earth. As you can imagine, it wasn’t really a topic they were at liberty to discuss growing up, lest everyone in Smallville thought their family insane or worse, the government started knocking at their door.
“I came to Earth in a… pod of sorts,” they start slowly. “It came with the clothes you first saw me in— you know, the one you thought was spandex?”
Grace blushes. “To be fair, it really did look like it.”
“It’s okay, I get it.” Kent laughs. “Anyway, I landed on the farm of Jonathan and Martha Kent and… they took me in. Raised me, fed me, loved me, even though I was so different from a regular child. It was too risky to have anyone examine the pod I came in, so everything I know about myself now was from years of dealing with a lot of stuff firsthand. My parents— my adoptive parents, were worried about what the government would do if they found out an alien was running around Kansas, so they kept my identity a secret from everyone and I got to live a mostly normal life.”
Rocky mulls over the information he just learned. “So you leave to help save Earth because it is your home, question?”
“Yeah,” Kent smiles. “It’s the least I could do. No one on Earth knew what happened to the Hail Mary after it left our solar system. When I realized I could maybe put my abilities to good use, I just had to find out for myself and maybe help out if I could. Otherwise, who else will?”
“You’ve done more than help, that’s for sure,” Grace says softly. “Rocky and I are glad you’re here.”
“Yes yes yes,” Rocky agrees. “Kent brave, like Grace Rocky.”
Kent laughs. “Thanks.”
“Rocky have another question, statement.”
“Okay, shoot.” Kent encourages.
“Is Grace considered good specimen by Earth standards, question? You are probably more than good specimen, because you are special. Statement.”
“Woah, that’s— wow, um…” they turn to Grace like a deer caught in headlights.
“I’m average,” Grace butts in, trying to save Kent from the question.
“I don’t ask Grace, I ask Kent.”
That shuts up Grace quick, and so, with no other way around it, all the attention goes back to Kent.
“He’s a very good human, I would say,” they hum, feeling their skin burning with embarrassment. “He’s very smart and kind. So yeah. Great human.”
They elect to leave out the fact that he's handsome. It's not like Rocky would know what that means.
“You can tell the truth,” Rocky says.
“Hey!” Grace exclaims in mild offense.
“I am telling the truth,” Kent chuckles, voice firm with nothing but honesty. “Grace is a very good human.”
“Okay. I believe you,” Rocky acquiesces.
Kent doesn’t catch the way Grace stares at them like they’ve just handed him the whole world.
──────────────────
The Don’t Go Crazy room is a godsend, and by far Kent’s favorite place on the ship (if you asked Grace, he would say it was also his favorite— that’s a big fat lie because his favorite is definitely the lab). It shows you anything you want, and stepping inside it almost feels like going inside a time capsule of Earth from before everything… before Astrophage came along and started eating away at the sun. They wonder briefly if Grace had any idea at all how bad things have gotten since the Hail Mary left for Tau Ceti. The thought flits by as quickly as it came; they don’t wanna be a debbie-downer.
Fireworks light up the room’s infinite screens and even though all the dazzling colors are simply textures to Rocky, he’s still incredibly happy. Visual things like fireworks are a completely foreign concept to him, what with Erid not getting any light from its star. Rocky chirps brightly, wiggling his carapace. The crystals on his necklace twinkle with sound that makes the sight all the more endearing. It’s an Eridian custom, he says, to wear special clothing and ornaments during a celebration.
The two humans (they both stopped making the distinction soon after Kent arrived, since they don’t really have a name for what they are) are not to be outdone, however. Donning a lopsided party hat, Grace brings out two paper sailor hats, gleefully popping his gifts onto Kent’s head and the top of Rocky’s ball. “Savior of the Universe” is scribbled onto the paper in red marker, accompanied by drawings not unlike a preschooler’s. Kent giggles, wondering momentarily if this is what it feels like to be one of Grace’s students. They’re sure he must’ve done things like this to his students on at least a semi-regular basis.
A sudden wave of fondness surges through them at the thought. Those kids must’ve loved this guy. They must’ve.
Their little daydream is cut short by an excited squeal from Rocky.
“My portable Earth thinking machine!”
“With all human knowledge,” Grace smiles.
“Thank thank thank.”
“And just one more thing…”
Grace digs into his pocket, pulling out a crocheted ball. Kent recognizes it, having seen him fidget with the thing a few times. Mostly he just holds and stares at it. They know the story. It’s a memento from his time as a teacher, which to Grace, wasn’t that long ago.
“It’s Earth.” Grace’s smile softens into something a little more somber. “So you can remember me.”
“Rocky can’t forget.”
Grace sucks in a breath, willing the sadness in his body to go away, before turning to Kent. “In any case, at least we both have you. If anyone can go back and forth between Earth and Erid, it’d be you.”
Kent grins, hoping to lighten the mood. “As long as you beam me up, I think I can do it.”
It works. Grace laughs before sighing contentedly. “I got you something, too.”
“Oh, you didn’t really didn’t have t—”
“I wanted to,” he says in that tone of voice Kent doesn’t often hear. It’s that gentle-but-firm teacher voice that always leaves no room for argument. “I haven’t known you as long as Rocky, but I’m glad you’re here, so I hope you’ll like what I got you.”
This time, when Grace brings their gift out, Kent almost immediately wants to decline it.
“Doc, no! You love that thing!”
Kent is no stranger to the cardigan in Grace’s hands. It’s priceless to him. He made a point never to wear it in the lab because he didn’t want to ruin it. And also because he believes in proper lab procedure— safety first and all that. He wore it often enough, though he tried to keep it at a minimum once he realized the chemicals he used to clean his clothes might ruin the wool.
The knit cardigan is soft to the touch, red-orange foxes adorning both the front and back. It looks extremely comfortable. Kent can see why it’s his favorite.
“I want you to have it.” Grace insists.
“Doc—”
“It’ll take me a lot longer to get to Earth compared to you. If it makes you feel better, think of it as… think of it as you holding onto it until I get back.”
Kent hesitantly accepts the gift, feeling the weight behind Grace’s words. There was subtext there.
I still might not make it home, but I want this piece of me to survive.
“Thank you,” they finally say. It’s soft, but the words are made raw by understanding. Once again, Grace is trusting them with something so precious.
“I didn’t get you anything,” Rocky murmurs.
“I didn’t, either…” Kent adds, suddenly ashamed.
Grace only smiles again, eyes glassy with emotion. “You guys gave me everything.”
Kent and Rocky go silent, simply feeling Grace’s declaration as it finds its place in their hearts.
“But if I were to give you something?”
Grace thinks about it for a while, feigning nonchalance. “It’d be pretty cool to see your ship.”
Rocky chirps in surprise. “I will need to prepare. You will die in Rocky ship without protection. Maybe Kent can give something first, question?”
“Yeah, yeah!” Kent agrees. “I mean, anything, doc—and you too, Rocky—what can I give you?”
Grace and Rocky look at each other, coming to a silent understanding, then look back at Kent. The former’s lips press into a thin line, barely suppressing a smile, while the latter somehow manages to ooze mischief even without a face. Rocky raises his arms, and opens and closes his claws.
He chitters with gusto, “It is time to do big science!”
author's note: up next: grace and rocky study kent's crazy physiology!
taglist: @mensbestfriend @good-night-starlight @miakxn @bermatchalah @mrsandorbby @readersofthelostarc @cl0u-dy @caitsymichelle13
"you have to get cracked by ryland grace, colt seavers, holland march, sebastian wilder and noah calhoun to save your friends" i'm prepared to make that sacrifice
additional tags: the reader is the last kryptonian alive (no clark/kara/zod) and was raised on earth, reader is basically clark kent, superheroes don't exist you're just an anomaly, LOTS of fluff, mutual pining, rocky is the best wingman, grace and rocky geek out over reader's physiology, canon near-death experience, starmora if peter was a complete nerd and gamora was nicer, sunshine x sunshine, some science stuff i made up based on google searches
synopsis: the hail mary is pulled into adrian, threatening to end grace and rocky's mission to save the stars. the stars send a savior of their own.
tw this chapter: detailed description of a panic attack
masterlist | read on ao3 | << previous | next >>
CHAPTER 2: POMODORO
The first day without Rocky rolling about the ship takes its toll on Grace. He tries to accommodate the newest member of the crew, but it’s clear his heart is heavy with guilt. With grief. With the knowledge that he wasn’t here because he was a brave person who wanted to help save Earth. He was a middle school teacher Eva Stratt plucked from San Francisco who just happened upon some nifty information before other people could. He wasn’t even part of the original crew. Just a replacement.
It’s too quiet without Rocky.
He busies himself by finding a way to accelerate Rocky’s recovery, finding moments in between to acquaint Kent with the ship. He gives them the clothes that used to belong to Ilyukhina and Yao.
“He needs heat,” he thinks out loud, watching his motionless friend. “I need to build him a heat lamp. I think that should help.”
Kent steps out, wearing one of the shirts Grace recognized as Yao’s. “I think I can help out with that?”
“You know how to build a heat lamp?”
Kent shakes their head, “No, but I can make lasers shoot out of my eyes?”
“How? Why?”
“I wish I could tell you, but I swear it works. I heat up my food sometimes with it.”
“I… okay. You can control the heat?”
“Yes, sir,” they nod, that ever-present polite, disarming smile on their face.
“Test it out with this first.” He scrambles to grab a piece of scrap xenonite lying around. Kent takes the little fragment, inspecting the alien material for a few seconds and marvelling at how strange it is. They close one eye and with a breath, projects the single laser onto the xenonite. “Woah!” Grace jumps at the sudden red glowing beam shooting out of this person’s eye, not knowing what to do with himself for a few seconds. He decides finally to lean against the wall, arms crossed.
As promised, the xenonite is intact but heated. Kent blows on it before handing it over to Grace, making sure that it cools down just enough for him to hold it.
“Is that okay?” they ask, eyes wide with hope.
It’s hard for Grace to stay stoic in front of someone who just wants to help, so he smiles back. It’s small, it’s tired, but it’s a start. Kent takes it as a win. “It’s perfect. Would you mind doing that for him while I build his lamp? I’m just worried what’ll happen if he goes too long without anything.”
They perk up, eager to be useful, “Yeah, of course! I’d be happy to.”
They shuffle to one corner of the room, picking a spot to sit. They hug their knees as they take a good look at Rocky in his ball. Blinking a few times, they take a deep breath and shoot the laser beams from both eyes as they breathe out. Grace has his hands at his sides, tapping nervously on his leg as he watches the whole ordeal, almost as if waiting for something to go wrong. Nothing does— the laser beams are stable, the xenonite is fine, and it defies everything Grace thought he knew about science.
“I’ll… I’ll be right back,” he says quickly, heading off to the dormitories to grab the large blanket and the Walkman he found in Ilyukhina’s bag along with a couple dozen cassettes, all separated by decade. He grabs them all and heads back to Kent, who dutifully keeps Rocky warm. “Hey, um, I got you these. Nice blanket, just in case and look, it’s a Walkman!”
Grace presents the Walkman proudly after setting down the blanket at Kent’s feet. “One of the original crew members, she, uh, she had a bunch of cassettes with her. I thought I’d just leave these here for you so you don’t get bored.”
He slots in a random cassette just to test it out, placing the headphones over his own ears and smiling when he realizes what song it is. “Ha! Here, give it a listen.”
He gives it to Kent, who stopped projecting the lasers for a moment.
The quietness of the ship is suddenly replaced by the gentle strumming of a guitar and David Bowie’s voice.
This is ground control to Major Tom
You’ve really made the grade
And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear
Now it’s time to leave the capsule if you dare
Kent laughs, “You’re funny.”
“What? Why? It’s Bowie!”
“I know but really? Space Oddity?”
“What do you mean? It’s a classic— oh. Sorry, is that offensive?”
“Not at all. I love this song. Thank you, Dr. Grace.”
Grace’s cheeks flush with warmth, mustering a small nod and a double thumbs up, “I’ll, uh, leave you to it, then. Gotta make that heat lamp!”
He leaves the room, flinching slightly at the steady buzz of the laser beam firing up once again as he goes.
It takes him a couple of hours to build the heat lamp, asking Kent to take breaks every thirty minutes or so out of guilt that they had to blankly stare at Rocky’s ball with nothing else to do besides listen to music. It’s during one of these breaks that Kent decides to accompany Grace in his little workshop: a cozier corner of the lab where he set up a few lights so he wouldn’t have to turn on the big overhead one. It gives him migraines.
“Hi,” they peep their head into the lab. Grace is startled only for a second before giving them a wave.
“Hi,” he replies, words coming out a little slurred from exhaustion and the generally awful state he was in. “Do you need something?”
“I just wanted to see if you wanted some company?”
“Oh.” Grace sets down the steel parts he was fiddling with. “Yeah, sure.”
“I realize that meeting someone like me is probably really off-putting,” Kent fidgets with their fingers, which Grace notices right away. One of his students, Regina, does that. It’s a bit surreal to see a nervous habit in someone with actual godlike powers. “I, uh, wish I could tell you more but to be honest, I don’t really have answers either. Sorry. But I want to help, in whatever way I can.”
He processes the information given to him for a while.
“It’s alright. You don’t have to explain. I’m sure we’ll figure it out sometime,” Grace waves off their apology. “You seem like a good person,” he says with a tone of finality. The words linger in the room, ringing in Kent’s ears. The certainty of his trust is more than they expected to receive so soon. Gratitude warms their chest.
“I’m trying to be,” they swallow. “I like to think my Ma and Pa raised me right.”
“Yeah? What’re they like?” Grace returns to his work but continues to listen, his eyes darting towards them every now and then.
“They’re… good people. They took me in when I was a baby. I landed right in their backyard. Literally,” they laugh softly, lips curling into a proud smile as they talk about their family.
“You landed in their backyard?”
“Alien pod.”
“Of course,” he chuckles airily with some disbelief. With everything that’s happened so far, he’s getting a bit better at handling shocking revelations. “I’m surprised you’ve flown under the radar for so long. Where are your parents now?”
“They put in a lot of effort to give me a normal childhood,” they reply, remembering how far their parents had gone to keep their alien heritage a secret. Before homesickness can take hold of them, they push forward with the conversation. “We have a farm in Kansas, but I left for the city after college. I moved back a few years ago. You?”
They get to talking about their childhoods, finding each other’s vastly different experiences fascinating. Kent asks about how Grace discovered his love for science, Grace asks Kent why they became a journalist. Both are surprised by how well they get along— finding similarities even with their opposite circumstances.
What was it like growing up on a farm? What was it like growing up in the city? Followed by “I loved that game, too!” What’s it like working at the Daily Planet? How did you get into teaching? Followed by “Oh yeah, that finale sucked.”
The banter ends abruptly when Kent remembers Rocky and the lasers they should be beaming at him right about now. “I should probably head back to your friend?”
“Oh, y-yeah,” Grace stammers out. “Yeah, I did ask you to do that, didn’t I?”
Kent smiles, “I’ll be back in thirty? Y’know, like… what’s it called? When you work for a bit then take a quick break and—”
“Pomodoro!”
“Yeah, pomodoro!” he beams, mirroring Kent’s tone of voice.
Both are delighted by the little exchange, sharing a moment of laughter.
“See you later, then?” Kent smiles. “I wanna hear about your students next.”
“That, I can definitely do.”
──────────────────
Grace finished the heat lamp. It’s been three days since Rocky went to sleep.
Since then, the new addition to the Hail Mary crew has been helping him wherever they can. They’re not a scientist at all, but they do possess something neither Grace nor Rocky has: a set of freakishly powerful abilities that even they don’t know how to explain. All they know for certain is that Tau Ceti makes them stronger, and so did the Earth’s sun.
Currently, they were flying outside of the ship, making simple repairs and trying to patch up some of the holes and other damage that Mary had taken. Originally, Grace was in the control room giving them instructions through the EVA suit’s built-in radio. Kent doesn’t really need the suit, per se; they just needed the radio inside.
Once they both realized that it was actually pretty basic work, he practically jumped at the opportunity to return to his lab and record another log.
Turns out, he doesn’t exactly do well with seeing someone in an EVA suit (again, that they didn’t need) doing a spacewalk… completely untethered. The idea made him nauseous. Especially since the whole Adrian fiasco.
So now he’s here in the dormitory, which is really Rocky’s place now. He’d staked his domain on the place the day he moved in.
“I’m not sure what to do,” Grace talks to the camera. He still hopes he can take these logs back to Earth himself. “I’ve done everything I can think of. I’ve made him a heat lamp… uh, our new crew member helped out a lot. Their name is Kent. They’re actually really nice. Turns out, they also have laser vision? Used it to warm up Rocky’s ball while I was building his lamp. So that’s… something. Anyway, he left me one last message.”
He pauses, thinking back to when he found Rocky’s message on one of the laptops. He clenches his fist to ground himself.
“Save Earth. Save Erid. I gotta keep that promise.”
He ends the recording, slumping against the wall.
“Hey, you alright, Dr. Grace?” he hears Kent’s voice call out to him softly. He didn’t notice the airlock doors opening and closing. It hasn’t been long at all since they met, but their gentleness struck him as an odd but welcome surprise. They seem almost uncomfortable with their own strength, sometimes shrinking themselves in an attempt to… he’s not sure, actually. Maybe it’s a self-deprecating thing or maybe they’re just trying to appear non-threatening. He thinks the second one is the more likely answer. Kent would say it’s both.
“Hm? Yeah, yeah, um. I’m okay. Just recording another log for Earth,” he pulls his glasses off his face, trying to blink away the tiredness from his eyes. He hasn’t been sleeping. “Gotta work on analyzing those samples from Adrian.”
“Adrian?”
The two of them stare at each other for a while. Grace is looking at them with a sort of what-do-you-mean-of-course-Adrian expression before he realizes that the name was not, in fact, universally recognized.
“Oh, yeah. Adrian is Rocky’s mate. Well, no. That was the best word I could find because y’know… alien proper nouns are kinda hard to find English equivalents for. Anyway, we named the planet after his mate because he said Tau Ceti E was a boring name. He’s not wrong.”
“I understood that reference!” they beam.
“Yeah,” he flashes them a small smile. They fall into another few seconds of silence before he remembers something. “Oh, shoot. I forgot, do you need food? What am I even saying? Of course you need food! It’s been three days! I— wait, why don’t you look like you’re starving?”
“It’s okay, Dr. Grace! I don’t really need to eat. Or sleep... or breathe…” they trail off, suddenly looking quite perturbed by the realization. “I just realized this must all sound really, really weird.”
“My partner in saving the universe is a talking rock alien. I’m sure we’ll find the answers to you at some point,” Grace reassures them, not for the first time that week. “You said the taulight makes you stronger. So you’re kinda like a plant.”
“The what-light?”
Grace blushes. He replies with a stutter, “T-Tau Ceti’s light. It’s not our sun, so it’s not sunlight. It’s taulight— you know what? Nevermind. It’s just a teacher thing. We name everything.”
“That makes a lot of sense, actually!” Kent says thoughtfully, even going so far as to nod in understanding, partly because they don’t want to embarrass Grace, but also because they agree with the logic. “Yes, I guess you can say the taulight makes me stronger.”
“I think we have pretty much everything we need here on the ship to test that out,” Grace offers. “We just need to figure out this whole Astrophage business first.”
“Thank you,” they nod, slightly taken aback by how freely Grace had just given them that opportunity. “I wish I could help more. I came all this way to try and search for answers and here you are with all the puzzle pieces and I can’t even help you put them together.”
“Don’t beat yourself up over it. You saved us. That alone is… thank you, if I haven’t said it already. And you helped repair the ship! I tried doing that once and screws were drifting off into space!” Grace pauses. “Would you mind keeping me company? I have to work on those samples and, um, I work better when I talk out loud. I can walk you through everything we’ve learned so far.”
Like with everything else Grace has asked of them so far, Kent agrees immediately.
They find themselves in the lab, and Grace gets started on the Adrian samples. The answer’s gotta be here. It has to be, because he sincerely doesn’t know what he’ll do if it isn’t.
Kent scoots up close to Grace’s work table, eager to learn. Rocky’s collector is placed on top of it, and Grace’s fingers press on the hexagonal sides to release the trays. He begins with his crash course on Astrophage. Heh. Astrophage 101. He wonders briefly if there are schools on Earth that are teaching this right now. He hopes his students enjoy them. Abby, one of his more competitive students, definitely would.
“Astrophage absorbs the energy from the sun, or any star it’s close to, dimming it, which then leads to the surrounding planets to slowly freeze. We found out that they went to Venus because it’s rich in carbon dioxide. That’s where they breed, and then they go back to the Sun to do it all over again.”
“It’s horrible out there,” Kent shudders, hugging themselves. Grace noticed that habit in the last three days they’ve been, well, cohabitating. “There’s so many of them. All connected by those lines.”
“You’ve seen them?”
“On the way here. I needed to stop every now and then to rest. All those stars out there are infected with these things. I don’t think people can see it with the naked eye, but I can. There’s so many of those lines, Dr. Grace.”
Grace’s shoulders tense up despite knowing all of this already. Astrophage infected nearly every star in the sun’s stellar neighborhood. But it’s different from Kent’s experience. Whereas Grace knows this as just a fact, as information in his head, Kent has seen it. It kind of makes sense that they can do that. Their lasers looked to be pure electromagnetic energy concentrated in beams. Actually seeing infrared should be nothing to them. On their way out of the airlock, Grace had tried the Petrovascope on them just to see what would happen, and they were basically glowing. So yes, the logic checks out.
Kent flew light-years from Earth, witnessing firsthand the red lines that marked the death of every star it was connected to. Moreover, it marked the death of all life living on the planets orbiting those stars.
“When did you leave Earth?”
“2036. The news said the Hail Mary would arrive at Tau Ceti about 13 years after launch. So just a little after I left. Things were already really bad. I had to do something. So I left to go find this star. ”
“That… that’s not possible. We’re 11.9 light years away from Earth,” Grace stammers, already mentally estimating how fast Kent travelled to have reached Tau Ceti in such a short time. Faster than the speed of light, is what his brain first concludes. He can feel his brain melting in his skull as he tries to wrap his head around that answer.
Kent notices and, polite as ever, tries to help Grace feel better by downplaying their abilities, “I guess I’m just really fast?”
“Really fast?” Grace gasps, his voice going high up into an almost-squeak. “You… that’s… you’d be breaking cause-and-effect, just downright breaking the laws of physics! You are possibly the only thing in the universe capable of time travel! You travelled so fast that you could have decided to go back in time and not travel at all! Oh my god!”
“I’m… sorry?” Kent winces as Grace’s voice goes higher.
“No, don’t apologize! Don’t apologize.” He ends up coughing from the sheer intensity of his outburst, so he forces himself to calm down but his knuckles are still white from gripping the edge of his table so hard. “It’s just… It’s a lot. It’s a bit overwhelming. Everything about you goes against what I know to be true so it’s an adjustment.”
“I can see that.”
“Okay, okay… um, back to the samples.”
With the trays of Rocky’s collector now jutting out from the sides, he carefully takes them out and lays them on the table. The samples are still sealed within their customized containers that matched Adrian’s atmosphere, ensuring that they don’t die.
“These are the samples we got from Adrian,” he explains, regaining his composure as he slips into teacher mode. “When we got Astrophage samples from Tau Ceti’s Petrova line, we had two batches: samples going from Tau Ceti to Adrian, and vice versa. So what should be the main difference between them?”
Kent thinks about it for a moment.
“There should be more Astrophage from the batch going to Tau Ceti because they’ve reproduced.”
Grace smiles, “Exactly. Not just that, they should double. It’s why the rate at which our sun was dimming was getting higher and higher.”
He pulls out slides from one of the containers tucked away in the lab, placing one of them under a microscope. He wasn’t sure if Kent actually needed the microscope to see the samples on the slide just because they’ve displayed a wide array of superhuman abilities so far, but he motions for them to come over and take a look anyway. ‘Cause why not? It’s always fun to look through a microscope.
Kent obliges, pushing themselves off of the stool and squinting to look into the lens.
“Can you see the black blob?” Grace asks.
“Yeah. What is it?”
“That’s what regular Astrophage looks like. Light can’t pass through it, unless it’s dead. They’re pretty indestructible, able to survive living on the surface of the sun and all. But it can be killed. I pierced it with a nanosyringe and then all the stuff that was blocking out the light disappeared. We were able to study it then with its anatomy visible.”
Kent pulls away from the microscope to look at Grace. “You poked it with a stick?”
Grace deflates. “No!”
Kent doesn’t respond, just continues to stare.
“Yes. I poked it with a stick. But it was a very scientific poke with a very scientific stick— just get back on the microscope, please!”
“Yes, Dr. Grace,” Kent snorts. Grace replaces the slide with another one, labelled “A to TC.” Kent tries to get even closer, smushing the hollow of their eye socket against the microscope. “Woah, that’s icky. What is that? Is that bacteria?”
“We don’t know yet. What we do know is that the existence of microbes in these samples tell us that there's life on Adrian, and if there's life on Adrian and the Astrophage leaving the planet isn't reproducing like it should, then it stands to reason that Astrophage has a natural predator there.”
“That’s... that's amazing! And you and Rocky figured this out on your own?” Kent leans back in awe, genuinely amazed by Grace and Rocky’s progress.
“Yeah. I mean, he’s a brilliant engineer. Dude’s a genius. I’m just the science guy.” Grace shrugs it off, despite his cheeks burning and his hands getting clammier by the minute.
“Don’t put yourself down like that, please,” Kent says. “You’re the guy that figured out all this stuff with Astrophage in the first place! You’re on this ship and you’re doing the work. You’re a hero back home.”
That last sentence hits him like a truck.
He never even thought of how he would be remembered back on Earth. Of course everyone knows about the Hail Mary by now. About the mission. About him.
About Ilyukhina and Yao.
You’re a hero back home.
The tears start before he can even process what he’s feeling. It’s like a dam breaking, and it takes all of his power to not collapse into a shaking mess of sobs on the floor of the lab. In front of this really kind person in front of him who came all the way here just to help him and his friend save their planets. His hand goes straight to cover his mouth as he shuts his eyes to try and shield himself from the mild humiliation of breaking down right in front of Kent.
When his legs wobble slightly, he feels strong hands on his arms gently supporting him.
“Dr. Grace?” they call his name softly.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I just—”
He doesn’t know exactly what he’s apologizing for. For randomly bursting into tears, maybe. But it’s also an apology for everything that’s happened, and not just for Kent. It was for his crewmates—his friends—who never woke up. It was for everyone on Earth, because it’s already been at least thirteen years for them since the Hail Mary launched and another thirteen for his return trip. Or the beetles’ return trip if something were to happen to him on the way back. He doesn’t want to think about the state the world is in now, right about halfway into its thirty-year death sentence.
He can’t get a proper sentence out anymore, the words stuck are in his throat. In his lungs. His breaths get shorter and faster, and he clings to Kent instead. He’s having a panic attack.
“Dr. Grace, please breathe—”
Kent’s voice is drowned out by the ringing in his head. He vaguely registers that Kent is still trying to get his attention, but he’s just too far gone into own mind. The room feels like it’s shrinking around him and memories of the last few months rush into his head: waking up alone on the ship, seeing Ilyukhina and Yao’s bodies, commending them to the stars, meeting Rocky, seeing Adrian for the first time, nearly dying, seeing Rocky’s motionless body.
Then he feels those same strong arms wrapped around him, and his whole world goes quiet.
Kent is hugging him. He’s being hugged. By another person.
More tears flow out of him as he goes limp in Kent’s arms. This time, he’s grounded. He’s not in his own head anymore. Just savoring the feeling of an embrace after so much time spent alone. Rocky is an incredible friend, don’t get him wrong, but this is different. This is physical contact, and he hasn’t had that in God knows how long. There’s a lot of things he convinced himself he was okay without, but man, did he miss hugs.
“Breathe,” Kent repeats. “I’m here.”
They don’t really know how long they stayed in that position, just holding Grace until his breathing slows to a normal, calm pace.
“You with me, Doc?”
He nods. “I’m with you.”
The two of them just stay like that for a while longer. It’s Grace that pulls away.
“Thank you. I’m… I’m sorry you had to see that.”
“You don’t need to apologize,” they shake their head, their hands still firmly on Grace’s arms, anchoring him to the floor.
This feels nice, Grace thinks.
“You’re very good at that.”
“You can thank my Pa for that. That man gave the best hugs in the universe.”
“In the universe?” he chuckles weakly. “Well, I’ll be. I may need to meet him at some point just to compare.”
“By all means, Doc,” Kent grins, happy to see him relaxing enough to crack jokes.
They sit with the silence that follows, like they have a fair number of times in the past three days. This time feels different. There’s a real respect for each other in the way the silence is more comfortable. On Grace’s part, it’s also because he just missed being around another person from Earth. The familiarity is comforting.
“Thank you,” he finally says after a while.
“Don’t mention it.”
Just then, Kent’s posture straightens with alertness, head swivelling to look at the door out of the lab.
And there he is, in all his Eridian glory, rolling into the lab in his ball.
Rocky.
His familiar whale song feels like a hug, too.
“Grace and ♩♫♩♩! Save ship, save Grace and Rocky! Thank thank thank!”
author's note: rocky's baaaaack! leaning more into the book with him waking up before grace figures out taumoeba, so we can have big science AND rocky-kent-grace interactions in future chapters! also left a little easter egg from the book hehehehe lmk if u spotted it!
taglist: @mensbestfriend @good-night-starlight @miakxn @bermatchalah @mrsandorbby @readersofthelostarc
additional tags: the reader is the last kryptonian alive (no clark/kara/zod) and was raised on earth, reader is basically clark kent, superheroes don't exist you're just an anomaly, LOTS of fluff, mutual pining, rocky is the best wingman, grace and rocky geek out over reader's physiology, canon near-death experience, starmora if peter was a complete nerd and gamora was nicer, sunshine x sunshine
synopsis: the hail mary is pulled into adrian, threatening to end grace and rocky's mission to save the stars. the stars send a savior of their own.
author's note: full credit to @soupiemeowmeow for the idea! and @bettyboop1ze for requesting someone to write a starmora vibe <3 thank u guys for the inspiration !!!
masterlist | read on ao3 | next chapter >>
CHAPTER 1: THE BLIP-E
He’s an idiot. He’s a stupid, reckless idiot.
That’s probably what Rocky’s thinking right now as he leaps after the collector hanging off the Hail Mary. Grace hears his friend panic over the comms.
“Abort, abort, abort. Grace will die! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no—”
The sound of Rocky telling him to stop this incredibly stupid move is drowned out by the sound of his heart pounding in his ears. The xenonite chain attached to the collector snaps, leaving Grace’s umbilical cable as his only literal lifeline. A slew of school-appropriate exclamations spill from under his breath as he swings just enough to the side to avoid being hit by one of the Mary's debris. He attempts to reel himself back to the ship’s surface, only for his cable to wind around and pin him against the ship instead.
The adrenaline rushing through him must be at an all-time high, and he remembers the tiny pocket knife concealed in his EVA suit, which he takes out and cuts the cable with. There’s no time to register the feeling of his stomach dropping, knowing that nothing would stop him from falling to his death now. The task of climbing back on board to the cockpit is near-Herculean—the seconds stretching to what felt like hours—and a passing thought of thanks flits in his head to Armando and the electrodes that made him so jacked during his coma.
Grace and Rocky both relax when the former finally settles in the captain’s seat, getting ready to return to Adrian’s orbit before its gravity claims the Hail Mary. Grace lets go of the gear shift when they finally make it out of the planet’s atmosphere, and all the blaring alarms suddenly stop. He holds his breath, waiting for something to go wrong as he looks around and then back at Rocky.
“Did we do it?” he blurts out.
A shadow zips through space, fast enough that Grace barely registers it at first. He only realizes that it was something when he hears Rocky’s anxious chitters and—
“Blip-E detected.”
“Grace. Grace,” Rocky tries to get his attention before the Mary’s system warning could sink in. “Grace Rocky not alone.”
Before he could respond, the ship shakes violently, alarms blaring once more as they get pulled back into Adrian.
“Why ship moving, question???”
“THERE’S A HOLE IN IT!”
The Astrophage, their fuel, is going to Adrian because of course it is, and with the two bad fuel tanks they eject, the force of the jettison sends them flying back, spinning way too fast. Grace feels as though he’s being squeezed by an invisible force, barely able to process what was going on, let alone move. The ship rattles him and Rocky in every direction but unlike Rocky, he doesn’t have Eridian physiology or a xenonite ball between him and the mismatched panels of the Hail Mary.
He’s pressed up against the window on the side of the cockpit. His vision has always been bad, but there’s no mistaking the shadow seemingly floating outside the ship. With each violent spin, the shadow inches closer. Another unexpected turn of the ship forces him away from the window. Rocky is trying and failing to stabilize himself within his ball.
The lever to activate the centrifugal gravity system is right there, he just needs to… get closer…
BANG.
The ship stops spinning abruptly—his mind registering within the split-second it happens that that shouldn’t be possible—but the force of it leads to Grace hitting his head against the control panel. Rocky’s terrified chitters get louder despite his own condition not being any better. Grace is seeing double of everything, the darkness creeping in from his peripherals. The last thing he feels before it all fades to black is the familiar lightness of zero gravity, while Rocky’s translator echoes glitching words into the cockpit.
It’s cold, but his skin is sticky with sweat. His limbs feel like jell-o, just like the day he woke up on the ship.
The ship.
He’s on the ship. His name is Ryland Grace. He’s a middle school teacher. He has a doctorate in molecular biology. He’s a crew member of the Hail Mary. His crewmates are dead. Rocky is— Rocky.
Where is he?
“Eye movement detected. Good morning, Dr. Grace.”
He shoots up, groaning as the pain of getting up too fast catches up to him a few seconds later. His head is pounding.
Someone is by his side in an instant. “Woah, woah, woah, take it easy.”
“No, no, I need to get to Rocky— wait.”
The scream that escapes his mouth is ear-piercing (which is not the first time it’s happened since this whole journey started, embarrassingly enough), and he’s suddenly flailing backwards in an attempt to get away from the stranger on the ship that was only supposed to have him and Rocky on board. He haphazardly throws storage boxes and medical apparatuses to block the stranger from getting closer. They… look shockingly human, and wearing an odd kind of—
“Is that spandex?” he exclaims, his fear ebbing slightly to make way for sheer confusion.
“What?” the stranger’s face contorts into an expression not unlike his own, and they look down at their suit where Grace was looking. It’s blue, paired with a red cape. A red-and-yellow “S” is embossed on their chest. “Oh! No, no, it’s not spandex. At least I don’t think it is?”
A moment passes. His breathing picks up.
“WHAT IS GOING ON? WHO ARE YOU?’ he screams again as the panic swells up in his chest.
The stranger puts their hands up and backs away, their actions so human that Grace is fully inclined to believe them to be one if it weren’t for the fact that they somehow managed to get onto the Hail Mary.
“I’m from Earth!” they cry out.
“THEN HOW ARE YOU HERE?” Grace cries out even louder.
“I… flew?”
That stops him in his tracks, a glimmer of hope quelling his panic momentarily. “You have a ship?”
“Uhh...” The stranger’s shoulders fall, crossing their arms sheepishly. Were they embarrassed? “No…”
“WHAT?”
“Please calm down! I’m not trying to hurt you! I want to help!” they try helplessly to convince him. Their words seem to work this time, and he finally slumps against the wall, still breathing heavily in an attempt to level his heart rate. They speak again, “I saw your ship and your friend let me in. I couldn’t understand what he was saying but he led me to you.”
“That’s Rocky! Is he okay? Is he alive?”
“He’s in bad shape but I carried him back to his, um… actually, I’m not sure what it is. His ball? But he’s alive.”
“Thank god.” He lets out a big sigh of relief, running his hands through his hair. He looks back up at them, rubbing his eyes. He’s still wary of this person, but what choice does he have? He’s never been much of a fighter. The first and last brawl he ever got into was in sixth grade, and he got his butt severely beat. All he can do now is check on his friend and hope that this stranger was telling the truth. “Where is he?”
The stranger visibly relaxes at Grace’s acquiescence. “He’s just in the other room. Do you need help?”
“No—” Grace tries to get up on his own, groaning when his arms don’t cooperate. “Yes. Please.”
They offer him a small smile as they make their way around the blockade of stuff he threw between them, taking his uninjured, outstretched arm and swiftly lifting him to his feet. He lets out a soft yelp of surprise, not expecting them to do it so easily. “You’re, uh… pretty strong.”
“It’s been said before,” they reply awkwardly.
The two of them follow the trail of liquid mercury burning into the ship’s floor. Rocky’s blood. Dread weighs Grace down with every step.
There, at the end of the corridor, is his friend, in bad shape like what the stranger said. More so. The tough, rocky exterior looks like it’s been burned, exposing a silvery interior that, despite being a completely different species, Grace knows is painful. His friend lets out a few weak chitters. Seeing him in this state is like a punch to Grace’s gut.
No, he thinks. It’s worse.
The wound on his arm stings underneath its bandages, but Grace looks down at it with unimaginable gratitude. The scar it would leave will forever be a reminder of what Rocky had done for him.
“I’ll watch you sleep, pal…” he tries to comfort Rocky, though his own voice trembles at the weight of the possibility put before him. That his friend might die after saving him. He takes another deep breath. “But, uh, you gotta wake up.”
The memory of Rocky’s “great words of encouragement” resurfaces in his mind. He gives Rocky’s ball a few taps, hoping that maybe he’ll hear it repeated to him. He doesn’t.
Deflated, he leans against the ball, facing the stranger this time and wiping the tears on his cheeks.
“He let you in?”
“He did,” they answer.
“Why?”
“Your ship was spinning too fast. I stopped it.”
The implications of such a statement take him a moment to calculate in his head. He turns his head to look at them better. “What? With your bare hands?”
“Yes.”
“And you said you’re from Earth?”
The stranger winces. “That’s… only partly true.”
“How are you only partly from Earth?” Grace presses, too tired and too sad to even be afraid anymore.
They sigh, already knowing how weird they sound. “I’m not human, but I was raised on Earth by a human couple.”
“I’m not even… I’m not even gonna get into that right now,” he groans, closing his eyes again. “Just… don’t lay eggs in me. Or eat me. I just want to save my friend and solve this… fudging… Astrophage thing.”
The stranger chews on their lip for a while, debating whether or not to keep going. They settle for a simple question.
“What’s your name?”
Grace opens his eyes again, the question sitting deep in his chest in a way that’s not entirely comfortable. It reminds him of when he first awoke from his coma: weak, confused, scared. Not able to remember anything about himself. He takes a good look at them. In the past ten minutes they’ve known each other, it’s only now that he takes them all in. Apart from the ridiculous suit, they do look human. They sound human. Beyond that, they seem like a nice person, if he could look past the fact that they somehow flew to Adrian with no ship, and stopped Mary from spinning out of control with only brute strength.
But they do seem like a nice person. Far be it from him to deny the company of another human— almost-sorta-kinda human, at least.
“My name is Ryland. Uh, Grace. Ryland Grace. Grace is fine. You?”
They tell him their name, Kent, and it’s one he recognizes as being an Earth name. First name-last name and all. He can’t help the breathless, tired laugh that escapes him when he hears it.
“What? Why are you laughing?” the stranger asks, their smile mirroring Grace’s.
“I just… sorry, I don’t know what I was expecting. Something like, Bleep-Blorp, I guess. I don’t know, some sounds I can’t pronounce,” he sighs. “Not… that.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” they reply, mildly amused. He doesn’t speak again. Silence engulfs the room. Grace's eyes are still red with tears. The stranger makes no attempt to start another conversation, or even move about the ship. They just keep him company.
A beat.
Grace sucks in a breath. “What do you know about the Petrova line?”
author's note: that's the first chapter of hazy cosmic jive! originally supposed to be a one-shot, but it's getting so long that i thought it would be better as a short series! let me know what you think my loves <333 more fluff in the coming chapters and YEARNING, i promise!
taglist: @mensbestfriend @good-night-starlight @miakxn @bermatchalah @mrsandorbby @readersofthelostarc
guys he is consuming my entire being. still actively working on the kryptonian!reader fic so dw!! but ive also been thinking....
would anyone be interested in a notting hill-ish au 🤓 famous actress x middle school teacher (and the sun is not dying)
mainly cos i want to write ryland's kids absolutely HOUNDING him for information once the rumors spread that hes dating that oscar nominee 😭 DO U GUYS SEE THE VISION???
IDK GUYS WHAT DO U THINK.... DO U WANT TO SEE THIS???
is this incredibly self indulgent? oh yeah. but we can be indulgent together 🤓☝️
soooooo i'm like 4k words into the ryland x kryptonian!reader fic and i just realized im not even HALFWAY through...... this is gonna be a long one so buckle up!!! anyway! as a little treat and apology for making you all wait so long, here's another preview of grace and kent (you!)
Any new WIPS going on? (Besides the one you showed previously x)
Any new fandoms lately? (I myself have fallen down the Young Sherlock and TOBS rabbit hole)
I’m happy to see you writing again. Hope all is well!
Tobs: the other Bennet sister xxx
hello my dear!
as of right now, I have three other WIPs besides the project hail mary one :)) one with vampire viktor from arcane, a req for the ghoul from fallout, and chapter 3 of dont they know (aka the benedict bridgerton zombie fic)
and YES! ive been loving TOBS as well! i've yet to get to young sherlock but i will surely get there once i have the time ❣️ super excited to rewatch PHM this friday and maybe TOBS while i work since the episodes are super short.
thank you so much for checking in ❤️ im happy to be writing again too! i always feel bad when i post for a little bit and then just disappear but life has been craaaay-cray with work and whatnot.
