Touch Deprived Ryland Grace (fluff/angst)
touch starved ryland grace fanfic / Word Count - 7.3k
Summary: Adora, a scientist and trained astronaut, is sent across interstellar space on a mission Earth never truly expected to succeed. To find Dr. Ryland Grace, the man who saved humanity and was presumed lost forever.
Find the full fanfic here (wattpad)
(fluffy touch deprived grace only here, but I have a few smutty chapters that come after I can post as well!)
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
I don't know if I really slept, but I did get to relax my aching body. I don't know how long I sat here until I could hear tapping from the airlocks window again. After my rough landing on Erid, the Eridians told me to wait in my ship, while they attached what I hope would be another airlock, on their side.
I groaned as I stood up. The astronaut suit was heavy, and my painful ribs and back from my previous fall, weren't helping the situation either. This time I was smart, and I pressed myself up against the wall as the airlock door swung open again. This time it swung open with just as much force as before, however now I wasn't in the way.
{We are at Erid Earth Dome} The strange Eridian spoke. The translator crackled.
I had just landed on the planet, Erid, after over four years of interstellar space travel. All for one reason, to hopefully find Dr. Grace alive and well. To hopefully find him here, surviving. To hopefully bring him home.
The large dome rose out of the dark like a sleeping moon.
It was huge. Far larger than I had imagined. A vast, curved structure stretching upward and outward, its surface barely visible beneath a faint, hazy glow that wrapped around the entire thing. The light around it was barely visible.
I had pictured a habitat. Something compact and utilitarian. Metal walls. Airlocks. A bed. A lab maybe, if the Eridians had been generous.
Out of all of the possibilities of human life on Erid, I had not expected this. A full human built enclosure. Hopefully this was a sign that Dr. Grace was alive here.
One of the Eridians tapped the side of my suit again. They were still wearing their clear, glassy, mesh looking suits. I looked behind me at my ship. It was clear they had made a small, and narrow, glass-type tunnel leading from my ships airlock, to what looked a large door on the dome.
{Human safe inside.} The translator clipped to my suit rang out.
A large door began to open before me, revealing an empty metal looking room. I stepped into the room slowly.
{Is airlock. Can take suit off inside. Opens to Erid Earth dome inside}
The doors shut behind me, leaving me alone in this empty room. The sound of the airlock moved through the ground before it reached my ears. A deep, grinding groan, followed by the hiss of pressure systems engaging.
I checked the screen on my suit, just above my wrist to confirm the pressure in the airlock has calibrated to human safe levels. It has. Of course it had. I mean, I technically had no reason not to trust the Eridians. They got me out of my ship safely, after all.
I took my helmet off, and slipped out of my space suit. Leaving it in puddle on the floor beneath me. I decided to leave on my white, temperature regulating suit, as that was more annoying to slip in and out of— and I assumed I would need to head back to my ship soon to sleep.
That's when another large door ahead of my began to open. The seam to the dome widened slowly, as blinding white light spilled out.
I lifted a hand automatically, shielding my unadjusted eyes.
For one blinding second, I saw nothing but white-gold brightness. Cool air touched my face. The smell of salt in the air. Damp sand crunched beneath my feet.
I stepped forward, and the light softened around me. The dome was not a habitat. It was a whole world.
A vast, open arena curved beneath the glowing shell above, so large that for a moment my mind refused to understand I was still indoors. Mist drifted through the air in pale ribbons. A cool breeze brushed loose strands of hair against my cheek.
Ahead of me, waves rolled onto a shoreline.
They rushed up the beach in foaming sheets, then slipped back again with that soft, dragging whisper I had not heard outside of recordings in years. The sound filled the dome, rising and falling, endless and rhythmic. A curated ocean moved beneath artificial light, its surface silver-blue and restless, lapping against the sand as if it had always belonged here.
Not exactly. Not if I stared too hard. The horizon curved wrong because there was no horizon, only the far wall of the dome hidden behind mist and clever light. The sky above was too smooth, too contained. But my body did not care about those details. My body heard waves. Felt wind. Smelled salt.
And for one dizzy moment, I was not on Erid. I was home, back on Earth.
"Oh," I breathed, sucking in a deep breath of fresh air.
At the far end of the beach, where the sand rose into a rocky artificial cliff, stood a small cottage.
It was angular and strange, not quite like anything from Earth and not quite Eridian either. A compromise, maybe. A translation of a human home through alien hands. It perched near the top of the cliff, overlooking the moving shoreline, its windows glowing warm gold through the fog.
It was beautiful. Impossibly beautiful. I took another step into the sand, and my boot sank slightly. The dome doors began to close behind me.
That was when I saw him. Dr. Grace, alive.
I knew it was him. I had seen him enough times. I studied what he looked like in the mission protocols. Earth had even sent digital composites of Dr. Grace's age progression, so we could guess what he may look like now—Now that he's older than when Earth last saw him. I didn't need the protocols, or the age progression composite now though. This man in front of me, was without a doubt Dr. Ryland Grace. It was easy to tell. I mean, even everyone on Earth knew what Dr. Grace looked like. He was a celebrity, a hero. And now here he was, sat in front of me on an artificial beach.
At first, he was only a shape near the waterline.
A man sitting in the sand about twenty feet away, knees bent, and a journal balanced against one thigh. He was writing something, head bowed, one hand moving quickly across the page. Beside him sat a small pile of objects I couldn't identify from this distance. A mug, and some other items that resembled tools? Maybe?
"I wasn't expecting any visitors today," he called cheerily.
His voice carried easily over the waves. Rugged and full of life. Human. He sounded so Human. The words tore through me so violently I almost stumbled.
Human voice. Human English. It had been years of travelling across space, alone and in silence. I wasn't sure if I was more excited to finally be talking to someone real again, or if I was excited that I had just discovered the Ryland Grace, alive.
He kept writing, like this was normal. Like he was expecting an Eridian colleague to vibrate some new scientific problem at him, not a woman from Earth standing frozen in the sand with her heart trying to claw its way out of her chest.
The massive doors sealed shut behind me. The bang echoed through the dome. The man looked up.
Dr. Ryland Grace's smile dropped.
The waves moved beside us. The artificial breeze kept drifting across the sand. High above us, hidden systems hummed softly within the dome walls.
He stared at me from across the beach, journal slipping slightly in his hand. His hair looked just as I remember from the old mission photos, with the possibility of some greys starting to form. There were lines around his eyes, across his forehead, carved deep by time, loneliness and whatever it took to survive this long on a planet never meant for him. His clothes were strange and aged too. A mix of old Earth fabric and what looked like Eridian-made material, layered and patched at the elbows.
But it was him. It was unmistakably him.
The man whose face had been printed across half the planet after the Beetles returned. The man whose name appeared in history books beside words like salvation and sacrifice. The man every school child knew had saved Earth and died doing it.
Only he had not died. It was him, here and in the flesh. Older. Changed. Real, and alive.
My mouth opened, but no sound came out.
His eyes moved over my face like he was trying to prove I was not some trick of the dome. Not a projection. Not a hallucination conjured by years of isolation and wishful thinking.
The journal fell from his hand onto the sand.
For what felt like minutes, we only looked at each other.
Then he stood up, slowly and unsteadily. Like his body had forgotten what to do with shock.
I swallowed the lump forming in my throat.
And then he ran. Dr. Grace ran.
I barely had time to take one full breath before he moved.
He ran across the sand like his body had decided before his mind could catch up. Like he had been hoping for years, for this exact thing to happen, and now that it was here, he was terrified it might vanish.
His arms came around me hard enough to knock a breath out of my lungs. I tried to ignore the bruising pain in my ribs upon contact. He scooped me against him in a hug so sudden, so complete, that my boots skidded half an inch across the floor. His face buried into my shoulder, then my neck, then my hair, like he could not decide where to put all of his grief.
For one stunned second, I just stood there with my arms lifted awkwardly at my sides.
He was shaking. His whole body trembled against mine, and then I heard it. The first broken sound leaving his chest. A sob, raw and muffled against my skin.
"Oh my God," he choked out, voice muffled against my hair. "Oh my God. You're here. You're real."
My hands hovered behind him.
"It's been so long," he mumbled. His voice broke halfway through. "It's been so long since I've seen anybody. Since I've seen—since I've seen a person. A human person."
Something inside my chest folded in on itself. For a moment I understood the pain he must have felt for all of those years of isolation. His fingers curled into the back of my white skin suit.
"I haven't hugged anybody," he said, barely audible now. "Years. It's been years since I hugged anybody."
My arms finally came down around him.
At first it was clumsy. One hand landed between his shoulder blades, the other against the back of his upper arm. I patted him once, stupidly, like he was a crying colleague and not a man who had been stranded on an alien planet for a lifetime.
But then his breath hitched against my neck, and something in me gave way. Because it had been four years for me, too.
Four years since I had left Earth. Four years since my mother had hugged me at the launch facility and tried not to cry because all of us had been pretending bravery was the same thing as not being afraid. Four years since I had felt bare human contact.
My fingers tightened in the back of his shirt, as the awkwardness drained out of me all at once. I hugged him back harder.
Dr. Grace made a sound that was almost a laugh and almost another sob. His knees seemed to buckle slightly, and I shifted my weight to hold him. He was warm against my face.
His hair brushed against my cheek, and I raised my hand without thinking, sliding it carefully up the back of his neck and into the messy silver-golden strands. He fell apart completely in my arms.
His forehead pressed into the curve between my neck and shoulder, and his shoulders shook under my hand. I felt the dampness of his tears begin to build up on the skin on my neck. It felt so human, and so real. I held him there, fingers tangled gently in his hair, my other arm locked around his back like I could anchor him to this moment through sheer force.
"You're alive," I whispered.
He nodded against me, messy and frantic, like he had forgotten how to answer with words.
"You're alive," I said again, because I needed to hear it too.
"I thought..." He swallowed hard, chocking on his words. "I thought nobody would ever come. I thought I would never see another human again in my lifetime."
The words entered me like a wound. I looked past him, over his shoulder, into the dome that had kept him alive. I couldn't believe the sheer size of this place, and somehow that made it worse. A carefully engineered human-safe habitat, built by beings who could not even stand in the same atmosphere as him. A miracle of alien compassion and science.
And still, it was a cage.
"I know," I said, though my voice was not as steady as I wanted it to be. "Earth sent me to find you."
He pulled back just enough to look at me.His face was wet. His eyes were red and wide and devastated, but there was wonder there too. A terrible, fragile hope.
"Earth? They don't think I died?" he asked.
"They know?" he whispered. "They know I'm alive?"
"They thought there was a chance," I said. "And now they'll know for sure."
His expression crumpled again.
He dropped his forehead lightly against mine, not quite a gesture of romance, as his rested just at the top of mine. It was contact. Human contact out of desperation. His hands were still gripping my sleeves as if some rational part of him believed I might dissolve if he let go.
"I forgot," he said hoarsely.
His eyes squeezed shut. "I forgot what people feel like."
I had no answer for that, so I held him tighter, guiding his head to fall onto my shoulder again.
The dome hummed softly around us. Somewhere beyond its walls, Erid pressed in with all its darkness and weight, and the curiosity of alien life. Beyond that was space, and beyond that, Earth. A tiny blue dot full of people who had mourned this man, mythologized him. Built statues and lectures and entire careers around the shape of his knowledge of Astrophage, his bravely, his compassion, and his absence.
But here, in this warm artificial planet, beneath alien stars, he was not a myth. He was a man. A lonely, shaking, brilliant, broken man who had saved the world and yet had not been hugged for years. A man who had not been celebrated for his sacrifice.
I stroked my fingers once through his hair, careful and slow.
"I've got you," I whispered.
His breath shuddered against my shoulder. My hand stayed at the back of his neck, my fingers threaded gently into his soft hair, and after a while his sobs softened into ragged breaths. He pulled back slowly, as if embarrassed by the space he had taken up.
His eyes were red. His face was wet.
"I'm sorry," he chuckled, though the sound cracked halfway through. He sniffled and wiped under an eye with the heel of his hand. "I'm being so rude."
I shook my head immediately. "You're not."
"I am," he said, laughing again under his breath, but there was still a tremor in it. "I didn't even introduce myself. Technically, I think I just attacked you with a hug."
"A little bit." I smiled sheepishly, now feeling the cool ocean breeze hit the wet stains of tears left on my neck and collar bone. We stood there, half smiling at each other, none of us daring to break the eye contact.
He winced, then laughed properly this time, soft and breathless. "Sorry. Really. Sorry."
He reached up, grabbed the collar of his shirt, and pulled it awkwardly toward his face to wipe along his cheekbones. It was such a terribly human gesture of awkwardness. Something in my chest squeezed, as I watched how emotionally vulnerable Dr. Grace looked right now.
"You can call me Ryland," he said, lowering his collar again. Then, with a small, almost shy smile, he added, "Dr. Grace feels a little too formal after someone lets me cry on them."
His eyes flickered over my face, like he was committing it to memory.
"Adora," he repeated quietly.
Now that he was standing straight in front of me, I realized he was taller than I had expected. Much taller. The top of my head barely reached his collarbones, which made the fact that he had folded himself into my arms a moment ago feel even more heartbreaking. As if loneliness had shrunk him down to something smaller than his body.
"It's nice to meet you," he said.
The words were ordinary, but his smile was not. It was wide and fragile and full of disbelief, like he was still half convinced I might vanish if he blinked too slowly.
"It's nice to meet you too," I said, and my voice came out softer than I meant it to.
For another second, we just stood there.
The waves rolled in beside us. The artificial shoreline breathed in and out against the sand. Mist drifted lazily between us and the cottage on the cliff. Up near the dome's ceiling, hidden lights glowed warm and golden, making the whole place feel like late afternoon on some dream-like version of Earth.
Ryland cleared his throat.
"Oh. Um." He looked suddenly flustered, glancing around as if remembering where we were. "Right. You just crossed interstellar space and walked into my very weird house-beach-lab living situation. I should probably..." He gestured broadly behind him. "Give you a tour of my dome."
I laughed before I could help it. His expression brightened instantly, like the sound surprised him and pleased him at the same time.
"Yeah," I said. "I'd like that."
"Great. Good. Tour." He nodded once, a little too enthusiastically, then turned and began walking beside me along the shoreline. "Okay. So. Welcome to the Erid Earth Dome. Terrible name, in my opinion. Very literal. The Eridians are brilliant, obviously, but they have not mastered the art of poetic naming."
"It's beautiful," I said.
His shoulders softened at that.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "It is."
We walked slowly across the sand, close enough that our sleeves brushed every few steps. I kept trying to look at everything at once—the moving tide, the distant cottage, the fog curling over the beach, the strange glassy curvature of the dome high above us.
"The ocean is not real," Ryland said, pointing toward the waves. "Well, obviously. There isn't a naturally occurring human-safe ocean conveniently available on Erid. That would be a little too lucky, even for me. But the water is real. Salt content adjusted to Earth standards. Temperature kept a little cold because I told them I missed the Pacific, and apparently they took that very seriously."
"They made me a beach," he said, with an expression that was equal parts fond and overwhelmed. "I asked for some open space. Some fresh air of course. You know, something less... metal box like the Hail Mary. Then Rocky asked a lot of follow-up questions, and the next thing I knew, I had tides and waves."
"Oh, yes." He brightened into professor mode so quickly it nearly gave me chuckle. "It's on a controlled hydraulic and gravitational simulation system. Very clever. The shoreline comes up and recedes on a twelve-hour cycle. Not necessary, technically, but psychologically helpful. Also, I'm a sucker for a foggy beach."
"And the lighting?" I asked.
"That is synced to Earth time." He pointed up toward the hazy dome ceiling. "Sunrise, midday, sunset, night. All programmed based on the same time system we used aboard the Hail Mary. The Eridians thought I might benefit from consistency, something about a humans natural circadian rhythm." His smile grew smaller. "They were right."
There was something about the way he said it that made me look at him.
He kept his gaze ahead, hands tucked loosely into his pockets now, his bare feet moving easily through the sand. I hadn't even noticed he wasn't wearing shoes. Somehow, that detail hit me harder than the dome itself. Ryland Grace, presumed dead by Earth, walking barefoot along a fake beach on Erid like this had become normal.
Like this was his normal life.
"A sunrise and sunset every day," I said.
"Makes it harder to forget time is passing," he replied, then winced. "Actually, that sounded darker than I meant it to."
"No," I said. "It makes sense."
He looked at me slightly surprised. I held his gaze for a second.
"Anyway," he said, sounding cheerful again, "that over there is my classroom."
He pointed to the left, where the sand gave way to a smoother walkway leading toward another structure partially embedded in the curve of the dome. At first, it looked like a bubble of glass. As we got closer, I realized it was a smaller dome within the larger dome, perfectly transparent, with rows of auditorium-style seating arranged inside.
It was empty now, but I could picture it full. Not with humans, but with little Eridian children.
The thought sent a strange shiver through me. Seeing alien life is definitely going to take some getting used to.
"You teach here?" I asked.
"Most mornings." His voice warmed instantly. "Science, mostly. Some Earth history. Very basic music. Occasionally I attempt to teach them Earth jokes, which are received with what I choose to interpret as enthusiasm."
I looked through the glass at the rows of seats. They would be shaped uncomfortably for human bodies, and look definitely designed for Eridian anatomy, the seats curved strangely, all made of a hard rock material. On our side of the classroom, in-front of the glass barrier, was a long table cluttered with instruments. A white board stood behind it, with what looked like to be notes from a pervious class. It was about the basics of light waves. Something he must have been teaching the children. And beside it, oddly enough, was a piano keyboard.
Ryland noticed me staring and grinned. "Oh, this is one of my favourite things."
He walked to the keyboard and ran his fingers over the keys. "This is how I speak to the kids."
I blinked. "With a keyboard?"
"It plays the same notes that Eridian's use to speak." He pressed a few notes, a small bright pattern played out. "Eridian language is pitch made of a whole bunch of frequencies I cannot personally make because I have only one throat not made for Eridian vocabulary, and it is frankly, impossible. So I get around with this."
He played another short sequence. It rose, dipped, then ended on a soft chord.
I stared at him, and he looked at me expectantly. I looked down at myself, then back at him.
"Oh. I left my translator on my suit in the airlock."
His mouth fell open, as he burst out laughing.
The sound filled the space between us, and I found myself laughing too, even though I had no idea what he had just said in Eridian.
"Oh no," he said, still laughing. "That was supposed to be impressive."
"It was very impressive," I promised. "I just have absolutely no idea what it meant."
"It meant, roughly, 'new human friend arrives, very exciting!'"
I laughed again. "You played that to me?"
"Well, technically yes, but it would have been better if you understood it." He chucked again. "So humans back on Earth aren't yet fluent in Eridian are they?" He joked.
"Still working on that" We laughed together this time.
"This is amazing," I said, looking around the classroom space around us.
His smile softened. "You think so?"
"Ryland," I said. The name still felt new in my mouth. "You have an alien classroom inside a customized human-safe beach dome on Erid where you teach Eridian children using a piano keyboard. Yes. I think this is amazing."
For some reason, that made him shy. He rubbed one hand along the back of his neck, eyes dropping toward the floor. "Yeah. I guess when you say it like that, it sounds kind of cool."
"It sounds extremely cool."
His ears went faintly pink, and I pretended not to notice. He cleared his throat and gestured toward further down the beach. "Okay. More tour. Before I become insufferable about lesson plans."
We left the classroom area and made down the sandy beach. The fog had shifted slightly, revealing more of the cliff path leading up toward the cottage. The structure looked even stranger from below. Sharp geometric angles, with wide panels of glass catching the dome-light. It looked like something from a future Earth had crashed gently into the side of a beach.
"So, this is my house up here," Ryland said, pausing at the base of the cliff to pick up a pair of old, battered Converse half-buried in the sand.
He must have left them there before wandering down to sit by the shoreline. I watched quietly as he brushed the sand from the bottoms of his feet, then slipped them into the shoes. They were worn nearly to death. Creased canvas, frayed laces that looked like they barely where holding the shoes together, and holes starting to split along the sides. He put them on with the easy familiarity of something he'd owned for years. Something from Earth.
Then he straightened, gave me a small smile, and gestured toward the path winding up the cliffside.
I followed him up. The path curved through carefully arranged rocks and low-growing plants. Some looked like earth plants. Soft grasses, and small pointy shrubs. Others were clearly not. They grew in crystalline clusters, thin and delicate, glowing faintly under the mist.
"Very modern," I said as we approached the front door. "Futuristic looking."
He laughed. "Yes, well, when the Eridian's built it, their only reference for human architecture was the sci-fi movies imported into the Hail Mary's media library. So apparently I live in what a group of aliens thought a human house was supposed to look like after watching too many movies about space."
"That explains a lot actually."
"Right? Very cinematic. I like it though."
He glanced at me, pleased, then pushed open the front door.
Inside, the house was bright. That was the first thing I noticed. Bright, open, and filled with warm artificial sunlight pouring through enormous windows that took up nearly every wall. The living area was simple and minimalist, with low furniture arranged around a small table. A few steps led up into a bedroom area at the back, open to the rest of the home but separated by a subtle change in flooring, and a half wall.
From its architecture, It should have felt cold inside. Instead, it felt like a cozy beach house. A strange one, yes. One designed by aliens with a poor understanding of what human homes really looked like. But still, there was warmth in it. In the light. In the woven blanket folded over one chair. In the stack of journals on the table. In the small collection of objects lined carefully along a shelf. Various personal treasures, a mug, some metal planetary looking model rested in its place on a shelf, and what looked like to be a child's drawing pressed beneath a clear panel.
And it was spotless. Not just tidy, it was absolutely spotless.
His bed was made with such exact precision that it looked almost military. With a colourfully patterned quilt pulled tightly enough, you bounce a coin off of it. Every item on the counters stood in deliberate rows. Pens sorted by size. Instruments lined parallel. Dishes cleaned and stacked. Books arranged from tallest to shortest.
There was no clutter anywhere.
I glanced at him. He noticed my stare.
"No, that is absolutely a 'something' face." He half pointed at me.
"I just didn't expect..." I looked around again. "You're very clean."
He blinked, then looked vaguely embarrassed. "Oh. Yeah. That." He rubbed the back of his neck again. I was beginning to understand it was his nervous habit. "When you live alone for long enough, you either become a complete disaster or you start to organize the spoons by emotional significance. I chose the second option."
I smiled. His gaze flickered to my mouth for half a second before he quickly looked away.
"And this," he said, voice a touch too high, "is Armando."
I followed where he was pointing.
A giant robot arm hung from the ceiling in the center of the room.
It was folded neatly at rest, sleek metal joints and articulated segments, suspended above us like some enormous mechanical spider limb waiting for instruction. A four fingered prong middle pointed lazily at us both.
I took a cautious step back.
Ryland noticed and smiled. "Don't worry. He's friendly."
"Obviously he." He walked beneath the arm and patted one of the metal segments affectionately. "Armando has been my closest thing to human contact since I left home." His smile faltered a little. "I mean Earth."
The correction landed between us quietly. He cleared his throat.
"Well. That and Rocky, of course. Rocky and his little family." His face changed when he said Rocky's name.
The loneliness was still there, but something tender moved through it. A warmth so deep and practiced that I knew, instantly, this was not just a colleague aboard the Hail Mary. Not just an alien who had helped keep him alive. This was someone he loved.
"Rocky has a family?" I asked.
"Oh, yes of course. Well, Eridian family structures are complicated, and I am still extremely bad at describing them in human terms, but yes. There are juveniles. Relatives. Household members. Many, many opinions. That and him and Adrian have had kids of their own as well." He leaned toward me slightly, suddenly animated. "Which you should totally meet."
"If you want to. Or not. No pressure. You did just land here." He paused. "Actually, that is a pretty big day. Do you need water? Food? A chair? A medical scan? Armando is really good at performing medical care if you need it. Maybe a nap? Wow, I should have offered those things before dragging you through the tour of the Dome. I'm sorry if I'm being a terrible host. Its just been so long since I've spoken to a Human, and honestly I'm a little rusty on human social manners"
"It's okay," I said, though a small smile. "I'm fine."
I was exhausted. Overwhelmed. Still shaky from the trip here, from my 'landing' experience if you can even call it that? My body still ached with the now forming bruises from my fall. But I also did not want to stop.
Stopping would mean this moment would end, and I was still struck with idea that Grace was alive and well. I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that I was standing in Dr. Ryland Grace's alien-built living room, all while a robot arm named Armando hung politely from the ceiling.
He studied my face, and for a second, the professor vanished. The cheerful tour guide vanished too. What remained was a man who had spent years learning to read small changes in people who were not human, and somehow, that made him far too perceptive with me.
"You don't have to be fine," he said quietly.
I looked up at him. His expression softened as our eyes met.
"I know the people who sent you probably told you to be professional and calm," he said. "And you are. Very much so. But also..." He gestured vaguely around us. "This is a lot. I know it. Ive been there."
A laugh escaped me, small and uneven.
"Yeah," I whispered. "It is."
Ryland nodded like that answer made perfect sense. I watched as he moved toward the kitchen area. "Okay. First, water. Then you can meet Rocky. Then maybe food? I have food. The Eridian's made me a special diet of— Oh". He stopped.
His hand hovered halfway toward one of the cabinets, and his expression shifted into something I couldn't quite read. Embarrassment, maybe. Or discomfort. Or the sudden realization that whatever sentence had been about to leave his mouth was not a sentence you said casually to the first human woman you had seen in years.
I stared blankly at him, waiting.
"What's the matter?" I asked.
Ryland turned slowly back toward me.
"Right," he said. "So. Food." He put his hands together in a triangle position, signifying that what ever he was about to say, needed to be braced for.
"No," he said quickly. "No, no. It's actually very impressive. Scientifically. Ethically... weird. Emotionally, also weird. But nutritionally? Excellent."
I blinked. "I'm not following..."
"Yeah...Fair." He scratched the back of his neck. "Okay. You know how I've been here for years."
"And you know humans require a pretty specific balance of nutrients, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals, et cetera."
"And you know Erid does not have chickens. Or cows. Or pigs. Or vegetables. Or, really, anything I can eat."
"Well." He gave me a strained smile. "The Eridians solved the protein problem."
My brows furrowed as I tried to understand where he was going with this.
"They made me something I call meburgers."
The waves crashed somewhere outside the windows.
"I'm sorry," I said carefully. "Did you say meburgers?"
"As in me." He pointed vaguely at himself. "Burgers."
Ryland lifted both hands immediately. "Not like that. Not—no actual pieces removed. Well, okay, its cell and tissue samples. But very small. Completely harmless. A cheek swab situation. A little tissue sample. Honestly, I was not in a great bargaining position at the time, and Rocky was very insistent I keep eating. For obvious reasons. At first I was eating the Taumeba, but I was severely malnourished. I am talking very sick, so we needed a solution to keep me alive."
I stared at him. He stared back.
"The Eridian's cloned meat from you."
"And made it into burgers."
"Made out of Dr. Ryland Grace."
I pressed a hand over my mouth.
Not because I was going to laugh. Part of me did feel genuinely ill. There was a very specific horror in standing across from a man and learning that somewhere in his kitchen existed burger patties grown from his own human cells.
But another part of me—the awful, curious, embarrassingly alive science part of me—lit up like a console.
"How?" I asked before I could stop myself.
"Yes. How does it work? Muscle cells? Stem cells? How did they culture this? Is it structured tissue or just protein slurry shaped into patties? How do they handle micronutrient balance? I have so many questions"
A slow smile spread across his face.
"Oh, you are my kind of person."
"I'm trying very hard not to think about the cannibalism angle."
"Technically not cannibalism."
"Okay, socially cannibalism-adjacent. Scientifically, cultured autologous tissue protein."
"It is a more accurate definition."
"It is worse because it is more accurate."
He laughed, a loud, real laugh. One that I had not heard from him before.
I looked toward the kitchen cabinet with a kind of horrified fascination. "So... what part of you did they get this tissue sample from?"
His face slowly turned pink. The question hung in the air between us.
"I mean," I said quickly, "not that I need to know. Obviously. That was a scientific question. Mostly."
"They swabbed my cheek," he said, a little too fast. "And a bit of my thigh? I don't know. Rocky, and the rest of the scientists handled a lot of that in the beginning because I was unconscious, and almost dying of starvation, and malnutrition by the time we got to Erid."
"That is somehow not better."
"Yeah." He exhaled, then opened a cabinet and pulled out a sealed container. "But it kept me alive. They put me out for the procedure and everything"
He opened the door to a large metal box on the underside of his kitchen counter, possibly a fridge, and set a container on the counter between us. Inside were several neat, pale-brown patties stacked in layers. They looked disturbingly normal. That was the worst part. If he had not told me, I might have assumed they were normal beef patties.
Instead, I found myself staring at hamburger meat made out of the man standing beside me.
"How do they taste?" I asked, because apparently I had lost control of my mouth entirely.
Ryland considered this with the seriousness of a food critic. "Kind of like chicken-pork."
"Yes. Not beef. I know burger is in the name, but it's not beefy. More like if chicken and pork had a very strange lab-grown cousin."
"And you eat these every day?"
"Yes, every day." He shrugged. "But they're balanced. Protein, fats, vitamins. The Eridians got very good at keeping me medically stable. And honestly..." He looked almost guilty. "I kind of enjoy them."
"I know," he said. "I hate that too."
"You cannot tell me I just crossed interstellar space to find you alive and now I have to process that you've been surviving on Ryland Grace patties."
He pointed at me. "That is exactly why I named them meburgers. Branding is really important here."
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it. It came out sharp and breathless and a little hysterical. He grinned.
Then, as if trying to offer me something less psychologically damaging, he brightened. "They also found a way to make synthetic coffee. So we have tons of that too."
My head snapped up. "You have coffee?"
"Oh, yes. Not perfect coffee. But coffee enough that I cried the first time I had it."
"That sounds incredible."
I glanced again at the container of meburgers and winced.
"Coffee would be great. I think I'll pass on the meburgers for now though."
Ryland nodded immediately, awkward but understanding. "Completely fair. Honestly, I might have been more concerned if you actually wanted to try my meburger."
"I may need several hours. Or years to process that you eat human meat daily. Well, human meat adjacent."
"Take all the time you need."
I looked at him, as the humour between us settled. He was trying so hard to make this normal. To make his survival sound funny instead of devastating. To turn years of isolation, alien medicine, and cloned self-meat into an awkward joke.
My chest tightened. Then I remembered,
"Oh," I said, suddenly straightening. "I actually have something for you, Ryland."
I smiled, excitement cutting through the strangeness of the moment. "A lot of things, actually."
His expression shifted. "What do you mean?"
"Earth sent supplies. Care packages. For you."
For one second, he didn't react at all. I almost didn't think he understood me.
"They sent..." His voice thinned. "For me?"
"Yes." My smile grew despite myself. "In hopes we would find you alive. There are crates in my ship, all full of gifts and supplies for you. Food, real food, snacks, medical supplies, fresh clothes, new shoes. I think three different agencies argued about what underwear to send, for like two months."
His mouth parted slightly.
"We have toiletries too," I continued, suddenly eager to tell him everything. "Books. Letters. Recorded messages. Seeds to possibly grow things. Some personal things people thought you might want. And coffee. Real coffee."
"Real coffee," he whispered.
He made a sound that was barely human.
"And..." I hesitated, because I knew the next name mattered. I knew enough from the mission files, enough from the recovered records, enough from what the mission higher ups had spoken about her. We all new about the history. About what she had done. "Stratt was one of the people who organized the mission."
His face changed. The excitement dropped out of it so quickly I almost regretted saying her name.
For a moment, Ryland looked away. His jaw tightened. Something complicated moved behind his eyes—hurt, anger, grief, loyalty, maybe all of it at once. Whatever Stratt was to him, whatever she had done to him, whatever she had done for Earth, it was still there.
"She..." I swallowed. "She helped choose most of what they sent."
The waves and the whir of the dome filled the silence. He breathed out, a slow and shaky breath.
"Of course she did," he said.
I could not tell if he meant it fondly or bitterly. Maybe both. Before I could ask, the thought of the supplies seemed to catch up to him all at once.
"Fresh clothes?" he asked.
"No patched holes, or stretched out hems?"
Then he was moving. I barely had time to brace before he crossed the space between us and wrapped me in another hug. This one was different from the first. His arms went around my waist, and then my feet left the floor. He squeezed into my bruised ribs again, but this time I didn't care.
I gasped. "Ryland!" I couldn't help but let out a loose laugh.
"Sorry!" he said, laughing through what sounded suspiciously like another sob.
But he did not put me down right away.
For half a second, he hugged me like a man who had just been handed proof that the world had not forgotten him. Like somewhere, far far away, Earth had packed boxes with socks and coffee and snacks because people had hoped, really hoped, that he might still be alive enough to need them.
He set me carefully back on my feet. The hug ended almost as quickly as it had started, barely giving me enough time to react. My hands had only just found his shoulders when he stepped back, wiping at his face again with his free arm. His other arm slowly slides down my forearm, lightly finding my hand resting on the counter. Fresh tears coated his cheeks. I don't dare to move my hand from his touch. Our pinkies gently linked together, something that feels so natural.
"What's wrong?" I asked, concern pulling through my voice before I could soften it.
He shook his head quickly.
"Happy tears," he promised, sniffing hard as he smiled down at me. "I promise."
A laugh bubbled out of me first. Then he laughed too, gently squeezing my hand before wiping at his cheeks again, looking embarrassed and radiant and utterly overwhelmed.
"You are going to make me cry every five minutes," I said.
"I know," he said, still laughing. "I'm so sorry. I used to be much cooler than this."
"I'm not sure I believe that."
"Fair. I used to be differently uncool."
I laughed harder. He grinned, tearful and bright, and for a few seconds the strange room, the alien planet, the cloned meat in the cabinet, the unfathomable distance from Earth. All of it felt fine. All of it felt normal. He was alive. He was here.
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