Carl x Grace except it starts in the lab with them betting on various experiments' outcomes using sexual favors as currency (Grace is flat broke)
Grace thinks it's A Funny Joke, obviously, and so the consequences of his actions don't register until shortly after Carl pins him to the wall in the only part of the lab that doesn't have cameras
Carl takes it Very Seriously, and doesn't know why this grown man who very clearly knew the stakes of this operation is blushing like it's their first date
Things taper off once they get to the big boat (it's hard to find a room with less than five people in it, minimum, so privacy is a bust) and Grace assumes that this was Just A Fun Thing That Happened that will very clearly Never Happen Again because they are now Consummate Professionals With Jobs To Do, however much he misses being two guys fooling around in a lab they basically owned
Completely missing the fact that Carl spends most of his free time (it isn't free, but... he makes it free) hanging around glaring at people who doubt Grace's qualifications to be here
Completely missing the fact that Carl has his coffee order?? memorized?? ? question mark??
Completely missing the fact that multiple people straight up assume they're dating
Then after Eva's karaoke stunt leaves everyone suitably existentially shaken, Carl invites Grace back to his room for a proper roll in the hay (/sincere)
Eva and like twelve guys are kicking Carl's door down the next morning because they "can't find Dr. Grace"
The same Dr. Grace who's just been rudely awakened from his beauty sleep, blinking up at the servicemen with a dopey smile as he asks, half-asleep and fully naked, "Who can't we find?"
Eva doesn't know whether to cringe herself into the stratosphere or give Carl a handshake
By noon, Grace finds that all his stuff has been moved into Carl's quarters
"For efficiency," Eva says. "And so we don't lose you again."
Grace has spent twenty minutes sitting on concrete in a field of satellite dishes mourning the astronauts lost in the explosion, alone
When he hears footsteps he thinks it's one of the guards come to drag him away from the precious infrastructure
Carl sits with him for another twenty minutes
Eva doesn't ask questions when Carl climbs into the back of the van to be with Grace instead of driving, and she looks politely down at her lap when Grace takes Carl by the hand and leans motionless against his shoulder, staring off into the middle distance
Her decision just got harder and more terrible
Grace wakes up in space with a letter sealed and signed, "Don't open until you remember"
It smells faintly of cologne
Grace doesn't know how one smell can be so irresistibly calming while also making him want to curl up in a ball and cry
In Grace's messages back home, sent with the Beatles probes, there's a section he insists be for Carl's ears and eyes only wherein he discusses having read the letter
He also mentions the enclosed USB stick full of images he admits he isn't sure Carl is interested in receiving from a "situationship from thirty years ago" but that, hey, "It's the first time anyone's been sent nudes from space, and I owe you. For everything.
"...Just don't sell them, that'd be weird. I know they're probably a collector's item at this point, but I really don't want anybody looking at these besides you. And maybe whatever poor soul is in charge of cataloging everything I just sent you guys.
"Oh God. I hope they didn't, like, pass this thing around. That'd be embarrassing. Carl, go beat them up if they passed me around.
"I don't really know what else to say except, thank you. For believing in me. And, uh... Yeah. Love you. Buh-bye."
"Well, are they any good?" Eva asks when Carl emerges from the isolated room she sent him into with a laptop and the USB stick with the stupid little "xoxo" written on a duct-tape keychain
"Wouldn't you like to know?" is all Carl says as he stows the otherwise unassuming piece of plastic in the inside pocket of his coat
She holds her hands up in mock surrender
What she doesn't know is that Carl is planning to make a physical copy of the eighth photo in the lineup as soon as he gets home—a tasteful and artfully staged shot of his sexy schoolteacher floating in the window of the Hail Mary, the shine from a multicolor nebula breaking up his outline so it appears he's suspended in starlight as he makes direct, beckoning eye contact with the camera
Since his legs are covering all the scandalous bits, Carl's husband only laughs it off with an understanding smirk when Carl tucks the image into the back of his wallet to join the faded green corner of a Skittles wrapper
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