→ Summary: As Team Sinner's personal assistant, it is your job to make sure that travel is booked, accommodation is booked, and everyone is where they need to be on time. It is not your job to fall in love with your boss - just think of it like a little bonus.
→ Word Count: 3.4k
→ Multi Chap
Chapter One
You were in love with your boss.
Well, in love might be a stretch. And boss might be a bit of a stretch, too. Sure, Jannik paid you, and you did all your work for him and the team, and he was technically the one in charge of you all, but you’d never really thought about him as your boss before. So, really, you could say you had a crush on your team leader.
But that didn’t convey the desperation of the situation.
Of these past six months barrelling into you with the realisation that you loved Jannik Sinner, and the easy flow of your life was currently slipping through your fingers with each day that passed. You were really having to fight these feelings. You enjoyed your job far too much to give it up with a fractured confession you knew would never – could never – be reciprocated. So, you kept quiet, and you followed Jannik to his tournament. Because that was your job, and it was easier to do your job than think about just how pretty he looked when his ginger curls were all messed up from the plane.
London stretched out through the windows of the private transfer you and the rest of the team crammed into with your luggage, a blurry haze of blue skies, and red buses, and cramped streets. You’d booked the transfer all the way back in May, halfway through Roland-Garros, when the idea of not having a car to drive you from the airport to your Airbnb woke you up in a cold sweat. Thankfully for you, the driver had been waiting with a sign that clearly read TEAM SINNER, and your job was safe for another tournament.
Would Jannik fire you just because you’d forgotten to book a taxi?
You’d hoped not, but he had just fired Marco and Ulises, and you still weren’t sure exactly why, and you were worried he was on a bit of a firing frenzy. Maybe the losses in Rome, Paris, and Halle after those three months at home just made him lose his cool a little with the team members more easily replaceable. Maybe he just really wanted Umberto back. You weren’t going to ask. All you had to do was make sure things were booked when they had to be, that Jannik made it to places on time.
The seven-seater car rolled to a stop at a red light, and you kept your eyes on the scenery unfolding around you. The city that seemed never-ending. Bigger than you had ever imagined. The streets just kept on coming – tall buildings, too many shops, too many people. All of them were going about their days with the sense of urgency that only sweaty summer days could create, the heat made worse by the weird feeling that London had a roof right overhead, locking them all inside. You wondered if any of these people cared that their city was about to be flooded by tennis players. Most likely, they were too busy worrying about their own jobs.
You pressed closer to the window, eyes dancing from tube station sign, to black taxi, to famous landmark as you passed through the city. You’d never been to London, but you’d imagined it the way most people had when they really, badly wanted something, daydreaming through rose-coloured glasses of high-rise buildings and telephone boxes and afternoon tea. London was a dream you’d never imagine you’d reach, but there it was, within touching distance. You’d known, when you’d taken on the job, that you’d get to go to London eventually, but it still didn’t quite feel real until the driver rolled to a stop in front of your rented home for the next fortnight.
You’d scoured Airbnb for two hours one fateful night in early May, when Jannik was walking out onto that clay court in Rome to cheering crowds excited for his return, and you were too busy worrying about trying to find the perfect place to stay in London. You spoke to more hosts than you could remember, until eventually, you found this family home you were sure the rest of the team couldn’t argue about. Six bedrooms, three bathrooms, a back garden big enough for the boys to play football in the sun while you did literally anything else. You’d just gotten used to booking hotels with Team Sinner’s fancy credit card when Jannik had mentioned he wanted somewhere out of the way for London, somewhere quiet, somewhere his parents could stay if he made it far enough to warrant them coming all this way to watch. You’d caught him tapping the wooden cutting board in the kitchen when he told you that, but he didn’t even seem to notice doing it.
Superstitious to a fault.
The driver helped you pull out all your bags. The suitcases, the backpacks, the racket bags, all lined up nicely in the paved driveway, and made sure that you, Darren, and Simone all had his phone number in case you ever needed him before his scheduled pick-ups. Then he was gone, zooming back into the city, leaving you alone with the big house and all the bags. You fumbled around the key hold, punching in the code while Jannik mumbled sleepily to Simone in Italian, still trying to wake himself up after his nap on the two-hour flight from Nice and again in the hour and a half transfer from Heathrow to your Airbnb. You led the way inside, and you all left your bags heaped by the front door with your shoes before you took a tour around, scouring out which bedrooms you wanted.
Jannik already decided the bedroom on the ground floor was for his parents, with the painting of the Alps hanging from the blue-green wall above the bed. There was a small bathroom separating it from the office space you deemed your own as soon as you stepped inside, one of the walls made up of a beautiful bay window, while the other two that didn’t have the desk pushed up against it were for the crammed bookshelves you knew you’d spend too long perusing instead of working. The living room on the other side of the house had both a PlayStation 5 and an Xbox Series X that you knew Jannik would spend way too much time playing on. The double doors in the airy, bright kitchen/dining room led out into the garden, already set up with a kids' set of plastic goals that you could already picture the men playing around in. God, you could see it already. Darren in goals, Jannik versus Simone, someone falling and twisting their ankle, having to call the transfer just to take them to the hospital.
You were going to have to create a no rough-housing rule.
Just the thought of Jannik fucking up his entire Wimbledon run, all because of some silly football game,s was enough to send shivers down your spine. He chuckled, low and deep, beside you, his elbow catching on yours, leaning down enough so he could whisper in your ear while your eyes grazed the grassy garden.
“Promise we won’t break anything.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Jannik’s laughter followed you throughout the house, still a little thick from the sleepiness of travel but still him, still that warm sound that burrowed under your skin and settled in your chest. Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t ignore the way one simple laugh was enough to send a blush careening over your cheeks. You just dropped your head and hoped he didn’t notice it.
(Jannik noticed everything about you.)
Four of the bedrooms were on the second floor with a bathroom to share. You and Jannik took one side, and then Darren and Simone on the other side, separated by a small mezzanine that led to the bathroom you were most likely going to fight over, even though there were two more in the house. It meant the last bedroom, on the floor above, would go to Mark if he decided he wanted to watch his brother play at Wimbledon instead of staying at home to watch F1.
“Neighbours, again,” Jannik joked as you lugged your luggage upstairs to your rooms. Almost every time, you and Jannik ended up staying in hotel rooms right next to each other. You liked it when the rooms had balconies, when you could both sit out late at night and talk in hushed whispers, like you were afraid to break the peacefulness of the ever-moving cities below you.
“Unlucky. I get to hear you snore all night now.”
“Hey!” Jannik leaned on the wall between your doors, mouth jutting out in a pretty pout that did nothing to soothe the terrible way your heart had been fluttering all day, since he showed up to the airport in grey sweatpants and leaned all of his tired bodyweight against you like it was nothing. Like this was all just casual. It stopped being casual when you woke up in the middle of the night because you couldn’t stop thinking about him wearing that black kit in Rome.
Oh God, and now you were going to have to watch him walk out onto the grass courts in all white. The perfect little dichotomous angel.
“You know I don’t snore as loud as Darren.”
“But you do snore. Like a little cat.”
Your laugh set off his, and, almost unconsciously, you ended up leaning closer, your shoulder pressing against his, his head so low you could almost feel his curls tickling the top of your head. You could have stayed like that forever, giggling away, watching the laughter shake his body, brightening his tired face, but he turned away, into his room, claiming you had no proof to pin on him.
(He didn’t want you to know that the way you were looking at him made his skin turn pink.)
Your room was nicer than most hotels you had stayed in since travelling with Team Sinner. Large enough for a double bed, a window with a cushioned seat, a large wooden wardrobe and a set of drawers, and a round table with a strawberry red armchair by the window that you could so easily sink into. Sure, there was no mini-fridge to raid or a TV on the wall to peruse when you got bored, but the walls were a nice, homely shade of pale pink that reminded you of your childhood bedroom. And when you sat in the window seat, you could see right out into the garden and beyond, at the pretty brown brick walls lined up behind the house, at the park stretching beyond them. If you squinted, you might even have been able to see Henman Hill.
You unpacked while you waited for your grocery order from Deliveroo to arrive, just enough to last the first week, just in case. You were worried about ordering too much, about it all arriving and making Jannik feel ill just to look at. Two weeks' worth of food when he might not even last that long. So, you ordered enough for this week and tried to keep a positive attitude. You’d have to order it all over again. Jannik was going to make it all the way to the end. You were sure of it – he made it all the way to the end at Roland-Garros, and he didn’t even like clay. Grass was a walk in the park.
It had to be.
Unpacking took barely any time at all, since you’d gotten better at packing the essentials rather than bringing half your wardrobe with you, and by the time the food arrived, you had just finished dropping off your toiletries in the bathroom. You carried the shopping bags to the kitchen, called out for help, and within minutes, the three men were barrelling down the stairs to help you unload the groceries.
Conversation flowed quickly and easily, the odd domesticity of figuring out where to put the pasta in a kitchen you’d never been in before, the closeness of being on the move with these people almost constantly. When Simone told Jannik off in Italian for trying to put the chocolate in the fridge, you and Darren shared an eyeroll over their heads. When you and Jannik reached for the milk at the same time, and your hands knocked, Darren said something to Simone that made him laugh so hard he had to put down the olive oil. The team was easy to be a part of. Always friendly even when working hard, always laughing, always competing somehow. You’d been a part of more card games with these three than you ever had in your life.
That’s why you couldn’t be in love with Jannik. You couldn’t let yourself ruin this little family you had stumbled upon by accident. Even though you’d only started in December, uprooting your life to move to Monte Carlo on a whim that you might actually enjoy booking hotel rooms and airport transfers for a tennis player you knew nothing about, you’d settled into the team fairly quickly, and your initial shyness wore off sometime during Rome. You hated go-kart racing, which Jannik forgave you for – eventually. You always argued with Simone over who got the smaller bedroom. And when Marco was still around, you always convinced him to make Jannik spend a little longer on the exercise bike when he was being particularly annoying.
You guessed that those three months bringing Jannik back to life helped you secure a spot in the team.
(Jannik never would have gotten through the ban without you. Maybe that’s why he was in love with you, too.)
This time last year, when you were unemployed and struggling, you never imagined you’d be travelling the world with a world-class tennis team. You had moved home when your life started fracturing. Back to your parents and their helicopter closeness, always right there, asking too many questions, knocking on your door with cups of tea when you were trying to rot in bed and pretend you were some top-notch cinephile with a Letterboxd review worth reading. You left home for university, for a stupid journalism degree you told yourself was going to lift you out of the mediocrity of your hometown and into a life worth living, and you ended up right back where you never wanted to be. In your childhood bed, with your parents hovering, with your internship deciding they could do better than you.
Then, six months later, your dad’s friend from a rival PR firm mentioned a tennis team in desperate need of assistance, and your dad put your name forward without even asking you. You had an online interview, wearing your most professional blouse and a pair of fluffy pyjama bottoms that they couldn’t see. When Alex Vittur mentioned accommodation tied to the job in Monte Carlo, of all places, well, you hammed up just how good you were at keeping on top of timetables. Then, a couple of weeks later, you were all packed up and ready to get on with your life. Ready to be more than the NEET living off your parents' food and close-watched hospitality.
And now, look at you – helping set the table while the World Number 1 tennis player makes you pasta. Someone looking in from outside your life would probably think this was some great feat, making the best male tennis player in the world cook for you, but for your team, it was an everyday occurrence. For you, it was an everyday occurrence. You’d gotten oddly used to Jannik’s cooking during the ban, forcing him into the kitchen to give him something to do while all he wanted was to rot away in his bed. You’d even forced him to make a Letterboxd account, but the only time he ever updated it was when you watched a movie together, and you reminded him to rate it. He was always far more generous than you.
(He only watched movies because he liked watching you enjoy them.)
Dinner was eaten through yawns and quiet conversations. You poured water and spilt some on the tablecloth, and nobody really seemed to notice. Jannik sat with his chin in his hand the entire time, though you knew his mother would scold him for having his elbow on the table if she were here. Simone and Darren rarely spoke, except to mention something about your upcoming busy schedule. All the practices, the matches, the media in between, you’d have to deal with. Your plane wasn’t exactly early this morning, but the travel took its toll eventually. The constant movement. The packing and unpacking. The carrying of bags from car to plane to car again. It was like a tide washing tiredness over you all, and after dinner, when seven o’clock started to roll around, and the sun didn’t even look close to setting, you all disappeared to your rooms to shut your blackout blinds and sleep.
Except, you were lucky if you ever got to sleep before eleven on a good night.
You lay on your new bed in the dark, your laptop playing a French romantic drama from your watchlist, when the knock came. Quiet but sharp, three raps in quick succession. A Jannik speciality. You huffed, heaved your exhausted limbs out of bed, and padded over the carpeted floor barefoot to twist open the door. His pyjamas were a hoodie and a pair of old sweatpants he probably should have thrown out months ago.
“Are you watching a movie?” he asked between yawns, running a tired hand down his tired face, dragging the skin with him. His ginger curls were a mess from tossing and turning in the bed in the next room. He was used to different beds, used to hotels or Airbnbs, used to beds that didn’t feel anything like home. But, this time, the difference had felt too stark, and he’d tiptoed over to you like it was the middle of the night before a final, and he was going to be in big trouble if he was caught.
“Yes. I thought you were tired.”
Through his yawn, he spoke, “Y’am.” You rolled your eyes but moved out of the way to let him in, slipping into the still darkness of the room that felt paused with the movie. Stuck in a limbo of not quite sleep, but the heavy, heady exhaustion of travel on warm days. “What are you watching?” he asked as he followed you over to the bed, blinking at the transition scene you’d paused on.
“Vie Privée – but you won’t like it, it’s French.”
Jannik groaned lowly, and the sound caught the hairs on the back of your neck. You ignored it, pushed away the simmering heat in your belly, and crawled over the bed to sit against the headrest. He copied your movements, crawling over the bed, sitting so close you could feel his shoulder pressing against yours. It was so easy to sink into him. You tried not to. You tried to fight the whole being in love with your boss thing. You were failing.
Jannik slid down the bed a little so he could rest his head on your shoulder. “I hate French movies. Too pretentious.” You ignored the way your heart somersaulted.
“Big word for you.”
“Ha ha. I speak three languages, and you speak…?” His words muffled in the fabric of the top you’d stolen from him once and quickly thrown into your pyjama cycle. You liked the way it hung off your body like a hug, some Nike thing he probably was never going to wear again, but that you couldn’t let him get rid of. Not when it smelled like a home you’d started getting used to.
“Yes, yes, you are very smart, whatever. Wanna watch this or nah?”
“Keep watching.” You could almost hear his eyes starting to slow shut. It was strange how much you could know someone after just six months. It was strange that you already knew he was going to fall asleep right here and, in a few hours when you were ready to go to sleep too, you would wake him up and send him back to his own bed. And, you’d mourn the loss of his warmth until tomorrow night when the exact same thing happened again, and again, and again. “I’m just gonna sleep right here.”
“Not all night,” you warned, pressing play on your laptop.
He smiled against your shoulder, and it felt like a kiss. You couldn’t ignore it.
(He couldn’t tell you how badly he wanted to actually press a kiss there.)
🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓
Hi! Welcome to our new Jannik fic! I've had such a lovely response to the teaser, and I'm so excited to read your thoughts as we go along. I'll be very busy over the next week with Christmas, but I couldn't wait to post, so there might be a little wait for chapter two 🤍
Hope you enjoyed! Let me know if you want to be added to the tag list.
doctor’s visit (ryland grace x gn!reader) PART 2 (PART 1)
summary: ryland keeps you company during a very boring night shift in the sick bay
wc: 4k
cw: SMUT! semi-public handjob, cumming in pants, lots of teasing, whimpering ryland of course, !!! MINORS DNI !!!
a/n: i can’t believe the love that the first part of doctor’s visit has had! I didn’t think it would be nearly as well received as it has been, so thank you for all of the support!
“Did you know that cotton is technically a fruit?”
Leave it up to Ryland Grace to know a fun fact about cotton- much less be able to recall said fun fact about cotton- at 2 in the morning.
It was a quiet, calm, and extremely boring shift in the sick bay. Being Saturday night, most people were either sleeping or drinking, letting loose on the one night a week they could sleep in, since Sundays were the designated day off for most people on the ship.
Ryland didn’t usually stay with you this late when you worked nights, understanding that sleep was vital for his job here. When he didn’t sleep, he got a little stupid. Stupid and Astrophage did not mix. But since Sundays were his days off too, he insisted on staying and keeping you company, claiming that he was worried you might die of boredom.
He’d already done so much to help- bringing you a late dinner and sweeping and mopping the floors- so you’d begged him to go to his room and get some shuteye. You could tell he was exhausted after a long week, dark bags under his eyes and eyelids at risk of sealing shut every time he blinked but he insisted he stay.
Your shift wasn’t scheduled to be over for another couple of hours and you were pretty certain Ryland was not going to make it that long.
While you organized and restocked the cabinets of supplies, distracting yourself with mundane busywork to keep your mind from shutting down too, the scientist kept the conversation flowing as he usually did to keep himself awake.
In response to his fun fact, you held up a cotton ball- the whole reason he’d brought up a fact about cotton in the first place- between two gloved fingers and raised a brow at him in disbelief.
“This is a fruit?”
Ryland had dragged the rolling desk chair from the office to lounge on, as it was a little more comfortable than a stool, and proceeded to spin around in circles for several minutes.
Feet catching on the chair’s leg to stop himself, he squinted at what you were holding. His glasses had been discarded on one of the examination tables and he made no move to reach for them.
“In a way.”
“I don't believe you.”
“Cotton comes from a flower and has seeds; ergo, a fruit.”
You hummed, rolling the cotton ball between your fingers before putting it back in the sterile container. Moving on to the next container of supplies that needed refilling, (bandaids) you snorted.
“So you’re telling me that the clothes I have on right now, which are partially or entirely made of cotton, are made of fruit.”
You tugged at the seam of your scrub bottoms, stretching the fabric to make your point. Ryland made a sound of denial.
“Well no- obviously it’s not a fruit anymore. It’s just technically a fruit while it’s growing, then it loses its fruit status when the boll dries and opens up. Also, I don't think your scrubs are made of cotton.”
“Maybe not entirely but I’m sure there’s some in there. My underwear is definitely made of cotton, though. Want to come check?”
The poor scientist stammered and his face warmed. “N-No, I’m sure you’re probably right, but that cardigan isn’t cotton. 100% wool. It’s the only thing I own that I can’t just throw into a washing machine.”
Indeed, when Ryland had joined you earlier in the sick bay, saw you only wore a short sleeved scrub top and had a dusting of goosebumps on your arms thanks to the circulated ship air, he hadn’t hesitated to throw his signature fox cardigan over your shoulders. It was warm, soft and smelled like him- coffee, a tiny hint of whatever solvent he used in his lab, and chypre cologne. He said he was warm enough in the hoodie and sweats he wore so he insisted you take the knitwear for the night. You didn’t complain.
Ryland was spinning again.
“Baby, stop doing that. You’re going to get sick.”
“No I won’t.” His head was hanging over the back of the chair, staring at the ceiling as he went in circles.
“Do you not remember your first day on the ship? Your cone? I’m not in the mood to mop up the chicken alfredo you had for dinner.”
“This is different. That was all flight induced.”
You sighed. Stubborn.
Snagging a lollipop from a little bucket on the counter, you unwrapped it and meandered to Ryland. What a bucket of lollipops was doing on a military vessel, you weren’t sure, but it sure had come in handy several times with some of the patients you’d treated. And the man you’d struck up a little… something with. You hadn’t put a label on your relationship yet.
Ryland didn’t stop spinning until you grabbed the armrest and popped the cherry flavored candy into his open mouth. He looked surprised, rolling the sweet around his mouth and ogling up at you through his lashes.
“Eat that. Some sugar to keep you awake.”
“Thank you,” he smiled, eyes lighting up and twisting the stick around with his fingers. The lollipop worked, Ryland stopping his whirling to focus on watching you again. While you began checking expiration dates on antiseptic, your companion couldn’t help but fill the quiet.
“Do you know how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie pop?”
You threw your head back to giggle. “I don’t. Was that part of the research you did for your dissertation?”
He snorted. “No, I was just really bored during one of my classes.”
“And what were your findings?”
“Well,” he hummed, kicking his feet up on a stool that sat nearby. “It took about 285 for me. My tongue started to hurt around 150 so I think that’s a big factor why there’s no definitive answer; people just give up because it starts to hurt or gets too boring. It depends a lot on technique too.”
“Does it?”
“Yeah. Do you do small licks,” he took the cherry candy and swiped it quickly over the flat of his tongue, “or more of a,” he put the whole thing in his mouth and pulled it out, “kind of lick? And the whole experiment is a bust if you bite it.” He did just that, biting the cherry sphere and breaking it in two, crunching on the piece in his mouth.
What an endearing man.
He held out the parts that remained on the stick. “Want the rest?”
You shook your head with a smile, gesturing to your mouth. “I don’t think I’d look very professional with a bright red tongue.”
Ryland’s own tongue slipped out to wet his lips when he glanced at your smile, biting the rest of the sugar off of the stick. “I think you’d look good.”
“Yeah?” Your heart skipped a beat.
“Yeah.”
Glancing to the cabinets of supplies, you decided you’d done enough mindless work for one night and wandered back over to Ryland’s relaxed form. He straightened a little when you approached, swallowing the cherry flavored saliva in his mouth and gave you a lopsided grin. His lips were red.
The scientist dropped his feet from the stool so you could stand between his legs and his eyes alternated between yours. You leant forward to bracket his body with your hands on the armrests.
“Can I have a taste?”
His smile faltered. “But I already-”
“From here,” you pressed a thumb onto his bottom lip, parting his mouth just enough to expose his bottom teeth.
“Oh…”
You didn’t let him respond more, leaning forward to press a featherlight kiss to his mouth. It was barely enough to taste anything, but that didn’t stop Ryland from craving more. His palms found your face, tilting his head to slot his mouth over yours.
“Ry, there’s cameras,” you protest against his lips, not trying very hard at all to pull back. Ryland retreated a centimeter to pout. “But… there’s none in the office,” you suggest, with a waggle of your eyebrows.
You’d never seen someone roll in a chair so fast. Ryland kicked off of the ground and scooted himself and the chair back into the little room hidden from anyone watching in surveillance, knocking the armrest against the metal door frame in the process.
The sick bay was quiet- no faroff footsteps, dim lights and empty. There was no harm in having a little fun to pass the time as long as you weren’t caught.
Your scientist was already looking eager and more awake than he had all night, haphazardly shoving some of the miscellaneous office supplies that littered the surface of the desk out of the way so a perfect, you-shaped space was cleared.
He was quick to pull you close when you casually rounded the desk, hands gliding down your sides and over your ass to cup the backs of your thighs, lifting you onto the surface without a hint of a struggle.
Ryland’s lips were soft and impatient when they found your jaw, searching and feeling while you carefully peeled the latex gloves off of your hands. You were in no rush. The stubble along his cheek brushed over yours when he mouthed at the arch of your ear, a silent plea for your attention. You loved having this effect on him- having him so incredibly desperate for your touch that he wouldn’t hesitate to get on his knees and beg. It was fun to tease him and you knew he secretly loved it just as much as you did.
He could stand and cage you in against the desk as much as he liked, but you both knew who really controlled the room.
You did just that- leisurely brushing your fingers under the hem of his hoodie enough to expose a sliver of skin. He shuddered at the touch of your circling thumbs that barely made enough contact for him to feel and when you didn’t make any move to continue exploring his abdomen, a breathy plea was mumbled against your neck.
His kiss was searing when he finally began chasing your mouth. The cherry flavored lollipop he’d enjoyed earlier coated his lips, giving you a taste every time he came back for another kiss. Several desperate kisses were planted on your mouth which you smiled at, before you squeezed at his waist, a quiet request to slow down. He did, keeping his lips a hairs breadth away from yours but staying still until you came to him.
A deep-throated groan rumbled out of him when you sucked his bottom lip into your mouth, teasing the flesh with your tongue.
You controlled the pace from there, slow and steady, while Ryland followed your lead. His lips would wait for yours to part, only opening when yours did. His tongue stayed dormant until yours sought it out. It was a delicate dance, one you could sense he wanted to deepen but refrained from doing so.
Peeking your eyes open just a touch when he tilted his head to bring your faces closer, you couldn’t help but smile against his mouth; his eyes were screwed shut and brow furrowed, eyelashes fluttering over the apples of his cheeks. The source of his discomfort was prominent where it pressed firmly against your thigh.
He’d been patient enough, you decided. A sigh of relief brushed out of his nose and dusted over your cheek when your arms slid from his waist to trail over his pelvis, stopping at the waistband of his sweats. A light groan of approval rumbled over your mouth when you palmed him through the material, feeling the tented, radiating heat and the smallest hint of dampness. He was straining; painfully hard. When you opened your eyes again, you could see the tension in his neck through the prominent tendons and veins pushing against tan skin.
You pulled away from his mouth with a light laugh, watching as he grunted in annoyance and ran his tongue over his lips to gather up any remnants of your saliva.
“This looks uncomfortable,” you tease, poking a finger at the wet spot on his pants.
Ryland made a sound that almost sounded like a growl. “It is.” His hands were balled into fists on the desk next to your thighs.
“Do you have any blood left in your brain or has it all traveled here?”
“All of the blood in my body is definitely in my head, just not the head my brain is in.” He said it so seriously, head hung and eyes shut like he was concentrating.
You couldn’t help the snort of laughter that escaped you. Ryland rarely ever made sexual jokes, even when it was just the two of you. Maybe it was the teacher in him, but it was always a treat when he snuck in a little quip out of the blue.
“I can help you with that.”
He was mumbling please like his life depended on it.
Ryland’s head ducked to your neck when you slid a palm into his sweats, leaning most of his upper body weight onto you for support in order to stay upright. His happy trail was soft and a perfect guide to where he needed you. You took your time with his navel, brushing your fingers through the short trimmed hair. He thrust into your palm with a whine.
“‘S not fair,” he grumbled, voice muffled by the wool of his cardigan that still warmed your shoulders.
“What’s not fair, sweetheart.”
“You haven’t even really touched me yet but I’m already this hard. How do you do it?”
Your fingers inched toward the base of his shaft. “Magic, I suppose.”
The both of you already knew the real answer to his question; Ryland’s body naturally reacted this way after any kind of attention from you, even after you’d been seeing each other for months. He was embarrassed by it, but you hoped it would never change.
The blonde’s hair shifted against your face and his mouth dropped open against your neck when your fingers ghosted around his cock, languidly smoothing down the length until you found the head in the confines of his boxers. The damp fabric and pre that dribbled from him in a slow, steady stream wetted your hand, making the brush of your thumb over the tip easy.
Ryland’s teeth sunk into your shoulder. Not to hurt but to ground himself.
He was pulsing in your hands, thighs quaking where they barely held him upright.
“Y-Your hands are really cold,” he breathed, tongue wetting his lips and your skin.
“Sorry.”
You weren’t sorry at all, not when he only seemed to get harder. Ryland’s shampoo permeated your senses while your hand explored every inch of him, mapping the veins, squeezing his balls. It was easy to find your rhythm whenever you returned to his cock, calm and gentle pumps of your hand to keep him wanting but not pushing him to the edge too early.
Hands palmed at the meat of your thighs, gripping and tugging you closer to the edge of the desk. His whole shaft was wet in no time, the muffled plap of your hand against him filled the otherwise quiet room.
The two of you melded into one, lost in the feel of each other as you did every time you were intimate. There was something about him that sang to you unlike any person you’d ever been with. You didn’t necessarily believe in soulmates, but if such a thing did exist, you wouldn’t be surprised if your universe was meant to be entwined with his.
Ryland seemed to be trying to bury himself under your skin, pressing his face impossibly close to your neck and hips jolting in tandem with each pump, squeeze and twist of your wrist. You trailed gentle kisses on the hairline behind his ear and preened at the fact that you held Ryland’s pleasure in the palm of your hands.
You sat entwined for several minutes and eventually, beneath the sounds of Ryland’s moans, the slick of skin and the creaking of the ship, there was another noise your mind nearly missed. A dull noise, rhythmic and echoing- the clang of rubber on metal. You’d heard it a thousand times during your time in the sick bay, most often as you worked day shifts.
Footsteps in the hall, coming towards your post where you were supposed to be working.
Anyone coming into the sick bay could see right into the office once they entered the threshold, meaning they would see the two of you locked in a steamy embrace with your hand shoved down The Ryland Grace’s sweatpants. It was not an image you needed being spread to every person on the ship.
Not because you were ashamed; no, it was quite the opposite. You were proud to walk around the ship with the man, not at all secretive about your feelings towards each other. No one really cared anyway- everyone was hooking up with everyone after being trapped on the aircraft for so long. You just didn’t want people gossiping about the private aspects of your relationship. And gossiping was one of the only things the people here had to talk about nowadays.
Ryland didn’t have any time to process your next move.
Ripping your hand out of his pants, you pushed his torso where it rested against yours to get him off of you and shoved a hand into his hair, pressing firmly enough to his head to signal to him that he needed to get down.
You didn’t stay to see where he ended up behind the desk, how he reacted to the sudden retraction of your hand from his cock or if he even knew what was going on; you just heard him make a strangled “oof” when he hit the deck before you launched off of the desk. You dropped his fox cardigan onto the wooden surface before you circled around to the door.
Straightening your scrubs and shaking your head to rid it of the hazy fog Ryland tended to cast on it, you strolled out as casually as you could to greet the person coming in.
It was a random crew-member, a cook from the kitchen who’d been working late to do some prep for breakfast and cut her hand with a knife. She was sweet, and none the wiser to what you’d just been doing as you carefully washed your hands of everything that Ryland had been slowly coating it with minutes before.
You made useless small-talk, not at all paying attention to the words that came out of your mouth- mind completely filled with the scientist who hadn’t made a peep in the office. After some liquid bandages and a sterile wrap, the cook was on her way out the door and the room was quiet again.
Tossing your gloves and giving the silence a minute to make sure she was certainly gone and no one else was coming, you wandered back into the office to peer behind the desk.
Ryland was sitting on the floor, propped up against the small column of drawers attached to the desk and staring blankly at the wall opposite of him. The cardigan you’d put on the desk had made its way into his lap, draped over his thighs where his hands fisted the fabric. Sweat shone on his forehead and his hair was wild. You’d never loved a sight more.
“Are you alive?” You asked quietly, moving to crouch next to him and brushing a hand over his head.
His nod was shallow, the scientist mentally somewhere else. His cheeks were pinker than they had been all night.
When he didn’t move to speak, you gestured to the cardigan. “Are you cold?” The office wasn’t cold at all in your opinion, if anything it was stuffy and hot after what you’d been doing.
Hair scraping along the drawers, Ryland shook his head. “No.”
“What’s this about, then?”
You picked up the sleeve of the knit top with a questioning look. When your fingers brushed the cream fabric, his hands tightened like he was scared you were about to take it from him. “Nothing.”
An odd reaction, but one you began piecing together based off of how flushed he looked and how determined he was to not let you see what lay beneath.
“Sweetheart…” you started, slow and gentle like you were talking to a cornered animal. Ryland’s eyes swiveled to yours for a second before turning away. “Did you come in your pants?”
A gulp. “No.”
Lie.
Heat bloomed through your body. He hadn’t come with the help from your hand, at least not at the end. You got him to that point but he’d come after you’d left, meaning he’d finished himself off because he couldn’t wait for you (which seemed unlikely) or he’d come untouched.
Ryland’s throat bobbed as you brushed a thumb over his cheek, feeling the heat of his blush. If he was this bashful, you had a feeling it was the latter.
“That might just be the hottest thing I’ve ever heard.”
He seemed to become even more flustered at the fact that you liked the idea of him making a mess of himself. His hands slapped over his face and he groaned in embarrassment. “I need to go take a cold, cold shower.”
You laughed and pressed a kiss to his temple before standing back to your full height, offering your hands out to help him up when he peeked through his fingers. “Not too cold, Ry. I don’t need you back in here within the hour with the sniffles.” He carefully took one of your outstretched hands and clamored to his feet, the other hand keeping a steadfast hold on his sweater to keep his crotch covered. You had half a mind to ask him to let you see even though you knew he would refuse.
“Uh,” he adjusted the cardigan. “Sorry, but I think I’m going to have to bring this with me. Do you want my hoodie instead? I don’t have a shirt on underneath but I can probably just zip this up and it should be long enough to cover-”
“It’s ok, hun. I only have a couple more hours before my shift ends and I’m not very cold right now anyway.” No, you felt plenty warm- inside and out.
Your scientist nodded with a small ‘okay’ and tied his cardigan around his waist. You smoothed out his rumpled hoodie, fixing the strings and pressed a long kiss to his sternum. Ryland sighed and cradled the back of your head with one of his beautifully large hands to press his own kiss to the top of your head.
The two of you walked hand in hand to the entrance of the medical wing in companionable silence, trying to soak in every minute you had together before parting. Between his constant meetings, experiments and jobs, it was hard to find time together outside of collapsing on his tiny bed and passing out on top of each other at night. So this steamy encounter, no matter how short, was a pleasant gift.
“Keep the bed warm for me?”
Ryland cheesed at you, perfectly white teeth glinting in the dim light. “Of course.”
a/n: the spicy idea I had for holland march is whispering to me like the green goblin mask, so a little holland march something is up next
doctor's visit (ryland grace x gn!reader) PART 1 (PART 2)
summary: you find it harder and harder to ignore the cute scientist that always sits next to you during your meetings
wc: 7k
cw: smut! submissive ryland and the glasses stay ON !! MINORS DNI !!
a/n: little nervous about this one :’) why’s ryland’s character so hard to get right?? enjoy! (cross-posted on ao3)
It took everything in you to squash the laugh that threatened to bubble out of your throat when you beheld the person dubbed the “leading scientist in Astrophage”. You weren’t sure what you expected, but the lanky man stumbling out of the jet, nearly falling backwards off the little ladder, wasn’t quite what you pictured. The second his foot touched the concrete landing pad, he hunched over to pick up a small orange traffic cone sitting next to the plane and proceeded to hurl whatever he’d last eaten into it.
Stratt grimaced, fidgeting anxiously next to you to get moving, and gestured for you to follow her once the scientist seemed to gather his bearings enough to stop heaving.
“Doctor Grace, how was your flight?” She asked.
He only replied with a thumbs up. A set of glasses were askew on the bridge of his nose and he didn’t move the orange cone far from his mouth when the two of you neared.
“Doctor Grace, this is Doctor (L/n) who’s here to make sure you’ve made it in one piece before we discuss your findings. Excuse me for a moment.”
As Stratt moved to discuss something with someone on the landing strip a couple of feet away, you took that as your queue to approach the man. He looked pale, watching wearily as you approached with a smile.
“Enjoy the view on the way here, Doctor?”
You wasted no time, moving to find the doctor’s free hand that wasn’t holding the vomit filled cone, to feel for his pulse. It was frantic, pounding against the pad of your fingers but unwavering. He let his hand fall limp in your hold, out of strength to do much besides stand in place.
“Well… I can’t say I saw much. I was unconscious for most of it. Loved the last bit though, when we’d landed and weren’t in the air anymore. Hey, do you have any water? Some guy gave me a pill and I think it’s still stuck in my throat.”
A smile creeped onto your face. You’d known this man for barely a minute but you could feel that he had a gravitating way about him. Something charming and sweet. Dropping his arm, you nodded to him and gave him the water bottle you’d brought along. You also held out a small white pill. He instantly shook his head.
“Ah, no thank you. Last time I took a pill from a stranger, I woke up on an aircraft carrier.”
“It’s dramamine, Doctor.”
A pause.
Defeat.
“Okay.”
You helped him open the bottle, as one of his hands was still occupied holding his puke cone, and watched as he gulped down mouthfuls of water to chase the dramamine.
“Pulse is strong. How’s your breathing?”
“Uh- fine, I guess?”
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
He adjusted his glasses with his wrist to finally properly fit over the bridge of his nose and blinked. “Two.”
You gave a firm pat to his back, which he groaned at. “Welcome aboard, Doctor Grace!”
-
While your first meeting was brief, that was not the last time you saw Doctor Ryland Grace. After he finally found his sea legs, he became a regular presence at every meeting in regards to Project Hail Mary.
You weren’t invited to many meetings, only joining when they were about the health of the crew during their journey to Tau Ceti. The robot being constructed to care for the comatose astronauts was an impressive piece of technology unlike anything ever built but it needed to be programmed perfectly to ensure the crew’s safety. If it went wrong- the crew would die and so would the rest of Earth.
That’s why you were brought aboard, to help bring up any possible problem that could happen with the crew on their trip and how the robot would handle it. You worked closely with a slew of other doctors, each of you bringing your own experience to the table.
As a Doctor specializing in neurology, your input was crucial. Being in a coma for several years was not ideal and could do some irreparable harm to the brain, which you disclosed as such in your meetings. It was an intricate dance, trying to solve the multitude of potential problems that came up with so many people with differing opinions
They also occasionally had you stationed as an on-call doctor when you weren’t discussing the mission, setting you up in the medical wing of the giant aircraft carrier to handle any ailments of the crew. You didn’t mind the busy work, it gave you something to do when you weren’t in the lab helping with the robot or fighting with a room full of scholars.
The first time Doctor Grace showed up to one of the medical meetings, he was 15 minutes late.
Stratt gave him a look that exuded annoyance as he scrambled to sit in the only empty chair at the table, which happened to be between you and the most powerful woman in the world.
“Sorry everybody,” he waved quickly in apology with an awkward laugh and dumped a folder of papers on the table. The room was dead silent. “This place is a maze! I got lost somewhere on deck C I think. They should really put up some signs.”
If Stratt wasn’t five feet away, you would’ve giggled. There were signs all over the ship. In several languages.
A cardiologist from Brazil tapped his pen against the metal table in agitation. “As I was saying…”
While the conversation buzzed on, discussing circulation and muscular atrophy that would arise from the crew's prone state for several years, you felt a shoe knock into yours. Turning your eyes away from the table, you were surprised to find Doctor Grace looking at you.
“Do you have an extra pen?” He whispered, not very quietly. He was leaning towards you like you were swapping secrets. The soft fabric of his quarter zip brushed against your arm.
Getting some glares from those sitting closest to you, you only nodded back and slipped an extra pen out of the spiral of your notebook.
“Thank you. Hey, you’re that doctor that checked up on me on my first day here, right? Thanks for that, by the way, the pill really helped. I nearly filled up that cone though, that was a little embarrassing.”
He laughed, another awkward chuckle that had you glancing sidelong at him.
Someone who used humor when they were uncomfortable, it seemed.
Taking a quick look around the room to make sure no one was watching, you leant towards him, bringing your heads closer together. He startled back a bit but didn’t pull completely away.
“When I first got here, I got so seasick I puked all over my tour guide’s shoes. At least you made it to a cone.” You whispered, smiling at the memory.
Doctor Grace looked at you in shock, eyebrows raising into his hairline. “Really?!” He was really bad at whispering.
“Doctors, do you have an idea you’d like to share with the room?” The leading creator of the nurse robot, Doctor Lamai, peered at your hunched forms.
Jerking away from each other, Doctor Grace and yourself didn’t talk for the rest of the meeting but you had to fight a smile when he slipped you a folded note that just had a crude drawing of a puking face.
-
Any meeting that you attended after that, Ryland- as he’d asked you to call him- would find a seat next to you. After learning how tough of a crowd most of the medical crew was, the two of you didn’t talk during the discussions again. But you did start passing notes like a couple of school children.
-
Did you know that the brain is a human’s fattiest organ? -R
Yes -(Y/n)
Really? -R
I’m a neurologist, Ryland. The brain is my job -(Y/n)
Oh yeah -R
Did you know that a human brain produces enough energy to power a small lightbulb? -R
-
This robot is basically like that big marshmallow doctor robot in that one movie -R
Baymax? -(Y/n)
Yeah that sounds right -R
Ours probably won’t be as cute as Baymax is -(Y/n)
Probably not. Maybe we should suggest something to make it cuter. Paint it in pink glitter and give it some eyes -R
Somehow I think that’ll make it even scarier than it already is. Go back to the drawing board -(Y/n)
-
I saw a bird today -R
What kind of bird? -(Y/n)
Seagull -R
Well, we are out at sea -(Y/n)
It’s a little too far out in the ocean to be seeing birds, don’t you think? They get tired -R
Maybe it was a stowaway? -(Y/n)
Poor guy :( -R
-
You learned a lot about Ryland over the next several weeks.
Ryland was full of fun facts and interesting thoughts. He’d barrage you with them any chance he had, and you would listen. While medical facts were mostly common knowledge to you, fun facts about anything else was always a pleasant conversation starter.
He taught you everything there is to know about Astrophage and how it works, once even letting you visit him in his little personal lab to see the little microorganisms yourself. He’d carefully prepared a slide for you, making sure the focus was perfect before stepping back to let you peer into the microscope. When you started barraging him with questions, he was more than excited to answer- leading you around his mini lab with a hand on your back.
You learned that he has a mild shellfish allergy- a rather unfortunate finding. He spent a couple of hours in the medical wing laying on a cot, popping Benadryl like candy and breaking out in hives after some cross-contamination with shrimp in the cafeteria kitchen.
His favorite animal is a fox and he has a surprisingly large collection of fox related things to prove it.
He was a molecular biologist, now turned loud-and-proud middle school science teacher. He loves his students dearly and spent the greater part of several years revolving his life around their education.
He rarely ever swears. At least, not the actual words, but their modified, kid-friendly versions. He’d have teachers knocking down his apartment door if he swore in front of his class, unintentionally expanding their vocabulary.
When he was trying really hard not to laugh, he’d make this tiny snorting noise that sounds an awful lot like a spray bottle.
He doesn’t know how to use chopsticks. Not the right way, at least.
He has no immediate family, no pets and no partners.
He was an enigma really; someone that felt so out of place on this ship. Ryland felt too… normal to be here. Not in a negative way, just a… he-should’ve-never-been-dragged-into-this kind of way. He was too warm compared to most everyone else here. The aircraft carrier was bursting at the seams with cold government officials and specialists in every science or space related field to ever exist. Many were too professional, too self absorbed to realize they had a stick up their ass.
Ryland was a breath of fresh air and you felt increasingly drawn to him every time you interacted.
It also didn’t hurt that he was attractive. Like… insanely attractive. His hair was perfectly messy every single day. He wore his glasses in such a way that you’d never seen anyone wear glasses before, hanging off one ear when he wasn’t using them. A near constant 5 o’clock shadow was always gracing his face. Despite his clothing choices which some around you found unprofessional, he pulled off everything he wore. His fox cardigan, his yellow rain coat, his cringy science-pun t-shirts. It shouldn’t, but it made him that much more alluring and it was getting harder and harder for you not to make a move.
You were friends- acquaintances at the least- but he’d never shown any interest. At least not that you’d seen. He was awkward sometimes but he was awkward with everyone. You didn’t want to make things weird, so you stuffed those feelings deep and filed them away for later. Plus, he was technically higher ranking than you in the Hail Mary hierarchy. He was Stratt’s right hand man. Maybe he didn’t want to ‘pull rank’.
These sorts of thoughts kept you up at night while you tried to ignore the sounds of the 3 other medical staff sleeping around you in your shared bunk. He wouldn’t get out of your head and you weren’t sure how much longer you could ignore that tightening string in your gut.
-
On Friday nights, the room on the ship that served as the social meeting place for many of the crew, equipped with a bar, was packed to the gills. You usually dropped by to say hi to the couple of coworkers and other doctors that you were friendly with but never staying for long. You just didn’t know anyone well enough to want to stay and chat. At least you didn’t… until one particular Friday night.
The hunched form at the bar clad in that unmistakable fox cardigan caught your eye almost immediately. He was hard to miss.
This was the first time you’d seen Ryland here. You weren’t sure why he never came, but he was the one person on his whole ship you’d actually consider sharing a drink with.
Immediately making a bee-line for the bar, you saw that the doctor was flipping through several sheets of paper, head in his hand as he read. The people surrounding him at the counter were making light conversation, enjoying a beer and enjoying their Friday night.
Ryland was working.
“Y’know this room is supposed to be a reprieve from work, not somewhere you bring your work to, right?”
The blonde looked up in surprise as you squeezed to stand in the small empty space between him and the guy sitting on the barstool next to him. It was a tight fit, and Ryland immediately shuffled over an inch in his seat to give you some more room.
Or to avoid touching you, which didn’t sit right in your stomach.
His glasses were near falling off his nose. He looked tired.
“I know but I couldn't sleep so I decided to come here. I brought some homework because I needed something to keep my mind busy and so I don’t look like a total loser sitting here by myself. Is it working?”
“Well,” you hummed. “I don’t think you’re a loser but I might be a little biased.”
He smiled, twirling a pen between his long fingers over the papers. You nodded over to where a karaoke machine sat and the 3 Hail Mary crewmates sat with their extra counterparts. “Why don't you go join them? You know them well enough, right? You’re working with them all the time.”
Ryland shifted in his seat to look over his shoulder. His knee pressed against your thigh which made it extremely hard to focus on his answer.
“No, I don’t think I really fit in with their crowd.”
“Why not?”
“They’re brave. Strong. Sometimes I don't even know why I'm here to be honest. Why Stratt dragged me here. A humble middle school science teacher.” He laughed lightly, but it wasn’t a genuine one.
Your heart squeezed into a knot for this man who’d been uprooted from his comfortable life as a teacher and thrown into this madness without his consent just like many others. He felt unsure about his place here and besides Stratt who had him on a leash, he had no one, it seemed.
Besides you, you hoped.
You prayed he enjoyed your company enough to feel a little less alone.
“Well,” you leant back against the bar to properly look at him. He looked up at you over the golden frames of his glasses. “I’d say you have every right to be here. You discovered how to kill an Astrophage and see what it's made of. You discovered how they breed and now we have the means to create a powerful fuel for the mission that will save humanity. All important things we might not have right now without you.”
Ryland huffed and drew a little circle on his paper. “I’m sure someone would’ve thought to poke Astrophage with a stick eventually. And learning how they breed didn’t take too much thinking either, surely someone would’ve-”
“You can't spend your whole life focusing on the ‘what if’s’, Ryland. We're here now thanks to you, whether you wanna see it that way or not.”
Finally, a real smile split his face and he nodded slowly. You couldn’t tell if he’d accepted your words as truth or not, but they at least lifted his spirits a little. Plus, a tiny bit of red painted his ears.
“Thanks, (Y/n). Can I… buy you a drink?”
Your stomach fluttered. “Yes, as long as it’s not anything too hard. I’ve got a shift tomorrow.”
He nodded quickly and signaled to the bartender. “Two beers please.”
Bottles in hand, you continued to lounge against the counter next to him, nursing the beverage and making small talk. He’d offered his seat to you but you refused.
Looking out over the crowd, you spotted two individuals huddled together in the dim corner of the room. Ryland noticed your gaze and turned to look too. When he beheld the two scientists tangled together, he shook his head and turned back to you with a raised brow.
“I think DuBois and Shapiro are hooking up.”
“Seems that way.”
“Dont you think it’s a little crazy? I mean, he’s going to be trucked off into space soon and she’ll be left here. What's the point in hooking up when it'll only end in tragedy? You’re just asking for heartbreak.” He shook his head, fiddling with the plastic label of his beer.
You shrugged. “I don't see any harm in it. Sure it’ll hurt eventually but why not live in the moment? Humans yearn for connection, it makes sense they’d want to have some sense of normalcy before the end of the world. It's probably nice to forget about the apocalypse and enjoy someone's company for a while, take your mind off the doom and gloom.”
Ryland was quiet after that, suddenly turning anxious if his ducked head was any indication. Had you said something wrong? You drained the rest of your beer.
“Is that something you find yourself doing?” He asked quietly, feigning nonchalance but his foot was bouncing erratically against the bar stool.
Nervous.
A smile began to creep onto your face. “Not currently.”
His foot stopped.
Relief.
“But… if the right person came along I wouldn’t be opposed.”
His hand squeezed the bottle and his shoulders drooped.
Disappointment.
“Oh… haven’t found the right one yet?” He picked up his head with a painfully fake smile and a nod, looking around the room like he was helping you scout the place. “Lots of interesting people on this ship. A pilot would be cool, huh?”
“Yeah but they’re a bit too cocky for my taste.”
He tapped his finger against his stacks of paper. “Okay, what about… another doctor? Or one of the government officials?”
You grimaced and he cringed back. “Right, no doctors or government staff If not them, then… what are you looking for?”
Ryland’s eyes were searching yours for a glimpse, a hint of what you might be feeling.
With the tiniest bit of liquid courage running through your veins, you tapped your beer bottle against your leg and lightly began playing with the sleeve of his fox cardigan. He became impossibly still.
“Someone real. Down to earth. Not afraid to be themselves… a nice smile and a pretty face sure helps too.”
The doctor gulped and you reveled in the sight of his Adam's apple bobbing in the soft light of the room. He inclined his head once, fingers twitching against the bar. “I’ll keep an eye out for you,” he whispered.
Neither of you broke the heated eye contact until the man you were standing next to fell back in laugher and knocked you off your balance. You were able to recover quickly, but not before pressing even closer to the scientist and nearly falling into his lap. His hand had immediately planted onto your hip in an attempt to keep you steady. Being this close, you could feel the breath from his nose on yours. Your heart was pounding.
The room grew in volume as people flocked to gather around the karaoke machine that was playing a song you couldn’t even bother to name. Not while Ryland held all of your attention.
While his chest heaved, you slowly moved to stand properly on your own two feet but holding his gaze. You took the hem of his cardigan in your hand. It was so soft.
“Want to go for a walk?” You asked quietly, glancing at his stack of papers that had been forgotten about.
Ryland said nothing but started brushing his work into a haphazard pile good enough to hold in one arm and stood up. Standing at his full height, you were reminded again how tall the man was. When he offered his hand as a silent question, an inquiry to make sure he wasn’t reading anything wrong, you didn’t hesitate to take it. No one batted an eye at the two of you as you led him through the crowd and out into the silent metal hallways beyond.
-
Ryland could not unlock the door to his room fast enough.
He only had one key to his name while on the ship, you’d think it would be pretty easy to manage. In theory it was, but when his nerves were blasting through the roof and you were fiddling with the belt loop on the back of his pants, he got a little distracted.
You giggled as the scientist finally fished his key out of his pocket and proceeded to drop it on the floor with a clink.
“Sorry,” he strained, scooping it up from the floor and finally fumbling with the lock.
Once the door swung open and the two of you stepped inside, you did a quick observation of the room. It was extremely small, barely enough room for one person, let alone two. There was just enough space for a twin bed and a small desk attached to the wall. Rylands’s belongings were strewn everywhere there was space. While it was cramped, there was something he had in his room that you didn’t.
A window.
A tiny circular porthole- so small you couldn’t fit your head through it if it was able to open- but a window nonetheless. Your room was deep in the middle of the ship so no windows for you. As it was around midnight, there was nothing but inky blackness on the other side but you wondered what it would look like when it was daytime and the ocean was blue. For now, the soft glow of a tiny lamp kept the room illuminated.
“Oh god- don’t mind the mess. I don’t get many visitors.” He stood awkwardly in the center of the room, brushing some discarded clothes aside with his shoe. “But to be fair, it’s impossible to keep a room this small clean. I mean, no dresser, no closet. I’m not 100% sure but I think this used to be a storage-“
You liked to think you knew Ryland pretty well now, and knew when he was about to spiral into a rambling fit. He was especially prone when he was anxious. As much as you loved to hear him talk, now wasn’t the time.
When you took a step forward and fisted the lapels of his cardigan in your hands, his words died immediately.
When your hands tugged his body down and your lips slotted against his, his whole body froze up.
You didn’t push beyond a couple of seconds before pulling away a hair- keeping him close but giving him the room to decide if he wanted to stop or come back for more. For all you knew, he was just bringing you back to his room to show you his collection of fox things. Through lidded eyes, you watched as his eyelashes fluttered, dazing down at you in shock.
Suddenly worried that maybe you had indeed read things wrong, you began to ease up your grip on his collar. When his hands shot up to keep your head in place, cradling your jaw in his large palms and returned the kiss with eagerness, you smiled against him.
Months of brushing around each other snapped.
Your mouths were tangled in a heated dance- his body moving closer and pressing yours against the door, like he was trying to melt into you. He still had his glasses on, which meant you were being a little cautious of how close you pressed your face into his. You didn’t want to stab your eye on the rims, what a mood breaker that would be. But you didn’t want to ask him to take them off. In fact, you wanted to beg him to keep them on.
When his hands dropped to your waist to pull your hips together, you wound your arms around his neck, your hands immediately finding the back of his head- finally able to feel the mussed hair that snagged your attention day after day.
It was extremely soft, just as you’d imagined. Perfect, just like the rest of him.
Time blurred and you weren’t sure how long the two of you stood there, tasting each other like you were starving. Eventually, you decided it was much too hot in the tiny room and you were both wearing way too much clothing.
Dragging your hands from his hair to trail down the strong column of his neck, you dipped your hands into his cardigan, sliding your fingers over his shoulders and pushing the cream knitwear off in the process.
He shivered under your touch, when your fingers glanced over his biceps as the cardigan fell to his elbows. His hands let go of your waist to allow the fabric to fall to the floor in a pile. When his hands returned, they planted themselves on the door next to your waist.
It wasn’t to tower over you, or to trap you against him. No, it was because he needed something to keep him upright or he was at risk of squishing you entirely against the metal when his knees gave out.
You broke the kiss with a soft gasp, chest heaving against his where his shirt stretched over the muscle.
You’d never seen Ryland without something thrown over the top of a t-shirt- always wearing some type of jacket or lab coat or something. Now that he was without one, your hands mapped over his arms and shoulders.
As he busied himself with your neck, gently nosing at the soft spot just behind your ear, you swore.
“Shit, Ryland. What are they feeding you in the cafeteria? Protein powder?”
He laughed against your skin, dipping his lips down to your shoulder. His scruff tickled and the metal of his glasses were ice cold compared to your heated skin. “No. I just… go to the gym sometimes.”
“Sometimes.”
“Mhm-“ he choked on his affirmation when you slid your hands up his abdomen to feel underneath his shirt. The muscle was warm and fluttered against your fingers.
“Can I see what else you’ve been hiding under all these layers?”
Clothes were shed in a record amount of time, save for the couple of extra seconds Ryland took to take off his pants because he almost tripped over his own feet. He did seem to hesitate when he got to his boxers, fiddling with the hem, but when you hooked your fingers into the elastic, he let the fabric fall.
Once every part of you was exposed to the chill, circulated air, Ryland began chasing your mouth again but stopped with a grunt when you pushed him back onto his bed.
The look on his face was priceless, enough so that you laughed as you knelt on the hard mattress and swung a leg over his hips to straddle him. If Ryland had been red before, it was nothing compared to the color of his face now. His eyes glanced over your body, appreciating but not lingering out of nervousness as he stammered.
“You want to-?”
Straightening his glasses to fit properly on his face, you nodded. “Is this ok?”
“Yes! Yes- I’ve just never… my ex was more traditional I guess so we never… She always liked me to be on top.” He let out a breathy laugh and a shy smile.
Everything about this man was so endearing.
“As fun as that sounds, I want to try this first. I can see you better this way.”
Another audible hitch in his breath as he nodded. “Okay.”
His large palms found purchase on your thighs and he sighed blissfully through his nose when you bent forward to kiss along his jaw. It feathered under your lips and he tilted his head back to happily give you more surface area to work with.
When you finally ground your hips down onto him, he bucked under the pressure. A completely unintentional gesture that had him apologizing. You chased that response, rhythmically moving your pelvis in tandem with his.
Ryland whimpered.
You’d be damned if you didn’t try to get him to make that sound a hundred times more before morning.
You spent several minutes exploring his neck with your tongue while keeping a firm pressure with your hips, gently swaying in circles against him. You found a spot right at the juncture between his neck and shoulder that had him moaning. By the time you eased up, red marks bloomed along his throat and Ryland was already breathless. Chest heaving against your palms, he looked heavily up at you through those glasses of his and gave you a shy, lopsided grin.
“That was nice.”
You raised a brow. “I’m gonna have to work harder if all I get is a ‘that was nice’, Ry.”
His smile dropped. “No! That’s not what I meant- I just… I’m gonna be honest it’s been a while since I’ve…” his voice quieted, letting you fill in the blanks.
You knew he had an ex- he’d brought her up occasionally in your conversations when the moment called for it- but you didn’t know how long ago that had been. If you had to guess, it was probably before he became a teacher. Which if what he was saying was true… then he’d hadn’t been with anyone since then and had gone several years without being intimate with anyone (besides himself, anyway).
Ryland took your momentary pause as a bad sign.
“Not that I haven’t wanted to! I’ve just been really busy. Teacher stuff. Grading. Lesson planning. And with a teacher’s salary on top of crippling student loan debt? Fancy restaurants can be a little too steep. Even fast food is getting expensive. I don’t even have a car! I bike to work! Can’t afford a coffee date some months.”
Another rambling tangent. One of his pointer fingers tapped erratically at your thigh.
“Well, you’re in luck Ryland,” you state, pressing a hand to his chest to feel his heartbeat, just like you had when you first met. Just like before, it was pounding but for a whole different reason this time. “I don’t think there’s any high-end restaurants on this aircraft carrier so I don’t need any of that fancy treatment. What if we have cafeteria oatmeal and orange juice on the flight deck together tomorrow morning instead?”
He was nodding before you’d even finished your sentence. “Yeah, that sounds nice.”
“Good,” you smile, raising yourself up to kneel properly over him.
His neck bobbed when you finally took him in your hand. He was warm and firm, the perfect length and size without being too much.
You felt him resist the urge to buck into your fist, instead throwing his head back against the mattress with a groan, tightly squeezing your thighs with his hands to ground himself. He was already leaking into your palm within a couple pumps.
“I-I don’t know how long I’ll be able to-“
“We’ve got all night, Ry, don’t worry.”
He nodded, comforted by your words. He was soft as silk and overly sensitive, it seemed. With the help of your hand, the scientist came quickly, just as he feared he would, painting his abdomen white. You shushed him before he could even think about apologizing.
One positive thing about him going so long without intimacy meant his refractory period was minuscule. He was hard again in minutes, which he’d blushed about.
When you finally sank onto him, moving slowly both for yourself and Ryland’s sake, all thoughts left your mind besides the ones that revolved around the man underneath you. You didn’t care about the dying sun, or Project Hail Mary, or your job. By his expression, Ryland was feeling the same.
His hands were surely leaving bruises on your thighs but you didn’t care one bit. Not when your bodies fit together beautifully. Fully seated, hips locked, you could’ve cried at how he felt inside you. He was just the right size, brushing every spot he needed to and then some without being too overwhelming.
When you began to move, Ryland helped where he could- offering your body stability and putting those muscled arms of his to good use. The veins on his forearms were bulging and the tendons in his neck were prominent against his skin.
You didn’t know how soundproof the metal boxes the higher-ups deemed bedrooms were, but you doubted they would do a good job of masking any of the noises the two of you were making. Ryland was keeping quiet as much as he could manage, teeth grinding. You were a little less reserved, gasping and groaning as you bounced. Let his neighbors hear, you didn’t care. Not when you finally got your chance with the scientist you’d been eyeing since the moment he stepped out of that jet.
Just like he was perfect for you, you could tell you were providing enough relief for him in return because you could feel his thighs begin to quake.
When he bucked up into you again, your hold on that string deep in your gut snapped and you saw white. Feeling you finish brought Ryland to the edge too. He was just barely able to lift your body high enough to free himself and release over your abdomen.
The next several seconds were spent breathing in tandem. Ryland was watching you like you hung the stars in the sky. With all of the movement, his glasses had skewed again. Huffing a laugh, you bent forward to straighten them and then pressed a long lingering kiss to his lips. You felt his fingers glide up to your ribs then wander to your spine, pressing your chest tightly to his.
His glasses were foggy by the time you pulled away, your shared breath heating the lenses.
“You ok?” You asked, brushing a thumb over the dusting of facial hair along his jaw. He nodded into your palm.
“More than ok.”
-
You woke up to snoring.
Not the loud, reverberating kind, but a soft and soothing hum that blended perfectly with the constant moans and groans of the ship you’d become so accustomed to.
Blinking open your eyes, you stared at the metal ceiling. It took several seconds to remember where you were. For a moment, you assumed you were in your room but when tiny glimpses of sunlight danced over the walls and when a hand twitched lightly against your waist, the memory of last night came rushing back.
The bar, your conversation with the scientist, and then-
A soft smile erupted across your cheeks as they warmed. Ever so slowly lifting your hand, you brushed your fingers through the head of hair that was tucked into your neck.
Indeed, Doctor Ryland Grace was laying by your side, pressed impossibly close to your body due to the cramped nature of his bed, and blissfully asleep.
All feelings of hesitancy and shyness he’d had hours earlier were gone as he slept, the doctor partially draped over you- an arm slung over your waist, a leg thrown over one of yours and tucked between your thighs. He was snoring against your neck where his face was pressed. You were pretty sure he was drooling. His feathered hair was soft against your fingers, even more unkempt than usual.
You could’ve stayed like that for hours, warm and comfortable even in the pathetic excuse for a bed.
Several minutes passed before he began waking up, stirred by the gentle pass of your fingers along the short hair at the nape of his neck. He shifted around slightly but didn’t move to pull away from your side.
He sighed against your skin, the fluttering of his eyelashes against your throat telling you he’d finally opened his eyes.
“Good morning,” you said quietly, not wanting to break the peaceful tranquility of the room that was rare to find on the bustling carrier.
You felt him blink a couple times before he responded, a smile sounding on his lips. “Morning.”
God, his voice was perfect- a rough, deep baritone thanks to hours of sleep. It had you turning your head towards him, pressing your lips to his hairline. You couldn’t see his face, but the stretch of stubble across your throat told you he’d smiled even more.
Several minutes went by in companionable silence, neither of you wanting to pull away. His fingers brushed lazily against your waist and yours didn’t stop thumbing through his hair.
You wondered after a while if he’d fallen back asleep before he mumbled a question. “What time is it?”
Peering over his head, you squinted at the small digital clock that sat on the tiny built-in desk.
“8:58.”
A pause.
Then panic.
Ryland shot upwards, unsticking himself from your body and scrambling out of the bed in a flurry of limbs and movement.
“Shhhhhiitake mushrooms!”
You watched from the bed, lightly amused as you watched him stumble around the cramped space in a frantic search for clothing. Lord above, he looked just as good from the back as he did the front.
“Something wrong?”
“I was supposed to go with Stratt to a crew meeting an hour ago.” He threw his legs into a pair of boxer briefs (which you were pretty certain were on backwards but he didn’t seem to notice or care), followed by a pair of jeans. “Kinda surprised she hasn’t barged in here already to get me up, actually. She’s done it before.”
You just hummed, watching him slug a blue button up across his shoulders and struggle with the buttons. He threw a glare at you that had no fire behind it. “Will you show at least a little sympathy? She could probably throw me into the ship’s jail for this.” He missed a button at the top of his shirt, which meant the whole shirt was now fastened lopsided. He didn’t seem to notice that either.
“I’m not going to complain that we got an extra hour or two of sleep together.”
His cheeks bloomed. There’s that shyness. He didn’t fight your statement, instead busying himself with tugging a beanie over his bedhead. When he sat on the mattress next to you to start putting socks and shoes on, he searched the room with squinted eyes.
“Do y’know where my-“
You held out his glasses. At some point last night, you’d relieved him of the spectacles for his own comfort (and so you could kiss him as senseless as you wanted to) and carefully placed them under the bed where they’d be safe from being squished.
“Thank you.”
Looking a little less than put together, he started collecting the notepads and folders stuffed with papers on the small desk, gathering everything into his arms.
“Uh- well, we missed breakfast so how about we meet up for lunch? Or dinner? Or breakfast tomorrow? Or we don’t have to do anything together at all if you don’t want to. Totally your call, really.” He kept his gaze down at the papers, avoiding your eyes. You smiled.
“Well, I start my shift in an hour and can’t leave the medical wing until I’m relieved.”
His shoulders dropped a little.
“But… there’s no rules against having visitors.”
Ryland looked at you over the rims of his glasses, starting to smile himself. “Yeah? Ok! Yeah, I’ll- Do you have a preference for lunch? I’ll bring you something. Or I can get you a little bit of everything from the cafeteria? Do they allow that?”
You sat up with a laugh, holding the thin bedsheets against your chest to keep the last little bit of warmth from him against you. “I’ll get the same thing you’re having. I’m not picky.”
The doctor nodded to himself, shuffling toward the door with large strides. Twisting the handle, the door opened barely an inch before he doubled back like he forgot something. You expected him to search for something else he needed, not expecting him to rush over and press a fast kiss to your lips. It was your turn to blush.
“Right! Ok, I’ll get us something good. See you in a little bit! And lock the door on your way out, will you? Thanks!”
With his goodbye, he rushed out of the room, gently shut the door and began racing away. You heard his pounding footsteps reverberate the walls as he ran down the hall.
His room was too quiet now that he was gone, only the sounds of the ship keeping you company.
It took you several minutes to shake out of your star-struck stupor.
When the blonde showed up in your quiet office in the medical wing at 12pm sharp, precariously balancing two to-go boxes stuffed full with cafeteria food and harboring a broad smile, you quickly realized just how tightly Doctor Ryland Grace already had you wrapped around his finger.
a/n: ryland grace: the people’s pillow princess. thank you for reading!
PERIAPSIS. ( PART 3 ) — RYLAND GRACE x Male!READER
SUMMARY: Murphy’s Law states that everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Ryland Grace would like to have a word or two with Murphy.
# # TAGS: Semi-Canon-Adjacent, Longform, Male!Pilot Reader, Eventual Rocky (No Rocky Here Yet), Hurt-Comfort, Caretaking, Injury, Slowburn-ish, There's Only One Med Pod, Part 3 of ??
# # WARNINGS: Canon-typical Space Dread, Graphic Depictions of Pain and Injury, Broken Bones, Mechanical Surgery, Bordering on Medical Gore (?), Medical Trauma, Angst, Strong Language, Inaccurate Space Science, Not Beta Read
NOTES: Thank you thank you thank you! I have no words for all the love and support I've gotten. I am so very grateful. Like, WOW! As an apology for taking so long, this chapter is relatively chunky. I'm so glad you guys are enjoying this fic as much as I enjoy writing it. As always, thank you for your patience! 6.4k words.
PART ONE, PART TWO.
TAGLIST: @screechingphantommaker, @whoislio4
The outer hatch sealed behind you with a heavy thunk. The silence that came after was horrifying to Grace. He'd scrambled to get to the intercom, nearly missing the console as he rushed to a seat. He didn’t bother buckling himself in. He put his glasses on, eyes darting around the monitors as he searched for you on the ship's external feed. Eventually, he landed on a small moving figure on one of the panels. He gripped the console, leaning in.
Telemetry scrolled down the right side of the screen. Suit pressure nominal, oxygen nominal, heart rate slightly elevated. Grace heard himself sigh in relief. “That’s comforting,” he muttered. “You’re only mildly terrified.”
Your voice crackled through the comms. “I heard that.”
Grace nearly launched himself into the ceiling. “Jesus—!”
The tether uncoiled behind you in loops, its faint clinking traveling up the steel braid and vibrating into the chest plate of your suit. Beneath you, the hull of the Hail Mary stretched out like the white belly of some prehistoric deep-sea leviathan. Overhead, the infinite empty void of space yawned open.
Back in the control room, Grace’s eyes scrambled over the main console until they finally locked onto the small microphone. “Hello?” he said, quite frantically. “Cap, can you hear me? Hello? Copy?”
You smiled behind the glass, though your brows furrowed at the obtrusive volume of Grace’s voice. You were using a handrail to orient yourself as you began the slow hand-over-hand crawl along the ship's spine. “I copy. But turn your mic down a notch, you're practically inside my skull.”
“Right! Sorry. Adjusting. Is that better?”
“Much.”
“Everything okay out there?”
“You tell me, Doc. You’re the one on the screens.” Your laugh was accompanied by static. “S’just dark as far as the eye can see over here.”
“Oh, god. Right. Okay.” You heard him shuffling across the panels. “Okay, everything looks normal. And there’s this radar here with a bunch of little green dots. None of them are near you. Well, there's one, but it's moving away. It’s moving very fast. Wow, space is terrible.”
“You’re doing great.”
The damage to the Petrova scope's antenna array was exactly as the diagnostic had described. The primary bracket was sheared through, looking like torn foil. The relay coupling, which was the little yellow case's counterpart, was warped. Its ceramic housing cracked open to expose a nest of severed fiber-optic filaments that floated like tiny transparent hairs.
“I’m onsite,” you reported, hooking your safety tether to the anchor point. “The bracket is compromised. I'm going to have to manually realign the housing before I can seat the new coupler. It's going to take some muscle. My telemetry might spike a bit; don't panic.”
“Copy that,” said Grace. You could hear him impatiently tapping against the console. “Hey, can I tell you something?”
“Talk to me, Goose.” You unclipped the tool bag from your thigh and pulled out the pneumatic wrench. The work was tedious, frustratingly restricted by the pressurized bulk of your gloves.
There was a brief crackle of static as Grace took a breath. “I’m terrified of heights.”
A soft chuckle huffed out of you, echoing inside your helmet. “If it makes you feel any better, there’s no up and down out here. Technically, no such thing as ‘height’ either. There’s no floor to catch you and no floor to fall from. We’ve got a trillion miles of absolute nothing in every direction.”
It took a while for him to respond. “You seriously thought that would make me feel better?”
Every action required an equal and opposite reaction; if you turned the wrench too hard without anchoring your hips, your whole body would swing around the bolt like a pendulum. For five agonizing minutes, the only sounds were the rhythmic whir-snap of the tool, the steady hiss-click of your suit's oxygen regulators, and Grace's occasional, anxious updates.
“Debris field is clear,” he said. He’d begun chewing on a Twizzler that he’d found floating over the panels. “Hull pressure is rock solid... You've got a slight temperature spike in your left glove, is that normal?”
“Yeah. Friction from the wrench. Keep watching.”
“Copy.”
You pulled the cracked coupling free. It drifted away on a short wire lanyard until you clipped it to your tool belt, replacing it with the pristine, yellow-housed component Grace had retrieved for you. It slid into the slot with a gratifying mechanical clack.
“Coupler is seated,” you grunted, bracing your knees against the hull as you reached for the locking lever. “Engaging the primary seal now.”
As you worked, the cause of the damage became clear. The tricky thing about traveling at the speed of light was that any loose debris you met had the calibre of a bullet. The ship's primary defense was its massive sacrificial bumper, designed to absorb the brutal kinetic energy of cosmic dust. But with the ship now in orbit, (or settling into orbit) there was hardly a need to be wary of such dangers.
Unless of course, instead of the ship propelling towards the debris, the debris was coming at you.
“Something’s wrong.” Grace sat up from his chair. “I’m getting alarms, Cap. Foreign objects detected? This wasn't here before. What the – Oh, god the green dots in the radar earlier — there’s a cluster of them now. Heading to you!”
Your head snapped up. You didn't waste time looking at the void; you wouldn’t see projectiles traveling at kilometers per second until they were already tearing through you. “How long?” you barked, having already abandoned the wrench.
It didn’t make sense to Grace. How was it coming so fast? How had Mary not seen it sooner? “Five seconds! Four—!”
You unhooked your knees from the cleats and threw your weight downward. You tried to tuck your body behind the thick, reinforced structural rib of the Petrova scope's primary housing. It was the only substantial piece of shielding within arm's reach. You pulled yourself in, curling into a tight, desperate ball against the hull. But you were a fraction of a second too late. A soundless flurry of violence erupted around you. A spray of cosmic gravel shredded the space where you had just been floating. It didn't make a sound in the vacuum, but you felt it — a series of sharp, rhythmic thuds vibrating violently through the metal hull beneath your chest. Bright sparks danced across your visor as particles vaporized against the ship's skin.
Then came the impact.
A blinding spike of agony caught your trailing left arm. One of the larger fragments slammed directly into your sleeve. Your dutiful EVA suit refused to breach, and as a result, trapped the force into your forearm and shattered the bone under your skin.
The strike spun you against your tether until your helmet snapped against the hull. You couldn’t tell if you were screaming. You were deaf to the world, hearing only the sharp singing of your broken arm.
You gasped for air, spots dancing in your eyes. You clutched your shoulder and pulled your wrist toward your chest. The pain was a sickening, throbbing white-hot fire radiating towards your entire torso. You forced your eyes to focus on the flashing HUD data overlaying the dark void.
SUIT PRESSURE: 14.7 PSI (STABLE)
O2 SUPPLY: NOMINAL
INTEGRITY: 100%
The ringing in your ears gradually subsided. In its place, came Grace’s frantic calls.
“Cap! Cap!” He was screaming into the microphone, his voice slightly distorted by the volume. “I lost your vitals — no, wait, your heart rate is at 180! The suit sensors — is there a breach? Tell me there's no breach. Talk to me!”
The multi-layered Kevlar and reinforced polymer weave of the sleeve had held, absorbing the brunt of the hit without puncturing. But the sheer force of the impact had transferred straight through the insulation.
“No… no breach,” you squeezed through gritted teeth. You pressed your forehead against your visor, sweating profusely. “Suit’s… suit’s whole, Grace.”
Grace didn’t realize he was already crying. He angrily wiped his tears away with his fist. Now was not the time. “Okay.” He sniffled. “Okay. Come back. Forget the antenna, come back now.”
“My arm,” you groaned. A choked sound escaped your throat as the throbbing intensified. Inside the rigid, heavy suit, you tried to move your hand and immediately regretted it as a fresh wave of agony made your stomach churn. “My arm's broken. I can’t move it.”
Grace paled.
It took everything in you not to vomit. In zero gravity, a broken arm wasn’t a weight-bearing problem, but a physics problem. Every time you hauled your weight forward with your single good hand, the lack of a counter-stabilizing grip sent your lower body swinging. You kept your injury as close to your body as possible, but the shattered bones under your skin felt as though they were grinding together with sickening, wet friction. You had to time each pull, slowly dragging yourself along the handrails, knowing that one missed grip meant hurtling into the void.
“I see you.” Grace’s trembling voice snapped you out of the haze. “I-I see you, Cap. You’re doing great. You’re past the thrusters. Just six meters to the airlock.” He was lying. It was eight meters. But he needed the distance to be shorter, if only to keep his own lungs from seizing up. He felt completely and utterly useless.
“Tell me… tell me about the radar,” you panted, your voice cracking as you reached for the next magnetic cleat. You needed a distraction. You needed him to talk. “Any—Any more debris?”
Grace snapped his eyes to the screens. He blinked back the tears that blurred his vision. “No. Nothing. It’s clear. You’re safe, I promise.”
“Good.” You laughed weakly. “Because I don’t think I have another dodge in me, Doc.”
“Don’t talk, just focus on the rails,” Grace pleaded. His breath shuddered. “You’re almost there. Just come inside. Please, just come inside.”
When you got closer towards re-entry, Grace abandoned his station and rushed to the nodes to get you.
The internal airlock door hadn’t finished its depressurization but Grace was already throwing it open. The sudden rush of cabin air swirled around your helmet. You barely registered it. You were slumped against the bulkhead, your right hand locked onto an emergency handle in a death grip while your left arm hung weightless.
“Oh my god, oh my god, I’ve got you,” Grace lunged into the airlock, his hands trembling so violently he could barely get a purchase on your suit’s latches.
He didn't bother with the full decompression protocol. With a frantic grunt, he popped the seals on your helmet and yanked it free. The sudden rush of cool, recycled ship air hit your sweat-drenched face, but the relief was instantly swallowed by a wave of vertigo. The cabin was spinning.
“Can you talk? A-Are you going to pass out?” Grace’s face was inches from yours, his eyes wide and panicked behind his crooked glasses.
“Don't… don't touch the left sleeve,” you wheezed, your voice a ragged whisper. Every breath felt like inhaling glass. “Just get me… out of the suit.”
“Right. Okay. Carefully. We’re going carefully.”
It was anything but careful. In microgravity, maneuvering a dead-weight human body out of a rigid multi-layered EVA suit was an Olympic sport. Doing it while trying not to jostle a shattered forearm was competing in the finals. Grace worked like a man possessed, unclipping the torso restraints and peeling the heavy material down past your hips, steering entirely clear of your left side.
When your left arm finally slid free of the inner lining, a sharp, ragged gasp tore from your throat. Without the stiff structure of the suit to hold it, the arm deformed — bending at a sickening, unnatural angle between the wrist and the elbow.
Grace let out a small, horrified squeak, the blood draining from his face. “Oh, Jesus. Okay. Don't look at it. Just look at me.”
He grabbed your right hand and draped your good arm over his shoulders, anchoring his arm around your waist to keep you from drifting. “We need to get to the lab. The med bay. Hold onto me, okay? Just hold on.”
The journey through the narrow, cylindrical corridors of the Hail Mary was an exercise in pain. Without gravity to keep you grounded, every movement required momentum. Every shift was an enemy. Grace used his free hand to pull both of your masses along the guide rails, but he wasn’t a trained astronaut; his movements were jerky and frantic.
With every forward lurch, your lower body drifted, and the momentum transmitted straight up your torso to your dangling left arm. The shattered ends of your bones shifted and ground against each other inside your swollen skin.
“Wait—Grace, stop, stop,” you choked out, your eyes squeezing shut as a violent wave of nausea hit you. Your stomach convulsed, and you had to swallow down the bitter taste of bile. If you vomited in zero gravity now, you’d choke on it.
“Stopping! I’m stopping!” Grace slammed his hand onto a handrail, bringing both of you to a sudden, jarring halt.
The abrupt deceleration sent a searing shock of lightning straight up your arm and into your brain. Your vision completely blew out into a roaring haze of grey static. You felt your knees buckle into the empty air, your chin dropping against Grace’s shoulder as you shivered from deep, systemic shock.
“Hey, hey! Stay with me!” Grace’s voice sounded like it was underwater, echoing from the end of a long tunnel. He was panicking, his grip tightening around your waist as he began hauling you forward again, much faster now, his breaths coming in ragged, terrified gapes. “We’re almost there. Come on, don't pass out on me yet. I can't do this by myself!”
You couldn't answer. You could only press your face into the fabric of his jumpsuit. Your right hand clutched his shoulder so hard your fingers cramped, riding out the humming aches as he dragged you through the hatchway of the infirmary. For what it was worth, it felt good to be held. You kept your cheek against Grace's shoulder, relishing in what little relief his presence brought.
“Okay, okay.” Grace set you down on one of the cots. Under the infirmary’s fluorescent lights, the unnatural color your arm was turning became impossible to ignore. He did his best not to look at it as he strapped you down.
Your head lolled as he moved. “Grace,” you called weakly.
His eyes snapped to you. “Yes? Yes? What's wrong? It's gonna be okay, we're gonna fix this, okay? Hang on. I'll fix it, I promise.”
You couldn't even remember why you said his name. You supposed you just wanted to see his face. Dazed and weakened by the deafening pain, you sought comfort in having his attention. At least you weren't alone, you thought. You couldn't imagine going through something like this by yourself.
As the final strap clicked into place, securing you firmly against the cot, a chime sounded overhead. Mary's perfectly modulated voice echoed through the small room.
“Warning. Biometric anomaly detected. Commanding Officer: heart rate: 178 beats per minute. Respiration: elevated. Severe localized trauma identified in upper left extremity.”
“Yeah, no kidding!” Grace yelled at the ceiling, using the back of his arm to wipe a mix of sweat and tears from his face. “Uh… Uh, initialize medical assessment protocol!”
With a heavy hydraulic hiss, a panel in the bulkhead beside the cot slid open. Out glided Armando, the ship's sleek, segmented contraption of aluminum and white polymer, tipped with a precise multi-jointed hand.
Armando didn't have a face, but the way its optical sensors whirred and clicked as they focused on your left arm felt intensely invasive. The robotic hand hovered a mere inch above your swollen, distorted forearm. A thin line of green laser light swept down from your elbow to your wrist, mapping the grotesque S-shape of the fractured bone beneath the skin.
You hissed through your teeth, flinching away even though the machine hadn't actually touched you.
“Assessment complete,” Mary reported. “Displaced compound-adjacent fracture of the left radius and ulna. High risk of compartment syndrome. Radial artery compression detected. Peripheral blood flow to left distal extremity is critical. Immediate manual reduction required to prevent permanent tissue necrosis.”
Grace stared at the diagnostic monitor, his face losing what little color it had left. “Necrosis? No, no, no... Okay, uh, Mary, initiate automated analgesic protocol? Give him the good stuff, knock him out!”
“Request denied,” Mary responded instantly. “Mechanical failure detected in primary intravenous delivery valve. Fluid line pressure: insufficient. Administered dosage of localized analgesic: 0.05 milligrams. Maximum threshold reached for current capacity.”
“What do you mean threshold reached?!” Grace slammed his fist against the medical console. “Override it! Bypass the valve!”
“Grace,” you choked out. “Something's blocking the valve. It's not gonna work till you fix it.”
The infirmary lapsed into a terrifying silence, save for the rhythmic, high-pitched beeping of your spiking heart rate. Armando’s robotic hand retracted slightly, twisting its joints into a waiting posture, as if acknowledging its own inability to fix the mechanical jam.
Grace turned his head to look at you. “Okay, so I'll fix it. I-I'll fix the valve.”
“Fix it later,” you told him. “Right now you have to activate the centrifuge. We need gravity for the rest of the infirmary to be operational. C-Can you do that for me?”
Grace nodded. He asked you to stay still, then he was gone.
Grace had been out of your sight for no more than two minutes, but it was hard to gauge time with how incessantly your arm was burning. It felt like forever. It felt like he'd never return. You breathed shallowly in your cot as you stared up at the ceiling and did your best to stay conscious.
Then, the world shifted. You held your breath, thinking it was another wave of vertigo. But then your hair fell over your face and you realized that gravity was making a cautious return. Up and down were re-established in a slow, careful descent.
It felt good to be oriented, but worse to feel pressure against your broken arm. You let out a strangled, breathless cry, your right hand instantly locking onto the metal frame of the cot as the extra weight crushed you into the mattress. Your vision, already swimming with static, began to fade into darkness.
“I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Grace yelled, stumbling as his own feet slammed into the newly formed floor. He nearly ran into your bed upon his return. His glasses slid completely off his nose, dangling from one ear. “I did it. Gravity stable. What now?”
“Shit.” You gasped. “Shit, shit, shit.” You inhaled a deep, unhelpful breath. “Grace, you have to set my arm.”
“What?!”
“You do. You have to do it. Armando's not going to with that broken valve. You need to set my arm before he can operate.” You held your good hand out as if to stop him from bolting. “You just — i-it's just one big snap into place, okay? Then I'll pass out, then you can fix the valve.”
“You're insane!”
“I'm out of options, Grace!” You were hyperventilating by then. The monitors next to you were going haywire. “You can do this.”
Grace tugged on his hair. He was going to be sick. “Can't I just fix the valve first?”
“No!” you yelled. He hadn't heard you yell that loud before. “No. Please. Set the arm. I want this over with. It hurts. If you take any longer the injury will be irreparable. You have to do it.”
Grace froze, momentarily shaken by the desperation in your voice. He looked at your face, streaked with sweat, pale with shock, twisted in an agony he doubted he could comprehend. He inhaled a deep, steadying breath. This was the least he could do.
“Okay,” Grace breathed, his voice suddenly losing its frantic pitch. He swiped his dangling glasses off his ear and shoved them into his jumpsuit pocket. He didn’t want a clear view of this. “Okay. I’m going to do it.”
He stepped to the side of the cot, his boots slamming heavily against the floor. He positioned himself over your left arm. Up close, under the harsh infirmary lights, the distortion was stomach-turning. The sharp, jagged edge of the radius was pushing so hard against the underside of your skin that the tissue was white and bloodless, a mere breath away from tearing through.
“Hold onto the rail with your right hand,” Grace commanded, hands hovering over you. “Don't let go. Don’t move.”
You locked your right fingers around the cold titanium frame of the medical bed. You closed your eyes, squeezing so hard your face creased. You took one last ragged breath. “Do it.”
Grace didn't give you a countdown. He knew if he paused, he’d lose his nerve.
He clamped his left hand firmly just above your elbow, pinning your upper arm against the mattress to anchor it against the crushing centripetal force. With his right hand, he gripped your wrist, his fingers locking tightly over your cold, purple-tinged skin. Then, with a guttural grunt of exertion, Grace leaned his entire body weight backward, pulling your wrist down and away from your shoulder with everything he had.
The universe fractured.
An ungodly wet grinding screech echoed within the flesh of your arm as the overlapping, shattered ends of the radius and ulna were forcefully dragged back past one another. The sharp shards of bone plowed through muscle and fascia. A raw, piercing scream tore from your throat, a sound of pure, unadulterated torment that vibrated through the metal frame of the bed. Your spine violently arched off the cot, fighting against the padded restraint straps as every nerve ending in your upper body flared into a blinding nova of pain.
To Grace’s horror, the job didn’t end there. He felt the horrific, structural resistance of the bones, and with one final, agonizing heave, he gave the wrist a sharp, aligning twist.
SNAP.
A heavy, sickening thud reverberated through your arm as the two main shafts of the bone finally slid back into their parallel tracks. Instantly, the pressure on the radial artery released, and a hot, throbbing rush of restricted blood surged back into your fingertips.
At the exact same moment, the automated splint on the counter sensed the alignment. With a sharp hydraulic click, it shot forward, wrapping around your forearm and clamping down to lock the newly straightened limb into place.
But you didn't feel the splint. The overload to your nervous system was too much. Your eyes rolled back, your grip on the metal rail went completely slack, and your head fell heavily to the side. The world mercifully went black, plunging you into deep, silent unconsciousness.
On the monitor, your heart rate plummeted from its frantic peak, settling into a steady thumping.
Grace let go of your wrist, stumbling backward until his back hit a wall. He slumped down against it, sliding to the floor, his chest heaving as he stared at his trembling, sweat-slicked hands. He was hyperventilating, crying, tugging on his hair again. He wanted to throw up. But he also wanted to be sure you were alright.
Above him, Mary’s voice chimed with a serene indifference. “Vascular occlusion resolved. Distal blood flow restored to 100%. Bone alignment within acceptable parameters.”
Grace sat there for a moment longer, timing his breaths to the steady beeping of your heart rate.
“Right,” he choked out, aggressively wiping his cheeks as he forced himself back up. “Not done.”
Compared to the horror of setting your bones with his bare hands, fixing the valve was a walk in the park. Mary had been there to guide the repair, and soon enough the rest of the medical systems were operational. More hands protruded from the cot. They snipped your shirt off and injected you with needles and tubes. Armando wore an oxygen mask over your peaceful face. They whirred and hummed and then a scalpel was slicing through your skin.
Grace did not do well with blood. Back on Earth, he felt dizzy at the sight of a drop. But he could not look away from you. He held himself as he stood over your unconscious body and watched as mechanical arms operated on yours. He didn’t leave until the process was done. It had taken hours, and the balls of his feet had ached and numbed, but he wasn’t satisfied until he had confirmation that you were stable.
When the tension finally bled out of him, it hit his knees first. Grace sank straight into the floor, head dropping to his hands. He cried into the ground and stayed there until he could cry no longer. His lungs burned with a weariness that felt heavier than any force the ship could pull.
He didn’t think about going back to his quarters. Instead he dragged his blanket and pillow from his bed and pulled them through the corridors, clumsy in his exhaustion. He laid them out on the floor beside your cot and collapsed there. He wedged himself into the tight gap between your bed and the diagnostic console. The space was cramped and ridiculous for a man of his size, but it was the only place he could bear to be.
Lying there on his side, his cheek pressed against the rough fabric of his pillow, he stared up at the underside of your cot. The position was devastatingly familiar.
It brought him right back to those terrifying first weeks. The fog of his amnesia had been so thick and suffocating, and you had been nothing more than a stranger with a stable heartbeat on a monitor. He remembered watching you until his eyes could no longer do so. Now, he would do it again. He would wait for you to wake up no matter how long it took.
The hours blurred into a disjointed montage of isolation.
Grace lost track of the ship's artificial day-and-night cycles. He lived in the increments between your medical readouts. Every three hours, the overhead console would hum, cycling a fresh dosage of targeted analgesics into your IV line. Grace would instantly sit up at the sound, his eyes scanning the data, verifying the diagnostics and checking your skin temperature before allowing his head to drop back onto his pillow.
He tried to pass the time. He brought your navy moleskine notebook into the bay, holding it under the dim tertiary lights. He traced the crude, jagged diagrams of Astrophage membranes and Petrova formulas he had scrawled just days before. He filled the empty margins with frantic sketches and lists — anything to keep his brain moving. But the science felt flat, and the math was useless. He felt as though the universe’s worth had shrunken down to the hitching breaths of the man on the bed next to him.
He ate his space ramen cold, sitting on the floor with his knees pulled up to his chest, his eyes never leaving your resting profile. The plastic mask obscured the lower half of your face, fogging slightly with every exhale you took.
The twenty-two hours of orbital settling had long since passed. Outside, Tau Ceti held the Hail Mary firmly in its gravitational grip, spinning the ship through the silent, perfect curve of its new home.
It was late.
The world outside was dark, and cold, but the lab was warm and lit by the steady hum of monitors.
A desk lamp cast long shadows across the tiled floor.
There was so much work to be done and so little time to do it.
The edges of the room were washed out like an overexposed photograph, but the feeling in your chest was heavy and whole. You were focused on a task, hunched over a surface, pen in hand, scrawling something down into your familiar navy-colored notebook.
Something was distracting you.
Someone was distracting you.
Everything sounded far away, but you could hear the unmistakable cadence of Ryland’s voice. He sounded lighter — softer. He had nothing to be afraid of here.
Since when did you call him Ryland?
Hands.
Fingertips.
You could feel him breathing on the back of your neck. You could hear the smile in his words.
That's enough for tonight, Captain.
How annoying. Couldn't he see that you were busy?
Stay on your side of the lab, Grace.
Slowly, deliberately, the tips of his fingers trailed an agonizingly gentle line up the sleeve of your shirt, tracing the curve of your bicep, sending a wave of electric heat straight to your spine.
You snapped. With a low laugh bubbling in your throat, you dropped the pen.
You caught his wrists and surged forward, using your weight to pin Ryland back against the edge of his desk.
A pile of folders shifted beneath him, but neither of you cared. He let out a breathless, triumphant gasp, his hands instantly wrapping around your neck to pull you down.
A kiss.
Warm.
Familiar.
Secret.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep…
Your eyelids felt like lead.
You moved your good hand first, fingers twitching against a rough but thin sheet. The sensation of friction jarred your brain further into consciousness. A dull throbbing ache pulsed in your left arm, muted and distant under a heavy blanket of narcotics.
Slowly, your eyes blinked open.
You felt good, all things considered. You were sure you had the morphine to thank. The ceiling of the medical bay took shape above you. You sluggishly turned your head. The plastic straps of the oxygen mask shifted against your cheek. Your arm felt like a distant object. Curious, you commanded the limb to move. It rose with a heavy reluctance, floating up into your line of sight. You blinked, attempting to draw your swimming vision into focus. Your forearm was encased in a thick, rigid medical cast. It locked the limb straight, while your exposed fingertips looked slightly pale against the stark white bandages.
You felt good. Wait, you thought that already. Boy, those meds sure were working.
You sat up, tugging the oxygen mask from your face.
Grace was on you in a millisecond. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! What do you think you’re doing? Lay back down!” his hands were on your shoulders before your head could even clear the pillow.
“Narcotics,” you mumbled, your voice sounding like it had been dragged through gravel. The oxygen mask was dangling uselessly around your neck, puffing a gentle hiss against your collarbone. You had a dazed look in your half-lidded eyes. “These are. Good. You should try.”
“Okay, that’s nice. Please lay back down.” Grace was crying again. His warm eyes glistened with tears.
You reached your good hand out to touch his cheek.
“I’m so glad you’re awake,” he whispered. Despite his emotional state, he was still making sure you weren’t hurting yourself. He let you sit up, but kept a close eye on the needles and thin tubes that poked out of your skin.
“I’m fine,” you insisted. To prove your point, you craned your neck, which triggered your vision into a slow, dizzying spin. Your hand shifted on Grace’s face, thumb clumsily catching the edge of his crooked glasses and shoving them further up his nose.
“Don't move, just—please, don’t move,” he begged. He didn't pull away from your hand on his cheek. If anything, he leaned into the touch, verifying that you were actually warm; actually alive.
“It'll take more than just a couple of rocks to keep me down,” you slurred. “How long was I out?”
“Three days,” Grace muttered. The answer broke out of him like a sob.
The resistance in his posture completely collapsed. His forehead dropped against your mattress, landing next to your good arm. His fingers slid down from your shoulder to lock tightly over your right hand. His shoulders shook as the last 72 hours of terror finally gave way to a wave of relief. His tears soaked wet circles into the sterile sheet of your bed.
“You did good,” you muttered.
You ran your functioning fingers through his hair, petting his messy oil-slicked curls. You didn’t know what else to do to comfort him. The sight of him so thoroughly broken by the thought of losing you was doing funny aching things to your chest. These, the painkillers couldn't numb.
“You’re a terrible patient,” he mumbled into the mattress. “An absolutely terrible patient.”
You hummed out a laugh.
His hand blindly reached for yours. When he found it, he didn’t let go. He squeezed every time his chest hitched with another shuddering breath. He stayed like that for a long time, letting the weight of the universe bleed out of him onto the edge of your cot.
“C’mere,” you said. You shifted your torso to the side, wincing slightly as the automated splint on your left arm gave a tiny, protective whir to adjust for the movement. You tugged at your blankets with your right hand. You made space for him on the bed; which was hardly any space at all.
Grace lifted his head from the sheets, staring at you, bewildered. His eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. “What?”
“Lay with me.”
He looked at the tiny gap of mattress you’d cleared. “What?” he repeated.
“C’mon, Grace,” you slurred, your eyelids drooping as another wave of warm drowsiness rolled over your brain. You gave his hand a clumsy, insistent tug. “Who’s gonna fuckin’ see? Lay with me here — I’m cold.”
He could’ve gotten you another blanket. But he had to be numb to reject the offer to be held. Tired and sleepless himself, Grace crawled into your cot. He was hesitant and careful not to touch your broken arm, but he was also embarrassed at how little convincing it had taken him to lie down next to you.
The rest was automatic. Grace somehow knew that he laid with his back to your chest, and you somehow knew that your good arm went over his waist. Your chin rested above his head. The mattress was entirely too small for the both of you, but it was impossible to feel uncomfortable when the warmth of another body was there to cushion your every ache.
You slotted against each other like you'd done it a hundred times before. Grace was too exhausted to have realized this. And before he knew it, he felt himself drifting closer to proper slumber.
“How did you figure out how to activate the centrifuge?” Your voice had gone low and sleepy. It made Grace’s stomach flip.
“It just came to me,” he whispered.
You smiled. “That’s good.”
“I did this to you,” he muttered, now loopy from his own sleep depravity. His fingertips traced idle shapes on your good arm. “I didn't watch the monitors. I should've been able to tell you there was incoming debris.”
“Wrong.” You nuzzled into his hair. “The Petrova scope wasn’t the only thing damaged. The housing sits right over the main radar antenna — the ship’s main computer couldn't see the debris because the broken scope was blocking its eyes.”
You felt Grace curl into himself.
“Mary couldn't have known,” you insisted. “The radar itself was broken. Didn’t even transmit to my suit. You didn't mess up. You gave me four seconds of warning in a total blind spot. If you hadn't been there, I’d be dead.”
Grace went entirely still against you.
“You saved my life,” you whispered, your eyelids feeling heavier by the second. The morphine was pulling you back under. “Don't do it again. Bad for your heart.”
A tiny, breathless huff of a laugh shook Grace’s chest.
Grace drifted the rest of the way down until his cheek was against your pillow. His breathing fell into a slow rhythm, matching the steady beeping of your heart monitor. One of his hands remained loosely tangled in your right fingers. You were a protective dead-weight anchor that kept you both pinned to the bed.
The medical bay faded around the edges. The harsh fluorescent lights dimmed in your consciousness, replaced by a thick, safe silence. You didn't think about the four light-years you had traveled, or the memories yet to return, or the dying suns, or the extent of your new injury, or the difficulty it would add to succeeding in your mission. You held onto the warm man beside you and let the momentum of the Hail Mary carry you both into a deep dreamless sleep.
Summary: The entire school knew how close you and Ryland Grace had become since you'd joined Grover Cleveland Middle's staff a year prior. That knowledge only fueled the rumor mill, that one that ran between the staff and students alike, on just how close the two of you were. It didn't help that you were definitely head over heels for the slightly awkward and endearing science teacher.
Warnings: pre-Project Hail Mary and should not include spoilers but caution anyways just in case, pre-movie storyline, tooth-rotting fluff, idiots in love, workplace romance, friends to lovers, slightly suggestive-ish comments but no smut, female reader but no characteristics described, definitely some incorrect science information but I am not a scientist so apologies, I am also not a teacher so I am sorry for any inaccuracies there lol, lightly edited so apologies for any mistakes
“Can anyone tell me why it was that Penelope asked her suitors to string Odysseus’s bow?”
The silence that followed was deafening. Your eyes shut for half a second, a tiny sigh escaping through your lips. Reopening your eyes, not a single one of your students had dared to raise their hands. No one except for Olivia, your star student, who waved her hand repeatedly in the air from the back of the classroom. A single glance to the clock told you all you needed to know.
11:55. These kids were already in lunch mode, and there was zero way you were getting them to listen to you.
With a sigh and a wave of your hand, you gave Olivia the okay to answer the question. She happily took your permission and ran with it, always the first to answer any questions you posed in class. If only the rest of these damn middle schoolers were as eager as she was.
“Penelope didn’t want to marry anyone else, so she gave them an impossible task,”
“Why does she always know everything?”
Marcus thought his comment was whispered just low enough that you wouldn’t hear him in the first row, but he was never quite that lucky. He quickly shut his mouth and looked anywhere but in your direction the second he caught sight of the disapproving look you were casting directly at him.
“You are exactly right, Olivia. Thank you for answering my question,” there were a few chuckles in the room at the obvious sarcasm laced through your words, as you hopped up onto your desk to relax and get a better look around the room full of kids. “Penelope knew the only person that could string her husband’s bow, was her husband himself. She needed to buy time, especially when these suitors only really wanted to be the ones to inherit Ithaca-”
There was a loud knocking on the door to your classroom that had been left open for the last 20 minutes of class, interrupting your words. You weren’t surprised in the slightest to meet the eyes of none other than Ryland Grace, the science teacher.
“Uh- sorry! Didn’t mean to interrupt important book talk stuff. Super important, you uh-you never know when Shakespeare will come up at your future desk job,” the cringe that Ryland physically did at his own comment was easy to see, even from across the room. He gave you a sheepish smile, his glasses barely hanging onto his face from their unconventional spot hanging off of one of his ears. The blonde held up the brown bag in his hand, and you could practically smell the food that rested inside. “I’m early, I’m sorry. Didn’t think you’d want to have a cold burger for lunch.”
“I told you!” Marcus still didn’t understand the concept of a whisper, leaning over to his best friend Jason at the desk beside him, slapping him on the arm. “They’re totally dating!”
“As if Mr. Grace could pull her,”
There was a chorus of snickers and laughter through the class, any semblance of order you might’ve had descending into chaos as every single one of your loveable, little shits just kept casting looks between you and Ryland, who still stood awkwardly in your classroom doorway with reddened cheeks.
Your face was surely no better, you were sure you could feel the heat that was emanating off of your skin, as you ran a hand down the burning skin of your face and wondered why you chose to teach these little menaces for the rest of your life. The world decided to be kind to the pair of you though, for once, letting the lunch bell save you from any further embarrassment from a group of 13 year olds.
“Please come to class prepared to actually answer questions tomorrow!” you called out over the hustle and bustle of the class as they grabbed their things, eager to scurry off to their lunch hour and finally eat. “Your unit test is at the end of next week, and I would prefer not to fail all of you.”
They weren’t listening, but by this point in the day you were hungry and didn’t have the energy to try and argue with them.
Any of that tiredness they brought to your bones? It disappeared the second you watched the way they all interacted with Ryland on their way out the door.
Big smiles, every single one of them excited to see the school’s favorite science teacher lingering in the doorway to their English class. You could just barely hear the tail end of one of Ryland’s terrible science puns, something about a hungry planet needing a ‘light snack’ that got a groan out of Marcus. All it did was bring a soft smile to your face, though, one that somehow softened even more at the quick, secret handshake Olivia shared with him before she was out the door.
Then, it was just the two of you, smiling like idiots as you locked eyes across the room again. And god, did you want that fluttering group of butterflies in your stomach to calm down for just a moment.
Having a crush on Dr. Ryland Grace, the former molecular biologist turned San Francisco middle school science teacher, was inevitable from the moment you turned up at the school for your first day over a year ago. Incredibly smart, amazing with kids, and so incredibly handsome you thought your heart stopped beating the first time you saw him–hell, Mrs. Doyle, the math teacher for over 5 years, said there were at least 4 other young teachers that absolutely had crushes on this man. You were far from the first.
He broke that perfect vision of himself you were building in your head within 5 minutes of meeting, tripping over his own two feet and knocking the stack of papers a mile high from the Principal’s hands, but you had only found it even more endearing.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” he apologized again, long legs striding across the room and reaching your desk in a matter of seconds. “I had a free period before this, a-and you mentioned this morning you forgot lunch so I grabbed some for both of us-”
“Sal’s?” you questioned, pointing to the bag of foot now sitting on your desk with the familiar logo. “They’re, like, 10 blocks away. Why’d you go that far?”
“Because I know they’re your favorite,”
The flare of heat in your cheeks was instant. Ryland Grace, who rode a damn bike to the school every day, used his free period to ride 10 blocks away and pick you up lunch from your favorite spot, all because you mentioned offhandedly at 7 a.m. about forgetting your lunch for the day.
Well, he certainly didn’t do that for the four fresh out of college teachers that had crushes on him. You’d mentally consider that a hefty win in your book.
“How sweet of you to remember,” Ryland simply waved you off, head turned away as he passed your wrapped burger into your hands, taking up space on your desk chair while you stayed comfortable on top of your desk. “You even remembered tomatoes this time!”
“I forgot them one time and I never hear the end of it,” laughter was shared between you both for a moment as Grace took a bite of his own burger. “I caught the tail end of that discussion. Olivia answering all your questions like a champ?”
“Isn’t she always,” you shot back with another laugh, turning slightly on your desk to better face him. “I swear she’s the only one that I can ever get to answer any of my questions. She might be the only one that does any of my assigned readings.”
“To be fair, can you blame her?” Ryland’s words were muffled slightly by the food in his mouth. You couldn’t even contain the slight smile that grew as he managed to just barely catch the ketchup dripping off his burger before it could smear itself on the stack of papers that needed graded at your desk. “Shakespeare was just…so interesting. Couldn’t get enough of his stuff. Don’t know why your kids don’t want to read it.”
There was silence for a moment, your eyebrow quirked in his direction. The blonde stopped mid bite of his burger, looking back at you quizzically, trying to figure out what he had said wrong.
“You know we’re currently learning The Odyssey, right?”
“Yes?”
“I’ll let you think about that for a second,”
He did, just slowly blinking in your direction. He glanced at the chalkboard behind you, covering in little notes you’d made throughout the class discussion, before they flickered to the copy of the book that sat on your desk. That was finally when you saw the light bulb flicker on above his head, Ryland’s eyes shutting as he let out a loud sigh.
“...that wasn’t written by Shakespeare, was it?”
The laughter that bubbled out of you practically had you throwing your head backward.
“No, but I’m sure Homer won’t be too offended,” feet landing on the ground as you hopped off your desk, you gave Ryland’s shoulder a quick squeeze as you moved past him. “The attempt was cute, though, it was a good try.”
Cute. Why in the world did you let that one slip? You were practically cursing yourself in your head for that one, taking another bite of your burger as you worked to erase the whiteboard to prepare it for your next class. You didn’t dare steal a glance over at Ryland, in fear that your little slip-up was going to ruin everything.
There was only quiet for a moment before the single moment of awkwardness was gone.
“I promise you I know Homer wrote that. I swear!”
The desperation to believe him drew another laugh out of you. Sparing a glance in his direction, Ryland was giving you his best, exaggerated puppy dog eyes, begging you to believe him, as a smile just barely squeaked its way onto his lips.
“Right, of course you did. My mistake. Whatever you say, Ryland-”
“I mean it!” It was his turn to laugh this time, a sound that had those butterflies rattling around once more. “I was just…distracted.”
“Uh-huh, distracted,” as if you were preparing to scold one of your students, you turned to face him fully with a hand on your hip, eyebrow raised expectantly. “By what, exactly?”
If a human being could buffer, Ryland Grace always seemed to be constantly buffering. Your eyebrow remained raised, waiting for him to piece together his response. All he could do was open and close his mouth like a fish, before looking away and taking another bite of his food.
“Nevermind that, just finish your food before it gets cold. I did bike, like, three miles to get that thing,”
With a roll of your eyes that held zero malice what-so-ever, you made sure the blonde could see your next bite of your food, a satisfied smile on his face.
“Back to the previous topic,” you steered the conversation in another direction, wiping off the last bits of chalk on the board and writing down your next period at the top so that you could start the discussion on the reading over again. “I don’t understand why it’s so hard to get some of these kids to just read the content. They all pay attention in your class!”
“I heard Jason make a comment yesterday during class that Marcus has a crush on Olivia. Maybe they’re too distracted to read,”
You shot him a skeptical look.
“Marcus, crushing on Olivia? He was just making fun of her before you came in the room,”
Ryland averted his eyes, suddenly very interested in his ID badge hanging around his neck from his school issues lanyard.
“W-well, maybe he just doesn’t…know how to express his feelings,” he spared a glance up at you, seeing you were still watching, as he tripped over his words again. “It can be hard for boys–and men–of all ages, to…tell someone how they feel.”
“Well, I don’t know where he’s learning from, but making fun of the girl you like isn’t the right way to go about things,” you shot back.
“Then teach them!” Ryland sounded absolutely ecstatic, that light bulb over his head going off again as he looked like he’d come up with the world’s greatest idea. “Classic literature, there’s plenty of great love stories in there. Get his interest by teaching them about that, so he can learn from them.”
“Alright, give me an example then, Mr. Suddenly an Expert in Classic Literature,”
“Romeo and Juliet,” he said like it was the easiest thing in the world, balling up the remnants of his finished food and tossing it in the bag it came in. “Greatest love story ever told, so great Taylor Swift wrote a song about them.”
“Except they don’t run off and get married and live happily ever after, Ryland. Romeo thinks she is dead and kills himself with poison, and when Juliet realizes he’s dead she stabs herself,”
Ryland’s excitement fell slightly, his mouth forming a little ‘o’ shape.
“...oh,”
“Don’t think that’s what I want to teach young, impressionable pre-teens about love-”
“Daisy and Gatsby, then! He loved her so much he stood on that dock staring at the-the bright yellow light of a stoplight for her,”
“It was a green light and it was the dock light, first of all. I’m not even sure how you could be that off. Secondly, Gatsby is murdered at the end of the book and Daisy doesn’t even attend the funeral, she and Tom move away and pretend it never happened,”
Ryland’s eyes are shut at this point, his fingers massaging his temples and those glasses just barely hanging on from their place around his neck.
“...does anyone not die in these old books?”
The sound of your laughter permeates the room and you sweep over, collecting his trash and combining it with yours. You never even spared him a glance, though you could feel his eyes on you, as you swept the trash away with you to the other side of the room, his voice echoing across to you.
“I’m going to get lucky on one of these guesses!”
What Ryland Grace was really lucky about was how adorable you found him, and how head over heels you were for him, because his lack of literary knowledge was astounding.
❤︎
“I’m sorry, you’re trying to tell me that aren’t currently fucking the eye candy that is the science teacher in room 305?”
“Evelyn!”
Evelyn Doyle was in her late thirties, married since she was 18, and already had three kids with her high school sweetheart. Since you had transferred into Grover Cleveland Middle, you’d become fast friends and she had become a great mentor.
She had, sadly, caught onto your pathetic crush on Ryland Grace before you had even fully realized it, and was now ‘vicariously living through you’ as she always said.
“There’s not a single child left in this entire school right now,” she shot back, gesturing around her empty classroom, as she finished cleaning up anything her students had left around at the end of the day. You rolled your eyes at her excuse, perched on the edge of her desk. “Please, I’m tenured, what are they going to do?”
“I’m more so yelling at you for butting into my love life, once again,” was your reply through laughter. “Ryland and I are good friends, that’s it.”
It was her turn to laugh, finishing up her cleanup around the room before she joined you at her desk, packing her things away into her shoulder bag.
“Oh please, you keep denying that little crush of yours-”
“I never said I was denying that,” you cut her off. “Lord, you realized I liked him before I even did. But he and I aren’t anything besides friends. I’m not lying.”
Your pleas fell on deaf ears, like they typically did when you were around Evelyn. She simply waved your statement off, tossing her bag over her shoulder as you followed her out of her room and down through the quiet of the school hallway. The quietest the hallway ever was, in the hours right after students were sent home for the day. You’d rather be anywhere else, preferably at home, but these mandatory once-a-month staff meetings were unavoidable.
“Whether you’re telling me the truth or not, you have to understand why everyone thinks so–teachers AND students. I think even some parents think so!” The only response she got was an eyeroll, her shoulder bumping into your’s playfully. “He brings you lunch at least once a week, meaning he rides that dingy bike to get whatever you’re craving that day.”
“It’s usually just something random-”
“Constantly in your classroom, or vice versa,” she cut you off, and you quickly realized you weren’t getting a single word into this conversation. “I’m pretty sure Principal Marshall has considered, somehow, moving your classroom closer to his just so he’ll stop being late to classes because he’s busy talking to you.”
Okay…yeah, you didn’t have a retort for that one. Your classroom was on the opposite end of the school building from Ryland’s own, and yet every time he had even a split second he was somehow always leaning in your doorway. Even if it only resulted in a conversation that lasted all of a minute.
Many times those ended with your students having to remind him that the bell rang and he definitely had students in his own class unattended, waiting on their teacher. More than once he’d slipped as he tried to sprint back to his classroom from yours. It didn’t matter how short those little conversations were, though, because every second around him was precious to you.
“Awe, look at you blushing about it-”
You slapped Evelyn’s hand away, throwing her a look of disdain that didn’t really hold any true malice to it.
“Look, all I’m saying is the ball is in his court,” was the response you finally settled on as Evelyn propped the door of the small auditorium open for you to enter. “Ryland is nothing but friendly to me, so if he’s interested then he’s got to show me.”
“You’re acting as if you’ve made your own feelings clear, honey,”
“No, but I clearly don’t do a good enough job of hiding them,”
Speak of the devil: there he was. Ryland’s head shot up the moment the pair of you walked into the auditorium. Those damn glasses hanging down from one side of his face, framing his stubbled jawline perfectly. A smile lighting up his face the second those blue eyes found yours, gesturing to the empty seat beside him.
A packed auditorium, as you and Evelyn were the last ones there. Every seat up practically filled, and yet Ryland Grace sat among a crowd of people, eyes trained on you and a single seat saved for you amidst it all.
All you could feel was the heat in your cheeks, and the touch of Evelyn patting your back as she laughed, voice low but loud enough to hear as she shifted past you to find a seat of her own.
“Doesn’t have interest in you my ass,”
Her words swam through your head with every apology you muttered to the other teachers as you snuck past them in the cramped rows, happily taking the empty seat beside Ryland.
“You didn’t have to save me a seat, you know,” your voice held a hint of teasing to it, but it was soft. Filled with an adoration that you knew you were terrible at hiding. Luckily, Ryland was terrible at picking up on it.
“Wanted to sit next to you,” he whispered back as Principal Marshall began to drone on about updates neither of you particularly cared about. He leaned in close, a hint of his breath wafting over the shell of your ear as he spoke. “You make these slightly less boring.”
Close proximity to this man was your worst nightmare, and the cramped auditorium wasn’t helping. That single touch of his breath against your skin was enough to send a simultaneous shiver down your spine and another round of heat to your cheeks. His suit jacket covered arm rested on the shared armrest between your seats, the edge of his bicep ghosting against the bare skin of your arm with every little shift he made, tapping incessantly against the armrest.
The slight action made you smile. He never could sit still in these meetings, always hated them.
“Did anything fun happen in class today?” you kept your voice low, eyes trained on the principal, as your head tilted slightly over to Ryland so he could better hear you.
“Uh, if you count Madison telling me that she thinks the sun orbits the earth, then sure,” you had to stifle your laugh at that, casting Ryland a side glance as he grinned at you, doing a terrible job of whispering back at you as usual.
“How could she possibly think that?”
“You’d be surprised,” Ryland leaned just a tad bit closer, the side of his arm pushed up fully against your own. You could almost hear the smile in his voice without even having to look over at him. “The National Science Foundation estimates that 26% of Americans still think the sun orbits the earth.”
“Jesus, that many?”
“Well, 100% of them are stupid, so,”
Nasty looks from other faculty were shot your way that second you choked on your own breath, slapping a hand over your mouth in an attempt to stop yourself from breaking out into uncontrollable laughter. You gave them the most sympathetic look you possibly could, learning how to breathe normally again before mouthing sorry at them all.
Ryland didn’t care in the slightest for the warning look you shot him, a bright smile on his face as his eyes seemed to trail over every inch of your face.
“If you keep doing this in every faculty meeting, they’re going to separate us, Ry,”
“I met Madison’s parents for the first time last month for parent-teacher conferences,” he continued, ignoring your plea. Instead, he leaned in even closer, eyes locked on yours, and god it was impossible to look away. “They are, 100%, undeniably, part of the Flat Earth Truthers Club.”
You shook your head, a smile creeping back up on your lips. Ryland’s gaze could still be felt on the side of your face as you turned back to face the front, eyes focused back on the principal again in an attempt to pay attention to the meeting.
“Flat earthers are ridiculous. They’re just scared of science,”
“Well, you know what they say…the only thing they have to fear is sphere itself,”
There simply wasn’t enough time to clap your hand over your mouth and conceal your laughter, a split second of it breaking through the quiet of the auditorium. And Ryland? His smile was somehow even brighter than it was before, still locked onto your face, never having strayed once.
“Dr. Grace, is there something you feel needs to be shared with the rest of your fellow faculty?”
Principal Marshall’s voice was enough to knock Ryland out of whatever trance he seemed to have put himself in. Eyes wide as if he’d just seen a ghost, hands barely able to catch his glasses as they almost fell right off of his ear where they dangled, a burst of red spread through his cheeks instantly as his deer-like eyes locked onto the unamused principal.
“I-I uh, no. No, nothing, Principal Marshall,” he scratched at the back of his head, ruffling up his already messy hair, a nervous tick you’d picked up since the moment you’d met him. You simply buried your head in your head, eyes trained on your shoes and Ryland out of the corner of your gaze, terrified to look up at your fellow faculty that you’d already apologized to once. “Just getting super jazzed about faculty updates. Hard to keep it in here. I’m like a mushroom, getting all…hyphae…”
A collective groan sounded through the auditorium at the terrible biology pun that rolled off of him with ease. All you could do was smile into the palm of your hand.
“Please just…pay attention to the meeting, Dr. Grace, before I separate you and your other half,”
Other half. That’s not how she meant it, but it was impossible not to let your mind wander to the idea.
Early mornings. Coffee, the smell of eggs and toast burning in the kitchen. Ryland and his hair that was surely even more unkempt that early in the day. The guarantee that he definitely had about 120 science puns ready to go at any moment.
Late nights. Curled up on a couch. A movie, a shared blanket, warm in the embrace of his arms. The quiet of just being with someone that made you happy in ways you’d never felt before. The promise of another day with them on the horizon.
It was becoming increasingly harder not to think about Ryland Grace like that every day, of what a life with the awkward, endearing science teacher could be.
And as Principal Marshall continued her meeting, and your eyes met the blue ones that were already looking at you: soft, kind, a hint of something you couldn’t understand in them, you could only dream he thought the same thoughts when he looked at you.
❤︎
“Alright, who can tell me the day of the first human space flight?”
Not a single middle schooler, packed into the building’s planetarium, raised their hands at first. Many of them started whispering to each other, confused looks on their faces, but Ryland just waited with a smile on his face. A brave soldier from Mr. Harkin’s class, Damien, finally raised his hand.
“Uh, Mr. Grace? Wouldn’t that…be today?”
“Excatly!” Grace’s clap echoed through the room as he pointed toward the young kid sitting in the front row of seats. “International Day of Human Space Flight, commemorating the first human space flight by Yuri Gagarin. It was a trick question, and you passed my tiny friend.”
Were you excited about losing a chunk of your day to escorting your class to the planetarium, along with other classes in the building, for a special science presentation? Absolutely not, especially not with how terribly your class did on their last The Odyssey assignment.
When you found out that Ryland was giving the presentation during your allotted time? Suddenly, The Odyssey meant nothing to you. Not when you could watch Ryland teach, something he did so effortlessly.
The way he captured every single child’s attention with ease. That glowing smile on his face every time they answered a question right, and simply the way he seemed to love what he taught. You were captivated every time you got the chance to see him teaching the thing he loved so much.
“Yuri Gagarin was a Soviet cosmonaut who became the first person in space in 1961 aboard the Vostok 1,” the planetarium was lit up with the night sky, little stars reflecting down. You could almost see them in the students eyes, in their bright smiles as they looked up into the vastness of space. Your eyes trailed to Ryland, already looking at you with a soft smile of his own, before he cleared his throat and moved throughout the room, focusing back on the kids. “Over the course of 89 minutes, his ship traveled to a maximum altitude of 187 miles, as it orbited the Earth.”
“Wait, so we weren’t the first people in space?” one of your students, Lydia, called out. Ryland laughed, pointing over at her.
“No, we kind of sucked,” you rolled your eyes with a grin at Ryland’s statement, though it drew a laugh from all of the kids. “No, America had actually scheduled its first space flight for May 1961, so this was a huge blow to us. It really heated up the space race.”
“He really is good with them, isn’t he?”
Glancing over, Mr. Harkin had saddled up beside you on the edge of the room, head tilted toward you and voice low so as to not disrupt the lesson the kids were being taught. Your gaze drifted back to Ryland as he continued his lesson, eliciting more laughter from the kids. It only brought another soft smile to rest on your lips.
“He is, in a way that I just don’t understand,”
Those blue eyes you’d become so fond of met yours for a moment across the room, face illuminated by the light projecting onto the planetarium’s dome walls. The little grin he wore seemed to drop just slightly, gaze still locked on you but flickering every moment over to Mr. Harkin as he spoke to the students. Harkin’s elbow dug lightly into your side.
“Careful, you’re giving him major ‘heart eyes’ across the room right now,”
You did your best to conceal your laughter, shooting Harkin a look, Ryland’s gaze still felt on the side of your face even as you looked away.
“Why do I feel like I’m about to find out that every teacher in this school has a secret betting ring going on when it comes to Ryland and I?”
“I mean, it’s not a secret. Principal Marshall runs the damn thing,”
“Mr. Grace?” one of the youngest girls in the grade, Aurora, called out, raising her hand up to get Ryland’s attention. “My mom told me the other day that there’s 8 planets in our solar system. What happened to Pluto?”
Ryland went to answer when Mr. Harkin beside you laughed, capturing the attention of everyone in the room, as he shook his head at his young student.
“No, honey, scientists a couple years ago decided that Pluto wasn’t a planet anymore,”
Your eyes flickered to Ryland, who was already staring at Harkin from across the room as he tossed his little crochet earth back and forth in his hand. His response was a bit of a forced laugh.
“Well, your teacher isn’t wrong. Scientists classified Pluto as a dwarf planet a couple years ago,” he explained to the kids, eyes trained on the little crochet sphere in his hands. “But there’s 8 other very important, even closer planets that we should focus on. I mean, who really cares about a tiny, slow planet that takes 248 years to orbit the sun–honestly, he should just accept that he’s slowly falling into obscurity and stop trying to steal the spotlight.”
The room got quiet. Your eyebrow raised slightly, head tilted, as everyone just seemed to stare at Ryland, who had yet to look up.
“Uh, Mr. Grace?” some student in the back called out. “Why did you call Pluto ‘he’? Are the planets boys and girls like us, too?”
Ryland’s head shot up, as if he suddenly remembered he was in a room full of students. His eyes shot to you, his mouth opening, then closing, before he quickly looked away.
“I–well…planets don’t really…I’m not trying to misgender the planets, you know? That’s not for me to decide, that’s for them to–you know what, does anyone else have any other questions that aren’t related to Pluto?”
You really didn’t want to laugh at Ryland, but only he would be able to accidentally turn a lesson about space and planets into almost a lesson on bodily autonomy. He caught your eye, his widening just slightly and you could almost see his cry for help written across his face, but it only made your laughter worse.
It was little Madison that raised her hand next, speaking before she’d even been called upon.
“Are you sure the Earth isn’t the center of the universe?”
Ryland hung his head in shame, the shaking of his head evident from across the room as a few of the kids around laughed at the young girl’s comment. You were quick to shoot them a warning look, not keen to hand out any detentions today.
By the time your gaze turned back to Ryland, he was already looking at you. His gaze flickered to Harkin, then back to you, and it was like a light bulb had just flickered on the way his eyes lit up.
“Yes, Madison, I’m sure the Earth isn’t the center of the universe. And I can show you,” his long legs crossed the room in seconds, his body sliding between you and Mr. Harkin as his hands landed on your shoulders with a tiny little squeeze that sent your heart leaping through your chest. “But to do that, I’m going to need this volunteer that I’m not quite giving a choice.”
“It’s not volunteering if you didn’t ask, Ry!”
You exasperatedly tried to whisper to Ryland as he steered you across the room to stand before all the kids. He only shook his head as a bunch of your own students started cheering for you around the room, only worsening the red that coated your cheeks the second his hands had landed on your body.
“I need you for this,” he shot back hastily, positioning you in the middle of the room, standing in front of you. His body blocked the students from your vision, blue eyes boring down into yours, hands gently squeezing at your upper arms as you begged the blush in your skin to not be too obvious. “You trust me?”
A ridiculous question, because the only answer was yes. You gave him a nod, and Ryland’s smile only widened as he turned back to the kids in the room.
“Alright, kids. Your gorgeous teacher here is the Sun,”
Little oohs and awes sounded from the kids around the room at Ryland’s little slip in of the word ‘gorgeous.’ There was a sting in your bottom lip as you bit into it with your teeth, trying to contain your own smile. Marcus spoke up from across the room without raising his hand, as usual.
“Then what’s Mr. Harkin?”
“Oh, he’s Pluto,” Ryland shot back immediately, nodding his head. “Suits him.”
Laughter rang through the room, the young boys as rambunctious as ever. Ryland met your astonished look with a tiny wink of his own, one that forced a small laugh to tumble from your lips. Then, he began to slowly spin, walking around you in a circle.
“And I am the Earth,” he called out to the kids, and you could only hope he didn’t trip over his own two shoelaces. “The Sun holds 99.8% of the mass in our solar system, which means it’s packing some massive gravity.”
Ryland stopped spinning himself, still moving around you in a circle. He held his hand out toward you, and you slipped yours into it without hesitation, spinning in that circle slowly with him.
“Because the Sun holds such intense gravity, it’s actually pulling Earth into it. But, Earth has such high forward velocity that it actually keeps us moving sideways. Put these two together, and it keeps Earth moving in an almost perfect circle around the sun. Can anyone tell me another fun fact about our movement around the sun?”
The words went in one of your ears and straight out the other. There was no paying attention, not when Ryland’s hand held your own. Soft skin, just slightly rough around the edges, and those blue eyes were so soft, locked onto you as if there was nowhere else he wanted to look.
“Our speed changes!” Olivia called out from somewhere in the back, but you didn’t even try to look and find her. “When we’re closer to the sun in our orbit we move faster, and the further away we are, the slower we move.”
“Very good, Olivia!” Ryland called out, sparing just a quick glance over to the kids in the room as his hand held yours tighter, still spinning slowly together. “Madison, we also know this works because there’s other sun-like stars out there that are also orbited by planets. Like Tau Ceti, which has four Earth-like planets orbiting it.”
“Is the sun important for other things, besides just being the center?”
Ryland’s eyes flickered to you, and you watched as he paused. The slight hesitation on his face, the bobbing of his Adam’s apple for a moment, before those blue eyes locked onto yours and refused to look away.
“I-It is…for a lot of reasons. The Sun is the Earth’s entire reason for existing. The Sun gives the Earth life. The Sun is the reason the world is beautiful,”
Your breath hitched, eyes still trained on Ryland. There was something in his words, something in that earnest, raw look that he had written across his features as he looked at you that added a weight to his words. A weight that sent a tiny chill across your skin, raising the hair on your arms.
“Without the Sun…the Earth would be nothing,”
There was quiet across the room. Then, a couple snickers, followed by Olivia’s smug little voice.
“The Sun sounds beautiful the way you talk about it,”
“She is,” his voice was lower, softer than it was before. Until, he seemed to realize what he said, the red on both of your faces spreading further than before as his eyes shot wide. “THE SUN I mean! I-I’m talking about the sun, obviously, b-because this is a science presentation!”
Laughter rang through the room, little chants of your names mashed together coming from some of the kids as the bell rang and saved either of you from further embarrassment.
Ryland, being Ryland, chose that moment to finally trip over his own two feet. You pulled on his hand as hard as you could, saving him from plummeting to the ground as he instead just landed on his one knee.
“Make good choices,” Ryland commented lowly as some of the kids walked past the two of you, still snickering and giggling to themselves. You let go of his hands finally, simply resting it on his shoulder with a gentle squeeze. “Don’t uh, I don’t know, blow up the world during lunch or anything. Or pop those chip bags and give kids heart attacks, whatever you kids do these days.”
You laughed, stepping around Ryland as your kids lined up outside of the room, waiting for you. He shot you a sheepish smile from the floor, and your skin still burned with heat at the memory of his words as you looked at him.
“Every time I think you’re doing well with those kids, they manage to knock you down a peg,”
“Yeah, well, what’s new?”
When you met your class outside, you didn’t let them get a word in before you warned them not to say anything. You could still hear little comments talking about ‘shipping’ their English and Science teachers the entire way back to your classroom.
❤︎
Ryland Grace didn’t understand how he had ended up here.
Well, he did. Calling the leading scholar in his field a “staggering waste of carbon” at a UNESCO conference in Denmark was an easy way to get blacklisted from the field he’d studied in for many years in college. It was an easy explanation for how he ended up teaching middle school science at Grover Cleveland Middle in San Francisco.
Not that he had a problem with teaching! He actually loved it. Loved his kids, loved talking about science. He loved teaching the future little scientists of the world about why every facet of science was awesome. The pay wasn’t great, though.
Especially when it was the reason he rode a bike to school daily.
And there was currently the equivalent of a monsoon raining down from the sky onto the pavement, the reason he’d been standing at the front doors for the last 20 minutes hoping that the rain would simply let up. The heavens didn’t take pity on him, though, and it only rained harder and harder. His rain coat and bike were not meant to withstand heavy rain and damaging winds to this extent.
Best cast scenario? It takes him a little longer to get home on his usual 20 minute bike ride than normal. Worst case? He crashes and dies, dead in a ditch covered in mud.
“Ryland, please tell me you aren’t thinking of riding your bike home in this?”
Then there was you. You were probably the single greatest reason why he loved teaching at Grover Cleveland Middle. If he ever had the unfortunate chance to meet that scientist from the conference again, he’d thank him this time for being a staggering waste of carbon, because it led him down a path to you.
“I can’t be that bad,” he tried to joke, waving you off as a crack of thunder seemed to shake the entire building, and his fake confidence faltered for a second. He glanced back at you, coat wrapped around your bag instead of yourself in order to keep its contents dry. “Just, you know…the slight threat of bodily harm.”
He really wished the path that led to you was less bumpy and full of himself looking like an idiot, but at this rate he’d take what he could get from the universe.
“Yeah, absolutely not,” was your immediate reply, head shaking as she fished your car keys out of the bag still covered with your coat. “I’m giving you a ride home, can’t risk the best science teacher’s life over a dumb storm.”
Ryland immediately shook his head, turning to face you beside him. He was not letting you risk your own life in the storm for him. If it really came down to it, he’d sleep at his desk. There was a change of clothes he kept in the bottom drawer, it wasn’t the first time he’d had to do it.
“I can’t let you-”
“This isn’t up for discussion,” Ryland snapped his mouth shut as you cut in once again, dangling your car keys up in front of him with a little shake. “I…care about you, okay? I want to know you are home safe.”
There was no stopping the immediate heat that filled Ryland’s cheeks, and he knew it. There was red blooming across your own, but Ryland shook all wishful thinking from his mind. The AC unit in this school was unreliable, you were definitely just flushed from the heat. No other reason.
Ryland decided he wasn’t going to put up a fight at this point, but he wasn’t going to let you do this without anything in return. He shrugged the yellow raincoat hanging over his own shoulders off as he kicked the glass door in front of him open, the muffle sounds of the torrential downpour now louder as droplets of water splashed into the front door. He held the jacket out, hanging it above your head to protect you from the rain.
“At least let me save you from getting drenched,”
“You’re going to look like a dog that just had a bath by the time we reach my car,” Ryland only smiled at your joke, and the little giggle that fell through your lips. The close proximity didn’t help as he held the jacket up around you.
“Actually, it’s not windy today,” he shot back with a grin, nodding out the propped open door into the rain. “That means if we run, I’ll be drier than if we walked, because the rain that’s hitting us from above is proportional to time. Though, the rain hitting us from the front is proportional to distance, and when running-”
“Ryland Grace, you are adorable when you get all science-nerd, but if we’re going to run…we should run,”
Ryland was thankful that you couldn’t see the renewed heat flooding his cheeks, as you were both too busy sprinting through the torrential downpour to the staff parking lot.
Being a gentleman (who was head over heels in love with you and too terrified to say a damn thing) was thrown out the window with how fast you were booking it to your car, the idea of shielding you from the rain with his jacket abandoned after just a moment booking it across the lot. He could feel the coolness of the water settling against his skin as it soaked through every layer of clothing he had, every few seconds having to furiously wipe at his glasses in hopes of seeing through them.
None of it really mattered in the end, not when he heard your laugh. The little shrieks of laughter as a particularly big drop happened to fall right in your eyes. Or the laughter as Ryland managed–in his signature fashion–to slip on the final step into the parking lot, and you had to double back in laughter to help haul him to his feet.
He’s spring clumsily through the rain a thousand more times if he got to see you smile like that. And that is why his kids always told him that he was definitely ‘whipped’ for you. Whatever that meant.
The second you had both jumped into your respective seats of your vehicle, doors slamming shut, there was only a moment of silence between the both of you. Ryland felt like his chest was going to explode, remembering why he always hated gym class, his heavy breathing mixed with yours as you both caught your breath, before you locked eyes over the center console.
Then the laughter resumed.
He held his hand to his stomach, feeling an ache settling in as he couldn’t stop his own laughter. Your’s grew slightly louder in his ear as you leaned over, trying to help him wipe at his glasses that were still covered.
“I was right, you look like a wet dog,”
Ryland’s only response was to shake his soaking wet hair like one, a simple reaction that earned yet another shriek of laughter from you and a light slap to his shoulder. You muttered something unintelligible under your breath, but Ryland found himself unable to tear his gaze away from your lips as you started the car and began to pull out of the staff lot. How soft they looked, the way the little beads of water running down your cheeks fell over them.
Whipped. He still didn’t get it, but he agreed wholeheartedly with his kids at this point.
There was no driving fast in this rain, especially when the windshield wipers were moving at their highest programmed speed and it still wasn’t enough. It was quiet in the car for just a moment as you pulled out of the parking lot, but Ryland broke it the second your phone had connected to the car’s bluetooth, music filling the space between him and you.
Fly me to the moon, let me play among the stars. Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars.
“Frank Sinatra,” Ryland couldn’t help the growing smile on his lips as the familiar song flooded through the car speakers. He kept his eyes trained on the side of your face, watching the little smile grow on your own lips, eyes focused on the road conditions in front of you. “Old books and old music. Didn’t know you had such an old soul.”
“You calling me old, Ryland?”
“N-no!” Ryland immediately back track, hands flying up and shaking back and forth as his eyes went wide. “I might say some stupid stuff some–okay, most of the time–but I know better than to comment on a woman’s age.”
“I’m just teasing you,” he could thankfully hear the sincerity mixed in with the teasing lit to your voice. “But yes, I do enjoy some old music. Always been a big fan of Sinatra, especially this one.”
“It’s a nice song…just not scientifically accurate,” he caught the side eye that you threw his way for just a moment, another crack of thunder banging across the sky and almost shaking the car. Ryland couldn’t help but jump slightly. “Jupiter only has a 3.13° tilt to its axis, so it doesn’t experience seasons like we do. Mar’s would, though, because its axis is tilted at 25°, only 1.5° more than our own tilt…”
Ryland trailed off as the car rolled to a stop at a red light, and he caught you fully facing him this time with a bemused expression written across your face. His smile dropped just slightly as he let out a sheepish laugh, adjusting his glasses as they slid back down the wet bridge of his nose.
“...I went full science-nerd again, didn’t I?”
Your laughter drowned out the rain beating against the roof of the car as your attention returned to the road once more.
“You always do, but I happen to enjoy it very much,”
If only teaching paid more, because the commute to Ryland’s apartment was a lot shorter than his bike ride home every day from work.
Parked in an open space across the road from the dimly lit apartment building, Ryland Grace hesitated with his hand on the handle of the door. His eyes swept out over the area around the vehicle, still being hounded with rain. The top of his road looked like the beginning of a river, the way the water was rushing down the small incline to pool at the bottom.
“Thanks…for this,” he gestured toward the weather right outside the card.
You moved to respond to him, when the weather alert on your phone propped up on your dashboard sounded out. Ryland could just barely make out the headline: FLASH FLOOD WARNING.
The roads were far too dangerous, and Ryland already knew from various conversations that you lived on the opposite end of town from him.
He…could ask you to stay for the night. Just for safety reasons, obviously! He was quickly trying to work through the pros and cons list in his head.
Pros: his only friend that just so happened to be the woman he’s been head over heels in love with for the last year would be safe and not driving in this storm.
Cons: his only friend that just so happened to be the woman he’s been head over heels in love with for the last year would be inside his tiny little apartment that looked like it had been hit by a separate hurricane than the one it felt like they were currently suffering through.
“I should probably get home-”
“Stay,” Ryland cut in, quickly continuing his words after his vague statement. “I-It’s just, the roads are bad, and you live on the other side of town. This storm is just going to get worse, and I-I’d hate to know something happened to you.”
You hesitated, he could tell, shaking your head.
“Ryland, I couldn’t ask you to let me stay,”
He hesitated himself for a moment, every feeling he’d kept bottled up for a year now threatening to escape past his lips. Instead, he settled on echoing your own words.
“I…I care about you. I want to know you’re safe,”
Moments later, he had his rain coat draped over your head as he rushed you inside his apartment to shelter from the storm.
Ryland’s hands shook the entire time as he put his key into his front door’s lock. The last time he had guests over…was never. His apartment was built and designed for him and his brain, scattered with notes and books and piles of arts and crafts that he worked on in order to decorate his classroom. It was not meant for visitors, especially not ones as pretty as you.
“Don’t, uh, mind the mess,” he mumbled, holding the door open and motioning after you, allowing you to take a step inside his apartment as he let out the small breath he didn’t realize he was holding.
Chucking off his sneakers, little puddles of water forming below them on the ground, his jacket found its way into a pile with them. Ryland wiped his hands nervously against the thighs of his jeans, the action doing nothing against the soaking went material, as he watched you take in his apartment.
The apartment that looked like it had been ransacked, at least partially. Stacks of books relating to a thousand different topics were stacked on the ground by the tv stand, on top of the coffee table along with the coffee cup he’d abandoned there early in the morning in a haste to get to the school, and and by his desk that had a stack of papers scattered around it after her strewn them about in order to find one specific slip of paper at 11 p.m.
It was a mess, and Ryland regretted everything.
“It’s not messy, it’s homey,” your reply sent a burst of heat through his skin as you turned to him with a bright smile, leaving your own bag and coat by his pile of wet items before gesturing to your own soaking wet clothing. “Do you maybe have something a little less…wet?”
He scurried away into his bedroom, trying to ignore that little section of his brain that took your comment in a MUCH different way.
His bedroom was worse. Ryland wasn’t letting you sleep on the couch, but he surely wasn’t letting you see his room in a state like this.
Clothing was thrown across the room and Ryland quickly ran about, shoving piles of clothing away into corners where he was certain you wouldn’t be able to see any of it. Throwing it into his closet and slamming the door before it could fall out, pushing it down in his laundry basket, kicking it under his bed so it was out of sight and out of mind, whatever he could think of.
“Great idea, Ryland,” he muttered to himself, pulling on a dry pair of sweatpants and a tshirt for himself, trying to shake the remaining water out of his hair as he rummaged for something you could wear. “Almost get the woman you’re in love with killed by letting her drive you home in a monsoon. Invite her to stay the night in your apartment that makes you look like an even bigger loser than you are. Amazing idea. A doctorate in molecular biology and this is the best you can do.”
You were waiting by the couch in his living room, just glancing around at everything with a smile, when he reappeared. Sheepishly, he handed the folded clothing over to you, hand running through his soaking wet hair as he pointed down the hall.
“You can take my bed for the night. Uh, just leave your clothes in the bathroom, I can throw them in the dryer in a bit. I can scrounge up something to eat in the meantime,”
“Thanks, Ry,” your hand reached out, squeezing his upper arm lightly, and he felt the heat in his skin instantly bloom under your touch. “For all of this.”
If it wasn’t for the giant crack of thunder that flickered the lights of the building for a moment and made Ryland jump out of his skin, he would’ve forgotten how to breathe again.
He rummaged through every part of his kitchen, desperately trying to find something that he could make the two of you to eat that also wouldn’t make him seem pathetic. All he could come up with…was a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a jar of jelly.
Yesterday. He’d stayed late after the end of the day to help in tutoring. He forgot to go grocery shopping. Ryland let out a sigh at his realization, back to his fridge door and head banging back against the stainless steel, hand running down his face and dragging against his skin as his glasses were knocked off, hanging off of one ear.
“Great,” he muttered into his palm. “Just absolutely freaking great, Ryland.”
Ryland Grace desperately wished he had the guts, the bravery, to just simply tell you how he felt.
From the moment he met you, when you had arrived for your first day at Grover Cleveland Middle, he was a goner. It had been a long time since he’d had a partner, his last one certain that he was too busy with his head in the clouds to pay attention to her, and she wasn’t wrong. But from the moment he looked at you, waving and smiling as you introduced yourself to all of the teachers that had gathered to welcome you, you were suddenly the only thing his brain wanted to focus on.
He had been so focused on you, too busy admiring every inch of you in silence, that in his typical clumsy fashion he tripped over his own two feet and knocked Principal Marshall’s papers out of her hand, spreading them five feet across the floor. But you’d joined him on the ground, laughing lightly to yourself, as you helped him clean up the papers, and Ryland knew he was a goner for you.
It only continued every single day, getting worse, and you somehow became his friend. His only friend, if he was being quite frank. So he tried to hide the way he really felt, too scared to mess anything up. He’d rather have you in his life in any way he could, then mess this up and lose you forever.
Keeping those feelings in was getting increasingly harder in the last few months. Which explained why he’d traveled cross town just to get lunch from your favorite place, or compare you to the sun and basically called you his entire reasoning for living in front of a bunch of children-
Either Ryland was going to blurt it out at some point, or he was taking these feelings to the grave with him.
“Peanut butter and jelly? Sounds like we’re eating like royalty tonight,”
He shouldn’t have looked over at you. He really, really shouldn’t have. Leaning against the opposite wall of the kitchen, hair still damp and dripping onto the cheesy “I had potential” shirt he’d been gifted by one of his students the following year. Sweatpants that were bunched up around your ankles so that you didn’t trip over the length, waist tied in as tightly as possible so they didn’t just slide right off your hips.
Ryland Grace had never thought it possible that you could look more gorgeous than you did every day, but he stood corrected. He felt more in love than he ever had just looking at you right in this moment.
“Sorry, I don’t exactly…live a life of luxury,” Ryland awkwardly laughed as he spoke, pulling out two sad paper plates from the cabinet next to him and flashing them in your direction, shaking them lightly in the air. “Hope this doesn’t ruin my perfectly curated image.”
His eyes followed you as you brushed past him, humming to yourself with a little grin. You fumbled through every drawer in the kitchen, looking for something, when Ryland quickly popped open the one right next to him, showcasing his small selection of utensils. You flashed another heart-stopping grin at him before digging out two knives from the drawer.
“That image cracked a long time ago, Ry. Like that time you let Marcus perform some chemical reaction and got the fire department called to the school,”
The tall blonde groaned to himself, rubbing at his temple as you pushed past him to throw some of the bread down onto the plates and crack open the jars of peanut butter and jelly set out.
“That was one time!” he tried to defend himself, saddling up beside you as you passed him one of the knives. He almost completely missed the opening of the peanut butter jar, eyes too transfixed on the sight of you in his clothing. It was still up in the air if his heart was actually working correctly yet. “I learned my lesson very quickly not to let him handle any more chemicals.”
“Don’t worry. I made the mistake of doing popcorn reading when we were working on The Outsiders. Marcus seemed to end up with every single instance of profanity in the book, which he would yell at the top of his lungs,”
Ryland snapped his fingers, glancing down at you at his side with a teasing smile.
“You know what? That explains that really loud ‘HELL’ I heard across the school a couple months ago. I was so sure that it was going to shatter the windows of my classroom,”
“Oh, shut up! It wasn’t that bad!”
Your laughter permeated the air, elbow digging into his side as you spoke. And when your eyes locked with his, and Ryland got the perfect look at every square inch of your face, he could see it so clearly in his head.
Mornings just like this, where you’d both struggle to get out of the warmth of the blankets. The way he would surely annoy you with his very disorganized morning routine, but he’d make up for it with coffee already set out for you, just as you liked it. The lingering moments by the door, too wrapped up in each other because you didn’t want to leave the peace of this space, even though you were going to the same place.
Late nights, curled together on the couch with some movie playing on TV that neither of you were particularly paying attention to. Whispered words, laughter shared. Kisses that lingered, hands that trailed-
Thunder broke Ryland from his spell, thoughts gone in a flash. He was back in his dingy kitchen, with you just inches away, staring up at him as the picture of true beauty.
“T-This is nice,” he cleared his throat, turning back to his sandwich as he spread his toppings along the bread, heat blooming across his cheeks again. It always did around you. “Making dinner with someone…no matter how sad the dinner is. I haven’t done this in awhile.”
“Right,” your voice responded after a momentary pause. “Sarah, wasn’t it? You were dating her when we first met. What, uh…what ever happened to her?”
“Oh, we broke up a long time ago,” Ryland waved the comment off, shaking his head. “She just, uh, thought my head was too far in the clouds. Didn’t think I wanted to be down here on Earth. She wasn’t wrong. It was for the best, though. She hated…all of this. The rundown apartment, the lack of a car, my love of science. She just never understood it. I was just…too much for her. But she’s with Mark now, so I’m sure she’s happy.”
Ryland chose not to mention that his last relationship had been dead long before it officially ended, the pair not having seen each other in well over a month by that point. If his math was right, which it usually was, Sarah had started dating Mark before she’d even broken it off with him.
He also failed to mention the relief he felt inside when she had called it off, knowing his heart had belonged to you the moment your eyes had locked with his.
Fingertips just barely ghosted over Ryland’s cheek, and he froze in place. Eyes trained on the plate in front of him, he could feel the way your hand curled around his cheek. The way your thumb glossed over his skin, back and forth, and the way your other fingers barely grazed over the shell of his ear. He couldn’t help the way he instantly leaned into the touch, a touch he hadn’t felt in so long.
Ryland turned his head, still resting in the palm of your own, to look you in the eyes. You gave him the softest smile, hand trailing across his cheek and ghosting over his jawline. His eyes watched it move, the way your fingers gently curled around the frame of his glasses dangling precariously from his face, and placed them gingerly back where they belonged, resting on the bridge of his nose.
His breath caught, your body so close to his, as your hand trailed back down and rested on his chest for just a moment, your own gaze flickering to its resting spot while his gaze stayed on your face.
“You are never, and will never be, too much, Ryland. Not for the right person. They’ll love every part of you. The clumsy parts, the nerdy parts, every part that makes you…you,”
The Sun. That’s what you were to Ryland Grace. He meant every word he had said in that planetarium that day, driven by the rare jealousy of seeing Harkin that close to you.
The Sun was the reason Earth had life. Without the Sun…the Earth would be nothing.
Without you…well, Ryland Grace had accepted long ago that he didn’t understand what it was like to truly live until he’d met you.
Your eyes flickered for just a second, and Ryland took in an audible breath, swearing they settled on his lips for just a second. The apartment was quiet, except for the hum of the fridge and the pattering of the rain against the living room windows.
The moment shattered with yet another terribly timed clap of thunder, your body jolting away from his, focus turned back to the counter in front of you, face hidden from his wide eyes.
“Y-you know…I can’t tell you the last time I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,”
Ryland shook his head, smiling slightly to himself at the little stutter in your own words, turning back to finishing his own food as well. But the moment still lingered in his head, the heat that bloomed from where your skin touched him still lingering.
“Since peanut butter is banned in school for allergies, probably awhile,”
“I almost forgot that rule a couple weeks ago and almost packed peanut butter crackers,” you joked back, before Ryland heard you snap your fingers. “Oh! Speaking of work, did you put yourself down to volunteer for the school dance next week?”
Sandwiches finished off, Ryland packed the ingredients away and stashed them back in their appropriate spots, laughing awkwardly to himself.
“Hah, uh, no I didn’t. I chaperoned last year and kind of left covered in punch, became the kids’ favorite ‘meme’ for a week afterward since one of them got a picture of it,”
He turned back to you. Leaning against the island counter, holding your sad little sandwich in your hands, face still lit up red as you smiled toward him.
“I think so far it's me, Doyle, and Harki, plus Principal Marshal and I think Katie and Dawson from the front office. We could really use another teacher,” he swore the fluttering of your lashes was on purpose just to kill him and his resolve. “Sign-up? For me?”
Well, there was no universe in existence where Ryland said no to a request like that.
Rejoining you at the counter, he held his own sandwich in his hand, reaching out and tapping it against yours as if you were sharing a toast.
“For you? Totally,”
Even as you both took a bite of your sandwiches, eyes still locked together, Ryland felt as if something had shifted in the air. Your eyes were still as kind, your smile still bright, but it felt like there was a new weight to your gaze as you looked at him.
And he swore–and hoped–for just a split second, that your eyes had just flickered down to his lips again.
❤︎
The student council had outdone themselves with this end of the year dance.
As you stepped through the main doors of Grover Cleveland Middle’s building, the smile on your face grew immediately at the sight before you. The walls were lined with little fairy lights, little styrofoam planets hanging down from the ceiling at various lengths, glow in the dark stars right around them and glowing. Silver streamers hung around the fairy lights, with the check in desk decorated with tons and foam and lights behind them to look like twinkling lights in the clouds.
“A space theme?” you called out as the two kids in front of you ducked away from the registration desk. Evelyn Doyle finally looked up from the sign-in sheet, grin growing as she took in the sight of you and rounded the desk. “I hadn’t heard anything from the student council on the theme, but they did well.”
“Nevermind the theme, you’re finally here!” you laughed as you threw her arms around you, reciprocating the hug, before her hands landed on your shoulders in order to get a good look at you, eyes trailing you up and down. “And look at this dress, oh my god!”
The deep yellow dress fell right around your knees, the fabric light and airy as it swooshed through the air with every move you made. Buttons lined the front down to the tie around your waist, leaving just enough room for the little gold necklace resting against your collarbone. You thanked yourself for choosing a short sleeve option, already feeling the heat in the building from how many kids were all packed in and dancing together.
“Thank you,” was the sheepish reply you gave your friend as she let you go. “I’m sorry I’m late, I caught one of my student’s parents in the parking lot and they turned it into a mini parent-teacher conference, sadly.”
“Not a problem,” she waved the comment off, gesturing toward the doors of the gym just off to the left of you both. “Just get on in there, have some fun, and keep those slow dancers at least 12 inches apart at all times.”
If the hallways were gorgeous, the inside of the gym shone even brighter. Bathed in blue and purple, even more little lights twinkled around the room, hung off the walls, the ceilings, and on every surface they could possibly find. Moon and star decals, made by the art students, hung off the walls and from the ceiling, almost glowing under the lights.
Your eyes trailed over all of your children, scattered throughout the room, already having been dancing for at least thirty minutes. The smile on your face grew as you watched each one of them, gathered with their friends as they danced together in groups, or even stood off to the sides and just observed from beyond the dimly lit dance floor.
Mr. Harkin had been stationed at the punch table, and you could hear him from across the room warning these middle schoolers not to try and spike the punch. You could only giggle to yourself, shaking your head at his antics, before your eyes swept over the crowd once more-
The music seemed to stop in your ears, breath hitching, the second you laid eyes on him across the room. Ryland Grace.
He wasn’t in anything fancy. A nice pair of jeans, the worn pair of black dress shoes you’d seen by his apartment door that night. A dark green shirt was tucked into his jeans, adorned with a worn, navy blue suit jacket overtop, and those same glasses almost falling off the bridge of his nose as he spoke animatedly to Olivia.
Ryland looked good. Too good, in your eyes.
For just a second, he looked up, and his eyes happened to meet yours across the room. You thought for sure you’d forgotten how to breathe.
Whatever had happened that night, in the silence of his apartment with only the beating of the rain against the windows and the roof as a witness, had shifted something. From the moment your fingertips had ghosted along his skin, your hand had rested against his chest, and you’d been close enough to see the specs that danced in those ocean blue eyes of his up close, nothing had been the same.
Like the little bubble you had been existing in with your harbored crushed had finally popped. Like a toe had dipped just slightly over a line, and there was no going back from then on.
You always blushed around your friend, every time he’d manage to fumble his way through a comment that borderlined on a kind-of-not-just-friendly compliment. But since that day just a week or so ago, every time he has been within a few feet of you, your face lit up like a hot summer’s day.
Moments where he’d find a second to linger in your classroom door, held a new weight to them. Sharing lunch together, fingers just barely brushing for a second as you both reached for your food, to moments when you’d simply be walking together down hallways, back of hands brushing along each other’s but no one making any moves to stop it from happening.
Something was different, and you weren’t sure you wanted to go back to how things were before. Not after touching his skin, or existing in his orbit like that. Not when you’d seen the side of him beyond these school walls.
You were in love with Ryland Grace. You had been for a long time. And, finally, you were done trying to pretend that there wasn’t at least a small chance that he felt the same.
“I need your help,”
The heated staring contest between you two was broken by the sound to your right. You turned, just to see Marcus standing directly beside you and reaching up to pull on the sleeve of your dress. His hands wrung together, foot tapping incessantly on the ground, and you immediately knelt down in front of him to get a better look at his face that he was trying to hide from you.
“Marcus? Honey, what’s wrong?” you asked gently, hands coming to rest on his arms as you tried to get him to look at you.
“I…I like Olivia,”
Oh. It was one of those problems. The anxiety you felt in that moment finally washed away, an easy smile falling to your lips as you took a quick glance over in Ryland and Olivia’s direction, the former’s eyes still locked onto you from across the room.
“I did hear a rumor about that. Olivia is a great girl,”
“She is,” he said quickly, finally looking at you. His nerves were basically written across his face. “I-I’ve been really mean to her. I didn’t mean to be.”
“I know, honey. Sometimes feelings can be confusing,” you stood up, hands on your hips as you looked down at him with a smile. “Do you want to dance with her?”
“I do,”
You held your hand out toward him with a smile.
“Then why don’t we start by going and apologizing to her?”
With Marcus’s hand in yours, you confidently led him across the room, eyes locked back onto Ryland’s as you approached. He stood with Olivia at his side, who was talking his ear off, a dopey looking grin on his face as he nodded to whatever she said as he continued to watch as you approached him.
“Dr. Grace, I’m sorry to interrupt you and Olivia,” you announced yourself to the pair with a grin of your own, hands on Marcus’s shoulders and you lightly pushed him forward. “But Olivia, there’s something that Marcus here wants to say to you.”
The young boy shuffled awkwardly forward, hands wringing together again as he stood in front of his crush.
“I, uh, I wanted to say I was sorry. For being really mean to you. I didn’t mean it,”
Olivia’s eyes went wide, as she too shuffled uncomfortably for a second. Ryland saddled up to your side, the pair of you sharing a glance as you watched the interaction happen right before your eyes. His hand graced over yours lightly, and it took everything in you not to reach out and lock your fingers with his.
“Oh! It’s, um, it’s okay. Thank you,”
“Say, Marcus?” Ryland called out to them both, catching the boy’s eye and gesturing toward Olivia with a wink. “What do you think of Olivia’s dress?”
“I…I think she looks really beautiful,”
That comment finally seemed to catch Olivia off guard, her eyes wide in shock as she giggled nervously.
“Oh! I…thank you, Marcus. You look really nice too,”
“Thank you,” his posture seemed to straighten out at Olivia’s reaction, like seeing her accept his compliment gave him the confidence he needed. “Do you want to dance with me?”
Olivia shot you and Ryland a look, and you both immediately gave her a thumbs up. Then, your happy eyes could only watch the two pre-teens awkwardly shuffle away together to the dance floor, not daring to meet the eyes of the other.
“Look at us, playing matchmaker for middle schoolers,”
“I think they did that for themselves, we just helped,” you laughed, turning your head. The laughter died on your lips the second your eyes met with Ryland’s, voice low and breathy as you whispered to him through your smile. “Hi.”
“Hi,” he whispered back just as breathily. His hand came up to the back of his head, running through his hair for a moment, and you could see the red and pink hues that lit up his cheeks. “I got worried when I didn’t see you. I was ready to call you.”
“You could’ve,”
“I’ll remember for next time,” he shot back, hands finding their way to rest in the front pockets of his jeans. His eyes moved back over the crowd, finding your two young students once more. “I’m proud of him for that. That…must have taken a lot of guts to do.”
You followed his gaze, landing on the pair as they danced together, laughing and talking like old friends.
“Like you said before, it can be hard for boys to express their feelings. All he needed was to pull up his big boy pants and ask her,”
Ryland laughed beside you.
“Yeah…I should probably follow in his footsteps,”
You glanced back to him, seeing him already watching you. A single eyebrow raised toward him quizzically, even though your heart felt like it was ready to beat directly out of your chest.
Ryland’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened again, as if he were trying to force out words that he couldn’t quite seem to get right. You didn’t even realize you were holding your breath, hoping inside that whatever he wanted to say would address the weight that seemed to be hanging between your gazes.
“Stay here,”
There wasn’t even time for you to respond before the tall blonde rushed away, almost tripping as he dashed over to the DJ booth across the way from the makeshift dance floor. He whispered something to the DJ, and you could see the thumbs up he got in return, before he rushed back over to you, panting slightly.
“Ryland?” you questioned softly, the man who held your entire heart without knowing it standing just a foot in front of you with a nervous grin on his face. “What did you just do?”
As if on cue, the song changed, and familiar lyrics floated through the room, bouncing off the walls.
Fly me to the moon, let me play among the stars. Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars
“I’m pulling up my big boy pants,” he responded with a nervous laugh, his hand outstretched toward you. “And asking you to dance with me.”
Nothing else existed the second that you slid your hand into Ryland Grace’s without hesitation, letting him pull you in. You weren’t in the school, not in a room decorated for a middle school dance, and certainly not surrounded by middle schoolers and a bunch of faculty that had placed bets on you both.
It was just you and Ryland Grace. That’s all you wanted it to be.
Your arms found a place to rest around his shoulders, fingertips just barely brushing past the strands of hair that tickled the back of his neck. There was a fluttering in your chest the second that his hands made their way to your waist, curling around the divet just above your hip bone, pulling you into him just by another inch.
In other words, hold my hand. In other words, darling, kiss me. Fill my life with song, and let me sing for ever more.
"I didn't tell you yet…,” his voice was soft, words whispered just between the two of you in a crowded room. “But you look beautiful,"
"You don't have to flatter me, Ryland,"
"No, really, you look-"
"Like a banana in this yellow dress?"
He paused. His tongue poked out, running along his bottom lip, and you could see the nervous bob of his Adam’s apple before he spoke again.
"...like the sun,"
You are all I long for, all I worship and adore.
Oh. That fluttering in your chest was back, and suddenly, you weren’t at a middle school dance anymore. You were back in that planetarium, spinning in circles. And this time, there were no doubts in your mind. You were the Sun, and he was the Earth. And what was the Earth, without its Sun?
"Ryland-"
"I wasn't lying,"
You cocked your head.
"...about what?"
"That I knew Homer wrote The Odyssey,"
That drew a short laugh from you, but you could still see the nerves that were laced through Ryland’s smile.
"Right, you were just distracted,"
"I was. By you. I'm always distracted by you,"
In other words, please be true. In other words, I love you.
You took a deep breath. He’d crossed the line for you, thrown himself onto the other side, and was waiting for you with open arms. It was just a leap of faith.
“I’m always distracted by you, too. Since the day we met,”
The song faded away, melting into the next. There could’ve been eyes on you both, either from students or from faculty, but nothing would break either of your gazes away from the other.
Ryland took a quick look around the room, before his hands took hold of your own, bringing them down between you both. He gave you a grin, one filled with more happiness than you had ever seen–and you knew your own matched his perfectly–before he tugged you toward the doors of the gym.
“Come with me,”
“Ry, we’re supposed to be chaperoning!”
“I don’t see Principal Marshall anywhere. What’s the worst she could do, fire us?”
“Quite literally, yes!” you shot back with a laugh.
Ryland only shrugged his shoulders, tugging you again, and you didn’t even try to fight back. Your feet simply moved with him.
“Worth it,”
Hands clasped together, fingers intertwined, your laughter echoed off the walls of the empty hallways as Ryland Grace ran you down them, a destination clear in his mind. Every few seconds he’d look back, just smiling at you as his eyes trailed over every single inch of you, before you’d yell at him to look at his own feet before you’d both be sprawled across the linoleum floors.
The door to his classroom was open as you flew inside, hand slipping from his as you caught yourself on the projector cart sitting in the middle of the room. Spinning on your heel, you caught his eye just as he shut the classroom door behind him, and the silence enveloped you both once more. Finally alone, no prying eyes to watch.
The momentarily confidence that seemed to seize hold of Ryland dissipated in that moment. He wiped his hands against the front of his jeans, chuckling awkwardly as he took a few steps toward you.
“What was your plan here, Dr. Grace?” you teased, taking a couple steps toward him as well, too high on the feeling of everything you’d just finally realized. High on the feeling of finally not denying what your heart knew long ago: you and Ryland Grace were never just friends.
“I’m not going to lie,” he shot back, coming to a stop just in front of you, barely an inch or two separating you. “I hadn’t thought this far ahead.”
“Then stop thinking,”
No one had leaned in first. It had been both of you, as if drawn together like two magnets, as your lips finally found one another's.
Goosebumps rose across your skin as Ryland Grace’s mouth moved against yours with an ease that shouldn’t exist between two people that have never kissed before. It was like a perfect dance between two partners that knew each other better than anything.
Your lips never left his, moving against his as if you couldn’t believe you had deprived yourself of this for so long, as your hands wound around his shoulders. Fingers curled into his hair, finally carding themselves through the blonde strands that felt so soft between your fingers.
The slightest little moan, enough to send heat coursing through your body the second you heard it, slipping from Ryland’s mouth into your own. His hands grasped at your hips, winding around your back to press into your lower back and tug you as close as humanly possible, as if he was a starved man that craved to touch you in any way that he could.
His lips were soft, a feeling that you knew you were going to crave for the rest of your life now that you’d had a single taste of them. You pressed further into him, a small mewl tumbling from your own lips and swallowed by his mouth as you pressed every inch of yourself into him, desperate to hang onto the moment in case the world would be cruel and wake you from this dream moments later.
The need to breathe was what finally separated you, but not far. Ryland’s forehead pressed to yours, his breath fanning out across your skin. His hands still gripped at your hips, holding him to you, as yours stayed carded through his hair, nails gently scraping at his scalp as you chest heaved as it tried to level your breathing back to normal.
“If I haven’t made it clear already, you’re my best friend,” his words were breathy, accented by the way he was still trying to catch his breath. But his smile was bright, his eyes almost shining, as he looked down at you. “And I’m completely in love with you. Literally, since the moment we met.”
You laughed, trapped in this little bubble with him, as your hands slid from his hair to instead cup his cheeks. The tip of your nose just barely brushed against his, and he bumped his right back against yours without hesitation.
“I’m completely in love with you too, Ryland Grace. Since the moment you tripped over your own two feet,”
The sound of your laughter filled the empty, dark science classroom again as Ryland’s hands came to scoop you up around your thighs, spinning you in relentless circles. All you could do was hang onto his broad shoulders and smile, his lips peppering a thousand kisses to every inch of skin he could possibly reach.
The Earth needed the Sun, like how Ryland said he needed you. The person that makes it all worth it, that makes the days brighter, that makes this short little life worth it.
Ship: Ryland Grace x female reader
Rating: Explicit (smut)
Tags: Minimal use of Y/N, Angst With a Happy Ending, Slow Burn, Idiots in Love, Yearning, Kid Fic (eventually), Dubious Science, Explicit Smut, Not Beta-Read, Will Be a Very Long Fic...
Description: You worked with Ryland Grace on the Project Hail Mary - you, having studied astrophysics, were trying to crack the code for superluminal speed (warp speed), and you needed Ryland's help with Astrophage. There was a growing relationship between the two of you, before Ryland was forcefully placed onto the Hail Mary, leaving behind more than just you and your potential relationship, but a daughter that had been a surprise. Could you figure out the superluminal speed drive to bring him home before any more time passed?
This will progress from his time on the Hail Mary and his past memory recollections, to his time on Erid (briefly), until eventually we get to his time back on Earth. (Very slow burn - the kid side of things won't be for a long while.)
Check out my other masterlists | requests are open !
—strangers to lovers, pre-rocky, y/n is starfire like.
𖤓 by the time your ship and the hail mary crossed paths, you had been alone for seventeen light years. truly alone, drifting off in a ship that had lost fuel due to a leakage caused by running into a meteor shower. you had lost hope that anyone else in the universe existed, so you genuinely thought this other ship was a hallucination.
𖤓 the first meeting is nothing like ryland expected. your ship had had just enough energy left to send a distress signal, and the fact that this energy had lasted just enough for you perform a spacewalk and construct a interconnecting pressurised airlock tunnel was nothing short of miraculous.
𖤓 ryland cautiously opened the airlock, expecting some form of hostility, only to be met by a humanoid alien woman who looks at him with wide stunned eyes and immediately bursts into tears. fully sobbing, exhausted overwhelmed disbelief.
𖤓 ryland panics immediately, “oh my god, please don’t cry. god, okay, please stop crying. i dont know what going on either.”
𖤓 you’re immediately grabbing at his suit, crying at his feet and rapidly saying something in a language he can’t understand. you sound grateful. he just stood there, confused, because you were looking at him like he personally descended from heaven. you’re friendly, reaching towards him instead of away.
𖤓 the first couple of days together are nothing short of both hell and fascinating. neither of can understand the other, and ryland has you hooked up to a translator, needing to manually add words so you can communicate. you’re talking through pointing, drawings, frustrated noises, and increasingly dramatic gestures. you’re terrified he’ll kick you out, and he’s scared you’ll turn into a monster and eat him.
𖤓 you’re learning insanely fast, and you’re talking nonstop now that communication has been established. not out of naïveté, but because the silence had become a haunting soundtrack of those years you spent alone waiting for death to free you. you’re endlessly asking about humans, music, birthdays and rain. you watch ryland sleep, patiently waiting for him wake up just to ask another “important human question.”
𖤓 you’re laughing at all of his corny jokes, because you genuinely find them funny, and ryland realises with absolute horror that he wants to keep making you laugh forever.
𖤓 and for something alien, ryland is shocked at how human you were. you were empathetic to a fault, fascinated by cat videos, and immediately loving the idea of a rainbow. but you could also pick him with one hand, and memorise the ship’s coding interface within minutes. you had grabbed his hand to steady yourself, and that’s when he found out that you had healing abilities after a scar from childhood faded after you let go of him.
“why are your eyes doing that?”
“i can see in the dark!”
“…you can what now??”
𖤓 you had a tendency to misinterpret human culture in the funniest way possible while being very confident about it. ryland teaches you sarcasm, and suddenly you’re using it in deeply inappropriate situations. “dang it! the system failed again.” “you’re so good at this, no wonder your people chose you.”
𖤓 you’re always close to him instinctively. watching over him while he works, leaning over his shoulders to watch over his experiments, wandering into rooms purely because he’s there. ryland found the proximity comforting. having been alone for years too left him touch starved in ways he hadn’t even begun to unpack. he enjoyed the way you’d drape your arms around him, they way you’d grab his face to understand human expressions, when you’d touch his hair because you didn’t understand why it didn’t float off like yours.
𖤓 this leads to him realising that you couldn’t stand being alone. not in a clingy way, but more out fear after enduring decades of forced solitary confinement. if he disappears into a section of the ship for too long, you’ll come looking for him under the guise of wanting to help him with something trivial. you’re attached to him, because to you, he’s your divine intervention. another living creature in the vast nothingness.
𖤓 ryland is used to people tolerating him, respecting him professionally. but you’re genuinely amused by him, you look at him like he’s genuinely special and he has absolutely no defence against that.
𖤓 your fascination with human affection is what emotionally cooks ryland. your species expressed closeness differently, so you studied him constantly. the meaning behind every smile, every tone shift, why humans touch each other so casually. ryland had given you a hug after helping him unlock a memory from his time back on earth, and you freeze for a moment trying to understand it. after that, you made up reasons to initiate physical touch yourself. fingers brushing his while handing him tools, resting your head on his shoulder while looking at star maps, sitting so close to each other and your thighs touch.
𖤓 you learn that humans kiss after watching a movie, and become obsessed with understand why. and ryland is a blushy mess trying to get you to drop it.
“what biological significance does ‘kissing’ have?”
“not much. it’s just-.. you know, emotional.. significance..”
“oh. can you demonstrate? …why are you red?”
𖤓 and ryland can’t handle it normally. the chemistry becomes too much to handle because you’re so open and warm, and he’s so painfully awkward. you look at him like he’s the centre of the universe, isolation stripped away all pretence for you, so you trusted him blindly. and when you tell him: “i forgot what conversation was like before you. i used to talk to the walls so i would hear a voice answer back in the echoes.” and suddenly he became very busy tightening a screw because if he looked at you, he would’ve cried. he knew what that was like.
𖤓 you adored him so openly, it truly confused him. to you, he was an intelligent, compassionate, and full of life. always watching him with that expression that said you couldn’t believe he’s here. and ryland, who was very emotionally avoidant, would try to rationalise it scientifically.
“i think you’re just culturally expressive.” while you’re playing with his hair, unable to stay away from him.
𖤓 and because you’re so emotionally sincere, there’s no playing games. if you’re happy to see him, you say it. if you miss him you say it. if you think he looks handsome while he’s working on something while his biceps flex, you’ll tell him.
𖤓 one night, ryland accidentally falls asleep in the lab, and when he wakes up, you’re laying on the ground next to him because you didn’t want him to wake up alone.
𖤓 hugging him for the first time because he fixed something in your ship. just throwing your arms around him, “grace!!! you’re so wonderful!!!” and it’s just him short circuiting, and genuinely forgetting what he was saying.
𖤓 constantly complimenting him, and him not knowing how to take it. “you’re very beautiful when you think!” “your voice becomes higher when your excited! very adorable!” “your eyes are very kind! very beautiful!”
𖤓 you listen to every single word he says, you made him feel like his every thought mattered. even his dumb dangers. especially his dumb tangents. but he’s apologising halfway through over explaining molecular biology to you. “why apologise? i enjoy hearing you think!” with the prettiest smile and his brain is blue screening.
𖤓 your crush on him is very obvious, there’s no hiding it. it’s obvious in the way you look at him, there’s way you touch him, how you’re immediately healing him when he’s hurt even if it’s something as small as a paper cut.
𖤓 sometimes ryland looks at you while you’re admiring the drawing his students gifted him, and he’ll feel this crushing ache in his chest because you survived for so long on your own, but still came out gentle. still came out loving. and that terrifies him, because he’s developing a level of attachment that he knows will eventually hurt. a part of him keeps trying to resist your connection, but the other part already knows that he’s hopelessly gone.
𖤓 he admires you endlessly, you’re not someone he rescued anymore, you’re the brightest star he’s ever encountered.
𖤓 with your open affection, you end up accident teaching him casual intimacy. sitting in silence, little touches, casual praise, shared routines. ryland realises one day that no one has ever made him feel this emotionally safe before.
𖤓 he starts needing you in ways he doesn’t want to analyse too closely. everything feels off when you’re in another section for too long. he craves your praise when he’s researching. he’ll feign having headaches just to feel your fingers in his hair. he automatically looks for you whenever he enters a room.
𖤓 the real turning point comes when you’re hurt during routine maintenance work. it’s nowhere near life threatening, but ryland is panicked, his voice is shaking, his hands are trembling while trying to help you. he’s half dazed, holding you a little too tightly when he realises: “oh. oh, i got it bad.”
𖤓 he’s so much more softer, more open afterwards. he already knows how you feel about you, so he’s touching you a lot more. hands on your waist and hips, resting his forehead against yours when he’s tired. and you react like those gestures mean the world to you every time.
𖤓 one time you fell asleep against him while watching star charts, and he just sits there while looking at you with this devastated smile on his face because the truth finally settles into place. ryland grace was in love.
🍦 Teacher!Ryland Grace x f Teacher!Reader
tw: Age gap (8yrs), Teacher inaccuracies (I’m not a teacher), slowwwburn, Grace being dorky, reader is super cute and silly, they go on little teacher adventures, they both fell first, miscommunication
wc: 2.5k
Plot/notes: You and Mr.Grace start to bump into each other all around school. Who knows maybe a few more awkward interactions with the man and you'll have to transfer schools.
When you show up to work you see Mr.Grace locking his bike up.
Part of you wants to say hi, ask about the projects maybe, but instead you decide it's too early in your new 'friendship' or whatever this is.
You grab your work bag and shuffle out of your car.
As you lock the car door you hear a voice. "Hey!"
When you look to your right you see Mr.Grace walking over to you.
"Oh!" You shuffle some items in your arms. "Good morning."
"Sweet ride." He looks your car over.
"Please." You roll your eyes. "It was all I could afford with student loans." You huff a breath hoping you don't sound too pathetic.
"Hey, better than a bike right?" His thumb hooks over his shoulder and points to his wheels.
"No! I like your bike!" You grin at him as the two of you walk across the parking lot.
"It gets me from a to b." He shrugs his shoulders, they look a bit more broad with his sweater under his yellow coat.
"And exercise is good for you!" You thank him for holding the door open for you. "I bet you're the most active teacher here."
"You don't get out much?"
"Well, I like walks.” You brush your hair out of your face.
He snaps his fingers together. "Ah! Yeah I've seen you walking around the field at lunch!”
You laugh and drop your shoulders. "I like to watch the kids."
You hear him coo something sweet but it doesn't register.
-
When your free period hits you take the opportunity to grade papers at your desk. No granola bar, no open door, no music, just you and your red pen.
When you hear a knock on your door you welcome them in, not looking up from the short essay in front of you.
“Hey, busy?” You hear Mr.Grace whisper.
“Um, not particularly.” You set down your pen after making one more correction.
Mr.Grace taps on your door that he’s still half behind. “Wanna come introduce the lesson to my class?” He tilts his head at you.
“Sure.” You smile and get up from your small swivel chair.
“Okay, so I briefly told them about it so just emphasize what they’ll be doing in your class.” He briefs you before opening his class door for you and introducing you to the students.
“Hello!” You take an opportunity to rake your eyes over the students. “I see a lot of my students in here.” You wave to a couple and then continue.
“For the science report you’ll be graded on three things.” You hold up three fingers as the students nod. “One; writing a good thesis based on your hypothesis, two; writing a full page report, and three; having two quotes from two separate sources.”
“Can one of my sources be my dog?” One boy asks in the back of the class.
“What is your dog going to say Henry?” You tilt your head with raised eyebrows.
“Um… woof?”
You shake your head.
Another student raises their hand. “Can I make my report about pasta?”
For that question you look over to Mr.Grace.
“Well, what’s your hypothesis?” He asks the kid.
“It’s yummy.” The kid smiles.
“Well, that’s not actually a hypothesis, Trevor. That’s a conclusion. But, see me after class and we can work something out.” The kid nods at Mr.Grace’s answer.
You answer some more quick questions from students before one lands a bit awkwardly.
“Why are you and Mr.Grace working together now?” A girl in the middle of the class raised her hand.
“Um, well…” You look to him for help but you see him already looking at you. “We decided that a project would be fun! Plus its the end of the year!” Hopefully that blows them off the scent of their science teacher not wanting to make a new lesson plan.
“And also, Rekha, we’ve been across the hall from each other, and teach the same grade, so…”
“So you have a lot in common?” The same girl ends Mr.Grace’s sentence.
“Sure, let’s say that.” He finishes.
You watch as Rekha turns around in her seat to whisper to two other girls that then look at you and Mr.Grace before giggling.
After a couple more questions and a small goodbye, you leave him to teach the rest of his class.
You have so much to do you almost forget to print out your lesson plan for the next class. What a waste of a free period.
When you notice theres only a couple more minutes of lunch you race to the printer. Before you can shuffle the papers in your hand neatly and prepare to copy them, you see Mr.Grace banging his fist on the poor old machine.
“Um, I don’t think that helps.” You quip.
He lets out a stressed laugh at you. “I can’t get this darn thing to work.”
“Darn?” You make fun of his use of words as you step closer.
“I don’t cuss.” He says it like it’s a badge of honor.
“You know every student in this building does though right?”
“Well, maybe they need a better roll model.” He smiles at you, letting the joke land a bit softer.
“Hey, I never said I cuss in front of the students!”
He smiles at you. “So defensive.” He quips.
You roll your eyes at him, but your tight time frame is more important than your banter. “Here, let me help you with this. She likes me.”
“She likes you?” He questions your relationship to the ancient machine.
“Hey, don’t doubt me.” He steps back and watches you press a couple buttons. “Okay, I need your help. You have to press the restart button on the back of the machine while I do this, okay?”
“Aye, aye captain.” He bends down and reaches for the back of the machine, slightly getting in your space.
“Okay, now.” On your say he presses the button and you restart the system.
When the two of you stand up a bit straighter the machine whirs to life.
“Ah ha!” He throws his hands in the air. “You did it! Thank you, you’re my savior!”
Your back is against the machine as you stare up at him, “Um, yeah no problem.” He’s only about six inches away, grinning down at you.
Part of you imagines him being so thankful that he cups your jaw for a kiss, stroking your cheek with his thumb and telling you that he always felt this way about you.
Maybe he notices the way your eyes linger on his lips or the softness in your gaze but he doesn’t stop it. He takes a deep breath and when he swallows you watch his Adam’s apple bob in his throat.
Your eyes dart around each other; his pink lips, his blue gaze, his messy blonde hair. His thoughts race at whether your lip gloss is the sticky kind or the sweet smooth kind that feels good on his lips when he pulls away.
The school bell signaling that passing period had ended pulls you out of your trance. Your eyes widen. “Shoot I still need twenty copies!”
Mr.Grace offers you to go first, knowing he’ll be extra late to his next class. His eyes linger on you as you scan your sheet and print out what you need before thanking him twice and running out of the teachers lounge.
-
During lunch you find him in the teachers lounge again. This time he’s a lot less rushed as he sits on the couch, donated by parents, sipping coffee out of a mug with a horrible science pun on it.
Your cheeks redden before you can stop them but you decide to greet him anyway. “Hi.” You smile.
“Hey!“ He sits up a bit straighter as you walk into the room. “How are the reports coming along?”
“The first ideas look pretty good. Scientific papers are new for them, but similar enough to the short essays, they’ll be fine.” You walk over to the vending machine and unwrap your crumpled dollar bills before straightening them out on the corner of the machine.
“Yeah, well thats good.” He takes a sip of his coffee, peering at you over his lenses. “The projects are mayhem. Maybe you were right about having over thirty different projects all happening at once. My room is messier than before this all started.”
You laugh at him. “And that’s saying something.”
“Hey! You’ve never even been in my classroom.”
You spin around to face him. “Not true!”
His eyes squint, “Okay, name one time.”
Some teachers glance at your little squabble but the couches are close enough to the vending machine you aren't being too loud.
“On my first day I came into school and said hi to you in the morning.” You raise your chin, clearly right.
“Does that even count? I don’t remember this.”
“Yeah, well you were busy grading papers or setting something up, I can’t remember. But you said hi with a half smile and that was it.” You shrugged your shoulders.
You don’t know if your tone was sad, or if Ryland noticed a mood switch but he set down his coffee. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to brush you off.”
“No! You’re fine.” You smile back at him. “I just figured you were one of those teachers who was here for the students but not for the other teachers.”
"Is that why even though you've been across the hall from me for three years we never talk?" He didn't mean to sound accusatory, he almost sounded heartbroken.
When you turn back around towards the machine you enter in your $3 and choose your snack of choice, this time it was goldfish. "I figured you thought I was a dopey young teacher who wasn't worth the trouble."
When the machine starts up you watch carefully as the spiral bars spin and your goldfish hits the last row of snacks before stopping.
You let out an exasperated sigh as you look to the ceiling.
“Really? Goldfish? Are you twelve?” He jabs at you, with a smirk. That effectively lightens the mood.
“Hey, they’re the snack that smiles back.” You give him a cheesy beam of a smile.
“Alright, just sayin’, cheez-its are better.”
“No way!“
He slips behind you, towards the machine, and pulls out his wallet. You look at the worn leather and old card slots and wonder how he's still able to use it without it falling apart.
"Watch and learn." He smirks as he enters his cash and pushes a couple buttons. His cheez-its fall directly into the tray and he's able to grab them.
But before he does you watch as he reaches in a little further and grabs your goldfish too.
"Thank you!" You practically jump for joy knowing you don't have to worry about your hand made sweater getting caught on that little slotted door again.
That happened about a month ago. It was the snag of the century and it took you forever to patch it.
He nervously laughs as he gives you the small snack bag. “Just returning the favor.”
“Oh? For the printer?” You question before he nods.
“Yeah, that was great. So, thank you. I don’t know if I thanked you properly with us being all…” His sentence tapers off and you don’t know if he wanted to say busy, late, or if he’s thinking about you pressed up against the printer as he had peered down at you, soft hair falling towards his face, glasses askew.
“No yeah of course.”
He clears his throat. “She's tricky." He lightly taps on the glass. "'Been here longer than me."
"Woah." You sounded a bit like a little kid learning how old their parents are.
"Hey." Ryland popped a cracker in his mouth with furrowed brows. "I'm not that old."
"How long have you been teaching here?"
“Oh...” he looks anywhere but your eyes and you think it’s because he’s embarrassed to admit how old he is.
But Ryland’s heartbeat isn’t about being older than you, that much is evident from the plush of your skin and the crows feet he has on the edge of his eyes.
He’s worried about you realizing his doctorate degree. “I’ve been teaching at this middle school for only a couple years.” of course this is the only school he’s taught at but if he told you he started teaching at thirty-one then the questions would fly in all kinds of directions.
"So... that would make you?" You wait for his response. "I'm not very good with guessing games Mr.Grace."
His breath stops in a short laugh before he rakes a hand through his hair. “Thirty-four.”
You took a breath, deciding it was better to smile than to jab him with another quip.
“What you’re only twenty-four or something?” He questions you but you’re too busy trying not to giggle.
“No, no. I’m twenty-six.” You shake your head. “I held a receptionist job through my masters and a little longer afterwards, so this is my first year of teaching.”
“Why didn’t you go straight into being a teacher?”
“I couldn’t find a job I liked. After college I had student loans and needed good pay. I had to move all the way out here to get it.”
Something behind his eyes gleams at that. “So you’re not from the bay?”
“The bay?” You almost laugh at how easy it is for him to call it that. “No.” You shake your head.
You can practically see the gears turning in his head. “Well, I grew up here. If you’re ever lost. I’m your man.” He points his thumb in his direction in a dorky show of pride.
“Well, I have a map on my phone but sure, I’ll make sure to give you a call when I’m in a dark alley.”
He laughs at that, settling back into your original conversation. “And you like it? Teaching I mean.”
“Yes.” You beam back a grin. Your mind can’t help but think of the eight year difference between the two of you. “But, are you serious about being thirty-four?”
Before you can even giggle Mr.Grace is dragging another hand through his hair. “It’s true.”
When you snicker at him he rolls his eyes. "You can make a joke."
"No, no." He watches as a mischievous grin overtakes your pretty lips. "I just wouldn't have guessed." You eat a goldfish.
"Yeah, yeah."
"No really! You look like you're late twenties.”
"C'mon just make a joke, you know you want to."
You shake your head. "Mm-mm."
"Alright." He smiles, waving you off before grabbing his mug to make the short trek back to his room.
Before he can fully get out of the door you call over your shoulder. "So did you like ride dinosaurs to school when you were a kid?" You giggle. "What was it like inscribing clay tablets?" Before you can make another jab he's already in the hall. But you hear his faint laugh.
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