not doing wip weds game this week so instead for wednesday you get one (1) snippet of a wip:
Stratt pauses, turning slightly towards him to look him up and down. The guards walking alongside her stop and do the same. He’s pretty sure he isn’t imagining the way a couple of them put their hands on their weapons, but he tries not to let it visibly shake him.
“What do you want, Dr. Grace?”
“That’s it? You’re leaving?”
She shrugs. “At the school, you said there were thousands of people more qualified than you. I’ll go get one of them.”
“Are you appealing to my sense of sentimentality?” Stratt turns fully towards him then, her eyebrows arched just so into an expression of disbelief. “I don’t have time for that. I don’t have time for ego. You know what I have time for, Dr. Grace? Dozens of heads of state and university presidents, begging me for samples for their labs. Each of them will only get three or four cells as is.”
“I can do more for you than them.” I’m your soulmate! he thinks incredulously. Or at least, she’s his soulmate.
“Yes! I’m—I have research experience no one else does. You said it—everyone knew I could have led the field of astrobiology if I hadn’t left. No one else is like me. No one else has the models of novel lifeforms that I do.”
“I can recreate your expertise elsewhere. You have been out of the field for some time. I can shape another scientist to be what I want.”
Oh, god, she’s going to make him beg. Grace squirms. He wants this. It’s embarrassing how much he wants this, but he does.
“I—God, Stratt. I want to be on the project. I want to work with Astrophage. I want to—I want to help the world.” He takes a deep breath. “Please, let me stay on the project.”
Her hairline is a high aspiration but her eyebrows are reaching for the stars.
“I left you three cells.”
Grace’s stomach flips immediately. He can stay—oh, god, he can stay. This is the most important thing he’ll ever do.
Then her words catch up to him.
She left him three cells.
She already left him Astrophage! He didn’t have to beg at all! She just let him do that for fun!
“Three cells,” he repeats, a little flat. She tips her head to the side, briefly, a sharp movement of equivocation.
“Plus the one you killed.”
Oh, god, he hates her. Grace groans and puts his hands over his face, and he’d swear he sees the corner of her mouth raise in a mean little smirk.
“Why’d you let me talk so long?” He moans through his fingers. She huffs—he thinks it’s a laugh. It’s not fair for it to be such a nice sound when it’s at his expense like that.
“You seemed like you needed to get it off your chest,” she says, and tosses him something. He catches it. It’s his Earth beanbag. She freaking nicked it. “Get to work, Dr. Grace. I’ll leave the lab up. Now that you’ve promised me you can give me what no one else can, I expect results.”
Without waiting for an answer, she turns, ducks into the SUV (someone opens the darn door for her!), and is driven off.
origamiaround
baratheonpilled
prguitarman
titsay
2087
