Project Hail Mary | Ryland Grace | STEM stuff
AuADHD grad student spectroscopist who's therapist asked if it'd help to put their daydreams down on paper~
(Cover art by Crystal Scott)
ah- a phm x martian fanfic BUT no astrophage so grace remains a middle school teacher and is kinda like "im never gonna match who my ex replaced me with." that's until he meets you-
Imma write this, idc if it's only me who reads it. but i'd appreciate if someone else does.
synopsis. vignettes of your quiet love with ryland, and the future you once imagined together. a life that never got a chance, yet continues to linger. because some people leave, but they never really disappear (3.9k words)
note. atp all i can really do is say sorry . loosely based off that scene in the romeo and juliet play w sadie when this song plays aka not a lot, just forever
I.
“I remember when Ryland used to…”
The words fall lightly on your co-worker’s mouth—like the name doesn’t mean anything. Like it doesn't bear weight, simply tossed between sips of coffee and passed around in conversation.
But for you, it’s like the world stops turning, solar system collapsing in consequence.
Your smile flickers from a story she’s saying that you don't remember anymore, something you don’t want to listen to anymore in fear of the stubborn lament sitting deep in your chest.
She doesn’t notice. She keeps talking—line after another of insignificant things. They all fall short to his name.
Your body language twists. Eyes lowered, coffee untouched. Quiet.
It’s as if the mention of a name, Ryland’s name, ripped open something you thought you had sewn shut. Or at least, attempted to. Something you’d never really forgotten, but buried with the busyness that comes with the years passing.
You suppose your co-worker’s indifference is because she never really knew him like you did, because she’d mentioned countless ex-boyfriends and talks of closure like it’s conversation. Something that can be scheduled. But grief doesn’t respect calendars, not even when it’s been years.
Perhaps she just doesn’t know what it’s like to carry someone around like a bruise you keep pressing on just to make sure it still hurts. Like the evocation of pain is the only proof that it was real. That he really happened.
She just doesn’t know the grieving over someone that’s living.
II.
You met early spring.
You had black stains on your fingers and the ghost of a literary piece on your lips, chanting and reciting quietly under your breath to remember the lesson you’d be teaching on your first day at Cleveland Middle School.
And you’re too distracted that you don’t prepare for the gust of wind that steals the papers in your arms and sends them flying in the air, and eventually scatters them on the ground.
Ryland sees you outside the library, crouched over spilled notes. It’s instinct the way he helps, and it’s genuine the way you smile in return.
“Sorry.” You laugh, tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear as you accept the stack he hands over. “Apparently I’m losing a pretty hefty fight against the weather.”
“That’s okay. The weather’s definitely cheating. I mean, come on, using the wind is quite petty, if you ask me.” He smiles easily. Always so easy. From this moment and the days that will follow, but you don’t know that yet.
Then, he glances at one of the pages. “Lesson plans?”
Your smile sheepishly at the man, taking the papers from him as he hands them to you. “Yeah. I’m assuming you teach here too? With the tie and blazer and everything…”
“Guilty.” His mouth twitches into a wider smile. Outstretched. “Middle school science.”
Then, he offers a hand. “Ryland Grace.”
You tell him your name, taking his hand in yours in a firm handshake. Somehow, it feels like it fits perfectly together. Neither of you know the future waiting for you.
“Nice to meet you.” He says, smiling in that slightly awkward, earnest way. “Hopefully next time the wind is less involved.”
“That depends.” You smile. “Are you planning on being there to rescue my papers again?”
That’s all it took. Spilled notes and a few shy conversations after classes.
Love didn’t come loud. It didn’t crash through his chest or scream upon its arrival like he thought it would. It was quieter than that. Softer.
Lingering in your classroom long after the final bell, half-finished conversations carried between classrooms and coffee, recommending novels he swore he wouldn't like and inevitably loving them, listening to him ramble about endless things, and the realization that his favorite part of every day had somehow become spending time with you.
Four steps instead of two now.
It was love before he even knew it was.
It was love as he caught himself looking for you in every room.
It was always love.
III.
“Ryland?”
He looks up from the stack of papers on his desk, pen caught between his fingers. It pauses mid-air as his focus shifts to you—you, currently standing in the doorway of his classroom, holding a book he’d lent you three weeks ago. The one he'd spent an embarrassing amount of time choosing because he thought you'd like it.
He really wanted to impress you despite only knowing each other a few months.
“I finished it.” You smile. You always smile, and it always messes him up.
Then and there, he could hear his heart start beating faster, growing tenfold if it was possible (it isn’t, he would know.)
“Oh.”
At that moment, Ryland seriously considers death by jumping out the window as a viable option. Why is it that his knee-jerking reaction to you smiling at him is a dumb “oh”.
“I liked it.” You prod, tilting your head and the small gesture makes Ryland’s hands sweat.
Still, the relief is instant. Nothing could’ve prepared him for the restlessness as he was waiting to know if you’d liked his recommendation. He lets go of a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
“Yeah? You did?”
“Yeah.” You take a few steps closer to where he’s sitting now. “Actually, I think I liked it because it reminded me of someone.”
His stomach drops. The beating of his heart is back, the bated and held breath, the tense shoulders as he looks up at where you’re standing. Nearer, and nearer, and a step after another.
“Really? Haha, I wonder who that could be.”
“I wonder too, Ryland.”
You’re looking at him, and it drives everything from his mind but the narrow focus of when you might say something next, of what you were going to do next. Because Ryland has loved you since the day he met you, and somewhere along the months of knowing you, it had only really grown. It grew and settled in spaces he didn’t know could be filled with love.
When he looks back at you, there is no other feeling in his heart.
He tries to breathe. In and out and in and out, and you don’t say anything just yet, and the world closes in on him and he can’t breathe in and out and in and out, and then you smile again.
“You know, for a smart guy, you're taking a really long time to figure this out.”
And suddenly, the possibility of reciprocation bursts around his black-and-white world.
IV.
You get the news of your publication on a Friday night.
Ryland remembers because it was raining, and he'd almost texted to ask if you wanted to reschedule your plans to meet. The weather was miserable, and Ryland was only still at school because he'd forgotten a stack of quizzes he needed to grade.
But you came anyway. You’d ran to him, ran to Cleveland Middle School, soaked to the bone, clutching a crumpled email printout half-ruined by the storm, and you’d launched yourself into his arms as he was waiting for the rain to calm.
He nearly drops his umbrella, nearly drops the bag he’s holding with the quizzes he’d come back for as he catches you in his arms.
"Ryland! They accepted it!"
"Wait. Wait, your paper?" His eyes widen in recognition, momentarily letting go of the hug to hold you by your forearms, pulling you back so he can look at you.
You nod frantically, and he’s still holding you.
“Yes, my paper.” You tell him, in such an exhilarated tone indicative of pure, unadulterated happiness that it makes Ryland’s heart burst to listen to. “They’re publishing it.”
His mouth falls open.
"Oh my God. That’s huge! You’ve… you’ve been working on that for so long!"
You laugh, and the sound comes out halfway between a sob and pure excitement. "I did it."
"You did." He pulls you back against him, arms tightening around your shoulders in a proper embrace this time.
"I actually did it." You whisper into his shoulder, breathless from when you’d been running earlier and from the rush of emotions you haven’t recovered from yet. “I suppose this means I can stop ambushing you with drafts mid-grading papers.”
“I don’t know. I think I’d miss it. I liked reading them, anyway.”
That day, you smelled like rain and printer ink and something that could only be described as triumph. And your cheeks were red from the cold and the rush. And your hair was a mess, and your hands were cold, but he felt the warmest he’s ever had, holding you.
And in that moment, he was sure.
It had to be you.
Ryland Grace had always been the type to wish for more time—to solve a problem, to finish a project, to understand something that didn't quite make sense yet. But in this moment, with you like this in his arms and listening to your heartbeat race with excitement, he’d decided he’d like to just freeze it here.
In this moment with you. Always with you.
V.
Then one evening, sitting beside you in the familiar quiet of your classroom, he finally found the courage to say it.
Or at least, some version of it.
The confession arrived clumsy and stumbling, caught between half-finished thoughts and nervous laughter. Every sentence seemed to trip over the next one.
But you listened. You always did.
And when he finally ran out of ways to avoid it, he looked at you and said the only thing left to say. The one he’d been trying to say, but couldn’t.
"I like you."
Even though love would’ve been a more appropriate word. He just didn’t want to startle you away from just how much he felt for you.
The words hang in the air, lingering there and floating around, and for a moment, the only thing Ryland could hear was the pounding of his own heartbeat.
But then you smiled, and it was something so subtle that Ryland almost missed it.
"Good.” You said quietly. "That would've been really embarrassing for me otherwise."
Ryland stared, and his heart tingled with a nudge as he realized the connotations of your words. And suddenly every fear he'd carried for so long felt ridiculous. Here you were, returning the feelings he has felt for years.
The warmth of your hand found his, threading your fingers through his as naturally as if they'd always belonged there, and the kiss that followed wasn't perfect but neither of you cared.
Because, where what-if’s would’ve sat, there is an overwhelming realization that the person you had been waiting for had been waiting all this time too.
VI.
The reception is beautiful.
Strings of warm lights hang from the trees overhead, casting everything in gold. The evening air is cool, carrying the scent of flowers and freshly cut grass. Somewhere beyond the dance floor, laughter drifts through the crowd.
Ryland notices almost none of it.
Because you're standing in front of him.
The world had watched you walk down the aisle earlier. Every guest had turned to look.
Ryland still hasn’t been able to stop staring. Even now, hours later, he still can't.
Your dress catches the glow of the lights with every movement. The fabric gathers around your feet like spilled starlight. There's a softness to your smile that has remained unchanged since the day he met you, and somehow seeing it now—with his ring on your finger and his last name newly yours—feels enough to knock the breath from his lungs all over again.
No one in this world is perfect. Ryland knows that better than most. But if perfection exists at all, he thinks it might look something like this.
The music shifts. There is the gentle sound of the piano, some strings, an acoustic guitar.
A nervous laugh escapes him before he can stop it.
"Mrs. Grace?" He says, offering his hand.
"Still sounds weird."
"Yeah?"
"A little."
"Well." A small smile tugs at his lips. "Good thing we have the rest of our lives to get used to it."
You beam, placing your hand on his and immediately, his fingers close around yours.
He draws you closer, one hand settling on the small of your back while the other remains intertwined with yours. The two of you begin to sway across the dance floor, slow and unhurried.
For a while, neither of you says anything.
And it's only somewhere near the middle of the song when he exhales a quiet laugh.
"What?" You ask softly, pulling your head back from where it had been resting on his shoulder to look him in the eyes.
His head shakes against yours.
"Nothing."
"Ryland."
"I'm just..." He glances at your joined hands. "Still trying to process that this actually happened."
Your eyebrows lift in amusement, and you can’t fight the smile that always settles on your face when you’re with him. "Our wedding?"
"Yeah." He smiles to himself. "Our wedding. Statistically speaking, the odds of two people meeting exactly when they do, becoming exactly who they are, and ending up here are ridiculously small. I mean, I met you on such a random day. What if… what if someone else had helped you then? Would things be the same now?"
You shake your head, a laugh escaping your lips.
"Only you would bring up statistics during our first dance."
"I waited until after the ceremony."
"How considerate of you. And for the record, I think we would’ve still met anyway. I think this was always destined for us.”
His smile softens, and he says, a little quieter, “Okay, then statistics worked on my side. Or destiny. I don’t know anymore. I just keep looking at you and thinking how lucky I am. I don’t care what had to transpire for this to happen. I’m just happy it did.”
The words settle between you, and your heart is bursting with so much warmth and happiness, and suddenly you notice that his eyes look suspiciously wide and he’s blinking way too much than he normally does.
"Ry, honey, are you crying?"
"No."
"Ryland."
"Maybe just a little." You laugh as a tear escapes despite his best efforts. He lets out a helpless groan as he tries to wipe it quickly. "I’m sorry."
"For what?"
"I told myself I wasn't going to do this."
"You cried during the vows."
"That was different."
"Honey."
He pulls you a little closer at the endearment, forehead finding yours. And when he looks at you, there's so much love in his expression that it almost hurts.
"I just love you so much." He whispers, and the tears continue.
VII.
A baby girl sits on the kitchen floor, holding a wooden spoon.
It is nearly as long as her arm, but she grips it with both her chubby hands anyway, dragging it across the floorboards as she makes her way toward the cabinet where you and Ryland are.
The spoon belongs to her. She likes the weight of it, and the sound it makes against the floor, and when she finds a spot in between where you and Ryland are standing, she tunnelvisions to stay there. Though, a little wobbly.
“Bow…” She sputters out, and you instinctively place down the wooden bowl on the floor where your daughter is currently standing.
There are words there if you only know to listen, and you’ve memorized the vocabulary of your daughter by heart.
She drops the spoon into a wooden bowl. Again and again and again, until she begins stirring. There is nothing in the bowl, just air, but she keeps stirring with great concentration like she sees something others don’t.
A string of sounds escapes her as she works. Little hums and murmurs that rise and fall with the movement of the spoon.
Behind her, something whistles, and it gets her attention. She watches, often, how you and Ryland cross around the house, back and forth and in perfect harmony with one another. Like now, preparing lunch together.
He’s laughing at something, and your daughter perks up at the sound. She knows that sound, hears it so many times everyday, hears it enough to distinguish that it sounds different around you. Almost softer.
Your daughter watches her father wrap an arm around your waist while waiting, and she sees you lean back against him automatically.
The little girl stirs faster.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
Then she stands, or at least attempts to. The spoon is still in her hands, and it immediately throws her off the balance she’s still learning to steady.
Before she can fall, Ryland appears. He always does.
One hand catches her under the arms, just by her belly, and his other rescues her spoon.
"There you are."
She giggles, clapping her hands as she’s hoisted into the air unexpectedly. There is a sudden change of environment as she had previously been on land. Then, when she catches sight of her spoon, she makes grabby hands at it. The spoon is returned to her immediately, and she starts pointing at the floor, where her wooden bowl is.
Ryland settles her on the ground before sitting next to her. "What are we making today?"
She looks into the empty bowl.
Then at him.
"Soup."
His eyes widen, a smile of adoration already on his lips. "No way."
The little girl nods. Very seriously.
“Honey, our daughter is making soup from scratch. I think we're witnessing greatness.”
You crouch down a little to look at your husband and your daughter. “Hm, what kind of soup, sweetheart?”
She stares down at her bowl again, that same serious expression on her face. And then, “soup soup.”
You and Ryland laugh, heart bursting in fondness. And your daughter doesn’t understand why you’re laughing but she starts to laugh too. Because her parents are laughing, and because the kitchen is warm, and because her father is sitting beside her, and because one of his hands is intertwined with yours, and because the spoon is still hers.
And because, though she does not yet have words for it, there has never been a moment in her life when she doubted she was loved.
VIII.
The laughter still bounces around the room, and the food is finally ready.
And for a moment, everything feels so real that you can almost reach out and touch it.
But your co-workers words still echo with his name, and the apartment is dim when you arrive home, dim light spilling from the corners of your room like memories refusing to fade.
The kitchen disappears, there is no bowl and no daughter holding a spoon, there is no laughter. Only silence, and the sun coming down as you click the door locked.
You stand in the doorway longer than necessary, waiting for something. But you’re not quite sure what you’re waiting for. Maybe a voice. Or footsteps. Or the familiar sound of Ryland calling your name from another room.
Nothing comes.
Of course it doesn't.
The apartment has been empty for years.
You set your keys on the counter, and you wince at the silence. It is too loud. His absence is too loud, too noticeable.
You walk past the living room, past the books he left behind, past the coffee mug you still leave out for him, past the framed photographs on tables. A life that almost happened follows you from room to room.
The wedding. The house. The daughter with his eyes and your smile and her favorite spoon.
All of it lives somewhere inside your head now. A future that never got the chance to exist.
By the time you reach the bedroom, the sun is nearly gone. And there, tucked inside the top drawer of your desk, is a red velvet box.
You don't remember the first time you found it. You only remember a long silence before you felt your face visibly break. You remember losing your composure, being reduced to a sobbing mess. You remember how hard it was to breathe. You remember screaming like flames were forced to emerge out of your throat. You remember hitting everything in sight, like your wrists were meant to be bound in chains.
You remember how the box scorched your fingers when you opened it. Inside sat a ring, waiting for a finger it will never fit, waiting for a hand to give it that will never come anymore. And beneath it, a piece of paper. Unsent.
And the painful sight of the loops and dots of his handwriting. Words that are his.
The paper’s edges are a little worn from being folded and unfolded too many times that it’s begun to tear. The ink slightly smudged where a hand trembled while writing it.
You already know every word. Still, you read it. You always do. Especially on nights like these when the silence is too loud.
You let your hand travel through the paper, tracing through his uneven handwriting, through the crossed out sentences, through paragraphs abandoned midway through, through sections rewritten multiple times. You can almost picture him doing it.
You can vividly see Ryland getting frustrated, wanting to find the perfect words, trying again and again.
You skip over most of it though. It hurts too much to do it tonight.
Instead, your eyes drift toward the bottom of the page. Toward the only line that was never crossed out, the one he seemed completely certain about.
I just don't want to imagine a future that doesn't have you in it.
Will you marry me?
You close your eyes.
The apartment is silent. There is no laughter, no wedding, no little girl stirring soup with a wooden spoon too large for her hands.
There is just you, and a future still waiting patiently between folds of paper. As if he might come home to finally deliver the speech in his handwriting and put the future in motion.
Your hands start to tremble. Not from anger, but from the weight of dreaming about a life every night and waking up to loneliness. Of feeling the shadow of a hand grazing upon yours when you see things that remind you of him—the book he’d recommended, the rain and how you’d ran to him, stale coffee and quiet conversations, and the stars.
Always the stars.
The distance between you cannot be measured in miles or cities or oceans. It is measured in light-years. Ryland Grace is hurtling through the dark, through space. He’s busy saving the world. But selfishly, you think, does he still think of you sometimes?
You have become frighteningly good at waiting, even though you know he’s never coming back.
You know because a slightly older woman with long orange-blonde hair and blue eyes had told you it was a suicide mission, that he will be remembered a hero, that she thanks you for your understanding. But you don’t understand, and you don’t think you ever could.
The ring remains in its box.
The proposal remains trapped on paper.
And you remain here, caught between what was and what could have been.
You would’ve been a good mother. A good wife.
Your thumb smooths over the final line one last time.
I just don't want to imagine a future that doesn't have you in it.
A laugh escapes you then, small and broken. Because that was exactly what you were forced to do.
the sand beneath your feet weaves its way between your toes, your knees cramping as you try to walk as steadily as you can.
it’s foggy out, just the way ryland always liked it.
you keep walking, struggling to hold yourself steady now. your lungs are fighting to keep up as you inch closer and closer to your destination.
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
the rocky sand is coarse beneath ryland’s feet as he paces up and down the shore, mind at ease as he stares off into the vast sea in front of him.
he kneels down, one hand coming to scoop up a handful of sand and watch it run between his fingers like an hourglass.
it’s warmer today— the water is slightly warmer too, just the way you always liked it.
he smiles to himself, glasses slipping down his nose as he looks down.
he brings a finger to push them back up as he returns his gaze to the water, watching the waves ripple and roll.
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
you take a deep breath, inhaling that familiar beachy musk that you have known for so much of your life and that you have come to love.
you take a seat now on the towel that you carried with you, groaning as you bend down.
your knees just aren’t what they used to be.
you press your lips together, a little solemn as you reach a hand into your bag to pull out a pack of sour skittles and the polaroid picture of ryland that you took the last time you saw him.
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
ryland looks away from the sea and up into the sky, or rather up at the top of the biosphere that the eridian scientists have engineered for him.
he swears he can feel you with him, though he knows that even if you are still alive, you’re some 16 light years away.
still, he still feels your energy at his side.
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
you rip open the pack of skittles and pretend to offer some to the wooden memorial that you erected for ryland decades ago.
a little wooden cross with the figure of an astronaut attached to the base, no larger than a roadside memorial.
“dr. ryland grace” is painted across the horizontal board, though it’s a bit faded now from enduring years of salty sea spray.
for a while, hoards of people would come leave memorial flowers. former students, leading scientists, old academic rivals— but now it’s just you.
the wind blows through your silver hair, ruffling it the way ryland used to, and for a moment it’s like he’s still here.
you used to sit together on the beach for hours. sometimes silent, sometimes deep in conversation, sometimes arguing.
the last time you were here with him, it was the latter.
they say he died in space, but somehow you can’t believe that, not when it feels like he’s right here beside you every time you come back to the beach.
you try with all your might to keep his name alive for the last few years of your life. you tell everyone the epic stories of dr. ryland grace, and you pray that they will remember them and pass them on.
and for the rest of your life, you unknowingly sit in the sand with him once a week, for he is always sitting in the sand on erid.
