always the next step

࣪ ˖ ⊹ 24. she/her. daydreaming on AO3 ⊹ ࣪ ˖

[flamestormed]

⟡ MASTERLIST ⟡ ⟡ CH 1 UPDATE ⟡

if you never eat, you’ll never grow ── .✦

⤷ ryland grace x mission engineer!reader ♫⋆｡♪

「 only available on AO3 」

content/genre/warnings: angst angst angst, domestic fluff, established relationship, doomed relationship, non-linear narrative (the journey to erid interwoven with memories from stratt’s vat, baikonur & even from before the vat), food issues & starvation, a mix of book & movie canon

summary: ryland’s whiteboard has cycled through a couple different phases. first, it held his scattered inventory of memories. then, calculations charting the path to rocky. and now, having saved rocky, columns of figures devoted to rationing food for the journey to erid. near the bottom corner, circled three separate times, are the words: WE WILL MAKE IT :) well, you learn that there is a special kind of hell reserved for the first person to discover a problem, because now, even four words scrawled across a whiteboard can mock you. you see, here’s the problem you’ve found: turns out there isn’t enough food on the hail mary for both of you to make it to erid alive after all. OR: the hail mary has enough food to get one person to erid. unfortunately, there are two of you. and worse, you’re in love.

navigate: 「 KEY 」 ꩜ = reader pov | ☀︎ = grace pov full = redirected to AO3 | snippet = redirected to tumblr updates 「 TO BE UPDATED 」

꩜ chapter 1 ─ full (3.5k) | snippet 「 KEEP READING BELOW! 」 ꩜ chapter 2 ─ full (2.9k) | snippet ꩜ chapter 3 ─ full (5.1k) | snippet ꩜ chapter 4 ─ full (6.4k) | snippet ꩜ chapter 5 ─ full (4.0k) | snippet ☀︎ chapter 6 ─ full (0.7k; phone log) | snippet ☀︎ chapter 7 ─ full (7.8k) | snippet

↓ view chapter snippet ↓ in the wake of learning that one of you must die, your mind returns to the moment grace finally chose to let his guard down and show you how he felt─a moment that came only after he was certain you would both survive.

Chapter 1 Snippet ── ⋆⋅♫

...

Grace rubbed the back of his neck, a sure sign he was nervous. He huffed a small, uncertain laugh, then went quiet. Really quiet.

“Look,” he finally said.

Then paused.

Started again.

“Look.”

You put the marker down and folded your arms. “I am looking, Grace.”

“Please don’t make fun of me right now.”

That alone changed something in the air. Because Ryland Grace was many things. But he was rarely serious. Not like this. It made your pulse jump, in the same way it did when he broke the news that the Taumoeba was going to destroy Rocky’s ship and gobble up all of his fuel.

“Okay,” you managed.

His gaze dropped, then lifted again, as if he’d decided looking away wouldn’t help him survive this. Well, whatever this was. His face had gone faintly pink, and that was when you knew what this was, but somehow you’d buried the possibility for so long that you didn’t know what to know or what to want. You watched something shift in his expression. A decision. And then he was taking a step closer, then another, closer again.

There wasn’t much space left between you before instinct kicked in and you started to back up.

...

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[flamestormed]

⟡ CH 7 UPDATE ⟡

if you never eat, you’ll never grow ── .✦

⤷ ryland grace x mission engineer!reader ♫⋆｡♪

「 CHAPTER 7 NOW AVAILABLE ON AO3! 」

fic summary: the hail mary has enough food to get one person to erid. unfortunately, there are two of you. and worse, you’re in love.

⊹ ࣪ ˖ view full summary & navigate on the ⟡ MASTERLIST ⟡

Chapter 7 Snippet ── ⋆⋅♫

grace is but a man in love, still unaware that one of you must die on this ship. musing about your bravery and beginning to worry for you, we get a glimpse into the day he first realised he loved you—the day Stratt announced that you’d be sent to die.

...

The day Stratt announced the promotion, Ryland had thought that was it. He’d thought that was it in more ways than one, in ways that clashed and clanged together in his head and made his whole body ache. It was a kind of pain he hadn’t felt since losing his parents in the crash, since losing his grandmother, since Linda had chipped away at whatever self-esteem he had left before walking out on him. In other words, it was a kind of pain he never thought he’d let himself feel again.

Or as one might more efficiently say: 

He felt like s***.

───

Ryland tried to search for something to say, but everything felt a little off-kilter today. His usual emergency stash of fun facts wasn’t coming to him. His brain felt foggy, and talking felt like a chore. Gosh. Maybe he actually was getting sick-sick from all this dramatic moping… but okay, Ryland Grace. He couldn’t possibly just sit here like an idiot either, so he willed his brain to scour the trenches for a Plan B. Problem was, his go-to question of what are you planning to do after all this? wouldn’t work either, because he already knew the answer:

You planned to work at the DoE. He was going to link you up with Marissa. You were going to work on alternative fuels, and the two of you were going to keep in touch.

You planned to work at the DoE. He was going to link you up with Marissa. You were going to work in the Alternative Fuels and Feedstocks Office in D.C.; he was going to go back to teaching in S.F., and the two of you were going to drift apart anyway.

You planned to work on the Hail Mary. He was going to get you to Tau Ceti. You were going to work on saving the world, and you were going to die.

“Grace?”

You furrowed your brows at him.

Gosh. He’d been staring, hadn’t he?

“Yeah?” he managed.

Your lips turned up just a fraction as you looked back out at the horizon, and he did too.

“You know I wanted this,” your voice came from beside him. Calm. It landed somewhere between a question and a statement.

Ryland had gone still. His mouth was dry. His brain, which was usually very good at producing words when absolutely nobody needed them, suddenly had nothing.

...

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[flamestormed]

everyones like OMG the centrifuge wasnt balanced!!! but UHm

SIR?????? pls dont do that with your used nitrile glove? sir please you have a phd in molecular biology

literally me:

[flamestormed]

⟡ CH 6 UPDATE ⟡

if you never eat, you’ll never grow ── .✦

⤷ ryland grace x mission engineer!reader ♫⋆｡♪

「 CHAPTER 6 NOW AVAILABLE ON AO3! 」

fic summary: the hail mary has enough food to get one person to erid. unfortunately, there are two of you. and worse, you’re in love.

⊹ ࣪ ˖ view full summary & navigate on the ⟡ MASTERLIST ⟡

Chapter 6 Snippet ── ⋆⋅♫

grace’s phone log.

...

[MISSED CALL — Astropharent #3]

[MISSED CALL — Astropharent #3]

[MISSED CALL — Astropharent #3]

...

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[flamestormed]

brooo i just caught up oh my god??? oh my god

Love your writing!! So excited to see where you take the story!!!

Thank you for reading and thank you for this!!!

[flamestormed]

⟡ CH 5 UPDATE ⟡

if you never eat, you’ll never grow ── .✦

⤷ ryland grace x mission engineer!reader ♫⋆｡♪

「 CHAPTER 5 NOW AVAILABLE ON AO3! 」

fic summary: the hail mary has enough food to get one person to erid. unfortunately, there are two of you. and worse, you’re in love.

⊹ ࣪ ˖ view full summary & navigate on the ⟡ MASTERLIST ⟡

Chapter 5 Snippet ── ⋆⋅♫

you’ve evaded breakfast and lunch and now it’s nearly dinner, and you’re still unable tell grace the truth. talks about having children and choice ensue, and you wonder if things would be better if both of you never crossed the line.

...

The laptop screen is too bright in the dimming light of the Hail Mary. It burrows its way rudely to the back of your eyes until the muscles there ache, so you close the window—some systematic review on Nightmares and Psychiatric Symptoms. The desktop background greets you—a photo of Ryland and yourself hugging Rocky in his celebratory clothing, party hats on your heads and LED fireworks lighting up the sky behind. Ryland’s struggling to reach around to hold Rocky’s Saviour of the Universe hat in place. You’re both grinning, and you can remember how bright Rocky’s thrills were that night.

Your eyes are still sore, and now your body has gone pins-and-needles numb. You close the machine. Set it aside. The bed beside you still holds his shape, a warm indent in the sheets. You curl into it and press your hands to your eyes. 

...

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[flamestormed]

AMAZE AMAZE AMAZE. your name in landsat. nasa science.

࣪ ˖ ⊹

and earth will remember dr. ryland grace, who loved the ̴̥͘ț̶̌h̶̙͠e̵̗̊ ̴̯͆i̷̮͑ḏ̸̊ẻ̸͜a̵͔͝ ̸̢͌o̷̥̚f̷̞̿ ̵͔̄s̷̡̚t̸̙͑a̸̯̿y̴̨͑ḭ̴͆n̵̥̂g̸̞͒ ̷̟̽a̴̪̅l̴͕̓i̸̠͘ṽ̶̤ḛ̵̄ ̶̲̓o̶̼̽n̶̻͌ earth, a hero for eternity. and earth will condemn eva stratt, who loved the earth and the lives upon it, to an eternity imprisoned, unloved.

[astrugglingacademic]

Ryland thinking Rocky is happy with being back on Erid vs Rocky putting on a brave face because he has to give 20+ eulogies and he's desperately trying to prevent one more by keeping Grace alive.

[flamestormed]

Thinking more about the unsuitability of the exact term 'putting on a brave face' since faces are overrated for Rocky's species.

Thinking more about how the Eridians go about hiding their emotions from other Eridians, or if they even can.

Because do they pick up on even the slightest shifts in body language? In tone? How then, is Rocky going to deliver the 20+ eulogies in the human equivalent of 'putting on a brave face'? How much effort will it take for him to stand in front of the crowd of strangers and old friends and families of the crew and not be tipped off that he's obviously, actively, falling apart by the one-million-and-one cues of the Eridian body that are near-impossible to control? Does he forgo it? Do the Eridians let him forgo it? Or does he practice in front of Adrian until he can sing the tunes without the slightest crack in his tone, because he knows the people are attuned (sensitive) to these things and the last thing he wants is to send ♪♫♪𝄞♪♫♬, who's always been the sweetest soul in his neighbourhood, the mate of Blip-A's medic (who spent a great part of his last days crashing out before the illness took him too, because 'he's been trying EVERYTHING but why couldn't he ♯♪♯♬ save his friends when that's supposed to be his one ♯♪♯♬ darn job'), into a spiral in public??? He surely doesn't want their pebble—and good grief, Rocky still can't fully fathom how ♫♬♪𝄞♪♫𝄞 is no longer a pebble and hasn't been for a while—to have to deal with something like that.

Also, what can he even SING that will fully and respectfully encapsulate the sacrifice of those 20+ lives in exchange for his unlikely survival? (Think: it is with all of their deaths that he has sufficient food to even 'wait' for Grace to arrive and make it back to Erid, and what would they all think about all that time he wasted in the Blip-A, orbiting Tau Ceti, being so paralysed and so useless???) Everything is unfair and painful and wrong and as fresh as the day he started to lose them one by one and Rocky does not want to step up there to deliver those 20+ eulogies, especially not when his co-dependent space blob is still next in line, still actively dying from something so stupid as malnutrition (something so stupid as turning back for him), but he knows he'll have to figure out a way to keep it together and do it anyway.

And he doesn't want to have to do something like this for Grace either, not ever, but humans live such short lives even at their fullest health. To Rocky the Eridian who's lived for almost 300 Earth years, even when well-fed and healthy, Grace's death will always be just around the bend,

unpreventable.

[flamestormed]

⟡ CH 4 UPDATE ⟡

if you never eat, you’ll never grow ── .✦

⤷ ryland grace x mission engineer!reader ♫⋆｡♪

「 CHAPTER 4 NOW AVAILABLE ON AO3! 」

fic summary: the hail mary has enough food to get one person to erid. unfortunately, there are two of you. and worse, you’re in love.

⊹ ࣪ ˖ view full summary & navigate on the ⟡ MASTERLIST ⟡

Chapter 4 Snippet ── ⋆⋅♫

flashback-heavy. you two grew close on the vat by working on the astrophage breeders together, and guess what? turns out you snapped that polaroid of grace in the movie.

...

“Why does it matter?” he asked suddenly, but not unkindly.

“What do you mean?”

“It wasn’t good enough. That’s why it’s getting shut down. This place doesn’t matter that much.”

You sighed, because there it was again, that infuriating habit of his—collapsing entire accomplishments into failure just because they weren’t perfect.

“It was a good run nonetheless, wasn’t it?” you said. “We still got a significant amount of Astrophage out of these. The efficiency of the latest model’s incredible, but it just so happens the world needs scalability more than efficiency right now. And—” you pointed to the workstation in the corner, “—see? You sent the final Sahara plan to Stratt from there. You made history here, Grace. Doesn’t that make it enough to remember some of this?”

His gaze flicked to it, then back to you. 

“As you said, the Sahara plan was an ‘us’ thing. Which includes our resident embezzler Bob,” he corrected. “You wanna go get him?”

You rolled your eyes. “Grace,” you said, shifting your grip on the Instax. “Just one picture. We can’t really do a proper selfie with this thing anyway. You can take one for me after.”

He shrugged and rolled his eyes too, but he didn’t refuse again. Thermos of espresso in hand, exhaustion etched into every line of his face, he stepped into frame anyway and looked at you through the viewfinder.

Click.

...

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[flamestormed]

the Big Worrying Problem with having no bandwidth to read the phm book as yet is accidentally writing grace OOC which i get so darn embarrassed about. case in point, i did not expect weir to explicitly state that dr. ryland grace (who screams fluff! and domesticity! and meagre teaching salary!) hates cooking so much so that he'll eat out every morning in S.F.,

and confidently wrote that he genuinely enjoyed cooking back on earth. like an idiot.

GAWD do i hate the feeling of writing characters OOC and i hope i don't get some Big Scare later that'd affect key conversations/actions in the storyline of my fic lol.

(i'm also embarrassed that i've yet to read the book but i'm running on so little sleep and this → ← close to getting two coffees at once like our dear eva stratt that i still haven't given my copy a read yet.)

but anyways, i fix:

*from chapter 4 of if you never eat, you'll never grow! ⟡ AO3 | MASTERLIST ⟡

[a-real-hum4n]

shout out to book!grace, who blasted himself with 29 atmospheres worth of 210c (410f) degrees hot straight ammonia, in the hopes that rocky would survive. who carried rockys whole 168kg (370lbg) down ladders in a make-shift carrier. who turned around for rocky, fully expecting to die of starvation. sigh. who was just a little bit more of a bitch than movie!grace (whats that one quote where hes like "if i had a nickel for every parent i wanted to slap during my career, id have enough to fill a sock and hit them with that instead"). who was purposefully given memory loss, so he wouldnt sabotage the mission (something he threatned many times). who wasnt "friendless", like he was depicted in the movie. i miss you so bad. you were everything.

[flamestormed]

book!grace who told stratt to go to hell.

[astrugglingacademic]

Ryland thinking Rocky is happy with being back on Erid vs Rocky putting on a brave face because he has to give 20+ eulogies and he's desperately trying to prevent one more by keeping Grace alive.

[h4nanabananaz]

inevitable

[nikuttek]

i'm rereading phm and i forgot how stupid silly grace is. what do you mean you're eating breakfast at a diner EVERY MORNING because you hate cooking and want eggs and bacon?

EGGS AND BACON?? a child could cook those. grace what the actual fuck why are you like this

[flamestormed]

light. grief. dark. hope.

PROJECT HAIL MARY 2026

run time 156 MINUTES directed by PHIL LORD CHRIS MILLER starring RYAN GOSLING based on the book by ANDY WEIR

look how the stars shine for you, hero Grace.

[uovoc]

What I envision for Grace is this. He would have been a normal guy if he'd stayed on earth. As a baseline, he is not a monsterfucker or an alienfucker. He's not even really into other humans because he can only get the hots for someone if they've established a soul-baring level of emotional intimacy first, which is impossible because he's allergic to vulnerability. On the flip side this means that on the off chance that he establishes a soul-baring level of emotional intimacy with someone, he's going to have the hots for them no matter what the genital situation is. If Rocky had been a cloud of sentient algae he would have wanted to do it in the cloud. However Grace doesn't know this. He thinks he must have had some kind of latent alien fetish and that's why he was so bad at relationships

[flamestormed]

I walked out of the PHM movie feeling hopeful for about ten glorious seconds before my brain realised that Ryland's a little soft and a little pathetic and that because of that, he's now in danger. Watch out, Ryland Grace, cause I'm going to make you one of my all-time favourites but that means a Terrible Situation's coming right up for ya in my fic.

This is a case in point following this realisation.

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