Was inspired by the wonderful post by @hailed-marys so me and @sam-i-am-27 got possessed by the demons and came out with this.
HC list under the cut
* Astrophage is more like a virus that either alters people, causing them to commit crimes or violent acts, or a power that supervillains are starting to use.
* Grace is still a middle school teacher who got bitten by the spider, obviously.
* Adrian is the one who stitched up the suit (the Aunt May of this universe).
* He has all the perks of a normal Spider-Man, but he's still Grace, so he's incredibly clumsy. He does have a super-strong spider sense, and that's what saves him 100% of the time, but he absolutely does not have the agility. When adrenaline kicks in, he can do anything, but otherwise he'll trip over the most ridiculous things.
* He was wearing his yellow raincoat the first time he saved someone, so now he wears it over his suit (along with his white Converse).
* The spider was discovered by SHIELD (which is undercover as a scientific research facility that Grace works for part-time). After the original test subjects (who were only able to survive the spider mutations if they possessed a specific gene) were killed in an attack, Eva delivered the spider to Grace so he could be bitten before other villains got their hands on that power. (My boy gets unwillingly turned into a savior in every universe.)
* Simon is still an ex-convict who, in exchange for his freedom, is asked by the evil company of the day to test a series of mines infected by what appears to be blood from a meteorite (which eventually turns out to be the symbiote Ellie!).
* At first, they wanted to kill each other, but they end up becoming besties.
developing the hots for ryan gosling because of project hail mary is so fucking embarrassing I swear to god. that is a conventionally attractive man. a noted hollywood heartthrob. he's even blond, are you kidding me? did he win people magazine's sexiest man alive? I don't know. I'm not going to check but it wouldn't surprise me at this point. it's such a mainstream taste. such a clichéd celebrity crush. like oh I fancy ryan gosling and my favourite drink is coca-cola and my favourite snack is ready salted crisps. jesus christ. 'b-b-but i only like him when he's in a science pun tshirt and playing a dorky-awkward loner type!' doesn't matter. he's still ryan 'ken from barbie' gosling. it's so trite. I feel like the weird nerd girl in a teen coming-of-age romcom falling for the super popular jock. don't I know that I have a reputation to uphold here? cringe.
“This means… of Rocky, possessive. Of the speaker.”
“My.”
“Correct. But only for names.”
“So you’re calling me…?”
Rocky repeats the word: “My Grace. Yes.”
“Are there other Graces? Why do you need to specify?”
Rocky considers this, tapping his xenonite-encased claws idly against the floor.
“No other Grace,” Rocky says. “We just do this.”
“Like an honorific,” Grace guesses. “It goes before everyone’s name? Everyone you know?”
Rocky whirs in surprise. “No, no, no. Not at all.”
“Okay, then who? What makes me qualify?”
Rocky is silent for a moment.
“...Does this offend Grace?” he asks, voice lower.
Grace blinks. “No! I don’t think so. Is there a reason to be offended?”
“Good,” Rocky says, relieved. Grace is starting to recognize what Eridian relief sounds like. “No, no reason.”
“Who else do you call that?”
“You don’t have this on Earth?”
Grace considers. What for, friends? He couldn’t call Marissa “my Marissa.” That would be weird.
“I still don’t know what it means,” he settles on. “So I couldn’t tell you.”
Rocky groans in frustration. He’s a very impatient tutor. “We just say it.”
“Are you my Rocky?” Grace asks. He hits the two keys to make the my note.
“I don’t know!” Rocky says. “You decide this.”
“I decide? Who do you use it for?”
“You. Adrian. I will use it for my pebbles.”
Grace blinks. “So few?”
Rocky shifts. “I am… you do not have the word yet. Eridian who works alone often, not close to many other Eridians.”
“What, mechanical engineer?”
Rocky chitters. “Acceptable.”
“Is Adrian your only friend?”
Rocky draws back, like he’s taken offense. “I have friends. Coworkers. But different.”
So just Adrian. And him.
“This worries you,” Rocky says.
“Adrian is your mate,” Grace points out. “I’m not your mate.”
“Correct. You are not. You do not like to be a mate.”
Grace isn’t sure how to respond to that, so he ignores it.
“I’m your friend,” Grace says.
Rocky hesitates, for a second. “...Correct.”
“Like your coworkers.”
“No.”
Grace sighs, rubbing his hand across his face. Okay, maybe that’s fair. It’s not like he felt about any of his coworkers like he feels about Rocky.
“Best friend,” Grace amends. “You’re my best friend, too.”
Rocky hums. “Acceptable.”
“Just acceptable? Now you are offending me. Can you just explain?”
This makes Rocky fall silent for a minute longer than usual. Grace is half-ready to apologize and to say let’s move on and to retype his own name without the superfluous my.
“The Earth ‘best friend’ is not strong enough,” Rocky says finally. “It does not translate this way.”
Grace runs his fingers through his hair, a little nervous, for some reason. “Okay.”
“It is…” Rocky pauses. He has to pause more often, now that they’re not using the translator, to simplify his language. “It means that I am not Rocky without my Grace. You are part of… of the whole. When I wake up, I think of you. When I work. When I eat. When I think I am going to die.”
Rocky speaks slowly, but it’s still a lot of Eridian for Grace to grasp all at once. Even as he works out the sentences in his head, he can feel hot tears rising in his eyes.
“It means that when you are sick, I am sick,” Rocky continues. “And it means I will take care of you, because taking care of you is taking care of myself.”
Grace bunches up his sleeve, wiping it across his face, blinking furiously.
Rocky’s voice is soft. “So Grace is part of Rocky. Grace is like a cell. You see? My Grace.”
Grace is quiet, for a moment, trying to get himself together. When he speaks, his voice is shaky.
“...Oh.”
Rocky hums, pressing his carapace gently against Grace’s arm. “You are leaking. Does this make you sad?”
Grace shakes his head, sniffing, crossing his arms across his knees and resting his chin on his sleeves. “Not at all.”
“Good, good.”
“I feel like that,” Grace mumbles. “Just like that. Just exactly—exactly like that.”
“About your old mate?”
“Don’t act stupid. You know I’m talking about you.”
Rocky hums, burrowing closer. Grace curls one arm around his carapace. That’s not enough, so he leans over, dropping his head down so his forehead presses against the xenonite.
“My Rocky,” Grace whispers in English.
“My Grace,” Rocky echoes in Eridian. Grace can recognize the note at the start. He will add it when he plays Rocky’s name.
“How long have you called me that?” Grace asks. “Must’ve been a while. I didn’t notice it change.”
the Hail Mary is the opposite of idiot-proof. she's built for very smart people to be able to do Whatever They Need with every tool they have in order to achieve their goals. fucking with the centrifuge settings? i'll warn you that you're messing with important stuff but go right ahead man. ripping up the floor panels and pulling out the electricals to make a really unsafe extension cord? sure why not. pop off the fucking fuel tanks? yeah ok you're the most qualified person here and if you say you need to do that who am i to argue. i love the utter lack of guardrails on everything
I think eva stratt has detailed files on all petrova taskforce personnel that contain more information about their subjects than the subjects even know about themselves. several people in her employ have mild food allergies that she noted and had cut out of their diets via requests to the catering staff but that the people themselves have never consciously noticed, ilyukhina just thought she stopped getting regular stomach aches when she arrived on the vat because she's god's specialest engineer and not because all the dairy in her diet got swapped out for alternatives. grace does some shopping on the mainland at one point and doesn't realize he bought a different scent of moisturizer than usual so stratt just goes into his room and switches it with a hypoallergenic formula in an identical bottle. this is because she has never been normal about anything in her life.
stratt and grace and the rest of the phm science team running on 4 cumulative hours of sleep at an unscheduled conference. dimitri and lokken are trying to explain a new complication in the hail mary's fueling system and the resources necessary to iron it out but they keep getting interrupted by government officials butting in until grace (who doesn't even look up from his laptop and checked out of the conversation two days ago) snaps "we raise our hands to speak"
complete silence for like 3 seconds. the french prime minister sheepishly raises his hand and stratt smiles for the first time that week (grace buries his entire head behind his laptop screen for wont of a better option, like jumping straight into the sea)
"don't assign human morality to non human things" is so true except when it comes to printers. they know what they are, they understand dilemmas and ethics and morality. they choose to be how they are, they choose to be evil, at their very core they are rotten
gummygunk
dailybridgerton
yousharknotpass
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