littles are known grace tiny and eva!!!
Littles-are-known/Classification Agere AU for Project Hail Mary 🪐
CW: angst, prescription drug misuse ("suppressants" and stimulants), "impure"/stress-induced regression, panic attacks. || This got away from me, oops. This turned into an entire unbeta'ed 2.3k oneshot my bad o7
☆ This AU establishes age regression as common, with humans either being Littles, Caregivers, and Neutrals, though some deviation from the norm exists. "Instincts" exist between the groups and they fit together like puzzle pieces. A Caregiver can be filed as a Little's official proxy of sorts (ex. being on file as an ICE number in the hospital). Drugs exist to stop regression and instincts regarding care, but these need to be used carefully to avoid long term health consequences (seizures, heart issues, etc), dependency, drug resistance, and more. All age regression remains sfw.
☆ Grace is three things: a Little, stubborn, and a man who has gone through grad school. He's sure that he abused enough Adderall to take a few years off his life, so his inconsistent regression-suppressant use doesn't worry him.
Research, starting his life over, becoming a teacher—Grace worked his behind off to get where he was in life. He experienced no shortage of people talking down to him like he was a child, excluding him, or finding an legal-loophole to refuse him a position "just in case." He resigns himself to separating his small and big sides—shaky hands and crayons had no place in the cold, sterile environment of a laboratory.
As per the recommendation of his prescribing doctor, he takes bimonthly breaks from the drugs so he doesn't wreck himself beyond repair. It's easy to lie about a Caregiver on his file—he never gets himself into a situation where they'd call his old roommate anyway—and not have any eyebrows raised about neglect or endangerment.
The inevitable crash always has him plummeting, but the wails and fear stays confined to the walls of his apartment. He doesn't need a Caregiver—Grace has been doing this long enough on his own to know himself well enough. He buys microwave meals and makes sure his sheets are clean the day before; he cleans the result of the tiny tornado that went through his apartment the day after. He's on top of it, but if he cries because he can't kiss his own bruised knee, then that's no one's business but his own.
...Until it becomes the government's business beyond the L they put on his driver's license. And worse, the information gets into the hands of Eva Stratt—a woman who is so head-strong and serious that Grace wouldn't have guessed she was a Caregiver in a million years if it wasn't for the small pull he felt towards her.
☆ Stratt has a tendency to study everyone she interacts with like they're a bug, but it doesn't help the unease in Grace's stomach whenever she looks at him like he's something to figure out.
She saw his file and still wanted to recruit him to the Petrova Taskforce. It's not his fault if she missed something.
It's not like Grace is lying about his classification—he's been tested, stamped, and approved Little for over a decade. It's public knowledge and helps him be protected from getting fired for needing days off (that he doesn't use, but he would bend over backwards to make sure someone else got what they needed). He's just... not being as truthful as he should be.
Grace's file in the medical system reads 'Age Range: 4-6.' There's never any evidence for a provider to assume otherwise—Grace is a doctor, he should have been on top of his own life enough to be right about whatever he tells them. It's not too out of the realm of possibility. Saying he regressed to 12 would warrant questions about recklessness. Any younger and there would be concern for his own safety—someone dropping so young on suppressants needed blood tests and check ups to monitor the hormones and neurochemicals responsible. A doctor would surely have to talk with his Caregiver because Grace obviously wouldn't be able to advocate for himself.
So he fibs a bit. Ryland Grace: the middle school teacher with a doctorate in molecular biology and Little who drops to ages 4-6. No one has any reason to think differently.
☆ There's plenty of people across and beyond the spectrum on Stratt's Vat. They have their own med bay room for any drops or emergencies (read: a repurposed office that one of the nurses had taken time to decorate) that Grace had been mortified when the director suggested he stop by.
They're the best minds on the planet all working toward their planet's survival. There's no time to doubt each other's qualifications for something as silly as a N, C, or L.
Everyone seems to be on the same page: the world is ending, sometimes you need to drink the anxiety away. For some that's hitting their taxpayer-funded liquor cabinet. For others, that's crying your eyes out into a juice box in a room with animal posters on the walls.
Grace, who is the leading authority on astrophage, doesn't get the luxury of taking a break. He always has a call to make or an email to answer or yields to report. There's so much work piling up that he doesn't know what day it is, much less the last time he took a small break. He's vaguely aware his body is going to reach it's limit sooner or later, but that's a bridge he can cross when it gets there. As soon as the fuzzy feeling enters the back of his mind, he tosses back another pill with an energy drink and locks back in.
☆ The others who share his classification watch a movie every Friday night.
A simple but needed break from the hustle and bustle of their lives. They get together in one of the conference rooms and use the whiteboard as a projector screen, sharing whatever snacks they manage to get from the cafeteria.
The Caregiver who hosts it—a cheerful, chartered financial analyst he should really get the name of—always puts a hand on his shoulder and tells him what movie they'll be watching. Like clockwork, every single Friday at 3 pm, she's there with the warmth that threatens the stability Grace fights to keep.
The first sign that something was wrong should have been that when the woman says they're watching Finding Nemo, he really, really wants to say yes. He catches the yes before it leaves his lips, instead letting out a vague grunt and gesturing to his double laptop setup.
"Maybe next time," even though there's been 10-something next-times he's failed to show up to.
Grace wonders if she believes he'll cave. He offers her a little shrug and turns around, ready to kick off this Friday's all-nighter once this little routine ends.
She doesn't leave. Her hand stays put and the patches she touches through his sweater burn—maybe it's a fever from whatever is going around, shame, or a mix of both.
"I think it's time to take a break." She whispers, despite the fact it's just the two of them in the soundproof lab. "You know you're not supposed to be small in here, bud."
The tone should have anger swell up in his chest, barbed wire wrapping around his throat. Instead, it has part of him stumbling—desperate to run away from the harsh sterility and into the gentle, welcoming vibrato. Every neuron in his body screams for it, yearning coded into the very core of his being.
He doesn't need a break—he's more than qualified to get this done. He has half a dozen hormone-stabilizing patches all over his body and took a pill half an hour ago. The strong ones from home that kept his head steady.
Grace, though, has never been farther from steady. His fingernails dig into his palms as he gets ready to defend himself.
"'M not a kid," and nope, that's not convincing one bit.
He wants to hit his head on the metal table until he forgets this interaction ever happened, wants to tell her to go away, but all that comes out is a little defeated sound.
"How long have you been out here, Dr. Grace?"
Dodging the denial; asking questions meant to frame the conversation like Grace was in control; using his name to create a feeling of trust. Top tier manipulation, to be expected of a government employee.
Or from someone who cares.
"It's only 7," because Grace is a government employee too, "got stuff to work on."
He points a shaky finger (betrayal) to the laptops and she raises an eyebrow.
Panic fills his brain. What the heck has he been doing for the last few hours? He could have sworn he was deep in emails and Overleaf files—did he not plug anything in? Did the battery run out and he didn't notice? God, what if he didn't save and lost all the work from the past week—
She crouches down and places another hand on his shoulder, and that's the final straw. The breath he doesn't even realize he's holding comes out of him a startled, choked-out wheeze. The air is pulled back in as soon as it leaves and Grace's lungs burn from the effort. His face feels too hot and his hands won't stop shaking. His ears are ringing and there's snot coming from his nose and he's going to die.
The fear of not being able to breathe is much bigger than him, now, as he drops down, down, down.
He's pulled against something soft, something warm. He can't do anything to fight it but lightly smack his fists against the soft, comforting wall. The big part of him that knows this isn't very 'AR: 4-6' behavior desperately tries to save some of his dignity.
"Oh, we're small, huh?" The wall vibratos, and the rumbling helps smooth out some of the sharp barbs keep his lungs constricted. "Gonna call Stratt, okay?"
The Caregiver says it so casually, like it's not the end of the entire world. Like Stratt isn't one of the most powerful people on the planet who can drop everything at a moments notice to come get her lead scientist because he couldn't handle a little stress.
The displeasure he makes known is covered by bouncing and shushing. He tries to stifle some of his crying to not be annoying as she talks on the phone, but it just makes him sound like a kicked animal.
Exhaustion starts to take over. Grace is dead weight against the other, all of his energy being used to letting months of angst out. He doesn't know how there's still any tears left to cry.
He recognizes the smell of Stratt's flowery perfume before he sees her and dread sets in.
She can't see him like this. He shoves his face into the sweater he's ruined, inhaling the scent of peach-scented lotion like it'll save him from his fate.
The Caregivers talk above him, but it sounds like Grace's ears are full of water. He makes out words like expired and prescription and young, all adding fuel to the fire that is his shame.
"Dr Grace," a hand rubs up and down his back, separate from the pair holding him close.
She sounds disappointed. He's going to lose his job, or she's gonna hate him and send him away. There's snot all over the nice lady's shirt too, so he's gonna be left all alone because he's gross.
"'M sorry," comes out in a strangled cry and once the words start coming, they don't stop. "Didn't mean t' be bad 'n bother you. Sorry, sorry, sorry."
The rest comes out as gibberish, but Grace's muddled brain can't bring itself to care as it desperately tries to force syllables into words that exist in any language. He sounds ridiculous; he sounds Little.
Arms remove themselves from around him and he shuts his eyes hard enough that his ears sound like bees. This is it, they're gonna send him away or make him swim all the way back to California.
He's being lifted and his breaths come out in erratic gasps again. They're walking somewhere, but Grace keeps his eyes firmly closed. He doesn't want to see the end he knows is coming, just wants to believe the warm coat he's held against is safe.
The cold air outside hits him, but the cold bite of the ocean never comes.
A warm hand comes up to his under-eye and gently smooths the crinkled skin where his eyelids strain. His breaths even out the slightest bit at the gentleness of it all and the cold night air filling his lungs is leagues better than the smell of bleach and ethanol.
Teary blue eyes open and he's met with Eva Stratt. She's in her usual sweater and navy blue coat, but there's no serious crease to her brow. The director isn't look at him with disappointment; the Caregiver looks at him like Grace is worth something gentle.
Her hands move to the unruly mess of blonde tufts on his head, attempting the Sisyphean of smoothing them out. He giggles a little at her concentration and gets to watch as Eva Stratt honest-to-God smiles.
Pieces fall into place and Grace realizes just how much he's been missing, just how long he's been telling himself he's been treading water while drowning. Alone in the middle of the ocean, hundreds of miles away from his apartment in San Fransisco, unable to turn around and run. Grace finds himself not wanting to.
Maybe trying to hide secrets from the most powerful woman on the planet wasn't a great choice—Eva knows everything about everyone on the Vat. Especially not lies that she kinda-already-sorta knows the truth to, and most certainly not when a medical file from Grace's recruitment, an emergency Caregiver number belongs to one Eva Stratt.
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