im all settled in at my summerhouse and so it's ask time! im excited to see how you tackle it ^.^
Grace really, really doesn't do relationships, because he's focusing on other aspects of his life and the last one ended in a spectacle (and many other things he tells himself). boom, world's ending now. enter reader, a fellow scientist (maybe astronomer?) on the Vat, and now he has to go to basically everyone for advice on what reader likes and such, because there's no way he's letting them slip his fingers
thank you for this amazing request!!!! i got a little. carried away. i hope you like it!!
The Science of Flirting (ryland grace x reader)
also posted on ao3 | my masterlist Ryland hasn't flirted with someone in a long time. You give him some tips. He makes a list. Despite being the world's leading expert on Tau Ceti, it takes you far too long to notice. ~10.9k words (oops); fluff; Stratt's Vat; idiots in love; astronomer!reader; fem!reader (referred to as a woman with she/her pronouns)
tag list (lmk if you would like to be added!): @lilredbird101
Dr. Grace is not exactly what you expect, particularly because he is standing at the front of the room, pale as a worm, looking like he’s about ready to throw up.
You know about the paper, and the conference, too. Everyone who worked on anything remotely related to extraterrestrial life knows about it. So when Stratt introduced him to the room, you expected a hothead, someone who wasn’t afraid to express what they really thought about what someone else was saying, because that was the exact personality type that Stratt liked in the scientists she recruited. But, instead, what you see is a tired, anxious, and likely nauseous man who quotes Tag Team’s Whoomp! (There It Is) and collapses into his chair.
It’s a little—disappointing, kind of, because this man was kind of a legend, a folk tale that academics in astrobiology and exoplanet studies told their advisees to warn them about the dangers of pissing off the wrong people. The reference is pretty good, though.
Stratt grants him clearance, which surprises you; she must see something in him that you currently can’t. You positively hate the graphic she’s still using to explain the spread of the interstellar microbe—astrophage, which you’re fairly certain Dr. Grace had coined—because it’s not actually every star that’s been infected, just stars with planets, and now this criteria had become more specific since his discovery that they required carbon dioxide to reproduce.
Your impression is slightly revised when he looks around the room after being told that the current plan was to hurl three astronauts at ninety-two percent the speed of light. A little bit of color has returned to his complexion. “Any other plans you’ve thought of? Anything else you’re kicking around?”
Yes, you think. That’s closer to what you expected. He seems fun. You decide you’d like to actually meet him at some point.
--
It takes you a week to finally introduce yourself to him.
Stratt keeps him busy, breeding astrophage and giving presentations on its biology, and you’ve had your own projects to take care of. But you currently have a sliver of free time, which means that you are now standing outside of his makeshift lab, knocking on the frame of the doorway.
He jumps in his chair and then swivels around. “Uh, hello?”
You smile and walk into the room. “I just wanted to stop by and introduce myself.” You give him your name, and then you’re about to say your affiliation, but then you remember that he’s kind of an exiled academic whose institution is now a middle school—you’d done some Googling—so you refrain. “I lead the team studying the Tau Ceti system.”
The face he makes is impressed and a touch surprised. “Wow. I didn’t expect that. Uh, that’s not. I’m not saying that because you’re a woman. Love women. Very capable people.” You try and fail to suppress a wide smile. “You’re just—you seem young, is what I mean, to be in charge of something like that.”
“I’m not that young.”
“How old are you, then?”
The smile is now a shit-eating grin. “First you fumble through explaining that you like women, and now you’re asking me my age? Very smooth, Dr. Grace.”
His face is already starting to turn a delightful shade of red, and the color looks much better on him than the pallor he wore when you first saw him. “You know, at first I thought you were nice, because no one else has come and introduced themselves like this, and now I’m realizing that you are actually very mean.”
“Really? You’re kind of. Well. A little famous, in these circles. I’m surprised people aren’t walking by to watch you like you’re a zoo animal.” Everyone’s been gossiping about him, and you’re fairly certain someone printed a few (dozen) copies of the paper to pass around. You didn’t take one, because you’ve already read it, obviously.
He closes his eyes, briefly, in embarrassment. “Awesome.”
“You’ll be fine. And hey, once this is all over, you could probably get a job anywhere you wanted. Granted, you know, that the higher education system survives.”
“Yeah, right,” he scoffs. “I think I’m good.”
Hm. Your impression of him is still being revised. You thought he’d be a little bit more…spiteful, maybe, or at least rearing to prove himself, but it almost seems like he’s more or less resigned himself to being here. You decide to stop tormenting him, at least for a while. “What are you working on?”
Dr. Grace wheels his chair to the side so you can see his desk. It’s. Kind of a mess. “Refining the design for their breeding containers. Also brainstorming some stuff to research. I’d really love to know how they’re able to keep themselves so opaque, their super cross-sectionality, you know, but I haven’t been able to make a lot of progress on that.”
You hum thoughtfully as you look it all over. Your earlier thought, that he didn’t really want to be here, is carefully crossed out in your mind. The notes look a little like a mad scientist’s, complete with little doodles and overlapping circles when he’s realized he’s had a particularly good idea. “I’ll leave you to it, then. It was nice to officially meet you, Dr. Grace.”
The look he gives you is a little difficult to discern. You think it’s possible that it’s been a while since someone said that to him. “You, too. Have fun with the…Tau Ceti. Stuff.”
“Oh, I will. These exoplanets aren’t going to study themselves.”
He smiles, then, and it’s a real one, not one that’s embarrassed or nervous. It’s a good look on him.
--
The ship is almost quiet at three in the morning. There are still people milling around—there’s always more work to do—but it’s a muted version of its normal daytime landscape. Your eyes are starting to hurt from how long you’ve been looking at a computer screen, but you really need to finish this up, despite the fact that you feel about ready to fall asleep in your chair.
Alright. Coffee break, and then you’ll get back to work.
There’s a few people in the mess when you get there and make a beeline for the coffee carafes. The stuff is—it’s not great, but it does the trick, so you just pour a hefty amount of sugar and creamer into your cup and try not to grimace when you take the first sip.
Someone calls your name behind you, and you turn around, the cup still at your lips. “We meet again,” Dr. Grace says. “Night owl? Or can’t sleep?”
You hold up the coffee. “Kind of the opposite. I would love to go to sleep right now. But my team’s presenting on our research in a couple of days, so. Lots of data to double check, a slide deck to finish. All the super fun stuff about research.”
He nods in understanding and then just. Stands there, looking at you, and you’re looking right back, because he’s kind of the one that came up to you in the first place. He seems to remember this fact after blinking a few times. “Sorry. Um. What’s the presentation on? I mean. Outside of being about Tau Ceti.”
“Exoplanets, mostly. Tau Ceti’s a tricky system—surrounded by a ton of dust—”
“Right. It’s got a dust cloud that’s, like, ten times denser than the Oort cloud, right?”
You give him a small smile and nod. “That’s exactly right. So, historically, it’s been pretty difficult to get a good look, particularly because if it does have planets, they don’t seem to cross in front of the star from our perspective. We have to look for a little wobble in Tau Ceti caused by a planet’s own gravitational pull. But, you know, when you can use every telescope on Earth—and the ones outside of it, for that matter—it gets a little easier. Not much, but a little. Means there’s a lot of data to sort through.”
He hums and starts making himself his own cup of coffee. “Have you always studied them? Exoplanets, that is?”
“Mm-hm. I think it’s the most exciting frontier of astrophysics, personally, although there are a lot of people who think it’s too inexact.”
“Boo. Everyone knows that the inexact science is the most fun.”
You watch as he practically chugs the entire cup. That can’t be good for his heart. “Why are you up this late?”
He sighs contentedly when he finishes the drink and then pours himself more coffee. Good lord, are you about to watch this man have a heart attack? “Jetlag, mostly.” You refrain from pointing out that he’s been here long enough that the jetlag shouldn’t really be an issue. “And I don’t—it’s been a long time since I’ve been surrounded by people like this. Academics. And adults, to boot. Puts me a little on edge, I guess.”
Right. Middle school teacher. “Do you miss your students?”
“Of course. They’re—wait. How did you know that?” He give you a side-long glance, then, and the corner of his mouth lifts. “I see you’ve been in on the gossip.”
“Nah, I don’t listen to that crap. I looked you up like a normal person would.”
He laughs into his coffee. “Of course. Very normal. Yeah, I miss them a lot. But this is all—” He gestures around vaguely, and a little bit of liquid spills over and runs down the side of the paper cup. “—for them. So.”
“It’s pretty admirable of you. To leave them and come here to try and save the world for them.” Because, really, not everyone was here for that reason, at least not as their top priority. This project was an opportunity of a lifetime: unlimited funding, recognition, peer review essentially thrown out of the window.
It seems as if Dr. Grace doesn’t quite know how to respond to this. The tips of his ears turn pink. He must have a very active circulatory system, you think idly. Maybe all the caffeine. “Uh. Thanks.”
You pour yourself a little more coffee and sigh, rubbing at your eyes lightly. “Well. Back to the grind, I guess. Thanks for saying hi.” You find that you mean it, too. You’re pretty sure it’s been several hours since you last spoke to a human being, and he’s kind of…refreshing, to talk to. Clearly incredibly intelligent, but not completely full of himself. You’re a little glad that your initial expectations have been, thus far, proven wrong.
“Sure. Actually—could I see what you’re working on?” You look at him curiously, and he smiles sheepishly in return, rubbing the back of his head. “What can I say, I’m nosy. The dust cloud stuff got me excited.”
“You really know how to make a girl swoon.” He coughs in surprise, and the sudden motion makes even more coffee spill out. “I’m just messing with you.” It is surprisingly easy to do. “Come on, follow me.”
You lead him through the narrow, maze-like hallways of the carrier with ease, because you’ve been here for a while, now; after all, it was pretty important to gather as much information as possible about Tau Ceti, seeing as three people were going to be launched there in order to save humanity. He chatters the entire time, commenting on the walk or the tiny doorways or anything else that pops into his mind, really, perhaps overcorrecting for his earlier awkward silence after he had first walked over to you.
It only takes you a few minutes to get to your workspace. You look on with a little bit of pride as he takes it all in, because it is much neater than his lab. Not that that’s a very high bar. “I feel like a slob,” he finally comments.
You shrug, but you’re smiling a little smugly. “We all have our own methods. I just know if my space is a mess, my head’s a mess, too.”
“I think my head’s a mess no matter what,” he mumbles, and he must have thought you wouldn’t be able to hear it, because he whips his head toward you when you giggle. “Anyway. Dust cloud. Lay it on me.”
You sit down in front of your computer and pull up some of the cleaned-up data, although you’re beginning to suspect that he would be able to understand the raw version. “I don’t think you’d want a dust cloud on you,” you say idly. “Especially if you’re going super fast.”
“It would be fine. They’re spread out enough that it’s a non-issue.” He’s hovering over your shoulder, pushing up his glasses so he can see your screen.
“Again, depends on how fast you are.” You’re kind of ignoring the real reason he asked to come along with you, but whatever, this conversation is more fun. “Even just a handful of particles can be dangerous.”
He snorts. “It’s a bit of a bell-curve, isn’t it? Once you start going fast enough, the stuff’s just going to bounce right off. Ninety-two percent the speed of light should do the trick.”
“That’s correct, Dr. Grace. One point for you.” He looks at you again and clears his throat. Wow, he’s really unsocialized, isn’t he? “Well, here it is. What I’ve been staring at for the last few weeks.”
“Wow.” He leans in a little closer. There’s another chair, so it’s a little unclear why he’s still standing. “And is that…?”
You follow where his finger is pointing. “The wobble. Yep. Caused by Tau Ceti-e, most likely, though we’re working on trying to confirm the existence of a second planet.”
“I thought. Don’t we already know that it has multiple?”
“Well, that’s where the inexactness comes in.” You pull up a few different windows, then, before continuing. “People have been looking at Tau Ceti for a long time, because it’s a lot like our sun, but no one’s been able to definitely prove it has planets. For some people, a wobble is not enough.”
Dr. Grace nods, and you turn a little to face him, to watch his eyes dart around the screen. “But it is for you?”
“I’ve been looking at stuff like this for a pretty long time. Just shy of a decade, if you want to try and do the math to figure out my age. So it’s—it’s sort of hard to explain, but I just have…”
“A feeling?” He finishes for you. “That makes sense. Basic pattern recognition. Brains are pretty good at that.”
You huff out a laugh. “Yeah, well, ‘basic pattern recognition’ doesn’t go over super well in peer review.”
“Well, it should. Can I…?” His hand hovers over the computer mouse, and you gesture for him to go ahead. You watch as he clicks around, skimming through different sets of data, sometimes muttering something under his breath. It’s a little incredible, how sharp he’s managed to stay despite leaving academia behind and only teaching at the middle school level. “I’m not an expert, but I believe you.”
You smile softly. “Thanks. I’ll put it on my CV.”
He finally drags the other chair over and sits down, taking a swig of his coffee. The face he makes is pretty funny; it must have gone cold already. “That’s another massive perk of leaving. I haven’t looked at a CV in years. It’s great.”
“You really like teaching, huh?”
It’s quiet for a few moments as he takes another sip. “Yeah, I do,” he finally says, quietly. “The kids are really great. So smart, insanely curious, and really not so bad once you figure out how to manage them.” The coffee cup is set down on the table, half full. It must be pretty awful. “What about you? Teaching?”
“I don’t get to do it as often as I like. Definitely not anymore, now.” You close a few of the tabs open on your computer. Despite the caffeine, you’re fairly certain that you’re done for the night. “I don’t think I could go lower than the college level, though. I get a little. Overzealous. And I imagine that wouldn’t go over well with children.”
He grins at that. “You’d be surprised. Kids like it when you treat them like people, and when you don’t hide what you really mean. And, I don’t know—I only just met you, obviously, but I think you’d be good at it.”
“Thanks.” Your face feels a little warm. “You might want to revisit that statement if you sit in on the presentation.”
“Oh?”
You wave a hand, and then you have to cover your mouth with the other as you let out a yawn. “You’ll see. There are some people here. That I do not particularly care for. And they will most definitely have something to say.”
“Looking forward to it, then.” There’s another genuine smile waiting for you when you look at him again.
--
The presentation is tomorrow. You cannot remember the last time you slept. The food in your mouth is only barely registering as food, because in your mind you’re still reviewing your notes, thinking about a slide you need to tweak, some numbers you want to go over again.
You glance up to see Dr. Grace standing in the middle of the mess hall. It seems like he’s considering whether to pick a table to sit at or to just scurry off back to his lab with his food. You raise a hand once he looks your way, and then you wave him over. He shifts his tray so he’s only holding it with one arm and points at himself, mouthing, me? You smile and nod. He takes a step, and then he hesitates, before he finally keeps walking forward and sits across from you.
“It’s not good to spend all your time in the lab,” you say around a yawn. “Work-life balance, and all that.”
He chuckles and takes a bite of his lunch. “Never had much of that. Also, pot, kettle? You look like crap.”
“Thanks,” you deadpan. “Your ability to compliment women continues to amaze.”
This makes him choke a little on his food. You would almost feel bad, because he seems to be clearly lacking in the social life department, but it is simply really funny to mess with him like this. “Why’d you wave me over?”
You shrug and pick at your tray. “I just said. Work-life balance is important. And you kind of looked like a new kid in a cafeteria, trying to figure out what cliques to avoid.”
“That about sums it up, yeah.”
“Surely you’ve made some friends by this point.”
He takes a moment to think about this while slowly chewing. He swallows. “Sort of? I don’t know, I’ve been busy. And historically I haven’t had a lot of friends.”
Oh. That’s kind of sad. “Seriously? You don’t have a single friend. Historically speaking.”
“Well, alright, it was a bit of an exaggeration. I had a friend that I got dinner with every week. From grad school. I haven’t…I don’t know what she’s up to, right now, with all of this going on. But. That’s one, at least.”
You wait for him to continue, to bring up some other examples, but he doesn’t. Yikes. “Well, alright. I think you can say that you have two now.”
His mouth is full when he says, “Who’s the—oh, you?”
“Yeah, why not? I mean, you got excited about a dust cloud and told me I was right about an exoplanet. We’re basically best buds already.”
He chokes on his food again, but this time it’s because he’s laughing. You pass him your water, because apparently he didn’t grab any, and he takes it gratefully. “Alright. Sure. I don’t, uh, I don’t know what my responsibilities are now.”
“Dr. Grace. We’re friends, we’re not in a relationship. You don’t need to, like, start planning dates or something.” The redness is back. You still do not feel that bad about teasing him, especially not now, because this is what friends do, but you say the next thing anyway. “Sorry, sorry, I should really stop. It’s just—it’s so easy, it’s almost like you haven’t even been on a date in years.” He’s silent. In fact, he is now flushing even more. He should probably get that checked out. “Are you—oh, my god.”
“I take it back. I don’t want to be friends anymore.”
You look at him, utterly flabbergasted. “How long—when was the last time you went on a date?”
“I don’t know—stop looking at me like that—I had a girlfriend in grad school.” He had a girlfriend. In grad school. That is the last example he can come up with. From about a decade ago, if your math is right, and it usually is. “We’re talking about something else now. How’s the presentation going?”
You would really like to keep talking about it, actually, and you definitely do not want to talk about the presentation, but fine. You’ll drop it. For now. “It’s going. I plan to sleep for two days straight when it’s over.”
“Why’s it so important? It seems like people are doing presentations, like, all the time, and half of them are pretty boring.”
You rub your face with your hands, meaning that your next words are a little muffled. “We kind of need to prove that there’s a planet there that the astrophage might be breeding on to justify sending an interstellar spacecraft almost twelve lightyears away.”
“Ah. That. Makes sense.” You move your hands off your face. Dr. Grace looks like he’s trying to figure out a way to reassure you, or comfort you, or something, but it seems like he’s not coming up with much. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
“Here’s hoping. I should head back, probably. Thanks for sitting with me, Dr. Grace.”
You start to gather up your things and stand when he speaks again. “You can. I guess if. Ryland is fine. Since we’re friends now, apparently.”
“Okay. See you around then, Ryland.”
While you walk back to your workspace, you’re mostly thinking about all of the things you still need to do before the presentation tomorrow. But there is a tiny, little piece of your mind that is turning over whether the flush on his face was a remnant of your teasing, or if it was because you said his name.
--
The presentation is going fine, you tell yourself. This is fine. Half of the room looks bored, because you are describing the data in excruciating detail, but at least Ryland is nodding along and taking notes.
The question portion arrives. You are already steeling yourself for what is about to happen. It’s going to be bad, because you are still running on very little sleep, and it is also so lame that people aren’t more excited about all of this, because exoplanets are fascinating, and you’ve just presented the most detailed information ever gathered on one.
The asshole in the back left of the room raises his hand. You do not give him the respect of calling him by his name in your mind, because he is an asshole and has always been an asshole. “I’m not convinced,” he says, not even waiting for you to call on him, “that you’ve taken the dust into account.”
You grit your teeth and try to keep your response measured. “Well, as I spent the first twenty minutes explaining, we have. If you compare the data with—”
“No, I heard that part, but I think the variations in Tau Ceti’s luminosity are better explained by the dust passing in front of it.”
You are going to explode. It is going to happen. It is just a matter of when. “You see, here’s the thing. You said you heard that part, where I explained why, actually, those variations are not the result of dust, but then you said the second thing, which leads me to believe that you weren’t actually listening.”
The room is so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. Everyone is looking back and forth between the two of you like they’re watching a tennis match. It is so annoying that this is suddenly much more interesting to everyone than your research. “If you go back to slide twenty-three—”
“Oh, this slide?” You click back vigorously. “Right. The slide that is clearly labeled as ‘historic data,’ which was taken from a single night using a telescope in Arizona, which led the authors to conclude that they could not definitively rule out the dust. What’s crazy, and maybe you were going to ask about this next—” You click to another slide. “—is that we have been looking at Tau Ceti for months, using almost every telescope that is currently in operation, we’ve run simulation after simulation, and even looked at comparable stars with confirmed exoplanets, and everything. Everything. Points to Tau Ceti having at least one planet, if not two.”
Everyone looks back to the asshole in the back left. “There’s clearly a gap in your literature review. My article—”
Here it is. “Your article from 2016, yes. They really let anybody publish now, don’t they?” Someone coughs at that, but you can’t really tell who it is. You’re sort of focused on something else at the moment. “We read your article, and we didn’t cite it, because it’s sloppy work done by one of your graduate students that you passed off as your own. Figure four is mislabeled, by the way, and isn’t it funny how you neglect to mention that your data was recorded over two separate nights, four months apart? Sort of puts a damper on anyone trying to replicate your results when you don’t specify that.” You look around the room, then, a little wildly. “Now. Are there any other questions.” The asshole puts his hand back up. “Put your hand down.”
He scoffs and then looks over at Stratt. “This is what I was telling you. She shouldn’t have been the lead on this. She can barely keep track of her team, and now she’s letting her feelings get in the way, just because I got a grant over her a few years ago—”
The explosion has an aftershock, apparently. “You sexist, chauvinistic pig—”
“That’s enough,” Stratt finally says. She turns to you. “Good work. Send me a typed-up report of your findings. A few teams on the ground will take a look, and then we’ll send it off.”
The relief that washes over you is enough to almost make you collapse to the floor. Everyone starts filtering out, and you’re pretty sure the asshole is starting to make his way to the front of the room, which is really great, because you have a few more choice words that you’d like to share with him. The grant, really? Everyone knew he got that because he had been college roommates with the head of the committee, who then didn’t recuse himself from the vote.
Ryland gets to you before he can. “So. I think I understand what you meant now.”
“Yeah. I wasn’t kidding. I fucking hate that guy.”
“I might have picked up on that.” He glances over his shoulder and then looks back at you. “For what it’s worth, that was kind of amazing to watch.”
You smile, but it’s a little shaky. The adrenaline is starting to wear off, and you think you might just pass out within the next five minutes. “That’s high praise. What was the line you used again, in Denmark? ‘Staggering waste of carbon’? I should have quoted it.”
“Jeez. Everyone actually knows about that, don’t they?”
“We do. We really, really do.”
--
“What about,” you say around the candy in your mouth, “Dr. Lokken?”
Your life has been so, so much easier now that the presentation was done and the report had been sent off. You were still collecting data on Tau Ceti, of course—there’s always more data—but the work was moving at a much more leisurely pace now, relatively speaking, at least. It left you with a lot more time to pop into Ryland’s lab and start bothering him. Which you are currently doing. If he’s surprised at how casual you’ve started being around him, he doesn’t show it.
He doesn’t even look up from the microscope, gloved hands carefully adjusting the dials. “Absolutely not. We hate each other.”
You scoff. “She gives you ‘fuck me’ eyes every time you’re in the same room together.”
“Someone really needs to wash your mouth out with soap,” he comments idly.
You smile as you unwrap another piece of candy. It’s—you really like being his friend, you have come to realize, because he’s sharp and bumbling at the same time, insightful, patient (sometimes), he can hold his own in a conversation, he refuses to swear even though he hasn’t been around a child in weeks, the list could go on. “I’m just trying to help. Oh, how about Stratt?”
His head finally whips toward you. “No. That’s not—no. That’s terrifying, actually, to think about.”
“There’s seriously no one?”
“Well—well—what about you?” He gives up on looking at the sample, at least for now, and sits down in his chair.
Really great deflection there, Ryland. “What about me?”
He gestures at you in frustration. “You haven’t been. You know.” You raise an eyebrow. “Unless. Have you?”
You let him sit in suspense for a minute before you finally shake your head. “No. But I could, and that’s sort of the whole point.”
“Is it?”
“It is now.” He simply sighs and wheels over to his desk to write something down. “You’re no fun.”
“I’m loads of fun.”
You slowly roll over to him to look at what he’s writing, and then you offer him a piece of candy. He goes to take it after a beat, but then you jerk it away. “Wait. Your gloves.”
Ryland waves you off and tries to grab the piece again. “It’s fine. I’ve already touched the table, I’ll just put on new ones.”
You tut and then start unwrapping the candy yourself. “All lab safety goes out the window when Ryland Grace is hungry, apparently. Open.”
“Uh, what?”
“Your mouth. Open your mouth. For the candy?” You hold it up like he’s forgotten it was there in the last half of a second.
He rolls his eyes but still opens his mouth, and you carefully pop the piece of candy in. “You’re impossible,” he says around it, looking back down at his notes.
You are not looking at him or his notes. You are staring at your hand. The tip of your index finger is wet. This is a fact that is suddenly consuming you.
“You good?”
Your head snaps back up, and you wipe your finger on your pants. “I’m fine. I—I’ll stop bothering you, I need to go check on something.”
Ryland looks at you curiously. “…Okay?”
“I’ll see you later.” You walk back to your workspace, turning over this new development in your mind.
--
All things considered, everything is fine.
You’re an adult, not a teenager, and you have a decent amount of experience with being attracted to coworkers at this point. So you keep popping into his lab, and sometimes he drops by your workspace, and you show him the latest readings that you’ve been combing through, and most days you eat lunch together. And, sure, the attraction is there, but you like being his friend more than you want to potentially jeopardize that.
One of your assistants comes over and drops a stack of papers on your desk. “Here are the reports you asked for from 2011. Also, Dr. Grace was here earlier, I assume he was looking for you.”
You take the stack and start flipping through it. “Did he say what it was about?”
She shrugs. “No. It was kind of weird, though, because after I said you weren’t here, he still stuck around, just sort of standing there awkwardly, and then asked me what I knew about flirting.”
Your finger slides against the edge of one of the sheets or paper. There’s a drop of blood, now, on the page detailing the spectroscopy of Tau Ceti back in 2009—publishing takes a while sometimes—and you have to bring your finger to your mouth because of the sting. “Sorry, papercut. That’s sort of an insane thing to ask. Do you think he was flirting with you?”
“Oh, god no,” she scoffs. “He asked it like he was collecting data, or something.”
“Well, what did you tell him?” You start rummaging around in one of your drawers. There should be a bandage around here somewhere.
Your assistant opens a different drawer and hands you one. Having an assistant is so great. “That it just depends on the person and the context.”
You snort. “I bet he hated that answer.”
“He didn’t seem pleased, no.”
The bandage is successfully wrapped around the cut, so you return to leafing through the report and try to ignore the bloodstain. “I wonder why he’s asking. And why he’s not asking me. I bet he’s doing it to piss me off.”
She stands there beside you for a second. “…Yeah. It’s a real stumper,” she finally says before she walks away.
--
The deck of the carrier is a little cold at night, but you still love coming up here when you can, because it’s quiet—except for when a jet lands, then it is decidedly not quiet—and the view of the sky, out here in the middle of the Pacific, is simply gorgeous.
Ryland’s been gone for a little while. Some trip with Stratt, you think. It’s odd: you remember not being sure what she saw in him, that very first day he was here, and now when you think back on it you simply do not understand how you came to that conclusion.
“Permission to come aboard, captain?” You look over your shoulder to see him standing behind you. He’s still in a jet harness.
You salute. “Permission granted. At ease, soldier, or whatever it is they say.” He sits down next to you, then, and starts pulling off the harness. “I didn’t know you were coming back today. Fun trip?”
“Well. I guess we’re going to pave the Sahara to breed astrophage. So. Sure?”
“Um.” You look at him incredulously. “That’s. A lot.”
“Yeah. I don’t really want to talk about it.” He sighs and leans back on his hands once the harness is completely off. You look him over for a second, studying the bags underneath his eyes, the absolute mess of his hair, and you’re pretty sure one of the hinges on his glasses is broken. “What are you doing out here?”
You gesture toward the night sky, lit up with endless stars. “Taking in the view. It’s a good night for it.”
He hums and looks up, and then the two of you are quiet for a little while, listening to the sounds of the sea water against the hull of the ship, tracing the arc of the Milky Way across the sky. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “This is pretty nice.”
“I used to do this all the time, as a kid. And then when I was old enough to drive, I would go way out into the middle of nowhere just to get less light pollution.” You don’t look over at him while you speak, instead tilting your face up, as if you were talking to the stars. “Didn’t have as much time in grad school, or when I was on the tenure track. One of the many conveniences,” you joke, “about living on a boat now, I guess.”
“Don’t forget the food,” he chimes in. “Real five-star dining experience on this thing.”
You still don’t turn to face him. You simply cannot tear your gaze away from the sky. “What’s your favorite constellation?”
Ryland shifts a little beside you and thinks on this for a few moments. “Is it too on the nose if I say Cetus?”
“Maybe,” you laugh. “It has Messier 77 in it, though, which is pretty cool, so I won’t judge you too much if that’s your final answer.”
“I don’t know if I’ll lock that in just yet. I need some time to think about it. What about you?”
The wind picks up a little bit, and you hold back a shiver. You don’t really want to go inside yet. “I know this is such a lame thing to say, because I was the one who brought this up in the first place, but it is so hard for me to pick just one. I’ve always been partial to Orion, though. It’s one of the first ones I learned.”
You think he’s smiling. “He is pretty classic.”
“Yeah. And I like that he’s kind of standing by a river. Eridanus, that is. It seems fitting. Since he’s a hunter, and all.” You finally manage to stop staring upwards for a moment to look at him, and you find that he isn’t looking at the sky at all. A small smile grows on your lips to match his own. “So. I think he’s my final answer. Even if it might be basic.”
“It’s not basic. I don’t think so, at least.” The wind brushes through his hair, tussling some of the strands awry, and you watch it for a moment before dipping your eyes back down to his face. He’s backlit by all of the lights on the surface of the carrier, and it’s difficult to tell what expression he’s currently wearing. “I think I’ll stick with Cetus. He was a sea monster or something, right?”
You nod. Part of you wants to look back up. The other part of you simply can’t. “Mm-hm. I’m not a myth expert, or anything, but I think he was the one that Perseus killed to save Andromeda. And then Perseus got to live happily ever after, which I’m pretty sure was decently rare for people in those sorts of stories back then.”
“Right. The monster got turned to stone. And then…put in space, I guess?”
“Sounds right to me. Like I said, not an expert.”
The two of you just stare at each other, for a little while, until finally you turn and look up again. It’s just—you can never get tired of this, of the sheer magnitude of it, the depths of the universe wide open above you. It makes your chest clench, just a bit, thinking about it, how infinite and sprawling and beautiful it all is.
There’s another gust, and this time you can’t hold back the shiver. You sigh. “I should probably head back in.”
“Cold?”
“Unfortunately. I think the water makes it feel colder, I don’t know.” You don’t move yet, though, taking one last lingering look as Ryland shifts next to you, probably to stand and go inside himself.
Something soft brushes against your arm. “Here.”
You glance down. It’s his sweater, a blue knitted quarter zip, and he’s holding it out to you. Your eyes flick up to his face, then, and his hair is somehow even messier than before, and he hasn’t bothered to fix his glasses from however they got knocked around when he took it off. “It’s—I’m alright, really, I can just go inside.”
“Right. Even though you did the thing where you said you should go and then you looked at the sky like it was your husband going off to war. Take the dang sweater.” He presses the sweater into your arm further, and after a second you take it and slip it on.
It’s warm, and it smells like him, and the evening is starting to slant dangerously toward a place that it probably should not go, but you stay there anyway, stargazing, periodically pointing something out; and Ryland sits with you the whole time.
--
You’re on your way to his lab, with nothing really in particular to say or do. You’ve just been staring at page after page of articles for hours, and the walk sounded nice, and you drop in half the time anyway. It’s just around the corner, and then—
“Stratt, hi. It’s—right, caller ID, I know.”
You stop walking. He is so loud on the phone for some reason. Also, why doesn’t he just go to her office?
“Listen, I have a question, it’s a little bit out of the blue. So. You’re a woman. Which means—” He’s silent for a second, which is annoying, because it was just getting to the good part. “She hung up on me,” he says, a little more quietly, almost in disbelief.
A small grin spreads on your face. He really just cannot catch a break with women, can he. You decide to tuck this away to pull out at a later time, just to really screw with him.
--
You sort of hate having to eat lunch in your workspace, but there are simply too many readings that you need to sort through today, and Ryland wasn’t in the cafeteria when you picked up your food. So you fiddle with the door, trying not to spill your food everywhere, before walking in setting your tray down carefully. There’s a folded-up piece of paper sitting on your keyboard. Maybe a note from one of your assistants?
It is not.
Trip with Stratt, gone for a few days. Movie night when I get back? Interstellar? ⬛⬛⬛
-Ryland ⬛ :)
That’s nice. You wonder, briefly, what the scribbles are covering, after the movie title and between his name and the smiley-face, before tucking the note into your drawer and getting to work.
--
The movie doesn’t happen, because when he gets back, it turns out that the project might be nuking Antarctica, and this is really taking a toll on him. You hold him for a little while as he cries in frustration.
--
It’s one of the rare nights where people on the ship have decided to actually have some fun, rather than be snippy academics—which, to be fair, you sometimes contribute to that, if your presentation is anything to go off of—so some of Earth’s brightest minds are gathered in the crew lounge, getting drunk on free alcohol.
You take a sip of your beer, and then you clink Ryland’s bottle for good measure. It had taken a little bit of pleading to get him to agree to come; it’s actually turning out that he might be ahead of you in the friend department, and if he didn’t show up, you wouldn’t have anyone to talk to.
He sighs and grabs his drink. There’s a book open in front of him. You have already teased him about this. “I’m just saying. This is a great night to, you know, scope out who’s available.” It is possible that the two of you are not on your first drinks.
“Not doing that.”
This seems like the right time to use up some of the ammo you’ve been storing. “Are you sure? Because my assistant told me this really interesting story. Something about you asking her what she knew about flirting?”
This makes him sputter and finally look up from his damn book. “She told you about that?”
“Um, obviously? She’s my assistant.” You sidle a little closer, which means you’re half off the bar stool. “So. Who’s the lucky lady?”
He closes the book and leans his face on his palm. “Who said it’s a lady?”
“You did.”
“I did not.”
“Yes, you did. When you were on the phone with Stratt.”
He closes his eyes and rubs his face underneath his glasses. When he’s done, he doesn’t push them back up. “Were you eavesdropping? That could have been a private conversation. About. Classified things.”
You smile and pat his arm. You’re feeling a little bit bolder, what with the alcohol. “I have the same level of clearance that you do. Come on. Tell me. Tell me, please,” and you draw out the please, not stopping until he sighs again. “At least tell me whatever it was you were going to ask Stratt. I have been dying to know. And then I’ll stop, I swear.”
He looks at you over his wire frames, raising his eyebrows. “And I’m supposed to believe that?”
You raise a hand, sticking up three fingers and crossing your thumb over your pinkie. “Scout’s honor.”
“It’s the other hand.”
“Whatever. It’s the thought that counts. So…?”
Ryland just looks at you for a while, and then he sighs, again, and you know that you’ve won. “Seems like the cat’s already out of the bag. I. Was going to ask her. About what women like.”
It’s a little anticlimactic, because it’s precisely what you were expecting, but you’re still riding the high of getting him to tell you anyway. “Okay, one more question, and then I’m done. What is it, exactly, that you were expecting her to say?”
“I don’t know,” he responds, a little petulant, “it’s why I was asking her in the first place.”
You hum knowingly, and the smile on your face is growing into a wide, cheshire grin. “Last request, and then I am actually, seriously done. How were you going to phrase all of this to her.”
“This is how I can tell you were never a scout. You are sullying their honor.” Oh, gosh, was he a little Boy Scout once? There has to be pictures. You need to see the pictures. But that’s less important than staying silent right now until he caves. “Fine, fine. Well, apparently you heard the opening.”
“Yes, but I would like to hear it again. Pretend I’m her.”
“I really don’t want to do that.”
You try to flatten out your expression. She’s so serious, at least all the times you’ve seen her. A thought pops into your head, then, that Ryland actually knows her a lot better than you do, seeing as they spend so much time together. You don’t like the way that lands, so you push that away and focus. “Stratt,” you say, as if you were answering the phone.
He rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. “Hi, person who is definitely Stratt. I had a question. You’re a woman. Which means you know what women like. So. What do women like?” He doesn’t say anything else, then, even though you’re still waiting for him to continue. “That was about what I had planned.”
“Wow.”
“Are we done now?”
You take another sip of your beer and nod. It’s empty, so you turn to the bartender and ask for another, which might not be the most amazing idea you’ve ever had—and you’ve had a lot of good ones, which is why you’re even here on this ship—but whatever. This is fun. “I think what gets me about all of this—”
The book is closed again, because apparently he had opened it back up while you were ordering. “Not done. Got it.”
The ball’s already rolling on this, so you keep going. “—is that you could have just asked me.”
He is, quite possibly, the most still you have ever seen him. And that’s saying a lot. You can almost hear the cogs turning in his head. Finally, he says, “Okay. You are a woman.”
“Aw, you remembered.”
This remark is ignored. “How would I. Hypothetically. Go about doing something that a woman would like.” It almost seems like he is in physical pain, having this conversation.
You decide that you’ll actually take this seriously, even if there is a very small part of you that is shriveling and dying up at the thought of giving him advice about this, about wooing someone. “Alright. First step: maybe don’t point out her female-ness.”
He clicks his tongue. His cheeks are a little red, probably from a combination of the alcohol and the topic at hand. “That’s—probably a good point.”
A hand is on his forearm now. It’s your hand. The movement happened before you could fully think about it. “This is going to sound incredibly cheesy, and probably not very helpful, but you should just be yourself.”
“Right. The person who confirms with a woman that she is, in fact, a woman.”
You squeeze his arm. “It’s a part of the charm, Ryland.”
His eyes flick down to your hand, and then back up to you, searching your face for a few moments. “…Alright.”
“Great. Go get ‘em, tiger.” You move your hand away, using your beer as an excuse, and you take a long swig. “I’m assuming this person is here?”
“It’s…possible.”
Your fingers tighten around the bottle. “Then let’s put this amazing advice I just gave you into practice.”
He doesn’t move, instead opening the book back up. You just stare at him for a while, expectantly, until he glances at you again. The edge of his mouth is lifting up into a smile. “What? You said be myself. This is what I would do.”
“You’re impossible.”
“I know. It’s an image that I try very hard to cultivate.”
--
You peer into the microscope. “You know, if these microbes weren’t actively killing the planet, I would think they’re pretty cool. I wonder which system they originated in.”
“My money’s on Tau Ceti,” Ryland says beside you. He taps your shoulder, signaling you to move, so you step aside and watch as he takes your place.
“That would be an insane coincidence. But not impossible, I suppose.” Wait. This gives you an idea. The data’s spotty, since so much of it was collected from amateur astronomers, but if you combed through it all, you might be able to trace their exact pattern. It was easier to tell the most recent path of infection—so, for example, you knew the last few stars they had jumped around to before reaching Earth—but maybe if you looked long enough, went back far enough, you could actually figure this out.
His voice interrupts your train of thought. “Here, look at this.” He scoots over so you can gaze into the microscope again.
“What am I meant to be looking at?”
“Do you see—there’s two of them, kind of sticking together—”
You look for a little while longer until you see what he’s talking about: there’s two little astrophage cells, darting around from place to place together as the two of you exhale, searching for the carbon dioxide. “Oh! I wonder why they’re doing that.”
It’s quiet, then, as you keep watching them, until Ryland blurts out, “That’s us.”
You stand up straight and smile. “Aw, that’s sweet. Two astrophage buddies.”
After a beat, he nods. “Yep. Two little buddies. Just. Buddying around.”
--
As it turns out, trying to figure out the astrophage’s original system is much, much harder than you thought it would be.
The main issue is the time scale: even though the microbes were incredibly fast, as far as living things go, it still took them years to travel from star to star. And while humans have been looking at the stars for pretty much as long as humans have been a thing, telescopes advanced enough to give you the kind of data you need have only existed for less than a century, and the most powerful ones have been turned toward objects much father away for quite a large chunk of that time.
Another online forum stares at you, a site for amateur astronomers to share pictures and general observations. In another tab is an archive with letters between members of the RAS in the 80s. There’s another tab—look, you have a lot of tabs open. You’ve at least managed to stretch the timeline back by a handful of systems, but that was about it.
You don’t even notice that someone else is in the room with you until there’s a to-go cup of coffee set down on your desk. The suddenness of it makes you jump. “Jeez, what the—oh, hey.” You’re not even sure who else you were expecting, because he’s the only person who drops in like this.
“Sorry. Still working on figuring out where the little guys came from?” Ryland pulls a chair up and sits next to you, except he’s sitting on it the opposite way, and it’s sort of fascinating to you sometimes how he comes up with new ways to use such a simple piece of furniture.
A little sigh leaves your lips as you lean back, trying to give your eyes a break from the screen. “Sure am. Not a ton to show for it.” He scoots in a little and starts clicking around to look at what you have so far; the two of you have reached a point where you don’t really need to ask before skimming through the other’s research. “We just don’t have reliable enough data, at least not anything that goes back far enough.”
He keeps glancing over it all for a while before nodding. “There’s a silver lining here, at least. The stars that have dimmed and then stayed that way definitely have exoplanets. So—your job is a little easier. Your other job, that is.”
You smile and finally pick up the coffee that he brought you. “This is true.” Hm. The coffee actually isn’t half bad today. Maybe the ship got a new shipment of better beans, or something.
Ryland is watching you drink it. His eyes dart between the cup and your face. “Good?”
“What, the coffee? Yeah, actually.”
“That’s good. Great, even.”
You set it down on the table. That might be a new project, you think, at least something to do on the side while you continue to observe Tau Ceti. Record some data on some of the other infected stars; maybe it would be a good article after all of this was over. You go to lean forward to open up a new document, at least to write up some preliminary thoughts, and you glance at the coffee while you do. Oh—there’s some kind of marking on the cup. “Did Stratt put a Starbucks, or something, on the boat? That would explain why it doesn’t taste like creek water today.”
When you rotate the cup to look at the black ink, you discover that it is not, in fact, a strange misspelling of your name, but a whole sentence. It says, in all capital letters, ARE YOU HYDROGEN? BECAUSE YOU’RE MY NUMBER ONE.
You stare at it for a little while before turning to look at Ryland, who is watching you take this all in. “Did you write this?”
His fingers are fidgeting with the back of his chair, picking at seam of its lining. “Well, I can tell you that Stratt did not build a coffee shop in the last few hours, so. Your conclusion is sound.”
Something clenches in your chest. He needs to stop doing stuff like this, because it is giving you a lot of false hope. “That’s really sweet, Ry. Thank you.” You run a finger over the letters, and then your smile turns a little mischievous. “I think I’d rather be thulium, though.”
His brows furrow. “Thulium, why…” You can tell that he’s picturing the periodic table in his head, because then he finally gets the joke, grinning and shaking his head in disbelief. “You’re a child, actually. My students would make that joke. And you said you wouldn’t be a good middle school teacher.”
“I still wouldn’t. Somehow I don’t think the school’s administration would appreciate me making a sixty-nine reference.”
You take another sip of the coffee and then start typing up your initial plans for taking a look at the exoplanets around astrophage-infected stars. Ryland is drumming his fingers against the chair. After a minute or so, he sighs.
--
Ryland isn’t at his lab. He must be on another trip somewhere with Stratt. Sometimes he gets whisked away so suddenly that he doesn’t get the chance to tell you before he leaves. It looks like he was in the middle of something, if the half-finished notes on the whiteboard tell you anything.
You decide to snoop around a little. It’s not malicious, or anything—though if you find something embarrassing you won’t be mad about it—you’re just curious about what he was working on before he left. It looks like he’s still brainstorming the cell’s super cross-sectionality, which no one has been able to figure out so far, even though it’s been months. You flip the whiteboard around. It’s a little difficult, because the swivels that allow the large board to be spun around really need some WD-40.
The other side of the board is not about astrophage. The longer you look, the more you realize that it’s not about any kind of science at all. It’s a list, with some items crossed out, others with little addendums made below them or to the side.
-SCIENCE LINES?
COPPER AND TITANIUM?
(doesn’t have an e—might get made fun of for misspelling)
….I forgot about tellurium
HYDROGEN #1 thulium? really?
BONDED LIKE O2
SO HOT PROTEINS DENATURE ew, probably not
MITOCHONDRIA….SOMETHING?
-GESTURES
COFFEE
order beans
creamer
cane sugar?
KEEP SWEATER
have to wait for her to ask if I want it back
MOVIE? (romance too on the nose – Interstellar? she says it’s really about love, not astrophysics)
STARGAZING
blankets
handwarmers?
thermos
There’s more to the list, some things that have been crossed out, like the candy he hid in your desk, the email he forwarded to you about blue light glasses that were being ordered for the scientists on the ship, the book that he lent you. At the very bottom, ‘BE MYSELF’ is written in larger letters and underlined a few times for emphasis.
Oh. This is. You are the world’s leading expert on the Tau Ceti system, and probably exoplanets in general, at this point, and this thing has been staring at you in the face for weeks, and now you are feeling a little bit like an idiot.
You look at it all for a little while longer before slowly turning the whiteboard back around.
--
The ceiling of your bunk has not changed in the last thirty minutes that you have been staring at it.
The past few days of waiting for him to get back have been positively excruciating. Your work has been sloppy, because you spend half the time in your own head without realizing it, trying to figure out what you’ll say. And it has also been boring, because it has become glaringly obvious that he is the only person you really hang out with.
The main thing you keep turning over is whether or not to tell him that you saw his list. On the one hand, it feels like the easiest way to apologize for being the blindest person on Earth, but on the other, you’ve been feeling guilty about breaching his privacy like that, even though you really hadn’t meant to snoop on something that personal. You genuinely thought it would be more research. It technically was, you suppose, just not the kind you were expecting.
You’re contemplating a list of your own, maybe something to make up for just how oblivious you’ve been, when there’s a knock on your door. It’s a little late, but not late enough that it wouldn’t be someone on your team dropping something off for you.
You need to stop expecting that. It has been Ryland every single time. He’s standing in the hallway, holding a couple blankets and a thermos, which means that you know exactly what item on his list he is about to suggest. “Hey.”
“Hi.” The two of you just look at each other, for a second, and you’re considering blurting it out right then and there, but then you notice that he’s wearing his cardigan, the one with the foxes that you told him you really liked on him once, and you’re pretty sure he’s combed his hair. Maybe—maybe you can let yourself enjoy this, at least for a little bit, before you bring it up. “Did you just get back?”
“Mm-hm. About an hour ago. I thought I’d—that we could hang out on the deck, and I’d tell you about it.” He holds up the thermos. “I have hot chocolate.”
You are in your late thirties, and your stomach is buzzing like you’re a teen girl on prom night. “That sounds nice. Let me just throw a sweatshirt on.” He nods and waits for you while you dig through your bin of clothes, and then you glance over at your tiny desk, at the chair in front of it, draped upon which is the sweater he gave you the last time you stargazed together. That will work, you think.
He’s smiling softly when you walk back to the door. It is possible that you are more nervous for this than the presentation you gave in front of some of the world’s most intelligent—and annoying—scientists. “It’s a good color on you,” he says, glancing down at the sweater. “You should keep it.”
That’s another item crossed off. He’s really speedrunning his list tonight, isn’t he? “Are you sure?” You ask, because you’re still pretending like you didn’t see the whiteboard.
“Yeah. I have other sweaters.”
As you make your way to the top deck, Ryland tells you about the trip, even though he had just said the whole point of going up top together was to tell you about it there. It was something about the Hail Mary’s design, you think, but you’re having trouble genuinely registering his words.
He fiddles with the blankets for a while when you finally get outside, smoothing them out repeatedly before gesturing for you to sit down. You take the thermos from him so he can sit next to you. It’s really, really good hot chocolate.
It’s not exactly the best night for this: the moon is bright, and there are patches of clouds drifting across the sky and obscuring your view of the stars. But it’s still nice, and the two of you look up anyway, passing the thermos back and forth.
After some time passes like that, he finally speaks again. “What have you been up to? While I was gone?”
There are a few different responses in your head, ranging from not much, because it is really boring without you here to thinking about how much of an idiot I am. What comes out instead is, “I saw the whiteboard.”
“The white—oh.” He clears his throat, then, but doesn’t say anything else. His fingers start tapping nervously on the thermos.
You keep your face tilted upwards, because you’re not really sure if you can look at him just yet. “I’m—sorry, really, I wasn’t trying to—I thought it was more astrophage research. I’m sorry,” you repeat.
He clears his throat again. And then one more time for good measure. “It’s. Fine. I guess I shouldn’t have left it there.” There’s something in his voice, and it takes you a second to realize that it’s a hint of deflation, possibly disappointment.
“Don’t—I’m not—I liked it,” you rush out.
“Oh. Oh?” Apparently, words aren’t really working for either of you at the moment.
You nod and then finally look over at him. It’s still hard to read his expression out here, with all of the ship’s lights behind him, but his eyes are wide, brows a little raised, lips just barely parted. He’s clutching the thermos like it’s a lifeline. You put your hand down, then, in the space between your bodies, just letting it rest there, palm pressed into the blanket. He looks down at it, then back up at you, before setting the thermos aside. It falls over. This is ignored. His hand slides over yours until his fingers are slotted in the spaces between yours. “The science lines were pretty good,” you murmur.
He smiles and exhales, a little shakily, curling his fingers so he can squeeze your hand. “Yeah?”
“Mm-hm. What was the mitochondria one going to be?”
“Something about powering my house. I don’t know, I’ve been workshopping that one.”
This makes you laugh, softly, quietly, and then you scoot over just a little, so you can lay your head on his shoulder and look back up at the sky. Half of the hot chocolate has spilled on the deck of the ship. Neither of you do anything about it, not while you point out different stars and constellations, while he comments whatever facts he knows about them. Orion is up there, standing at the head of the river Eridanus, which peaks up over the horizon. Next to it is Cetus, the constellation where Tau Ceti lives, though neither of you can see that specific star yet. That’s fine. You’ve looked at its data long enough to know it’s there. You think you’ll always know, deep down, where it is, with just the same certainty that you know that Ryland is right there next to you.
