Lorièn

a good time;

Has exactly the tropes you like and the characterization you want to read;

Gratification: yes you did finish a thing and yes you did do good;

just a very fun time all around.

Cons of re-reading your own fic:

After several attempt to stop him, she finally declared, “If you keep kicking those over, your leg will fall off!”

No sooner had she said this than she looked up and was mortified to notice a man standing on a pair of crutches with one leg.

Before she could apologize, he looked down at the boy and sighed, “I used to love to kick those.”

it is specifically his lack of relationship that gives stratt the ability to whisk him away to work on the hail mary. in every aspect of his life he is seen as replaceable.

take him out of his classroom. there are other teachers. put him in a hazmat suit and see if astrophage kills him. there are other biologists. fly him to a military base to work. there's no one wondering where he is. (not even a dog.)

it's a critical part of his story that his life is perceived as lonely, as sad, and that its not a problem to uproot him, solely because there's no one waiting for him at home. stratt knows this, knows the optics of it, and knows that it makes him a better candidate than anyone else.

so little consideration is given to grace's life by anyone - he barely even considers it himself until it's too late. and that's so real, so important, because i promise you every aroace person in your life knows how it feels to be dehumanized, and seen as less-than, to be seen as disposable, because you want to live your life a different way. because every single one of us would have fought stratt tooth and nail to not go up on that ship and we all would have lost.

Stratt: tries to make a going-off comfort gift and instead creates the most insensitive thing possible