ami!

With a sigh and a wave of your hand, you gave Olivia the okay to answer the question. She happily took your permission and ran with it, always the first to answer any questions you posed in class. If only the rest of these damn middle schoolers were as eager as she was.

“Penelope didn’t want to marry anyone else, so she gave them an impossible task,”

“Why does she always know everything?”

Marcus thought his comment was whispered just low enough that you wouldn’t hear him in the first row, but he was never quite that lucky. He quickly shut his mouth and looked anywhere but in your direction the second he caught sight of the disapproving look you were casting directly at him.

“You are exactly right, Olivia. Thank you for answering my question,” there were a few chuckles in the room at the obvious sarcasm laced through your words, as you hopped up onto your desk to relax and get a better look around the room full of kids. “Penelope knew the only person that could string her husband’s bow, was her husband himself. She needed to buy time, especially when these suitors only really wanted to be the ones to inherit Ithaca-”

There was a loud knocking on the door to your classroom that had been left open for the last 20 minutes of class, interrupting your words. You weren’t surprised in the slightest to meet the eyes of none other than Ryland Grace, the science teacher.

“Uh- sorry! Didn’t mean to interrupt important book talk stuff. Super important, you uh-you never know when Shakespeare will come up at your future desk job,” the cringe that Ryland physically did at his own comment was easy to see, even from across the room. He gave you a sheepish smile, his glasses barely hanging onto his face from their unconventional spot hanging off of one of his ears. The blonde held up the brown bag in his hand, and you could practically smell the food that rested inside. “I’m early, I’m sorry. Didn’t think you’d want to have a cold burger for lunch.”

“I told you!” Marcus still didn’t understand the concept of a whisper, leaning over to his best friend Jason at the desk beside him, slapping him on the arm. “They’re totally dating!”

“As if Mr. Grace could pull her,”

There was a chorus of snickers and laughter through the class, any semblance of order you might’ve had descending into chaos as every single one of your loveable, little shits just kept casting looks between you and Ryland, who still stood awkwardly in your classroom doorway with reddened cheeks.

Your face was surely no better, you were sure you could feel the heat that was emanating off of your skin, as you ran a hand down the burning skin of your face and wondered why you chose to teach these little menaces for the rest of your life. The world decided to be kind to the pair of you though, for once, letting the lunch bell save you from any further embarrassment from a group of 13 year olds.

“Please come to class prepared to actually answer questions tomorrow!” you called out over the hustle and bustle of the class as they grabbed their things, eager to scurry off to their lunch hour and finally eat. “Your unit test is at the end of next week, and I would prefer not to fail all of you.”

They weren’t listening, but by this point in the day you were hungry and didn’t have the energy to try and argue with them.

Any of that tiredness they brought to your bones? It disappeared the second you watched the way they all interacted with Ryland on their way out the door.

Big smiles, every single one of them excited to see the school’s favorite science teacher lingering in the doorway to their English class. You could just barely hear the tail end of one of Ryland’s terrible science puns, something about a hungry planet needing a ‘light snack’ that got a groan out of Marcus. All it did was bring a soft smile to your face, though, one that somehow softened even more at the quick, secret handshake Olivia shared with him before she was out the door.

Then, it was just the two of you, smiling like idiots as you locked eyes across the room again. And god, did you want that fluttering group of butterflies in your stomach to calm down for just a moment.

Having a crush on Dr. Ryland Grace, the former molecular biologist turned San Francisco middle school science teacher, was inevitable from the moment you turned up at the school for your first day over a year ago. Incredibly smart, amazing with kids, and so incredibly handsome you thought your heart stopped beating the first time you saw him–hell, Mrs. Doyle, the math teacher for over 5 years, said there were at least 4 other young teachers that absolutely had crushes on this man. You were far from the first.

He broke that perfect vision of himself you were building in your head within 5 minutes of meeting, tripping over his own two feet and knocking the stack of papers a mile high from the Principal’s hands, but you had only found it even more endearing.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” he apologized again, long legs striding across the room and reaching your desk in a matter of seconds. “I had a free period before this, a-and you mentioned this morning you forgot lunch so I grabbed some for both of us-”

“Sal’s?” you questioned, pointing to the bag of foot now sitting on your desk with the familiar logo. “They’re, like, 10 blocks away. Why’d you go that far?”

“Because I know they’re your favorite,”

The flare of heat in your cheeks was instant. Ryland Grace, who rode a damn bike to the school every day, used his free period to ride 10 blocks away and pick you up lunch from your favorite spot, all because you mentioned offhandedly at 7 a.m. about forgetting your lunch for the day.

Well, he certainly didn’t do that for the four fresh out of college teachers that had crushes on him. You’d mentally consider that a hefty win in your book.

“How sweet of you to remember,” Ryland simply waved you off, head turned away as he passed your wrapped burger into your hands, taking up space on your desk chair while you stayed comfortable on top of your desk. “You even remembered tomatoes this time!”

“I forgot them one time and I never hear the end of it,” laughter was shared between you both for a moment as Grace took a bite of his own burger. “I caught the tail end of that discussion. Olivia answering all your questions like a champ?”

“Isn’t she always,” you shot back with another laugh, turning slightly on your desk to better face him. “I swear she’s the only one that I can ever get to answer any of my questions. She might be the only one that does any of my assigned readings.”

“To be fair, can you blame her?” Ryland’s words were muffled slightly by the food in his mouth. You couldn’t even contain the slight smile that grew as he managed to just barely catch the ketchup dripping off his burger before it could smear itself on the stack of papers that needed graded at your desk. “Shakespeare was just…so interesting. Couldn’t get enough of his stuff. Don’t know why your kids don’t want to read it.”

There was silence for a moment, your eyebrow quirked in his direction. The blonde stopped mid bite of his burger, looking back at you quizzically, trying to figure out what he had said wrong.

“You know we’re currently learning The Odyssey, right?”

“Yes?”

“I’ll let you think about that for a second,”

He did, just slowly blinking in your direction. He glanced at the chalkboard behind you, covering in little notes you’d made throughout the class discussion, before they flickered to the copy of the book that sat on your desk. That was finally when you saw the light bulb flicker on above his head, Ryland’s eyes shutting as he let out a loud sigh.

“...that wasn’t written by Shakespeare, was it?”

The laughter that bubbled out of you practically had you throwing your head backward.

“No, but I’m sure Homer won’t be too offended,” feet landing on the ground as you hopped off your desk, you gave Ryland’s shoulder a quick squeeze as you moved past him. “The attempt was cute, though, it was a good try.”

Cute. Why in the world did you let that one slip? You were practically cursing yourself in your head for that one, taking another bite of your burger as you worked to erase the whiteboard to prepare it for your next class. You didn’t dare steal a glance over at Ryland, in fear that your little slip-up was going to ruin everything.

There was only quiet for a moment before the single moment of awkwardness was gone.

“I promise you I know Homer wrote that. I swear!”

The desperation to believe him drew another laugh out of you. Sparing a glance in his direction, Ryland was giving you his best, exaggerated puppy dog eyes, begging you to believe him, as a smile just barely squeaked its way onto his lips.

“Right, of course you did. My mistake. Whatever you say, Ryland-”

“I mean it!” It was his turn to laugh this time, a sound that had those butterflies rattling around once more. “I was just…distracted.”

“Uh-huh, distracted,” as if you were preparing to scold one of your students, you turned to face him fully with a hand on your hip, eyebrow raised expectantly. “By what, exactly?”

If a human being could buffer, Ryland Grace always seemed to be constantly buffering. Your eyebrow remained raised, waiting for him to piece together his response. All he could do was open and close his mouth like a fish, before looking away and taking another bite of his food.

“Nevermind that, just finish your food before it gets cold. I did bike, like, three miles to get that thing,”

With a roll of your eyes that held zero malice what-so-ever, you made sure the blonde could see your next bite of your food, a satisfied smile on his face.

“Back to the previous topic,” you steered the conversation in another direction, wiping off the last bits of chalk on the board and writing down your next period at the top so that you could start the discussion on the reading over again. “I don’t understand why it’s so hard to get some of these kids to just read the content. They all pay attention in your class!”

“I heard Jason make a comment yesterday during class that Marcus has a crush on Olivia. Maybe they’re too distracted to read,”

You shot him a skeptical look.

“Marcus, crushing on Olivia? He was just making fun of her before you came in the room,”

Ryland averted his eyes, suddenly very interested in his ID badge hanging around his neck from his school issues lanyard.

“W-well, maybe he just doesn’t…know how to express his feelings,” he spared a glance up at you, seeing you were still watching, as he tripped over his words again. “It can be hard for boys–and men–of all ages, to…tell someone how they feel.”

“Well, I don’t know where he’s learning from, but making fun of the girl you like isn’t the right way to go about things,” you shot back.

“Then teach them!” Ryland sounded absolutely ecstatic, that light bulb over his head going off again as he looked like he’d come up with the world’s greatest idea. “Classic literature, there’s plenty of great love stories in there. Get his interest by teaching them about that, so he can learn from them.”

“Alright, give me an example then, Mr. Suddenly an Expert in Classic Literature,”

“Romeo and Juliet,” he said like it was the easiest thing in the world, balling up the remnants of his finished food and tossing it in the bag it came in. “Greatest love story ever told, so great Taylor Swift wrote a song about them.”

“Except they don’t run off and get married and live happily ever after, Ryland. Romeo thinks she is dead and kills himself with poison, and when Juliet realizes he’s dead she stabs herself,”

Ryland’s excitement fell slightly, his mouth forming a little ‘o’ shape.

“...oh,”

“Don’t think that’s what I want to teach young, impressionable pre-teens about love-”

“Daisy and Gatsby, then! He loved her so much he stood on that dock staring at the-the bright yellow light of a stoplight for her,”

“It was a green light and it was the dock light, first of all. I’m not even sure how you could be that off. Secondly, Gatsby is murdered at the end of the book and Daisy doesn’t even attend the funeral, she and Tom move away and pretend it never happened,”

Ryland’s eyes are shut at this point, his fingers massaging his temples and those glasses just barely hanging on from their place around his neck.

“...does anyone not die in these old books?”

The sound of your laughter permeates the room and you sweep over, collecting his trash and combining it with yours. You never even spared him a glance, though you could feel his eyes on you, as you swept the trash away with you to the other side of the room, his voice echoing across to you.

“I’m going to get lucky on one of these guesses!”

What Ryland Grace was really lucky about was how adorable you found him, and how head over heels you were for him, because his lack of literary knowledge was astounding.

❤︎

“I’m sorry, you’re trying to tell me that aren’t currently fucking the eye candy that is the science teacher in room 305?”

“Evelyn!”

Evelyn Doyle was in her late thirties, married since she was 18, and already had three kids with her high school sweetheart. Since you had transferred into Grover Cleveland Middle, you’d become fast friends and she had become a great mentor.

She had, sadly, caught onto your pathetic crush on Ryland Grace before you had even fully realized it, and was now ‘vicariously living through you’ as she always said.

“There’s not a single child left in this entire school right now,” she shot back, gesturing around her empty classroom, as she finished cleaning up anything her students had left around at the end of the day. You rolled your eyes at her excuse, perched on the edge of her desk. “Please, I’m tenured, what are they going to do?”

“I’m more so yelling at you for butting into my love life, once again,” was your reply through laughter. “Ryland and I are good friends, that’s it.”

It was her turn to laugh, finishing up her cleanup around the room before she joined you at her desk, packing her things away into her shoulder bag.

“Oh please, you keep denying that little crush of yours-”

“I never said I was denying that,” you cut her off. “Lord, you realized I liked him before I even did. But he and I aren’t anything besides friends. I’m not lying.”

Your pleas fell on deaf ears, like they typically did when you were around Evelyn. She simply waved your statement off, tossing her bag over her shoulder as you followed her out of her room and down through the quiet of the school hallway. The quietest the hallway ever was, in the hours right after students were sent home for the day. You’d rather be anywhere else, preferably at home, but these mandatory once-a-month staff meetings were unavoidable.

“Whether you’re telling me the truth or not, you have to understand why everyone thinks so–teachers AND students. I think even some parents think so!” The only response she got was an eyeroll, her shoulder bumping into your’s playfully. “He brings you lunch at least once a week, meaning he rides that dingy bike to get whatever you’re craving that day.”

“It’s usually just something random-”

“Constantly in your classroom, or vice versa,” she cut you off, and you quickly realized you weren’t getting a single word into this conversation. “I’m pretty sure Principal Marshall has considered, somehow, moving your classroom closer to his just so he’ll stop being late to classes because he’s busy talking to you.”

Okay…yeah, you didn’t have a retort for that one. Your classroom was on the opposite end of the school building from Ryland’s own, and yet every time he had even a split second he was somehow always leaning in your doorway. Even if it only resulted in a conversation that lasted all of a minute.

Many times those ended with your students having to remind him that the bell rang and he definitely had students in his own class unattended, waiting on their teacher. More than once he’d slipped as he tried to sprint back to his classroom from yours. It didn’t matter how short those little conversations were, though, because every second around him was precious to you.

“Awe, look at you blushing about it-”

You slapped Evelyn’s hand away, throwing her a look of disdain that didn’t really hold any true malice to it.

“Look, all I’m saying is the ball is in his court,” was the response you finally settled on as Evelyn propped the door of the small auditorium open for you to enter. “Ryland is nothing but friendly to me, so if he’s interested then he’s got to show me.”

“You’re acting as if you’ve made your own feelings clear, honey,”

“No, but I clearly don’t do a good enough job of hiding them,”

Speak of the devil: there he was. Ryland’s head shot up the moment the pair of you walked into the auditorium. Those damn glasses hanging down from one side of his face, framing his stubbled jawline perfectly. A smile lighting up his face the second those blue eyes found yours, gesturing to the empty seat beside him.

A packed auditorium, as you and Evelyn were the last ones there. Every seat up practically filled, and yet Ryland Grace sat among a crowd of people, eyes trained on you and a single seat saved for you amidst it all.

All you could feel was the heat in your cheeks, and the touch of Evelyn patting your back as she laughed, voice low but loud enough to hear as she shifted past you to find a seat of her own.

“Doesn’t have interest in you my ass,”

Her words swam through your head with every apology you muttered to the other teachers as you snuck past them in the cramped rows, happily taking the empty seat beside Ryland.

“You didn’t have to save me a seat, you know,” your voice held a hint of teasing to it, but it was soft. Filled with an adoration that you knew you were terrible at hiding. Luckily, Ryland was terrible at picking up on it.

“Wanted to sit next to you,” he whispered back as Principal Marshall began to drone on about updates neither of you particularly cared about. He leaned in close, a hint of his breath wafting over the shell of your ear as he spoke. “You make these slightly less boring.”

Close proximity to this man was your worst nightmare, and the cramped auditorium wasn’t helping. That single touch of his breath against your skin was enough to send a simultaneous shiver down your spine and another round of heat to your cheeks. His suit jacket covered arm rested on the shared armrest between your seats, the edge of his bicep ghosting against the bare skin of your arm with every little shift he made, tapping incessantly against the armrest.

The slight action made you smile. He never could sit still in these meetings, always hated them.

“Did anything fun happen in class today?” you kept your voice low, eyes trained on the principal, as your head tilted slightly over to Ryland so he could better hear you.

“Uh, if you count Madison telling me that she thinks the sun orbits the earth, then sure,” you had to stifle your laugh at that, casting Ryland a side glance as he grinned at you, doing a terrible job of whispering back at you as usual.

“How could she possibly think that?”

“You’d be surprised,” Ryland leaned just a tad bit closer, the side of his arm pushed up fully against your own. You could almost hear the smile in his voice without even having to look over at him. “The National Science Foundation estimates that 26% of Americans still think the sun orbits the earth.”

“Jesus, that many?”

“Well, 100% of them are stupid, so,”

Nasty looks from other faculty were shot your way that second you choked on your own breath, slapping a hand over your mouth in an attempt to stop yourself from breaking out into uncontrollable laughter. You gave them the most sympathetic look you possibly could, learning how to breathe normally again before mouthing sorry at them all.

Ryland didn’t care in the slightest for the warning look you shot him, a bright smile on his face as his eyes seemed to trail over every inch of your face.

“If you keep doing this in every faculty meeting, they’re going to separate us, Ry,”

“I met Madison’s parents for the first time last month for parent-teacher conferences,” he continued, ignoring your plea. Instead, he leaned in even closer, eyes locked on yours, and god it was impossible to look away. “They are, 100%, undeniably, part of the Flat Earth Truthers Club.”

You shook your head, a smile creeping back up on your lips. Ryland’s gaze could still be felt on the side of your face as you turned back to face the front, eyes focused back on the principal again in an attempt to pay attention to the meeting.

“Flat earthers are ridiculous. They’re just scared of science,”

“Well, you know what they say…the only thing they have to fear is sphere itself,”

There simply wasn’t enough time to clap your hand over your mouth and conceal your laughter, a split second of it breaking through the quiet of the auditorium. And Ryland? His smile was somehow even brighter than it was before, still locked onto your face, never having strayed once.

“Dr. Grace, is there something you feel needs to be shared with the rest of your fellow faculty?”

Principal Marshall’s voice was enough to knock Ryland out of whatever trance he seemed to have put himself in. Eyes wide as if he’d just seen a ghost, hands barely able to catch his glasses as they almost fell right off of his ear where they dangled, a burst of red spread through his cheeks instantly as his deer-like eyes locked onto the unamused principal.

“I-I uh, no. No, nothing, Principal Marshall,” he scratched at the back of his head, ruffling up his already messy hair, a nervous tick you’d picked up since the moment you’d met him. You simply buried your head in your head, eyes trained on your shoes and Ryland out of the corner of your gaze, terrified to look up at your fellow faculty that you’d already apologized to once. “Just getting super jazzed about faculty updates. Hard to keep it in here. I’m like a mushroom, getting all…hyphae…”

A collective groan sounded through the auditorium at the terrible biology pun that rolled off of him with ease. All you could do was smile into the palm of your hand.

“Please just…pay attention to the meeting, Dr. Grace, before I separate you and your other half,”

Other half. That’s not how she meant it, but it was impossible not to let your mind wander to the idea.

Early mornings. Coffee, the smell of eggs and toast burning in the kitchen. Ryland and his hair that was surely even more unkempt that early in the day. The guarantee that he definitely had about 120 science puns ready to go at any moment.

Late nights. Curled up on a couch. A movie, a shared blanket, warm in the embrace of his arms. The quiet of just being with someone that made you happy in ways you’d never felt before. The promise of another day with them on the horizon.

It was becoming increasingly harder not to think about Ryland Grace like that every day, of what a life with the awkward, endearing science teacher could be.

And as Principal Marshall continued her meeting, and your eyes met the blue ones that were already looking at you: soft, kind, a hint of something you couldn’t understand in them, you could only dream he thought the same thoughts when he looked at you.

❤︎

“Alright, who can tell me the day of the first human space flight?”

Not a single middle schooler, packed into the building’s planetarium, raised their hands at first. Many of them started whispering to each other, confused looks on their faces, but Ryland just waited with a smile on his face. A brave soldier from Mr. Harkin’s class, Damien, finally raised his hand.

“Uh, Mr. Grace? Wouldn’t that…be today?”

“Excatly!” Grace’s clap echoed through the room as he pointed toward the young kid sitting in the front row of seats. “International Day of Human Space Flight, commemorating the first human space flight by Yuri Gagarin. It was a trick question, and you passed my tiny friend.”

Were you excited about losing a chunk of your day to escorting your class to the planetarium, along with other classes in the building, for a special science presentation? Absolutely not, especially not with how terribly your class did on their last The Odyssey assignment.

When you found out that Ryland was giving the presentation during your allotted time? Suddenly, The Odyssey meant nothing to you. Not when you could watch Ryland teach, something he did so effortlessly.

The way he captured every single child’s attention with ease. That glowing smile on his face every time they answered a question right, and simply the way he seemed to love what he taught. You were captivated every time you got the chance to see him teaching the thing he loved so much.

“Yuri Gagarin was a Soviet cosmonaut who became the first person in space in 1961 aboard the Vostok 1,” the planetarium was lit up with the night sky, little stars reflecting down. You could almost see them in the students eyes, in their bright smiles as they looked up into the vastness of space. Your eyes trailed to Ryland, already looking at you with a soft smile of his own, before he cleared his throat and moved throughout the room, focusing back on the kids. “Over the course of 89 minutes, his ship traveled to a maximum altitude of 187 miles, as it orbited the Earth.”

“Wait, so we weren’t the first people in space?” one of your students, Lydia, called out. Ryland laughed, pointing over at her.

“No, we kind of sucked,” you rolled your eyes with a grin at Ryland’s statement, though it drew a laugh from all of the kids. “No, America had actually scheduled its first space flight for May 1961, so this was a huge blow to us. It really heated up the space race.”

“He really is good with them, isn’t he?”

Glancing over, Mr. Harkin had saddled up beside you on the edge of the room, head tilted toward you and voice low so as to not disrupt the lesson the kids were being taught. Your gaze drifted back to Ryland as he continued his lesson, eliciting more laughter from the kids. It only brought another soft smile to rest on your lips.

“He is, in a way that I just don’t understand,”

Those blue eyes you’d become so fond of met yours for a moment across the room, face illuminated by the light projecting onto the planetarium’s dome walls. The little grin he wore seemed to drop just slightly, gaze still locked on you but flickering every moment over to Mr. Harkin as he spoke to the students. Harkin’s elbow dug lightly into your side.

“Careful, you’re giving him major ‘heart eyes’ across the room right now,”

You did your best to conceal your laughter, shooting Harkin a look, Ryland’s gaze still felt on the side of your face even as you looked away.

“Why do I feel like I’m about to find out that every teacher in this school has a secret betting ring going on when it comes to Ryland and I?”

“I mean, it’s not a secret. Principal Marshall runs the damn thing,”

“Mr. Grace?” one of the youngest girls in the grade, Aurora, called out, raising her hand up to get Ryland’s attention. “My mom told me the other day that there’s 8 planets in our solar system. What happened to Pluto?”

Ryland went to answer when Mr. Harkin beside you laughed, capturing the attention of everyone in the room, as he shook his head at his young student.

“No, honey, scientists a couple years ago decided that Pluto wasn’t a planet anymore,”

Your eyes flickered to Ryland, who was already staring at Harkin from across the room as he tossed his little crochet earth back and forth in his hand. His response was a bit of a forced laugh.

“Well, your teacher isn’t wrong. Scientists classified Pluto as a dwarf planet a couple years ago,” he explained to the kids, eyes trained on the little crochet sphere in his hands. “But there’s 8 other very important, even closer planets that we should focus on. I mean, who really cares about a tiny, slow planet that takes 248 years to orbit the sun–honestly, he should just accept that he’s slowly falling into obscurity and stop trying to steal the spotlight.”

The room got quiet. Your eyebrow raised slightly, head tilted, as everyone just seemed to stare at Ryland, who had yet to look up.

“Uh, Mr. Grace?” some student in the back called out. “Why did you call Pluto ‘he’? Are the planets boys and girls like us, too?”

Ryland’s head shot up, as if he suddenly remembered he was in a room full of students. His eyes shot to you, his mouth opening, then closing, before he quickly looked away.

“I–well…planets don’t really…I’m not trying to misgender the planets, you know? That’s not for me to decide, that’s for them to–you know what, does anyone else have any other questions that aren’t related to Pluto?”

You really didn’t want to laugh at Ryland, but only he would be able to accidentally turn a lesson about space and planets into almost a lesson on bodily autonomy. He caught your eye, his widening just slightly and you could almost see his cry for help written across his face, but it only made your laughter worse.

It was little Madison that raised her hand next, speaking before she’d even been called upon.

“Are you sure the Earth isn’t the center of the universe?”

Ryland hung his head in shame, the shaking of his head evident from across the room as a few of the kids around laughed at the young girl’s comment. You were quick to shoot them a warning look, not keen to hand out any detentions today.

By the time your gaze turned back to Ryland, he was already looking at you. His gaze flickered to Harkin, then back to you, and it was like a light bulb had just flickered on the way his eyes lit up.

“Yes, Madison, I’m sure the Earth isn’t the center of the universe. And I can show you,” his long legs crossed the room in seconds, his body sliding between you and Mr. Harkin as his hands landed on your shoulders with a tiny little squeeze that sent your heart leaping through your chest. “But to do that, I’m going to need this volunteer that I’m not quite giving a choice.”

“It’s not volunteering if you didn’t ask, Ry!”

You exasperatedly tried to whisper to Ryland as he steered you across the room to stand before all the kids. He only shook his head as a bunch of your own students started cheering for you around the room, only worsening the red that coated your cheeks the second his hands had landed on your body.

“I need you for this,” he shot back hastily, positioning you in the middle of the room, standing in front of you. His body blocked the students from your vision, blue eyes boring down into yours, hands gently squeezing at your upper arms as you begged the blush in your skin to not be too obvious. “You trust me?”

A ridiculous question, because the only answer was yes. You gave him a nod, and Ryland’s smile only widened as he turned back to the kids in the room.

“Alright, kids. Your gorgeous teacher here is the Sun,”

Little oohs and awes sounded from the kids around the room at Ryland’s little slip in of the word ‘gorgeous.’ There was a sting in your bottom lip as you bit into it with your teeth, trying to contain your own smile. Marcus spoke up from across the room without raising his hand, as usual.

“Then what’s Mr. Harkin?”

“Oh, he’s Pluto,” Ryland shot back immediately, nodding his head. “Suits him.”

Laughter rang through the room, the young boys as rambunctious as ever. Ryland met your astonished look with a tiny wink of his own, one that forced a small laugh to tumble from your lips. Then, he began to slowly spin, walking around you in a circle.

“And I am the Earth,” he called out to the kids, and you could only hope he didn’t trip over his own two shoelaces. “The Sun holds 99.8% of the mass in our solar system, which means it’s packing some massive gravity.”

Ryland stopped spinning himself, still moving around you in a circle. He held his hand out toward you, and you slipped yours into it without hesitation, spinning in that circle slowly with him.

“Because the Sun holds such intense gravity, it’s actually pulling Earth into it. But, Earth has such high forward velocity that it actually keeps us moving sideways. Put these two together, and it keeps Earth moving in an almost perfect circle around the sun. Can anyone tell me another fun fact about our movement around the sun?”

The words went in one of your ears and straight out the other. There was no paying attention, not when Ryland’s hand held your own. Soft skin, just slightly rough around the edges, and those blue eyes were so soft, locked onto you as if there was nowhere else he wanted to look.

“Our speed changes!” Olivia called out from somewhere in the back, but you didn’t even try to look and find her. “When we’re closer to the sun in our orbit we move faster, and the further away we are, the slower we move.”

“Very good, Olivia!” Ryland called out, sparing just a quick glance over to the kids in the room as his hand held yours tighter, still spinning slowly together. “Madison, we also know this works because there’s other sun-like stars out there that are also orbited by planets. Like Tau Ceti, which has four Earth-like planets orbiting it.”

“Is the sun important for other things, besides just being the center?”

Ryland’s eyes flickered to you, and you watched as he paused. The slight hesitation on his face, the bobbing of his Adam’s apple for a moment, before those blue eyes locked onto yours and refused to look away.

“I-It is…for a lot of reasons. The Sun is the Earth’s entire reason for existing. The Sun gives the Earth life. The Sun is the reason the world is beautiful,”

Your breath hitched, eyes still trained on Ryland. There was something in his words, something in that earnest, raw look that he had written across his features as he looked at you that added a weight to his words. A weight that sent a tiny chill across your skin, raising the hair on your arms.

“Without the Sun…the Earth would be nothing,”

There was quiet across the room. Then, a couple snickers, followed by Olivia’s smug little voice.

“The Sun sounds beautiful the way you talk about it,”

“She is,” his voice was lower, softer than it was before. Until, he seemed to realize what he said, the red on both of your faces spreading further than before as his eyes shot wide. “THE SUN I mean! I-I’m talking about the sun, obviously, b-because this is a science presentation!”

Laughter rang through the room, little chants of your names mashed together coming from some of the kids as the bell rang and saved either of you from further embarrassment.

Ryland, being Ryland, chose that moment to finally trip over his own two feet. You pulled on his hand as hard as you could, saving him from plummeting to the ground as he instead just landed on his one knee.

“Make good choices,” Ryland commented lowly as some of the kids walked past the two of you, still snickering and giggling to themselves. You let go of his hands finally, simply resting it on his shoulder with a gentle squeeze. “Don’t uh, I don’t know, blow up the world during lunch or anything. Or pop those chip bags and give kids heart attacks, whatever you kids do these days.”

You laughed, stepping around Ryland as your kids lined up outside of the room, waiting for you. He shot you a sheepish smile from the floor, and your skin still burned with heat at the memory of his words as you looked at him.

“Every time I think you’re doing well with those kids, they manage to knock you down a peg,”

“Yeah, well, what’s new?”

When you met your class outside, you didn’t let them get a word in before you warned them not to say anything. You could still hear little comments talking about ‘shipping’ their English and Science teachers the entire way back to your classroom.

❤︎

Ryland Grace didn’t understand how he had ended up here.

Well, he did. Calling the leading scholar in his field a “staggering waste of carbon” at a UNESCO conference in Denmark was an easy way to get blacklisted from the field he’d studied in for many years in college. It was an easy explanation for how he ended up teaching middle school science at Grover Cleveland Middle in San Francisco.

Not that he had a problem with teaching! He actually loved it. Loved his kids, loved talking about science. He loved teaching the future little scientists of the world about why every facet of science was awesome. The pay wasn’t great, though.

Especially when it was the reason he rode a bike to school daily.

And there was currently the equivalent of a monsoon raining down from the sky onto the pavement, the reason he’d been standing at the front doors for the last 20 minutes hoping that the rain would simply let up. The heavens didn’t take pity on him, though, and it only rained harder and harder. His rain coat and bike were not meant to withstand heavy rain and damaging winds to this extent. 

Best cast scenario? It takes him a little longer to get home on his usual 20 minute bike ride than normal. Worst case? He crashes and dies, dead in a ditch covered in mud.

“Ryland, please tell me you aren’t thinking of riding your bike home in this?”

Then there was you. You were probably the single greatest reason why he loved teaching at Grover Cleveland Middle. If he ever had the unfortunate chance to meet that scientist from the conference again, he’d thank him this time for being a staggering waste of carbon, because it led him down a path to you.

“I can’t be that bad,” he tried to joke, waving you off as a crack of thunder seemed to shake the entire building, and his fake confidence faltered for a second. He glanced back at you, coat wrapped around your bag instead of yourself in order to keep its contents dry. “Just, you know…the slight threat of bodily harm.”

He really wished the path that led to you was less bumpy and full of himself looking like an idiot, but at this rate he’d take what he could get from the universe.

“Yeah, absolutely not,” was your immediate reply, head shaking as she fished your car keys out of the bag still covered with your coat. “I’m giving you a ride home, can’t risk the best science teacher’s life over a dumb storm.”

Ryland immediately shook his head, turning to face you beside him. He was not letting you risk your own life in the storm for him. If it really came down to it, he’d sleep at his desk. There was a change of clothes he kept in the bottom drawer, it wasn’t the first time he’d had to do it.

“I can’t let you-”

“This isn’t up for discussion,” Ryland snapped his mouth shut as you cut in once again, dangling your car keys up in front of him with a little shake. “I…care about you, okay? I want to know you are home safe.”

There was no stopping the immediate heat that filled Ryland’s cheeks, and he knew it. There was red blooming across your own, but Ryland shook all wishful thinking from his mind. The AC unit in this school was unreliable, you were definitely just flushed from the heat. No other reason.

Ryland decided he wasn’t going to put up a fight at this point, but he wasn’t going to let you do this without anything in return. He shrugged the yellow raincoat hanging over his own shoulders off as he kicked the glass door in front of him open, the muffle sounds of the torrential downpour now louder as droplets of water splashed into the front door. He held the jacket out, hanging it above your head to protect you from the rain.

“At least let me save you from getting drenched,”

“You’re going to look like a dog that just had a bath by the time we reach my car,” Ryland only smiled at your joke, and the little giggle that fell through your lips. The close proximity didn’t help as he held the jacket up around you.

“Actually, it’s not windy today,” he shot back with a grin, nodding out the propped open door into the rain. “That means if we run, I’ll be drier than if we walked, because the rain that’s hitting us from above is proportional to time. Though, the rain hitting us from the front is proportional to distance, and when running-”

“Ryland Grace, you are adorable when you get all science-nerd, but if we’re going to run…we should run,”

Ryland was thankful that you couldn’t see the renewed heat flooding his cheeks, as you were both too busy sprinting through the torrential downpour to the staff parking lot.

Being a gentleman (who was head over heels in love with you and too terrified to say a damn thing) was thrown out the window with how fast you were booking it to your car, the idea of shielding you from the rain with his jacket abandoned after just a moment booking it across the lot. He could feel the coolness of the water settling against his skin as it soaked through every layer of clothing he had, every few seconds having to furiously wipe at his glasses in hopes of seeing through them.

None of it really mattered in the end, not when he heard your laugh. The little shrieks of laughter as a particularly big drop happened to fall right in your eyes. Or the laughter as Ryland managed–in his signature fashion–to slip on the final step into the parking lot, and you had to double back in laughter to help haul him to his feet.

He’s spring clumsily through the rain a thousand more times if he got to see you smile like that. And that is why his kids always told him that he was definitely ‘whipped’ for you. Whatever that meant.

The second you had both jumped into your respective seats of your vehicle, doors slamming shut, there was only a moment of silence between the both of you. Ryland felt like his chest was going to explode, remembering why he always hated gym class, his heavy breathing mixed with yours as you both caught your breath, before you locked eyes over the center console.

Then the laughter resumed.

He held his hand to his stomach, feeling an ache settling in as he couldn’t stop his own laughter. Your’s grew slightly louder in his ear as you leaned over, trying to help him wipe at his glasses that were still covered.

“I was right, you look like a wet dog,”

Ryland’s only response was to shake his soaking wet hair like one, a simple reaction that earned yet another shriek of laughter from you and a light slap to his shoulder. You muttered something unintelligible under your breath, but Ryland found himself unable to tear his gaze away from your lips as you started the car and began to pull out of the staff lot. How soft they looked, the way the little beads of water running down your cheeks fell over them.

Whipped. He still didn’t get it, but he agreed wholeheartedly with his kids at this point.

There was no driving fast in this rain, especially when the windshield wipers were moving at their highest programmed speed and it still wasn’t enough. It was quiet in the car for just a moment as you pulled out of the parking lot, but Ryland broke it the second your phone had connected to the car’s bluetooth, music filling the space between him and you.

Fly me to the moon, let me play among the stars. Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars.

“Frank Sinatra,” Ryland couldn’t help the growing smile on his lips as the familiar song flooded through the car speakers. He kept his eyes trained on the side of your face, watching the little smile grow on your own lips, eyes focused on the road conditions in front of you. “Old books and old music. Didn’t know you had such an old soul.”

“You calling me old, Ryland?”

“N-no!” Ryland immediately back track, hands flying up and shaking back and forth as his eyes went wide. “I might say some stupid stuff some–okay, most of the time–but I know better than to comment on a woman’s age.”

“I’m just teasing you,” he could thankfully hear the sincerity mixed in with the teasing lit to your voice. “But yes, I do enjoy some old music. Always been a big fan of Sinatra, especially this one.”

“It’s a nice song…just not scientifically accurate,” he caught the side eye that you threw his way for just a moment, another crack of thunder banging across the sky and almost shaking the car. Ryland couldn’t help but jump slightly. “Jupiter only has a 3.13° tilt to its axis, so it doesn’t experience seasons like we do. Mar’s would, though, because its axis is tilted at 25°, only 1.5° more than our own tilt…”

Ryland trailed off as the car rolled to a stop at a red light, and he caught you fully facing him this time with a bemused expression written across your face. His smile dropped just slightly as he let out a sheepish laugh, adjusting his glasses as they slid back down the wet bridge of his nose.

“...I went full science-nerd again, didn’t I?”

Your laughter drowned out the rain beating against the roof of the car as your attention returned to the road once more.

“You always do, but I happen to enjoy it very much,”

If only teaching paid more, because the commute to Ryland’s apartment was a lot shorter than his bike ride home every day from work. 

Parked in an open space across the road from the dimly lit apartment building, Ryland Grace hesitated with his hand on the handle of the door. His eyes swept out over the area around the vehicle, still being hounded with rain. The top of his road looked like the beginning of a river, the way the water was rushing down the small incline to pool at the bottom.

“Thanks…for this,” he gestured toward the weather right outside the card.

You moved to respond to him, when the weather alert on your phone propped up on your dashboard sounded out. Ryland could just barely make out the headline: FLASH FLOOD WARNING.

The roads were far too dangerous, and Ryland already knew from various conversations that you lived on the opposite end of town from him.

He…could ask you to stay for the night. Just for safety reasons, obviously! He was quickly trying to work through the pros and cons list in his head.

Pros: his only friend that just so happened to be the woman he’s been head over heels in love with for the last year would be safe and not driving in this storm.

Cons: his only friend that just so happened to be the woman he’s been head over heels in love with for the last year would be inside his tiny little apartment that looked like it had been hit by a separate hurricane than the one it felt like they were currently suffering through.

“I should probably get home-”

“Stay,” Ryland cut in, quickly continuing his words after his vague statement. “I-It’s just, the roads are bad, and you live on the other side of town. This storm is just going to get worse, and I-I’d hate to know something happened to you.”

You hesitated, he could tell, shaking your head.

“Ryland, I couldn’t ask you to let me stay,”

He hesitated himself for a moment, every feeling he’d kept bottled up for a year now threatening to escape past his lips. Instead, he settled on echoing your own words.

“I…I care about you. I want to know you’re safe,”

Moments later, he had his rain coat draped over your head as he rushed you inside his apartment to shelter from the storm.

Ryland’s hands shook the entire time as he put his key into his front door’s lock. The last time he had guests over…was never. His apartment was built and designed for him and his brain, scattered with notes and books and piles of arts and crafts that he worked on in order to decorate his classroom. It was not meant for visitors, especially not ones as pretty as you.

“Don’t, uh, mind the mess,” he mumbled, holding the door open and motioning after you, allowing you to take a step inside his apartment as he let out the small breath he didn’t realize he was holding.

Chucking off his sneakers, little puddles of water forming below them on the ground, his jacket found its way into a pile with them. Ryland wiped his hands nervously against the thighs of his jeans, the action doing nothing against the soaking went material, as he watched you take in his apartment.

The apartment that looked like it had been ransacked, at least partially. Stacks of books relating to a thousand different topics were stacked on the ground by the tv stand, on top of the coffee table along with the coffee cup he’d abandoned there early in the morning in a haste to get to the school, and and by his desk that had a stack of papers scattered around it after her strewn them about in order to find one specific slip of paper at 11 p.m.

It was a mess, and Ryland regretted everything.

“It’s not messy, it’s homey,” your reply sent a burst of heat through his skin as you turned to him with a bright smile, leaving your own bag and coat by his pile of wet items before gesturing to your own soaking wet clothing. “Do you maybe have something a little less…wet?”

He scurried away into his bedroom, trying to ignore that little section of his brain that took your comment in a MUCH different way.

His bedroom was worse. Ryland wasn’t letting you sleep on the couch, but he surely wasn’t letting you see his room in a state like this.

Clothing was thrown across the room and Ryland quickly ran about, shoving piles of clothing away into corners where he was certain you wouldn’t be able to see any of it. Throwing it into his closet and slamming the door before it could fall out, pushing it down in his laundry basket, kicking it under his bed so it was out of sight and out of mind, whatever he could think of.

“Great idea, Ryland,” he muttered to himself, pulling on a dry pair of sweatpants and a tshirt for himself, trying to shake the remaining water out of his hair as he rummaged for something you could wear. “Almost get the woman you’re in love with killed by letting her drive you home in a monsoon. Invite her to stay the night in your apartment that makes you look like an even bigger loser than you are. Amazing idea. A doctorate in molecular biology and this is the best you can do.”

You were waiting by the couch in his living room, just glancing around at everything with a smile, when he reappeared. Sheepishly, he handed the folded clothing over to you, hand running through his soaking wet hair as he pointed down the hall.

“You can take my bed for the night. Uh, just leave your clothes in the bathroom, I can throw them in the dryer in a bit. I can scrounge up something to eat in the meantime,”

“Thanks, Ry,” your hand reached out, squeezing his upper arm lightly, and he felt the heat in his skin instantly bloom under your touch. “For all of this.”

If it wasn’t for the giant crack of thunder that flickered the lights of the building for a moment and made Ryland jump out of his skin, he would’ve forgotten how to breathe again.

He rummaged through every part of his kitchen, desperately trying to find something that he could make the two of you to eat that also wouldn’t make him seem pathetic. All he could come up with…was a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a jar of jelly.

Yesterday. He’d stayed late after the end of the day to help in tutoring. He forgot to go grocery shopping. Ryland let out a sigh at his realization, back to his fridge door and head banging back against the stainless steel, hand running down his face and dragging against his skin as his glasses were knocked off, hanging off of one ear.

“Great,” he muttered into his palm. “Just absolutely freaking great, Ryland.”

Ryland Grace desperately wished he had the guts, the bravery, to just simply tell you how he felt.

From the moment he met you, when you had arrived for your first day at Grover Cleveland Middle, he was a goner. It had been a long time since he’d had a partner, his last one certain that he was too busy with his head in the clouds to pay attention to her, and she wasn’t wrong. But from the moment he looked at you, waving and smiling as you introduced yourself to all of the teachers that had gathered to welcome you, you were suddenly the only thing his brain wanted to focus on.

He had been so focused on you, too busy admiring every inch of you in silence, that in his typical clumsy fashion he tripped over his own two feet and knocked Principal Marshall’s papers out of her hand, spreading them five feet across the floor. But you’d joined him on the ground, laughing lightly to yourself, as you helped him clean up the papers, and Ryland knew he was a goner for you.

It only continued every single day, getting worse, and you somehow became his friend. His only friend, if he was being quite frank. So he tried to hide the way he really felt, too scared to mess anything up. He’d rather have you in his life in any way he could, then mess this up and lose you forever.

Keeping those feelings in was getting increasingly harder in the last few months. Which explained why he’d traveled cross town just to get lunch from your favorite place, or compare you to the sun and basically called you his entire reasoning for living in front of a bunch of children-

Either Ryland was going to blurt it out at some point, or he was taking these feelings to the grave with him.

“Peanut butter and jelly? Sounds like we’re eating like royalty tonight,”

He shouldn’t have looked over at you. He really, really shouldn’t have. Leaning against the opposite wall of the kitchen, hair still damp and dripping onto the cheesy “I had potential” shirt he’d been gifted by one of his students the following year. Sweatpants that were bunched up around your ankles so that you didn’t trip over the length, waist tied in as tightly as possible so they didn’t just slide right off your hips.

Ryland Grace had never thought it possible that you could look more gorgeous than you did every day, but he stood corrected. He felt more in love than he ever had just looking at you right in this moment.

“Sorry, I don’t exactly…live a life of luxury,” Ryland awkwardly laughed as he spoke, pulling out two sad paper plates from the cabinet next to him and flashing them in your direction, shaking them lightly in the air. “Hope this doesn’t ruin my perfectly curated image.”

His eyes followed you as you brushed past him, humming to yourself with a little grin. You fumbled through every drawer in the kitchen, looking for something, when Ryland quickly popped open the one right next to him, showcasing his small selection of utensils. You flashed another heart-stopping grin at him before digging out two knives from the drawer.

“That image cracked a long time ago, Ry. Like that time you let Marcus perform some chemical reaction and got the fire department called to the school,”

The tall blonde groaned to himself, rubbing at his temple as you pushed past him to throw some of the bread down onto the plates and crack open the jars of peanut butter and jelly set out.

“That was one time!” he tried to defend himself, saddling up beside you as you passed him one of the knives. He almost completely missed the opening of the peanut butter jar, eyes too transfixed on the sight of you in his clothing. It was still up in the air if his heart was actually working correctly yet. “I learned my lesson very quickly not to let him handle any more chemicals.”

“Don’t worry. I made the mistake of doing popcorn reading when we were working on The Outsiders. Marcus seemed to end up with every single instance of profanity in the book, which he would yell at the top of his lungs,”

Ryland snapped his fingers, glancing down at you at his side with a teasing smile.

“You know what? That explains that really loud ‘HELL’ I heard across the school a couple months ago. I was so sure that it was going to shatter the windows of my classroom,”

“Oh, shut up! It wasn’t that bad!”

Your laughter permeated the air, elbow digging into his side as you spoke. And when your eyes locked with his, and Ryland got the perfect look at every square inch of your face, he could see it so clearly in his head.

Mornings just like this, where you’d both struggle to get out of the warmth of the blankets. The way he would surely annoy you with his very disorganized morning routine, but he’d make up for it with coffee already set out for you, just as you liked it. The lingering moments by the door, too wrapped up in each other because you didn’t want to leave the peace of this space, even though you were going to the same place.

Late nights, curled together on the couch with some movie playing on TV that neither of you were particularly paying attention to. Whispered words, laughter shared. Kisses that lingered, hands that trailed-

Thunder broke Ryland from his spell, thoughts gone in a flash. He was back in his dingy kitchen, with you just inches away, staring up at him as the picture of true beauty.

“T-This is nice,” he cleared his throat, turning back to his sandwich as he spread his toppings along the bread, heat blooming across his cheeks again. It always did around you. “Making dinner with someone…no matter how sad the dinner is. I haven’t done this in awhile.”

“Right,” your voice responded after a momentary pause. “Sarah, wasn’t it? You were dating her when we first met. What, uh…what ever happened to her?”

“Oh, we broke up a long time ago,” Ryland waved the comment off, shaking his head. “She just, uh, thought my head was too far in the clouds. Didn’t think I wanted to be down here on Earth. She wasn’t wrong. It was for the best, though. She hated…all of this. The rundown apartment, the lack of a car, my love of science. She just never understood it. I was just…too much for her. But she’s with Mark now, so I’m sure she’s happy.”

Ryland chose not to mention that his last relationship had been dead long before it officially ended, the pair not having seen each other in well over a month by that point. If his math was right, which it usually was, Sarah had started dating Mark before she’d even broken it off with him.

He also failed to mention the relief he felt inside when she had called it off, knowing his heart had belonged to you the moment your eyes had locked with his.

Fingertips just barely ghosted over Ryland’s cheek, and he froze in place. Eyes trained on the plate in front of him, he could feel the way your hand curled around his cheek. The way your thumb glossed over his skin, back and forth, and the way your other fingers barely grazed over the shell of his ear. He couldn’t help the way he instantly leaned into the touch, a touch he hadn’t felt in so long.

Ryland turned his head, still resting in the palm of your own, to look you in the eyes. You gave him the softest smile, hand trailing across his cheek and ghosting over his jawline. His eyes watched it move, the way your fingers gently curled around the frame of his glasses dangling precariously from his face, and placed them gingerly back where they belonged, resting on the bridge of his nose.

His breath caught, your body so close to his, as your hand trailed back down and rested on his chest for just a moment, your own gaze flickering to its resting spot while his gaze stayed on your face.

“You are never, and will never be, too much, Ryland. Not for the right person. They’ll love every part of you. The clumsy parts, the nerdy parts, every part that makes you…you,”

The Sun. That’s what you were to Ryland Grace. He meant every word he had said in that planetarium that day, driven by the rare jealousy of seeing Harkin that close to you. 

The Sun was the reason Earth had life. Without the Sun…the Earth would be nothing.

Without you…well, Ryland Grace had accepted long ago that he didn’t understand what it was like to truly live until he’d met you.

Your eyes flickered for just a second, and Ryland took in an audible breath, swearing they settled on his lips for just a second. The apartment was quiet, except for the hum of the fridge and the pattering of the rain against the living room windows.

The moment shattered with yet another terribly timed clap of thunder, your body jolting away from his, focus turned back to the counter in front of you, face hidden from his wide eyes.

“Y-you know…I can’t tell you the last time I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,”

Ryland shook his head, smiling slightly to himself at the little stutter in your own words, turning back to finishing his own food as well. But the moment still lingered in his head, the heat that bloomed from where your skin touched him still lingering.

“Since peanut butter is banned in school for allergies, probably awhile,”

“I almost forgot that rule a couple weeks ago and almost packed peanut butter crackers,” you joked back, before Ryland heard you snap your fingers. “Oh! Speaking of work, did you put yourself down to volunteer for the school dance next week?”

Sandwiches finished off, Ryland packed the ingredients away and stashed them back in their appropriate spots, laughing awkwardly to himself.

“Hah, uh, no I didn’t. I chaperoned last year and kind of left covered in punch, became the kids’ favorite ‘meme’ for a week afterward since one of them got a picture of it,”

He turned back to you. Leaning against the island counter, holding your sad little sandwich in your hands, face still lit up red as you smiled toward him.

“I think so far it's me, Doyle, and Harki, plus Principal Marshal and I think Katie and Dawson from the front office. We could really use another teacher,” he swore the fluttering of your lashes was on purpose just to kill him and his resolve. “Sign-up? For me?”

Well, there was no universe in existence where Ryland said no to a request like that.

Rejoining you at the counter, he held his own sandwich in his hand, reaching out and tapping it against yours as if you were sharing a toast.

“For you? Totally,”

Even as you both took a bite of your sandwiches, eyes still locked together, Ryland felt as if something had shifted in the air. Your eyes were still as kind, your smile still bright, but it felt like there was a new weight to your gaze as you looked at him.

And he swore–and hoped–for just a split second, that your eyes had just flickered down to his lips again.

❤︎

The student council had outdone themselves with this end of the year dance.

As you stepped through the main doors of Grover Cleveland Middle’s building, the smile on your face grew immediately at the sight before you. The walls were lined with little fairy lights, little styrofoam planets hanging down from the ceiling at various lengths, glow in the dark stars right around them and glowing. Silver streamers hung around the fairy lights, with the check in desk decorated with tons and foam and lights behind them to look like twinkling lights in the clouds.

“A space theme?” you called out as the two kids in front of you ducked away from the registration desk. Evelyn Doyle finally looked up from the sign-in sheet, grin growing as she took in the sight of you and rounded the desk. “I hadn’t heard anything from the student council on the theme, but they did well.”

“Nevermind the theme, you’re finally here!” you laughed as you threw her arms around you, reciprocating the hug, before her hands landed on your shoulders in order to get a good look at you, eyes trailing you up and down. “And look at this dress, oh my god!”

The deep yellow dress fell right around your knees, the fabric light and airy as it swooshed through the air with every move you made. Buttons lined the front down to the tie around your waist, leaving just enough room for the little gold necklace resting against your collarbone. You thanked yourself for choosing a short sleeve option, already feeling the heat in the building from how many kids were all packed in and dancing together.

“Thank you,” was the sheepish reply you gave your friend as she let you go. “I’m sorry I’m late, I caught one of my student’s parents in the parking lot and they turned it into a mini parent-teacher conference, sadly.”

“Not a problem,” she waved the comment off, gesturing toward the doors of the gym just off to the left of you both. “Just get on in there, have some fun, and keep those slow dancers at least 12 inches apart at all times.”

If the hallways were gorgeous, the inside of the gym shone even brighter. Bathed in blue and purple, even more little lights twinkled around the room, hung off the walls, the ceilings, and on every surface they could possibly find. Moon and star decals, made by the art students, hung off the walls and from the ceiling, almost glowing under the lights.

Your eyes trailed over all of your children, scattered throughout the room, already having been dancing for at least thirty minutes. The smile on your face grew as you watched each one of them, gathered with their friends as they danced together in groups, or even stood off to the sides and just observed from beyond the dimly lit dance floor.

Mr. Harkin had been stationed at the punch table, and you could hear him from across the room warning these middle schoolers not to try and spike the punch. You could only giggle to yourself, shaking your head at his antics, before your eyes swept over the crowd once more-

The music seemed to stop in your ears, breath hitching, the second you laid eyes on him across the room. Ryland Grace.

He wasn’t in anything fancy. A nice pair of jeans, the worn pair of black dress shoes you’d seen by his apartment door that night. A dark green shirt was tucked into his jeans, adorned with a worn, navy blue suit jacket overtop, and those same glasses almost falling off the bridge of his nose as he spoke animatedly to Olivia.

Ryland looked good. Too good, in your eyes.

For just a second, he looked up, and his eyes happened to meet yours across the room. You thought for sure you’d forgotten how to breathe.

Whatever had happened that night, in the silence of his apartment with only the beating of the rain against the windows and the roof as a witness, had shifted something. From the moment your fingertips had ghosted along his skin, your hand had rested against his chest, and you’d been close enough to see the specs that danced in those ocean blue eyes of his up close, nothing had been the same.

Like the little bubble you had been existing in with your harbored crushed had finally popped. Like a toe had dipped just slightly over a line, and there was no going back from then on.

You always blushed around your friend, every time he’d manage to fumble his way through a comment that borderlined on a kind-of-not-just-friendly compliment. But since that day just a week or so ago, every time he has been within a few feet of you, your face lit up like a hot summer’s day.

Moments where he’d find a second to linger in your classroom door, held a new weight to them. Sharing lunch together, fingers just barely brushing for a second as you both reached for your food, to moments when you’d simply be walking together down hallways, back of hands brushing along each other’s but no one making any moves to stop it from happening.

Something was different, and you weren’t sure you wanted to go back to how things were before. Not after touching his skin, or existing in his orbit like that. Not when you’d seen the side of him beyond these school walls.

You were in love with Ryland Grace. You had been for a long time. And, finally, you were done trying to pretend that there wasn’t at least a small chance that he felt the same.

“I need your help,”

The heated staring contest between you two was broken by the sound to your right. You turned, just to see Marcus standing directly beside you and reaching up to pull on the sleeve of your dress. His hands wrung together, foot tapping incessantly on the ground, and you immediately knelt down in front of him to get a better look at his face that he was trying to hide from you.

“Marcus? Honey, what’s wrong?” you asked gently, hands coming to rest on his arms as you tried to get him to look at you.

“I…I like Olivia,”

Oh. It was one of those problems. The anxiety you felt in that moment finally washed away, an easy smile falling to your lips as you took a quick glance over in Ryland and Olivia’s direction, the former’s eyes still locked onto you from across the room.

“I did hear a rumor about that. Olivia is a great girl,”

“She is,” he said quickly, finally looking at you. His nerves were basically written across his face. “I-I’ve been really mean to her. I didn’t mean to be.”

“I know, honey. Sometimes feelings can be confusing,” you stood up, hands on your hips as you looked down at him with a smile. “Do you want to dance with her?”

“I do,”

You held your hand out toward him with a smile.

“Then why don’t we start by going and apologizing to her?”

With Marcus’s hand in yours, you confidently led him across the room, eyes locked back onto Ryland’s as you approached. He stood with Olivia at his side, who was talking his ear off, a dopey looking grin on his face as he nodded to whatever she said as he continued to watch as you approached him.

“Dr. Grace, I’m sorry to interrupt you and Olivia,” you announced yourself to the pair with a grin of your own, hands on Marcus’s shoulders and you lightly pushed him forward. “But Olivia, there’s something that Marcus here wants to say to you.”

The young boy shuffled awkwardly forward, hands wringing together again as he stood in front of his crush.

“I, uh, I wanted to say I was sorry. For being really mean to you. I didn’t mean it,”

Olivia’s eyes went wide, as she too shuffled uncomfortably for a second. Ryland saddled up to your side, the pair of you sharing a glance as you watched the interaction happen right before your eyes. His hand graced over yours lightly, and it took everything in you not to reach out and lock your fingers with his.

“Oh! It’s, um, it’s okay. Thank you,”

“Say, Marcus?” Ryland called out to them both, catching the boy’s eye and gesturing toward Olivia with a wink. “What do you think of Olivia’s dress?”

“I…I think she looks really beautiful,”

That comment finally seemed to catch Olivia off guard, her eyes wide in shock as she giggled nervously.

“Oh! I…thank you, Marcus. You look really nice too,”

“Thank you,” his posture seemed to straighten out at Olivia’s reaction, like seeing her accept his compliment gave him the confidence he needed. “Do you want to dance with me?”

Olivia shot you and Ryland a look, and you both immediately gave her a thumbs up. Then, your happy eyes could only watch the two pre-teens awkwardly shuffle away together to the dance floor, not daring to meet the eyes of the other.

“Look at us, playing matchmaker for middle schoolers,”

“I think they did that for themselves, we just helped,” you laughed, turning your head. The laughter died on your lips the second your eyes met with Ryland’s, voice low and breathy as you whispered to him through your smile. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he whispered back just as breathily. His hand came up to the back of his head, running through his hair for a moment, and you could see the red and pink hues that lit up his cheeks. “I got worried when I didn’t see you. I was ready to call you.”

“You could’ve,”

“I’ll remember for next time,” he shot back, hands finding their way to rest in the front pockets of his jeans. His eyes moved back over the crowd, finding your two young students once more. “I’m proud of him for that. That…must have taken a lot of guts to do.”

You followed his gaze, landing on the pair as they danced together, laughing and talking like old friends.

“Like you said before, it can be hard for boys to express their feelings. All he needed was to pull up his big boy pants and ask her,”

Ryland laughed beside you.

“Yeah…I should probably follow in his footsteps,”

You glanced back to him, seeing him already watching you. A single eyebrow raised toward him quizzically, even though your heart felt like it was ready to beat directly out of your chest.

Ryland’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened again, as if he were trying to force out words that he couldn’t quite seem to get right. You didn’t even realize you were holding your breath, hoping inside that whatever he wanted to say would address the weight that seemed to be hanging between your gazes.

“Stay here,”

There wasn’t even time for you to respond before the tall blonde rushed away, almost tripping as he dashed over to the DJ booth across the way from the makeshift dance floor. He whispered something to the DJ, and you could see the thumbs up he got in return, before he rushed back over to you, panting slightly.

“Ryland?” you questioned softly, the man who held your entire heart without knowing it standing just a foot in front of you with a nervous grin on his face. “What did you just do?”

As if on cue, the song changed, and familiar lyrics floated through the room, bouncing off the walls.

Fly me to the moon, let me play among the stars. Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars

“I’m pulling up my big boy pants,” he responded with a nervous laugh, his hand outstretched toward you. “And asking you to dance with me.”

Nothing else existed the second that you slid your hand into Ryland Grace’s without hesitation, letting him pull you in. You weren’t in the school, not in a room decorated for a middle school dance, and certainly not surrounded by middle schoolers and a bunch of faculty that had placed bets on you both.

It was just you and Ryland Grace. That’s all you wanted it to be.

Your arms found a place to rest around his shoulders, fingertips just barely brushing past the strands of hair that tickled the back of his neck. There was a fluttering in your chest the second that his hands made their way to your waist, curling around the divet just above your hip bone, pulling you into him just by another inch.

In other words, hold my hand. In other words, darling, kiss me. Fill my life with song, and let me sing for ever more.

"I didn't tell you yet…,” his voice was soft, words whispered just between the two of you in a crowded room. “But you look beautiful,"

"You don't have to flatter me, Ryland,"

"No, really, you look-"

"Like a banana in this yellow dress?"

He paused. His tongue poked out, running along his bottom lip, and you could see the nervous bob of his Adam’s apple before he spoke again.

"...like the sun,"

You are all I long for, all I worship and adore.

Oh. That fluttering in your chest was back, and suddenly, you weren’t at a middle school dance anymore. You were back in that planetarium, spinning in circles. And this time, there were no doubts in your mind. You were the Sun, and he was the Earth. And what was the Earth, without its Sun?

"Ryland-"

"I wasn't lying,"

You cocked your head.

"...about what?"

"That I knew Homer wrote The Odyssey,"

That drew a short laugh from you, but you could still see the nerves that were laced through Ryland’s smile.

"Right, you were just distracted,"

"I was. By you. I'm always distracted by you,"

In other words, please be true. In other words, I love you.

You took a deep breath. He’d crossed the line for you, thrown himself onto the other side, and was waiting for you with open arms. It was just a leap of faith.

“I’m always distracted by you, too. Since the day we met,”

The song faded away, melting into the next. There could’ve been eyes on you both, either from students or from faculty, but nothing would break either of your gazes away from the other.

Ryland took a quick look around the room, before his hands took hold of your own, bringing them down between you both. He gave you a grin, one filled with more happiness than you had ever seen–and you knew your own matched his perfectly–before he tugged you toward the doors of the gym.

“Come with me,”

“Ry, we’re supposed to be chaperoning!”

“I don’t see Principal Marshall anywhere. What’s the worst she could do, fire us?”

“Quite literally, yes!” you shot back with a laugh.

Ryland only shrugged his shoulders, tugging you again, and you didn’t even try to fight back. Your feet simply moved with him.

“Worth it,”

Hands clasped together, fingers intertwined, your laughter echoed off the walls of the empty hallways as Ryland Grace ran you down them, a destination clear in his mind. Every few seconds he’d look back, just smiling at you as his eyes trailed over every single inch of you, before you’d yell at him to look at his own feet before you’d both be sprawled across the linoleum floors.

The door to his classroom was open as you flew inside, hand slipping from his as you caught yourself on the projector cart sitting in the middle of the room. Spinning on your heel, you caught his eye just as he shut the classroom door behind him, and the silence enveloped you both once more. Finally alone, no prying eyes to watch.

The momentarily confidence that seemed to seize hold of Ryland dissipated in that moment. He wiped his hands against the front of his jeans, chuckling awkwardly as he took a few steps toward you.

“What was your plan here, Dr. Grace?” you teased, taking a couple steps toward him as well, too high on the feeling of everything you’d just finally realized. High on the feeling of finally not denying what your heart knew long ago: you and Ryland Grace were never just friends.

“I’m not going to lie,” he shot back, coming to a stop just in front of you, barely an inch or two separating you. “I hadn’t thought this far ahead.”

“Then stop thinking,”

No one had leaned in first. It had been both of you, as if drawn together like two magnets, as your lips finally found one another's.

Goosebumps rose across your skin as Ryland Grace’s mouth moved against yours with an ease that shouldn’t exist between two people that have never kissed before. It was like a perfect dance between two partners that knew each other better than anything.

Your lips never left his, moving against his as if you couldn’t believe you had deprived yourself of this for so long, as your hands wound around his shoulders. Fingers curled into his hair, finally carding themselves through the blonde strands that felt so soft between your fingers.

The slightest little moan, enough to send heat coursing through your body the second you heard it, slipping from Ryland’s mouth into your own. His hands grasped at your hips, winding around your back to press into your lower back and tug you as close as humanly possible, as if he was a starved man that craved to touch you in any way that he could.

His lips were soft, a feeling that you knew you were going to crave for the rest of your life now that you’d had a single taste of them. You pressed further into him, a small mewl tumbling from your own lips and swallowed by his mouth as you pressed every inch of yourself into him, desperate to hang onto the moment in case the world would be cruel and wake you from this dream moments later.

The need to breathe was what finally separated you, but not far. Ryland’s forehead pressed to yours, his breath fanning out across your skin. His hands still gripped at your hips, holding him to you, as yours stayed carded through his hair, nails gently scraping at his scalp as you chest heaved as it tried to level your breathing back to normal.

“If I haven’t made it clear already, you’re my best friend,” his words were breathy, accented by the way he was still trying to catch his breath. But his smile was bright, his eyes almost shining, as he looked down at you. “And I’m completely in love with you. Literally, since the moment we met.”

You laughed, trapped in this little bubble with him, as your hands slid from his hair to instead cup his cheeks. The tip of your nose just barely brushed against his, and he bumped his right back against yours without hesitation.

“I’m completely in love with you too, Ryland Grace. Since the moment you tripped over your own two feet,”

The sound of your laughter filled the empty, dark science classroom again as Ryland’s hands came to scoop you up around your thighs, spinning you in relentless circles. All you could do was hang onto his broad shoulders and smile, his lips peppering a thousand kisses to every inch of skin he could possibly reach.

The Earth needed the Sun, like how Ryland said he needed you. The person that makes it all worth it, that makes the days brighter, that makes this short little life worth it.

If there was one thing you knew it was that Ryland Grace and you perfectly orbited each other, even when he was far off in San Francisco teaching the next generation of young scientists. It had been that way since you met him in college and it just never stopped. Part of you thought it was written in the stars that Ryland Grace and you were meant to do great things together.

Even after everything that happened with his research paper, even after your lab group dropped you post college from lack of funding, it was still the two of you. Science Partners, pen pals, best buds….among other ambiguous unstated things. You stayed in contact over the years, frequent calls, letters, the stupid punny e-cards he would email you on your birthday every year. There was a time, in college, when the two of you were together almost every day. And your excuse was always that we just work well together.

You knew Ryland Grace, you would say it was your next best subject. However, in this specific, very rare instance, you had no idea what the fuck Ryland Grace was even talking about.

Have you ever considered helping save the planet?

You must have reread the email a thousand times. Enough where your brain eventually shut off from confusion and your head met the keyboard in place of a pillow. Only when a loud thudding rattled through your dingy apartment did you finally realize that you had even fallen asleep. You blinked at the screen, lifting your head from your keyboard, the sun shining through the windows onto your desk. Reaching up, you peeled a small sticky note off your face, rubbing your eyes.

BANG, BANG, BANG. The sound rattled through your thin walls again and only on the second time did you realize it was coming from your front door. You paused for a second and glanced at your small digital clock, it was only six in the morning. Shooting up from your chair you made your way to the door, grabbing an umbrella on the way over, just in case.

You peered through the peep hole, only relaxing for a second when you saw a woman…then her two, what you could assume were body guards, behind her. Right about now you would have called Ryland but he had been off the grid, that email being the first sign of life you had gotten in days.

Shit. Shit. Shit. What do you even do? You glanced back out, seeing them talking amongst themselves before knocking again, the woman calling your name through the door. Quickly turning to the mirror on the wall near the door, you  let out a groan at what you saw. There was mascara smeared under your eyes from sleep and your hair stuck up in fifteen directions, all completed by the oversized t-shirt you had on reading “This gal believes in aliens”. 

Fuck it!

You threw the umbrella to the side, brushed some hair out of your face and opened the door, casually leaning against the frame like everything was under control.

“Hi,” you spoke up, voice rough from not sleep, quickly clearing your throat in response, arms crossed over yourself to hide the stupid shirt. “Hi…uh is there anything I can do for you?”

The women did not look amused, only offering you a nod, slightly peaking into the small studio apartment behind you. 

“Yes, actually, you received an email,” she spoke, sharp, straight to the point. It wasn’t a question really, more like a confirmed fact she was repeating. Her eyebrow quirked ever so slightly at your silence. “Am I wrong?”

You shook your head quickly.

“Yes or no? It is really that simple”.

“Yes, yes, sorry…” you hesitated for a second, coming to the quick realization you had no idea who these people were. And yet, you were so scared to see what would happen if you lied. “Yeah I got an email”.

“Not my decision. Dr. Grace thought however that it would be most efficient,” she continued. “He has spoken very highly of you and from my own research, I can understand why”.

Dr. Grace? Ryland? 

She gestured past you which you could only respond by moving to the side. Her presence commanded space and you respected it, or feared it, there was a lot to unpack. She stepped past you, turning to give a nod to the two men with her who remained outside.

“I am sorry,” you began, closing the door, turning to face her. “Maybe you got the wrong person-”

“That is not possible,” she replied. “He was very insistent that we must contact you in order to move forward”.

For what? Contact you for what?

You watched as the woman moved around the room like it was her space, picking up books and skimming through old pages of notes you had written. Then she turned to face a white board you had mounted messily in your kitchen, scribbled with notes and doodles that surrounded three big words: THE PETROVA LINE.

“Seems we are on the same page,” she mused, the first time you had heard any significant change in her tone. 

The space and the stars and the idea of infinity above had kept you up late into the night as a child. Your parents should have expected your world was one far away from the grounds of Earth, that you would live your life with your head in the stars. Your father used to have to drag you inside from your backyard, you set up with a blanket and a small telescope that they had bought you for your birthday that year. Each night would end the same, your parents calling you to come inside and you asking for five more minutes, which turned into ten, which turned into hours. But your little sixth grade self could not fathom how school was more important than the world above, the possibilities of the stars.

And when you went to college to study that world it was the easiest decision of your life. Then the stars turned on you and you could not understand why.

The Petrova Line kept you up at night.

“You studied the Tau Ceti System, yes?”

The name of the planet system sent a shockwave through you in a way you didn’t even know was possible. Tau Ceti was your whole life, or it had been in a distant past, it was a system you believed to have more potential than people truly gave it credit for. Yes, you knew Tau Ceti, however you had let that ship sail a long time ago. 

“Yeah,” you spoke up, quieter than before. “Yeah I did some work on Tau Ceti”.

And you could not help the wave of disappointment that hit you at those words. You had been recruited to a lab group after college that was specifically dedicating funding to researching the Tau Ceti System, and when it fell through, so did all your plans. You had dropped every other offer for the one that, it was everything you had wanted. It was a risk, and it fell through. No one really prepares you for post college as an Astrobiologist, no one ever tells you that you will end up working as a waitress at the Extraterrestrial Eatery near your house. At least you got to wear a cool space suit there. Tau Ceti and your other research had been benched, pushed to the side for evenings when you had nothing else to do.

“Perfect. Now that is cleared up, grab anything that might be important and we can be on our way”.

The women turned to move past you back for the door and you felt like your feet were suddenly glued to the ground. You opened your mouth to speak, before closing it, then opening it again. Yet no sound seemed to come out.

“What is this?” she asked, turning back, gesturing to your face. “I do not need the fish impression right now, this is a serious matter, we do not have the time”.

You immediately shut your mouth, then took a breath.

“Who are you?” you finally cried out. “What is this? No one is telling me anything!”

You felt insane, like you were living in some simulation where everyone knew what was going on but you. Where were the cameras? When were they gonna jump out and say it was all some weird, honestly unnerving, prank?

“I am Eva Stratt, head of the Petrova Taskforce” she began. “And you have been selected by Ryland Grace to help solve the Petrova Line”.

“I have work tomorrow,” you breathed out, a loss for words. The Petrova Taskforce, some of the world's most brilliant minds coming to you…a waitress at an alien restaurant. The email came back to you, the ominous words from Ryland, saving the world. This was news that a long time ago would have been everything you had ever wanted to hear…now you felt like some imposter, out of place.

Why you? Why now? Why after years of beating around the bush did Ryland Grace need your help to solve one of humanity's greatest emergencies. Why was Ryland Grace solving one of humanity's greatest emergencies?

“That will not be a problem,” Stratt countered. “We have already contacted your place of work and put you on an indefinite time of leave”.

“You can’t just do that!” you fought back, even if you knew that was the least of your worries. It was all so much, all at once. Ryland and Tau Ceti and the Petrova Line and saving the fucking planet. 

You remained still glued to the floor, grasping at straws, scared of saying yes…maybe even more scared of saying no. You glanced around the room, the books, the hours of work, the pictures of Ryland and you scattered around the room from college. It had been years since you saw him and maybe that scared you too, seeing him again, reopening feelings you had sworn to bury too deep to ever reach again. 

Your curiosity for the world remained, your love for space had never quite gone away, that would be impossible. It was just more of a hobby now, you looked less like someone with a PhD in Astrobiology and more like a crazed conspiracy theorist. You weren’t the same scientist from college, bright eyed and ready to fly into space if she had to.

Dr. Stratt spoke your name from the silence, your eyes snapping back to meet hers, “the sun is dying.”

The word settled heavy, lingering in the air between the two of you. 

“Dr. Grace is my last hope,” she continued, honest, blunt. “And you are his”.

And that was all it took as you nodded, a loss for words, moving in a sort of trance to gather your things.

-----------

If there was something you would be fine never doing again it was that fuck-ass fighter jet. But now, standing in front of the door to the conference room, you think you might rather go back and ride the jet a few more times to stall. You hadn’t seen Ryland Grace in years…and now you were there, feet away from him and the idea overwhelmed you more than you thought it would.

The ride over had been a bumpy, hazy mess. Anyone you tried to ask about what was happening would ignore you as if you were a ghost…which only left you with more questions. By the time you landed on a boat your brain was too tired to even try to make sense of it all.

You had met Ryland in college. You both ended up in the same class, ‘The History of Extraterrestrial Life’...better known on campus as That One Alien Class. It filled both of your general education requirements, or at least that’s what you told him was your reasoning.  It had taken him weeks to get you to admit that you believed in Aliens and even longer to admit that the class really wasn’t a joke to you. 

The two of you were paired up for most of the semester, spending time whispering in class and making jokes about how deranged the content was. Even if it did open your eyes up to the whole Tau Ceti system. 

You remember the last day of class so vividly. It was your final presentation and Ryland had taken it upon himself to get you these dumb matching shirts reading, “This gal believes in aliens” paired with “this guy probably is an alien”. It was stupid. And it was so perfect.

The thought made you smile, only for a second, before the nerves of it all settled back in. 

There was too much there, floating, left unsaid. And it scared the shit out of you. 

Before you could even fully prepare, the doors opened, your body moving in autopilot as Eva Stratt led you into the room. There you were, suddenly standing in front of what felt like a million eyes, all looking to you like you had answers. You had to remind yourself not to do the whole fish thing again as you just awkwardly gave a small wave, trying hard to keep your mouth shut. What am I doing?  You were a waitress at an alien themed restaurant, not a scientist…at least not anymore. 

Stratt introduced you to the room, briefly detailing your credentials to be here. You had kept your gaze straight, scared to look in either direction, straight was safe, straight was easier. You had imagined what it would be like seeing him again, more times than you would ever like to admit, and this was nowhere close to what you thought it would ever be. In a room surrounded by some of the world's most important people. 

“This is Dr. (last name),” you hadn’t been referred to as that in a while…and you could not lie, it felt kinda good. “She has researched the Tau Ceti system most of her career and will help us identify why exactly the Tau Ceti star is the only one not losing energy”

Great. They really loved leaving out the important details. You knew the star, probably more than the back of your hand but there was still immense mystery to it.

“Anything you want to share, Doctor?” Stratt finished, turning the room over to you and you made the one mistake, moving your head. There, at the left end of the table was him, Dr. Grace. Not an email, not a letter or postcard, not a lingering memory…no it was really him, looking at you. Every emotion you had ever felt about him hit you at once in a way that made you want to grab on to the nearest wall so as to not crumble to the ground. Ryland, your Ryland, the same one you remember, albeit a little older, a little more tired. Your heart stuttered for a moment, actually stuttered, like it too had forgotten how to function. And all you could do was muster a small wave. Nothing could have prepared you. 

You had spent years pretending that he wasn’t the sun of your own personal solar system. It turned out that was much easier when he was not standing feet away from you, his glasses practically falling off his face.

You swallowed, mouth running dry. And funny as it was, after all the years, after all the anticipation and wondering, your body eventually went back to the familiar state it always did when it saw him. You softened. Your heart beat steadied and your breathing returned to something much more normal.

Stratt cleared her throat, your eyes snapping back to hers.

“Um…Tau Ceti is… pretty dang cool,” you finally choked out, the people around the room sharing looks between each other. “...Thank you”.

Sporadic, unsure claps filled the room as you took a step back, ready to smash your head through the nearest wall. You did not lie, Tau Ceti was pretty freaking cool. But you were sure that was not what the Patrova Taskforce really needed to hear from you at that moment. 

“Thank you,” Stratt said, a slight shake of her head, before she gestured towards the empty chair in the one section of the room you had planned on avoiding for at least a little longer. You tried to ignore her before one of the men in suits began to guide you there himself.

Each step you took felt heavy, like your body was trying to stop you. But there was the other part, your heart racing in anticipation, in want. This was what you had wanted, your work hadn’t been the same without him. You two brought out a fire in each other, seeing the best in the mess of crazy ideas the two of you brought to the table. The two of you.

As you walked down the table, a few of the other scientists took turns shaking your hand, welcoming you on board. Maybe your speech was not a total mess afterall. You hadn’t even realized you had made it to the end of the table, his hand reaching yours before your brain could catch up. 

“Tau Ceti is pretty dang cool,” the familiar voice spoke. Your eyes immediately met his and you felt like the world had stopped for just a second. Every version of him you remembered and every version you didn’t hit you all at once. Then you felt him squeeze your hand, his head slightly tilting. “Earth to alien girl?”

It was an odd feeling, seeing someone after so long. The memory of him was hazy until that very moment. You had tried so hard to remember the shade of his eyes and the way they kinda squinted up when he laughed. You had tried to commit those things to memory, tried to live through the pictures, but nothing compared seeing them in-person, in front of you.

You tried to form words, frozen in place, only coming back to reality as Stratt began to talk once more. You quickly sat down, pulling your hand from his and forcing your attention forward.

There were a few seconds where neither of you spoke, ignoring the weight of his eyes on you. You were supposed to be professionals…since when were you ever professionals? You were on a boat, with the world's best scientists, saving the planet…next to your best friend. And somehow, that felt like the most overwhelming part. You were sure your brain would eventually catch up one day, the shock fading with every minute that passed.

Then he slightly shifted in his chair, “Pretty dang cool?” he asked, just loud enough for you to hear, just like the two of you used to do in those alien class lectures. A smile grew on your face, one you tried to bite back.

“I panicked,” you whispered back, eyes still focused forward on Stratt, nodding along to words you weren’t even hearing. You didn’t have to look at him to know he was smiling too.

The silence again, the silence of years of pushing off visits and ignoring the hard questions. It made you twitch slightly, racking your mind for anything to ease it.

“So, are you the one responsible for the U.S. government pretty much knocking down my door this morning?” you whispered from the quiet, a slight quirk of your brow, gaze still set forward. 

“Guilty,” he said, seeing him lift his hands in mock surrender in the peripheral of your vision. You could almost roll your eyes at how predictable the response was, slightly nudging his foot with yours under the table. He let out a quiet, breathy laugh, one you wanted to be the reason for forever.

“I didn’t think you would come,” he spoke again, his words softer this time, real.

Those were the words that broke your focus, your head turning to meet his gaze, really meeting his gaze, for the first time.

“Kinda didn’t have a choice,” you replied, half-joking, the other half completely honest, thinking back to the morning and the woman who was now commanding the room. Then you smiled, looking back at him, “But I would have come regardless”.

Even if you still weren’t exactly sure what all this was, what you had somehow signed up for. Even if it made you question who you were, why you were here…what you were to him.

You looked down to your lap. You were among the greats because Ryland Grace said you should be. You were not quite sure yet if that was reassuring or terrifying.

“It’s gonna be like old times, huh?” he added, as if it would make it all easier. “You know, you and me, figuring things out, putting the pieces together”.

Fuck. That did not make it any easier.

The meeting breezed by in a blur, words flying all around you as you tried to catch up to speed with what exactly was happening. You could pick out Petrova Line, Astrophage, Tau Ceti, among several other things you weren’t quite sure on. 

And then it was quiet. Just you and him, alone, in a room that now felt much too big. You both started talking at the same time-

“So-”

“Hey-”

You stopped, laughed, apolgized…tried again.

Then you did the exact same thing once more.

“Out of sync,” you joked, a quiet laugh, as the adrenaline wore off and gave way to a feeling you could not describe. You knew him but then again, it had been years. It was finding the balance between an old friend and a stranger. 

“It’s been a little bit, huh?” he added, hands digging into the pocket of his jeans. You finally got a glimpse of his shirt, a science pun you were sure he was so excited to show his class of middle schoolers. 

“Yeah, just a little bit,” you added, feeling exposed now without the other people in the room, the slightest bit bitter that it had taken all this to see him again. But then again, who really was to blame for that? You looked down at the ground for a second, shuffling your feet against the floor, racking your brain for anything.

 “So…saving the sun?”

You barely got the words out before he stepped forward, closing the space between the two of you, pulling you into a hug. So tight, like you might disappear. You stood there for a second, air caught in your throat before you caved into the feeling. Your arms looped around him, head rested against his chest, as if this was something the two of you just did.

“I missed you,” he said, honest, real.

You stayed there, just together, quiet in the chaos of the day.

“I missed you too,” you finally let yourself say, quiet as if the whole world was listening and you wanted it to be just for him. “Why me?”

He quickly pulled away, as if he was shocked into motion, a wild look on his face, you almost started laughing.

“What?” he gasped out, dramatic as ever.

‘What do you mean ‘what’?” you countered, slightly shoving him in the chest. “Why am I here, dumbass?”

“Hey, so first, we are not cursing anymore,” he scolded, his voice morphing into something you only imagine came from years of teaching. “Second, you are the only person I know who would be crazy enough to show up here”.

He shrugged as if it all was nothing, that dumb smile on his face, as he began to move towards the door. “And you would kill me if I got to research Tau Ceti and you didn’t get the invite”.

You wanted to interject, fight it, but you knew, deep down somewhere, that Ryland never stopped knowing you and you never quite stopped loving him. 

“You just gonna stand there?” he asked, already at the door, holding it open. “Or are we gonna do some science?”

It really was like no time had passed between college and now…well if you ignored the millions of dollars worth of equipment now at your complete disposal. It’s funny, the way the body reverts back to old habits. The way Ryland and you moved in the lab was your own sort of rhythm, brains connected in a way that seemed almost superhuman. You needed to grab a tool, he dropped it on your desk before you could even move. He had a question, you were answering it as the question left his mouth…then he would smile at you and roll his eyes and go back to his work. It should have felt different after all this time…and it just didn’t. It was dangerous. And it was so wonderful.

The Vat, or Stratts Vat as everyone began to call it, was a hodgepodge of every science you had ever dreamed of. You could talk to a biologist from across the world and then suddenly meet an engineer who happened to be from your hometown. For a while you pretended that this wasn’t what you wanted, you ached to go back to what was safe and comfortable. But as you stood there, another day on the boat, you realized that maybe this is what you had been waiting for. You were researching again, being curious, all the things your younger self could have only dreamed of. 

Your days were mostly spent with Ryland, the two of you poking at astrophage while you dug through old research papers you had on Tau Ceti. Your presentation was coming up, only revealed to you a few mornings ago by Dr. Stratt. She had come into the lab early, you had just woken up, believing it to be a perfect time to tell you that you would be addressing the taskforce with any details you had on the planet system. You sat there, swiveling back and forth in your chair, your sidekick on the other side of the room jumping up and down about a new development in Astrophage breeding.

“I wish I had your energy right now,” you groaned out, shuffling through your notes.

“Tau Ceti not treating you well?” he asked, peaking his head around a shelving unit that slightly blocked your view. “Did you try taking it out to dinner first?”

All you could do was flip him the finger, scribbling notes at the same time. “You think I haven’t tried that yet?”

He let out a laugh, coming around to stand behind where you were sat working. You had been really trying, but there were some things that just needed to be seen to be understood…and one of those was Tau Ceti. You had theories, tons of them, hopefully enough to be of help.

“She is still my greatest mystery,” you admitted, turning your chair to face him.

“Well Rome was not built in one day,” he looked at you, a serious look on his face regardless of the word choice. “And Tau Ceti is not gonna be understood that quick either".

You let your head dramatically fall to rest on the desk, quietly groaning into the sleeves of your jacket. Then you felt Rylands hands on your head gently shaking it.

“Hey,” he began, a laugh already escaping him, you mentally preparing yourself for whatever he would be saying next. “Remember they used to call you the brain!”

“Uh, you used to call me the brain,” you retorted, lifting your head up and shoving his hands away. “and it was and still is stupid”.

He grabbed your head once more, shaking it around, “C’mon use the brain, I know it is in there somewhere”.

You turned to glare at him, his lopsided smile making it hard for you to be upset at anything. The energy settled down, the man leaning back against the desk across from you.

“Do you think this is all gonna work out?” you spoke up, looking back to your notes. “Tau Ceti and the Astrophage and all of it?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted, blunt and honest. “But beats sitting around and waiting for it to solve itself…ar at least that it what I choose to tell myself”.

You just nodded, letting him fade back into his work as you faded back into yours. If Tau Ceti wasn’t enough, the constant push and pull between Ryland and you was. You told yourself to keep it easy, to ignore it, all those dumb feelings squashed down from college that threatened to bubble over any second. You buried yourself in your work, that was easiest. But there would be nights where you would fall asleep at your desk and wake up to a blanket thrown over you. Or mornings when the mess you left in the lab were cleaned up…and there would be Ryland, a small wave and a smile, doing a ‘cheers’ with his coffee mug. You could not let yourself read into it, because then it would be all the much harder to eventually pull away. 

The presentation day had come in a blur, you now standing once again in the front of that room, papers gripped so tightly in your hands. You were never good at the presenting part of it all. In the bustle of the room you were able to find him, him waving his hands above his head to get your attention. You smile, he shot over two giant thumbs up, and all you could muster was one half as enthusiastic one back. You turned to look through your notes when he caught your eye again, pointing at his head and mouthing “the brain”, which you could only roll your eyes in response, a quiet laugh fighting its way out of you.

“Alright everyone,” the powerful voice of Eva Stratt entered the room, coming to stand beside you in front of the projector screen. “As you know, Dr. (LAST NAME), has been working hard gathering information on Tau Ceti, which will be our final destination for this trip”.

Everyone around the room turned their full attention to you as the women gestured to you and took a seat. Deep breath. 

Your heart was jumping in all sorts of directions, as you fidgeted with the clicker, trying to get the presentation to flip to the next slide.

“Hi,” you began.

“Tau Ceti, it  is pretty dang cool!” Ryland called out from the back, heads turning to him, him once again shooting the thumbs up.

“Uh, yes…as Dr. Grace put it, "Tau Ceti is really ‘dang cool’,” some of the scientists laughed at that, the stress easing the littlest bit off your shoulder. You began clicking through slides, diagrams of the systems and the potential planets in its orbit. “Thank you for your enthusiasm”.

You took one last deep breath before diving right in, trusting yourself and the years of work you had put into this already.

“What makes Tau Ceti so interesting, while not an exact match, is that it has the potential to be the closest relative to our own solar system,” you began. “Which means, there is a great likelihood of it supporting life or even already having life within it.”

“Now we know that the Tau Ceti sun is the only star to have not been impacted by the Astrophage, however what is harder to understand is exactly why,” you continued, switching to the next slide, getting into a rhythm. It was easy when it was your whole life's passion. “Which is why our mission is going there, to better understand it…however I have some theories that could be useful to prepare our travelers for what exactly might be going on”.

There was first, the idea that the spectral output on Tau Ceti did not match that of what Astrophage was looking to feed on. However the spectral output is very similar to the Sun so it would have to be significantly off to be a problem, which was unlikely. Along with this, there could be some sort of natural defense, like dust specific to that atmosphere. However, the most exciting idea was that of evolutionary pressure…another lifeform that could be eating away at the Astrophage to keep it in balance. While so extremely far fetched, it was the one that made you the most excited to get the data back from the scientists on the Hail Mary. It could change everything that scientists know about that system.

“But the honest answer is, we don’t know until we get up there and bring back some samples,” you closed out. “Now we do have to be aware that this planet is around twelve lightyears away from us”. 

You were in a rhythm now, comfortable enough to really look up and around at the people in the room, several of them taking notes and nodding along. “Which means we are kinda looking at it in the past. The light we are seeing right now left Tau Ceti twelve years ago. Which is incredible, but there is the risk that this system is already gone or changed and we wouldn’t know until we get there”.

“However,” you flipped to your final slide. “The data we are able to gather from here points to strong evidence that this system is very alive and this trip will not only open doors for Astrophage but open up a world to an entirely new solar system that could be inhabited by human life”.

You clicked again, the slideshow coming to a close, “And, uh, yeah that is it from me…thanks guys”.

The sound of applause filled the room and you finally felt like you could actually breathe again rather than having to remind yourself to. Your face hurt from smiling, looking around the room, taking it in. You imagined your younger self, sat with her big telescope and book of constellations in a chair in the back. She is smiling, the biggest smile you have ever seen. She knew all those late nights would eventually pay off. Even after your original Tau Ceti lab fell through, even when you couldn’t find a job and ended up at an alien restaurant, even when your door got busted down by Eva Stratt…all those days led to this moment, right now. You wished you could go back and tell the girl in college that it would be okay, that she was enough, that one day she would do big things. But eventually she would learn and that made it all the more worth it.

And there was him too. You found his eyes in an instant, it seemed to be the first thing your body did. It was an old habit, one you could not break, nor really wanted to. He was beaming, an ear to ear smile, waving at you like you had just accomplished something so incredible and not just given a presentation. You made your way towards him, your bodies drawn together like magnets. However with each step you took, you felt like you were being pushed further and further away as people began to come up and shake your hand or ask you questions. Further and further until he faded away in the back of the crowd, now a lone hand stuck up above the crowd trying to get your attention. A thumbs up and you knew everything was gonna be okay.

----------

You were sitting at the bar, hot off the mic with Ilyukhina, who had forced you up against your will. The slight buzz in your head was enough to make you cave, you were sure that was the whole reason Ilyukhnia had insisted on getting you a few drinks at the start of the night. All of it leading to a horrific and yet kinda beautiful version of “Space Oddity” by David Bowie …it felt fitting.

She had bought you a final drink as a thank you, one you were nursing now, looking around the room. Grace had stayed late in the lab, normally you were there too, but the others in the lab had started to joke that you hated fun and you were determined to prove them wrong. You were fun! Very Fun.

You hadn’t been down to the bar before, didn’t quite understand how people could celebrate knowing what was approaching. You weren’t even on the ship and you could barely get your brain to settle at night enough to fall asleep. The room was full of people, singing, laughing, leaning into each other and finding comfort. It made you smile, maybe made this whole thing feel more real. It made the pit in your stomach worse. 

Your eyes caught on DuBois, a drunk Shapiro leaning against his arm, the two of them laughing together, in their own world. Your gaze lingered, unable to pull away. The way they could laugh togethering knowing that DuBois would be gone, not set to return. They had people here, people they were leaving and for the first time that really hit you. You tugged your gaze away, looking back down to the bottle of beer in your hands, half empty…it would stay that way. You couldn’t help it though, like it was a piece of art, you found yourself looking back at the two of them. She looked at him with a quiet kind of intimacy, like the two of them could know what the other was thinking without speaking a single word. They moved in a perfect rhythm, a messy, beautiful rhythm. They weren’t just leaving behind Earth, they were leaving behind their people…a chance at a normal life.

You were gonna be sick. Quickly you set your beer on the table and left the bar pushing through the groups of people singing until you were finally out onto the deck of the ship, cold wind smacking you in the face. You gasped for air, but no matter how much you took in, it still didn’t feel like enough.

The ocean was dark ahead, it was like an abyss and as you looked up, you were met with the bright stars, their shine almost too bright with no other lights around to dim them. You felt so small, and in the grand scheme of things you were, and it both terrified you and brought you some peace. 

Your grip was tight on the railing, it almost hurt. You needed to be stable, grounded, anything-

“Hey,” a familiar voice approached from behind, your body tensing before slowly relaxing. You didn’t have to turn back, just slightly nodded your head, an invitation. 

“Hey,” he repeated himself, this time softer, as he came around to your side, gripping onto the railing next to yours. “Earth to alien girl?”

“I thought you were working late?” you spoke up, anything to take your mind off earlier, get rid of the image of people who would never see each other again. 

“The lab gets kinda lame without a certain scientist analyzing everything I do,” he joked, but you could not get yourself to laugh. “I love your analyzing…that’s uh, that’s what I meant”.

It was almost a compliment, a small smile crept on your face that quickly faded out as another gust of wind hit you, the waves crashing below you. The two of you sat there in silence for longer than you ever had before.

“You okay?” he broke from the silence, turning his head to look at you.

You nodded, “Just cold”.

He nodded back, unconvinced you could tell, as he began to reach for his jacket regardless. You did not fight him on it, you were cold, maybe it would help. The chunky fox cardigan draped over your shoulders as he absentmindedly buttoned the top to keep it  from falling off of you. You mumbled a quiet ‘thank you’, bundling into the thick yarn. 

“So are you gonna tell me what is really wrong?” he spoke again, him still standing in front of you, adjusting the sweater so it covered you. You met his eyes, his head slightly tilting.

“Have you seen Dubois and Shapiro?” you finally allowed yourself to speak your thoughts into the air. 

He nodded, returning to stand next to you, leaning once again against the metal rails, "Yeah, they are definitely hooking up”.

“No,” You shook your head, “There’s something more, you can see it in the way they look at each other”.

The silence met the two of you again, the waves below you getting louder and louder, them in their own conversation. You wondered if the waves too had problems like this, if they thought about the world and what they were meant to be. You felt nauseous, you chose to blame sea sickness. It hurt even more because maybe you wished he would look at you like that. You supposed that was your last tether to Earth, last tether from making you lose your mind…it seemed to be him.

“I just cannot imagine knowing the person that you loved was gonna be gone in a few days, just out in space, floating…and you just never see them again. And you can’t even do anything about it” your voice slightly quivered, it was all too much. The several drinks in your system did little to ease your worry, you actually think it made it worse. “After I lost…after my parents, I mean, it took so long to be okay with not getting a goodbye. But they, I mean Shapiro gets to say goodbye. How do you even say that kind of goodbye knowing they are out there and will die, alone?”

You hadn’t realized how blurred your vision had gotten until you looked up, finding Ryland’s gaze, his eyes scanning your face. He had been there, in college, when your parents had passed, had sat up with you for weeks on end keeping you distracted, helping you stay on top of work when your world felt like it was ending. 

He carefully reached to wrap his arm around your shoulder, pulling you close to his side, a silent kind of comfort, the kind you liked. You rested your head against his chest, melting into his touch, allowing him to be strong for you for a little. It made your head hurt, all of this and him…there was always him.

You weren’t sure how long it was before he spoke up again, you had counted at least twenty crashes of the waves against the boat. It seemed to be the only thing you could think about without falling apart.

“Where do you see yourself after all this?” he asked, pulling you the little bit tighter against him. You were not in the headspace to dig into that, nor the question he was asking. Because where did you go? You were doing the thing you had worked your whole life for and then what? Back to the restaurant? Back to serving punny dishes named after planets and pretending you were fulfilled? 

“Probably go home,” you began, your voice thin, a little shaky. “Can’t keep the Extraterrestrial Eatery without their best server for too long”.

It was supposed to be funny but it came out dejected. A quiet laugh escaped him at your words.

“That’s not-”

“That’s exactly what it is,” you cut him off, sharper than you meant it to be, gaze set down at your shoes, at the hem of his sweater, at anything that wouldn’t make you think so much. “That’s my life, Ryland”.

Before this your life had been small, so miniscule…your dreams seemed so far away. Now you were here, it was all right in front of you. You didn’t even think you would ever get this close to studying Tau Ceti, all the resources right there for you to use. 

“This…all of this is everything I ever worked for,” you continued. “Being here, doing things that actually matter, and then it’s just gonna be over”.

The lab, Tau Ceti…him. You had grown so used to it, too comfortable and the feeling of it being torn away felt weird. But that was life, you would adjust, or you would try.

“It doesn’t have to be over,” he offered, trying to comfort the ache in your words. And it hit you, with a force that could have sent you overboard. Your head snapped up, looking at him, you opened your mouth to say something but stopped yourself. 

“I gotta go,” you spoke, in a daze of sorts, his words replaying over and over in your head.

“Hey, no. Come on” he too stood up, no longer leaning against the railing. “Talk to me, I am here! We could go sing karaoke or  something, be stupid, forget about it”.

“You hate karaoke,” you countered, already edging towards the stairs back down into the boat.

“Maybe I could like it?”

“I am gonna go to bed,” you turned back to him, lying through your teeth. You searched his face once more, took a mental picture of him standing right there, breeze blowing through his hair, glasses slightly tilted. He looked perfect.

“It does not have to be over,” you repeated, more to yourself than to him, before ducking down into the stairs and back down the hall. You were sure he called your name but your body could not turn around. It could have been the alcohol in your system. Maybe you were losing your mind. Maybe it was a little bit of both, but your feet carried you right to Dr. Stratt’s office.

You didn’t even knock, pushing open the door, her head snapping up from the silence. Her eyes slightly narrowed, you standing there in the doorway, trying to catch your brain up to your movements. 

“Take me instead,” you blurted out, desperate. 

The woman did not react right away, just studied you, like she was weighing something you couldn’t see. 

“I have nothing keeping me here”.

At least, almost nothing.  

“I have worked my whole life for this,” you continued, words spilling out of you before you could even really think them through. “Tau Ceti is my everything and now I am here. And I can do it, I want to do it”.

You swallowed, a shaky breath, so loud in such a quiet room.

“I need to”.

You stood there, feeling so small in the doorway, waiting for something, anything that would confirm that you weren’t making a mistake. Doctor Stratt just nodded her head, short and direct, like she always was.

“Go get some sleep Doctor,” and you just nodded back, your brain going completely silent for the first time that night.

--------

When the explosion happened a few days later, it was all the justification Eva Stratt needed. The day had been a mess, the loss of those doctors devastating, the power of Astrophage even more extraordinary . There was no time to even process though, as just as quickly as it had happened, Dr. Stratt had pulled you into a conference room. The plans moved fast, there was no time to delay with launch day approaching. You agreed as quickly as it was proposed, Ilyukhnia sending you small thumbs up from across the table.

The explanation was a blur. The coma, the four year trip, the three hours until you would have to be ready. Three hours before your life changed forever. That was all it took for everything to become real. But you nodded along. You had a duty now, not only to yourself but to Dubois and Shapiro and all of humanity. For Ryland Grace and his students, for the young girls out there dreaming of studying the stars. It would all be worth it, for them. It had to be.

You made your way back towards the lab, moving in a sort of hazy trance. You were allowed a few personal items to bring with you on the ship, most of the ones you wanted to bring were stored on the shelves of your desk. A picture of you and Ryland at a weird alien museum your class had gone to. A photo of you with your parents on move-in day at college. Your favorite book. A journal of your personal notes. And that stupid alien shirt.

You smiled, piling the items into a box you kept in the lab, when the door came rattling open. 

Ryland Grace came stumbling into the lab practically lit on fire, out of breath, a million emotions on his face. You knew it before he even spoke the words.

“What are you doing?” he asked in a panic, searching your face, his eyes shooting in every direction, him taking steps closer to you.

“I don’t-”

“No, you aren’t doing this,” his stopped you. “What are you doing? They can’t just take you?”

“I volunteered,” you countered back, simple, straight to the point…it would make it easier. You turned back to the box, finishing placing the items, scared what looking back at him would do. He was quiet behind you and that hurt the most. Maybe it hurt because of the quiet, maybe it hurt because he didn't have more to say.

“This is it for me,” you said, still facing the box, busying yourself with organizing and reorganizing the objects, anything to keep from facing the truth. “I have studied Tau Ceti my whole life and now I am going to see it, I am going to help save this planet”.

“You don’t know that,” he bit back. “I mean we can hope but you have no idea if this is even gonna work-”

“Beats the alternative,” you countered.

“And what's the alternative?”

That made you turn, you finally facing him. He looked so tired, a mix of confusion, anger, sadness… somehow all at once. 

“This,” you admitted. “Going home to that apartment, living through pictures of a better time while I work that shitty job. That’s not living, that is not how I am going to live!”

“So what, now you are just going off to die?” he was upset, you hadn’t seen him like this in a while, not since his theory about water had not been received well in college.

“I am saving humanity”.

“Oh wow, yes, real courageous of you,” he retorted, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Fuck you Ryland,” you said, quiet, cold. “You’re the one who brought me here”.

His eyes snapped to yours, the two of you just looking at each other, breathing.

“And it was supposed to be a temporary thing,” he bit back. “Empahsis on the whole temporary part of this all. I mean, just a couple of days ago you were saying how you couldn’t imagine people having to say goodbye like this.” 

You didn't have the heart to tell him that you hadn't planned on saying goodbye to him at all. It was wrong, you knew that, selfish, but you couldn’t get yourself to do it. He was your last tether to Earth and it was growing thinner and thinner.

“I have nothing here for me,” you spoke from the silence.

“You have-” and then he stopped himself and your head once again snapped up to meet his eyes.

“Say it,” you spoke, quietly, pleading for him to say the one thing that could make you stay. “Please Ry, just say it”.

Everything hung there, floating in the air  and he couldn’t, his head just slightly shaking in disappointment. The tether snapped right there. 

“Okay,” it was so breathy, barely even a word. You had no more fight left in you, no words left to say, nothing he could do that would change your mind. He was too stuck in his ways, too stubborn. You grabbed the box, looking at him once more, before you shoved your way past him and out the door of the office. It was quiet, too quiet down that hallway and when you looked back he was looking at you and you just gave him a smile, a small one…I will learn to forgive you.

You felt no regret.

Not when Eva Stratt thanked you for your sacrifice. Not when the doctors came in and prepared the injection that would put you under. Not even when the needle pierced your skin. You only did, just for a second, when you heard your name. When his voice called through the room, faint but desperate. It was muffled, your vision growing thinner and thinner, fading at the edges. The voice just grew quieter and quieter. A hand gripped tightly onto yours, shaking you more and more until you felt nothing at all.

----------

The first thing you realize is that you cannot open your eyes, like they are glued shut. You squeeze them a couple times, blinking over and over until they finally force themselves open.

So bright!

You should have just kept them close. You blink a few more times.

Then you realize that you can’t move, and not because your arms are stiff…no, there is a giant, what you could best describe as, plastic bag wrapped around you.

“Eye movement detected,” you  practically jump out of your skin at the sound disrupting the silence. The voice is clean, almost inhuman, as it once again repeats its previous statement. 

You try to move your arms, nothing. Your legs, nothing. Your fingers…just a little bit. The feeling of helplessness crashes all over you at once as you come to the slow realization that this was not just a bad case of sleep paralysis. 

Before you could even begin to make sense of it, a giant robotic hand swept across your vision, reaching down to unzip the human sandwich bag you were being trapped in. Now was your change, you shifted your weight as much as you could side to side until you rolled and made contact with the hard floor. A groan escaped you, the only sound you could really get out.

What the actual fuck?

There are tubes, connected in places you didn’t even know were possible. But nothing was as alarming as the realization that you had no idea where you were…no idea who you were. You looked around in a panic, trying to worm around off the ground, the robot hand stopping you in your place, lifting you off the ground and placing you back onto the table. You left out a mix of muffled objections, the most you could muster…your vocal chords were somehow still waking up. The computer acted before you could even protest, removing all the tubes, sensations you had never felt before and hoped to never feel again. At least, you assumed you had never felt them before. 

You saw it as your chance, the robot hand busy putting the tubing away, you jumping off the table and immediately crumbling to the ground. 

“Fuck!” the sound surprised you…you were making progress. Using the little strength and feeling in your limbs that you had, you scooted and crawled across the floor. Where was the door? Your head snapped back and forth, up and- There it was, on the ceiling, of course it was. The ladder connected to it seemed daunting but what choice did you have.

The robot spoke again, speaking a name, or you assumed it was, “detected, alive”.

It must have been your name, huh, you didn’t completely hate it. You continued to move across the floor, slow, scared that the robot arm might just yank you right back into the air. 

“Movement detected in the dormitory," the robotic voice spoke once again, causing you to speed up. It was trying to blow your cover, ruin your plan. Who knew, there might be a whole army of robots up there ready to get you. With each scoot across the floor, the feeling in your limbs began to find itself again. By the time you reached the ladder you were able to somewhat pull yourself up, each step getting harder and harder. You were tired, even if it seemed you had just woken up from some coma-like situation. You reached the top, banging the door over and over until it eventually popped up.

Reaching the top, standing on solid ground again was a feeling you had a new respect for. Then you turned your head…and you came to the jarring realization that you weren’t on solid ground at all. A giant window looking out into the great plane of stars…you were in space. You took slow, cautious steps towards the window, scared that you might somehow get sucked out. 

It was beautiful, you were at a loss of words for a reason other than your inability to talk. 

“Holy shoot,” a voice spoke from behind you, you stumbled slightly turning around, throwing your hand up in defense. “You are awake”.

“Am I?” you asked, genuinely…you wouldn’t have been shocked if you had died and were now in some weird waiting room. 

The look on the man's face was one of relief and that was enough to slowly allow your hands to fall back to your side. He seemed slightly more put together than you were, except for the glasses titled slightly on his face…though he made no move to readjust them. Maybe he was an alien and that was how they wore their glasses? Were you an alien too?

“Where am I? What is this? What…” you trailed off, once again catching a glimpse of the stars. The feeling was hard to explain, like you were floating in your own head, nothing there but faint blurry glimpses of something that you knew came before this. But no matter how hard you fought, you could not get yourself to decipher the memories. “I can’t remember what…”

He nodded as you spoke, and you knew he understood. You couldn’t understand, but your body softened slightly, your heart beat became steady and your breathing returned to something much more normal. 

“I, uh, I woke up a couple days ago…in that room,” he tried to explain, looking as if he too was piecing it together in real time. “Where do I even start…”

You stood there, helpless, waiting for something.

“We are in space,” you rolled your eyes at his words, pointing out at the window next to the two of you. “Oh right, well, just clarifying”.

“Anything else genius?” you didn’t mean to come across as on edge but you were confused and hungry and annoyed that your brain could not do what it was meant to do.

“We aren’t in our own solar system,” he spoke again, finally with some seriousness to his tone, you perking up and meeting his gaze. “We are, according to the map in the control room, in the Tau Ceti system about twelve lightyears away from Earth”.

He trailed off on the last word, giving you a second to absorb…but you were not a sponge and your brain was rejecting all of it. It made no sense, it was insane…but so was the giant robotic arm that picked you up earlier. 

“We were sent here for a reason,” he finished. “I just am not sure what exactly that is yet”.

He then paused, a long pause, like he was choosing his next words carefully, “we were sent in a group of four”.

“Oh,” you looked up at him, a feeling of relief washing over you, maybe they knew more, maybe they had been awake for longer. “Well, let’s just go pick their brains?”

“They didn’t make it,” he added, the words sitting heavy in the air.

You just nodded, unsure of what to say, scared of how it would all feel once your memories began to trickle back like his were. 

Would they have been your friends? Would the grief hit you later? The words sat weird in your stomach, even weirder knowing that there was a time where you knew everyone on this ship, there was a time where you knew why you were there. People who were your friends and now it was just you and strangers, chosen by some sort of fate to survive. 

“What happened to them?”

“What am I? Your magic eight ball,” he joked, a weak attempt at trying to lighten the mood…you hated that it made you smile the way it did. “Don’t fight it, I know it was funny.”

“Oh wait, the memories are coming back…” you pretended to think, before letting a blank look spread on your face. “You’re an asshole”.

He threw his arms in mock defense and you weren’t sure why but it all felt so natural.

“I found some vodka earlier,” he offered up, a shitty solution, a temporary one for sure, but a solution nonetheless.

“We brought vodka?” you paused. “At least we know we had fun”.

He laughed and you laughed too, anything to keep you from thinking about what this all was, what this meant and how exactly you get back to Earth from twelve light years away.

The man, who you learned was named Ryland Grace, took you around the rooms he had already spent time exploring. The labs…so you were scientists? Then the controls, and the space suits and the shelves of equipment that you could not even begin to understand. He eventually showed you a small closet, one containing boxes labeled with four names, pulling the one with yours on it down. 

In yours were some pictures…one of the two of you, so you were friends? Maybe? You should go with friends for now. Then a picture of two older individuals stood next to you, in front of the sign of a college…they must have been your parents. Did they know you were up in space? Did they send you up here? The thought made your head hurt so you stopped, tucking it away, it was for another day. There were too many questions floating as is. Then the shirt, a giant shirt that confused that shit out of you even more. You took it out of the box, holding it up to show him and the two of you just burst out laughing. 

“So I have bad taste in clothing?” you asked, trying to regain your breathing, him wiping away the tears from his eyes. 

“You should see some of the other clothes people brought,” and those words were just the start. Too much vodka flowing through your system, the two of you found comfort in trying on stupid hats and shirts packed throughout the ship. At some point you found yourself collapsed on the floor with him, laying there, the bag of alcohol laying between the two of you.

You talked for hours that night…well you assumed it was night, trying to hypothesize about who the two of you might have been. Were you smart? Where had the two of you met? Were you friends? Somewhere in your mind you felt like there was something else there. But you did not want to dig there, when you tried your head would just pound right back. So you laid there, accepting the silence of space, accepting that none of it made sense.

“I am glad I am not alone,” he spoke up from the silence, so quiet you might have missed it.

“I am not sure why, but I feel like we were meant to do this together,” you replied, turning your head to the side to look at him.

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no matter his respectful declines of your invitations to promenade around Penacony (re: going on dates), you really didn't know how to leave him be. though he hasn't exactly said he hated it, sunday was, admittedly, rather... affronted. your gifts, in particular, were your loud declarations of your affection (that make his wings flutter more rapidly than he'd like); but sunday was rather inconvenienced at the whole thing.

nonetheless, he does still accept them. reluctantly, mind you. not because he was fond of your constant shower of affections, which seemed so permanent that he began to look forward to them got used to it. to your credit, your gifts were very much to his tastes. (Robin once gave him a rather soul-searching look when he found himself wearing the gloves you gifted, light blue and white in color. he still uses it, just not when his sister is in the vicinity.)

in fact, perhaps he may have gotten too comfortable. little by little, your constant intrusions on his time have thawed a way to his heart; making sunday look forward to your jovial greetings and grandeur elaborations on your day, and such a thing makes him feel scared sunday needed to nip this in the bud, and fast.

so he confronts you, abruptly one day as you give him his newest gift—a jewelry box for his earrings. (surely, the rapid thumping of his heart was due to his irritation at your constant persistence, right?) “i'm afraid this can no longer continue. i am flattered by your... fancy for me, but i do not wish to enter a relationship in the near future.”

the utter silence that follows is torture to him—but he endures. he tries not to look at the momentary flash of hurt on your face. you seemed to quickly recover, though. giving him a simple smile (it didn't reach your eyes. it shocks him how his chest ached at the realization) and shaking your head when he returns the gift to you.

“i understand, mr. sunday.” the formal usage of his name instead of your chipper ‘sunday!’ makes his face twitch. “but please, keep the gift. think of this as my last declaration. it... would do me a great comfort, just this last time, if you accepted it instead.”

(if he had grabbed your hand at that moment as you left for the door, would he regret it?)

when you leave, sunday thought it would put the conflicting feelings in his mind at ease—but it doesn't. a week and two days counting, true to your word, sunday receives no flagrant gifts, nor little messages on his phone that tell him to take care of himself, to eat, and to make sure to remember to check up on Robin.

instead, contrary to the feeling of ease, regret follows him instead.

it's at two weeks and five days counting when sunday could no longer stand the sight of papers that stacked atop his desk and the image of you leaving for the door replaying in his head far too many times for him to count, that he contacts Robin.

and she, once hearing about the situation, gives him a very, very enlightening talk. (of course, not without giving her brother a lecture of the lifetime. part of him felt shame to know that his sister knew of his... turbulent love life, but she was the only one who he could trust, anyway).

“absence makes the heart grow fonder,” she says. “but in your case, brother, your heart has already decided it's course, right?”

sunday eyes the smooth velvet of the jewelry box you gifted, ruminating. his earrings lie there, carefully pristine and beautiful, gold and silver intertwined. he has worn them without fail, clean and spotless. (of course it was. such a design so intricate was only chosen by you. the thought makes his ears warm).

the next days are agonizing. vigor renewed and epiphanies well-spent, sunday spends the rest of his time after finishing his duties researching and painstakingly finding the best jeweller he can find (even employing the suggestions of a certain gambler, much to his dislike), and spending a god awful amount of time revisiting and rechecking which spots you like, which places you enjoy, to the point it comes up in Penacony's headlines that sunday is interested in someone.

surely, it should've reached your ears by now, yes? sunday panics. your preferences are well-accounted for, and he's sure the Bloodhound family members that report to him have to tell you that the person he had in mind was you. even Robin, who was your closest friend, has probably told you already.

it's embarrassing to admit, but; to hell with it, the day he meets you after three weeks and sees you having a pleasant chat with aventurine, of all people, sunday thinks his heart had shattered into little pieces and stabbed themselves into his body. not so much as sparing him a glance, moreso.

so when, finally at his wits end, sunday chooses to corner you at the dewlight pavilion and spills out how he has royally screwed up in the worst way possible, no one is surprised. at this rate, you would be swept up in the charms of that wretched gambler, and what sunday lacked in, aventurine more than made up for.

“wait, don't go to that gambler just yet.” he's breathless, he's chaotic—and something in his heart squeezes when you finally look at him. “i... i wish to take up your time now, if that's possible.” (he wishes he would take up your time forever, really, but that was still too early).

you eye his getup. all of your gifts, lined on the man you spent so long chasing after—you see the gloves you gifted, the tie with not so much as a single crease, and the earrings that shine more brightly in the light of the pavilion. (it suits him. like you) it was as if sunday had completely surrendered himself to you, had all but decided to proclaim that he was yours, and this was nothing short of a plea for you to hear him.

“please.” he says. almost begs. “i can't bear not seeing you anymore. allow me to correct such a damning mistake.”

and if you were skeptical, the way sunday looks at you would dispel any doubt you could ever have. (his wings, they were fluttering.)

(months later, after a nerve-ending confession, many days of dinners, shared gifts involving matching jewelry and promenading to your wishes, it dawns on sunday he was absolutely dancing to your tune. did he regret it, though?

....no, most certainly not.)

if AVENTURINE were to be honest with himself, he saw you as a useful “friend” rather than a romantic interest. was it bad of him? of a sort. but risk cutting himself open and letting someone he might grow to care for know about all the ugliness that follows his life? no, he's fine as it is, thanks.

the first thing he notices is that you're kind—though he distrusted most of his colleagues and preferred none to get close to him, aventurine, in some morbid moment of curiosity, instead allowed himself to bask in your attention. instead of curtly disparaging you, he flirts back at your compliments (the way your face heated up in return was far too endearing that he can't help but want to kiss you he finds it amusing) and consistently texts you a “did you get home safe” or a “i bought you this because it reminded me of you”; at this point, it was like you two were dating.

was it leading you on? yes, but he supposes it was a win-win; he could send you those tiny bits of validation that was enough for you to stay respectfully at a distance while he probed at your intentions. unlike others who attempt to garner his favor, you're genuine, and you seriously take the time to know him. because you always text back with hearts, always reassure him, tell him to stay safe and wish him luck at every gamble, every high stakes bet he finds himself in. you even complimented his perfume once (and, if he had to be honest, he could not stop thinking about it all day—because that perfume he commissioned exclusively was based off of your own favorite scents and it was extremely embarrassing that he loved hugging you knowing that you loved the way he smelled and that it felt extremely domestic).

(sometimes, he doesn't reply. for months on end. suddenly the golden-haired man you love goes cold and you know then that aventurine ghosts you and then returns when he's in need of a friend—never a lover. it hurts you, but at the very least, you know he cares in his own way.)

and, if aventurine had to be honest, it was killing him from the inside bit by bit. as if to drive the knife deeper, you never danced around what exactly was going on with you two. you never ask why he ghosts you, then sends you a bundle of gifts all of a sudden and then rapidly spends time with you and repeating the cycle. no, you were consistently by his side, so warm and so caring—so unlike him—that aventurine wonders if it's really all right to open his heart to you.

if, by some chance, he actually wanted to be with you, would you treat him even more sweetly than before? aventurine thinks you would—you were beautiful in your entirety, and he was practically undeserving of you. he imagines himself kissing your hand and having you in his arms—and that feels like ice cold water being dumped onto his head, because you could do so much better and yet, why him?

so when aventurine hears about how a certain doctor was visiting you for some unknown reason, his already fragile sense of security in this little will-they, won't they crumbles.

and when he finds out that you were staying over with ratio? something twisted lodges itself in the little brushes of his heart, coiling and coiling—making him feel green. aventurine is aware you and the doctor are good friends, and ratio was the one who even told you to make a move on him! how could he just—suddenly interrupt?!

(was it dramatic? extremely. but knowing his friend and the person he secretly adores might end up together? you can't really blame him.)

he supposes this can be attributed to him. it was an egregious mistake, a blunder aventurine made—he never gave you a clear sight of whether he truly loved you or not and now you're slipping away from him.

so, he does something very unexpected.

at 3:00 AM in the wee early morning hours, aventurine practically barges into one Dr. veritas ratio's home, demanding what the hell was going on between you. and as if he had expected it, his doctor friend merely gives him a shrug in return.

“perhaps they were simply getting fed up by a certain IPC member—who is clearly head over heels in love with them—giving them mixed signals.” ratio's tone is stern, and aventurine definitely knows that the look he gives him is the one he gives only to fools.

you idiot, the doctor seems to say. yeah, yeah, he is; aventurine ignores the clear pinprick at his dignity.

yes, he supposes he is the fool here. “ah.”

“yes, ‘ah,’ indeed. now, let me propose a question.” the purple-haired man says. “will you react in such a way when i tell you that in order for my friend to stop their anguish, i managed to get them to fraternize with one of my colleagues?”

“...what?”

“they will be having a meet-up seven system hours from now.” ratio shrugs. eyes aventurine, who's looking at him like a gaping, stupid fish. “i can only hope that no one would dare to disrupt.”

...it doesn't take him long to be rid of the gambler by then.

(a few hours later, you stop by the Intelligentsia Guild to see one veritas ratio with a smug smile, eyeing the fur coat draped around your shoulders, and the flushed and happy expression written on your face.

“did it work?” he asks.

you laugh, “splendidly.”

indeed, that gambler was a fool, and there's nothing more than dr. ratio loved than to educate such fools to shape.

“that will teach him.”)

as a quote unquote ‘old man’ who knows that he's well up in his years for a relationship, JING YUAN finds you to be quite amusing.

it doesn't take a detailed analysis to know that you were smitten with him, really. you're a complete open book by his standards—if your heated face and slightly airy voice whenever you were even placed in the same vicinity with the Dozing General was anything to come by. while flattering, he also shares the similar mindset of being too old for any love his way—and he could be mara-struck at any given time, and jing yuan does not wish such a life filled with anguish and pain for the one who may steal his heart. but, worry not, brave suitor of the Arbiter General! unlike the other two above, this man has the experience of millenia, and is open-minded and aware that you truly wish to be perceived as a potential lover.

in fact, jing yuan's recent favorite habit is sneaking off the Seat of Divine Foresight purely to freak you out, watching you scramble up your words, seeing the heat crawl up your nape and bloom all across your face. adorable. you certainly knew how to appeal, that's for sure.

(“heh, it seems i've found a new place to stay in so that the Diviner Fu won't grill me alive when she sees me.”

and when he's rewarded with a bashful and speechless look in return, a smile and your, “i'm glad, general.” it surprisingly lightens up his mood by more than he expected.

that, in turn, gives him a frightening 30% energy boost; fu xuan was utterly shocked to see the languid man actually working and looking like he enjoyed it, for once.

“did something good happen today, jing yuan? why so enthusiastic?”

“i just felt like working more than usual, diviner Fu. i seem to have my energy levels at a high.”)

now, jing yuan is considerate and perceptive first and foremost, so there's a high chance that out of all the men here, he is the most open to giving you the chance to pursue him. he does inform you beforehand that he has no plans of accepting your confessions in the future, and that is where the ‘hard to get’ part comes in.

it's like playing a confusing romance visual novel with a fickle love interest—you never really know what you're doing, whether it's something jing yuan would like or not, and you don't know if he even thinks your attempts are moving his heart. (tldr: he friend zones you).

he maintains the same distance no matter his banters with you, no matter how many times you tell him that you'd help yanqing out with sword lessons. it's like he was just... treating you as he would a friend, and that you were basically stuck in the friend-zone forever.

(he keeps it to himself, but something warm stirs in his chest when he sees yanqing sleeping on your shoulder after training practice, with your arm protectively around the boy's side.

your sleeping face didn't make it easy to look away either; it's one of the few moments in which jing yuan shows just the slightest bit of reciprocating your pursuits; he brushes back the stray hairs covering your face, and drapes a blanket over the two of you.

of course, perhaps to tease yanqing, he also takes the calligraphy brush and makes a work out of his face, doodling all over it.

when you wake up, there's a lingering scent of ink and yellowed paper that fills your senses. when you turn to the boy beside you, you almost giggle out loud.)

it's a little disheartening—and while jing yuan did acknowledge that you were slowly, slowly burrowing yourself in his heart, he doesn't act on it fast enough, and instead lets the realization sit in his mind for a while.

it gets to the point where it feels as though he were preparing to distance himself, and even yanqing had asked if he was well. your visits with the Arbiter General also decrease, as he suddenly buried himself in his work even more than before.

he doesn't get to see you all that much afterwards, despite the lingering feeling of missing you filling his heart.

....that's until jing yuan hears word of a recent mara-struck incident involving the Sky-faring Commission; with your name listed among those heavily injured.

when he visits Bailu's clinic after yanqing urges him, jing yuan takes in the sight of you, littered in injuries from head to toe. your life, about to snap. he never even told you that you won; you did manage to steal his heart and for the first time in a long time, jing yuan allows himself to love.

so if, after three weeks later when you're finally healed up and ready to go, jing yuan brings you into his arms and drags you to let him sleep in your lap, you can't really blame him now, can you?

a/n: i love yearner hsr men,,, might do a pt 2 though. thinking of mayb ratio, jiaoqiu and f/heng next time...... sighs dreamily