synopsis. a summary of drabbles / one-shots with fwb!ryland where both of you start to question, is this arrangement still casual?
(1.5k words) all these chapters are going to be suggestive
masterlist | one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine | ten
Ryland almost doesn’t answer the call.
It was an odd sight, your name on the caller ID of his phone. Odd because you’d never called each other before. Given, you’ve only been sleeping with each other for two months.
Still, you’ve never had any reason to call each other.
You’d always just text each other, usually one-worded or two maximum: ‘Thursday?’ or ‘Come over’ were most used.
So, when your name flashes across his phone in the middle of him reviewing some data on his laptop, Ryland almost doesn’t answer. It takes him the third ring to finally realize that maybe something was wrong, and that he should probably pick up.
“Are you alive?” is the first thing he asks, and the silence that greets him almost sends over a sort of panic until he hears you laugh a little on the other side. Nervous.
“Is that how you usually answer your phone?”
“Usually when someone who never calls me suddenly calls, yes.”
“So dramatic.”
It’s also odd to banter with you like this, through the static and muffled sounds of a phone call. Usually, you’d banter and it was sex immediately after. It almost felt wrong to just casually do it in the middle of the day.
“Anyways…” There is a return of the nervous drip in your voice that Ryland immediately discerns.
“Anyways…” He repeats after a significant silence.
“Can you possibly help me with something? But, only if you aren’t busy today.”
Usually, help in the language of two people who were friends with benefits usually meant one thing. You really can’t fault Ryland for assuming that.
“Help you with what? Do you need me to come over and fuck you cause… a text would’ve been enough.”
“I… Well, that would be nice. But, no. Not that kind of help.” You sigh, and suddenly groan out loud after a few beats at the sear embarrassment of having to ask Ryland of all people for help. It’s loud, so much that he has to pull his phone back an inch at the unexpected increase of volume. “I made a mistake.”
“You’re gonna have to be more specific than that. I don’t think I’m committed enough to help you bury a dead body.”
Ryland smiles, barely visible, when you laugh again on the other end.
“I took an elective…” There is a pause before a very dramatic and frustrated voice says, “It’s your stupid microbiology elective!”
Ryland snorts at the mention of his field of interest. “It isn’t my elective.”
“It might as well be! And I quite frankly know nothing about it, but it was better than Astrophysics so I took it!”
“It’s a relatively easy elective.” He says, like it’s the most obvious thing.
“Repeat that sentence and I will not let you have sex with me for a month.”
“I retract my sentence. Uh, you need my help now? Like right now?”
“If it isn’t a busy time. I just, I have an exam tomorrow, and I’ve been staring at the same page for two hours now. You were the only person I knew that actually enjoys this subject.”
He sighs over the phone, eyes darting over to the clock on his table.
“So…” A few cackles are heard from your side. “Can you come? I’ll make this Thursday extra special for you if you do.”
Ryland is in your dorm in less than 30 minutes. And, it isn’t hard to spot the disaster state you and your dorm are in.
There are sheets of paper everywhere, sticky notes that have nothing written on them, and discarded cups of coffee from the university’s nearest coffee shop.
And in the middle of your table, a very large textbook with desperate annotations.
“Wow, it’s like World War III just happened in here.”
“van Leeuwenhoek started it.”
He pulls out a chair from your dining table, carrying it over to where you’re hunched over in your study area. “Move.”
You obediently shuffle aside, staring at him as he goes over your notes, trying to see what topic you were currently in. “Where do you want me to start?”
“From the beginning?” Ryland whips his head at you, and you can only smile sheepishly at the man before putting your hands together in an almost begging motion. “Pretty please?”
He pinches the bridge of his nose, but he still flips the textbook at the beginning of the chapter. And for the next few hours, Ryland patiently (or whatever the hell constitutes as his patience because quite frankly, the man doesn’t have much of that) walks you through the concepts you need for your exam which mostly was him explaining something and you staring blankly in response.
“Are you even paying attention?”
Defensively, you immediately answer, “I am!”
He sighs. “Not to discourage you, but you might be a lost cause.”
That certainly earns him a smack on his shoulder. “Don’t be mean! I’m trying my best.”
“I don’t think it’s possible to cram this much information in a single night.”
You groan. “I hate this elective.”
“You chose it.”
“And I chose wrong!”
He studies you for a moment, and the way you rub your eyes in frustration. You seem unwilling to look at your notebook or anything related to Microbiology because it’s been almost three hours of pain.
You obviously needed a break. He has the perfect idea.
“Baby.” Ryland drawls with an obnoxious smirk, the one that made you want to hit him again, but also kiss him long and hard. Because he only ever uses that petname in bed. And you think that might be where he was going with this thought. “What if we go do something else for a moment?”
“No. I can still be helped!”
You drop your head on the table, but it doesn’t come into contact with your table. Instead, you get a cheek-full of Ryland’s palm. “Your exam is tomorrow. I don’t think I can do much anymore.”
“I hate you. And stop trying to seduce me, it might work.”
He laughs, placing his head down on the table so he can look at you face-to-face. That smirk is still on his face. God, you want to wipe it off so bad. Or kiss it off. Anything works. He has been so sexy explaining to you with his big science terms, fingers pointing at concepts and biceps flexing on reflex.
Focus!
“Ten minute break. We can makeout, or… I can put my fingers into good use. I’ve heard it helps with stress.”
He’s so tempting, so so tempting, but you can’t give in. You called him over to help you study, not fuck you dumb. “No. You’re the worst tutor ever. Just… one last try?”
Ryland sighs dramatically, but relents anyway, lifting his head from the table to reopen your notes. And despite your inability to stick anything into your head tonight, he still tries, explaining the concepts again until the textbook starts to look a little less horrifying to you.
The evening slips away unnoticed that when you check the clock again, you make a face. “Shit, it’s already seven.”
“So?”
“So…” You start gathering a few papers thrown to the side, stacking them into a messy pile. You look almost… embarrassed, and a little guilty. “You should go.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Why?”
“It’s late. And you probably have things better to do than watch me lose a battle with my elective.”
Ryland does have something else to do. A half hour ago, his phone had buzzed in his pocket with a persistent Colt texting if they were still doing dinner since his twin brother was in the area. When he’d glanced at you at the time, you were absentmindedly chewing on your pencil while trying to understand a paragraph Ryland had pointed out about a certain laboratory procedure.
Though, unknown to you, he’d already rainchecked, telling his brother he was helping someone study. Colt’s response? A string of inappropriate emojis and finally, a thumbs up.
“This is entertaining enough. Now, where were we?”
“Do you really not have anything else to do?”
“No. Now, are you gonna keep asking me that or are you going to pass this elective?”
You instantly close your mouth. “Fine.”
For a second, nothing is done, but then you move your chair to move just a little closer to him. “And thanks, Grace. I know this isn’t exactly… part of the deal.”
“It’s nothing.”
It’s definitely not nothing to you. In fact, you think he might deserve a little something.
And, just when Ryland thinks you’re going to continue where you left off, your textbook suddenly closes with a dull thud, and he looks at you with a questioning lift of an eyebrow. You only smile at him innocently, teeth finding its way to chew on your bottom lip. “You still offering that ten-minute break?”
Ryland’s eyes buzz. You know he’s thinking about it.
Cws; mentions/suspicion of cheating (not true), violence (minor), typical werewolf stuff, no use of gendered pronouns
Summery: you attempt to confront your boyfriend at his apartment for cheating on you, the truth you find is much stranger
Word count; ≈1.1k
Ryland was acting weird. For the past few months he had refused to make plans or canceled standing ones, like clockwork every attempt to see him was swallowed by a vague pit of "busy". It was weighing on you. At first it was easily justifiable: a missed deadline, papers he had to grade, an emergency. But as the months tore on you found doubt creeping into the recesses of your otherwise trusting mind.
Maybe your boyfriend had been growing bored of your relationship, maybe he had a secret standing affair with some—you stop yourself, degrading his affair partner won't get you out of this—some monthly rendezvous with a mysterious stranger.
The thought made you sick, the thought of your sweet, dorky Ryland meeting up with someone more "fun" for a night every month, just to endure you. To live with your relationship any longer he needed someone else, to have some kinky sex so he could come back to the boring partner he had waiting for him.
You had made a plan, you had a key to his apartment but never barged in without telling him, that went out the window now. You were going to drive to his place, sit in the parking lot and see if you could scope out anything suspicious, and hopefully catch him in the act.
You got the inevitable "busy tonight baby, so sorry. I love you" text at around six, when the sun was starting to dip below the horizon and cast a red orange glow over your living room. The scene would be beautiful if not for the hurt coiling in your gut like a snake, the pain simmering behind your eyes and pouring out from your waterline. you got in your car before you could think better of it.
Ryland still remembered the first time it happened—well he remembered some of it, flashes of teeth and cracking bones, stretching flesh and white hot pain. he remembered the clumps of bloody fur and feathers he woke up spitting out, remembered the dirt and blood that matted his dirty blonde hair and the carcases of whatever he had killed.
it never hurt so badly after that, or if he did he couldn't remember it; maybe his brain was blacking out the pain like it did the rest of his shift. he could remember little things, the smell of his apartment, the feel of mud under his paws.
The most vivid memories were the ones of flesh giving way under his long, wolfish canines. The taste of copper from a fresh kill he never remembers clearly.
And that terrified him. He could take a life so easily, he could end someone without thinking twice about it. He was a monster.
The sickening thought of waking to find your lifeless body with those ugly tooth punctures all over it, frozen in the terror of seeing your rock, your anchor, your Ryland transform and turn on you so easily.
So he did what he did best, he isolated.
You pulled into the parking lot in silence, the oppressive kind that choked any optimism you could have brought to this trip.
The apartment was dimly lit, you vaguely registered that the tv was on. It was low and droning on some nature documentary about birds, it reminded you briefly of what your friends would put on for their dogs when they left the house—you laughed kind of sadly, of course Ryland likes that stuff, he is..was..your lapdog of a boyfriend after all.
You barely noticed the mud on the carpet as you padded further into the apartment, towards the closed bedroom door and the shadows shifting underneath it. You had been so sure you caught him, throwing the door open and starting to yell, tears welling in your—
The impact knocked the wind out of you, you had to scramble back to not bang your head on the fake wooden floor. It took you a moment to fully process what you were seeing, feeling, hearing.
A wolf. A giant, drooling, sharp toothed wolf. In your boyfriend's apartment. On you. Tongue out, tail wagging so hard you thought it was going to break something as it looked over you. It didn't look aggressive, you thought. Blonde curls of thick, soft fur that you couldn't help but think would be divine to run your fingers through.
It didn't seem intent on killing you, you thought, it just stood there looking at you happily. You took the chance to sit up, slow as not to startle the thing—it didn't move too much when you did, simply sitting at your feet with a wagging tail.
"Uhh" you swallowed hard, peering into the room that it had darted out of "Ryland..? Are you—" You're interrupted by a soft "bworf!" From the wolf, who had stood up and started walking excited circles around you and making a soft clack clack clack on the floor with its claws.
You stepped forward, tripped, and realized you were being herded, the wolf has started hitting you gently with its head bonk bonk bonk towards the door.
You were sure that when you stepped into the bedroom you'd find Ryland, maybe his mistress too, bloody heaps that had been ambushed by whatever this oversized wolf that had gotten in was.
You braced yourself for blood, for visera, for painful images. Instead, you found a mess of blankets, pillows, and your laundry. Like a nest.
The wolf herded you towards the bed, tail wagging so hard you felt the air fan your legs "okay, okay, I'm going" you tentatively tuck yourself into the nest, watching the wolf hop up onto the bed with you.
"Well. I guess how this is how I'm spending my night" you sighed, your new wolf friend barking in agreement, prompting you to scratch him behind the ear—which was as lovely as you had thought it would be—and laugh.
The night wasnt as bad as you had originally anticipated it being. The wolf was little more than a big puppy, yipping and pawing at you and really he was a nice weighted blanket. Warm and cozy on your lap.
You woke up the next morning early and discovering that last night was not a dream as you had first suspected. The weight on your chest shifted, and you reached down to pet the wolf. Only to find..Ryland.
He was naked, sprawled out on your chest and looking utterly exhausted despite his sleeping.
He shifted, groaning, and lifted his head as you sat up.
Ok uhhhh consider March x reader who’s basically Driver (Drive 2011), very soft spoken/monotone getaway driver with the capacity for Violence. Is this anything? investigator x secretly a criminal,,, do you get me
if you end up writing Frank castle might I humbly request x venom-host reader or something of that variety? not an immediate request I’m just providing that idea here for later
- non-LA anon
this is actually really delicious. because imagine holland who finally moves him and holly back into their reconstructed house, just to find that there’s a new neighbor in the apartment complex next door. he thinks you must live alone, because you’re always by yourself—and you’re… quiet. you come home at odd hours (not that holland’s paying attention).
the first time you ever talk to him, holland’s complimenting your ability to parallel park. he curses himself for choosing that of all things, because he could’ve said something nice about your jacket or those gloves. there’s a lot to choose from, and still holland goes for parallel parking. all things considered, it is impressive because you wedge yourself in the tightest gap between a ford and his other neighbor’s suv. it’s like nothing for you, and then you’re getting out of the car with your keyring rolling on your pointer finger and holland just says it. “nice parking job.”
and the nod you give him back, a silent thanks, sends a shiver down his spine. you make him nervous. and this happens every time you bump into each other. holland feels like he’s flubbing his words all the time because he speaks too much and you speak too little. he’ll try to flirt, crack a joke or two, and the most he can get out of you is that little grin. if he’s really lucky, you’ll say a few smart words—and then holland realizes you’re really witty, which makes this situation a whole lot worse. he thinks he might have a small schoolboy crush on his neighbor who only speaks in a blue moon.
on your end of things, it’s… complicated. you’ve noticed holland from afar for ages before he actually gets the opportunity to speak to you. you’ve been like that since you were young, quiet, watching, waiting—and holland is so sweet. you can tell from the way he speaks to you. and also when you’ve seen him to apologize to the cars, bushes, and lampposts you’ve watched him bump into on his drunken walks home.
the issue is that he’s either a cop or some kind of detective. you know because you’ve seen his car up and around every place you’ve helped rob in the past three months. you’re lucky holland hasn’t noticed, because then you’d have to go through the task of spinning an impossible lie. this is confirmed pretty quickly one morning when you’re trying to load a briefcase of money into your apartment from your car, and holland catches you, running out the front door of his house just to give you his business card. the nice guys. you’ve got to swallow down the worry, and focus more on the way holland is checking you out. it’s easier to enjoy him when you’re not thinking of what could go wrong.
it’s a good balance. you’re always narrowly avoiding holland’s car each time you’re getting away (you notice that he’s getting better at catching up to you, which you find yourself a little impressed by). holland wouldn’t know it’s you anyways; you make sure to change out cars every job, a generic model every time.
until one of your jobs leads straight back to holland. they’re asking you to drive next door to this PI’s house so they might rough up his teen daughter to get him off their tail. it’s clearly holland—you can tell, the criminals keep calling him “drunk sherlock.” you take them as close as your apartment, tell them that holland and his kid are just up the stairs of your complex. you come out with a metal bat from your passengers seat as soon as the two criminals reach the curb.
holland pulls up his car to the house, gun slid out of his holster, when he finds you beating down one of his perps. the other one is already well bloodied, molar on the floor, nose broken. and you’re punching the first guy hard enough to break the skin on your knuckles. you don’t even need the bat; it’s discarded at your feet. holland has never screamed louder in his life, and then holly’s running out to see what’s going on. holland has to run to the porch to cover up holly’s eyes, turn her back around, and send her back inside.
he comes back out to you, whose headlights are still on and lighting up this image of you heaving deep breaths, blood—not your blood, holland checks—running from your hands down to your jeans. the worst part about it is that holland feels his dick twitch in his pants and he realizes that this whole thing is really turning him on. it’s only after you re-park your car and hide away in your apartment—holland calling the cops to come lock up his two perps—that he comes knocking on the screen door of your place. best believe he’s begging you to tell him who the hell you are. the unintended effect of you being a getaway driver is that you have the next-door private investigator crawling at your feet. not the worst outcome when you think about it.
hi again!! I really loved how you wrote my last suggestion so I figured I'd send another if you're interested!
Grace x reader who really likes drawing? Like whenever she has some free time she's sketching him, something around the ship, rocky, or just doing random doodles 🥹 tysm!!
Doodling 4 Dummies 101
Ryland Grace x reader x Rocky
Includes: gender neutral reader, no beta we die like the sun, fluff, Rocky as a warning, reader who isn’t an artist by any means but finds it entertaining, author is not good at drawing lmao, grocky x reader if you squint, not 100% romantic but I like how cute this turned out
A/N: tysm for requesting again! Seeing anything in my inbox brightens my day, I’m so glad ppl r invested in my writing!
Rocky tolls away endlessly in his lab crafting the xenonite collector chain, a continuous clinking reverberating throughout the cabin. He hums to himself, a work melody in indecipherable Eridian. Awhile ago, you’d inquired about the manner, curiosity ebbing at your conscious.
Is for productivity! He responded, eager to explain,
Help crew work. Faster, focused.
Despite his presence remaining constant, his work still fascinates you greatly, each of his dexterous limbs working in synchronized harmony.
Presently, Mary has been on autopilot while the three of you prepare to go ‘fishing’ and further kill time. You’ve already double, if not triple checked the environmental control life support systems that maintained your atmosphere- as per your duties. Unfortunately, and fortunately, since you were still breathing, your present situation required nothing of you except waiting.
Your chest puffs, a sigh bubbling up your throat before you consciously prevent it. The last thing you need is for Rocky’s expert hearing to pick up on your boredom, lest you suffer another dry quip of,
Human bore so quickly. Do something, do do do!
Rocky’s demands for productivity reminded you of a stubborn mom who’d overheard you’re, ‘I’m so bored!’ and insisted you complete chores. It’s rather fitting, you think, fidgeting with the pen you’d tucked into your jumpsuit.
You glance to the notepad on your side of the lab, quickly retrieving it before sitting on the table. Grace had lectured you on it once, but consequently gave up when you’d pointed out the high grade steel could definitely support your weight.
You hunch over your notepad, ballpoint pen deftly tucked between your fingers. Not so slyly, you sneak glances at Rocky from your periphery, doodling a haphazard stick figure of him in his element. It’s rather entertaining, you decide, attempting another doodle of him. This time, with Grace’s glasses. They’re wire rims, clunky, though they suit his fac-
“You do realize the sun has more than five rays, correct?” Ryland teases, eyebrow raising in amusement. He must’ve finished lunch earlier than anticipated; he offered to make you instant ramen too, but you’d already eaten prior. You peek from above your messy sketches, confusion written across your features, because he elaborates,
“The circle with sunglasses and rays? Meatball with spaghetti legs?” He cocks his head to the side, gaze flickering to your face and back to the notepad.
Oh.
You pause momentarily before chuckling to yourself,
“that’s Rocky,” you state, gesturing towards your companion with the end of your pen. He, in response, piques with interest. Curse his superb hearing.
“Show show show! Rocky want to see human art!” The translator whirs from the floor next to Rocky’s lab.
“Hate to break it to you buddy, but I’m no artist.“ You shrug, scooting off the table. You don’t miss Grace’s humored expression, peeking at your doodles from above his glasses. You both settle next to Rocky’s lab- you, cross legged, and Grace with one knee to his chest and another extended.
Still, despite imminent disappointment, you hold up the notepad for Rocky. His claw clutches the crystal that translates to his texture pad, and if he had eyebrows you assume he’d be furrowing them.
“Is… interesting.” He finally states after a lengthy pause.
Grace snorts from behind you. You can feel the judgement in Rocky’s tone as you slap Grace on the arm in return.
“How about you draw the two of us? As payback,” you suggest, offering the drawing closer.
“Not enough liquid to show how leaky you are.” Rocky rebuts.
That one elicits a chuckle from both you and Grace, though he continues.
“Is joke! You two my favorite leaky space blobs.”
“Well, you’re our favorite rock,” you hum, mirth in your expression.
“I dunno, not after pulling that stunt,” Grace teases, though you can see the fondness in his gaze. It’s practically saccharine, a rare moment of respite aboard the Hail Mary.
Something within you flickers, a reminder of your limited recreational time before you arrive at Tau Ceti, though you opt to ignore it.
“Hey- you alright?” Grace questions, snapping you into the present.
“Yeah,” you hum, happily coexisting with him and Rocky.
synopsis. you’re sick and you unexpectedly find your neighbor standing on ur front door / lars is concerned about ur wellbeing (1.7k words)
note. I love you lars.. you are so dear to me
So, you’re sick.
It’s a minor setback, nothing you can’t handle, truly.
Sure, it’s a little harder to keep much food down when eating and you’ve got this chill you can’t seem to shake even though you’ve turned off your airconditioning, but you weren’t dying.
Just a small bug.
That’s what you told Lars when he stood there on your porch, hands shoved awkwardly into the pockets of his jackets, staring at you with very concerned eyes.
“I’m really okay.” You had insisted, and Lars had looked at you for a long time in response.
He didn’t believe you. You can tell. You think he’s just figuring out how to tell you that he knows you’re definitely lying to him.
So, in defense, you change subject.
You don’t even remember what you’d said–something about work, and the time, and eventually landing with how you have everything under control.
And the boy in front of you simply nods slowly.
He really didn’t believe you. But he allows you the illusion as he excuses himself back inside his own home when you’ve managed to back away enough to make it to yours as well.
Your “under control”, currently, looks like sitting on your couch with a plastic of used tissues on the side. There’s a documentary playing quietly on the television, something about an old historical mystery you probably would’ve found interesting if your head didn’t feel like it was full of cotton. And you’re wrapped in your most comforting blanket.
The house is quiet. It really is. For a moment, at least.
And then, a knock.
But when you open the door, Lars is, once again, standing there but with a paper bag in his hands this time.
“Hi.” He says.
“Hi, Lars.”
He doesn’t say anything after. Simply looks at you. And in retaliation, you look back, trying your very best to look like someone who currently wasn’t losing a battle with fever.
“What are you…” A cough escapes that you try to swallow down instantly. “… doing here, Lars?”
“I brought soup.”
He lifts the paper bag slightly, without much effort, and you blink at him.
“Oh Lars, you really didn’t have to.”
“I know.” He shifts his weight awkwardly, looking down at the bag instead of you. “I was already making some.”
It is obviously a lie. You both know it.
Remnants of guilt flashes you as you remember how you’d dismissed him earlier when he’d knocked to ask if you were okay. So, this time, you let him in. You can’t refuse his kindness anymore. Not when he’a looking at you like this, with a small smile playing on his lips, and his eyes staring into yours like he was trying really hard to read you.
“Thank you. Uh, come in if you’d like.”
He nods, slowly and tentatively walking inside as you sit back down on the couch. Though, instead of sitting next to you, he chooses to stand in your kitchen, looking around like he’s trying to figure out what needs to be done.
“You don’t have to do anything.”
Lars turns to look at you, blinking in surprise at having been read. He tries not to show. “I’m not.”
“I’ll clean when I’m feeling better. Don’t go rearranging my whole house.”
Again, he says, “I’m not. I’m just… looking.”
He moves away from the kitchen, choosing now to bring the soup he’d brought and set it down in front of you, on the table in front of your couch. A plastic spoon and some tissue is arranged neatly beside it.
“You should eat.”
You frown, shaking your head as you look at the food. You don’t want to look ungrateful, but you’ve tried eating enough to know how hard it was to actually swallow anything. Albeit, you’ve only really attempted to eat solid food. “I’m not really hungry right now.”
“But you should.”
The tone of his voice surprises you, eyes widening a little at how uncharacteristically insistent he is at the moment.
You don’t think you’ve ever seen this side of Lars before. Or well, up until he backtracks. He must’ve heard what he sounded like with his own ears.
“Sorry.” He says quietly. “I just… you haven’t eaten yet and…”
His sentence trails on without continuation. And he looks like he’s trying to figure out what to say, and it looks like it’s hurting him, so you do the only thing you know would calm him down.
You pick up the spoon. “Okay, I’ll eat.”
Lars visibly relaxes at this, relieved at not having to finish his sentence, relieved that you’re finally eating something. “Okay.”
When you’ve finished eating, Lars is still sitting on the couch beside you. There is a huge gap between the two of you, and the documentary that had been playing had finished long before you’d been done with your food. Some old rerun of a cartoon is playing now.
And you don’t notice you’ve fallen asleep. And Lars doesn’t either. Not at first.
But he hears quiet snoring, and he can’t help but stare at you as you’re bundled up on your couch with your finished container of soup in front of you.
Lars doesn’t leave, but he does think about it. Several times.
Because what if something happens to you while you were asleep and unassuming?
He tells himself he should, though. You’re asleep now. Your house is right next door to his if anything happens. He should go back to his own place and let you rest.
That would be the normal thing to do. But then he looks at you curled up on the couch, surrounded by tissues and blankets, and he remembers what it feels like to be sick and alone. What it feels like not wanting to reach out and bother anyone.
So he stays.
Lars continues to sit quietly beside you, leaving the same careful space between you as before.
The television keeps playing. He isn’t really watching it. He just stares ahead, occasionally looking over at you to make sure you’re still breathing comfortably, still asleep, still okay.
Eventually, he checks the clock.
His eyes move to the table. The medicine is still there, unopened. Save for one missing dose.
And Lars frowns. Because he knows exactly what that means.
“(Name). Wake up.”
It’s quiet in your house, save for Lars’ soft voice pulling you from your trance of sleep.
There’s a trace of hesitation in his voice, like he wasn’t entirely sure if he should wake you at all. It’s a little difficult to focus on anything when every surface of your skin feels like it’s burning, but you recognize his voice immediately.
“(Name).” He tries again.
His hand gently taps against your arm before quickly pulling away.
When you still don’t shift, he starts to tug at your blanket to hopefully wake you up.
“Lars? You’re still here?” You croak, voice congested as a result of your fever.
When you open your eyes, Lars immediately moves back slightly, like he hadn’t been leaning over you for the past few minutes trying to decide if waking you was the right thing to do. Like he hadn’ felt guilty shaking you away from rest.
He stands there instead, holding a glass of water and your medicine in his hands. And there’s a tiredness behind his eyes that tells you he probably hasn’t gone to sleep yet.
“You need to take this.” He says quietly.
You blink at him, trying to process his words. Trying to process that he’s still in your house.
“The medicine.”
A realization dawns on you. Right. You forgot. To be fair, you didn’t even know you’d fallen asleep either.
You move to sit up properly, the sound of your rustling blanket lingering in the silence.
A glance at the clock tells you it’s late. Way too late for Lars to still be here. He should be in the comfort of his home, asleep. He had work tomorrow, you know this. And it makes a guilt sit bitterly on your heart.
“Lars…”
He looks like he already knows what you’re going to say. And before you can apologize, before you can tell him he should have gone home hours ago, he holds out the medicine and water.
“Here.”
You take it from him, a frown still on your mouth as you place the pill on your tongue before drinking the water. And he watches carefully, not in a way that’s weird. He looks like he’s genuinely making sure you’ve taken it.
Then, very carefully, he takes the glass back and places it on the table.
“How do you feel?” He asks quietly, because a few seconds ago, you’d been asleep.
He doesn’t want to startle you out of the grogginess you were probably feeling at the moment.
“I don’t really know.”
You hate admitting it. Because all you really want to do is reassure him that you’re okay, lie to him that you can handle yourself like you had earlier. Tell him he should go home because he shouldn’t be here this late.
“That’s okay.” Lars says, tone still soft. Still careful.
“I’ll ask again tomorrow.”
He reaches over and pulls your blanket back up.
The action is awkward.
“...And you should probably transfer to your bed.”
You watch him pick up the empty glass, watch him take out the discarded tissues, watch him throw away the empty container that had contained soup just a few hours ago.
And the guilt resurfaces.
“Lars?”
He turns around immediately, looking at you and waiting for you to say something.
“I’m sorry.”
His eyebrows pull together in confusion. “For what?”
“For bothering you.”
The words come out quieter than you expected. You’re still half-asleep, but the guilt is there. It’s been there. You just hate the thought that he’s tired now and that he’d be tired tomorrow because of you.
Lars just stares at you. He’s confused, and he genuinely doesn’t understand how you could possibly think that.
“You’re not bothering me.” He says it immediately, and that catches him off-guard. “You’re sick….”
A heartbeat passes. And then two more.
“And you’re alone.”
His fingers tighten slightly around the empty glass. “You don’t have to be alone.”
He surprises himself. And, deeming the moment too vulnerable, he immediately tries to move past it.
“Anyway. You should sleep.” Lars clears his throat. “I… don’t have anything tomorrow morning. I’ll be here.”
You know he’s lying, and you want to argue with him. But your eyes are getting a little heavier once more, and it takes you a while to notice that he’s guiding you to your bed until you’re safely and comfortably tucked inside.
ᯓ★ paring: science teacher!ryland grace x history teacher!reader
ᯓ★ summary: there's a door connecting your classrooms, ryland takes full advantage of it...
ᯓ★ word count: 3.0k
ᯓ★ warnings: none!!
ᯓ★ author's note: my first post on this account :)
── ˖ ࣪ ⊹ ✦ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──
The classroom buzzes with the quiet scratch of pencils against paper as I write The Renaissance across the whiteboard.
"All right," I say, setting the marker down. "Last class we talked about the conditions that led into the Renaissance. Today we're looking at why it began in Italy and how it spread throughout Europe."
Twenty-six pairs of eyes look back at me.
Well... twenty-five.
Jackson is still trying to balance his pencil on his upper lip.
I don't even have to look directly at him to know exactly what he's doing. It's become something of a routine over the past few weeks—every time the class settles into a quieter moment, he decides to test the laws of physics using whatever happens to be on his desk.
Without missing a beat, I set my marker on the tray beneath the whiteboard. "Jackson."
His eyes widen as the pencil drops with a loud clack against the desktop before rolling onto the floor.
A few students snicker while Jackson hurriedly scoops it up, rubbing the back of his neck with an embarrassed grin. "Sorry."
"I know you are," I reply, unable to hide the smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. "Now, unless your pencil has somehow become relevant to fifteenth-century Italy, I'd appreciate it if it stayed in your hand."
More laughter ripples through the room, and just like that, everyone's attention returns to the front. "Can anyone remind me what the word Renaissance actually means?" I ask, leaning lightly against my desk.
Several hands shoot into the air. "Olivia."
"It means rebirth."
"Exactly." I nod, pleased. "It refers to a period of renewed interest in classical Greek and Roman ideas—particularly in art, literature, philosophy, science, and architecture. Rather than viewing the Middle Ages as something to continue, many scholars believed they were rediscovering knowledge that had been forgotten for centuries."
As I speak, I jot rebirth, humanism, and classical learning beneath the lesson title, occasionally glancing back toward the class to make sure they're following along. Most of them are copying notes; a couple are already trying to connect today's lesson to yesterday's discussion.
It's one of those classes every teacher hopes for—not perfectly silent, but engaged in all the right ways, for the most part.
"So," I continue, capping the marker, "Why Italy? Why didn't the Renaissance begin somewhere like England or France?"
Before anyone can answer, a familiar metallic click cuts through the room.
The sound is quiet, but every student hears it. Twenty-six heads swivel in perfect synchronization toward the narrow connecting door tucked into the back corner of the classroom—the one leading directly into the science room next door.
For a brief, naïve second, I consider pretending I didn't hear it. Maybe if I keep talking, the man on the other side will realize I'm in the middle of class and leave.
The thought lasts exactly as long as it takes for the doorknob to finish turning. The door creaks open a few inches before a familiar head of blond hair appears through the gap, followed by a pair of soft blue eyes that sweep across my classroom as though he's simply checking in on the weather.
The room erupts.
"It's Mr. Grace."
"Oh, he's here."
"I told you it'd happen today."
A few students exchange triumphant looks like they'd been placing bets on exactly when he'd interrupt, which to be fair, is a valid thing to put money on. Considering he pokes his head into my classroom nearly every day like clockwork, the odds are usually in their favor.
Ryland's gaze lands on me almost immediately, his expression brightening into an easy smile that makes it painfully obvious he doesn't feel even remotely guilty about interrupting.
I set my marker on the tray beneath the whiteboard and fold my arms. "Everyone say hi to Mr. Grace.”
The warm greetings echo through the classroom with far more enthusiasm than anything I'd said during the lesson, and Ryland has the audacity to look delighted by it.
"Hi, everybody." He lifts a hand in a small wave. "How's history?"
"Good!" several students answer at once.
One voice from the back calls, "She gave us homework yesterday!"
I point toward the student without turning fully around. "And I'll do it again."
Ryland lets out an amused laugh before looking back at me, seemingly content to let the chatter die down before saying another word. He has one hand resting against the edge of the door, his shoulder leaning casually into the frame as though he belongs there. Honestly, at this point, maybe he does.
The connecting door has become less of a boundary between our classrooms and more of a revolving entrance for whatever question has wandered into his head that day.
"So..." he begins, drawing the word out just enough that I already know I'm not going to like whatever comes next. "I've got a question."
"I know," I reply flatly. "You always have a question."
"It's a history question."
"I've heard that one before."
I hear a few of the students giggle.
"Okay, hear me out,” he starts talking. “How long does something have to happen before it becomes history? Like... if I trip over a chair right now, is that history five minutes from now? Or does there have to be a waiting period?"
The giggles erupt.
It begins with Jackson in the second row, who immediately drops his head onto his desk in an attempt to muffle his laugh. Olivia covers her mouth with the sleeve of her sweatshirt, while a few others exchange bewildered looks that quickly dissolve into smiles.
I simply stare at Ryland. He stares back, completely serious.
"...Mr. Grace."
"What?"
"You interrupted my lesson..."
"I did."
"...to ask me when the present becomes the past?"
He nods once. “I’ve been thinking about it all morning.”
Which is what he says every single time. Every time that connecting door swings open, it’s for Mr. Ryland Grace to get some historical insight on whatever topic seems to be occupying his mind on that given day.
“I’ve been thinking about it all morning.”
“I’ve been dying to know.”
“It kept me up last night.”
So, like always, I provide him with an answer just long enough to please him, but short enough to keep the attention of my students. Once satisfied, he flashes a grin and swings the door shut, allowing me to finally get back to my lesson plans.
That is, until Dylan—a small boy in the front row—speaks up.
“Are you and Mr. Grace dating?”
The question hangs in the air for about two seconds before the chatter starts up.
The room dissolves into overlapping voices, half the students suddenly abandoning any pretense of discussing the Renaissance in favor of the much more pressing matter of their two teachers' personal lives.
“I knew it!”
“Mr. Grace loves her!”
“Does this mean she has cooties?”
I inhale sharply. Part of me is embarrassed that this is what my life has come to; the other part of me is mentally scolding Ryland Grace for creating this mess in the first place.
“Okay, everybody quiet down, please.” I rub my temples. “Mr. Grace and I are colleagues; we’re both teachers here, and we both enjoy getting to see you all every day. The only love we have is for you guys.”
I watch as half the class opens their mouths to toss in an opposing argument, but thankfully the bell rings before they can get any of them out.
The tension that started forming in my chest disappears instantly.
“Alright everyone, remember your worksheets are due tomorrow at the start of class!” I remind them, but I can tell none of my students seem to care as they zip up their backpacks and form into their little clusters as they all walk out the door.
“See you tomorrow!”
“Byeee!”
“Tell Mr. Grace we said hi!”
"I will not be passing along your messages," I say under my breath, but the words are drowned out by the scrape of opening lockers and the familiar chaos of the passing period.
Jackson is the last one to reach the door.
Before stepping into the hallway, he turns back with entirely too much confidence for a thirteen-year-old. "I still think he'd say yes."
I blink. "...To what?"
"If you asked him out."
My jaw drops. "Out."
He grins. "I'm just saying, I think he likes you."
"Jackson, you little menace." I shoo him away with my hands. “Go to your next class.”
He laughs as he rushes out the door, and despite everything, it makes me smile.
I let out a slow breath, shaking my head as I begin weaving between the rows of desks. A forgotten notebook rests beneath one chair, three pencils have somehow migrated into the aisle, and someone's worksheet has been abandoned on the floor despite my reminder that it was due tomorrow.
I love my job.
My coworkers, however, tend to push my buttons. More specifically, the man who’s currently sitting in the classroom next door, the man who somehow has the same exact free period as I do.
And as I gather up the scattered papers, my annoyance starts to grow for him.
Because I can’t prove it, but he must know what he’s doing. Why on Earth would he act the way he does if not to simply make my life more difficult?
Because there’s no way someone as intelligent as Ryland Grace could be that oblivious.
The man has a doctorate in molecular biology. He can explain complex scientific concepts to a room full of thirteen-year-olds without so much as glancing at his notes. He's published research. He's the kind of person who can answer obscure science trivia before a student can even finish asking the question.
Yet somehow, every afternoon, he loses all ability to determine whether a question can wait fifteen minutes.
And it’s really starting to get on my nerves.
So, before I can think too much on it, I walk over to the back of my classroom and swing open the connecting door.
The familiar scent of dry-erase markers and rubbing alcohol greets me almost immediately as I step through the doorway into the science room.
Ryland's classroom is, unsurprisingly, organized chaos.
The tables are arranged in neat rows, but every available surface seems to be occupied by something. A half-finished model of a DNA helix hangs from the ceiling near the windows. Beakers and graduated cylinders dry upside down on a rack beside the sink. The back counter is lined with bins labeled ACIDS, BASES, FOOD COLORING, and, somewhat concerningly, one simply labeled MISCELLANEOUS THINGS THAT MIGHT EXPLODE (THEY WON'T) in thick black marker.
I sincerely hope the last label is a joke.
Ryland is sitting at his desk with a stack of lab reports spread out in front of him, a red pen tucked behind one ear as he absentmindedly scribbles comments in the margins. He's so focused on whatever he's reading that he doesn't notice me at first.
“Mr. Grace,” I say as I close the door behind me.
His head snaps up so quickly that the pen behind his ear slips loose, bouncing once off his shoulder before landing somewhere in the mountain of papers covering his desk.
I watch as his entire face lights up. “Why, hello there. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
I don't return his smile.
Instead, I slowly fold my arms across my chest and lean back against the now-closed connecting door. "We need to talk."
The grin on his face falters just enough for me to notice. "...That sounds ominous."
"It should."
He glances around the empty classroom as though looking for someone else I could possibly be talking to before pointing a finger at his own chest. "Me?"
"Unless there's another Mr. Grace hiding under your desk."
He instinctively looks under the desk anyway. I hate that it almost makes me smile.
When he comes back up, he pretends to be shocked. “That’s crazy because I swear there was another Mr. Grace under there just a few minutes ago…”
I roll my eyes as I push off the door and make my way to his desk. “Ryland, look, this is serious.” I stop a few feet away from where he sits, letting my hand rest on one of the lab tables. “You need to quit it with all the questions during my lessons.”
“Oh, are you having trouble answering them?” He smirks, and it nearly kills me.
"I mean it," I continue, keeping my voice calm despite the frustration that's been building all afternoon. "You may think it's harmless—and most of the time it is—but you're interrupting my lessons almost every day. My students have started expecting it. They stop paying attention the second they hear that doorknob turn because they know you're about to poke your head in with another question."
Ryland doesn't interrupt, he just listens.
"I spend the first ten minutes of class trying to get everyone focused, and then you show up asking whether people living through the Renaissance knew they were living through the Renaissance, or whether castles had employee handbooks, and suddenly I'm spending the next five minutes trying to steer everyone back toward the lesson I was already teaching. And then, on top of that, our students have the nerve to ask me if you and I are dating, and that’s definitely not something I incorporate into my lesson plan.”
I don’t realize how long I’ve been talking for until the room finally falls back into silence as he processes my rant.
Ryland purses his lips and drums one of his fingers on the desk, hopefully deeply considering everything I’ve just said. Though I know it’s no use when he looks up at me and tilts his head.
“So they asked if we were dating,” he clicks his tongue. “And your response was…”
“No,” I shake my head. “My response was obviously no.”
Ryland nods slowly, as though filing that information away. "Right, right."
He drums his fingers against the edge of the desk once more, his gaze drifting thoughtfully at a spot somewhere just past my shoulder. My own fingers reach up to pinch the bridge of my nose.
“Look, Ryland,” I sigh. “You’re a great guy, but I really don’t feel like filling my students in on my love life every class.”
His eyes snap to mine. “Love life… you have love… you are in love… there’s someone—”
“No,” I cut him off. “That’s the problem: there is no love life, so I’m just wasting valuable classroom time discussing something nonexistent.”
He considers my words for a second. “So what I’m hearing is that you’re not in love with someone, which means you are, in fact, single?”
I blink at him. "...Ryland."
"What?"
"I need you to understand that that is not the conclusion I wanted you to draw from this conversation."
He pushes his chair out and stands up, rounding his desk to where I’m still leaning against a lab table. He adjusts his glasses with one of his hands and pushes them back up on his nose.
“I just think that’s an important piece of data to gather, about you… I mean,” he says, shrugging as if his words aren’t swirling around in my brain.
“What… what does that even mean?” I ask.
“It means,” he reaches out and lays his hand flat on the lab table next to me; maybe it’s a peace offering… I honestly have no idea. “It means that I like talking to you.”
I take a deep breath, looking up at the papier-mache solar system model on his ceiling.
“I like talking to you too, Ryland, just maybe not during my class periods.” I glance back down at him. And he’s grinning ear to ear.
“Really? You like talking to me?” He questions, placing a hand on his chest as if he’s in absolute disbelief.
It’s kinda cute.
I let out a long sigh that does absolutely nothing to hide the smile threatening to appear. "Please don't make this weird."
"I'm not making it weird," he says, sounding genuinely confused. "I'm just... verifying."
“Okay, let’s make it very clear then,” I take a small step closer to him. “Yes, I like talking to you. No, not when it’s during my class time. Yes, I would like to talk to you more. No, I would not like it to impact my teaching time.”
Ryland watches me with complete concentration, as if I've just started explaining the instructions for an especially complicated lab. He nods after each sentence.
"Okay."
Another nod.
"Yep."
Another.
"Got it."
I squint at him. “Do you?”
He scoffs, pretending to dust off his shoulder. “Of course I do.”
“Repeat it back to me then,” I challenge.
He pretends to crack his knuckles.
“You like talking to me, but not when I interrupt your class. You think I’m really interesting and attractive, and you want to go out with me this Friday, but you don’t want our students to know about it,” he raises a questioning eyebrow as he finishes his sentence.
My jaw drops, and for a split second my mouth struggles to form a response to whatever the hell he just said. He seems pretty proud of it, though, giving me a playful wink.
“That is not at all what I said,” I point an accusatory finger at him.
“True,” he admits. “But it does sound like an amazing plan.”
And, yeah, I hate that he’s right.
Because as much as it hurts me to admit it, getting to talk to him every day is kinda one of the many perks of this job, though I’ll never tell him that. His ego is big enough. And I haven’t actually been out with anyone in what feels like years, so it doesn’t sound like a completely awful idea.
“I’ll only go out with you if you save all your history questions for Friday night,” I say. “Which involves not opening that door when my class is in session.”
summary: the one time ryland grace breaks his morning routine, he ends up regretting it. why? because he runs into you - and he has to reckon with all the feelings he's been trying to avoid since you broke up.
word count: about 4.7k!
CWs: 18+ MDNI!!!, sexually suggestive content but nothing explicit, flashback scene is in italics, no use of y/n, heavy kissing/makeout session, handsy!grace save me, heavy petting, some neck kisses, ex!fem!reader x ex!ryland grace, soooo much angst, ryland's head is a mess, they're friendly......until they're not, some tears, not a very happy ending (sorry not sorry). i think that's it!
Ryland Grace doesn't like to stray from his morning routine.
It's a simple one. A relatively new one, but it works for him. Wake up at 6:00 AM. Get ready and leave his apartment by 6:45 AM. Bike to work and get there for 7:00 AM. Enjoy an hour of quiet class prep before the bell rings at 8:00 AM.
A routine set out of ease. One that he's followed every day during this school year without fail. One that he never really feels inclined to break, because the more you do a routine, the more natural it becomes. Lord knows he needs the stability.
But…there's a new cafe on Main. And it's only a couple minutes away. A quick walk down the street from school. A chance at a coffee stronger than the watered down mess of grounds he can get in the teacher's lounge. A drink he'll enjoy instead of a drink he'll be forced to stomach.
What's the harm? Seems like the universe is telling him that he should go, anyway—he woke up on his own 10 minutes before his alarm went off this morning.
He's never been superstitious. Maybe he should try it today. Take something as a sign for once.
So, here he is. Parking his bike in the spot he claims every day but taking a left and going down the block instead of a right and going into school.
The walk is nice. It's short. Fall is in full swing, so there's a chilled breeze nipping at his fingers. Shoots shivers down his spine and forces him to shove his hands in his pockets. He only has to turn the corner to get where he's going, but the wind is threatening to freeze him solid.
This isn't a sign that I'm doing the wrong thing. I'm not superstitious. It's just cold outside because it's always cold in October.
Self-soothing reassurance. Just enough to keep him walking forward instead of backtracking. The coffee will help his iced hands defrost, and he's already here, and…he wants it. He comes to terms with all of that and tames the nervous thoughts in his mind as he reaches the door, pushes it open, and crosses the threshold into the building. Trembling fingers and all.
He takes his surroundings in at a distance. While he's standing right next to the trashcan these places always put near the door.
It's warm in here. Warm enough for him to feel confident taking his hands out of his pockets, although they stay at his sides. His fingers immediately begin picking for threads to pull at his jeans. It smells really nice, as was expected. Definitely better than the way the coffee in the lounge smells.
Unfortunately for his routine-driven brain, though, the line is long. Full of people just like me, he thinks to himself, who wanna squeeze in a visit here before work. How can we all be so irresponsible?
Sometimes his brain's anxious thoughts win. Especially now.
These are people just trying to get their hit of caffeine before getting locked away in an office building for eight hours. Impatiently tapping their feet, or distracting themselves on their phones, or drumming their fingers against their thighs, or staring at the ceiling with tensed jaws, or releasing a heavy sigh through their flared nostrils.
Because the line they're all standing in is moving quickly, but everything else is quite slow. He's been here for less than a minute, and while that line's moving fast, he can't ignore the massive crowd of people waiting for their drinks off to the side of the register.
He tries to ignore it, though. Looks up at the massive clock on the wall behind that very register that reads 7:00 AM. Really stares at it. At the second hand that's steadily ticking and taking his minutes away from him.
This is fine. Maybe I'll only be in here for 10 minutes. Only takes five to get back to school. Forty five minutes of quiet is just as good as an hour, isn't it? I can grade some of those papers during my planning period, can't I?
Okay. Maybe this was a bad idea.
Being superstitious for one day means that he notices the good signs, sure. Comes with the bad ones, too, though. His morning routine is ugly-screaming I TOLD YOU SO at him in the back of his head, but he gets in line anyway and hopes for the best.
Hopes it'll quiet that screaming, at least. And for a brief moment…it does. The line moves fast. He asks for a simple thing: Black coffee that he'll add his own creamer to. Simple and effective. Also allows him to get his order quicker than almost everyone else in front of him, which he'd feel bad about if he had the time for it.
Even though it's 7:08 AM and he's still not at his desk, Ryland's brain is shockingly calm. Calm enough to allow himself to smile while he's walking out of the cafe.
There's a saying about hindsight, though. It's always 20/20. Even for someone with bad eyesight like Ryland Grace.
Perhaps he should have listened to his brain's shouting about sticking to the routine. Should have listened to the way his fingers tensed around his bike's handlebar a little harder when he told himself he'd turn left instead of right today. Should have listened to the hesitation in his steps, and the way he almost couldn't open the door to the cafe, and the angry chatter of all the frustrated customers who were pissed that everything was moving so slowly.
Because as soon as he steps out of the cafe at 7:08 AM, he knows he won't be getting to school with 47 minutes to spare before the bell rings.
He steps out of the cafe, one foot on the pavement, and runs into you while you're clearly about to walk into it. It was foolish to think he'd have 47 minutes. He bit off more than he could chew. He ignored too many bad signs. Suddenly, he's the most superstitious person in the world.
"Ryland?" you excitedly call out. You've got the biggest smile on your face. The kind that adds a pretty little melody to his name when you say it. A melody he hasn't heard in months. A melody he misses more than anything.
"I can't believe this! It's been so long! How are you?"
God, you're so excited. It's like you're over the moon as soon as you recognize him. The corners of your eyes are scrunched, and your irises are so bright, and you're high-pitched in that way you'd get when he'd trudge through your formerly-shared apartment's front door in the afternoon. You're looking at him like a person looks at their bed after a hard day. Lovingly. Relievedly.
Why are you so excited? Why are you so relieved? How aren't you hurting like he still is?
"I—" he stumbles over himself immediately and nearly trips over his own two feet. Almost drops his coffee because his hand aches to ditch the cup. His fingers still want to intertwine with yours. After everything that happened, after how long it's been, after how miserable things were, they still just…want you.
He blinks. Roughly. Quicker than is probably necessary. Had to make sure you were still there, that this isn't a dream. His smile falters. Then, with all of his might, he conjures just enough energy to step out of the way of the door and toward the sidewalk. Toward you, although every synapse in his brain is firing and telling him to run away.
But he breathes your name, anyway. Forces a fake smile on his face and retightens his fingers around his coffee cup. Tells you hi.
"I'm just on the way to work," is his almost whispered and absolutely pathetic response to the question you asked. It barely even made sense. What the hell is he doing? Should he be worried about the tightness in his chest?
"You're out of your way, then," you chirp. Smile still on your face. Voice still sweet and excited.
"Unless you're not at Grover Cleveland anymore?"
"No, I—yeah. I'm still there. Stayed after you left," Ryland mutters. He gestures toward the cafe he just walked out of, the one you're rearing to walk into. He clears his throat. He's not sure if it was to make his voice louder or if it was to force the lump forming away.
"I just wanted to try this place. Are you still at Ridgeview?"
"Yeah. Trying to leave, though. I'm almost finished with my book, so...fingers crossed."
"That's nice. I can't wait to read it."
You hum. He looks down at the concrete in the space between you. At his favorite beat-up pair of Converse he's wearing contrasted with your borderline squeaky-clean brand new pair. Funny. You told him you'd get him new ones one day.
Apparently you got them for yourself, instead. Did you think of him when you bought them? Do you ever think of him as often as he thinks of you?
"Anyway. This place is good. I've been here a few times since they opened," you offer. Then you clear your own throat and gesture toward his hand. He can't help but wonder if you saw the way his muscles tensed when you did it. If you saw every God damn cell in his body react to you and tighten.
"What'd you get? A black coffee that you're gonna add your own creamer to?"
The laugh he punches out is a weak thing.
"Yeah," he confesses. He allows himself to look at you a little longer when he lifts his gaze to meet yours again.
"I knew it." The smile you give him after you say that is softer. Lacking teeth, but still lovely in all the ways you always are.
Of course you knew it.
"If it's not broken, why fix it?" he jokes. You nod and laugh through your nose.
Things fall quiet for a moment, and in that moment, you just…look at each other. A soft, unwarranted jealousy bubbles up in his chest when the sunlight peeks out through an overcast cloud and illuminates your face.
Who gets to see you like this now? Beautiful and glowing in the sunlight that Ryland's convinced was made for you to bask in? Is that new person good to you? Better than he was?
"You look good," you softly coo. In that silence, you must have been taking him in. Taking him in in the same exact way he was taking you in. Again, he's not superstitious, but…that has to mean something, right?
"Speak for yourself."
Smooth. Every single atom in his body is set ablaze with anxiety and pain, but that was a smooth response. He's a little proud of himself for that one. Proud enough to put the wind back in his sails.
"I'm glad you're doing well, Ry."
And, just as quickly as the wind appeared for him, it's taken away.
His arms ache with the weight that's been on his shoulders since you left him. His fake happiness crashes and burns, replaced with a little frown that he couldn't fight off of himself if he tried. Replaced with a furrowed brow and an inability to look at you. It's like he deflated right in front of you.
Why'd you have to call him that?
"Do you wanna come inside?"
A simple question. One that requires a simple answer. Either a confirmation or a rejection. Yes or no. Hell, he doesn't even have to open his mouth to answer it. Could be as simple as a nod or a head shake.
So Ryland's not exactly sure why he's struggling to answer it when you ask.
"I don't wanna be a burden," he mumbles. Managed to get that one out after he had spent a couple seconds staring at you for too long.
Way to go, Ryland. Complicated the easiest question in the world to answer.
You laugh at him. What a pretty sound. The prettiest sound in the world, maybe.
"A burden? How could you be a burden? I'm literally inviting you in, Ryland."
"I just," he trails off to a heavy pause. Wrings his hands in front of him. Shifts on his feet.
He's nervous. Of course he wants to go into your apartment, but…is three dates even enough to be invited into an apartment? Will he be too eager if he accepts your offer? Is this some sort of test?
"You don't have to invite me in."
"I know I don't have to," you counter. Your voice softens to a gentle whisper, a siren song, when you finish, "But I want to."
Then you reach over and grab onto one of his hands. Your grip is as gentle as your voice. The soft curl of your fingers as they intertwine with his is enough to make him weak in the knees, so…thankfully, you've got a solid hold on him. He swallows down a groan as soon as you begin brushing your thumb back and forth against the back of his hand.
How on Earth could he say no?
"Okay," he caves. "I'd love to."
It's breathy and pathetic and embarrassingly relieved, but the shame he'd feel over that gets struck down. Completely overshadowed by his own happiness when you flash a big, bright grin at him.
He made the right choice.
He realizes that as you tug him into your apartment and throw your arms around his shoulders. As you lean up to press your forehead against his and nuzzle your noses together.
Your invitation into your place was all he needed, apparently. You might have made first contact, but he's the one who kisses you for the first time. Deep, needy, a little quicker than he wanted it to be.
He's the one who kicks your front door shut, wraps his arms around your waist, and lifts you up with an ease that makes you whine into his mouth. He has to choke down a whine of his own when you tangle your hands in his hair and yank on it.
Before he even realizes it, he's stumbling into your living room and dropping himself down on your couch. Of course, he takes you down onto it with him. Plops you down in his lap and relishes in the feeling of your hips pressing down onto his.
He hasn't done this in a while. Doing this with someone he's actually in love with? Even longer.
So, when you let yourself lean into him and deepen the kiss despite how forward he's being, he feels an absurdly large wave of pride swelling in his chest. It'd take up all of it if you hadn't already settled in beside his heart.
That pride leads to a couple things. First, him burying his face in your neck after pressing a line of messy kisses down your jawline. Second, and more importantly, a rather bold move of him sliding his hands down from your waist to your ass.
"Shit," you groan as soon as he gives it a rough squeeze. When his teeth gently nip against the side of your neck, when his tongue laves against that little bite before he sucks on it, he earns a moan.
"That feels so good, Ry," you whimper while you dig your nails into his shoulders and roll your hips against his.
He stops in the middle of sucking a soft pink hickey on your neck. He just…pauses. Completely stops in his tracks and lifts his head. You blink a few times. Furrow your eyebrows and, while you're still panting, you concernedly ask, "Are you okay?"
"What'd you call me?"
A question for a question. It's only fair.
Your lips quirk up into a little smirk. A facial expression he's learning that you only make around him. When you know you've got him caught in some kind of compromising situation. He's never focused on just how much you do it. On how much you come out on top of him. On how you've been doing it for over two years while you've worked at Grover Cleveland with him, and how he's only just now picking up on it being a thing.
So much for being attentive. He really needs to fix that. Needs to take his head out of the clouds.
"Ry," you purr. He shudders and lets his head fall forward onto your shoulder. His hands return to your waist, arms tightening around it so he can pull you closer. This was only your third date, and you've already got a nickname for him. The intimacy behind that might end this party before it even starts.
"You like it?"
He smiles. Presses that smile into your skin before he lifts his head to flash it at you. It's probably crooked. Probably a little dopey, too, judging by the way you giggle at him when your eyes flit down to his lips.
"Yeah. I like it."
He hates to admit it, but he still likes it. Maybe even more now than that first time you said it.
"If you're doing well, at least. You look like you are."
"I—uh," he squeaks out. Stops to shake his head and squeeze his eyes shut. Tilts his head down because he can't fathom looking at you after that memory came back to him in full force. Feels disrespectful to both of you.
He reopens his eyes and glues them to your shoes, then promptly hates himself for it, because they make him tear up. Maybe he can blame those tears on the chilly breeze that's still attacking him. He can blame his reddened cheeks on it, too.
All he can do now is pray. Pray, for a silent, quick second that his voice won't crack when he speaks up again.
"Yeah, sure. Thanks. You look like you are, too."
He isn't looking at you, but he knows you shrugged. He saw the way your arms lifted out of his peripheral. Heard the shuffle of your jacket. Felt the change in your demeanor almost as heavily as the change in his own.
It was a gentle, hesitant move on your part. Seems like every part of this conversation is gentle and hesitant now that the initial adrenaline and shock has melted away.
"I've been better. I'm okay, though," you admit.
He doesn't have to see you to know you weren't happy when you said it. It was lacking confidence. Lacking the smile on your face that he can always hear in your voice. Lacking the soft melody your tone adds to every word that's lucky enough to leave your lips. Lacking everything he still loves about you.
Maybe you are just as miserable as me.
There's a beat. A silence that shouldn't be very comfortable, but is. He knows better than to take solace in your misery. But when he's just as miserable, if not more…
Well. Everyone knows misery loves company.
"Sometimes 'okay' is all we can be," he finally rumbles. A desperate need to break the silence. To hopefully pull your voice out of you so that he can hear it again. Even a few seconds without it is too long.
"Always so levelheaded," you reply. Then you chuckle. And his heart aches and races all at once. Maybe this is a heart attack.
"I miss that about you. Glad that you kept it."
Ryland goes quiet. Even quieter than he already was. His fingers tighten around the cup in his hand.
What's he supposed to say to that? Is he supposed to agree? Beg you to give him another chance if you miss him so much? Tell you he's never been less levelheaded in his entire life now that you're not in it?
You miss me. I miss you. What are we doing?
He opts for an awkward laugh instead while he rubs the back of his neck with his free hand. Opens his mouth and spews something he's not even sure he believes for himself when he says, "Gotta stay levelheaded if you wanna be a good teacher."
You nod. The smile that accompanies it is…melancholic.
His chest tightens. The last time you smiled at him like that was the last time you walked out of his life. Why stay here and continue making each other miserable? Why live through this a second time?
That's why he tells you, "I should get going. Need to set up for the day."
Your eyes widen. Your hands twitch when you let them fall at your sides. Are you reaching out? Is each cell in your body reaching out to him like his are to you?
"Yeah, I get it. I'm sorry I kept you, but it was nice to see you, Ry. Really," you concede.
You're not reaching out. You're letting it happen. You're letting him walk away. Why does that hurt more than anything else he's been through with you this morning?
"Yeah. You too," he half-heartedly returns. A lie that he pushes out over the bile in his throat and through his teeth. You give him a tiny laugh combined with an eyeroll. You picked up on that lie. You always laughed like that when he told a bad one.
But you tell him bye instead of calling him out on it. And you watch him as he starts to move backwards, unmoving from your spot. So much for focusing on the coffee you wanted.
Ryland continues to walk backwards, but not for long. It's just enough to memorize what you look like before he hopefully never sees you again. He spins on his heel when he's had enough of that sad puppy dog look in your eyes as you watch him leave. A face he was hoping he wouldn't have to see more than once.
His gait is slow as he walks away from you and back toward school. Unmotivated. Miserable. You'd think that when you're miserable all the time, you'd get used to it.
He wonders about whether or not he can just call in today. He's bitten off way more than he can chew. Been inundated with way too many bad signs on the one day he's decided to be superstitious.
Thinking about it would only make it even worse for him. For his brain. So, thankfully, he doesn't have to.
Because you're too busy stealing his attention. Again.
"Hey, wait!"
He doesn't want to stop walking. He doesn't want to turn back around and see you again. He's had enough of it; of the bad signs he can't ignore anymore and of the good memories he can't ever go back to.
But he does stop walking. How couldn't he? At the end of the day, he still belongs to you. He'll still do what you say. So he turns around, too.
When he does, he sees you coming his way. You're jogging to him. Past the cafe and all the way down the street. Waving and staring at him with a pleading look in your eyes.
Why do you want to do this? Why won't you just let him go like he's desperately trying to do to you? Seeing you here was enough. It was closure. Of course, he feels worse—but it's closure. You're okay. That's all that matters. He'll deal with his pain over all of this on his own time.
He gnaws on the inside of his cheek. Sighs, then defeatedly says, "I'm sorry. I can't do this. School's starting soon, so I really have to go."
"I know, Ry, but—"
"Oh, for Christ's sake! Can you…" he groans and shuts his eyes. Hangs his head. The ache in his jaw reminds him that he should probably unclench it. He doesn't even remember clenching it in the first place.
"Can you stop calling me that?"
It was rude, the way he shot you down and cut you off. Frantic. Brash. A little hateful, even. A flash showing of a temper that he desperately tries to hide, but can't always hold back when he's frustrated.
You frown at him. Guilt never feels good.
"Sorry," he whispers when the guilt threatens to drown him. "Just…I can't. Stop calling me that. Please."
"I didn't know you didn't like it anymore," you brokenly admit. You avoid his eyes and look down at your hands. You only do that when you're about to cry.
I like it too much, actually.
More guilt floods his senses. Has anyone ever drowned without touching water?
"Hey," Ryland breathes. Laughs to himself. It's awkward. Stilted. But he continues, anyway.
"Don't worry about it. How could you have known? We haven't seen each other in…" he trails off and waves one hand dismissively, "a while."
A while. One year, four months, and seven days. That's a lot of time. A lot of time for two people to change. A lot of time for him to stay the same.
"Yeah," you agree, quiet and solemn. A tiny nod of your head to match before you look back up at him. "Definitely a while."
He hums. When he turns his head to the right, he gets a glimpse of the street ahead of him. Big and empty. Lacking any sort of life. Dull. Almost like a prison sentence. What he has to do instead of what he wants to do.
When he turns back to you, he sees life. What his life could have been had you not both called it quits. It's as bright as the sunlight still bouncing off of your face and the tears glistening in your eyes.
He drops his mouth open to say something, then closes it. What could be said?
You sniffle and punch out a stilted laugh. Something of necessity. To ease the tension here, although all it does is make him feel worse. He put you here in this situation. Why'd he have to branch out from his routine?
"Did you wanna say something?" he asks.
"No," you answer. "I just had a question."
Ryland's brow quirks up.
"A question?"
"Yeah. If you have the time for it."
He nods.
"I can spare a couple minutes."
You smile. It's as weak as the trembling hand coming up to swipe a stray tear off of your cheek. A shaky sigh leaves your chest; tumbles out of your lips, makes itself known with the fragile little cloud within the cold air around you both.
"Are you really okay?"
That's probably the worst question you could have asked him. It stalls in between you both. Hangs in the air and demands to be answered even though he doesn't want to. Although, this entire morning has consisted of shit he didn't really want to do, so…
"I—Yeah. I mean…yeah. I am," Ryland answers.
That wasn't even convincing to him. Definitely won't work on you. He's sure of that.
Or, at least, he was sure of that. Because after you hear his response, you smile at him. Another weak smile, but it's genuine. A soft upward pull of the corners of your lips. That's all he gets.
"Good," you murmur. You punctuate that one little word with a relieved sigh. How did you not know he was lying? Has it really been that long? Do you not know him anymore?
Does he not know you?
"Are you?" he asks.
"Mhm," you answer.
You clear your throat and gesture back toward the cafe.
"Alright, I need to get in line if I want to be on time, so I'll let you go now. Have fun shaping the youth of San Francisco," you muse. You wave at him and start to backtrack.
"See you around, Ryland."
Ouch.
"Yeah. See you."
And, with that, you're off. You turn around. You don't look back at him while you jog back to the cafe and into it.
Ryland mirrors you after he stops himself from staring at your back. He turns around, too. Starts walking down the street and back to Grover Cleveland Middle.
Back to real life.
author's note: i said i'd never hurt ryland grace but unfortunately i did end up hurting him real bad. im sorry to him but not sorry that i wrote this because i think it may be my most favorite thing i've ever written. thank you so so so dearly to my beautiful beloved @clarkscolumn for helping me with the editing on this, for it would not exist without you. and thank you to my brilliant fellow writers @thceseus and @icykentss for beta'ing this and approving it for me! i love all of you so dearly. thank you one million billion times. you're the best (but you all knew that already)
taglist: @clarkscolumn @thceseus @clarknsun @sparklingsin @notebookmixup @frivolousimagination @qardasngan @aerixae @snoopysupe @pinksplace @soniayonce @yearningforsolitude (I TAGGED YOU BC YOU RESPONDED TO MY POST EARLIER BUT IF U WANT ME TO REMOVE IT PLS LMK <3)
hiii, im a huge fan of your work! everything is so beautifully written and the effort and love u put into every piece is something i aspire to achieve :,)
could you write something of childhood friends reader and ryland? maybe they met in primary school and parted ways until adulthood, meeting either at school or for Project Hail Mary? i’d love to see what u could make with this!!
thank you so much!! i hope you like this :) and. i am so sorry in advance for this.
make believe (ryland grace x reader)
also posted on ao3 | my masterlist
Science camp. High school. Quiz bowl. Prom. College. Grad school. And then: nothing.
And then: Ryland is back in your life, as quickly as he had vanished.
~17k words (don't even look at me); childhood friends to lovers; angst; smut; Stratt's Vat; engineer!reader; oral - f!receiving; missionary; unprotected sex; fem!reader
title based off of this song (make believe by jigitz) that i listened to on repeat while writing
taglist: @umbranull @lilredbird101 @carolineesnell @sillybillyp9 @pixiebuggz @yennimxchi @joccey
You send Stratt the file at two in the morning, having gone back and forth in your mind about it for about an hour, then rereading it for good measure, then rewatching the footage from the ArcLight probe. They’re alive, even though that statement probably wouldn’t survive peer review, particularly because you’re not even a biologist. But you know it, in the same way you know your name and your address and your phone number.
The paper is still downloaded to your computer. Of course it is. You read it when it came out, and a few times since then. It had been one of those instances where you almost broke the silence, reached out to him, asked him how he was doing, even though it was pretty clear that the answer was ‘not great.’ But you didn’t. Because he had been the one who stopped keeping in touch. The other time had been after the conference, which you’d only heard about secondhand, from a colleague in another department.
They’re alive, and they live on the surface of the sun, and even if you haven’t talked to him in years, you’re pretty sure you still know him, that he would take to this like a fish to water. (He would probably hate that metaphor.)
She does not reply, but she does leave a thumbs up on your email.
A week later, you are staring at the report in your hands, in a decidedly different location than your office.
It stares back at you.
You lose the staring contest, because right there, right at the top of the page, in the subtitle, it says ‘research conducted by Dr. Ryland Grace, United States,’ and you have to blink a few times to make sure that you’re reading it right. She did it, then. She read the paper, and she found him, and now he’s named astrophage and discovered how they reproduce. He is probably on his way to the aircraft carrier, right now, because when Stratt decides she needs someone on the project, they are scooped up and dumped here immediately.
This means two things: one, this will be the first time you’ve seen him in years; two, you are now wondering if he’s even thought about you in that time. He must have, because you do. Because you have the scar, and the pictures from the photobooth that have still managed to stick around in your purse, and the hole he left in your life.
--
science camp – between fifth and sixth grade
The university’s campus is so huge, you think, walking toward the welcome hall. Your mom had tried to come with you, but you had insisted that you could go by yourself, because you’re about to go into middle school and are therefore basically an adult. So you handle registration yourself, getting your nametag with a little blue dot on it, and you listen carefully as the front desk person tells you where you need to go.
Thankfully, it’s just across the open courtyard at the center of campus. You’re early, so there’s only a few other kids sitting at the color-coded tables, including one blond boy at the blue table. When you sit down next to him, you stick your arm out for a handshake—again, almost an adult, pretty much—and smile widely. “Hi. I think we’re on the same team.”
He turns to you and blinks at your hand before shaking it. Then he glances down at your nametag, looking at the blue dot, which matches the color of his eyes. “Cool! I’m Ryland.”
“I know. I can see your nametag.”
“Oh. Right.”
But you tell him your name, anyway, because he already looks a little embarrassed, and you think you heard your dad say once on a phone call that team chemistry was important for success. “What grade are you in?”
He puffs out his chest a little. “Sixth.”
“Wow. Do they really give you lockers when you get to middle school? I’ve been wondering about that, and if I should buy decorations and stuff.” You’d already drawn it all out: a cute little chandelier, a fluffy rug for the bottom, some magnets. But your mom said she wouldn’t take you to get any of that until you actually knew if you’d have a locker.
Ryland seems to deflate as you ramble. “…Well, I’m going into sixth grade, so I don’t really know.”
“Oh, that’s even better! It means we’re in the same year.” Your smile widens, and after a moment, his own returns, if a little shyly.
Some of your other teammates filter in, and you quickly decide that you like Ryland the best, so you stick to his side throughout the day, and each day after that. He’s crazy smart: he has the best ideas for the derby car, already knows stuff like air resistance and velocity, and he figures out pretty quickly that you’re the best kid on the team at art, so you get to paint the car. At lunch, in one of the college’s dining halls, he tests how high he can make his fro-yo—college is so awesome, and you can’t wait until you’re old enough to go—and he always shares it with you.
Your team wins the derby race at the end of the week of camp, which wasn’t really ever in question. Your mom makes the two of you pose for a photo as the other kids start leaving with their parents. At first, this is super embarrassing for you, but then Ryland gives you his mom’s email so he can have the photo, too. Science camp next year can’t come fast enough.
--
As you wheel the cart of lab equipment across the hangar bay, wincing every time one of the wheels catches on a divot in the floor, you wonder if Stratt is having you do this because she suspects that the two of you know each other. Well. Used to know each other, at least. Because why else would you have that paper, for what other reason would you send it to her in the first place? You can’t help but think this must be some kind of strategy or ploy. Or maybe she’s just trying to be nice, have him greeted with a familiar face—you don’t know, you don’t actually interact with her that much.
This is the last trip, anyway, and then you can go back to doing actual work, the kind that you are qualified for. Now that the astrophage could be reproduced, the issue of fuel was solved, and the engineering team could move forward with the design of the Hail Mary. You’d already drafted some preliminary sketches; these would probably be scrapped, because it was in such an early phase, but you liked having the visuals. Maybe you’d throw together some concept art of the living quarters, try to make it a little homey. It was the least you could do for the astronauts who would die there.
As you’re contemplating this, there’s two sets of footsteps that stop just outside the plywood and plexiglass room, and a familiar voice speaking. “Thanks. Er, right, Mandarin. Can’t say I ever picked that up. A thumbs up is universal, right?” It is not, but you don’t say so, because you are trying to busy yourself with the test tubes so you don’t have to turn around. “Oh. Hi. Wow, I see I have you to thank for the lab. It looks great.”
You clear your throat, because the anxiety simmering in your gut has started to crawl up your windpipe. “No problem. Let me know if there’s anything else you need.” You’re not sure why you even say this, because this really isn’t your job, and you don’t even know if you’ve set some of the equipment up correctly.
“Thanks. Uh—I’m Grace, by the way. Dr. Grace. Dr. Ryland Grace.” A thought pops into your head, then, reflexively: he still never landed on what he wants other people to call him.
It’s probably time to rip the band aid off, you think, get this over with and see if he even recognizes you, so you turn around. “I know.”
He just—freezes, then, staring at your face, and his mouth opens and closes a few times before he settles on, “What?”
“I might look a little different,” you say, as disappointment floods through you, “but—”
“No, that’s not. I recognize you, obviously I do, I just—I really was not expecting that it would be you, when you turned around.” His hand flexes by his leg, and he takes a step forward, and you think he might be about to hug you, but he stops at the look on your face. “It’s. Wow. This is just. Wow,” he repeats. “How are you? How have things been? Why are you—here?”
He falters on the last word. It’s as if he’s realizing that of all the questions he just asked, that is somehow the most obvious one, when it should be the other way around. “Well. I’ve sort of been involved in the design and construction of almost every NASA mission in the past decade. So. I kind of know how to build a spaceship. Which is the whole point of this project.”
“Right. That’s—yeah.” Ryland—because he will always be Ryland to you, because that’s how he introduced himself when you first met, all those years ago, at that blue table—looks immensely uncomfortable. There is a tiny, petty part of you that is glad for it.
“And I’ve been good. Just got promoted to associate professor last year.”
He nods and sticks his hands into the pockets of his cardigan. “I know. I saw that.”
Oh. He’s been keeping tabs on you, even after you gave up on doing the same for him. Then why didn’t he just call, or text, or email? Show up on your doorstep, like he did—“I see,” you finally reply, if only to stop your own train of thought. “Well, I’ll leave you to it. Welcome aboard, Dr. Grace.”
You start to walk away, and you make it out of the doorway when his voice stops you. “It’s still Ryland. You’ve never—I’m still Ryland.”
“Alright.” You don’t turn back around. “I’ll see you around, Ryland.”
--
science camp – between eighth and ninth grade
It’s the last day of science camp, ever, because it’s only for middle schoolers, but any sadness you might feel about that is washed away when Ryland tells you he’s going to Central starting next year, because you’re going to Central next year, too. And you have a phone, now, and he puts his number in so you can send him your class schedule when they come out.
Right now, you’re supposed to be at lunch. You are not.
Ryland takes his nametag off and stuffs it into his pocket. It says ‘Ryland’ this time, because for a couple years he decided to go by ‘Ry,’ but apparently he has now concluded that nicknames are a little too childish. You’re secretly glad about this, because you like his full name, to the point that you almost never called him Ry in the last two summers.
You’d like to point out to him that taking the nametag off isn’t really going to make the two of you any less obvious, because this is still a college campus, and you are very clearly soon-to-be high schoolers that are here for summer camp. You still take yours off, too.
“Score,” he says, smiling widely at you as the doorknob to the lab turns. “I knew they didn’t keep it locked.”
You have to tilt your face up a little to look at him. It’s weird, because you’re used to being taller than him, but a growth spurt must have hit over this past year. “I still really don’t think we should do this. We’re missing out on the fro-yo,” you whine.
Despite your hesitation, you still follow him into the room. “This is way more fun, though. I want to actually do stuff without everyone else crowded in here and getting in the way.” He hands you a pair of goggles and some gloves. He turns to you when he has his goggles on and gives you a gloved thumbs up. It looks a little funny, because his black, chunky glasses are kind of smushed underneath the plastic. It was a bit of a surprise to see him with those this year—he told you he had been getting headaches, and it turns out he badly needed glasses to look at things close-up. “And I can ask my mom to take us to get ice cream.”
“Sweet.” The two of you had hung out a little bit outside of camp, but nothing too crazy. Mostly it was meeting at the library or getting dinner with your moms after a day of camp. Ice cream, though—that felt special. The sort of thing that qualifies as a date. You can’t help the small smile that spreads on your face, the heat dusting your cheeks. “So—what do you want to do?”
Ryland takes a glass beaker out of the cabinet and then rustles around for some reagents, because evidently none of the people running this camp thought to lock anything up. “Actual science, not the kid stuff they’ve been showing us. I watched a video about titration the other day, I think I’d like to try that.” He sets up the beaker and the burette as he keeps talking. “Don’t worry, this is a super standard thing people do in labs. I won’t burn the building down. It’s just about using a titrant to figure out the exact concentration of the analyte. But I want to practice now, so I can get a headstart on being a world-famous scientist.”
You try your best to follow along and watch carefully as he pours two different liquids into the beaker, and then sucks up a third with the burette. “What’s that?”
“Hydrochloric acid.”
“Isn’t that a little—dangerous?” You ask nervously, though you don’t move away, still watching his hands carefully set up the titration.
He scoffs. “Hydrochloric acid is in household cleaners, I’m pretty sure. It’s used all the time for stuff like this in labs.”
You shift, a little anxious. “Just. Be careful, please.”
Ryland looks up at you then and smiles widely. It’s annoying how nice his teeth are, because you’re stuck with braces for at least the next two years. “I’m always careful.”
This is completely untrue, but you stay quiet and watch as he slowly lets the liquid drip in, and then gasp when the liquid in the beaker changes color. “Did you do it? Is that supposed to happen?”
“Yep. First try. I knew I could do it.” He goes to turn his body fully toward you, and then his arm hits a bottle, and neither of you realize that the bottle does not have a cap until there’s liquid on your arm.
Holy cow, it hurts, it hurts really bad, and you have to bite down on your cheek to keep from crying out as he drags you over to the sink and starts running water over it. “Oh my gosh, I am so sorry, it’s okay—I think I got it off in time—are you okay?”
You nod as tears start to spill down your cheeks. The skin is red and blistering, but the water is helping to dull the pain. “I’m alright.” Somehow you manage to laugh, and he looks at you, extremely confused, probably thinking that you are delirious from the pain, or something. “Of course I’m the one who gets burned.”
His face is red, and he almost looks like he’s about to start crying, too. “I am really, really sorry. I can’t believe I forgot to put the cap back on.”
“It’s okay. Maybe it will be a cool scar?”
He sniffles a little as he pulls your arm out from under the stream of water. You wince as the pain returns in full force. “I’m not sure. It doesn’t look super deep? I am so sorry.”
As he turns your arm carefully to inspect the burn, you notice that the pads of his fingers are also blistering. “Ryland, your fingers.”
He lets go of you to look at them. “Oh, yeah. I think I accidentally touched some when I pulled you over here.” Oh. Maybe that’s why he’s also been tearing up. When he looks back up at you, he smiles, his eyes a little glassy. “Maybe we’ll match.”
The two of you do not get ice cream later, because you both end up needing to go to urgent care, and your parents are pissed. The doctor tells you that it’s second-degree, and that you’re lucky, because it should heal on its own, but you’ll likely end up with a scar. Ryland fares a little better, he tells you over text: he’ll have some raised bumps, but they’ll eventually go away.
--
Dozens of schematics are scattered across your desk, and your fingers are starting to cramp from holding the pencil. Technically, you could just do this digitally, but you like the feeling of drawing it yourself, the tactile experience of bringing what will most likely be the pinnacle of human engineering into life on the page.
The main focus of the engineering team’s meetings so far has been the fuel tanks. This is rather boring, because you could probably design those in your sleep. But you’ve been dutifully sketching them out anyway, calculating how much material you would need, where the tanks would be connected to reduce stress on the ship and allow for the astrophage to be funneled to the engines. Apparently, they were bringing on a Russian scientist to make these, which meant there was only so much the team could do before that was figured out.
You’ve turned to your little side project in the meantime: designing gold plaques to go in the ship, akin to the Pioneer and Voyager plaques. The ship itself would be a message to any intelligent life that might stumble upon it, but it would be even better, in your mind, if there was some purposeful communication there. You’re looking over the sketch of human evolution when your stomach grumbles. You should really eat, but—you’ve been staying away from places where groups of people gathered. It feels childish, to avoid him like this, but you tell yourself that you’re just saving the two of you from the awkwardness of dealing with the fact that whatever place you used to have in his life is gone.
You settle for pulling a granola bar out of your bag and munch on it while you keep thinking. There should definitely be a plaque about the astrophage, but you would need to consult with some of the biologists on this to make sure the visual was accurate. Maybe you could—
A knock on the doorframe of your lab makes you jump. “Knock knock.”
“Who’s there?” You say, reflexively, and your lips pull into a small smile, despite the fact that it currently feels like you’re being punched in the chest at the exchange.
You swivel around to see Ryland standing there, balancing two trays on one arm. “Radon.”
“Radon, who?”
“Radon, man,” and he stretches out the word ‘man’ like a caricature of a stoner might, grinning widely. “I brought you lunch.”
“Why?”
He walks in and sets the trays down before dragging another chair over and sitting next to you. It reminds you of science camp, and high school, and getting dinner together after a quiz bowl tournament, and studying in the diner in college, and—and you force yourself to stop thinking about it. “I haven’t seen you in the mess hall at all. And then I asked around, and someone said you usually eat at your desk. So.”
You look at him for a few moments. His hair’s gotten a little darker since grad school, and he’s finally figured out how to grow a little bit of scruff out. It looks good, you think idly. Same wire frames, though. Once he figured out those looked the best—not that it was a very high bar, because the thick black ones he started with were pretty bad—he never changed the style. “Okay,” you finally say. “Thanks.”
“And.” His fingers drum on his thigh as he looks at his tray, then around your workspace, before finally settling his gaze on you, nervous and unsure. “I wanted to say sorry.”
“For?” This is not a real question. This is you letting that small petty thing inside of you win.
His mouth twists, just a little. You hate the expression on him. “For not calling. Or texting. Or—you know. Anything. I’m sorry.”
You don’t really know what to say. It makes something twinge in your chest, because it used to be that you never had to think about it, that you could say anything to him. And it feels ridiculous, too. Plenty of people fell out of touch with childhood friends. Sure, it felt like your friendship had been a little bit stronger than that, lasted longer, had been more, especially when. When. “It’s. I accept your apology.”
“And I know you’re—wait, what?” He blinks at you in surprise.
“It’s fine, Ryland.” You shrug and start unwrapping the plastic around the fork and knife. It is decidedly not fine, but you are trying to be the bigger person here. “You had a lot going on.”
He’s silent at that, just another thing that doesn’t fit into the picture you’ve kept of him in your mind. You’ve never known him to not have something at the ready, a witty response or a longwinded explanation, and it’s another reminder that you don’t really know him at all anymore. “I. That’s. Alright.” It seems he doesn’t know how to have this conversation, either. He looks at you for a little while before slowly grabbing his own utensils, and then his mind changes halfway through the motion, because then he’s picking up one of the schematics on your desk. “Wow.”
“What?”
The paper is slightly trembling as he holds it. Probably the adrenaline crash from coming in here, you think. “These look amazing.” He glances back up at you with a small smile. “You kept drawing.”
You try to return the expression as best as you can. “It comes in handy. I’m somewhat decent at it.”
“I know you are,” he says quietly. “I remember.”
--
tenth grade
God, Ryland is taking forever to come pick you up. At least it’s nice out, as you sit on your front porch. The autumn foliage has set in nicely. You pull your phone out to snap a quick picture—you had to beg your parents to buy you one with a halfway decent camera and a keyboard that doesn’t require hitting each number a billion times—since it looks like it would be good watercolor practice, you think, maybe a piece you could do for your art class. Because that was really the only time you had for art these days, what with robotics, and quiz bowl, and all of the studying you have to do for pre-calc on top of your other classes.
He finally pulls up in front of your house. You sling your backpack on your shoulders and bound down the steps, carefully opening the passenger door—if you pull too hard, the casing of the handle flies off—and slide in. “Took you long enough. I was afraid the thing had fallen apart on your way here.”
Ryland waits for you to buckle up your seatbelt before driving away. He gives a gentle pat to the dashboard. “Be nice to the old gal. She’s trying her best.”
You fiddle with the aux cord. It takes some adjusting, because it’s actually connected to a cassette tape, and the wiring has to be positioned just right to work. Finally, some music is playing from your MP3 player, although it kind of sounds like shit. Half of the speakers don’t work. “Have you come up with a name yet?”
“Not yet. But I’ve got some contenders. I’m thinking Leia. Or Daisy.” His fingers tap along to the music on the steering wheel, and some of his hair flutters around the glasses perched on his head. If he doesn’t keep them on his person, they will simply vanish.
“You are such a nerd. I’m assuming Daisy is because of Space Odyssey?”
He looks over at you and smiles while the car is stopped at a red light. “Bingo. Can’t do Hal, obviously.”
You roll your eyes and try to ignore the fluttering in your stomach. “It’s a car, it doesn’t have a gender. But also, you shouldn’t do Hal, because he famously tries to kill them all.” Then you glance over at the plastic casing rattling around the air vent. “Actually, maybe you should name it Hal.”
“Hey,” he whines, but he’s still smiling.
You stick your tongue out and then lean your head against the window, closing your eyes against the chilly October air that comes in through the cracked window. It sort of sucks that quiz bowl practices are always on a Saturday, because this would be a nice day to walk around, maybe go to a movie, but at least it was another chance to hang out with Ryland.
He turns down the music a little, and you’re about to chide him for it, but he speaks before you can. “So. Homecoming.”
This makes your stomach drop and every muscle fiber in your body freeze. “What about it?” You say carefully.
“Have you thought about who you might want to go with?”
You have. You have thought about it quite a bit. You are currently making a poster to ask him, because you’re fairly certain he won’t do it first. None of this comes out, obviously. Instead, you reply, “A little. What about you?”
Ryland nods, and it’s a little nervous. “I think I might ask Krista.”
“Oh.” Alright. Well. Maybe you’ll just burn the poster and your entire house down with it. You clear your throat. “Krista? That’s—she’s the girl you’re tutoring, right? On the volleyball team?”
“Yeah. I know you think she’s dumb as rocks—”
You snort, trying not to cry or possibly throw up in his car. “She does have an F in geometry, so.”
“But she’s really nice, actually. And I was wondering—would you help me make one of those posters? To ask her? Since you’re so good at drawing and stuff.”
This is, actually, the worst. You feel like the side character in a stupid romcom, the best friend who helps the guy get the girl, who is vaguely implied to be a lesbian at the end of the movie, just to make it clear to the audience that she was never a love interest the whole time. “Sure. I can do that.”
It comes out flat, and he notices immediately, because he always does. “Are you sure? You don’t have to, if you’re busy or something.”
“No, no,” you rush out. You could never refuse him, even if you wanted to. “Sorry, it just made me remember—there’s a robotics competition the same day, and I forgot to tell Mr. Samson that I couldn’t go. We were supposed to do that earlier this week.” This is a lie, through and through, because he wanted you all to tell him if you weren’t going to the tournament this coming week. “I can make the poster. When do you want it by?”
He exhales in relief. “Maybe by next weekend? You’re the best,” and then he reaches over to squeeze your hand, unthinkingly, still looking at the windshield because he’s driving.
Quiz bowl practice is fine. You make the poster when you get home. The one you had started making for him gets shoved in the back of your closet.
Krista says yes.
Your team gets first place at the robotics tournament. He sends you a shitty picture of his glasses tangled up in his hair, because he recently switched to ones with a wire frame but keeps putting them on top of his head anyway, and he looks really nice in his tie and boutonniere.
They start dating for a while.
--
Ryland starts bringing you lunch nearly every day. You almost want to ask him if he truly does not have anything better to do, but that hour is so nice that you can almost forget that he went radio silent on you for years. So you let him do it, and you let him look through all your drawings, give you some suggestions for the plaque about astrophage. Sometimes he shows you what he’s working on, and at least this one thing hasn’t changed: he is still brilliant, creative, willing to try things no one else would ever even think of.
Some days he stays after lunch, simply watching you work, and you don’t know why he does it, because he gets fidgety almost immediately without anything to do.
Like right now, for example. He’s been alternating between clicking his pen incessantly and tossing a little crocheted ball back and forth between his hands. When he switches back to the pen, your eye twitches. “Ryland. Please.”
“Sorry.” He sets the pen down. You return your attention to your screen, because you’re trying to look over some of the designs for fuel cell eleven, but you simply loathe any and all CAD software with a passion. You do not get very far. “Who do you think would win in a fight,” he says suddenly, “Godzilla, or the big space fetus at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey?”
His mind is truly an enigma. The corner of your mouth lifts up. “Well. I think it depends—which Godzilla are we talking about? Like, Final Wars Godzilla, or the 1998 American one?”
“See, you always have the best follow-up questions to these.” You can hear him lean back in the chair and spin around in it as he thinks over his response. “Let’s say it’s the one from Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla.”
You have to rack your brain for a second, because it has been almost two decades, at this point, since he sat you down and forced you to watch all of those movies with him. Oh, right—that’s the kind of very cute looking Godzilla. Who fights the robot, but that part was obvious. “Okay. And how are we interpreting the end of Space Odyssey?”
He stops spinning, suddenly, and you turn so you can see his expression without even realizing that you’re doing it. His eyebrows are raised, and he’s looking at you as if he’s saying, seriously? “There’s only one correct way to interpret it.”
“There’s really not.”
“But there is,” he insists. “Bowman experiences time all at once, and then he’s lifted to the next stage of evolution, which is the star child—”
You interrupt him, if only to be extremely pedantic. “Okay, but you’re not addressing whether the star child is actually him or only a copy of him.”
He waves a hand. “That’s in the book, that’s not relevant.”
The conversation is giving you an overwhelming sense of déjà vu, because you’re pretty sure you’ve had this exact argument with him several times, in what feels like another life. “Okay, fine. I’m going Godzilla.”
“I think I have to go with the space fetus,” he sighs, as if this is the obvious choice. It’s not. He definitely would have picked Godzilla if you hadn’t answered first.
You snort. “All it does is influence human events. Godzilla literally has atomic breath. He’s giving that little baby radiation sickness, if he doesn’t just totally blast it apart.”
The way Ryland is smiling in disbelief and shaking his head is what you imagine he must do to his students when they’ve given a particularly nonsense answer to a question. “The fetus is literally in space, if it hasn’t gotten radiation sickness yet, it probably can’t. Also, I think ‘he’s giving that little baby radiation sickness’ is probably the first time those words have ever been put in that order.” He scoots his chair forward and puts his hands on the armrests of yours, looking way more serious than the topic demands. “And the baby could influence humanity to kill him.”
“No, that’s not fair, that’s bringing in a third party,” you shoot back, rolling your eyes. “We’re talking fisticuffs here.”
There’s a lock of hair hanging in the middle of his forehead. You don’t know when you started looking at it. “Okay, and the fetus would still win, because it’s literally larger than the entire planet.”
“You know the whole saying, ‘How do you eat an elephant? You take one bite at a time’? That’s what Godzilla would do.”
“And how would he even get to space to do that.”
“That just makes the whole argument nil, if we’re assuming that they have to get to each other first. No, for this question to even make sense, they already have to be in fighting distance.”
Ryland smiles, then, in a way that makes your throat seize up. “I missed this. A lot.”
You look at him for a long moment, studying the piece of hair still curved toward his brow, the way his eyes have softened almost imperceptibly, the soft dip of his cupid’s bow. “Yeah. I did, too.” That petty part of you wants to point out that neither of you needed to be in a position where you’d miss it, because it could have stayed the whole time. You do not. Instead, you say, “And you’re deflecting, because you know I’m right.”
“I am not.”
--
eleventh grade
If he doesn’t stop throwing the bouncy ball at your wall, you’re going to hurl him out of the window.
You’re both supposed to be studying for AP Calc, because the exam is in a few weeks, and God knows Mrs. Murphy wasn’t really preparing any of you well enough for it. What is actually happening is that you are studying, while he gave up about ten minutes ago, not because it’s hard—it is genuinely annoying how easily this stuff comes to him—but because he’s bored.
The door to your bedroom is closed. Your parents have stopped being pedantic about it, because it has become clear that, while Ryland is a serial dater, he isn’t going to try anything with you. It is sort of depressing that even your own family doesn’t think you can get any.
“You can leave whenever you want, you know,” you mutter, still looking at your textbook. “I’m sure you have a date with Stephanie, or whatever.”
“Nope.” He doesn’t stop throwing the ball. “We broke up last month, remember? And then I got back with Krista.”
You jot something down in your notebook. “You’re kind of a slut.”
The ball doesn’t hit the wall again, because now it’s being lobbed at your shoulder. “Rude. Not very third-wave feminist of you.”
“Well, if you stopped being a man-whore, I wouldn’t call you that.” The ball kind of hurt, actually, and you have to rub your arm a little to soothe it. “Anyway. Whatever, then, I’m sure you have a date with Krista.”
He walks over and scoops the ball back up, and then he starts bouncing it on the top of your head. You sigh but don’t do anything about it. “We’re sort of. On a break, at the moment.” This makes you snort. “Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“But you thought it.”
You are thinking it, but you won’t say it. They’ve been on-again, off-again since they first started dating. You still don’t really get it, and it is genuinely not just because you have been crushing on Ryland since the seventh grade, which is a fact that you have resigned yourself to accepting and tucking away. No, they just have almost nothing in common, and she’s kind of mean to him. Maybe he’s just a masochist. Another thought occurs to you as you consider all of this. “Wait. Who are you going to prom with, then? Isn’t it in, like, two weeks?”
He sighs and lays on your bed, staring up at the ceiling. “Dunno. She made it sound like we weren’t going together, and everyone else already has a date.”
“Bummer.” You close your textbook and spin around in your chair to face him. He’s now tossing the ball up in the air and catching it, and at one point it hits him square in the face, which is pretty funny.
And then, like the ball falling on his face has struck him with an idea, he sits up so fast that you’re worried he’s going to snap his spine. “Wait. You don’t have a date.”
“Uh-huh. Because I’m not going.”
He leans forward to grab the arms of your chair and drags you to the edge of the bed, and then he pulls his glasses up onto his nose and looks at you, extremely serious. “You haven’t been to a single dance. This is, like, the quintessential teenage experience.”
Normal teenagers don’t really use the word ‘quintessential,’ but you refrain from pointing this out. “I doubt I’m missing out on much. Also, I’m getting my braces off that morning, remember?” You’d had to keep them on for an extra year, because. Well. It is possible that you weren’t as diligent with the rubber bands as you should have been. And you’d purposefully scheduled it that day, so you had an excuse to avoid suffering through a night of watching him with someone else.
“What time?”
You sigh. He has set his sights on this, and he will not let go of it. “Ten.” It was, unfortunately, the only time available when you scheduled it, because the orthodontist’s office closed early on Saturdays.
His face lights up. “You’ll definitely be done in time. We can go together.”
It is difficult for you to describe the emotions that spike through you in that moment. Have you been desperately hoping he would ask you to be his date to a dance for literal years? Yes. Is it, genuinely, the worst freaking thing ever that this is in the context of being his backup date? Also yes. Are you capable of saying no to him? “…I don’t have a dress.”
He knows that this is a yes, that he has won, even though you never actually agreed. “That’s fine. We can go this weekend, I’ll need to match the color of my tie anyway.”
Ryland keeps his promise and takes you to get a dress. You pick a blue one, to match his eyes, and then the next weekend he’s picking you up, and your parents make you do the incredibly cheesy thing where you walk down the stairs, all dressed up, as they take pictures. He slips the corsage on your wrist, and you give him a tentative, nervous smile, with teeth.
He stares, and stares, and stares, and then he finally says, “You look weird.” So you punch him on the shoulder, hard, and he holds your waist as your parents take more pictures, and then he drives you to prom. It’s fine. High school dances are pretty overrated, in your opinion, although there is a photo booth there, which is pretty cool. The two of you never manage to take pictures in it. You try to let yourself pretend, just for the night, that you had been his first choice, and he dances with you during the slow song, and he says your smile looks nice. Pretty, even.
--
Slowly, the shape of your routine changes, because suddenly you are being brought along on trips to meet with other scientists, engineers, whoever, outside of the Vat, and of course he’s there, too, as the preeminent researcher on astrophage. You have a sneaking suspicion that he has something to do with this.
This time it’s a conference room in Geneva. Ryland is tapping away on his laptop, looking frumpy and annoyed, because the real-life astrophage breeding isn’t matching his simulations. It reminds you of the weekends in college you would get together—because even though you went to different schools, you both were in the Bay Area—and study for exams in a decrepit diner with shitty coffee and slightly better pancakes.
You push the thought away as a severe Norwegian woman walks into the room. A rather silly argument follows about his paper, which really wasn’t that bad, in your opinion, certainly not a ‘slap in the face to the entire scientific community,’ but then they’re leaning towards each other, and you simply cannot put yourself through this again.
Then you’re getting even more pissed off, because Dr. Lokken says, “…this was the only way to tell you a critical design flaw in the Hail Mary.”
“Excuse me?” You interrupt. “We have the greatest engineers on the planet making this thing, and you think there’s a ‘critical design flaw’ in it? Are you even an engineer?”
Ryland looks at you, slightly surprised, because you used to never snipe at someone like this, certainly not in a professional setting. The only person you would get snarky with was him. You almost want to throw it in his face. He isn’t the only person who’s changed. You’ve been through the hell that is the job market, getting tenure, dealing with decrepit men in charge of robotics labs that still aren’t sure women should be around machinery.
Dr. Lokken sighs, a touch exasperated, and takes some papers out of her bag. “The most important part of the ship is the lab, yes? None of the equipment you’ve listed here will work in zero-g.”
“Which we’ve already thought of,” you swiftly interject.
Stratt takes over, because apparently she hadn’t realized she had brought two hotheads along. “We’re having several companies around the world design zero-gravity versions of all of this equipment.”
The other woman scoffs. “You won’t have enough time to test it all. You need gravity.”
As Stratt says something about artificial gravity, it hits you: Dr. Lokken is building up to suggesting exactly that, artificial gravity, but not the sci-fi kind.
“She means a centrifuge,” Ryland says, and then he looks over at you, because somehow he can still tell, even after all these years, when you’ve reached a similar conclusion at the same time he has.
You look over the hastily drawn up schematics as they discuss the particulars. The design she’s brought is simple, but it’s sound, even if you can already tell it will require some tweaking. You look back up when Stratt is telling Dr. Lokken she has an hour to pack a bag and meet the three of you at the airport. Awesome. The person who essentially personally insulted your work is now going to be on your team.
Stratt leaves, and then Dr. Lokken does, too, because now she has about thirty minutes to gather up her belongings before being dropped on a ship in the middle of the Pacific. “Well,” Ryland sighs, spinning around to face you. “What do you think?”
“I think you all pretty much covered it. It makes sense.” You pack up your bag and stand. “It’ll make the crew more comfortable, at least. Spending that long in zero-g and then dying doesn’t sound super fun.”
He chokes out a surprised laugh at that as he gets up. “Yeah, probably not.” The two of you walk out of the room, down the long hallway, and then outside. Stratt is standing by one of the cars on the phone. You’re about to head over when Ryland stops next to you and grabs your arm. “Are you hungry? I’m hungry.”
“…I guess? I thought we were on a pretty tight schedule, though.”
“We’ve got thirty minutes or so, it’s fine,” and then he’s jogging over to Stratt, saying something you can’t hear and gesturing over at you. She waves a hand in dismissal, which is basically her way of saying yes. He walks back over and stands in front of you. “There’s a little grocery store down the street. Not exactly authentic Swiss cuisine, but, come on, let’s go.”
He tugs you down the sidewalk. He must have looked at a map on the way here, because he always does that before going to a new place, trying to memorize it to see if he can get around without needing directions. It usually does not work. This time, though, the convenience store is close enough that the two of you don’t get lost. Soon you’re sitting out on the curb, splitting a two-pack of those Lil Debbie cupcakes, looking extremely and unabashedly American. It reminds you of quiz bowl, you think, watching as a family bikes down the street, when he would get so antsy at practice before a tournament out of town that you’d sneak out so he could test his memory of the map he looked at.
You take a bite of your cupcake. Sweet, tooth-rotting sugary goodness. “You know, this reminds me of—”
“Quiz bowl?” He finishes for you. “I was just thinking the same thing.” His cupcake is almost gone already, because he’s basically been cramming it into his mouth. “Sometimes I really don’t know why you were friends with me for so long. I was kind of a jerk.”
“Was?”
He elbows you. “Hey now.”
A grin settles on your lips. “I’m joking, obviously. Teaching’s really mellowed you out, you know. Well. At least a little bit,” you tack on, because he did kind of immediately start arguing with Dr. Lokken back in the conference room.
“And thank goodness for that. I’m surprised I didn’t give you an ulcer, back then.” He dusts his hands of crumbs and then wipes at his lap. There’s a spot of cream on the side of his mouth.
You pull your sleeve up. “You did give me a scar, to be fair.”
He grabs your wrist and brings your arm closer to look at it, fingers brushing over the raised and shiny skin. You hate what the touch is doing to you. “And I have taken lab safety extremely seriously since then.” When he lets go, you raise an eyebrow at him. “Okay. Mostly seriously.”
“Anyway,” you continue, taking the last bite of your cupcake, “you weren’t that bad. I think if we hadn’t been friends, I would have been so boring. Never leaving the house, just studying and going to robotics tournaments. Probably would have failed orgo at Stanford, too.”
“Nah, you would have been fine.” He stretches his legs out a little into the street and brings his glasses to hang beneath his chin before leaning back on his hands.
The sight makes your stomach twist. He still never picked a normal way to take his glasses off but still keep them close by, you realize, and for a moment it is like no time has passed at all. You mourn the years that you missed out on, that he missed out on, because he had always made you feel like a better version of yourself, braver and more exciting, and you find yourself wondering who you would be now if he had simply kept in touch.
You clear your throat a little. The sound makes him glance over at you curiously. “What?”
“Nothing. You have some cream by your mouth.”
“Here?” He wipes at the wrong side. You almost wonder if he’s doing it on purpose. You roll your eyes and wipe it off for him, and then you lick the cream off for good measure. “Hey,” he whines, watching you with wide eyes, “I might have been saving that.”
You dust your own hands off, then, and stand, offering him your arm to help him get up. “You snooze, you lose.”
He matches his stride with yours as you walk back to the car. “You know, you’ve changed, too.” There’s something to his voice that you can’t quite pin down. “Academia roughed you up a little bit.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Ryland holds the car door open for you. “I meant it as a compliment,” he says, almost as an afterthought, and then he closes the door.
--
college, sophomore year
“I just still do not understand pericyclic reactions,” you mumble, staring at the notes sprawled out on the table in front of you. Your drawings are perfect, they always are, but you feel like you’re simply regurgitating the figures without actually understanding them.
Ryland hums from the other side of the booth. He’s on his third cup of coffee, despite the fact that it’s almost one in the morning. “What don’t you get?”
You sigh and rest your head on your hand. “That’s the thing. I don’t even know how to word what I don’t understand. That’s how much I do not get it.”
He sets his pencil down and looks up at you. “Okay. Let’s start with the basics. What makes them different from ionic and free radical reactions?”
“Um…” You rack your brain sluggishly. “They aren’t affected by solvent changes, radical initiators, scavenging reagents, or electrophilic or nucleophilic catalysts. For the most part.”
“Good. That’s one,” he smiles. “There’s two more.”
You fight the urge to look down at your notes. “Okay. Second one…pericyclic reactions—they’re a simultaneous series of bond breaking and making within one kinetic step.” He nods and waits for you to continue. “And. Oh, the obvious one. There are no ionic or free radical intermediates on the reaction path.”
He gives you an enthusiastic thumbs up. “Exactly. Alright, give me the four principle classes.”
“That’s easy. Cycloaddition, electrocyclic, sigmatropic, and ene.”
“Perfect.” The praise makes you feel all tangled up inside. You watch as he tugs some of your notes free, then, and you try not to stare at his fingers for too long. “Point to a cycloaddition reaction.”
You tear your eyes away from his hands to skim the page. “This one.”
“And what’s happening here?”
“Uh. I don’t—I’m not sure,” you finally respond, embarrassed. “I don’t know. It’s fine, I’ll just try to go to office hours—”
Ryland shakes his head. “No. You know it. Just look at your diagrams. They’re really good, by the way.”
A tired smile tugs at your lips as you stare at your drawings a little longer. “I think. It’s…two pi-electron systems, and they combine…to form a new ring with two sigma bonds and two less pi bonds?”
“Yes! I told you that you knew it.” You have to duck your head to hide the warmth on your cheeks. “Now electrocyclic.”
This continues until you’ve gone through all of the different classes. Some of them take you a couple tries, but you eventually get it. “Thank you,” you whisper softly. “You know, you’d make a really great teacher.”
He rubs the back of his head sheepishly after setting your notes down. “I don’t know about that. I think I’d start arguing with a kid. Their parents too, probably. And I didn’t teach you anything, not really. Just helped you see that you already knew it.”
That’s kind of exactly the point you’re trying to make, but you let it go, because your phone lights up. You huff and roll your eyes when you read the text and quickly tap out a response. The reply makes you mutter, “Oh, my god.”
“What’s up?”
You set your phone back down. “Nothing. Just this guy I’ve been talking to. He texted me ‘you up’ and then asked me to come over with a winky face. Super subtle.”
He looks at you, measured and careful. When he speaks, his voice is a little strained. “And are you? Going to go over?”
“Probably not. I don’t know. He’s fine, I guess. A little. Well. He’s in a frat,” you admit.
“Oh. So he’s stupid.”
You laugh and start packing your notes up, because you’re not sure your brain can handle any more organic chemistry for the night. “He’s not that dumb. He’s in finance.”
Ryland snorts at that and starts putting away his own things in his bag. “So he’s really stupid. How’d you meet this guy, anyway?”
“A party,” you shrug. “I went with my roommate. His name’s Drew. The frat guy, not my roommate. But you knew that, you’ve met my roommate. I really need sleep.”
The two of you step out into the night air after paying your bill, and he walks you to the bus stop. He always stands there with you, just in case some creep comes up to you while you’re waiting for the bus to show up. “I don’t think you should go over there,” he blurts.
“Well, yeah, I wasn’t going to. It’s, like, two in the morning, and I have class at nine.”
“I don’t just mean tonight. I mean ever.”
You glance over at him curiously to find that he’s very purposefully looking away. “And why’s that?”
“You deserve someone who can hold a conversation with you. Who doesn’t just text you after midnight to come over. And who can count past ten.”
“I see. Anyone specific come to mind that fits those requirements?”
You’re goading him, and you know it, and you want to see if he knows it, too. The only sounds for a few moments are crickets, the odd car driving by, your footsteps against the pavement. After a while, he mutters, “I don’t know. Just—I don’t know.”
The two of you have arrived at the bus stop, and you just look at him for a second as the bus pulls up, surprisingly on time. “Alright. I’ll text you tomorrow. Thanks again for the help. With the pericyclic reactions.”
“Any time.” He does a little mock salute and then stays standing there while you get on the bus, as it pulls away.
In a fit of frustration, you tell Drew you’ll come over. He kind of is an idiot, but he is surprisingly attentive in bed, and you have to concentrate so your mind doesn’t wander to a different pair of hands, the color blue, the smell of coffee and sour candy.
--
Dr. Lokken isn’t so bad, the more you get to know her. There’s a bit of a cultural divide: she is extremely blunt, always saying the thing that she means even if it’s a little rude, but you find that you don’t mind it much anymore. She has good input on the design for the centrifuge, and she agrees with your opinion that the living quarters should be, well, actually livable for the crew.
At every turn, she makes her disdain for Ryland known. It is immediately obvious to you that she likes him, because you have dealt with the same condition for years.
Her plans to use the astrophage as a radiation shield are inspired, once she gets the advanced copy of the CERN paper confirming the microbe’s super cross-sectionality, and it’s easy enough to add a millimeter-wide layer of it to the ship’s design.
But Stratt insists that it needs to be run by Ryland first.
“So,” he says, looking over the schematics, “you want to add a layer of astrophage to the ship. Okay. So. One problem that comes to mind: they can be killed with a stick. An extremely small stick, to be fair, but a stick nonetheless.”
Dr. Lokken pulls out another stack of paper. “I had my friends at CERN run some tests. Even at near lightspeed, nothing gets past it. We won’t have to worry about physical trauma.”
He keeps looking over it all, and his hesitancy morphs into something akin to an impressed expression. “It wouldn’t take any extra mass,” he mumbles, almost to himself, “since it’s using the fuel itself. Hidden from anything that would make it explode, probably. Hopefully.”
She watches him take this all in until he looks up again. You stay silent, because you know it will work, because you’ve worked through all of this with her yourself, and this is merely a formality. “So? What do you think?”
“I think it’s genius,” he finally replies. She smiles and looks away. You are so tired of this, you think. But then he looks at you, instead of at her, and gives you a small thumbs up. It makes you think of blue gloves, and the scar on your arm, and the photos that still live in your purse, and the yellow lighting of a crappy diner.
--
college, senior year
The basement is positively dingy. Maybe three years ago, this would have been fine, but now it’s just kind of gross. Ryland seems to hold the same opinion. This was supposed to be your victory tour, after the both of you had gotten into grad school, after so many weekends of studying together in that crappy little diner, of keeping your promise to stay friends after going off to college. But the unfinished cement walls are just kind of sad, at this point.
“Proposal,” he murmurs into your ear, dipping his head down so you can hear him, “we take a shot and then we leave.”
“Deal.”
The only thing left is UV Blue. This used to be delicious. Now, you are pretty sure it will just make you throw up, but you down it anyway, shuddering at the way it slides down your throat. Ryland tugs you up the stairs and into the cool night air, and the two of you stumble all over each other on the way to the bar.
Another shot. “To us,” he says triumphantly, “to getting into the PhD.”
It goes down smoother than the last, and you lean against his arm once you’ve set the glass down. “I don’t know what I’ll do without you around,” you slur.
“You’ll be fine.” His arm comes around you, then, and you fight the shiver that rolls down your spin. “We should—let’s go sit down.”
As you slide into the booth across from him, you find yourself staring, at his hair, his glasses, the patchy scruff that’s coming in on his jaw. He’s wearing the periodic table shirt you got him for his birthday last year. When he catches you looking, you smile, wide and sweet and extremely drunk, and then your mouth suddenly twists. “I mean it. I—I just. I don’t know who I am without you.”
“You’re you,” he says simply. “And we’ll stay in touch. We have so far.”
It’s so assured, so definite, the way he says it, that it might as well be a law of the universe. You rest your elbow on the table and stick your pinky up anyway. “Promise?”
His finger curls around yours. “Promise.” You take a long sip of water, then, and glance at the side of the bar, where the photo booth sits. It’s usually out of order, but tonight, apparently, it’s working. He follows your gaze and then smiles. “Let’s do it. I think I owe it to you, anyway.”
You lean your cheek on your hand. You do not bother to hide the love and infatuation that shines out of your eyes. He’s never noticed it so far, anyway. “You remember?”
He snorts. “Of course I do. I think you asked to take pictures at prom, like, every hour.”
You let him tug you out of the booth and across the bar, behind the curtain of the photo booth, your hip pressed into his on the tiny bench. For the first photo, you both make absolutely ridiculous faces, and he gives the camera a thumbs up. The second, the two of you are holding up finger guns to each other. After a moment of consideration, you wrap your arm around his neck and smush your cheek into his for the third, smiling right into the lens. Finally, for the last one you stay smiling, pulling your face away a little, letting him pose however he wants to. You hope that he’s smiling nicely and not making a totally stupid face.
It takes a second for the photos to print once you step out. The first strip is in full color, and the second is in black-and-white. You stare at the fourth frame for a while, because while you’re looking into the camera, he’s staring at you, lips pulled into a wide grin, and you let yourself believe, just for a second, that it means what you want it to mean.
He takes the black-and-white version. “More vintage,” he explains, carefully tucking it into his pocket.
The booth is still open, so the two of you slide back in after getting another round, which will later result in you throwing up into your toilet. “I want a cig,” you mumble after a little while, mouth around the straw of your tequila sunrise.
“Absolutely not.”
You blow a raspberry at him. “No fun. Drew always lets me bum off him.”
His hand tightens around his glass. “Are you still seeing him, then?”
A pssh leaves your lips as you wave a hand. You are very drunk. “Nah. But the sex was great.” This is, most definitely, just to see what his reaction is, and you are extremely pleased when he rolls his eyes as he takes another sip.
“Yeah, I bet.”
The way he says it makes you pause and narrow your eyes at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Your words are sliding into each other.
“The guy was a dick,” he says, as if it is the most obvious thing in the world. He looks at you flatly. You are too busy staring into the blue of his eyes behind his glasses to care. “I doubt he was that concerned with making it good for you.”
“Like you care,” you mutter, swirling the orange liquid in your glass around with the straw.
His brows furrow. “I do. You’re my best friend. You deserve nice things. And that includes. Well.” He has to take a moment to think about what he wants to say next. “You know.”
You look up at him from half-lidded eyes. “I don’t, apparently.”
The next moment is extremely fragile, as you look at each other, as your chest feels like it is about to burst, until he downs the last bit of his drink. “We should head back.”
“…Alright.” So you leave, and he guides you down the uneven sidewalk, all the way to your apartment, and he holds your hair while you puke, and then you tuck him in on the couch before passing out in your bed, holding the photo strip.
--
The Russian scientist, Dmitri, arrives on the Vat. He’s a delight. Very enthusiastic, extremely intelligent, deeply excited to potentially blow things up. You consult on his spin drive design, and it’s ingenious, really. You tag along for the demonstration when it’s finalized. Ryland is incredibly reluctant to hand over some of the astrophage he’s been reproducing.
“You know,” he pouts, clutching the container to his chest, “that giving this much away is like losing out on double the amount next month.”
Stratt plucks it out of his hands and gives it to Dmitri, who happily replies, “This is a good day. Dr. Grace, now I show you my spin drive!” And then he smiles at you and nudges your arm. “Our spin drive. Your engineer, very smart.” Then you’re all bounding up the stairs, filing into the vacuum chamber. Ryland stands right next to you, his arm pressing into yours, as you look at the little spin drive.
Dmitri explains the design and confirms that the ship is far enough from land before ushering all of you out. The chamber is sealed, and then it fires, just for a second, and then it’s done. He has to stop Ryland from trying to go back into the chamber, because the little spin drive just fired off sixty thousand Newtons of force, which means the chamber is very, very hot. You’re glad it worked and that the entire ship hadn’t just been vaporized.
“Good,” Stratt finally comments. “This is the prototype, I assume? When will the real thing be ready?”
The Russian scientist points to the screen, where the video feed of the drive is displayed. “Is the real thing. We put one thousand and nine on the ship, for redundancy. Your engineer,” he says, clapping you on the shoulder, “calculate how many we need, the size that fit into ship but maintain functionality. Very good. I buy her a drink later.”
You almost try to tell him that the alcohol is pretty much free here, but he walks away to join the rest of his team before you can. Stratt leaves shortly after, and then it’s just you and Ryland, staring at a hunk of melted metal on the screen. “So that’s what you’ve been doing,” he finally mumbles. “Helping with this. For Dmitri.”
“It’s pretty cool, right?” You’re still looking at the spin drive, at this little marvel of engineering and pure energy. “He’s kind of a genius.”
He’s quiet for a few moments. “…Sure. A genius who could have caused a tsunami and killed everyone on board. I still want my astrophage back.”
You smile and pat him on the arm. “Our astrophage, you mean.” It’s meant as a stupid reference to that communism meme, but he huffs, because he’s been spending most of his time painstakingly breeding the little microbes. “Lighten up. That was pretty cool. And he needs the rest of it to test the spin drives.”
When you glance over at him, you find that he’s not looking at the screen anymore. “Let’s go get a drink,” he blurts. “To celebrate not being annihilated just now.”
“Sure.”
You follow him as he leads you to the lounge, and he orders you a tequila sunrise without asking. “Sorry. I don’t even know if you still drink these.” You don’t, really, but you take it anyway. “I imagine they don’t have UV Blue on here.”
Even the name of that alcohol makes you gag. “I hope not. I’d probably throw up just at the smell.”
He smiles and takes a sip of his beer. “What is your shot of choice, now?”
“I don’t really do shots at this point. Now that I’m not in school anymore.” He raises an eyebrow, peering at you over the tops of his glasses. “Okay, fine, um…” You glance over the shelves of liquor bottles behind the bar. “If I was forced to do one, maybe a green tea shot.”
Ryland gives you a mischievous smile and then waves the bartender over. The two of you down the shot, and you laugh as his nose wrinkles. “That,” he chokes out, “does not taste like green tea. At all.”
You giggle as you wipe your mouth. You can’t even remember the last time you giggled like that. “No, it doesn’t. But it’s still tasty.”
He looks at you flatly. “It really isn’t.”
“Sorry.” You lay a hand on his arm without really thinking about it. “I forgot I was talking to the guy who brewed mead in his basement once.”
“For science,” he clarifies. “Always for science.”
A couple more rounds are ordered. He tells you about his classroom, back in San Francisco, his students; and you detail your publications, working at JPL; and you can almost, almost forgive him for disappearing.
At one point, he’s staring at your left hand, holding his third beer. “I thought—weren’t you engaged?”
“I was,” you admit. The realization that he stalked your socials, just like you had with his for a while, gets pushed away. “That didn’t work out. Obviously. He didn’t want to relocate, when I landed the job.”
He searches your face for a moment. “His loss,” he murmurs.
You bring your drink to your lips, if only to have something to do. “What about you? Did you ever get back with—Linda, that was her name, right?”
The hand holding his bottle tightens, just barely. “No. We. No,” he repeats. “We did not. And I haven’t—it’s been a while.”
“Wow. Impressive.”
He scoffs. “What’s that supposed to mean.”
A playful smile dances on your lips as you mess with the rim of your glass. “Nothing, nothing. Just—you dated around a lot, for a while. I’m pretty sure I called you a slut for it.”
“And a man-whore,” he points out. “Which was—probably fair.”
The two of you are quiet for a little while, then, for the first time that evening. You hadn’t known that he’d never gotten back with Linda, because that had been after—well. It was around the time that he had stopped responding to your texts and calls. And he’d never been very good at updating his social media accounts. You’re fairly certain that the last time you’d checked his Facebook, it said they were still together. To be fair, that had been years ago. But. Still.
You desperately want to ask him the question that has been tormenting you this whole time.
You do not. “I should probably head back to my room. Not as young as I used to be,” you joke. “I’m already tired.”
He nods after a moment. “I’ll walk you back.”
And he does, all the way to your tiny shoebox of a room. He asks if you need to throw up. You do not, but you still laugh anyway, and then he closes the door behind him as he leaves.
The photo strip is still in your purse. You do not take it out.
--
grad school – ABD
God, there are so many things you need to do before this weekend—clean, grocery shop, plan activities, the list goes on—and he still hasn’t given you his ETA for Friday. It’s supposed to be the belated celebration for both of you passing your quals, and you want to make sure that it’s fun, particularly because you hardly get to see him anymore.
You decide you’ll start with cleaning. Maybe you’ll take him to the bar your cohort likes to go to every month, although it’s a little pretentious. Perhaps a weekend in would be better, rent some movies, pick up a bottle of wine (or two).
When you shut the vacuum off, you pull your phone out to see a notification from him. Perfect, hopefully this is him finally letting you know when he plans to start driving—
You stare at the text for a while. ‘Please don’t hate me, I got my dates mixed up and Linda wants me to meet her parents…’
This is fine. It is not, actually, but it’s fine. He does this a lot. He’s become much more scatterbrained since starting the PhD. It makes sense. It’s a lot of stress, and deadlines, and papers, and conferences, and. And.
After a little while, you slowly tap out, ‘no worries, I can check my calendar and see when another good weekend is.’
--
Ryland misses lunch. And then you find that he’s not in his lab, when you go to check on him later. No one’s seen him when you ask around, and you know that he’s not on a trip with Stratt, because you just saw her an hour ago.
You make your way to his room. He might just be sick, or catching up on sleep, because he hasn’t been getting a lot of that recently. When you get there, you rap on his door, three quick knocks, followed by two, then one, so he knows that it’s you.
After a few seconds, he calls out, “It’s open.”
He’s lying on his little bunk, in jeans and t-shirt, the one with the cat and the Golden Gate bridge that he’d bought from a tourist shop when you’d gone on college visits. It’s like he had gotten dressed and ready for the day, and then just. Laid back down to stare at the ceiling. “Everything alright? You missed lunch, and no one’s seen you, so I just—are you sick, or something?”
“No,” he exhales. “No. I’m fine.”
He is most definitely not. You cross the room, closing the door behind you, and sit on the edge of the bed to look him over. His eye bags are a deep purple. You’re not sure the last time he washed his hair. It’s taking a toll on him, you think, the comas and the planned suicides and Antarctica and paving the Sahara, because Stratt consults him on each and every one of these decisions. You haven’t had very strong feelings about her, really—she’s in a difficult position, and this was all about saving humanity—but in this moment, you kind of hate her.
You don’t tell him any of this. Instead, you run a comforting hand over his arm, and his eyes slip shut, causing a tear to slide down the side of his cheek. Something inside you urges you to wipe it away. You do not.
“You want to talk about it?” You ask, gently.
“Not particularly, no.”
“Alright.”
You keep rubbing his arm, because you don’t really know what else to do. After a while, he sits up, hunched over to keep his head from hitting the top of the bunk, and you scooch in a little so you can sit next to him. “Sorry. I’m okay. Really.” He wipes at his eyes with the heel of his palm.
“It’s okay if you’re not.” Your arm settles around his shoulder, then, and he leans his head against it gratefully.
The two of you sit there like that, until suddenly he laughs a little. “Sorry, I’m just—sometimes I still can’t believe that you’re here.”
The way he says it makes you think that he might be working up to finally explain why he vanished from your life. You don’t know how you know this, but you do, with complete certainty, and it makes you realize that you’re not even sure you want to hear it anymore. You were so angry, and sad, and frustrated, for so long, and you are simply tired, and you don’t want to be mad at him again, not when you’ve gotten him back. So you squeeze your arm and murmur, “Well. I am.”
He lifts his head, slow, so slow, and tilts it to look at you. The look—you know this look. And you cannot do this again. You cannot be the thing he settles for, the thing he goes to for comfort, because you still have only ever been able to say no to him once in your entire life.
“You should eat. Let’s go get you some food.”
You help him out of his bunk and walk with him to the mess, sitting with him while he eats, filling the air with nonsense chatter as the color slowly returns to his face. He goes back to his room after to sleep, and you go to yours, perched on the edge of your bed, staring at your purse.
--
postdoc
It is absolutely pouring outside, which means the gutter is probably flooding again, because the landlord still hasn’t fixed it. You cannot wait until you can find a new place for next year, one a little farther from campus, quieter and somewhat livable.
You close your laptop with a sigh. There are simply too many things to do: lab reports to look over, assignments to grade—because the postdoc came with a 1-1 load, and the teaching experience is nice, you suppose, but it’s a bit much—but it’s close to midnight, and you want to get up early tomorrow to prep for your meeting with the department head in the afternoon.
You’re standing in your crappy little kitchen, drinking a glass of water, when there’s a knock on your door. Probably some drunk undergrads, you think, so you decide to ignore it.
And then there’s three quick knocks, then two, then one.
You set the glass down with a shaking hand and slowly walk over to the door.
“Surprise?” Ryland says weakly. He is soaked to the bone and shivering, so you usher him inside and then run to the bathroom to grab some towels, all before you even say anything. “Thanks,” he mumbles as you wrap the cotton around him. “Sorry for. Well. Kind of. Showing up here without saying anything.”
You guide him to your thrifted couch and have him sit. For a split second, you think about laying another towel down, but it’s really not that great of a couch, so you decide not to bother. “It’s fine. What’s going on?”
He sighs and takes his glasses off, trying to dry them off with the edge of the towel. “Just wanted to see you,” he finally responds.
“…Okay?” You know that this isn’t the full reason, because even if he’s been pretty shit at responding to your texts recently, you know him, probably better than you’ve ever known yourself. But you don’t push for it, simply waiting for him to tell you.
Another sigh. “They want me to take an extra year. To ‘shore up’ my dissertation.” Oh. You knew he’d been starting to have problems, butting heads with some of the faculty, but you didn’t realize it was this bad. “Linda broke up with me, also.”
You carefully sit next to him and hesitate, just for a moment, before wrapping an arm around him, even though he’s already starting to soak through the towel. “I’m sorry. Did she give you a reason?”
He shrugs. The movement is utterly defeated. “Said I had my head in the clouds. Always thinking about something else, never really there. Which is true, probably.”
This was the one girlfriend of his that you’d never met, so you don’t actually know the full context, but it seems like an unfair thing to say to someone who’s trying to finish their dissertation. “Sorry,” you repeat. There’s not really much else to say. “Do you want to take a shower, or something? At least change? I think I still have one of your old shirts.”
“Yeah,” he nods. “That would be. Yeah.” When he looks at you, his eyes are bloodshot and puffy, and his lips are still a little blue from being out in the rain. It hurts, it’s always hurt to see him like this, so you stand and dig through your closet to find his old t-shirt that you stole back in undergrad, plus a pair of sweatpants that don’t fit you, and then you direct him to your bathroom.
While he rinses off, you dig out two wine glasses and grab a bottle from the back of your fridge. You give him a hefty pour, and then you shrug and give yourself one, too. There’s not really any snacks that would ‘pair’ well with it, so you settle for a bag of chips.
When he comes out, his hair is still wet because you’d only had one clean, dry towel left, and it drips onto his glasses and his shoulders. He plops down next to you and then downs the glass in one go before pouring himself another. “I hate to ask this after showing up here unannounced. But. Could I, possibly—”
“Yeah,” you answer, before he even finishes the question. “You can crash on the couch. How’d you get here, by the way?”
“Flew. Then took an Uber from the airport.” He starts to munch on the chips, washing them down with wine every few bites. Yikes. He is not doing great. Also, if he got an Uber, then why was he…? He must have stood outside of your door for a while, you realize, working up the guts to knock.
Well. This is an unexpected turn of events, and it feels awful to see him doing so poorly, but you are also, secretly, extremely happy to see him, so you take a long swig of your wine. “Want to watch a movie? Or play a game, or something?”
He leans back on the couch, evidently done with the chips. “You can put on whatever.”
You decide to pull up a show that you know he likes making fun of, but he barely ends up watching it, because he forces you to update him on everything that’s happened since you last saw each other. This takes a while—which makes something clench in your chest, because it means it has simply been that long—and between the two of you, the bottle is finished by the time you catch him up to speed, and a few mixed drinks on top of that, too.
Ryland’s smiling, and his cheeks are dusted red from the alcohol, and you have missed him so much. “Look at you, little miss JPL,” he grins. “Moving up in the world.”
“Like I said, it was just a good conversation at a conference. But. Yeah. I feel pretty good about it. Would be nice to be back in California.”
His grin turns into a sly little thing. There’s a flip in your stomach. “Yeah? How come?”
“Oh, you know. The weather’s pretty good out there.”
He starts tapping his fingers against his thumb on each hand, like he’s a crab. Oh, no, not this, you think with a smile. “There’s no other reason? None at all?”
You start to inch away from him on the couch as he moves closer, still holding his hands up. “The food is pretty good, too—no, not that, Ryland,” you giggle, because now he’s tickling you, and he knows all the exact spots that make you squirm and shriek with laughter.
“I’ll stop when you say the real—reason—”
“Never,” you gasp, and he intensifies his efforts. “Okay, okay! It would be nice to live in the same state again. There, happy?”
“Mm-hm,” he hums, hovering above you—you’re not even sure when that happened—and his hands are still on your sides. Blue eyes search yours as his glasses start to slip down the bridge of his nose. You think you could pick out the hex code of his eyes without even trying. “I missed you,” Ryland murmurs. “A lot.”
It’s. You think you understand what is happening right now. And you want it, so, so badly, because you have wanted it for over a decade, at this point.
But it’s—not like this. You don’t want it like this, when he is drunk, and sad, and freshly single. You cannot let down the young girl inside of you like that, who pined over him for years, who imagined some giant, romantic gesture, who only ever wanted to feel truly loved.
“You should sleep,” you finally say. Something breaks in his gaze, just before he closes his eyes and nods, sitting back on the couch. You grab an extra blanket and a pillow and tuck him in, just like you would when he would crash at your place in college, and you set a glass of water and an ibuprofen pill on the table for him to have in the morning. “Good night, Ryland.”
He’s already asleep, because he had definitely drunk much more of the wine than you had. You gently slide his glasses off and fold them up, putting them next to the water. Then you just—look at him, for a little while, at the way his lashes rest on his flushed cheeks, the slight parting of his lips, the way his chest rises and falls. An unknown amount of time passes like this before you head to bed.
It is the last time you see him.
--
You head to Baikonur ahead of everyone else, because someone needs to oversee the final phase of construction, make sure the safety checks go smoothly, coordinate with the engineers on the ground.
It is insanely boring.
Ryland emails you, at first, and then you think he must get Stratt to give him a satellite phone, because then he calls you almost every day. Most of the time it’s not really about anything at all, just talking about your days, random anecdotes from the time the two of you didn’t speak, reminiscing about high school or college.
You send him a picture of the finished gold plaques. It’s beautiful, he replies. Everything you make is always so beautiful.
Then, finally, the people that have stayed on the project arrive in Kazakhstan, and it is like he is a clingy cat that you’ve left at home over a vacation, because he is practically glued to your side. He comes with you for safety checks, and you hang out in his trailer to do paperwork, and sometimes he falls asleep on your couch.
Construction screeches to a halt during a particularly bad week of storms during the rainy season—it’s record precipitation, probably a consequence of both the astrophage as well as the methane the project released into the atmosphere when they nuked Antarctica—and the two of you are holed up in your trailer. On the first day of rain, all you could think about was your shitty postdoc apartment, an empty bottle of wine, a shirt and sweatpants neatly folded up in a pile on your couch. Now, after a few days, you can simply allow it to be rain and nothing else.
“What do you think you’ll do? After the launch,” you ask idly, because you have been staring at paperwork for so long that the words are starting to swim off the page. You toss the stack onto the table and kick your feet up.
He shrugs next to you on the couch, still looking at the paper in his lap and periodically writing something down. “Probably go back to my kids, keep teaching. You?”
You sigh thoughtfully and look out the window. It’s difficult to see anything further than five feet from the trailer. “JPL, I guess. But. I don’t know—I think I might have had enough of rockets and spaceships for a lifetime.”
“That’s…understandable.” He does one last signature before putting the stack on the table, shifting on the couch so he can face you, resting his elbow against the back cushions and laying his temple against his knuckles. “What would you do? Instead of that.”
“Might be nice to just do some art, for a while. Try to relax. I don’t know.”
You’re about to lightly comment that the Bay Area has a pretty good art scene, because you are not letting him leave your life again, but then he suddenly says, “I stopped because I’m a mess.”
“Um. Okay?”
He takes his glasses off and rubs his face. “Sorry, that didn’t. I meant to have a build up to that, which happened in my head instead of out loud, so that didn’t make any sense. Okay.” He takes a deep breath and looks at you, so earnest and open, that you can’t find it in you to say anything to that even if you wanted to. “I was a mess, then. Objectively speaking. And you—I was—when I—gosh, this is going terribly.”
You lean forward, taking your feet off the table, to put a soothing hand on his elbow. “You don’t have to—”
“But I do, though,” he interrupts, sharply, and your eyes widen a fraction. “Sorry, I’m just. You were doing so well. The dissertation award, and the postdoc, and JPL, and I was—I was being me, doing things before I was ready, and.” He has to clear his throat to keep speaking. “And I didn’t want to drag you down with me. Because that’s what I do to you.”
A few moments pass, while you wait to see if there’s anything else, before you speak slowly. “Alright. And it never occurred to you to ask what I wanted?”
He blinks at that and shifts uncomfortably. “Well. That’s not. I didn’t want to—you—no. I guess not.”
“Okay. It’s my turn to talk now, then.” Ryland nods, looking a little ashamed of himself. “I was devastated. Genuinely devastated. I almost got fired from my job, because I couldn’t sleep, and I stopped showing up to meetings, and—”
“I’m sorry,” he tries to interrupt, but you hold a hand up.
“Not done. I spent the whole time wondering what I did wrong, if it was because I didn’t let you kiss me that night, even though I would have hated myself for it, because—because—I have loved you, I have been in love with you, probably since middle school, and I could not let myself be the thing that you settled for, and that’s fine.” God, you’re starting to cry, and it is embarrassing and annoying. “I made peace with that, a long time ago, because I literally could not picture my life without you in it. And then you left.”
You would like to keep going, but sobs are starting to heave out of your chest, and he wraps you up in his arms as you shake. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he whispers, over and over again, into your hair. “You—you love me?”
“Ryland,” you sniffle. You wipe your snot on his shirt, because at this point he deserves it. “It is, quite literally, the most obvious thing about me.”
He gently grabs your shoulders, then, and pushes you back, just a little, so he can see you. His hands are shaking as he wipes off your tears, as he reverently holds your face, even as he brings you forward and kisses you, and it tastes like salt and coffee and sour candy.
There is a single moment where you let it happen, where you kiss him back, where you sigh into his mouth as his thumb smooths over your cheekbone, and then you pull away. “I’m not—I’m not doing this, if it’s not—”
“It is,” he rushes out. “It is.” Ryland breathes out your name, then, and it sends a shiver skittering down your spine. “It always has been. You. It’s just been you.”
“Then why? Why now, why not before, why—”
His hands start to smooth over your hair, your neck, your shoulders, as if they cannot stop touching you now that they have started, and it is both exactly how you imagined and entirely new. “Because I am an idiot. The world’s biggest idiot. If I could—I would do everything so different, if I just—I,” and then, apparently, he decides that words are simply not working for him, because he tugs you toward him again.
You let it happen, this time, kissing him as if everything inside of you is finally pouring out, and you don’t know how you’ve been keeping it all there this whole time. His fingers grasp at your shirt, and you bring your own hands up to slide them through his hair as you lick into his mouth. The sounds, the sounds he is making, you think you could live off of them alone and simultaneously never have enough of them.
It is not the most comfortable thing, when you clamber onto his lap, and you simply do not care. You need to be close, as close as possible, right now, because you have been waiting and waiting and waiting for this for two decades, and you cannot go a single second longer without it.
You whine into his lips as you grind down onto him. The groan he lets out sears itself into your mind, so you keep doing it, keep dragging yourself against him as his hands squeeze your sides, still kissing him, still crying a little, until he leans back. “I want—” He sucks a breath in through his teeth, then, because you’ve dropped your head down to bite and suck mark after mark onto his neck. “Bed, please, I would really like to do this on a real bed.”
Frankly, you would probably be willing to do this outside in the pouring rain if it meant that it would happen right this second, but you nod—after another mark—and he shifts around so he can plant his feet on the ground, grabbing your hips, and then he stands and carries you all the way to your bedroom.
When he lays you down, it is so gentle, so kind, so loving, that you think you might start crying all over again, but he climbs over you before you can, tracing his hands fervently over your body and sighing into your mouth. You tug at his shirt impatiently. There are still entirely too many clothes in this equation. He pulls it off, and then he tugs down your pants, and then he’s back to kissing you. It is messy and awkward: your teeth clack against each other, and his glasses are digging into your nose, and it is all so perfect.
One of his hands slowly slides underneath the hem of your shirt. It is like he is mentally mapping every curve and line of your body, but finally his fingers slip beneath your bra, pushing it up with the back of his hand. “Oh,” you gasp, as his thumb starts to gently circle over the bud of your nipple. “Please, I want to—just—please, Ryland.”
You never actually said what it is that you wanted, but he knows, of course, and he shakes his head as he starts to slide down, pressing his mouth against your jaw, your neck, your collarbone, lifting your shirt and bra up all the way. “No. I have been—for so long—I’m going to take my time.”
And he does, and it is infuriating and intoxicating, the way he slowly kisses and nips and licks your stomach, your ribs, your chest. By the time he’s laving his tongue over the peak of your breast, you are about ready to burst, but he still maintains this torturously slow pace. One of his hands dances down until it rests at the apex of your thighs so you can grind against it, a kind of peace offering for his unhurried movements.
It’s possible, you manage to string together in your mind, that you could come just like this, rutting against his hand and arching into his mouth. It is unclear—though it probably shouldn’t be—how he senses this, because then he starts moving down again until he’s resting in between your legs, pushing up his glasses so he can see the soft expanse of your body, even in the low light. “I’m ready, I swear I’m ready,” you beg, squirming against the sheets, “you don’t have to do this, we can just. Please.”
Ryland looks up at you as he pulls your underwear down, lifting your leg so he can slide it off on the one side, not even bothering with the other. His hands wrap around your thighs. “I told you, back then. You deserve nice things. Including this.” His head rests against your leg, and he stares at you pleadingly. “Please let me give this to you.”
You finally nod. You can’t say no to him. At least, in this, he is granting you some amount of mercy, because when he brings his mouth to your cunt, it is not slow or teasing. Your eyes squeeze shut as he utterly devours you, filling the room with the sounds of your moans and the obscene wetness of him sucking at your clit. It is—he is very good at this, and a thought momentarily flashes in your brain, that he’s done this, practiced this, with people that are not you. It does not take much effort to push that thought away.
One of his fingers slides inside of you, then a second, and you feel every inch, every centimeter of it, of the hands and fingers that you spent years staring at and fantasizing about. You clench around them, and he genuinely whines at the feeling. It makes you open your eyes and thread your fingers into his hair, grasping tightly, so you can grind against his tongue. “Just like that,” you gasp. His eyes flick up to yours, and you can still see the blue of them, even with the lights off. “I’m so—I’m already—wanted this for so long, it’s not my fault.” You’re babbling, at this point, but neither of you really care.
So he keeps going, and going, and going, licking and teething and sucking at your clit, never faltering in his rhythm, letting you guide his face against your wetness. He wants you to come, so badly, not just to give you this nice thing that you deserve, but also because he wants to know what it feels like to be buried inside of you. This is it, this is the thought that does it for you; your fingers tighten in his hair, and your thighs squeeze around him, and your head tips back against the pillow as you whine and cry out, and he keeps going through all of it.
In fact, he doesn’t stop, even after you start to come down from it. You twitch from the overstimulation. “Ryland—”
“I think you could come again,” he mumbles into your cunt, “just like this. Want to taste it.”
Jesus Christ. “Probab-ly, fuck, yes, I probably could, but it’s not. If you aren’t inside me in the next thirty seconds, I am going to lose it.”
The speed with which he moves and kicks off his pants and underwear could probably break the sound barrier. You sit up quickly to take off your shirt and bra, both because it is a little uncomfortable and because you’d like to feel every inch of your skin against his.
When he settles between your legs again, brushing his cock through your slickness, his eyes look like they’re watery again. “Sorry, it’s just—it’s a lot,” he huffs, wiping at his tears before bracing his hand against the bed by your hip again.
You grab his hand. “I know. I know.”
Ryland keeps looking at you, roaming over your body, blinking like he still can’t quite believe that this is happening. He brings his eyes back up to yours, and then, finally, finally, he is pushing himself inside of you, and you force yourself to keep your eyes open, to hold his gaze as his hips meet yours.
It is—it is—there is nothing, there are no words that can effectively communicate the feeling. It is just you, and him, and the rain pattering against the windows, his hand underneath yours against the sheets.
“Love you, so—so much, for so long,” he stutters and groans out, dragging against your walls, “since—I don’t even know when, that’s how long—please touch yourself, I can’t, I’m the same, not going to be able to—”
You bring your other hand to your clit, fingers trying to match the stilting rhythm with which he drives into you, over and over and over again. “Please, just like that, it’s so good, you are—I love you,” and you can feel him twitch inside of you at the words, can see the way his abdominal muscles ripple and tighten.
He leans down to kiss you—it’s barely a kiss, really, more just the two of you breathing and whispering and babbling into each other’s mouths—and you keep circling at that little bundle of nerves, and when he shifts your leg, just a little, a moan catches in your throat, strangled, because suddenly the angle is just right.
You come again, just like this, letting yourself get lost in the stretch of him, crying out into his mouth, and he swallows up every sound, telling you that you’re perfect, so beautiful, that you feel so good around him. “Come—here—” You choke out, even as your orgasm is still cascading through you, grabbing at his shoulders and tugging him down.
He wraps his arms around your torso and buries his face into your neck. His hips start to move again, and you slide one hand down his back and the other into his hair, mumbling and cooing and begging in his ear, telling him that you love him, that you need to feel him come inside you, just like this. “Oh, god,” he groans at that, and he does, he spills inside you just like that, with a broken cry muffled into your skin.
The two of you lay there for a moment, breathing in the other, slowly, reverently. He shifts after a while to lay on his side and pulls you with him, and he strokes your hair and kisses you, again and again and again.
“Not going anywhere,” Ryland murmurs into you. “I’m right here.”
He’s not. You will not let that happen again. So you nod, and then you roll him onto his back, because you have no plans to let him sleep tonight. It is the least he can do, after all the shit he’s put you through.
--
epilogue
Periodic table shirt, the one you got him for his birthday. Golden Gate Bridge shirt from the tourist shop. His canvas shoes that look like they haven’t been cleaned, ever. Skittles. Some pants. His little crocheted Earth.
All of it and more is put into the soft-sided container methodically, robotically, even as salty tears pour and pour and pour.
He is leaving. He has already left, really, and once again he’s done it without saying goodbye.
You carry it outside once it’s full. Your feet do not take you to the little makeshift headquarters. Instead, you go to your trailer, and you open your purse, and you take out the strip of photos, because his black-and-white version is hung up in his apartment.
You stare at it. For a moment, you consider cutting off the fourth frame, so you can keep it. You don’t, because it’s the best photo of them all. You slip it into the container.
First of all, I’m so happy people are getting into Drive and I hope you liked it! :D Driver is so precious to me, so I was stoked to see you taking requests for him! I’ll genuinely take anything you’ve got about him LMAO if you have any thoughts on him, or any particular things you want to explore, or whatever else! Dealer’s choice XD I’m just stoked for more content of the beloved lil pookie
a/n: Yes! I did really like it and I plan on buying the book soon
summary: Driver takes you to his favorite spot
theme: fluff, eventual smut
w/c: 1.1k
notes: mdni, oral, fingering, semi-public sex, unprotected sex (please use protection,) pinv, kissing
Beneath the Stars - Driver x f!reader
Driver waits outside your house, the engine running as he taps his gloved fingers along the steering wheel. You walk out, wearing a white dress, the fabric ending at your knees. You open the passenger door, closing it as you sit. He gives a short, “Hi,” as he nervously smiles at you. You smile back, returning his hi.
He backs out of the driveway, driving onto the dark street, the streetlights illuminating the street signs. You clear your throat, starting conversation. “So…where are we going?” you ask, turning your head to face him. He glances at you before looking back to the road. “You’ll see,” he plainly says, turning down an unfamiliar road.
He pulls up to a small area below a bridge, short trees surrounding the area. He turns off the engine, the headlights disappearance making it even darker. He walks over to your side opening the door for you. You step out, wondering where he’s taken you. He holds his gloved hand out to you, nodding in the direction of the clearing.
You take his hand in yours, his way more gentle than you imagined as he leads you through the trees. Beyond the trees lies a small stream, glistening under the moonlight. He sits along the bank, pulling you down with him. You still hold his hand, watching the stream run. Driver lays back, placing his free arm under his head as he looks up at the stars. You smile, moving to lay next to him.
He blushes, although you can’t see it from the darkness. He absentmindedly strokes your knuckles with his thumb, enjoying your presence. You sigh, looking up at the stars with him, enjoying the peaceful night.
Driver decides to make a move, moving to sit up above you, caging you in. He smiles down at you, admiring your beauty. You return his smile, cupping the side of his face with one hand. He leans into it, enjoying your touch. With some bravery, Driver leans down, gently capturing your lips in a kiss. You hum into it, letting his tongue slip past your lips. He sighs into the kiss, pulling back with a spit trail connecting your lips. You swear that was one of the most gentle kisses you’ve ever received.
You pull him back down for another, hungrier this time, tongues swirling together. He hums into the kiss, followed by a whine as his hardening length pushes against your thigh. He pulls away, embarrassment coating his face. You notice, making him face you with a hand on his cheek. “Hey, It’s ok,” you reassure him, stroking his cheek with your thumb.
You can’t deny, his arousal seems to reflect onto you, heat trailing down to your core. He notices you squirming from it, making him impossibly harder. “Y-You can touch. If you want,” you stutter, torn between the option to keep kissing him or to turn it into something else. He takes it as permission, tracing his hand where you need it most over your dress.
He slide it up to your hips with both hands, the leather adorning his hands cold and smooth against your exposed skin. He looks to your eyes again, searching for any regret. He doesn’t see any, continuing his motions, sliding your panties down your thighs. He lets out a whine, looking at your glistening pussy.
You squirm beneath his eyes, waiting for him to make a move. Right as you’re about to speak, he runs his middle finger through your folds, the leather coated in your slick. You whine, looking down at him. “You’re soaked…” he whispers, almost unbelieving.
A gasp escapes your lips as he circles your clit with his tongue, moaning as the taste, sending vibrations throughout your core. You hand grabs at his hair, ripping another moan from him. He gently inserts a gloved finger into you, curling into you as he continues his motions on your clit, driving you to the edge.
When he slips another finger in, it’s over. You’re rutting into his face with a moan, cumming all over his face. He laps it up, savoring the taste. Once he’s worked you through it, he pulls away, his face shining in the moonlight from the juices coating his face.
Eyes lidded, you look up at him, wandering down to his hardened length straining against his jeans. You trail a hand down, slowly unbuttoning and unzipping the fabric, drawing a hitched breath from him. He helps your pull them down, his boxers following. His hard length springs free, the tip red and leaking. You almost gasp, not expecting him to be so big.
He gently rubs your hips, waiting for you to tell him what to do. You reach out, pumping him a few times, watching as the pre cum drips down his length. He lets out a whine, his eyes shutting. You remove your hand, gesturing for him to go inside.
He moves down, lining himself up before slowing pushing in, stretching you out inch by inch. Your breath hitches, even after prepping it still stings. He stops pushing, looking into your eyes. You nod for him to continue, holding his hand in yours.
He continues to stretch you out, finally bottoming out with a whine. He waits for you, rubbing your hip with his free hand. “Y-You can move,” you stutter. He nods, slowly pulling out before pushing back in with a moan. With a few more slow thrusts, he turns your pain into pleasure. You start to moan, throwing your head back into the ground. He takes advantage, softly kissing and sucking your neck, leaving wet spots across the skin.
His whines turn to moans as his orgasm approaches, yours not too far behind. He hides his face in your neck, moaning into the skin. You pant and moan, louder when his hand trails down to play with your clit. It sends you over the edge, moaning as you clench around him. He whines, cumming inside you as you ride out your high.
He fucks you through it, slowly pulling out, watching the mixed cum drip out of you onto the ground beneath you. He collapses on top of you, panting. You stroke his hair, kissing his forehead as you come down from your highs.
“I think I’m gonna need a new dress…” you mumble, gesturing to the dirt coating your back. Driver pulls his face up, smiling at you before kissing your lips softly. He pulls away, smiling down at you. “I’ll buy you a new one.”
We need a part two for the daughter fic like where we actually have a cutesy mother daughter date URGEHHHH I LOVE HOLLY☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️
Also love u and ur writing !! stay healthy always
anon you are so right. where is the found family holland fics. i havent found them. cracks knuckles lets do this. and thank you for the kind words, im so glad you're enjoying my blog ! for newcomers, reading part one is not necessary, but it is here !
retail therapy 101
the sitch ⋆˚꩜｡ the only person holland trusts with his daughter is you, the neighbor that has silently stepped into the role of a mother figure for holly over the past few months. so, when you hear that holly's struggling with her appearance, you commence a mother-daughter date to up her confidence; holland finds out he can fall even more for you.
dynamic ? holland march x fem!reader
word count : 2.4K / genre : fluff
includes: no beta we die like men, the pain of being a teenage girl, holland is whipped and such a dad, fluff!!!, mention of holland's late wife
notes: im giving holly the world because she deserves it and also i drool at the idea of holland just doing dad things he makes me absolutely feral
"don't spend too much money, alright? if there's anything expensive that you really want, just hold off on it and tell me when you're home, 'kay? we can make something happen for your birthday." holland march's gaze flicked between you and his daughter, who was practically bouncing off the walls.
ever since you promised to take her shopping, she was in better moods than before. once you secured a date, she hadn't stopped talking to holland about what she was going to get. you told him before that this was your treat, but he wouldn't forgive himself if you had to lay off on restaurants and chinese takeout for a month because his daughter thought she could go crazy with "adult money."
"it's fine, holland," you replied, stepping to the side of him. "she's not gonna kill me. it's clothes and manicures. when's the last time she got to have a little fun with shopping?"
you watched as holland glanced to his daughter and digested the truth you handed to him. "you got a point: any girl deserves a trip to the mall every two months or so." he brushed some hair away from holly's face; she happily let him do so. "i expect a haul when you come back. and you'll have to report all the best sales you get. no reason to spend full price on anything nowadays."
"march," you warned him, to which his daughter smiled and rolled her eyes while he took a step back. you then looked to holly. "sweetie, could you start the car for me? i'll be there in a second."
you rummaged through your pockets and tossed her your keys. with both hands, she caught them and ran off, leaving you and holland alone. it seemed that whenever you and him were alone, something positively tempting and unknown hung in the air—it made you smile shyly each time. when you pulled your eyes from the driveway, you were met with holland's eyes already on you, focused intensely on something you couldn't really pinpoint.
"thank you for doing this." the obvious thing to say. you shrugged, and he continued. "i feel bad. i know all the girls her age have moms to help them out, give them advice." when he said the word "moms," he swallowed a little harsher than before. "what do i give her?" he muttered.
your shy smile turned a little softer now. "you give her home cooked meals, you pay for her monthly subscription to national geographic, not to mention you've been studying up a bit yourself and can actually talk to her about all the space stuff she's been learning." as you spoke, he stepped a little closer, maybe on accident or impulse, you couldn't really tell. but you found yourself moving closer too, noticing the top notes of his cologne that clung onto his suit: sandalwood maybe. "if they sent you to NASA tomorrow, i think you'd manage."
"i don't remember anything past 7th grade math." this made you laugh. recently, it's been very easy for him to make you laugh, though. it was embarrassing, really, but the positive was seeing how he always lit up, how his chest swelled and puffed out a little more after the fact. "you'll be back by dinner?"
"of course. don't want to keep her out too late."
"great! i, um..." he scratched the back of his head, casting his gaze over to the driveway where holly was waiting. "i also wouldn't mind if you stayed, ate with us." this wasn't the first time he asked, certainly wouldn't be the last, but he was still as coy about it as ever. you tilted your head.
"why do you always ask me like that?"
he froze behind his aviators. "like what?" he squeaked.
"like i'm gonna say no."
he pursed his lips, charmingly awkward for someone that dressed so suave, then nodded. "see you then." and he leaned in and hugged you goodbye. using hugs as greetings and farewells could feel too platonic and buddy-buddy at times for all the unspoken words between the two of you, but it was always comforting knowing that you'll be welcomed and sent off with an embrace from him. besides, you weren't really complaining. under all that silk and cotton, he was toned, and his clothes only hid so much when he held you like this.
pulling back, you could've sworn he looked you up and down, but the moment was gone before you could find out, and soon you were heading out the door, waving to holland as you drove off with holly in the passenger.
the first couple hours at the mall, she lost herself in the racks of clothes and endless trips back and forth between the changing rooms. it was more than heartwarming to see. she held up blouse after blouse and jeans with it, silently asking for your thoughts with a nervous quirk of her brow. you clapped for her; she did spins for you. as the trip progressed, she grew more talkative and opinionated, telling you what was trending and what celebrities were her fashion icons. cher was up there, along with stevie nicks. she liked neatness and color.
she turned to you for help today and you weren't going to let her down. no, you were going to use everything you learned growing up and pass down your knowledge to her: color schemes, what to do with texture, needed basics, everything. holland would strongly disapprove of how much money you were dropping, but when you looked down at holly and saw how much she loved her reflection, how could you not buy her a whole new wardrobe? as you took her around, you never caught the awe on holly's face as you guided her through this world of style. the only sign you got was when she got comfortable enough to grab your hand to drag you to another section. still, you appreciated it.
a common thing with holly, though, is that she always had a plan brewing. and two hours deep into your exploration of the mall, she cornered you at a manicure as your nails dried and you had no escape. you were relaxed, getting pampered, zoning off as the technician took care of your hands. in half an hour, you'd bring holly home and have an average dinner with the march family. that was until:
"so what's going on with you and my dad?"
you tried to fix your face, feeling it contort into complete shock, but the slip up was too noticeable and both of you knew it. you pushed it, asking, "what are you talking about?"
holly gave you a deadpan stare which had you shrink up a bit. "you're really going to pretend like there's nothing happening between you and him?"
"he's my neighbor. we're neighbors." and you shrugged. "we live in a tight knit community."
"uh huh. so you're having dinners and movie nights and long, awkward staring contests with everyone in the cul-de-sac."
you scoffed at her deflection, but the embarrassment of her seeing all of this unfold silently, and her admitting to seeing it, pulled you back from further denying it. so, you just sighed and looked to her. "yeah, okay, i think he's nice. and funny, even when he's not trying to be. especially when he's not trying, actually."
holly watched you carefully, but not with malintent. if anything, seeing you soften up, talking about her dad, made her feel equally warm. "so?"
"what do you mean, so?"
"well, it's not like i don't like you. and it's definitely not like he doesn't like you." holly turned back to her nails getting painted, her first manicure. as monumental of an occasion, there were other things running around her head. "if you really do like him... i just want you to know that i'm okay with that."
you sat with that answer for a bit, watching holly's nails alongside her. she was poised and quietly confident about it. part of you wished you could tackle this issue with holland as confidently as her. you were learning as much as she was today. "you can still see the difficult conversations that'll need to happen, though. even if he liked me."
"he does like you. he practically starts floating in the air when you're around." then her expression shifted to something a little less lighthearted. "my dad could be scared just because that's the way he is. he's cocky until he's not, then he folds like a wet paper towel. with that, i don't know what to do. but i've been thinking, like... that he might be scared because of me. like i'll be conflicted 'cause some people would misinterpret this as you replacing my mom."
it was her turn to sigh. "but that's just not true. you're two different people and stuff. my mom's not less important because we need to keep living without her. that's just how it is. and as long as we still, i don't know, remember her, think about her?" when she looked back to you, her bottom lip was tucked in thought and some level of uncertainty. the energy of her preaching deflated into something smaller. childlike. "then that's okay, right?"
you saw it clearly: the hope that she was doing the right thing, that she wasn't disrespecting her mom. it was surreal that you were at the center of it and causing it. but right now, it wasn't about you. it was about her. you softened your voice to match hers. "i think you have your heart in the right place. your mom wouldn't be upset at you, not by a long shot."
holly nodded, seeming smaller than usual now, more hesitant to take up space. "i just... like, i think you're cool. and you're fun. you're always easier to talk about my books with and what happens at school. i don't know." her feet swung underneath the table. you smiled.
you wanted to live up to holly's expectations, more than anything. and it was a big task to handle. but who else was going to do it? a better question was did holly want anyone else to do it? now you knew the answer. "so what do i do about your dad's wet-paper-towel tendencies?"
"i don't know. maybe you just need to get really obvious about it, so he doesn't doubt himself."
"i'm kind of a subtle person by nature, you know."
"well, he's not, and he has trouble reading people who are. just amp it up once or twice, hopefully he figures it out." on cue, both of your technicians finished and you two pulled your hands away, revealing the fresh sets. holly flipped her hands back and forth, a newfound sparkle in her eye. and like always, she looked to you for your reaction.
you nodded. "we gotta get you on the sonny & cher show."
the backseat of the car was stuffed with bags to the point where you didn't have to worry about anything toppling—there wasn't any room for it to happen. holly jammed out to the radio as you kept your eyes on the road, and in the back of your mind you wondered how in the hell would you "amp it up once or twice." how far was too far? should you really be doing this? even hugs were currently awkward.
you pulled into holland's driveway where he was already waiting at the front door for you. holly burst out of the car with the brightest smile he'd ever seen and held up as many bags as she could. "dad, it was crazy! we got a whole bunch of new stuff, look!"
if it was still sunny enough for his aviators, he would've snatched them off his face. when you exited, he looked to you for explanation. "i thought you said you wouldn't let her take advantage of you."
"she didn't," you assured, walking over, carrying the rest of the bags; holland rushed over to get as many off of you as possible, which you giggled at. soon, your hands were empty and he was half hidden by bags. "we found good deals and we didn't pay full price for most of these things, if that assuages your worries at all."
"partially." he looked over his shoulder to holly, about to talk to her some more, but she was already running inside, so he resigned and began walking in with you. "you guys have fun?" and underneath that was another question: did the retail therapy make his daughter feel better about herself?
"loads of fun. i think she was just intimidated by all her classmates who seemed to know what to buy and where to shop. you'll be seeing a mini stevie nicks around the house soon." this made holland laugh, which you joined in on; holly's words echoed in your mind. amp it up. what was there to amp up?
the two of you stopped at the doorway, stumbling yet again into another random silence. holland glanced around the house's interior while you stared at your shoes. why couldn't holland ever make a move for once? why did you have to fall so hard for pathetic men? what were you going to do—!
"how was the manicure?"
you let out a small hum of confusion until your brain caught up; he didn't need to repeat himself. "oh! yeah, it was great." you held up your nails and flashed the new polish at him. "of course, these were full price. this is why i don't usually get my nails done."
"well, they look great."
"they do, don't they? shame."
"well, if you ever want your nails done, you can just ask me."
you froze and slowly looked up from your hands. surprisingly, he wasn't pulling back or stammering after hearing himself. he looked certain, almost blasé. he added, "i don't mind. you shouldn't be paying for nails yourself anyway."
you searched his gaze for anything saying he was messing with you but came up empty handed. so, you simply asked, "really?" and he nodded. now the silence went from awkward to open. what you did next was more your body thinking than your brain. you reached up and took ahold of his tie, on which you gently tugged, pulling him just a bit closer. his eyes widened. coincidentally, your nail polish was the same color. it made your heart flutter. "i'll try to keep matching you, then."
he looked down, only for you to end the moment there and walk into the house, leaving holland to return to his wet-paper-towel nature, crumpling onto himself on the front stoop.
You lowered yourself onto your bed in the dormitory, pulling the bedsheets up to your chest. Both you and Grace had moved the beddings onto the floor instead of the compartments attached to the wall. You preferred the floor in fear of falling off the bed because gravity wouldn't be kind if you fell.
You turned on your side, facing Rocky.
He sat a few inches away, two of his limbs curled underneath the bottom of his carapace like he was a cat loafing. You were glad he moved out of his xenonite ball into an actual suit to cover his body.
Rocky shimmied in place. “Rocky notice your body is still active when sleeping. Why is that, question?”
You blinked in thought. “Oh yeah, I move around in my sleep. But a bunch of different reasons can cause it,” you started.
“Sometimes it’s maintaining physical comfort, regulating our body heat, or it can be tied to a sleep disorder.”
“What is a sleep disorder?” Rocky asked.
You yawned. “They’re conditions that affect how humans sleep, from the quality to the amount of sleep we’re getting. There’s different types of ‘em.”
Rocky nodded his carapace. “Too complicated. Humans too restless.”
You chuckled. “I think you’re describing Grace right now.”
Rocky tapped two of his claws together. “Grace should be sleeping soon, too. Rocky will remind and or get him if not.”
You reached your hands out towards him, a wordless cue that Rocky understood was a cultural thing.
Rocky trilled, happily trotting underneath your bedsheets to your chest. His body was like a personal little heater, given his insanely high body temperature.
You stroked the top of his carapace.
You had an urge to kiss the top of his carapace, but decided against it. He'd probably be uncomfortable about it, wondering why your mouth hole was on him. Perhaps another night you'd show him some other ways humans show affection to each other.
You let out a tired sigh. “G’night, Rock.”
Rocky shuffled closer. “Good night. Rocky hope you have sweet dreams.”
Closing your eyes, you fell into a dreamless sleep.
Grace shuffled into the dormitory a little later. He paused at the doorway, seeing you snuggled up with Rocky. He held in a coo at the sight, getting under his own bed opposite you.
He folded his glasses, putting them on the empty cot attached to the wall.
“How’s sleep watch going, Rocky?”
Rocky moved slightly, careful not to disturb your sleep. “Good, good, good. They’ve made minimal movements so far.”
And as if on cue, you flopped your arm over Rocky's vents, jostling him. You kicked your leg out from under the sheets.
Grace held in a laugh, chuckling into his pillow.
Rocky carefully returned your arm to your side and crawled out of bed. He readjusted your sheets for you.
He slumped his carapace onto the padded floor between you and Grace. “Nevermind. No understand human sleep.”
Grace patted the top of his carapace. “You know they can’t help it.”
“Yes, yes, understand that part.”
Grace rubbed his eye and relaxed under the covers. “Sweet dreams, Rocky.”
Rocky curled two of his arms under his carapace. “Rest good. Hope you have fun in other life.”
Grace slipped one of his hands under the pillow, his breath slowly evening out.
A feeling of relief washed over Rocky, content that his two humans were now asleep.
catastrophically.˚ ⋆ 𖤓☽˚.⋆ | “you make everything stop.”
ryland grace x alien!fem!reader (ft. rocky) | [previous episode]
—more than friends to lovers.
RYLAND grace is not normal about you. unfortunately, “normal” stops being an option approximately four days after you join him on the hail mary.
it starts innocently enough.
at least, that’s what he tells himself.
you’re the first intelligent lifeform he’s encountered besides himself in an impossibly long time. of course he’s emotionally invested. of course he likes talking to you. of course he keeps finding excuses to linger in rooms after conversations should reasonably end.
that’s just psychology. not love. definitely not love.
then one morning he wakes up before you and immediately feels disappointed about it. and that’s… concerning. because ryland has spent most of his adult life alone very comfortably. he likes solitude. likes quiet. likes not having to emotionally perform around people constantly.
but now the hail mary feels strange when you’re not in the room. too still. too empty. and it doesn’t help that you’re so painfully easy to adore.
you emerge from your sleeping pod every morning with your hair floating wildly around your face in, feet slightly dangling as you fly around the ship, glowing softly with sleepiness while mumbling cheerful greetings in increasingly better english.
“good morning, ryland grace,” you say brightly one day. “i have missed you for seven hours.”
ryland nearly choked on his coffee pouch. you don’t notice. you never seem to notice what you’re doing to him. or maybe you do. he honestly can’t tell anymore.
at first, he thinks your warmth is simply cultural. your species is tactile and emotionally expressive in ways humans aren’t. you touch his arm while talking. lean against him while reading data projections. smile at him constantly with this open radiant affection that makes his chest hurt.
none of it means anything romantic necessarily.
probably.
except then you start seeking him out.
not just for work. not just for translation practice or scientific collaboration. for him. if he disappears into another section of the ship too long, you come looking. always with some transparent excuse. “i have another human question.” “the plants appear emotionally unstable again.” “i became bored without conversation.”
and every single time, ryland feels himself soften instantly at the sight of you. it becomes ridiculous very quickly. he starts talking more around you. rambling honestly. endless tangents about earth and science and terrible films and obscure marine biology facts that absolutely do not matter. and you listen to all of it like he’s fascinating.
that’s the real problem. nobody has ever looked at ryland grace the way you do. not impatiently. not tolerantly. not waiting for him to finish. you look at him like hearing his thoughts is genuinely the best part of your day.
one time he’s explaining the concept of theme parks while repairing a filtration system, mostly because you asked why humans would voluntarily pay money to experience fear recreationally.
“it’s the illusion of danger,” he says, crouched halfway beneath an open panel. “your brain knows you’re safe, so it turns fear into excitement.”
you’re sitting cross-legged beside him on the floor listening intently. “humans are very strange.”
“correct.”
“you enjoy this?”
“rollercoasters? absolutely not.”
you think about it seriously, “i would likely vomit.” ryland laughs so suddenly he bangs his head against the panel above him.
“ow— fudge.”
you gasp and immediately lean towards him in alarm. “ryland!”“i’m okay,” he wheezes, rubbing his forehead. but you’re already kneeling beside him, glowing faintly with concern while gently moving his hand away to inspect the injury yourself.
and ryland stops functioning entirely because you’re so close. your face inches from his. your hands warm against his skin. your expression openly worried in a way that feels terrifyingly sincere. “there is redness,” you murmur.
“yep.”
“you are injured.”
“it’s barely—”
you touch his forehead lightly. ryland forgets every language he has ever spoken. you blink at him. “your heart rate accelerated significantly.”
“yeah, well,” he says weakly, “that happens sometimes.” you continue staring. then very earnestly: “humans are emotionally unstable organisms.” and somehow that makes him laugh.
that night he lies awake in bed staring at the ceiling of the hail mary and realises, with absolute certainty, that he is catastrophically in love with you. not a little bit. not rationally. catastrophically. the kind of love that rewires your nervous system. the kind where your entire day reorganises itself around another person without permission.
he starts noticing insane details after that.
the exact shade your glow turns when you’re amused. how your voice softens when you’re tired. the way you fly closer unconsciously whenever he sounds upset. he notices because he’s watching you constantly now. not intentionally. okay, maybe intentionally. a little.
the worst part is that he cannot hide it to save his life.
one evening you’re both cataloguing samples in the lab while soft music plays through the ship speakers. ryland is supposed to be entering data. instead he’s watching you smile at a petri dish because apparently some microbial reaction looks “friendly.”
“you know,” he says before thinking better of it, “you’re really cute when you do that.” you glance up immediately. “do what?”
“uh.”
abort mission. abort mission immediately.
“you make that face,” he says helplessly. “that little— the smile thing.” you beam at him. actually beam. “oh! you find me visually pleasing.”
ryland physically covers his face with both hands. “ryland grace,” you say with growing delight, “you are turning red.”
“i know.”
“this is extraordinary!”
“i’m having a horrible time.”
you laugh so brightly the sound echoes through the ship, and ryland thinks helplessly that he would probably survive being set on fire if it made you laugh like that again.
by the time rocky arrives, the situation has already become completely unmanageable. rocky notices immediately. because of course he does.
the first time the three of you share a proper meal together, rocky pauses midway through discussing astrophage trajectories. “observation,” he says calmly. “grace stare at y/n constantly.” ryland chokes on his cup noodles. you look delighted. “you have observed this also!”
“oh my god,” ryland groans.
rocky tilts his body curiously. “why grace pretend this not obvious, question?”
“it is not obvious.”
rocky and you stare at him in silence. then you say gently, “ryland grace, earlier today you walked into a wall while looking at me.”
“in my defence, that wall came out of nowhere.”
“you say this often,” rocky observes.
it only gets worse after that. because now rocky actively enjoys pointing it out. ryland offers you his blanket during a cold cycle?
“observation: mating behaviour.”
ryland brings you human fruit portions because you liked them once?
“grace perform courtship ritual.”
ryland spends forty straight minutes fixing the environmental settings because you mentioned the temperature felt slightly uncomfortable?
“grace aware he already pair-bonded, question?”
“rocky,” ryland says through a full body blush, “i need you to know, you’re not helping.”
meanwhile you seem endlessly fascinated by all of this. not mocking. never mocking. just curious.
“you care for me greatly,” you say one evening while the two of you float near the observation deck watching distant stars drift past. ryland glances at you nervously. “yeah. i do.” you smile softly at that. “so does rocky.”
“okay, yes, but differently.” you tilt your head. “explain.”
and there it is. the problem. because ryland grace can explain astrophage reproduction and relativistic mechanics and molecular biology under pressure. but trying to explain how deeply he loves you apparently turns his brain into soup.
“i just…” he exhales shakily. “i think about you all the time.” you blink slowly. “i worry if you’re tired. or cold. or sad. i like making you laugh more than literally anything else. the ship feels wrong when you’re not around and—” he cuts himself off abruptly. “jesus christ.”
your glow brightens softly in the dim observation deck. “you experience significant affection.” you state, “that is a horrifying understatement.” for a moment neither of you speak.
the stars drift endlessly outside. then you move closer. just inevitable. your hand rises carefully to his face, fingertips brushing his cheek with unbearable gentleness while you study him with those big glowing eyes.
“you are very dear to me also, ryland grace.”
he actually stops breathing for a second, because you sound so sincere and so certain.
“you know,” he says faintly, “for a scientist, i’m handling this situation with very little professionalism.” you smile. “i enjoy when you become emotionally compromised.”
“oh good. excellent. glad my suffering entertains you.”
“it does.”
ryland laughs helplessly, and then, because apparently the universe has decided he deserves happiness after all, you lean forward and kiss him. so very softly, and very carefully. like something precious. ryland makes a tiny startled noise against your mouth that will haunt him forever. your species doesn’t kiss naturally. you learned it from human media and anthropological discussions with him, which means this kiss is entirely intentional.
entirely for him.
when you pull back slightly, ryland is staring at you like you reached into his chest and restarted his heart. “oh,” he says weakly. you look worried instantly. “was this unpleasant?”
“what? no! no, i just— wow. okay.” you brighten immediately at his reaction. then kiss him again. ryland is so unbelievably gone it’s honestly embarrassing.
after that, it becomes common knowledge aboard the hail mary that ryland grace is hopelessly obsessed with you. even armando and mary know it. not subtle obsession either. disgustingly obvious obsession.
he follows you around unconsciously now. smiles whenever you enter rooms. looks physically happier every time you touch him.
rocky watches this unfold with endless fascination.“observation,” rocky says one day while you’re curled beside ryland during calculations. “grace now approximately seventy-three percent softer emotionally.” ryland points accusingly. “i was always soft.”
“no,” rocky says immediately.
you laugh into ryland’s shoulder and he instinctively wraps an arm around your waist tighter without even thinking about it. rocky notices that too. “further observation: grace would do anything for y/n instantly.”
ryland looks down at you curled comfortably against his side. at your soft glow. your warm smile. the way you still look at him like finding him out there among the stars was the best thing that ever happened to you. because it was.
lars and the new girl 𖦹 ⋆ﾟ꒰♡꒱༘ | new neighbour! [long hcs]
lars lindstrom x neighbour!fem!reader — no warnings.
—strangers to something more than friends
❅ lars felt like a victorian man seeing an ankle for the first time. he stood by his window, watching you move into the house across the street. he’s so hyper aware of your existence already, he knew this was going to be disastrous.
❅ on your way to bring in another box from your car, you spot him and his poor attempt at hiding. you wave at him with a small smile and he immediately moves away from the window. he wanted to disappear right this second. oh. oh, no. you were pretty. this can not be good for him.
❅ lars sat very still, quietly listening to you moving boxes in your house for about forty minutes instead of offering help like a normal person. he’s was mentally grappling with the fact that he was going to start seeing a new face—a very pretty one—around town often. yet another pair of eyes were going to be on him.
❅ he avoids you like the plague for the first two weeks. from home to work, work to home, and church every week. he didn’t want you to pop up out of nowhere and watch him embarrass himself.
❅ he was still watching you though, not spying! just.. observing. he had memorised your schedule, 8 am your bedroom lights come on, 8:45 you leave for work and you’re back sometime before 4:37. good, now he knew when to avoid you, now he just had to figure out where to avoid you.
❅ the first time you see him fully, you’re both outside on a saturday. he was getting some mail, and as he’s rummaging through the mail box, he hears a cheerful “good morning!” he looks back for one second, and it’s you. and you watch the poor man quickly waddle back into his house, while a couple of letters fall out of the box with a small “oh…? uhm, okay…”
❅ after that, you notice him everywhere. a tall figure behind frost covered windows, his curtains slightly shuffling when your cars pulls out of your driveway. catching him through your window once, but he moves to quick you thought you genuinely imagined him.
❅ the second time you see him, it’s at a record store that recently opened. he was so excited to go buy some new albums after gus introduced him to a band that made ambient jazz, but when he walked in, his heart might as well have fell out his ass. there you were, the pretty girl next door, placing down vinyls and cds on the display shelves. he wanted to run away again, but he genuinely froze.
“hi! are you looking for a new album to buy?”
“…yeah… a… jazz band…”
❅ he stood there, internally panicking as you told him about what albums you had. he was sweating, even though it was freezing cold outside. you pick up the album he was looking for, but he couldn’t bring himself to say that it’s what he wants, instead blurting out a quick “i left my keys at home, sorry.”
❅ he locked himself inside his house for the rest of the day, but when he was about to leave for work the next morning, that same album was waiting outside his door with a small note on it. sorry about your keys! enjoy -y/n
❅ now he had a name to the face, and later that day, he told gus and karin about the gifted record, and karin tried to get him to talk to you. “i’ll bake you some cookies, why don’t you bring them to her?” but lars didn’t know the difference between seeing you again and being held at gun point. he insisted on the fact that you probably wanted privacy.
❅ on your way out to work the next day, your driveway was shovelled and freshly salted. and when you looked across the street, he was standing by the his window, yet again. but this time, when you waved at him and smiled, he nodded and stood there for one second, before quickly walking away.
❅ something in him relaxed just a little bit when he realised that you didn’t find him to be a complete freak weirdo. you kept waving at him every time you saw him, you would flash him that gorgeous smile, even left a couple more records from the band just because you wanted to. well, now he obviously had to pay you back, right?
❅ your rubbish bin would be dragged back up your driveway after collection day, your porch light would mysteriously be fixed after flickering for a whole week. you had no proof, but you knew it was him.
❅ he became obsessed with the sounds of your routine. the sound of music through your open window when he’s chopping wood in the evening. the sound of you struggling to open your car frozen car door in the morning.
❅ there’s this one horrible moment where you knock on his door (knowing damn well that boy is not opening up) unexpectedly to introduce yourself after months of silently watching each other from a distance. lars completely panics and freezes, he can see you through the window and he stupidly decides to pretend that he’s not home, despite the fact that you can literally see him standing there.
❅ but afterwards, he felt so guilty, he literally couldn’t sleep. but you had walked away quietly giggling because this man looked absolutely petrified of you.
❅ your first actual conversation lasts less than a minute. it happens when you catch him outside while he’s shovelling snow, thanking him for clearing your driveway. he muttered “it was in the way,” despite the fact that it objectively was not. that’s when you finally get his name.
❅ you start lingering outside longer after that. taking your time to open your front door, watering plants that the freezing weather had killed weeks ago, anything to see him appear near by again.
❅ and he somehow always does.
❅ there was an odd chemistry between you at this stage, and it’s unbearable because it’s built on restraint. longing looks through windows, tiny acts of care neither of you acknowledged. you feel his eyes on you before you you see him, and he spends everyday convincing himself that he needs to stay away while unconsciously orbiting you like a planet.
❅ lars grew very obsessed with this chemistry because it was only interesting thing going on for him. between small talks in the morning, you would mention minor inconveniences because seeing him so focused to get something done just because you mentioned it in passing was kind hot. it was clear that he was a very attentive man.
❅ a loose cabinet hinge? he’s on it. snow shovelled before dawn. your heater is making a weird noise? he’s outside your house before he’s even fully put on his gloves.
❅ it was ridiculous because after a while, it was you watching him from afar. maybe you had a massive little crush on your shy neighbour. watching him chop wood and shovel snow just because seeing him breathing hard would get to you a little. you would ask him to pick up a heavy box just to hear him groan or whimper a bit.
❅ you quickly figure out that he likes routine, so you’d appear in predictable ways to see him relax, maybe even give you that adorable awkward smile of his. same time everyday at the mailbox, same overly sweet wave through the window.
❅ you couldn’t tell if it was the proximity, or the fact that he always seemed to be there when you had an issue with your house (no matter how small it was), but you had your eyes on him now.
❅ you’d lean against the doorframe, gently teasing him while he’s red-faced, gripping a mug of tea so tightly it might break, looking like he’s seconds away from going into cardiac arrest.
❅ lars hadn’t even realised that you’ve been flirting with him until karin pointed it out. because “what do you mean she asked you to change her bedroom lightbulb three times this week?”
❅ oh? is this what intentional flirting was like? when you’d call his hair perfect, while brushing snowflakes off of his sweater even though touching him felt like it needed medical approval? looking at him with that hypnotic gaze while he accidentally rambled about carpentry? oh.
❅ this poor baby would go back to hiding for days in his house, but he’d always have his eyes on you. he didn’t want to be outside unless he looked perfect, he’d put on his best sweater just to look good for you. combing his hair in different sides to hear you say which side you liked better, showing up to the record store just to say hi and buy nothing.
❅ one night the power goes out after a particularly violent snowstorm, and you show up at his door, wrapped in a blanket asking if you can stay with him because your house kept making scary creaky noises. you sit together in candle light, drinking terrible hot cocoa. one point you fall asleep next to him with your thighs touching, and he terrified of moving because he doesn’t want to wake you up.
❅ lars tells gus and karin, and they’re immediately invested. thank goodness, it’s a human girl this time! gus trying not to laugh every time lars “just happens to be” outside your front door again, and karin watching you to talk to lars even though he’s one touch away from falling to his knees.
❅ he’s hyper focused on everything you say. when you mentioned that you had a favourite candy that you used to eat as a child, he’s suddenly giving them to you with a quiet “i saw these in the store and they reminded me of you…”, even though he ordered them from a different city. you genuinely had to look away because it had affected you so badly.
❅ and the tension gets so unbearable because you want to touch him so bad, but you feel like you need government clearance for that. and it was almost a year to the day you moved in when you finally caught him looking at you with that soft, helpless expression he didn’t even realise he was making. just pure affection, like he couldn’t believe you were living next to him. and that was the exact moment he realised, you both are definitely having the same thoughts about each other.
hey! i was wondering if i could get a fic that's like sun/moon with lars, since everyone calls him "Mr. Sunshine"? A reader that's like the moon maybe?
⋆˚₊ 𖤓☽˚.⋆ moonshine, moonshine, shine over me. I won't let you go.
pairing: lars lindstrom x reader
WARNINGS ⊹ ࣪ ˖୨ৎ‧₊˚ ⋅ none!
a/n: I hope you like my take on this, I had so much fun writing it! 💓 sorry for taking so long btw
☾☼ everyone who knew lars knew that he was the sweetest person ever even if he was extremely shy. he liked helping people. there was more than once chance that if he saw anyone struggling with their groceries, he'd help them get them anywhere, no matter how heavy the bags were. mrs. gurner was the biggest witness of this.
☾☼ you weren't like that. you weren't mean, but you also didn't go out of your way to help people like lars did most of the time. you were more of a quiet lurker of society, if you will. the kind of person who, instead of replying to a normal "good morning!" across the street, started walking faster to run away from the situation.
☾☼ you and lars had crossed paths more than once. a small town like this, it was honestly rare that you didn't see each other daily. if the two of you were walking towards the exit of any store at the same time, he'd rush over to open the door for you, even if he was a couple of steps back. or that one time that you needed a nickel to use one of the payphones, he had simply reached into his pocket and took out one, placing it on the metal cover before running off before you two could even exchange a word.
☾☼ today, you were fighting the dark cloud that had settled over your head and was now making your day harder and darker. everything was going sour today, even ridiculous things like your usual life-saving double knot in your shoes was failing you.
you hoped that the pastry you had bought in the bakery downtown would make your day become as sweet as said treat, but apparently, today was fighting for the worst day of your life title because when you stepped into the sidewalk, your shoelaces had slipped out of their knots once again.
you saw the bakery's paper bag slip from your hands and fall on the asphalt before you felt the impact on your knees, leaving you without a sweet treat, with scraped knees and hands, and with a public humiliation that nothing would ever replicate.
"oh. oh no." you heard the smallest and most gentle voice next to you, glove-covered hands hovering over you like they weren't sure as to what to do, even trembling slightly before you felt one of them taking your upper arm to help you up.
you were up on your feet, your eyes finding lars' worried face looking at you. "are you okay?" he asked, his hand dropping from your arm as soon as you were standing
you let out a shaky breath, your hands dusting off the dirt in your pants. "i'm okay." you replied, nodding gently. "thank you, lars."
he nodded once, stiffly, before looking at the paper bag and picking it up, seeing the ruined pastry there.
he looked even more worried, somehow, and then he went into the bakery without saying nothing, leaving you confused in the sidewalk as you watched his figure moving inside. you sighed, not giving it much thought before crouching down and tying your shoelaces for what felt like the fifth time that day.
just as you rose to your full height, he was there, handing you a new paper bag without a word. "oh, no, lars, you don't-" you started, but the second you took the bag, he was gone. you looked down into it, only to find the same pastry you had lost, plus a chocolate one. this made your day a little brighter.
☾☼ it felt like lars had a sixth sense to know when it seemed like the black cloud on your head was getting darker and darker, because now every time that your day had some inconvenience, he was there.
you dropped the apple you wanted to buy on the grocery store? no worries! he was already helping you find a new one because picking that one from the floor seemed disgusting. you needed help carrying something to your car? he was your guy. the wood for your chimney was all burned down already? good thing he liked chopping wood.
he was there. like a guardian angel who's only purpose was to make your life easier.
☾☼ you were the librarian of the town. which was an incredibly boring job, except for the times that the books that people took out helped you discover their secret drama.
like today, that mrs. henry took out a book in child psychology and the most common disorders in children. you weren't surprised. his son was the weirdest kid you had ever come across. good thing that she was dealing with it before the little bastard became a serial killer.
but whenever the job was more boring than normal, you knitted. you even had your materials in a box underneath your desk, a half finished sweater sitting there, waiting for the day that you returned to it.
☾☼ lars stepped into the library one day, with an expression in his face that made you wonder if someone had died or if he was dying in that moment.
"lars. hey. what's up?" you asked once he was close enough, a book cradled against his chest like it was the most important thing ever.
"i- I missed the date..." he replied, putting down the book on your desk and you immediately relaxed.
"that's okay. don't worry." you said, taking the book before grabbing his library card and seeing his fine.
10 bucks for two weeks? it was ridiculous.
you didn't say a thing, taking out your wallet and paying the 10 dollars yourself without saying a thing. "it's all taken care of." you told him, offering a smile that you hoped made him feel better.
he looked at you for a few seconds before he shut his eyes in one of those hard blinks and disappeared through the door again.
the warm feeling in your chest was what made this day better. even when you were ten dollars poorer.
☾☼ that day that you dropped the pastry? yeah. that no longer was the worst day of your life.
your car had broken down. it was 10 pm, and you were stuck on the side of the road with a smoking engine that told you nothing besides "you're fucked" and "you won't eat anything this month."
it was freezing. it was dark. you were tired. you wanted to go home and forget about your car, maybe even set it on fire.
you kicked the wheel, which ended up being worse for you than the vehicle, who still seemed to be mocking you.
you were about to call a towing service that would surely overcharge you when a car stopped behind yours. for a second, you thought that you'd be murdered in the side of the street, and then the doors opened, and lars stepped out of it.
"oh my god, lars." you said, and for a second or two, your impulse was to hug him, but you restrained yourself.
"hi." he said in that shy voice, stepping closer to you and giving you a once over before he stepped in front of your car. he stared at the engine for two seconds, and for an instant, you were sure that he'd fix it.
but then he turned to you, then back to the car. then back to you. "i don't know mechanics..." he said, his fingers drumming against the lifted hood.
you laughed gently and shook your head. "that's okay."
but lars wasn't happy with that because he closed your hood and then pointed to your car. "I'll- I'll drive you home. if you want?" he offered you.
"that would be really nice, lars."
☾☼ you were sitting in his passenger seat now. the drive had been quiet, you two hadn't said a thing, but the radio was turned on in a frank sinatra song.
your eyelids started closing despite your intentions of staying awake, and in a second, his car had lulled you to sleep.
he turned to look at you after a few seconds when he noticed your stillness, "oh," he breathed out, hesitating for a few seconds. should he wake you up? he weighted the options for a whime before he decided against it.
instead, he unwrapped the scarf from his neck with one hand and gently draped it over your curled up body, making sure that you were covered by it.
⋆˚🔪ྀིྀི🩸⋆༺ he is a sucker with a gun, gun, gun, gun !!!!
pairing: richard haywood x fem!reader
WARNINGS ⊹ ࣪ ˖୨ৎ‧₊˚ ⋅ dead dove: do not
eat. violence. stalking. dark fic. blood. mention of murder. ghostface richard and justin. richard is 19!! toxic af.
a/n: my writing's shit but at least it's not ai💓
˚₊‧⁺⋆ ♱ the news about ghostface had spread all around the usa like a forest fire. no matter where you looked or who you talked to, all they could talk about was the tragedy that took place in woodsboro, california. every news outlet covered the story day and night, updating with the smallest details about the case and everyone involved.
˚₊‧⁺⋆ ♱ richard and justin were some of those guys who were absolutely obsessed by the case. any time you happened to walk by the two of them in the halls, they were always whispering about whatever had been revealed now.
˚₊‧⁺⋆ ♱ richard was used to getting your attention just as easily as he did with everyone else. come on, he was richard haywood. lf he asked for your homework, you were supposed to offer to let him copy it the rest of the semester. and at first, you were the same. it's not like you were head over heels for him like everyone else, but you also didn't want to be annoyed by his pretty face and arrogant attitude daily, so whenever he asked for your homework you just handed it to him. less of a problem for you.
˚₊‧⁺⋆ ♱ until it developed into... something. the thing between you and richard couldn't be called a relationship. you hooked up with him twice, both times in parties, before he started hanging out with justin and stopped seeking you out, and you, being as petty as you were, responded by completely ignoring him in the halls and in the class you shared. you weren't about to beg for his attention.
˚₊‧⁺⋆ ♱ it bothered him. not because he missed you, but because it left him feeling bitter. he was used to girls fawning over him when he disappeared. for godsake, there was a european girl still calling him after his one month trip to italy. how could you just start ignoring him after he gifted you two nights together? it got on his nerves. you got on his nerves.
"hey." richard's voice came before you could even turn to look at him, the jack-ass smile practically obvious in that simple sentence.
you reluctantly closed your locker door and turned to look at your right, where richard was already less than a feet away from you. "what?" you asked, your hand resting on your backpack strap.
"what's the hurry?" he asked once he was right in front of you, the charm in his voice practically dripping. "can't we talk for five minutes? you couldn’t get enough of me two months ago." he added, his hand already coming to the back of your neck. he saw you roll your eyes, and his smile turned sharper and more cocky. "yeah. you made that exact same face."
"fuck off, richard." you said immediately, your face turning into an annoyed frown. "i stopped being interested two months ago."
oh. those words hit him square in a part of his stomach where his arrogance lived, especially with the way that you moved his hand away from his neck like he was an annoying bug.
"no one's uninterested-" he started saying, but you didn't linger enough to hear what he had to say. you just turned around and started walking away. from him.
˚₊‧⁺⋆ ♱ the idea had hit him after listening to you talking with your friend in the middle of your english class. you were complaining in whispers about how the news kept talking about the "ghostface shit" and how "no one wanted to hear about two insane fucks who did it."
˚₊‧⁺⋆ ♱ he had practically ran to justin at the ring for lunch, pushing whoever got in his way to the side without lingering to hear their complaints.
"you and me. ghostface." he said as soon as he was standing in front of justin, not even caring that the other man was deeply focused in his book.
justin lifted his gaze, frowning as he processed his words. "what are you talking about?" he asked.
"she hates it. we use it to scare her a little, then I come and save her and win her back." richard said as if it was obvious, shrugging one shoulder.
˚₊‧⁺⋆ ♱ the first call had come at 2.02 a.m. on a friday night while you were in the middle of a malcom in the middle marathon. you picked up the phone after the first ring and placed it against your ear, only to hear a breathy: "do you like scary movies?" you didn't even entertain whoever was on the other side of that phone call because five seconds later, you hung up the phone and disconnected it. not tonight.
˚₊‧⁺⋆ ♱ the calls kept coming and coming. you never indulged, no matter how creepy they became.
˚₊‧⁺⋆ ♱ richard was properly pissed off at that. he was doing all of this for you and you wouldn't listen to him? or at least, that was until you sat on your couch after school, tv turned on in some news channel only to listen to the reporter start talking about how the ghostface fever had arrived to your san benito. the victim was a girl from your english class, the same girl you had been talking to that day.
˚₊‧⁺⋆ ♱ richard looked the same as he stepped into the classroom the next day, shooting you one of his annoying looks as he slid onto his usual seat. "where's your friend?" he said, nodding towards the empty chair next to you. you had to turn your head to the other side to hide your tears.
˚₊‧⁺⋆ ♱ it hadn't stopped with her. the police and the news kept reporting two more victims, each of them related to you somehow. the guy who had tutored you, even the girl who you always walked through the doors with.
˚₊‧⁺⋆ ♱ richard had started finding his opportunities to get closer to you. during school assemblies, he'd sit on your side, his hand finding a way to rest on your shoulder or even take your hand in his. you couldn’t even fight him anymore, you just let him worm his way back in your life. he'd comfort you while you cried during memorials, fight with teachers to let you turn in homework after the deadline, do everything at his power to keep you calm.
˚₊‧⁺⋆ ♱ you had started depending on him, as much as you hated it. when you saw the teachers place a small altar for everyone the school had lost, you'd immediately start looking for him to crumble in his arms.
˚₊‧⁺⋆ ♱ richard loved it. that's why he and justin had gotten more cocky. they had three victims so far, but richard wanted to make sure that he had you wrapped around your finger completely.
˚₊‧⁺⋆ ♱ the next one was your best friend. you and her had been friends since diapers. she was the only other person who had been close to you during this time, comforting you just as much as richard had.
˚₊‧⁺⋆ ♱ it was almost 8 pm. when the call had first come. richard was on the other side of the phone, keeping her distracted while justin sneaked into the house. the girl was easy to play with, giggling stupidly at the breathy voice who asked what movies she liked.
justin was in through the backdoor as she stood by the phone near the stairs, her back turned to all of the kitchen of her house. justin moved slowly, making sure that no sound came from his steps as he approached her.
the knife that slit her throat wasn't gentle. it made a sharp line, causing her hands to drop her phone to hurriedly bring them to her neck as if that would stop the river of blood escaping from her flesh to drop on the floor.
she dropped to her knees, coughing sharply and pitifully as richard made his way inside of the house. he never liked the killing part, but he knew that with a few words and what not he could convince justing to do it himself.
"well. she went down without a fight," richard said once he was standing next to justin, watching the way that the blood started painting her fingers and pooling around her body, painting her soft blue sweater to a dark color instead.
˚₊‧⁺⋆ ♱ it was in the middle of moving her body that the front door started opening, your cheerful, clueless voice filling the space. "I know you said that I have to stop coming inside your place like this, but i-"
your words died down when you stepped into the house, only to find the scene of justin and richard in black robes, masks thrown to the floor as they stood next to a pool of dark blood, your friends legs being held by richard's arms like she was just a doll.
you mouth opened as your legs started to move back, but your yell was muffled and your run was stopped by a hand pressed against your mouth that pushed you against the wall, your eyes forced to meet the sight of richard's face.
"no, no. shhh, no yelling." he said in a voice that felt like a forced combination of comforting and harsh, his fingers digging harder into your cheeks to keep your jaw still. "I did this for you." richard whispered next, his face moving closer to yours.
"you don't need anyone else." he continued, his voice turning sickeningly gentle now as his free, blood-stained hand came to brush through your hair. "just me. but you, you were too stubborn to see it. I tried to get close to you, but you kept thinking that you didn't need me. that you were uninterested. you wouldn't listen to what I had to say." he kept talking, feeling your tears drop onto the hand that was pressing against your face.
"no, don't cry. there's no reason to cry. I won't do anything to you now that you're interested again. I have you, right?" his blue eyes scanned your face, his fingers tightening when he didn't get no response. "I said, I have you, right?" he repeated, his voice sharper now.
you nodded furiously under his hand and he smiled, the hand on your hair turning gentle. "good. good, now you'll know what to focus on."
