summary: after stratt hires you on as a documentation specialist for project hail mary, you find yourself being more and more drawn to one dr. ryland grace. (part ii here!)
pairing: ryland grace x reader
tags: (set on stratt's vat, pre-tau ceti) meet-cute, strangers-to-lovers, forced proximity, workplace relationship, idiots in love, fluff, will they/won't they, documentation specialist!reader
What would you do if the apocalypse started?
It’s a stupid hypothetical that you make up when you’re trying to get to know somebody. Something you say at two in the morning at a sleepover, or at work in the break room with absolutely nothing to do. It isn’t serious—never that—until the Petrova line. Until the pending death of the Sun. Until Eva Stratt comes knocking on the door of your high-rise apartment, asking you—really, telling you—to abandon your day job and leave for overseas.
She has you document everything. You take notes on all the major classified meetings. You transcribe conversations between officials, especially the particularly tense ones. When you’re not writing, she has you in front of a printer-scanner, making copies for the bi-weekly organizational debriefings. You went to school for technical writing, and now, it appears that you’ve been placed into the absolute life-or-death version of a dream job. It could be worse. You could be at home, knowing that the next thirty years will spiral into world crises and war over rations. At least you’re doing something.
Her latest project for you—and, allegedly, the most important—is technical writing regarding astrophage. For the past few weeks, you’ve done nothing but compile information from Stratt’s several global microbiologists. It isn’t until the big breakthrough—the “great American scientist” who figured out how to breed the little things—that the ball starts rolling. You’ve been hearing all about him, no matter how unwillingly. There’s plenty of reserved comments from Stratt about how reclusive he seems to make himself. From the scientists, who praise his findings. From the agents, too—a schoolteacher, he’s a schoolteacher, and he dresses like one, too.
The first time you meet him truly is ultimately… gratifying. Dr. Grace lives up to expectations. You’re at the other end of the table when Stratt leads him in: a mousy, blonde-haired thirty-year-old man. Glasses askew, and dark-blue eyes blown wide. It takes a lot of will for you not to tilt your head at the sight of him—the way his eyes dart around the room, his unsuccessful attempt to back himself out of it. It’s… amusing–like watching a baby bird get coaxed out of the nest. What comes next is rather productive. You type fast on your laptop: astrophage, single-celled, Venus, high-CO2, breeding, replication by mitosis. You aren’t able to focus much on him, per say. It’s more his words, his cadence when he talks about the discovery—and the following queries that come with debriefing him on Project Hail Mary. He’s cute. And there isn’t enough time in the world for you to think that.
The next time you see him is in the mess hall a couple days after. Clearly, Stratt has him settled in—probably placed him in a nice bunk with another one of the old scientists. He sits mulling over a bowl of cereal, looking almost identical to the way that he did in the meeting room. The greatest change, clearly, is his choice in clothing. He’s got a knit cardigan on, over some punny science t-shirt that you can only vaguely read. Dr. Ryland Grace sits alone. And, he’s in your spot.
Your imagination runs its course. Maybe, he likes solitude. Maybe, he’s still facing the fact that this ship is filled with some kind of Sisyphean effort to try and save the planet. You’re very sure, looking at him stirring his spoon pointlessly in the bowl, that this situation is too big for him. He wants to go home. You’ve got your own tray of breakfast—oats and bottled juice. Clearly, you’re not used to the barrack-like quality of the ship quite yet, or else you’d be able to sit down with just about anyone else. The only downside of your job is that you don’t have very much time to talk—buried in screens and stacks of files. You sit alone, too, most of the time, in this very spot that Grace has decided to occupy for himself.
You approach him slowly, waiting for him to notice your presence on the other end of the table. It’s regrettable that he doesn’t, so caught up on the swirling quality of his cereal. You have to knock your knuckle on the edge of the tabletop. “Dr. Grace,” you hum. He retracts his hand from his spoon like it’s red-hot and stands up to greet you.
“Hi,” he says, pulling his own tray back to make room for yours. “Please, please sit down.” You wonder if he’s going to try and reach out to shake your hand—but he’s back down as soon as you swing your leg over the bench. You follow suit, giving him a polite, tight-lipped smile. Grace hums, eyes squinting as he taps his fingers across the tabletop. “I recognize you,” he says, “You had the, uh, fast hands.” The observation comes out of his mouth disjointed and awkward—but, straight to the point.
“Stratt hired me on as a documentation specialist. Fancy title for making sure that everything gets dated and down on paper,” you tell him. You almost want to light up at the thought of him picking you out in that stuff-full room—but you’ve got to keep your cool. “I’ve been assigned to record all research regarding the astrophage.” Which means you’re going to spend a lot more time together.
“Important work. Historians will love you if everything turns out how it’s supposed to,” Grace nods. In truth, you’d never considered your job in that light. In your head, Stratt had simply wanted documentation as a contingency. If all Hell broke loose, there’d still be the logs that you maintained of all the work of the scientists, the engineers, the researchers… You hadn’t been able, in the rush of it all, to consider what it meant long-term.
“Right,” you chuckle, “And molecular biology’ll make a pretty shrine for you, too.” It’s a silly thought—Father of the Astrophage, on a platinum plaque. The flattery makes him shift in his seat, index finger coming up to push up his glasses higher up the bridge of his nose. You have to soak it in a little bit, his nervousness up-close. It’s charming.
The two of you sit in silence for a moment, making ample use of your food by using it to keep quiet. Grace has his cereal, and you your oats. It’s easy. You feel like a little kid again, trying to make a friend in the cafeteria; you’re sure that’s what it looks like, too. You take a moment to crack open the lid of your juice, and Grace takes the opening. “Is this where you would’ve wanted it to end up?” he asks, “When… everything, you know—”
“Went to shit? No, not at all,” you huff. It comes up again. What would you do if the apocalypse started? Except, this time, it’s very clear that neither of you have much of a choice. Yes, it’s definitive now. Grace doesn’t know how he got here, still, despite the briefings. He’s in the middle of the ocean, and so are you; he wants advice. “I think most people hope for a conservationist sort of end. Like, in the middle of the redwoods, in a tiny cabin with a stone chimney, or something.”
He lets out a dry chuckle and stifles it quickly with the back of his hand. “Is that what you wanted?”
“No. I mean, I think I’m where I’m supposed to be now. It’s this or slow, slow death.” For an unquantifiable amount of people, you could add. You find it better not to.
“—knows I’m here, if you can believe it. Stratt’s act of kindness. They think I’m doing administrative work for the U.N., which isn’t a complete lie,” you murmur under your breath. He can only nod solemnly. Carefully, you recall: “She told me that you didn’t… have anyone to contact.”
He doesn’t seem phased at all by the inquiry. “No, no. My parents passed away before I finished doing my doctorate. They were older. I moved to the Bay for my tenure track after that. It was the easiest decision I could’ve made, considering—” He doesn’t have to spell it out for you: he bombed his own career with a single dissertation—it was teaching or nothing at all. And, all things considered, Grace really loved to teach. “I lived alone in the end. No dog, one ex.”
Ex. You think it’s probably too soon—and, too much pressure—to tell him that you don’t have anyone else waiting for you at home, either. In some twisted way, you might want him to be curious about it. To wonder if there’s someone waiting for you at the shore, or if you’re hooking up with one of the pilots on-deck. It’s all a bit of harmless fun. Vaguely, you explain, “I had an apartment, too. Nice place. Took forever to hunt for it, lock down the lease, decorate—and then, nothing. Had to surrender the keys after Stratt made it clear she wanted me on-board.”
It’s all been a little bit less lonely since Grace’s boarded the ship. You practically have to be glued together on account of Stratt’s orders. “He should rarely leave your sight,” she tells you over dinner one night, in a cleared navigational deck, “It’s imperative that you have his calculations recorded down to the decimal and uploaded to the database.” Really, it isn’t the hardest task. After that first breakfast, he seems generally comfortable in your company. He floats towards you, seemingly, more than you do him. The greatest tell is his punctuality. Grace makes it early enough to morning meetings so that he can position himself right beside you.
When there’s much more dull conversation being held about different nations providing staff or material, you notice that he has the tendency to get more… distractable. Beneath the table, you can feel his knee brush against yours as he bounces his leg—sole of his sneaker scuffing against the floor. Of course, he doesn’t have nearly as much reason to listen when the conversations turn more diplomatic and less scientific. And, while you’re supposed to pay attention heartily and take your extensive notes, Grace is on the less helpful end of the spectrum.
He likes to pass notes. They vary in topic and seriousness. There’s one particular morning when he chooses to be heavy-handed with them. It starts as soon as the representatives begin to argue. With nimble fingers, Grace slips the note right next to the trackpad of your laptop. Britain is a tool. Britain being the politician from Britain, an older man with too-tight trousers who dissented to almost everything Stratt had to offer. You take the card and slip it between the front cover and the first page of your notebook.
More chatter, and you can already see him scribbling out the next one behind his walled-up hand. You peek over, and he slides it determinedly towards you. Hope they do something other than eggs today at caf. Yes, they’d served it five days in a row. You decided to keep your complaints about it in for the first three days, and broke on the fourth. Grace had heard the bulk of your argument—the grittiness of powdered eggs, and how you’d kill for a stack of pancakes. This note, you slide back over to him. It’s not nearly as taboo as the first, which means he can have it back.
The last one Grace has for you comes a whopping ten minutes later, after he gets pulled into a conversation about laser tech for the breeding tanks. Once that devolves into yet another disagreement, he turns his attention back over to you. This new note, he makes sure to fold in half before lodging it beneath the keyboard of your computer. It takes you another five minutes of conversation lulling for you to open it. You pry the two edges open to read it: What do you do with sick chemists? Helium. What do you do if they die? Barium.
This one makes you snort to yourself too loud for your liking. You brush the index card into your lap with your nose scrunched in realization of how much of a slacker you must look like. This routine of yours is beginning to set itself in most morning meetings, and you’re beginning to wonder if you should start giving him the silent treatment. Grace appears rather proud to have made you laugh, chest puffed out; he tries to hide his smirk by looking down at his lap. If Stratt has an opinion about it, she doesn’t say anything.
You’re staring, and you really can’t help it. Grace has his cardigan shedded and strewn across the nearest lab chair. He’s doing an awful lot of calculations, something on astrophage power output that you’ll have to ask him to spell out for you later. The graphic, of course, is no better than the rest of the shirts he’s worn all week. But, the real kicker is the way that the fabric of his short-sleeves are hugging around his biceps. You couldn't have guessed that Grace would be so… fit.
You can’t take your eyes off him now, as he takes a black Expo marker to the surface of the whiteboard. The shirt’s tight. You’re checking him out. It isn’t until he peeks over his shoulder at you that you become all the more conscious of it. It’s a fleeting moment; unwillingly, you peel your eyes off of his and onto your laptop on the desk in front of you. You’re supposed to be compiling a folder to send out to the Payload Systems team. Not… this.
“Sorry,” you shoot out mindlessly. You make an exerted effort to examine the inventory list on your screen and cross-check it with another spreadsheet on the tab over. Busywork. It’s better to look like you’re doing literally anything else.
Grace doesn’t take his eyes off the board as he continues scribbling across it. He lifts the marker off the board a moment: “What for?”
You suck in a deep breath. An apology implies that you’ve got something to be sorry about. You want to leave now—but there’s really no good excuse to. Stratt is off-site, which means that you’re only doing busywork ‘till she’s back with new news. So, you elaborate with an empty “…Nothing.”
“O-kay,” he enunciates. You can’t do anything but return back to your screen with an attempt at dutifulness. Grace stays at the board, head tilted to write some undecipherable combination of greek-letters at the upper-right corner, and you can go back to your previously abandoned work. It’s almost machine-like, the way in which he scrawls the information from left to right, without any hesitation. You write several lines down on the notepad to your left: Hermle centrifuge machine needs replacement. Polypropylene for containment units — CNPC bulk load. And, messily, at the corner of your page, In love with Grace?
It’s difficult to tell. You’re together ninety-percent of the time. You’re clearly attracted to him and his square frames and his dad clothes. He makes you laugh, lets you use his old iPod to listen to Oasis. And maybe it’s the close proximity speaking, but you feel deeply about Grace in a way that you aren’t sure how to describe. Like now, as he caps the white board marker and slides it into his back pocket, before coming over to check on you with quick steps.
“On a scale of one to ten, how illegible is that?” he asks you. You try not to cave as he rests both of his hands on the edge of your desk, toned arms straining right beside you. You squint as you stare at the board, trying to make sense of the numbers.
“I think I can get everything down except for that bottom-half. It’s not your handwriting, just the formulas,” you admit. You’d never been one for complex mathematics, and you need to make sure you can get the equations recorded exactly as they are.
He hums, “That isn’t bad at all. For now, just note the biomass—circled and labeled it wet weight, in tons. If you need to, you can send the number out to DuBois, see if I got the match right, and I…” Grace trails off, picking up the mug that he has set on the desk next to you. He makes an additional effort to peer into your own empty mug, before picking it up with his other free hand. “Will be right back.” He carries them out of the room without another word. Another plus: he fetches you drinks without any asking.
It’s more quiet when he’s out of the room, presumably at the espresso machine just down the hall. In Grace’s absence, you can actually think more clearly about the situation. You know that Shapiro and DuBois have their own version of a relationship—albeit, more or less casual. At the end of the world, nobody really bats an eye about it. All things considered, it’s actually better for morale. You have to wonder if that’s in the cards for the two of you.
It isn’t long before he comes back with the two mugs. First, he places his a safe couple of inches away from your computer. Then, he makes a slow gesture for you to take your mug out of his hands. “Careful. It’s hot,” he tells you softly, running his hand beneath the bottom of the cup to swipe off the possibility of a wet ring. As he gingerly passes the handle into your hands, your fingers brush against one another comfortably. You note, eyes glancing up from the steaming cup, that there’s a faint blush littering his cheeks. But, he’s too intent on the handoff to take his eyes off the coffee to look up at you. Yes, you think, In love with Grace.
Once you figure out that fundamental fact, you start to think it over too much. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with your finding. It’s natural, and probably inevitable, for you to have fallen for him. What’s more anxiety-inducing is what you’re supposed to do about it. Under any other circumstances, you’d be okay keeping your mouth shut and letting the opportunity pass you up. But, considering the timeline of the Earth at present, it seems like there’s no time to waste. At the end of the world, it isn’t the sort of thing you should keep to yourself. You should tell him. And still, you’ve been sitting on the idea of it for weeks.
You really hope that Grace hasn’t figured it out, as observant as he is—but it’s really very clear to everyone else on Project Hail Mary. You can tell by the way they watch you both, like it's morning television. Grace rambles on about astrophysics, and you listen. He goes off on tangents about old and wrong college professors, and you laugh. You talk about your life before the project, and he listens with his chin resting on his hand. He asks you questions about what you used to do, where you used to go—like you’re another thing to learn. And everyone fawns.
It’s a good night when you hole yourself in your bunk room. All the engineers and specialists and to-be cosmonauts are all gathered together for drinks and a movie. The simple act of slipping away, letting people assume that you’ve got a migraine or an extra load of paperwork, is easy. It’s in the comfort of your tiny twin bed that you get to listen to the ocean and wailing ship creaks, window propped open to let in the fresh air. It’s strange to think that this room has been yours for so many months; the gunmetal ceiling of it is familiar now.
You get to enjoy this for upwards of an hour, until footsteps come clunking down the hall. You’re sure you know who they belong to. There’s a couple of soft, metal knocks on your door. “Hey, buddy. You sleeping?” It’s Grace’s muddled voice on the other side of the door. “Dinner’s up and everybody’s wondering where you’re at.”
You raise your head off of your pillow, “Door's unlocked. Just come in.” It’s a quick scramble for you to sit up and toss your legs over the side of the bed. As soon as Grace makes it through the doorway, you give him a sheepish smile and a wave.
“Jeez, it’s freezing in here.” Grace’s cardigan is hanging on his right hand. Another tight tee tonight, vintage tour shirt for The Beach Boys. You have to look away as he tosses it on the desk chair adjacent to your bed and as he comes up to sit right beside you. “You know,” he starts, lowering onto the hard mattress, “If you’ve been feeling overworked, I already told you I’d tell Stratt I could handle my own documentation for a week. It’s lab standard, anyway—”
He’s not making it any easier for you. “No, it’s fine,” you insist. It isn’t very easy to tell him that you’re not overworked, that you just have stupid feelings for him. Your refusal only makes him work harder.
Dismissively, he continues, “You can just sit there and watch me work. Read a book or something. A little bit of downtime isn’t going to be the end of the world. And, yes, I know how it sounds given the current circumstanes—but I think you definitely deserve it with the amount of running around that you do.” He’s getting rather impassioned about you resting, so much so that when you mumble out his name—a soft-spoken “Grace”—he doesn’t even pick up on it. He only marches on, “When you think about it, it’d help my research, too. Because if you’re stressed, I’m stressed. And that’s just no good.”
“Ryland,” you blurt. He halts, lips parting and closing. You never call him that, and now he seems very, very dazed. You explain, “I’m not overworked. I just needed a bit of time to think. Alone.”
“Right,” he cedes. “I’m sorry.” You can see his shoulders slump in the slightest, all guilt-ridden about having disturbed you. Grace leans weight onto his sneakers, clearly in an attempt to get off your bed and dismiss himself. Too easily, you reach for his arm to hold him in place.
“No, I want you,” you retract it just as quickly with a blurted, “Here. I want you here.” Grace looks more puzzled than before, but sits himself more comfortably on the end of your bed. Open to listen. You clasp your hands together, “Okay. I’m going to give you a hypothetical… Say, you have a decent life, nothing crazy. Good job at a library. It’s modest, and you’re happy with it. Go You have a good place, good friends. No… partner.” Maybe, the two of you are more similar than you realize. “And that’s okay,” you add, paying no mind to the way Grace’s eyes soften behind the lens of his glasses.
You carry on: “You’ve been okay with that for a decent amount of time. Then… apocalypse starts. You find somebody by chance, who you’d probably never cross paths with otherwise, and you realize that you like being with them. And, suddenly, because the apocalypse has started, you probably won’t have another opportunity to like another person like you do this one. And you really like the one.” You can feel your palms clam up at the confrontation of it all, the vulnerability.
He blinks slowly once. Then, twice. Grace raises a slow index finger up towards himself, eyes peering just over the frame of his glasses, “That’s me.” He states it out like an educated guess, cut-and-dry.
“No, it’s Yao,” you shoot back. “Yes, it’s you, obviously. Who else would it be?”
“Okay,” he says, hand reaching up to take his glasses off. Grace stands up with a deep breath, hand ruffling through his spiky-blonde hair as he walks further away from your bunk. Again, he mutters out a soft, “Yeah, okay,” not far off from how he looks trying to expand out a calculation. Grace taps his foot on the floor, paces left, then right, rubs his palm over the scruff on his face. A torturous lack of response. Then, finally, he turns around. “So, the whole time you weren’t just really into microbiology?”
You have to gawk at him. “Are you being serious?” He looks completely serious, glasses hanging off of his chin, blue eyes inspecting the irked look on your face with doe-like curiosity.
“Well, can you blame me? You’re gorgeous, and you’re also impossible to read.” Gorgeous? He thinks you’re gorgeous. That’s nice. You can feel the warmth bloom in your chest at the implication—but you can’t help but scoff out of pure offense. He puts his hands up in a haphazard shrug. “I mean, now that I know, it makes a lot more sense why you look at me like… that. I wasn’t totally sure.” Now, it seems that he’s making a bit of a game out of it. You don’t care to ask him to elaborate on what “that” looks like.
Stubbornly, you tut, “I’m taking it back. I’m taking it back, and it was completely hypothetical!” You stand up from your spot on the bunk, walking narrowly past Grace to your desk. Briskly, you pick up his cardigan—disposed of on your desk chair—before bunching it up and shoving it towards him.
“No, no, no—you can’t take it back. Cat’s out the bag,” Grace insists teasingly, hands clinging to the cardigan. Before you can completely let go of the woollen fabric, he makes sure, next, to grasp his hands over yours. They’re significantly larger and warm, too warm; with your hands plastered to his chest, there isn’t really anywhere for you to go. You think he must feel the nervousness practically radiating out of you, because he seems to slow down: “Okay, I’m being difficult. I can grovel if you want me to.” Grace’s voice lowers down into a rasp.
There’s a cockiness about it that you haven’t exactly seen from him before. You can’t tell if it’s making you flustered or annoyed—both, likely—and in some bout of courage, you get on your tiptoes to press your lips against his. The cold, metal frame of his glasses nudges against your face as the two of you kiss. Grace takes one hand up to cradle your jaw, and you can hear a quiet, satisfied hum come out of him. It does live up to hypothetical expectation, the way his body melds against yours clumsily around the barrier of the cardigan. It’s very him, and it’s very you.
Grace can barely be convinced, with your hands pushing back against his chest, to let you take a breath of air. Once the two of you split, Grace has a sideways smirk. “I really like you, too. Not sure if I made that clear,” he murmurs. “So, would you come grab dinner with me?”
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