kaitybvg

“Yes, Mr. Grace?” You replied, as you glanced at him.

“Really?” He let out a sigh of disbelief, then said your name again this time starting a sentence with it but then stopped to process what he wanted to say. “Why are you being so distant all the sudden?” He asked, “You haven’t stopped by my class all week, ignored my texts about dinner or grabbing coffee together, dodged my presence after the faculty meeting, had a student bring my jacket back to my room instead of just doing it yourself.” He said, and he didn’t stray far from the truth at all. It was true, you were avoiding him, you had specifically dodged his every attempt to see you in person, and now that you are in the spotlight and need to give him an answer, you can’t.

Ryland and you have been attached at the hip since you two were 19 and starting college, you were there when he called a world renowned scientist a ‘breathing waste of carbon’ to his face, you were there during his break up with his ex, you rescued him when it would storm and he’d be biking, he would show up with takeout and a movie to surprise you, he wiped your tears, has gotten you out of bed in your most depressive states, and has also as of recently.. gotten you into his bed.

It was a saturday, it was a coworkers wedding and there was an open bar and you and ryland had just so happened to both be invited, you wanted to have a fun weekend out of the school and actually do something for once, so you drank until you were sloppy drunk and you ended up making out with ryland in the back of a uber and in his bed in his small apartment that same night.

When you woke up, he wasn’t there.

You left quickly, accidentally leaving behind your favorite pair of panties in your wake.

Today is Friday. You’ve ignored, dodged, ran from any form of ryland. You made Mrs Moskowitz take over lunch duty the day you had it with ryland, you came to school later than usual in an attempt to not run into ryland as he locked his bike up, you ducked below his classroom doors window when you walked by, you left immediately after a faculty meeting, in which ryland stared at you the entire time.

You wouldn’t be lying if you said you were scared that you had ruined what you two had, and you didn’t want to find out if you did either.

So the only other option.. was to avoid him, right?

WRONG.

Now ryland is standing infront of you, arms folded and waiting for a response from you. He was quick to grab the papers out of the printer so you could absolutely not leave, he knew you needed those papers.

“I’ll wait as long as it takes.” He says, looking down at you, his glasses are resting on the tip of his nose, sliding down from looking down at you.

“I’ve been busy.. you know how it is.” You replied, avoiding eye contact, “Bullcrap.” He said, “You’re lying to me.”

You look at him, attempting to grab the papers out of his hand, but he has a crazy death grip on these papers and not even hurricane force winds could blow them out of his hands right now.

You looked at his t shirt which had ions on it and a pun that read “I’ve got my ion you”, you sighed.

It was after school now so no kids should be in the building at all, you could say what you needed to say without a kid hearing it and repeating it to everyone they knew, creating a wildfire that you wouldn’t be able to put out.

“You left.” You mumbled, barely coherent.

“What was that, sweetheart?” He asked, tapping under your chin to get you to look up at him. It works.

“You left.” You say again, you know he caught it this time because he perks up like a foxes ears do when it becomes alert.

“I left?” He asked, you nodded. “You left after that night, weren’t there in the morning when I woke up. I didn’t think you wanted to see me, thought you wanted to forget about it.” You said, and he took a step back, handing the papers to you and letting his hands fall to his sides.

“You left.” He said, looking at you confused. “What?” You asked, and you could tell he was calculating something in his head and the answer had just clicked. “Did you think I left-left?” He asked and you nodded again. “Jesus, {name} you should know me better than that. I biked to get you breakfast, so we could eat together and talk about it but when I got back you were gone.” , hearing that makes you whip your head back up to look up at him, and he doesn’t let you talk again. Instead, he grabs his papers and leaves your favorite candy on the printer, and says “We’re talking about this at your place, I’ll be there at 630, I’ll bring dinner.” and he just walks away, you’re left there completely stunned.

Later in the day when you’re waiting for him to knock on your door you’re pacing the small distance from the front door to the bathroom.

You were completely wrong. You read the entire situation wrong. Why would you even think for a second that he would- knock. knock. knock-knock.

It was ryland, he always knocks in that pattern. You opened the door and let him inside quickly, he sets down your favorite comfort food. Ramen. Your stomach growls as you look at the food.

He takes his shoes off before you ask him to, and then he looks at you. “Sit.” He demands, if there was any word for how he was acting right now it would be bossy.

You sit though.

You two talk for two hours, he explains everything, you explain everything and by the end of the conversation you’re both giggling while you toss away your trash. But you still haven’t talked about what really went down. You could tell rylands gear were turning as he found an appropriate way to bring it up. “So.., you know..”, you stood infront of him, which apparently made him nervous because he let out a nervous cut off laugh. “Hi” He said, you raised an eyebrow. “Hi, ry.”

“We.. we uhh.” He swallows and then speaks in a full sentence this time. “We had sex.” He says, you nod. “We had sex” He says again, in disbelief almost like he was trying to prove it to himself.

“Yes we did, Ry. We had drunk sex.” You said, he looks at you.

“You wanted it?” He asked, you replied. “Yes.”

“Did.. it feel good?”

“Yes, ry.” You reply, this time he has your full attention.

“One time thing?” He asks, looking at you.

“One time thing.” You solidify, but your tone wavers.

“Or one more time.” You say after a moment, his attention snaps back to you, his gaze wanders back down to your lips. “What did you say?” He asked, and you look up at him. “You heard me, ry.” , he stares down at you for a moment, muttering a ‘fuck’ which is rare considering he never cusses and almost only ever used the kid friendly substitutions for curse words. “Are you sure?” He asks, his voice has dropped an octave deeper than it was before, he had a primal, hungry, heavy gaze on you now.

“It’ll make my day better.” You say, and then he leans in at the same time you do, laying a soft, tame kiss to your lips once, testing the waters out before kissing you again, this time more insistently, more hungry, more passionate, his hands wrapped around your waist, traveling up under your shirt feeling your ribs and back down, his touch left flames in its path, you were running so hot now you could be mistaken for having a fever.

The kiss intensifies an interval more, a groan escaping past his lips, you whine as he pulls away to look at you again, he’s taking in your appearance, your pink swollen kissed lips. He dives back in again, this time one of his hands travels up from your waist to you neck, to your jaw and then finally lands in your hair, holding your head in place as he kisses you. You moan against his mouth, his knee slots in between your thighs, pressing against right where you need him.

“That was a pretty noise, let me hear it again baby?” He says, pulling your head back by your hair, leaving hot, wet, open mouthed kisses to your nape and farther down, coming back up to your jaw and then meets you back at your lips. He finally slides his hands all the way under your shirt, kneading on your boobs through your bra and then carefully slides your shirt off you, muttering against your mouth. “I’ll fold them when I’m done with you.” He says, and then he starts backing you towards your bed, opening the door in one swift motion, he knows your house as almost as good as you do, considering he’s always here and your always at his.

He slides his shirt off with one hand and if you weren’t gushing then, you definitely were now.

You knew ryland went to the gym when he wasn’t busy or with you, you knew he was strong, he always lifted your boxes of books up at the end of the year for you to put in storage, you weren’t shy to staring at his biceps from time to time, but seeing the master piece in front of you for the first time without a shirt since you were 20 and he was scrawny.. fuck.

He was toned and chiseled, you reached out running your hand down his abs, you could feel his muscles flexing under your touch, he let out a sigh. You sat on the bed and leaned forward, leaving an open mouthed kiss to his lower abdomen and then went up. He tangled his fingers in your hair, watching as you kissed up his stomach towards his chest. “Look at my sweet girl” He whispered, pushing you back against the bed, making you scoot up before resting in between your legs, kissing down between your breasts, leaving tiny marks in his wake.

“I didn’t appreciate you enough my first time.” He kissed against your lower stomach, “Let me fix my mistakes, baby.” He says it not in a question tone but a demanding tone, he’s not letting you leave this bed until he’s satisfied with you.

“Yes, Dr Grace.” You said softly, which made him immediately get your attention. “You’re beautiful.” He said, pulling down your pants and discarding them somewhere in your room before kissing down from your ankle to your inner thighs, you whimpered, he was getting too close to wear you desperately needed him and wasnt doing anything.

“Patience baby.” He reply’s, kissing your mound through your panties. “Please, Ry.” He hears that and slides your panties down real slow, savoring every moment of every single thing. He carefully nudged your thighs open, kissing them once again and admiring the beauty that was inbetween your legs. “Fuck..” He muttered, inhaling you. He licked a slow, teasing stripe up your slit, causing you to jerk your hips slightly, which resorted in him holding your hips down with one of his arms. “Don’t move baby.”, you watched as he licked one big stripe up now, his tongue flat against you, your eyebrows knitted with pleasure, as you felt the heat inbetween your thighs grown with intensity, your body slowly pushing out even more wetness. “All for me?” He laughed almost mockingly, before going absolutely relentless on your clit, sucking and flicking with his tongue, drawing circles around it with his tongue, groaning against you as he grinds into the sheets to release some of the pressure on his cock.

“F..Fuck!” You moan, your hand shooting down between your legs to grab at his messy, tousled blonde hair. You realize he still has his glasses on and they are completely fogged up from his breathe, you watch as he absolutely destroys your pussy like it’s a gourmet meal, (because it is to him.)

He slips a finger inside of you and curls it, he can feel your gummy walls clenching around just one of his fingers and he mumbles against your clit. “Still so tight even though I stretched you out last week.”, “Ry- Ry I’m gonna cum!” You almost yell at him, when he completely stops what he’s doing, and looks up at you, keeping his one finger pumping slow and steady, not enough to give you an orgasm. “Not yet, sweet girl.” He says, he looks an absolute wreck. His mouth and chin are covered in juices from you, his hair is all messy from your pulling and his glasses are slowly losing the fog from between your legs.

He adds another finger watching your reaction as he scissors his fingers to stretch you out so you can take him painlessly, “Mm” you whine, grinding up and against his hand. “Such a needy little thing aren’t you?” He coos, pressing down on your lower stomach just a little which makes you yelp, feeling all the sensations even more now. He taps your clit, almost laughing at your sensitivity.

He pulls his fingers out of you and you whine at the loss of him. “You want the real thing now?” He asks, you nod and he doesn’t move an inch to pull himself out of his pants, instead he waits for the correct answer. “Yes, sir.”, he smiles. “Good girl.”

He frees himself from his pants, slotting himself inbetween your legs and watches as you sit up to take your bra off, he dips his head down to suck and flick at your nipple, biting only slightly enough to make you hiss, he starts teasing you with his tip, rubbing it up and down your heat, his tip is glistening with your juices, as he teases you by slipping just the tip in, and then immediately pulls out, doing it again, and then one more time before he slams into you in one big but gentle motion, you gasp at the sheer size of him.

Drunk you must’ve been rudely awakened.

He gasps too, closing his eyes shut tight for a second, “fuccckkk” he breathes out, one of his hands on your hip and the other above your head holding him up. You start to grind your hips upwards towards him, seeking out any form of friction to make the pressure go away. He starts a slow, menacing pace, watching your every facial expression to each thrust. He smiles, picking up the pace and you moan, he dips back down to kiss you on the lips again, but it ends up with both of you moaning into each others mouths, he’s finally set a good pace, fucking up into you. It feels like your being split in half by him, his every thrust feels like it’s nudging right up against your cervix, and honestly you wouldn’t be shocked if it actually were.

“You feel so good” He moans, fucking into you harder. “So big” You manage to spit out inbetween gasps, he can feel you clenching down on him again, your noises intensifying. “Is my sweet girl ready to cum?” He asks, and you nod, “Yes, yes, please!” You beg, he keeps his pace but talks again. “Tell me you want to cum, pretty” He demands, “I want to cum! Please, Ry!” You gasp and moan out, he smiles and reaches his hand down inbetween you two and starts rubbing torturous circles on your clit. “Cum on my cock, baby.” The coil that was tightening in your pelvis shatters, you gush around his cock your legs spasm and shake as you he rides you through the high of it, he’s right at the edge of cumming, only thrusting two more times before whimpering your name into your neck and filling you up with his cum, which he pushes back inside you when it threatens to spill out.

Sweaty and exhausted, he rolls off of you, laying beside you for a second before getting up and getting a warm wash cloth to gently wipe you down, he’s careful around where you’re sensitive, makes sure you’re clean and grabs you fresh clothes, and puts on his clothes again, he gets back in bed after and leaves a soft kiss against your cheek, your temple and your forehead.

“Are you okay?” He asks, looking at you. You shake your head. “I wasn’t too rough was I?” He asks again, “No, ry. You were just right.” He smiles, and kisses you again.

“We’ll figure out the complicated stuff tomorrow.” He says, “I want you to sleep first.” He says, pulling you into his embrace. “I love you.” He says, and it brings you comfort. You haven’t heard him say it in awhile. “love you too.” .. you can feel him smiling before he whispers.. “later gators.” , you giggle. “See you in awhile crocodile.”.

i lowkey suck at writing smut lolz

Because alongside the book there has been: a browser tab he forgot to close, open to what appeared to be a forum thread titled "single column tie for beginners, advice?". A second library book, returned before you could clock the title, which he insisted was "just a thing for school" with the bright innocent expression of a man who has never in his life convincingly lied. A small coil of soft white cotton rope that appeared in the bottom of his sock drawer four days ago, which he relocated to the bedside drawer two days ago, and which he has since checked on, you are fairly certain, three separate times.

Ryland Grace is the world's worst secret-keeper. It is one of your favourite things about him.

It is also why, tonight, when he comes into the bedroom in his pyjama pants and a faded t-shirt that says I HAVE A CHEMISTRY JOKE BUT I'M AFRAID IT WON'T GET A REACTION, and finds you sitting cross-legged on the bed with the book open in your lap, his face does something extraordinary.

It is a face that goes through approximately six expressions in two seconds. You catalogue them, because you love him, and because they are very funny.

One: recognition.

Two: alarm.

Three: a brief, valiant attempt at innocence.

Four: the dawning realisation that innocence is not on the table.

Five: a flicker of something else. Something warmer, and lower, and considerably more interesting.

Six: the smile. The crooked one. The one he does when he's been caught and has decided, with admirable speed, to enjoy it.

"Ah," he says.

You turn a page. You do not look up.

"So."

You turn another page.

"So you've," he says, and stops. Starts again. "So that's. That's a book."

"Mm."

"That you have. Found."

"Mm."

"In our bedroom."

"On your nightstand," you correct, helpfully, still not looking up. "For three weeks."

There is a pause. You can feel him calculating. You can practically hear it. He's running through, you suspect, several increasingly creative explanations and discarding each one on the basis that you are smarter than he is currently capable of being.

"Okay," he says. "Okay. Right. So."

You finally look up.

He is standing at the foot of the bed with his hands shoved into his pyjama pockets, his hair doing the thing it does at night where it sticks up at the back, his glasses pushed up onto his head and clearly forgotten about. He looks, for a man who has just been busted, remarkably pleased. Slightly flushed. Mouth twitching at one corner like he's trying not to laugh and only partly succeeding.

"How long," you say, "were you planning to wait."

"To," he says.

"To say something."

"Oh." He considers this with the seriousness of a man being asked a question on the SATs. "Honestly? I had not landed on a timeline."

"Three weeks, Ryland."

"Three weeks is a timeline. It's a slow one. I had not ruled it out."

You close the book. You set it on top of the duvet. You raise both eyebrows.

He exhales, scrubs a hand over his face, and laughs, soft and a little helpless. "Okay. Okay, yeah. Fair. I have been. I will admit. I have been, uh. Sitting on this."

"Among other things."

"Among," he agrees, "other things."

"Were you," you say, "going to mention the rope, too. Or was that going to live in the sock drawer indefinitely."

His mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. "You found the—"

"It was in the socks, sweetheart."

"It was under the socks."

"Ryland."

"Look," he says, holding up both hands now, the picture of a man trying to defuse a situation he has, in fact, set up entirely himself. "I want to be clear that there is a reason for the order of operations here. There's a methodology. I had a plan."

"You had a plan."

"I had a plan."

"That involved hiding rope in your sock drawer."

"That involved," he says, "doing the reading first. And then ideally not springing anything on you. And then, you know. Talking. About it. Like adults."

"And how was the talking going."

"The talking," he says, "was scheduled for some unspecified future date when I had finished assembling the relevant. The relevant. Look. There are things you should know before you say yes or no to a thing. There are things I should know before I ask. I was being thorough."

"You were stalling."

"I was being thorough and also stalling. These are not mutually exclusive."

You bite the inside of your cheek to keep from grinning. He sees you do it, because of course he does, and his whole face goes soft around the edges. He climbs onto the bed, finally, and sits down at the other end of it, facing you. He pulls his glasses down off his head, looks at them like he's surprised to find them, and sets them on the nightstand on top of the book, which is now, of the two of you, the third most embarrassed object in the room.

"Okay," he says. "Okay. Hi. Let's. Let's do this properly."

"By all means."

He takes a breath. He looks at his hands for a second, and then he looks back up at you, and his eyes are doing the thing they do when he's about to be serious about something, which is to say they are very steady and a little bit bright.

"So I've been," he says, "reading about something. Which you have now correctly identified. And I have been reading about it for. A while. Actually a longer while than three weeks, if I am being honest, the book is just the most recent of several books, which I am bringing up now because I am committed to full disclosure."

"Several books."

"There is a stack at school. In my desk drawer. Under some lesson plans." He winces. "Don't ask which lesson plans. The answer will distress you."

You make a small involuntary noise.

"Right. Anyway. The point is that I have been. Thinking about this. For some time. And the thinking has gotten, increasingly, less abstract. And at some point in the last, I want to say, month, it stopped being a thing I was curious about in theory and started being a thing I was, very, specifically. Curious about. With you."

He pauses. He's watching your face.

You keep it still. You do not, you are quite proud, give him anything.

"And I want to say a couple of things up front," he says, "before I get any further into this, because I think it matters. The first thing is that I am not. Bringing this up because I think anything is, you know, missing, or wrong, or. None of that. We are good. We are extremely good. This is not a, a fixing thing. This is a, a, an additive thing. A bonus content thing. A director's cut."

"Ryland."

"Sorry. Yes. The second thing is that I have done a truly embarrassing amount of research. Like. Genuinely embarrassing. I could give a seminar. I have, at this point, opinions about cotton versus jute that I will spare you unless you are interested, in which case I have a lot to say. But the relevant takeaway is that I know what I'm talking about. I would not be bringing this up if I didn't. I would not put you anywhere I had not, mentally, been already and figured out the load-bearing parts of."

Something low in your stomach tightens.

"The third thing," he says, and he's still watching you, still very steady, "is that I have been thinking, very specifically, about. About what I'd want to do. If we did this. And I want to tell you. I want to lay it out. So you know what you're saying yes or no to, if you say either."

"Okay," you say. Your voice is, you notice, a little quieter than it was a minute ago.

"Okay," he says back. He shifts on the bed. He doesn't come any closer. He's giving you space, which you only notice because of how deliberate it is. "So. Here's. Here's what I've been thinking about."

He takes a breath.

"I've been thinking," he says, "about doing this slowly. Like, much slower than you would think. Because the thing about rope, the thing that is genuinely the cool thing about rope, is that the point of it isn't the. Isn't the end state. The point of it is the time it takes to get there. The whole experience is the wrapping. The being-held. The not being able to go anywhere because you don't need to go anywhere, because I've got you. That's the thing. That's what it's for."

He's looking at you and he's talking with his hands a little, the way he does when he's enthusiastic about something, but his voice has gone quieter to match yours, and the effect is that he sounds less like he's explaining and more like he's confessing.

Your mouth is dry. You did not notice it going dry.

"I've been thinking," he says, "about starting with your wrists. Just your wrists. Because I want to see how you do with that first before I do anything else. Single column tie, behind your back, soft cotton, the kind that won't leave marks unless I want it to. I've been thinking about how that's going to feel for you. How your shoulders are going to sit. How you'll have to lean forward a little, because you won't be able to balance the way you usually do, and I'll have to put a hand on you to keep you steady. Right here." He touches the centre of his own sternum, lightly.

The image arrives in your body before it arrives in your head. His hand. Flat against you. Holding you up because you can't hold yourself. You feel the heat of it climb up the back of your neck. Your stomach does something low and stupid and slow.

"And I've been thinking about how that's going to feel for me," he says. "Having you like that."

You cannot look directly at him. You cannot look away from him. Your eyes have settled, traitorously, on his mouth, which is a problem because his mouth is what is making the sound, and the sound is the issue. His voice has dropped half a register without him seeming to notice and you have, you are realising now, stopped listening to the words a sentence ago. The words are arriving on a small delay, like a translation. The sound is going somewhere else. Somewhere lower. The sound is doing the work the words are only describing.

"I've been thinking," he says, lower still, "about taking my time once you're tied. Not doing anything for a while. Just looking at you. Because I am, you should know, extremely planning to look at you. For a while. And I've been thinking about what you're going to do, while I'm doing that, because you are very bad at being looked at without doing something about it, sweetheart, you cannot help yourself, you will start to fidget, and you will not be able to, because I will have made sure of that."

Your thighs press together before you decide to do it. The duvet shifts under your hand. You think, with great and useless clarity: he is not even touching me.

You try to say his name.

What comes out is closer to a breath than a word. A small soft thing. Not language. You feel it leave you and you cannot take it back and there is a heartbeat of silence after it in which you realise, with a fresh wave of heat up your throat, that he heard it.

His eyes change.

"Yeah," he says, quietly. Like he's answering you. Like that sound was a complete sentence and he heard it and he is, very mildly, taking note. "Yeah. That. That's what I've been thinking about."

He doesn't come any closer. He doesn't have to. You feel the inch of space between you on the bed like it has acquired weight. Your pulse is in your throat. Your pulse is in less defensible places. He is sitting cross-legged in his pyjama pants and a t-shirt about chemistry and he has not raised a hand and you can feel exactly where he has decided his hand is going to go first, on your sternum, holding you up, and you cannot, you find, breathe quite normally.

"I've been thinking," he says, and his voice has dropped again, and you feel it in the small of your back, "about what I'd want once you've stopped being able to fidget. About putting my mouth on you. Slowly. Working out what makes you make noise and what makes you make better noise, because there's a difference, and I have, frankly, been collecting data on this for some time, and I have hypotheses I have not been able to test under controlled conditions."

The laugh that wants to come out of you does not come out. It catches somewhere in your chest and turns into something else on the way up. You exhale through your nose. Your hand has, you discover, closed in the duvet without your permission, and you cannot make it let go.

"I've been thinking," he says, ignoring you, or possibly answering you, or possibly both, "about not letting you come for a while. Because you are extremely in charge most of the time, like I said, and a lot of being in charge is about deciding when things happen. And I want to. I want to take that. For a little bit. I want to decide. I want to make you ask. And then I want to make you ask again. And then I want to see what you sound like when I finally say yes."

You make a sound. You do not know what kind of sound. It is small and involuntary and absolutely not your fault.

He notices. Of course he notices. The corner of his mouth lifts. Just slightly. Just enough that you know he heard it and filed it and is, somewhere behind his eyes, pleased.

"I've been thinking," he says, softer now, almost gentle, "about every single one of these things, in detail, for weeks. I've thought about them sitting at my desk during fifth-period prep. I've thought about them in the shower. I've thought about them lying right here next to you while you were asleep, which I am telling you because I said I would be honest. There is not a part of this I have not turned over and looked at."

He stops.

Not for breath this time. For effect. You feel the shift the second it happens, in the way the silence between you changes texture, in the way his shoulders settle, in the small specific stillness that comes over him when he is, you know from a hundred other contexts, about to land something.

He looks at you. Properly. He takes his time about it. His eyes move over your face, your throat, your hand still closed in the duvet, the way your chest is moving, the way you are not, currently, meeting his eyes. He looks at all of it. He looks at all of it the way he looks at a problem he has already solved and is now simply confirming the solution to.

The half-smile is gone. Or it has changed. Something has settled into the corner of his mouth that was not there a minute ago, something quieter and more certain, and you understand, with a small bright drop somewhere behind your sternum, that he has known for some time that you were going to say yes. That he has been watching you arrive at it. That the gentleness of the speech was, in part, a courtesy, and the courtesy is now, very deliberately, being set aside.

"And the only thing," he says, and his voice is low and easy and entirely unhurried, "the only thing in the entire world that has been stopping me from doing any of it."

He pauses. He holds your eyes. He lets you feel it.

"Is that you haven't asked me to yet."

The room is very quiet.

You can hear, distantly, a car going past on the street. You can hear the soft hum of the fridge from down the hall. You can hear your own pulse, which is doing something embarrassing.

He's just sitting there. He's not pushing. He's not even moving. He's put the entire situation on the bed between you, neatly assembled, and stepped back from it with both hands visible. The ball, as the saying goes, is in your court. He is wearing a t-shirt about chemistry.

You look at him. You look at the book on the nightstand. You look back at him.

"You did do a lot of reading," you say.

He grins. Wide and stupid and relieved.

"I really did," he says.

You take a breath. Your hands are not steady. You don't try to make them steady. You reach behind you, slowly, and you pull your hair off the back of your neck, and you hold it there for a second, and his face does something you will think about later, in detail, with great satisfaction.

"Okay," you say.

He goes very still.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah to. To which part."

"To all of it, Ryland."

His exhale is audible.

"Okay," he says. His voice has gone rough at the edges. "Okay. Right. Yeah. Okay. Give me. Give me one second."

He gets up. He goes to the dresser. He opens the drawer. He turns around with the coil of rope in his hands, and he is, you notice, very slightly pink in the face, and his hands, you notice, are not steady either.

"Hi," he says.

"Hi."

"I love you a lot."

"I love you too."

"I am going to take my time," he says. "Just so you know."

"I gathered."

He climbs back onto the bed.

He sets the rope down beside him on the duvet, neatly coiled, and you look at it and then you look at him and you watch, fascinated, as a small flicker of something passes across his face. Not nervousness exactly. Not anymore. Something more like the feeling of standing at the edge of a thing you have planned in detail and are about to step into for the first time. He looks at the rope. He looks at his own hands. He breathes out, once, quietly, and the flicker resolves.

"Okay," he says, mostly to himself.

He looks back up at you, and his eyes are warm, and the half-smile is back, and the something-else underneath it is back too, and you understand that whatever momentary uncertainty just moved through him has been catalogued, accepted, and set aside.

"Come here," he says.

It is not a question. It is not unkind. It is the voice of a man who has thought about this exact moment for weeks and has decided, on the available evidence, that this is how it begins. You go to him. Of course you go to him. Your knees move you across the duvet without consulting you and you arrive in front of him, on your knees, close enough that you can feel the warmth coming off his chest through the thin cotton of his t-shirt.

He looks at you for a long second.

"Hi," he says, softer.

"Hi."

"You're okay."

"I'm okay."

"You'll tell me if you stop being okay."

"I'll tell you."

"Good," he says, and the word goes through you in a way that is genuinely unreasonable given that he has not, technically, started anything. He sees it. The corner of his mouth moves. He files it. You feel filed.

He reaches up, slowly, and he brushes your hair back from your shoulder with the side of his thumb. His knuckles graze the skin at the side of your neck and you do not, you are very proud, make a sound. Then his hand settles, flat, at the centre of your sternum, exactly where he said it would. He does not push. He just rests his palm there for a second, as if checking the calibration of a piece of equipment he has been describing to you in theory and is now meeting in practice.

"Okay," he says, quieter. "Okay. Yeah. There you are."

He moves his hand. Down. Slow. He hooks his fingers in the hem of your shirt and lifts, and you lift your arms because you have apparently agreed to be useful, and the shirt comes off over your head and is, with great care, folded once and set on the nightstand on top of the book. You almost laugh. He almost laughs. Neither of you does.

He looks at you.

It is, in fairness to him, exactly what he said he was going to do. He looks at you for what feels like a very long time. His eyes move, slowly, over your collarbones, your shoulders, the line of your throat, the slight rise and fall of your chest, the place where his hand rested a second ago and where you can still feel the heat of it like an imprint. He does not say anything. He does not need to. The looking is doing something to you that words have already done once tonight and are apparently going to keep doing in different forms.

You want to cross your arms. You don't. You hold very still and let him have it, and the holding-still is, you realise, a thing you are choosing, and the choosing is its own kind of giving.

"Beautiful," he says, eventually. Just that. Quietly. Not a comment. An exhale.

His hand comes back. Settles between your shoulder blades. Light pressure. "Off the bed for me, sweetheart. Just for a second."

You slide off the edge of the bed and stand on the floor. He stays where he is, kneeling at the edge of the mattress, which puts him almost exactly at your eye level, and his hands settle on your hips. His thumbs hook in the waistband of your pyjama bottoms. He slides them down, slowly, all the way down, steadying you with a hand on your hip while you step out of them, one foot then the other. He folds them. He sets them on top of the shirt. The little stack on the nightstand is becoming, in its quiet way, completely unhinged.

He looks at you from where he's kneeling on the bed.

You have, you realise, never been looked at quite like this before. Not by him. Not by anyone. He is looking at you the way he looks at something he has earned the right to look at, the way he looks at a thing he has been thinking about so long that meeting it in person is a small and serious event. His eyes are bright. His hand is still on your hip and his thumb is moving in a small absent circle on the curve of bone there, like he doesn't know he's doing it.

"Okay," he says, and his voice is rough at the edges again, "okay, you have to. You have to give me a second here, because I'm going to. I'm going to lose the plot if I don't. Come back up here. Knees. Yeah. Like that."

You climb back onto the bed and kneel facing away from him, your back to his chest, your hands loose in your lap. The mattress shifts behind you as he settles in closer, close enough that you can feel the soft cotton of his t-shirt against your shoulder blades, close enough that you can feel him breathe. His hands rest, briefly, on your upper arms. A grounding touch. A here-we-go touch.

"Hands behind your back for me," he says, near your ear.

You bring them back. Your wrists cross, automatically, neatly, the way they would in handcuffs, and you hear him make a small soft noise behind you that you are going to think about later, in considerable detail.

"Look at you," he says, quietly. "You've thought about this too."

You cannot answer. Heat moves up the back of your neck where he can see it. He sees it. He does not comment. He is, you understand, busy.

The rope comes off the coil with a soft dry sound. You feel the weight of the bight as he doubles it. You feel him measure the length against your forearms, once, then a second time. He is, even now, checking his work.

"Okay," he says, and his voice has gone different. Not the bedroom voice. Not the speech voice. Something narrower and more focused, the voice of a man with his hands inside the actual problem. "The thing about a single column tie is that the whole trick is friction and load distribution. You want the wraps doing the work, not the knot. The knot is just where you stop the wraps. So I'm going to wrap you a couple of times here. Soft. Snug, not tight. Tell me how it feels."

The rope settles around your wrists. Cool at first, then warming fast against your skin. He wraps once. Twice. A third time. He is so careful. He is so unhurried. You can feel the small precise tension as he pulls each wrap into place, and you can feel his knuckles brush your skin, deliberate, attentive, not incidental.

"How's that," he says. "Talk to me."

"It's. Good."

"Good how."

"Snug. Not. Not tight."

"Can you move your fingers."

You move your fingers.

"Good," he says, soft and pleased, and you feel the word in three different parts of your body. "Good. Okay. Now I'm going to take the working end through. Here's where the friction does its job, see. This part. The wraps grip themselves. So even when I tie it off here, the tightness doesn't change. You're not getting tighter. You're getting secured. There's a difference."

You did not know there was a difference. You did not know you wanted to know there was a difference. You know now.

You feel him pull the working end through. You feel the small definitive cinch as the friction takes. You feel him tie something off behind your wrists with a soft brisk efficiency that you are not surprised to learn he possesses, given that this is a man who has, by his own admission, given a seminar's worth of thought to this exact event.

His hands rest on your forearms when he is done. He sits back, just slightly. He does not let go.

"Test it for me," he says, quietly. "Pull. Gently. Just see what it does."

You pull. Gently. The wraps hold. There is no give. There is no tightening either, exactly as he said. You are simply, definitively, held. Your shoulders adjust, exactly as he said. You lean forward, a little, because you cannot balance the way you usually do, exactly as he said.

His hand arrives at the centre of your sternum from behind, palm flat, steadying you. Exactly as he said.

"There you go," he murmurs, right at your ear. "There. I've got you. I told you."

You make a sound. Small. Involuntary. Absolutely not your fault.

He files it. You feel him file it.

"Okay," he says, soft. "Okay, sweetheart. Now I get to look at you for a while."

He works the knot at your wrists once, gently, testing it himself. He runs the back of his fingers up the inside of one of your forearms, slow, checking the line of the rope where it meets your skin. Then he sits back. The warmth of his chest leaves your back and you feel the absence of it in a way that is, honestly, a little embarrassing.

"Don't go anywhere," he says, softly, like there is any version of this where you could.

He moves. The mattress shifts. He comes around the side of the bed and settles in front of you, cross-legged, knees almost touching yours, and now you can see his face again for the first time since the tying started. His hair is sticking up at one side from where his hand kept going to it during the speech. His t-shirt about chemistry has, somehow, become a thing you cannot stop noticing. His eyes are bright and very level.

"Hi," he says.

"Hi."

"How are we doing."

You try to assemble an answer. Your assembled answer is: "Good."

He smiles, slow. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. Talk to me if that changes."

He picks up the rest of the rope. There is more of it than you realised. He had not just brought one short length out of the drawer. He had brought enough. You watch him uncoil it across his lap, sorting it into a length he likes, and you understand, with a small clean drop somewhere behind your ribs, that he had a plan for tonight that did not stop at your wrists. That when he said the only thing he had meant the plural. That the chest harness, when it arrives, has been pre-measured.

He looks up and catches you looking at the rope.

"Mm," he says, soft. "Yeah. I'm not. I'm not done with you yet, sweetheart."

You make a small noise that you absolutely did not authorise.

"Okay," he says, in the narrowed-focused voice from before, the one that arrives when his hands are about to start working. "So this part. This part is what most people picture when they picture this kind of thing. The chest harness. I'm going to build a frame around your ribs. Above and below. It's structural. The whole job of it is to give the rest of the system something to anchor to, so when I do the next bit, it has something to hang off of. Okay?"

"Okay."

"I'm going to need to be in your space a little for this. I'm going to be close. Tell me if that's too much."

It is, you suspect, going to be too much in a number of ways that he has not specified. You nod.

He brings the bight of the rope up. He folds it once. He measures it, briefly, against the width of your ribcage with a small workmanlike motion, and you watch him do it and you have the distinct and unhelpful thought that you have never wanted him to take his shirt off more in your life than you do at this exact moment, while he is fully clothed and you are not, and you understand with absolute clarity that this asymmetry is deliberate, and that he knows it, and that the knowing is part of the point.

"Lift your chin a little for me."

You lift your chin.

He passes the rope behind your back, under your arms, and brings it around in front of you. The first wrap settles high across your chest, just under your collarbones. He pulls it through with one hand and catches it with the other behind you, and you feel his knuckles brush the side of your ribcage as he passes the working end. Once. Light. Deliberate. He does not acknowledge it. Neither do you.

"This wrap," he says, conversational, like he is teaching the most ordinary class of his life, "is the upper band. It sits here. It's not load-bearing in the way most people think, it's actually mostly for shape, and for. For where I want your shoulders to be sitting. Which is exactly where they are right now. Good."

The second wrap comes around. Lower. Underneath. Just below your breasts, snug against the curve of your ribs. He pulls it through and threads it back, and as he does his fingers pass, briefly, along the side of your breast. Not lingering. Not avoiding. Just passing, with the kind of casual intimacy of a man who has decided that you are now within the territory his hands are allowed to cross while working.

You exhale through your nose. He does not look up.

"This one," he says, "is doing more of the actual work. You can feel the difference, right. This one's snug. The wraps above and below are going to share the load."

"Mm-hm." You cannot, you find, make a longer sound than that.

He passes the rope behind you again. The cinch goes in at your side, against the inside of your upper arm, and you feel the small bright tightening as he pulls the two bands toward each other and ties them off there. His fingers work at the knot. The backs of his knuckles rest against your ribs while he ties. He is so close. He smells like the soap you both use and something underneath that is just him, and the t-shirt about chemistry is brushing the back of your hand where it is bound at the small of your back, and you do not think you have moved at all for several minutes, possibly longer, possibly years.

"Other side now," he murmurs.

He moves around you to do the matching cinch on your other side. His hand travels across the front of you to get there, the back of his fingers tracing, slowly and apparently incidentally, across the upper band as he goes. The contact is, for half a second, deliberately and unmistakably across the curve of your breast.

You make a sound.

He does not stop. He does not even look up. He just finishes the pass and threads the rope through and starts the second cinch, and his face has done nothing, but his ears, you can see, are very slightly pink.

He files it. You file the filing.

He ties off the second cinch. He runs his fingertips along the lower band, checking the tension. He nods, once, to himself. Then he reaches behind you and brings the working end up to your wrist tie, and you feel him thread the rope through the cinch at the back, and you understand, with a slow rolling realisation that goes through your whole body, what he is doing.

He is connecting them.

Your hands, at the small of your back, are about to become part of the harness. The rope at your wrists is being tied into the rope at your ribs. You are not just being bound. You are being integrated.

He ties the final knot. He tests it. He runs his hand, flat, down the line of your spine from the back of your neck all the way down to where his knot sits at the base of your shoulder blades, and the gesture is so casually proprietary that you make another sound, smaller this time, almost inaudible.

He comes back around to the front. He sits, again, cross-legged, knees almost touching yours.

He looks at you.

The looking is, somehow, worse than before. You are now framed. You can see, peripherally, the soft white lines of cotton crossing your chest above and below. You can feel the rope holding you upright in a way your own muscles are not, currently, contributing to. You can feel your hands at the small of your back, secured to your own ribcage. You cannot, you discover, slump. You cannot hunch. The harness holds you in a posture that is, by accident or design, the exact posture of being presented.

And he is looking at you like the looking has been the entire point of the last twenty minutes.

"Beautiful," he says, quietly, the second time tonight. He uses the word like he's learning how to. Like he is, perhaps, going to use it again.

"Ryland."

"Mm."

You don't have a next sentence. You just wanted to say his name. You wanted to hear yourself say it and you wanted him to hear you say it and you wanted, you realise, for it to come out small and a little wrecked, which it has.

He breathes out. He shifts forward. He brings one hand up, slowly, and rests it flat against the upper band where it crosses just under your collarbones, his palm warm through the rope and against your skin. His thumb moves, once, in a slow arc across the cotton.

"You feel okay."

"Yeah."

"Tell me if anything goes numb. Hands especially. Promise me."

"I promise."

"Good."

The word, again. You feel it land in three different places.

He leans in, slowly, and presses his mouth, briefly, to the centre of your forehead. Then to the bridge of your nose. Then, for a long warm second, to your mouth. He does not push it. He does not deepen it. He just kisses you, soft and slow and entirely on his own time, while you sit bound in front of him and cannot, with your hands, do a single thing about it. When he pulls back, his thumb is still moving on your collarbone, and his eyes have gone very dark.

"Okay," he says, soft. "Okay, sweetheart. We're not done yet."

He sits back. He surveys his work for a long second, head tilted slightly, the way he does when he is looking at a thing he has built and is mentally checking it for load-bearing accuracy. His eyes go from the upper band, to the lower, to the cinch at one side, to the cinch at the other, to the line of rope disappearing behind your shoulders. He nods, once, small.

"Okay," he says, mostly to himself. "Okay. Last bit."

He picks up the remaining length. There is, you note, still a surprising amount of rope left. You had assumed, somewhere in the back of your head, that he was almost done. You were, you are learning, wrong about this. You are wrong about a lot of things tonight. This is, apparently, going to be a recurring theme.

"This part," he says, his voice quieter now, no longer in teaching mode, more like he is talking to himself while he works and has decided to let you listen, "is going to come down from the front of the harness. Here." He touches, lightly, the centre of the lower band, where it sits in the soft valley just under your breasts. "Down. Across your hips. Around the back. Up to the cinch points on the sides. So it's all. It's all going to connect. Everything is going to be part of everything else."

You exhale, slowly. You feel him track the breath.

"And then I'm going to do something around your thighs," he says, "but not. Not so much that you can't move them. I just want. I want the line of it. I want to see it on you. I want you to feel it there."

He stops. He looks up at you. The corner of his mouth lifts, slightly, with the small specific wickedness it has acquired over the last hour.

"You know where I want you to feel it," he says.

You make a sound. You do not have a word for the sound. It is not a sound you have made before and you are not, currently, in a state to interrogate when it might have entered your repertoire.

"Yeah," he says, soft. "Yeah. I thought so."

He brings the working end down from where it sat at the centre of the lower band. He pulls the length through his hand once, smoothing it, and then he leans in, close, and his face is at your collarbone as he reaches around behind you to feed the rope through the cinch at your shoulder blades. His cheek brushes the curve of your throat as he does. You feel the soft scratch of stubble. You feel his breath on your skin and you feel your own pulse jump visibly there, and he must see it because he makes a small soft pleased sound that goes through you like a struck note.

He doesn't pull back right away. He stays close for a second, his face at your neck, working the rope by feel behind you. Then his mouth, briefly, lights on the place where your shoulder meets your throat. Not a kiss. A pressing. A confirmation. You hear yourself say something that is not a word.

"Mm-hm," he murmurs, against your skin. "I know. I know, sweetheart. I'm taking my time. I told you."

He pulls back. He keeps working.

The rope comes down the front of you, from the lower band, slow. He guides it past your stomach. Past your navel. His knuckles trail the path the rope is taking, light and deliberate, as if showing the rope where to go and showing you where it is going at the same time. By the time the working end reaches the top of your hip he has, technically, done nothing untoward, and you are, in practice, almost incapable of holding still.

He passes the rope around your hip and behind you. He brings it back through. Your hips, he is now, very methodically, framing. A wrap above. A wrap below. He pulls them snug against the curve of you and you feel them settle, low, lower than the harness, in a place that is, anatomically and otherwise, beginning to be a problem.

"Okay," he says, his voice gone soft and very low. "Okay. Let me. Let me just."

He shifts. He leans in. His forearm rests, briefly, against the inside of your thigh, light, just for balance, as he reaches to thread the rope behind you. The contact is, you tell yourself, incidental. The contact is, the more honest part of you knows, not incidental at all. You make a small involuntary noise.

He pretends he has not heard it. He is busy.

He brings the rope around to your other hip. He ties off a small efficient connection at your side, where the hip wraps meet the cinch from the harness above. Now the harness and the hip rope are one system. The wrist tie behind you is part of that system. You are, increasingly, one entire piece. You are no longer a body with rope on it. You are, you are realising with a slow heat that is climbing in places it has no business climbing this far in advance, a body that is part of the rope.

He sits back. He looks at his work again. He nods.

"One more thing," he says. "Bear with me."

He takes the remaining length and brings it down past the hip wrap on one side. He guides it across the top of your thigh, just below where the hip rope sits, low across the front of your upper leg. He passes it around the back of your thigh, brings it back, and ties it off into the hip rope so it forms a soft loop. Then he does the same on the other side. Two loops, one around each thigh, low and snug, attached up to the hip wrap. They do not restrict your legs. They simply sit there.

They sit, specifically, exactly where the line of his attention has been pointing for the last twenty minutes.

You can feel them. You can feel the line of the rope across the front of each thigh. You can feel where each loop disappears around the back. You can feel, with a clarity that is genuinely unfair, the open inch of space between them.

He runs a fingertip, once, along the front of the rope where it crosses your right thigh. Slow. From the outside in. Following the line of it. His fingertip travels along the rope until it reaches the inner edge of the loop and then, for one half-second, it does not stop. His knuckle brushes, briefly and with absolute deliberation, across the place his speech had promised and his hands had been deferring.

You jerk.

You cannot help it. Your hips move and your breath leaves you in a sound that is half gasp and half something else, and the harness holds you upright when you would otherwise have folded forward, and he watches it happen with his hand still resting, lightly, on your thigh.

"Mm," he says, soft. "Yeah."

He removes his hand. Just like that. He sits back on his heels and looks at you, and his face has done the thing it does when he has confirmed a hypothesis, the small bright contained pleasure of a man whose data has come in exactly as predicted.

"Okay," he says. "Yeah. Yeah, we're. We're good. We're past good. Sweetheart, look at you."

You cannot look at yourself. You can, however, look at him, and what you see in his face is the same look from before the speech ended, the look of a man who has been planning a thing in detail and is now, with great satisfaction, watching the thing arrive. Except now there is something further in it. Something almost reverent. Something that has, you understand, been waiting for this exact configuration of you to exist.

He reaches up. He cups the side of your face. His thumb traces, slowly, along your cheekbone. You lean into his palm without deciding to.

"You okay."

"Yes."

"Tell me how you are."

"I'm. Ryland."

"I know. Use your words for me, sweetheart, just a couple."

"I'm. I can't. I want."

"I know."

"Please."

The word leaves you before you decide to release it. It is the first time tonight you have asked him for anything in plain language and the sound of it in your own voice is a thing you are going to think about, later, with great and burning specificity.

His eyes close. Just for a second. Like the word has gone through him too.

When he opens them, they are very dark. The half-smile is gone. The settled certainty is fully in his face now, the look he had right before the closer of his speech, and his thumb is still moving on your cheekbone, and his voice when he speaks is so quiet you almost feel it more than hear it.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, okay. Lie back for me."

You lie back.

It is not, mechanically, easy. Your arms are behind you, tied to the harness, and you cannot use them for balance. You start to tip and he catches you, one hand at the back of your neck and the other flat against the harness at your sternum, and he lowers you down slowly onto your back across the duvet. He is so careful. Your shoulders settle. He adjusts your hips so your weight is not on your wrists, and the small specific competence of it, the way he handles you like you are precious cargo he has personally packaged, does something to you that you do not have language for.

He looks down at you for a long second.

The angle is, you understand, different now. He is up on his knees beside you, fully clothed, and you are laid out on the duvet in nothing but rope. The asymmetry from earlier has acquired a final form. He is looking down at you the way he looks at a problem he has solved and built and is now, with great satisfaction, going to test.

"There you are," he says, softly. "There you are."

He puts a hand, flat, low on your stomach. Just resting it. The weight of it goes through you. His thumb moves, once, along the line of the lower hip rope where it crosses your skin.

"You feel okay."

"Yes."

"Shoulders okay."

"Yes."

"Hands."

You move your fingers.

"Good." The word again. You feel it land. "Sweetheart, look at you. Look at you. I'm just. I'm going to look at you for a second. Is that okay."

"Yes."

He does.

You have, possibly, never been looked at so completely in your life. His eyes go everywhere. The rope across your chest. Your throat. The slight shine of sweat at your collarbones. The line of the hip rope. The loops at your thighs. The space between them. His attention is the most physical thing currently happening to you and he is not touching you at all. His hand is still resting, light, low on your stomach, and his thumb has gone still, and he is just looking.

You move, involuntarily, a fraction. Your hips shift. The rope at your hips moves with you. You see his eyes drop to track it.

"Mm," he says. Soft.

He shifts. He moves down the bed. He settles between your legs, on his stomach, propped on his forearms, and the new angle puts his face level with the lower hip rope, and you realise, with a slow heat that climbs the inside of your thighs, that he is now exactly where he has been describing being for the better part of an hour.

He rests his cheek, briefly, against the inside of your thigh, just above the rope loop. He turns his face slightly. He presses his mouth to the soft skin there, slow, a real kiss, and you feel his lips part and the warm flat press of his tongue and you make a sound that you do not authorise and cannot retract.

"Hi," he murmurs, against your skin.

"Hi."

"How long have you been like this for me."

You cannot answer. You do not know. Time has, you suspect, broken slightly.

"Long enough," he answers himself, soft. "Yeah. I know. I've been watching."

He kisses, slowly, across the inside of your thigh. He kisses the soft hollow just above the rope loop. He kisses the place where the loop meets the inner skin of your leg. He kisses, with great deliberation, around where you need him, in a small unhurried arc that maps the outer perimeter of his actual destination. He is taking inventory. He is, you understand with a kind of distant despair, still doing reconnaissance.

"Ryland."

"Mm."

"Please."

"I love it when you say that," he says, conversational, his mouth still moving slowly across the inside of your thigh. "I love it. I've thought about it. It is, in fact, one of the things I have been thinking about. I want you to know that."

"Ryland."

He laughs, quietly, against your skin. The vibration of it goes through you in a way that makes your hips jerk forward without your permission.

"Okay," he says, softer. "Okay, sweetheart. Okay."

And then his mouth is on you.

He licks you, one long slow stroke straight up the centre of you, and the sound that comes out of you is high and broken and entirely new. He makes a low pleased sound back, into you, into the wet heat between your thighs, like he has been waiting to hear that exact noise and is filing it for later. His hands settle on your hips, but only briefly. They move down. He hooks a finger under the rope loop at each thigh and pulls, gently, opening you wider for him, and the rope obliges with a soft creak and you make a sound you do not authorise.

"There," he murmurs. "Better."

The hip rope is, you note distantly, holding you in place where his hands no longer need to. You understand now why he built the system the way he did. The rope is helping him. The rope is part of him. The rope is, you understand with a small distant heat, currently doing more to you than his mouth, because his mouth has not started in earnest yet and the rope is already holding you open for him.

He licks you again, slower, savouring it. Then again, the flat broad press of his tongue dragging all the way up and ending in a slow tight circle around your clit, and your hips try to lift. The rope at your hips creaks, holds. You do not move. Your breath leaves you in a single shaky exhale.

"Fuck," you hear yourself say.

He laughs against you, a small warm vibration that makes you make a noise you do not authorise.

"Mm-hm," he murmurs, his lips brushing your clit as he speaks. "Yeah. I know."

He takes his time.

He takes, in fact, all the time he said he was going to. He licks slow flat strokes up the length of you. He works his tongue into you, briefly, pushing in, fucking you with it in slow shallow strokes that make you say his name on a broken vowel. Your breathing has, you realise, picked up. You hear yourself, distantly, the small fast hitches of it. He hears it too. He hums into you in response.

Then back up. He sucks your clit into his mouth, the small bright pull of it, and you make a noise you have never made before in your life. He hums around it. He releases. He licks you again, slower. He is calibrating. He is, you understand with a kind of distant wonder, running the experiment he said he would run. He is mapping you. He is checking what makes you make noise and what makes you make better noise, and he is, on the available evidence so far, learning very fast.

He sucks your clit again, harder this time. Your back arches against the duvet and the harness holds you and you cannot, with your hands, do a single thing. Your breath comes faster.

"There," he murmurs, briefly lifting his mouth, his chin already wet, his voice gone low and rough, "there it is. There. Look at you. You are soaking, sweetheart. You are absolutely fucking dripping for me. I can taste how long you've been like this."

"Ryland."

"I know. I know. I've got you."

He releases the thigh loops. He brings one hand up. He hooks his fingers, instead, into the front of the hip rope where it crosses low across your stomach, and he uses it. He uses it as a handle. He pulls, lightly, lifting your hips up off the duvet by the rope itself, tilting you into his mouth, and the angle changes and the sensation changes and your breath leaves you in a ragged shocked sound that is barely a word.

"Yeah," he says, soft, into you. "Yeah. Just like that. Stay there for me."

He holds you there, suspended by the hip rope against the strength of his arm, and he goes back down on you with the new angle, and the new angle is, you understand within about three seconds, devastating. He sucks your clit and works it with the flat of his tongue at the same time and your hips cannot move because he is holding them in place with the rope itself, the rope he built specifically so it could be used this way, and you are, increasingly, breathing in fast shallow hitches that you cannot regulate.

You try to look down at him.

He must feel your head lift, because he glances up, and the second your eyes meet his you make a noise like you have been struck. His mouth is on you. His eyes are on yours. His hand is wrapped in the hip rope, holding you up to his mouth. The lower half of his face is wet. His chin is wet. He looks like a man who has been doing exactly what he is doing for as long as he has been doing it and is, with great satisfaction, not about to stop. The combination of his mouth on your clit and his eyes on your face and his hand fisted in the rope and the loops at your thighs and the fact that you cannot, with your hands, do anything but lie there and let him eat you, is too much. You make another sound. Your breath catches. Your head starts to go back.

"Uh-uh," he says, briefly pulling off. His mouth is wet. His voice is wrecked. "No, sweetheart, look at me. Eyes on me. I want you to see this. I want you to see what you look like with my mouth on you like this. I have been thinking about your face right now for six weeks. You are not going to deprive me of it."

You make a noise that is not, technically, a word. Your breath is coming faster.

"Yeah," he says, soft and low. "Yeah. That's what I thought."

You open your eyes. You lift your head, again, with great effort.

He waits until you are looking at him. Until you have, deliberately, met his gaze. He holds your eyes for one long deliberate second.

Then his mouth returns.

And he does not look away.

He sucks your clit and works it slow with his tongue and his eyes stay locked on yours, and it is, you understand in some far back unreachable part of your brain, the most him thing he has ever done. He is going to make you watch. He is going to make you see him doing this. He wants the data on what your face does. He wants to record it. He wants, the speech had said, to see what you sound like when he finally says yes, and apparently finally says yes is happening now, and the saying-yes is being delivered with his mouth and his eyes both, and you cannot, you find, look away from him.

The pressure builds. He sucks at your clit in tight focused steady pulls that have absolutely abandoned any pretense of teaching mode. He is no longer figuring you out. He has figured you out. He is now, deliberately, doing the thing he has figured out, with the focused unhurried efficiency of a man who has the right equation and is solving for the variable.

Your breathing is ragged now. Open-mouthed. You can hear yourself.

He slides his free hand up off the rope, briefly. He brings two fingers to your mouth. You suck them in without being asked, because it is the only thing you have left that you can do with your body, and his eyes go black when you do.

He pulls them out, wet. He brings them down. He pushes them, slow, into you, and you feel them slide in easily, you are so wet they slide in like nothing, and he makes a low broken sound when they do.

"Christ, sweetheart," he says, his voice cracked. Christ. You are. You are absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Okay, you can take more than that. Look at you. You can take more."

He pulls his fingers out, briefly, and adds a third. He pushes them all back in, slow, slow, and the stretch of it makes your back arch against the rope and the sound that leaves you is high and broken and your breath stops, briefly, before it starts up again faster, much faster, the small fast pulls of it audible in the quiet room.

"There," he says, soft and wrecked. "There. Yeah. Look at you taking that for me. Look at you."

He curls his fingers inside you. He finds the spot he is, evidently, looking for, the spot you had not known you had labelled in his head for him, and his fingertips drag against it with the stretch of all three of them filling you and you make a sound that is, frankly, humiliating. Then his mouth is back on your clit, sucking steadily, while his three fingers work you from the inside, curling in time with the pulls of his mouth.

You are gone.

Your breathing is, you realise dimly, no longer regulating itself at all. It is coming in fast desperate hitches. You can hear it. He can hear it. The room is full of the sound of your breath and the small wet sounds of his mouth on you and his fingers in you, and the hip rope creaking faintly each time his arm flexes against it, and your own voice making noises you do not recognise.

"That's it," he says, briefly lifting his mouth, his fingers still moving inside you, "that's it. There you are. I've got you."

"Ryland please."

His mouth returns to you, briefly, a slow press, before he lifts again. His eyes lock on yours, low and rough. "Come on, sweetheart. Come on my mouth. Come on my fingers. Look at me and do it. Yes. Yes. Now."

And then, with absolutely no warning, his mouth closes around your clit and you feel the soft careful precise scrape of his teeth.

It is so light. It is so deliberate. It is, you understand in the same second it is happening, something he has been saving, something he has been timing, something he has known he was going to do exactly when he did it. His teeth, his tongue, his three fingers buried inside you, his eyes on you, the rope holding you in place, the rope at your hips holding you up to his mouth, and your breath stops happening and your chest cannot move against the harness and the sensation goes bright in a way you have never felt before, and then it goes through you, and you come.

You come with his teeth grazing your clit and his three fingers buried inside you and your eyes on his and your hands tied to your own ribs and his hand fisted in the rope at your hips and the rope holding you in the exact posture of being given, and the sound you make is loud and high and absolutely beyond your control. You come around his fingers in tight clenching pulses, the stretch of them making it sharper, brighter, more, and you feel him groan into you when you do, the sound vibrating against you and dragging the orgasm out longer. He works you through it with his mouth and his fingers and his steady dark eyes on your face. He does not stop. He does not slow. He keeps you there, in it, riding the bright sharp peak of it for longer than you knew was possible, his fingers still curling against that spot inside you, his mouth still working your clit in steady pulls. Your breath comes back in great shocked gasps. He works you through every one of them.

When you start to come down he eases off, gentling, slow soft passes of his tongue, his fingers stilling inside you, the pressure backing off in careful stages. His hand uncurls from the rope at your hips and he lowers you, slowly, back down to the duvet.

You are not.

You are not entirely here.

The duvet is soft under you. That is a fact you have access to. The ceiling above you is white. That is another fact. Your eyes are open. You think they are open. The light is doing a thing where it has gone soft at the edges, gone blurred, gone honeyed. You can feel the rope. You can feel the rope as the most present thing in the room, the rope across your chest, the rope at your hips, the rope at your wrists holding your hands to your own ribs, and the rope is the thing keeping you in your body when the rest of you has gone somewhere else.

You hear him say your name. From far away. Soft.

You think you make a sound back. You are not sure.

His cheek is on your hip. You can feel his breath, warm, against your skin. He is breathing. You are breathing. The breathing is the same thing, somehow. The breathing is one breathing.

He shifts. The mattress shifts. He moves up the bed, slowly, and you feel him settle alongside you, his body warm against your side, his hand sliding flat across your stomach above the hip rope, his face close to yours. He kisses your temple. Soft. He kisses the corner of your mouth. He kisses the bridge of your nose.

He is saying things. The things he is saying are warm and quiet and at first you cannot quite assemble them into language, you can only assemble them into the texture of language, the low gentle particular shape of his voice when it is close to your ear and speaking only to you.

The texture, eventually, becomes words.

"There you are," he is saying, soft. "There you are, sweetheart. Hi. Hi. I've got you. I'm right here. I've got you. You did so well. You did so well for me. Look at you. Stay with me a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, just like that. Breathe."

You breathe. The breathing is, you discover, something you have to be reminded about. You breathe in. The air goes deeper than you expect. He breathes with you. His hand on your stomach rises and falls with the rope.

"Good girl."

The words land somewhere quiet. They do not hit. They settle. You feel them in the same place you feel the rope.

He kisses your temple again. He stays there. His mouth is warm. His hand on your stomach is warm. The warmth is, you discover, holding you together in a way that is, currently, necessary.

You do not know how long you are there. Time has, you suspect, broken slightly. You have been told this happens. You did not know it would feel like this. It feels like floating in warm water with the lights off. It feels like the rope and his voice and his hand and nothing else.

You become aware, slowly, that you are coming back. The ceiling is whiter. The light is sharper at the edges. You can feel the duvet under you in detail again, the small weave of it, the slight cool of where your shoulder has not been pressing it. The room reassembles. He is still here. Of course he is still here. He has been here the whole time.

You turn your head, slowly, and look at him.

He is right there. His face is close to yours on the pillow. His eyes are warm and very steady and watching you with the focused careful attention of a man who has been waiting and is not going to rush. He smiles, small, when you meet his eyes.

"Hi," he says, very softly.

"Hi."

"There you are."

"Mm."

"How are you doing, sweetheart. Talk to me. Just a little."

"I'm." You try to find the word. "I'm. Good."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Can you tell me where you are."

You consider this. "Bed."

He laughs, very quietly. The laugh moves through his chest and into your side where you are pressed against him. "Yeah. Bed. Good. Excellent."

"With you."

"With me. That's the one."

His thumb moves on your stomach, slow, against the rope. He is, you notice, checking. He is running through a list. He has, you suspect, been running through a list the entire time you were away. His eyes go to your hands, briefly, to the angle of your shoulders, to the rope at your hips, to your face. He brings his hand up. He touches your cheek. He brushes your hair back.

"Anything hurt."

"No."

"Hands okay."

You move your fingers. "Yes."

"Shoulders."

"Yes."

"Tell me if anything changes."

"I will."

"Good." He kisses your forehead. He stays there. His mouth is warm against your skin. "Good, sweetheart. You did so well. I am. I am genuinely struggling, here, to convey to you how well you just did."

You make a small pleased sound. It is the first proper sound you have made since you came back, and it surprises you a little to hear it.

He smiles against your forehead. You feel the smile.

He pulls back, slightly. He looks at you again. His eyes are still very dark, you notice, underneath the softness. The softness is real. The dark is also real. He has been holding both, in parallel, the entire time.

"Stay with me a little longer," he says. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Tell me your name."

"What?"

"Tell me your name, sweetheart. Just say it for me."

You say your name.

He grins. Slow.

"There you are," he says. "Yeah. Okay. Now we can keep going."

He kisses you. Properly. The first proper kiss since the harness, his mouth warm against yours, the taste of you still on his tongue, and you make a sound into it that is, you realise distantly, the sound of you fully arriving back in your body.

He pulls back.

"Because," he says, soft, his forehead against yours, "I am, sweetheart, in fact, not done with you."

He kisses you again. Slower. Properly. You can feel him taking inventory through the kiss, the way his mouth moves against yours, the soft thoroughness of it. His hand has moved up off your stomach. It rests, warm, against the side of your throat, his thumb at the line of your jaw, holding your face exactly where he wants it.

When he pulls back, his eyes are dark again. Fully. The softness has not left, but the dark is rising back through it.

"I need you to sit up for me," he says, soft. "Yeah? Slowly. I'll help."

He shifts. He sits up alongside you, swings his legs around, and slides one arm under your shoulders. He brings you up with him, slowly, taking the weight of your upper body for you, because your hands are still tied behind your back and you cannot push yourself up. He is so careful. He brings you up to sitting and steadies you there, one hand flat at the centre of the harness, the other at your lower back. He lets you find your balance.

"There," he says, soft. "Good."

You sit, looking at him. Your knees are tucked under you. The hip rope creaks softly as you settle. He is sitting in front of you, fully clothed, hair worse than ever, the lower half of his face still faintly damp, and he is looking at you with the same focused careful attention he tied every knot with.

He smiles. Small. Crooked.

"Stay right there for me," he says.

He gets off the bed.

It is the first time he has moved away from you in a long time, and you feel the absence of him like a small cool draft against your skin. You watch him. He stands at the foot of the bed and pulls his t-shirt off over his head in one motion, the chemistry pun balling up in his fist and getting tossed, without ceremony, in the direction of the laundry basket. He misses. He does not appear to care. His hands go to the waistband of his pyjama pants and he pushes them down and steps out of them, and then he is standing at the foot of the bed in nothing at all, and you have, you realise, not exhaled.

You look at him.

You look at him properly, for the first time tonight, and the looking is sudden and total and unbalancing. He is flushed across the chest. His hair is a complete disaster. He is hard, obviously, achingly, the visible evidence of how long he has been holding himself in check while doing everything he has done to you for the last hour. His hands at his sides are not quite steady.

He sees you looking. The corner of his mouth lifts.

"Hi," he says, softly.

"Hi."

"Yeah," he says. "I know. I've been. It's been a long evening."

You make a small wrecked sound that is half laugh and half something else. He grins, briefly. He climbs back onto the bed.

"Okay," he says. "Okay, sweetheart. Last bit. Come here."

He gets you up onto your knees. He turns you, gently, by the harness, so that your back is to him and you are kneeling facing the foot of the bed. He shifts you, slowly, until you are kneeling at the very edge of the mattress, your knees just at the line where the bed ends and the floor begins. The hip rope creaks. He is using it, again, to position you, the rope doing the work of placing your body exactly where he wants it.

He gets off the bed.

He stands behind you, on the floor. The height of the mattress puts you, kneeling, at exactly the right level. You understand, with a small bright drop, that this is what he was building toward when he chose where to put you. The geometry has been planned. Of course it has.

His hands settle on your hips. Warm. Skin to skin now, for the first time in over an hour, and the difference is immediate. You make a sound. He makes a small low sound back, like the contact has hit him too.

"Okay," he says, soft, at your ear. "Okay. I'm right here. You with me."

"Yes."

"Tell me your name again."

You say your name.

"Good." His mouth presses to the back of your shoulder, soft. "Good, sweetheart. Stay with me."

His hands move. One stays on your hip. The other slides up your back, slowly, finds the rope at your shoulder blades where the wrist tie connects to the harness, and his fingers wrap around it. He has, again, a handle. He has, again, the system he built doing exactly what he built it to do.

He pulls, gently. The rope pulls your shoulders back, the harness pulling with them, and your spine arches and your chest goes forward and the hip rope tilts you, slightly, the angle of your body adjusting under his hand without you having to do anything. You are being posed. You are being put into the position he wants and the rope is doing it for him.

You exhale, shakily. Your breath has, you realise, picked up again.

"There," he murmurs. "Yeah. Like that. Look at you."

You feel him, then. The warm press of him against you, at the very entrance of you, slick from your own wetness and from the residue of his mouth and his fingers from before. He does not push in. He just holds there, the pressure of him against you, and you make a sound that is desperate and unauthorised and entirely his fault.

"I know," he says. "I know. I'm taking my time."

"Ryland."

"Mm-hm."

He pushes in. Slow. So slow. He sinks into you in one long unhurried stroke, his hand still wrapped in the rope at your shoulders, his other hand fisted in the hip rope, using both to hold you exactly where he wants you, and the stretch of him after the three fingers is, somehow, still a stretch, and the slow inevitable slide of him into you makes you make a noise that is almost a sob.

He bottoms out. He stays there. He breathes.

"Christ," he says, his voice cracked. "Oh, sweetheart. Oh, fuck. You feel—"

He cannot finish the sentence. You understand. You are not capable of finishing sentences either. He is in you. He has been talking about being in you for an hour and he is now, finally, in you. The fact of him is the only fact in the room.

He moves. Slowly at first. Long deep unhurried strokes, his hand in the rope at your shoulders pulling you back onto him in time with the push of his hips, the rope doing the work of moving you because your hands cannot. The harness creaks. The hip rope creaks. You can feel the rope at every wrap on your body, holding you in the shape he chose, while he uses you in the exact way he described he was going to.

"There you are," he murmurs, his mouth at your shoulder. "There. Yeah. Just like that. Just like that."

He picks up the pace. Not by much. Just enough that the strokes become harder, more deliberate, the slap of skin audible in the quiet room. Your breath is, you realise distantly, picking up again, fast hitches that match the rhythm of him. You feel it starting to build again. You did not know it could build again so soon. You did not, in fact, know anything about your own body that you are currently learning.

He feels it before you can tell him.

"Wait," he says, soft, almost surprised. His hand on the rope at your shoulders flexes. "Wait. Sweetheart. Are you. Are you already."

You make a noise that is, you suspect, an answer.

He laughs, low and incredulous, the sound vibrating against your back. "Already. Okay. Okay, that's. That's fast. That is genuinely. Okay."

He presses his forehead to the back of your shoulder for a second, as if collecting himself. His hand on the hip rope tightens. When he speaks again his voice is rougher, lower, the half-smile audible in it.

"Okay," he says. "Okay, fine. Fine. Yes. Yeah. We can do that. We can absolutely do that."

Then his hand in the rope at your shoulders releases.

You feel the absence of it for one half-second, and then his hand is sliding, slowly, up the line of your spine. Up the back of your neck. Around to the front. His palm settles, warm and certain, across the front of your throat.

He does not press. He does not squeeze. He just rests it there, his fingers light at the side of your neck, his thumb at the line of your jaw, the heel of his hand at the soft hollow at the base of your throat. His hand is, you realise with a small bright drop, exactly where his hand has been heading all night. The sternum. The collarbones. The side of your throat after the harness. The kiss. He has been circling this. He has been getting closer to it for an hour. And now he is here, his hand at your throat, the warm certain weight of him there, holding you in place not with pressure but with the simple fact of his hand on you.

You make a sound. It is small and wrecked and you do not have a word for it.

"Yeah," he says, soft at your ear, his voice gone low and dark. "Yeah. I've been thinking about this too."

His thumb moves, once, along the line of your jaw. He tilts your head back, slowly, until it rests against his shoulder, until your throat is exposed in his hand, until you are arched against him with the rope holding you up and his hand holding you back and his body pushing into you from behind. Your breath comes in slow shaky pulls. He can feel each one. His hand at your throat feels every single one of them.

"Breathe for me," he murmurs.

You breathe.

"Good." The word lands directly into the skin of your throat under his palm. "Good, sweetheart."

He starts moving again. Slow at first. Deep. The rope at your hips is the only thing positioning you now because his other hand has stayed there. The shoulder rope hangs loose. His hand at your throat is what is holding your upper body in place. The rope built the cage. His hand is the final lock.

You feel yourself, distantly, going somewhere again. The light at the edges. The slowness. The hand at your throat is keeping you here, keeping you in your body, the simple anchoring fact of it.

"Stay with me," he says, quiet. "Yeah? Stay right here. I want you here for this."

"Yes."

"Good girl."

The words go through you and you make a sound and his hand feels the sound move up your throat and you feel him smile against the back of your shoulder.

He picks up the pace properly now. The strokes get harder. Deeper. The slap of his hips against you is loud in the quiet room. His hand at your throat does not move. It just stays, the warm certain weight of it, the thumb at your jaw keeping your head tilted back against his shoulder, the heel of his hand at the base of your throat, and you can feel your own pulse against his palm and you understand that he can feel it too.

His other hand slips off the hip rope.

It slides down your front. Down across your stomach. Under the hip rope, between your legs, and his fingers find your clit with the precision of a man who has been there recently and knows the way. The moment his fingertips press there you make a noise that is, frankly, indecent.

"There," he says. "Yeah. Right there. I've got you. Come on."

He works your clit in tight focused circles in time with the strokes of his hips and the hand at your throat holds you exactly where he wants you, and you can feel him deep, the angle of him hitting the same spot his fingers had found before, and the combination is, you understand within about ten seconds, going to undo you completely.

"Look at you," he says, his voice gone rough. "Look at you taking that. Sweetheart. Sweetheart, you are. Fuck. I'm not going to last. I'm not. Come on, come for me, I want to feel it, come on."

You come.

You come a second time, harder, sharper, your whole body going tight inside the rope, and his hand at your throat feels every pulse of it move through you, and you feel the harness hold you in the exact shape he set you in, and you feel him groan against your shoulder, deep and broken, and his hand at your throat tightens just slightly, just enough that you feel it, just enough that it makes the orgasm go bright and sharp at the edges, and his hips stutter and he buries himself in you and comes with a sound that is, you note distantly through the haze of your own pleasure, the most undone you have ever heard him.

He holds himself in you. He breathes. His hand at your throat softens, just slightly, the thumb stroking along your jaw. His mouth presses, open and wet, to the place where your shoulder meets your throat.

The aftershocks start, small and bright, before he has even finished. Your body keeps clenching around him in soft involuntary waves and each one makes him groan against your skin and you cannot stop them, you are not in charge of stopping them, you are not in charge of anything anymore. Another wave. Another. Smaller. He is still in you. He is softening, slowly. He is breathing against your shoulder.

"Oh," he says, very softly. "Oh, sweetheart. Oh, look at you. You're still going. You're still. Yeah."

His hand at your throat strokes your jaw. His other hand is still between your legs. He has not moved it. His fingers are still there, light, resting against your clit, and as you ride the small waves through your body he starts to move them again. Slow. Light. Almost nothing. Just enough.

"You can give me one more," he murmurs. "Can't you. Just a small one. You're so close already. Look at you."

"I can't."

"You can."

"Ryland."

"Sweetheart. Yes you can. Just one more. Just for me. I want to feel one more move through you while I'm still in you. Yeah? Come on."

His fingers work, so light, the lightest possible pressure, slow circles that match the small involuntary clenches still moving through you. He is softening inside you and you can feel it, the slow change of him, and somehow this is doing it too, the awareness that he is going soft in you and is still, with the last functional half of his attention, working you toward one more.

"Come on, sweetheart," he murmurs. "Right here. Right here with me. One more."

You feel it gather, small and bright and so close to the surface that it barely has to climb to get there.

"There," he says. "There. Yeah. Let me have it. One more for me."

You come again.

It is so small. It is so bright. It moves through you in a soft slow wave that makes you shudder against him from your shoulders down through where he is still inside you, and his hand at your throat feels it move up through you and his other hand feels it move through your clit and he makes a low broken sound at the back of your shoulder, his whole body tightening around you in response.

"Yes," he breathes. "Yes, sweetheart. Yeah. There. There. Good."

The wave subsides. His fingers slow. They still, eventually, against you, but he does not move them away. His hand at your throat stays where it is, warm, steady, the thumb stroking your jaw. He is still, just, in you. He stays.

"Oh," he says, very softly, against your shoulder. "Oh, sweetheart. Sweetheart. Look at you."

He holds you, like that, against his chest, his hand at your throat and his hand between your legs and the rope holding you in the exact shape he set you in, for a long time. You do not know how long. Time has, again, gone strange around the edges. You can feel your own pulse in his palm. You can feel his pulse in his chest behind you.

Eventually, slowly, he eases his hand from your throat. He brings it up. He brushes the hair back from the side of your face, tender, slow. He kisses the line of your jaw where his thumb has just been.

"You with me."

"Yes."

"Yeah?"

"Yes, Ryland."

"Good." A kiss to your temple. Soft. "Good. Okay. Okay, sweetheart, let me. Let me get us sorted."

He eases out of you, slow, careful, both of you making a small involuntary sound at the loss. His hand stays warm and flat against your stomach as he does. He kisses the back of your shoulder, once, soft.

"Stay right there for me. Just a minute."

He moves. The mattress dips and rises as he gets off the bed. You hear him in the en suite, briefly, the soft sounds of water and a cloth. He comes back. He kneels behind you on the bed again and you feel the warm gentle press of a damp cloth between your legs, careful, thorough, and then a soft dry one after it. He cleans you up the way he ties knots, which is to say with the focused unhurried attentiveness of a man for whom the doing is the whole point.

"Okay," he murmurs. "Okay. Let's get you out of this."

He gets you turned around, slowly, by the harness, until you are facing him again, kneeling in the centre of the bed. He sits cross-legged in front of you. His knees touch yours. His hands settle on your forearms behind your back, checking the wrist tie, and his eyes do the small bright inventory thing again, looking you over from collarbones to thighs.

"How are we doing," he says, soft.

"Good."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Anything hurt."

"No."

"Anything numb. Hands. Tell me."

You move your fingers. "No."

"Good." He smiles. Small. Crooked. "Okay. Sweetheart. We are going to do this in reverse. Yeah? Same as we did it. Just. The other way. Slowly. Tell me if anything feels weird coming off."

"Okay."

He reaches behind you. His fingers find the knot at your wrists first, because that was the last thing he tied to the harness, the connection point that made the whole system one piece. He works it loose. He pulls the rope back through the harness cinch. He frees the wrist tie from the rest, and now the rope at your wrists is its own length again, separate.

But he does not untie your wrists yet.

"In a minute," he says, when you make a small questioning sound. "I want to do these in order. Trust me."

He moves on. He works on the hip rope and thigh loops first. His hands are deft and patient. He unties the thigh loop on one side, slow, slides the rope free, then the other. He lays the lengths across the duvet next to him as they come off. Then he works the hip wraps. He unwraps them, slowly, his knuckles brushing your skin as the rope comes away from you. Each wrap that comes off, he traces the line of where it was with the backs of his fingers, slow, deliberate. There is a faint indent in your skin where the rope was. He runs his thumb along it. He does not say anything. He just looks at where his rope was.

He kisses, once, the soft place at your hip where the lower wrap had been sitting.

"There," he murmurs. "Yeah."

He moves up. The chest harness comes off in stages. The cinch on one side first. The cinch on the other. Then the lower band, slow, unwrapping from your ribs. He pulls the rope through and lays it aside. You feel the cool of the room replace where the rope was. You feel his fingers trace the line of the indent again, light, careful, the way he traced the hip mark.

"Look at that," he says, soft. "Look at where I had you."

He kisses the line. Once, twice, following the soft red mark just below your breasts where the lower band had sat snug. His mouth is warm. Your breath, against your will, hitches.

He smiles against your skin. He kisses the place once more. Then he moves up. The upper band comes off the same way, unwrapped slowly, set aside. He traces the line just under your collarbones. He kisses there too, slow, almost reverent.

"Hi," he says, quietly, into your collarbone.

"Hi."

"Almost done."

He sits back, just slightly. He brings you forward, gently, until your forehead rests against his. He reaches behind you. He finds the knot at your wrists, the last one, the first one he tied tonight. He works it loose.

The rope comes away from your wrists.

Your hands fall, slowly, free for the first time in what feels like hours, and they do not seem to know what to do with themselves. He catches them in his. He brings them both around to the front. He looks at your wrists. They are faintly pink where the rope was. The lines of the wraps are visible, soft, not raised, just the soft impression of where you were held.

He brings one wrist to his mouth.

He kisses the inside of it. Slow. He kisses the soft place where the rope had sat. He does the same with the other wrist. He rubs his thumbs, slowly, into the small muscles of your hands, the way he would knead a cramp out, working the blood back through them.

"How are these," he says.

"Fine."

"Tell me if they tingle."

"They don't."

"Good."

He keeps holding your hands. He looks at you over them. His eyes are warm. The focused careful attention is back to its normal household configuration. He looks like himself. He looks, you note, extremely like himself, like a man who has been Ryland Grace this entire time and is now just letting it all show.

"Okay," he says. "Come here."

He pulls you down with him. He lies back against the pillows and brings you with him, settling you against his chest, your cheek on his shoulder, your hand resting flat over his heart. He pulls the duvet up over both of you. He folds you in. He rests his chin against the top of your head.

You can feel his heart under your palm. It is, you notice, still going faster than it should be.

"Hi," he says, softly.

"Hi."

You stay there for a while. His hand moves, slowly, up and down your back. His breathing slows. Yours slows. The room is very quiet. You can hear, distantly, a car going past on the street. You can hear the soft hum of the fridge from down the hall. The same small sounds the room made an hour ago when he was telling you what he wanted to do.

He has, you note, done all of it.

You make a small sound against his shoulder that is almost a laugh.

"What," he says. His voice is sleepy now. Warm.

"You did do a lot of reading."

He laughs. The laugh moves through his chest, into your cheek where it is resting against him, into your hand where it is over his heart. He laughs for a long time, soft and slow and helpless.

"I really did," he says, finally.

"Was it. Was it worth it."

"Sweetheart."

"Mm."

"I am going to be processing tonight for, in fact, the rest of my life."

You smile against his shoulder. He kisses the top of your head.

You lie there. He is warm. The rope is in soft pale coils on the duvet near his feet, neat where he laid them as he took each one off you. You can see them, peripherally, the white of the cotton against the dark of the cover. They look, you think, more innocent than they have any right to. They look like rope. They look like the kind of thing he would, with great quiet certainty, put back in the bedside drawer in the morning.

You think about the book on the nightstand. You think about the browser tab. You think about the small coil that appeared in the sock drawer four days ago and the way he checked on it three separate times before he was ready.

"Ryland."

"Mm."

"Are there more books at school."

He goes very still. You feel him try, for a second, to assess whether this is a trap.

"Yes," he says, carefully.

"Bring them home."

He laughs again. Helpless. He pulls you closer. He kisses the top of your head.

"Yeah, sweetheart," he says, soft and warm and slightly wrecked. "Yeah. Okay. I can do that."

You close your eyes.

You think, with the last small functional half of your brain before sleep takes you, that you are going to have to renew the library book one more time. Just to be safe. Just in case.

You fall asleep with your hand over his heart.

ryland didn’t even look up. “option one: we open it and potentially discover advanced human knowledge. option two: we don’t open it and i slowly lose my mind wondering what’s inside.”

“option three,” you added, “we don’t open it and you will forever be curious about the content but hey, at least you'd still be alive!”

he glanced up at you with a grin that immediately told you he was not going to pick option three.

“ryland last time you said ‘this’ll probably be fine,’ we almost suffocated.”

“counterpoint,” he said, straightening and placing a hand on the latch, “almost.”

you sighed.

“i just don’t like it,” you said for what was probably the fifth time.

ryland made a thoughtful humming sound that meant the exact opposite.

“you don’t like anything that comes from rocky.”

you crossed your arms without taking your eyes off the object. “that is objectively untrue. i like the parts that don’t explode, corrode, or attempt to rewrite the laws of physics.”

“so.... none of it?”

“exactly.”

pause.

just when ryland reached for the cylinder, you spoke out again.

“and just for the record....” you said, voice flat, “i am deeply against whatever you’re about to do.”

“come on. what’s the worst that could happen?”

you dragged a hand down your face, already bracing for disaster. “okay, i need you to understand that that phrase is cursed. like, historically cursed. civilizations have fallen after someone said that.”

he ignored you.

of course he ignored you.

the seal popped before you could argue more. the cylinder hissed open with a soft, pressurized sound.

for a second, nothing happened.

you leaned forward slightly, squinting, peering into the opening, expecting.... something. a device. a sample. anything.

“okay.... maybe it’s empty—”

poof!

a burst of fine gold dust shot out of the container in slow motion, catching the light as it drifted upward and outward, directly into both your faces before either of you could react.

“oh— come on—!” you coughed immediately, stumbling back and waving your hands uselessly through the air. “why is it always airborne—”

“i didn’t—” ryland coughed too, turning his head and blinking rapidly. “i didn’t know it was going to do that!”

“it’s a mysterious alien container, of course it was going to do that!”

the dust settled almost as quickly as it appeared, vanishing into nothing. no residue, no smell, no visible trace that anything had even happened.

you both stood there, breathing hard, staring at each other.

“....okay,” you said slowly. “status report.”

he blinked a few more times, then patted his arms, his torso, like he might find damage. “uhhh.... lungs: functioning. skin: not melting. vision: normal.”

“define normal.”

“i can see you glaring at me, so, yeah. normal.”

you exhaled. “great. fantastic. we inhaled space dust and survived. love that for us.”

“see?” he said, already relaxing. “nothing to worry about.”

you pointed at him sharply. “you do not get to say that. you lost that privilege the moment you opened it.”

“fair.”

then there was a beat.

“so.... that’s it?” you asked.

he peered into the cylinder, turning it upside down. only the residue of the dust fell, nothing else was inside.

“that’s it.” he confirmed.

“okay,” you said finally, though your voice carried a thin edge of disbelief. “either that was completely harmless, or we just inhaled something that’s going to kill us slowly and mysteriously.”

“statistically,” ryland said, already turning back toward the console, “it’s probably the second one.”

“great,” you muttered.

“yep.” he clicked his tongue and made a double finger gun. “nailed it.”

only for a while.

only for a while, it actually seemed like he was right.

you two ran scans, double-checked the air composition, monitored your vitals like you were waiting for them to spike into something dramatic and undeniable. everything came back normal. no toxins, no foreign pathogens, no radiation spikes, nothing that explained the golden dust or what it was supposed to do.

it should have been reassuring.

it wasn’t.

because about an hour in, you noticed something off.

not dramatic. not alarming. but subtle enough.

you shifted in your seat, tugging slightly at the collar of your yellow jumpsuit. the fabric suddenly felt too close, too warm against your skin.

“hey,” you said, not looking up from your screen. you were in your station in the lab, your back facing ryland. “did the temperature go up?”

ryland glanced at the panel beside him. “nope. holding steady.”

“huh.” you leaned back, frowning. “feels warmer.”

“maybe you’re just stressed.”

you snorted. “yeah, because inhaling unknown alien particles was such a relaxing experience.”

you tried to ignore it.

it didn’t work.

because by the second hour, it got worse. worse enough that it distracted you from doing your job.

you were restless now, shifting every few minutes, hyper-aware of your own body in a way that was getting increasingly distracting.

“okay, nope. something’s happening.” you said, standing up. you zipped down your suit. it pooled around your waist and left you in nothing but a dark green tank top you wore underneath. now you looked like a formula 1 driver walking around the garage in the middle of a malaysian heat.

except you were pretty sure that the heat in malaysia was tolerable enough and the drivers were used to it.

this, whatever this was however, was far from it.

“i'm sure it's nothing—” ryland finally turned but then paused.

“what?” you asked as you tied your hair into a ponytail.

he was sitting still. too still. his posture was stiff, shoulders slightly tense, like he was holding himself in place. his jaw tightened and his eyes that were currently fixated on you slightly dilated.

“....ryland?”

he flinched, snapping back to the present. he fixed his glasses while his eyes withdrew, focusing on somewhere else but you.

“yeah?” his voice came out a little too quick. a little too tight.

you narrowed your eyes. “you okay?”

“fine. totally fine.”

“you don’t look fine.”

he let out a short laugh that didn’t sound entirely natural. “well, looks can be deceiving.”

“you’re flushed.”

“it’s warm,” he said immediately. “i’m…. internally warm.”

“....that’s not a thing.”

“it is now.”

you crossed your arms, studying him.

“you’re acting weird.”

ryland scratched the back of his neck. you did not miss the way he licked his lips. and there was a faint flush creeping across his face, coloring his cheeks and the tips of his ears, subtle but unmistakable once you saw it.

“nothing. nothing. um—”

you frowned. “are you okay?”

“yes, yes,” he cleared his throat while still staring at a very specific spot on the floor, like he was avoiding your eyes.

“okay....” you turned, walking back to your station, trying to not let his sudden weird behaviour get to you. it's ryland. he was always a bit odd, even back on earth when you first met him on the ship.

by hour three, thankfully you finished your work quickly because the heat was no longer tolerable.

“fuck....” you muttered under your breath, standing up and started pacing around.

ryland was still busy with his duct-taped-computers, probably working on the algorithm to translate rocky's melodic language.

he stopped typing on the keyboard and grabbed his notebook, writing something there now.

your paces halted. and unfortunately your brain decided that right now was the perfect time to let your eyes wander to his arms out of all places.

you didn’t know why but it just happened.

you didn't get to stop yourself. you brain drifted, catching on the absolute ridiculous size of his biceps. since when did he work out? the thought of middle school science teacher ryland grace going to the gym and working out during the weekends got more ridiculous the more you think of it.

you should have stopped. should have sat back down and worked or went to take a nap or— oh my god his veins—

you flinched.

jesus, what the fuck?

since when the fuck did you notice that?

nope. absolutely not.

you squeezed your eyes shut briefly, exhaling through your nose like that might reset your brain.

it didn't.

you sighed, audible enough just to your ears. your gaze flicked, just for a second, and then immediately snapped back to somewhere else.

that was a mistake.

because now you knew, and knowing made it harder not to look again.

your brain, completely unhelpful, decided to supply additional commentary. since when does he have arms like that? it asked, again, like this was new information, like you hadn’t been working side by side with him for months.

you squeezed your eyes shut briefly, exhaling through your nose. get it together. this was ryland. your crew mate. your friend. the only other human being alive within literal light-years.

and yet—

“oh, for fuck's sake,” you cursed under your breath.

“what?” ryland immediately turned, ears sharp enough to hear you. he looked concerned for a bit.

“nothing,” you said quickly. too quickly.

he adjusted his glasses. “that did not sound like nothing.”

“it’s nothing.”

ryland tilted his head. a hint of amusement decorating his face.

“you were staring at me,” he pointed out.

you jerked your gaze away. “i was not.”

“you absolutely were.”

“i was not,” you insisted sharper, which would have been more convincing if you hadn’t immediately glanced back at him again.

he let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “wow. okay. so it’s not just me. good to know.”

you pressed a hand to your forehead, giving up on your pretenses. “no, it is definitely not just you.”

you paced again a few more steps, trying to shake it off, but it didn’t help. if anything, it made you even more hyperaware of everything. your breathing, the air, him.

and by the fourth hour, denial was no longer an option.

“okay, that's it.” you said, pacing now because sitting still felt impossible, “we need to figure out whatever the hell this is.”

“yep,” ryland said, standing up simultaneously.

“define what you’re feeling,” you asked.

he hesitated. “uh, okay. so, scientifically?”

“obviously.”

“i feel.... distracted,” he started, frowning slightly as he tried to articulate it. “like my brain keeps derailing. and also—” he stopped.

he looked at you and held his gaze for a second too long.

“ryland.”

“....also very aware of you,” he finished.

pause.

“define 'aware'. like when you were staring at me?”

“i wasn't—” he stopped, then frowned, like he was trying to catch his own thoughts mid-escape. “okay, maybe i was.”

you crossed your arms. “why?”

“i don’t know,” he said immediately, which somehow felt worse than any actual answer. “i just— looked up and— there you were.”

“i’m always here!”

“yes,” he said, a little too quickly. “i am aware of that. conceptually. but right now it’s.... more noticeable.”

you stared at him.

“more noticeable.” you repeated.

he rubbed the back of his neck, clearly uncomfortable. “that sounded weird.”

“it sounded very weird.”

“i meant it in a normal, non-weird way!”

“there is no version of that sentence that is normal, ryland!”

“you were staring at me too!” he reminded.

you opened your mouth, then shut it again, abandoning whatever argument you were about to attempt. he got you there.

then you sighed. you realized that you both seem to be doing that a lot today.

“you know what? nevermind. just— are there any other symptoms? like what, hormones? perception? impulse control?”

“all of the above, probably.”

you exhaled slowly, forcing yourself to think. maybe it was—

“the dust,” you said suddenly, stopping in your tracks.

he went still. “what?”

you pointed at the cylinder. “it has to be that.”

“yeah,” he said, nodding slowly like he just pieced all the puzzles together now. “yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. mysterious alien substance, unknown effects, sudden onset of—” he gestured vaguely between you “—this.”

you raised an eyebrow. “'this?'”

“i don’t have a better word!”

“well, find one!”

“i’m a scientist, not emily brontë!”

you dragged both hands down your face. “oh my god.”

“okay,” you continued. “let's not panic. let us all calm down. so, we agreed we got exposed to an unknown particulate substance.”

“yep.”

“we’re experiencing.... thermal dysregulation.”

“yep.”

“and—” you hesitated, “—behavioral anomalies.”

he made a small, distressed noise. “that is a very scientific way to say that i cannot stop staring at your lips.”

you frowned. “you were staring at my lips?”

“and you were staring at my arms! we can do this all night!” he said defensively.

“did you just quote the sequels— nevermind. not important.”

you pressed your lips together. which, unfortunately, made his eyes drop there again.

you both noticed, and you both looked away at the same time.

“okay,” he said, pacing once, like movement might fix this. “okay, okay, okay, okay, we can figure this out. we always figure things out.”

“right,” you said, latching onto that. “we analyze.”

“we observe.”

“we hypothesize.”

“we do not panic.”

“we are absolutely not panicking.”

you were both very clearly panicking.

“let’s list everything again.” he said, forcing steadiness into his voice. “all symptoms. no judgment.”

“no judgment,” you agreed.

“elevated body temperature.” he started.

“check.”

“heightened sensory awareness.”

“check.”

“uh....” he hesitated, visibly struggling. “increased.... focus on.... specific.... features?”

you folded your arms tighter. “check.”

“compulsive attention,” he added weakly.

“check.”

he swallowed. “and a— a noticeable shift in, uh—”

“attraction?” you said bluntly.

he closed his eyes. “yeah. that.”

the word hung there, heavy but accurate.

you both went very still. because once it was said like that, clean, clinical, undeniable, something in your brain clicked into place.

not just the symptoms.

the pattern.

your mind started pulling threads together, faster now. the dust. the delivery method. the lack of any visible organism. the immediate onset being minimal, then escalating over time.

you frowned, thinking harder.

“okay,” you said slowly. “if this were any known terrestrial system, particulate exposure with delayed onset behavioral changes would suggest—”

“toxins,” he said automatically.

“but there’s no impairment,” you countered.

“cognitive function is intact. motor function is intact. we’re not disoriented.”

“right,” he said, catching up. “so not a neurotoxin.”

“and not a pathogen,” you added. “no immune response. no inflammation.”

“so it’s not attacking us.”

“it’s affecting us.”

you both went quiet again, thinking.

he ran a hand through his hair, pacing again, faster this time. “okay, so— delivery system: aerosolized particulate. effect: behavioral modification. targeted toward—”

he stopped.

you watched it happen. the exact moment the realization hit him.

his entire posture went rigid.

“....no,” he said.

your stomach dropped. “what?” you asked, even though something in you already knew but refused to acknowledge it.

he looked at you. then away. then back again, like he wished reality would swap out for a better option.

“no, no, no, no, no, no,” he muttered, shaking his head. “that’s— that’s not—”

“ryland,” you said, sharper now. “what.”

he gestured helplessly toward the empty cylinder. “there were no organisms. no plant matter. nothing visible. which means whatever this is, it doesn’t rely on traditional biological structures.”

“okay....?”

“which means,” he continued, words picking up speed like he couldn’t stop them now, “it could be a synthetic analog. or an alien biochemical system that doesn’t follow earth-based taxonomy. something that mimics a known function without the same physical form—”

“ryland.”

he stopped and looked at you.

you held his gaze.

“say it.”

he hesitated. like if he didn’t say it, it wouldn’t be real.

“....on earth,” he started, carefully, “there are airborne particulates that influence behavior in very specific ways.”

your chest tightened.

“they’re typically produced by plants,” he went on. “released into the air. inhaled. they trigger physiological responses that.... alter attraction. increase reproductive drive. reduce inhibition—”

your breath caught.

he exhaled, defeated.

“....pollen,” he finished.

silence.

thick.

absolute.

you stared at him.

he stared back.

“that’s not possible,” you said, even as your brain was already connecting it. "that's not fucking possible. what the fu—”

“i know,” he said quickly. “i know. there were no plants. there’s no visible biological structure. it doesn’t make sense.”

“so it’s not pollen.”

“it’s not plant pollen,” he corrected weakly.

you both paused.

“but it’s doing the same thing,” you said.

“yeah.”

another silence. longer this time.

he let out a hollow laugh, dragging a hand down his face. “that’s— wow. okay. that’s just— fantastic. amazing. incredible. we got hit with alien.... pseudo-pollen that—”

he stopped himself.

you finished it for him. “that makes people.... like this.”

he nodded, looking like he wanted to walk directly into space.

you swallowed. your skin still felt too warm. thoughts still kept drifting back to him.

to his hands. arms. the way he was looking at you right now.

you dropped your hands. wanna know the worst part of this? it's that now that you understood it, it didn’t make it stop. it just made it clearer.

“we’re in trouble,” you said quietly.

he nodded, equally quiet.

“yeah,” he said. “we really are.”

“and rocky just gave it to us with no warning?”

“to be fair,” ryland said, “he might not have known humans would react like this.”

you stopped pacing. “react like what, exactly?”

“like this,” he said weakly. “he probably thinks this is how humans reproduce. like, 'here, have some breeding dust, make more crew for the mission!'” ryland continued.

“oh, jesus.”

another pause.

longer this time.

he shifted his weight. “okay. solution-oriented thinking. we just.... wait it out.”

“wait it out,” you repeated.

“yep. it’s a chemical thing, right? it’ll metabolize, wear off, we go back to normal, and we never speak of this again.”

“not even a little bit.” you agreed quickly.

“not even in a funny anecdote way.”

“especially not in a funny anecdote way.”

he removed his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose with his eyes shut tight while his other hand was gripping the edge of his desk for dear life. firm, almost rigid, like it was the only thing anchoring him in place. “good plan. great plan. love that plan.”

you stopped pacing and looked at him properly.

really looked.

the flush hadn’t faded, it had deepened. his breathing was just slightly off, not enough to be obvious unless you were paying attention, but you were paying attention now. and the way he was holding himself. tense, contained, like he was actively stopping himself from—

“ryland,” you said slowly.

“yeah.” he did not look at you.

“why are you holding onto the table like it’s about to float away?”

he let out a short, strained laugh.

“because if i don’t,” he said, voice tight in a way that made something in your chest twist, “i might do something incredibly stupid.”

your stomach dropped. “define 'stupid.'”

his eyes flicked up to yours, and whatever you saw there made your breath catch.

“i think,” he said quietly, “you already know.”

pause.

you stole a look at him. ryland had gone very still, hands braced on the edge of the console, head bowed like he was trying to think his way out of this. he looked just as wrecked as you are. tense, flushed, jaw tight like he was grinding through it.

the lab suddenly felt too small, like the walls had inched closer, like the air had thickened into something you had to push through just to breathe. you were still standing too close to each other. close enough to feel the heat rolling off him. close enough that every tiny shift felt amplified. and neither of you seemed able to take that one simple step back.

you both pretended to think. which would’ve been easier if your thoughts weren’t constantly derailing.

“okay,” ryland said finally, too quickly, like he’d been holding the word in his mouth for a while. he wasn’t looking at you. he hadn’t been looking at you for a solid minute now, which somehow made it worse. “solution. we need a solution.”

you nodded, even though he couldn’t see it. “yeah. yeah, obviously.”

he paced once, twice, hands flexing at his sides like he didn’t know what to do with them. “we don’t know the duration of the effect. could be hours, could be longer.”

“right,” you said, your voice coming out tighter than you meant.

“it might not get worse,” he said quickly.

you both paused.

“it’s definitely getting worse,” you said.

“yeah,” he admitted. “yeah, that’s fair.”

another stretch of silence followed, thick and charged and deeply unhelpful.

another beat. he stopped mid-pace, suddenly locking eyes on your lips again as you bit the lower one in concentration. a visible shiver ran through him.

you, meanwhile, were transfixed by the way his t-shirt stretched across his chest when he breathed. arms. shoulders. that stupid little strand of hair falling over his forehead.

it was ridiculous. you were both adults. professionals. stuck on a ship light-years from home with an entire species depending on you not screwing this up.

and yet.

both of you looked away at the same time.

he continued pacing, then he straightened slightly, like he’d latched onto something solid. “okay. i’ve got it.”

you perked up. “yeah?”

“isolation.”

silence.

“what?” your voice came out small.

“we isolate,” he repeated, more firmly now, like saying it again would make it more reasonable. “separate areas of the ship. minimal contact. we wait for the effects to wear off.”

you stared at him. “you’re kidding.”

“i’m not kidding.”

“ryland, that’s not a solution. t-that’s— what if it gets worse? what if it doesn’t wear off?”

“then we reassess,” he said, easy. “but right now, the safest option is distance.”

you laughed, sharp and disbelieving. “distance? on this ship? we share literally everything. systems, controls, workload—”

“yeah,” he said, gaining momentum, talking faster now. “we separate. different sections of the ship. minimal contact. we only communicate over comms when absolutely necessary. reduce exposure to.... stimuli.”

“stimuli,” you repeated flatly.

he made a small, helpless gesture. “i’m trying to keep this clinical.”

you stared at him. really stared this time.

“ryland,” you said slowly, “we are on a single-crew mission with two people.”

“yes.”

“yao and ilyukhina are—”

“i’m aware.” his voice was tighter this time, jaw clenched.

“we barely manage everything together on a good day.”

“we’ll adjust.”

“adjust?” you let out a short, disbelieving breath, shaking your head. “we’re already compromised. you said it yourself. attention issues, cognitive interference. you think splitting up is going to make that better?”

his jaw tightened. “it removes the trigger.”

“it removes the only person who can help when something goes wrong,” you shot back. “we don’t have backup. we don’t have a third crew member to pick up the slack. if something breaks, and something will break, we need both of us functional.”

“we are functional,” he insisted, but it came out strained, like he didn’t fully believe it.

you took a step closer without thinking.

his entire body reacted.

it was subtle. so subtle you almost missed it. but it was there: the way his shoulders went rigid, the way his breath hitched just slightly, the way his hands curled like he was holding himself in place.

that alone made your point for you.

you gestured between the two of you. “this is not functional.”

he didn’t answer.

you softened your voice, just a little. “we don’t know how long this is going to last.”

“it could wear off in a few hours,” he said, but it sounded more like hope than certainty.

“or it could be days,” you said quietly.

he didn’t argue.

“or weeks or never at all!” you added, pushing it, because you needed him to really think about it, not just cling to the best-case scenario.

“it’s the only plan that doesn’t make things worse. it’s better than the alternative.” he replied.

you stilled. “what alternative?”

he didn’t say anything.

which, unfortunately, was an answer.

you exhaled slowly, your chest tight. “okay. no. we’re not doing this vague shit. we need to actually say it.”

“we really don’t,” he said quickly.

“we do,” you insisted. “because if we don’t, we’re just going to keep circling around it and nothing gets solved.”

he dragged a hand down his face. “no.”

“ryland—”

“no,” he repeated, firmer this time. “we are not— no. that is not the solution.”

you stared at him. you've never heard his voice went that rough. that low. “it’s the only solution that makes sense.”

“it’s not a solution,” he shot back. “it’s—” he stopped, jaw tightening. “it’s not something we should even consider.”

“we both know what this is doing to us,” you pressed, voice low but steady now. “it’s not just going to fade if we sit in separate rooms pretending we’re fine. it’s getting worse.”

“i said no,” he repeated, sharper this time.

“and what happens if it peaks while we’re in the middle of something critical?” you continued anyway. “a maneuver, a repair, a calculation— what then? we just hope we can think straight?”

“we will think straight,” he snapped. “we’re not animals.”

“no, we’re worse,” you shot back. “we’re aware of it and still can’t stop it.”

he looked away first, jaw flexing, like he was trying to clamp down on something.

“we are not going to make a decision like that under the influence of alien—” he gestured helplessly, “—whatever this is.”

“we might not have a choice,” you said.

“we always have a choice.”

“do we?” you asked. “because right now it feels like we’re both in agony and pretending that distance is going to fix it.”

he flinched. barely, but enough.

“you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” he said, quieter now. steadier. like he was forcing the words into place. “okay? whatever this is, it doesn't make that decision for us. you don’t—” he stopped, swallowing. “you don’t owe me anything. not for survival, not for the mission. nothing.”

your expression softened for half a second, before hardening again.

“this isn’t about owing anyone anything,” you said. “this is about reality. about what’s actually happening. we can’t function like this, ryland.”

“we can,” he insisted. “we will.”

“you don’t believe that.”

he didn’t answer.

you stepped closer without thinking. his shoulders tensed immediately, like proximity itself was dangerous.

“look at me,” you said.

he did.

“you’re telling me to isolate,” you said, softer now, but more intense. “to stay away from you, to fight this out on our own, when we both know exactly what would make it stop.”

his breath hitched. just slightly, but he held his ground. “knowing something doesn’t mean we should do it.”

“why not?” you asked. “if it works, if it stabilizes us, if it lets us actually do our jobs.... why not?”

“because that’s not a choice,” he said, the words coming out sharper than he meant them to. “that’s a reaction. that’s the pollen making the decision for us.”

“or it’s us making the best decision with the situation we have,” you countered.

“no,” he said, shaking his head, stepping back now like he needed the space. “no, that’s not the same thing.”

you followed without realizing.

“then what is?” you demanded. “we wait it out and risk compromising the mission? we split up and hope nothing goes wrong? how is that better?”

“because at least it’s ours,” he snapped.

the words hung there. then he froze, like he hadn’t meant to say it that way.

you frowned slightly. “what?”

he dragged a hand down his face, exhaling hard. “if we— if we do this, it shouldn’t be because we’re backed into a corner. it shouldn’t be because some alien dust messed with our heads and left us with one option.”

“it’s still us,” you said. “it’s still our choice.”

“is it?” he asked quietly.

that got you. because there was something in his voice now. something deeper than just logic. something personal.

“i don’t want that,” he went on, more quietly now, but more intense for it. “i don’t want.... something like that to happen because we had no other way out. because we were trying to survive it. i don’t want it to be something we look back on and think, ‘we didn’t really choose that.’”

you stared at him.

he looked away again, jaw tight.

“that’s not—” you started, then faltered. “that’s not what this is about.”

“it is for me,” he said.

there was a beat.

“we don’t have the luxury of waiting for perfect conditions,” you said, more gently now. “we have a mission. we need each other functioning.”

“i know,” he said. “i know that.”

“then stop pretending this is something we can just outlast.”

“i’m not pretending,” he said, voice rougher now. “i’m choosing the option where you don’t wake up later and regret it.”

pause.

you blinked at him. your voice came out quieter than you intended. “you think i’d regret it.”

“i think,” he said carefully, “that this isn’t exactly a clear-headed situation.”

you opened your mouth but no argument came out. because he wasn’t wrong.

“i’m just saying that it might fix the problem.”

“at what cost?”

a beat.

he stepped closer. just one step, but it closed the gap enough that the heat surged again, sharp and immediate, both of you feeling it.

his hands flexed at his sides like he was actively resisting the instinct to do something else with them.

“you think you won’t regret that?” he asked, voice lower now, rougher around the edges. “you think we won’t look back at this later and realize we only did it because we didn’t have a choice?”

you didn’t answer right away.

he shook his head, almost to himself. “that’s not…. that’s not how that should happen.”

there was something else in his voice then, something quieter, buried under all the logic and resistance. something that didn’t quite belong to the situation at hand.

“if we’re going to—” he stopped, jaw tightening, then tried again. “if something like that ever happens, it shouldn’t be because we’re trying to survive some alien.... whatever this is. it should be because we actually—”

you watched him cutting himself off. the way his shoulders were locked, the way his whole body looked like it was braced against something internal, something he was refusing to let slip.

“isolating wouldn't work,” you said quietly. “we can’t do this alone. not here. not now.”

“maybe not,” he admitted.

“then—”

“i’m still not doing that,” he cut in.

you blinked. “ryland—”

“i’m not,” he repeated, firmer now. “we’ll figure something else out. we’ll manage it. we have to.”

“even if it makes things harder?”

“yeah,” he said. “even then.”

you searched his face. trying to understand. trying to find the line he wouldn’t cross.

“you’re really that set on this,” you said.

“yeah,” he said quietly.

another pause.

“fine,” you said at last, though it didn’t sound like agreement so much as reluctant acceptance. “we do it your way.”

he nodded once.

“we isolate,” you added. “but if it gets worse—”

“we reassess,” he said immediately.

neither of you moved.

just stood there, separated by a few steps and a whole lot of tension, both of you very aware of how fragile that distance felt.

like it could disappear in a second.

like he might cross it.

like you might let him.

his jaw tightened.

his shoulders went rigid again.

and for a split second, he looked like he might—

but then he turned away.

“i’ll take the lab first,” he said, voice a little rough. “you can have the cockpit.”

you swallowed. “okay.”

“we’ll.... check in. over comms.”

“right.”

—

you weren't sure what time it was, but two things for certain: you were going crazy because sleep refused to come and the ceiling was mocking you.

you had been lying in bed, tangled in your sheets for what felt like hours but was probably just twenty minutes, staring at the ceiling, flipping from one side to the other like a rotisserie chicken. the gold dust still simmered under your skin, turning every shift of fabric into slow torture. your tank top clung to your damp chest. your shorts felt too tight, too rough, too everything. you rolled onto your stomach, then flopped onto your back again, kicking the blanket off with a dramatic groan.

“this is stupid,” you muttered into the dark, dragging a pillow over your face like that might solve anything. “this is so fucking stupid. i am the pilot of the hail mary. i’ve navigated black holes in simulations. i should not be this horny because of some stupid alien dust.”

another wave of heat rolled through you, settling low and insistent between your legs. you whimpered softly, pressing your thighs together, but that only made it worse.

your brain refused to calm, looping the same thoughts over and over again.

ryland’s voice.

ryland’s face.

ryland's arms.

ryland's hair.

just him in general. the way he’d looked at you before you separated. the way his voice had tightened. the way his shoulders had gone rigid like he was holding himself together by sheer force.

you groaned softly into your pillow, pressing your face into it like that might smother the thoughts.

with a frustrated sigh, you shoved the covers off and swung your legs over the side of the bed, the cool floor a brief relief against overheated skin. you sat there for a second, breathing, trying to steady yourself before started pacing.

“isolation,” you scoffed under your breath, pacing faster. “yeah, great plan, ryland. fantastic plan, ryland. terrific plan! it was never gonna fucking work.”

you sighed again before stopping to take a deep breath.

“okay,” you said to yourself. “it's fine. it's fine! you're okay. you're doing good. just— breathe. it’ll pass.”

you closed your eyes and tried to focus.

in.

out.

in—

“mhmmph—”

pause.

you blinked an eye open.

what—

“mhmphhh— fuckk—”

—the hell was that?

you tilted your head slightly, listening.

at first, nothing. just the low hum of the ship, steady and familiar. long enough you were starting to think that your brain was playing tricks on you.

but then—

“oh, please— please—”

it was soft and faint. slightly uneven. and came from the other side of the wall.

and the other side of the wall was ryland's room.

you froze. you heard it again. a low, muffled whimper drifted through the thin wall

unmistakenably ryland.

he was in the room next to yours.

awake.

and very clearly not handling this any better than you were.

he was trying so hard to stay quiet, really committing to the bit, but failing miserably. another whimper followed, shaky and desperate, quickly bitten off. the faint, rhythmic sound of skin on skin. a muttered curse. your name, whispered like he was cursing the universe for putting him in this position.

heat flooded your face so fast you probably matched the emergency lighting. you stood there, mouth slightly open, ears straining despite yourself.

is he—

no.

no way.

no fucking way.

another moan, softer this time, but unmistakably him. he was doing a terrible job at being stealthy. the wall might as well have been paper.

you paced faster, hands flapping uselessly at your sides like a malfunctioning robot.

dilemma time. big, stupid, pollen-fueled dilemma.

option #1: stay in your room. be responsible. respect the isolation plan he’d suggested earlier like the noble scientist he was. suffer in dignified silence until the dust wore off. maybe meditate. or count rivets in the ceiling. very professional.

option #2: march over there, bang on his door, and finally deal with whatever this is, together.

you stopped, pressing your ear against the cool wall, right where the sounds were loudest. another whimper from his side. your stomach flipped. your body voted very enthusiastically for option two.

“but he said isolate,” you argued with yourself in a harsh whisper. “he was all ‘we’re professionals, we can handle this.’ what if i go over there and he freaks out? what if it gets awkward? what if he opens the door with his dick in his hand and we both just scream?”

you frowned at the mental image. not very flattering thing to think about.

“fuck, no. i’m strong. i’m a pilot. i’ve done evasive maneuvers in asteroid fields. i'm on a mission to save earth. i can handle one night of alien-induced horniness without climbing my crewmate like a tree.”

you resumed pacing, arms crossed tight over your chest like that would somehow contain the fire. three steps. turn. three steps. the sounds from his room continued. another low moan, a bitten-off “shit” that sounded way too sexy for your sanity.

you stopped again, staring at your door like it was the airlock to certain doom.

your hand hovered near the door panel. you yanked it back like the button burned.

“no. professional boundaries. we have a mission. we have dignity. we—”

a particularly broken moan cut through the wall, followed by a muffled thump like he’d smacked his head against something.

you groaned, dragging both hands down your face. “okay, fuck it. i’m weak. i’m so fucking weak. if he doesn’t want this he can yell at me tomorrow when the pollen wears off.”

a beat.

“if.... it ever wears off.” you added.

before you could talk yourself out of it again, you marched to the door, heart hammering like a faulty thruster. you raised your fist and banged on his door, loud, impatient.

no turning back now.

inside, everything went dead silent. then frantic shuffling. something clattered to the floor. then the door finally slid open.

ryland stood there, flushed crimson, hair a disaster, breathing like he’d just run a marathon. his glasses were crooked. shorts wrinkled, barely even on, one hand still guiltily hovering near his waist. his eyes widened comically when he saw you.

you didn’t give him time to speak.

you grabbed the front of his shirt, pulled him forward, and kissed him hard.

he made a surprised noise that got immediately swallowed when you kissed him, the door sliding open the rest of the way as he stumbled back into the room.

for a second, he didn’t move. just froze, like his brain had short-circuited.

then his hands came up instinctively, one landing on your waist, the other tangling in your hair as he kissed you back with pent-up desperation. you stumbled forward into his room, mouths still locked, and kicked the door shut behind you with your heel.

the kiss was messy at first. noses bumping, tongues fighting. but neither of you cared. you poured every ounce of frustration and heat into it. his back hit the wall and he pulled you closer, hips pressing against yours so you could feel exactly how affected he still was.

after a long, dizzying minute you forced yourself to pull back just enough to breathe.

“wait, wait,” you said, out of air. “you were the one who wanted to isolate. if you want me to stop.... say it. we can pretend this never happened—”

“no— no, no, no, no. don’t you dare,” he said immediately.

you blinked. “what?”

“don’t say we can stop and then actually mean it,” he said, like that was a personal attack. “that’s— no. absolutely not.”

you huffed a breath that might’ve been a laugh. “you were literally the one arguing against doing this.”

“i know,” he said. “i was wrong. past me was— misguided. naive. deeply out of touch with current events.”

“current events,” you repeated.

“yes,” he said, nodding once, very serious about this. “new data has come to light.”

“and that data is?”

“i need you.”

a beat.

“please.” he stared at you, eyes dark and glassy, lips swollen. his hands flexed on your hips like he was scared you’d vanish. for a heartbeat the only sound was your ragged breathing and the low hum of the ship.

“i tried— i really fucking tried to be good. but this dust is evil and you were just right next door and you look too good in that tank top and i’ve been losing my mind for hours. please.”

you raised an eyebrow, smirking. “oh, so that's what the staring was for earlier?”

“i.... well, i mean— yeah.” he stammered, realizing there is no point of pretending anymore.

you couldn't help but chuckled. “yeah, okay. the feeling's mutual.”

“yeah?” he laughed too.

“yeah.”

“can i kiss you again then?”

you smiled. “thought you'd never asked.”

this time it was him who surged forward, kissing you slower this time, deeper, letting the burn build deliberately. his glasses fogged up immediately, the lenses clouding over from the combined heat of your breaths. he didn’t take them off. didn’t even reach for them. just kept kissing you through the haze, like the fog made it somehow hotter. your fingers traced his jaw, his neck, the rapid flutter of his pulse. he shivered under your touch.

you walked him backward toward the bunk without breaking the kiss. when his knees hit the edge he sat down heavily, pulling you with him so you straddled his lap. the new position pressed you right against the hard line of him, making you both gasp into each other’s mouths.

slowly, you started undressing each other. your hands slid under his shirt, palms mapping the warm, flushed skin of his chest. he lifted his arms so you could tug it off. you tossed it somewhere behind you, leaving him in only his glasses. he returned the favor, peeling your tank top up inch by inch, kissing every new strip of skin he revealed. your stomach, the underside of your breast, your collarbone, until the fabric was gone.

his fingers hooked into the waistband of your shorts. you rose up on your knees so he could slide them down your thighs along with your underwear. you kicked them away. then you focused on his shorts, tugging them down slowly, savoring the way his breath hitched when you freed him.

naked now, you settled back onto his lap, skin to skin. the contact was electric. you took your time, rocking gently against him without taking him inside yet, just feeling the slide and heat while you kissed him lazily, tongues tangling in slow, filthy strokes.

you reached between your bodies, wrapping your hand around him. he groaned loud, head tipping back, the sound vibrating through his chest. “fuck— your hand feels so good,” he breathed, hips twitching up into your grip. “please don’t tease me— been dying for this.”

“you sure about this?” you murmured against his lips between kisses, giving him one last out even as your hips rolled in a slow, teasing circle.

“never been more sure of anything in my life,” he breathed, hands gripping your thighs.

you laughed softly into his mouth, the sound turning into a moan when he shifted his hips just right. one of his hands slid between your bodies, fingers exploring with gentle, curious touches until you were trembling.

only then did you reach down, wrap your hand around him, and guide him to your entrance. you sank down inch by torturous inch, both of you moaning at the slow, perfect stretch. when you were fully seated you stayed there for a long moment, foreheads pressed together, breathing each other in while your bodies adjusted.

then you started to move.

slow rolls of your hips at first, savoring every drag and press. ryland’s head tipped back, exposing the long line of his throat. you leaned in to kiss along his jaw, his neck, sucking lightly at his pulse point while you rode him with deliberate, unhurried patience. his hands roamed your back, your sides, your breasts, learning every curve like it was new data he needed to memorize.

gradually the rhythm built. your movements grew deeper, harder. the bunk creaked steadily. soft gasps and moans filled the small room. his fingers found your clit, rubbing tight circles that made your rhythm falter and your breath catch.

“ryland— fuck, just like that—”

“you feel so good,” he panted, voice breaking on the words. “oh, baby— don’t stop, please—”

it hit you like a solar flare. you cried out his name loud, clenching around him hard, hips stuttering through the waves. he followed right after, burying himself deep with a broken, guttural moan.

“yes— fuck— coming— inside you— god, you’re perfect— take it all—”

you collapsed against his chest, both of you trembling, hearts hammering in sync. his arms wrapped around you tight, holding you close while the aftershocks rolled through, glasses still fogged and slightly askew on his nose.

for a long moment, neither of you said anything.

you were half sprawled across him, one leg tangled with his, your arm draped somewhere over his chest like you’d both simply.... collapsed and decided to stay that way. the room was quiet except for your breathing, slowly evening out, though not nearly fast enough to feel normal.

ryland was staring at the ceiling.

very intently.

like it had just revealed the meaning of life and he was still processing it.

“....so,” you said eventually.

“so,” he echoed.

another pause.

you shifted slightly, propping your chin on his chest so you could look at him. “on a scale from one to ‘we should never speak of this again,’ where are you at?”

he didn’t look at you.

“....i’m considering faking amnesia.”

you snorted. “wow. rude.”

“i’m kidding,” he said quickly, then paused. “mostly.”

“mostly,” you repeated.

“okay, no, that sounded worse than i meant it,” he said, finally turning his head toward you, eyes wide like he was trying to fix it in real time. “i don’t regret it. i do not regret it. i just—” he gestured vaguely with one hand, which was difficult considering you were partially pinning him down, “—need a second to emotionally catch up with my own life choices.”

you raised an eyebrow. “your life choices led you to space.”

“for the record, i did not consent to that.”

fair, but you ignored him. “and then to alien pollen.”

“unfortunately, yes.”

“and then to me.”

he hesitated.

“that part i’m less willing to categorize as a mistake.”

you stared at him for a second.

then narrowed your eyes. “that was almost smooth.”

“thank you,” he said. “i panicked halfway through it.”

“i could tell.”

another stretch of quiet settled in, but it was different now. looser. like the tension that had been buzzing under your skin all day had finally burned itself out, leaving something softer in its place.

“....for the record,” you added after a moment, “your ‘being quiet’ plan earlier? terrible.”

he made a strangled noise. “oh my god.”

“like, impressively bad,” you continued. “i heard everything.”

“you did not hear everything.”

“ryland.”

he covered his face with both hands, cheeks heated up. “i would like to be ejected into space now.”

“denied,” you said immediately. “we need you for the mission.”

“please, just kill me already.”

“also,” you added, very seriously, “for future reference, the wall is not soundproof.”

“i have gathered that,” he said into his hands.

“just making sure.”

he peeked at you through his fingers. “....are you going to bring this up again later?”

“oh, constantly.”

“i walked into that one.”

“you really did.”

another quiet moment passed.

you could feel his breathing steady under you now, less uneven, less strained.

“....hey,” he said after a while.

“yeah?”

there was a small pause before he spoke again, like he was choosing his words more carefully this time. “are you okay?”

it caught you off guard.

not the question itself, but the way he asked it. steady. grounded, like he needed the answer to mean something.

you blinked, then nodded. “yeah,” you said, softer. “i am.”

he turned his head then, just enough to look at you properly, like he needed the visual confirmation to go with it.

“okay,” he said finally, the word carrying more weight than it should have. “i'm glad.”

you nudged him lightly with your shoulder, a small, grounding kind of contact. “you?”

he let out a breath that sounded like it had been stuck somewhere in his chest for a while. “yeah. i think so. which is honestly surprising, given.... everything.”

another quiet stretch settled over you, but it wasn’t awkward. not really. just calm, in a slightly surreal, post haze kind of way.

eventually, the exhaustion caught up with you. real, actual exhaustion this time. not the restless, jittery kind from before.

you shifted closer without thinking, your head settling more comfortably against him.

he stilled for half a second then relaxed. his arm tightening just slightly around you.

“also,” he added, voice softer now, almost drowsy, “for the record…. i don’t regret it.”

your chest tightened. you didn’t lift your head, didn’t look at him. just let the words settle somewhere quiet inside you.

“…me neither,” you murmured.

that was the last coherent thing either of you said.

Stratt grimaced, fidgeting anxiously next to you to get moving, and gestured for you to follow her once the scientist seemed to gather his bearings enough to stop heaving.

“Doctor Grace, how was your flight?” She asked.

He only replied with a thumbs up. A set of glasses were askew on the bridge of his nose and he didn’t move the orange cone far from his mouth when the two of you neared.

“Doctor Grace, this is Doctor (L/n) who’s here to make sure you’ve made it in one piece before we discuss your findings. Excuse me for a moment.”

As Stratt moved to discuss something with someone on the landing strip a couple of feet away, you took that as your queue to approach the man. He looked pale, watching wearily as you approached with a smile.

“Enjoy the view on the way here, Doctor?”

You wasted no time, moving to find the doctor’s free hand that wasn’t holding the vomit filled cone, to feel for his pulse. It was frantic, pounding against the pad of your fingers but unwavering. He let his hand fall limp in your hold, out of strength to do much besides stand in place.

“Well… I can’t say I saw much. I was unconscious for most of it. Loved the last bit though, when we’d landed and weren’t in the air anymore. Hey, do you have any water? Some guy gave me a pill and I think it’s still stuck in my throat.”

A smile creeped onto your face. You’d known this man for barely a minute but you could feel that he had a gravitating way about him. Something charming and sweet. Dropping his arm, you nodded to him and gave him the water bottle you’d brought along. You also held out a small white pill. He instantly shook his head.

“Ah, no thank you. Last time I took a pill from a stranger, I woke up on an aircraft carrier.”

“It’s dramamine, Doctor.”

A pause.

Defeat.

“Okay.”

You helped him open the bottle, as one of his hands was still occupied holding his puke cone, and watched as he gulped down mouthfuls of water to chase the dramamine.

“Pulse is strong. How’s your breathing?”

“Uh- fine, I guess?”

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

He adjusted his glasses with his wrist to finally properly fit over the bridge of his nose and blinked. “Two.”

You gave a firm pat to his back, which he groaned at. “Welcome aboard, Doctor Grace!”

-

While your first meeting was brief, that was not the last time you saw Doctor Ryland Grace. After he finally found his sea legs, he became a regular presence at every meeting in regards to Project Hail Mary.

You weren’t invited to many meetings, only joining when they were about the health of the crew during their journey to Tau Ceti. The robot being constructed to care for the comatose astronauts was an impressive piece of technology unlike anything ever built but it needed to be programmed perfectly to ensure the crew’s safety. If it went wrong- the crew would die and so would the rest of Earth.

That’s why you were brought aboard, to help bring up any possible problem that could happen with the crew on their trip and how the robot would handle it. You worked closely with a slew of other doctors, each of you bringing your own experience to the table.

As a Doctor specializing in neurology, your input was crucial. Being in a coma for several years was not ideal and could do some irreparable harm to the brain, which you disclosed as such in your meetings. It was an intricate dance, trying to solve the multitude of potential problems that came up with so many people with differing opinions

They also occasionally had you stationed as an on-call doctor when you weren’t discussing the mission, setting you up in the medical wing of the giant aircraft carrier to handle any ailments of the crew. You didn’t mind the busy work, it gave you something to do when you weren’t in the lab helping with the robot or fighting with a room full of scholars.

The first time Doctor Grace showed up to one of the medical meetings, he was 15 minutes late.

Stratt gave him a look that exuded annoyance as he scrambled to sit in the only empty chair at the table, which happened to be between you and the most powerful woman in the world.

“Sorry everybody,” he waved quickly in apology with an awkward laugh and dumped a folder of papers on the table. The room was dead silent. “This place is a maze! I got lost somewhere on deck C I think. They should really put up some signs.”

If Stratt wasn’t five feet away, you would’ve giggled. There were signs all over the ship. In several languages.

A cardiologist from Brazil tapped his pen against the metal table in agitation. “As I was saying…”

While the conversation buzzed on, discussing circulation and muscular atrophy that would arise from the crew's prone state for several years, you felt a shoe knock into yours. Turning your eyes away from the table, you were surprised to find Doctor Grace looking at you.

“Do you have an extra pen?” He whispered, not very quietly. He was leaning towards you like you were swapping secrets. The soft fabric of his quarter zip brushed against your arm.

Getting some glares from those sitting closest to you, you only nodded back and slipped an extra pen out of the spiral of your notebook.

“Thank you. Hey, you’re that doctor that checked up on me on my first day here, right? Thanks for that, by the way, the pill really helped. I nearly filled up that cone though, that was a little embarrassing.”

He laughed, another awkward chuckle that had you glancing sidelong at him.

Someone who used humor when they were uncomfortable, it seemed.

Taking a quick look around the room to make sure no one was watching, you leant towards him, bringing your heads closer together. He startled back a bit but didn’t pull completely away.

“When I first got here, I got so seasick I puked all over my tour guide’s shoes. At least you made it to a cone.” You whispered, smiling at the memory.

Doctor Grace looked at you in shock, eyebrows raising into his hairline. “Really?!” He was really bad at whispering.

“Doctors, do you have an idea you’d like to share with the room?” The leading creator of the nurse robot, Doctor Lamai, peered at your hunched forms.

Jerking away from each other, Doctor Grace and yourself didn’t talk for the rest of the meeting but you had to fight a smile when he slipped you a folded note that just had a crude drawing of a puking face.

-

Any meeting that you attended after that, Ryland- as he’d asked you to call him- would find a seat next to you. After learning how tough of a crowd most of the medical crew was, the two of you didn’t talk during the discussions again. But you did start passing notes like a couple of school children.

-

Did you know that the brain is a human’s fattiest organ? -R

Yes -(Y/n)

Really? -R

I’m a neurologist, Ryland. The brain is my job -(Y/n)

Oh yeah -R

Did you know that a human brain produces enough energy to power a small lightbulb? -R

-

This robot is basically like that big marshmallow doctor robot in that one movie -R

Baymax? -(Y/n)

Yeah that sounds right -R

Ours probably won’t be as cute as Baymax is -(Y/n)

Probably not. Maybe we should suggest something to make it cuter. Paint it in pink glitter and give it some eyes -R

Somehow I think that’ll make it even scarier than it already is. Go back to the drawing board -(Y/n)

-

I saw a bird today -R

What kind of bird? -(Y/n)

Seagull -R

Well, we are out at sea -(Y/n)

It’s a little too far out in the ocean to be seeing birds, don’t you think? They get tired -R

Maybe it was a stowaway? -(Y/n)

Poor guy :( -R

-

You learned a lot about Ryland over the next several weeks.

Ryland was full of fun facts and interesting thoughts. He’d barrage you with them any chance he had, and you would listen. While medical facts were mostly common knowledge to you, fun facts about anything else was always a pleasant conversation starter.

He taught you everything there is to know about Astrophage and how it works, once even letting you visit him in his little personal lab to see the little microorganisms yourself. He’d carefully prepared a slide for you, making sure the focus was perfect before stepping back to let you peer into the microscope. When you started barraging him with questions, he was more than excited to answer- leading you around his mini lab with a hand on your back.

You learned that he has a mild shellfish allergy- a rather unfortunate finding. He spent a couple of hours in the medical wing laying on a cot, popping Benadryl like candy and breaking out in hives after some cross-contamination with shrimp in the cafeteria kitchen.

His favorite animal is a fox and he has a surprisingly large collection of fox related things to prove it.

He was a molecular biologist, now turned loud-and-proud middle school science teacher. He loves his students dearly and spent the greater part of several years revolving his life around their education.

He rarely ever swears. At least, not the actual words, but their modified, kid-friendly versions. He’d have teachers knocking down his apartment door if he swore in front of his class, unintentionally expanding their vocabulary.

When he was trying really hard not to laugh, he’d make this tiny snorting noise that sounds an awful lot like a spray bottle.

He doesn’t know how to use chopsticks. Not the right way, at least.

He has no immediate family, no pets and no partners.

He was an enigma really; someone that felt so out of place on this ship. Ryland felt too… normal to be here. Not in a negative way, just a… he-should’ve-never-been-dragged-into-this kind of way. He was too warm compared to most everyone else here. The aircraft carrier was bursting at the seams with cold government officials and specialists in every science or space related field to ever exist. Many were too professional, too self absorbed to realize they had a stick up their ass.

Ryland was a breath of fresh air and you felt increasingly drawn to him every time you interacted.

It also didn’t hurt that he was attractive. Like… insanely attractive. His hair was perfectly messy every single day. He wore his glasses in such a way that you’d never seen anyone wear glasses before, hanging off one ear when he wasn’t using them. A near constant 5 o’clock shadow was always gracing his face. Despite his clothing choices which some around you found unprofessional, he pulled off everything he wore. His fox cardigan, his yellow rain coat, his cringy science-pun t-shirts. It shouldn’t, but it made him that much more alluring and it was getting harder and harder for you not to make a move.

You were friends- acquaintances at the least- but he’d never shown any interest. At least not that you’d seen. He was awkward sometimes but he was awkward with everyone. You didn’t want to make things weird, so you stuffed those feelings deep and filed them away for later. Plus, he was technically higher ranking than you in the Hail Mary hierarchy. He was Stratt’s right hand man. Maybe he didn’t want to ‘pull rank’.

These sorts of thoughts kept you up at night while you tried to ignore the sounds of the 3 other medical staff sleeping around you in your shared bunk. He wouldn’t get out of your head and you weren’t sure how much longer you could ignore that tightening string in your gut.

-

On Friday nights, the room on the ship that served as the social meeting place for many of the crew, equipped with a bar, was packed to the gills. You usually dropped by to say hi to the couple of coworkers and other doctors that you were friendly with but never staying for long. You just didn’t know anyone well enough to want to stay and chat. At least you didn’t… until one particular Friday night.

The hunched form at the bar clad in that unmistakable fox cardigan caught your eye almost immediately. He was hard to miss.

This was the first time you’d seen Ryland here. You weren’t sure why he never came, but he was the one person on his whole ship you’d actually consider sharing a drink with.

Immediately making a bee-line for the bar, you saw that the doctor was flipping through several sheets of paper, head in his hand as he read. The people surrounding him at the counter were making light conversation, enjoying a beer and enjoying their Friday night.

Ryland was working.

“Y’know this room is supposed to be a reprieve from work, not somewhere you bring your work to, right?”

The blonde looked up in surprise as you squeezed to stand in the small empty space between him and the guy sitting on the barstool next to him. It was a tight fit, and Ryland immediately shuffled over an inch in his seat to give you some more room.

Or to avoid touching you, which didn’t sit right in your stomach.

His glasses were near falling off his nose. He looked tired.

“I know but I couldn't sleep so I decided to come here. I brought some homework because I needed something to keep my mind busy and so I don’t look like a total loser sitting here by myself. Is it working?”

“Well,” you hummed. “I don’t think you’re a loser but I might be a little biased.”

He smiled, twirling a pen between his long fingers over the papers. You nodded over to where a karaoke machine sat and the 3 Hail Mary crewmates sat with their extra counterparts. “Why don't you go join them? You know them well enough, right? You’re working with them all the time.”

Ryland shifted in his seat to look over his shoulder. His knee pressed against your thigh which made it extremely hard to focus on his answer.

“No, I don’t think I really fit in with their crowd.”

“Why not?”

“They’re brave. Strong. Sometimes I don't even know why I'm here to be honest. Why Stratt dragged me here. A humble middle school science teacher.” He laughed lightly, but it wasn’t a genuine one.

Your heart squeezed into a knot for this man who’d been uprooted from his comfortable life as a teacher and thrown into this madness without his consent just like many others. He felt unsure about his place here and besides Stratt who had him on a leash, he had no one, it seemed.

Besides you, you hoped.

You prayed he enjoyed your company enough to feel a little less alone.

“Well,” you leant back against the bar to properly look at him. He looked up at you over the golden frames of his glasses. “I’d say you have every right to be here. You discovered how to kill an Astrophage and see what it's made of. You discovered how they breed and now we have the means to create a powerful fuel for the mission that will save humanity. All important things we might not have right now without you.”

Ryland huffed and drew a little circle on his paper. “I’m sure someone would’ve thought to poke Astrophage with a stick eventually. And learning how they breed didn’t take too much thinking either, surely someone would’ve-”

“You can't spend your whole life focusing on the ‘what if’s’, Ryland. We're here now thanks to you, whether you wanna see it that way or not.”

Finally, a real smile split his face and he nodded slowly. You couldn’t tell if he’d accepted your words as truth or not, but they at least lifted his spirits a little. Plus, a tiny bit of red painted his ears.

“Thanks, (Y/n). Can I… buy you a drink?”

Your stomach fluttered. “Yes, as long as it’s not anything too hard. I’ve got a shift tomorrow.”

He nodded quickly and signaled to the bartender. “Two beers please.”

Bottles in hand, you continued to lounge against the counter next to him, nursing the beverage and making small talk. He’d offered his seat to you but you refused.

Looking out over the crowd, you spotted two individuals huddled together in the dim corner of the room. Ryland noticed your gaze and turned to look too. When he beheld the two scientists tangled together, he shook his head and turned back to you with a raised brow.

“I think DuBois and Shapiro are hooking up.”

“Seems that way.”

“Dont you think it’s a little crazy? I mean, he’s going to be trucked off into space soon and she’ll be left here. What's the point in hooking up when it'll only end in tragedy? You’re just asking for heartbreak.” He shook his head, fiddling with the plastic label of his beer.

You shrugged. “I don't see any harm in it. Sure it’ll hurt eventually but why not live in the moment? Humans yearn for connection, it makes sense they’d want to have some sense of normalcy before the end of the world. It's probably nice to forget about the apocalypse and enjoy someone's company for a while, take your mind off the doom and gloom.”

Ryland was quiet after that, suddenly turning anxious if his ducked head was any indication. Had you said something wrong? You drained the rest of your beer.

“Is that something you find yourself doing?” He asked quietly, feigning nonchalance but his foot was bouncing erratically against the bar stool.

Nervous.

A smile began to creep onto your face. “Not currently.”

His foot stopped.

Relief.

“But… if the right person came along I wouldn’t be opposed.”

His hand squeezed the bottle and his shoulders drooped.

Disappointment.

“Oh… haven’t found the right one yet?” He picked up his head with a painfully fake smile and a nod, looking around the room like he was helping you scout the place. “Lots of interesting people on this ship. A pilot would be cool, huh?”

“Yeah but they’re a bit too cocky for my taste.”

He tapped his finger against his stacks of paper. “Okay, what about… another doctor? Or one of the government officials?”

You grimaced and he cringed back. “Right, no doctors or government staff If not them, then… what are you looking for?”

Ryland’s eyes were searching yours for a glimpse, a hint of what you might be feeling.

With the tiniest bit of liquid courage running through your veins, you tapped your beer bottle against your leg and lightly began playing with the sleeve of his fox cardigan. He became impossibly still.

“Someone real. Down to earth. Not afraid to be themselves… a nice smile and a pretty face sure helps too.”

The doctor gulped and you reveled in the sight of his Adam's apple bobbing in the soft light of the room. He inclined his head once, fingers twitching against the bar. “I’ll keep an eye out for you,” he whispered.

Neither of you broke the heated eye contact until the man you were standing next to fell back in laugher and knocked you off your balance. You were able to recover quickly, but not before pressing even closer to the scientist and nearly falling into his lap. His hand had immediately planted onto your hip in an attempt to keep you steady. Being this close, you could feel the breath from his nose on yours. Your heart was pounding.

The room grew in volume as people flocked to gather around the karaoke machine that was playing a song you couldn’t even bother to name. Not while Ryland held all of your attention.

While his chest heaved, you slowly moved to stand properly on your own two feet but holding his gaze. You took the hem of his cardigan in your hand. It was so soft.

“Want to go for a walk?” You asked quietly, glancing at his stack of papers that had been forgotten about.

Ryland said nothing but started brushing his work into a haphazard pile good enough to hold in one arm and stood up. Standing at his full height, you were reminded again how tall the man was. When he offered his hand as a silent question, an inquiry to make sure he wasn’t reading anything wrong, you didn’t hesitate to take it. No one batted an eye at the two of you as you led him through the crowd and out into the silent metal hallways beyond.

-

Ryland could not unlock the door to his room fast enough.

He only had one key to his name while on the ship, you’d think it would be pretty easy to manage. In theory it was, but when his nerves were blasting through the roof and you were fiddling with the belt loop on the back of his pants, he got a little distracted.

You giggled as the scientist finally fished his key out of his pocket and proceeded to drop it on the floor with a clink.

“Sorry,” he strained, scooping it up from the floor and finally fumbling with the lock.

Once the door swung open and the two of you stepped inside, you did a quick observation of the room. It was extremely small, barely enough room for one person, let alone two. There was just enough space for a twin bed and a small desk attached to the wall. Rylands’s belongings were strewn everywhere there was space. While it was cramped, there was something he had in his room that you didn’t.

A window.

A tiny circular porthole- so small you couldn’t fit your head through it if it was able to open- but a window nonetheless. Your room was deep in the middle of the ship so no windows for you. As it was around midnight, there was nothing but inky blackness on the other side but you wondered what it would look like when it was daytime and the ocean was blue. For now, the soft glow of a tiny lamp kept the room illuminated.

“Oh god- don’t mind the mess. I don’t get many visitors.” He stood awkwardly in the center of the room, brushing some discarded clothes aside with his shoe. “But to be fair, it’s impossible to keep a room this small clean. I mean, no dresser, no closet. I’m not 100% sure but I think this used to be a storage-“

You liked to think you knew Ryland pretty well now, and knew when he was about to spiral into a rambling fit. He was especially prone when he was anxious. As much as you loved to hear him talk, now wasn’t the time.

When you took a step forward and fisted the lapels of his cardigan in your hands, his words died immediately.

When your hands tugged his body down and your lips slotted against his, his whole body froze up.

You didn’t push beyond a couple of seconds before pulling away a hair- keeping him close but giving him the room to decide if he wanted to stop or come back for more. For all you knew, he was just bringing you back to his room to show you his collection of fox things. Through lidded eyes, you watched as his eyelashes fluttered, dazing down at you in shock.

Suddenly worried that maybe you had indeed read things wrong, you began to ease up your grip on his collar. When his hands shot up to keep your head in place, cradling your jaw in his large palms and returned the kiss with eagerness, you smiled against him.

Months of brushing around each other snapped.

Your mouths were tangled in a heated dance- his body moving closer and pressing yours against the door, like he was trying to melt into you. He still had his glasses on, which meant you were being a little cautious of how close you pressed your face into his. You didn’t want to stab your eye on the rims, what a mood breaker that would be. But you didn’t want to ask him to take them off. In fact, you wanted to beg him to keep them on.

When his hands dropped to your waist to pull your hips together, you wound your arms around his neck, your hands immediately finding the back of his head- finally able to feel the mussed hair that snagged your attention day after day.

It was extremely soft, just as you’d imagined. Perfect, just like the rest of him.

Time blurred and you weren’t sure how long the two of you stood there, tasting each other like you were starving. Eventually, you decided it was much too hot in the tiny room and you were both wearing way too much clothing.

Dragging your hands from his hair to trail down the strong column of his neck, you dipped your hands into his cardigan, sliding your fingers over his shoulders and pushing the cream knitwear off in the process.

He shivered under your touch, when your fingers glanced over his biceps as the cardigan fell to his elbows. His hands let go of your waist to allow the fabric to fall to the floor in a pile. When his hands returned, they planted themselves on the door next to your waist.

It wasn’t to tower over you, or to trap you against him. No, it was because he needed something to keep him upright or he was at risk of squishing you entirely against the metal when his knees gave out.

You broke the kiss with a soft gasp, chest heaving against his where his shirt stretched over the muscle.

You’d never seen Ryland without something thrown over the top of a t-shirt- always wearing some type of jacket or lab coat or something. Now that he was without one, your hands mapped over his arms and shoulders.

As he busied himself with your neck, gently nosing at the soft spot just behind your ear, you swore.

“Shit, Ryland. What are they feeding you in the cafeteria? Protein powder?”

He laughed against your skin, dipping his lips down to your shoulder. His scruff tickled and the metal of his glasses were ice cold compared to your heated skin. “No. I just… go to the gym sometimes.”

“Sometimes.”

“Mhm-“ he choked on his affirmation when you slid your hands up his abdomen to feel underneath his shirt. The muscle was warm and fluttered against your fingers.

“Can I see what else you’ve been hiding under all these layers?”

Clothes were shed in a record amount of time, save for the couple of extra seconds Ryland took to take off his pants because he almost tripped over his own feet. He did seem to hesitate when he got to his boxers, fiddling with the hem, but when you hooked your fingers into the elastic, he let the fabric fall.

Once every part of you was exposed to the chill, circulated air, Ryland began chasing your mouth again but stopped with a grunt when you pushed him back onto his bed.

The look on his face was priceless, enough so that you laughed as you knelt on the hard mattress and swung a leg over his hips to straddle him. If Ryland had been red before, it was nothing compared to the color of his face now. His eyes glanced over your body, appreciating but not lingering out of nervousness as he stammered.

“You want to-?”

Straightening his glasses to fit properly on his face, you nodded. “Is this ok?”

“Yes! Yes- I’ve just never… my ex was more traditional I guess so we never… She always liked me to be on top.” He let out a breathy laugh and a shy smile.

Everything about this man was so endearing.

“As fun as that sounds, I want to try this first. I can see you better this way.”

Another audible hitch in his breath as he nodded. “Okay.”

His large palms found purchase on your thighs and he sighed blissfully through his nose when you bent forward to kiss along his jaw. It feathered under your lips and he tilted his head back to happily give you more surface area to work with.

When you finally ground your hips down onto him, he bucked under the pressure. A completely unintentional gesture that had him apologizing. You chased that response, rhythmically moving your pelvis in tandem with his.

Ryland whimpered.

You’d be damned if you didn’t try to get him to make that sound a hundred times more before morning.

You spent several minutes exploring his neck with your tongue while keeping a firm pressure with your hips, gently swaying in circles against him. You found a spot right at the juncture between his neck and shoulder that had him moaning. By the time you eased up, red marks bloomed along his throat and Ryland was already breathless. Chest heaving against your palms, he looked heavily up at you through those glasses of his and gave you a shy, lopsided grin.

“That was nice.”

You raised a brow. “I’m gonna have to work harder if all I get is a ‘that was nice’, Ry.”

His smile dropped. “No! That’s not what I meant- I just… I’m gonna be honest it’s been a while since I’ve…” his voice quieted, letting you fill in the blanks.

You knew he had an ex- he’d brought her up occasionally in your conversations when the moment called for it- but you didn’t know how long ago that had been. If you had to guess, it was probably before he became a teacher. Which if what he was saying was true… then he’d hadn’t been with anyone since then and had gone several years without being intimate with anyone (besides himself, anyway).

Ryland took your momentary pause as a bad sign.

“Not that I haven’t wanted to! I’ve just been really busy. Teacher stuff. Grading. Lesson planning. And with a teacher’s salary on top of crippling student loan debt? Fancy restaurants can be a little too steep. Even fast food is getting expensive. I don’t even have a car! I bike to work! Can’t afford a coffee date some months.”

Another rambling tangent. One of his pointer fingers tapped erratically at your thigh.

“Well, you’re in luck Ryland,” you state, pressing a hand to his chest to feel his heartbeat, just like you had when you first met. Just like before, it was pounding but for a whole different reason this time. “I don’t think there’s any high-end restaurants on this aircraft carrier so I don’t need any of that fancy treatment. What if we have cafeteria oatmeal and orange juice on the flight deck together tomorrow morning instead?”

He was nodding before you’d even finished your sentence. “Yeah, that sounds nice.”

“Good,” you smile, raising yourself up to kneel properly over him.

His neck bobbed when you finally took him in your hand. He was warm and firm, the perfect length and size without being too much.

You felt him resist the urge to buck into your fist, instead throwing his head back against the mattress with a groan, tightly squeezing your thighs with his hands to ground himself. He was already leaking into your palm within a couple pumps.

“I-I don’t know how long I’ll be able to-“

“We’ve got all night, Ry, don’t worry.”

He nodded, comforted by your words. He was soft as silk and overly sensitive, it seemed. With the help of your hand, the scientist came quickly, just as he feared he would, painting his abdomen white. You shushed him before he could even think about apologizing.

One positive thing about him going so long without intimacy meant his refractory period was minuscule. He was hard again in minutes, which he’d blushed about.

When you finally sank onto him, moving slowly both for yourself and Ryland’s sake, all thoughts left your mind besides the ones that revolved around the man underneath you. You didn’t care about the dying sun, or Project Hail Mary, or your job. By his expression, Ryland was feeling the same.

His hands were surely leaving bruises on your thighs but you didn’t care one bit. Not when your bodies fit together beautifully. Fully seated, hips locked, you could’ve cried at how he felt inside you. He was just the right size, brushing every spot he needed to and then some without being too overwhelming.

When you began to move, Ryland helped where he could- offering your body stability and putting those muscled arms of his to good use. The veins on his forearms were bulging and the tendons in his neck were prominent against his skin.

You didn’t know how soundproof the metal boxes the higher-ups deemed bedrooms were, but you doubted they would do a good job of masking any of the noises the two of you were making. Ryland was keeping quiet as much as he could manage, teeth grinding. You were a little less reserved, gasping and groaning as you bounced. Let his neighbors hear, you didn’t care. Not when you finally got your chance with the scientist you’d been eyeing since the moment he stepped out of that jet.

Just like he was perfect for you, you could tell you were providing enough relief for him in return because you could feel his thighs begin to quake.

When he bucked up into you again, your hold on that string deep in your gut snapped and you saw white. Feeling you finish brought Ryland to the edge too. He was just barely able to lift your body high enough to free himself and release over your abdomen.

The next several seconds were spent breathing in tandem. Ryland was watching you like you hung the stars in the sky. With all of the movement, his glasses had skewed again. Huffing a laugh, you bent forward to straighten them and then pressed a long lingering kiss to his lips. You felt his fingers glide up to your ribs then wander to your spine, pressing your chest tightly to his.

His glasses were foggy by the time you pulled away, your shared breath heating the lenses.

“You ok?” You asked, brushing a thumb over the dusting of facial hair along his jaw. He nodded into your palm.

“More than ok.”

-

You woke up to snoring.

Not the loud, reverberating kind, but a soft and soothing hum that blended perfectly with the constant moans and groans of the ship you’d become so accustomed to.

Blinking open your eyes, you stared at the metal ceiling. It took several seconds to remember where you were. For a moment, you assumed you were in your room but when tiny glimpses of sunlight danced over the walls and when a hand twitched lightly against your waist, the memory of last night came rushing back.

The bar, your conversation with the scientist, and then-

A soft smile erupted across your cheeks as they warmed. Ever so slowly lifting your hand, you brushed your fingers through the head of hair that was tucked into your neck.

Indeed, Doctor Ryland Grace was laying by your side, pressed impossibly close to your body due to the cramped nature of his bed, and blissfully asleep.

All feelings of hesitancy and shyness he’d had hours earlier were gone as he slept, the doctor partially draped over you- an arm slung over your waist, a leg thrown over one of yours and tucked between your thighs. He was snoring against your neck where his face was pressed. You were pretty sure he was drooling. His feathered hair was soft against your fingers, even more unkempt than usual.

You could’ve stayed like that for hours, warm and comfortable even in the pathetic excuse for a bed.

Several minutes passed before he began waking up, stirred by the gentle pass of your fingers along the short hair at the nape of his neck. He shifted around slightly but didn’t move to pull away from your side.

He sighed against your skin, the fluttering of his eyelashes against your throat telling you he’d finally opened his eyes.

“Good morning,” you said quietly, not wanting to break the peaceful tranquility of the room that was rare to find on the bustling carrier.

You felt him blink a couple times before he responded, a smile sounding on his lips. “Morning.”

God, his voice was perfect- a rough, deep baritone thanks to hours of sleep. It had you turning your head towards him, pressing your lips to his hairline. You couldn’t see his face, but the stretch of stubble across your throat told you he’d smiled even more.

Several minutes went by in companionable silence, neither of you wanting to pull away. His fingers brushed lazily against your waist and yours didn’t stop thumbing through his hair.

You wondered after a while if he’d fallen back asleep before he mumbled a question. “What time is it?”

Peering over his head, you squinted at the small digital clock that sat on the tiny built-in desk.

“8:58.”

A pause.

Then panic.

Ryland shot upwards, unsticking himself from your body and scrambling out of the bed in a flurry of limbs and movement.

“Shhhhhiitake mushrooms!”

You watched from the bed, lightly amused as you watched him stumble around the cramped space in a frantic search for clothing. Lord above, he looked just as good from the back as he did the front.

“Something wrong?”

“I was supposed to go with Stratt to a crew meeting an hour ago.” He threw his legs into a pair of boxer briefs (which you were pretty certain were on backwards but he didn’t seem to notice or care), followed by a pair of jeans. “Kinda surprised she hasn’t barged in here already to get me up, actually. She’s done it before.”

You just hummed, watching him slug a blue button up across his shoulders and struggle with the buttons. He threw a glare at you that had no fire behind it. “Will you show at least a little sympathy? She could probably throw me into the ship’s jail for this.” He missed a button at the top of his shirt, which meant the whole shirt was now fastened lopsided. He didn’t seem to notice that either.

“I’m not going to complain that we got an extra hour or two of sleep together.”

His cheeks bloomed. There’s that shyness. He didn’t fight your statement, instead busying himself with tugging a beanie over his bedhead. When he sat on the mattress next to you to start putting socks and shoes on, he searched the room with squinted eyes.

“Do y’know where my-“

You held out his glasses. At some point last night, you’d relieved him of the spectacles for his own comfort (and so you could kiss him as senseless as you wanted to) and carefully placed them under the bed where they’d be safe from being squished.

“Thank you.”

Looking a little less than put together, he started collecting the notepads and folders stuffed with papers on the small desk, gathering everything into his arms.

“Uh- well, we missed breakfast so how about we meet up for lunch? Or dinner? Or breakfast tomorrow? Or we don’t have to do anything together at all if you don’t want to. Totally your call, really.” He kept his gaze down at the papers, avoiding your eyes. You smiled.

“Well, I start my shift in an hour and can’t leave the medical wing until I’m relieved.”

His shoulders dropped a little.

“But… there’s no rules against having visitors.”

Ryland looked at you over the rims of his glasses, starting to smile himself. “Yeah? Ok! Yeah, I’ll- Do you have a preference for lunch? I’ll bring you something. Or I can get you a little bit of everything from the cafeteria? Do they allow that?”

You sat up with a laugh, holding the thin bedsheets against your chest to keep the last little bit of warmth from him against you. “I’ll get the same thing you’re having. I’m not picky.”

The doctor nodded to himself, shuffling toward the door with large strides. Twisting the handle, the door opened barely an inch before he doubled back like he forgot something. You expected him to search for something else he needed, not expecting him to rush over and press a fast kiss to your lips. It was your turn to blush.

“Right! Ok, I’ll get us something good. See you in a little bit! And lock the door on your way out, will you? Thanks!”

With his goodbye, he rushed out of the room, gently shut the door and began racing away. You heard his pounding footsteps reverberate the walls as he ran down the hall.

His room was too quiet now that he was gone, only the sounds of the ship keeping you company.

It took you several minutes to shake out of your star-struck stupor.

When the blonde showed up in your quiet office in the medical wing at 12pm sharp, precariously balancing two to-go boxes stuffed full with cafeteria food and harboring a broad smile, you quickly realized just how tightly Doctor Ryland Grace already had you wrapped around his finger.