k but imagine Rocky wanting to learn about how humans became the apex predators of their planet so he has Grace “hunt” him in the biodome as an experiment and during it he thinks Grace isn’t trying or taking it seriously which is bad bad bad because this is for research purposes
only for Rocky to get more and more tired as the experiment goes on just to realize that Grace isn’t which makes him panic so he puts as much distance as he can between them and finds a (hopefully) safe spot to sleep and when he wakes up the human is crouching over him like “got youuu” and Rocky has never shrieked so damn loud before in his life
sooo this inspired me and then prev's tags did too:
so there's a mini fic under the cut I smashed out in like an hour. kinda low effort but whatever. might keep it going on ao3 with more little experiments
At some point, Grace of course realizes it's living in a zoo enclosure. Then comes a Discussion.
"Rocky."
It sat Rocky down and brought up the subject by being uncharacteristically blunt and saying "Look, I would've appreciated a heads-up before becoming a zoo attraction."
Which sent Rocky into a total panic - it told the xenology team to not let Grace know! Now Grace is going to be offended or mad about being a zoo animal! There's no way to sugarcoat this! - and had it screeching out apologies. It won't be able to withstand Grace being mad at it, because the last time Grace was mad at Rocky Grace ignored Rocky. IGNORED. The silent treatment had grated so bad on Rocky's nerves it felt like it was going to go insane.
"ROCKY! CHILL OUT!"
Rocky slows. Grace is still kneeling from where it had settled after first saying 'we need to talk' (worst words in the universe, by the way). Rocky doesn't get any closer, just fiddles nervously with its fingers.
"Rocky, look. This isn't- I'm not mad about it. Honest! I kinda…" It rubs the back of its 'neck' with a hand. "Kinda already figured it out a while ago."
Grace laughs, flashing its 'teeth'. "I mean, we'd do the same thing on Earth if this was all reversed. I get it! I'm an alien, I knew this was a possibility."
"Along with dissection," Rocky grumbles. "And starving to death. Does not mean good thing. Does not mean Grace happy about it."
"But I am! Look, Eridians are learning from me, right?"
Rocky hums a begrudging confirmation.
"Then I'm happy about it! You know me. Once a teacher, always a teacher. Plus, it could be worse."
That is true, all of it. Rocky sighs. "Okay. If Grace is sure Grace not mad at Rocky…"
"I'm sure, buddy. C'mere." Grace reaches forward and wraps Rocky in a 'hug'. Rocky accepts it, reciprocates, feeling the familiar noises of Grace's organs.
"Team will ask more questions," Rocky warns. "Want to do experiments on Solean behavior."
"Oho, boy. I'm looking forward to that."
And Grace isn't lying, and neither is Rocky: within days of the conversation, the xenology team is approaching Grace and asking many more questions about Solean things, especially enrichment and differences between their respective biological functions. They already were, of course, but something seems to have emboldened them.
What everyone finds absolutely ridiculous is Solean hunting, though.
"Sorry," Historian Lilith wheezes out. It's almost laughing too hard to keep going. "You're saying- you- Soleans just walk your prey to death? And you became the apex predators on your planet? How does that work?!"
Every other member of the team present is cackling, including Rocky: Grace alone stands sober, pouting in the way it does when it's offended.
"What's so unbelievable about that?! It's a very effective way to hunt!"
Rocky snorts. "Grace lying. No way walking is efficient! Ambush is better. Example!" And Rocky lunges playfully for Grace, relishing the squeal and the scramble backwards. Then Grace stands up taller. "Okay! I'll show you. Who wants to get hunted?"
Everyone instantly steps back, leaving Rocky at the forefront. Figures. All that talk about how it's not realistic and yet they scatter at the idea of being the prey. Frankly, Rocky can't blame them - nobody wants to be hunted, after all, especially by an alien that breathes oxygen - but it raises a hand anyways. "I volunteer. Grace hunt me. Then we know truth once and for all."
The grin that split Grace's face somehow seems even creepier than usual. It goes off to prepare, murmuring about contacting the substitute teacher that takes over when Grace gets sick. Huh?
Rocky disregards that and prepares by simply making sure the atmosphere suit is fully ready. It knows Grace isn't really going to hurt it, but it has to reassure several members of the xenology team and Adrian, who's come to watch, of that fact. "Seriously? It's Grace. Grace won't hurt me. Grace can't even hurt me!" It starts to mutter about how ridiculous they're all being when someone points out that Grace could potentially break the atmosphere suit with the abundance of rocks in the enclosure, trapping Rocky in the deadly Solean-safe atmosphere, which stops Rocky dead.
It's Atmosphere Specialist Superman, well-known to be paranoid even at the best of times. Eridians have no 'faces' like Soleans, but Rocky deliberately rotates towards the idiot just to hammer in the absolute stupidity of what Superman just said, and then smacks Superman so hard several team members have to pull it off of the scientist. It's swearing and screeching the entire time, and it takes a few Earth hours to calm down properly.
The very idea of Grace deliberately hurting Rocky in such a way - when Rocky knows for a fact the scars from the Adrian Incident are still fully apparent to the Solean senses, when Grace spent months freaking out over every little sneeze or cough Rocky made when in the prototypes of the atmosphere suit - is preposterous. Grace would never ever hurt Rocky like that, would never do anything to expose Rocky to its atmosphere ever again even accidentally. They're both so very careful about it. Rocky is still steaming about Superman's insinuations when it walks inside Grace's enclosure.
Grace is waiting by the airlock. Rocky huffs. "Unfair. Go farther. Too close for start, cheater."
Grace holds up its hands in the almost-happy movement ("When I put my hands up like this, this means surrender.") and steps away a good distance. It's still smiling. "Not gonna matter, Rock," it calls. "I'm about to get you back for alllll those times you ambushed me on the trip here."
"Yeah, right!" Rocky shifts, preparing to run. "We see who is better predator."
"Ready?"
"Ready!"
"GO!"
Rocky bolts. The sand is hard to traverse, its arms slipping both from the xenonite covering and the loose grains, but it already knows it's a faster runner than Grace. And when it clicks to see where Grace is, Grace is so far behind it's laughable. Oh, this is gonna be easy.
Rocky reaches the edge of the biodome, a little worn out from the run. Luckily, it just had a sleep cycle, so it won't need to sleep for another few Solean days. Grace is out of range. HA!
It meanders back closer until it can hear Grace, leisurely strolling along the beach. "What wrong, Grace? Too slow?" It calls out.
A ripple of laughter comes from Grace. "You'll be eating your words soon enough." It sticks its hands in its pockets.
Rocky snorts, and decides to continue to be a little shit. It goes back and darts around Grace, mocking it, staying juust far enough away where if Grace lunges Grace won't even be able to touch it. Grace does give chase eventually, but Rocky just carefully climbs up the cliff face. Damn, humans are stupid! Every time Rocky thinks they're not so bad, Grace does something like this. It's not even chasing Rocky! It's just slowly following.
The biodome cycles over to night, Rocky can tell by the click! of the flashlight Grace carries. It settles on top of the cliff, enjoying the sounds of Grace trying its damndest to climb the cliff. Technically it's well past the time Grace should be asleep, but they're both too stubborn to call quits and the xenology team isn't in a hurry to interrupt this glimpse into Solean hunting methods.
Rocky has to run again when Grace reaches the top of the cliff and starts to chase it again. This keeps going, Rocky running and mocking Grace, Grace just continuing on, unshakable. Rocky only starts to worry when night falls again and Grace is still able to catch up to it!
It yells to Grace, who's a slightly shorter distance behind by now. "Grace need sleep."
"Grace has slept." Grace shouts back. "Remember, I can wake up easily. I've been sleeping and eating regularly, I promise."
"Good!" Rocky lets itself feel some relief that Grace isn't neglecting its health for this experiment. Then it goes right back to insults. "Then Grace have no excuse to be so slow!" It makes a 'fart' noise in Grace's direction and scuttles off, laughing at the offended sound Grace makes.
Day comes again, and Rocky gets frustrated. What in the actual fuck?! Something's not right. Grace has been at this for two Earth days and nights now. If Grace was going to catch Rocky, shouldn't that have happened by now? Is Grace even taking this experiment seriously?
Well, Rocky does know Grace is taking it seriously, because Grace is doing it. Hasn't given up. Hasn't called it quits. So the only reason why must be because this persistence way of hunting is, in fact, not effective, and Grace is just too stubborn to admit it! HA! Get wrecked, Grace.
Frustration turns to glee, which then curdles into nervousness as the day still goes on with no sign of Grace stopping the pursuit. They've both been running in circles: the biodome's not that big, all told, and Rocky can't access a quarter of it due to the fake ocean. No matter how long Rocky runs, there is always the inevitable appearance of Grace on the horizon, and Rocky refuses to entertain any other notion than that the reason for it is the small space. The alternative is too scary to consider.
And, even scarier, Rocky can feel a sleep cycle is imminent. It's exhausted. All the running it's been doing must have brought the sleep cycle on sooner. And Grace, last Rocky heard, still shows no sign of tiredness. Urgh!
Rocky pushes itself just a little harder, until Grace is far beyond Rocky's range of hearing and Rocky is well hidden: Grace is still on top of the cliffs over by the outer wall of the dome, while Rocky's down below nearer to the water. Then it finds one of the caves. It knows this cave in particular is the science cave, where the xenology team has been watching on the camera feeds and listening to this whole debacle, and where Grace usually goes to talk to the xenology team about things.
"I have to sleep," Rocky manages. "Can't keep going." It collapses, and the world vanishes. No worries. Grace won't catch up, and if it does, it won't think to look for Rocky here.
When Rocky wakes, it first hears a clamoring from the observation room. Many voices shouting over one another in panic. It sends a spike of fear through Rocky, and it taps at the floor to hear better - and nearly has a cardiac failure then and there, screaming louder than it's ever screamed before in its life.
Grace is standing right. over. Rocky. Looming, really, and it's never sounded taller or more ominous.
"Hiiii."
Then Grace plunges down, wraps its arms around Rocky. "Gotcha!" It opens its mouth and presses it to Rocky's carapace, leaking saliva all over the suit and pressing its tongue to the xenonite as if it's trying to eat Rocky.
Rocky shudders in disgust and cusses Grace out with every word it knows, smacking it lightly with an arm. "CREEPY! Scared Rocky, nearly kill Rocky with heart attack! No no no bad Grace! BAD BAD BAD GRACE!" This is not the first time this has happened, but it's the first time it's struck such raw fear into Rocky.
Grace is laughing, sending vibrations through Rocky's body. "I told you," it says in that light singing kind of voice it likes to do. "I tooooold youuuu! Persistence predators, baby!"
"That no count! You wait until I fall… asleep…" A horrible idea begins to dawn on Rocky. "No." There's no way. There's no way. It's too awful to think of, and yet it's the only possibility.
"Well-" Grace settles back, crosses its legs underneath it and turns towards the window to the observation room: where, by the way, everyone's gone silent with their own realization of what exactly Grace just did. "You guys didn't let me finish explaining earlier. See, a lot of prey animals on Earth are very fast for short sprints, like Rocky here." It gives Rocky a noogie. "But they can only run for so long before they have to stop moving to catch their breath. So humans evolved to be able to endure long stretches of exercise without having to stop for air. We chase an animal, track it using its footprints or the direction it was going in, keep following it, and then eventually when the animal's forced to stop, we catch up and kill it for our food. So that's what I just did!" Grace flashes its teeth again. It's terrifyingly happy about all of this.
Meanwhile, Rocky quite literally cannot move from fear. Grace has sparked fear before: their first meeting, when Rocky had no clue what to expect but it certainly wasn't some squishy cold bag of meat that breathed oxygen of all things; over Adrian the planet, when the ship had been sent into an uncontrolled spin and Rocky had known what it would have to do to save Grace and Earth and Erid all at once even if it meant death; for a few moments when Rocky had been floating in its tomb, the original Eridian ship, and had heard a cracking-thumping sort of noise coming from outside.
All of those instances were tiny bits of dust next to this type of fear. The revelation that Rocky's wonderful and clumsy friend could have, just now, very easily killed Rocky in Rocky's sleep and that its species did so regularly was the singular most horrifying concept anyone could ever have imagined. Grace probably had no idea that the Solean way of hunting was the stuff of the worst Eridian horror stories. Something that just kept going, kept chasing you until you were forced to rest? Fucking WHY?! WHY, of all the aliens Rocky could have EVER brought home, was it a species THAT HUNTED LIKE THAT?! WHY?!
"That-" it weakly starts - still feeling like it was about to, as the Soleans say, 'shit its pants' - "Very… nice, Grace. Thank for demonstration."
It crawls out from under Grace's arm. "Back soon," and lunges for the airlock. It needs… more than a little bit of processing time. That whole thing was fucking disturbing.
Grace just waves, oblivious to Rocky's internal turmoil. "See you later, Rocky!"
project hail mary fic but it's stratt in a time loop and no matter what she does she always has to send him.
project hail mary fic where what we saw was the 20th attempt and nothing else was working so she tried sending him.
project hail mary fic where the first few times she wasn't even in charge and she had to fight her way there before she could even start changing things.
project hail mary fic where the time loop is short, each day over and over until she finally gets it right and they next day starts. the lab explosion happened and she thought surely she'd get to do that day again but no, somehow that was the right thing to make the loop move on. she no longer trusts the loop itself. it might not even be possible to get this done. she tries everything on launch day. kidnapping grace and sending him was a crazy Hail Mary attempt to get the dang loop to move on since nothing else had worked. she expected the loop to reset and he'd be back with her, trusting her to find someone to send. but no, the loop moved on and she sentenced her only friend to death in space and it's permanent and she just has to live with it now.
that was the right choice, the loop says. The only choice. Does that make it any easier?
project hail mary fic where the time loop isn't short. it isn't short at all. It starts when the petrova line is discovered and it restarts when stratt dies and it ends when the sun comes back. whoever she sends into space, she has to wait twenty-six years to see if they succeeded, knowing she'll have to do these thirty years again if they failed.
the loop is so long that she always forgets the details of what happened last time, so long that her changes spiral out of control and she spends twenty-six years wondering which ones were wrong and which were right.
the beetles don't come back and she dies of old age and the loop restarts and she changes anything she can think of and they don't come back and she dies and tries again and they don't come back. how is she supposed to know what happened, what went wrong? how is she supposed to fix it. how.
she can't figure it out without being there. she needs to be on that ship. the loop resets when she dies. she can die over and over again on the spaceship and get the information she needs.
she doesn't have the coma gene.
she puts herself awake on the ship with the unconscious crew. she needs to survive thirteen years of complete isolation without going crazy in order for this to work.
yao and ilyukhina and dubois die in their comas within months. she considers going on and trying to collect the data herself but she is not the expert she needs for this and she desperately does not want to spend another twelve years alone for maybe no results. she figures out why they died and she uses yao's nitrogen to restart the time loop.
it's such a blessed relief this time, to be able to start over after only a few years, to not have to wait out the whole interminable time. they fix the coma issue and she sends herself again with the sleeping crew.
she makes it almost a year before she feels the isolation starting to unravel her mind. she uses ilyukhina's heroin to restart the time loop. she researches sanity and isolation and learns every way to try to keep a mind intact. she makes it two years before her memory starts to come apart and she uses dubois's gun to restart the time loop. she can't go alone.
she doesn't have the coma gene.
she takes a crew with her awake. yao dies in his coma after two years and they figure out why and write it down and she doesn't restart the loop, she can still get the information she needs this loop. they make it three years before they hate each other and four years before someone snaps. she bleeds out listening to gunshots and screaming. the time loop restarts. they fix the coma problem and hope there won't be more.
she can't go alone. she can't go with people. is the coma gene really as important as they say? she tells them to put her under. she feels ice creeping through her veins. she doesn't have the coma gene. the loop restarts.
she can't go. she can't wait here not knowing what's going on and guessing at what went wrong. she can't go, she doesn't have the coma gene.
she puts cameras all over the hail mary and names probes after every drummer and producer and sound editor and publicist the beatles ever had. she waits on earth and gets new footage every few months. she waits for years and watches them sleep and every day drags on interminably and every day is a victory because they're still alive and they make it halfway and then some stupid coincidence in the engine system breaks the ship. she watches the footage a month later and wants to give up but there's no giving up, when she dies she'll always wake up with the news of the petrova line discovery on her morning tv. she gives in the despair for a while until the panic on every face and the news of wars and starvation are too much again. the nitrogen was the best way. she heads down to the empty lab and restarts the time loop.
the petrova line is discovered again. she fights her way to international power again. she recruits dubois and yao and ilyukhina again. she starts them building the hail mary again.
this time she tells the research team to look into every last unlikely way the engines could break. both her scientists die in the explosion because some idiot sent the wrong amount of astrophage. should she restart again or can she learn anything from this loop before she has to try again? no, this loop is still worth something, she needs to know if the comas are safe yet, and she's so tired of fighting her way to power, bribing the french president and convincing. british prime minister and blackmailing the american senators to get out of her way. who else can she send this time? it doesn't really matter, she'll make sure the scientists survive the next loop. but no, it does matter, because they might make it this time. she does need to send the right people in case they do make it, otherwise she's wasting more interminable years.
she turns to grace. last loop she told him everything, hoping it might pull him into the loop with her. it would be so nice to not have to remember it all herself. but no, it's only her. he didn't remember any of it when the loop restarted. it's only her and she has to send someone who actually has a chance, otherwise she'll have to do this again. (she'll probably have to do this again anyway). she's so tired of doing this again.
she turns to grace. he has the coma gene.
he refuses to go. he doesn't want to die. she knows death, now. it's not as bad as he thinks. he won't remember any of this in the next loop. she doesn't have time for his cowardice. she has all the time in the world.
she sends him. she waits for years. she misses him, but she'll see him again as soon as this attempt fails and she restarts the loop. she'll send dubois again next time and he'll be here waiting with her. they make it halfway and the coincidence doesn't happen and they continue. yao dies in his coma again (there is nothing new under the sun) and she doesn't know why. she's not there. she doesn't have the coma gene.
there's no one awake on board to find out why, to ask the computer, to do an autopsy. she doesn't have the information she needs. how is she supposed to fix this when she doesn't know what went wrong. she has to keep going with this loop until she gets enough information to fix things.
they make it three-quarters of the way. she feels the arthritis starting again and celebrates. it's been a long time since she made it this far. (she has all the time in the world). ilyukhina dies in her coma (there is nothing new under the sun). she doesn't know why. she's not there to find out. she doesn't have the coma gene.
how is she supposed to get past this point. if they die and there's no one awake to tell her what happened, she can't fix it. she doesn't want to watch him die. she'll be here forever, a ten-year cycle of sending astronauts and watching them die in space. (she has all the time in the world).
ryland grace wakes up.
she watches it all in amazement. there is something new under the sun. she watches him find himself and she watches him find an alien and she watches them make a plan to collect taumoeba and she watches it all go wrong. she watches the hail mary's momentum crush him against the wall of screens and she doesn't want to watch him die. how is she supposed to fix this?
she watches the room fill with smoke as the alien saves his life. she watches him wake up and she watches the alien wake up and she sees them try to figure out how to breed the taumoeba that will save the sun. she runs out of footage from that probe and she waits. the next probe saves the sun.
she sits and she grows old again and she waits for him to come back.
the trolley problem except the guy tied to one set of tracks is your friend and someone you trust and one of the few people in the world that you genuinely like and he's begging for his life and he's saying that you're murdering him and he's screaming and clawing and running like a wild animal. on the other set of tracks is every living thing on the planet. its a no brainer, obviously. but he will still scream. this happened to my good friend eva stratt
grace, who has been alone for five minutes: oh my god. an alien! im not alone anymore! i hope he wants to be friends :)
rocky, coming up on 50 years of solitude, imprinting on grace in ways baby ducklings can only dream of: if you leave me to sleep where i can't watch your heart beat i am blowing up this tunnel with us both in it
anyway i looked up the post about seeing your grandma's boobs and tumblr has deleted the screenshot of the story where the finnish dude says that americans are "like that" because they haven't seen their grandma's tits
[image description: a screenshot of a tumblr post. the first post is an answer to an ask.
anonymous asked:
boobs shouldn't sag like that
asirensseng answered:
what a funny way of admitting that you've never seen a pair of boobs outside of porn
a reblog on this post from tumblr user "that1betch" is a screenshot of the following text:
I always think of one of my co-workers at a husky farm near Inari, who told me apropos of nothing while we were clearing out dog shit together that he thought the reason Americans are "like that" ("like what, Veikka" got the response "you know what I mean") is because "they never see their grandma's tits." His logic was that "in Finland, you go to the sauna with your grandma from when you're a baby, and you see her naked, and this is years and years before you ever see any porn, so you know before you see any of it that it's temporary and fake. And when you get a girlfriend later, you know it's only a matter of time before her tits look like that too, you accept this.
And Americans don't know that! They don't! They look at porn, and then they get a wife, and then they're surprised and bitter when she gets old - it's true!"
Like, to be clear, I think Veikka's analysis might have been missing more than a bit of nuance, this is the same guy whose motto was "Driving 600km south to Rovaniemi to get therapy is expensive, chopping wood till you don't care about it anymore is free", but I do occasionally still look at some British or American take online and think to myself, in his voice, "they've never seen their grandma's tits"
Sorry I saw your reply to another post and now all I can think about is Adrian being perfectly fine adding Grace to their polycule but Rocky fully just has to get divorced and lock Grace down.
yeah on swinger Erid adrian's like sure what's one more polycule member when we already have eleventy seven. we'll get over the fact that he's a leaky space blob. meanwhile rocky's realizing with dawning horror that what he forgot while he was happily chattering away about adding grace to his polycule back when they were bumping nasties on the Mary is that it's not an eleventy seven-hedron with a straight line leading from rocky to grace with no other connections. grace is actually going to be free game for adrian and the other eleventy seven polycule members. and without bothering to check if grace would actually be interested in adrian or the other eleventy-seven polycule members rocky is like uhhhhhhhh. actually there's this human religion called monogamy and its core tenet is no touching and i've been converted. everybody back off. someone get me a divorce lawyer. nobody look at grace. stop looking at him
Getting back into more kiss art practice and I had it pointed out I sadly missed out on Fem!Snape/Harry so here it is! I wrote a short fic where they're professors together, a spicy one, but I do love a flirtatious Defense Professor Potter 💚