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Eva Stratt is the most powerful person in the world. The top scientists are at her beck and call. Her crimes, now, are innumerous, but she remains free. She can do what she wants, exempt from retaliation until the world loses hope in Project Hail Mary. She knows everything there is to know about every person on her ship. And it is for that reason that there is a mandatory 8-hours rest break every day. She doesn’t care when it’s taken, only that it is. She will not have deadly mistakes made by over-tired scientists. Not for this. Not when the entire world rests in her hands. On the ship, what she says goes, but she is exempt from her own rules. While her scientists sleep, she sits in her room with her laptop, bearing the burden of bureaucracy that even she can’t sidestep.
Eva Stratt is the most powerful person in the world. Her power comes at the cost of having the Earth’s blood on her hands. Of losing everyone. For who is going to get close to the one marked for death if it all goes wrong? Who is going to get close to the one who has killed, who is killing, who will kill? Who has destroyed a continent? Two? Who, even in the face of all this sin, still has no regret? No one, no one, and she cannot blame them. It doesn’t matter anyway, because she cannot afford any distractions, any attachments, anything. Not even a dog.
Isn’t it hard, asking everybody to… y’know… Dr. Ryland Grace asks.
It really isn’t. She wonders if this will be it, the way he stares at her. But then he just smiles, something soft, and salutes before heading back to join the party. And as her feet carry her down after him, as her hand takes the microphone, and as her mouth opens to sing, she can’t deny that despite all odds, despite her best efforts, she’s come to care for Grace, and seemingly he for her, too.
From the moment he arrived on the ship and she escorted him into the meeting room, he has been at her side every day ever since. Every meeting, briefing, argument. He is, for all intents and purposes, her second in command, a position he didn’t fall into by accident, but one he has proven his worth for. Even as he spins in his chair and spills his Skittles, when she looks to him for answers, he has one ready. There is no one’s scientific expertise she trusts more.
There is no one’s opinion, period, she trusts more, aside from her own. He jokes, he hesitates, but he does not bullshit. Even when he doesn’t like the answer, he doesn’t get into mind games the way her other scientists might. She does not have time for games, and his honesty is a blessed relief.
She is certain he is much of the same mind, for a similar reason as the rumors that circulate around the ship (she knows everything about everyone. Including the whispers). Grace is incredibly tactile, but he is selective toward whom. She doesn’t even think he realizes he’s doing it, when he presses his leg against hers as they sit in meetings, or brushes her shoulder with his own as they walk, enough times in one span that she knows it’s not an accident. Unconscious, sure, but not by chance.
I didn’t mean to bother you.
You don’t bother me.
She almost loathes the day he figures it out. While everyone else leaves her a wide berth, an invisible line they’ve all agreed not to cross, only Grace dares to come closer. She is not some mythical figure to him, no carefully chosen words lest he incur her wrath. When she meets his eyes, they stare back, calm and level, clear like he is seeing her, not the specter. He is not afraid of her. Up on this cold and windy pillar alone, the warmth of his presence reminds her that she is still human. That she is still alive.
She isn’t exactly surprised when the rumor makes its way to her ears. Grace is not always in his lab, as she is not always in her office. Sometimes they will sit together on the deck, or an empty conference room, just for a change of pace. Sometimes he will lean in to show her something and stay close. Sometimes she is on a chair and he has pages of math spread out on the floor, head against her leg as he rubs his eyes and tries to make sense of all the numbers. Sometimes, when he’s staring too hard at the numbers and can’t hear her, she tugs gently on his hair, watching for his eyes to focus back up before she repeats her question. Perhaps against her better judgment, she lets her hand stay. His hair is soft, softer than she deserves, but he doesn’t seem to mind that she steals it for herself.
She doesn’t bring it up, and neither does he. Whether he knows about it or not, she sees no reason to talk about it. She knows what he is to her, and it does not matter that everyone else is wrong.
⸻
She finds herself in the usual situation for a weeknight: in her office, papers piled high on the desk. Grace is across from her, working on his own tasks. Though his task, at the moment, seems to be falling asleep while staring at his tablet.
She signs a form and sets it off to the side to be scanned and filed. Rarely does she let her coffee get cold, but there is still a little left in the cup on her desk, in case she needed it to get through the last of the papers. Or, last of what’s in front of her right now. There are always more.
Grace’s tablet hits the desk with a thump that makes him jerk back awake. In the periphery, she can see him shake his head and scrub a hand over his face.
There is no reason she has to finish these papers here. At least, back in her portable, she can make a fresh cup of coffee. Maybe take a shower if she has time. With another form signed, she sets it off to the side and sweeps up the rest, dumping them into her bag with her tablet and laptop. She takes the last sip of her coffee and tosses the empty cup into the trash as she stands up and heads toward the door.
“Come along, Dr. Grace.”
Grace squints at her, sleep-deprived brain making him slow on the uptake. She patiently waits as the spark lights in his eyes and he grabs his stuff, hurrying after her as she hits the light switch. They make it out of the building before she speaks.
“You should’ve gone home earlier.”
He doesn’t reply at first, and she starts reminding him about the dangers of sleep deprivation, even though she knows that he is well aware.
“It isn’t,” he interrupts.
She pauses, looking over. “I’m sorry?”
He meets her eyes for just a moment before looking back down at the ground. “It isn’t home, my portable.” He puts his hands in his jacket pockets and buries his chin in his collar, like he’s cold, even though it’s relatively mild out tonight. “A bed is a bed is a chair.” He shrugs. “Sleep in them all the same.”
Stratt considers her own portable. As she spends just enough time in it to sleep, shower, and rarely eat a meal, it’s pretty bare. She didn’t bother to bring anything from home to decorate with. It was unnecessary, and would’ve only served as a distraction.
But Grace is not like her. Where a room goes silent when she walks in, where a chill is left in her wake, Grace brings light and warmth. She does not have time for creature comforts, cannot have time. But Grace, with his endless requests for Skittles and Twizzlers, the googly eyes on lab equipment, the sickening amount of cream and sugar he puts in his coffee—he lives by it.
It might be nice, for just a little while, to experience such things.
He is so warm, and she understands now, why the chair is an equally appealing option. At least there, he is surrounded by the soft clinks and clicks of lab equipment, or people chattering among themselves.
Their portables are equally distanced from the path, but he’s followed her over to hers. She can see him out of the corner of her eye, almost sadly looking over at his.
She walks up the few steps to the door and unlocks it, but hesitates a moment before opening it. She cracks it open, then turns. Grace is watching her, looking lost for all the world, try as he might not to. He’s an open book when he’s tired.
She’s read his file (multiple times, even). She knows everything there is to know, except for this: why he stays, and why she lets him. When she’d tracked him down, it’d been purely for business. He had the credentials she needed, and he was in a position she could leverage. A piece in the ever-changing game that she could use and sacrifice as needed.
But now, he is her de facto second in command. Even when she is short, even when she’s thrown him into situations with no warning, he’s still there. The end of the world makes people do strange things, she supposes.
And she can admit, just to herself, just right now, that it has been a long time since she’s seen him as just business. He is a confidant. A friend. Despite her best intentions, despite her rules (no distractions, no attachments), she turns to him like a flower to the sun. He disarms her in a way that should be concerning, but that she can’t help to admire. People do not look at her and crack jokes and get her to smile, but Grace has done it time and time again. Despite what the world demands, try as she might, at the end of the day, she is only human.
“Sleep with me, tonight,” she says softly. Not phrased as a question, but he knows her well enough by now to understand that it is.
He startles. “I don’t—”
“I know. That is not what I asked.”
After a moment, he nods, and she leaves the door open for him to follow.
She gets ready in the bathroom first. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed when she returns, fiddling with a loose thread on his jeans. She digs in her bottom dresser drawer. When they’d moved off the ship, some of the boxes had gotten mixed up. She’d ended up with a pair of his sweatpants and a shirt. They come in handy now. She tosses them to him, and he looks at them, then her, with surprise.
Let this one stay a mystery. It’s the only thing mysterious about her to him, anymore.
As he changes, she crosses the room to get some water from the kitchenette. She could make coffee, but the walk over woke her up enough that she’d rather make it later, lest it get cold.
She hears Grace leave the bathroom as she puts the water pitcher back in the fridge. She turns just in time to watch as he flops, face down, onto the bed, waiting a breath before getting in properly. Once he’s seemingly settled, she sits down next to him with her laptop.
He turns, squinting at her screen. “You’re still working?”
Rather than reply to the obvious, she reaches out and pulls the covers up over his face. He huffs and mutters something she can’t make out, but curls in on himself and tucks the blanket under his chin.
He scoots closer to look at her screen, though she’s certain the wall of legal text is far from interesting. He seems comfortable, though, and she rests a hand in his hair, the top long enough to idly play with as she scrolls and reads.
A few minutes later, his eyes are blinking slowly, staying closed a little more each time. “You need sleep too,” he mumbles. “Even though you’re… all powerful… the sleep rule should apply.”
She can sleep when this is all over. Or when she’s dead, whichever comes first. Suppressing a yawn, she reaches for her cup on the nightstand and, finding only water, remembers that she’d neglected to make coffee earlier. She could get up and make some. But she’s tired, and sitting next to one of the only people she can’t deny. A few hours won’t hurt. In the interest of making sure her lead scientist meets his sleep quota.
She closes the lid of her laptop and sets it on the nightstand, then turns off the lamp. Moonlight faintly filters in from the window over the sink. She gets properly under the covers and looks over. A queen provides them plenty of room, but Grace has ignored that in favor of crowding her side, though he still leaves some space between them. She can’t find it in herself to mind one bit.
“It’s cold,” he complains, words half-intelligible as sleep takes him.
He’s the scientist. He should know that cooler sleeping environments provide better sleep quality. She doesn’t have another blanket, so she does the next best (inadvisable, but if she’s going to break the rules, she’ll break them all now and be done with it) thing and tugs him closer. Despite his squeak of surprise, he goes like a ragdoll as she lays one of his arms over her side and tucks his head under her chin.
He is warm. Heat radiates from his skin, sinking into her own. His hand finds her hair tie and gently tugs it out. He runs a hand through her hair, and she resists the urge to frown as her scalp protests the change in tension. He lets his hand rest at the back of her neck, fingers slowly wrapping a lock and then letting it go.
She mirrors him, hair at the nape of his neck much shorter than her own but enough to tug gently on. He sighs, his breath warm where the collar of her shirt meets skin.
In the morning, she will be back to work, to rules, to being the most powerful woman in the world. But for just this moment, she accepts the gentle fingers in her hair. The scratch of stubble against her arm and the tickle of hair on her neck.
She is here. She is alive.
For just this moment, she can breathe.
He is warm. She steals it while she still can, and lets herself play at being human for a little while longer.
⸻
Now there is a bed, big enough to fit two, but only filled with one. She pulls the covers tighter, knowing it a futile effort because the cold isn’t in her room, it’s in her. Shallow breaths turn into halting, stuttering sobs as she fails to choke them back.
There is no hand in her hair. No sleep-sweet voice to remind her she’s human. She folds in on herself, curling around something that is no longer there. That, by her own blood-stained hands, will never be there again.