Between Stratt & Ilyukhina

Summer (She/Her) 18+ - love comedy love angst - requests are OPEN but nothing is guaranteed …

Ryland Grace x Reader

Was Any of It True? (COMING SOON)

Eva Stratt x Reader

Harness Your Hopes

Olesya Ilyukhina x Reader

Stonehenge (COMING SOON)

Thoughts + Blurbs

Imagine being Stratt

Drunk Ilyukhina

You wake up next morning to her gathering her clothes, looking for a way out of your apartment— but she can’t resist the way you look at her, asking her to stay. Breakfast. Okay, fine, just coffee. And something in her chest, maybe deeper, in her ribs, tells her this is dangerous. It’s real bad. She’s 2 months into training and she can’t afford to love someone right now. But she finds herself in your kitchen, talking to you and realizing she could do this all day. So she stays, and loves— until she really has to go. And you realize okay so maybe she wasn’t joking about the whole astronaut thing.

You recall the memory of running into some of her work friends— and they had stared at you so strangely when you joked about marrying her in a couple years, especially the blonde one with the dumb glasses— and everything starts dawning on you. Oh. You’re really never going to see her again.

And before she leaves, when you’re pressed up against her, skin to skin, listening to her humming a nameless song, and wondering if you should ask her to stay, if that’s too selfish of you, she says:

“You are like…”

She searches for the right words, creasing her brows.

“A rock in my shoe.”

You laugh.

“Wow. Okay.”

She shakes her head, smiling.

“You know what I mean.”

Her fingers drift through your hair as the last of the sunlight spills into the room.

“I can still keep walking. But it would hurt. Every single step.”

Ilyukhina traces absent circles against your arm while the sun hangs low above the horizon. It looks no different than it always has, spilling honey-colored light across the floor.

And the sun is so radiant that your eyes surrender before you can see it disappear under the line. Every dawn convinces you there’s just as much light as yesterday. That you will wake up tomorrow to the same pale glow stretching across the morning.

It’s so bright that you can’t ever see it diminishing.

But it is.

…

Pairing: Eva Stratt x Reader

Synopsis: Eva finds you crying on the stairwell. She responds the best she can, and as always, it isn’t enough.

Contains: Angst, unrequited (?) love, sleep deprivation, crying, “maybe in another life,” slow burn? Idk, it’s kind of funny imo. Stratt character study.

Words: 1186 (unedited)

Notes: first fic kinda nervous… heavily inspired by that one scene in The Fall Guy

Your earphones are turned up just loud enough to soften the research facility.

It’s never quiet here. Beneath the music, a constant subsonic hum from the coolant pumps pulse through the walls. Nothing can drown those out— not even when you’re hiding in the emergency stairwell, knees drawn up to your chest.

Your shift ended hours ago. There was a time you stayed late because the work fascinated you. Astrophages were impossible creatures— violated everything you believed about biology. They drew energy from the sun, slowly diminishing the heat. Every paper answered one question and raised hundreds more.

You loved chasing those questions. And whenever you had an answer, you’d bring it to Stratt.

She never praised people lightly. She’d read through every line in silence, listen to your words with furrowed brows— most of the time she’d find a tiny flaw, a small miscalculation.

The rare times she didn’t, you’d revel in her short approval.

Sometimes, you wonder if you’d still be here if she weren’t. It’s a terrible, fleeting thought that makes your stomach churn. Without you, a quarter of the world’s population would die out in the next 30 years. And Somehow, somewhere along the way, your heart decided to make this about one person.

But Stratt belongs to this mission long before she could ever belong to another person.

You know that. You’ve always known that.

The song changes again, into something embarrassingly sentimental.

You slept maybe four hours a night for weeks. You’ve been camping out in the facility, going home just to change clothes and remind yourself you still have a life outside these walls.

Exhaustion has thinned down your defenses, letting the tender lyrics of unrequited love slip through. That irritating feeling in your chest tightens, and somewhere in between the bridge and the chorus, your eye starts to burn.

You let the tears fall, curling into yourself. It’s strangely relieving, knowing you’re alone in the stairwell, with nothing but the bittersweet melodies accompanying you. You close your eyes and mouth the lines, letting them carry the unexpressed thoughts you’ve spent months pushing back—

“What are you doing?”

Your eyes snap open at the voice, body jerking upright so quickly the earbuds tumble into your lap.

Eva Stratt stands above you, her ginger hair tied loosely behind her shoulders. Her eyes search yours with the same expression she’s worn the first day you’d met her, when she appeared at your apartment. It was a look of quiet confidence and exhaustion, calling you by your full government name, and escorting you into the sleek black government car that carried you to here, the project site.

“Eva.”

Your voice, embarrassingly rough, echoes throughout the metal stairs.

“Uh, just,” you clear your throat, hurriedly wiping your eyes. “Hanging out.”

She glances at the empty space around you.

“By the stairwell?”

“Yes.”

“Alone?”

You look down.

“…Everyone else went home.”

You cringe at how pathetic you must look— with the damp sleeve of your shirt, to the earbuds tangled in your lap. The faint tracks of your tears across your cheeks, beginning to dry.

“Have you been crying?”

“No.”

Warmth creeps up your neck. You don’t even know why you bother lying.

“Clean your face,” she says.

She waits while you rub at your face. Only then does she lower herself onto the step beside you.

“You’re upset.”

It’s not a question. You’re upset. If she’s curious about why, she does not pry immediately.

‘It’s better this way,’ she had said when you had asked her to dinner after another 14-hour day. You cried that day too.

“It’s nothing big.”

“Then it should be easy to explain.”

A pathetic laugh escapes you.

You wish.

“It isn’t.”

“Hm,” she hums. “You went home twice in the last eleven days.”

You blink. How does she know that?

“Your badge logs.”

“You check those?”

“I check everyone’s.”

You nod. Sure. As if she has time to check on everyone’s badge logs.

Hope is a dangerous thing.

“You’re exhausted. You need sleep. I don’t know why you keep refusing to put your health before your work. I need you alive.”

“I’m…”

You frown. The word ‘sorry’ catches in your throat. You’re sick of being sorry.

“…I can’t stop the sun from dimming. I can’t change the laws of physics. I can’t force Tau Ceti to give up its secrets any sooner.”

Eva says nothing.

“The only thing I can do,” you swallow, “is work.”

“You already work.”

“I can work better. Every problem I solve is one less problem at your desk.”

You risk a glance at her.

“…Maybe I can lift some weight off your shoulders.”

You try to laugh as you say it, as if it’s a joke.

It does not land on Eva Stratt.

She stares back at you, her lips tight. During the silence, you find yourself imagining the words she could be swallowing. By now, you should know better.

“You’re doing plenty.”

“I can do more.”

“I don’t expect you to. I already trust your calculations before anyone else’s.”

“Eva…”

“You’ve prevented two major catastrophic errors in the last four months.”

“I don’t want your professional respect.”

The words leave you before you can stop them.

You open your mouth. Close them. Try again.

“I want…”

You falter. Eva waits. When it becomes clear you can't finish the sentence, she does it for you.

“I can’t give you what you want.”

Something stings behind your ribs. It’s familiar.

“…Yeah.” Your mouth feels dry. “Okay. Figures.”

This time, the joke lands. A smile appears on her lips, the lines beside her eyes creasing as she turns her head back at the stairs leading down.

“My life belongs to this project.”

You try to listen to the tone of her voice, searching for an ounce of regret. Of guilt.

“It has to.”

You find neither of those things. Maybe you just don’t know how to. You were always better at solving problems and working on equations than deciphering relationships.

That’s why you’re here.

“If you continue like this, your health will deteriorate. Your work will deteriorate. You will eventually collapse.” Eva looks at you, holding your gaze. “How does that help me?”

God, you’re so sick of feeling sorry.

“I want to matter to you.”

“You do.”

“Not like that.”

“I am sorry,” she says, as gentle as she can. “that those are different things.”

When she sees that you have nothing more to say, she stands up, pulling out her phone from her pocket.

“I’ve called the car around.”

You watch as she heads to the door. Beneath the neon-green exit light the neon-green exit light, her ginger hair loses its warmth, fading into a dull color.

“If you really cared about me,”

Her hand rests against the handle.

“You’d sleep."

The door swings shut with metallic clang. The hum of the pumps comes back, layered with the faint sound of a song seeping out of the earbuds resting in your lap.

And because Eva Stratt told you to sleep, you push the earbuds into your pocket, and start down the stairs.