summary you couldn't say that you ever dreamed of a group of twelve-year-olds intervening in your love life, but maybe you weren't too upset about it. cws no spoilers/au with no dying sun, friends to lovers, painfully oblivious protagonist wc 3.6k words
thank you anon for requesting, i wrote this swift af i'm not gonna lie. the title comes from the taylor swift song state of grace, i'm very funny. i've only see phm twice, i'm hoping to see it again thursday :)))
The sun shone into the classroom in the way that you always enjoyed, the irritatingly bright and bug-corpse-filled overhead fluorescent lights turned off while you graded papers. It was always the most relaxing like this, with the sun shining light on the desk, rather than the lights that always felt like they were two seconds away from giving anyone who had to be around them for too long a headache.
However, it also meant that you would soon have company, a routine that you had also grown accustomed to over time.
Like clockwork, Ryland Grace appeared at almost four in the afternoon on the dot, the moment that he was finished with his own grading (though he was often just keeping more scientifically inclined students after class because they had more questions). Ryland was popular with the kids. He was funny and kind, he cared about the students more than some teachers, and each and every one of them felt comfortable coming to him with anything and everything.
Granted, you were in the same boat. He was the science teacher, and you were the English teacher. But, you were both popular with the children because you were able to relate to them to help them. Both of you were always there to help, to make school more bearable for children who were being forced to be there. Naturally, the two teachers with the most whimsy in the school were the most popular with the kids, and the two closest of any of the faculty members.
“Mr. Grace, to what do I owe the pleasure?” You asked, setting down the pen under the guise of faux-professionalism. But that was dropped the moment he tugged a desk closer to yours, sitting on the desk rather than the chair, and tossing a crocheted ball of the Earth at you. Or, as you had come to discover, lava… apparently.
“I’m just here for my daily community service, teaching the school English teacher how to do physics.” He joked, reaching his hand out as he caught the ball you tossed back at him. Because that was part of the routine, too. Ryland liked to tell you all sorts of things about science, but mainly physics, because it was the one that you found the most interesting; at least, in the way that he broke it down. “So, what did you want to learn today? I was thinking that we could learn about stars, you seemed to like that last time.”
You smiled as you tilted your head down, finishing the paper that you were working on before setting the stack of them off to the side. Ryland’s smile was infectious when he sent it your way, but it always was. He was sweet, and he always came here to talk to you. But you were both always talking to each other, anyway. You ate lunch together, chaperoned the same field trips, and presented at assemblies with each other instead of anyone else. You were naturally closer to each other than anyone else.
That closeness didn’t come without its pitfalls.
Ryland was very, very attractive. Especially when he wore his cozy-looking sweaters and his glasses the wrong way. You always found him beautiful, and you didn’t understand how he was still single. You knew his last relationship hadn’t gone well, from what he told you. He’d told you that she thought his head was too high in the clouds, that he didn’t have quite as much ambition towards a relationship as he had toward his work and the science that he studied.
Still, he was too beautiful to be single, in your eyes. Though you weren’t complaining. You would, admittedly, hate it if he were in a relationship.
“Stars,” You finally mused, tilting your head as you thought about it. “Later, we’ve gotta talk about the field trip in two days; we haven’t talked about it yet.”
“Well-hey-I’ve tried, you just said ‘sorry, I’m reading Romeo and Juliet right now’. Crazy excuse by the way, who reads Romeo and Juliet recreationally?”
You tossed a balled up sticky note at him before showing him the paper you had been grading. “Not recreationally, Ryland, it’s our current lesson.”
“You’re torturing the kids? No wonder they’ve been asking to stay after class with me instead.”
“Hush.” You groaned, but you couldn’t help the little laugh that bubbled up in your throat. Ryland didn’t have a problem, necessarily, with the books that you taught or with books in general. But he certainly did like picking on you about it, just like you enjoyed picking on him for a month straight when he was the unfortunate teacher who had to show a grade of kids the dreaded birth video. “Field trip. Planetarium. Stars. Are we taking the same bus?”
“We always take the same bus; let Mrs. Johnson deal with the other one.” He joked, but his words were true. There wasn’t a time in recent memory that you had gone on a separate bus from Ryland. You often sat across from each other, but you sometimes sat together if there were too many kids for you to sit across from each other. He liked to sprawl out in the seats, though. Using the bus bench as his own personal bed until he complained about whacking his head when the bus bumped too hard.
“True, yeah, okay. Same bus. I was thinking that we could do two lunch breaks since there are more kids than usual this time around.” Ryland groaned at the idea of having to wrangle the kids for two separate lunch breaks, but you raised an eyebrow. “Imagine if we had to give one hundred and fifty kids lunch at the same time in public, Ry, that would be horrendous.”
“Yeah, alright. But we-” He made a motion between the two of you, far too exaggerated when you were giving him your direct attention. “Are having lunch together.”
“Sure, let Mrs. Johnson handle the other lunch, too.”
The thing was, Ryland liked being around you. He insisted upon it, really. Just as you did, even if you weren’t as blunt. But you figured it was just because he was nice, because you were both friends and hung out outside of school. You knew he didn’t have many people he was close to, if any. So you figured he just liked having the connection, which was why you never once allowed yourself to wonder if he reciprocated the feelings that you made a habit of hiding from him.
“Good, deal. Now, can I teach you about stars?”
“Mm… you got any snacks?”
“Obviously.”
Ryland jumped down from the desk as he passed you a share-sized bag of Sour Skittles that he had certainly taken his share from earlier. That, however, didn’t stop him from eating them while he stood behind you, giving a presentation on your whiteboard in a way that only he could give. Nor did it stop him from walking out with you, insisting that you both get coffee before you go home, even though it’s not typical for people to get coffee on the way home from anything.
The next day came quicker than you would have liked. Ryland walked in with you, because you both discovered a bit ago that you lived relatively close to each other. Sometimes, you carpooled. Other times, he liked to tail you just to annoy you. Today was no different than any other day, your fingers tapping along your coffee cup as you walked into class.
Handing back the papers that you graded, you leaned against your desk as you went over everyone’s papers and their different interpretations of love that they gave in their papers. You, of course, had noticed that there was a lot more snickering within the class since you’d started the lesson on this story. You figured, at the time, that it had something to do with kids being kids. The idea of romance made them giggle. It was probably something that kids did back when you were their age, so you didn’t think much of it at first.
“So, I want you guys to find your favorite adaptation of this classic and do a paper or presentation on it for the midterm. Can anyone think of a real-life adaptation of Romeo and Juliet?”
There was more snickering from one side of the room, and one student from said side raised their hand for your attention.
“Yes, Ashton?”
“Yeah, um, can I do mine on this class? Sometimes I think it’s an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet.”
More snicking, especially when you gave perhaps one of the more perplexed expressions you had given in class before. “Okay, no to… whatever that means.” You responded, moving on to the next student.
“I think what Ashton means is that Mr. Grace is like totally in love with you and he talks about you all the time and stuff, but you can’t be together because of the principal.”
Some students nodded in agreement, but you just felt your jaw fall open as yourself trying to speak but not feeling anything coming out, causing to more laughing in the class. “Okay, first of all, totally intrusive and inappropriate, but I’ll let it slide this time. Second of all, I don’t think he’s totally in love with me, and third, I don’t think the principal would care, not that it’s any of your business.”
“No, Miss, he’s definitely in love with you.”
“I sincerely don’t think that’s true. And anyway, it has nothing to do with adaptations of Romeo and Juliet, let’s get back on track about that.”
One of the girls in the class audibly sighed at your insistence, but you just continued on with class even though you could feel yourself still a bit flustered. You were pretty flustered throughout the day, which was ridiculous because a bunch of twelve-year-olds teasing you shouldn’t fluster you. Naturally, it was a part of the job. But something about it was different. Because children were nothing if not honest, to you, at least. And they liked you and Ryland; they’d been rather clear about that. Meaning that they certainly weren’t out to humiliate you.
Did just about everyone think that there was something going on between the two of you? You were a bit surprised, given the fact that you doubted that Ryland felt that way. But you were left curious and warm throughout the day. Even during lunch, you found yourself sharing food with Ryland like you normally did. All he ever ate was Ramen, so you often took it upon yourself to try to make him eat other things. Granted, he still just went back to his old reliable Ramen.
You were still thinking about it even when you were getting in the car together, but he distracted you pretty quickly when he diverted the car away from home and toward a restaurant that you’d both been talking about going to for a while.
“I’m definitely not dressed for this, Ryland. And I think it’s reservation only.”
You were standing outside some new, fancy Italian place that you had been salivating over the prospect of for a week now. But you didn’t like going to fancy places alone, and you didn’t feel confident enough to ask Ryland to go to dinner with you. So you figured that you would wait for a bit until one of your other friends was free enough to go, which was getting harder since they all had… families and stuff.
“I made a reservation, and you look beautiful.”
He brushed it off like it was nothing, leaving his side of the car before you had the chance to even process the compliment. You opened the passenger door, but were perplexed by him holding out his hand for you. You just quirked a brow and unbuckled, taking his hand as he helped you out of the car (you didn’t need help, but you’d take the contact, anyway). Ryland, in fact, had made a reservation for two about five days ago. That was probably day three of you showing him pictures of their housemade alfredo and telling him that you’d die if you got to taste it. So, maybe he was trying to kill you.
But he sat across from you, and he ordered wine, and he paid for everything. It felt like a date; it had all the makings of a date. But you didn’t want to assume; it felt wrong to assume. He was your friend, a close, close friend who was bringing you out to dinner after work so he didn’t have to keep hearing about how badly you were craving pasta while he was trying to make the most of his forty-nine cent chicken noodle Ramen noodles. It wasn’t anything more than that.
When he was taking you back home, he stopped outside of your house, still talking about something stupid that one of his students had done during the day. He was always so animated when he spoke, and you couldn’t help but be too enthralled to even notice that you were even home. But he eventually stopped speaking, his head turning so he could look at you.
“I think we’re here,”
“It does look pretty familiar.”
You had half a mind to remember what the kids had said earlier about him being ‘totally in love with you’, but they were just kids, right? Unreliable narrators. You opened your mouth to say something, to tell him about what they had said. But something about the way that his eyes met yours made you pause, your smile falling a bit. Everything felt tense, neither of you knowing exactly what to say. You were almost certain that his eyes moved down to your lips, and you were positive that your eyes had moved down to his lips in return.
But Ryland cleared his throat, and you turned your gaze toward your house when he did.
“Thank you for dinner, really. I’ll pay you back.”
“No, no, absolutely not. I paid, you just have to suffer the consequences of having an extra fifty dollars in your bank. Tough ask, I know.”
You smiled and moved to grab the door, but what the kids had said was still giving you pause. You contemplated for all of ten seconds before you leaned over to kiss his cheek. It could easily be perceived as platonic; you knew that. But you felt his skin heat up under your lips for the brief moment you had them there, your eyes locking on his for a moment before you moved back toward the door. “Really, thank you, you’re the best man in the whole galaxy.”
Maybe you were being bold, but maybe it didn’t matter. It was predominantly like nothing had happened the next morning, but that was mainly because you were both very busy trying to wrangle kids and last minute permission slips for the trip to the planetarium. Some of the kids who had made the comments in your class the other day were on the trip, so you made sure that they were on a different bus since the attendance turnout meant that you were going to be sitting next to Ryland.
That effort was… fruitless.
More children than you knew were under the distinct impression that you were both in love with each other. At the very least, they were all under the clear impression that Ryland was in love with you, and you were pretty sure you had kept your pining on the down-low.
If it wasn’t one kid taking a picture of you both sitting together to post online, it was another group of kids insisting upon sitting across from the two of you in the front of the bus so they could somewhat loudly talk about you both being ‘their favorites’ and saying that you should ‘get married so you can be their favorites and also be married’. You just ignored it, though you could still see a little pink flush on Ryland’s cheeks. And maybe that was confirmation, a bit of one at least.
Once you were inside the planetarium was when the teasing became a bit more relentless, though.
You’d both been called up by one of the employees to do a demonstration for the kids before they did it, a standard thing for the teacher to be called up first. You were supposed to show them how to pull the lever that would move one of the projectors, and it was helpful to have Ryland up there since he actually knew what he was talking about and what to point out. But the lever was a little stuck, and instead of just waiting for assistance, you both decided to just un-stick it instead of wasting people’s time.
The issue with that, though, is that you were both a bit clumsy.
Fixing it meant pulling really, really hard. And eventually it freed itself, but Ryland just about crashed right into you. Your hands immediately shot out to his shoulders to stabilize yourself and make sure that he, too, didn’t fall on his ass. But your eyes were on his as he held onto you in return, apologizing for almost ‘treating you like a bowling pin’. You were both very close, though. Touching each other, eyes locked on each other. And the kids noticed, a few whistles coming from some of them.
That noise made you both jerk apart, going back to the presentation.
But you couldn’t help wondering. What if they were right? You didn’t expect them to be right about personal, adult matters. They were children; what did they know about romance? But Ryland was a talker, and if he did like you, he probably made it… obvious.
Shit, he did make it obvious. You’d just been an idiot about it.
All the following each other around the school, bringing you snacks that he knew you liked, sharing coffee, and going to shops after work. He had been just about properly courting you in every single way besides asking if he could properly court you, and you couldn’t put it past him to admit to his students that he was carpooling with you for energy efficiency or something. He was someone who liked to talk, and he often overshared. But he didn’t even have to do that. Because he had been obvious, he basically took you on a date, and you just didn’t notice.
The moment the first lunch break started for the kids, you let Mrs. Johnson handle her group while your group explored. But while they were watching the light show, you were tugging Ryland off by the sleeve into a more secluded area. You were nervous to ask, to talk to him about any of this, but you felt like you had to. You wanted to, because you knew that you had just been too oblivious to read a single one of the very obvious signs that he had been dropping.
“We should probably, uh- what’s wrong?”
“Was that a date?”
“What?”
“Last night, was that a date?”
“Um…”
Ryland rubbed the back of his neck, looking away from you. But you reached up to him now, your hand on his chest, resting over the dorky t-shirt that he had decided to wear to work that day. His attention turned back to you, his cheeks flushed.
“Do you… want it to be a date?”
You smiled softly at his question, “Yeah, I do.”
Ryland seemed a bit stunned for a second. For a man who had spent so much of his free time hanging out by himself, he was a bit surprised that you were openly admitting that you wanted to go on a date with him. But he also wasn’t the type of person to deny himself of something that he absolutely wanted. Something that he knew you wanted, too.
“I think all of our students want it to be a date, too. My kids are persistent that you’re ‘like totally in love with me.”
His cheeks flushed a bit darker, but he laughed this time. Ryland let one of his hands move to your cheek, sighing when you leaned into his touch. His thumb stroked over your cheek delicately, like you were made of porcelain. “Yeah, maybe a little.” He admitted, his eyes moving back to your lips like they had done the night before. “Can I kiss you?”
“Yeah, quick. Don’t want any of them to make any illegal bet money off of us.”
You weren’t sure who closed the distance first. You just knew that you were never going to forget the feeling of his lips pressed against yours, or how soft his hair was in your hand when you finally got to tangle your fingers in it for a moment. When the kiss broke, he was just about to go back in for another before he heard talk about Pluto from the other room, his head perking up like he’d been activated by the gaseous giant.
“C’mon, wanna make sure they don’t call poor Pluto a planet in there.”
Laughing, you let him drag you back into the other room by the hand. You were a lot more relaxed throughout the day, laughing with him now that you both knew the truth, now that you knew what exactly this was. But you did end up giving the kids the illegal bet money that they wanted anyway when you held hands on the bus, and especially when he dozed off with his head on your shoulder on the way back.
As grateful as you were, you would never live down a bunch of middle schoolers being what got you both to stop being so oblivious.
In which Sirius is dead tired but won’t fall asleep because you are doing your nightly chatterbox session
He’s laying in bed with his one leg underneath yours and your other leg on top of his.
He’s been listening to you talk for a solid 5 minutes, his eye lids getting heavier with every minute that passes by.
Currently, you were rambling about a certain topic you’ve been researching for one of your favorite classes at Hogwarts. Which of course didn’t exactly capture his attention.
Sirius lazily combs his fingers through inky black curls attempting to get them out of his face. His hand hitting the mattress in an act of exertion.
The thud caught your attention. Peering over at a very sleep deprived Sirius.
A quiet smile drew itself on your face. Sirius laid with lids practically shut and mouth partially open.
The wand on the bedside table was casting lumos to keep the dorm dimly lit. With a simple flick of your wrist the light went out.
Covering Sirius with more of the blanket, you settled right in next to him.
Sirius with a “I must hit my daily word quota before I go to sleep” girlfriend. It’s me, I’m that type of girlfriend.
Knowing that Eridians have much longer lifespans, and also he can't be at every school on the planet at once, Ryland Grace decides to record a bunch of entertaining science lessons with Rocky's help.
Hundreds of years later, Eridian kids still get excited when the substitute teacher rolls in the 3D shape projector, because they know they're in for an episode of Friend Grace the Science Ace.
Ilyukhina was the Hail Mary's engineer and Rocky was the Blip A's engineer and Ilyukhina would have been so excited to meet Rocky and oh my god they would have bonded over both being engineers and oh my god she would have loved him so much and they would have learned so much from each other and oh my god
hilarious how grace is wandering around that aircraft carrier thinking i'm just a guy. meanwhile his security clearance is technically on the same level as the actual eva stratt herself
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