imagine being the first person in human history to teach an alien swear words. iluna finch i love you. i think ilyukhina is laughing her ass off from above rn
i feel like rocky’s also going to get berated by adrian for teaching the children bad words. like rocky that is a CHILD by eridian standards
pairing: ryland grace x oc crewmate
pov: ryland grace
summary: between hours of searching space for rocky and the pressures of the food situation, tensions are on the rise on the hail mary. grace tries to figure out what his crewmate doesn't want to tell him and ends up being reduced to a whimpering mess.
content: 18+. smut. crack. mates (the eridian way). humor. you can gather from the below screenshot what is also featured in this. eye contact. grace says please. ryland's nerdy science shirt stays ON during sex (yes it's the one in the gif). hand holding. p in v. ryland grace is still very new to feeling comfortable enough with a person to be intimate with them. there may also be a table involved somehow.
word count: 6k
this work is part of a larger fic but can be read as a standalone. read the full fic, stuck in the middle with you, on ao3 !
We’re days away from running out of solid food when we decide to sit down and try out the coma slurry. We can’t put it off anymore, I said, like an idiot, except it tastes like chalk and I immediately regret being responsible enough to suggest this idea at all.
I grimace instantly, which seems like an over the top reaction, but then Finch buries her head in her hands. So, in the end, my reaction seems pretty normal.
“I can’t do this right now,” she mumbles.
I watch her and slowly exhale as I sit back in my chair. I’m not impatient, just concerned, because she’s been acting like this ever since we decided to abandon our journey home to look for Rocky. Like she can’t take as much before it wears her down anymore. It’s not like I can blame her, because I’m feeling it too. One of us is just dealing with the fact that we’ve essentially sealed our fates a little better than the other right now.
“Right now is going to become every day pretty soon,” I say carefully. She knows how close we are to eating this stuff every day, obviously, but I say it anyway. “We have to do this at some point.”
“I know,” Finch sighs, defeated. “I’m just too irritated right now.”
My glasses hitch a ride on my hands as I rub my face. “Why are you irritated?”
That immediately seems like a stupid question. I know why she’s irritated. For the last four weeks, we’ve been searching for Rocky non-stop. We have literally nothing else to do, and any time we take a break it just feels like time wasted when Rocky is out there alone. Today we already searched for twelve hours straight, and tomorrow we’ll be back at it again.
I’m stupid and tired right now so I’m saying stupid, tired things. I pause, then lower my hands and stare at her as I scramble to follow it up with anything else. The best I can come up with in the moment is apparently—
“Aside from the obvious, I mean.”
Finch shakes her head. “It’s just everything. You know. I’m impatient.”
“I can take point tomorrow if you want,” I say, concerned. “I don’t mind if you take a break.”
Finch runs her hands over her face. “I don’t want to take a break.”
I exhale gently. “I know you don’t.”
I get it. I really do. Since we turned back, every pause just brings Rocky to mind. I could suggest watching a movie, but I know neither of us will be able to focus on watching the movie and Finch would just be restless during it anyway.
“I get it,” I say. “I mean, with Rocky and the food situation and—”
“I’m going to go take that break,” Finch says, too fast and sharp to be casual.
Then she gets up and walks off.
I scratch at my hair and stare at the space Finch just disappeared from. I expected things would get tense at some point, but the last thing I expected was for it to start wearing at Finch first. Of course I’m completely unequipped for this. Of course I have no idea what to do next.
Okay. This is not ideal.
She’s mad. I think. Possibly at me. Probably at our wider situation overall, but possibly also at me.
I wish Rocky were here. He’d be able to tell me what to do. He helped me with Finch before, and only now do I remember how hopeless I really am with this kind of stuff. Rocky’s the only reason we got around to doing anything about this in the first place, after all. He’d been my wingman whether I wanted him to or not.
I am so bad at this.
I rub my hands over my face and sit back in my chair. Maybe I should give Finch some space. Maybe I need some space. All it took to shake me back to my factory default awkward setting was Finch being in a bad mood. We’re both exhausted and the cracks are showing.
I try to keep myself busy, but sleep wears at me so I head to the dormitory. Finch is already there—she’s sitting on her bed with her arms folded as she glares at the floor. She’s sulking, alright.
I laugh before I can stop myself, but I regret it immediately. I’m not laughing at her, just the image of an angry penguin it brings to mind, but it’s too late to take it back once it happens. Across the room, Finch glares at me.
If we had a couch, I’d definitely be sleeping on it tonight.
I immediately regret it, so I raise my hands in surrender. “Sorry, sorry,” I apologize. “I know you’re upset.”
“Upset is an understatement. I’m angry.”
“Why are you—“
“I don’t want to play therapist with you right now, Grace.”
I close my mouth. I haven’t seen Finch like this before, nor has she ever been this blunt with me. She sits there, irritated, arms still folded, but despite the annoyance on her face there’s something else lingering too. I can’t place it. It’s radiating off her in waves and I can’t place it.
Is it me? Am I the problem? Is the image of an angry Pingu she brings to mind the problem?
“Oh-kay,” I say slowly, stepping back like one does from an angry tiger. “Got it. I won’t ask.”
Finch looks over at me with what I can only describe as a defeated half-glare. “You’re infuriating.”
“Thank you,” I say slowly, bemused. Finch doesn't actually seem like she means what she’s saying, so I’m not sure where this is going. “It’s my special skill. I should add it to my resume.”
Finch actually groans and covers her face with her hands. “Stop it.”
“Talking?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Oh, my God.”
“Finch, I’m really lost here.”
“It’s fine. You’re fine. It’s nothing.”
“Something is bothering you,” I say, a little softer now. “Can I at least do something to help?”
“The only thing you can do for me is something I’m not prepared to ask out loud.”
I blink. “What is it? Is it a foot massage? I’m not a feet guy, but I can do it if you—“
I catch a small upwards curve of Finch’s lips before she throws a pillow in my direction. “You’re doing it again!”
I catch the pillow. “I don’t know what I’m doing!”
“I know!”
I look down at the pillow and stare at it like it might explain the current crisis myself and my mate are in. I have no idea what she’s talking about, and this might be the start of our first argument but I don’t quite think it’s an argument so I’m really not sure what’s going on here. I toss the pillow back like we’re playing a game of catch, which is a bad idea in hindsight. Finch just lets it fall to the floor in front of her.
“Rude,” I mumble.
She just points at me. “I’ll show you rude.”
“No, please don’t show me rude.” I pause, glancing over her. “Maybe we should show ourselves to sleep, though.”
Finch sighs. Clenches her jaw. She just stares at me, irritated. “No.”
“Okay, well—“
Finch crosses the room, grabs me by the shirt, and then she kisses me. I’m confused, naturally, but I kiss her back anyway—
Then she reaches for my hands and places them immediately on her behind.
I hiss an inhale against her lips, surprised, and Finch smiles slightly against my own like that’s what she wanted.
“Oh,” I blurt out. “That’s what you—?”
“No.”
I raise my brows. “No? What else did you mean?” I’m so confused.
Finch shakes her head. “You’re not ready.”
“What?” I glance around the room like I might suddenly expect to see ropes and chains falling from the ceiling. “What are we talking about here?”
Finch laughs at me. At me, not with me. I notice the difference and pout. She just reaches for my shirt again and kisses me.
“But—“ She kisses me again. “You could—“ Another kiss. “You could show me what you want—”
“No.”
Okay. She’s really not giving up on this.
I lean back to look at her because I’m worried now. “Is this a comfort thing? Do I not make you comfortable?”
Finch’s lips part but she doesn’t make a sound, like she’s surprised by the question and needs a second to recover.
“What? No.” She shakes her head. “No, Grace. I wouldn’t even be at this stage with you if I didn’t feel comfortable.”
“Okay,” I frown. “I just—you know, I want to make sure you’re—comfortable and okay and—“
Finch sighs. “I just don’t think there’s an easy way to ask you to bend me over the table.”
My eyes actually widen and my jaw falls slack.
I see why she held back now. We usually don’t say things like this out loud, at least not so confidently. I’m immediately reminded of being subjected to this kind of talk by Dubois and Shapiro, only this is Finch, so suddenly I am reevaluating every judgement I made against those two about why they would even bother having sex if they knew at least one of them was going to die soon anyway—
“Oh,” I reply. I am only able to speak in a series of oh’s for a while. “Oh.”
“See?” Finch sighs. “I broke you.”
“No,” I stammer, “you didn’t break me, I’m just—imagining, or—assessing—”
“Assessing?” Finch replies, brows rising. “Assessing what it’d be like?”
I shake my head, then nod, because she makes it incredibly hard to think when she’s like this. My fingers actually—shamefully—tighten on her in response.
“Yeah. Yes. Sure.” I stammer. “I can be wherever you want me, really.”
“Wow. That was easy.”
I’m pretty sure my face is bright red. Why do I always get like this? We’ve had sex before. This is nothing new. Or—
Wait.
Yes, it is.
Finch isn’t usually like this. We don’t have sex for the sake of it. When we do get intimate, it’s in the heat of emotion, usually because we’re about to die or one of us needs to feel as close to the other as we possibly can—
Oh. I understand what’s happening.
She’s frustrated, but she’s not just frustrated about our situation. She’s frustrated in every way possible. She’s looking for a release.
That makes sense, actually. Logically. We can’t even stop worrying about Rocky—or about how futile this all is if we don’t find him, or can’t contact him—even when we take a break. We’re restless, just varying degrees of it. If there’s one way to go completely thoughtless, it’s this.
Does Finch realize that? She probably does. It’s probably that part of her brain that’s interested in psychology. She’s always thinking of these things even when I’m too late to pick up on them. She’s so—
“You’re so smart,” I blurt out, naturally, instead of anything profound or seductive.
Finch blinks at me. “What?”
“You’re really—”
“No, I know what you said.”
“Well, it’s true.”
Finch nods. “I know.”
I pause, staring at her. “So about the whole table thing—”
Finch just laughs and grabs me by the shirt again. “Come here.”
She kisses me again, only this time she takes a step forward and I stumble back.
And back.
And back.
We only come to a stop when my back presses against the wall. I relax when we get there, fingers resting at her waist, but Finch isn’t so patient. Her fingers slip under my shirt to grasp at my chest, which apparently turns me into a walking, talking Madonna song—like a virgin, get it?—because I quickly break our kiss to inhale sharply in response to her hands on my skin.
“I want to try something,” Finch murmurs.
I raise my brows. “What else?”
She smiles faintly. “Careful.”
“Careful?” I swallow. It’s shameful, really, the way my body is reacting to her being like this. “What do you mean, careful?”
“You’re being a brat.”
I think I’m going to die.
“Oh,” I say, nodding like I fully understand even though my brain doesn’t seem to be working. I can hear my heartbeat in my ears. “Right, yeah, I’ll shut up. Ma’am.”
Finch snickers.
Then she kneels in front of me and I am struck with the immediate understanding of what’s happening. I swallow thickly, arching a little involuntarily at the way she reaches for the waistband of my pants. I’m incredibly alarmed by how much I’m enjoying this. I’m just a teeny bit unable to function.
There’s no hiding that I’m already turned on by the time my pants are around my ankles. I feel a tiny bit embarrassed, which is stupid because we’re done this before and she’s seen all of me by now, but then her lips—and hands—are on me and my hips are bucking involuntarily toward her and I am whimpering.
My hand finds the back of her hair automatically. I don’t force her anywhere—I just take a handful of hair on instinct. Finch moans, lips around me, and it goes straight through me. My eyes close, my head tilting back against the wall as she just keeps going—
“Oh, my God,” I mumble. I bring a hand to cover my face because I just don’t know what else to do.
I feel like I’m in college all over again, experiencing everything for the first time, only this time I don’t hate any of it. There are no mystery party drugs to blur things, either: all I can focus on is Finch, the fact that she’s here, that her lips—and hands—are on me. For a brief second I imagine what it’d be like to do those things to her and it sends a rush of heat straight to my groin.
“Finch,” I eventually croak, but my voice is hoarse, so I clear my throat. “Ilya.”
That nickname makes her pull away and look up at me fast. I’m breathless, really, as I look down at her, my chest heaving as I take in the sight of her like this—eyes slightly glazed with lust, breathless too, hair all messy from where I’ve been clutching at it.
I pull my hand away and swallow, willing my voice into submission. “I want to do that.”
Finch frowns. “What?”
“Please.” Stupid brain. Stupid words. I swallow again. “You wanted the table, right?”
Finch looks at me. “Yes.”
“Lean against it.”
Recognition flashes across Finch’s face, then lust, then she nods and stands. I quickly pull up my pants, which feels shameful in itself for some reason, but I push that down in favor of following Finch over to the other end of the room. She leans against the table, her back to it, and immediately reaches to pull me closer by the shirt and kiss me again.
I’m not quite sure what I’m doing with my hands—everything turns into a bit of a blur—but I vaguely register that they’re squeezing places they haven’t squeezed before. Eventually, I break our kiss to lean back, a little warm by this point, and reach to take off my shirt—
Finch reaches out a hand to stop me. “No.”
I raise my brows. “What?”
“I like the shirt.”
I pause. I glance down at it. My shirt says I WEAR THIS SHIRT PERIODICALLY. Nothing about it is remotely sexy.
I look back up at Finch. “You’re telling me the shirt turns you on?”
“You wearing the shirt turns me on.” Finch looks at me with a severity I simply do not understand. “Keep it on.”
I laugh, because this is insane, but who am I to refuse? “Okay. Sure. The shirt stays on.” My fingers find the waistband of her pants “These, however…”
I hear Finch inhale, then exhale, and none of it sounds steady.
“Can you turn around for me?” I ask, then glance to the table. “Show me what you want. Since you didn’t want to say it.”
Finch just stares at me, hesitating, then she turns around and leans over until she’s flat against the table and I think, again, that I might die. For a second, I just watch her—bent over just like she wanted, her front pressed against the cool surface, and when I think of what she would look like in that position without any clothes on, I realize very quickly that I don’t just want to just imagine it anymore.
Don’t ask me where her pants end up because I don’t know. All I know is that it’s my turn to get on my knees. I start to lower myself to the floor, but if the confusion on Finch’s face says anything at all, it’s that she didn’t realize that this was my plan.
“What are you doing?” She asks, frowning.
I hesitate. I am in an awkward standing-kneeling position. “If you’re not comfortable—”
“No, no,” she replies. “I’ve just never—you know. This. This part.”
“Oh,” I say, nodding, fingers tracing the curve of her spine. She inhales sharply in response to my touch. “No pressure, then.”
I hear Finch laugh softly before I lower myself to the ground fully. Her breathing hitches as I make my way up her thighs and I see her fingers clench at the corners of the table. I’m taking this slow, not to tease, but because it’s hard for me to be anything but soft with her.
I’m not exactly the king of cunnilingus, but I’ve covered enough sex ed classes—I’m not an idiot, I know the female anatomy—to know what to do next. I know how Finch likes to be touched, anyway, so the room quickly fills with muffled noises from the both of us. Finch moans my name—Ry, Grace, Ryland—and I keep her locked in place with my arms around her thighs.
It’s not to tease or torment her. Really. It’s just because if she moves away then I might whine with protest and that would be really embarrassing. I’m enjoying this way more than I thought I would: me, on my knees with my head between her legs as Finch’s noises draw similar ones from myself.
By the time she comes undone, her legs are shaking, which does nothing to lessen the arousal that is quickly building into something that is growing harder—pun intended—for me to ignore. We both take a moment to catch our breath, Finch straightens up, and then I kiss her again, a little more heated now.
My fingers clasp at the back of her neck—fingers all tangled in her hair—a little firmer now. Finch moans against my lips, our kiss deepens, and she paws at my skin under my shirt again. Eventually, her fingers wrap around the waistband of my pants to pull me flush against her.
“Grace,” she murmurs against my lips. “I want you.”
My name on her lips—and her words—make me hiss a sharp inhale. I have to swallow to compose myself.
“You wanted to be bent over the table,” I say slowly. “Right?”
Finch blinks at me like she didn’t expect me to say the words out loud. “Yes. Yes, please.”
“Okay. Yeah.” I swallow, eyes searching hers now. “But can you look at me?”
Finch actually makes a little noise. Apparently she likes that. Or at least the implication of it all.
It doesn’t matter what position we’re in. I mean, I have my preferences, but as long as I can see Finch—it’s about her, really; the connection turns me on, not the act itself—then I’ll enjoy it. I’m pretty sure she feels similarly. If she wants to explore this way, then who am I to say no?
Finch nods, just looking at me like she’s trying to stay composed. “Can I make a request too?”
My fingers tighten on her hips again. “Yes. Yeah. Of course.”
She presses her lips together to try to resist a knowing smile, which makes me immediately suspicious. My hands tighten on her hips, anticipating whatever it is she might ask me to do next—
“Can you push me down?” She asks, gesturing to the table behind us with a tilt of her head. “Onto the table?”
I blink at her. “Forward—onto the—”
“Yes.”
Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. “Sure!” My voice is shamefully high pitched.
I tilt my head to gesture for her to turn around, because I’m honestly too worried about hurting her to be too rough with it. Finch glances between my eyes and lips, then turns around, and I take a second to suck in a breath through my teeth before I close the distance between us. I wrap one arm around her waist from behind, then my free hand slips between her legs.
My lips find her neck. “Are you sure?” I mumble against her skin, like always, because I need to hear the words from her lips.
“Yes,” Finch gasps as she arches into me.
The feeling of her pressed into me is all the encouragement I need. I reach for her hands to take them in mine then lean forward fast, using my body weight to do as she asks, because that seems more controlled than just shoving her onto a surface with my hands. I pin her hands against the table with my own and Finch whines, then writhes against me, so I pull back.
As if remembering my request, Finch looks back at me. Our eyes meet and she extends a hand in my direction, so I take her hand and our fingers interlock. I take a moment to look at her like this—bent over, brows knitted together with frustration, her eyes taking me in as mine do the same to her. It’s a mix of our fingers locking and the eye contact, honestly, that makes me lose all sense entirely.
Don’t ask me anything. Don’t ask me the color of Finch’s shirt. Don’t even ask me my name. At some point, my pants are discarded and I am reduced to a whimpering mess as Finch and I join together. She whimpers, too, and suddenly I’m moving in response to her noises at a pace my hips set for me before my brain can even catch up to think about it.
I glance away, breathless, down to where we join and then come apart and then join again, but the sight goes straight through me. I look back at Finch almost frantically, desperate to meet her gaze, and I do—except there’s this look on her face completely foreign to the one before. Her lips are parted slightly, brows raised together in the center, completely overwhelmed by the pleasure of it all.
Something about the look on her face makes me pick up the pace.
I move a hand to her shoulder to keep her in place, and that look on her face—completely blissful as I fuck her—remains. Yes, I’m cursing, because apparently all the years of restraint regarding swearing go out the window when it concerns something like this.
“Grace,” Finch moans, fingers still wrapped around mine, loose but still there, present. “Ryland—”
Oh, God, the way she says my name—
I try to focus on the look on her face instead of my own mounting pleasure because it’s all I can do to stop myself from coming apart entirely. I end up just finding a deeper kind of enjoyment, though, in the way she reacts to me—in the way each movement of my hips, the way we come crashing together, seems to send her into an even loftier state of bliss.
It’s not even about me at this point. It’s about her—the way she reacts, the way she gets off to me. I think I’d let her do anything, really. She can ask me for anything she wants as long as I get to see and feel her come apart around me. As long as I get to be the one to give her what she wants.
My fingers dip down to draw circles between her legs. The noises the pressure there draws from her—and the way her body reacts around me—does things to me I couldn’t put into words if I tried. I don’t stop the pace we’ve set as I lean forward, wrap an arm around her waist, kiss her neck, and mumble her name into her skin—Ilya, not Finch, just Ilya, because it seems more personal.
I try to lock in when I feel the beginning of my climax building, but I just end up focusing on two things at once: the feeling of Finch around me as I slide in and out and the immediate panic of a man whose mate doesn’t mind it when he doesn’t pull out but is panicking about it anyway.
I spend too much time thinking about the condoms in the medical cabinet—the ones we should definitely be using, the ones I stared at, confused, for way too long the first time I saw them, only to realize it was Ilyukhina's idea of a joke—to have the time, in the end, to do anything about my dilemma. My body decides that it's time when Finch comes: I feel her shudder around me as her body beckons mine to do the same.
The sound of my name on her lips makes me come undone before I can do anything about it, hips arching forward in smaller thrusts as the last of my climax spills out of me. I just whimper incomprehensibly, too overwhelmed by the pleasure of it all to be embarrassed about how much my mate has reduced me to a stammering mess.
A small noise slips out from Finch as she rides out the last of the waves of pleasure, and we linger there in the aftermath, breathless as we try to catch up to reality. My head is fuzzy, which is new and nice, because I haven’t felt able to relax like this in weeks. Is this why people do this? Maybe we should do this more.
Sure, we’ve had sex before, but something about what we just did feels different this time. More final.
It is, in a sense.
I bring my lips to Finch’s neck because I need the contact as a distraction. “We should do this more,” I murmur against her skin.
She taps my arm, so I straighten up and we part. Finch turns around to face me, then she kisses me—softer this time, once or twice, before she pulls back.
“Really?” She murmurs against my lips. “I would’ve thought you’d be saying it’s a waste of energy.”
“It is,” I reply. “It’s still worth it, though.”
“Wow. Look at you.” Finch pokes me in the chest with a finger. “A new Ryland Grace.”
I roll my eyes. “Don’t go spreading it around.”
“Who would I even tell?”
I huff a laugh, then cup her cheek, and I almost mention Rocky—because he was awful regarding human mating habits when it came to meddling in our relationship—then decide not to, because I don’t want to sour the brief moment of peace we’ve managed to curate for ourselves after weeks of restlessness.
Instead, I kiss her gently. “I’m going to have to wash this shirt.”
Finch huffs a laugh. “I’ll do it. It’s my fault. You can take it off now, if you want to.”
“You just want to see me shirtless.”
“I do.” She thumbs at the bottom of my shirt. “Off.”
I huff a laugh. “Alright, alright.”
I swap my shirt out for my jumpsuit pants and throw the shirt into our pile of laundry in the corner of the room. Finch excuses herself to the wash room, I change, and by the time she returns I’ve already made a nest out of our bedding and the lucky blanket. We’ve slept here, in the middle of the room, every day for the past few weeks. There’s no point sleeping separately anymore.
I hand Finch her sleeping clothes when she sits down next to me. “Here.”
“Thanks,” Finch says, taking them from me with a small smile. “This really is the height of romance.”
I huff a laugh and shift the blanket higher with one hand. “Yeah. Sleeping on bedding on the floor of a spaceship. We’re definitely rom-com levels of romance right now.”
Finch smiles faintly as she changes her clothes, then she settles down next to me and hums, pleased, as her left hand finds mine. The ones with our mating ties around it.
She squeezes my fingers once. “Love you.”
I just look at her for a few long seconds. I love her, too, but something about saying the words out loud feels terrifying despite the fact that we’ve done it before. Like each time I say those three words out loud, it just makes our fates more permanent. Like each time I say it, it just feels like another reminder of how real all this is.
“Love you, too,” I reply, even though it makes my throat feel tight.
I have to shake the feeling away before it becomes too much.
“So,” I say quickly, “what made you want to become an astronaut?”
Finch tilts her head up, brows rising at me. “That was quite a conversational leap.”
“I'm curious. We’ve never talked about it. We've spent so long up here busy in actual space that I never even asked you why you wanted to come up here to begin with.”
“You're avoiding something.”
“Also true. Answer the question.”
“We’ve talked about how I felt on Earth.”
“I know,” I reply, “but most people wouldn’t immediately pick a career in space because they feel like they don’t fit in.”
Finch sighs. “Well, for starters, I was involved with a research group that worked with the ISS when I was studying at the University of Cambridge. That’s how it all started.”
“Pause.” I raise a hand. “How have we never talked about you going to the University of Cambridge?”
“We’ve talked about college before.” Finch adjusts her pillow. “You with your mystery drugs and bad decisions…”
“Okay, ouch, that’s like—a violation of my trust.” I don’t mean it, and she can definitely tell that by the smile on my face. “How else was an unmedicated college student meant to get through his exams?”
“Drugs got you through finals?” Finch shakes her head at me. “You were one of those people who partied and still got good grades, weren’t you?”
“I plead the fifth.”
“So that’s a yes.” Finch sighs, then shakes her head again before looking away. “I can’t imagine you like that.”
“What? Why?”
“You’re so… patient. Composed.”
“Composed?” I laugh. “You think I’m composed?”
“Well, no,” Finch replies, which just makes me laugh again. “I just mean that you don’t seem like the type of person who would take drugs from strangers. You seem like the type of person that would overthink taking said drug from strangers.”
“Oh, I did all that and then I took them anyway.”
“Oh, my God. Why?”
“You’re not going to like this.”
Finch covers her face with her hands. “Ryland, just tell me.”
I huff a laugh. “College was not an easy time. I had no family left at that point, I was a nervous wreck, and I was so riddled with anxiety that if I let myself worry about anything beyond the immediate danger of dying then I was just letting myself be consumed by anxiety. I got dragged out by my friends all the time because they told me I needed to chill out, and, you know.” I tilt my head. “Things happened. It was a lot.”
“Wow,” Finch says. “I hated people like you in college.”
“What?” I gape at her. “You were up there in your ivory tower at the University of Cambridge looking down on us lowly peasants for their drug use?”
“Yes.” She frowns at me. “I’d be there, studying for hours like a dutiful student, and then there’d be someone like you,” Finch points at me as if to make her point, “who rocked up after staying out all night and somehow still managed to get top grades.”
“Wow. Ouch.” I cover my heart, mockingly wounded. “This changes things, Finch. Actually, I think I’m going to have to—”
I reach for the red mate mark tied around my left wrist teasingly, but Finch just rolls her eyes and whacks me in the chest. I lower my hand with a snicker before I can even get anywhere close to untying it.
I wrap an arm around her. “You really never mentioned Cambridge, though.”
“Oops.”
“Did you do that on purpose?”
Finch just shrugs, which only confirms my suspicions.
I sigh. “This whole time I’ve been calling you a genius and you really are a genius.”
“You’re telling me you doubted my geniusness?”
“I don’t think that’s a word, genius.”
Finch rolls her eyes. “Says the genius who saved two planets.”
“Maybe two planets.”
We’ll have to find Rocky to save Erid, after all.
Finch nods, then a little bit of that light in her eyes dims at the reminder of where we are and what we’re here to do. I scramble to continue the conversation before it can darken anymore, then I realize that she barely told me anything in response to my question before I derailed the conversation. Typical me.
“Reasons for wanting to become an astronaut, though,” I say again, nodding. “Go.”
Finch sighs. “Well, I mentioned the research group in college.”
She looks at me pointedly, making sure I’m paying attention. I nod. My listening ears are on.
Finch continues, “I struggled for interest in anything back on Earth outside of anything related to engineering. I knew enough to know what I wanted to study in college, just not what I was going to do with my life after.” She sighs. “A couple of people in my department had connections with space programs, and my work started getting passed around through the usual academic channels.”
Finch waves a hand dismissively as she moves to lay on her back, like this isn’t a big deal and she’s not extremely cool for actually choosing to go into space.
She looks at me. “Around the same time, I was told I might be a good candidate for the next European Space Agency intake, so I was advised to prepare an application when the call opened. Not long after, I was quietly approached about opportunities through the Russian side as well, more as a would you be open to further discussions kind of thing than anything formal. I sat on it for a while because I wasn’t sure where I wanted to go with it.”
“Then?” I ask.
Finch huffs a laugh. “Then my mother called me and told me I’d be an idiot to turn down anything that even looked like a foot in the door.”
I nod. “So you chose Roscosmos?”
“Yes.” She nods. “My dad passed away shortly before, and I think at that point the whole UK reminded me of him so I wanted to get away. My mother was still in Russia and she didn’t really have family left either, so I was trying to find a sense of home I’d lost, I guess. It felt like the right decision at the time.”
I frown. “Did you have any doubts about it?”
“Not doubts, per se, just… different avenues I could go down. Regardless of the option I chose, I felt like I could either be down on the ground, living a life I knew I would never be satisfied with, or I could do something incredible in space. Maybe I could even feel hopeful about the future for once.”
“And it worked?” I ask. “Space actually made you feel that way?”
Finch gives me a look that is half smile, half grimace. “Space and more, Grace. I felt it with you, too.”
Felt. It’s hard not to catch the specifics of the word. I know what she’s talking about—that hopeful feeling we both had at the start of our journey back to Earth. The home we were imagining we'd live in and the lives we might lead.
I squeeze her hand. “We’re going to find him,” I say, even though my voice goes a little hoarse. “It’ll be worth it.”
Do you have any examples of what Grace and Finch's mate bands look like? I know it's fabric tied around their wrists but I loved the details they chose for each other. Maybe they could add Eridian charms to them at some point or Rocky could make them some, like Eridian jewelry? Since it's meant to replace the Eridian mate marks. Either way I think it's super cool
okay i didn't realize how much i needed to draw these. literally, because i searched for pictures for you and found absolutely nothing matching what i was imagining in my mind. here they are!! they basically used whatever they could on the hail mary to put these together. the "wire" grace used is the tubing stuff around it stripped reallllly thin.
finch wears hers over her palm more because of the burns from when she tried to lift rocky (rip, it's ok girl, it was a bad time all around). grace absolutely fiddles with the string and accidentally unties it every time then goes to finch with his tail between his legs and asks her to tie it back up for him.
to answer your question, i absolutely think they could add eridian charms down the line. that would be so cute!!! maybe rocky makes them some and grace's eridian students catch on and start making them charms as well.
a panel from the finch waking up chapter from stuck in the middle with you because i think it's funny that her immediate reaction upon waking up with no memories is that she's been kidnapped and she needs the pen as a weapon. finch are you okay?
